Standing By

I have a new Tumblr blog here. If any of you reading this are on Tumblr as well, you can add (”follow”) me. You can also subscribe to the RSS feed.

The Tumblr blog (Standing By) is mostly meant for shorter posts. Do check it out.

In case you’re wondering, I will continue writing here as well.

Currently Reading: The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Calcutta

Just got back from Calcutta. I had initially planned to spend a week there, ended up staying for two. Seems like I was there for a lot longer, though not quite long enough.

There’s lots to see and do in Calcutta. High-end restaurants with hilarious descriptions of the food on offer. (Whatever the people who wrote that were smoking, I’d like some of it.) Angry, somewhat bemused glances for singing silly Backstreet Boys and Westlife songs in said restaurants. Male waiters who wear generous amounts of eyeliner and absolutely demand tips. Smelly, overcrowded pubs with drunk college kids merrily singing old Hindi songs, while loud fights between other sufficiently inebriated people break out all around.

A shady brothel, a renowned temple, a court, a prison and a posh residential area, all within two minutes of each other. A large, popular museum that may or may not have fake relics and fossils on display.

Friendly old drug dealers who try to sell you the finest “Bombay Black”. Scary rickshaw drivers who try to browbeat tourists into getting onto the hand-drawn carts. They might seem eager and friendly enough at first, but if you decline, their eyes say “get on, or I slit your throat in your sleep”. (One of them even claimed to have all of eight sons living in Bombay, for some reason.) Clean metro platforms. Uncrowded, punctual trains. No fist fights in train compartments. No yelling. No separate compartments for men and women. Yellow-coloured, expensive Ambassador taxis.

Pink iPods and purple Walkmans. Movie theaters with pretty cats running around the back seats. Big stationery stores. Bookstores. More bookstores. Even more bookstores. Glorious, glorious Starmark.

Dusty, colourful, confusing, crowded marketplaces where you can get pretty much anything you want.

Snooty, condescending women. Pretty women. Men who can’t stop staring at women’s chests. Scorching heat. Friendly people. Great new friends. Big, scary birds, handsome tigers and sweet cotton candy at the zoo. Lions in heat. Sitting by the lake at Victoria Memorial, surrounded by couples getting cosy under trees. Bright green leaves against a brilliant blue-grey evening sky. Lots of bad jokes. Lots of laughs. “If you know what I mean.”

Aimless wandering. Coffee and conversations. Comfortable silences. Lots of brownies and ice cream. Double chocolate chip muffins. With chocolate sauce.

The Girl™. Heh.

I’m going back in a few weeks.

Flying for the first time tomorrow.

Currently Reading: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon

O-zone Layer

Why are people making such a big deal out of Slumdog Millionaire? Okay, it has a pretty good soundtrack, but the movie was just about alright. Definitely not among the best movies I’ve seen in the recent past. Not even close.

You can always trust the Times of India and the Bombay Times to come up with really awful headlines, but they keep outdoing themselves.

“OSCAR Rahman: Raja of Roja Now Rules the O-zone Layer.”

You can’t make this stuff up.

People are paid money to write this.

And I don’t know how anyone else hasn’t noticed that Anil Kapoor can’t say the word “millionaire” properly. He just can’t.

One Point Four

Version 1.4 of the Morning After theme is now available. New features include (optional) automatic thumbnail generation, Gravatar support, threaded comments (screenshot), and support for WordPress’s in-built image wrapping classes and image galleries (screenshot one, screenshot two). Also included are a number of minor design-related tweaks and general cleaning up of things.

The theme will no longer be hosted at Google Code. The new home of the theme is at: http://themasterplan.in/tma/

As of version 1.4, the theme is now published under a Creative Commons License (Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike). Just to clarify what is implied by non-commercial use: you are not allowed to sell the theme or any derived works. You are, however, free to use the theme for commercial web sites.

I was going to include localisation in this version as well, but progress with that is still a bit sketchy. I will continue work on it, though, and as soon as I’m satisfied with the results, I’ll release a proper localised version of the theme.

That’s that, then. Hope you enjoy this version of the theme. Feel free to post your comments, etc. here.

Currently Reading: About a Boy by Nick Hornby

This is just another day. Let’s do the things we normally do.

Love the song. Love this short film.

Split Magazine turned three years old on January 22, 2009.

Hard to believe it’s been three whole years :) Nice.