Life and other weird things

Tintin Mania - 1

2011-12-10T23:15:00.001-08:00

I can't imagine a world without Tintin. Period.

That's possibly because ever since I have been conscious of the world, I have been exposed to the brilliance of Herge. My mother probably read out the stories to me when I was 3 years old, and they have been a part of my imagination ever since.

What is it about Tintin that continues to captivate me all these years ? Comic heroes have come and gone. I seem to have outgrown Phantom, Mandrake, Bahadur, Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse and so many others, all of whom I was pretty enamored by at an earlier age. But Tintin continues never to age. His adventures continue to throw up some new meaning, and some new facet which I had not thought of earlier.

I don't know what are the reasons for this. Maybe if I studied literature, I would know how to deconstruct Tintin.

Today, I thought of going through each of the Tintin adventures and take up one frame from every book which I think is a salient point of why Tintin continues to enthrall.

1) Tintin In America

For me, Tintin starts with his American adventure, for the simple reason that his Soviet and Congo adventures were unknown to me much till much later in my life.

The American adventure is a fast moving western, with less of a 'story' and more of 'exploits'. Tintin and Snowy are more of the equivalent of modern day swashbucklers than the suave detectives of the later adventures.

The humor is slapstick for the most part, but a frame that always gets me is where Tintin climbs out of the window of a skyscraper and climbs in through the neighboring window. More than anything, this daring and ingenuity is an indication of what our hero is capable of in his later travels around the world.

The frame depicts the sheer drop which Tintin crosses. with a slightly nervous expression on his face. The depiction of perspective, along with the authenticity of architectural elements (which would turn out to be Herge's forte) are so impressive that I can never flip this page by in the book without looking at this frame for a long time. This is probably the one place in all the Tintin adventures where we have a 'never say die' moment.

The boy reporter has burst onto the scene. It's all uphill from here.

2) Cigars of the Pharaoh

This is probably one of Herge's weakest stories, in my opinion.

There are ridiculous plot points and highly un-Herge-esque factual inaccuracies.

India is depicted as a land of snake charmers, maharajas and fakirs, something that matures tremendously by the time Tintin makes his epic adventure to Tibet.

In the story I find this frame memorable - where Tintin, our hero shows his vulnerable side by falling to Senhor Oliviera de Figueira's 'patter'. The sheet absurdity of Tintin buying a top hat, a ski-ing kit, a garden shower and a parrot in the middle of what is probably the Arabian Sea, is hilarious.

I think this vulnerability is one of the reasons why Tintin stands out. he is not a superhero, and he has many of the failings of his readers.

3) The Blue Lotus

Herge's first masterpiece. The Blue Lotus is a standout in many ways. it's the only Tintin comic to make use of real events in it's plot point without disguising them as happening in fictional countries (like Syldavia, Borduria, San Theodoros and Kehmed of future adventures). Japan is the aggressor here, and very evidently so.

I don't know why, but this frame always makes me stop and look. I think it's the sheer detail and authenticity of the drawing. Everything, from the small lights on the 1930 lamp posts to the way the backpack of the man in the foreground is pressed by its weight against the ropes adds to the mood of the frame.

Undoubtedly, the hard work Herge applied to making his depictions of life 'excellent' and not just 'acceptable' is one of the reasons why his fan following only grows 82 years after he wrote his first Tintin adventure.

4) Tintin and the Broken Ear

The Broken Ear kicks off the adventurous run of Tintin in the real sense. Here, Tintin lands up in the thick of a South American revolution. What better adventure than that ?

Most of the gags in this adventure still border on the slapstick, though we can see the plot getting better.

The most recurring point of interest I find myself hung on to, each time I go through this book is where Tintin is listening to a conversation between Dr. Ridgewell and Avakuki (the chief of the Arumbaya tribe). What looks like gibberish is actually immediately comprehensible when we read it aloud. I still remember the first time I discovered this (fortunately no one had told me this before, to spoil the fun), and how absolutely thrilled I was.

To explain, Dr Ridgewell is saying "Now look. Do you remember the brown idol ? Tintin's looking for it. Can you help him ?'. And Avakuki replies "The brown idol ? Yeah ! Yeah ! It's like I told you. The tribe gave the brown idol to Walker. He was a nice guy. But his fellas took our precious jewel. And if the Arumbayas catch him they'll have his guts for gutters. No messin !'.

I don't know about others, but I found this to be insanely clever. Apparently Herge did something similar in French, but whoever translated this to English must have been a genius.

5) The Black Island

With this adventure, Herge officially let's go of the slapstick, and Tintin moves into a whole new era. The redrawn version of the Black Island transports the reader to the Island of Eire. The drawings abound with the minutest of detail.

Nowhere is the sense of adventure more evident than this frame, where Tintin and Snowy are approaching the Black island with a sense of determination to find out its secret. Notice the difference in lighting in the gorge and the sea beyond, along with the eerie effect of the birds circling the tower of the abandoned castle.

6) King Ottokar's Sceptre

This adventure introduces us to the interesting world of Baltic politics, with Syldavia and Borduria as the representatives of warring European nations of the day.

Syldavia is portrayed as a benign monarchy, with a typically East European history, while its neighbor Borduria is clearly a representation of the Italy of Mussolini.

The story, though slightly dated, still is relevant in the present day as long as we have constitutional monarchies in Europe.

The frame that captivates me, is the one where Tintin has messed up by allowing the royal sceptre to drop out of his pocket, and Snowy has to choose between picking up the sceptre or a tasty bone. Snowy enters the scene with the sceptre, clearly not very pleased about having to leave his bone behind.

Again, an example of the real failings of our heroes, along with their determination to choose the right path.

7) The Crab With the Golden Claws

To me, nothing depicts the spirit of Tintin better than this vignette.

Even in the empty desert, with no one to turn to, Tintin, Snowy and the indefatigable Captain Haddock have each other. One of the reasons I was happy with Spielberg's recent film is that he managed to capture this moment perfectly.

This adventure is a particularly crucial one in the Tintin stories, as this is where Tintin meets Haddock, who will remain his lifelong friend. The fact that Herge manages to portray beautifully in this frame is that in the desert of our life's journey, it is important to make and cherish those few friends who will stand by us in times of hardship.

8) The Shooting Star

I am not a particularly big fan of this adventure, but it does have its moments.

I always crack up at this sequence where Herge, in a typical Tintin-deprecating moment, shows our hero in a confident moment breathing in the sea air (and advising Snowy to do the same), and a moment later getting drenched by the sea.

9) The Secret of the Unicorn

If there was any adventure of Tintin's that could be filmed, this is it. This is an adventure par excellence, which throws the reader between the middle ages and the present time. Between the villainy of pirates and of present day hoodlums. Between the swashbuckling heroism of Sir Francis Haddock and the steadfast friendship of his descendant Archibald.

The drawing above is an unusual Tintin frame. For one thing, it happens in flashback. For another it shows a fair amount of death and carnage. Both not depicted so starkly in any other story.

Somewhere, deep within us, we all yearn to be heroes like Sir Francis, with a cutlass in one hand and a pistol in the other, saving His Majesty's treasure.

10) Red Rackham's Treasure

Another crucial adventure, where we are introduced to Professor Cuthbert Calculus, who will remain an integral part of most future stories. Much as the wholeof this story is filled with superb depictions of Carribean Islands, underwater wrecks and old manors, my favorite vignette remains the one below.

Calculus is clearly the inspiration of Lalmohan Ganguly (Jatayu) in Satyajit Ray's Feluda series. Here we see that many of Jatayu's traits are also those shown by Calculus. In this frame we see Calculus instantly offering to help Haddock buy back his family home with the money that the government has given him. The surprise and shock on Haddock's (and Tintin's) face is evident, as they considered Calculus to be a rather eccentric scientist for most of the story.

This incident turns our adventurers into an inseperable trio.

Empires to Dust

2011-07-31T20:25:00.000-07:00

I spent the weekend delving in history, so thought of putting up a few pictures that I have taken over the years, of empires that thought they would last forever.

Sometimes I find going through this line of thought somewhat refreshing, as it reminds me that the things we spend too much time thinking about - like money, bills, traffic, office and such are terribly small considerations in the scheme of things.

Would even Marcus Aurelius ever have imagined that common plebs would walk into his palaces and defile them ? Would the Devaraja's of Kamboj ever tolerate feisty gaggles of tourists climbing up the ramparts of their sacred temples at Bayon ? How about the Rajas of Vijaynagar - what would go through their mind had someone told them that their powerful city, at it's time mightier than Rome, would be a city of ruins a mere four centuries later ? And I bet the price for telling a Mughal royal in the 1600's that common folk would walk around sipping range juice in the Diwan-i-Khaas would be nothing less than a sever flogging. Finally, who among the stalwarts of the Honorable East India company would believe that an Indian millionaire would own the symbol of their pride anytime before Judgement Day ?

So. The things that matter are almost certainly not power, money, fame and all that goes with it. What matters is there here and now. What matters is having support from one's family and friends. Death eventually comes to everyone and everything - individuals and empires. What matters is the peace of the moment.

The fortress built by the Nuraghi in Sardinia, sometime more than 5000 years ago. Most people today don't even know about it and it recieves minimal tourist attention in the beach resort island of Sardinia.

The Sarcophagus of Cleopatra, contemporary of Julius Caesar and Marc Anthony, now lying in the British Museum in the list of 50 'must-see' items.

The once mighty Roman Forum, now serves to satisfy millions of tourists who throng among its cobbled ruins trying in vain to feel the tinge of empire.

A section from the walls of the Chennakesava Temple at Belur; a structure clearly built to impress the viewer with a riot of art. The lady seems to be looking into a future in which she knows she will be forgotten.

The magnificent Vishnulok, built for the Devaraja's at Kamboj, lost in the dense jungles today.

The once glamorous city of Vijaynagar, home of the emperor Krishnadevaraya, now is a sprawling ruin with creatures like this carved in stone with listless eyes.

The most progressive of all kings, probably in the world, was Jalaluddin Mohammed Akbar, who lies in this tomb. He was a contemporary of Queen Elizabeth and Shakespeare. While Europe lay in the grips of fanaticism and turmoil, Akbar's court thrived in art, culture, discussions on land reform and progressive theology. To sit next to his tomb, at one time would require royal sanction.

The last great Queen of the last great Empire, Regina Victoria's shadow reminds us of the inevitable transition of power and time.

I guess, the right thing to do would be to not get overwhelmed by all the trappings of modernity. Time makes sure that everyone has their chance.

What happened in my birth year

2011-07-01T19:20:00.000-07:00

I've been off this blog in a while and have been thinking of putting pen to paper (figuratively of course - it's been years since I actually WROTE anything) for a while now.

Today, I stumbled on this website - http://whathappenedinmybirthyear.com/ .

This is what it had to say about me :

In 1980, the world was a different place.

There was no Google yet. Or Yahoo. Or Newtab, for that matter.

In 1980, the year of your birth, the top selling movie was Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back. People buying the popcorn in the cinema lobby had glazing eyes when looking at the poster.

Remember, that was before there were DVDs. People were indeed watching movies in the cinema, and not downloading them online. Imagine the packed seats, the laughter, the excitement, the novelty. And mostly all of that without 3D computer effects.

Do you know who won the Oscars that year? The academy award for the best movie went to Ordinary People. The Oscar for best foreign movie that year went to Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears. The top actor was Robert De Niro for his role as Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull. The top actress was Sissy Spacek for her role as Loretta Lynn in Coal Miner's Daughter. The best director? Robert Redford for Ordinary People.

In the year 1980, the time when you arrived on this planet, books were still popularly read on paper, not on digital devices. Trees were felled to get the word out. The number one US bestseller of the time wasThe Covenant by James A. Michener. Oh, that's many years ago. Have you read that book? Have you heard of it? Look at the cover!

In 1980... U.S. President Jimmy Carter proclaims a grain embargo against the USSR with the support of the European Commission. Global Positioning System time epoch begins at 00:00 UTC. Nigel Short, 14, becomes the youngest chess player to be awarded the degree of International Master. The president of Sicily, Piersanti Mattarella, is assassinated by the Mafia. Israel and Egypt establish diplomatic relations. The Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific railroad is ordered liquidated due to bankruptcy, and debt owed to creditors. Robert Mugabe is elected Prime Minister of Zimbabwe. The Silver Thursday market crash occurs. Spain and the United Kingdom agree to reopen the border between Gibraltar and Spain, closed since 1969. The Dominican embassy siege ends with all hostages released and the guerrillas flying to Cuba. Mobster Henry Hill is arrested for drug possession. Pac-Man, the best-selling arcade game of all time, is released. U.S. President Jimmy Carter signs Proclamation 4771, requiring 18- to 25-year-old males to register for a peacetime military draft, in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Ford Europe launches the Escort MK3, which ditches the traditional rear-wheel drive saloon in favour of a more practical and modern front-wheel drive hatchback. The St. Gotthard Tunnel opens in Switzerland as the world's longest highway tunnel at 10.14 miles, 16.32 km, stretching from Goschenen to Airolo. The Washington Post publishes Janet Cooke's story of Jimmy, an 8-year-old heroin addict, later proven to be fabricated. Digital Equipment Corporation, Intel and Xerox introduce the DIX standard for Ethernet, which is the first implementation outside of Xerox, and the first to support 10 Mbit per second speeds. The Staggers Rail Act is enacted, deregulating American railroads. The video game of the day was Space Panic.

That was the world you were born into. Since then, you and others have changed it.

The Nobel prize for Literature that year went to Czeslaw Milosz. The Nobel Peace prize went to Adolfo Pérez Esquivel. The Nobel prize for physics went to James Watson Cronin and Val Logsdon Fitch from the United States for the discovery of violations of fundamental symmetry principles in the decay of neutral K-mesons. The sensation this created was big. But it didn't stop the planets from spinning, on and on, year by year. Years in which you would grow bigger, older, smarter, and, if you were lucky, sometimes wiser. Years in which you also lost some things. Possessions got misplaced. Memories faded. Friends parted ways. The best friends, you tried to hold on. This is what counts in life, isn't it?

The 1980s were indeed a special decade. The Soviet-Afghan war goes on. Eastern Europe sees the collapse of communism. Policies like Perestroika and Glasnost in the Soviet Union lead to a wave of reforms. Protests are crushed down on Tiananmen Square in China. Ethiopa witnesses widespread famine. Nicolae Ceausescu is overthrown. The AIDS pandemic begins. The role of women in the workplace increased greatly. MTV is launched in the US. There is opposition against Apartheid in South Africa as well as worldwide. Heavy Metal and Hard Rock bands are extremely popular. The rise of Techno music begins. Originally primarily played on campus radio stations, College Rock enters the scene with bands like the Pixies, REM and Sonic Youth. The Hip Hop scene continues to evolve. Teletext is introduced. Gay rights become more widely accepted in the world. Opposition to nuclear power plants grows. The A-Team and Seinfeld are popular on TV. US basketball player Michael Jordan bursts on the scene. Super Mario Bros, Zelda's Link, and Pac-Man gain fame in video games. People wear leggings, shoulder pads and Ray-Ban sunglasses.

Do you know what was on the cover of Life that year?

Do you remember the movie that was all the rage when you were 15?Seven. Do you still remember the songs playing on the radio when you were 15? Maybe it was This Is How We Do It by Montell Jordan. Were you in love? Who were you in love with, do you remember?

In 1980, 15 years earlier, a long time ago, the year when you were born, the song Rock with You by Michael Jackson topped the US charts. Do you know the lyrics? Do you know the tune? Sing along.

Girl, close your eyes
Let that rhythm, get into to you
Don't try to fight it
There ain't nothin' that you can do
Relax your mind
Lay back and groove with mine
You gotta feel the heat
And we can ride the boogie
Share that beat of love
...

There's a kid outside, shouting, playing. It doesn't care about time. It doesn't know about time. It shouts and it plays and thinks time is forever. You were once that kid.

When you were 9, the movie Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade was playing. When you were 8, there was Willow. When you were 7, there was a Disney movie out called Oliver & Company. Does this ring a bell?

6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1... it's 1980. There's TV noise coming from the second floor. Someone turned up the volume way too high. The sun is burning from above. These were different times. The show playing on TV is Too Close for Comfort. The sun goes down. Someone switches channels. There's Magnum, P.I. on now. That's the world you were born in.

Progress, year after year. Do you wonder where the world is heading towards? The technology available today would have blown your mind in 1980. Do you know what was invented in the year you were born? The Compact Disc. Flash Memory.

It was the fearful night of December 8th
He was returning home from the studio late
He had perceptively known that it wouldn't be nice
Because in 1980, he paid the price
...

That's from the song I Just Shot John Lennon by The Cranberries.

In 1980, a new character entered the world of comic books: Bananaman. Bang! Boom! But that's just fiction, right? In the real world, in 1980, Christina Aguilera was born. And Christina Ricci. Venus Williams, too. And you, of course. Everyone an individual. Everyone special. Everyone taking a different path through life.
It's 2011.

The world is a different place.

What path have you taken?

at path have you taken?

Double Brilliance on a Sunday

2011-01-30T05:29:00.000-08:00

Today was one of the best spent Sunday's in recent memory.

The morning started off with my 7th Chinese lesson. It's only the second time in my life I am attending a language class outside of a formal setting, the first being a course in French that I took on the insistence of my grandfather when I was about 13. It's amazing how fresh one's mind feels when one is doing something as a hobby, as opposed to something that is required for school/work. There is definitely something to the concept of 'doing what you like'. And even in the case of one's job, the moment I start 'liking what I do', the whole concept of 'job' turns into something totally different; something that at times even becomes 'passion'.

Anyways, soon after this, went down to watch Kiran Rao's debut film 'Dhobi Ghat' at our local multiplex. And what a debut it is. This is, by far, one of the best films to be made in India since Satyajit Ray crafted out his study of human civilization in 'Aguntuk' way back in 1991. And what a joy it is that someone of the caliber of Aamir Khan is associated with this. Films like Dhobi Ghat is the stuff what students of cinema yearn to master. It is the craft of motion pictures at its best. A well thought story line, well crafted characters, near perfect casting, a haunting background score, and editing that makes people forget they are in a movie theater.

The film takes us into the lives of 4 residents of Mumbai - an accomplished painter, an ambitious dhobi cum rat killer with aspirations of making it as an actor, a down-to-earth western educated daughter of a Parsee millionaire, and (my personal favorite) Hasina Noor - a lower middle class Muslim woman resident of Mohammad Ali Road. I am a fan of stories which take the approach of defying time lines and sequential storytelling, and was immediately drawn to Dhobi Ghat right from the opening scene - where the audience takes the vantage point of an invisible Yasmin Noor who is videotaping a rainy day out of her taxi window.

Khan plays the divorced artist who is a self confessed loner, with clear people issues, who, one night, finds himself sharing common thoughts with an NRI daughter of a millionaire builder who is on a sabbatical. Soon after she walks out on him after their brief encounter, he finds a few tapes left in the back of a cupboard in his rented apartment left behind by the previous occupant of the place. With Khan, we begin a crucial journey into the life of Yasmin Noor - as the tapes are her home videos, made as recorded letters to her brother back home.

We are also quickly introduced to Munna, the 'dhobi', who services the apartments of both our painter and our NRI daughter-on-sabbatical. He represents about 95% of the population of Mumbai - a migrant with hopes of making it big in the metropolis of dreams. He is a dhobi by day, and rat killer by night, with dreams of becoming an actor in this unforgiving city which he has chosen to call home. He is also the 'glue' in our story, and serves to swivel the screenplay from one life to another.

Dhobi Ghat is one of those films where one can interpret several layers, so I will stick to the things that appealed to me. To me, the film is largely about loneliness in a big city. It's the kind of loneliness that was depicted almost to perfection by De Niro in 'Taxi Driver'. It's the loneliness which can make a person lose his humanity, the loneliness which can make human beings lose touch with reality. And in my experience, the more crowded the city, the more lonely is the person in it. Just like Travis Bickle, the character of the painter Arun struggles to fight his inner demons, and shows a spark of his inner human being when he finally connects with someone. In this case, that someone is a person he has never met. Yasmin Noor, who exists only in the forgotten video tapes, is the only person who seems to be able to reach out to the troubled painter.

In two hours, the film takes us through a few weeks of these four peoples' lives, in such an adept way, that at times, we almost feel like a voyeur. We are taking a look at people at their most vulnerable moments, as well as at moments when some of them almost find themselves.

On hindsight, one of the things that I really liked about this film is that, it showed us, for once, regular Muslim folks who lead regular lives. Not the innocent guy who gets pulled into hardline politics, not the honest police officer fighting discrimination, not the terrorist fighting the never ending 'jihad'. Here we see regular folks - with the same aspirations as anyone else, and the same demons as well. Again, on hindsight, something that I really liked about this film was the fact that it leaves the audience to make their own inferences about each person. Nothing is 'dumbed down' with an explanation, or with some obvious hint. Just like life itself, nothing is black or white, it's all shares of grey.

Full respect to Kriti Malhotra for essaying the role of Yasmin so amazingly well. And more so to Kiran Rao for envisioning this masterpiece.

I just hope Kiran doesn't do an Orson Wells and disappear into mediocrity after this. Dhobi Ghat is a tough act to follow.

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The second film I watched today was 'The King's Speech'. This is another one of those films which is a rare find these days - one with a soul. though Dhobi Ghat and The King's Speech could not be set in more different surroundings, there is something that is a common thread between these two films. What that something is cannot be explained very easily. I guess the simplest way to put it would be to say that both films are about the ability of human beings to rise above themselves in their own small way. Only, in the case of the second film, the human being is a King - of what was then the largest empire in the world.

The King's Speech takes us into the private life of King George VI, or Bertie, as we come to know him in the film. We learn of his struggle with his stammering, resulting from childhood traumas, and the pressures of public life. We also look at the relationship between him and his therapist, played so marvelously by Geoffery Rush.

Very soon into the film, we stop seeing Prince Albert (later to be Geroge VI) as a member of the royal family. He is, like us, just a human being - with similar (perhaps more complex) mental anguishes, and similar shortcomings. His struggle with his stammer, leading to a near-total breakdown of self confidence is played to perfection by Colin Firth (one of the most underrated actors - watch Shakespeare in Love and Bridget Jones' Diary).

The final few minutes of the film, which show the newly instated king of the realm speak to his subjects over the radio at the onset of World War II, is the high point of the film. Watching Rush and Firth go through the King's speech almost like a tango is an absolute joy, and is sure to go down as one of the most finely crafted sequences in cinema ever.

In short, another masterpiece. The 12 Oscar nominations are not unwarranted.

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The icing on the cake, was that I was not alone in enjoying these films. The missus too thoroughly enjoyed them.

Strange Days ..... and the genius of James Cameron

2010-12-20T22:10:00.000-08:00

Sci Fi had never been my favorite genre of book or cinema. I have always had access to sci fi literature from as long back as I can remember, but people like Arthur Clarke never really made an impression on me in school or college. I always found the complexity rather meaningless.

Later on in life, I was exposed to the films of James Cameron, and the more I watched the first two Terminator films, and the Abyss, the more I felt the need to delve more into this genre. Then came Minority Report, which sealed the deal for me, and in about a month, I read everything I could by Philip Dick.

A few dozen books later, I decided that these kinds of stories required a particular breed of storyteller, and I don't think that there has been a better science fiction storyteller than James Cameron. Ever. Though Minority Report was a terrific film, reading Philip Dick made me realize the level of sophistication in the story which never made it to the film. Also, another film based on Dick's work - The Scanner Darkly, ranked way above Spielberg's work in my book.

Recently, I got my hands on a film of his that I had never heard of. Strange Days, written by James Cameron. The film was made in 1995, and it is, in short - a classic.
The film deals with the classic science fiction theme - that of a technology built by the government being put to questionable use. This time, it's the technology to record a person's experiences directly from the cerebral cortex, to prevent police from carrying wiretaps that gets out into the black market. And what better black market than the pornographic industry.

Cameron manages to turn this (rather) simple premise into a taut thriller, with one such 'SQUID' recording which shows rather sordid facts about the LAPD making its way out into the open.

Ralph Fiennes plays the ex cop Lenny Nero almost to perfection - with his every move showing his vulnerability and his nervousness. Fiennes plays a cop who was fired and now pays his bills by selling people's 'experiences' in the black market using contraband technology. His love interest is played by Angela Basset in what is most likely her best character role yet. Other people in the stellar cast include Juliette Lewis (of Cape Fear fame), Vincent D'Onofrio (brilliantly under rated actor who made Full Metal Jacket a memorable film), William Fitchner (who played the blind scientist in Contact) and Tom Sizemore (aka Michael Cimino of Heat).

What makes this film different from other works of Cameron is that there are no noticeable special effects. It's all about the story, camerawork, and characters. Not to say that other Cameron films are not about those things, but - what the hell, it bears mentioning.

This is one of those movies which have sunk into obscurity, but which deserve to be seen by everyone interested in quality cinema.

Rome and New York

2010-11-02T06:47:00.001-07:00

Back in April, I visited Rome, and in September I was lucky enough to visit New York.

This is a long overdue post, and I have been meaning to pen down (though the expression has become a bit of an anachronism) some of my thoughts about both places.

When I first entered Rome, after about a 20 minute drive on a rather rainy April Sunday morning, I was quite overwhelmed. The entry to the city is through between the ramparts of a wall built (I later read) sometime in the 3rd Century AD, apparently under the reign of the emperor Aurelian. So it didn't take long to get to grips with the fact that the city was going to be a paradise for a sucker for history.

Fortunately for me, my rooms in the city were located at a short distance away from the old Roman Forum. The city is a complete treasure trove of evidences of times gone by, of a city which was in its heyday the HQ of a superpower.

The imperial forum is littered with ruins with names like 'The Temple of Saturn' and 'Palatine Hill' - names which for many us conjure up scenes of 1950's Hollywood movies made in Technicolor, with actors like Richard Burton or Robert Taylor making their entry in purple dresses and metal miniskirts. But here it was - the reality - which was much grittier, where the foundations of important buildings in close proximity bore witness to the ongoing competition between succeeding rulers.

The market built during Hardian's time is still magnificently preserved, and it's a chilling feeling to know that the same roads in the market were used by common Roman plebians two millenia ago.

The highlight of old Rome was of course the Colloseum. It's one of those monuments to human achievement which have to be seen to be experienced. It's remarkable how well preserved the structure is, considering that it's estimated date of inauguration was sometime in 80 AD.

My visit was just long enough to include a trip to the Vatican, which was like walking into a treasure chest. Masterpieces from folks like Michelangelo, Boticelli and Rafael glare down at you from all corners, and it's crazy to think about the amount of talent which was housed in the region during the Renaissance years.

In some respects, a visit to Rome is like an earlier visit I made to the city of Angkor Thom. Both these places once housed ruling powers far in advance of their times, which made them undisputed superpowers. Just reading about the aqueducts of Rome, which was used to transport water to the city from tens of kilometers away is enough to make one dizzy. The perfection of the architecture of the Pantheon (built more than a thousand years before the Taj Mahal) leaves one open mouthed in wonder.

I came across some CGI recreations of what Rome would have looked like during the time of Julius Caesar, but something tells me all of it was very lame. I don't think we can begin to imagine the sophistication and grandeur of the city as it existed then. Someone interestingly described the erstwhile Roman Forum to be something like a cross between the powerhouse feel of today's Washington and the seediness of Times Square in the 1980's.

Besides the historical aspect of the city, Rome is a delightful place to be in. Lovely weather, warm people and the general laid back feel of Goa. Everything about the place is a bit lyrical, starting from the language, to the names to people and places, to the Tiber flowing between narrow roads playing host to thousands of manic drivers.

For me, the city will be a reminder to the impermanence of power. I wonder what the Ceasars would think of the idea of Bangladeshi trinket sellers wandering around selling replicas of the Colloseum and Pantheon, or the numerous Asian tourists wandering around what used to be their temples. Most of all, I wonder what they would make of the Colloseum, which for a long time was where thousands were entertained by watching 'heretical' Christians being impaled, burned and eaten by animals - and is now under the ownership of the Catholic Church !!

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My trip to New York, was in many ways like a trip what a common trader in the 2nd Century AD would have made to Rome. I was, in effect, trading in knowledge, and New York is - by far - the most powerful city the world today !

The trip from JFK airport into the city, is quite uneventful, as most of the ride is through the residential areas of the borough of Queens. Mid and Lower Manhattan can, in many ways be likened to the old Roman Forum. Both are littered with temples of their time. Rome had its temples to Juno, Vesta and Saturn, which served both religious and powerful political purposes - and New York has its own temples to Chrysler, JP Morgan, AT&T and Rockefeller.

