A Bollywood ending

I dont hate bollywood movies .. I just hate the way they end.
But then again looking at the 150 minutes of adventure, emotion, music, sex and drama packed celluloid life, it is pretty good a bargain for Rs.80-100 . Looking back, it is important to get it all perfect and happy at the end of the movie .. because as we know, it is difficult .. or almost always - impossible in real life. So I started watching the lesser known Bollywood movies, lest I should end up totally incapable of enjoying and appreciating the simple joys of life. Soon I grew bored of them, boredom grew into contempt, contempt into revulsion and further into hatred. ( Iam not a Hollywood movie evangelist either)

I hate the way movies glorify violence. I hate the way they bring in a perfect ending to every single two-something-hour episode. I hate the way they portray a wrong image about life. I hate the way they tell you that life is fair and everything ends well. I hate them because they say that good always triumphs over the evil. I hate them because they mix the emotions so well that people love to feel emotionally vulnerable.

For a moment I kept aside my prejudices and gave a fair look into these movies .. Maybe there is something in them that make people want for more. What makes Indian cinema uniquely different ? And why hasn't the essential 'formula' never changed over the ages ?

a) Songs in Indian Cinema
More than an additional source of revenue for a movie, the songs that come with the movies are more of a historical residue. ( Songs featured from the time man began to speak in the movies. ) There is a song for every occasion- be it a funeral, birthday, festival .. or my favorite - the judaii scene. It will definitely take another research why Indian movie goers cannot live without 5 songs in a movie. But for these songs .. there would never have been a better teen pass time called Antaakshari - What better way to entertain yourself when you are on a four hour journey with 3 girlfriends of yours ? ;)

b) The catchy dialogues ( usually re-used a hundred times)
These can also be used as a quick guide to understand the context if you have missed the previous 3 minutes of the movie.

"Mein tumharey bachey ki ma banne wali hu" ( usually accompanied by very loud background music .. )
context : The duo have an illegitimate affair and the lady is pregnant , .. usually the guy is unwilling to marry and the lady is unwilling for an abortion.

"Kanoon kay hath bahut lambey hothey hein " -
context : The much wanted criminal is finally nabbed by the cops ( can go upto 25-30 years of chase and being in the hit list). The scene might usually be that of an old but influencial and powerful criminal ring leader being handcuffed by a very law abiding and 'clean' policeman with 3 or 4 constables overlooking , and old Mahindra jeep in the background. This might be soon after a bloody confrontation between the two sides ( usually with lots of bullets zipping across and the death of a couple of cops )

"Kuthey ... Mein thera khoon pee jaonga"
Attributed to Dharmendra??. The next scene is definitely going to be violent.
Another reason why the dogs in India ( esp North India) are malnourished.

Tumney Is Khandaan ki izzath ko mitti mey mila diya.
Literary translation : ( You have mixed the Family izzath ( supposedly a strong binding agent ) - with the local sand. ( Didnt you know the chemical formula for the binder was a family secret ?? .. you duffer !)

Yeh Shaadi kabhi nahi ho sakthi .
context :
1) either the rich son tells his dad about his intention to marry a poor girl. ( or vice versa ) or ...
2) during the muhurat of the wedding, some old nobleman dives in to the wedding scene and just as the bride is about to be garland'ed' .. he shouts ... "Nahiiii .. Yeh Shaadi nahi ho sakthi" ( everything stops and the camera zooms in to the elderly mans face )

c) The length of the movie.
Take this : Sholay was 3 hrs 25 minutes .. Lagaan was 3 hrs and 40 mins and LOC Kargil was 4 hrs 15 minutes !!!!!!
Do we really need a 3+ hour escape from reality to entertain ourselves .. really? But looking through the list of the longest movies, I get consoled that not a single Indian movie features in the 10 longest movies. ( longest being a Chinese movie , running time : 27 hrs ! )

d) Absolute lack of variation
Barring the occasional diversions from the norm, we have our 'ready-made-templates' for the actors - Movies are made for the actors. Sometimes the story lines are made with some actor in mind. Can there be a Hrithik Roshan movie where he does not have a dancing number ? Johnny Lever cannot handle ( never ever ) a serious role. Pran is always a villain. Sunny Deol is always angry and hot blooded.

But then again ... an Industry as big as a nation, watching a Hindi movie over the weekend is not that bad an idea.

Trivia :
Of the top 20 All time earners in Bollywood ( adjusting inflation) , there were only 3 movies made post 2000 . - Gadar, Dhoom 2 and Munnabhai-2

Eyes so Deep

I saw an ocean in your eyes
And an island in your heart
I sailed all day and dreamt all night
Only to find a barren soul
I will never look into those eyes again
I will never look into those eyes again

Public Paparazzi

Did you see the latest offering by rediff to woo in more committed readers ?
Send in your pictures with celebrities and they will feature on this page of rediff ..
Its definitely a novel idea and Andy Warhol's idea of the 15 minutes-of-fame time-contracted to the "three seconds of fame" draws realization among the indian readers.

This one pic definitely caught my eyes .. Salman Khan .. and no surprises if he poses for a candid picture bare chested ;)

Do I look like a Mallu ? No … you sound like one.

DISCLAIMER :

I base my observations on a few people I know that I often can relate to as ‘quintessential mallus’ ( including me ) . Any semblance to any other ‘mallu’ alive shouldn’t be taken as marks of offense/insult. Garv se kaho hi tum mallu ho. ( apologies to BJP : Garv se kaho ki tum …. )

A scientific approach to finding some answers

Recent turn of events in my life, when some one notices the occasional nasal tones ‘in some particular vowels and syllables’, when I use English as a mode of verbal communication, has set me to (sit down and) think about why only Mallus are assaulted for their innate 'abilities' to talk from their nose and accentuate on certain vowels .

French and German accents are considered sexy. ( for that matter Eastern European accents too ) . British/Australian accent is a turn on. American is real. Chinese as natural. A north Indian accent is more likely to be dismissed as the “Indian norm”. Even the ‘horrible’ Bengali-English accent is not as suspiciously or menacingly looked (down?) upon as the Mallu-English accent.


What makes Malayalam as a language different ? And where does the difficult-not-to-miss Mallu accent originate from ?

The peculiar case of extra vowels .

English has 5 vowels and 21 consonants
Hindi : 11 vowels and 35 consonants.
Tamil : 12 vowels and 18 consonants
Bengali : 14 vowels and 29 consonants

While Malayalam stands out distinctly with
16 vowels and 37 consonants !!! ( Iam wondering if there are any other Indian language with this many vowels or consonants !)

Does the extra vowels hold a reason for their nasal influence ? ( More research needed before I come to a conclusion)

Or could it be that the two special vowels (/äu/ and /ai/) taken from Sanskrit hold the key ??

The English influence on Mallu “expats”

Any Mallu who is not brought up in Kerala has to have a non-mother tongue which invariably becomes his first language ( and which is often English ). On the other hand, for a quintessential mallu brought up in Kerala, it is definitely Malayalam . English features as a very distant second language. So they are trained to use those difficult vowels from age Zero. Probably the first few vowels did contain the genetic modifiers .

Adding to the general indifference shown by Mallus towards the knowledge of their own language, not knowing how to read and write in Malayalam is rather considered not as a sign of disgrace but an essential factor contributing to your “urban-ness”. ( I learnt these two soon-disappearing-art at a very later stage in my life … with very conscious effort by finding a teacher during spare saturdays and sundays and taking me over 3 years.)

