My bro enjoyed his brief stay here. Most of the time, he was out accompanying ma to the hospital ( she was here for a check-up, among other things) or busy writing cds. We had a couple of debriefing sessions late in the night, when we walked out all the way to Necklace road, just swapping “life stories”. It used to drizzle often the last week, mostly at night, and almost always when we were on Necklace road, so we used to come back home soaked. ( Close-up: mom screaming at errant youngsters. Slow-motion capture: A single drop of water falling from one EY’s chin, goes “splat!” on the floor Pan: piping hot dinner ready in the kitchen. Eat your heart out, John Woo. )

I haven’t caught a cold yet, but I can feel it coming up. The occasional sniffle, the sudden twitch of the nose. ( This from a guy who, at the peak of his runny-nosedness, sneezed 43 times in a row. Or was it 45? )

Oh yeah, I haven’t said that before, he’s a teacher. He teaches Maths and Science in the same school where he passed his 12th, in Golaghat. he’s also the Scout-master there. Actually, that was why they had to leave so early, him and my ma, because he had this Scout meet from the 16th. Seems he gives all his students a DC comic each if they perform well, like solving a particularly good maths problem, or answering a difficult question in class. It was quite a weird experiment, at first, because the students did not like to read, especially stuff other than what they should be reading at school. (Isn’t that the case everywhere?) But there have been converts, all the same.

My brother made me do something I haven’t done in a long time. The day we went to buy his discman at Abids, we also went to Saremisons ( easily the best stationery shop in Hyderabad. At least, the only good one I know ) He bought a couple of pens and geometry boxes for his students. And then he bought a drawing pad and gifted it to me. You’re crazy, I said. I don’t draw anymore, I haven’t drawn anything in the last four years, other than maybe the occasional doodle on notebooks. And the occasional message on T-shirts.

Guess what, the pad inspired me to sit down, last Thursday evening, and draw something. I mean, I have this beautiful white page, lots of beautiful white pages in front of me, and I need to fill them up. The first fifteen minutes was spent in deep thought (Original composition? Still life? Comics? Portrait?) and occasional hops to the kitchen (ma was cooking chicken that night). . Took the easy way out and thought about an “artistic reinterpretation”. In other words, a black and white rendering of something, since a black pen was all I had.

Three hours of dedicated “rendering”, with a short break for dinner, and I was done. And guess what! I liked what I saw. Not bad, eh? Nope, definitely not bad. Not too good either, but ok, good enough for someone who’d stopped all kinds of artistic activity. ( does Photoshop count? naaaaaaaah!)

My friends were gracious enough to echo my sentiments when I showed it to them. Or maybe they were just being kind. :-)

Is there anything as catchy as, Aiyyo, Love is full of pain, poda, love is just a strain.???

Imagine going inside a room, a big room, that’s filled with books. Books piled one over the other to the height of an average human being. Books piled together so precariously balanced that you need to weave your way through. And when you stare, and stare some more, you realise that these are books that you have been waiting to buy for like, years, and all of them are priced below hundred.

This is what’s going on at Best Book Stall. The shipment that Ahmedsir was talking about is insane. My budget is going to be blown into orbit. Would you believe me if I told you that the pile includes all of Michael Chabon’s books? All the books from the Foundation series. All Anne Rices. Loads of Philip K Dicks and Robert Heinleins and Neil Gaimans and Anne McCaffreys and Conan books and …whooof….each of them priced at 75 rupees. All classics and children’s books for 50 rupees. All the “pulp” stuff, Archer, Segal, Sheldon, Harold Robbins, Jackie Collins, Grisham at 95. The sale is due to start from Monday. Fingers crossed. I asked him to call me an hour before the sale actually starts. Already booked a lot of good stuff for myself.

Yeah. My mom left yesterday evening. My room begins to resemble its previous configuration, with myseterious piles appearing at every corner and the distinct feeling of being smaller than it actually is.

News#1: My computer is gone. I gave it to my mom because she said she wants one at home, and I felt it would be too much for her to buy one when she would be using it just for writing documents and spreadsheets. She will get a printer there, that’s all.

News#2: I am getting a new computer. With a DVD drive. And a Creative Soundblaster Live!TM soundcard, and a 5.1 Cambridge SoundworksTM speaker set. Beatzo’s descent into Entertainment hell begins. *Insert RATM guitar riffs here*

News#3: Ma left at 5:45 yesterday. At 6:10, I was in Abids, going through the new Star Wars novels that Ahmedsir seems to have gotten. Found a lot of good novels, but the icing was the invitation he made. Seems there’s a new sci-fi collection he’s acquired, so he wants me to go today and help him price the lot. He’s about to put up a sale, and he wants optimal prices. Right. First dip is what I get in exchange.
The stuff I bought yesterday:

Philip Pullman: The Tin Princess. My first stab at Pullman. Seems this book is a member of that deadly species for bibliophiles – The Multi-part Epic. So I will have to defer reading it until I get the remaining ones. Or unless madhavn can help me out with the reading order.

Carl Hiassen – Skin Tight. I have taken to buying every Hiassen book I find. That guy can make me laugh aloud.

Vonda McIntyre – Star Wars: The Crystal Star. I sometimes get confused about which Star Wars trilogies I have, it’s easy to get parts 1 and 3 of every trilogy, but tough, really tough to find out part 2. Standalone books are so much better. Reserved a lot of stuff that I will buy today or tomorrow.

A haul of Argosy magazines from 1953. Contains original stories by Roald Dahl, Ray Bradbury, AJ Cronin, among others. Got a set of four books for 25 rupees, feeling pretty good about it.

