Sandipan Bollywood Awards 2010

And the Awards go to:

Best movie: Rajneeti
Best Actress : Vidya Balan for Ishqiya
Best Actor: Salman Khan for Dabangg
Best Song: Pee Loon from Once upon a time in Mumbai.

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To make up for the time-stamp, I published the main list at 11:57 pm on 31st. Here’s the detailed one:

This year the awards might be a bit subdued. I really haven’t seen many movies thanks to my “No Pirated Hindi movies” resolution last year. The resolution continues though. So, I really haven’t seen many of the god movies including Pankh, Lamhe, Aakrosh, Housefull, Tere Bin Laden, LSD etc. So the awards might be a bit skwed but as usual please feel free to suggest the deserving candidates in the comments section and I will update accordingly.

For TV:

Best television interview: Nothing that I remember a lot this year. Actually Deepika and Sonam in Koffee With Karan was good. But for me the discovery of the year was Nita Ambani in Walk the Talk with Shekhar Gupta after IPL 2010. It was probably her first interview and she came across as a very positive person.

Most hilarious moment: Barkha Dutt crying like a baby in her own version of reality show in news, and then blushing on being called beautiful. The guy must be blind.

Now for Movies:

Best Story: I think it has to be one of Well Done Abba, or LSD or some such but as I haven’t seen those movies, the award goes to Prakash Jha for Rajneeti.

Best Song: ‘Pee Loon’. Not only me, but all my friends have been humming it for the past few months. Anything we like, becomes the part of this song like Gobi Manchuru, Snowuu… you get the point.

Best Music Director: Shankar Ehsaan Loy for “My Name is Khan”. The reason being this movie has all songs in the good/decent category. Rest all movies have only 1-2 good songs.

Best Singer (Male): When the best song is Pee Loon, the best male singer has to be Mohit Chauhan for Pee Loon.

Best Singer (Female): My favorite is Rekha Bharadwaj for ‘Ranjha Ranjha’ in Raavan. Better than Munni or Shiela for sure.

Best Item Song: Munni Badnaam Hui by Malaika Arora. Munni beats Shiela anyday.

Best Comedian: Salman Khan in Dabangg.

Best Supporting Actor: A tough one this year. I would give it to Arshad Warsi for Ishqiya. But here’s the list of all who are really good: Ajay Devgan in Rajneeti, Raghubeer Yadav in Peepli live and Ajay Devgan/Imran Hashmi in Once upon a time,


Best Supporting Actress: Prachi Desai for Once upon a time in Mumbai.

Best Villain: Sonu Sood in Dabangg. Full Stop.

Best Newcomer (male): Rajat Barmecha in Udaan. Don’t really know of that many this year. Luv Sinha was a dud.

Best Newcomer (Female) : Sonakshi Sinha. No doubt. Tere Mast mast do nain 

Best Director: Prakash Jha for Rajneeti.

Best Film: Rajneeti. The only movie to have story, songs, star cast.

Best Actress: Vidya Balan for Ishqiya. She dared to act opposite Nasirddin Shah and Arshad Warsi and she did it in style.

Best Actor: Salman Khan for Dabangg. Pure star power. What else do you want.

You see what you want to see

Blogdosts,

Haha, that’s how Shobhaa De starts her blogs. For my case if the only dosts that I had were blogdosts, I would be a pretty loner in life. No agenda for this blog, but basically just getting back to the habit.

I had decided that there should be one post in every 2 weeks so effectively 26 posts a year but this is the first year I am missing that goal and that too by a large margin. November was hectic but I don’t think even with that in I could have made 26. It’s mainly my fault. But now with this post and the eagerly awaited annual Bollywood awards, 20 posts are assured.

I had been to India in November. It is strange how I viewed the country in a totally different light in every trip. Of course all of my trips always had a main motive (brother’s marriage, H1 stamping etc.) but there were also different angles to how I see the things around me. And I have come to the conclusion that we see what we want to see. Let me explain.

The first time when I came, I had heard from everybody how India has changed a lot. So I was looking for those signs of developments and I really felt that India has changed so much. Plus I had started looking for jobs that time and when I saw my friends in India already settled with stable jobs, things obviously looked rosy and nice in the country.

The second time I went, I had a job at hand, friends were getting married and I really didn’t care for how India has changed. So things looked very much the same. I was trying to tell people that my home-town (Barasat) was a village contrary to what the people of Barasat think. So I was looking around diagnosing what consists of a city look and what is a village look. In Bangalore, friends were getting married, brother had finally settled into his own flat. There was nothing really I was looking out for. But the thing that hit me was the price of things. Now that I had started earning again, I was comparing the prices and I was always shocked by how expensive Bangalore/India had become.

Now this time, I saw things in a different light. I was comparing lifestyles. And Bangalore to me looked like as if the city has only home returned NRIs. This ofcourse can’t be true and that’s when I realized, you always see what you wanted to see. Everywhere I go, I see only NRIs. I was so proud of the Madras shorts that I bought this summer, but every tom dick and harry there was wearing Madras shorts. It was not as if that was the current fashion in Bangalore, but it mostly marked the home returned NRIs. One of the shops I went to had Thanksgiving discounts. I was shocked. As for the lifestyle, I had a notion that people like to have way too much fun in India love hectic weekends full of movies, malls, parties etc. And that was a negative for me. So this time when I looked out for that, I was again pleasantly surprised. People/ my friends had actually calmed down. They did things slowly. Weekends were relaxing and everything was peaceful.