The City (as I have heard most locals refer to it) is definitely infused with an overdose of 'life'. There are people everywhere - and not in the sense of being everywhere like in Bombay. Here, the people visible are often always moving with purpose. I am acutely aware that I did not get a chance to move around other areas of the City like Harlem and parts of Brooklyn - else I would have more comparisons of New York City to Rome - especially the areas of ancient Rome near the Aventine Hill. Two things are certain - I have never been in a city where I have heard so many languages being spoken on the streets, and I have never been on a train system which is as interesting. Just like in Bombay, one has to take a few rides on the New York subway on a working day to feel the pulse of the city. There's no easier way to see the different residents to this amazing place - from the iPad carrying I-banker to the weathered African American lady with her bag of groceries headed uptown - than to take a ride on one of the 24 hour lines of the subway.

The amount of hard work and determination which has gone into building this megapolis is experienced nowhere better than by walking across the Brooklyn Bridge - a marvel of engineering and innovation. Pretty much what New York is all about.

When we remind ourselves that even today the highest building in Bangalore is the 24 floor Public Utility building, and that New Yorkers had finished constructing the Empire State building in 1931, it speaks volumes about the grit, innovation and hard work of the people on that tiny island.

If there's just one thing one were to say about New York which leaves a mark (other than the skyscrapers) - it has to be the food. It's the best variety and I daresay the best priced food in the western world today.

While I was flying out of the city and looked back at it for a last time - the thought that (predictably) crossed my mind was what would happen to this place in about a thousand years from now. Would we have tourists from Africa, China and India walking through the rubble of what used to be 5th Avenue, and walk over to see the insides of the Waldorf Astoria ... a place which played host to the 'kings' of the times ?

Places

2010-07-31T05:42:00.000-07:00

On this boring Saturday, thought of writing down a few things I remember about some cities and towns I have visited or lived in. Was trying to see what was the first thing that came to my mind when I thought of each of these places. One of the many weird things about me is that I have no city/town which I can call home, and hence have an outsider's view of wherever I live.

Bangalore:
Twenty years ago, the phrase that would come to mind while talking about Bangalore was : 'Summer Holiday'. Today what comes to mind is 'Change'. Everywhere you look there is a new construction, a new flyover, a new road where there is a new traffic jam.

Pune:
According to me, best described as 'Intellectual'. Everyone here speaks like they have been there and done that. The true blue Pune-ites assume that the universe was created with them in mind, and that the rest of the world have a debt to pay to the city - what with sharing the same oxygen as them. At the same time, the city has a degree of culture which is fast missing from most modern metropolises.

Bombay:
The most lively, and the most dirty city I have ever lived in. The energy of the city is contagious, just as the filth pervading it is disgusting. The city is like the microcosm of India. It is even more contradictory that Bangkok, which I describe later - it's true that a train ride on the central line takes people through the most horrible living conditions imaginable, just as it's true that driving through South Bombay on a weekend is a remarkably beautiful experience. The most interesting conversation I had in the city was with a sweeper in the local trains at 1am, who told me that he works 6 hours cleaning trains at night and then works the whole day to sell pens at traffic junctions, and ends up making Rs 12000 a month. It was more than the starting salary of most IT firms. Given my rather mixed feelings about the place, the one thing that comes to my mind while trying to describe Bombay is 'hope'.

Goa:
To me this place symbolizes 'untapped potential'. Goa has the ability to make me feel happy and sad at the same time. Happy, because it would be difficult to find a place as beautiful and unique as this. Sad, because it shows pretty much everything that's wrong with India today. A government that does little for its people. A place blessed with abundance from nature, but with rulers without the will to use this for the benefit of the people. There are places in the world with a fraction of what Goa has, which make millions through tourism just by good governance, while the moneyed tourists of the world give Goa a miss. Yet, there is a magic about the place and the people which make it my favorite place in India today.

Calcutta:
Somehow, as much as I would like to, it's difficult to say anything that is very definitely positive about this city. A place with obvious past grandeur and majesty, it is simply 'depressing' to go there today. I'm sure residents of the city would disagree, citing many cultural aspects, but the fact that the people running the city managed to drive out almost all it's educated workforce all through the 1980's and 1990's is testament to the depression one sees in the place. Yet, in the last 4-5 years, there are pockets of the city where one sees real development, and one feels hope for the once great city. It just takes once CPM or MC led strike to get rid of that feeling.

Delhi:
'Regal' is definitely the adjective best suited to Delhi. Everything about the city oozes culture and history, whether it is the stately architecture of the Mughals or the glitzy malls of today. Undoubtedly the city with the best infrastructure in the country, it's fair to say it's the best place to live in India at present.

Singapore:
This city is an embodiment of 'discipline'. A place which was essentially a town in comparison to Bombay even in the 1950's, is today arguably south asia's most important and ultra-modern metropolis. The visionary leadership of Lee Kwan Yew and his team have not just borne fruit, it has probably exceeded anything they thought they would achieve. What makes one think, is that in the race to be modern and the most disciplined city - a model city - there is an extraordinary amount of history and culture that has had to be sacrificed. Now, with the first generation of Singaporeans who have never known anything other than extreme modernity in the workforce, this will surely start making relevance.

Bangkok:
Coming to this city is much like coming to an Indian city. A constant contrast between poverty and modernity. Fantastic infrastructure, fabulous tourist attractions with an equally dark underbelly, what comes to my mind when I think of this city is 'contradiction'.

Phnom Penh:
A unique city, by any standards. The smallest capital city I have seen, but with all the ingredients of a growing city. Full of activity and business, the city is filled with young men and women of all ages. Most men of the 70's and 80's were killed by the Khmer Rouge. Still, with the friendliness of the people in the city and way I was not ripped off a single city, I would describe this place as 'promising'.

Hong Kong:
Undoubtedly the most 'buzzing' metropolis I have been to. The beautiful thing about Hong Kong is the fact that one can go from totems to total modernity to a rustic village in less than an hour. The energy of the place is best experienced on Canton Road on a weekday morning, where one has to fight for space on the roads. Seeing the immense crowds, as well as the surprisingly clean roads they travel on, is a learning experience.

Jakarta:
Haven't seen much of the city, but it was exciting enough to leave an impression. One word - 'crowded'.

Zurich:
The thing I will never forget about Zurich is it's transport system. I have never been as amazed by trains, trams and buses before I visited this city. I used to take the number 10 tram from Felsenrainstrasse every day at 8:03am. I still remember the kick of seeing the tram take the bend at the end of the road every morning at 8:01am and stop in front of me 2 minutes later. Every day for the three months I was there. So the word I use to describe Zurich is 'precision'.

Geneva:
Again, didn't spend too much time here, but just about enough to set an impression. And that impression is 'multicultural'.

London:
Ah. London. Words are not enough to describe this city. Once the greatest city in the world, ruling over two thirds of the world's people. Today, is arguably one of the most happening cities anywhere. The museums, the theaters in Covent Garden, the art galleries in Kensington, the musicians in the underground, recognizable names like Baker Street and Whitechapel all around which we have read in so many books, people queuing up for anything and everything, the majesty seen in the City of Westminster...I could go on for a while. How do I describe the place ? Probably the best way is to call it 'cultural'.

Dubai:
A city which is testament to vision, in my opinion even more so than Singapore. Singapore was an important port from the mid 1800's, but Dubai was much less until very recently. To have the vision to transform a desert outpost into an ultra modern city with the biggest and tallest of everything (along with making it the transport hub for more than half the world ) is truly stunning. I think of Dubai as 'incredible'.

Rome:
By far the biggest tourist paradise I have ever visited. I doubt if there are too many places in the world where there has been a powerful city in existence for a straight four millenia. Cliched as it sounds, to me Rome is 'eternal'.

Houston:
Just one word. 'Big'.

Colombo:
A city in the center of a three decade long inter-communal conflict would not arouse much emotion in people visiting the place. Yet, a visit to Colombo feels like a happy misunderstanding. The place is CHILLED OUT. An inexpensive place with a vibrant night life, what comes to mind when I think of Colombo is 'relaxed'.

Frankfurt:
Again, not much time spent here, but the impression I got of the city and its people was - 'hardworking and industrious'.

Well, that was it. A small venting of thoughts. Will try to update this list when I visit new and interesting places.

Doordarshan's curious habit of discarding our heritage

2010-07-05T04:47:00.000-07:00

It has frustrated me since ages that Doordarshan has produced some of the best television programs ever, and then proceeded to just let them rot in their archives.

These examples are particularly live in my memory as having been great television mini series which I fear will be lost forever unless someone at DD has the good sense to bring them out in the form of CDs or DVDs :

> Buniyaad, Hum Log (Fantastic family stories)
> Kakaji Kahein (Om Puri's foray into television - first rate comedy)
> Karamchand (Pankaj Kapur's carrot chomping detective)
> Lekhu (Mohan Gokhale's immortal role of a talented simpleton)
> Stone Boy (don't remember much but something about a boy with supernatural powers)
> Indradhanush (about a group of boys who travel back in time to pre independance India)
> Byomkesh Bakshi (Brilliant serial by Basu Chatterjee which I feel is still not lost completely to memory)
> Mujrim Hajir (Utpal Dutt and Nutan's saga of 19th century Bengal. Terrific)
> Mungeri Lal ke Haseen Sapne (day dreaming saga starring Raghuveer Yadav)
> Mr Yogi (something about Mohan Gokhale playing a rich man searching for a simple wife)
> Bharat Ek Khonj (Shyam Benegal's adaptation of Nehru's Discovery Of India which I think will soon be out on DVD)
> Kissa Katmandu Ka (Starring Shammi Kapoor as Satyajit Ray's Feluda)

The frustrating thing is that each of these serials/TV series were phenomenally popular and the doyens at DD don't think it commercially worthwhile to sell these masterpieces on DVDs. Western TV series of much older times like 'The 3 Stooges' and 'I Love Lucy' from the 1950's and 1960's are widely popular till date because of DVD releases.

Frustrating.

My new top 10 scenes list

2010-06-06T04:50:00.000-07:00

One of my first blogs, was a list of my top 10 scenes from movies I had seen. I didn't know what to write about, and thought of penning down a list of some moments in movies which I enjoyed.

Now, almost 6 years after that list, I thought of revisiting it to see how much that has changed.

Well, here goes.

10) The Michael-Vito Corleone conversation in the garden(The Godfather). This hasn't changed and still finds it way into my top 10. To me, this is a showcase of Brando's genius. Even after multiple viewings, I still find something new to marvel at each time I see this particular sequence. I am sure - almost positive - all the nuances which Brando puts into the character of an aging and concerned Don Corleone could have been in the shooting script. Much of the work was his own. Which is why it remains timeless.

9)Vijay coming home from jail after his mother has been shot and killed(Shakti). It was in the last 3 years or so when I have come to appreciate the genius of this sequence. In the world of Hindi movies, where overacting and hyperbole are the order of the day, a performance like this from the most definitive leading man of the time is in itself a joy to watch. The sequence is one where Bachchan's character is given permission to attend his mother's funeral (he is imprisoned at the time). When he gets home, he manages to share a quiet moment with his father with whom he shares a very difficult and strained relationship. No words. In an amazing moment of virtuoso acting, Bachchan and Dilip Kumar convey (or rather don't convey) what they have been keeping buried within themselves.

8) Goopy Gyne discovers he can sing (Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne). I don't know why this was not there in my first list. This has been a sequence I have been fascinated with ever since I remember. I first watched Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne when I was, maybe 4 years old, at Nandan in Calcutta. Ray's genius (not that I knew anything about it at the time) left such an impact on me, that I remember small details about the movie experience even today - like the lights in the hall going off in the middle of the final sing in the film. I remember that we were sitting somewhere to the front of the hall towards the left, as I had to lean a bit to the right to see behind the heads of the people in front of me. This particular scene has Goopy singing furtively to find that the king of Ghosts has indeed gifted him with a voice that can bring joy. The expression on his face speaks a million words, as it is something that all of us feel at those very rare and special moments in our lives - when we get something we really have wanted. Absolute Poetry.

7) Girl in the red dress (Schindler's List). This is one from the old list. In all the darkness and depression of the holocaust, Spielberg introduces an unnamed little girl, walking aimlessly between the SS and German troops. She is the only piece of color in this dark tale shown to us in monochrome. I guess it's Spielberg's way of giving a name to the millions who died there. There - he shows - this could be a girl you knew. So profound is the impact of the girl, that no one I have spoken to till date who has seen the film, has missed the sequence, when the girl is shown for a fleeting moment in a pile of bodies ready to be interred. In my mind - that is cinema. Never has an Oscar been more deserved than for that kind of thought.

6) Apu throws the necklace into the pond (Pather Panchali). I probably did not have the mindset required to appreciate this sequence when I first made up my list. One needs to realize how difficult it is to sometimes face the truth to know the beauty of what Ray shows us here. Years back, Apu's sister Durga, was accused of stealing a neighbor's necklace. No one (including the audience) believed she had stolen it. Many things happen after that, like Durga dying of pneumonia and the family house being reduced to ruin forcing them to migrate to take the tough decision to migrate to Varanasi, and this necklace thieving is lost to everyone's memory. On the day when the family is moving, Apu digs into a high shelf and topples a small container from which the necklace tumbles out. It's a moment where we see Apu's innocence disappear, as he throws the necklace into a pond, which swallows the memory. Completely wordless, this is a sequence which is something of a case study for students of cinema.

5)Kuribayashi's death (Letters from Iwo Jima). Very few movies are made about the 'enemy'. The few that are, eventually show one among the enemy as a good guy, while showing that he reluctantly falls in line which the larger 'bad' agenda of his lot. I remember McNamara once saying in an interview that if the Allies had lost the war, all the generals would be have been tried as war criminals. Anyway, during WW2, it was evident to all but Japan and Germany that they were in the wrong. The tragedy of the story is that the heroism of Japanese soldiers was very like the heroism of the American ones - something that director Clint Eastwood brings out in his film. My favorite sequence in the movie is when General Kuribayashi asks his junior soldier with his last breath 'Is this still Japanese soil ?'. The futility of the question brings to mind Leo Tolstoy's Pahom running around for land, when all that he needed was six feet of earth. When the soldier answers 'Yes, this is still Japan', you can see the light in Kuribayashi's eyes (played brilliantly by Ken Watanabe for his much less powerful performance in The Last Samurai), as he shoots himself. The scene with the junior soldier's expression, who has come to accept the horrors of war, makes the viewer do a quick introspection. Nothing major - just a nagging feeling of worry that those who we see on the television firing weapons while we sip coffee, are actually real people.

4) Are you talking to me ? (Taxi Driver). Cliched though it is, this scene really is a spark of genius. To me, this is what loneliness is. In a later film (Heat) DeNiro would say the line 'I'm alone, I'm not lonely'. But in Taxi Driver - he is LONELY. And crazy. The film is made to suck the viewer into the lonely hell in which Travis Bickle (DeNiro) resides. He talks and thinks to himself as he goes through the dark underbelly of 1970's New York City in his yellow cocoon. He has an opinion about everyone, and soon the viewer is living with him in his utterly aimless existence in which he is trying to find meaning. Many of us film fans took life for granted till we saw Taxi Driver, after which we get creeped out when we find we are talking to ourselves at any time. DeNiro of course, stepped into the shoes of the Taxi Driver living on the edge of reason and brought out the thoughts in his troubled brain to perfection in this chilling sequence.

3) Gift of a thistle (Braveheart). This is one from the old list, and something whose charm hasn't faded away. And after all these years, I must say it is one of Mel Gibson's oddities. Nothing else he has made has had anything like the impact of Braveheart. And in that movie, this particular sequence, towards the beginning of the film sets the tone for the film. That no matter what violence one saw later, most of that would be overshadowed by this one moment of silent humanity shared between two young children. Historical inaccuracies and gore aside, this sequence, with it's beautiful backdrop, editing and music, made the film worth the recognition it got.

2) The montages from Citizen Kane and Up. This is a tie for me. In Citizen Kane, the 24 year old Orson Wells takes us through the deteriorating marriage between Kane and Susan Alexander using this brilliant cinematic technique. An ordinary breakfast conversation is turned into a multi effective tool. First, it serves as a fast-forward device showing Kane aging. Second it shows his increasing power through the news that he reads. Third, it shows the growing distance in the relation with his wife. Never has any director since been able to convey so many powerful ideas through a single sequence. In Up, Pete Doctor achieves something nearly as effective. An early montage in the film beautifully shows the audience the relationship between a man and his childhood sweetheart, and the loneliness he feels now that she has passed on. These two sequences are marvels in themselves, and are a must watch for anyone who is looking for quality cinema.

1) After a lot of thinking, I realized that the best sequence I had ever seen was something from my old list - where Neil McCauley was deciding whether or not to take Waingro out - from Michael Mann's "Heat". I couldn't think of any other film, or actor whom I could remember where one could read the actor's thoughts through just twitches in his face. DeNiro is such a genius that the whole audience follows his face during this scene and gasps as he takes the final decision which will lead to his inevitable doom. Acting and directing at its most harmonic best.

Well, there it is. I don't know what to make of my change in choice over the years, but I like my current set better than my last one.

This was fun !

The New World and 2 movies

2010-03-09T06:36:00.000-08:00

The wife has taken a one way ticket to her hometown, and having nothing better to do, decided to pen down (figuratively speaking) a few lines about what has been going on.

I came back a few weeks ago from a trip to the US. Wait, correction. Came back from a trip to Texas. Which, as everyone tells me, is different from a trip to the United States of America.

What I saw there was, predictable, different from anywhere else I've been before. In a way, I was fortunate that the first sights of the US had to be Texas. I saw the good and the not-so-good things all in one shot - and in widescreen technicolor. Because, if anything in life is big - it's Texas. Now I can't pretend to be an expert on life in the USA, this being my first visit there - but after what I saw of the place, it's difficult for me to imagine anything bigger and more rich in abundance than Texas.

My ride from the airport to my hotel in Houston was about 70km, and in all that distance on a fine sunny Sunday evening, I saw just one person on the road who wasn't in a car. He was a beggar at a signal with a sign which said very succinctly 'I am hungry. Need money.'. Every other human being was cocooned in his or her car. It was surreal, like being in a scene of the 'Rise of the Machines'.

Everything what I encountered there was so different from India that it would take days to note. The roads for one. Massive. Once I was on the road the other side seemed somewhere in a galaxy far far away. Once in a food court in a mall, everything seemed to be 3 times the size I was used to. But then again, having only traveled well in Europe and South East Asia I am not really used to seeing Coke being handed out in 24 oz cups(almost a liter).

The supermarkets were full of 'stuff', as George Carlin would put it. Too much stuff. And the weirder thing was, people were buying them. People who were so obese that they had to use motorized vehicles to move in those huge complexes.

That was the most part.

Now for the good bits. Made a visit to the Johnson space center near Houston. Everything progressive about America is in that one facility. Ingenuity. Hard Work. Enterprise. Science. Technology. The drive to be the best. I saw the room from which the first moon mission was launched, way back in the late 1960's. The thought that people using slide rules and computers with 1 MB RAM could send a man onto the moon and bring him back was a thought that gave a tremendous adrenalin rush. Only today, I read in an Indian newspaper that India 'plans' to put a man on the moon in some years from now. Hello people, it's been done more than 50 years ago. And in the same paper I found an article about how India produces the highest or second highest number of engineers in the world. Ironic. Everyone I saw in the Johnson Space Center seemed PROUD of the place. And rightly so. Which other nation had the grit and determination to do what they did ?

Next, went to a small town outside San Antonio called Bandera, which calls itself the cowboy capital of the world. It was there that all my preconceived notions about Americans went out of the window. The people in that small town (population - 957) were so warm and so amazing, that they had me at the word go. Hard working people, who build their own houses, prize their culture and love their music. The next time I hear the phrase 'American's have no culture', the speaker gets a mental hammer on the head from me. Of course there's culture there. And a very attractive one too. Cliched as it may sound, it bears repeating that television paints as biased a picture of America abroad as it does of India. Of course I met people there who thought Indians spoke 'Indian'. Equally true is the fact that I know many Indians who think that Americans have no sense of value and their favorite hobby is to marry and divorce every few years. Both these views are, of course, a load of crap. I was fortunate enough to land in Bandera on Mardi Gras, where my kind hosts introduced me to what seemed like half the town. I met real cowboys who talked with me like they knew me for years, and met librarians who were so proud of what they did that it brought a lump to my throat.

Most importantly, I met some great people on the professional front. Heard a CEO speak live for the first time. And was duly impressed. Met people at work from various countries and appreciated the difference in cultures of people from all corners of the world. Never had a chance to chat up with a Bolivian, a Canadian, a Portuguese, an Englishman, a Swiss, a Frenchman, a Chinese and a New Zealander, among others, all in one room.

So all in all, it was a great trip. Great learning, which I am hoping I will remember for a long time.

Now back to fun.

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On the last day in Houston, caught Martin Scorsese's latest work - 'Shutter Island'. A great film, if not the master director's best work. Leonardo Di Caprio is definitely the Robert De Niro of this generation. The movie is a 'picture perfect' (pun intended) example of a psychological thriller. It's been long since I watched a film which can scare the audience just with the clever use of music and silence. Yes, Scorsese does have his moments of blood and gore in a couple of scenes in the film, but those are the most forgettable. The originality of the portrayal of a diseased mind is what you remember at the end. As trends go, I can predict that Leonardo will never win an Academy Award till he makes an utterly second rate film (like Denzel Washington's Training Day). Once he does that, people in LA will wake up with a jolt realizing it's time to give him an Oscar. I hope that day comes many years later, and we can keep getting to see his inspired performance till then.

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Watched Norman Jewison's '...And Justice For All' this evening. One of those under-rated great films. Al Pacino acts an unusual role - one in which he is clearly not in control of a situation. An idealistic lawyer, who believes in the things he fights for. The film is an ironic look at the US justice system, or indeed, any justice system in the world - where corruption and systematic injustice results in innocent people landing up behind bars. Pacino puts up a brilliant performance of a person pushed to breaking point after seeing everything he knows pushed off the brink. The ending of the film, like so many other great films (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Pushpak, Taxi Driver) is not really an ending. It leaves it up to the viewer to imagine what happens to the protagonist, in whose future the audience really feels interested in - thanks to a clever screenplay and effortless acting. In short - an amazing film to watch when you are feeling a bit thoughtful about life.

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Now, back to work.

Top 10 quotes/incidents from SP Jain Dec 08 batch - please feel free to add on.

2010-01-21T03:38:00.001-08:00

10) ModigilaniMiller won the Nobaell Prize.
9) Take your hands out of your pockets - same VP
8) We will devise a Mehndi contest - AD in response to a contest as to what CSI activity to do with $50m dollars. Yes. $50m.
7) AS - Hello good evening. Me - good evening sir. AS - What are you doing ? Me - Sir applying for Visa to Dubai. AS - Oh, you are going to Canada ?
6) Take this seriously, we will make a fart neutralizer - KG suggesting to his group what product they would market in MM class.
5) This is what you will have - an MBA degree. This is what will distinguish yourself from the other regular BComs and BEs in the crowd.
KG - Sir, what happens when all of them also get their MBA's ?
4) HM addressing rest of class on seeing SRR sleeping with mouth open and toppling over - Please stabilize him. Up to 130 degrees is ok, but he is at about 160 degrees now. He may break his neck.
3)Mars ? It's closer than Moon ? - AS in response to an answer as to what the closest planet to earth was.
2)Did you take my chocolate ? - HG in 613

And, the top quote/incident from SPJain Dec 08 Batch -
1) I'll string you up by your b*** and play with them - VP to AK

Also in the race :
- AS to MM - You want me to give you banana and peel it also ?
- BP arriving at SG Campus shirtless and closer to heaven than any of us have been.
- Saale ekdum Bukharr hai.
- MM to PS - Aeeee, muh me daalne ke liye kuch de na (on seeing PS eating mints in class.....just to preempt those thoughts which the line evokes).

Racism ????? WTF

2010-01-06T01:12:00.000-08:00

Today's TOI carries a news article which links to a Times Now new clipping, with the headline 'No Apology, Only Insensitivity from Aus'.

To this is say - WTF ????

There has been some Indian students being beaten up in Australia. I know nothing of what led to those beatings - thanks to our bullcrap media machine which churns out sensationalist news after sensationalist news [On an unrelated note, I saw a THIRTY MINUTE news feature the other day in a restaurant which was discussing a dormant volcano under the Himalayas the other day in a restaurant. Really.] All I can assume is that Indians are as safe in Australia as in the US or UK, or any other developed metropolis outside India. I have a few friends who have lived for years there and I didn't hear a peep out of anyone claiming that the country was racist.

Can Times Now please point their self righteous fingers at the Government of Goa from time to time, what with comments from the chief minister there asking tourists to follow 'codes' and such like. Rarely does one hear such unadulterated rubbish. If anyone should be apologizing, it should be the Government of Goa apologizing to the country - for not removing the corrupt inbreds who call themselves policemen in the state, and for allowing a beautiful state to be vandalized by land sharks, and for allowing the state machinery to languish while conducting rape investigations, and for who knows what else. But nooo....we want to the AUSTRALIAN government to apologize.

Self righteous rednecks is what we are if we support this line of thinking.

5 Point Idiots

2010-01-03T00:46:00.000-08:00

Come on Chetan Bhagat.

You are a successful author, with two of your books inspiring films with top actors in it. Do you really need to get all worked up about what is quite obviously a non-issue ?

I agree - that I have no idea of what went on behind closed doors when you signed the contract with the producers of 3 Idiots. But from what your blog says, I gather you want to be credited for the story of the film. Come on, that sucks !

I went through Five Point Someone today, and found that it's just not true that 70% of the film script was taken from your book.

There are a few moments from your book which are shown 'as-is' in the film, but dude - the message of the film is way off from what your book tries to say. And let's face it - the film clearly centers around Racho/Phansuk Wangdu, who is clearly a brilliant mind trying to show the flaws of an existing system of education; the similar character in your book - Ryan - does nothing of the sort. In your book his role is not of a genius trying to change the system - he is a student who occasionally rebels and is generally obsessed with friendship.

The relation between the student and the HOD's daughter in your book is also way different from the way the relation between Aamir and Karina's character are treated in the film. In the book, you treat it as a passing first-time romance which ends, while in the film the relationship starts off as fun and takes a serious turn after Rancho's qualities come to light.

I see the following ideas taken from your book :

-> The idea of 3 friends in college together
-> The idea of one friend moving out and then rejoining the group
-> The idea of a student having an affair with a faculty's daughter
-> The idea of a student from a poor background and having a paralyzed father, a working mother and a sister of marriageable age.

And the way I see it the crux of the film is in the following plot points :
-> The idea of a friend being found after a decade
-> The idea of the unhealthy competitive nature of one student
-> The idea of parents allowing their children to study what they wish and take up a career of their choice without obsessing about professional courses
-> The idea that success will follow people if they just pursue excellence

Your book, Five Point Someone was great. It was an entertaining read which folks in the 20-30 age group (like myself) enjoyed reading - as it was about people like us.

But hey, the film makers have clearly has used your book as a starting point, but the story is their own. Aamir Khan's has made the character his own. Rancho is nothing like Ryan from your book.

I ask myself - did everything go smoothly with the film called 'Hello', which was also based on one of your books ? No hitches with copyright there ? I mean, I know that the film was terrible, but still - was just curious to know.

I also ask myself - How did you not watch the film before its release. Let's forget the legal aspects of the matter. If one of my books was being turned into a film with Aamir Khan in the lead, and I was invited for a preview show, I would run to the nearest flight and make a dash for it to Chattrapati Shivaji Airport. Apparently you were called and you didn't attend, and chose to make your views about the film felt after it was clear that it was going to be a blockbuster.

In any case - the film credits clearly say that the film is based on your book. So what's the problem here ?

The script is not your making. You were credited for inspiring it.

So stop making a fuss about nothing, and give us another interesting book to read, instead of these idiotic news tidbits.

Avatar

2009-12-21T02:39:00.000-08:00

What's the difference between a Mercedes Benz and a Bentley ?
Or the difference between a Creative mp3 player and an iPod ?
How about the difference between any A Class city in the world, and Singapore ?

In each case, one is as good as the other, except for the fact that the latter has pushed the proverbial envelope somewhere down the line.

It would be a similar analogy to compare any A list science fiction adventure movie with James Cameron's latest offering 'Avatar'.

To say that Avatar is a different kind of movie would be like saying that Sachin Tendulkar plays good cricket. It's groundbreaking - superlative in terms of marrying technology to the art of storytelling.

I've watched a hundred movies with aliens in their story, of which maybe less than ten are not laughable. Some, like 'Close Encounters of the third kind', 'Terminator 2' and 'The Abyss' make you gasp at moments. And then there is Avatar - which completely makes you forget these other masterpieces.

