Moodiness quotient rises

I'm attending Mood Indigo 2005, so if you're interested, you can catch semi-frequent (subjective) updates here.

Differing strokes

I'm a little nonplussed with this Ganguly affair, mainly concerning the various reactions. For long, the wishlist of Indian fans has been for the Indian Board to be more Australian-like. The Aussies showed no compunctions in dropping the likes of Healy or Mark Waugh (please correct me if I am wrong) when they felt their time was over and even denying them fond farewells at home. I think Steve Waugh got away with it because he'd made it clear he was going to retire.

In SCG's case, he is not going to retire (frankly, he is just 32 or 33 and surely he would feel he has a couple of years left), so I don't think what Gaurav suggests Dravid should have done in his post was feasible or even required (more on this post later).

If you want a professional board, you need to be able to take and swallow such "harsh" decisions - atleast in this case, there is a sufficient cricketing case rather than the lows of Noel David in the past. Whether this is any indication of a more professional selection committee, I don't know, but Test players have been dropped after doing much better in the past and it wasn't as if Ganguly was on top of the world.If you want a kinder board based on what a player has achieved in the past, then you need to devise severance/VRS packages and have a broad and kind HR policy :-)

Coming to Gaurav's post, I'm not very sure about Dravid being likened to Brutus. Let's examine the comments made by Dravid and Chappell. Their response to each question about Ganguly would have been (and was) examined under a microscope, perhaps even run through a voice processor for subtle tonal inflections! You expect the Indian captain (known for his political correctness) to say anything less than what he said about Ganguly's contributions in the match? Upto you to decide whether he was speaking the truth or willfully misleading everyone - he never said something on the lines of "oh, what a genius and how we missed him and if he hadn't been there, we'd have never won", did he? Also if Chappell says SCG is a "mentor", that thought should still hold in a professional setup - after all even if India's most successful captain is no longer among the top 6 batsmen in the team, he has a lot to offer off the field. Does he have to be in the playing 11 to provide these inputs? (could he have been in the 14? it's a call on how he'd respond to being in the squad without being in the 11 - perhaps they had just needed to leave him in the 14 and add another opener). At the same time, consider a selection meeting where Dravid is asked: who would you prefer, Ganguly or Yuvraj at 6? If his reply was Yuvraj, does that make him a Brutus-like figure. I think not. If Dravid had said "oh Ganguly made no worthwhile contribution in the Test", he'd have been crucified too. I don't think anyone is saying Yuvraj is the next Bradman, but it's a question of available resources and investments, ain't it? Instead of focussing on sorting out the opening problems, off we go on a tangent.

Whether Jaffar is the best option or not, I don't know - I haven't been following domestic cricket to that extent. The vacancy was in the opening slot, especially if you want to take 3 openers on a tour. But do you also want the Yuvrajs & Kaifs to get a run - of course. IMO too, Kaif could be a better Test player than Yuvraj, but so far Yuvraj has been preferred and I'm glad they haven't made an abrupt change. I don't understand what Gaurav and others mean by Ganguly having been denied a dignified exit - how do you decide this and how exactly do you ease a player out (who is not yet contemplating retirement)? Do you want to take him down in degrees?

Secondly, Gaurav wants Dravid to take a saner stand. He feels Dravid should have spoken his mind. But if the captain had spoken aloud and said "I don't want Ganguly at the cost of so and so player", he's a Brutus-like figure. If he'd said "Let's give him an honourable exit", then people would have been happier, but I think that would have shamed Ganguly more - being treated like an old family retainer people are too polite to speak the truth to. Let's cast our mind back to that famous declaration at 196* (at Multan, was it?). Dravid has shown this ruthless streak before and similarly caused a split in opinions. I refuse to believe yet that Dravid is anything less than a professional and like many of us who work in a professional setup, we must accept that such decisions have to be accepted without too much mollycoddling, for it's always going to come down to a question of subjective degrees. What does a phrase like "forced out" mean? Unless if a Test player voluntarily steps down (like one of those English captains once did - was it Mike Denness) or retires (like SRW), any player has to be "forced out" or "dropped" or "rested" depending on what turn of phrase catches your fancy. Why would it be any other way? Decorated Generals hopefully also need to know when their time is up - this general still feels (and why shouldn't he?) that he still has it in him. It's not time to make him a Field Marshal yet, is it? We need something like what they do in Britain to the annoying politicans - bump them up to the House of Lords! :-)

I guess my point is this: like most other people, I continue to be a Dravid fan, but unlike some of them, I don't want to be cynical of his motives.

The JaDe Project - 7

Category: Awards

There are awards and there are self-thumping awards, but none like the Star Parivaar Awards. I mean, what the heck? Take a look at last year's award winners here, but more importantly, at the categories: A Best collection of Pati, Patni, Naya Sadasya, Khalnayak, Devar/ani, Jethani, Yogya Bahu, Saas/Sasur. All these are merrily laughable, but I draw the line at Best Saut - ROTFL-saying-WTF.

{Are there no Best Jeth, Best Chach[a | i] et al? Shows you what the pecking order is. And question: Does a Saut actress with a Bahu and Saas of herself qualify for all these categories? The possibilities are endless}

These awards are supposed to be for the entire Star Plus channels (if I am not mistaken), but by having Saut-ern categories, aren't they constraining the competition? It is a giant K-ego massage at best (no pun intended). We haven't even hit "Best JoDi" - I would have voted for Amitabh and Computer-ji if I could.

IMHO, the only time such paarivaarik awards could have been cool would have been if the Corleones or the Sopranos were involved. Imagine "Best Consigliere" or "Best Capo Regime" or "Best Two-timing family member".

I would watch the * Parivaars if they had awards like "Most Numerologically Powerful Title" or "Most Gruesome Makeup for Khalnaaikas". Everything else is just down of Saut.

A little bash-fulness

Sunday, 11th Dec, The front pages of The Times of India. The top banner reads: "On December 11, 2004, Sachin Tendulkar equalled Sunil Gavaskar’s world record of 34 Test hundreds.A year later, on December 10, 2005, at 4:44 pm at the Ferozeshah Kotla in Delhi, he — literally (my emphasis) and metaphorically — elbowed out the original Little Master to create history".

I know someone had a post recently pointing out these literal errors, but can't find it. Hopefully, Gavaskar (who was reported to have been holidaying in Nepal when Sachin overtook (not literally of course) him - so it was one heck of a long-distance elbowing) did not catch any of those infectious diseases that the younger Mumbaikar has been carrying in that part of the body. What else do you say?

---

NDTV's news ticker had this under "Sports" yesterday: "Ronaldo wants to win a Nobel Prize". Sports news? Forget that. News?

Thoughts on the music of Rang De Basanti

A Sikh devotional hymn, a fast paced Punjabi number, a rap/pop "college" song, a very slow romantic duet, an Arabic style song, a contemplative melody , a recited version of "Sarfaroshi Ki Tamanna", a surprising mother-son duet and a rock-and-roll-ish carol to end - there is no shortage of variety in Rang De Basanti. Whatever credit accrues must go to the story/screenplay writer to provide a music director with such a range of situations, for it is that department (assuming no marketing interference) that holds the key to what a music director can make music for.

Now to the actual songs:

Ek OMkaar

From the minimal research I did, I found this hymn is known as the Sikh "muul mantra" and begins the Guru Granth Sahib [link]. Harshdeep Kaur sings this in a very crystal clear production. So now ARR has an album with a Sikh devotional presence, after Hindu, Islamic and Christian before. Interesting.

Ra.Ng De Basa.nti

Punjabi number? Don't be afraid of listening to it - there is a complete absence of exhausted clichés like soNi kuDiyaa.N and gali de muNDe et al. This marks one in the merits column of the lyricist (Prasoon Joshi : Interview on the album) who provides a bhangra touch without sacrificing freshness. Sample this:
"Dhiimi aa.Nch pe tu/Zaraa ishq chaDhaa/thoDi jharne laa/thoDi nadii milaa"
Quite minty to me.

Daler Mehndi and Chitra in the same song - I would never have bet on that combination being credited together. This is a rocking good song, though I'm not very sure about its shelf life yet. However, the minor electronic touches here and there, the delightful contrast between the male and female voices and the lyrics (Joshi points out "The song describes the method to prepare basanti ka rang") make this the song the album will lead into the marketplaces with. More lyrics appreciation: I learnt words like "dhau.Nkanaa".

PaaThashaalaa

Supposed to be a rebellious college number, the kind we've heard in Kadhal Desam. The yells of "Lose Control" and "I'm a Rebel" were unappealing to me (too old? nope, generally sceptical of these specious sentiments :-) ). Still, just a couple of notable crumbs and slight irritation at the singers (Naresh Iyer, Aslam) saying "tiita" instead of "thiita" (Greek "theta" if you're wondering). Let's skip along. I have a feeling this would probably work better in a film situation than as a standalone song.

PaaThashaalaa - Be A Rebel

While we are at it, let's get the second version of this song out of the way. Blaaze back rapping (usually causing a little trepidation to me) - but must say, interesting mix of lyrics. "Zi.ndaabaad/zi.ndaa-good"? Still figuring out if I like that. More electronic jhingbang with a recurrent beep and a sort of chorus scat. Again, not my line of affections.

