movie

A movie is like a recreation of life. Complex in nature, it has to be, because life is very complicated as perceived by us little beings. The sheer number of variables is astounding. You take the scientific point of view to create an analogy that makes you think but then the analogy is all bullshit. Still it is like recreating life. It isn't that easy, not as hard as science maybe, in a way, but the way to look at it is different. We are like pawns playing our part. Any part may be glorified but the picture remains the bigger picture, probably simply because of the astonishment when we watch it. It's like an orgasm, isn't it. It blinds you, makes you numb, removes all the sense of the presence or maybe make you feel more alive to it, more aware of it. A movie is beautiful, it has to be, since life is. No matter what it gives you, pain, hunger or despair, it is beautiful. It has that element of the incomprehensible that imparts to it the beauty. After all the product is the real joy and fruit of the maker and the audience. The real object of beauty. A movie is an illusion but it can make the sense of things real. There is a lot to learn from a movie, to take the trip, to travel between reality and imagination, a more preferred word than illusion here. That's what imparts the teaching, the wisdom, the fun, the romance. The mind is a weird tool. It has always been an invention beyond our control, ironically what we use to exercise any form of control. The movie is a complex being. It has all the elements of nature, of beings, it is a walking portrait of life. No portrait is as beautiful as the object of beauty it derives inspiration from, but it is the portrait, that is our source of beauty, in any and every possible sense. All our mind presents to us is a portrait, all we perceive is just a portrait, an abstraction, which is why reality is an illusion and a movie a portrait, a beautiful animated, walking portrait of life.

The diary of a truant school boy.

The diary of a truant school boy is a very special thing. It can easily be broken down I guess because it's free , open and vulnerable or hold out very strong for the spirit born of the same reason. It's like the mind of the school boy, very little written into, free to experiment and experience, ready to run and forth. It is scribbled in too, I guess like the dying marks of weak ink that make up the strongest ideas. All the brushmarks, I guess are a thread of thought , style and promise but innocent, loyal and honest, most of all. The diary of a truant school boy is also a very precious thing to hold, it has a lot of power, restless in nature, ready to thwart. It deserves to be free, it deserves to roam, the diary of a truant school boy is a also a very sorry thing, because even those who manage to keep it free can't manage to keep it alive in all it's glory, hardly alive.

Rumour has it, it does not completely die, it has shown signs of resurgence in the past, but no skill, no game, no sport ever comes back the way it was, natural and spontaneous like grass that crumbles below our feet and sways in the wind that tastes it and brushes it away. The diary of a truant school boy is a very beautiful thing and a thing of beauty is a joy forever and ever. Do not lose the eyes behold this beauty cos sooner or later it is going to slip away. The diary of a school boy is a free bird fluttering away over a cliff watching a sea torment, but with all the calm the sea has shown to possess.

Good movies aren't they.

i'd better right this now, else i won't...i'll go to sleep and i'll forget everything, not totally but it'' become stale in terms of effect. so before the effect of yet another movie fades into nostalgia and the remnants of a hope or desire, let me speak out of this type-writer like console.
this is nothing but a simple tribute to all those writers, novelists, moviemakers, actors and directors etc. alike who have come up with some good hope, something true and important for us. something other than what is generally used to politicize and has been politicized...so thanks to all of u for making movies like sarfarosh, aamir, mumbai meri jaan, a wednesday and the like (i can only think of these few now) that add strength to my hope that one day i shall live in my country in communal harmony..i shall live in a place where there is freedom of speech, expression and thought and my misguided critics shall understand what i actually want that my words can't properly convey, that i shall live in a place where i dont have to feel deprived or jealous of other countries for not having the sort of relegious vandalism that prevails in my beloved country...they add strength to my burning desire, my biggest hope for my land, country and people if u may say, my dying, leaving breathing, waking, sleeping hope that we shall one day have communal harmony in india, the soft earthen bed of ALL..because only an indian i guess, one who lives here, has been brought up over here can understand the level of ghastliness spread upon us in the name of relegion...because if germany still lives under and tries to come out of the shadow of world war 2 and japan the bombings and other countries out of their haunting, we, i believe are still haunted like many others but this is our biggest challenge, sorrow..the root of our despair
because we can't and won't really get anywhere with this in our backyard

Culture and Class

Has culture really become the property or lets say an article that can only be bought by the rich. Of course not you might say, but I'm trying to make the point in a slightly different manner. I agree a poor kind banging some stick away on a rail is as much music culture as a privileged person learning the guitar. But there is something else to notice here. When we look at a picture of an old female musician, sophisticated and couth, walking on to stage with a sitar and playing beautifully, talking of poetry, scriptures and looking like an angel in her articulately draped saree and fashionably walking among the crowd all erudite, her wrinkles not withstanding and now what I think is, is it possible to have this amongst the poor. the ones too caught up in the daily life struggle and no thought for once of pondering over the sadness of the lets call it backward culture they live in. just get that little girl in her 13s getting married picture for once. yes it happens. now what im saying is, that good culture actually takes status to earn. i mean there are backward and rich losers and ya the world is better of without them, but in general, good culture and i mean culture in the true sense, of beauty and practises not horror and bullshit deceit, is it only available after you get some refined(i sadly use this word) education and company which only the lucky few get. Yes there are those who can think beyond their surroundings, environment, company and generation but barring those, how do we expect the drunk crowd dancing in front of a pandal(drunk on the chanda collected) to bollywood music and kaanta laga stuff to appreciate what the aforementioned musician was trying to say. there is a gulf here. a gulf cos lack of education and then the root cause is of course as they say "bhookh aur ashiksha ka choli daaman ka saath hai (hunger and illiteracy go hand in hand)"...but i am sorry i have to question your attitude, i have my sympathy but i have to, it's not just the bollywood music, we do a lot of blind things, lots of them...really really sadly

