Threatening moments

I wake up to mom calling ‘maya maya’ in unusual hurry tone, from which I aware that our pet dog is creating some trouble outside and she also calling my brother to come out immediately. I only thought then that our pet might run out of the gate and some stray dogs chasing her or she may run chasing them, which is the situation many a time with her in case of unchained when outside the home. But things were different this time and she was running within our house compound walls chasing a cobra that came into ours. We have no idea where the cobra came from, but the garbage collectors were said to see the snake entering our house from the roadside.

Encountering snakes aren’t new for us, as we have seen snakes in our early apartment area and the people resides here have also seen snakes many a time around. The open ground behind our house with number of trees and a broken workshop, could be nothing that a better hideout for snakes and only a 7 feet wall protects anything enter our compound. The heavy rain and wind lasted few days back, broke our water pipe from the over tank and only a day latter it was fixed by plumber, mom when to check if it was ok this morning, was followed by our pet who found the snake got chased. She was trying to bite the snake tail while pursing around, for which it protests by hissing and few strike attempts before tough climbing the wall  and crawled though a Neem tree to a safe high.

It was exciting and adventure for us this morning and the story still spreads from one another, Maya becomes heroin by her daring act against the snake. Lol!  There’s another terrific story to share with u here, was as never like before, a lightening stroke very close to our house on Wednesday evening results in killing our LED TV. There was heavy thunderstorm in our area that evening, but a lightening came very first without warning had a loud blast and threaten to cease heart beats… which was the situation lasted for half an hour. Our pet also exposed to frustration for the loud cracks and it was like thousand fluorescent lamp blink at a time, and along with it the transformer also celebrated a pre-Diwali producing sparkles.

We once again tuned to our free television set, provided by government, until the Led TV is back after its major transformation of motherboard. It was a situation similar to 2009, when our CRT TV shutdown, we went on watching programs on govt.’s free color television for a year before bought the LED… it was too exactly on the season of Navarathiri. Even we used set top box for cable television, the lightening took the life of our led TV and there were number of TV sets in our area lose to the lightening. We are always cautious and switch off television and unplug wires when there was thunderstorms, but it fall quite unexpectedly and it is our fault indeed.

         Not to forget, the cyclone Phailin is on its way ready to sweep the coastal Andhra Pradesh and Odisha in hours… let all hope and wishes there wasn’t much damage to our neighboring states. The cyclone is expected to be very strong storm, where experts guessing the wind could touch 240 km per hour when it landfall between Odisha and AP… the tides could rise up to 3.5 meters and rush 600 ms in land. 

Payphone or telephone booth

We live in Smartphone era, but there was some period, peoples depend on phone were only on telephone booth and payphones fixed at some particular place or office or junction. For many people in India and abroad these payphones still helps at communication in absence of mobiles or emergency contact. Before telephones arrive at our homes, we used to visit the telephone booth or PCO (public call office) to make phone calls; and in my childhood days I have accompanied many a time my aunt to the red telephone booth or payphone in our area (Adyar) to make calls to her friends. I really enjoyed accompanying her not only because it was fun dropping the coin into the photo box and then dialing the rotary dial, she also get me chocolate or ice-cream while back home. 

Apart telephone booths, sometime we also visit our neighbor’s house (one or two houses that have telephone connection then) to make emergency call and also give their number to our relatives and friends to call in case of anything important. The same thing happens when we bought telephone, some of our neighbors get calls from their relatives and we have go and call them at their home… which only then we realized how difficult we gave to others. Lol

There were also few shops in our area then had telephones, which they also make it as a public phone and collect money for talking. We were also asked to press a red button (an additional device attached to the phone to calculated our talk time) when beeps rise at the end of each minute of the call, like how we drop one rupee coin in the payphone boxes at the end of each minute to continue our talk. 

Those days, I guess, we can’t make STD (subscriber trunk dialing) calls or talk out of our city or town from the telephone booth or payphones but only visiting the specify shops that has STD or ISD facilities. Making an STD also means paying more money, so people don’t make much calls unless important and also put their calls short and sweet thinking of the high rate. These days we can’t find any of those pretty red telephone booths, but only the yellow payphones fix to the walls or poles in public places or in front of the shops and the minimum rate of call to make allover India is Rs.1 per minute. These payphones are provided by public telephone sector ‘BSNL’ and the amount received through these boxes are collected by neither shop owners nor BSNL employees, for which they are paid commission.

Footnote:

The picture above is a coin operated payphone… kept at a shop in a village called Kuppanur, on the foothills of Yercaud, Salem district of Tamil Nadu. The yellow phone was catching my attention for photo and it was the inspiration to write on phones here.

Whisper of love

I blow away her curls
crawling around her ear’s
to whisper my love.

Holding her face in palms
 kissed her forehead
for she embarrassed in red.

Eyes grasped each other
digging deep in desire, that
who quench (love) thirst first.

Lips ready to unfold, to say
something whispered so far
or plainly imprint love. 

PowerShot Sunday - Bright in colors

This is a hotel in Yercaud serves homemade Biriyanis… and while waiting outside, I find the colors painted on the hotel was very bright and catchy! It was slighting drizzling then, which are the drops on the image (as I shot it from inside the car) and the rain that last from previous night had added glorious to the green trees behind looks stunning.

Raja Rani - Entertainment Rule

A newlywed couple, experience indifference in their marred life from the day one and both were only intend to agonize  each other through silent acts of conflict. The flashback reveals their past, parting the film equally half with enough dose of love, comedy and tragedy making it a wholesome entertainment. After longtime, Nayantara had appeared in a Tamil film and along with Arya - both were seen paired in Boss En Bhaskaran - had ruled each other as Raja and Rani (King and Queen) on screen.

Directed by debutant Atlee, had done a decent job by giving not much important to alcohol and such like comedy scenes had warm up with beer! The way he handled the post breakup scenes is appreciable, without much despair. Jai been Nayan’s love affair, doesn’t look fair but rather he appear like a younger brother to her. As a customer care employ, he makes fuss with Nayan and begs for releasing him from being irritated by multiple callers dialing his number - the people who receive customer care calls will enjoy the scene.

The sweetest and cute part of the film for me personally was Nazriya Nazim’s role as Keerthana, makes cheery on the cake! She’s an example how sweet a girl could be… I like to add a line from Gautaman Bhaskaran of Hindustan Times, wrote: “the one person who caught my attention was Nazriya, who as an Arya’s lover, is absolutely gorgeous with a face that is so expressive that we do not need her to speak”. How true! Hehe… I have become a fan of her lately (check the lovely song of her on my sidebar from Tamil film Neram).

Sathiyaraj as father of Nayantara was emotionally well done and called him as darling by her sounds different. The music (by G.V Prakash) was wonderful overall and I esp. like the song Oday Oday, which is very peppy and stylish and the cinematography also involves creativity. Not to forget, Santhanam has been the minister of this kingdom of king and queen, but as a comedian he makes merely laugh for good rather constantly annoying. The indoor sequences look fair in soft light and the frames were all well composed in an artistic manner. Overall a decent modern family entertainment!

Footnote:

As usual watched the film in the Drive-in Theater here and seldom was it crowded on Monday, we could find number of families with kids parked their seats in front of their cars. It was just like a proof how well the film had reached and received. Despite interruption of rain, everyone seems enjoyed the movie.