clog

Too much of cricket this year caused me to stay away from the first four matches of "The honour series". But matches like this keep pulling me back. Another ethereal knock by Sachin and India was sniffing the victory. I wish Jadeja had taken a few deep breaths after Sachin was gone. Unable to stand the pressure, he was almost rushing to get out and be gone from the field.

Australia's bench strength is getting stress tested and yet they manage to outperform.

A disappointing loss but a great match.

Came across an average movie (of course my pov) titled "Butterfly on a Wheel" that is based on the phrase - 'Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel'

Some random google searches helped me conclude that Orkut is still the number one social networking site (4th overall) in India but as suspected facebook is catching up fast. Not in the least is it helped by the fact that most of the western countries prefer facebook.

Similar to what Amit described here, I have independently observed that orkut indeed is considered sidey (that's not my personal view though). People guess based on the personality where would a person be on social networking scene. Comments like "Oh him, he must be on orkut" followed by a laughter are the ones that I have chanced upon more than once in last one week. 'Still stuck to' orkut (just orkut) is definitely not seen as cool.

off late while I am not watching tv is voting to keep Negar Khan in the reality show "Iss Jungle Se Mujhe Bachao". Its been since school that I have followed programs so seriously on tv. Don't get me wrong, I watch more tv than an average housewife, but it is mostly random. Not so this time. So much so that, it has eaten into my reading, blogging and a few other things I do.

So, what is it that has got me hooked up. The answer comes every day at 1130 PM on Sony TV when an uncut version of the show is aired which invariably opens with a sequence of bikni clad Negar Khan taking a bath. Negar Khan with her surgically enhanced lips is given special clothes to match up to her personality. While everyone got a normal T-shirt, hers ends a couple of blocks above her shorts leaving behind a large chunk of real estate uncovered.

What else is interesting in this show is the return of Palak (a roadie) who would have put to shame the rudest guy I have ever met with her gallis. The return isn't without its own twist where Palak instead of saying "Tune apni bahan *** hai" is doing "haan ji" like Shweta Tiwari's character in most of her serials. (She, btw, is another participant in the show). It seems she got some makeover done for her looks as well as her English. Few months back where majority of her dialogs were heard as *beeps*, she is now very comfortable using "so sweet" and "love you" thrice in every sentence. Not to mention her new found Lakhnavi accent ("Hum apne ghar walo ko bahut miss kar rahe hain").

Equally surprising is the fact that the rest of the gang members seem to have fallen for her innocence or at least pretend as such. In something akin to poetic justice, her theatrics got the better of her. Her crying etc for gaining sympathy turned into a nightmare when she was chosen to be one of the two people fighting for survival (and she lost). Apparently everyone felt she was missing her home way too much and is too young to handle this rough journey. Good for her.

I would have talked about two other popular shows, Rakhi... and Sach.. but not doing it, since the former has lost all its fizz and I haven't tried watching the latter.

Anyway, now that I am done with my token post, I am getting back to work. Gotta go to personally kill everyone who is not voting for Negar.

It's been centuries since the concept of Fourth wall has been in existence. At home, you would see a Kader Khan talking to camera in his millions of comedies or a child Mithun in Muqaddar telling the camera - "meri ma hai lekin baap ka pata nahi, main harami hoon".

A little further, Marvel comics has a character who knows he is a comic book character! Most recently he was seen in X-Men Origins: Wolverine

I could never appreciate the fourth wall and subsequently its breaking until I saw it in action. It was one of those moments when I witnessed something remarkable unexpectedly, kind of an aha moment. I was part of an exercise where a play was staged, and then paused to get audience reactions. To my surprise the reactions from audience were met with reactions from the characters without them coming out of their characters. It was not a defense of non committal parties. They were vehement or mild defending their actions as those characters would have, but defended they all. The experience amazed me, the simplicity and effectiveness of the medium. Not to say, the message they were trying to drive came home easy and was thoroughly entertaining. To put it mildly, it was f***ing awesome.

