Since everybody and his patti was online last month celebrating the biggest thing to hit Indian television since the advent of colour, I decided the thravadi thing to do was to stay away. Lekin, control nahin hote…
So, here goes…A week after the attack, we were in Mumbai for a seminar. Told our cabbie that we wanted to go see the Taj. The guy wasn’t very happy, “udhar mausam thoda kharab hei”…anyway, we did the terror tourism triangle: Oberoi – Taj – Leopold Café, shot a few pics on the mobile and had a pint of the fabled Mumbai spirit.
Next evening. After the seminar. Airport. While walking towards security check, we saw a group of around 20 paramilitary guys crowding the corridor outside a shop. We thought some suspect was being questioned inside, we thought a seige was on…
Though a little tense, we inched up the corridor – this Mumbai spirit is contagious – and peeked into the store to see what was happening inside…and we saw what the cops were all so intently staring at – an old Dharmendra movie playing on a huge LCD screen. BHH.
(Click to enlarge)
Stumbled on the poster at Your Entertainment Now. Inspite of all the beautiful faces on it, the poster looks bad (early-’90s PowerPoint collage). But do check out the movie. With four of my fav actresses – Jennifer Aniston, Drew Barrymore, Scarlett Johansson, Jennifer Connelly – plus Ben Affleck and Kris Kristofferson…how bad can it get.
Releasing on February 6, 2009. Gotta check if bhai already has the DVD.
Wiki Trailer
IBN Live Story
I am not a fan of Parvathy and had not been tracking her ‘great journey’ from Kottayam to Jo’burg. Actually…if i may use a malluism, if it was not for my insomnia, i would not have known about this breaking story on IBN.
Congrats Paru!
Now, what would be Achu Mama’s response…
Some stuff i found: Wiki, Old pics & video
The blog address is now babukuriakose.com
Nostalgic bit about the good-old-days…
Contributed by Pattar. Thank you.
Read-without-straining-those-old-eyes option: here
(I am 43, i still don’t need glasses. I drink direct from the bottle.)
REC, 1986, Election season. There are not many things I would like to remember from that period of blood, sweat and tears except perhaps the deep bonds of friendship we forged under fire…and my first logo.
Flashback: After the suspension/ police action that happened in our first year, it was rumoured that politicos refused to help sort out the issue because the student-body was apolitical. Anyway, soon after that NSUI and SFI units were formed in REC, and nothing would ever be the same again.
I was in B224 during the period, with Paramu, Jackie and Binod Ramakrishnan. I was a little upset about this whole politics thing, and one evening while Paramu was mugging, I had this – to use a Sangham phrase – sudden brilliant idea, ‘Let us start a movement to fight party politics in campus…Engineering Students Council Against Political Exploitation, ESCAPE for short, the tagline would be ‘Escape with us” and the logo, the letters e-s-c-a-p-e stacked to form a stairway to heaven…’
I don’t remember what exactly Paramu’s response to my idea was, but it was something on the lines of ‘smirk!’ (expression of disgust, said out loud, not a facial expression). But that very evening we were called to Thadian Vinod’s room, and briefed about the launch of…a movement that fights party politics in campus. I told him about Escape, Thadian told me the objective was not to form another party…RIP Escape.
We fought two elections under Thadian, unofficially called Anti-Pols (the world referred to us as Andi Poliyans). By the time we reached the final year, we adopted a less-confrontational name, Non-Pol, and during the election season I created the Non-Pol logo, and not that anybody cared, the logo grid.
Over the years I have had the good fortune to moonlight as a graphic designer and create logos for products, events, awards, etc. Here are my personal favourites…
CD Check Valve. Inspired by the product. Sajeev helped refine the logo. Thanks.
Theme for 2007-08. We had the budget confab in Manali. The logo combines the contours of the hills and a growth graph (The rhyme would work only in Australia)
Logo for silver jubilee stockists. The letters 2 and 5 merge to form a valve icon.
Event logo. Started as a scribble on a napkin…
Face-to-Face. Customer Interface Programme. I was trying to fit the two Fs together and the ‘2’ suddenly popped up and hit me.
Last month I was stuck in Brussels for three days after the Valve World expo. I had three days to myself and the original plan was to do a World According to Garp meets Sound of Music trip, from where Marcus died to where Maria…um, cried? tried? Any way, to cut a long story short, Austria didn’t happen…
Day 1
Wake up call at 5:30. Checked out of Apple Park Maastricht by 6:30. Got dropped at Brussels Airport by 7:30. I had a large suitcase, a laptop bag and a huge sleep backlog.
Flashback: Brussels Airport, five days before. I arrived from Chennai to discover that my suitcase hadn’t. Filed a complaint and hit the road. Didn’t enjoy the ride to Maastricht at all – the car smelled of ciggies and I had given up smoking the previous night. FM was playing all my fav songs from the ‘80s – remixed with something slimy. And outside the car, autumn vistas in 64 million colours – big deal…dead leaves.
Things kind of improved from there. The expo went off well. Then, our last night in Maastricht – that will be the night before Day 1 (image of God tinkering with a light device flash in my mind) and we did the touristy things – main square, dinner at a brasserie, the bridge on the river Maas.
(To do: Reread A Bridge Too Far. All the towns from the book – Maastricht, Liege, Eindhoven, Nijmegan – are on the motorway boards. Trivia: Maastricht was the first Dutch town liberated by Allies)
OK, back to Brussles and day 1. I started my adventure armed with a city map and instructions in pantomime. And, this would be a recurring motif, I lost my way, horribly. Finally after walking about for 5 kms, with my shoe gnawing on my small toe, I discovered that the Grand Place, and the tourism office, was just next to my hotel. From there, another hike, to board the hop-on hop-off bus from near Brussels Station – church, palace, museum, ok, ok.
The highlight of the day was the visit to the The Belgian Center for Comic Strip Art. I smurfed through the collection and hit the Tintin gallery – ten panels, 3 statues, one rocket model.
While walking back to the hotel, finally in the right direction after two false starts, I began to miss Chennai.
Day 2
The Cathedral and Atomium in the morning – gothic and futuristic, stained glass and brushed steel, infinite and infinitesimal.
Flew past Belgian Aircraft Museum – website much better than real thing. Antwerp after noon. Cathedral, Christ, Cross, Capello and cut, carat, colour, clarity.
By the time I got back to Brussels, my friend Venky was waiting for the Brussles tour – drive-by shooting version. We did the Grand Place, Town Hall, Manneken Pis, t’Seerclaes, Cathedral and Galeries Royales St. Hubert in one hour and settled down in Rue des Bouchers for some French cuisine (we had amplette, and the waiterbhai wasn’t amused when we asked for peanuts to go with the wine).
Day 3
Woke up late. I figured my hotel room would have more to offer in terms of entertainment than Brussels on day 3. I figured right. Dinosaur Gallery, Museum of Ancient Art. By evening, halfway between ancient and extinct, i trudged back to my room, St. Michael on top of the tower guiding my way.
Babu Kuriakose 