Rants - Oh Imperfect Realm

Yes, we can!

2010-12-20T10:22:00.000-08:00

A long time ago, (and wow has it been a long time!) I had written about how Indian IT industry must climb up the value chain. Since then I have known a few companies that have done so through high tech startups based off US but getting a lot of quality work done out of India and also of a handful of brave souls doing business in the west based out of India. The entrepreneurship spirit in India is blooming in other industries, but what about IT?

A story which has caught my attention for many months and has been kept alive during all the gadget talk at office is the much heralded and very little known Adam tablet. “Oh no, not another ipad wannabe”, you say. Well my friend, before we kill the product by calling it an ipad killer, let us give it some attention and possibly its due. This device has quite a few firsts to its name:

1. Its gonna be the first android 2.3 (gingerbread) based tablet
2. Its gonna be the first tablet to house the power frugal nvidia tegra 2 at its heart
3. Its gonna be the first tablet to have the pixel qi screen
4. Its gonna be able to play more than a day of continuous 1080p video playback
5. And most importantly, Its gonna be the first India based tablet which fights in the world scene (not counting olivepad)

The CEO of notionink, the company behind the Adam tablet, is Rohan Shravan, an IIT alumnus. Unlike his numerous predecessors and peers, he chose to NOT create jobs in US, but rather in India! He is a young chap and his confidence in his product was evident during his interview to ET Now. The start has definitely been promising but the company has pushed out the release dates in the past (not surprising) and any more details may kill a lot of the “new” stuff that Adam tablet has to offer. There is also the challenge of getting people to write some seriously nice apps for this platform, which wont be easy for a small company. Also, they need to give the look of a company that is out there to do serious business and actually beat the likes of Apple and Samsung and avoid such goofs.

All in all, very proud of what this company has achieved! And if they bring down the price by another $100 (wishful thinking never killed anyone) and ship within India for less than $50 then I will buy one. ;-)

Movie and reality

2010-12-19T02:25:00.001-08:00

There are so many movies released these days with either very interesting plots or very interesting promos that I end up seeing a good number of them. I then feel hardly inspired to write movie reviews because a good number of them won't even be worth a mention. But here is a post that is not a review but yet is inspired by a movie.

I watched Rakht Charitra a few weeks back and today watched the second part of the RGV two part experiment. The movie in itself was just an extension of the first part and all violence, what got me interested were the pearls off wisdom that RGV had to say at the end of the movie. :-)

Did some googling, some wiki and some youtube and what I discovered was quite scary. The movie in both its parts shows a lot of violence and shows the heady mix of politics and caste issues in Andhra. The violence shown is so gruesome and the revenge and vendetta so unreal that the realization that all that was shown was more or less factually correct was most shocking.

Whatever be the reasons and I don't claim to understand any of it, to know we live in situations where forget corruption but this level of violence exists is an eye opener. I have read on and off about naxalites and how violent they are when they exact revenge and then too see it in celluloid strangely makes it all the more real.

The political system and will around such gruesomeness also tells you that no matter how much we middle class try, India has too much baggage it carries for us to pull it out off this mess. Was I naive enough to think we could, yes, I was.

I believe that if each individual sets his house right, then, over time, the nation will also be set right. Not all of us have the will to fight against crime and corruption, but a long as we support those who are, we are doing our part.

But if the ground reality is this bad, do we stand a chance?

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Leaked. :-)

2010-12-15T02:39:00.001-08:00

Courtesy: xkcd

Disgusted and Helpless

2010-11-20T10:25:00.000-08:00

For a generation that I belong to, which is bestowed with the responsibility of taking India to a superpower in world economies, the condition at home is far from inspiring. When I say "Home", you can take it as India, you can take it as Karnataka and you can also take it as Bengaluru.

Take India on the whole and like in the last couple of decades, we are not short of scams at any point of time. The only difference, we have graduated from scams that were a few tens or hunderds of crores to thousands, ten thousands and even lakhs!! Take Karnataka and you have the whole fiasco with majority vote for BJP government, here we are talking of partys on the whole trying to grab power by horse, now lets not calls these goons horses, more like donkey trading(sorry donkey)! And finally let’s take Bengaluru and we are hit by the continuous stream of land grabbing news coming out of the Yeddy family coffers.

Now, scams are not new to us. We have seen our fair share of them over the years. The CWG scam was just Kalmadi making hay when sun shines, god knows when we will host another non-cricket world event of any repute (CWG just about cuts it). While Raja was just doing what he was sent to Delhi to do, make money for DMK. Of course, it helps if you are dating the supremo’s granddaughter! The Adarsh society issue is possibly the most harmless or least money involving of the lot. And there has been one fall guy for all of these scams. Kalmadi is gone, Raja is gone and Chavan is gone. Enquiry is on for each of these scams, but the Congress party has at least shown the door to the primary person involved in these. It isn't much and it is too late, but then, it is something. What sets the Karnataka/Bengaluru scams apart is the openess of everything. All this is being said and done in the open! Imagine the confidence and gall of Yeddy to say publicly that he has done all the land grabbing that is being mentioned. And what is his defense?? His predecessors have done it and he has just followed the "tradition"! The tradition??, what kind of lunacy is this?? And he and his think-tanks figure out a perfect way to get out of this nice mess. They agree and spearhead a probe into the land grabbing, but not just the current one but whatever has happened in the last 10 years! This way, the other corrupt lot of opposition politicians keeps their mouth shut and all this gets brushed under the ever growingly stinky carpet. This jackass should be thrown out of office for not only doing all this land grabbing, but also for not doing anything about all the misdoings by "tradition" that he was aware of!! Karnataka is the first state in south India where BJP has come to power and instead of being a beacon of good governance, as was promised, it has epitomized what can go wrong in a power and money starved political setup. The mining thing and reddys happened, numerous lok ayukta issues happened, katta happened, the renukacharya happened and now land grabbing. Nothing has resulted in the BJP top brass doing anything. It is almost as if the state government has been told to make money and make money fast, the elections are gonna come anyway. And all we get from Joker of a CM is, tears... yes, this nincompoop can put crocodiles to shame!

What does this make us citizens as?? Just bystanders? Its true most of us dont have the time to spend, but we have the monetary will and wish to make governance better. If I have to pay shitload of taxes just for these goons and buffons to make merry, I sure can spend money to get some professionals to play out the case for us on court. Ideally, this can be under the purview of some government body, but since the perpetrator here and in most cases is the government, this has to be a higher authority. Something which is less tainted or influenced by governments, say the judiciary. Can this work? What is the flaw? Dont tell me that the the adage "want something done, do it yourself" is going to be the solution here, coz this whole "do it yourself" is bullshit! I am doing my part which is doing my job which gives me money in my hand to spend in this land. Remember the early part about economic superpower?? Yeah, I am part of that effort. On the other hand, the effort needed to "do it" is so high... sorry, I will rather rant on blogs and live my life in this corrupted land than have to "do it". I and I am sure more like me have the will and means to help, someone make use of it, else... thanks for reading! :-)

Bad Sport

2010-10-06T08:04:00.000-07:00

The first test match between India and Australia at Mohali ended up being a classic. It will definitely be remembered for Laxmans class and Ishants defiance, not to mention their will to fight over physical pain. Test cricket is dead, but then, such matches do help revive the memories a bit.

But that being said, with Commonwealth Games on at Delhi, it was super insensitive of the BCCI and all concerned to have the most anticipated test series, possibly more than an India vs Pakistan series, to be help coinciding with the games. We live in a cricket crazy nation and the series just takes the spotlight away from CWG. Delaying this series by a couple of weeks should not have mattered to cricket, but would have made a world of difference to CWG. Abhinav Bindra went on to say “The Commonwealth Games will dominate the news columns. At least I want to live with that illusion.” Imagine our Olympic Gold medal winner having to make such statements.

This whole crap about BCCI being a non government body and the government having no control over it is all bullshit! For a non government body it sure has a lot of government ministers and in some cases chief ministers as head of the state cricket boards! The government should have cracked the whip and told BCCI to take a break of two weeks and then continue with their money making ways!

"History doesn't win matches"

2010-10-03T11:30:00.000-07:00

The title of this post are the words of Arsene Wenger before Arsenals Premier league match against chelsea (which they lost). Similarly, even the players (or coaches) can't live on their past laurels. Going by what I have seen this season, here is my wishlist of folks who must either hang up their boots or at least be demoted from their high pedestal.

1. Danni Alves (Barcelona) - He is playing "Oh so bad!"
2. Patrick Viera (Man City) - Please retire!
3. Rafa Benitez (Inter Milan) - You screwed liverpool, now inter?
4. Ronaldinho (AC Milan) - In football, running is mandatory!
5. Iker Cassilas (Real Madrid) - World Cup is over, can better goalkeepers take over?
6. Jamie Carragher (Liverpool) - You can't outrun a tortoise, good luck with rabbits!
7. Fernando Torres (Liverpool) - Spain and Liverpool have been patient, now score!
8. Andrea Pirlo (AC Milan) - You are the playmaker, make some plays!
9. Barcelona - The world knows your game! Change it!!
10. AC Milan - Even young reinforcements cant carry your old long-timers!

I am harsh on some and lenient on some, but I believe there is definitely some food for thought here. :-)

The test...

2010-10-03T09:07:00.000-07:00

11 more days... yes, we need to survive 11 days of thoughtless media scrutiny and irresponsible bureaucracy to come out head not held low. The CWG 2010 is on and in-spite of a super bad run-up to the games, we somehow have managed a "jugaad" solution to get the games going.

Most of us, the hapless middle-class can only watch what is shown to us and discuss about in the cafeteria in our offices, and the general consensus was that the games be scrapped. It is so sad to think that our so called competitors, China help the Olympics in such a breathtaking manner, while we struggle to put our best foot forward for the comparatively insignificant Commonwealth Games.

On the other hand, we could think like Mr.Anirban Chaudhuri, who claims that commonwealth games are a display of imperialism and slavery. And if this were the case, we may in fact start praying for the games to flop. :-)

An idea for Steve!

2010-09-21T08:41:00.000-07:00

I won't be surprised if @pple came out with a product similar to what is mentioned below and it too sold like hot cakes! :-)

Bad luck?

2010-09-12T21:39:00.000-07:00

All sports is about skill and it is just as much about luck too. In some cases it may not be as obvious, but luck play a HUGE part in sports. Instead of focusing on specific incidents or instances during cricket or football or tennis matches etc, I am more keen in establishing the bad luck an individual carries along with him.

I was watching this Tamil movie Bale Pandiya and I haven't finished watching the movie, but the movie revolves around a guys who just spells "bad luck". This is good for a movie plot, but in real life? and in sports? My take, yes, there are guys who just spell "bad luck". :-)

The example I would take to explain this is Javier Mascherano. :-). In all my years of regular premier league watching (all of 2 years :-)), I have hardly seen anything worthwhile from Mascherano other than blatant fouls and injury feigning. He just spells bad luck all the way! Here is my analysis. :-)

1. I believe he along with Lucas were instrumental for the horrid time Liverpool had last season, in what can be described only as midfield mundaneness!! And as a result Rafa Benitez got the boot. To my surprise Rafa actually wanted Mascherano to sign on for his new club, Inter Milan! Lucky Inter, he didn't join them. ;-)
2. Similarly, for some inexplicable reason, Diego Maradona trusted Mascherano enough to have his as captain of the Argentinian national team. As can be expected they struggled to qualify for the world cup and later didn't do very well in the world cup either.
3. As if enough people hadn't burnt their fingers, the shrewd thinker, Pep Guardiola from Barcelona decided to get Mascherano for th 2010 season and again no surprises, Barca lost their first league match at home in ages! And that too to a team that is playing La Liga for the first time in 13 years!!

I honestly don't know what makes Javier a favorite of these coaches, surely can't be his luck. :-D

Humour and More...

2010-09-12T21:30:00.001-07:00

Courtesy: xkcd.com

Time erodes quality...

2010-08-18T09:19:00.000-07:00

The very first infotainment program I can ever remember watching was "The World This Week" on DD presented by Prannoy Roy. I used to diligently watch it every Friday (I think?) and that was my window to the world! I have since followed Prannoy Roys shows, his election coverage (along with Vinod Dua in Hindi), the lauch of NDTV, the growth of NDTV etc etc.

Since he is CEO and stuff, he no longer reads the news, at least not regularly. Tonight I happened to tune to NDTV and I was surprised to see Prannoy reading the news. The Prannoy I remember was crisp, sharp, to the point and rarely wasting time. But the Prannoy I saw tonight was so so different and super disappointing! He was talking to Montek Singh Ahluwalia about inflation and stuff and he was OK, then he took up some lame cricket controversy and talked to Gavaskar. It was super artificial, he was not "into" the news, was out of depth, and was out of words!! Some unnecessary pleasantries, lotsa backrubs and many fumbling words later he moved on to the next "item". We now had Deepika Padukone and Neil Nitin Mukesh on show to promote a film. Again, total waste of time in both talking and asking departments. The question only got more stupid! Again no attachment to the story he is trying to say or make and there you go… News@9 is over!