It's no coincidence that when I was thinking of the 3 best Alien movies I had seen, two of them (Terminator 2 and The Abyss) were made by James Cameron. The man is, frankly, a diety - an avatar, as it was, of some creative super being. Like Steve Jobs, Sachin Tendulkar, Lata Mangeshkar or Ravi Shankar, his only competition seems to be himself. It's like he just decides that he is going to prove that he is the 'king of the world' again and gets on to doing something for the next 5 years with a single minded determination to be the best there is.

Avatar is fairly straightforward in narrative style - nowhere near the complication of the script of Terminator 2. The tale here is set in the mid 22nd century where the earth has run out of energy resources, which has forced humans to travel out light years into space and colonize planets which have anything that humans could use. One such planet is Pandora, which is the source of a mineral impossibly called Unobtanium - something that sells for 'twenty million a kilo'.

Humans would mine the planet for all it's wealth except for one problem. The richest deposits of Unobtanium lie beneath a huge settlement of the indigenous humanoids, called the Na'vi - who inhabit Pandora. Tha Na'vi are brave warriors, standing well over 10 feet tall, with skin like amphibians and amazing abilities to read and connect with nature.

Research has given rise to a technology wherein scientists can blend into the local populace by controlling synthetically grown Na'vi bodies (Avatars) with their minds . The hero of our story is Jake Scully, who pilots one of these Avatars into the Na'vi village - ostensibly to help the scientists learn about the Na'vi, but also to clandestinely help the military establishment in trying to persuade the villagers to evacuate the area, so that Unobtanium mining can commence.

Predictably, Jake Scully falls in love with the beautiful Neytiri - the chief's daughter. What follows is the even more predictable 'going native' of Jake - as he sees first hand the injustice being perpetrated on the tribals, and eventually ends up leading a defensive attack on the corporate driven humans.

All this sounds pretty routine for an action movie. Except, there's James Cameron behind the camera here. He takes us through Pandora without the customary hoo-haa of medical scores. It's not the first look at the Brontosaurus moment we saw in Jurassic Park. This is more like being thrust into one of the most spectacular natural reserves of the universe (literally) where everything is spectacularly alive. You have plants which curl up from a huge bracket fungus into nothing. You come face to face with creatures the size of small houses with heads like hammerhead sharks. You fly on huge reptilian birds and ride six legged steeds, by talking to their minds with your hair tied up in theirs. The imagination behind all this is breath taking.

What stuck in my mind that here was a movie - like Terminator and the Abyss - where technology was not used for the sake of showing how big a toy the director had. The technology was part of the story. And it wasn't about using what was already there - but bigger. This is about creating a new technology just to tell this one story. See what I mean by clicking here. It's 300 million dollars well spent.

The film tries to be as contemporary as possible, in terms of theme. There's a lot of talk and emotional content to do with the need to preserve the environment. There are phrases like 'Holy Daisy Cutters!' through which Cameron obviously shows which side of the political fence he is on. And of course there is the whole theme of a powerful corporate driven machinery with no sentiments except the joy of profits, attacking an under privileged group of people who have done them no harm, simply because they can.

The animation, needless to say is the best ever seen in movies so far. Everywhere - from the time Jake Scully walks in his avatar the first time, to the time Neytiri is distraught at the destruction of her village - you have tight close ups of Na'vi faces with flawless expressions.

All said and done, 2009 is closing with a movie which will become the new benchmark for all attempts to make a science fiction film. Watching this, especially in 3D, makes you forget the outside world for a while. And when you see the fantastic floating mountains of Pandora or are following Jake flying the magnificent Duruk, for a few moments you are out there - being a Na'vi, and having a little more respect for nature.

For those who haven't watched it - delay no further. This is how movies should be made.

MBA

2009-11-08T02:06:00.000-08:00

Just got back to India after a year of studies.

The last two years have been, without doubt, the most important for me in terms of learning.

For starters, I got married. After living it up with friends for more than four years, and doing exactly what I wanted to without being answerable to anyone, it has been a huge learning experience. I've begun to slow down and think before taking decisions, and have started to think less about myself.

Then came an opportunity to work in a good role in my last company. After months of trying, I managed to land a role as a pre sales consultant. It gave me an opportunity to step into a field which I was interested in, with a lot of challenges thrown in. I interacted with colleagues who were experts in their own fields, and were ready mentors. I tried to do my best at work, and it has paid off now, more than a year later.

Then came the MBA. A crash course in life. For starters, it was tough getting back to student life after 5 years of work. Next, I had never been thrown in a situation where I had work till there was only a couple of hours of sleep possible in a day- week after week. Further - the whole experience was a lesson in building human relationships. I was tossed around from one team to another - to work on various assignments and projects. I learned to work in teams all over again.

For me - the MBA experience was given meaning when I finished reading Subrato Bagchi's new book 'Professional' today. As I join a new job tomorrow, I have been trying to tell myself to remember as much of the learnings from the last 2 years as possible. This book by Bagchi will help. His experiences give more meaning to business administration than any course can hope to do.

Here's hoping for more learning in the years ahead.

Inglorious Basterds

2009-09-27T08:45:00.000-07:00

I love movies which explore alternate realities. Which is why I thoroughly enjoyed films like 'Watchmen' and 'Forrest Gump'. The experience of watching what might have been is refreshing.

Isn't that what movies are supposed to be about anyways ?
Back in 1903, it was enough for an actor dressed as a robber to fire into the camera and at the audience to become the talk of the town. It takes a whole lot more to excite audiences today. Surprisingly, the answer to that one still is, and will always remain - a great story with strong characters.

Which brings me to the subject of 'Inglorious Basterds'. The film is quite easily one of the best films of the last decade, and the principal character SS Colonel Hans Landa is right up there in the list of top 10 movie villains of all time.

Although all the movie's posters show Brad Pitt's Aldo Raine as the 'hero' of the film, viewers may be mislead into believing that he is the protagonist. Quite untrue. The smooth talking polyglot and self styled detective Hans Landa takes center stage in this film. In style.

The eponymous 'Basterds' are a group of American Jewish soldiers out on a mission to destroy - read 'kill' - as many Nazis as they can. They are led by the most American man one can imagine - Lt. Aldo Raine, who speaks as though he stepped out of an audition for the local chapter of the rednecks.

As in all Tarantino films, this film has multiple story lines which converge. Here, we meet the seemingly frail Shosanna Dreyfuss - a French Jew who witnesses her family being massacred by the Nazis. At the time of the Basterds' exploits, she runs a cinema in Paris, which is earmarked as the venue for the premiere of a Nazi propaganda film to be attended by the entire Nazi high command including Hitler, Goebbels, Goering and Bormann. Unknown to each other, the Basterds and Shosanna plot independently to get rid of the entire Nazi establishment in one night.

The film pays homage to many westerns and war movies, of which one scene that stood out for me was a homage to 'Guns of Navarone'. The cinematography is excellent; the use of bright colors keeps the audience from moving away from the 'suspension of disbelief' mode that Tarantino creates so well.

The strongest thing the film has going for it are the performances. Every single character is as well etched out as can be. Even though everyone plays a caricature of sorts, the depth and wit in the dialogs prevents this movie from becoming a spoof of itself. And towering over the characters is Colonel Landa, played brilliantly by an Austrian actor Christoph Waltz, none of whose earlier works I had watched. His portrayal of Landa is simply genius - an addition to the list of characters in cinema that overshadow actors who played them. Like Vito Corleone, Randall McMurphy, Charles Foster Kane or The Joker. An inspired performance.

The movie ends with Brad Pitt speaking into the camera and echoing, what is most likely, Tarantino's message to the audience when he says, 'This has got to be my masterpiece'.

Scoundrels...

2009-08-16T13:19:00.000-07:00

Blogging after a long time, mainly driven by the sheer dissapointment of having just seen the latest Vishal Bharadwaj film - Kaminey.

Till this evening, I thought Vishal Bharadwaj was one of those rare Indian directors who was more or less infallible. Maqbool and Omkara were works of art which I was personally proud to talk about to my non-Indian friends. They were works which were of world class quality, and were brilliant adaptations of two of Shakespeare's most gripping tragedies.

Kaminey, in complete contrast, is a mind bogglingly disappointing experience. Especially so, since the product comes with a Vishal Bharadwaj tag. It's like purchasing a Rolex watch and finding a 'Made in China' tag under it after paying the bill.

I think what killed the experience for me was the atrocious first 30 minutes of the film. A film which aspires to reach the levels of a Guy Ritchie/Tarantino work has, in my opinion, no business showing us two simpering lovers purring lines like 'Mai tumhe Mumbai se jyaada pyaar karti hun, Calcutta se bhi jyaada, Thiruvanathapuram se bhi...'.

The plot of the film is, to be fair, fairly original. Even if one chooses to ignore the obvious 'inspiration' from Enemy of the State for its climatic sequence. The whole problem is that Shahid Kapur cannot act. And we are treated to a double dose of his hamming in this film, as he plays twins. So, for all the colorful supporting cast - some of whom are genuinely funny - and Priyanka Chopra's sincere acting, every time Shahid or Shahid appears on screen, the tempo falls flat. Sorry. Just not happening. If anyone in the production team thought he would bring the energy of Brad Pitt or Jason Stratham on screen, they were quite quite mistaken.

I have had discussions with a few friends before about Indian films which try to imitate the styles of western ones. Sometimes, folks have told me that it's unfair to constantly criticize Indian films which try to get 'international'. My thoughts on this are - how is it possible, that every single 'remake' or 'inspired movie' is quite brain dead compared to the original ? And the result is the same whether Mahesh Bhatt does it, Sanjay Gupta does it, or as has sadly happened in this case, when Bharadwaj does it.

Maybe I expected too much from the film, but there's no doubting the fact that things like unnecessary songs, contrived romances and lack of acting skills in lead actors make things worse, not better. And 'Kaminey' is most definitely a film that is worse than it could have been.

My new favorite movie and a few other snippets

2009-06-06T06:09:00.000-07:00

I can never have a favourite movie permanently. Sure - there are a few movies which I like a whole lot more than I do others, but I can never name a single favourite movie.

My current favourite is Majid Majidi's 'Children Of Heaven'. It's definitely one of the best films I have seen.

The story deals with the relationship between two pre teen siblings, and is held together by the theme of the children's desire to own a pair of new shoes.

Amazingly - that's the whole story : Two children yearning to own a pair of shoes.
But Majidi, along with the fantastic lead actors of the film - Amir Hashemi(as Ali) and Bahare Siddiqi(as Zahra) - manage to tell a tale of such simplicity with such beauty that it is just breathtaking.

The film shows the children coming up with a plan to cover up their loss of an old pair of shoes from their parents, who are hard up and cannot afford a new pair. Most of the film is about this plan, which eventually leads to a climatic sequence where Ali stands to make up for his loss of his sister's shoes.

The film makes use of a lot of close ups and tracking shots, which make the viewer feel part of the flow of the story. The excellent camerawork and intelligent editing all contribute to the smooth, almost lyrical flow of the story. The film does not aim at being a tear jerker - but as a viewer, you cannot help but connect to the pain and pleasure felt by the protagonists.

This is one of those films which make the viewer think about the complexity which humans infuse into life. The film is - in that sense - a study of human beings in the real sense.

If you inhabit this planet and care about the fact that you are human, this film is a must see.

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Visited the Pench Wildlife Santuary a few days back. What stood out in my mind after the visit was the sight of a bison in the wild. I have never seen such a picture of pure strength pass by. The animal was bristling with muscles and moved around with such obvious physical power that it was impossible not to feel a lot of respect for the fact that I was in a jeep and not facing it on foot.
I later read that these animals weigh more than a thousand kilograms and that they have no natural enemies. The latter part of the sentence means, of course, that they do have an unnatural enemy - humans. It's a hugely saddening thought that this magnificient species is at the brink of extiction today. All I could think of saying to the one which showed up in front of me was - to quote Ali G - 'Respect'.

Snippets

2009-05-30T18:09:00.000-07:00

Just watched Danny Boyle's 'Millions'(2004). I must say, I am becoming a fan of the man. The film is fantastic. The man has child psychology down to a T. The whole story can be summed up in a line : 'What two little kids do with a million quid'. I would especially recommend this film to all religeous nuts who think they have it all figured out.
Two thoughts :
I have never heard a better explanation of the 'fish and bread loaves' miracle.
and
The halos on the saints are uber cool.
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I don't know why Anandamela does not publish more Satyajit Ray stories in comic form. The few they have done are very good. I especially liked Boshpukure Khunkharapi and Unicorn Expedition. We could do without the sad Archie translations.
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What's half an MBA done for me ? I'm sure it did something. But I can't remember it at this time. It's been about 10 days since I've been in India on vacation, living a life of sedentary ease.
I'll be able to answer my own question after the 7th of June, once I'm back in a hostel.
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What are some other 'must-see' films that have been seen by yours truly in the last week ?
The Other Boleyn Girl. Mississippi Girl. Children of Heaven.
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Nothing in Cinema comes close to matching the genius of this and this.

Bush's Legacy

2009-03-13T01:33:00.000-07:00

In 2000, when Clinton stepped down, the wealthiest 1% of USA shared 9% of the country's GDP.

In 2009, when Bush stepped down, the wealthiest 1% of USA shared 19% of the country's GDP.

That's what I call - EVIL.

Heartbreaking

2009-03-01T23:42:00.000-08:00

Here I am doing my MBA.
Rather, here I am with the luck and freedom to do my post graduation after 5 years of work.

And here is another part of the world. Not very far away.

http://video.nytimes.com/video/2009/02/22/world/asia/1194838044017/class-dismissed-in-swat-valley.html

I sometimes think, is what I'm doing worth it ? Worth anything ?
Or is it better, and more moral to go to one of these places and try to help a young child find their way through.

Maybe a few lives are worth the trouble to try.

Der Vorleser - a study in morality

2009-02-27T04:10:00.000-08:00

Who is a 'good person' ?

Who is 'moral' ?

What is 'morality' ?

I can't speak for everyone, but these are questions that pop up in my mind from time to time. Colonel Kurtz's classic monologue from 'Apocalypse Now' comes to mind :

"I've seen horrors... horrors that you've seen. But you have no right to call me a murderer. You have a right to kill me. You have a right to do that... but you have no right to judge me. It's impossible for words to describe what is necessary to those who do not know what horror means. Horror. Horror has a face... and you must make a friend of horror. Horror and moral terror are your friends. If they are not then they are enemies to be feared. They are truly enemies. I remember when I was with Special Forces. Seems a thousand centuries ago. We went into a camp to inoculate the children. We left the camp after we had inoculated the children for Polio, and this old man came running after us and he was crying. He couldn't see. We went back there and they had come and hacked off every inoculated arm. There they were in a pile. A pile of little arms. And I remember... I... I... I cried. I wept like some grandmother. I wanted to tear my teeth out. I didn't know what I wanted to do. And I want to remember it. I never want to forget it. I never want to forget. And then I realized... like I was shot... like I was shot with a diamond... a diamond bullet right through my forehead. And I thought: My God... the genius of that. The genius. The will to do that. Perfect, genuine, complete, crystalline, pure. And then I realized they were stronger than we. Because they could stand that these were not monsters. These were men... trained cadres. These men who fought with their hearts, who had families, who had children, who were filled with love... but they had the strength... the strength... to do that. If I had ten divisions of those men our troubles here would be over very quickly. You have to have men who are moral... and at the same time who are able to utilize their primordial instincts to kill without feeling... without passion... without judgment... without judgment. Because it's judgment that defeats us."

This, and watching Stephen Dalry's briliant 'The Reader' today, made me think today. How can we judge people by our moralities ? How can we pass a sweeping statement about an act being right or wrong, or a person being 'good' or 'bad', based on what WE consider right ? Is it possible to pass such a judgment? And is it right ?

'The Reader' is based on the award winning German novel "Der Vorleser', and takes us through the lives of two people, from the mid 1950's to the present decade. The protagonist and narrator of the story is Michael Berg - who appears first in the story as a school student and ends up being a moderately successful lawyer. The second, and vastly more interesting character is Hannah Schmitz, who appears in the story as a lonely tram ticket collector, before one realizes that there is more to her than her present lonely life in West Germany.

Without giving too much away, the gist of the story is as follows. Michael and the much older Hannah have an affair for a summer, during which she makes him read out many classics of literature. Her abrupt departure from the city leaves Michael emotionally scarred, from which he never really recovers. A chain of events after Hannah's departure leads Michael to find out certain startling facts about his temporary flame, which changes his life forever. The facts revolve around Hannah's past in a very different Germany of the 1930's and 1940's, at which time moralities were different, as was the sense of right and wrong.

The movie goes on to show Michael Berg's attempt at personal redemption from the shackles of his own mind, which refuses to let him off the hook from what he considers to have been an immoral affair in his youth.

Kate Winslet, and Ralph Fiennes have come up with stellar performances as Hannah Schmitz and Michael Berg. The pain in their lives is not seen overtly through actions, but is visible in their eyes.

Many times in life, it becomes easy to blame a person for being 'immoral', or 'bad'. Life being what it is, such judgments are never quite that simple. The perceived morality of an action by an observer is almost never representative of the point of view of the actor. This is more true while judging actions taking place in a time frame when the entire society's sense of right and wrong was different from what exists at the time of judgment. Like Colonel Kurtz, or Michael Berg, or Hannah Schmitz, there are people who justify their actions, and are, in their own way, in their own space of events, quite right.

To me, that's what The Reader is all about. A brilliant movie. Must Watch.

Silenced by technology

2009-01-05T07:53:00.000-08:00

I remember a few incidents when I was completely bowled over by technology that I witnessed first hand.

The first time when modern technology truly silenced me was when I first saw an ATM machine give out money. It was sometime around 1994 when two HSBC ATMs were installed near the Orange County at Dickenson Road in Bangalore. I remember very clearly the astonishment I felt when my uncle punched in some numbers at the machine and the contraption spat out a few hundred rupee notes.

Some other instances when I was stunned by technology include :
- the first time I saw personalized TV screen for flight passengers(1996)
- the first time I saw trains stop in front of doors in underground stations and align themselves perfectly with the marked 'door zones' (1996)
- The first time I booked a train ticket online (2003)
- The first time I saw a cellphone display the names of places where I was passing through using the 'cell info' option (2002)
- The time I used the cell phone to buy an item from a vending machine (nearly shit myself when it worked - 2006)
- The time when I realized that the fare machines (EZ-Link) in Singapore buses were all controlled by GPS (2007)

And these are just the incidents that are on top of my mind. It happens a lot these days.

Today it sort of 'blew my mind' to see a somewhat unusual technology at work here in Singapore.

I have always lived in places far from the LRT systems in Singapore, and thus had never used the system before, except for one very short ride.

The LRT, or Light Rapid Transit, is a public transport system that is designed to get people from the bigger MRT (Mass Rapid transit) train stations closer to their public housing. They are small driver less vehicles that wind their way about through HDB blocks on elevated lines, dropping people off at important junctions. Today, I traveled by LRT to Bukit Panjang.

On the way from Chua Chu Kang to Bukit Panjang, I noticed the glass windows of the LRT suddenly go opaque at times. One moment I can see the city outside, and the next minute it's like someone pulled the blinds on me. And it's not like all the windows in the train behaved this way at the same times. For the life of me, I couldn't figure out what on earth was going on.

Later this evening during a conversation, I learned what this was about. Since the LRT system passes too close to HDB dwelling, the buildings have sensors on them to let the trains know they have come too close and will now be passing near people's windows. The LRT windows have some kind of LCD sandwiched between their double sheet panes which change state to become opaque for the time the vehicle is between residential blocks, to protect the residents' privacy !

What a wonderful use of technology ! What an absolute thrill to actually see it !

Unfortunately the next time I see this happening, it will just be another one of those things I pass by. Writing it down will hopefully help me remember that it takes brains and fantastic creativity to come up with a design solution such as this.

Ghajani-itis - the disease one gets from watching Aamir's pecs from too many angles

2009-01-03T09:09:00.000-08:00

Triple disasters do happen.

The day started off with two disasters, each worse than the last, in the form of two quizzes at college. Within moments of laying eyes on the question papers, I felt my mind drawing blinds on itself and quietly going into a semi hibernation mode.

To try and end the day on a happy note, plans were made to head out of campus to catch the latest Aamir Khan thriller - Ghajini. In retrospect, this was a plan roughly equal in its folly quotient to Mamata Banerjee's "plan" to get political mileage by holding the Nano hostage. In other words, Ghajini was the third disaster of the day.

There are quite a few words to describe Ghajini, and none more appropriate than the old Anglo Saxon adjective - 'Horrible'.

How a person like Aamir Khan with his acting and production prowess could agree to be part of this unadultrated mass of tripe is beyond my understanding.

Cut to the chase. Sanjay Singhania(Khan) is a man who runs an uber-successful telecom company in his spare time. What he during the rest of his waking hours is not clearly shown in the movie, but there are suggestions to indicate that he suffers from a form of mania involving an obsession of carving his body into an incredible mass of muscle, making him look more like a renaissance statue than a human being. A completely random set of coincidences and chocolaty circumstances result in Mr Eight Pack Dollar Millionaire falling in love with a melodramatic twit played by Asin (in her first, and hopefully last, Bollywood role).

The more observant among you will notice that the movie did not really make the impression on me that the producers desired.

Moving on. Another set of random incidents ensure that the aforementioned twit heroine ends up on the wrong end of a knife wielded by a tribe of villains, all of whom seemed to have escaped from The Hospital for the Steroid Enhanced. The leader of this bunch of bulges is a man who speaks in rural snarls, and who has 'badass' written all over him in each scene. This man is of interest to us, since it is he who lends his name to this....err.....film. After dispatching Singhania's girlfriend to the afterlife, the arch villain, Ghajini decides to use Singhania's head for a golf ball. The man had barely begun to get into the mood after teeing off with the Singhania skull using a rather rusted rod, when Singhania decides to take control of the plot and promptly gets 'Short Term Memory Loss', wherein he is unable to remember events for longer than 15 minutes.

Not that any of this matters, for director Murugadoss does not seem to have heard that little thing called 'logic' which helps movie plots along.

To make a molehill out of a veritable mountain, Sanjay goes out to take revenge on the reprehensible Ghajini for paying golf with his fiancees and his own heads.

The flowchart of the movie 'plot' can be summarized as :
Sanjay is beaten up by Ghajini -> Sanjay get short term memory loss-> Sanjay takes revenge on Ghajini despite his condition.
Murugadoss takes upwards of 3 hours to articulate this, what with asinine songs liberally inserted into the screenplay, and hamming heroines whose acting prowess made the hemispheres of my brain clang against each other in frustration.

The thing that completely got my goat in the film was the STML affected hero go into complete pyrotechnic mode at regular intervals, with no identifiable reason. Eek.

I tried hard to think of ONE redeeming feature of Ghajini. Unfortunately, other than the few seconds of joy in realizing that the movie had ended, every moment spent watching this bundle of cinemanure was spent in stress and agony. Stress on realizing how much better the evening could have been, and agony on watching one of my favorite stars walk deeper and deeper into a morass of bad scriptwriting. The music was average, and the camerawork - shoddy at best. Acting was not really noticed in this venture, so comments about it are irrelevant.

Well, that was the long review of Ghajini.

The short review is - 'Watch it at your own peril.'

Butterfly Effect

2009-01-02T04:19:00.000-08:00

Time has lost it's conventional meaning.

I'm back in Singapore, this time as a student. And this time, the regular menu of 'things to do' do not include taking off to Pulau Ubin, or hanging out in Bugis Junction, or walking through the sultry forest of Bukit Timah.

This time, it's to live in a blur of space-time, where day and night exist simultaneously, where a wasted minute can seem like an hour, and a pleasant hour can go by like a minute.

I always knew it was going to be like this, but living through a two year MBA course crammed into 11 months is showing itself to be a challenge. The light dawned rather brightly on me today when I realized that I had sat through a 2 week course in Accounting and have rather credibly covered the amount of study material an undergraduate student would study in half a year. I never thought I would see myself do that. A single block of time wasted sets one back by a mile.

The overall MBA experience has been educational so far, if not entirely satisfactory. Some genuinely new things have been learned. Some genuinely capable people have been met.

What's lacking so far is people to have a serious conversation with.

I hope at times that the obscene amount of money invested in this course pays off - if not by getting me a plum job, by at least making me a more rounded human being.

What to do ?

2008-11-30T20:23:00.000-08:00

Like millions of Indians, I spent the weekend in a mood that can best be described as 'pissed'.

A place in Mumbai which I loved was marred by murderers. People like me were gunned down in a cafe. A railway station I frequented often looked like the aftermath of a bad slasher movie.
To make a bad thing worse, there were monumental bastards like R.R.Patil saying things like 'Small things like this happen in big cities' (he used the word 'haadsa' or 'incident' to describe the carnage), Vilasrao Deshmukh taking a 'terror tour' in the Taj Hotel with sonny boy Ritesh and film maker Ramu Varma, and political parties in Mumbai placing billboards in the city with their party logos on them while ostensibly venerating fallen policemen.

Though I respect Manmohan Singh as a formidable intellectual, he clearly lacks any attitude required of a national leader. His speech post the all party meet in the wake of this mass murder ranks among one of the most lackadaisical public speeches ever. It even led me to think that George Bush - a man who made dribbling morons look like prodigies - showed more spunk and raw passion when he promised a serious ass-kicking to anyone who harbored terrorists post the 9/11 massacre. Dr. Singh on the other hand was reading out a script and looked like a tired schoolboy reading out an essay on 'What I would like to be when I grow up'. At least the much maligned 'foreign devil' Sonia Gandhi was gutsy enough to say that the government led by her party had failed to provide a sense of security to their employers - the Indian people.

In the middle of this piles of incompetence and injustice, I couldn't but help admire some people.
First - the Mumbai Police, the ATS, NSG commandoes, and any other forces who put themselves in the line of fire to flush out the murderers. Second - the many staff of the Taj hotel who tried to save their guests, many times at peril of their own lives. Third - the group of people who stopped Azam Amir Kasab near Girgaum and pumelled the shit out of him.

After many discussion with friends and family, here are my two bits about this carefully planned bout of sadism.

Terrorist outfits can supply weapons of any kind, but the level of training, planning and determination shown by the group of mercenaries in Mumbai can come out only as a result of professional army training. It's simply impossible that a group of people can gain such courage, expertise at urban warfare, communication and intelligence into building topology without active assistace from an army. I seriously doubt if Al Qaeda or Lashkar e Toiba or Deccan Mujahadeen or whoever has the technology or the skill to impart such excellent training.
It's fashionable to say 'the government had intelligence about attacks on hotels but did nothing'. Undoubtedly, the coordination between the intelligence groups and the state leaves a lot to be desired. But we need to realise that the intelligence on hotels was one among many intelligence warnings. To follow up on each and every percieved threat is much more difficult for the state than we think.
I would strongly support an Indian army attack into the 'indigenous freedom fighters' training camps in Pakistani Kashmir. I'm sure the Army knows exactly where many of these are located. Just missile the sons of bitches. No questions. Show them that we mean business. Show some muscle.
The government needs to get some good diplomats into the US to do some active lobbying on behalf of India. Get some good fundraisers out there. Build support for India there.
Citizens need to be made aware that any suspicious behaviour needs to be reported to the police. And of course the police should be made aware that they need to get off their asses and work on these reports from the public - no matter how many hoax calls are made. When our politicos make their next free visit abroad they could learn how the English and Singaporeans do this.
Barkha Dutt is getting on my nerves. Her fake emotions, her dramatization of events and her loud screechy voice is irritating - to say the least. It wouldn't be wrong to say that I hate her.
If I hear another word about how Muslim militants still remember Ayodhya and continue to kill people, I am going to throw up. Remember, apalling though the destruction of the Babri Masjid was - NO ONE WAS KILLED DOING IT.
The defence forces need to advertise themselves more to recruit the cream of the Indian youth.

I would like to believe that this attack on my country would not be brushed off by my elected leaders like so many other attacks have. Hell, we need to send a signal to the enemy. And let's not kid ourselves - the enemy is Pakistan. It may not be Asif Zardari as a person or even the ruling class, but it is Pakistan as a country. It's sections of the Pakistani army which arms and trains murdering youth. Yes, they have terrorist attacks on their own soil. But that doesn't change the fact that these men are trained in their country, by their citizens, and with active help from rougue army men and the ISI. The Indian government needs to send a clear message to these criminals that it's not going to take things lying down. And that message cannot be in the form of a strongly worded letter. It has to take the shape of a well loaded missile.

No more Michael Crichton

2008-11-05T20:06:00.000-08:00

Was shocked to read that one of my favorite authors Michael Crichton died of cancer this morning.

Crichton was one of the best writers whose works I have read.