I guess it has got more to do with phases of life that makes you think how you view things. Generally a place essentially remains the same. Afterall comeon, the country is 5000 years old. Looking out for drastic changes every 2 years will just assert ones ignorance.

Gossip news

In the Indian media context, or may be to a large extent world media too, the gossip news nowadays has become a child’s play. I guess there was a time when gossip columnists had to work hard to find some gossip. They went to great extent with paparazzi stuff and we all know what drastic consequences it had. However, now it has become very easy to create reports with the information obtained from celebrity twitter accounts. I find twitter reporting against journalism best practices, but my “Bade Bhaiya” has said it is perfectly valid and I take it for granted whatever he says without arguing. But this also means that I can generate some news as well. Here are a few:

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Aamaar Kolkata not aamchi Mumbai for Bipasha this year

After the fiasco in the Mumbai Durga puja pandal last year, Bipasha is not taking any chances and going to her own Kolkata for this year’s Durga puja. It so happens that the occasion coincides with her Birthday. Like a happy bird, she tweets:

“Landed in kolkatta! Yay! Nia. N my sisters came to pick me up! Time to surprise mom!”

She also wishes her fans Happy Durga Puja and Dushera.

Her joy is visible in the words. After all, home is where heart is.

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Sonia’s Dilemma

Soniaji has solved many big issues both for the country and for herself but there are seemingly two affairs that Soniaji may be confused about

1. Wedding of the nephew: Ofcourse, the families are not very friendly on public platforms (being from different parties) but not to go to the wedding of nephew Varun and Yamini might be a tough decision for even the biggest decision maker of the country herself.
2. The national awards ceremony: This year’s National awards ceremony will be something to look forward to. With both the Bachchan boys surely to be there, to collect the best actor, and best movie prizes, we wonder if Mrs Gandhi will be conspicuous by her absence.

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Tit for tat

Recently RGV came up with digs on his friendly enemy Karan Johar on the context of his new movie Rakta Charitra with comments like this:

“Rc has no loving families..it only has warring families.so all those who liked kabhi khushi kabhi gum better stay away from Rakta charitra”.

What else will you expect from a man whose forte is anything but subtlety.

“Apparently Rakhtcharitra is not for people who liked K3G!! Didn't know planet pluto had multiplexes!! Aliens can't wait to see it!!”

We were waiting for the war of words to continue but alas, RGV liked the joke and put an end to it :(

“@kjohar25 ha ha ha ha that's a super one karan”

We say, really RGV, you thought that was a good one? You can do better.

Missing the Orkut days

One social networking website has taken over the other one. I still have my orkut account, but due to lack of response from other people, it has gradually faded away even from my daily routine. However, this weekend I became quite emotional after browsing the old things in Orkut for a bit.

I really missed my proud 12000 scraps on Orkut. Now it has started reducing because the site deletes all the scraps of people who have left Orkut and there are quite a few of them.

Also, suddenly I got reminded of what I used to call OFOD at that point (Orkut fortune of the day). It was plain fortunes, nothing too earth shattering, and most of the time just like fortune cookies, they were just statements and not really any predictions. There was also another funny aspect where I would exchange my OFOD’s with my friends. It so happened that Advay and I probably got assigned the same random number seed and hence our fortunes were always the same. This gave me a 11.5 hours head-start over my other US friends about my fortune. How I bragged over this little inconsequential thing.

For a while there was a limit of photos that you can upload on Orkut and it was generally a tricky thing to decide which 12 they should be. We were younger those days and the kind of photos we put was surely very suspect at times. While browsing through photos of my friends, I found one or two of my photos which I would have obviously objected to, if uploaded now.

Scraps were public and there was a lot of Jasoosi that could be done. I had spent hours doing Jasoosi with friends on other ones. This public scrapping was bad too and I realized it first time when CNN IBN actually went through all the scraps of the Indian girl dead in the Virginia Tech Shootout and passed judgments on her possible boyfriends based on scraps.

And of course there were the communities. We created the K.V. Ambajhari community and till the time Orkut was alive, we went up to 600+ members from a mere 10 of my own batchmates to start with. I had created only one community ever and that was of Shamu the Killer whale but it did not kick off. There were only 100 odd members worldwide.

Becoming a fan and counting number of fans was also a big deal. I learnt the trick of increasing fan count, which is by becoming fans of other people. Soon they introduced the concept of Cool and Handsome too. I remember how I had shamelessly requested people to rank me so that my rating bump up.

And finally, testimonials. How can I forget those? They are such big morale boosters. I love this one the most:

Sandipan stands true to the saying "Good Things Come in Small Packages". I would like to say that sometimes the best of things come in small packages.

Orkut is and was definitely more loaded than the Facebook. I guess simplicity is were Facebook wins over orkut and ofcourse I think the fact that Facebook is “American” while orkut was never also played a part in it's success. I still vote for Orkut anyday.

World peace, the necessity of the future

I was traveling to California last weekend. When I went for my security check at Boston Logan Airport, they had two kinds of detectors. One was the usual metal detector and there was another one which looked liked those x-ray machines. This was there for every conveyor belt checking your carry on bags. As luck would have it, I was to go through the x-ray kind of machine, hold my hands up above the head and pass through. As I did that, many thoughts breezed past. I was thinking if I should be offended. The next person to cross was also a foreigner, an Asian. My suspicions grew and I kept observing. An African American lady, I was at loss how to account for this that I saw two Caucasian Americans also went through the x-ray detector. Meanwhile, on the non x-ray side, I saw one Indian old couple and another Asian guy pass by amongst other people and finally that calmed me down.

