At the Apasara Awards .. and presentations by the President of the Guild for Guzarish ..

A file picture at the Awards -Ramesh Sippy of Sholay, Karan Johar of K3G, KANK, Sanjay Leela of Black ..

the Kensville Golf country, Gujarat .. bad swing, need to train more … but the ball went a good 200 yards !!

Later at the Kensville evening … love and affection … always a joy …

Just a smiling moment …

But the smile disappeared soon after in the morning of my Hotel in London, the Isles off the Sea, when the alarm bells rang and police officers rushed in to evacuate the St James Court Hotel because of an impending emergency.

Having just come out of a shower it was a rushed job to grab whatever one could and leave to anxious commands by the authorities. Women , children , staff all bundling out into an open area behind the Hotel - a School play field. The biting cold of the UK, skimpy dress and unprepared clothing to face the chill - it was a bit treacherous ! Luckily had the sense to grab the mobile, but not the purse. So having waited for a while and seen the entire area surrounded by blaring sirens and fire brigades and cops, decided to venture out behind the premises to hail a car and drive off to some distance as advised. In a few hours, the management called to say all was clear.

There is a building right in front of the Hotel that has just been brought down to rebuild another. The base and the plinth area has been dug out, like a large crater and the workers had put their power station inside it at the bottom of this large pit. Incessant rain in the last few days has caused the area to flood. Fearing water going into the power station and causing an explosion due to short circuiting, they cleared the region, because had there been an explosion the very heavy cranes that had been based within this pit, would have been thrown off balance and crashed onto the Hotel, causing extensive damage. The cranes and the pit and the building is in fact right opposite my very window and now that I have had a closer look, I do feel it would have hit my room first. So am happy I did what was asked of me to do, with a bit of the grumble thrown in !!

Right …

On then to matters bloggish in content and not as one abusingly addressed me on Twitter a short while ago : ‘Just shut up and stop behaving like a reporter giving news ‘ !

What a boon modern communication ! Had just to open up my little palm Black Berry the size of my mobile phone or my iphone, punch in a few alphabets and the whole universe starts pounding you with queries and concern. And as we move on in years and days and hours a gadget that completely destroys all that you thought was the ultimate springs up and astonishes you. Your mobile phone when placed alongside your camera, digital camera as it takes a picture can now simultaneously pick up the picture on the mobile without doing anything. No connect wire to transfer, no nothing. The camera now carries a chip called the ‘i-fi’, as in wi- fi and automatically transfers picture on mobile when you hold it close enough to the body of the camera while taking a picture.

More …

The new refrigerator has a device loaded on the door of the fridge which is digitally connected to your mobile. It will tell you through the mobile when you go to the aps., of the fridge what the fridge contains and what it does not. So if you are driving home from work and want to stop by the grocery store to pick up stuff for the house, dial in to the fridge and it will tell how many eggs, fruits, drinks, colas etc it has stocked so you could buy in whatever is necessary without having to come home and check personally. Of course each time you use something from fridge you go to the panel and through touch shift icons of eggs or colas or whatever to the empty section so the door panel knows what is empty and what is full. Its the same device with washing machines. Mobile tells you when the machine has finished the twirling and washing and drying, so you can then come up to it and get the clothes out.

Hmmmm … !!

Getting naughty ideas of what if such devices were fitted on to humans !! No elaborations needed on that !!

Internet ! You lovely piece of invention ! You have smashed the myth of singular opinion. Of destroying beyond comprehension that information is no longer the domain of ‘we few, we happy few, we band of brothers’ ! Today the opinion of each is as voluble and as intense and as respectful as any other. Today the reliance on one medium has transferred itself to its non reliance. Objectivity, the muse of the mediums that professed transparency, has acquired many muses. Objectivity in the past was in many cases manufactured, devised to exhibit the non bias of those that sat on information. Not any more. That opaque screen has now converted itself into one that need never be opaque. It has lost its position and import to be in such condition. Science and discovery and evolution has become a signatory to poetic justice. Legal justice runs through norms and acts and references and conclusions and judgements. It has always been depicted by the figurine of a human form holding a balance with a black cloth covering their eyes depicting blindness. ‘Andha Kanoon’, blind justice they popularly say. Human evidence, jury judgement has been the final legal word. Now assisted by the carrier of material through the cyber in millions of nano seconds , Google and Wikipedia rule and decide and judge and inform. This then forms the element of decision. Our decisions are run by the cyber.

What I shall ingest on blog and Twitter and Facebook and what ever, shall be recognized as worthy of appearing on the conventional medium. You and I shall be in position to run our own news our own opinions and not have to wait and depend on the more popular form held each morning with a hot cup of tea or coffee. The laptop, the tablet the pad is all that is required … now slowly shifting to an even smaller form in the mobile phone. Where are we going ? And where shall it all end, if at all it ends ? No one knows !

I know however, where I need to go …

Amitabh Bachchan