I was in about 10 or 11 years old when I saw Jurassic Park on screen (Plaza, Bangalore - Rs 17.50 for a balcony seat). Within a week, I had raided the school library to read the book. The library didn't have it. I went down to the principal's room, and told him that I thought the library should have this book. I was lucky to be in a school which encouraged this sort of thing. The principal, Mr. Benny Joseph, told me that I could buy the book and bring it to the library; the school would reimburse the money. Over the next few years, I ended up buying Jurassic Park, The Lost World, Sphere, The Andromeda Strain and The Great Train Robbery for the school. Each time I bought a new book for the school, I was asked to review it at the morning assembly.

In later years, reading a new Crichton book meant about 3 days of unadultrated pleasure. I can remember where I was when I first read Timeline, Prey, State of Fear and Next. A new Crichton story was an event in itself. The combination of science, general knowledge and a smacking good story line was not something to be found in the works of any other writer I knew.

I remember the last time I felt this bad was in 1992, when Satyajit Ray died. I was in my grandmother's house in Calcutta when we got the news. I hid in a corner and cried for about a minute. I just couldn't believe there would not be any more Feluda stories.

Just like I can't believe there won't be any more gripping science fiction thrillers from Crichton's pen, which will make me lose all sense of time as I read them.

Michael Crichton, you will be missed.

What the hell's wrong with Bangalore ?

2008-10-31T07:37:00.000-07:00

My grouses :
1) Autorickshaw drivers are at the top of this list. The sods should be exterminated like termites. A Bangalorean auto driver is like a suicide bomber with a hernia, i.e. pretty irritable.
A polite Bangalorean auto driver is like a suicide bomber with a hernia who speaks Esperanto, i.e. pretty rare.
I have tried everything short of killing the cretins. I have argued. Threatened. Compained and dragged a few to the cops. To no avail. They just keep crawling out of everywhere, and consistently refuse to drive you anywhere for a fare that is less than Zimbabwe's deficit.
2) The point about useless cops is closely related to the discussion about auto drivers. Cops in Bangalore seem to have ZERO authority. I once complained to the cops that an auto guy wasn't taking me somewhere. The rather malnourished government servant stopped an auto for me and instructed the driver to take me where I wanted. The driver drove about 20 feet and asked me to get off and dissapeared. I went back and complained to the cop. He stopped another auto. The second guy did the same thing again. It was hilarious, actually. Everyday I see cops at traffic junctions being treated like they are part of the local flora. No one cares. Maybe it's to do with the going bribe rate - even Rs.30 can get you out of trouble with a Bangalore cop if he catches you without your vehicle papers.
3) Lack of safety. Going with the flow, this takes off where point number 2 leaves off. Bangalore happens to be one of the most unsafe metros to live in. There are an insane number of attacks on people travelling through ill-lit roads at night. And of course, the cops are just fixtures. Recently a girl was molested near my friend's house in Cambridge Layout. My friend and some local guys caught the miscreant and dragged him to the police station. Instead of arresting the SOB, the cops then wanted to know if the girl was having an affair with this man. The girl in question was in school and the man in question was a rag picker. Not only did the cops not book a case against him, he was quietly let go from the station when no one was looking. The cops then asked my friend and the local guys why they were getting involved in this issue !!
Oh yeah, I forgot. The 'cops' in Chickmagalur, near B'lore completely ignored a find of a shitload of explosives, before the day serials blasts took place in the city a few months back.
What can I say.
4) Ill lit roads. Travel to the new airport any day and you will see the streetlights near Hebbal burning electricity in broad daylight. Travel on inner Ring Road any night and you will see nothing. Bangalore. IT City. Hi Tech. Guess what. Shit crap, is what.
5) Forum Mall. I am beginning to detest the place. Everything's overpriced. The crowds are just crazy. Going to a movie there is like passing through US customs. There's a bloke there who has dug his fingernails in my ass crack the last three times I was there in the name of frisking. And to go to see a movie there means you have to leave every freakin thing you own outside. A Saturday night movie costs Rs 200. What the hell.

All in all, the frustration gets to me at times. I want to get out of this city and country for a long while.

What's been happening

2008-10-30T08:09:00.000-07:00

It's been about half a year since I last blogged.

Here's what's been going on in the speebverse.

Started working as a pre sales consultant - April 2008
Got married - May 2008
Travelled to Bhutan with the missus - June 2008
Set up a house - June 2008
Travelled to Hampi to see the bygone splendor of the Vijaynagar kings - July 2008
Completely freaked out in Goa - August 2008
Travelled to Belur/Halebidu. Got dazzled by stupendous Hoysala temples - September 2008
Appeared for GMAT, as did the missus - September 2008
Got hooked on to Richard Dawkins writings on Darwinism and evolution - September 2008
Applied to SP Jain GMBA program and got through, as did the missus - October 2008
Had a few sleepless nights thinking about how to raise the obscene amount of money needed to lead a year of student life with no money coming in - October 2008
Paid the fees to the aforementioned course - October 2008

The last few months have taught me a lot about life, and as has been the story of most of my life, I've been lucky.

I'm lucky to have a companion who understands me and stands by me at every step. I'm lucky to have the opportunity to realize my goal of pursuing my postgraduation, with the added bonus of having my wife as my classmate. I'm lucky to have family who are helping me realize that goal. I'm lucky to have had the means to travel to some of the most mind boggling places in history.

As an aside, it's not all smooth as silk; this business of being married. Years of doing exactly everything I wanted to combined with dollops of eccentricity make it difficult to adjust to a new life of sharing and commitment. But at times, I am reminded of the line from Sam Mendes' film :

'Sometimes there's so much beauty in the world I feel like I can't take it, like my heart's going to cave in.'

Yup. It's all good. And I'm gonna do all I can to make it stay that way.

The World of the Unknown

2008-03-26T22:57:00.000-07:00

Ever since I had seen the faded monochrome pictures of Borobodur and Angkor Wat in the pages of the sub-standard history text book in our school, there have been days when I have dreamed of visiting the two monuments. I first heard of these collosal creations when I was in Class 8 (I think), and have never stopped being impressed by the fact how Indian culture spread across South East Asia, without any major conquests or colonizing expeditions by the Indian powers of those times.

After coming to Singapore, I took the first chance possible to visit Cambodia and witness the marvels of Khmer architecture first hand. Now, with less than 5 working days left in the little red dot, I finally got to see the older, and undoubtedly more mysterious monument - the Borobudur Stupa near the south coast of Java, Indonesia.

Anyone who wants to know what the word 'spooky' means, can get his questions cleared by visiting the 9th century structure at 5am on a quiet day in the off-tourist season. The structure itself is set atop a hill, overlooking the dense forests of southern Java. Unseeing eyes stare at visitors from every corner, with the moonlight reflecting off their stone irises. The jungles smoke with the condensation of tropical trees, and the whole feel of isolation is complete; save for some of the distant lights of Jogjakarta city. It was only once the sun slowly showed up was I overwhelmed at seeing the full size of the structure. The whole thing is a visual treat - with a veritable riot of relief carvings and sculpture.

What makes Borobudur so exciting is the fact that no one really knows its history with any certainity. Most scholars are of the opinion that this gigantic stone stupa was built by the kings of the Sailendra dynasty circa 880 AD, but there is nto a single inscription or record to testify to this. While it is fairly certain, that the Sailendra King Samaratungga built some of the nearby temples of Kalasan (Sanskrit - Kailas), there is no definite proof to show that the same king supervised the building of Borobudur. In fact, no records exist even of Borobudur's original name.

Making things more complicated, are the temples of Prambanan - also without any dated inscriptions. For one thing, the current dating technologies place the time of the building of these Hindu temples at about the same time as the Borobudur structure.

In my opinion, this is impossible. The Prambanan temple complex originally consisted of more than 230 small temples surrounding three huge monuments to the Hindu divine trinity. It was, thus, a work under a substantially powerful ruler. Like the rulers of the Sri Vijaya dynasty, who controlled much of Sumatra and Java, and were contemporaries of the Sailendras for some centuries. The Borobudur and Prambanan temples are barely 40 miles from each other. And each was a product of a kingdom at its peak. I find it tough to believe that two kingdoms - one Hindu(Sri Vijaya) and one Buddhist(Sailendra) - existed in such proximity to each other and built such imposing structures almost simultaneously. I am no history scholar, but it just seems hard to believe. If what I think is true - the Prambanan temple is much older than what many believe, and was built by kings of the Sri Vijaya dynasty. Popular belief that the Sanjaya or Mataram kings built such an imposing structure is, again, hard to believe - as neither of these kingdoms were nearly as powerful as to command resources nessecary to build such a structure.

In short, pretty much no one knows anything about these 'candi' - except that one - Borobudur, turns out to be the largest Buddhist structure in the world, and the other - Prambanan is the largest Hindu temple complex anywhere in the once powerful Hindu kingdoms of Indonesia.

Which brought me to think of something else. When we talk of the great empires of the world - most people only think of the Roman Empire, the Chinese Dyansties, The Ottoman Empire, and the British Empire. This is, I would say, a white man's history we have been learning. The empire of Ashoka in the Indian subconitent was a revolutionary one in that it controlled an area about as big as Europe. The Khmers controlled the whole of Indo China for about 550 years! And the Sri Vijaya dynasty lasted for longer than any known empire in history !! The Roman Empire came into being sometime in about 50BC, and lasted all the way upto the Punic wars of in 476AD. About 500 years. China's Han dynasty lasted 206BC to 226AD. About 425 years. The Ottoman empire was founded in 1326 and ended after the first world war in 1918. A stunning 590 years. The British empire in India lasted 300 years. The Sri Vijaya dynasty was founded in about 650 AD and lasted all the way till 1290 AD, when they were defeated by the Javanese. That makes the empire a full 640 years in duration. How many of us have learnt that in school ?

More interestingly, I find the need to delve and find out more about the Cholas and Pandyas, who were the dominant Indian power during those times, who exercised so much influence over the South East Asian kings that such art and architecture spread across the Indonesian archipelago and Indo China.

In any case, all this thought is small fry compared to the sense of wonder and pride in looking at some of the greatest structures built by humans. The audacity to imagine these monuments and to dare to chisel them out of stone is humbling.

And again, it's a reminder that someone, someday will 'discover' and look at our own highrises and business centres and feel the same thrill.

I guess it's the temporal feel of it all that is so overpowering.

Singapore scribbles

2008-03-11T17:59:00.000-07:00

I'm going to be leaving Singapore in a few weeks from now.

It's been a good year, for the most part, and here I am, suffering from (yet another) bout of insomnia blogging about the general experience of living here for the last 11 months.

By any account, Singapore is a unique place. Most people I know crib about this being a place 'without culture' and 'devoid of excitement'. At the very outset, here's saying that this is patently wrong. The truth is that - most people(locals and tourists) have no clue how varied Singaporean culture is - and how exciting it can be to give a miss to those overpriced and garish malls on Orchard Road and have a meal at a coffee shop underneath a HDB apartment. It just matters where you look.

Most of the prats I meet here from India have not taken the opportunity to explore this tiny island and see the amazing variety of life, food and culture - even in the ample time of a whole year. Where else in the world can you go walking from an ultra modern business district to a charming old neighborhood that is Telok Ayer in less than 5 minutes ?

True - not all is utopia in Singapore; yet, what place is ?

Let me start with the good. The average Singaporean is hard working and generally honest. I haven't seen the 'rip off' tendency in any local service provider - even people at the low end of the chain - like taxi drivers and shop keepers are almost consistently polite and honest. Every call I make to a local call centre is answered, and each time - any problem I have had has been dealt with and solved. There have been times when a taxi drivers have taken me along longer routes than normal to reach a place - and on arriving at my destination the driver has apologised to me and knocked a couple of dollars off the meter rate. The Chinese coffee shop uncle under my HDB apartmentis as friendly as the tapri owner near my house in Pune, and I like the way both of them throw my cup of tea at me over the table each morning.
And the kicker is - and I don't think anyone can prove me wrong -Singapore just happens to be the safest place in the world at present. I have walked in deserted streets at 2am here with money in my pocket and not felt in the least bit unsafe.In complete contrast - I remember nearly soiling myself at the unhealthy hour of 11pm while taking a train ride from Kings Cross to Luton last year when a group of shaven headed tattoo bedecked teenagers boarded my compartment and gave me some distinctly unfriendly looks.

Now, for the not-so-good. The average Singaporean is the most paranoid, pretentious and selfish person. In the local lingo - it's called kiasu, which I think is Hokkien for 'afraid to lose'. Examples of this are seen everywhere, nowhere more so than at train and bus stations. The bastards can't wait for alighting passengers before they bound in between the doors. And this in a country where people haven't seen crowds anywhere near what exists in Bombay - where I would say a certain amount of paranoia of this sort is warranted. Another classic example of kiasuism is the local peoples' obsession to keep buying new things. A typical evening/weekend consists of a trip to the local mall and coming back either stuffed with food from the food court at the mall, or with a few designer labels.
Even my landlord - one of the least kiasu people on the island - came home one day with a Bravia LCD television the size of my bed. When I asked him what the hell was wrong was wrong with the old set (which incidentally was no mean thing - a 2 year old 29" Sony) he just replied 'New model lah, must buy. Installment what....only 1500 dollar'. Now this may not seem very kiasu, but when I tell you that my landlord doesn't get a fixed salary, and he is a struggling musician who gets paid by the number of shows he does - and has to support a family of 4 - the need of buying a cupboard sized LCD TV does raise some questions.

The same is the case of the people who go out to buy a car in this tiny island. A huge percentage of people in the island are working class - i.e. not millionaires. In fact, most have a just about comfortable life after paying all their bills each month. Were it not for the brilliant public housing scheme of the government - a majority of people here would actually be poor. Yet, they all want to buy a car. The bloody island is 45 km long and 30 km wide - and boasts of one of the best public transport systems in the world. Yet, looking at the morning traffic makes you think that everyone is headed from New York to Philadelphia. The sods spend more time parking their vehicles than making the actual journey. And buying a car in Singapore is not cheap - far from it. There are an astonishingly high number of cars which are impounded every month because of the owners' inability to pay the monthly installment. As one taxi driver told me 'Here, everyone must buy car lah. Mostly to save face one. Neighbor have, you also mus have. Otherwise no face what.'

Most people have a lot to say about how draconian Singapore's laws are. I used to feel the same way when I first came here and realised (the hard way) that littering carries a fine of about $500. But over time - it's only fair. The only things the government fines you for are things you shouldn't be doing in the first place. Come here with heroin - you will be hanged. Spit in public - you will be fined. Most private institutions work with the same mentality these days. In my own firm - fake a Rs.10 bill or leak company secrets - you will be fired. And it's enforcing these kind of laws that has made Singapore one of the safest places to live in today.

One of the things I cannot understand about Singapore is that - in spite of being a bloody rich country with enough money to govern Malaysia and Indonesia, it still has no social security system for the elderly. The government says it wants to run a fair state, not a welfare state. All very fine - but what about those who do not speak English, do not operate computers and generally cannot contribute today to the government's model of a knowledge and service economy ? I am sure they all contributed in some way to the island's lightning last growth from a village in the 1960's to the ultra modern city today. Maybe I just don't get it - but I think one of the first thing a rich country does is to provide heath care and social security of some sort to its retired population.

Anyway - here's my list of things not to miss while in Singapore.
Visit the zoo. It's one of the best in the world. Go cycling to Pulau Ubin. Eat Chilly crab. Have roti prata at Jalan Kayu. Walk through the CBD. Walk through Chinatown. Walk down Serangoon road on a weekend. Walk through the trails at Bukit Timah Reserve. Take the bungee jump at Clarke Quay. Check out the Armenian church, and the Mariamman temple. Take a trek trough Labrador Park. Walk around in MacRitchie reservoir in the morning. Visit the Times bookstore in Vivo City.Actually there are tons of things to do......and blowing money at Sentosa and Orchard road are not among them.

Yeah, in retrospect - it has been a good year. I've explored this tiny island quite extensively. I've eaten an amazing variety of food - which was cheap and great. I've thought about how on earth a swampy village in the 1960's could become one of the most advanced societies on earth in less than 40 years. I've been thrown a cup of tea at me every morning by the Chinese guy downstairs. I've enjoyed listening to the auntie at the coffee shop bellowing her customer's orders so people could hear her from Tampines to Tashkent. I've been told by a rather serious Singaporean that the greatest danger the country faces is the fact that the business district stands on unstable ground that one day very soon it will all come crashing down. I've realised that advanced societies do not produce better bus drivers - and though Singapore has a better bus network than Bombay, I'd lay my last penny betting on the average Bombay bus driver knowing how to brake a bus better than the average Singapore green shirts. I've visited 5 countries from here and seen some amazing sights which will remain with me forever. But mostly, the last few months have been spent looking forward to the nights when I run up my telephone bill to rather obscene limits while talking about nothing to my fiancée.

Which is why I'm returning. I have a little more than 2 months of my bachelor life remaining, and I'm in no mood to spend them here, far from my friends, soaking up the humidity.

So, that's all from here. Take care now. Bye Bye then.

Random Rants on a Boring Sunday Morning

2008-02-16T17:55:00.000-08:00

Patience is not yet something that has been added to the charecterestics of Speebee. Until some spurts of anger die out......extremely irrational decisions can be made.

A companion is someone whom I can trust completely and who completely trusts me.

I can understand people well. If only I can understand myself.

If I were a jumper, I would visit the following places today : Ladakh, The Grand Canyon, Lakshwadweep Islands, The Bikini Atoll, The Galapagos.

I am hoping Jodha Akbar is a great film. Hope to see it today.

I would give up everything I owned (which admittedly is very little) to be able to travel in a time machine.

I think I am better than those sodding MBA's with paper degrees. To prove it, I would have to get one of those degrees myself.

Knowledge is power indeed.

Is fear of God really the beginning of wisdom ? Is the knowledge of the Holy One understanding ?

I need help to quit. I need to make my zone a Nichtrauchenzone.

Esperanto was a good idea. I need to learn it.

Respect is missing somewhere.

Beauty is everywhere :

Ailein Duinn

2007-12-26T21:05:00.000-08:00

The below song is completely meaningless to be - lyric wise.

To me - it is the ultimate example of music being a language of its own.

I heard this song about 10 years ago when I first watched 'Rob Roy'. The sight of the singer - Karen Matheson - singing this song solo in the movie has remained with me always.

The lyrics - which are irrelevant anyway are :

Gura mise tha fo éislean
Moch sa mhaduinn is mi g'éirigh

Chorus:
Ò hì shiùbhlainn leat
Hì ri bhò hò ru bhì
Hì ri bhò hò rinn o ho
Ailein Duinn, ò hì shiùbhlainn leat

Ma 's e 'n cluasag dhuit a ghaineamh
Ma 's e leabaidh dhut an gheamainn

Ma 's e 'n t-iasg do choinlean geala
Ma 's e na ròin do luchd-faire

Dh'òlainn deoch ge b' oil le càch e
De dh'fhuil do choim 's tu 'n déidh do bhathadh

Truths about the IT workplace and life in general

2007-12-23T21:17:00.000-08:00

It been months since I blogged. It's been a combination of nothing and everything happening in life all at once.

Recently, I've been drawn to books about business administration and IT project management in a big way. Just the other day, I spent the obscene amount of S$136 buying three books on management. On reading them I realise that everything - and that's EVERYTHING - written in the damn books is nothing but plain common sense. The whole experience of reading a book on management is like watching some of Baba Ramdev's morning sermons on Zee TV. You hear everything you already know (if you are a person with a non sub-human IQ), and feel like a fool for spending your valuable (!) time reading the damn thing.

That's not to say these books are not worth reading. The more I read them and the more I underastand about the corporate workspace, and life in general, it seems to me that we need to be reminded of some of the most basic facts from time to time - however obvious they may seem.

So, on that basis alone, I decided to pen down a few of the things I feel are vital to remember in today's IT workspace. Anyone reading this (and no one might - no one reads my blog anyway) may well feel that I am stating the obvious - but it is my strong conviction that the obvious is what we(including me) invariably overlook. Almost all the time.

It's been 4 years and 3 months since I started working in the Indian IT industry. Here are the summaries of my learnings to date :

1) You need to have a core skillset to succeed. The trend among freshers to be a master of all trades simply is not a viable strategy in the long run. True, this way of working is often pushed down to the fresher by the system. Also true, it's important to have an awareness about various technologies and their workings. But to be a Java resource and a C resource and a tool specialist and a testing resource and a developer and a support person is not the way to go, especially after about a year of work. One simply must have something to call one's own. It is important for a person to be categorised with some kind of work - as opposed to just being a good resource. There are ways to do that. Which brings me to my second learning.

2) No one gives you opportunities. You have to find them out for yourselves. This is something I am learning every day. Many times while searching for opportunities it is not evident that there is an opportunity right at one's doorstep. It's important to bring oneself to knwo that. And grab it. In today's IT industry, unless you are a brainbox with an IIT/REC degree (in which case you never read my blog and don't need my advice anyway), you are most likely to be employed in one of the big names in a Bangalore/Hyderabad/Pune based company. In that eventuality, you are one in thousands of people vying for promotions. If you are not proactive and don't search for chances to put your foot in the door yourself - it's likely that nothing is happening in your professional life. For this, it is nessecary to be vocal and assert your expectations. This leads to making contacts with important people. Which is my next point.

3) Relationships are invaluable. It's crucially important to be in the same office as decision makers in your devision/company for the first few years of work. Something I have ignored and have been unable to do. Relationships with senior folk are invaluable in terms of opportunities they throw your way. Though this seems to be an obvious fact, I used to underestimate this a lot - as I suspect do many junior folk. Talking to a decision maker or someone who knows decision makers over lunch or a smoke is probably more important in the long run than that piece of code one writes or that module one tests.

4) There will always be assholes. And in copious quantities. The trick is to ignore the bastards. When ignoring them is not an option there are two possibilities. If said asshole is your peer - keep only a working relation with him. If asshole is your boss/senior you need to keep in contact with - leave all self respect in the locker and suck up to him till his asshole factor ceases to be directed towards you. This is another truth I have been loathe to follow - consequently landing me in many a troubled time. If there is one learning that anyone should remember it is this one. The bright side is this : the asshole eventually gets his due. Revenge tactics rarely work. Best to tolerate the sonofabitch till you or he gets reassigned. If you are better than him, you will rise to a position far better than him. It will never happen that you will lord over him. But you will do better if you ARE better. The proverb to keep in mind is "Elephants don't take notice of dogs barking in the streets".
---The asshole factor is so strong in workplaces that it's worthwhile mentioning more here. If the asshole is just plain rude - forgive him. If he is vindictive and a snitch - DO NOT be afraid to take the first step and snitch on him first to save your ass. Escalation to a sane manager is often a lifesaver, especially if you have followed step 3 and built a good rapport with him.---

5) Most importantly - Patience Is Paramount. Those who work in the IT industry today invariably come from backgrounds where making money was one of the hardest things to do in life. Suddenly in this generation (for the IT folks) it's the easiest. We do not come from families where parents can easily relate to the present industry and give us advice relevant to the current day and age. Most often we have to make career decisions for ourselves. Relying on the advice of flatmates and friends. We see people in Bangalore with 3 years work experience laughing all the way to the bank drawing paychecks of 12 lakhs per annum. We see dumbass juniors who we thought couldn't tie their showlaces without help get a longterm onsite to UK and buying a 3 bedroom flat worth 40 lakhs. And we don't know how to deal with it. The urge to jump 3 jobs in as many years has never been stronger. But the truth of the matter is - these job jumping easy money makers will be nowhere in their senior life. Unless of course they are super gifted in what they do - of course, the number of super gifted people in our industry and quite small. The virtue of being patient and waiting it out, proving onself before asking a 50% hike in salary is absolutely vital.
Basically the truth is - when push comes to shove and the IT industry takes a hit - the new guy has the privilige of being the first one out of the door.

Well, that's my dose of the obvious. Everyone of these are tried and tested truths, and I am yet to follow any of them well.

I console myself by realising that I know enough now to write these out - just as a reference during times I know I am going to go against any of them.

Hasta la vista.

A Study in Foster

2007-10-14T20:10:00.000-07:00

Watched 'The Brave One' on Friday. And on Saturday.

Great feeling to be watching a film maker and the entire ensemble cast in their element.

Normally I watch a movie after reading a review of it on the net, so I pretty much know what I'm expecting. In this case, I read nothing; I walked into the theatre just because Jodie Foster was in the film. And boy, does she do a great job.

Foster plays Erica Bain, a New York based radio voice who talks about 'the safest big city in the world' and people's experiences in it. We are given glimpses into her unusual world - and the world of radio entertainment, a world which is increasingly becoming insignificant in this world of round the clock television and reality shows. Erica walks the streets recording the sounds of the city in unlikely places - from atop sewers and next to roadside basketball games.

Erica is soon to be married to a British doctor (of Indian origin; true enough - just like in Calcutta one can safely say Beauty Parlor = Chinese proprietor, in the UK and US the equation Doctor = Indian is becoming more and more taken for granted), and they are very much in love.

In a ghastly turn of events they are attacked by a trio of Hispanic thugs in Central Park, and what was to be a regular evening walk with the dog, turns out to be a living nightmare - in which she is beaten unconcious and her husband to be is killed.

The best scenes in the movie show Erica's mental trauma soon after she is discharged from hospital - in which she is scared to step out into the streets of her beloved city.

Terrence Howard ( brilliant actor notably last seen in 'Crash' as the black film director ), plays Mercer, a stoic cop who is yet to get over the pain of his divorce. Mercer is methodical, but by no means is he a movie supercop. He knows his shortcomings, and is dedicated enough to try and get over them. Mercer is in charge of Erica's case - which is nothing more than another homicide case to him.

Erica's trauma causes her to undergo a fundamental personality change - she goes from being the petite radio host to a vengeful tour-de-force, who first through accident, and then through intent finds out and kills those who make her city a fearful place to stay in.

Foster does a great job in making Erica phase out from the innocent girl in love at the start of the story to a determined and cold killer ( who seems 'on lockdown', according to one witness who has seen Erica ), whose hands don't tremble after blowing away people with an illegal 9mm.

The plot then moves on to Erica finding remeption from her trauma and overcoming her fears.

The screenplay goes a long way in this film. The complex plot (there are two distinct storylines) are held together coherently. The characters of Erica and Detective Mercer, though not the run of the mill average Joe have been characterized well enough for us to identify with them. And of course, there's the powerhouse performances from Terrence Howard and Foster.

Irish Director Neil Jordan has a treat for us here ( I watched his 'Interview with a Vampire' and 'Michael Collins' years ago and loved them ). Prepare to be refreshed with a fresh story and some great acting.

Star Star Star Star.

This only is denied to God: the power to undo the past - Aristotle (448BC)

2007-09-02T17:54:00.000-07:00

There are a kind of feeling which cannot be put down on paper. You can only feel it, and probably feel it just once. It's a kind of tingling feeling down one's spine and head which one feels during extreme excitement and wonder. Different people feel this at different occassions. I also know people who feel no wonder at anythign at all. Well, I pity them.

I thought about this when I first saw the Taj Mahal in March. It made me feel glad that I hadn't been brought to see this work of genius when I was a boy, else I would have forgotten what it was like to feel what I felt that day. As kids, we feel wonder at so many things; but as adults it's difficult to present oneself to situations which are genuinely new and exciting enough for the mind to be overwhelmed.

In March, I felt that rush when I first saw the Taj. And in August the same year - 10 days ago - the feeling was back when I saw the lotus bud shaped towers of the Angkor Vat dominating the horizon.

It's a feeling like being covered with a muslin cloth which is then slowly pulled away from you - making your flesh tingle with the sensation. But in this case, a thousand thoughts went through my mind at the same time - mostly asking myself about the audacity required to envision such a thing.

Two weeks ago, I took off for a mini backpack trip through Thailand and Cambodia. Away from Sanitized Singapore - into the world of Kings who were thought to be gods.

I spent about 4 days in Thailand - exploring the Rattankosin region of Bangkok. Much as I was bowled over by the numerous palaces and Buddhist temples in Bangkok and Ayuthaya, I could not wait to get over the border to Cambodia.

On 23rd August, I took the 5 hour long boat ride from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap - up the Tonle Sap river. From the makeshift harbour, I travelled another 15 km by motorbike to get to my hotel in Siem Reap town. A quick bath later I was back on the road - off to see Angkor Vat.

And what a sight it was. This marvel of construction - dating back to about 1120 AD from the reign of Suryavarman II - seemed to me to be a bringing together of all human genius. There was science, art, politics, technology and religion all in one sweep.

To imagine the genius behind the place - one should try and think about the artisans who chipped away at rock and created things like Indra figure on the left.

One would not only have to be an artist, but also a bodybuilder ! Imagine the physical strength needed to chip away this deep into rock. With such precision. that people a thousand years later would just look and wonder. One mistake, and the artisan would have to start all over again. There was no way to erase a mistake. Your work was, quite literally - set in stone.

In more ways than one, a visit to these sites is to take a journey into perfection. Each figure here has been done from start to finish in one go.

No erasers. No copiers.

