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.

Aubrey Upjohn in the literary flesh

I'm into the thick of the 4th of the Jeeves Omnibus and beginning Jeeves in the Offing, I realise that we're finally being introduced to Aubrey Upjohn of whose educational establishment, there have been umpteen references by Bertie W.. The name crops up usually as a nostalgic precursor to Bertie creeping up into someone's room to pinch something, for the story of how he crept in the passage to the office of that formidable man's study at Malvern House, Bramley-on-Sea to sneak some biscuits when to his eternal horror, it was occupied by the man himself tucking into them with gusto.

More dirt is revealed about the man who doled out "six of the juciest from a cane of the type that biteth like a serpent and stingeth like an adder" such as the fact that he had a bare, wide upper lip that twitched scarily and that he couldn't make his speeches without referring to his notes instead of memorising them, a crime in Wooster-world.

Can't wait for him to get in the neck thanks to Jeeves :-)

You are kidding

Yesterday at the local British Library, I chanced upon a Sandman novel by Neil Gaiman. I have never read one and had heard about it from Sudarshan, so I picked it up. At the issue counter, however, I was informed that it was a "junior member" book and being on a Senior Membership, I couldn't borrow it.

The British Library here have always done very silly things like this. For instance, common sense would dictate that no terrorist outfit worth its ammo would bother to attack a library in Pune - yet they continue have a couple of pretty useless bomb detectors. Coming back to the point in question, they have separate memberships for Junior, Senior and Family categories (the last one includes both and hence is costlier). The sensible thing to do would be to grade memberships in terms of the number of items (books, CDs, DVDs) you're allowed to borrow. For who is going to decide what is a children's book and what's adult? Why shouldn't I be allowed to read Noddy and why not let a kid discover P.G.Wodehouse?

In the Sandman instance, from what I saw while glancing through the contents, the novel was quite "graphic" and anyone who classifies it as children's lit just based on the fact that it is visually-oriented is nuts. They should show them some of the Manga from Japan. Eventually some "junior" member is going to borrow that book and receive quite an education. Until his/her parents get it, for they're going to have a fit.

Power trip

Extended trailers of the next big Ram Gopal Varma film Sarkaar have appeared on air. The Factory always has approached film promotion in interesting ways. So while on one hand RGV invokes The Godfather with any talk about this film, the stills and trailers of Sarkaar show more than a passing visual reference to Bal Thackeray and family. Which is great for building interest and expectations.

The long trailer that's doing the rounds of music channels is designed to enumerate the cast. So while we're waiting, it's good fun to pair them off against The Godfather. The little B is obviously Michael, and has (surprise #1) Katrina Kaif as company as Kay. The talented Kay Kay (unintentional coincidence with Diane K's Adams of course!) steps into RGV world as Sonny. I don't know who new-Factory-staple Rukhsar is paired up against. Or is she the Smita T reference? Supriya Pathak is a lot more believable as Mrs. Sarkaar than the likes of Shefali nee-Shetty/ex-Chaayaa/now-Shah opp. the Big B. (surprise #2 is) Tanisha seems to be Connie. So RGV sees something worth exploiting in the surprises. Let's see. Good to see the guy who shone as the MLA Velankar (not S. Amrapurkar of course) in Ab Tak Chappan. Fringe characters repeating in larger roles subsequently is of course a RGV trademark.

Amitabh Bachchan gets a separate paragraph to himself, for subtly changing over to a more aggressive and how-do-we-say-it taamasik character. Despite the cliché, he looks different. Will he be bumped off in the middle of the film? I think not.

No full-blown songs shown yet, just a snatch of a theme that goes Govinda Govinda. More points to the RGV marksheet if he's had the guts to not spill songs about. (Though the inev. item song may surface soon).

We will of course soon find out what Sarkaar is all about. RGV has to hardly market the film with such a cast, but I've already jumped into the hype-machine. Can't help it - the mouth waters so much.

Ashes to Ashes, Dutch to Dutch

If Aishwarya "Ash" Rai gets a tulip named after her, what does the actress Tulip Joshi do? Perhaps sponsor a monograph on ashes a la Sherlock Holmes?

Film trivia

* Bobby Deol stars in a new film called Barsaat, the second time he does so in a film by that title. Any idea if there exist other such instances of the same person in more than 1 film by the same name?

* Just realised that Mani Ratnam has made films set in all four Indian metros. Mouna Ragam - Delhi, Bombay - Bombay, Yuva - Calcutta and take-your-pick for Madras. Any other instances of an Indian filmmaker doing so?

Group-phobe

Some days ago, I saw an email on some egroups announcing a new organisation for "young people". I don't remember who is behind it or what the exact aims are, but apparently the purpose was to rally educated young people into "making a difference" in Indian society.

The problem is that for some reason, I'm always skeptical (sometimes even suspicious) of any large organised formation. This despite never being a member of any proper organised group - the local Mensa chapter that I'm a member of doesn't really have any activities that cause people to gather together. The big club in my life is the BC Quiz Club which is a loose aggregation without any formal framework - just the way I prefer it. IMHO, one reason for it lasting 15 years has been the lack of any material profit to be made from exploiting it.

Will any large group be prone to being doomed or be hijacked by a small clique? If so, then unless I'm likely to be part of the ruling cabal, I shouldn't venture in :-) But since it's easier to lobby collectively, I'm going to be ineffective as a lone ranger. Still don't know what's the seed for my innate distrust for large organisation.

The Period and the commerical domain

I finished reading a book called Dot.Con - The Greatest Story Ever Sold by John Cassidy. It analyses the crazy period from 1995 to just before the 9-11 attacks and attempts to answer the retrospective question: What was everyone thinking?

Cassidy wades through the mass of numbers (that causes people like me to see white haze) and the alphabet of the stockmarket to explain how almost everyone in the US seemed to be pouring money into ventures that were valued higher than the giants of industry and yet seemed to have nothing more than a webserver, a plan to sell items ranging from pet food to canned fruit but with a colossal talent for burning money at astronomical rates. The reasons were some sort of self (and peer inflicted) mass hypnosis causing a breakdown of judgement, a massive feedback loop and a misguided belief that the "paradigms" had really changed this time.

He quotes Alan Greenspan as saying that no one can really tell it's a bubble until afterwards. I can see the sense in that. Fads are such that it is tough to keep convincing yourself what reality must be, especially if everyone else seems to believe in it. And especially if they are making astounding pots of money. It didn't help that the big financial guys, the journalists and other "objective" monitors were too involved to have been relied. The skeptics were being silenced as party-poopers and no one wanted to listen to them. Actually, they couldn't be heard for the music was so loud.

It takes a brave man to step aside and stick to his beliefs - for the longer he seems wrong, the more inclined he is to throw the towel and join the rest. What if it was really true this time? What if the dotcoms had found a business model that would yield money in the future for your if only you threw in your weight with them? Quite tough.

The fact that I lasted the book and actually understood some of the points could be taken as a positive plug for the book for anyone interested in those times. The dotcom crash coincided with many of us taking up our first jobs and we never had any firsthand idea of how rosy things must have seemed before that. Now that things are much better, probably it's a good lesson to know. For some reason, I've heard a lot of people already start to speak of the next "crash". I don't know if they're being realistic or just being pessimistic from their experience of 4 years ago.

Incidentally, here's a post on the same topic from Amit's blog

Napunsakalinguistics

Many, many days ago, I said to someone that someday I'd like to learn (properly) the Sanskrit and Urdu languages. The reaction surprised me. That person said "why would you learn Urdu?". And indicated that it wasn't what this person considered "ours", and not something that people like "us" be interested in.

I don't want to approach this topic by attaching any "-isms" to it, but however I see, it's hard to call it anything but jingoism. I was aware of the person's political leanings, but the reaction still took me by surprise. I didn't understand how language entered into political ideology at the personal level. What would cause a person to be repulsed by a language, or even think it to be "tainted"? I didn't think Urdu was forced down the populace in the same way English was pushed in Ireland (and to disastrous consequences for the Celtic culture). Is it considered the "language of the oppressors" or "the language of the opponents"? I can't explain the reaction for a member of my generation with a profile similar to mine.

