At The Edge

On a cold winter night. Gurgaon, January 2012 . Damn it's already 2013. -0- Previously: In Summer

Splashing and flashing. With the blazing sun on his back, this fellow felt like having a little bath. The reason why some genius came up with the idea of 'bandar proof' water tanks and one of the reasons why people put bricks on the lid of their tanks. -0- Gurgaon May 2010

I don't do firecracker thing on Diwali, and it has been like that for many years now. After you start choking on that heavy sulfurous air typical to the night of Diwali, it doesn't take much brain to figure out the stupidity of it. The whole experience is traumatic for animals, birds, infants and elderly. The streets run dirty covered with cracker paper for weeks. On top of that there is the other obvious risk. Last year, two of my cousins spent good six months recovering from painful ' Anar ' burn - the thing was supposed to big woosh , but it went bang .    This year, I made an exception for ' Samp ' just for good old times sake. 'Cock Brand' made at (imaginatively named) Taj Serpent Eggs Factory, Sivakasi, Tamil Nadu. These would be the 'eggs' Okay so what can I burn. This piece of wood looks tempting. And that's the snake. Also, here's a tutorial for How to make these chemical snakes at home using Baking soda -0- Pre...

    I look out the window, and there they are. Every time I call up my Internet provider about dead connection, they always start with the line, 'Sir, it's the squirrels. Your area has just too many of them. They eat all the wires.' Actually, more often, the field people of rival Internet providers cut off each others wires. They say the Indian Palm Squirrel actually earned its stripes. Squirrel got the lines when Lord Rama stroked its back for kind services rendered while building the bridge to Lanka.   A 'Ramayan' Poster picked off the streets. Sita feeding wild berries to squirrel while living in Banvas, dwelling in a forest. In that Golden era even squirrels were a bit fairer.

Silver molded into a scene depicting a colorful Elephant ride Cost: around Rs.12000 Where: Jewel Emporium (since 1841), Rambagh Palace Hotel, Jaipur An elder cousin bought it as a present for my sister.

"O, 'tis a mere nothing! A snake! A snake! The commonest thing in the world. A snake in the bosom — that's all"  - Egotism; or, The Bosom-Serpent by Nathaniel Hawthorne [ Google books link ] On the morning of 24th April, I reached Jammu to attend the wedding festivities of a cousin sister. Since it was still morning, ritually, I had a cup of tea and opened the local newspaper- Daily Excelsior , the most widely read newspaper of the city. It offered usual unusual dose of death and mayhem. Sad, sad news. Mini-wars and min-conquests. National dailies have got nothing on them. Farther you get from the center, near the edges, grimmer the picture gets. But on that particular day the paper, on its front page no-less, offered something bizarrely, slitheringly different. While reading the News piece, please do keep in mind: this is the region where in ancient times the cult of Snake, Naga worship flourished. In fact, in Bhaderwah district of J&K people still perf...

According to the story line: A crazy forest princess is holding some lady friends of Tarzan as prisoners and she is forcing Tarzan to do house chores wearing a loin cloth made from the skin of a pink panther. Or maybe the coloring artist was using the pink color to symbolize subjugation of Tarzan. Why else would Tarzan wear a pink underwear! Image: Curiously colored version of Tarzan from Times of India.Sunday,  March 22, 2009. Edgar Rice Burroughs must be disappointed.

Guess the charms finally worked. Time magazine informed us that American President elect Barack Obama during the election campaign carried in his pocket: A U.S. soldier’s bracelet (currently deployed in Iraq) A gambler’s “lucky chit” A “Madonna and Child” charm “A tiny monkey god” And three or four other unidentified items, among which seems to be a slug, an angel coin, yet another Virgin Mary charm, and some other coin-y detritus. At another campaign event , he reached into his pocket and out came some more charms:  an eagle given to him by a Native American woman, a lucky poker chip given to him by another voter who met him on the campaign trail, something resembling a guitar key chain and many other such. “A tiny monkey god” was reported in India, quite obviously, as Hanuman. 'Obviously' because these papers had already widely reported Indian well wishers Hanuman Idol gift to Obama (no, I don't think they were trying to convert him to be a Bajrang Dali) . The...

