Viridiana

This is a 1961 film directed by Luis Buñuel and produced in Spain by Gustavo Alatriste.

Censored and banned by the Francoist authorities in Spain, this anticlerical film was acclaimed at Cannes, winning a Palme D'Or. Buñuel himself said "I didn’t deliberately set out to be blasphemous, but then Pope John XXIII is a better judge of such things than I am."

Viridiana was the first feature film Buñuel ever made in his native Spain. After the film was completed and sent to the Cannes Film Festival, the government of Francisco Franco tried unsuccessfully to have the film withdrawn, and banned its release in Spain. The film was only released there in 1977, when Bunuel was seventy-seven years old.

Well thats a little history that I dug up about the movie. Somehow I'm worried that I might end up forgetting about movies like this until I chance upon some remnant of it in the distant future. A scary thought that!

Veintisiete!

The years go by like the people you passby on a busy New York street.
Every year distinct and unique as the one before it. Heartstopping moments intermingled with the more mundane all rolled up into a very comfortable unit of measuring a mans life.

The future calls. But I shall not heed its call tonight. Oh no! Tonight its just me and my past entwined in our intimacy. Where's the friggin light switch?!

Trip

Its been a month since my arrival at my new home. St. Cloud, Minnesota, USA. Here today, gone tomorrow. I arrived here smack towards the tail end of winter and so I had the chance to have a go at skiing and snowtubing before spring set in. I took one too many tumbles and falls that day in the snow. While lying on my back I remember grabbing a handful of the white powder and staring at it. My mind drifted back to my feet sinking in the sand dunes of the deserts in the UAE, the monsoon rains pouring over me in the tropical forests of the Western Ghats in India and now this. Its been an amazing journey.

Then there's the trip that I take everyday. I put on my Sony headphones. Click on my favourite house track and let it rip up my brain cells. I close my eyes and see the world rise and fall with every beat. Snippets of life both real and unreal dancing before my eyes. My hands and feet find a new master and I become a slave. It feels so good to lose myself in something so pure, something so vibrant, something dripping with so much uncertainty that I am not bound
anymore. Perhaps this is as good as it gets!

another chance...

Come, my friend! I'll have to find you a new little corner in my heart. No matter how much i wish that what I had done could be taken back, you still remain throbbing like the pulse in my veins. They say second chances are hard to come by. Until that day, rest my brother, for the journey is long.

Life after 100

Well it’s been just over a year. My bikes’ crossed the 10000 km mark during the first week of December this year while riding back from Hypnos with Chris. The best part is that it has blossomed into one of the finest machines I’ve had the privilege of using. It seems to get better with age like wine. And to top it off I’m getting a little cocky on the roads these days. I wouldn’t be too far off the mark by bragging that my skills have vastly improved from the nervous-wreck glancing furtively every time a vehicle comes too close to the more laid-back what-the-fuck come-what-may mofo that I’ve become. Ain’t no two ways about it!

Looking back, there are lots of little incidents that took place during this one year span. I remember the time, about eight months back, when I went to an underground party with Steve. It was around 2am in the morning on Hosur Road. There was a bye-lane that we needed to take in order to get to our destination and we ended up crossing it by around 20 odd meters. We had to backtrack coz there was no way to get to the other side of the road. So we ended up backtracking the way we came, in the wrong direction of traffic flow. I dimmed my lights to just the parking lights reasoning to myself that the truck-drivers roaring down from the opposite direction won’t get disoriented and drive the metal beasts down our throats! Big mistake! There were no other lights in our immediate surroundings. So I ended up not noticing the deep ditch on our side of the road. Eventually while trying to stick to the side of the road, the front wheel slipped at the edge and we tipped over. It was, in retrospect, not much of a fall and we were not hurt either coz we were riding really slow. But the handle-bar ended up getting twisted to an impossible angle. That, more than anything else, freaked me out. You would understand what I had felt then if the ZMA was the first bike you’ve ever had and that too for less than 2 months.

A couple of weeks back, I rode to Ramnagar with Karthik and co for a bout of rock climbing and stuff. There were a couple of Royal Enfield Thunderbirds giving company to my ZMA at an average speed of around 110 to 120 kmph on the Mysore Road. We had an unhindered view of the open blue skies with the sun perched comfortably over our heads, the black tarmac screaming past under the wheels and the wind whistling a tune that can be heard only at such speeds. You have to experience it to know what I mean when I use the word “breathtaking” in this context. There was not a single four-wheeled contraption on that highway that came anywhere near to the speeds we were hitting and the sight of us smoking all those Marutis, Toyotas and Mitsubishis made the ride even more sweet. There is an altogether different way of life existing on the other side of that 100kmph mark and you’ll never experience it in the cocoon of your four-wheeled tin-can my friend!