It is so sad to see a stalwart such as Prannoy Roy showing that he is just one of "them". Even though I knew he is just as much a part of the bad media we are all exposed to in India today, it just feels really sad to actually see it. :-(

Loyalty?

2010-08-09T11:46:00.000-07:00

Apple Inc is bigger than its long time rival Microsoft and friend-turned-foe Google and is in no mood to leave the throne. The iPhone 4 just cemented its position even more firmly.

But it was not all rosy, what with the gizmodo leak and steve losing the bang that he is so used to generating in his keynotes. People soon forgot all this when the real deal was released and was lapped up by enthusiasts. So much so, that people started dumping their hardly used iPhone 3G phones to get the latest fad, fashion statement, cool gizmo, the "in" thing, etc etc. Not soon after the release the problems with iPhone's signal reception issues cropped up and the blame was on its much touted antenna design. True to apples legacy, they seem to have recovered from this setback too, albeit rather lethargically. But Apple could not let go of this shame so easily, after all they had a reputation to maintain. The person who got the sack was Mark Papermaster, the HW design guru.

This ~~lead~~ led me to read a bit more about Mark and the first thing that hit me about him was that he was with IBM for 25 years!! I know that some in India too agree that IBM is a place you are retire at, but still 25 years, wow!! But then, even after 25 years and after all his contributions, when he left IBM to go to Apple, he was sued by IBM! Yes, that is what 25 years bought him, a law suit and 2 court certificates to prove that he hadn't leaked any "IP" to Apple.

I have always believed that, you can almost never buy loyalty. Either the employee feels it or he doesn't. And if loyalty sounds too old school, call it professionalism. But whatever you call it, "it" is hard to come by. During my early days, I have gone through bouts of this loyalty pangs and almost felt guilty when I had to quit. Did it a second time, it got better and slowly realized that there is no such thing as loyalty. Once you leave a company, the company has to keep the interests of those who are still associated with it at higher priority. This can be at the cost of friendships and unsaid remorses (in some cases 25 years of it!!).

As insensitive as it may sound, it is business, nothing more, nothing less. They companies know it, the employees seem to take some time to figure it out. :-)

Chrome's Inspiration?

2010-07-29T08:40:00.000-07:00

An artists view...

:-)
p.s: Courtesy Patel.

Be very scared!

2010-07-26T02:12:00.000-07:00

How do they do it?

2010-07-18T09:10:00.000-07:00

Not so long ago, Bill Gates pledged almost all (if not all) of his money to a charitable trust run by his wife and himself. Warren Buffet, the guru of the stock markets pledged his billions to the same charitable trust. And today I read this. Paul Allen, the other and less famous half of Microsoft, and a successful VC in his own right, has pledged many billions to a charity trust started by him.

This kind of Philanthropy truly amazed me. Of course, you can question if this is all just some kinda hogwash and maybe the money is getting channeled back to them. But frankly, there are too many hawk eyes and ears in the world these days and pulling something off of this nature is next to impossible. So, the only possible explanation is the most unbelievable one! These guys are actually parting with their life's hard earned money!! I am just super surprised by all this because, Philanthropy of any form doesn't come naturally to me, and it does not for most Indians. And we really don't have such examples set by Indian businessmen either. Sure, there are some who give up their lives working and caring for the poor or needy, but how many part with their money and that too so much of it! Can you imagine the feuding Ambanis parting with so much of their money? Or maybe the splintered Birlas or the family run businesses like Bajaj or Godrej or .. I can go on and on...

Some facts are surely stranger than fiction!!

A festival...

2010-07-15T21:39:00.000-07:00

The FIFA world cup 2010 concluded after 40 days of fun and excitement. As many close to me know, I was supporting Spain from day one and feel vindicated at the end of it all. :-)

This was probably the first world cup where I saw a huge cross section of friends, family and colleagues keenly following the world cup and tracking their favourite teams. This made it all the more interesting during and post match discussions and it was such a lot of fun. I enjoyed it thoroughly!!

I am a lover of Jogo Bonito and have been following the EPL, La Liga, Serie A and Bundesliga for the last couple of years. Since this is where all the money is, most of the best players in the world play here and more often than not, the club football is more fun than when countries play each other. But the standouts during the last couple of years, in my view, have been Barcelona and as an extension Spain. They play a brand of football that I love to watch, endorse and play!

This is not to say that 4 years from now, I will continue supporting Spain. A lot of things can change in 4 years and I suspect the real stalwarts of the "Beautiful Game", like Brazil and Argentina will learn from their early exits from this world cup and go back to their style and flair rather than mimic the European nations. And then there are the bruised giants like France and Italy and the quintessential under achievers, England, who have a point or two to prove. And who can discount the Germans, who livened the world cup like no other team has!

As the excitement of one subsides, the wait for the next one starts...

Very Messy

2010-07-15T21:30:00.001-07:00

The BP oil slick in the Gulf Of Mexico has US very interested coz it is very close to home and by the same measure has indians very disinterested because it is far from home. I saw very little coverage in the media about this and thanks to that I didn't know of the extent of mess that BP had gotten itself and the world into.

Today I got some time to do some youtube searching and as expected I was not disappointed. Have a look at the below video.

The good part of being in India is, you are slowly but surely trained to accept most ill around you as inevitable and unavoidable and in the process we are all stoic about it. So, I don't know if this was closer to home, would it have made any difference? On a lighter note and with a touch of sarcasm, Scott Adams on BP.

Outcry... really?

2010-05-22T10:22:00.001-07:00

Nice weather, some errands to run and more resulted in me deciding to make my weekend a long one and stayed at home on Friday. This gave me time to do things I used to do a lot earlier and never find time to do now, like seeing TV channels other than Sun Music! :-) I decided to take a round of the breaking channels. The same stories were breaking in different channels albeit each channel focusing on a different one at any point of viewing.

The first one was regarding a ex-BSF jawan who was shown the boot by Canadian Immigration officials. Each channel was showing Canada in the worst light possible. It was as if they had committed the greatest crime against India. An insult so unbearable that some politicians (trying to cash in of course) wanted us to send back the Canadian high commission diplomats to Canada. While it is true that the reasoning given by Canada to reject the ex-BSF jawans immigration application was not the best possible one and in ways insulting to the Indian armed forces, I think a different look is worthy, considering the usual "trial by media" mode in which India and its media works these days.

1. Canada houses a HUGE population of Sikhs many of whom are ex-khalistan fighters who are not known for their peaceful ways. Coincidentally, the ex-BSF jawan was a Sikh and assume for the sake of argument that this was the reason that the officials didn't want him in Canada. Not letting him into Canada was their prerogative and if they had openly told the above mentioned reason, it would have amounted to racism and somehow the Caucasians somehow get the worst of it. Indians are just as racist if not more than any other country, but we and rest of the racist hypocrites would pounce on Canada if it had given this as the reason for rejecting the ex-bsf jawans visa.

2. Canada as a country has the right to not allow anyone to come into its territory. Fault it for the reason it gave, but not to its right to choose its citizens/immigrants.

3. The ex-BSF jawan was going to leave India and be an immigrant. Not a very patriotic thing to do, but somehow the media wants to make us and apparently succeeds in making us patriotic for this!

4. Some indian techies can vouch for much worse treatment by the US consulate during the visa process or the US immigration authorities at the port of entry. The reasons for rejection can be far more frivolous and yet we all are OK with it. Some of the horror stories my colleagues have faced is better left untold.

5. Racial profiling is the name of the game in European and US airports. They would never agree or accept it, but from their point of view, they stand a better chance of catching a Faisal Shahzad by doing this rather than check the Caucasian race people for the sake of being politically correct! Again, a country protecting its interests, can't fault that!

To summarize, I agree that Canada could have been more judicious in its reason, but is this really such a big deal ? We settle for far worse on so many more serious fronts, but somehow chose this to be the battle that needs fighting ?

Living Legend

2010-04-24T02:25:00.001-07:00

I am no fan of the ipoo's. I never liked the ipod and didnt find the value in ipod touch either. I am likely to get one soon enough to know what the value talk is all about. I also didn't like the iphone when it was released, but the recent ones have been more promising. I have a similar doubt on the value of the iPad which too will be lapped up by consumers faster than they can be sold :-). But all being said, one thing majority of us will have to agree to is the "i" brigade has changed that way the world listens, communicates and connects. The man behind this revolution, like many others, is Steve Jobs. This compulsive entrepreneurs business life can be compared to that of a cat and his revivals to that of a phoenix. And when a man of his vision talks, people listen and with reason. Here is a small speech he gave to a bunch of Stanford grads. Seems rather melodramatic at times, unbelievable at times and possibly a bit gloating too, but a captivating listen none the less .

Feel...

2010-04-22T07:24:00.000-07:00

I cracked up as soon as I saw this and just had to share it!! :-)))

Courtesy:xkcd

An outside opinion...

2010-04-04T00:35:00.001-07:00

A wise friend of mine once said, "If you want to know what really happens in India or what India really does, read Dawn, the Pakistani Daily". These were not empty words as my friend used to first read Dawn before picking up TOI everyday! I never tried to figure out how correct he was, but the below article in todays TOI sure reminded me of him!

India’s growing misfortunes
Following the signing of the nuclear agreement with India, owing to India’s pressures, America declined to sign a nuclear deal with Pakistan… But now, America is ignoring India’s opposition and has commenced preliminary discussions in that direction with Pakistan. As a result of this change of policy by America, India is in a grave predicament today… In addition, America refusing to hand over Headley, who is now in the custody of America, to India for interrogation, in connection with the Mumbai terrorist attack has further aggravated India’s plight. It is India’s failure to perform its South Asia leadership role duly safeguarding the American interest, which is at the epicentre of India’s present inescapable quagmire… India is the architect of its own misfortunes.
— Daily Mirror, Wednesday,
March 31, Sri Lanka

How much of truth is hidden in the above article is open to discussion, but this sure gives us a relatively unbiased look at the current situation and for us to understand where we stand or where countries with an interest in the matters surrounding India or South East Asia think we stand.

Movie Review: Karthik Calling Karthik

2010-04-03T04:45:00.001-07:00

The Hindi film world had long been riddled with mediocre films or high budget films but very rarely with thoughtful films. But the multiplex generation has changed the landscape with a new breed of directors, producers and actors. There is a chance of seeing a totally nonsense movie and just as much chance of seeing a 2 hour sensible or sensitive depiction of a storyline by a crew not burdened with expectations or stereotypes.

One such movie is Karthik Calling Karthik. I was expecting to see a romantic story being told with a twist or two. But it turned out to be a thriller which was quite a surprise. Farhan has done nothing more than an OK job. I may be in the minority, but I don't find him a good actor. Deepika is also quite plastic, but at least she can look pleasing. ;-). But kudos to the screenplay and director for keeping their wits about their thin storyline and keeping everything together. The supporting cast is very small and contributions also minimal and hence nothing noteworthy to mention in terms of acting either. Since there is a mystery element to the story, I wont delve on that part, but then, there is nothing else to delve on in this movie either. The ending was a bit abrupt and it was almost like the director had made a deal with someone that he would not want this movie to go too long and get kicked out of multiplexes. :-) The music is surprisingly appealing and a couple of songs are really catchy, though I had not bothered to listen to them on the airwaves earlier, but are part of my playlist now.

A nice movie that is worth a watch. I give it a 7 on 10.

The strange ways...

2010-04-02T01:31:00.001-07:00

I have been thinking for a while now to change my broadband service provider. I am with BSNL right now, and while their service per say is not bad (as long as you don't have to interact with them), their tariff plans are archaic when compared to others like Airtel.

During this contemplation phase, I happen to download a file which got downloaded in about half the time that it would normally take. I take a speedtest and it tells me that my download speed is doubled! Now, knowing that I am with BSNL, I think it is most probably a backend glitch and I will enjoy the double download speeds as long as it lasts. But I also had the nagging feeling that I may get charged double my normal charges. So, I went to the BSNL website and guess what, they have a promo going on! How much effort is it to send an email (they have mine in their records) or send an sms (they have my mobile number in their records) and inform users of this!!

Anyway, the promo in itself is quite brain dead. What will one month of higher bandwidth do? Coax me into going to the higher bandwidth plan even though there is no discount on offer? Anyway, never shy away from a free lunch (if ever there is one). :-)

Philosophies...

