The Meltdown Log

Upgrades from Blogger

2010-05-20T17:59:00.001-05:00

The new look for the blog, for those 2 of you who sometimes stop by, is courtesy the new set of tools offered via blogger.com on their new tools test site. There are far more options in terms of design templates, layout and customizations of both. This helps eliminate the need to hack the CSS and HTML - which I had been doing earlier with somewhat limited success in terms of liking what I saw.

Don't get me wrong. I am happy to be able to take somewhat of a crack at stylesheets. But I will be the first to resort to WYSIWYG editors. Especially when it comes to layout and design. These new abilities are much overdue. Not sure if it's enough to catch up with Wordpress and its tools. But at least Blogger is showing some intent in doing so. Of course, Blogger does one thing better - it allows users the ability to modify HTML for free as opposed to Wordpress who only offer that ability for a fee.

Anyways, those few of you who still have a Blogger account and haven't already moved over to Wordpress, you can finally do a few cool things with your blog's look and feel.

Rocket Singh: Salesman Of The Year

2010-05-20T15:46:00.003-05:00

This is yet another movie review. As you've probably noted by now - I've had some time on my hands to watch these movies. Because of a whole lot of changes in my personal life (and professional for that matter), haven't really had the chance to pen down thoughts. Until now - sort of

Rocket Singh... is about a rookie salesman Harpreet Singh played by Ranbir Kapoor who fresh after graduation joins a company that assembles and sells computers. Things seem good at first but trouble's ahead because Harpreet has been raised an idealist of sorts with a solid grounding in values by his grandfather. His value system is soon challenged the day he's sent out to visit a potential client to close a sales deal and the manager over there demands a bribe to ensure that Harpreet and his company are awarded the contract - as opposed to someone else. Harpreet, seriously offended by the bribery demand, walks out thinking he's done the right thing. He can't wait to tell his superiors about the sleazeball client manager.

However, instead of the pat on the back that he thought would be forthcoming for his honesty, his superiors are livid with him and berate him for having offended and walked out on a major client. Harpreet soon realizes that what he encountered at the client location was actually standard practice. What's more - he soon becomes the butt of ridicule in his company for being a naive loser with no idea how the world works. And this is only the beginning of his disillusionment. He also learns that another standard practice adopted by his company is to mark up the prices of their computers exorbitantly - far higher than the sum of the parts - and to never offer the promised offer sales support.

When things finally reach breaking point for him (by now his fellow sales staff toss paper rockets his way all day), he decides to turn on his company and clandestinely start his own computer sales company from inside his employers facilities. As he starts getting clients for his own secret company he also slowly starts recruiting disgruntled employees of the parent company to secretly work for him as equal partners. He also wants to do things differently by offering his clients lower prices and fantastic after sales service - all things that his original employers don't practice. Also, he will offer no bribes to get contracts. In short, he wants to maintain the highest standards and ethics for his nascent company. His company's name - Rocket Sales.

Little by little, Rocket Sales starts to steal away clients from Harpreet's original employers. It turns out that there is a market for an honest, upfront company that delivers what it promises at a reasonable price. Of course, this situation where Harpreet operates a company secretly within the premises of another cannot last. That of course forms the remainder of the movie. A lot of what happens next is predictable. But its done well.

Rocket Singh is about an idealist and his attempt at trying to do things his way. But it's also a simple story about ideals and ethics and whether those have any relevance in the real world. The movie has a very low-key, indie movie-like feel to it and that works really well for the subject matter at hand. Though it's a feel good story of sorts, melodrama is at a minimum. The story moves forward pretty evenly and all the actors do a pretty good job. Ranbir, especially, does a very convincing job as Harpreet Singh.

I really liked this movie as well. It's a good story thats well told, well acted and well directed (dir: Shimit Amin).

Definitely a must see.

Ishqiya: No Sh*t - Love actually kills!

2010-05-18T13:43:00.001-05:00

Produced by Vishal Bharadwaj, and directed by Abhishek Chaubey this movie is about 2 incorrigible thieves - played by legend Naseeruddin Shah and the more-often-than-not fantastic Arshad Warsi - on the run from a local don. In the course of their flight they end up taking shelter temporarily in the house of a pretty but not-so-fragile widow played by Vidya Balan - who was married to an outlaw herself until a cooking gas cylinder blast under mysterious circumstances killed her husband and barely left her alive. And while she may be beautiful, little else about her is as it appears on the surface. All this makes for an interesting triangle of relationships. The triangle develops slowly and keeps us guessing about how it's all going to look eventually. It helps that the three leads do a great job with their characters. Like the relationships between the leads, the story arc also takes its time to move forward. But I thought the journey was worth savoring. For the most part that is.

Unfortunately, just as the inter-relationships brew starts to get real interesting two-thirds of the way through the movie, the story sort of falls apart a little. It's almost like the director suddenly realized that he's got to end the movie pretty soon, and hurriedly arranges events to bring the earlier juicy proceedings to an abrupt and somewhat improbable finish.

I liked the movie a lot though. The story was for the most part very well written. Some of the dialogues were difficult to understand because of the regional dialects used - but that also adds to the charm of the movie about life in the hinterlands. The actors were all extremely good, and the best thing I can say about the movie is that I disliked the ending because it brought an end to what was turning out to be a delightful, depraved love triangle.

More power to depravity.
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Mumbai Meri Jaan - When love and Hate collide

2010-05-14T17:18:00.006-05:00

A "Crash"-like amalgamation of separate story threads involving different people living in the city of Mumbai, Mumbai Meri Jaan shows how different people from various walks of life are affected by bomb blasts on Mumbai commuter trains and their aftermath. Its main purpose is to highlight the fact that the veneer of cosmopolitan life that Mumbai prides itself on is really only held together by fragile threads that strain and break often when such terrorist attacks happen.

I really liked how the different characters that we follow in the course of the movie are forced to question their beliefs and assumptions about the city of Mumbai, and society in general in the aftermath of the bomb blasts. One disturbing aspect the film focuses on is how easy it is to raise the level of distrust between Hindus and Muslims - the two main religious groups in India. Via the character played by Kay Kay Menon, Mumbai Meri Jaan offers a very realistic, no-holds barred window into the sometimes paranoid mind of an average Hindu and his almost complete lack of trust in the patriotic intentions of his average Muslim brethren and the belief that Muslims are behind all terrorist attacks in India.

Other threads focus on themes which include the callousness and the lack of sensitivity of the mainstream media in its constant pursuit of the sensational, the internal struggles of an idealistic rookie beat cop trying to find his place within a corrupt law and order establishment, a poor family man trying to avenge his daily losses in the class war society inflicts on him daily and a techie slowly losing his faith in the ability of Indian society to keep him and his family safe and sound and considering greening pastures abroad. In the end though, all the characters mostly find consolation and redemption of sorts even though their personal journeys are somewhat painful and littered with more questions than answers.

Mumbai Meri Jaan is well directed. Weaving the parallel story threads into a coherent narrative is an extremely difficult job. Nishikant Kamat, not only does that wonderfully, he also does the details really well. There is a certain authenticity in depicting Mumbai and its people in ways that most other Hindi movies, to say nothing of movies by outsiders like Danny Boyle, have not been able to do right. And the acting is close to top notch by most everybody - with both veterans Paresh Rawal, who plays an experienced, worldly-wise cop partnering the conflicted rookie, and of course Kay Kay Menon essaying their roles brilliantly.

This is the kind of social commentary that is both relateable and entertaining. It is also thought provoking because it doesn't beat the audiences on their heads with simplistic, preachy messages like the Munnabhai series or 3 Idiots but instead places the onus on the characters to find their way out of tricky moral dilemmas. And because these characters are everyday people, perhaps it's a message for us folks to also find our own ways out of tough conundrums?

A definite must watch, especially for people of and from Mumbai.

(image from Yahoo India)

3 Idiots is 3 too many

2010-05-14T16:40:00.009-05:00

The most recent movie directed by Raju Hirani, whose portfolio consists of the phenomenally successful Munnabhai series. 3 Idiots is essentially about 3 college students and their experiences vis-a-vis the Indian education system (more specifically an engineering college) telling us - the unsuspecting public - that the odds favor the rote learning robots produced by the aforementioned system as opposed to free thinkers attempting to and sometimes tragically failing to find their true calling in life. The movie stars Aamir Khan, Madhavan, Sharman Joshi - all 3 alumni of the popular Viva-La-Revolution themed "Rang De Basanti" - here playing both young college students in their late teens/ early 20's shown in flashback, and slightly older men set in current times which is a few years after their college years. Boman Irani - a staple of Hirani movies playing the rigid, negative person who eventually turns over a new leaf at the end of the movie - is around once again doing more of the same in a slightly different getup. Here, he plays the inflexible and insensitive principal of the engineering college in which our 3 Idiots aspire to get educated or earn a degree or both.

The movie begins with the characters played by Madhavan's Farhan and Sharman Joshi's Raju trying to find Aamir Khan's Rancho as they seem to have lost touch with him ever since they graduated from their engineering college together many years ago. It is during this search that the movie flashes back to their college life and their struggles with the rigid establishment. And as they seem to get closer and closer to locating Rancho, the flash backs continue to tell us, nay, beat us on the head about how so very depressing the whole education system is and how it kills eager students from the inside.

I shouldn't be so harsh though - 3 Idiots isn't all that bad. The problem is that while the message is somewhat decent - that the Indian education system favors rote learning and that Indian parents force their children into Engineering or Medicine related disciplines - both of which are true - it is so far from new that any Indian who needs to watch this movie to learn about the state of affairs is the real idiot. Also, 3 Idiots has an overly simplistic take on the whole issue as well. This simplistic take is delivered via various unsubtle scenes (which unfortunately are far from few) whose sole purpose are to serve as setups for Rancho, the anti-establishment whizkid, to first demonstrate how very clever he is in comparison to his inept lecturers and fellow bookish students, and then next to carp on about how the whole system is so rotten that it produces f*ks like them and not studs like him.

The characters too were all completely one-dimensional to really be able to relate to in any realistic fashion with the all-knowing Rancho easily being the most difficult to relate to. Only Sharman Joshi, who plays the self-doubting Raju who eventually finds the confidence to tackle the naysayers, and Omi Vaidya (Chatur Ramalingam in the movie) who plays the punching bag rote-learning bookworm really tried to break out of the narrow confines written for their roles. And the direction, while very competent, was sadly very much like the education system it beats down with glee - formulaic and by the book.

Occasionally though, there was some surprisingly dark humor - the hospital scenes for instance were good tragi-comic. Moments such as those briefly elevated the movie while bringing back memories of the classic "Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron" - but thats all they were - moments and very brief at that.

Overall, for a movie with pretensions of being social commentary of sorts, the message was far from convincing. If the director really wanted to take on the education system - he should have focused on primary or secondary education when the rote learning behavior actually takes shape. But then if he did, he wouldn't be able to get a bunch of popular actors in their mid 40's to impossibly play one-dimensional college kids and thereby lose out on the ability to hype the movie and rake in the big bucks all the while harboring pretensions of bringing in radical societal change.

(image from naachgaana.com)

Contrapment

2010-03-18T15:13:00.001-05:00

Me and the wife at a SuperTarget recently. She's off browsing some section of the store. I wander off to check a nearby section. I turn a corner and see a guy walking towards me. Guy breaks into a smile and points a finger at me with an expression of a slowly dawning familiarity.

GuyFromTraget (GFT): "Hey - do I know you from somewhere? You look familiar."
Me: "Really? Sorry I can't seem to place you." (I'm trying real hard though!)
GFT: "I think I saw you at #$% - are you a student there?"
Me: (realizing that it might be possible I met this guy somewhere at #$% while I used to work over there) "Yeah. I used to be at #$% but not as a student. I was a researcher and I also worked with faculty at the business school."
GFT: "Yeah. Yeah. The business school. I think I met you over there. Cool. I'm {GFT}.
Me: "I'm Sarat. Nice to meet you {GFT}."
GFT: "So Sarat, what do you do?"
Me: "I am currently looking for work but I am actually a computer science researcher and software developer (I go off into my small prepared intro that I have had the opportunity to use extremely often these last few months - with limited success)."
GFT: "Really? What do you work on?"
Me: "I am visualization expert. I focus on visualizing and analyzing data, that is, make graphical representations of complex information to make them more easier to absorb and understand quickly."
GFT: "Oh Cool. That's really very interesting."
Me: "So what do you do?"
GFT: "Oh. I am an entrepreneur. I work in the distribution and retail industry."
Me: "Cool! Good to hear."
GFT: "You have a business card or something? We're constantly looking for people who can work with us."
Me: "Sure. I don't have a business card anymore - but here's my phone number. Do you have a business card yourself?"
GFT: "Thanks. No - I'm not carrying one but here's my email address."
Me: "Thanks. Nice meeting you - and good luck with your venture."
GFT: "Nice meeting you as well. Good luck with your job search."

Chance meeting over. Driving home from SuperTarget. I'm thinking: Wow. GFT seemed like a real nice guy. I wish I had recognized him. I need to do something about being so forgetful and stuff off late.

Couple of days later, phone rings.

Me: "Hello?"
Voice: "Sarat? Hey - this is {GFT} - we met at the Target."
Me: "Oh Hey. I do remember. How are you?"
GFT: "Good. Good. Listen - are you still looking for work?"
Me: "Sort of."
GFT: "I may have an opportunity for you if you are interested."
Me: "Cool. What does it involve?"
GFT: "I only have a minute right now but me and my associate would like to meet with you sometime. Do you have time on Tuesday or Wednesday?"
Me: "Not on Tuesday. But Wednesday evening's good?"
GFT: "Cool. How about 8pm at Panera Bread on Wednesday?"
Me: "Uh... Ok. Sounds good."
GFT: "Good. You will show up though right?"
Me: "Oh of course. I'd be happy to learn more about the job opportunity."
GFT: "Excellent. So see you on Wednesday at 8 p.m."

Cool! That chance meeting turned out to be interesting. There might be something there. Of course, a lot of potential job opportunities for me haven't quite turned out right off late. But meeting with people is the most important thing when looking for a job, right?! Plus maybe distribution industry folks need my analytics experience and stuff. So it might be useful to meet those guys - if not now then maybe sometime in the future.

Wednesday evening - 8:05 p.m. @ Panera Bread. I am sitting at a table all by myself waiting for {GFT} and his associate to show up. Phone rings.
Me: "Hello?"
GFT: "Sorry I am running a little late because of a conference call. However, my associate {Ass} is on his way over to meet you. He should be there in a few minutes. Is that Ok?"
Me: (Something starting to feel a little off - dunny why tho). "Umm... Ok. But I have no idea what I am meeting for yet." (Ok - dat why!)
GFT: "Dont worry. {Ass} will explain everything."

8.30 p.m. A guy - not GFT - walks in wearing a buttoned shirt, trousers and a tie with a couple of other nicely dressed folks.

Ass: "Sarat? Hey - I am {Ass} and I work with {GFT}. This is {Ass_2} and {Ass_3}."
GFT: "Nice to meet you."
Ass: "So {GFT} explained to you what this is about right."
Me: "Nope. I really have no idea what this is about and what you guys do other than that you wanted to meet me regarding a potential job opportunity for me." (I'm starting to feel that this is all going to lead to something monumentally horrible... still not sure how or what tho!)
Ass: "This is actually not about a job opportunity for you but about a way for you to be self-employed and make some money."
Me: (A sinking feeling in my stomach. Realization finally dawns on me - I got suckered into meeting with the class of people I detest the most...) "Oh ... Ok!"
Ass: "So basically let me tell you how..."

Ass launches into his marketing spiel with fancy acronyms and charts. But I'm not really listening to the drivel. My mind has already raced back to the Target meeting with {GFT} and the epiphany that I've just been had with the "Dont I know you from somewhere?" trick! That's right! I've just been had by a fking pyramid scheme dude peddling some new kind of pyramid scheme BS.

15 minutes later the meeting ends. Although for me the meeting had been over 15 minutes ago. It was supposed to go on for another hour or more. I decided that I had had my fun though. That fun involved interrogating Ass about their pyramid scheme, about why I would buy stuff from him when I could buy at wholesale prices from Sam's Club or Costco, about why they having a website is no great shakes because the wholesaler membership clubs like Costco and Sam's have their own website as well, about how much profit each customer of his really makes, about how much he makes on each of his customer's profit, about why the products he sells have no real benefit for me... and so on.

I take pity on myself and the fool. I've had enough. I tell him I'm done - that I am looking for a job and that this whole setup was miscommunicated to me by {GFT} and that you guys should go after him for wasting both our time.

Meeting over, I call the wife and I tell her we need to celebrate me being had by another pyramid schemer - after a 10 year gap. She's laughing too. The only good thing that came out of it - they guy behind the counter at Panera gave me a free coffee. Small mercies like that let you keep faith in humanity.

Those that feed on the insecurity of folks in real tough situations are the worst of sh&t. Good trick tho GFT. But I'm hopefully not falling for that one again.

Pachauri in hot water

2010-02-17T18:36:00.009-05:00

Rajendra Pachauri, the chair of the International Panel on Climate Change or the IPCC is presiding over some of the toughest scandals to hit climate change and global warming research.

First, came ClimateGate. Hackers hacked into email servers of the Cliamte Research Unit (CRU) of the IPCC and got hold of several Megs of email communications between scientists. When the contents of these emails were examined, it came to light that, among other serious issues, some of the temperature measurements that were used as major indicators in the claims of Phil Jones, a climate researcher with the University of East Anglia, that global warming was real, were seriously flawed, i.e. fudged.

Next, came Glacier Gate, in which a benchmark study on glacier melting in 2007 conducted by the The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) and whose director is Mr. Pachauri, that predicted that the Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035, was found to be seriously "flawed" as well.

Most recently, came Amazon Gate, in which new evidence was discovered that the IPCC's claim that large portions of the Amazon rain forests are in serious trouble because of global warming was also based on faulty and non-peer reviewed information.

The damage done by these scandals has already discredited the world's leading climate research organization and by extension, the whole notion that climate change and global warming is real and is happening. That last effect is the one that is the most disturbing, forcing ordinary people to lose faith in the scientific work behind climate change and allowing climate change skeptics to regain their foothold in the debate on whether global warming is real or not. As discussed in the above piece by Christopher Booker, the notion that IPCC is and has been conducting global warming research impartially is probably mistaken as well.

Mr. Pachauri is definitely in the hot seat. Calls for him to take responsibilities for the scandals and resign as chair of the IPCC are growing. And while he has been resisting these calls for now, he may not be able to do so for too long. But his options if he were to leave the IPCC are also somewhat limited given that the government of India is also not all that predisposed towards him as they may have been before - especially after that faulty Himalayan glacier melting report.

There's more. In early 2008 he greeted the launching in India of Tata Motors' low cost passenger car called the Nano, with a statement that the launch of the car was giving him nightmares, filled with images of Indian roads clogged with these little pieces of metal and polluting the world to kingdom come. This disregards the benefits of the Nano (low cost vehicle that makes traveling for poor families a lot more safer than is currently possible for them while positioned precariously on a 2 wheeler in both rain or sun, very low emissions compared to gas guzzlers) and the production and distribution limitations on that scenario ever becoming possible. Coming from a person of Indian origin, these comments were certainly perplexing to say the least. Or perhaps he said those things to stay on the good side of the environmentalists and the green lobby.

Whatever. Mr. Pachauri is morally responsible for the scandals even if he does not have a direct contribution to the faulty claims and reports issued by the IPCC. The damage done to the credibility of climate studies is going to be very, very hard to repair.

But, if the IPCC is itself not exactly committed to serious, impartial research and is only interested in pursuing its own agenda (however well-intentioned) then it probably does not matter who becomes the new chair after Pachauri.

The Good, The Bad and The Sulky

2010-02-09T17:46:00.004-05:00

Five Rupees has a very interesting discussion between three political science PhD candidates on the Indo-Pak issue in the backdrop of the Indian side recently proposing to renew talks with Pakistan. The talks had been halted rather abruptly after the terror attacks on Mumbai on 26th November, 2008 and India since then had been understandably sulking about it. It's been over a year though since that horrific incident and a lot has happened since, not least of which is the rapid decline in the internal security situation in Pakistan.

The discussion is enlightening in many ways as it touches upon several topics of relevance for people in that region (and outside as well). Topics include nuclear deterrence, Pakistan's strategy of strategic depth against India by its involvement in internal Afghan politics, the Indian reasons for coming to the table for talks, the water dispute between the two countries and of course Kashmir.

With regards to the talks, it seems that one of the main reasons for India initiating the new rounds of talk is its perceived weakness in the Af-Pak region. India has seldom wielded real influence in Afghanistan except for its support to the Northern Alliance during and after the Taliban rule. But what little influence it had just suffered a still larger blow with the powers-that-be in the region, i.e. US, UK, Canada and Pakistan, having recently consciously chosen to sideline Indian concerns on Afghanistan. This despite India having invested billions into redevelopment efforts in Afghanistan since the dismantling of the Taliban regime. The US of course wants to assuage the concerns of the Pakistanis so that they can focus on going after the extremists in their midst and worry less about encirclement by India.

But the Indians seem particularly alarmed that everyone (except India) seems to be very inclined to start talks of some sort with the "good Taliban" in the Af-Pak region to solve the region's problems. The Indians insist that there is no such thing as good Taliban - a view expressed by Indian foreign minister S M Krishna recently. Of course, Krisha was forced to backtrack somewhat on those comments and suggest some flexibility on the issue because its stand has fallen on deaf ears, with the powers-that-be only intent on offering whatever confidence builders are desired by Pakistan for now.

It does seem that the security situation in the western part of the sub-continent has changed little since the Mumbai terror attacks. India's standing has not enhanced much and for the moment at least, despite its recent warming to and alignment with the United States. While the internal terror threat has been tackled with a lot of vigor, the external threat to India primarily in the form of anti-India extremists residing in Pakistan still exist largely untouched by the govt. of Pakistan and are not the focus of US action in the region. This could definitely be perceived as a failure of Indian foreign policy in the region.

There seems to be little option for the Indians than seeking the help of the nascent Pak civilian government in reducing that external threat, even as the Pak govt. once again tries to battle on many fronts. As in the past, the perception remains that it is still the Pak Army and its intelligence agencies who call the actual shots. In that context does it make sense for the Indians to talk to the civilian government in Pakistan?

It does seem as if its just the start of a new cycle of "Talks - catastrophic security event - Confrontation and No Talks" a sentiment expressed by Five Rupees as well. Any bets on the breaking of that cycle this time around?

