Yet another short trip to Coorg
When we went to Coorg two weeks ago, we already knew that it was not going to be siginficantally cooler than Bangalore. And indeed, save for an occasionally misty early morning, it was every bit as warm and sunny as Bangalore gets in March. A few distant clouds were seen rolling over the hills, but they were unorganized mutinous soldiers and not the disciplined brigade it takes to start a downpour. Yet, they did manage to tinge the sunset with a bit of color and drama that the clear blue sky of all day long could hardly have managed alone.
A beautiful sunset that could be anywhere (but was at Coorg)
But what this visit stands out in our minds for is coffee blossoms. Given how unpredictable the rains have been in Coorg, a lot of coffee estate owners have taken to irrigating their plantations themselves. Since everyone follows their own schedule, there is no one day you on which you’ll see all the estates blossom. Apparently this year, it had rained just a week before our arrival and practically every single coffee plant was bedecked with beautiful white blossoms. It was our noses that pointed this out first to us - the breeze in Coorg was fragrant with the scent of coffee flowers. Our eyes took notice of the unending sea of white much later.
Now if you are thinking ‘coffee smell’ here (you know the sort you get when you brew filter coffee, or step into a Café Coffee Day/Barista/Starbucks outlet), you are mistaken! Coffee flowers don’t smell even remotely like coffee. In fact, if you were classifying the coffee plant based on the smell of its flowers alone, you’ll place it somewhere next to Jasmine. This I think makes discovery of coffee an even more remarkable feat!
Unfortunately, the blossom is short-lived. Within a day, the flowers begin to wilt and turn brown. As we drove back to Bangalore, it was hard not to feel sad at their decay. But we had the smug satisfaction of knowing that hundreds of tourists who’d throng Coorg a week later (a long weekend) would have no idea what they had missed.
Devdas - of the Kamal Haasan variety
While looking for the Dev D music at a music store this weekend, I stumbled upon an older version of Devdas - rather Chandramukhi Devdas - starring Kamal Haasan and Sri Devi. My curiosity was sufficiently piqued, but this picture on the sleeve made sure I had to buy it:
Devdas - the attack of the clones edition
Now you are probably thinking that this looks suspiciously close to the album cover of Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Shahrukh Khan starrer:
Devdas - the ‘original’ edition
A closer inspection of the two covers will reveal, that indeed, the Kamal Haasan variant is just a shoddy photoshop job on top of the Bhansali version. Someone not only planted Kamal Haasan’s head on to Shahrukh’s torso - they added insult to injury by repeating the process for Sridevi and Sripriya (with Aishwarya Rai and Madhuri Dixit being the respective victms).
The movie turned out to be a badly dubbed version of an old Tamizh movie. The soundtrack seemed to have been (badly) redone for the Hindi version - so ridiculous dialogues weren’t the only coat of fresh paint that had been applied over the original. That said, we managed to extract a few laughs from a movie that has been been roughly modeled on one of the greatest romantic tragedy of all times. Here is a synopsis in 8 easy chunks:
 Pink? Pink? What's wrong with Pink?
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Raja (Kamal) is a brat with prediliction for ridiculous pink t-shirts and chain smoking. |
| Enter Devi (Sri Devi) his love interest - who is an Air Hostess for Indian Airlines - no less! She is seen here clearing her ear, while her friend pretends the she and the movie camera do not exist. |
 Let's pretend that there is no camera
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 In love at last!
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Through a series of contrived and rather forgettable events they fall in love and decide to get married. The families are happy with the match and the two go on a wedding card distribution spree. |
| But alas, the wedding is not to be - Raja, thanks to years of smoking like a chimney has - yes - cancer - very visible cancer. |
 Look ma, I've got cancer
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 The concerned brother
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Devi’s brother comes to know of it and wants to save his sister from her fate. |
| He contacts the friendly family priest/astrologer and urges him to postpone their wedding by 6 months - knowing well that his chain-smoking-cancer-inflicted brother-in-law to be wouldn’t last that long. Note the clever assumption that his sister will show sound judgement and will not marry a dead man. The priest obliges. |
 No comments
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 The elaborate song and dance routine.
| Raja in the meanwhile realizes the gravity of his condition and starts supplementing his copious intake of nicotine with healthy quantities of liquor. The jeopardy of his betrothal also opens door to a brothel. Enter Radha - played by a certain Sripriya. She is seen here indulging in an elaborate song and dance routine with the soon-to-be-dead man. |
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Devi - with a little nudging by big bro and a little prodding by Raja himself - ends up marrying an old friend of hers. He is visibly pleased. After the wedding they all come together at Radha’s place for a grand, tearjerking finale. |
 The guy who finally gets the girl
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Doomsday keeps coming closer
Doomsday keeps coming closer
Just a few years ago, doomsday was something that happened a few hundred years down the road. But of late, Hollywood has been pushing the date a little too close to the present. I just saw the trailer for the movie 2012 and found it sufficiently spooky. Watch and judge it for yourself!
From today, I won’t be mopey about mops
When I moved to Bangalore, I wasn’t sure if I wanted a maid working in my house. It was partly out of concern for my privacy, partly driven by desire to not have any dependence whatsoever on another person and partly because I didn’t know whom to ask for a maid! A few weeks into doing my own dishes, dusting and mopping, I realized that household chores can be an excellent workout, besides being a form of meditation. Six years later, I am still mopping the floors of our flat myself.
The biggest problem to have plagued my enterprise has been the non-availability of quality mops. Many things can go wrong with a mop. Its head can wear out and start leaving long cotton strands all over the floor or worse, the head can come off the handle because either the head or the handle rusts, causing the connection between them to sever. Over the years I’ve tried practically every brand, model and make available at the shops here, and all of them have met more or less the same fate. Another problem is accessories - almost all the mops sold are supposed to have replacement heads available - but best of luck actually finding one.
This Saturday while looking for a new mop, I came across a whole section dedicated to them at Spar. Apparently 3M have figured that this space needs a shakeup and have decided to take a plunge. There they were - Scotch Brite Mops - all nicely packed and neatly stacked. I procured one for a princely sum of Rs. 225 and took it for a spin today. So far, I am impressed. The cotton strands are looped for longevity, the head is neatly screwed onto a sturdy handle and there are strips of some synthetic material with dots of a plasticy polymer on them amidst the thick cotton loops, that are supposed to allow me to scrub stubborn dirt with ease. Today, it all worked as advertised. We’ll see how it holds in the coming days. Considering this is 3M we are dealing with, at least a replacement head should be easy to procure.
Scoth Brite Mop
Will 3M be successful? I have my doubts. Firstly, I know (at least anecdotally) that I am part of tiny minorty that buys mops for their own use. Mopping in most household is delegated to maids - and while we might demand the fastest, newest laptops from our employers at work in the name of productivity and efficiency, a maid at our house isn’t going to get the latest, greatest tool that the money can buy; especially if the tool (as is the case here), happens to be on the expensive side. The product might work if commerical establishments start procuring branded mops en masse, but as long as their are cheaper alternatives available, I don’t see that happening either. But who knows - 3M might just be able to muscle shelf space and bulk contracts and put others out of business. As far as mops go, I don’t think that will be such a bad thing.
In summers, the grass smokes
In summers, the grass smokes
Taken at one of the numerous parks in London on a particularly hot summer day. For me, travel and photography are inseparable. I haven’t been doing a lot of the former, and so the latter has suffered. This is the nature of things that have been keeping me busy for the past few weeks.
Monkeys
Monkeys 1 
Monkeys 2
The real thing and a dustbin shaped like one.
Similar simian pursuits: