Writer's Blog

So, this month and last were cricket world cup months. Followed it anxiously through. Wasted a lot of time. Maybe the shock from India’s ...

Maybe because I have picked tough, big novels that I have had trouble completing books these days (reading, of course :-). David Copperfi...

Got a pleasant surprise this morning. Was looking for Meenakshi Memudam on youtube - and found a rendition by T. M Krishna. Wonderfully fre...

Naseeruddin Shah's well-dresssed, well-bearded upper body covered half the giant screen in the auditorium. In those early days, the r...

I have become quite the world traveler recently. It came with the job, and started gradually about a couple of years ago. And only recentl...

Of a whim, on my drive home, I played an old favorite on youtube: Mera Kuch Saaman:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlvXDGJAMT0 At ...

I don't know what took me so long to look for this quawwali on YouTube. I had seen the full version on TV long long ago with my mom, a...

One of my favourite films, for a hundred different reasons. Had to read and share this link, even though I am supposed to be finishing som...

http://razarumi.com/na-ganvao-navak-e-neem-kash/#more-883 Found the above translation and explanation of Faiz's "Na Gavao Navak...

(A long post: it might be ok to skip a paragraph here and there.)  At a loose end, since the wife and kid are out of town, I decided to g...

"3BHK flats @ xx lakhs, 3-side open, Vaastu complaint.." Well, don't advertise it!

On request from Naira Niazi, here's a translation, with some interpretation, of Ae jazba-e-dil...  There are ghazals that you lis...

Friday last, a senior physicist visited our company to talk about the Higgs Boson. It was a general talk, about how science's understan...

It looks like I have become a new me, sometime during the last four-five years. Sudden aspects of my past life shock me. Was it me that did...

The squirrel A bad one: Thiruvalluvar had a pet squirrel after which he named his famous work. The name of the squirrel? Thiruquirrel.

Daag and his alliterations I have always contended that Ghalib and Daag used entirely opposite methods. Ghalib creates beauty out of comple...

Ik Vaari Ik Sardaar Si Bhai Niranjan Singh "Amreekawale" Ramakrishnan asked me if I would review his book "Bantaism - the ph...

Donkeys and Lions The other day, at the entrance to the tech park where I work, I over-heard a guy talking over the phone, in an old-Bangal...

Midnight In Paris Got to see Woody Allen's Midnight In Paris, on a plane from Dubai to SF. Last time on an Emirates flight, it was Abid...

The Old School Thanks to an excellent channel called DD Bharati, which, in my opinion, is about 10x better than the DD National Channel...

Avoid Waste An email a colleague sent at work... My take on this (and I have been following this lately) is to always get any left over foo...

Damn this contentment. Oh for the madding passions, Of a rabid dog.

Haiku What will it turn to, the yellow dress you'r wearing, pretty one? red? green? This, in half profile, fills me up with dreamly sle...

Me and Uncle Pai Today I was going through some old manuscripts and correspondence from the days when I was an active writer of stories for...

She... She bit him harder now, Drew a little blood, They tossed about, In the large bed, Under the high macchar-dani , She giddy with inst...

The Good Life This post was written on board an Emirates flight back from Rio de Janeiro (I have had the good fortune of trotting the globe...

Tees Maar Khan - delightfully irreverent Irreverent. That word says a lot. Look here, I respect you, but I don’t revere you. So, while I ma...

Midnight's Children The last time I tried reading Midnight's Children, I could only get to a hundred pages or so. I had been readin...

Chirp I have started out on twitter. here goes

Nitish Kumar Ki Jai: Clean hands and a good heart!

Go Rahul Rahul Gandhi's charm is already much talked about. Here's some evidence of that. Rahul Gandhi on Raj Thackeray Charm by i...

Something Fishy No offence, but I have lately noticed that Pakistani bureaucrats, diplomats, ministers etc. have a tendency to overuse (and...

Disambiguation Of late, my blog has had visitors from profiles of other 'Anant Kamath's. Thought I would clarify things a bit, and ...

If you like humour and if you know your impressionists: Woody Allen's 'If the Impressionists had been dentists' Amazing stuff.

Oh to laugh like this! 'Tere bin Laden' was a laugh riot. I don't know if Pakistan is really the way it is depicted. Maybe it...

Ad agencies make strange bedfellows This tea brand ad comes on TV these days with this slogan: "Waagh-bakri chai, rishtey banae"....

Whither Weather-whether? The Met department has predicted a 98% normal monsoon. They are like the astrologer that exactly preadicts what yo...

Ocean haiku Lovest thou the sea? But must thou make land thy home? Island's an option.

Almost Idiotic Well, if there is going to be an Amir Khan movie, I am going to watch it. What made me watch Three Idiots earlier was the th...

Watch it for the 3D There is a lot of India about 'Avatar'. The word Avatar ofcourse, and some of the cultural traits of the Na...

More of Rafi and Ghalib... Zikr us pari-vash ka aur phir bayaan apna Bazeecha-e-atfal hai Gazab kiya tere waade pe aitebaar kiya Shauk ...

Rafi and Ghalib: The original combo On a summer's day more than 8 years ago, I was first properly introduced to Ghalib, through Ghazals...

The sequel to watch for Vikram Seth is writing A Suitable Girl !. It is the first time I have been even a bit excited by the news of an up...

Jai Ho "Poye Poye, Taamara poye " ("Oh it has gone, Oh it has gone, the lotus has gone"). I remember one holiday after...

Amber fluid, Amber fluid A couple of weeks ago, some bee-hustlers (my expression) were invited to our apartment building to take care of so...

DevD If I am not forgetting some other interesting film in the interim, and not counting full comedies, since these are mostly packed with ...