Tuu Bin Bataaye

This is the kind of Rahman song that needs several warnings of "this will probably grow on you, so give it time". Very, very, very slow tempo and quite spare in orchestration. I have heard it several times now and must confess that I find it a little conventional in its progress, with the bell chimes and the sax - the standard signs of a romantic duet. Naresh Iyer (of whom we hear a lot in the ARR scene these days after he got "spotted" in the Super Singer of course) sings another leisurely duet with Madhushree (Ah Aah being the earlier one). They do sing well and there's a lot of scope for them to exhibit. On the whole, worth a few listens actually - I realise I have a slightly poor threshold of acceptance for our slower-tempo traffic.

Khalbali

Experimentation time - in many ARR albums, you'd find one song that sounds quite weird and has these esoteric arrangements. This song is the representative here. Composed in the Arabic style (or what is commonly felt to be the Arabic style at any rate), for me it was torn between the strangeness of the singing (the music director taking on the burden with Aslam, and Nacim providing the Arabic chants) with the vibrating pronouncements of the words and the compelling rhythms (credit: Hossam Ramzy). If you can get both past and used to the singing (I don't know how successful it is, but it is attention-grabbing to say the least), then you'll probably want to listen to this again. I found that hearing it under the influence of the headphones helped and the "hone hone de nashaa/khone khone ko hai kyaa" bit helped matters. Atleast we have a version in a Hindi film that has not been ripped off from some CD. According to the Joshi interview, they've used an instrument called the chenda which is an integral part of kathakali performances - you do notice a good percussion during the second part of the song, but I wouldn't have known it was this.

Khuun Chalaa

Listen to this one with your headphones and turn the volume up, for the song is so mellow that I didn't catch a lot at the first batch of hearings. Mohit Chauhan (more famous for being the lead singer of the band "Silk Route") is a fitting choice for this quietly intense song mixed with sonorous violins and piano which could have fitted into one of our better subcontinental rock albums. It's a pity this is a small song, for we could have done with more of the anthemic lyrics. According to me, it's a pity they chose to follow this up with the rap "PaaThashaalaa" on the CD quite upsetting the mood set up by this song.

Lukkaa Chuppii

Lata M, A R Rahman and lyrics starting with "Lukka chuppii" - frankly I was dreading this song :-) and expecting it to turn out to be some soppy sentimental song with less than perfect singing. And then came the guitars.

There is some cool strumming on acoustic guitars to begin with and a melody, followed by the seniormost Mangeshkar (singing for Waheeda Rehman, I read) singing some very pleasant lyrics without any trace of incongruousness. Guitars continue as Rahman joins in (with highly Tamil accented Hindi! - I guess that despite knowing his pronounciation is not really there, he pencils himself in for these songs because he thinks only he can communicate the feeling behind it).

Then come the tabalaas in the a.ntaraas and even better, soon to be followed by a very well-utilised harmonium interspersed with bits of the trademark flute. The real surprise arrives towards the end featuring an extensive alaap flourish by both singers. One will be compelled to overlook the less than perfect pronounciation and Lata's sibilant singing for the overall emotional content produced by putting all these elements together.

Now, according to the interview I cited earlier, this song is set at the funeral of a son with the mother reminiscing. In that light, the lyrics (another thumbs up for you Mr. Joshi) with the kite metaphors do acquire further depth and it's quite commendable the powers that be chose to take this approach for such a situation.

Lalkaar

This is a recital by Aamir Khan, very much in the mould of Iruvar's "Unnodu naan iru.ndha ovvur.u maNi thuLiyum", of verses in the sentiment of Sarfaroshi Ki Tamanna. Obviously for one of those "inspirational" and "rebellious" situations.

Ruubaruu

Wow! I love this song. More guitar strumming, this time chased around by cooing backing vocals. Naresh Iyer and A.R.Rahman croon this one to the accompaniment of what could easily be your college band. This 60s kind of rock and roll song could easily be performed by a four person band and that is hopefully the kind of frothy and upbeat mood they wanted to evoke. Nice lyrics once again which gel wonderfully into the song structure (assuming Rahman composed it first). Good support from the yodellers in the background.

In summary, Rang De Basanti gives A.R.Rahman the chance to get out of the ponderous "period" film scene and return to contemporary tunes. The variety means that one would probably like atleast one or two of the songs, but could also mean less acceptance of a majority of them. However, like always, when I get a proper ARR album, there are several points of interest to go and read up and follow to. Personally, the biggest positive was to hear so many newer voices rather than the usual syndicates, for only with newer combinations will the Hindi film music scene go ahead.

Local - a review

A small review of the novel 'Local' on the Lit Blog.

Faux News - 9

Faux News bulletin

(You know it's time if it's faux pas nine!)

Next moon landing to be shot in India
By our Science correspondent

In a further sign of the increasing cooperation between India and the US in areas of science and technology, the next moon landing will involve an Indian location in addition to carrying an Indian astronaut among the crew.

The first set of Apollo missions in the late 60s and early 70s were widely believed to have been staged in a studio lot set up in Alaska and Iceland given the very authentic moonscapes available. However, sources in NASA and in the Department of Science and Technology in the GoI told this website that advances in terrain engineering have now enabled several Indian cities to put forward their candidature for this prestigious project. This also stems from the personal interest taken by top officials in the United States administration who would like to encourage greater cooperation as envisaged in the joint declaration earlier this year.

Ms. Ada Mantine, chief of the Amsterdam based Sharon's Rock Monthly, told Faux News that in the last two years Indian roads have deteriorated to just the right consistency and texture to closely approximate the required geological conditions. D.A.Gadde of the Indian Geological Association also pointed out the strict quality checks introduced by the Indian Road Congress in retaining the composition of the shale and mud in the surrounding topographical regions, for the audiences would now expect a higher video quality as opposed to the days of Armstrong and co.

However, this decision to move the shooting of this latest gigantic technological step has already run into trouble in the US Senate. Senator Al Luvium has opposed the move saying that it was further indication that the current US administration did not have the interests of US labour and technicians in mind. Additionally, it has also been reported that the Pakistani lobby is behind the Senator. The Pakistani government is unhappy with this growing collaboration and claim that this honour had been promised to them over a decade ago, which is why they had left untar-nished all major roads in the country.

Despite these hiccups, both governments are determined to make this the most authentic moon mission till date. Bids have been sought for city municipal corporations and from the surface of it, cities like Pune and Bangalore could be the frontrunners.

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Click here for a free look at the earlier editions.

Woe kaun thi

Two events that have had a catastrophic influence on our collective Bollywood experience:

1. I know people loved Hera Pheri (I didn't to the same extent having seen the same plot in 2 other languages before, so kindly excuse), but if only that movie had not done well at all, we wouldn't as a society be subject to attempt after attempt by Priyan to assembly-line-remake all his Malayalam movies and the human equivalent Zyclon-B team of Akshay Kumar-Paresh Rawal-Sunie[0-n]l Shetty-/ would not have shown up as frequently as cyclones this year.

2. (this is even more dismal) I don't have any objections to Mallika S pursuing her own line of fashion, but did she have to do it in a film starring Emraan #mi? If only she'd picked another film and made that a success, we wouldn't have been seeing the eh? boy in every 2nd trailer these days (I counted today). This seems to be the final push from agnosticism to atheism, a secular sign if you wish. OTOH, my eyesight has improved from not watching much TV. Beethoven : Alex (post-treatment) :: #mi : moi. Would I be happier with Ashmit Patel in every other film? Yuss! Scream bloody murder.

And I'm not trying to be funny.

Sawai Gandharva

First time at Sawai Gandharva yesterday. I decided to finally sample the biggest music programme of the year in Pune as part of increasing my consciousness of Hindustani classical music. I don't have any formal knowledge and have been slowly dipping myself in the aural offerings.

When Nikhil and I got to the venue, we had missed Shrinivas Joshi (Bhimsen Joshi's son) but entered to Kala Ramnath's violin performance. This was followed by a disciple of Shobha Gurtu's, Rajshri Pathak. The big name for the night was Pandit Jasraj, accompanied by Appa Jalgaonkar on the harmonium and the seemingly ubiquitous Vijay Ghate on the tabla.

One thing I've always observed is that on most occasions, the big names do have that something extra that distinguishes them from the second rung of performers. Pt. Jasraj was no different and you didn't have to know too many technicalities to get involved. This was also true of Appa Jalgaonkar's harmonium playing - I can't tell if any musician is making mistakes or what is the purity of his performance, but I can tell you if this was different and special. There were some breathtaking moments even for a layperson.

Pt. Jasraj ended with an appeal to listeners to promote Indian classical and raised the bogey of the music channels and the pop scene - this always makes me uncomfortable. There are some issues involved here - is interest in such art forms flagging below a critical level, if these channels weren't there, would their patrons necessarily switch to classical music, what can musicians and patrons do more than simply lament the passage of time, etc. Such issues are true of many genres, and though people think preservation is important and can't be left to the ravages of commercial interests, the blanket blaming of commerce isn't the best option, methinks.

I was happily surprised at the proficient organisation at the venue - the additional screens and the TVs at appropriate distance intervals made it quite comfortable even for us in the "bhaaratiya baiThak"s.

