(c) Pigeonhole

Bad storytellers

2011-10-12T06:52:00.001+05:30

Have you ever experience the following?

We come across bad storytellers. Bad storytellers can be of many kinds. One example is people who take twice the number of words to explain the same content. They make an interesting story seem lame and staid. They spoil the punchline of the joke. They are in general not so good as entertainers or showman. And when you come across one such person, especially in a small group, you and the group go out of your way to avoid giving them opportunities to come to the centrestage and be the narrator or the MC for that instant. The effort of avoiding them may be more than the time spent in listening to their bad story - but we do not mind. The negative value of a bad story seems big enough to put such an effort.

Acute Attention Disorder

2011-10-04T16:18:00.003+05:30

Have you ever blanked out in the middle of writing a sentence? Or worse, have you ever blanked out in the middle of a thought? If yes, then welcome aboard - You are part of the group of folks who suffer from this amazing disease called "Acute attention span disorder".

The patient's mind will be tired at the end of the day, but if he looks back, then the achievements don't substantiate the level of fatigue. This affects morale and adds pressure to the apparent lack of performance. This is how this disease affects our health. It lowers self esteem (basis poor ROI for mental fatigue), increases blood pressure (Lost time with no work) and reduces ability to do long concentrated stretches of work.

I am a patient. I want to get treated. Any suggestions?

Why the world needs to recalibrate

2011-09-24T13:08:00.001+05:30

Increasingly the world that we live in seem to be a world full of big numbers.

Population is billion, Financial profits and losses are in trillions and billions, 2G scam loss is in Crores, Median b-school and IT/ITES salaries are in lakhs, real estate are under construction is in Million sqft, Land being acquired for infrastructure is hundreds of acres, Political yatras are for thousands of kms, Petrol lost through the new oil spill is Millions of gallons, Number of people on social media is in millions, number of tweets per day is in billions.

Man! Where are the 1s,2s and the fractions?

Are we capable of understanding what does a million, billion or even a thousand stand for? Do we have the capability to understand big numbers?

Intuitively, I believe that we understand the number 1 very well. And Fractions and percentages being firmly anchored in 1 as a baseline and the fact that the meaning of fraction is very well fenced by the outer boundary of “1” helps us understand the same better. But as 1 multiplies and becomes a big number the ability to grasp and understand the impact and the relative import of such large numbers is lost.

The world does not seem to care because not many of what we read on a daily basis is meant for communicating the real understanding - most articles are aimed to create an impression which is a derivative of the real thing and the big numbers help create that illusion. But on the contrary, the big numbers are also slowly, but surely, creating a numbness in the human mind which is blocking out all the communication. I no longer care if you increase the estimated loss/damage from millions to billions - Both are equally distant for me!

I believe the world needs to recalibrate and keep things simple - make it more relevant but keeping the numbers closer to 1 - as much as possible - atleast in fields where it is possible.

Archiving Music

2011-04-17T20:13:00.000+05:30

I have been an avid Indian film music follower for the last decade or so. Ever since I got into the hostel at IIT and had unmitigated freedom on my entertainment sources, tamil, telugu and hindi film music has kept me constant company. Recently my good kannada friends have got me some exposure to sonu nigam's recent exploits in that part of our country.

Now the problem with following Indian film music is that by default the songs are archived by movie name. And movie names do not guarantee any pattern of genre in music. For instance, mainstream masala movies will have a melody romance number, an upbeat underdog turning it around song, an item masala song, a remix version of the same and a morose theme song. With so much variety packed into one average album, its almost like a default random list mix incorporated in the playlist.

The problem is that our listening needs are not necessarily a mixed bag all the time. For instance, when i run, i typically would want some peppy melodies to acoompany the regular running steps - usually avoid silent instrumentals or ultra slow theme songs. But there are times during solo travel when you would want to listen to precisely those kind of songs.

I do have some playlists categorising songs into these specific needs / genres. But the problem gap is that these lists are static and it takes quite an effort to update these lists basis the new material which comes in - almost everyday.

Is there any software/music player which does a auto archiving of new songs into standard category of playlists. Its almost like a labeling requirement. Juztaposing a label structure over the existing file structure based on movie names. Even better would be an intelligent player which can keep track of the group of songs which i typically listen together and suggest possible play lists. Does any such thing already exist? Can anyone help direct?

In the long haul, can some product manager figure out some time to help address this need. This is a real one :)

Insight : Investor/Performer

2010-12-18T16:26:00.000+05:30

Personal finance is a tricky thing.

Step 1 : You need to decide how much you want to invest. Balance short-term needs with long-term goals.

Step 2 : Find the right opportunities to invest.

Step 3 : Once the investment is made - Wait till the schedule time to redeem the investment.

Like any other process, you can mess up in any of the steps.

According to me, step 1 is the easiest… To know one’s needs and aspirations is the most controllable step in these series of process steps. Whether you want to lead a luxurious life now with 3 parties every week or save up a little more for the future so that you can retire that bit earlier or risk that startup which you always wanted to do. The best part about this step is that there is no right or wrong. The only messing up that people can do, is, decide about one set of requirements today and change their wish list in some time. The changing, wavering nature of our mind leads to disappointment and messed up portfolios.

Next comes, step 2 - Equities, bonds, real estate, margin trading, futures, options, gold, commodities, art, currency, interest rates… The list of what you can invest in keeps increasing and changing. Things which were goods till yesterday are suddenly packaged as assets and sold for appreciation. Who would have though that mustard is the next big opportunity for holding your money. But most people, i have seen, dont make any major mistake here. People usually tend to invest only in places which they appear to have understood to a decent extent. Most people still invest in fixed deposits and post office instruments - why - because they understand that banks and governments promise return. Some people invest in mutual funds and not equities, because they understand that equities provide good returns, but they do not know how to selectively invest and hence choose the funds. Etc etc. With increasing discourses on risk and return of every asset class, the expected holding period and written advice of so many sources, this is also becoming easier by the day.

The third thing, according to me is the most difficult. Its difficult because, most people do not even reach this stage. Most of us, are always perennially in the “investing” zone. We never accept that we are invested and we are just waiting for the dividends to mature. Most of us, are not investors, in the true sense. We are entertainment seekers, and investment is one of those avenues providing excitement. We constantly want to seek to seen as “Investing”. Because this is that golden stage when you have money, are generating insights, people are watching you, looking up to you for some smart moves, you can spread gyaan you have self generated or acquired, and can acquire more gyaan in return. This is the zone of the “performer”. We never want this performance to be over. We never want our investment to ever become the hero. Its always about the investor. We dont want to talk about the old investment. We always want to make that better opportunity come alive. We always want to better the past - even if its always not the case. We dont believe in time giving us results - we dont want results - the journey of investing is our result.

And our weakness at step 3, my dear friends, is the biggest need that wealth management companies play on. Its a deep insight about the “investor” and not “investment” which makes all this money go around in wealth management. Private bankers, boutique investment firms, elite service, red carpet advisory etc etc are all services provided for the “investor performer” need alive in all of us.

Long live the insight generator!

Obama O mama!

2010-10-31T22:39:00.000+05:30

Its interesting to read the multiple observations on the significance and implications of the impending visit of Barack Obama to India.
Sceptics say
1. While many in India believe that the last couple of years of Obama’s presidency have been more Pakistan-dependent or Pakistan-centric. His policy mindshare for India is very low politically and strategically in foreign affairs
2. The contextual compulsions in the US to be seen as acting against firms which outsource jobs is making him appear “Anti-India” since “Bangalore” occupies a lot of the outsourcing psyche of the world.
3. The just concluded US-pak strategic dialogue where billions of dollars have been promised for Pakistan’s continued military role in the Af-pak border is seeding doubts in whats the more serious dialogue
4. Timing of the visit with a popular Indian festival making the visit seem more symbolic in a frothy manner than making it strategically, diplomatically, economically and militarily significant
5. Lack of any big ticket policy items which are needed to create the buzz around any such visit
Optimists say
1. Association of positive words in the Indo-US relationship like democracy, business and trade, people to people contacts etc makes the relationship fundamentally more strong. Both parties don’t seem to be blackmailed or cornered to talk to each other. Instead they appear to be converging together automatically
2. Inspite of a non-enthusiastic regime in the US, the relationship doesn’t seem to be going too adrift. Any change in US foreign policy to a more favourable disposition can grow the current state of affairs more rapidly
2a. Despite all the flak MMS faces in India in terms of popular leadership qualities and ability to communicate, he seems to have built a professorial diplomat sort-of image, which the world politicians appreciate in public. This may play in India’s favour.
3. “Afghanistan-Pakistan” and “India-China”. The hyphonisation of countries clearly indicate the perspective with which the relationship must be viewed. India should stop seeing Pakistan as competition. Instead it should talk about how to enable Pak to overcome its insecurities, possibly nefarious ambitions and play a constructive role – without compromising on its security and interests.
What I would find it interesting in this trip – is which of these views linger as the predominant feeling after the visit gets over.
On the personal front, to think that the Bombay roads would be closed on a weekend due to the president’s visit is a nuisance i could have lived without. Cant they travel on weekdays?! Weekends are the only solace for the salaried pawns like me!

Insight : Investor Performer

2010-10-25T18:21:00.001+05:30

Personal finance is a tricky thing.

Step 1 : You need to decide how much you want to invest. Balance short-term needs with long-term goals.

Step 2 : Find the right opportunities to invest.

Step 3 : Once the investment is made - Wait till the schedule time to redeem the investment.

Like any other process, you can mess up in any of the steps.

According to me, step 1 is the easiest... To know one's needs and aspirations is the most controllable step in these series of process steps. Whether you want to lead a luxurious life now with 3 parties every week or save up a little more for the future so that you can retire that bit earlier or risk that startup which you always wanted to do. The best part about this step is that there is no right or wrong. The only messing up that people can do, is, decide about one set of requirements today and change their wish list in some time. The changing, wavering nature of our mind leads to disappointment and messed up portfolios.

Next comes, step 2 - Equities, bonds, real estate, margin trading, futures, options, gold, commodities, art, currency, interest rates... The list of what you can invest in keeps increasing and changing. Things which were goods till yesterday are suddenly packaged as assets and sold for appreciation. Who would have though that mustard is the next big opportunity for holding your money. But most people, i have seen, dont make any major mistake here. People usually tend to invest only in places which they appear to have understood to a decent extent. Most people still invest in fixed deposits and post office instruments - why - because they understand that banks and governments promise return. Some people invest in mutual funds and not equities, because they understand that equities provide good returns, but they do not know how to selectively invest and hence choose the funds. Etc etc. With increasing discourses on risk and return of every asset class, the expected holding period and written advice of so many sources, this is also becoming easier by the day.

The third thing, according to me is the most difficult. Its difficult because, most people do not even reach this stage. Most of us, are always perennially in the "investing" zone. We never accept that we are invested and we are just waiting for the dividends to mature. Most of us, are not investors, in the true sense. We are entertainment seekers, and investment is one of those avenues providing excitement. We constantly want to seek to seen as "Investing". Because this is that golden stage when you have money, are generating insights, people are watching you, looking up to you for some smart moves, you can spread gyaan you have self generated or acquired, and can acquire more gyaan in return. This is the zone of the "performer". We never want this performance to be over. We never want our investment to ever become the hero. Its always about the investor. We dont want to talk about the old investment. We always want to make that better opportunity come alive. We always want to better the past - even if its always not the case. We dont believe in time giving us results - we dont want results - the journey of investing is our result.

And our weakness at step 3, my dear friends, is the biggest need that wealth management companies play on. Its a deep insight about the "investor" and not "investment" which makes all this money go around in wealth management. Private bankers, boutique investment firms, elite service, red carpet advisory etc etc are all services provided for the "investor performer" need alive in all of us.

Long live the insight generator!

