Sandi's Musings

Marks for Sports

2012-02-05T12:52:00.000-05:00

After reading Nikhil's post about "Marks for Sports" campaign by NDTV, I am totally confused.

I am not able to decide if it is good or bad for the country. The simple justification says that it must be good as it will bring all those people to be more confident and forthcoming who were the so called "bad boys" in the school. But then, didn't everybody look up to those bad boys anyways?

The other problem with Marks for Sports is that Sports is not a subject like Math, it is like saying marks for "Language". Which sports to play? And of course, we cannot afford multiple sports in the same class. With 2-3 languages, 3 science subjects, 4 social studies subjects, it is already a burden. Add Cricket, Football, Hockey and a game of your choice to that, and the poor kid will be dead.

However, I think if it were me at that time, things would have been quite different. I would have been a totally different person by now. I have been thinking about that too. And now I think I would have been a master in at least one sport. After all, my skill was never good knowledge but smart knowledge. Do the basic minimum to get maximum output out of least effort. I could have applied the same things to sports class too. A little known fact: We did have games as grades in my school and I managed mostly A's in that too. If sports had marks, I would have got them from real work.

In cricket, it would definitely be a bowler for me. The batsman has more chances at getting hit and so does the wicketkeeper.

American Football would have had more choices, though my friends here joke that I would be a holder, but I think I would be a good center as well.

The other thing I could have bettered is swimming. I guess it is because the chance of hurting oneself is less.

Just trying to get back into blogging mode here. The post is abrupt and ill constructed.

Corruption eradication should be bottom up and not top down

2011-08-17T18:57:00.001-04:00

Right now, India is reeling from an overdose of corruption/anti-corruption drives. I do not understand how or why people always tend to judge things and black and white. Whether Lokpal or Jan-lokpal bill is good or bad is a totally grey question.

Personally, my thoughts are that the version of Anna Hazare etcs Jan Lokpal is too aggressive. Corruption is a big problem but not the biggest problem for India. So, Lokpal should NOT be the most powerful person in the country. But Anna's bill suggests something different.

The other thing is what people mean by Corruption. Dictionary.com says it is perversion of integrity or dishonest proceedings. So anything dishonest is corruption. And so, unlike popular belief, watching pirated movies, downloading songs illegally, photocopying books, acquiring illegal version of Windows, MS Office, MATLAB and other such s/w are all acts of corruption. I have specifically mentioned these 3 points because I believe that most of the facebook and twitter noise is created by the people who have done these in the past and not even feel guilty about it. When I talk to them, they say, "Oh that is nothing, look at the politicians. They are collecting crores."

It is never the question of crores. I bet if all the social media noisemakers give 100$ per corruption they did (not even say for every movie watched but like 100 for all pirated movies watched, 100 for all s/w download, 100 for photocopying pages of books, 100 for music, 100 for the Indian Driving license you got, 100 for using the Indian Motorbike license to decrease your 4 wheeler license in US etc.) and donate that money to the government, it will be much bigger amount than even what A Raja has got.

Secondly, why is there corruption in the society? Well, Indians in general have a mindset that if a thing is available for cheap, why spend and more often than not it crosses the moral boundaries. Now, how to eradicate this mindset? Education, education and education. How education? Population Control, Poverty Control etc etc. So you see, how corruption is not the biggest problem in the country? And even if it is, the right way of correcting it is a bottom up approach and not a top down.

People might argue that catching the big people have a quick and bigger impact and will deter small time corrupts but that is not true. And again, implicit in that argument is the word quick which is the root cause of all corruption (getting things done QUICKLY.)

Continuing on the same example, BIG time money laundering will be caught anyways. You really don't need a Lokpal for that. A Raja and Kalmadi were caught without a Lokpal.

So in conclusion, yes probably we need a revolution/uprising to curb corruption, but that revolution should be a self realization rather than a blame game. I think this is what true Gandhianism is.

Image Courtesy: Audiovisit.com

Views on Skins (The UK TV Series)

2011-07-30T09:10:00.002-04:00

Time flies fast, and really fast. I remember reading about a controversial show called Skins not so long ago and wanted to watch it too? Why? Just because of the controversial aspect. And it felt like yesterday that I had read this news. Suddenly, some 2-3 weeks back, I see that the series is available on Netflix. Old (rather not so old, because it felt like yesterday) memories rekindled and I wanted to give it a shot. And "bollocks", what do I see? The series is already 5 seasons old and 3 are on Netflix.

Anyhow, I start watching the show and I continued. And I finished the entire series in 3 weeks. Now, initially I thought it is just the way TV series are made, that it is very difficult to not follow. But then, I could not follow the hugely popular "Lost" though they always ended the episode in such a shape that you had to watch the next. I did not even continue Naruto, though I really want to revisit that series.

What all did I like about the series? Well first of all the fact that it is British and their funny accent. Secondly, the characters are all very fresh and good looking for most part and have more variety in terms of clothes and style than boring courtroom/detective series. As for the story line, it is pretty good and the way they arrange the episodes is awesome. Each series has a bunch of interesting characters and they dedicate one episode to one such character. But this is not done at the cost of compromising and deviating from the main story line. The subtlety in which they highlight one person but still let the main story continue is a first time for me and I liked it immensely.

As for the drug, smoke and sex content, yes, it does feel unrealistic but certainly not boring or obnoxious enough to stop seeing it.

My suggestion, go on, try the pilot episode.

Deathly Hallows 2, Why o Why

2011-07-23T09:33:00.003-04:00

The last Potter movie. The excitement was electric. The buzz was just right and there I headed out for the midnight show of the movie which I believed will be the greatest movie of all time. It was a back to back show of 7-1 and 7-2 and people had queued up 5-6 hours in advance. Everyone dressed in their witch and wizard finery with Snape and Umbridge being the rare ones.

I watched the movie twice, one was the midnight show and the other one next day at IMax 3D. OK, so I believe that Potter movies are beyond comparison and you should rather compare individual characters, the changes in plot from the book etc.

Considering all that, I really liked the changes made from the book. Most of them were pretty apt, making the story much more grander than it was. I am sure it had Rowling's full approval too. Ron, Hermione and Neville together hunting for Nagini, the house where Snape was murdered (did not look like Shrieking shack, but a great place nonetheless) and of course the untold Ron and Hermione's destroying the Horcrux.

There were lot of good things but it was as if they had been half-hearted efforts. If they really planned to make the movie 3-D, the roller coaster ride to Gringotts vault could have been a real one. I didn't even feel a thing. They were all safe shots and felt like 3D was an afterthought and a software post processing.

Same with Killing Nagini, just one hot and Nagini becomes digital and disappears into cyberspace? What about Voldemort killing? He looked like as soon as Nagini is dead, he is gone too. Which is not the case, he was still powerful enough to take more people. The evilness of Voldemort was lost and he felt more like a small villain you kill in 1st part of a movie franchise than the last person itself.

The biggest problem with the movie is that it could have been so much more, and I don't thin budget was a concern. It had the potential of being the best movie of all times instead it was not even the best Potter movie.

However, I still wish that the movie keeps breaking all the records. At the very least, no transformer or twilight should ever touch it's records.

Slightly desi boston tour guide

2011-05-22T18:31:00.005-04:00

With almost 3.5 years here, I have become a tour guide to many of my friends and relatives in Boston. I have tour packages ready for 1/2 day to one week vacation plans ready for anyone who wants to come to visit my place.

The "have to be there" places I have taken to people are very obvious: Harvard, MIT, Quincy Market, Long Wharf, Holocaust memorial, Boston Commons, Prudential Tower, duck tour etc. However, here are a few of my personal favorites, some which may take a slightly more time:

1) Here is an easy one to fit in the schedule, right next to Boston Commons, there is Boston Public gardens and in there in the public garden is the "Make way for the Ducklings" statues in the north east corner. Nothing extraordinary, but just the idea that a statue of a duck and it's kids finding a permanent place gives me hope, that the world is still a simple place to live.

2) Another easy one: The sky walk at Prudential. It is $11 well spent. You bring someone, who wants to see Boston but has only 1 day? Take them to skywalk and show them the whole of Boston in just 45 minutes. It is totally worth it and crowd free too.

3) This one is not really my real favorite but saves you from lot of hassle from the friends who come to visit Boston and want to see some cool things. It is the Sam Adam's brewery. And of course you get to sample free beer. If you had a history overdose along the freedom trail a day before, and friends are complaining that the city is so old, this might be a good idea.

4) Whale watch: You watch it once or twice but it is a must watch for any guest. I thing to do is, if they are in a group of greater than or equal to two, just leave them for the whale watch. It is surely exciting for the first time and oh yes, the nap on the way back. It is simply amazing. Believe me, you have seen the whale, seen the wonderful Boston Harbor islands, there is nothing to look forward to, in the next 1.5 hours. You cannot even unnecessarily refresh that facebook app on your smart phone as there's no network here, so, sit back, relax and let the breeze blow onto your face and before you know, you are in the dreamland. Once you land, you are as fresh as ever, for the next activity.

5) The beaver tail statepark: Most of the desi kids take their mom and dad to the "Newport Mansions". Next time you go there, call me, I can do a better job than those automated tour guide radios they give you. But please don't go back after seeing the mansion and the ocean drive. The beavertail state park is just 15-20 minutes away across the bridge. An awesome lighthouse at the end of the land with water splashing on rocks from all 3 sides. Go at twilight hours and you will love it. Round off the day with some nightlife in Providence if you wish.

6) Moving closer to home, Natick, m office is a good watch too. Ofcourse, I need to get permissions from the security and once granted, welcome to my office buildings and the construction that is happening while I tell you interesting stories about what the huge mound of excavated soil looks like and what we did in Feb 09, while you gaze at the huge monitors the friendly kitchen area.

7) For all the desi's, I highly recommend the Ashland Hindu Temple, the biggest temple in new England. Much smaller than the famous ones in Pittsburgh, Houston or Chicago, this is still a pleasant watch and believe me, you will see more south Indians here than even in Bangalore.

8) One of my personal favorites, the Hopkinton State Park, the most accessible state park by car, so that your walk distance is minimized. Good for boating and Kayaking in summer but even in Winter, you can have the fun of walking on a frozen lake and a stroll on the dam with white expanse on both sides enough to blind you.

9) Your visit to Natick is unfinished if you haven't had the Sushi buffet at Miandos. Experimental veggies can have a good time as there are atleast 5 different veggie sushies (more than anywhere else) but you will still feel neglected because 5 consist of 5% of the available items. It is here that you understand what Sushi really is. There are more stylish Sushi places around Boston area but this place is UNLIMITED and definitely 10000000000000 times better than mall Sushi.

Raju guide signing off. Shabakhair

Two distinct categories in Bengali literature

2011-02-05T07:25:00.003-05:00

Disclaimer: Yes, though everyone knows that opinions expressed in a blog is of ones own, but I reiterate it here owning to my potential limited exposure on the topic. As I think it is worth a discussion, hence putting it here.

My liking for poetry is very limited and except the classic ones, really find it hard to concentrate. So, let's ignore that. And ignore non-fiction too.

What I have observed is that in Bengali fiction, there are two very distinct kinds: Kishore and Bayaska (or Teens and Adult). It might be a good idea to have this distinction but I have some apprehensions about these two disjoint sets.

The Kishore or Teen books are generally the adventure kinds and the immensely popular Feluda series falls into this category. But I always wonder, why is there not a single hint of any woman in these stories. I mean, with such a able hero, having a heroine is so much desired/natural. Same with the Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay kishore upanyases. Always about kids or man. There is never any love interest in any of his books. The Pandob Goyendas, Shontu and Kakababu, none have any trace of romance in them. Is this intenntional? Is the Indian mindset of romance being a taboo really the reason for this? Is this a marketing decision? It is surprising because as little kids you hear stories about a prince and princess falling in love and prince killing some demon to rescue the princess. Is one supposed to be immune to soft feelings as they grow from kids to teens?

Look at the English ones of the same kinds: Harry Potter, Hardy Boys, Twilight or even Asterix comics all have a love interest in them. It is not that you have to be vulgar as soon as a woman comes into picture.IN all the books above, romance is very sweet and cute. None of the above have even the tiniest bit of vulgarity in them.

There are exceptions. For example Famous Five, Tintin etc hardly have any romantic interests. In Bengali, only one author stands out: Shorodindu Mukhopadhdhyay (better known as the creator of Byomkesh Bakshi for rest of the world). The Byomkesh series is divided into 2 parts, the first one is pretty non adult but it still has Byomkesh getting married to his love. Part two is more adult in nature but yeah, it needs to be, because so many interesting murder mysteries can be made out of weird relationships. Shorodindu also has a teen series called Sadashib, about a young recruit in Chatrapati Shivaji's army. That is perhaps the sweetest love story I have ever read. The author has a bunch of other historic fictions which also have some romance. But apart from that I really dont see many crossing the line. Of course, I have not read "Rabindranath Tagore" as yet. But even if he maintains the balance, 2 out of 100s is still considered exception.

Coming to the adult part, it is more disturbing. By the time you are 17-18 in India, you really grow out of the Feludas and Byomkesh Bakshis but (call me old fashioned for it) you are still not ready for adultery. The so called grown up books in Bengali all not only have frequent and elaborate descriptions of sexual beauty but they also are in most cases about adultery. Compare this with the Jeffrey Archer, Ludlum , Sheldon, Grisham,Michael Crichton etc. Many romantic moments but romance/relationships is not the primary thing. Basically I think kids from 17 to say 25 really do not care about relationships and they grow out of Feluda kind of adventure too. But in Bengali it is just not it. Adult books are always about complicated relationships. I wonder if Bengali literature is loosing it's market/charm for this.

Sometimes I think, it is probably the general tendency of Bengalis and it is ME who is out of the place. People like the same "complicated relationships" themed movies of Rituparno Ghosh. Bengali movies have always been about subtle changes in relationships in probably some bigger context like WW2, India's freedom struggle, naxal movemennt etc. I long for an epic drama which creates an era of it's own. It should not take shelter of some real world incident but create a new world, like Harry Potter.

Any recommendations?

Sandipan Bollywood Awards 2010

2010-12-31T23:56:00.003-05:00

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

2010-12-19T17:41:00.001-05:00

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

2010-10-17T16:52:00.003-04:00

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

2010-10-04T22:19:00.003-04:00

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

2010-09-11T12:03:00.000-04:00

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

2010-08-20T18:03:00.004-04:00

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

2010-08-14T12:12:00.001-04:00

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

2010-07-31T12:16:00.002-04:00

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

2010-07-22T23:06:00.000-04:00

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?

Feminism

2010-06-28T21:36:00.001-04:00

I think my views regarding this topic are a bit different than the rest. For the past few days I have been thinking about this a lot and more for my own sake than letting others know, I write them down here.

Basically I like to think that I am a pro-woman person. I do believe very strongly that it is necessary to fight for the right of women because they are still not treated equally and they should be and that is not because they are our creators etc etc but for the simple reason that they are as much homo sapiens as much we are. I spent quite an amount of time thinking how I am going to organize this and later stuck with the simple form of non-numbered bullets depicting that these thoughts are in total random order.

• I believe that a girl child is still considered bad in India and steps must be taken to ensure that they get some special privileges like free education and other incentives more than the male counterparts. I fully support the special privileges given to girls/women in terms of fees even till their graduate studies. It’s still a reality that parents think “what’s the use of higher education for girls” and so ensuring subsidized education up to just 12th grade is not enough.

• Though I was a victim of this, I think women should have reservations in graduate studies too. I had to go for a worse undergraduate school initially before finally moving to NITK just because 33% girl’s reservation was introduced in Maharashtra. But the way it should have been done is not by decreasing seats for other students but increasing the infrastructure to ensure an extra percentage of students. I know this is a much difficult task, but it is certainly more desirable and not that impractical or improbable.

• The thing that makes me believe that girls are truly treated as equal in the US is a very strange observation. I think in the US, there are equal if not more number of female smokers than men. The fact that in India smoking men are by far more than women (atleast more than 10:1 ratio) is not because women are smarter and understand the effects of smoking but because it has been always associated with a man thing which goes against my principle of women’s rights.

• This right of equality should also extend to responsibility of equality. I was always very angry with the fact that whenever it was the task to move furniture for any event, it was the guys who were always called. I do understand that girls are probably slightly physically weaker than guys but it is never to the extent that they cannot lift a chair or giving a hand during lifting a heavy desk. The physically less fit is acceptable in the case of 3 setter tennis instead of 5 for women but certainly not acceptable above. I think it is as big a crime not to let women work in moving moderately heavy things as much as female feticides.

• There should be only two situations when women should be treated with more care than men and they are around 9 months on either side of pregnancy (this applies to any woman) or if it is your spouse/girl friend (Then it is out of love and not gender). It is perfectly alright to let your love not do all the work but that immediately means that you yourself do it without bothering any 3rd person.

• I strongly believe that there should be 33% percent women in Indian parliament but I do not agree wit the present implementation. It is based on the fact that each constituency will have a woman candidate every 3rd elections. This reduces the accountability of the incumbent Member of Parliament. Though I do not have a solution for this problem, but I think it is a fundamental flaw and not like one of those situations where the present is lesser evil.

• Though all the above points are very logical, this last one is difficult to defend. I think all women should try to look beautiful. As you can see, this doesn’t at all sound feminist and sounds rather chauvinist. But let me put it this way: Women should try to look beautiful because men want them to. Men would gladly oblige if women desire a single such thing but being complicated creatures, they rarely do so. Let’s take one example. Given a choice between the following singles: Arundhati Roy (Brain + art), Mamata Banerjee ( Political power) and Priyanka Chopra (beauty), at least 80% of the men would choose Priyanka Chopra. On the other hand, given a choice between Rahul Gandhi (power), Mahendra Singh Dhoni (sports), Siddhartha Mallya (Money) and John Abraham (looks), I think women would be divided almost equally. Hence, my comment that women SHOULD try to look beautiful is not chauvinism but very practical.

10 years from high school

2010-06-16T19:43:00.001-04:00

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

2010-05-19T18:31:00.000-04:00

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

2010-05-05T22:55:00.001-04:00

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

2010-04-17T19:50:00.002-04:00

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

2010-03-31T19:18:00.004-04:00

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

2010-03-16T18:21:00.004-04:00

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

2010-02-12T23:18:00.003-05:00

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

2010-02-07T17:23:00.002-05:00

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

2010-01-31T08:22:00.002-05:00

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

2010-01-14T18:25:00.003-05:00

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

Sandipan Bollywood Awards 2009

2009-12-31T07:16:00.006-05:00

The Sandipan Bollywood Awards (SBA) is in it's fourth year now. This highly biased award however changes its statuette this year for obvious reasons. Also, Bipasha Basu is conspicuous by her absence.

I will try my best to stick to the old list, but some would be staying undecided and some new ones will be introduced.

Best Story: The award goes to 2 movies. Incidentally, both the stories are supposedly written by 2 different famous authors in their own field. However, the directors interpretation of the story was what made it beautiful. Hence the best Story awards goes to Raju Hirani and Anurag Kashyap instead of Chetan Bhagat and Sarat Chandra Chattopaddhyay for 3 Idiots and DevD.

Best Song: For me, it is Masakkali

Best Music Director: Who else but --- A.R Rehman for Dilli 6. The only other movie with decent songs was Kaminey.

Best Singer(Male) : Mohit Chauhan for "Pehli Baar.. Mohabbai ki hai"

Best Singer (Female): This award has to wait. All the songs I remember are all male singers. Tentatively, the award goes to my favorite Alisha Chinoy for being the female voice in the duet "Teraa... hone laga hoon" from Ajab prem ki Gajab Kahani.

Best Lyrics : Gulzaar again for "Pehli Baar.. Mohabbai ki hai". Esp the lines

Tujhe gudgudana… satana yuhi sote hue,
Gaal pe teepna… meechna bewajah besabab.

These lines always gives me shivers.

Best television interview: There was a lot of potential this year with the Indian Elections and there have been so many interviews of Sachin when he completed 20 years in cricket. However, I probably missed most of those. For me, the best one was Sourav's interview in Farhan Akhtar's Oye It's friday.

Best Item Song: Hands down, Hrithik for Baawre in Luck by Chance.

Here is a new award:

Best reality show Contestant: Nominations: Natasha Sinha (Roadies 6), Joanna Magee (Splitsvilla 2), Mona Wasu (Iss jungle se Mujhe Bachao 1), Rupali Ganguly (Fear Factor 2) and Claudia Ciesla (Bigg Boss 3). And the award goes to.... Claudia for her sweet pronunciation of Kyunki as kuykin.

And now the main awards:

Best Comedian: Rather than giving it to some cliched comedian, it goes to the actor who made us laugh the most, even with the stale jokes: Aamir Khan for 3 Idiots.

Best Supporting Actor: R. Madhavan and Sherman Joshi for 3 Idiots

Best Supporting Actress: Giselle Monteiro as Harleen Kaur in Love Aaj kal

Best Villain: Amol Gupte as Bhope Bhau in Kaminey

Best Newcomer (male): No idea. No award this year.

Best Newcomer (Female) : Again tough choice. So no awards but a special mention to Sonam Kapoor who re-invented her this year.

Best Director: Vishal Bharadwaj for Kaminey.

Best Film: Though the biggest hit was 3 Idiots, my award goes with Kaminey. The movie had it all, good script, good acting, good songs as well as a fresh change. 3 idiots lacked in songs.

Best Actress: The nominations are: Sonam Kapoor (Dilli 6), Priyanka Chopra (Kaminey), Priyanka Chopra (What's your Rashee), Vidya Balan (Paa). And the award goes to.... Priyanka Chopra for What's Your Rashee. The the movie bombed, her performance was really commendable. It was historical.

Best Actor: The nominations are: John Abraham (New York), Shahid Kapoor (Kaminey), Ranbir Kapoor ( Wake up Sid and Rocket Singh: Salesman of the year), Aamir khan (3 Idiots). And the award goes to.... Shahid Kapoor for Kaminey (woh fa ko fa hi bolta hai)

And now, another new award just for this year:

Best Cameo: And the award goes to one and only Shahrukh Khan for his role in Billu Barber. Especially the end speech in the school was personally Shahrukh Khan at his best.

Deep down, I am a bong

2009-12-18T16:48:00.003-05:00

I just realized how Bong I am when I was discussing with Nirmal about Racist attacks on Indians in Australia. We both agreed on this statement of Shobhaa De, found here:

Both the governments should work together more cohesively, and the Australians in particular must reassure the community that the safety of students is of paramount importance to them. Our student numbers contribute a sizeable chunk to the Aussie economy. Their lives must be protected and their status respected. On our part, desi students cannot treat the host country as their filthy backyard and abuse local customs.

What Nirmal said was if you are doing illegal work there, you should be ready to face the consequences like these attacks. In reply, I said that, how-much-ever illegal it is, physical violence is not the way to show your displeasure. You should do strikes, road blockades, marches, candle light vigils and what not.

It looks like the word fell off from some Trinamool Congress 101 course. But yes, I do think that is the way things should work, though in the reverse order of the actions stated above. Well, I think that is the attitude of all Bongs. We want a peaceful solution with no physical harm, however monetary/public annoyance it may create. First and foremost priority is to be physically safe. I think that is the key to Kolkata not being a place of any Violence inspite such a large ratio of muslims and hindus.

Take a few examples. What is MNS doing? It is beating up people and sending them home whoever it feels unfit. Though we all agree it is not right, we have different opinions on what is right. My view is that if I feel endangered by foreign entities in my state, I should take it to the law. I should file a case to the court that I feel threatened in my own land by outsiders and I am not feeling secure. As law takes its own course, the next most daring thing I can think of is a protest march. What will a typical bong do? He will probably think the same as me, but then as we all know how slow law is, it would just end up being a coffee table discussion that look how Marwaris have virtually taken up all our businesses. (Well that's what is happening, though I have heard slight dissatisfaction over Marwaris taking up local businesses, I have not seen any efforts from Bengalis to be entrepreneurs. Exceptions exist).

Jayalalitha does not like something and she sends troops inside Karunanidhi's house at the dead of the night who drag him to jail. What will Mamatadi do? She will stand in the middle of Esplanade, block two hours of traffic in the middle of the day and give speeches as to how bad Budhdhababu is.

