Re: [silk] Silkmeet on Friday (21st May, Zoom, 7pm)

[Sumanth Cidambi]

+1, I should hopefully be able to make it.


> On 18-May-2021, at 4:23 PM, Deepa Mohan  wrote:
> 
> To make it nice and alphabetical (as you can see, I have nothing much to do
> right now)
> 
> So far
> 
> Deepa
> Kiran
> Jayadevan
> Peter
> Surabhi
> Uday
> Venkat
> Vinit

Re: [silk] Hello and Introduction

[sumanth cidambi]

Hello both :). Great to have you here (am just an avid lurker though) :))


Sent from Yahoo Mail for iPhone


On Monday, April 26, 2021, 19:21, Venkatesh Hariharan  wrote:

Welcome Sundar

On Mon, Apr 26, 2021 at 7:18 PM sur...@hserus.net  wrote:

> Wow and I thought Silk was dormant. Welcome.
>
> -srs
>
> From: silklist  on
> behalf of Sundar Narayanan 
> Date: Monday, 26 April 2021 at 6:36 PM
> To: silklist@lists.hserus.net 
> Subject: [silk] Hello and Introduction
> Hello everyone,
> I wanted to say a quick hello and introduce myself.  I joined Silklist
> yesterday.  I would like to firstly thank Sumanth Cidambi for the
> introduction and Udhay Shankar for his willingness to include me.  I look
> forward to learning from this forum and growing as a result.
> A little bit about myself.  I grew up in Chennai/Mumbai and currently
> reside in Dallas, Texas.  I currently work at Microsoft leading their
> global risk, quality and compliance team.  My educational background is
> Electrical Engineering and Business Administration and my 25 year career so
> far has been entirely in Management/Technology consulting at Ernst & Young,
> Capgemini and Microsoft working with global customers.  I am married with 2
> teenage kids.  I am an avid cricket/tennis fan and of course like so many
> others, played during my school and college days. My reading interests are
> around political history, foreign policy, global socio-economic changes,
> brand management, marketing and psychology.
> Thank you again for including me.
> Regards,
> Sundar NarayananSundar Narayanan | LinkedIn
>

Re: [silk] In Bangalore June 20/21/22

[Sumanth Cidambi]

Lovely. Tentative +1 for now. Thanks. 

Sent from my iPhone

> On 13-Jun-2019, at 12:19, Udhay Shankar N  wrote:
> 
> On Thu, Jun 13, 2019 at 12:17 PM Sumanth Cidambi  wrote:
> 
> Udhay. What venue decided please?  Thanks.
> 
> 
> Biergarten in Koramangala, 6pm onwards.
> 
> Udhay

Re: [silk] In Bangalore June 20/21/22

[Sumanth Cidambi]

Udhay. What venue decided please?  Thanks. 

Sent from my iPhone

> On 13-Jun-2019, at 10:07, Venkat Mangudi - Silk  
> wrote:
> 
> +1
> 
>> On Thu, 13 Jun 2019 at 9:31 AM, Udhay Shankar N  wrote:
>> 
>> On Tue, Jun 11, 2019 at 10:17 AM Udhay Shankar N  wrote:
>> 
>> 
>>> I am visiting Bangalore to attend and present at Rootconf.in. Thursday
 promises to be kinda crazy but would love to meet the good folks of Silk
 on
 Friday (June 21) or Saturday (June 22) evening.
 
>>> 
>>> Friday June 21 works better for me, but can do Saturday June 22 if that's
>>> what the majority wants.
>>> 
>> 
>> The collective hath spoken. Saturday June 22 it is. Anyone else wants to
>> come, please respond in this thread.
>> 
>> Udhay
>> --
>> 
>> ((Udhay Shankar N)) ((udhay @ pobox.com)) ((www.digeratus.com))
>> 

[silk] Meeting this evening

[Sumanth Cidambi]

Just reconfirming Boteco for 7pm, correct? And please can I know whose name the 
reservations are made in?

Am not much of a conversationalist but will do my best to keep up :)

Best
Sumanth

Sent from my iPhone

Re: [silk] Mumbai meetup?

[Sumanth Cidambi]

I will try and join, work schedule permitting.