Update: Harish's experiences

Loud and clear

Last Tuesday, I went to listen to Simon Singh talk about the subject of his latest book Big Bang. I had read part of his most famous book Fermat's Last Theorem, so I expected quite an informative talk. It was quite entertaining too. Singh put on a very interesting slideshow going over the key elements of the Big Bang theory in the last 50 years, though for anyone who has read the relevant sections in Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time, it was not unfamiliar.

As had been promised in the publicity flyers, Led Zeppelin ("Stairway to Heaven" played in reverse and words sounding like a hymn to Satan, to illustrate the human mind's penchant for sometimes contriving patterns out of nothing and) why the Teletubbies are evil showed up. He also started the evening by acknowledging the existence of a book with the same title but dealing with the kinds of issues that Eccentrica Gallumbits was known to have written about according to "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe".

Slightly ironic about the evening was the fact that the venue for this event was at the IUCAA whose head Jayant Narlikar's guru, Fred Hoyle, was the foremost opponent of the "Big Bang" theory. It was quite a decent 101 to the theory. Coincidentally, I even found a copy of this book at the British Library today, so let's see how that turns out.

Armstrong tactics

It's not about the bike is simply the toughest book I've read in a long, long time - perhaps of all time. It really was not about the bike. If I didn't know it had such a well-chronicled happy ending, I would have found it hard to stomach all of it. I have read a lot of lives with worse things happening, but it was something about the Texan and the candidness with which he talks of things before and after. I don't know what. It's not very easy to make a gist in a paragraph, so I'm not going to even try.

Over the last 5 years, each of the biographies I have read add weight to that great quote I read somewhere (paraphrased): "What's the difference between fiction and reality? (sometimes) Fiction has to make sense".

European Film Festival - Hotel Rwanda and Enduring Love

Hotel Rwanda
So you've seen films about humans in conflicts, how some of them with rare courage end up saving the lives of many around them despite faltering along the way. These stories have been set among warring Bosnians and Serbs, Hindus and Muslims, Indians and Pakistanis, Jews and Nazis, Russians and Germans, etc. etc. - the appellations change but we've seen it all before. So why should we watch a film like most of these set in Rwanda?

One, because however jaded the theme can get, these stories need to be told. We need to learn about the Hutus and Tutsis as well, precisely because these are so easily transplanted elsewhere. They can plant a seedling of caution. It also helps that the film has been made well, with some good performances from the likes of Don Cheadle in the main role as the hotel manager whose conscience forces him to abandon his me-and-my-family-only stance to (reluctantly at first) care for as many as he could. These tales apart from being about uncommon bravery amidst all too common stories of woe are also a reminder of the fortuitousness, the random arbitrary hand of chance and the occasional inability of the powerful to be fully evil. This may have happened a decade ago, but that the world saw most of it and still couldn't or wouldn't do much is not something I knew.

If you have been watching movies for a while, there'd have been one film that shook you out of your naive belief that they all have happy endings. Mine was "Von Ryan's Express" where I found it extremely hard to believe that they'd kill Frank Sinatra after all the trouble he went to getting those soldiers out of the Nazi clutches - I became a little suspicious of stories from then on. The reason why I'm talking about it here is that the way the film has been narrated is not always the most predictable - they've left in the little snatches of humour and sadness that makes up life as we usually know it.

Enduring Love
This isn't the greatest psychological thriller you'll ever see, but I will remember this for a long time for I was brilliantly set up for this movie.

So you're in a lush green field in one of those made-for-cinematography bright English days with your girlfriend. An out of control hot air balloon punctures this picture of serenity. It has a small boy in it. You rush to help as do a few other passersby. A few spectacular shots later, one of them is dead - dead by plunging to his fall. You were among those who let go. It begins to haunt you. You're Joe.

Or you were one of the others. When you saw the body, you knelt to pray. And coerced Joe to do the same. And when he did, you felt a strange kinship spring between both of you. And you continued to see meaning in everything he did from then on. How harmless are you really? You're Jed.

You're Claire and you continue to be puzzled at what Joe's been thinking - why does he blame himself so? It's come to a point where one of you has to make a decision.

Enduring Love doesn't lift into a higher gear at any specific point, not even when it could have - but I found the meandering more menacing, more irritable, more intriguing. Throw in neo-Darwinian discussions on the ethics of love, the quest for meaning when none probably existed, on finding it complicated to keep it simple - the adaptation of a Ian McEwan novel had all this to offer. In the end analysis, it comes up a little short, but if you're in the right (or wrong) frame of mind, you might really like it.

That the film was directed by the man who made "Notting Hill" will explain the presence of actors like Rhys Ifans (Hugh Grant's Welsh roommate) and Bill Nighy (the wannabe banker). Samantha Morton, I've seen in similar scenes of psychological trauma in an episode of "Cracker", while this was my first glimpse of the new Bond, Daniel Craig.

KM
I sort of lost enthusiasm for the rest of the festival, but will be heading to watch Mani Ratnam's "Kannathil Muthamittal" on the big screen for the first time. There were a couple of minor factual errors in the brochure regarding the plot - wonder who ctrl-c/ctrl-v-ed that from where.

Ah Aah, The Rising, Water

{As usual, not a review - just a place to jot down thoughts - long overdue}

Ah Aah
Those Rahman fans who thought the bag of fast, pacy songs had dried out, should give the title track a listen - some fans have gone as far as to lament its presence in this film, for according to them, it was good enough to be a Rajnikanth intro song :-) - high praise indeed. I didn't fancy too much of the rest of the album, but there were snatches that I really liked. Shreya Ghoshal gets better each year and I have to follow her work more seriously. She's done a good job (and I haven't heard her sing such songs before) with "Nazhuvuthu" which also presented a few interesting bits. OTOH, I would really implore ARR to stop using Madhushree - her recent efforts have been huge dampeners. So I didn't like "Mazhilazhage" much. The faster version of the same song (different lyrics - interesting that) in "Maramkothiye" is a touch better, but no great shakes. "Thigu Thigu" for some reason reminds me of Ilayaraja in the early/mid 90s - not sure why. More non-Tamil female singing credits - this time Sadhana Sargam. Hugely annoying male voice - Blaaze? - aargh. "Varugirai" - didn't care much for this too, sadly - but atleast Hariharan and Chitra don't suck in the singing dept. Rewind then, back to "Anbe Aaruyire" and hear the music director croon soulfully.

(BTW, "Ah Aah" is really the name of the film - no joking.)

The Rising
This album was understandably not a hit - understandably, because in the ultimate analysis, it wasn't all that great, and plus it would have demanded some more patience from its listeners. Since I was anyway going to invest that kind of time, I did come away with some positives than the average listeners.

There are three variations of the title track. It took me some time to figure out that the first was actually not about Mangal Pandey, but a general evocation to the beginning of a day and let everything be good. I liked this one and the last one which digs out defiance from despair (I seem to be a sucker for these). If I can forget about the annoying nasal twangs of Madhushree again, the Holi song - especially, the spoken part towards the end - had me interested. "Mai.n vaari vaari" also caught my fancy as did the seductive, gypsy "Rasiyaa" tune, which I found quite fresh. I'm glad ARR has decided to stop doing these "period" films for it's taking its toll and I'm tired of the by now ubiquituous Muslim devotional ("Al-Madath Maulaa" in this one). "Takey Takey" is more of a situational song - I didn't think much of it. Trivia note is that Rahman's kids have now registered their voices on an official soundtrack with this song.

Water
I'm not going to write much about this unless I hear a full CD quality album, but reactions are that it's obviously quite spare in arrangements and I don't think it's going to be a crowd-pleaser by a mile. I think the reason Rahman rates it highly must be because of the challenge it must have posed personally - requires a completely different set of gears.

Ping

The brief interlude is over - I'm back to finding anonymous concealment in books, movies, music and writing, just like it used to be.

*** I have a long vacation and it has been repeatedly impressed that such days will not show up too often in the rest of my life. So feeling a little like being out on the Rockefeller laws or a final Shwaas-like parole before the guillotine drops, I'm trying to do many of those "things". It reminds me of actor Chris England in his book "From Balham to Bollywood" who writes about how he finds himself succumbing to the desperate fever of squeezing in that extra moment in the holiday. I'm a fan of sleep, but sometimes the pressure is such that even to me, 6+ hours of the zzzs seems to be wasteful.

Plans include catching on some lesser known films at a "European Film Festival" at NFAI, at least one session at Sawai Gandharva and more books than films this time.

*** TV is back and have been catching up on a favourite pastime - movie trailers. Mr. ya Miss is arguably the worst Factory trailer ever and is despairing considering the more creative efforts before. Antara Mali as director? So she cops blame both for screaming too much and making it the focus of the trailers. OTOH, smart work as usual from Sanjay Gupta who has been given credit only by George methinks. And this time, some brownie melting fudge points from me for opting to go for a quieter adjunct song by roping in Strings to do "Yeh Hai Meri Kahani" with a distinctive video featuring the Pakistani rockers along with Sanjay Dutt and John Abraham. Good work. Most of the rest remain good test cases to test the reflexes of the fingers in hitting the remote control buttons. But good visuals from another of the Gupta tribe - Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra's Rang De Basanti showing up with title track racing through.