It is also a journey into the minds of power crazy kings. The late 12th century saw King Jayavarman VII come to power in the Angkor. He converted to Theravada Buddhism and went on one of the most ambitious construction sprees ever in history. In roughly 35 years as king, he built about 20 major temples and palaces. Each one a testament to his love of the arts and megalomania.

No where is this more evident than in the temple which forms the centrepiece of Javavarman's capital city of Angkor Thom - the Bayon.

Here - the devaraja, or god king - commissioned the carving of his face on about 50 pillars. Not once on each pillar. Oh no. Four faces on each pillar. So the temple is a maze of alleyways, and nowhere are you far from the gazing eyes of one of the over 200 faces of Jayavarman.
It's as creepy as it gets.

In 13th century a Chinese traveller Zhou Da Guan lived in Angkor for a while and gave some fascinating accounts of the city in those times. He wrote of the Bayon with it's towers covered in gold, glistening and visible for miles.

It was a sight to see even in the 13th century - in this city which was littered with artistic masterpieces. The city which supported a population of a million people, at a time when London was in squalor barely managing to keep it's population of about 40,000 people from starving.

In many ways - the Angkor empire is a mirror of our own times. Great rulers - with visions of grandeur - each thinking that God is on his side. Each thinking his kingdom will last through the ages. Not one person wants to acknowledge the fact that one day his empire and country will be rubble.

The Angkoreans were powerful in their time, and Angkor Thom was the London City of it's time. Like Europe of today, they flattered their powerful ally by imitating it's grandeur. The grandeur of India - the centre of culture at the time - which impressed the Khmers enough to build the Vishnulok (Angkor Vat), is just too much to imagine.

Yet today, this sight is a stark reminder as to who is the real master of the earth.

The Buddhist concept of 'chakra' or the wheel of time is something ingrained into these countries' cultures.

And it's true.

Dust we are. To dust we return.

The last kampong - Buangkok

2007-07-29T22:12:00.000-07:00

Wandered off to the Buangkok area near Hougang on Sunday.

Reading Neil Humphrey's book 'Final Notes from a Great Island' made me aware of the existence of a village in Singapore which had escaped the HDB bulldozers all these years.

Make no mistake, I am a great admirer of the island state's public housing scheme. Arguably it's the most successful public housing venture in the world today. I make funny faces at Singaporeans who call the HDB apartments 'chicken coops'. I wonder if they have ever seen living conditions of middle class people elsewhere in Asia.

Just 40 years ago, the whole of Singapore was filled with Malay style villages or 'kampongs'. Malaysia still has them in abundance. But with the Singapore government's super efficient HDB policy, the kampongs were all removed all through the late 60's and 70's to make way for dense housing apartments. The last major kampong in Geylang Serai was removed in the 1980's.

Yet, all this progress inevitably has had a side effect. The country has no natural feel to it. Everything is manicured. I hear about old timers lamenting in coffee shops about the dissapearence of the 'kampong spirit'. People live for years in HDB apartments without speaking to their neighbours. And most importantly, there is a complete loss of a sense of history. Most youngsters here know nothing except HDB's, condos and bungalows as places to stay. A real village could be a million miles away for all they cared. Which is actually stunning, as their parents' generation all grew up in kampongs. It speaks of Singapore's lightning progress.

True, the government has preserved colonial architecture in areas like Joo Chiat and Geylang. But they are not REAL. They are manicured to hide the past, rather than showcase it.

Again, I hate to make it sound like I WANT there to be poor people. There should not. Poverty is ugly, and this government above any has taken all the right steps to eradicate it. But eradicating history is also unspeakably ugly. It creates a complete loss in value systems among younger generations. What I would love to have happen is for the people of Kampong Buangkok to get some grants from the government and renovate their houses. And for the government to declare the place a national hertiage. Something like what the Goa Government has done in Fontainhas.

I had considerable difficulty finding the place. The village is completely hidden from view in the middle of a small forest in Buangkok behind Lorong Buangkok. Walking past some of the snazziest new HDB blocks, I could not believe that there was anything close to a kampong nearby. Neil's book said there was, and I trusted him.

The kampong was there, just as he had described it. The man at the entrance to the small village of about 15 houses gave me the biggest grin I ever had flashed at me since I came to Singapore. I was a bit taken aback, and asked him if I had come to the right place. He welcomed me into his cycle shop, and have me a cup of Milo. I was speechless. Being a city guy, I was absolutely unprepared for this kind of behaviour. Our genes are wired to be wary of strangers, and if I was him, I would be quite alarmed at the sight of a dodgy looking unshaven Indian bloke walking up with a camera near my house. I would certainly not invite him home and give him Milo. This was my introduction to the much talked about 'kampong spirit'. The three people I met in the kampong were more than willing to talk about themselves. They told me that the place had been around for the last 80 years. Unchanged. I was walking into history.

The people had houses opening into dirt tracks, worse than what I have seen in slums in India. Each rain damages their houses. But the smiles on these people were to be seen to be believed. They were not poor at all. Each one of them had a business which definitely put them in the lower middle class category. They just wanted to cling to their past. Which is not nessecarily a bad thing. It was clear to me that if the government helped them by cleaning up their village, they would never leave. But in Singapore, each square inch of land has to be tapped to give maximum value. And these people live in Hougang - one of the most upmarket areas in town. A HDB apartment block here would be immensely profitable. It would also make these families very rich. And they know it. But, as one middle aged guy explained to me - this house was his fathers'. He grew up there. And could not bear the thought of losing it.

A decent lunch lacher with the locals, I was back out in upmarket Buangkok. Just a walk of three minutes had taken me forward 60 years. Still, it made me happy to have seen the place. And the fact that the people who lived there were so happy. I had seen what was in all probability the last remaining natural inhabitations in the whole of the island.

Just when I thought I had finished with my experiences for the day, one young chap from the Kampong came forward and offered to give me a lift in his car to the nearest bus stand. I would be less surprised in Singapore if anyone walked up on the road and asked me to marry his daughter.

That was the kampong spirit.

Fantastic Film after ages - The Prestige

2007-07-16T08:31:00.000-07:00

Just ambled into Tampines Mall today and picked up the VCD of 'The Prestige' never expecting it to be one of the best movies I was to see in recent times.

Based on a novel by Christopher Priest, the concept of the story is nothing like I had ever seen before.

The story revolves around two magicians - Borden and Angiers. At the start of the story they are friends, but one day, a show in their magic act involving Angiers' wife being tied up and dropped into a water casket goes horribly wrong and she dies, apparently because of a wrong knot that was used to tie her wrists by Borden. Angiers never forgives him and they become bitter rivals.

Both continue their respective careers - Angiers assisted by his friend Cutter (brilliantly played by Michael Caine) and Borden by his right hand man Fallon. Throughout, they are so bent on outdoing each other that they go to great leangths to sabotage the others' act. Often succeeding.

The turn in the story comes when Borden comes up with an act that stumps everyone. He terms it 'The Transported Man', and it involves him walking into one door on stage and exiting another, meters away apparently without traversing the space in between. Angiers is obsessed with knowing how his rival managed to get this act. He goes for help to the eminent physicist of the day - Nikola Tesla, who agrees to build for him a machine that will transport him across distances. For a fee.

Angiers' desperation to know his rival's secret leads him on a path to aquire an extraordinary invention of Tesla, which is a crux of the story.

His revenge on Borden - who he considers to be his wife's murderer - is terrible, but so is his own punishment.

The story is so well put together that I had to watch this film two times in a row.
It has the exact feel of a Satyajit Ray supernatural thriller like 'Khagam' or 'Ratanbabu ar Shei Lokta'. Meaning - rivetting.

Hugh Jackman as Angiers and Christian Bale as Borden are a reat to watch - each consumed with a combination of dedication to their art and obsession to outdo their rival. Michael Caine, expectedly shines in every scene he is in.

Watching this story took me back to the times I first read the Satyajit Ray stories I mentioned (no one who hasn't read these stories will have any idea of what I'm talking about), and it is reminiscent of the feel of dark mysteries like Conan Doyle's 'Ring of Toth'.

We see to some extent what the world of a stage magician really is like. Endless research and constant practice. That combined with the obsession of out doing his competition. Of outperforming other performers. The film is made more interesting with the insertion of some real life chanracters into the script. There's Chung Ling Soo - a famous Chinese artist in Victorian times. Well, almost Chinese - for when he died after a bullet catch sequence went wrong on stage, people discovered that he was actually a Caucasian. He had kept up the pretence of being a Chinese all his life to fuel people's interest in his show, as he thought people loved to see magic performed by Orientals. Then of course, there's Nikola Tesla - the brilliant inventor physicist. We get small glimpses of his eccentricity and bitter rivalry with Thomas Edison. A rivalry probably similar to that between Angiers and Borden.

And finally of course, the message of the story being one as old as time itself. Your actions catch up with you. In some way or another.

This one is definitely ranking in my favorite movies ever. Yeehaw.

Harry Potter - The Order of the Phoenix

2007-07-12T19:24:00.000-07:00

I'm not ashamed to say that I'm quite the fan of Harry Potter.

I was introduced to the book when the Goblet of Fire release made the big hoo-haah in India. I then proceeded to read the first three books and was hooked on to them from the very beginning.

When the movies started coming out....well different story altogether. The first movie - Philosopher's Stone wasn't nearly anywhere close to being good. All it did was mildly excite people into being introduced to the characters in the book. Didn't like that at all. I wold think that each film would be made as if it were the last.

The second film (Chamber of Secrets) was better, if only for a cool young Voldemort. Other than that, highly forgettable, probably forgotten.

The third, in my opinion was the worst film in the series. The book (Prisoner of Azkaban) was in my opinion the most exciting book on Harry. I still think it's plotline was the most concise and tight in the series so far. The movie cut out too many exciting things form the book, so it didn't do much for me.

The movie of Goblet of Fire was the first Harry Potter film I actually liked. The movie was suitably dark in feel - after all the story is not entirel pleasant. Lord Voldemort was really evil - Ralph Fiennes was brilliant.

The Order of the Phoenix was a book I didn't think too much about. Too long winded and complicated, I thought. I was openly skeptical about how the film would be like, with all the plot twists and turns. Thankfully, as I found out yesterday, my skepticism was entirely unfounded. The movie is, simply, a must-see.

Director David Yates has done a marvellous job putting together some really A grade performances from his actors.

The chillingly cruel Dolores Umbridge played by Imelda Staunton was my favorite character in the film. At best, she doesn't bat an eyelid before banning all student priviliges. At worst, she calls students to her chambers and drugs them into giving information about other students or makes them write out apologies in their own blood. Staunton plays the character with gleeful aplomb, complete with sadistic chuckle. Her punishment at the end of the film too, is excellent, with Harry stating that he 'must not tell lies' that she meant no harm.

Sirius Black returns in this film. Gary Oldman is one of my favorite actors (in my opinion he stood out in JFK more then any others). He plays Black with the right amount of seriousness and mystique.

And of course, there's the Dark Lord himself. Appearing in Harry's dreams and probably taking control of his mind, Voldemort is back and as powerful as ever. He is regrouping his followers, as seen at the end of Goblet of Fire. Here is is bent on retrieving a prophecy to do with himself and Harry from the department of Mysteries. Ralph Fiennes is as villanous as ever, hissing his way through the role with the menace one would expect of a Sultan of Evil.

It's strange that though the stories are all about Harry, Ron and Hermione these supporting roles are what remains in one's mind after watching films in this series. Maybe it's a tribute to the wealth of acting talent in Britain. Maybe that's the way it's meant to be - and that's what makes these stories click. Whatever the reason - this film is well made, tautly directed and exciting. The fact that Helena Bonham Carter acts as a deranged witch makes me look forward to the next film.

Finally the best part of the film I felt was the bit where Sirius Black died. I always wondered how this would come out on screen. This is the first major character to be killed the the series. Well, the sequence is quickly shot and with enough element of horror to stun the audience. I liked it.

A few points that were a bit of a let down. First - Dumbledore. Well, Michael Gambon is just not Richard Harris. Let's leave it at that. Second - needless bits of romance between Harry and Cho. The two have no chemistry whatsoever on screen. I don't see any relevace to the story either except to remind us that out boy hero is actually an adolescent hero.

In summary, I feel this is the best movie made out of the books so far. This is turning out to be a great series. A must see.

Belated Details of Tioman Trip

2007-07-04T20:21:00.001-07:00

Unreal
Originally uploaded by soham_pablo.

Had an amazing trip to Tioman a few weeks back. Have been meaning to write about it for weeks, but my laziness gene was acting overtime these days.

This be what was done :

. Left home at 5:30 am from Singapore. Took Bus 168 from Tampines to Woodlands Interchange. Felt good to get a bus at that time of the morning, that too on a weekend.
. Reached Woodlands in about 20 minutes. Took bus 950 to the Woodlands Checkpoint. This has got to be one of the worst organised border crossings anywhere in the world. For the small volume of people crossing over each day, there is just one checkpoint office. And boy, does it take a long time to wait for your turn at the immigration and customs. You get off the bus - pass through customs hell at Singapore and walk straight into immigration hell in Johor Bahru. All this at about 7am
. Waited for about 20 minutes for a Singapore bus (170) to show up on the Johor side. This took me to Larkin bus stand, which a helpful local told me was the place to go if I wanted to reach anyplace in Malaysia. There are many busses taking people to Kota raya bus stand, which from descriptions sounded like Shivajinagar bus stand in Pune. That is - you can get nowhere.
. At Larkin bus stand, I found that I was too late to catch the 8:30 bus to Mersing as the last ticket was just sold to the lady in front of me in line. I felt like a case study in a Murphys law demonstration. Next bus - 11:30 am. Bought a ticket. Cheaper ticket prices than India. 10 ringgits for a 3 hour ride. That's about 120 rupees in an Air Conditioned Volvo.
. Went in a metered taxi to see a bit of Johor Bahru while I waited for the time to turn 11. The taxi driver took me to some quaint little places in the town. The Museum is worth a visit, if only to see the lovely colonial architecture. Total cost to see about 7 places - 50 ringgits.
. Bus left on time from Larkin. Keeping in touch with my recent (and not so recent) luck in buses, I get a seat next to a toothless uncle. Anyway, the countryside is absolutely lovely, and is a photo happy delight. You can't sleep for a minute if you are taking this route for the first time, as you always find something to look at on the way.
. Mersing at 2:30. The most polite tout I have seen escorted me to his Ferry Service to Mersing. I get sold a return ticket for 70 ringgits, and a long drawn con game is cut short when he comes to know I already have my hotel booking on the island made.
. The ferry ride is glorious too. The picture with this write up is taken from the ferry while passing one of the thickly forested islands on the South China Sea. My stomach wasn't in best form though, and the 150 minute ferry ride wasn't doing anything to help.
. Reach Tioman at about 5pm. I had booked rooms at the Selang Indah resort at a ridiculous price of 40 ringgits a night. That's a price I could not get in Goa for a similar room.
. Fun starts. Snorkelling, blah blah blah. Beer at 5 ringgits. Whatever.
. Left Tioman next day at 2pm. Long ferry ride back was spent with a British student group.
. Back in Johor Bahru at about 8pm. Take bus back to Singapore and home at 12 am on Sunday night/Monday morning.

Another backpack plan this weekend

2007-06-12T05:53:00.000-07:00

Another plan made to get out of this place.

Plan to take off to Pulau Tioman. Which is off the eastern coast of Peninsula Malaysia. Supposed to be ranked among the most beautiful islands in the world.

Called up just now to find out how mucha budget hotel would cost me (thanks, wikitravel, for leading me on the right track).

A helpful lady from the Salah Indah Resorts that it would be about 40 ringitts to stay in a non air conditioned room with a fan. Which is not bad. Considering the place is just on the beach. That's less than 20 Sing Dollars. The trip, if I do it from Singapore in a bus costs me more than that ! Hmmm....I just hope they keep the reservation.

Plan to leave here early on Saturday, take the bus from Larkin bus stand in Johor and bus it to Mersing. Thence ferry on to Tioman.

Insha Allah.

Coming to terms - Mein Leben (now)

2007-06-02T19:51:00.001-07:00

An interesting day.

Since the time I went through a rather trying phase of my life about 10 years ago, I always had felt curious to know how I could stand up to facing up to the proverbial skeletons in a certain closet of mine. Well, today I discovered that things were gone and buried.

The trying phase basically was one that begun happily enough with my getting a 2 year scholarship aftermy 10th standard. What made the experience a difficult one was my complete lack of maturity at the time to understand my responsibility to myself. In summary, I squandered an opportunity and was not able to complete the required 2 years of study under the scholarship, and returned home to continue my class 12 education at a government school.

Strangely enough this wasn't what made the phase worthy of being called a 'closet cartilaginous framework' either. As I was only about 16 or 17 at the time, repeating a year would not have (and indeed, has not) caused any lasting effect on anyone. What went wrong was a few personal traits - which to put diplomatically ranged from the mildly eccentric to the boderline criminal. It runied my peace of mind, brought untold grief to my parents, and left me teetering a bit as far as living normally was concerned.

Which brings me back to my original point. I always imagined if I could hold up normally when I came into contact with the people who were on the recieving end of my eccentric and at times plainly insane behaviour. It turns out, as a friend of those days pointed out yesterday, that I had been fortunate enough to be in contact with a few people who refrained from making spot judgements - and who probably viewed those days as much a weak moment in my past as I did.

While talking to this old friend of mine, I was reminded of a line from Lion King. 'The past hurts. But you either run from it, or learn from it.'

Though I shared it with no one before, the last (maybe) 6 years has been devoted to coming to terms with that past. Today I am quite happy doing what I am doing, and have nothing to hide from anyone. I am lucky to have a couple of friends who I can fall back on at any time for help. I genereally have a good rapport with people and have made reasonably good aquaintences from all over the world. But nothing can make me forget that one year from a decade ago when my existence went haywire. In many ways, that one year changed my life and built up what I am today.

Last night, I felt that though it had taken years, I had finally learnt to learn from my past.

I felt completely at ease with myself. At ease enough to write this.

KL and Melaka - or a trip back to India

2007-05-27T22:36:00.000-07:00

Went around KL Saturday morning.

Nice city. A real city actually, coming from Singaopore. The whole feel was exactly like Bombay, like I said in the first post.

I walked down from the bus stand, which is in an area called 'Pudu', to see the Petronas towers. It's about a 15 minute walk down a road, surprisingly called Jalan Raja Chulan. A turn into Jalan P Ramlee brings you to the KLCC area with the Petronas towers towering over. The towers are beautiful, and the general area is kept clean. Which is more than one can say about the whole city of KL.

Rules obviously are not followed here as strictly as in ultra modern Singapore. People cross the road where and when they feel like. There are patches of rubbish at intervals. The picture here is taken just about 200 meters from the twin towers.

My cabbie showed me this really cool Hindu temple built just on the outskirts of the city. Apparently it's the largest Murugan statue in the world. Whiat I like about Malaysia was the thick lush green vegetation all about the place, and this temple, built near the Batu caves was completely covered in trees, almost like the Costa Rican initial scenes from Jurassic Park. Beautiful. I didn't climb up to the caves coz the taxi meter was on the run. Next time, maybe.

In the afternoon, took a bus to Melaka, which turned out to be almost a carbon copy of Goa. It was a Portuguese colony as well, so the architechture was very similar. There are some of the most fantastic eat outs I have seen there, and compared to Singapore - boy, is it cheap ! I took a rick ride around Chinatown and the colonial areas. Didn't get time to do the Malay parts. Next time, surely, as I'm definitely coming back here.

All in all, a fantastic weekend. I liked it more than travelling around in European places as there was so much in common with India here. And it was interesting to see the extent to which Indian culture had extended in the past. We just read about European explorers and conquerors in history books, but when you know that the Cholas ruled Kedah for a long while, it makes you think.

So, in anticipation of my next trip here - probably to the East coast of Melaya now - signing off.

Malaysia - backpack

2007-05-25T15:16:00.000-07:00

Last evening at about 3 pm I decided I would not be in Singapore during the weekend.

Looked over on wikipedia whether Indonesia or Malaysia would be a better option and decided on Melaka, Malaysia.

At about 10 pm I was at the bus stand in Singapore looking for a ride to Melaka. None available. The last bus had left. I took the bus to Kuala Lumpur instead (which saves me the cost of staying in a hotel for a night - coz I would reach Melaka at about 2 am).

Went through the most funny immigration and customs at the Singapore Malaysia border. In a bus stand.

Reached KL about 2 and a half hours back. The city is just like Bombay. Exactly the same heat, feel and bustle. At 4 am there streets were full of people, hangers-on and taxis.

And boy, is it HOT. I needed a couple of hours of sleep, and didn't want to spend too much - so found this backpackers' Inn on the Pudu road (oposite Hotel Pudu Raya) which charged me 15 Ringitts for a 2 hour sleep. Worked for me.

Now that I've slept and splashed some (smelly) water on my face, I'm ready to hit the road again. The plan is to roam around KL for a while before taking a bus to Melaka.

PS : The net cafe I am in right now does not have a broadband connection. Reminds me of the cafe in Ribandar, Goa. Doesn't take much to remind one that one is out of ultra modern Singapore.

In Singapore

2007-05-13T22:49:00.001-07:00

Singapore Boat Quay at night
Originally uploaded by soham_pablo.

Well, it's been a week since I have temporarily relocated to Singapore.

Place is picture perfect, as is expected of Singapore. On the surface, that is.

Spent the weekend roaming around the southern part of the island, which is the business district.

It's quite unique acutally, a place as tiny as this having so much strategic importance for so many centuries.

One of the trivial things that jarred me :
I went to the National Library on Saturday to become a member. The lady who was processing my application asked me whether my address was still 420 Marine Parade Road. That was the place I used to stay in when I was in this place in 1996-97. Exactly 10 years ago. She went on to recite my then phone number and old passport number. I was quite alarmed by the ease with which she pulled out details about me. Being in the IT field myself, it's not any surprise that data like this is meant to be pulled out exactly the way she did, but it unnerved me all the same. Just reminded me that nothing you do in this digital world is ever forgotten. Every single deed (or misdeed) is there. Somewhere.

Speaking of the National Library here, it's nothing short of fantastic. 16 floors of books. I can see many weekends being spent there.

End of a Project - Some ramblings

2007-04-20T01:18:00.000-07:00

New day. Finished with my first project in my company.

The project took me from Pune to Chennai to Luton(England) to Bridgend(Wales) to Coventry(England) to Chennai and finally back to Pune.

My two bits about this experience.

o Chennai is a nice city. Good roads. Busses that take you pretty much anywhere. But home to a unique species of disease causing organism called 'Autodrivus Madrasis'. These organisms cause an instant dislike of the city within anyone coming to Chennai from any other place. They are a rude species, prone to pulling numbers out of their asses at random and terming it as 'auto fare'.

o Competition is cut throat. You got to be the best to just get ahead in the game. The winner however, need not be the best player in the game.

o In one day, I met a taxi driver in Chennai who was offended as I thought he was a Malayali, and a taxi driver in Mumbai who wanted me to trust him so far as to leave my laptop with him as I took a leak just because he was from Pune and not Mumbai. Verbatim 'Mai Pune se hoon sir, Bombaiyya nahi. Kuch nahi hoga aapke samaan ko'. Made me think a bit. There are a lot of people out there who think that their credentials as members of a certain city or community automatically labels them as paragons of virtue. Stereotypes. Like I can't imagine someone seeling the idea 'Mai Bihar se hoon sir, de do aapka laptop. Kuch nahi hoga.' to anyone today. Pity that is not the case though, as I have been looted on various occasions by various people, not all hailing from places connected with crime. I'm not kidding; I have faced a situation when a MONK tried to con me into buying his glasses which he claimed were authentic Ray Bans.

o London is one place I would go back to, given a chance. It's THE most exciting and vibrant place I have ever seen, and probably ever will see. Not that I will not see more places. I just don't think any city can get any better than that.

o In India I have been to and/or stayed at the following places: Bangalore, Chennai, Goa, Pune, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Delhi, Jamshedpur, Pondicherry, Agra. That's in recent memory. Of these, my first choice of a great place to live in would be Hyderabad. Next would be Pune. Goa would be third. Then comes a mix of the rest. Oh yeah, I would NEVER stay in Kolkata. The reasons for the above : Hyderabad has a good mix of nice people, fantastic food, cheaper than average living rates, amazing infrastructure, good jobs, and places to see. Pune has crappy roads and vague people, but some amazing climate and my friends crowd. Goa, well, is Goa. Kolkata has traffic that snarls, crowds that smell, people that suck and climate that makes you want to move to a cooler part of the world - like the Equator. The food, however makes Kolkata a place to visit often, if not a place to settle down in.

o The fabled London underground (and other train services in the UK) is a rip off (like much of the things in the UK). Inordinately overpriced, and often malfunctioning.

o Russel Peters is a goddamn funny guy. I watch his videos when there's nothing else to do and it sure does lighten my mood.

o I don't know if I will live to see a day when there is a 'Speaker's Corner' anywhere in India akin to the one in London.

o The variety in India is unimaginable. We all take it for granted. I was at Chennai at 12 am one night boarding a bus, and the bus broke down at about 2am. I don't know where the place was. All I know was that the people there spoke a variety of Tamil the likes of which I had never heard. In 2 hours I had entered a place which was as foreign to me as Timbuktu would be.

o I spoke more Hindi on London roads than in Chennai.

o Bengalis are everywhere. I didn't hear Gujrati or Marathi being spoken in the malls in Chennai, but you can bet your last bullet that you will hear a shrill voice every time you visit there screaming something like 'Ai Mishti, babar hath charish na!' ( Mishti, don't leave daddy's hand) or 'Bobo....Bobo edike aay, bathroom ta ei dike'. (Bobo, come here, the bathroom is this way). Also there is serious talk of changing the name of Whitechapel area in London to Banglatown.

o If anyone goes to Chennai, stay clear of Shollinganallur.

o If anyone comes to Pune, stay clear of the roads. You could hurt yourself just breathing on the roads. If you decide to hold your breath to avoid breathing in copious amounts of carbon monoxide, you could be helped on your way to the other world by a motorist who thinks driving on the wrong side of the road will please his 'kula deva'.

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Kaaka Kaaka and Vettaiyadu Vilayadu

2007-04-12T02:09:00.000-07:00

Procured a good copy of Kaaka Kaaka finally. Had watched it before in Pune on some seriously crapped out camera print.

It had been some time since I watched such a slick and well directed movie. Of course, there's a kick ass story and good performances to match.

Most of the story is told in flashback, with the grievously wounded cop Anbuselvam (Surya) - left for dead - having his life pass before his eyes. The story is filmed in a gritty no-nonsense style, showing how Anbuselvam and his posse of cops go about with their 'encounters' - which is plain and simple murder - of criminals in the city.

In the course of their city cleaning drives, they cross the path of one Jeevan (registered Hindi abuse spewing psycopath), who is baying for Anbuselvam's blood. Reason for baying - Anbu has killed Jeevan's brother Sethu in, yes, an encounter.

What follows is a series of ambushes and counter ambushes (with one sequence mercilessly ripped out of that master movie Seven), which predictably ends up in Anbuselvam's girlfriend-turned-wife(played by Jyothika) being kidnapped by the evil psychopath on their wedding night.

Unluckily for Jeevan, Anbu doesn't die in the skirmish. Instead, he gets his act together again to come back for Jeevan, whom he does get - after treating the audience to a staple diet of Tamil movie fighting techniques, complete with sound effects accompanying each punch loud enough to wake the hounds of hell.

Though the story seems pretty typical for an Indian cops and robbers film, the reasons for this movie standing out are as follows:

1) Very very few Indian commercial movies have a good treatment of romance. This film is an exception. Surya and Jyothika's chemistry is brilliant, and their performances are completely believable. Surya and Jyothika behave gracefully with each other, and not with a childish craziness(by the girl) or downright insolence(by the boy), which is the norm in most Indian films.
2) The screenplay is tight, and even with such an obvious story, manages to keep the audience on the edge of the seat. Gautham Menon's direction is really, really good.
3) The cinematography is brilliant. The look of the film is gritty and the romantic scenes are filmed with soft color which add a great deal to the mood of the film.
4) All the characters - from the trigger-happy cops down to the autorickshaw driver with one scene in the movie - give believable performances.
5) The music. Harris Jayaraj's score is simply amazing. The Uyirin Uyire song that kick starts the movie is simply amazing. I read it was filmed somewhere in the Andamans. Treat to watch.

Summary in two words : Must see.

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Vettaiyadu Vilayadu seems like a follow up to Kaaka Kaaka, and I won't be surprised if Gautham Menon makes a third cop movie to do a Ram Gopal Varma-esqe 'trilogy' (think Satya, Company and Sarkar).

