India Blogs
Last updated on December 17, 2011 16:19:21. ET
On movie technique, criticism and Kael
One wants very much to talk about what makes Tolstoy uniquely Tolstoy and Renoir uniquely Renoir -- and that's their technique, their vision -- not just their stories or their themes. You can't "distinguish form and content for the purposes of analysis," because (as we all know) the form is the content, and what the artist has done is how the artist did it. You can't perceive the whole without taking notice of the specifics, any more than you can absorb a novel without reading the words or see a movie without looking at the images.Almost dislocated my neck while
Jabberwock | December 12, 2:00 pm ET
Literary carnival notes 2: book-to-film adaptations
[Did a shorter version of this for my Sunday Guardian column] At the Times of India Literary Carnival, I participated in a panel about books being adapted into films. Adeptly moderated though the discussion was – by author, screenwriter and all-round funny man Anuvab Pal – there’s no way an hour-long session can cover all bases on this wide-ranging topic. Still, it was a good excuse to put together some of my scattered thoughts about adaptation. Here goes: One of my peeves as a film buff is that too many reviews these days discuss movies almost exclusively in terms of
Jabberwock | December 10, 2:00 pm ET
Notes from the ToI fest
While I was at the Times of India Literary Carnival, I got an SMS from a friend wondering if there was anything genuinely wrong with the fest, given the criticism she'd been reading on social media, or if it was mainly kneejerk ToI-bashing. I had hardly been online in the previous two days and didn’t know exactly what she was referring to, but this was my reply: “Nothing particularly wrong at all. Very professionally organised, sessions proceeding quite smoothly. There are of course irrelevant/banal things being said every now and again, but that happens in any such lit-fest.” I’ve done my
Jabberwock | December 5, 2:00 pm ET
Time out of joint: Stephen King revisits a "foreign country"
[Did a shorter version of this for the Sunday Guardian] Entirely without planning, Stephen King became a major theme in my reading last week. It began with his fine short story “The Dune”, included in the Granta Horror special (here's a post about that book). Then, despite my reluctance these days to commit to a really bulky book, I became hooked to King’s new 740-page novel 11.22.63, which is a time-travel story sprinkled with social observation about the late 1950s and early 60s – a key time (it can be said with the benefit of hindsight) in America’s social, cultural and
Jabberwock | December 4, 2:00 pm ET
Google Enters Music Market
Google Inc., world’s largest Internet search company has officially launched its music service to users wherein music lovers can now listen to songs and/or buy them through Google’s Android market.
Geekwerks | November 18, 2:21 am ET
Apple Launches iTunes Match
Apple on Monday November 14, 2011 has launched iTunes Match. The launch was delayed by over two weeks later than the date originally announced.
Geekwerks | November 16, 1:20 am ET
Motorola Droid RAZR Hits Verizon Stores
Motorola Droid RAZR has hit the Verizon stores on November 09, 2011. But that’s no news and we know it aint juicy.
Geekwerks | November 12, 4:23 am ET
ASIMO The Humanoid Robot Is Now Smarter
ASIMO has undergone huge update on its intelligence technologies, and it now has improved AI skills, and can work without human control for long time.
Geekwerks | November 11, 11:27 am ET
Google Considering Paid Cable Television Network
AT&T and Comcast, the present tycoons in the cable world might be having sleepless nights with the latest news doing the rounds, as Google might soon take over the cable television industry.
Geekwerks | November 7, 4:55 pm ET
Random Updates – Winter Travels
A busy October is just behind me, now it is time to look forward to a winter full of exciting journeys. November is a month for me to attach wheels to my shoes and keep going from place to place. After a week of lazy holiday in Manali in October and exploring the beautiful mountainsides [...]
India Travel Blog | November 4, 7:27 am ET
Jaipur – The Pink City
* This article was earlier published in The Business Entrepreneur magazine. * Join me on a photography-centric tour to Rajasthan in the last week of November As my plane hovered over Jaipur City waiting for signal to land, I looked down from the tiny window past the obtrusive wing for my first sight of the [...]
India Travel Blog | November 1, 11:18 pm ET
Photography Tours in November
As the winter is about the begin, weather is at its best across India and migratory birds start arriving in the plains, we have a whole lot of expert-led photography tours coming up. We have something happening almost every week this month. Check out some of the destinations we are going to in November and [...]