Well, I think this is the way I am and all the Bongs are. I believe in a ideal society. In this society, a candle vigil will be taken as seriously as probably the Gujarat riots. There would be reason behind everything and everybody would be well educated. As all are educated, crimes would be momentary reactions and would be corrected by a term in jail. There would be no forced confessions by the police or no crime should result in capital punishments.

Don't all the Bongs think this way? Wasn't Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose a fluke case amongst Bengalis and Gandhiji more a symbol of Bong ideologies?

Bests of 2009

2009-12-15T19:04:00.002-05:00

This is probably the last but one post for this year. For the annual Bollywood awards, you have to wait for the next year as I think it will be injustice to pass any verdict before watching 3 Idiots. Here are some random bests according to me:

Best blogger:
Shobhaa De

Best website:
www.bing.com (Strictly for homepage looks)

Best news website:
in.rediff.com (Content not layout)

Best looks amongst Indian movie leading actresses
Sonam Kapoor

Best Talk show:
Oye it's friday

Best Indian food place where I went:
Kabab factory

Best cloth shop for my budget:
Old Navy

Best Indian Sportsperson:
Saina Nehwal

Best news correspondent:
Shekhar Gupta

Best food place near Natick Framingham:
Minado

Best book I read:
Sea of Poppies (originally 2008)

Best food I cooked:
Palak Paneer in August

Best Indian Politician:
Shashi Tharoor

Best (non personal) day of the year:
15th July 2009 (Harry Potter and Half blood Prince movie release date)

I stop at that.

Feasts

2009-11-27T18:49:00.001-05:00

How old are feasts? Probably as old as the oldest of the civilizations. We have proofs of feasts being held in Egyptian civilization. We all know about the lavish feasts in the roman empire and the famous last supper was also a feast.

I read through numerous definitions of feasts, banquets etc but for simplicity let’s call any elaborate food arrangement as feast. I will try to list down the famous “feasts” that sort of etched into my memory.

Let’s start with the recent one, the White House State dinner. The menu was hilarious and I am sure, if this menu was served in any Bengali wedding, even the poorest of the poor weddings, the results would have been even more catastrophic than Tata Nano going out of Singur. Potato and Eggplant Salad, Potato Dumplings, Lentil Soup, Chickpeas and Okra and Green Shrimp curry. Probably the food tasted exquisite, but the menu is so disturbing. I am sure the Indian delegate would have gone back and had some Tangdi kabab and palak paneer.

The menu at Windsor Castle Banquet for Pratibha Patil was much better which included halibut, salted saddle of lamb and stuffed courgettes with mango ice cream, washed down by Chateau Cos d'Estournel, St Estephe 1988.

Another one I remember was for its fantastic menu. It was the Global Bunts Convention held in Mangalore in 2002 or 2003. Aishwarya Rai was the chief guest and the menu was all possible seafood delicacies cooked in traditional Udupi Style. It involved Mackerel, pomfrets and Bangdas. I am not able to recollect the entire menu but it was available in the Hindu and Times of India of that day.

One more was Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s holiday in Goa in December 2002. Here is the link. The menu included: “Choice dishes were on offer for dinner: traditional Goan Hindu, Catholic and Portuguese specialities will be offered. The array of seafood includes lobster piri piri, mudoshi (a type of fish) fry, sungtyache kodi (prawn curry), kulliamchem mass (crab meat) in addition to popular preparations like balchao, xacutti, vindaloo and cafrael. Vegetables typical of the region — tambdi bhaji and ambadyache udda methi and nir phanas (bread fruit) — will be served. Chinese and Mediterranean cuisine will also be offered. “

These are the ones that I will remember for a long long time.

Kalkatta

2009-11-01T00:20:00.005-04:00

This quote of Bachi Karkaria provoked me to write this blog:

"In different applications it is ‘o’ or ‘aw’. ‘Kolkata’ is subjected to such verbal mutilation that it should Black Hole those who ordered the change. Or perhaps the Brahmins of Writers Building did it deliberately so as to perpetuate the cultural caste system which separates those who can ‘o’ correctly, and those who can only gape in awe."

Full text here.

Well, there are people who liked the name Calcutta and it was always called "Kolkata" (pronounced as Coal-Kata) for the Bengalis just like Bombay was always Mumbai and Poona was Pune. But my favorite has been "Kalkatta" (pronounced as Kul-cutta)", the hindi version. It is so sweet, just like the staple food of the people of this city.

Every year, after summer vacation when I come back, teachers would ask, Kahan gaye the (Where did you go)? And I would reply "Kalkatta". One of the first hindi rhymes I learned was:

Aao Bhai Khele Khel, Chalti hai ab apni rail,
Hum Engine hai bhak bhak karte, hum dibbe hai chak chak karte...
.. and somewhere in the middle...
Jhatpat Kalkatta ho aaye.....

Imagining saying "Jhatpat Kolkata ho aaye" gives me shivers even now.
Another instance is the iconic song Chamma Chamma. Starring my one of the favorite Bollywood actresses, it has a stanza -

Hila doon UP, hila doon MP
Jo maaroon main thumka
Tere thumke pe haan Mumbai Patna
Main haaroon Kalkatta

Again replacing it with "Kolkata" will take the whole fun out of the song. It is like replacing Urmila with Raima Sen.

The word "Kalkatta" has this sweet raw crassness which is totally missing in Kolkata and especially the way rest of India attempts to say it : Call-katta. "Kalkatta" brings back the lost charm of the city. Kalkatta brings back the time when the Hindi Heartland (Delhi-UP-Bihar-MP-WB) was "The India" and this so called new IT cities like Bangalore, Hydra-bad, Pune though always good cities were never the talk of the country. Dilli - Lakhnau - Kanpur- Ilahabaad - Kalkatta were the the places where things of any consequence "happened".

The cosmopolitan Calcutta was never due to foreign countries or even southern/western India. It was always a place of confluence for the North, East and North-east India. For them it was always "Kalkatta". Making it Kolkata robs out the cosmopolitan part of the city.

For "probashi"'s like me, Kalkatta was the way we described the city to our friends all these years. Mentioning it as Kolkata or even worse, letting them pronounce it as "Call-Katta" is I believe a big Black Hole.

A "sort of" confession

2009-10-25T10:41:00.002-04:00

I have a small confession to make here, though it will come with a lot of justification. First of all, I am very honored by my name appearing in my school website honor roll. Have a look here: http://kvambajhari.org/results.htm. Search for keyword “Mitra”.

My name appears in the list of toppers for 12th standard, though it appears as Saneepan with a missing D. The confession is, I was not the topper. It was my classmate Chandrashekhar Munjewar. But my confession ends here. As of my present mindset, I am not going to write to my school to change my name and the justification is as follows:

Though official records say that I did not get the highest marks, the thing that was always important in Maharashtra was the PCM or Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics marks. I did get the highest there. So there were a lot of people who consider me as the topper and I would like to believe the same too.

The other reason is: I believe the appearance of the name in the webpage is partly accounted for by my school teachers themselves who like me a lot. The reason for this belief is how my name is spelt. My dad, like most of the Bengalis, misspelled my name to Sandipan instead of Sandeepan. The teachers over the 10 years had themselves corrected the name only to change it back to Sandipan in 10th standard because they wanted it to be inline with what my dad wrote 10 years back. So when my name appears as Saneepan in the website, I feel it’s some teacher who said lets put Sandeepan’s name there and not some advanced database query to find out who was first.

The third reason is more selfish. I have been in the school for 12 years and had a consistent academic performance, a teachers pet etc etc. Not as an allrounder, but I was always regarded as the “smart” (the US smart, not the Indian smart) guy. So, I deserve my name there.

Bottom line is I wrote this blog as I feel I am cheating myself if I don’t let people know the truth and now that I have published it on my blog, I will feel less guilty conscious . Whoever is reading this please let me know if you think I did the right thing or not. I know I am not popular enough like Amitabh Bachchan to have a poll in my blog, but comments would be really helpful.

Durga Puja memories, yet again

2009-09-26T10:50:00.005-04:00

I think this probably happens to every Bengali during the puja, how much ever probashi he or she is: some nostalgia creeps in. I really haven't been to any durga puja for quite some years now, with some years on and off. Last year and this year too I will go to a puja, which has been reduced to 3 hours for me from a 5 day extravaganza.

Barring 2 years in the trance undergrad phase, I really missed the puja every year. It's those memories which come back year after year. The Ambajhari Bangiya Samsad durga puja memories.

My durga pujas at ambajhari can be straightaway divided into two parts: Pre Rinki Transfer and post rinki transfer. The pre-rinki transfer durga pujas are still etched fresh into the memory but just 2 days back chatting with a friend, i was reminded of those post transfer days.

The poem recitation competition was a must for me as it was a proof of how bengali you are. How good are your pronunciations. The drawing competition was quite generic and nothing bengali about it. Most of my school bengali batch mates and friends did not participate in the poem recitation. It was just me, Esha and Shashwati from our year. So there you are, all of us did get some rank, either first or 2nd or third. I would like to believe that i was 1st most of the time but Esha and Shashwati may differ.

Another thing was treating friends. We probably had a budget of around 50Rs a day. You have to treat around 15 friends with that money. We pooled some and after very complicated math we all did manage to treat one another on every day of the puja.

As we grew older, the various stage programs were no longer an attraction for us but instead we will make a large round circle and keep chatting (Bangali Adda). Wonder what did we talk in those times. Movies? Cricket? Local who is dating whom gossip? or just plain antakshari? But we did chat and even till 1-2 am in the night.

Another thing was our batch's specialty of managing juniors. As in the school, here too, we were a favorite with the younger batches of people and we would play, eat and have fun together. By younger I mean atleast 5-6 years younger so the play will be hide and seek, or balloon volleyball. My favorite was handling their complaints though. I remember once little girl mana came and complained that manabendra had thrown some water onto her new dress. She wanted me to take some actions. But what could I do? Run behind manabendra and throw some water back? Or what even more strict people will do, that is, catch and scold manabendra and then make mana throw water on him? The person that I am, i would have probably just got Mana another icecream whch she would have eaten much to the envy of Manabendra.

Anyways, there are so many memories of this kind. Am off to Boston Durga Puja now.

Picture index:
1) Top Left: Durga Puja 2008 at Ambajhari Bangiya Samsad, Courtesy Sayantan Ghatak
2) Bottom Right; Boston Prabasi Durga Puja 2008, Personal file archives

Diary Sept 19 09

2009-09-19T22:26:00.003-04:00

Been long since I wrote anything random. It has always been issue based. Of course my life is not interesting as Amitabh Bachchan or Shilpa Shetty that I can simply blog about what I ate in the day or whom did I meet. Who will even remmotely find that interesting apart from who know me. Well, on the other hand it's only the people who know me generally read this blog.

After a long time I had a good Saturday. I neither worked nor go to any place and got myself unnecessarily tired. Most important thing for me on weekends is getting up early (but little later than regular days) to maximize the day. I am a person who gets lazy by night.

I finished my intersting pattern of browsing which starts with Gmail, then orkut, then rediff.com followed by ibnlive and timesofindia. At this point, fed up, I switch to news.google adn read up all the headlines of India, US, Boston and Indian Entertainment. I ofcourse get most interested in teh entertainment section. At this point, I will search Bipasha on google news. MOst of the time I am up to date and find the news being already late. Then if I will serach some other random names depending on mood which can vary from Aishwarya Rai to atal Behari Vajpayee. Some common search terms are Varun Gandhi, NITK, Surathkal, Kolkata etc.

After this I had to drop my friend to car mechanic shop and from there we went for a morning walk near a lake. It was hilarious to see an old couple paying 5$ parking fees inside the state park and simply parking their car next to the lake and reading newspaper inside.

Then we went to Starbucks or rather Starsucks (atleast in terms of regular coffee), barnes and nobles and back home by 9:30 am. at this point my calls started starting with bro and bhabhi and moving on to other friends from grad school etc.

Went to a nice place for lunch called Kabab Factory in Boston. Still in the "no meat" mode, I just ate grilled veggies, fruit chat and shrimp masala. Came back and saw Harry Potter and Goblet of Fire on DVD. I had just finished the book and though very different from the book, the movie was pretty engaging.

After this went to temple as navaratri starts today and came back, made a few more phone calls and little more Harry Potter revision. Now it's 10:42 and will go back to revising HP and sleeping off.

This blog can't be as boring as my attempt to fiction :P

Dilemmas regarding Baba Ramdev cleared

2009-08-28T19:36:00.006-04:00

I have been wanting to write on this topic for a long time but many thoughts prevented me. I wanted to have a solid reasoning before I published my thoughts and finally I have found one.

So here is the dilemma. My mom wants me to do the yoga taught by Ramdev baba and frankly, my mom has been a direct beneficiary. But I always found the exercises too boring for my taste. Then comes Ramdev Baba with his statement that being gay is a disease which can be cured by yoga. Now this was a fact that like most of the "learned" people did not go well with me. So then I thought because I do not agree with his views, I am perfectly alright by not following his yoga techniques. But there was always this nagging thought which can infact broken down to three:

1) Ramdev baba did not invent yoga. So why stop something which is an established science just because of one person's personal views.
2) Every person has the right to have an opinion. What is wrong if Ramdev baba has one and he is voicing it.
3) What if being gay is really a disease and/or something which can be cured.

Finally I have found my answers to all these three nagging questions. Let me go bottom up.

Counterargument to point 3) Though studies prove it as well that it is not a disease, and it may very well be a habit which is cured, but who cares. According to Indian culture/ movies, we consider love as a disease (sardi, khasi na maleria hua, main gaya yaaron mujhko, love, love love loveria hua). Can love be cured? Probably yes, probably not but who cares. It has all the symptoms of a disease if taken in a different light. At young age, it may ruin your career. Loving a wrong person may ruin your finances, your trust, your very existence in this world. Being gay may have similar consequences. But as we do not mind love being a disease, this one should also not a big deal.

Counterargument to point 2) I have been reading a lot about this issue. A blog from my friend Lalit, Gay Ho, and subsequent comments on it helped me better regarding this. Finally I read an argument as a comment on this article which is as follows:

Ramdev baba has said that being gay is a disease and he has challenged Delhi high court's judgment which says that gay sex should be decriminalized. I add these two statements. What does this imply? That Baba Ramdev thinks that all diseased people should go to jail. Is it human to put say all AIDS patients, cancer patients and the numerous millions of people in the jail just because they have a disease? This is against humanity. You may find this argument ridiculous and may say that this is putting words in somebody's mouth but then a public person should think twice before what he speaks. Like in this case his own statements lead to the conclusion that he wants diseased people to be criminalized.

Counterargument to point 1) If not already, after reading this reasoning, you might think that Sandipan is losing it by putting baseless reasons but then counterargument to 1 is the one which really has motivated me the most. I will not follow Ramdev baba's yoga but Shilpa Shetty's yoga. Two main reasons for that. Firstly, biggest motivation to do yoga for me was to reduce tummy. Ramdev baba being such a proponent of yoga, still has a tinge of tummy which I see no chance of going. Shilpa on the other hand is on diametrically opposite side of the spectrum. She has got the best abs in India. I know, abs is probably the last thing that comes to somebody's mind when someone thinks of a beautiful girl, but I find Shilpa's abs to be her best asset. Second reason is that the most irritating part for me in Ramdev baba's yoga is Kapaalbhati. Apparently, you have to do minimum of 5 minutes (300 times) going up to 15 minutes. On the other hand Shilpa suggests begin with 1-5 with no more than 3x10. You should totally see Shilpa's yoga. Search these keywords "shilpa shetty yoga" on youtube and you will get many relevant results. Even the idea of breathing-in n Kerala and breathing-out in Himalayas as her videos suggest should be enough to motivate anyone.

So this is the final conclusion and end to my dilemmas. I will do yoga but not the Ramdev Baba way, but the Shilpa way.

[Picture courtesy Bollywoodnet.blogspot.com and Rediff]

Was detention of Shahrukh Khan right thing?

2009-08-15T19:52:00.007-04:00

Ok, I am a big time Shahrukh fan. I got up at 3:30 am tonight after having a nightmare as aftereffects of the movie 'Kaminey'. I browse as usual and go through the news that Shahrukh was detained at Newark Airport. I was terribly upset and shaken. I could not sleep after that.

Now after almost 16 hours after the story, having read a few 'counter' stories, I am at peace. So here is what I would have done if I were the person in charge of taking Shahrukh Khan to the detention room. Ok let's generalize this. Because even Shahrukh says he does not feel bad because of just himself but the room full of people who were mostly from a particular community. Here we go: (My monologue, thoughts in brackets)

Hello Sir, we have to hold you off for additional checks. Please do not panic sir, we will make sure you will be able to get to your connecting flight if any. We would like you to enjoy your stay in this country and make it as comfortable as we can.

Let me be frank, yes sir, as you might be thinking right now, you are being held because of your name. As you know Sir, we are a bit panicky country (tell exact reasons why you are doing even if it shows you in a slightly weaker position. Nobody becomes small by bowing before others). We took strong actions an entire nation because they destroyed our own WTC. But there is a good side to it as well Sir, as you can see, nobody has even dared a second attack. (On the other hand, there are some countries which encounter repeated terrorism, still get used to it, have such nice culture of equality which an outsider doesn't even realize). This is because of our security system sir, I hope and I know, you will understand as you come from such an educated nation.

(Saying this, take him to a room which should put the Lake palace Udaipur's presidential suite to shame, escort him to a seat, serve him snacks and drinks). Sir, to make this check shorter, can you just name somebody whom you are coming to in US so that we can call them and confirm? Here, take this i-phone. (A person comes to any other country for 2 reasons, he knows someone and has some purpose of visit, in which case he should have a contact address, or he is a tourist, in which case one can show their whole itinerary of stay or atleast the initial hotel. If found suspicious, one can always spy him)( So, now Shahrukh/any person makes the call, connect me and that person and we do a basic check. )

Thank you sir, I really appreciate your patience personally and on the behalf of my country. I hope you enjoy your stay in this country. Also, here is a feedback form and if you have any concerns and how we can improve this process, please let us know.

(Note that this entire process should take a max of 10-15 minutes per person with a staff size big enough to handle each and every person separately so that no one has to wait more than 30 seconds. After all, this is also an opportunity for job creation.)

This day that year

2009-08-11T23:14:00.001-04:00

Today is 11th of August 2009. I can really go back to any year, say 2005, when I first entered this country or 1975, I was not even born but mom and dad got married. But let’s just go by 10 years. I will recollect what a typical day would have been back then.

11th August 1999, I was in 12th Standard: very important year for anyone. By this time, as it was August, I assume all the tuition classes would have been over, except Chemistry which the teacher (Kakulididi) insisted that she would not rush through.

I was a fairly early riser. So I would have got up at 6 sharp. Morning 6-8 was School study time, as the other time, I would supposedly prepare for IIT entrance. Not sure now why I did that so much. I never liked cracking all those uselessly difficult problems, but still had to do it. So I found the non IIT morning time more enjoyable. I studied Physics or Chemistry for the first hour and probably Biology from 7 to 8. Next I will iron my school uniform, go for a bath and get ready for school. Then, switch on Sony TV from 8:30 to 9 and would have breakfast and watch one of those dubbed English kids serials like Different strokes or Dennis the Menace.

Though my house was hardly 50 yards away from the school, I would still reach school 5 minutes before start. As I was the captain of my house “Nirbhik”, I would have to go through the checklist for morning assembly if it’s my house on duty. Somebody is saying the pledge- check, news –check! Oops we forgot the “though for the day”. Hurriedly, we would find some nice thought in some newspaper, attribute it to either Gandhiji or Plato or Martin Luther King and give it to any random person to deliver. I liked being backstage.

Let’s skip to the classes. Period no. 2 teacher is absent, so both classes will be done by Radha madam for physics. As soon as she leaves after grueling 1 hour 10 minutes, we will swarm on tiffin boxes. First to be opened was always Anuradha’s tiffin box. She would always bring something with potato and thus getting the nickname Aaloo herself. Next would probably be mine, or Sumit’s or Aprajita’s tiffin. By the time we (here, we = 30+ people) reach 5th or 6th tiffin, Maths teacher Ajay Pandya sir will come over. It was always fun as it was a refresher to whatever we already learnt in the coaching class but Pandya sir always had something new to add to our knowledge. Like this, 2 more classes would go one after the other until it is lunch time. This was the time we did dadagiri on the entire school being the seniormost. We would roam around the entire school, listen to complaints like “Bhaiya bhaiya, they took our wickets away”, or the 1st and 2nd grade ones will say “ Bhaiya, he ate 3 pieces of apple from my tiffin box.” Soon after, we will resume classes or some lab. Labs were fun too.

By default, one of the classes would be off that day. This time was spent in variety of activities. Either go out and play, or play indoor round robin table tennis with a normal ball on teacher’s table or sometimes, just play Antakshari (Again 30 people divided into groups of 15). Finally classes will get over at 3:30, but it would be another 15-30 minutes to reach home as we would chat all the time.

Eat food at home, do the tuition and school homework till 5. Oh yes, MTV will start from 4 with some show with VJ Nikhil Chinappa. Strange, Nikhil still is the VJ for MTV, and we thought MTV was always youth. At 5, I would just close all the books to watch “MTV most wanted” by VJ Shehnaz. This was my favorite time of the day. It will be the same usual songs –“My heart will go on”, “Am a Barbie girl” or “Show me the meaning of being lonely” or sometimes a bit different “Animal Song”. Anyway, 45 minutes to the show, I would leave for Chemistry Tuition. The class was long, 1 hr 45 minutes with a 10 minute break. But no doubt it was fun. Again, another half an hour gone after the tuition in chatting.

Come back at around 8:15, only to study for another continuous 2 hours. Dinner was usually served at 10:15. This time was reserved for the “IIT Exam” studies, hence most grueling and least attractive. At 10:15 sharp, me, mom and dad will have dinner together and it was always so nice. Little did I know then that in a year’s time I would stop eating mom cooked food? It was only in May 09 that she came here and I could again eat what she cooked.

Ok back to Dinner table of 99. Would finish the food in 10 minutes to go and start the TV again. This time, the Bengali channel DD7. It was movie time. Ideally I am supposed to resume my studies but then the movie would be one of the Bengali classics which mom and dad would not want me to miss and I would leave menial studies for better knowledge of my cultural roots.

Things have changed now. Probably for better. Wish I continue to blog even in 2019. And I will write about this day. A day spent in work, high school musical 1, iss jungle se mujhe bachao and writing a blog.

Deepika Padukone’s accent

2009-08-08T19:19:00.001-04:00

I saw Love Aajkal yesterday. It is a good one time watch. But the thing I got hooked to is Deepika’s accent. It’s not rare for me to get hooked to some weird characteristics of leading ladies though. I like Bipasha’s slight squint, Rani’s husky voice, Katrina’s faulty hindi, Shilpa Shetty’s abs.

But Deepika’s accent is very mysterious. I still don’t understand which part is it from? My initial hunch and Nikhil confirms that it is the Hindi spoken in Marathi cities, but not Nagpur Pune or Mumbai. But then she was brought up in Bangalore and her origins are from Mangalore. She doesn’t have the typical south Indian accent also. The other strange thing is, it is such a slight accent as it cannot be categorized, it cannot be corrected or somebody can point out the mistakes. It is very subtle. I googled it and thought that it will lead me to something, but I found no such article. If anyone has any ideas, please let me know. One cannot even copy and make fun of the accent. I wish I could.

Whatever is the case, Deepika is surely the kind who is horse of long race “lambi race ka ghoda”. She is here to stay and not vanish like the zillions of newcomers. Whenever I think of her, a funny incident comes to my mind:

Me, and my 19 year old cousin, 14 year old and 7 year old nephews were playing 20 questions or what is also known as Tom Dick and Harry where you have to identify the name of a person asking only 20 yes no questions. We all knew about the limited knowledge of the 7 year old. After all, you really do not expect much from him. So his turn was after me and hence he used to think in the same lines as I do. My first character was J.K Rowling. My little friends made to it after almost 25-30 questions but that is fine. Next, is this nephew’s turn. Now we all know he knows only 1 litterateur. So the first question we ask him is “Rabindranath Tagore”? And he says yes . Next I choose a bit less complicated and I choose Madhuri Dixit. So when it’s his turn, we directly tell him, “ Is it Deepika Padukone?” He just knows only one actress :D

Another proof is my friend’s quote: All kingfisher air hostesses are like Deepika Padukone. It’s like she has become the epitome of beauty. These just prove Deepika’s growing fan following. A sex symbol can never be the most popular actor; they do not become popular amongst kids. True popularity comes if someone is acceptable to all generations. So, Deepika! way to go.

