Just to be "cool" and may be to an extent actually stay up to date with technology, I started following the popular tech blogs like mashable.com or techcrunch.com. But they are so utterly boring. There is hardly any talk about some good technology in them nor any good spicy news.
It is the same old apple, facebook, google, MS and these stories repeated again and again. To their credit, they will have blogs about getting repeated over and over again also but will never get out of it.
It gets tiring after a point. Og the retina display of iPad is awesome and some 20000 articles on it. OK I get it. It's just a feature enhancement. It need not be talked into detail so much.
Another such example is social websites. It's crazy. So there's this new thing called pinterest. And even before it really kicks off, it is already termed as a success. And then I think ok, lemme see what it looks like and so I google it. And all the top articles suggest that it is a women's social website. Women like to pin things to their walls. Weirdness.
Then there are pages and pages on layout stuff. Or twitter changed it's layout today. The new top right corner has this white space (made up story) which shows promise. And they will go on and on about it.
But yet, I still read them, and talk about them and worse, now even blogging about them. New promises: the draw something app and kinda cute social book-keeping website Goodreads.
Thanks for tagging - Anupama of Volatile Spirits.
Here are the rules of the Tag-a-thon
Rule#1: Put the rules on your blog.
Rule#2: Every person tagged should answer the 11 questions asked by the one that tagged you, tag 11 other people and ask them 11 different questions.
Rule#3: Let the people whom you tagged know you've done so.
Rule#4: Don't tag anyone who's been tagged before.
Rule#5: Really do tag 11 others; don't go all ''if you want to take this tag''. [Yikes!!]
Here are Anupama's questions:
1. What does blogging mean to you?
A: For me, it is an avenue to compose and channelize my thoughts. It's like a scratchpad, but because it is public, I tend to be focused and thus focus my own thoughts.
2. Name the person who influenced you most.
A: My brother.
3. Which is the last book you read?
A: Inheritance, Christopher Paolini
4. Which are the subjects you hated most in school and college?
A: The ones that fetched me the lowest marks. Usually Hindi or Social Studies. BUt it could have been Physics, Maths as well.
5. If you were to become a sports celebrity overnight, who would you choose and why?
A: Tom Brady. He is passionate and 6/50 states in the US are passionate about him + Giselle is his wife.
6. Name your dream travel destinations- India and Abroad.
A: India: All Indian Lighthouses (bonus: Kutch to Sunderbans)
Abroad: Mauritius, Hawaii, Caribbean and Harry Potter Theme Park in Orlando.
7. Describe your job briefly.
A: An engineer trying to make life easier for fellow engineers.
8. What is your alternative career option?
A: Goss columnist who writes off twitter feeds and google searches. No actual travelling journalism.
9. Do you really think the world will come to an end after December 2012?
A: No way!
10. What are the things you would like to do before you die?
A: Go to HP Theme park, Orlando. Put whatever money I have in some good cause.
11. Your views on television soaps?
A: A society gets what it deserves.
Now here are my 11 questions:
1. Five years from now, who will still be in news: Rakhi Sawant or Rahul Dravid, and why?
2. If you are given a chance, which year of your life would you want back (eg, my 21st year, or final year undergraduate etc).
3. Fill in the blanks: I am a -----------. ( An adjective which starts with a consonant)
4. Favorite movie theater?
5. Next in the sequence: Hu Jintao, Kate Middleton, Mark Zuckerberg, Nelson Mandela, ...
6. Favorite sports/game as a kid?
7. If you want to kill a celebrity, who would it be?
8. Who should retire first: Madhuri from movies, Sachin from Cricket, Anna from his fasts, HM Queen Elizabeth -II, Chetan Bhagat from writing
9. Your last meal should have ..... (Only 1 item, please dont say some Thali or something as vague as ice-cream (name the flavor) )
10. What is a must for iPhone 5?
11. If I unleash an boggart in front of you, what would you see. (You can cheat a bit here, we really don't want to open our private lives in public).
I am tagging the following people:
1. Advay of Advay's world
2. Deepak of From the Capital
3. Esha of Esha Trueself
4. Mahesh of l'ineffabile
5. Mukesh of My Expresso
6. Nikhil of Reflections!!!
7. Nirmal of Howdy
8. Sambaran of Oshantomon
9. Sandeep of Random Rumblings
10.Sidvish of Mostly Harmless
11.Sayantan of Sayan with wings
And if you like to answer these questions, and I could not include you here; consider yourself tagged and take it on!!! If you don't blog, write as comment. If you do, blog it, get back into habit, and leave a comment.
There seem to be so many unnatural pairings and gossips happening around in Bollywood which gets me thinking what went wrong. Here are a few of them:
1) Shirish Kunder: Why on earth will someone like Farah Khan marry a person like him? Well there might be many reasons but I just hope that she did a good prenup before the marriage.
2) Ranveer Singh: How did this guy get a debut with a Yash Raj movie inspite of no movie family background, no modeling career and a face that can put even Sunil Shetty to shame. If he is really a hard working guy who made it the right way, hats off to him. But if there is something more going on, then double hats off to him to keep it out of the prying eyes.
3) Kamal R Khan (KRK): He was hilarious in Bigg Boss. I wonder how a person in public life doesn't realize that he is so damn irritating and unnecessary? Even Rakhi Sawant knows that and she does an awesome job to keep herself in the news by caluculatively doing the wrong (or right) things at the right time. But this guy has an airy attitude about nothing.
4) Bakhtiyar Irani: Husband of somewhat famous Tanaaz who acted in superhits like Kaho na Pyaar hai and RHTDM, this guy has done nothing in life to be called a celebrity. But it is funny when he comes out with Statements like this: " Non celebrities like Siddharth should not be allowed in Bigg Boss". (Unfortunately, I am not getting the news link to claim this statement). What does he think? Siddharth is if not a fledgeling celebrity, atleast has more camera time than this dude in Splitsvilla and other MTV VJ-ing.
5) Jay Mehta: Well no complaints against him, must be a really rich and nice guy too to let his wife still do and rock the movies after marriage, but simply put, their pictures together are always funny.
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.
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.
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.
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
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?
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.
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.
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!”
“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”.
“Apparently Rakhtcharitra is not for people who liked K3G!! Didn't know planet pluto had multiplexes!! Aliens can't wait to see it!!”
“@kjohar25 ha ha ha ha that's a super one karan”
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.
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.
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.
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).
