Caught at MidWicket

Binayak Sen gets bail.. finally....

2009-05-25T07:12:00.001-07:00

It's taken 2 long years... May 14th 2007 was when he was arrested on various trumped up charges...

The slothful system that passes off for a judicial finally realizes that 2 years is long enough!!!

http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/002200905251707.htm

Medha Patkar's Talk at Emory Univ, Atlanta, on March 22nd, 2009

2009-03-28T07:17:00.000-07:00

Hard-hitting and pulling no punches, Medha Patkar stays true to her reputation and launches a scathing attack on the concept of big dams and even bigger development, the SEZ model, the need for a space to protest and raise the inconvenient questions.

Part -1

Part -2

P.S - FYI, these videos were recorded by the AID Atlanta chapter folks.

Some insights garnered during an unforgettable afternoon with Medha Patkar in Atlanta.. (March 21st, 2009)..

2009-03-23T21:28:00.001-07:00

I was in Atlanta this past weekend, where Medha Patkar gave a talk at the Emory University. Us AID vols also had the fantastic opportunity of interacting with her in a informal discussion for 2-3 hrs on Saturday afternoon.( we were at least 15 of us). Her passion and courage was there for all to see and inspiration was never in short supply. I did record most of her official talk at Emory, but I need to do some post-processing ( :D ) before uploading it somewhere. Hope to do that sometime this weekend.

The following is some excerpts from that discussion. In most cases, I have written her opinions or at least my interpretation of her opinions. Also, this is not a structured write-up and this is also not about the Narmada issue. Basically it's just a bunch of points put together in a fairly easy-to-read manner.

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Question from us- . Can a truly non-violent movement survive and achieve their goals? Won't the moderates get silenced easily?
Ans from Medhaji- Only if the movement is truly mass-based. Needs an enormous base for it be a successful non-violent struggle. Unfortunately, quite a few Indian movements have a much bigger international support base as compared to a national support base. More national, provincial and local support is very essential to raise an issue and get it to reach the "powers that may be".

Q. What role do NGOs play in the current scenario (vis-a-vis development, activism etc)?
A. NGO's typically divided into 4 kinds:
1. Big and well-established (also read "pro-establishment") - Typically work on projects that help them garner the goodwill of people, well reputed, get a lot of funding from the govt and from corporates., do not get into activism-related issues, get invited by the govt to sit on committees forming policy and regulations, generall do not play a part in progressive legislations and prefer the status quo.
2. Funding agencies getting into field-work - Agencies which primarily used to fund small NGOs who would be working at the grass-roots level have started getting involved in field work. Has a created an uncomfortable situation where the person with the funds is the one deciding the "what-how-why"s of any project.
3. Smaller NGOs working on a mix of projects and activism-related issues - Generally not afraid to get involved in activism too, but band-width, presence and funding is limited.
4. People's movements - Mass-based movements that struggle towards a certain cause. Activistic in nature. Most of these movements are very low on funds, but the high energy and enthusiasm of volunteers keep it going.

Medhaji.....

Some thoughts on the current development paradigm...

Role of the State - State is transferring the responsibilities to private interests. Rather than giving money, indispensable resouorces such as land, water are being given away to profit-driver interests. Instruments of low used for such things are typically a legacy of the British Raj, with some post-1947 amendments only making the situation worse. ( Example - Land Acquisition Act, 1894).

Nowadays, govt's onslaught is no longer obvious or crude or extra-judiciary. It functions in perfectly legal ways. The basis for this is the law-building process, when various violations are legislated into place eg - SEZ act and amendments to the Land Acquisition Act) Thus, in the law-abiding phase ( the phase once these legislations are passed), any protests from victims become violations of low. This form of legal framework goes against the constitutional framework for basic human rights. It also enables the killing of rural communities that have existed for generations. The costs/benefots analyses are typically done - but for whose benefit?
- This in short is today's living problem.

Role of private interests - Corporates also do not employ crude attacks on protestors. Initiate dialogues which are however imbued with false promises.More often than not, these natural resources are on sale without the original owner being anywhere in the picture. In most cases, corporates and real estate builders get the precise land chunks that they want, at ludicrous prices. Case in point being the current Bombay skyline, being heavily influenced by the mushrooming of skyscrapers in illegally procured land ( sometime as cheap of Re. 1 / acre). The upper ceiling ( for buying real estate) that used to be present, has all but vanished in most states, thus paving the way for even more such gross violations. Contrast this with the case where a group of organizations ( Medhaji was a part of it) tried to get 50 acres of land for a 50 yr lease period, at Rs. 40/acre - the file is stuck at some govt. office and is very slow to move.

With a poster displaying some of the ill-gotten chunks of the Mumbai skyline...

Compensation and Resettlement - Is a big sham in many cases. Rampant corruption has been unearthed in cases of financial compensation, to the tunes of many, many crores. Investigations are still going on.
W.r.t resettlement, many a time, govt. land is being sold as private sold. Your own land might be sold as many as 8 times, without you coming to know if it at all. Such is the sorry state of resettlement measures.

An animated Medhaji driving home a point rather forcefully...

Judiciary - In the current scenario, even some parts of the judiciary have gotten influenced by the corporate view of development, thus skewing judgements and swaying away from the famed neutrality.

Globalization needs to be used to solve common international problems and not just for the increase of profits of a select few. Need to make the UN relevant and potent. Need to make international pressure work. Need to ask questions to the corporate head-honchos when they travel to the U.S. Also, corporates like Coca-Cola and Dow have to be questioned more in the U.S for their roles abroad.

Most poignant moment for me (Karthik) : The govt. had made faulty estimates about the Narmada submergence area, grossly underestimating the extent of future damage. A striking example: The small, yet efficient hydel project in Bhilgaon that was setup with the help of AID ( the Swades project) and which presented a fitting riposte to the grandiose, yet inefficient Sardar Sarovar dam, has now been completely destroyed. Submerged. :(

Engrossed listeners.....

Final words - Medhaji quoted MLK Jr ( born in Atlanta )
" Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable... Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals"

An Afternoon at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial in Atlanta

2009-03-21T20:29:00.000-07:00

Tale of Two Companies...

2009-02-11T20:03:00.000-08:00

Company A has been around for more than 30 years. Pretty sucessful, yet fairly small player, who had started making quite a few dents in the older established rival, Company B's market share. Interestingly, even in the bleakest of times, Company A actually made money. Year after year. And MOST CRUCIALLY, these profits did not come at the expense of head count. Simply put, this company, despite going through multiple downturns in its 3 decade history, had not conducted a single layoff. Signs of a prosperous company and dedicated and secure employees. In fact, the company started doing so well that some of "those-who-know-better" decided to let the company go public sometime back.

Cut to 2008. Company B, which had been steadily losing marketshare to Company A, started chomping at the bit when it realized that Company A had gone public. What better way toregain market share than to kill the competition. Monopoly works, anywhere, anytime. So end of 2008, Company A became yet another medium-sized company swallowed up by it's bigger erstwile rival (Company B had a fairly chequered record in this regard).

Cut to beginning 2009. Layoffs everywhere. Company B definitely had to do it, if not for anything , at least to convince the be-all and end-all of markets, the investor. Looking around, Company B realizes that there are lots of new faces in the company.

Company B happy, investor happy. An "insignificant" few unhappy.

Now tell me why I should still like market capitalism..... ( yeah, I know there are lots of cases where it supposedly works... but ...)

The Man Who Greened Vellore

2009-02-07T19:08:00.000-08:00

“He makes it all sound so simple”. The greening of the hills of Vellore, vermi-composting, bio-gas, cattle-breeding, nursery, employment generation, environmental awareness, enviro-friendly marriages – these were just a sample of the “simple” topics covered by him. Who is he?

Even as a Bachelor of Sciences student in Mathematics, C. Srinivasan found his proverbial calling in the hills of Vellore, his home-town. The long lines of history etched onto its forts had not prevented the city from getting ravaged by the needs of man and time. The forests in these hills were slowly being destroyed for the sake of firewood and illicit liquor and the debilitating effects did not stop with the people affected. The district of Vellore had silently become the hottest district in the state of Tamil Nadu with the mercury levels soaring over 45 degrees Celsius.

Pained at the realization that the heat being radiated by the barren hills were fast turning Vellore into a furnace, he painstakingly combed each of the 256 hills, gathering evidence of this ecological disaster and also trying to come up with ways to counter the situation. Thus was born the Vellore Hills Restoration Project along with the Exnora Green Cross, Vellore. This was the seed which germinated into nine other interlinked projects, each reviving a vital thread of the eco-society of Vellore and all of them culminating into three grand outcomes – JOB OPPORTUNITY, ENVIRONMENT PROTECTION and ECONOMIC GROWTH.

More than the actual work being done, it was the working of Srinivasan’s mind which stood out during his talk on June 3rd, 2008 at the Parr Public Library, Plano. Here was man who embodied everything that we in AID have come to believe in. The selflessness, as he spoke of making the projects help uplift as many people as possible, without expecting the slightest remuneration; the passion for his work, as he corrected himself while giving out the dimensions of one of the many rain-water harvesting ponds in the hills; and the absolute devotion to the cause at hand, by talking of all his fellow-workers as one big family.

His work does not just stop with the afore-said. In an age where wedding planners make millions arranging Hawaiian or Elizabethan themed weddings in the dust-bowls of Chennai or Jaipur, Srinivasan could either be termed an anachronism or a pioneer. His wedding theme – “Go Green”. His enviro-friendly weddings feature stainless steel cutlery and glasses instead of plastic ones, cloth wedding invitations which double up as hankies and the coup de grace, giving away tree-saplings instead of the usual “coconut-betel leaf” as part of the traditional “thaamboolam”. Neither did the wedding innovations nor the innovative weddings stop. Having successfully conducted nine such weddings since his own “green” wedding in 2005, he is now searching for the next couple who will get to write their names in the Guinness Book of World Records by having the world’s first 100% enviro-friendly wedding.

For long, the AID volunteer in me had this feeling that the people running NGOs in India, like Srinivasan, were a league apart. There was a lot of admiration, but there was also a whole lot of awe and this feeling of an unexplainable “X-factor” surrounding all these people. But now, all I could see was this simple man, uncluttered by the trappings of fame, rubbing shoulders with district collectors and common-men alike.

And, when he requests for just two years to turn these projects into fully sustainable, lucrative individual initiatives, you realize that his earnestness comes, not from mere expectation, but from experience.

- Karthik Ranganathan, June 2008

Sudan... War and Peace

2009-02-01T05:05:00.000-08:00

One of the most profound influences on my life has been Amr, Sudanese by birth, but currently living in Dallas. When I met him first in March 07 and came to know that he was from Sudan, all that I could ask him was "Isn't that where Darfur is...". Sadly, this is the case even now for a lot of people - "Sudan is Darfur and Darfur is Sudan"

Arguably the cradle of all human life on Earth, the Nile valley that strectches across northen Sudan and southern Egypt played host to the Nubian civilization, the proud descendants of which include Amr Haj-Omar. Home to more pyramids than even Egypt, Sudan is the largest country in all of Africa and is quite a continent in itself, with the diversity present there.

Unfortunately, Sudan has been ravaged by a civil war between the North and the South for the last 2 decades, with the goverment in the hands of the North. Described often as the biggest humanitarian crisis in modern times, it has resulted in millions being dead and displaced (there is currently a truce in place and a referendum is due in the South in a couple of years). Anyway, enough of facts better obtained from Wikipedia...

The real reason for this post is a book that I recently read, "They Poured Fire On us From the Sky" http://www.theypouredfire.com/. The book is written by 3 boys from Southern Sudan and is a first-person account of the war that engulfed their lives and the struggle they underwent to escape from the horrors of it. They were among the thousands of boys and girls who literally walked for thousands of miles, through hunger, despair, bullets and land-mines, men and animals behaving like animals, in search of safety in the neighbouring countries. Some walked all the way to Ethiopia, buoyed by reports of UN-funded schools and camps with lots of food and joy around, only to find themselves coming under the line of fire of warring groups over there. Their search for relative succour and safety ended at the Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya, where relatively well-equipped UN-funded camps were indeed in existence and waiting for them.

The book is stunningly simple yet stark in its narration. The conflict is seen from the eyes of children under 10 yrs of age and so the the narration does not get clouded by politics or ideology. It is a testament to how much the human body can undergo if the spirit is willing. It is also a testament to the futility of war where the civilians caught in the war-zone have few or no real choices available. The bleak future of the civilian population caught in conflict is best captured by an incident where the boys in a camp held by rebels whoop with joy when informed that they would be provided with guns. Seeing the menfolk in their families strut around like heroes with guns and grenades, arms and ammunition were the only designer labels that these kids craved for.

The one paragraph that best explains human conflict... as narrated by one of the boys after he leaves Kakuma for the U.S...

"Find peace in my heart. That wasn't something that I had been searching for. Revenge had been there for so long. It would have to move aside first and I was not wiling to let go so easily or quickly."

The book is a wonderful read for all those even remotely interested... Try it out.. you'll be better for it...

P.S - Darfur is an entirely different story politically and ethnically and has nothing at all to do with the civil war that raged in Sudan.

Random follow up to a Girish post...

2009-01-24T14:29:00.000-08:00

Only recently read the post by Girish where he bemoaned the sudden lack of creative pursuits in his life and his subsequent resolutions. It was interesting to see that similar sentiments were being shared across the globe... lack of time, corporate straight-jacketing, facts and figures of the financial kind taking over the previously fluid mind ??? :)

Was glad to note that some of his remedial actions have been a constant feature of my life for a while now.. regular Sunday cricket, lots of reading, the occassional sketching and photography ...

More updates on the reading front soon.....

Tom Segev... an Israeli "New Historian"...and Gaza...

2009-01-02T22:37:00.000-08:00

As with the most of the world, I have been following the happenings at the Gaza Strip.. with a mixture of interest, sadness, pessimism, deja-vu..

While reading one of the countless articles on the topic, I ran into a few written by Tom Segev, previously unknown to me..

Reading a refreshingly different point of view from an Israeli historian did shed a whole new light on a lot of the issues dogging the fortunes of Israel, Palestine, Middle East and well, the entire world..

Some of the interesting discussion points brought about by Tom go like this.. What if Israel had not go ahead with the annexation of the Palestine territory in 1967..

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/05/opinion/05segev.html

Questioning the statement in the Israeli "Declaration of Independence" ..were the Jews really exiled from Jerusalem.. the assertion central to the Zionist movement...

http://monthlyreview.org/mrzine/segev120308.html

Most comprehensive was this discussion he had for this institute in Berkeley..

http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people7/Segev/segev07-con0.html

almost a book review and info session on his latest book "1967: Israel, the War, and the Year that Transformed the Middle East"

I'm totally intrigued by this book and dying to get hold of it.. but I have to adhere by the rule of the missus... finish the books I currently have started reading before buying a new one.. this has immediately put a 6 month delay :D

Anyway... hope to get it a lot sooner than that... For more info on the book..

http://www.amazon.com/1967-Israel-Year-Transformed-Middle/dp/0805070575

Too many times terror equates to error??

2008-12-17T20:33:00.000-08:00

A totally random thought led me to search for the number of occurrences of the word "terror" in the homepage of www.outlookindia.com.

Result was 21!!!

Terror - sign of our times

Error - sign of times to come???

The Inevitable Return....and the December Season...

2007-12-15T16:49:00.000-08:00

For some unfathomable reason, in the last 4 days, the topic of returning to India for good has figured in my blog, office conversations, Hindu magazine reading and late-night conversations with Sivasankari ..and not once did I initiate it. Some didn't know it would happen. Those who knew, didn't know when. Those who knew when, didn't quite understand why. As for the person who was supposed to know everything, he didn't have a clue how....

Anyway, shifting tracks, I came across this fantastic piece of writing by the historian/cricket historian Ramachandra Guha in the latest Outlook. In a humorous yet caustic critique of the NRI homecoming season in December, Ram Guha takes the liberty to launch broadsides at several sections - the deep-rooted racism in the Indian society, the fawning hosts, the high-and-mighty "visitors", radicals both left and right of centre.. He even affectionately terms these ppl as "The Family Show Off", "Non-Resident Religious Radical(NRRR)", "Non-Religious Political Radical(NRPR)"...

A few selections from this piece ( http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20071217&fname=Col+Ramachandra+Guha+%28F%29&sid=1&pn=1)

"Like Dussehra and Diwali, it is a winter festival, but unlike them the gods it honours are living beings, who appear before us in flesh and blood instead of being frozen into stone. This relatively new addition to our lives is called NRI puja. It takes place in December, a time when thousands of Non-Resident Indians briefly become Resident Non-Indians. As a middle-class, English-speaking South Indian, I am always part of these festivities myself. For half my family serve as deities; the other half as worshippers....."

"The NRRR tells you that the only way to build a strong, self-reliant nation is to marry Faith with State. Like exiles everywhere, he yearns for the restoration of a pure, uncontaminated, national culture, which in his rendering can only mean a Hindu culture......"

"the NRPR are located chiefly in the American academy, as students and professors. They are fervently against 'lpg': liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation. This, despite being beneficiaries of L, P, and G themselves. Some NRPR offer socialist Cuba as an alternate economic model; some others, the Gandhian ideal of the self-sufficient village economy. Where the nrrrs support a political party, namely the BJP, the NRPR are more prone to support, and influence, those social movements which share their distaste for the state, the market, the establishment; for, it seems, everything - and - everyone - but -themselves...."

"Both kinds of radicals are hypocritical. Living under a Constitution that separates Church from State, the religious radical yet wishes to convert India into a Hindu Pakistan. Living in an open, free society that encourages innovation and enterprise, the political radical yet wants to refashion India into a Burma writ large, into an isolated, autarkic autocracy that shall pass itself off as a socialist utopia....."

.....................................................................................................................

I have long been a fan of Ram Guha, but this article totally blew me away, for I could instantly map quite a few ppl into these divisions. Despite these observations not taking me completely by surprise, the articulation was as perfect as it could get and left me smiling. And the icing on the cake was the realization that the more liberal I thought I was becoming, the more radical I was getting. The more conservative I was turning into.

I knew exactly which category I was starting to fall into.... and my lone point of concern is .....Should I be concerned by this??

Will I ever know what is right and what will be left?

Stolen Generations???

2007-12-05T19:50:00.000-08:00

"The Australian Govt. will render an official apology to the natives".. or something to that effect was said by the new Aussie PM, Kevin Rudd. And when I came to know that his predecessor Howard had steadfastly refused to do so for quite a while, my ears perked up.

More reading yielded the phrase "Stolen Generations" , " raging debate", " myth" and the like. What started off with a regular visit to the sports columns of smh.com.au ( or The Sydney Morning Herald in short) became a topic worth blogging!! and that too after months!!!!

In short, this is the gist. From the last cpl of decades of the 19th century till 1970, the Australian Federal Govt. had actually implemented a "policy" of removal of "half-caste" children from Aboriginal families to "more congenial" locations such as a missionary or a white family. Ostensibly with such good motives, the policy however could deny itself from becoming racist and all hell broke loose thereafter.

The govt.l felt that half-caste children were being shunned as outcastes by their native Aboriginal communities, so they decided to take things into their own hands and provide shelter. Not uncommon, but unfortunately white kids in such scenarios happened to have better lives, like seeing their relatives very often, visiting them during weekends or even just staying with a dependable relative rather than in a govt. shelter. The half-castes of course had the luxury of never again seeing their relatives or community members. Oh actually they did see them. When they grew up, just to ensure that they did not grow up completely oblivious of their nativity, their white foster homes would take them to Aboriginal workshops to teach them ab
out a smatter of their culture.

From all of my reading, I could not deny the blatant racist overtones of this policy - ensure half-blood mixes ONLY with pure-blood, thus ensuring pure-blood triumphs over the mudblood. But on the other hand, it was also obvious that those communities had shunned quite a few half-caste children and their moms. So the govt. definitely had to do something.

Yeah, as always in this man's world, the poor moms turned out to be natives who were either raped/ married/ loved by white men only to be deserted by them soon enough. So the good old white Oz govt. decides to punish the only 2 groups blameless in this mess - the children and their moms. Simplistically looking at just this one issue, you had those Aboriginal communities and you had the cowardly white men, the 2 groups which needed some form of counselling/ help/ censure. But then that would be way too much for any govt. that had to be both politically correct to some believable extent and still be true to their vote banks.

Anyway, bottomline is this.. after all the backlash about the Stolen Generations (half-castes), the various Aussie state govts. apologised for their roles( a certain Mr. Howard refused to do that even then). Just when you think the story's got a good ending, here comes the clincher. Now, the authorities refuse to interfere in any of the abuse-related cases from those communities, lest somebody shouts "wolf".

So .. you get the picture.. talk about a good act getting sour.....

P.S - Watch the Rabbit-Proof Fence..movie on 3 girls who escaped from a missionary/camp...true story... and must watch the making.... enlightening...