Raavanan

2010-07-04T10:12:00.002+05:30

MR has had a knack of using his movies to run a live commentary of current affair issues. He did it with Roja (Kashmir), Bombay (Bombay), Kannathil Muthamittal (SL tamils) [Dont know whether to consider Nayagan a commentary on Bombay underworld or not]. He has chosen the backdrop of the expansionary urban elite vs the oppressed forest lot (Seemingly close to the Maoist situation we hear in contemporary folklore).

Mixing this very very current setting with Ramayan (the oldest good vs evil), with fuzzy demarcation of good and evil, makes the movie a masterpiece. Raavanan as the tribal violent protagonist and Ram as the police/govt makes our conventional understanding easy. The ruse of using Sita as the mirror to the audience works very well. Only the audience and Sita are able to see both worlds of Raavan and Ram. And take a call on whats right and whats not.

Like Sita, the audience end up falling in love with Raavan more by the end of the movie. We want more, just like her, but unfortunately it’s the end. We want more MR. Lets make it faster for the next one.

Turbulent times

2009-10-30T13:55:00.000+05:30

It was a day like every other. The morning roads were dusty, clogged and long queues of colored cars were fuming and honking at each other for moving past their immediate signals. Just as they were doing what they usually do, the bridge collapsed. Collapsing with huge noise – no, it was cacophony – The noise of metal bodies scrapping against each other, crushing and maiming one another. The cars didn’t care about the bridge they used to stand on every day - all they were worried was about getting off the bridge at the earliest. Today, it was the bridge’s turn to seek attention. And what a dramatic way of seeking attention. Not only were all the cars seemed to be asking what happened to the bridge suddenly, thereby the only object of everyone’s attention being the bridge – but also the bridge was seeking karma by destroying a few of them as a cost of neglecting the bridge for so long. The cars were sorry, the bridge was sure, because the only place where people say sorry was when it is too late. As the maimed metallic lumps were crashing into the dry bed of the long lost friend – the river – the bridge was cursing itself for not taking the decision long ago. To accompany a good friend is never a bad decision. The day the bridge was born, the river was in its youth, flourishing with a lot of life, pace and vibrancy. The constant play through the day, the river used to change its moods from slapping to kissing moments – Ah, those wonderful moments. Those days even the odd cars which passed over the bridge seemed to be better behaved. Thanking the bridge, smiling and waving at the river. The days seemed more dreamy. Alas, how things changed so soon, was incomprehensible for the bridge. The river was sucked in by the huge reservoir which came a few miles upstream. Nowadays, the river appears once in a while, like an epilepsy patient, ferocious when it appears. The bridge does not even recognize the river nowadays – it is like the river is out to take its vengeance on everyone else with its rage. The rage, in fact, has made the bridge more worn out and hence made it easier for the bridge to commit suicide – It is, in fact, more difficult to kill a healthy body. Neglected, overused, under nourished, tortured, the end seemed to be obvious. It was all like it was planned. But by whom, the bridge failed to understand.

Will Farhan Akhtar make a legendary director?

2009-10-07T19:06:00.000+05:30

When Farhan Akhtar is a 50 years old, assuming he is going to choose to work in the film industry in some capacity, will he be remembered as a legendary director? Would he have proven himself to be a prolific director good/great movies?

I beg no. I have a few reasons to say so.

The first three movies of Farhan are Dil chahta hai, Lakshya and Don. DCH was a very well made and connected really well with the urban young crowd who related with a lot of emotions, situations and character streaks. Lakshya was also well made, albeit a little loose and slow, was a coming of age movie of a rich slaker with a patriotic flavor. The third movie was a smart remake of a yesteryear hit (for which his father happens to be the script/story writer).

I see a pattern in Farhan’s directorial career so far. DCH and Lakshya are full of south Bombay elements. DCH is a story of three rich south Bombay youngsters; Lakshya’s protagonist also happens to be a south Bombay young slacker. I guess I can imagine that Farhan also would have been a rich south Bombay kid who slacked most of the time till he reached the age of having to do something with his life. A lot of the script would be, I am assuming and hence deriving, is based on his life experiences.

Don’t take me wrong – I like all his movies so far. He has told his stories extremely well. But where he falls short is in generating good stories independent of his life experience. I think all good directors would be extremely well read on wide range of topics, history, good observers of other people/situations and great commentators. The fact that his third movie was a remake and the long gap since “Don”, sort of reinforces my reading of him – that he is barren when it comes to story ideas. But if given a good story, he might execute it well.

City life : Enthusing me towards sanyas

2009-10-06T15:48:00.002+05:30

My office and home are within city bounds. But the unfortunate part for me, is that, both are in very distinct distant parts of towns. I cut across through the middle of the city and drive about 15 kms one way to reach my office. In bad days one way travel can take about 1.45-2 hrs. I have tried many ways of travelling to office and have found no single option to make do for a single positive solution

1. Self driven car:

If I leave early enough both from office and home (leave home at 8 and leave office at 5), then driving takes around 50 minutes and its bearable. If I don’t, then I go through a feeling of killing myself multiple times over in the course of pressing the clutch and brake multiple zillion times over.
Car driving in city (especially Bangalore I think) is slow but sure poison

2. Auto:

The pleasure of having the vehicle driven by someone else is offset by the constant vibration which shakes every single bone in my body more than a coconut would go through in process of becoming a chutney. And the best part is that the vibration is not the worst part.
The worst part is that I sit for 90 minutes in midst of poison chamber inhaling all the other vehicles spew black fluids graciously into my face. I can feel my lungs cry out of mercy killing during all those 90 minutes. Bombay train travelers – Thank your gods for making the trains relatively non polluting

3. Bus :

The closest bus stop from my office is 2kms away. Worst!
There is no direct bus. I need to take two buses. I take the change of bus in majestic. And in the evenings, my second change bus takes atleast 20 minutes to get out of majestic itself! I sit, sit and sit, staring at the humanity bustle around me in majestic – in no great interest or excitement.

This is the first time in my 5 years of office life that I feel so burdened by the act of “going to work”. And the fact that I am experiencing it in bangalore, I think, is no coincidence. Bangalore, just happens to be designed for such.

Eeram

2009-09-15T11:09:00.002+05:30

The entire theatre had 8 people including 6 of us. But that can be no indication of the quality of the movie, Eeram. Produced by “Director Shankar” and Directed by Arivazhagan (yet another masterful find of S pictures), the movie is definitely watch worthy and a good brangan-review worthy.

A few points that stood out as x factors in the movie:

1. Surprise factor : The trailer of the movie did not give any hints on the genre/story-line of the movie. And the movie also, does not give out the broad direction of the storyline till about one hour into the screening. I found that good.

2. Good dialogues : I thought the movie dialogues were very good. Like when Adi tells the heroine Ramya’s father on why he wants to become a police officer, or on the way the lady living in the opposite house cribs and whines or on the way in which Vikky talks. The dialogues were reflective of true human behavior and not theatrical charade.

3. Camera work : The camera (The movements, angles, change of focus in the water choreography scenes) was very good.

4. Water choreography : Water choreography is awesome in the movie. No two scenes with water choreography are repeated and the angles of view and patterns are quite exquisite. Very well done.

Among other things, hero (Adi), Music (Thaman), overall casting, narration style, production values were also good. I strongly recommend this movie to anyone who wants to watch a well made movie!

The issue of ownership

2009-09-07T11:55:00.000+05:30

On Saturday, myself and two of my friends were participating in a protest march organized by the residents of GKVK Campus near MG Road. We were protesting against the proposed cutting of over 3000 trees inside the campus, which would enable the laying of road through the campus. This, apparently, would save time and energy spent by people who travel to the new airport by travelling all along the circumference of the campus.
We typically measure the worth of any initiative through the number of manhours. For instance, if we by mistake delete a word document that we have been working on, we say that we lost 2 man hours of work. By cutting (deleting) 3000 trees, just imagine the number of god hours that we are losing. Most of the trees would be atleast a 100 years old. Its atleast 3 lakh god hours. Not wanting to compare god hours to man hours, I would like to believe that the protest was for a just cause. Cutting even one tree is a stupid idea – according to me. (According to me, architects should try and develop methods by which they would be able to build buildings along with the trees within them – somehow).
Anyways, coming back to the protest march, there were barely 30 people, trying to save 3000 trees. It was a very sad turnout. For what seemed like a just and obvious cause, with immense benefits, people who are directly affected are refusing to turnout. I started thinking of a few behavioral reasons of why
1. Unknown enemy : The thing with fighting with the state is that the state is a fuzzy concept. In some ways, you are also part of the state. So its not a defined debate structure where you have the enemy easily identifiable
2. David vs Goliath : Even if we identify the ruling party or the ruler person as the enemy, he just seems too big and too busy for us measly citizens to command his attention, influence him and change his course of action
3. Petty thinking : People believe that they can profit in the short run through “development” measures. If the road comes up, property values might increase, thereby increasing their assessment of their own worth.
4. Pure laziness : Who will get up and stand like a loser on the platform on MG Road with placards stating the obvious (“SAVE TREES”). After two hours of grueling effort, all you may have got is a few burns and hungry and thirsty stomach.
5. Prisoner syndrome : While I have successfully, evaded all the previous reasons for not going, and am ready to go – Wait! What if, the rest of Bangalore have fallen victim to the previous reasons and I would be the only person standing there. What can I achieve alone! Let me not take the chance prone effort.
It was even more disheartening because, north Bangalore is supposed to be the area where it is the “locals” who are more affected than say in areas like Koramangala or Indira Nagar, where there may be a chance of migrant population (who typically are expected to care less) being more predominant.
Whatever be the case, In an attempt to create something for small short term reasons (Save travel time to airport of few hundred people by a few minutes a few times a year), 300000 god years of effort is just about to be destroyed. God willing, he should do something to safeguard his efforts. Amen!

Startup

2009-08-25T09:23:00.005+05:30

If you want to start your venture, what is the correct approach? I may be wrong in attempting to get to a "correct" approach. What are all the possible approaches that one should be aware of before choosing one? I tried asking a few questions

- Area of expertise or acquintance or interest : Should the area of business be related to your studies or your work experience or your interest or your background. For instance, I am a tam bram who studied engineering and business, worked in a bank, interested in innovative advertising and now wants to startup. Do I have to go with something which is in line with my tambram instincts (like a captive research unit), start a engineering unit or a consulting firm, or start vendor operations for a banking business or start implementing my ideas on innovative advertising... Which one is will yield best results?

- Single player or Multi player : Should you start something individually or is it better to find like-minded people and then start as a group. Starting in a group will obviously help in terms of keeping the energy levels high and team work would be fun. However, sooner or later, groups will need to confront conflict on multiple issues on decisions, money, etc.

- Jump or evaluate : Is it better to start with the current idea in hand or is it better to wait for the better or the best idea (which might emerge in a few months)?

- Risk vs Return : Is it better to put in your own capital or try and raise capital through bank/VCs/acquintances etc?

- Sequence the quit : Is it better to quit your day job completely and then get down to work or moonlight to setup the basics and then quit the job once things pick up

For the "qualified salaried" segment, which has lived life evaluating exit options, evaluating an entry option and approach does not come naturally. But not to lose heart, I am confident that answering all the questions accurately is not necessary for a successful startup. We should attempt answering them, but if we dont have a definite answer - dont worry, we shall come back few months after business starts to take corrective actions.

Target Segment Definition

2009-08-01T12:34:00.001+05:30

Death of the Indian politician

2009-05-14T23:52:00.001+05:30

The interesting thing in Indian politics has been the need of a strong enemy for parties to grow and establish themselves. No party has ever been able to build a definition or image for itself without referencing itself against its enemy.

There was the strong anti-congress sentiment in the large part of Independent India’s history. Many national and regional parties have been etched out of their opposition of congress dominance. BJP, DMK, TDP, BJD, Akalis, Shiv Sena and many other regional strongmen, I think, owe their birth and growth to the strength of the erstwhile congress. As soon as they reached a sizeable vote share in their region, they began to stagnate – there was nothing to differentiate themselves from their biggest enemy in their region or state.