Royal Restaurant Mahal Indian

2010-01-04T17:45:00.003-05:00

Among the things we expat Indians invariably ask about when we get to any destination outside of India is - Does this place have any Indian restaurants? If so - how many? And what kind of food do they serve?

Not all cities are equal. Some have a few Indian restaurants and some have a whole lot to choose from. Of course, the restaurant scene is constantly evolving, growing and Indian students and IT workers play a huge part in that phenomenon here in the USofA where I be located currently.

Besides the quality, the type of Indian restaurants that you encounter in the many cities and towns also vary. For me, I'd say these joints (restaurants) come in 4 Types:

Type 1:
Which is: A restaurant named using a combination of the words "Taj", "India/Indian", "Spice", "Curry", "Palace", "Sitar" and of course "Royal", serving what used to be once called North Indian cuisine but is just some pale, bastardized imitation and reduction of both the palate and the range. They get by serving mostly nostalgia. When you walk in on a weekday for lunch - the buffet has Chicken Tikka Masala, Saag Paneer, various Naan bread types, some Pakoras, and salad with ranch dip on the side.

You look around and there are pictures/potraits of various dead Kings who you've never heard of in your history lessons, and if you strain your ears you'll probably hear some morbid sitar music or instrumental old Hindi cinema music (i.e. Bollywood stuff). You'll also notice that most of the people eating at the restaurant are non-Indian (unless you're in a small college town where the university has a graduate engineering program - in which case you will most definitely seen a smattering of Indian graduate students too - usually the ones who have a scholarship of some sort).

Now there might be places that get those dishes reasonably right. If you're not Indian and you don't have any baseline to compare the dishes to you don't really care as long as the stuff tastes good. But if you are Indian you know that they rarely ever get it right. And that's probably because the owner doesn't care about being authentic because his clientele for the most part isn't you - its people who tell him that they like Indian food except for the spice part of it (Go figure!). Any guesses what he's going to do in the name of customer retention.

Where they at: A small, occasionally miserable, city or town in the US more than a couple of hours from a major US city by road.

Type 2:
Which is: A North Indian restaurant that opened very recently whose menu caters to the Indian palate for the large part - and what's more - the food's almost good! Well - except for the lunch buffets of course which still sucks because thats when the non-Indian office goer who likes the food but not the spice comes by. But coming back to the menu - it actually has a lot more items to choose from and they serve a lot more than nostalgia. Even the Bollywood songs they play are new and not necessarily instrumentals inspired by the 80's.

Where they at: A medium sized city with a few IT establishments and/ or a reasonably large college town nearby. Type 1 places still exist however because the locals have finally gotten used to them. If you're living in just such a place, you may also have recently heard at the local Indian grocery that a South Indian restaurant is going to open up soon in your neighborhood and you're now looking forward to boasting to your Indian friend going to school in Wyoming or Alabama, about this recent development. Which brings us to...

Type 3:

Which is: A decent, recently opened South Indian restaurant serving idli, dosa, utthapam and sambhar. (Note: These are on par quality-wise with Type 2 places but the only reason they are a number higher is because they usually start showing up after Type 2 places do. Let's not get into a North India-South India debate here.)

Where they at: A large city with several IT establishments and a few universities (big and small) around. There are the usual Type 1 places around along with a few Type 2 ones as well. If you live in such a place, you wouldn't want to be caught dead in a Type 1 restaurant ever again unless there's you had to be there because your American friends at work operate under the impression that its a great restaurant and dragged you there for the lunch buffet thinking that you'd be happy to eat over there. You've also realized the pointlessness of explaining to them that an Indian lunch buffet, however inauthentic, is a soporific like no other and you'd much prefer Mediterranean/Mexican/Chinese/Soup&Sandwich for lunch.

Finally, Type 4:
Which is: ...And this is f***ing GOLD, a no-frills, self-service style Indian Fast Food i.e. Street Food restaurants where you're going to get chaat, bhel, vada-pav, pani puri, dahi puri, Indian Chinese and a whole bunch of other stuff the dinosaurs running Type 1 places only remember as distant memories of a past life or have probably never heard of at all.

Where they at: A large city with several IT establishments that has been this way - large and booming - for a while. This place also has Type 1, 2 and 3 places. By now, you'd probably have detected the pattern - the smaller town has only Type 1 restaurants, the medium-sized has Types 1 and 2, a large city has Types 1, 2 and 3. But its only in the really large cities that you're going to find a Type 4. And if you're a new expat - its these Type 4 places that help keep India fresh for you. If you're current location has one of these, then you've got it made bud!

Now if you could just keep your job...

Climate Changers

2009-09-29T17:00:00.000-05:00

The whole debate on climate change and who needs to take responsibility and do what continues to rage with no end in sight. The so called developed countries - mostly in the West - while promising a cut in emissions, have in the past demanded that the developing countries also do the same across the board. This is of course not exactly to the liking of the developing world.

For one, the rapid industrialization of the developing nations is an essential ingredient to their growth and to ensuring that hundreds of millions of people are able to climb out of the poverty hole. Cutting down on emissions would in essence mean fewer conventional industries, etc. - which would mean fewer jobs as well as much less wealth generated by the local consumption and the export of the products generated by these industries.

The second reason is of course, how did our climate get to this point? It would be safe to argue that until very recently the biggest polluters in this world were indeed the most industrialized and developed countries of the world, whose per capita contribution to climate change and global warming is staggering to say the least. It would only be fair that they take the burden of the major changes on themselves, since it was their rapid growth that brought us all here. To now deny the developing world their industrialization and growth, especially without adequate compensation of any sort, is/ would be hypocritical at best. Combined with the crimes of their ancestors during their colonial pasts (forcible occupation, subjugation, colonization and massive exploitation of the people and resources of several developing countries), it alarmingly creates the impression of a new form of repression.

It also hints at immaturity in trying to somehow maintain an extreme consumption based lifestyle that has brought us to this point while requiring the more populated developing world to bear the brunt of the problem. More alarmingly though, it points to a protectionism agenda in trying to maintain their industrialized economies as is and perhaps keep the rapidly gaining competition in particular from Asian nations from achieving parity and overtaking the developed world.

But, while there is some truth to all of the three perspectives outlined in the previous paragraph, the issue is not simply apportioning blame. The fact of the matter is that we are all in this together. Some more than others. But eventually, it will affect most, if not all people on this planet. More populous developing nations with several big cities surviving right by our ever rising seas are in the most danger. Expecting the West to help out before it becomes too late would be rather reactive and wishful thinking too I might add.

While I do believe that global initiatives for climate change action are extremely welcome, the fact that everyone has differing opinions on how to go about doing it and the fact that there are clearly two opposing viewpoints in the whole discussion means that very little is going to be done going forward multilaterally.

Instead of course, we must recognize that rapid industrialization, while improving the economies of many nations and bringing more of their population into prosperity, also brings with it a degradation in the quality of life in terms of health and well being, especially if the western model is to be followed. Smog is a daily feature in many big cities in the developing world (just as the megacities in the developed world). Health problems arising out of carbon emissions, as well as chemical affluents are not desirable on any level as it would add significantly to health costs in the long run and a significant degradation of life as we enjoy it.

Populations in the developing world are not ignorant of these issues, in fact they are probably far more concerned about it than developed countries are. After all, it is the air they breathe on a daily basis. They are also willing to pursue (and in many cases already acting on it them) several options going forward be it wind farming, massive solar energy generation initiatives, implementing high standards for emissions from vehicles and industries, adopting environmentally friendly planning and construction practices among others. In the future, you can expect them to continue to adopt these green options in greater numbers and with ever-increasing pace.

Furthermore, the economies of these countries will probably be boosted by the development and mass production of green technologies including manufacturing of next gen solar power cells, wind technology and the adoption of safer nuclear power production practices and safeguards.

As these populations start becoming more and more affluent, their focus will shift from livelihood to quality of life. Clean air and water, direct results of cleaner energy production, will be up next in their list of wants and demands.

Overall, I remain bullish about the ability of the developing world to make fundamental shifts in tackling climate change.

Moon water and "Red Mars"

2009-09-29T16:25:00.004-05:00

The discovery of water on the moon now confirmed by several different moon missions, and most recently by a NASA probe deployed via the Indian Space Research Organization's Chandrayaan I moon orbiter, is astounding news. That news has been followed with the discovery of large quantities of water on Mars much closer to the equator than was previously thought (earlier the notion was that water in the form of ice was concentrated closer to the polar areas of Mars).

All this really means is that both the moon and Mars are now colonizable, perhaps more easily than earlier thought possible because of the ready availability of water. Coincidentally, this past year I have been reading the wonderful science fiction trilogy on Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson; namely the award winning "Red Mars", "Green Mars" and "Blue Mars", which deals with exactly that - the colonization and "terraforming" of Mars.

The first book in the series, "Red Mars" (full book link on google books?), which I highly recommend, deals with the eventual arrival of permanent human presence on Mars in the form of an early group of astronaut settlers sent to setup bases which include power generation, and mining units as well as green houses, and research labs. The scope of Red Mars is not just scientific and engineering centric - the first settlers, while being the best scientists and engineers, are also highly opinionated and have brought with them their beliefs and philosophies. All of this makes for a fascinating read.

The remaining two books continue on that theme. "Green Mars" explores the continuing efforts to settle Mars by building some sort of an atmosphere on it for human beings to breathe freely in, and the resistance to both the greening effort as well as the control exerted by and from Earth. Finally, "Blue Mars" (which I am halfway through and which is not as easy a read as "Red Mars" was but is nonetheless very illuminating) talks about the eventual reconciliation between Mars and Earth in the backdrop of catastrophic events and displacements on Earth and the need for sending large numbers of affected Earth people to a new life on Mars, and of course the continuing struggles of the Mars inhabitants.

Overall, if there's a minor niggle I have had, its the fact that the author does have a Western bias of sorts in the array of characters introduced and developed. But the bias is far less than several others I have read - names, places and beliefs from Eastern lands have been liberally referenced, very appropriately too I might add which reflects the authors knowledge of history and literature. But I find it strange that given the large numbers of Chinese and Indian scientists in particular active in several engineering and scientific domains, there are hardly any characters of those origins playing principal roles in the Mars trilogy.

Of course, since I am Indian in origin, I am for more Asian representation as prinicipal book characters. Which basically means countering the bias against, with a bias for - a convenient zero sum game, I agree.

Regardless, the authors deep knowledge of the sciences and literature, and very sound storytelling skills brought together by a sweeping, detailed vision of life on Mars is what stays with you. I wouldn't be surprised if future events though reflect in some fashion the ideas and vision displayed in "Red Mars". Fans of good fiction will enjoy this book immensely.

(Red Mars cover image courtesy Amazon.com)

Racism redux: Race in the mirror

2009-09-25T16:32:00.005-05:00

Tehelka's latest edition has a series of stories/pieces on how racism is not something new to Indians - they are indeed old experienced hands at practicing it themselves.

These pieces are for the most part short in nature and are personal experiences and opinions expressed by individuals. For instance, in How to Draw Within the Margins, Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih talks about how people, particularly women, from the North Eastern Indian states are treated.

In another story, Navdeep Singh talks about how Indians in general perceive blacks, or being black or dark-skinned people. In particular, her generalization that:

"Most middle class Indians grow up with a sense that White > Indian > Black. (For some reason, East Asians aren’t competing)"

and

"...We often nominate ourselves as honorary white."

are quite telling summarizations.

Stories like these help construct a much broader picture of how prevalent racism is in Indian society and how there is very little done to address it.

(Older post on racism with an Indian twist.)

Origins 06: Amar Chitra Katha

2009-09-17T17:49:00.002-05:00

Origins 06: Amar Chitra Katha

Amar Chitra Katha (or "Immortal Picture Story" as translated by me from the Hindi title) or ACK is a graphic novel/comic book series started by Anant Pai (aka Uncle Pai) under the label India Book House (IBH). Early on, they were largely focused on ancient Indian mythology (as opposed to modern Indian mythology) - which is mostly Hindu in origin of course. But very soon, they expanded to include all stories pertinent to India including history, religion and folklore. The Wikipedia entry has more details - but of course.

These comics have been around for a while. They were a staple diet while I was growing up. My sister and I, being voracious readers, devoured them. As a result we grew up fat on Indian mythology and history. The fact that these books were well researched made them immensely educational as well.

Mythology is of course an extremely fascinating topic. Indian mythology, like other ancient mythology is extremely rich and you could spend years reading stories from it and yet still not know all of them. I was fascinated with it in my much younger days, like several other kids my age. Primarily because like the others I was a sucker for a good story. I wasn't old enough to find blonde haired princesses from foreign lands all that fascinating - not just yet (and no - I'm not referring to Paris Hilton or Pamela Anderson when I say that). Not that we didn't read about them and stuff. But Indian was where it was at.

When I was a kid growing up in Mumbai, we would travel to my father's hometown Elluru frequently where we would spend time with my grandparents and occasionally, some of our cousins too who would be visiting around the same time. In the evenings, around sunset just before dinner was served, us kids would sit on the steps leading up to the verendah outside the family home and my grandmother would sit down with us and tell us stories from Indian mythology. Those story sessions were fascinating.

As my sister and I grew older those trips to Elluru grew more infrequent (not entirely a bad thing as that meant we at least got to visit other places - sorry Dad!). ACK helped keep those stories alive and helped expand that knowledge-base considerably.

Of course, now that us kids of the ACK generation are older and stuff, we're all into interpretations and implications of those mythological stories. Part of the great Indian culture of discussion and argument as endorsed by Amartya Sen in his "The Argumentative Indian". But looking back, the basis for all that lay in that age when we were suckers for a good simple story, especially those rendered in ACK comics.

In summary, if you're a fan of mythology in general and want to learn about Indian mythology, you wouldn't do too badly if you picked up one of these.

Fake NHL Player Tweets: What does that remind you cricket fans of?

2009-09-16T14:54:00.002-05:00

Apparently, people have been following fake tweets from tweeters who are pretending to be real NHL players.

Now what does that remind cricket fans of - especially those of the "Indian Player League" or IPL?

Origins - Part 23: Vividh Bharati

2009-09-08T17:30:00.006-05:00

Maybe I still carry a grudge with my parents for cutting (figuratively speaking) me from Cable TV in high school in India. Twice. Both before important end-of-school-year exams (10th Std. and 12th Std.). Their reasoning: I could never probably have enough entertainment. Now, with only the regular TV channels on (all 2 of them - both run by state-owned media) instead of the several other enticing stuff on Cable, they thought that I'd spend very little time in front of the TV and spend more time studying for those exams instead.

They were right - about the first part at least. However, the part that satellite TV would have played was instead taken over by radio - via an old transistor radio that my Dad had bought. That radio, about the dimensions of a decent-sized hardbound novel, was more than 10 years old at that time.

Circa 1991, radio broadcast in India was still state owned and operated, just as terrestrial TV broadcast in India was until a little over a decade ago. During those days, cable TV was actually Satellite TV, transmitted locally within neighborhoods via cable from the neighborhood satellite TV hub. These hubs consisted of huge satellite dish antennas from which overhead cable lines spawned out to buildings across the neighborhoods. Each building hub then had several connecting cables that went into people's homes via windows. This form of cable TV then consisted of channels from all around Asia, the more popular of which were those owned by Star TV - based in and broadcast from Hong Kong.

Prior to 91, India not only had nationalized TV and radio programming, they had also closed borders to stations broadcasting from outside India. All that changed in '91 when the country finally opened up its skies just as it had opened up its economy in response to an economic crisis of great magnitude. Star TV was the first foreign entrant into Indian skywaves, and had quickly started to become pretty popular among the city dwellers. My parents contemplated getting us hooked as well. However, wanting their good-for-nothing yours truly to somehow surprise them pleasantly by doing well in the 10th Std. public exams, they decided against it.

India's state owned radio broadcasting corporation was called All India Radio or simply AIR. At that time AIR broadcast mostly on Medium Wave (MW) and Short Wave (SW). While discussions on starting an AIR FM broadcast in India were on, with private entities allowed to broadcast segments of time, they still hadn't begun yet.

"Vividh Bharati", was the main entertainment feature of AIR, and was broadcast on MW. It carried a broad range of programs from music, to radio plays, etc. These soon became staples for me. Most of these programs were in Hindi. And since I was cooped in my room pretending like I was preparing for exams and stuff, the radio was almost a constant companion. It actually made practicing math problems a lot more pleasant.

So - over the course of a single day, I would end up listening to a whole bunch of old Hindi songs ("Bela ke Phool"), new Hindi songs, trailers of new Hindi movies, famous radio hosts like Ameen Sayani hosting the Hindi music countdown show "Cibaca Geet Mala" (originally the Binaca Geet Mala), request-a-song shows, entertainment shows like the Diamond Comics radio show on Sunday afternoons (I think), radio plays like "Hawa Mahal", and so many more that I can't recollect on the spot.

While I had always enjoyed Hindi music - both old and new, there's nothing like listening to them all the time to really learn about them. I can't imagine how else I would have been introduced to so much Hindi music in so little time.

Another favorite on radio was to listen to the BBC world service on Short Wave (SW). This was especially the case when Vividh Bharati service on state owned radio stopped around 11.35 p.m. on weekdays.

All this while, I remained a voracious reader of English fiction and an avid listener of Western pop and rock. You may think that those multitude of influences may have played a large role as well in me being screwed up, or having experience being screwed up, or whatever.

Cable TV was briefly hooked up in 1992-93 for about a year or so. However, as all Indian kids educated in India, I had to start preparing soon for the public end-of-year exams for the 12th Std. It was decided again, that for my own good, Cable TV would be disconnected once again. Obviously I was pissed like any rebel-without-a-cause teenager worth his salt. But I didn't panic. I had my fallback.

So - being an avid radio listener in general, and of Vividh Bharathi in particular, especially during those 4 years i.e. 1991, 1992, 1993 and 1994 - probably ended up becoming a huge influence on me. Sure, all that reading, watching all that TV, MTV and getting hooked on to FM radio, were all pretty influential as well. But I think the one exerted by "All India Radio" has manifested itself in many ways; those that I recognize and those that I may never be able to.

Still not sure if I should stay mad at my parents for cutting me from Cable TV. Maybe it will be as they say:

"When you'll have kids one day - you'll know."

.

The Quick Gun Murugan is here

2009-09-01T11:48:00.003-05:00

Shashanka Ghosh first created this memorable multi-layered character, a spoof on Old Westerns of the Clint Eastwood kind, and on boisterous Tamil and Telugu movies and their larger-than-life heroes, for a series of shorts/promos for "Channel [V]" in early 90's. Somewhere down the road he decided that "Quick Gun Murugan" (or "...Murugun", whatever), the "sambhar" cowboy as they're calling him now, deserves a larger feature-length movie for himself. That movie is now finally out - it released in India this past weekend and as I understand it has a mostly Hindi-English version, mostly Tamil-English version and a mostly Telugu-English version.

Trailer 1 is an international film circuit preview with mostly Tamil-English dialogues.

Trailer 2 is the mostly Hindi-English version.

Either ways, this does whet the appetite for the main course. I'll try and catch it sometime. I could use the laughs.

Clunker Cranker

2009-08-07T13:46:00.006-05:00

The "Cash for Clunkers" program has finally wound down. I guess those who had "clunkers" but still couldn't make up their mind about replacing them with pragmatic, bang for the buck new vehicles, will still be out driving on the roads and highways. Which is sad for the rest of us. Still, I'm glad that the government for once offered people the incentive to make smart decisions. Especially, when it comes to giving people who made unwise choices the first time around a whole better second chance.

I'm not too unhappy about the program coming to an end though. Primarily because I got plenty sick and tired of seeing and hearing the "Cash For Clunkers" phrase everywhere - on TV, radio, print, the web. Everywhere.

But, and those of you who know me and my dislike for large SUV gas guzzlers will understand this more so, pictures like these do warm the heart.

(Pic from http://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2009/07/cash_for_clunkers_faces_uncert.html)

Geopolitical butterflies

2009-07-30T17:03:00.006-05:00

India and Pakistan have problems. Several.
Once again, they're trying to talk those problems out in the backdrop of India trying to shake off the rope of regional conflict holding it from really flying off into the progress statosphere, and Pakistan trying to recover from the monster within fed on 3 decades of zealotry and hate that now wants to swallow its own master.

Each attempt at conversation has its own hurdles. The court of public opinion is the one that really matters though.

Here's an NPR attempt to wrap people's mind around the geopolitical dimension to the India-Pak conflict in the form of an NPR program with three experts from India and Pakistan lending their perspective. The whole discussion is an hour long so listen at leisure.

For a lot of people around the world the so-called "war on terror" depends greatly on the India-Pak conflict and its possible resolution. Thats because as long as Pakistan wants to get at India (for whatever reason), they will continue to go soft on the jihaidis within their midst.

If you're passionate about cinema...

2009-07-30T10:47:00.006-05:00

... Then Passion For Cinema or PFC is the place for you (see new feed on right as well). I've been a regular reader at PFC. Being a follower of independent Hindi cinema for the last many years and of movies and cinema from over the world in general, I've enjoyed the insights readers of and contributors to PFC have provided. The list of contributors include famous folks like Anupam Kher, Anurag Kashyap, KK, Khalid Mohammed, and several others. This is not just your regular movie review site, it's basically a site for cinema musings about people who are - as the name suggests - passionate about cinema. And if ever you considered yourself to be so passionate about Indian cinema, this site is going to introduce you to a whole new world.

As an example of the myriad cinema related stuff, Here's a loosely translated (from Hindi) interview of Anurag Kashyap (writer-filmmaker of recent movies like Dev D and Gulaal) in which he explains some of his early days as a filmmaker and the accompanying frustrations he faced. He also discusses how his initial setbacks at trying to make movies the way he wanted to, were compounded perhaps by his naive idealism borne out of a sense of sticking to the pure form of storytelling via movies. And he also talks about his growing realization that the same idealism also opened other doors for him and has played a part in creating an aura around him.

PFC also shows how much thought processes of and within Indian cinema have evolved and continue to do so. Suffice to say that meaningful cinema is here to stay and will continue to grow.

Also:
Some changes to the site with colors and backgrounds. Still learning and playing around with CSS. I guess I'm not done yet with the fooling around (i.e. experimentation) - so there will probably be more changes.

They're taking over!

2009-07-27T09:22:00.010-05:00

In a world suffering from a severe recession (sounds like a movie trailer opening line that - "In a world where..." Ok. Ok. Moving on...), its probably not the thing you want to hear - that ultimately, one day, some machine is going to be doing your job. Thats because, as this this NYTimes articles says, the damn machines are going to become smarter than you. Knowing myself however, they don't have all that much of a distance to cover.

