Got it as a gift from my cousin and was lying idle for quite sometime, until the recent rains marooned me at home and then i decided to devour this book with some vadas and kaapi.

Boy, it was really good, i managed to finish the book in a day and am already planning to check the book stores if there is more of tamil pulp fiction translated into English.

What interested me to take up this book was the back cover…Mad Scientists! Hard-Boiled Detectives! Vengeful Goddesses! Murderous Robots! Scandalous Starlets! Drug-Fueled Love Affairs! ah it can’t be better! a good potpourri

17 Stories by 10 Tamil authors

Here are the ones..

Hurricane Vaij” by Subha
“Idhaya 2020″ by Rajesh Kumar
“Matchstick Number One” by Rajesh Kumar
“The Rainbow” by Rajesh Kumar
“Silicon Hearts” by Rajesh Kumar
“The F.L.R.” by Rajesh Kumar
“Me” by Vidya Subramaniam
“Ripples” by Vidya Subramaniam
“The Rebirth of Jeeva” by Indra Soundar Rajan
“The Rich Woman” by Ramanichandran
“Dim Lights, Blazing Hearts” by Ramanichandran
“Sweetheart, Please Die!” by Pattukkottai Prabakar
“Tokyo Rose” by Tamilvanan
“My Name is Kamala” by Pushpa Thangadorai (excerpt)
“A Murder and a Few Mysteries” by Brajanand V.K.
“Revenge” by Brajanand V.K.
“Glory Be to the Love That Kills!” by Resakee

My favourites were Hurricane Vaij, Matchstick Number one and The Rebirth of Jeeva. I will not go into individual review of the stories, but trust me this book is a good time pass on a rainy day.

The Blaft Anthology of Tamil Pulp Fiction translated by Pritham K. Chakravarthy. Published by Blaft. The paperback costs Rs 395.

go, grab a masala vadai and kaapi, sit back and enjoy the book.

Information source - Blaft and Amazon

Construction in progress with A R Rahman billboard in background - July 2006

Partly operational - View from St Thomas Mount - July 2008

Fully Operational on Deepavali day October 27, 2008

Chennai’ites are awed with this grade separator. Of course with some confusion. With more road signs coming up the facility is a great boon to those who cross Kathipara

Traffic bottleneck in this crucial gateway is a thing of the past.

Now Chennai looks for the Padi Grade Separator to become operational soon.

I took the flyover from Guindy to Ashok Pillar direction, so took one of the arms of the clover and made a full loop. It’s just amazing and took me hardly 2 minutes to cover the crossing which used to take minimum 10 minutes previously during mild traffic.

I hope the authorities concerned put bigger direction display boards and also mark direction at least 200-300 meters before we take the flyover so that the motorists can change the lanes accordingly instead of changing it just near the start of the flyover.

I will try to take some photos of the completed flyover soon.

So what’s your view and experience on the new flyover? Would it serve the purpose of seamless movement of vehicles in one of the important entry/exit to our city?

Seen here are the Photographers in action during the 12th (1st anniversary) Chennai Photowalk.

Been to some Pubs and outdoor restaurants where people used to smoke previously, i don’t see it after the ban.

Honestly, it really feels good in a pub or a restaurant without the smoke hanging over the place. We are able to breath easy.

Is there a ban on smoking Hookah in Public places too?

Hope the next Gandhi Jayanthi changes the scene in picture below …

Chandrachoodan Gopalakrishnan, of the popular blog Selective Amnesia the person who initiated Chennai Photo Walk, along with Mahesh and Seshu Badrinath are conducting The First Chennai Photoworkshop on October 8, 2008 at Chennai.

What is this workshop about ?

Chandrachoodan says

” Get three people who’ve never met in the physical world to jointly lead a workshop. To make things complicated, let the workshop be about photography. Heh! Still too easy. Let the workshop have three very distinct, rather unconnected sessions lead by these very different photographers. Each talking not with prepared notes and rehearsed-over-the-years efficiency but with just an hours very nervous grabbing at reeds preparation.”

If you are interested and would like to know more about this read about The First Chennai Photoworkshop at Selective Amnesia

I thought I would do a post on this subject of painted pumpkins and the like.

d4dpak and ravisha in their comments have explained it better. People use different variants to ward of the evil eye on something new and these fixtures can be seen in shops also. One such fixture commonly used is in the image above. Here the object is made of coconut tied with turmeric coated thread to which a large sized shell is tied up. Hung for display and sale in a shop at Bazaar Street, Mylapore. On closer examination i find an alum also forms part of this assembly.

Painted Pumpkins are tied in front of shops with the same belief. In Mumbai, 2 green chillies and one lemon fruit attached with a thread  will be sold at the traffic signals on Fridays (or is it on Tuesdays). The car owners / drivers buy and fix it in their front bumpers - I wish I had an image of this item.

In Temples, before the deity is taken on a procession, the pumpkin and  coconut  are taken by a person in a rotary motion, thrice in both clockwise and anticlockwise direction and breaks it on the ground. The lemon fruits are kept in front of the wheels and run over when the procession starts.

All these are performed with the belief that such practices will help ward off the evil eye.

This is the Mamallapuram Guest House inaugurated by erstwhile CM of Madras Mr K Kamaraj 51 years ago and was under the ITDC Management subsequently. Taken over later by the GRT group and rechristened as GRT Temple bay.