This bifurcation of polity in regions, is leading to the next generation evolution. The third player in the respective regions is taking an “anti-existing” parties position and aims to gain some vote share. The third player just claims to be an “alternative” but does not say how or why.
So if A had 100% share in the beginning. He lost 50% to B (who was anti A). They lost 16% each to C (who was non A non B alternative). In the next phase, A B and C would lose equally to D (who would be non A B C alternative) and so on and so forth.

Essentially, the Indian politician is losing it. He spends money, time, effort and career – and by launching more versions of the same politician, he is only wasting his marketing budgets. In the end, no one is building a long standing proposition.

Lets look at this election. No party came in with any new idea. The only idea seemed to be giving freebies to electorates. Their internal war room strategies must have indicated that Indians behave the same way at saravana stores and election booth alike. Each party must have spent a bomb at marketing and selling their faces and symbols to the public. At the end, has anyone created anything sustainable? The answer is a big NO. They have all progressed one step ahead in their self destructive evolution mode.

The day a single person or entity is able to standup, create and communicate a new idea of what they think the country should be like. Then is when the Indian politician would get a second life. Otherwise, he seems to be dying and fading off into the muddle of the 4th,5th and the nth consecutive alternatives.

Bengaluru times

2009-01-20T18:38:00.004+05:30

I have been wanting to write this post for a long time. I have even sat down a couple of times and logged into blogger. But ever since, I have morphed from the loner-framework drafter consultant to the egregious-people managing sales manager, my ability at communicating non essential non follow up related stuff seems to have diminished significantly.

To all those people who still have this blog on their blog-roll, I have a some new updates to state. I have moved to Bangalore. The move is an internal role change. Earlier I was peddling mortgage loans to people in chennai. Now I will be helping people with discretionary excess money make intelligent investment decisions. So, I still work with Citi, the ailing giant, which aims to go through some liposuction sort of stuff, get rid of some flab in a jiffy and magically look healthy and fit. The beauty with an internal role change is that it gives you all the positives of a job change - like new boss, new (different) office, new colleagues etc... but it also comes with the biggest drawback - same pay!

So here I am enjoying my first month in my new role, when I can afford to chill out camouflaging under trainings, certifications, admin chores etc. I would soon come under the scanner of monthly/quarterly/annual numbers and the normal cycle for a salesman/line manager would start. The good thing about this role, hopefully, would be that I would get to meet a lot of people (read customers) directly and I hope to make a lot of friends/decent acquintances through them. I hope that they are interesting people and would be nice to me and help keep my job engaging and interesting at the least.

Mumbai gore, Cricket and Pakistan

2008-11-29T10:20:00.003+05:30

I think Pakistan loves cricket as much as a punju loves butter chicken or a tam bram loves paruppu saadam with ghee. Off late, Pakistan has descended into chaos which no news paper reporter or political analyst worth his education is able to summarise in 50 words. As a result, the cricketing normalcy in pakistan has been uprooted and the Pakistan cricket team would soon be renamed Sharjah Cricket team.

I do not believe that normal Pakistanis harbor much hatred towards Indians or they support killings and whatever happens in Kashmir related politics etc. But I am sure that they harbored much jealousy the past year or so when Indian cricket has moved leaps and boudns forward (Test progress, IPL, ODI fresh faces, Champions league etc) whereas the pakis were stuck where they were pre independance - not playing any matches (In fact the ICL pakis were playing more matches than their national team!)

Given the background of whats happening to the current england tour and the Champions league etc, I am fairly positive that the average pakistani must be happy in a weird way. Just the way the marketing junta (IIM junta i meant) were happy when the financial meltdown bursted out.

Such are the weird ways of the world.

Jothe Jotheyali

2008-11-24T23:11:00.002+05:30

Thanks to Milliblog, I got hooked to this kannada song

I had planned to learn Kannada some few months back. I had even bought a book (The typical learn kannada in x days sort of book). The chapters never enthused me to go beyond the first dozen pages. However, Janaki's flirtatious singing, the consequential heavenly lyrical quality (phonetic i mean, I can understand nothing of what the song means) has rekindled my wish to learn and talk (and maybe even sing) in Kannada.

Btw, the song is composed by the one and only. Long live the genius, the maestro!

Story attempt 11

2008-11-22T19:48:00.009+05:30

Her name was Deepika. Dressed in mallu traditional attire, she reminded him of Asin at first glance. "Ah! My mother knows pretty women too!", he wondered. She spoke with the flow of a giggly stream flowing into the kaveri the pretty forests of Thalakaveri. The imagery of the stream and its pictorial smell of moist greenery filled his mind with happiness. His mind is an easy to paint-and-repaint canvas. There have been multiple women who had created "Gorgeous wallpaper" level imagery in his mind through his life. In many ways he was similar to the character played by Saif in DCH - easy to fall in and out of love (Afterall, I can call beautiful imagery, love... one has defined love as otherwise!).

It has been a while since the last meetings. It was an evening like no other. Sitting by of the fishing boats, watching the fisherman folk do their chores, the piled up fishing nets emanating the fishy smell - he sought to calm his frayed ego. Somehow, today things were different. The usually sultry chennai weather was breezy, the 'bright and otherwise blazing' sun was hidden by the clouds like a veil over a kashmiri beauty, the waves were lashing out on the shores attempting to tell him a story.

The story of the images stored in his mind. Like a collage of unrelated pleasant items, he had stored them all- constantly refreshing them in his mind in no particular order. The images were going through a whirlwind motion, like the contents of a mixer grinder. Just the way the coconut pieces will turn from a voluminous bulk to a paltry paste, the image pixels got broken and crushed into a dot and blipped away into the deep archives of his subconscious. He felt empty and at the same time refreshed. He felt the power of an art curator armed with a fresh canvas - in search of his next picasso. The next "arranged" meeting beckoned!

Home Alone

2008-10-18T17:39:00.002+05:30

So who do you hang out with nowadays?

Its been 3 years since I graduated out of my last college. The hostel or a college campus setup gives multiple options of people, with whom you can choose to spend time. So realistically, spending time alone is never a necessary option. But what do you do when one does not have the advantages of a campus... like :

1. Ample time - classes do not cover more than 20% of a day's time. Work hours nowadays cover about 75% of my "eyes-open" time.
2. People with ample time : If you had put my boss, myself and my colleagues in a jobless campus sort of place, I guess we would have fun together. But here, my friends at work and otherwise have 75% of their respective time caught up with their "to-do" list
3. Lack of people : At campus, there is a 90% probability that I would be meet a person in the same age group and the person will broadly will have the same aspirations, goals in life. (like for instance chicks, sports etc) . At work, this probability has dwindled significantly. Dont you agree?

So when one finds the ambience not conducive for any group activity (ok - activity need not necessarily be active - group can just hangout in a bar also), one is forced to search for some timepass options which can be implemented without the constraint of finding an appropriate partner/groupie. I have been in one such phase for a long time now. I have thought of and tried some of the stuff which can be developed as a solo hobby or activity.

Can you suggest any?

Poor kids!

2008-09-22T22:23:00.002+05:30

Children are an exploited lot. Following are some of the reasons why I think they are exploited.

They live in an out of size world. Think of a 2 feet tall, 2 year old trying to keep place some of his stuff on the toy shelf - He has recalibrate himself to the shelf size which has been designed for his 6 feet tall dad.

Old people never understand kids. Over a period of time, Its always the kid which adapts and learns the old guy's language. Have you ever seen a dad learn and use words like "chockil", "lubber" etc?

Have you ever seen old people sit and have a patient chat with kids? They never ever take the effort to make the kids understand about how it feels to be a grown-up. Parents never give pro-active long term fundaes in general. Its always tactical stuff like, dont touch the fire, dont light the candle sort of stuff - which invariably is driven by the older guy's need to minimise his work.

No wonder most wonderful kids grow up to be messed up adults!

Micro finance - A few thoughts

2008-07-03T01:20:00.001+05:30

Economist talks about Microfinance in its latest edition at http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11622469

Microfinance has captured the imagination of people... or atleast the headlines in the media due to the following reasons
1. Access of credit to the unbanked
2. Not for profit motive
3. Innovation in banking model - Community banking or peer group banking

It faces a few challenges
1. Not for profit does not incetivise growth. A billion people need to be covered. Will not for profit be able to drive the expanse.

It is undergoing a few changes
1. Banks, Investors etc are starting to marry the concept of profit and access of credit to the unbanked through the microfinance model.
2. Profit has started to introduce competition

It is likely to face a lot more challenges going forward
1. Will it be able to achieve IT enablement of their process (necessary for scale), and maintain access to trained low cost manpower
2. Will the relatively small private players in the field be able to have the necessary capital strength for large scale growth. Will we ever see a region level or a national level MFI?
3. During the evolution process, will the MFIs be able to keep the basic differentiation between them and the conventional banks?

Note : This post has been cross-posted from http://the-counter-economist.blogspot.com

Santa Barber-a?

2008-07-01T22:47:00.004+05:30

His mom was surprisingly pleased at the ease with which he had accepted the latest proposal from a prospective bride. She found him an absolute pain in her gut, whenever she had to coax him to consider a particular "girl" proposal, in a serious manner. Invariably he would make a wisecrack about how the jadagam of the girl says that she would fall in love after marriage (he liked jadagam as a smokescreen in the process - anything can be said in association with the horoscope - no one can prove or disprove it), or he would talk about the buxom girl he saw outside the mosque a couple of days (his mom would be extremely distracted between the mosque bit and the buxom bit), or he would stare into his mobile and SMS friends as if he is sending SOS messages (his typing speed was probably lowest in his age group - so he was not acting unnatural when he stared into the screen hard to type one full grammatically correct sentence). Basically his strategy so far was simple. Play the game of "Irrelevant sentences" with his mom and distract her. And with time passing by, they would move onto their respective next tasks.

But this time... Things were different. He actually was asking "relevant" questions like the girls age, where she is working... and her gothram too! And he was talking about taking the possible days he might have to take off to go and meet the girl! His mom found it surreal, ethereal, villa real... basically unreal.

Little did she know that the visit to the barber shop that morning, when they discovered his little hidden bald patch, had such a deep impact on him!

Idhu varai ketkadha soundaryam....

2008-07-01T19:57:00.004+05:30

Theneeril Snehidam
Theeradha Pechugal
Pin seatil minmini
Eppodhum sugam sugam bhoomiyile

College-il angelgal
Kannale Thoondilgal
Calendar Babygal
Kondadu ilamaiyin vizhigalile

Vayasu vayasu parakira vayasu
Manasu manasu rasikara manasu
Endrum Endrendrum...

Poi pesa thozhamai
Thol sayum kadhali
Theendadha Soundaryam
Sandhosham varum varum ninaikaiyila

En meedhu mun pani
Illadha Megangal
Neerveezhchi kaanungal
Ennaalum inimaigal iyarkaiyile

Vayasu vayasu parakira vayasu
Manasu manasu rasikara manasu
Endrum Endrendrum...

Good strong lyrics...

New blogs

2008-06-29T12:25:00.002+05:30

There are two blogs which are having their auspicious debut today

1. A blog which marks my attempt at keeping in touch with the intellectual stuff. An attempt at interpreting stuff with the basics of economics that I know of. I would be improving as I go along writing along with my friend Dinkar (who is definitely much more serious Economics than me) at http://the-counter-economist.blogspot.com/

2. Second is an attempt to pen down the observations about the various eating/drinking/coffee joints in chennai. The food, feel and fee of chennai hangout spots shall be briefly reviewed in the perspective that I think is important. I am not a food buff, so dont expect too much of cuisine knowledge here. But if you are a person who eats out - because you want to eat OUT, then you are reading the right stuff. Car park and curd rice with ample seating space will form a great eating place according to me. Please read me and Varath give our point of views at http://gajananamthachimammam.blogspot.com

Btw, the second url actually salutes the ultimate food on earth - Curd rice.