So is the only -ism that applies here to be preceded by the word "jingo"? Anyone who has seen Hindi films over a period of time would have imbibed a fair amount of that mellifluous language unconsciously, right? I'm no linguist and I can't always explain my tabassums and my tarannums, but I don't see why anyone shouldn't feel an affection for the finely nuanced and poetic thoughts that emanate from it. How can anyone wish that away?

From my limited experience, we don't have a great deal of respect for our linguistic advantages and prefer to label & file them away into convenient drawers. This is a fallacious generalisation, but as a thumb rule, I've always thought anyone who knows 2 or more Indian languages is likely to be more "tolerant", or at least have a less narrow understanding of their surroundings. If you could understand Pu La or Tagore or Bharatiyar or Ghalib, wouldn't you stop thinking only your kind has to be the finest?

Sahadeva Uvaacha

The Sunday Magazine section of The Hindu has a interesting new series of extracts from what is supposed to be "a novel in progress." by Kesava Menon. It's a version of the Mahabharata narrated by Sahadeva ,"the youngest and perhaps the most insignificant of the Pandavas" and is set at the beginning of the 13th year of exile, the "incognito" phase.

Apart from being a revision of the fascinating epic, it is not the usual "PG" rated fare, but a little more adult with an attempt towards "realism". Sahadeva gets bumped up the importance scale which provides us a fresh new viewpoint.

The series is just two episodes old. They are (for the benefit of all those like me who don't buy a print copy) My Game and Blending In.

Staring at the glare

If you, like Daemon and me, have been puzzled by what's under Shivnarine Chanderpaul's eyes when he comes out to bat, then pay a visit to Mueller Sports Medicine's anti-glare strips.

Snip-pop-pets

* There are fewer sights in cricket that has the purists' eyes playing pinball and causing technical-minded coaches to cover the eyes of their pupils (side-dish: if one of the pupils was called "Iris" and she had a humourous disposition, the optician would be even more pleased) than that of Shivnarine Chanderpaul facing André Nel. But both have had reasonable successes of varying degrees showing that not everyone needs to stick to a mould to get to the highest level.

* Randomly riding the channel waves yesterday, I paused to see the curious sight of even the outtakes at the end of a dubbed film having Hindi voiceovers. That's a complete job by the dubbing people. Well done.

* The skies darkened, the wind picked up, leaves danced. Rain pattered in, impromptu pools formed. Still something was missing. The pre-monsoon showers were a little incomplete in their effect. Then in answer, a transformer blew and the lights went out. Ah! The monsoon is knocking at the gates.

The Corpses of Roads

There is something rotten about the roads of Pune.

Quite a lot actually. And despite repeatedly lamenting the state of the city (indeed, all our cities), the mind is not sated. Complaining doesn't help, but atleast it quietens the frustration for a while.

Riding through Bombay two weeks ago was an exercise in going to the trenches. I hope there will be a "better tomorrow" and all this inconvenience will be worth something. As soon as I was back in Pune, the trenches had gone, but there was quicksand in place. A highly viscous mass, choking and choked with guttural sounds to show. I didn't know why this last year has seemed more vicious than preceding years in feeling the strangulation of traffic on the roads, but I am a traffic-asthmatic now. The open roads induce a serious claustrophobia; almost every inch is packed with motor vehicles; each inch that has escaped annexation will lose that status the next moment.

A statistic appeared in the newspaper that may explain this: apparently, the population of vehicles in this city has gone up by 35%. The booming second-hand car market, the rise in affordability of vehicles, the availability of more (larger and powerful) models and the continuance of a lack of any mass transport alternative have ganged up together. For several people, it is a great ambition to possess a car, something their fathers would never have been able to contemplate so easily. But with bigger paypackets, loans and "special offers", purchasing a car is within grasp. One can hardly blame anyone for doing so and why should they be prevented? So anyone who wants to buy a car today can do so and any director/ad-film-maker/actor who cherishes a dream of working with Amitabh Bachchan can get him on board. Truly, it is the time for fulfilling fantasies.

We do have a significant number of vehicles on the streets. I'm willing to guess that most middle-class families in Pune have more than one vehicle in their name. A count of vehicles in my own apartment revealed that there are 6 cars and 10 two-wheelers for 7 flats. I can hardly blame anyone else; we ourselves have > 1 vehicle. Pune has always been a two-wheeler city and almost everyone who has to leave the house daily for work or studies uses or expects to use their own vehicle. This could directly be related to the poor standard of buses and also the relatively short distances one has to travel. Hence it becomes more convenient to employ one's own vehicle. If I had to take advantage of "flexi-time" at work, I would have to use my own gaaDi; plus there is just one bus (possessing an indifferent frequency) plying that route.

Since none of us will shy away from purchasing vehicles just because the per capita road space dwindles everyday and parking spots don't expand infinitely, we will sacrifice long-term for short-term. It is tough to start via individuals - why should I sacrifice when others won't? It is the price for the city's success and it's hard to leave the party.

There were many noises months back when Pune Municipal Corporation members wanted to mimic the great advances made in Bogota, Colombia where a professor-turned-mayor turned things around there. "If it can happen in that drug-cartel infested city where the respect for law is thought to be minimal, why not here?" is the feeling. However, the mayorship there has a greater concentration of powers and it lacked only the will. Here, the responsiblities are so divided among the executive & the political authorities, not to mention infighting & publicity hungry MPs, that both the will & wisdom is hard to find.

Nor do ordinary people care much if they can achieve their small goals of going from place A to B irrespective of the means. My veins & arteries are going to pop one day from the routine mania of the traffic violations; the behaviour is downright criminal.

I think I am a fool to feel so wretchedly about all this while others nonchalantly breeze through. Every trip through the killing fields scrapes my confidence a little; the roses of my brow are replaced by pessimistic thorns just on setting wheel to tarmac. There are three large buildings coming up on the road where my place of work is - that stretch of road used to be among the best in the city. It is impossible to imagine exactly how bad things are going to be when the thousands of residents/office workers of those buildings will start to pour in. Perhaps it will be like drowning amidst the salty ocean after the scuba gear starts to go phut. My empty rant's genesis is mostly from impotent rage and from a sense of having lent a hand to the massacre.

To bear or not to bear, that is the question.

Blogstars

I remain surprised that there seem to be no bloggers among "celebrities" (not bloggers who are celebrities, but noted people who blog :-) ). I'm sure if the likes of Rahul Dravid or Harsha Bhogle or Ruskin Bond or Upamanyu Chatterjee or even the juniors Deora/Pilot were to blog, they would find their blogs being subscribed to in large numbers.

Why would their blogs be instantly successful? Because readers are thirsty for inside information, backroom insights, perhaps even mundane trivial peeks into their worlds. In fact anyone who provides these tidbits (for which the mainstream press wouldn't be able to spare column inches) would find a large audience. I'm sure the likes of Amit Varma and his fellow Cricinfo bloggers notice a surge in their page views whenever they're covering a cricket match live or are in a position to talk about the game from much closer. (Which is a good time to ask: why has the Cricinfo blog never returned from vacation?)

Some of these celebs have columns or are interviewed often. Those are usually along set lines. Many columns, especially the sports ones, are obviously ghost-written (imagine Javed Miandad using all those fancy words) and run-of-the-mill, so those have lost both credibility & ability to interest. The agents of some of the more articulate ones may well point them in the direction of the blog. Blogs are less polished and raw which works in their favour.

Two issues: quality and credibility. Blogs need to be updated at a consistent frequency and must not seem to be contrived or even too politically correct. The content also has to offer novelty and issues that aren't in the forefront of mainstream media. I'm sure these "celeb" bloggers would make money from selling adspace on their blogs.

Of course, the online world is notorious for attracting riff-raff (just look at the comments left behind on online articles in major portals). But it represents a unprecedented opportunity to get close to fans and others by pushing content instead of the regular media extracting it from them.

I haven't checked it in ages, but Bob Woolmer's site used to have a semi-blog like page where he'd post notes on the Pakistan team. I am really surprised no big name has actually plunged into this space (I don't know of anyone famous doing so in other parts of the world as well) This would be a little different that say a "News" page on their personal websites or an occasional entry. It has to be frequent, informative and from the heart.

