Just the usual stuff

yet Annather rant!

2011-08-29T22:59:00.006+09:00

This recent uprising against corruption is a very interesting phenomenon.There are both positives and negatives from the movement, its good that middle class in India is able to unite and protest against what is clearly a callous government, it is also sad that they are doing this only in this forum and not during the time it really matters like during elections.

I personally disagree with this method of holding gun to government/Parliament and threatening that fulfill whatever I tell you or else …

How different is this from Naxals or terrorists ? Why do we shun them while we welcome this? If you see in Kashmir Valley there is a considerable anti-India feeling among large sections of society as shown by recent stone throwing incidents. So if tomorrow say Geelani decides to hold a fast unto death unless separate nation is created and 4000 people hold peaceful candle march in Srinagar will media also play along and Parliament pass the resolution?

This drafting resolutions/bills and giving instant deadlines is what makes me keep my distance from this, holding marches and asking Govt to properly consider alternatives would have been the right way, but it is not dramatic enough and perhaps the Govt also may not have paid heed too!

Another thing I can’t understand is how do they expect to create a super efficient lokpal which will monitor corruption in higher and lower levels of bureaucracy?

If it’s a super body which monitors corruption at higher level – like scams etc then can understand, but if it has to monitor corruption at district/ town level then u need a mammoth force and the amount of money to be spent would be huge and if u create such a huge body then u would also have a task of appointing several thousands of ‘honest’ people to run the body. According to this article the cost of such a lokpal would be counter productive to progress of nation.

Is this practical? Do we really think it will happen this way?

This is not to say Anna is bad or that he is a naive man getting manipulated by a set of shrewd people as some critics seem to point out. He has done us all a favor by bringing these topics into limelight and encouraging debates and giving hope that something would transpire from all this. Last Saturday thanks to Anna's efforts everywhere people were following Parliament debate live on TV! There was a lot of interest in social media on the debates and country as a whole seemed clued in this time on a key issue instead of apathy usually displayed by middle class.

He has ensured that middle class who do not bother with the nation and policies etc get united and question what is happening which is very commendable. I would like this movement or whatever it is to play the role of a proper Opposition and question the wasteful policies and mismanagement done by Govt which would bring benefit rather than oppose corruption through some super power body.

It would be interesting to see if the millions who sported the badges, walked on streets, gave missed calls, sent self righteous smses and put up facebook updates etc would actually walk the talk and shun corruption going forward.

Tomorrow if they get stopped by traffic cop for some violation will they pay the actual amount or will they give Rs50 to the guy to let them off? If they are purchasing property will these anti-corruption messiahs pay the full amount in white and not quote a reduced price to evade duty/tax? Even if it sets them back by a lac or so?

Which brings me to why we are doing the above mentioned acts? Is it because there are set of 'bad' people who take bribes and need to be weeded out or because of illogical rules and lax regulation that corruption is able to thrive? Should we not look at why things are like this instead of just jumping up one fine day to say stop all corruption?

A rather harsh, but perhaps correct view would be that the whole country is running because of corruption …. If im buying a property/vehicle, I might need to get a couple of approvals which could take time normally but the agent collects 2-3K from me and hands to these guys and without wasting my time I get all the papers signed.

If we stop this from happening, how will it affect me? If I decide not to bribe, the govt officer probably has no incentive to attend to me quickly I might have to spend a day waiting for his approvals in his office which means loss of productivity for me and no gain for him too – loss loss finally! This is not to say that corruption needs to continue, but just to emphasize the point that 'Lokpal' is not the one shot cure for all evils plaguing the country and will not transform us dramatically as most people seem to believe. Maybe what we need is more transparency and methods to make the current system work effectively rather than another policeman, but that is a much tougher route to take though.

the Aftermath

2011-08-14T23:56:00.005+09:00

The defence of the 'Crown' was half hearted, more than knowledge of conditions our past reputation and self belief were to be the main weapons ... but once the leader of bowling attack limped out in the first session, things started going downhill. After two heavy defeats suddenly our talismanic leader was under attack, in the third test he responded with a couple of gutsy knocks. I noticed a tweet at the end of the test saying "finally India's captain showed up but sadly the rest of the team didnt" as we hurtled towards yet another heavy defeat.

More than defeat, the way we folded with minimal fight has led to a lot of talk. Perhaps some of the criticism is justified, we have done poorly no denying that, but the expectations were very high. Lot of the hype was created by media of course, but when a team is ranked no:1 in the world you do expect them to win more often than not. But again we all knew England was no pushover, beating Australia home and away is a feat unmatched in last few decades and add home advantage plus players peaking at right time. It made all the difference compared to India's unsettled lineup which was hampered by players not adapting , untimely injuries(we need to remember tht we played first two tests with just 3 bowlers) and sheer bad luck. Curiously some time back people were questioning the whole world no:1 thing saying the system was not proper. But suddenly in this series the whole world seems to think the ranking is all that matters and India is pilloried for doing injustice to world no:1 billing!

This is not a post aimed at criticizing Indian team nor justifying their capitulation. There are enough number of articles/people doing that. What captured my interest was the reaction of public to this, people of facebook, twitter, friends I keep in touch, colleagues in office and any random conversation I happen to hear in office cafeteria or while travelling to work.

Everyone is disgusted with the team and some swear not to follow cricket anymore, but quickly check the score at start of Indian batting to see if Viru might return with a bang! Everyone is clear on what is wrong, in fact a few days back I heard a lot of conversations questioning Dhoni's leadership ability and whether he merits a place in test team. This is a man who had never lost a test series before this tour and has the best track record for an Indian skipper and only one in a long time who seemed to be handling captaincy without letting it affect his batting. I dont think I need to waste any time pointing out his numerous successes but just how fickle is public memory! Just 3 months back when Dhoni smashed a six to seal the world cup people were cheering wildly, sporting "Bleed Blue" buttons and proclaiming from rooptops that we are champions and this is the best Indian team ever. But the moment they lose some matches people turn their back and start attacking the same guys. Again I'm not saying winning World cup means they dont need to win anything henceforth. But such drastic reactions are totaly unwarranted, media seems to be playing an active role in this with extremely critical articles in which reporters get very judgmental and sometimes seem to be worse than your average cricket fan. Also the opinions carried of former cricketers also fuel the fire with every 'expert' condemning team, so cant really blame the man on the street who thinks Dhoni lacks 'dynamism' as captain and needs to be replaced! Everyone has quick fix solutions and their own diagnosis of the problem. Funny thing is most of the problems noticed were there in the team for a long time now, with these very problems we became world no:1!

Its really strange, as a nation we go through life with zero accountability from all authorities and we hardly seem to care about the corruption, bad roads, poor administration and what not, but somehow demand total accountability from cricketers!

Movies I love : Mononoke Hime ( Princess Mononoke)

2011-05-16T15:28:00.000+09:00

For a long time I have been wanting to write something about Hayao Miyazaki's wonderful Anime movies. But the fear of not being able to do justice to the material used to keep me from writing , but nevertheless here is an attempt - however lame it is, had to be done !

Mononoke Hime /Princess Mononoke (Japan 1997) , Dir : Hayao Miyazaki

This is a tale set in ancient Japan where forests still loomed large and was populated with large hordes of animals and birds. With forest spirits and animal Gods still dwelling there was a harmony between men and beasts. However industrial era was coming and with it men were getting stronger and bolder and were expanding like never before, destroying forests, setting up forges and factories and making metal. Thus setting up a conflict with forest and its dwellers.

The story begins with young prince Astaka of an eastern tribe who spots a strange foul creature moving through forest about to attack his village settlement . He bravely pursues the creature which turns out to be a demon-Boar God filled with wrath and hatred towards human race . He somehow manages to subdue the creature but his arm gets infected through contact with demon-God. He is told that to save himself from fully getting infected he has to travel west from where this demon God came and find out what drove the Boar God into becoming a demon filled with hatred and wrath and find a way to life the curse.

As Ashtaka travels across the kingdom on his steed ( a mountain elk ) he comes across wars and injustice / bandits and finds that his cursed arm can make him kill people effortlessly when they cross paths with him. As travels further he saves a few men from drowning , they are part a settlement on the verge of forest. This settlement is led by brave Lady Eboshi who has a troop of female warriors/bodygaurds , she has reclaimed some part of forest land had driven away lot of animals. She represents industrialization , equipped with ever improving technology her folk have set up a metal forge where they make weapons and tools but their biggest secret tool is gun. With help of lighter and more efficient guns , Lady Eboshi and her band of followers are now able to expand even further and claim more lands and achieve much more prosperity than they could ever dream of , but she has lot of rivals to contend with human and animal. Leading the attack on Eboshi and her men is Wolf Godess from across the river along with her two sons and an adopted daughter (a human girl) - San -who is Mononoke Hime to the villagers. San leads the wolves on multiple futile attacks on the human settlement as tensions keep mounting between humans and the animals.

But what sets Miyazaki's tale apart from all other representations of human-nature conflict is the way he sets up the confrontations by showing us the true nature of all participants , no one is entirely wrong/evil , they all have reasons for doing what they are doing. Lady Eboshi even though she is leading the drive against nature is not shown to be someone who is purely evil. She works for upliftment of women , to give them the status they deserve in society . In Lady Eboshi's township women work in the factory and have upper hand over men and they worship her and are willing to lay down their life for her. She also rehabilitates people cast away by society like lepers , by giving them shelter and work and helping them integrate and be part of the movement. This is what sets this story apart from similar stories in this genre like James Cameron's recent movie Avatar which had evil , greedy humans plundering a planet . Here all characters have sufficient motivations to do what they have to and no one is purely evil.

Ashtaka lands up in the middle of this conflict , but quickly realizes what is going on and tries in vain to stop the both parties. As Lady Eboshi and men from Emperor's army decide to team up to behead the Deer God , the ruler of the forest - a life giver - in order to completely end the era of forest Gods and start the era of men and machines , on the other side wild boars decide to fight the humans to death to prevent any further damage to forest . Now Ashtaka must team up with San (Mononoke Hime) and her wolf tribe to try and save the Deer God to maintain the delicate balance that exists between nature and its inhabitants.

Like most Miyazki movies the visuals (most of it hand-drawn) are enthralling , the colours , landscape and the sheer imagination take it to a whole new level . This is an epic movie , with sweeping landscapes , lush green forests with brilliantly imagined forest spirits , the battles between rampaging animals and humans is very well captured. This movie takes forward the constant pacifist theme in most Miyzaki movies along with message for living harmoniously with nature , this is truly one of the best efforts from the legendary animator.

Books I read - Nov/Dec

2011-01-12T03:20:00.005+09:00

Just happened to read these two books which tread on the same territory - Afterlife . They almost validate Prof Dumbledore's line from Harry Potter-6 "To the well organised mind , death is but the next great adventure"

"The Lovely Bones" by Alice Sebold

Had heard a lot about this a while back and wanted to pick this up and read ... there was even a movie recently based on this book ... that reminded me to get this one . But the theme somehow put me off after buying the book and took a lot of effort to finally get started. However once I started it was a pretty neat read especially because of unique plot device - narration by a dead central character. This is story of Susie Salmon, a young girl who gets gruesomely raped and murdered in her neighborhood and her body is disposed off where no one can find her. The story is narrated by her spirit watching over her parents , school friends , neighbors and also her killer over a period of time . Susie Salmon watches her family/friends slowly come to grips with reality that their missing daughter/friend may never come back again . As Susie watches from above the once picture perfect family struggles to recover from the loss and move in different directions affecting each others lives and bonds of family get stretched. Its about relationships and coping with loss and its also about love and its power to heal wounds. Everyone affected by this loss deals with it in their own way , but in someway or other they heal and get back.

Young Susie is not sad or bitter but hopeful and optimistic and eager to know how people are doing and progressing in life and wishes they all move on , even though she herself will never be able to experience things people down below are experiencing. Inspite of a little surprising and a tad romantic ending this was a nice read. A significant departure from the kind of books I usually read , but this was worth it !

"Her Fearful Symmetry" by Audrey Niffenegger

I picked this one up as I had simply loved this author's previous book "The Time Traveller's Wife" which was a great read as was a about a character which took on the concept of time. Here once again Niffenegger is on similar territory as concept of life and death is re-examined/challenged this time.

Valentine and Julia Poole are 20 year old symmetric twins , they are identical and are in fact mirror images of each other .They suddenly inherit a big house in England overlooking Highland Cemetery from their recently deceased Aunt Elspeth who is buried in the same cemetery. But the condition for twins getting the house is that they should live for 1 year in the house and their mother (Aunt Elspeth's identical twin sister) and their father should not set foot in the house. As twins move from US to Britain , they enter a world of mysteries and dark secrets.They also meet a few eccentric neighbors including the enigmatic Robert who is working on his thesis on Highland cemetery and also happens to be their late Aunt's young lover. As one twin falls for Robert against the wishes of the other , cracks start appearing between the 'perfect' symmetric twins . In addition to all this Elspeth manages to return as ghost to her house and makes contact with her nieces . There is a delightful subplot involving another neighbor - Martin , who sets crossword puzzles for newspaper but whose life itself is a puzzle as he suffers from OCD and cannot leave his house and hence struggles to get in touch with world outside the house where the love of his life resides . Meanwhile Elspeth's ghost also goes through the same problem as she is bound to the house where the twins nows reside while she desires to move on and get close to Robert , who was the love of her life .Overall it seems a good place to lose one's mind and thats exactly what happens . What unravels is a shocking tale of love turning into obsession and degenerating into madness as the boundaries between life and death blur. The Highland Cemetery provides a great setting for this nice ghost story and it is described very well and almost feels like a character in the plot !

Social TV ?

2010-11-28T14:16:00.007+09:00

A couple of days back 2 friends of mine called me up at night and started drunken rambling ... conversation was fun and secrets came out tumbling. In between all that fun , friend A was apparently trying to change the channel on TV and was not having any luck and started cursing and abusing the remote control. Then I heard a lot of laughter coming from friend B, who informed me that friend A was so wasted that he was trying to change the TV channel with his cellphone !!!

Now what if mobile phone ( read smartphone ) could actually act as remote ? TV viewing has changed a lot ... these days many a time I switch on the TV after being told to do so by friends. I usually get a lot of SMSes / phone calls from friends alerting me about something interesting on TV - mostly sporting events, occassionally some reality programs also - we watch the show/event and then SMS each other or call and discuss what happened.

Sometimes watching and sharing things with friends makes it a much superior viewing experience, these are the guys I used to watch these matches together sometime in life.... now what if we could connect better while watching ....

Yesterday there was this wonderful tennis match in ATP World tour final event , this was semi-final between Nadal and Murray and the match swung between both players , I watched it for a while told a few friends about the wonderful match and then switched off the TV after a while when I was sure Nadal was gonna win . I got a call from a friend telling me that match was still on and had this time Murray was leading. I subsequently texted a few other friends the scoreline. In fact I was in touch 6 friends during the match at 11 pm ... this was a non-grand slam tennis match .... during cricket matches ( esp major events ) the people you are in touch with are much higher.

I guess if my TV remote was on my cellphone and I could tell my friends about this really good tennis match going on this particular channel with match being interestingly poised ( perhaps an update on the score-line and why should tune in ) , then it would be really cool

Searched online for more on this and found this piece on Technology review website

Though they are talking about making TV remote a smart remote , though I would prefer doing away with it and having Mobile phone do the same task.

So efforts are actually on to make watching television something that viewers in different places can share and discuss. It wont be too far when your social network and television meet. That means my friend - who is a smart and successful Manager when sober - was not all that wrong when he tried to change channels with his smartphone , only problem was that he was a little ahead of time !

Books I read - Sep/Oct

2010-11-14T01:50:00.003+09:00

Salmon Fishing in the Yemen - by Paul Torday

This is a brilliant political satire about a ludicrous idea of a sheik from Middle East to introduce Salmon fishing as a sport in the wadis of his desert nation. When international politics , government departments , inept bureaucrats and even British prime minister's office get on board the insanity reaches epic proportions and a dazed fisheries scientist finds himself in the middle of this ! This delightful novel pokes fun at British society , TV/news , the spin-meisters and politicians superbly.

Book begins with this idea of a Middle east billionaire to introduce salmon fishing in his country and interestingly uses letters and office memos , diary entries , report from House of commons , interrogation tapes and hilariously even intercepted Al Qaeda mails being used to move the story forward. The idea which began through correspondence through letters (and internal memos) from a firm representing the Sheik and fisheries dept and this scientist moves forward quickly and reaches the highest office in the country and the ridiculous idea catches the fancy of a few and becomes an order from dept and project of huge national importance ! The Sheik and the scientist bond well and he starts admiring and respecting the sheik and his vision and the idea actually seems to take off and the entire team starts "believing" Sheik's vision until absurdities of life catch up in the end. This is a really wonderful read. Somewhere along the line there is a lesson for some real world nations who too believe in such improbable ideas !

Ps : There is a movie being made on this book

A Short History of tractors in Ukrainian - Marina Lewycka

I picked up this book because of the title , the book is again a humorous account of how life changes for a middle aged Ukrainian immigrant in Britain when her mother dies and her extremely old father decides to marry a young Ukrainian woman who is clearly marrying only for her father's money and to get citizenship. The daughters plot and plan and fight to save the old man from clutches of "the evil painted Russian tart" and in process try to discover a family bond which never seemed to have existed. The story is narrated in a very light tone , but it does touch a lot of real serious stuff about relationships , loneliness , ageing , sibling rivalry , life in the communist nations , World war 2 , the hardships faced by these immigrants before and in UK. The title comes from the book this old father is writing about innovation in farm equipment and machinery in Ukraine , he notes how innovation which could have helped cultivate the world and create food got changed into wrong direction. Instead of tractors the focus moved to machines for war like tanks and instead of machines which tilled , machines which killed were created.

Happy Diwali folks !

2010-11-06T20:44:00.003+09:00

India is shining this Diwali, economy is doing well, country is rapidly progressing, the sensex is trading at 21k and so on ... Even if you leave these indicators aside, overall there is a considerable improvement in standards of living, along with it the kind of celebrations during festivals have also become much grander. From the time I remember, Diwali/Deepavali used to be celebrated with people getting attired in new clothes, decorating their homes, getting together with family along with lot of sweets and lot of fireworks. When we were young the fireworks were the highlight, there were lot of safety concerns those days, perhaps all that made it more appealing and thrilling with that hint of danger involved !

In 80s and early 90s, the amount of crackers and other items were limited due to budgetary restrictions; But gradually as standards of living went up the ability to splurge on big festivals also went up and the amount of money spent on firecrackers, the options available and noise generated have also gone up quite a lot. Until a few years back, I have heard people mention with pride in Tamil Nadu, the amount of money they spent on buying crackers and other fireworks. This used to be some kind of indicator of social status , the louder and more colourful and longer your firecracker orgy, the more ahead you were in society or something on those lines !!!

I wonder how firecrackers, 'flowerpots' etc got included as part of celebration. My guess is that since this is a celebration of dispelling darkness and vanquishing the enemy, crackers are perhaps able to symbolize this well with the visual effect as well as the sound effect.

I live in a neighborhood which is dotted with so many high-rise flats where Diwali was celebrated with lots of crackers and firework display this year . I started writing this after seeing a few birds which had curled up in a corner in my balcony while the crackers were creating a huge din outside. Normally when I open the balcony door and step out these pigeons,if they were around fly away immediately, yesterday night i saw them cowering in a corner and then understood why !

While we celebrate we trouble so many of these innocent birds and animals who get so disturbed by the unnatural flashes of light and loud noises which totally scare and confuse them.

Fire-crackers may work symbolically and I do admit I enjoyed it when I was a kid, but the cons far outweigh whatever pros they offer . Kids these days have so many avenues for fun anyways ! Air and noise pollution affect everyone, especially the most vulnerable sections - Children and senior citizens and of course animals and birds in the area.

Thankfully more and more people are moving away from firecrackers of late . Govt also is enforcing rules more strictly. Today morning in my daily newspaper in the front page between various Ads for electronic goods and real estate projects managed to find a news item which mentioned that the level of noise pollution (due to fire-crackers ) during Diwali this year have been lower than last year. Hope the trend continues and we all realize that there are better ways to celebrate the festival of lights and prosperity and to spread joy and celebrate it with near and dear ones !

Indian retail comes of age !

2010-10-31T15:46:00.004+09:00

When we were kids we were taken for a short 1 day or mostly half a day trips/picnics in school bus , one class at a time to some place inside the city. Aim was to have an outing and give kids a chance to learn and experience things outside their classrooms and books , the places you were taken to used to depend on how old you were. I remember going to see factories which had big machines , centers of science research , planetarium , parks , zoo , museums etc ( depending on what was available in the area). As you grew older , longer outings were planned for a few days with visits to some good holiday spot or a big city , but all these visits had at least one 'industrial visit' as part of the tour to ensure that parents are convinced that kids not only have fun , but also 'learn' something !

Last week , I had visited Bangalore and had to get a few essential household items , so decided to go to a Big Bazaar outlet nearby. This wasn't such a big outlet , it did have ground floor and first floor but this was by far the smallest store i have seen of the retail chain. Guess they have a store every few kms in B'lore . Now as we were entering , my mom and I noticed a long line of young students wearing blue and white uniform with a badge which proclaimed that they were from a school nearby gathering patiently outside the store ; We went in and saw a couple of teachers talking to someone inside the store. We were doing our shopping when we noticed the students entering slowly in a single file ,with teacher in tow constantly reminding them to be quiet and only to look and not touch what is on display. They went slowly through almost all aisles on both floors and were stopped once a while by teachers who kept explaining something And within 15-20 min they had covered the store and slowly moved out. The kids were apparently made 'aware' of super markets , how various items were stocked and got to observe how 'buying and selling' happened in markets !

Guess Indian retail industry really has come of age if 8 year olds are taken to educative field trips in middle class shopping centers ! Big Bazaar has joined the factories , reservoirs , museums as place to observe and learn for kids !!! This is probably a good indicator of how we have changed as a society , i remember things didn't look very rosy initially for organized retail , but slowly but steadily it has surely caught on with Indian middle class !

Enthiran - an experience !

2010-10-03T14:24:00.006+09:00

Rajni movies have long ceased to be just a 'movie' .... its an event , almost like a festival in TN. This time whole national media seem to have woken up to it and have covered it in excruciating detail , so there is nothing more to be said on that front !

Context is everything , even in movies getting a perspective of where the movie is set and the reasons why it is made / who the movie is addressing helps in a little in appreciating the movie IMO. Rajni movies follow a certain story arc , contain a few staple items which make the day for die-hard fans , pack a little extra for normal viewers also and the sheer screen presence of the man takes care of the rest. There is always less logic and more magic . These movies are a showcase for the biggest star in the country and little else. So when he teamed with a good big-budget movie maker like Shankar last time , i felt we might get something more than a usual Rajni movie . We didnt , we did get a good value for money masala movie showcasing Rajni well , but this time they have made amends and how !

There are two kinds of science fiction in the world of cinema , really classy ones which are more concerned with the ideas and impact of these on the world and explore them and then there is the more commercial twin of sci-fi movies , the ones which use sci-fi as one the key plot devices but are basically entertainers , these are sci-fi movies made for masses. Enthiran is a very well made sci-fi mass movie . The movie is a story of a humanoid-android trying to fit in in to society , explored how emotions are the what distinguishes us from them and what could happen if that is changed unleashing sociological complications and unleashing of a Frankenstein like monster ! But this sci-fi drama has been embellished with enough masala content , situated in a good vs evil drama populated with some classic tamil movie characters in 'good' and 'noble' hearted hero and his lady love ( Aishwarya looking really awesome ) and with the brilliant as usual music by ARR unfurled on screen in usual Shankar fashion with most exotic locations and brilliant explosion of color

Shankar the director has delivered this time , setting up the canvas by staying true to sci-fi story and breaking technology down for masses. The Pros and Cons of Robots / Androids devoid of emotion are put across well and the special effects are the best ever for any Indian movie and is close to Hollywood standard !

Again the movie is what it is only because of one man , the superstar who appears in 3 roles in the movie. The good scientist who creates the robot intending it a machine which will save huma lives , the Robot Chitti played neatly Rajni which moves from machine to almost human ( neatly done ! ) and finally the best of the lot - the evil robot played brilliantly by Rajni. He seemed to have lapped up the chance to finally unleash some meanness and everything from the look to the famous 'walk' and the climatic showdown (aided hugely by brilliant conceived by Special effects ) make it a great performance. The movie is a great showcase for him and he is simply outstanding and shines in every frame he is in. Aishwarya looks great and does what is needed from heroine in Rajni movie !

The roles of villian (Danny) and comedians (Santhanam and Karunas) are wasted as Rajni did both with ease . Minor quibbles involve the length of the movie overall , could have been 15-20 minute shorter . I know im nit-picking but I wish they could remove a few songs as they seemed to be hampering the flow rather than adding any value. "Kilimanjaro" song was a good brilliantly shot but i felt it wasnt helping the story at all ! Also the fight sequences , though well executed seemed to drag a bit too long . Shankar seems to have done a bit of self reference with mention of a song in Jeans to describe Aishwarya Rai's beauty and reference to Mudhalvan slipped in ! But overall good stuff easily outweigh the bad and makes it a really good watch. I simply loved a few lines like 'nakkal - nickel ' and also that scene during a fight in first half when Robot-Rajni becomes magnetic and pulls all metal and becomes a God !

All in all a great entertainer , the Indian Avatar if you will ! 160 cr is a lot of money , I dont know how easy it will be to replicate such movies , but if this movie works ( it should ) then we can hope for more sci-fi movies and other high tech movies which will push the envelope and tell more entertaining and visually amazing stories. The economics of movie business has changed of late with new markets abroad and higher prices from multiplexes and release across the world - this movie is supposedly released at 2000 theaters world wide. Still the budget is really big for an Indian movie esp regional movie , very few stars have the power to pull off something like this and carry it through. Only way for such movies to work is to make it the way this one is made with something for classes and for the masses .This one was totally worth every rupee spent by the makers and more than worth the ticket price for audience . Can Ra.One and others do the same ? Lets hope it happens and we get more such entertainment spectacles.

Movie review : Summer Wars

2010-09-29T15:35:00.003+09:00

Summer wars or Sama Wozu as it is called in Japanese is an animated Sci-fi movie which is essentially serves as a cautionary tale warning us not to lose touch with real world while exploring virtual (online ) world. Technology can be a boon or bane depending on its usage , the movie explores this theme. Made by the same guys who made the lovely "The Girl who leapt through time" , this one also has some neat animation and some impressive sequences of virtual world.

The story begins in Tokyo where two geeks are working as part-time support staff for Óz' the virtual world similar to Second life where users can create avatars and can live just like real world interacting with other users without barriers like language and with much more freedom and choices. In a scenario almost similar to where we are all headed in real world today with facebook and twitter replacing most of the real social interactions , people interact more and more through Óz' even for work. During the summer break , Kenji one of the geekish math wizards who is a little awkward socially is invited by most attractive girl in their school , Natsuki , to take up a summer job at her family house outside city . That summer is her grandmother's 90th birthday. Her grandmother is a powerful figure hailing from a rich and highly regarded dynasty , so a massive celebration is planned and a huge extended family arrive at the palatial house. Setting is similar to most Indian movies ! After arriving at the house Kenji is shocked when Natsuki announces that his job is to play her boy-friend for a week to make her Grandmother happy. The extended family features a lot of lovable and eccentric characters.

Then one fine day , Kenji gets a text message on his phone with what he thinks is a math puzzle . He works the whole night and manages to crack it and to his horror discovers later next day that the puzzle he solved helped someone crack the security code and hack into the virtual world 'Oz' . The person who hacked into Oz uses Kenji's id to carry out attacks and starts stealing many other ids and suddenly the brilliant online virtual world collapses . As the news spreads Kenji is painted as villain and is thrown out of the house and is taken to police station. En-route they realize that the whole city is in chaos as hacker has stolen ids of virtually everyone who matter , the traffic lights are not working , water hydrants go off , emergency services go haywire and almost all essential services are affected and life comes to stand-still in real world.

They return back to the house and Kenji tries to make amends using his math wizardry and almost wrests the control back but is rebuffed at the last minute by the all powerful hacking program. Then the entire family pitches in to support the attempt to strike back at the hacker and restore normalcy to the world. It is a the good old tale of family uniting to save the society , there are a few clichéd plot elements like most of the people who matter in the battle including the good and bad guys all being under the same roof , family disputes / love triangle.

However it was refreshing to see the same old story placed in a 'sci-fi' set-up , being an anime movie helps a lot as animation makes it possible to convey a lot of things which would taken really huge budgets to make in normal movies. In spite of being slightly predictable the movie has its heart in right place and its tough not to like it ! The romance between lead pair blossoms gradually and its also coming of age tale of the youngsters. More than anything it functions as a cautionary tale for todays generation who is getting lost in virtual world and is appeal to also pay attention to real world and family

Its not just a game !

2010-07-18T13:39:00.010+09:00

Sport is an indicator of the state of nation , it reflects the character of nation and represents the aspiration of its people , that is the reason why lot of importance is placed of sporting victories . Also the reason why people follow their national team with great fervor and corporate houses invest so much money in these events and in sport-stars.

60 odd years ago 2 nations were created at the end of colonial rule and both have taken their own unique route . Cricket field is very good indicator of the way India and Pakistan have fared and performed in the world stage. This should also answer the question of skeptics as to why is the nation so much obsessed with this game called cricket !

Indian cricket team traditionally was always good on paper with stylish players and spin wizards , but never quite managed to translate that potential into victories in world stage and were perfect representation of an under performing nation growing at 'Hindu rate of growth' whose economy stagnated with corruption , excessive protectionism and regulations , while other smaller 'Asian Tiger' countries leaped ahead in the first five decades of self rule.

Pakistan was also going through similar phase as India , a nation with lot of potential but never quite managing to put it across when it mattered , just like its cricket team which could be world beaters one day , challenging any nation and fold up meekly the next day.

At the start of this decade , Indian economy slowly started 'shining' , the growth really picked up and India was recognized as an emerging power by the world over the next few years . With steady growth of more than 6% over last couple of decades , India which is now the 4th largest economy is one of the fastest growing economies in the world

At the same time the cricket team under Sourav Ganguly and later under Rahul Dravid started challenging all major powers both at home and away on consistent basis. They started managing test wins in most of the major tours abroad , gradually improved that to series wins in Eng , Pak , WI , NZ and finally leading to No:1 ranking in tests with a win in T2o WC also in between ... Nation also firmly established itself in the world stage by opening up its economy resulting in a stable domestic market . The success of IPL is an example of the economic might of India , the amount of money it has been able to pour into the game and the way it has been able to attract cream of world cricket is sign of strength of its local economy and the belief of all investors in the potential for growth in the country.