Ashish ROCKS!!!!!

2007-05-26T01:36:00.000-07:00

Ashish the cameraman... Ashish the "materialistic", corporation-hating, left-leaning individual...

the hyper-aggressive, hyper-emotional, hyper-loud...

bottomline is just this - THIS GUY'S NOT CHANGED A BIT OVER THE LAST YR AND 3 MONTHS....( except for adding a few chins)

except more soon.....

125 more..

2007-04-19T19:50:00.000-07:00

Time doesn't get any slower than this...or should I want it to go any slower? Bachelor to Master...a journey last made in the academic domain....now gets a meaning more literal...though the Master part might actually be far from the truth..

( For some reason all of a sudden the title " Lady or the Tiger" flashed past my mind :D )

Defly feels different..the thought of marriage and after...for one will lose all bragging and ragging rights with early twenty something bachelors....but still I wudn't trade it for anything else ;) ...or probably will do... will never rule anything out....

Anyway..the inertia of non-blogging has been trying its best to curtail my writing today..words taking ages longer to come out...or should I attribute this to the fact that I tend to become a little "tongue-tied" when talking about certain things...events....a certain woman....yennavo podaa!!!!

The countdown....

2007-04-11T22:50:00.000-07:00

Has begun...

THE MOVIE that I'm waiting for....

2006-12-25T15:38:00.000-08:00

They're Back...J and G...

For the uninitiated, their previous offering ABCD was nothing short of poetry. America-Bound-Confused-Desis....nothing cliched, to silence the nay-sayers... Was amazing the way they packed in so much in 20 odd mins. The joy, irony, the tragedy...encapsulated beautifully ..They're freshers here, no doubt...and that's what sets them apart ......

I'm assuming the music score's by the RR-Giri-Navneeth combo, the same one that so many of my friends have heard and relished SO much. I know absolutely nothing about this movie, so pls do wait till I get my hands on the CD...

IIMB box-office reports state that the early-bird reception's been extremely good and what's remaining is the marketing blitz. Have no clue what's in store for this movie...but trust me ppl, you'll not regret putting your money on these chaps!!!!

This Day That Age...Dec 13th...

2006-12-12T14:08:00.000-08:00

This was posted back in '04...but posting it again for those who came in late...namely the hubby-of-person-in-question :)

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The birth of one of more unassuming yet passionate, attractive yet very sensible women( no brickbats for this please..) on this world. Swetha Kannan, as she goes by in her profession ( google this and end up with dozens of write-ups by her for her newspaper The BusinesLine), but more often than not Miss Journo to this author, belongs to one of the rare breed of modern youngsters not afraid to take the path not treaded before. Her decision to take up B.A Sociology in M.O.P.Vaishnav and pursue journalism later, despite being one of the brightest students in school all the time in the Sciences and the Math and her determination to follow the dictates of her heart rather than the mores of the society is what really gave the outside world an idea of the "real her".

For long, she'd been the " bright and studious girl with the machcham" to my mom and my perennial sparring partner in my English period duels with her. But those days are all long gone, cos I am real no-hoper now, for , what chance would a "techie" like me, have , against a real flesh and blood journalist... Could go on and on , but with 2 exams in 2 days and a flight to India to be caught 12 hrs after my second exam, time is really at a premium... but not for everything I guess...... not deftly at a premium when it comes to writing about one of my closest friends and one of the few ppl whom I actually look upto and admire and hope to emulate... Carry on doing the good work that u have been doing all this while making a difference to the society and to the many who love you ( list revised since Dec'04: one SIGNIFICANT addition)...

Yet another day goes by, but more importantly, yet another December 13th goes by....
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P.S - Does marriage indeed make a difference? Not sure, but being with someone you love definitely does...and one look at her recent photos confirmed it :)

For Want of An Easier Word....

2006-11-30T17:17:00.000-08:00

Calling it my bug-bear might be giving it too little credit. Calling it my demon will be placing it on a pedestal too high..but for what it's worth, it's the one thing that's been a constant source of fear, apprehension, tension what not...

As far as I remember, I've had the problem of stammering. At varying stages, it has had varying effects on my psysche, though the bigger the stage, the bigger the albatross around my throat. i guess it would suffice to say that this has been one demon that has never been slayed till now. There are still periods when my confidence reaches its nadir, with words refusing to come out, come what may. ( Actually this was something which got thinking a cpl of weeks back...me knows and many ppl have commented that I've never really come across as a confident person..my doubt is..did my lack of confidence compound my stammering or was it the other way?? bit of a chicken or egg I guess...)

Anyway, two days back, I finally got around attending a meeting of the Dallas chapter of the National Stuttering Assn( N.S.A). The first thing that they strive to explain is that "this is not a place where stuttering is cured, but a place where stuttering is actually encouraged!!" It is a place where a stutterer can come, talk, stutter, stutter more, listen to people who stutter even more, without any inhibition...and therein lies the key...

Getting a stutterer to get rid of his fear of talking is winning half the battle. Practically every single time I speak, I scan my words before I speak, consider the difficulty level of the word chosen and if need be, perform a quick mental word-substitution and try to complete the sentence. It's partly the reason for me sounding absolutely non-sensical at times, going round and round. I've even read about instances where people have changed their names for want of an easier name to say ( Karthik's perenially difficult to say..but I guess I cannot imagine myself being anybody else..:D)

With this fear constantly preying a stutterer's mind, speaking become even difficult and ultimately impossible. So the NSA does an amazingly good job of getting people to come out of their closets.

Stuttering without the fear of humiliation, in the midst of similar people does provide a HUGE lift to a stutterer's psyche. And ultimately, whether the stutterer gets cured of the physical impediment or not, he would well and truly been on his way to a much more satisfying life...For, many a time I've not ( and continue to) volunteered to talk/answer simply because of this. And I've been through situtations where my lack of answering has been construed as a lack of knowledge. Debilitating, yes, but not half as difficult as having to go through the torture of speaking.

It's far too early to say what effect the NSA will have on me, but at the very least, it's helping me get out of my closet far more readily. Getting to meet people who consider stuttering to be just another facet of their self and not THE defnition of their self is indeed inspiring. One of the head honchos of this group, Russ Hicks is an ex-TI-er, very severe stutterer and a famous Toastmaster...gives amazing speeches..pretty popular ones..Has some amazing write-ups on stuttering on the net..MUST-READ ones. It defly was relieving to hear so many people talking about the very same experiences you've gone through and that's the objective of the NSA..to make you realize that you aren't alone and that you've absolutely nothing to fear..

The need of face myself in the mirror has finally caught up with me...just the beginning of a long, arduos, but ultimately promising journey...

"Vaarthai Thavariyumey, Kannammaa, Vaazhkai Thodarndhadhadi...

Naetru Nigazhndhadhellaam Kannammaa, Nenjam Marandhadhadi..."

P. S - http://www.nsastutter.org/ - NSA website

http://www.russhicks.com/#Writings - Russ Hicks' writings...

Redefining a "Whingeing Pom"...-Gabba'06 Day 3

2006-11-24T17:09:00.000-08:00

From criticizing cliches a post ago, I 'm actually having one adorn my post's head-line....

At the beginning of the day's play, I was half-hoping England would show a LOT more fight, simply becaos it would have stopped the mindless drivel coming out of Rodney May's mouth. From being a absolute nobody a cpl of day's back, he is fast climbing the ladder of commentating notoriety.

England start at 53/3 - 4 overs and 11 runs later - England was suposedly off to a steady start, promising. rock-solid what not..and looking good....Am not sure if I had ever heard anything half-as ridicullous.

Then Pietersen gets out 14 runs later..LBW to Glenn..initial reaction from Rodney May - " That's out plumb" ...from Cricinfo - " McGrath to Pietersen, OUT, Out! A misjudgment of Gattingesque proportions from Pietersen. On a length, the ball jagged back, he had already decided to shoulder arms and the ball smacked into his back leg. It looked out before the appeal had even reached the "zat" stage and Billy Bowden agreed."

Then Hawkeye conveys the info that the pall hit Pietersen outside off-stump and that the ball would have gone way past off stump.....so immediately the "plumb" decision became a disappointing one..being ranted about for the next few minutes.....the other guy does a sanity check by reminding Rodney that it looked "definitely plumb" at real-time, but with technology's help it was obvious to us...( Cricinfo later adds "Hawkeye says it was missing off stump ... certainly didn't look like it " )

And the situation went downhill with Freddie being given out on a no-ball..tut-tut..the umpires seem to be conspiring against me..any hopes of "normal" commentating has gone out of the window ..with "stinkers", " dreadful" ringing out load all the time...

Thanks goodness..Warne's on now...Rodney's actually gushing that there's not a dull moment with him around....

Trivia for the session: Bell supposedly bats like Ashley Metcalfe ....strictly jus FYI...

Lesson for the session: What's a "Whingeing Pom"?

For starters, it is Whinging Pom...in more detail.."The term 'Whinging Pom' comes from the HUGE influx of British migrants after WW2 when many had trouble adjusting to the laid-back Australian environment and attitudes. They used to do a lot of complaining and so they earned the title of "whinging pom".Used in the context of our on-going sporting conflicts in Cricket and Rugby, the term POM is one of endearment and respect, just as the cricketing term "the old enemy" is also. - courtesy some discussion about cricket on History Channel

Commenting on the commentary - Gabba'06 Day 1

2006-11-23T10:52:00.000-08:00

Enough and more has been written about England's statement of intent or the lack of it..from Harmi's howler to Monty's no-show...Am hoping to keep this blog away from all the hype and type...

Listening to the commentary yesterday on the Stanjames Live Cricket console was strangely a rather under-whelming experience..not quite becos of any lack of skilled commentators...They in fact did a really decent job...the team of Jonathan Doidge, Rodney May and Ashley Metcalfe...
no--bodys to me though Ashley was forever being introduced as ex-Yorkshire captain...not that the accent sounded any different.. David Lloyd and Boycott rolled into one...one quick cricinfo reference states that this Ashley guy's played 216 first class matches..at a decent average of 34.5.

anyway junk stats apart...the biggest complaint I had was that most of the time boundaries were reported as almost an after-thought...to quote an example " that ball was directed wide outside offstump.......and with that boundary Ponting's score goes to so-so."..what the hell!!!! Absolutely no excitement..being insightful is one thing...being dead-pan-dry is another thing..and even they do not make for a heady combination...how I wished Bill Lawry and Tony Greig could hijack their way into the commentary team...

The other thing was that cliches suddenly became so very evident...I was reading this article on cricinfo surfer where it talked about the excessive use of "metronomic Mcgrath, nuggetty Langer, mesmeric Warne" and the like...Here it was slightly different....Langer gets out..and the commentators exclaim " there isn't a better time to get a quick cpl of wickets as that would surely being England even with the Oz..

and then 100 runs later...with Ponting and Hussey making merry..." this would the perfect time to get a cpl of wickets. With the day about to end, any look into the lower middle order would surely even things out for England!!!!" All that this re-inforced was the fact that wickets were always welcome, and you didn't need an ex-Yorkshire skipper to say that...the way they made it sound was almost like England was perenially 2 wickets away from parity...and the truth was far from it...

One interesting thing was the fact that a rabid Aussie fan was listening to commentary by 3 Englishmen about the way England was getting roasted by the Aussies...what took the cake was this piece " It does feel odd/strange to keep talking England up after Aus are 290-odd for 3, so let's hope that we can say tomorrow that England are 290-odd for 3...." on hearing this yesterday, I almost burst out laughing...some how a mix of self-pity/desperation/hope had found its way into the talk....

anyway..that's that for Day 1....anybody on for Ponting equalling Sachin's no. of centuries by the end of the series????

The Ashes are On!!!!!!

2006-11-22T15:05:00.000-08:00

Less Than an Hr to go!!!!!

Been quite some time since I got so excited!!! With Indian cricket following familiar script against the Proteas, Ashes fever is higher than ever!!!

Tried a lot to get some cheap online streaming video..but to no avail...

However managed to find this site with live audio commentary..

http://stanjames.teamtalk.com/StanJames/Ashes_Popup

Will never forget the '05 Ashes...first cricket series ever to have fully followed on radio ..BBC TMS (Test Match Special) was exquisite in it's commentary..with Jonathan Agnew being as good as any you would ever find!!!

Audio commentary is particularly nerve-wracking, 'cos you tend hear the exclamations first and then hear about the action that had happened.....Especially the first few overs in '05 with the Aussies being bullied by Harmison..the tension/excitement was unmatched!!!

Guess TMS would not have it this time, with the matches being Down Under. .. but still something is better than nothing!!!

ultimately video or audio or cricinfo..don't give a damn..

Go Aussies, Go!!!!!

For The String of Life To Fall Into Your Hands ..DOR

2006-10-15T06:49:00.000-07:00

Story spoilers ahead..nothing you might not have heard earlier about this movie...but just in case for the news deficient....

" One is used to the string of life ( read ability to make decisions pertaining life)being in the hands of God. It lets him control everything that happens. But now the string is in my hands and I don't want it. I don't want to be responsible for life"...or so one sentence goes in the movie. Easily among the MOST beautiful dialogues in Indian cinema.

It amazes me that Nagesh Kukunoor doesn't figure more often in our everyday cinema discussions. This guy's perception of life through cinema is top-notch, never mind the fact that he does get inspired at times from other movies. Dor is undoubtedly an adaptation of a Mallu movie and I haven't seen the original.

The basic premise is simple. 2 newly wed couples - one from Rajasthan, one from Kashmir. The husbands leave to Saudi for work and become roomies there. The Rajasthani dies and the Kashmiri is convicted for murder, getting the death penalty. Only way out - Saudi law permits pardon if victim's wife pardons the accused. And the whole movie is about the the implications of this law on the 2 wives.

I have to say this is a casting coup if any. Gul Panag as the Kashmiri couldn't have done it any better. The character's innate steel reflects through Gul all throughout the movie. And does anybody know Ayesha Takia? The "actress" I mean? Beautiful, vulnerable...I had no idea who this actress was and I saw the name on the credits at the end. I vaguely remembered seeing this name earlier and googled around for her pictures. What do I get..a "sultry siren" as Bollywoodish as they come. And she's the meek, demure Hindu wife here!!!! The scene stealer is Shreyas Talpade as the beharoopiyaan.. delightful!! ( He's acted in Iqbal...not seen it though)

The movie caresses the soul as tenderly as possible...leaving one smiling all thorugh..

Bottomline - MUST WATCH!!!

P.S - Jus realised that I haven't mentioned the song which leaves you with goosebumps at the end...Watch it!!!!

One quick google search tells me that Shreyas is slotted to play the role of M.F Hussain in a movie!!! Watch out for this chap!!!

This Day That Age..Sept'04th 1982

2006-09-06T20:19:00.000-07:00

The birth of a firebrand of a woman. Guess everybody's gotten used to to my hyperbolish writing by now, but trust me, this one is the REAL DEAL. Very few people have left me in admiration at first sight. Fewer still have left me wanting to know them more. Vrishali Subramanian doesn't leave too much room for equivocation. You either like her or ....love her...( well that's the biased me :) ) or just love to see the back of her.

Her speech prior to the ISA elections '05 was enough to leave a handful of boys at the corner of the auditorium rooting for her with gusto. With most of the crowd finding the impromptu formation of the Vrishali fan club a l'l too much to digest, our raucous applause and whistles were often answered by hoots and catcalls. But my support wasn't in vain then and since then, it's grown to see many more dimensions.

For starters, she is a Civil Engineer - turned - Environmental Toxicologist - turned - Biologist. Claims Lubbock to be her home-town in the U.S, but presently does an amazing job of mixing with the best at Georgia Tech. An idealist at all times, the one thing she's probably bad is at sugar-coating her ballistic missiles that pass for words. Brave, extremely compassionate and of course smart, Vrishali's influenced me in more ways that she realises.Sharing taking recourse to Che for inspiration with me, my time at Lubbock would never have been the same without her.

Somebody who lives for the simple pleasures in life....I'm probably doing her a huge disservice by resorting to such bombastic language to describe her. But then, that had been her job all the while as the editor of Bharati, often tortured by my preying pen.

All said and done, I have definitely not written the last word on the bond we share. Happy B'day girl!!!!

Jet-sitting...

2006-03-10T06:03:00.000-08:00

One leg up in the air, the other on the groud..this is how I felt for most of the time, having hopped onto close to 20 flights in the last cpl of months.. Houston, Dallas, N.Y, Sacramento, Orange County, San Diego....Being perennially in-flight, on one hand does make one feel like a super-important executive..but reality's far from it...and at the risk of sounding "over-scene-party", crummy, crammy economy class travel is O.K at best... more often than not, with hardly any leg-room to speak of...and always running the risk of being sandwiched by 2 Sumo wrestler look-alikes....

Travelling by more than one airline does make u privy to some useful info though... for slightly longer distance flights..opt for Continental ....they at least offer u a sandwich, some cookies, salad etc..unlike Southwest who staunchly refuse to part with anything more than peanuts.. Despite the fact that Southwest has slightly cheaper fares, it will probably be offset by the stuff that we buy outside to eat...though one thing's gotta be admitted.. Southwest does offer this "amazing value-for-money" snacks packet..with some mouth-watering cookies...which will hardly last a mouthful and some peanuts again...all for a princely sum of $3.

For the movie-friendly, Continental's the way to go....with the latest movies being screened..(saw Walk The Line and Proof a week or two befopre it's official DVD release) ..but it does come with a hitch..the headfones have to be purchased in-flight...for a stunning $5 ( cost exaggerated becos these are not the single jack normal headfones and can be used only on Continental.).. and the worst part is that they accept only cash..so for all those credit-card faithfuls like yours truly..brace urself for some mute-movie watching..one way out which I discovered is to buy credit for the equivalent amount while printing out the boarding passes in self-print kiosks..a really useful feature I must admit..

But more than these things....the best part abt these travel sessions are the ppl that one chances to meet..have had some amazing conversations...one was with an executive coming to Lubbock for a company supervision...ended up learning a lot abt interview techniques, abt the normal American family's paranoia towards divorces and yet their remarkably frequent occurences... and in another flight, got sandwiched between an elderly woman and a middle-aged woman...and soon enough was caught in the cross-fire, in their argument about the different faiths of Christianity which they followed..and it ended with both of them concurring on one thing..that I "should seriously open myself up to Christianity and see what it offers and that I would defly embrace it if I realised what it means etc etc ".... was hilarious as long as it lasted..trust me...

anyway guess I have written enough to last a month :D (thats the way I have been blogging ..once a month..need to somehow get out of this habit..)

2006-02-02T17:07:00.000-08:00

Picture taken by Manik, one of the kids. High-spirited, forever naughty..this girl Puja, steals the show...
(Pic. courtesy: www.bornintobrothels.com)

Born Into Brothels...

2006-01-31T19:52:00.000-08:00

I have been trying quite a bit to break out of this stupor that's set into my blogging habits and I came quite close to it on my b'day only for it to be consigned to the "draft-bin". There's something about being jobless. On the one hand, there's this increasing pressure on you to do all you can to secure a job. On the other hand, there are times when you feel that you cannot do anything more and that you need some kinda lucky break for your life to come out of the plateau that you have helped create.

I keep thinking about the early 80's Tamizh movies, for that was the stage when the theme of joblessness was running rampant in tinseltown. Though I am far from reaching that stage of desperation, I was jus kinda curious to juxtapose myself with that, having spent more than 4 months now, after my thesis defense, without a full-time position. Curiously enough, this bleak period has also con-incided with some of my happiest moments...and so things haven't reached the Varumaiyin Niram Sigappu levels... I actually wanted to blog about the state of mind that envelops a jobless graduate, but my ex-roomie Vishy done a present decent job of it, though I don't necessarily agree with everything he's written...http://visveswaran.blogspot.com/
(Even as I am writing this, I am teling Makki that once I didn't feel like blogging myself, there was strangely very li'l enthu for me to even read other blogs..very strange..there's absolutely no reason that I can ascribe to it, jus that I didn't want to have anything to do with the bloggosphere )

Anyway, I think I have ranted enough and moreover, " namma cassettela B sidekku vandha apparamum, titlea ulla nozhaikalanaa asingam".

Born Into Brothels is the name of a documentary on the lives of children of prostitutes living in Calcutta's Sona Gachi. And boy did it blow me away...far from the preachy outlook that anything even remotely associated with sex-workers seems to suddenly develop..My first impression when I heard about the movie was that this would be yet another bleak, depressing view into the poor lives led by the women at Sona Gachi. But this movie's perspective could best be summed up through the words of Zana Briski (one of the directors and the narrator) " I have this incredible respect towards the women living in Sona Gachi and I felt complelled to help their children come out of this living hell."

Zana Briski is a cinematographer, who spent a cpl of years or even more, living in the heart of Sona Gachi following the lives of the children present there. Soon enough, realising the interest shown by the kids, she started teaching them photography and the whole documentary talks about this unique atempt to reach the children and help them reach out for a better life. Full of vivid images that are stunning in their simplicity, the movie has got be among the best-ever works in this field( Not that I have seen loads of docus..but I find it hard to believe that there could very many docus better than this one..).