2010-03-30T13:46:00.001-07:00

Before the subject of this post could confuse someone, I am talking about sports and specifically football. :-)

I was hearing some experts talking the other day on TV on how Liverpool has lost its way, its philosophy and how it will be a slow slide down as Spurs, Man City, Villa and possibly Everton push on for the elite Champions League slot. And this got me thinking about the match I am watching right now, the Champions League QF between Man U and Bayern Munich. Thanks to the telecast timings, I see more of English football than German and maybe things have changed off late. But the days I remember, Germany used to play flank to flank. Their legendary long passes used to define the style and philosophy and also variety of European football. But in this particular match, I am seeing a host of small passes. They are playing consistent and strong and for a change Man U seems to be the team without the plan. I am sure things will be very different when they play at Old Trafford, but for now, this is a very interesting game. The experience in the midfield of Van Bommel is defining the game and the relative ineffectiveness of Scholes to do something similar speaks of the lack of midfield superiority, though a very hardworking midfield of the current Man U team.

The match just got over and a surprising result with Bayern doing to Man U what Man U does so often to many a team, pipping the opponent at the finish line. An open game and a treat to watch... just wondering what tomorrows match between two of the most creative midfields in todays football, Arsenal and Barcelona will have in store. :-)

Its all an act...

2010-03-30T12:18:00.000-07:00

When the Karnataka CM, Yeddyurappa made a tall claim of 23/7 electricity supply in the summer months leading up the school exams, most of the residents of Bangalore (whom I know :-)) had a huge sense of relief and disbelief.

It is not as if this was the first summer time that Bangalore has had power shortage, yet, such bold claims were not made in the past. So, what really prompted this magnanimous move? Actually what is more important an event that the yearly exams of kids is the once in nine years BBMP elections! And since the elections got over on Sunday, the place I stay has been witness to an average daily power cut of 5 hours!

Mr.Yeddy, I am sure the kids still have their exams on... wanna continue your magnanimity a little longer of should we wait a lot longer... say another 9 years!!

Start chirping...

2010-03-21T03:56:00.001-07:00

... or tweeting.

Airtel has collaborated with Twitter to make tweeting available and affordable to all those non smartphone types who are still stuck in the world of sms's (your truly included). If you couldn't tweet coz your office blocks visiting non-work related sites or don't have net access at home or don't have phones with GPRS (nor 3G) enabled, your tweet solution is here.

I called up Airtel to confirm this and to find out if we had to pay a premium for sending and receiving these tweets. The answer I got was that the SMS's to this special number will cost the same as your local SMS and there are no other hidden charges. Happy tweeting...

Take a hike...

2010-02-28T09:32:00.000-08:00

The industry in general may be recovering to its better days and the Finance Minister has helped us out a bit more with some tax sops. Below is the only meaningful extract I could make of everything.

As a good friend of mine said, the fuel price hike and the resulting hike in prices of everything else will more than make up for whatever IT sops Mr.Pranab has bestowed on us. The folks who know more about money and stuff claim that this is not a bad budget in general. I will go with that sentiment for now. :-)

On a related note:

:-)

Shadowy Google

2010-01-16T00:24:00.001-08:00

It has hit the press and spread like wild fire, that google has threatened and in fact is pulling out of the biggest and possibly the fastest growing internet penetration markets in the world, China.

Google started with the "Don't be evil" as part of its code of conduct but has been walking a tight line as it has grown into the behemoth it now is. One the times when it turned a blind eye and chose to flirt with this code of conduct was in China. China has been a tough market to penetrate for many and the chinese cyber wayside is full of their remains. Google of course thinks it is special and can break the jinx and has been spending considerable time beefing up their china plans. But the cyber attack seems to have changed everything and a hasty plug pulling has happened. But I think there is more fire beneath all this smoke!

What if the attack on google sites (gmail) was in fact more than what google is making it out to be? What if there was a serious breach and google is trying to hush-hush the whole thing away while they take time to plan a cover up? Baidu is still the most popular search engine in China and google is not used to losing, at least not in search game. What if Google has lost patience as it fights the local search engines and are too big to claim defeat and see this as the right opportunity to get out of a bad state ?

Google has been pretty shrewd with its business dealings belying its otherwise geeky image. But this move is definitely business impacting and seems indefinite by nature which makes it even more real. Something is brewing or already has brewed, but the might of Google will definitely manage to close the lid on this faster than we think.

Two left feet...

2010-01-14T22:24:00.001-08:00

... if I were talking about dance, sure there are many who qualify to be categorized as having two left feet. But if I were referring to football and if I were referring to Lionel Messi, you probably will understand that Messi with two left feet would be unstoppable!

And if you thought Messi was the only one from Argentina in today footballs to have a gifted left foot, then think again and watch the below video.

This is Angel Di Maria from Benfica who is being linked to move to the English Premier league teams like Chelsea or Man U this year. This kid is talented and has an attitude to boot!

A Thousand Words?

2010-01-14T11:29:00.000-08:00

I couldn't help but post these two pics I saw in TOI today. They are varied and have no relation to each other, other than both having evoked strong and immediate responses in my mind.

First, Eeco from Maruti Suzuki. Somebody told me that Maruti is going to release 10 cars this year. If they are all going to be like the Eeco, I don't wanna see them!

The front of a Maruti 800 and the rear of the Omni! Wow... got to give it to the Maruti guys for creativity! But then, this is a super cheap family vehicle and starts at 2.8L. This is also most likely to be super cheap on safety features too, but does the segment that this car caters to really care about safety?

Secondly, what freedom really means can only be told by someone who doesn't have it or more so by someone who had it and lost it. This tiger sure was in a hurry to get back to his free life... and who could blame him?

Yes... pictures sometimes do say more than a thousand words.

Foolhardy

2010-01-14T02:56:00.000-08:00

While casually browsing I came across a website which is supposedly useful to take meeting notes, agendas etc. I don't really know how useful something like this would actually be, but I thought of giving it a shot.

The site has a minimalistic look about it and before signing up, I wanted to understand what all it can actually do and I clicked the "intro" link and it didn't work. I was using firefox and switched to chrome and the link still didn't work. Last option, I went to IE 8 and then I get the below message.

Quite a gutsy company I would say, but it has got many things wrong here.
1. It is gonna take a while before IE dies, so don't narrow your user base.
2. I was using IE 8 and not IE 6
3. I used IE only coz firefox and chrome both couldn't open the link.

A brave but foolhardy company. :-)

Movie Review: Paleri Manikyam

2010-01-13T04:50:00.001-08:00

A mallu movie in a theater after a looong time. We were five of us and we paid a total of Rs.200 for the tickets and no parking hassles. I would have paid the same amount for a single ticket in Bangalore! Anyway, back to the movie.

Paleri Manikyam is a period thriller which goes back to the time of the first communist government being installed in Kerala. Since it is a detective "whodunit" kinda thing, I obviously can't delve too deep into the actual story, but it is to do with the rape and murder of a young lady and then the elaborate cover up. The story is well taken forth in the first half with very limited yet accurate depiction of the 1950s. The second half starts well, but then tapers down a bit and ends as a whimper. Mammotty in his many roles has done a good job, while his supposedly platonic criminal analyst friend is absolutely useless. She neither serves as good eye-candy, nor is she playing any part in the story other than smoking and questioning. The rest of the characters have too small a role to be really impacting, but the convenience with which some of them volunteer information is unexplained. Above all this is the very reason as to why the protagonist starts on this investigative journey some five decades after the incident occurred. A good detective movie must drop enough hints for the viewer to play detective and solve the mystery and not just drop an obvious clue at the end or a totally new character introduced to close the mystery loop.

All in all, Paleri Manikyam is a good attempt at a thriller, but fails in certain areas which tends to slow the movie down and hence can't keep the audience glued down and wits challenged. I give it a 6.5/10.

Upgrading To Inaccuracy

2010-01-05T11:50:00.000-08:00

The Indian Railways have come a long way in last decade. A lot of modernization, cleanliness and expansion drives have happened. One of the big pluses of the last decade has been irctc and the other numerous sites maintained by the railways that have sprung up.

I happened to visit one of them to get to know if the train I was to help someone board was on time. It said the train was on time and I got to the station on time. The train was blissfully late by 50 minutes and Bangalore can be quite cold this time of the year around midnight! Below is the information I got of the train after I just witnessed it being 50 minutes late!!

Either give accurate information or give no information at all. Half knowledge is dangerous and cold!

Hope...

2010-01-03T23:47:00.000-08:00

First off, a very happy new year to all!

Looks like the year is going to be one for the greedy one in you. The doom sayers have not had much to do since the world economy has shown some recovery steps. And if the below chart is any indication, the US economy (the bellwether) is back to its spending ways.

Here's hoping for a pink-slip-less year ahead for all (can one ask for more than this these days?). :-)

Home, Sweet Home...

2009-12-12T10:21:00.001-08:00

The term "home advantage" is used very often in sports and also with a similar meaning in situations that have nothing to do with sports. In a sport like cricket, playing on home ground means a lot. This is coz the game has a lot to do with the nature of pitch, the pace of the outfield, the weather, the humidity, the moisture etc etc. But this never made sense to me in a game like football. What could a home ground (other than spectator support) be of significance in football?

I got the answer, surprisingly, very close to home. :-). We at office play a game of football every week. There is a regular public ground that we visit and we rarely go to any other ground. Last week, for reasons of overcrowding (and this time the population of India was on display), we had to switch grounds. This new ground we went to, was bigger, but we also had a full complement of players. But before long, we knew the game was going to be very different. We are no great players, but don't suck too much either. Yet, the passes were not as accurate as usual, the ball trappings were not as clean, the flank angels were all awry, and most critically, the auto orientation on where your team players are more importantly the goal was completely missing. It was a fun game because it was well contested and not because of the quality of the game.

This experience of playing away from our "home ground" has definitely improved my appreciation of the home advantage theory being applicable in football too. :-)

Big!

2009-12-10T02:38:00.000-08:00

Useless trivia... :-)

Search is on...

2009-12-06T11:56:00.001-08:00

It has been a long time since I have covered a gadget on this blog. I have been on the hunt for a good TV media player which has the required HD play power and at least DTS downmix if not decoding capabilities. There are quite a few pretenders, like the Asus O!Play, Ryan AC PlayonHD etc, and I had almost narrowed down on the WDTV Live, but my perennial indecisiveness ensured I didn't jump the gun and boy am I glad I didn't!

A couple of days later, I see this! Now, this thing is super cute, super powerful (for its size) and feature rich. And as luck would have it, it is also super costly, approx $500. But as a colleague of mine at office suggests, you can never get more future proof (at least w.r.t media players) than a comp as upgrades are more easily available. Maybe I will wait for a few more months and see if more like these crop up and if they can be price competitive with the current slew of TV media players.

Until such a time... droooooooool! :-P

Really?

2009-11-25T18:41:00.000-08:00

Our President, Pratibha Patel is no where as dynamic as Mr.Abdul Kalam. As a result, she is hardly seen or heard doing anything significant other than trying to ensure her family has a holiday every time she goes on an "official" visit abroad.

Off late, our leader has been donning the newspaper for equally frivolous reasons. She is going into the record books for sitting inside a Sukhoi fighter jet. Really? Is this really so important? What the hell does this accomplish for anyone? Is anybody "proud" of her? Damn as hell I am not! She just wasted a shit-load of my taxpayers money.

I wonder why our leaders are still stuck doing these kind of cheap gimmicks even in this time and age!

Genius!

2009-11-22T22:02:00.001-08:00

I happened to read this article and view the video just a few minutes back and it just blew me away! Here is the wiki-link for the more interested folks.

A prototype device of $350 and you have further integrated the two worlds we live in today! This invention has the potential to be the next killer technology wave and when commodotized, it will be available to the common man at a price which will pressure M$ into thinking differently on their surface computing plans. Lets hope and pray for all the philanthropic dreams of Pravav Mistry to also come true!

...make it even better!

2009-11-21T19:16:00.000-08:00

The football world cup is round the corner and there are a few final slots to be booked yet. One of them was going to Ireland or France. I didnt see the match live but heard so much about it that I had to see the videos on youtube. All the talk was about how Henry, the captain of the French national team used his hand quite deliberately to control the ball before passing it to gallas to score the all crucial goal.

As shocking as this was for Ireland, it really isn't shocking that incidents like this go unnoticed on a football field. Most sports today use technology, some more than others, to keep the game fair and controversy free. Will technology ensure zero controversy? Of course not, but it will dramatically reduce the number of absolute insults to the game. During football discussions at office and we have some very passionate discussions, I have heard of how the intervention of technology will slow down the game. Well, my counter argument to that is, the number of fake injuries, dives and unsporting conduct already eat a lot more time than technology could. And once the players know that the cameras all over the place are tracking not just their deft footwork but also their deft fakework, and foulwork, the number of actual minutes of "football" will only increase. There is another argument which says that technology will kill the charm of the game. While this could be true in a very minuscule manner, the way the game gets played these days, there is more cheating skills on display than football skills. And there is no charm in cheating!