For Pakistan whose team was the dangerous floater of 80s and 90s , the next decade was not so memorable as they could not match their neighbor in consistency, despite occasional dominant performances like T20 WC win last year it has been more of lows than highs.
Similarly the country which allied with US in war on terror has been believed by many to be running with the hare and hunting with hounds. There has been a gradual destabilization as the extremist forces have started making in roads and govt struggling to maintain stability and peace.
As the cricket team changed captain after captain - they have recently named their 7th captain in last 3 years - nation also plunged through leadership crisis with Democracy being overthrown by dictatorship which was also collapsed leaving the nation without effective leadership as extremist forces continued to attack and the country getting world wide attention for trouble within . As the country is battling to overcome infighting , Pak team is also going through similar phase with senior players being removed/banned and several players reprimanded for damaging team discipline , with players coming in and going out constantly

In contrast India has had relatively stable rule with a functioning democracy and governments getting re-elected and Test team had captains enjoying long runs at helm.

Quick look at numbers confirms the same :

Indian test team had a success rate of 20% before 2000 and in the next decade(post 2000) it has improved to 35 % . The Win/Loss ratio was 0.65 earlier and it has improved almost 100% to 1.22 in the last decade.

For Pakistan team had fared better than India in previous decades , success rate was at 27% earlier had only marginally improved to 29% in the last decade. Win/Loss ratio has actually dropped by around 50% for them, with the drop being more in the last few years. For Pakistan economy which was model economy initially with its high growth rate in the first few decades , the last few years have mirrored the fortunes of their team with Balance of payment crisis and GDP growth rate dipping in the last few years.

Note : Economy stats pulled from wiki and cricket stats pulled from cricinfo - rough calculations only ; Cricket - Only test records considered in order to measure last 60 years performance. Results against Bangladesh and Zim have been omitted while preparing this statistics as 1) They were not playing test cricket that much before last decade 2) I don't personally believe they are Test class teams !

Book Review : What is the What ?

2010-05-09T16:53:00.007+09:00

Honestly , it was the title which prompted me to pick up this book from Crossword bookstore ... Never judge a book by a cover they say , but most of the books i pick are based on hunch that they could be good by looking at their cover and what they say at the back of the cover !

What is the What - is an awe-inspiring story of struggles faced by a young orphaned boy named Achak from Sudan , who had to wade through a civil war affected homeland , walk for several months through difficult terrain , living on next to nothing , move through refugee camps across three countries to find a life of peace only to have it shattered and begin the journey all over again !

What makes this boy/man's story so special is because it is full of struggles against forces which have consistently tried to knock him out , shatter his spirit. But every single time he falls down , he still manages to pick up the pieces and get back on his feet and continue his journey. The story begins with young Achak living in his peaceful village as tensions slowly rise between Arabs and Christians in his land. It covers the journey of group of boys called 'Lost boys' who walk flee from the slaughter in their homelands to refugee camp in Ethiopia and later to Kenya . Before finally managing to reach USA . As it is told from point of view of young boy there are no political overtones and this is purely the story of how hatred/communal violence affects common men.

This real-life story of Achak Deng is truly inspirational stuff and is well worth a read for the courage it gives to every reader to face the challenges of life bravely and do whatever you can to improve your life and that of people around you. I picked up this book when I was going through slightly rough phase in my life , but my troubles seemed very trivial compared to challenges this boy had faced and reading this book improved my spirits considerably and made me look at myself differently and acknowledge how privileged we are growing up in a relatively secure environment. This is a book which tells us how follies of a few have damaged the lives of millions irreparably , but also offers hope that despite all the challenges where there is a will to succeed there is always a way

Wolf Totem - Book review

2010-05-01T15:02:00.008+09:00

Wolf - is an animal with which humans had a very long and old connection right from stone ages where men were supposed to scavenge from Wolf kills. Their strength,agility, teamwork - hunting packs with defined territories and communicating through howls makes them one of the best predators in any condition and hence most feared opponents for men ; precisely the reason they have been ruthlessly hunted and pushed to wilderness. But these qualities also make them an enemy men revere , right from Native Americans to Grasslanders in Mongolia , wolf is a much respected foe and part of their traditions. It is said that in Europe as men began settle down and clear forests for large scale farming wolf was a big scourge attacking livestock , this led to tales connecting Wolf with Satan , leading to massive hunts to wipe out wolf population. Our perception of wolf is likely to be influenced by the biased view of farmers who saw them as enemies and much of popular literature (tales of werewolves) and culture backs this view.

Jiang Rong's 'Wolf Totem' offers a radically different view of this animal , the book is set somewhere in 1960s in Inner Mongolia during Cultural revolution in China. This book is tale of a young Beijing student sent to live in harsh countryside as punishment . Book describes life of nomadic Mongolians , their traditions and rituals and paints a fascinating picture of wolf , which is feared , hunted yet highly respected by the local mongol grasslanders. For them Wolf is their biggest enemy , but they also understand the crucial role wolf plays in maintaining the balance of Eco-system by keeping the population of other inhabitants of grassland in control and ensuring that land remains green and natural balance is maintained. Those men understood their role in their tug of war with wolves which ensured that Mongols and their animals remained very tough and combative and they in turn by hunting wolves , without wiping them out maintained this balance. The book beautifully describes some fascinating battles between wolves and men , where lot of strategy is employed by both parties and paints wolves as a very sharp thinkers , who carefully assess the situation , plan and execute their attacks to perfection.

The protagonists (Chinese students) wholeheartedly adopt the customs and practices of traditional mongols , earning respect of locals and gaining acceptance. But their relations take a turn when the students adopt and try to raise wolf cub in captivity wanting to understand more about nature of wolves and understand the Wolf totem. The students form a great bond with the cub , but realize gradually that it can never be raised in confinement , the fate of the once wild wolf cub raised under chains in a way is a metaphor for how man has taken control of nature.

A beautiful and serene pastureland which sustains wide variety of flora and fauna has managed to maintain itself and to provide for people living there for ten thousand years. But ever increasing of population of China means farmers from plains have to look elsewhere for food leading to a battle of traditional nomadic herders with modern agrarian society seeking to get more out of the land . At the same time the clashes between man vs nature led by their finest guardians - the Wolves keep happening , the arrival of increasing numbers of men from plains of China along with arrival of modern weapons threatens to totally tilt this delicate balance and send things spiraling out of control. This book describes the cost nature has to bear to support the progress and advance of human race , through the lives of these herdsmen it proposes how we could have lived in harmony with nature. The consequences of human progress on the whole eco-system of Inner Mongolia is a great read and it is something people anywhere in the world should be able to relate to.

A Curious Case Indeed !

2010-03-29T02:49:00.008+09:00

In 2008 there was this wonderful movie made by David Fincher called "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" , based on a short story of same name by F.Scott Fitzgerald. The movie was about titular character who was born as 70 year old and aged in reverse . Curiously as he grew older (age-wise) , Benjamin Button kept getting better , fitter , energetic and younger. Age is one those concepts which we always love to challenge as it dictates what we can/should do , it creates an invisible boundary or box limiting the roles to be played during that period of life. Hence the concept of being able to defy and move opposite to age and what it entails is a very fascinating subject.

Of late in India , there seems to be a 'Benjamin Button' effect going around , clock seems to be running in reverse all over. First there was this case of country's biggest ever superstar actor who is in late 60s , sending the clock for toss and playing a 12 year old kid suffering from progeria. While it could definitely be said that Mr.Bachchan fitted the role to perfection and nailed it with his portrayal , same unfortunately cannot be said about another blockbuster movie which hit the screen earlier this year. The movie has a title which in a way proclaimed what it expected the audience to be ! It had an actor in mid 40s and two other actor in 30s hoodwinking concepts of age and playing college kids who challenge education system with glee and with great commercial success ! The movie in spite of strange choice of age-defying actors did work thanks to the basic ideas espoused by the movie and its good presentation . Credit is also due to the actors for having put in effort to ensure they somewhat fit the bill. The concept has been such a huge success that this month in India there has been a spate of Ads on TV starring these actors with one of them reprising a college boy role again in a series of Ads for a telecom operator .The other actor , the super star , amazingly continues to play yet another age-defying role this time of a young son leaving family for first time to big city for his first job (!) , promising to stay in touch with his parents and also his college going girlfriend through his cellphone ! If this is not enough the 3rd actor , who is from South India , appears in an ad for a bathing soap whose USP is that it helps hide age and makes you look much much younger !!!

Now for some serious time benders - in the field of sport. This years' IPL has just proved that age is just another statistic which can be bandied about during pre-match analysis and discussions , but out there on the cricket field it hardly matters. The so called veterans of the game , who were supposed to be on their last leg and were being nudged out by media decided that this is the time to roar back . Sachin Tendulkar has never batted so well ; In international cricket in the last few months He has played some stupendous innings and in IPL that form seems to be continuing He can hardly put a foot wrong of late . Kallis seems to have struck the form of his life and in the initial matches no one could even get him out . Vaas rocked the party right from start of season with a clutch of wickets . Hayden put many youngsters to shade with his experimental Mongoose bat , rest of the veteran gang - Murali , Kumble , Dada , Gilchrist , Warne are all having a ball this season and seem to be more competitive than most youngsters. And the buzz is that Brian Lara is planning to come back and is widely believed to be in contention for a place in one of the new franchisees , with Kemp and Martyn also playing (and heck with Michael Schumacher behind the wheels of a F1 car ) one could be excused if there was a confusion on which decade we are in !

What has happened to world suddenly i wonder , the clock seems to be turned back somehow ! What next i wonder ?!

No Country for bowlers

2010-03-06T01:44:00.011+09:00

It was a hot March evening - about middle of last decade - me and my roomie were casually watching cricket on TV and saw Ricky Ponting demolish South Africans in style with a brilliant knock and lead Australia to an unbelievable 434 in 50 overs ... tht was quite a score at that time . But when South Africans began the chase , we knew that this was something special and we sat through entire 50 overs not able to believe what we were witnessing , it was a run feast - yes . Bowlers were getting slaughtered - yes . But it was fun to watch and was good cricket . South Africa pulled off an amazing win in the end in what is even now billed as one of the greatest games in ODI cricket , and no total was safe after that in ODIs. After 2005 esp , we have seen a run glut in ODIs with scores of 300+ being commonplace . Somewhere during middle of last decade , when the attendence started dropping for cricket matches a new crisper format was created called T20 . Matches getting over within 3.5 hours , just 20 overs per team but with runs scored almost at twice the pace of ODI cricket !

With advent of T20 , batsmen started getting more creative with just a few overs to play they started taking more risks and changed the whole mindset of building an innings and consequently opened up whole new ways to score runs . Reverse sweeps , scoop shots , switch hits started getting employed and if that was not enough stricter rules for wides , Free-hits for front-foot no-balls meant that noose tightened further for bowlers. Stats-wise last few years have been the worst time ever in cricket for bowlers , never have their clan been thrashed around so much , in the era of T20 an economy rate of 6 runs per over is a luxury and is celebrated as achievement . Its not only in T20 but in ODIs and test cricket too batsmen have started thriving , scoring runs at fast clip.
It would seem like they have been liberated from some curse which had for generations held them back and had controlled their ability to attack and decimate their rivals the bowlers , their seemed to some natural order of things , balance of nature which allowed batsmen to prevail in most contests , but always allowed bowlers to comeback strongly call shots too on many occasions and stamp their authority enough to ensure there was always a contest between bat and ball ... but something seems to have snapped during late 2000s , never before have bowlers appeared so clueless as a tribe (of course there are a few practitioners who still conjure up magic , but they are a rare breed indeed) ... it could be the emergence of subcontinent where tracks are bowlers graveyard , but that is just one factor ... matches all over the world in last few years have produced high scores ... T20 cricket as I mentioned earlier must have played its part too in increasing the appetite of batsmen. How else do we explain Indian test team successfully chasing a near 400 4th innings target to win a test match on final day !

Experts have mentioned that this is not an overnight phenomenon and this is something which has been happening over the years with batsmen getting benefit of good protective gear , better bats , smaller grounds , stricter laws which reduce scope for bodily harm and ensure bowlers bowl in a channel where batsmen can if they play properly - hit the ball , docile pitches , sheer workload which burns out most bowlers have all played a part in slowly titling the balance more and more away from bowlers. I think these might be the set of reasons which has caused this imbalance in the game between the two traditional opponents ... But the tipping factor to me is that match in 2006 when the myth of an impossible to chase target was demolished !

But is it all over for the bowlers ? Have they been reduced to pathetic losers who need to scratch and bite the cricket ball on sly to manage to compete with batsmen ? Are they mere accompaniment pieces to batting armies , playing support roles to batsmen ?

The prognosis doesn't look very good at the moment for bowling , but there are still a breed of fighters left the ones who deliver precise yorkers , ones who bowl with genuine pace , ones who manage beat the batsmen with their flight and variations. But they are a diminishing tribe , for the sake of the game lets hope they prosper and come up with newer tricks in their sleeve to restore the balance. This IPL did suggest that even though it is show of batting might ... there are guys who can 'swing' or spin the match away with the ball too ... even in matches where 200 runs are scored in 18 overs .. 2 tight overs in the end turned a possible record chase into a close fight ... however bowlers need to move away from playing supporting role by just stemming the flow of runs and its time they asserted their might with new innovative wicket taking deliveries!

Superstitions in modern world !

2010-02-20T16:11:00.008+09:00

We were getting ready to catch the latest movie on Friday evening , i was at a friend's place waiting for him to get ready. Just 20 min to go for the movie , he was searching for his car keys and finally when he found it and when we were about to get out , i sneezed ! Had this nasty cold for last couple of days and had been sneezing throughout evening , nothing different in the way i sneezed this time . However my friend seemed to have a different opinion , he stared hard at me then inexplicably instead of following me out of the house and locking it , he went back and sat on the sofa ! 19 min to go for movie ... i was really surprised and asked him whats going on ? He said "you sneezed" ... then added "they say when someone sneezes before you go out for something , its not good sign , you should sneeze again or we need to wait for a couple of minutes " . Now suddenly i was the guilty party , in spite of not misplacing keys and despite being ready much before time , by this act of sneezing i had delayed our departure and now i suddenly realized that he actually expected me to sneeze again to ward of the evil ! i told him to stop this nonsense and marched him out ... though he came , it still nagged me this behavior came from a guy raised in city ! News channels / newspapers report about a lot of superstitions and medieval practices followed in rural hinterlands , but incident above made me look around in urban India for superstitions.

Of course harmless ones like believing that our cricket team will win the match if we continue sitting in the same position on our sofa is amusing and charming you could say. But there several annoying ones as well where the particular practice must have had some relevance when our ancestors initiated the practice , but following them in today's age without thinking whether it is relevant or not is foolish IMO

Some practices actually make a lot of sense and probably because they didn't have any scientific basis to support the belief , some religious explanation was provided to ensure that people follow that practice . The belief in astrology is another perplexing thing , sun-sign and stuff are really harmless obsessions . What really astonishes me is that lot of educated youngsters think astrology is a science ! The fact that college educated youngsters confuse Astrology with Astronomy is a sad reflection of our education system !

Recent solar eclipse was another reality check on the superstitious urban India , plethora of e-mails started floating around ( driven by older generation who have become net-savvy of late ! ) advising everyone the dos and don't s of eclipse. I got a mail from someone telling me what Hindu's should do to ward off eclipse evils , including the mantras to be recited. Mail also mentioned that no food should be consumed during eclipse( 11am to 3:30 pm on that day) and we should take bath as soon as eclipse is over before doing any activity . Quick search online tells us that there is no scientific basis for this , according to scientific community solar eclipse is a brilliant celestial event , however care should be taken not to view the sun directly during the event. I wrote back with links mentioning that as far as i know we need to avoid looking at sun otherwise we should do fine. I got a mail back saying , Sun releases harmful rays which pollute the food and will cause stomach upset if food is consumed during 11am - 3 pm when eclipse had occurred. The person suggested waiting till 3pm and then consuming the food . My further questions like - "wont the food prepared during the day contain these so called 'harmful rays' " ? Wont the raw materials get hit by radiation ? Wont entire food in the world get tainted that way , should we stop eating forever ? - did not elicit any response ! Although someone else suggested adding Tulsi leaf is a sure-fire way to get rid of all the 'germs' and radiations !!!
I tried to reason with another person who endorsed the contents of mail that by not consuming food during proper time we will actually be causing indigestion and stomach upset . I got a reply that such a thing wont happen as it is ok to consume Milk , biscuits etc during eclipse , we should not eat proper meal that's all ! I was totally stumped and did not have any response to offer for such gems of wisdom ... and these are the answers i got from educated , working professionals !

Its very amusing yet sad all the same , as people are sullying our glorious tradition and culture by blindly following practices . Im not saying everything we do is stupid or meaningless , there must have been precise reasons for each and every cultural / religious practice and belief . For eg , wrt solar eclipse , our wise ancestors would have probably understood this problem and had through religious myths ensured that people avoid looking at sun and even stepping out during eclipse , as a precautionary measure they would have ensured we don't perform any activity during that time.
In today's world thanks to scientific advancement , we are in a much better position to know things and instead of trying to understand why we are doing something , people still believe in blindly trusting the wisdom of ancestors. Knowledge is a continuous process and every generation owes it to next generation to keep finding out things and improving the knowledge of how and why things happen . But somewhere down the line the purpose of the whole thing seems to be lost with regards to our traditions , questioning them gets you branded as non-conformist rebel and as arrogant youngster ! Its really frustrating when people , even educated people, living in urban India working as software engineers follow these ancient beliefs without really thinking

Avatar - An experience !

2009-12-20T18:58:00.008+09:00

Managed to catch the most anticipated movie of the year , James Cameron's 'Avatar' yesterday at IMAX in Mumbai . Decided to wait for a day to let whatever i saw sink before i attempt to write something about it , this is not just the review of the movie ... this is about the experience of watching the whole thing unfold. Its taken a long time , but this one is worth all that time and effort invested Cameron has delivered a movie which will definitely be remembered for a long while , whatever be the merits or demerits ... this is one movie which should change the whole movie going experience and how movies are made forever. I had read lot of stuff about the new kind of cameras used , the technological advancements , 'performance capture' techniques etc .. and movie seems to achieve what the makers set out to create an awe inducing visual spectacle.
As i sat wearing those uncomfortable 3-D glasses , the movie moved in same expected arc but right when Sam Worthington and Sigourney Weaver were plugged to their respective Avatars and went out to explore forests of Pandora ... the way Cameron managed to capture the planet through 3-D images I felt like I was right there along with them leaving my body behind in the multiplex seat !

I Have not seen such brilliant usage of 3-D imagery before , in almost all 3-D movies till now .. the 3-D part was just a gimmick to keep audience enthralled with an occasional object thrown at audience or some such tricks .. but this was the real deal ! The visuals trump everything else and easily makes us overlook the somewhat weak story , friendly nature of proceedings aimed at generating a blockbuster movie . The moment Pandora's flora and fauna were showcased i was reminded of the shot from Jurassic park when i saw real looking Dinosaurs running along on lush green landscape ... that was a great cinematic moment , this one was similar. These kind of movies are milestones and remind us what the medium is capable of ! Hopefully the advancement in technology and brilliance with which the story has been executed on screen will ensure other filmmakers can dream more such brilliant projects and will have the technical ability to translate those visions onto screen effectively !

Storywise as many reviewers have said this was "Dances with Wolves" set in space ! That Kevin Costner western sure seems to have acted as an inspiration to this one , but in spirit this is close to another visual masterpiece Hayao Miyazaki's "Princess Mononoke" . Mononoke was about how nature and all beasts live in complete harmony with man getting more greedy and trying to take more than the fair share through deforestation and industrialization. Cameron delivers a similar message here with hints of mistreatment of native Americans (Naavi do seem to resemble them ! ) and also hints of American misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. Its still the same old good vs evil clash with clear demarcation of both to make things very simple ! While the earlier mentioned movies had subtle messages , this one makes it very clear with mean Military thugs with machine guns and missiles taking on primitive naavi armed with bows and arrows and large heart !!! The actors are pretty competent in their roles and 'performance capture' works well as avatars manage to convey a lot of emotions and are totally convincing.

The World of Pandora viewed through 3-D in Imax is as real as it can get on screen , Cameron has painstakingly created an entire planet , fascinating plants and animals , 10 foot tall Naavi with their blue skin - feline features , their language , culture and what not. This Tolkien like creation itself deserves repeated viewing to appreciate. Despite some minor misgivings I think this one is a ground breaking effort and no words can capture the experience of watching and getting transported to a strange new world !

PS : For Avatar 2 , i sure would like to see the coporate sleazebag played by Giovanni Ribisi coming back maybe even with an Avatar and introducing Na'vi people to credit card , cable tv and internet connection and then lets see how the game changes !!!

Rocket Singh - the pursuit of honesty !

2009-12-13T01:46:00.012+09:00

Synopsis : A youngster finishes college (just scrapes through) decides Sales is the field for him and joins a Computer sales firm and gets exposed to the big bad world of sales , involving cut throat competition , hostile colleagues who suspect others of backstabbing them , People expecting bribes , companies over charging customers to make profit ( How dare they make so much money like this !) , lack of ethics etc .. u get the drift by now ... Young man , enters gets shocked and scarred and faces the challenges and tries to carve a niche for himself

When a story like this comes on Indian movie screens ... you expect them to be made by one Mr.Madhur Bhandarkar and you expect some standard judgments to passed on the big bad world of sales and unholy nexus between salesmen , politicians , mafia , MNCs , USA , CIA , Headley or whoever !

Also the movie would have been plainly called "Sales" !!!

But this one aint called sales! Its got a delightful name and a makes a real good sales pitch through a clever trailor and has Ranbir Kapoor in lead and is made by the most promising duo of Shimit Amin and Jaideep Sahni ... just like Rocket Sales corp in the movie , they represent good meaningful stuff without exploiting the target audience , this was my expectation when i went for this one

After the movie i can say for sure it was a refreshingly take on the subject , its leisurely paced and well acted and doesn't have any irritating commercial elements like needless songs /item numbers , sub plots to spice up or entertain/reach out to all sections of audience .. this is a very neat effort no doubt ... lot of positives .. lot of heart warming moments and smartness by the movie makers ... right from the time titles roll

It captures the struggle of a middle class boy to achieve his ambitions and to make a mark in something which he feels he should be good at ... it plays out almost like cross between "Pursuit of Happyness" and "Boiler room" ... elements of struggle to achieve your goal in a highly competitive environment and disillusions in discovering that the whole setup is one big con ... Like in Boiler room , HP Singh also faces moral dilemma and the route that he takes though is slightly different putting himself in a unfavorable position legally though . The movie is his fight against a bad system which consumes basic good in humans and converts them to mean things driven only by money .. typical pitfalls of young and ambitious who sacrifice a lot to gain success ! is it worth ? it is there a way out ? is what the film tries to explore

I was let down by the length of the movie and lack of cleverness in the script ... dont get me wrong it wasnt a bad movie .. but proceeding did get a bit monotonous after a while .. perhaps it was the weight of expectations from previous outings of the director , was always waiting for the tour de force towards the end , but all we got were a serious of long speeches ! Some plot elements were plain guessable and at times felt let down by the way things moved, as lot of people in the audience remarked (and i do concur ) this was almost like a TV serial !

Despite all that a satisfactory movie .. still feel it could have been much more given the talent of its makers and their sensibilities .. hoping this trend of making good movies continues and delivers even better fare in the coming year!

T - 20 , An incredible Journey !

2009-11-15T05:39:00.007+09:00

I had started following cricket in early 90s , around 91 i think , started reading newspapers and 'Sportstar' magazine . Since the time i started following Indian cricket there was this young kid with curly hair , who was regarded as the most talented by one and all . As kids we loved him as he was a youngster who could take on much older guys , it also helped that he was bloody good . Benson & Hedges cup tri -series in Aus (91-92) was when i started following live cricket action on TV first time , used to wake up early and follow the matches , thts when i saw Sachin in action for the first time ! That tour confirmed to the world what he was one of the most talented and complete batsmen with his centuries in Sydney and Perth . For me as a viewer that series was the beginning of the era of a legend whose career i would be following eagerly over two decades . A career with a lot of promise which actually ended up getting fulfilled , one with a lot of expectation which were easily surpassed effortless by the man known as The Little Master , but for the legions of cricket crazy fans in India for whom the game is nothing short of religion , He is God !

Over last 2 decades a lot has changed in India , post liberalization and opening up of economy the country has totally transformed , among all the crazy transformations the only constant has been the His presence in the Indian line-up . They say 90s was the decade of hope after a long period of just sustaining and surviving India decided to break shackles and slowly tried to make its presence felt . Sachin was a symbol of that hope of 90s , a country that was changing ,as TV sets became more common the fanatic worship had begun , then and now, He was/is always the reigning deity and He never disappointed the millions. Indian cricket in 90s began and ended with Sachin Tendulkar , such was our belief in Him that the moment He got out millions of Indians without a second thought used to switch off the TV and come out of the bubble of hope and exuberance that was built by His mere presence at the crease . As long as He was around we were always in the game was what majority of Indians felt.

As 90s ended , India as an economy had acted on the promise just like Sachin . Economic growth took off in 2000s , things started improving all around , IT , communications , infrastructure boomed , basic facilities improved , red tapism had gone down , private sector was running the show now , cable TV and news channels had emerged and for many Indians life started getting better. The cricket team also improved , VVS Laxman and Dravid put up a huge partnership following on and even without Sachin doing too much India made a miraculous comeback and defeated Aussies. More victories started coming , other support players emerged , Ganguly was the brave new captain .. Sehwag was new hard-hitting fearless opener cracking triple centuries ; But for most of us He was still the no:1!

The presence of an effective support cast meant a lot of burden was lifted off His shoulder/elbow (the tennis one !) He moved to a different role that of a consolidator , the boy ripped apart attacks was cast aside and the man who could ruthlessly accumulate runs was born. We didn't like it initially we wanted the old kid back , one who would pummel the opposition to surrender , the one who would create nightmares for the bowlers even if they were regarded as Greatest Leg-spinner ever. But He knew better and He excelled in his new role as a mentor figure for youngsters , someone who would guide India home.

Economy was now clocking steady growth , BSE Sensex was mirroring the run aggregate of Sachin and things around us were improving at a steady rate , Sachin was also scoring at a steady pace . However time and again critics would surface point out flaws only to have The Little Master put them to shame with an impeccable display of batting They said he cant play in finals , He thrashed Aussies with a 117 and 91 in 2 finals to guide India to victory in the CB series finals in 2008 , they said he cant play in the 4th innings in test match , He scored an assured century and guided India to a brilliant victory chasing a huge 387 run target in 4th innings at Chennai . Just when u think you have seen it all , He turns the clock back and comes up with knocks like the 175 in the recent ODI agains Australia which turned an impossible run chase to a thrilling one and almost had India coasting home !

To the person up there .... Thanks a lot for 20 years of Tendulkar !

Back to the Past !

2009-10-21T02:41:00.000+09:00

Recently went to attend the marriage of a friend of mine in a small city in Kerala called Calicut (or Kozhikode ) ... i had decided to travel alone in train (good time to read books/introspect was what i thought) . Anyways i finally landed up in Calicut (as i like to call it) after a journey of 20 hours ... actually i was landing up in Calicut after a journey of 15 years....
When i was a kid ( my parents were getting transferred every 4 yrs to another location at work) i had spent 4 yrs in Calicut ..that was between age 9-13 of my life ...so when i think of childhood .. this is where the rewind lands ... we lived in an apartment complex (rarity in those parts in early 90s) , lots of kids to play/hangout with , tht school , traveling by buses alone for first time in life , playing cricket / football in the play ground we had ... there were lot of memories ...
During the journey , i was reading this book called "Istanbul" by Orhan Pamuk , in which the author reminiscences about his childhood in Istanbul , so promised myself tht maybe i will just go and re-visit these places i last saw 15 yrs back ... a couple of times i had passed through this city , i was always tempted to those parts of the city i grew up in .. but never went ... infact i have never re-visited any place of my childhood or previous years ... thats something people who grew up in same place may not understand .. every time u shift ur base to a new place u leave lots of things behind and start afresh and then again leave it behind and move on .. thts what we did and i actually liked it .. its a bit sad . But again things are never same even if u stayed in same place as my friends tell me ... even if u don't physically move ... things around you will change

Anyways this time i was in Calicut the day before the wedding and i had reached much before even the wedding party had arrived .. so i checked in to the hotel and after debating internally whether to actually make the visit or just stay in the bed watching cricket on tv ... my friends were supposed to join me there in the morning called up to say they wud arrive by afternoon only ! so there u go .. i showered got ready and stepped into the heat ... it felt good to back in this place .. the sun ,the heat , the bustle .. the language ... the shops .. all so familiar ... locked away in a corner of your memory ... occasionally i wud see a building/landmark which i knew from childhood days... the hotel was located in a place i used to visit frequently earlier , so easily located the bus-stop and got into the correct bus which wud have taken me 'home' 15 yrs back ... now its another place, just an address .. took the ticket till last stop as i ddnt know from where i wud start my 'back to past' tour .. how much i wud cover ... there were so many places (2-3km radius tht kids of 10-12 yrs explore ) to see .. so many memories to revist ... before i knew it i was in familiar land .. things had definitely changed ... but heart warmed up whenever a familiar house , building came ... the bus was moving in a cruise mode (there were stops every 500m) finally reached the last stop ... it was bang opposite my School ... the school was located in a house/palace once owned by the erstwhile ruler of the place the Zamorins , the school had expanded with main building being the 'palace' like one , but most of the classrooms were in proper concrete buildings built nearby in same sprawling compound ... whenever i think of my school i always remember the huge building and big wide open space in front of the main building ...we used to play cricket there and scoring a boundary / hitting six then was very tough as it was really huge... So I got out of the bus and headed to the school .. it was a Sunday , so the gates were shut ... the walls which were huge and intimidating then were just my chest height now .. the playground looked pretty normal ... infact school was looking much smaller , cramped as opposed to a spacious sprawling palatial building tht was residing in my memory ... i somehow couldnt go in .. it was looking strange n different in someways unsettling .. anyways no one was around and the gate was closed ... i turned back and decided i shuld probably walk as sometimes i used to from school to home ... i knew a lot of shortcuts ... while walking on the main road .. i cud see a lot of such smaller roads i used to take as a kid , roads leading to some friend's house ... seemed familiar , but cudnt recall ... so i stuck to the main road as i was not sure whether i shud venture down those lanes ... after walking for 5 mins , the heat got better off me ... i hailed a rick and reached the area where i used to live earlier , got down and saw the video library there had become a VCD/DVD shop ! my barber shop was still there , so was the bakery and the grocery store , some things hadn't changed ... i walked to my apartment complex ... there was a security gaurd there ! What do i tell him ? My house address ? i used to know a lot of people there and almost all of them were locals who owned the flats surely there must be people i know over there still ... as i paused outside , the gaurd just got up and went out ... should i go in or not ? ... finally had a good look from outside ... took a walk down the road remembering the good old days .. flood of memories rushed by when i took in familiar sights the house nearby where cricket balls used to disappear if we hit a six from the playground (it was six and out as balls were tough to retrieve !) ... decided to check out the playground on the backside , wall on the other side was pretty low so cud see the apartments more clearly ... they looked different now with a different shade of paint ... i saw the playground of my childhood where we used to play cricket and at times soccer / badminton ... in my memories it is a sufficiently big ground ...but as i looked over the wall at tht ground suddenly things seemed to have changed just like my school .. the ground was so small ... it took a while for it properly sink in .... what had happened here ? what had changed ? How did it reduce in size ? why is it all different i wondered , got back to my hotel room without any further exploration ... then the obvious answer came to me .. nothing had changed .. it was just the perspective ... the boy who was looking at these things had grown... maybe thats how the world changes ... u just grow bigger !