One thing that struck me was the maturity shown by kids as they candidly discuss the lives that go on around them and the ways, if any, to get out of it. For kids as young as 10, they are exposed to a life that wouldn't have even figured in our wildest nightmares and yet the will to survive and succeed is intact.

Positive, up-lifting, inspiring..adjectives present all over the DVD of this Academy Award winning documentary..but it left me grappling with numerous questions... problems with no silver bullets... but at least made me realise that I would be one satisfied soul if I could even do 1/10th of what Zana's done....

check out www.bornintobrothels.com for more info....

Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir or India-Disowned-Kashmir? A question for the Pres...

2005-10-21T18:17:00.000-07:00

TOI never leaves me feeling ambivalent about it. It's always just the same kinda feeling - irritation, disgust and at times even shock. Yesterday's TOI incident was its entry on Google Earth.

For quite some time, Google Earth has been the "roast" of Indian media, gleefully reporting all of Pres. Kalam's reservations about it. Yesterday, it went one step further, when it proclaimed with absolute "shock" at the egregious mistake done by Google Earth. " What the heck do those blokes at Google Earth think? Just becos they happen to belong to the most innovative techie company in the world , it doesn't give them the license to tamper with "national boundaries" especially one which is of no significance but overwhelming pride to Mother India?????" Obviously TOI didnt go to this extent but one could be forgiven for assuming on those lines.

The outrage over PoK being shown as a part of Pakistan and not India , whether justified or not, showed the totally jaundiced outlook of this section of the media. Only a cpl of cpl of weeks back, when the earthquake had totally devasted the Himalayan regions, India went on record, stating that the official death toll in India was only around 300-400. While this would be true taking into consideration the damage that had taken place in "India-occupied-Kashmir", the figure would drastically change if the remainder of Kashmir was taken into consideration. Meaning..if PoK , which is ALWAYS shown to be a part of India in all of its political maps, suddenly vanished off the map. Thus, the thousands of Kashmiris who died in PoK were no longer considered to be inhabiting Indian territory. But that didn't force anybody to change India's political map. It's still being shown in the same manner, with PoK right at the head of the India landmass. With this kind of a depiction, most students would hardly know abt the existnece of such a place in "netherland"...or rather no man's land....

The Indian govt. considers PoK to be a part of India..for all political purposes..but when it comes to relief measures and governance during times of distress, it cooly chose to wash it's hands off . Talk of double standards on the part of the Indian govt. Not to forget the absolutely hopeless TOI...but then if these are the times that we live in, how can it choose not to live up to it's name?????

P.S - Only recently did I come to know of the legal suit filed against a blogger named Gaurav Sabnis (IIM grad. amd working for IBM) for allegedly defaming a management institute called IIPM (This institute has nothing to do with IIM and for further details on this issue go to http://www.gauravsabnis.blogspot.com/ and go down to the post named " The Silence") I have also heard of cases where the Feds here pulled up ppl for slandering Bush. Any chances of me landing up in jail ??? Better start a "Karthik- Bail-Fund" soon enough...might need it dearly.

The RestRoom Chronicles

2005-10-16T09:41:00.000-07:00

Disclaimer: THIS POST CAN BE CONSTRUED AS GROSS ( THOUGH STRICTLY NON-SEXUAL) BY CERTAIN SENSITIVE SOULS. SO READER DISCRETION IS HIGHLY :D RECOMMENED

Not often do I find myself in a position either waxing lyrical or trash-talking my rest room here at Taurus apartments. Probably the best thing to have happened is the rest room being available when it's way past down-load time and the bandwidth's on the verge of being exceeded. But a cpl of weeks back, the rest room became such an intergral part of my consciousness, such that never ever will I take it for granted!!!!NEVER!!!

Day 1.....
Get up in the morning...race ahead of everybody to the rest room..settle down for a nice long haul and get out satisfied...only to find whatever u had eaten the day before..plus a few undescribable things...floating around for the whole world to admire..even after flushing... The next 30 mins was easily the longest and the most disgusting 30 ever in my life..with a small bucket of water being my only source of succour. Pail by pail, chunk by chunk..I manage to break down the most determined yet disgusting piece of shit ever encountered in my life. All hell was finally broken down and taken care of.....but not for nothing do we add flavour and fragrance to our food...room freshener's glorious fightback notwithstanding, I came out of a place that could have turned away a million noses....

Day 2 ....
Routine slightly changes...for it was one of the unfortunate roomies to suffer the same fate...

Day n - x ....
Miraculous recovery for the restroom..all evil forces exorcised....life's limping back to normalcy....

Day n-x +1 ....
Lightning most defly strickes the same place twice....Sree bears the brunt of it....complaint to manager brings temporary relief...something clogged up outisde Taurus....taken care of the manager...rays of relief ....

Day n-x+2 ....
My turn to be the first riser...Teeth-brushing taken care of.... a sliver of common sense tells me to finish off the most important thing first and then lie low till the coast clears... I choose to take a leak and soon enough the flush chooses to become the protagonist again....Desperate measures...roaming around the house like a caged lion .. hoping for a "download dump" to sprout up from somewhere.... Possible relief measures :

Univ. Departmental rest room: problems present = lost the key to the dept. SO GROUNDED as dept opens only at 1 p.m on Sundays ( time is 11 a.m)
Univ. Library rest room: problems present: opens only at 12 noon on Sundays..BUT AVAILABLE...

Unforseen problem: Cycle left in dept. Only mode of transport : Nataraja service. With downloadable material up to the brim. Situation potentially unsafe.

Superman comes to the rescue in the form of Sreeram and his car....By choosing to get up early on this fateful day, this was defly Providence at work..... Destination library....a short while later....Empty is Happy!!!

Day n.... Repeated complaints to the manager finally results in some drastic action...plumber ( or whatever he's called) found messing around in the kitchen..Result: whole house left smelling a million unkempt rest rooms...but as they say the worst had passed over.... and the only way was forward.... a cpl of hours later....Taurus #105 back to it's pristine best..dirty, messy, unkempt..but defly NOT STINKING....

Mobile ...Does it Really Matter????

2005-10-14T18:40:00.000-07:00

I AM....the new mobile... had to happen sooner rather than later..and there was this irresistible offer of getting $150 cash back if I purchase a Cingular plan for a Nokia 3120 from Amazon..so there it is..enough fodder for all of y'all to massacre me in the forthcoming weeks...Soon the mobile maniac that Sree ( my roomie) is...he got hooked on to that all night long ;)..checking out all of its assets...Finally managed to get my hands on it only to find him having changed the ring tone to his own voice screeching " Helloooooooo Kaaaaaaaaarthik".thaks to the voice recorder present......that was one shocker......

I have heard the usage "pudhu pondaati" a lot..not that I know what it is to have one ....but I am sure I was not totally besotted by the mobile to dote on it like crazy..infact, considering the fact that sree liked it more..was it a case of " Maatraan thotathu malligai maNakkum"..??? but in all fairness, I was looking forward to using it no doubt...next morning...first call I receive in the morning...any hopes of a
" Hello My Dear Wrong Number...
Ketkave Undhan Kural Sorgham..
Nerile Paarthaal Yenna Vetkam.."....

were quickly dashed....

Not that I am Kamal...but I didn't really want that vamp actress on the other end too...so it was ok...but only dreaming was my forte..not making it come true....and sure enough ..It was my fone's kalla kaadhalan..Sree asking me abt some domestic bills which had to be settled....defly a WRONG NABAR...not not as wrong as I wanted it to be.....

anyway...it's been a good 3 days of usage...and it's not been bad at all ;).... but trying my best not to get caught in the manner I so famously trashed earlier here.....

I'm back....

2005-09-16T19:56:00.000-07:00

Firstly, my heartfelt apologies to all those who have coming here dutifully during my absence :D...secondly and most importanly, I am finally done with my Master's....had my thesis defense yesterday..and the best part of the day..."Karthik,u'll get through..congratulations"!!! from my profs.

Was on a self-inflicted "No blogger till thesis defense" ..and I jus didn't wanna break despite my defense getting delayed due to various reasons...anyway no pazham panchaangam....been itching to write about so many things....will take some time to get some order into all those...

Before I take leave..jus a quick moral for all those living in the U.S...despite having seen umpteen Hollywood movies, there are certain things which jus don't strike us...some 10 days back..was walking back to my house at 3 a.m and found a cop car go past me....then turned and came beside me..with somebody yelling" Hey u there..stop"... expecting some "action"..I dutifully stopped...and pretty soon was starting to get grilled by 2 cops...abt my antecedents, precedents and what not.... Intent on having some kinda identification shown, everything from my "non-existent" drivers license, to my passport to my SSN card came into the dialogue..In my anxiety to provide them with the only ID I had..( my Tech student ID), my hand shot for my pocket to retrieve it out...only to find myself a gun in a split second.."Get ur hands out of ur pocket, will u.." came the order...and with a surprised, sheepish, startled look on my face..slowly explained myself out of trouble.... how many times wud I have seen cops barking out such rules to ppl intercepted!!!!!

Anyway, I was intent on making as much trouble for myself as possible that night...After being asked for my SSN ( social security no.), I actually had the temerity to ask them for their identification ;)...( did they think I was gonna go down without a fight???) A visibly unimpressed cop then proceeded to show his badge and some Lubbock police insignia...and normal service resumed.... moreover, I think I spotted jus a hint of the good cop-bad cop routine..when one chap was busy trying to verify my credentials with my SSN. The other guy started chatting ....where are u from? India. Where in India?..( surprised) southern part of India... Which state in India ? ( even more...) TamilNadu....What's ur master's specialization? ( wud this chap even be able understand what VLSI means..)..VLSI.. Does that have anything to do with circuits, CAD etc etc? Yes , something like that.... Where did u do ur under-grad? India, Bangalore... Oh I know Bangalore very well!!!! ( damn..does outsourcing have to make its presence felt in every conversation..)

anyway, all's well that end's well..and they let me off with a word of advice abt the not-so-safe nature of the neighbourhood.... to which I replied with a question of my own.." Excuse me officer, I have a question... Is there anything u can do abt the dogs being let loose by houses in the nights..I have been chased by quite a few of them." Reply. " I guess u will have to report that to the Animal Prevention blah blah...."

Government officials aren't that dissimilar, isn't it!!!!

Ninaivalaigal..Life Goes On....

2005-06-19T22:24:00.000-07:00

9.35 a.m IST 20-06-05 The train chugs out of Chennai Central... melancholic as always, taking its share of joy and dreams along and leaving behind a dose of disappointment and sorrow in its wake.

12.05 a.m Central Time, 06-20-05 Navjivan Express,the fone rings , interrupting the train of thought meandering through yet another crossword. The barriers of distance prove to be a farce as words travel back and forth suburban Chennai and Lubbock at the speed of thought.

10.37 a.m IST 20-06-05 . Radio Mirchi, Anna Salai, Hands Free, yet thoughts hand-cuffed to an image that had disappeared in a haze of smoke and dust. The fone rings yet again as the TVS MAX-100R continues to plough manfully across Mount Rd. A dash of surprise and faint strains of joy as mobile thoughts make their presence felt....

As Impromtu As They Come - Footprints On The Sands Of Time...

2005-06-19T09:27:00.000-07:00

Hardly a minute off the fone with my man, Blogger beckoned me big-time. On the eve of his journey into a land seen by so many in their dreams, but so few in reality, life sudenly took a few steps back for me...reliving his final few moments before leaving for Spore..seemingly the most momentous occasion of them all in his life...watching him get ready to clear customs... his biggest achievement till then... and now something in an entirely different league, simply becos of the fact that this is jus what he wanted to do with his life....

June 24th 2003, it was then...June 19th , 2005 it is now....the years might have rolled on...but he keeps rolling on faster....For a person who's been a part of his journey for most of his life...right from the moment when Kurai Ondrum Illai rang out loud in the General Assembly at PSBB in 1994, sung by a small puny kid ....that day of playing cricket in the ground behind his prev. house in K.K.Nagar, when he was still sticking to the Mallu influence , wearing a lungi....n he was all of 13 yrs old.., those times in 9th std when he used to regale his growing group of admirers with the beats of Humma Humma on class-room benches.(1995)., my first few days in Rangarajapuram where he was the only friend around all the time , Motta Maadi cricket..l( 1996), when he first made me listen to Telephone Mani Pol to emphasize the fact that the music kept alternating between the two speakers in K.V.Colony (1996) .,. the joint "sighting" of a girl referred to as simply "Angel" in the Thyagaraya High School opposite TTD in the 10th std summer holidays,... the day when I refused steadfast to give up my best-friend in a hypothetical conflict of values between friendship and honesty in a Value Education Class in 11th Std,1997, ... the night outs in his house and his other man's house... crying our hearts out before I left for Blore.in Oct. 1999.... somehow as much as I felt that a chapter of our lives had gotten irrevocably closed, .I later on realised that it was only a new beginning.... and finally an absolutely amazing farewell (supposedly) in the Blore station on June 6th 2003, but then destiny deigned to give me another chance...and so June 24th 2003 and the Airport happened...those hr-long fone calls on his way back home daily from Univ. to house....(2004) and then Jan 4th 2005...my turn to clear customs with him doing the honours this time... and finally the telephone conversation on June 19th 2005 .. and ofcourse not to forget the day the Tsunami spared us....

It's been one helluva ride mayte... all along considering myself to be an elder bro doubling up as a peer.... breath-taking to see u blossom with all of ur boundless talents.... blissful to have been a part of everything.... and thankful for what u have been....

A'Bad Ahead.... Make the Most of What's Been Offered to You........

Anbaana Uravu Kandu Koodu Katti Aaduven...

Annaalil Naam Irundha Vazhkaiyai Thaan Theduven....

Andru Sonnaan Bharathi Solliya Vaarthaigal Thotradhillaiyadi..

Yendan Ennam Endraikkum Pirivu Enbadhai Yetradhillaiyadi.....

Phishing ...Fishing of a Different Kind!!

2005-06-17T07:25:00.000-07:00

Been rather hectic cpl of weeks, with Intel interviews and prepping for the same taking up most of my time..and the recent deluge of blogs demanding my attention is just too much..hoping for some quality time in my hands to devote to blog-voyeuring.....

Anyway, a rather important piece of info...of the Phishing kind..I am sure quite a few of u guys would have heard abt this..but for those who came in late, Phishing is a e-mail fraud, simply put. A spam mail is sent to you, seemingly from a very reliable source, with a link provided being the sucker punch. Jus another means of eliciting confidential info.abt ur various accounts etc etc . I got a cpl of mails in the last week itself , one from "PayPal" and the other from "eBay". Here there are...

1. Paypal -
Subject : Account logged in Europe!!!

Security Measures

"Our systems detected your user ID being used in Europe."

Dear member

Our systems detected your user ID being used in Europe. At the moment we are trying to trace and resolve the provenience of this matter, so please get involved in helping us trace these bruteforcing attempts. Use the link below to access our mainframe database and confirm the information we have on file for your account.
........some link provided......

If you choose to ignore our request, you leave us no choice but to temporarily suspend your account. If you received this notice and you are not the authorized account holder, please be aware that it is in violation of PayPal policy to represent oneself as another member. PayPal is committed in assisting law enforcement with any inquires related to attempts to misappropriate personal information with the intent to commit fraud or theft. Information will be provided at the request of law enforcement agencies to ensure that impersonators are prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.. Thank you for your patience as we work together to protect your account.

Sincerely,
PayPal Account Review Department.

*************************************************

The most important thing to be noted here is that the mail looks jus like any other mail from PayPal, jus that they don't EVER ask for such info from their users. Moreover, the word PayPal is written makes the difference. There was no tiny "R" on the top right corner of PayPal.. enough to identify the bluff.

2. eBay -

Subject - Dear eBay ( this is a dead give-away--why should the mail be addressed to eBay intead of u!!)

Place or Update Credit Card on File

Dear eBay,

During our regularly schedule account maintenance and verification we have detected a slight error in your billing information on file with eBay. This might be due to either following reasons:

- A recent change in your personal information (i.e. change of address)
- Submitting invalid information during the initial sign up process.
- An inability to accurately verify your selected option of payment due an internal error within our processors.

Your credit card on file with eBay
Card number: XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-7679 (Not shown for security purposes)
Expiration date: 02/07 ( this was totally bogus...not my credid card info.....)

Please sign in to your eBay account and update your billing information:

.......some link provided.........

If your account information is not update, your ability to sell or bid on eBay will become restricted.
Thank you,
eBay Billing Department

**********************************************
I have highlighted all the bloopers in the mail by making them bold. The coloured ones are my additions...

I had been hearing a lot abt these "phishing" attacks..but first experience..luckily was sensible enough for once to immediately google around with the first few lines of the mail..and bingo....the fraud was identified in a trice.

So peeps, please take care!!!!!

Jus' a li'l B'day Wish!!!

2005-05-31T01:10:00.000-07:00

She's gotta be a real snob!! Talking all the time, jus too loud for my liking...Too bold, brash.....

Thoughts from a different time, different life, different person ..and all this about the person most responsible for making me realise that life and love was all about giving and not expecting an iota in return.

She's by no means perfect... but jus' goes to show that perfection can remain a pipe dream and yet one can live towards the fulfilment of a dream that very few even bother thinking about...

For long I have taken more pride than necessary in my writing skills, with an ego inflated manifold. But seeing myself in parallel with a person whose only wish is to bring about a difference to the life of atleast one poor soul in this world, it's not hard to realise the harsh reality abt the relative pointlessness about my existence till now.

Not for a moment am I talking abt an ideal soul. In fact, she's far from it. But anybody who has it in them to galvanize half a dozen ppl into action has got to have that X-factor , their USP. What began as a simple b'day party in the beginnning of 2004 at Agape, a children's home in Blore, has metamorphosed into a mission performed with an infectious zeal, with the latest task being to try and provide financial support to every single girl there. Having literally become an Akka to those dozen girls at Agape , she's shown that it is still possible in today's world to love , unconditionally.

High words of praise indeed, for someone jus' turning 24 on this very day. But defly nothing undeserved. In an age where time has somehow become more money than money itself, here is a person who's dared to dream... the dream of infusing life into the "lives" of those unheard of and uncared for.

If Life and Love go hand-in-hand, You are the invisible thread binding them together.

For having the heart to dream,

For having the courage to follow it up....

And for simply being One of a Kind - The Rarest Kind that Inspire Hope....

A Very Very Happy B'day!!!!

Storm in a "Saathumadhu Kinni"

2005-05-28T21:12:00.000-07:00

For quite few days I have been following the ruckus created over Jo Bole So Nihaal... For the uninitiated, it is a Sunny Deol movie( incidentally directed and produced by Sardars) , with the protagonist being a streotypical Sardar cop. The crux of the controversy was the title, with the words being a revered religious chant/slogan in the Sikh tradition. Coupled with the presence of scantily clad nymphets and allegedly having many scenes heaping disgrace over the Sikh culture, the movie had enough in it to raise the hackles of the Shiromani.... . With the moral Sikh police taking part in full fervour, some bright terrorists took the cue and happily bombed a cpl of cinema halls in Delhi, even managing to kill one.

Religious intolerance is nothing new, more so with respect to movies, with our Geethai becoming Pudhiya Geethai a few years back. With all this happening, I jus' cannot help but imagine what would happen w.r.t Anniyan.... :)

********************************************************

Ranganatha Iyengar : Oyi Narayana, indha Anniyan paatelaam kaettiyaa? Vayaru pathindu varala?

Narayana Iyengar : Yenna Anna solrael!! Aathula aambadayaaloda paadara maadiri paatu vandhade illiyenna!! Mathavaalukku mattum dhaan romanceaa? Nammalavalukku vendaamaa??

Ranganatha Iyengar : Oyi umma budhi yenga pochu? Umma aambadayala paarthu neenga mattum paadina paravayilla, aana ippo oore paadume !! Idhellam kettundu summa irukka mudiyumaa?

Narayana Iyengar: Pinna yennanna panna solrael!! Kodi pidikka solraela??

Ranagnatha Iyengar : Kodi pidikara kaalamellam mala yeri poyaachu Oyi..Ippo RDX vechundu paesinaa dhaan mathavaa namma paecha kaepaa!! Aanaalum enna aadhangam irundhirukanum avaalukku, Iyengaaru veetu azhagaame.....

Narayana Iyengar : Paatu yezhudinadhu yaaravadhu oru Iyeraa irukkum!! Avaalukkudhaane nammala kandaa aagave aagaadhe!!!

Ranganatha Iyengar : Narayana, paathu pesum!!! Indha vishayathula, nammalavaa support mattum irundhaa pathaadu Oyi!!! Iyer supportum kandippa thevai!! Nammalavaalo illiyo, braamananukku braamananadhaane othaasaiyaa irukkanum.. appadi ippidinuu solli avaala namma pakkam izhuthudalaam...

