tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-230602392011-11-15T03:57:57.250-08:00Deciphering the patterns of fiction, reality and everything in-betweenAnand Silodiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01776546664010381576noreply@blogger.comBlogger191100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23060239.post-54142430737249956892008-02-20T03:49:00.000-08:002008-02-20T12:16:42.171-08:00

Costumes matter, especially when they're supposed to hide the identity of a superhero. But their absence is as important to a comic book as their presence. In fact, I have seen comic books with no wacky costumes at all, and they count amongst some of my favorites. Indeed, the worst comic books are often no more than a costume parade (or soft porn, or both).What matters much more than the costume

Anand Silodiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01776546664010381576noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23060239.post-9726307751633195512007-06-10T02:44:00.001-07:002007-11-29T04:23:24.675-08:00

Happiness. What is happiness? Is there an objective way of defining it? A lot of gurus talk of 'true' happiness and 'momentary happiness' and eternal happiness and such whatnots. They usually talk of some absolute transcendental happiness that results from attaining some transcendental knowledge. It is a very lucrative proposition, actually: to put in a good deal of effort for only once and then

Anand Silodiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01776546664010381576noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23060239.post-86565228257532667732007-01-20T06:43:00.000-08:002007-01-20T06:52:27.663-08:00

This is a poem I wrote a couple of years ago, and later got it published in the poetry section of www.theonering.com, a Tolkien fansite . It might still be lying somewhere in their archives. When I originally wrote it, I was suffering from the heroic feelings that one is afflicted with so very often in student life. Later, I depersonalized it by posting it in the context of the life of Frodo

Anand Silodiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01776546664010381576noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23060239.post-1168688428494310712007-01-13T01:55:00.000-08:002007-01-16T02:55:16.915-08:00

Magic. What is magic? Demonology? Nature worship? Satanism? Imagination? A tribal dancing around a pole for the rain god to bring the heavens pouring down on his head? Chanting mantras for your physical and spiritual health? An alchemist trying to make the philosopher's stone? Is it natural or supernatural?It would be a rather fascinating quest to explore the notion of magic and the role it has

Anand Silodiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01776546664010381576noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23060239.post-1161839258988988362006-10-25T22:03:00.000-07:002006-10-25T22:07:39.003-07:00

Wired asked some famous authors to write 6 words long stories for them. The results were ... well, read for yourself here.My personal favorites are :Longed for him. Got him. Shit.- Margaret AtwoodWasted day. Wasted life. Dessert, please.- Steven MeretzkyIt cost too much, staying human.- Bruce SterlingThe baby’s blood type? Human, mostly.- Orson Scott CardDon’t marry her. Buy a house.- Stephen R.

Anand Silodiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01776546664010381576noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23060239.post-1159122831974874542006-09-24T11:22:00.001-07:002006-09-24T11:33:51.986-07:00

It's been a really long time since the last time I posted something here. I've been writing a couple of posts about the different media used for telling stories, but there are so many of these, each having its own special qualities, that I never finished that draft. And then I got busy, oh, so very busy.Anyway, I'm planning to be more regular from now on. So, today I'll just post one of my

Anand Silodiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01776546664010381576noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23060239.post-1152464921089879482006-07-09T10:04:00.000-07:002006-07-09T22:21:01.546-07:00

It's superpersons galore this summer! Apart from 'Superman returns' and 'Xmen-3', there's also the debut of the Indian superhero Krrish to be taken into account.In fact, it's Krrish who has inspired this post. The movie was fine, but there was something about it that bothered me for quite a while. I had a nagging thought after coming out of the theatre that this one was no 'superhero flick'.It

Anand Silodiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01776546664010381576noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23060239.post-1151919499687540592006-07-03T02:19:00.000-07:002006-07-03T02:38:19.696-07:00

Finally! I've finished the transliteration of my first blogpost in french. It can be seen at http://conteur-francais.blogspot.com/ . It took longer than I planned, due to some unforseen circumstances. Also, to keep the phrases as pertinent as possible, I simply had to change some phrases at certain places. I must admit it was a bigger headache to try and translate the post than I had assumed; but

Anand Silodiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01776546664010381576noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23060239.post-1150351607221822462006-06-14T22:54:00.000-07:002006-06-14T23:06:47.230-07:00

Neil Gaiman discusses a very interesting and important question in his blog today : what to do when you're crap at 23 ... He discusses his own journey towards becoming the successful writer he is today in a very candid manner. It's not a manual for becoming a good writer,as he himself observes, "... that was how I did it. You'll probably want to do it differently. I don't think any two people

Anand Silodiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01776546664010381576noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23060239.post-1150181710206597782006-06-12T23:47:00.000-07:002006-06-13T06:24:17.070-07:00