There's hardly anything new in the fear that machines will ultimately take over the world. They've taken over a lot of stuff anyways. Planes use computers to fly themselves between take offs and landings. Cars use an array of sensors managed by processors to ensure smooth running. The internet manages our money. And computers have abstracted the complexity of data communication from us to make everything appear as simple as possible. In fact, systems are increasingly designed to be as idiot-proof as possible. Which leaves us human users increasingly ignorant about how these things work in the first place. And since they're doing everything for you anyways, where's the incentive in learning what's really beneath the hood

The field of AI has dedicated considerable effort towards creating machines that behave and act autonomously like human beings supposedly do. One of the chief goals of such AI systems is successfully clearing the "Turing Test". In this test, a human judge has a conversation with another human and a computer, and the judge has to distinguish which of the two she's conversing with is the other human and which is the computer. If the judge can't tell who is which or which is what, then the computer has passed the "Turing Test".

Which brings us to this interesting video - also off the same NYTimes page - on Microsoft Research's attempt to make a more human-like expert system to guide human users who come to it in need of medical advice. In the video, we see two parents - one after another - coming up to a kiosk of some sort, with their child in tow, and talking to a computer-generated face on the computer screen about their children being sick, and we see the face then trying to help them diagnose their child's condition better and finally deliver some sort of advice.

The whole combination of expert system diagnosing capability, computer graphics, speech interface and natural language processing capabilities is mighty impressive. But, I did have one main problem with that video (and by extension the system being demonstrated). That is: at the end of the long conversation with the users - all the AI effectively does is it tells them to go see a doctor and schedules an appointment for them.

Now why would I waste my time conversing with it if that's all its going to do for me?

Signs you're getting older: #117

2009-07-23T23:45:00.003-05:00

You spend a little bit more time than you used to looking behind you - worrying about who's trying to screw you.

Call it a "Welcome to the real-world" realization or another little slip down that slide into paranoid schizophrenia. Take your pick.

Movie Roundup - Titan A.E. and "W"

2009-07-23T22:49:00.004-05:00

Just finished watching Titan A.E. a little while ago - or at least I caught the second half of the movie. Been almost 10 years since the movie came out and I had been meaning to see it since it had released in 2000. For those who haven't seen Titan A.E., it is a science fiction movie set in the future when humans live in space and stuff. It's also an animation/animated movie combining traditional cel animation (the type you see in movies like The Lion King and Mulan), with 3D computer graphics (the Toy Story/Pixar sort).

Well. I thought the second half was fun. Now I've got to wait till they show it again so I can watch the first half. Some of the themes were somewhat similar to Final Fantasy - The Spirits Within, a full length 3D computer graphics animated movie with photorealistic human characters (in lay man terms - movies without real actors but actors generated by computer graphics to look and act like real people). FF didn't do too well at the box-office, but it wasn't a bad movie at all.

Also, saw "W" a couple of days ago. Josh Brolin plays the most famous Dubya of recent times - George W. Bush. Oliver Stone directs the story of Dubya: how and why he is who he is, what possibly may have been his motivation to go for the presidency, and what drove him to commit his country into the Iraq mess. I was expecting a Bush flogging, but it turned out to be a lot more nuanced than how supposedly stupid the man was (Michael Moore did that anyway with Fahrenheit 911). There's nothing too new in the hypotheses of the movie: The man seem to be guided by his urge to find his true calling and for his desperate need to emerge from out of his father's (ex-president George H. W. Bush) and his brother's (Jeb Bush) shadows. And that his simplistic belief system (there are good guys and there are bad guys - and we're the good guys), coupled with the advice of highly motivated neo-con scaremongers (Saddam is making nukes and will sell them to the Islamic terrorists) and opportunists (America needs oil - the Middle East has it), made him invade Iraq despite the lone dissenting voice of Colin Powell.

But what we didn't perhaps know all too well was how it all went down between: Bush and his father, Bush and his staff (Cheney, Rummy, Condi, Colin Powell and Karl Rove), Bush and Laura, etc. And how indeed did he get his act together after spending a good portion of his early life doing "jack sh*t"? Oliver Stone tries and answers some of those questions. Not all too successfully all the time though. Some segments just seemed to run on autopilot - like re-enactments on the History channel - mannerisms, accents and make-up. But Brolin does a pretty decent job, as does the supporting cast for the most part including Richard Dreyfuss (Cheney), and Thandie Newton (Condi) among the others.

The presidency of George W. Bush will perhaps go down as an era that transformed the world in several ways - many of which we will only learn decades from now.

Warning: Your next big mistake is just around the corner

2009-07-20T10:03:00.006-05:00

Why?

Because:

"As we grow older and more experienced, we overrate the accuracy of our judgments." - (Malcolm Gladwell)

Malcolm Gladwell, the author of the "The Tipping Point", offers his insight into why people still manage to f*** up even after seemingly having everything under control - or more precisely why he thinks Bear Sterns went down in the New Yorker.

Also, on Bear Sterns, Vanity Fair has a take on how it all came crashing down for the giant. According to this piece - the main culprit ... a simple rumor.

The scary part. The rumor was false.

The result...

Corporate Speak

2009-07-08T14:00:00.000-05:00

Gotta love corporate speak. The Onion does a take on it.

Race(ism) against Time

2009-06-22T10:46:00.004-05:00

Race (and or Racism) is still in the lead by some distance, although I've been told Time is extremely patient and will probably make a move some time in the future. Who's going to win though? Has someone won already? Depends on where you want to paint the finish line. For now though, Racism is sprinting ahead.

Sanjay Suri's article titled "Brownian Notions" in Outlook India magazine, has this extended tagline

"The prejudice NRIs exhibit is more complex than what they face ..."

. I can't help but agree with that - especially because its an issue I have struggled with internally for sometime. The article is a fascinating read as well.

Indians - especially those living abroad in the "West" - are still grappling (knowingly or unknowingly) with the many prejudices and the many insecurities ingrained in them by virtue of a complex, several thousand year past. Combine that with the misplaced belief that a somewhat superficial "Indian-ness" is still highly superior to other cultures, has only made this internal conflict worse over time and has externally manifested in an attitude embodying disdain for everything and everyone not like "themselves".

Skin color is the most easily available "mechanism for exercising prejudice" that Indians in India or abroad overwhelmingly avail of. That we still judge people using a skin-colored lens is as illuminating as it is tragic.

Illuminating because it makes us think about where it could possibly have come from. The "North-South" divide in India is sometimes held responsible for it. The caste system is another popular culprit. But they cannot be the only reasons. Skin-color based discrimination is also quite prevalent in several countries and cultures in Africa, as well as other South Asian and South-East Asian countries. I guess we could generalize this phenomenon by saying that skin-color prejudice exists in many societies that have various shades of black and brown amongst the people.

Tragic because Indians use that skin-color(ed) lens to make various blanket judgments and generalizations (yes - I'm generalizing here as well - so sue me!) - from a person's race, country or origin, their mother-tongue, caste, perhaps religion to their mannerisms, accents, and even the kind of food they eat, etc. And for decision-support they have traditionally relied on a database of both prejudices, and stereotypes as well as the underlying insecurities behind them that have been passed down over the centuries (millenia perhaps?). Indians living abroad have only expanded that database to include people from a wider set of countries and cultures including their host countries. All this assessment is done before the person in front of us has had the opportunity to even open their mouths to say something. Perhaps culturally, it is the most natural thing to do and can be explained away with a: "So what? Everyone else does it is too. Why shouldn't we?".

Whether we may or may not admit it, the most widely held (and practiced) prejudice and insecurity among Indians is that "Fair is Fair". And, as cheesy as it sounds, that's not really all that fair. It's critical that beyond the inherent racism that is embedded in our "value system" and the debate about whether we are being discriminated on the basis of race and skin abroad, there also needs to be a debate on why we think we need to be treated fairly (pun intended) when we don't do the same ourselves - especially in our own country? I do agree that this contradiction does not in any way diminish the nature of the discrimination that we sometimes face - it is and would be criminal to actually ignore or overlook it in any country. But it is equally criminal to not use this conflict as a means to start holding ourselves to the higher standards we feel entitled to from those around us.

Blast from the past: old DOS games anyone?

2009-06-20T01:02:00.007-05:00

a. Revisiting the "Foundation" series by Isaac Asimov.

b. Also, playing an old DOS game that I used to enjoy back in the day. It's called "Megafortress" (circa 1991), a flight sim game. The graphics is pretty bare bones, but flying the Megafortress is not exactly a piece of cake - especially when the missions become more and more difficult.

While the game does run directly on XP - the problem seems to be that it runs a little too fast. Also, the mouse controls don't seem to get configured correctly - the click is too sensitive and becomes a pain at some point. The game also messed up my System Date setting.

After searching for solutions on how to run old DOS games on XP without problems, initially came across one suggested fix: applying/changing settings for the .exe file. ".Exe file"->RightClick->Properties->Program Tab->Advanced->Turn on Setting "Compatible Hardware Timer Emulation".

That fixed the system date problem, i.e. the Megafortress no longer messed with the System date after that. But it still didn't fix the "mouse too fast" problem. So searched a bit more for a better solution and came across a suggestion to give DosBox, an x86 emulator for Windows, a try.

Bingo. "Mouse too fast" problem solved using DosBox. Only issue now though is the small window size when running the game. They didn't have 1024X768 displays then. Changing the display settings to 640X480 could do the trick though and you could play the game Fullscreen. I just haven't given that a try yet.

Above fixes should let you play your old games on WinXP. If you still have them lying around somewhere perhaps you could give them another try.

While old DOS games could help you with your nostalgia fix, they aren't going to be a substitute for the ones that got away though. But then, let's also be realistic here. It's not like they would really want to have anything to do with you now would they?!

And no - you really don't have to finish that big bag of Lays just because you're all depressed now.

"I was a fool - please take me back"

2009-06-16T16:05:00.003-05:00

As is the case, when we all start with a ton of ideas and intentions, we almost always end up with not having done anything about most of those.

Naming my personal blog as "The Meltdown Chronicles", overlooking the inherent pretentiousness and the genuine lack of creativity in the title, was meant to provide the blog with some overarching purpose. The purpose being - some way of documenting how crazier I am going to get as the years roll on by even as MPB (Male Pattern Baldness) and CRS (Can't Remember Sh*t - Thanks Venky), among other afflictions, start working their magic on me. As with good intentions that fall by the wayside, (although "chronicling" my descent into what I will come to loosely being known as, i.e. crazy would not necessarily be termed as a "good intention" in any easily conceivable way - there in perhaps providing a decent enough glimpse of that future dementia), I fear I am not doing much justice to it.

If you thought though that the whole purpose of this confession was that I would somehow start spending more time trying to achieve that purpose... you're not in the same room as I am. Perhaps fortunate. Because while I am busy trying to become mental, I am not doing a good job recording it.

Anyways, besides the confession that I'm really bad at following up sometimes with long-term goals, or that I'm really good at making course corrections whenever convenient, whatever, I've also had this realization (yes yes... the useless epiphanies keep sparking up) that it would be easy to read all this one day (ok - it won't necessarily be easy) and discern the madness between the lines camouflaged by the increasingly extraordinarily mediocre writing.

I will try though to be a little bit more regular. It's not that I have to look around real hard for material. I've been fortunate that way - it doesn't take too much to have me go off on a long rant about something.

So please take me back (If I gave myself a rupee or a nickel for every time I said that ... I'd be richer if it were more nickels than rupees - plain old exchange rates you see).

Last word on Fake...?

2009-04-27T19:50:00.004-05:00

Well, according to "The Real IPL Player", apparently the power that be have unearthed our Fake IPL Player. Whatsmore according to "The Real IPL Player" he's been cut off from his source. Who was Fake IPL Player's source? Well - it was Real IPL Player of course. Duh!

But does not Real IPL's writing style seem a lot more similar to the earlier Fake IPL Player's - before the whole rumor about Fake being finally found out surfaced a few days ago?

So was Fake really a journalist getting insider info from Real, as Real claims? Is Real the authentic Fake and Fake - well - fake? Or is Fake the authentic Fake? Or are Real and Fake the same people?

I'd like to say I don't give a damn eitherways... but then it would be a little bit of a lie. But enough on Fake. Stay tuned to the news feeds for more news.

(Was) the best thing about the IPL so far...?

2009-04-24T00:00:00.007-05:00

No. No. I'm not about to say that the previous day's cricket games - despite them being fairly tense and nailbiting - have upstaged "Fake IPL Player".

The past tense indicates that there seems to have occurred a big new twist on the whole situation. As Prem Panicker first indicated on his twitter page, apparently the identity of the Fake IPL Player has been uncovered - referring to Gulu Ezekiel's piece in the Indian Express (go down to the "Op-ed" page and see bottom section).

Oh well. Sadly, it may seem that the whodunit part of the story is finally over. Or is it? Maybe there's still a lot more drama to come our way - now that matters seem to be coming out into the open. Or we may likely never know who was truly involved either.

Personally, it seems to me that "Fake..." become too famous (or infamous) for his own good.

The best thing about the IPL so far...

2009-04-20T22:58:00.004-05:00

(IPL = Indian Premier League; an Indian city-based franchise cricket league/tournament currently in its second year being held in South Africa because of security issues in India)

Last year the IPL was a huge novelty, an unknown. It was also wildly successful. The idea of a city-based cricket league really took off in India in a big way. Twenty20 is certainly here to stay.

Disappointingly, this year the IPL tournament is being held in South Africa. The Indian government was not able to guarantee the safety of the tournament given that it coincided with the Indian general elections - a super mammoth exercise in itself that would stretch security agencies, supposedly, to the max.

The tournament began this past weekend in SA. A few games have been completed. A lot of big name players and a good amount of cricket has been seen. But the best thing that has happened so far is not the cricket, or the fanfare (or lack thereof), or the hype, or the asinine Bollywood activities surrounding the event, or even the player slappings, coach firings, and other going ons...

The best thing is the surfacing of this blog that started on the eve of the game called "Fake IPL Player". The interesting thing about this blog is not just the humor/satire, particularly involving and directed at the Kolkata Knight Riders, a team owned by Shah Rukh Khan, but the level of detail with which supposedly fake events that happened outside the cricket field are described. Despite the disclaimer that all events and people mentioned in that blog are fictitious, there is just too much information for the blog to be considered an entire fake. Which means, in the guise of a fake blog, we may have someone who has insider access to the KKR team and is giving us some sort of factual insight into all thats going on behind the scenes. And for a team thats struggling on all aspects and heading towards a huge meltdown of some sorts, it makes for very interesting reading.

Fake's posts are something to look forward to, even more than the cricket.

Dodge this!

2009-04-19T23:34:00.002-05:00

Tarun Tejpal weighs in on the symbolism of the "shoe protest" phenomenon. A recent addition to its annals is the incident in which a Sikh journalist threw a shoe at P. Chidambaram, Indian's Home Minister, to protest the central government's clean chit to two prime accused of the anti-Sikh riots/pogrom in 1984 - the prime accused are politicians and members of the same political party that the Home Minister belongs to.

Tejpal's edit also serves as a reminder that good journalism is not just proving a voice to the population but also holding a mirror to it.

Then again, how many really care for true journalism really.

I dread Sundays

2009-04-19T19:12:00.001-05:00

There's nothing else to look forward to for the morrow.

A Man

2009-04-09T22:20:00.002-05:00

There is so much to learn.

Gears of a mad world

2009-04-08T11:41:00.006-05:00

If you're like me you probably saw the promos of "Gears of War" (Epic games) back a couple of years, and thought it looked pretty cool. Also, like me, you thought that the song in the promo was pretty cool too, and a lovely touch that actually enhanced the game's appeal beyond the usual ultra-violent video game commercial.

That song was/is "Mad World" and was by Gary Jules and Michael Andrews. It was the first time I heard it. Thought I'd link to that video here as well. If you're like me, you'll like the lyrics as well.

What I didn't know then was that the song originally belongs to "Tears for Fears".

Anyways, some guy on American Idol performed "Mad World" on the show. I heard it. Thought it was largely inspired by the version heard in the "Gears of War" promo (Jules/ Andrews).

And for all the well-deserved hype "Mad World"'s getting you have "Tears for Fears" to thank.

"Gears of Wars" was/is freakin amazing as well.

Slate really gets me!

2009-03-26T11:00:00.002-05:00

(Warning: This may be hazardous to bloggers).

NPD or Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

Yup. Well. That was a depressing/damning read. The title of my post should tell you how deep I am in this sh$t. Its been a few days since I read that - and I'm still trying to come to terms with it.

There now. You only live once.

"I Liked/Like" - P II

2009-03-20T18:06:00.001-05:00

Kay Kay Menon

Kay Kay has been around for a while. First saw him in some gangster movie - where Kay Kay plays a police office who goes undercover and infiltrates a notorious gang, but in the course of time ends up conflicted about the situation (Chhal). That story is pretty much almost staple fare across the world for action-drama movie script purposes. So no biggie there.

But he's always been an integral part of the alternative/ multiplex Hindi movie genre. He played an impressionable Marxist in Sudhir Mishra's superlative Hazaroon Khwaishein Aisi, a business tycoon who ultimately goes up and down with the dirty game that business tycoons seem to be playing all the time in Madhur Bhandarkar's Corporate, an investigative officer trying to put together the pieces of the bomb blasts in Mumbai in March 1993 and the plot behind it in Anurag Kashyap's Black Friday, a senior manager at a Mumbai call-center not averse to cheating on his wife on the side in Life In A Metro, among other parts. Did I say he was very impressive in essaying those varied roles? Well - he was.

He's been acting in commercial potboilers off late as well. So far they've been a mixed bag. In Ram Gopal Varma's Sarkar - a remake of/tribute to Mario Puzo's The Godfather (of sorts) in an Indian political setting, he played the character most similar to Fredo Corleone. He was also easily the best thing in that movie, for me at least, despite the fact that Senior and Junior Bachchan were the central characters. Can't wait to catch him in Kashyap's latest release Gulaal.

To sum it up, easily one of the best around in the acting business. Fair to say that the parallel cinema/multiplex movement would have been/be far less effective/entertaining had he not been around.

"Bhimsen"

2009-03-12T10:57:00.006-05:00

Bhimsen (by Prem Panicker) (Link updated.)

Prem Panicker's story series views the world of the Mahabharata through the eyes of Bhima or Bhimsen, the second of the official five Pandava brothers, also the mightiest of them all according to legend. It is in episodic form and is a work in progress/unfinished. Meaning - episodes are being written as we speak and the story updated periodically. The link above points to the entire archive including Prem's preamble and the source of his inspiration.

Those familiar with the Mahabharata will find this easier to follow perhaps. I have been following it since Prem started writing it on his relatively new website (see side link under "Reading List").

Why follow it though if you already know the story?

Ah, but, does merely knowing a sequence of events mean that you really know a story? There are as many perspectives to a story as there are readers. It's also very well written.

Update:
Prem's continuing the series and his blogging over at his new site. So follow the latest Bhimsen episodes over there.

I Like/Liked.

2009-02-27T18:22:00.007-05:00

(Note: In no particular order)

Oye Lucky Lucky Oye

Abhay Deol plays Lucky - a charming, aspirational thief who at different times nonchalantly, and/or brazenly, steals his way up the ladder of high life. His audacious exploits of daylight thievery seem to suggest to us and him that he has people figured out for the most part. Until, one day, his one weakness, that desire for some kind of recognition by society in general and high society in particular, lands him in his most sticky situation yet. Still, if this is the same Lucky you've been following through the movie, you can be sure there's nothing he doesn't back himself to not get out of.

The supporting cast is wonderful, lead by Paresh Rawal and Manu Rishi. Abhay is fast becoming the poster-boy of "multiplex", or small-budget, Hindi cinema - a movement that deserves fully to not be labelled "Bollywood". He's never going to top popularity charts like the Khans and Bachchans with their movies that either outright lift themes, situations, even whole movies from Hollywood (thereby fittingly being labeled Bollywood) or repititively, regressively and non-sensically depict a hackneyed-moralled Indian culture that perhaps only exists in their movies and in the warped minds of non-resident indians. Whatever. So What. (So ends my usual pet rant about "Bollywood" movies and actors in general - for this post only though.) Quality cinema watchers can trust movies Abhay Deol is in though.

Oye Lucky Lucky Oye is also Dibakar Banerjee's second (?) directorial venture after the fantastic Khosla ka Ghosla. Very Delhi both. Very wonderful both.

Most recently, he played the turn of the new century Devdas in Anurag Kashyap's (Black Friday) Dev D. I still haven't caught Dev D, but I plan to very soon. Something tells me, it's going to be a blast.

Mithya

Which brings us to another poster boy of "multiplex" Hindi cinema, Ranvir Shorey. Mithya is the story of a regular guy played by Shorey, who unfortunately by a quirk of fate, finds out that he's a mafia don doppelganger. Sure enough, one day, he finds himself, and not by choice, in the situation of being forced to take the don's place, unknown to most including those closest to the don - something he, in spite of looking like the don, is totally unsuited to the job. Along the way he finds true love of sorts. His life doesn't get any easier though.

Sure, we've seen similar themes in the Amitabh classic "Don", and there are shades of situations from John Woo's "Face/Off" as well, among others. But Ranvir is as earnest as independent actors can be. Neha Dhupia as the love interest is also surprisingly decent - she needs more movies like these. Mithya is reasonably well-made.

Ranvir also did a super job in Khosla ka Ghosla, and Pyar Ke Side Effects (which I finally watched recently) as well.

Vinay Pathak

The third posterboy of "multiplex" Hindi cinema. In Khosla ka Ghosla, Mithya, Manorama - Six Feet Under, the Chinatown tribute, with Abhay Deol, in Bheja Fry, and recently in Rajat Kapur's Dasvidaniya, Kapur incidentally another earnest filmmaker and actor, among others. Pathak was also in the thriller, Johnny Gaddar. He's another actor whose movie choices are pretty much spot on.

Welcome to Sajjanpur

A satirical take on life in small town India, that covers a wide gamut of socio-political issues including poverty, illiteracy, conservatism vs modernism, widow-remarriage, dirty politics, among several others.

Down but not out

2009-02-17T19:21:00.002-05:00

...At least not yet.

Finally decided to get my bum right knee fixed. Turned out I had a complete ACL (anterior cruciate ligament) tear. I had suspected that something was seriously wrong with it. Underwent ACL reconstruction surgery. Surgery was always going to be the last resort. Still. Wasn't left with too much of a choice.

