India Calling ...

Need an Oscar???... come to the east .... Slumdog has revealed just a few aspects of Indian cultures and poverty at its best. You will find more...

Pinki smiles is one other documentary on India which has won the director an Oscar. Centuries ago, many travellers and foreigners came to india as it was called the golden bird... "Sone ki chidiya"... And they thought they looted everything from india... the britishers, the portugeese.. the mughals..

Nope.. they were wrong ... India still has a tremendous potential to be exploited.. and no it is not it's riches that i am talking about... it's the mediocrity... that the world is trying to cash upon ...

I feel slumdog is a decent movie but it is over rated way above it's standards.... and it has won 8 oscars.

And Anil kapoor says.. "Fantastic!!! Can you believe it??"...

No i don't... As many other indian directors and actors would agree that there were many other great movies that Indian cinema has come up with,,,

The likes of black, swades, taare zameen par, lagaan, ab tak chappan... are rarely acknowledged in the global arena..

Million other rahman fans would agree with me that he has produced better songs than these..
I agree that... the hard work has payed off...but i feel that... the music scores for the original indian movies should also be nominated for the awards tantamount to the oscars...


In these tough times of recession... if you want to have bullish run... come to india... :)

Random observations

Random Observations:

I solicit the readers, followers of this blog not to expect any correlation between the posted observations...( i know this is redundancy as the topic clearly mentions..."Random Observations"...but still... bolne mein kya jaata hai...). this post is intended to be a big one as i have taken long time to write a new post...


1) I have recently completed the book "Between the assassinations" by Aravind adiga and it is a not complete let down but a bad second one after a good debut. The name of the book is in no correlation with the content and it would have been better if the author named it as "Kittur days". The two assassinations mentioned in the title of the book are that of Indira gandhi and rajiv gandhi. I am not sure whether the incidents are real life incidents btween these to incidents but the content was surely not comparable to White tiger. The story is very much similar to the R.K. Narayan's Malgudi days. I am a very big fan of Malgudi days.. so might be many of you, so i found the book by adiga a bit interesting. The narration as it was in white tiger, very good in this book too. I would rate it 2 out of 5 and recommend you to buy Malgudi days than this one as it is much cheaper and much better.



2) Recently, i have been to warangal, my native place and have been to few temples. due to the unavailability of bike, i had to travel in an auto rickshaw. I have observed that the margins that they strive so hard for are in the range of 1-2 rupees per ride. It has been the same always, but as i have been staying in bangalore for the past 16 odd months, i have observed how totally contrasting the two regions are. I accept that the living standards are very high in bangalore, but margins of 15 bucks(average) per ride in bangalore is really very high. Hardly any auto rickshaw driver in bangalore agrees to abide to the rules of the meter. Time may come when.... the only customers in bangalore malls will be auto rickshaw drivers going for pepe's and wrangler's and chilling out in coffee day's and barista's.
Hope in the times of recession (and due to reduction in the global crude oil prices) at least the prices of auto charges come down.



3) The above pic is from the train from bangalore to kacheguda, which i captured in my mobile camera. It is sheer negligence of the railway department and this lax can be very dangerous. the dc power outlet where there is a facility to charge the mobile phones was kept completely open. This happens to be just beside the sink and rest rooms and thus can be very dangerous. I incidentally warned one of the co-passangers of the peril as he was about to rest with his back towards the dc power outlet.


4) In the wake of the recent developments in karnataka and the actions by sri ram sene(SRS) in mangalore, the chief Pramod muthalik has been arrested and the same person has been released on bail after 2 days. He happens to make a statement yesterday in CNN-IBN that he has plans to ruin Valentine's day in bangalore. He says "Pyaar karne ke liye ek day nahi chahiye. Aaj karo, abhi karo, kabhi bhi karo (You don't need a day to celebrate love. Do it whenever. It's a feeling, why a day?)".....

I have utmost respect for the indian and hindu values, but this kind of moral policing is not just. I believe that the traditional values of India have been and will be carried generation after and generation and there is no doubt about it. But we have to welcome different traditions into our system. It is absolutely the right of an individual how he wants to lead his life , ofcourse not disturbing the communal harmony, and Amen!(So be it!)....