Security at Indian Airports

2009-07-25T14:31:00.002-04:00

The security at Indian airports is under a renewed limelight after the Kalam fiasco. We will come to that later, but here are a few facts that I have observed at Kolkata/Bangalore/Nagpur/ Bhubaneswar airports.

They do not let anybody other than passengers inside the airport gates. Thus the entire episode of seeing off somebody from the airport becomes a very nasty affair where you just park you car, with all your relatives in it, get off and go inside the airport with no chance of looking back. It’s inside an opaque glass building. (Another question, why make it glass if it is opaque). This is so not the Indian culture where this will be an entire one week worth of Soap opera material. On the other hand, you can really hold hands till the train leaves the platform, may be even run besides the tracks for a while at any Indian Railways platform. No wonder, movies never show "bidai" from an airport.

I don’t know who decides these policies and are probably happy that this is so strict. Apparently this action was taken keeping into view the security threats. But now read on to see how you have to go inside the airport. Show a stupid printout of any ticket with your name and date on it (even a standard 4 student can take an e-ticket, paste it in MS Word, replace the name and get a printout). With this, they watch your ID. Sounds good, but they even accept voters ID. Haha, even I cannot recognize my face in my Voters ID and I showed my voters ID which is in Kannada at Kolkata, Nagpur and Bhubaneswar airports. We have to agree that our airport security people are really smart.

Even if we assume that it was an ok check, listen to this. I had my friend with me. Seeing that she is a girl, and that she was with me and had some printout in her hand, they let her in without any check. "Naari ka samman karo" I guess.

Inside is even funnier. You do not remove anything from your body, not even the metallic belt or the wallet full of coins. The super intelligent gate is probably filtering this out from other metallic objects which you may carry. All you take out is your mobile. Looks like bombs can only be in mobiles. Then they do an embarrassing check with that detector like thing in their hand. (You keep your wallet out at this point, so effectively never checking it). And whoa you are secure.

Let’s concentrate on the women’s line. They do not even take of their handbags (and we all know that there is nothing in the world that is not there in the handbag of a woman) and calmly walk through a curtained alley with no checks. Doesn’t matter how much jewelleries one is wearing, it never beeps. Frisking a woman or asking her to take off her jewels is against the culture probably.

I sincerely hope that this is just the eyewash and may be unnoticeable to us, they are actually monitoring us, with x-ray cameras etc. Atleast I would like to believe so. Otherwise what this means is that our security guards are the smartest people on earth who can identify people from their faces and actions and take suitable action. I can even imagine a conversation amongst fellow security men:
“You know, that guy is a great security guard, he could look at that person from a distance and guess what kind of man he is. I once remember he caught a man randomly and got 4 kilos of marijuana from him. He should get Padmashri”

Come on, typecasting people has always been a practice in India, either it be w.r.t. the clothes they are wearing, the caste they belong and even the shade of brown they are (I practice the last one myself), but security should not be typecasting.

So now, coming to the issue of Kalam, with the above argument, it should follow that Frisking of Kalam should not be a big issue. If everybody has to do that, he can also do it. Moreover, if he really did not want it, he could have chosen national carrier rather than a US private company aircraft. May be Kalam does not even want this to be an issue. May be he finds this media hype unnecessary.

But there is another side. If there is a law of land, it has to be abided. You can protest against it in court, in peaceful marches but certainly not go against it. If it is a law that ex presidents should not be checked at airports, everybody should abide it. Even though this law includes a man called Robert Vadra whose only qualification is Husband of daughter of a dead ex-prime-minister. We can discuss about changing the law, but certainly not take it for granted that for greater good of humanity, we will let a corporation tamper with the law of land.

For the same reasons, I like the fact that internet will be banned (or rather some part) in China and corporations have to abide by it. It is a blatant violation of human rights. I will be the first in any procession against it, but if China has passed it as a law, corporations should adhere to it. Google or Continental can never be bigger than China or India or for that matter even the poorest country in the world.

Company taking on policies of a country is a dangerous trend and should be avoided at all costs.

Some really useless news items

2009-06-16T21:52:00.006-04:00

On the same day I came across three very funny articles. They really define the present day Indian media. The worst part is the source of the articles. As I go through each of them, I will elaborate how I came across them.

1) An exclusive account of what happened at Karan Johar birthday bash : Just look at the way they present the article. It is as if some red carpet is going on at Kodak Theater. But definitely the best line goes to:

"The awesome foursome, AbhiAsh and SRK-Gauri left in one car with K Jo. Gauri was seen sitting on Chota B's lap. So sad the photogs didn't capture this classic moment on cameras."

To be honest, I was the one who googled Karan Johar birthday but the intent was just to bug my friends with some gossip page 3 news.

2) Varun, Rahul greet their aunts: This is another useless article. Who really cares about who Rahul and Varun say hello to in the Parliament. And isn't it natural for everybody to greet people next to Prime minister and leader of opposition. The best line here:

"Priyanka and Robert Vadra left the gallery after Varun and Rahul took oath."

Now apparently Rahul was the last to take oath. Isn't it quite natural that the sister will wait for her brother's oath. How does Varun even come to the picture. A news like this coming from Hindu is really disappointing. Even worse is how I came across it. It was the top story of Google News India.

3) Sachin's 'embarrassing moments' not caught on camera: atleast no surprises here. The news comes from the news creator channel CNN-IBN. But the point is the relevance of the article. Who is really interested in a topless Sachin Tendulkar? We could have bought the argument that the target audience is college girls if it were Yuvraaj Singh, Dhoni or Ishaant Sharma. But Sachin? I would even compare it to M.F Hussain's Saraswati picture as Sachin is literally the GOD for most of Indians. Come-on, atleast leave this guy with 2 kids in peace. And the article has no concrete theme. Sachin siiting in kolkata musing about some dressing room at a foreign location and concluding that he likes Kolkata very much. BS.

Now honestly tell me, though none of the articles were relevant, you have to agree at least the first one was humorous and there is so much left for speculation. With Amar Singh sitting in front seat with driver, there were 5 people in backseat. Gauri with Abhi, leaves us with really hilarious combos.

Say no to Air France

2009-05-28T22:47:00.002-04:00

This is the second incident now. Continuing my theory of there can be no smoke without fire, this is purely unacceptable. And so, as I do not buy Tommy Hilfiger garments after reading the e-mail chain, I will no longer travel by Air France.

Frankly speaking, though the Tommy Hilfiger story may even seem to be unreal, this Air France story is pretty real. I have seen a certain apathy of the European staff for the Indian customers in the flight. I have seen this in Lufthansa as well but as it was an all Indian flight, I would like to give them the advantage of "curt by nature/birth" and not due to any racism.

People may argue I have no right to be angry against racist as I myself care for fair skin. But I would like to remind that I differentiate only Indians with skin color as skin color in India can be changed by exposure to sun, makeup materials and general skin care habits unlike the rest of the world and so I think being fair in India is more a matter of self care than a genetic property. There are also a lot of gorgeous dark skin people including the great Biapsha Basu, Madhu Sapre, Kajol to name a few.

Short Note on India Elections 09

2009-05-17T23:27:00.000-04:00

Election 09 for me was only two people. Varun Gandhi and his mom Maneka Gandhi. In 80's Rekha had shown us Biwi ho to aisi and in 2009, Maneka shows Maa ho to aisi. BJP had almost disowned him, Congress was against him but one person who was always wit him was his mom, she visited him every day when he was wrongly put in the jail. She tried so hard for him that she had almost lost in her own constituency. But all's well that ends well. Both mother and son duo has won. I do not care if they are with BJP or any other party of their choice but the sweetness of their victory can not be ignored. Imagine Varun and Maneka sitting together at one end and Rahul and Sonia on the other. Both the mothers beaming at their son as they speak and as soon as they finish, hurry up to give them a warm glass of milk, that too malai marke.

BTW, I had pulled off the post below but now re-posting it. Originally posted even before Varun was caught under NSA.

My Views on Varun Gandhi

There are 2 ways you can really have strong views about a person. When you have done all your research and when you haven’t done any. For me, the analysis below is mainly because I did not read much about it and I think I just read the facts. I do not want to read what each and every person is saying to form an opinion. But yes, this is not a hard and fast opinion (With more proofs, things may change, and come on, he’s just 29)

I feel Varun Gandhi is just a puppet in a big game that is being played by BJP or even the sinister BJP-Congress alliance which I have a feeling is always cooking under the hood. Ok, not to sound too absurd with my argument made above, but even if it is anybody’s plan, it is certainly not Varun’s own. Hate speeches like these are being made every day by RSS workers and have been made in the past by all the BJP stalwarts except perhaps Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi and Sikander Bakht. To make this a political issue is a part of a bigger conspiracy which I am really eager to find out. It might even be political ambitions of the likes of Rajdeep Sardesai, Barkha Dutt etc.

Second startling fact is the comparative low tone of condemnation by Priyanka and Rahul. As star people of opposite parties I had expected harsher criticisms but their statements are more like “We are ashamed of our little brother but after all he is still a kid, he will learn”. Whether these things point to the BJP-Congress under the hood pact that I speculated earlier or a case where blood is more important than political rivalry, both are good for the country as a whole. We need sensible next gen leaders who are not like present Advaniji’s BJP which had decided to oppose each and every word that Congress says in the parliament and vice versa. By showing their solidarity, Priyanka and Rahul prove that even if the become political opponents, they won’t be as insensitive as the 80+ lots.

Third reason I would like to defend Varun is his mom. She is an outcast of the great Gandhi family but she still managed to stay in picture. There are numerous people who are now nameless because of their non allegiance to Gandhi Family. But she still survives. Also, for a politician, she looks really cool( much better than Mayawati, Mamata, Jayalalitha and even Jaya Bachchan. She is in the league of Sushma Swaraj, Vasundhara Raje who themselves are collectively below the league of Jayaprada, Smriti Irani, Hema Malini). Thirdly she does this really hep and cool green and animal care thing. I do feel with most of her issues like keeping birds in cages and killing stray dogs and all such animal right things. I even try very hard to get out of Non Veg, but I promise Ms Gandhi, that the day the taste ratio of Non veg to veg based on availability even falls below 200%, I will turn a vegetarian (right now, from what I cook and what I get in restaurants, the ratio is far more than even 500%). So, I think the son of such a great mother does deserve a bit more respect and probably forgiveness because I would like to believe that he at least didn’t mean the words that we think he said.

A bedtime Story

2009-05-03T20:59:00.000-04:00

There was a little boy who lived in a big house in the suburbs of a very small metropolis. The house had a wonderful view of mountains on one side and the sea on the other side. One day, the little boy decided that he will make a lighthouse. The lighthouse will be so beautiful that when people see it, they will feel so much peace at heart that the little boy will eventually get the Nobel Peace Prize.

The little boy sets out to find the right material for the lighthouse. As soon as he gets out of the house, his friend Artim asks him, “Dood, where are you going so early in the morning?” The little boy replies-“Hey dood, I want to build a lighthouse. I am off to get the material for the base.” Artim says that he wishes to join him and the little boy readily agrees. Artim asks: “Where do we go?” The little boy says “Let’s make this out of marble stone. Let’s go to India and get the marbles from Bheda Ghat”. They fly in Air India and reach New Delhi. From New Delhi they take the train to Jabalpur. On the way they see the Taj Mahal and its Minarets. Artim asks, “Do you want your lighthouse like those Minarets?” The little boy replies, “No, much more beautiful.” Finally they reach Jabalpur and then they take the ferry to Bheda Ghat. After 7 days of intense search, they find the right marble and then make arrangements to send it to home. They take the Air India flight where they were served wonderful Kaju Barfis for dinner and come back. The little boy says, “Artim, tomorrow I am going to select the colors tomorrow. Will you come with me?” Artim replies “No dood, I have had enough fun here and have to play cricket tomorrow.” Artim thanks him for coming and goes back to his magnificent house with sea on one side and mountains on the other.

Next day the little boy sets of again for the colors. This time he meets his friend Idnas. Idnas asks: “Dude, where do you go?” The little boy replies “ Hi dudette, I am making a Lighthouse. I am going to find the colors today. Will you come with me?” Idnas shakes her head vigorously and says “Yes, I would love to but do you have any color in mind?” The little boy says “Yes dudette, I want to get the red with white polka dots just like the Mushroom on which Caterpillar was sitting when Alice met him. I need to get his copyright permissions. I think we have to go to Amazon.” Dumb as she is, Idnas says “Wow, I would love to go to Seattle” to which the little boy replies “Dumbo dudette, it’s not Amazon.com headquarters but the jungles of Amazon”. So they fly to Rio de Janeiro in TAM airlines. On reaching Rio, they saw everybody was playing soccer. Lazy as she was, Idnas found a red and white football and told the little boy “Hey, why don’t we get permission from Pele and use this pattern?” The little boy said “Oh lazy dudette, it’s not half as good as the mushroom. We have to go to Amazon forests.” They set off on a boat to the deep jungles of Amazon. After encountering the great anacondas and the piranhas, they finally reach near the gates of El-dorado. And guess what, the gate keeper was the old caterpillar himself. The little boy asked his permission and the caterpillar was glad to oblige and also accepted the invite to the opening of the lighthouse. Happily Idnas and the little boy come back home in TAM airlines eating Banana fritas. The little boy asks Idnas “Hi dudette, tomorrow I am going in search for a reflector for my lighthouse. Will you come with me?” Idnas says “Hey dude, thanks for the trip, it was really awesome but I have to do my MBA preparations tomorrow”. The little boy thanks her for coming and goes to his big house in the small metropolis.

The little boy wakes up early morning at six fifty the next day and sets of in search for the reflector. He meets the rowdy neighborhood boy Blutu. Blutu asks “Hey Dyude, ‘ssup! so early on a Saturday morning, I haven’t even slept yet . Where are you going?” The little boy replies “Hi, I am going to get some reflectors for my Lighthouse. Do you want to join?” Blutu tags along. The little boy tells him that he plans to go to Buckingham palace to ask for some diamonds. They fly in British airways and reach Heathrow airport right on time. Restless as he is, Blutu immediately wanted to go to rest of Europe especially Amsterdam. The queen had given them appointment after a few days so they set up for a Euro Trip. The little boy wanted to go to the ongoing Cannes Film festival and from there, they sailed to Amsterdam. On the way back, in Belgium, Blutu suggested getting some glass from there for the reflector but the Little boy never changes his mind and they went to the Queen. The queen, Her Majesty Hermione I, was very nice to them and showed them all her diamond collections including the Cullinan diamond and the Kohinoor. Then she offered her own selection of diamonds to the little boy for the reflector and promised to come for the opening bash. They came back in British Airways flight with Blutu enjoying his Tandoori chicken but the little boy stuck to the very English Fish n chips with Tea and muffins. After coming back, the little boy asked Blutu if he wanted to accompany him next day in search of the foghorn. Blutu replied, “Dyude, I wish I could, but you know, I have to see this girl tomorrow who is going to be my prospective wife. So, I better be there.” The little boy wished him all the best and went back to his big house with a Bonsai mango tree in the patio.

The little boy woke up a little late at seven thirty and got ready. Just when he was about to get out, Dnohs came asking for some cereal for breakfast. On seeing the little boy all dressed up, Dnohs said, “Magaa, where are you going, da?” The little boy said, “Magane, I am going to Africa to ask the Lion king for copyrights for his roar for the foghorn of my lighthouse.” Dnohs immediately came along, even without brushing his teeth. They flew in Air Tanzania. But as luck would have it, the plane did a ccrash landing in Alexandria. It was a blessing in disguise as neither Dnohs nor the little boy had visited Egypt before. They had fun roaming around Giza and Alexandria. Dnohs was a sharp buy, To reduce travel, he told the little boy, pointing towards the Spinx, “Magaa, this looks like a lion, and you will probably never see this big a lion. Why don’t you ask this one for permissions?”. But adamant and quality conscious as he is, the little boy ruled out the idea though secretly appreciated Dnohs’s idea in one of his blogs. They set off for Tanzania first on camels and then on elephants. Finally, at the edge of a cliff, with setting sun in the background, they found Simba. Simba said “Whroaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaam, I will be pleased to give you the necessary rights, just bring my pen so that I can sign it.” After getting the signature and his consent to come for the opening ceremony they came back home in Air Tanzania eating Ugali. The little boy asked Dnohs if he is available tomorrow but Dnohs said, “Magaa, I have to finish my project 15 days before the deadline you see. It’s recession time.” Little boy just smiled and came back to his big house in the small state.

Now, the little boy had all the necessary things and just had to build the lighthouse. As this did not involve any fun travel, nobody was willing to accompany the little boy on his venture and hence he started building on his own. As soon as he put the first stone in place, a hand came and helped him place the next one. He turned around to see a beautiful little girl. He asked her, “Miss, what’s your name?” She said, “Hello my friend, I am Alimru. I live in the house on the hill. I saw you working alone and came along. Do you need some help?”. The little boy thanked her and both of them started working. With such a great company, they never realized when it was dark and then Alimru said, “It was nice working with you and I will come again tomorrow. I might be a bit late as I have my MBA prep classes at 6 and we then have practice for our softball finals, but I will join you by 9 for sure”. The little boy was fumbling for words and went back home. Soon this became a routine and Alimru came every day to help little boy realize his dream. Meanwhile, Alirmu scored an 800 in GMAT and her team won the softball. The little boy was cheering her from the first row. One late evening, they finally finished and Alirmu said, “Dear, what do we do for the light?” Both of them giggled and went zooming into the sky, beyond Milky Way and plucked one of the brightest stars. They came back and placed the star on the light house. It was looking fabulous and they decided to go for a walk along the beach. The phosphorescence of the water and the lighthouse beams created a mystic surrounding. Suddenly, the beam stopped right on them and both just stopped where they were.

They celebrated the opening day under the starry sky on the beach with cool breeze blowing. The menu was selected by the little boy. They had Palak Paneer, Crunchy Salmon sushi, broccoli and asparagus salad, Mapo Tofu, Coconut Shimp and many more with Chocolate Mousse and Rasgullas for dessert. The caterpillar, Her Majesty Hermione I, Simba, Artim, Idnas, Blutu, Dnohs everybody had come down for the occasion. But of course nobody could take their eyes off Alimru!!

A trip to Halibut point and Wingaersheek beach

2009-04-25T21:59:00.001-04:00

Finally it is warm in Massachusetts. It was a Saturday and I and a few friends decided to make most of it. We decided to go to the above mentioned places.

The journey was different this time. I generally avoid driving such long distances (~55 miles). But this time I wanted to. We were 5 in my Blue Accord Sedan and 3 in my friend’s coupe of the same make. I thank my co-passengers for having faith in me. There were just 2 odd moments once where I got really scared as a music started with a big blasting sound and I imagined it as a honk. The other one was I got carried away in conversation and had to merge to the interstate very close. My lane changes were discrete and not analog, but apart from that it was fine. And most importantly I liked it. For the first time I really liked speed.

Let’s move on. So we reached this place called Halibut Point State park. Primarily it was a quarry way back in the past and now there is a small pond. On one side of the pond wall there is the sea and a World War 2 watch tower on the other side. The other car was late (thanks to my awesome driving) and we started playing Frisbee and soccer in a picnic area. Soon the others joined us. We played a unique combo of playing soccer and Frisbee together which slowly changed to a game called donkey. After around an hour we realized that there is too much non-zero mean noise in the rule and we set out for the trail.

The trail around the quarry was small and non extensive but when we reached the other side, we just went towards the sea. It was a rocky beach with the water just hitting the rocks. The water was ice cold but it was still fun to wet our feet. I monitored a 0.5 cm fish stuck in a crevice for a long time until another string wave took it away. Wonder how it would survive in the ocean.

There were curious stone structures on the way back which reminded me of a game I used to play: Pittuk. But some people thought it looks like Stonehenge. We set out to make one. We did make it but then destroyed it as well. It was fun acting like 5 year olds amongst an age group with average age of 26 :-o.

Next on our way to the beach, we stopped by at Rockport downtown for lunch. The place called “Rockport House of Pizza” though had good food but an absolute rude waitress who flustered a lot and was seemed to be angry on the fact that she has to make so many checks. Though yelp.com rates it good, I think it’s bad.

Anyway, next we went for Wingaersheek beach. There was a huge crowd. My last few visits to the beaches have always been to the ones either too small or too less occupied. This was full of people. We did our bit of people watching, sitting on rocks, playing in water and burying the feet in sand. There were a set of little girls who had long hairs. They played a game of dipping their hair in waiter and then splashing it all around. It was fun. The beach had rocks in one end which reminded me of the rocks in NITK beach and the zillions of associated memories. On te other end, there was Ipswich river bay and this entire place was in Gloucester. Sounds as if we are in the middle of England.

Amongst the songs played in the car, my favorite was Flight IC 408. Youtube Link

7th on BigB blog

2009-04-18T18:13:00.004-04:00

Hi,

Not that I am a big fan of Big B, but yes, I do like his blog. And today I gotto be the 7th one to comment and the first time I really tried. The comment makes no sense but see for yourself.

Indienglish is phunny

2009-04-15T22:06:00.127-04:00

A small post here. I realized that there are some funny usages in tamil, marathi and bengali. These are when someone tries to communicate in these above languages but using English alphabets. Here are soem of them:

In tamil, an extra h is used for everything. Though I have started using 'th' for the first sound in 'Taj' (Thaj Mahal sounds so funny) but I cannot just get used to 'dh' for the first sound in 'the'. Funniest is the usage in the name 'Darshan/Darshana'. In tamil, it becomes 'Dharshan/Dhaarshana' which has a very derogatory meaning in hindi/sanskrit.

Next is Marathi. For some reason marathis think z is 'jh'. And hence jhootha becomes zuta. Jharna becomes zarna which may not be that hhilarious, but somehow irritates me in the same way as the sound of metal against metal.

Equally, if not more in the usage of 'v' by bengalis. Bengalis think 'v' is 'bh'. So the very common word for good i.e. bhalo is spelled as 'valo'.

As an end note, this fondness of non bengali speaking people with the word bhalo can be quite misleading as it has such close relatives with very different meanings. Here is a list:

Bhalo Aachi are 2 words meaning I am good.
Bhalobashi as 1 word means I love.
Bhalo Bhashi 2 words actually mean " I float well" but some people think that it is same as bhalobashi which is I love again.

Fashion

2009-04-04T19:19:00.002-04:00

Looks like it is becoming the most used word nowadays. We have been bombarded with fashion weeks. And they appear to occur almost every month. This year, the best actor (female) awards and best supporting actor (female) awards both went to the actors in the movie fashion. After this sudden bursts of Delhi and Mumbai fashion weeks back to back, many of the bloggers have started writing about fashion shows and they are more or less in the negative tone. I really like the fashion shows and unlike a single working professional who will be out having fun on Saturday evening, I am simply sitting at home, I thought I will pen my thoughts on this.

I will begin with hat I like in the fashion shows and later delve into what fashion means to me.

For whatever reasons, we all have either secretly or openly watched fashion TV. People like Sushma Swaraj planned to ban it, but could not stop the curiosity of the people watching it whatever may the reason. Knowingly or unknowingly, we became familiar with the terms like “fall-winter”, “spring summer”. We came to know that Milan is the fashion capital of the world. Though we always think LA will be more fashionable considering Hollywood factor, actually New York is the place of fashion. In general we started getting used to the famished looking people walking on the screen. And thus we all learnt the basics of fashion.

Needless to say, India caught up with it and the small fashion industry got more and more limelight. Few fashion icons joined the movies and then fashion shows became more important. Add to it, the burst of 24X7 news channel and the advent of color in newspapers. There had to be more flashy things to show to attract more viewers and the result is the overdose in true Indian fashion. Whenever we like something, we overdo it to an extent that we ourselves start hating it: Candle marches, social networkings are just to name a few.

But I enjoyed this overdose of Fashion weeks a lot. Every morning amongst the gloomy economic news, the mud slinging of politics and the daily terrorist attack stories, I really look forward to these skinny models walking on the ramps wearing clothes which nobody would ever wear in public. Some people object to this very fact that why show something which nobody will ever wear in public. Well take it as a form of entertainment just like IPL or EPL.