Kind regards
Sumanth

Sent from my iPhone

> On 12-Aug-2018, at 11:28, Kiran K Karthikeyan  
> wrote:
> 
>> On Sun, Aug 12, 2018, 10:15 Simmi Sareen  wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> Boteco it is! I have made reservations for 7 pm tomorrow.
>> 
> 
> See you all there. I might be delayed due to traffic. Hope it isn't too
> difficult to hold our table.
> 
> Kiran
> 
>> --
> Regards,
> Kiran

Re: [silk] Not quite your dad's cup of tea

[Sumanth Cidambi]

Udhay

Possibly of interest.  I took a lazy option, sorry.

http://www.seriouseats.com/2014/06/best-water-for-tea-tap-spring-bottled-filtered.html

Sumanth

Sent from BlueMail



On 8 Dec 2015, 17:26, at 17:26, Venkatesh Hariharan  wrote:
>Different "good," or different, "bad?"
>
>Venky
>
>On Tue, Dec 8, 2015 at 5:24 PM, Suresh Ramasubramanian
>
>wrote:
>
>> Does the tea taste any different if you make it using aquafina or
>other
>> bottled drinking water?
>>
>> > On 08-Dec-2015, at 5:22 PM, Udhay Shankar N 
>wrote:
>> >
>> > Interesting thing I just noticed.
>> >
>> > I upgraded my water filter to an RO based system. The water tastes
>> > different, which is understandable. The tea made with it tastes
>> different,
>> > which is also understandable. But the tea *looks* different. The
>liquor
>> is
>> > lighter and more reddish. All other conditions (tea used, time
>steeped)
>> are
>> > same. Any ideas?
>> >
>> > Udhay
>>
>>
>>

Re: [silk] Indo-Mexican fusion restaurants and recipes

[Sumanth Cidambi]

Chinita in Indira Nagar. I liked it.

Habanero started out promisingly but has gone down over the last 2-3 years.  
Has multiple outlets. 

Sent from BlueMail



On 21 Oct 2015, 08:04, at 08:04, Biju Chacko  wrote:
>Starting the obligatory thread drift: does anyone know of an authentic
>Mexican restaurant in Bangalore? I've experienced little Mexican food
>and
>I'd like to fix that.
>
>-- b
>On Oct 21, 2015 06:14, "Thaths"  wrote:
>
>> Inspired by the biography of M.N.Roy for the last couple of years
>I've been
>> thinking of Indo-Mexican cuisine's possibilities. There are a handful
>>  of 
>restaurants
>>  around the world that serve this food,
>but
>> I've haven't been to any of them yet (came close to going to
>Avataar's in
>> Sausalito, but they were closed the day I walked to Sausalito from
>San
>> Francisco). Their menus seem to full of "curry" in mexican clothing
>> (Chicken Tikka Burrito, Prawn vindaloo enchiladas..., you get the
>idea). I
>> was thinking of food that was fused the other direction.
>>
>> Some of the potential dishes I've been dreaming of:
>>
>> Bhel puri with chorizo (or soyrizo), pico de gallo, sour cream
>>
>> Pani puri with tomatillo rasam
>>
>> Uppuma made with masa harina
>>
>> ...
>>
>> What are some dishes that you think would make great Indo-Mexican
>dishes?
>>
>> Bonus points if you can actually whip up and share a recipe.
>>
>> Thaths
>>

Re: [silk] Child sex abuse and child rights

[Sumanth Cidambi]

A video I came across on this:

rtsp://v5.cache6.googlevideo.com/ChoLENy73wIaEQnROxtBon1SABMYDSANFEgDDA==/0/0/0/video.3gp

On 6 Sep 2014 10:02, John Sundman j...@wetmachine.com wrote:

 [Apologies for top posting. I think that horse has left the barn, as we say 
 here in Amurka.] 

 Insofar as the system apparently led to allowing the systematic torture and 
 rape of nearly one and a half thousand children over a period of decades, in 
 a supposedly civilized nation (UK), I hope that everybody reading this note 
 on this list will agree that the system was (and still is?) entirely and 
 criminally fucked up. 

 So, we agree that the people who were charged with protecting these children 
 (who were and are both boys and girls, to my understanding) failed, and 
 failed miserably, and criminally. 

 The number boggles the mind. 1,400 children (effectively) kidnapped and raped 
 in one (smallish) city.  How can this possibly be true? And yet it apparently 
 is. 