Quick Linguistical Discrimination Test

1. A mallu will have trouble telling “Roam in Rome” ( essentially sounds the same for him) ( Ref : Plaint of a Mallu )
2. A mallu will be immediately stared upon when using these words - College , Lorry, Omelet, Orange, Onion.
3. A monkey is sometimes pronounced Mangi.
4. Queen ….. is sometimes Kyuun .
5. Gulf is Gelf. ( for anyone who has gone to Dubayi )

Future Plan

Some day I plan to write an intelligent software which asks you to dictate few words / phrases and then calculates the obliqueness from the normal accent and locates you geographically with the help of your accent. ( The software will ‘jemb’ into ‘conglusion’ if it’s a Mallu taking the test. )

Cross references

To attribute unique accents to Mallus is not just biased but criminal . It exists all through the Indian subcontinent.

- Bangalis say “God Shave the Queen”
- For 'Andhrites' and people from Orrissa/Bihar, there is no ‘z’ there is only ‘j’
( A compressed file is a JIP file not a zip file.)
- thirty is thirrtty for a north Indian .

and did you forget the Bangalore English ?? so soon ?

As I always write … a quick and dirty way to escape these nuances in accent is to
‘roll the ‘r’s and flatten the ‘t’s.

To end it all with a Mallu Joke …

Why did the Mallu cross the road ??
-Simbly .

-------------------------------------------------------------------
Articles worth reading :
Spot the Mallu, anywhere by K. BALAKRISHNAN ( very essential research material ;) )

Wisdom Blocked and wisdom Blogged. ( references )
http://balancinglife.blogspot.com/2005/05/indian-accents-and-flawless-speech.html

Free write #34 - The two lovers

And then they were lying beside each other staring straight onto the heavens like two tired lovers ... softly chanting each other's names ...
It sounded like a litany ... but every time she whispered his name into his ears, it had that depth of wanting ... it had that depth of craving .. and everytime it was gnawing deep into his heart ...

He knew it was true .. and it was true indeed. He could feel the longing in those words... She wanted to be hugged ... so did he. He moved over to her lips and bit them like a lustful lover, and bit her neck like a hungry hyena sinking its teeth deep into a carcass.

She closed her eyes and tried to live the moment as if something like this would never happen again in her life time. She lived every moment of it. It was ecstasy far beyond words could describe.

Windows for $3.

Microsoft has announced a windows suite ( XP Starter Edition, Microsoft Office Home , Student 2007, Microsoft Math 3.0, Learning Essentials 2.0 for Microsoft Office and Windows Live Mail desktop ) for $3 as a part of its Microsoft Partners in Learning program (PiL, a $250 million investment) in developing countries across the globe.

What does this mean for the Software world and primarily for Microsoft ?



a) A truly Windows-based-sub-$100 pc is more of a reality with the major chunck of financial burden posed by the costly softwares is removed
b) MS has a renewed push to combat piracy of its costly Windows OS and suites.
c) Software race against their new free goodie giver- Google - over its online Office like doc management tools gets a reasonable look.
d) MS extends its reach to difficult regions of the developing world.
e) subsidy based software sales ( with additional revenue coming from ads inbuilt in software and OS??) becomes a prime mode of sales .
f) Finally, Mr.Gates enhances his philanthropic image.

No Hug, No Kiss ; We are religious fundamentalists !!

Furore over display of physical intimacy?? has rocked the past weeks in Pakistan ( when the tourism minister, Nilofer Bakhtiar, earned a fatwa from radical Islamist mosque for her hugging a French parachute-jumping-instructor ) and in India ( right wing Hindu nationalist party,Shiv Sena burnt effigies of Richard Gere for kissing Shilpa Shetty during an AIDS awarenewss event in Delhi )

This is what the Islamist fundamentalist had to say about the minister hugging the instructor ... "Hugging is an illegitimate and forbidden act and and the minister has committed a great sin .. " .. and this is what Shiv Sena MP Sanjay Raut had to say about the Richard Gere-Shilpa Shetty episode "not at all in keeping with our culture and tradition" (Shiv Sena has demanded the arrest of Gere for "hurting the sentiments of Indians ")

I thought our culture was a very tolerant one ?
Next stop : What will the rightist christian fundamentalist protest against ?? You guess ...

Latest development : (April 26 2007 ) : Arrest warrant issued against Richard Gere . ( court appearance on May 5, 2007 ... )

Bowling for Virginia ?

Univ of Texas ( 1966) ( 16 deaths )
Jonesboro School, AK ( 1998) ( 5 death)
then came Columbine (1999) ( 15 deaths )
now it is Virginia Tech ( 32 deaths ) ( minus the killer )

All have one common thread .. the shooter just wanted body count and had apparently no particular reason on targetting anyone specific .... and these could have been avoided with stringent guns rule ... ( Most of these firearms where bought from Sears,Walmarts and other places where you buy toys,chewing gums and toilet papers. )

Still the NRA is not budged . Didnt the messiah of conspiracy theories, Micheal Moore, prophesies about more of these kind 5 years ago ?

What US needs is ..
a) Ban on firearms in public places
b) Freeze on selling of weapons in supermarkets and shops
c) Buy back of already existing arms in the community ( as done in Australia, 1996 after the Port Arthur killings)

Virginia Tech Shootings does not give a new dimension to the status quo .. it just thickens the need for something drastic and an end to America's fascination for guns. During the personal computing era it was .. "A PC for every home ...." and now it is a gun in every hand. Whats next ?

Other Readings

Profs from Harvard School of Public Health concluding that Americans feel much safer in a places where guns are not allowed.

References
[1] The big list of school massacres .
For the timeline of how it happened, Virginia Tech homepage says it all.

Smoking out the evil

How many cigars/cigarettes does James Bond smoke ?
Ans : As many as 60 a day !! ( Morland Specials ) [1]

My grandfather quit smoking at the age of 75. He died at the age of 93. He didnt have to use nicotine patches, neither did he sip on cold orange juice everytime he had a craving. It was an overnight decision.

Personally I dont have anything against smokers ... even when I have to be a passive one. People who smoke because they think it is cool, or because smoking gives them a pseudo sense of relief , like a placebo relieving you from headache or because it gives them the three-seconds-thrill, miss the whole point in not smoking ... and would always do it.
People should not be persuaded to give up smoking, they should not be deprived , they should not be isolated ; for that matter nothing is as powerful as they realising it themselves. But they should never be coaxed into smoking.

The WHO even accused the bollywood for 'promoting' smoking as a 'cool thing to do'. Will the bollywood ever budge ? Definitely not given the fact that few of their awards are sponsored by major cigarette making brands.

What is it like to smoke ?? When asked this question , someone told me ... its like the first 3 steps that you take when you are out of a roller coaster ride . ( I asked myself .. how long should the rollercoaster ride last to make you feel like that ?? )

Reasons to give up smoking #47 : It only takes 8 hrs for the carbon monoxide and nicotine content in your blood to reduce to half. [2]

Good news and Bad news : For a regular smoker, it only takes a year for the risk of heart attack to lower by half. But it takes a whooping 15 years for the risk of heart attack to reduce to the same level as that of a non-smoker.

And finally if you are smoker and tried quitting ... here another place where you can find tips to quit smoking .. ( definitely you have seen others like this )

Latest News : April 25 2007 : Govt to set up tobacco regulatory body for effective implementation of anto-tobacco laws. Read More here :
References :
[1] Wikipedia - List of famous smokers
[2] emomtional health - Some misconceptions about smoking

Who will look after your children Mrs. President ?

The 2008 presidential candidates are certainly unique in their own ways . No Macho Texan cowboy image , no heroic last action heroes and no powerful millionaire image.

