Once upon a time, when my daughter had just mastered the “inside leg outside leg” style of walking, I took her out to the lawn. It was a beautiful New England Sunday afternoon. I threw in a soccer ball and proceeded to instruct her in the fine art of soccer.

Not that I myself was a passable soccer player (hey, since when did that stop me? ), but it was a thrill to pass on whatever little I knew about kicking the ball. I explained to her the basic mechanics of the game and before I knew it, I was deep into explaining the “zen of soccer”, babbling on about “drive”, “ambition” and even a healthy dose of life lessons about what she had in store for her.

After five minutes, she gave me a bemused smile and ran to the middle of the lawn and started doing cartwheels (well, the toddler version of it which is sort of a cross between a full cartwheel and a monkey roll). The first one was unintentional (She stumbled as she ran and tumbled head over heels in the grass). But the next three dozen or so were definitely not. I stood there feeling vexed that my fatherly wisdom had been cast aside so casually and her attention was now focused on such a cavalier pursuit. I watcher her roll over and over again in the grass, giggles turning into full belly guffaws with each passing revolution.

After a while, I gave up and joined her. We rolled around in the lawn for quite some time and my neighbors looked at me like I had lost my mind.

It was surprisingly fun.

Sometimes in life, we tend to overthink and overact.

Maybe the answer is simple.

Screw the soccer lesson, let’s all just do cartwheels.

Sometimes one poses and postures, trying to create an appearance that satisfies one’s ego and the basic psychological need to appear “Cool and hip”. That path usually leads to… well, ultimately stuff doesn’t work out as you plan.

Sometimes lightning strikes. A moment of spontaneity occurs that captures all that you embody as a person.

This photo that my wife took today at the beach is one such moment. I hope my daughter grows up and looks at this one day and remembers our time together when she was little.

Okay, first of all personal updates:

On Feb 6th my daughter Adya was born and last couple weeks have been spent in adapting to fatherhood and perfecting premeptive diaper change techniques.

On the work front things have been slow. Apart from my regular monthlies DEVI and INDIA AUTHENTIC, there are three one-shots that I’m working on with Virgin Comics all coming out first half this year. As of now one of them has been solicited for an April 2008 release and for now that’s the only one I can talk about

I am working with legendary Indian comic book artist Anupam Sinha, creator of Super Commando Dhruva for a project titled JIMMY ZHINGCHAK : AGENT OF D.I.S.C.O.

Below are the details for the book

JIMMY ZHINGCHAK : AGENT OF D.I.S.C.O.

Grab your white polyester bell-bottom jumpsuit, slap on your platform shoes and switch on the disco ball! Virgin Comics is going to take you on a trip in the wayback machine into the la la land of ’80s Bollywood!When Truth, Justice and the Indian Way is threatened by the vile designs of an evil “phoren” megalomaniac sulking in his island fortress with a perverse fondness for Cabaret, Cuban cigars with Martinis, and a hatred for all things DISCO, the fate of the world – Nay! The fate of the entire civilized universe! – rests on the shoulders of young disco-dancing super agent, Jimmy Zhingchak. Armed with a license to thrill, will Jimmy boogie on into the sunset or will he stumble and crumble against Sir John Firang’s evil machinations?Be prepared to be dazzled with glitter, glamor, cliches and of course bad hairdos or as Jimmy would put it “Aieeee Saala.“

The project is a full timepass spoof and homage to the 80′s bollywood DISCO zeitgeist made so popular by iconic figures like Mithun chakraborty and Bhappi Lahiri. I promise you it’s funny as hell too with cliches and plot holes galore.

so Aieee Saalaaaa wait up for Jimmy Z boggeying on your way.

One of my oldest memories is listening to old songs on a LP disc player my father used to own. Cramped in a two room house way back in the early eighties, I remember listening half-asleep to songs that my father would play at a very gentle volume so as not to wake up the neighbors. Growing up they were my lullabies and I do miss them so much.

The other day on a whim I tried searching for some old Oriya movie songs on YouTube and I came up with this gem

Now that I’m going to be a father myself I find myself wondering what would be the sound my daughter would fall asleep to? would it be the clatter of a keyboard that she’d remember growing up or would it be the chime of a cell phone ringtone? Maybe when she is growing up I’ll play her the song, maybe it’ll be worth something to her as well

Okie doks intrepid readers. Welcome to mohaps.com 4.0.

I just finished the upgrade to WordPress from Simple PHP Blog cause I was worried about performance and security. Simple PHP Blog served me well but lately I see traffic increasing and one of my other sites got hacked into a phishing site. So had some time on my hands and voila! We have the new improved mohaps.com.

I managed to import the posts but sadly could not get the comments out. ah! them’s the breaks. so anyways just wanted to say welcome to my new site and now back to the grind … SADHU #4 script needs to be completed this weekend.

cheers

mohaps