Thinking Out Loud

Mondays determine my rest of the week. The events of the week and their outcomes depend so heavily on Mondays that I become a victim to Monday-bashing, also popularly known as Mondayitis. If I see and talk to no one on the way to work on a Monday, rest assured, it will be a week of birds-singing, dew-dropping, sun-shining, jazz-listening days of wine and roses minus Jack Lemmon and addiction to alcohol. On the contrary, if someone said something as harmless as "good morning" on a Monday, I blow my top and read Nietzsche or Dostoyevsky and blame everything on everyone and think about genocide, a lot. But, as the song goes, I pick myself up, dust myself off and start all over again as I cool down with a Red Bull (yes, it relaxes me; yes I'm weird) on the train which proves to be quite amusing at times. There is a story of how I drank a 473 ml can of Red Bull and fell asleep on the train, but that's a whole other story. I commute to work via train. Most of the days, I am...

It was a mixture of emotions, more of a pleasant contradiction as I realised while reading " The God Delusion " by Richard Dawkins , I had "Thiruvasakam" by Ilaiyaraja playing in the background. The music was providing a beat (in my mind) to the words of Dawkins. I have heard that music brings people closer to God (the unspecified God; who knows what people really believe in) and I could not help but smile. Usually it is either a book or a song blaring from the earphones, but on this particular day I was engrossed in Dawkins's words about the ontological argument and this person sitting next to me proceeded to talk on her phone and as the conversation progressed she became excited and her voice levels grew to an alarming pitch. As Peter Finch said "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!", so I put on my earphones and chose random and what should play but Thiruvasakam (Thamizh hymns written by poet Manikkavasakar about world...

மறுபடியும் உயிர்த்தெழுந்து உணர்வுகளின் ஒரு பகுதியில், உறவுகளுடன் ஒரு உரையாடல் கொண்ட கண நேரத்தில் காலன் தவறை உணர பலியான கனவு உண்மை தெளிய, எதுவும் அன்றி பொய்யாக விழிப்பின் விளிம்பில் ஒரு உரையாடல் எவரிடமோ என்பதல்லாமல், பயணங்கள் தெளிவற்று வெளிச்சத்தில் நிலையற்று, இருட்டின் தேடலில் மறந்து போன, மறைக்க நினைத்த வாழ்வின் முடிவில் மரணம்…

I first heard about "I Heard You Paint Houses" when Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese were planning to adapt the book into a movie called "The Irishman". Needless to say I was excited by the fact that De Niro and Scorsese were re-uniting after more than ten years (before they had collaborated to make "Casino" in 1995). One lazy Sunday afternoon I was browsing the web and decided to buy the book, on an impulse, from Book Depository . I have never heard of Charles Brandt before so I was not familiar with his style of writing. To say I was pleasantly surprised from page one would be an understatement. The book was never tedious as I had predicted (I had read a few non-fiction books before, and were not keen on them). The book reminded me of the time I watched " GoodFellas " for the first time (I could not watch any movies completely for a long time after GoodFellas because they could just not complete with it). I will say the same about I Heard You...

"It's all over after Phuket" said my friend, "I am all sexed out". Some people may find this amusing, others not so. I belong to the latter category because my friend has been saying this for the last 5 years. That's right, five fucking years! Put aside the feelings of jealousy and read on. If I can write this, surely you can read it. Some background info on my friend. For those who don't know him, let's just leave it at that. For those who are familiar with him, you know that he has faults like other human beings, refuses to accept those faults like other human beings and juxtaposes those faults on his 'partners' so he can have a clean break-up once the sex is over and he is "sexed out". Like other human beings? I honestly don't know the answer to that one. When asked why he behaves like a bastard, he says "better to be a player, before being played, 'cos you are gonna get played, anyway". Hmmm, food for thought, ...