 So it's easy to assign blame to those who failed to protect the children: the 
 mothers, fathers, police, ministers, priests, teachers, and every other 
 goddamn adult in the city.  I can believe that some of them had no idea what 
 was going on. But I cannot believe that *nobody* had any idea what was going 
 on. 

 But let's put that on the stack for a moment and consider the other question, 
 who were and are the rapists? According to this story, they were prominently 
 Pakistanis or people of Pakistani heritage. Let's assume that's true for a 
 minute.   One then must ask, Is all Pakistani culture fucked up, or is it 
 merely some swath of it? ( I take it as axiomatic that raping kidnapped 
 children is fucked up.) 

 My question: how many Pakistani rapists raped the 1,400 children who were 
 raped? Was it 100 rapists who raped 14 children each? 14 rapists who raped 
 100 children each? That sounds horrific. Maybe it was 200 rapists who raped 7 
 children each. Is that better or worse? 

 We don't yet know, if I understand the facts, how many of the rapists were 
 Pakistani, or what words might properly be used to describe the 
 ethnic/cultural/whatever affiliation of those rapists who were/are not of 
 Pakistanis heritage. 

 I shuddered when I read Shiv's comments about disciplining children and 
 honor murders. 

 He asks, why were all the girls white?. The most obvious answer is that 
 that's what the market wanted. 

 Shiv says  In Britain the state attempts to protect vulnerable children from 
 physical and emotional abuse by parents, and then insinuates, if I 
 understand him correctly, that this impulse to protect children from abusive 
 parents is somehow correlated to the kidnapping and rape of children in 
 Rotherham. 

 What the fuck? 

 It's illegal to beat up your own child in your own home. It's also illegal to 
 kidnap somebody else's child and rape him or her repeatedly over a period of 
 years. 

 Is it really not obvious that both of these things are bad or that the state 
 has an interest in curtailing them? 

 I'm not even going to try to parse the discussion of honor killings or of 
 how consensual sex is somehow tied to child rape. 

 I can't even write about this any more. 

 This shit is fucked up. 

 jrs 


  
  The system seem to have things the wrong way round. Exactly what is 
  going on? 
  
  shiv 
  
  
  

Re: [silk] Bangalore silkmeet

[Sumanth Cidambi]

Tentatively yes please

Sent from my iPad

 On 06-Aug-2014, at 7:55 pm, Udhay Shankar N ud...@pobox.com wrote:
 
 A Bangalore silkmeet is proposed, following some discussion on the silklist
 facebook group (if any of you want to get in, let me know) on the 23rd
 August, at Cobalt on Church street.
 
 Show of hands?
 
 ​Udhay​
 
 -- 
 
 ((Udhay Shankar N)) ((udhay @ pobox.com)) ((www.digeratus.com))

Re: [silk] What should I do with my money?

[Sumanth Cidambi]

The ancient law (for want of a better phrase) - source, Dharma

1/6 - spouse
1/6 - progeny
1/6 - parents
1/6 - spouse's parents
1/6 - charity (depending on your vocation)
Remainder - self and general purposes

Having lived a life of almost near penury these last 17-18 months, I managed  
upto 4/7 of dharma and no further. 

Without sounding parochial, further pointers in the yagnavalkya smriti and 
(separately), santi parva of the mahābhāratā.

Best
Sumanth
 

Sent from my iPhone

 On 08-Apr-2014, at 19:18, Udhay Shankar N ud...@pobox.com wrote:
 
 I don't usually send along this kind of article to silk, but this quoted
 part is interesting, and mostly aligns with my opinion. I would be
 interested in opinions from the list, especially on the last part.
 
 Udhay
 
 http://www.businessinsider.com/money-cheat-sheet-2014-4?IR=T
 
 q
 
 WHAT ELSE SHOULD I DO WITH MY MONEY?
 
 Forget about it.
 
 Money is just a side effect of health.
 
 I talk a lot about the daily practice I started doing when I was at my
 lowest point.
 
 I know now after years of doing it that it has worked. I've done very
 well with it, and I started doing it when I was dead broke, lonely,
 angry, depressed, and suicidal.
 
 I didn't start it from a position of privilege.
 
 And you don't have to buy my book. I'm not selling anything.
 
 Here's the whole thing: stay physically healthy in whatever way you know
 how (sleep well, eat well, exercise). Be around good people who love you
 and respect you and who you love and respect, and be grateful every day.
 