Anyway, fashion shows always remind me of the fashion show in my undergrad college. There used to be only 1 or 2 nice looking girl in every batch. The fashion shows became all about choosing which girl from the 1st year will be chosen for this coveted job and the show always happened to be 4 women (1 for each year) surrounded by 20-30 men. It was hilarious.

To me fashion can come in any form. For example, election fashion. Sarah Palin had her own fashion. Queen and her pearls are another fashion statement. Sonia Gandhi, Vasundhara Raje are the fashionable amongst Indian women politicians. Amongst the men it is Murali Manohar Joshi, P Chidambaram, Arun Jaitley and even Varun Gandhi.

The biggest fashion in India always comes from movies. I still remember the number of friendship bands we wore after kuch kuch hota hai, and how all of us in undergrad tried hard to keep small triangular stubble on our chin. Aamir khan has been the person who always starts new trends. Surprisingly, amongst women, I think it is not Aishwarya Rai as much as it is Kareena Kapoor. Whether it is her avatars with Tushaar Kapoor, or as Poo in K3G or in Jab we met, her fashion has always percolated the deepest.

As I write this big an article on fashion, I realize that I myself dress in the poorest form imaginable. This blog attests the same. More for carrying the guilt and less for people to see, here are two more How not to’s:

1) How not to dress for a wedding
2) How not to dress in a beach
3) How not to stand next to objects which make you conscious of your height.

Adios

Short Note on India Elections 09

2009-03-28T23:50:00.003-04:00

Kuch bhi

2009-03-21T17:13:00.001-04:00

It has been a long time. I am not sure what to write, now that I have tried so many different things. I tried to be emotional, I tried to be gossipy, I tried to be personal and I tried writing about current affairs. Today I am bored, but I still feel like writing. I am not sure if it is a good idea to clutter the blog with such posts. But then, I have seen not blogging gets into a habit and I would not want to do that. Let there be no issue based blog, but at least keep the blog alive with some written text rather than random links and pictures.

Readership has been low. Or has it increased? I do not know. But definitely, it is not the current posts that are being looked at. I think the most read ones are the Bollywood awards that I dish out and the one about “Bengali in me”, thanks to the dhono dhanye song I have put in there.

Ok let this be an update blog. I will update all of you who do read this blog and may be more for me to read later what updates I can comfortably share on this date.

I have got this craving for some good “Rani/Priety” movies now. By Rani priety I mean recent movies with a dominant heroine role. Rani has not been doing much good stuff. I saw Priety in Last Lear and Heaven on earth. I liked Last Lear.

I have also been watching this series called “The big bang theory”. It’s about 4 geeks and a dashing girl in next apartments. It’s extremely funny and I highly recommend it.

On the bad sides, I am not at all excited about the Indian general elections 2009. I do not like NDA/BJP’s prime ministerial candidate and Congress was never glamorous. The rising clout of the regional parties will just add noise to the government and no real breakthrough can ever happen. How I wish Samajwadi party was a national party. It has got glamour, it has got the backing of industrial big shots and it seems that it always means business and no nonsense party. It may be corrupt etc, but then it’s end goal is get into the government and it makes it very direct to a common man like us. On the other hand, BJP’s election issues are so baseless: attacking congress for the global recession, Afzal Guru hanging etc. How can these be election issues. Unrealistic 2 RS rice and free color TV campaigns also make more sense than this. Congress on the other hand can do such a constructive campaign, but it is so busy with it’s Rahul baba that it cannot see anything beyond. Sonia madam was an efficient backdoor puppeteer, but the problem with Rahul is that he is the puppet.

Worse is the recession. Just when we think it cannot get worse, there is more shocks. We cannot predict. But I think we are at a stage where we have already expected the worst. Nowadays lay offs, shut down does not even alarm us any more unless it is us at the receiving end. Is the slowdown also slowing down?

But for me, the biggest concern is “Woh ladki hai kahan”. It is a combined effect of so many factors. Suddenly I realize that the often used line “pehle khud ko establish kar loon” has began to blur. There had been times when I could have really gone ahead but this line pulled me back and now when the line goes blur, the picture gets blurrer. Add to it the fact that almost all my friends are already ahead of me in this race. Not only lonely, I feel angry too.

And hence we should do yoga. I have started Ramdev baba yogas. The thing that I enjoy most in that is my daily choice of accompanying music. I need a clock with second update so that I can rate my kapalbhatis. Hence I play songs on you tube. I had started wit meditation music, bhajan, devotional songs, rabindra sangeet etc. But today I tried Aishwarya Rai songs, and I enjoyed it. Probably tomorrow will be jaadu hai nasha hai. Let’s see. I should probably follow the Shilpa Shetty yogas. It will be glam yoga .

Book Review: Sea of Poppies

2009-03-01T12:36:00.000-05:00

After a long time, I am writing a book review. And I have read a few available about the book. One thing I noticed that the reviews are actual reviews, not the typical hindi movie reviews which just go on to praise the film if they like one and find every possible flaw if the do not. The reviews always give an idea off what the writer is trying to achieve and as he successful in doing that. It is difficult for me to write a review of that kind, and hence I will stick to the Indian kinds. So people, here comes the new Kazmi, Sen and Masand.

Bottom line first, I liked the book. So it will be only good things about the book. I am not new to Indie English novels but I am very new to historic novels which give you a balance of history along with a strong storyline. This book pleased me thoroughly but did not come as a surprise as I has already read “Hungry Tide”. While reading it I never realized that I know so much about Sunderban. This book just takes this feel further and this time it is not confined with a small region like Sunderban but instead covers a vast region of the world. It talks about China, Cape Town, England, Kolkata, Bhojpuri belt and of course about the life in sea which can be considered a whole new country of it’s own.

Another of the thing that I liked immensely was the language. It’s just so varied. I never enjoyed the language so much in any other novel before. There is English by the sea men, there is the African American English, there is the English English (English spoken in England), the French English, English that the English people spoke in 1830’s India and then the English that Bengalis spoke in 1830. Each is so different and the way Amitav has blended all of them leaves me mesmerized. To add to it, so many foreign words are borrowed all throughout the book: Bhojpuri, Bengali and especially the language of the seamen who are called Lascars. I know Bangla and can understand bhojpuri, but as I had no idea about the lascar tongue, it was a pleasure decoding that. Towards the end of the book, Amitav is blending cultures. I got so excited and kept thinking of all these people who then went to Mauritius and how is the present culture of Mauritius affected by it.

And of course the part that had me dumbstruck was the sex. The very fact that I am shamelessly writing about it shows its impact on me. I have always read sex with either curiosity or disgust and I think that was its purpose when it is written about or shown. But here it was a part of the story and blended so well. And it was in all forms. There is the straightforward straight and then both forms of non straight, there is sexual harassment of children, there are different types of punishments and there is even with animal. But it comes so naturally in the book in a way that I am not used to. You are never excited or disgusted about it. In most of the other reads, you either read a rape with contempt and hatred for the rapist or in normal descriptions it is something which bonds love more strongly. But in this book, it does neither. It comes in and goes wit the same flow as say a day goes and the night comes.

Unlike Rajiv, I will not go and tell you about the best moment in the story. I also won’t criticize the book like Raja Sen who thinks that a critic has to criticize. Unlike Nikhat, I would still rate the book with five star though it does not have shahrukh or amitabh or directed by K Jo.

My best Friends’ Wedding

2009-02-11T20:27:00.000-05:00

Haha, an oxymoron in the title itself: ‘Best Friends’, but that’s right. This time my biggest realization during my trip to India has been married people. And I met several stages of them. Married for a couple of years, married for couple of months, just returned from HM, got married while I was there and even will marry in near future.

What happens when friends marry? You make the third person, the concerned person and even you believe that this is the best thing that can ever happen to them and which might be true, but it does feel so animated most of the time.

When your friends insist, you talk to theirs’. “Hi, how are you?”, “How is new life”. “ How do you find my friend ….?”, “ Is he/she bothering you”, “Ae, mere friend ko kuch at bolna”, ‘Pata hai, once what happened ………”. And at this point it’s like the person is saying “Why do I have to bear this guy” and you are saying “Why did my friend make me talk to this person”.

Even worse are your conversations with your friend. You have to ask about the spouse. Oh how is…. And, if they start off even once, you are again into the animation mode. If they do not, it’s even worse. The person thinks, “Isko bhi abhi phone karna tha”.

Things does not stay you and me, they become ‘both of you’ and me. The individuality is lost. May be at work life, they still have the individuality, but in the limited hours when they are not working, they rather stay as “we”. What plans for weekends?” Oh, we plan to but curtains, or we will go to buy a lamp” or some of those trivial stuff which you never thought can bother your friend. All you can say, Thank god, atleast you are not shopping for ‘Pink Chaddis’.

Worst is when you meet them in person. Ofcourse you have to meet theirs’. And then sometime in the middle of the conversation you are totally not part of it and you start feeling kabab mein haddi.

All in all, you just understand that it is time to change and focus on yourself. Do not expect them to “daak shune aasha” but instead “aekla cholo re”

Disclaimer: It’s not a generic behavior. Everybody as one or 2 of the above qualities.

Police Excesses in India

2009-02-01T19:25:00.001-05:00

I cannot stop myself from writing about this. Here are 3 incidents:

1) 3 guys throw acid on 2 girls who died but police shot the three people down. Here is a link of the story in ToI.

2) A guy wrongly speed races on his bike at 1 am n Bangalore, police stops him. He runs away towards a house which turns out to be a brigadiers, makes a call from the roof top, in Urdu, and police shoots him down. Link.

3) The fracas began at 2.30pm in Kolkata, when 37-year-old Yadav was about to park his vehicle on the wrong side of Kiron Shankar Roy Road. Policeman Banerjee, who was on duty in front of the high court, spotted the taxi and signalled to the driver to stop. When he didn’t, the constable sprinted towards the taxi, witnesses said. “He was holding an iron clamp, which he tried to attach to one of the wheels to prevent the driver from fleeing. The driver alighted and asked Banerjee why he was using the clamp instead of filing a case of parking violation,” a bystander said. Banerjee allegedly replied with a slap. Link.

The three incidents are of varying intensity and if decided to judge individually, probably you may differ on the sides to choose on each. However, one thing is clear, on all the three incidents; the people who suffered from police violence were not clean. They all had committed some offense. But is this the way a responsible police should react?

However, I am surprised at people’s reaction. Yes there are people who think these are bad acts by the police but I thought that would be a unanimous decision. However, surprisingly people differed. One of the people I asked felt that Police did the right thing. That is why terrorism is on the rise. Nobody is afraid of the police anymore.

Here is what I beg to differ. The job of the police is to maintain law and order. It is not their job to convict people and make people afraid of them. If you see a police on the road, you should feel positive that aah, here is a man maintaining law and order. But the truth is different. We see police with either disgust or fear.

However slow the process of law may be, somebody else cannot take over it. Ideally in all these cases, police should have caught the convict and produced him in the court, but instead they chose to be the judges. When discussing with someone about the first case, I said, police should have shot him on the leg or put tear gas. The other person said may be the police wanted to do that but the shot got misplaced. Come on, why do you pay the police for if they do not even know how to shoot.

And this is precisely why I hate when people talk highly of the so called “encounters”. Yes, those people may be convicts, or may be we can even kill the dreaded terrorists in encounters, but that’s not the way things should happen. It should be for the law to decide these things. If the law process needs to be revived, let’s do it. But police taking over law is definitely not the way to go.

And this is what I think is the difference between first world and third world country. Till now, whenever people used to tell me that India is a third world country, I used to feel sad. But now I know why it is so. Police takes law in its hand because lawmakers take infinite amount of time. Digging deeper, somewhere it boils down to the fact that we do not have the money and resources to have a police which should have the decency to talk like a gentleman even to the most dreaded terrorist in the world. Wasn’t even Saddam tried in the court before being hanged?

Sandipan Bollywood Awards 2008

2009-01-27T20:17:00.002-05:00

After the very successful blogs of Sandipan Bollywood Awards from 2006, and 2007, here we go for 2008. I say popular, because if you search Sandipan Mitra on google, the first result is the 07 awards.

This year has been tough. Not lot of good films rather mostly dismal. A few decent ones though. But I have to continue with the tradition. Here we go:

Best Story: Neeraj Pandey for ‘A Wednesday’ and Shyam Benegal for ‘Welcome to Sajjanpur’.

Best Song: ‘Jashn-e-bahara’. Melodious as well as fresh

Best Music Director: A.R. Rahman , “Jodha- Akbar”. (and borrowing from previous year’s blog ---- who else?

Best Singer(Male) : Javed Ali for ‘Jashn-e-bahara’

Best Singer (Female): I guess this award goes empty this year. Not a single memorable solo. What’s wrong with Shreya, Sunidhi or even alka and kavita madam?

Best television interview: Of course Arundhati Roy in ‘Devil’s Advocate’. I know that may be she is not at all right and her logic fails at time but she is so convincing with her words. By the way, this time I found one person so irritating that she better not give any interviews and that’s Deepika Padukone. Why does she have to speak in English when her accent is like a Gaon Khede wali of Maharashtra?
Best Item Song: Krazzy4 Hrithik Roshan

And now the main awards:

Best Comedian: Abhishek Bachchan in Dostana
Best Supporting Actor: John Abraham in Dostana. He was so hilarious and did what he can do the best. Reminds me that once during the wedding of my friend I asked him that when is his wife going to do the chawal fenko rasam like John?

Best Supporting Actress: Hands down Kangana Ranaut. She was the core of Fashion. The way she changed expressions for drug addict to supermodel in no time was top of the world.

Best Villain: Bipasha Basu in Race. In Race, everybody is a villain and not many villainy movies in 08 except Ghajini. And Bipasha has to get some prize.

Best Newcomer (male): Farhan Akhtar for Rock On. He was really impressive and a fresh and unconventional face.

Best Newcomer (Female) : Asin. Though I did not like her ‘Jab We Met’ish acting much bt she is definitely the best looking amongst the new faces.

Best Director: Shyam Benegal and Neeraj Pandey for Welcome to Sajjanpur and A Wednesday resp.

Best Film: Combining the fact that it should have story (Jodhaa Akbar, Ghajini, Singh is Kiing and Rab ne ruled out), Good looking and famous star cast ( A Wednesday, Welcome to Sajjanpur, Rock On, Jaane tu are gone), decent songs (A Wednesday, Ghajini, Rab ne, Fashion all out) and ofcourse a decent budget, the award points to only one movie which may not be best amongst any of the above factors individually but has a good combo of above all, and the movie is RACE…

Best Actress: Like last year, I again want to give it to Soha Ali Khan or Mumbai Meri Jaan but I guess that would be too much bias. A Kareenaish Asin does not impress me, Genelia is too kiddish and Fashion is all about Kangana, mugdha and Kitu and not about Priyanka. Aishwarya as Jodhaa looks more south Indian and can never look rajputani. However, I think the best actress award should still go to her but for Sarkar Raj. She really stole the show and she DID some acting apart form looking good and/or crying.

Best Actor: Shahrukh Khan for Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi. The lesser the mentioned of Ghajini is better, and Singh is Kiing is really not worth that much. Hrithik as Akbar was good but with nonsense scenes like Sword fights and dismissing court listening to Man Mohana, he has lost it. The reason it is Shahrukh Khan is not only because people really liked Surinder Sahni but because Shahrukh made people hate Raj. It is probably easy for a Superstar to make you love him but it is really difficult to hate ur favorite star and he was successfully able to achieve it.

Last blog for 2008

2008-12-24T21:08:00.000-05:00

I am sorry folks, for all who were waiting for the famous “Sandipan Bollywood Awards 2008” (if any) but it has to wait because of Ghajini which I am going to watch only in the New Year.

Here, I will just try to recap the year for me. The year has been a year of Travel. On first Jan 2008, I was in San Diego. During Labor Day, I went to Miami. 4th of July, I was in NC and Atlanta and 22nd of July I was in New Hampshire. Thanksgiving time I was again in California, but the Bay Area this time. Apart from this, I have been thrice to Rhode Island and twice to the wonderful Cape Cod which is hours away but truly they are amazing. And finally and hopefully, I am flying to Kolkata tomorrow.

I was really new to Boston last year but now I know a lot about in and around places and I love it more and more. Yes, mid December to mid February is bad, but after that it is really wonderful spring summer and fall.

Blogically, I have maintained my stats, 26 blogs are more like a one a fortnight which is cool. I have stayed away from Bollywood but I cannot control myself in saying this now: “If reports are true that Bipasha is acting pricey and does not want Juhi Chawla on the sow, then to hell with Bipasha”

Apart form movies and the musings and ‘News that I follow’, my past few blogs have been a bit to sensitive. But I think I am going to continue that and keep nurturing the impossible dream of boundary less world with no war or crimes or criminal punishments.

As for social networking goes, I managed approximately 500 scarps on orkut which is on the lower side. I keep calling chacha chachi, mama, mami, nani, bua, bhabhi, bhatija, bhanja and all possible relations and do keep in touch with my friends too. What’s new this year is the emergence of their fiancés/fiancées. Being the good guy that I am, I have got these new friends now. It was kind of embarrassing early on, but now it looks fine.

2009 looks to be a promising year already which economy booming towards the middle of the year and my fist month beginning with a holiday and a cruise from Miami in the second month. As for movies, ofcourse waiting for Harry Potter the most. Apart from that looking forward to “My Name is Khan” and the ‘Sushmita-Shahrukh’ movie. The annual Disney-Pixar also has been something that I am looking forward to every year now.

Merry Christmas and a Happy new year

Impact of Mumbai blasts on me

2008-12-16T23:16:00.000-05:00

In my vain attempts to be a neutral citizen and not form and opinion about the incidents have failed. But what surprises me the most is that I have mixed emotions for both for or against.

Let’s go to the bad part first. Not blaming the terrorists. There can be many shades of positive arguments about this. First which I think is more important is not to give them a death sentence. I am strictly against death sentence. What if they land up in heaven by accident? Then the whole purpose of death sentence will be lost. We can rather give life long imprisonment making their life like hell. I think that’s what should be done to all the criminals who are sentenced to death.

Second is, these are just brainwashed youngsters made to do all this because they have nothing better to do in life. Let us create fair job opportunities on both sides of the border rather the sub-continent as a whole. Killing these people either by encounter or by conviction is not a solution. I specially hate the media hyped and liked by many – the so called encounter specialists. I always get the feeling that by accident, they are may be not killing absolute offenders but also some people just at the wrong place. I always get reminded of some incidents which happened to me and I bet every one of us at some point. Here are 2 examples:

1) Did it ever happen to you that you are with a bunch of “friends” who suddenly get into eve teasing? So they are passing comments at a certain girl on the road. The girl looks back. Is there any reason that she will believe you are not amongst them? Same may happen to a guy killed in an encounter. I agree that you should avoid such company, but you know, it’s not always avoidable.

2) You typecast just because of your geographic origin. For me, though jokingly, people call me Commi, Bangladeshi infiltrator and in one case was a part of a convicted group for just being from “Maharashtra”. I do not say that I should be separated from the rest. After all, yes, I am from the Commi state, my great grand parents did live in Bangladesh way back in 1905 and I am a proud Maharashtrian born. I would not like to be separated from these groups and revered in isolation.

3) You are doing the right thing in the wrong time. Once I took my very dear school friend for a walk. He is physically challenged so we took some time for the walk. And I was beaten by the teacher for being late and my nice deed was entirely unappreciated.

So, might be many of the terrorists fall in one of the above 3 categories and put friendship/loyalty first? Do they deserve to be killed?

Another ting I liked about this entire last few days of event was failure of BJP’s terror campaign. Deep down, I think I still prefer this party over others. But it is high time they learn that national issues do not and should not concern common people who do not have even access to basic amenities like drinking water. How is getting killed by a bullet worse than dying of thirst. It should get into the root cause campaigning mode and not this “India shining” or “Anti terror” campaigns. Terrorists most likely will never target small villages.

Having said so many things against the common people, I don’t know why, deep inside me, a small hatred has started against Pakistan. I would not justify these acts as enough has already been said and done by politicians, media and intelligentsia. But as a consequence of that, I could not make myself buy the 1000 times better Pakistani biryani masala and the Basmati rice and instead chose the inferior Priya and Swad brands. Still not able to fathom why and how to get rid of this emotion.

Happily grazing cow in New Zealand

2008-11-23T22:16:00.000-05:00

A very strange thing happened today. Like the last few days, I was awake since 4:30 am. Today at 5:30, I get a call from my School friend Shubhajit. He always calls in odd hours but though I will never talk in those odd hours even from my parents, I can never hang up on Shubhajit or Bhaji. The reason is that he calls from the borders of Jammu and Kashmir, where one rarely gets signals. I always feel a strange guilt attending his calls. He did something which I never had the courage to do and instead, to public and to myself I always spoke of joining army as joining a band of fools. But deep inside, I do know that it is more because I am not capable of so much sacrifice.

I asked him abut what’s happening as it was Election Day and he said that it was very hectic but he was happy that I remember. Yes, and I had just read it in rediff some 10 minutes back. There is a lot going on in that part of the country. We can just speculate, the locals can just suffer, the army people might just be the pawns but whatever is happening in the power corridors on either side of the border, we do not know, rather we may not wish to know.

Is it justified? Fighting for the country? After all, if we do believe in some sort of superpower, it might have just been a split second decision of the god to pass the next life on earth as a human being of a particular country. Next second, we could have been a cow happily grazing grass in New Zealand. Well, with my present, I am happy. I am paying back to the world in whatever form I came in. I am paying tax so that we walk on better streets, I have sent money to Indian charitable organizations also and if that is not enough, I did buy the Unicef greeting cards to have the proceedings sent to Africa. I will also buy ‘Tales of Beedle The Bard’ and the proceedings will go for betterment of the world. And so is the cow from New Zealand paying back to the society. It is making more cows, it is giving lot of milk and it is also maintaining the balance of nature.

But what is a man in military doing? Isn’t he being brainwashed to fight for SOME country on the whims of certain people? For example, India and Pakistan are fighting for ages now on may be some stupid decision of the then Viceroy and queen Victoria’s ‘Let’s have some fun, let’s split the Hindus and Muslims’.

Same with the World Wars, the present Iraq war or any other wars. It is a few people who decide the fate of so many others, who simply decide to die for the country, when if one instant late they would have been happily grazing cows in New Zealand.

I am so happy that I was born a few seconds late, so now I am a happily sitting on a couch and frantically pressing keys on the laptop keyboard, not much different from the grazing cows of New Zealand!!!

It is probably inevitable to have wars, or it might be really important to go to space when children are dying of hunger on the streets, or it is really important to spend millions of dollars to go deep down into the sea and find some stop watch in the titanic, it is just that I do not know why.

Titbits

2008-11-08T18:11:00.000-05:00

It has been long since I wrote something. I had consciously tried to write a blog every other week. So ideally the total would have been 26. I think I will manage it, now that this is the 24^th one, and the usual annual 2008 bollywood awards will come towards the year end.

However, after being quoted in Mumbai Mirror in an abridged way which gives a wrong picture of me but on the whole carries the point, I did not know whether I should be happy or sad. When I saw that I did not receive any comments (forget angry ones) I realized that even if people would have read it, they would have done it on the newspaper, and nobody was crazy enough to type out the link on a computer and read it for themselves.

Hence, I will be talking about myself a bit, though I know not for whom. I have moved to a new apartment and the net connection hasn’t come yet. This brought 2 nice things with it. One, I started reading agan and secondly, I stopped watching bigg boss season 2. The show was very addictive. Watching a bunch of brain dead people over and over again fight over lost tomatoes and less sugar in the tea left me brain dead too. Not that I was following a lot of quality news before bigg boss started, but I was not even watching the hindi movies which I always made sure I watch. I was out of touch with the blogs I read, the google news searches that I do. Atleast now the little time I spend surfing in the office, I spend it on reading some news keeping me up-to-date with the current affairs.

However, watching any news or reading any news website had become so boring in the past few days. It was just Obama everywhere. Beaten to death. It was so difficult to get any other news other than which country head congratulated hi and how he out smarted McCain or how the fall was all due to Sarah Palin. I had had enough. However in my desperate attempt to find more news on the day after the elections, I found 4 events that I found non Obama.