Cheers,

Seriously need help!

2008-04-07T21:41:00.003+05:30

I need to meditate. I hope that would improve my attention span. I cannot hold my attention to more than three sentences related to the same topic, in a single stretch - I changed the on my browser as I was writing this post!!!

Agressive pursuit of being alone

2007-10-19T00:32:00.000+05:30

It was a sunday like every other sunday.

He was reading the Weekend section of Business standard when the kid who lives downstairs wailed out loudly. Her mom was dragging him away from playing in the mud pile at the construction site right opposite their house. There were quite a few new buildings coming up in this obscure suburb of chennai. The wail of the kid reminded him that he had to negotiate the new rental terms with the mother. Just as his mind was wandering between the inconsequentials, the doorbell rang.

He expected no visitors on sunday. He lived alone. Opening the door everytime 'an unwanted someone' came knocking, made him display unwarranted affection towards his doorbell-trespassers. In his blue lungi, white banians and the weekend stubble, he was suitably attired to drive the pretty alien away.

"Sir, Is there anybody at home?".
"No". Even he didnt consider himself as somebody.
"Sir, There is a kolu contest in the neighborhood. Are you celebrating navarathri".
"Yes. In my own way. What do you want?"Adding a stern tone to his last word.
"Nothing sir. Dont mind". She turned back.

He closed the door behind him. To enjoy his sweet lime and sunday editorial.

It was a sunday like every other sunday.

...Articulate Jerry...

2007-10-18T00:12:00.000+05:30

JERRY: I swear, I have absolutely no idea what women are thinking. I don't get it, OK? I, I, I admit, I, I'm not getting the signals. I am not getting it! Women, they're so subtle, their little...everything they do is subtle...men are not subtle, we are obvious. Women know what men want, men know what men want, what do we want? We want women, that's it!...It's the only thing we know for sure, it really is: we want women. How do we get them? Oh, we don't know 'bout that, we don't know. The next step after that we have no idea. This is why you see men honking car-horns, yelling from construction sites. These are the best ideas we've had so far...The car-horn-honk, is that a beauty? Have you seen men doing this? What is this? The man is in the car, the woman walks by the front of the car, he honks: [imitates horn] e-eeehh, eehhh, eehhh, this man is out of ideas. How does it...? [imitates horn again] e-e-e-eeeehhhh, "I don't think she likes me"...The amazing thing is, that we still get women, don't we. Men, I mean, men are with women. You see men with women. How are men getting women, many people wonder. Let me tell you a little bit about our organization. "Where ever women are?", we have a man working on the situation right now. Now, he may not be our best man, OK, we have a lot of areas to cover, but someone from our staff is on the scene...That's why, I think, men get frustrated, when we see women reading articles, like: "Where to meet men?". We're here, we are everywhere. We're honking our horns to serve you better.

Story attempt

2007-10-10T01:33:00.000+05:30

Idhu enna matram,Iraivanin Thotram
Iru vizhi paarvai,Vilakugal yetrum
Penmayin maayam, ragasiyam pesum
Adai mazhai vandhal, Kudai enna seiyum

Anaikinra podhu, Yerigindra Theeyo
Padhaiyin Oram, Pani thinnum poovo

Blog posted by NM @ 4.15 AM

The next morning, NM's lab mates reached their desks, opened their google readers, blinked at their screens of their grad school friend's latest blog post. Almost all of them smiled unto themselves. Vizhunduttaya Vizhunduttan. :)

The concept of lying

2007-09-17T23:22:00.000+05:30

In this world which is largely governed by perception management in an ever increasing proportion (read increasing GDP), lying has become the core necessity for any and every entity to continue to be part of the party called "life in this world".

The other day, I was sad. I switched on TV. I felt happy. Why did I feel happy? Because I saw a 7 year old cutie tell me that a particular cooking oil is the best for health, 5 dancing beauties told me how silk sarees from a particular shop helps maintain friendship among women, and how I can maintain myself young and energetic (despite turning 25 last week) by buying the latest sleek softdrink can. I knew that all these were lies. But I felt happy as I lied myself into the illusion that I found answer to some of the more important questions in life.

I think I am normal and most men (and women too) are like me. They like simple answers to many things which are bothering them. They do not care if the answer is well researched or whether it is proven in multiple laboratories before they try it out. They just care about the simplicity of the answers - Buy a deo and get a girl, Buy the new deo and get more girls - If the simple narration can be put across to me in a 30 sec communication, I am happy. I am happy that I spent the least time to solve the most important question and that too by spending nothing much.

This, my dear friends, is the essence of most of our lives. And I like lying a lot. I am henceforth going to try and understand the story behind some such beautiful lies which we come across in our daily lives - In management jargon terms, I would be analysing the advertisements and marketing communication which are targetted towards us - unassuming, lie-liking consumers.

Till the next lie,
TCL.

2007-07-10T22:20:00.000+05:30

The thing about your life is that its not yours. Its a separate being on its own. And all the time its a race between life and yourself. To think (i mean run) faster than the other person. You are given a small handicap in the first few years of life, however life has taken an eternal timeline long handicap to prepare itself for its race.Initially, you would think you are doing good - you think you would be able to maintain the lead comfortably. But NO. One fine day, it will whiz past us, run quickly upto the finishing post, stand there, turn back and laugh at us - panting our way till the last step.

Such is life!

Serious Fun

2007-04-01T19:41:00.000+05:30

Iran is a fun loving country. Alright. But why mock serious stuff in places where we are talking about petty humiliation :) Its things like these which might actually motivate Iran to prove that they werent joking afterall!.

Fairpooll Foundation might just find its place in the kid's history books.

A(ex) effect

2006-12-15T13:33:00.000+05:30

City centre mall. Lifestyle ground floor. The perfume counter reminded him of something.

She. Priyanka. The. Priyanka smell. She smelt the best. Whenever he was near her, you could see him soaking in her fragrance – not like the sniff of a hunter dog, not like a shopper testing his perfume, not like a traveler wallowing in the rose gardens – his was a holistic smelling experience. He believed that he could predict her response to any situation from the slight nuance of the smell that she had at that point of time. A dry smell indicated a foul, a moist hurried up smell indicated haste, a warm pleasant smell indicated happiness, a puerile shy smell indicated innocence, a staid almost lack of fragrance said that she was lazy… and so on. A combination of all was what he called the priyanka smell.

2006-11-18T17:02:00.000+05:30

In the end, it does not matter whether you run or walk in the rain. You will get wet anyways.

New found devotion

2006-11-02T00:28:00.000+05:30

She was standing outside the temple on the scooty - waiting for her mother. Law of averages inside the family had made her the not so religious/spiritual one. Her mom and dad more than compensated for her in religious/spiritual matters.

"Your mom comes here everyday? doesn't she? ", the flower-vendor would ask, everyday.

"Not necessarily, she comes whenever she feels like", she would try to shield her from the vendor with indifference

"You dont go inside any temples? is it?", the vendor would persist.

"Not necessarily, I dont go wherever there is difficulty to find a parking space", she would try to add a layer of logic in an attempt to satisfy the vendor's inquisitiveness.

"Oh yeah, that is definitely a problem. Why dont you leave the vehicle here and go - I will take care of it from getting towed away or hit by another one."

"No thanks, I am ok.", she would start cursing her mom for putting her in this situation.

"The god inside the temple is supposed to be lucky for students. I have heard that he is especially generous with young women's wishes.... " the vendor would go on - believing that the initial banter has got her firm inroads into her mindspace.

...
...
...

She started praying to the almighty lord. "Oh god! please save me. if she stops, i will find a parking space the next time i come here."

:-)

2006-11-02T00:27:00.000+05:30

test

2006-10-24T22:15:00.000+05:30

http://www.ibnlive.com/news/sania-climbs-one-spot-to-no-67/24607-5.html

And that is headline material in CNN IBN?!!!
Indian media seriously got to get serious or atleast more innovative - 1. Serious - to get some actual news broadcast 2. Innovative - to find better ways of featuring Sania as frequently as possible in their news roaster

Small update.

2006-10-18T08:12:00.000+05:30

Reporting from chennai. Joined a new assignment, very different from what I was doing before. Have to change a whole lot of online profiles to reflect the change. More about the new job and about the good and bad things of the job as I move along.

Ciao,

2006-10-09T22:41:00.000+05:30

"Midhitha pin dhaan theriyum, Karappaan Garbhamendru"

Thiraipadamum, vazhkaiyum

2006-10-09T15:29:00.000+05:30

There is this friend of mine called Chilli. Chilli and myself have had this argument on the effect movies have on us - positive and negative. He says that if a person is inspired to a particular motive - then it wud be irrespective of the movie. My take is that, even if i accept that a person might be either going towards positive actions or negative ones - through his intrinsic motives, the external cues, might accelerate his journey.

I was just relating this argument with a comment from another friend. This guy is an MBA grad, trying to do something different. He says that he wants to do this thing X. To do that he has to do intermediate steps of 1,2 and 3. Which are not as exciting as X and his time of stay in 1,2 and 3 are turning out to be longer than expected. Essentially he was running out of patience. Now the point is, he has been clear of this objective (X) for a pretty long time. And he has been attempting getting thru 1,2 and 3 only for last couple of months. He is not the only one. In most cases, with my friends we feel the lack of excitement on a sustained basis and hence get frustrated with the things which we are doing.

I am sure my logic is kinda long winded, but still. I think the lack of patience or the requirement of consistent and quick returns to any effort is reflected/ influenced by the kind of movies also. We need immediate and explicit gratification in movies -
1. An intro song/ fight sequence as soon as movie starts.
2. A protoganist who is assured of success
3. A series of sustained gratification - a parallel comedy track maybe.
4. A grand climax - which we are assured of since the beginning
For the lack of the one or the above - we tend not value the movie, like it or even rate it as a decent movie.

It seems very similar to the saying which i had read somewhere - that " We have been brought up on a diet made of action movies, blonde babes and rock music. We are slowly realising that lifes not like that. And we are getting pissed."

2006-10-08T20:25:00.001+05:30

I had gone to a friend's place for dinner. Had some really nice kannadiga food for dinner. The next day when he met me, he told me that his mom thought that I was a nerd. :)- I smiled. I knew that deep down, I am the silent geek who did the desktop mathematics better than performing acts or any such stuff.

The point to be noted here is that I was the only "MBA kind of job" guy there among the 5-6 people in the gang, who were all "techie kind of job" guys.

The point I am trying to drive at is the following : There are two approaches possible
1. I can align my career towards what I am meant to do fundamentally - by birth - acc to talents bestowed to me.
2. I can align my career towards what I want to myself to look like - by design - maybe develop the qualities which are currently found in lesser quantity.

I think I have at every step been attracted more by the second approach - wheres the fun in doing the stuff which comes to you so well all thru ur life :) I want to play the different roles - under different masks. But under the mask, lies the good old nerd :)

Post movie reflection 2 : DOR

2006-09-27T18:34:00.000+05:30

Rang de basanti and Lage Raho Munnabhai, Maqbool and Omkara, Iqbal and DOR – These are some of the better movies in the recent times. Between each of the pairs mentioned above, there seems to be a trace of a pattern emerging. RDB and LRMB superimposed the historic legendary heroes into a contemporary surrounding and weaved an inspirational story around it. Maqbool and Omkara are adept adaptations of Shaskspearan drama into very Indian surroundings – the beauty of the movies is in the execution rather than novelty of the plot itself – the underworld in one case and hindi hinterland politics in the other.

Nagesh kukunoor seems to have taken to simple emotion-based stories – of ambition, achievement, disappointments and human relationships. Iqbal narrates the journey of a muted boy making it to the Indian cricket team and how he overcomes various barriers along his way. The story was about the spirit of the boy, the resolve he shows, his imaginative ways and his relationship with all who mattered to him most. In DOR, Nagesh attempts to build a beautiful relationship between two women – who are very distinct from each other.

