This is possibly the only full length video interview with Writer Sujatha Rangarajan that’s available in the public domain. A friend of mine(also a frequent commenter in this blog) sent this video file two years ago, immediately after this interview was broadcasted on Vijay TV. Though watched this interview on Vijay TV, I loved to hold onto this. I watched it numerous times and I can now literally talk the entire text of the interview without watching it. I also ripped the video to make it into a mp3 version to accompany me in the car.

The reason to brag about this is due to the fact that I lost this video file sometime last year. I later found that I uploaded a copy of this video on Google and forgot about it totally. This video was also played during the condolence meeting that was arranged by Uyirrmai team.

It’s clichéd to say I couldn’t believe that Sujatha is no more with us but honestly for last two months I haven’t read much(actually any) of Sujatha’s writings. Whenever I try to pick up his book, its tough to forget my little interactions with him and the sheer magical spell he had on me/millions of us through his writings.

I booked sujathalogy.com, a site about Sujatha and his writings sometime last year and also informed Sujatha about it. But I was too late on taking this site live, before which he passed away. The plan now is to slowly add content to this site and make it as a full-fledged fan site of Writer Sujatha.

A prolific writer that he was is making my my job tougher to list every single book/movie with a short synopsis. I would certainly need help from his fans and friends. Desikan has already accepted to help me with this. By next year, this site will have enough content. As of now, it only has a tribute page. Many thanks to Keerthi for designing the start page. More to come. Stay Tuned.

And before I forget, Happy Birthday Sujatha. You’re still alive in our memories and in your writings. We miss you.

Thanks for keeping us entertained.

[Source - Kumudam / Hindu]

and it seems it was only yesterday Sujatha wrote the super famous essay on aging. Happy Birthday Dude !!

BTW, I picked up vaathiyaar’s picture above from a kumudam column. He was resembling Dravid and hence put them togehter to see if anyone except me felt the same.

Update May 05 -

1) Sujatha on Sujatha 71 and PG Wodehouse.

Yes, the 5th birthday of this blog. Four years completed. What started as an extremely spontaneous reaction to a rediff article[Part 1 & Part 2] by Anita Bora and Nidhi ‘Sunshine’ Rathi, has lasted for four complete years. For the first six months, I was the only reader for this blog. And then it was noticed by a few. After that three years of sheer roller-coaster ride with lots of fun, excitement, learning and sharing.

Unlike previous years, I was determined not to forget Feb 25th and I managed to remember it today. One sunny afternoon, while browsing rediff, I bumped against this article, I, Me,My Blog by Anita. It was a time when I thought writing a short story for Sulekha was the shortest way of becoming a writer. But heck, to be very honest I was never thinking of writing/scribbling anything like this. The article was certainly well written and it introduced me a word, WEBLOG. Thanks to Anita. The ‘Also Read’ section of the article had a link to another column, Instant Journalism which caught my fancy. I went bonkers over that story which said, a guy named Mahesh Shantaram had 60 followers daily. 60 followers daily. Holy Cow !!. Those days 60 unique page hits to a blog meant stupendous success. And Mahesh Shantharam was called a BLOGGER. A Blogger ?. My interest level was peaking.

Without much hesitation, I went over to blogger.com and signed-up. So what should be the author name, I thought. Who cares, I told myself. lazygeek was a nickname I gave myself when I created a rediffmail ID, few days back. A brain wave for that struck me, at the stroke of a midnight session at office when I was racking my brains to come up with a pseudo name for myself. I was neither lazy nor a total geek. So how bout lazygeek, an aspirational pseudo name. So this blog was named scribbles of a lazy geek. I didn’t write a blogpost once I created an ID. I logged out and went ahead to see Mahesh’s blog. Mahesh was the Big B of blogging at that time. As a matter of fact there were only a handful of bloggers at that time. After glancing his blog, I decided that the blog should have stuff that I love to discuss about and those things about my place/movies/people which never found the light on the internet. So I scribbled something as a post. Not one but three posts on the same day. First one at 2:14 pm, second at 2:16 pm and the third at 6:53 pm. I had very little idea about a blog and things needed for being a blogger. And that’s how it all started. Rest of the story is available as four year archives.

As Dave Winer says, “This blog’s readers are collectively smarter than the author”. This ain’t true not only for this blog but for every other blog around. So its the readers who have inspired me to write. Even when I was the only reader it was the reader in me who kept the thing going. Plain six months, no one else to read the bloody blog. I had no clue where to go and whom to ask, on how to pull audience towards a blog. No one blogrolled this blog nor even bothered to drop a comment. However, I didn’t write anything great and that’s one of the reason why no one dropped in. These days, given the wide awareness of blogs, every other blog receives a good readership and enough comments(including spams) to keep the fire going. But just in case, if you have a blog like what was here four years back, you are one your way to strike Hatrick at Indibloggies. Keep Bloggin !!.

