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Showing posts from November, 2009

Wait'n for X'mas

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Yet another X'mas in the offing and I see a lot of my friends talking about their elaborate preparations for a happy get together of families and friends. I'm not a Christian. I have never read the Bible except in parts. Yet, I've always loved the spirit of this season. I've seen it in many movies and read about it in many books. My first encounter with the spirit of X'mas was is my 8th standard English text book in school which had the most popular story - A Christmas Carol by  Charles Dickens . The author he-self has said about the story thus - "I have endeavoured in this Ghostly little book, to raise the Ghost of an Idea, which shall not put my readers out of humour with themselves, with each other, with the season, or with me. May it haunt their houses pleasantly, and no one wish to lay it. Their faithful Friend and Servant, C.D. (December, 1843)" And truly so, the "Ghost of an Idea" has haunted me ever since then. Though we were

"Good Eyesight is Fundamental"

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This is one of the smartest ads I've ever seen! The base line of the add, when translated into English says, "Good eyesight is fundamental"  Agency - AlmapBBDO/Sao Paulo Client - Art Foco Writer - Cesar Herszkowicz Art Director - Gustavo Victorino Creative Directors - Marcello Serpa & Luiz Sanches 

Swami says...

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"Physical bravery is an animal instinct; moral bravery is a much higher and truer courage." And here we're, trying to justify all our faults by telling others and ourselves, "after all, we're animals too"! Swami Vivekananda

My friend's leaving

It's 3 in the morning and I haven't slept yet. In fact, I was out with my friend till now. I had a particularly difficult day today. This friend of mine who is also a colleague was a great comfort for me in my lonely hours. He is the only person with whom I had a one on one open hearted conversations in the past few months. It was in no time that we became good friends from being mere colleagues. He's also my beer-buddy! Besides, he's the only person of my age as my friend in town. So, his sudden announcement of resignation from job did bother me a lot. I felt very distracted and couldn't put my mind in whatever I was doing. After the office hours, I came back home and sat locked in my room as usual. But by about 10'o clock I decided to pay him a visit at his bachelor's room and I didn't wait another minute. We sat there discussing about a lot of things as usual and by around 12.30 I suggested that we'd go out for a ride and he immediately obliged.

I got my song back...

A second post on the same day! But I can't help but share my excitement in being able to listen to a song long, long forgotten. This is an old Malayalam romantic song rendered K. J. Yesudas in his younger days. What a magnificent voice he had for a boy of his age. He must have been in his late twenties when he sung this song (probably my age!). And I'm not surprised that he shot to fame at such a young age and later on went to be hailed as one of the best voices in the history of Indian music. Fresh and energetic... Ah! How I wish I had a voice like his... Hm... But the song is special not just for the young voice of an iconic singer but also for the soft melodious tune without much nuances and any over play of instruments. And that's how old songs anywhere in the world was. The singer had more prominence and since there was not much of technology to enhance the voice and stuff, the singer always had to give his/her best shot. Besides, there was no space enough for mediocri

Ramblings of a non relegious mind...

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I seem to be having a lot of things to discuss but... I'm still struggling to come out... Let's forget the whining part. I'll tell you one thing that has been bothering me since a long time now - God. Aha! The much debated topic right? But what I want is not to prove whether there truly is a God or not. In fact, that is something very much irrelevant to me. I do not care for the existence of all the Jesus' and Krishnas of the world. To me, someone who feeds me when I'm hungry is God enough. I had this little conversation with a Christian friend of me over this subject and she tried her best to convince me that there is only one true religion (Christianity) and only one God that is Jesus. Her arguments were clever but nothing new. I've heard it too many times from my other Christian friends to realise that they are all nothing original but Church taught. Lessons (venoms, I'd rather say) fed in Sunday schools. For eg. when I said I can see Krishna in Jesu

I'm back...

Hi all, I'm back. Not that I feel completely all right but the worst is over. I do not know what exactly was bothering me. I had been thinking a bit about my future, my career and then the most dreadful thing that is loneliness. All through the last week, I was feeling very gloomy, down and out. One main thing that triggered me was my apprehensions about my career. I work as a copy writer with an advertising agency in my town and I've not got any major break through since I joined this company in June. I'm someone brought up in a school of extensive writing - essays, feature articles, travelogues etc. and to convey things in a couple of sentences (couple of words even!) was something nearly close to impossible to me. I've ever been struggling and fumbling. But I was not too bothered about this as long as I enjoyed my work. But something happened a week ago. I didn't mention it then as I was not too clear about it me-self. My Creative Director happened to see some

I'm so lonely, I'm so blue & I'm lost...