 Think of new things each day (or all day) to be grateful for.
 Gratitude is another word for Abundance because the things you are
 most grateful for, become abundant in your life.
 
 And finally, write down 10-20 bad ideas a day. Or good ideas. It doesn't
 matter. After exercising my idea muscle for six months, I felt like an
 idea machine. It was like a super power that just wouldn't stop.
 
 /q
 -- 
 ((Udhay Shankar N)) ((udhay @ pobox.com)) ((www.digeratus.com))
 

Re: [silk] Introductions

[Sumanth Cidambi]

Thank you. Been two more post that and hopefully I finish the last desert this 
November :)

Sent from my iPhone

 On 26-Jan-2014, at 19:27, Shenoy N sheno...@gmail.com wrote:
 
 Thanks Sumanth. I read about your 250 km (!) Atacama crossing! Deep respect!
 
 Hi Madhu! Prostrations :)
 
 
 Thanks Anish! Great to meet you
 
 Thanks Venkat! The lad has been getting me to listen to Queen (Bohemian
 Rhapsody, to be precise) but I found that song too random, which opinion
 made me drop several points in his opinion. He keeps playing Clapton's
 Layla, which I've grown to like. Queen's going to take a while though :)
 
 
 
 
 On 26 January 2014 18:56, Venkat Mangudi - Silk s...@venkatmangudi.comwrote:
 
 Welcome...
 
 Nice combination that... Hindustani classical and rock. Try Queen.  You
 might like the music. And Eric Clapton.
 On Jan 26, 2014 6:31 PM, Anish Mohammed anish.moham...@gmail.com
 wrote:
 
 Welcome to the interesting bunch of folks whose connecting factor being
 Udhay ;)
 
 Anish Mohammed
 Twitter: anishmohammed
 http://uk.linkedin.com/in/anishmohammed
 Skype: thecryptic
 
 On 26 Jan 2014, at 05:01, Shenoy N sheno...@gmail.com wrote:
 
 I'm happy and honored to be part of this list (thanks Udhay!) and while
 I'm
 acutely aware that I'm probably, as my wife Sheela leaves no
 opportunity
 unutilized to remind me of this, a pretty useless and boring person,
 here's
 a brief intro
 
 I'm Narendra Shenoy. I run a factory manufacturing components and
 sub-assemblies which go into various engineering applications.
 Currently,
 for instance, we make hinge assemblies for the Coke and Pepsi
 visi-coolers
 that you see in restaurants and cafes.
 
 We occasionally get to make interesting stuff too. We partnered with
 Berkeley University to develop the Berkeley Darfur Stove (
 http://cookstoves.lbl.gov/darfur.php) and the prototypes for a very
 promising groundwater arsenic remediation technique called ECAR
 http://gadgillab.berkeley.edu/research/water/arsenic_removal/
 (ours processes 600 liters every 2 hours)
 
 For most of my time, however, I'm found pottering around Malad West in
 Mumbai, where I live, trying to persuade my wife to cook me some Coorg
 style pork or Mysore style mutton pulao. I read as much as I can,
 almost
 entirely non-fiction, though in times of depression, I will pick up a
 P G
 Wodehouse to make the blues go away.
 
 I listen almost exclusively to Hindustani Classical Music. My younger
 son
 however has been working on me for the last year and has got me to like
 Pink Floyd, Led Zep and Metallica. He teaches himself to play the
 electric
 guitar and I'm often his main audience. I chronicle some of this in my
 blog, narendrashenoy.blogspot.in
 
 Cheers!
 
 
 --
 Narendra Shenoy
 http://narendrashenoy.blogspot.com
 
 
 
 -- 
 Narendra Shenoy
 http://narendrashenoy.blogspot.com

Re: [silk] Introductions

[Sumanth Cidambi]

Welcome

Sent from my iPhone

 On 26-Jan-2014, at 10:31, Shenoy N sheno...@gmail.com wrote:
 
 I'm happy and honored to be part of this list (thanks Udhay!) and while I'm
 acutely aware that I'm probably, as my wife Sheela leaves no opportunity
 unutilized to remind me of this, a pretty useless and boring person, here's
 a brief intro
 
 I'm Narendra Shenoy. I run a factory manufacturing components and
 sub-assemblies which go into various engineering applications. Currently,
 for instance, we make hinge assemblies for the Coke and Pepsi visi-coolers
 that you see in restaurants and cafes.
 