Jungle Jungle baat chali hai pata chala hai, aarey chaddi pahan ke phool khila hai phool khila ha) Ek parinda tha sharminda, tha woh nangaa, aarey aisay to andey ke ander tha vo changaa Sooch raha hai bahar akhir kyo nikla hai Aarey chaddi pahan ke phol khila hai phool khila hai Jungle Jungle pata chala hai, chaddi pahan ke phool khila hai Jungle Jungle pata chala hai, chaddi pahan ke phool khila hai - The famous title song of Jungle Book, a cartoon series shown on Indian National channel – Doordarshan, in early nineties. Most people in India remember Jungle book as a delightful cartoon series that was made popular by a memorable title song composed by famous lyricist Gulzar and set to music by musical genius Vishal Bharadwaj (at that time he was a budding musician, and is now a critically acclaimed film director). In a previous post about another anime series Taro Ek Dragon Ka Beta , I claimed that Taro was the series that introduced Japanese animation to India. I was wrong...

‘We pretended to be real, to be learning, to be preparing ourselves for life, we mimic men of the New World’ - Ralph Singh narrator of V. S. Naipaul’s The Mimic Men Road-Song of the Bandar-Log by Rudyard Kipling Here we go in a flung festoon, Half-way up to the jealous moon! Don't you envy our pranceful bands? Don't you wish you had extra hands? Wouldn't you like if your tails were--so-- Curved in the shape of a Cupid's bow? Now you're angry, but--never mind, Brother, thy tail hangs down behind! Here we sit in a branchy row, Thinking of beautiful things we know; Dreaming of deeds that we mean to do, All complete, in a minute or two-- Something noble and wise and good, Done by merely wishing we could. We've forgotten, but--never mind, Brother, thy tail hangs down behind! All the talk we ever have heard Uttered by bat or beast or bird-- Hide or fin or scale or feather-- Jabber it quickly and all together! Excellent! Wonderful! ...

A few weeks ago I saw the movie The Man Who Would Be King . The movie based on a story by Rudyard Kipling. It is a pure delight and a complete entertainer.Sean Connery perhaps in his best performance, completely over shadows Michael Caine. More about the movie and my cyber search for Kafiristan later. Also, I won’t talk about The White Man's Burden and all the other stuff. The movie took me back to the classic by Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book . Here is a gem that appears in The Jungle Book, it's the poem: The Law of the Jungle. Now this is the Law of the Jungle -- as old and as true as the sky; And the Wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the Wolf that shall break it must die. As the creeper that girdles the tree-trunk the Law runneth forward and back -- For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack. Wash daily from nose-tip to tail-tip; drink deeply, but never too deep; And remember the night is for hunting, and forget not t...

Untamed Love: summing up a beautiful documentary by National Geographic. Could well have been a Bollywood movie or a Pearl. S. Buck saga. - Shot somewhere in South India. - There are two tribes: The Mountain Tribe and The Old Temple Tribe. - The tribes usually fight over the limited food. - Story told in first person by a She monkey from the Mountain Tribe of monkeys. - Jeela is young and beautiful. - She falls for Bo-Bo a young handsome monkey Prince from her tribe. - Bobo, being a prince, is dear to all. - Bobo, the dear son of tribe chief Nine Fingers, is even allowed to climb the throne of the Chief - the lone tree a top the mountain. - Bobo and Jeela spend a lot of time together playing around. - A scheming powerful male Longtooth wants to be the Head. - The monkey tribe of Temple attack the mountain. - Nine Fingers and Longtooth give them a tough fight and they retreat. - Nine Fingers and Longtooth follow them, but only one, Longtooth mysteriously returns. - Nine...