Pride and Prejudice

One of my favourite VCD collections that i watch often is the Pride and Prejudice BBC series.
I have ofcourse read the book already , and have even studied an abridged version of the book in my school years. Jane Austen's writing is just amazing. I mean here is a piece of literature , that still sounds so relevant even after nearly 200 years after it was written. I have tried other Jane Austen's writings some of which are quite good but none in the same league as Pride and Prejudice.

What makes this book so enchanting ? probably the romance, and the lines , the dialogues , the letters echanged between the protagonists, and of course the scenic descriptions of the english contry side.

The BBC adaptation of the novel has made it even more memorable. BBC has made some remarkable adpatations of classic novels and this should surely rank amongst the best . ( the others I like being Sherlock Holmes and Great Expectations) Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth fit into the characters of Elizabeth and Darcy respectively just like pieces from a jigsaw puzzle. if their portrayal of the characters is near perfect so are the dialogues almost repeated verbatim from the book such that you never get the feeling that you are watching a condensed version.
The music is melodious too , dominated by the piano and violin orchestras lending a rich experience overall.


This Jane Austen's 18th century novel has remarkably withstood the tides of time and still seems to find new ways of expression. and I think even Bollywood has taken a fancy to it with Aishwarya Rai taking a dig at it. How is this for a list adaptations of the novel:

1. 2005: Kiera knightly's Pride and Prejudice the movie
2. 2004: Our desi Aishwarya Rai's Bride and Prejudice or if you prefer the ridiculously titled "Amritsar to LA , Balle Balle"
3. 1995: The BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice , starring Jennifer Ehle and Collin Firth - by far the best.
4. 199X: Trishna - A Hindi TV serial adaptation of the same story - a decent effort.
5. 1813: The original : Pride and Prejudice , the book by Jane Austen

Trip to Taipei

Business brought me to taipei on a late october evening. Having visited the US and Europe I was not sure what to except but what was pleasantly surprised by how modern and developed this city was. The journey from Tao Youn international airport to our Hotel in the city took about an hour. The freeway system is very developed very much like US with controlled entries and exits and its a pleasure to travel by car.

The next day was a typical business day full of meetings. But in the evening , I had the chance to explore the night markets of Taipei. Taipei also has an efficient train system. we took the underground train to the Gagantan night market.

I forgot to mention that china airlines had already obliged me by by missing my baggage and it also turned out that it was because Indian airlines screwed which sounded like the usual thing to happen anyways :-) . But then as a consequence here i was buying some bare necessities. I could buy a couple of shirts for quite cheap may about a 1000 Indian rupees. The night markets are full of roadside eateries. Some thing told me that this assortment of eateries had contributions from various species of the animal kingdom including the amphibious and reptilian varieties. So I took in the aromas and colours and let it pass by. Fortunately there are plenty of MacDonalds all around Taipei so food is not too much of an issue. The night markets are literally teaming with people you can barely walk and usually you will get pushed from one end to the other. I was surprised to not find even a single indian anywhere in the night market - and then I suppoted one - in the Cell phone shop , checking out some latest models , India as you know is slowly becoming cell phone crazy.


Sunday was the only day which was some what free from work schedule so I made the most of it by visiting the famous land mark - Taipei 101. What can i say abou this marvellous structure !
You can spot it from almost any corner of the city and it has the most amazing view from the 89th floor where there is an observatory , the building is so tall that from the top floors you can actually spot a cloud or two floating below in the lower horizons.
You can read more about it in wikipedia.

The glittering taipei 101 in the evening .... :-))




Taiwan is good for shopping too and you can find a number of swanky malls to pick up the latest and happening stuff in fashion , electronic gizmos and the like. I found the prices to be slightly on the expensive side if you compare it with US or singapore, also beware that voltage in taiwan is usually 110 v so if you are buying a hi-fi system , you will need an appropriate volatage adapter.Never the less, after a considerable amount of window shopping, the only thing that i picked up was an I-Pod nano - need less to say its a sexy gizmo that I have fallen in love with ever since :-)

Nothing too much to write home about that sounds touristy but as i have a keen interest in automobiles , I could not help noticing the number of scooters in taipei the streets are full of them and seems like a fast and easy way to get around the city. There are loads of toyota corolla nd Nissan sentra taxis around. If you are some body in India who is eyeing to buy that "D-Segment" , "luxury car" Corolla , Keep this in mind. Ditto about the Nissan Sentra when it gets introduced in India. But then on the other side , I sa w plenty of Mercedes Benz taxis in Germany So probably my argument doesn't carry much weight after all.