fireflies

An experience worth calling a life-changing experience is an experience worth blogging about. We as I would now like to identify ourselves, the people who feel the dirt lying in the muck as close to breath as possible and thus similarly the fragrance of music were given what we all deserve, what we all never seem to get and what we all not that often make the effort to search for; we were given fireflies!
An experience, a concert which had the sanctity of soil amidst the outskirted sylvan of bangalore and the presence of , how do describe it, heartfelt, mind-jarring, still lingering music. Music at it's very best and highest. We had the best variants, so many of them. The picture of us standing headbanging to hindusthani classical, somehow jovially all strumming around in our places like drunk animals out of control was a nice scene to begin with. Then again there was the crowd, the beautiful crowd and the most beautiful part of them was that their existence and non-existence was much the same. No one gave a flying fuck. Do what u wanna do, be what u wanna be, stay how u wanna stay, no looks, none at all.
Now that I decided yesterday night to write his post since I was reminded of the beauty of it, I should mention some specifics as well. The first performance was by a band lead by a lady who used the word 'mast' exactly the way it should be used, with sheer masti! She played a proper version of the small harmonium like wired instrument which most of us have seen sold down our strees along with a version of the tambourine and she sang. yes all that. most of what she sang was kabir's poetry and appealed to god and simple lucid ways. no preaching included and me athiest was able to appreciate it so u get the idea. btw, i heard her say mast backstage when she was talking about other bands to some other music guy. i remember clearly a crazy bassist, u have to be crazy to be good, playing along with a drummer, flutist and vocalist cum rythm guitarist(apology if frowned at;). This band was called 'emergence'. they are from auroville, pondicherry, sing in english, tamil and french, grow their own food and stuff (again for specifics im the wrong guy), then they had a jam session between the flutist and the drummer. need i say more. need i say any thing more.....then i remember a band who had a guy who played the bamboo stick really, i mean that was his instrument. (have to say an extension of my voice is my instrument ;)). then there was this bengali band who played hindusthani classical, a guy later played tabla on a stool, mostly exactly like the one we sit on in school. (school nostalgia sometime later).
and yes a funny incident. every rose has its thorn (cliche - check) and every concert has a stupid lame fuck who boos brilliant bands and this guy simply replied to him , my memory's beating me here, something like 'jisko sunna hai wo rahe, baaki hand me jaaye', to naturally a lot of cheering from us. then there was a proper qawali guy, proper, i mean the way it's done and he sang 'damadam mast kalandar'. and u had to see the crowd erupt. even we in all our sleepy situation, me specially not having slept proprly the last night had to acknowledge. it was cold, chilly, beautiful. the night had ppl just frantically, rampantly dancing, beautiful hippies, they are just so beautiful and there, just there. and what else. we ended with 2 more bands...apart from the ones in between. there was a band which had the instrument which gilmour plays, half guitar on a table like structure(pardon my ignorance), now that was an experience and it ended with swarathma, a band like the name..sing in english, hindi, punjabi and the voices of 'jaana kahan hai mujhe - aage jaana hai mujhe' still resound. we left only by morning 6-7. i was dead sleepy before swarathma came, but they had be jumping again crazily, ha, and then in between their performance i saw superman, yes a guy completely stoned, totally on dope and realy really stoned, wearing a shawl like a cape and coming down the amphitheatre stairs and he was quite an image.
but all the specifications apart, the music. i cannot explain in mere words, how astonishing the music was..it was like, why the hell dont we have them all the while. i kept asking my friend stupidly, i want a video of that, there wasnt any, but i had a memory, that was good enuf and yes i had quite a memory being etched in digital slate now. the music was above that level..it seems naive to levelize music but that was that level of music, yes it is my ignorance that says that but then thats why im a fan and i can tell why the experience was special, the culmination not ordinary and i can feel the 60s even stronger and understand the woodstock outside the videos once again and even closer and tell u that it was a night of truly ENCHANTING music. i mean i dont remember any feedback during the soundcheck, and maybe it was passed as music...all the same. it was the best music in a way i had experienced. in all forms and styles.
and the last bit about the setting, i got in to a concert for free again. it was simple just walked around the little dried branches, took a round, some hopping. it was a forest after all.and there was a little amber sparkle that you could see from the skies that was fireflies.