Pt. Bhimsen Joshi being awarded the Bharat Ratna. He The last Bharat Ratna was awarded was in 2002. It has been a long time. On thinking who would be the right choice for the next one, three people came to my mind. The first one surely deserving and the other two should be atleast considered. They are: Sachin Tendulkar, Narayan Murthy and Al Gore.

Uma Bharti slapped her party worker, kissed him again, he was still angry after the kiss and then she was on a strike till he forgives. Really crazy.

B. R. Chopra died. This news though supposedly important, it just to be read as a headline and moved on to the next.

Abhishek Bachchan suffering from high fever in Kerala. This news did not come from any news site but from Amitabh Bachchan’s own site. And sure enough, next day it appears in the news websites. I don’t know whether I should like or hate these easy journalisms: getting news from celebrity bloggers. But then it’s absolutely legal to do so.

Anyway, the second good thing that happned with no internet is that I started reading books again. I read ‘White Tiger’ by Arvind Adiga. It is a fast and good read. Does give you a picture of how India is shining in fools gold. And then ofcourse, I am re-reading Harry Potter 7. I have re-read selective chapters but for the first time re-reading the entire book. Some parts are just amazing. The two shifting minds when Harry runs out of Bathilda’s house. The tussle between Hermione and Ron after he returns and how he keeps agreeing to everything she says for truce. And many more things here and there.

Anyways, turned out to be a long post. Will be back soon.

Endorsing Arundhati Roy

2008-10-19T18:43:00.001-04:00

I just saw an interview of Arundhati Roy in Devil’s advocate by Karan Thapar and needless to say I am impressed by the lady. I have always been awed by her and am still continuing to be.

Generally, when Karan Thapar grills anybody, either they go backfoot or they counter his evidences convincingly and we feel that the person has done so well. But this lady, not only accepted whatever Karan Thapar quoted from various texts, but also provided enough evidences why she thinks that way and why it is the right way.

But the best part is not that. The best part is she knows what she is doing. She knows that she will only get the wrath of politicians and even the common people for this. She will be compared with the terrorists (if not already) but still she carries on her job. She knows she is fighting a lost battle. But we need people like her. What if Narmada Bachao is actually required, what if Afzal is actually not guilty, what if Kashmiris really want an independent Kashmir and are denied of that. What if the Indian Mujahideen is a media creation and the police are actually just cooking up stories and fooling the people with collaboration from media.

Let’s hope this is all not true. What the government is doing is actually right. We will feel immensely happy and I am pretty sure Arundhati will be happy too. But what if the above is actually true? We are turning into a fascist nation and soon will become another Germany? At least we will have something to say: “But one amongst us stood up against it. One amongst us fought for it. And that is Arundhati”.

I am very sure Arundhati knows all this. She is doing all this knowingly that how much wrath this will invite for her. After all she is an author and which other does not like popularity? But the fact that she is going against all this shows that she is a big humanitarian. She has her own principle and not relenting to even the public pressure is a big courageous act. She is doing all this, just to make sure that we are all right in our decisions and not hurriedly doing anything wrong. This is my principle too, I can stand convicts moving freely in the societly, but I cannot stand a single innocent person to be punished.

Let’s briefly talk about Singur. Yes, there would not be any industries after this in West Bengal, yes Mamata Banerjee is a Mahishasur in a female form. But do you think everything was alright in the way CPIM allotted the land? Do you not think there was some underhand money involved between Tata and the government? Most importantly, do you really believe that there was no other way possible that would have convinced the entire concerned group? I believe there would have been ways out. I already read somewhere that the initial land for the tatas was allotted somewhere near Kharagpur, but it is just that the Tats said can’t you offer anything better and they gave away more important land. Can’t a compromise be arrived with the Kharagpur land as well. Why will a government have to act like a Ramu servant to a business powerhouse.

Arundhati, I am not as courageous as you are. But like you, I do really hope that the correct convicts are punished and the correct thing in Kashmir might be a way that brings peace to the actual people of Kashmir. In many other cases, I would hope that you are really wrong and the media/ common man opinion is right. Because if it is not, we are really heading towards doom. But for all your endeavors, I really respect you a lot! It is not easy to go against the people for the people.

I wish

2008-09-28T18:04:00.001-04:00

It’s my one year in Boston today. As a recap, this is after 17 years in Nagpur, 4 in Surathkal, 0.5 in mysore, 0.5 in bhubaneswar, and 2 years in College Station TX.

Boston is different from all the other places I have been before. This place has 4 distinct seasons. You really need 4 distinct set of clothes for the four seasons. The trees are four different colors. And now coming to think of it, I do like the fact that we do not like the winter. It’s so good to have not liking a season over the other unlike say California where people have no choice as it is sunshine year round.

Aah, enough of false praising. I really would love a warmer place, a place like Miami or Houston or Austin, or say a place like Bangalore.

Bangalore, it is my favorite place. As you might have noticed above, I have never stayed in Bangalore but I still love it and I think that is my final destination ten years down the line. Ask the people of Bangalore, and they will say “Oh, so much traffic, things are so unnecessarily priced” etc. But the simple fact that I am still interested in hearing these people out who say so shows my concern. The reason may be because I have never felt any place as my own. Though I love Nagpur a lot, there is nothing in Nagpur to hold me. Though there is enough to hold me in Kolkata, I really don’t feel any connection with that place. I do feel sad about the issues like Singur because of being a Bengali and I also secretly do not like when non Kolkata people bash Kolkata, but when it comes to me being a part of the people and the city, I feel like an outsider.

On the other hand, Bangalore has always been a pampering place for me, thanks to my brother. When I went there the first time, bro was new in his job and he spent a lot and we were always eating in good restaurants, going to the fancy malls, buying expensive clothes etc. Then, during my stay in Surathkal, this became the place where I used to come when I needed breaks from the college life. I ran there once for Holi. In first year, when I was really afraid of my seniors, Bangalore was a soothing comfort. I will come by an early bus in the morning, and then always get cheated by the Autowallas on my way to Dada’s place but all to be reimbursed by him. His roommates also ensured I have a nice time. Overall it was always a fun place. Then, the one year after college, Bangalore became the place of dreams because it had all my “college friends” and it was a place where you had all the good paying companies. I yearned for Bangalore even in my first few months in College Station when I was still making friends and I was always jealous that my college friends are having so much fun together.

Thinking on practical terms, may be staying anywhere else will be no different than what I have been imagining about Bangalore, because few years down the line, when I will eventually think about coming back to India, none of my friends will be single and may be not even me. Things might be totally different. But there still be the Forum mall with it’s characteristic smell (if not already blasted by the terrorists) and there will always be newer and better eating places, either my brothers favorites like Parivar, Nagarjuna, Amravati and Sues kitchen or the one with the get ups like “Chandni chowk” or fancy names like “Rumali with a view” (As if the rumali rotis have a hole in the middle to peep out while eating). And of course those out of the world Bangalore Times articles talking about trends which nobody follows and finding terms like Gastrosexual ( Just heard this term from Umesh, apparently it means “women of Bangalore” nowadays like men who will cook food for them). I am very sure this is also a BT finding.

But then, I may meet my brother again by surprise on the stairs of PVR cinemas, introduce our friends and move on.

Scary thoughts on the blasts

2008-09-14T10:02:00.000-04:00

Lot is happening around the world, especially those which bother me like Ike, Georgia, Singur and to a bit even the US presidential elections. But this post, I would like to discuss the blasts happening in the Indian cities.

Yes, enough has been written about it, and various views. There are many topics to discuss on. They are:

1) What is government doing?

2) Is it justified to have an anti terrorism law like POTA

3) Is what was earlier known as the “Mumbai spirit” actually “Mumbai cowardice” or “Mumbai apathy”?

4) Should we begin to suspect all Muslims?

5) What do the terrorists really want?

Let us begin with the last question. I wish and I can just wish that they would tell me “We want azad Kashmir and nothing else.” If I had power, I would have immediately said “Yeh lo, and take this extra 1 square meter from ladakh too, and please stop this”. I wish it was as simple, and if it is, I urge the politicians please do this right away. But we all know that is not the case. I think the reason for the blasts has to be something else, and it might not be entirely based on reason, region or religion. It very well might be, they had nothing else to do. These big terrorist organizations, once found that everything is already ok in this world but they have these huge infrastructure established and they will go jobless if they do not do anything, started brainwashing people. And where else will they get such a large population to influence and to attack. Yes, Indonesia has the biggest Islamic population, but then they can’t create havoc there, because it is all Islam. India becomes a natural choice.

No I am not typecasting the religion, I am just typecasting terrorism. To sound more secular, let me bring out a Hindu example. What would VHP and Bajrang dal do if India was a Hindu nation?

Now this drives me to the next point. See how in he above explanation, I had to do Hindu bashing for the sake of sounding secular. This is what I am so concerned about and this is what Rajdeep has also discussed in his blog. Why do we have to do our own religion bashing just to sound secular? Even in common life, we consider a Muslim good if he is clean shaven, he takes part in festivals like diwali and holi alongwith Eid and he even goes to temple. We the Hindus say “See, that is how a Muslim should be, and see, how we accept such good Muslims to our society and we think we are tolerant hindus”. But that is not right. We should also respect a Muslim who does not want to participate in Holi or Diwali. Frankly speaking, Holi diwali are not even Hindu festivals, they are Indian festivals. How many Muslims do take part in the “Sathyanarayan katha”?

So now that we see that it is all about a change in mindset for all the people is needed, we look at what is the government doing for this? And the answer is obvious, not only nothing, but just the opposite. Ideally the government should have made conducive atmosphere for the peaceful co-existence of the two communities (which I think occurs more by naturally than by the government) and change the mindset of the young people through education. Considering that it is the government who designed the CBSE syllabus, I would say it was a job well done. So you see the government would have been actually helping the problem if it just stopped what it was doing but no, they just did the opposite. They started appeasing one community and thus actually creating differences between those who would have become an ally over time.

And now the most difficult question, so what can be done now? And I am afraid the answer is : I have no idea..

Ganesh Chaturthi

2008-09-01T20:54:00.000-04:00

Yes, after a long long time, I am back to my old blogging style. Musings. This times that year kinds. And this one is about Ganesh Chaturthi.

Lord Ganesha has been in my life since I had senses, but in a very peculiar way. The Lord has never been my primary point of inspiration. But he has always brought joy. All hindus tend to have one primary god, though Hinduism believes in polytheism. It can be a good study in itself to see how this is across India as well as classes and subclasses amongst people. But that is not the point of discussion. Anyway, so that way, if I have to choose my primary god, it has to be goddess Saraswati and I would like to believe that it came naturally to me. As a student, it is goddess Saraswati who gives you knowledge and you should pray to her to score good marks in exams. Being a student till last year, you can imagine that she has to be THE goddess for me. And now that I started work, logically speaking I should change to Goddess Laxmi, the goddess of wealth, but I do not like to change. And here comes lord Ganesha. People say, he is the god of knowledge and god of wealth. I think he is also the god of sane thoughts. In short, he is highly capable of being THE god. But, for some reason, he never features that prominently in Bengali culture.

For me, Lord Ganesha has other significance. I was born and brought up in Maharashtra. The land of “Ganapati Bappa Morya”. So every year, Ganpati puja was a big festival in my colony. This also coincided with the “Durga Puja Shopping” commencement. This process involved going to Nagpur city 14 km away and buying new clothes, going to the various ganesh pandals across the city and finally a good dinner at some restaurant. So you see, Ganesha commences the happy season.

Later, when I moved to Karnataka, I realized, it is equally big here and in my college it was a regular event. Infact, this was my first day at Surathkal. I was sitting in the auditorium where the idol was established. It is here, I sat with the people of my state “mattha party” and were introduced and thus made friends who not only made the following four years enjoyable, but even became the most trustworthy friends for life.

Then I came to Texas A&M. Who would have believed that out of the zillions of Hindu festivals celebrated across India, this will be the one that is celebrated in A&M? Yes, diwali, holi rakhi all are celebrated, and I believe even Durga puja and Saraswati puja, but none at the same level as Ganesha utsav. I know the reason too and that is the timing. This coincides with start of fall semester and what better way to start a semester than prayers. I could have ignored this celebration as I do with nearly 95% of the traditions followed in the Aggieland, but as luck would have it, I stayed with Marathi roommates here and hence never missed this occasion. And as luck would have it, this was not only the place where I met many of the friends for first time in college station, but also the place where I met my advisor, the person who shaped my career.

This is the first year; I will have nothing special to do, but now comes the best part: The reason which made me write this blog. It is not me who realized this connection, this subtle realization that knowingly or unknowingly, I have been following this tradition since I was born. And no prize for guessing who made me realize this. Of course, it has to be Maa. And yes Maa, I will definitely do something this time too.

Any good writer, Jane, Jhumpa or JKR, would have stopped here, but no, I want to write more. This may not even be a strong point, but I cannot not mention about it.

The prep of durga puja is described by a poem as follows:

Shiuli phool-er gondhe momo,

Pujar thane dhaker baari

Bhorer aalo fotar aagei

Pounche Gechi taratari.

Somehow I always associate durgapuja with this poem. The poem is pretty meaningless so I won’t dare to do a mundane translation, but it is the first line: Shiuli phool which is a tiny white flower with orange stalk, the frangrance of that flower is the mark of start of the puja season, and the first time we use this flower, is ofcourse for ganesh chaturthi.

My blog turns 3

2008-08-27T21:06:00.000-04:00

Today is the 3^rd anniversary of my blog. Happy birthday “Sandi’s Musings”. I won’t look back much but here but here are some stats: 103 blogs in 156 weeks which is like one blog every 10 days and I believe is a good frequency. Also I have evolved over the years. Earlier in my first year it was always about my past and my feelings and what I did and what I liked. Slowly, I became more conscious of my identity and there were some self discovering posts. Then I started taking interest in the current affairs around the world and mainly India. There have been some repetition of ideas and one of them being “what news I follow” and I still like it and I think I will do that more often. Bipasha has been a consistent topic of my blogs too.

Anyway, in this blog, I will do something which I have never done in ages and for which I have been asked many times. I have never reported my trips here after a one day trip to Austin in 2006 summer. I have had many long and exciting and beautiful trips since but did not have the patience to write a travelogue. But today I will describe about this place called Beavertail State park in Rhode Island USA.

I went there with my friend Sumit who is also my colleague and an amateur photographer. After a quick visit to Newport, which I have already been to before, we headed to Beavertail State Park to be on time for the sunset. The island is named so after its shape which is like a beaver’s tail. The extreme tip of the tail is supposed to have sea on all three sides. We parked the car a bit far from the tip and walked through the trail with trees around and getting glimpses of the bay here and there. It was almost sunset so there were lot of activities by the insects and I was intently listening to their sound. I had not consciously listened to this sound for quite a long time. And far from the noise of the cars on the road or ACs in home, this was a welcome sound.

Soon we arrived at the tip of the island and I was dumbstruck. This was one of the best places I have ever been too. There is sea on all three sides and rocks at the place where they meet. I ran as far as I can go to the tip. Sumit shouted: “ How do you like the place?” . I replied “ I feel like Swami Vivekanada already”

There was also this foghorn along with the lighthouse. Quoting Wikipedia : ‘Foghorns are a navigation aid for mariners. In foggy conditions, when visual navigation aids such as lighthouses are obscured by the weather, foghorns provide an audible warning of rocks, headlands, or other dangers to shipping.’ I remember foghorn from a old story I read in my English textbook about a dragon (probably last living dragon) thinking the foghorn as a call from his mate and coming from far away only to find the lighthouse with the foghorn. Can somebody please share the exact story if you remember?

Anyway, I was fully immersed into the scenery when I witnessed a clear sunset after a long time. How the sun touched the horizon and the illusion of sun actually changing shape from a circle to an inverted ‘matka’ and then making a nice ‘Sunny Side Up’ egg before finally disappearing, and then the dancing of the colors, the various shades of oranges and reds and yellows and pinks and blues and whites in the scattered clouds and sky and ther constant change of wardrobe makes you forget even the best of the dances like Bipasha’s “Beedi” :)

PS: A video with a vague and funny commentary by me is attached alongwith. Notice the foghorn sound and the great roar of the sea.

Bachna Ae Haseeno Review

2008-08-17T21:53:00.000-04:00

Bipasha does it again. Yet another crap movie. The list is just becoming endless, but I can still not stop praising her. Her looks are killing (तीखी नज़रें , कातिल अदायें)। God knows what she means by when she says I choose my movies carefully. For that matter, which heroine can really claim that she chooses her movies carefully except may be Shabana Azmi.

Yes Advay, I also have to admit that in one song, she did look more like Serena’s sister than Venus, but that was just one wardrobe in one song. Other than that she was the best in the entire movie. But that should also not come as a big complement considering the rest of the starcast: newbies Ranbir, Deepika and Minisha. Bipasha had to be the best and she does it in style. Finally Bipasha has understood, that she has to do the oomph roles very much like Aishwarya has understood that she can only do crying and simply sitting looking beautiful.

Anyway, now the other characters starting with Minisha Lamba. She reminds me of Divya Dutta trough and through. Needless to say she can’t act which is true for any contemporary heroine other than Rani and Kareena, but this girl also does not have the heroine looks. She looks so much like heroine की बहन . Additionally, I don’t know why the cameramen did not notice this but her nose is much redder than her rest of the face in the entire movie giving her a look of joker with the red ball on the nose. And who designed her outfits for her first 30 minutes? She was wearing a green pajama and violet short kurta in Zurich. Give me a break. Even any काम वाली बाई will have better dressing sense. Overall, Minisha has scope for improvement and she looks promising but she should change her makeup man and dress designer immediately.

Let’s move on to Deepika Padukone. I did not like her in OSO, and I did not like her here either. She is too much girl next door kinds. I thought she has an eggface, but this move it was small and back to circle. So she is more of the egg yolk face now. And where did she learn her dialog delivery? She is born and brought up in Bangalore but her way of speaking is very Pune types. I have seen many pune girls talk like this. Feels very out of place and weird. The funniest part was her crying. She cried twice in the movie. Once from right eye and once from left and never from both. Why, God only knows. And the crying is like a tap of water is opened and then suddenly closed.

Now to Ranbir Kapoor. Even in this movie he tries to be Raj Kapoor. I would suggest he should try to be more like his father or Kareena, the only 2 decent looking people and decent actors in the entire kapoor खानदान . Ranbir has done his homework, he has presentable body, knows dancing and can act fairly well. He just needs to improve a bit more.

Now some movie aspects but so much has been said about it already by other reviewers: length is long, story second half is predictable, story lacks good humor etc etc. I have nothing new to add. On the brighter side, te Yashraj did what it always does well: breathtaking locations.

Now back to Bips, she has done perfectly what was expected out of her but I did not like what was expected out of her. But that should not be a problem. Also, why does she have to do that showing hands with mehendi to the camera. It doesn’t look sympathizing but scares me by reminding me of “Kile ka rahasya”. Suggestion to her, Bipasha, you look beautiful in almost any style and any look but sometime you do look like Serena. Please try to avoid that look. It’s not difficult.

Funny observation about News Channels

2008-08-10T21:08:00.000-04:00

Off late, we many times keep bashing the internet news and TV news channels for showing nonsense stuff. We want quality news. News that matter to us and that’s where I think is the catch. What news matters to us?

Do we really care if Obama wins or Mc Cain does? Even their decision on healthcare doesn’t bother us as company pays our healthcare. None of our families are serving in Iraq or Afghanistan too that we will be worried about them. Even if they had been, their news would have been brought to us by they themselves over phone. Nor even does the news of serial blasts in Ahmedabad or Bangalore directly affect us because it is not going to prevent you from going to work. Yes, certain part of it does matter but these news you as a resident of Bangalore would hardly have got from news channel, you would rather have over heard in person.

What are the news that matter to us directly? May be what is the best school in vicinity for the kids (if you have any), what are the good restaurants nearby Where do you get cheap and good groceries. This information (news) is more important to us rather than what Omar Abdullah shouted in the Indian parliament.

Now there may be certain issues which matter like how much percentage government hiked the pension scheme or what is interest rate cut by the Fed but then that’s hardly .001% of what TV news channels cover. Another important thing might be weather. But even that, the Indian news channel in particular hardly pay any attention to.

So the bottom line is that, news channel are entertainment channels and the show us what we want to see. That is why we have Britney all over the news and even news like people do not want to see any more of Britney becomes news. Or we have these murders of beautiful or rich women in India starting form Jessica Lall to Aarushi. I am pretty sure atleast one per month is killed in the tiny villages of India for petty reasons as dowry or even caste etc but they do not cover that. They rather cover what’s happening in Delhi and Mumbai. And they are right too. They have to sell.

A good idea of our own want of news can be judged from the most read or most watched sections of news websites.

Here is a sample:

One of the 5 most read news in BBC: Soul icon Isaac Hayes dies at 65

In CNN: 'Batman' No. 1 for fourth straight weekend

In Times of India: Are you hot in bed or a hopeless wreck? Read on for tips to get your act right... What makes a person great in bed?

In NDTV: Durga Puja rights sold to US company.

Now apparently, death of Isaac Hayes is the biggest news in BBC, CNN etc and may be the guy was really famous. Bit do I care? Not really.

On the other hand, rightly so, the news in Times of India is of most direct consequence. But do we really need that as part of news?

For me, the most important news form the above 4 is the last one, but probably it interests only the smallest portion of the readers of my blog.

Strange world.

I guess what the news channels and sites try to do is to put up news that most of the people would cherish and hence we get all the masala news we want to read/see but also love to comment on that what is news media becoming today.

Make sense yourself

2008-07-20T19:32:00.000-04:00

I just saw a movie called ‘Via Darjeeling’. I recommend seeing it but do not compromise any schedule for it, but when you have nothing better to do, typically Sunday 5-7 pm, just go for it. For this blog, I will be inspired by the same movie and write so many things without really making any sense. I will touch my favorite topics: Review, News I am following, musing, women and filmy gossip all at once.

Ok, so I went for this movie the Dark Knight, people said it’s the biggest grosser till date, well I slept for the first half, but I truly give credit to the movie that I atleast woke up for the second half. Next day, I went for the long awaited ‘जाने तू ’ movie alone.Before the movie, I was eating at a local sandwich shop and suddenly a procession went outside. This is very unlikely in US I guess but a group of people, old, young and even some kids were demonstrating for ‘No war on Iran’.

Anyway, afterwards I went for the movie and though the first fifteen minutes were boring and over acting, I don’t know why and at which point I liked the movie. Even when I think now, there is no single or even multiple points which are good about the movie, but it just sailed along. Initially I thought Genelia was boring but slowly she was just unstoppable. She was too good. And her voice is exactly like Urmila. To be precise, the Urmila of ‘ एक हसीना थी ’ questioning Saif always.

After coming back from movie I was chatting with a friend and we started rating which girl u liked in the movie. And here was my order: The girl with the guitar (Sugandha Garg), Genelia and Kitu Gidwani. Yes, the old timer, the Junoon woman and the Swetlana of स्वाभिमान. She was really cool. At least I found her so.

By the way, both these movies had one thing in common. They made me feel old. In Batman, the crowd around me was all high school kids and the freshmen and sophomores. If it were kids, they would have found Batman good, but these people, like typical people of the same age group were actually cheering for joker. I was pretty impassionate and was glad that the movie was over. Similar experience with जाने तू . The movie involved an अदीति and जय

of 20-21. And they were already talking about marriage and they were surrounded by friends and friends were the most important part in their life. Well, at 25, my friends are getting married around me, and I really love my friends, but things are not they way when I was 21. I think I became more mature in these 4 years than any consecutive 4 years except transition from age 1 to age 5. may be.

Talking of old times, Bachi caught my attention (yet again), with this wonderful article on Nagpur. She mentions Nagpur as a city with permanent prefix via. Mumbai to Kolkata, via Nagpur. The Nagpur people may take offense, but if you really read deep, you will appreciate each and every word of her and you are not sure whether she is telling good or bad about Nagpur, but the fact is that she has portrayed Nagpur as clearly as I have ever seen. These are the exact things what a non-Nagpurian thinks of Nagpur and these are also the things which make Nagpur so special to my heart.

By the way, I will be going to Nagpur (most probably) after a long gap of 6 years. Hope I still find the same warmth there.

P.S: The idea of this blog, as mentioned in first paragraph, is as convoluted as ‘Via Darjeeling’ and is also inspiration from the famous Big B blog, and his mixing of daily activities with viewpoints.

