He didn't have to

I watched Double Indemnity the day before yesterday and now these lines from the film are, inexplicably, spinning around in my head:

Phyllis Dietrichson: I wonder if I know what you mean.
Walter Neff: I wonder if you wonder.

and

Walter Neff: It's just like the first time I came here, isn't it? We were talking about automobile insurance, only you were thinking about murder. And I was thinking about that anklet.


I didn't quite like the way the film ended. I wanted Walter Neff to let Nino be falsely implicated in the murder of Mr. Dietrichson alongwith Phyllis, and wash his hands of the whole thing. But unsurprisingly, he has a change of heart when he realizes Phyllis was playing Nino along as well. Benevolence and kindness sweeps over him, and he wants Nino and Lola to be together. So he does the noble thing, and turns himself in.

The general consensus, most certainly, is that he did the right thing.

And that, exactly, is what put me off.

He didn't have to.



----

It's such a pity I hadn't been a regular listener of The Rolling Stones a lot earlier. However, I am one now, and so 'Street Fighting Man' is now on repeat on me laptop.

They are bwwiillliant. :D

Could be worse

He looks up at the brilliant blue sky
and then at the parched earth 'neath his feet
the relief of rain is, yet, all but a wistful dream

Undeterred, he puts his next foot forward and soldiers on
and in his quest for the ever-elusive water,
he marches into the wasteland further deep

Not even once does the poor soul rage or curse
for, he knows full well
It could have been a lot worse.

Medley I

Aaiye dukaan kholta hoon:

1. Re-vive: Coming along pretty nicely. I’ve now sort of realized what I had been missing for quite some time. The ubiquitous adda session that happens every day from sunset till 11 o’ clock has become very, very essential to my daily existence. Pausing to think, I also realize that earlier, we never ever had to call each other to a specific place just so we can have this – we had the tuitions which served the purpose. Commendably. And Mukherjee hasn’t changed. Not. One. Bit. And that keeps things jazzed up all the time, although we sometimes go a little overboard! The Polo Ground is perfect for this kind of timepass. Made my second trip to school with Babai, Souvik and Roy. And we ended up singing a plaintive - and pathetic - rendition of ‘Winds of Change’(Or...did we?). School school naa raha(sob). Siddhant ‘Choos-Lee’ Bhartia came down all the way from Calcutta to meet up with us. We appreciate it, Sidd – it’s a pity our plans to get smashed together in Bangalore never really materialized, and now you're no longer in Bangalore. Now it’s Calcutta for the next 3 years, pucca. Right then. We’ll get smashed in Calcutta one of these days :D
And I still can't decide whether I want to go for that reunion party in school. Most of us are undecided - we're unsure of the crowd... what if the grand old men of SPS Alumni take centrestage and we newbies are summarily ignored? Wisely, the organisers are dangling the bait of having ex-students from AG Church and Loreto on board for the '3 day extravaganza' :D We shall see!

2. Brit GP, Silverstone: So the Brawns finally came unstuck. Low temperatures weren’t letting their tyres warm up properly, and Button was undone (*smirks*) and Barrichello wasn’t exactly giving a great account of himself (Massa and Rosberg almost jumped him). But I’m dribbling on about a mere bagatelle. Why don’t we sidestep this issue and yell ‘SEBASTIAN!!’ - What a performance. What a thundering performance. Granted that the Red Bull car was flattered a little by the nature of the circuit and the air and track temperatures, but you simply can’t gloss over the fact that Vettel, on a heavier fuel load, first put in a stonker of a qualifying lap to take pole, and then pulled away from the two old goats on the grid at over a second a lap consistently during the first stint of the race. That was the day he did a Schumacher. Fab job!