It will be two weeks since surgery tomorrow. I am getting better. Movement is restricted. Crutches help me around for now. I'm in the process of eliminating their need one by one. I'm also undergoing physio-therapy sessions. Pain has eased up a lot. Still, I do require painkillers now and then.

Hopefully in about 6-9 months I can return to some level of atheletic activity. Something to look forward to I guess. Thats why I underwent the sort-of-ordeal in the first place.

Case of the missing witness

2009-01-15T21:40:00.002-05:00

On the evening of Nov 26, 2008, Anita Uddaiya of Mumbai saw terrorists land in a dingy near South Mumbai. She accosted them and was told in return to mind her own business. Minutes later, these terrorists began their attacks on Mumbai and a whole lot of mayhem followed. Anita had a good look at them before they began their rampage. She had seen them arrive by boat. She was a key witness to piecing together the story of the attacks.

A few days ago, Anita disappeared. Her daughter filed a missing persons report at the local police station. Folks were outraged at the fact that the authorities let a key witness disappear, that she was never offered protection.

Then the daughter, who had filed the missing report, called the police and said, "Never mind! She's not missing anymore." Apparently, Anita had contacted her - she had called her over the phone - and claimed that she was calling from the US of A. She claimed she had been taken over there to help the U.S. authorities in their investigations into the Mumbai attacks.

Then a couple of days later, she returned to Mumbai. But this time she claimed to all the reporters who showed up to find out about her disappearance, that she had been visiting her sister in Satara, Maharashtra instead- pooh poohing the whole notion that she had somehow been to the U.S. as had been reported/speculated.

Then, she changed her story again, and confirmed that she had indeed been to the United States to help the FBI out. The whole "visiting my sister in Satara" was a lie actually. She describes the course of events in a lot more detail in this interview.

The United States though denies any involvement in this whole affair.

Curiouser and Curiouser.

Lasantha

2009-01-15T15:08:00.004-05:00

Lasantha Wickrematunge, wrote this piece in the Sri Lankan news magazine The Sunday Leader shortly before he was shot dead by assailants on his way to work on January 8, 2009. He was the editor of the magazine.

I unfortunately never heard of him and the enormous risks he took while he was alive. It was only after his death that I came to know of him and his work. People, like Lasantha, devoted to their duty above all else are extremely rare. Especially when they are ordinary folks like you and me.

Investigative journalism in the sub-continent is a very dangerous profession. While Sri Lanka seems to have an abysmal record in taking care of its journalists, other countries in the region do not fare too much better. In India, what passes off for journalism in most newspapers and news channels, is just farce, focused as it is largely on celebrities and sensationalism as an end in itself. News magazines like Tehelka are some of the few remaining bastions of true reporting in India. They may not always be right, but they fight hard to expose the truth to the public, especially in those circumstances where it has been forcibly kept under wraps. They provide us with a mirror with which to look into ourselves as a society, culture, country and citizen of the world.

In several countries, including democracies, those who report against the existing powers of the day constantly live under the threat of some sort of retaliation by those powers. Most will find it impossible to continue working under those potentially life-threatening circumstances - and rightly so too. To those few who, inspite of the risks, strive to bring us the truth, and not farce - we owe a lot.

I get knocked down...

2009-01-09T17:05:00.005-05:00

"For sure, I am going to lose matches, but I am never going to quit."

(Somdev Devvarman, 2 time NCAA mens tennis champion, after his victory over Carlos Moya in the Chennai Open 2009 round of 16.)

What after Mumbai? (Part II)

2009-01-05T18:15:00.001-05:00

It is possible that the terrorists who staged the Mumbai attacks of November 2008 had anticipated the numerous potential consequences/fallouts of the attacks, were they to be successful. Several of those consequences may have been intended too (otherwise why carry them out - right!?). Some of the many that have been bandied about since then include: a.) destroying the so-called India-Pakistan "peace process", perhaps igniting a war between the two nuclear neighbors as well, b.) putting the brakes on India's rapid economic growth, c.) sowing even further communal disharmony within India, d.) further weakening Pakistan's democratically elected government, e.) trying out terror strategies in India to be applied elsewhere, f.) replacing Al Qaeda as the numero uno Islamic terrorist group operating in the sub-con, etc. ,

The impact however on Indian society is what we need to be most concerned about.

1. Further communal divide is probably inevitable in the short term:
India should be most concerned about the potential for further divisions being created between Muslims and non-Muslims. There is already a fair degree of polarization primarily between Hindus and Muslims. There is a general perception among non-Muslims that, Muslims, as a community have until now reacted only halfheartedly to the cause of tackling religious extremism. While the presence of any truth in that perception is highly debatable , that the perception exists and won't be going away soon is itself is a major sticking point going ahead.

The Mumbai attacks will in the short term exacerbate this communal divide. All of this can only mean further marginalization of a large percentage of Indian Muslims from the mainstream. This is bad news for a community already suffering from a fair degree of alienation within India; both of the self-imposed kind, in their reticence to adopting modernity, as well as, of the discriminatory kind practiced by their biased countrymen.

A polarized society to some extent is also ideal in the eyes of rightwing nationalists and religious extremists including and especially folks like Narendra Modi, and hardline conservative Muslim organizations, in their quest for becoming prominent national players. Rightwing Hindu nationalists, not content with pogroms such as Gujarat 2002, have also been indulging in terrorism of their own kind purportedly in response to Islamic terrorism. Some commentators have called this vigilantism but as it still involves the murder of innocents - it's just plain terrorism according to me. Investigations by the Mumbai ATS (Anti-Terrorist Squad) recently unearthed that some recently unexplained bomb blasts, most notably Malegaon, were plotted by right-wing Hindus, and the participants included, among others, ex-Indian military personnel. These were previously blamed on Muslim organizations and/or the Interservices Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan's notorious intelligence agency.

It also didn't help matters much when the ATS officer (Hemant Karkare) leading this investigation was scorned by rightwing Hindu parties for pursuing Hindu extremists, leading many Muslims to suspect a conspiracy behind his subsequent tragic killing along with those of two other police officers in a shootout early during the Mumbai terrorist attacks. That such absurd conspiracies can actually gain some credibility (expressed even at a governmental level - read A. R. Antulay) is a testimony to how little trust there exists in the impartiality of law and order enforcement in India.

2. Moderate Muslims will be more vocal:
These events and possible consequences have not escaped the notice of Indian Muslims as well. They have been hitherto silent - perhaps reluctant to voice their opinions denoucing extremism of all sorts, particularly the ones linked to Islam because of the reaction of very vocal loudmouth religious Muslim conservatives. Now is the opportunity to make themselves heard more clearly, as they are They're probably getting sicker by the day because of a.) the hijacking of their religion by brainwashed, mostly uneducated crazies around the world but particularly in India, and b.) the profiling and some discriminations they face in many places by virtue of their last names (analogous to the racial profiling and discriminations African Americans sometimes face in largely Caucasian i.e. white neighborhoods, and c.). the constant need for them to make a show of their patriotism and mainstream credentials. Expect more of them to speak out. The rise of the moderates will be crucial in averting direct confrontation between communities.

3. Elites just realized that they're just like the rest of us:
It is clear that elite Mumbaiites had believed themselves to be generally much safer when compared to the rest of the city/country, being dissociated from the bomb blasts ordinary Mumbaikars and Indian citizens as a whole had been subjected to all year. They probably thought they lived in a different country altogether. The Mumbai attacks may have changed that to some degree. The same elites who have remained largely silent and detached, are now at the forefront of social activism, loudly demanding better security and governance. While this new found awareness does reek of hypocrisy of sorts, it is critical to bringing about the necessary improvements in governance. That is because this group is highly influential, being either famous or rich or both. (The celebrity obsessed 24/7 news media outliets in India clearly lap up and continuously replay anything these guys say.) This may easily be one of the more positive fallouts of the Mumbai attacks. However, it remains to be seen if their new found political activism is shortlived or not.

4. Urban India - Middle class meltdown?:
The urban middle class however will continue to do what they have been doing all this while - trying to live quiet, decent lives in spite of being surrounded by increasing despair about the inability to control anything in their lives in any substantial fashion. As if they weren't suffering enough already because of poor governance, overcrowding of their cities, dismal infrastructure and facilities, rampant corruption at all levels, communalism, near-constant fear of war, current economic depression, etc. The fear now that they aren't even safe in their own homes will just make general stress levels go through the roof. Folks will start breaking down far more often. A new generation of children will grow up having watched those 3 days of continuous TV coverage of a horrific terrorist attack on their country/city. The impact this could have on their impressionable minds is impossible to predict.

How important national security is to the general populace will be more quantifiably determined from the results of the upcoming national elections due anytime soon. So far terrorist attacks have largely affected the urban populace. It's difficult to image the rural population being too concerned with problems faced by big cities, especially when these big city residents can hardly be bothered to vote, much less spare a thought for the problems faced by the rural folks, and when rural India is faced with several problems of its own and where development has been percolating extremely slowly.

5. Possible watershed event?
Terrorist attacks in Indian cities have become common place. But as is frequently the case with humanity in general, and Indian society in particular, things have to get a whole lot worse to actually get better. The Mumbai attacks may have just made things a whole lot worse - surpassing the high tolerance, resignation and fatalism levels of Indian society. Indian society reacted this time by demanding government accountability and wholesale changes with immediate effect. They got it too. In the long term, it is highly likely that among the several hundred million deeply affected by these attacks, there will be some who will soon be in a position to effect large-scale improvements. There will also be still others who will be goaded out of their apathy and will end up participating in the political process to improve their security.

Fear can end up being a pretty good motivator after all.

But ultimately, no one really knows. We can only wait and see. And hope that after all this, things may just get better.

What after Mumbai? Part I

2008-12-29T17:00:00.004-05:00

The Mumbai attacks that began on November 26th have severely dented the confidence of Indians, as a country and a society, to continually better their overall quality of life (or existence - take your pick). A huge contributing factor in creating that dent is the increasing lack of trust among Indians in their government's will and ability in somehow bringing an end to the almost monthly terror attacks. There is a perception that major cities are being targeted on some kind of a rotation-policy basis and there seems to be nothing that anyone is doing or has been able to do about it all. The government has been feeling the heat from all quarters. They are being forced to act in improving security on all aspects, from internal policing to external threat assessments, from improving intelligence to prevent attacks even before they happen, to responding efficiently if and when they do to minimize loss to life and property. For now, it seems as if they've finally taken some positive steps in that direction, albeit steps that should have been taken five years ago.

But its also not unthinkable to believe that terrorists have made plans for what happens next and are perhaps poised somewhere, waiting to spring the next wave of attacks on an increasingly fearful populace. Or at least Indians fear as much now more than ever. The fallout of this new upgraded terror level on the country as a whole, starting or culminating with the Mumbai attacks depending on the perspective, will be tremendous.

Some economy related trends seem to be emerging and some others could perhaps be speculated. (Note: This is by no means a comprehensive list - it's primarily a first pass really.)

1. Paradigm shift towards protecting assets (Rise of security industry):
For one, big corporations based in India seem to be realizing that the economic boom of sorts that has been happening in India for the past decade or so could easily be derailed by security breaches such as Mumbai-November'08 and countless other less spectacular but as much or more devastating events that took place regularly in other Indian cities. Protection of their assets including their properties, loyal customers and most importantly their image and brands will now require a new security abstraction altogether. Failure of the government to provide this security cover has forced them to seek their own cover of sorts.

Large companies like the Tata group , the Bajaj group, the Reliance groups, and the IT companies, among several dozen others, will probably push for employing their own privately armed security guards at their installations, creating private armies of sorts with substantial weaponry and powers. There is also talk of the Tata group creating its own security and intelligence agency for securing its assets - a reaction based on its disillusionment of the systemic failures and shortcomings of the governmental agences in doing so. There is also talk of conducting much more comprehensive background checks on new and old employees to avoid hiring and employing terror-minded individuals secretly wanting to cause destruction to their employers. Expect to hear more of this sort of news in the near future. Already, there is speculation that the private security industry will grow tremendously in the coming months and years (Investors take note perhaps?). All this can only mean that a fundamental shift in the erstwhile naive and complacent approach by these companies towards security awareness and assest protection is under way - leading to the growth of new industry altogether.

2. Pullouts from India:
The continued failure to protect their installations may also mean that these corporations may resort to moving outside of India if necessary and wherever possible, especially if their security needs cannot be met adequately. This is a deal that any government of India cannot and will probably not accept without a fight however. The damage to India Inc. as the business community is broadly referred to as, from the Mumbai attacks will also impact the government of the day, who will have to bear those consequences along with the responsibility of allowing such an event to take place (and perhaps of prolonging it as well). Multinational companies will also reasses their plans in India - leading to, at the very least, a freezing of growth activities in the present. If the security situation worses, expect pullouts from them as well.

3. Economic Losses as potentially huge motivators for improvements in governance:
Losses to India Inc. would also mean loss of revenue to the government and the individuals within as well, which will hurt a lot more in the long term staring with at the ballot. Not to mention the severe loss of face, both nationally and internationally, in admitting to their inability to provide security to the rich and the influential, the common person being long excluded from that protection.It is thus entirely possible that market forces such as the situation described above will force the government to act and to be more and constantly vigilant as well.

4. Overall:
But the biggest economic consequence will arise from the denting of the confidence of the ordinary citizen. People may be fearful of their security and law and order situation in general, leading to an ultra-cautious approach with regards to money. Malls, movie houses, etc. will see fewer patrons because of the fear of terrorist attacks. Public transport will be relied upon much less for the same reasons leading to big losses in revenue. Tourism will be several affected in the short term - especially foreign tourism. With states like Rajasthan, Uttaranchal, and Kerala relying in no small amounts on internation tourism, expect several folks over there to be badly impacted by the slowdown in visitors. The lack of tourists is also a symptomatic of the general lack of confidence perhaps of the international community in being present and doing business with another country. For India, this could mean a lot less investments of foreign entities in the Indian market and economy.

People will in general go out less, buy less, travel less and feel less happy. Maybe people will end up buying more stuff online instead - the web based businesses are probably well placed for this situation. But it remains to be seen if Indians feel secure doing a whole lot of shopping with credit cards online. I know they're pretty queasy about it right now. Maybe that could change however.

So bad news for the economy in general. The government will have to show the will and produce results in reducing the security and law and order fears in the immediate future for this to not have as significant an impact to economic progress as is currenty feared.

Part II will be about socio-religious (if there is such a word) consequences of the Mumbai attacks.

Did the Indian media give away too much info to the bad guys? NDTV (India) responds

2008-12-04T13:08:00.003-05:00

One of the many concerns voiced by several Indians ,who watched the almost 3 day attack on Mumbai, which began on Nov. 26th, 2008, was that the "too close to the action" live coverage of Indian news channels of the entire event may have communicated important information about the anti-terrorist operations conducted by the Indian military back to the terrorists. Live coverage of army operations against terrorists holed up in the Taj and the Trident (formerly Oberoi) hotels and the Nariman House apartment building in Mumbai, could have perhaps been a factor in the terrorists being able to successfully hold out against the Indian military for so long. The fact that the terrorists had Blackberrys and satellite phones supports this theory as well.

Now one of the Indian news channels, NDTV, has responded to these concerns via their senior correspondent/reporter Barkha Dutt.

Several statements stand out from her op-ed piece. Here's one:

"Please do note that at all times, the media respected the security cordon- a cordon that was determined by the police and officials on site- and NOT by the media. If, as is now being suggested, the assessment is that the media was allowed too close to the operations, here is what we say: we would have been happy to stand at a distance much further away from the encounter sites, had anyone, anyone at all, asked us to move. In the 72 hours that we stood on reporting duty, not once were we asked to move further away."

It's clear that there really was no coordinated strategy on how to deal with media coverage between the various security agencies involved in the anit-terrorist operations. as she outlines in her piece:

"Across the world, and as happened in the US after 9/11, there are daily, centralized briefings by officials to avoid any inadvertent confusion that media coverage may throw up. Not so in Mumbai. There was no central point of contact or information for journalists who were often left to their own devices to hunt down news that they felt had to be conveyed to their country. No do's and don'ts were provided by officials."

The op-ed piece also has a whole lot of self-congratulatory language in it as well - detailing how several important folks thanked NDTV in particular for their coverage of the whole event. I noticed the same in TV spots on the various other Indian news channels as well - congratulating or self-promoting themselves in some way or the other. Some of the accompanying stunts included: encouraging people to light candles (this is actually clever: the number of candles lit across the country would convey to that particular channel the proportion of people actually watching their channel - so much better than TRP ratings. Besides, lighting of candles is becoming off late a popular response to tragic events. This first began in response to the then fast-going-nowhere investigation on who killed Jessica Lal. The movie "Rang De Basanti", an Aamir Khan starrer earlier in 2006, may have provided the inspiration in the Lal case. I saw candles being lit in a few places across Mumbai), observing a minute of silence in respect, showing 30 second, 1 min and 2 min spots of clippings of the terror attack coverage with accompanying grim music and such, and various others.

Nevertheless, they provided the transparency that such things lacked in previous situations. One hopes that this transparency ensures that officialdom can no longer spin excuses in such situations. These channels, while frequently not reporting with any reasonable levels of journalistic integrity, are providing a medium for the disgruntled populace to express themselves, and ask tough questions, and for millions of others to hear them and sympathize with them, and wait, along with them for a response to those questions.

Rajdeep on Raj

2008-11-03T17:08:00.009-05:00

(Link to Rajdeep Sardesai's open letter to Raj Thackeray: http://ibnlive.in.com/blogs/rajdeepsardesai/1/52784/an-open-letter-to-raj-thackeray.html )

Comments: I guess being an expat Mumbaikar/Mumbai-ite would allow me to talk about Mumbai. Raj Thackeray's (he originally of the Shiv Sena founded by his uncle Bal Thackeray, and now the leader of the breakaway Maharasthra Navnirman Sena) anti-North Indian campaign has ignited a lot of mindless violence, reactions (both violent and non-violent), and several debates.

What's important to know though is that the latest Raj Thackeray-initiated melee is not necessarily unique or unprecedented. It has happened in Mumbai before - being, as it is, a regular feature of the Thackeray family/Shiv Sena strategy. The idea is to get enough Maharashtrians worked up about them somehow having ceded "control" of Mumbai away to non-Maharashtrians/outsiders and then voting for the Shiv Sena to take back control on their behalf thereby banishing all that which ails the city, the state and its people (which people?). Never mind that Mumbai is neither the heart of Maharashtra nor has it become what it is today solely because of Maharashtrians. Through the last 50 years and more, the Sena and their offshoots have gone about targeting Gujaratis, south Indians, Muslims and most recently north Indians as those aforementioned outsiders.

But the human drama that continues to unfold is not just the Thackeray's being up to their usual shenanigans. There's more to it. Rajdeep Sardesai of CNN-IBN in the above linked open letter to Raj isn't really informing Raj of something he wouldn't already know. But he's probably making an effort to also educate the Indian public on the political machinations/endgames taking place behind the scenes - most beyond Raj's control.

Rajdeep's piece also just reinforced the feeling that it seems to require a Maharashtrian (or several of them) of some stature to take an anti-Raj Thackeray stance in this matter, to make an impact. Never mind that those stances are few and far between; these days its the familiar, insecure, "yes (he's wrong), but (there's some validity to his point of view)" argument (Rajdeep being one of the few exceptions) that other prominent Maharashtrians have been spouting. They're just riding both directions of traffic on the political highway.

The sad/crazy aspect to all this is that - by Raj's (and by extension the larger Thackeray family) definition, with the tacit approval of the 'yes-but' arguers, a Mumbaikar who is not a Maharashtrian by last name, but was born, and has lived in Mumbai now for several decades is an "outsider" and a new born Maharashtrian baby in a remote corner of Maharashtra is an "insider". That is so convoluted that even Raj cannot obviously believe in it.

I pity those Maharashtrians and non-Maharashtrians who actually do believe it.

$4 - Part III

2008-10-20T16:09:00.003-05:00

... And it's now down to $3.29 or lower. Dropping real fast. Gas is cheaper because demand is down. If its cheaper, people can fill up more now. Will demand stay down? Will prices keep dropping?

More importantly though, why do I care so much anyways? That is: besides feeling threatened by the fact that my reasons for my being all-uppity at those who didn't make fuel-efficiency considerations when purchasing their personal transportation options, is under some danger?

Ok, I sort of answered that rhetorically or something. I'd say that, while the "moral" high ground is still intact (for all its usual hypocritical worth, which is basically zero - plus it pisses off other people as well), its the economic high ground that is sort of lowered at the moment, i.e. no longer can I run around saying "Hah! Hah!" to those driving gas guzzlers.

Fear not though.

Why? Is it because I expect demand to go up again and hence the prices? Is it because I believe this is only a temporary dip in consumption?

No. Because I'll find several umpteen other reasons to feel all-uppity anyway. It's in my nature. It's what I do.

Same old, same old

2008-09-25T11:30:00.003-05:00

... gets up in the morning and says, "Man! There's a whole lot of sh*t going on and somebody needs to do something about it!"

He's been saying the same sh*t day after day, year after year. He said that same sh*t when he was in school. He said the same sh*t in college. He said the same sh*t as he got dressed in his suit for that big interview with that big firm that sucked people's blood and mis-managed their life-savings. He said the same thing as an executive while continuing that profitable mis-management for that firm.

He said the same thing when he fed the birds on Sunday mornings. He said the same thing to his old friends. He said the same thing when he prayed.

He said the same thing to his kids; the same thing the day after he retired, the day he donated 200 bucks to charity.

Until he stopped saying it anymore.

He's you. He's me.

Lunch box blues

2008-09-25T10:21:00.003-05:00

I don't pack lunch from home to take to work. I buy it.

The last week or so - I got used to bringing lunch from home. Home cooked lunch. Tasty and wholesome. Not cooked by me. My mother-in-law's visiting us.

Today I forgot to bring it with me. I realized that I hadn't half-way to work. And work is not close-by. I almost turned around to go back and pick it up. I didn't though.

I'm at work now. Still bothers me that I forgot to bring my lunch - it was packed and ready for me.

The last time I remember being bothered about not bringing my lunch from home was back in the 7th Standard (i.e. 7th grade).