*** I seem to have become an emotionally driven consumer like many others - truth, despite my cringing at this admission. For a reaction to having made a fool of myself was to go and buy Lance Armstrong's It's not about the bike and others - books are so overpriced these days :-( - got a decent haul at BCL, so there's enough to read.

*** Looking forward to the music of Rang De Basanti - less than a week.

One way street

All signs point to a one-way street,
the kind that ends in a blind mirror;
Knowing I can only see myself in it,
all I wish is for you to do the same;

Just a hint of your fleeting glance,
and the storm-clouds regroup;
Reminders that at the end of the trance,
pearls will dissolve into tears of rain.

{Please don't read any "meaning" into this - an attempt from the archives on something I can't do well - write poetry}

Food for thought

{Pardon pun above; danger signal goes up ahead on another silly theory of life}

Does the speed at which you eat tell us something about you? This was something that struck me today. A friend's placid pace was commented upon, at which I remembered that once I was a top-ranked player on the slow-consumption charts but these days things have gone horribly wrong.

In among a pack of exceptionally slow-eating cousins, I was the slowest. The crown kept returning home after the showpiece marriage lunches with the next pa.ngat (cycle of serving) on my row being held up on account of my cole-slow impressions. Did it (like some art filmmaker might opine) mirror an internal state of mind? These days, I am wolfing down my food like a hare-on-paranoid-steroids. In the last couple of years at the office lunch table, I was no competition to the usual bottlenecks, unless if it was some discussion or storytelling that needed a lot of contribution from me. What kind of a disrespectful gastronomical speed-fiend have I turned into?

I am stilling waiting for the magic food pill - the one that gives you all the vitamins and other stuff that MSc Nutrition courses are often telling the deaf world about, in addition to deluding your stomach into contented fullness with an optional Capital of Senegal to boot. This has been a childhood dream which provided much mental chewing gum while going about the mundane business of eating. The dream still lurks in the subconscious these days, but the attendant mental tranquillity seems to have ducked under too.

All the people I know who are lazy eaters also seem to be more relaxed in life. I used to have it and I want it back. To my friend I can only say: stay that way and wait for me - we'll munch our way while the sun sets in the yonder desserts.

The JaDe Project - 6

{a.k.a the return of the JaDe Project}

This would have languished in the netherlands of latenight television among the many "scary" tales of crime in our cities, if it hadn't been for Gaurav having some spare time of late (further giving us cause, like Shaw, to praise idleness). Chai.n se sonaa hai to (pause, take in breath in preparation for dramatic effect, let loose while twirling wrist) JAAG JAAO! is quite simply the most amazing dialogue delivered in the history of news television. It was first "exposed" to us by Gaurav in this befitting piece of sensationalism.

Inspite of making an effort, I could not remember the presenter's name, the throat behind the words. (Contrary to Gaurav's recollection, I thought it was "Siddharth" or something - I was too lost in appreciation to remember the name.) It was worth staying up till 11:00 p.m. (I'm no night-owl) to catch this. I really wish I had a tape-recorder or more correctly, a movie cam to capture the moment. When Gaurav first told us about this, he acted it out, and I must say that sometimes Gaurav was better than the original - so GS, why not record it and upload it? Like many of its fellow JaDe Hall of Famers, no amount of hype can stultify the essence of the moment, so don't worry about expecting too much.

The post ends here abruptly as I have run out of words.

Set theory, assumptions and the whodunit

As we know (and love), the whole idea behind a "whodunit" is to find out who does the crime. I have read quite a bit of the classic detective fiction stuff and prefer the old-fashioned and sanitised crime world of Doyle, Poe, Christie et al. The thought came to my mind that in some sense, in many of these, the reader is nominally invited to take a guess at who the culprit was (and if the butler really did it). The success of these plots (films/plays/TV serials all included) depends on presenting us with a choice of people.

Take a typical Christie. A whole array of characters will be presented to us and the sleuth will eventually figure out who was the criminal in question. We can guess that as with any evolving genre of plot, initially the criminal was the most villainous of the lot (this is especially true of films - the audience will, with their experience of the movies, identify very early who the villain of the piece was, and it remained for the narrative to provide the links). There was a straightforward translation of the good-vs-evil template.

Holmes stories were not like Christie formats, in the sense that we did not see all the pieces at the same time the detective did. We would eventually marvel at Holmes unravelling a very mystifying set of items, but we travelled with Watson and Holmes hardly told him anything :-). We were usually meant to drop our jaws in awe. The Christie version was more of a jigsaw puzzle, where usually one was given several important pieces of information at the same time as the problem-solver was. The unlikeliness of the person was very central to her success and this didn't require her popular and geriatric detectives to bound about unlike Holmes, whose legwork was a vital part of his triumphs (which many a time excluded Watson and hence us).

So essentially, in the classic whodunit of the Agatha Christie variety, it came down to a set of choices. Method was secondary to this. As you read her books, your mind opened up to the possibilities - she cleverly manipulated our naivété & biases. Soon, she churned out an array of unlikeliest criminals and tried almost everything possible with rearranging the set. One can only guess, but it is not hard to imagine the Dame beginning with a group of characters and wondering "what if XYZ did it? How would one weave a story with that ending". At any rate, that is what I would do :-)

I'll avoid spoilers and instead recommend the following Christies as great examples of what I've just talked about. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is of course her most famous work, and something that justifiably caused a lot of ripples in those days. Hercule Poirot's Christmas, Murder on the Orient Express, Ten Little Niggers, Evil Under The Sun and Crooked House are other examples where our inherent assumptions are cleverly challenged. As a finale, Curtain: Poirot's Last Case is also recommended.

From making several variations on individuals in a set, authors then moved on to even making it a subset of people - this, again, would have been very novel then. We have seen several examples on screen and page since, so it may not seem so new to us. So to maintain the twist that gives the whodunit its lastpage turning spice, some enterprising authors even increased the subset size to be almost as same as the complete set!

A day came when all this became very predictable, so creators again shook off the burden of making everything available to the viewer/reader. Now, sudden twists came in by the addition of characters midway through the plot or ingeniously reviving forgotten characters. An examples of movie in these cases would be certain David Fincher films. Certain Ed Norton films also had this element - and again, they challenge some assumptions we're led to making. This makes it a lot of fun. Occasionally, you lose the ability to predict the twist by gaining such a lot of "experience" - it happened with Identity and sadly, with the The Usual Suspects. Perhaps I heard about the latter elsewhere without actually making an explicit association. But the kick of the first realisation - that was lost.

TV serials like Columbo eschewed the whodunit path for a different "howdunit" approach (there was a Hindi remake of this concept featuring Anita Kanwar). But still, the whodunit holds sway. Jonathan Creek (will be writing about this extensively some day :-) ) was hence a rarity - it had both the whodunit and the howdunit given equal prominence. In several (would this be an example of "post-modern" consciousness?) cases, we now have reality and fiction overlapping - take a Hey Ram for example.

So what are the tiny variations left for writers of creative fiction to exploit? This is an interesting exercise for people like me who like the "puzzle" nature of whodunits rather than the more realistic American styles involving Marlowe, Spade etc. Perry Mason, the ubiquituous paperback, was a more classic British style than of the noir variety. Poirot stories didn't have any unnecessary subterranean complications and they lived in a less grey world, but I liked that a lot more. Jonathan Creek was, for me, very much in that mould with its tongue-in-cheek humour and a slightly unrealistic world, where the crime will be solved by our detective. There is a certain reassurance in all that :-)

{For some hilarious thoughts on the whodunit genre, read some of the Jeeves-and-Wooster stories by PGW, where Bertie usually has a whodunit at hand, but events prevent him from immersing himself in them. He also consults them with fervent interest with the usual imbroglios resulting. As a result of watching these British serials over the last one year and having read several British detective books over the last 20 years, I really envy the range of plots they have explored.}

I'm going to end this piece with one version of a "twist" that I had employed (so I'm cleverly using this opportunity to re-plug an old attempt of mine: A Head For Red). And perhaps the last movie whose ending totally surprised me and shook some assumptions was The Others.

MICAndescense

Was at MICA this weekend to do a General quiz for them. Ended up meeting some of the known and unknown quizzers-and-bloggers and some other friends and acquaintances. Words of kudos for the hardworking and pleasant MICAns, who kept their cool amidst some of the worst puns involving the word "MICA" being hurled at them relentlessly.

Kunal has some more jottings on the trip and I would like to add to his "friskiness", the fact that I was stopped and baggage searched at Dadar station this morning (despite having only a 2 day old stubble unlike the comparatively more hippier Kunal). I wonder if there has been any increase in "threat perception" in these parts or it is just routine in the times of Diwali-Id. Since there was no unpleasantness, was ok with the lawmen doing their random sampling.

Of "Ambi Valleys"

Nice article on some of the everyday nomenclatural occurences among Tam-Brahms (link thanks to Amit V and Harish).

I don't have any "Ambi mama" myself, so I can't rejoice in the festivities (having a "ambi periappa" instead), but some of my cousins do. For the record, we even have "chinnambi"s around :-) (translation: small 'ambi's)

A Quizzer's epitaph

The gravestone would probably read:

Don't pass me by - atleast take a guess!