Some thoughts on PWYW model

2009-10-08T01:35:00.004+09:00

Recently read a couple of posts on Freaknomics blog about 'Pay What you Wish' model , originating from this story of someone starting a taxi service where you can name what you want to pay.
In India also we have similar non-fixed price service , but only issue is the taxi driver doesn't easily agree to your price and we haggle and arrive at what is mutually deemed as the 'right' price.

But what is the right price for any product or service ? who decides it ? isnt it a great step in Customer satisfaction (delight ) to let her/him name the price for the service she/he enjoyed ?

Pay what you Wish Model hence is an interesting model , something which is very bold ,daring, risky , but still if cleverly implemented will be a very successful one !

Recently when i was studying in Singapore , we used to visit this Indian Restaurant called "Annalakshmi" in ChinaTown , which used to serve really good South Indian food , the ambience was also very nice , it was part of a group of charitable institutions in India and was run by volunteers. This restaurant in Singapore , implemented PWYW model , there used to be buffet system , the food was really tasty and of good quality. But they didnt have any price printed in the menu card , the price you wanted to pay for the food consumed was left to you.

Whenever i visited , there was a lady who used to enquire if we were satisfied with the food and service and used to ask us the total number of people , before accepting the money. We used to visit the place often , still by our estimate we used to overpay most of the times as the entire experience was too good that you loosen your purse strings without second thoughts . Again here we didn't mind because the 'profits' from this restaurant was used for charitable purposes only.

It is the social element which is a key factor in this model , we don't want to be seen as the guys who dont pay properly by the patrons of the restaurant . The system works best if you dont know what others are paying for the same service. Also the service/product needs to be good goes without saying !

Another set of people use a variant of this model very successfully in India , the guys who come to collect money for festivals /temples ... they never quote any specific amount as the donation for these causes is always a voluntary one by the public. Though you hardly have a choice and rarely do people say no to a donation for religious cause . These guys were pretty enterprising they always used to carry notebooks / receipts printed with names of certain people who had paid say Rs.100 , when you actually wanted to pay only Rs.10 to the guy. Now even though the guy has not quoted any price for the donation and just asks you money ... you see what some other folks have paid and the social pressure ensures you never underpay him and actually in more instances really overpay !

Tipping in a restaurant , is another PWYW service - the guy never demands it , but its a social convention . The amount of tip depends majorly on the experience in the restaurant.

In normal PWYW model , this tendency to overpay is one bad thing about this model - u logically want to pay as less as possible but you feel guilty about it and your conscience makes you overpay. But is it really overpaying ? We actually end up paying what we think/conclude (at that point of time) is the 'right' price and often there is a satisfaction in paying whatever we wished to pay and even if we got conned into paying that amount ! On top of this there is a tremendous 'goodwill' associated with the concept too , the very fact that someone trusts you to evaluate their performance/value and empowered you to decide the right price itself makes this little extra shelled out worthwhile !!!

It would be really interesting to see this model being extended successfully elsewhere for what is deemed conventional services too . How would it be if you could name your price for whatever you purchase and same way get paid for your work at prices deemed right by others and what if all parties concerned are happy with the arrangement? Possible ? Well then we would be at Utopia right ?!

Movie-meter-2

2009-08-29T11:18:00.003+09:00

In my previous post i had cribbed a lot about how people use hype generated by movie , its star power and Box-office success as criterion to measure whether movie is good or not ... which i feel is not correct . Since i got started on it and also because i watch a lot of movies these days , i feel i should pen down how i pick out 'good' movies , what are the criterion's i use for choosing movies to watch.

Movie critic plays a very important role in guiding us on what movies to watch and in setting the basic expectations about the movie , again its not the rating given by critic it is the reason why he/she recommends/thrashes the movie that is important for me. Again critics are also humans and they would obviously write reasons why they like the movie , why they think the movie should be watched/not .... It may or may not match your view of world/movies ... critics' sensibilities and your sensibilities may or may not match ... I have a set of critics whose views/opinions i concur with on most occasions and i have mostly agreed with their recommendations , so it is pretty helpful in choosing movies.

But more than critics , my favorite method of choosing movies to watch is through imdb site ... again this is public opinion , unlike BO verdict , this is opinion by people who watch a lot of movies and whose tastes mirror those of an informed movie viewer , Imdb ratings are a very useful guide to determine whether to watch a movie or not, when you are not very sure.
But again recent movies , popular genres among the voting public always get better ratings ... but despite a few faults its more or less most accurate way of determining if movie is watchable
There are also sites like Rotten-tomatoes , metacritic which are aggregators of reviews/rating by critics and should appeal to more serious or more evolved film viewers.
The Top 100/250 lists (there are various versions floating around) represents another fascinating way of choosing movies , here are the best (in the eyes of certain experts) movies chosen and arranged in order for you ... whether these are best or not is not the point , but these are definitely movies which stand out in some way or other ... Lists represent a very good way to discover great movies , while on lists i think Imdb all time top 250 list is the most accessible to the average film goer , if she/he wants to undertake this journey to discover better movies.
Since it is voted by a public consisting of informed movie viewers this list would be the best place to start looking for good movies to watch , the list ofcourse is a bit lopsided with recent movies dominating it . Personally im targeting to watch all the top 250 movies from this list , as i discover a movie i discover a lot more about that genre/director and ending up watching a lot more movies made by the director/in that genre which may not be present in the list but are definitely enjoyable. This list in a way guides me to a lot more movies , i might deviate sometimes , but by following this kind of list i do explore all popular , highly regarded movies of all genres.

In various forums , i have noticed a lot of average film viewer complaining that most these top movies are over-rated or beyond their grasp and many don't see a point in viewing these movies and are happy catching up with latest blockbuster movies . They have a pattern for viewing movies and dont see a point in experimenting. But that is never the case , our choices and preference changes/should change during the course of time , hopefully for the better. As noted critic Roger Ebert puts it "one hopes being an average moviegoer is not the end of the road: that one starts as a below-average filmgoer, passes through average, and, guided by the labors of America's hardworking film critics, arrives in"

When Pigs Could Fly !

2009-08-23T21:26:00.009+09:00

It was the time (of) Swine Flu !

For a few months now we have been hearing about 'Swine flu' or technically proper term 'H1N1'virus . The current form of the pandemic had originated in Mexico and has since then slowly spread across the world - . The first recorded case was in Hyderabad way back in May

As expected after a while it started spreading to other parts of the country . But the entire system which was aware of this still waited and only when it reached the panic button was pressed. Panic started in Pune where lot of cases started getting reported then it slowly spread to Mumbai. Even though authorities stepped in handled things well their actions were more of reactionary , pro activeness was unfortunately missing. Whether the virus was spreading or not , the panic was spreading very fast ! To make matters worse , testing for this could be done only in govt labs and only certain hospitals could treat the patients all this just increased the pressure and panic. Even the correct masks to be used were also in short supply.

Elsewhere in city , administrators surprisingly arranged an SMS poll to general public to gather inputs on whether schools should shut down or not in the wake of a possible epidemic. The whole idea of 'sms poll' was ironically thrashed in mainstream media through a couple of other opinion polls ! Its hard to disagree with the majority view in those programmes that it was totally unnecessary to ask confused public for directions !

At my work place most of us were unperturbed , though there were still a few people sporting masks. However all the hell broke loose one afternoon when someone from my floor was suspected of having contracted the virus. Some family member of that person had tested positive and that person also had got tested and was awaiting result. Even before any confirmation came people were not prepared to take chances and in a matter of a few minutes the entire workforce in my floor had disappeared. Thankfully HR in my company was prepared for the situation and do's and don't s related to the virus were quickly circulated ! Next couple days were memorable as lots of people did not report to work or came dressed like bandits ! People moving around in masks , handkerchiefs and duppattas covering their faces was fun but the smell of the eucalyptus oil which was supposed to ward off the flu (as per sms fwds) was so horrible !!!

I was reminded of scenes from various zombie movies where entire population gets infected by strange virus and go crazy , for while it seemed like all those crazy things will indeed become reality

But all the hoopla and media frenzy lasted just a week by end of the week the 'swine flu scare' had slowly faded away and out went those dirty handkerchiefs and surgeon's masks sported by general public. At its peak during that one week , the panic had totally altered many things affecting Business ,education and entertainment . School kids ,TV channels , medical shops and black-marketers/entrepreneurs selling these masks benefited from this . People disappeared from public places , avoided restaurants , those commuting to office started avoiding trains which were perceived to be crowded , multiplexes couldn't release new movies as there were no viewers and had to shut down for a few days . Slowly by end of the week panic had subsided , lot more meaningful information started being available and rational people started getting more footage in TV channels and in newspapers. Suddenly lot of statistics were dug up which showed that mortality rate of this flu is much lower compared to other diseases and importantly a lot of meaningful debates started getting triggered on how our country was ravaged by so many other diseases which is not given enough attention.

Even though it was un natural panic reaction , the awareness about the disease spread quickly and general sanitation and outlook improved and maybe in a way helped contain a much wider outbreak. However out in the streets , after a couple weeks things returned to normal and all those masked crusaders disappeared !

Movie-Meter - is it all about Money ?

2009-07-22T00:55:00.002+09:00

We all want to watch good movies , no one wants to waste 2-2.5 hrs of their precious time in causes they dont identify with ... How do we know a movie is a good , decent / watchable movie before watching it ???

Word of mouth from People Like Us , who would possibly share similar tastes is more or less accurate way .. but how easily is this information available , how will we ever get recco from friends for all movies we want to watch ... so what are the other indicators of how good a movie is ?

One friend of mine goes by the logic of Box Office verdict .. he and several others like him watch movies which are success at BO ... "If a movie has grossed so much that means people have enjoyed it and movie watching public are no fools , if millions have watched the movie then it SHOULD be good" , that is their formula.
A lot of people follow this simple rule of equating how good the movie is with its Box-Office collection ... im not saying its necessarily a wrong thing , they could be right on lots of occasions and this is a pretty simple and infact a very easy rule to judge whether to watch a movie or not.

But on the flipside this has more to do with the tendency of 'herd mentality' and this is not really connected to what the movie really is ... its more to do with what majority 'think' the movie is ... my guess is that majority of these people go to these because others are going !!! Newspapers these days are full of huge Ads declaring the biggest opening ever ... But does that necessarily mean a good movie ... if a movie has made huge amount in the opening day its because of advance booking made by people who have no clue about the actual content / quality of the movie ... the movie could well be a very badly made one but if it has enough 'star power' and is publicized well it will be declared a hit based on its revenues from first couple of days.

So in effect lots of people watch the movie because they think it might be good and lots more follow because the first lot went to see it ... whether the movie is really good or not doesn't matter much here ... its merely the numbers that matter !!!

These days its been a trend for movies to be declared super hit or mega hit after opening weekend , every movie seems to make 50-60 crores in a matter of couple of days ... no one really knows what happens truly , but i guess no producer will admit that his movie tanked big time ! what follows during the weekend after some big budget movies are released would be that well known critics give it a proper appraisal and give it a rating it deserves. But who is deciding things after reading reviews in newspaper on Sunday ?! by Sunday the same movie would have been declared ultra mega hit with some mind boggling figures also quoted and public gets really confused and ends up watching it and also bad mouthing it later while at the same time contributing to it becoming a hit all the same !!!

This is exactly why i believe movie viewing is more personal experience and when we watch a movie we should be watching the movie to enjoy the movie , not simply because it made $ 300 mn world wide ! We are not getting any money for watching something which had record opening .. so how does the money it makes really matter ? I believe in going by what is in the movie and trying to understand why the movie should be watched and why it could be a good experience for me ...

How to exactly identify and come up with what movies to watch n avoid is obviously not easy at all , will explore some of the options i use in the next post

Return of The King !

2009-07-06T03:20:00.006+09:00

The greatest ever Grand Slam final ?

No it was never supposed to be ...
That was last year , when the challenger had finally come of age and had toppled the established order ... Today it was supposed to be the match that would establish ' The Return of the King'

Roger Federer in his quest for 'G.O.A.T' status was waiting to add that one more Grand Slam to make it 15 and go past Pete Sampras and Wimbledon Centre Court was the perfect place for the feat. It couldn't have been scripted better than this !

After his superb win in Rolland Garros , Wimbledon esp after Nadal withdrew was supposed to be a mere formality and entire media was only focusing on Roger. The result seemed to be a foregone conclusion for most people add to this a gallery of famous names in the Royal Box – Pete Sampras, Bjorn Borg, Rod Laver - the legends of the game - were watching, ready to grace the occasion when history was to be made ... You couldn't be faulted if you thought Roddick was there just to make up the numbers ...

But the final was something totally unexpected ... Andy Roddick came from no where with a vastly improved game and great hunger for the crown and almost pulled it off !

What a match ... When Federer came back from 2-6 in the 2nd set tiebreaker , saving 4 set points it looked like the momentum had swung especially when he took 3rd set. But Roddick wasn't quite done , he fought and fought really hard.

The fifth set was an amazing effort as the two players hung on and battled like Gladiators ( Russell Crowe who was part of the crowd would have agreed!) . I always thought tie-break for 5th set was not proper , but today after watching both these players giving their best ... struggling to stay afloat until mistake of one decided the winner , I think we are better off with tie-breakers , would save players from exhaustion and would be kinder to spectators with weak hearts !

Congrats again Roger ! its been such a treat to just watch him play , i think he totally deserves the World No:1 ranking and G.O.A.T status now , what a comeback for him after he was totally written off exactly an year ago by many after a defeat in a similarly grueling 5 set marathon . The icing on cake would be an US Open win by defeating Nadal in the final !!!

While i feel so great about Roger winning , feel sad for Roddick though especially after the way he played in this final , yet another Goran ?! Hope he is also able to script a fairly tale comeback

Television ga ga 2.0

2009-06-26T18:17:00.001+09:00

Before i pick up from where i stopped in the previous post , let me tell you about this incredible site called -' Paleofuture ', this site has ideas of future predicted by various 'experts' in previous century in 1920's , 30's , 40's etc of world 50 yrs henceforth . Needless to say most of the so called experts got it wrong. Which just proves nobody is qualified enough to make accurate predictions about the future . So i guess i can easily stick my neck out and make a prediction for future without much worry !

Why are we always visualizing all these home entertainment ideas with TV in the centre ?

So what i feel is when convergence arrives , TV will not survive . Internet revolution has touched us all and Computers have managed to integrate themselves into our lives and has managed to enter a huge number of homes and the growth in the coming years is expected to shoot up exponentially .

Now why will people continue to back TV as the central medium in a convergent era , its fairly obvious that the mantle will be passed onto Computer (with a wide LCD screen if u may ) DVD player/ set top box might become redundant

I guess its bound to happen sooner or later ... now ubiquitous television set will get replaced by its more powerful nerdy cousin which can not only display visual images but can also do processing and various other activities.

Already this is slowly happening around us , some of my friends no longer watch TV they download their favorite programs on laptop and watch at their convenience without any commercial breaks in between to bother them ! In last 2 years i have watched 5 TV series but i didn't watch any of them on TV. I had downloaded the episodes and had watched it on my laptop whenever i was free. A friend of mine recently told me he had set up his house with all electronic gadgets except TV which he felt was not needed at all if you have a broadband connection. Yes he sure misses the odd live sporting action , but then most of the other stuff can be viewed with internet , live online feed for sporting action also wont be so difficult i guess. Life without conventional TV doesn't seem all that difficult !

This is fairly easy prediction to make , one of the harbingers of this new wave is 'you tube' . the day wont be far when there is a channel on your tv/computer which allows you to search and watch videos you want - movies/ songs / concerts / college fests / video shot by a friend , or any random stuff ! Given the way reality shows dominate the programming in normal tv channels of today , going forward we would have more and more content featuring ordinary people , prepared by users , circulated among groups ... reality TV driven by us / featuring us .!

In short we might move from 'Broadcast' where channels create stuff they think people want to see and beam it to everyone , to an era of 'Multicast' , in which we move away from one size fits all idea of Television channels , idea would be to simultaneously make many things available and user is given much more power to choose what he/she wants to view.
Come to think of it the most popular videos could be the ones shot by people like you and me wont it be funny it were to be a song like "Television Ga Ga" or even a "Internet killed the Video star"

Television ga ga !

2009-06-20T23:50:00.000+09:00

Im a trivia lover and since childhood was an avid quizzer , so would start with a piece of trivia which is in a way relevant to this post -"Video Killed the radio star" was the first video to be aired in MTV in North America and it was about singer whose career was cut short by television.

This refers to the changes in Home entertainment industry in 1960's ... till about 50's radio was the medium and voice was everything , when TV arrived it changed the whole game .

But it was in early 80s that TV became popular in our country , Doordarshan ruled the roost in 80s . We watched what they deemed fit and whatever time they chose . Infact for a long time many activities in life revolved around the timings of our favorite programs on TV. For instance 8pm in the evening meant English news on DD national . Wednesday evenings had Chitrahaar and in late 80s every Sunday at 9:30 am all activities used to come to halt across the country as religious epics used to be beamed on Natl Television !
But thankfully in early 90s before cable era ushered in unimaginable variety for the viewer and spawned a whole new industry. Late 90s brought a flurry of news channels soon they were beaming news 24x7 , democracy received another major boost !

In a few years public started getting more and more involved with the content that was being provided , shows like KBC set the dice rolling as it required public participation over phone and later through sms. Inspite of having charismatic and popular icons from acting world as hosts these shows were hit because of the involvement of 'aam junta' and the vibes shared between the host and the participants who the viewers felt could have been one of them.

This gave away to more and more game shows/ reality shows involving public , but again very minuscule proportion of the population managed to make it on screen . Along with the popularity of TV in Indian middle class , other electronic gadgets also started making their entry. The one with the biggest impact was mobile phones and in no time most of middle class Indians had a phone in their hand.

Next masterstroke from TV was to draw these people to participate in the shows , instead of a celebrity judge deciding which contestant stays in the show / gets booted out , general public were given the chance. Suddenly the ordinary viewer who was enthralled by all that was happening in this wonderful box started feeling important , now he had the chance to decide and control the show.

We have slowly moved on to era of user centric content ( a la Web 2.0 if you will )

Last couple of years has seen a whole new industry called Digital home entertainment sweep into households. Now the Indian television viewer has lot more options as a famous movie star tells during a service provider's Ads , he can pause live action , attend those phone calls , can be nice to relatives , can entertain guests , need not tussle with wife over remote without feeling he will miss the match/ she will miss the serial . The digital set top box with hard disk solves all the problems.

The next revolution slated to hit homes is called IPTV , we will have what is called Triple play.

Let me pause here as the aim behind this post was to talk about change that is happening in home entertainment ; So whats gonna happen next ?
(to be contd in another post)

The early morning Jog

2009-04-17T02:01:00.013+09:00

Its morning , im jogging ... its taken some time to get adjusted to life here in a new city - Mumbai ... everything about this life/new job is so different ... My interests/activities has also changed a lot over the years , sometimes I wonder if i have changed totally as a person as i hardly feel a connect with the kind of life i was leading a few years back ... earlier i used to read a lot after getting back from work ... these days im always online chatting/reading blogs , watching movies/TV series on laptop ... for sometime i thought there was no connect with the life i used to lead and i had moved into some other dimension altogether like in the plots of some of my favourite Superhero cartoons or like Neo at start of Matrix Revolutions. That was until i started my early morning jog ...
These days i go for a jog in the morning in a park nearby and mostly i am all alone early in the morning and while running alone my thoughts get sucked into a nostalgic whirlpool , my mind wanders off into the past ... My memory jogs back to the days when two young lads in Coimbatore had finished their engineering college and decided that they needed some exercise as months of sitting at home and awaiting for joining letter/job was taking its toll .. the Two of us used to go to a huge ground/stadium in an University near our place ... we used to jog in the athletics track in the stadium which was empty during summer ... i can still vividly remember the cry of peacocks and sights of the hills in the backdrop of the stadium , athletes training in one corner , while we do the rounds cracking occasional jokes , discussing cricket sitting in the shade of a tree after jogging ... i keep running while looking at my watch , there is still no one here in this park today.
Its early morning in Bangalore and 2 super energetic roomies drag their thin roomie out of bed and i reluctantly trudge along and we go for morning jog in the parks of JP Nagar ... the air is so fresh and pure , the place is full of people doing exercise, jogging , oldies out for a walk and catching up with old friends in park benches , laughter therapy sessions ... the place is so full of energy and activity early in the morning as i keep running trying to catch up with my roomies ... Occasionally a sound of Lorry passing by or car honking reminds me that im still jogging alone here in this park , i look at the time just 10 mins up ... i spot an old man wearing t-shirt and formal trousers with sports shoe doing brisk walk ... i keep running
Three of us at office decide to hit the gym and all of us being lazy bones - we call each other early in the morning over phone to ensure we all turn up in the gym and we ensure that the one who misses gym is taunted the whole day . Its morning at Infy Bangalore and three friends are running on the treadmill ... we trade an occasional joke in the middle of it and pass comments on the latest chick to hit the gym , we compare notes on the exercises we are gonna perform that day and how much of 'muscle building' has happened ... i keep running the sun has come up and its getting really sweaty , even mornings in Mumbai are hot ! no wonder there are only a few people in this park ... I keep running its been 20 mins , there is a strange sound somewhere nearby , i stretch my arms ...
The two young lads are again running in Coimbatore in the same picturesque university ground ... they are back jogging together here after 5 long years , but little seems to have changed , the track looks the same , there are athletes practicing in a corner, the peacocks are still abundant , the lads still share the same camaraderie , crack the same old jokes ,talk about the same old stuff and run ... I slow down , the hot Mumbai sun has emerged and is making its presence felt, im sweating a lot , again i hear a strange sound ,look around don't see anything , i stretch my arms .
I start slowing down and shift to brisk walking , the well paved concrete path in the part that im running on seems so familiar , as i walk around the park , my thoughts deposit me somewhere esle , the scenery changes , im wading through the neat concrete pavement however around me there are blocks of similar looking apartments ... its hot and i continue walking the scenery has changed im a road which seems to be placed in Shire and not in this world , its so green and there is grass all around on one side of the road is a slope full of grass leading to dense growth of trees and on the other side and huge and beautiful houses, i half expect to meet hobbits ... im on Canterbury Road in Singapore , i slow down in my walk
Im covered with sweat ... i hear some strange sound near my ears ... did i overdo my workout ? Whats going on ? whats the strange sound , now its getting real louder , its so close by ...

I wake up in a pool of sweat , the power seems to have gone for quite a while . Its so hot inside the room ... i realize my cellphone alarm had been snoozed a couple of times ... damn i didn't get up early to go for a run in the park like i have been planning to ... i again slowly drift into sleep , before finally getting up when the never tiring alarm tries yet again to wake me up !

PS: I finally managed to defeat the tendency to press the snooze button and keep on sleeping and im actually going for morning jogs (atleast i did it 3 times last couple of weeks ! )

Broken Spell !

2009-04-12T02:03:00.009+09:00

Right from ancient times , when human beings learned to communicate with each other , spelling was very important to the language. It was one of those vital things which ensured we communicated what we wanted to communicate correctly. We have always given utmost importance to getting this part right . Right from early stages of education in schools a huge stress has been given to spelling , in my school the teachers used to punish spelling mistakes by docking 0.5 marks for each error. An answer sheet with all words spelled correctly was the sign of an intelligent and well educated kid who will achieve something in life !

The main reason why i started writing this is because of a few things i noticed over last few months. In office we had to write a letter in normal paper with pen for some purpose and a friend of mine started writing and he couldnt write a single sentence without making spelling mistake ! "I always type on MS-Word dude", he told me , "it always corrects my spelling mistakes , i just need to supply the alphabets in somewhat correct order".
This was bound to happen to most of us who were working with computers for quite a while , only when he spelled it out i realized it !

I was surprised by his remark but still felt that such things wont happen people like me who were very good in English language since school days. However recently a friend of mine spotted 2-3 spelling mistakes in a mail i sent to him ( i don't run spell check on personal mails as we use words from Indian languages in it ! ) and then i realized that this spell-check dependency had affected me too !
Now this guy has a really good command over the language still i could spot a mistake in the mail he wrote me informing me about my spelling errors (these were not typos as they got repeated couple of times ) . Now i realise a lot of us will not able to spell 100% accurately like how we
used to do 6-7 yrs back when we did not use computers.
But the more i think about it , more i realize that knowing the exact spelling is no longer required in today's world , the computer is here to help you with it ! I guess the brain has realized this and no longer cares too much about getting the proper spelling of all the words typed !!!
The language purists will surely disagree and the schooling system will not drop its attitude towards getting spelling right , which i think is fair. But deep inside me im kinda convinced just like how my brain/subconscious mind felt while typing .. it no longer matters :)

The other day when Spelling Bee contest was getting aired on the TV , i simply changed the channel ... i really don't see the point of remembering such complicated spell(ing)s ... after all we are just Muggles !

education-system-when-will-change-come - part 3 : This is how !

2009-03-28T00:20:00.003+09:00

I started thinking about the education system when i saw this :

Xo laptop - the $100 laptop developed for school children in third world countries

There is a non-profit arm of the company i work for and they are responsible for spreading OLPC movement in India
Now this is not a plug for my company/OLPC movement .. though i admire both for their efforts.

It was quite an interesting experience to know that children in a school in remote area in Maharashtra were doing their learning in school with laptops and were doing pretty well and enjoying it !

This is about the idea of each school going child owning a laptop and doing his/her work on it ... wont it totally revolutionize the education scene in the country ?

We all agree current education system is not enough , there are 2 main problems currently as i see it.
First is the spread of education and access to it. Second one is the quality of the education provided. Usage of technology would be the solution which would address both these problems.
Once education system embraces technology , it could provide a much better education to children and also would widen its reach.

The whole concept of education will change with laptops/internet entering and digitizing classrooms , the current model of a single person imparting knowledge to 60-70 students in a cramped room, students not getting enough attention , students losing interest/dropping out etc can be significantly reduced.

Schools will once again become places which encourage 'learning' , the teacher becomes more of a facilitator or a mentor who helps the children explore the world through computer and influences their interpretation of what they see/read about.

Since our future is a result of what happens in today's classrooms , its time we stopped making incremental changes to system and take a quantum leap.

If we can build Rs. 1 lac car then cheap and effective laptops will not be difficult for our nation and dream of every school child learning through a low-cost laptop doesn't seem such a wild idea

In case you have doubts whether the children in rural areas/lower strata will learn how to use computers , take a look at OLPC site or at the famous Hole in a Wall project - which gave the idea to writer of the book which became the famous 'Slumdog Millionaire' movie !

Education system - When will the change come ? Part 2

2009-02-19T02:48:00.005+09:00

When i started the last post on same topic i took a slight detour while picturing the old classroom , the effort was solely to convey that very little has changed in the system. Its month of March tht means its Class X / Class XII board exam time again .. same old remember Hall ticket ... be in the exam venue on time , do not copy/interact with kid next to you , concentrate ,perform well in the all important exam , the same boring academic rigmarole the system imposes on us... This one test is supposed to determine where u end in life (atleast that's what the kids think or are made to think) that is the system most of us grew up in , some say we are good because of this sytem , maybe or maybe not ... i wud like to believe we made it despite the system !
So this post is my ramble on the current system as i compose this i realise i will make one more post after this !

As i read the newspaper i see stories about how certain kids forgot their hall-tickets and reached exam venues , a few other kids missed their train / got stuck in traffic etc and cudnt make it to exam hall on time . This time all these people called some 'Board Helpline' and informed the powers tht be of their miserable plight. Kids who cudnt make it were allowed to write in nearest centre , the ones who came late were granted extra time to finish their papers , the kids who misplaced their hall ticket were allowed inside !

Thts such a nice story for the newspaper ! But seriously why were the kids made to travel to a far-off centre , why cudnt they give it in a place close their home in first place ? Wud a Hall ticket be needed if the kid is writing exam in the same school itself or cudnt the examination Authorities collect the photo and signature of each candidate . Later along with Qn sheets given to the neutral invigilator at kids own school ,why cant they give a sheet containing Candidate name , photo , signature ?!!!

A poor 15 yr old kid already has the pressure of one exam which (acc to her/him ) will determine where she/he will end up in life ... it doesnt matter if he/she has aced the smaller tests , exams in Class X , it doesnt matter if he or she has topped from Class I to Class IX ... This one exam determines his worth ... at such a young age isnt tht a huge pressure you are putting them under ...

No i wont take talk like survival of fittest etc ! coz my point is this determination of academic worth after 10 yrs of schooling shuldnt be based on a single exam held on one particular day in the year .

Finally doing well in the exam is not just about ur academic worth , its about how well you are handling the stress , how thousand other external/internal factors co-odinate and cooperate with you plus some dollops of luck which determines how you perform in this system . Make no mistake about this -hardwork does pay most of the time .
But when you see external factors like simple forgetting to get ur pen box , vehicle breaking down , traffic jam and a 100 other things make a mess of quite an amount of hard work , you gotto feel for the poor kid being put under such extreme pressure !

So what do we DO about this ?

Proposal 1 :Cant a computerised test like SAT be conducted between say March 1 to March 31 be used instead of all this ! kids can choose their own order of computersied test , they can take their stronger subjects first or move from weak to strong , which ever suits them . Bottomline is technology needs to be used to make the scene better for the students end to end

Proposal 2 : Dont reduce exam to a single chance in an academic year .. give them an opportunity to bounce back from unexpected setbacks . Second chance based on predefined conditions - to be selected when applying for exam
Based on their previous scores / averages the kids can set a minimum and good score for an exam for eg if im strong in English and i expect to score 70 min .. i wud set
the range and if fail to score 70 or above , but at same time score above 50 { min target - 20 } then I can be given a retest chance

On the other hand if im sure of acing say Math and set my min score target as 90 then if i dont score 90+ but score above 70 { min - 20 , again helps to convince the Board tht u r a genuine 90+ type of guy } then u can be given a chance again

Now if u aim to score 70+ and score 42 then u dont get a second shot , same case u get nervous and screw up twice , then u had it coming kid !