More on flat worlds

2008-09-14T15:25:00.000-05:00

Tom Friedman continues to churn out books about what the world is going to look like. I suppose he should be commended for being prolific. Can't comment too much on the quality of the content he produces in his books though. I haven't actually read any of his books. But, I do read his columns on NYTimes sometimes. I used to read back before the whole Iraq war marching drums started rolling . And then for some reason, he jumped on the Iraq war bandwagon and the fact that it was the right thing to do and it was absolutely necessary (discussed here earlier).

What does that say aboutFriedman's ability (or lack thereof) to make sense from nonsense - is really up to whoever cares a sh*t to judge.

But he's out now with another book. This one apparently drubs on about how the green revolution will be the next big industrial revolution of-sorts, the next technology driver, the next culmination of all known/hoped/wished-for messianic movements and events all wrapped into one (including the love children of Gandhi and Mandela, marrying those of MLK, and JFK before finally being crowned kings and/or queens of Mother Earth).

Slate's got a review of this one. Clearly, the man loves jumping onto the latest bandwagon - no matter what it be. Whether it's for the war when it was popular, before going against it when it was unpopular. Gotta love a weathervane.

$4 - Part II

2008-08-14T15:23:00.005-05:00

And it's not $4 anymore for a gallon of gas. Where I'm at - its down to $3.69 or lower.

Which means, the f***ing SUV drivers have been handed a reprieve. Slowly but surely, if I may say so, speeding is back in vogue on the interstate. It's not so bad though I'm personally saving about $3.50 each time I get a refill. That comes to about $14 a month that I'm actually "getting back" from the pump! (As opposed to what I was getting back a couple of months ago - nothing really but hope that consumption habits would finally change!)

Woohoo!

And if I'm getting back enough to buy a quarter cup of coffee at Starbucks (not that they'd sell coffee for/at that size), imagine what the SUV drivers are getting back from the pump?!

You know what folks?! It's your reward for sticking by your gas guzzler through the bad times (even if you felt the need real bad to dump that fat, hi-maintenance, bitch recently!). You did the right thing. Here - go have yourself a BigMac Value Meal. Make sure you drink Diet soda though. I hear the regular stuff can make you fat and sick and stuff.

And all that money that people have been "getting back" these last couple of weeks must be great for the economy too. I mean, instead of having to spend it all on gas and then trying to save elsewhere by not splurging on expensive food, clothes, home improvement, a fresh new set of underwear - I can actually use some of that new money on the very things I've been staying away from - and on gas as well. And here's the best part - the more I spend on gas, the more I'm going to get back. F***ing beautiful!

Who's side are you on?

2008-07-28T23:10:00.009-05:00

Life moves along. There's money to be earned. Food needs to be put on the table. Mouths need to be fed. Babies need to be shushed - and put to bed.

For now, the mother nation (India, for me) mulls recent events. As always, thoughts and discussions have veered towards who supplies the folks within with ammunition/ bomb material to express their sentiments. Sentiments arising perhaps from displeasure at past grievances/crimes. Perhaps from interpretations of whatever it is that they believe in (for e.g. "its time to send society back into the stone age"). There's time for all that. But, more than ever - or once again, it's time to think about actions and consequences.

Sure, when you're competing for resources, its consequences on your side that matter more than reactions from the other side, i.e. those you compete with. So you don't really care about reactions from others then.

But it's time to the take the competition more seriously.

Make no mistake, with people its always "our side" and "their side". For a large section of Indians, partly frustrated by years of competition for resources and brainwashed by people who've smartly learned to play on their frustrations, its mostly Hindus and Muslims on opposing sides. And it's always been a matter of teaching the other side a lesson. (What that lesson really is however escapes me.)

In Gujarat, for the past few years, one side has been practicing a strategy of inculcating respect from the other side largely through fear. A respect that has led to an uneasy peace. Life has had to move along. It's back to bread and butter: earning money, feeding kids, watching cricket and senseless film songs and dances. There's never any choice (especially with those songs).

And then, a weekend came along and someone pissed all over the uneasy pax. Maybe people will start taking the competition more seriously now. But maybe people also need to figure out who and what the competition is. Especially, if the "other side" has already been cowered into a corner after presumably having been taught a lesson.

The whole, insane, "us and them" exercises have gone on for too long. It's time to recalibrate and choose new players to crush.

No... Please... Don't ...

2008-07-23T12:30:00.002-05:00

The thing with blogs, for me, is that anyone with a semi-intelligent thought thinks they can and should blog/ write.

And thats a good thing and a bad thing. More often than not - it's a bad thing.

A friend of mine had similar thoughts about blogs and bloggers. She blogs/writes regularly - her blog being one of the few sites that I visit often enough and that I am happy to in the knowledge that I know the person behind the words. (Ok. Ok. Let's not go into what does "know a person" really mean.)

And off late, I've decided that I tend to agree with her. Sure, it's elitist to think that others shouldn't blog. And I hate to think I'm an elitist myself (I have the denial thing down pat, you see).

But I didn't always think that way before. I believed in the therapeutic abilities of writing and writing often. Perhaps still do. If people open up - maybe they can deal with their inner conflicts more rationally. Maybe they can deal with the stress of daily lives a little bit more easily. By writing a blog and letting people read what I've written, maybe it gives me a chance to let others learn something about me, as much as reading their blogs gives me a chance to learn about them.

So what if their blogs sound like the ruminations of a half-wit. So what if its so very painful to read them walk you through their most recent epiphany or self-realization (OK - so they're kinda the same thing - but what the heck!). And by painful - I don't mean in some emotional, "I feel your pain" kind of way - but painful as in "How is it even possible someone to write this crap?" way. And if I don't like what I see, I can choose to not go to their websites and ridicule their writing abilities and their acumen any more. That sounds simple - and fair.

But where's the fun in that? We've all grown up believing that the world is one unfair place - with one put-down after another lined up for us day after day after... Which makes it doubly fun to visit a half-wit's up and running blog and mock it - even if its to yourself. Nothing feels better after a put-down, than picking on someone else. I feel better after feeding the birds once in a while. And I feel better after putting someone down. It doesn't matter how I feel better - as long as I do.

I think it's OK to write. But if its on a blog, then its on there because you want others to read it. The "others" therefore are free to make up their own minds. If I don't like the way you write - I could choose to not visit it and ridicule it and enjoy putting you down to make up for my own insufficiences.

Or you could choose to not put it out there for me to read.

There. I just walked you through my most recent epiphany. That felt good. I feel better already.

$4

2008-06-15T19:42:00.004-05:00

Ok... Ok... I won't talk about it.

What I really mean though is that I'll talk about it by pretending that I'm not talking about it. I'll also probably end up gloating about it by not gloating about it.

I should just stop now.

P.S. Remember this?

What's a meltdown?

2008-06-15T15:22:00.001-05:00

... You ask?

According to dictionary.com it is:
"...the melting of a significant portion of a nuclear-reactor core due to inadequate cooling of the fuel elements, a condition that could lead to the escape of radiation."

Well. Now that that query has been answered have you got any more for me?

Why is your blog called "The Meltdown Chronicles"? (It's also a bit too pompous for me if I might add!)

Thats a very good question. So I guess pompous names for blogs are out, coz they're aren't all that cool anymore. It's also not very original - I searched and found several blogs that have the same title. I guess I really couldn't really think up a better one for now.

There were the usual names that I wrote on the back of paper napkins at CupAJoe - things I thought could work as sweet blog titles/names. But, I don't know where those napkins are at this moment. Probably in a landfill in Raleigh somewhere. The point being - I guess I could have thought of something better.

Then again, there just might be something of a meltdown in relation to me that would make this title somehow seem appropriate. Originally, I thought I'd be documenting some kind of downward spiral into further depravity, dementia, and stuff like that. Somehow, I've always found those conditions to be glamorous - that my life can be explained away by the spectacular nature of its failure and the depths to which it falls using those aforementioned conditions.

But the way things are going, I don't think that fate awaits me just yet. Instead, the more likely outcome is just an eventual realization that there will be no meltdown. There will be just this slow and steady slide to mediocrity in my hopes, my dreams, and my expectations - especially those of myself. Sort of like being stuck on a ledge on the vertical face of a mountain, just big enough so I can park myself here for a long while without falling off the edge anytime soon, but far enough from the top that I won't be attempting to make my way up for fear of slipping and sliding down all the way.

I'm not making any sense am I?!

Did I tell you I'm into alcohol these days?

Not Spanish is he?!

2008-06-06T15:25:00.008-05:00

It's been a while since I've blogged. I've even forgotten how to do it. Not that I wrote anything of significance before anyways.

I guess its customary to apologize for absences. And I'll pretend I've had an audience that cared to visit my blog on the by and by and look it over for any new spiel, and who may have been affected (mostly positively I fear) by my hiatus. To them I apologize from the bottom of my heart. You chose to waste your precious free time by visiting my site - and then to your disappointment, ended up wasting a portion of your precious free time in looking for and not finding anything to waste it on. And that's criminal.

Conan O Brien's "Late Night with Conan O Brien" has a recurring segment called "Frankenstein wastes a minute of your time". Yeah well - "The Meltdown Chronicles" tries and wastes your time too. Except its not quite in the class as "Late Night with Conan O' Brien". But then - you've got to aim high - and you've also got to start somewhere - even if its a rather low place to start from.

Unlike me though, Raoul not only aims high(er), but sits on a higher plane to most us anyways. Already, he stands much taller than 95 99% of humanity (not neessarily a substantiated claim), as those of us who know him, or at least have seen him, will attest to. He's also just as taller , figuratively speaking, on account of his writing.

But if I have to nitpick (and since I can't help myself from doing so - I will do so) - there are two things going against him sadly.

The first is that, although he blogs a lot more frequently than say - someone like me - he's still not as prolific as he could/should be. Which means, not all your visits to his site are equally well-wasted. Not unless you don't mind re-reading his older material. I'm a fan of re-visitations myself actually - books, movies, music albums, googling for pictures of ex-flames, etc.. So - well - this one thing is not really half as bad as it could be.

The second (and far more graver) charge against Raoul is that his blog wastes your time almost too well. It's the quality of his writing. The whole wasting your time experience borders on not being wasted at all. And to me thats very sneaky.

I mean - here I am, not really minding my own business, trying to waste my time. But then, after visiting his blog and reading his latest material - I end up with this feeling somewhere deep inside that somehow I didn't actually waste my time on his blog. Because, I actually enjoyed my time reading through it.

Anyways - my point is - thats sneaky, Raoul. Very sneaky.

Give me back my precious free time so I can actually waste it - you bastard.

Lap Timing

2008-03-14T10:41:00.007-05:00

I wonder who gave the idea to the Tibetans to launch their agitation against China a few months before the Olympics are scheduled to commence in Beijing.

It truly was/is fantastic timing.

Wonder if the Indians had something to do with it. Perhaps they gently prodded the Tibetan refugees (largely settled in India) that this was as good a time as there ever was. The world will be watching unlike these past several decades when they didn't give a f**k (as usual).

The Commonwealth Gamhes are to be held in Delhi in 2010. Will China return the favour? Could they end up prodding Pakistan to prod the Kashmiris into organizing protests and as such, cause some serious embarrassment to the central Indian government?

Are Tibet and Kashmir even related in any way?

Perhaps China's problem is that its rise coincides a little with the fall of eminence of some parts of the West. The West does express itself a lot though, doesn't it!? And not all of it is necessarily introspective. According to those representing the West, their slowdowns in economic growth (read obesity) are largely the fault of oil-starved China and India who seemingly want to strip the Earth bare and leave nothing for our fat brethren due somewhere West. Obviously, China and India wish to deprive the vibrant West, particularly America, of its rightful consumption of stupendous amounts of energy.

And while the Western xenophobe loudmouths keep ranting away, the Chinese xenophobe loudmouths remain largely quiet. It may have something to do with the lack of freedom to freely express themselves about political matters in general. It may also have to do with the fact that not all of those Chinese loudmouths who do have official sanction to fire away are fluent in English. Or French. Or German. Or Redneck for that matter.

They did have a lot to say about Mr. Spielberg though. Yup - that's right - Steven Spielberg. Apparently, he was part of the Beijing Olympic committee. Sometime ago, he decided to resign from whatever capacity he seemed to be working in. It was admirable, righteous and courageous - all at the same time. You've got to agree with him that the Chinese were wrong to not interfere in Sudan to help put an end to the genocide (which was his stated reason for resigning from being involved with Beijing 2008). It's natural for the Chinese to get pissed off at Spielberg for his principled stance. They don't care about people dying anyways. Not like the West does.

Of course, Spielberg doesn't have to defend his reasons for not "pulling out" of the United States after the USA declared war on Iraq on the basis of fabricated evidence, i.e. lies. He also does not have to defend US foreign policy of propping up brutal regimes such as the Saudis and the Pakistani military (until recently), rescued the Kuwaiti autocratic regime, helped arm to the teeth Afghan militia and also (surprise! surprise!) does not interfere in Sudan on humanitarian basis. And he absolutely does not even have to defend his joining up with the Chinese in the first place for Beijing'08, despite perhaps being aware of their excellent human rights record (in particular their lovely restraint at Tiananmen Square). How dare you suggest that Steven Spielberg take a moral stand on that issue as well? He's Spielberg man!

There is a moral at the end of it all, certainly for India (and perhaps for most other developing nations around the world):

Don't bother hosting the Olympics, India. It's just a monumental waste. Not because everyone thinks you are poor and stuff, and that your air and water is so very dirty and polluted. Not just because it would be a perfect excuse for eminent Western economists to allude to that endearing, oft-repeated stat of mysterious, mythological origins that more than 50% of India still lives on less than a dollar a day and yet they wish to spend billions of dollars in hosting the Olympics. Especially not because they think:
"C'mon now! This has gone on for too long. What's with you hosting the Olympics and all? Shouldn't you be out begging on the streets, speaking in your funny accents and smelling funky? Besides, what do you expect us to do when we get there? You seriously don't expect us to sleep in thatched huts in the monsoon and crap in the open fields, like the rest of you, with those snakes and man-eating tigers around, do you?! And anyways, I'd hate to have a tiger pounce on me when I'm in such a compromising position. That's some scary sh*t!"

No. The number one reason why you shouldn't bother holding the Olympics India...

Ya obviously don't care enough about it to win a frikkin' medal!

A penny for...

2007-11-15T17:30:00.000-05:00

My parents visited me recently. Sometimes, I saw my Dad just sitting on the sofa staring off into the distance through the large windows. I don't think he was looking at anything in particular. I do know that he was deep in thought. When he gets that way, I find myself overwhelmed with a whole lot of thoughts myself. I also feel sadness inside that I have trouble defining.

What's he's really thinking about? I have no idea. I have posed that question to him a few times. Each time, he turns towards me and flashes a warm, slightly guilty looking smile. He shakes his head and says, "No. Nothing. I'm not thinking about anything."

His response makes me feel somewhat less melancholy. I feel good about myself for having asked him to tell me what he seems to be preoccupied with. I let him know, in my own way, that I gave a damn. That I wanted to share his concerns if he so wanted it.

His response also makes me feel just a bit more sad. I don't know why. Why does the act of my parents gazing away into the emptiness make me sad? For all I know, they're probably happy and contented - now that my Dad's been semi-retired for a while now, and my Mom doesn't have young kids to look after. They have a lot more free time on their hands. Time enough for them to sit down and relax, watch TV, read their favorite books, travel a bit, do yoga every morning and go meet friends and family similarly unburdened with looking after thankless offspring 24/7.

Maybe.

Still. I can't seem to get over the sadness I feel. Especially when all they tell me is that it's nothing at all. Perhaps it's because their visit was too short and I wanted to spend more time with them. Perhaps it's because they're looking visibly older and more vulnerable with each passing year. Perhaps it's because of the guilt I feel for having left them back home by themselves - for not being around in their old age when they probably need me the most. Or perhaps seeing them deep in thought makes me feel that they're feeling the weight of many worries. Worries that I should have been able to ease somewhat by now but I have failed to do so. Perhaps it's all of these reasons put together. And I want to do something about it - if I only knew what.

My Dad saw me sitting quietly staring away into nothingness one evening. He asked me what I was thinking about. The irony didn't escape me. I took a couple of seconds to compose myself before I turned around to face him. I knew what to say - I had been learning from him apparently.

Gujarat 2002 in perspective

2007-10-30T18:00:00.000-05:00

It's official then - well - at least more official than it has been before. A lot of you may know about this already - Tehelka.com dug it all up recently. I'm referring to, what Dr. Manmohan Singh recently referred to as, the genocide in Gujarat in 2002 that followed the horrific killings of several dozen people in a train in Godhra, Gujarat. Tehelka just brought to light what a lot of us felt that we knew already- that the whole thing had indeed been planned right from the start and had the sanction of people in high positions of power.

We also know that this wouldn't have happened however if the groundswell of tacit support for committing such atrocities hadn't existed / didn't exist. That this culture of hate is rampant - is a reality that cannot be wished away. At least, not just yet.

Warning: The report is a disturbing read.

Excavation

2007-10-04T17:08:00.001-05:00

Digging your nose on the day, or the day after, you've clipped your nails can be very frustrating - those nasty boogers seem to slip away at the last possible second.

Moral of the story: Don't clip your nails down completely. Leave a little bit on for digging in and for chewing on purposes (in any order - I don't necessarily favor a particular sequence of actions).

The world is a flat circle

2007-10-02T09:47:00.002-05:00

... going round and round.

NY Times, which a couple of years ago had made its Op-Ed section a paid access site, has finally realized the error of their ways and are now back to allowing free access to all. In case you can't make the connection - they have come full circle. That's good news - right?! Perhaps. Trouble is, most of their columnists have really lost credibility, at least in my opinion, since their blind support for the war on Iraq and the no-questions-asked clean chit to the bullcrap fed to them by the Bush administration with respect to Iraq.

One of the chief defaulters on the credibility front is Tom Friedman, columnist and author who wrote, among others, the famous "The World Is Flat" which touts outsourcing as a great positive movement. Recently he wrote this column in the NYTimes.

While the article may not signify a full circle traversal by him - it clearly implies a backtracking from his earlier position of being gung-ho on the war on Iraq. In fact, he's backtracked so much so that, off late, he has been rather apologetic about that error in judgment. Well - good for him, I say.

But it's difficult though to figure out what his true intentions are with all this - to borrow a Republican term used very effectively against John Kerry - flip-flopping. Tough to figure out if he's just trying to win back credibility and through that, readership for his next edition on outsourcing or Iraq - or that he really thinks deep-down inside that he somehow screwed up and now he's trying to make amends for it. He may be back to being on Bush's case now - but when it really mattered in the buildup to the most useless and counter-productive war in recent times, he failed f***ing miserably in exhibiting good sense.

But then again, he wasn't alone in that.

Safe

2007-09-29T09:04:00.001-05:00

One thing about being in school for so long means that you get used to a different kind of reality. You don't really have to watch what you say unless you're facing a committee of professors. You don't have to look and behave like a normal nine-to-fiver, unless, once again you're facing the said committee. People argue aggressively, vociferously with another and yet there's usually no ill feeling at the end of it all. Abusive language is a necessary part of making a strong case to back up your arguments and views. Basically, it's a different world where a lot of the norms that exists in the life outside of the sphere (or any other volume) of influence of a university aren't exactly adhered to. And that's putting it politely. In most circles, some of which I have been involved with and have been an active participant of, those "outside world" norms are downright derided.

But at some point, you have to leave your safe environs and step outside. Leave your cheap apartment where your roommates and neighbors consisted of other poor students, graduate or undergraduate and move to better areas so you can be closer to work. At some point, think about getting rid of your cheap car - the one you love, loathe, respect, abuse and fear in equal parts. Stop wearing crumpled T shirts, and smelly, old worn-out pairs of jeans. Stop ogling at people thinking that you're complimenting them by doing so. And most importantly - watching what you say real hard. You will have to do all of this when you leave those safe university environs and start living in what's called the real world.

It's like when you leave the theatre after a movie or a play that you really enjoyed watching, and found yourself immersed in. Once you open the wide exit doors to step out on to the street you're suddenly brought back to reality, rather rudely sometimes, with the sounds of dozens of cars and the jarring music blaring from them, people milling around in front of the ticket window talking, shouting, cell phone ringers going off. It's a "Welcome back to reality, bitch!" experience.

The longer you are in the theatre, the longer it takes for the effect of the alternate, make believe world you just escaped to, to wear off and for you to come back to reality. School's like that.

When you step in to the real world outside, you've got to start looking, dressing, acting and moving like you belong to it so that other real-worlders can accept you, and not be scared of you, and maybe even like you - although that last part is perhaps stretching it a little. And why all this is important, is because the real world is where the money is - and to make it in there you've got to make the adjustments. And sometimes it takes really long for the adjustment to be made. It's not that school doesn't equip you with the tools to adjust. It's just that the adjustment is a drastic one sometimes. Some look forward to it. Some don't. Most though are unprepared - no matter how they've prepared themselves.

I find myself at that curious transition state of having left that shade of the large tree I was living under and making my way into what's waiting for me on the outside. All that I've studied in school doesn't prepare me though for the complex terminologies spoken in outside circles, like the APRs, 401K's, etc. I pretend I know what they mean. I even understand what they speak of in those circles sometimes. But mostly I just end up realizing that I'm hopelessly out of my depth. And all I end up doing is pissing people off with my posturing that I don't care about what I don't understand, while what I'm really trying to do is get a handle on the fact that I don't know jack really.

Yup. I am hopelessly lost. Now, just where did I put my drink down.

Randy Executives

2007-09-17T20:59:00.001-05:00

NYTimes ran this article,which made it to their most emailed list, and which is where I saw/found it. The piece is on Ayn Rand and her legacy - how several successful folks in higher up positions in corporate America had, in their youth, read books written by Rand and how their lives were never the same again from that moment on. That pattern (of young lives being changed irrevocably once they picked up Ayn Rand's books) is hardly unique to these guys. I first read "Atlas Shrugged" and then "The Fountainhead" while in college getting my Bachelors degree in Engineering. I identified with all her characters - both strong and weak - and, in my own way, I know I have imbibed portions of her message and rejected other portions. I daresay my life did change in some ways. I also saw others around me - around the same age as I was - who too were... well... mindf**ked a little after reading either one of the two afore mentioned books. Now, looking back, I don't really know if I couldn't have done without having read them.

