Musings

A historical lesson

I wanted to write a blog about the battles that fascinate me most. I had wanted to do it for a while now. I had always been fascinated by history and that is right from my school days. I always read the pages containing the details of battles and wars from my history books more than often. I had been fascinated by how mighty empires were created by the will of so few men (so often the few simply equalled one) and after centuries of existence were merely uprooted by the senselessness of the descendants of the same mighty men. I would always remember the history of the Maurya dynasty - it had all the romanticism of a modern film. Alexander after his victory in the battle of hydapses river (against Porus) he wanted to invade the whole of India. His troops refused because they heard from their newly conquered lands that the Gangetic plain was ruled by the Nanda dynasty which had 8000 war elephants alone, along with numerous other battle-hardened forces (that Alexander never took a minute to consider this issue merely tells how brave and great he was). But the same Nanda dynasty was ousted by a simple man who came from a family of Peacock hunters (hence the name Maurya) in a series of battles in a few years. The Nanda dynasty was ousted and Chandra Gupta Maurya became the emperor of India, all before he attained the age of 20. His empire was empowered by a series of able rulers but after centuries of dominance, they were run ragged by a group of savages from Europe. I still remember the exact lines from my history text book. It read: "The huns arrived and the once mighty Mauryan empire, fell like a pack of cards before them".

But I said, I wanted to write about battles, didn't I? If at all I wanted to write about battles I would choose to write about Battle of Carnae, Battle of Walaja, Battle of Stalingrad and ofcourse the evergreen Battle of Gulagmega. (If any history buff can identify what's common between all these battles, I would certainly fold my arms and surrender.)

But I said, I wanted to write about battles. I am now writing about them here (knowing the few sparse readers my blog has, I know no one is interested in them anyway) - what I want to write about today is a dame called "Jill". No introductions, no formal descriptions about how she looks and all - it is enough if I say, I haven't seen another beautiful girl in my vicinity in all my life. And I can officially declare that she has a great dressing sense and one killing hair-stylist within her.

Today, Jill had come in a full-blown free-flowing hair style - or atleast thats how I saw her. I didn't recognize her coming opposite me and when I suddenly looked up, she was looking straight, straight past me with those brilliant eyes and if at all she noticed me, she didn't show. I hadn't seen her quite as lovely as today and quite unsurprisingly, it took me more than normal time to realize that staring at a girl like that is not the way to go about for a decent person like me (at the end of the day, everyone has a decent person inside him). I quickly came back to senses and walked past her and allowed myself to convince myself a thousand times that she wouldn't have noticed my stare. I am quite good at it - making myself believe in these things.

After a while, something else happened. The quite useless teammate decided to call upon Jill to discuss something not so important right behind me, letting me work all the time. Needless to say, it took me considerable effort to just put things in perspective and work.

There you go - I hope everyone had a good lesson in history. Cheerio all. We will meet in our next history class...did I say "history" just now??

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There are those days when you are not happy

Its a strange thing that I am writing another blog so soon. My frequency has dropped to almost once every 2 months or so and hence what I am doing now is simply outrageous. I am but a freewill breaker of any rules I see (even ones which I formulate myself) and hence I do not consider this an exception. Ergo, anyone who reads this, certainly didn't want this explanation but what's the point of having a blog if you can't write what you want to ramble..er..write.

I am having a headache - no, it was not due to me having to endure Vijay TVs mokkai shows for the weekend, it wasn't even due to Ganesh-trademarked mokkai edhugai-monai jokes which everyone in our room (including myself) are very keen to pickup. It could be my hair for I normally have atleast one bad-headache days before I get a cut - I know its time to have a hair-cut. Isn't it wonderful when you know that in the absence of a mom, you have something else as an yardstick for things so trivial as these?

Speaking of headaches, once in my school days a friend had asked me once if I had a headache, over a normal conversation. I hadn't mentioned to him that I was having one and I remember that it was not that serious for me to cringe or any other stuff like that. I was startled - I asked him how he knew that and he told me that he had observed that people always get a few hard lines in their forehead when they are having headache. I didn't believe it and still am skeptical about it , but there is always such a feeling when I touch my forehead during a headache. Placibo effect, perhaps?

And finally, "Happy Days" is a good film. Not because it portrayed college life as it should be done in films, not even because the ever-likeable character tells the real reason anyone wouldn't want to miss their love and not certainly for everyone in the film played their part to utmost perfection. I liked it because it had a good tribute to Rudyard Kipling's "If". If at all I could recite it here completely here, I would be a man. Films like these certainly make me acknowledge that I am not watching as many films as I should be.

And I need a course in blog titles - this is the lamest title ever written in the history of mankind... 

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I hate Power Rangers

I decided to update my blog today - no, it was not the first thought I had in my mind when I woke up in the morning. From what I remember, I was more worried about the weather and the cold-bath I have to take and whether I would get to see "jill" today. All of them happened and more - I got the idea of writing a blog when I had to finally accept to myself that there is nothing else to do with the resources I had at my disposal. As soon as I decided to write one, I opened my tblog page and I got a "server not found" error. My office network is quite crappy in such elusive searches and in normal circumstances I would have dropped the whole plan and gone on to spend some time in a football fans forum. If at all anyone is interested in fanatical humour you can check out the likes of redcafe.net, glory-glory.co.uk or gunnerblog.com for instant and everlasting humour. Sometimes, they do really get me. But coming back to today, I was having none of it and with one swift press of the refresh button I brought the page to my browser (i am trying to heroic here).

So, what is there to write - I somehow lack the tenacity or the researching attitude to bring on a subject to talk about in my blogs these days. Relatively newcomers like Arun seem quite capable of writing blogs spontaneously. Yes - most of what he writes are about films and they do get boring sometimes but there is some spontaneous humor about it all that makes me wonder if I am missing my "timings". Ramak is his own self - nothing indulgent from the long one - he should be called  Ramak longshanks - I sometimes allude him to Edward Longshanks. Ramak - if you are do reading this, read the wiki page of the English king who wasn't popular for his benevolence - I think he called himself "hammer of scots" - you can call yourself "drinker of scotch" - funny, isn't it.

I haven't been seeing any films recently. Not that I miss them much though - I once saw a film called "Power Rangers" and quite liked it - remember this was in my school days. Later during one of my wiki days I read this review of the film done by none other than Roger Ebert. This is what he had to say about the film:

The movie stars six teenage characters who have been marketed on TV and in toy stores. They have names, but no discernible personalities. None of them ever says anything more interesting than "You guys!" As teenagers, they are skilled in-line skaters and karate fighters, but they don't get their real powers until they turn into faceless clones in Power Rangers uniforms with plastic masks and helmets. Is that the message? Faceless conformity is the way to success? Certainly the Rangers are not individuals in or out of uniform, but I wonder if they don't represent a triumph of merchandising over creativity. Children's heroes have traditionally been individualistic and eccentric. The Rangers are not, properly speaking, even characters. They are color-coded products...Paging through the movie's press kit, I came across this quote attributed to Amy Jo Johnson, who plays Kimberly, the Pink Power Ranger: " `Mighty Morphin Power Rangers™: The Movie' is a mix between `Star Wars' and `The Wizard of Oz.' " I wonder if Amy Jo actually said "TM" when she was delivering that wonderfully fresh and spontaneous quote, which is so much more involved than anything she says in the movie. More to the point, I wonder if she has ever seen "Star Wars" or "The Wizard of Oz."

Way to go - I only wish I never meet anyone to whom I had confessed I liked the film. I declare with full conscience that I hated the movie. Hated hated hated the film till the last reel, last bit - even its footer. Thats it.. 

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