The Green Room

Tuesday

DEREZZED!

Seeing Daft Punk live at Keyspan park in 2007 was hands down the best concert experience I've ever had and one of the coolest things I've ever witnessed in my life. NO I'M SERIOUS. Ask anyone who has seen them live, the french robot duo understand how to move the masses, both literally and figuratively. Obviously I am stoked and seriously geeking out about the soundtrack that DP has recorded for TRON Legacy, coming soon to theaters (argh!!!I can hardly contain myself.) Here's the latest trailer with their newest track, Derezzed. YEZZZZZ.

Saturday

Snaps from Kerala

My dad and I traveled from Delhi to Kerala for a little change of scenery. I'd never been, and it was so different from North india I hardly believed I was in the same country. The pace is slower, as southern regions of many countries are. It's cleaner, greener, and the people are friendly and warm. See more on my flickr.

Thursday

Thanksgiving

When my brother was in Africa in June traveling for several weeks, he wrote my family some very beautiful emails describing his everyday discoveries and observations. When I say "my family" I am talking about: my mom, dad, my brother Nick, my cousins Sandeep, Jyotin (and now Devika and Gokul since they've moved to the East coast) and Glam and Grandpa. When Nick started writing to us, we sort of collectively started replying to all. We were all in different places in the world and it felt really nice to hear updates from everyone- even the most mundane things. Jyotin wrote to us about the grind of working at a hedge fund in Connecticut, my mom wrote about decorating her house in Montclair, dad sent us pictures from hiking in Germany on a beautiful day after work.

I think we all really enjoyed these updates, and the practice stuck- we have more or less continued the family emails, whether it's a long letter from one of us describing our travels, or a snapshot with no text, or a link to an interesting article. Today my dad sent us all this video with the text "My gift to you this morning". I found the sentiment and the video very thoughtful, and my Grandpa quickly responded with the following statement, "This reminds me that almost all we can do as individuals is live our lives with dignity and ethically as best we understand ethics. Bad things are happening all around us and it often seems like we have no control (and maybe we don't). Anyway, I love you all,and look forward to seeing you all at thanksgiving".

I felt very grateful for these snippets of reflection from my family, and today, I am actively taking a minute, or two, to really feel thanks for them.

Sunday

It looks so simple!

Thursday

The cloud came in

Read more here.One of my favorite stories about traveling in India is from my trip with Sarah and Olivia in 2005. We were in Raniket, a hill-station in the Himalayas, where my Uncle Bunty and Aunt Bindu have a beautiful house made of stone. In the daytime, you look out over the mountains and are instantly awed by the view. Then, the sun comes out and you realize that what you were seeing before were mere foothills, and that the crisp white peaks towering much, much, higher--the ones you thought were clouds in the fog, are the real mountains. One night, when Sarah, Olivia, my cousin Devika and I were getting ready for bed, a white ghost floated into the room through the window. We stared at it in awe, feeling chilled by its presence. After a few moments of stillness and utter disorientation, Devika shouted "it's a cloud!". Of course! It's only a cloud that just floated into our bedroom, how could we have been so silly. Wait a CLOUD JUST FLOATED INTO OUR BEDROOM?!?!?! It was almost as unbelievable as the ghost idea! As the cloud floated across the room out and out through the opposite windows, I had the feeling I had just seen something I might never see again. However, apparently now inside-clouds are on public display, ever since architect Testuo Kondo got a team of scientists to MAKE A CLOUD inside his building!