one month

It's been a entire month since I last blogged.

I managed to catch jaundice a little more than three weeks ago and I've been under the weather since. The bout has been pretty severe with my blood tests through the roof, but I'm coming back to life now.

The major gripe has been missing Diwali. I had to cancel a trip to Calcutta but my parents came down instead and we had a low-key affair. Ofcourse, I couldn't eat any of the scrumptious food. I was way too bummed out all of that week to send the usual Diwali greetings, so here's a photograph I took from the last real Diwali I had:


Happy (belated) Diwali folks.

I did manage to watch Johnny Gaddaar (how did they get the dvd this soon?!) and American Gangster. The first is film noir and coming from Bollywood it is a very nice surprise indeed. I give it five stars. Watch out for Dharmendra spouting Indiana Jones dialogues! The second, too, is very good, notwithstanding the fact that I'm a sucker for dark mafia movies! :-) Oh, Hot Fuzz is brilliant too, very deserving of its 8+ IMDB rating.

Mostly I've been in bed and out of any sort of action. The doc tells me to keep it quiet for another few weeks and has already given me a list of things to avoid (eating and doing) for the next couple of months to make me have nightmares. Right now all I need is a machine that will look into my head and write whatever I am thinking. I have had way too much time to think and not enough (time or energy) to get stuff written.

The Economist and YouTube (watch this!) have been faithful companions for whatever time I can use my eyes before they start feeling the strain. I have been watching movies but it is so difficult to get hold of anything that is not standard Bollywood or Hollywood fare. So I've resorted to watch the older (and more easily available) stuff I've missed out - Indiana Jones, the Godfather sequels, etc. And I'm in dire need of newer music. By newer I mean stuff I don't have already. I'm more than willing to give the usual Dylan and Doors and U2 and Rolling Stones a break.

I tried listening to podcasts recently, to give my eyes a break. They're actually quite intolerable. No wonder they haven't become much of a rage. They are painfully slow and I have to concentrate twice as hard to listen as while reading. And while reading I can choose to glance through or skip back forth and definitely read faster than voice overs with their careful diction. Podcasts aren't worth listening unless they're just news headlines or something as brief as that.

I have much much more to write about - it's all crammed in my head. But I'll just take my own sweet time to do it, unless a brain-reading version of the Dictaphone comes about soon.

Cheerio.