[Note :Im just making up a few numbers here for illustrative purposes , but the aim of the exercise according to me is to reduce luck factor , wean away pressure and allow people a fair chance to make a mark]

Proposal 2.1 : Again computerised tests as mentioned earlier to be administered for all subjects , this will help kids with not so good handwriting (esp ppl who write like me ! ) , since no one writes anything by hand anymore , so why insist on result of such a huge exam dependent on someone's handwriting . These days computer corrects everyone's english spelling , so punishing kids for English spelling errors in manual papers doesnt make sense anymore IMO !

PS : Part 3 of this on the way ... now thts connected to education scene but in a totally different way !
PPS : In case you are wondering i did screw up my board exams , but managed to move on and do not so badly after tht but at the same time I did ace another Board exam , so i know how it feels to be on both the sides !

Education system - when will the change come ?

2009-02-10T00:22:00.002+09:00

I finished my school 10 years ago ; I changed 5 schools during the 14 yrs of schooling , we always had same kinda classrooms with desks and benches , playgrounds cramped with kids .We had textbooks in which the 'stuff to be learnt' was present , we got new textbooks every year and there was notebooks in which whatever learning happened in class was 'recorded' . Initially we wrote with pencil on notebooks ( with double lines , there was even something with squares , one with 4 lines in a group to improve your 'cursive' writing ) then gradually moved from pencil , eraser , sharpener era to ones with fountain pen , Brill/chelpark ink , ink filler , blotting paper/piece of cloth to counter a spillages etc to better pens , finally in my case it was a Hero pen which contained a flawless nib and u just had to put in the ink bottle and it would drink up necessary fuel :) ... then gradually towards the end started using ball-point/micro tip pens. Then there was that geometry box (isnt tht the name ? ) which contained protractor , divider (which was really a mystery device and was never really used ) and compass and a couple triangluar scale like things .. ofcourse in class we had blackboards with duster and white chalk ... there was teacher who was mostly strict , mostly carried a cane around and did not hesitate to use one if needed . Physical punishments i hear is not present tht much these days. Ofcourse there were homework , exams , midterm tests and other gory stuff which was balanced by games period , sports and other competitions in equal measure !

What i described must have been what most of us had in 'class room' the bare basic stuff ... my older cousins had the same , my parents also had the almost the same stuff ... my Grandmom who was a teacher would also say the same when asked to describe school ... i dont know how different is todays classroom in fancy schools in big cities , but rest of India would mention roughly the same on the topic of classroom and learning ... Oh I almost missed it ...there was something called Computer lab which was added to schools in mid 90s ...

Which brings me to the main point of writing this post , how has education system changed over last few decades ? Isnt the way we learn , the way we ' show' how much we learnt , kinda unchanged over last few decades .. but when you look at the outside world for which these kids are 'prepared' in school , there is a whole lot of difference in the kind of jobs and the way the jobs are performed . Todays workers are lot more smarter , more tech savy , tech oriented than the ones before , thats the way it has been always and that is how it will be. When you go to buy provisions , previously the guy at small store used to write something on piece of paper and total it and tell you the amount . But now we buy stuff from supermarkets where smart looking youngsters use bar code reader and determine product code and price and give you a consolidated printout of the bill and use cash register. This is just an example , any field of work for that matter, computers have found a way to make themselves useful. Cellphones have been accepted by people of all strata and have been put to good use to make their lives better. This is the age we live in , where entire population have started embracing technology to lead a better life.

But shouldn''t our education system also evolve much more in tune with the changing world ? im not saying it is exactly the same , whatever changes have happened are cosmetic ones. Im talking of Radical changes not just in select schools , in the whole system ...when we are living in an age where technology is available for masses , shouldn't the education system wean itself away from the traditional 'textbook - notebook' routine with 'board exams' which has existed for ages now ???

Now im not shooting in dark , i do have a few more thoughts inc the main reason for this post , will put it in part-2 of this post ... coming up sooooon

Cinema paradiso - the week tht was - movie special

2008-10-07T01:24:00.004+09:00

These days movies are my fav pastime , and basically watching movies is all i do in life these days. After a point decided to spice things up a little .... now now dont get any wrong ideas .... naughty naughty ... just tht decided to make last week a 'Foreign Movies' week - of course all English movies are foreign movies - but in reality English is not a foreign language at all to me thts the language i use almost all the time in Mumbai ; Im deviating , back to my movie watching - aim was to see non-hollywood movies

There are lot of these movies which dont get usual hype in media , don't get released in theaters here , are not shown in movie channels on TV ... so its a bit tough to even know about these movies , let alone catch them ... over the course of time through arduous downloading or collecting movies through office network and personal networks established with great effort , i managed to a get a decent set of foreign movies

All these movies are not only good , but offer you a non-american view of the world ... so thought of sharing little bit bout these movies with all

Persepolis - This was a movie in French - It was a cartoon/graphic kinda movie , set in Iran of 1980-1995 . It was tale of a woman from Iran ... her life right from childhood to teenage to adulthood , examines many events in the country which changed the lives of people forever .. it doesn't show the events like - revolution against Shah of Iran or entry of fundamentalists or communists .. it just focuses of lives of ordinary families (slightly rich family actually in this case) how these major events changed the way they live. A very good movie.
This was actually a graphic novel which was converted to a movie

Diving Bell and the Butterfly - again French - Set in France this time , it was real-life story of Elle magazine editor , who became paralyzed after a stroke and had visibility in one eye alone but whose brain was working and hearing was proper. The movie is about how he manages to communicate to the outside world (by blinking his eye) and how he helped to write a book about how a person with his condition views the world. This is a true story , he actually communicated enough to make a book ! good watch , the best part of the movie is that it is totally non-manipulative and just presents the story without trying to reach to audience or make u like the character ,win ur sympathy etc ..needs to be saluted for tht alone ... tht really works and makes it feel genuine

Pan's labyrinth : its a spanish movie - set in arnd 1944 in Franco's Spain which was ruled by fascists and there was a civil war going on. The facists had taken control and a few rebels were resisting them in countryside .. tht is where the story is set. Its a tale which blends fantasy and reality .... the protagonist is a 12yr old girl whose mother had re-married a captain of fascist forces who is hunting down these rebels in countryside. Tale is set in an almost abandoned village near the edge of forest - a brilliant setting for such a movie

Without giving anything away , the girl reads a lot of fairy tales n fantasy stories and she imagines herself to be in one ... this is shown parallel to the story of how her cruel step father is fighting the good natured rebels ... both the tracks go on and somewhere along the way the line between them blurs ... fusion of real life and fantasy making this one really memorable movie for me - performances are top notch and direction is too good - MUST WATCH - a movie like no other !

Machuca - Spanish movie - this is set in Chile - yet another country which has been ravaged by civil war/ revolutions etc ... Story of a couple of kids , one a rich boy and another living in slums outside city , Communist party gets power in Chile and the long standing class divide seems suddenly threatened ... poor/underprivileged people suddenly seem to be raising their heads and are demanding equal rights in society. A set of poor kids are allowed to join the finest school for free ... this is a story of friendship between the rich kid and a poor boy ... how they weather the cultural/ political storm of class divide. In Chile ,Pinochet came into power backed by upper class and did a huge cleansing of the lower classes after this ... movie shows all this in background , with focus being how lives of people change with the changing times/ ideologies ... it looks at class divide without taking sides or sermonising

Nuovo Cinema paradiso - Italian - Set in some obscure town in Italy - This is the story of a director who returns to his hometown after 30 yrs ... it traces his story as a kid who was mad about cinema , his friendship with guy in charge of projector at local cinema. More than anything this movie is a celebration of cinema ... captures how cinema touches people .. a story of pursuing dreams.
Brilliant in all aspects ... Ennio Morricone's music is the icing on the cake ! yet another Brilliant movie

No Man's land - Bosnian/Serbian - set in no-mans land between both countries , its about 2 soldiers from opposite camps who get stuck in the no-mans land and need to depend on each other to get out alive , the attitude and beliefs and actions of the two mirror the countries from which they hail ... brilliant plot setting ... great movie which succeeds in bringing out the futility and insanity of war .. questions the role of UN ... looks at people in the war .. Fantastic movie

Trivia : This is the movie that beat Lagaan and Amelie to Oscar in best foreign language film category in 2002 !

Malena : Italian movie - set during WW II in a small town in Italy , spans the period when Italy was at its peak fighting war with ally Germany against rest of the world , Italy had great pride in itself
Then everything comes crashing down after a humiliating defeat in the war , the post war years are very terrible for Italians. This movie focuses on a few adolescent boys in a remote town and the effect of a super haaawwwttt Malena (Monica Belluci ) on them and infact of whole town ... on imp thing i read before this movie was that Malena in the movie represents Italy .. what Malena goes through is infact a representation of how Italy was used and abused -> my perception of the movie changed after reading this - earlier felt it was semi-porn ! But actually its a very good movie

Rashomon - Japanese movie -
Why you must watch it : Akira Kurusowa - Need any more reasons to watch this one ???

Movie is about a murder and account of 5 different witness of the same. Their accounts of the same event is different in some ways and all of them claim they are telling truth
Kurosawa makes a lot of interesting points and analyses human tendency to delude themselves and questions whether somethign called truth is possible .. i stop here and let u judge what he says after you watch .. brilliant movie

thts it for now ... again the reason for lumping together these movies are tht they are foreign language movies and I happened to have them in my harddisk this month ... this is no best foreign movies / 5 movies to watch before u do anything else or any such shit !

Tour de malaysia - Day 4 KL

2008-08-23T23:51:00.000+09:00

Reached KL Sentral (the railway station of malaysian capital) by morning ...
Headed to our hotel which was in the heart of the city .. the name of the place was 'Serai Inn' .. regular bed and breakfast types place to cater to budget tourists .. the place was fully booked , luckily we had booked online. we checked in .. since there was 8 of us we had taken thr 8 bed dormintory which was damn cheap .. even by indian standards !
Then we headed for local sight seeing .. roamed around the city a bit .. most of the prominent landmarks were near from our hotel ... then headed to Batu caves

they are pretty old (4.5 million yrs acc to wikipedia) .. apparently the temple was built by a local businessman some 150 yrs back and its a famous shrine with a huge number of pilgrims visiting every year .. its got a pretty imposing Murugan statue about 150 feet tall!
there is a steep climb up to temple which is in a cave , there are about 300 steps !

we wanted to watch the qualifiers of the Race - which btw was the main reason of Malaysia trip !

so headed back by bus to KL and reached KL sentral station and found buses for as less as Rm 10 (about Rs.120) for a trip to Sepang track which was near the Airport .. it was really far away about 50 Km .. but the roads were fantastic and on the way we saw townships of CyberJaya and Putrajaya (new administative capital) getting constructed .. they are superbly planned and executed on a mammoth scale and will come up in a few years

The atmosphere at Sepang international circuit was like tht of a carnival with people from different nationalities , supporting different teams decked up in diff colors , waving flags of their nations / teams .. the Ferrari flag was most prominent and red attire was the most common one ... there were stalls put up by the teams selling official merchandise
Lot of buying/reselling of tickets were also happening unofficially outside ticket counter and was being carried out by Europeans not locals !
There was a huge European crowd , but lot of support for the local team one which local company Petronas was sponsoring ... it was called Sauber Petronas earlier .. now its just BMW Sauber .. but after Ferrari the local team had maxmim fans .. then came McLaren ... with a huge number of people sporting Hamilton caps ... then finally a sizeable contigent was decked in blue cheering for Alonso and Renault team !
we had hillside stand and since it was qualifiers the place was not fully packed ... we settled down and eagerly waited for cars to begin practice laps before qualifiers start ... the pure joy from live action .. seeing the Formula one car coming roaring in and pass right infront of your eye is somethiign which has to be experienced and no words can do justice to the sheer delight in this experience ... from where we were sitting we could view a straight sectiona and 2 corners ... the whole atmosphere and the sound of the cars made it an unbelievable experience ... the feel of the track is something u never get while watching it on TV
In the evening we went to Petronas towers , the building was simply brilliant with lights at night ... same for KL tower .. but petronas towers was something else
Finally headed to Chinatown and after roaming around quite a bit managed to locate a shop which sold F1 T-shirts cheap ... since there were frequent raids the guy took us to backside of the shop and displayed the merchandise and packed it and asked us not to open it till we were out of the place ! we were getting it for 10% of the price of Original T-shirts and they looked the same !!!

Tour De Malaysia - day 3 langkawi

2008-08-21T22:26:00.000+09:00

We decided to go on 'island hopping' tour , there were lot of private boats which were available , since we were a group of 8 we got a boat of our own - (Refer pics) strapped on the life jackets and embraced ourselves for a heck of ride through seas !

We were taken to a couple of islands after 30 min high speed journey through the sea ... waters were relatively placid still since the boat was an open one and with the winds blowing fine spray of water against faces it was good fun ride ..

We docked at the first island whose name totally escapes me ! the place was supposed to be famous for watersports n stuff ... unfortunately we went on a local holiday and all the shops were closed.

Then we headed to another island after another 10 min ride through sea ... this one was another smallish island but had a freshwater lake in it !!!
the lake was on top of a small hill ... there were lot of monkeys all over tht place .. after trekking up the hill we reached the lake .. boating facilities were there .. u cud rent a canoe or pedal boat and go across the lake
Once tht was done we moved out of the island after 5 mins we reached a point between a set of uninhabited islands ... this was the place for 'eagle feeding' ... ppl toss food in tht place and eagles come in great numbers , swoop in and grab a bite !

after watching it for 10 mins we headed back to the main island .. the whole trip took about 3 hrs
By now we were running out of time .. there were lot more stuff to explore like the Bridge where the Hindi movie 'Don' was shot and a waterfall and couple of places like an island which had a marine park and another one famous for scuba diving ... since we were running out of time we drove around a bit ... had food and returned our rental cars and hung out near Eagle park and took the Ferry back to mainland Malaysia , from where we had to catch an evening train back to Kuala lampur

Tour De Malaysia - day 2 - Langkawi

2008-08-20T13:13:00.009+09:00

We had planned to reach Langkawi through train and ferry instead of flying direct(which on hindsight was a better option ! ) Train was till a place called Alor Setor (they called it something like 'alor star' ) , we reached Alor Setor at 8:30 in the morning with a slight delay of 30 min , which was pretty common in Malaysia as a fellow traveller informed us. "Our Railways aren't as efficient as the Indian Railways" he added leaving us shocked , proud and at some level amused also !

We had to take a 15 min taxi ride to the ferry terminal at a place called .... There was a ferry every 30 min or so , but breakfast was a problem for us finding veg food anywhere in southeast Asia is a harrowing experience. But this was a small town and we had given up hope of finding food when we stumbled upon a 7-eleven store and managed to find cheese sandwiches ( thts about the only food vegetarians can get at that place as even ready to eat noodles are all non-veg)
We caught the ferry at 10:30 am and the boat ride went slightly below expectations for me. I had really looked forward to this 45 minute ride over sea as it would be the longest sea cruise for me.
we were seated inside the boat and the seating was just like a bus/flight and through the closed glass windows u look at the sea outside. Not being able to feel the sea breeze/smell the air was a dissapointment. However it was great looking outside and seeing just water all around and the sea was pretty placid and the journey was very pleasant.

We reached Langkawi islands at 11:45 , situated on Andaman sea Langkawi is an archipelago of about 100 islands mostly small ones and a few big ones , the main one biggest of the lot is called Pulau Langkawi ( i know it sounds like a food item for us ! ) and is reachable through sea and has an airport. The island dotted with trees is a proper desktop wallpaper material. A prominent landmark near the boat jetty is the big Eagle statue. Langkawi means land of Eagles.

We had booked rooms in a place called Eagle Bay resort , which was pretty close to Eagle square We had done booking over internet and rooms were just like the pics we saw online , good comfortable rooms and easy on our pocket also.
The first task after checking into the hotel and freshening up was to find a good restaurant which served Veg food.We talked to the hotel staff and got directions to an Indian restarant nearby.

There is no public transport on the island , cabs were available but werent tht cheap. The best way too move around on the sufficiently big island town was to hire cabs/bikes. Since it was very sunny and rains are always a possiblity in tropics we decided to get a car for 4 of us.All we needed to show was a valid license (even Indian one wud do !) and pay a deposit of 100 Ringgit (Rs.1100) and we took the car on rent for a day ; We took a Hyundai Accent and had to shell out just 70 for one day. We were given a map of the island , there sign boards at most places , the
roads were very good. The map however wasnt tht easy to follow as the locals had warned. But there are only 3-4 main roads in the island its not really possible however hard u try to get lost on the island. After 3-4 wrong turns we managed to locate an Indian eatery. It turned out to be a South Indian one much to delight of many of us(6 out of 8 guys in our touring party were from South India) It was our first Indian meal in 2 days and hence seemed to be pretty good despite the fact tht it was a low end restaurant. There was a Pakistani food joint also in the vicinity. We headed to the gas station next and filled the car with petrol. It was a Petronas outlet and was a self serivce one , the cost for 1 litre of Petrol in malaysia then was just Rs.18 for 1 litre when it cost more than Rs.50 in India !

We saw the list of attractions in the island and their location on the map and decided to tackle the White sand beach and black sand beach first as it was already late afternoon (3:30 pm ) . Both of these were located near each other on the North eastern side of the island and we were on the South east side. The whole strech of road was wonderful with trees and vegetation on either side we reached the entrance to White sand beach where public entry was from one end of the beach and the majority of the beachfront was occupied by a Star hotel/resort full of foreigners. The beach was almost empty but for tourists from the hotel facing the beach. There were a few shops selling trinkets and Tshirts outside the entrance to beach , but no local or hawker was present anywhere on the beach. A few small islands were visible and a few them seemed very close by from the beautiful white sand beach. We saw a group of European tourists wading theough the somewhat placid sea towards an island some half a kilometer into the sea and decided to follow the suit. Tht was one the best experiences on langkawi the walk to the island through sea with water at waist/chest level most of the time and occasionally reaching neck level( I didnt know swimming ) . So it was an exciting trip walking to the island through bluish green water.

Around 6 pm much against our wishes we decided to move out of the beach and head to the blacksand beach which was just a few minutes drive from there. But the few minutes drive became a really long one as we got lost and kept missing the entrance to the beach repeatedly and only when we drove extremely slowly we managed to find the beach. It was somewhat secluded and there was nothing around the place to suggest it had such a beautiful beach. There was absolutely nothing there no vehicles. people or shops selling touristy stuff etc.
Unfortunately sun was setting and the there was lovely pier and a lot of fishing boats on one corner of the beach and the other side had gigantic rocks and was simply beautiful. After clicking a few pics in the fading light we moved to their Pier and had a look at boats , there was a fishing community near the boats and there were a few houses with local fishermen.
After a quick shower to get the seawater and beach sand out of our bodies we headed towards Pantai Cenang Beach which was the more commercial beach supposed to teem with people and shops. This was supposed to be a popular hangout spot for all tourists and was supposed to provide best in shopping and food. After finishing our dinner we made up plans for 'Island Hopping' tour next morning

Dasavtaram - adding a whole new dimension

2008-06-27T00:16:00.010+09:00

Kamal Hassan's grand movie 'Dasavtaram' opened in June atlast after a looong delay , the most anticipated movie left most of us confused too about the intent of the filmmaker as it was neither a full fledged comedy or light movie nor was it a very serious movie inspite of issues it endorsed.

" So how did you find the movie ?" ... this was the only common question in all conversation i had with my Tam friends across the country or rather world ( read Infy onsite ).
Many of my friends and lots of guys in Orkut communities etc thrashed the movie as dumb and just an excuse for Kamal to play 10 roles. But some thought otherwise , I reluctantly joined the latter group, which comprised mostly of guys brought up mostly on a diet of Tamil movies, who felt it was ok types and definitely worth a ' one-time' watch.

" People don't see movies for what they are " quipped another buddy of mine when i was talking to him about how Kamal's latest magnum opus was being soundly criticized for being very dumb. I noticed in a couple of blog posts on same topic where lots of people pointed out that this was kind of movie where you take something from what was on screen , your interpreation was what mattered. The movie has something for different classes of audience.

For almost a week most of the conversation with buddies would involve a question on what they thought bout the movie , a lot of people (again most of the guys living/raised in TN) were for the movie and a lot of people were against ( majority of these were from outside TN) . I may be wrong in generalising given the number of people i spoke to is very small ... but I guess its fairly straight forward why the movie was made the way it was ... It was meant to appeal to masses in TN and was made almost like a Rajni movie with the ' Universal hero' being the centre or rather everything in the package.

Whether it has fully succeeded or not Box-Office is not very clear , but so far it doesnt look like the film has bombed or suffered the fate of intelligent and critically acclaimed Kamal movies like Hey Ram , Anbe Sivam etc

My own take would be that a man who made movies like the above mentioned ones would be incapable of making stupid movies and whatever we saw on screen was result of toning down the film to make it palatable for masses. Come to think of it , the film had a lot of things which arent tht common in Tamil/regional cinema or i should say Indian cinema.

Movie had lots of themes like Atheism , religions conflicts , chaos theory , Biological weapons , role of America. It also touched upon the kind of impact man has on earth by highlighting sand quarrying etc. and con

At another level our Regional cinema (and Bollywood also) is very different from Hollywood where intelligent movies (atleast some of them) make it big in Box office , but it must be said that as they are made in Englsih they have a much bigger market than these regional Indian movies. Even in Hindi many good movies categorised as 'off-beat' or multiplex movies do find an audience and do well. But i guess if you spend 100 odd crores to make a movie which covers such a huge number of issued and has an actor who can pull of a stupendous 10 roles then obviously any filmmaker would try to ensure that the movie reaches the maximum possible people.

Make no mistake this is a movie for Kamal as an actor to showcase his ability to pull of such a wide variety of roles and hence its no-wonder that the movie had to 'dumbed down' to cater to masses. Once you get tht firmly entrenched in the mind , the movie pans out differenty and there is a quite a lot of enjoyable fare ! While playing 10 roles Kamal was also trying to reach all segments of audience with a film which essentially was a cocktail of lot of things.

One among the many postives of this movie is that it invovled a lot of issues of global interest which is very rare in regional cinema is our country. We usually see this kind of movies i Hollywood only where the entire world is under threat due to some strange weapon/alien or any such thing and am American steps in to save the day. But now a Tamilian has taken on the mantle to save the world and thts an interesting shift !

Perhaps it might lead to more movies involving global theme of Indians asserting their influence on the world , whether it leads to good cinema or not Im not too sure ... but the prospect sounds exciting. I just dont understand why we are always getting movies with college kids or people running around trees or in foreign locales. Perhaps the restricted environs of our movie themes had prevented some radical stories from turning into movies. But with movies getting slicker ( Billa , Sivaji et all ) and budgets getting better we should see more variety from Tamil cinema . So if this movie clicks then probably we would see lots of stories espousing different issues in a commercial format thus reaching a much wider global audience and with Projects like 'Robot' lined up future does seem bright and interesting !

Tour de Malaysia - Day 1 Genting Highlands

2008-05-03T14:38:00.009+09:00

It was the first time all of us were going from one country to another by train and not surprisingly were asked to disembark just 1 hr into our journey from Singapore when we reached the malaysian border , we had to show our passport and Malaysian visa ( the train was being searched at tht time ) and then were asked to get into the train which took us to malaysian capital , Kuala Lampur.

We were headed to Genting resort on Day 1 of our trip ... In the morning we reached KL sentral ( the central railway station @ KL) which looked more like an airport than a railway station .. it was one single complex which had both long distance train , local trains(monorail) and bus station as well. Genting Highlands was a resort cum theme park about 45 min from KL , we got the tickets and the bus to Genting from KL sentral itself . There was a package deal which covered two way bus fare + 2 way cable car ride to top of Genting resort+ free access to most rides in outdoor and indoor theme park for just 42 Ringgits. It seemed to be a pretty attractive rate compared to what we find in India for similar theme parks where entry itself costs as much. There was 45 min bus ride and one could notice how neat the cit looked and the roads were very well maintained , we could see most of the important buildings enroute. We passed the Batu caves on the way and after seeing the gigantic Murugan statue and the caves , I made a note to myself to somehow fit it in our schedule when we got back to KL for sightseeing.

Genting was a resort cum theme park and also had a a number of huge star hotels and a a very famous Casino. The buses dropped us at the bottom of the hill and the remaining part of the journey was through ropeway .. it was the longest ropeway ride i had taken (about 12 minutes) and there was rolling mists across the hills and we passed literally through the mist. Journey through the clouds was simply awesome !
There was an indoor and outdoor amusement park .. with pretty decent rides (but nothing exceptional n all) and had attracted a good crowd of tourists esp from India ... Im not much of a rides person , still found myself taking on most of the rides and it was good fun. As we were moving around we seemed to be walking in the clouds ! I was sunny in the morning , but by midday it got kinda dark and there was mist all around us , sometimes we could hardly see what lay ahead of us and in the afternoon it started drizzling , however it rained only in patches , whenever it rained , most of the rides were shut down for safety reasons and after a point we decided to find a place servinf veg food . Finally we had 'veg' fried rice at a small eating joint over there , the menu didnt have any mention of veg fare , but the guy at the counter told us they make veg food for Indian tourists. Gotto mention getting Veg food is difficult in South East Asia!

we shifted indoors and started roaming around in the indoor amusement park , there were quite a few nice rides over there , best one was a sky-train kind of thing which had tracks pretty high up and went in loops all over the place and best part was when we whizzed past ( i should say above) starbucks cafe and a quite a few amused ppl over there waved to us. There were a number of attractions like rock climbing and snow world which weren't part of our deal. But overall the place was very crowded and wasnt as attractive as the outdoor one and we went back to the outdoor one inspite of sun playing hide n seek.

Though rain played the spoilsport and with the entire hills covered with mists at some points the visibility was extremely low esp when we did go-karting , visibility was so poor tht the ppl over there did not allow any overtaking spoiling all the fun . Still it was fun driving the slow moving kart with almost zero visibilty during the second round.

We returned by evening to the city , to KL Sentral (thts where the bus from Genting was headed) railway station which looked more like an airport with convenience stores and swanky shops and eating joints like McD , KFC , Dunkin Donuts .It also had a subway joint where we had our veg dinner we waited in the waiting area till we got the call to board the train to northern part of Malaysia to go to the island Langkawi ... we were taking a train to a place called Alor Setor and from there we had to catch a ferry reach the island. The train was at night arnd 9pm and we were supposed to reach next day at arnd 8 am at Alor Setor.

Though we had booked a/c coach and it was quite comfortable , i felt Indian trains were much better they have more space and one could talk/chat with friends and on the whole you could enjoy the trip much more. Here we started chatting n laughing but found that we seemed to disturbing most of the people who had dived into the bed as soon as the train started . In our trains we have this concept of lower berth where everyone in the coupe sit when they arent sleeping , in those trains the arrangement was different with a lower berth n upper berth on both sides and a common central corridor , which made sitting in a group difficult and ur sounds carried across the compartment and we were met with a few icy stares from disturbed occupants across the compartment and finally we also decided to call it a day !!!

Tour De Malaysia

2008-04-26T03:13:00.004+09:00

In between a cramped MBA schedule peppered with various courses lasting a week or two we suddenly found ourselves with a weeks break with nothing to do ..so thot of hitting Malaysia .. planned a lot stuff .. but cud finally get away only for 5 days .. we had the tickets for Malaysian Grand Prix .. so fitted our tour around tht.
We left Singapore by KLM Train .. KL was an overnight journey from Sing ... train was like the ones we get in India ( AC coaches) but was running on metre gauge hence compartment seemed smaller and the whole experience wasnt tht gr8 as it shook a lot more than Indian trains.
Entire trip was planned thru minimal internet research ... the big learning i got from this trip ( as with couple of trips i had undertaken in India also) was tht all u need is spirit to roam and experience something new and once u pack ur bags n set out everything falls in place.
At the same time i have to mention tht basic planning is also a must for instance we had booked hotels and train tickets in advance , but rest of the itenary n places we covered were all decided after reaching the respective places.This trip also gave me a chance to experience a totally different nation , which is similar to our own country in some ways , but is marching
ahead in many ways and offers very good lessons for us. I had lived in Singapore for 4 months prior to this , but had not observed the nation tht much , but after malaysian trip when i came back , i started comparing both the nations and kinda improved my understanding of Singapore.
So will post all the happenings of our 5 day trip over here in a series of posts.

Sentosa Trip - part 2

2008-04-22T03:09:00.002+09:00

My days in Singapore were slowly coming to an end but the 2nd visit to Sentosa seemed a distant possibility as we made grand plans to tour outside Singapore. But as with most well laid plans this one also came unstuck and finally decided to cap off my last week in Singapore with another Sentosa visit and try and cover things i missed last time ...

Wanted to cover Fort Siloso which i cudnt fully explore last time around but unfortunately by the time i reached the place there want enuf time to sneak in a visit .. this time visited by paying just $3 monorail 2 way ticket and decided to but the tickets for each attraction from the island itself ... (very costly option if u r visiting for the 1st time , as some of my friends discovered !!!)
This time we especially wanted to see songs of the sea program which happens @ 7:45/8:45 at night .. So we got the Songs of the sea tickets along with island entry ticket itself as the shows get full by evening time.

First stop was at cineblast the 4-D theater .. had seen the movie earlier tried the other attraction and found tht it was a very good experience but lasted only 15 min .. which was way tooo less
then the next stop was at Luge ... we get to go down a hill in a sled kinda thing which has got brakes and can be maneuvered to an extent and boy it was fun .. best part was tht for $18 ticket .. u get to do it 3 times !!! u go down the hill , come up in a sky ride (ropeway) and its one of the best things in the island ...

we were done with this by 7 and since we had another 45 min to kill thot to visiting the small beach over there and then spotted the beach bar !
the Bartender suggested a local cocktail called 'Singapore Sling' so we ordered tht ... he took an awfully lot of time to prepare it and we got our hands on the drink @ arnd 7:30 and there was less than 5 min to the show and we all were in a hurry n dint have time enjoy the drink and hence gulped it down in a jiffy and the bartender who had prepared the drink for over 15 min looked very annoyed with us for finishing it off in 15 secs !!!

the Songs of the Sea show features some local songs with dancing performers and spectacular laser show topped off with brilliant fireworks and was really good.

When you are done with each of these 'éxperiences' when move out u invariably pass through cleverly placed stores selling souvenirs/memorabilia connected to the show u just saw/other attractions in the island and most ppl ending buying something or other !
just for memory sake i bought a small singing statute to keep at my home and much to my chagrin found tht my parents (who visited this place a month back) had bought the same object !!!
Looking at the island u cant help admiring the way these ppl have turned a small island into such a brilliant money-spinner which gives the tourists a great experience.
But they arent done yet .. they have plans to build a casino on the island and a few other attractions are also being planned making this a place to visit for any tourist.

