Why this Kolaveri Di?

Why this Kolaveri Di? That is probably the question a lot of Indians are asking and the answer is simple, its just a song with a catchy tune. Still confused? Well most of India, at least the northern part is....or well was when all of sudden that first line I typed was played, firstly everyone who didn't speak Tamil, had no idea what was happening and there was this talk about Kolaveri which was odd as no one knew what it meant unless of course you had any remote knowledge of Tamil. The other bit was that it started with, "Why this Kolaveri Kolaveri Kolaveri Di?" to which the most obvious response was, "Shouldn't it be what not why?" and as humans our curiosity always gets the better of us and hence we went to our best friend (Google) and asked the question that kept bothering us. Alas, the answer is a 4:08 min video of a song, it was initially leaked and went so viral the producer released a lengthier version with a video,on YouTube. Now, the first time I heard the song, it didn't really click with me as such, that is for the first 45 seconds and then I started bopping my head, the slow bop of the head - a sign of affirmation that the music connects with you. The only thing is that it has words which made you do a double take, there was mention of soup song and flop song, now flop song I could understand - the dude obviously is playing himself down right at the start to keep the expectations low (or well that was my understanding of it) but I could not for the love of those guitar strums figure out what a soup song was or for that matter soup boys? I mean was this a new trend that Maggi and Knorr were using to promote their products? If so why would they have the word flop follow suit? No there had to be a another reason, a totally different meaning and voilà there it was, the soup song referred to "Love Failure Song" (sic) and soup boys were the boys who failed in love as per that most authentic source on the web - Wikipedia. So while I got back to the song, this small exercise confirmed my conclusions that soups weren't as cool as they are touted to be, I found that all of a sudden this had become my next "Apdi Pode" (another Tamil song which had a massive crossover to the northern side) and somehow it kept repeating itself on the playlist. A few days later, what do you know, its trending on Twitter and getting more posts and attention than Sunny Leone (totally stole her thunder) and everyone who's anyone in India started talking about that song that Dhanush wrote and sang. The song has well and truly gone viral and if you have not yet heard it, then you probably don't have any connection to the land of India. I have approximately 20 people sharing this song in the last 24 hours and the count is just going up. The Kolaveri (which means killer rage) is just starting to ramp up and don't expect it to die soon. Like it or Loathe it, the line you will utter is "Why this Kolaveri Kolaveri Kolaveri Di?"!

Social Networking - The future or a fiction?

It's all about social networking advised someone an article I read while trying to pass some time waiting to catch up with some friends (in actual real life) and I wondered what the fuss was about, I mean I have a Facebook account and thought that's what it is all about. I then forgot about it till I was listening to a music pod-cast and the presenters went on talking about how being on different social networking sites is where the future is going. Being the experiment dabbling individual I am, I went ahead and logged back into Google+ (which I had opened when they were beta testing and thought it to be very boring) and was not surprised it was just where I had left it....bare and empty, apparently like me most of my friends had not found anything appealing on it and gone back to where everyone hanged around - Facebook. The thought of the whole future being on the social media however kept me thinking and I wondered how we had drifted from actually meeting up with friends we have in real life to stalking the whole world sitting in our living rooms. Don't get me wrong I am all for Facebook (and anyone who even remotely knows me can vouch for that) inspite of all the privacy issues and what not but as a self-confessed anti-social (I really am one....seriously!) I still like meeting up with people in real life and see their faces while talking to them, shaking hands and the occasional friendly hugs to see if I am still human or if Skynet has taken over us all and we have tricked ourselves into think we are human all while there are steel chords and microchips instilled all over the insides of our bodies. Any how so on a quiet boring day off from work, I did something I had been holding off for years, I joined twitter and it was just to find out what all the fuss was, I mean it had been there for sometime now but the whole tweet thing kept chirping away and I had finally succumbed to it. It has been a couple of weeks since I have signed up and I can see what the whole thing about social media being the future is about, its about bringing in everyone and by everyone I mean everyone - the celebrities, the politicians, the activists, the philosophers all come together and share with you a part of them thus giving you a glimpse of them and probably changing (manipulating) your view of them. The one thing I found out was, that it stands as a medium for you to shout out your thoughts without anyone caring or reading it and hence it becomes an outlet similar to you screaming out loudly in the bare silent sky, all while listening to your local legislator or one of the stars you follow have a public meltdown along with you. So the next time you hear the line, "The future lies in Social Networking", let me assure you there is a pinch of truth in it, it just depends on what you would define "social" and who you would want to interact with.

Wonder Where The Wondering Went....