Narayana Iyengar : Yennamo pongo, logame kettu kuttichevaraa poyiduthu!!!! Manushaalukku mariyaadhaiyaa illaama poyiduthu!!!

**************************************************

Mr.Ranganathan and Mr.Narayan, kindly forgive me!!!! ;)

P.S - Dictionary.com is now jus a click away......

Rendezvous with Myself.....

2005-05-26T19:44:00.000-07:00

Slip catches galore, trying to rip one past my surprisingly safe pair of hands.....A routine away from routine... away from the big bad world of browsing and books....Is this what they call a stress buster?? But do ppl drain themselves out totally when all that they are trying to do is to bust stress?? I most defly do !!! Jus' that ( aahaa....Zikhr Se Bhadke kicks off........ it's all about timing isn't it...It's been nothing but Bose ever since I found the mp3s finally on coolgoose, 3 days back...)....

Jus that the slip-catching routine today became a far more ex(in)tensive workout, with a Warney 6-fer ( for Hampshire, against Warwickshire) induced bout of leg-spin bowling.. turning the ball a trifle more than expected... then a throwback to those days of my long run-up pace bowling...loved it immensely even if I was a trifle less impressive than expected... been so many years since I came bounding to the crease(albeit an imaginary one)....is it time to rediscover myself ???? And rounding everything off with a sesison of fielding... replete with running stops and complete with pot-shots at an imaginary solo wicket..... not wanting to rein in even an iota of the cricketer in me (albeit a failed one...)

Sweating tankerfulls ... flopped down against the wall.....eyes closed..waiting for my drenched face to become anything different from what it was threatening to become... not content with my li'l treat to myself, made my way to the front side of my dept... and a tete-a-tete like nothing else beckoned me... with my back to the bench and eyes locked at the oh-so-distant cloak going by the name of sky...with leaves looming right overhead...and the azure blue sky tainted by jus the faintest hues of grey.... Call it in nature in reverse, or simply a different perspective altogether..there's something amazingly alluring in finding urself on an even keel with grass blades jus a few inches tall... to find everything bigger than you.... ( 2 long fone conversations ..Chets and Sree and a short one with VS ....now back where this post started..Hasbi Rabbi Jallallah... yet another Bose loop gone by...)... truly humbling...... road-side reverie rambled along..long after the recess caused by a Prashanth , not content in jus walking past..but also waking me up. ;).... though by now I was making my way back to the place where this post started...my desktop....

With this loony post finally making its way to a predictably sombre end, I can successfully stake a claim to have experienced the vicissitiudes of life in all of its regal splendour.... May 25th (incidentally my Mom's and Magoo's bday) 1.15 p.m..jus getting off the fone ..after a telephonic interview with Intel..... May 26th (incidentally Raad's bday...), 1.15 p.m, jus trying to get my mind off the fact that I was officially jobless at Tech... a state not seen since Sep.24th 2003.....

As one of my blogmates would choose to say.....

The Random Search continues.... for an on-campus job here at Tech...but more significantly for an "off-campus" job in the Techie world!!!!

It's all abt timing isn't it.... Ghoomparani Maushi Pishi..... cud't have a better song to give me company as I sign off....

A slightly convoluted soul in search of sprightly clues for this unsightly conundrum that is Life.....

Musically Yours....

2005-05-01T08:11:00.000-07:00

As always, after wanting to write on something else for more than week, I am writing this one purely on an impulse and "feel" as other bloggers would vouch for.... ( The other piece will defly come out...not now but a lil later..)

"Poo Poothadhu"....from Mumbai Xpress.... for some strange reason, this song didnt appeal to me THIS much during the first hearing, though that could also be put down to other reasons like there being a huge crowd at home and we were partying on Sree's Bday eve..so jus flitted through the songs of Mumbai Xpress the day the music was released online.....

As always with such songs, within a day or two, got hooked onto it big time.... actually the whole album..liked the overall feel of it.."jazzy" as all the music critics call it..too much of a layman to come up with something like this on my own...but whatever genre it is, simply loved the totally pure "instrumental" feel of the album... with the like of trumpets and other wind instruments, creating the "band" feel.... simply superb... despite jus one song fitting into "my genre" of "soft, melodious music", very much liked listening to all the songs in the movie..... this layman is slowly , but surely on the path to realising the subteltities of various genres of music....

anyway without digressing too much.... Poo Poothadhu.... sung by the dream combo of Sonu Nigam and Shreya Ghoshal... I am willing to stick my neck out and say that there hasnt been a better combo in Hindi for the last 25 years or so..... ever since the older generation faded away... Shreya's nothing short of perfect in this, with her pronunciation having improved by leaps and bounds ...actually keeps varying I guess, was very good in Elangaathu Vesudhe ..but pathetic in Ninaithu Ninaithu Paarthen.. but when it's good..the song's "oh..so good"...... Sonu was a more Northie like in his diciton...but the song was right up his alley...so no hassles... and the interludes by the effervescent Shaan... Neach is not the word for it ;), though I wonder why Raaja chose to go for Shaan , despite having the versatile Sonu .....

Totally enraptured by this song, wanted to get the lyrics asap ( diction left me gaping for a few words..) , but osmehow google helped me land up in the Telugu version of the movie... and half-expecting it to be the same combo doing the honours even there, but secretly hoping for something more...and what do I get... S.P.B and Chitra.... my night was getting better and better ...11.30 p.m ....in my lab.. Without knowing a word of Telugu, if the words could sound so very mellifluous and sweet, who else could be the reason.. the softly romantic way of singing that S.P.B is so good at....and Chitra..need say more.?? and sonmehow the humming or whatever u call it , sung by each of these 4 singers during their stanzas.... a study in contrast..not musically well-versed enough to bring out the nuances..listen to realise it....

this song actually started to sound better in Telugu, though that's probably due to this duo being more comfortable in the language the song was being sung , than the former duo ....

Which brought me to an Aayutha Ezhuthu in Mumbai Xpress...... Sonu-Shreya, in both Hindi and Tamil.., then S.P.B-Chitra in Telugu.... was jus wondering how it would have sounded to have another combo sing this song in Tamizh... and immediately my main man comes into the picture thala Sreenivas... would he have made this song his own or what.... then whom do I pick for the female slot... Sadhna Sargam?? Diction's getting almost prfect, but slightly iffy at times...might spoil the show...who else?? Harini possibly?? Cudnt come up with a better alternative.....

Did Raaja miss a trick by not opting for such a trium-du0-virate ..???( I do love murdering Engleepees...)

If Only.....

This is also TEAM INDIA!!!

2005-04-10T17:32:00.000-07:00

If the Ides of March proved to be our undoing at Centurion in the year 2003, mid-April was no better. Electric Blue , the Green and Gold , Centurion, World Cup Final, defeat for the Blue Brigade by close to 100 runs ...an eerie sense of deja-vu. Jus that it was the distaff at work this time. After having followed the fortunes of this young team for the betterpart of the tournament, it was nothing short of a heartbreak to see them flounder at the final hurdle. But face it... The Indian Women did it!!! Gold or not, they have turned the proverbial corner .

The title of a chauvinist never did sit lightly on my head and I would consider it nothing short of a sacrilege to get called as one. But I have to admit that, when it came to women's cricket, I was one BIG chauvinist. Though I am able to think up of "genuine" reasons as to why I didnt like following it ( lack of proper cricketing ability, the inherent slowness of the game etc etc..) , I do have to admit now that I never did even give them a chance. Yes, they indubitably were a LONG way behind Men's cricket. But shouldn't we have treated them as younger siblings finding their feet, rather than giving them the cold shoulder??

Despite not having watched the present teams in action, there is this huge fascination in me to see the Indian Captain, Mithali Raj in action. Here is a batswoman ( was this a struggle or what , to write "woman"), who's been scoring as heavily as anyone could, leading the country with pride and gumption and even prompting the headline " The Indian Raj has to end , for an Aussie victory", in an Aussie newspaper. The century in the semi-final against the Kiwis , despite battling an injury only underscored her ability as a big match performer. If all this is not enough for her and her gang of girls to gain even a modicum of recognition and respectability in her own country, God Save this Queen of Indian cricket.

No interesting articles, no intriguing analyses, no profiles of the players- If this is the way the Women's World Cup is being covered by the mainstream media in India, little wonder that there is hardly any sponsorship of note for these "step-sisters" of ours. Wasn't cricket supposed to be the religion of India? Or did we change our complete ethos by starting to worship only male deities?? Or are we just being true to our patriarchal mentality by refusing to even acknowledge their presence?

Males, chauvinists, cricket followers and fellow pigs, please welcome the renaissance of Indian Women's Cricket!!!

P.S - Reminded of a comment made by an Aussie female cricketer a few months back, where she remarked that she really was surprised at the interest that the Indian girls had in cricket, despite the total lack of encouragement for women in all forms of sports . She was in fact happy that she was playing cricket in a country where there were no such restrictions. Need say more ???

This is TEAM INDIA!!!!!

2005-04-08T08:48:00.000-07:00

I had another post in mind, but when I read this story, I jus could not resist it.

http://espnstar.com/studio/studio_coldetail_1478466.html

If this is true, it has got to be an amazing incident. Something which augurs VERY VERY well for Indian cricket!!!

P.S - Thanks SreeKrish for the link....

Am I being unconstitutional?? I certainly do not think so...

2005-04-03T10:45:00.000-07:00

I don't know if this has something to do with my Tamil origins.. but even then I think this is a pretty pertinent issue. Does anybody really bother abt the National Animal? Does anybody bother abt the National Bird??? I know it's not exacty in the same vein, but my contention, why should the National Language alone be such a big deal?

OK.. I definitely accept that I might be taking the analogy a bit too far. But I feel it has got to be as simple as that. Does the whole of India need to know Hindi? I personally feel no. And trust me, this is not coming from some deep-rooted bias. Anybody who knows me to any extent knows better . The reason I have such an opinion abt Hindi is that, India being the country it has always been, ppl cannot expect the whole country to learn one regional language. It is as simple as that. More so at a time when the whole country has to learn a totally alien language ( English)..and I believe one common language is sufficient.

Considering myself to be a part of the growing intelligentsia of this country, I would not hesitate for a minute, to talk abt the advantages of knowing Hindi. Aybody aspiring to go beyond the confines of their respective states need to know Hindi. More so , becos, knowing Hindi builds bridges faster than anything else with our North Indian brethren, not jus in N.India, but even out here. But I think the issue should stop there. I find absolutely no reason for any person to be "ostracized" simply becos he doesn't know Hindi.

The reason behind these ramblings are becos' I have had quite a few conversations with quite few ppl here ( no prizes for guessing which part of India they come from..), who are of the opinion that every Indian should know Hindi , simply becos it is our national language. I deny this vehemently, for Hindi is no different to me from Kannada or Telugu or Malayalam. Jus becos our "founding fathers" chose to confer this "exalted" status to Hindi, will not make me learn it. I totally understand the reason behind this move, but the fact of the matter is , Hindi is as alien a language to a Tamilian as Marathi or Kashmiri is( For anybody who sees blood-red over all this, .... my honest apologies... please listen me out) . I have had ppl stopping jus short of calling me "unpatriotic" jus becos I dont know Hindi. Pls, gimme a break.

Expecting me to learn Hindi is jus the same as expecting me to learn any other Indian language. If ever there is a genuine need to do so, I will. I know Kannada cos I felt that it was nothing short of a sin not knowing the language of ur residence. (It's another thing that I personally like to learn new languages.. but again that's not the issue here..) I cannot identify myself with any language apart from my mother tongue or the language of the land where I reside. And it's no secret that Hindi is easier to learn for those in N.India becos of the inherent similarity of the languages being spoken.

I believe that it is time for the Hindi-speaking and Hindi-related -languages speaking ppl to realise that the Dravidian languages are a world apart. The roots are totally different. The syntax is different. So expecting a South Indian to learn Hindi is jus the same as expecting him to learn German or French. The only difference in the matter is that Hindi happens to be our national language. But the bottomline is.... Hindi was meant to be a language of convenience for the Indian citizens and not one of legal or constitutional significance and that's all that's there to it.

One small observation : I don't find very many N.Indians conversing in English to ppl from other states, even of the others choose to reply in English. Whether they understand Hindi or not is a different question. But probably, the Hindi speakers do need to realise that English is the preferred language of communication. It's another issue that there are still lots of "non-S.Indian ppl" who do not know that there are 4 completely different languages being spoken in South India.

P.S : Kindly DO NOT view this as a jingoistic Tamilian's opinion...... and the irony here is that.. I am writing this at a point of time when my comprehension of Hindi is improving by the day.... and trust me, I am liking it...:)

CoFFreaks....

2005-03-27T10:17:00.000-08:00

Get up at 4.30 a.m. Help urself to a glass of steaming coffee. Wait till ur wife gets up at 5.30 a.m and have a cupload of even better coffee delivered to you , making The Hindu a thousand times more enjoyable, despite having to share the daily with ur eldest son. Have ur youngest son play on ur lap, all the while finding it somehow possible to sip thro' another cuppa, this time ostensibly becos' ur wife is anyway making milk for ur son, so why not help urself to another cuppa!!!

If ever my dad was a "diarier" ( dairier might probably fit him better, considering the amount of milk going into his system everyday..), then this would have probably been his standard diary entry..Ctrl-C, CntrL-V...

Leading the life of a Tam Bram who considers coffee to be taboo ,is not easy trust me!!! Ur lineage is questioned, ur non-conformity is ridiculed, last but not the least.. having to live with tags such as MilkyBoy, MilkyBaby.... This definitely has got to be South India's biggest past-time, apart from probably reading The Hindu. "Not drinking coffee gives me a headache", " My day is jus not complete without one", " I feel impotent without having one everyday" ..) O.K the last one was concocted ;).... but I seriously find it near-impossible to fathom as to how this crazy concoction does all these "unseemly" things to millions worldwide!!!

Bitter, Bitterer, Bitterest.. that's how coffee has always tasted to me, the few times that I have somehow managed to dump it into my tummy. With milk, it is bad enough.. without milk .... revolting is probably the word closest available in my dictionary... For the life of me, I cannot comprehend why ppl would choose to drink something so "positively disgusting" which makes absolute addicts of them... for life!! Without any de-addiction centres , this definitely looks like a sinister plot envisaged and executed by humanity's biggest enemies ( probably the legendary Martians????) ...

Freaks??? Would that suffice to describe the undesribable millions succumbing to this "potion from hell"?

P.S - I am all set to receive the biggest ever backlash ..brickbats most of ya???. here I am .... bouquests anyone??? all I know there is at least one other person who would stand by me... and it's not the one whom u are all thinking of!!!

One parting anecdote... The "coffreaks" that my dad and his cousin are.... they spotted this new shop on G.N.Chetty Road...supposedly brewing exotic coffee... never one to miss a trick in his coffee book, he dragged his cousin into that "shop"... only to find themselves looking like Earthlings on Mars... couples everywhere.. not a single soul above 25... and the "cream on the coffee" being the prices.. nothing less than 40 bucks... "By-two"ing one cuppa', they beat a hasty retreat out of....

QUICKIES!!!

750 Feet Down Under...

2005-03-24T10:51:00.000-08:00

A world that had existed hitherto only in geography textbooks came alive in a breathtaking fashion, 750 feet under the surface. Not often does one get to experience something so "unearthly"( the irony here is as inescapable as it is unavoidable) as this , and moreover having had no clue what to expect, it really was stuff of dreams. Stalagmites, stalactites and other calcite formations might not have really enthused me very much when I was grappling with them in the mundane world of geography. But they sure have now. Carlsbad Caverns , in the state of New Mexico, was one place which truly did leave me speechless.

Classified as a World Heritage Site, this is 260 miles from Lubbock and the 5 of us Sreeram , Vrishali, Shankar, Prashanth and me set on a road trip for the same , with the first two takinbg turns being the steering wheel. As always the case with such road trips in the United States, we lost our way somewhere in between and ended up going 30 miles in the wrong direction. Though the driver was Vrishali, I believe the navigational skills of Sree too had a role to play in this diversion . I am ever the gentleman... yet (dis)credit should be given where it is due.. :) Anyway, goof-ups aside, it was a pretty good drive, which even the barren landscape of West Texas was unable to tarnish.

Welcome to Carlsbad Caverns

With the diversion throwing a spanner into the spokes of our "driving wheel"( at least once let me try and write like Raju Bharathan), we reached Carlsbad only by 1.15 pm with the deadline being 2 pm. Mouthfuls of the yummy pudina and salsa sandwiches made by the lone female ranger in our midst (trust me this has nothing to do with chauvinism.. she was responsible only for the entree, yours truly took care of the main course , veg. pulao and raitha :) ) did their best to divert us from the calls of our stomachs and focus on the calls of the (W)underworld wild.

Kaante..

Being the intrepid explorers that we were :D , the one hour trek down to the bottom appealed a lot more to us than the 1 minute elevator and so off we were, on our walk into the little known. An amphitheatre look-alike signalled the start of our trek, and the fittingly so too, for in our own li'l fantasies, we were nothing but gladiators looking to fight past imaginary underworld monsters and claim our place in the sun ( or the lack of it rather, in this dark and dingy cave) . As soon as we got to a place where sunlight had to bargain its way into entering, we were welcomed by a racuous group of flying mammals, more popularly known as bats, leading to a spontaneous shriek of joy from our Lady Ranger. All this while, the P.C.Sreeram in our midst, Dunkin' Dongar was following his "shutter"ing instincts to the hilt and all these amazing snaps are thanks to him.

The Mouth...waiting to devour....

Pretty soon, the remaining vestiges of sunlight deserted us and with that went the world that we were all comfortable with. From then on, till we reached The Big Room ( the 1.5m long base of the cavern), it was almost like time had stood still for a thousand years. Mammoth rock and calcite formations, huge colonies of bats ( though inobtrusive), the occasional pool of water , all of which shrouded by a huge cloak of near-darkness - this was nature at it's pristine best.

Easily the Best of the Lot ....

In fact the only indications of the times that we lived in, were the presence of a few handily placed telephones, the metal railings along our trail and the lighting provided. After having been to beaches and hill tops galore, it was a truly humbling and enchanting experience to find ourselves hundreds of feet underneath all humanity, in a place never seen or been before. One moment was sheer magic. A few of us paused walking, only to find the stifling silence being shatered at rhythmic intervals by the sound of water droplets kissing the rocky floor . Another vignette never to be forgotten was the the presence of a calcite formation with a crystal clear pool of water at it's base. This was named The Mirror Image with the placard containg the mirror image of the words "The Mirror Image", thus enabling the actual words to be read on the water surface.

The Mirror Image ( not as evident as I would've liked it to be...)

As always, the tendency of humans to anthropomorphise led to a lot of formations being given distinctly normal names like Whale's Mouth, The Grotto, The Chinese ...(something I unfortunately don't seem to remember) .

The Whale's Mouth...

And as always, the "porny/horny" mind of the roving male led to quite a few lewd connotations being given to utterly harmless structures. Though I strongly suspect that the presence of the Lady Ranger might have had an effect in them being toned down.

No prizes for guessing what this is...

It is only now that I realise that all that I can do here is describe jus the proverbial tip of the iceberg. For as much as the heart wants to recount certain things, the brain proves to be incapable of restoring them from the "data dump" that the mind is. But still I soldier on, with the sole motive of recreating that heavenly experience.

One issue that we were discussing during our trek was the presence of a few formations with uncanny religious implications, Christian or otherwise. This led to us thinking that if such a formation with Hindu connotations had been there in India , it might have been "consecrated" instantaneously , with a "temple" constructed around it, thus defacing the natural beauty. As much as I found this plausible, reading the Da Vinci Code has given me a lateral way to look at this. With Hindu religion's outlook being distinctly "pagan" ( w.r.t worshipping of Nature) it might only be logical for Hindus to look at Nature with religious implications. Moreover, as worshipping Nature is anathema to the Vatican, that might explain the lack of any religious connotations being given to these rock formations. Not that this "pagan" outlook of Hindus would justify the de("con")secration of such natural wonders. But this might explain this tendecy of us Hindus.

In all, the trek to the base took us 45 mins to an hr approximately and the Big Room took us another hour or so to explore. Though it wasn't a lot in terms of time, all this walking up and down rocky trails did leave quite a few of us exhausted by the time we were done with the caverns. Did I say walking?? 'Cos thanx to the relentless running/walking by the Lady Ranger, we "dainty daisies" were forced to up the pace simply to not lose face. To boot, time had also runout and we rather conveniently opted for the express way up, 750 ft in one minute , in the elevator.

Dead as a Dodo...