 We occasionally get to make interesting stuff too. We partnered with
 Berkeley University to develop the Berkeley Darfur Stove (
 http://cookstoves.lbl.gov/darfur.php) and the prototypes for a very
 promising groundwater arsenic remediation technique called ECAR
 http://gadgillab.berkeley.edu/research/water/arsenic_removal/
 (ours processes 600 liters every 2 hours)
 
 For most of my time, however, I'm found pottering around Malad West in
 Mumbai, where I live, trying to persuade my wife to cook me some Coorg
 style pork or Mysore style mutton pulao. I read as much as I can, almost
 entirely non-fiction, though in times of depression, I will pick up a P G
 Wodehouse to make the blues go away.
 
 I listen almost exclusively to Hindustani Classical Music. My younger son
 however has been working on me for the last year and has got me to like
 Pink Floyd, Led Zep and Metallica. He teaches himself to play the electric
 guitar and I'm often his main audience. I chronicle some of this in my
 blog, narendrashenoy.blogspot.in
 
 Cheers!
 
 
 -- 
 Narendra Shenoy
 http://narendrashenoy.blogspot.com

Re: [silk] An excellent obituary

[Sumanth Cidambi]

Thank you for sharing
Best
Sumanth


Sent from my iPad

On 01-Jun-2013, at 10:33 AM, Deepa Mohan mohande...@gmail.com wrote:

 Most Indian obits deify their subjects, and are monuments of hypocrisy.
 Here's an honest and impressive obit (at least, I think so)
 
 http://www.firstpost.com/bollywood/an-icon-beyond-labels-man-woman-or-rituparno-830493.html
 
 
 One of Rituparno Ghosh’s greatest performances on screen was not in any of
 the dozen films he directed or in the handful in which he acted. It was on
 one episode of*Ghosh and Company*, a Bengali chat show he hosted on the *Star
 Jalsa* channel. His guest was the comedian Mir.
 
 One of Mir’s great talents is mimicry. And Rituparno and his manneri
 were often the target of that mimicry. “When you mimic me are you mimicking
 me or are you mimicking an effeminate man?” asked Rituparno.
 
 A rather nonplussed Mir replied he was imitating Rituparno Ghosh and only
 Rituparno Ghosh.
 
 “But what is the message?” asked Rituparno. “Are people seeing Rituparno
 Ghosh or a *naari-shulabh purush* (effeminate man)?”
 [image: 
 PTI]http://www.firstpost.com/bollywood/an-icon-beyond-labels-man-woman-or-rituparno-830493.html/attachment/rituparno_pti
 
 Ghosh was someone who embraced his sexual minority not with an activist
 zeal but an almost matter-of-fact brazenness by just being who he was: PTI
 
 Then he proceeded to shred Mir’s arguments.
 
 “Have you ever thought that whenever you mimic me, so many effeminate men
 in Kolkata, in Bengal feel ashamed, feel humiliated?”
 
 For Rituparno it wasn’t personal. “I can carry off my jewellery with such
 flamboyance it doesn’t matter to me. But there are many people who feel
 tremendous shame and stigma about this, who don’t have the courage to wear
 jewellery, or the guts to wear *kajal*. I can live life on my terms, Mir.
 But they cannot.”
 
 Some thought Rituparno had planned a public ambush on Mir. Others thought
 Mir, himself a member of a minority as a Muslim man, should have been more
 sensitive to begin with. That debate still rages on *Youtube *though Mir
 and Rituparno never carried their grudge forward. Rituparno appeared on
 Mir’s comedy show as a judge. And yesterday an emotional Mir mourned Ritu-*
 da *in front of his house.
 
 That is what we lost with Rituparno Ghosh’s death. Not just a filmmaker and
 writer, but someone who embraced his sexual minority not with an activist
 zeal but an almost matter-of-fact brazenness by just being who he was, with
 his Sunset Boulevard turbans, his flowing outfits, the herbal *kajal*-rimmed
 eyes, the dangling ear rings. It was not a fantastic drag queen performance
 which would have been just an act. It was Rituparno being Rituparno –
 erudite and articulate, just in a gender-bending *salwar-achkan*.
 