The whole thing sort of reminds me of those slick military commercials glamorizing military life for recruiting/propaganda purposes. They prey on young, impressionable minds, showing them all the "good parts" of being a soldier: a life full of adventure, lots of shooting automatic rifles and acting all bad-ass, and oh yes! protecting your country from "the enemy", and finally getting your Dad to show some respect to your formerly good-for-nothing ass for once. All that just to get them to sign up and do their bidding. These kids may end up seeing the life they imagined they'd be living as soldiers, or just doing just the exact opposite - depending on whether they enrolled to shoot up people or save innocent folks, parachute stealthily behind enemy lines or dig trenches for human waste, making a difference with their lives or dying needlessly. Whatever.

Ayn Rand and her books are recruiting tools for the corporations. Some examples are in the linked article. Her books justify, glamorize and deify idealism and greed to ambitious young people who believe in personal success above everything else. Corporations want and need such driven foot soldiers who will one day push the corporate agenda near and far as a means to get to their own individual, grand successes. Just as army soldiers who one day discover the difference between early perception and ground realities though, I suspect several of these future execs never prepared themselves for the fact that when naked ambition collides with naked ambition, nasty things happen. Stuff they never planned for.

And besides - if you do take me as an example - it's clear that Rand's voodoo doesn't always work. I've yet to see the personal success she inspired the other folks to accomplish. Take that - big corporation executives!

Radio GaGa

2007-09-11T22:45:00.000-05:00

A list of some of my preferred FM radio stations when driving, either in and around the Raleigh-Durham area, or on the interstate. It's good (for me at least) to know that a lot of these stations can be streamed too.

Don't know what your preferences are but I think a lot of you may find a decent station in the list below. For those thinking of finding a good contemporary pop station here, I suggest you quietly navigate away and I won't ask you what kind of music you listen to - and then make fun of you.

Note: This list is NOT a ranking of any sort.

1. WUTK New Rock 90.3 (Listen Live)

WUTK is a station based in the University of Knoxville, TN playing mostly alternative rock music (commercial free for the most part). I discovered this station while I was temporarily in Knoxville in the early part of the year. This is a great radio station playing quality rock music - super to listen to at work or while driving (if you're in the Knoxville area).

2. WKNC 88.1 The Revolution (Listen Live)

WKNC is NC State's radio station, broadcasting from the NC State campus in Raleigh, NC. I never really thought the station played any good music until Rohit really made me listen to it for a while. WKNC specializes in mostly "Underground" music. That also means that they cover a broad gamut of genres. Only it's not the usual ditzy music playing on every other station. I tend to enjoy their evening and late night material ("After Hours on WKNC") more than their daytime material however - that's when they play reggae, rap and electronica and metal. If you're listening to at work in India - chances are high that you'll be listening to their "After Hours" music.

3. WUNC 91.5 (Listen Live)

WUNC is the station for North Carolina Public Radio broadcasting from Chapel Hill, NC. During the day they mostly play NPR (National Public Radio) programs. Late nights - it's usually news from the BBC Worldservice. And on weekends it's "Backporch music", which essentially means a whole lot of Blue Grass music. Regular news and information programs during the day keep you updated with the latest happenings. Tuning in to NPR stations on long drives also helps keep sleep away, for those who haven't tried it yet. Then again if you have satellite radio, don't tell me about it and make me all jealous and mad.

4. WNCW 88.7 (Listen Live)

WNCW is a radio station broadcasting from the Isothermal Community College, Spindale, NC. They play a mix of different genres and the station itself has a pretty good range too. First discovered it on one of my several road trips to Knoxville, TN. Since then, I tune in on every trip to Knoxville and back.

5. WSHA 88.9 (Listen Live)

WSHA broadcasts from Shaw University, Raleigh, NC. They mostly play Jazz during the day, but also play the Blues, Reggae and Latino music - especially on weekends. My cousin Pradeep played this station often in his car - that's where I first heard it. WSHA's range isn't that great which is probably it's only disadvantage.

Other notable: 96 Rock (FM 96.1) , a commercial rock station playing in the Raleigh-Durham area. They play a lot of really good rock music. They also play a lot of bad rock music from a plethora of sissy rock bands. No names for now though - that's for another day. Another bad thing - the commercials, of which the first five stations have almost none.

Happy Listening!

Monster Truck Damn

2007-08-27T23:04:00.000-05:00

Rising gas prices don't really bring smiles to anyone's faces. Here in the Younited states, cheap gas, for decades, has been a fundamental right of all Americans - rich and poor alike. Higher gas prices don't just mean that the wings of ordinary Americans are being clipped, but also means that their money stretches even lesser than it already does. Basically, there really isn't any good news on that front for us ordinary folks, not just in the US but all over the world. (In fact the rest of the world woke up to the bad news a long, long time ago.)

That being said most of us have been aware since childhood that the supply of fossil fuels was limited and would one day be exhausted unless we found other means to produce energy. What I don't get is that, despite this knowledge people continued/continue to buy gas-guzzling vehicles without any thought about the future, only to now complain about how the price at the pump is killing them. Cleaner, efficient vehicles have always been sold side-by-side with the gas guzzlers for about the same price. OK - they've been smaller and aren't best suited to "extreme", off-roading enthusiast types, or people anticipating a whole bunch of kids (that's another topic altogether). But they've been around.

Instead, people - especially those with no real functional need for them - continued to buy large SUVs, and now, for the most part, these SUV's hurtle around with single occupancies. Sure, driving pleasure is important. If they're happy with these vehicles - fantastic. But if these people (especially those in lower income groups) bought these vehicles thinking that pump prices would stay the same, or even drop - and now complain about how gas prices are hurting them ... well....

In some way, it makes me happy that the sales of gas guzzlers are down. Now, whenever a huge-ass SUV whizzes dangerously by me on the highway, I resist the urge to curse the driver (using my choicest Indian Maa... and Behen... gaalis) and instead laugh to myself (with an almost but not quite the Skeletor-like laugh, or the Thriller-like laugh... you know the kind I'm talking about!) thinking about how much it's going to cost the f*&^er at the pump the next time (read - an hour later) he/she's in for a refill. What can I say - I can be a vindictive mother.. sometimes.

Or maybe I'm just bitter. Oh yes - besides being occasionally vindictive, I can also be bitter about things once in a while. Usually, with my kind it's the memory of some rejection of some sort by a female somewhere that triggers the bitterness, which usually prejudices me against all things related to that person and the rejection (places, people, beds - just kidding about the beds, etc.). But, when it comes to large SUV's, I just don't know what it is about them that makes me not too happy. I mean there are several possible reasons but I'm still not sure which one of them is the prime cause.

I'm all for people getting those big machines though. It neatly categorizes humanity for me. People who drive/buy them, if not involved in landscaping, or transportation, or some commercial activity that actually requires those large vehicles, are either a.) stupid, or b.) not very visionary or imaginative, or c.) the sort that just don't give a f*&k about the rest of us, or d.) all of the above.

Not to be left behind too far behind (not) choking on my (car's) cleaner, low on carbon emissions exhaust, they too probably have categories for people like me. For them, people like me are either a.) whiny sissies, or b.) bitter f&*ks, or c.) people who care too much about everything to do anything meaningful about one particular thing, or d.) all of the above.

Hmmm...

I still don't know why I so dislike large SUV's.

Help me.

The scream rises to the top?

2007-07-05T10:02:00.000-05:00

Watching yesterday's highlights of the Venus Williams versus Maria Sharapova Ladies Singles QF match at Wimbledon 2007, I realized more than ever that I just don't like watching Sharapova play tennis. I think she's a tough competitor and all with great mental strength, the ability to come back from behind and play well in the clutch, take her game to the next level when the chips are down, blah.. blah.. blah.. No really - I do think all those things about her.

But her guttural screaming for every play (regardless of the effort level) is just too "off-putting" for me. And if as a TV viewer it can be so distracting - I can't even imagine how her opponents feel. Even if I hit the Mute button to tune her and the accompanying commentary out, her playing style is also not very entertaining really. She doesn't really cover the court well and pretty much gets to the ball and hits it -hard. If she's in trouble, she digs deep into herself, focuses - and just hits harder. She's a champion for sure - and she wins games. But she's definitely not a looker when she's playing.

By contrast, Venus' playing style is so much more pleasing to watch. She's fast, agile and covers the court extremely well. Her movements are fluid and her long limbs allow her to reach for balls most players would let go. She also relies on the angles and slices as much as she does on raw power. Most importantly, Venus doesn't grunt anywhere close to the decibel levels of Sharapova. All that makes it fun to watch Venus play.

Both players do have one similarity however - they're both tough competitors and are potential greats in the making. In most cases, when great players play one another, I usually don't care too much who wins as long as the match was entertaining. In this case though, sadly, prejudiced ol' me preferred Venus over Maria. The result, needless to say, made me happy.

Hiatus Explanation (for those who don't care)

2007-06-08T11:10:00.000-05:00

My apologies to those regularly checking in to my blog on the very long gap in posting. Several events occurred in a very brief spell of time - such as (but not limited to) interviewing for jobs, lots of traveling, finally getting some job offers and then selecting one, then starting work, and also moving to a new apartment in a new zip code.

Relax. I still haven't left the area. Suffice to say that these last few months have been very eventful - all the ups and downs made things very interesting. I will make the effort to be on here more often than I have in these last couple of months.

Highway Projects in India - Photos

2007-06-07T16:43:00.001-05:00

Earlier, I posted a thread from SkyScraperCity that had some supernice pics on the Mumbai/Bombay skyline at night-time).

Here's a thread - once again from SkyScraperCity, that has some decent resolution pictures of ongoing highway and road projects in India. This thread/forum is a good example of the benefits of citizen journalism and reporting - that of providing far more information than the mainstream media. However, just to keep things in perspective, since the posters are largely India-biased - it seems that only the better looking pics have perhaps been put up. Nevertheless, it does make for informative and pleasant browsing. The discussions in the thread are also pretty balanced and informative - which reflects really well on the people participating in it. More importantly, the posters have done a remarkable job in gathering and posting the pictures.

It would do good for most people who aren't living in India currently, to contrast those pictures with the actual driving experience. Suffice to say there's a lot of work to be done. But then - a lot has been and is being done.

Drive safe. Stay protected.

(Image on top of post is a sample from the SkyscraperCity thread discussed above. The image was posted by user SunCity is a view of the Mumbai-Pune expressway.)

The Dream TARDIS

2007-04-03T14:21:00.000-05:00

When I wake up in the middle of the morning, I think about how sleepy I still am. Then I decide if I just have to get up for anything in particular, or if I can afford to sleep off that sleepiness.

That's way too much thinking to do when you really just want to sleep though. Thinking kills sleep. Makes the mind wander to non-dreamsy places. No harems or space travels anymore for a few more hours.

I wish though that my dream TARDIS had a little less randomness. Perhaps it could be programmed better - maybe a few minutes before I actually formally declare to myself, "I'm now ready to go to bed". Now, here I must digress further to clarify that when I say "I'm ready to go to bed" - I'm not saying that "I get ready to go to bed". That clarification is important.

Back to dream programming. There's an important difference between watching programmes on TV and dreaming. At least from my perspective. The difference is that it's you that's making up the dreams (since there's no known scientific proof of it being broadcast from some outside-the-body source) , which means that perhaps you could control the programming somehow. Instead of looking at TV Guide to decide which shows you want to watch, and/or TiVoing your favourite shows when their timings clash with one another, you could perhaps program your dreams so you could tell your dream TARDIS where you want to go, what you want to do and how you want to be doing it all.

So, when I'm ready to go to bed, I could tell my mind:

"Allright, here's stuff that I am interested in:

(1) For the first hour of my dream, I want to relax a little bit. No nasty surprises that jolt me out of sleep. Take me somewhere where I'm playing some kinda outdoor sport. Show me doing well, playing hard. And I don't really care so much if I win or lose, as long as you show me using my real-life bad knee like there's nothing wrong with it. I'd be happy with that.

(2) Then for the next hour, take me back to my childhood. And make my nephew - who's now 6 years old - join in and play with me and my childhood friends. Show us participating in cool adventures, like the several times we'd go climbing that hill that when I was a kid. And of course, some cool adventures I never really had but would have loved to. (Don't ask me which ones those are. Just do it - damnit!) Make sure my nephew and me end up bonding together as best buddies. I'd really like that.

(3) Keep the Shotime and Skinemax dreams out for the third hour. I think tonight I'd like to spend some time with my parents. Show me as I am right now. With a lot more hair on my head. Ok then - that's not as I am right now - but don't you start getting too cute with me now! Anyways, back to hour 3: make sure to show my parents young. Show my Dad the handsome young man he was. Show my Mom as the young, striking beauty she once was; Her hair long, free and show her laughing away carefree - like a little child watching a cartoon show. Show me as being respectful to them and make sure they're having a good time with me, not dreading the next rebellious thing I might spring on them. My sister needs to be around too - bubbly and pretty young girl that she was. Show us two getting along really good without those fights we constantly had.

(4) For hour number 4, I think I might be in the mood for spending time with my lady love. No. No. Not just that kind of time. Take us back home when we were dating then. Make sure I have a lot more money to show her a good time around town - catching a movie, eating at a nice restaurant, walking around the historical sites, perusing the books and interesting items being sold by the street vendors. Better still, make all of that not require any money. Show people around us being kind to lovers - not the suspicious, kill-joy moral police types. Then show us travelling back home in the evening - in the upper level of a double decker bus - sitting side by side, holding and squeezing each other's hands as the young lovers were were then, looking out of the window from above at the sea of humanity below us - mesmerised by the interconnectedness of millions of lives.

Ok. That's all I could think of. For the remaining hours, I'll let you decide what you want to show me. Make it interesting though. And entertaining. And while you're at it, make it illogical if you want to - I'm not a great practitioner or exponent of logic anyways.

I think that should be it for tonight. Tomorrow, we could do an all-nighter on me and my friends. I'm looking forward to it already. In fact, one of my friend's birthdays is coming up - so mix that in as well. But all that's for tomorrow.

Oh - and TiVo the stuff I enjoyed tonight, so we could do a re-run some other night!"

Unfortunately that dream machine of mine is not programmable. Or controllable in any fashion - not in any way that I really understand. I don't have any way to control where it takes me - no way to comprehend that randomness. Nor do I really understand all the stuff that seems to manifest itself into those random trips.

But then there's a lot of stuff that I don't. Including why I want the dreams I want.

P.S. In case you're wondering what the hell a TARDIS is - please read or watch Dr. Who.

Sample and Savour

2007-04-01T14:37:00.000-05:00

(1) House, techno, electronica - and add to that heady mix the talented DJ and my buddy Rohit Sharma - and his blog (which I just belatedly discovered) called Profound Sounds (Yes - I think it's a cool name too!) You can also listen to some of his latest mixes here.

(2) ...And a dose of reality - Ketaki style - at Same Page, not a recent discovery by any means unlike Rohit's, but in fact a blog I visit often to derive cutting-edge insight from.

In case you aren't doing so already you should be get to any or all of the other people's sites I've linked to - so you can actually get to interesting things to read.

Babel

2007-03-20T11:41:00.000-05:00

It's been a while since I watched a good movie. I did see 300 recently, a movie inspired by Frank Miller's graphic novel of the same name and while I did think the action in the movie was shot in truly exhilarating fashion, the acting and the dialogues in contrast were unoriginal and one-dimensional bordering on being comical even and ultimately detracting from the experience. In short - pretty crappy. I do want to clarify that I haven't read Miller's novel. It does seem to me though that people who read the book were far more immersed in the movie and ultimately found it to be more enjoyable. Perhaps I should have done the same.

But this is a problem with movie adaptations of famous or great books. Moviegoers who've actually read the original book usually go on like, "Man! You haven't read the book? You should have - it would've made a lot more sense to you!" I know they say that - because I do that a lot myself!

And while deriding the book-challenged among us is all well and good, the truth is a good movie ultimately must stand on its own without having to be a companion piece to something else all the time. For example, I found the "Lord of the Rings" motion picture trilogy more enjoyable than the J.R.R. Tolkien book trilogy (Yes Raoul, Yes. I do know there's more to LOTR than "just those three" books) even though I read the books before the movies came out. Consider Frank Miller's other famous work - the Sin City series brought to life on the screen by Robert Rodriguez as another case in point. Sin City is one of the most amazing movies ever made. In both above cases, while reading the original books do perhaps enhance the experience of watching the movie, the movies themselves can easily stand alone by themselves. Ah! If only Rodriguez had directed 300.

Overall, not such a bad movie but doesn't quite live up to the hype. For a fan's review of 300, do check out Sibin's here.

This post though is basically about Babel, a movie I saw on DVD in the comfort of home a couple of days ago. Babel is directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu and among the more prominent stars of the movie are Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett. The movie also stars several lesser known actors and as is often the case - these lesser known actors are exceptional.

The story (not necessarily told in a linear format) begins in Morocco with two adolescents - both brothers - minding their goats armed with a hunting rifle given to them by their father solely for the purpose of shooting away jackals. To while away their time, the brothers start to carelessly shoot at far away boulders on surrounding hillocks. Soon, the target shooting moves to moving targets, in this case shooting at vehicles passing by on the winding road below in full view from their hilltop perch - an activity only kids could possibly think of. One bullet fired from some distance by the more talented marksman among the brothers finds its way into the flesh of an American tourist in a bus full of foreign (and all white) tourists visiting Morocco. This single event then triggers a whole series of events and circumstances, actions and consequences that changes the lives of several people across four countries.

Babel could be loosely compared to Crash in the manner in which it weaves different stories within its main storyline. But where it differs from Crash is in that these stories aren't weaved tightly to one another. Babel lets the story threads run their own courses. It's pace may seem laborious and the movie may ultimately disappoint those bottom-line hunting , road-rage-suffering, ADD afflicted among us looking for an explicit payoff or resolution of some sorts fed intravenously at the end of the movie into our lazy blood streams as we are accustomed to; for the few others the superb acting on display from several actors (especially the Moroccan cast of the movie), the intricate storyline and the wonderfully captivating background score will keep you riveted to your seat.

With that I must now correct my first statement. It had been a while since I saw a good movie. At least until I saw Babel that is.

(pic courtesy www.apple.com )

Upgrades

2007-02-23T16:53:00.000-05:00

No.. No.. no upgrades to my desktop, laptop (I don't have one), MP3 player or appendages (I won't comment on whether I need one or don't anyways!). Just some upgrades to the blog as seems to be permitted - even facilitated - by Blogger. I guess competition from Wordpress has made all of this possible, although I'd like to see a lot more enhancements before I am satisfied. Nothing like an unpaying customer or client like me asking for the world, and then some. For free! Heh! Heh!

Actually, I have been meaning to switch to Wordpress for a while now, but inertia and the just-in-time new Blogger features have prevented me from doing what I should have done already. Never mind. It's on my agenda anyways. For now, I am partially satiated with the ability to list (and cross-list) posts by labels - a feature common to other sites and providers. Hopefully it will be a lot more easier to navigate through the worthless posts on this blogsite anyways.

Then again, there are more labels on my blog than posts. That's to show you how multidisciplinary my writing can be. Or - to put it plainly - how all over the place the whole f**king blog is!

Peter Straub

2007-02-12T23:31:00.000-05:00

The last few posts ( 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5) have been largely book related. That tells you the amount of free time I have these days. But talking about works of fiction that I thoroughly enjoyed, I do feel it would be criminal to not mention Peter Straub and his works. Yes - I know most of y'all (except for BrijWhiz) probably haven't heard of him.

Straub is usually classified as a horror writer - much like the more famous Stephen King, probably because he's collaborated with King. But it's tough to call Straub a horror writer. Usually his stories are built around a premise that you'd find in psychological thriller type novels. But his novels go much deeper than that. His characters hold up a mirror for you, compelling you to introspect, while his writing compels you to turn pages. And in that sense, he has very little in common with King, much less with most other authors I've read.

I picked up The Throat written by Straub for a train journey from New Delhi to good ol' Mumbai in '98. I thought I'd picked up a cheap, slasher novel. Instead, behind that cheap sounding title was a self-indulgent, but utlimately superb psychological thriller. The Throat, the third and final book of what's known as the "blue rose" trilogy, deals with the return of a serial killer to a small American town, who scrawls "blue rose" besides his victims. And here everyone had thought that the killer had been caught after the first spate of murders died out (no pun intended). By the time the book was over, I was looking for others from Peter Straub.

I did pick up the remaining books from the "blue rose" trilogy including Koko and Mystery, thereby ending up reading the whole "blue rose" trilogy backwards. No harm done though. I found the experience extremely rich. The Throat and Koko, especially are two of my favourite psychological thrillers. And I highly recommend both these avant garde psychological thrillers by Peter Straub to start with. The links should lead you to Amazon pages for the books along with summaries/ editorial reviews.

Special props to Brijwhiz for helping me keep my interest in Straub before.

A Good Story Comes To An End

2007-02-02T17:14:00.000-05:00

Not all is bad in the world of paperback fiction though. However the death of Sidney Sheldon whom I curiously mentioned a few days ago, will leave a void in many ways. A work of fiction generally involves telling a story. The story need not be true in any way. And while there are several people who can perhaps describe scenes or events really well, the fact is - a work of fiction cannot wholly succeed without a good underlying story that connects all the peices (well described or not) really well. Sidney Sheldon, in that regard, was a master at telling a good story.

When I first picked up his books in my adolescent years, it was mainly to get to the lurid sex scenes several of his books seemed to be filled with. I know I wasn't alone in doing that. But like others, I also realized little by little that the stories he told were very captivating. It was the essence (believe it or not!) of the characters that came through those aforementioned scenes that made me track back to pages before these scenes and continue reading far after they were over. His classics like If Tomorrow Comes, The Other Side of Midnight, and The Doomsday Conspiracy are superb examples of stories with great appeal and solid content.

Youngsters these days may have internet pron to educate themselves. But I seriously doubt if it's ever going to lead them to great stories like those Sheldon once wrote. Whatever. It'll be their loss. Sidney's probably living it up wherever he is right now.

Bad Science and Imaginary Weapons

2007-02-02T15:34:00.001-05:00

One of the books I read recently was Imaginary Weapons: A Journey Through the Pentagon's Scientific Underworld" by Sharon Weinberger. The book is a study on how the military establishment in the US, in its quest for new, deadlier weapons to stay ahead of all competition, funds fringe research ridiculed and dismissed by mainstream science. Pseudo-science backed with little and in several cases dubious rigor can capture the imagination of top military funding agencies. The prime example used in the book is the quest for devising a super weapon using a halfnium isomer that could theoretically be put inside a container the size of a hand grenade but could have more power than a conventional nuke. Moreover, it could theoretically penetrate concrete and steel making it impossible to guard against.