Too old!

2008-06-30T19:37:00.000-04:00

Is it growing up or is it already seen it all? Or is it that I am turning dumb over time? My yesterdays visit to Museum of Science in Boston left me with all these questions.

Why did I go there at first place? I don’t know. May be it is because this is one of the “to do” things in Boston and secondly it is free for MathWorkers. Ok, so now I land up there and see these “cool stuff”. A straight rod if rotated at an angle and at a radius form a centre doesn’t really form a straight line surface but a hyperboloid. Randomly falling balls in a series of vertical columns will form a Gaussian distribution. Definitely, these are not Kiddo stuff, but still I was not at all excited. Oh and then there was a spark generator and there were birds and the usual conversation of energy demos. Probably all I liked in the theater was the Rattle snake and I attempted speaking in Parseltongue with no real effect whatsoever. This definitely proves that it is not the “growing up” that has bored me.

The second reason can be overexposeure. The excellent “Science City” and “Birla Science Museum” in Kolkata or “Raman Science Center” in Nagpur or Vishveshwaraiyah Science Museum in Bangalore. I think I have overdone it. But if it is just loss of curiosity, then there were many things in here that were not there in the 3 above mentioned places and vice versa.

That really leaves me with the third option. Am I getting dumb or rather detached from these technology and science? Wow, so encouraging for my company whose motto is “Accelerating the pace of Science and Technology”!!

To my defense, this is what I have to say: At the exhibit hall named “Evolution of Computer”, all of us literally ran in the other direction.

What is worse is after coming back home, I logged into bhejafry.net and started watching IIFA 08. Needless to say I was enjoying it. Whether it was over enthusiasm of the Bachchan family in the event because Big B is the ambassador or be it the Gorgeous Urmila taking stage after so long. Loved it lots.

And this scares me even more. Such indifference to technology and such attention to the old timers like Urmila, makes me feel ashamed when I scold Maa and Baba for not learning how to e-mail or sms. Where will I be? I will still be driving my 2008 accord when my kids willl be traveling at light speed in their solar powered mini copters and communicate with people through the chips embedded in shape of earrings and pierced in lips and ears. They will read the video books. For example, now JKR would be able to not only pen or voice record her thoughts on Harry Potter but actually store what she visualized in her mind. She can also do revisions on the “video thoughts” just like one would do to the manuscript. Oh and she could transmit emotions too through these video books.

Well, this is the whackiest I can think of happening in the next 15 years and this is not all that whacky either. On second thoughts, am I being too realistic here? Haha, this is what a true engineer should be. Curtail your imagination and do what is needed. Well, now I am happy. :)

Book review: 3 Mistakes of My Life

2008-06-07T19:43:00.000-04:00

You can also read Advay's review here.

When writing about Chetan Bhagat, we should always remember that we are not expecting a 'Da Vinci Code' from him. We expect him to connect with the middle and upper class educated youth (thankfully, there is negligible difference amongst them nowadays). What's the %? Someone told me it's around 20% who are middle or up. Youth will be 50% of that, so let's say 10%. Well, he does write for them. For the people aged 17-30. And yes, he does it well.

Five Point Someone was much more hilarious, but there was nothing new in the story, just over dramatized version of our own life. Midnight at call center had a very poor ending though the buildup was nice. However, The 3 mistakes of my life is a better attempt. The language usage was improved and the story though was nothing out of the box, had a certain sweetness in it.

What I found most commendable is the delicate balance he maintained in the book about cricket, religion and politics. Certainly, these 3 are the most discussed thing in India and he maintained a good balance without tending to go towards cricket much more which would have been an easier path.

What I really liked was the way he portrayed the cause of Gujarat Riots, the father of a dead boy brainwashed by drinks carries on the riots while the biggies watch silently. This was by far the most neutral account of Gujarat Riots i have heard. Reminds me of 2 different versions of the riots I have heard before:
1) The hindus inside the carriages lit themselves, just for an opportunity to create riots. Give me a break.

2) The other and only true ( first person report) I had heard about this entire riots is by one of my gujju friends. His mom had a difficult time going out after the riots as she had to make sure that she wore all possible golden jewels and a big red bindi on her head showing that she is a Hindu. Well, not bad proposition for a woman to be saved from riots. What say?

Anyway, another thing that impresses me about Chetan is his ability to discuss on god. In the last book as well as this, god came very naturally and in a nice way without any particular religious belief. This impresses me so much because I can see a slight dilema even in JKR. generally in magical books where good and bad come up so easily, god and devils come in the same breath, but JKR has avoided it. Is it her mastery or her cowardice? Well, Chetan did manage it well and that I think is most commendable.

Movies I like

2008-06-01T16:46:00.000-04:00

One can categorize movie watchers into the following groups:

The one who like the Action/ Sci Fi, in short, fast paced movies with no brainer or something so technically advanced that they can get totally immersed and actually love the so called scientific concepts in the movie.

There is another class which likes the Oscar movies with intense drama and deep thought provoking theme.

There is the widest class which like any movie with a great star cast, lots of style, lots of romance angle even if it is action (Spidey 2) and which are generally hit even before they release.

I fall in class 3. But somehow there is sometimes a thin line between category 1 and category 3. An example will be the recent Iron Man or the National Treasure 2. For the same reasons mentioned above, I chose to go for both of these. But I was disappointed.

Or was I? Actually not. I was motivated. Motivated to watch more of “Tanananananaaa… Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham” kind of movies where Shahrukh stammers, Amitabh gives well punctuated but long dialog deliveries and the heroines do a virtual fashion show with Manish Malhotra clothes. Off late, Kabhi khushi kabhi gham has become a benchmark for me. It lies in the critical region below which any movie can become unwatchable. Example: Veer Zaara, KANK, Tara Rum Pum, Aaja Nachle. Movies which barely cross it on the other side will be No Entry, Laaga Chunari mein daag, Om shanti om and even bhootnaath.

Amongst the English ones, I guess such a movie will be “The Departed”. It lies in the better side of the movies but for English movie, the criteria are totally different. There has to be a good story, because if there is no good story, I will again rather watch des ki movie…tanaanaaanaana….with loads of songs and dances.

You might be wondering why “The Departed”, its because it has all the factors I consider important : An A1 star cast, a wonderful story and not so sci fi-ish. However where it fails is the use of swear words. I can understand, to give the true picture, you do need to be realistic, use the language of the people. But then you also have to keep in mind that movie is a mass medium, and however common in lingo, swear words can never be good and should be consciously avoided. A classic example of such a movie will be “Omkara” which had to have some bad words, but they were kept to the minimum required.

Now the interesting comparison. Movies above and below “The Departed”. The ones that are bad : Iron Man, National Treasure 2, Oceans 12, Pirates 3, Beowulf etc etc. Movies better: All HPs ( the best story in the world), Atonement, Oceans 11 and 13, Spidey 2, Lions for lambs, Charlie Wilson’s war etc.

Hehhe, again a post so full of me comes to an end. I know this will end up with no comments. But I can’t stop myself from copying Bachi Karkaria at this stage. Bachi always quotes a certain Alec Smart ( Interestingly, when wikied, Smart Alc refers to a person who is regarded as obnoxiously self-assertive and an impudent person. Anyway, so here we go:

Alec Smart says “ I started enjoying Rajnikanth movies from the day I saw ‘The Transporter’”

The Scared Blogger

2008-05-22T21:43:00.000-04:00

Well I am scared and not just as blogger. The whole freedom of expression definition needs to be changed. This freedom of expression issue started with the M.F. Hussain pictures. Then came Taslima's books. Well, well, we can argue for both sides for hours. Not long before it cooled down, there came the Message by some Gurgaon guy about Sonia Gandhi. Well can you say anything about any person? May be yes, may be not.

For me, it will be this: If the person is not talking directly to me, he/she can say whatever he wants. If saying about me to a person who cares about me, that person should be smart enough to not get angry by some stupid saying something about a person you like. And finally, if the person is saying bad things to me with me, good enough, let's sort it out. No way, you can complain to a court. That too, here the case was scenario 2. I guess, this was just another of those futile attempts to get into the good books of N-G family.
As for me, whenever I tell someone that I am a big fan of Bipasha, they immediately say: " But dude, she is a B****. She had 4 boyfriends in the past". Expecting a angry reply or a defensive statement form me, what they get really shuts them up: " Hey, can you find me a more gorgeous B****?" This really shuts everybody up and then they come up wit meek replies like "Whatever, I don't like her", and I reply "ur wish, I never asked you to. The lesser the better"
I wish the fans of Sonia were as smart as me (eh!!)

The other scary thing happening is Aamir and Amitabh writing. Amitabh is just defending himself from the many many things that have been written about him. His latest style (as of day 34) is scan the newspaper and critique everyline. Do read his defense to Shobhaa Dey for Aishwarya's creased dress in first day at Cannes 08. It goes like this:

" Oh ! About the creases on Aishwarya’s dress, I never noticed any and it is hardly expected of a team of 15 stylists, dress makers and make up professionals from Armani to L’Oreal working on her for hours since the morning of the event, to have overlooked such obvious detail. The protocol at the venue is strict and disciplined. Celebrities are seated in respective special Festival cars to ride in a motorcade almost 50 meters long to a destination just 100 meters away; the crowds, and traffic and paparazzi making this innocuous little journey an hour long ! Sitting on any dress this long would crease.

I am disappointed though that your customary wit failed to notice the creases that needed repair on the faces of many of the other celebrated stars from Hollywood. Whither patriotism ??"

Well well, Amitabhji, you are surely a role model. every bahu will be proud of you. You have redefined Sasur Bahu relationship. Is Ekta listening?

The other thing was Amitabh defending rather denying Aish/Abhi's premarriage temple tours being anything to do with Aish being Mangalik. Well Sir ( as most people call him), you need not defend, infact, it shows rays of hopes to the hundreds of lovers whose stories are not going further because of this issue. Now they really dont care of they have to marry trees et al to get to their loved ones.

Aamir aamir. poor guy, innocent humor turned so costly. I know your fan base is mostly concentrated on a web based so called educated young generation making yours the highest membered community on Orkut and making your movies like RDB and TZP rise to levels it should not. But you know and I know, even a KKKirrran or a "taaanannanana, kabhi khhushie..kabhie gham" kind of hamming can shake u off the chair.

Extending what one of my colleagues commented today on Bush (apparently Bush has a cat called India), what if aamir's dog pees on him? It will be " Shahrukh peed of Aamir."

Lolz...

Justifying being Bips fan

2008-05-11T18:57:00.000-04:00

Haha. Since this seems to be an argumentative topic, the first question that you might ask will be why justify if you truly like her? Well, I don't have the answer except that there will be somme sense of self praise tat will go on in the following paragraphs.

Nobody can deny that you ought to have a favorite movie actress though orkut has not introduced it yet(preferably one in hollywood and one in bollywood). You can definitely like all the heroines but like favorites in anything (sports, politics, travel) you do have favorites in movies too.

My choosing favorite heroines had started long back when I used to say 'fyavrit' for favorite. The first one was hema and then it was Juhi for a long long time and she is still my favorite only that she is doing roles of sisters and middle aged women nowadays. That was followed by Urmila after her famous dances in Rangeela and chamma chamma. I liked her in all the movies but somehow she turned into a similar role witha bhoot types looks with specialization in scenes in which she has to act scared.

After Urmila age which ended in around early 2000's, there was a time when the favorites kept changing and then it settled on Bipasha.

Well, I have to say I am alone in this new choice. My friends not only have other favorites but they really hate her. Many of them tend to go towards the homely looking "Amrita Rao" who simply reminds me of Mallika Sherawat's comment "If you want to see a girl next door, go next door". My friends are predominantly marathis and they like Sonali Bendre a lot, I guess because she has a typical marathi face. The majority though still crave for Aishwarya. Well my point is: It is a fact that she is the most beautiful woman on earth. I think ash can't be somebody's favorite the same way sachin can be nobody's favorite. These two people are beyond comparison.

Well, and that is the starting point of liking Bipasha. You tend to like someone who is hatke. Bipasha is sexy but she is not the usual league of Neha Dhupiya, Amrita Arora and Mallika Sherawats. Bipasha can never be the typical Yash Raj/Karan Johar women like Rani or Preity. She is also not as rare as Chitrangada and nor is she as artistic as Konkona who tends to act more when more money is paid. Well that leaves me with 2 choices: Kareena and Bipasha, and naturally I choose Bipasha.

There is something about her that is so enchanting and inspite of me being a "fairness ka pujari", I just can't take my eyes of her. I also like the way she portrays herself. She takes acting as a profession and does things similar to what we do to improve our resumes. She acts in different kinds of movies to have a hold on all of them. Her voice is the other thing that charms me. It's so different from the rest of the people.

Ok enuf, I just realized that this is the crappiest post am ever writing and the justifications above won't even change the views of a single person. Signing off on a lazy sunday....

Current Reality Shows on Indian Television

2008-05-03T19:34:00.000-04:00

Well, to my defense (or should I), I do follow a few American reality shows like American Idol, So you think you can dance and Hell’s Kitchen, but it is the Indian shows that I like the most. In the past, I have compared the reality based Indian Idol 3 and the most unrealistic show Koffee with Karan.

Today I followed 3 reality shows almost back to back.

Let’s start with “Kya aap paanchvi paas se tez hai”. Copied from “Are you smarter than a fifth grader”, though some liked it YET, I can’t guarantee that I won’t like it later. First thing was the concept was not new to me. Secondly, I expected that Shahrukh will give a totally new dimension to the show, but he was almost enacting his KBC only not sitting in a chair this time. Te children gave it away. Though all of them were selected to be nice smart and cute, it was very apparent that they were trained to act so. I bet even their dialogs were scripted. But the funniest part of the entire show was the first contestant. The lady from Jharsuguda. She looked like she is just out of the “Saas Bahu” serial sets. Her all actions reminded me of Tulsi of KSBKBT (the only show I saw some 10 episodes of). She wore bangles till elbows in both hands and the saari also looked like one from the sets. The way she put hands in the ears and kissed the kids, all looked like copied from the ‘Saas Bahu’ serial. But I guess we cannot blame her. I have seen a few samples before my eyes and this one from TV who have made me believe that the new Indian Housewife, or new indan wife who watces this saas bahu serials try to enact them consciously r subconsciously. So its not the Bipashas, Kareenas and Aishwaryas who are defining styles of modern women but the Kkusums, Gangas and Tulsis.

Moving on to reality show II: MTV roadies 5.0. Well, this is the reason for the YET in capitals in the previous paragraph. Just a few blogs back I had thrashed this show simply because I had seen an unedited version of behind the scenes in the MTV website where they did not censor the swearing. Apparently, they are censored in the main show. The game is all about politics and the ladies bitch a lot. That does add lot of spice to the show. The tasks are not very easy and cover all sorts. It’s the true DARE tasks one may think of in Truth and Dare. They ask them to strip, dance with shaved legs, eat snakes and roaches, sleep with moving saw below, jump form high spots etc. What makes t more exciting that though people do all these tasks, it doesn’t ensure them a chance in next round. That is entirely dependent on the contestants. And I guess the Saas bahu effect has reached me. I can’t leave the show midway.

The third one is the most passionate one. People won’t call it reality show, but I do. The Indian Premiere League or IPL. Since day 1 it has been dramas and they never seem to end. The day the bidding started with Shahrukh, Juhi and Preity falling into cricket business, it got the required entertainment factor. Just when things were beginning to get sporty, Shahrukh came up with Korbo Lorbo Jeetbo re and soon Preity, Akshay, Katrina, Hrithik started singing and dancing for their own teams. Next came the cheer leaders’ episode. I don’t have any views on whether it’s good for the Indian society or not but I have one comment. Either let them as they are, or eliminate them with Bhangra, Koknaki and Lawni dances but please don’t make them wear long clothes and continue the same.

But this is not the end of the drama. To add the sent plot to it, bhajji slaps sreesanth and worse: he starts crying in front of TV. If this was not setup beforehand like all reality shows do, surely the 10 match ban was a setup. Even if that is not, the Ganguly- Warne one has to be one. And the usual spice is there too. Rediff didn’t delay a bit in coming up with stories with the Katrina and Akshay pictures. If that is not enough there is all the hoopla with Priety hugging only the star players. Surely, it is the baap of all reality shows.

Unaccustomed Earth; A review from a Jhumpa Fan;

2008-04-20T17:07:00.000-04:00

There are few people whose opinion I value and I change my adamant stance about my thoughts and views only based on these selected people. One of them told me that Jhumpa writes too much about Bengalis immigrated to US and their lifestyle. I believed and the next day, Jhumpa was out of my orkut community which I have diligently kept to a small number of 13 which identifies my past and my passions.

But still I could not resist the weekend “Unaccustomed Earth” was released. It was released on Friday the 4^th April and I bought the book on the 6^th from Barnes and Nobles, the counter lady telling me that the book is becoming very popular. Well I didn’t care because something told me, I have to read this. I have this knack of following authors and reading all of their work; so far have finished Jane Austen and Mario Puzo. From the goddess (JKR) and the queen (Jhumpa), I expect many more but I guarantee I will follow all of their works.

Anyway, with an opened mind, I read through the stories. As always, the language so simple yet so elegant made me fly though the stories. Here each story was quite different from the other, all dealing with some form of complicated relationships. The base was still the same though (Immigrant Bengalis) but now it was all about the GENNEXT: The first generation immigrants. Some of the views really opened new windows of thoughts. Once she mentions how the Indian parents always tell about the hardships they faced before coming to the US but never do the children tell about the humiliation they have to go through in the schools for their strange habits of greasy lunch boxes and unfamiliar rituals. The parents do not like when the children fall for a non-Indian partner leaving their parents speechless and heart-broken but did the parents realize that they have done far worse to their parents leaving them 10’s of thousands of miles away?

Another nice part I liked and this has to be personal is the location. All the stories are primarily based in and outskirts of Boston. Cambridge, Wayland, Marlborough, Peabody and even my present place Natick. To all the readers of this blog who know me, please read this book just for the sake of the description of New England, the weather, the people etc. Just yesterday for the first time, I went to one of my family friends place on their anniversary. It was full of Bengali people and pages from Jhumpa’s book just flashed before my eyes. The kids speaking with rolling r’s and not eating the elaborate 7 course meal and instead savoring the cheese pizza. The parents discussing the school they have put the children into, the grading etc. It was just like they were acting on Jhumpa's directions.

But the masterpiece of the book is surely the 3^rd part, consisting of three short stories jointly called “Kaushik and Hema”. It can surely be made into another of those movies like The Namesake. And this should be an eye opener for all the people who criticize of her choice of topic. Though the story is still about immigrant Bengalis, it is not about their lifestyle. It’s a story; I feel is ageless and location less too. Infact, still leaving the characters to be Bengali Immigrants, she just proves her literary superiority. The flow of the story so elegant and so different from the other Bookers I read where I spend almost 50% of the book before I get glued to it.

Again, for the readers, who know me personally; if you decide to read this book, let me know. I will be truly happy to gift one copy. (Well, a few don’t have a choice : ) )

Of birthdays and birthday gifts

2008-04-06T15:47:00.000-04:00

Today (In

India

)/ Tomorrow(here) (i.e. 7^th April) is Umesh Bude’s birthday. Happy Birthday Doobs. When I called him, his phone was busy and instead he called me in sometime. This is one of the firsts oh this kind. Generally people (me included) generally don’t give calls to others on their own on the birthday. But it does sound like a good idea. What he explained to me was that there was a brief gap between his calls and he thought of maximizing his efficiency by himself calling up other people. Good Idea Doobs, will surely implement it from next time.

Somehow I have always enjoyed friends birthdays more than my own. Over the top of my head, I remember these few:

1) Mana’s birthdays: They were always fun with me going a bit early to help in the decorations. And Mana always got an amazing number of Sketch Pens as birthday gifts.

2) Sumit’s Birthday: Sumit’s birthday in 2000, the last one before I left home was a fun. It was one of those last get togethers we school people had. We both wore Kurtas instead of usual clothes just to be different and did soil it thoroughly.

3) Doob’s birthdays in college: It was rare that we brought cakes for friends birthdays. I bought one this time. But what I remember that for is that was one of the worst cakes ever. The icing was too sweet and non-soft. The cake was dry too. But we were all so hungry that we finished all.

4) Vikram’s birthday in 2^nd year: Vikram likes his birthdays low key. But somehow that day was some function at college open theater and when everybody knew he was thrown his birthyear times in the air and every time it was around 20 feet into the air.

If I try remembering now, I would rate my 2005 birthday as the best because what happened was totally unexpected. And I was actually cribbing that how my past birthdays were and how I am stuck up in such a faraway land this year when suddenly 20+ people come in with a huge cake. And it ended with me in almost zero degree water(that time zero degree as still cold, now its warm). It was certainly the most pleasantly surprised birthdays.

Now coming to gifts. Even though the most popular gifts evolved over the ages, since for some reason I never celebrated my birthdays, I never got any. Till I was 6-7, the traditional gifts were always vessels (tumblers, plates or bowls) wrapped in Magenta color papers and with to and fro names etched on it. Most of the tumblers at my home still have “Tua ke.. xyz”. Still don’t know why there was no “Tublu ke..”

Then times changed and plastic took over steel. The gifts: Pencil Boxes, tiffin boxes (especially the one with spoons with it) and of course The Sketch Pen set. People would get 6-7 sketchpen sets on birthdays but by default, still a month later, you will make your dad go to the store and get another set. Sketchpens are meant for losing.

And then came the time of show-pieces. These were the most nonsense gifts one could think of and added no value but were considered very up class. It was mostly black metal photo frames or Natraj or Ganesh.

Then things changed to perfumes and deos (and this was not so long ago) when somebody told me that these gifts are just meant for girlfriends and boyfriends. So since I have none, that was also out of question.

And at this time, I realized that books are the safest gifts. I have received a “Blandings Castle” every year during my undergrad from dada. When I started gifting people, my favorite was Pride and Prejudice. I have gifted it to atleast 10+ people. Books are still my favorite gift items to be given because its easily available and offers such a variety, that it can often be considered “oh so thoughtful”

The most selfish gift I ever bought was a headphone to enable a friend for voice chatting so that telephone minutes could be saved.

Anyway, can anyone suggest more ideas? To a girl you can give flowers, plants if not books. What do you buy for guys?

Control system and the present state of nation

2008-03-22T22:44:00.000-04:00

Certainly this is something big. Same day in Times of India, there are four columns by Bachi Karkaria, Jug Suraiya, Shashi Tharoor and Taurn Vijay. All lashing out against oust of Taslima Nasreen from India. Apart from the slight Hindu angle by Tarun Vijay (which is expected) all others speak of freedom of expression at different levels.

The root problem is that we are succumbing to a very small group of people. And the reason is obvious. Because this small group of people always vote. (or are they made to vote?) I still remember my mom voted only once and that too because a local party worker provided her and her friends a ride to the polling booth. Well, we so called educated people feel lazy to vote. We need some stimuli which will make us vote. Certainly the poorer classes of the people get those stimuli. They are targeted by the politicians during the run up to elections that their needs will be met. They are the people who attend the mass rallies. We conveniently sit in our couches and listen to the Sagarikas and the Barkhas. Whatever they present to us, we discuss all about it but on the crucial day we chicken out. I have heard during elections, politicians do come door to door to ask for vote. But I have never seen anybody at my door asking my parents to come and vote. Only once did the local municipal leader come and that was the only time Maa voted. Is it the way the politicians treat us or the way we treat the politicians that has made the middle middle class and upper middle class disconnected from politics. Worse still is with India Shining, this middle middle class and upper middle class is increasing. And so we are seeing a growing political disinterest amongst people. And sure enough, politicians are all out to woo the lower middle class and the poor and not in a proper way but the cheap tactics. The result: 60000 Cr loans, Oust of Taslima and many many more. By the way, the tax slabs are such that the lower middle class and lower class doesn’t pay taxes.

What’s the end result? The taxpayers’ money goes towards cheap appeasement and creating vote bank of the non tax payers. It doesn’t need a control system engineer to say that this is an unstable system. It needs a feedback loop (well the control engineer in me says that open loops can be stable too and closed loops can still be unstable).

