Mimicri memories from the days of yore

Yesterday I found something which made me nostalgic about IIT days. I was flipping through "My Yahoo" to find if there is a way to read mails using any application. I saw a link saying 'Your Briefcase has moved". I couldn't figure out what is that and clicked on it before deleting it. It took to a very old Yahoo style page (non-ajax era, plain HTML and simple Javascript). There I saw a folder 'mimicri'. It was a feeling of WOW. Same feelings which you get when you accidently find something which you thought was lost for ever. I remembered the days when I went to US in 2000. I had recorded some of dialogues using laptop and mic (which was a great thing for me that time). Then I had uploaded it to yahoo and shared the links with Friends. Here is it for you to enjoy. 

These are some dialogues which are from different moves/mimicri acts. Enjoy. Let me know if you have any comments/suggestions. It has been long since I have tried any of these things. I'll try some again.

Note: Looks like there some problem in running the audio on IE. Please try Firefox, it should work.

Amitabh and Pran from movie Kaalia.

Devanand from movie Johny Mera Naam.

Pran From movie Johny Mera Naam.

Funny song by Omprakash in mimicri act 'Picnic'

Omprakash and Ashosk Kumar from act 'Picnic'

Ajeet and Mona darling (extra stupidity added by me)

Mythical mythology

Mythology is one of my favourite subjects which I enjoy reading and discussing. Indian culture is filled with zillions of mythological stories. I was (and still am) confused about what exactly is qualifies as mythology. It is not History else it will be called History (intelligent conclusion.. right?), it is not fiction as people believe in it, it is not science. I mean, it definitely is different than other categories of facts. I remember having a discussion few years back with one of my seniors. We were discussing something about Ramayan and I said that I feel that all the mythological stories about Ramayan are true. To which he said, it can not be because it is mythology. That raised the question what is mythology. He said people believe in it but there is no proof of it hence it is mythology. Well, there was a point. I have never given a thought to 'what defines mythology?'.

So what provoked this writing? Today I was reading a book by Mark Tully, 'India's Unending Journey - Finding balance in a time of change'. It is an interesting read as is with other writings of Mark Tully. Another reason why I enjoy Mark Tully's works is his pro-Indian views. Which I admire a lot. Coming back to point. In this book author is discussing about the contrasts that you see in India, Indian Culture and religions. At one point he quotes Bede Griffiths' words from "The Marriage of East and West"  ..

"The East must learn the use of reason, in science, in politics, in industry and I would say above all in moral life..... But the west has to recover its lost imagination..."

Which is very interesting thought. He the goes on to say that Bede Griffiths regards myth as "symbolic expression of reality in terms of human imagination". That is a beautifully chosen definition. Myth is a 'Reality' which is presented symbolically using imagination. So while exact words may not be true but the underlying concept or source behind a mythology is true. While "the 'Ram Setu' was built by Nal-Neel using floating stones" might be imaginative but Setu itself is true. So with that definition, can it be said that mythology is history written in a imaginative way?

Other views may differ, but I really liked this way of looking at mythology. May be it is just my bias towards mythology as I always believed that mythology is true.

Happy New Year 2009 to All

Festive seasons are times where a lot of mails, SMS (ok... ok.., it is TEXT .. thats what it is called in UK), cards, posts are exchanged. I'm sure email traffic increases thousand folds during this time. Today I received a mail wishing me Happy New Year 2009. I couldn't recognise the sender and generally in such cases I simply delete the mail assuming a junk/spam mail. But I do have a look at the sender and at times open unrecognised mails also where sender seems to be a genuine sender. Many times it has happened that mail came to me because sender mistyped the address if the mail seems to be important one, I respond informing the mistake. So this time also, sender seemed to be a genuine person. So I opened the mail and it was a big surprise. I have never seen such a mail in my life before. With all the respect to the sender, but there were hundreds of people in the list of recepient. I had to use a screen capture program FastStone which can scroll thru the screen and take screenshot. I'm attaching the screenshot. Judge yourself. (click on the image to see the bigger version)

Just to make sure that image is not confusing, this image shows only From, Subject and To of an email and not the full email. Have you sent one like that?