The plot revolves around how wife(Zeenat played by Gul panag) of a man convicted for murder of his friend in a foreign land, attempts to reach out for help to the unknown victim’s wife (Meera played by Ayesha Takia) – armed with just one photograph of the affected couple with her. The beauty of the plot is that it allows the director the choice to concentrate his narrative on various aspects - The murder/accident (As the case maybe) plot, the search of the accussed wife for the victim’s wife with least possible cues and so on. However, Nagesh has chosen to rush through the first half of his movie in setting up the context by rushing through the details, and he devotes the rest of the movie to show the delicate and adorable friendship developing between the two women protagonists of his movie – and what they learn from each other through their relationship.

The movie makes the audience think about many important issues : First and foremost is the importance of freedom and independence for leading a happy life, the hypocrisy of many customs which we might follow and most importantly, who and how do we determine the right to create and destroy life.

There are interactions in the movie which leave you with deep insights on human relationships – Especially the one where Ayesha response to Gul panag’s request towards the end of the movie, the brief interactions between the widow ayesha and widow grandmom, the drunk confession of Talpade (Who plays a friendly conman/entertainer) with Gul panag, the final confrontation of mother-in-law with Ayesha takia.

Among all the directorial finesse, what impressed me most was the pace at which Nagesh had set his narrative. By the time the movie ended, it had almost converted into a musical. Unlike the jerky movement in most other movies, the editing, music and narrative were in sync at the same smooth pace all thoughout. Shreyas Talpade, who plays the innovative con-man who meets Gul panag along her search for Ayesha takia has been used very intelligently to add mainstream entertainment value. Shreyas shows versatility in his mimicry and is very entertaining all through the journey – to both Gul panag and the audience.

Post movie reflection 1 : Khosla ka Ghosla

2006-09-25T22:53:00.000+05:30

Disclaimer : You may enjoy reading this piece more when you have already seen the movie or have read some other writeup which is more complete and more comprehensive in describing the movie.

A “service-class” resident of delhi, Mr Khosla, wants to plan for his future expansion of his family – buys a new plot in South Delhi. A money minded shark, again laughingly played by Boman Irani (The jerky laugh has stuck onto Boman since his MB-MBBS days), grabs the plot of the poor Khosla. How does Khosla manage to get back his Ghosla, is what the movie is all about.

Add to this another half a dozen peripheral plots -

A story around how a PSU employed dad and MNC employed son handle their uge gaping generational divide , a little tug of war between career minded side and the little romantic side of the same MNC dude, a self respecting woman who is in love with a guy who is caught in multiple aspirations at the same time, an erstwhile partner of the bad guy looking for a chance to get back at the bad guy...
- the concoction is adeptly brewed by the director and writer into what I would call the wittiest hindi movie I have seen for a long long time.

What endears the movie the most is the “very believable” Delhi working class surroundings captured in the movie – The independent house with one car parking space, the white santro with the decorated head rest, the bonding-vonding and shopping vopping punju-influenced lingo, the morning walk culture, chartered bus friendship and many more such things. :-)

The movie is most aptly cast. Apologies as I do not know all the actors – but the special mention should go to Navin Nischol playing the chief protoganist in the get-back-at-the-bad-guy drama, Navin’s secretary guy who would have been selling biscuits in station if he hadn’t been cast properly, the US visa agent who is the chief mastermind of the drama and Ranvir who plays elder brother. Ranvir in particular, is most hilarious – especially in the hiring the pehalwaan sequence and the taking on the watchman sequence.

As one sits wafting through the sea of wit and high quality comedy , Tara sharma’s voice shakes us fiercely now and then – one of the weirdest possible “eaaah” pronunciation of everything – makes the movie less enjoyable, if at all that was possible.

To illustrate the spirit of the movie, imagine this trailer piece assembled together from movie pieces

Imagine five people standing in line facing a wall, side by side and a girl in the same line facing the opposite side.
Ranvir reads the writing on the wall “Yahaan, pishaab karna mana hai”. Standing next to him, Anupam Kher understands the urgency of the situation, and advices ”Arey aaram se. In cheezon ka mazaa dheere dheere karna chahiye. Hold it up”. Nischol pleads ”Arey yaar, meri phat rahi”.
Tara, who is standing facing the road, laughs looking at Nischol “Oh god, look at ur face – don’t worry, I am not going to kiss you”. Boman letching at Tara, “Very good, very decent, I appreciate, very decent”.
Meanwhile the camera zooms from the wall to the middle of the road where Parvin Dabbas (MNC dude) and the US visa guy start dancing to the dhinchak club beats singing the following…

“Duniya khel tamasha
Ye tedi medi baasha
Ye tish phish taashun shooshan
Chak de phatte

Duniya mast kalandar
Yahan utte baihtan bandhar
Samjhe apnoon sikandar
Chak de phatte”

:-)

Expensive markets or No markets?!

2006-09-22T14:40:00.000+05:30

Bangalore and chennai are both nightmares for people who do not have their own personal transport. The public transport is crowded, over burdened, no easy way of knowing the cryptic bus no- route conundrum : especially for the city newcomers, uncomfortable and it cannot provide differential service to people who are ready to pay more. It is in such cases the taxis and autos come in to fill in the gap in most cities. But in bangalore and chennai the auto-wallahs make life more miserable for commuters.

Bangalore auto guys just refuse to come to certain places. I live in koramangala and work in richmond road.Bangalore is mired with one ways - hence I do not travel on the same route in the morning and evening. And auto guys refuse to come to either koramangala or richmond road. Its not just restricted to these two places. I have found the problem with Richmond road to airport, MG road to airport, Residency road to st marks road, Residency road to cox town, richmond road to vidhan soudha, forum to bannerghetta road and bannerghetta road to jayanagar. They just refuse to move their butts. There is demand for a person to commute from point X to point Y - but no supply of autos willing to do the same. It takes a dozen enquiries, pleading sales pitches, tempting offers and threatening scowls(thru the traffic police) with auto guy to make the nth auto on the road to reluctantly agree, behaving as though you should pledge your life in return for his generous help :)

The case is different in chennai - The auto guys are born deal makers - they agree to go from anywhere to anywhere - but they jus have a cost associated with that. They do not have an ounce of conscience while stating the current petrol rate (as if only they consume petrol at that rate) as their justification for a distance which will consume 100ml of their petrol. I have even noticed guys running on gas stating petrol rates sometimes - but only the stupidest or the man with most courage and verbal energy shall get into debate with them.

Its a case of no market existing in one case and really expensive market (created by a coterie of auto guys) in other case. Compare this with a heaven for auto commuters called Bombay. Sooper guys. You wave for an empty auto, get in, tell him the place, he downs his meter and he moves. Simple efficient comfortable process.

I think the basic difference between the auto guys in Bombay and the other places is the origin of auto guys. In bombay its the UP,bihar, Orissa and rajasthan guys who drive the autos. They are immigrants who have come to make money. Its an economic activity. In chennai and bangalore - chennai especially, the guys are locals, tamizh pasanga, who live and work in the same pettais (areas). They are like much more at ease, more arrogant and more carefree about scorning customers, not making that extra rupee and in return put some style/arrogance with customers. Its a lifestyle activity for them.

Somehow we need to figure out a way to send the chennai auto guys to hyderabad, hyderabad guys to bangalore and bangalore guys to come to chennai.

:-)

Story attempt # 8

2006-09-21T16:36:00.000+05:30

Collegil eppoyudhum idhe pechu dhaan. Netru iravu, ravi sharadha-vin veetin veliye avalukku oru ichu koduthadhaga vadhandhi. Pona vaaram nadandha class partyil sukumar jananikku propose pannadhaga innoru vadhandhi. Idhellam unmaiyo illaiyo, raviyum sukumarum varum sandhadhigalin history puthagathil (cycle stand wall) idam petruvittargal. Contemporary heroes endrum sollalam.

Avanum koodiya seekiram edhavadhu saadhikka vendum endru mudiveduthan. Minimum Barista coffee, auto fair, oru china gift – edhellam illamal malathi impress aavalo maattalo.

Veetil amma fridge-in mael madhathirkaana packet paal veitha panathai eduthaan. Senraan. Venraan.

:-)

Translation for my non-tam friends

Ravi and sukumar had earned their place in the annals of the college – cycle stand wall to be precise. A peck on the cheek by ravi and an alluded proposal by Sukumar : which were doing the rumor rounds nowadays was their achievement – apparently. If only, the topic was discussed more freely, he would call them contemporary heroes.

Pressure was on - to prove himself. Soon. So he sat down to make his elaborate plans for the week ahead – Barista coffee date, auto ride both ways and the kind of gift to get for her – this should be enough to impress malathi., he thought.

Mom had kept her monthly budget of 500 bucks for the milkman on top of the refrigerator. It was more than enough for him. He came. He took. He conquered.

:-)

Story attempt #7

2006-09-21T15:55:00.000+05:30

Lift kadhavu thirandhadhu.

Avan moonji surungina thakkaali pol therindhadhu. Manasukkul varutham. Thanakku thaane paavam solli kondaan. Kadandha oru madhamaaga avan dhinamum aapis vittu pogum poyudhu iravu padhinoru mani irukkum. Sadharana naatkal pola internet surfing-inaal late sellum kaaranam kidaiyadhu. Avanudaiya manager avanukku niraiya velai kuduthaan endrum solla mudiyadhu. Avanukke manadhirkul oru asattu aasai. Edhavadhu pudhidhaaga seiya vendum endru. Ellorukkum varum, appoppo indha madhiri asattu aasai – veru yaarum sollamal, thaane velai uruvaakki seiya vendum endru. Netru varai miga thrupthiyaga irundhaan. Avan undu avan velai undu endru. Indru kaalai, avanudaiya departmentai maatri vittargal. Pudhu department-il niraiya velaiyaam – aal thevaiyam.

Ivanukko, kanakku podum poyudhu paadhiyil notebookai pidinginadhu pol irundhadhu. Kadaisi oru maadham seidha velai – thaanagave seidha velai – thanakke thoniya velai – ellam full speedil dead-end edhire vandhadhu pol thoniyadhu. Manasukkuleye azhudhaan.

Avanai department maathuvadharku munnadi oru vaarthai solli irundhaal sariya irundhirukkum. Konjam slow down panni, oru u-turn eduthu marupadiyum siripodu velaikku vandhiruppan. Ippozhudhu verum aathiram dhaan.

Translation for my non-tam friends

The lift door opened.

His face looked shrunk like a week old tomato. His heart and mind were sullen with sadness. Self-sympathy was the only thing he was capable of. For the whole of last month, he had been working very late. No – He was not surfing the internet post working hours. No – the project was not going through one of its peaks in terms of workload. It all started with a inner hunch of doing something out of his own liking in the project. Most people go through these phases. When something in the background catches your fancy, you go after it just for the heck of doing it. Till yesterday, he was a satisfied man. Doing what was asked of him and doing a little more – that which he asked of himself. But today there was reallocation of work and he was moved to a new department.

It felt as if someone snatched his notebook while solving a mathematics problem midway through the solution. Month long effort, interest, involvement - All of it was like heading full speed into a dead-end.

Maybe, just maybe, if they had given a signal before the dead end – he could have slowed down and taken a U-turn towards the new direction. Now all he could feel was helpless and angry.

Startup idea 1

2006-09-20T12:39:00.000+05:30

Off late, I have been hearing a lot from my school and college friends. And every time there is an update, it will surely have a oh-you-know-him: he-is-seeing-her. Both him and her would have either been together in same class anywhere between kinter garden and graduation (probability of pair-creation follows a normal distribution- over the length of the scholarly journey of the person). This increasing trends of intra-school or intra-college pair making is fast replacing the intra- community arranged (maman magal, athai paiyyan) trends.

