My talking watch

The story of my first & last watch

          As a high school kid probably after seeing Mr India I had this fascination of having some kind of cool and  unusual watch, I was gifted a watch by this girl, her family was friends with our family, she stayed at hostel & my dad was Principal of that college and our house happened to be near to their hostel. This watch looked more of ladies watch sort of & I did not liked it though I got hardly any gifts apart from a dress for a birthday every year. Then there was a trend of a typical watch called talking watch in our class and school. It was a relatively cheap Rs 150 something, which was available in local market. Everyone was talking about the talking watch, it could tell the time yes audio output when a button was pressed, nice florescent glow light etc, alarm etc feature. I wanted this badly & convinced parents to buy me this if I get 3rd rank which was the norm until all these years in school as Akshata & Bhavana took first & second ranks  and I was sort of unbeatable at third rank position.  
                So I flaunted it all around making it tell time to all friends. It had a good battery after a couple of months also it said the time loudly enough. One day it went insane and never stopped making noise in class just alike a never shutting up barking dog. and I had to put it in my bag & keep it outside. This was embarrassing , came as  direct blow to my constant efforts to impress on girls thought never any girl was impressed in actuality. After this event things changed in life a lot, lost a fascination for showing-off things to others. I never wear a watch to this day, just feel the need to be simple enough, some one said we should have some feature in our appearance by which others can start conversation with us, something to start talking about like a watch or a nice shirt etc..so that they can hit off the conversation & become friends. I don't know I never liked to wear watch again. this was my first & last watch  !

Movie review-Guru

         Although concealed the movie very clearly resembles the process of Dhirubhai Ambani establishing himself as business tycoon of India. Abhishek Bachan i.e Guru bhai executes his role & character elegantly in the well defined role by Mani. Besides a couple of songs being melodious the songs tend to bore & simply do not fit in the story, but this can be excused owing to the chemistry between Aish & Abhishek working out very well. Guru bhai who intends to do good bijness(business), intelligently & aggressively establishes his textile business doing whatever it takes to achieve an exponential growth although setting a new trend of corruption & corporate crime in the pre-globalization era in India.

Guru bhai’s daring, self confident nature & his passion to dream big & chase to achieve them, coupled with very strong & well crafted dialogues definitely inspires the young entrepreneurs of Indian. Gurubhai hailing from a decent village family & his journey to become a great visionary creating huge & instant wealth to the Indian middle class is made very well in the movie. Guru bhai delivers on his business stratergies exactly his business expected, doing whatever it takes. Whenever his salute was required, he saluted! Whenever there was a need to bribe politicians to get his work done, he bribed!

Guru bhai’s passion to keep dreaming bigger & the chase makes him do some unlawful things as manipulating shares & cunningly increasing productivity of his company leading to conflict between himself & the archetypal capitalist, communist – a newspaper owner(Mithun) & his star reporter(Madhavan) who swears to bring Guru bhai down, ultimately landing guru & his empire in trouble .Watch out how guru survives his allegations & manages to get himself & his company out of the judicial allegations. Thanks to Mallika's guest appearance - dancing in 'mayya mayya' song in Istanbul which is really awesome.

Movie review Spider-Man 3

Starring:

      Tobey Maguire - Spider-Man/Peter Parker

       Kirsten Dunst - Mary Jane Watson

       James Franco- New Goblin/Harry Osborn

Plot Outline: An alien black parasite bonds with Peter Parker and causes inner turmoil as he contends with new villains, temptations, and revenge.

Spidey is back again with action, adventure, thrill, wit, excitement & romance. Among the superhero category of movies like Super-Man, Bat-Man, Hulk, Fantastic Four etc Spider-Man is the superior one in terms of conceptually strong plot, action, animation etc & this sequel proves that all again. 

This time Spidey has to fight against not one or two but three major villains, 2 story lines that have been developing since the first movie and then you have two brand new storylines. Spidey’s is all there to save the world whenever there is cry for help, but he also has problems of his own.  

The story goes that Spidey wants to marry Mary Jane but Spider-Man's popularity is getting in the way of his relationship with her. His best friend from high school turned mortal enemy Harry Osborn (James Franco) is still trying to find a way to kill Spidey. New editions is Flint Marko who escapes from prison after being charged with the murder of Ben Parker, Peter's uncle who was killed in the first part, stumbles into a Physics testing lab where he is accidentally mutated into a Particle-man. An black alien sludge attaches itself to Peter and transforms him into a meaner, more aggressive Spidey and Peter as well. Certainly the fight is very tough for our Spidey as he tries to keep up his breaking love. Watch out how spidey figures out ways to defeat his enemies & who comes to his help.

