Yahoo "Dot" ID

Yahoomail has come with a secondary email address feature. You can create a new Yahoo Id (with a dot if you want) and use this in place of the existing one. But both these IDs will have same account. Read more here and create the ID here. Does this has anything to do with the new version?

Done with Half-Life! Almost...

Today on twenty fourth December, Yours Truly, the owner of this blog is twenty four years old! Assuming an average life expectancy, I have already spent almost half of my life on planet earth. The past had been good and future looks promising provided I put some hard work.

But at this very moment, I must admit I really do not know why I have been doing what I have been doing and what I want to do in life. I have started thinking now-a-days what life is all about and why is I alive here.

I do not want to write anything further but would like to quote from a passage I came across titled Being Twenty-Something, It's Really Hard, the source of which I actually do not know. I think it sums up the dilemma to an extent.

They call it the Quarter-Life Crisis. It is when you stop going along with the crowd and start realizing that there are many things about yourself that you didn't know and may not like. You start feeling insecure and wonder where you will be in a year or two, but then get scared because you barely know where you are now.

You look at your job, and it is not even close to what you thought you would be doing. Or you realize that you are going to have to start at the bottom of hierarchy, and that really scares you. You see what others are doing and find yourself judging more than usual because suddenly you realize that you have certain boundaries in your life and are constantly adding things to your list of what is acceptable and what isn't. One minute, you are insecure and then the next, secure.

You laugh and cry with the greatest force of your life. You feel alone and scared and confused. Suddenly, change is the enemy and you try and cling on to the past with dear life, but soon realize that the past is drifting further and further away, and there is nothing to do but stay where you are or move forward. You get your heart broken easily and wonder how someone you loved so much could do such damage to you. Or you lie in bed and wonder why you can't meet anyone decent enough that you want to get to know better. You question your existence, you're beliefs and all that you thought was right. You go through the same emotions and questions over and over, and talk with your friends about the same topics because you cannot seem to make a decision. You worry about loans, money, and the future and making a life for yourself...and while winning the race would be great, right now you'd just like to be a contender!

Kavyageethikal

Thanks a lot to my friend who forwarded this link to me.

This has the preview of songs from the latest album Kavyageethikal, which are poems by famous Malayalam poets sung by G Venugopal. His first album in this genre Kavyaragam had good reviews, but I was not lucky to hear the songs.

I have heard some of these poems (eg. Saphalami Yathra) a hundred times during the recitation competitions in my school, so much so that hearing it again gives so many triggers along the memory lane and makes my mind lighter and nostalgic.

There are no copyright issues involved in downloading these, because it is provided by the distributors Manorama Music itself for promotion.

Once again, a hundred thanks to my friend!

Yahoo Search My Web 2.0

At last I am lucky to find a user friendly book marking tool for web pages.

My Web 2.0 feature of Yahoo Search is a new service from Yahoo, where you can bookmark and tag web pages, as you find them through search. I have been using Yahoo Bookmarks and was not happy with it, copy-pasting the link was a tedious job. It was easy shifting service, because of the import feature through which I could transfer all my links from Yahoo Bookmarks to My Web. And to add to that there is the option to share these links with my community, which is promptly integrated with Yahoo 360. Good Enough!

Google Reader

I was finding it difficult to browse through blogs to check if they have been updated, finally decided to subscribe to Bloglines one week back.

It seems Google Labs' latest offering is a similar feed aggregator named Google Reader.

Bloglines is better as of now, but Google Reader is still in its Beta infancy!

Ennum Nanmakal!

I adore Sathyan Anthikkad, the Film Director.

I adore Sreenivasan, the Script and Dialogue Writer.

But, I adore the combination of the duo more!

I thought I had seen almost all the movies from the duo! But Surya TV telecasted another one yesterday night; Ennum Nanmakal which I had not seen yet and is one of their best.

There must be lots of Mallus who like Sathyan-Sreeni movies, for a various reasons. I tried to find out why I do, and the reasons listed here should be similar with most of those Mallus out there.

I have always been ambitious in life, everybody is. At various stages of my life I had planned my future and all this plans to be affluent had one single aim; to live a in a small beautiful village in Kerala where people do not care much about internet or politics. This dream village had wonderful and innocent people to live with and endless stretches of paddy fields, a small river, lots of coconut and mango trees etc.

The milieu of Sathyan-Sreeni films have been a similar village. I have heard Sathyan speaking passionately about how he would like to spend his leisure time in Anthikkad, his native village and how the place has encouraged him to make films about village life. And more than capturing the natural beauty of the villages, he has been successful in portraying the innocent people of these villages and their lives with at most reality. I think I like these films because while watching them I get the pleasure of living my dream life, at least for three hours.

It is not mandatory that the Sathyan-Sreeni film should have a villain. Even if there are villains, these characters are never mafia dons or suicidal maniacs. They are all normal people, innocent people from villages, who do some bad things in certain situations of life. The story plays all these conventional character mannerisms of heroism and villainous, and the characters just blend into it; and this gives the proximity of the film to real life drama. I specifically liked the characters for I wish and believe that all people are basically good at heart. At the end of the film you love them all, be it villain or hero and wish if you could be there with them in the on-screen village. And there lies the beauty of duo’s films.