So parents are getting worried. Lesser control variables - no jadagam(horoscope), no background details, nothing. All they can decide is which school or college among the available set of options will their kids be enrolled into - and then, comes out their prospective set of daughter-in-laws or son-in-laws.

So here comes an idea to help parents make a more informed choice : Essentially a googling service which will map the kids in various schools and colleges - guys and girls from kinder garden and upwards in every school and college - resume like - acads, extracurrics, parents, friends, bad habits, good habits.. everything. And hence mapping the DNA of a college.

In addition, Colleges can position themselves with certified ratings from our firm about the kind of people they induct, along with the professional and personal prospects and hence differentiate themselves.

What say?

Narration : Appa

2006-09-19T18:34:00.000+05:30

I was walking down the road that I noticed the old man,( He looked like a beggar, but he wasn’t begging then) nibbling away at his bread crumbs. Bread crumbs.

It was when I walked closer to him that I noticed the bulge made by a bag of coins on his side. I was wondering why doesn’t he have a nice little meal at the tea-kadai rather than nibble at the fungus coated bread piece.

I walked past him. Towards home.

Some days passed. I was walking down the same road. The man was there at the same location. He just seemed to have grown older. A couple of wrinkles here and there kind of ageing. He was still nibbling at a similar piece of bread crumb. His bulge of coins seemed to have swelled. A small kid came running towards him calling out, “Appa, I want a mittai pa”. He cuddled the child and took a few coins out of the bag and handed it out to him.

*Narration of a real incident

Iruvar

2006-09-18T20:13:00.000+05:30

When I was growing up, there were moments when me and my friends would be hopeful of a miracle happening in the film world - Rajni and kamal staring in the same movie. Yeah, as much as we used to divide ourselves into two teams "Rajni likers" and the "Kamal likers", this was one point common in all our wishlist (Btw, naan superstar katchi :))

I guess the current generation would be dividing themselves between Vijay and maddy or Vikram and Surya - definitely there are no just two representatives of the film world nowadays.. but there would some really interesting duos on screen . For instance, consider these

1. Arya and Vijay in a police story or a action based chase thriller.
2. Vikram and maddy in a crazy mohan comedy (Idea courtesy : Chilli)
3. Bharath and Sid in a strong manirathnam movie
4. Koundamani and Santhanam in a one-liner nakkal thiruvizha/festival

As an aside, even though me and few of my friends agree to some traces of talent in Simbu as a director, he can still make for a "Pits" level combination with prashanth :) Total animal planet! And Sathyaraj and SJ surya can make for an good hefty show for all the sleaze/nakkal lovers

2006-09-16T00:05:00.000+05:30

I started with nothing, I still have most of it

கதை நேரம் : 6 / Story attempt : 6

2006-09-15T15:14:00.000+05:30

வீட்டில் breakfast table-இல்.

“அப்பா, ரவியோட parents இன்னிக்கு வீட்டிற்க்கு வற்றாங்க பா”

"ஏதுக்கு” என்றார் அப்பா.

"என்னப்பா”, என்றாள் சுனிதா, மூஞ்ஜியை சுலுகிய படி – சுனிதாவின் அப்பாவிற்கு ஏதாவது பிடிக்கவில்லையென்றால் அதை பற்றி joke அடிக்க அரம்பித்து விடுவார் – வெளியே கோவம் காட்டும் சுபாவம் கிடையது "இப்பொ நக்கலுக்கு time இல்ல பா – seriousa சொல்லறேன் – அவன் U.S. போறான் – அதுக்கு முன்னாடி ஒரே ஒரு last chance – please be serious”

"ம்ம்”

"அம்மா – நீயாவது சொல்லேன் மா. ஏதாவது respond பன்ன சொல்லேன். இப்படியே எதுவும் சொல்லாமல் கடைசீயில கால வாரி விட்ட என்ன செய்யர்து”

திடீர் என்று secretary கையில் landline மாதிரி ஒரு phone-ஐ கொண்டு ஒடி வந்தார் – emergency call போல. அப்பாவினுடைய்ய பர்ட்யின் ஒரு இளம் M.P. எதிர் கட்சி செர்ந்து விட்டாறாம். அந்த M.P. அவர் கிட்ட வந்து எதோ Constituency fund allocation மற்றும் சில பல விஷயங்கள் பேசும் பொயுது – joke அடிதிருக்க கூடாதொ. ஏதாவது சொல்லியிருந்தால் பெசியிருகலம்.

"அம்மா சுனிதா, ரவி வரட்டும், நல்லதா பேசி பார்கலாம். கவலை இல்லாமல் collegeக்கு போய் வா.”

சுனிதா secretary uncleக்கு ஒரு செல்ல hug குடுத்தப்படி துள்ளி சென்றாள்.

:-)

Translation for my non-tam friends

At the breakfast table.

”Appa, Ravi’s folks are coming to visit us today”

“Oh, any special occasion?”

“Appaaaa” said Sunitha, the wrinkles in her otherwise smooth forehead and chin indicating her dislike of his sarcasm and indifference to what she was saying. “ Appa, no time for jokes pa. Ravi is pushing of to the US tomorrow. Last chance for us pa. Please be serious”

“Hmmm”

“Amma, Cant you do anything. Appa cannot keep quite every time I tell something and take a surprise decision at the final moment – mostly on the negative. Ask him to talk”

His secretary ran into the room suddenly. An emergency phone call apparently. A young MP from his party had resigned. Probably joining the opposition. He paused. When the new MP came to discuss budget allocations for various constituencies, maybe he should not have joked around. Some response could have bought him some more time.

“Sunitha, hmm, let them come. We will talk and everything will be good. Have fun at college”

Sunitha sprang up from the seat. Gave a celebratory hug to secretary uncle and sped away through the door.

:-)

Story attempt #5

2006-09-12T11:42:00.000+05:30

From: Ravi, Kumar (Really hyped fin firm) [mailto:ravi.kumar@reallyhypedfinfirm.com]
Sent: Tuesday, September 11, 2006 11:24 PM
To: Me
Subject: Re : My candidature

Thank you for your interest in the really-hyped-fin-firm.

We have reviewed your resume carefully and were very impressed with your background and qualifications. However, we regret to inform you that we are unable to offer you any suitable opportunities at this time. We will keep your application on file and will contact you should any appropriate opportunities arise in the future.

We wish you every success in your career search.

From: Mann,Priya (Really useless mall) [mailto:priya.mann@reallyuselessmall.com]
Sent: Tuesday, September 12, 2006 8:46 AM
To: Me
Subject: Re : Your profile

Congratulations! Thank you for your interest in the really useless mall.

We have reviewed your profile with great interest and we are happy to inform you that you have been offered premium membership with our range of stores.

We hope to see you soon at the really useless mall

Andru kaalai, Mudhal irandu mail padithadhum, morning coffee vandhadhu. Seatil saindha padi, manasukkuleye mudivu edhuthan. Inimel mall and job rendukkum vera vera profile details anuppanum.

:-)

Translation for my non-tam friends

From: Ravi, Kumar (Really hyped fin firm) [mailto:ravi.kumar@reallyhypedfinfirm.com]
Sent: Tuesday, September 11, 2006 11:24 PM
To: Me
Subject: Re : My candidature

Thank you for your interest in the really-hyped-fin-firm.

We wish you every success in your career search.

From: Mann,Priya (Really useless mall) [mailto:priya.mann@reallyuselessmall.com]
Sent: Tuesday, September 12, 2006 8:46 AM
To: Me
Subject: Re : Your profile

Congratulations! Thank you for your interest in the really useless mall.

We have reviewed your profile with great interest and we are happy to inform you that you have been offered premium membership with our range of stores.

We hope to see you soon at the really useless mall

With the coffee in his hand, he reclined on his chair, with the inbox still open. Then he made a very conscious decision. From now, he will send different profile details for jobs andmalls

:-)

Story attempt #4

2006-09-11T16:43:00.000+05:30

nanbargaludan cyclelil veetirku thoppa thoppa ninandhukondu payanam – yaaru mudhalil servargal endru oru siriya poetti – brake pidikave pidikadhu , road munaiyil skid panni style kaattuvadhil competition, adhe munai chettiar kadai 50 paisa pepsi cola vaayil thonga, road orathil maths textbook coveral seidha kathi kappal, namuthu pona appalam pol 5 roobai nottu sattai paiyil, Manhole cover ottaiyil tornado pol suzhandu kondirikkum mazhai neer, keech keech endru saththam podum canvas shoes, 60 vayadhu aana pol surungiya kaiyum kaalum, football, cricket, running race. Marunaal irumal, thummal, possibly juram.

Amma thittuvaal. Appo, Ammavinaal bhayam.

Ippovum adhe madhiri dhaan, mazhai endral avanukku rumba bhayam. Cell phone ninaindhu vidumo endru.

:-)

Translation for my non-tam friends

The rides back from school to home - drenched to the bone – cycle race between the friends – even with the non functioning brakes, skidding style competitions, with the 50 pc pepsi cola stick dangling like a extra long tongue, math-book-cover–turned into the ultra powerful shredder ship cruising along the flooded roads , 5 rupee note resembling the rasam dipped tear and eat papads, the intricate patterns made by gushing water around holes over the manhole covers, squeeking canvas shoes, wrinkles in hands and legs makes wondering whether all the youth was just a makeup, football, cricket, running race. And the next day, cough, sneeze.

Amma would rebuke him. Then, he was wary, cos of amma.

Even now, he is wary of getting drenched in the rain. Wary that his communicator might get drenched along with him.

:-)

Story attempt #3

2006-09-08T11:20:00.000+05:30

Bike speedometer 85 kmph kaatiyadhu. ECR. Kaalai 6.30 mani. Pin seatil gayathri.

Thalaivar vivek’s “Figurea parthundane, friend kut pannaran” vaakiyam manadhirukkul oru pin-nal kuthiyadhu. Gayathri mael avinashukku oru kan. Nalla kanna nollae kanna – theriyavillai – aanal avinash en 12 varuda nanban – Mudhal dhum, mudhal beer, mudhal ragging session ellam onnagave kadandhu sendra nanban. College mudhal varudam, gayatri final year padikkum senior – Romba azhagu endrellam solla mudiyadhu – Aanal ellarodum nanraga pazhaguvaal – aval siricha mugamdhaan avinashai eerthirukka vendum. Ennavellamo try pannaan avinash. College election poster ottinaan , appa loan pottu bike vaanginaan (second hand bullet), culturalskku bench thookinaan.. ennavellamo! – iddhellam verum avaludan ore idathil irundhu, medhuvaga pesi ‘correct' pannalam endru. Nanbanana naan – military cover pola– enge ellam avan ponano, naanum poven – image protectionnu sonnan avinash.

Aanal, eppo enna nadandhadho – out of focusil irundha naan thideerendru modelaga marivitten.

Sorry da avinash

:-)

Translation for my non tam friends

Cruising along ECR at 85 kmph. 6.30 AM. Gayatri on the back seat.

“Figurea parthudane, frienda cut pannaran” had been the favourite teasing line of his gang in college – Now the same line was eating him from inside. Avinash had a thing for Gayathri. Good thing or bad thing – who cares – for Avinash was my childhood mate. First smoke, first beer and first ragging session – we had seen past most important milestones together. Gayatri, then was a final year student, our senior (we were lowly freshers then) – not the drop dead gorgeous types – but definitely attractive, thanks to her ever smiling face and genial demeanour. Avinash must have had a book like “501 ways to woo a girl” or something – he tried a variety of tricks like… sticking posters for college elections, buying a second hand bullet (obviously his dad was the financier then), lifting benches for the culturals – I was even amused of the things he would do to just be around her and get a chance to talk now and then. The good friend that I was, had to agree to be the prodigal “ personal cover” (very like the military cover) to him – “Hanging out with a friend was like setting up the background” he said.

But, not too sure on what happened when, foreground and background got mixed up and so here I am.