Another way to look at this would be, these kind of controversies keep us talking about the game longer and this only helps the game get more popular. :-)

Pushing it...

2009-11-20T00:48:00.000-08:00

Google is at it... again. We were today welcomed to watch the first glimpses of the Google Chrome OS or simply Chrome OS.

I have used the Chrome browser on and off. It is quick, it is more secure, it is not as customizable as firefox (yet), but in my experience it does hog a lot of memory incrementally. But none the less, it is a good attempt at a browser with certain clear innovations.

Now, the Chrome OS seems to be pushing the envelope even more considering the paradigm shift that we are expected to take compared to our regular OS use. This is probably the reason why they are releasing it more for the smart phones and netbook market rather than make it mainstream. The one thing about Chrome OS which sucks (at least for us poor souls in India) is that the whole OS is built on the assumption that you have a super fast net connection, which in India costs a bomb.

Anyway, we can be spectators watching the spectacle unfold and waiting for when our ISPs can offer us world class broadband at world beating price (like the telecom industry has). :-)

Irritated!

2009-10-17T11:32:00.001-07:00

I don't follow cricket like I used to, but still something like this really irks me!

What did Dravid do wrong in the champions trophy that he is being dropped from the team? He was the top scorer and possibly the only guy who looks like he did his best to get India to a win! What did Raina do right that he is in the team? Who sees talent in Virat Kohli compared to Badrinath or Manoj Tewari or even Abhishek Nayar.

No wonder cricket (probably Indian cricket) no longer holds the special place in my day to day life. :-(

Reality beckons

2009-10-05T20:17:00.000-07:00

The "startup days" of Linux seem to be behind it. Saw this interesting article come by and I couldn't agree more.

The more popular linux becomes, the more user friendly it becomes, the more it looks and feels like Windoze.

For the conscious...

2009-09-20T07:09:00.000-07:00

I intentionally left out "health" from the title... ;-)

Its been a year...

2009-09-04T09:48:00.000-07:00

Google surprised the world with its entry into the browser war when it released Chrome. It has now been a year since and Chrome has reached 2.0 w.r.t stable releases and 4.0 w.r.t developer releases. I have used Chrome on and off over the year and one thing that is going for it is, well, its fast... speedy gonsalves fast!! But for the add-ons I am so used to on firefox, I would have moved to Chrome. Another thing that Chrome touts is security and sandboxing. It would be good to see some benchmarking done along these lines (i.e most secure browser) than along the same old lines of speed, speed and more speed.

Here is a comic book (old one) that was released by Google when introducing Chrome to the world. The comic book, though geeky, tries to explain in as layman terms as possible the ideology behind the Chrome browser. A good read...

Interesting...

2009-08-31T06:33:00.001-07:00

An interesting article...

Why Indians don’t give back to society

Some characteristics unite Indians. The most visible is our opportunism

Why don’t we worship Brahma? We know he’s part of the Hindu trinity as the creator, but we worship Vishnu, manager of the cosmos, and Shiva, its eventual destroyer. The answer lies not in religion, but in culture. But in what way does our religion shape our culture?

Max Weber explained the success of capitalism in the US, Germany and Britain as coming from their populations’ Protestant faith. This ethic, or culture, was missing from the Catholic populations of South America, Italy and Spain. Protestants, Weber said, extended Christianity’s message of doing good deeds, to doing work well. Industry and enterprise had an ultimate motive: public good. That explains the philanthropists of the US, from John D.Rockefeller to Andrew Carnegie to Bill Gates. What explains the behaviour of Indians? What explains the anarchy of our cities? To find out, we must ask how our behaviour is different.Some characteristics unite Indians. The most visible is our opportunism. One good way to judge a society is to see it in motion. On the road, we observe the opportunism in the behaviour of the Indian driver. Where traffic halts on one side of the road in India, motorists will encroach the oncoming side because there is space available there. If that leads to both sides being blocked, that is fine, as long as we maintain our advantage over people behind us or next to us. This is because the other man cannot be trusted to stay in his place.

The Indian’s instinct is to jump the traffic light if he is convinced that the signal is not policed. If he gets flagged down by the police, his instinct is to bolt. In an accident, his instinct is to flee. Fatal motoring cases in India are a grim record of how the driver ran over people and drove away.We show the pattern of what is called a Hobbesian society: one in which there is low trust between people. This instinct of me-versus-the-world leads to irrational behaviour, demonstrated when Indians board flights. We form a mob at the entrance, and as the flight is announced, scramble for the plane even though all tickets are numbered. Airlines modify their boarding announcements for Indians taking international flights.

Our opportunism necessarily means that we do not understand collective good. Indians will litter if they are not policed. Someone else will always pick up the rubbish we throw. Thailand’s toilets are used by as many people as India’s toilets are, but they are likely to be not just clean but spotless. This is because that’s how the users leave them, not the cleaners.

The Indian’s reluctance to embrace collective good hurts his state. A study of income-tax compliance between 1965 and 1993 in India (Elsevier Science Das- Gupta, Lahiri and Mookherjee) concluded that “declining assessment intensity had a significant negative effect” on compliance, while “traditional enforcement tools (searches, penalties and prosecution activity) had only a limited effect” on Indians. The authors puzzled over the fact that “India’s income tax performance (was) below the average of countries with similar GDP per capita”.

We do not think stealing from the state is a bad thing, and our ambiguity extends to corruption, which also we do not view in absolute terms. Political parties in India understand this and corruption is not an issue in Indian politics. Politicians who are demonstrably corrupt, recorded on camera taking a bribe or saying appalling things, or convicted by a court, can hold legitimate hope of a comeback—unthinkable in the West.

The opportunist is necessarily good at adapting, and that explains the success of Indians abroad. We can follow someone else’s rules well, even if we can’t enforce them at home ourselves. The Indian in the US is peerless at the Spelling Bee because the formula of committing things to memory, which in India passes for knowledge, comes naturally to him. But this talent for adapting and memorizing is not the same as a talent for creation.

The question is: Why are we opportunists?

In his great work Crowds and Power, Elias Canetti observed that the rewards religions promised their faithful were all far off, in the afterlife. This is because a short goal would demand demonstration from god and create skeptics instead of believers. There is an exception to this in Hinduism. Hinduism is not about the other world. There is no afterlife in Hinduism and rebirth is always on earth. The goal is to be released entirely and our death rites and beliefs—funeral in Kashi—seek freedom from rebirth. Christianity and Islam are about how to enter heaven; Hinduism is about how not to return to earth, because it’s a rotten place. Naipaul opens his finest novel with the words “The world is what it is”, and Wittgenstein ( “The world is all that is the case”) opens his Tractatus similarly.

Hinduism recognizes that the world is irredeemable: It is what it is. Perhaps this is where the Hindu gets his world view—which is zero-sum—from. We might say that he takes the pessimistic view of society and of his fellow man. But why? The Hindu devotee’s relationship with god is transactional: I give you this, you give me that. God must be petitioned and placated to swing the universe’s blessings towards you. God gives you something not through the miracle, and this is what makes Hinduism different, but by swinging that something away from someone else. This is the primary lesson of the Vedic fire sacrifice. There is no benefit to one without loss to another. Religion is about bending god’s influence towards you through pleas, and appeasement, through offerings.

Society has no role in your advancement and there is no reason to give back to it (in any way, including leaving the toilets clean behind you) because it hasn’t given you anything in the first place. That is why Indian industrialists are not philanthropists. Rockefeller always gave a tenth of his earnings to the Church, and then donated hundreds of millions, fighting hookworm and educating black women. Bill Gates gave $25 billion (around Rs 1.2 trillion), and his cause is fighting malaria, which does not even affect Americans. Warren Buffett gave away $30 billion, almost his entire fortune. Andrew Carnegie built 2,500 libraries. Dhirubhai Ambani International School has annual fees starting at Rs 47,500 (with a Rs 24,000 admission fee) and Mukesh Ambani’s daughter was made head girl. An interesting thing to know is this: Has our culture shaped our faith or has our faith shaped our culture? I cannot say. To return to the question we started with: Why is Brahma not worshipped? The answer is obvious: He has nothing to offer us. What he could do for us, create the universe, he already has. There is no gain in petitioning him now.

Aakar Patel is a director of Hill Road Media. Write to Aakar at

replytoall@livemint.com

Thought Collage...

2009-08-30T06:49:00.000-07:00

It has been a long time since I have spent any kind of time on this blog. It has less to do with me not having something to write about, but more because the thoughts I had were too scattered to muster enough content by itself. But I had spent time to write something, this is all the stuff I would have written about. :-)

1. Damn Nakul, porcupine haired baby face from the Shankar movie Boys is the hero of Kadhalil Vizhundhen and Masilamani. What a makeover!
2. Cricket has gotten so boring these days (even the Ashes). Now, am I hearing someone say "I have been saying all along..."
3. Indian Television is getting bolder, just look at Is jungle se mujhe bachao
4. World club football is gonna be all about Real Madrid this year. Ronaldo, Kaka and Benzema alonside legends like Raul, Nistelrooy etc Its gonna be some La Liga 09!
5. Tamil cinema lacks good scripts! Kaunis being remade in tamil, Jab We Met is also being remade in tamil.
6. Swine Flu seems to stick on longer in the desi memory than the mumbai attacks last year. Strange way the desi mind works!!
7. Saw Love Aaj Kal, Sankat City, Palung, Nadodigal, Sarvam, Pasinga, Ghost and Darkness and probably more (I have bad memory :-))
8. Listening to Aadhavan, Whats your Rashee and Eeram. Nothing special, at least, not yet.
9. Fisichella finally gets some points for Force India. Amazing!!

And many more. I should start blogging with some frequency sooner rather than later... ;-)

Less Taxing

2009-08-12T08:06:00.000-07:00

Yup... taxes are going to be less taxing, i.e. if Pranab Mukherjee has its way. The new direct tax code seems to be good for the end tax payer with the only glitch for those dabble in the stock market, wherein long term capital gains would also be taxed.

I, for one, definitely hope that this comes through in the not too distant future. :-)

Competition...Maybe

2009-07-30T21:18:00.000-07:00

The ipod/iphone mania never seems to subside and probably for good reason. I used the 1st Gen and 2nd Gen ipods and absolutely hated it. They were so high on fluff and so low on actual features or for that matter music quality that it was almost insulting to see tech geeks go for it! I usually try to place the geeks above the fad factor.

But seems like a lot has come off age at the ipod circle. I recently used an ipod touch which a friend got from US and also iphones which many in my office own. I was pleasantly surprised by their sound quality and the apps support on them. In my opinion, the app support alone is a HUGE factor to its continued growth. But, it still sucks w.r.t to value of money, at least in my opinion, but it is in many ways the 'only' option for folks who need a relatively complete solution.

Creative which not so long ago was doing pretty good for itself in the mp3 player market and has slipped off late has come out all guns blazing with Creative Zii Egg, their first multi touch mp3 player (and more). The SW and HW specs on this are drool material. They have mixed Andriod with the new Zii chip interface and the Plaszma reference platform to give 1080p nirvana! The rest of the feature set indicates a keenness to go over board and beat ipods out of the market. They have also priced it attractively with a purported starting price of $199, sweet! They have dual camera, one for video conferencing and one for HD recording. They have got wifi, bluetooth and some version of GPS which I didnt go into details off. They have also provided SDHC based expandability over the 32GB of internal storage and most importantly have introduced the now buzz word touch interface.

The video and the link should give you the rest of the story. Lets see how far this one goes, but on the face of it, seems like a winner...

A lost plot...

2009-07-26T11:46:00.000-07:00

I happened to watch MTV after a loooong time today and it was surprising to see very little music on music television. It was one wasted reality show after another and it was like it would never stop! Its bad enough that English music is next to never seen on MTV (for which they have VH1.... of course!), now even our desi stuff is off. Though I am certifiable no longer part of the Y generation, I dont see my younger cousins interested in viewing the crap being dished out either.

MTV... losing it!

Secure - FYI

2009-07-21T09:13:00.000-07:00

Follow the link. Useful info for desi e-retailers.

It is Time...

2009-07-07T21:53:00.000-07:00

It has been a while... but it is about time!

Google Mail, Calendar, Docs and Talk are all out of beta! Coincidentally VLC has also reached 1.0!

A Viewpoint

2009-07-07T13:05:00.000-07:00

Here is an interesting article from Anand Giridharadas in New York Times.