It was an incredible experience for me to watch stunts on big screen in Spidey’s style. I wish I could have got the superpower of Spider-man but remember that: With power comes great responsibility – the responsibility to save the world….as per the tagline of movie.

There are a few humorous scenes involving the “new” spidey i.e after transformation- turning hostile to black parasite, who is charged with energy & dance moves & dialogues but there could have been more of them.

Spidey’s message in this part is wonderful which is “We all have choices. It’s our choices which make us what we are & we can choose to be always right.

When asked Tobey who among Bat-man, Spider-man, Super-man is the best in one interview on TV, his comment goes something like this: Bat-Man does not even compete with the other two. Super-Man with body of steel is certainly is the strongest, but Spider-Man is the best as he is the combination of wisdom & strength.

Although some would feel there is too much cheesy and boring romance and not enough Spider-Man, but overall its a good one & a must watch.

Rating: 4/5 

Movie Review-The Departed

Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson, Mark Wahlberg, Martin Sheen, Ray Winstone, Vera Farmiga, and Alec Baldwin

As rightly reflected by the plot & Tag line- it really does not make a difference whether you are a Cop or Criminal when you are facing a loaded gun.

            The departed is a American crime classic thriller from the legendary martin Scorsese who proves himself as the best in framing movies with beautiful & strong plots- a story worth telling & of course watching. Scorsese has complimented rather than remaking of “Infernal Affairs”.  I was on the edge of my seat with the knife keeps turning up to the final scene the plot being the lives of two cops: Colin Sullivan (Damon), smart and unabashedly ambitious, Massachusetts State Police Department's elite Special Investigations Unit, whose prime target is powerful Irish mob boss Frank Costello (Nicholson) & Billy Costigan (DiCaprio), street-smart and tough, is purported to have a violent temper that costs him his badge and eventually lands him back on the rough streets of South Boston, where he is recruited into Costello's ranks. Two men from opposite sides of the law are undercover within the Massachusetts State Police and the Irish mafia, but violence and bloodshed boil when discoveries are made, and the moles are dispatched to find out their enemy's identities. But neither man is what he seems and, as they work at cross-purposes, they are plunged into a dangerous game of cat and mouse in which the stakes could not be higher. Both being loyal to their masters are made to do exactly the opposite thing of what they pledge in their respective profession of cop(Damon) & thief(Dicaprio). Eventually the plot spins into free fall and the bodies start piling up.

A really spectacular movie & a must watch. A sequel is also being planned.

Movie review: The pursuit of Happyness

Cast          : Will Smith, Jayden Smith, Thandie Newton 

Direction   : Gabriele Muccino

                       The Pursuit of Happyness is really worth for its Best Actor nomination for Will Smith which is inspired by a true story of rags to riches of Chris Gardner, an ordinary salesman on the streets of San Fransisco who goes to become a wealthy stock broker owing to his never ending pursue, hard efforts & never-say-die spirit. 

                   This movie is all about fatherhood amidst struggles to recover from harshness of poverty & hence seeking happiness ultimately. Chris a salesman by profession walks the streets of San Fransisco trying to sell his mysteriously portrayed product box: which once made a fortune for him is now no longer able to support him with enough earnings even for his daily bread. As Chris desperately tries to recover his family from economic crisis by switching businesses, he gets abandoned by his wife who adheres to his insistence of letting their 5 yr old son Christopher remain with him. As he makes up his way in his internship of stockbroker, life demands him a lot more struggle than ever. Some scenes like spending night in public restroom along with his son, running from cab driver when he has no money to pay for the drive, donating his blood for money for his daily bread, his tears when he clears the exam securing the job of stock broker after many long months of training & struggle to manage his life along with son did leave me with tears.

A must watch for those who like emotional ones.

This leaves a feeling somewhere in heart the miseries of poverty & economic inequality & in my opinion probably the movie is over made to a small extent.

Look out what really is the happiness, which Chris is pursuing, & why in name of movie happiness is spelled happyness & what Chris tries to sell in his salesman profession.  

Will smith sparklingly shine in acting & elegant expressions of his well-defined character makes me wonder how come he missed Oscar for this superb role? & his son plays his role very naturally & deserves lots of appreciation.