Perhaps these people would prefer the relative security and safety (not to mention the better returns) of a newspaper/website column. I don't say that the blogging community needs such people to raise the profile of blogging in general or that their type is sorely missed. It's just that as I said at the beginning, I'm surprised no one seems to plunged into it yet. Or perhaps they have done so (even anonymously) and I haven't realised yet!

Comic. Strip?

I saw the Rituparno Ghosh directed (and authored ;-) ) Raincoat this weekend. Quite a decent film and I think George's review of the film perfectly summarises it.

I am no Aishwarya Rai fan. I don't hate her or something, but I have yet to be dazzled by her acting skills. I admit to getting a little hot under the collar when people went gaga the week she turned 30. What I'm about to write here is a little unlike me, but I'm sure many of you will recognise the pragmatism in these words.

Ms. Rai is never going to hit it big in the acting registers. She has had her innings for over 5 years now. She has had several major acting roles, opportunities that have been seldom offered to better actresses. Mainly, she has been incapable of being even average, barring very, very few sparks. Just look at the mess she made of a reasonably decent role in Raincoat. So objectively speaking, she is unlikely to grow into a better actress.

OTOH, Ms. Rai's agent has been successful in hoisting her onto the leading US talk shows. This is obviously a well-thought out strategy to project her in Hollywood. But Ms. Rai's disinclinations towards making a spectacle of herself (if you know what I mean) seem to be a crippling roadblock. The problem is that no casting director is going to hire her on the basis of her histrionic skills (especially if s/he saw Devdas). So what's left is the "Joey" tactic: take it off.

I'm not being s3xist or anything. Frankly, she is not going to make it otherwise. Perhaps she should cast an eye homewards, at the careers of sundry Koppikars, Aroras and Dhupias. She was lucky enough to not have to require such steps at home, but if one takes a hard look, Hollywood's not all that different.

Surely, it's none of my business, but I'm really getting tired of these endless promotions. They hardly lead anywhere. I wish the lady would decide how ambitious she really is. One way or the other, please put a lid on these "Cannes" ooh-la-lahs.

Bean Talk

A glaring hole in my TV timetable was pointed out by a visiting niece and I have done much to rectify that in the last couple of weeks. Mr. Bean shows up every night on weekdays at 8:30 pm (preceded by one of those candid camera shows called Just For Gags, a Quebecois show). All this on POGO, a channel that didn't show up earlier on my radar.

The thing about the Mr. Bean series apart from the brilliant acting and the situations is how the writers never lose grip on the characterisation. Mr. Bean isn't all an imbecile, he just has a radically different way of approaching things and the writers always keep him true to his illogic. They don't try and wrench sympathy from the viewers as may have been the easy way by showing him as an idiot. Mr. Bean is selfish, sometimes mean, not above ripping off the head of his only friend, the emaciated teddy, to make a paintbrush and is easily tempted into cheating.

For anyone who would find it hard to believe that Rowan Atkinson is capable of playing anything else (such is his body language), I recommend the equally brilliant Blackadder series. The first Blackadder is a little like Mr. Bean, but later versions become this suave, cynical, canny character, far removed from Mr. Bean.

The team of Atkinson, Richard Curtis, Howard Goodall have had a tremendous influence on some of the popular English films in the last 15 years. Especially the Curtis brand of romantic comedies. However stereotypical, they never disappoint.

Gift horses

Last evening, there was no doubt that Manchester United were robbed of the F.A. Cup by Arsenal. The problem was that Manchester United opened the doors & windows, threw the keys away and thought they were living in a place like Shani Singnapur.

Groundhog Day

Today's Indian Express reports that soon we may have direct air links between Iceland and India. That gladdens me because I have a strange fascination for Iceland.

The direct, single cause for this fascination was a spy thriller called Running Blind by Desmond Bagley. This book was set among the lava lumps of Iceland and the description of the landscape (which isn't always covered by snow contrary to popular perception), the geysirs, the desolation and how all of this has shaped the people of the land somehow attracted me to Iceland. I have always nurtured a secret desire to visit that country and perhaps a direct air link would come in useful :-)

This Icelandic interest had one amusing consequence. The book describes how many Icelanders followed the "Germanic" system of naming where a suffix is added to the father's name to produce the last name of a person. For instance, if Magnus had a son named Gunnar, the son's name would become Magnus Gunnarsson Gunnar Magnusson. In turn if Gunnar had a daughter called Elin, she would be called Elin Magnusdottir Elin Gunnarsdottir.

Apparently, this was quite common among the Scandinavian people and would cause a lot of headaches in managing records, for a single dynastic surname helps as seen in other countries. From what I learnt, countries like Sweden actually offered people incentives to abstain from this practice and stick to a single surname.

I happened to write in to Wordsmith during a week when the theme to their Daily Word was "patronyms" (names derived from the name of a father, ancestor or a family name). One reader, Willie Velloso, an 84 year old Brazilian from Florida mistakenly thought I was an Icelander and told me of his own interests in that land. He'd never been there himself, and was giving up all hope of doing so now.

In closing he mentioned it was unusually cold there, 4°C and asked me not to laugh at these "high" temperatures. I shivered just reading that!

More analogies

I don't know why I have the urge to compare key figures from English football and Indian cricket, but after the last one, here's another: Wayne Rooney and Virender Sehwag.

Perhaps it is their attitudes to their respective games that is identical. Both go hard at the ball and have the powers to come up with outrageous results. Temperamentally, they are poles apart with Rooney being so much more combustible. But they have set themselves up as the key men to provide victories to their respective teams.

I had occasion to compare English football and Indian cricket about 4 to 5 years ago when both teams hired foreign coaches and also had captains at the helm who were both always criticised for being both special-and-limited: Beckham's prowess from the deadball and also drawing flak for being a one-foot wonder, while Ganguly's fluid timing and lack of onside ability. Fill in the other details about temparament and affairs.

Not sure Dada has "Dona" mispelled in English on his arm though.

CD Conservation

Is the whole dangling-CD-in-vehicle a very Indian phenomenon? Is it because we have an innate inclination to recycle? I can't think that any other place in the world would see a compact disc serving as a festoon after it's finished spinning in the drive and been cast out.

Does anything become obsolete in the Indian ecology? (Apart from cheetahs and seemingly tigers of course.)

Jolly good fellow

Members from the paternal side of my family have always had a rich store of anecdotes to narrate. So when uncles come visiting and strike up old memories, there is a lot of merriment to be gained.

One of father's cousins, a former Professor of English and someone with a fleeting involvement in local politics, provided this real-life tale:

Many years ago, a constituency in the Nagercoil area came up for elections. The two usual suspects, both lawyers, were up against each other. Let's call one Raman and the other Krishnan. Krishnan's supporters were quick to begin campaigning, and overnight a large sign appeared on a wall in the main town square. It read:

Should you vote for that drunkard Raman?

The night-time inclinations of Lawyer Raman weren't hidden from the townsfolk as he was an old local. But what was ironic was that everyone knew Krishnan was no saint either. The staff of Raman scratched their heads over an appropriate response: merely defacing the sign was a sure provocation to cause fighting in the streets and wasn't considered an equal riposte. At last someone had a brainwave.

Next day, an equally large sign appeared right below the previous one. It read:

Why not vote for the other drunkard then?

The old professor also told us another one, an American joke I hadn't heard before.

A man was filling out an application. He raced through the Name, Gender, Age, Address fields before hitting a section about his parents' details. He wrote down his Father's name and paused at "Age (if alive)". Thinking it over, he carefully wrote: 128. For that's what his papa would've been if he was still alive.

CCCLXV diem: annus blogus - III

I lopped off part of the right margin, but the text can be extrapolated. The last word on the 2nd last line is "paper" :-) Note to graphologists: I'm not sure if this is a proper sample of my handwriting given that I didn't write this in ideal conditions.

Previous annual commemorations

* 2004 - the Nadsat Post
* 2003 - the Boustrophedon Post
* - and for historical reasons, the début post

Coach Coach Hota Hai

Question? Answer.

BTW, who is the unfortunate coach of the Railways Ranji Team? Think of the possible ribbing he must be getting by being a railway coach. (or has this been pointed out before?)

Foucault's Code and the Da Vinci Pendulum

Finally managed to get this post up.

Good Heavens

If you thought only mere mortals suffered the mundaneness of the ritual called "appraisals", Nikhil shows you that it's all not hunky dory up in the celestial realms as well. Read A Celestial Appraisal (Note: Nikhil writes mainly in Marathi).