Gautham Menon was obviously able to attract larger funding for this movie after Kaaka Kaaka made thumping collections everywhere (there's even talk of the film being remade in Hollywood). The story this time revolves around Raghavan, played by the redoubtable Kamal Haasan. I was really happy to see one of my all time favorite stars back in the saddle and doing what he does best - acting. Please Kamal, stay off the directing, the music, the screenplay and other aspect of your respectable trade. Stick to acting. You are great.

Though the story here tries very hard to outdo Kaaka Kaaka, it's mainly let down by two things - a story pulled on for a bit too long, and the weird villains. The story here, like in Kaaka Kaaka, is not very inventive. We have 2 serial killers on the loose who get their kicks from raping and killing young women and dismembering them. It's our man Kamal's job to get them.

Kudos to Gautham Menon for using an ordinary plot like this yet again and pull it out of the ordinary. Almost half the film takes place in New York, where Kamal's friend and mentor Arokiaraj has been found murdered along with his wife.

What follows is a series of gory encounters with the killers doing their job, and Kamal trying to outsmart them. As with Kaaka Kaaka's Anbuselvam, Raghavan is hacked up and left for dead by the killers in NY. Turns out movie villains never learn.

The story shifts to India, where the chase continues, till Raghavan finally gets his men after a well executed trademark Tamil movie fight sequence.

Sounds ordinary again, but here are the plus points :

1) Again, a very beautiful and unique handling of the romantic angle with Jyothika.
2) Amazing cinematography
3) One great song
4) Kamal Haasan.

The freaky let downs :

1) Too much focus on the gore. Gautham should know that one can pass on a message without zooming the camera on slitting throats and dismembered fingers.
2) King weird villains. They are supposedly brilliant medical students from Brooklyn university. Hmmmm. Apparently they are gay as a Christmas tree as well. Well, why do they go around raping young girls then ? If they are such uphill gardeners and fruit picking sodomites, why are they so insistent on girls ? No answer.
3) The last third of the film goes on for too long, with the chase going on endlessly into various Indian towns.
4) What's with those date markers ? Don't think they were really necessary for a film like this. Once in a while maybe, not all the time all through the film.

Summary : Good film. Kamal saves it. Without him, this would be ordinary.

BJP CD

2007-04-11T02:53:00.000-07:00

Was curious to know what the BJP CD that was causing all the controversy was all about.

After days of forgetting to do a Google search, finally hit on it today, and found this report on the Hindu (7 April 2007).

Some clips from the alleged contents of the CD.

.....Pakistan wants to break India into pieces. Hyenas hungry for political power are egging them on. They have forgotten what the consequences of this will be. Now, ordinary people of India have to think, do they want slavery again or Ram Rajya in their independent India.

The present government is giving full support to butchers. Cruel atrocities are being committed on Gaumata.

Hindus will produce two children and Muslims will marry five times and produce 35 pups and make this country into an Islamic state.

That Aurangzeb earlier cut your choti [tuft of hair] and took off your sacred thread. And now these tikas on your forehead will have to go and in their place you will have to grow beards.

Ha ha ha! When Hindu girls get ensnared by us, they scream and shout but sadly there is no one to listen to them and we have great fun. Ha ha ha ha ha!

And now, that day is not far away when we will be afraid to even call ourselves Hindu, and you will never be able to find a Sohanlal, Mohanlal, Atmaram, or Radhakrishan anywhere. Wherever we look, we will only see Abbas, Naqvi, Rizvi, and Maulvi. All schools and colleges will be shut down. What will open are madrasas from where fatwas will be issued to drive Hindus out from this country, enslave them — because they want to rule over here, they want to make India into Pakistan. Then it will be difficult for Hindu girls to ever venture outside their houses. Muslims will seize their houses.

Just as the slogan of Vande Mataram inspired us to throw out the British, today we have to take an oath to drive those traitors out of the country.

I don't know how much of this is true, but then again, I have never stayed in villages, and more importantly, I've never stayed in Uttar Pradesh. What goes on in vote bank politics is a complete mystery to me.

I'm not the biggest fan of the Indian Government's handling of minority issues. I think we are the weirdest country in the world to have different laws for people belonging to different religions. I would support people who protest this pandering to minorities to secure votes.

But if the alleged contents of the CD are this inflammatory and disgusting, I really don't know what to say. I can't believe that a propaganda CD like this has come out without the knowledge of the BJP higher ups.

I can't see where this hate mongering will get us as a country. This politics of hate. Instead of uniting people to rise up in spirit, the agenda seems to be to create as many divisions as possible.

I'm quite happy with my opinion of religion that I expressed almost exactly a year ago.

Ashley Judd Interview - NDTV

2007-04-05T08:19:00.000-07:00

After watching this interview with Ashley Judd by Prannoy Roy , I found myself wondering how tame Prannoy Roy looked in front of Ashley Judd.

I hope he is not withering away. He looked like a shadow of his former 'The World This Week' self.

I would encourage anyone who comes by the link to this interview to watch it. It's really good. There are celebrities who do public service for show, and there are those who don't. Ashley Judd is among those who comes across as one of those who is committed, speaks her mind and very eloquent.

Hope there are more like her.

Ubuntu

2007-04-05T00:50:00.001-07:00

I have long thought, that if someone were to ask me what the most astounding event of the last 50 years has been, I would say it the fact that South Africa achieved it's removal of apartheid without massive bloodshed.

The black South African population was living under absolutely inhuman conditions for well over 60 years under a psychopathic government, and when the time came for justice and a change in the system, the inspired leadership of people like Mandela and Archbishop Tutu made sure that there wasn't the mass uprisings and revenge killings everyone had expected.

Given the enormity of the injustices perpetrated by the Afrikaans government on black South Africans, it seems to me that if there is anything more astounding than the largely peaceful and smooth change of power, it is the fact that this event in history is not a major part of history lessons worldwide. Seems to me that Mandela and Tutu should be compulsory study for any student of any school anywhere in the world.

The principle of their spirit of forgiveness is drawn from the Sub Saharan concept of "Ubuntu". The word, I feel is untranslatable. The dictionaries give the meaning to be a concept such as "I am what I am because of what we all are". It's the equivalent of the "Circle of Life" concept from the Lion King movies. Only here, we are not talking about cartoons. African cultural concepts like these made a person like Mandela able to forgive his White enemies for locking him up in a cell for 27 years, for the "crime" of speaking out his mind and having a free spirit. Twenty Seven years. I haven't lived on this planet for 27 years, and this man spent 27 years in prison, and lived to forgive those who did that to him. I can't understand it.

Why is all this ranting coming out all of a sudden ? Coz I watched this movie called 'In My Country' last night.
It's not the greatest of movies, but it's one of the few (the only one I have seen) that brings out the how the "Truth and Reconciliation Hearings" took place in South Africa.

The story is fairly typical, as movies go. A white South African radio journalist Anna Malan (played well by Juliette Binoche) meets a black American print jouno called Langston Whitfield (played with panache by the always superb Samuel L. Jackson) on the road while following about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission into the remote villages of the country. The principle of the hearings were simple. It encouraged perpetrators of human right violations to come out and tell the truth, make a full confession of their role, and prove that they were politically motivated and were following orders. If they could do the above, they were promised amnesty.

The hearings bring out hordes of people, some of which the film shows. To be fair, there were some whites came out to voice out their complaints against assaults by black South Africans as well, and the film does show that. The principal players in the film - Langston, Anna and her assistant Dumi, hear gory tale after gory tale, and learn about 'ubuntu' in the process.

One of the most poignant scenes in the movie shows an old man asking a white ex-policeman why he broke 5 of his trees which he had planted and tended for since years. At times, the audience, like the journalists in the film start to lose their minds with the excesses committed by the state. In one scene Anna Malan just loses control and starts laughing to hear that a man went back to a farm one day after his son's death to pick up his son's brains so that he would have something to bury.

The film led me to ask myself a few questions :

1) Just how beautiful is Africa ?

2) Just why are film makers get tempted to add needless romance in an otherwise involving story ? The chemistry between Jackson and Binoche is as visible as a lot of nothing in the Sahara. The romantic angle was completely dispensable.

All in all, this was a good movie, which brings out an important historical event of our times, with strong performances, and beautiful photography.

If only it had left out the lovey dovey bits, this would have been a clincher.

Now, off to read more about Ubuntu.

The World is Yours

2007-03-29T01:10:00.000-07:00

I remember when I was about 9 years old my parents and I were passing by the Plaza cinema on MG road in Bangalore which was showing Brian De Palma's 'Scarface'.I guess my father's film fanaticism of his bachelor days had still not subsided yet (sadly, it has mellowed now), coz he took my mother and myself to see the movie which had started about 10 minutes back. It was considerably embarrassing for my parents (not for me :) ) what with the pretty drastic language (for the time. That was before I were exposed to Martin Scorsese and Joe Pesci !) and some very little nudity in the film. I clearly remember the hall gasping and laughing at a certain line in the movie where a person said 'He wants to protect you from guys like that asshole...'. Asshole was still a surprising swear word in movies at the time. That's nostalgia.

Anyway coming back to Scarface. I watched it again yesterday after a very long time, and realized again what a cult movie it is. In any case the story of a man who gets it all and loses it through his own excesses is bound to be interesting.

The story revolves around Al Pacino's character Anthony 'Tony' Montana, who is one of a lot of Cuban criminals sent over to Miami on the Mariel landings by Fidel Castro as a strategic attempt to rid himself of some of his crazy drudges to US shores. Tony is a character we hate right from the moment we see him. Pacino plays him as a true anti-hero. Not for a moment in the film does the audience feel any pity for the character. Tony works his way up from being a dishwasher at a roadside restaurant in Miami to a powerful drug lord. He starts work in the drug rings as a pusher first, then an underpin to a powerful drug baron, and finally after deposing the baron ends up as the top guy himself.

On the side he has a mother who can't stand him and a sister, Gina, who loves him ( and more so his money ). Tony's best friend and longtime Cuban companion Manolo has his eyes on Gina, but knowing Tony's crackpot possessiveness, does not make his feeling public.

The film goes on at a brisk pace with some great music and in the soundtrack to keep the momentum going.

Tony downfall comes when he double crosses a powerful Bolivian partner who has already warned Montana 'never to f*&^% him. Never.' Very Hindi filmy, yes. But it works. The Bolivian sends out a mini army to ambush Tony in his mansion, who by this stage has become a complete wreck. He has killed his friend in a fit of rage and turned himself in a coke snorting maniac.

The film itself, as a I find out was not very well received when it was released. It went on to become a cult classic later, what with Pacino's rendition of the now classic 'Say hello to my leetle friend....!'

Anyways, a trip down memory lane on this one...A must see.

Playa Giron - Silvio Rodriguez

2007-03-15T04:04:00.000-07:00

I am addicted to this song these days....

I had never heard of the singer Silvio Rodriguez before....on looking up I find he is very famous.

His voice, and those guitar strings sure are haunting.

Compañeros poetas,
tomando en cuenta los últimos sucesos
en la poesía, quisiera preguntar
-me urge-,
¿qué tipo de adjetivos se deben usar
para hacer el poema de un barco
sin que se haga sentimental, fuera de la vanguardia
o evidente panfleto,
si debo usar palabras como
Flota Cubana de Pesca y
"Playa Girón"?

Compañeros de música,
tomando en cuenta esas politonales
y audaces canciones,
quisiera preguntar
-me urge-,
¿qué tipo de armonía se debe usar
para hacer la canción de este barco
con hombres de poca niñes, hombres y solamente
hombres sobre cubierta,
hombres negros y rojos y azules,
los hombres que pueblam el "Playa Girón"?

Compañeros de historia,
tomando en cuenta lo implacable
que bede ser la verdad, quisiera preguntar
-me urge tanto-,
¿qué debiera decir, qué fronteras debo respetar?
Si alguien roba comida
y después da la vida, ¿qué hacer?
¿Hasta dónde debemos practicar las verdades?
¿Hasta dónde sabemos?
Que escriban, pues, la historia, su historia,
los hombres del "Playa Girón"

Discovery of India

2007-03-12T06:34:00.000-07:00

Finished reading The Discovery of India yesterday. In all fairness, this guy Nehru has got to have been one of the brainiest people ever. The clear thoughts, the lucid language and the immense knowledge of the man grips the reader throughout the book.

Like many people of my age whom I know, I was introduced to this book through that masterpiece of a serial made by Shyam Benegal - Bharat Ek Khoj. The Sunday nights of that year (I think it was 1988 or 1989) was marked by the haunting music of Vanraj Bhatia. My folks had a small black and white Oscar TV set with a six inch screen on which we used to watch the serial in our lodgings at Pottery Town, Bangalore.

A few months back, I managed to get the mp3 of the start and end title of Bharat Ek Khoj. Somehow it takes me right back to those times. Almost chilling. The deep baritones of Om Puri who played Aurangazeb facing off with the equally brilliant Naseeruddin Shah as Shivaji. I remember one dialog above all:

Aurangazeb : Aap hame aapka bada bhai samajhiye.
Shivaji : Aapke bhai se saath kya solooh kiya jata hai woh hame achchi tarah pata hai.

After hearing the song again a few hundred times (lyrics given below), I decided to get down to reading the book. I have never been a big fan of Nehru, so was a bit reluctant to start off with it. But as they say, the book had me at hello. It takes an effort to put this book down.

The history of the Indian subcontinent is presented in layman's tongue - right from describing the time of the Indus Valley civilization up until the state of he country in 1945.

When I think that all this work was done not from the comfort of the man's study, but from a cell in Ahmadnagar from 1942-1946, it's hard for me not to have respect for the man. His command over history and the English language are just extraordinary.

Unlike Nehru's other masterpiece - Glimpses of World History - this is a regular book with chapter, as opposed to compiled letters.

Not only does the book provide a great way to learn Indian history, it also analyzes in depth the philosophy of Indian life.

And surely no one can argue, that the prescribed history text books in our schools, not to mention the teachers who teach history, leave a lot to be desired when it comes to arousing the interests of students in their own cultures and in those of others. Our history texts are like bitter pills one has to forcibly tolerate till the last exam of the year is over. How beautiful if a book like Amartya Sen's 'Arguementative Indian' or Nehru's 'Discovery Of India' were made compulsory reading for high school students.

In short, this book is a must read, for anyone.

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To conclude, here are the verses from the start and end titles of Bharat Ek Khoj.

Srishtee se pehle sat nahin thaa, asat bhi nahin
(Before creation there was no truth, or untruth)
Antariksh bhi nahin, akash bhin nahin thaa
(no universe, not even the sky)
chhipaa thaa kyaa kahaan, kisne dhakaa thaa
(Where was it hidden, who hid it ?)
us pal to agam, atal jal bhi kahaan thaa
(At that time there was no water)

Srishtee kaa kaun hai kartaa
(who is he creator ?)
Kartaa hai vaa akartaa
(…)
Oonche aakash mein rahtaa
(Who stays up there in the sky )
Sada adhyaksh banaa rahtaa
(who is in charge)
Wahin sachmuch mein jaantaa..Yaa nahin bhi jaanataa
(He truly must know everything, and maybe not!)
Hai kisi ko nahin pataa, nahin pataa,
(no one knows..no one knows)
Nahin hai pataa, nahin hai pataa

Sanskrit….

Weh tha hiranyagarbh srishti se pehle vidyamaan
(he was born out of the depths..before creation)
Wahi to saare bhoot jaat ka swami mahaan
(he is the lord of all life)
jo hai astitvamaana dharti aasmaan dhaaran kar
(the one who is there over land and sky)
Aise kis devta ki upasana karein hum avi dekar
(who is this god who we pray to ?)

Jis ke bal par tejomay hai ambar
(He whose strength the sky is held up with)
Prithvi hari bhari sthapit sthir
(and the earth lies green and stable)
Swarg aur sooraj bhi sthir
(the heavens and the sun stay stable)
Aise kis devta ki upasana karein hum avi dekar
(who is this god who we pray to ?)
Garbh mein apne agni dhaaran kar paida kar
(In whose womb lies fire)
Vyapa tha jal idhar udhar neeche upar
(who controls here, there and everywhere)
Jagaa chuke vo ka ekameva pran banker
(who gives rise to life)
Aise kis devta ki upasana karein hum avi dekar
(who is this god who we pray to ?)

Om ! Srishti nirmata swarg rachiyata purvaj raksha kar
(creator of creation, the heavens and who looked after our ancestors)
Satya dharma palak atul jal niyamak raksha kar
(who keeps the truth, justice and the essence of life)
Phaili hain dishayen bahu jaisi uski sab mein sab par
(whose hands seem to stretch over all there is )
Aise hi devta ki upasana kare hum avi dekar
(this is the god who we pray to)
Aise hi devta ki upasana kare hum avi dekar
(this is the god who we pray to)

Comfortably numb

2007-03-09T06:40:00.000-08:00

Found the version of Comfortably numb that was used in 'The Departed'...

Here it is.

Great Article about Charles Simonyi

2007-03-05T05:49:00.000-08:00

Came across this article about Charles Simonyi , one of the prime architects of the Microsoft Office suite.

The article, published by Technology Review, is a fascinating insight into the life of a man who created what is the probably most widely used software ever.

It also gives a great look into the world of computers, as his life closely mirrors that of the evolving PC computing world across the years.

A must read.

Hilarious Ad

2007-03-03T21:45:00.000-08:00

The other day, I came across this ad on TV. It was so goddamn hilarious, I coudln't stop laughing for long after it was off the screen.

Just to what on earth the product is, I registered today at fropper. Turns out it is nothin that special - a very regular run of the mill people connection website with the requisite blog page, photo sharing page etc.

I was just impressed with the hilarity and outrageousness of the ad.

Small update

2007-03-01T04:42:00.000-08:00

Just tried searching for "Iraq" on flickr photos. Not a single picture of an Iraqi came up even after browsing 10 pages ! Everything was about protests by foreigners against the Iraq war !

Cat and mouse - Infernal Affairs

2007-02-28T06:50:00.000-08:00

I remember gushing over Martin Scorsese's "The Departed" a few months back.

And what a great movie it was.

When I was in the UK, I picked up the DVD's to the Infernal Affairs trilogy, the first episode of which has inspired the Departed screenplay. It's quite ironical actually, that quintessential New Yorker Scorsese should get his first (richly deserved) Oscar for a movie that was actually an Asian product. Of course Scorsese is a self confessed fan of Asian (especially Japanese) cinema. Still, I find it a bit hard to take that the so-called Academy of Motion Pictures overlooked his brilliance in films like Taxi Driver, Goodfellas and Aviator.

Anyway, coming back to Infernal Affairs.

A brilliant series, if there ever was any. I have seen the entire series 5 times till now, and have found something new in it each time I watched the films. I became a fan of Tony Leung ever since I saw 'Hero', and this film just strengthens my view that he is one of the finest actors today. Many people I showed the IA films to felt that Departed was better. I beg to differ. Departed shows a completely Americanized view of the story. Much of the force behind the story and characters I felt was brought out by the use of expletives and innuendoes (apart from, of course some kick ass performances). In the IA series, the tension and the force is brought out primarily by the script and the performances. There are absolutely no expletives used and hell, there isn't even much violence. No blood spurting out everywhere.

This is not to say Departed was a bad film. It works, surely. But watching the IA series, especially the first part, and watching the story unfold in its originally intended Chinese setting, is an absolute joy. People who have watched Departed may find the performances in this movie a bit muted on the first viewing. Especially with the firebrand performances of Leo DiCaprio and Matt Damon fresh on the mind. I felt the same way. But on the second watch and on consequent viewings, that view changes. As one my friends said 'You can see Chinese culture here. There's about 5000 years of refinement behind this, in front of which the Americans are just barbarians'.

I think we have got so used to American cinema that we fail to appreciate this.

The second and third installments of the story, a la the Godfather series switch between the past and the present, showing in detail the lives of the protagonists Lau Kin Ming (bad guy in good team - Matt Damon's character) and Chan Win Yang (good guy mole in the gangsters - Leo character).

The actors, especially Anthony Wong as the redoubtable Inspector Wong, are fantastic.

For those who haven't watched this film, it is strongly recommended.

Go for it.

To finish, here's a video made form scenes from IA 1.

Doodles

2007-02-12T05:05:00.000-08:00

Found this joke pretty hilarious :

Heaven : Japanese home, Chinese food, American Salary, Indian wife.
Hell : Japanese food, Chinese home, American Wife, Indian salary.

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Found a site which has some beautiful pictures of London.

Goodbye Britain

2007-02-02T08:50:00.001-08:00

Amazing guy - in the middle of Speaker's Corner madness
Originally uploaded by soham_pablo.

So it's been a week today since I left England.

A good two and a half months it has been too. Things learnt, places seen.

Of all the lovely things I had seen there, this is the one sight I will probably miss the most. Not as imposing as Trafalgar square, nor as stunning as a Broadway show. Not nearly as photogenic as Picadilly Circus, nor does it have the buzz of Soho.

This guy comes every day to Speaker's Corner at Hyde Park and stands up for hours with his 'Free Hugs' sign. Speaker's corner as I saw it was a place for all the religious loonies of London to congregate in and yell in all directions about the greatness of their god. Allah is the greatest ! Jesus is best ! That's all you hear there on Sundays. And in the middle of all this this guy quietly goes around giving people 'free hugs'.

I couldn't help admire his tenacity and ingenuity. Apparently he has his own web page. I don't know. Didn't get his name. I think it's this page . Does look like the same guy.

Only in London I guess do all and sundry have this chance to let their feelings fly about religion. I remember thinking you could get killed in India for doing it, let alone in other less tolerant nations.

This was by far the best trip I have had ever. Standing in the middle of Picadilly Circus gave me a chill of excitement. Also, visiting Baker Street and Whitechapel. I mean, they are no different to look at than any other part of London, but Sherlock Holmes ! Jack The Ripper ! Man.

London itself was so thrilling, I often forget that I visited that other wonderful place called Oxford. It's an understatement to say that one feels excited to stand in front of a college that's been there since the mid 1300's. And everything's maintained so beautifully !

I was left thinking of how little history the country has to show, and how beautifully they have preserved what little they have. And in a tourist friendly manner. I remember being dismayed while visiting the Karla caves near Lonavala once, for their state of disrepair. And those caves easily date back to before 600 AD.

Then there was Brighton. Lovely beach town. Also, probably the only town in Uk to have auto rickshaws ! As tourist attractions obviously.

All in all, a great trip. Nonetheless happy to be back. All these months in the horrible weather of wintry England have taught me the importance of the freedom to be able to get out at 10 in the night and roam the streets in my shorts without getting my nethers frozen in 5 minutes.

These are a few of my favorite pictures

2007-01-12T02:26:00.000-08:00

I have been clicking away for a little less than a year now.

Have been reading about photography and all such stuff whenever I get the time.

Here is a slideshow of my favorite pictures taken since February 2006.

Tempted to try this out...

2007-01-10T01:36:00.000-08:00

Went over to Canterbury this Sunday.

Beautiful historical place.......housing the highest seat in the Anglican church...the Archbishop of Canterbury. And as is typical of English historic places, it is filled with places where someone or the other was brutally butchered !

Great man gone nuts - sad to see

2006-12-29T00:57:00.000-08:00

For me - officially - Mel Gibson has lost it.

Last night I watched his latest excuse for a blood bath - Apocalypto.

On afterthought, I sat down to think the reasons behind the making of this movie. Maybe it is to show the depravity and madness of a civilization before its collapse. Maybe it is to show the desperation of a hunted man. Or maybe it is another lip smacking opportunity to splash some blood, guts, livers and other organs on screen. On further thought I concluded that option 3 was closest to the right answer.

This movie reminded me of Kamal Haasan's self indulgent wacko movie Alaivandaan (released in Hindi as 'Abhay'). Actually Mel and Kamal are getting very similar. Two very talented actors who have garnered so much power in their respective film industries that they are now not answerable to anyone. Then they get into directing movies. And sadly, in their passion to make us watch their points of view, churning out insane films time after time.

I honestly thought Passion of the Christ was the weirdest Gibson would go to. I mean, I appreciate the idea of making a film about the Maya Civilization - something we don't see everyday. But, last I knew, a film has a story. As in - a plot. As in - a start, a middle and an end.

While watching this film, I was hoping every five minutes for a story to begin, and before long I moved the mouse on my laptop and found the progress bar on the media player almost three quarters down the way. Still no story. Only gore. I had seen a tapir being impaled. I had seen a man having a nightmare about a man standing with his guts in his hand. I had seen extremely pregnant women being thrown around. Throats slit. High priests cutting people hearts out and decapitating them. But what I hadn't seen yet was a story.

The events in the film centre around a man called Jaguar Paw (who incidentally gets chased by a Jaguar in the movie), whose village is pillaged by ...... well, pillagers. We never get to know very clearly who these pillagers are. They capture people (yes, the picture isn't pretty, as capture in a Mel Gibson movie means smashed faces, rapes, impalement etc. ) from JP's village and take them to a sacrificial ground, where a high priest is busy ripping people's hearts out. At this point comes the cheesiest part of the whole film. While out hero JP is about to be relieved of the big red pumping organ in his body, there is a solar eclipse. Man. Everyone I knew said 'Tintin' at the same time. I swear it. Ok, not everyone. Some said 'Prisoners of the Sun'. As a result of this eclipse, JP is not sacrificed as the high priest has decided that the Sun God has had enough. Now through another series of violent incidents, JP escapes and runs off into the forest. Oh, yeah, in the middle of all this madness I forgot to mention that JP's wife and son (Seven and Turtle Run - that's their names) are stuck in a well all this time. His wife is heavily pregnant and being in a hole in the ground is not doing her any good.

If anyone is still reading this, there's still a little more to go.

Jaguar Paw keeps running through the jungle followed by half a dozen homicidal maniacs who want his hide for something I lost track of. Oh yeah , he killed someone's son. But then, one of the homicidal maniacs killed Jaguar Paw's father (Flint Sky. Yes that's a name. I don't know why Mel didn't leave native Maya names in the script. He left the native Aramaic versions of Jesus and his disciples in POTC. Why try and translate Mayan names into english ? We can pronounce Schwarzenegger, can't we ? Why not Mayan names ?). Coming back to what's left of the film, the ending can be summarised as - everyone except JP, his wife and kids die. And in one brief shot we get to see Spanish ships landing on the shores of what is now Mexico.

Now if anyone can tell me what this movie means, I can at least promise a dinner. Mayans as far as I knew were a great civilization. Yes, I'm sure there were depraved wacko things going on, but hell, that happens today. And my whole point is - what is this film trying to say ?

Maybe I am too dumb to understand big man Mel Gibson's philosophy.

As far as Apocalypto goes, it makes you feel almost happy that the Spanish conquered the wacked out people shown in the film.

Off to another dose of disprin.

Small learning update

2006-12-27T00:32:00.000-08:00

I guess most people already know this, but here goes.

I just came to know from someone this wekeend about the origin of a popular nursery rhyme.

During the Black Plague of London in 1665, children made up this little poem.

A-Ring-a-ring of roses (one of the symptoms of the plague was a series of red marks on the body that looked like rose petals)
A pocket full of posies (refers to the herbs people carried around in their pockets as an antidote)
Atishoo! Atishoo! (Sneezing....another symptom of the plague)
All fall down ... (Needs no explanation I suppose).

The plague killed about 100000 people in one year, wiping about more than a fifth of London's population at the time.

Ironical this rhyme is now sung all around the world today as one of the most innocent expressions of collective childish happiness !!!

London Diaries

2006-12-25T09:18:00.000-08:00

London skyline in the evening
Originally uploaded by soham_pablo.

"It is difficult to speak adequately, or justly, of London. It is not a pleasant place; it is not agreeable, or easy, or exempt from reproach. It is only magnificent." - Henry James

It's really true. I don't know if any city can get much better or more full of excitement than London.

The feeling of standing in Trafalgar Square or Picadilly Circus and hearing a hundred languages being spoken all around you is nothing short of indescribable. The sight of all those theatres near Leicester Square and Covent Garden make me want to shout out in happiness. The thought that despite all the crap happening in the world, there are places like these where culture thrives and people enjoy themselves is a comforting one.

Of course like any big city, the underbelly of London is ugly. You find loads of homless people spending nights in sub zero winter temperatures. You find 'knifer' gangs out in the undergrounds of east London who don't hesitate to kill you for a couple of pounds. You find those singers in Kings Cross station who churn out beautiful song after song waiting for passers by to throw down a few pennies.

Yet, there's no doubt that this is one of the best cities - not to say one of the most beautiful cities - in the world today.

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I was out alone exploring the city and had two rather strage experiences :

Scene 1 : Underground
Next to me : Two European middle aged ladies trying to find out which stop to get off at
I ask if I can help them. I tell them the right stop. Then I ask them where they are from. Denmark, it appears. I ask them if they are new to London. They say they are just passing through and are going to 'Tschey-nai'. I say 'Where ?'. 'You know, Tschey-nai. Used to be called Madras. In India'. I am red faced. I tell them I am from India, and why are they going there ? One of the ladies has a son getting married to a girl from Tschey-nai (formerly known as madras, in India). The marriage will be there and the reception in Gulbarga. She seemed to know more about India than me; more red-faced scenes.