The lines ahead contain spoilers. Do not read the further lines if you intend to see the movie soon.

The product Chris tries to sell is a bone scanner sort of medical equipment nicely called a ‘time machine’ by a mad beggar. Happyness is the name of the kindergarten school in which Chris leaves his son daily during his work. Chris seeks his happiness in the happiness of his family especially his son. 

Strings are the new particles

.....A peak into the bizarre world of Theoretical Astrophysics 

.....A sip of reality at the Quant um Café..

                       

                           In physics the word 'theory' has a special meaning. Surprisingly, it has a life cycle. An idea or proposal submitted in scientific community based on findings mathematically proved or experimentally conformed in lab. In Astronomy its mainly observations. A theory is proved when scientific community accepts it officially. A theory survives until it is proven wrong by someone sometime. It essentially predicts the outcomes precisely. If a theory cannot be proved in lab & confirmed, it should not be called theory in first place itself, it falls under the realms of philosophy or metaphysics or whatever you may like to put it in. 

Our journey for the quest for understanding of the working of our universe has taken us from billiard balls to spaghetti. Read on to know what this implies.

          In 1665, not long back, once Isaac Newton was sitting under a tree and an apple fell on his head, this made him wonder about the gravity and lead to whole new understanding – this story is so wonderful that I choose to rejoice in the assumption of this being true, although this may be just a fancy story. Gravity was first force to be understood scientifically, He suggested the force making apple fall to ground & the force which keeps planets round the sun are the one and the same. The force of gravity is directly proportional to the product of the masses of two bodies & inversely proportional to the square of the distances between them, irregular bodies are reduced to point masses by the concept of center of gravity. His equations made pretty accurate predictions enough to drive spaceships to moon & put a man there. But, Newton never knew how gravity actually worked.  

Einstein was working as a patent office clerk, & working on light, Yes, he was not in the physics community at all. He discovered that the speed of light is like a cosmic speed limit. Light travelling at 3,00,000 km/sec is the maximum you can get in the universe. Exceeding this limit would mean theoretically you need infinite mass. This implies you need to build a spaceship so massive essentially containing all the mass of the universe to propel it greater than the speed of light, which is obviously impossible. 

The light rays from Sun take about 8 minutes to travel 93 million miles to reach us. This implies if someone switches off sun like an electric bulb, it would take 8 minutes before we can see darkness here on earth.

When light itself, travelling at such high velocity is not instantaneous, how can gravity act instantaneously on bodies?  It was later proved that gravity acts at speed of light.

Einstein continued his research & after 10 yrs came up with brilliant concept space time, i.e. three dimensions of space & one dimension of time constituted the space time fabric. This is like a stretched cloth, being warped, curved and twisted by the presence of heavy objects like planets and stars. This warping is what we feel as gravity. Gravity was a sort of unification of things happening on bodies like apples and bigger things like planets & galaxies.

This startling discovery not only gave an explanation how gravity actually worked but also came as a blow in the face to Newton’s gravitation concept that gravity is instantaneous independent of distances.

Gravity waves, waves if you would like to call them travel at speed of light. Gravity hence was a wave in the fabric of space time.

General relativity is the most beautiful theory

If Einstein would not have come up with general relativity, no one else would ever have. 

                             quote by Prof C Vishweshwara @ JNP Bangalore 

Disclaimer :  Well I have googled & found that the title "Strings are the new particles" is not used anywhere in internet ! Hence this makes me owner of the phrase.

to be continued...

My first day at school

          

           I was crying incessantly, wetting almost half of my blue shirt, pulling out half from my grey half pant, making it look funny. It was first day for school, I didn't knew what the school was but really disliked the notion of being away form home, mom & especially my toys. Mom promised me Laddu in the evening told dad to bring the same from market that evening. This was a good deal & finally agreed to go to school.
Later that evening, I was crying again night for not getting laddu still while mom tried to finish feeding me dinner. She told a story, dad was coming from office, he met an ant on the way, it asked him where he was going. Dad said to Mishra Pedha shop in market. ant said me too going there to get some sweets. Both went together & dad gave it two laddus. It wrapped it in bag & put on its head & went home & the doorbell rang. i opened the door & asked dad you met the ant ? What did ant tell you ? How are its children, Dad added his own part to the story as it was my everyday story & he knew how to continue the same, while I enjoyed my laddu. As far as first day is concerned I was already ahead of race, knew A to Z & numbers 1 to 12, reverse .So I think, I did not learn much that year anyway. Totally not anticipated, the school thing became interesting after first day as a pretty girl Deepa was made to sit besides me in my desk ! So never got bored !