The statement made by muthalik can be easily countered that any other festival in india which are celebrated with great enthusiasm and shraddha.. can be celebrated on any other day.. why have specific dates to do that. For example dusherra which is celebrated on the name of the victory of good over bad... can be celebrated on any other day... why celebrate on that very dashami of the year....



Many more incidents to discuss.... but.. i shall pen down my thoughts...soon..in another post... Till then.. Have a nice time.. Aloha!

2008... for better or worse...

Picking up from where muddu has left off, i thought i would do some research as to why it has been such an ominous year. According to the chineese astrology, this year is termed as the rat year. It is an animal associated with aggression, wealth, charm, and order, yet also associated with death, war, the occult, pestilence, and atrocities. While i have seen nothing regarding the wealth and order(and not even charm, except for few good looking girls i have seen at Forum :P)... this year has been a true representation of aggression, death, war, occult, pestilence and atrocities. While most of the other predictions that i have stumbled upon in the internet for the year 2008 have been proved to be fallacious, it is certainly an year to think about, rather than just forgetting and moving forward. 2008 has seen some disastrous events like the economic slump, the market blood bath, terrorist attacks. People have reacted to the atrocities. A great leader emerged in the americas, few more were duly elected in india. Let conscience prevail and bring positive changes...


Let us also pray in these last moments of one of the disastrous years... so that peace and prosperity is restored everywhere.

So.. i propose a toast to a better year and a better world...

Happy and prosperous new year 2009

My mom's physics

Are you better than your mom in applying physics and its concepts? I am certainly not.

Here are two such incidents that occurred to me....

1) After coming to bangalore, i started cooking and my mom gave me instructions that when cooking daal , add salt after the dal is cooked. I have been wondering why. But it occured to me that the boiling point of water is increased when we add impurities, especially salt. I googled and found out that the boiling point of sea water is 103 odd degrees. My mom never knew this but she knew that adding salt delays the cooking of daal. Howdy hell i didnt know that... and i claim that i got 120 out of 120 in phyiscs in my 12th(and 30/30 in practicals :P).

2) This incident made me think that my mom(or her mom, or her grand mom) discovered things that newton proclaimed to have discovered. Whenever i had some hot water in a bucket, my mom insisted me to add some cold water to it immediately. I asked her why and she said that because of this the hot remains hot for a longer time , even if you left the hot water just like that. Years later i read that newton's law of cooling is exactly the same. It says that the rate of cooling of a body is directly proportional to the difference between the temperature of the body and its surroundings.


You have the answer now, are you still better than your mom in application??

Journey into the dark... in Balram halwai's cab

Aravind adiga's first brainchild 'White tiger' is, as many would concur, a roller-coaster ride into the darkness of india. Let me first make it clear that it does not have a great story. But, the way the author narrated the story of a driver and his ambitions to become a 'social entrepreneur' is truly commendable. Balram halwai , the protoganist of the book comes from a remote village in Bihar with not many dreams but ends up as an owner of an enterprise. His journey from the school, where he is bestowed upon with the title 'White Tiger', through the tea shop in dhanbad, the driver of Mr. Ashok, and finally a successul owner in Bangalore, is truly amazing.

Balram, the driver of one Mr.Ashok is portrayed to be a highly intoverted person. I really loved the way the author described subtle things in the life of a driver and his encounters with the other workers in his owner's apartment. I am presently reading the author's second book, 'Between the assassinations'... will soon post the review of it here.

This Forrest ain't running anywhere...

The first thing that comes to mind, if u hear about Forrest gump is "Run, forrest, Run". Tom Hanks' exemplary action in the movie makes it even more memorable. I happened to go to Landmark few weeks back and Lo and behold, Forrest gump, Washington press book was on sale. I instantly made up my mind to buy the same.

People who have seen the movie sure would remember dialogs like, "Run, Forrest, Run", "Seat's taken!", "Life is a box full of chocolates, you never know which one you are gonna get!". This book ain't got any catchy dialogs like that, but it sure has few things the movie doesn't have.