India Travel Blog | November 1, 1:58 am ET
November 2011 Desktop Calendar Wallpaper
This month’s desktop calendar is an image of Vijaya Vithala Temple in Hampi. Download this for your desktop in resolutions 1336×768, 1280×800 or 1024×768
India Travel Blog | November 1, 1:07 am ET
I’m All In: Confessions of a Poker Obsessive
This personal essay by me appears in the winter edition of Forbes Life India. I feel the ground sway under my feet as I get up. I gather my chips and walk unsteadily to the cashier’s cage. I’ve been playing poker for 40 hours now, and I’m up by the amount I used to earn in a month in my last job. But it’s been a swingy session, and I was down by a lot at one point till I fought back, and I was up by more than I am now till I lost a couple of hands. I’ve faced
The India Uncut Blog | October 27, 2:29 pm ET
Varanasi – Braced in Belief
+ This article was earlier published in The LA Journal. + Join me on the photography tour to Varanasi from December 24 to 28. Standing in a corner of Prayag Ghat, I watched people come and go in thousands every hour in the evening of Maha Shivaratri. Pilgrims arrived at the ghats in larger than [...]
India Travel Blog | October 5, 2:47 pm ET
China Skepticism
(I wrote this after my visit to Shanghai and Beijing in May ’10, as part of my MBA program at Duke. I originally circulated it around with friends and other readers with the title “China is at least 2 generations behind the rest”, but that was just needlessly provocative, and incorrect in many respects. Nevertheless, [...]
The Indian Economy Blog | October 3, 12:50 am ET
‘No Touching, Only Seeing, Okay?’
I’m amazed that India hasn’t yet woken up to the fact that Himesh Reshammiya is the new Govinda. I mean, check out the awesome video below of ‘Umrao Jaan’, a song from his forthcoming film Damadamm. It’s WTF, yes, but it is brilliant in its WTFness, which is quite deliberate and over-the-top, much as Govinda was at his best. There are just so many kickass moments in this. I especially love the end… (Link via Mudra Mehta.) The India Uncut Blog © 2010 Amit Varma. All rights reserved. Follow me on Twitter.
The India Uncut Blog | September 27, 5:26 am ET
Vishwa Bandhu Gupta and Cloud Computing
If you thought Ponytail’s speech the other day was funny, wait till you see this: Vishwa Bandhu Gupta, former IT officer, explaining, among other things, why cloud computing is a problem: I love how clueless the interviewer looks. On second viewing, his reactions are the funniest part of the video. Insanely good. (Link via Arun Simha.) The India Uncut Blog © 2010 Amit Varma. All rights reserved. Follow me on Twitter.
The India Uncut Blog | August 28, 5:55 pm ET
The Sadness of Dogs
The New York Times reports: A video of a dog apparently mourning the death of his owner at a funeral has gone viral, prompting an outpouring from viewers around the world. The footage was captured by a woman whose cousin Jon Tumilson, a member of a Navy Seal team, was killed in Afghanistan when his Chinook helicopter was hit by enemy fire on Aug. 6. A funeral service was held for Mr. Tumilson in Rockford, Iowa, last week and attended by 1,500 people. But also in attendance was Mr. Tumilson’s loyal Labrador retriever, Hawkeye. The dog wandered over to his owner’s flag-draped casket
The India Uncut Blog | August 26, 4:31 pm ET
‘That is Not a Lump, Mr Beck, It is a Blessing’
Huffington Post reports: Glenn Beck called Hurricane Irene a “blessing” on his Friday radio show, saying it would teach people to be prepared for disasters. By that logic, it would be a blessing if Beck gets cancer—it will teach him to be prepared for cancer. Of course, I wish cancer on no one. But that’s where Beck’s logic leads us. What a clown. (Link via Arzan Sam Wadia.) The India Uncut Blog © 2010 Amit Varma. All rights reserved. Follow me on Twitter.
The India Uncut Blog | August 26, 3:43 pm ET
Like snow, falling
"poetry lights up life from time to time like snow, falling, and you have achieved a great deal already if you have kept eyes to see it."- Philippe Jaccottet, from Seedtime(translated from the French by Andre Lefevere)
2x3x7 | July 30, 3:00 pm ET
In Short
"It seems to me that when you write a short story, you have to cut off both the beginning and the end. We writers do most of our lying in those spaces. You must write shorter, to make it as short as possible.”- Anton Chekhov(from: the NYRB blog)
2x3x7 | July 5, 3:00 pm ET
Shades of Eternal Night
R.I.P. Cy Twombly[Image taken from here]
2x3x7 | July 5, 3:00 pm ET
All in the mind
Reading Marcia Angell's piece in the latest NYRB on the treatment of mental illness (an interesting read btw), I found myself wondering if it really makes sense to speak of placebo effects in the context of mental disease. If you believe you're less depressed, aren't you, in fact, less depressed? And if a course of treatment can make you believe you're less depressed, then doesn't that make it a valid cure for your condition, even if it has no chemical or physiological benefits whatsoever?In other words, what if the most effective treatment for depression were to create the illusion of
2x3x7 | June 11, 3:00 pm ET
Melt
All winter the snow made the roads impassableI wrote page after page thinking of you.Now the water flows free down the mountainAnd I must decide if these words are worth sending.- Hu Ming-Xiang
2x3x7 | June 4, 3:00 pm ET