Its only a viewpoint at the end of the day, but with a lot of truth in it. The "Hum Kissi Se Kam Nahin" attitude that is written loud and clear on the young Indian is difficult to miss and impossible to ignore. Anand talks about revolutions and there is many a tussle of opposites in the middle of all these revolutions. The period that the revolution sustains may very well be dependent on the solutions that we adapt or are forced to accept to resolve these tussles.

Lets wait and watch...

Serious Joke!

2009-07-05T13:34:00.000-07:00

The newest entrant into the crowded premium hatchback space in India has managed to breakaway from the crowd. I am talking about Jazz, Honda's entry into the small car market. Honda seem to have forgotten that their intention was to enter the small car market, not to exit it before they got in! The route they chose to breakaway from the crowd was not features but by making the car super pricey!! The on road price of the top of the line Honda Jazz will hover a few ten thousands short of 8L! That is a lot of money for a hatchback, no matter what the pedigree. Skoda made the same mistake with Fabia and even after correcting it to some extent by bringing in a lower priced variant, it was too little too late. They had by then already managed to send a very nice car to the never-to-be-seen-or-heard gallows of the frugal desi mind!

Looking past the price, how about the Ad campaign?? If their intention was to make the smartest ad ever to be understood by 1% of the super smart future premium hatchback ownership (me clearly not included), well, they must have done a great job! The punchline for the Honda Jazz is "Why so serious?". Seeing the price of the car, I am sure most people will see the joke in it! :-)

I have seen the Ad time and again, and I can't help but get serious... damn guys, is it so difficult to make a decent Ad? What the hell does it mean anyway!$#%@!

Outsiders...

2009-06-29T01:39:00.000-07:00

I came across an article in New York Times today, and it absolutely surprised me. Just last week, I was discussing with a cousin of mine on what is the laptop he should be buying and I told him, "Go HP, else Go Dell else Go anything else, and buy Acer if you are strapped for cash". My statement was not based on market share or any such thing. It was purely based on personal experience using these products in India (bought in the US) and their technical pros and cons and most importantly their support responsiveness. Yet, very quietly Acer has moved up the ranks and is now challenging Dell, the rags to riches american story for the No.2 slot in PC/Lappy sales! Quite commendable, especially in this economy.

I was similarly caught on the wrong foot when I was making another buying suggestion (I do that a lot :-)) on a MP3 player, and I said "Go Ipoo if you want to follow the trend, Go iriver/cowon if you want quality (and feel geeky) or Go Sandisk if you are strapped for cash". Very soon I got to know that Sandisk has grown to be next only to ipod in mp3 player sales across all models of mp3 players! Its a different matter that Sandisk seem to have given up on their mission to be the "ipoo killer", but none the less, this latecomer and ranked outsider had played the market right, more with respect to pricing than with innovation and won (for most part)!

I suppose its these kind of stories that smaller companies and ranked outsiders need to think that they can make it big some day, though thinking and getting there are very very different ball games. :-) BTW, I am thick skinned enough to continue with my "buying suggestion" sessions. ;-)

Change...not really

2009-06-20T10:31:00.000-07:00

This cartoon is courtesy Basic Instructions.

:-)))

Too Smart...

2009-06-06T12:03:00.001-07:00

... for your own good. That is what comes to mind as I see India play Bangladesh in their first match in the T20 World Cup. And the comment is only to do with arguably Indias most innovative captain, Dhoni.

Yes, in his pre-captain days Dhoni was one of the most feared batsman in world cricket. But captaincy has brought responsibility and Dhoni has slowly but steadily moved from the blaster role to a grafter role. While in the same time guys like Suresh Raina and Yusuf Pathan have won many a game on their own, not to mention Yuvraj and his explosive power. Yet for some reason, Dhoni thinks he is a better bat than all of these folks. Maybe every other game, just for the shock factor he can come one down, but he is now making it a habit and as habits come, this is a bad one.

Now, any one who wants to stick around in Indian cricket (Sreesanth definitely doesn't) knows that they don't wanna piss off Dhoni and telling him to come down to order would piss his off I suppose. But like in todays match, Dhoni came in one down after Rohit Sharma had given a good start. Gambhir has been struggling with form off late and in the company of Dhoni the two were scoring at around run a ball for the better part of 8-9 overs. Dhoni ended with 26 or 21 with one six and Gambhir to a 50 off 44 balls. Thanks to Yuvraj we had a decent score at the end, but left to "out of form but wont get out" Gambhir and "I am better than all" Dhoni, we would have definitely given Bangladesh a chance to smile, again! Who knows we still may...

Money, Money...Must be funny...

2009-06-06T10:56:00.001-07:00

Intel has started on a fresh wave of Ads titled 'Sponsors of tomorrow'. Below is the original Ad.

People can't let anything this fancy go by without a spoof, so here is the Oops version. :-)

Apparently, the guy featured in the original Ad is not the real Ajay Bhatt and is an actor. Kinda killed the concept for me...

Anyway, what I was coming to was, a friend of mine who works in the US told me that the same Ads run there too, which means that a lot of money is being spent on this campaign across the globe. What is quite strange about this Ad and the whole campaign is the timing. I know friends at Intel who have told me about colleagues who got pink slips and possible pay cuts. And this is the time that Intel wants to build a "feel good" factor in people minds about itself? This is not a product Ad, this is not a technology Ad, this is a generic Ad telling that smart people work at Intel and since we are firing and not recruiting you are not welcome. ;-)

Looks like Intel has a lot of money, just not for retaining existing jobs.

...And its a rap!

2009-05-31T23:25:00.000-07:00

A legend of American Television, Jay Leno has finally called it a night! After 17 years at the helm of "The Tonight Show", Jay handed over the reins of "The Tonight Show" to an equally talented Conan O' Brien.

Jay's show was on Star Plus or maybe Star World when cable television in India started getting a move on and I have been a viewer ever since. His show was my only source of "American Culture" then and it has helped me to no ends when I interact with Americans or folks in US on a daily basis as part of my work. Yes, the idiot box actually helped me with my work! I have since used Google to help me keep abreast with the happenings in US, but I never miss a chance to catch up with Jays show as I channel surf.

Jay was quick-witted, smart and bold! He will have to attribute a lot of his fame to his excellent script writers who always gave him the best of jokes on a daily basis. When the writers guild went on strike in late 2007, early 2008, the quality of Jays jokes went noticeably down and he made no attempt to hide the fact that his regular writers were not around to give him the "good stuff".

Adios to a great comedian and an excellent host...

They exist...

2009-05-25T01:41:00.000-07:00

... yup they really do!! I am talking about colleagues who do next to no work and yet somehow not only manage to evade being caught but manage to get lauded by peers for doing a good job! Its difficult to corner them on anything as they have some standard areas to hide, where no one has gone before and never will!

ok.. now for the fun part!

A mandate...

2009-05-21T11:52:00.000-07:00

... like no other in recent past.

Lok Sabha 09 was the first time I voted in "any" form of elections and this was probably the reason why I followed the results as intently as I did. Karnataka again voted to not be in sync with the centre! The mandate that resulted was quite surprising, since I just didn't expect the UPA or for that matter the Congress to do as well as it did. But what suprised me more and quite happy that I was, the fringe players who thought they were more than fringe players have been shown their place. Mayawati almost made it look like she just deserved to be sitting in the PM seat, now with some 20 something seats, she can just forgot about it for a while. The communists who were quite arrogantly bossy after their good showing in the last elections have got their worst number of seats ever, if I recall right. And the list goes on... Lalu, Paswan, Gowda(s) or even Mulayam, have all been shown their place.

What this means is that Congress has a free hand for most part in the running of the Government and the decisions to be made. Good or bad... time will tell.

Now, thats Royal!

2009-05-21T11:17:00.001-07:00

Never thought I would see this, at least not in this edition of IPL! The Royal Challengers Bangalore are in the semis of IPL 2009! Yes, yes, you read it right... the co-whipped boys of last year have pulled off the real coup. They have beaten the top 3 teams in the last 3 games and in the process ended up in the top 3!

Hats off to Kumble... that guy is just such a fighter!!

Finally...

2009-05-01T12:42:00.001-07:00

Watching IPL has been fun... though I have been only catching glimpses, the sheer mega feeling of the event and the intensity that big money gets from everybody (owners, players, rivals, commentators, coaches etc etc) is worth watching!

Our very own Royal Challengers, the team that we have to support, started off this year too just as badly as last year. Kevin Petersen couldn't do much and it was up to the old warhorses, Kumble and Dravid, who have been the best performers in the team. Just when I was losing interest (again!), they beat Kolkata Knight Riders (this years super strugglers, no thanks to Buchanan) in an unabsorbing yet tight encounter. Todays match between RC and Kings XI Punjab was a forgone conclusion in my mind. With no KP or Dravid, and the team playing 3 wicket keepers (Boucher, Sreevats and Uthappa), I didnt expect much. The batting was patchy, but thanks to some wierd and lusty hitting my Van De Merve, RC got to a decent total. They surprisingly followed this up with an exceptionally good performance on the field and a decent bowling show.

The first worthy win in this IPL season for RC and hopefully a turning point in the the teams fortunes!

Loooong Hiatus!

2009-05-01T12:32:00.001-07:00

Not a single post in the month of April... I actually achieved it! :-) Though I wasn't gunning for it, I was overwhelmed by work at home, work at office and then some more additional responsibilities at home. :-)

Anywayz... time to get back onto the saddle.

Another G-service

2009-03-12T11:21:00.001-07:00

Google can't stay quite for too long now, can they... They are now coming up with a new service, Google Voice, which is designed to help the person calling you, get to you on any one of the myriad locations you are likely to be in (home, mobile, office desk, lab etc). The way it works is, they give you a special number which gets mapped to all your configured contact numbers. So, calls to this special number can be received on any of your configured contact numbers. This is far from being a brave new idea with many companies already providing similar services (just Google for it).

If you go through the homepage for this service you will see a lot more features. As exciting as this may sound, the service is currently under private beta for GrandCentral users, a company that Google bought quite some time back. And if and when it comes out of private beta, the service is likely to be available only in US. The rest of the world will just have to wait for Google's benevolence to cross the seas. :-( And considering the big market in India and innovative ideas that the telecom service providers here come up with, we can expect an alternative to come up pretty soon. From what I remember, Airtel already had a similar service though only compatible with their mobile and landline services.

Timeless...

2009-03-10T00:11:00.001-07:00

In the midst of drastic attempts by the cricket administrators to make the sport more TV friendly (T20, T10 gully cricket) and compete with other sports like football, basketball etc, here is an interesting bit of info I didn't know off until today.

Imagine if we had stuck with the "Timeless" format for tests and we leave the Sri Lankan cricket team to bat on a dead wicket... they will keep batting till the fat lady is in her grave!

Movie Review : Delhi 6

2009-03-01T23:15:00.001-08:00

I caught this much anticipated second movie of Rakeysh Mehra during its first weekend after release. I was not really keen on this movie till the music released and got more interested after a couple of colleagues gave me a positive review after they watched it on the day the movie released.

The movie describes the "holiday' journey of an American born to Indian parents coming to India to drop off his grandmother who wishes to 'rest in peace' back home. An "All American" Aby baby comes to the chawls of Old Delhi to be greeted by the contrasts that would surprise even folks who have stayed in India all along! Apart from a few "cool" and "nice" remarks he is not too perturbed by what is transpiring in the antiquated streets of Delhi-6. While taking in the smell, sound and taste of Delhi-6 our hero slowly falls in love (desi style incest) with his uncle’s daughter. While poking his American value system onto the almost childishly immature occupants of Delhi 6, he incurs their wrath in the most obvious problem that could crop up, communal tension. All this under the backdrop of the monkey man controversy that hit the Delhi streets in 2001. The movie climax is obvious and expected in more ways than one, and hence I skip it. :-).

There isn't a strong storyline or great performances to note. Throughout the movie there is an innate sense driven into people that "India Works" while making Cliché yet needed comments on politically incited communal tensions. The music is good, the screenplay is excellent and Old Dilli plays a wonderful backdrop to this movie. A see once and forget experience, I give Delhi-6 a 6.5 on 10, docking 0.5 off for not living up to expectations.

BTW, I up the music review rating of Delhi-6 to 7.5. I liked the picturisation of a couple of songs. :-)

Now just a slumdog!

2009-03-01T01:41:00.000-08:00

Azharuddin Mohammed reached heights he could not imagine, saw places he could not even dream about and shared stage and red carpet with legends he could not even afford to see on screen.

After all the glitter and glamour of the Oscars, the little boy comes back to his life, his reality, to be treated like a superstar.