Private public transport (?)!

2008-02-16T04:06:00.004+09:00

There comes a stage in every MBA students life where after being subjected to hundreds of business case studies and generating business ideas after ideas for course after course ... We end up trying to identify whatever we find wrong in the world around us and try to come up with some innovative ways to improve it. Only to come to realisation that many solutions do sound nice or look good on paper and thts about it .. as far as practicality is concerned. But in one way or other these things do make us realise how or rather why the system operates in its present form. That in a way is a great learning by itself for future, if at all we get to changing things in future !

While discussing several of these ideas , lack of effective public transport in India is something we have debated about passionately. We did discuss one day wide range of solutions right from metro to car pooling and all ... While discussing about this i was drawn back to my days as a techie in Bangalore when I observed how people overcame this lack of adequate transport problem easily ( even if on wrong side of law)

I used to visit my hometown every alternate weekend and would reach Bangalore early morning arnd 5am when the public buses wouldn't be available and I used to get down on the outskirts of the city at a place just about 2 KM from my house .. since it was early morning walking all the way was ruled out , the only other mode of transport was Autorickshaw ... here it was the case of monopoly and at times the demand would exceed the supply and hence they would charge exhorbitant rates for their service

After a few months i noticed a few people would disembark from the bus and would turn down the waiting autos and would walk further ahead and wait near the bus shelter . I figured there must be some other alternate method of commute and joined them. Then they arrived , the 'call centre' cabs ... these cabs come after dropping off people to offices/homes or from wherever ... essentially they were coming back on return trips and for a very nominal amount would drop you to your place provided its on their way. The driver makes a quick buck and we , the poor commuters , were no longer held hostage by the auto rickshaw wallas ...

In Bangalore , there are huge numbers of private buses, vans , cars used to ferry the estimated 2 lakh IT/BPO employees in the city. Now all many of these vehicles put in multiple trips and hence go empty half of the time.
I used to wonder why cant Govt legalize these people picking up passengers on their return trip , we talk about energy crisis and the fact that oil imports are hitting us hard n all ... we also talk about how to optimize our energy needs , so if private vehicles were allowed to pick up passengers for nominal charges then aren't we saving energy and benefiting the common men as well . We would not only provide support for the public transport , which inspite of our best efforts is lacking in many places , but also effectively make use of already deployed vehicles in addition to saving on fuel , cutting down on pollution as well reducing the overall costs for all parties concerned !

Also if Auto drivers are allowed to take multiple passengers with per person/km fares , then multiple people can share costs and probably the driver might get more revenue and more fuel can be saved.

So can this be done , is it worth the trouble ?

I'm still not sure about the answer .. there are many many angles to this debate , but essence of my argument is that we are wasting a lot in the current process and do need a rethink sooner or later ... But this being the age of Private Public Partnerships , why not ?

trip to Sentosa ...

2007-12-28T00:00:00.001+09:00

( Slightly longish one ....)

Sentosa island is a popular tourist resort in Singapore, its just about 2 km long but filled with beaches, various other popular tourist attractions and luxury hotels and golf courses.

Sentosa can be accessed by monorail, cable car as well as by bus. We took the monorail , the ticket included complimentary passes to a few major attractions on the island as well.

As the monorail coach passed thru a few bends n came close to the island , we were jolted from our admiration of the nearby docks and sea by shrieks of “merlion … merlion” by a small kid who was sitting near us in our coach .

Merlion is the symbol of Singapore, its what Eiffel tower is to Paris (atleast thts what I understand … maybe its like Burj incase of Dubai) . The actual Merlion is near Singapore river though, googling tells me there are 4 merlion statutes in Singapore . All said n done, this one is the biggest and is really grand sight!

We went further up to a place called Imbiah lookout from where we took a ride up ‘Calsberg’sky tower which is offers a terrific view of Sentosa and some parts of Singapore.

Then we visited the brilliantly done “Ïmages of Singapore “… This showcases the culture of Singapore and lets the visitor experience the journey/ evolution of Singapore through ages. It started off with a short movie about what makes the culture of Singapore so unique n spl , followed by a tour through the neatly done museum which captured the journey of Singapore through last 400 years. The concept is well done and everything is conveyed neatly, I would say it is a must visit for any tourist to understand Singapore , its culture , evolution and what makes it unique !

I particularly liked the initial 5 min experience in which tale of Singapore was narrated; to me it seemed straight out of pages of a Harry Potter book! (for those who have actually seen it .. I do have a wild imagination J )

Next came the ‘4-D’ experience, it was a short 3-D movie plus some features to make you really connect with the movie! Did not have time for the Luge and decided to check out Underwater park instead. There are basically 3-4 points in the island where attractions/adventures are present, you can travel around from one point to next either thru trams or buses. Buses take a shorter route, while trams take a much more scenic route. We took the bus and were lucky to get a double decker open top bus , as we were going from one end of the island to other end , we got a mini-island tour in the bus. Since it was already afternoon we decided to check the dolphin lagoon first and the journey through the island to the point where this place was lovely on the open-top bus.

Dolphin lagoon is a huge crowd puller , the place got full in no time and the dolphins were fantabulous (for want of better word !) . I got a big surprise when I saw them for the first time , they were pink !!! it was kinda unreal at first , heard or even imagined that there could be a pink animal …

But it was good and the show was wonderful and is a must see for visitors to Singapore , we then went to Underwaterworld which was located in another end of the island in a beach tram , which goes alongside the scenic beach .

Underwater world is a pretty good place too , the collections of marine animals from various parts of the world is awesome , but the highlight was the underwater tunnel . We pass through a transparent tunnel where we are surrounded by fishes on all sides; we actually look up at fishes moving above us! Got a greak kick outta watching sharks and other big fishes zooming over us ! Another interesting thing was the presence of RFID … the fishes had RFID tags whenever a fish passed near the display screen thanks to RFID reader , the screen would display info bout the fish which is closest to it… pretty neat usage of technology.

Finally there was Fort Siloso , which was a fort built by British in more than 100 yrs back to guard the harbour . It was equipped with a battery of big guns to thwart any attack on British Empire; the guns are a majestic sight even now. It is a sort of museum with ammo stores, barracks, tunnels, living quarters of soldiers with audio commentary and life size replicas of soldiers inside each place to give us an idea of how the fort operated. The big guns at various points in the fort are the highlight.

It was late in the evening and as we were too exhausted we decided to call it a day and returned back to mainland by cable car from Sentosa. Hope to be back some other time and cover few other wonderful attractions which we missed out this time !

Also observed tht the island was ruled by Coke … no Pepsi at all !!!

All in all I should say that these guys have done a fabulous job of developing(or rather marketing) a tiny little island into such a popular tourist destination ... just a quick glance at numbers from websites tell me what i suspected when i visited the place ... this tiny island attracted 5 million tourist last year compared to 4 million tourists visiting entire India !!!

There is actually nothing so great in this island when you compare it with the natural beauty and the kind of sights and sounds that a well packaged Indian tourism can provide ... but again the numbers quoted earlier tell us clearly what really happens !

the 'K'-factor

2007-11-10T20:39:00.000+09:00

This is about our tinsel town .. but dont worry its not about the K-serials of eKtaa Kapoor !

saw OmShantiOm this Friday @ Dubai ... desi movies r nice to watch in a foriegn land .. though u can hardly call Dubai 'phoren' place .. given the fact that ppl from subcontinent seem to b the majority here ! a hall packed with ppl who speak ur language share same culture does seem to make even the most horrible movies digestible !

No, the movie in question OSO was'nt bad , it was pretty decent entertainer and was good in some parts esp the references and digs at the industry itself !

Another very interesting thing bout the movie was the K-factor , as in , you need a surname starting with K - Kapoor , Khan , Khanna etc to make it big in film industry ...
No , just changing your name wont do , u need to be born as son/daughter of a K

The movie had 2 SRKs ... a struggling actor without the 'K' name and a superstar-son who becomes what he is because of the 'K' surname ... there was also a funny filmfare award bit in which 4 real life star fathers come and pitch for their respective sons !

It makes a very valid statement , especially given the fact that it is coming from the man who many people believe is the last hope for people who dont have family connections and wish to make it big in bollywood ! When you think of it there is hardly anybody you can remember in last 15-20 years who made it really big without somebody in film industry other than the SRK ...

Another intriguing coincidence is the fact that this movie OSO , which highlights the 'star power' concept, actually released this Diwali against a movie which stars not one but two 'K'apoor kids in a ultra-lavish dream debut which ordinary mortals cannot even dream of !

Evolution & cellphones

2007-10-13T06:46:00.000+09:00

No you read it right , the title is not evolution ‘of’ cellphones , its evolution and role played by cellphones in it.

From the time life originated on earth the process of evolution has been one straight forward yet rough and tough game. Only those who have something special and extra survive , there lot of terms for these like natural selection and survival of fittest which has ensured that all the species which are currently present on earth are there coz they have something which others don’t have. It could some characteristic like the neck of a giraffe or trunk of an elephant or hump of camel or the thick fur coats of animals in colder regions and various other unique qualities in all animals, which helps it in more ways than one and helps it prevail upon on competition. This kind of unique trait ensures that out of same animal family some species which are more developed survive and they hone these traits or features to the level of perfection.

Now you might be wondering how on earth is wildlife and evolution related to mobile phones ?

Well I give you two choices , either I have too much time to spare and love taking people for a ride ! Or that Im going to make an interesting point , I will let you decide which one of these two is correct.

So only the species which have evovled and adapted very well to the evironment has managed to survive , but who rules the earth ? Well , Homo Sapiens ( thats you and me) of course.

Next question would be how ?

I know the conventional answer would be that its because of that highly developed brain of ours and our ability to think or rather out think the competion that we have become masters of the earth.

Ofcourse that is correct , but I would say that this ability to innovate as in “make tools'' and harness energy and all , has actually made us the leader of the pack.

Over the years right from stones which were converted to some forms of crude weapons to the age of metals to much more recent tools like guns gave man a control over all other forces around him. Man got so much control that those forces around him stopped mattering that much. All these tools which made our life easier or helped us survive and overcome competition can be considered to be part of our evolution. The same way an animal which has to hunt faster prey develops and perfects attributes like stealth and precision , we developed things like automobiles and gadgets of precision to make ourselves safe and comfortable .Hence I consider these gadgets as part n parcel of our evolutionary growth.

Let’s get over with gadgets which helped us evolve further and develop as a race and come straight to the gadget which rules in 21st century , which is none other the ubiquitous mobile phone/cellphone ...

The word Cell some 10-15 years would have surely meant confines of a prison , but cell today is gadget for liberation !

Cellphone has truly helped us evolve in multiple senses ... This pocket size gadget has replaced lots of heavy weight gadgets and has captured the hearts ( nay shirt pockets) of millions ranging from Compnay CEOs to peons.It comes in various sizes ,shapes and forms from plain low-end phone to ultra cool i-phones to Blackberry phones , the cellphone market has something for everyone.

Now to substantiate my theory that mobiles have truly helped us evolve or make our lives better , I choose a few real life examples where people used this gadget in their day to day lives and succeded in their business . To drive home the point I choose the common man as focal point of all my examples.

Among the first stories of business growth driven by cellphones were that of fishermen in kerala .

Once cellphone era began these fishermen no longer had to sell fish in the local beaches; they were able to find out the exact price for fish in the various markets outside their home territory and were able to sell their catch at best possible prices.. Overall they ended up making more money and also resulted in the reduction of prices for the consumers as lesser fish were wasted ... more the fish less the price , simple economics...

Basically it eliminated geographical barriers for business and 'where' you were present no longer became a constraint provided you had a cellphone , let me elaborate with a few more common-man examples.

In my hometown , we have an electrician cum plumber who used to handle both house work and do repairs in his shop . As his work was good, he began getting more and more house calls. The only way to contact him was to go to his shop and tell his assistant the nature of the problem. Then we had to wait till he got back from his previous assignment and came to our house. Since he covered a wide area , more often than not if the person was not present in the shop , people would not prefer to wait they would rather go to some other person. Now with a mobile phone, he is just a call away and he immediately tells us where he is and how quickly he can come. This results in more business for him, less effort for us(his customers) also. Same with auto-drivers in, earlier they used to wait in the auto-stand and you had to go to the auto-stand to hail an auto or if you were lucky on the way you might get an auto. Today we just give a call to an auto-driver we know, he will come to our house to pick us up or call any of his friends who might be in the same area and ask them to pick us up !

I was travelling in the local bus in Bangalore 6 months back and a few construction workers were travelling with me and to my surprise I heard cell phone ringing in the pocket of a shabby looking guy next to me and it was a call from some contractor for some work in some other part of B’lore for him and his group. He told me after they got a cell phone they are never out of work. These are just a couple of examples I could remember off hand nowadays everyone from tailors to hairdressers are just a call away and mobile phone has simply changed the way business happens.

QED : Mobiles have become a necessity if you need to stay in the race these days or you get left behind and others march ahead of you.

( this is the first in a series of posts im planning on cellphones and their role in our life ... to be continued )

DCP - (D)mystified

2007-09-10T20:40:00.000+09:00

... the word which is a rage in my class these days is 'DCP' ...

DCP for dummies expands to Desperate Class Participation and is quite a remarkable phenomenon/tendency/ in some circles even labeled as 'disease' which can b found in most 'b-schools'.

The basic defintion is "It is a (shameless) act of asking a question in the class to pickup marks for class participation or just to impress the professor"

This comes in various forms and though this article does not claim to exhaustively cover this phenomenon as newer variants keep cropping up every now and then ( just now got an update thru gtalk bout 2 new variants springing up in the neighbouring class), we do promise to keep you updated on the latest developements on this front.

coming back to the word in focus , DCP strikes in most lectures the most common and easily reconginable symptom is the raised hand which keeps pace with the movement of lecturer's eyes ...

the basic premise behind this is believed to be the good old proverb tht "in an mba course any publicity is good publicity" ... ooops was'nt the saying meant for politics! ... with so many questions being popped around in the class, brains of ordinary mortals like me are bound to get addled.

There are a few basic instances when DCP surfaces ... first and foremost is when the lecture gets a bit boring and some of the participants decide enough is enough and starts asking Questions .. no one really knows what these questions are and how they are related and so on ... Dont ask me any further details , i generally wake up during this time ... so pardon me for not noting the question or what exactly happened .. but more often than not the questions are met with an exasperated "so whats your point ? what are u exactly asking?" tone or with curt and abrupt to the point answers like the "that was the paper covered in last term ..." or "we are yet to discuss the relevence of that on krakotan economy ..." sorry some of us quietly doze off ...
Another is when partipant gets very enthusiastic and tries to really sink her/his teeth into it ..arrhhhhhhh ... more often than not these Q go much beyond scope of Phd in the subject !

Another funny variant is when person is despo type and feels bad tht she/he has not participated much and asks questions from the slide the lecturer is covering when point no:1 is discussed , the DCPer jumps to point 4 and asks some Q related to tht !

Somewhat harmless one is when a particpant suddenly wakes up after forty winks and more often than because Prof has seen her/him dozing ... When the mind is torn between annoyance in having to wake up and guilt in having missed what was discussed , she/he comes up a smart way to snap out this .. ask Q !

So the question that comes to our mind is tht why does this happen ? of course there are quite a few obvious explanations like someone out there who designed the course actually thought giving marks for participation was a good idea ( believe me lot of ppl r hunting for tht person , i assure u we will take proper care of her/him) , but during some really drab lectures I got some real interesting opinions/theories ... the best one was that DCP is perpetrated by a group aliens with a mission to destabilise planet earth and this is done thru contact with ppl who wil shape India of tomorrow .... This could easily explain why clever people yours truly avoid any class particpation to avoid any contact with these aliens .. we will outlast the aliens and Earth can count on us ...

now most of the profs are pretty smart folks and can easily see thru an attempted DCP .. now each one has their on style of dealing with it .. lenient/poor ones try to even answer it and get bogged down and have vacant looks on their faces as Q follow Q .. some just let it pass...
the best ones hav been a recent instance where the prof asks the participant to Repeat the Q ... this kinda puts many a DCPer to shame and the the subsequent Q would somewhat rephrased and more logical version of the first one .. some need repeated takes to get this right .. but ofcourse for all his noble intentions i feel there is a minor flaw in this approach keepin in mind the alien-infestation theory tht is doin rounds ... if such an approach is tried with an in-organic life form ,we could end up in endless loops of repeated Q till the alien or replicant or whatever it is runs out of gas/battery charge in its oxygen-methane convertor or some such thing ... ofcourse the fact tht such a thing has not happened in class has made many debunk the alien-invasion theory .. but the guys who proposed the theory assure me , they are working hard to find out more bout these alien life forms .

Another notable approach which is prety aggresive and is to take on dcp er and give some rubbish back and put her/him to shame . Sample this ... "this is like saying there is an ätomic power plant in Krygiztan "... "ok whats your point ?!!!" ...

On the whole however i wud admit tht whether the Q made sense or the ppl gained anything , for good or bad DCP has had an impact on our course and has certainly manged to infuse some life into even the most dullest of classes !

PS: As many of u have rightly guessed this was written in class !

First Impressions ...

2007-08-03T03:44:00.000+09:00

Landed in Dubai on a hot summer day in the afternoon … right from the airport itself got accustomed to seeing things on a bigger or rather grander scale(compared to things back in India). We watched in awe as we moved across the huge airport . The moment we stepped out from airport and boarded the SPJCM pick up bus to hostel , we wherever we looked around the city it was just tall buildings n taller buildings emerging out of never ending miles of desert sand and amazing roads n flyovers full of dream cars zooming past us , the ‘wow’ factor continued. The city had set ‘lofty’ standards in our minds and upon arrival in the hostel was pleasantly surprised to see the lofty standards being maintained in the hostel too . The hostel is an entire apartment complex in International city on the outskirts of Dubai, it is just 20 min from college by Bus (arranged by college). We were all shown to our pre-allocated service apartments , which were much beyond what we had expected ! reminded me of the training days at a heaven called Mysore Infosys campus …

The college arranges transport from hostel to college in mornings and the buses leave on the dot , hence its quite a challenge for all of us to get ready in time to catch the bus …

The college is located in a place called academic city , which has lots of educational institutions in the middle of desert ! like most of the places in Dubai this place is also coming up fast and with huge sums of money being pumped in to develop world class infrastructure and things do happen here and happen fast . Its hard to imagine that the whole place was just a stretch of desert 3 yrs back !

All buildings are identical and after a long travel along numerous winding roads we finally reach the college building and after seeing the entire place and hostel , I was kind of thinking that the everything being excellent would be hard. So I thought initially that the college could be a letdown because we already had set very standards based on what we saw so far; I couldn’t be more mistaken … the first few hours itself changed whatever doubts I had about the place. The facilities , the kind of people , the classroom with beautiful amphitheatre like seating arrangement , with video recording of each lecture and the entire atmosphere convinced and reassured me that I had got a very good deal. We had a few ice breaker sessions for us to know each other (given that we were a batch of 150) better . then all the intricacies of the course was explained and we had a guest who was a VP in a reputed UAE based company telling us about life and business climate in middle east in general and Dubai in particular. We also had a couple of visits or rather sightseeing kinda tours arranged by college authorities to give us a feel of the city , mainly to get us adjusted to and feel the ‘global factor’, one of the main reasons for pursuing a MBA here in Dubai. The city visit was followed by a Dhow cruise followed by dinner on the dhow ( big boat) arranged by college as a welcome.

Having thus settled in at the ‘global’city of Dubai , we embarked on the business of learning or earning our stripes and the first week gave us enough indicator of what lies in store , people started adapting quickly to the frentic pace of life in a 1 yr course which almost covers most of the stuff taught in 2 yrs at SPJIMR. The excellent professors (mainly from SPJIMR along with a few resident faculty and guest lecturers from IIMs/XLRI) , the daily quizzes and assignments meant we had our hands full. Class full of people with work-ex ranging from 1-7 yrs of experience spread across all sectors meant rich and insightful classroom discussion/ interactions .In the first month itself we started getting an idea of business in UAE through a series of guest lecturers where people from various sectors in Dubai addressed us. Market research projects meant that all of us had to interact with businesses in Dubai and get to understand what it takes and how they do it ... mine was with a wonderful place called Wolfi's Bike shop .. we went there posing as customers and observed how they add value and how they do business in general ...

That’s just a month down … with 5 more months of learning to follow before heading off to Singapore…

Ps: i guess most of u mite hav already guessed from the wooden style tht this was written for college ! ;)

cat is out of the bag

2007-08-01T05:11:00.000+09:00

Finally it is out ... those of us who had tried hard to bell it now know how or why we missed it ... Thanks again to RTI and efforts of ... , the 'process' of IIMB admissions are made public.

The disclosure was something which interested a lot of us who were part of the Cat brigade at sometime or other in our life , though it doesnt really matter now for most ...
Despite fact that the secrecy had lent some sort of aura to the whole process and even though it may not b same again , i think everyone wud defnitely prefer to know it ...

I was totally impressed with the kind of effort and dedication spent in refining and following up the admission process which is supposed to filter and get the best that there is ...

Having written the exam 4 times and having managed to walk across those gates only once for an interview , i know how tough it is ...

Lot of misnomers are cleared btw , about the percieved biases and patterns followed.

Also the odds seem to be stacked against ppl with not so good acads .. apparently CAT score is not the only factor as some coachin centers used to claim ...

Im not so good at summing up whats written in those 5 pages ...

so check this wonderful post by Rashmi which explains what this is all about ...

Dubai slices - Mall of Emirates

2007-07-16T23:54:00.000+09:00

Since im spending 6 months here in the desert kingdom , thought of jotting down some of the experiences ...

If you look at Dubai city during daytime the first thing you will notice is zillions and zillions of cranes and buildings under construction , wherever you go and wherever you look you see more and more buildings springing up over the entire desert landscape ...

Another thing which is starkingly different cities back home is that in dubai its dificult to spot human beings/animals or birds outside during the day. But when sun goes down it all changes ... the Dubai skyline by night looks amazing the whole place (incl highways ) is always lit.

Though its a muslim country , unlike its neighbours or for that matter other emirates in the country , Dubai is not a conservative place. It is very comsopolitan mainly due to the huge number of outsiders and huge number of Europeans. So nightlife is pretty rocking here.

The malls are also amazing and you do get good bargains during the shopping festivals and summer sales. currently Dubai Summer Surprises is on .. it runs till end of this month and a huge number of Malls and shops are part of this , we had heard that they offer really amzing discounts , so thot of chking it out.

A few of us went to Mall of Emirates last week , the trip was pretty costly , we went by the offical cab and not the 'lift service' (which is unofficial cab , run by mallu drivers , more bout that later in nother blog) ... the cabbie was incidentally a Punjabi . Taxi drivers here are either Indians or Pakistanis or Bangladeshis ... interestingly when the cabbie heard that we were MBA students said he was an MBA student before , me n my friend Aswin were shell-shocked !
It seems he dropped out of some college bacck home and regrets it hugely and advised us to concentrate hard on our studies ! In midst of all this friendly chatter , the guy took us through roads with Salik toll' and when we finally reached the destination - Mall of emirates , our eye-balls popped out when we saw the meter ...
The attractions in the mall begins right at the parking lot , which is flocked by visitors with cameras :) ... u get to see the best n most flashy cars in the world there , people just wait for the owners/valet to park the car and then click their own pictures with the car !

The mall itself is huge , with many shops being part of Dubai Summer surprises , there were a lot of places where you could get good discounts. You really need a store map to get anywhere in the mall. For all Bangaloreans this mall is like 10-15 times the size of Forum .

The mall also houses a few movie screens and carrefour supermarket inside , this time as DSS was going on there were lot shows on makeshift stages in various parts of the mall , where Asian culture and diversity was on display.

Unfortunately like malls back home in India , on weekdays in this mall also most shops close by 10 , we went too late and by the time we had checked out most of the shops and had kind of identified the shops with best deals , they all started closing !
Finally lots n lots of options for food with starbucks , dunkin and donuts etc and lots coffee shops n fancy restaurants with cuisines across the world. Food court also has variety of options , but good veg food is not so easily available.

PS:
Plannin to drop another visit to the place when a good movie comes along and will add more details

Dubai Slices - meena bazaar

2007-07-10T04:37:00.003+09:00

Like the name suggests its a place in Dubai dominated by Indian shops ...

Today we had a somewhat free day @ college , had a quiz in the morning and couple of lectures and a simple group assignment and by 2 in the noon we were free ! They say its difficult to get free time in this course and wanted to get most out of it , so hit the sack immediately to make up for lost sleep ... woke up @ 6 and then suddenly had an idea of going to city . friend of mine wanted to buy watches .. he has a small collection now .. anyways he also jumped at the proposal and got a third aimless, bored soul also and then booked an unofficial (and illegal ! ) 'Mallu' cab (which is an interesting concept and i will dedicate a separate post for that ) to go to Bur Dubai ...

Roads in Dubai are amazing , you can easily run up 100kmph + speeds ... i believe 120 is the limit , but ppl drive around /above that usually ... once u reach the city proper , many areas have nasty traffic snarls and u never miss good ol Bangalore or for that matter any big city in India :)

Went to this place called 'Al-Ain Centre' which is a mall full of electronic goods shops ... was hunting for a pen drive , found the prices dropping as we moved from store to store. After grabbing some food from a Mexican fast food joint there , stepped out into a hot n sweltering Dubai evening...

It was close to 8 pm still it was extremely humid, but by the time we walked a couple blocks all of us were drenched !

Checked out a few watch shops on the way and reached 'Meena Bazaar'. If you are blind folded and dropped suddenly into this place you would think you are in some city in India. for ppl from, B'lore the place resembles Commerical street ! all the streets in that area had Indian shops ... all the people we saw on the streets were Indians / South Asians ...

after futile attempts at watch shopping , we moved around aimlessly (apparently we had missed the street where u get the best deals !)...

This is the place where the average Indian , the ones who come to Dubai to earn a living and tranfers bulk of the money back home , shops - u find shops of all sizes n shapes selling virtually evrything ...
there were a few Indian restaurants / fast food places too ...
Then there was a supermarket where u get all ur 'desi' packaged food stuff , replenished our depleting stocks and jumped back into business of exploring the place , there is a 'temple' also somewhere there , didnt find it when we went around ... there was a lot more to explore , but since there was hungry guy n knowledge thirsty guy (wanted to prepare for nxt day's quiz at college) ... i was forced to return back and again got a 'mallu' cab and was back in the hostel by 10 ...

Sivaji @ sharjah !

2007-06-25T17:52:00.000+09:00

there are some movies which cannot or should not be reviewed ,Rajni movies definitely fall in that category.Don't get me wrong here , the reason why we cant review it is , reviews dont matter , the story or ensemble cast doesnt matter , a Rajni movie is above all these things , its a phenomenon in itself. A lot of ppl who are not from south may not understand , but Ranjni is not an áctor' in Tamil Nadu (actually entire south ) he is THE 'Superstar'. He appears in only 1 movie in a couple of years and fans eagerly wait for his darshan. By fans its not just rural folk/lower class , but city folks too and a huge crowd of techies/software engineers who are spread all over the world.Blogosphere is full of blogs about how eagerly they are waiting for superstar's movie !
Though im not a big Rajni fan , i feel you just deny the fact the man has the charisma n appeal and is a phenomenon , movies with Rajni needs just Rajni , fans just want a darshan with typical style n mannerisms.So when i set out to watch the movie 'Sivaji' on a hot sultry evening in Dubai , i had my expectations (-> superstar + lots of style , action , some comedy and a cute girl with values as heroine) in the right place , which i believe is important while watching movie of any genre. it was a monday evening in Dubai and the movie hall we were going to had 300 seats , like in India , here also Rajni sells and we could not get tickets at all in Dubai ! So we headed out to nearby city of Sharjah in a cab from dubai ! When the movie had released , i was earlier amused when i heard tales of ppl from Chennai going to other cities to watch the movie and suprisingly here i was doing the same.getting there was in itself an interesting , movie like experience , getting cabbies and arranging the trip to shrajah for 8 of us and seeing a new city was memorable.
We saw lot of southindians out there and saw a shop called madras grocery , where some us bought pickles n such typical tam stuff and then we followed it up with an early dinner @ Saravana bhavan ! it never felt like we were in middle east , we sitting in a huge table and talkin in tamil and the whole place was full of south indians that really set the mood for the evening.
So lemme get straight to the movie , the recipe ( perfected for Rajni movies over years) was there , the ingredients were definetly there , ppl handling it were the best lot of tamil cinema ( shankar n his crew is the best u can think of ) but the final effect was not what i was really looking forward to ! it simply was not what i wanted , something was missing considering the hype , the potential of ppl involved the final effort was def not justified , but who cares , its a Rajni movie they say and he is there and i guess thats all counts for most !for ppl like me who were looking for a 'movie' along with superstar, there's bound to be some dissapointments.Having said that it was not all that bad i definetly though it was worth my dirhams !
Rajni was usual self and was in top form , supporting cast was adequate , Shriya was nice eye-candy and fitted the role , 'item-girl' Nayantara was wow ! Vivek was in top from with his one-liners n his terrific comic timing with Rajni had everyone in splits. The first half was just not what i had in mind , it was a let-down for me personally , a view shared by most ppl in my group. the story was typical Shankar stuff , one man taking on the system for the benefit of masses , it was fight against money laundering /black money in this particular case. But dialogues and pacing of songs ( though masterpieces by themselves ) was really bad !but i guess overall the movie must have addressed Ranji's fan base , it was for the masses, it had all the fantasies of tamil male viewer , there were references to MGR , sivaji and even Rajni's prev films , i liked the bit "enna koduma saravana"and ref to vadivelu during comedy scenes , all in all a movie for the fans ...but still felt that it as a movie lacked the punch we wud have expected ...
i read this one the movie reviews and when i saw the movie , i realised how true it was , there was scene were rajni while trying to woo shriya gets stuck on a track & is about to be run over by the train. the same was true for movie til then , it was bout to be run over by the expectations and if it proceed at that pace would have been smashed to bits n pieces. But shriya comes along waving here duppata n saves the hero and funnily after that point film also gets saved. The pace picks up , Rajni starts to kick ass and get into the role we are familiar with the trademark style satements , superhero stunts and dialogues all fall into place and it is an amzing journey after that. Most of our movies begin well and lose the fizz subsequently and endings are weak points in most of Indian movies , but here was a glorious exception , i absolutely loved the last 15 min , where Rajni transforms himself into MGR from Sivaji , his appearance n screen presence was terrific and the last 15 min made the movie for me ! The movie is supposed to have one of the highest budgets in Tamil Cinema , agreed the sets were grand n all , but still was wondering where all that money went , the final 5-10 min gave me an idea of how so much money was spent ;-)

A cat n mouse game !