 Anuj Vaidya, co-director at the Third I South Asian International Film
 Festival which has showcased many of Rituparno’s films says, “In his recent
 work, it becomes too hard to determine whether one is watching a man or a
 woman – and I love that Rituparno often does not care to elaborate.” He
 says it is “destabilizing at first” but eventually it does not matter if it
 is “a he or a she or the many possibilities in-between – I am just watching
 Rituparno.” It was not just make-up. Rituparno was changing physically –
 shaved-head, kajal-eyed. He had had abdominoplasty done before a role and
 undergone hormone replacement reports *The Times of India*. “I think what
 is important is how Ritu over the last five years had started changing the
 way he dressed and presented himself and to see that as a film maker/
 actor/ writer he started to address queer themes in films simultaneously,”
 says filmmaker Onir, director of *I Am* and *My Brother Nikhil*.
 
 Perhaps, says, Onir, the respect and love he had earned gave him the
 confidence.
 
 In *Aar Ekti Premer Galpo* Rituparno played both the *jatra *actor Chapal
 Bhaduri who spent his life playing women on stage and a gay filmmaker
 making a film about Bhaduri. In*Memories in March* he played a gay man
 whose lover has died and who must confront the dead man’s clueless mother
 played by Deepti Naval. In his last film *Chitrangada: The Crowning Glory*,
 he used Tagore’s dance drama as a springboard to play a choreographer
 struggling with his gender identity.
 
 Enacted by a diva like Rituparno, these characters often were more
 Rituparno than real characters. But in the Tagore drama *Noukadubi*he went
 one step further by dubbing the grey-haired widowed mother in his own
 voice. It’s as if physically Rituparno Ghosh was quietly transforming
 himself into a woman in front of his audience’s eyes and despite occasional
 snickers about Ritu-porno and Ritu-*di*, his very middle-class audience
 largely played along politely.
 
 Critic Aveek Sen offers up a
 cluehttp://www.telegraphindia.com/1120920/jsp/opinion/story_15989965.jsp#.Uag1fPJhe_I
 as
 to why that was when he writes that both *Chitrangada*and *Aar Ekti Premer
 Golpo* 

Re: [silk] Silent running

[sumanth cidambi]

Thanks folks, just saw this post.  Sorry, I am quite inactive on the forum.
 
Udhay,we meet this weekend?  Will call you.



--- On Sun, 5/8/11, Radhika, Y. radhik...@gmail.com wrote:


From: Radhika, Y. radhik...@gmail.com
Subject: Re: [silk] Silent running
To: silklist@lists.hserus.net
Date: Sunday, May 8, 2011, 9:22 AM


amazing and inspiring. even 10k every day would be bloody amazing as a goal. 


On Sat, May 7, 2011 at 12:24 PM, another.prufr...@gmail.com 
another.prufr...@gmail.com wrote:

Inspiring? Bloody intimidating!!

But big heap respect.

Sent from my HTC




- Reply message -
From: Varun Sahni v...@yahoo.com
To: silklist@lists.hserus.net silklist@lists.hserus.net
Cc: silklist@lists.hserus.net silklist@lists.hserus.net
Subject: [silk] Silent runningi 
Date: Sat, May 7, 2011 11:40 pm


Wow ! That's awesome and a real inspiration. 

Regards,

Varun 

On May 7, 2554 BE, at 3:32 PM, Udhay Shankar N ud...@pobox.com wrote:

 Interesting piece about silklister Sumanth Cidambi. Congrats Sumanth, and 
 have an extra beer to celebrate. :)
 
 Udhay
 
 http://www.livemint.com/2011/05/05201740/Desert-runner.html
 
 Desert runner
 The first Indian to complete a seven-day, 250km-long desert trail in the 
 Chilean Atacama, one of the toughest endurance races in the world, shares his 
 experience
 Rudraneil Sengupta
 
 In March last year, Sumanth Cidambi, CFO with a Hyderabad-based company, 
 received an email from a friend that simply said “game for a run?” It also 
 had a link to the website of possibly the world’s most challenging running 
 event, the 4Deserts—a series of four 250km self-supported desert 
 ultramarathons, each run over seven days, that include the Atacama in Chile, 
 the Sahara in Egypt, the Gobi in China, and Antarctica.
 
 Cidambi, who picked up running in 2005 after being diagnosed with diabetes, 
 quickly found an aptitude and passion for the sport that went far beyond just 
 health concerns. From struggling to finish even a kilometre in 2005, he was 
 jostling with other competitors at the starting line of the Mumbai 
 half-marathon in 2006. A full marathon in 2007 was a natural progression. 
 Racing through almost the entire country of Chile on the driest, most brutal 
 desert on the planet though was an exponential leap.
 