Animal

It is cruel to ask people to come back to work full tilt after a three day weekend. We need atleast a half-day to ease back in - like dipping a shivering toe in an Arctic lake prior to the plunge. [This last statement doesn't apply to Vinayak - he just spends his vacations diving into them.]

Love in the time of the Emergency

I watched Hazaaron Khwaishen Aisi with about 30 other people in a cinema theatre meant for about 100. The rest of the potential cinema population was presumably watching Kaal and I hope that film was as interesting as the Sudhir Mishra one was to me.

The way an ordinary person of my profile in India learns about history is by chance. Perhaps you will meet someone knowledgeable about the past. Or you will stumble by a book or even a film that fills in areas of the canvas you didn't even know existed. For instance, I got to learn some of the most basic facts about the events of 1947 from Freedom at Midnight. The events of the Emergency of 1975 may be as remote to me as say the Mughal era; in fact I may know more about the latter. So it isn't surprising that a film like Hazaaron... won't set box office registers ringing, but it did set my mind aflutter.

The film is essentially a love story (however trite that may sound) set before & during the Emergency. Mishra doesn't go about analysing and dissecting the tumult of the times, but simply chooses to explore how all that affects his characters. Siddharth (Kay Kay), a radical from a wealthy family, Geeta (Chitrangada Singh), educated abroad and quietly worshipful of Siddharth, and Vikram (Shiny Ahuja), openly in love with Geeta and who "wants a way in". Into the power structure that is.

Threading through a Naxalite group in Bihar, commercialisation of palaces, venality, crime, supplication - the usual stuff of politics, then and now - we follow these three for about 8 years and get a sense of how it all must have been (and perhaps is). It is far removed from my current reality, but who's to say?

The story isn't of a kind that has a definite beginning and end, but describes a phase. No loss-of-innocence fable as well; almost of all the players know the score and feel the need for survival very strongly.

I was a little puzzled at the ending though, mainly with the abrupt transformation of Siddharth, for which I didn't see any adequate explanation. Sudhir Mishra wants to show a certain loss of morals in some as well as a contradictory strengthening of it among others simultaneously, so perhaps why the film ended the way it did. There is however, a sense of closure with what happens to Geeta & Vikram. The cynical & caustic imprint begins right at the opening lines of the film where the filmmaker follows a stock shot of the "tryst with destiny" speech by mentioning the technical fact that not the whole world was asleep when India woke to light and freedom - it was 2:30 pm in parts of America.

The performances are first-rate, and the meatiest parts are gobbled by Shiny Ahuja & Chitrangada Singh. Some of my friends didn't want to watch this film because of Ahuja after they apparently walked out of a screening of Sins (their explanation for being there was that they "strayed into it") in 15 minutes after watching him. If that was the case, well, he has paid for those and recovered his name here. Chitrangada Singh's uncanny resemblance to Smita Patil has already found mention in many places, and it is to her credit that her acting stands up to those levels of quality. Several good cameos including ones by Sandeep Kulkarni & Saurabh Shukla add ballast. This film could've only succeeded by such good actors supporting the storyline.

Much appreciated also was the score by Shantanu Moitra, especially with man yeh baa.nwraa. Trivia notes existed: the dedication to Mishra's former wife, the late Renu Saluja, a tiny appearance by Mishra himself and two fleeting references to "Ahuja" and "Tarneja" in the film being the most noteworthy.

The film is believably "Indian", respecting the diverse nature of players in such stories. There are no concessions to help you understand some of the subtleties, which helps the elasticity of this two hour film. All in all, quite recommended if you have the inclinations for such stories.

Drop out

It is a sign of the times that when I'm watching a film where the heroine has just opened the taps at full blast in preparation to take a bath, all I can think of is does she really need to use so much water? Especially, when the scene cuts and I realise that no one has turned the tap off. (In case your imagination is getting a little "steamy", it was My Fair Lady and quite a chaste scene, I'm afraid).

It also wasn't the best day to look expectantly at the dripping tap after having just had a haircut. Later in the day, noting the further deterioration of several roads in the areas I was visiting after a while was saddening and maddening.

Bijlii, SaDak, Paani for us too.

On the face of it

John Cleese presents a BBC documentary called The Human Face which is a fascinating exploration of the curious collection of muscles, flesh, bones and all of that stuff which coalesces into a human face. I've seen bits of this 4 part series earlier, but BBC World is running this again as part of their weekend programming.

Last week's episode revealed a researcher's claim that though what constitutes a beautiful face could be extremely hard to define, he had arrived at some parameters that almost all "beautiful" faces share. He claims that the Golden Ratio is at play here and these faces had an astonishing set of coincidences in terms of how the ratio of lengths between 2 different pairs of related points were always about 1.618. For instance, the ratio between the length of the forehead to the rest of the head, the distance between the mouth to the side of the face to the distance from the nose to the side. He's even come up with a template made up of various lines in these ratios which make pentagons & other *gons while intersecting which he applies to a variety of glamorous faces and finds a great deal of match.

Another interesting theme: it is commonly held that beauty was a sign of health in a prospective mate and hence forms a primeval response in the process of selection of mates. However, thanks to cosmetics & fashion, the number of "good-looking" people has gone up and so the original concept can hardly hold any more.

For more such interesting notions, see the last part of the series on BBC World, Saturday at 7:40 pm & Sunday at 4:40 pm.

Killing me softly...

take/going forward: ~30%
that point in time: ~20%
complete visibility: ~10%
value add: ~10%
up the value chain: ~5%
in this space: ~5%
ramp up: ~5%
due diligence, buy in, action that, skedule, streamline, shoot it out, that point in time: the rest (~15%)

I try and avoid those massively meandering meetings when I can, but sometimes they're unavoidable. A little like Roberto-Benigni-in-concentration-camp during peacetime (actually a lot less watered down), the only way to escape the attendant drudgery is to invent little games and turn the situation on its head.

The above list is from me attempting a ranking of management-speak phrases uttered in a few recent meetings. I don't know if such phrases are addictive or if people consciously adopt the argot to fit in, but more and more people fall prey. I must confess it is a dangerous beast; I occasionally am horrified to hear myself uttering such a phrase when I'm not on guard, but that has happened once in a million. Immediate self-flagellation is the only punishment for this.

Take "going forward". Who retired the phrase "in the future" ? Or why do we say "skedule"?

Jose Chandidas Mourinho?

This is one of those vague inexplicable associations - every time I see Jose Mourinho in action, I'm reminded of Saurav (Sourav?) Ganguly. Look at Mourinho celebrating Chelsea's goals (especially as they get nearer to being Champions) and I'm reminded of SCG's antics on the cricket field immediately after a tough win (a la Lords-Natwest). Both have a very gauche schoolboyish, inelegant, fly-in-soup kind of method. Both rub their opponents the wrong way almost everytime and marry articulation with a serious lack of tact.

Both are definitely the kind that will be praised as long as they do well and who will cop a lot of criticism when they don't.

Caribbean Cricket and hits to this blog

A random check of my blog stats yesterday showed a surge in readership on the 25th, indicating I got linked somewhere. Turns out that a weblog on a West Indies Cricket site linked to my post on Brian Lara a few days ago.

The increase in hits made it "the busiest day" for my blog. Incidentally, the previous "busiest day" was when I got linked on the Cricinfo blog almost 5 months ago to the day.

Which is a lesson that if your aim is to seek more publicity, you are better off talking about films and cricket/sports :-). Extrapolate this to all media of all scales, and I can figure why almost everyone ODs on these subjects.

Coming back to the site, Caribbean Cricket seems to have comprehensive coverage of the daily soap that is Windies cricket. There's even an interesting article on the future of cricket coaching by Greg Chappell tied to the Indian coach hunt.

Following

Meant to have blogged about this 4 months ago, but anyway never too late. Before Christopher Nolan shot to fame with Memento (when they do a retrospective of his films sometime in the future, this film will be very apt!), he made a short, experimental film called Following. Quite frankly, it was one of the most outstanding films I've ever seen. I would go as far as to say that I found it better than Memento, because the plot was more plausible and the film is awesome given the constraints.