Now there are other complications all over the world, the Florida pastor, the Kashmir destructions and the Deganga incident. They are all really unnecessary. For a moment let’s think about the alternative that there were no evil acts in the world. It would have been so different from what it is today! There could have been people escorting me all the way to plane door and as it was a fine weather, I could even have waved them from the tiny windows of the airport. And it was not even a long back that all this was possible. In the old Silsila movie there was a scene when Jaya Bhaduri comes all the way till the runway premises to receive Amitabh. The only reason she didn’t come to the runway seemed to be not because of permissions but that she was shocked at her husband’s death.

The US has such a high value of freedom of speech and being a first world nation, one can truly enjoy the freedom and human rights. But again, because of evil hatred, things have changed. The country can no longer stand by its name – Land of opportunities.

Kashmir would have been such a nice place to live if people had given up arms. Imagine such a cool place would have benefited the Indians and even say south Pakistanis so much during the hot summer days, would have been an ideal winter destination. Such a big hilly area wasted just for some stupid egos.

It’s not that I am some angel who does not know the meaning of anger and hatred. There are people I hate so badly that I really pray that some accident happens to them or I will go to a gaming parlor and play shooting games thinking my targets are those people. But I would never take up arms to destroy them.

The options of no evil are so good compared to the other way round that it makes perfect sense to even forgive and forget all the hated people.

One line from the famous poem “Where the mind is without fear” by Rabindranath Tagore comes to my mind:

…..Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit; ….
…Into that heaven of freedom, my father, let my country awake.

This is exactly what is needed in the world right now. Or for that matter ever. Read the whole poem here. I think it suits the scenario of yesterday today and tomorrow. No wonder people call him Kabiguru. In just 13 lines he has really found the root cause of all the evil in the world.

The ABCD of URL's

Here is an interesting exercise. I have for a past few months wondered on what basis the URL choices come up when I hit only 1 letter in the address bar. As my own blog is a pseudo personal place, I will jot it down here and compare sometime again in a few months (may be). It's an interesting exercise and I would ask you all to do the same to. If not on your own blog, if you wish to share, you can share the links in the comments section of this blog.

Datapoint:
My fun browser on home computer, Firefox which has not been cleared of cookies for over half a year. Chrome is the browser of choice for videos.

Note for work colleagues and recruiters: IE is the browser for work + tech reading.


Here are the results:
A: http://advay1983.blogspot.com/
B: http://twitter.com/bipsluvurself
C: http://www.cnn.com/
D: http://shobhaade.blogspot.com/ (De’s D is highlighted)
E: http://www.eshatrueself.blogspot.com/
F: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?
G: http://greatbong.net/
H: http://www.bbc.co.uk/ (Homepage H is highlighted)
I: http://twitter.com/iamsrk
J: http://www.telegraphindia.com/section/frontpage/index.jsp (The J of JSP)
K: http://twitter.com/kjohar25
L: http://www.weather.com/weather/today/Natick+MA+USMA0273 (Part of Local)
M: http://maheshsonawane.blogspot.com/
N: http://www.ndtv.com/news/index.php
O: http://www.orkut.com/Main#Home
P: http://twitter.com/priyankachopra
Q: Q gave links to private Google docs. First non private: http://www.google.com/search?q=nitin+gadkari&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a
R: http://greatbong.net/ (2nd time, this time based n R of Random thoughts)
S: http://sandipanmitra.blogspot.com/
T: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/
U: http://www.cnn.com/ (U of U.S.)
V: http://twitter.com/vmavalankar
W: http://www.weather.com/weather/today/Natick+MA+USMA0273 (Local weather)
X: http://www.stanacard.com/en/home.aspx (x of aspx)
Y: http://www.youtube.com/
Z: http://twitter.com/realpreityzinta

Analysis of result:
1) 6 twitter links considering the fact that I do not have a twitter account.
2) 7 blogs out of which 4 are myself and friends, and two writers, one repeated.
3) There is certainly some recent effect as it has been only 1.5 months since Bipasha came on twitter and my browsing history is about 6 months.
4) I read in.rediff.com more often than cnn.com which features twice. I don't even think i visit iamsrk more often than in.rediff.
5) The q and x results as expected are most unexpected.

Bottomline: In the web world, I am a friend loving, celebrity worshiping, news reading, weather fearing person.

The Kashmir Dilemma

Kashmir is again in news. It is unfair to comment about Kashmir without being there. Other people’s opinions available now are simply not an indicator of the true feeling in the valley. We must remember that news channels/papers show what they want to show which is in turn what people want to see. So it is not a true indicator at all. To add to the confusion, let me add my two paise as well.

The BBC has an article of seven possible solutions. The solution that is most viable to me is solution 5 or 6 wherein there is an independent Kashmir. India controls Jammu and Ladakh region, Pakistan controls what it already has captured as Pakistan Administered Kashmir. (Why nobody bothers about the Chinese controlled Aksai Chin is as big a mystery for me as human rickshaw pullers in Kolkata).

Here’s how I think it will help India. I do not think that the tiny Kashmir valley which becomes independent Kashmir gives much tourism revenue. We can surely develop other tourism spots in the Ladakh, Kargil and Jammu regions which we retain. As for what the people really want, the people will be given a 2 months period in which they can migrate to any part of India they want (ofcourse after intense security checks). If they really love their place of birth like those die hard New Yorkers or Bostonites or even the Delhites or Mumbaites, my advice is grow up dude. Life is not so easy. Look at me; here I am, staying in 5 places in the last 10 years.