If there is one golden rule in quizzing, it is "Never Pass!" {unless if you are against some negative scoring beast}. In the past, having lost atleast two quizzes I desperately wanted to win by the simple act of not taking that shot in the dark that was eventually right, I've learnt it the hard way. Now, does the "Die but don't pass" dictum hold in life? Is it a good enough metaphor for "give it a try"?

When you make a wild guess for a question, you have to fight back the sane voice that says that people will laugh at you for saying that - even if you know that moment of embarassment, the finger that points at your ignorance, is a mere moment, nothing in the long collection of jiffies in your life. So is taking the wild shot in real life even harder?

The choice is between the egg waiting to colour your face yellow and a golden sunrise.

Nothing special

Nice "Idea! Cellular" campaign for Maharashtra - good use of 4 of the most prominent Marathi actors today (prominent outside Maharastra too; these are Mrunal Kulkarni, Atul Kulkarni, Milind Gunaji and Sachin Khedekar) dressed up in traditional Marathi attire with the ad copy consisting of some of the most well-known fragments from Marathi songs/literature.

Very emotionally appealing, no doubt, to the MaraThii maaNus (correct spelling? or is it maaNuus?) Good example of locally targeted advertising. It is a high profile & high budget campaign judging by the locations of the hoardings in Pune, so curious to know if it translates into an increase in business.

The Volvo rides to Pune on most Saturday mornings and the return on Monday mornings have seldom disappointed in terms of the climes and the views. The whiff of Bombay in the mornings, the misty ghats and the gentle cold in Pune - make up for the lack of sleep in having to make those rides.

TV snippets from Sat. Films starring two of the least successful (and probably the two most interesting) of the Kapoor third generation. Vijeta and Hero Hiralal. The former was a pretty decent effort at inner angst and the air force (probably still the only decent IAF film from the Hindi world) and the latter was another schizophrenic effort from Ketan Mehta, which still offered some interesting moments. "PhaTaa Poster, Nikalaa Hero", another Amitabh cameo in a Gul Anand production and the ensemble cast. You didn't mind Naseer overdoing things or Sanjna Kapoor not getting the hang of acting but looking like a dearie. I'm sure the third sibling Karan Kapoor had a life in the films (not to be confused with Bombay Dyeing), but not sure which one.

How is it that an entire generation of Malayalam film singers sound so much K.J.Yesudas. I know he's been a towering presence in that region (and elsewhere), but such a lot of impact? (Listen to the likes of Unni Menon and you'll agree.) A recurring mystery. I can understand all Pakistani offspinners bowling the duusra and getting called for throwing a la Saqi, but this bit of influence from our South-Westernmost state is too much.

Among the usual ROTFLs from the Rajnikanth starrer "Phool Bane Angaarey" was the fact that it stars Tamil comedian Senthil. Which is quite extraordinary because one never thought that any of the supreme slapstickers from Kollywood had made these excursions up state. What's better, he seemed to be doing a decent job at attempting to speak the dialogues (it was dubbed, but the lips weren't slurring over the unfamiliar Hindi). Pity it didn't catch on - the viewers up there hardly know what they missed.

Some cricket thoughts

Some new posts from me on the quiet cricket blog run by Harish and me. Here and Here.

Impressive

Update

A result of this episode (and conversations I've had with friends whose opinions I respect) has been to reflect on content that we put out on our blogs. The tone, the insinuations, the critiques, the praises, the ignorance, the insight, the guesswork, the unfamiliarity with the inferences etc. I'm sure we all have had an emotional reaction to all this, but it should also be followed up by some serious thinking to pick out the learnings. I'm being vague here because the conclusions one reaches will be personal, and can't be over-generalised. If that kind of introspection doesn't happen, this would have been a waste for other bloggers.

---

Earlier

Meet my brave friend.

[P.S.: I hope it's safe to criticise the films certain production houses have made or will make in the future. There isn't enough money to pay out for that kind of stuff.]

The Surfer

I liked what Cricinfo has turned their "Best of the Web" section into - a regular blog with RSS et al. Presenting The Surfer.

Comment Spam - Technique #xyz

I noticed that recent instances of comment spam on blogs have had the following template:

The first part of the comment usually has a paragraph & headline from an online newspaper. The second half actually has the spam content (usually saying "what a great blog - check mine out at link").

This is interesting, for it continues to show what a game all this is - spammers thinking of newer ways to beat filters. Obviously here, they don't have to add random non-spam words (like they did before) to their content - probably the spam-fighters caught up with that. Instead, the random words are more cohesive, and relevant to that day. I guess they cottoned on to a pattern, where on many blogs that tend to be regular newstrackers, people would post links/extracts from a recent news piece.

Perhaps the idea to use here is to check relevance between comment and post (a very hard thing to do realistically - needs to be coupled with a whitelist etc). Meanwhile the easiest thing you could do on your blog is to see what additional services your blogging service provider has made for combating spam on your blogs, and to enable them.

[An example of such spam can be seen at Hirak's latest post (don't delete it, Hirak :-) ) . The lovely, but no doubt fictional, Adele talks about recent changes in the furniture business - the news item here (item happened about 4-5 days ago). ]

101-101

Just a day after I was expounding somewhere on how I was tired of blog-memes, comes this from Gaurav. The fact that I was supposed to be studying for an exam meant that my brain was more than unusually attuned to this latest diversion. I shut my eyes in order to make it go away, but some time later, the following emerged.

Effort ek

Omnipotence "You switched it off?!"

"It was a mistake! - I'm sorry" came bubbling out among the tears.

She was a kid after all, sighed the Creator.

"Let's go see."

Points of light shimmered except in one gloomily dark area.
He switched the Sun back on.

"F***!". All the 'saurs were gone.

Effort deux

Action items "Bills payed ?" - Check.
"Window mended ?" - Check.
"Money sent to charity trust ?" - Check.

Pausing after some of the steeper portions to catch my breath.

"Emails to Manu and Abhinav ?" - Check.

Yoo-hoo! Finally at the top.

"Note and photo-id in pocket ?" - Check.

Then off I jumped.

If you liked them, please leave comments - I could do with some ego-massaging now.

As for tagging others, I take the easy way out and do a global broadcast tag - please pick it up if you wish. I will make one specific tag - to Tejaswi - who's never been tagged before, so here ye go.

Small personal broadcast

[thought this would be the fastest way to mention this] - those who add me to your Google Talk list, thanks for doing so. I'm afraid I'm on Linux behind a firewall most of the times and haven't had the chance to try getting past it, and I have an ancient monolith running Win 98 at home, so right now there's no way I can actually use that service now. But let that not stop you from including me in. As Gaurav once mentioned in another context, right now, I have trouble catching up with the 21st century sometimes :-) When I do, I'll be e-vocalising.

An Introduction to the Principles of Porcine Aviation in England

"We have now successfully demonstrated how a member of the Sus Domesticus Airline can successfully take off. To recap, take 11 men in white {must include atleast one exceedingly beefy specimen}, all native {NOTE: the word "native" includes any member from neighbouring countries in a radius equalling the distance to the centre of the earth or with any evidence of commonly shared genes} and to get them to reduce another 11 to ashes.

Now a note on maintaining the flight (taking off is relatively easier). This will require another 11 {extensible to 14 over a period of 90 to 120/150 minutes} with one Scandinavian native on the side with fluctuating domestic life. To sustain flight altitude, they will need to get a leg past assorted men in blue, yellow and the rest of the colours of the rainbow. {NOTE: They must do this in the finals of the Finals}

It is very easy to land back on earth {the thud-degree depends on the amount of "hype" factor generated towards the end of flight}. We shall describe one such mechanism here. For flights in late June/early July, add any number of men/women/boys/girls/toddlers in white, on a fading green background {NOTE: To economise, simply fetch a person with the first name of "Tim"}. The landing can be delayed, but not avoided.

Thus ends our primer into what passengers affectionately call the "Swine Airline". We hope you have a pleasurable flight on the Oink 747s."

Kaalaa akshar bhai.ns baraabar?

I'm sure Punekars would agree that the last 12 months have probably been the worst in terms of civic life in recent memory. Three essentials went bust at some point or other: water, electricity and roads [in case of the latter, well, the old joke about astronauts practising Moonwalks is still applicable].

What are the reasons? I don't know for sure. But I'd guess that it'd include "more people", "more vehicles" and "more blinkers". Tell me this: how can a civic body sanction three multi-storeyed buildings on a road like Senapati Bapat road which is sure to add about 1000 daily users to that area (they're mainly commercial/office complexes). The road is already saturated, so unless they're building subways or have a chopper service, I don't know how even a worm can move on that road. The head hurts just thinking about it.

My question is: how deep buried in the sands of neglect and internecine politics can civic bodies be to not notice similar signs in other cities and in their own? Has anybody tried to study the effects of extreme chronic water shortage in Madras, of power cuts and road problems in Bangalore and elsewhere? Heck, it was hard to figure out that all the excavation along University Road was for a flyover and not for T-Rex remains - not even a board came up (atleast the ones in Mumnbai had the courtesy to apologise, whatever little comfort that was).

So why not consider introducing CNG (or whatever alternative) following the lead of Delhi>? Why wait for the problem to get out of hand before making silly short-term panacea measures.