Penny Lane___

Their breath smelt of puffs I guess. It must have been a lot of vibrance, vigour, fresh melancholy mingled with dated mirth, sour n sweet nevertheless. They must have been foolish of course, the best of their breed, the worst but still the forerunners to what has made what is the crux of our spirit's exuberance. It personified tasted the sixties and lived it. They were the sixties but still the forerunners to a smart quick run of slow moods. They have been there, they are still here, never gone. They are the BEATLES!

LUGarticle

the article I had submitted for the college newspaper.

MAY THE SOURCE BE WITH YOU

Does anyone know what runs GOOGLE!!! Does anyone know which is the best browser in the world and product of the year 2006 (Firefox - Open Source)? Has anyone tried Amarok (GNU/Linux Audio Player)? Did you know that VLC Media Player is open Source? Did you know that there exists a 3D Desktop way cooler than Vista which runs on 192MB RAM and came out over a year ago (Beryl Project), and a study concluded that machines on GNU/Linux last twice longer, take up lesser system resources and has graphics so astounding that you'll be gaping at it flabbergasted by its unnerving appeal?
The answer my friends to all these is GNU/Linux and free software, so if you haven't found this out yet, it's high time you joined BMSLUG (BMS Libre Software User's Group). A group for those who understand and are looking forward to understand the brilliance of Free Software which is not only free from the bondages of censorship but also way superior to proprietary software. Thus, a group for those who truly love coding and therefore choose GNU/Linux which has the most advanced development tools along with modern and efficient compilers. Software that is free in the true sense and not just free but also hip.

Now enough introduction. Stop thinking and now THINK!
Try going to any IT related site, any site that has to do with sotwares and computing. Try buying any magazine which is related to computing. Try realizing the fact that Govt. of Tamil Nadu and American Defense have moved to GNU/Linux. Try looking around more carefully than you generally did. A wave of liberty is spreading and people have stopped taking things for granted. Look at the IT industry once more and you'll know that Dell is coming up with GNU/Linux pre-installed on their desktops, HP and IBM are donating terabytes of RAM to GNU/Linux and undergoing mega deals for GNU/Linux desktops and laptops. Like an ocean beating the embankment over, the wave of free software is at the helm of "breaking the wall" and if you're not with it, you're not in it.

To find more goto www.google.com/linux or simply come to us, the tuxified groups.yahoo.com/group/bmslug/ .

BMSLUG:

Founded in 2000, we aim to create awareness about free sotware, software that respects the consumers' right to use it the way he/she wants it to. We actively interact with various free software enthusisasts in the real world industry, who are part of our regular mailing list. Discussions, seminars, presentations, practical lessons and even projects are also part of the regular agenda. Also, GNU/Linux based companies such as Novell and RedHat are invited for demonstrations. Bluntly, we do everything enjoyable in coding, in confirmation with the spirit of free software for liberated users.

How it all started:
Every once in a required while, there come people who bring important parity into this disparate world, who balance the equation of such power that brings out the best of untamed cruelty in someone. Such a person was the legend Mr.Klaus Emil Fuchs, who passed on the secrets of the Atom Bomb and thus denied singular possession of it to America and such a man is Sir Richard M. Stallman who came up with GNU and thus denied the singular rule to proprietary software. In more than one ways the chain of events has been similar to Atom Bomb History apart from the huge difference in the nature of the products, one invokes freedom whereas one provides a threat to it. As time has gone by, more countries have gained access to the atom bomb as have more people have come up with free software and today a horde of free operating systems are available. The sad fact though is that the rule still lies with America as does with Microsoft.
As restrictions and censorship crept up and the practice of freely developing and sharing code was chained down by password enabled accounts, Sir Richard M. Stallman realized the deep problem and quit his job at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1984 so there wouldn't be any ownership issues over the new software that would be developed. He gathered together a group of dedicated programmers who developed the GNU operating system for a 32 bit system as foreseen by him would be the requirement by the time they finished in contrast to the usage of 16-bit systems at the time. By 1992, the project had seen near completion except for the lack of a kernel which was fulfilled by Linus Torvalds, who released a Unix-like kernel Linux as free software. This complete system GNU/Linux, mistakenly called just Linux, comes in a diverse variety of distributions and is yours to choose from.

Why GNU/Linux:

Ever saw a discalimer say NOTHING! Ever saw a copyright statement say FREE TO COPY AND RE-DISTRIBUTE.
Imagine people who are in love with coding and are passionate about developing a software, and on the contrary those with tied up with bogus deadlines and the compulsion to produce a workable code which requires a couple of service packs to make it run normally. There lies the difference. Information is only as valuable as it's source and the product is only as valuable as it's maker. Free software imparts to us the versatility to condition our software according to our needs, and the availability of the source only enhances it's beauty.
A simple example. Ever felt the frustration rising when Windoze dozes away on installing applications. The reason being that every application overwrites into the system the basic compilers and tools it requires which clots up the system. In case of GNU/Linux, these files aren't overwritten and the same tools are shared by various applications so installing numerous applications doesn't hurt.
There are numerous such examples and you already know the right place to find them. So come in and let the experts take over.

Pulkit