 “I spent a couple of months thinking about it and researching the race,” says 
 Cidambi, “and then in August 2010 I signed up for it as a 40th birthday gift 
 to myself.”
 
 High and dry: (clockwise from top) Cidambi at the Atacama ultra with volcanic 
 peaks in the background; negotiating a rocky climb and at the finishing line 
 at San Pedro. Photographs courtesy: RacingThePlanet
 
 High and dry: (clockwise from top) Cidambi at the Atacama ultra with volcanic 
 peaks in the background; negotiating a rocky climb and at the finishing line 
 at San Pedro. Photographs courtesy: RacingThePlanet
 
 Cidambi, who already had a daily 10km running schedule, began scaling up his 
 training for the extreme race immediately. For the next six months, Cidambi 
 turned the guest bedroom in his house into a supply and equipment depot, woke 
 every morning at 3.30, ran for 2 hours, did strength training and stretching 
 exercises for another hour, before returning home and leaving for work by 
 8.30. For his wife Nandita and their year-old son Atri, this crazy schedule 
 meant tailoring all their activities around it.
 
 Nandita began a blog called The Runner’s Wife to write about her experience. 
 “…all those missed moments of togetherness doing simple stuff like having a 
 cup of tea together in the morning or staying late watching a movie on the 
 telly, it is almost like I have loaned my husband to someone else in this 
 whole period.” Nandita wrote on her blog during this period. Nandita, a 
 doctor specializing in nutrition, played a crucial role in Cidambi’s 
 training; managing his strict and complicated daily caloric requirements, and 
 sourcing the specialized running shoes, equipment and supplements through 
 friends and family returning to India from foreign countries.
 
 By the end of six months of training, which included running the 2011 Mumbai 
 Marathon, Cidambi was comfortably running 25km a day, and 35km on Saturdays.
 
 The race
 
 On 2 March 2011, Cidambi flew from Bangalore to Santiago de Chile, before 
 finally arriving at San Pedro de Atacama, a small sun-bleached town on the 
 northern edge of the great Atacama desert. Cidambi spent two days walking 
 around and acclimatizing at San Pedro, which is surrounded by volcanic 
 mountains, lagoons and archaeological sites dating back as far as 800 BC.
 
 On 5 March, Cidambi left San Pedro with the other 109 competitors, including 
 42-year-old housewife Michelle Kakade from Pune, an ultramarathoner and 
 mother of two, for Camp 1, tucked in between high canyon walls. They were the 
 first Indians to compete in the Atacama ultramarathon.
 
 “Despite some last-minute-butterflies-in-the-stomach syndrome

Re: [silk] The Rock Album as Science Fiction

[sumanth cidambi]

I can think of two other Rush albums - A Farewell to Kings and Hemispheres that 
have the SciFi themed songs. 2112 is not entirely a SciFi themed album.  It 
has one song on side A of the LP.  Side B's songs have nothing in common with 
2112.  IMHO, Heller got it slightly off ;-)
 
Other bands I can think of offhand are Coheed and Cambria (these guys are like 
the Robert Jordan of concept albums) with their five part Amory Wars and 
Anthropia's The Ereyn Chronicles (more Sci Fantasy)
 


--- On Fri, 6/25/10, Udhay Shankar N ud...@pobox.com wrote:


From: Udhay Shankar N ud...@pobox.com
Subject: [silk] The Rock Album as Science Fiction
To: silklist@lists.hserus.net
Date: Friday, June 25, 2010, 1:49 PM


This is going to push the buttons of a lot of list members, including
yours truly. What has he left out? :)

Udhay

http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/heller_06_10/

Moonage Daydream: The Rock Album as Science Fiction by Jason Heller

Rock 'n' roll was never intended to have a future. Hot, fast, loud,
bright: the genre was made to be as disposable as the chemically-fueled
rockets that had started putting objects into orbit just as rock was
getting off the ground in the '50s.

It's perhaps more than coincidence that the song generally considered to
be the first rock 'n' roll tune was titled Rocket 88 — a scorching
instrumental by Ike Turner that, granted, was ostensibly an ode to an
Oldsmobile. Still, even today the song takes off in a burst of fiery
glory, one that most listeners back in the '50s surely assumed would
destroy itself in a puff of faddish obsolescence.