Came across these two news stories on the same day:

IIT student hangs in hostel
IIT Kharagpur tops the list of best Engineering Colleges

I thought it would be fitting to write a post about colors after a week from holi, but well this isn't about holi colors.

Colors is the most promising channel as cited by some popularity stats. In less than one year it has become a threat to stalwarts like star and zee. It took a series of regressive saas bahu sagas to take star to new heights. Not surprisingly, it is even more regressive saga of child marriage that is helping colors. What's wrong with us?

I also felt pretty pissed off after watching their new (or may be not so new) series called Utran. Every episode is punctuated after every 5 minutes by a sad tune where a poor girl is made to feel the pinch of her poverty. I doubt if any poor kid would self pity himself or herself as much as she does. I think most, if not all of them would have made their peace to not complain or think about it every 5 minutes. Its good to show efforts of getting out of poverty, but they could have spared the unnecessary self pity.

They have a talent hunt competition for stand up comedian kids who perform well beyond their ages in every sense of the word. To top it all, one of the judges is a wife beater and drug addict. Some role model, way to go colors!

Prem Panicker is pissed off with the terror attacks like everyone else. Here is a rant post that he wrote asking for comments. Since you need to register to comment on his site, instead I am choosing to write my comment here. So here it goes.

What pisses me off most is:

"The talk" - any kind; including the one in his blog and the comment I am writing in this post.

No matter how intelligent a debate is, it doesn't solve any problem. I hope for people (all of us) to get into the mode of "Stop talking, Start doing" (those who are already doing it, thank you and keep going) and doing whatever we can without any self promotion or any show of self righteousness.

After Obama's landslide victory much of which is attributed to his oratory skills, debating would be lauded even more. It always appears, you are right only if you can prove it, which is the point of any debate. But when it comes to real results, a lot of decisions that may be inexplicable or lot of people who won't be great at explaining stuff will prove far more useful than the windbags. Having said that, there is no other way than to debate for weighing the options of a decision but the ability to explain should not become paramount. People will end up providing "explainable" solutions not the best solutions. We may end up with just talkers everywhere.

As India is reeling under the impact of terror attacks and all those involved in rescue operations are trying their best, the last thing anyone would want is a painful, non-cooperative, intrusive and complaining media. For a change, the reporting has been uncharacteristically mature on all the major news channels. It seemed completely sensible until Shobha De and Barkha Dutt, two ladies who sensationalize everything, came on the screen chatting on phone. All the cliched talks of taxes and government apathy were repeated. One moment Ms De was not happy as there wasn't enough political presence on the scene, next moment she felt Manmohan Singh and Advani flying there was meaningless and then urged all the politicians to stay away. I am appalled at the logic and more so at the timing of these rants. Well, I guess I will end my meta-rant with this.

Citigroup gets ready to cut 52,000 jobs

Only if he could have taken his work a little less seriously.

http://sify.com/news/fullstory.php?id=14737007

This is inspired by(in response to) an article written by Shashi Tharoor in his regular column in Times of India. He hailed the court verdict acquitting M F Husain of all the accusations related to his painting nude pictures of Hindu goddesses. Here are a few 'gems' of his articles.

Why is Indias Picasso staying away
Its time to stop harassing M F Husain

First off, I don't agree to the point he made but that is not the point of this blog. He made a reference to Kamasutra as traditional Hindu text and using it as a defense to drawing pictures of goddesses in nude.

Transporting ourselves to Bollywood, "Mumbai Salsa", a C-grade movie (IMDB rating 3.7) about Mumbai's urban life. There is a foreign character who 'kind of' defends one night stands because we have a history that features Kamasutra and Khajuraho in it.

Looks like, Kamasutra can justify almost anything remotely related to sex or nudity or even pornography. I have nothing against these things, if it were not for the context in which these things are done.