Following sees Nolan making his feature debut and immediately applying his soon-to-become trademark non-linear screenplay writing skills to the project. The film was shot under a "no-budget" i.e. the makers (Nolan with friends & family) shooting guerilla-style on the streets, in homes of well-wishers (as the DVD commentary revealed, sometimes even two different locations in the film are actually set in the same house) and in black and white in London, establishing a very noir feel. The film is jusy 70 minutes, but never once is the lack of length an issue. The cast is small, and hardly anyone from it is still acting professionally in films. Nolan was the only one to make it big, but let not this turn of events indicate that the actors are a bunch of simpleton amateurs. The performances were all excellent. The twists in the plot are sudden hairpin binds, so enjoy them.

I had even more fun watching the movie accompanied by Nolan's remarks and then using the option of watching the film scenes in chronological order. In light of his first two attempts, Insomnia was such a disappointment. I don't know where else anyone can get hold of Following considering it was such a low key, summer-project-like, British indie move, but Pune's British Library has a copy of the DVD. I couldn't find a single full-length review of the film on the web, suggesting the film was hardly a mainstream release.

Hopefully the next Batman movie should restore our faith in Nolan's immense abilities beyond the novelties of screenplay structure. To end with the appropriate pun, a career worth following.

[Update] Harish rightly points out that I must credit him with finding the DVD. However, that would also mean revealing the slightly embarassing truth that he was going to return it without watching it and it was I who (with some backing from George) who gave the underdog a shot. So much for talent spotting, eh Harish ;-)

Lynch mob

I guess you could debate the "is-the-media-being-unfair-to-cricketers" theme till the bovines caught the milk-train back home, but sample this: One of the Hindi news channels had an "analysis" programme called Match ke mujrim.

Criminals? So when the 'keeper breaks the stumps and an Indian cricketer goes back courtesy a silly run-out, would the umpire deny him one of the bails?

When the knives are out... on vacation

So if Laloo (if I use his earlier non-arithmetically-sound name, would it bring bad luck on him?) Yadav is forced to resign his Ministership, will Rabri Devi again step up heroically to replace him, this time as Railways Minister?

What a kitchen cabinet that'll make.

On Online communities

A few weeks ago, I was interviewed by a Mass Comm student doing a project on online communities, which also included all kinds of socially interactive media irrespective of size of participation. The questions were quite interesting and set me thinking a bit. A couple that I found worth-mentioning:

Three things that you look for in online communities

* Signal-to-noise ratio on the group/blog/newsgroup/etc: How much of the stuff on that particular piece of the web is useful or stimulating or thought-provoking?

* The relative uniqueness of the community: Given a set of pages related to a common topic or theme, what distinguishes it from the others?

* Am I allowed my own kind of space: How does the group treat lurkers, passive and active participants, members from outside the initial "seed" group. Does it let you maintain your own level of involvement or does it force patterns on you?

Then an innocuous question that turned out to be tough:

Would you put a photograph of yourself on your blog

I don't have a photo on this blog though the publishing service provides the facility to do so. Why? There is an strange, undefined reluctance. Perhaps it isn't something that most other bloggers do. Whereas on social networks like Orkut, and perhaps even on a personal (more static) webpage, I'd feel the pull of "convention" to do so. It seems to be related to the lack of peer pressure to do so, and also perhaps I would think it a little impetuous? Not sure.

Dupe-licate

I'm seeing double and that despite my glasses (saying "specs" conjures up unfriendly Word documents in my mind). A few days ago, there was a Shoaib Akhtar duplicate, replete with long hair & bulging eyes, only spoilt by the fact that he bowled left-handed. Then there is this forward doing the rounds in which a young & late 70s/early 80s hairdo wearing Azim Premji looks remarkably like what Kamalhaassan looked then.

I also realised a few days ago that Ramchandra Guha looks a lot like Bill Gates. There was a news item about MSFT, and my first reaction on seeing the accompanying image was what is Guha doing there. The resemblance is really uncanny with the spectacles, hairstyles & "Mona Lisa" smile that accompanies their photos. Perhaps there is Iyengar blood somewhere in the Gates lineage - may be a story of hidden love stashed away in the cupboard.

A lot of people vehemently disagree with this observation, but when I see Clint Eastwood in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, for me he resembles David Beckham (when the hairstyle is sombre of course). I must watch out for Blondie's hand to see if he's misspelt something in Hindi to complete the match.

TomaakE Chaa_i

Listening to the music of Netaji Bose, I got a little interested in Bengali popular music and got a friend to share some of the songs in his collection. They were mainly film songs sung by Kishore, but there was one Bengali pop song called tomaakE chaa_i which is not about Darjeeling tea, but translates to I want you... (unless if it is more finely nuanced than that).

Sung (and in all likelihood composed) by Suman Chatterjee, who according to my friend brought a new sound to Bengali popular music along with the likes of Nachiketa Chakraborty, the orchestration is a little dated. So you hear some synth beats popular earlier, especially the "Dhich-uh-kuh-dhich" type ones (if you know what I mean). Nachiketa wonderfully sings the refrain in Eklaa Chalo Re in Bose and apparently had release a contemporary version of the song himself a few years ago.

Anyway, I found the song quite nice. A translation of the lyrics can be found here along with a link to where the song can be found.

By happy coincidence, I'm listening to the songs from Anand whose music director Salil Chowdhury was also a major figure in Bengali & Hindi music.

Are Popular Bloggers Extroverts?

A couple of weeks ago, I finished reading The Meme Machine by Susan Blackmore. In it, Blackmore elaborates an interesting thesis: what if memetics was a greater driving force than was previously thought to be? Would it explain certain phenomena of our social life such as why do we love to talk so much, why do certain ideas develop at the expense of others, why we have such large brains and how s3x and even altruism flourish only to spread memes.

[A meme, of course, is (still) a vague concept: a sort of unit of an idea, one that cannot be quantified easily, nor its carriers clearly identified & demarcated. Usually analogous to the concept of a gene, it is used to express the idea of well, an idea, that spreads from human to human.]

Now, what Blackmore does is to attempt to de-hyphenate memetics from genetics and push her theories of what may result thus to the extremes. She proposes the growth in power of memetics, of the potency of ideas emanating from the brain that initially were subordinate to genes and merely present to further genetic evolution. The growth is such that later memes become powerful enough to take charge of their own destinies (in a manner of speaking) and start modifying their environment to further their own short-term goals of spreading high-quality copies of themselves. Independence, then from the yoke of the genes.

Blackmore uses this parallel replicator to conjecture why the human brain could have developed into such a large and energy-hungry organ beyond the initial benefits of tool-making or overpowering the environment that early man would have required. From there to modern-day traffic jams or continuously "on" cell-phone users is a big leap indeed with no overt genetic survival needs. On the other hand, if you consider memes as compelling forces of replication with a fundamental need to copy without any regards to larger goals of "progress", then a lot of these human states could be explained.

[I've still not got to my central theme :-)]

Ok, now Susan Blackmore attributes the success of memes among humans to the power of "imitation". That is, if I caveman make sharp stone spear and slay bear, I'm more likely to survive winter & disease compared to if you waited for the bear to die of old age. Since I'm smart enough to fashion the object, my genes are more likely to survive, meaning that the chances of cavegirls taking a fancy to also me shoot up. [Note: the last statement obviously makes it fictional.] Now, if you're smart enough to imitate my tool-making capabilities, you catch up with me. So if there is a gene for smart-imitation, it spreads more through us than otherwise.

Fast-forward a few thousand years and you find people imitating rock-stars, actors, cricketers - their fashion statements, their throwaway ad lines and their attitudes. One day everyone's wearing bell-bottoms, another day they have little goatees under their chins. Now, obviously, the bell-bottom has no role in human survival, but over the years, certain people have become more worthy of imitation than others. They are "successful" to different degrees. I started blogging probably because in part I was imitating someone whose actions I found worth aping. Or I'm in computers partly because its a profession that many others are in i.e. peer pressure. Or Chotaa Paav is a gangster because he saw Satya. Of course, reasons for imitation may differ in some small groups, but some figures are obviously more influential for a large section of the population.

Now I won't delve into why Susan Blackmore thinks these people became worth imitating, but I can see a pattern here - most of these people are "public" figures. They demonstrate their actions and we ape them. Blackmore theorizes why humans talk so much - because the memes in their brains are competing for survival, and can spread by transmission. Till today, probably the most potent means of influencing someone is by speech. There is writing of course, but talk, orate, expound, communicate verbally and that meme will be passed on.