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Read the very insightful transcript of Enn Kanavar, a speech by Sellamaal Bharati[not devayani] where she recollects her life with the ‘Poet of the century’. And as usual, favorite lines from this dude’s poetry -

Ooyuthal Seiyom Thalai Saayuthal Seiyom
Unmaigal Soalvom Pala Vanmaigal Seivom

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Wishing the Jeeves of Indian Cinema an incredible birthday.

The great Indian censor board’s ban on ’smoking-on-screen’ doesn’t fit documentaries, I assume. Else, this docu interview, The Inner and Outer World of Shahrukh Khan, would have never even made it to a preview theatre. Shahrukh, the man who is perpetually restless, also perpetually smokes in ever damn shot of the interview. And heck, even me who is completely against banning smoking-on-screen, for once thought Shahrukh’s smoking is infectious not only for him but also for others. He smokes during a hair cut, in-between a shot, while lying flat on his bed and even while walking from the backstage, during a public show. While he talks too much about being an orphan after his father and mom’s sudden demise, I’m only thinking Shahrukh should defintely stop smoking atleast for his family.

Anyway, the two DVD disc contains two different faces of shahrukh. One, the inner world of Shahrukh, the man he is in shooting sets, with his family, as a dad and as a loving husband. The outer world of Shahrukh displays the face he is in movies, to his fans and during a public show. Two manifestations of the same human. He pushes a teenager in a public show to dream about naked women. While, he is teaches his son to pray, ‘ Bismillah…..’ on a diwali day. That’s Sharukh for you.

The inner world of Shahrukh was essentially made during 2004 when he was shooting Main Hoon Naa and moving lips for the hindi version of The Incredibles[Hum Hai Laajawaab]. So as Shahrukh talks to the interviewer inbetween the shots, he makes perfect sense. Not an inch of stardom imagination, he has. He is clear that the world wouldn’t stop if he stops to act. He doesn’t carry the hype about himself along and hence he is able to converse from the heart.

The outer world of Shahrukh DVD, follows him through his concerts in the USA. It shows how people love him and how he wanders from one city to another alongwith a huge crew comprising of Rani Mukherjee, the vivacious Preity Zinda and Saif Ali Khan.

Shahrukh Khan was once my fave actor for his versatality but during the last few years, he walks into any movie and just acts smart. As he turns more of an icon than an actor, I think he becoming another Rajinikanth. That apart, he is still seems to be a common man like you, me and everyone else.

The takeaway for me from this 2 hour interesting documentary is this - “I have completely lost track of time. I don’t know where I am, which city I would move tomorrow and where I sleep. All the hotels and rooms look the same to me and tomorrow morning, I would forget which hotel I stayed. I always feel I am late by 2 or 3 days. Even if I were to die, I think I would be two three days late. For me, there is no timetable. There is no past or future. If something has to happen it will happen then. Until then, the world will wait for me”.

What a curse, the stardom is !!

P.S - What a co-incidence, just read somewhere that today is Shahrukh’s birthday. Happy Birthday Dude !!

P.P.S - I am sure Shahrukh doesn’t read this column but with a pinch of co-incidence again, he is planning to quit smoking. Via KV in the comments.

Google’s official birthday is on Sep 7th of every year. Even last year it was on the same date. Donno why they have this birthday logo on their homepage today. It’s probably on 28th Sep, 1998 that they opened their first office at Menlo Park, California. With the buzz happening everyday around Google, one would assume Googleplex must be the most happening place for geeks. I may not agree with that. With all the buzz that’s happening, these guys continue to strive hard to innovate ways that could tackle the ever-expanding web. And that’s why we have apps springing-up from Google, every friday, like a Jaishankar movie.

A friend had a good question, “These dudes are creating word-class applications and giving it away for free. How the heck will a business model that supports such give-away decisions be firm ?”. We know that the main source of revenue for Google is through Ads other than other smaller sources of income like the corporate licensing of search engine etc. With $3.7 billion at their pockets this year, I am sure a considerable amount of money would eb spent on market research to study the market conditions. And these guys aren’t oblivious to the fact that there are numerous dudes who have lost sleep because of them and they are over-working to throw Google away. Even if what I said could be wrong, these guys may be set to break the rule, that they create world-class apps, give it for free and still prosper in business.

Just today, I read Marissa Mayer’s profile at Business Week. Marrisa Mayer is a product manager at Google and is said to be the brain behind the new innovations at Google. And more than her profile, the column, though not-so-well-written, talks about how fresh ideas are inspired and nutured till the end at Google. Here’s how Google innovates.

Sergey and Larry didn’t know HTML[Via] when they started Google. I am not joking. It’s only because of that Google doesn’t have a cluttered interface. Ignorance is bliss. As you notice the Google page today, the no of indexed pages count is dropped and it looks more cleaner than every before.

With the recent rumor about Google providing free wi-fi across US of A, as Buzz Machine calls it the Googlopoly may be named as United States of Google.

Anyway, if you are tad against what I have to say on Google here, do login to GMAIL and see what a killer app it is. Despite the fact that EMAIL had existed every since Sabeer Bhatia chose to call it Hotmail. And thats just one reason why we should agree Google can see beyond the horizon of internet.