Scene 2 : Bus stop in front of St Paul's Cathedral
Next to me : A Chinese looking family looking to go to London Bridge, where I was going.
I start talking to them. I ask them where they are from. The man says 'Tennessee'. I do a double take. 'Where ?'. 'Ya know...Tennessee...Thats's in Memphis. America.' Red Face. It's the kind of feeling you get when a man looking completely Indian comes up and introduces himself as Jean-Paul Chirapally and says he is from the Reunion Islands.

Made me think how weird the world is and where people land up.

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In the last couple of weeks, had a chance to see two absolutely fantastic plays in London. Well, one play and one musical. The musical was Lion King. Absolutely fanstastic. I was wondering how an animated feature could be transformed onto the stage. It has to be seen to be believed. Amazing. Scar, played by James Simmons is absolutely lip smacking menacing.

Was a little dissapointed with the first half primarily because the tykes playing young Simba and Nala didn't have the best voices. However, the ultra-amazing second half, especially the scenes of Mufasa's ghost appearing more than made up for it.

The play I caught was called 'Frost/Nixon'. It's about the interview which David Frost had with Richard nixon in 1977. It became the first time when Nixon publicly admitted that 'he had let the American People' down and he had done 'things not worthy of a President of the United States'. A very intelligently done play with inventive lighting and narration techniques. 25 quid well spent.

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Finally, did something I was meaning to do for a long time. Climbed up the highest point on St Paul's cathedral. What a view it is from up there ! Was thinking - what if the German's had bombed this marvel ? German bombs had fallen a few metre's from Christopher Wren's work of art during the Blitz.

UK doodles

2006-12-04T07:12:00.001-08:00

Its been almost 20 days since I came to England.

Found something to write about just today.

Last weekend was a pilgrimage of sorts for me. Went over to visit Baker Street and The British Museum.

The brilliant thing about visiting Baker Street is that I didn't have to ask anywhere where to go. After getting out of the Baker Street underground, I headed straight for number 221. And sure anough there was the Sherlock Holmes museum. Arguably, this is all London means to me. There are a lot of people for whom London brings about pictures of the Queen, or maybe of the Big Ben, or maybe any number of other things. For me, speak of London and the only image that comes to my head is one of a pipe smoking detective rushing off to solve his latest case. The Sherlock Holmes museum takes you back to the Victorian age, and you almost expect Dr.Watson or Inspector Lestrade to come walking in through the doors. It's one the most amazing experiences in my life. There are some beautiful life size figurines of characters from Doyle's Holmes' stories, and the rooms are filled with memorabilia of the age. An old Times newspaper, Holmes' violin and chemistry papers....everything you would expect. Anyways, nothing I say can express what a Sherlock Holmes fan would feel on seeing these things.

The British museum with it's millions (literally) of exhibits was another mind boggler. I took the audio tour of the 50 most important assets of the museum. It took me more than three hours, and left me exhausted. The place is massive and filled with treasures of all ages. I mean, can many things be more chilling than standing in front of the Rosetta Stone ? Or looking down at Cleopatra's mummy ? Everything about the place is amazing, right from the fact that they don't charge you an entry to this treasure trove. Photography is allowed everywhere, making me wonder why the hell our Indian museums are so paranoid about allowing visitors to take pictures. Mind blowing pieces from China, Rome, Mexico and Greece dazzle you at every room. This definitely wasn't my last visit there.

Other things that stick out in my memory from the last 20 days :
. An Afghan taxi driver telling me that it was his dream to visit Bombay since he was 5 years old.
. The buzz at Picadilly Circus.
. The horrible state of the London underground. I mean this is like one of the richest nation on earth, and I'm willing to bet there's never been a day in the last 2 years when all lines of the underground worled without a hitch. Bombay locals have a lot to be proud about, considering the number of people they ferry.
. The amazing music of the beggars at King's cross station. Honestly, one can stand there for hours listen to them sing or play their instruments.
. The fact that the path to Luton railway station is arguably dirtier than Chennai railway station.
. The fantastic amount of culture stuffed into the city of London.

More to come.

Classic Crime

2006-11-05T20:18:00.000-08:00

Martin Scorsese is back in the saddle. And how. In his latest film The Departed, he shows what movie making is all about. A great story, goaded on by absolutely kick-ass direction.

Pretty much everything about this movie is superlative, and it's easily one of Scorsese's best works......right up there with Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and Casino.

A departure from Scorsese's normal work is that the story here is set in Boston, away from Scorsese's favorite New York. The protagonists - Billy Costigan (Leonardo Di Caprio) and Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon) - are mirror images of each other. Well, almost. Billy is a Massachusetts State 'Statie' cop placed undercover in underworld goon Francis Costello's (Jack Nicholson) gang. Colin is a fast riser in the Statie's Special Investigation Unit placed there by Costello to be a mole for him. And thus begins a thrilling cat and mouse game that keeps the audience on the endge of the seat for most of the roughly 150 minute running time of the film.

What lifts this film up from the run of the mill is, without question, the best performances the ensemble cast (DiCaprio, Damon, Nicholson, Wahlberg, Martin Sheen, Alec Baldwin) has given in some some time.

Jack Nicholson plays the Mephistophilan Costello with such meanace and aplomb, it's impossible to take ur eyes off him whenever he comes on screen. He reminded me of a enhanced version of Doyle Lonnegan (played with delicious panache by Robert Shaw) from George Roy Hill's classic The Sting. Nicholson's Francis Costello snarlling 'Who dya think ya work faar ?' is smarmingly reminiscent of Shaw's Lonnegan whispering 'Ya fallaw ?'.......Irish gangsters at their best (or worst...depending how you look at it !).

The Departed is so filled with twists and turns that I found it had to relax for any length of time while the story unfolded. And unfold it does, right up until the last minute.

There are some beautiful moments too....as with any Scorsese movie. Among the many beautiful quick camera movements (Scorsese trademarks) and pans around the speaking character, the scenes that stuck in my mind were :

The sequence when Billy and Colin are on their cell phones, each trying to guess who the person at the other end of the line is. The tension in this scene is truly palpable.

The scene where Costello freaks Billy out by waving a severed hand while eating. Billy is 'wired' by the cops, and his absolute fright at realizing what could happen to him is he is 'made' is a treat to watch.

Of course, the final scene of the movie, where the rat scurries away on the hand rail, bringing the movie to a close.

All in all, this is a briliant film. Tight script, amazing direction and some ultra fine performances.

My recommendation : If you like anything about movies - watch it.

And yeah, two things :

Thing 1 : Pink Floyd's 'Comfortably Numb' will never be the same to me again.
Thing 2 : Dropkick Murphy's 'I'm Shipping up to Boston' is on my current hitlist.

May God watch over the faithful departed.

Lost in a movie

2006-10-31T20:49:00.000-08:00

What a movie. What a simply great movie. I can't remember when it was that I last watched such a simple (yet immensely complicated) story being told with such style.

Last night, I finally watched 'Lost in Translation'. It was the first, of what I believe will be many viewings of a great film.

I feel quite sure that this movie was a result of some deeply personal experience of writer/director Sofia Coppola. The experiences the protagonists go through in the movie are so real, that any adult viewer can relate to them immediately.

Bill Murray plays aging Hollywood star Bob Harris, who is in Japan for a few days to shoot for a ad endorsing a popular whiskey brand. Shortly through the movie we get to know that Bob is not exactly at the peak of his career, and his marriage of 25 years is at a stage when both he and his spouse take each other for granted all the time. Example of a phone conversation between Bob and his wife : Wife - 'Do I need to worry about you, Bob ?' . Bob - 'Only if you want to.'

In Japan, Bob is severely hit by the completely new culture he is (almost forcibly) exposed to. He can't relate to a single thing here, and there are some quiet but extremely comic sequences of Bob taking a bath in a strange shower and him waking up to automatically retracting window blinds.

(As an aside; I can completely relate to this kind of feeling. When I was abroad, one of my biggest fears was going to the bathroom to take a leak. I mean, every bathroom has a different kind of flush and one of my perennial fears used to be that I would be stuck in the toilet without being able to find the flush. I actually spent a good 20 minutes in an airplane toilet once before I found the discreetly hidden flush. Then there was this situation in a restaurant washroon Zurich where I was standing like an idiot in front of a washbasin not knowing where the tap was. Till another customer showed me that the 'tap' was on the floor, and one had to put one's foot on it for the water to flow from a nozzle into the basin. The extent to which these small things alienate you from your surroundings is not as small as it might seem. Every time you get into a train and hear announcements ONLY in languages you don't speak gets unspeakably irritating after a while. There's a hilarious sequence in the film where Bob is stuck on a treadmill which only gives out instrctions in Japanese. Reminded me of an incident when I lost 5 francs in a candy machine that gave out instructions only in German. I was banging and kicking the damn thing, much to the amusement of onlookers.)

Coming back to LIT. Added to the cultural alienation faced by Bob is his realisation that he is at the fag end of his career, and he knows that he is endorsing a Whiskey brand for the quick buck it provides; rather than acting in a quality play.

Checked into the same hotel as Bob are Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson)and her photographer husband. The husband is on assignment in Tokyo. He and Charlotte have been married for 2 years, and clearly the relationship is not meant to last. He is a shallow character, and is no match intellectually for the obviously smarter and mature Charlotte. Charlotte is a recent philosophy graduate and is confused about where life is taking her. He husband clearly wants to keep her as much out of his day life as he can. She spends her time in her hotel room gazing at the emptiness of ultra modern Tokyo from the window.

Charlotte and Bob bump into each other a couple of times at the hotel bar and get talking. They both find someone who can understand their loneliness and confusion. Soon, Bob finds his humorous side in Charlotte's company. They run about the alleyways and karaoke bars of downtown Tokyo, and forget about their lives for a short while.

The characters of Bob and Charlotte are so well chalked out, and Murray and Johansson play their parts so well, that the movie rises way above the ordinary. Bill Murray became one of my favorite actors way back when I watched Groundhog Day. I always thought he is one of the most underrated actors in film, and this film reinforces that feeling.

The movie ends when it's time for Bill to leave Tokyo after his shoot. Both he and Charlotte have touched something in each other, and it's something they will never be able to tell each other.

What clinched the movie for me was the final sequence. Bob just wants to say farewell away from all the flunkies at the hotel. He finds Charlotte in a busy street and goes over and manages to bid her goodbye. He tells her something in her ear which we, the audience, cannot hear. And we respect that. It's such a beautiful touch. I feel if we heard what Bob said, whatever it was and however poetic it was, it would ruin the moment.

The relief and happiness evident on Bob's face after he leaves Charlotte on a good note is something I think we have all felt in our lives at some point. It's a feeling that says to us - it's better to make up than to fight. It's the feeling of satisfaction and fulfillment that flows through when we know that we have managed not to let a beautiful moment pass by in bitterness.

Kudos to you, Sofia Coppola, Francis Coppola, Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson.

At the end of this wonderful film, I was reminded of Billy Joel's lyrics :

She turns to me sometimes and SHE asks me what I'm dreaming
And I realize I must have gone a million miles away
And I ask her how she knew to reach out for me AT that moment
And she smiles because it's understood there are no words to say

It's all about soul.

Book Tag

2006-10-31T03:09:00.000-08:00

Book that changed my life - Can't really think of any one. The one that came closest was probably Jonathan Livingstone Seagull.

Book you’ve read more than once - Just about every book I own. The ones I enjoy re-reading more than the twentieth time : Count of Monte Cristo(Dumas), Timeline (Michael Chricton), The Hound of the Baskervilles, Glimpses of World History

Book you’d take to a desert island - Man.....just one ? Dunno....dunno......Maybe the Satyajit Ray Feluda and Shonku series....

Book that made you laugh - How to Be An Alien by George Mikes.

Book that made you cry - Can't really remember. The one's I remember made some emotions flow were 'Kabuliwala' by Tagore and 'Shawshank Redemption' by Stephen King

Book you wish you had written - Count of Monte Cristo, for sure. And then I would have killed myself directly, as it would be the most perfect piece of writing in history.......:)

Book you wish had never been written - The Fountainhead. Don't ask why.

Book you’re currently reading - Just finished '33 Strategies of War' ....

Book you’ve been meaning to read - BMC Manuals. Ok. That's a lie. Actually it's 'Meditations' by Marcus Aurelius.

Goa, Food, and DON

2006-10-26T03:49:00.000-07:00

Was in Goa during the weekend.

It had been a while, almost 5 months since my last visit, and decided to live this one to the fullest.

Chilled out on Vagator for a couple of days and on Candolim on another. In Vagator, had a cheese sandwich eaten out of my hand by a curious bovine while I was gazing at the sea (ahem).

Goa is beautiful, it's also bloody hot this time of the year. Hired a crappy bike called Kinetic Blaze, which looks exactly like a frog ready to leap. The damn thing drinks petrol like a thirsty camel going for the trough.

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Went to the local Bongo Samiti to pig out at the Kali Pujo dinner. Went to my friend Aniket's to pig out for his birthday. Went to Javed's to gulp down Biriyani for Eid.
Ordered and spun out on chicken cafreal at home.

So basically......well....whatever....eat fest(Notice the prudent way in which all topics relating to drink are completely avoided).

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Okay. About Don. Have to admit - I liked it.

Compared to the normal turd that's hitting the commercial Hindi movie screens (barring an occassional Munnabhai) these days, this movie can actually be called good.

I read a lot of negative reviews of the film and all of them are centered around comparing Amitabh with Shah Rukh. Okay, now here's where I am unique......I have never watched the original Don completely. It's always been either the beginning , or the ending or something in between when the old classic is aired on the television. So I went to see Farhan Akhtar's Don with no set pre conceptions of how the story should be.

I guess what I liked about it (other than the story, for which of course a thousand kudos to the original writers), is the fact that this movie is absolutely at par with any Hollywood spy thriller. I mean, I love movies like 'Clear and Present Danger' and 'Patriot Games' and 'The Bourne Supremacy', and FA's Don is very much in the same league. The same feel.

It's quite amazing to see how fantastic stunt scenes are in Hindi movies these days.
The scene where Don/Vijay jumps off the plane (though completely lifted from a James Bond movie with Roger Moore whose name I forget), is pulled off in great style. There are other scenes which are pulled out of movies like Con Air and Fast and the Furious; but hell - they work.

Story wise, the protagonists i.e. Don, Roma and the inspector are quite believable. I mean, it's not like normal Hindi films where a quiet 'bhola bhala' hero suddenly discovers that he has the strength to fight off Beelzebub's armies when someone touches his girlfriend. This is Don, man. And he's bad. So is the Lara Croft like Roma(uncanny resemblance in the intro scene....barring the ahem....you know... the ahems...).

Acting wise, I must say it was a relief watching Shah Rukh Khan play the bad guy after years of watching him contort his eyebrows as if a tsunami was playing beneath his forehead. I loved the man in Baazigar and Darr, and I was pleasantly surprised to see him play the menacing Don to the hilt. I mean, the character is meant to be over the top for chrissakes. And the Don character is smart - able to outsmart the rest - which I believe Shah Rukh Khan is. One smart cat. Priyanka Chopra is not bad either. Pretty decent in fact. Not just easy on the eyes, she packs a pretty punch as the karate judo jujitsu whatever-belt Roma. And Boman Irani. This guy could make any role believable. Seriously I think the man is right there in acting ability with Naseeruddin Shah and Om Puri. After his long spate of (albeit good) 'screaming Parsee' roles, he plays inspector D'Silva with a seriousness that is pretty impressive. Speaking of Om Puri, the man is completely wasted in a crappy role here.

***************WARNING - SPOILER LINE***************************

The best thing about it, and this was Farhan Akhtar's touch, was that we didn't have to come out of the theatres believing that a Banarasi Pan chewing street guy suddenly plays Don so convincingly that all and sundry are decieved. Besides learning to fight like he's been in the business since donkey's years. To me, villains are always more interesting than heroes, and I was kinda pleased with the ending.

*********************SPOILER ENDS*******************************

My biggest peeve about the film : Did Kareena have to dance like that in 'Ei Mera Dil Pyar ka Deewana' ? She looks RIDICULOUS in that yellow dress trying to shimmy like Helen. Atrocious. Yucky even.

So all in all, would be fair to say that I quite enjoyed being entertained for what seemed a tad too long (3 hours).

But I guess, at the end of it all - even with my lack of knowledge about the original 'Don' gained in peeks at Sony Entertainment Television - I think when it comes to dialog delivery and sheer screen presence, it's Amitabh who can mouth the immortal lines best : 'Don ke liye to 11 mulkon ki police intezaar kar rahi hai. Par yeh samajh lo : Don ko Pakadna mushkil ki nahi.....namumkin hai.'

Seetiyan seetiyan.

I'm suddenly raving about Munnabhai songs

2006-10-19T23:49:00.000-07:00

Like, I am totally hooked on to this song 'Samjho ho hi gaya' from Lage Raho Munnabhai.

I mean, the spirit of the song is so damn light hearted.....I can't help but laugh out loud at parts...

Ae Bhai, Bhai Bhot Khush Lag Raha Hain Bhai, Baat Kya Hain
Ae Bhai Hua Kya Ae Bhai Hua Kya Ae Bhai Bolna Yaar, Hua Kya
Card Chapwaale
Ae Bhai Hua Kya
Suit Silwale
Samjho Ho Hi Gaya. Bolana, Samjho Ho Hi Gaya...
Arre Samjho Ho Hi Gaya.
Pam Pam Pam Samjho Ho Hi Gaya.

Ae Bhai Reverse Mein Kayko Story Suna Raha Hain
Starting Se Sunao Na.
Bhabhi Ko Ghumane Ke Liye Kidhar Le Ke Gaya
Arre Kidhar Mat Pooch Yeh Pooch ...
Kiss Mein Le Gaya Tha. Kiss Mein
Kismein Bhai
Arre Kissing Car Mein Yaar
Ae Bhai Side Car Suna, Kalakar Suna, Bekar Suna, Dakar Bhi Suna,
Yeh Kissing Car Kya Hota Hain
Arre Jismein Kiss Karte Hain Yaar

Apun Ko Mil Gayi, Arre Ek Kissing Car,
Back Seat Pe Jee Bhar Ke Kiya Pyar

Bhai Driver Ne Mirror Mein Dekha Renga Kaisa Manage Kiya

Arre Driver Ko Maine Sau Ka Note Dikhaya,
Usko Su Su Karne Ka Idea Tab Aaya

Arre Bhai Tu Toh Genius Hain! Phir Kya Hua

Kabhie Chumti Idhar, Kabhie Chumti Udhar
Arre Boli Mere Munna, Itne Saal The Kidhar

Aise Hua Kya Bhai
Arre Samjho Ho Hi Gaya. Samjho Ho Hi Gaya... (2)

Uske Baad Kissing Car Kidhar Muda Bhai Picture
Nahin Re
Chinese Hakka Noodle
Nahin Re ... Circus. Circus
Circus Kayko
Arre Circus Mein Sher Hain Na Yaar
Toh

Ring Master Ko Ek Sau Ka Note Dikhaya
Usne Zor Se Phir Hunter Ghumaya
Hunter Hunter Se Kya Hua
Sher Ne Kiya Roar, Woh Lapki Meri Aur
Phir Sher Ko Main Bola, "ae Mamu Once More"

Aayla Bhai Sher Ko Mamu Bol Dala Phir Kya Hua

Darr Se Usne Aise Mujhko Gale Lagaya
Kya Bataoon Circuit Arre Kitna Mazaa Aaya ...

Aise Hua Kya Bhai

Haan Samjho Ho Hi Gaya. Arre Samjho Ho Hi Gaya. Samjho Ho Hi Gaya
Abey Circuit ...
Samjho Ho Hi Gaya….

Ae Bhai Bolna Hua Kya Haan

I hope they make more Munnabhai movies, and change the settings of the stories completely, a la the Blackadder comedies.

Bwahahahahaha !!

2006-10-09T04:15:00.000-07:00

On the way to Bangalore for the Durga pujas about 10 days ago, I picked up this sorry thing from Crosswords in Pune. I had read about the book before, and how it should be relegated to the 'Fiction' and 'Comic' sections of any bookstore, but nothing had prepared me for the actual thing.

Sadly, I don't have the book with me now. I could not bear to keep it with me, as I was getting violent stomach upsets looking at it. I gave it to a relative, not because I wanted to give him a stomach ache, but because I wanted the person to get some of the unrivalled entertainment this book offers. Unfortunately, after about 4 hours with the book, my relative came back with such a grimace that I thought it better to move on to other topics of conversation.

The 'memoirs' start with lines like 'There was a loud explosion. My car was airborne.' I mean, most Michael Chritonesque. Each chapter ends with a premonition of disaster, much like the Hardy Boys series of yesteryears. But most funny of all is the 'holier than thou' attitude shown by the 'author'(I say 'author' because I've heard rumors that there actually was a ghost writer who chrned out this crap and eventually the book was released with a made-in-Musharraf stamp on it). Honestly, brother M thinks he is God's gift to the world. Every single politician and leader in Pak, with the exception of the Qaid-e-Azam, are made to look like villains. Even his own army people are made to look like traitors whenever he chooses. In fact, on the basis of this book alone, one could conclude that Musharraf is the best thing to happen to Pakistan in all its years of history. Man.

I thought at first that I would come to know something about the man and his history in his own words, like in Clinton's 'My Life'. No such thing. It's gloat, self praise, and sensationalizing all the way. You have statements like 'I got into the Pakistan Military Academy at age so-and-so. It was a cinch for an intelligent, atheletic boy'. Whew.

The whole book is in four parts. One small chunk of about 60 pages about his early life. Then a HUGE chunk about his takeover from the evil Nawaz Sharif. Then another HUGE chunk about Kargil and how it was a victory for Pakistan. Finally a small bit about the road ahead for Pakistan.

If anyone wants unbridled entertainment, this is one book to go for. Beats any Sunny Deol film hollow.

Thoughts after Singapore

2006-10-09T02:09:00.000-07:00

It's a little unnerving for me to think that Singapore was like this about 50 years, maybe even less longer ago. At that time, it is fair to assume that India was in exactly the same place, if not better placed, economically.

So what exactly is that which makes Singapore freeze the sights, which are so common to this day in India, in bronze ? And what exactly was it that made Singapore into this :

I really can't begin to answer that, given the difference in the sizes and natures of India and Singapore. But surely, it has something to do with discipline and that uncommon virtue called common-sense.

Out of a sense of shame, I cannot put up pictures of Pune roads yet, though I have taken some. Suffice to say that the roads here are unbelievable. I am not asking for roads in India to become like the picture below overnight, but is it too much to expect road users to exhibit a modicum of discipline, i.e. KEEP TO THEIR LANES ? Where there are lanes, that is.

Maybe making bus bays like the ones shown above do help in keeping the roads clear of traffic congestion.

I know numerous government sponsored 'teams' from India visit Singapore year after year on taxpayers' money to do 'studies' on everything starting from the traffic management to the police force to probably how-to-pick-teeth, but what have we to show for it. Zilch is an understatement.

I remember an incident from about 6 years ago when a team from the Goa Government went to Singapore on a 'study trip' to better the police force and came back and changed the police uniforms. Nothing more.

It's painful to see a country filled with nothing but effing shops and effing malls get more tourists than India with all it's extremely rich cultural heritage and beautiful landscapes.

Wonder what each one of us can do about it.

In Learning Mode

2006-09-26T00:25:00.000-07:00

Right now am into this book 33 Strategies of War, by Robert Green. One can buy it from here.

It's an amazing book, and since for the last couple of years the history bug has bitten me hard, I am completely hooked on it. The book gives numerous historical references to generals and their strategies to win battles.

It's completely filled with information, and is fascinating in it's interpretation of historical incidents. It's also pretty cool how any aspect of life can be treated as a battle, or part of it. Hell, getting up in the morning and wading through Pune traffic is a battle. And yes, there's stuff in this book which I found could help me get through that too :).

Actually all the fundas are based on Mr.Sun-Tzu's principles.

Damn, the man was a genius. How people like him, Shakespeare, Rabindranath and Satyajit Ray managed to write/create stuff which are absolutely timeless is quite beyond me.

Here are a few of my favorite passages from 'Art of War'.

All Warfare is based on deception.

There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare.

To secure ourselves against defeat lies in our own hands, but the opportunity of defeating the enemy is provided by the enemy himself.

To list an autumn hair is no sign of great strength; to see the sun and moon no sign of sharp sight; to hear the noise of thunder no sign of a quick ear.

The clever combatant imposes his will on the enemy, but does not allow his enemy's will to be imposed on him.

Five dangerous faults of a general :
1) Recklessness, which leads to destruction
2) Cowardice, which leads to capture
3) A hasty temper, which can be provoked by insults
4) A delicacy for honor, which is sensitive to shame
5) over-solicitude for his men, which exposes him to worry and trouble

If fighting is sure to result in victory, then you must fight, even though the rules forbid it; if fighting will not result in victory, then you must not fight even at the ruler's bidding.

Anger may in time change to gladness; vexation may be changed to content.

Knowledge of the enemy's dispositions can only be obtained from other men.

I think these books (Sun-Tzu's and Robert Greene's) should be made compulsory reading for all people above the age of 18.

Back to the book.

Armour

2006-09-19T21:10:00.000-07:00

Colorful injured bug
Originally uploaded by soham_pablo.

'American Beauty' is one of my favorite films. I've watched the sequence with the fluttering plastic bag about a hundred times and still can't get enough of it.

There really is a lot of beauty in the seemingly drab places world - if we care to look for it.

Last night, this bug entered the apartment I live in. My roomie noticed it and we quickly took some pictures of it. The insect was about as big as my fingernail. But the colors ! It was like the body armor of a samurai warrior ! Something sombre and proud about it.

I've quoted this line from American Beauty before in a previous blog entry, but I'm going to do it again......

"It was one of those days...where it's a minute away from snowing,
and there was this eIectricity in the air.You can aImost hear it.
Right ? And this bag was just...dancing with me,Iike a IittIe kid begging me to pIay with it,for minutes.That's the day I reaIized
that there was this...entire Iife behind things...and this incredibIy
benevoIent force...that wanted me to know that there was no reason to be afraid...ever. Video's a poor excuse, I know,but it heIps me remember. I need to remember. Sometimes there's so much...
beauty...in the worId. I feeI Iike I can't take it...and my heart...is just going to...cave in."

Masha Allah.

My grouses for the day at Pune

2006-09-18T20:23:00.000-07:00

Here are my grouses for the day :

1.Potholes in Pune : Why do the roads in this otherwise beautiful city have to resemble some kind of long forgotten war zone ? Cases in point : Aundh Road, Sus Road, Khadki Road, University Road.
When travelling on Khadki Road a few days ago in a Volvo, I was quite alarmed to notice that the redoubtable Volvo was shaking and swaying like Shakuni's dice. Quite a sight.
Parts of Sus Road are indistinguishable from scenes in war torn Afghanistan. I ride my two wheeler on this road on pure guess work - especially during the rains. The other day I saw a hilarious cartoon by RK Laxman where a man without a car jack was shown changing the wheel of his car by standing inside a pothole. Not very far from reality where you are a Puneite.
Aundh Road is a joyride on the lines of roller-coasters in amusement parks. The authorities claim that the road has been 'repaired' a few months ago, but hell, no one thought of using tar. 'Repair' here meant strewing the road with innumerable stones so that for about 3 kilometers all vehicles shake their bolts off.
University Road has had a flyover building on it since the start of time. No one knows what the road was like before work on the flyover started. Now the road is one devastated patch of the netherworld. Large parts of it are cordoned off and people are forced to take narrow roads which are - surprise surprise - riddled with craters the size of small districts.

2.Traffic Sense of Pune drivers : People who think Bangalore has bad drivers should come to Pune for half a day. Traffic proceeds at a merry pace with drivers hurtling down at equal speeds on the right and left of the road. Democracy and freedom at its best. I read somewhere that someone asked a famous mountaineer why he climbed Mount Everest. He is said to have answered 'Because it is there'. Pune drivers feel the same way about their accelerators and horns. 'Dear Puneri maniac driver, why did you jam the accelerator and press the horn ?' Answer : 'Because they are there.' Most traffic lights exist for lending color to the otherwise drab lives of citizens. One signal I cross regularly (Bremen Chowk) has two traffic lights working independently of each other. I guess it's meant to encourages out-of-the-box thinking among road users. Software City after all.