If you were shy and incapable of making your point, you would be at a disadvantage passing on the revolutionary new idea that you had. Your "influence" would be much lesser if you were Greta Garbo and had a new hairstyle that hardly anyone saw. Publicity matters and demonstrativeness matters. Since I assume (with a little simplistic generalisation here) that extroverted people are more likely to talk and hence spread their memes than introverts, obviously those influential ideas that require pushing them to the masses would benefit from residing in the brains of extroverts.

What I'm conjecturing is this: take the "popular" bloggers. I think the large majority of these would tend to be extroverted rather than introverted. This despite the fact that writing levels the field somewhat between extroverts & introverts for the writer is solitary and on the web is guaranteed a fair bit of anonymoity. However, I would think that extroverted writers (and here I'm talking of topical, almost-everyday bloggers, not the dreamy-diary kind) are much more demonstrative, more provocative and just that much more keen to spew their thoughts & share their ideas/notions/theories. They would probably also be less uncertain or apologetic (for instance they would possibly not use words like "possibly" or "probably" leaving out the possibility of them being incorrect), and would be more assertive in their prose. As a result, they would provoke more reactions and comments from readers, and hence increase chances of their visitors returning. They would be more likely to want to "communicate" stuff, having been used to it and in most cases, blogs being cyber-projections of a person, that attitude would spill over.

Now, I have no way to test this over a large sample, but applying this to people I know, I would say this theory is fairly true i.e. the more popular & influential bloggers would tend to be (perhaps even highly) extroverted.

Pustak memesaahib

AnTi handed over one of his batons to me, so I take it up. Here goes:

1. You’re stuck inside Fahrenheit 451! which book do you want to be?

Having not read F 451, only barely aware of the plot and reading Vinod's interpretation, I have two in each category:
Something I like and would be subversive in F 451: Surely, you're joking Mr. Feynman! For if you wanted to rebel against boxing of thought, what better illustration than the story of a man who did that all his life?

Something I don't think I'd like and would tie up the censors in knots: Ulysses

2. Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?

- Like AnTi, Kathleen Kelly from You've Got Mail, also the Julia Ormond version from Sabrina and of course Ilsa Lund from Casablanca. But assuming we're looking for more bookish examples, I guess Betty from the Archie comics. Someone that nice and dependable - wonder what Archie's sees in that other girl! Perhaps the underdog effect.

3. The last book you bought is:

- Where On Earth Am I by Jug Suraiya. But the last book I helped buy was The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night time.

4. The last book you read: - India in Slow Motion by Tully & Wright and (appropriately) The Meme Machine by Susan Blackmore.

5. What are you currently reading? - Baudolino by Umberto Eco and Being Digital by Nicholas Negroponte

6. Five books you would take to a deserted island:

* The Complete Sherlock Holmes book - Doyle
* One of the Jeeves Omnibus books - Wodehouse
* Yes Prime Minister - Anthony Jay & Jonathan Lynn
* Being Happy - Andrew Matthews
* Surely you're joking Mr. Feynman!

7. Who are you going to pass this stick to and why?

* Sudarshan so that he'd be utterly confused because he'll have more options than anyone else I know :-)
* George, because his DVD player needs a rest.
* Nikhil to spread the meme into non-English literature and avoid monotony.
* Anand to give him some exercise while he recuperates.

(Not) a Grimm Tale

If you were Hans Christian Andersen or among The Brothers Grimm and were writing a cricket fairytale, casting Brian Charles Lara as the main protagonist would be most appropriate. For to Lara happens the magical and the miraculous, the sublime and the ridiculous, the tragic and the revelatory.

Some of the most breathtaking fairy-tale moments of the last 15 years of cricket have happened to Lara. He hits the highest Test score and follows it up with the highest First class score. Then when he loses the former, he grabs it back as soon as he can play England at St. John's.

Or when he bumps voluntarily into McGrath's shoulder and gives him a mouthful and follows that up with a cracking drive that must have hurt Pigeon even more. All en route to making a 153* and taking the Windies to a sweet win over the Aussies all by himself. That he was dropped by Healy who made one of his rarest errors is just how you would expect fate to sometime step in and aid the cause of our hero, for fairy-tales aren't Ram Gopal Varma films.

And by making a splendid comeback a couple of days ago and slamming a ton, he added another issue in the series. That he fell 4 short of 200 shouldn't be construed as a failure on the part of the hard-working guardian angel, for Andre Nel's delivery was a ripe & golden peach, which no magic, even that of Lara's, could have warded off.

In fact, it was a perfect semi-colon in the annals mirabilis (to concoct a fake phrase) that has been Lara's career. So writers of febrile cricketing fantasy, note: when you're considering your characters, Brian Lara is your man whom we believe miracles will happen to. Not Sachin Tendulkar - he's more Sidney Carton and fit for a Dickensian world.

Jade Project - Columnists

Ms. Maneka Gandhi wins instant nomination to the JaDe Project for the most weirdest suggestions made about the English language since Americans wanted to un-French-ise their vocab. Read Samanth's cool riposte.

[Previously]
* George makes a couple of JaDe entries
* Since I agree with Gaurav that the 7UP ad sucks like a vacuum pump, I'm adding this effort to the annals of the Project. Methinks Farah Khan is getting too big for her dancing shoes.

The Art of Structured Procrastination

A couple of days ago, I read this article on Structured Procrastination. It was an eyeopener. Finally someone seems to have explained a key pattern of my life.

As if I was a sole elephant in a zoo wondering why I had such a long nose while no one else around me did. And then stumbled upon other pachyderms. So there are other people who spend their lives in idle pastime while more important "tasks" loom large over your shoulder.

Though I must say the author, John Perry is a PhD, so he must definitely not be such a fine exponent of the art as I must be. He must have put in the hard hours and the deep thought to come up with a winning thesis however long he'd have stretched it out. Nothing to compare with me letting application deadlines loom closer & closer and then lapse out of some systemic tendencies to proc'nate (I'm too lazy to even say the word).

To think of it, I have read the most books, seen most films (and repeatedly) and watched most of the sporting action under the shadow of something much more daunting. Like exams. Even recently, I was struggling with Focault's Pendulum for over 3 weeks. Faced with something important, I actually finished the remainder of F's P in about 3 days flat. For those industrious among you, yes that's how it really works for me on most occasions.

I know a few people who like to feign laziness and like to give out the impression that their many achievements were merely accidents or that they didn't have to do much about it. Somehow we always want to be David Gower rather than Geoff Boycott. I have a few chaps asking me how I get so much reading done (and fellow quizzers would have had the experience, that recalling abstruse & useless trivia seems to enthrall certain people, never of the feminine kind though) and how I have the time to remember (to paraphrase Elaine Benes) "the excruciating minutiae" of so many things. It was easier to pretend that such things came naturally to one, but there is an important factor - while you were out there slogging away in pursuit of your academic or career goals and following your dreams, I was postponing things and wallowing in the dream of "there is time left" and doing all of these cool but not always life-saving ones. Suffice to say, if we were back in old hunter-gatherer times, I'd have been extinct pretty soon. It's this current corrupt hedonistic & entertainment-oriented way of living that tolerates us.

I don't know if it also explains my relative lack of ambition in what I'm doing these days and the surprise/shock that accompanies appraisal meetings where supervisors don't always understand why I'm mostly unconcerned about my "ratings". I don't know if this mode of operation is a good thing, for instance, I'm blogging stuff like this when I ought to be improving my "domain knowledge" or something. But then I think of all the stuff I got done and I marvel at how I get better each day at getting things not done and still surviving. Atleast as long as it lasts.

Has anyone noticed...

... that the Indian ladies cricket team has actually won all its 4 matches so far at the Women's World Cup and is currently 2nd behind Australia in the points table (only technically, for we are merely .001 behind on the net run rate).

For a nation whose news channels put each day of a Test involving the men's team as the lead story on primetime news, we could do with a little more publicity for this great run by another of our sport representatives. One thing, however, is certain: if we don't win a single match at the World Cup from here on, there won't be endless analyses and irate calls for sacking Mithali Raj as captain, nor will anyone throw stones at Anjum Chopra's house :-)

Let's hope the team continues its current run in South Africa.