Welcome to presidential elections 2008 . The year of change. This time the democratic candidates are certainly of a different built – either be the case , we would have a “first” of sorts . – The first woman president or a person from the afro-american roots.

A recent statistics showed that Mrs. Clinton had raised 26 million as election campaign booty for the party while Obama finished a close 25 million. Certainly if these figures could translate themselves into votes, Mrs. Clinton could well be on her way to be the next president of the United States .

But the battling question still remains – Are Americans ready for a female president ?

How is Mrs. Clinton perceived by the conservative Americans especially in the Mid West and Central parts of US ? When motherhood is an asset for a candidate, cold, calculative and ambitious ( often attributed to Mrs.Clinton ) are certainly not a trait that the electorate are looking for a in a woman. ( Though it is treated as a positive attribute when the person in question is a Man. )

What the Americans want is a strong Caucasian – arrogant , assertive , powerful and determined – flamboyant and intelligent MAN – who can carry forward the repressive image that United States today portrays itself to be. – Will Mrs.Clinton be able to wear that hat ? Lets wait .

And iam pretty curious to know what Bill Clinton would be called if Hillary is elected President ... First Gentleman ?

SEZ – to be or not to be ( Part 1 )

The recent row over SEZs have little to do with real concern for the poor farmers . As they say “its all part of a game – a political game”. A quick look at the pros and cons of the SEZ dilemma that India is facing today -

• Drawbacks

a) the compulsory land grabbings means lower selling cost for lands for the farmers. These low priced land acquired for “public good” exchanges hands into government agencies , real estate developers and then to private industrial institutions and in this journey, their prices multiply several folds. Undoubtedly somebody in this process makes huge profits. Its just a matter of common sense to understand how much of the cut in profit the farmers might get .

b) With all the investment benefits , tax holidays , import duty cuts and service, sales, center and state tax benefits, think who really makes the biggest benefit ? ( And how will the government (ultimately the public ) ever make a ROI ? ) ( Don’t tell me the increased FDI will eventually work out !! )

• Why are SEZs needed ?

a) We draw the example from the land policies / government acquisitions and the policies on SEZs in China which have resulted in very rapid progress and development , thrusting China to the super power status . Even after the 234 proposed SEZs come into being , it will take up only 0.1% of the farmlands .

b) These would attract ( mind the word – attract ) an investment worth Rs.300,000 crores and generate 4 million jobs.

With other factors which still need to be thought about and discussed – ( to be covered in a later part ) –have you made up your mind yet ? What is your stand today towards the SEZ ?? Go for it or go against it ?

50 years of Dravidian politics

Trivia : Which is the first democratically elected communitst Government ?

If you said … The EMS government in Kerala , 1957 , … WRONG.

We had British Guiana , 1953 , under Dr. Cheddi Jagan and even before it … San Marino, 1948 …. I used to take pride that I come from the place which had the first democratically elected Commie Government … now the myth is busted and my pride lowered.


However .. it’s the 50th year of the first democratically elected Communist Government in the Country. – Look back 50 years into the past – and you see EMS and the communist government – How ironic … in Gods own country the cimmunists prevail !

50 years of Thalaivar .

Another southern state which has come to limelight is TamilNadu with the DMK supreme K Karunanidhi completing his 50 years in the state Assembly … As always … this too doesn’t go without a controversy . The AIADMK head J Jayalalithaa has appealed to the president not to accept the invitation for the state-sponsored-celebration of the supremo’s 50 years in the state assembly saying “he has actually served only 38 years” … Now the President is in a dilemma .. to come or not to come ?
For the AIADMK it’s a direct question … Mr.President , Do you want a second term ?

My 'sweet' Jesus

Catholic pressure groups have come to picture yet again . This time in NY, to ban the exhibition of Cosimo Cavallaro's 6 foot chocolate statue (90.7kg , 485460 Calories ) of Jesus on the crucifix. ( no crucifix though )

Another similar incident on covering up of human anatomy - The US DoJ spends 8,000 to cover the semi-nude 'Spirit of justice' statue .

What ever happened to freedom of expression ??

Three Unfaithful Wives

Three unfaithful wives of mine
Always cuddle me when Iam on wine
Know not where they stay
Not near, but not so far away .

Every morning they love me endlessly
Stays through the whole evening with glee
But every night they disapper
Until In the morning, their knock I hear

Let me tell you who they are ...
One is pain, that leaves the scar
The other Jealosy, the one who feigns
And the third, Anger, the one who reigns.

Hoo Haa India !!

"The Indian team eats cricket , breathes cricket, talks cricket .. smells cricket ... they do 'every thing cricket' .. except play cricket."
- From an sms joke

Now that India is out of the Cricket World Cuppa, its time to relax and read better things in the news papers , see lesser of Mandira Bedi's skin and no more jingoistic ads featuring Indian team as tigers and other ferocious wild animals . ( Some ads even remotely resemble a scene from Gladiator .. the only difference is in real life ..they get busted )

Criket star look alikes all over India are having a tough time ... Is this a cricket crazy mob .. or an irrational outburst of "sportsman spirit" ?

I never thought loosing a game could cause an economic meltdown of sorts especially where cricket, bollywood and political chaos go hand in hand. ( sometimes out of hand ) . 600 crore loss in ad revenue, 30 crore loss for the travel industry and change in strategy shift for the electronics industry (now a lower target, and lesser number of TV sets to be sold ) .. Nobody knows how much money has gone into making the numerous "world cup specific ads' - Nike being the eye candy of all . ( Dont forget the stupid Loy-Shankar composed song -Mind and body, heart and soul - for Visa - What a tragic melody it turned out to be ! apt and sarcastic )

A group inAhmedabad has even gone to the extent of 'boycotting' anything thats endorsed by the indian cricket team ... that mean saying no to everything from Visa/Master card , to toothpastes , washing powders, lots of cola and even some wall paints !

Team India needs us more than ever . Now that sponsors will shun them .. its only us who can give them moral support and courage ( to come back and live in India )

Orkut - Whom did you meet today ?

Anybody who has been addicted to orkut can vouch - its something you will hate - sooner or later - but always will come back to .
For a socially deprived you, orkut gives your enough opportunities to feel good . Hundreds of random people to meet , and many more lost-and-found friends from your kindergarten.

A strong social statement, orkut style, makes you feel better .. atleast with those weird lines you write .. the weirder .. the better. ( Afterall ... thats the easiest way you stand out of the crowd )
I had my string of social experiments on orkut - and I found that mostly people trust one other - even if they have never ever met or even knew of their existence. Neverthless, orkut remains one of the fastest growing social networking too ... ( though hi5 and yahoo 360 have been around too .. Japan has its own orkut - mixi, which has gone public with share value doubling on its IPO day ! .. and lets not forget our very own fropper with its really vague ads on TV that makes me think that the world is the internet. )

Incessant 'thankings' to orkut ( and google) for bringing back old colly memories of my schooldays . - and not letting me get away from my old friends whom I still owe money. I hate orkut ... like everyone else ... but thats the first thing I do when Iam on the net .

Hey Raam

More "disturbing" progress towards the global village-ification . This time it comes with a religious touch ... from none other than the sadhu who taught us the fast disappearing art of levitation - Mahesh Yogi .. Read it and see it ;)

Best e-governed state !

Goa tops as the best e-Governend state in India in a recent survery conducted by IDC for Dataquest . Karnataka and Delhi follows ...

Few years ago .. one of my friend's sister (an IAS officer) , on her Discover India tour had been to Bihar to find the maturity of eGovernance in that state . Disappointed she was when she found there was no sign of even governance ... let alone eGovernance . !