Now, personally I have nothing against one night stands, but I took exception to the reasoning behind justifying it. They are justified in their own right - Kamasutra or no Kamasutra. Just because some sage wrote about sex doesn't mean you use it as a justification/reason for having one night stands or painting gods without clothes. It is akin to saying that it's ok to kill your siblings because we have had some serious sibling rivalry in Mahabharata.

Kamasutra may have been written as a book that touches all the aspects of relationships centered around sex, It wouldn't be prudent to use it to decide about extra-marital affairs or one night stands. Also, I am not entirely sure of the contents anyways.

To Tharoor,
I expected better reasoning from you. May be you are extremely liberal, may be even to the point of letting your family members get painted in nude or caught up in acts which most of the less-liberal people intend to keep indoors, but it is harsh to impose your own sense of values on a society as a whole just because someone decided to write a book about sex centuries ago. It was anybody's guess as to what the reaction would have been to those paintings.

To Husain,
You have done very well so far in not painting anything absurd for your own religion, that would have probably put a full stop to your career and life (and a lot of people will find it justified after all India has a great tradition not only sex but violence as well). Next time when you put your brush to use, do the same with your common sense else as a not-so-liberal art admirer, I will be inclined to think of it as a gimmick for cheap publicity, which I know it is.

To a blogger,
who swears by the line "opinions are like assholes, everyone has one". Most of his opinions certainly are. He has written way too many controversial posts with a good number devoted to the Husain controversy, feeding on his controversy for his own publicity?

http://sujaiblog.blogspot.com/2007/07/shashi-tharoor-on-mf-husain.html
http://sujaiblog.blogspot.com/2008/07/mf-husain-nudes-judgment.html?showComment=1215694860000

To All,

Use your common sense before doing something controversial or reacting to it.

Disclaimer: I don't approve of the acts of vandalism that happened against the artist in the wake of this controversy.

• Sudden Slowers: Cars suddenly slowing down on the middle of roads apparently for no reasons form the first category. They are people who fiddle around with their headsets/phones in an attempt to take all those urgent calls they need to take.
• Rajesh Khannas: They are people on two wheelers with their heads strategically tilted to support a mobile phone. It also, implies that they don't wear helmets. The ones with helmets are mellowed down RKs needing a lesser tilt for the cushion of helmets makes it easier to support phones.
• Loosely coupled cars: This is a pair of two two-wheelers going parallel like Jai and Veeru would have done if their bike didn't have a sidecar.
• Head Turners: This happens when the pillion rider is a girl. Not willing to lose even a moment of conversation with the pretty girl at the back the rider would perilously turn his head to listen to her every syllable. Love knows no fear.
  

This is a little later than I expected. I intended to publish it over new year but that just didn't happen. Anyways, here it is and all the possible disclaimers go with this post. The entries are in no particular order (if you want to assume any, best bet would be to go from 5 to 1)

H'Wood Movies

• The Departed (for all the cursing)/HPOOP (For the arrival of grey potter and full fledged Voldermort, magnificent!)
• Spiderman3 - Spiderman can't go wrong ;-)
• 300 - For the poetic narration and blood
• The Bourne Ultimatum - Slick as ever
• The pursuit of Happyness - This is one of the best movies I have seen in recent times (the others on the list are partly due to my prejudices)

B'Wood Movies

• Guru - was a little different
• Bhool Bhulaiya - For the bengali ghost - Manjulika ("tor rokto khete chai" will be the dialog of the year for me)
• Om Shanti Om - For unabashed irreverence and shahrukh's assertion that he is bigger than any(thing/one) else in bollywood
• Tare Zameen Par - No nonsense stuff
• Khosla ka Ghosla - An old world, cleam, smart comedy

Sportsperson

• S Mirza - For the game and the looks ;-), Good show overall, three cheers for her new best ranking.
• S Tendulkar - he will remain there in the list as long as he keeps playing
• Y Singh - six sixes (stuff that will make it to the cricketing legend, even more because of the fact that he had a conversation with flintoff right before the over)
• S Ganguly - Comeback king, my respect for him is at an all time high
• R Federer - do i need a reason