2007-06-06T02:41:00.000+09:00

Writing had always been first in the list of things i 'wanted' to do .. though i did make attempts at writing fiction, i never completed anything ; also sad part of bout my attempts was that none my stories packed the punch. As with most stories these days mine also had its moments but when it came to finishing i realised that i was pathetic. Though i kind of fixed that urge to write by coming up with this blog where i keep ranting bout lotsa usual stuff . Since i found myself outta work for some time , thought of makin another shot at fiction , starting another story
(disclaimer: it could b loong boring and may or may not make sense as i still havent figured out an ending )
i was sitting in my bus and was reading a book which i had picked up purely on whim one day from a bookstore , the name somehow appealed to me . im always good at pickin books which are gr8 reads . the book in Q was called "My name is red" written by a turkish author and it did turn out to a real good one , but thats not the point here. i was reading this particular book while i was travelling to my office as i was telling you , i happened to read a chapter which was bout a guy returning to a city where the person he loved lived after a gap of 12 yrs. She had married , but her husband was missing on warfront ... by fotuitous circumstance he happens to catch a glimpse of her one day . I closed the book and was thinkin that it had been 12 months since i last spoke to my ex-girl friend . Not that i was sad or anything , infact i was amazed at how i din feel bad at all considering that previously after break-ups i used to be such an emotional mess and would invariably jump into a realtionship witin a few months , but this time i hadnt wavered , and also for the first time i broke it off ( nothin to b proud of , but a first all the same ! )Now that i have set the tone , let me get back to my story , after closing the book , started walking to my office from the busstop , the whole campus is really huge and swarming with ppl , as i walking to my building i saw a familiar face , i saw her from distance , infact it was not my eyes that noticed her , i knew even before my eyes saw her that it was 'her' - 'she who must not be named'.we were still a sufficient distance apart and i was suddenly flustered as my eyes confirmed that i was indeed 'her and the red line of sindoor drawn on her forehead was clear "RED" signal for me. it wasnt the old her and only one word flashed before me 'Avoid' , i just wanted to get away , i quickly changed directions and moved into a buliding nearby , i realised that i cud hear my hearbeating and that i was feelin a little hot under collar !!!i still couldnt beleive my rotten luck for she used to work elsewhere in another part of the country !moreover i had resigned my job as i was takin up a new assigment and would be speding most of the time abroad.i just had a little more than a week left and i badlywanted leave that part of my past which involved her among many other things behind.I quicly went to my desk and realised i was early , i grabbed a cup of cofee and stood near the window watching the entrance to my building and to my relief foumdout that she wasnt in my bulding and hence not in my department. So there was hope yet , i just had to watch my step. with thousands of ppl around i was sure i could move around for another 10 days unnoticed !It was evening and a colleague asks my why im working so hard daily even though i have quit the job ! I quickly close the chat windows and mails/articles that i was reading and lean across my desk and shout back saying "i get so immersed in this that i never realise it!" ( boy i can shoot crap !). But anyways since most of frens r offline , i think its time to shut shop , so leave with her. we walk till the busstand , then i move to the terminus where buses heading to my directions come and i find that there are 3 buses which are about to start. There were around 50 odd buses starting in that 20 min period from that terminus and 3 to my place. I choose one ( thinkin bout the how narrow the odds were for another encounter with 'you know who' ) and i get in and i get this strange feelin again and there 'she' was sitting in the front row near door , she was talkin on phone but i was sure she saw me , i quicly moved in and took a seat in the back row, By now i kinda figued that she mite living in same area as me ( had to be !) Since the place i lived was at almost in the heart of the city , the we were always caught in traffic jams , so i thought of gettin down 1 stop before mine and i was sure that if i walked i will reach at the same time as the bus reached the stop. I crossed the road and walked to stop near my home and headed into a store nearby from there i watched the bus coming slowly past the traffic and people started disembarking and just as i thought she got down at the same stop ! To my relief she lived a few blocks away from my house and i slowly walked back to my house aware of the cat n mouse game that awaited me daily at my office.
(to be continued ...)
Ps: Thanks for all the comments , unfortunately had to hide the comments as you ppl commented before reading the full story , i do plan to complete it pretty soon , got held up lots of stuff after moving to Dubai , hence the delay !

Million Dollar Babies !

2007-03-31T16:26:00.000+09:00

what do you think of it ? asked my friend while we were watching TV. Tv channels all of them were into "Team India" bashing mode then , the very media who projected them as heroes were now after them show after show , funnily in between these debates the ads featured had cricketers endorsing products ( initially !)... on tv we were flooded with images of fans going berserk ... majority demanding that the team come back right now and stop 'disgracing' us !
( where were these ppl n those who interviewed em when hockey team was playin or when any other intl sports meet where we took part was happenin .. i wonder ;-) )
well it was that time of the World Cup when a extremely cautious India was shocked by a carefree Bangaldesh. I had hopes of the team bouncing back then as i beleived (and continue to beleive that we are a good team) but it was not be. Ex-cricketers , who had given 'expert' opinions bout the greatness of current team and had rubbished Bangaldeshis before the match , suddenly discovered that the team was not good and were able to come up with a lot of flaws. More hilariously TV channels went around asking common men and funnily filmstars for advice on what was wrong with Indian cricket... comments were really hilarious ( some sick) to say the least. here are some i recollect ...universal conclusion was that it was ads which was responsoble for the 'spineless' capitulation ..."stop them from doing all these ads , then they will be better cricketers" they all quipped . They should stop doing all these ads and practise harder instead they all chimed . How easy is the life of an arm chair critic ! we are a nation of under achievers yet we expect our cricketers to do magical feats. Ads i thot meant safe n secure income and optimistic way of lookin at it wud mean that a cricketer who has a 5 yr contract wud not be very worried about getting out and can be free of pressure and hence can perform better which cud lead to more ads and more money .. translating to more motivation for ground breaking performances ! But whole country acc to media polls thinks otherwise ... Another enterprising gentleman had this formula , there some 10 point agenda to reform Indian cricket ! Another KPS Gill in making i guess :-) if they dont perform , dont pay them they thundered. ..
some ( inc TOI newspaper !) were of the view that cricketers should be given targets like sales executives ... " they should be set a target of say 40 runs ave .. to be maintained over a period of 10-15 ODIs , if u dont match it u r dropped, same for bowlers , they should have x economy rate and ave over a period of time or they r dropped".
Gosh .. how idiotic can ppl get ! now they want ppl to conc on the personal records instead of helping the team win. now if these ppl/media have their way u will have ATP style ranking system wherein the top 11 wud make it to the team and others wud work hard to earn points to make it to top 11 and enter the team ;-) one politician was quick to poune on this and demanded bannin cricket as solution to all our problems ... i guess a better solution wud be to ban all these politicians, who discuss cricket in Lok sabha instead on concentrating on graver issues n problems botherin the nation.
my answer to 'it' would be that we are a nation which is evolving fast yet some things like mindset dont change so fast. im sure we will in due course realise that our Cricketers are no heroes they are also humans like each one of us and are prone to failures like most of us !
Our society has changed/evolved a lot in last 25-30 yrs when watching sports / playing was considered criminal waste of time by most parents ... to healthy appreciation of both .. to current trend of coaching camps , tennis academies where 6-8 yr olds are dropped for coaching by ever eager parents... The cricket economy has grown at a much faster pace then the game itself in our country and hopefully sooner or later this gulf wud get bridged , this defeat i guess wud in that sense go a long way in correcting the perspectives of most and would actually do us a lot of good in the longer run ... Soon we will come terms with defeat and will realise as late Bob Woolmer said "it is after all a game" !

Bang on Target !

2007-03-18T17:08:00.000+09:00

They have done it ... it is yet to sink in for the 2 heavyweights from subcontinent.
It was supposed to be a walk in the park for both , but suddenly both India and Pakistan find that the park has turned into a maze and they have totally lost their way. Pak has been booted out , but India still has a chance to make it . If they come out of the mental maze they have created for themselves . As expected newspapers and news channels are full of criticism for the players , which rite now is waste of time . When one team played like tigers and other team was bleating around like lost lambs it was an uneven contest ( i was initially tempted to call this post "Silence of lambs" and lambast Ind :-) ) . yes we all do feel bad that our team remained as tigers only in the pepsi commercial ! But simply shouting @ them / attacking thier houses is not the way out ... we need to back them to come back ... on the same note , while everyone were fretting about team's chance of bouncing back we are missing a huge phenomeon ... Cricket is slowly coming of age , liberated from clutches of the elitist club of 7 top nations and others can now swing their weight equally at world stage . Now isn't that something ...
Who would have expected all this a few days back !
This was the first time we had a World Cup with so many teams and there was this talk of 2 different WC contests , round one was to be fun with minnows and then the big ones get together to fight the real world cup in a round billed as super8 !
but i guess yesterday changed it all ! WC has seen its share of upsets and tales of underdogs pulling it off like that of Kenyans last time. But politics and hence teams forfeiting matches played a role then , which is the reason why the matches yesterday are so different.
Now cricket WC has started resembling Soccer WC a bit , we are not yet there , but looks like this could be a beginning for more exciting contests . Honestly i never believed it when ppl called this group D as 'group of death' , such things happen in Soccer maybe but not in cricket is what i believed , but Bangladesh has shown the spirit and has acheieved the impossible. But what Ireland has achieved is totally unbelievable esp for a team playing its first Cup , I cant beleive it is yet to be beaten in WC !!!
And to think of it most of the ppl were looking forward to "April 15 " ( when India was supposed to meet Pak in Super 8 !!! ) , guess we need to wait another 4 yrs for that !

The Sixth Sense

2007-02-25T19:30:00.000+09:00

I do have this tendency to name my blogposts after movie titles/TV shows (!) but in most these cases its simply because they happen to be the most apt title. Sixth sense i something i totally believe in and every now and then I can see some proof of this phenomenal power of human mind.
I normally see this phenomenon coming handy when im leaving for office ( its actually rushing to catch the last bus) in the morning. I usually have a huge paraphrenalia which i carry to office with various assorted items like gym clothes , id card , cellphone , tie , wallet et all ..
I have noticed that whenever i miss something , there will be some voice inside me telling me "u have missed something" and during the frantic process of getting ready most often than not it manages to remind me the object i have missed also !

Yesterday i saw this mind thing happening again and boy Im really thankful for all those senses !
We had gone out yesterday on a team outing to Mysore Infy Campus and got back to Bangalore @ 10 at night , some of us had dinner and a couple of ladies had to be dropped at their homes , so after dropping the last person , i was walking to my place.
The street i live which incidentally is good representation of urban India , with big posh houeses and flats at one end of the street and small shops and cluster of shabby houses/huts at the other end. Typical 'two Indias' street . Importantly for this tale it also has a butcher's shop at one end so there are lots of stray dogs in the area. Banglore these days is famous for its street dog menace with growing no:of attacks on human population. In my area i had earlier seen packs roaming around at nights and occassionaly just for the kicks , giving a few bikers a chase! Enough has been said and written about what should be done to 'tackle' this problem and who is to blame for this , since i dont have anything significant to contribute on that note , i limit my comments on another interesting 'phenomenon' i observed during a brief encounter with the canines.

Coming back to my tale ,I was walking from the 'other' end of street and before i turned into my street , i remembered last time i had come through the area so late @ night . It was a month back with my cousin and we were coming back after watching a late night movie , he had suggested picking up a couple of stones with us so that if any dogs chase us, we have some ammo to reply back ! I had scoffed at his idea then , but then while i was walking i thought of that incident and picked up a couple stones without giving it much thought.
As i was walking and reached the 'dreaded' end of my street i got a call on my cellphone and was engrossed in it and didnt notice the fact that right in front of my were 4 stray dogs. After ending the call ( which was for some issues at office , requiring me to work on weekend) and ruing my bad luck and a weekend gone waste , i moved past a pack of dogs and suddenly i was greeted by a series of barks and couple of dogs came running towards me . Though reason dictated that i should not panic and should keep still , I found that reason and logic could not hold against 5 dogs who were very close to my legs.Suddenly in a split second i had thrown the couple of decent sized stones i had collected earlier at my attackers and which kept them at bay and then at the next instant before i knew it i had started running , though something told me it was wrong to run when there are dogs around , i ran for a few seconds at the max speed i could conjure up. Fear gives you wings they say and it was true within no time i was pretty near my house and i realised that there were a few ppl walking in the streets in front of me who were now watching this spectacle ! I slowed down and noticed that dogs were no longer chasing me , i seemed to have moved out of their territory , there were some dogs much further ahead , so concluded that i must moved to no-man's land ... oops no-dog's land ! Then a guy who was walking in opp dir came up to me and told me that you should never run when dogs bark and best thing to do is to move away slowly! But when 4 dogs come towards you barking , i guess logic takes a second seat to panic!!!
Anways i think if not for those stones which repulsed them for a second or two and helped me make my getaway ... i wud have been easy target for those dogs, given that i had comminted the blunder of running when they were barking at me ...
I for sure believe it was some kind of sixth sense which made me pickup those stones given the fact that i have travelled thorough that area a number of times before this late in the night and had never been chased by dogs .

A River Runs through it ...

2007-02-07T15:44:00.000+09:00

Its a 100 yr old debate and just like other tussles over sharing of natural resources between states/nations this one also will never get solved. But on monday 5th Feb when Cauvery tribunal was abou to to give its verdict , a lot of people where waiting for the verdict with bated breath ... Among this lot were a lot of my colleagues at office ... now how does water sharing formula of a river which runs through 2 states and primarily affects the farmers would interest the crowd of techies was kinda puzzling to me initially. But then this is city of Bangalore in Karnataka and the waters of Cauvery is deeply linked with politics of the region.

Along with water tussle there is another big fight in the offing a similar yet diff kind of problem ... While flowing through two states the river also seems to dividing ppl from these two states , instead of finding means to solve their problems , ppl seem content to bicker from either side of the river. Everyone has their own share of problems and actions like violence against ppl from the other state will never help in bring a solution. River seems to run through 2 set of people and dividing ppl living in the city , the war has begun with cable operators firing the first salvo; all tamil TV channels have been blocked since the day the verdict came out ! Most of the bus services have been suspended between the states since then ...Stage seems to set for anti-Tamil movement .Though most people know such measures are hardly ever going to help .. things just happen . During such times voices of reason are seldom heard, it is these moments when reason fails that as an individual you feel totally helpless ...

Last time things came to this level was in '91 when after the verdict came things changed and people changed . .. it was a totally harrowing time for the sizeable tamil population in the cosmopolitan city fo B'lore .

Ofcourse I was not there , but knew a lot of close friends and family members who were here @ Bangalore ( city they call their home) . "...it was really a situation of riots brought to ur door...
u won't understand...no one who wasn't there will understand...
being tamils was a huge thing...u could get killed for that... " was what i got when i asked one of them why is there such a huge buildup to the Cauvery tribunal verdict which came out today ...

Now suddenly a lot of us have this slight feeling of insecurity which is suffered by majority of the minority groups all over the world ...

As usual politicians and small time leaders as is their wont , have begun fishing in troubled waters and if last week's riots in some parts after rally to protest execution of Suddam Hussein ( 1 month after the execution) was any indication , there is a huge danger of this issue escalating into another widespread riots. Now the latest news is that Bandh call which was made for Thursday earlier is now postponed to monday so that they can do adequate 'preparations' !

Day Six

2006-12-26T17:01:00.000+09:00

It was the last day of our trip ...
if the previous few days and the trip in the morning was good , then the travel back was total contrast , the trip back to Siliguri was bad but the next journey from Siliguri to Kolkata in private bus was Ugly !
for the first time in last few days we dint have to get up very early , we left @ 8 for Rumtek Monastry which was below Gangtok (southern side) we reached pretty quickly in about 30 min , the monastry is a pretty famous and has had its share of controversies/disputes and is the seat of religious head ( who is in exlie). The place had high security with a posse of policemen around the monastry and a couple of other places in the complex . The ones near the main entrance were extremely rude to ppl ( just 3-4 visitors were around). The monastry had no specific timings and was closed when we went in the morning , we enquired in a shop nearby and were told that it would open by 8 in the morning but due to some reson it was no opened that day. There was the famous Golden Pagoda in the monastry and also it has university for religious studies for Buddists.We went to another monastry which was also beautiful in its own way , the architecture was totally different.
We reached Gangtok by 12 and then went around the main market area to pick up shawls and sweaters for ppl back home and moved to Jeep stand by 1 , we had get back to Kolkata , we had to catch a jeep t Siliguri andf from there we had booked tickets in a private bus @ 7 to Kolkata
We expected the Journey from hills of Sikkim to plains on Bengal to be another fun trip , but thanks to mad man at wheel of the crowded jeep the entrie journey was a nightmare , we were glas to reach Siliguri alive !
We went staright to railway station outside which is the busstand .The The journey was supposed to be 12 hr one , and we had flight to B'lore @ 10 so we wanted to reach the place by 8-8:30 so had booked thr bus @ 7 . But bus we were supposed to travel in had some problems and we had a delay of more than 1.5 hours before we finally got started . to add to our miseries the driver and conductor (perhaps irritated by our constant questioning) told us that it might take 14 rs to reach Kolkata which meant we may not make it in time !everytime we saw a signpost indicating distance to Kolkata we were making mental calculations about when we might reach !The roads were extremely horrible and the bus after travelling on these roads was a total wreck creaking and shaling each time we passed over a pothole , which was like every other minute . most of the seats were rickety and window panes kept shaking and moving and cold air kept coming in ... All this meant a horrible night topped by fear of missing our flight !thankfully the Airport was on the way , before we reached Kolkata city so we saved a lot of time and made it to Airport by 9 ( flight was at 9:50) and reached ontime. It was a journey which we could never forget for the sheer tension , frustration and exhaustion , i remember sleeping for some 15 hrs straight after reaching home that evening !!!on the whole it was total fun and gr8 trip given the fact that we had very little planning !

Day Five - Sikkim

2006-12-24T16:47:00.000+09:00

We started early that day our vehicle was waiting outside the hotel for trip to a few sunrise view points in the city. Our Driver suggested that we miss Tashi viewpoint as it will be crowded with toursits , he said Hanuman Tok which also gives a similar view would be a better choice and we agreed and that quite set the tone for the rest of the day as our driver cum guide suggested a lot of things each one of which made the trip really wonderful , we managed to have quite a good time and avoid the crowds. We reached Hanuman Tok first and we were the only ones there. The place was temple of top of a hill and it presented a magnificent view of snow capped mountains with Kanchenjunga standing out . Next to the temple is the burial bround of the Royal family and it was resplendent with flags. The temple itself was neat much to our amusement the priest at the temple after handing us the prasad showed us a snap of the mountain he had clicked 5 min back ! Mountain is looking really beautiful today and its such a clear day u guys r really lucky he kept repeating. He also showed us the best place to take snaps of the mountain from the temple. Only when we were finished and the sun was totally up did other tourists turn up and we appreciated our driver's suggestion to go against the normal tourists route. We next went to place called Ganesh Tok , it had osbservatory built by toursim dept. the views of the mountains one one side and the scenic hills and city of Gangtok on the other side were unforgettable. We then saw the Sikkim legislative Assembly building and then went to another view point which was right on top of a hill with beautify view of the valley below. It was wonderful to watch the entire valley gettin lit by sun's rays gradually.We returned back by 8Am , finished our breakfast and set out for Tsamgo lake(40 Km) and Baba Mandir (54 Km) , the trip was supposed to take about 2 hours. There are lots check posts outside the city 5th mile , 8th mile ans so on .. to go to any place you need to get a permit stating ur detaisl and ur reason for visit , the drivers get these things done pretty quick , they help Govt track people movement int eh border state and also check any possiblity fThe journey was amazing and roads built by BRO wind through the hills , its a really marvellous feat by building such high quality roads on such a trecherous terrian.
We stopped for a warm cup of tea just before reaching Tsango lake , our driver had mentioned that there a few places which were not part of our original itenary , but could be 'arranged'. We then reached Tsango lake (called Changu ) , but did not stop there , we went past it and our destination was a place called Baba Mandir , enroute we saw snow on one side of the road and barren rocks on the other side. in half an hour we reached this place called Baba Mandir , which was built in memory of a soldier. The temple also had memorial for soldiers who lost their lives for the nation in that region. Since we had gone on sundays we were provided with prasad at the temple on sundays all visitors were provided with lunch by the army. When we were eating lunch suddenly we were hit by a cold winds and the temperature dropped very drastically. thanksfully we were well equipped with wollens and gloves. During lunch the visibility was very poor though it was one clock in the afternoon. Our driver was very sceptical about covering the next place we had planned a couple lakes a bit higher than the Mandir. He checked with a few cabbies who were back from that place and told us that though there was a chance that the trip would be ruined by poor visibility and storms there was also a chance of the fog clearing off and asked us to choose.

we decided to try our luck and were not dissapointed the next few hours turned out to be the highlight of our joureny to sikkim as we went higher and higher and soon saw snow on either side , we came across the world's highest ATM and cyber cafe ! After that it was pure heaven ! we went as much 1400 ft high and the view of Himalayas and kanchenjunga mountain was amazing . After apoint he stopped the vehicle and there small hills covered with snow , where we could play with snow , we had a snow fight and it was truly a gr8 experience.

after an hour we returned back to Tsango lake which was oval shaped and over a kilometre long , thanx to influx of tourists a lot of shops selling trinkets and offering joy rides on yaks are there.
While we were ambling about enjoying the beauty of the lake and snow covered mountains we were hit by sudden winds and mist which made it even more memorable !

We got back to Gangtok with a sense of statisfaction this particluar day made the trip and would stand out among all the wondeful memories of this trip. Missing out Nathula was the only regret.

We came back to Gangtok and did some shopping for shawls n sweaters at the local bazaars and also finalised the itenary for the next day , the plan was to visit a couple of monastries nearby.

Day Four - Darjeeling/Gangtok

2006-12-23T22:49:00.000+09:00

We woke up early morning and we outside the temp was 3 deg and got into our car and took off at 5:15 for tiger hill , we reached there in about 20 min , the vehicle drops u almost at the top of the hill. this is the place which affords u a brillinat view of kanchenjunga and also on a clear day a glimpse of Mt Everest ! But we were not lucky , it was a partially clouded day and we went up the hill and got into the observatory which was fast filling up with ppl. there rows n rows of chairs and glass panes arnd us thru which we were to observe the sunrise .

As time started progressing ppl started gettin restless and were bedoming a huge nuisance , outside it was real cold so we decided to stay inside the observatory where we could sip tea/coffee which were provided inside. As the first straks of light appeared on horizon ppl started standing up n clicking pictures ( God knows what they got ! ) and we decided to move out of the the observatory into the open after gettin our first glance of the rising sun.

What a spectacular sight it was ! then I heard a old gentleman telling everyone that Sun is not hat we should be looking it , we should actually be looking at the other direction Where Kanchenjunga will recieve its first sunlight of the day. We cam out and started cliking pics of sunlight and patiently waited looking at the op direction and then saw the marvelous sight of a huge mountain slowly coming into view in between the clouds , the first rays of sun falling on the whitish mountain and the resultant effect was unbelievable and just cannot be described in words ... After enjoying the sunrise and watching the entire valley slowly emrging out of darkness to a brnad new day , we started from tiger hill to the next point which was Ghoom monastery, followed by something called Bastasia loop which was a memorial. But these two turned out to be a big dissapointment as there was nothinh worth wacthing there. We returned back to our hotel some time after 8 , then got ready and went to the Mall and strolled around looking for some good restaurant and had a really yummy breakfast and then packed our bags and proceeded to the Jeep stand. We had made a big mistake in not planning this part of the travel properly , we had just enquired where the jeep stand was and had assumed that we would get a vehicle at all times. It turned out that they had only hourly service after 10 , so had to wait for a long time and finally got a jeep for Gangtok at 11 AM.

The journey was supposed to take close to 4 hours.

And we had braced ourselves for a tortorous trip as it was in a jeep. But it turned out to be quite an experience. The views were simply awesome , we passed through a few tea gardens and a lot of places where 'Terrace farming' was practiced.

The total journey itself was gr8 as the road to Gangtok was through hills and after a point we came across Teesta river and after that the entire journey the road and the river ran alongside and there lot of scenic views

There is also white water rafting on Teesta river which was attracting quite a big crowd. There was a place on the way where there were numerous resorts which offered rafting experience.

.Finally reached Gangtok which was also a city on hills at 4 and managed to locate out hotel Shilton Lodge(once again had found out about it through internet). The rooms were pretty good and very affordable .We had reached the place late afternoon around 3:30 and after checking in , asked the guy at the hotel about the places we can visit. To our dismay we were told that we wont able to visit any of the places we had planned as it was too late and places inside the city were all sunrise view points which were not worth it during evenings. So we went out dissappointed and hungry and decided to have a late lunch at a restaurant nearby , which had a band performing during nights. We had gone in arnd 4 and the band was somewhere inside practising for their performance later that night and after a point it was really irritating and they took a huge amount of time to bring the food , after waiting for 30 min we were angry tired and totallyclueless as to what to do. Everything seemed hopeless the mood in the camp was totally down. We were about to walk out of the place , then the food arrived ! I have never such good chinese food ever before in 10 min we had finished our late lunch and trooped out into the main market place. Which it turned out was very small just a couple streets ! For a capital city Gangtok is very very small. But still it was a pleasant expericence , we walked around looking for some trinkets. The weather was also very pleasant must have been 15- 20 degrees , a huge departure from Darjeeling where it was below 10 in the afternoon itself.

We headed straight to the tourist info centre ru Sikkim govt. unfortunately for us , by the time we made it the place was closed , it was around 5PM. Here also people shut shop much earlier , most shops close by 7:30. Then we started walking around the central area called MG Marg which had shops on wither side and was a busy street. We spotted a lot of Travel agencies and decided to ask a few of them the rates for sightseeing and then decide what to do the next day. The first place we entered , the guy gave us the normal tour package where you with a group of 10-15 which wud be economical but crowded and also suggested that we could hire a cab on our own ( Maruti Van) since there were 3 of us , it would be comfortable and not so hard on pocket for us. The places covered would be Tsango lake which was 40 Km from Gangtok but close to 2 hrs on road and a place called Baba Mandir which he assured me was wonderful. We also wanted cover a couple of other view points ( in this part of the country view points r meant to view the sunrise) and the cost came about 1500 for the vehicle. But he said all permits for Nathula Pass were finished so we cant visit that place. Nathula is on Indo-China border on the famous 'silk route' . You need to get prior permit to visit the place and visit is possible only on Tuesday, Thursday, Sat and Sunday. We had landed there on Saturday evening , which he said was a bit too late for permit. When we asked if it is possible somehow to procure a permit , he said that the no: of visitors on any day is limited to a certain number and he had run out of his quota , but told us that we can try with any other operator and if we were lucky (since it was pretty late) we might get , so we tried our luck at another 3-4 places each one told us the same thing , No Nathula permit. Finally we came back to the first guy and booked for trip to Tsango lake and also for early morning sightseeing in Gangtok. Tot cost was 1500.
One good thing about this place is that they treat the tourists really well , Govt stipulates a standard rate for these sightseeing trips and do a constant checking to ensure that those rates are maintained.

We had dinner at a hotel in MG Marg which served North Indian food , there were a lot of good hotels there and returned back to hotel to sleep early , the whole city sleeps by 10 ! We had planned our Sikkim sightseeing from 5:30 next morning.

Day three- Darjeeling

2006-12-22T20:06:00.000+09:00

Train from Kolkata to Siliguri took exactly 12 hrs and we reached @ 7:45 in the morning

We had 2 options from Siliguri to reach Darjeeling , one was the 'toy train' which winds its way up the hills to Darjeeling , the jourey takes 8 hrs but is said to be really amazing. but we had to choose option 2 , travel via Hill cart Road along railway linecoz it takes only 3 1/2 hrs. With a cramped schedule like ours we dint have any choice moreover after an overnight train journey we were not really comfortable with idea of spending another 9 hrs in train.

On arrival tourists like us were chased by a swarm of agents who promised to find us exciting travel packages/ hotel booking. Finally we went with one guy who arranged the trip to Darjeeling for us and got us our bus tickets for the return joureny to Kolkata. Actually all we had to do was to step out of Siliguri station and right outside there is bus stand where u can book tickets and there are lot of private jeeps waiting outside which will take u to Darjeeling/Gangtok

The ride to Darjeeling was Rs.70 per head. The roads were winding and the views were fantastic and by afternoon we reached Darjeeling. Throughout the journey along with the roads you can see the tracks of Darjeeling Himalayan Railway line along the winding roads , how they manage to travel along such curves has to be seen to be believed.

We had booked a room at hotel Sunflower (got it through net) and the room was really good and worth the 1500 price tag. The temperature was 12 deg when we arrived in the afternoon. The town is at 7000 ft We decided to visit the Himalayan zoo and Himalayan Mountaineering institute in the afternoon/evening.

Dusk falls pretty soon in this part of the country and most places get closed by 6. so we spent the evenings walking along the streets looking for some trinkets. Bought some Tea which Darjeeling is famous for and some shawls for parents , cap and gloves to beat the cold climate. The temperature fell to 4.5 deg in the evening and later to 3.5 deg later in the night. The place had a colonial hangover and was full of cafes and cake shops and eateries each one seemed to be better than the other, all in all it was a wonderful day.
We arranged for a land rover to pick us up early morning next day for visit to Tiger hill.
4 wheelers are the only mode of transport in the steep sloping streets in the town . There are local taxis and jeeps which connect the town with neighbouring towns. It was prety cold that night , but we had room heaters so it was really cozy n comfortable, for the next day we had planned for Tiger Hill and 2 other places early in the morning and then come back and start for Gangtok for the next leg of the trip ...

Trip-Day two - time travel

2006-12-21T18:17:00.000+09:00

As we ventured out into the streets of Calcutta we started doubting if we travelled from Bangalore on an Airplane or was it a time machine ? (!) ... The roads , the buildings and the buses , trams and cabs seemed to suggest that we seemed to travelled back some 15- 20 years ... The city of Calcutta seemed to be what i remember of cities of late 80s ... Though we had an idea that this city is totally diferent from other cities of India and that it does retain the old world feel , adjusting to the city took some time. The city is called the cultural capital of India and has the legacy of Raj ( being the former captial city fo the country) . So we decided to check out the Victoria memorial and the museum first. The Chandni chowk metro station was pretty near to our hotel , so we decided to travel by the metro . Though we dint really like the cabs , buses and the congested roads , the metro changed our impression about the transport facilities in Kolkata. It really is a cheap, fast and effective means of transportation and i guess is one of the best in the country. The underground metro stations had maps indicating stations covered and train timings and was really hassle free travel for us.

We visited the Victorai memorial which was built as memorial for Queen Victoria who the empress of India in early decades of last century. It is made of white marble and is pretty well maintained and though it was a British Building at first glimpse it reminded me of Taj Mahal. Like Taj , this was also surrounded by sprawling gardens on all sides . Inside this there is a musuem which has a huge display of potraits/photographs from British era till Indian independence. The building is surrounded by gardens and a couple of big pools. After a couple of hours we trooped out to have a look at modern Calcutta.

