Outcast
Outcast
..or in the wake of the latest Microsoft advertisements - “I am a Mac, and we are the PCs”.
p.s. From a trip to Nandi Hills in April.
Mirror Mirror On The Ground
Mirror Mirror On The Ground
Taken at Shimoga some two years ago while visiting Kuvempu University for presenting at a weekend workshop. I rose early to catch the sunrise but the clouds denied me the opportunity. Still, there was no dearth of photographable things
The Tale Of A Tooth Extraction
And so my wisdom teeth, in an act contrary to their moniker, started pressing against my jawbone. This made it impossible to clean them and necessitated their removal. It was decided by the wise dentist that Saturday evening would be the perfect time for their extraction.
On Friday evening, I found myself watching the movie Enemy At The Gates. It is set in Russia in the middle of World War II and mostly involves a sniper from Russia trying to outdo (and do) a sniper from Germany. Now among the supporting characters, is this guy called Kulikov (Ron Perlman), who was training in Germany when Germany attacked Russia. He is caught by Stalin’s moral police and tortured for his alleged treachery - totally ignoring the fact that he was in Germany on Stalin’s very orders. He grins, baring his all-metal teeth and explains what his tormentors did to him:
“Confess spy bastard, confess - bang, bang, bang, bang - well there was no sickle, but there was a hammer. And bang - knocked out all my teeth!”
Kulikov
The perfect image of harmony and bliss to go to a dentist with. There I was leafing through an ages old issue of a news weekly and waiting for my tormenter to arrive. And defying my secret prayers, arrive he did (if an hour late). For someone who has recently been through two if not more root canals, I wasn’t too scared of what awaited me. Still, there is something about losing a body part - no matter how vestigial, how rotten - that was making me nervous.
The nervousness was not unfounded. After the obligatory local anesthesia, I was told to wait for a few minutes for it to fully kick in. I progressively lost all sensation first in my cheeks, in my gums and eventually in the left part of my lips and was shortly back on my seat. The equipment that dentists use for a tooth extraction looks way too primitive compared to those sophisticated drills they employ when filling your cavities or giving you a root canal. The tools would’ve looked just right in the hands of an ironsmith, a carpenter or a medieval torturer; in the hands of a dentist they were completely amiss.
My jaw was completely shaken with the aid of various tweezers, miniature crowbars and other abominations that should have no business in a man’s mouth. After five minutes of jaw-wrenching jaw wrenching the tooth gave in. My agony was only half over. Within seconds the dentist began the application of his entire mortal self to the other tooth. This one wanted to stay in my service against all coercion and wouldn’t budge a single millimeter. The dentist eventually gave up and ordered an x-ray, which revealed that the faithful tooth would require a somewhat elaborate procedure for its extraction. Since it was already very late, we decided to pursue it next week. I left with a prescription for an antibiotic and a painkiller.
Now as a child, the good thing to have come out of such an episode, would have been a half-year’s supply of ice-cream in a single day. Since I am now all grown up (hence the wisdom teeth), an ice-cream is something I can treat myself to whenever I please; without waiting for such a momentous occasion. Ice-cream therefore, has ceased to be a comforting trophy it once used to be.
As I turned in sleep at night, feeling the void left by the tooth with my tongue, I wondered about something I have chewed (?) on before. Why don’t we photosynthesize? That way, we’d be outdoors most of the time, would use the lunch hour doing something more productive, and would never have to see a dentist ever again.
And yes, dear tooth, wherever you are, may you rest in peace.
ToothFairy
p.s. The picture is from my dentist’s appointment card. I’ve posted it before, but what the heck. At this point I’d like to think that my dentist has a sense of humor - however vestigial.
p.p.s. Thanks inkyji for mollycoddling me. It sure helps heal faster.
WALL-E
WALL-E
Just back from a Sunday morning show of WALL-E and I cannot seem to put WALL-E and EVE out of my mind.
Unlike most other marquee Hollywood releases, WALL-E in India is terribly late. The timing of the release could not be worse. The summer vacation in schools is over and bootlegged copies are already doing rounds in the market. In fact, so peeved was I with Disney for being late, that I wanted to deny them that measly revenue which I would have contributed by watching the movie in a theatre. Better judgement prevailed and I was sitting in the front-row seat of a theatre waiting for the movie to begin. I found my petulance melting away even before WALL-E was projected on the screen - thanks largely to the delightful Pixar short ‘Presto’, which preceded it.
The first few minutes of the movie reminded me of ‘I Am Legend’. They brought back that same eerie sense of loneliness at having been left all alone in the ruins of a vibrant, big city that was bustling with people once. And then Pixar’s trademark story-telling begins to weave its magic. Yes, Pixar movies tend to play on somewhat similar themes. The protagonists in Pixar’s animations are usually “once-famous” before they slip into oblivion or are left behind or are separated from the ones they cherish. Then through a series of events they are reunited with their loved ones or are restored to their former glorious days. And yet there is something about the way these themes play out in each movie that keeps the sum-total interesting and fresh.
The thing I found most fascinating about WALL-E is the exploration (perhaps not intended by Pixar) into human communication. The robots themselves are not human, but their creators are - decidedly so. It shows. The robots rarely - if at all - go beyond saying each other’s name. And yet they speak to us and to each other through their “body-language” and tone. EVE has an exasperated “WALL-E”, an excited “WALL-E”, an affectionate “WALL-E” and even a dejected “WALL-E” and despite sounding as if the voice was synthesized by a computer, it conveys a broad spectrum of emotions really well. Of course the context in which “WALL-E” is said helps as well.
EVE was designed by John Ive, the man behind such iconic products as the iPod and there are generous smatterings of Apple-isms in the movie. For instance, upon fully charging, WALL-E emits the same sound that Macs make when they boot-up. Cute, depending on which camp you are in. I found the references funny, even endearing.
In short, I liked WALL-E. Not as much as some of the other Pixar works - like The Incredibles, but enough to want to own a DVD. I was misty-eyed more than once during the movie. No, it was not the wisdom tooth that the dentist so unceremoniously extracted last night.
Selectively Painted
Selectively Painted
A chariot outside Ranganathaswamy temple at Srirangapattana. I wonder why only the main deities had been painted.
Defaced
Defaced
The enthusiasm with which people in India deface public places amazes me. Even ordinary objects - like this old bulb-holder - aren’t spared sometimes. Ironically, this one was defaced with a face.