So, after having played these, I installed Tom Clancy’s HAWX and Colin McRae Rally 2004. They’re both pretty good, but just not as immersive as a game should be. I find myself getting quickly bored and switching them off after playing for a while. Not good enough. And it just makes me feel a little odd. One of the things I look forward to most when I come home for the holidays is being able to play videogames on the home PC (the NVidia 7600GT I forced dad to buy a few years ago is probably one of my best investments to date. I’m able to run most modern games with a highly modest 1 GB RAM on Windows XP – albeit, it must be said, on medium level graphics). And not having games to play just makes me feel a little confused.

In a way, it’s a good thing, of course. Gives me more time to do other (important) things. We’ve had a course this past term that has been atrocious in terms of the level of input required. And it’s not yet done either. In these holidays, I’ve got to complete 2 more assignments for this unreasonable (in my opinion) level of requirement. Oh well.

This post was originally published on my blog, Thought Overflow | For poetry and more of my writing, check out my website at Gurdit.com.

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It reaffirms your faith in good music.

PS: Yes, it is heavy (or “noisy”, as some of you may prefer to describe it), but there are way too many God-awesome riffs packed in here. The elaborateness of the guitar work and the passionate, almost careless way the vocals have been thrown in are amazing. It’s like putting all the good ingredients into a pot, and mixing them up to get something awesome.

This post was originally published on my blog, Thought Overflow | For poetry and more of my writing, check out my website at Gurdit.com.

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What does this have to do with my post? I don’t know. The point I was trying to make is that as humans, and pretty much as animals of any kind, our surroundings tend to affect us a lot, and in humans, that manifests in the form of a mood.

It’s been a hot couple of days, but it rained in the evening, the temperature is nice and cool. I’ve turned on only the 8W CFL bulb instead of the tube-light, casting my room with a soft glow rather than brightening it up. There’s Scorpions’ “Wind of Change” playing. And it all just blends so perfectly to create that perfect mood that I want to share with someone, anyone, with people I know and maybe with some that I don’t. This moment here is magical and full of life, full of a special kind of feeling that should be felt rather than described or written about.

I had (have) a few chat windows open, with friends I’ve never met, people across the country and some across the globe. And here in this moment, when I feel connected to the world, I feel connected to you all. I feel like I love you without having ever met any of you. It’s an awesome feeling. Thank you.

Dedicated to: Sophie, goog and A.

This post was originally published on my blog, Thought Overflow | For poetry and more of my writing, check out my website at Gurdit.com.

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My reaction to that article is best summed up by three little words that I once read in this wonderful XKCD comic. Fuck. That. Shit.

Stop being worried about every little thing you do, because if you are, then you will never release yourself from the shackles of their expectations; you will never find your inherent spirituality because you are stifling your spirit. You will never be anything but the husk of others’ expectations, an empty sack, soul-less and lost.

This post was originally published on my blog, Thought Overflow | For poetry and more of my writing, check out my website at Gurdit.com.

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Weather like this, particularly in summer, gets everyone (almost) in India high. Or at least, it does get me high. I cranked up the volume to hear the music (which plays almost continuously now that I have no room-mate to disturb with my taste in music!). But the rain became harder, the thunder more frequent. The wind picked up, banging doors shut, and the thunderclaps sounded like gunshots in the sky.

Obstinately, I turned up the volume even more. But I think God was in a competitive mood today. The rainfall became even denser, lightning flashing every few seconds. The thunder became adamant, a continuous rumble in the near distance, punctuated every so often by an explosive roar.

I gave up. I hit the pause button and started listening to the sounds of Nature’s gentle fury. Lesson learnt. Man is no match for nature or God.

This post was originally published on my blog, Thought Overflow | For poetry and more of my writing, check out my website at Gurdit.com.

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Having said that, I’m going to break tradition today by directing you to an interesting article I read today. I haven’t really been able to analyse it or give a lot of my own thought or opinion to the issue, but there are quite a few points made in the article that made sense to me.

Here’s the link: “The Trouble with Dr. Zakir Naik“ by Sadanand Dhume, Wall Street Journal (Asia Edition).

In case you do not want to read the whole thing, I am quoting below a couple of paragraphs that made me think about things:

In general, India accords extra deference to allegedly holy men of all stripes unlike, say, France, which strives to keep religion out of the public square. Taxpayers subsidize the Haj pilgrimage for pious Muslims and a similar, albeit much less expensive, journey for Hindus to a sacred lake in Tibet. This reflexive deference effectively grants the likes of Dr. Naik—along with all manner of Hindu and Christian charlatans—protection against the kind of robust scrutiny he would face in most other democracies.