Then we had our first glimpse of a tram ! The tram is a really unique mode of transport and tram lines run along the major roads and how all these vehicles on road , pedestrains and trams manage to co exist on same road is something really amazing !

After we came out, we cut across the Maidan which is supposed to be largest urban park in Kolkata , the Eden Gardens , Victoria Memorial , the turf club and polo club are located on its fringes. We then strolled through busy streets of kolkata for an hour after lunch. Then decided to check out the Kalighat , it is believed that kolkata derieves its name from it. Kalighat is where the famous Kali temple is located. But our timing was very bad , by the time we reached the temple had closed. But what was shocking was how the whole place was maintained , the place is full of touts out to squeeze money. Less said about it the better, this is one place to AVOID for casual tourists ie who are'nt really religiously inclined. Place is full of beggars and other assorted pujaris and their helpers out to snatch money under some pretext or other . The worst part is that all of of them are together in this and they have a unique model by you are forced to pay all of them. When you enter you are asked to leave your footwear in a shop ( there was no footwear stand outside temple) and hence you ahve to buy something from the shopkeeper and need to tip the guy who suggested the shop to you and so on ... The experience of visiting a temple is totally spoiled when you come across such elements . The temple visit turned out to be a really bad experience and we decided not to visit any temples in this part of the country.

We returned back to our hotel and in the evening visited the Howrah bridge ( Rabindra setu) and took a boat ride across Hoogly river.
Later in the evening we checked out of the hotel and moved to Sialdah station to catch the train to Siliguri. The journey was supposed to take 12 hrs. Another major problem we faced was lack of Restaurants at Railway station and surprsingly no one was selling food stuff.

Trip- Day one

2006-12-20T23:40:00.000+09:00

Day one

For the last 2 years i have been going on road-trips with my cousins once in an year.
This time , me and 2 cousins of mine , Aswin n Sridar had planned an outing somwhere in Dec . By sheer chance i saw an article about sikkim and we decided that this is the place we are heading this winter. None of us had any idea what to expect or any friends at these places we were planning to visit. Thanks to internet we managed to gather adequate info about the places to visit , some do's and don'ts etc to make a rough plan. So this was the initial plan Bangalore-> Kolkatta->Siliguri->Darjeeling->Gangtok->Siliguri->Kolkatta->Bangalore

So finally we are off today on 20th Dec afternoon , the flight was supposed to be in the evening 5:05 pm , but it turned out that the flight was actually at 5:50 PM , anyways we reached the airport at 3:30 itself. All the while I had flown only with Indian Airlines and occasionally on Jet , this was my first flight on low cost carrier , we were flying in SpiceJet.

The flight was via Hyderabad and finally we reached Kolkatta at 9:40 PM , after retrieving our luggage and standing in a long Q for pre-paid taxi we finally got to our hotel (researched thru net) . It was at a place called Ganesh Chandra Avenue , we booked coz name seemed nice -> hotel Broadway. Also the location was near a Metro station(Chandini Chowk) and near the Sialdah Railway station also. It turned out to be pretty neat choice , the rent was moderate , the rooms were decent enuf . The city was full of cabs and buses , very less no: of Autos which we see here in Bangalore. Also when we looked around that night it seemed we had boarded a time machine and had landed back in 80's . That was our first impression of the city.
Most restaurants had closed by the time we reached our hotel and we had roam around for an hour around the city before we found one ! What a start !!!
Plan for tomorrow - Trip around "the city of Joy"

Sikkim Trip !

2006-12-19T16:01:00.000+09:00

Three of us ( me and 2 cousins of mine) went on a week long trip to Sikkim n Darjeeling this Winter !

Before we embarked on this trip , we had no idea of what to expect the idea seemed exotic so we thoght lets give it a shot.
All the info about the place , planning was done wholly based on info collected from net.
Internet has info about everything , all u need to bring to table is desire to explore places.
Nowadays wih the advent of low cost airlines , air travel has become pretty affordable and has made possible vacations to places in different corners of our country in limited time that we have.
These days you get a lot of books/sites about holiday destinations and most of the logistics are well covered.

I thought of blogging our trip , so that it provides some helpful info for ppl planning similar tripsand hopefully wud encourage ppl who have been planning to do something like this to finally do it.

We were what cud be classfied as budget travellers , luxury/best facilities was not the main criterion for us , but we were not always looking at the cheapest alternative either. All we had in mind was good comfortable holiday without being an expensive one.
We had decided on the hotels where we would stay in advance ,but we did not book them ie make any advance payment. We had telephoned and told them that we would be requiring rooms , since it was not the peak season that arrangement worked everywhere.

Flight and train tickets were the only ones we booked and all the rest were decided then and there ...

We left from Bangalore on 20th and came back on 26th Dec

the travel route was Bangalore -> Kolkatta -> Siliguri -> Darjeeling -> Gangtok-> Siliguri-> Kolkatta-> Bangalore.

Belling the Cat !

2006-11-19T19:41:00.000+09:00

At last the day arrived and off i went with to crack the exam along with 2 Lac others , phew !
CAT is one exam which has kept everyone guess ing and in the last few years stumped everyone . Earlier pre2003 it was the no:of questions/no:of sections which kept varying , then in '04 we had differential marking , last year no:0f Q came down. So all of us were waiting for the surprise as expected !
Well this year it was no different , as expected there was something different 4 marks for a Q and -1 for wrong ans , 25 Q in a section , 75 Q in all :-(
Took the English section first as usual as that is where i always 'score' and build up tall percentile scores ! It was not a walk in the park as i had hoped , rather it seemed like a night at a casino , had to gamble and gamble a lot as most of the questions had atleast 2 answers which seemed ok. Soon i got into the thick of things and ended up answering all the Questions in the section...
Never taken so much risk before , 5 options for each Q made it real toughie , just keepin my fingers crossed andhopin my insticts pull me through again !
DI&Logical was the best section , questions seemed workoutable and the section was pure delight.
Quants were always my weakest area and today was no different the limitaion in no:of is something which seemed to go against me , as my strength is speed over accuracy ! But the Quant section was not toughie as expected , there were lots of crackable questions and some required a little bit of application to crack them but was an overall good package and ppl who were 'decent' in math would have done real well. As for me clearing 25% was the target this time as IIMs have announced 25% in each section as minimum , last year i had just managed to scrape through , need to get lucky again !

Mind your Language !

2006-10-04T23:06:00.000+09:00

Language seems to be the new 'hot' word here now , and has knocked off reservation , corruption et all from the headlines ! But unfortunately its in the news for wrong reasons .

Come to think of it language is actually a means for communication which basically enables people to 'talk' and 'understand' and interact better with each other leading to improvemnet in the way we live.

But instead of enhancing realtionships and bring people closer , language , now seems to be a barrier which drawing people apart.

For ages , there was this debate about English vs Regional languages , the debate was fuelled by politicans who insisted that English langauge would contaminate and destory local languages and what not. They were instumental in bringing in various legislations to ensure that kids in Govt school are taught in mother tongue rather than English. But it is entirely different matter that children of these leaders attended private English medium schools ! Over the time the movement slowly eroded as people started realising that English is the passport to good future and you had to learn it ,whether u like it or hate it.
Evenstates like Bengal have gone soft on anti-English movement.
But suddenly now in South , the same movement has reared its ugly head again ! First it was PMK in TN with its oppostion to english names in tamil movies ! recently after coming to power the govt announced waiver of tax for films with tamil names ! I dunno by simply naming the films in tamil will these gaurdians of culture save the culture esp with kind of films being made these days !

In Karnataka there was huge outcry against Govt's ill advised move to close down schools which were teaching English , this was at a place known as It capital of the country and the global outsourcing hub which has a huge BPO industry where knowledge of English has opened a whole new successful world to millions of young graduates , ironically the word Bangalored will soon apply Bangalore itself if such people had their way and access to English education is cut off.

When states were formed , it was done on basis on language , the idea was to bring people of same language 'together' and all such states together to form a country called India.
But language instead of uniting people have turned into a force for dividing people , in Maharashtra it started with cries of of mumbai for marathis and through out south , you can notice that people who dont speak the local language always get the rough end of the stick.

When world over countries are encouraging ppl to learn English and get more in the IT/BPO pie here we are still fighting over wether we need to learn English or not !
When these ppl learn that we need to stop fighting over the share in the pie and rather look at increasing the size of the pie

Well the reason for me raving and ranting about this particular issue is that today happens to be a Karnataka Bandh , being from Kerala , the word Bandh is quite commonplace thing , so I took adequate precaution to ensure that I dont starve and would be able to spend the 'holiday' peacefully , but what i didnt anticipate was cable tv operators joining the bandh and shutting down all other channels except Kannada Channels all over Bangalore.
Now what could be the logic behind this ? Im totally at loss ? When the same thing happened after death of Dr.Rajkumar , I could understand it was mourning period for state , so all entertainment channels were blocked. But why today , why block all entertainment channels in other languages ? Why let Kannada movies/music channel play ? If they wanted ppl to understand their cause ( it is some border dispute , again language related) then they should have blocked all entertainment channles, allowing only news channel ( which incidentally has become a major source of entertainment ! ) ...
this is something i never get , why partiality towards outsiders , only localites get to enjoy this day off , espeicially in a city which prides itself as a Cosmopolitan city . This is not the first time we saw other language channels/movies targetted , last time there was ban on non-kannada films and what was really sad was that a lot of people were supporting it .All in all the level of tolerance is sometimes scary !

PS: Heard that Shekar Kapur is planning to make a movie set in future India , which deals with wars happening over water which wud be scarce commodity then , the movie was supposed to be called 'Paani' . I guess he could actually make a movie on wars based on language which might happen if such incidents continue , guess the movie on language wars might be called 'Basha' ( but oops there is already a Rajnikant movie by that name ! )

Reservation Ministry ?

2006-09-27T16:11:00.000+09:00

Today's morning newspaper threw up shocker of a news , there was a news report about plans by Karnataka Education ministry to provide new kind of reservation for non-merit students!
I know this sounds crazy but these guys seem set on making Arjun Singh's Mandal-2 look like nothing in comparision. What these guys want is reservation all private schools for students scoring 35-50 % !!!
The reason given for this absurd proposal is that inorder to maintain ther 100% pass rate private school managements have very strict admission criterion and dont admit students who have low marks and infact you need to score close 90 to get into top schools which acc to these guys is bad , hence the need for quota to sneak in non-performers ! The report further stated that there was plan for certain % reserserved for students scoring 35-50 % , and some for the next set and so on ...
I simple cant understand , how do ppl come up with such ideas !

Please dont tell me the logic behind this is that even bad students deserve chances ...
On paper the idea sounds nice , but how do u find out possibly good students out of bad students , I wud say its highly impossible.
If poor performers are given backdoor entry , how do u expect students to be motivated enough to put all that extra effort and score really good marks ?
India were riding high because our education system (though kinda faulty)ensured that there was a a huge competetion and you had to struggle a lot and put in a lot of hard work to stay ahead in the race , which helped them do really well when competing with others across the globe. Now we seem set to spoil that also !

What next , reserving 50% of college seats for non-merit , 50% of jobs for non-merit guys ?

At this rate we should not be surprised if they come up with a new ministry called "Reservation Ministry" to do come up with more such possible reservations !

fizzy ya fishy ?

2006-08-11T22:28:00.000+09:00

3 years back (almost to the day) CSE had published its famous pestic-cola report , now its back again. the reaction have been predictable this time around too.
Last time there was a talk on ban and all , but campain seemed to have lost fizz !!! Now again pestic-cola controversy is back , and this time lot of state govt seem to have jumped inot the fray in the battle with so called bad MNCs.What really got me and made me write this blog is a report in yesterday's newspaper supplement where they had published the opinion of college students in the city (mostly girls) who all unianimously declare that they will never ever drink cola and urge the Govt to immediately ban them. I find this extremely ridiculous especially in the light of this article titled cola con, on www.indianeconomy.org
Now the report may or may not be correct , but this act of banning is simply illogical , now cola companies should ensure that they dont sell substandard products , but another question is how did the pesticides enter the drink , now nobody seems to be least bit bothered about this. All they want is to ban colas and be done with it , but the source of pesticides are believed to be ground water and sugar . Both of which nobody seems to be interested in correcting.
Now for me , I still will drink cola when i go out coz i somehow feel that even if colas maybe contaminated , they will be much safer compared to water in small hotels or fresh juice in small shops. So banning them will only expose public to more danger. If standards are there then it should be for everyone , Govt should ensure that the water for preparing juices/ served in hotels are safe.
But since that never gets the kind of praise n fame u get when u bash an MNC/America no one bothers.

Pennywise

2006-07-15T23:53:00.000+09:00

"Pennywise and Pound foolish" ... goes the old English proverb ...
But thats what most of us are these days !
There is a store in Bangalore by the name Pennywise whose main USP is the "upto 50%" discount it offers. This is enough for crowds to throng the place.
Ofcourse the discount we realise is not 'flat' 50% , but a variable one with max of 50% for a few select items of clothing which no one wud buy even if it was given 100% discount. But then many ppl since they took the effort of stepping into the store , decide to buy something or other at a discounted price. Though in reality they may not actually need the stuff, just because it is available at a discount price ppl end up buying it !
Infact some stores have this tag line "Buy more,Save more!" what an amazing logic!!!
This seems to be a sureshot success strategy for all brands , though a good price for certain item of clothing wud be 'X'Rs , hype up the brand and put the price tag at '2X' or more and make it appear that the brand is out of reach for mere mortals.
The more highly its priced (though quality wise it may not be worth it) , the more awe it creates. But thats not all , the clever bit comes in when u sell it , you can't obviously make much money if u sell it at the marked price of '2X' Rs.
So u sell it with a special banners indicating some reason like "end of season Sale" (only the season lasts the whole year! ) and sell it at a discounted price of 20-40% over the hyped up marked price !
Which still means u make much more than the correct price "X" for the product !

Now Im firmly of opinion that the culprit here is not the clothes manufacturer but the end consumer who is more than happy to pay 1.2X for some brand which offers supposedly 'huge' discounts over its marked price rather than pay the correct price for another brand which makes same stuff and which has proper marked price 'X' and no discount but in reality 20% lesser (correctly priced infact)

In Tamil Nadu at this time of the year we see something called "Aadi Sale" with clothes vying with each other to offer tempting discounts and consumers enthused with the prospect of saving more with each purchase and loosening the purse strings ! The trend started with textiles and now have extended to Electronic goods shops also offer steep discounts during this time and volume of sales makes this the best season for them.Infact shopkeepers say that their sales see a 50 to 75% inc during "Aadi" month when compared to ordinary days.

Though I may be mistaken, but from what i remember 'Aadi' is an inauspicious month for Tamil ppl and hence in olden days ppl were not buying anything during that time and so the shop owners had to resort to the discounts and freebies , but today its the busiest season of the year !!!

Minority Report

2006-07-07T15:40:00.000+09:00

Politicians are one class who never cease to amaze you , though they do the same stuff over the years. Its the way they keep refining it which takes you by surprise.
Even Robert Langdon can't crack their code.
How else can you explain the banning of Da Vinci code movie in a few states in India on grounds that it cud hurt religious sentiments.that too when it is released in all Christian majority countries (even vatican too , I believe ! )Now the film is based on a book which was a best seller in all (christian dominated) western countries...
Now the book was just plain fiction and nothing so great that ur faith cud be challenged...
something so trivial was enuf for some netas to bend backwards to ensure the minorities (read their votebank ) are not hurt .
Since the movie is not shown for free/shown on television , if you want to watch it you have to go to a cinama hall (or rent a vcd/dvd) on your own free will. So where does the hurting of minority sentiment come in ?
Obviously just a gimmick to 'please' minorities !
now what next will they confiscate our copies of the 'Da Vinci code' book also ?

On a related note , there was a big controversy over women entering Sabarimala temple. whether its real or not is debatable. But this had prompted a TV news channel to come out with a debate on whether the practice is rite or not. It was an age old practice and there were reasons for why that was followed. Whether it is correct or not is another issue
But what irks me is the fact that a couple of politicians alleging that the temple is violating constitution by nott allowing women to enter....
But no such allegetion will be levelled against minority communities whose treatment of women is well known.

So why the apparent double standards in handling majority and minority ?
Now who is majority and who is minority ?

Latest update(13-7-06): After Mumbai blasts , SIMI a muslim student organisation was one of the prime suspects. In comes the UP chief to their defence , saying u cant accuse them (minorities) without evidence . Now the question is why shud UP chief be involved in an incident in Mumbai ... well apparently in a few months there is gonna be elections in UP and muslims form 10% of poulation and hence a valuable votebank !
When will they learn to treat all ppl as equals ? Why do we still vote for those who still see ppl as hindus , muslims and all ?
(Will be updated pretty frequently...)

Afterthought :

In Kerala , we have a holiday for "Avani Avittam" what that means most ppl in TN wud probably know ( its an annual ritual for us Tam Brahmins , where we change our sacred thread) but believe it or not , though there is no holiday in TN or any other South Inidan state. There is a holiday in Kerala which I believe has the least no: of brahmins in whole South !!!
Now this is precisely my point in Kerala , Brahmins are a minority and hence are a consolidated votebank , so too woo them (their votes) the state govt had to declare a state holiday for festival which has meaning for 1% of state's population !
That is the power of minorities in this country !!!

ITs Looting !

2006-06-10T15:46:00.000+09:00

Bangalore city may not have sky scrapers , but if you plot a graph of
the increase in property prices over the last few years you will surely get
huge sky scrappers.
Same is the case with house rents , Bangalore house owners are ones who
have made most of the 'IT' boom , whether IT really boomed or not for us poor techies who came into the scene late , the rents have certainly boomed.
There is an increase of 50 % over the normal rates if a house
owner comes to know that his prospective tenant is an IT guy ! Also a min of 10 rent advance to it ... Thats literally the ground reality
in the IT capital.

Everyone blames IT guys for the increase in rent ! What will we poor
non-IT guys do they always ask/tell me . his was one complaint which we
keep hearing again and again. But I would say its not really fair to
blame IT ppl for the increase. this increase happnes because of the
perception that these guys earn a lot and hence wont mind paying.
A couple of years back a few friends of mine were hunting for a house
in B'lore and they saw a 2 bedroom house for which the previous tenants
had paid 5k per month. This guy met my friends and told them that rent
would be 7500 ! They were shocked as the guy was suggesting 50 %
increase , when asked why such a huge hike . The owner seemed surprised
that these guys were making noise for a small inc ; "you are making a
lot of money, right?" he asked. "I dont think the increase is huge for
ppl of your standards", he continued. Then my friend asked him "How
much do you think I earn in a month?" , the owner smiled and said he is
not very good at guessing these things and siad it was common knowledge
that software guys make a lot of money compared to men like him. Upon
further prompting , he said he will hazard a guess and added that he
was just making a conservative guess "Maybe 1 or maybe 2 Lacs?"
My friends were shocked and told him they make 10-15 % of the amount.
he guy wouldn't believe it , no way he kept repeating , I always read
about techies getting shares and being millionares ...
That seems to be the general perception , and the reason for this huge
increase in house rents in some areas of B'lore generally preffered by
software guys.
Another big reason for the increase in rents is the stupidity of ppl of
our ilk , there are some ppl who pay whatever is asked without checking
the general trend and the rates in that area , when one guy starts
paying others are expected to follow the suit and then automatically
the rent in that area increases. The reason why some pay is that they
usually take a house for rent as group of 4-6 , since the rent is
divided between them an increase of 1000 means just an inc of 200 to
each one so they dont mind.
Also the owners just jack up the rent so that even if ppl negotiate
they get a big increase over previous rates.
A friend of mine was looking for 3 bedroom house in Koramangla ,B'lore.
After seeing an ad in papers he called up the house owner.
This is what happened.
my Friend: "I heard you have a house in Koramangla , im interested , is
it available"
the Owner : "Actually a few people have come and seen it , but it is
avaiable as of now , are you interested"
F :"I want to know more details , like the rent and facilities .."
O : "Where did you come to know about this house?"
F : "from my office bulletin board , there was an ad , but no rent was
mentioned , can you please tell me the rent"
O : "oh you work there ... , the rent is ... 15000 "
F : "WHAT 15000 .....!!!"
O : "Hmm 12000 (?) ..."
F : "WHAT 12000 !!!"
O : :"Ok , 10000 then..."
F : (sensing that his incredulous reactions were working ) "10000

?!!!"
O : "ya , i cant reduce below that"
F : "Its too much sir"
O : "Not really , there was a guy who was ready to pay 9500 , im sure
i will get someone for 10k"
F : "Best of luck sir , bye"

Acc to my friend the correct rates in that area would be around 8-9 k
mark but pretty soon it would touch 10k , coz some fool would think
owner wanted 12k and would negotiate for 10k. Sure enough , today 1 yr
down that lane you wont find a house of that size in that area for less
than 10k !!!

Another area where these owners make profit is the painting clause in
the agreement. An amount is specified in one corner of the agreement as
painting charges , it gets charged wherther you vacate after one year
as expected or much before (which happens most often than not , for IT
guys coz of job switches , onsites etc..) . Even if you vacate house
after just 2 months , though ther is someone ready to occupy the house
the same day you move out (thats the kind of demand ! ) still the owner
will charge you for painting , though he never does the painting is
another fact which never gets noticed.
Last month i vacated the house i was staying for last 1.5 yrs and moved
to a new place. We had never caused any roblem to the owner so we didnt
expect any hassles when we went to collect the advance . But it was not
to be , the guy who was always around to collect the rent , turned out
to be very busy when we wanted to get our advance (10 months rent )
back ! Atlast one month after i moved out we managed to get an
'appointment' with him . He cribbed a lot about not beinf able to find
a tenant since we had not given enough time and all then told us we
will have to pay for the painting or get the painting done ourselves.
The agreement had Rs 4000 approx as painting charges . He said that the
word aprrox was there and that by agreement we were supposed to take
care of painting. then he dropped the bomb by showing us some estimates
ranging from 10k to 8k. The cheapest option was 8k , so pay that.
Me n my roomie looked at each other with disbelief , "that sis 100 % inc
sir" , we protested, But the man would not budge after a long round of
negotiations and lot of talk about you big 'IT' guys , we small house
owners and all such things we settled for 1000 more than the orignial
4000 as we intended. Atlast he calculated the balance amount he had to give us and wrote it down and asked us to verify , i checked it and handed it to my roomie , whose eyes seemed to be glowing as he went thru the figures , after that he took charge and quickly counted the balance money (all in cash!) and asked to get moving ,we told bye to him and as soon as we stepped outsid my roomie burst into laughter and said the guy made a totalling mistake lets get out of sight before he realises and then we ran !!! That occasion GOD was on our side as the owner made
a calculation mistake and gave 1000 extra to us , so in effect we ended
up paying the same amount as we intended !!!

But not everytime u get that lucky , i shudder to think what will happen if
i have to vacate my current house . Its not the extra money that hurts
, its the tendency or that feeling there is nothing wrong in getting a few extra bucks from guys who earn a lot , which hurts ...
Dont know what name ppl keep fot this tendency , I call it looting !

Mind Matters

2006-06-03T14:28:00.000+09:00

Dont know what to call it : sixth sense , ESP or just a set of coincidences , but it always happens to me during my Bus journeys to B'lore from my hometown.
Let me be more clear though im still confused , or in other words let me clearly expalin a confusing thing . Ok , Ok ... Well this is 'it' ... Almost twice a month I go home during weekend and when i travel back to B'lore by Bus , I always wake up when i reach near a particular place 8-10 Km from Outer edge of B'lore city on the (in)famous Hosur Road.
Now the most puzzling thing is that this particluar point on the highway is just near where my office is located. To put it more clear terms , I seem to wake up from sound sleep , when i reach a familiar strech on the road. My mind seems to sense the fact the surroundings are familiar and gives a signal for me to wake up.
Its really unbelievable , the power of human mind or is it Brain ?
Sample this , I saw this happen on 5 different trips to B'lore from my hometown , on all the occassions the time at which we reached this particular point was different , once it was @ 4:50 AM , then once at 5:25 and another occassion at 5:50 AM , still i woke up just when i reached this place on the Hosur Road , which is roughly near my office !!!
Discussed this with a lot of my frens , we had diff theories , one I liked the most was that I travel to office daily on a particular 10 Km strech and reach my office , so the pattern of the Road is imprinted in my mind and when it reaches that strech of the Road , it recognises it subconsciously and wakes me up coz I have to get down before the regular busstop . So unless i wake up i cant get down at a place near my flat , mind recognises this dire need and remains active and alerts me !
Somthing similar happens to me when i have to get early for some emergency , for eg if i keep Alarm clcok for 5:00 , i gen wake up at 4:55 or something in time to switch off the alarm !
How and Why ? Just dont know and Dont Mind ! Thats mind ...

Whose line is it anyway ?

2006-05-15T22:20:00.000+09:00

There was a popular TV show by this name , but the line im talking about is'nt the spoken one but the ones in which you stand in or atleast supposed to stand in also known as Queue. But tis a sad fact that ppl these days hardly recognize a Q even when they see it. Guess govt needs to promulgate some spl law to save this dying practice !
One explaination i got for this phenomenon is that Its a fast world where no one has time and everyone wants their way , hence the lack of respect for Queues. But if some ppl start following Queues then others will automatically follow was the gen opinion at my office.

One day we had a big discussion on my office bulletin board about such behaviour , some suggested a course in courtesy towards fellow employees as part of training to freshers (majoriy of offenders were new joinees) , but then majority opinion was that such things need not be taught in training , but infact should have been part of the life when ppl join the organisation , consensus was that the best way to get it enforced is to drive home the point to the offender in public that what he/she is doin is wrong so that the message is heard loud and clear and such incidents dont get repeated.

I always used to get upset when ppl broke Qs but cud never muster courage to shout at the guy/gal who did it and always used to end up cursing them under my breath or cribbing to my frens. One day i decided enuf was enuf i had to act. Then it happened ...

We were standing on a looooong Lunch Q in a horribly mismanaged office canteen which had been newly opened and hence (as ppl hadnt really tasted that food much! ) was having a huge turnout resembling a first day first show of any blockbuster movie. Three of us (each one of us big cribbers) were standing in that Q and cribbing about everything under sun esp the size of the Q , the huge delays and all ... and finally we thought the ordeal had come to an end as my friend who was standing before me in the line was about to buy the food coupon ...

Suddenly one guy, who seemed to be man in hurry, appeared out of nowhere and handed a Rs.50 note to my friend who was about to buy the coupon , and cooly said " Buddy , please get me a Roti Curry". My friend , controlled the urge to put the Q breaker to proper place and decide to give him a cold shoulder and procceded to gaze vacantly somewhere else while counter guy was issuing him the coupon .But this man was not one to give up , he repeated his order/request again. This time my friend cudn't stand it and with gr8 restraint told him strenly to go and stand in the Q like everone else.
The guy still wont give up , " C'mon it wont affect you , just get my coupon after you get yours " , he suggested.
At this point i lost my cool and I shouted at the guy " But i will be affected" , the decibel levels had gone up considerably and ppl around had turned to look at us . Sensing a good chance with my adrenalin levels at an all time high , I continued in full volume "You think all of us standing in Q are idiots? If you want to get a coupon you can join at the back of the Q".

The guy stared at us as if we were some aliens from a distant planet in the outer rim of the galaxy and with shake of his head he moved away. Meanwhile we were thrilled at having achieved a sort of moral victory and resolved to continue our crusade for bringing orderliness in our surroundings. After this I have always been a crusader for maintaining Qs and these days find a lot of ppl like us on that day doin the policing !

Meter Down ...

2006-05-07T23:09:00.000+09:00

"Meter down ... down down down ..." goes a latest chartbuster song rendered by Adnan Sami ,But the song doesnt mean much in Tamil Nadu. No , its not because they dont follow Hindi songs , but coz such a thing as meter doesnt exist in the autos over here ! You wud have heard of the word motor mouth (for a talkative guy) , but in these parts of India be prepared for 'meter mouth' ie mouth is the meter , Whatever the auto driver says is the rate for ur trip. Ofcourse u can haggle , yes u r expected to haggle, so he always says 100 when he expects 60 bucks , u offer him 50 , then after a few rounds of negotiations when the hot sun gets to everyone , we settle for 60. The going rate is roughly 10 Rs for a km , double of meter charge , but still that seems to be the norm. Since i use the auto on rarest of rare occasions this impression of mine cud be wrong , it mite be worser than this !. After living in 3 southern states and not owning a vehicle at places other than my hometown of Coimbatore (Tamil Nadu) , i have fairly decent idea of this unique 3 wheeler vehicle and the unique folk who sit in the drivers seat and rule the roads with their own brand of rules.
Having spent most of my life there , i thought i will begin with Gods own country.
In Kerala my to and fro auto trip is well etched in my memory of early school days.
I think they are by far the best Auto drivers down south ... no hassles with them !
But my 3 years in B'lore and some time in Mysore have all been full of complex negotiations n fights with Autowallas. They have meter , but once they know u r an outsider most ppl try to get something extra out of u , which sucks ...
There are good guys , but some rotten ones are enuf to give a bad name to the enite lot ,once they find that u dont speak kannada , the attitude changes.
I learnt bits n pieces of Kannada , just for dealing with Autowallas , I always found that once I give direction in kannada , the guy wud be willing to settle for the exact meter fare. Though acc to rules from 10 PM to 5 AM they can charge 1.5 times normal , anytime after 9 at night or before 7 in the morning becomes 'one and half ' time for the auto guy , similarly any place whhich has bad roads are 'one and half' journeys ! unless u r ready to shell out more money u wont find anyone willing to take u there. Similarly any place which is not on main road means 5-10 Rs extra !
Most of my trips to railway station ( after 9 @ nite ofcourse) means most often than not they guy will expect more than meter fare and an arguement will ensue. Almost everytime I get into arguement over the extra fare demanded and unfortunately end up cursing that guy and resolving to take the bus next time . Only to resolve to forget all that while waiting on the platform for the train which never arrives on time. While waiting on the platform i suddenly realise that the poor guy also has a family to feed and all and feel bad for gettin angry.
So last weekend as i was leaving for my trip home I waskinda prepared for this cycle of fighting and later regretting.I got into the Auto and noticed that the details of the driver including his name address and all were displayed in one corner , good going by authortites , I feel. As the auto approached Railway station , i shot a quick look at the Meter and at my watch , Rs42 and 9:55PM , the latter meant a possible verbal showdown as the time was close to 10 and so auto driver wud announce "sar , one and half fare ". Was ready with mental math and was prepared to settle for Rs50 and I was gettin ready to shout my response incase he asks for more than 50. I extended the Rs.50 note to him , he shot a quick look at the meter , here we go , i thought as i waited for him to go into the now familiar its late nite i need more / the gas rate has increased etc .. dialogue
But was pleasantly shocked when the guy gave me 8Rs back , with great struggle i managed a smile and uttered a relieved Thanks ! as i realised that good autowallas do exist in real life also not just in films !