What ensued later on the "earth's surface" was downright torture. With our tummies starting to take turns in reminding us that we were way past lunch -time, we resorted to eating then and there, in a table provided outside the cavern entrance. Being highly critical of eating in such blustery conditions, I tried taking precautions to make sure that the food wasn't flying out of my plate. But then that turned out to be the least of our worries. The place was so freaking cold, that the bbbiting cccchill took over from hunger and drove us back to our car. But there was still place for some humour, as our Paranoid Pras' grumbled about the fact he dumped the plastic plates in the dumpster meant for glass waste!!!! All this in crazily windy and chilly conditions!!! I bet every single soul over there thought that we were a bunch with our marbles rearranged!!!

"Scenic" Drive Indeed...

With Carlsbad Caverns becoming history, we trained our sights on a "scenic drive"( as described by some travel brochure - it's high time we grew up and stopped believing these ..) . Driving for 10 miles at 10-15 miles/hr can be quite a gruelling exercise to the unoccupied mind and this proved to be no exception. A Punnagai Mannan style edge-of-the-cliff was the only saving grace, which promptly brought out the Romeo in our good ole' Sree and did our Dunkin' Dongar spring into action or what!!!

Romeo Must Die

With time betraying us , Guadulupe Mountains had to wait for another day, though the warnings about mountain lions and bears did nothing to assure us that there would be another day.

Guadulupe will've to wait for another day...

But who knows..... another day, another spring break....u might jus find us having a cuppa' on the mountain top, lions or otherwise!!!

Survival Of Mankind Rides On The Successful Pickup Line - Dave Barry

2005-03-11T08:09:00.000-08:00

CLASSIC DAVE BARRY

This classic Dave Barry column was originally published on Sept. 26,1999.----
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So I was at this party, and I wound up at a table where three attractive single women were complaining about - Surprise! - men. Specifically,they were complaining about the pickup lines that had been used on themin a bar a few nights earlier.One woman said: ''This guy comes up to me and says, 'Are you a teacher?'I mean, is that supposed to be romantic?''All three women rolled all six of their eyes.Another one of them said: ''This guy says to me, 'I've been looking atyou all night!' So I go, 'Hel-LO, we just GOT here.'''At this point all three women - and I want to stress that these areintelligent, nice women - were laughing. Not me.

I was feeling bad for the guys.I realize that there are certain hardships that only females must endure, such as childbirth, waiting in lines for public-restroom stalls, and a crippling, psychotic obsession with shoe color. Also, females tend to reach emotional maturity very quickly, so that by age 7 they are no longer capable of seeing the humor in loud inadvertent public blasts offlatulence, whereas males can continue to derive vast enjoyment from this well into their 80s.So I grant that it is not easy being a female. But I contend that nature has given males the heaviest burden of all: the burden of always havingto Make the First Move, and thereby risk getting Shot Down.

I don't know animal kingdom. If you watch the nature shows on the Discovery Channel,you'll note that whatever species they are talking about - birds, crabs,spiders, clams - it is ALWAYS the male who has to take the initiative.It's always the male bird who does the courting dance, making a total moron of himself, while the female bird just stands there, looking aloof, thinking about what she's going to tell her girlfriends. ('Andthen he hopped around on one foot! Like I'm supposed to be impressed byTHAT!').

Male insects have it the worst. The Discovery Channel announcer isalways saying things like: 'After the mating, the female mantis bitesoff the male mantis' head, and then she and her girlfriend mantises use it to play a game that looks a lot like Skee Ball.

Because I live in Florida, my patio is basically a giant singles bar for lizards. On any given day during mating season, I'll see dozens of male lizards out there making their most suave lizard move, which consists of inflating and deflating a red pouch under their chins. They seem to think that female lizards really go for a guy with a big chin pouch, butI have never once, in 14 years of close observation, seen a femalerespond. They just squat there looking bored, while all around themmales are blinking on and off like defective warning lights.

Every now and then you'll see an offbeat TV news story about some animal, usually a moose, that has for some reason fallen in love with, and decided to relentlessly court, something totally inappropriate, suchas a lawn tractor. This animal is ALWAYS a male. On the TV, they show it hanging around the lawn tractor with a big, sad, moony look, totally smitten, while the lawn tractor cruelly ignores it. My point here is that, in matters of the heart, males have the brains ofa walnut. No, wait! That is not my point. My point is that perhaps you women could cut us males a little bit of slack in the move-making process, because we are under a lot of stress.

I vividly remember when Iwas in 10th grade, and I wanted to call a girl named Patty and ask her to a dance, and before I picked up the phone, I spent maybe 28 hours rehearsing exactly what I was going to say. So when I actually made thecall, I was pretty smooth.''Hello, Dance?' I said.'This is Patty. Do you want to go to the Dave with me? Fortunately Patty grasped the basic thrust of my gist and agreed to go to the dance. This was a good thing, because if she had shot me down, I would have been so humiliated that I would have never have been able to go back to school. I would have dropped out of 10th grade and lied about my age and joined the U.S. armed forces, and as a direct result theRussians would have won the Cold War. That is the awesome power that you women have over us men.

I hope you understand this, and the next time a guy walks up and uses some incredibly lame, bone headed line on you, I hope that, instead of laughing at him, you will remember that he is under the intense pressure of wanting to impress you enough so that you might want to get to know him better and maybe eventually, perhaps within the next 15 minutes, marry him, thereby enabling the survival of the human race, which believe me is the only thing that we males are truly concerned about.

In conclusion, let me just say to all females everywhere, on behalf of all males everywhere, that you are very beautiful and your eyes are liketwo shining stars, unless you're a female fly, in which case your eyes are more like 2,038 shining stars. So please give us a chance. And ifyou're not interested, could you introduce us to your lawn tractor.

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To Call or Not To Call..Whose Call Is It Anyway???

2005-03-04T07:03:00.000-08:00

"My Dell desktop's crashed four times in the last week.
Oh, is that so?? Must be real irritating to keep calling Dell up for service and repair..
You bet, ..prevly, I didnt mind calling them up. But ever since the calls started to go to India, I have started hating it...
Ya, I know... gets very irritating .. to talk to someone in India who calls himself Charles or George and speaks with a hopelessly fake American accent....
Exactly.. I feel like telling them, " why don't u go by ur original name? I know it's not some Charles..and please do talk in your normal accent please.."
Things have only gone from bad to worse ever since Dell went to India... ya but I don;t think anything will change as of now.."

A convesation between a guy and a gal, the gal being the first one , and both being Americans. These were a cpl of students in my grading class who were sitting right across me in the computer lab and discussing abt this issue , sometime last week. And the disgust and the irritation was so patently obvious that jus for a moment, I thought of leaving the place, to jus to let them rave and rant without having to worry abt. an Indian sitting next to them.

And some 3-4 days back, I read an article( don't remember where. might be sify or rediff..) which was fullly about the travails that a call-center employee has got to undergo and the extent of vituperative language that he/she has got to be digest. One thing which I can make out for sure from all of this is that, NOT ALL call-center employees are able to put on a really "believable" American accent. With this being the case, it is very natural for an American to get riled. Though I have been come across reports saying that many call-centers are insisting on a neutral accent now, the number isn't much I guess.

Are the "powers -that-be" so very immune to both the sentiments of the American ppl and those of the call-center employees?? It wun't cut much slack with us if others were to try and imitate our way of speaking , language and to go a step further, find an American going by the name of Thirunaavukarasu.

I really do not know much abt call-centers, but it's high-time somebody stepped in and brought abt. a sea-change in the way this business is being approached. Let somebody put an end to thise "deception", please!! And I deftly feel that the employees would only be too glad to shift over to their original names!!

Jus another Sunday????

2005-02-28T11:51:00.000-08:00

Was quite a Sunday evening, replete with loads of fun and truckloads of yummy food. The AGM of the Indian Student Assn. (ISA) took place yesterday, with the floor being thrown open to the audience to grill the incumbents on the (non)performances in the year gone by. As always , intense interrogation, not sparing even the known faces...

Anyway, what wud have been an enjoyable AGM was soured by a solo incident. A chap ( Giri's junior, though he doesn't know Giri or his music.. strange right??) Nirmal ( EEE , HCE), questioned the ISA on their inclination towards screening Hindi movies all the time. However, with not everybody being a born gentleman, the question was horribly worded. What ought to have been a healthy suggestion to screen other regional movies got morphed into an accusation right out of hell. And predictably all hell broke loose, with the Hindi and other north indian students starting to shoot their mouths off . Thanks to the efforts of a few saner individuals around, a fist-fight was averted, though our ears were still ringing with the choicest obscenities that one could hear in the beautiful Sen(nai)Tamizh..

Thankfully the Indian food which considerably made up for the abundance of spice in the previous event ( though I do have to admit that the food was good!!!), was enough to silence everybody..

Now that I have dispensed off with the entree , lemme come to the main fare of the day. With today ( 28th Feb) being my roomie S.Arun Prasad's bday( PSBBites wud know him was Always Sleepy SAP), we had to do something and that something turned out to be bowling. And I must say that my second stint at bowling was significantly better than my first one ( more than 6 months back) , though there were a cpl of absolute experts ( Chaitanya and Ashish) , getting strikes at will. The fact that a totally sober guy ( not at all bad at bowling) cudn't defeat two inebriated ppl should speak volumes abt their superiority!!! Anyway, was quite a big gang ( 10 of us) , and had nothing short of a blast !!! With a "Black Forest" being the icing on this absolute peach of an evening ( Am i blabbering or what...) , all in all, it was time well spent!!!

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Tennis Trivia

P.S - Sania wins Dubai Open first round. This might be old news. But what this means is that, her present ranking of 97 will improve to 86, thanks to 25 Round points gained ( by virtue of she getting into the round of 16 of a Tier 2 $585,000 event) and 15 Quality points ( by virtue of she besting a player ranked 34th in the world) . To give u ppl an idea of how difficult it wud be from here on to go up the rankings, even if she wins her next round by defeating 6th ranked Svetlana Kuznetsova , her ranking would only climb by 10 more places ..... and things only get steeper from thereon..... Sania Mania indeed....

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Friday Fever

Yet another Friday and yet another lap-a-thon. This time it was an all time high.. 82 laps of 25 each (2050 m), in a time of 100 mins. Pretty decent right?? My first 60 laps ( 1500 m) was done in 67 mins. But jus to put things in the right perspective, I am jus 52 mins off the world record for the 1500 m swim !!!! ;)

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Newspapers and Me

At last my long-time pet wish of seeing my name in print ( discounting the lone instance when Miss Journo quoted me in one of her artciles) came true albeit in a manner which I wudn't have preferred much. But beggars can't be choosers, right!! A letter that I wrote to the college daily The University Daily, got published on Friday ( over the moon!!!!).. Infact , even have half a mind to cut that piece out and store it for posterity!!!!

For the jobless or the merely curious, here goes..

http://www.universitydaily.net/vnews/display.v/ART/2005/02/25/421e9b4f233ef?in_archive=1

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This Day That Age..

2005-02-24T00:05:00.000-08:00

This day , in the year 1982, saw the birth of a certain Suresh Ramamurthi Iyer ( God knows where..) , a person known as much for his swear words as he is , for his "dry sense of humour" ...
Never the one to take the backseat in pulling a fast one over his unsuspecting partner-in-crime and boy-next-seat Ranga in matters related to "insignificant others" in Ranga's school life, Soori was legendary for his Raad (a.k.a Radhika) and Soppu(a.k.a Swapna) pranks on yours truly. Not always known for his restraint, he even got his friend into trouble by writing the name of the former "insignificant other" beside Ranga's name in probably all of his textbooks and notebooks , thus merrily getting Ranga into trouble with his mom ( Ranga didn't spill the beans , mind u ...).. Very much known for calling Ranga as Soppu all the time, he even had the temerity to bluff around to his mom saying that " Karthik paaka Choppu maadiri azhaga irukaan, adhunala avana Soppunu koopiduvom.."

And how could I ever forget that day in 12th Std, when Soppu came over to our class during her "prefect/vlounteer" duty, asking if the class attendance register was available. His quip had the whole class in splits ( of course no teacher was present ) ...
" Only Karthik is available. You can take him if u want.."
obviously only one person in the class wasn't fully amused by this exchange.. ( Reminds me now of that scene in Kadhal where the heroine's friend says " Inga yaarukaachu Ice venumaa??")

Though he was even more notorious for his pranks on a certain Jay walker , those stories will have to wait for another day....

BTW.. this chap is now (warming his bottoms ) cooling his heels or whetever u prefer to call it, in the cozy confines of Infy, Sholinganallur....( Hope I am right with the place...)

Vaazhga Valarga..... Yendrendrum Anbudan.....

P.S - His presence on the net is probably restricted to suresh_r@infosys.com

2005-02-23T06:07:00.000-08:00

Fedex and Agassi.. On Top of the World

For more pics http://specials.rediff.com/sports/2005/feb/23sld1.htm

Lapping it up...

2005-02-14T15:24:00.000-08:00

The Aquatic Center at Tech has got to be one of most pleasant sights for anybody, but males tend to accept it far more than the females. Beautifully maintained swiming pool with a roof to shut out the vagaries of the weather, even better maintanied bodies, combined in an aqueous medium of relatively warm temperature... a heady cocktail , no doubt... Even the 3 days /week of swimming doesnt seem to satiate the Thorpedo in me..( or is it the Casanova in me..) The following are my "observations" based upon all these months of diligent and dedicated "whatever"...

1 . Fridays - Boom time .. or should I say Bikini time.. for theere is such a huge number of bikini babes on friday evening , that it becomes difficult to zero in onto one and stick to her for the rest of the swim session...

2. Saturdays - Family time .. the fact that the youngsters prefer boozing it out on Saturday evenings and nights is very evident from the pool population, with families with hordes of children ruling the roost..

3.Sundays - The tendency to limp back to normalcy is obvious... with the bimbos and the babies making way for the "serious swimmer"..

4. For some reason, every single lifeguard here , and that includes but does not restrict itself to, the distaff in the staff, seem to have flabbier builds when compared to the average swimmer... Reasons..hmm... I am able to think of a few...
cos firstly,they are the ones who swim the least, with their jobs being restricted to sitting and standing almost all the time.. and secondly, they aren't the ones who have a point to prove or want to have a head tossed in their direction.These are ppl who are here strictly for savingppl, and not "saving" them for themselves.. .. Thirdly, the lifeguards are denied the opportunity to have some "vigorous fun" with their better halves in the "relatively public" confines of the pool...

Strange.. as to how drastic the difference is between the lifeguards here and the ones that we are used to , at least on T.V.. the likes of BayWatch...

I guess i hace come to the end of my observations... and before I forget it... I CRACKED MY FIRST 1KM SWIM HERE.... On the 13th day of the month of February, on the hallowed waters of the Tech Aquatic Center, history was made , when the checqured career of Karthik got another "check" mark , with the completion of 52 consecutive laps of 25 metres each, in a record time of 50 mins. Incidentally, Karthik broke the record which he had set the previous week, when he swam 31 laps in 42 mins.

More surprising is the fact that, this happened on a Friday....

My Blog...

2005-02-09T06:27:00.000-08:00

Cudnt think of any proper name for this post, so jus decided to go ahead with the most cliche'd one. Dunno if it's my mood, or a lack of motivation or a lack of interesting topics to write on, but for some reason, the drive is jus not there. But as I firmly believe in being a person not purely driven by mood swings, here I am.. blogging as usual...

On one hand, u have ppl writing on their fave potato chips ( Pringles , in this case...) , an absolutely nothing topic to write on, but still makes a rather "decently interesting read"... reminded me of my most fave cloumn in the Hindu," The Slice of Life" by V.Gangadhar, which used to appear in the Sunday supplement, Magazine ( I dunno if the column stil exists, so that's why the usage " used to appear"). This guy was as proper a Tam Bram as u could find, who was residing / or resided in Gujarat or Bombay for quite a long time in his life. So his weekly column was nothing but the present day blog.. jus the kind that we wud attempt to write, but IMMENSELY ENJOYABLE...

He had the gift of morphing the mundane into absolutely hilarious situations. His typical read wud be something abt his childhood experiences with VATHHAL KOZHAMBU, or a MOR MOLAGAI etc. His penchant for throwing in tamizh phrases, traditions and the like, simply made the column irresistible to me. I guess the fact that my father was an avid reader of that column did help in continuing the tradition in my house.

Seeing the way I have taken to being a blogger and a blog voyeur, it doesn't surprise me now that I used to love his column so much. And makes me realise how much of a pioneer he was, in this concept. For all u know, in today's age.. it might have been called The Log of Life...

That Slice of My Life....

P.S - Anybody noticed a small change right up at the top of my blog?? Jus below the blog name.
Quotes from my eternal fave comic bok, Calvin and Hobbes. will probably update it once or twice a week.

SriLankan "Tamizh" Marriage...

2005-02-02T10:39:00.000-08:00

Murali marrying a "proper Indian tamizh girl"..... what wud be the actual significance of this ?? Though I don't want to dwell too much on the ramifications on the political field, this is deftly an issue which might ruffle a few feathers... as much as I am skeptical abt love blossoming in a days Tsumani work, stranger things have happened... anyway, anybody around with more political knowledge than me, to actually hazard a guess as to what this might imply???

The hero of SriLanka, going out of the way to marry an Indian Tamizh girl... any chances of sending the wrong signals to the Sinhalese poulation ???( though his Tsunami work shoud have dispelled any remaining doubts on his patriotism) or is this marriage in any way better than marrying a Srilankan Tamizh girl, politically???

Might actually be pointless talking abt this, but for some reason, this has got me thinking, though I am still to figure out my actually train of thought...

Federer......... loses!!!!

2005-01-27T06:03:00.000-08:00

The unthinkable, seemingly impossible.... Safin's done the trick.... minor satisfaction for yours truly after having been one of the " very very few" to have maintained that Safin wud edge Federer out.... Makki make note...

Now my money's on the Lleyton...to actually win the cup. Let's see....

And there ends one of the shortest posts in the colourful and delightful history of
http:// caughtatmidwicket.blogspot.com

"Long shorts "..... and their sex (un)appeal...

2005-01-24T18:01:00.000-08:00

I do need a tap on my back, for having raised the issue of "long" shorts of the male tennis players and theirgrowing tendency to cover up more , in one of my earlier posts. Shows that I have not been very much off the mark in my "fashionalsysis" .. Read the excerpts of what a fashion designer has to say on this...

Rebecca Weinberg, the woman made famous for dressing Sarah Jessica Parker in her role as Sex and the City heroine Carrie Bradshaw, brought a little bit of New York to the Australian Open on Day Eight. And style tips aplenty were dished out for those better known for their serves than their chic.

"I'd like to see more flesh. More flesh, more skin, more bulging muscles, shorter pants, singlets, more bare arms. I'm into that," Weinberg said of the possibilities on the men's circuit.
"Shorter shorts and shorter shirts not hanging so long I think to show more of their athletic figures is nice."
"The clam-digger pants, the below the knee look, I can't really relate to that. But things are pretty good overall."

James Blake and Lleyton Hewitt received points from Weinberg for the sleeveless shirts they are sporting this year - "I think that's a great trend for tennis and great for sun-tanning as well."

**** what she had to say after this was eerily similar to the sentiments echoed by a certain not-so-innocent 20 yr old in my blog*******

But if Weinberg had her way, this would be just the beginning of a movement towards a serious dressing down, even to the extreme of shirtless matches. "I love that. That's kind of hot. We could get down to bathers, I mean that would work. You never know, you never know where the trends will take you."

********** Would I still be watching tennis if such a day actually came up.... bare-chested males with their rippling muscles dripping with sweat and glistening under the sun....teens and 20-something female spectators out numbering everybody else by a ratio of 100:1..... Yikes..... I am outta here...

Hey.. hold on for a minute... jus focus the camera again on that woman in orange.... If that's not a certain Ms. V in the front row, I'll be damned......

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Disgusted....

2005-01-22T14:24:00.000-08:00

With lots of things.... with ppl, with the society which harbous such ppl, with the "values" which drives the society, with the mental-make-up on which this "value system" thrives upon, with the ppl with such a mental-makeup...

However much I try to reason out certain things, it just is totally beyond me... Can't ppl differentiate between chalk and cheese?? Can't the society accept ppl for what they are, instead of judging them by other "suposedly significant" extraneous factors???

Is there a way to compromise on anything that u want? Is it that simple?? Or is it really that dificult for a person to muster up the courage to stand up for what he wants and believes in, and try do his utmost to get what he truly wants??? Courage...... utterly lacking ....

Courage is what I need.... to lead my life the way I want to.....
Courage is what I need... to help ppl lead lives they way deserve to...
Courage is what I need... to stare at me in my face and tell me when I am wrong.....
Courage is what I need... in plenty....

Leading lives of a different kind...

2005-01-18T08:15:00.000-08:00

It's been some time coming, but better late than never... Dec 30th, I atlast got a chance to visit Agape with Chets. It was everything that I envisioned it to be and a li'l more too. 15-20 girls would be my estimate,the eldest of the lot being 12 or 13 and the youngest not even 5. The very sight of Chetana walking towards them was enough to send them off into raptures, all of them shouting "Akka,Akka , Akka.." in unison. It was only then I that I fully realised the extent of her rapport with these girls. And acompanying Chetana did have it's privileges too, with a bunch of girls crowding around me and beseiging me with all sorts of questions.

