A pyschological tip – Piet Hein

A very good friend of mine… recommended this poem. Obviously I obliged. I was really astonished at
the simplicity. This poem is amazingly profound…. yet remarkably simple. Hats off to the poet, Piet Hein
Stuff like this, seems unreal when you read it. It is sometimes frustrating, as for one you see someone, who is so much better than you… I take that positively and drives me to be as good. Not always though. I have always been in awe of Rock lyricists or even some Bollywood lyricists. It is just impossible to pen down your thoughts…. like those guys seem to be able to do. Recently someone said the same about my poem !! I assured them that they were mistaken…. but could not help smiling…and feel on top of the world

Happy Anniversary !!

I cannot believe that I have been in Sydney for two years. It was on this day, the 26th of July, I came to this continent with some dreams and some goals….the goals …I am likely to achieve…..the dreams still elude. It was uncanny that a celebration was in order. I was invited for dinner at my cousin’s place and had an absolute ball. His wife is an awesome cook…and spending time with them was fun. Since they are fairly new in Sydney, I feel a sort of a obligation to help them. Its not just because they are family….it is because I know from my experience that sometimes, there isn’t some available when you need it the most I was lucky enough to have a friend circle and support system around when I needed it. Calling it an obligation may be a bit unnecessary, it definitely does not seem like that. Hey…they are cool….they are family…and well…it was my two year anniversary here…you have to be nice The highlights of the night were the dinner….the long long long chat that we had…and them feeling at home…it was all worth it.

The Mannequin

A mannequin is a life-size articulated doll which is used primarily to display clothes. The word mannequin comes from a Dutch word “manneken” which means “little man” (courtesy wikipedia of course). Apart from being a cloth model, mannequins are also used in training procedures like CPR, first aid and intubation. Ever since the 1970s when they first hit the market/display (in New York), they have become very commonplace.

You must be wondering, why I am talking about these dolls. Well I wish to do so, as I have had a couple of funny interactions with these life-like, life-size dolls. Just for your information, certain fragment of the society are mannequin phobic. I believe the word is “pediophobic”. Mannequins have been used in films like “Silence of the lambs” and must have added to their overall “creepy” quotient.

The “on stage” me….

Back home…ever since I was a kid…I have been involved in performing arts. As a kid…it was arts….plural….as it included elocution competitions, debates, singing….dancing (if you could call flapping hands and feet….kind of like what a drowning person does to stay afloat….outside the water of course…dancing)…and acting. People say that its better to stand out…than be a part of the crowd…however, I stuck out….like …umm…can’t think of a perfect idiom.Lets just say that I stuck out…and thus…was pretty much thrust into each and every “art” related stuff.

My grade school made sure we did participate in a lot of extra curricular art competitions and more often than not, I used to feature on the teams. Not that I didn’t love some of them….but there was always some folk dance competition around the corner…which I just hated. I sometimes was even willing to “sing” …this was another thing that our school made us do, use of sound tapes/discs wasn’t allowed at all…you had to sing and play your own songs….dance to that “cacophony of instruments”, one being a vocal tract….called music .

The script of daily life

We, the three musketeers of 52/56 are all tied by a common thread. We all like certain movies and can recite most of the dialogues. It gives us immense pleasure to use these in daily life. A few of the movies that we use extensively are: Sarkar, Andaz Apna Apna, Ab Tak Chhappan, Hera Pheri, Gangajaal and more recently One Two Three. Whats interesting is that even with my friends back home, this was a force of habit. Even more, the movies remain the same. Reciting the dialogues in the same style as they were in movie and using real life data is something that we enjoy doing. Although it can make us seem as losers…..yeah..it does at times….it is fun. The person who manages to pull it off the best, gets applauded by all.

Mimicry has always been one of my interests and traits. I love to mimic people. At times I am really good, much to the delight of the on lookers. When I came to Sydney, predominantly I had been around Marathi speaking people and it meant my humor too found its roots in Marathi. Be it literature, films or books. People around me knew what I was saying and enjoyed the jokes as they belonged to the same contextual environment. Here it was a different ball game, while my Marathi friends really were in splits, I found it hard to make people from other parts of the world and even other parts of India, laugh. Over the last two years I think I have found a way of doing it.

A large part of it has been through mimicry and film recitals (English, Hindi and Marathi). If someone were to write the script to my daily life, they would have to make sure that a huge chunk of it was humour while the other was dark and mysterious.