I have a prejudice againt Bihar and was surprised not to have found it in the bottom list !!! ( UP "turned out" to be the worst ) ..

Freewrite #112 - The Lure

She lured him to the world's oldest trick ... . He was hungry for it. And she had the perfect recipe. It was inevitable ..There was no room for anything else . It was so plain simple.
At the end of it ..he said to himself ... "One hell of a woman".
The beginning.

Everybody Falls

Winding roads leading to dizzying heights
Addicted to success and effortless victories
Havent you too like everyone else around
Believed in the immortal you ?

Guiltless pleasure
Limitless love
Life seemed to be your slave
Trapped in a stalemate between destiny and real

Narrow lines of fortune
Twist like worms in warm puddle ..
Wriggle out from your hands into the darkness of the uncertain
Changing fate and future for good ..

Never Did you dream ..when everything seemed so easy
that life would take a dirty highland road turn
Didnt you know Dear ...
Everybody falls .. Everybody.

What makes Mumbai different ?

I was in Pune for some of my "official" purposes and then decided I would drop down(??) to Mumbai as I had never been there before . ( I now wear an invisible tag around my neck saying - I have visited all Indian Metros .. Cochin Included ;-) )

I decided I would travel on the much hyped Pune-Mumbai Express way ( on a Tata Sumo ) .. from where I started it was 144 kms to Mumbai . I timed my journey ..it took only ( ONLY in bold and underlined ) an hour and 45 minutes. that was around 90-100 km/hr on an average .. So the top speed should have hit 150-180 more than once ! Luckily for me ... I was tired and was resting my head on the passenger next to me , dozing but for the occasional G-force due to the twist and turns . I witnessed an almost fatal accident , 2 non fatal ones , few accident hit spots and a bunch of people who cared little about what they just saw !

With over 1.3 crore people - converts to 13 million - if there is one raw commodity thats cheaply available - its life ! Mumbai is easily the most populous city in India with Bangalore coming third with less than half of Mumbai's population - now you get the picture ... If not .. taste this ...
The railway terminal at Churchgate ( one of the busiest terminals in Mumbai ) has 1,500 people coming In /out per MINUTE at its peak hours. If you still dont get the picture .. the canvas is out there .

Few things you should not miss doing in Mumbai

1) travel by the local train
2) get down at CST and walk to Gateway of India.
3) Dine/Lunch/ Beer (verb) at Cafe Mondigar
4) Have vada-pav and cutting chai at some local roadside tea shop
5) buy pirated dvd from some crowded ghali near the train stations
6) drive through the marine drive in a taxi
7) walk down Dalal Street ( for the one who dont have a Phd in economics .. thats where the Bombay Stock Exchange is )
8) watch the Dabba-wallahs having their lunch
and in the night ..
9) spend an hour in a 'dance bar' with a beer worth Rs.250/- and table surrounded by neatly dressed lipstick laden, ever-ready, barely-legal teens with tonnes of makeup.

With all its crime rate and fast life ... Mumbai still remains the mother of all cities .. it makes Bangalore look like .... just an artificial, temporary settlement ! .

Meri Pyari Mumbai .

I confess ...

After more than a quarter century on this planet ... I realized with much pain ... and agony ..

1) ... that I cannot handle things under pressure. ( I used to think otherwise ... and I had taught myself to get used to such situations. If I havent learnt it after these long years .. the chances are ... I wont ever .)

2) .. that planning works. ( May it does not work wonders ..but it is far better to plan and act if you have the opportunity to do so. )

3) .... that money does matter. ( Its another thing that money is not everything ... but yeah think about satisfaction in life , work ethics, travel, ascetic life , meaning of life, idealism, et al .. when you have enough money for the rest of your life )

4) .... that you need to draw a line somewhere . ( Life is learning ... but then you just cant lead a life making mistakes, learning lessons from them and not implementing them for the rest of your life )

5) ... that practice does work miracles . There is nothing wrong with working hard ... It is NOT a sign of intellectual incompetence in case you cannot get it right the first or the second time ( Forget the outliers )

6) ..that it is okay to make a mistake AGAIN ! ( I thought that you need to always learn from your FRIST mistake .. and never ever 'commit' the mistake again ... commit is a word I should learn to disassociate with failure.. somehow it sounds so hard and unjust a word ) ( Read point #5 again ) Does a juggler always gets it the first time when he tries an additional ball ?

more lessons to be added later.....
( as and when I realize I havent written it down ... )

- added on June 12 2007 -
7) Its only imperfection that complains about the imperfect. The more perfect you are, the more tolerant you are towards the imperfections of others.

Four piece chicken - To go

Starting Notes
1) I donot like the chicken in KFC.

2) I prefer Pepsi to Coke.

3) KFC serves only Pepsi.

When was the last time you did something for the first time ?Like for example ... eating a four piece KFC Original recipe with half a litre Coke ? I never thought I would ever do that. But today was different. I had to do things that I have never done before .. Today was the beginning of everything new.
My resignation process has started moving in one direction and I will be stripped of all my entitlements. They would even take away the liberal joy of being called an employee of the company !
But just when everything was getting depressingly moody ... I had the news and the fantastic stroke of good fortune of having a better job. I call it fortune because its unlike any other forms of feeling of getting into a new job.My first ever shift to a new company ... and Iam already liking the feeling of joining the company. Now that the dark clouds have passed over I decided there was nothing to feel depressed about or ... for that matter there was nothing to think too much about.

Just 24 hours ago I was in my all time low ... Iam definitely having an emotional roller coster ride ... and let me confess Iam enjoying the ride right now . There is nothing like having a feeling of joy when you really really really crave for it . ( UNDERLINED AND BOLD )
I called up everyone whom I knew ... near dear and anyone close to being near or dear. I just let everyone know that I was happy ... And all the while I thought it was juvenile to be thinking like this ... I was suddenly reduced to an 8 year old girl who got a new bright colored skirt on a day which was definitely not her birthday ! ( the birthday would have spoiled her emotions ..considering the anticipation factor. )
I was reduced to a intellectually less fortunate kid who had just won a medal in the special olympics. I was reduced to an amateur pilot who just landed safely after his first ever flight. I was reduced to a devotee who could get a glipse of her Guruji for the first time. I was reduced to everyone and everything .... and my emotional floodgates just opened to everyone i talked to ... ( NO .. I didnt cry though :) )I compared myself to Cuba Gooding Jr in Jerry MgGuire ... I had that moment of I-love-everybody feeling. I have never ever been depressed and overjoyed in such a short span. Somehow I felt life coming back ... I was turning blue ... now I have regained my color .. and finally when I walked down ITPL ... for one last time with that emotion of having been cast out of an evil spirit .... I saw the writing on a bright red background. - KFC - hot and crispy. Of all the scores of times i passed in front of it ... I have never been lured ... but today I did get in ... totally oblivious to the surroundings ...I knew .. I should be doing something I have never done before and said ... "I would like to have a four piece chicken.. original recipe ... and could you please put some salsa along with it ... To Go"

TOEFL iBT

Please allow me to shamelessly talk on something not worth its time ...
But somehow in a period of loosing streaks .... this came in as a welcome change. And talking about it does really boost my morale.

Flashback ..
I decided to experiment with the iBT, though I was pretty comfortable with the CBT and the iBT speaking section was a new thing to worry about.
So except for the speaking section, I thought I was comfortable ! ... And yeah it turned out to be exactly what I thought would be.

112/120 sounds like a good score to me ;) ( Didnt I tell you I was in the mood for some blatant self promotion ... )
One down ... more to go ...