3.Lack of Public transport :Buses in Pune honestly look like they were last maintained by Peshwa Baj Rao the First. I have seen many of the said heritage pieces with entire sections of their body just plain missing. Add some speckled skin on them and you might think a T-Rex is hurtling across the road. For the average Pune person, the situation reads thus : Wanna get somewhere ? Whip out that two wheeler, travel the war zones and reach where ever it was that your ill begotten schedule had in store. Oh yeah, remember to get that appointment with your doc the next day for the immense back aches you will be subjected to as a punishment for subjecting the poor, delicate potholes to your weight.

A toast to this place !

Mein Leben VI

2006-09-13T02:00:00.000-07:00

Felt like penning down a few thoughts after many months. Maybe felt nostalgic after hearing Beatles 'Let It Be' on my new iPod. It was the first song I ever dedicated to someone, way back.

I guess I left off writing the Mein Leben series talking about when I was in middle school in Bangalore. High school was a fun time. Most of the memories I have of high school are of quizzes, debates and cultural programs. Yeah, I loved those. Especially debates. Loved to corner people on senseless arguements.

I guess I owe my overall development to those days. My father used to help me come up with cogent arguements for debates at the time. I had my own strategy for winning arguements, which I follow to this day. First - I used bring myself to believe in what I was going to say, even if it did not fit into my system of thought. I knew a lot of people who went up for debates on topics which they didn't fully believe in themselves. Example : Topic - 'Women in India have progressed since 1947'. This guy I knew got put into the 'opposing' team by lots. He was like 'Arre everyone knows women have progressed. But I got these great points and I'll convince the judges.' Never works, as far as I've seen. I somehow had to be like 'Women bloody well haven't progressed. Let's see someone coming up and telling me otherwise.' I use the same thing today when I attend interviews and other arguements. Most people are intimidated when they see a certain degree of confidence. The thing to do is to gauge the opponent well before hand so that you dont step on his area of expertise !
Watch Humphrey Appleby in Yes Minister carefully to see how this works in all situations.

Anyways, coming back, class 10 was an exciting time. The year of the first public exam ever for me. Also the year I proposed to a girl for the first time ever. Our teachers in Clarence were fantastic as far as I can remember, though my Cold War with the history teacher continued. I was chosen a prefect and House Captain for my house. Not much of responsibility actually, coming to think of it, as students did not really have much of a voice in our school. We just had to stand straight in assemblies and lead the house in sports marches. It was memorable though, especially as the House Captain was chosen by the students, as opposed to being crowned by teachers.

The ICSE exams were preceeded by major power cuts in Bangalore, so most days, the studies ussed to go on under candlelights. It's amazing now to think back and realise just how many things I did not have in those days and never missed them. No phone in the house. No cable TV for a long time. No computer. No vehicle - just a cycle. No blasted room in the house. But hell, no worries. Wouldn't change any of that even if I had the chance.

The exams came and went, and one important thing I remember were the pretty girls from Aditi's in Bangalore coming to Clarence to give their exams. Hubba hubba.

Anyways, after the exams there was a period of not doing ANYTHING for at about 2 months, till on the 24th of May 1996, I got my results and got to know that I was among third among only three students in Bangalore who succeeded in getting 90 marks and above in all 6 subjects.

How to stop Swearing

2006-09-03T01:03:00.000-07:00

Read this article today at the How-To site. Reproducing it here ....

Swearing can easily become a habit and is generally a bad habit. It is reinforced by the company we keep, the people we are trying to identify with (e.g. the "in-crowd"), parental examples and workplace behaviour. Parents must be extra careful to curb swearing tendencies as they are the first and principal cause of swearing children. If you don't want people to get the wrong impression of you and you are tired of swearing instead of speaking clearly, then this is a short guide to helping you to think about why you swear and how you might be able to curb the habit.
Steps
Recognize that you have a problem. Swearing is a habit. A habit is always difficult to break, so the first thing that you need to do is recognise that you have a problem with swearing. If every second word is #!% this and !^#% that, then you have a problem. If you think the only cool way to reply to a friend, parent, teacher or co-worker is with an expletive, then you have a problem. If you don't know how to speak comfortably without swearing, then you have a problem.
Understand why you swear. Is it because you hang around with co-workers in a job nobody much enjoys and swearing is a way of toughing it out? Is it because the cool crowd uses it as virtually the only way to speak? Is it because you are practising defiance against a parent, teacher or significant other? Is it because you are angry, sad or afraid and can't express yourself more clearly (e.g. when something goes wrong shopping, driving, playing or at work, etc.)?
Know why you want to stop swearing. This isn't trite - you really must want to stop the habit in order to challenge it. If you are half-hearted or only doing it for a lark, you won't stop. You really must want to stop. Think about all the reasons why life will be better if you do stop. That is the best way to find the motivation to want to stop. Write them down if it helps.
Make a commitment with yourself to stop. It's easier said than done, as it requires concerted effort and constant self-feedback. Be goal-oriented and choose a period of time during which you will try not to swear. Write down the following:

Why you think you swear (e.g., the triggers, the reasons)
Why you want to stop swearing (e.g., better communication, better job prospects, better relationships with other people, brighter outlook on life, etc.)
Triggers you know will set you off (e.g., anger, certain company you keep, activities, music, TV programs, supermarket queues, weather, etc)
Ways you think you can either avoid or lessen these triggers (e.g., don't drive in icy weather, don't listen to music with expletives peppered through it, don't rise to bite back at your parents/spouse when they nag you, tell your friends you've had it with swearing, etc).
Express yourself better. Civilised and respectful conversation is not a swearing contest. You owe it to yourself to find the vast array of other wonderful words your language provides to fill up your conversations. If you don't, you are limiting your own ability to clearly and accurately express your feelings and thoughts to other human beings and ultimately, you will be less accepted and understood by those around you. When you find yourself about to swear, make it a point to find another word or phrase that will better convey the same emotion or message.
Accept responsibility. Only you alone can stop the swearing. Be prepared for some people to feel threatened by your stand. Tell them that it is a personal decision to better yourself and that they aren't being asked to stop doing anything. Still, you're setting a good example to them in the long run and some may be so impressed they'll copy. For those who disdain you for it, consider how much you really need their friendship; friends are supposed to be supportive.
Enlist support. Ask for the help of non-swearing/infrequently swearing friends and family (including spouse). Tell them you realise you have a problem and that you need to change. Make sure you pick non-judgmental helpers, though; you only want gentle reminders, not lectures or score-keeping. They may also have advice to offer on helping you to stop.
Punish yourself. Every time you swear, put money in a swear jar for charity. This is a great idea for work where swearing co-workers can all be encouraged to stop by placing money in the swear jar. But also make a pact to move on from the lapse and get better.
Reward yourself. When you go for a day, a week or similar time space, reward yourself with something - a CD, some clothing, a movie, a day free from chores.
Persevere. Swearing won't stop overnight - if it has become a habit, it is second nature for you to respond this way. Don't beat yourself up about lapses. Like dieting, you simply stop doing the bad thing and start over again from that moment. It isn't fatal and it doesn't mean you'll never stop. It just means you are easing out of the old habit slowly and you're encountering a few hitches along the way. Keep trying!

Tips
Don't feel you'll always have to avoid swearing altogether (unless you want to); there are occasions in life when even the most mild-mannered person will let go of an expletive - for reasons such as pain, horror or loss. The idea is to stop using it as a major source of communicating your thoughts, behaviour and language.
Research has shown that 21 days can break a bad habit. Use this to set a goal for yourself - no swearing for a period of 21 days!
Learn more words if you need to. English and all other languages are full of amazing words that will help you truly express yourself and get your real meaning across to others. Subscribe to Internet sites that give you a 'word a day' or read dictionary lists that relate to emotional expression and feelings.
If you use swearing as a source of attention, ask yourself what is lacking in your life and try to work on improving that aspect of yourself. If you feel easily confronted by other people, seek out groups that teach you about improving self-confidence, assertiveness training and learning to feel at ease in social situations (including crowds). If you prefer one-to-one, ask your doctor or find a psychologist to assist you.
If you want to swear because something has upset you, count to 10 and take really deep breaths. In the time you do this, the moment will pass.
Exercise off your anger and frustration. This avoids the need to speak, let alone swear and will keep in you in good condition, respecting and caring for yourself.

Warnings
Swearing can engender disrespect, hatred and violence. Stopping it will improve your relations with other people but continuing to communicate through swearing will dull your experience of life and potentially leads to misunderstandings that can end up in bad situations.
Seek anger management through professionals if your swearing usually comes about because of anger, frustration or irrational thoughts; otherwise you may end up hurting yourself or others and you won't live the full life you deserve to.
Don't use swearing as a weapon - it only makes you look disobedient, ignorant, angry, rude, impatient, ill-tempered and difficult. This is especially important around authority figures like teachers, police, judges, bosses. Swearing gets you nowhere; manners open all doors.
Intense and relentless swearing is verbal abuse and in some jurisdictions can have you ending up in court for a fine or maybe even imprisonment.
If you have children, you MUST stop swearing. They will easily pick up your language and use it, making them seem rude, unpleasant and horrible to other people. Is that how you want the rest of the world to see your children? And is that a fair start to them in life to be seen in that light? Of course not. So this is a big incentive to stop.

Things You'll Need
Patience
Sense of realism about your goal - it takes time to change
A swear jar for charity
Friends and family who are supportive
Journal for thoughts, goals and self-promises

A smidgen

2006-09-01T01:00:00.000-07:00

Knowing me knowing you is the best I can do -
An ABBA number, one which sparks off a thought or two...

A difficult task - to get to know someone well -
'Take's a lifetime' says a friend, I responded 'Do Tell !'

Frankness is one thing, being rude is another
Makes my head spin at times - O Brother !!!

I've learnt the hard way not to ignore a doubt
One never knows what the future may bring about.

I realise full well my own habits are bizarre
My moods, and behavior, at times downright strange they are...

Yet, I hope the feeling I'm chasing is just a wild goose
Coz the person in question is one I'm afraid to loose.

Filling in the gap

2006-08-31T05:22:00.000-07:00

Ok. Found time at last to recap and fill in on the missing days.

Have joined Wipro Technologies in Pune in their fledgling BMC Patrol practice. And feeling good about it.

Right. About UBS. The trip to Switzerland was going fine, when there was a whole hitch up which involved disbanding the team I was part of. The higher management decided that the work earmarked for my team would not be offshored to India, as a result of which the five of us in the Patrol Team there started raising the page rank of sites lke Nauri and Monster. Luckily enough, I managed to get into Wipro in a BMC practice itself, which became a logical extension of the knowledge aquired in Switzerland.

Which brought me back to Pune. In fact right next to the Cognizant campus, which is where I started off (effectively) on the IT caravan.

Coming from Hyderabad to Pune is a culture shock in itself. Unlike other culture shocks, this one needs some good shock absorbers. I'm talking about the roads here. In a word - nightmarish. And to think the Mayor of Pune actually thinks that thins are just fine and dandy - in a press statement by her a few days back.

So here I am, learning up a lot about BMC technologies - actually a whole post on that should come up soon - and enjoying the scenic beauty of Pune. Again.

Till next time.

A kick up Bukhari's backside is sorely needed

2006-08-20T08:11:00.001-07:00

It's been an awful long time since I blogged.

I have to write about all that's happened in the time since I penned anything last and now, but right now, I read something that made me sit up and nearly puke in disgust.

This is the article from Rediff which I happened to bump into.

National song Vande Mataram is 'against Islamic beliefs' and asking Muslims to sing it would amount to 'suppression' of the community, Shahi Imam of Delhi's Jama Masjid Syed Ahmed Bukhari said on Sunday.

Addressing a press meet in Allahabad, Bukhari, who is also patron of the United Democratic Front, said according to the tenets of Islam, one could love one's country and even lay down one's life for it if the circumstances so demand.

"But when it comes to worship only Allah is given that honour. A Muslim cannot worship his or her parents, motherland and even the Prophet though they are held in high esteem," he said, reacting to a Central directive to states for recitation of Vande Mataram in educational institutions during a celebration on September 7 to mark the national song's centenary.

"Ever since independence, all governments at the Centre and in the states have been suppressing Muslims. This proposal is yet another example. If somebody sings Vande Mataram voluntarily, I have no objections. But if people are forced to do so, it will meet with resistance," Bukhari said.

Hmmm....

Just some more references to Syed Bukhari :

August 20th 2006
October 4, 2003
October 13, 2001

I am sure there are many more places where one can find the wise utterances of this vague individual. How he is allowed to get away with such plainly inflammatory and nonsensical tripe is anyone's guess. One phrase out of Narendra Modi's lips with the word 'Muslim' in it and all the newspapers in the country have a headline for the next day. I would love to see tomorrow which page of the TOI, or any other paper for that matter, shows the news about the Imam's latest tirade.

Anyways, I guess the Imam can consider himself lucky. In no other country than India can a person in such a position of responsibility get away with such utter rubbish spoken in public.

In the meantime, all I can do is dream about giving the man a kick up his sacred backside.

Time.....

2006-07-09T07:37:00.000-07:00

Explanation unnesecary
Originally uploaded by soham_pablo.

For some reason, I feel like this song at present........
Hail Pink Flyod.

Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
You fritter and waste the hours in an off hand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way

Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain
You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun

And you run and you run to catch up with the sun, but its sinking
And racing around to come up behind you again
The sun is the same in the relative way, but youre older
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death

Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the english way
The time is gone, the song is over, thought Id something more to say

Home, home again
I like to be here when I can
And when I come home cold and tired
Its good to warm my bones beside the fire
Far away across the field
The tolling of the iron bell
Calls the faithful to their knees
To hear the softly spoken magic spells.

Route to Office

2006-07-02T07:06:00.000-07:00

Just documenting the route from my flat here to office.

Each stop has it's own quirks and distinguishing features, which can't be seen in the pictures, but which have meanings for me.

Felsenrainstrasse is where I stay, and every morning I see old Mustafa setting up his corner shop Dost Market for the day's business.

The Hauptbahnhof stops are beautiful, with the Gothic architecture or the main station. The hustle of the people going to work is nice to see, especially in the otherwise laid back city.

Stauffacher is where I change trams every day, and the station is right in front of the beautiful St.Jacob's church.
The amazing partt is when everyday my Number 14 tram comes to Stauffacher, there's always the connecting Number 2 waiting.

Lochergut is the seedy sort of place with a surprising number of decent family folk staying there.

Finally there's Freihofstrasse with the Barkat market and Infosys offices, both reminiscent of India, and Kappelli, where I alight for work.

The full set can be found over here.

And the heart just stops at this sight

2006-06-18T10:34:00.000-07:00

And the heart just stops at this sight
Originally uploaded by soham_pablo.

There are some sights which are just indescribable. I feel this way almost every time I see a quiet beach in Goa. Nature's majesty. Sounds corny and pretentious, but that's what it is. Today..near Oberalppass..this sight somehow just overwhelmed me. There was something that just wanted to swallow me up....the size of it all.

It makes humans feel small..real small. And powerless. No painting in the world could be this beautiful. No music could be better than this silence.

Made me think, for no particular reason, of Hannibal, and what might have passed through his mind when he crossed the Alps with all those elephants.

It was many minutes later before I could really speak again.

Lesson learnt till now.

2006-05-30T07:29:00.000-07:00

Lesson One. A little smile and some politeness doesn't hurt. In fact it goes a long way. The first thing noticed about this place was the fact that everyone greets everyone with a cheery 'Gruesse' even if they dont have a clue who the other person is. 'Please' and 'Thank You' too are liberally used. It wouldn't hurt to take this back to India.

Lesson two.Preserving one's heritage isn't that bad a thing. Cleaning it isn't wither. Infact it gives a city some identity. Meaningless and unaesthetic construction is an eyesore.

Lesson three. India's tourist destinations are NOT to be underestimated. I have seen a lot of places like this in Munnar, and some in Goa. With a bit of trouble from our side, we can be up there with the best.

Lesson four.Without a tripod this would have been impossible to take from a moving boat. Hooray for my decision to buy one in India.

Lesson 5. Cinemas in India rock. As in the theaters. When I went out to what is supposedly one of the better theaters here are like, I puked. The menu features a pathetic sound system, a small screen and some shitty people. I am thankful for the multiplexes in India.

Let there be Light

2006-05-22T21:09:00.000-07:00

Let there be Light
Originally uploaded by soham_pablo.

Just when things look bleak, sometimes - just sometimes - some light shines through.

Maybe you don't realise right away how bright the light is that's coming to drive away the dark, but eventually it strikes you.

All right, it hasn't really struck me yet.

Still I got thinking about writing this post after listening to a Billy Joel's masterpiece 'You're My Home' this morning.

YOU'RE MY HOME (Billy Joel)

When you look into my eyes
and you see the crazy gypsy in my soul
it always comes as a surprise
when I feel my withered roots begin to grow.

Well I never had a place
that I could call my very own
but that's all right my love
cuz you're my home.

When you touch my weary head
and you tell me everything will be all right.
You say use my body for your bed
and my love will keep you warm throughout the night.

Well I'll never be a stranger
and I'll never be alone
wherever we're together
that's my home.

Home could be the Pennsylvania turnpike
Indiana's early morning dew
high up in the hills of California
home is just another word for you.

Well I never had a place that I could call my very own
but that's all right my love
cuz you're my home.

If I travel all my life
and I never get stop and settle down
long as I have you by my side
there's a roof above and good walls all around.
You're my castle, you're my cabin
and my instant pleasure dome.
I need you in my house
cuz you're my home,..
you're my home.

I was reading Greatbong's latest post , and realised how true it was when I visited the page on 'all about the Digital Camera' and realised that something that is becoming so much a part of my life, has no "inventor's" name listed.

The color of sunset

2006-05-10T02:09:00.000-07:00

Sunset - end to the day
Originally uploaded by soham_pablo.

Sometimes you get the picture exactly as you want it to. For someone like me, with no knowledge of photography, it's lucky when that happens.

A couple of days back, while driving down from Bombay to Pune, I chanced upon the sunset. And what a sunset it was. Unlike anything I had ever seen before. Reminded me of the scene in De Mille's Ten Commandments where The Commandments are being written into the stone tablets.

My camera had nearly run out of batteries, and after this shot, they went completely dead. I didn't realise it at the time, but now I feel lucky to have been able to capture this.

Don't know why but the sense of awe and freedom I feel on seeing this picture reminds me of a poem. It sounds a hell of a lot better in Bengali, but the English, translated by the poet (Tagore) himself goes :

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

The Pulp that is life

2006-05-04T01:40:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I think Pulp Fiction is what defines the world best. The confusion of it all.

Honestly, is there were ever a Nobel Prize for movies, this would win hands down. Much as I admire the works of masters like Satyajit Ray, Kurosawa, Bergman, Orson Wells, and the rest, their movies are nothing compared to the raw intensity and kick ass entertainment that Pulp Fiction is so full of. Yeah, I can say that again.

I have seen the movie an uncountable number of times, starting with after my father bought the VHS tape from someplace and gave it to me when I was about 18. Yes, I am probably the only person in the world who has had a copy of Pulp Fiction given to him by his father. In all fairness, I have to say that I don't really think my father knew what the movie was about when he picked it up for me.

Anyways, coming back to the film itself, did I mention I think it's a work of pure genious ?

The reason for this sudden passionate 'verbiage' in favor of Pulp Fiction is because I recently picked up a copy of its soundtrack. And oh boy, is it great. I honestly, truly, really can't remember another movie in which the music fits into the narrative so well. The music almost defines the movie.

And now when I listen to the lyrics of songs like Flowers on the Wall (Statler Brother), Girl You'll be a Woman Soon (Neil Diamond), You never can tell(Chuck Berry) and If Love is a Red Dress (Marian McKee) the feeling that 'this movie IS IT' intensifies.

Oh man, here's the lyrics to If Love is a Red Dress :

My heart is empty.
Your eyes are dark.
Once we were hungry,
Now we are full.
These chains that bind us,
Can't beat these chains.
If love is shelter,
I'm gonna walk in the rain.

You were my angel.
Now, you are real.
So like a stranger,
Colder than steel.
The morning after,
You know what you bring.
If love is a red dress,
Well, hang me in rags.

Away.
There goes the fairy tale.
Lord, ain't it a shame?
In all this comfort,
I can't take the strain.

If we played even,
I'd be your queen.
But someone was cheatin'.
And it wasn't me.
I've laid it on the table,
You had something back.
If love is Aces,
Give me the Jack.

Each time I listen to it, I can see Marcellus Wallace being beaten to a pulp by Butch, watched by the storekeeper with the shotgun, with Maria McKee crooning in the background. And that haunting whistle.

Experiment with focus

2006-04-24T21:32:00.000-07:00

experiment with focus
Originally uploaded by soham_pablo.

Went for an outing with the folks from office on Saturday and chanced upon these beautiful flowers.

Quite a thing, the sunflower. Hope someone from Wipro gets impressed by my picture ! The flower was actually quite small, and it shocked me actually when the picture came out so beautifully.

It's seeriously time to learn how and why pictures turn out well.

Lotus
Originally uploaded by soham_pablo.

The lotus. Truly, we find the most beauty in the unlikeliest of places.

Kind of reminds me of that masterpiece of a film 'American Beauty'. The monologue by the Ricky Fitts character.

"It was one of those days when it's a minute away from snowing. And there's this electricity in the air, you can almost hear it, right? And this bag was just... dancing with me. Like a little kid begging me to play with it. For fifteen minutes. That's the day I realized that there was this entire life behind things, and this incredibly benevolent force that wanted me to know there was no reason to be afraid ever. Video's a poor excuse, I know. But it helps me remember...I need to remember. (distant) Sometimes there's so much beauty in the world I feel like I can't take it...and my heart is going to cave in."

Mrs. Robinson and Vincent realise that The Times they are a' changin'

2006-04-24T21:28:00.000-07:00

Deepening focus
Originally uploaded by soham_pablo.

Wish I were born in the sixties. Really can't relate to the music that comes out now. What comapres to the magic of Paul and Art, or the guitar of McLean, or the poerty of Bob Dylan ? Maybe the lyrics of Billy Joel or the energy of the Beatles.

Took this photo(s) this morning before leaving for the drudgery of work.

Photography is turning out to be quite addictive. I always used to wonder what bloody joy people get out of snapping pictures of anything they looked at. Now, at time I find myself doing the same thing.

The whole concept of digital photographs have changed the world so much, in my opinion. I needn't think twice before clicking 10 photos of the same things, when before I remember quite clearly statements from my mother akin to 'Roll noshto koro na'.

Guess I must buy myself a book - somethng like a begineer's guide to get to know the basics of how to take good photos.

V

2006-04-24T01:27:00.000-07:00

Voilà! In view, a humble vaudevillian veteran, cast vicariously as both victim and villain by the vicissitudes of fate. This visage, no mere veneer of vanity, is a vestige of the vox populi, now vacant, vanished. However, this valorous visitation of a bygone vexation stands vivified, and has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent vermin vanguarding vice and vouchsafing the violently vicious and voracious violation of volition. The only verdict is vengeance; a vendetta held as a votive, not in vain, for the value and veracity of such shall one day vindicate the vigilant and the virtuous. Verily, this vichyssoise of verbiage veers most verbose vis-à-vis an introduction, so let me simply add that it's my very good honour to meet you and you may call me V.

Translation :

Behold! Before you is a humble performer, cast, against his will, by fate, to the roles of both victim and villain. The face you see now is not just some mere facade of pointless theatrics. It is a remnant of the people's voice, which has since gone and disappeared. However, this past annoyance stands courageously reborn and has sworn to conquer the evil and corrupt, who promote greed and the violent suppression of free will. The only way to do this is with a war of retribution. It will not be a fruitless revenge, for the importance and self-evidence of this quest shall exonerate the open-minded and righteous. But in truth, this thick soup of words is becoming too excessive. So, let me simply finish by saying that it's my very good honour to meet you, and you may call me V.

Undoubtedly, one of the most interesting films I have seen. More interesting than Crash even. The plot is obviously reminiscent of George Orwell's 1984.

England (circa 2030) is under the control of a totalitarian system controlled by the big-brother-like Chancellor Sutler and his cronies. People's lives are under constant surveillance, freedoms are trampled upon, Christian fanaticism is at the highest and democracy is abolished.

In the midst of this comes a lone face (or the lack thereof) of dissent - simply called V. We never know who he is, except that he was part of the goverment's program where human beings were live subjects of research. Much like the time when the Nazis experimented on live Jews and Gypsies. The person known as V, was undoubtedly some sort of a socially different character. Maybe a homosexual, or a Muslim or simply a person who voiced his dissent. He is subjected to lab tests like a ginuea pig, which eventually transforms himself into a killing machine.

But the film is about a lot more. It is about the trend that powerful governments are showing these days. When news is doctored. Wars are fought as an advertisement for weapons. When a corrupt lot rules a country with an excess of money.

Some of the things shown seem eerily familair. Like the manipulation of media to create an atmosphere of fear, which the current US government has done a lot of in the recent run up to the unjustified Iraq war.

V for Vendetta has some great dialogues, and is worth going to see just for that. It does require some IQ though, coz it just ain't a brainless action thriller.

A must see, in my opinion.

Crash into reality

2006-04-09T23:55:00.000-07:00

It's the sense of touch.
What?
Any real city, you walk, you know?
You brush past people.
People bump into you.
In L.A., nobody touches you.
We're always behind
this metal and glass.
I think we miss
that touch so much
that we crash into each other
just so we can feel something.

These are the lines with which this year's masterpiece opens with. I think we can substitute any big city name with LA and the staement above would still remain relavant.

Crash is a beautifully crafted film, and if anyone is like me, it will require two viewings to fully appreciate the subtle intricacies of the story.

The story, sorry - stories - plays around the lives of several folks in Los Angeles, who quite literally crash into each other over the course of one day.

The break up :
1. A Black Officer and his half Puerto Rican half El Salvadorian officer girlfriend involved in an investigation where a racist black cop guns down 3 black guys. Only this time - the black guys were clearly at fault.

2. A suave all-white politician and his (rightly) white paranoid wife who are at the recieving end of a carjacking.

3. Two black carjackers who sell stolen cars for a living, and one of them with a religious leaning towards St.Christopher.

4. A Persian family struggling to make a living in America.

5. A Latino keymaker trying to eke out a good living to help raise his daughter in a 'good' neighborhood.

6. A Korean accident victim and his wife with a dirty secret.

7. A disillusioned LAPD cop who doesn't know where to vent his frustration at having to see his father suffer from prostrate cancer.

8. A rich black film director and his wife who are subjected to the most horrifying indignities one night.

The film very adroitly shows the complexities of racism, which many of us look at as a very black and white topic. The blacks are oppressed, they are discriminated aginst. Yet there some fanatically racist blacks too. And a lot of people take advantage of their being a minority community , as you can read in Greatbong's post here. The whole story is very much like the Hindu-Muslim conflict situation in India. Though it is a fact that Muslims are a disadvantaged group of people, people living in India sometimes can't help but feel that a lot of that is the Muslims' own doing. And it's also a fact that whole lot of Muslims take advantage of the fact that being a minority community forces people to be 'politically correct' with them. But I digress.

Paul Haggis, the director of Crash, skillfully weaves the stories together, all of whom are involved in some way with racism. The Mexican keymaker is being stereotyped at one end while the black carjacker feels that all whites are against blacks.

The two best episodes (for me) are to do with the Persian family and the white politician's wife (played by Sandra Bullock in a surprisingly meaningful role).

The film is smattered with some great dialogues too. My favorite sample :

Stolen Car Dealer (SCD) :I understand. You run over a Chinaman.Stuff him in the back.
Then bring the truck here so I can share in the experience.
Carjacker (CJ) :Come on, man. It's a little bit of blood. It'll wash right off.
SCD: Georgie, burn this thing.
CJ : Burn it? It's a brand-new Navigator. All you need is a little piece of carpet.
SCD : You watch the Discovery Channel?
CJ : Not a lot.
SCD : They got some good shit on that channel.
SCD : Every night there is a show with somebody shining a blue light and finding tiny specks of blood splattered on carpets and walls and ceiling fans, bathroom fixtures and special-edition plastic Burger King tray cups. The next thing they show is some stupid redneck in handcuffs who looks absolutely stunned that this is happening to him. Sometimes the redneck is actually watching the Discovery Channel
when they break in to arrest him. And he still can't figure out how on earth they could've caught him!
(silence)
Do I look like I wanna be on the Discovery Channel?
Cj : No.
SCD : Then get the fuck outta my shop.

At the end of the film, I came out confused, realising what I already knew. That racism is a damn lot more complex than people think. On a similar vein, I think I am very liberal and honestly don't give a monkey's ass about people's religious beliefs, but still I agree with people who tell me that Muslims have ruined certain areas of Bangalore. I have some close friends who are Muslims but still am mentally uncomfortable at the idea of going to an all Muslim gathering.

I guess it's some kind of genetic makeup which we all have to want to be among people who are similar to us. I don't know.

The whole bloody matter is too complex for my tiny brain.