3. Wimbledon: It’s no secret which camp I belong to. And yes, Wimbledon without its defending champion feels a bit like showing up for a college prom night and having to dance with Bablu the channawallah. OK, that was monumentally asinine of me, but you shall, at this juncture, have mercy on this mentally challenged individual and get the drift. And, much as I don’t mind Roger Effing Federer and really, really respect him, the Savile-Row bedecked tennis-racket swinging Rolex commercial really gets on my nerves. The other one with footage from his matches is OK – I mean, Rolex has being doing that sort of ads for years, but this one is, well, phhbbbt.

4. Shantaram(the book): I won't say anything except describing it in one word : 'staggering'.

More later. Run along.

Oh, Roger!

Roger fans (I'm half a fan myself :-)), savour your moment under the sun :-).

What's with the excessive smileys I'm dishing out?

He is the greatest now. Now even critics who held his inability to win the French Open as a trump card have to shut their fucking traps up. Hats off, man. He and his camp have every right to be extremely chuffed about this victory. They badly needed this one. We always knew he had the game to triumph at Roland Garros, and it would only be a matter of time before he'd hold aloft the Coupe des Mousquetaires on Court Philippe Chatrier. There was only one thing he needed. Badly.

The absence of a certain Rafael Nadal Parera on the other side of the net.

Inexplicably, Nadal caved in against Robin Soderling, after decimating Lleyton Hewitt in the previous round. The only saving grace is that Soderling reached the final. Nadal summed it up himself - 'His game didn’t surprise me; I was more surprised by mine.'

And Bjorn Borg's gesture of sending Soderling a congratulatory SMS wasn't offensive at all. Its content was. Apparently, what he said to Soderling is that he was happy his record at Roland Garros remained intact. I've lost some respect for Mr. Borg. Great champions never think on those lines. Sad.

It looks like Federer's luck has also endured at this year's French Open. Nadal had been eliminated. Then, he narrowly managed to scrape through against Acasuso, Haas and Del Potro. Once he was in the final, there was absolutely no stopping him. Soderling didn't know what hit him.

----

Federer and his worshippers have more reasons to rejoice. Nadal' s pulled out of the Queen's tournament, and his entry in Wimbledon 09 is also in doubt. We all know why. But if you are a berk, here's why:

http://www.thetimes.co.za/News/Article.aspx?id=1015677

So King Federer says in an interview:

"I was surprised to see him pull out of Queen's, and now the debate that he might pull out of Wimbledon is quite frightening. I don't like to see it, because you want the best to be playing in the biggest events."

I think not ;-)

Anyway, Nadal has no intention of disappointing Roger Kumar:

"I am going to give 200 percent to be ready for the most important tournament in the world, the tournament that I always dream about,” Nadal said. But he also added that he would not play if he wasn't 100 percent ready.

Fingers crossed. Until the day they announce the draw at SW 19.

------

I wasn't aware of this - When Nadal burst on to the scene, he wasn't welcome at all. Frankly speaking, I myself hated him initially.

He had to face a lot of hostility from fans in Paris. Guy Forget, commentator on France 2 detested him(still does, obviously) and said, "We don't need construction worker arms in tennis." After the 2006 Roland Garros final against Federer, Nadal started by praising Federer in his speech. The translator mistranslated the speech, leading the public to think he was praising himself. Nadal was thus booed and whistled at throughout the speech.

Beautiful. These people have had to eat their own words. Repeatedly. And hopefully they'll have to do so for some more years.

Nonsense II

Look beyond the road

It's a sensation overload

Does it leave you irked?

Does it leave you bored?

Or are you sweaty n' uneasy,

And squirmin' like a toad?

Not a pretty picture
"NOOOOO", they shriek
"Look at him, that guy's a goddamn freak!"
Hacking, quartering
Sawing, strangling
It's all a part of your daily effing fixture

You look into her eyes, your own bein' bloodshot
You're just playing your part in the grisly plot
She screamed, she cried, she ended up begging
No let-up from you, your anger it wasn't ebbing

You cut open her bust
Blood spilled her guts
Yeah, now you're feelin' the rush
Nothing beats this endorphin buzz

You aren't a poet, obviously. Not even remotely. A tatty Audrey Hepburn impersonator over the vehicle's sat-nav issues instructions: "Range to next fill-up : 178 kms.... Weather conditions : Partly cloudy, with minimal chance of rainfall. 40 kms to destination..."

