Anjali - Kite Flying by Chance

I'm hopeless at flying kites. Anjali had some interest when she was younger - we even bought kites and tried to fly them but didn't work.

We went to the Kite Festival in Hyderabad too and I felt very inadequate at not being able to get the kite to fly. But recently we were driving by and I had a minute's work with Ranjan and I stopped.

Anjali said she would like to come and say hi so up we went and guess what he was flying a kite.

So Anjali got an impromptu kite flying lesson and some flying experience too.

A Lovely Visual

Says it better than most. Thanks Sagar.

Celebrating Life - Edited by Anuradha Jonnalagadda Tadakamalla

This is a fine coffee table book on Vedantam Raghavaiah, a highly talented and gifted Kuchipudi dancer, actor and director. He was born in Kuchipudi in 1919, and the book was compiled and edited by Smt Anuradha Jonnalaagadda, who is also a Professor at the Department of Dance, University of Hyderabad. The launch was held at Ravindra Bharathi and was attended by several prominent personalities.

Raghavaiah trained under Yakshagana Pitamaha Chinta Venkataramayya from a young age and at ahe 7, he won a gold medal for his portrayal of Pranhala Yakshaganam. He soon mastered the form. When he was about 20 years about and had already acquired considerable fame as an artist, he performed in a movie Rythu Bidda. He was the dance director for 22 films, directed 36 films in Tamil, Telugu, Hindi and Marathi. He started Vinoda Pictures in 1957 wit CR Subbaraman, DL Narayana and Samudrala Senior. His greatest works were Yogi Vemana, Tyagayya, Keelugurram, Swapna Sundari, Bhale Ramudu, Anarkali. Devadasu in 1953 was a runaway hit with Akkineni Nageswara Rao in the lead role. He passed away in 1971, aged a mere 52 years

It was a wonderful tribute to a great personality. The quality of work, the focus on doing quality work and never getting satisfied is something one can learn from these masters. A wonderful effort by Dr Anuradha Jonnalagadda, research scholar Kathyayani Ganti and exponent in Kuchipudi music DVS Sastry.

Dangling Gandhi - Jayanthi Sankar

Dangling Gandhi and other Short Stories are authored by Jayanthi Sankar who lives in Singapore (she's been there for the past twenty-five years). She writes, translates and edits and is also a watercolour artist. She was in Hyderabad in January for a book event and I picked up this book there.

The title catches your eye instantly - but there's nothing to worry - she's talking about a figurine of Gandhi dangling in a cab in Singapore and how the cab driver tells his fares how much he admires Gandhi. 'Did Churchill know' ends dramatically and is a good start to the book. The 'Punkah Wallah' is a poignant tale of an immigrant in Singapore who is earning money for his mother and his deaf-mute sister, until his mother passes away - but the landlords don't tell him even after a year. 'Read Singapore' is about a mother and daughter and their reading habits and how they discover each other in a strange land. 'Am I a jar' is about a teenager coming to terms with herself and her choices.

Jayanthi bridges the two worlds of India and Singapore with great ease. She has a unique, lyrical quality to her prose. She has a light touch and yet draws you into the world she is creating. There is enough research about the topics she wrote about to make it credible and convincing. The characters are interesting and layered. Enjoyable.

Talk at 41ers - Hyderabad Gymkhana Club

Pankaj invited me to give a talk at the 41ers - a club that spins off the Round Table where the members retire from active social work at 40 years of age. In the 41ers they continue to do the good work in a more relaxed fashion and meet once a month. After we agreed on the date Pankaj asked me to come up with a suitable topic. It took em almost two weeks to finalise the topic titled 'What's on your shelf?'. The audience had a few old friends, Ajay Narne from Intermediate days, Pankaj from Engineering and MBA days and a few others.

The talk was primarily about how I discovered, one fine day that there were so many books to read on my shelf, that I have enough to read for a lifetime. Similarly, I also have many movies to watch, things to write about, places to see, people to meet and practices to adopt and master. I have enough things to do. What started with a book or two a year, grew to 12 books a year and then to 20 and in recent times has been 70-80 books a year. Now I get books gifted to me, I got two bookshelves gifted to me and have some 15 books lying on my shelf that are unread and an equal number that I want to buy and read. I also have a list of 1000 books to read so my life is full. It makes me feel very excited to wake up and look forward to the day with so many things to do. Same with movies or whatever else is on my shelf.