A wild look at traffic jams.

Have you ever wondered why traffic jams happen ? Everytime i am stuck in a traffic jam , i know that either its because of a petty quarrel that broke over on the road because of a small accident , Buffaloes crossing the road, or one of those buses which were made in india just after independence are plying on the road with a full load. hmm , I think these might be valid reasons but I have an insane theory as to why traffic jams happen...

Have you ever noticed how many ad hoardings are there on the roads these days. Huge hoardings selling everything from cell phones and news papers to underwear. Pretty and skimpily clad women with glossy lipstick on 20 feet 30 feet banners sure are a major source of distraction ! distraction or whatever - the folks who put up these banners want people to be looking at them for as long as possible so that the dummies can buy their products. one way to make people look at these banners is to make traffic jams so that the people are rooted to one place and can keep gazing at the billboards. Another party that has lot of vested interests are the gas station guys. these guys sure want you to keep filling as much gas as you can and often. If you are going to be stuck in traffic jams sure you are going to burn more fuel.

One more suspicious element on my list are the FM radio stations. these people know that car drivers and the like listen to the radio in their cars , and one sure way for upping listenership is to get them stuck in traffic jams so that , while they dish out some sorry music and lame humour between commericials you steel keep listening for want of nothing better to do.

I plan to to wear my detective cloak and eyeglass tonight. Heading out to see how these guys are conspiring togehter to make traffic jams happen , i have a tip off that the preparations start at midnight !

Toodle hoooo

Maddening City Scapes - 1

I love our indian cities very dearly. I have had the opportunity to live in the three big southern cities , Chennai , Bangalore and Hyderabad. While all the three cities seem to have their own merits and demerits , I cant help feeling sad for the fact that they are all headed in the same direction and just reflect various stages of neglect and disarray.

The population of these cities is becoming too huge for the infrastructure to handle which is slowly but surely crumbling down. while in some cases, you can see some action being taken to widen and build new roads , new flyovers to ease smoother flow of traffic, the progress on these fronts is just too slow to keep pace with the rapid development in industries such as IT , BPO and Pharma which attact vast populace to relocate to these cities. Once there is such a vast section of upwardly mobile population, retail and hospitality industry has stepped in to cash in too - resulting in a number of spanking new malls sprouting up everywhere.

I do marvel at the developments shopping is a delight with retail customers being spoilt with variety and innovative schemes. New restaurants and hotels offer lots of cuisines to choose from. The night life though still bland is looking to improve too. World class housing projects are coming up everywhere. Private enterprise is flourishing.

All these developments have resulted in more usage of resources such as land , water , power and roads. So much that , i have noticed every 6 months there is almost a 50% increase in traffic jams ! I listen so much more to the radio in my car these days , atleast a couple of hours every day and I seem to be getting used to this kind of life too as is everyone else.

But there sure comes a point when you can no longer ignore the happenings. Just the kind of thing that is happening in bangalore now, where every one is realising that the city's infrastructure has crumbled.

I happen to read a survey of India Today a few months back which was talking about the dismal state of our cities. Most of the cities need thousands of crores of investement pumped into them and that too over a short period of time if any of our cities are even to come close to better offf cities in asia like Bangkok or Shanghai. Note that I dare not compare our cities with Singapore or the western cities which are actually light years ahead in terms of development , infrastructure and civic amenities.

How can we ever get there ? will we ever ?
I hope to see a day where our cities are atleast comparable or boast some of the good things in other world cities.

Happy Diwali !

