Durga Pooja

Went to Durga Pooja at Hayward today. Waded my way through a crowd of about 300 people, made some attempts at taking pictures and finally had a good lunch of the khichdi-bhog.

Huh!

I just discovered that my landlord Wayne Ferreira has been a well known tennis player! "Not many houses have an ATP ranked tennis player as landlord" - as a previous tenant puts it. This is what happens when you don't follow any sports.

Rising from the grave

I took the previous move of the government to heart and promptly disappeared from blogosphere (Of course, in reality I was just being too lazy to post!) For the people who had lost touch - I had a nice summer in Berkeley and then enjoyed a one-month trip back to India. Am now back to yet another semester and am sitting on the "other side of the bench". I am also officially a PhD student now after having managed to pass my prelims last week.

Among other things, I watched "Lage Raho Munnabhai" recently. The movie struck me as delightfully creative. Of course there are exaggerations at times, but the presentation of Gandhi-ism in a very entertaining package of gandhigiri is quite remarkable. The ending, which again seems to call upon Gandhi to be the saviour of the nation is not as satisfying though. In a sense, depending on a man who basically taught independence of thought and action seems a contradiction. However, the movie is amazing in many ways. I am currently reading "We, the people" which presents a somewhat different take on things.