Then I spoke about my mother in law Dr. Nalini Nargundkar who at 90 is very active and happy. She lives alone in a big bungalow, her husband passed away 30 years ago. I noticed that she has a very clear routine. From her yoga at 430 am in bed to her lime, honey and warm water, walk in the courtyard, her TV serials, her food, which includes a laddu at midnight, her books. Every minute that we wait at the doctor's, she spends reading a book, mostly a Mills and Boon or some murder mystery. These days she says she forgets which book she has read before so she is happy just reading.

Dayanand giving me a vote of thanks - he liked the concept of deliberate choice he said

When I asked her how she stays happy, she told me that we have to work for our happiness and not expect it to happen on its whims. We have to make our choices and follow them deliberately. That she said, was the secret of her happiness. Even her house - she said 'the house is for me and I am not for the house' - when I asked her how she maintains her huge bungalow. So she only uses the parts she needs and does not care about making the other parts look good.

Me and Ajay Narne, my pal from Intermediate days

So I realised that as my shelf gets filled up, I now need to be more deliberate like her to optimise my happiness. what I read, watch, write, who I meet should be more deliberate. Having got her, that's what I propose to do from now on.

There were a lot of questions and we had fun chatting up on our views on the topic. The key here is simply - do what makes you happy or brings you joy. To the question that I was well off economically to try all these, I said I wasn't. I just lived within my means, how much ever they were.

Throughly enjoyed the interaction and I hope they did too. Thanks Pankaj.

Canteen Fundas - 100% Responsibility is Freedom

Responsibility and freedom - the connection!

https://epaper.newindianexpress.com/c/48626140

Johnny Got His Gun - Dalton Trumbo

Unbelievably intense anti-war story of a young 16-year-old who goes to war and loses all his limbs, the front of his face - ears, nose, eyes - and how he tries to cope with his life after that. Searing anti-war take apparently inspired by a news item that the novelist screenwriter Dalton Trumbo read about of Prince Charles visiting a soldier in the hospital who had lost all his limbs.

Trumbo keeps the intense story going till the end, with just the internal monologue of this life trapped in a body that cannot speak, taste, hear, smell or move. The realisation that he has lost all his body parts, the inability to do anything about it including scratching an itch makes him try to engage his mind in figuring things out. He senses the distance of the door from his bed with vibrations of footsteps, tries to keep track of time with an intense effort, realises he can try and communicate by using his neck to tap a code. A sympathetic nurse deciphers his attempts, brings in an authority whose first reply in code is 'What do you want?'. A dumber question could not be asked and the soldier seethes in anger - what can you give me he rages inside. But he does convey that if they allowed him some social interaction, even as a freak show, he could earn money and also support others. Schools, colleges, museums, circuses...anything he says. the man from the organisation says 'What you ask is against regulations...who are you'. That's when Joe Bonham realises that they do not want him alive as proof of how dirty war can get. He takes off on the system of war where some people sitting in corridors of power pit people who have no agenda and who only want to live, against one another to kill and maim someone they don't want to kill. As powerful an anti-war story as one can read. Thanks, Vinod bhai.

That said, I must also thank Sagar for giving me the movie 'Trumbo' to watch a few years ago. Trumbo was one of the Hollywood Ten who were called up to explain themselves to the Committee investigating anti-American activities in 1947 (being part of the Communist party was construed as being anti-American much like what is happened now in India). Trumbo and the Ten get blacklisted and are given no work by Hollywood. Yet Trumbo manages to write classics like 'Roman Holiday' and 'The Brave One' under a pseudonym or for another writer, both of which won Academy Awards. Trumbo wrote 40 screenplays (Spartacus, Papillon, Johnny got his gun, Exodus, Thirty Seconds over Tokyo), 7 books and some plays. Interestingly his bio says he wrote 88 short stories and six novels in the nine years when he was studying and working at the University of California, all of which were rejected. But what a volume of work to write under so much rejection. No wonder he became the highest-paid screenwriter of his time. Another interesting fact - as opposed to the Hollywood Ten who never got a chance to explain themselves by the biased committee, the one anti-communist writer who cosies up to the system is the one and only Ayn Rand!

'Johnny Got his Gun' is a must-read like Vinod told me while giving me the book. But you need to be able to stomach it. Glad I read it.