You assimilate the shit she said, and swerve to avoid a loon with too much hair product in his...well, hair and too much power under the bonnet. You wonder how it would feel to behead these philistines. You think of all the enjoyable things you would do to them after they had breathed their last.

The next thing you heard from the lady on the sat-nav - "Shoot yourself in the nuts, sir. And then do the same to your head."

Your car was found the next morning smashed up against an elm tree that had no business being where it was. It had taken a substantial portion of the armco barrier with it. The forensics team couldn't unearth anything exciting. The police said nobody in the car would have or could have survived the impact, but how does it matter to you? It's not as if you were exactly alive the instant you rammed into the armco.

Now that it's all over, I feel a sense of sadness.

You were driving a Dacia Sandero.

Word-ling

This was the wordle result for my blog.

Hardly a surprise, eh?

Had to post this one

I don't know why, but I just had to put this one up - this one's probably the greatest quote I've come across.


"The loveliest of faces are to be seen by moonlight, when one sees half with the eye and half with the fancy." - Persian Proverb


(sigh)

On Dr. Dre's latest prescription drug

I haven’t done any album/movie reviews here because (a) nobody cares what a random blogger thinks and (b) why else are popular publications like Rolling Stone etc in business? They are the ones whose reviews shape the general reception of any movie or album that finds its way into theatres or stores. If you want to know whether you want to buy it or whether it’s worth a dekko, you’ll be better off reading what they think of it.

Anyway, the album is question is Eminem’s Relapse. It’s been four years since an Em record went on the shelf, and it’s most obviously an extremely important album for his biggest fans as well as people who hate him the most. The former group wants to know whether that magic and madness in his rhymes is still alive and kicking. The latter want to have another shot at belittling him. And truth be told, I myself wasn’t too optimistic when I listened to the first two singles from Relapse to have been released – 'Crack a Bottle’ and ‘We Made You’.

That skepticism changed for good once I listened to the rest of the album (‘Never has there been so much finesse and nostalgia’, as Em asserts in ‘We Made You’). For me, the first two singles were the weakest in the album – ‘Crack A Bottle’ with 50 Cent and Dr. Dre sure became the most downloaded song of all time, but didn’t exactly set my trousers on fire – it was nothing special. And as far as ‘We Made You’ is concerned, it’s a pale shadow of probably the best parody-rap song of all time, ‘The Real Slim Shady’. This one doesn’t even come close. The beats and chorus are okay, but Em’s accent in the song is annoying and the rhymes jar at places. The video was a good laugh, though.

But the rest of the album is at least as good as Encore, if not better. It’s vintage Eminem all over again. With ‘Dr. West’, there is a sinister (and homophobic, as the critics would spit) tone set for the album which is taken to an even scarier and gorier level with ‘3 AM’, whose music video was banned from being aired on TV, because it was deemed ‘unfit for TV audiences’. The TV regulatory bodies could have given themselves a break. Who cares these days when you have Youtube?

‘My Mom’ sees Em take the road he’s travelled so many times – he trains his hellfire on his mother, blaming her for what he is today (That's why I'm on, what I'm on, 'cause I'm My Mom!). ‘Insane’ is one of the best – and the probably the most cringe-inducing song in the album. He talks about his childhood experiences with his stepfather, which were anything but pleasant, and his mother’s constant indifference to the same (If you could count the skeletons in my closet/Under my bed and up under my faucet/Then you would know I've completely lost it/Is he nuts? No, he’s insane). ‘Bagpipes from Baghdad’ has been in the news to the barbs Em’s directed at Mariah Carey and her husband Nick Cannon, but it’s much better than a page three story, the Arabic Rhythm surprisingly works with the Dre beats and of course, Em’s rhymes.