Last month, I finished reading The city of joy by Dominique Lapierre. It gave me some insight into the plight of the poor and the homeless of India : an India that I never knew.Oh, I have seen slums and beggars all my life, there has never been any dearth of that; but a couple of years ago I had decided that they're all worthless bums who have become so used to not standing up for themselves and

Anand Silodiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01776546664010381576noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23060239.post-1149750850478515962006-06-07T23:57:00.000-07:002006-06-08T00:15:03.030-07:00

I'm getting little time as it is for blogging these days. But still, I'm going to start, hopefully sooner rather than later, a french version of my blog. It is mainly a self-educational move.While I regularly read french books and occassionally watch french movies; my grammar is going down the drain due to lack of practice in writing. So, that'll be a good way to improve my grammar and writing

Anand Silodiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01776546664010381576noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23060239.post-1148303212700953502006-05-22T06:01:00.000-07:002006-05-22T23:48:36.310-07:00

One of the major factors that distinguish a well-written novel from a badly written novel is characterization. I have come across a number of books which fall flat on their faces inspite of having a promising plot, just because the characters were somehow not 'real enough'. Of course there are also cases when just the opposite thing happens; but this is the kind of bad writing that I have

Anand Silodiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01776546664010381576noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23060239.post-1147934709823827282006-05-17T23:34:00.000-07:002006-05-21T22:24:03.500-07:00

This happened the day before yesterday. I have come to Hyderabad for my summer intern. My guest house is located on Road no.-3 on Banjara hills while the place I'm working at is at Road no.-2. And while it may look like a very easy reference, the so called 'roads' are a bit circuitous with many twists and turns and cul-de-sacs which usually hide one or more buildings. So anyway, I was to start my

Anand Silodiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01776546664010381576noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23060239.post-1145682349643188062006-04-21T21:55:00.000-07:002006-04-21T22:05:49.650-07:00

It's been a while since I wrote my last post. And it'll be yet another 10-20 days before I'm free enough to write my next post. Just doing a bit of book-keeping today. Deleted the post about child sex-tourism I had written earlier.I found that it was not really well-written.Well, actually I'm never completely satisfied with anything I ever write, but that one looked really sloppy and emotional.

Anand Silodiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01776546664010381576noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23060239.post-1143315327603582892006-03-25T10:02:00.000-08:002006-03-25T11:35:29.286-08:00

I have noticed a very interesting phenomenon.I believe it's quite common, though I have the example of only 2 people (myself and another) to cite till now.Whenever I'm studying in earnest for an exam, I usually start getting ideas; about new story plots. Of course, majority of them never get written, and some of them I leave in between. Honest confession : I've finished writing only 1 short

Anand Silodiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01776546664010381576noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23060239.post-1141845128446017012006-03-08T11:07:00.000-08:002006-03-13T20:07:20.340-08:00

Ask any person the above question, and most probably you'll get the answer that 'histoire' has dual meaning in french : history and story. And therefore the semantics of the word are context dependent. The Italian word 'storia' means the same thing. Both these words are derived from 'historia' of the parent language, latin. Ergo, there has been a whole linguistic tradition of signifying some

Anand Silodiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01776546664010381576noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23060239.post-1141567561842834152006-03-05T05:30:00.000-08:002006-03-08T04:25:06.510-08:00

The day before yesterday, I set out to write a post about the written protest against Islamic totalitarianism issed by Rushdie, Tasleema Nasreen and 10 other intellectuals. I intended to compare the Mohammed cartoon to the 'Da Vinci code' by Dan Brown, and to raise the question of exactly how far should we go with the freedom of expression; and is it ever justified to put a check on it. It seems

Anand Silodiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01776546664010381576noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23060239.post-1141070844083057552006-02-27T10:11:00.000-08:002006-02-27T12:07:24.113-08:00

I watched 4 movies in the last 2 days.That's a bit extreme for me, as I usually watch 1 movie in about a month or so.Two of them were totally run of the mill stuff, so I'm not going to talk about them. The other 2 were,however, really good and rather educational. These were 'Rashomon' by Akira Kurosawa and one of hollywood's latest , 'Crash'.I won't try to give away too much about the movies, for

Anand Silodiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01776546664010381576noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23060239.post-1140981038521763452006-02-26T11:01:00.000-08:002006-02-26T15:00:48.410-08:00

I think it's a good idea for my first post to be about the purpose of this blog; especially since I would need something to always keep me on the right track and stop me from rambling off into arbitrary inanities (I'm quite prone to do that).Ok,so first questions first. Conteur ? Well, that's the french word for a storyteller.That's the most relevent name I could coax out of blogspot.All the

Anand Silodiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01776546664010381576noreply@blogger.com0