The story plot is a whole bunch different from what you see in the movie. Here in this book, forrest is a chess champion, ping pong champion, an actor, an astronaut, a wrestler, a musician, and successful shrimp business owner and much more.... winston groom's great narration keeps you sticked to the book right till the end of the book.

There is Bubba, there is lieutenant Dan, and there is the poor old mama, but all of them have roles very different from what they are in the movie. Jenny curran, the love of forrest's life does not die of a disease at the end of the book, rather she marries another guy and that is one of the sad parts of the story.

There are many characters that you haven't seen or heard in the movie like the ape Sue which is one of the best friends of Forrest.

It is a good reliving experience after watching the movie... and a very good read.

how sirish gouda went to see a match, saw sachin, and got caught on camera :)

10th october 9:40 pm: Had dinner, ready to sleep as the next day was one of the most important days of my life.

10th october 11:30 pm: was still playing fifa'08 on my laptop...

10th october 2:20 pm: still playing fifa'08 ( lost 6 straight matches to bolton, and wanted to take revenge,,, kya karooo ... i am addicted to this game).. AT 2:30 finally beat bolton, and slept.

11th october 6:00 am : Woke up... i mean, hardly woke up to switch the alarm off... err... infact just snoozed it...

6:30 am : Dilip woke me up( FACT 1: Dilip, my roomie... a big fan of sachin and cricket... didnt sleep the whole night unable to contain his excitement) ... made me realise how important that day was....

7:30 am: had breakfast, started for the stadium at 8:00 am

8:30 am: venue : chinnaswamy stadium, bangalore. people were ecstatic, all kinds of people in a frenzy, everybody wants to get in the stadium as soon as possible, ( FACT 2: it rained in the last session on the last day and the play was supposed to start earlier today)

9:10 pm: finally entered the stadium... the very first sight of the stadium introduced sachin ramesh tendulkar in flesh to my eyes... was it a scintillating sight??? i bet my life it is.

Looks like you people are getting bored reading my diary with the most minutest details of the day... so i will cut it short..


The stadium was awesome, the crowd even better...( i think you got my point :P)... My day at the stadium started with the sight of sachin and saurav playing in the nets. India started of the day with 68 for no loss... and it started off the day very bad. Lost wickets in quick session. FACT 3: Actually to say the truth... we were equally culpable for india's bad performance...


It was the saga of the placards. We wanted to be famous by getting caught on the camera showing placards saying Thank you neo sports and blah blah.... !!!

But instead we thought of two very interesting quotes. The first one was after gambhir got out and dravid was on the field. We thought of writing " Don't break the wall, god (sachin) is behind it". Unfortunately sehwag got out before we even wrote the half of it. So we had to customise the quote as " Don't break the wall, prince is behind it" ( What customization, why don't i think like this in my mock cats :P)....

So there was sachin and dravid on the field.... we tried very hard to get captured ... but unfortunately we didnt get caught. So, we tried something else.... write a quote about sachin.. a very good one...

Saying .. " There is sachin, there is daylight and then there is the rest". As far as my memory goes, Tony grieg said this in one of the test matches against australia. It was a good quote ,.. u know... to get caught on camera... Again thunder struck on us... sachin got out... phew... i lost interest in the match...


So .. i slept to compensate for the last day's sleep... i mean i tried to sleep... amidst the loud crowd. Woke up just before lunch... when ganguly and dravid were trying to just get set in the game. The game after the tea was very interesting. ganguly got out , so did dravid. and it was harbhajan singh and Zaheer khan on the crease. they were taking it on the aussie bowlers and they were helpless... unconventional shots and some very good drives... brought the half century of harbhajan singh,,, and the very next moment we were on tv.... the crowd went bizarre... we were doing mexican waves... every next minute... and it was never so lively in the first two sessions...

After tea was amazing... and it rained afterwards and so match had to end soon... due to bad light.

That's the day from my perspective... much more to write abt the day.. but... no patience... :P