I'm really keen to see what happens in a place like Bangalore - but will Pune learn from anything that happens there? Frankly, Pune's just been exposed as a bit of an upstart, a one-hit wonder whose feted climate has been crippled by the pollution, whose roads have dissolved into gravel at the first downpour and never had any width to begin with to handle the explosion, and whose civic fathers are from one of those mawwkish TV serials where all they can do is abandon their responsibilities.

Is this even a price to consider paying for being an IT hub?

Cribsheet

* The fact that I hardly saw even 100 deliveries in one of the great Test series in modern times. And missed Shane Warne busting his guts out for his team, desperate to leave on the same note in the same place that heralded him into the world of cricket. [It's good in a way that not too many people here seem to be following the Ashes - otherwise I'd feel the pinch even more]

* That Star World has waited until I've moved into a non-Star World zone to get Seinfeld on its channel.

* That I'm missing what is likely to be a glorious year of Pune quizzing [methinks getting close to that year of 2000-01 and probably even touch the heights of 1998-99]

Who stole my Saturday???

Calvin, you lucky dog.

Suspense is...

Watching a little kid fall down. Pause.

And you wait with bated breath to see if the kid will break out into a wail or just get on.

The coolest GaNapati in these parts...

[Click to enlarge] {Put together by some really enthusiastic people here at KReSIT. I lent a tiny hand to proceedings as can be evinced from the S-t r e - t - c - - h...}

Two multiplied by one equals?

I thought this intrepid account about the recent film Double Cross - Ek Dhokha by Kapeesh (also one of the rookie BCQC members) deserved a plug. Especially since it raises an important question about the ever-burgeoning "entitlement" business that is the current Hindi film name crisis.

Like Salil points out in the comments, this wasn't the first recorded instance of a swapped English-Hindi scheme. That seemed to be Bullet - ek dhamaka and was duly recorded on this blog (incidentally the post above that talks about first sightings of The Rising(s)). Kapeesh's post raises some other disturbing issues, mainly centering around how a guy/kid/pup who seems happily docile in real life can be so different on his blog.

[Side issue offering scope for further research: Why are so many BCQC members B-movie followers? Is it just a proper reflection of the proportion in the general population? This list contains George, Harish and Salil and they have done much to spread the interest among the rest. Jai Cauli Maa Ki!]

[BTW, the answer to the question in the title is "Dhokha" of course: 2 cross 1 dhokha. For a better cine-version of Double Cross, check out the (IMHO) brilliant use in The Great Dictator.]

[Thanks to Kunal S for pointing me to this post]

NOC

This "Notify Objectionable Content" flag that has started to appear on the right top corner of Blogger blogs is interesting. Wonder what they'll really do with it in the non-extreme cases. Perhaps there should also be a "Notify Boring Content" as well - that would very useful. This is merely sueful (to coin a pretty bad word).

What I've been doing instead of listening for creeping deadlines

An account of a evening listening to Pt. Chaurasia.

[If DNA was right, I'll be able to listen to the whooshing sounds soon]

Peek back

My blog-absences have been further compounded by the lack of any coherent arrangment of feeds since my trustworthy thunderbird on my previous m/c. So having missed an entire month of blog posts from friends and "followees", I finally put an hour to good use by moving into Bloglines [Thus also causing a finely unbalanced assignment schedule to go careening into the morass, but who cares in a lost cause etc.]. Nice interfaces beckon there. So now I should continue to have all up-to-minute trivia about my immediate world, no doubt at great personal grading expenses.

This is also a good time to blare about my recent other blog (in which I revived a previously registered site) which will potentially be a large hanky for me to cry into when the world is being unfair again and a receptacle of life-as-trivia (we come back to the friendly T-word again) that actually makes life worth following. The key trouble is being regular there, and since it won't be quality-conscious as this one (ought to be, anyway - stop smirking), I'm going to try and type in atleast a minimal sentence each day I have at the PC here. Even if it is "ooh ah ouch".

So if you're the type that likes to follow the trials and tribs of this blogger, change lanes to the ext3 blog.

Shells-shocks

A oyster in a shell in a frog in a well under a carapace in an ivory tower. That's what living inside the IIT Powai campus has been over the last 4-5 days. True that rains poured into many of the ground and basement floors of some buildings, esp. hostels, and in some cases poured out of lifts. But all this happened only on Tuesday evening. Since then, most of us here have been completely oblivious to what has been happening around.

Having waded through knee-deep waters back to the hostel that night, I was very relieved to find no water had made it through to my ground floor room. The next morning, the waters had drained completely and things seemed normal again. So it came as quite a big shock the next day to find out that such utter devastation had been happening close to the campus, in Andheri, Sakinaka, Santa Cruz et al. In fact, all of Tuesday, we had been worried about the prospect of floods in Pune until that evening.

Same was the case with electricity and water supplies - we have been having them in abundance here. Again, it was an eye-opener when I rang up relatives who told me about many areas suffering from power cuts and water shortages. In fact, last evening, when I walked out to the market outside, I found that power has been missing for the last 12 hours. Truly, living inside the campus has cut me off mentally from the rest. I'm getting all the info from newspapers and from accounts like Gaurav's. Till then, the worst thing that had happened to me that night was that I got no dinner and had to subsist on some biscuits. I feel a little guilty(?) and relieved at having got off so lightly when others have had it so bad, and we didn't know.

Yesterday, this whole tsunami/Powai lake/dam rumour - what a waste of lives! Again, inside the campus, I had no inkling of this whole caper. I guess I'd be among the first to get swept away, but I'm still here.

Visit these group blogs for more info on how the city copes and about useful resources:
Cloudburst Mumbai, Mumbai Help.
Link via Amit

Cor Blimey

Just picking up the thread from George's post. People not following "news" online yesterday afternoon will probably not know that Aishwarya Rai was actually reported as having won the Best Actress award for Raincoat and I was understandably reeling. As were probably the rest of the sane populace. (This impression was soon corrected, but no one on those news sites seems to have printed an apology). In the melee, we didn't mind the Saif Ali Khan travesty so much. This is a classic Jeeves ploy - Wodehouse books usually have Bertie presented as the suitor to the fathers/uncles of Madeleine/Bobbie/Stiffy etc and then spring the real feller, so that the dad/unca thinks what a narrow escape he's had and readily agrees. Much of the same here :-)

I can think of 10, perhaps even 20 actors off-hand who would have easily had Mr. Khan and his entire family for breakfast in any 5-min role. I repeat my call for having a single large award function if we're only going to have a IIFA-Filmfare style production in all of them. Makes you wonder if Sudhir Mishra suffers from some kind of multiple personality disorder if he's the same man who made Hazaaro.n Khwaishe.n Aisi. Arguably, that doesn't mean he should get all his decisions right and isn't entitled to his opinion, but hard to swallow when the citation reads: "for his (S.A.K's) sheer ease, subtlety and spontaneity in portraying a complex and demanding role". What, in the Dum' Chums?

[Update]
Though being a little caustic about the Best Actor selection, was browsing through the list of awardees, was pleased to see Prabhu Deva win for Lakshya. Haven't seen any of the other major winners, so can't comment. Interesting to see that Santosh Sivan's Tamil film "Navarasa" has won Best Tamil Film award. He has always made offbeat and novel films (probably with the exception of Asoka, which was different from the rest - how good it turned out is a different matter)- this must be one of them too.

Kurzweil essays

Via slashdot, a link to a collection of some essays by Ray Kurzweil. Topics are the usual Kurzweil speciality - Futuristics

Paanch again?

Saw a trailer of Anurag Kashyap's Paanch, which begs the inevitable question: is the film finally, finally going to be released?

Quiz this Saturday

The July Open Quiz in Pune

The MIT Media Weblog Survey

Got to know about it from George

Sarkar

It seems to me that there are two ways of assessing the latest work of an established and successful filmmaker - one, you judge it against his past resumé and secondly, with contemporary cinema. Ram Gopal Varma's Sarkar may stand up and even tower over most of its peers in our eyes, but hold it up against past RGV work and it is dwarfed.

RGV starts Sarkar by reminding you that yes, not contrary to all the reports we've heard, this is a personal tribute to The Godfather. [As for any more than a passing visual and topical resemblance to the Thackeray clan, there isn't much hunting to do down that trail.] He drills in the homage by choosing to begin with an almost identical sequence, Bonasera asking for his daughter's abasement to be avenged. The problem is in that RGV fast-forwards through all those bits that told us all about the Don and his family. The characterisation is incomplete, and in some cases stillborn. What makes Sarkar (Amitabh B) so ruthless (if he is so), so feared by his enemies, antagonistic to certain "dha.ndaa"s to the extent of preventing Rashid Solozzo from doing them too? The older film was one of the longer English films I have known, and the pace develops at just the right chug. Sarkar assumes (and mostly correctly) that you've seen The Godfather - so will you just settle down and watch my version please? Which is ok because it gets better later on. But I'll just dwell on the blemishes a little more.