‘Hello’ makes you smile at the start (Hello.../Allow me to introduce myself.../My name is, Shady/It's so nice to meet you/It's been a long time/Sorry I've been away so long/My name is, Shady/I never meant to leave you). The song is decent enough as well. In ‘Same Song and Dance’, he realizes how oft-repeated and flogged the jokes and disses about the current music scene generally are. ‘Medicine Ball’ has the references to Christopher Reeve, and has come in for a lot of flak, but towards the fag end of the track, Reeve has his own back – “Eminem, I'm coming to kill you, always hated you and I still do /You'll never fill my shoes, my Superman costume/Doesn't even fit you, they don't feel you/You're taking this shit too far, who do you think you are?”. This track is also among the better ones. ‘Stay Wide Awake’ also has an extremely dark, murder-ly and manslaughter-ly theme to it. Works. ‘Old Times’ Sake’ is a sort of nostalgic trip, and Em along with Dre really rocks this number (So one more time for old time's sake/Dre drop that beat and scratch that break). Dr. Dre’s beats and Em’s rhymes come together perfectly in this track.

‘Must be the Ganja’ revisits the drug theme, and by this time, Em has already introduced zillions of drugs, almost as if he is reading off the inventory list of a pharmaceutical corporation(Valium, Zantac, Nyquill, Vicodin, Klonopin, Hydrocodone, Ambien, Xanax, Formula 44d, Percodan, Lunesta, they’re all here). ‘Mr. Mathers’ has medics tending to a passed-out Eminem, and the next track ‘Déjà vu’ talks about him falling ‘deeper into a manic state’. ‘Beautiful’ is a surprisingly pleasing track, with a mellow chorus, and Em’s voice is used for proper singing in the chorus lines. Here he’s on about how difficult it was for him to get out of the drug problems and the extreme depression that had encumbered him in the recent past. It was extremely tough, but like he says, ‘But I need that spark to get psyched back up, in order for me to pick the mic back up’. Em’s pen still hasn’t lost any of its ability to stir the emotions. Some of my favourite lines are from this song:

"In my shoes, just to see, what it's like to be me
I'll be you, let's trade shoes, just to see what it'd be like to
Feel your pain, you feel mine, go inside each other’s minds
Just to see, what we find, look at shit through each other’s eyes
But don't let them say you ain't beautiful
They can all get fucked, just stay true to you
Don't let them say you ain't beautiful
They can all get fucked, just stay true to you"

His long-time antagonist Steve Berman makes a comeback in the nineteenth track of the album, and this time, he sums things up as far as Em’s critics are concerned: “Let me guess, another album about poor me, I'm so famous that it's ruined my rich little life, and I'm such a tortured artist. Let me make music about it and my tragic love life, am I on to something here? … Big selfish superstar (Steve, I had a drug problem) Oh poor me, I had a drug problem. Who hasn't had a drug problem in this town?” The twentieth track on the album is ‘Underground’, which draws the curtains on a worthy comeback by Slim Shady – Obviously, like all Shady albums, this one’s also a love-it or hate-it compilation. If you hate it, you obviously shouldn’t have listened to it in the first place. People who are quick to dismiss this as a rehash of his previous work, think again. This is what he does best, and in Relapse he takes off where Encore left. Nobody does this better, and in most of the songs, the target is Eminem himself. His pen’s acerbic and biting wit is still there, and the rhymes still pack more than a punch. It’s that time again, as Em says in ‘Medicine Ball’:

“I said I guess it's time for you to hate me again
Let's begin, now hand me the pen
How should I begin it, and where does it all end
My medicine ball, you're in my medicine ball friends”

The lines that usually announce Shady’s comebacks are conspicuous by their absence in Relapse, and so I absolutely had to end this with those very lines.

“Guess who’s back, back again?
Shady’s back, tell a friend.”

He’s back. And how! Good to see you back at it, Em! And here's hoping the next album is an even bigger step up.