After distributing the ice-cream and other goodies which we had got them, the girls took the opportunity to wear the clothes that Chets and party had got stitched for them , and put on a dance performance, something which they were supposed to do on Christmas but could not thanks to her unavailability. Singing, dancing and then sketching, one could feel the enthusiasm among them, but little could one have even got an inkling of their sordid and frightening pasts.

Talking to the person running this noble institution Pastor Reuben Sathiyaraj, I came to know that each and every single girl in this group had at one point of time been forced into sex , both homo and hetero, during their stay on the streets on the "Garden City". Things were so bad to the extent that the girls continued these ways even after they had been relocated to Agape , with the support staff at Agape neding quite a few months to help the children recover. Despite being no stranger to such tragic stories ( thanks to the hundrereds that we read in the newspapers), it did leave me shaken, to say the least.

The talk with him was enlightening in more ways than one , with him talking about how he got the whole place set-up and running, abt his staunch refusal to take Govt. aid of any kind ,in order to preserve the high standards that were prevailing at Agape and also abt his plans for the future of these kids, for which he was hoping to set up a separate fund for each of them with the help of individual sponsors.

But the most shocking piece of information that I got from him, was the fact that the common whitener that all of us use to over-write documents and other printed materials ( known as Erazex ) and the diluting agent that comes along with it happen to be the most abused drugs among street dwellers. A mix of these two , when inhaled deeply, is supposed to give a person a "kick" which can last for hours, sometimes even rendering them unconscious. With this being available off-the-shelf for jus twenty rupees, the ragpickers pool in whatever cash they earn that day , buy an Erazex and share it between themselves for that night. Without even a smidgeon of care abt what the next day held for them, these kids choose to live for the present in the worst manner possible and unfortunately end up dying there too.

Two and a half hours at Agape...... leaving me with more than jus memories...

A cpl of reports on this drug abuse

http://www.rediff.com/news/1999/feb/04bang1.htm

http://www.deccanherald.com/deccanherald/apr302004/i6.asp

and a link to Agape.. http://www.agapeindia.com/street_children_challenge.htm

2005-01-16T17:01:00.000-08:00

Do I have a future in the blogging industry with my new looks?? Only time will tell...

2005-01-16T16:49:00.000-08:00

The Survivors...all there but one, the photographer himself, Mr.Makki, from the left..

Miss Kannan, Mr.Thiagarajan, Mr.Ranganathan, Miss Kulkarni, Mr.Kalyanaraman, Mr.Ramaswamy, Miss Pourasamy

2005-01-16T16:39:00.000-08:00

Do U See the Tsunami???

I do look different...

2005-01-15T19:44:00.000-08:00

The similarity between one of my earlier posts and this post ends with the title. The only time anybody's gotta use discretion now is when they get to see me, rather than this post of mine.

Instead of the ides of March, the ides of Jan chose to be my ill-fated period. In a manner befitting the usage " Et tu Vishy".., my "dear" roomie joined hands with another very close friend of mine , Chaitanya ( incidentally it was his b'day party), and another guy, Ashish, and successfully removed a tiny, yet significant portion of my pride and crowning glory, my mush, thus forcing me to give the finishing touches. So bottomline is....

for the 4th time in my life since it became a significant part of my striking visage, my mush's off!!!!!

More later....

Falling in love with love..

2005-01-14T09:58:00.000-08:00

Kaadhal....

4 times in the first week and twice on the first day .. and still going strong...

been quite some time I guess, since a movie's made such a strong impression..closes to this was I would say, Autograph....
very very evocative.. brilliant performances from everybody , with every single character etched out and executed wonderfully... Murugan and Aisu.... jus goes to show that even without a single experienced hand on set, masterpieces can be created on the silverscreen.
The Chithappa character... folding hands with his one proper arm and one stump instead of his left arm....

and the music.... what a debut!!! not since Minnale , did a debut album enslave me like this... Joshua Sridhar's going places.... finally my fave part abt the music.. Haricharan.... what feel!!!!
NAECH !!!!!! to think this chap is jus 18 or 19.... Way to go, young man!!!! ( I would have loved to be there at Giri's house when Haricharan gave him and J a solo performance of all the songs from that movie...)

btw.. all music lovers... check out Vishwa Thulasi... very old-fashioned but very melodious... by M.S.V and Raaja... Pick of the album... Mayakamaa by Srini.... this guy's got to rank alongside S.P.B for the timeless quality that's there to his voice....and this song is right up his alley.... in a totally different league altogether... Srini forever!!!!!

Chosen Ones????

2005-01-10T13:27:00.000-08:00

It's almost been a month since I last blogged... and what a month it has been.. enough and more memories to last a cpl of years ( thats' how long it might probably take to come back again to India).. Euphoria, shock, anxiety, aprehension, relief.... I have seen it all.... but the overall mood prevailing upon me hasn't all been up and positive...

A month in which when I came to know abt my dad's sister's possible cancer diagnosis, Chetana's grandma's illness and subsequent death, the death of thousands in the Tsunami.....

What did I do to deserve such a lucky break from the tsunami? What did those 7 others do to miss the tsunami by a mere 30 mins? What did J do to be lucky as hell to escape with external injuries after taking a 5-6 feet somersault with his bike... and what did those thousands do to deserve such a fate... Should I also use the oft-repeated phrase " God is great" to describe our escape.... Has it really been only been our prayers and religious inclinations which saved the day for us ( as our mom's would love to believe..)....

No spiritual reason could ever be ascribed to the deaths of those countless thousands... but I do believe that... if at all I am still alive, then that is for a reason.... I could have easily been any of those dead.. and I am not.. Shouldn't that be enough for me to realise that I have been lucky enough to have been given the opportunity to give something back to this world....

I jus loved Gilchrist's comments during the charity match..." It takes a tragedy like this for man to realise what he has to do normally.." or something like that ....

Do we need a tsunami to make us help our brethren????

...Realising that life is not all about designing circuits...

This Day That Age

2004-12-13T11:44:00.000-08:00

The birth of one of more unassuming yet passionate, attractive yet very sensible women( no brickbats for this please..) on this world.

Swetha Kannan, as she goes by in her profession ( google this and end up with dozens of write-ups by her for her newspaper The BusinesLine), but more often than not Miss Journo tot his author, belongs to one of the rare breed of modern youngsters not afraid to take the path not treaded before. Her decision to take up B.A Sociology in M.O.P.Vaishnav and pursue journalism later, despite being one of the brightest students in school all the time in the Sciences and the Math and her determination to follow the dictates of her heart rather than the mores of the society is what really gave the outside world an idea of the "real her".

For long, she's been the " bright and studious girl with the machcham to my mom" and my perennial sparring partner in my English period duels with her. But those days are all long gone, cos I am real no-hoper now, for , what chance would a "techie" like me, have , against a real flesh and blood journalist...

Could go on and on , but with 2 exams in 2 days and a flight to India to be caught 12 hrs after my second exa,m, time is really at a premium... but not for everything I guess...... not deftly at a premium when it comes to writing about one of my closest friends and one of the few ppl whom I actually look upto and admire and hope to emulate...

Carry on doing the good work that u have been doing all this while making a difference to the society and to the many who love you...

Yet another day goes by, but more importantly, yet another December 13th goes by....

Do I look different....

2004-12-12T08:56:00.000-08:00

Strict Warning: This account is most definitely not for under-age ppl ( below 18). Others, please use your discretion.

I most deftly wanted to abstain from blogging till my exams got over, but I just could not resist this. Walking towards the campus, I showed more than jus common courtesy, by actually waiting for a car to pass by , when it was his turn to stop and let me walk by. Very soon, that guy actually slowed down, to ask me if I wanted a ride onto the campus. Instinct and experience with ppl of this kind told me otherwise, but for once I wanted to be proved wrong , and hoped the guy would have very "straight" intentions. Very soon we reached campus, for it was jus 10 mins walk from the place where he "picked" me up.

As is the practice here, ppl. tend to assume that one is married if he/she has a ring on his ring-finger. With me having my "poonal" ring still on my ring-finger, this question was put forth to me yet again ( though never have they been with these ideas) and I duly replied in the negative ( I am going to come out "clean" from the next time onwards and say that I am married!!!!!!). As we were very close to to the EE dept, this was almost instantly followed by the one question which I was desperately (not) hoping for ... " U are a cute guy.. Are u straight, ".. Without batting an eyelid and having all the time in the world, as this was always in the offing, I duly affirmed it, and subsequently it didnt also take me long to refuse a rather explicit offer from him to do certain things, as he was feeling a bit "horny" this morning , to quote him verbatim ( which in any case was obvious to see, for such were his actions in the car )

Wishing me good luck on my finals, he went abt. his way, trying to pick up another "cute" guy,hopefully with a li'l more succes.

For me , this was jus yet another proposition, with which I have obtained the rather dubious record of having been propositioned to by 3 men, and proposed to by 1 woman.

4 wildly hectic days to go..... I have got truckloads to do... and I can very well do without such "offers"...

Let them live too...

2004-12-09T16:42:00.000-08:00

3-4 days back I was having this mind-blowing discussion with one of my roomies, Mr.Sreeram Vaidyanath ( http://sreeramv.com) abt this islamic conversion thing, which soon got morphed into various other things, one of which happend to be prostitution and this is my take on the issue. More specifically, the women from the weakest section of the society who get into prostituion and not the "high - class" cine - actress turned prostitute.s

It's probably got to be one of the disgraced professions ever, for such has been the mud-slinging on anything related to prostitution . Not for a second am I even insinutaing that it is something that's got to be encouraged. Hell,no!!! But what's got to change is our ourlook towards it. The minute anyone of us happens to look at prostitute( dont ask me how to identify them), the first thing that crops up in most of our minds is the image of a lecherous lady with absolutely no morals , no scruples and the like, who loves to jump into the bed with the nearest guy with a wallet full of money. Not for a second do we stop our thought flow to think about who she is actually is. No, she is not a woman with loose morals. No she is not a person with no scruples. And she's deftly not someone indulging in sex for the physical pleasure involved. Probably the last thing that she derives from it is physical pleasure. Such is the torture that she undergoes.

I don't know , but I deftly feel it is the male chauvinisic society that we are in, which chooses to bring the victim to brook, instead of those who are really culpable. On one hand, we have the woman, who is actually ready to undergo the worst possible torture everyday in order to earn money for her and her family( and not to lead a life of considerable luxury),and on the other hand we have the man, whose sole reason is to give vent to all the needs of physical longing and plummet to the depths of perversion. If having sex 24 times a day is anybody's idea of deriving physical pleasure, then please do take the honour of being the first to cast an aspersion on this woman.

O.k I might actually be guilty of giving too much benefit of doubt to these women. But am I actually exceeding any limits. I dont think so. For ,such is the extreme bias existing against them . By continuing to classify these women as the dirt of the society, but not raise a word against those who actually frequent these women, it's only been proved that hypocrisy is not an individual trait, but a social phenomenon.

Prostitution , is no doubt something which has got to somehow be eradiacted. But I am not saying this because of the moral aspects of it. It is simply the state that a woman is reduced to , physically, emotionally and socially which makes prostitution something not to be encouraged.

But is banning of prostitution possible? No. Simply becos this is something whcih has been existing since time immemorial( in various forms and under different nomenclature) and I formly believe it cannot be rooted out . If this is the case, why not legalise prostitution, as it is being done in the United States????

For starters, all these women will have to be registered with a central authority, which would only do wonders to the profession. By having the women medically checked on a regular basis, , the spread of AIDS would be greatly reduced. Legalisation of prostitution would give these women definitely a much better standing in the society. I am sure that there would be lots of opposing voices which would claim that legalising prostitution would be akin to giving a complete green signal to the profession and only encourage girls to get into it. Circumventing this lies totally in the hands of us people. Any one who is brought up sensibly, WILL be in a position to realise that this is not to be encouraged. And therein lies the key to this problem.

All these years of banning prostitution has led us nowhere. Nowhere has it been proved that the stats are improving. And in the present situation, the AIDS factor only looms even more larger . The only way out is by doing something radical and untried. And the benefits are definitely there to see.

Rising Hemlines and dropping trouser-edges...

2004-12-07T13:01:00.000-08:00

This topic first struck me more than a month back, when I was even more vetti than now... and instantly wanted to blog abt it.. but then as always, lack of immediate action put in on the back-burner... As of now, too many serious blogs have been seen.. so this one...

Has anyone realised that jus around the time when the skirts of the distaff in the game of tennis have been inching up by more than jus inches to reveal hitherto unseen territory, the same period has witnessed the rather rapid demise of the "short shorts" which used to be the attire of both choice and norm for the male tennis players... These sexy lil pieces of clothing which came into vogue when the long trousers fell out of fashion , remained strong right till the end of the 20th century. Contrary to poular opinion that any attire whcih is short is frowned upon by the oldies, it was only the advent of the "bermuda-style shorts" in the early 90's which was looked down upon.

If my memory serves me right, none other than Andre Agassi was the pioneer for these bermuda shorts, whcih was soon caught onto by Pistol Pete himself. But even then till the end of the 20th century, the short shorts continued ot see the light of the day with the likes of Becker, Chang and other flag-bearers of the previous generation refusing to see any logic in the idea behind concealing manly flesh.

How is it that one side, the female fashion gurus continue to try and satiate the insatiable appetites of voyeuristic males, their counterparts continue to market their male players in knee length "longs".....

Arent there any females out there desperate for those "hunky thighs" to come back on display??

Speak up now ma'am, or u might soon be looking at ur "male sex symbol" wearing full length whites , in a throwback to the 1920's.....

Jus more than a week to go....

Flights of not jus fantasy from the Land of "So- called Dreams and Opportunity" to the Land of my Love.....

2004-12-02T15:59:00.000-08:00

It seems just like yesterday as the cliche goes... when I was doing the analog equivalent of this particular activity that I am indulging right now... literally penning down my thoughts into a small notepad which was serve as my only companion right throughout the travel. The unbridled excitement giving way to immeasurable grief later giving way to guarded optimism. Not a moment passed without me feeling some kinda emotion.

Contrary to a notion which might actually sound reasonable to quite a lot of people , my sojourn in Blore did in no way alleviate whatever I was going through when I was sitting inside the plush Lufthansa flight, right next to the window, on the 4th of August at 1 a.m . There I was, jus a few miles away from my house, in U.S parlance jus a few minutes drive, alone , yet not alone, with all the freedom that anyone could hope for, yet shackled down by the pain and the anguish that only those who have ever gone through it can imagine. With mild drops of rain falling down in the dead of the Chennai night prolonging my last few minutes in good ole Madras, a thousand and one thoughts had beseiged my vulnerable mind, posing questions to the tune of the examining the sense and sensibility behind this irrevocable decision of mine.

For long I have paraded around with the cloak of a "mature" boy, a person "mentally strong", seemingly capable of taking the hardest knocks in life without even the proverbial "bat of the eyelid." And trust me, I have taken pride in at least trying to be like this. But this was the one moment in my life when I wanted to get rid of all the facades, the image , etc etc .. and be MYSELF.. a rather weak, insecure individual , ready to burst our into tears at the nearest shoulder on offer. To quote a slightly humorous analogy, the Madhavan of Nala Damayanthi who weeps on the shoulder of the kindly old lady in the train in Australia.

It would definitely be an exaggeration if I said that I was morose and depressed right throughout the travel. For there were moments of virgin euphoria , literally feeling on top of the world. But they were more than jus compensated for by the bouts of the opposite kind.

I guess I must be giving everybody a hard time by switching between the flashback and the present with atrocious frequency. It really is amazing though, to realise that these were pretty much the same words which came out through the pen that time... it's almost like time ceases to be a factor when it comes to recounting thoughts and actions that have done a lot more jus leaving mere imprints of themselves in one's memory.

This particular narration of mine all of a sudden was necessitated by the deluge of thoughts that overwhelmed me when I went with Sreeram today to the Lubbock airport to see off an India - bound Vishveswaran. With less than a fortnight to go, days seem immaterial now.. the whole thing jus seems to be one big chunk of time about to get exhausted pretty soon ... BUt as exciting as this trip is to me, I somehow just cannot put away the inexorable thought that it is still a long way to getting back to live with the people who matter to me then most.... I dont want to sound fatalist, but I just hope I might actually be live with all of them again for a considerable amount of time.....

Bangalore jus seemed to be a minor period of exile... but with Bangalore mushrooming into a Lubbock , I realise now that there is a realistic possibility of my best days with them being behind me...

But I continue to soldier on, battling the vagaries that Life has to throw at me, all in the hope that...

Hope does exist........

Just another person so much caught up in the ups and downs of his life that he doesn't even think twice before trying to drown it in other people , in people who are equally if not even more confused than himself....

Thanksgiving....

2004-11-22T19:02:00.000-08:00

It's Thanksgiving time here in the United States, though I think this practice is followed in a few other countries too. But I dont think it's the same reason for Thanksgiving in the other countries...

Here Thanksgiving is a HUGE festival. Possibly the biggest of the year, if Christmas is discounted. But considering the nationalistic apppeal of Thanksgiving, it probably does hold a place unmatched by any other festival here. It's origin goes right back to the times of the Pligrim Fathers, when they made their entry into Northern America.. Only the help of the local Indians ( native Americans) helped the Pilgrims survive the first year, as a result of which the Pilgrims decided to hold a feast to commemorate their first harvest and also invited the Indians to the same. But true to their true colours, with their moral high ground being the highest on the face of the earth , yet stooping to the lowest possible level also being never beyond them, it took the Pilgrims not more than half a century to wipe out most of that Indian race.

It's not uncommon to see artciles apppearing in news dailies here, whcih use phrases like " The very reason our founding fathers left the stifling society of England was to live in a land where the most sought after ideals of liberty, democrayc etc etc could prosper. I myself have read more than a handful of articles harping on this point. But this couldn't be farther from the truth.

More than fleeing from an stifling society, their main objective was to establish a " Kingdom of God" , ruled by the Puritans . With an outlook which could be best be desbribed as insular, their intolerance of any belief alien to their own would have put the Taliban to shame. With this being the nature of the "Purest" Americans, the present attitude of Bush's regime shouldnt really come as a big surprise. Though this is not really a fair conslusion, the state that the U.S is in right now permits me nothing more.

I guess that's enough history lessons for the time being. Will be back soon..

Pitter Patter, Chitter Chatter, Mobile's All That Really Matters...

2004-11-16T10:45:00.000-08:00

I am still not a member of that "once-upon-a-time" elitist group of cell-phone users. And boy, am I proud or what!!! Somehow the cell-phone easily tops my list when it comes to things irritating me the most. Ppl jabbering away all the time over the cell-phone even when they have ppl with them is bugging just to say the least. I dont deny the fact that it is most deftly one of the most essential things to have. But the mobile abuse over here in the U.S has got to be seen to be believed.

The minute a person gets out of class or even out of his house, the mobile is flipped open and and yet another seemingly endless conversation is commenced. Sometimes the urge os so string to jus rip out of their hands and throw into some " never never land". I used to wonder as to how the other ppl stand it when one of their friends receives a call right in the middle of a talk , and starts something which is more often than not, nothing but banter with a capital B. It would definitely not be an understatement to say at any given time of the day, every third person whom u come across walking acrross the campus, is rattling off into his/her mobile.

And this was heights... Last week, when I was coming back home from the Univ, there were the 10 of us travelling in the bus, a motley grouop of Chinkoos( this is how Chinese ppl are referred to here ), Amroos and Makkoos ( I'll leave it to u guys to guess as to whom these refer to ) to and ofcouse me. Right throughout the entire ride of 15 minutes, there were at least 8 ppl talking over the mobile at any given point of time, with me being the only constant factor in the non-cell-phone group. And the ratio only got better when I got down from the bus, with the cell-phone abuse continuing unabated. At one point I was almost on the point of laughing out loud, for such was the scene in the bus, with 8 different ppl talking out loud , in 3 different accents....

Despite my feeling that this was real horrible public behaviour, I couldn't but help laughing at this scene....

I am sure cynics would say that my attitude is fostered by the absence of a cell-phone in my trouser pockets and I only pray to God that there isnt a day when I figure in somebody else's blog in this very same manner....

30 days to go....

More than just shocked...

2004-11-12T10:42:00.000-08:00

I have never been a man for human worship. Despite arguments from loads of people, I have been been able to see any reason behind the worship of humans, for I tend to put my trust more on the "belief of a presence of hiugher guiding firce".. metaphycial or whatever... but it is nothing more than a guiding force to me.... as a result of which I cannot reconcile myself to considering living people as GOD or their incarnate ....