There were a little too many flaws for a RGV film at this point in his filmography. Harish (in whose company I saw the film, and who watched the film twice in as many days) reckons the errors become obvious only when compared to the Varma canon, but I was a little disappointed, for before this, he was getting better and better. The dialogues are a let down - it gets embarassingly trite at times. The BGM was better suited to one of the Cafe Coffee Day joints as it tried to blow your eardrum to bits at all the wrong moments. A call for the likes of Anurag Kashyap, Saurabh Shukla and Sandeep Chowta rings around the theatres, for men like these had huge parts to play in previous RGV successes. The BGM especially - if there was one thing particularly worth emulating from the original, it was this. Amar Mohile needs to be dropped for a bit. Feed him to the smaller Factory fish. And as feared, what are Tanishaa and Katrina Kaif doing in this film? Their screen time is wasted and their roles hardly have the same moral contrast that the women in The Godfather had. Which tells me this is a good time to stop all these comparisons.

Especially because the film really gets better when it deviates from the Puzo storyline. You know broadly how things are going to pan out, so when suddenly we're off on a slightly different track, it gets engrossing. As expected, it is the acting that this film is all about. The eponymous Bachchan doesn't really have that much to do and resides mostly on indoor sets - but he is good in all the difficult parts. I don't know if the RGV comment about Baby B being better than the father is another smart market buzz-creator, but for me, the film was about Baby B taking over the reins, story-wise and otherwise, if you're that metaphorically inclined. He carries on all the good work done in the last year, and is excellent as the brooding son who decides to jump in and prop up the family despite what he's being brought up to do. But don't expect the same kind of scenes as between Michael and Don Vito - aargh, I promised to stave off the comparisons. Kay Kay is as good as we'd expect him to, as are the usual pack of RGV staples. There is more Marathi spoken than one would have expected (I read in yesterday's Express that Kay Kay was a Punekar, which explains why he speaks the best tongue among all the lead actors). So when they lapse into filmi Hindi, you make a mental note to lambast the dialogue writer in the next day's blog post.

Which brings us to the villains of the piece. The pack of 4-5 are more Agneepath than the Five Families With Names Like Tataglia and Barzini. Deepak Shirke is the prototypical underworld-film-CM which is a black mark again on the characterisation. So what saves the day are the Telugu imports, Jeeva hitting the dirty notes once again and with a new face to Bollywood, Kota Srinivasa Rao. Jeeva gets some of the best moments, while Rao gets some of the choicest dialogue, of which as we have seen, there wasn't much to hand around. And Rao also gets the craziest villainous laughter I've heard in ages, so even though we know these baddies are going to get it in the neck in less than an hour, we like seeing them on screen. All RGV typos are forgiven if he continues to give us these fine actors. The villainy is of a pre-Nolan Batman vintage. Still, Jeeva's "kutte!" will stay in my mind forever - the best since Dharmendra in Sholay.

Everyone I know who has seen Sarkar has liked it, so there's evidently enough to interest audiences. The biggest plus is that it is 2 hours, and does not have any songs. RGV is the only commercial director to have consistently bucked the norm, for even in these days of so-called experimentations, these are considered bold attempts. But they don't help Sarkaar don't hit the high scales that Satya and Company did, or for that matter, even Ab Tak Chappan or Ek Hasina Thi. I've got tired of the claustrophobic closeups and the immense hurry to go on to the next angled shot. The Abhishek Bachchan chase among the shipyard is redeeming, but not in the class of similar RGV scenes in the past. And of course, there are more stories of a wider world to be told. Time to adapt. Incidentally, the first time I watched The Godfather, I was lukewarm towards it. But now I know why it is what it is. Will Sarkar turn out that way? I guess not.

Still, I leave the last word to that man - yesterday in an interview with NDTV, Ram Gopal Varma says: "this is a family film. This is my Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham". I didn't look for the twinkle in the eye, I just started laughing.

Bird's eye view

I didn't know until today that Google Maps now also shows other regions of the world via their Satellite link. So one can visit Google Maps, click on "Satellite" (top-right) and search for a location of choice (not sure how much they have mapped).

Looked at Pune and then Bombay - was quite fascinating to see the shapes despite knowing how they look. Take a peek. If you see a small dot blinking, who knows, it might be me waving ;-)

Link thanks to Vinod

Tech-scepticism

If you're working in a technical area and have participated in the writing/design of software or hardware, would you be more likely or less to be evangelistic about the whole march of application technology? I sometimes find myself becoming sceptical when I see what we occasionally have to do to get products working and how even the most impressive products have invisible assumptions and quiet bugs lurking about. Users and the marketing depts. seem to have more faith in things (how those things ever work most of the times despite all that testing, god only knows!) than the people who actually put the nuts-and-bolts in. As the jokes go, it is hard to imagine IT guys making the equivalent of bridges and buildings - not much use saying "let me see if I can reproduce the bug here" when it collapses, is there?

Stuff like the network infrastructure and protocols have worked so well for so long and have become invisible to us, so the same'll hopefully happen for the application layer in the future.

?? ???

Baraha means "writing" in Kannada - so says a help page on "Baraha", a software that helps create words in Indian scripts for use in applications. It converts to a variety of formats, most important Unicode and utf8, which help in publishing to web pages. The good thing is that you can write in plain English and see it being converted to the script using easy (and fast becoming standard) transliteration rules. Right now, it supports Devanaagari, Tamil, Kannada, Telugu and Malayalam.

A note of thanks to ?????, ???? and ????, whose blogs (and in the latter case, emails), featured the use of the software.

I'm going to try and write the odd words in posts in a more appropriate native script to see how it goes. I've realised though that I am not very sure about a lot of my spellings in Hindi/Marathi (and even Tamil, if I attempt it), so the typos on this blog are going to head off in search of the clouds - preemptive apologies.

[P.S.: I think Firefox incorrectly renders the maatraas, so if you're seeing it with the "Nikhil" above, I'm afraid, can't help it. If anyone knows what the problem is...]

Power trip - 2

After gushing a bit about the expectations of ??????, I'm pleased that the week of reckoning is nigh. Advance booking notices are already out and I'm happy to deduce from the show timings that the film is not greater than 2 hours (unless I have goofed up in assuming that the timings are for shows at the same screen). This probably means a diversion-free film. Let's see.

The possible place I land up for any viewing of the film will be the E-Square multiplex. Now last time I went there, fellow-viewers Sandeep and Sujay were found carping (rightly) about the sudden hike in parking prices, Rs. 10 for two-wheelers and Rs. 30 for cars, a rise of 100% and 50% respectively. The multiplexes in Pune have started guzzling money; their ticket prices seemed irrationally priced and now their parking fares join in.They also get a huge tax incentive, but are they passing it on to the customers?

Daemon notes that yet another multiplex (Pune's 5th) is coming up in Aundh. Whether the competitive effect will drive down prices or whether they'll just join the party, we'll have to wait. They'll eat into E^2 profits no doubt, for there must be some saturation in the market by now. Till then, we're left to cursing the big E.

ODI Substitutions

With the ICC implementing the new suggestions by their Technical committee, changes to the playing conditions start from end of July. Prominent among these is the allowance for a substitute in any capacity, with all 12 players receiving a full cap.

Just thinking about it a bit, it seems to me that most teams will make the substitution at the mid-innings break. They will go in for having 6 or 7 batsmen, and a full chart of 5 or 6 bowlers. It could also take the pressure off the Gilchristian dilemma of finding a batsman-wicketkeeper (though your weakest batsman is likely to be a full-time bowler).

I'm not very sure what the rule brings to the game other than giving weaker teams or those with less flexible players more cover. In contrast, the other major ruling about making 20 overs of restricted fielding with 10 of them being used in 2 blocks in the rest of the 40 overs should be interesting. If only to see how captains and coaches use this to their advantage. The introduction of the 15 over rule all those years ago shook up things and I think we may see things of interest happening. Until someone stumbles upon a very useful strategy that gets copied and ultimately turns stereotypical, this should have something for the viewer. South Africa had better watch out - more complex rules means more opportunities to make more cock-ups :-).

I still think my suggestion (made long ago) about letting some bowlers bowl more than 10 overs is a useful one which will further help tilt the balance away a little further from the batsmen. Alas, if only they listened :-).

Disporting pages

These days, there's no point in turning to the last pages of the daily Times of India first thing in the day's newsgathering, for those 3 pages at the back have deteriorated so badly that it sometimes threatens the place of the Pune Times of India at the bottom rung.

The typical layout of the sports pages these days are: one large photograph, preferably of female sportsperson in "inviting" clothing, three or four news articles printed with permission from foreign newspapers or from news agencies, a couple of useless insets about some past English or Aussie cricketer talking about the Ashes, or some "proactive" reporting about whether every municipal ground in India is willing to hold a Twenty20 match. There has been the odd useful news report, such as about the recent efforts of the Maharashtra Cricket Association to give their Ranji team a boost, but on the whole, some hapless trees being sacrificed.

Gaurav pointed out that this was a direct fallout of people like Ayaz Memon leaving for fresh pastures in the warzone of Mumbai. Still, I'm appalled it got so dismal.

BCL - rant deux

If any of you recall my ?????-filled post on the British Library (a.k.a the issue of the Sandman book), I actually took it up with them (mainly after reading Sudarshan's comment). I got a reply telling me that the book was available for Juniors and a catch-all Classic membership and not for the normal Senior member. The problem with this reply was that it told me something I already knew and made no reference to the fundamental point, i.e. the incorrect categorisation. So I wrote another (longer) mail throwing all the wattage of light I could on the matter. By now a little more impassioned, I ended my mail by saying that "you might as well make Lolita available too".