But then, has his reality changed very much? His irritated father is angry with him for not putting on a show for onlookers, completely disregarding that the young boy has just been through adrenaline pumping last few days and a tiring 24 hour plane journey. He gets an ass kicking (which he is probably used to), but this time in front of a crowd which was there to applaud his performance but instead see one from the dad.

I haven't seen the movie and am not really in a hurry to see it either. But, as people say, if the film talks of optimism and hope, I think one of the protagonists of the movie needs to see the movie more than many others!

Could it be any simpler?

2009-02-26T22:17:00.000-08:00

Blackberry takes its first (of possibly many) potshots!

Now, if the product can live up to this, that would be something!

Boon or Bane!

2009-02-24T00:50:00.001-08:00

I received the below content in an email. Apart from the extra development fees (or whatever...) that is built in into the existing air fares out of Bangalore, we will now need to shell out an extra Rs.260 per head every time we use the International Airport. If the committee that did the financial feasibility study of the airport didn't come up with the approx amount needed to run the airport, who approved the project? If the financial feasibility committee did do its job and if the promotors/administrators didn't get the financial part of this feasibility agreed and accepted, how did they get approval to start the project? How can the common man be imposed this fee at a random point in time? Why should someone use RTI to actually know if the money is being well used or not?

I am not a frequent flyer and won't be affected too much by this. But in my opinion, this kinda unilateral writ being pushed onto the consumers is wrong!!

Dear Sir/Madam,

Update: Bengaluru International Airport to charge a User Development Fee

If you are traveling from Bangalore, please note that the Bengaluru International Airport is now charging a User Development Fee of Rs 260. This fee will be charged effective January 16, 2009 and be collected directly by the airport.

Who will be affected?
All passengers travelling out of Bangalore from the Bengaluru International Airport will have to pay Rs 260. However, infants under 2 years are exempted.

Where to pay the UDF?
You can pay the fee at the specially built counters just outside the terminal. You will then have to show the receipt before entering the terminal.

How can I pay?
You can pay by cash, credit cards or debit (only Visa, MasterCard and American Express) at the UDF counters outside the terminal. If you are paying by cash, we would advise you to have the exact change ready.

Will it take time?
While the airport has made provisions to provide enough counters, it may take up to 10 minutes during peak hours - from 6am to 10am and 5:30pm to 8:30pm. While at other times, it may take no more than 3 to 4 minutes.

But why is this extra amount being charged?
The UDF of Rs 260 has been approved by the Ministry of Civil Aviation, Government of India. This amount will be used for the development and maintenance of this state of the art airport and to provide other services and amenities.

For any other information, you can contact the Bengaluru International Airport at 080 - 66782251 or 666782255 or visit their website: www.bengaluruairport.com.

Will we abide to ABIDe?

2009-02-16T23:29:00.001-08:00

Bangalore infrastructure woes are nothing new and there are many things being done to address things. Unfortunately most of these initiatives will take some time before they are effective on the ground. In the meantime, ABIDe is here to our rescue. Please read the below email from Rajendra Misra of Lead India fame.

Dear Friends,

As you are aware, ABIDe (Agenda for Bengaluru Infrastructure & Development) Task Force, with the Chief Minister as Chairman, Mr. Ananth Kumar (MP-Bangalore South) as Vice Chairman and Mr. Rajeev Chandrashekar (MP - Rajya Sabha) as Convener, has been constituted to revive and rebuild Bengaluru through a combination of Comprehensive planning, improved municipal services and new investments into infrastructure. ABIDe also owns the task of providing a blue-print for sustainable and orderly development of Bangalore under Bengaluru Vision 2020.

I and Ashwin Mahesh (IIM-B), are entrusted with the task of suggesting solutions to the Traffic and Transport issues of Bangalore - A tough job indeed :). Please visit http://abidebengaluru.in/report/show/7 to read and give suggestions on our recommendations.

The Transportation team at ABIDe has identified public transport as the most important tool in reducing traffic congestion and chaos on Bangalore roads. Given that metro rail network is still some years away, Bus based public transport system is being promoted with a corridor approach.

To promote public transport and make travel hassle free, 10 major arterial roads (Big-10) have been identified as high density traffic corridors which will be made junction/signal free with dedicated point-to-point Bus Services, both A/C and non-A/C buses, named as Big-10 service.

Priority Bus Lanes, Bus Bays, Paved Footpaths, Safe Pedestrian Crossings, Cycle Lanes (proposed) will also be introduced on these Big-10 routes. We have 3, 6, 12, 18 and 24 month deadlines to accomplish all these Road Infrastructure Improvement objectives on all Big-10 Corridors. Please visit ABIDe website for corridor and other details. - http://www.abidebengaluru.in

However, deployment of Big-10 and Hop-on Hop-Off (HoHo) Bus Services has already begun.

Out of 10 Corridors Big-10 Bus Service is already in operation on Hosur Road (Vellara Jn - Electronic City) and HAL Airport Road (Trinity Jn - Whitefield-Hope Farm jn). This is proving to be extremely popular. Next week Bannerghatta Road Big-10 Service will start. In next 2 months all 10 Corridors will have Big-10 Bus Service with a frequency of 5-10 minutes, both A/C and Non-A/C Service.

This service CONVENIENTLY connects with Central Business District (CBD) HoHo Service (Kendra Sarige) at Vellara Jn on Hosur Rd and Trinity Jn on HAL Airport rd respectively. This makes it extremely convenient for anyone living and commuting on these routes to use this Big-10 Service in conjunction with CBD HoHo service to reach any point in the city including all shopping malls and offices, without the need to take their private vehicles to work or shop.

I have myself used these services and they are extremely convenient and efficient.

Please encourage all your friends and colleagues to use these BUS services. Traffic congestion will reduce only if we stop/reduce taking our cars to work and shop. No amount of cribbing or road widening is going to help if we keep adding private cars to our roads. Now we have the comfortable and convenient public transport in close proximity to our homes and work places, lets use it and help our city and the environment.

PS: Please send this e-mail to your friends and colleagues with suitable modifications as you deem fit. We need to popularize public transport through media, blogs, personal contacts and word of mouth, to save Bangalore from traffic chaos.

RK

Great offer or is it!

2009-02-08T04:36:00.001-08:00

I had a couple of my friends talk about virgin mobiles new offer for free sms for the day after you send 3 SMS's out. Their USP apparently is that you get the offer irrespective of any pack.

When you do the math, they are charging Re.1 per SMS for the first 3 SMS's which makes it Rs.3 for the day i.e. Rs.90 for the month. Most SMS packs from other vendors are same or at lesser cost. So, camaflouged as a great feature, this is nothing but another market gimmick trying to get at the yuppy generation.

I don't know of any vendor giving a SMS pack for national SMS and this is where Virgin definitely scores. So, this offer could probably work out from this perspective though for potential customers. Their costing for National SMS works out to Rs.1.50 per SMS and for the mandatory first three it is Rs.4.50 which works out to Rs.135 per month. Not bad... maybe.

Funny!

2009-02-08T04:14:00.001-08:00

Long time since I had a good laugh. :-)

Idea Sirji!

2009-02-04T11:44:00.001-08:00

Last weekend, I was watching a football match and also a cricket match and voila, I get another pointless idea and I am bored enough right now to think its important enough. :-)

So, here goes... We have electronic boundary boards showing Ads during football. This means, its not a stagnant single company Ad made of paper and stuck on some cardboard. This is an LED (similar?) board which can show any Ad at runtime. Cricket hasn't gotten that sophisticated yet, but it will get there sooner rather than later. Lets take the case of football first. A live English Premier League game is watched in so many countries. Now, lets take a site like 888. They are a big deal sponsor in EPL and pay quite a bit to get onto these electronic boards. This site is not well known in India and the EPL folks are not going to get as much money(or viewership attention) showing this Ad while telecasting in India when compared to Airtel or similar. Likewise, the India vs SL series is mainly sponsored by IDBI Fortis, a new investment wing of IDBI bank. I am quite sure they have next to no presence in SL and hence this is meant mainly for the indian TV audiences. So, what about the Srilankans ? Wouldn't they be relate more to say, Dilmah Tea ?

In case you haven't got what I am getting at, my idea is that all the boundary boards be made green in colour, so as to make it easily graphicable, for lack of a better word. So, just like in the movies, with the help of Computer Graphics, the green coloured boards can house country specific Ads, hence increasing the sponsorship worth of events and hence more money flowing and more glamourous and all that good stuff.

There is this one glitch of the actual money paying viewers at the ground seeing just green boards. But I am sure there is some technology that can come to help in this case too.

How does it sound ? Can this fund my EMIs while the recession eats aways more jobs (me next?) ? :-)

Genius...But!

2009-02-01T12:54:00.001-08:00

So... another grand slam final and another Nadal win. Don't get me wrong, it was a great match and all, but somehow I expected something different. No, I didn't think the result would be any different, but I expected something more from Federer.

Federer has played Nadal in 5 grand slam finals now, if I remember correctly. He has lost 4 of them and 3 of them on different surfaces. Now, the genius that we all know Federer is, how can he be losing so consistently. Well, this in my humble opinion is his problem. He is a one dimensional genius. He doesn't have a plan B, at least not with Nadal, And its only with Nadal that he really needs a plan B.

For e.g. it doesn't take rocket science and 13 grand slams to know who will win an endurance testing baseline slugfest between Federer and Nadal. And similarly its also straightforward to guess who would win a serve and volley contest. So, how come Federer didn't use a single grand slam final to try this possible 'Plan B' or for that matter any other 'Plan B'??

To reiterate, I do enjoy seeing Nadal beat Federer everytime as rooting for the underdog (not any more I suppose) is more fun. But still, what would Federer want to be remembered as ? The greatest player of all time or Nadals bunny ??

Music Review:Dilli 6

2009-02-01T04:59:00.001-08:00

On the heels of the much heralded audio track of Slumdog Millionaire (I still wonder why), Rahman gives us Rakeysh Mehras next movie, Dilli 6.

Masakali - Kinda weird. I don't usually like Rahman when he tries this kinda stuff, but to the contrary to my usual assumption, Its not a bad hear. Surely a one month ear candy and some more.

Dilli-6 - The title track, this has a lot of character... kinda pacey. It has some lady rapping in some foreign language, probably french, and then in Hindi too with a similar accent. But nice mixing of styles...

Hey Kaala Bandar - Sung really well and a very good english rap merge. The lyrics are actually good(for most part) and a catchy rhythmic tune and beat. This one will rule the radio channels for quite a while.

Bhor Bhaye - I am not classically inclined, but from what I heard, this is very well sung and otherwise out of my league. :-) One for Shreyas resume, if she will ever need one.

Dil Gira Dafatan - What does the title of this song mean ? Nice strumming and later on scottish pipes. Can't think of many music directors who can give us this kinda instrumentation feel. But that being said, the husky male vocals didnt do it for me and I didn't feel anything special in the tune either. I have an inkling that Rahmaniacs will brand this as one of the most brilliant tracks ever and stuff. To escape their wrath, lemme say, I don't have a clue of such high fundoo music, so let me be. :-) Hopefully situational song, otherwise the most pedestrian track of the album (for me).

Arti tumre bhavan mein - Whats with Rahman and devotional sounding songs ? He always seem to get it right, whether its bhajans or sufi songs. No real music to talk about, but a totally riveting tune. For reasons I can't well explain, this is winner of the album for me and would have loved for it to be longer that it actually was.

Arziyan - Again Rahman with his devotional sounding song and this one has got great male vocals. Both Javed Ali and Kailash Kher have exceled in my opinion.I didn't think there was anything out of the way in the tune, but a nice hear none the less. They neednt have had this as a 9 minute song though!

Ghenda Phool - Now this is what Rahman would call fusion, and why not. A rustic voice (Rekha Bharadwaj) mixing with club beats and yet sounding like they belong. This is the second song (first being Kala Bandar) that I would like to see the picturisation off. Though the lyrics give away the generic locale and feel, the music seems too 'out there' for it to be anything usual. Lets wait and watch....

Rehna Tu - Rahman sometimes keep the best track of the album for himself, but he hasnt done that here, since this is not a special song. Its OK sounding and Rahman sounds very Rahman like and there is nothing more to write home about.

So, all in all, we have a mixed bag with Dilli 6, with some songs that are good, some average and none that is bad per say. I would give it a 7 on 10, and the lesser rating coz, for me, there is no real cracker of a track in this album. :-(

Right Steps

2009-01-26T07:54:00.001-08:00

Life has been happening and hence blogging has taken the second seat, no wait... third seat... no wait... its still waiting for a seat. ;-)

Coming to what I wanted to write about, dunno if you folks have noticed this, but there has been a rather strong message coming from the government and government supported agencies to do the right thing.