I know I've not been very active in here since a few days. I'm not visiting other blogs and I'm not commenting on posts too. It's 'coz I've not been feeling too good since a few days. I do not know what or why? I'm into a phase of brooding and my mind's always pre occupied. I'm anxious about something. I'm worried. I'm... Ah! I do not know what. Something seems to be troubling me. Something is unsettling me. It's been days since I had a good sleep. Been days since I ate properly. Ah! Gr!!! I can't pretend to be happy any more. I can't pretend to be all right any more. I'm... I'm... Hm... Kindly excuse my absence and my much erratic behaviour. I'm unable to concentrate on just anything let alone blogging. I'm afraid I'm slowly slipping away from all of you. Wish you were all real people in my life - I mean, it freaks me out to see that the only people in my daily life and with whom I can share my heart's s

Yet another theme blog

Hi all! I've started yet another blog solely dedicated to stories from Hindu and other mythologies of the world. These are stories that were told to me by my dad when I was a kid and taking into consideration the vast majority of my followers from outside India, I thought it'd be an interesting thing to tell you all about the stories from the Hindu mythology that you might have never heard of. I do not intend to propagate or popularise Hinduism. Religion is the last thing you should think of when you visit that blog. All I want to do is to share with you such fascinating stories which I grew up listening to. And believe me, some of the stories are so really interesting that I'm sure, at least some of you are going to come back and visit that blog again and again. Also, these are good bed time stories for your kids if you have run short of all those fairy tales and other stories of elves and goblets. And for those who are familiar with the stories from Hindu mythology, I

Ekan to the rescue...

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Today, as I was riding back from my office, I stopped for a light snack at a little snack bar. As I stood there munching on a meat roll and sipping on a bottle of soda, I heard a distant cry - "meeeooow, meeeoow". I immediately looked around the place. It was dark and couldn't see anything. I took the flash light from my pocket and flashed it around and I saw a tiny little kitten wedged between two gunny bags and mewing at me. One look at it and I picked it up and guess what? It was an abandoned kitten. The store keeper who was standing near me asked me whether I'd be interested in giving it a shelter. I took a second look at it. It was thin and sickly yet very cute. It had a ginger grey coat and a long tail too. I immediately remembered one of my colleagues asking me for a kitten. The next thing I do is put it in my bag and bring it home. I lost my colleagues number and so couldn't call her up and ask whether she was still interested in a kitten. And so I took a

"The name is Ekan, Ekanthapadhikan"

Ideally, this should have been the first post in my blog. But I was not aware that my name - Ekanthapadhikan - would raise such curiosity among others. In fact, I never gave a second thought to it when I had to choose a nick name for me-self. Eventually, I noticed that people who could make sense out of my nick name liked it and others (maybe) took it for a real name. And for those who thought it to be my real name, well, it's not. It's a nick name that I've been using for a long time now, though I started using it in public forums only recently. Well, well Ekanthapadhikan  means 'A lonely wanderer' - 'Ekan' means 'lonely' and 'Padhikan' means a person who walks around. This is a word in my mother tongue, Malayalam and it is never used as a real name. It's a qualifying word that explains the state of being of a man. And why did I choose this name? The answer is simple. Throughout my life till date, I've always found me-self to be

Two Awards & 30+ handouts (You could've received one too!)

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Ah! I'm Happy. I'm Happy, Hippy, Hoppy... to announce that I received two awards for my blogs. Let me not go too much into the details. My first award is the Superior Scribbler Award which was handed out to me by both Meenakshi Nair @ Ponderings  and Betty Manousos @ CUT AND DRY . THANKS A LOT FRIENDS!!! And that's why Meenakshi gave me this award - "A  m ulti talented person, whose writing is as good as his singing. Oh, and must say he too is a multiple blogger, like me". But this award comes with some rules and they are: Each Superior Scribbler must in turn pass The Award on to 5 most-deserving Bloggy Friends. Each Superior Scribbler must link to the author & the name of the blog from whom he/she has received The Award. Each Superior Scribbler must display The Award on his/her blog, and link to This Post, which explains The Award. Each Blogger who wins The Superior Scribbler Award must visit this post and add his/her name to the Mr. Linky List. T

My first karoke attempt

Never before have I tried singing with a karoke and simply because I didn't know how to do it. Whenever I listen to someone singing to a karoke, I see that it's as good as the original track. I never bothered to find out how they do it. I mean, the mixing of sound and all is so perfect. I always thought there were a lot of machines involved and hence always kept me-self away from it. But today, suddenly and just like that I felt like giving it a try. But I do not have a proper recording device or anything with me. I only had my trusted Sony Ericsson W550i mobile phone, which is what I use to maintain my song blog ( Ekan learns to sing... ). I contemplated on the idea and finall came up with "wtf, I'll try with what I have and that's it. So I downloaded a karoke track of one of my favourite songs ( Minnalae nee vandhadenadi... , which is a Tamil song from the movie 'May Madham') and just sang along with and recorded it using my mobile phone. It came out t

Tasha & Me-self!

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Couldn't squeeze in much time to write more and hence posting some pics. of my dear girl, Tasha and a scary self portrait of me-self! See, I give her a good pillow to sleep on and she absolutely loves it. She got a bit scared at the clicking noise made by my camera! And that's the scary self portrait that I was telling you about...