Well, the line went dead from that point onwards and I haven't heard from them in more than a week. Whether "the matter is under consideration" or if I have been classified into the file of "pesky persons" and mail redirected to trash, I don't know. Anyway, I shouldn't be blamed for not thinking too much of their PR.

End trivial rant. Grrr.

Fledgling steps

We've heard about the great (and inconsistent) exploits of the first generations of Indian cricket, from the bowling of Md. Nissar and Amar Singh, the first centuries home and away of the Lala and the recently departed Mushtaq Ali, and then the all-round deeds of Vinoo Mankad. But not until recently did we have a chance to sense what all that must have been like. That has come while watching the little triumphs of the Bangladeshis.

It must be exhilarating when everyone suddenly wakes up to your existence while hitherto dismissing you as nothing more than a optional side-dish. To hail one of your batsman as being exceptionally talented and entertaining too. To expect more and follow their progress with optimism.

Not to say that everyone takes a romantic view of Bangladeshi cricket and should gloss over the gaping holes in the team buildup - lack of good fast/medium pacers, opening batsman and backbone in the batting order. Issues that another subcontinental team also faced from its inception but managed to overcome bit by bit.

Back to School

I'll be heading over to the Kanwal Rekhi School of IT at IIT Powai this July end to start an MTech. As we have been constantly reminded before and during the process, the admission is still "provisional" until a registration process where I have to furnish sundry pieces of paper proving my graduation et al. So unless I am embroiled in some glorious snafu, I should be safely ensconced in the vicinity of the Powai lake in a month's time.

Finding a post graduate programme of my choice and interest (also one that would have me for no one was going to beg me to sign up, a la Shevchenko) took a lot of time. In fact, I'd say it's quite unusual (atleast in the circles I know) to go off so late after graduation, but that's how it turned out eventually. For some inexplicable reason, I was never too keen on find something overseas. For that matter, am not completely certain why I want to do a post graduate course - is it just peer imitation or the done thing or an escape route in needing a change from work? Not sure, but atleast I have a chance to find out in the place I wanted to.

What will be certain is that I'll be one of the oldest people in the course! A slightly new feeling that'll be, for even at work, until six months ago, I was usually one of the youngest members of all the groups I belonged to. A fact that I liked reminding others in my group :-). Anyway, better Clarie Grimett than no Test cap at all.

What I'm also looking forward to is to have a more physically active life compared to the last few years of chair-sagging sloth, a chance to pick up cycling again (if I can get the legs to pump that is), learn something worthwhile & formally from qualified people for the first time in a long while, live away from home (another first) and on my own, away from cloistered protection. From what I've seen and heard, KReSIT has good facilities to offer, so hopefully, there'll be much to gain. Perhaps I will even figure out whether this is the thing for me.

After having drawn a blank in the past (and tantalisingly so), I'd wondered if this was the thing for me. I still do. This development does put into the shade my rather ambitious Plan B of taking 6 months off from work next year and doing a whole lot of "other" things - such as learning a language, perhaps a musical instrument, writing more - stuff from some dreamy TODO list. Despite all the education, money earned, so called maturity, I don't know if I'd have had the guts to go through with that. I have never personally done anything that big in terms of bucking the trend. Despite promising to try and not follow "trends", apart from a couple of diversions, I'd have to say, I've been rather conformist. Now I won't know if I'd have been able to go through with it. Still, the very idea that I'm going to be chucking 2 years worth of salary has had a few people wondering.

I'm slightly amused at the whole "school" thing; indeed, their FAQ mentions it's called a school mainly because they don't offer any undergraduate studies. I still don't understand why only a college should offer undergrad studies, but I suspect it's more to do with carving out a separate identity. The E&TC Dept. at COEP during the Jog Regime was often called the "shaaLaa", and we from the then orphaned Comp. dept who were reluctantly being housed by the E&TC dept. were also slightly tainted by it, so school for me conjures up pejorative thoughts of uniforms, attendance and rules.

Well, I had better stop carping and gear up to offer my loyalties at my new school. The best thoughts have come from the realisation that despite how much work there will be, I will eventually have vacations once again.

Batman Begins

One more tick for me under the category of "which Christopher Nolan films have I seen?". It looks like his entry into mainstream Hollywood is complete, which on one hand proves to him that he can span the gamut of "indie" to "pop", but gives those of us who looked at him as a posterboy for novelty some anxious moments.

Not that the film is bad. It is more than competently made and in keeping with the recent trend in probing the inner works of "the men who keep the world safe", a plausible exploration of Bat-origins. The trouble is that there is only so far anyone can go with the plot, and Nolan does hit the horizons easily. I'm used to not knowing how a Nolan film will end, but with such films, there is no doubting the outcome. A few well-shot sequences, a baleful (pun intended) mortal-turned-hero, cliffhanger moments and a cool sequel hint later, Batman Begins joins a list of films you'd do well to watch once, but not necessarily in the theatres. My agnosticism here is probably explained by the fact that I haven't seen any of the earlier Batman films; many of the people who loved this film do so on the rebound from some of the disasters of the past.

The film seemed a little differently shot, with claustrophobic close-ups, especially during the action sequences, but the usual dearth of light is trademark Batman. I liked the idea of the Scarecrow and his "weapon" of choice - fitted in well with the travails of Bruce Wayne.

Unbreakable, Spiderman, Batman Begins later, will we finally see a film on the musings of Captain Self-Doubt?

Two useful reviews

* Samanth's review
* Ebert's view

The Biggest Upset

It's been a long while since I've had so much fun watching a cricket match. The main reason why I watched the Australia-Bangladesh match on Saturday was to see how (and not if) Australia pick themselves up after a horrendous start to the season (and that's "Batman Begins" speaking as well!).

I have no doubt that this was the greatest upset in ODI history. The three others that come close were the Zimbabwe-Australia match in the 1983 World Cup (where one can argue that no one knew what to make of the debutants and the Aussies were slipping into their worst patch in the last 25 years), the Kenya-West Indies WC match at Pune in 1996 and the Bangladesh-Pakistan WC match in 1999 (which of course had eyebrows hitting the ceiling). This one was a run chase and as one look at the Top 10 list on Cricinfo will show, the only one among the historic topplers.

It could have been an even better weekend had ESPN not replaced the Eng-Aus match to show Confederations Cup action, so I wasn't able to catch Pietersen's innings (dunno if they switched back later, but I had retired for the day in dismay). The Australians find themselves skidding all over the place, but of course, they can't be written off yet - cast your mind back to the Texaco Trophy in 1997 (IIRC, a 3-0 whitewash) and more famously, the 1999 World Cup which started in somewhat similar fashion.

Award optimisations

I didn't know until the rolling headlines on news channels told me that there had been one more "Bollywood Awards Nite" where the same people got the same awards. Ever since other film magazines and organisations realised that it didn't take much to print posters, create statuettes in semi-objectionable postures and call themselves the only credible prizes in the land, Filmfare's monopoly on the matter was challenged. So now we can't tell apart any of them. So in the interest of screen time and money, I propose a single award show. You get the filmi types together and go: right, Rani: you get the Screen, IIFA and Filmfare for Best Actress. But you don't get the Cineblitz one, it goes to Preity Zinta. Shah Rukh: you get all awards for any one of your movies, and we promise that any unannounced ones for this year will go to you retrospectively.

Of course, the other problem with our awards system is that of socialistic political correctness, which is essentially the issue of making sure every star gets an award each year so that they continue giving interviews in the future. What must be happening is this: the organisers have a list of stars and the names get checked one by one. When you know however you try swinging it that Kareena Kapoor isn't going to win any (for having played a streetwalker badly), you give her a special award for having played a streetwalker "differently". It doesn't matter what the award is called, that's what creativity is all about. Of course, you have to make sure someone from the each of the five families gets an award. The families are the Kapoors, the Bachchans, the its-all-about-loving-your-Johars-and-Chopras and the Limited Supermodels Society of India. The fifth one, keeping in with democracy, is an open slot - sometimes it is the Roshans, sometimes the Khan-Shetty-Dutt-Kumar combine.

By the way

While the Indian political theatre mainly featured a farcical comedy last week, two other interesting developments passed by almost unnoticed. In what was a true example of the word "reinvention" (a word that has been used so frequently this week), the BSP made a major leap with their Brahman Sammelan. No one will make her explain this properly, but Mayawati shows herself to be a player playing a pure game of politics unencumbered by the circumspection of deep ideology.

Then there was also the re-entry of P.A.Sangma into the NCP, with which was complete the whittling away of the founding principles (if you can call it that) of the NCP. Looks like the former speaker (formerly "respected" also) found it too hard to stay out on his own.

Probably the most humorous thing I heard last week about l'affaire Advani was the NDTV "ground report" that had to be interrupted because crackers were going off at his house when all had been sorted out (couldn't Ms. Dutt do her report from elsewhere?) and that Mr. Advani cut a cake in the presence of his family members to celebrate. I wonder what they all sang.

It's all nice for the Congress to be pleased at punch, but all this just proves that these things go about in circles. If the BJP wears the red nose today, not long ago, it was the Congress under the dunce cap.