The Mallorcan Marauder. And why he rules.

My apologies to – well, I don’t know who I should apologize to, but they have been long overdue. I was supposed to write this in the first week of February, but other unnecessary work kept me occupied – stuff like the quizzes and the endsems, the like.

A muscly, fist pumping, grunting and grinding Spaniard won the 2005 French Open at a time when the world, me included, just couldn’t have enough of the Swissmaster Roger Federer. No matter how much, too much was never enough. He was magical, he was sublime, he was winning everything and then some more. He was perfect – there weren’t any real weaknesses in his game, and over and above anything else, he never looked like he had to make himself the finest, and the best in the business or had to become the best the world has ever seen – he was born to be just that. And that’s what made him so special. If ‘poetry in motion’ is a term that could ever be applied to someone who wasn’t a Russian Ballerina, Roger on a tennis court was the perfect example.

When Rafa won his first French Open title against another lefty Mariano Puerta, the majority of us didn’t so much as bat an eyelid. My immediate reaction was, ‘Well, these clay-courters come and go. This guy might be good, but he’ll probably be unable to do much on the rest of the courts. He might fade away into sporting oblivion, for all I care’. I remember telling Puspen and the rest that.

I was justified in thinking thus. I remember so many random players who came good on clay, won the French Open (or at least came close to winning it) – Gaston Gaudio, Guillermo Coria, Albert Costa, Marcelo Rios, Juan Carlos Ferrero, Martin Verkerk, Alex Corretja, Thomas Muster etc etc. And then? Look at what these players achieved after that. They have all frittered away and, to the best of my knowledge, have chucked their rackets or are languishing at the bottom of the ATP Rankings. Why should I have thought any differently in Rafa’s case?

Come to think of it, I was furious, extremely so, when Nadal ousted Federer in the semi-finals of that tournament. I went mad; thinking that here was yet another pretender who has stopped the potential G.O.A.T. from adding the Coupe des Mousquetaires (that’s what the trophy’s called. Eek.) to his mantelpiece. Stupid Spaniard. I hated him. It wasn’t that I loved Roger too much. I just hated Nadal a little more. Anyway, better late than never. Roger would most certainly win the French Open. It was just a matter of time. His mastery would be complete.

Cut to the present day. ‘It was just a matter of time’. Heh. I’d never imagined it would take this long, and with it see the supplanting of the Fedex at the top of the rankings as well as the Wimbledon trophy being bitten on Centre Court by the same ‘stupid Spaniard’. The Aussie Open was conquered too. All this while dominating on the clay courts like none before him. Sheesh. And along the way, he’s also made me a huge fan. I’m sold.

His detractors say his game is too physical and too demanding. That his body will crumble due to the extraordinary demands he puts on it every time he goes out to play. That he is not quite the purist’s chosen one, for his game breaks a lot of established conventions. They don’t find it ‘aesthetically pleasing’ and that it is never a joy to watch him play – that is the exclusive preserve of the ‘artist’ and ‘magician’ Federer.

All this might be true, but why else do you think he’s succeeded time and again against Federer? It is precisely because of this ‘unconventional’ and ‘unaesthetic’ manner of his tennis. Nadal’s genius is just as great as Federer’s, albeit of a different sort. Nobody can beat the Fedex at his own game – that is the reason he so effortlessly dominated men’s tennis for such a long period. That is why opponents like Roddick and Hewitt get routinely thumped by him. Even though they’d been around before him and have played him so many times. It’s not as if they haven’t tried their best. They just CAN’T.

And don’t you lie saying you don’t enjoy watching Nadal on a tennis court. You may hate him all you like, but calling his game unexciting is like saying LK Advani is an eloquent and new-gen, charismatic leader who is fit to be the face of India on the world stage.

What is entertaining about watching him play?