Failure !

We have a tendency to think that failure of our actions is a faliure of ourselves.

- A friend whom I met on orkut

Shame and Mask

A man whose sense of shame has some profundity encounters his destinies and delicate decisions, too, on paths which few ever reach and of whose mere existence his closest intimates must not know: his mortal danger is concealed from their eyes, and so is his regained sureness of life. Such a concealed man who instinctively needs speech for silence and for burial in silence and who is inexhaustible in his evasion of communication, wants and sees to it that a mask of him roams in his place through the hearts and heads of his friends. And supposing he did not want it, he would still realize some day that in spite of that a mask of him is there - and that this is well. Every profound spirit needs a mask: even more, around every profound spirit a mask is growing continually, owing to the constantly false, namely shallow , interpretation of every word, every step, every sign of life he gives.

- Nietzsche, "Beyond Good And Evil", section 40

Munna Bye !

No doubt, Lage Raho Munna Bhai was a real break from the mundane mush-mush pyar-ishq-mohabbat Hindi movie genre. But I certainly had reservations on the way it has portrayed the Mahatma . No better time to think about it, than now.

Today is October the 2nd ..This day, 137 years ago, someone was born in Gujarat, who would, for ever, change the way we look at resistance movements. ( this also being the 100th year of the revolutionary Satyagraha movement ) Albert Einstein would later say about this man ...
"Generations to come will scarce believe that such a one as this ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth."
The Hindu Sunday Review yesterday rightly had an article on the way the latest Munna Bhai flick 'uses' the Mahatma as a novel story line - a break away from the usual formula.
It should have stopped there ! The media, religiously followed its instincts, portraying in a heroic way, the great effort done by the director (Raj Kumar Hirani) to spread the Gandhi ideals .

A very bad message - the Mahatma would not be claimed as unreasonable - he was politically savvy - You need to know whom you are fighting . You cannot use the principles of non-violence and civil disobedience against an irrational enemy - ( these links would be a perfect read . http://www.spectacle.org/995/gandhi.html and http://www.spectacle.org/995/scorp.html )

"If Gandhi were to take up the Dandi yatra against the Nazis, he would have barely made it one mile " - Since Gandhi knew that the British were very respectful of the political system and their own judiciary - non-violence seemed to be a very radical idea through with you can attain what you wanted from the British.

The way this is portrayed in the movie is pathetic - it would be senselessly stupid to compare Gandhis non-violence with that of Sanjay Dutt showing the left cheek to the watchman in front of Boman Irani's mansion ( towards the end of the movie ) .
Here is interesting the dilemma - Gandhi could be reliably trusted to never resort to violence even if his methodology of non-violence failed. He could be taken as very honorable and reliable. MunnaBhai is unreliable, unpredictable and unreasonable. As expected and wanted by the audience , MunnaBhai whacks down the watchman after he has shown the second cheek.

With great power comes the need for great composure to restrain it ! - the movie fails to portray that . Gandhi was powerful - very very powerful. He could have easily channelised his mass ppeal to expedite the process of attaining freedom - if he had taken the masses to violent actions - but that would mean the essential breakaway from his own principles.

The movie's stand on consmption of liquor is also not devoid of questioning - how could a iam-drunk-all-the-time goon take up portions of Gandhian philosophy to achieve his needs ? It would be unreasonable to assume that even though knowing about Gandhi was not his primary objective, ultimately the ghost of Gandhi transformed MunnaBhai to a perfect Gandhian. ( compared to the beautiful manner RDB shows DJ ( Aamir Khan) and his friends being transformed into modern day Bhagat Singhs ) But MunnaBhai does not go away without any social implications - a public screening of the movie on October 2nd !! http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/holnus/009200610010321.htm

Needless to say, we essentially live in a period of induced jingoism and irrational nationalism - fueled by the tension across the border and the subtle religious equilibrium. We need to rethink - if movies like L.O.C , Border and their likes ( inablility to recall more names ) should ever be screened.

To leave you with a thought, ...
"The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong."
- the Mahatma
.

Bumble Bee

"You are more afraid of something you cannot see ..than the things you can see."

Enter the story of Bumble Bee ! Somehow I need to make up my mind.
To be or to bumble bee !

Things I hate about my office

Last few days and all my animosity towards my company is culminating into one point - trying to find justifications on my decision to quit ! The following one might be trivial but very important in terms of keeping employees happy !

a) They have blocked almost all the sites - even Scott Adam's. - humour not allowed
b) Anything to have the keyword -'mail' has been blocked . - mailing not allowed



c) Any thing that has 'hot' or any variants of fornication in its URL - obvious - no porn in office !
d) The other categories being - sports , chat , matrimony, job sites ... the list has just begun.

I couldnt help twist my eyebrows in disbelief when some one told me that his favorite site on the java browser - hot java was blocked ... so was http://www.hotscripts.com/JavaScript/index.html ( The firewall should have intelligently filtered it as some sites that show semi nude lady with the name Java ! .. maybe even worse ! who knows ... as long as the firewall blocks it ... we are safe .. office morality is keep intact ! Thanks to all the cheap firewalls ! )

That 80s cartoon show

"Dance your cares away,
worries for another day,
let the music play,
down at Fraggle Rock."

As a child DoorDarshan ( DD ) was my only window to the outside world ... Urban indian middle class, especially in Cochin,Kerala, couldnt ask for more .. well .. they didnt need more. The TV costantly fed me with very interesting and captivating mega serials ... ( compared to today's mega .. MEGA looks like a larger than life one ... to be attributed to those 13 episode serials ) ...
Star Trek, Spiderman, Ek-Do-Theen-Char, UGC, Yeh-Jo-Hei-Zindagi,Mr.Yogi, MungeriLal Ke Haseen Sapney - These were all my favorites ... and yeah I used to watch 'HeMan and the masters of the universe' too.

But of all .... the one that really captured my imagination and attention was Fraggle Rock... the world of imaginary human like beings and their life in a worry free world - or rather a world in which worry was not the determinant of the way life should be lived !
I wondered where did all these beings disapper .. the only place I find them these days is on the net !

A perfect Sunday ....

What more could you ask for ... what more could you want on a sunday ... feel lazy .. relax ... stretch on a bean bag ... read The Hindu Literary Review.. sip on hot creamy coffee with low sugar... bit by bit by bit .. You are unconsciously aware of the presence of the coffee mug next to you ... You know there is still a little more coffee left in it .. but you dont let it bother you much .. you are engrossed in the literature ... you can feel the fluid running through your veins .. slowly entering your foggy sleepy brain ... you can feel the caffeine working on you .... but you are too lazy ... you cant even feel the bean bag behind you .. you are taken away into a world of lethargy and comfort ... that forbidden pleasure of loathing ... not letting anything worry you .. not even the time ... not even the sound of the waking day ... the outside seems so disconnected ... you dont even know if it is morning or evening ... the pleasant sunshine has been fading ...you feel you are absorbed into a comfortable surrounding where you wanted to be for a long time ... as if slowly sinking into a giant pillow made of white feathers ... as if entrapped into a heap of fresh morning snow ... but letting yourself seep into it ... and then slowly you grope your hands around you ... searching for something as if in the dark ... and pick the mug and bring it to your lips .... its no longer warm .. its cold and watery ... you know you have been there for a long time .. you try to get back to your reading ....you can still feel the masculine stench of coffee lingering in your mouth .. the taste of expensive coffee... and little did you know that you had slowly slipped into a perfect mid morning nap, on your bean bag .. with the sunday review newspaper outstretched on your chest, a coffee mug beside like a blanket barely covering you ... little did you know .... that this was the perfect sunday morning you always wanted..