Now that the places and people taken care of, let’s look at the consequences. We deploy a good non porous border line with hopefully much less army investment. So we can save that money and probably invest that in buying cycles for the human rickshawpullers in Kolkata. Just kidding, but really there are zillions of ways in which the money that is unfairly spent in military can be spent. We can develop really safe and good tourist places in the rest of the region that India retains.

We can deploy our troops along the Chinese side. Thus Ladakh will be a peaceful place where we can bring more refugees from Tibet. The Tibetian people will feel more at home in Ladakh than in Dharmashala.

In all probability, the independent Kashmir will be a failed nation. If not, then excellent but even if it does, who cares. The people were given a choice to change their location. If they did not, they deserve it. As for the natural reserves, there is nothing as breathtaking which a world tourist will miss which cannot be found in rest of Himalayas or Alps. There are no endangered animals to take care of and neither is there any big industry which will go bust. It will be a small country of people who get what they want.

Another concern that India has is that in all probability, Pakistan will capture the country and then demands in Punjab and Kutch will start off as well. It will symbolize to the whole world that Indian is a weak country who gives up on demand. My answer to that is during the transition time between Kashmir as an independent nation and Pakistan capturing it, we can make a really strong protected border along the new lines. As far as world opinion is concerned, with good PR we can really tell the world that it is a step for greater good of humanity and it is the culture of India for centuries. (For this bit of PR, we may need the help of Karan Johar who can show us on how to brainwash the world and even make a crappy movie sell).

The phone blame game continues

My good friend Advay taught me to always put the blame about the telephone connection on the other person. Of course, do not do this to an unknown person, but say if the voice is unclear on the phone, even before the other person gets to say something, say something like, what’s wrong with your connection. It’s a very nice trick and always puts people on backfoot thinking what’s wrong with them.

A typical example is my conversation wit my mom. There are so many blame points when we can’t hear each other. Let me make a bulleted list:

Her end:

• Mom, I told you, the wretched place you stay, a total village. There is not even a good coverage there.
• Mom, change your service provider: BSNL, a total crappy service. Get into a private service, Airtel or Vodafone.
• Time to change your handset maa. It has been some 4-5 years now. How long will you use that same 3000 Rs handset?

Middle ground:
• Is anyone chewing the fiber optics cable?
• Is it raining in London?

My end:
• This stupid Reliance. Like all their crappy products, the relianceindiacall is also crappy quality but highly affordable making it hard to ignore.
• ATT service. The highest drop call rate service provider. Whats wrong wit them, can’t they do something
• And finally, soon there will be one more excuse. And that’s the purpose of writing the whole post. Mom will tell me, "What Tublu, you are a grownup now, do I still have to teach you how to hold the phone? Are you still covering the lower left corner?"

Pretty sure she will have the last laugh in the blame game :)

Proud of embarrassments

I am not sure if everybody has this dilemma, but I have it all the time: To be a part of the stereotype or not. Though, it sounds cool that you are not a stereotype and different from the rest, being a stereotype is so easy and convenient that it is hard to not get sucked into it. And of course, you do not have to be non-stereotype for everything because that is a class of stereotypes in itself. I think the right way to do go about is to do what you like. Here I list down few things I really like but is against what a stereotypical guy of 27 should like:

1) I love going to beaches. Of course, going with your girlfriend will be cool, or more fun, but I equally love to go on my own as well. It may be considered uncool but I love it so much that I do not care. Every summer, since the last 3 years, Cape Cod beaches call me. I just love the variety there. The big beaches, the small ones, the crowded ones, the lonely ones, the sandy ones, the grainy ones: they have it all there. I am so looking forward to this summer’s trip.

2) Pride and Prejudice is my favorite book of all times. This is funny because till like some 2 years back, I really thought that proves how classy and well read I am, but then somebody said it’s a girl book. I mean come on, who cannot fall in love with Elizabeth Bennet? The inconsequential storyline is what attracts me towards Jane Austen’s books. You do not read a Jane Austen’s book for the sake of story. On face value, it does look girly: Emma is a girl who thinks she is a matchmaker. Pride and Prejudice is a love story where girl meets guy, have some fights and live happily ever after. But if that is one really gets out of the books, it’s a pity. It’s the lazy pace, the nothing dramatic happening all the time is what gives you time to look into other aspects. I think nobody explains women better than Jane does.

3) Harry Potter is my second favorite book and Ron is my favorite character. Well, I guess I am not really isolated here because the world is almost divided into 50-50 on Harry Potter. What I do not like about the stereotypes is when they consider HP as a children’s book or a magic book. Magic is just a tool in the book, a rather inconsequential thing I must say. Ron is my favorite character because he lacks the obvious characters of a hero. It’s precisely the reason that he is neither famous/brave like Harry or intelligent as Hermione, or funny like Weasley twins, weirdo like Luna or know-all like Dumbledore that I like Ron. I feel it’s very difficult to really stay a good friend of successful and famous. I had great difficulties in showing my excitement even when my best friends beat me in something but Ron does it so effortlessly. Though he faltered once, his genuine honesty and love for his friends is something I value very highly.

4) I am really proud of my blood unrelated sisters/ Munhboli behenein (I hate the term Rakhi sister because it is so grossly misused). I have 5-6 of really good munhboli bahans. Rakhi for me is just an annual ritual that like any other celebration is an occasion for get together or exchange calls/gifts. I really do not think that every girl that ever tied me a rakhi is my sister. Attaching so much importance to a string seems foolish to me. Rakhi is a result of a mutual feeling of brotherhood and sisterhood and not the other way round. The worst case is when people become brothers and sisters when the love just didn’t take off. Why can they not leave it at that? What is the need to create another relationship thereby trivializing it?