Flops (B'wood)

• Dhol - No head or tail
• Bheja Fry - I had high expectations given the star cast
• Traffic Signal - Total bore
• Aap Ka Suroor - I have seen parts, and its kind of disgusting
• Aag :-(

Songs(Any)

• Aankhon me Teri
• Jag soona soona laage
• Hare Ram Hare Ram
• bin tere kya hai jeena
• Ya rabba

Best Ads (3)

• Vodafone Alerts (The art of living one)
• Vodafone - (May fly)
• J C Penny - Magic

Worst Ads

• Dish TV - Shahrukh khan
• HDFC Pension Plan - Singapore trip one
• Idea Cellular (What an idea. Moronic idea for removing caste based differences, drop the last names genius. Doesn't appeal to my humour at all)
• Future group - Sone ki chiriya - The overall ad sounds retarded and ironically was one of the chief sponsor for series "My brilliant brain" on Nat Geo
• Airtel - Shahrukh double role

Moments in Cricket

• India's loss to b'desh - I had a hard time explaining what went wrong to my clients in US and how could we lose to such a weak team
• T20 victory - History
• Six Sixes - Good job
• Murali on top - His record is just so ahead of everyone else (including shane warne)
• Australia wins again - The invincibles

Worst phrases (anywhere)

• Guru Greg
• Guru Gary
• Chak De India (Please stop chaking now)
• All the Aaj tak alliterations
• Team India (Call it India Team or Indian Team, but this one just doesn't sound good)

VJs/anchors/RJs

• Mia [You need guts to host a show in your nightwear/undergarments :-) ]
• Anusha [Super accent]
• Vinay Pathak [the underdog, not any more]
• Ranvir Shourie [can play an asshole better than anyone else]
• Sarah Jane Dias (She was Vj for Channel V get gorgeous, so she does qualify)

Blogs

• clog - The awesome new blog on the block :-)
• iLog - An awesomer blog written by my friend and ex-team member
• Joel - For all the cult following
• Twisted-dna - Super style and humours
• Raganwald - for being super-prolific and some brilliant nuggets of code that I don't get at all

There was an article in The Times of India about punishment to children. The writer wasn't particularly amused by the idea of punishments as a means to improve kids. She went on to talk about how it demolishes their confidence and all. I have no comments (neither for nor against) on what she thinks. However, there was a specific punishment example she mentioned that floored me due to sheer creativity involved.

Her teacher used to punish students by making them stand in a dustbin. She used to tell them, they are there because that's where they belong.

Before I get labelled a sadist, let me clarify that I am not hailing the punishment because of the impact it had on kids, but because it sounds quite ingenious.

As year 2007 draws to a close, I am planning to put up my list of year's top 5s. Thanks to internet (the enabler) that is allowing people to do such stupid things :-)

I have an initial list of categories, I intend to work on the entries in next few weeks and publish the results. Feel free to leave a comment mentioning your choice for a category or a new category if you care.

As much as I would have liked to do it on popular votes, I simply cannot, because I don't have enough readers (yet, my hopeful yet!) to cast votes :-)

- H'Wood Movies
- B'Wood Movies
- Sportsperson
- Flops (B'wood)
- Songs(Any)
- Ads
- Worst Ads
- Moments in Cricket
- Worst phrases (anywhere)
- VJs/anchors/RJs

Its been around 10 months since I went to Delhi. The idea was to go to IITF. Well some trip it was, a pleasant surprise. Roads to and in Delhi are fantastic. There are all the right signs at all the right places (well almost). Things are in order as they should be everywhere. Well, that wasn't all that impressed me. The Metro, newest addition to Delhi is truly world class.

Thanks to Metro and a series of flyovers, almost all of Delhi now travels in air. Trade fair was fine, not that I was expecting a lot.

All in all, Delhi rocks!