Finally, unlike Hindu bigots, such as the World Hindu Council’s Praveen Togadia, whose fiercest critics tend to be fellow Hindus, radical Muslims go largely unchallenged. The vast majority of Indian Muslims remain moderate, but their leaders are often fundamentalists and the community has done a poor job of policing its own ranks. Moreover, most of India’s purportedly secular intelligentsia remains loath to criticize Islam, even in its most radical form, lest this be interpreted as sympathy for Hindu nationalism.

Unless this changes, unless Indians find the ability to criticize a radical Islamic preacher such as Dr. Naik as robustly as they would his Hindu equivalent, the idea of Indian secularism will remain deeply flawed.

Disclaimer: This post is not meant to offend anyone’s religious views. Please note that the views expressed in the article, despite being quoted verbatim on my blog, are the views of the author alone and not necessarily mine. I have only highlighted certain points that I thought deserved to be highlighted.

This post was originally published on my blog, Thought Overflow | For poetry and more of my writing, check out my website at Gurdit.com.

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I think about it now, I’m 23, and by God! I feel like I’m at that age at which I should no longer be a kid.

In the span of a week, I feel like I’ve aged a year, and 23 is that magic number that has defined me as an adult.

Watch out, life…either you’re going to get really boring now or really worth living.

This post was originally published on my blog, Thought Overflow | For poetry and more of my writing, check out my website at Gurdit.com.

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However, there’s an inherent flaw when you convert books (a medium based on imagination) or games (a medium that thrives on interactivity) into movies (a medium that is based entirely on visuals alone). The characters that one can play around with in books and games have an edge over the characters that we see in movies.

Game heroes don’t have to be good-looking or desirable across any social strata. In fact, if you look carefully, Altair, the protagonist of the wildly popular game Assassin’s Creed, appears to have a bit of a pot-belly, and has absolutely terrible posture and gait. Hermione (from Harry Potter, as if you needed to be told that) is far from pretty in the books. However, look how stunning they make her look in the movies (you can do your own Google Image search for Emma Watson). And so, we come to the point. Movies sell based on the stars that appear in them. It’s a sad fact of life that when most people go to watch a movie, they wouldn’t care much about seeing realistic characters, real men with pot-bellies or crooked noses. They want to see a hero that is desirable, perfect in appearance and attractive beyond what is common.

The Prince from The Sands of Time game is a young man, probably barely in his early twenties, immature and brash, passionate with a desire to impress his father, the king. He does not have a thick, gravelly, manly voice. In fact, his voice is fairly light and pleasant to the ear, and he comes across, as he rightly should, as a boy turning into a man, facing the consequences of his actions. I have seen nothing more than a trailer of The Sands of Time movie, but already I can see the differences I dislike. Prince Dastan (who was unnamed in the game series) has a body seemingly chiselled by God’s favourite sculptor, whereas the Prince from the videogames is more of a lean, athletic build. The voice of Dastan (from the movies) is grainier too.

Well, these minor compromises were to be expected, I guess. I’m happy that at least Prince Dastan doesn’t appear to have an annoyingly American accent!

This post was originally published on my blog, Thought Overflow | For poetry and more of my writing, check out my website at Gurdit.com.

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And just FYI, the books I’ve read:

1. 1984 – George Orwell
2. My Life as a Fake – Peter Carey
3. A Prisoner of Birth – Jeffrey Archer

And lined up:

• The Life of Pi – Yann Martel
• Greek Tragedy – A collection of plays (Greek mythology).

I would say that this is one of my major accomplishments from my Summer Internship.

This post was originally published on my blog, Thought Overflow | For poetry and more of my writing, check out my website at Gurdit.com.

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At almost any point in time in the last few years, I’ve had a ‘best friend’, someone special with whom I talked to about my day and everything else that was on my mind, without thinking twice, without worrying about whether what I was saying was right or wrong, politically or otherwise.

I miss that. I miss having someone to just talk to, just like that.

I guess it’s one of the things that just happen as you grow older. It’s so much easier to make friends when you’re a kid, and you have the phone at your disposal. More importantly, you have time at your disposal, unlike now.

Now, life is all about classes and studies and careers, and when it’s not about that, it’s about partying and doing activities to “live life to the fullest”. We have gained maturity, money and experience, but we have lost that time that we would have spent with friends, just talking for hours, uninterrupted.

Isn’t that worth thinking about?

* * *

I apologise for my prolonged absence from the blog. I have been without internet access, and apart from that, majority of my time has been being taken up by my internship work (which is how it should be, shouldn’t it?)

This post was originally published on my blog, Thought Overflow | For poetry and more of my writing, check out my website at Gurdit.com.

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