10 years from high school

I want to write about so many current affairs, so many movies, but thanks to Vineesh’s orkut status message; I realize that it has been exact 10 years since I left my school, Kendriya Vidyalaya Ambajhari Nagpur. I think around 16th of June was the time that was mentioned in my 12th standard marksheet, so we officially passed on this date.

I think I have mentioned about my school and my childhood many times before and I respect and revere my teachers and love my seniors and juniors, but of course it was my batch mates who are the most memorable.

Most of us, at least more than 50% have been together for more than 14 years ( 2 more continued with me for another 4 years) and it was an amazing experience. I would like to believe that our batch was unique, and though I have hard proofs that it really was, it will be cliché to talk about them as every batch thinks so. I don’t want to disappoint others.

What surprised me most was that it has been 10 years! It just seems like yesterday. I still have dreams where I am sitting in the classroom (the people change though, they include my undergrad, grad and even work colleagues) and something horrible happens to me. However, in all of these dreams, my classmates always stay with me.

Now that I read about the La Martiniere’s incident, I was reminded of how many times I was beaten. It was quite a few times and the funniest part is, the very first one that comes to my mind was from our Principal when he beat all of us in the class on our palms (girls included) but was expelled from the college, though for different reasons. Truth always wins. :). Another one that I remember was the other extreme: One of our math teachers was leaving the school and the very last day he was slapping me on both cheeks only to reiterate the fact that he truly believes I can and I should score a 100/100 in Math (That did not happen though, thanks to stupid pipes filling swimming pool problems).

Though the present state of where I am is totally because of the events that succeeded 16th June 2000, it is the 14 years before that which make me who I am. The school gives us an identity. It gives us an ability to think independently, helps us decide what is right and wrong, what is good and bad. Glory to KV Ambajhari Nagpur.

Vacationing with parents

The vacation season is here. With the Memorial Day weekend coming up in less than 10 days time, the summer is finally here and the vacation/touring kicks off. I have a moderately decent lineup planned for this summer already but I am missing last summer when my parents were here.

The article is not about vacationing@parents’ and also not about parents vacationing at your place. Neither is it about those childhood days when you HAD TO travel with your parents and nor is it about visiting ancestral house every summer. This is plain “go to fun destination/ touristy places” with your parents, siblings do not matter, rather their absence may be more fun because you get full 100% of their affection.

Last year when mom n dad came here for summer, we went out on long weekends to many places: NYC, DC, Chicago, Niagara, nearby places like Cape Cod, Rhode Island etc. I had been to almost all of these places before and while I cannot comment on how these places would feel with a partner, it is certainly a very different but positive feeling with mom n dad.


First of all, I was organizing everything which never happened while I was in India or when I was younger. Second is mom n dad assisting me in every possible way they can. Whenever I travel with friends, “who wakes up first” is always an issue and mostly it had to be me. With maa and baba, I was the last. Long live that extra ½ hour sleep. Thirdly, they are happy with whatever you show them. For example, we went to this really crappy aquarium in DC thinking that like everything else in DC, this also would be the biggest aquarium in US. It so turned out that it was even worse than the aquariums they have in restaurants. But maa and baba never showed any dissatisfaction and enjoyed the sad looking piranhas.

Another thing is I think the blood relation part. They like what you like and vice versa. This does not happen with friends. You may not like beaches and your friends might not like mountains. But your and your parents’ choices are generally the same. My parents like the typical touristy thing of visiting more spots and do not care for spending a whole lot of quality time there. This totally agrees with me. For example, because of time crunch, we did not go on top of lady liberty. But they didn’t mind.

Parents are great moral boosters. I was so disheartened to see the mile long queue to go up Sears Towers (the tallest man made structure on western hemisphere). But they gave me the necessary moral boost to go ahead. And I suddenly realized that I have a special privilege day pass, and vroom, went up the tower in minutes.

There were two more occasions when I was sort of grown up but went around with parents and elder brother. One was a conducted tour to Ooty, Mysore and Bandipur forest when I was 17. I had just got reject from getting into IIT and the trip was a great soothing agent. And part of it was because of being with parents. The other one and it was a really memorable one was a family vacation at Puri. We knew everything in Puri, there was no touristy stuff, it was plain rest, swim in the beach, visit the temple and eat healthy veggie food. Very unlike our tour choices, but it was immensely enjoyable. It was also the last trip of just us 4.

So my advice to all my “still single” friends is that please go on a vacation with your parents asap. Going with your partner may be more fun, more active, more partying, more drinking but definitely not as satisfying as being kid yet again.

Indian waiters in the US

My data spectrum is probably skewed as my opinion is based on around 12-15 restaurants in greater Boston area and 10-12 in rest of USA. But many of my friends agree with me. Waiters in Indian restaurants are below par. I am not claiming that waiters in all other restaurants are good, but for Indian restaurants, they are all below par for the same reason.

Most of the Indian joints are a family business. The waiters there are either the owner himself/herself or their extended family. There is no way they have done a professional course in waiting. This reflects in their behavior. In India, nobody cares about the waiter except how quickly they bring the order. But here, most of the places, there is more to than just bringing food that is involved. The Indian restaurants here are lost between the two and fail on both respects.

Another thing that comes out often is what somebody told me as reverse racism. The waiters, especially when they are the owners have a general tendency to look down upon the Indian customers. Their behavior towards Indian customers is totally different from the rest. I cannot describe what they do differently but it can probably be explained by a theory: Back in India, waiters are not held in that high esteem. But here, the waiters in Indian restaurants are generally the owners and they think that by waiting they are degrading their position before fellow Indians. So to “claim” their superiority, they always appear to have a high nose.

