Entries from January 2010 ↓

Second-hand books can be strange. Often it is the affectionately handwritten dedications on the title page that give me a start. Occasionally, all sorts of things tumble out of them – old movie tickets, grocery bills, postcards, handwritten notes – the works.

A book that was a Christmas present for someone in London in the 1930s somehow makes it to a second-hand bookstore in Bangalore and almost finds itself on my bookshelf. Surely it must have an interesting story to tell – apart from the one printed in it.

Here is another remarkable coincidence that happend this week. I picked up an old copy of Oliver Twist along with a copy of The 1982 Annual World’s Best SF. The 1964 edition of a 19th century Dickens novel shouldn’t ordinarily be related in any way to a compilation of science fiction short stories from 1982. But to my surprise the latter begins with Dickens’ famous lines from A Tale of Two Cities. Let me reproduce the first paragraph here:

“It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.” That was Dickens’ comment on the crisis of the 18th Century. It could apply now to the outlook for many periods of the 20th. There were the times just before the great wars – and just after. There were the times before the economic crisis that have racked this century… the times of ideological debate, of fog and confusion… times confronting the advent of surprising new scientific achievements.

The remarkability quotient would be so much higher if the book I had just picked was A Tale of Two Cities itself!

Let’s face it, Avatar isn’t winning any awards for best screenplay, dialogue or acting (wouldn’t that be going to the animators anyway?) and yet watching it for the second time wasn’t as big a bore as I had thought it would be.

A good deal of Pandora’s charm stays intact even on second viewing, but there are some tedious scenes – especially as the movie draws to a protracted end – during which you can take time out for certain random experiments/observations:

1. Closing one eye makes the 3D “go away”. Expected, because most theaters, including the one we went to, use stereoscopic projection – which, to put it crassly, relies on each eye seeing its own thing. After all, we’ve all got Wikipedia to do the heavy lifting.

2. The font used for the English sub-titles of Na’vi dialogues was Papyrus, which looked a little jarring. I’ll try to see the glass half-full here – it could’ve been Comic Sans.

Today was supposed to be the last day of the Ranji trophy final in Mysore, but obviously that won’t be needed now. Apparently matches in India have been rescheduled in the past to avoid eclipses.

Anyway, in a few hours from now, I plan to work from our office’s terrace and even if clouds ruin the show (which I am sure they will) I’ll enjoy the evening sky at noon.

8:26 AM IST It’s a very cloudy morning with barely a hint of breeze. Doesn’t look like this will clear any time soon.

10:15 AM IST The sun came out, but only just. It’s back to being cloudy. Worse, it might just rain. We’ll see. Off to work.

10:40 AM IST At work. A gentle breeze has picked up. The clouds are drifting leaving an occasional patch of blue through which the sun can be seen. We’ll hopefully catch fleeting glimpses of the eclipse.

10:54 AM IST On the terrace but don’t see the sun. The breeze is still around so there’s hope.

11:00 AM IST This is how the sky looks:

11:37 AM IST It’s still light and shade. The eclipse isn’t here yet. We’ll be seeing it live via the iSight camera on my MacBook.

12:01 PM IST The pinhole camera shows that the eclipse has begun! Still too bright for the camera but we are about to try.

12:13 PM IST The sun is obscured by the clouds. Hard to tell what’s up. Cannot even say if the loss in light is due to the clouds or the solar eclipse.

1:22 PM IST It’s very surreal here. The birds are beginning to get befuddled. The shadows under the canopies of the trees are crescent shaped. Nature’s very own pinhole camera!

1:50 PM IST None of the digital cameras (including iSight) work. We just get a flare of light – cannot underestimate even the eclipsed sun!

2:14 PM IST It’s fast getting over. That was fun!

…not here at any rate. Not even if it is a not-so-closely, not-so-keenly fought contest between India and Sri Lanka who’ve played so much cricket together of late that it’s a miracle to see Dhoni not do his press conferences in Sinhala.

Café Pascucci at MG Road has a big LCD TV inside that drew a small crowd of onlookers outside. I don’t know what’ll happen during IPL or the World Cup. I guess they’ll learn that big TVs tuned to cricket channels and glass facades are bad a idea in this country. The Reebok showroom on Brigade Road has a small LCD TV – where, by virtue of them being the official sponsors of the ICC, cricket must be the sole (pun unintentional) programming. But it drew a big enough crowd outside to probably start a mini-riot. The smaller the TV and the harder it is to catch a glimpse of the action on screen (let alone read the score), the bigger the crowd. Like moths flocking around the tubelights at a garish Indian wedding on a humid summer night.

A big German Shepherd, named after an American electronica musician quite popular in the UK, caused us considerable panic by charging straight towards us. Turns out, it simply wanted to play its own peculiar brand of “fetch” that involves the human subject kicking a piece of stone or wooden stick, which the canine will then promptly fetch and gingerly place at your feet. This was done till one of the parties tired out (invariably us).

The rules were quite like football in the sense that trying to touch the stone or stick with your hands carried a penalty – which in this case was the dog’s undiluted scorn that might have translated into a bite, causing you to lose the appendage that intervened for good.

All said and done, Moby turned out to be an adorable dog – like most dogs are. We might visit the Red Hills again just for a game of fetch with Moby.