Sorry da Avinash

:-)

Story attempt #2

2006-09-07T10:03:00.000+05:30

Avanum avalum “surya jyothika madhiri” endru pesa pattargal. Poduvagha naalu vidama pesara adhe naalu paer, ippo ore vishayam sollumbodhu, kallam illadha, aanal kadhal konda avanudaya manadhu kalaindhadhu. Oru pakkathil, avan surya level endru manasukkulla oru veekkam. Maru pakkam, aval nejamavey jothika dhaana, oru thayakkam? Oru velai, innum gundaga, azhagaga evalavadhu kidaipala?

Manasu kalanjadhu

:-)

They said that him and her were like “Surya Jo” combo. All along people around him have been saying diverging differing things about every facet of his life – when these same people told him the same thing in this particular matter, his mind fluttered. On one hand, there was a terrific ego massage to think of him like Surya. Simultaneously, was she really jo level? Maybe there could be someone more chubbier, more prettier out there for him!

Mind fluttered.

:-)

Better translation by Bala :

Word was, they were "surya jyothika types". People who made two and two five were now saying four, in one voice. It made him stop,listen and reflect. His mind harbored no evil and lots of love. Yet doubts plagued the mind. On one hand, his ego was stroked that he was "Surya level". And doubts plagued the mind. Was she really "Jyotika level"? What if he could get someone even chubbier and even lovelier?

Doubts plagued the mind.

Special thanks to bala

Story attempt #1

2006-09-06T17:15:00.000+05:30

Nanbanodu kaapi arundhumbodhu aval vandhal
Neela jeans, vellai chattai, thelindha mugam, kayil oru handicrafts pai
College pen pol irundhal. Nanban edho solli kondu irukka, enakko nokkam ellam aval pakkam
Peyar enna - Manadhirkulleye "Name and face matching" seiydhu konddirundhen
'Lavanya'pola irukkiral - anal chudidhar effect missing; 'Sandhya' pola irukkiral - anal konjam color extra.
Ippadi, kooti-kazhichu kondirikkum podhu... aval cellphone mani adithadhu... Ah! "Radhika speaking" endradhu andha ayuthamana inimayana kural
Ingu phone illavital, aval peyar theriyamal poyirikkulamey... Endru feel panni kondirukkum pozhudhu... adhe scene repeat agara madhiri, en phone adithadhu... "Hello, fart speaking" endren.

:-)

Translation for my non-tam friends

The other day, I was sipping hot latte with a friend of mine. She walked in.
Blue denims, white khadi top, a genial smile, with a handicraft bag over the shoulder.
My friend was trying to tell me something but all i cud see and hear(not much) was her's.
What could be her name? I was trying to play "Match the face with the name" game within my mind.
Lavanya is it? the chudidhar was missing. Sandhya, could it be? the colour was little bit pale.
Just then... her phone rang... "Radhika speaking" said a sweet firm voice.
I was thanking Sunil mittal and his brethren for making the cell phone possible. how could i have known her name if she hadnt had that phone today?! As my thanksgiving was happening... My phone rang... "Hello, fart speaking" I said.

:)

P.S : An attempt at tamil (in english) writing is inspired from Other's blog. Thanks da! Its nice.

2006-09-06T12:51:00.000+05:30

Kettadhum kadhal...
Shreya ghosal udan...

Listen to Saara yeh aalam from hindi movie "Shiva"... Remake of an old illaiyaraja beauty... good stuff!

Success and henceforth

2006-09-04T18:51:00.000+05:30

Friend :"Machan, we all wanted to be successful. We are a bandhi, house and a car away from it. What next after that!"

:-)

2006-08-30T17:12:00.000+05:30

From a chat transcript:

Me : Kabab corner's rolls rock!
Friend : Lets start a pub and call it rock and roll!

:)

2006-08-29T17:44:00.000+05:30

There is so little happening in life.
Very difficult to keep one excited for even 2 mins put together.

2006-08-28T19:25:00.000+05:30

Life, apparently, is all about timing.
But I have lost my watch.

2006-08-16T18:40:00.000+05:30

Avalukkuenna amba samudram iyer hotel halwa madhiri
thazham poovena thala thalavena vandha vandha paaru

Avanukkena Alwar kurichi azhagu devaru aruva madhiri
burma thekkana pala pala vena vandhan vandhan paaru

2006-08-08T15:24:00.000+05:30

A link on my internal college message board led me to a page which has this totally beautiful and (maybe) almost true definition of a cynic

...an idealist whose rose-colored glasses have been removed, snapped in two and stomped into the ground, immediately improving his vision...

Lovely!

Learning for the day!

2006-08-07T13:37:00.000+05:30

Apparently, Mahabharata is called a great epic because of the following insight about the book :

" If its here, then its nowhere else; If its not here, then also its nowhere"

Source : Quoted from "Bookless in baghdad" by Shashi Tharoor

Noose or News?

2006-08-03T20:27:00.000+05:30

My contention is that...

the candid camera expose' nowadays do not add any TRP value to the media company because every damn channel is doing it and its pretty boring anyways!

So it has to be funded by someone other than the consumers - My guess is (and i guess the only possible guess!) that this someone is one who is plotting to break down his rival gang's prosti network or child trafficking network or land mafia control etc

So pranob roy might be hobnobbing with dawood in all probability to decide where his journalists will be working next!

Scary thought! (Think of a calcutta based don brokering the chappell - ganguly spat for money from ganguly's foes or think of bombay based don's manipulating what analyst's say about a particular stock in the media!)

2006-08-03T14:01:00.000+05:30

Cant write a review and all... ARR simply rocks... munbe vaa anbe vaa is the best... shreya ghosal and Naresh iyer - whattay voice... god level !!!:D

2006-07-30T20:02:00.000+05:30

The best part about earning life is that, the quality of weekends generally improves. No longer would the poor student who used to think twice before going for karting - calculate twice his cash flows and the number of days left till the time he gets his next allowance. Salaries in general are more than what your time pass activities would demand. If one finds his salary little to less to manage this itselt, then I would have to recommend him for some implementation of rigorous fiscal practices - like a) burning of some credit cards which he might have b) maintaining accounts of expenses and actually maintaining a personal balance sheet! etc etc

Now, my weekends for the last one year and more have been really been pretty good. Be it either bombay where me and the gang (includes ali,vishy, sid, laks (and some iima friends of his), anta, parande, icy, pondy and andy etc) do the usual fame adlabs latest hindi/english flick and follow it up with pop tates thai red curry and rice dinner routine or make a more involved trip to matunga to enjoy the south indian delicacies at Manis or Rama nayak - every weekend was a memorable one. Add to it the mid week bash at Aura with either of icy's new friends or sometimes even sid's dad joining us for a drink or two - Aura was awesome.

Move over from bombay to bangalore, things have gotten only better. Have been spending my alternate weekends at chennai and bangalore and I would say that both cities have been competing in a very healthy manner to entertain me. Chennai has been tantalisingly successful in making me think hard about a complete shift of base back to hometown. Chimpi, varath and dd - the chennai gang and moron, gawd, nirma, muther, dufu, homo and chilli (and some of his friends( his gang is too huge for me to remember all the names - but yeah, i have met avi twice and i remember his name!) - the bangalore gang... :))... As one more weekend goes past by, I stand waiting for the next weekend pitstop!

Long live weekends!

2006-07-27T18:50:00.000+05:30

Baby -> Kid -> Boy -> Teen -> Man -> Parent
This parent gives rise to another chain of baby to parent thingie...
Whats the exact equation between the parents and the kids? Why do people have kids? Following are some of my hypothesis

- After college, dating, job and marriage that is the most widely observed next step!
- To find a purpose of earning (even if work is shit!) - feeding a kid and educating him gives a seemingly noble and worthwhile cause
- Sense of acquisition to a very priceless possession? A living thing?! that too of the same species!
- To escape from boredom - after some point friends get other better things to do in life and u need ur own family?
- To develop an insurance for future? Belief that kid if brought up well, will repay with care, love and comfort when needed later?
- Imperious feeling of leaving back the genes even long after you are gone from this planet?!

Any more ideas anyone?

Tagged!

2006-07-27T16:44:00.000+05:30

I am thinking
about what next to do

I said
nothing much

I want
power and knowledge

I wish
peace with myself

I miss
my iitm days

I hear
nothing much

I wonder
about worth of anything including me

I regret
some lies, some stealth and some mistakes

I am
sudheer aka f@rt

I dance
slowly nowadays (age has taken its toll!)

I sing
tam songs... usually when i am alone!

I cry
very rare

I am not
a cheater!

I write
whenever i have energy

I confuse
none - most people are smarter than me!

I need
a gym at office or near home!

I should
stop procrastinating

I finish
this tag!

2006-07-27T10:34:00.000+05:30

For the hungry bangaloreans

2006-07-26T09:43:00.000+05:30

Hi,

An interesting website meant only for the hungry souls of Bangalore www.hungrybangalore.com was launched recently.

It’s a repository of many hotels in Bangalore and it enables users to place online orders to the restaurants registered with it. One can search for hotels in a particular area based on various criteria…view the entire menu online (even view the item description for unknown sounding dishes). One almost feels like sitting at the restaurant while viewing the menu, of course sans the usual hassle of wading through the traffic to reach the joint.

Enjoy ordering online.

2006-07-14T12:47:00.000+05:30

Any job to give ultimate orgasm is a combination of a lot... ideation, planning, leadership, patience, grunt work etc...in real world all this exists.. but the fundas of economies of scale and scope
etc.. have put all the grunt work together and all the respective rest in seperate layers... what we dont realise that we need small dose of everything to get the full orgasmic feeling.. but that unfortunately does not favor the overall picture apparently.

Can someone tell me what this overall picture is? please.

:)

2006-07-12T16:00:00.000+05:30

There is glory in chasing doomed dreams. There is valour in pursuing dreams destined to decay and die. There is manliness in tilting at windmills, even if some might label the act tragicomic rather than heroic.

It's a bit like wooing a beautiful, unattainable woman. For all the flirting and the occasional positive signals, you know from the beginning that there is never going to be a happily-ever-after, that your proposal will never be accepted.

Yet, the thrill is in the unending pursuit, no matter the soul-numbing inevitability of the ending. The journey itself is the destination.

--Nirmal Shekar

Came across this in an orkut profile of a friend. Suddenly life seems to have gained a pseud edge irrespective of whatever I am doing... Long live Nirmal shekar!

Media O Media

2006-06-06T14:31:00.000+05:30

For the last few days, there have been stories covering
1. Rahul mahajan
2. Cocaine, heroin and the likes
3. Sushma swaraj and Vajpayee's opinion of high flying lifestyles
4. Rekha Mahajan and her parental habits
5. Rahul Mahajan

What ever happened to the reservation story? What ever happened to the medicos? What is arjun singh doing?
Media O Media - Kindly have some responsibility - Take a story to its logical end

p.s : Media has enlightened me sufficiently enough that I know the addresses of cocaine and heroin suppliers in Mumbai and delhi - How is it that CNN IBN and NDTV does not come under the NDPS act?!!!

2006-06-02T15:16:00.000+05:30

2006-06-02T12:16:00.000+05:30

Democracy is a fallout of game theory.

One of the worldviews can be stated as world being an interplay of roles where each human/entity is playing a particular function according to their respective strengths.

Government is one such role. That’s all. Like a barber, scientist, doctor, etc, government is a role - Which is to perform the administrative and such activities on an ongoing basis for a specific group of people or for a territory. Not everyone can become a barber or not everyone can become a doctor – In the same way, not everyone can become a government.

A doctor’s and a barber’s role is very well defined and experienced and people can be clearly identified to be either qualified or not qualified. The person making the judgement of this qualification is immaterial. The parameters of judgement are absolute and not subjective. Unfortunately even though a government’s desired characteristics are known, there is a confusion when it comes on actually rating different aspirants according to those characterisitics.