Well how did this happen? Let’s say that the open loop system was stable and the transient responses (independence, emergency) being over, it was the steady state responses that were taking effect. This system can now go unstable because of some external disturbances. I don’t know the creator of disturbances, but I can see the kind of disturbances. It’s religion. I have been taught all along that all religions are equal and I believed it without even questioning it. And so did everybody. We all thought Sanskrit as an ancient language which defines India. Was it so Hindu? We all learnt shlokas as a part of pur curriculum. So did we learn the stories of Jesus and all the Muslim soofis. We learnt ramayan and mahabharat as stories. I enjoyed the complex characters, the wars and every bit of it. I bet all of my Christian and Muslim friends did too. After all it was a nice story, and the way it was presented was a story and we didn’t sit with flowers and agarbattis in our hands to read these books. So were the stories from old testaments and Akbar and Mughals. It all came to us as a natural course. We never thought of it as religion. But then one day (thankfully after I passed out of school) some moron politician started rethinking the curriculum. They thought Mughal portion is more and it should be otherwise. Well it started with that. The other party came to power and not only vetoed this decision but also made sure that vande Mataram is not sung in schools. Saraswati is a hindu goddess and not the goddess of knowledge. I think soon the Ramayan and mahabharat will be banned from school and our morning prayers, though still will have

“Vatan ke waaste hi jeena, watan ke waaste hi marna”, it won’t have “Sarve bhavantu sukhinah, sarve santu niramayah, sarve bhadrani pashyantu, Ma kashchid dukhbhagbhavet, om shant shanty shantihi”.

Everything we were taught had been dissected. We were not told that Hinduism is a way of living. We just accepted it not as Hinduism but as Indianness. We always liked Christianity not because God is great, but we associated it with God loves children (the pictures showed so) and Christians make cakes which are good to eat. We even had a faint hope of getting fairer. But all that went on in a subconscious level. It is the new age politics which is putting finger in eye and and saying this act is Hindu, this act is muslim and so on. The disturbance made the loop unstable.

The solution? There can be 2 ways: the engineer may want to introduce a feedback loop which will make it stable even against disturbances. But then I guess this loop will be that educationàpolpulation circular loop. Unless we tackle polulation, we can’t educate people, we can’t stop population unless we educate people.

The other solution is cut off the disturbance. After all, its there in Gita:

“Yada yada hi dharmasya ( countrysya) glanirbhavatu bharatah”

“Abhyutthanam adharmasya (bad people) sambhavami yugey yugey” Only this time, it won’t be Kalki, it has to be all of us.

News I am keeping an eye on

2008-03-14T18:02:00.000-04:00

Well, yet again, I want to write something but not have anything to write about. So I do the usual, news that I am following nowadays. The comments to the blog have reached an all time low so this post will help me later when I try to think "What was I thinking that time?"

To begin with, the most nonsense piece but which is talked about everywhere but is of least significance I think. US elections. My local friend says US has never withdrawn troops from any country it ever attacked (like even Japan), so no way anybody who comes will have chance to do anything different. The healthcare plan both Obama and Hillary talk about is nonsense. It can never match India's healthcare system where you can afford to go to a doctor even if you sneeze in the morning. And whenever people talk about "First colored President" or "First Woman President", I get reminded of the great president of India who inspite of being the "First woman president of world's largest democracy", fills me with shame. Nobody can deny that she is in noway more talented than our kaamwali bai - Parvatibai Gayakwad.

Next ofcourse is the bloggers favorite: The great 60000 Cr Rs loan waiver to Indian farmers. This topic hurts me lots and I tend to avoid it but so many people constantly writing about it leaves me with no choice but to read. My Take: This may be a bad step, but which govt hasnot done something this foolish before the elections?

Getting on to better topics, IPL. The money game. It cannot be anything other than that. Right now, none of my firnds seem to be too much interested in that but soon they will be. And we will have to choose a team. But I will be waiting for more teams that are planned for future. I will wait for Nagpur team. Let's see when the "Nagpur Narangis" are ready to rock.

WLIFW or Wills LifeStyle India Fashion Week. Offlate it seems that this event is not a yearly but a quarterly event. And ofcourse none of the clothes they have makes any sense to me. But then the best part of every IFW is Bipasha's commitment to fashion industry. She always comes and wears some funny clothes and surely there is John to cheer her up and rediff and Hindol Sengupta of IBNLIVE to cover the news.

Aamir Khan blogs. They have been a news item in themselves as I have seen Times of India and Rediff making news articles out of his blogs. It's utterly funny because Aamir's blog are so amateurish. I guess he doesn't know anything about blogging but still I bet his blogs are most read and most commented (May be in the world)

And ofcourse the evergreen Bipasha Basu. Well, she is never out of news and if Google News is to be believed, she makes it to some news on Times Of India everyday. After her disastrous Dhan Dhana dhan goal, and the splitting and making up stories with John, latest she is in news for her "Classic Bob Cut" and her saucy role in Race. Well, but the funniest of all that was Bipasha saying she doesn't like makeup ( I can't find the link where I read this). And here is the news I just read today. This news is surely written for the visually impaired:

"Bipasha showed her curves in a jersey knit black halter top with a revealing neckline and a short tube skirt. Her top was accented with a satin bow at the center of the V-neckline.

She wore two necklaces with lovely pendants in silver tone and a black wide bracelet in her right arm.

Bipasha's newly acquired bob cut is still in place and continues to look great on her. It compliments her facial cut and gives her an air of confidence."

Well that's all I follow. Thanks rediff, for my complimenting my interests. :)

Is cheez ko main kya naam doon?

2008-03-03T22:24:00.000-05:00

bitch´ing

n. 1. complaining; griping.

Adj. 1. an informal intensifier; as, we had a bitching good time.

What I am going to write about is the Noun form. Earlier I had thought of many meanings of that word based on perception, but all the synonyms that dictionary.com and/or wikipedia gave were very generic and of good taste.

Disclaimer: This discussion is not based on any particular person and though people may identify some, I consider this as a necessary part of girls ( I am of the opinion that a woman is not a woman if she does not do nakhras and bitches about other women)

Though generally we relate this act with girls, I have observed a majority of guys too doing the same. Let us concentrate on the part played by girls. Later we will move to guys bitching; which though less but it exists. Let us now concentrate on girls. 90% of us (the guys) would have had multiple occasions where we fell to the prey of this phenomenon. It is generally some office colleague or some friend or it can even be someone you meet in voice chat. There need not be any kind of great friendship that needs to be developed before this happens but yes certainly over the time you become good friends. And by default, the topic of discussion is other girl (roommate, colleague or classmate). Room-mates being the all time favorites. I feel it is something they need as a part of their life. As in, staying without roommates is not a solution. They will somehow find one or the other to bitch about and it’s such a funny discussion. Most of the time it is related to food or bartan. Sometimes clothes and how things are kept or it may be TV channels or the music too loud but there definitely will be some complains. And all you have to do is occasional ‘hmm’s. And it can go on and on forever. After a great amount of time, they realize that it has been long enough and will apologize and finish talking. I know most of my friends have witnessed this (being at the receiving end) themselves and I bet the others have faced it too. If not, I seriously advise you to get some hands on experience. It may not be as fascinating as watching Taj Mahal under full moon light but then not far behind :)

But I really appreciate the stories. They are so nonsense but it seems so important. ‘Everyday TV chalake zor se aawaaz aata hai’. ‘Bathroom mein bahut der tak rehti hai, late hota hai’ , ‘khana theek se nahi pakati’. It can be any stories. But they have so much grudge and that calms down only after an hour and more of talking. God knows what was achieved.

On the other hand, guys also do bitch, but it is much smaller time. It’s like same things, but then it gets over in 5 minutes. So what do they do with the time that is saved? Listen to some girl for the rest of the time :)

Obscenities and Moral Policing

2008-02-18T12:14:00.000-05:00

I am against both moral policing and the obscenities in public. But when I try to analyze it, I myself stand confused. Let me do a self introspection and writing always helps.

What motivated me to write this article is the latest post by Rashmi Bansal. She writes about MTV roadies and channel V hotties. What she wrote and what videos I saw when I did a bit of background check was shocking. They are so narrow-minded; they have just concentrated on the college kids and the fresh out of college generation. I myself don’t swear in common day to day dialogues, but I know it’s pretty natural and I do accept it from others. But it is entirely different if these come on national telecast and that too without beeps. I just saw a video about behind the scenes roadies and the profane obscenities totally shook me. Asking people to roam around in undergarments in a 7 pm show is not really acceptable.

Another thing I dislike more is swear words in public. I know it’s close to reality, but there should be some scale. I didn’t like “Departed” in spite of it being a nice movie is just because though I tried hard, I could not justify the F word in every 10 seconds. In the Indian context, obscenities strike me even more. I can accept if these kinds of shows (Hotties / Roadies) are reserved for after 11, or some other channel. Or even if parents just take care that the child is not watching these. But I myself has once seen that a small kid and his father both watching “Kaanta lagaa” and enjoying it.

Am I being Shiv Senaish? May be. But I still don’t support Sushma Swaraj’s act to ban Fashion TV. Banning is not a solution. But definitely, the parents should be responsible. But who will do that?

And doesn’t this contradict with the fact that I like Bipasha Basu? I definitely wouldn’t have liked Jism to be a movie where whenever John and Bipasha come, they show two flowers.

I guess it is just the beginning phases of a developing nation. In a developed nation, all things are available. But because the people are educated, they themselves can differentiate between right and wrong and take care of their children. On the other hand, in India, the content has come but people are not smart enough to take it wisely. I guess, with time things will settle. Let’s just pass this trend as momentary.

Side Note: Off late, I realize that most of my posts end up in a solution where people have to be more knowledgable and wise? Is this a practical solution? And is it achievable, If so, how?

Immigrants

2008-02-10T18:31:00.000-05:00

It all starts by reading these two articles. The Bachi Karkaria one and the Greatbong one. I think I can comment on this new hot topic of immigrants as well. I have been an immigrant all my life. But still I can’t fight FOR the immigrants. There are two reasons for that. First one is, I feel, commenting on immigration problem as an immigrant is like the extremely dirty proverb “Kandhe Pe Chadhao to Kaan mein Mutta hai” ( Take him in your shoulder and he will piss in your ears.) Yuck. I can’t believe I can write this on my blog, but please give me a more apt and decent one. The other day my manager (American) was discussing how he hates the quotas for H1B and how they should be removed. I felt I don’t have the right to speak on that topic.

The second thing is I have seen two of my favorite places ruined because of the influx of immigrants. First one is Bangalore. Undue advantage has been taken on the generally quiet and well mannered Kannada people. Firstly by the Tamils and now by the North Indians. The costs have risen sky high and the traffic jams. Plus this tendency of Indians in general to impose their culture on others. Unlike them becoming like the rest of the Kannadigas, everybody wants their own kind of living. And with the predominantly young software crowd, things are out of hands.

The second case is that of Puri. Did you know it belonged to Orissa? Even if you did, just go there once, you won’t feel it that way. Its Bengalis all around. Even the shopkeepers say only one sentence in Oriya- ‘Dhai Kiri Kiri’ (hurry up, fast fast or something similar) and this too just because for some strange reason Bengalis find it funny. Makes me cry though.

Coming to the recent Marathi Manoos chaos. Technically I can comment because I have been born and brought up in Maharashtra. It’s Maharashtra’s and Nagpur’s generosity/fault that I didn’t learn Marathi because I could survive well without it. Anyway, I think Mumbai is an exception. I have never been to Mumbai but I have been to New york. And if Mumbai is even a bit like it, it’s a city of immigrants. The city thrives on immigrants. And New York was the first place ever I liked the immigrants. I think Mumbai is also the same.

Let Pune be the city of Marathi manoos. And that does not mean immigrants not allowed, but immigrants acting as “In Rome, Do as the Romans Do”. Same has to apply with Bangalore now as it is in irreparable state. Let Mysore be the Pune of Karnataka. As for Kolkata and Chennai, they are different league. Whatever you try to do, they will never change. Kolkata will always be bongy and Chennai be Tamily.

Ok, so as the conclusion was ‘In Rome Do as the Romans do’, a bit of appendage is necessary: ‘To the extent you don’t loom foolish’ and this appendage applies to all those fake American accent putters. J

Republic days of the Past

2008-01-24T19:05:00.000-05:00

Oh yes, this is how I started the blog with. Musing about the olden golden days. And here we go again. Let's begin. And it's fun. Because this does have a beginning, a middle and an end. Surprisingly beginning and ends are just 1 years each.

Beginning: I don't remember what I did in Lower KG (We called it KG1) but in KG 2, I performed. Stop.... I forgot a prologue.

Prologue: Republic day for me/OF Ambajhari Nagpur, people mean the mega interschool competition held at the ATS grounds in the OF estate. Don't be overwhelmed by the abbreviations and the jargons, it simply means the only stadium in our locality. There used to be 2 sections, KG schools and schools (included primary and secondary). There was competition in 3 categories (March Past, Dance, Mass PT) and finally the coveted best school title). Note that KG schools did not participate in March Past.

Resume Beginning: I was in the dance competition and we danced on the famous 'Jee Ka Janjal' which I also mention in an earlier post. I don't remember whether we won or lost but undoubtedly that was my biggest ever stage appearance. I would believe the typical crowd will be 6-8 thousand people. And that was the end. I never performed anything on the republic day ever after.

Middle: As I said, I never performed after that and the main reason being PT and dance was a girls only territory and march past was for people >= 9th Standard. So lets concentrate on the other factors for this huge period between 1st standard to 10th standard.

Though officially a holiday, thanks to my fathers insistence, we never thought we could NOT go to school that day. Another attraction was the Laddus. After flag hoisting in respective schools, there used to be sweets distribution to all the students in the school. It used to be 2 laddus and a packet of Chewda. Sometimes the school gave just 1 laddu and we would shout that the management is "eating" money. Anyway the point is not that. My mother is a big fan of this school laddus (though they are far from the best) and it was perhaps the only occasion where I could give something to mom instead of she giving something which was the case every time. So fighting with my greed and determination, generally mom will end up with at least half the laddu and I would like to believe that she understood the hardwork that went behind giving her that piece.

The other fact is the feeling of patriotism. Pardon me for generalizing my feelings, I feel Indians are one of the least patriots amongst all countries. At least from what I have seen, patriotism amongst Indians is far less than the US people though its a farce because hardly any of the US people have American roots. But this republic was different. I would wake up and amidst getting ready to go to school, I would surely not miss the live telecast of the republic day celebration from Delhi. With the entire nation, I would also stand up when the national anthem was sung in Delhi with the 21 firings of canon. After that dressed in an all white uniform I will head for the school where until the actual falg hoisting starts, they will play all the patriotic songs most moving being 'Ae mere watan ke logon'. Then after the laddu distribution, we all will head towards the big stadium where the inter-school competitions will start. With one eye on the ongoing events, we will be mainly looking at all the food and small toys shop. We never got our weekly/monthly pocket money but in occasions like these, we did get some (10/- being on the higher side.) We always compromised with cheap food so that we could buy some toy not because the toy is good but because the longevity of a toy or a flag is more than the food and we get more time to show off our purchases. Finally around afternoon, the prizes will be given out and more often than not, it was the 'other' school which won most of it and I came back with a sad face back home. But that is only momentary. Some special cooking by mom will be ready in the tables. I will ask maa about all the details of the various tableau (jhaaki) that were in procession in Rajpath Delhi and who won the best tableau which was mostly goa or lakshwadeep.

Lastly in this middle zone, I also realized that republic day actually marks the entry of spring. It was the first day when I would take off my sweater in the middle of the day and never wear it again.

The end: The end was as undramatic as it can be. I was in 11th standard. There was a divided opinion among that being the last year you can have some fun in school life or being the most crucial year which if neglected will screw up the very important 12th standard. The geek that I am, I was of the second opinion and hence restrained from taking part in the March Past which all others of my class participated in. Me and my firend sumit were the only two 'studious' guys who did not take part but that doesn't mean we didn't come to the event. We were there full time. What extra advantages we got by not participating is a question I still wonder.

Anyway, after this pretty much was the end of republic day celebrations for me. Though we did celebrate it at college, it just involved 5 minutes of flag hoisting ceremony.

New year, new musings

2008-01-05T23:29:00.000-05:00

Well, a new year has come. I spent the first few hours of the new year with old and dear college friends partying in California. A great start I should say. A few new year resolutions made only to be forgotten and renewed during the Bengali new year 3.5 months later.

A few trends I have observed. A increase in the number of blog readers. Makes me happy but sad as well at the thought that though people are reading, even those who used to comment, do not comment. And I could trace various reasons for that. Most important is being lazy to type. The second most important reason is that most of the times the topics are so vague and out of the world that people won't connect to it. For example my last 2 cookery posts. Even the 2 posts related to West bengal was not that appreciated. Only bengalis will care about bengal. Whatever, I have decided to go on with my present style of writing irrespective of people's perspective about the blog. The trick is to have good titles to increase the readership. For example, te title of this blog is very vague and will never come up with possible searches. On the other had, things like potter pandal, tasleema nasreen will be widely read.

Coming to the third point, different that I am, from everybody, this one, is another characteristic of mine which right at this moment I am cherishing immensely. There is a bus service in Natick: Natick neighborhood bus, going all around Natick. Nobody except the really old people ride in the bus. those who can't drive or don't have money enough to have a car. Well, as I still haven't got mine, I sometimes travel in that bus. Even a few friends of mine did. But they got scared. They feel depressed seeing all the old people. But for me, it gives me hope, a lot of hope. A hope that I want to live a long life (bolte nei). That during the long life though my children will desert me, the government wont. I can still talk about how Mr X of 72 is dating Ms Y of 76 and how Mrs Z made pudding by mixing pudding powder as per instructions on teh back of the pack. All of them know each other. Today all the 3 of them scolded a 4th lady for not wearing enough winter clothing. I liked the whole fact a lot. Though I feel out of place. Though it should act as a motivation to buy the car soon that I do not have to look out of place, but I think even after I have my car, I will intentionally travel in this bus and sitting in a corner window seat in the back of the car, listen to these old people.

4th point is about doing things alone. People want to do several things alone and several things in groups of different size. To talk a bit yuck, even though bath with your partner may be a good idea, one never wants to potty with other people. While this is straight forward, some other things are difficult to generalize. Like eating food. Some people like it alone and some people like big group. Shopping is another such thing. Now for watching movies at the theater. As far as Indians are concerned, it is very rare that one goes alone. But today I made up my mind. Nobody was ready to see 'Atonement', so I went alone. And it was not bad. Neither was it good because I did miss sharing my ideas about beautiful Kiera, I missed talking about the wonderful transition of typewriter sound to music. But it gave me a lot of self confidence. That I can do even the unimaginable things alone.

Tublu

Sandipan Bollywood Awards 2007

2007-12-28T12:20:00.000-05:00

Continuing with the tradition of Sandipan Bollywood Awards from 2006, here we go into our new year.

Disclaimer: Be prepared for a typical Sandipan awards, for there will be plenty of partialities. After all even Oscar and filmfare is not without favoritism. And a close second award will be awarded in some cases. There will be a special category of Razzie awards as well. This year it will be more towards anti feeling towards some than favoritism towards a few. Also, I have not seen many movies this year

Here we go. Let me start with the BollyRazzie awards.

Worst Film: Jhoom Barabar Jhoom. From songs to style to story, everything was pathetic. RGV ki aag doesn’t get this award for 2 starcasts: Urmila and Sushmita

Worst Actor: John Abraham, in Goal.

Worst Actress: Konkona Sen for her various movies. She is terribly overacting nowadays.

Anyway now I come to The mainstream awards.

Best Story: Possibly Taare Zameen Par.(Haven't seen the movie yet though)

Best Song: Sajna di wari wari from Honeymoon travels Pvt Ltd (For the awesome horn effect in the background) and "Om Shanti Om" song with all stars (Esp Juhi and that famous dance step by Rani)

Best Music Director: A.R. Rahman , “Guru”. who else?

Best Singer(Male) : Shankar Mahadevan, Maa from Taare Zameen Par.

Best Singer (Female): Shreya Ghoshal, Barson re megha megha

Best television interview: As an Obituary and posthumous award to Benazir Bhutto in Devil's Advocate especially the way she pronounces "Pakstan" with missing 'i'. The second one goes to Rani in the Madhuri Dikshit KWK interview.

Best Item Song: Mayya Mayya Mallika Sherawat

Lets move on to the main awards now.

Best Comedian: Tabu, Amitabh and Sweeni Khara in Cheeni Kum.(Wittiest movie)

Best Supporting Actor: Mithun Chakrabarty in Guru. Not very sure about this though. Open to better suggestions

Best Supporting Actress: Sweeni Khara for Cheeni Kum.

Best Villain: Shilpa Shukla as Bindiya Nayak in Chak De India

Best Newcomer (male) : Prashant Raj Sachdev in RGV ki aag.(Award given because of lack of better choice)

Best Newcomer (Female) : Sagarika Ghatge (Preeti Sabarwal) in Chak De India.(I hate the eggface Deepika)

Best Actor: Shahrukh Khan for Chak De India (Unanimous).

Best Actress: I don’t want to give this to Cat Eye Kareena (has animosity with Bipasha and dumped Shahid) and neither to Aishwarya (I hate the family of Pati, Patni, Woh(Amar Singh), Beta and Bahu). So the award goes to Soha Ali Khan in 'Khoya Khoya Chaand' for so much looking like her mom.

Best Director: Aamir Khan for 'Taare Zameen Par'

Best Film: Chak De India for creating the enormous impact. The T20WC may be attributed to it.

Comments Welcome!

On Taslima Nasreen

2007-12-17T21:12:00.000-05:00

Does it matter? Is everybody supposed to have an opinion on the Taslima issue? Ideally it should not. But somehow I could not stop thinking. I felt the need that I have to have a stance on this issue. But I was confused. Unlike the majority of the blogger society or the news channel projected this to be a violation of artistic freedom, somehow I was never satisfied with the answer.
Another thing is that we should forget the political colors that has been surrounding the entire issue. As for that, there can not be any separate opinion that the political drama was of 3rd grade.

But let's come to the issue of writing something which may hurt the sentiments of certain people. Being an ardent fan of Jane Austen, I feel you need not take the shelter of hot and controversial topics to show off your literary talents. But whenever I think that, the much highlighted term of "Artistic Freedom" keeps poking me. I begin thinking about what would have happened if there were no artistic freedom? Would the world still have been flat? Would the sun still have rotated around the sun and could Archimedes have ever said Eureka? When I think along those lines, I take my view back. This dilema had been haunting me for almost a month now. But suddenly the week before last, I got my answer. And this time it was form Shobhaa Dey in Sunday Times of India 9th Dec.

The gist is this: Let's define the people. If a person is writing controversial thing, it got to have a purpose behind it. Simply writing controversies is a cheap tactics of money making. Noway better than yellow journalism. Let's say Taslima or Rushdie were not yellow journalists. Through their writings, they want to grab the world's attention to the atrocities they thing is a part of their religion with the hope that there will be some kind of action and world wide support which will help in abolishing this problems from the society.

The moment you think on those lines, you are no more an author. You are a human right activist or some rebel or some leader. Authoring becomes just a mean of expanding your net to attract more and more people towards the mission. So the bottomline is, when you write controversies, you should eventually atleast think that what you think will benefit the society and work towards it. Simply writing sensational stuff is a cheap act.

Now what did Taslima do? Agreed, she was in mortal danger in Bangladesh and had to run away. But why did she stop her protests? Why did we never see her in the streets of London/ Kolkata / wherever condemning what she found out in the religion. But I didn't see her fight. Shobhaa just confirms the fact (in case there is some error in my judgement). Taslima should not have been afraid of death. She should have taken her cause to the streets of Bengal. It would have been a test for the cultural capital of India also fr it's reaction to her cause.

Now it falls in line with Galileo/ Leonardo Da Vinci etc. These people were severely punished. But they took their cause to the streets. They believed that the current believes are wrong and people need to change.

I don't think Taslima is brave enough to face the brunt. She is not ready to take her cause to the level when people can actually be benefited. And this is why, I think she is wrong. If you dare, come what may you should go ahead.

Well on a side note, if it were me, I would have chosen the easier way, avoid controversy. NOt the other way round..