Invisible Children

"Ask yourself how the Islamic world can be so enraged about 24 deaths in Haditha and the indignities of Abu Ghraib, while there is no outcry about the death of 400,000 Muslims and the atrocities in Darfur."

A very young crowd ...
A very noble cause ...
A very cold night ....
A very peaceful setting ...

29th April 2006 was not very notable in history, neither was it a turning point, but for a group of aronud 500 teenagers assembled in downtown Pittsburgh ( Market Square ) and for me and my friend, it was rather a change of daily routine. It was a just cause ... fighting for the rights of children in Africa .. Moved by a documentary made by 3 Americans ( titled Invisible Children released 2003) , and with a rising call for humanity and compassion towards children of Africa, and more importantly to bring to thw awareness of the American Government what has been happening for almost 20 years of civil war, a nationwide call was made to 'Not just watch ..but Do'. The news spread and on April 29 , it became a national call . Teenagers across the nation took to the main street and slept over together in groups of 100s, woke up in the morning around 6 , assembled together, posed for a group snap and left for their homes. I drove back to from Pittsburgh to Perrysburg ..

What was the whole thing about ? That day probably not many would have realized the importance of the cause for which they were doing it. Probably not many realised it. ( not me too that day, until I went home and read about it ). I met the organiser of the GNC Pittsburg, Lisa Dougan, a student from Grove City College and talked about it and later exchanged a few mails and the pictures we had captured on that day. You can listen to her on whole incident and what it is all about here ( ogg file 344 KB, playable with windows media player ) ... and to know how it all started here is a compact version according to BBC .

KANK-ed by KJ

For some one who didn't know what the previous movies of Karan Johar ( referred to from here on as KJ) were, Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna ( refered to from here on as KANK) was the perfect sampling of a high-budget bollywood movie portraying NOTHING - a perfect example of how a 'decent' story line could be turned into a stupid melodrama ; the quintessential bollywood stick-on-to-the-formula movie ..

Empty is not the word I would use to describe the theatre .. haunted would suite better. Barely 15 people and most of them i-dont-have-anything-else-in-the-world-to-do look alikes. The acoustics were rather flawed.. I dont blame it on the theatre ... I believe it is because of the empty house ; sound tracks in hindi movies are made such that they sound good when the sound is absorbed by clothes covering human flesh in a packed house .. In this case .. it was resonating against the latex coated cushion seats - hundreds of them .. waiting to sink down under the weight of a bored movie goer.

Like the gold rush of the 1850s, where the biggest money makers were the ones who sold the shovels, the old man at the counter selling coffee must have made a fortune selling hot anti-somniferous fluid to people who try to keep themselves awake watching KANK. Intermission is definitely a welcome break - unless you have left the theatre in total despair.

The movie was nowhere close to reality. It was a dramatization of cliched situations worked out very badly by a director who thinks like a gay fashion designer turned jobless. How can one comprehend such a movie and equate it even remotely close to reality ?

Consider this ..
It mostly rains when Shah Rukh Khan and Rani Mukherjee meet on the streets and get drenched when the whole population of NewYork carry umbrellas or wear ponchos .. May be its Murphy's law always working against them - or maybe they are genuinely poor to afford an umbrella.

Amitabh dressed in flashy fur clothing can be understandably considered as what is demanded by the character ... but the silent background track singing "Sexy-Saaaaaam" when ever Amitabh flirts with a prospective bed-mate was a definite killer.

The humor was pathetic ( lack of apt word ) .. very very corny. The scenes where Shah Rukh is mistakenly tranquilized in the hospital - instead of 'Black Beast' - Rani .. and the resulting confusion ... is NOT FUNNY; it is irritating. Arjun?? (Shah Rukh's son) picking up the ball and returning it to the goalie when he should have scored ..is NOT FUNNY. Its poor humor. The humor brings out the metally-retarded innocence in you. You have to have an heart overflowing with blissful joy to enjoy this humor.

Rani's role was a mistreatment of odds- It gave me a wrong impression that Rani wanted to make love only if you checked in to a hotel. At home she is a vegetable. Husbands, get the message - it pays to get laid. But considering the obvious disadvantage she was at, in portraying her character, Rani did a good job- so did Abhishek. The director always brings out the hidden talents of the actors - particularly when the roles are unfairly challenging.

High points of the movie -
a) the sado-masochist attire on Rani.
b) walking tour of NewYork Skyline.
c) Good camera rolling esp in the song Mithwaaaaa
d) preity zinta dancing in a shamefully golden mini skirt and doing an split second obtuse leg-split in to the air.
e) Catchy foot tapping melodies.

I realized that KJ movies promise interrupted flows of tears punctuated by songs that come out of nowhere . Definitely a watchable movie if you want to kill some time, loose some money and get a headache as a take away. KANK was a sign - a desperate call to end it - It was .... an Alvida to All Karan Johar movies.

Seeing things through a girls eye.

Col: When a girl runs out like that, she generally wants to be followed..
Fergus : She is not a girl
Col: What ever you say

( But Fergus rises and follows . )

-The Crying Game, 1992


(more later .. )

The Game

The outcome of the game depends on the players that you choose.

My dream(ing) job

Soon I should be writing a blog like this ...

"Iam jobless again ! Its those times when you start appreciating work.
When you work .. you crib about how much far you have to go before you can go home and sleep. But when you dont have a job, you start to feel the weightlessness of your already weightless wallet. You stop having your weekend bash and your occassional - no-reason-parties and dinner outs.. Its time for contemplation .... hey .. wait ... have I not been contemplating for the last 5 years ? Do I belong to the ever growing class of motivationally impaired species infront of blue screens trying to save the world by plucking out protruding bugs and in the process implanting with newer better ones !
After years of constant comtemplation I found my dreamjob - Indefinite Slacking."


Thats a would-be blog .. coming your way soon. - very soon.


After note : The post-it came in handy ... the figure on the note is growing everyday .. I heard- by the next financial year end .. it would almost cross 100,000 !! That almost makes me feel very important - one in a hundred thousand !!!

A perfect blog-job

Sometimes I have been too bothered about blogging and the thoughts that come into my mind are just bits and pieces of literary inspirations ( that peep into my thought-window when I ride, sleep or try to sleep .. ) and nothing more than that. The feeling of helplessness due to my inability to expand on the idea forces the early abortion of the blog-fetus. So I decided that even if its just 3 lines .. A blog is a blog ... afterall blogs are just meant for that ! Who needs a perfect composed blog afterall with an Introduction Content and Conclusion? Eeek .. It all sounds genuinely artificial. Write as if no one is reading.. ( a variant of 'Dance as if no one is watching' .. in my case, both inevitably are true.) Stop when you feel its no more fun. That's a perfect blog-job.

Blogs are just the beginning.. The future is scary

Why should blogs be ever popular ? Is it because of the ease of the execution of mandatory web-page-publishing-cycle ? Or is it because of the push it is given by the fad propogating media ? Or is it for real ? Far away from the ideas of convergence of devices , confluence of media and unification of almost-everything ... to a meaningful granularization of existing media, every one having a medium of communication of their own, I-have-a-channel-of-my-own culture.

Imagine the death of the video-on-demand culture, instead you surf into another's personal media channel- a public broadcast of someones personal ideas and living style - cybercams fitted into living rooms, personal speech pod-casted into the cyberspace and everything that you want made available - made public. There is an enormous amount of cultural diversity waiting to be broadcasted- there is an infinite amout of information waiting to be consumed. There will be an overload of junk which today is wrongly interpreted as information. The internet is no longer be the internet as we knew a few years ago. It is bound to be a living, growing and thriving society where you will have to fight for your personal space, wars waged over virtual boundaries and everything that you see or do leaves behind traces of your cyber fingerprints.