For e.g. I noticed the Ads on TV to try stopping domestic violence and if I may try profiling the audience, they have tried to target the less fearing and more outspoken younger brigade by playing them on channels like MTV. Not so long ago, there were many Ads on Consumer Awareness which is something very desperately needed in India. I have always found the after sales service in India close to robbery with none of the vendors caring a rats ass for the customer once the sale is done. Then there are Ads to initiate people into voting with "Jaago Re" series and also Ads on making people aware off and less embarrassed to talk and use condoms with "Condom Condom" series.

A much needed and well directed series of initiatives.

HNY 2009!

2009-01-01T11:11:00.001-08:00

All you folks have a great year ahead! I will try to be more regular with posts here than I was last year [for better or worse ;-)].

But I am too lazy to actually make it a new year resolution..... Yet! :-)

Comment Promotion

2008-12-28T08:28:00.000-08:00

This post was initially as a comment to this. But since Arun tracks my blog and my comment was more than a 'comment', I thought of posting it here. :-)

---
First off, must have been quite a lazy afternoon for you to have tried your hand/mind at sathsang. :-)

That being said, self exploration is always good and if sathsang gets your there, nothing wrong with that. My view is, I somehow don't get the core point for being stateless and staying away from 'maya'. They main 'gyan' delivered by most spiritual leaders/oraters is, "if you have no wishes, you have no disappointment". That is so obvious, I don't see the point in everyone repeating it! What is the big funda in this ?? If you have no wishes you also have no drive to be better than 'average'. So, as per all the swamis, we have to be just average to be happy. Its so easy and frankly cliché to see all the bad and say that its 'maya' which is the cause of all misery. If "everyone" in the world always strove to be average, then would we have seen all the good in this world today ?? The lives that medicine is saving ? The lives that technology is improving ? etc etc.

Till I see someone who makes more than an obvious observation and says "stay away from maya", I don't see any point in wasting even the laziest of afternoons!
---

Movie Review: Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi

2008-12-18T18:57:00.000-08:00

Those who know me well enough would be shocked that I actually saw this movie. If its any consolation, I didn't pay money to watch it. ;-) If you are still shocked, well, my defence is, I don't like SRK, but a Aditya Chopra movie could be interesting.

Anyway, I ended up with a copy of this movie and decided to give it a go. The movie is no where close to the completeness of other Aditya Chopra movies, but is not a bad one either. Its rather too filmy in portions where the age old superman crap works i.e. the guy loses his glasses and moustache and voila, his wife can't recognize him any more! Except for a couple of songs, the rest are forced upon you and kinda kills whatever little narration is working. Music lacks the punch, but is adequate I suppose. There is nothing special to mention about the other facets of the movie making as such, all was pretty straightforward representation of the directors vision. The film lacks any connection with reality and that is its biggest flaw, I suppose. For this movie to be effective, it should not have been a second over 2 hours, hell there is no story depth to even last that long.

SRK has done a decent job, but he always overacts and this movie is no different. Vinay Pathak has been wasted in the movie. He needs to be careful of not losing his "charm" so to speak, with Dasvidaniya, Oh My god and this movie all coming close on each others heels. Anushka Sharma is definitely the find of the movie. She dances superbly, can act decently enough (especially for a debut movie) and except for scenes where Aditya chopra actually tries to create some melodrama, she is quite natural with her expressions. In my opinion, she can take deepika padukone head on and whip her ass!

I would rate this movie at 6/10 and have a special mention for Anushka's dance, she sure can move! :-)

Whodunit ? Hedunit!

2008-12-15T02:41:00.001-08:00

Sachin has finally done it! He has finally scored a century in a 4th innings victory for India. I have always yearned to see this and in fact have rated many like Inzamam ahead of Tendulkar because of Inzys ability to win test matches or Sachins inability to win them.

Finally, India chasing an epic score in the 4th innings, brings the very best out of the veteran and this 103 n.o. would be rated by many, including him, as one of his best ever hundreds! More so sweet because it happened in Chennai, which will sure help heal those Pakistan inflicted wound.

Thanks Sachin... Thanks!

p.s: Taking nothing away from Yuvraj though, he was just as instrumental if not more in winning this memorable test match! Kudos!

Sense And Sensibility!

2008-12-03T12:10:00.001-08:00

When Mumbai 26/11 was happening, all the media channels ensured that no political parlays were allowed or debated. They could afford to do this because they had an opportunity to not do any programming and had LIVE "action" to show. Now that the 'LIVE'ness of the incident is over, the media is back to the politicians for debates and gyan. Can't blame them in entirity, as they need to look at their topline too. And at the end of the day, the whole incident was covered more correctly by the media than what we see them do on a daily basis.

No, this is not a 'rant' on the media, but on the same old boring topic of politicians. Why I don't tire telling this to people I meet or writing about it in emails and now blogging here is coz, the sheer narcissist attitude of many of the senior politicians after the incident is unpardonable at so many levels. You wanna be corrupt, be corrupt. You wanna be inept, be inept. You wanna be lazy, be lazy. The people of India usually don't care. But this... this is very very different. 'Everybody', in my office, my family, my friends, whom I have personally met have had a sense of seriousness about what has happened. There are no jokes cracked, there is no blame game going on, its just sheer shock about what has happened and worry about what are we going to do about all this. And what do we hear from our politicians ?

Vilasrao Deshmukh:
i) On why Ram Gopal Verma accompanied him to the Taj : Many people come to such places
ii) On whether he is going to resign : I have offered to resign, and if the CWC thinks there is some responsibility I need to shoulder for this incident, then yes, I will obey.
RR Patil:
i) On whether he is going to resign : There is no question of resigning
ii) On whether there was intelligence lapse : In big cities, such small things happen
Achuthanandan:
i) On why Sandeep Unnikrishnans parents shouted at him : I don't know. If not for Sandeep, even a dog won't go to their house.
Mukhtar Naqvi:
i) On the outrage against politicians : All this is rubbish

There are many more examples:
1. Like how Veerappa Moily wanted a probe into why Hemant Karkare was targeted and there was BJP hand in it. Sure sir, that is exactly the problem!
2. Or how Arun Jaitley felt that the entire government should resign. Sure sir, now is the right time for elections and we can all get busy voting you guys back into power.
3. Or how Advani or Rajnath Singh cannot make it to the 'all party' meeting hosted by the PM. Sure sirs, lets win the elections in Rajasthan first, Maharashtra elections are not around for some time.

I mean... c'mon guys, even if you can't do your jobs, at least act Indian, FOR ONCE!

Two Of A Kind ?

2008-11-29T13:10:00.000-08:00

As if having one Raghu was not enough for the MTV Roadies contestant, he now has help from his twin brother Rajeev! I can't think both of them choosing to go with the exact same goatie plus bald look plus earrings etc. Orchestrated, but yet interesting ...

For some reason, I can't embed this video, youtube goof! Anywayz, here is the link. This post is thanks to my wife. :-)

Music Review: Yuvvraaj & Ghajini

2008-11-29T13:03:00.001-08:00

I had been thinking of writing a review for Yuvvraaj for more than a week now, but just haven't gotten around to it. So, here it is, along with a bonus Ghajini music review. ;-)

Yuvvraaj:
Subhash Ghai wielding the directors mic after a long time (I think). Honestly, I don't think much of the guy as a director, but hey, what do I know! :-) So, as a movie, I was not looking forward to Yuvvraaj, and if I go by the reviews, I was right. But w.r.t music, "anything" from A R Rahman has gotta be more interesting than the rest of the fare. And this time, Rahman does not disappoint. The album is one of the best from Rahman off late and considering Jodhaa Akbar earlier in the year, bettering that, in my opinion was a tough ask. Rahman did just that with this album. Typical Kay-Kay range melody in Tu Meri Dost Hain and well rendered by Shreya and a good start in Bollywood by Benny Dayal. I feel he has goofed up around the end of a stanza at about a minute and 20 sec into the song, but I don't seem to find support from the most musically literate person I personally know (my wife :-)). Tell me if anyone else feels that Benny lost it. Next is Shano Shano which is a typical peppy number but a little slow for being a party song though. The next one, Tu Muskura, is my favourite in this album. How Rahman got Alka Yagnik to croon like her good ol' days will remain a mystery, but hell she has delivered! And Javed Ali, what can I say, I just like his raw, rustic and fresh voice. I need to hear this guy sing more! The album probably didn't need another light song, but it has Mastam Mastam. In my opinion, this is the weakest song in the album. Zindagi has the smooth-as-silk Srinivas delivering the song beautifully. This is more a Srinivas song than a Rahman one. Dil Ka Rishta is where Rahman displays his growing prowess in western style orchestration and does a really good job. Manmohini is an ok song I suppose, probably too classical for me to appreciate it. :-) . All in all, I loved 3 songs, and find the rest of the songs also to be good. I give it a 7.5 on 10. Have I ever rated albums before ?

Ghajini:
Getting two super albums in one year from Rahman that I love is rare and getting a third was almost too good to be true. But after hearing the promos of Guzarish, I knew I could well be surprised. Its Javed Ali again and another great song! As if his souding like Sonu Nigam was not confusing enough, the humming in the middle of the song is actually by Sonu Nigam! A very nice song and sung very well. Aye Bachoo is a fast number and ever so stylishly rendered by Suzanne. I liked it more for the attitude in Suzannes voice. Kaise Mujhe has Karthik at vocals doing a decent job and the song starts off with promise, but the song kinda moves into this lazy note and kinda lacks the initial emotions till Shreya does the rescue act. This is quite rare for a rahman song, and the album has been going only downhill from Guzarish. Behka by Rahman flavour of the season, Benny and the constant of the season, Shreya. The song didn't do anything for me. The promos of the songs seem interesting, but the song by itself was not. Latoo is a true run-of-the-mill song and somehow Shreya, though does a decent job, should leave this genre of songs to Sunidhi. A rather disappointing end to a promising start. I give it a 5.5 on 10, and I guess even this rating is being helped by the latent leftover effect of Yuvvraaj.

Rahman has been very busy this year, and I am yet to hear the soundtrack of Slumdog Millionaire. Maybe we have more to come from the Maestro before the year ends...

Yes, we live amongst them!

2008-11-16T20:40:00.000-08:00

This is old news, but unfortunately, my ability to grasp important news has been "breaking" off late! This is extremely disturbing and hence you have been warned. But none the less, we need this kinda jolt once in a while to realize the difference between civilized and uncivilized forms of existence. BTW, I did think of writing the previous sentence as the "difference between civilized humans and wild animals", but I see enough Nat Geo to know that wild animals wouldn't be this uncivilized!

These are student clashes in chennai between two law colleges. The police apathy can prick at first, but remember, their action or inaction is not decided by them. You can see the police officer talking to someone on the phone and his apparent orders are to find a good spot from where he can watch the action rather than diffuse it!

I googled the net to know the reason behind these acts of aggression, but I surprisingly couldn't find any. All I could find was people talking about politics inside the campus etc etc. If anyone knows the reason (I am sure its going to be painfully silly!) or followed the news, please let me know.

Movie Review: Quantum of Solace

2008-11-12T11:15:00.001-08:00

Its been a while since I have written a review and what better to get back to the groove than Bonds latest movie Quantum of Solace. I really loved Daniel Craigs first bond starrer and truly had high hopes for this one and hence got the release weekend tickets.

As it turns out, the movie was not all that special. Daniel continues to be the Bond who prefers to punch his way out of trouble rather than take help from gadgets. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but a very thin and unclear plot didn't help the movie. Other than Bond, there is no character that stays back in your mind, not even the villain. The movie camera work is too fast and hence seems patchy at times. There are no ladies in the movie to note, with Olga Kurylenko merely a presence for the sake of it. During the movie I did wish for Q to come back from the dead and give Bond a gadget or two, just to spice things up. But alas, the only accomplice Bond needed were his fists. Some action scenes were good, but again, not enough action around the
action scenes, if you get my drift. The forced references to the
sequences and characters in Casino Royale was irritating, and to think that the movies climax is also driven by it was a let down.

As usual, the plot or the lack thereof is for you folks to see and savor, but my take on it is a 6/10 and I am being very lenient.

Bad to Worse

2008-11-12T03:38:00.001-08:00

My second favourite gadget stop is teethering! How many more pins to fall ? :-((

The New Kali

2008-11-05T19:45:00.000-08:00

Halloween + bored of stale costumes = Indian Goddess in a new avatar!

I am sure we will have some effigy burning and destruction of public property in India if these pics makes it some desi tabloid. ;-)

BTW, This is Heidi Klum and her husband Seal.

The Madness Continues...

2008-10-11T09:37:00.000-07:00

The fall in the financial markets in the US continues unabated and the Indian markets can't be too far behind...