A journey to remember

2006-04-29T00:03:00.000+09:00

No , its not a trip to some fantastic place or a farway island or anything remotely resembling such stuff. The journey was essentially a simple one deviod of any gr8 incidents and was a simple auto trip from my house in B'lore to the Private Bus terminus. But it showed/highlighted the biggest flaw in me : I postpone things till last minute and dont do any planning. I was supposed to catch a bus @ 9 (as per ticket) and go home for looong weekend. But here i was watchin some interesting stuff on TV , discussing some nonsense which i dont even recall now with my roommate till 8:15 , then i went and packed my bags for the journey home and at 8:30 i step out of my house. Then slowly i open the ticket and lookep up the time and instead of the normal 10:00 , Departure time : 9:00 PM was staring at me ! and here i was just stepping out of my home at 8:30 , the place was 8km away and with Bangalore traffic it could take a real long time !
Luck seemed to be on my side as i spied on an auto as soon as i stepped into the street (normal days it cud take anythin b/w 10-15 to get an auto) and the guy agreed to come to the busstand. He was a middle aged guy and immediately started conversation with me in Kannada , my Kannda vocab being very very limited and the guy speaking nonstop , i stopped pretending to listen after a while and just supplied the "Yeah , Yeah" , occasionally to give him an impressiont that he had a compassionate audience willing to listen to his crubs against govt , fellow motorists and a few others whom i cudnt make out!
After a while I felt it wud be prudent to request him to go quicker as time was running out for me. "No way" repsonded the guy , "its impossible to make it by 9" he told me (in Kannda ofcourse) , he gave some explaintaion for it , which unfortunately i cudnt understand but got the bit about 4 signals standing in between me and my bus @ 9 .
My hopes slowly began to drain out of my as i started cursing myself for being so careless and irresponsible (i stop here as i the person all this being directed to is me) and swore that i will keep this a lesson and will defintely blog it as lesson to remember for myself . by now i was sure that i wud miss the bus ...
Then i started reminiscing about all the close shaves with buses and trains i have had , invariably something will happen which will delay me while i was in college and i wud be running and just ctaching the bus /train when it was moving most of the times ! Though always i wud promise myself that this kind of thing wil never happen. then one day i missed a train and after that i always used to be on the platform 30 min before ! i had been kinda following that for last 3-4 yrs but of late my old self had been resurfacing , and here i was sweatin , worried and tensed waiting for green light to flash at the first signal , with 3 more ahead...
Then suddenly it happened , things started swinging my way the autowala started driving fast (somewhat fast) and suddenly lady luck seemed to be firmly on my side as we somehow cleared all the signals without spending anytime waiting at 9:00 sharp i was at the bus terminus and cud see the my Bus still parked.
With an immense sign of relief and after thanking all the Gods i cud remember at that instant and the auto guy also for his part, i collected my luggage and glanced at the meter which stood at Rs 45.50
Feelin kinda happy at having made it inspite of not so fast auto ride , i gave the auto walla 50 bucks. "70 Rs" he announced , i was clearly shocked , "for what?" i asked , "Bhaiyya , meter is only 45 ".
The explaination he gave was a real gem
point 1:
"If not for me , you wud have missed the bus and wud have lost a lot of money, so i saved you money rite , cant u give extra"
Point 2:
"i drove fast for u" , i refuted that (cudnt control my laughter !) then he bettered that explaination with this one :
"But I helped you, I took the shortest route ,so that u cud reach faster and on time"

Now this really was startling ,the guy had admitted that he had planned to swindle me by taking a longer route and hence earn more money but now has not done it and was demanding money for being good !

Amazing logic... havent heard such a shocker for while , imagine a robber goin to a bank and negotiating for a few lakhs which he had planned to steal , but saved effort for everyone concerned by not doin it really ! ok im streching it too far , but this seemed a bit similar to that. Along with things like be responsible ,punctual , plan in advace , added 'avoid autos' also in things to remember for future !
ofcourse i dint pay him anything extra , but this trend of auto drivers demanding more than meter was not unusual , i guess i have enuf of such incidents for a seperate blog.

Now coming back to my original story , I rushed to the ticket counter and flashed my ticket , guy had a look at it and calmly announced "the bus is 10, there is a sofa here ,you can sit and wait here" !!!

Reserve or Deserve ?

2006-04-20T14:27:00.000+09:00

Since its the hottest topic now with online petitions , sms polls and ppl on newschannels , sundry experts n just about everyone having their own expert view about it , So as a probable affected party ( thanks to my seemingly infinte attempts bell the CAT) i thought i'll also chip in with my 2 cents on reservation tangle .

For me the move to reserve close to 50% of seats in central univs n IITs n IIMs looks like an election eve 'bramastra' which annihilates all oppostion , but unlike normal promises, the ones we are pretty much used to and are conveniently forgotten and confined to bin after the elections are over, this seems to be more real n different and a dangerous and potent ace from HRD minister and by all means looks like 'Mandal Returns' a dreaded sequel to the original which created such a huge turmoil and though was hailed as a tool of social re-engineering which was designed to uplift a lot of careers but ultimately helped only some politicians uplift their political careers ! This along with the 'reservation in private sector' talk which has been going on for quite some time seems a lot more real suddenly and once they get converted to reality will surely alter the entire education and job scene.

We have been seeing a lot of online petitions , opinion polls , sms polls and interviews of common ppl from all over country and expert views and all seem to be agast and the general opinion would seem to suggest that there is a huge groundswell against such a move.
But how wrong we are ! the fact is that vast majority of the ppl who are voicing their concern onand lamenting the fact that merit is losing out to othe considerations are the ones who are affected by these. so there reaction is but natural.

Also the truth is that though India seems to be shining with Sensex zooming every other day and sectors like IT , manuacturing etc. gettin better n better by day the effect has made a lot of us pretty well to do. But the no:of ppl reping the rewards of this growth is far lesser

the downtrodden masses continue to remain so , education has not reached everyone
so the obivious step should be to ensure proper school education for the backward communties.
But thats real hard to implement and doesnt create headlines like throwing open half of the seats of India's most prestigious institutes like IITs n IIMs to backward communties.
But will they really benefit from these freebies is a really debatable. With someone pointing out what will happen if the companies which come for recruitment insist on knowing if you are a merit candidate or reservation guy , So the Question "Reserve or Deserve" in effect nullifies whatever the quota law was supposed to achieve for the ppl from backward communities!

Some ppl have hit back at such arguements saying give em a chance and see. Yes its true n sad that due to caste system lots of ppl had to suffer and remain outside the realm of development simply because of their birth. Its imperative that such discrimination has to be stopped and such ppl given chances and their fair share under the sun , but this certainly is not the way. Education from Primary onwards , spl coaching for less privileged and limited time bound resevations seem to be better soln to me esp in the light of statisctics like 50% of SC?ST students dont study beyond age of 10. So it is not rocket science to figure out where the system is going wrong , provding good infrascture and good teachers to Govt schools looks like the obvious soln.Im sure if we do a proper impartial analysis of this we can come up with many such initiatives which will benefit everyone instead of just accelerating brain drain by driving so called 'elite' students to foreign universites.

By this move only thing they will achieve is more divisionof society based on caste instead of eliminating caste system coz caste instead of losing its relevance as it rightly should these days have become passports to a secure future. There is always the danger of backlash from forward community students denied a fair chance in their own country and the rich might go abroad or use money power to get ahead but what about the poor they will simply fall behind jus like the backward communities did in previous centuries. Soon we may face a scenario where there will be need to provide reservations for forward community ! In short we are just repeating the mistakes of past and will be entering a vicious cycle.During a deabate on TV a few weeks back when ppl where fighting on merits of reservation , one of the panelists an IIM-A alumnus pointed out that we are still fighting over inc our share in the cake , when we should actually be looking at increasing the size of the cake !!!

I have seen many ppl in my student life who have got their seat in college because of reservations , but still did study hard (much harder than me i believe ! ) and put there best effort to make sure they succeded in life making using of the oppurtunity , but there were lots of others who never made that effort secure with the knowledge that their community ppl need only the barest min marks and govt jobs are always within reach as the competetion from their own communties is lot lesser. There were others who were from well off familes (the so called creamy layer), but still used reservation , when there were poor students from upper/not so backward castes who inspite of scoring marks were not able to secure admissions.

That looks like reverse discrimination to me . To stop an inequality you create another !
After 50 years of it not achieveing the desired result , ppl (politicians) are still clamouring for reservations and another surprising and heartening fact is the increasing no: of ppl who though coming under reservation , prefering not to take it and get their seats by merit. I was glad to have a few friends like that who refused crutches called 'reservation' and preferred to stand on their legs and fight with the rest. Gradually as more and more ppl get empowered , soon in not so distant past we will be hopefully be rid of quota system.
Oops ! wrong place ... Im dreaming about Utopia !!!

QLFC

2006-03-22T21:13:00.000+09:00

No , it is not an insurance scheme or pension plan or Mutual fund offering or anything of that sort. QLFC expands to Quarter Life Crisis (added an F in between for Financial crisis / the crisis involving the more obvious 'F' word ;-) , wherever it is applicable along with the rest of the problems) , a term which is generating a lot of attention of late. Its something most of us can identify with and are actually going through.
a quick search on wikipedia gave me as the characteristics of QLFC :
* confusion of identity
* insecurity regarding the near future
* insecurity regarding present accomplishments
* re-evaluation of close interpersonal relationships
* disappointment with one's job
* nostalgia for college life
* tendency to hold stronger opinions
* boredom with social interactions
* financially-rooted stress
* loneliness

odds are that most of us have most of these !!!
Welcome to the quarter-life crisis.

What do I really want to do with my life?
is the question which we just dont have clue about and is the one we are supposed to ask ourselves n come up with a convincing answer during this stage of life

why are we so clueless , confused n frustrated ...
Is it becoz we have so many opportunities or so much freedom and so many choices ?
To an outsider , it looks like our gen has everything n we shuldnt be having any reason to crib
but then we know things are not all that rosy
It does not matter how well you are doing, when someone is doing a lot better than you.
seems to be the biggest problem !
whenver i get a feeling (mind u only a feeling , that too momentarily) that im doing well in life n earning decently , i get to hear about how much a friend or a friend's friend or his friend .... is earning n 'pop' that feelin disappears !
Come to think of it salary/money is just one of the worries , there are countless other factors which all add up to quite a potent combination and has a real unsettling effect on some.

Lots of ppl handle this in diff ways...
a few do' talk' about handling this by optin out of rat race and sorting out priorities in life , gettin their focus back on , rediscovering that urge n joy n what not , only to land up in office with same frown on the face monday after monday.

in short nobody seems happy , maybe its cool not to be happy
or maybe "grass is greener on the other side"

To be contd...

WMD

2006-03-09T15:36:00.000+09:00

Bush has been around here a few days back ,but this one is not about him or Iraq or anything remotely connected to it .
I have this fascination for unusual titles for very usual stuff , so this is just one more to the list !
WMD - stands for 'WoMens Day'

if (you are a woman)
{
By spelling it as WoMen , i mean even in name you have somethig more than Men !
}
else
{
i dont have to explain , we all know !
}
ok i was just kidding , the same insensitive way we ususally do when dealin with gender diff ...
its just my way of saying though WoMen are spl and i acknowledge their rightful place in the scheme of things, But in noway im able to leave out the fact that Men are equally important

most of us externally agree that in short both r equals and need each other and what not ...
But honestly deep inside i feel we never let ourselves beleive even for a sec that women can be better...

Ok coming back to serious stuff

Life I believe is a series of amazing and absurdly unusual yet perfectly logical coincidences.
By a sheer coincidence i happened to chance upon a blogevent on WoMens Day which made me realise how things actually are for Women and how badly men are treating them !

I knew things were bad , but never realised how really it is , when we (men) see PYTs (pretty young things) we never realise the kind of struggle and fight they have to put up in their day to day life to deal with inequalities.
A visit here : BlankNoiseProject
will get u an idea of what im talking about

Finally before i forget a very Happy Womens day to all u ladies !

India One

2006-03-04T21:15:00.000+09:00

Like Majority of folks living in a state in India other than the ones where their near and dear live , the announcement of Re.1 per min Std call rate dubbed 'India One' made by the Telecom minister brought great hopes n joy to me.
But till now the one India or India one plans announced by Airtel n Reliance will make us end up spending more than a Rupee for a min if you factor hidden costs. So still its a long way from real 'India One'.

But thats not the point i want to make , Im talking about the same term 'India One' but from another angle. It all began while preparing for numerous interviews where you get asked such scary questions about yourself like "Who are you" ( now what do u say when a guy asks u such a Q ), Tell me about yourself in 1 min ( C'mon , what do i say ?) I was always in a fix as to what do i say , Im Tamilian from kerala or Im a Malayalee from TN !...
One thing led to another and the combination of boredom and ingeniousness led to this idea as my solution to the problems facing the country !

Lanuguage and parochialism are the major problems , i concluded, which if overcome will make our country a better place to live.
This is easier said than done , after jogging my grey matter with this thought found out a ridiculously easy solution , India One !

This is one plan which will go a long way in achieving the national intergration which ppl keep harping about.
the plan (which have named as India One') as i said before is ridiculously simple , but only hitch is that its time consuming ,ie ,will take a lot of generations once it gets rolling and mite cause a lot fo social turmoil initially but as ppl slowly realise the brilliant ending it will achieve the opposition will surely come down.
I expect a lot of political parties to support it in the long run as its a 'secular' plan ! But the bigger problem is participants to take the plan forward. Taking about the plan , the plan is to unify India through generations and finally acheive at a aperson who will be a true Indian.

Im both Malayalee n Tamilian plus currently settled in Karnataka , so as the first step i have flung the net in search of Telugu and/or Kannadiga girl so that out of our alliance will emerge a true blue South Indian !
the kid can proudly answer any interviewer,auto rickshaw guy or any nosy parker's Questions like Who are you ? with Ans: South Indian ;
where are you from ? S.India ! ok the effect is not like "Indian" as old man Kamal Hassan says in the Tamil movie of the same name (Movie called Hindustani in Hindi)when posed with a similar Q ! But soon this effect will spread and my successor 2-3 generations later for all you know could be the one who will be the first to give the Answer : "Indian".
But so far the idea has not clicked coz , given a choice between a normal kid and a multilingual yet possibly demented one (like me !) , the girls seem to prefer the former !

On a serious note , last few years we have seen things like linguistic barriers , caste , religion and all have stopped being any sort of barrier to ppl uniting in love . Love has been able to surpass all these barriers and new races are created , soon (maybe 20-30) years later my presently ridiculous looking idea of India one mite actually be a common place occurance
Go India go !

Close encounters of 'K' kind

2006-03-01T14:06:00.000+09:00

(Warning : its really long ,not by accident but by design so that u r not tempted to read on just like that ...)

Writing CAT had been like a hobby for me , as i had been following the same routine for last 3 years ! But this time it was a pleasant surprise to find out that though my effort put in had been low compared to past , i had actually cleared it ! Just though...
So was rewarded with a single interview call (IIM-Kozhikode), something is better than nothing , i thought ! Since then lot of frens had wished my loads of luck and had shot me loads of questions ranging from what this whole stuff is to how to improve their scores and all. After that encounter (my interview) got over , i had to recount again and again to each n every friend of mine what happned on that day , so after a point i decided that i will properly capture the entire details , made it as detailed as possible with the obvious aim that because of its sheer size ppl will stop proceeding unless they are very interested &/or were askin me the details of the interview for courtesy sake. Incase someone was really interested , here goes my exp ...
...the D-day was on Feb 8th , the month of Jan was filled with practice interviews and Mock-Gds at my coaching centre , which was fun initially , met a lot of brilliant guys n gals.

Then before i knew it the D-day arrived pulled myself out of my dreary n boring world to step into a world full of oppurtunity challenges et all and i landed up @ 1 in the afternoon at IIM-Bangalore campus and was almost lost in the whole new world, then spied a few guys wearing tie , with confused expression on their faces and my hunch that they had also come to attend the interview turned out to be rite ! We all somehow found our way out of the maze of buildings and reached the correct building.

10 of us in panel , 3 guys from my company !!! 8/10 ppl with IT experience , whoa is this the 'mixture' that CAT throws up , I wondered.

Chatted in Hindi with a guy from Delhi , met a Mallu guy and struck up a quick conversation and then met a tamil guy and again chatted in Tamil with him , used English otherwise , had everyone confused about my origins !

Stepped into the room for GD , was called in last and had a very bad position on the table , the fag end !
Topic was given in the sheet of paper kept before us , we were asked to read it and when they ( 2 profs ) say start , we were to begin and discuss for 10 min on it.
It was rite out of the world , archiac English , it was Charles Dickens or rather an extract from one of his books , a small para , gist of it was that American society was going to dogs and young ones are the only hope to bring it out of decay.

All seemed confused and were making frantic notes , i too had scribbled lots of thoughts , but then realised that even i couldnt actually make out what i had written !

Then came the sound "Start" ... I tried to jump inot the fray , knew that whatever little stuff i had , lots of others too would have , so better dump it first , But found that 3 others had the same idea and all started and we all found it jarring and halted dead in our tracks . Then one guy suddenly quoted George Bernard Shaw and all fell silent , someone agreed wit the quote and the discussion started , i jumped into the fray with some points of my own and made a few entries here and there about America , Hollywood ,materialism and what not , but i was sitting in such a way that panel wud never see my face when i spoke and was always afraid that my points wud be credited to guy next to me , who also spoke on similar lines , except for 3 ppl all others spoke but lack of ideas showed.
Overall ok , not good by any means ,personally and also for group.

we were dismissed after 10 min before we kinda warmed up and were told to wait outside , till they call us one by one.
We all waited , me being last in the list had the longest wait , the guys who had their interviews first , were grilled by us waiting outside and at every 15 min , one interview got over and the next one was called and all others left one by one wishing me luck.
So armed with all those wishes , i bravely stepped in to face them ...

Two Profs (P1, P2) were there on the Panel and they warml wlcomed me and asked the Q i was expecting and had a ready Answer .
P1 :"Last person to be called in for interview ,Long wait rite ?".
I shot of my pre-prpared answer with humility and humour. That was the only part where i was in control !
P2 (with a smile):"which IIM will u choose and Why ?"
me:gave Beggers can't be choosers kinda response n told them that this is my only call and hope n pray that things go well and i make it.
P1 and P2 (earnestly): All the best
me , though a bit surprised , said thanks sir
then the grind started
P1:What is the probability of clearning interview and gettin a seat at IIM
me: rattled of the fact that there were 800 odd seats ( dont know know from where that no: stuck in my mind) and 3000 ppl approx , so 1:4

he didnt agree at all and had long debate about it and asked me to repeat my reasoning again and then asked for IIMK hat is tha chance , i said , i read somewhere that 1800 ppl were called for 180 seats , he looked surprised and siad that seems to be too high a figure ( i was relieved ! ) and asked me my source of info , i said newspapers. P1 and P2 exchanged surprised glances

P1: So what are your interests ( going through the personal data sheet I had filled and submitted) , oh reading , is it ? Why do everone read ? Ok What do u read
me: rattled off a the last book i had read ( was a book about China , hence had done my full homework on all possible Qs about China n all ) , explained about the book for a while , he didnt seem too interested !
P1: Other books ?
me: continued mentioning names of other books i had read in recent past , finally said "The Alchemist" and interviewer seemed interested and i added that the book was really inspiring
P1: oh is it , tell me the story
me: explained the gist of it
P1: No tell me the proper story , from start to end
me: ( i had read it 2yrs back) started hesitantly and tried to tell the story , found going too tough and started explaining the gist of it
P1: No , tell me the story if u have read the book
me: i had read it 2 yrs back and explained that t was what u derieved out of the book that was imp and explained what i got out of it
P1: other books
Me: mentioned some more and stopped
P1: So u write ? What do u write
me: used to blog , just personal stuff .. I have written a few short stories
P1: tell me
me: explaining the plot and judging from the guys looks , gave up midway and told him that the stor was interesting because of the humour and fun with words that i had employed and i cant narrate that so well.
P1: So u studied Electrical engg , what is it
me: explained what and all i had in the course
P1: (cutting me off) how long has the branch existed
me: (clueless)offer my guess
P1: no its older than that , so whats the most imp electrical invention used in industry
me: motor
P1: ya , so let me ask u something which noone has answered properly before ( hint of smile on his face)
me: sure sir
P1: So How will Motor evolve in next 20 or say 50 years later
me: thinkin n blurting a few nonsesnsical replies , suddenly utter something meaningful about my idea for a smart motor !
P1: (smiles), ok
P1: so what r ur other achievements , anything diff than others ? , oh u have written acting in skits , what did u do
me: explains
P1: act n show !
me: really sir ? it was not a one man stuff ( suddenly was getting reminded of ragging during college days ! )
P1:fine do it urself

I got up and performed one of those skits ...
P1:hey i had seen this during my college days also , what is this ! Ok i will tell u some situations in life , u act n show it
(this seemed straight out of my days as fresher in college ! )
I did whatever he asked me to do , halfway thru he asked e do u find this funny , u have a trouble hiding a smile of embarrassment ! and sked me to take my seat
P2 (was observing me all this while , now full of smiles): ok Electrical Engg
P2: What is Corona ?
me: Sir, it comes in High Voltage , causes some loss or something , but can't remember
P2:asked a couple of other gen Q me:tried explaining but gave up halfway through saying I was familiar with these during college days , but it has been 2.5 yrs since i graduated , Now im working in another domain altogether
P1 & P2 nodding
Still no Q about my Company , Work-ex , my domain at work which i was fully prepared
my attempts to draw them to it was just not working !
P2:Who is the collector of B'lore
Me: No idea .Sir
P2:Who is the CM of Karnataka ? and a couple of sundry Q n some Q about cricket
me:answer almost all of em coz they were very simple

P2:what brand is this mineralwater , ame other popular brands?
me:answers that Q
P2 shot a glance at P1 who nodded his head and they wished me all the best and P1 escorted me out

Leaving me even more confused as i tried to find my way out of the maze again to step back into the dreary n weary world outside !

Ennui !

2006-02-21T21:17:00.000+09:00

My wallpaper says it all !

"Someone's boring me
and i think it is me"

hope it says more than enuf , dont know what to , im at cross roads in every aspect of life really ! one of these days surely need to decide something or other , gettin bored of just drifting along
Currently everything seems uninteresting or routine or i should say trite (i guess thats the best word)...
Don't know how n when i will get out of this .
xpect something to jolt me out of this sooon ...

to V or not to V

2006-02-14T23:59:00.000+09:00

Morning news was filled with either ppl in Red celebrating V-day or ppl in Black also 'celebrating' V-day in their own styles !

Simple point is if u have a girl u will be in Red ( literally and figuratively ;-))
otherwise u turn out in black in protest; to protest what, im not so sure !

Read and Tailor !

2006-02-13T21:04:00.000+09:00

The otherday there was a discussion among my friends about how Hindi movies are copycats and so on. Some guys had very strong opinions about bollywood films coz they were mostly poor copies of hollywood fare. A few of us were opposing this view , our point was that there are very few original works , there are lots of clones and inspirations which cannot be classfied as copy and looked down upon. Agreed, there are lots of Bollywood movies which are pure lifts ie frame by frame re-make , which some enlightened reviewer points out to us and we look down upon it as a copied and hence 2nd rate product. But the fact is that vast majority wouldn't have seen the hollywood movie in the first place , so the story and movie would be something novel for them and they would actually thoroughly enjoy it. I can remember scores of films which were hollywood inspired , but had localised the stories and had adapted them to Indian situations so were good, some were even better than the originals(I liked Kaante better than Reservoir Dogs!). There have been lot of hollywood inspired stories , where the central idea would be from a western movie , but most of the situations will Indianesque (Tamil blockbuster Ghajini from Memento).
I dont' see harm in such movies as long as you are entertained you should not be complaining. Ofcourse plagiarising is bad , but in some cases it becomes a homage to the original. If due credits are given then we can see this 'copy'/'inspirated' cinema as a means to convey good cinema/stories to parts of the world which it wouldn't have reached because of language or culture limitations. Same is the case with regional cinema , down south there have been numerous movies which are made in Malayalam and get remade in Tamil , Tamil movies-> Telugu,Kannada and vice versa.
The fact is that all these states have their own industry , with their own stars and way of story telling. So dubbing a movie doesn't work always ,hence they go for remakes tailored aptly for each state. 'Manichitrathazhu' a classic in Malaylam went to karnataka as 'ApthaMithra' and landed up as Rajni film tailor made for Tamil audiences in from of 'Chandramukhi'
Coming back to the main issue , even Hollywood movies are mostly adapted from good novels , these days all best sellers are instantly lapped up for movies. But Indian fiction is still in a nascent stage , so we have to rely on Hollywood or other cinema for stories.
Recently saw this ,
which is really encouraging ,hopefully we will also soon be doing 'Read and Tailor' method for movie scripts !

Road to Nowhere : Part-2

2006-02-12T21:28:00.000+09:00

'horny' / 'horn-happy' or not traffic rules are almost non existant. Im not complaining , why should all countries be the same , we are unique in our own way !Last week at office , we played host to a Canandian from our client company , who had come to impart some training for us. While we were talking , the guy ( an India lover actually ) said earlier he used to be surprised when some Indians he met at the client office told him they didn't know to drive. Well with auto gear cars around all you needed to know was how step on gas and how to brake thats all , whats to learn in this he used to think and hence was amused to see 'Drving Schools' when he first visited.But now after coming here he has been exposed to a whole new world of driving , he said. He too concurred with me that it adds to the charm of the country , but then added that if you have to put up with this sort of thing daily then it surely becomes one hell of problem.So thats the system here , no system at all; still things move on or chug along. Earlier the bus journey from my place to office used to last 40 min . Well that was a good 2 years back, but gradually over the years the time has increased and now has almost doubled. But the best part is our tolerance , we crib , we rant but in the end accept these delays as part and parcel of the game. It all happened in phases , the travel time would suddenly increase by 20 min , people started getting angry , irritated , then it it would improve a bit but would be worser than before , bit ppl will be happy, slightly better than before they say.Every now and then there used to be talks of Govt. not doing anything , then suddenly someone points it out that 'IT' guys or Bangalore is not everything for the Govt. , they have millions of mouths to feed and look after in rural hinterland , where ppl are much worser off and we city slickers ought not to be complaining as long as we have something which can pass off as a road. Think about your rural bretheren , they said and we , part ashamed of being too demanding and also for getting the best facilities and life , kept quiet.Anti-IT = Pro-Farmer ! As long as you are not spening too much on him , Im happy , even if Im also not getting anything. Wow what a logic, wonder who thought of such a simple formula , in essence you need not do anything anywhere. As yet another day dawns and fades away as i sit in the comforts of my office bus , my sympathies for ppl out there on roads on your vehicles , my heart really goes out for you. Meanwhile at office , im pressing for TV and Dvd player in our buses . We can catch an entire Hindi movie , Im sure. Anyone listening ?

Why are we so 'Horny' ?

2006-02-12T01:45:00.000+09:00

Last month on a nondescript weekday , I was in the bus back to my home from office. Was stuck as usual in the traffic jam in the same area as usual but for a change had a female colleague i knew sitting next to me. Traffic was crawling slowly , conversation was also at bare minimum as we were all frustrated n tired and air was filled with sighs from tired travellers n the never ending honks from sea of vehicles all around us. Then suddenly out of blue she suddenly asked "Why are we Indians so horny? " !!! Got the shock of my life and I almost dropped the book i had in my hand ... i din't know how to react ! we guys gen classify gals into varous categories n sub categories and ppl u can talk to x things till y level and not and all. This gal was in my goody good or 'sati savithri' kinda class , so I was clueless as to what to say to such kind of observation. Then suddenly i was wondering why now , why to me and what not . My Mind started exploring countless possiblities and their different permutaions and combinations and also thoughts like what is happening to me, Im i alright , did i hear it right or am I flipping and for a moment the world that i lived seemed to have been turned upside down, suddenly i wondered did i judge only her wrong or everyone wrong or have i judged everything wrong !But then the next statement brought all such thoughts crashing down and cleared everything . She followed the first one with another gem: "That guy in the Santro car behind us just doesn't take his hands from the horn" ! Then it struck me , suddenly things were very clear , things seemed to flip back and everything seemed to return to noemal and world seemed fine a much better place to be as i became more sure of everything ! 'Horn + Horn + Horn ... = Horny' ; I repeated to myself and put on a smile of realisation ( in truth relaxation ) . I concured with her , ya we are horn-happy i told her but from the looks on her face i knew she dint exactly get my analogy to the common english usage , but then judging from the earlier statement , I knew i was expecting too much.That is Indian usuage of English ! But having said that i started thinking about the relevance of her point ya we are hornhappy , vehicle before u stops for a sec; "HONK" , u try to balst him out of orbit and try to zoom ahead on non-existant roads ... sitting in the comforts of the bus we were having an elaborate discussion of this 'Indian habit of honking too much' , as the conversation progressed i was told that during a team dinner with a guy from her client company , the 'white man' had remarked that 'the traffic in this country is a mess and ppl keep honking too much' , which was what had made her realise the peril the country was in and hence the concerns. "what will he think" she continued , "what will happen to our image as a growing superpower, these motorists observe traffic rules at all" she thundered and shook her head with resignation , I also joined the fray and nodded half ashamed of image of my country and also for the part i too play in it when im on the road . Then as her stop was approachin she got up and stood near the door and much before the stop the traffic halted , the lady jumped out quickly so into middle of the road from the bus and dodged her way past 'bad mannred' motorists who again resorted to honking on seeing someone blocking their path and as i looked out of the window , she running through the road cursing those 'shameless' motorists who were disturbing her walk through the road to the otherside. She may not have heard of Zebras other than ones in discovery channel or zoos we used to visit as kids , So i deleted the mental note i was about to make to talk to her about zebra crossings next time. No wonder the 'white man' was saying what a chaotic country !

so here i go ...

2006-02-11T23:35:00.000+09:00

well the construction is still going on ...
always wanted to start my blog , made a few futile attempts , have deleted them and here i begin afresh once again.
Once the question on whether I should blog or not was answered , immediately the next one popped up what should i write or rather blog about ...
I was still unsure on what i should be writting about , having followed various blogs for more than 3years now , i was at loss on which style to follow.
Do i tell everyone what i do daily or report 'events' or happenings in my life etc..
Then i finally decided that I won't stick to any particular structure and just write whenever i feel like and write on whatever i want to ...
So here goes my new + a few old unpublished thoughts ...

2005-10-12T19:54:00.000+09:00

This Page is under construction ...

Will be completed shortly like the flyovers in Bangalore ;-)