Grids of Information
Everything would be done over the internet - the grid. Your life would revolve around ( or stand still ) on what the grid has to offer today. The grid would be so very ubiquitous that everything that is pluggable would be plugged into the grid. We are not talking about the laptops or the PDAs .. we are talking about your toaster, hair dryer, battery charger, telephones, water heater,ceiling fan, tubelight, 100-watt GE bulb, dishwasher - anything electric - to begin with ... and slowly micro-chip-embedded devices like fountain pens, wine bottles, pepsi cans, post-it notes, razor blades, shirts, shoes and even the liquid nail polish would have grid enabled technology in it. Everything would have a story to tell and all this would be available over the internet - data flowing into the internet like streams of radiation from the sun.

Plug - but dont Play
A little distant future is even more scarier - The world as we know today is over. I dont even want to think about the possibility of detachable, grid-enabled body parts out for sale in the walmarts-of-tomorrow. You would be moving around in an invisible but recognizable ether of 'grid-fluid' .. thick, dense and full of data - your presence easily monitored and broadcasted by a universal GPS - Grid Positioning System. If you want to find out where your teenage daugher or for that matter your toothbrush is ... all you have to do is just log in to the GPS ( G for Grid ) tracking site and search by the GID ( Grid ID) (todays prototypes are the RFIDs) - but the question remains - how will you remember the GID for something as trivial and 'useless' as a cork-opener ? There comes the solution in the form of AIG ( Artificial Intelligence for teh Grid ). You think about it - and you get it ! Sounds crazy ? - sorry to dissapoint you - the future is already here. But that would be another blog ... The grid is here to stay ! Plug yourself in .. Unplugging yourself would be the equivalent of suicide. Someday, scores of eons from now when the Bible would be re-written, it would read like ..
" In the beginning, there was the blog ...."

A whole new world

All the world is a stage and the people mere players ... What do you want to be ? the curtain raiser ?

Cheers ... for ummm ... nothing !

Of late I raise a toast so very often that I have ran out of reasons. Are we in a crisis where we are desperately in search of good news ? Has the age of the hero ended ?

The chemistry and economics of falling in love.

Matrimonial sites
One Sunday afternoon I got a mail from a locally popular matrimonial site congratualting me on registering with them. Surprised I was .. , I clicked on their homepage. I had the shock of my life when I saw my photo on their home page ! I was being advertised . I was on the main page of a matrimonial page asking for prospective girls !!! I called up home and there lay the answer .. my parents were getting worried that my youth was getting wasted in office politics, travel and bad philosophy. They wanted me to get married - even without my consent !( I personally resent from advertising on these sites .. I accept this as the first symptom of you not able to pick up potential mates and globally having acknowledged the fact that you are way below in the mating food chain. ) It cost them well over a thousand Indian Rupees and my profile is "valid" for the next 6 months . It so happened that my parents knew the people well and they even managed to get a discount ! So I made the calculation ... on an average, a girl-seeking-guy waits for 6 months without much success through their site. They know it .. and they want us to know it. Some even wait for a year ! Further I searched their database .. about 100 "potential candidates" on a loose search criteria. Thats about Rs.15/- for viewing a profile. Why dont they put a pay-per-use policy on their site ? Ahh now thats a fantastic business model !

Body Politics
I always had trouble convincing my ex-girl friend that being thin was in.
Maybe I was just being hyper conscious about my physical stature or I wanted to justify her ego and comfort her that she had not made any wild , out of the natural choices. She was wrong in almost all her choices - including me.


Chocolates and love
I read this alternate theory that chocolates induce the production of amphetamines that are similar to the ones that are produced when you are in love. Or was it the artificial stimulation of your senses because chocolates seems to be the obvious( cheapest) choice of gifts. So its just Pavlov's reflex. After almost three years when I was out of love, I didn't have the craving for chocolates ... Either it was not love or something was wrong with my endocrine glands. ( I like to believe the former )


Economics of love
I love to listen to the NPR when I drive to office and back, and on one such boring thursday evening, they had something interesting .. about how lovers ought to get state benefits , how they positively drive the economy , how the hospitality and beverages ( esp red wine ) industry is atleast slightly influenced by lovers . .think about the amount of diamonds, red roses, champagne bottles, mushy cards, telephone calls, lunches/dinners, movies,
Lovers should get some kind of exemption on these , maybe a tax cut , or some extra free cell phone minutes, a reduction on luxury taxes, service taxes, and ofcourse some free movie tickets ..all sponsored by the state. Afterall love makes the world go round.

Whose war is it anyway ?

"It fills me with rage to hear about it and read about it. The pity I once had for foreign troops in Iraq is gone. It's been eradicated by the atrocities in Abu Ghraib, the deaths in Haditha and the latest news of rapes and killings. I look at them in their armored vehicles and to be honest- I can't bring myself to care whether they are 19 or 39. I can't bring myself to care if they make it back home alive. I can't bring myself to care anymore about the wife or parents or children they left behind. I can't bring myself to care because it's difficult to see beyond the horrors. I look at them and wonder just how many innocents they killed and how many more they'll kill before they go home. How many more young Iraqi girls will they rape?"

- From the blog of an Iraqi girl

War on terror , Operation Iraqi Freedom , Operation enduring Freedom .. the list goes on .. the jargons and the phrases .. the deaths , the injuries ... the strife .. goes on ..

Operation Iraqi Freedom reminds me of the Vietnam war .. loosing grip day by day... For the administration its a question of honour, for the financial machinery its a question of raising money to support the troops, for the american public its an unnecessary war .. for the military combatant on the field this is a lost war .. its plain ridiculous when they really donot know whom they are fighting for !

For a statistician, the conclusion would be easy .. they are just numbers .. but as it turns out numbers speak ! Have a look and thou shall know.

This shows the as of today ... To get a more weiry number .. here it goes .. as on June 27,2006

Total Deaths : 2527 ( * +2 deaths pending confirmation, details not released )

Total Injured : 18490 ( unofficial 20,000 - 48,000 )

These are the official figures as posted in the DoD ( Department of Defence ) website . Looking at it would give you an idea how dreadful the numbers are ... Since the date of its inception, the war machinery has been churning out news of death like a weather data .

The business of war reporting and newspapers

How does this sound ? "Reuters: Roadside bomb kills 1 Iraqi soldier, wounds 7" .. pretty much everyday news ! ( this is a June 29 news .. not quite a headline though)

1198 days(as on June 27) from the start .. on an average 2.3 deaths per day !! 2 deaths a day ... and the news sounds so normal .. it doesnt make it to the headlines of the local newspapers anymore .. its not reading material .. casuality death doesnt make sellable news anymore .. people are tired of the same news.. News agencies are in the look out for the next sellable story .. wait for the next bad news !

Links :

The DoD daily casuality list : http://www.defenselink.mil/news/casualty.pdf

Casuality count statistics by period : http://icasualties.org/oif/

For "keeping track" of the count .. I thought I would put a counter on my blog .. sounds inhuman .. but what worth does humanity hold in front of oil ? ... if you are interested in adding an automated script as a reminder on the daily casualities .. you can get the script from here http://www.antiwar.com/casualties/counter.php

More will be added as Operation Iraqi freedom continues ... watch this space for more updates ... and views ... ( lots of sarcasm intended )

Once Bit-ten Twice Shy - The rise and rise of Bit Torrent

I just completed a 3.1 GB download of the complete lectures of Richard P Feynman. It was rather tiring to wait for a little more than a day. But the wait was worth it . I would have paid a fortune to get that from Amazon or BnN or somewhere online .. maybe I would never have got that at all in a voice media format.