Equation <> Equation

I've been reading the series of cliché exposés on Amit Varma's blog (as he reports on the Indo-Pak Test series), and can add a biggie - one that will be on every commentator's lips once the one day series gets underway.

This is The Equation. Deep into the 35th over, when the batsmen are jockeying for position to enable them to time their chase to perfection to the chagrin of the fielding team, up pops a graphic on your TV screen with the number of balls, runs & wickets left. Dravid & Kaif will have one eye on the equation, which is getting tougher as the overs go by will inevitably follow.

Call me reactionary, but when I can't see even one "equal to" sign accompanying the word "equation", I get a little worked up. While Stephen Hawking gets told not to include too many equations in his books, cricket commentators drop the word after every commercial break as if they were chums with number theoreticians.

It had always been a favourite daydream of myself in my younger teens when after providing some excellent self-commentary to a game of wall-cricket, I would imagine being on august panels instructing the common public on the finer niceties of the game. And then it would happen. Somebody would say the word "equation", in response to which, setting asides the more immediate & ephemeral excitements of the run-chase, I would go:

Ahem Tony. Just on the matter of the "equation", you do realise that the variables are hardly cast into an equation...

... and launch on pleasurably until I was cut off by an irate producer. I could lose my job as a result, but anything for pedantry.

[This blogger would like to really, really know what the "equation" is]

Bose - the music

Honestly, I had very few expectations from the score of Netaji Subhas Bose - The Forgotten Hero. For starters, the film & its music release seemed to be caught up in interminable delays and there was hardly any news about it, indicating problems at the producer/financier levels, which in my mind atleast, didn't augur a happy & cogent thinking crew. Few films that stretch out seem to come out well, and we hear that the film was over 3.5 hours long & not well-received on its initial set of test screenings. Perhaps the delay was in part due to Shyam Benegal doing some late post-production work. Then the first set of trailers appeared, and I wasn't very impressed. Plus, the lingering suspicion on whether A.R.Rahman would be able to segue into a Bengali flavour given reports that this album would need it.

Which was all fine in retrospect, because with almost every track, I felt myself going "This isn't too bad" and is probably why I will make a hearty recommendation for this music score.

The impressive thing about the album is that it has 20 tracks, the sheer number itself makes its a valued purchase. Of these, 7 are vocal tracks & the rest are "themes" or background pieces, including an orchestral variation of Jana Gana Mana. A more descriptive account of the tracks:

Aazaadi
A.R.Rahman and the Western Choir, Chennai
This vigorously patriotic song establishes one of the three dominating moods of the album: the choral; the others being the melodic & the orchestral. With the Western Choir chanting Jai Hind! in harmony, the harmony dominates over the words. Lots of the tuba/trombone/trumpet like instruments sounding a positive, aggressive notes along with heavy rhythms. All playing excellent support to the vocalist, the music director himself, singing in all gusto. If you are prepared to overlook the heavily accented rendition which since are subordinate to the appropriate emotions being evoked, there isn't much to complain.

This track is the only one playing on the trailers, and believe me, it doesn't sound all that special on television. I have observed this with several other songs as well - that an opinion based on a TV trailer should be very cautiously made.

Kadam Kadam Badhaa_e Jaa
Vijay Prakash and the Mumbai Film Choir, Chennai
No song was more representative of Subhas Bose and the INA than this one, so ARR only has to supply arrangements for this. He employs a patently martial track & the choir is robust. Short and direct, the anthemic track is just as we know it.

For a film that aims to make aware the "forgotten" deeds of Netaji Bose, it is a glaring omission that the original composer of this song Captain Ram Singh(of the INA) is not mentioned on the credits. I still don't know who wrote the lyrics for this song - was it the Netaji himself?.

On a trivial note, though technically not a ARR composition, it continues the tradition of having a repetitive word sequence song, the likes of which always seem to appear in Rahman soundtracks.

Ekla Chalo Re
Nachiketa Chakraborty and Sonu Nigam
Unlike in the CD inlay, I put Nachiketa Chakraborty's name first above because he provides a stellar intro into this sonorous track. Tagore's immortal words are well paraphrased by Javed Akhtar to add another song in the kitty of quietly confident songs ("Do Kadam Aur Sahi", "Sarfaroshi Ki Tamanna") that Sonu Nigam has got to sing for Rahman. The over-modulated rendition by Nigam may raise some eyebrows, but there is so much mellow positivity in this song that it doesn't matter.

Nachiketa Chakraborty only sings the "Ekla Chalo Re" refrain throughout, but he makes all the difference. The accompanying music elevates even this simple riff, with an outstanding rhythm change with "Eklaa Chalo Re" at the end.

jOdi tore Daak shunE keu naa aashE ... tabE eklaa chalO rE!
(Corrections welcome from Bangla-aware readers, I don't completely trust the lyrics with the cd, and couldn't find an accurate transliteration on the Web)

Hum Dilli Dilli Jaa_e.ngE
Mumbai Film Choir
This is actually a pretty decent track, though not very remarkable. I think the collective singing of the choir does elevate this song (the lyrics are all about the INA soldiers singing in military bravado). Perhaps meant more as a quick filler or bgm piece, this is a smallish track that fits in well with the album.

DEs ki miTTi
Sonu Nigam, Anuradha Sriram (backing vocals)
Amazing track. After several iterations of the album, I found myself coming back to this song for more. A song of longing for the country, the lyrics show why Javed Akhtar is unarguably the best film-lyric writer in the country today. The words describing the singer's yearning for his country are so evocative that it is not easy to remained unmoved. Also, the choice of words is quite novel for a Hindi film song.

The music in this one is also special. There are a lot of backing vocal voices, with Anuradha Sriram (she is credited as "Anuratha" - typo or numerology?). There is a very simple rhythm, lovingly embellished with ghu.ngruus and sweet violins playing. Oh, and there's a simple piano bit at the right places.

Now for some reason, this song evoked the feeling that this was quite Naushad-like. I don't know much about Naushad's music to be an expert, but perhaps something in the arrangements, Sonu Nigam's singing or the lyrics just brought the feeling of that era. Very instinctively. I can rarely resist the temptation to rewind to the song again immediately after I finish listening to it.

Zikr
A.R.Rahman, Rafi, Rakeeb, Shaukat Ali
This is a meditative song about the practice of the "zikr" (seems to be more frequently a sufianaa practice), in which the many names of Allah are mentioned, remembered and evoked. This will accompany a "whirling dervish" sequence in the film.

Now this being a prayer song, I don't if there has been any composition involved here and if the chanting is as usually experienced.

Ghuumparaani
Sapna Mukerjee, Satyanarayan Mishra
Sapna Mukerjee had more or less disappeared from the mainstream music scene for quite some time now, so I guess her return here is because of the Sahara connection (they're producing the film and she sings a lot of stuff for them). It's a lullaby (my friend Souvik tells me that Ghuumparaani maashi pishii mOdEr baaDi AeshO is a much recited lullaby phrase) and is somewhat wayward towards the middle and end. Very Bangla rhythms, but the song is a little disappointing.

The Theme pieces These are a mixed bag. The percussive Durga Rhythm is fabulous, with a shehnai foreground coursing through it and ends with an appropriate conch bit. This one is a little different from the following 12 theme tracks which have been recorded with the Czech Film Orchestra. The "Netaji-1" (essentially an "Ekla Chalo Re" instrumental), "Emilie-1" (where interestingly a riff from "Vande Mataram" seems to be present), "DEs ki MiTTi" themes are quite good, while I thought the remaining (two "Afghanistan" themes, the second parts of "Emilie" & "Netaji", "Kadam Kadam", "War", "U Boat" & "Hitler") themes were as yet unremarkable. Still, the aural diversity in this album is greatly enriched because of these theme pieces.

Of course, I'm not even including the orchestral version of the National Anthem in this discussion, because it always sounds fabulous and stirring.

In summary, quite an album and a valuable find. For the average Rahman fan, a CD worth hunting down for many several music shops haven't heard of it (atleast "Thakkar's Music Bank" had :-) ). Other listeners will find interesting tracks even if they don't have the time to devote to multiple listenings that an album like this deserves. The very fact that Rahman is first choice today for directors who can trust projects of such nature to him will mean that he grows more as a musician. This cannot even be subject to commercial considerations really, for it won't fit into those parameters at all.