Celebrations

This post has been published by me as a part of the Blog-a-Ton 16; the sixteenth edition of the online marathon of Bloggers; where we decide and we write. To be part of the next edition, visit and start following Blog-a-Ton.

                Well, this is an unconventional style, no paragraphs or stanzas, important is not to concentrate on the rules of writing but to enjoy the feelings behind the words.

may be its a poem in nascent stage, sometimes a raw image appeals more than a meddled photoshop one, hence this unrefined post. It's just a collection of raw abstract bizarre thoughts ran across my mind when looked through my window !

A tribute to all the small insignificant things in life that bring joy ! 


The elegant dance of flame in the gentle breeze 
swinging in the rhythm of life
a burning desire in the prison of lantern resembling life
the chirping of birds returning their nests
a dried leaf floating in the random wind
without knowing its destiny and purpose
the light fragrance of the white jasmine 
So pure, so serene and happening so effortlessly  
a withering petal, half brown and half pink
a log floating in the stream, going with the water
Seems like my destiny freely floating in the waves of life
the flickering of street light outside my window
the thunder and then the silence before the storm
the reminiscence of childhood
a feeling of childhood joy rescued from oblivion
never ending wait for the sheer bliss of living
waiting for the return of joy shot from the catapult of life
a careless walk in beige dried grass
an unwilling attempt to embrace the destiny
to live the life the way it comes      
has life lost its sheen ?
a green blade of grass shining in the sun
a small bean trying putting its head out 
to get the first glimpse of the sunny world
a millipede with its numerous legs, crossing the street
an extinct sparrow returned with its chirp to wake me up
reminding me of the beautiful world out there
apart from being just plugged into the wall
taking a break from the normal windows desktop of landscape
and resting my eyes on the actual one from outside my window
bringing a great sense of belonging with the nature deep within
quintessence of living is long forgotten luxury  
an effortless attempt to understand the intangible universe
the line of ants passing by, with tiny bits of food in their mouth
storing for the harsh winter  
a snail making up slowly, unaware of its speed
escaping into its shell, sensing any danger, pretending to be safe inside  
a sea shell lying on the shore, a twisted spiral
little aware of the fact that its bigger home milky way is also a spiral
a million sparkles reflected on ocean water by the setting sun
the last orange ray trying to make its way beyond horizon
a tendril hoping to coil around the stem of neighbor
a mushroom waiting to stretch itself from the moist log
A honey bee, checking out millions of beautiful flowers 
working hard, collecting a bit of honey from each to make a drop 
unaware of the probability that it may be stolen
Strange is the evolution which has imparted intelligence
the necessity of hexagonal honey comb
and the intellect in every organism to sustain itself  
Admist all these bizarre thoughts
a desperate wait for someone special never ends,
waiting for a warm hug from beloved one, easing all the pain
to tell the thing never told, that you mean a lot to me
wishing the force of my desire be stronger
than the force of obligation
for once I would like to take a daring leap
breaking the circling around along the path set by life’s destiny
for once gathering courage to take a leap of faith
to be free form regret of not attempting even once
as a feeble photon travelling from a millions of light years
from unknown abyss of space and time hits the eye
mind rejoices in the realization that we are insignificant as a particle of dust.
A destiny reluctant to reveal more than one page at once
A falling star seen across the sky
I don’t know what to wish for
I only wish to convey gratitude to the creator, sustainer and destroyer
Stretched hands feeling the ocean breeze
Seemingly flying in the bliss of sight of horizon of water and sky
Glancing at the cloud passing by,
feeling the tender kiss of first rain drops on the cheek
the cold waves touching the feet
like arms of the sea trying to embrace me in it’s abode
as I let go off the notion of reality, the modern world around me
I feel as light as rain, as white as snow
To connect with the nature in its true form,
and rejoice in the very existence and wonderment about oneself
For I am the one of the nature’s most beautiful creations
I am just a ripple of celebration of someone somewhere 
in the mysterious fabric of life 


      The fellow Blog-a-Tonics who took part in this Blog-a-Ton and links to their respective posts can be checked here. To be part of the next edition, visit and start following Blog-a-Ton.