So the question is...have we stopped to wonder about things. Now for your sake or the sake of humanity I hope you are wondering what I am embarking on. Well, the thing is have we slowly stopped to use the whole concept of wondering and started using the same practise that we do when now in a debate - Use Google instead of talking and thinking about things. I mean when was the last time you wondered, "Geez what would it be like if sharks for some reason started walking the earth and smashing doors in, what kind of a sound would that make?", or lets go a bit simple for your benefit, something like, "Why am I calculating how much money Tim has in a Maths class when my pocket money is cheap as peanuts.....wait...yeah no I can afford peanuts".
There was a time when we questioned the intentions of the poor chicken scrutinising all of its moves even when the little creature had no option but to cross the road in spite of being aware of all the risks of turning into road-kill. Did we ever stop to wonder why the chicken and not the ducks or even cats or dogs, no it was always the chicken who even when made it safely to the other side ended up on a plate for dinner, totally nullifying all its effort of making the stride across.
I wonder if anyone wonders, why there is no mention of food in my entries even though I have call is Life's a pie. Well if you have ever wondered that then you should probably speak out and work on writing words in the comments section.
So before you start wondering what you are doing here reading this, I am going to end it and let you wonder what in the world this was. :)

Question Quest on Queasy Questions

There are times when you realise that things you say might not sound the same as it sounds in your head, actually let me correct that, there are only times when you realise that things that sound brilliant in your head come out as expected. The thing though is we don't really think of things we speak either, like when you see a person at the cinemas or a mall or even at a restaurant and go "Hey!! What are you doing here?"! Now, lets break that question down and this is what it comes down to -
a. You can't afford to be here!
b. If you are here, I wonder if I should be......
b. Damn it...its like I can't avoid you anywhere
c. Kind of follows b, but is more like crap now I have to talk, ask a question, any question....and after the question you go "Duuh!! Had to ask that one of all the ones there were!!
This can be expanded further but you know where this is going. The other one which I have come across, and let's be honest they were trying to be nice, was while visiting the doctor I was asked, how I was doing. Really!! You ask a person who's feeling sick and had to wait 45 minutes in a waiting room, which co-incidentally only stocks women's magazine....don't know why but that one defies all logic as to do the doctors think only women fall sick or they just don't care about the men waiting there, anyways back to the point, you are waiting for 45 odd minutes and get asked how are you doing, the only thing you can do is look around you and go you kidding me? Do you think I like spending time in a room full of people breathing out germs and handing out diseases just to exchange pleasantries with a doctor!
Then there are questions that are just asked to confuse you, like the one and this remains the weirdest question I was asked, ever. I had an interview with an immigration officer who basically had to approve my citizenship application and had asked me the normal questions which were expected, and then just before ending the interview he thrown down a googly, and the question went as such, "Are you aware of any criminal charges brought against you in any country that you are not aware of?", I had to take a minute just to process the question in my head and when I had, my first reaction was to laugh which I suppressed as common courtesy suggested that it was inappropriate and a better sense of judgement (rare occasional moment) prevailed and I as any other person said when put in a spot says - NO! Turns out that was the answer, that person was looking for and after a minute said thanks and started to walk away before realising he worked there and I had to leave.
Anyways, the point of all this, if you really do read what I write and think it makes sense, is that when you ask someone a question, give yourself a 10 second buffer to think over it and if you have the slightest of hesitation over it, do everyone a favour - Don't ask the question!

P.S: This applies while answering a question too, although, allow yourself a bit more time to think especially if answering to a girl about a girl otherwise you dig yourself in a big hole! :)

Alienating the Aliens

So the debate continues, do you believe in Aliens/Extraterrestrial/Martians who quite simply can't get enough of hovering around our skies in their mundanely disc shaped ships we fondly call UFOs. The thing is we are so convinced that anything funny found in the sky is being flown/driven/controlled by Aliens that calling them UFOs makes the whole "Unidentified Flying Objects" totally obsolete if not stupid....yes I used the words Aliens, UFO and stupid in one line, god forbid I ever make it to Comic con and get caught among the alien loving nerds, that would be the end of me if they get the lightsaber working that is.
The thing is though, that however much we may try to prove or disapprove the theory of the whole life in outer space, and them wanting to come here and probe us in places...lets leave it to the probe us shall we, the whole Alien invasion remains one of the Piece De Resistance when we bring on-screen in cinema. There is the whole good vs Evil Alien thing happening there too but our fascination with the green creatures still stays strong either ways. We had the friendly ET who just wanted to go home and more recently had Paul (yes we gave the Alien a name too) trying to do the same thing except this time make it more of a comedy than drama. On the flip-side we had bad-ass human killing Aliens, with the whole Aliens series and Species and then some. We all remember Will Smith blowing up the mother-ship in "Judgement Day" and then having a cigar to celebrate the victory. We even got outer space robots fighting it out on our planet and turning into cars, trucks, tanks, fighter jets and even mobile phones in Transformer all because their ship had crashed on Planet Earth.
All this would not have been an issue but for the humans trying to mix the world of fantasy with the reality, and I am not joking when I mention that there are kids out there today who actually believe that vampire and werewolves are real, so much for the folks having a hard time explaining who Santa is. We have watched so much of these alien flicks that we actually believe that eventually we are going to be invaded by green monsters in flashy space-ships with gadgets that are out of this world (literally :P). So the next time you see something abnormal in the sky, don't worry, unless it starts beaming light near you, you're okay and if its round and white and shines, its probably the moon!