But the arrest of the Shankaracharya has left me disapointed in more ways than one... Even if I did not have the same single-mided zeal and devotion that my family members have, the very fact that he was the foremost of all the Hindu spiritual leaders in India had a certain standing to it. Coupled with the fact that I consider militant Hinduism to be Hinduism at its lowest form and that the Shankaracharya was actually trying to talk sense and mediate between various factions, amidst all the bravado and illogical talk of the VHP, RSS etc etc ... I definitely did have respect for this man, if not anything else related to devotion.

But this episode, if really true, would only go forth in adding more credence to my belief in not worshipping humans. Being a Hindu Brahmin who likes and respects his culture and tradition without being over-passionate about it, I am disappointed in more ways than one....

The America that is not really seen

2004-11-04T17:10:00.000-08:00

I must say that living in the United States has been an eye-opener in more ways than one. There have been times when so-many of my pre-conceived notions were only re-inforced as if in stone, but there have been a fair share of occasions which have left me wondering if I really did think I knew what to expect from the U.S.

Religion is not a topic which has often been associated with the U.S.A. For reasons not really difficult to state, the middle-easter countries and south-asian countries are the ones more commonly associated with issues concerning religion. Having been a witness to quite a few religious squabbles in India and not hearing about even a single one from the U.S.A, I have always been under the impression that the progressive, ultra-modern U.S.A would be a country wherein religion would probably be the last thing in anyone's mind. And from what I have made out from discussions with fellow Indians here, they were very far away from my conclusion.

But let me state one thing for clear. U.S.A will not be what it is without Christianity. The extent of Christianty's influence in every walk of life has got to be seen to be believed. In a country where there is no paucity of in-ur-face audacity in spheres of dressing, behaviour et all, there is an equal abundance , if not more, of churches and assosciations affiliated to churches.. Every other block would have one and near my house there happens to be at least half - a dozen churches, all within half a kilometre.

There are dozens of student ministries, where students take upon themselves the task of propagating information about Christianity . But one thing to be noticed here is the fact these are definitely not " religious propaganda spewing machines", but are just organisations which do a lot of "normal everyday student" things, but with more than just an undercurrent of religious influence.

One stark difference which I have noted between India and the U.S.A is the huge involvement of students in religious activities. Back inIndia, the number of youngsters who are of the religious kind is dwindling. Not that I am critical of it, for I am of the firm belief that it is something which should just not be imposed upon people. But it cannot be denied that the more "progressive" and "modern" that India becomes, the lesser will the influence of religion be in the Generation Next. This , of course, could actually be a boon in a country like India where religious strife is rife. With this in perspective, I really am amazed at the high priority given to religion here.

Things are to such an extent that the American Constitution or pledge or something of that sort, goes by the phrase " In the name of God". There was some significant opposition to the presence of that phrase , with the atheists claiming that this was against their fundamental belief and thus against the basic freedom of an individual with lots of lawsuits being filed. But ultimately they all came unstuck, with the Government refusing to budge from it's position and remove the word "God" from the concerned paragraph. It is only in the fitness of things that the recently re-elected Bush keeps re-affirming his faith in Christianty in each of his speeches and also that the Bush administration is anti- gay ( at least when it comes to marriage), with the contention that homosexuality is against the fundamental tenets of Christianity. It is also a point to be noted that the quite a few religious heads here openly campaigned against Kerry , as he tended to lean more towards the gay population.

I am not really sure if I have been entirely coherent and cogent in this piece, but all that I wanted to say was that " Dont ever let anybody fool you into thinking that America has nothing to do with religion"

Charge of the Bimbette Brigade - Part 2

2004-11-02T01:11:00.000-08:00

This one is definitely much much hotter than it's prequel. As a result of it, I make a sincere request for all underage readers to " grow up" for a cpl of mins and then read thro... cos risque, rauncy, saucy... name it u got it here...

"HOOTERS"... most deftly a word whihc has got to remind u of something more than just the hooting owl. For all Sheldon, Wallace etc etc readers, this would not be an alien term.. for the others....u'll get it by the end of this piece...

This happens to be the name of the a very "in"famous chain of restaurants right around the globe, with it's base here in the U.S. Quite fittingly , they have a an owl as their trademark symbol. And even more fittingly, they have things on display which would not quite be out of place in the afore mentioned novels...

The shortest of shorts, the most decollet'e of tops... club these two things along with the name of the restaurant, u should get the picture.... A place where u get waited upon by the choicest of women in the pink of their healthiest health, wearing the skimpiest of clothes....In short, as described by a columnist of my univ daily" A restaurant where u can get away with staring at things for which u would have got spanked by ur mother otherwise..."..

Known for it's generous pay and perks to it's more than jus generously proportioned staff , it has finally spread it's wings to the Hub City ( this is how Lubbock's called , though I dunno why..)

But the reason I am talking at lenght abt this is cos'... it's gonna be Hooting time at the Pub City too... also called the Garden City..... As the representative for Hooter's India remarked.." the unique culture of India combined with that of Hooter's would provide a dining experience of a different kind"....

Indeed.. I am sure at least half of the population in India would agree to this....

India's changing for shoore.. for better or for worse..????

P.S - If somebody still hasnt got the hang of this , then lemme let u in on something... Hooter's is not famous for it's Chicken Breasts alone.........

10 day hiatus...

2004-10-31T13:15:00.000-08:00

Fundamentals of Engineering.... Never thought that they would be of any consequence.. but unfortunately.. the bosses up there in my dept feel so... as a result of it...

Thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, statics, dynamics, chemistry, mechanics of materials, lots of math and a sprinkling of electrical too...

Recipe for disaster..if ever u were in search of one...

Fundamentals of Engineering... not so affectionately called F.E .. an 8 hr exam with the morning 8 hrs having all of the afore mentioned topics, then a break of 30 mins, then a discipline - oriented session for 4 hrs ( I obviously stuck to mine ..) all together 180 questions.....torture as pristine as it could ever be....

For the last 2 weeks, jus could not even think of doing anything else...., for I will not be allowed to graduate if I do not pass this exam. Hope it doesnt come to that.. anyway...test wasnt all that easy too.. the EE section was quite tough.. and I could not devote much time to it as I had to learn the other stuff like thermo, fluid mecho right from scratch.....

anyway... nadanthadhu nadanthu pochu.. mudinjum pochu.... from now on will get back to my regular life.. vis-avis- courses, thesis and of course deftly more of blogging..

48 days to go......

Charge of the Bimbette Brigade...

2004-10-21T16:20:00.000-07:00

Move over Mary....there are younger ones to see... Make way Miss Maria... u aren't being noticed...Ur game's over Anna....nobody's ogling at you nowadays..This must have deftly happened thanx to a distress call from the male fraternity...requesting for some eye-candy to reduce the extreme "stress" levels during a tennis match.

Much to the consternation of the "elite few" women tennis players among the distaff , who had only been competing with models in the metaphorical sense, the organizers of the Tennis Master's cup at Madrid, have gone ahead in employing professional female models as ball girls for this year's tournament. Guess the verdict was probably unanimous in the boardroom - SKIN IS IN...

But I also have enough reason to believe that this is conspiracy on the part of the distaff, for a certain Roger Federer was running away with all the glory in tennis, despite the presense of the hot young starlet Maria. What better way to bring a man down....the world's oldest profession is always there....

While not for a moment am I seriously insinuating any correlation between that profession and this , this move does leave a LOT TO BE DESIRED....(hee hee hee..)

Can very well imagine the reaction of my dear young impressionable friend, an M.S graduate from S'Pore...

Vaaathaaaaa........

Chickens ... There does seem to be a whole lot of them around...

2004-10-18T11:00:00.000-07:00

For long , it has been described as toothless. The ICC cannot be called toothless. They have proved it beyond doubt. Their decision on the Zimbabwe issue does make them deserve more fitting adjective. Spineless!!! This would fit it to a T. Be it an Oz stranglehold , or be it a South Asian regime, the Icc continues to funciton in a manner totally insulated from the tribulations which rock the cricketing world.. and more importantly, the real world...

How the ICC could clear ZCU of racism is simply beyond belief. The report even goes as far as putting all the blame at Heath Streak's feet. Somebody find my alarm clock please... By categorically stating that it was Streak's rigid demands which led to the subsequent chao and turmoil in Zim, they have exonerated the ZCU of all of its wrong-doings, and in the bigger picture, they have given an absolutely clean chit to the Mugabe regime.

Does all this mean that Zimbabwe was God's own nation in the "pre-Streak episode" era, where everything was fair and square? Then what does it have to say about the defiant stand taken by those two courageous souls, Andy Flower and Henry Olonga? Were they fools to put their life at stake by choosing to stick their neck out? Was it jus a mere co-incidence that the one sane person in the entire ZCU establishment , Vince Hogg happened to get kicked out the minute the fracas broke out?

Questions, questions and more questions... not really difficult to find the answer... but only if you want to look out for them... or even ... ony if u really do want to keep ur eyes open...Otherwise.... as they say...the blind man's dalliance with the devil is the safest... no reason to get scared of it....

60 days......

p.s - This reminds me of the other piece of mine where I was pleading with the ICC to do something... they have at last chosen to do somehting... or rather , nothing..

Here is its....http://webpages.acs.ttu.edu/krangana/yellow__coloured_glasses_viewing.htm

My defunct website.. desperate in need of funds ( in my case... time and motivation..) was going through a complete overhaul.. but for some reason the contractor stopped off after the white-washing....

Cliches and a li'l more...

2004-10-13T06:56:00.000-07:00

Piqued by Makki's question about the proverbial 8-ball, I set about enlightening myself more thoroughly.. only to hit upon this amazing aritcle...

Courtesy : http://www.nexus.edu.au/teachstud/dexed/docs/cliche.html

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The Use of Cliches in the Modern English Curriculum and Pedagogy
Graeden R Horsell, November 1997

I make no bones about it. I’m not going to beat around the bush. I need to clear the air, settle an old score and kill a sacred cow. I had an English teacher whose last name was English. She was hard as nails and long in the tooth. Ms. English, as every schoolboy in her class learned, had an axe to grind when it came to cliches. Ms. English would get on her highest high horse and in her best pedantic style would drill a hard and fast rule: “mind your Ps and Qs you young men and avoid cliches like the plague.” Pointing her thin bony index finger at the ceiling, she would with wispy lips and piercing eyes, cackle, “If you don’t, heads will roll.” Then, pushing her face toward us she would, in her mad as a wet hen voice, say, “Do you read me-loud and clear?” Man, did she have an attitude. The classroom would get so quiet you could hear a pin drop.
Most of what Ms. English told me went in one ear and out the other. I could get away with an occasional split infinitive or dangling participle, but cliches were Ms. English’s last straw. When it came to cliches, we had to be letter perfect. She had a motto of live and learn, but Ms. English’s intense dislike of cliches made her motto seem more like learn or die.
She said that what separates the men from the boys is that real men don’t use cliches. Just like that, it was an open-and-shut case. I was young; I couldn’t have cared less. You know, boys will be boys, free and easy, sort of a captain of your own soul type thing. Silently, I’d say to myself: “heavens to Betsy Ms. English, you don’t have to get your nose out of joint every time I use a cliche.” But, if I didn’t get all my cliches out of my essays there was hell to pay. Ms. English and I always seemed to be at loggerheads. Imagine, she accused me of having a chip on my shoulder.
One subtle cliche and Ms. English would blow her stack, give me the evil eye, and chew me out. I paid through the nose for trying to get some subtle cliches past her. The bottom line, she told me, is that cliches make writing pedestrian and if I wanted to rise to become the cream of the crop as a writer of speeches, I must drop my cliches. “Deep six the cliches”, she would yell. I’d yell back: “with all due respect, Ms. English, that’s a cliche and you should practice what you preach.” She’d yell back, “Do as I say, not as I do!” Fine for her to say. For her, it was all in a day’s work. But, for me, old customs died hard and it often left me in a blue funk. It seemed like I was always behind the 8-ball. You can bet I was in Ms. English’s little black book-often.
One day I had a change in heart. I decided I didn’t want to be a good-for-nothing. I decided it was do or die and that I would put my shoulder to the wheel and leave no stone unturned in my quest to find cliches and eliminate them. Many nights I burned the midnight oil, and, for a while, I made progress by leaps and bounds. But cliches were here, there, everywhere. The cliche became the proverbial albatross around my neck. I was as busy as a cat on a hot tin roof with my red marking pencil. Many a time, after I wrote a fine piece, I found myself down and out because I would find one small cliche and then it was back to the drawing board and sometimes back to square one.
Be that as it may, I tried to be of good cheer. Time and again I would break out my eraser for battle royal with the offending cliche. Come hell or high water, I had decided every cliche must go. Believe it or not, by brute force, an eagle eye, the sweat from my brow, and by burning the candle at both ends, I was able to ferret out all cliches for a short time. I was on cloud nine.
Then something happened. I found a cliche, tried to replace it, and I drew a blank. I racked my brain and sweat blood, gallons of it. It didn’t help. It was hope against hope. I tried to grind it out and I all I did was grind to a halt. If you are new to writing speeches, you’ll find that eliminating a cliche is sometimes easier said than done. It’s certainly not child’s play. Replacing it, well, you’d better have a month of Sundays.
It finally dawned on me that I knew, from the bottom of my heart, I couldn’t cut the mustard or toe the line when it came to eliminating cliches. Sadder but wiser, I decided to bite the bullet before I bit the dust. I went full circle on the cliché thing. I figured out there was not a ghost of a chance that I could get by without cliches. When you can’t think of the right words, well, all I can say is: beggars can’t be choosers.
Sometimes a good cliche is the staff of life and sometimes using a cliche is as right as rain. If the shoe fits, wear it. If you are in a pickle and a cliche will get you out of it, in a word, use it. I still don’t recommend using cliches across the board. There is such a thing as too much of a good thing. But I sure hope Ms. English teacher will some day come down from her ivory tower, see the handwriting on the wall and faces the music. Ms. English, sometimes, even if it’s only once in a blue moon, you can’t and shouldn’t avoid all cliches.
The “the eliminate all cliches” rule is much ado about nothing. With all due respect, Ms. English, let me bend your ear: you’d better change your view or mark my words, some day you’ll eat your words. Maybe you’ll even get hoisted by your own petard. (Something seems wrong with that last sentence, but that’s beside the point; you can’t win them all.) There, I’ve said it, the moment of truth has come. As for me, you can bet your boots or your bottom dollar that I use cliches to my heart’s content. The long and short of it is that often cliches are my ace in the hole. I know, I know, for some people hope springs eternal, but when it comes to avoiding cliches the only thing I can say is abandon hope, all ye who enter here. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Ms. English.
Oh, for crying out loud, I can’t do it. I can’t end on a sour note and cast aspersions on the character of Ms. English. She was stubborn as a mule and she always stuck to her guns, but she was also an honest to goodness grey eminence. Hmmm, now that’s food for thought. Or perhaps it’s just a backhanded compliment. Who knows? Whoa, that sounds dangerously close to a cliche. I’d better check it out. Well, that’s the story of Ms. English and me. As for the cliche, I have only one rule: never say never.

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This has got to be the first instance....

2004-10-12T14:26:00.000-07:00

There are firsts for everthing in life I guess.. but never in my wildest dreams did I even contemplate that an international cricketer would go to the extent of dropping himself out to give place to a deserving youngster.
Just seems so unimaginable.. more of you consider the fact that Lehmann has played jus 21 years , being in the sidelines through the Waughs' era, averaging close to 50 in the 21 games that he has playe, scoring 2 centuries and 4 50's in his last 6 test matches and also realising probably that his chance might be lost forever.

but lots of factors to be considered too by the selectors.. for they is jus the teeny -weeny chance that Clarke might go the way Blewett did .. though it looks more likelythat Clarke would go the Sachin way...

Another interesting thing abt this is that.... the vice-captain is dropping himself out ....

the whole thing jus sounds too unbelievable....

Adding a totally new dimension to the oft-repeated cliche of "playing for the team"....

Not leaving a stone unturned - Part 2.. My only shot at journalism

2004-10-10T19:40:00.000-07:00

The Unseen Face Behind the UD

Morning cuppa’ and the daily newspaper to go with it - How often does one take a moment off to actually think about the trials and tribulations that go into the making of a newspaper? How often do the travails of being a journalist really bother the average newspaper-reader? Rushing to beat deadlines and looking to make every word count. Such is the hectic nature of a newspaper office throughout the day that it would not be an exaggeration to liken it to an ocean of turbulence. But the presence of an island of calm in this environment is what is really instrumental in running the whole show without a hitch.

Meet Andrea Watson, one of the two editorial advisors for The University Daily. Low – profile and working behind-the-scenes, the editorial advisor is easily the most vital cog in the entire system and it is not difficult to fathom why. Taking care of the day –to- day problems faced by the reporters, doing post-publishing critiques and corrections, counseling the student reporters on issues like internships and other career related issues , Andrea does have her hands full. But the best part is that, she is doing something in which she is absolutely at ease.

Hailing from Colorado, Andrea realized as early as in high school that journalism was her calling in life. An avid lover of writing, there were just two avenues for her, teaching English or pursuing journalism. She gladly opted for the latter, thus embarking on the journey which would ultimately make a Red Raider out of her , and also make her stay put in good ole’ Lubbock , contributing her mite to the betterment of the UD.

Graduating from Tech gave her the perfect opportunity to get herself into the media scene in Lubbock, and she kicked off her career as a reporter with the Lubbock Avalanche Journal. Not content with being just a journalist, she also reveled in her other role as a public relations handler. While other reporters normally aim to go right up their career ladder leading to the coveted Editor’s post, Andrea wanted to be a trifle different. Making a lateral shift in her career, she opted to take up the position of an Editorial Advisor at the UD, here at Tech. Though this was a far cry from the rough and tumble world of instant reporting, what enticed her into this was the fact that this position entailed her to get in touch with students a lot, something which she loved to. With a mature head on her young shoulders and an infectious smile to boot, she took to her new avatar like a duck taking to water.

But it is not always smooth sailing, especially if you are the Editorial Advisor, for one of the very important jobs is to make sure that the Editor does not approve of anything which would amount to an invasion of privacy to any third party. Getting the UD to follow to the narrow lane of legality does fall into her purview. The consummate professional she is, Andrea is certainly not the kind to even bat an eyelid for such issues.

“Once a journalist, always a journalist”, so they say in the land far and beyond. Not wanting to let her writing skills get frayed at the edges, she does do a lot of free-lance writing and reporting, always managing to squeeze in a word or two in between her busy schedule.

If you are thinking that she had already taken on work much more than what she should be doing, just wait till she tells you about her duties as an Editorial Advisor to the YearBook too. So the next time you get ready to pillory the UD about something as inconsequential as a spelling error, just spare a thought for those who are working themselves crazy just to cater to the student community. And trust me, no one exemplifies this better than Andrea.

Not leaving a stone unturned....

2004-10-10T19:37:00.000-07:00

Been a week since I last posted here.... been quite busy actually.. for once...

My hitherto futile search for that elusive remaining 10 hrs of work here on campus found a new avenue. The University Daily( UD), the university newspaper. This was probably the one place which none of us Indians ever thought of trying. Seeing an ad regarding vacant repoter postions, I decided to try my luck. Vandhaa malai ponaa verum masuru.. Anyway, chock-full of confidence and literally nothing to lose, I went ahead and met the editor-in chief.

But was always behind the proverbial 8 - ball, with my total lack of journalism experience..Somehow mustered up enough courage to take a couple of my write-ups ( the one on Agape and the one on Zimbabwean cricket)... As expected... she kept on harping about my lack of experience.. but I guess the articles did make some kinda favourable impression. Finally, I was instructed to talk to the Editorial Advisor of the UD and write a story based on my interview with her. This totally threw me off guard... but I guess I should have seeen such a thing coming.

Kadavul melai baaratha pottu... went about interviewing her for close to 10 mins... which was pretty remarkable , considering the abject paucity of questions coming to my mind. The editor had given me a max of 8 hrs to turn in the story,.. aana naan summa viduvenaa.. completed it in an hr and a half.. went through it half a dozen times... then finally decided to turn it in.....

Anuphcu... ara mani nerathulaiye.. reply vandhudhu.... as expected... but as I had requeted her to give her comments on the article , irrespective of the decision, she dwelt on it for a couple of sentences.

Even went to the extent of saying that I had a pretty creative and unique style of writing.. ( coming from a journalist, I can most definitely take this to be compliment)but unfortunately.. that was not the journalism style which they printed.

Wet on to say that it was almost editorialized, rather than being objective. I assume that this meant I had played around too much , eulogized her an awful lot , been too flowery etc etc...

Immediately my thoughts ran back to those days in school , when our own Journalist would keep criticising me and Giri for being way too flowery and showing off too much in our write-ups. I guess old-habits die hard....
Anyway....

Definitely felt a bit disappointed...for I thought I could make history by becoming probably the first Indian student ( non ABCD) to write for the university newspaper.
though I didnt have much of a cause to be so.. with my background...

but one thing .. my "English Ego" remains as HUGE as ever.. if not bigger..... for shoore....