Of course, what Rocket 88 — and rock 'n' roll in general — really did
was this: open up a jagged, flaming path into the world of tomorrow.

Science fiction served a similar purpose in the '50s. Having vaulted
from the fringes of pop culture into the mainstream after a newly atomic
America became obsessed with films about mutants and aliens, SF
literature matured and flowered throughout the '60s and beyond, just as
rock 'n' roll did the same. It was inevitable that the two would mix.
And although plenty of random rock songs in the '60s were fixated on SF
themes — including The Byrds' Mr. Spaceman from 1966 and Space
Odyssey from 1968, not to mention Pink Floyd's groundbreaking Set the
Controls for the Heart of the Sun, also from 1968 — it was David
Bowie's Space Oddity in 1969 that really sealed the deal.

Of course, Bowie would also be the artist to put the SF concept album on
the map in the '70s. Full albums, after all, are much better vessels for
SF's sprawling tropes. Since then, some bands have tried making bona
fide, SF rock operas. Less ambitious groups have settled for loose
concepts — many dystopian — for songs to revolve around. And some simply
use the flash and fantasy of SF as a backdrop to their own warped vision
of the future.

Below are a few of the most intriguing SF-themed records launched at the
unsuspecting public since Bowie made his first foray into the concept
album. While many rock albums — like The Alan Parson Project's I Robot
or Golem's Dune-based The 2nd Moon — base their narratives to some
degree around existing SF works, the list below sticks with original
concepts: the fevered output of a few dozen buzzing brains addled by
feedback, distortion, beats, drugs and, of course, the ever-morphing
futurism of science fiction.


David Bowie, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from
Mars (1972)

For a record that launched a thousand bloated, SF-centric concept
albums, David Bowie's The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the
Spiders from Mars is pretty concise — especially considering that title.
In 38 minutes of apocalyptic surrealism rooted in the warped SF of
Samuel R. Delany and William S. Burroughs, Ziggy Stardust tells the
melancholic yet rapturous tale of a rock 'n' roll alien who comes to
Earth during the five years prior to the apocalypse. While never
matching his sweep and scope, other glam-rock artists of the era —
including Roxy Music, T. Rex, the doomed American singer Jobraith, and
even Elton John with his hit Rocket Man — would share Bowie's love for
glittery, gender-bending SF. After all, what's more androgynous than a
spacesuit?


Hawkwind, Space Ritual (1973)

Progressive rock is synonymous with the concept album, but surprisingly
few bands of the '70s prog movement actually made SF concept albums
(Yes' unfocused yet excellent Tales from Topographic Oceans being a
notable exception). The idiosyncratic Hawkwind was never entirely a prog
band, but frontman Dave Brock and crew (which featured a pre-Motörhead
Lemmy on bass) took their primal, interdimensional drone to its apex
with Space Ritual. A double album that approximates what space travel
might sound like if astronauts flew around in bong-shaped ships, Space
Ritual even has some real SF credentials. Legendary author Michael
Moorcock, a regular Hawkwind collaborator, delivers a metaphysical
spoken-word piece titled Black Corridor — which just 

Re: [silk] The Rock Album as Science Fiction

[sumanth cidambi]

What?! No mention of Sun Ra?



I heard him for the first time at a friend's place and liked the music.  I came 
away with the feeling he believed he was an alien or at least not of this 
earth (sorry, mr. satriani, ;-)).  


  

Re: [silk] The Rock Album as Science Fiction

[sumanth cidambi]

touche... just re read the list again. . . . carefully ;-)

--- On Fri, 6/25/10, Sumant Srivathsan suma...@gmail.com wrote:


From: Sumant Srivathsan suma...@gmail.com
Subject: Re: [silk] The Rock Album as Science Fiction
To: silklist silklist@lists.hserus.net
Date: Friday, June 25, 2010, 3:53 PM









Other bands I can think of offhand are Coheed and Cambria (these guys are like 
the Robert Jordan of concept albums) with their five part Amory Wars and 
Anthropia's The Ereyn Chronicles (more Sci Fantasy)

CC are on that list. I don't particularly like their music, to be honest, but 
the concept is quite interesting. I might consider a space opera a la BSG 
instead.

-- 
Sumant Srivathsan
http://sumants.blogspot.com