Musings:
The trouble with such a quest is that mainstream phyicists of repute who have researched this idea have already found it to be highly infeasible (i.e. un-doable) for several reasons - the least of which being that for such an endeavor to actually succeed would require seriously violating known laws of physics. But that somehow did not or does not deter fringe scientists from taking up this cause repeatedly, and, even more scarily, for the military establishment of the most powerful nation on the planet to continue to fund such dubious science by millions of dollars.

And just why do these scientists eagerly propose such research time and time again? Maybe, because in absence of any proper scientific funding (probably denied to them because of the dubious nature of their proposals in the first place) their only option is the generous military. Or maybe because they somehow believe strongly in the feasibility of these fringe topics, no matter how contrary known evidence is.

As a scientist myself(Hee! Hee! Still get a kick out of saying that!), all this is a good reality check that there are a lot of scientists out there who either lack scientific rigor or who somehow believe that they're better and know more than the system that produced them. Who needs equations and proofs to back one's gut feelings, right?!

But more importantly a scientist who actually craves for recognition which he or she knows that mainstream science is never going to grant them, but they're going to make a run for it one way or the other is a very dangerous one. Such people are eventually going to not only self-destruct at some point, but will also end up taking a lot of people (innocent or otherwise) with them.

Book Review:
The book itself did tend to get a little tedious (like this post), not because of all the scientific details inside but because the writer explains events, people and her interviews with them in far too much detail. A lot of the material could have been condensed and published in a major newspaper as an exposure piece.

Also, while the title says Imaginary Weapons, i.e. implying the plural, the author only really talks about the halfnium weapon in some detail. While, in the beginning of the book, the writer does allude to military funding for an acoustic weapon, i.e. one that uses sound waves to neutralize the enemy, or funding for harnessing gravity waves in some destructive fashion, she makes very little or no further mention about these other topics later on in the book. That's kind of a let-down really, because I did want to hear about other dubious projects funded by the military. However, her sarcastic, almost satirical writing style makes it easier to plod through the more weightier (read boring) topics. On the whole, informative but a slightly dissatisfying experience.

Tailpiece:
With that troubling thought of bad science and scientists in my mind, it's time to hit the textbooks again then for me - just to make sure I have all the facts right. Heh! Heh! More book reviews, observations coming up later. Textbooks won't be included, fortunately.

Bad Writing

2007-02-02T15:32:00.000-05:00

I picked up some more books recently (continuing on with my book reading spree). My last foray into reading paperback fiction (of the Dan Brown sort described here) made me realize two things:

1. It had been a while since I had read a novel of the airport quickie variety and somehow this time around, I found this kind more difficult to digest. Reading Dan Brown and Digital Fortress was really the last straw for me. I know it sounds pompous but I think I have sort of graduated from books of this sort. Why do I feel this way? I dunno! Probably because I don't want to read badly written books anymore! The last good work of fiction that I had read - sometime last year - was The Five people You Meet In Heaven by Mitch Albom which was immensely readable when compared to the Brown kind of tripe.

2. I don't really understand how mediocre writers get recognition or acclaim while the real good ones don't ever get anywhere. It brings up the question: Just who are those reviewers quoted on the back of these bad books who extoll non-existent virtues of these books, and just how much do they know about writing?

I do know that reading a book (or reading anything), watching movies, listening to music, or appreciating a work of art for that matter - has all to do with how much appeal it holds for you. And what appeals to who has not necessarily been captured in a bottle and/or is sold off the shelves of drug stores. However, some bad writers seem to have gotten a whiff of that essence somehow.

Of course Reason no. 2 is an oversimplification of complex social, cultural and psychological issues that determine what works and what doesn't. And no one really knows everything about it all. That doesn't mean I can't be a snob and diss stuff I don't like.

Crichton and Programming

2007-01-25T18:57:00.002-05:00

My good friend Brij discussed earlier a fantastic piece of fiction - Dune by Frank Herbert here. My cousin Sanjay first lent me the book - although I had heard much about it before. Idle reading these days (being unemployed and all) involved finishing Prey by Michael Crichton. The connection between Prey and Dune being that they're both categorized usually as science fiction (i.e. sci-fi). And you're right - that connection I made was the result of some serious analytical skills. I do understand though that sci-fi is generally classified into hard and soft. With that in mind, Dune's probably on the soft side, while Prey's probably on the hard side.

I know I wasn't all that excited about wanting to read Prey. Crichton's last book that I read i.e. Timeline was a good thriller incorporating quantum science in interesting ways, but pretty much typical run-of-the-mill in terms of writing quality. I decided to give Prey a read anyways however, since I am prone to rushes of magnanimity and Crichton's been begging me for a while. I won't go into the book summary and all that - you'll find a much more detailed account here. But the story deals with the confluence of nanotechnology, genetics and computer science, and the implications of it all to the future of mankind. Food for thought indeed!

While some of the notions and ideas in the book are far fetched given that Crichton's works are usually based on current ongoing or proposed scientific research, there were a few that I did find relevant. Especially those about computer programming. In the book, programmers of the Silicon Valley regularly indulge in designing and developing virtual, autonomous agents to work in distributed computing scenarios. Also, most programmers know how to power these agents with evolutionary or genetic algorithms that allow them to combine with other agents and come up with efficient solutions for a broad range of complex problems. Just like people getting together with other people to solve problems. (Or stone other people - probably the same as solving problems actually!)

It is my understanding, based on what is normally taught in programming that such programming is still far from the norm in the Silicon Valley or any valley. Most programmers are still rooted to using algorithms for which upper bounds and lower bounds, both in terms of memory use and time are known or can be evaluated. Such algorithms are essential for commercial software development right from analyzing the cost-benefit of program code at the lowest level, up to the setting of milestones, deadlines, etc. up at the higher, project management levels.

But, while such programming is still pretty essential, the truth is - the theory and practical applications of genetic algorithms may soon become important for all programmers to study. Besides off-the-shelf resusable code or code libraries are used extensively for known problems. Why keep re-inventing the wheel? More importantly, complex problems are solved better using a combination of traditional as well as heuristic techniques just as humans tend to problem solve.

Off-late, several computer science as well as bio-informatics graduate programs across the world do offer courses on genetic algorithms and such. And while programmers armed with this knowledge may not quite be the norm in Silicon Valley, not quite as Crichton potrays, they will probably become necessary in the not-to-distant future.

A mildly compelling page turner at best, Prey however is nowhere close to Crichton's best. I do think that this phase of reading paperback quickies may not last too long.

Brown's Fortress and the Brown Code to writing

2007-01-25T18:54:00.000-05:00

On to Dan Brown then, the famous author of the Da Vinci Code. I did read the Code earlier. And I also happened to read one of his earlier works (if you could call it that) called Digital Fortress much more recently (I still wonder why!). The story is basically run-of-the-mill Brown I guess: cryptologists searching for secret codes in the backdrop of a standard text-book race-against-time thriller format of paperback fiction. One really sad part about the book is just the sheer number of inaccuracies and misrepresentations of computational theories. The story itself is badly written with the cheapest, totally unoriginal and completely predictable gimmicks you've seen before and you just can't believe people still use them. All the while I also felt the ghost of another book I'd read many years ago while reading parts of the more interesting story arc of Fortress. The entire part about a man tracking down all those people between who an all important ring changed hands (No. No. Not Frodo's ring.) reminded me vaguely of The Doomsday Conspiracy by Sidney Sheldon.

Dan Brown should probably be excused for writing a sorry book such as The Digital Fortress, since it was early into his fiction writing days; much before he became famous for the Da Vinci Code. We all know however that the Code itself was haunted by complaints of plagiarism. Suffice to say that the only thing Dan Brown can do is incorporate symbols and codes and ciphers into his stories. I don't even know if he does a good job at that either. And that's his calling card. Just like Grisham generally incorporates courtroom dramas and the finer points of the law into his stories. But unlike Grisham, a lawyer himself and Crichton, a scientist himself, there's little that Brown brings to his books (so far from the two that I have read) that makes someone meaningfully smarter about the complex world around us.

And as a final note on Brown and ...Code, here's Dave Barry's absolutely hilarious analysis of the Da Vinci Code techique. The original article was published in the Miami Herald, but it requires registration. Barry's piece is in the first post of the forum I linked to above. I read it a couple of years back. And it's still funny as hell. Enjoy!

Air India sucks

2007-01-15T09:49:00.000-05:00

I realize this is going to be my first post of the new year. And it saddens me that it starts on such a sour note for one of my friends Subhayu, who had to suffer through a terrible travel ordeal on account of the folks at Air India. I am reproducing his email here - bear with us because it's slightly lengthy.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Air India - National Airline or a National shame !!!

This is a absolutely true & horryfying experience that I just went through with our national airline - Air India. It was so traumatic for me that I couldn't have imagined in my wildest dreams. I have heard of stray incidents of various types happening with different people, just couldn't believe when ALL of those happened with me in 2 days. Here's my experience.

Day 1:

I walk into the Mumbai airport at 12.15 pm for a 14.55 pm flight to london. (AI 131). After about 40 minutes, AI counter representatives just start walking around and chatting amongst themselves. Maybe 15-20 minutes after that, someone raises some noise about their behavior and then they come out open stating that the flight was full and that the flight was overbooked. Now overbooking as AI puts it is a very common action that most airlines resort to, even in peak seasons such as the one I was travelling in. To my outmost surprise, they had overbooked a flight of 210 passengers (they fly a Boeing 767 for this flight) by 40 odd passengers. Absolutely ridiculous !!!. Thats when this whole saga of trauma began. We fought with the AI officials to come up with a reason and tell us what they were gonna do for us. But they refused to budge and did not give any reasonable explanation. After about 30 minutes of screaming and fighting the duty manager arrived at the scene and the very second statement he made was that we are going to put you guys in a 5 star hotel. The next possible flight that they could put us on was AI 101 which would leave at 7.10 AM the next morning. They couldn't arrange for any other flight citing that they were all full, but they did not confirm with anyone before making that bold statement, just because they wanted to save the buck for AI. My case was a bit complicated cause I had to make it to the US the next day on a American Airlines (AA) flight. So they promised me to rebook me on a different flight and also provide me a hotel accomodation in London since I wouldn't make it for my original flight.

After that around 14.00 pm, there was a change of shifts, which meant a new duty manager was to arrive and be briefed about the situation. Some passengers like me, decided to take the lead and explained him the situation. He promised us that he would take care of us and would assign a hotel and boarding passes ASAP. Before that he had to head to a small meeting for 15 mins. That 15 mins, took him 2 hours and then he comes and states that out of great difficulty he could get us to the next flight at 7.10 AM, which we should have always been given priority to board since we were bumped off our original flight. But he refused to check in our luggage and give boarding passes, asking us to come to the airport some 6 hrs in advance. We refused and decided not to budge, and maybe after an hour he agreed to check us in. Still no hotel and it was 5.00 pm. One of the fellow passengers lost his head since he was travelling with his 80 year old mom who was struggling to sit through this trauma. Another family with an infant just wanted to know if they r going to get a hotel and still no action on AI's behalf. Finally around 6.30 pm, they come out and say that they cannot find hotels for us and offer to put us up in the airport area, where they have some facilities. Some of us went and checked the facilities. There were some beds with some dirty linen, no bathrooms, no TV's, no kind of entertainment and full of mosquitoes which would definitely give you malaria before leaving india. One guy mentioned that he wouldn't even let his dog stay there in that room. Such were the facilities offered to passengers who paid full fare, after being promised 5 star accomodation. Little did we know that this was a beginning of what we had to go through. After that we all went to the duty managers office and sat there and he refused to give us priority. After forcing him to give us his attention and forcing him to inform his seniors of our position, he negotiated with us.

After about 2 hours of this, AI made another offer to us. Find a hotel on your own and get us the bill tommorow and we'll reimburse you. The ceiling limit was set to Rs. 5000 / passenger or Rs. 7000/family, which is really a small amount given the costs of hotels in mumbai. Anyways, we tried hard to negotiate with them to give us a reasonable limit since we would never get a decent hotel around the airport for that kind of money. Sensing that we weren't making much progress with this issue with AI after an hour of debating and they still looking or acting to look for hotels for us, some of us decided to take the offer and share rooms. To our surprise, AI said they would not give us cash and we would have to produce a bill after paying it on our own. Some of the passengers had no indian currencies, some students have very limited credit card limits which blocked them from taking this limit. So we again tried to negotiate, but with no success with the thick skinned inconsiderate AI people. Also at this stage, AI managers told us that turn up at the aiport only around 6.30AM next morning since AI 101 is delayed to 8.00 pm. That would give us an additional 1 hour of sleep. By then the next shift came into work who again argued with us that every airline rebooks and they are justified with their hostile behavior and actually gave us a hard time to even dispurse the mininal taxi costs to us. Finally, around 10.30 pm in the night after spending more than 10 hrs at the airport, some of us decided to take a cab and give it a shot to look for a hotel on our own. Found one at around 12 in the nite and spend the next couple of hrs trying to get some sleep.

Day 2:

Next morning when we got to the airport at 6.20 AM, we noticed the same story being repeated with the AI 101 passengers who were dumped thanks to us. Similar shouts and screaming and determined AI officials fending off all allegations of mismanaging reservations. Infact funnily, the AI desk officials kept blaming AI reservation ppl for messing things up and telling us that they couldn't do much about it since thats how its been since the past couple of years. One of the AI officials mentioned that the whole overbooking saga was going on for the past 7-8 days, but surprisingly they still did not have hotels booked and they just kept using their strategy to hold passengers in the airport until they got frustated and left on their own. Suddenly we get rushed stating that we were delaying the flight. To our surprise the flight is stated to be on time. So we go thru immigration and then identify our luggages and finally make it to the flight. It leaves as stated - i.e. at 8.15 AM.

During the flight, I fell sick with the previous days food. The moment we landed, I was throwing up and had a very hard time keeping myself hydrated. Go to the luggage claim area in london and after about 1 hour, AI official comes and says that they did not board some 20 passengers baggage. Guess what .... all the 20 ppl were from AI 131 flight. It was so ironic, that they did not board things like the old lady's wheel chair. Can u imagine that ? After all this .... they do that. Also, with AI, something else we learnt is there is no compensation for your baggage if they do not arrive with you. I tried to negotiate, but one of the AI london officials mentioned that they would not entertain any requests unless the luggage was lost for more than 48 hrs. Nice !!!Thot I was done and so I went to the AI customer service and asked for the 1 nite hotel stay that I was promised in bbay. AI flatly refused stating that their responsibility ends in London. They do not care anything beyond that. Infact this one lady in the AI customer service was so rude and so insulting that I was amused if this is what "Customer service" meant for AI. No other airline counter had such rude officials. I decided to wait and speak to the duty manager, who also refused but after he heard my traumatic story asked me to stay there for a bit. This is like 3 hours since I landed in London still trying to get something I was promised. Finally, he took pity on me and decided to give me a room for a nite and he was perhaps the only AI official who had backed his words with some real action. I went to the hotel & crashed thinking I was done with AI for good ....I was dreaming .... yes, I was. Next morning, I reach Gatwick and presented my booking details to AA to take my flight to the US. They see my booking and ask me for a paper ticket. AI did not give me any paper ticket. They just gave me a piece of paper and thats it. The reservation was a no go and they asked me to buy a new 1 way ticket to Raleigh. At that stage, I couldn't think of anything to do. But i remembered that my original booking was a refundable, changeable ticket. So AA looked up my old reservation and the lady at the counter did some magic and I made it to the my flight to Raleigh. AA tried to trace my luggage, still no information and I am still waiting for it after 40 hrs of my flight.

Apathy:

In this whole experience, the thing I was surprised by was the sense of accountablity (or lack thereof) of the AI employees. Its a true government organization where there is no accountablity and everyone is trying to pass the buck onto someone else and run away from the responsiblities. I pity the old parents, families with infants and foreigners who get screwed and swindled with this kind of treatment. The saddest part of my experience is the AI officials behaviours and no sense of urgency to deal with our issues. It just seems to be a every day issue at AI and I personally noticed so many people losing their heads at the AI counters. After this experience, I have decided that I am going to pay additional money and travel any other airline but AI. They simply do not understand a passenger's or a paying customer's plight after making them go thru such hell. Not to mention how bad the AI website is to dig out any details. A nation like India which is the world leader in IT, our national airline's website sucks and doesn't get me any reasonable information.I just felt that after this experience I need to let every Indian whom I know in the US know about this. AI will not get off the hook this easy. They need to learn a lesson and I am gonna put every effort in trying to do so. I have refrained intentionally from naming individual AI officials since I dont think that would help cause I believe its an organizational issue and the attitude needs to change from the top to bottom, just changing some officials will not make this airline any better.So adios AI .... national airline .... my ass.

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Tailpiece: My wife and I had a harrowing experience ourselves in India trying to fly Air Deccan. It's a long story by itself, but one that reeks of the same complete lack of accountability that Subhayu wrote about - this on the part of the employees of and the Air Deccan management itself. Anyways, its sad that so many of our country's people are continued to be treated like crap.

Now what?

2006-12-14T02:40:00.000-05:00

3 drinks
empty stomach - well ok - some fries in between
a wicked buzz
a lot of cussing and swearing
lots of laughing with good ol' friends in on a celebration
help me walk me up the stairs later in the evening
up to my apartment-for-a-couple-'more-weeks-now
it's the middle of the night - nay early in the morning
And I suddenly find myself awake, wide awake
Buzz gone away
And hungry as hell

Monsters and action heroes

2006-10-04T02:22:00.000-05:00

Conflict is our permanent curse. And as long as there's some form of conflict heroes and villains seem to keep cropping up. Trouble is, several of these "heroes" take to playing the part of do-gooders in order to mask their true intentions like seeking personal gratification of some sort, or to hide their insecurities regarding their own shortcomings, or guilt at having been villains in some way at some other time and now want to atone for it somehow.

Villains, for their part so it seems, are always f**king with humanity, and heroes are always seemingly trying to stop them and consequently save humanity. It's just not in the nature of do-gooding heroes to be content living the calm life like the rest of us common folk suckered into watching one crappy TV show after another. Nope. Heroes are always itching for a fight.

The sad part about the whole thing though is that sometimes the itch to indulge in some blood-letting gets to them so bad - that they actually create monsters out of thin air. Just so that they can have some kind of conflict. Just so that they could justify their own presence in some way most of all to themselves and thereby feel relevant.

That though is little consolation for people who have lost their lives and/or their minds in this battle between heroes and villains. Even if you are now wise to all the antics of the conflict seekers, the sad reality is that you cannot distance yourself from one side or the other. To all of us who lie in between, these self-appointed heroes and their chosen villains (in many cases self-appointed heroes themselves) are both edges of the same knife; the same knife thats sticking out of our collective backs.

Fishing for Validation with Depravity as Bait

2006-09-23T02:24:00.000-05:00

Not all depravity is humourless. In fact, I'd even say that most depravity is humourous. What's really funny, in a sad way, is a joke that's not very funny. Whats sad for me (and sadly or happily funny for you) is that I'm mouthing those unfunny jokes.

Cracking jokes is some kind of a validation trip. That validation is gained through the laughter we induce. The more maniacal the laughter, the more validated we feel. There's nothing more satisfying than a wise crack that gets a lot of laughs. Wit is a sign of intelligence, especially the ones we make on the fly. Or so we keep telling ourselves. So to prove our own intelligence to people around us, most of all to ourselves perhaps, we keep trying to get a witty comment in. When they laugh, it's like, "Wow! That went down well! I must be freakin' funny or something!"

Trouble is, wit is highly subjective. What's funny to me ain't necessarily funny to you. Some get it. Some don't. And there are some who pretend like they don't want to get it. But I have to say that getting it is a good thing. It's stress relieving. It's invigorating. It's tiring - but in a good way. Ok! I digressed from talking about getting jokes to getting some other "it".

See? That was another cheap attempt at humour. It's really sad how badly I want you to laugh at something that cheap. As the title says, I'm fishing for validation using depravity as bait. See how well I linked all that? Chalk coming up with stupid titles as another talent I have.

Night Skyline - Mumbai

2006-09-12T23:17:00.000-05:00

A new look for this page - transitory it will be like most things. My absence is due to work. Loads of it. There is some kind of light at the end of the tunnel. But it's still a little ways to go. Will get there eventually.

I found this link with various images of different Mumbai skylines a few days ago. The link belongs to a forum for skyscraper aficianados called Skyscrapercity, and the topic is a view of the various Mumbai skylines at night-time. Some of the pictures are breathtaking, especially the ones posted by the user who goes by the name "Magestom". I have attached two of the several images from that site here.

With that, it's back to work for me though. Meanwhile, enjoy these pictures of my hometown.

(both pics courtesy: http://www.skyscrapercity.com)

BrijWhiz grows older!

2006-08-25T01:28:00.000-05:00

Many happy returns of the day (August 25th) to BrijWhiz, my personal pioneer and more importantly, one of the very best of buddies a guy ( and/or a woman) can have.

Brij, may your hopes and aspirations for the next year of your life be fulfilled. May your wealth and stock options continue to grow. And may you finally be able to stay away from the hookers and the booze. Oh right! Sorry! You're way past that phase of your life, and your wife wouldn't want to hear of your past exploits. Or rather, I mean the lack thereof (for Megz's sake!).

Continuing on then; may your wife have something sexy and naughty planned for you - and may you help her out a little more by taking a shower finally. (I did that on my birthday and it was received with the most heartfelt expressions of gratitude. One needs to do good deeds as mentioned above annually. Too often though, and you risk diluting the enormity of that particular expression of love.) Shaving your facial hair may be a little too much of a shock for the poor thing though. So go easy on her. One thing at a time.

Ok. Ok. All that roasting aside, a toast to all the good times and bad we've all shared over the last several years, and to all the good people we've met, and the bad ones we dissed, and the pretty ones we ogled. And to your continued presence online and offline (whatever offline and online means). Don't need a share of the stock options though to say life is immeasurably richer with you around (but would definitely help)!

P.S. Just found out that BrijWhiz shares his birthday with ... Sean Connery - whoosh 76 yearsh old today! Now I know why you've had the luck with the ladies, and a penchant for Scotch! Cheers buddy!

Hope

2006-08-18T15:18:00.000-05:00

Ssshh! Don't speak that word. Don't say it out loud. Don't say it like its OK to use it. It's not. There are kids around. You don't want them to ask you what it means, do you?

"Sure, if you want to listen to all the bad news things will always look a tad grim, won't they?! But if you look at all the good things happening - you'll know that its not all bad. In fact, things are getting better. We've turned a corner for sure."

