When even Google is helpless.

If you know the name of a person, Google will track down for you, anything about them
that is available on the net. But what if the only detail you want about someone is their
name itself ?

In Feb 2008, I was returning from an official trip to Japan & there was a short transit
stop-over at Malaysia. I was roaming around the Kuala Lumpur International Airport
(KLIA) taking in the sights, doing some shopping and stuff when I come across this
Tamil TV actress in one of the duty-free shops. OK, Y.G.Mahendran and another TV
artiste were with her, but who is bothered about men anyway ? :-)

There was a deal on Johnnie Walker whisky where if you buy 2 bottles of Black Label
whisky, you get a strolley-bag free. And predictably, the whole shop was swarming with
Indians (including yours truly), who could not miss such a nice deal. And this lady was
also there - she was telling a fellow TV artiste travelling with her that the whisky is for
her husband.

So, I have seen her on TV and she looks as seductive in person, as she looked in the TV
serials/soaps. Infact she looked way too slimmer than she looked on TV - maybe she
worked-out to lose the flab. She is wearing a nice pink trousers matched with a frilly/lacy
top and in short is looking great.

Being the shutter-bug that I am, I find it hard to resist taking a couple of snaps of her.
Especially when the subject is a pretty woman. Since it would be rude/embarassing to
take snaps of her from up-close, I leave the shop and move to an area of the airport
some 25 metres away, from where I still have a straightline view. And when I have 15x
of optical zoom packed in my Sony H7, distance-to-subject is no issue at all.

Walking along at KLIA. The guy with her is Y.G.Mahendran.


At the liquor store, with her other colleague. Ah, which whisky do I buy ?


Too confusing this selection business.

Hmmm. Gotta pay for this.

You would have noticed that I could not get her face in any of the snaps. If I had got
atleast 1 facial snap, I could've shown it to any of my women colleagues who would
have told me her name. But without her face, they won't be able to tell who it is.

And unless it is Jennifer Lopez with her designer butt, guys would also find it tough
to know who it is when shown a side-profile or rear-view snaps. :-)

So what do I google for, to get her name ? I did try by googling for "tamil tv actress"
and such strings, but nothing about this particular actress came up. Finally I gave up

the search for her name.

And then in last Sunday's newspaper, I see a photo of her with her name - Devipriya.
It was like a Wow moment for me. Finally (after 1.5 years) I have a name to attach to
the snaps. Ofcourse when I google 'Devipriya', what's thrown up is loads of scandals
about her than anything complimentary.

And the images thrown up by google are no patch on the ones I took. Infact one of my
colleagues said, "In your snaps, she looks so awesome, but Google throws up pictures
of her which are so yucky".

As much as I would love to take credit for my snaps, I guess its mostly the subject and

the camera that are responsible for a good picture. And when the snap doesn't come up

well, blame the photographer. :-)

P.S. : On the flight to Chennai, she was sitting in the seat in front of me and while getting

off the plane, she grabbed my Johnie Walker strolley by mistake (they all look identical).