Another difference between other restaurants and Indian ones are that in other restaurants, there is at least 50 if not more percent of women waiters. By nature they are more friendly and appealing. This is totally absent in any Indian restaurant where it will be usually a grumpy faced granpa who will take your orders.

However, I need to mention two exceptions. We all know that Indian food is really good. In some places, they hire local people for waiting and they do an excellent job. They try hard to get the names right and are generally qualified waiter/waitresses. The combo of good food and good waiting makes a deadly combo. In many cases there are ABCD girls too who chip in who in addition to good waiting skills also have a good accent with food names. Places to mention are Dosa in SFO and Kabab Factory in Boston.

The other one is a tiny restaurant Dosa temple near my place. These people are the India kinds. They do not try to copy, so they come forward as genuine and that’s what makes them special. They also do not have that attitude that seems apparent on the other desi waiters.

No wonder, Indian buffets are so popular. It’s difficult to screw up.

More on media

I think a few people have taken my previous article in the wrong sense. There are 2 things that the media does that people do not like:

1) Make news out of silly things; Eg the BBC story in my previous blog or the Sania-Shohaib hype.
2) Polarized view: Terming Varun Gandhi as a Hindutva poster boy (with Hindtva in a negative connotation) or making fun of Palin writing on her hand (I find this very practical).

I am perfectly fine with the first and I am totally against the second. It is not without reason that some of my friends tell me that I am stuck in the wrong job and I should be a page 3 writer instead. To my defense I will say that yes I openly admit that I do read gossip news, but then the fact that they appear in the front page and also are listed as the most read items prove that many people do the same but not accept it.

I do not see any reason why Sania Shohaib news should not grab all headlines. It has got so many angles to it. Love amongst warring countries, an immensely beautiful bride, a banned captain, even a fat ex-wife. Even that opens up new discussions, is man really a devotee of beauty? Why is fat ugly etc. At least the other woman was equally fair. It would have been even more dramatic if she was not. I totally gulped their latest walk-the-talk interview with Shekhar Gupta. They looked so human, totally in love not very different from the many newly wed friends of mine. I like it when I see celebrities behave like normal people. There was one part in the interview where Shekhar asks Shoaib if he is the quiet person and Sania is the talkative one. Sania immediately jumps in to say that spend some time with him, you will se how much he talks. I can so relate to these observations with people around me.

I do not even feel guilty of reading this article “Ash's secret weakness” first in the morning when the main news was probably some suicide blast somewhere. This headline was so mystic and could mean anything from the “good news” to the exes. But as it turned it, it was her craving for sweets. Even then I was not disappointed because I am a sweet tooth too. Also, putting a picture of Aishwarya Rai on front page should attract more hits. Sometimes I feel the whole controversy around Bachchans being angry over Ash's false pregnancy reports was just some irresponsible journalism by some writer who was asked to write a article around a picture and not put the picture for the article.

But then tell me, who would have read a killing of not very large number say 5-6 jawans/militants in Kashmir next to a headline like “Saurav slams Sachin” with the news being a terrific victory of KKR over MI in the last league match of IPL3 (unrealistic wishful thinking).

News channels will and should continue to give us what we/mass likes. The thing it should not do is bias the views. Give all news. We will read what is important for us, but why give your own angle. But then again, the final call lies with us; we should be smart enough to filter the actual news from the biased one.

Biased/nonsense headlines

Came across a few headlines in the recent past. Of course IBNLIVE leads the chart with their pro-congress anti-BJP headlines.Here they follow:

1) 'Advani did nothing to save Babri'

Why cannot they change the headline to: "Attention seeker tries to defame Advani over Ayodhya.". Well I agree this is the other extreme. But a good headline could have been : "Person testifies against Advani, court verdict pending."

2) BSP shows Sonia's photo with money garland

Alternately, they could have just said : "After Maya, it's Sonia, age of woman's obsession with money". But instead they chse to put the blame on BSP. This is unfair reporting. And it is the same people who had such a headline about Advani.


3) A similar stance was taken on Modi: "Modi grilled for over 9 hours by SIT". It could as well have been " Modi patiently answers all questions for 9 hours to make sure all issues are addressed in 1 day"


Anyway, these were political. Here are some nonsense ones from ToI and BBC.

4) This one is mentioned by Amit Verma of Indiauncut as well. News by Times Of India's midday: "Oshiwara gay teen killed" Just read the article and see if it was really a gay issue.

But this last one justifies it all. A headline from king of news BBC itself. This news was most read on BBC for almost 24 hours and on 2nd for a long time too.

5) "Man used p**** to assault female police officer " If you read through, you will realize it's a classic case of getting super drunk and apologizing later. Imagine this being the most read when news like US Health care, global warming etc are doing rounds. I guess this proves why we get headlines like above 4.

Random thoughts on Indian Politics

Some thoughts on the current state of Indian politics and of course media interpretations:

• UPA 2: This UPA 2 has again brought out the commi out in me. When UPA came to power, one of my few friends who were unhappy over the results (only 3) commented, 'Now we have to stay "aam aadmi" for another 5 years', which is what Congress promised to do anyway. But things look very different now. Looks like UPA 2 is full of the Stephenites and the IITians and the actions they have taken is very pro genX. For example, look at the budget. The only good thing for common man was tax cuts. Apparently only 2% Indians pay taxes. But the price rise of petrol affects even the poorest of the people. I am not saying that price rise of petrol is bad, but then there were hardly any actions to control the food price rise. How can the government even think of anything else when prices are so high? Ofcourse it doesn't affect our class of people, the ones who mostly eat out or pay so much house loan/rent that food cost < 10% of their costs. These are the people like Shobhaa De who made the comment "And who eats toor daal anyway." These are the same people who are in media and share same ideas. I thought Sonia Gandhi was populist, and yes I do agree that these decisions like the ones made in budget now *may* have long term effect on the future of the country but ignoring price rise.
  
