Selective Amnesia There was a point to this. But I forgot.

On things.

South Madras, once more. The Gopalakrishnan family has been disrupted, uprooted and moved. From Kelly’s to Mandavelli/Mylapore to KK Nagar to Velachery/Madipakkam to Virugambakkam/Saligramam/Vadapalani to Kelly’s to Saidapet. That’s about 15 pincodes within a city of about 200 sq. km. I am proud of my family.

Some really lovely old houses, art deco and earlier constructions, litter the tiny lanes of an Agraharam in this town of Sayyed/Said Khan. 3 streets from my new flat is a pretty old temple for the rest of the world that’s still an upstart young one for Tamil Nadu. Karneeswarar is about 400 years old; 40 odd years the city’s elder brother. From the gopuram of which, you could, if you wanted to, see the bridge Cojah Petrus Uscano built to help seekers of a legend about 1600 years old. Now, of course, Marmalong is long gone, Maraimalai connects Little Mount to Mount Road.

On to other things, then.

If you haven’t caught on yet, this blog has become an exercise in lethargy, procrastination and vanity. As it always has been. It also has become less of a blog and more of a place to announce the next Chennai PhotoWalk. Which’s cool, yes. But what this blog also is, is one of the few that’s survived almost entirely intact through all the heaving changes in the world of personal publishing since 2001.Which is cooler, I think.

Before I go on to the next thing, however, an apology. A big, heartfelt, sincere apology to all watchers of Tamil Cinema. You must have seen ‘Ko’, you must have seen ‘Mayakkam Enna’. Maybe not you individually, but some of you. You’d also have seen instances of ads on TV and elsewhere featuring Yuppies and Lalas pursuing a big of Hippie-ness in the form of photography.

I’d like to apologise for that. You see, barring Kamal Haasan (hello boss) in Tic Tic Tic, I can’t recall a single movie in which the protagonist was a photographer. But since I began the Chennai PhotoWalk (4 years old, people. We celebrate by ordering t-shirts.) we’ve had 2-3 films with photographers as heroes, and ads featuring wildlife photogs, portrait photogs, wedding photos, Deepika Padukone as Photog and more.

I know the world is a random stochastic nothing-makes-sense place. However, if you must blame some agency for this surfeit of films about photographers, blame me.

On to further things.

If you’ve been following this little blog for a while, or at least through 2011 the calendar year, you’ll know I’ve spent an extraordinary amount of time with doctors and hospitals. Add one to that. I got beaten up, recently. A cut on the upper lip, some assorted bruises (not to my ego) needed fairly urgent medical attention. 3 sutures, 2 doctors and 3 nurses conspired to keep me in pain over the weekend. I now look and wheeze like Michaeol Corleone as rendered by Al Pacino.