Read an extremely interesting bleacherreport today as to why Pele will always

stand above Messi and Cristiano and the whole WORLD. Hard to imagine that all these years later there has never been anyone who has come close to attaining the kind of glory the “Black Pearl” did. My day would beg to differ  on this point, as far as he is concerned is has got to be Maradona all the way. My dad maintains that when the Hand-of-God goal was struck I was shrieking at the top of my voice and celebrating with him (this being said the year was 1986 ,I was just a toddler and I would have happily joined in any kind of celebration with as much enthusiasm a 3 year old could muster)

Ok, back to the topic of the bleacher report, it brought back a long buried memory of a chapter in one of my school text books that described Pele’s debut match and how he shot to international stardom in a match where the Brazilian squad scored a goal against Russia(which at the time was one of the best footballing nations in the world) and that too when Yashin was at the nets. There was an entire section in the chapter dedicated to the brilliant Russian goalie called Yashin who till this day happens to maintain the reputation of being the best goalies the football field has ever seen.

It was a lovely feeling to open a fresh browser and search for Lev Yashin and see pictures of a man about whom I had studied a long time ago(for grades of course) . Guess it shows how much mystery the world has lost to the advent of technology. I guess it isn’t always wonderful to be instantly gratified.

The best introduction to a movie ever!

My version of the the Zulu part was “Maaaa sesenyaaaa mamasissii babaaaa” until Googleruined it  corrected it for me years later. My heart still goes ‘aww’ everytime I see Simba sneeze when Rafiki pours sand on his forehead . Even though this movie is about Simba, Mufaasa will always remain “The Lion King” for me, he was way cooler than Simba ever was and I guess once you’ve heard him , you can never look at the stars as just regular balls of gas burning billions of miles away. I guess my childhood was as awesome as it was due to movies like these.

Oh and what a cool character Rafiki was – he was as crazy as he was cool. I remember watching a clip of the show on Broadway performing “the circle of life” on the Oprah show a long time ago and burst into tears right there in the living room.

A sight from my past confronted me last evening………..

and I immediately wanted to scream “BANTAAA??”(in Kannada) … (according to my Hindi speaking friends it was AAYA KYAA?? in their respective households) …. .. brought this up during lunch at work today and everyone had their own stories to tell about the “ANTENNA”. The crowning accessory of every TV owning home in the 80’s and 90’s.

The Antenna that brought back memories

Each story was more hilarious than the previous one. Everyone seems to remember manually turning it 1 millimetre at a time so that we could get a CLEAR SIGNAL. So the routine was as follows …. switch the TV on…. if the signal is not clear run to the terrace …. climb the ledge and hang on for dear life … brave the raw earthly elements namely the sun, the wind, the thunder , the lightning (I may be completely exaggerating  here  …… )  move the antenna one mm to the right …. scream … BANTAAA?? … if the answer was in the negative … you move it another millimetre…. if the signal quality worsens then you start turning it mm by mm in the opposite direction ….. then when you hear a positive response to you AAYA KYAA’s .. you run downstairs and watch Chitrahaar…

Imagine as  you plonk down in front of the TV to watch Ramanand Sagar’s Ramayan …. a naughty gust of wind would change the painstakingly-checked-rechecked-triplechecked-antenna-co-ordinates and all hell would break loose …………. The drama that unfolded after this would be equally worthy of being directed by the dear Mr.Ramanand Sagar himself………. remember when the two arrows would take up an entire serial slot of time to collide with each other in mid-air and nullify each others effects….. and both parties who let the arrows loose would dramatically say “Chee” and slap their thighs 

I went to the terrace and consciously scanned the rooftops in my neighbourhood. All that I saw were a range of Dish TVs , Tata Sky antennas…………………… Finally found one house at a distance that still housed the old antenna but in a poor condition.

On that note …… BANTAAAA???? 

HANGMAN – My Blackberry today suggested I add this app ……

……. the minute I looked at it I could help but be taken aback and let myself go back in time to be swept through the corridors of my school. When teachers had their weekly meetings or when we had a free hour or just when we were too bugged to be bothered to listen to what the teachers were going on about ….. HANGMAN was the game to be played.

I cannot remember the last time I played this game…. must have been in my 5^thor 6^th grade….. but when I played today I felt the same sense of panic that if I click one more alphabet wrong …………….

The younger sibling introduced me to this interesting app called SHAZAM ......

......... which identifies music that is being played instantaneously. It immediately got me thinking about the days when a part of a tune I remembered from a song I heard somewhere, would plague me for days and I would keep singing it, lest I forget the song.

I immediately ran downstairs to the room where we have our old cassette player and picked up the many tapes that are still sitting collecting dust on the shelf. Holding those tapes , I almost felt like I was transported back to a time when we used to buy blank tape’s and borrow the original cassette from some friend so that we could collect songs. I had one of those tape recorders which are a double player. Which means I could put the original cassette in one player and the blank cassette in the adjoining player and hit record. Made me quite popular with my school girls (I was quite in demand for my recording services)

The exercise that was undertaken before any singing competition at school was of mammoth proportions. It required an endless regimen of rewinding-and-playing-the-song-until-you-get-the-lyrics-right. If it didn’t require too much rewinding, we would use a pencil strategically inserted into the tape to rewind just a ye bit. As I was rummaging through the shelf I remembered something...... a hazy memory which suddenly became a very vivid memory. I ran back upstairs to rummage through my cupboard to find an old diary in which I have painstakingly penned down lyrics of almost 50 songs ranging from Maine Pyar kiya to DDLJ. I don’t think I did it right, because some of the lyrics I have written make absolutely no sense whatsoever. ;)

My brother has just found our treasure trove of GnR song tapes  and sitting in my room listening to O Sanam (by Lucky Ali) on a tape recorded during my high school days............... :D

Just the other day I found an old fountain pen that I used during my school days …..

…. broken nib and everything else intact.

It immediately transported me back to my 4th grade in school when we were all scrawny 10 year old’s on the threshold of graduating to another level in our school life ——— THE PEN USERS. Close to the end of the first term in the 4th grade, it was announced that based on how neatly we maintain our notebooks (in pencils) few students will be allowed to write in their notebooks with FOUNTAIN PENS….

Oh the madness after that was unbelievable. Everyone was writing at turtle-speeds because they wanted to present their best handwritings and be able to graduate to the pen club. I was hoping I would be the first one in my class , but my arch nemesis (at the time) who-used-to-use-her- pinky-finger to space her words was the first person to be awarded the high honour. ( as I’m writing this I can still remember how much importance this event held back when we were 10 years old) ….

Anyway I was the second person and I immediately announced to my parents that I need a HERO PEN (which was promptly shot down… I finally got one of those when I was in 9th grade) , I was provided with a maroon coloured pen which wrote very well and a pot of ink. Within a month the entire class was writing with fountain pens. It was nice to see the different pens people brought to school. There were classmates of mine who had hero pens (and I was stewing away with jealousy)

On that thought , I’m off to fill ink into my Mont Blanc