  
  
• IBN's obsession against Varun Gandhi. Has anyone paid them money to do it? All the headlines regarding Varun are so negative. In the latest news about Varun being oe amongst the tonnes of secretaries made a heading with the same alleged "hate speech" picture of his. Even NDTV while putting a nice picture of Hema Malini up there put in a rather angry picture of Varun out there. And then ofcourse there was the "Varun Hate Speech 2" headline where again allegedly Varun compared Sharad Pawar and Mayawati to Raavan and Shurpanakha. This can be funny, but no way hate speech.
  
  
• I am utterly confused about NaMo (Narendrabhai). I do not agree with media's constant basing of Narendra Modi but I also do not understand that how come, every article about Narendra Modi with negative shades have so many "For Modi" comments on it. Are Modi followers really so many that they can flood any negative Modi posts? There are two things I do not like about Modiji and they have nothing to do with religion:
  a) Its a historic precedence to resign when something that nasty happens. So many rail ministers had resigned after any train accident. Were they responsible? No, but they took the moral responsibility. Same with Vilasrao Deshmukh and Shivraj Patil. If everybody does, why not NaMo? Is he above all these people? OOP concepts say "God Objects" are a bad idea. It's true for Politics too, methinks...
  b) It's a good thing to have so many corporates coming to the state. But is the basic human rights being taken care of? Again, the little commie in me thinks not even one step extra should be taken unless we cannot assure the basic rights to all the citizens. Many of these dev plans in Gujarat look forced. I am not sure how many of them are with consent of the "ALL" the people.
  
  
• I am reading Ramachandra Guha's "India After Gandhi".
  It looks like Dr. Ambedkar was a really good man. He had a great vision. I specially loved his statement that- Gandhism (read non cooperation movements, strikes) are good only for a enslaved country. In a free democratic country, there are democratic ways to address this issue and these kinds of things are bad for democracy. I consider this a brave statement especially coming around 1949. Its just the present age politicians who are taking mileage out of his name and instead making people like us have a false prejudice against him.
  

Image Courtesy:
UPA: CNN-IBN
Varun: aurat.in

His name is Khan, and he is a torturer

Karan Johar has done a great job of bribing a lot of people. Barkha Dutt and Shahrukh may have an interview again that things were not a publicity stunt and it may or may not be true, but surely how can sane people say that this movie was good. Nikhat Kazmi, Jitesh Plllai and even Rajeev Masand. Especially Rajeev has disappointed me. I never like his reviews but that is because they are too negative. How can he give this movie 3.5 stars?

Karan Jhar even roped in celebrities like Priety Zinta, Hrithik Roshan to say that the movie was good. God forgive their lies.

Technically speaking most of the things about this movie were good (acting, situational songs, camera work, clothes) but the most crucial things were not even bad. They were worst: The story and the direction and the man responsible is noone other than Karan Johar.

There is a similarity between Karan Johar and Bipasha Basu. Off movies both are so good. Especially both are very good in TV interviews. But as soon as they get into movies, they totally suck big time. It's their TV presence that makes me watch their movies every time and needless to say, except Bipasha's beedi song and Karan Johar's KKHH, they have not only done anything good, but they have consistently done bad.

And what is with Karan Johar and those nationalist songs? In K3G, Kajol starts singing Janaganamana out of the blue and here the same with We Shall overcome at the Church. He should seriously switch his profession to Costume Design and Production. Tarun Mansukhani and Ayan Mukherjee had much better movies than his.

Indian news of the week, Shahrukh, Jaya, Varun and Bipasha

Another week comes to an end. It's 5:25 EST and in exactly one hour, I will try my first attempts at being the part of one of the greatest annual events in this country, The Superbowl. Let's see how it goes. My humble attempts at BEING a part of THE country.

But on the other hand, in the last 20 hours, (out of which 8 I slept and 4 I was connecting with friends and relatives) I spent 3 hours reading and watching videos of Shahrukh Khan. I read all his tweets on iamsrk. There was a comedy interview at IBN, there was a serious one with Barkha Dutt on ndtv and then there was a discussion about Shahrukh Khan by 8 other people on "We the People". I watched it all. All I expect of thsi whole fiasco is if not "3 Idiots", My Name is Khan should atleast beat Ghajini's record. That movie was the biggest piece of crap ever.

Anyway, let the rest of India discusses about Shahrukh and Shiv Sena. With hopes of MNIK beating Aamirs records and wishful thinking of Barack Obama really congratulating SRK on his part in the movie, I move to three more news items which disturb me.

The first one is the report that Jaya Bachchan is complaining that why did people not come out in support of her when she said something against Shiv Sena and why are people coming to support SRK now. Well, I think, even though she might be quoted of saying such, it was taken out of context and a vain attempt of media to gain air time.