Diwali is a great festival, the biggest of them all truly and I look forward to it every year. The colourful skies, the gifts, the greetings, Everything !. Not to mention the corporate celebrations and corporate gifts these days which add a new flavour to Diwali.

But one thing that I absoltely dread every year is the noise. I have had my peaceful sleep ruined many a time by noisy fire crackers. and the noises are only getting louder year after year. There have been instances where I at 3 am in the morning have laboured from my sleep to plead with these noise makers to choose other stuff to toy with but to no avail - the show had to go on !

One of those Diwali's when i was in Chennai ( which is by the way a city which thrives on these 3'O clock fireworks ) I even drove out of town to nearby pondicherry just to be away from the noise :-)

But there are even more terrified creatures other than me , Pet subjects mostly and dogs in particular. our poor doggy used to find the closest bunker ( bed/sofa underside ) whenever the loud noise crackers used to go off.

The worst part is after diwali , smoke, and litter every where, paper bits sprewn around on the streets and the air reeks of phosporous , sulpher and other chemicals which predominantly make up firecrackers.

If there is one good thing coming out of the whole exercise I think the mosquitoe armies will bite the dust for a few days.

I wish we could continue to celebrate diwali as the festival of lights and not as the festival of noise and pollution :-) . Even as i speak , on this evening, in some house they are just lighting up up the evening lamps allover and the whole city is going to look oh so pretty with the lights lit up !

Let us celebrate Diwali - the festival of lights !

Melancholy

This picture was taken by me while driving through rural Andhra Pradesh, on the hyderabad bangalore highway.

There is something about Sunsets that is very melancholic to me . On one side the magnificient glory of the Sun and the beauty surrounding it... The marvelous hue , the blue sky now paling into a dark gray. And then as minutes pass the sun slowly fades away - a painful retreat indeed. Unnoticeably the night takes over.

Sunsets are marvelous times to have a drink too and nothing beats the tropical sunsets. But often i link them to goodbyes , and loved ones who go far away.

Of Camels and Magic shows

Our group was entertained by this wily rajasthani magician on a recent outing. He modestly claimed that there is no magic whatso ever in what he was showing us and it was all 'sleight of the hand' or 'Haath ki chamatkaari' as he said.

As things magically appeared and disappeared from no where, we tried really hard to spot whether they were coming /going from the folds on his sleeves or into his colourful turban.

We had to come away very baffled in the end , without learning any tricks of the trade :-)







Meanwhile, there was a camel meant for fun rides close by which was enjoying a short rest in between trips. I had the chance to examine at a close range. I found it to be a gentle animal curiously trying to understand what i was trying to do getting upclose with a camera.

I have never rode a camel , though i have had the amusement of watching people ride it for the first time. they are unusually tall and when they walk, which is usually with swinging up and down motion, you have to hold on to something , lest you suffera 10 feet fall !

Death Speaks

I am sure this is a popular one and I love retelling it though it is not one of my own. Its an old persian story that also it comes up in one of Archer's own short story books as a preface. Like many Archer stories , the last few lines pack the punch: Enjoy !

There was a merchant in Bagdad who sent his servant to market to buy provisions and in a little while the servant came back, white and trembling, and said, Master, just now when I was in the market-place I was jostled by a woman in the crowd and when I turned I saw it was death that jostled me. She looked at me and made a threatening gesture; now, lend me your horse, and I will ride away from this city and avoid my fate. I will go to Samarra and there death will not find me. The merchant lent him his horse, and the servant mounted it, and he dug his spurs in its flanks and as fast as the horse could gallop he went. Then the merchant went down to the market-place and he saw me standing in the crowd and he came to me and said, Why did you make a threatening gesture to my servant when you saw him this morning? That was not a threatening gesture, I said, it was only a start of surprise. I was astonished to see him in Bagdad for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.

Welcome to the Inn

Welcome to the Winding Road Inn !
the highway is far away and so is the city
I have lit up a fire to warm up the evening
The music is not too loud either
So relax and have a drink !

I am the Bartender !
Relish the hospitality ,
Enjoy the conversation
there's lots of it around