Well, what isn’t? The lightning speed with which he darts about on the court, his dogged pursuit - and return - of every single ball the opponent sends to his half of the court, his lunging and scrabbling all the time, never giving up, that whiplashing top-spin loaded forehand, the way he wields his Babolat like a cutlass, the way he exults and fist-pumps after hitting yet another impossible winner or the way he passes the sternest of tests with the belligerence of a battle-hardened, uncompromising buccaneer, what? (OK, the repeated yanking at his shorts is). If there is one word to describe him on a tennis court, it is 'indefatigable'.

His bellicose, some would even say violent playing style is something Federer hasn’t come to terms with. Yet. This is testimony to his class and his resilience – he has steadily improved since that first French Open title, adapted himself fantastically to the other surfaces (something which so many people doubted he could do). He is probably the greatest counter-puncher the game has seen – whatever anyone throws at him, he’ll invariably find a way to send it back. Another striking facet of his game is that he doesn’t allow himself much of a margin for error. As last nights’ semi-final of the Madrid Masters against Djokovic showed, he is capable of winning matches against the best in the business even when he’s not playing at his best, his footwork is not quite up there, the timing is not coming to him or the shots look a little feeble. That, in my opinion, is what his opponents, most of all Federer, have to worry about. And speaking of his rivalry with Federer – it’s the best thing to have happened to men’s tennis since the days of Sampras-Agassi and Sampras-Rafter. Nadal always finds an extra gear, a way to raise his game several notches against him, and has prevailed with an alarming regularity. The current head-to-head is 13-6, in Rafa’s favour.

His domination over Federer came full circle in the Wimbledon Championships, 2008, where he outlasted Federer in that epic final, finally ending Federer’s 5 year reign at SW19. And his nature off the court is in direct contrast to the raging bull that we see grunting and snorting on court. It’s almost as if there is a switch that alternates him between ‘On-Court Mauler’ and ‘Off Court Captain Courteous’ modes. Despite humbling Federer on surfaces other than clay regularly, he’s always maintained that Federer is the best in history, and it is an honour for him to have been such a worthy opponent. It’s not that I like him for the depressingly kind words he has for the man who finally broke down (Aus Open ‘09) after losing yet another grand slam final to his greatest rival. I say all this because you might start liking him for these reasons!

Sure, he says all that and sincerely means everything he says. But he probably doesn’t realize he himself might be well on the way to becoming the most successful of all time. He is improving with every tournament; he’s giving absolutely nothing away to his competitors and he’s staying fit. Making such a prediction as this might be taking it a little too far, but (a Hammond-esque BUT) you never know, do you? And it’s not just about the idle speculations – he may not actually achieve the calendar Grand Slam, or win the most titles, or stay No. 1 longer than Federer, but that is not the point. The fact that he is forcing us to confront that possibility is.

I’m willing to lay any wager that if he can keep playing at the level he is now for another 4-5 years, he might become the one who replaces every other name in the record books.

If and when he does that, you can count on me rooting for him.

And so it happened

The club has hit me in the gut, the truck has mowed me down and my carcass is being ripped apart, shred by shred, by the overanxious vultures, even as I use Blogger's 'Psychic Live Writer' to upload this post which I'm only thinking about.

With time and with experience, people expect a step up - even if they haven't done much to deserve it. And truth be told, I was expecting that too. But, as someone has famously and appropriately said, 'Shit Happens'. And so it has, big time. I am too loathe and too...indifferent(?) to do something about this. So, without giving it much thought, I have come back to watching Jack Bauer take out yet another rogue-organisation-with-WMDs-threatening-the-national-security-of-the-US and laughing my head off watching Jezza, Captain Slow and The Hamster falling over and cocking about amidst the usual orgy of speed and heavy metal (the real things - not six-strings with cocaine addicts holding them iffily and eliciting strange noises from them).

My death won't be a hero's one. That's hardly a surprise. Not even the vultures like the taste of me. One of them is undergoing convulsions- looks like it's going to keel over rather soon - and the others, taking the cue, are flying away. In search of better and more delectable meat.

In search of... you.