Given the sweep of genres & orchestration, it would have been very useful to know a lot more about the singers, instruments and musicians involved than has been made available in the CD credits. But atleast all the lyrics are there.

I'm not even competent to venture any preliminary statements about the presence or absence of "Rabindra Sangeet" influences in some of the song, but I would be interested in knowing about them. When you listen to an album like this, you cannot help but be curious about the contributing musical milieus. So I got some info on the topic from the afore-mentioned Souvik - a small post on that later. Even if from just that angle, this has been a very satisfying and instructive experience.

Bose

After months of uncertainty and lack of any clear publicity about the music release of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose - The Forgotten Hero, finally got hold of a CD on Saturday. But not before a hunt, as several music shops hadn't even heard of the album (more blame piles up at the doors of the music company & the producers).

I instantly liked the tone & mood of the album; some of the offerings were quite appealing on first hearing. I didn't even have a chance to hear all the instrumental themes yet (more than half of the 20 track album), after spending all my time along with Harish first making some money in a quiz and then waiting ages to collect it.

Some detailed thoughts should follow soon, but couldn't resist making public first reactions to the score. Very orchestral & choral. Tasty prospect.

Millstone

What a way to mark a 100! If ruling Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar out (when he wasn't) in front of an Eden Gardens crowd in an India-Pakistan match when the batsman was repeatedly appealing for bad light and hence nipping a most crucial innings in the bud will not get Mr. Bucknor to retire, what will? :-)

Completely exemplifies this umpire's career.

The blogs & the newspapers are going to buzz, and for once, well, I'm going to join the hunt...

When Rudi Koertzen provided the Indians and in particular Tendulkar with some unusual largesse in the first Test, I remember thinking that it was all necessary given the announced list of umpires for the next!

Hille le

For the first time ever, felt tremors of an earthquake. Being on the 4th floor, so people got a little rocked naturally. It took me a couple of seconds to figure lower reaches were actually shaking, and it was over soon.

People just jumped up like jacks-in-the-boxes and looked about puzzled... What does one do? We don't have any safety drills Japanese style. Was this just one shock or the augur of more to come? Panic rushes kill more sometimes...

Sometimes, one just thinks the chairs are shaking - not really - psychological aftershocks.

News has just started filtering in - Rediff says it's a 5 pointish shock. Hopefully, not too much, if any, damage has happened. People calling up homes & friends to confirm & reassure. My folks didn't seem to have noticed, just like I didn't while sleeping on the 7th floor of a building in Mumbai ~12 years when the earth shook at Killari.

Update - 3:45
* These guys are fast: A Preliminary report
* Just remembered that when I looked at the floor clock at the time of the tremors, the clock showed an uncanny "3:14". Considering all the noise I've been making about Pi Day, almost eerie :-)

Update - 4:00
Egg on face - the link posted before seems to have been an earlier earthquake today ...

According to Rediff (link), it seems to have been centered near Koyna (in the same longitudinal range as Amsterdam Island earlier)

Update - 4:15
From the Rediff article:
"The quake measured 5.1. The epicentre of the quake, which occurred at 1514 IST, is in Koyna region. We are still looking into other details," an official at the Indian Meteorological Department in New Delhi said.

Koyna is very important for the region for reasons of power generation. Hopefully no loss of life or property there.

Today is...

Hurrah! Today is "Pi Day"!

Wait, not that Pie!

Try again...

Hurrah! Today is "Pi Day"!

Today is also Albert Einstein's birthday!

That's Walter Matthau dufus!. He played Einstein in I.Q. Try again...

Today is also Albert Einstein's birthday!

But I just realised - I'm not a mm-dd-yy guy, I'm dd-mm-yy...
Hmm... in that case, how about waiting till the 22nd of July?

Stragglers and Caravans

Breakfasts on weekday mornings are usually accompanied by a quick look at movie trailers. Akshay Kumar usually appears in every alternate trailer, but these days he seems to be getting stiff competition from the likes of Priyanka Chopra & John Abraham. Among the three of them, they're giving me lots of incentive to go back to watching The Drew Carey Show.

However, to stop being unfair, some of the teasers aren't all that bad. I found the riffs Teraa hi karam from Karam to be quite catchy (anyone know who the singer is?). That and the other songs from the same film seem to follow a trend these days of picturising songs like music videos would. Though one would expect such a non-filmi style oozing effort from Sanjay F. Gupta.

Another set of similarly shot trailers are from the cheesily titled Lucky - No Time For Love (par for the course considering that Sohail Khan is among the producers who earlier gave us a gem of a title : I - Proud to be an Indian)). This Salman Khan feature has created some anticipation because of the uncanny resemblance of the new actress to a certain Aishwarya Rai (and to be fair, Mayuri Kango as well :-) ). Is this intentional or just a clever gimmick is left to speculation. However, another interesting aspect is that the music is scored by Adnan Sami (his first in Bollywood?). The music seems decent but sort of conventional. I found the Lucky Lips (Asha Bhonsle) song reminiscent of another Asha song called Bas Ek Baar Kahi.n ek baar.

***

I'm only making a mention of Deepak Tijori's latest film called Khamoshi because looks like it's a remake, nay a ripoff of Identity.

***

Who is Ayesha Takia and why is she winning awards and getting a lot of coverage in filmi news articles? I'm quite intrigued. I first noticed this actress on ESPN-Star of all places where co-star Abhay Deol and she were plugging their film Socha na tha there (a trend originating from Dhoom and Mujhse Shaadi Karogi).

Her last name is a little unusual and has a potential bag of puns to spark off. For e.g.,

Q. if she was a superheroine working undercover, what would her nickname be?
A. Ayesha the Pillow

or

Q. What would've happened if President Kalam had a son and she married the son?
A. She would have her own signature phrase by becoming Ayesha Takia-Kalam.

I know, I know. Those who know where I live have marked it for instant annihilation. I think I should add my post to the Jade Project.

COEPian tragedy

Today when COEPians and other members of the public gathered at the COEP Boat Club to witness the highlight of the COEPian cultural year The Annual Regatta, there was an extremely unfortunate accident in which a third year student fell into the river. Apparently some people were being ferried across to the opposite banks when overloading seems to cause some people on the boat to topple into the water. Among which seems to have been this boy who by some exceedingly unlucky oversight was not rescued until some minutes passed since no one seems to have realised he was missing. He was then taken to the hospital where his condition was said to be serious. The Regatta was cancelled as a result. News filtering in from the hospital wasn't very upbeat. Harish & I had reached the place a little after the accident occured and had waited for a while before hearing the cancellation was announced. Details were told by friends who'd been there earlier.

The Regatta has been the big event of the college for a very long time (this would have been the 77th) and no one can recall such an accident ever happening in the past. I guess we let that blind us to the real dangers that organising the show has always entailed - the pride in the novelty of the event and the mostly successful results have probably never alerted us to the possibilities of any undue events like today occuring. I've participated in the Punt Formation myself, where even non-swimmers like me were encouraged to take part. My initial apprehensions at being in the middle of the river despite being unable to fend for myself in case I was to go overboard were soon dimmed - for the punt is the most stable of boats. But the fact remained that we hardly had any major safety equipment on standby as far as I can tell. Even the Telematches with some bravado acts with fire were always bordering on the dangerous (once in my TE, a guy had got himself burnt in the middle during one such act).

I'm sure someone's going to get hauled up for negligence etc., but I think to be fair, the levels of organisation have typically been the same for many years and since nothing's gone wrong so far, we have never woken up to these eventualities.

This would have been my 7th Regatta in 8 years - it turned out to be the unhappiest. I wonder for the future of the show itself. I feel awful for the guy and also for the current students, especially the Boat Club & Regatta guys.

Update - 7 Mar 2005
Most of us there yesterday guessed this would be the outcome but didn't want to mention it until it was made official. Sadly, the person in question, Mayur Kamble could not be saved.

Oscar de la Goodfella?

Now that in his fourth attempt, Morgan Freeman picked up an Oscar, is Martin Scorcese alone at the top of the current list of damn-why-hasn't-he-got-one-yet?