The chaos that is Little India on a Sunday

Where The Heart Is by Billie Letts

What a great story-teller! I loved this unpredictable roller coaster journey of a formidable Oklahoma  teenager who finds herself pregnant, penniless & homeless at 17. A great social commentary on the lower-income life in America-between-the-two-glamorous-coasts; on feminism in the modern world; on home & on family in all unconventional ways.

Its that time of the year in Singapore...

And with that beautiful image of the scattered flowers at Robertson Quay, I'm reminded of something cool I learnt in Japan.

A Japanese iroha is a form of poetry which (as Wikipedia says) is famous because it is a perfect pangram and at the same time an isogram, containing each character of the Japanese syllables exactly once. Here's one translated into English (which, let's face it, is only half as cool; and yet pretty lyrical).

Although its scent still lingers on
the form of a flower has scattered away
For whom will the glory of this world remain unchanged?
Arriving today at the yonder side of the deep mountains of evanescent existence
We shall never allow ourselves to drift away intoxicated,
in the world of shallow dreams.

The fickle cricket fan

An ode to Yuvraj Singh's epic fall from celebrity last night after the 2014 T20 World Cup finals :(

Not so long ago, he was a conqueror
Victorious, carried on their shoulders,
His name chanted with fervour;
Mexican waves rose in his honour.
And in a blip (21 balls really)
Came the sudden fall from that dizzying height,
Allegiances change frequently, he must know that.
Falls must hurt nonetheless. Sorely.
No love is lost though.
For the fickle cricket worshippers,
Sulking over this last heartbreak today,
Are sure to be as capricious tomorrow.

Happy birthday K

5 years old, dude. Growing up, becoming independent, getting more assertive, and more logical. It's making me happy & sad to see you enter the next phase of your life. You're closer to being my best friend, but farther from being my baby.

Not yet an adult but not a fascinated-by-everything baby/toddler either. A phase where you believe you're equal to an adult but the adults around you don't share that belief. Your life is going to be tough for the next few years. A lot of your arguments have already started sounding like "...but you do this, so why can't I?", and a lot of my responses already go like "...because you're still a child and I say so". Now hand over the iPad please.

The Lunch Box

Non-mainstream Indian movies like "The Lunchbox" don't usually make it to Singapore. I'm glad though that this one did as part of a festival. What a great movie! Set in the suburban struggling class of Mumbai (the old-fashioned folks who travel by local trains & BEST buses, work in government offices for 35 years, have conversations with next door neighbors across the windows), this is a love story between odd & improbable lead characters. Arguably an old-fashioned take on life in Mumbai but the movie is better for it. Loved it!