The governments are all trying to put a wicked spin on the facts. Signs, they say, that everything is going well - even getting better. That you've never been safer. But then they also tell you to board up, stock up, tape up and hunker down - safety helmets on - just in case. Just in case what? Just in case, for instance, the unknown Islamo-fascist drives a tank thru the walls of your erstwhile cozy homes, or better still, blows you up to bits.

"... Just in case something bad happens - which, might I add, is not going to happen in the first place."

I suppose then, people like this chick who writes on Baghdad Burning is, at the very least, a pessimist! At worst, she's probably fabricating all this sitting in some desert oasis eating the choicest dates of the land. She must really hate democracy and freedom!

"Absolutely! She needs to cheer up a little. Go party somewhere. Get a life."

Listen to the great white "protector" ramble on about how "democracy" is making all the difference. Like how the world is such a dangerous place today, but still, you've never been safer than you are today. So hunker down in those bunkers, and let your protectors do what we they do best(?). To put on their robes, their cross, their kippahs, their threads and tikas, and take on the bearded zealots. Slaughter them and their brethren, as they slaughter yours, and bomb more trains and run planes into more buildings of your people (and some of theirs).

"Hey! They started the fire - didn't they?! Meanwhile, we'll be taking away some of your freedoms while we're taking care of this problem. Relax though! Its only to protect your freedoms in the first place. See? It's all very, very simple!"

"And if you're too concerned with how your life's not quite turning out right - about how your little corner of the globe is getting a little too hot - move to some palce else. Like California, man! California rocks. There are all those movie stars over there, theme parks, fancy cars that run on premium unleaded, lovely natural vistas, people living carefree lives sipping Mochas, californicating all the time! That's what you should be doing!"

So run away tonight! Forget your worries. Your problems. Your struggles. Your disagreements. Your sense of attachments, of belonging. Your boredom. It's all going to get better. Just ... try not to h--e. Why ruin a perfectly good gig?

I used to h--e. I used to try and pass it around. Not much's coming back these days. Now, my stash is empty.

Maybe your stash is empty coz you've smoked it all away - you stupid f**k!

"Losing my Religion"

2006-08-06T20:00:00.000-05:00

I know, I know all I have been doing here for the past couple of weeks is putting up pictures or embedding YouTube videos. I agree the whole video linking and sharing is wonderful if its used properly - and NOT excessively. It's like thinking that babies love to be tickled all the f**king time. They don't!! At least not you babies out there.

Ah do apologize for mah excess.

Be that as it may, I'm back here with another video: once again ("Lord have mercy!") from CBS's RockStar Supernova. But this time, it's from a performer you haven't seen before on this space - Ryan Star. And I was eating my dinner on my couch watching the show when this performance came up and I stopped chewing for a ... lengthy period of time. I have since viewed this performance, and heard it on mp3 format several times. I think some of you (who haven't yet seen it) will do that too - before you exorcise it out of your system.

Here's Ryan Star then - on this very short video clip from this past Tuesday's episode of Rockstar Supernova with a wonderfully fresh rendition of R.E.M.'s classic "Losing my religion".

To get more of the Supernova stuff ( videos, mp3's , bio's, etc.) visit Supernova Fans . I wish I could say that this will be my last video post on the topic of Rockstar Supernova... but I can't. So you'll have to bear with me for a little while more on this and hope that I get tired of watching the show and quit yapping about it, and move on to something else.

Problem: There's nothing worthwhile to move on to!

Devi

2006-07-31T17:00:00.001-05:00

Continuing on with women-centric posts, here's Devi, a virtual child superhero goddess born out of the partnership between Shekhar Kapur and Deepak Chopra and Virgin Comics (and therefore by default - Richard Branson - since he's owns Virgin).

"She's Devi. A fierce feminine warrior, stronger than the Gods themselves, she is reincarnated into the body of a human woman each time a great threat faces the Pantheon. She is the champion of the heavens and the protector of man."

Now that's impressive introduction. The artwork's very impressive too, at least that's my impression from the sample pages provided. It's about time we had some good Manga with India-centric themes!

Another interesting title in the works by Virgin Comics is Ramayan Reborn. The art work is once again interesting - in a very, very good way. I'll be looking out for copies at local bookstores soon.

However, my only grudge is the language used in the comics. At least within the sample pages, the dialogues somehow seemed a trifle out-of-sync with the artwork. Even the snippet from Devi's introduction that I reproduced here uses terminology of the like "human woman". Hmmm. And here I thought all women were human!

Seriously though, there might be other explanations for gaffes like that. Perhaps, the text on the web-site was hurriedly written by overworked and underpaid writers. Or it could mean the mythologies behind the characters themselves permit the differentiation between a human woman and, for instance, a devil woman or Asura woman, or ... well... we'll have to wait and see. That minor niggle aside, I sense good things for this comic. Even if the language seems stunted somehow, hey, atleast we'll have cool wallpapers of Indian superheroes and such.

Now if only I can get my hands on a copy of one of those comic books, I could sit and read by my window, sipping my hot coffee in my cool NCState mug, watching the snow fall as nuclear winter descends.

(pics courtesy Virgin Comics.)

Storm Large - Bad Ass Beauty!

2006-07-30T03:36:00.000-05:00

I guess its the easier alternative out - put up a post with minimal effort by embedding a YouTube video link. But really, what I am more concerned about is whether the material I "work so hard at" putting up in some way contributes to making your day interesting, if even in the smallest manner possible.

Ok. Thats mostly bull. I am lazy. No getting around it. I have a whole lot of work that I am very stressed about, and that allows me the liberty of continuing to being an ass about all the things I should be doing, people whose calls I should be returning, people who I should be calling, just a whole lot of stuff that's been on the backburner for a while now.

"No. Not now. A terrible purpose awaits me impatiently. All else pales before it. I just cannot be bothered with the trivialities of our social existences while my destiny calls. Not now. No."

But back to the subject of the post.

This is of course my third post connected with "Rockstar: Supernova" on CBS. I apologize to those out there who really don't give a damn about all this Rockstar business. But, if you've read my earlier two posts (1. and 2.), I linked videos of 4 contestants that kinda impressed me on post 1 after week 1 of their performances. Since then, Josh Logan has sorta alienated himself and seems more of a misfit in a setup that isn't be willing to be dragged into so much soul. Heavy metal is definitely a stretch for him. In short, he's a musician - but he doesn't belong here.

I still back Lukas Rossi and Dilana to be the front runners for this gig tho. Even if they don't make it as "Rockstar" i.e. a chance to front the band "Supernova" - and sometimes I think they probably deserve a better deal than this one entails for them as winners - I'd follow their individual music careers with a whole lotta interest. Possibly even more than I'd care about Supernova really!

While it's difficult to find other performances for Dilana on, say YouTube, the search term "Lukas Rossi" does return other performances of Lukas not connected to the show. And yes, he's good. Very good. And I'll try and put up links if possible for Lukas a little later, for those lazy or uninclined to do any searching.

But before we glimpse more into Lukas, there is one other person who deserves attention. I have to reiterate - that Storm Large is one helluva package. Searching for her on YouTube, returned this live performance of hers (location: I-Dunno), with her erstwhile band "Storm, Inc."

This beauty is one Bad Ass, isn't she! And not that I thought any comparisons to Jimmy Morrison were valid here, but her diatribe did sorta rake up the memory of the "Lizard King". But even outside of that comparison, there's a lot more to her than she's revealed on Rockstar. If all her live shows are like this little piece, i.e. she can let herself go each time she performs, then add her to the list of people whose musical career I'd follow. With a personality as intriguing as hers, that's not going to be much of a bother. Not at all.

Two of the ladies on "Rockstar: Supernova"

2006-07-28T00:26:00.000-05:00

I mentioned to some of y'all the show Rockstar: Supernova on CBS in an earlier post. Here're couple more snippets of two of the ladies on the ongoing show; these are from Tuesday's airing (July25th, 2006).

First one's Dilana performing the classic 80's hit "Time after time" by Cyndi Lauper. Bear in mind that she's auditioning for a heavy metal band. Of course, if you saw the earlier snippet of her in the earlier post, you'd know she fits right in to heavy metal. But this reworking of a classic pop hit shows lots of talent, and guts to pull it off so well.

I almost like this version as much as the original. Well performed.

The second one's Storm Large performing "Anything, Anything" by Dramarama. I'd have to say she's one great package. Enjoy her performance, including that dive into the crowd of some real lucky men (and women).

Hah! v/s Duh! (Hi-tek v/s Lo-Tek)

2006-07-17T22:30:00.000-05:00

Venky initiated this discussion on "Would our kids label us as technology illiterate?" Sorta like how we label our parents and their "unsavviness" with regards to modern technology and its use.

Venky's point of view (in his own words) is: "I strongly believe that we (our generation) would bridge the gap between generations as far as using technology is concerned. I’m sure we will NEVER be as up-to-date as our teenage kids (whenever that happens) but we will at least be in the same ballpark – and that is to say that we will be a few steps ahead of our parents’ generation.".

You can read more about his views and his justifications/ reasoning on that earlier link. And as per Brij's request to help further the discussion, I am "copy-pasting" the comment I made earlier to that discussion as a regular post here:

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(July 17, 2006):

Nice discussion there Venky. And although you made some good arguments there, I'd have to say as far as tech-savviness is concerned - the NextGen will be superior.

However, I guess it's important that you separete medium from content in your argument. My firm feeling is (just as Pranav and Soumya) that the average person only picks up so much tech kno-how (essentially knowledge) as much as is of use to that person. Anything more is purely incidental.

In other words, soon you may be using the latest phones and gadgets (as you are so inclined ;) ) but there will be menu items, tabs and mechanisms for which you will have no use for - but the next gen might. For instance rating bars, hangouts, bands, even popular classmates, etc. instantly, or as some of my PhD friends suggested, obtaining a GPS location of the nearest cool joint where the highest number of hip and popular are currently hanging out. Or consider next generation VR games for which there will be better tactile tools for social interaction in virtual communities. How much of use would we have for it once we sink further into our settled mode of social interaction? But would that prevent the next gen from adapting to it? I don't think so. We'd never know how to use next gen virtual interaction equipment by and large, simply because we'd have no use for it.

Not compelling examples those, but just to demonstrate that there'll be tons of stuff around for which we when we grow older - will have no use for. But these things will be developed keeping the NextGen in mind.

Again, as I said medium and content need separation in any discussion on future tech. The reason is that as long as the media which is available to us is supplying us with all the content that we need, there will be very little impetus to move on to something else. Unless and until, we are convinced that the an alternative exists thats atleast as good if not better than our current options, and/or else is being used widely by others.

Those who stay ahead of the curve will have a better chance of adapting to the new tech world. And being tech-savvy could be a powerful tool for the coming future. But, those persons would be more of the few exceptions than the significant majority obeying the rule.

To sum up the sentiment, here's a quote from more than 100 years ago:

"Everything that can be invented has been invented."

-Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899.

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Stuff

2006-07-17T00:58:00.000-05:00

For Mumbai lovers only, Mid-Day's anniversary issue is a must browse (if not read). There are great accompanying pictures, vignettes into the everyday life of a Mumbaikar. ( Clicking on the article will open the article in a readable form on a separate window. )

I have also been watching a webcast of the daily India news on CNN-IBN. Click on the link on the top right of the web-page that allows you to view the webcast. This, for those who want to keep track of the current status of the blasts probe.

"Inanities, Bagatelles"

2006-07-07T23:52:00.000-05:00

...is the title of Raoul's blog.

From dictionary.com:
"Bagatelle:
1. An unimportant or insignificant thing; a trifle.
2. A short, light piece of verse or music.
3. A game played on an oblong table with a cue and balls."

Now that the meaning of "bagatelles" is out of the way, I have to say that it pains me that there are so many good writers out there and yet there's so little material that they churn out. Not that you have to be a writer to write (or blog). If you've made some meaningful contribution on any scale you can think of (while being mostly honest to yourself), you could pat yourself on the back for that. And you'll probably get better at it the more you do it - which is true for a lot of things in life. ;)

However, there are some folks out there who have the ability that most of us don't - to contribute a real lot even when they're not really saying too much. And one hopes that they say a lot more than they let on.

Which brings us back to Raoul.

Rockstar: Supernova

2006-07-06T21:48:00.000-05:00

CBS's second season of their Rockstar show. Sorta like American Idol - except that all the finalists here are rockers or rocker wannabes with a chance for the winner (after all contenders have been systematically eliminated) to be the lead singer of (or to front as they'd say it) a rock band.

Last season, it was the Australian band INXS. This season, it's a newly formed band called "Supernova" with Tommy Lee (ex-Motley Crue and Pam Anderson's ex-husband), Jason Newsted (ex-Metallica) and Gilby Clarke (ex-GNR ). All three of 'em plus Dave Navarro (Red Hot Chilli Peppers) will judge the 15 finalists.

I happened to catch some episodes of Rockstar last season. Before the first show Of last season kicked off, I was very skeptical about the whole deal and didn't really expect anything unique out of it - given the surfeit of singing talent shows like American Idol. However, what won me over at the end of that first show was the talent on display - among the constestants were some really good rockers.

This season's first show aired Wednesday evening - and once again the season start was far from disappointing. In fact, I was more impressed with the finalists this year around than last year. Considering that they're auditioning for a screaming, heavy metal band that's yet to record a single song - it seems like a great chance for one of them to finally bag that one great deal. And what's really cool about the whole thing is the fact that Metal is actually primetime TV (8.00 p.m.)!!

I'll try to post some of the vids from youtube of the finalists I think seem to be early candidates to win this thing. Although you never really know what this new band is looking for and whether they'll actually record something one day.

Rockstar Supernova: Josh Logan

Here's Josh Logan - the rocker with a bit of soul.

Dilana on Rockstar: Supernova

Scary, yet mesmerizing Dilana. While that was a great performance, her act could quickly get stale if that's all she can do.

Storm Large on Rockstar Supernova

Rock could be pretty if we had more singers like her (and few like Steven Tyler!).

Lukas Rossi on Rockstar Supernova

And finally, the frontrunner I believe after week 1 - Lukas Rossi from Canada. This guy is so crazily talented (I watched some more of his clips on youtube, search words: "Lukas Rossi"), he deserves a full band and a great record deal.

More on Shamu!

2006-06-30T03:35:00.001-05:00

Earlier, in this post about Shamu, I mentioned how it irritates me that the Sea World people are scamming us all by calling all their whales Shamu - as if we dumb people wouldn't realize that they're all not the same freakin' animal.

Alternately though, there are other perspectives on Shamu. For instance, here's an article titled "What Shamu Taught Me About a Happy Marriage" by Amy Sutherland about how our beloved Sea World scamster helped her manage her partner better. This is a good read for the ladies (insight into ways in which you could tame that gorilla who lives and sleeps with you), and also for the men (insight into how "that gentle thang" will find some way to get you to always jump thru' hoops while you're thinking you're really showing her who's boss!).

It's funny and yet - quite scary.

2 kinds

2006-06-22T03:11:00.000-05:00

People love categorizing things. Easier to manage - things are if they're categorized. And as far as categorizing people is concerned - for most of us it's usually categorizing people into 2 kinds. The types differ. There's good or evil, right or wrong, black or white, rich or poor, capitalist or communist, with you or against you. Stuff. All appropriate in some context or situation

Increasingly though for me, there are just two kinds of people. Those who are (1) honest to themselves, and (2) those who aren't. And while I don't (quite ironically) know where I belong, I sure know where I want to.

I can't really think of any way to tell for sure who belongs to which category. Mainly because that categorization is so completely internal. I know would like to belong to category 1. Heck, I think we all should aspire to be in category 1. But I also know that I am not really that honest to myself. I know sometimes being honest to oneself is depressing. Especially when you realize that you're not as virtuous as you believe yourself to be.

But if you really want to start categorizing others as honest to themselves or dishonest to themselves, then you're missing the point somewhat - as I am. Finding out who you are is basically a self-test, and failing it means that you obviously have a lot of work to do internally.

And while I don't really think there's a definite sign that tells you who you are in this context at least, I am starting to think that one way to start off on that path is having an awareness or understanding of a sense of irony. Particularly the ironies in your own life. And if you can't see the irony of how things have turned out for you - you've really really really missed the point all this while.

Common Man and friend at Worli sea-face, Mumbai

2006-06-09T01:48:00.000-05:00

(pic courtesy: www.mid-day.com, photographer: Mukesh Parpiani)

Wonder what they're both thinking about. But, I am sure R.K. Laxman's "Common Man" is enjoying the boy's company too. As he stands there taking in the spectacle of the crashing waters of the Arabian Sea, the ebb and flow of the tides, boats and ships in the distance, the approaching monsoon clouds, and the setting sun every evening. Forever lost in contemplation.

Rise and Shine!

2006-06-06T02:38:00.001-05:00

( pic courtesy: http://www.nowrunning.com )

Just finished watching "Gangster" by Anurag Basu, starring Shiney Ahuja, Kangna Ranaut and Emraan Hashmi. The only reason I watched this movie was for Shiney. He has a first name of which I'd normally be mocking by now. Except that I am sold to his acting skills - have been since Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi. And that really means that I don't really care what he calls himself. He acts and acts well. And that's all we should really care about.

Of course, I was hardly expecting another Hazaaron... All I was hoping out of Gangster was - perhaps a decent performance by Shiney, some good music, and that would be it. Not offensively bad. Not crazy good either.

Instead, I got to see a very good debut by newcomer Kangna Ranaut, and solid direction by Basu that paid attention to detail while ensuring the the movie itself worked as a whole. All that was a surprise, and a very pleasant one I might add, to me. Hashmi's presence was also not a major irritant (although his entire angle appeared the weakest link in the relatively tight script). Gangster, unlike several of those sleazy, un-original, "inspired" flicks recently churned out by the Bhatt camp (and Bollywood in general), pays a whole lot of attention to studying and exploring the relationships between its principal characters in some depth, particularly the one between the gangster Shiney and his moll Kangna. It was more than a pleasant surprise that the movie turned out to be well-crafted, even with the cursory skin show and a Hashmi lip-locking scene.

How totally unlike recent movies from the Bhatt camp! Which begs the question - which movie was it inspired by? It couldn't actually be an original story, could it? Abhishek Bandekar at efilmcritic raises the same question in this review of the movie.

And finally, how good was Shiney in this movie you ask? Well - he was good. Very, very good. And what's more, Gangster was well-worth it. Surprised? So was I. So was I.

Smoking pot again (3)?

2006-06-01T16:19:00.000-05:00

Once, when I was much much younger (and that was a long long time ago), as a birthday gift I received a small wooden wall-hanging on which was inscribed, "The smallest good deed is better than the greatest good intention." I don't really know if the person gifting me that plaque was trying to pass on some kind of a subtle message to me or something. Maybe it was a message of some sort. I dunno. But it took me a long time to figure out the significance and the implication of the entire statement.

Such words of wisdom come from pretty much everywhere - from stuff people once wrote and from stuff wise people from our past once said (or were reported to have once said), or even from pop culture, or from the word on the street. Many of them are so commonplace that we don't even have to say them in their entirety anymore. Its enough to say, "Hey, you know what - if it ain't broke..."

Several times though words of wisdom like the one I started this piece with start to sound terribly cliched. Especially when you start using them when you can't really come up with something original but still want to sound at least pseudo-meaningful. In fact, people blurt out cliches frequently in order to pretend to be wise and offer meaningful advice ("You must look into your heart to find the real truth!" and other such pearls.)

And I don't really know if wise words start sounding like cliches because people who use it are unable to think original, or because our generation is far more skeptical and distrusting of any information that comes our way. Everything starts to sound like some amalgamation of cliches, and ultimately just empty rhetoric. With all the mis-information that is out there in the guise of fact, I wouldn't blame our generation really.

But as the saying, apt for circumspect folks like me, goes, "Even a stopped clock shows the right time twice a day!" What it means in this context is that even the worst cliches are sometimes frustratingly apt. Most of the time, how you perceive "words of wisdom" is really a function of the space-time continuum - i.e. a matter of being at the right place at the right time. And if you are in a situation with your defences down and vulnerable to a cliche-attack, a well-aimed cliche might just hit home. And fit just right.

Just like the horoscope you happen to read on one of your more introspective afternoons. Or the preacher you meet on one of your depressed and (more) depraved days. Or the fortune cookie you crack open after a romantic meal (and not add "In bed" or "And then you die!" to whatever the fortune in it says). Or the affirmation that new age gurus give you validation and affirmation addicts in the guise of leading you on to the path of better living. Or the song you hear on the radio when you're driving home pondering over the status of your relationship with your love ("Free! Free! Set them free!")

And maybe, just maybe, just as a stopped clock showing the right time twice a day, as opposed to other quantifiable (or not) instances of time when it doesn't, the cliche that hits home may just so happen to make far more sense to you than anything original you can come up with. Skepticism may just be a convenient way to excuse ourselves from the business of accountability - which is probably how words of wisdom became cliches in the first place.

"Just because it's a cliche - doesn't always mean it's bullsh#t!"

P.S. New look prompted by BrijWhiz who still remains the pioneer - as always!

The Shamu scam?

2006-05-25T02:02:00.001-05:00

If Shamu is everyone's favourite killer whale (or whatever he is ) at Sea World, how come there are four separate whales performing at each of their shows and they're all called Shamu? How's that even possible?

If that weren't enough, there're actually Shamus in Orlando, San Antonio and San Diego - that's right, at all the 3 Sea World locations spread over 3000 miles. How are they at 3 places at the same time? And back to my original question - how are they all called Shamu?!?? Why?!

Americans, you've got to stop naming all your captured animals the same damn thing so as to not get your little bastards all confused and everything.

(Shamu pic courtesy: http://www.adventurist.net )

I need Kavya!

2006-05-11T23:32:00.001-05:00

Well, at least to bump up visits to my blog. Not that it was my intention to do so - but I was pleasantly surprised when I looked at my WebStats counter data that I do about once a week, that since I wrote about Kavya on "Internalizing", my blog got a whole buncha hits.

Take a look at this graph that I got from my counter page.

Notice the large hits in the center - they were during the Kavya days. Now that the hype has sorta died down, and we're all not that interested in how badly she screwed up anymore, in short her 15 minutes of infamy are up, well - my site hits are sadly back to what they were earlier. I guess my advice to bloggers out there is, if you want more people to visit your site - write avidly about current topics and watch the hits rise. Oh wait! We're all doing that already. Shoot!

So, the truth is, I need Kavya as much as Kavya needs inspiration. Pretty badly!

Visit my whorehouse soon folks. Until then...