The second one also is a media created news. This is how cnnibn puts a news "Hate speech II: Varun abuses Pawar, Mayawati". All Varun Gandhi said was ""The duo of brother and sister is responsible for the price rise in the country. The pair of Ravana and Shurpanakha are causing price rise in the country. One is ruling in Delhi and another in Lucknow."" I frankly think there is nothing wrong in what he is saying. And specially in a country where the biggest South Indian Superstar acts as Ravana in his next movie, this becomes even less relevant. I don't understand why the media is utterly biased against Varun Gandhi. He is a nice chap. He even comes from the Gandhi family minus the son of Italian's tag. Why is he still not able to cash in on it. Why is he not extra careful on his dialogs. With the present state of price rise and BJP being in the able hands of a Nagpuri, there is a high probability of the next government being a BJP one. To add to it, the party is yet to decide on its leaders. It is a high time for some smart moves. Wake up Varun.

The third one is most disturbing. This one is regarding some hotelier abusing Bipasha outside her room. Read it yourself. My question is why is it Bipasha all the time? The Jersey parade incident, the lewd comments in Srinagar shoot, the groping in Durga Puja and now this. Why is it always her. Madhuri Dixit in one interview suggested that these kinds of things might have happned to Indian heroines during her time. Then there might be one reasoning that other heroines keep quite when these happen to them and only the Brave Bipasha shouts out foul. That is so brave of her. The other reason is not that comforting thought though. She is at the borderline of the Class A and class B heroines, the class A being the blessed with Industry biggies like Aishwarya, Kareena etc and class B being Mallika, Mugdha etc. Bipasha is not famous enough to have the clout of A and not like B who cannot grab headlines. Poor her, my heart and soul goes out to her.. Especially is when she is doing the best thing one can do: Trying to make Indian girls look fit through her fitness DVD, more so at a time when "Mummy ne mujhe chai pe bulaya hai"

Nagpur rising

For the people who do not know me but read my blog, I was born in Nagpur and lived there for the first 17 years of my life. So, my love for Nagpur is undying. Many acquaintances of mine still remember my famous quote when I was 5-8 -"I will bring Olympics to Nagpur". At late twenties, I have given up hopes on that as well as the Nobel Peace prize, but I still have hopes for a Padmashri (well that doesn't need hope as much as money these days)

Nagpur is a very strange city. In any kind of stats across India, Nagpur comes in top 10 (In population etc). However, thanks to Nagpur's excellent infrastructure, at any traffic light, even at peak hours you won't see more than 30 vehicles out of which 28 are two wheelers. Nagpur is never in regular news. You would probably even hear more about Allahabad than Nagpur though Nagpur features in all those top 10 lists and Allahabad not even in top 20. Nagpur is 9th or 10th in those lists followed by Jaipur, but just see the % of headlines that Jaipur has as compared to Nagpur. For years Nagpur people have talked about state of art industrial area called Buti Bori which till date hasn't come up with anything more than Vicco Vajradanti and the MIHAN project which is still going on.

To summarize the two paragraphs above, I love Nagpur but Nagpur is never in news. We crave for any kind of Nagpur news. I remember during my undergrad, when Dravid got married to a Nagpuri girl, we Nagpuris prided ourselves for a long time. Those pictures of Vijeeta getting up into Rajdhani Bangalore with her shades on is fresh in my memory.

Anyways, Nagpur is back again in news. The importance of these, I solely reserve for your discretion.

* Cricket Nagpur: VCA is now a day night stadium. It hold very important records for for team India including Sachin and the retirement venue of Saurav Ganguly.

* The director of the top grossing Hindi movie of all times,Raju Hirani 3 Idiots, guess were he hails from? --- Nagpur

* The national president of the opposition party, Nitin Gadkari is from Nagpur.

Over the past 2 months, whenever these news came, I always swelled with pride. Jai Bharat, Jai Nagpur, Kha Santra.

School bag memories

I just came back from work, dropped a bag on the couch and jumped off into the bed with the laptop. I open ToI and this is what I see: Kendriya Vidyalayas set weight limits on schoolbags. It says:

As per the new `loadshedding' policy laid down for the 981 Kendriya Vidyalayas across India, schoolbags for classes I and II should not weigh more than 2kg. For classes III and IV, the bag weight should be less than 3kg, and those studying in classes V to VIII shouldn't carry bags that are more than 4kg. The upper limit for senior classes — IX to XII — has been set at 6kg.

Immediately, all bag related thoughts came by. It is strange that my bags have just been in reverse order.

The bag I dropped just now at the couch has a checkbook, a muffler, a pair of gloves, ear phones and my lunch box.

Back in grad school, my bag had 1 binder notebook and a Laptop.

In undergrad, it was funnier. For the class, I went with 3-4 notebooks in hand but when I went for "studying" in the library at night, it was usually 3-4 notebooks, one big fat electrical book and a bunch of pens. Oh yes, it also had the GRE prep book and a bunch of flash cards all the time. Note that I gave GRE only after I graduated.

11th and 12th was fun. I would carry not the text books but the reference books to school, atleast 5 of them everyday along with the corresponding notebooks. And ofcourse, the big lunch box, to be emptied long before lunch time.

6th to 10th was pretty lame with textbooks and notebooks brought according to the day's time-table. An additional trividha, rapid reader always accompanied. This was the time when horizontal dimension of the bag was less than the vertical dimension. Before this, it was all reverse.

Pre 6th standard, with the H>V dimension bags, I could make two compartments in the bag. One was for notebooks, one was for textbooks. Also, no textbook was to be missed. The drawing book has to be there and then the sketchpen set. The compass box which was never used and the box of crayons. I would cram in everything I own in that bag. No wonder, the bags weer torn every year and that too the base fell off.

I don't know how much the bag weighed then, but it was a fashion to have heavy bags. May be that's what retarded my height. If I were to be a student of this time, may be I would have been 6'2''.....

Image Courtesy: MYSORE TARPAULINS