Disgusted and Helpless

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

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"

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...

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!

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?

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...

Courtesy: xkcd.com

Time erodes quality...

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?

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?

An artists view...



:-)
p.s: Courtesy Patel.

Be very scared!

How do they do it?

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...

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

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?

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

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...

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

Courtesy:xkcd

An outside opinion...

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

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...

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). :-)