Kolkata Headlines ( 2 years from now)

2007-12-02T14:44:00.000-05:00

I am tired of the headlines. Ideally I should have been happy because after many many years the news is more about west Bengal than anything else. But it’s all the wrong reasons: Singur, Rizwanur, Nandigram, Moon Das, Taslima and what not. So here I go, a few news items related to West Bengal which I want to be in the Newspapers soon.

Brand Ambassadors Ronaldo and Bipasha at the launch of Rs 1 Lakh Car by TATA in Singur

SMNA, Kolkata: Football superstar Cristiano Ronaldo and Bollywood reigning queen Bipasha Basu were chosen as the brand ambassadors at the occasion of Launch of the new Rs 1 Lakh car by Tata Motors manufactured at Singur near Kolkata. The event was aattended by who’s who world over including Mr Green Al Gore, Prime Minister of India Arun Jaitley, Hollywood diva Julia Roberts and ofcourse the extended Bachchan family: Amitabh, Jaya, Amar Singh, Abhi, Ash and their twin kids Karina and Vivek.

Buddha inaugurates Google Kolkata

SMNA Kolkata: Yesterday was another notable day for Kolkata as Google Inc. opened their Development center in Kolkata. Notable amongst those who were present at the occasion apart form the Google founders was N.R. Narayana Murthy and T.V. Mohandas Pai of Infosys Technologies limited who have just extended their plans of Kolkata office from 10000 to 20000. It might be noted that for a change Infosys will chnge their plans about horizontal establishmensts. The new building is supposed to be 50 storey with 6 storey of parking, an indoor stadium at the first few floors, and complying to the green policies they apre planning to have a garden every 5^th floor.

L.K Advani at the opening of grand transportation project:

SMNA Kolkata: Home minister L.K Advani, (self proclaimed Kolkata hater) has changed his tunes kicked off the new transportation project in the city. The facilities include the following: Merger of Kolkata Metro and Suburban trains with Kolkata transport. The metro has been extended to Barasat and Barrackpore in the north and Jokha in south. Also it is no longer a single line and instead cris crosses the entire city. The suburban trains comply to the time and frequency has been doubled. The wooden buses have been removed. Instead swanky double decker buses will ply all over the city. As a new initiative of Woman’s liberation and equality, the ‘reserved for ladies’ seats have been removed in all the buses. The circular canal transportation project has finally started and people will find it both very hassle free and scenic to use this water transport facility.

World Fiction Authors meet in Netaji Indoor Stadium:

SMNA Kolkata: The 3-day World’s biggest ever Fiction authors kicks off at the new Book Mall at college street. Almost everyone amongst the living fictional authors has gathered in Kolkata for this grand event. This includes the controversial trio of Salman Rushdie, Dan Brown and Taslima Nasrin. The keynote speaker, the new rising star of fiction, Sandipan Mitra will give a lecture on how great books can be written even without controversial topics with generous references to the Austen books. Each day will have some famous book launches. The first day will be launch of yet untitled book by Khaled Hosseni about the fight back of Afghanistan against both the US troops and the Taliban. The second day will be the launch of Jhumpa Lahiri’s ‘The sky and the Begonia’ which for the first time is not about Indians immigrated to US and instead deals about a forest with talking trees. Sources say that it is a satire on modern world politics. But ofcourse the star attraction has been left for the Last day. It is “Advanced Potion Making by Libatius Borage” actually written by J.K Rowling. This book will be 500 pages long. The copy will resemble the one that belonged to the half blood prince. A record 50 million copies have already been pre-booked all over the world.

Special zones for the lovers

SMNA Kolkata: The Kolkata mayor has finally relented to the wishes of the youth. It has made 40 tall walled parks in and around the city where they can carry on with the stuff they want and leave the beautiful places like Millenium Park, Science city and Swabhoomi for family crowd. However it has also been made sure that the minimum age in these parks is 16. Entry is through ID cards.

PS: SMNA is Sandipan Mitra News Agency

Babban Hajaam

2007-11-29T19:25:00.000-05:00

Once upon a time, there was a Raja. The Raja was very nice and people were living happily in his kingdom. Suddenly one fine day, Raja’s barber dies. He was very old and has been with the family for a long long time. So obviously the search began for the next barber who can be the King’s barber. After a lot of search, this post was offered to a young lad called Babban. Babban was conscientious, hardworking and diligent; without coaching or reservations he was selected for the royal snip snip snip. As he did ‘Hajaamat, people used to call him ‘Babban Hajaam’. Babban was very happy. After around a month, came the time when Raja needed a haircut. Till that time, he was busy with cutting hairs of the other members of the royal family.

It was a nice Sunday morning. Babban whistled his way to work and continued humming the newest hit song by the courtesan Billo Chamanbhaar. The Raja too was keeping up the beats by patting with his palm on his thighs. Suddenly Babban paused. The Raja did too. Babban continued but alas, the scissors froze.

Babban baulked again. He rubbed his eyes, pinched himself. But still he couldn’t believe his eyes: Horns on the royal pate? O swami of Hari-ki-Dun! The Raja half-turned and with a straight index finger on a shivering mousatche said – “Sshhhhhhshshsh, if you say another word about this to anybody, that will be the last day of your life.” And thus it wound up, with a scrape scrape and brush brush and talcum powder puff puff, and certainly no mirror.

After this, a peculiar thing started happening. As hours progressed, Babban’s tummy swelled. By late evening, his tummy was of the size of a football. By next day morning, the swelling reached upto his neck and he was looking like a big barrel. By Tuesday, his whole body swelled up and he became like a huge balloon. This was happening because he couldn’t keep the secret for such a long time. At last, the poor lad tried to run but it looked more like he was rolling. He rolled towards the woods. Finally when he was deep inside, he told the secret to a tree. He told the tree – “Raja ke sar pe seeeeeng”. Soon he shrunk back to his normal shape.

But now, the tree started swelling and it swelled well. One fine day, after 6 months or so, a woodcutter was walking though the forest and he saw this tree with a huge trunk. He tapped on the trunk. It gave a nice hollow sound. He thought, “Wow, this makes such a nice sound. This wood will be awesome for musical instruments.” So he cut the tree and gave the trunk to his friend who was a maker of musical instruments. The friend was very happy and gave him a lot of cash in return. The friend made 3 instruments out of it: A violin, a harmonium and a set of Tabla. Soon after he made them, a band of musicians came over and were very impressed by the quality of the instrument and bought them at a very good price.

Soon, one day the singers were called to the durbar of the Raja. It was a great day. It was Raja’s birthday. There were a lot of Durbaris. Nice looking women dressed in the shady kind of clothes that the Apsaras Menka and Rambha generally wear, were serving food and paan to all the durbaris. After a scintillating performance by Raja’s favourite Billo Chamanbahaar, came the turn of these musicians, the rising stars of the kingdom.

People waited with baited breath. The musicians came to the stage and started tuning their instruments. In the middle, while they were checking the sound system, suddenly the violin lifted on its own and started playing by itself:

Raja ke Sar pe Seeeeng.. raja ke sar pe seeeeeeng.

Soon the harmonium also started off:

Kisne Bataya Kisne Bataya

And the tabla started the beats:

Babban Hajaam Ne, Babban Hajaam ne.

All the people in the court fell of the chairs laughing. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men, could not put the courtiers back on their chairs again.

Note: I would like to thank Kaushik Ramu for the bare bone structure of the story

Fastest Egg recipe

2007-11-23T11:16:00.000-05:00

Let this thanksgiving be about a few recipe posts from me. Like the earlier one, this one is also pretty open ended and may need a few trails before perfecting. Before I go ahead with the recipe, let me thank my friend Nirmal for introducing this recipe to me.
The main advantages of this recipe are:
1) If you want to eat egg, and not the house smell, you eat egg boiled. This takes atleast 20 minutes. So by the time the egg actually is ready, you have lost your appetite. This recipe just takes 3 minutes literally.
2) If you are a stickler like me who believe in not loading the sink with used utensils, this is a boon, u need only 1 vessel to cook and that too easy to wash. Compare this with an omelette vessel where you need two, one to beat and one pan to fry.

OK, now lets go ahead with the recipe:
Ingredients:

1) 2 eggs.
2) one tsp vegetable oil.
3) Mushroom/Peas etc (Optional) if you want to have something inside your omelette.

Procedure:

1) Take a microwavable stone/china bowl. The bigger base, the better.
2) Break the eggs in the bowl, add salt, optional veg and beat it for sometime.
3) Pour oil along the edges. The lesser the better.
4) Microwave for 2 minutes. You can take it out after one minute, scramble it a bit and put it back again.
5) Scrambled egg is ready. No smell, no vessel, you can eat in the same bowl.

Recipe: ShimlaMirch-Aaloo Ambajhari (Indian gravy based Capsicum and Potato)

2007-11-22T11:28:00.000-05:00

After a long long time, I did something I really wanted to do. I cooked the way I wanted. It was nothing like slight variation. But definitely a mix and match of many different recipes. Lets call it ShimlaMirch-Aaloo Ambajhari , a Capsicum and Potato Recipe. If there exists Hyderabadi Biryani and Veg Kolhapuri, why not this. BTW Ambajhari is a place near Nagpur where I was born and brought up)

Ingreditents:

For the gravy:

1) Onion

2) Tomato in any form (paste, chopped, chunks)

3) Groundnut powder (1-2tbsp)

4) Grated Coconut (Only if you like it)

5) Yoghurt (Optional)

6) Chilli Powder/ Green Chillies (Depending on ur palate)

7) Garlic and/or ginger

8) Anything you find interesting to put in a paste form (Cashew, Raisins etc)

For the curry:

1) Capsicum (cut into 0.5 square inch pieces approx)

2) Potato (boiled and cut into small pieces, again around 0.5 cubc inches)

3) Salt (to taste)

4) Any Indian masala ( I tried tava fry masala) 1 tsp (Just for flavor)

Procedure:

As you have already noticed, the quantity is not specified in any of the main ingreditents because I feel it strictly depends on your taste. For example, my onion ratio was a bt on the higher side resulting in a ‘Jhanjhalo’ ( a Bengali word, basically the adjective for reason why onion makes u cry).

1) Put all the ingredients in the ‘For the Gravy’ section in a blender and blend it well.

2) Heat oil in a pan. Add the usual cumin and mustard seeds if you want to, else leave)

3) Pour the contents of the blender in the pan and fry till oil separates. This will take a long time. So you can put salt, turmeric (optional) in between.

4) Add the masala of your wish towards the end stages of oil separating.

5) Put the capsicum and some water. Allow it to boil depending on how crunchy you like your capsicum.

6) Towards the end, add the boiled potatoes, mix well and remove from heat.

It tastes the way you want it to taste, because you have decided the quantities and the products too.

You can do this with any vegetables. Some suggestions:

1) Only Cauliflower (Boil the cauliflower first. You don’t want this raw)

2) Peas and Potato

3) Only Potato

4) Paneer

5) Mushrooms

Dada

2007-11-15T21:37:00.000-05:00

Well dada means a lot of things. To me, it means my elder brother Sambaran. To many of the people, in a typical work/society the elder Bengali will be called a Dada. In the roads of Bengal, till sometime back, it was the same as Anna of Chennai or Swami of mangalore. But ofcourse, most likely if you ask anybody, who is Dada, the answer will be: Who else but Sourav Ganguly.

It took some time for me to accept his popularity. I always thought it’s only West Bengal, and seems the truth is not very different. I have even seen many people getting jealous. ( but pretending to be either angry or disgusted or as a big shot of cricket and denounce him). But this is the truth, the way Ganguly is adored in West Bengal, no body will ever be adored in any part of India.

As they say, you have to be there to feel it. I don’t get many chances to go to Kolkata and which coincides with some cricket match, but it is a sight to watch. The whole time Dada is on crease (which thankfully is generally not much), is like some last moments of world cup final. People observe every movement of his, will do ‘ishhh’ on his misses and jump on his fours and sixes. It’s just amazing being with all of these. You can’t dislike him anymore.

Ofcourse then, it’s quite obvious, that Chapell will be considered villain. No way can people forgive him when he did something that bad to their won dada. But it was poor Dravid who also got the wrath of the people for no good reason, simply because he was the one who replaced dada. When I tried to discuss any cricket in these lines with any common person (not some very jaankar kind of), it seemed I am a fool if I think otherwise that Chapell may be right, dravid may be good.

The guy who comes out clean in this case and for that matter any controversy, is Sachin. At a position, when he can command anything he wants, they way he never shows his temper and maintains his image is simply amazing. No wonder people refer him as the God.

Anyway, coming back to Ganguly, I now realize, that the reason for his popularity is that he has been the only achiever for Bengal for a long long time. Amartya Sen, though a Bengali has been too long outside to be considered a son of soil, and so are Arundhati, Jhumpa, Rani, Sushmita or Bipasha. Though you see almost half of the reporters in the news channels as Bengalis (leading the pack ofcourse is Sagarika Ghosh) they are all what we call “Probashi Bangali”s. To add to it, the Bengal politics is in a mess, the govt is in the hands of people whos average age is 70+ and the opposition is a lady who has left her brains somewhere long ago. The recent situations in Nandigram makes matter even worse. In all this, the only good thing that has happened to West Bengal in last 15 years is just Dada. No wonder then why Bengalis react to him this way.

Before I end, just as an unrelated note, have any of you read the recent reports of peaceful demonstrations in Kolkata, which was described as a march by the intelligentsia, the writers, the film personalities and the socialites. I just wonder who constitute the intelligentsia :)

Gujarat riots, Tehelka Expose

2007-10-25T21:46:00.000-04:00

I feel so sad, and to a certain extent guilty, about the Gujarat riots. Tehelka has exposed the fact that Mr. Narendra Modi was behind the riots. But didn’t we all know about that? People may have had doubts about the extent of his involvements but rumors never spread out of thin air, and especially rumors this big (not Rani marrying Aditya, for that matter even the initially debunked rumors about aish and abhishek had some base in it). So Narendra Modi is guilty and in this case, less or more doesn’t matter.

People always tend to think the wrong directions or biased opinions in this case. The learned Muslims know the lesser said the better. The illiterate Muslims do what the Qazis tell them to, who in turn are politically inclined. What depresses me is the opinions that the Hindus have. There are fanatic Hindus who went on describing about the barbaric deaths of the people who were burnt in the train. And they tend to justify the riots based on this presumption. There are a bunch of Anti-Hindu hindus (Yes, there are lot of them), who think that the Godhra Train massacre was also self created by the Hindus just as an opportunity to kill the people. In either of these, people are moving from the depth and gravity of the situation to petty finger pointing.

I have simple views. I believe the first reactions of the people are always true. The fast reactions can generally never be painted. So I do believe that something bad happened in the train. But what I DO believe is no matter what happens anywhere, killing people is never a solution. Even though it is in retaliation of something really disgusting. So I condemn the entire Gujarat riots. I know people will agree with me up to this point. Now I will go further and say that though Modi and a few others who may be responsible for the riots, I will, as a human being, consider it as barbaric as the riots if somebody kills these people. Let the justice take its action. (I firmly believe capital punishment should be banished. There are ways to let people live their entire life in repentance and guilt of a terrible crime than just kill them).

I would like to mention the Grahams Staines death. This may be true that the means Graham Staines adopted to spread the word of Christianity were really of the third degree. But that doesn’t qualify somebody to kill him and his children. Again, I tend to believe it’s not Dara Singh who is alone responsible for this. It must be some rich educated hindu fanatic who brainwashed his mind and made hi commit the murder.

The root of all these become very apparent. Lack of good education which should promote clarity of unbiased thoughts. And as my Mom and Dad say, Rabindranath Tagore has written something about every situation, which appears to be true in this case, I end my blog with some lines which I consider very relevant:

Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way

into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;

Where the mind is led forward by thee

into ever-widening thought and action--

Into that heaven of freedom,

My Father, let my country awake.

A look at Current Affairs

2007-10-14T09:54:00.000-04:00

Let's begin with me. I have shifted my base to Natick, a suburb of Boston to be precise. For a living, I work with a software company, but strangely, it's not the typical software company (Oh so Cliché, but it is. ) And I am happy so far and guess that's important.
It's fall and you can see it best here. People go to other states nearby to see the fall colors. This year I am content with whats happening around me . Trees from all shades of green to Red with orange, yellow in the middle stages. Its too good. And what makes it more wonderful is its not same for all trees. So U just see colored trees at random. Its too good.

Next let's go to the Nobel Peace Prize. Well deserved for Al Gore I would say. He did real good work in creating awareness. The movie which I have not seen and the 07-07-07 world wide concert which I have not been to are just a few good moves. It did put the word in everybody's mind, especially in America who just never think of these kind of consequences. In addition, IPCC was the co-winner. IPCC headed by Rajendra K. Pachauri. I don't know to what extent we Indians need to be proud of that fact? Am not very sure! We may congratulate Rajendra K. Pachauri for ths fact, but it can't be a national pride. The worst of this came out in a Hindustan Times disussion panel where Shahrukh was speaking about rising India and what needs to be done for Globalizing Hindi movies. It was quite natural taht he mentions Oscars/Chak De etc. Suddenly this Nalini Singh jumps and asks why didn't you mention Mr. Pachauri. It seems we are ignoring the achievement. Shahrukh Khan was dumbstruck. Apologized and named Pachauri. But I think nalini Singh proved that she is dumb. But I liked her DD shows and thought she wasa good journalist. 1 heartbreak.

Moving on to Harry Potter and Hogwarts Pandal in Salt Lake, Kolkata. Get what happened from the news. I think what happened was good. Indian should know the extent to which copying is OK. I guess JKR would have herself come down and inaugurated the Pandal if she had been asked to. But these people never thought of that. I think lawsuit was an accident, but the court ruling was the best. Go ahead this time, but be cautious from next time. It is very important.
What I didn't like about the whole episode is the reactions of non-potter lover indians. They think JKR is evil. Greatbong is one of them. He has gone way too much with renaming Hogwarts as HagooWarts. I thought he was a good blogger. Another heartbreak.

Lastly, lets discuss the Rizwanur case. As with most of the murders this one too, though a love story murder failed to catch my eyes which generally go to the right side movie section of rediff, first thing in the morning. I read all about it after going through the Jhumur Bose blog on CNN IBN. My views went for one extreme to the other as I first read the blog and then read the comments. What my views stand is this: Whatever happened (murder/suicide) was sad. The guilty should be punished (I am anti capital punishment though). But now let's move on to the Mom-Dad-Daughter and Rizwanur angle. Its perfectly right for the daughter to fall in love with Rizwan and vice versa. They may decide to marry and nobody should stop them. But it's also perfectly valid for Mom and Dad to oppose the marriage. If one can love somebody for no good reason (which is generally true, love looses its meaning if it is with some motive) there is no rule that nobody can hate him. So it's also perfectly alright that they express their displeasure to their daughter. But it should have stopped at that and the parents laying the condition that if you go ahead, we disinherit you. At this point, the girl should decide what to do, to go with heart or brain . In this case because Rizwanur has good earnings as an animation expert, its not a bad idea to go with love and promptly get out of her family. This may be very hard but had to be done. I guess this is what would have happened in the west. But I don't know why we Indians always go for a compromise. The father thought of talking to the police. Who knows if he hired gundas. This is what is going beyond what is needed. On the other hand, the people would have felt bad even if he just disinherited his daughter. This is bullshit because he can do whatever he wants if daughter goes against his wishes and is over 18. he can have cast/money bias. Can't be helped. All in all, the matter should have been left with just the mom,dad daughter and riz.

Anyway enuf of my views. Eid Mubarak. Happy Navaratri and Durga Puja.

The Bunty and Babli age

2007-10-03T19:43:00.000-04:00

Rightly depicted in the movie "Bunty aur Babli", this is the age of the small town people as rightly depicted in this article. Dhoni, Pathan, Sreesanth, Amit Paul , Prashant Tamang and most of the Indian Cricket team as well as Indian Idol finalists just strengthen this belief. The IITians are coming from small towns . Mallika Sherawat and Priyanka Chopra are the examples in the tinseltown.

And why am I happy? Because I am a small town guy. And like most of the others I feel a great aversion to the Big City people. The Mumbaikars, the Delhites and the Kolkatans. I do not count Chennai as I haven't seen many Chennites who fall into this hated category. I exclude Bangalore because though there are a lot of people in Bangalore who belong to this category for some particular characteristics of theirs, they are not the "Original Bangalorites", they are migrated.

By the way, what are the characteristics that make me or may be many others averse to these people?

These people think that that particular City is THE city and life hardly exists beyond that.
Fashion and looks are foremost in their minds and being non trendy is considered a big sin.
They expect you to know "Ghatkopar ka CCD", "Sector 18 mall" and "Puja@Maddox Square", but won't even CARE to know any facts about any small town.
They showoff. They invent their own lingos and expect you to know that.
The girls are most confused. The vague notion that they are being modern by changing a few cosmetic things but in essence they never develop the modern outlook of the west as well as they loose the calm composure nature of the natives.

Ok, enough of this big city bashing. I hate them somehow and I can go on and on about it. But I do see many exceptions. It may also be true that the people on whom I based my opinion does not truely represent the local middleclass/poor population which sadly enough accounts for the major population of any Metro. But then they never make a fuss about Big City/ Small City.

Here are the exceptions. There are ofcourse people in the upper middle class also who behave down to earth/normal according to my yardstick. These exceptions are most welcome when it is this way but I just loose my cool when it is the other way. And this is what happens in Bangalore. The nice, good and simple Kannadigas of Bangalore, they have been in Bangalore all their life beautifying it. And in comes about 1-2 lakh people a year, mostly from small towns but suddenly feeling all high class. These people will tend to act pricey, go for the foreign brands, wear unnecessary sunglass, put all kinds of perfume, deos even if they are just going down Sabji Shopping and then hog around the pubs on weekends.

Frankly speaking even I have been through this mode but soon realized that though i may be a part of it, I do not like it. And now I realize, there is absolutely no harm in staying simple.

Though not very relevant, but I have seen this trend here in US. Guys drink only beer rather prefer beer. I don't understand though I sometimes do the same myself just trying not to different, what is so great about a drink which 1) Doesn't taste good. 2) Doesn't get you high easily. 3)Stinks more than any other and 4) Makes you feel so pissy. :D

Ragging

2007-09-18T15:11:00.000-04:00

The recent reports of how a student from Lucknow was ragged and was in hospital compels me to get started on the topic.

Being a hostelite, and surely like every other hostelite I do feel that “Those were the best days of my life…blah blah blah” but I don’t agree with most of them on another cliché statement “Ragging as long as it is not physical, is good for personality development.” I am also surprised that many of the fraternity people here in US where ragging is called hazing also defend the culture.

Though most of my friends laugh back at those first year days, and I can also laugh aloud if I really want to, but I am still not able to forget those days. Just the fear of going to college from high school was so prominent that I failed to recognize the biggest change in my life – leaving parents. There, my mom stood in the balcony suppressing her tears, my friends encircling me waiting for me to break down, and me like an idiot, more afraid of the future, just couldn’t feel the gravity of the situation, I didn't shed a single drop of tear and neither was i sad. Though I think my dad and to some extent my bro are of the braver kind, still I don’t understand how the fear got into me.

On landing in Surathkal, the fear was gone as I realized that any form of physical abuse was not going to happen, but soon the feeling of disgust. This was even worse. I had to go to the ground everyday, just sit or play, but for a person, who doesn’t like to play it was a burden. There were also many restrictions. Don’t go to the beach; don’t go to Surathkal/Mangalore alone etc. etc. It was all done for good so that people don’t get carried away and for their own safety. But I feel, for a person of 17, he better be the master of his own will or of his parents who can contact through phone. We are a democratic country and to curb ones independence is a violation of Fundamental Rights.

The officials think they do a good job. Nothing really drastic happens in our college anymore. But instead, the first years are never allowed out of their hostels at any time. They have to keep a log of their times. All this, for their safety. But what about the independence?With all this though I got the security, there was still the mental fear that I went through, I will never forget though I may forgive. Though I began to like all my seniors, the TRUST never came and neither did any respect for the wardens.

When I came to second year, it became our responsibility. I wanted to make sure that atleast my juniors can trust me and then I can show them the path to freedom. I could show them the towns, the good food places, the most beautiful beaches. But that was not to be. Taking a junior outside was considered a big violation of rules.

Anyway, on the whole, I feel any form of restrictions either imposed by the university or the seniors of the college is a violation of fundamental rights. Instead, people should work on to maintain the independence of freshers and help them in a SMOOTH transition.