My mom's house is in a village near to the borders of Trichur district where it meets Ernakulam district. From there, Ernakulam town is one hour travel where as Trichur is almost three hours. My own house is in Ernakulam, and due to the proximity to the city of Cochin these places are more developed. But the Trichur area being far away from Trichur town has been neglected by the district officials and is less developed. The border line between the districts is a river which you will have to cross by boat. So whenever we crossed the river to travel to my Mom’s house, we used to tease Mom telling this. Because you need to wait by the river side for a minimum of one hour to get a bus, we used to get a lot of time for this teasing. (We would get buses in every five minutes at the Ernakulam side)

In spite of this, I have always liked my Mom’s village better than my own. I have stayed there for two years with my Grand Parents when I was less than five years old. The people there were very friendly and innocent. I specifically remember one old friend of my Grand Father, Kasukka whom I was very scared of and times when I went to festivals like Kodungallur Pooram and Vaakkadappuram with my Grand Father; these experiences have left permanent marks in my mind. The characters in Sathyan-Sreeni films always had the mannerisms of some of the innocent people whom I have seen in there, and the scenes make me nostalgic.

Apart from these, the humor sense of Sreenivasan has greatly contributed to the popularity of all the films. He has never bothered about acting as a dumb character in his own creations. As a script writer, he always handled the subject with maturity and the scenes always had the real life touch to them. From Ennum Nanmakal, I specifically liked the scene in which Sreenivasan proposes to Santhikrishna. That was very original and classy and involved no drama that is usually seen on films in similar situations.

I would just list some of the films here, because each one of them can inspire me to write so much as to create a new blog entry altogether. There best of these films are T.P. Baalagopalan M.A, Sanmanasullavarkku Samaadhaanam, Sreedharante Onaam Thirumurivu, Ponmuttayidunna Thaaraavu, Varavelppu, Mazhavilkkaavady, Thalayanamanthram, Ennum nanmakal, Sandhesham, Golaanthara Vaartha, Veendum chila veettu kaaryangal, Narendran Makan Jayakaanthan Vaka and Manassinakkare. Some of these films are not from the duo, but still they are the best.

Thought for The DAY

Ella Nayinte Monum Oru Divasam Undu!

Yesterday was world Aids day. I have always wondered who decides that so-and-so date can be celebrated as so-and-so day, that today will be X's day and tomorrow will be Y's day. Every day is different and unique for every individual, you celebrate your birthday, birthdays of your relatives and close friends, marriage day etc and mourn the death days of your loved ones. Apart from that, people of a state, nation or religion or locality collectively celebrate special days, which would usually have a well-known history for the day being celebrated as so-and-so day. As a school child, I have come across many Children's Days and Gandhi Jayantis which were holidays. I was taught that these were birth or death dates of some of the famous national leaders. I could assimilate the logic then, for I knew that those people were really great to be honored like that. (As primary school child I was not taught history then, but only knew the name of these leaders).

But as I grew up, I came across so many other days for which I could not find out the reason behind the celebration. As youngster I came to know about Valentine's Day, Lover's Day, Father's Day, Mother's Day etc. I could not understand why one would love one's mother more on a day of the year if everybody else is doing so, I do not think people who were brought up in traditional Indian culture can assimilate the idea. But there are always people who are benefited and would like to promote the event, the media and Card companies being some. Extremist mindset towards these celebrations has lead to violent protests where people celebrating Valentine's Day have been harassed. I find many of these days stupid enough to ignore, but I cannot agree to these violent protests for it is one's wish if he/she would like to celebrate a day or not and no body else has a say in it unless it creates some disruption to their daily life.

I still find Mallus the most orthodox community among Indians. But even in Kerala, media houses like Malayala Manorama and Asianet have been trying to inculcate this habit of celebrating the days. They have been widely trying to market these days particularly among youth, through various varieties of promotions. And this has resulted in the present generation being more interested in this celebration culture, though they may not know why this day is selected for a particular celebration. I also belong to this group.

Apart from these two, there is a third type of day celebration that is becoming popular, which is generally aimed to create awareness among people about anything be it about Aids or environmental hazards. The World Aids Day belongs to this type. Whole world celebrated the World Aids Day, but I doubt how many know why December 1st was selected for the same. I wonder how many would be interested in finding this out (I for one, would not like to). But there was huge celebrations going on everywhere, every channel modified their icons to add that twisted red tag to them and competed in bringing home the best movie based on Aids to home. Music channels competed in telecasting the best music concerts held world wide, to create awareness about Aids prevention. I was watching one of these shows, where all the celebrations were happening in typical Bollywood style with men and women were performing on stage with barely any dress worn. I could not really get how this was going to increase the awareness about Aids, but I found this more as a promotion to the culture which spreads Aids. Nobody can be blamed, because there is no hard and fast rule on how to celebrate Aids day, and no one knows why this day is selected Aids Day!

Meanwhile my own state Kerala is celebrating an anti-ragging day, to create awareness against ragging among student community. Keralites are lucky that they are able to celebrate a day on everything, good or bad, happening world wide, often accompanied by a hartal. You will find Keralites celebrating in protest of capitalist policies of American Government, Central government policy against rebels and naxalites of Nepal etc. By the vigour with which media is promoting the second type of days (e.g.: Valentine's Day and Lover's Day) and the political parties promoting the third type (e.g.: Anti-ragging day), it is not far when people will spent whole 365 days of a year on the day-celebrations rather than doing anything else.

The proverb (the first sentence) will be more true then, Every Dog Has a Day!