World's best Dad

I distinctly remember this. I was in my 3rd standard in school. There was this big advertisement on TV about a bunch of fun and adventure board games that were available for you to get IF you collected and gave 10 or 20 wrappers of Maggi noodles.

 

There were sign boards about the same in almost every departmental store at that time. And to my eyes those games were like the biggest thing to attain in my life.

It was not a custom at my home to buy food outside and maybe noodles would be prepared twice or thrice in a year!

 

I started to plead with my Mom to make me more Maggi noodles... I kept telling her how I love to eat Maggi for breakfast, lunch and dinner. But since I had a reputation of eating almost anything, my mother would have only cared to listen if I said I DON'T want to eat something... as it would have been a big surprise.

 

With my effort in luring my mom going futile I had to device another plan.

 

Idea #1
I thought I will stand outside the department store and see if people drop the wrapper... but then it hit my morbid brain that it is not some chocoloate or ice cream for people to eat and throw the wrapper around.

 

Idea #2
Check the garbage of neighbors to see if there could be any wrappers... but my dignity and societal status prevented me from treading that route. Also, there was HEAVY competition for this and neighbors had kids too!

 

Idea #3
I calculated putting to use all the math that was taught in school to know how much money it would cost to buy 20 of those noodles by myself and it was a HUGE investment for someone who could only get to SEE currency notes and never even get the pleasure of touching them. Besides I couldn't care less about the noodles... what would I do with so much noodles?

 

With no plan plausible and nothing that could be hatched out I automatically resorted to what every other 10 year old would do... REVOLT, CRY, TORTURE YOUR PARENTS, EMOTIONAL BLACKMAIL.

 

Time was running out and the offer was closing really soon... my torture techniques weren't taking effect either... hiw easily a kid's sentiment gets ignored in a family! I wish I would grow old on the very next second... I had dreams of playing those board games... that was how obsessed I was on them.

 

At the point where I was in the verge of giving up there came a mail... a courier package... a BIG

parcel that had the logo of Maggi on it... I teared it open and inside were ALL 4 games that I was craving for. My father was smiling at me and told me then that he had actually written to the Maggi company attaching some money explaining about all the tantrums I have raised requesting them to send the games to us treating this as a special consideration. This was the greatest surprise for me and that moment I knew I had the world's best Dad.

Musicals and Me

Just realized this stupid habit of mine... Any article or news or blog I read AFTER watching a musical, I try to read it in the tune of songs from that movie itself...however non-rhyming it would be.

This happened in the past with Chicago and then Sweeney Todd and now with Les Miserables. I know it is stupid and I dont know if this happens for others too but I just keep doing this for a few days until I am over with the movie

My newest lessons learnt from watching a TV show

I was watching the newest Super Kitchen/Super Chef show on Star Vijay today and saw some nice vegetarian cooking. Though not so inclined towards cooking, it is the drama and politics that I was looking out for - the one that fuels such competition and reality shows.

There was this girl who claimed she is terrible in cooking, super nervous about the show and she knows nothing that could impress the judges and I admit she did seem like she was ovedoing it a bit. Some people tend to do that - show themeslves to be below par and then when they actually deliver - voila they look like a super hero. Sometimes it would work, sometimes it would fail... I remember actor Adrien Brody in a promo for one of his movies, asked people NOT to watch his movie (hoping it would create a spur and people would flock in). But then, he never expected the people to be so odedient - actualy no one ever went to the movie after all! Ok, I am degressing...

Getting back to the kitchen show, there was this other guy who was super confident and very very experienced in cooking. And in one of the cut scenes (in-betweeners) he started ranting about this girl and called her for playing dumb. He made remarks like he has seen so many such kids before yada yada yada...

Finally he went on to become the winner of the episode and the girl came runner up.

Looking at this all, I was telling my sister who was with me watching this show that it would have been SO MUCH more better if this guy had kept quite about the girl. He won it finally, that is big enough. But if he had not made such comments it would have shown him to be more mature.

I agree that the girl was a bit too noisy and nosy and extremely talkative. Maybe this guy was irritated. Maybe she was trying to play the dark horse and come out winning - she really came close too! But STILL it would have been really really better if the guy had just not made such comments.

I try to take some management concept out of this - In my work place too, I encounter similar people with different types of attitude and intent. So given below is my personal lesson taken from this:

"If someone is irritating or frustrating you but you know that they are not worthy of your time or skills, just completely ignore them. They will make enough noise to show themselves to be stupid or not... But remember to just focus on your work and no one can prevent the inevitable success"

A nice song from 1996 tamil movie - Andha Naal

I got reminded of a song from a 1996 tamil movie called Andha Naal.

Nicely rendered by K.J.Yesudas and quite a melodious one.

When I tried hunting it down on the internet, could not find a downloadable version anywhere. So I now have it uploaded in cooltoad. The link is given below for all the music lovers:

Andha Naal Unmai Yaavume - Andha Naal (1996)

Cheers!

A timid and yet shameless sense of pride

Today, while I was uploading some music that I got hold of and wanted to share with the rest of the world, noticed the statistics on the previous music files I have uploaded. They were downloaded thousands of times and thousands of people who downloaded have also voted on those songs.

I know that those are not my creations, I was simply sharing some songs which were quite rare to get, still there was this tiny sense of pleasure to see that so many people have actually devoured them.

Carnatic Fusion - Mystic Waves

You know, sometimes you get things EXACTLY the way you asked for and immediately too - like as if your prayers were answered. Thats how I would put this - I was telling my colleague one day about how I felt like listening to some Carnatic music fused with some techno beats and percussions. He said - "I have a huge collection right now, do you want it?".

Wow! That was fast.

Anyways, for people with similar interests and for those who do not have this already, I took the time to upload them in cooltoad while watching back to back episodes of Seinfeld.

Mystic Waves - A carnatic fusion performed by various artists. My personal pick would be the Jaga Janani and BrOva BhAramA.

01 - Saraswathi Namosthute
02 - Sudhamayi
03 - Karunai Deivame
04 - Srinivasa
05 - Brova Bharama
06 - Bantureethi Kolu
07 - Maravairi Ramani
08 - Kaliyuga Varadhan
09 - Jaga Janani

Poonkatru Pudhidhanathu - Moondram Pirai

Last week one of my beloved reminded me of Moondram Pirai songs. Unfortunately I was not carrying those songs in my mobile or hard disk. I was left stranded with the song just running in my mind. I desperately wanted to listen to Poonkatru Pudhidhanathu from that classic movie - One of Raja Sir's infinite gem of a creation.

With most sites blocked at my office, I was pounding the net through my mobile and found a few links. I clicked on one of them and waited impatiently for the 3 minutes it took to download and played it only to realize that it was a karaoke version and was sung by some not so gifted yet quite so audacious, Yesudas sir 'wannabe'.

After listening to him the craving to listen to Yesudas sir's actual voice only exponentially increased in me. Its too difficult not to yield to such temptations. I strode to the internet kiosk and pulled the song from cooltoad and plugged the music into me and allowed myself to be hit by waves and waves of goose bumps...