What's next ? Who's next ??

Sub-prime prequel

2008-10-07T02:32:00.000-07:00

Here is a real nice article on the reasons for what transpired on wall street over the last month or so. [Thanks to Patel]

Don't miss the last line of the article. The guy still wants us to keep putting money in. :-D

Need Solution

2008-10-04T22:54:00.001-07:00

I have a simple problem and need a solution. I may not have tried hard enough, but I am looking for a quick answer. Power cuts are a reality we live with today in Bangalore and has been so for the last few summers. I use broadband at home and many a time use Skype for conference calls. I have an inverter at home for backup power supply and it takes over when there is a power cut in less than a second. My TV, tube lights etc don't get interrupted at all. But my broadband router is a different story. The time it takes for the power supply to get handed over to the inverter is good enough for the router to reboot and this is super irritating. I need to wait close to a minute before I dial back in and as Murphy would have it, this usually happens when I am expected to be doing the talking on the call.

I called up some UPS companies and they say "No UPS can switch over that fast". I don't get it... its a simple problem and should have a simple solution. I am sure there should be other appliances which are just as power sensitive and critical. How come we don't have a solution for this yet!! All I need is a 1 second battery backup after which the battery can give up and my inverter will take over.

p.s: Sudden motivation is, I was downloading a file for the last 6 hours from rapidshare and needed just 20 mins to complete it, but some BESCOM employee felt like testing my inverter and just did a power flip flop. Result is, my download stopped, can't be resumed and now since I am over my rapidshare limit, can't download for the next few hours!!

Web Junk Confirmed!

2008-10-01T22:05:00.000-07:00

We only had to wait a day to see the true reason behind the website.

I should have guessed as much when I saw the primarily "Orange" colour in the Ads. Looks like the real estate business is not doing too well and hence they had initially gotten into the furniture business and now travel. Or is it that they have made so much money from the real estate business and don't know what to do with it! :-) Either way, all the folks who went to the website and spilt their hearts out should be feeling pretty letdown with the true intent of the website! Crap!

Web Junk !?!

2008-10-01T07:59:00.000-07:00

Those who listen to FM Radio in Bangalore or read Times Of India (Bangalore edition) could not have missed the rather uninspired Ads on a rather interesting topic. See below and here:

I was extremely interested to know what the intent of the website was. Was it to know why people who have settled down in Bangalore are thinking of retracing their steps (I know a few such cases). Or was it to know if Bangaloreans are contemplating leaving Bangalore (I don't know a single case). Or was it just a whacky new way of attracting readership for some newspaper like DNA Daily's Whats in Bangalores DNA or Bangalore Mirrors Get Bangalore talking campaigns.

As it turns out, its a damp squib. Its likely just a portal for people to say *something* and probably for some marketing folks to collect email ids. Unless something big is waiting in suspense, such websites just add to worldwideweb junk!

Miracle ??

2008-09-29T10:05:00.000-07:00

People who are familiar with the stretch of Old Madras Road between Krishnarajapuram and NGEF junction know the dreaded Beneganahalli bridge. This is a real bottlneck for traffic movement throughout the day starting as early as 8AM and not ending even at 9PM. I used to frequent this section every day and every night and it took quite a toll on the emails I sent on reaching office or the intensity with which I would chew my dinner. :-)

This section had actually gotten so bad, that I had started using the Airport road to get to/from office. Just the other day, a week or so back, I took my chances for reasons I can't remember, changed loyalties and went via my ex-route. :-). To my utter surprise, I cruised at 30kmph (trust me, this is speeding!!) through the section. I thought this was just my lucky day and tested my luck in the evening. Same result again! Cruised through... I tested the stretch again and again the next few days. Everyday, same result...even at 9:00AM or 7:00PM, which are peak traffic times! There was no change in traffic patterns with respect to feeding of vehicles and yet this miracle ??

This is a mystery which needed figuring out. So, I sacrificed some of my grey cells for this noble cause. As it turns out, the traffic cops were the reason for the blockage at Beneganagalli. I actually have a lot of respect for the traffic cops who do a decent job in Bangalores maddening traffic. So, why would these traffic cops do such a stupid thing... day in and day out and then one fine day, stop doing so ??

The answer my friends is that (and here I theorize...), the next big junctions i.e. NGEF and C V Raman Nagar junctions are both heavy traffic ones. Since more people will be affected if there are traffic jams in these junctions, the earlier junction i.e. Beneganahalli bridge junction is choked on purpose to smoothen traffic in the following junctions! Then came a point when the Beneganahalli bridge junction became a bigger bottleneck than the the worst of jams on the bigger junctions. And voila, traffic cops vanish and so do the traffic jams at Beneganahalli bridge!

So there, mystery solved... at least in my mind. :-) But whatever be the reason, this sure is a blessing for people struck by traffic plight.

Movie Review : A Wednesday

2008-09-13T13:14:00.001-07:00

I was not in town last weekend and missed the movie reviews of the newly released movies. But my sis-in-laws SMS'ed me the ratings and was not surprised to see A Wednesday got 4 stars. The movie stills were impressive coz it came through as a no-bullshit movie and catering to the multiplex audience (which is so me!).

So, not surprisingly, I saw the movie this weekend. Its a short movie by Bollywood standards and has no song-dance sequences, no mushy-mellow stuff and definitely no hamming! The actors at the helm of the movie, Naseeruddin Shah and Anumpam Kher have got a chance to work in a movie befitting their talent. The story is crisp and to the point with next to no surprises, gearing the viewers for the suspenseful few minutes at the end. Since its a short movie with a tight storyline and no frills, one doesn't get bored and this pacy point of the movie is good. The role of the journalist has been shaped out badly and doesn't have enough meaning to it. Using the media to see the happenings "live" has been seen many times in movies in the past and the same is used here too.

People who plan to watch the movie, please stop reading now, as spoilers follow. I will try my best to retain the interesting parts of the plot. :-)

The story is very straightforward. Its a "I have planted bombs, free the terrorists" plot. Though I liked the movie because of its intent, the possibility of something like this happening seems way too remote. No one has the time, money, will, guts or one may say, even need, to do something as what the protagonist has done. And there were some very amateurish mistakes too.

For e.g:
1. How did Naseer get access to all the money needed for something like this ? He seems like a 'common' middle class man.
2. For someone this techie about everything else in the movie, his lack of attention to detail, like getting a simple disguise while getting into the police station is stupid
3. Use gloves! Doesn't anybody watch CSI ?? :-)
4. Its fine for Naseer to be getting cooked in the mumbai heat, but couldn't he have spared his gear ?
5. If Anupam Kher had not intention of catching/Killing Naseer, why even go to the supposed site of operations that Naseer used ?
6. If Naseer was using "some" software to do number hopping, why care for changing the SIM each time ? Why even come to mumbai to do stuff ? Sit at home and have fun!

Anywayz, all in all, a decent fair, paisal vasool, worth watching once! I give it a 7 on 10.

Huh... Come Again ?!?

2008-09-12T12:37:00.001-07:00

I have rarely liked Ads on US television and looks like internet Ads are no different. I have seen a few of the famed Apple Ads, they are OK, but not really out there funny or out there cool. Micro$oft Ads have been even less funnier than the Apple ones and they seem to be very intent on keeping it that way. They must have paid millions to get Jerry Seinfeld to do these, but then, just because you have one of the greatest stand-up comedians of all time does not mean that you can get away with absolute nonsensical crap!! Bill Gates may be a saint, thanks to his charity foundation, which is cool. But damn, he is not even close to cool in the below Ads! Have a look...

Damn Bill, Damn Jerry, Damn Micro$oft... what were you guys thinking ? What was the point of the Ads ? If you plan to pass some message or slogan about Windows/Micro$oft, at this rate, you will need a 100 videos before you actually get there!

Dilbert...Again

2008-09-09T13:01:00.000-07:00

Couple of nice ones. :-)

Idea Drought ?

2008-09-03T12:17:00.001-07:00

As is now very common knowledge, Google took tiny steps with their big feet into the browser world with the beta version of Chrome. This is a rather confusing move on Google's part, as they have always been a strong advocate of Firefox and getting a browser, no matter how the positioning, will be a hindrance to Firefox's continued acceptance and possible domination in the browser world. So, I really wonder, who does Google plan to hurt with this new product ? Tech savvy people will choose Firefox without a doubt, but I do hear IE 8 has some nice stuff coming up. Who do you think will be using the Chrome ? Gotta be tech savvy people, again! Is Google running out of ideas for products ?

I was also very surprised by the number of people who have heard of Chrome! How did Google manage that ?? I have not seen any Ads pop up on Gmail or Google Search. I don't remember popular tech blogs reporting about the new incumbent into the browser world till the actual beta of the product. All in all, many things about this product is surprising.

Though I haven't used Chrome enough to be able to give a complete review, here is my first take on it. Its a simple browser!! There are no bells and whistles to talk about, there are no obvious eye catchers (other than its simplicity). Its definitely less memory consuming than Firefox 3. Its definitely faster than Firefox 3, at least under low load. There is no official mention of add-ons support, but I would presume that its a foregone conclusion that there would be add-on support. A simple Google search did give me a few hits about Chrome add-ons, but I haven't tried any.

In a nutshell, this is a fast browser, but there is nothing innovative about it, at least not yet. I am not even closely tempted to move away from Firefox, but then, since i use so many of Googles products, I wouldn't mind giving one more of their products a decent shot. Lets wait and watch...

Keep 'em coming!

2008-08-20T02:53:00.001-07:00

Sushil Kumar won a bronze in wrestling!! If my memory serves me right, this is the first time India has won more than one medal at any one Olympics. Yipppeeeeee!

Why is it that when we don't win a medal we whine about it comparing ourselves with Burundi and when we win one we whine comparing ourselves with China ? Hell, this is sports... shit happens... Anju bobby george fouled all her 3 jumps yesterday. We start cursing her... just imagine, do you think she would have enjoyed 4 years of preparation to culminate like this ?? Yogeshwar Dutt missed at least a bronze in wrestling yesterday by just 10 seconds! Can this be deemed as a "dismal end" to his challenge ??

Yes, I love cricket (its been waning off late), Yes, it is the bane of every other sport in India, Yes, the administration sucks, But, please, leave the sportsmen/women alone!!

Riddle me this!

2008-08-17T23:01:00.001-07:00

There has been a lot of news about the Mehtas abortion case. There has been a zillion opinion polls already and a lot of view points. Usually most issues that we see or hear in our day to day lives (even through media) have very simple positioning, when it comes to which side of the story you are on. Rarely do you come across something that you don't know the solution for or even don't know who is right and who is wrong. This particular case was one such for me.

I assume everybody is more than aware of the details of this case, thanks to utter lack of privacy on the part of the media. If you don't, please go through the link provided earlier. Among the most popular of opinions I have heard is, "What has the court got to do with all this! ?" The Mehtas have, and with good reason, chosen not to have the baby. It has to after all be their choice, since they are the ones in a position of sacrificing a big portion of their lives, earnings, time etc etc. On the other hand, why can't this be branded as a case of 'perfect baby' syndrome ? And this can, with little reasoning, be extended to be a case of boy vs girl child. Who decides the perfectness of the baby ? What is perfect for one person needn't be so for another. Here there is a case of a child with a heart problem. What if there is a case later where the child is supposed to have one leg shorter than other and the parents happen to be athletes and hence feel they don't want the child ? As you can see, this is now a case for the court to decide, since this almost points to choosing life and death for a fetus. And choosing death amounts to murder!

Because of all the emotions involved in this, its relatively (and obviously) easy for us to find fault with the courts as being insensitive to the Mehtas. But, this is a case that will have implications in the coming years, as the high moral ground that we Indians claim to stand on erodes as the years go by. The Indian values that we pride on, have been morphed by us to suit our current lifestyles. We are making a valiant attempt at keeping them alive, while each passing day is another nail in its coffin. With more and more parents getting more and more involved in their professional careers and the rat race in general, who wants to spend more time in taking care of a less than perfect child ? On a different note, lets say the court orders the government to take care of all medical expenses for the child. I am sure a certain portion of the people protesting against the court order will be ok with this solution, but would this be good enough for the Mehtas ? Would they have then wanted to have the baby ?

The latest development in this case gives a new twist to the whole saga. A mother and father who didn't want a baby are being forced by the law to have one. Is it too much to imagine that they did whatever they could to avoid complying with this diktat ? Can it not be claimed that the Mehtas murdered the fetus ? If so, is that right ? If not, who is to get the Mehtas to justice ? Who will file the complaint in order for there to be a further probe ? Who wants to be the cold hearted impassionate villain ?

This issue may or may not be in the news for long, but this sure has had me thinking a lot!