Its the ultimate nightmare of a recording company , the headache of the movie distributers and the haven for online file swappers . Enter Bit Torrent.

Introducing Bram Cohen, the inventor of Bit Torrent ... whose passion is solving puzzles .. the harder ..the better.
Did you know that one-third of the internet traffic is accounted for by torrents ?
What started as a harmless way of sharing files is now a movement . ( remember Yahoo started as a small listing project by a Stanford student ? , so did Google ... )

Is p2p Softwares good for the Software Industry and how would it change the dynamics of eCommerce and online trading .. is yet to be seen ..

Meanwhile Cohen claims ... He has never violated any copyright laws by using his own software to download any pirated files ! Sounds like Kalashnikov claiming he has never used AK47 to kill anyone ;-)

What the heck is wrong with the Americans ?

Its yet another Friday afternoon and I can feel the silence and the lifelessness in my office space. The parking lot is as empty as it should-never-be on a working day. No one at the vending machine gossiping about the death of the Al Qaida #1 .. no one at the cafetteria .. no ringing phones .. no high tones of laughter ... no exchanges of 'how are you doing today' .. I wonder whats wrong today ..

Then suddenly something sounding like my inner voice shouted at me in a rather rude tone .. "Dont you know bozo ... Americans donot work after lunch on Fridays ! "
( I should have known !! )
Americans , themselves very well unaware of it , live in a Orwellian world made to their own comfort, where you dont have to bother too much as long as you bother your own business. The business of the Big Brother ofcourse is to bother your business . ( How very ironic !)

Enterpreneurship
The system takes care of your needs .. Thats what the communists once told .. America is the worlds biggest pseudo-capitalist state .. Who says enterpreneurship is welcome in America ?
Consider this .. you want to start a new business in India , how ever 'small' your initial capital needs/gains are .. you can ! ( the only hurdle is the social stigma )

In the US, you just cant imagine starting a grocery shop next to a Walmart .. ( are you carzy ? dont you know Walmart sells everything from baby food to 16-gauge Remington Pump shotguns ? )

Right to work
One of the best things in a free country is the right to work and earn your bread. If you are in India, no matter where you belong to .. what your status is .. you can earn your bread ( and butter ofcourse ) by hook or by crook.
In america, the two deadliest socio-economic problems (as preached and propogated by the state) are terrorism and illegal immigration. The right to work is limited to someone who is in the system .. If you are not in the system .. you are against it . For legal aliens like me, work is permitted, but limited to closed bounds ( iam lucky, but you may not be as lucky as your neighbour)

America Inc
America is not a democrazy. It is a company. It is a conglomeration of corporations run by the corporate board members who send their representation to the Congress whom the people call 'Senators' . Who elects these senetors ? You thought it was the people ? Nah ... If the NRA had a problem with the gun control policy, why cant they spend a little and make some person to represent them in the congress to frame a pro-armament, every-man-has-the-right-to-keep-and-bear-arms bill for the American people ? ( making a safer America for their children ? )
For more biased opinions watch Noam Comskey-Micheal Moore 3 part documentary titled 'The Corporation'

Ever watched wachowski brother's Keanu Reeves starrer 'The Matrix' ?? Living in the American mainland makes you feel like you are in the movie !
How true ... truth is more complicated than idealized fiction ...

... To be continued later some day

Down the rabbit hole

The black hole has always intrigued theoretical physicists all around .. and for many non-physicists its been a very interesting and time consuming 'hobby'. Mathematicians all around find it irresistablly compelling to tinker on this . I met one such person - mathematician by profession-physicist by hobby !( professor by day, hobbyist by night ) Lee Powell ! ( Thanks to my friend at CMU ( in the picture on the left with Lee) who introduced me to him )


And what more better place to meet and talk about relativity, a pub !
One truly great thing I learnt is .. every thing should be expressed in simple ways . The more complex it is .. more the chances that it is wrong . Two underlining quotes on these .. One from the great designer ( gun-designer, mind you ) Mikahail Kalashnikov .. "The most useful things in life are simple .. The more complex are usually useless !"

and Einstein says ... "Things must be made simple ... but not simpler"

I bet the most argued topic among theoretical physicists would be .. was Einstein wrong ? Is indeed the speed of light absolute ? Cant there be anything more faster than a photon ? Can something that shows the wave and particle nature truely have no mass atall ?

Quantum physics is much like the philosopher's rock - we stumble over it , sometimes hit it .. and sometimes it hurts. Somehow .. is that real ? What we have seen is just the tip of an immense quantum mechanical reality iceberg. Sometimes I feel that quantum mechanics is much like faith that ... the subatomic world is a fantasy created by the mad physicists. To the layman, it means nothing.

Its indeed a rabbit hole out there .. but the question is ..... how far down the rabbit hole do you want to go ?

875 Things i want to do before I die

( not in any particular order )

1. Watch change of guards in London infront of the palace.
2. Gaze at the pyramids on a very hot afternoon.
3. Build a library at home before the moths eat my books. [[ ALMOST DONE]]
4. Fall head over heals in the so-called-emotion - love and Marry.( not necessarily the same girl )
5. Have kids and spoil them with endless supply of love and turn them into spoilt brats.
6. Own and drive a geared four-wheeler to work.
7. Go to Machu-Pichu and smell the air.
8. Rest on a lonely beach all day long and eat fried fish.
9. Have honeymoon in a university.
10. Drive all day long without knowing where am heading. [[ DONE - September 2004]]
11. Play decent tennis.
12. Try grass .. just once. [[ DONE - ]]
13. Get drunk and dance alone in my room to the beats of a popular dance number. [[ DONE]]
14. Do cartoons and sketches of people in railway stations.
15. Go to Las Vegas, gamble and win lots of money. [[ ALMOST DONE]]
16. Play hotel California on acoustic Guitar.
17. Write a play.
18. Read Fountain Head and Catcher in the Rye.
19.Find if I have a purpose in this world ( not to be confused with the word function )
20. Score 99th percentile in a competitive exam.
21. Write a letter to my son ( as if it were the last and only letter )
22. Enjoy solitude for 30 days ( atleast 10 ? ) , shut down from everyone , silence and away from the world.
23. Bungy jump.
24. Cycle for a whole week.
25. Climb the everest.
26. Run a marathon and be the top 2% of the finishers.
27. Make the most perfect tea.
28. Live till you are 70, find your old friend who is 66 and spend a good vacation with her.
29. Road trip in USA - Rote 66.
30. Visit James Uncle in Kenya and be with the tribes for a few days.
31. Learn perfect photography with the SLR.
32. Make a well researched documentary.
33. Learn to meditate.
34. Oktoberfest in Germany !

840 to follow ....

Loose your virginity all over again..

Few couple of years ago .. it was boob job ... now ... surgeons have come up with yet another cosmetic miracle ! .... ( for a whooping $5,000 they can stich up your himen ... and let you loose your virginity all over again ! ... even at the age of 45 ! )
Wow !
Married Women are now thinking about this as a perfect way to surprise their hubbies !
Some call it the re-virginaization surgery , some cosmetic virginity ... the end result is the same ... whats in a name anyway !
More here http://women.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,17909-2057781_1,00.html

Flash News : Cosmetic virginity has become so common a thing in cities like New York that its prices have dropped down to $1,800 . !