Sounds like a weird DJ mix….just some of the stuff you get to hear in Charlie’s Angels:Full Throttle….the background track is hyper! Smoothly moves from track to another, made me feel like a rhino on steroids.Truth be told, I enjoyed the movie, much better action and better slo-mo sequences our Friendly Neighbourhood Reloaded sequel. It keeps the laughs coming, Cameron Diaz looks ugly as usual, and manages to compensate for it by wiggling various parts of her body at right intervals. Lucy Liu cracks her fingers, cracks some heads, cracks some bawdy jokes about clientele and tackling 12 sailors at the same time. Drew Barrymore….ahem…smiles, with that odd twitch of her mouth that reminds me of Two-face. Charlie could be voiced by Hemant Birje. Yeah, touch wood.

Pink makes a guest appearance somewhere in the movie, So does John Cleese. yeah, Bruce Willis too. Demi Moore – Va va voom.

Mithunda and Rajiniannawere missing, their spirits were palpable throughout.

White Teeth is turning out to be a Black Read. The jokes keep getting tedious, and there’s no shift in plot. Ugh. I will finish it, though.

AR Rahman. Boys. Tamil cd. Rs 95. Lifestyle. Lunchtime today.

Juts got back from a session to the pre-sales people about the Loadbalancer. I love praise.

I had this weird dream sometime this morning, just before I awoke.

OK, I saw that Cash had come back. And we were being very chummy about it, and all of a sudden we are in a class in college. Only, the class happens to be the Nursery hall of my old school. And an old professor comes in with a lot of cronies who set up a microphone ( which looked like a Shure piece, pretty professional and all ), and a speaker which was one of those conical things you see in political speeches.

Then this old chap, who happens to be a professor, comes in and starts lecturing on….believe it or not…Lord of the Rings, in pure Assamese. I can assure you that Assamese is a funny language, it’s pretty sweet to listen to, but it’s funny with words, like – saying Markin Juktorashtra for the United States cracks me up everytime. This old fellow starts teaching the first chapter of LotR, and very drily, at that. And I could vaguely get the feeling that it was the last day of the lecture, and he had been to the class only on the first day, where he had handled the preface, and exams were two days away.

All the while I was thinking, oh my Gosh, I don’t remember how to spell Gandalf in Assamese. And Cash was going crazy trying to write “Gom Pau” on a notebook. And then he got caught while trying to do that. And then I woke up.

I don’t remember eating anything odd last night.

A lot of good things happening.

The mundane ( read “materialistic”) stuff first. A trip to Walden got me this month’s swag of Gotham comics. I never held Sharad Devarajan and his crew in high regard, except for the fact that they were bringing one of the best Marvel titles to India. Ultimate Spiderman happens to be the particular title I am talking about, and really, any reader would find Brian Michael Bendis’s work on the book nothing sort of path-breaking. The best part about the book is that it concentrates so much on Peter Parker, rather than Spiderman. Think young, think a scrawny High School kid who gets these amazing powers. ( No, don’t think Tobey Maguire, he was much too old ) And this kid is trying to find his limits, trying to figure out what he can do with his powers, and most of the time he’s screwing up badly. Granted, this was the premise of the original 1962 Spiderman series, but Bendis carries it a step, no, several steps further, by adding neat twists to the tale as we know it, by making Peter Parker more than a shunned Science geek. He actually has a life here (not to mention a funky haircut ) and he’s not the “Yes, aunt May, I love you, aunt May” guy that used to be around. There’s another Spiderman title published by Gotham comics – called simply Spiderman . It’s by John Byrne, and trust me, after reading Ultimate Spiderman, it’s almost an affront to follow Byrne’s mediocre storyline. Suffice it to say ( and feel free to repeat after me ) – Bendis is God.

OK, I cheated. I went to some review site and actually got the entire storyline upto issue 45, so that there’s no niggling sense of “what happens next?”. But it’s still a treat to watch the story unfolding in the comic book. I still maintain my stand – the comics medium is unparalleled when it comes to storytelling.

And then I got a pleasant surprise. A very pleasant surprise.

Gotham also brings out a couple of Super-Specials every now and then. So far, they had been testing the waters, bringing out the previously released comics in collected format – standard Trade Paperback issue. And two or three Superman and Batman Elseworlds tales. But yesterday, I saw what was coming next.

Wolverine: Origin. Daredevil:Yellow. Batman: Tower of Babel. And believe it or not, they have started to reprint the Hush storyline in Batman – which happens to be an ongoing series right now!!!!

Monsieurs and Mesdames, I think comics are beginning to come of age in India. I particularly like the mini-comic format in which Gotham is bringing these titles out, it’s small, godd enough to fit your pocket, and it’s cheap,so kids can afford it. And kids, I dunno, always seem to have this affinity for things that look small, know what I mean? The fact that I can’t find older issues of Ultimate Spiderman and JLA ( another neat series, written by Grant Morrison ) goes to show that good storylines and writing is appreciated even here. I will forget the collectible aspect of comics for now, but the reading value of comicbooks, I believe, will not do anyone any harm.

(Oh jeez, I sound so holier-than-thou up in this last paragraph. )

This is crazy, but I have this weird idea that by the end of next year, Gotham will be reprinting the Sandman titles in India. Fingers crossed.

I also bought the Batman stash I had seen in Sec’bad. At 35 rupees each. And the guys there say that newer stocks are coming in by next week, with titles at 40 rupees. I told them that I would buy out the lot, if they get Batman. Let’s see.

More good things happening in my life. Of course, it’s nothing to do with my everyday, ho-hum interests. I just don’t know where to start. Maybe I will just frame my thoughts properly and write down something when I get the time.