Jus for keepsakes... I am putting up the article that I wrote.... in my next post...

Lovely article on Chandidas...

2004-10-01T12:31:00.000-07:00

This is from smh.com.au , and the author , Trevor Marshallsea.. one of my fave writers outside India...

Trevor Marshallsea examines the character of a man routinely dismissed as arrogant and finds it is a lie. It's just that he will do anything to win.

Being Sourav Ganguly. It would work as a movie title in Bollywood. It might even win a Boscar. After all, originality has never been the hottest commodity in Mumbai's film factories, and there is more than enough in the man for a box-office smash, even discounting that a billion Indians list their viewing preference as "anything to do with cricket".
There is money: Ganguly is from a wealthy Kolkata family, owners of India's second-largest printing business. There is fame and power: he is captain of India and a hero to the fans who outstrip the rest of the cricket world combined in fanaticism and number. Non-Indians, including Test cricketers, can only imagine what it is like to be him in his country, even if he plays demi-deity to Sachin Tendulkar.
And there is intrigue in spadefuls. Many rivals, most famously certain Australians, have insisted that on good days he is unbearably prickly, on bad days an unbearable prick.
If you listen to the stories and complement them with Steve Waugh's thoughts during Australia's 2001 loss in India, Ganguly should register somewhere between Douglas Jardine and Jack the Ripper, especially if the latter was indeed the Duke of Clarence. Just as the Duke is exonerated by most Ripper historians, however, the truth behind Ganguly might be different to the myth.

Doubtless Ganguly has a streak of what well-heeled Kolkata families like to call "mongrel" running through him. How else would he make a pressurised Test debut after Navjot Sidhu dramatically stormed out and score a century at Lord's? How else would he take over a team amid the ashes of the match-fixing scandal which engulfed predecessor Mohammad Azharuddin and help forge India's greatest side, becoming comfortably the country's most successful captain? Still, even most Australian players now accept him as tolerably non-toxic, undeserving of his image problem.
Last summer, Ganguly let down Australian journalists on alert for any hint of uncooperativeness, disrespect of cricket's traditions, elitism or aloofness. He was generous with his media time, arrived punctually in a blazer for the toss, and apparently saw fit to slum it in the same five-star hotels as his team. More importantly, there appeared no especially bad blood between the two teams in their tense 1-1 drawn series.
Ganguly tales still abound. One truth is that he irritated Waugh and some teammates to distraction during the 2001 tour through his lateness and un-blazered attire for the toss. A rumour suggested Ganguly, who can be absent-minded, found himself in the toilet when it was time to toss for the first Test. Upon reading of the indignation of Waugh, he resolved to be late again. And again. If it is true, it is hard not to at least admire his cunning. Reposing in the garden of a team hotel during an interview before this tour, Ganguly - wiry, bespectacled and disarmingly softly spoken - denied it nonetheless.
"No, it's not true. I read Steve was pretty upset about me coming out late for the toss, which I understand. But I have too much respect for the guy. He believes in cricket ethics, the baggy green," he said. "He's one of my role models."
Something was going on, for Ganguly then admitted that some of his best moves in 2001 were not to position fieldsmen but to position himself and teammates under Australian skin. "They were such a good side we had to do something different to beat them. If we had played the way they wanted us to play, they would have hammered us."
And there is the key to why India under Ganguly's leadership are so formidable - at home and, more importantly, away. As Michael Atherton, former England captain and teammate of Ganguly's at Lancashire, says: "When I first started, you had the feeling you could bully India. What Ganguly's shown is that he's not going to be pushed around."
Several of Ganguly's Lancashire teammates in 2000 considered him aloof, because he chose nights with his wife, Dona - with whom he effectively eloped - over the culturally unfamiliar ritual of drinking with the lads. Ironically, this is redolent of why several former Australian heavyweights could never warm to Waugh.
Once, Ganguly was supposed to have handed his sweater to his batting partner to run it off the field. "It's apocryphal, like many of these tales," says the supposed partner, Atherton. "I found him great - easy to get on with, very polite. But he did struggle with the weather, and playing almost every day. He's a guy who lifts for the big occasions." Witness the left-hander's pugnacious 144 in Brisbane last year when more gifted teammates had failed.
Ganguly, 32, likes his sleep-ins and can deliver a bollocking of a teammate on the field. Some could perhaps sledge him for dyeing his hair - a red tinge hides some rising grey - but so culturally endemic is the practice here, it would be like sledging Australians for sledging.
"I used to get pretty upset, thinking, 'Why do people get the wrong impression of me?'," said Ganguly, who does much unpublicised charity work in Kolkata and blames India's vast, rampantly competitive media for spreading mistruths. "And they pass [them] to the foreign media. If you've been told I'm an arrogant fellow, the first time you meet me you will be thinking, 'This guy could be arrogant'.
"I think it changed after we toured Australia. I had some nice words from a lot of media people in Australia, which was very comforting. A lot of people have the wrong idea about me because of the way I compete on the field. That's the way it is and I can't keep changing everybody's minds.
"But I have an ambition of taking Indian cricket forward, and being respected. I'm sure with the way we performed against Australia in Australia ... people's outlook on Indian cricket has changed. For that I needed to compete, I needed to get my players going, because I've seen this team play the best when they are aggressive and positive. But off the field I am a completely different person."
Sure, but didn't you refuse to carry the drinks on the 1991-92 tour of Australia? "That was the biggest lie. Absolute rubbish." Ganguly said the story was spread, due to regional Indian cricket politics, by tour manager Ranbir Mahendra, who he later called "probably the worst guy I've seen in my life". Perhaps awkwardly for Ganguly, Mahendra this week became president of India's cricket board.
Haven't you stayed in separate hotels to your team? "Never." Not even with Tendulkar, for better security? "Staying with the team is more secure because we've got security preventing people from knocking at the doors at all hours. I go out whenever I want.
"I go out and watch movies in Kolkata with my family, and we hardly get disturbed. People ask for an autograph and if you tell them 'we're here to watch a movie, can we do it after?', they understand. If people get your mobile number, you get all sorts of calls, but if I receive 10 calls, eight wish the team well.
"There will be guys who ask: 'Why isn't the team doing well?' But you play for this, otherwise you would just be an ordinary man walking up the street and not doing what you want."
Ganguly, whose inspirations are Waugh, Pete Sampras and his beloved Manchester United, jokes that he might better seek peace on the streets. He lives in a 22-bedroom mansion with 35 relatives, including his three-year-old daughter, Sana. "It's not very normal these days," he laughs. "It's a great environment when I win. When I don't, there are too many questions. My dad will say 'you should have done this', my uncle will say 'you should have done that', and my cousin will come and say 'you can't bat'. But the support is always good."

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That bit about Ranbir Singh Mahendra is indeed interesting...... I am waiting to see how long it take before there appears a re-conciliatory statement form Gnguly... I frevently hope he doesnt give one.... but one thing.... if the going is good for Ganguly.... then they cannot gang up on him... but knowing and the pl whose feathers he's ruffled.... might find it a bit tricky if India's loses against Australia....but let'see...

Never been a big fan of Ganguly the Test batsman.. infact as a batsman he doent merit a place strictly speaking...but Ganguly the Leader.. incomparable.... best thing that cud have happened to Indian cricket since the advent of a 16 yr old in 1989.

Springing a smidgen of a smile .....

2004-09-29T17:01:00.000-07:00

The lovely ,beaming smiles on the tender countenances of these girls would have been enough to make the day for the even the grouchiest of all men. For a group of children , not always accustomed to celebrating b'day parties with such gusto, this was nothing short of a god-sent opportunity to actually live life the way their "more fortunate cousins"across the street did so, even if it was just for one evening.

These girls are the inhabitants of Agape, a children's home in the outskirts of Bangalore. Literally picked up from the streets , these children have had to lead lives which not even the bravest among us would dare to , with rag-picking probably being the best of the jobs that these girls were forced to do. Not even into their teens, these girls have actually experienced first-up the harshest of cruelties that life could ever offer, with acts considered "unspeakable " by our society ,being the norm of the day for them. Probably , the adjective "unspeakbale" fits the bill right to the T, for, in this world of paedophiles , these acts continue to remain unspeakable, but aeminently do-able.

The joyous occasion at Agape that day was due to the presence of a handful of youngsters, rather young men and women, celebrating the birthday of one of their friends alongwith these children. For the "more mortal" among us, a birthday would probably be a visit to the nearest hot food -joint and guzzle and gorge merrily. Though this in no way can be criticized, it takes a special something on the part of a person to actually celebrate a b'day in the a children's home.

I am sure that there are people , a dime a dozen who would definitely pause for a moment or two when confronted with articles or news about the "not-so-fortunate"ones in our society. And probably continue to be cocooned in their own lives from the next minute onwards ( yours tuly included ... not real proud about it though..) Social consciousness is most definitely somehting which most of us possess. It's just that we choose to put it on the back-burner and ignore it in a rather very convenient manner. Pray, tell me, what is it that is preventing us from from taking the next step? Be it helping a person involved in a road-side accident or even sparing an hour to be spent with kids like these... Do we actually lack the inner strength of will to go against the tide and put forth a helping hand? Why is it that , when we as a society , espouse all the noble deeds of men who have long gone into the sunset, refuse to even do the bare minimum to try and emulate these heroes??? Does it really demand too much???

I am indeed proud to admit the fact that the people mentioned here are actually a few of my beloved friends. And , trust me , these people have made a difference in my outlook towards life and living, through this small, yet, immensely significant deed of theirs. Even if this would go ahead and inspire at least one person among the many who would at least take a furtive glance at this piece of written material, I would be one satisfied individual......

Vizhiyum Vizhiyum..... a throwback to the 90's...

2004-09-27T16:41:00.000-07:00

Was listening to Swades.... the latest ARR effort.. but then didnt want to stay there for a long time...( most deftly not due to the quality of music..I jus wanted soemthing new and unheard of)
So Raaga surfing landed Veer Zara in my laps... and I thought I was gonna lap it all up.. for the M.D was none other than the late great Madan Mohan ..( an 60's hindi M.D... lots of lovely songs..) supposedly recreated by his son... whatever it is... wasnt up to the mark... Sonu's brilliance was all there to see in the two songs listed in his name.... but ENOUGH AND MORE INJUSTICE is being rendered to the music industry.. simply by making Lata sing yet again.. and there're a lot of "yet again's" in this album.. for she's sung each and every song.....that was enough to totally put me off... ther are places where it's so pitiful to listen to her struggle..

So changed gears and tracks... and went over to the Tamil section... and here there it was.. THE JACKPOT... my erstwhile melody man.. after departing from this genre for a few "notable" movies.. is back Vizhiyum Vizhiyum is a timeless melody right out out of the Vidyasagar stable.... where was he hiding this all this time???? Madhu Balakrishnan and Harini... they more than made up for the Lata fiasco..... this is easily my fave song of recent times.... and for keepsakes.. he's even thrown in another mild Karthik number... quite pleasing to the ears...

BTW.. the movie's name is Sathurangam.. a Srikanth starrer...and the link for this one is
http://raaga.com/channels/tamil/movie/T0000642.html

These two are keeping me busy enough not to touch Swades now...nowadays I make it a point to get to ARR after the initial hype has died down...

"Mail men" in the making.... The Ultimate Googley

2004-09-25T16:38:00.000-07:00

U've got to give it to Google... They really do have their finger bang on the pulse of the present generation... but not jus that... they know a helluva lot abt the way the human mind works.. and playing jus the right card to trick the unsuspecting mind into dancing to it's innovations...

No more prancing around.. I am referring to GMail and the way Google went abt. marketing it.... hats off to them...By making sure that nobody gets it off- the - shelf jus like that.... they successfuly created the craving ... But it's not this I am surprised at ...

I am more taken back by the effect that these "invitations" have on those of us who already have gmail accounts....The mere presence of these invitations on our mailboxes virtually turn us into hunters looking for a virgin unadulterated by a GMail account.. And it was Makki who made me realise this....when I was asking him if he wanted a GMail acct. , he shot back.." why would I want one??? " to which I responded " Dont u know abt GMail etc etc ..... His response was " I know pretty well abt it.. but tell me one good reason as to why I shud have one????

It's another story that even Mr.Monitor Makki has a GMail acct. to his name..but the fact is that .. all those who have those invitations end up scouting for ppl to donate them too.. as if it was something which was an absolute must.... and I was watcing my friend do the same here in my dept.... looking for ppl to invite...Google has so very subtly managed to pull of this "heist"..

This is what makes me say that Google has managed to get a form of advertisement which is jus unbeatable. Without having to do anything... keep giving out those " 6 invitations" to the existing ppl.. and lo and behold.. Google can sit back and watch all the fun of recruiting done by us ...

I am not insinuating for even a moment that GMail is bad etc etc .. It's wonderful.. I really do like the way it's been done... but the fact is that I do resent the fact that Google has made me do this kinda "propaganda work".. without my consent.. and even worse.. without me realising it all this time...

Taken for a ride by Google..... both u and me ..

P.S - GMail does remain my fave account though.... and I guess this explains partly why I do want to "recruit" freshers....

Browne and Bradshaw come of age in their early thirties...

2004-09-25T13:34:00.000-07:00

I guess this is nothing short of a miracle.. cricketing or otherwise... for a team being pilloried and thrown around from pillar to post ..to reach the final, put up a stellar bowling and fielding performance.. , then flounder in the none-too-unusual Windian way...and then pull England's nose- ring off right from it's nose ( I cudnt resist this... didnt want a cliched term.. however bad this newly coined phrase is..)

Jus take a moment to reflect upon this... how often do u see batsmen with mind-boggling personals bests of 26 ( Browne) and 12 ( Bradshaw) have a 70 odd partnership to win games...The nearest that comes to my mind is Sri and Anil turning it on against the Aussies...
But this is way way bigger...

33 yr old Browne's sweetest moment of his career's come after a decade of playing..albeit in fits and starts...Not many would be remembering the fact that Browne has even opened for the Windies in a few matches in the distant past, with the 96' W.C semi-final being one of those. Here was a guy who had been dropped for 3 whole years twice in his career.. once in 1997 and then once in 2001. And he ends up winning the cup for his country in his comeback tournament. Stuff of dreams...

Bradshaw's been a slightly different.. for he was 30 when he made his debut the past year...For a west indian selection establishment obsessed with raw youngsters, this performance of Browne and Bradshaw should definitely be an eye-opener..

As far as England are concerned, it would have been a case of deja-vu... for they had lost in almost identical fashion to the Aussies in the world cup, with the Aussies requiring 70 runs to win , and the Windies , requiring 72 runs to win, being 8 wkts down in both the cases..

even before the e-ink starts drying on this HTML draft, I hope there are not any proclamations for the "knighthood " of the two Windian players involved... such is the fickle nature of the cricket board over there that... I most deftly wouldnt be surprised if this actually happened... and even less surprised if these two are dropped after one bad tournament. The best thing that the others in West Indies , be it the ex- players or the administrators,could do is to just sit back and let the team grow.....

This West Indian team is jus blossoming....

An ex-IIMian's take on the IIMs today...

2004-09-24T14:50:00.000-07:00

Courtesy : Outlookindia.com

Exclusivity Kills The CAT

Sandipan Deb advocates throwing open IIMs' gates to more students
SANDIPAN DEB

One out of every 680 men and women who sat for the Common Admission Test managed to squeeze into IIM Calcutta this year.
The average figure for the four IIMs that participated in the Outlook survey was one out of 402. That is one number that has "world record" written all over it. And it’s utterly mad.
It means only 0.25 per cent of all those who applied got into an IIM. It means that you can do better in the entrance test than 99.5 per cent of all the people who sat for it, and still not get an admission into India’s top B-schools. It means that just one mark more or less can send you up or down hundreds of ranks and change your life. So aspirants today spend thousands of rupees—possibly even more—on coaching classes, and cram for the test for up to two years, to the exclusion of everything else. I have met people who gave up Infosys jobs with US postings to spend a year at home studying for CAT.

Only 0.25% of applicants get admission into IIMs .The consequence of all this is the competence to crack a particular type of exam, at the expense of general awareness and life skills. This is a common complaint I have heard from professors and alumni who interview candidates
and supervise the group discussions. Most interviewees invariably say that their ambition is to be the CEO of a multinational corporation, yet claim that Bill Gates’ Business @ The Speed Of Thought is a novel.

I wonder how many of these MBAs would be able to take unusual decisions when they go out into the world. Will they make interesting choices about their careers and about management problems and their lives? When we got into IIM in the late ’80s, I don’t think we treated it as a life-or-death issue; it would be nice to get in, but we were not going to lose much of our swagger if we didn’t. Just the other day, looking at the careers of our bunch of 13 close friends, 16 years after we graduated, I discovered the diversity of stuff we had done.

One has a top job in a big advertising agency, while one runs his own agency. Three work in Silicon Valley, one of whom once insisted on a demotion because he liked his previous job better. One was a software entrepreneur who managed to sell his company for a gazillion dollars and has returned to India to unhurriedly figure out his next goal in life. Two are bankers, two teach in US business schools, one of whom is also a tireless activist for many noble—and perhaps lost—causes. One cracked the stockmarket open wide enough to now live by investing. One is a senior policeman and one a journalist. I wonder how many of today’s MBA students, who have been under such tremendous pressure from their parents and their environment to get into an IIM at any cost, would follow anything but the straight and narrow corporate path. The path that is Given.

The IIMs should take in more students. Of course, exclusivity of the brand and the education must be maintained because quality must have a hierarchy. But 400-to-one exclusivity goes far beyond being Brahminical. It’s like being the Illuminati or something equally absurd. The six IIMs take around 1,200 or so students every year. The number could easily rise to 5,000 without sacrificing student quality—how much difference is there between the person who scored 99.8 out of 100, and 99.1?—or chipping the exclusivity tag. Harvard Business School takes in about 700 a year, and the applicant-to-student ratio is about 13 to 1, with no effect on brand status.
The simple truth is that the societal pressure to get the IIM stamp, the ridiculously low intake and the consequent distortions could have worrying long-term effects. The possibility is distinct that IIM graduates, who, among the alumni of all Indian institutes of higher learning, are in a position to take the maximum risks, could end up the most risk-averse. As things stand even now, while the IITs have produced hundreds of successful entrepreneurs, the IIMs’ record in this area is quite poor.IIM graduates make profits for other people who take the risks. Nothing wrong with this, but it leaves me a little sad.

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I still dont know much abt the IIMs to write abt them.. my sole interest in the MBA idea is cos of Giri and Hari.... but this does seem to one interesting article.....Feels like there is some merit to his argument.....considering the extremely small ratio of students getting in when compared to the ratio getting to Harvard business school....

U business minded guys... tell me more abt all this....

Ranga

Bday....

2004-09-24T13:49:00.000-07:00

For quite some time today, I was wondering as to whose b'day it was today.. Sept. the 24th. It most deftly had to be someone whom I knew very well.. for the feeling was quite strong.. jus now it strcuk me... Parthasarathy Rishikesh's bday... our long-lost "original" koyan.. living in a world all of his own

One guy whom I for sure cannot forget for a life time.. such was his influence in our lives... a real pity that he chose to go the way he has gone... but good for him.. heard from Giri that he's doing some path-breaking research stuff in S'pore.. planning to do his PhD.As Giri said a few months back.. he was one guy who was jus too brilliant to be with us.... Yengirundhaalum.. needoozhi vaazhga....

Ranga

At least.....

2004-09-23T23:07:00.000-07:00

Life here at Lubbock for a grad. student from India does not really have a lot of exciting things in store. More so if u are the "thayir saadham " kind like me... As one of my more eloquent friends described it..." Our lives here involve jus two things.. Apartment and Department".... which is hitting the nail right on its head...with very li'l interaction with the locals. Despite this, I had this one tiny, memorable , albeit a "touch" embarrassing, conversation with a guy named Matt ( EE guy) ... Read on.....

Matt : Hey Karthik.. where are u partying tonight? ( It was a Thursday F.Y.I)
Me : Nowhere.... U know me right...
Matt : Oh yeah... I'd forgotten that u don't drink.....Havent u ever drunk???
Me : Nope.... not once..
Matt : Do u at smoke????
Me : Nope....
Matt : Do u at least drink coffee???? ( with a sarcastic expression..)
Me : Nope... ( beginning to get embarrassed..)
Matt : What???? U serious..??? Then at least Tea????
Me : Nope... I dont realy like them that much..
Matt : Cmon.... u must be joking.... Do u AT LEAST HAVE SEX......????? ( The guy was having the time of his life laughing away....) U are pathetic.....

By this time..yours truly had turned pink... for the guy had been so loud that I guess half of the class would 've heard him....But the worst part was ... there was a gal right in front of us.. who was laughing in a not-so-subtle manner...

These ppl.... jus cannot believe their order of things .....

Ranga