While I may say that person X is a good administrator, honest blah blah you are more likely than not, bound to disagree with me – atleast in the extent of ratings.

It is this lack of transparent qualification process which leads to the birth of DEMOCRACY– where both you and me are given a chance to have a say (even though we don’t know much about what we are saying) – It is just an attempt by the system as a whole to cover its ass – It can later say that – “Fucker, you elected this government, now don’t crib!”

Bottom line : I feel that in democracy most people, if not all, think of what makes least harm to him/her rather than going for best possible selection!

Give up! Cos they say such a system is what is the best possible situation in this world!

Banking on Banking

2006-05-28T10:39:00.000+05:30

If asked to bet on the next big thing for indian industry, then which one would it be? By the "next big thing" I mean, the one which would grow consistently at a rapid pace, generate employment aplenty, impact positive social changes and brand india in world stage.

For instance, Information technology sector fits the bill till now. But I am skeptical not about the growth prospects, but about the continuing impact on society as a whole, and the growth in rate of generation of jobs and desirability of continued branding of India as a IT destination. We need to change and there are a few options in front of us.

Of the many, the most promising sector looks to be the Indian financial sector. Robust Indian banking system has been often quoted as one of India's strengths vis-a-vis china in addition to the more open and democratic socio-political setup. Indian banks, nationalised and private, have been protected for a long time from competition - for instance, the foreign banks all put together have been given restricted access to growth in the indian market. This protection has enabled the transfer of technology and products from the foreign players and helped the ICICI bank , HDFC bank and the likes to develop robust balance sheets. So impressive is the technology backed banking systems that ICICI bank (in one of their presentations in my campus) has plans to go overseas with the competitive offering of services at a lower cost (lower cost due to operating out of india and better technology!).

Agreed that global financial scenario has many menacing heavy weights which are mostly synonymous with country government backed governments, the Indian nationalised banks, as and when privatised and opened up for more private investments, coupled with growing indian domestic market - might give that small chance for Indian players to go global!

Another facet of Indian financial acumen going global can be felt through the increasing recruitment of Indian talent by the global heavy weights like Goldman sachs, Lehman brothers, Bank of America etc and the increasing levels of offshoring activities of even the core banking activities to India by the same players.

Be it the indian players going abroad or the indian talent powering the existing global players, my bets are on the indian financial sector to make us proud - real proud!

p.s: This post heavily inspired by an article on International banking survey on the Economist this week - It brought to surrface my thoughts on Indian banking sector in a more succinct and clear manner.:)

Medico mystery!

2006-05-20T10:18:00.000+05:30

In the wake of reserve vs Deserve debate, it seems only the doctors seem to have been affected. There has been very little contribution/voicing of their views from students from other backgrounds...

- Is it because, engineers who form significant part of our graduate population ( need to verify this - does anyone have any numbers in this regard?) are from southern states (like TN, AP etc), where the reservation percentage (69%) is already higher than the proposed percentage - Even then, doesnt it make sense for them to have some sort of a view atleast???

- Or is it that the funda from government - of increasing the seats by 100% and then implementing reservation quota acceptable to others - afterall, TN engineering college seats is the most responsive to demand supply mechanics - A college can be built up and ramped up overnight in some yet to be built building with a board claiming the existence of college on the outside!.:).. maybe this is not possible in medical system. Actually, I think the standards of setting up technical physical sciences and general sciences is acceptable (despite being low!) because we mostly use it as a springboard to either one of the IT/ITES jobs or as a plank to apply to the better (arguable again!) american colleges! No one actually uses what they learn in these colleges for earning their bread and butter later in life...
Poor medicos! They actually spend their 4-5 years learning stuff to use it later in life.:) "5 point someone" must have been such an alien book for my doctor friends!

Whatever it is, while the doctors get lathi charged, the engineers (and etc!) are busy orkutting and forwarding reservation related petitions and mass mails!:P

Movie mapping - I

2006-05-18T22:46:00.001+05:30

Not all movies can be seen by all. Some movies are for some and the rest are for the rest. See below some movie recommendation for a select some. :)

Pyaasa

Aspiring movie makers, hindi poetry lovers, people who like cute angelic babes (waheeda rehman!), old hindi music lovers, society blamers, "philosophy of life" thinkers, vague linkage analogy lovers, angst carriers, talented lazy guys

Euro trip

Europe lovers, europe haters, nude beach lovers, nude beach haters, crazy european sex believers, absynth followers, boob watchers, those with 100 mins allocated for time pass.:)

Thavamai thavamirundhu

Tam movie makers (producers, directors etc), sons, dads, daughters and the like, aspiring movie makers, believers in comeback rajkiran, wud-be padma priya fans!

Pattiyal

"Manirathnam style of movie making" liker, YSR tam pop music lovers, Na muthukumar lyrics muggers, wud-be padma priya fans!, revenge revellers, wannabe gangster, those who miss "two hero movies", those who dont miss "happy endings"

Ullam ketkume

Irene aka Pooja lovers, laila also maybe!

United 93

Those who saw the 9/11 happen on their TV screens, those who have travelled by plane in the past and plan to do that in future (Even air deccan would count!), america lovers, america haters, baby boomer believer, good documentary lover

Coming up : rest of the movies for the rest

Idea politics

2006-05-18T16:14:00.000+05:30

What is common to BJP, Congress, DMK, ADMK, Samajwadi party and the like? "Lack of ideas". The only idea which seems to be thriving among the minds of our political leaders is short term gains through populism and freeriding on tax payer's money to gain their own personal (business - I am sure that each of these political parties has a P&L and is run with an aim to maximise the promoter's profit!) ends.

In the last two decades we have had close to half a dozen PMs. Is it possible for the electorate to clearly identify, let alone differentiate, each of the PMs from one another based on their beliefs, ideas and policies which they stood for? Maybe apart from the 'apparent' exception of PV Narasimha rao, who arguably(!) introduced India into the global economics of free market in a restrictive sense ("Arguably" because, it can be proven that he was forced to take the steps of liberalisation because he was left with no other feasible option to prevent india from bankruptcy!), I can think of none who did anything different from the predecessors/successors.

Also, look at the pertinent issues which are making news nowadays - Narmada bachao andolan problem, reservation issue, agricultural debts, bombay traffic issues, delhi power supply issues, bangalore roads and general infrastructure - the only posture which we hear from our politicians is that of populism "The incumbent government is incapable of solving the problems - GIVE ME POWER - I will give you(the people who turn out to vote - among these the rural ones/illiterate ones/ poor ones are the numerically relevant ones ) roads, power, food, education and even colour TVs for free!!! There is not one single party which can clearly stand for a solution theme and communicate the same to the people!

The advantage of a multi-party system is that, different parties will bring in different ideas/ ways of solving the same problem - to illustrate it in a simple manner, Capitalistic approach vs a socialistic approach is a century long debate (Many would claim that capitalism has won the debate!). What the political parties are doing today is not even adopting a socialistic approach - they are just populistic one-time measures - they are not establishing a system by which the government will continue to give free colour TVs and free electricity for the future generations!

There is something terribly wrong with the incentive structure for the Indian politicos. Possible reasons are

People do not trust ideas - years of abuse - tons and tons of failed promises, makes the electorate immune to new ideas/ promises of solution
Government no longer plays a significant role in problem solving for the public at large ! Judiciary, NGOs, Government, corporates and the individuals themselves feel capable of solving their own problems - so why seek ideas from the government - Instead seek the freebies which are easy to measure and account for !
Coalition politics leads to dilution of ideas - or rather destruction of ideas!
.
..
...

I can go on! But I myself am not able to pinpoint the root cause of this malaise!

P.S: BJP has grown with a one single (social) idea of hindutva! but since the party has always been as part of a coalition, unfortunately they were not able to do anything different - I am not saying that the idealogy is a good/bad one! But atleast they seemed to have a distinct identity!

2006-05-15T20:11:00.000+05:30

Economist says,

"In the important southern state of Tamil Nadu, a coalition led by Congress's partner, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, defeated one led by the incumbent chief minister, Jayaram Jayalalitha, a controversial film star turned politician. The election was notable for spendthrift promises. The DMK offered free colour televisions; Miss Jayalalitha countered with personal computers for needy students and gold for brides"

Note the reference to DMK as "DMK" and AIADMK as "Jayaram Jayalalitha" and the leading qualification of JJ is "controversial". JJ needs to build a more neutral image - and a stronger support system - like the Marans of the DMK to build a more sustainable powerbase.

For the time being, TN gets ready to be bled (hopefully not to death!) by the "spendthrift" promises by the power hungry parties. God save TN!

2006-05-15T19:21:00.000+05:30

One thing good about IIMs over the IITs is the annual alumni meets - Last saturday, Anusmaran was held at various cities. I made it just in time to bangalore (from a factory in an obscure place - lets talk about that later!). Bangalore anusmaran was special for one extra reason - the venue was the campus itself and everytime one visits campus, one cant refrain from revisiting the most enthralling to most mundane memories attached to every damn corner and corridor on campus.

The dinner went off in a suave sophisticated manner with all of us ("Us" denotes the gang of Sid, muther (and sunitha), homo, jabba, dufu (and manjula), gawd and moron (and smriti)) trying to bond with a few seniors, batchmates, juniors and profs here and there. The highlight of the evening of "Share the shine" photo between Dufu and one of his fav profs and for me personally,highpoint was catching up with Janat shah - the simplicity of the man is too good.

Then came tsepak - Chants of "Hom fighter, fighter homo" were doing the rounds as Muther, sid, myself and doofs teamed up against homo, gawd and a few others. We kicked their ass comprehensively - Homo vs sid being the high point of the match!

The DJ tried his best to ruin the L square which followed - but the ensemble was jus too spirited to let anything spoil their evening. The "Duhast" headbanging, surdie brownian motion, sid and muther's belly dance, droof's rare appearances, Punju songs remminiscent of piddu and gang, and all else made the 4 hrs on the dance floor wild and worth remembering for a long time to come!

Now that all of the fun is gone - my system is recuperating slowly to flush all the greasy soot from out of my system. Sure signs of getting old! Its monday for godsakes!

Disclaimer : The post can be understood only by the select few from IIM bangalore batch of 2004, 2005, 2006 due to the generous dependance on nicknames and contextual narration!

2006-05-03T11:44:00.000+05:30

"Magnificent sledging" makes Bangla day by STAFF REPORTERS
Bangladesh opening batsman Shahriar Nafees has described the moment he was sledged by Australian paceman Brett Lee yesterday as "the greatest moment of my cricketing life".
"Oh, it was wonderful," Nafees, a century-maker in the first innings, told thebladder.com. "Never in my wildest dreams would I have dared to think that I would be standing at the crease with Brett Lee calling my mother a dirty whore. I wanted to pinch myself."
Nafees and opening partner Javed Omar had carried the second innings total to 0/40, taking Bangladesh's lead to 530, when Lee beat Nafees' bat, gave him the eye and began sledging. "It took me a moment to realise what was going on," Nafees told The Bladder. "I actually had something in my eye, which is why I missed the ball for the first time in three days of batting, and then I could hear all this abuse. I finally blinked the insect out of my eye and looked up to realise Lee was glaring at me.
"He asked if my sister was a good root, and then said he'd seen better looking monkeys than my girlfriend, but he and all the other Australians had f*cked her anyway. He also mentioned that I didn't know which end of the bat to hold but either end would fit up my a*se."
Nafees said he was thrilled. "I called up the pitch to Omar, 'Hey Javed, listen to this! I am being personally sledged by a champion Australian paceman. Truly our cricket minnow of a nation has arrived!' Javed had tears in his eyes as he said: 'At last, we are worthy of paceman abuse. Our mothers are being called whores and we should celebrate.'"
Nafees said he was so distracted with emotion and happiness that he wasn't able to smack Lee for another four for a whole three balls, and only scored 16 off that over.
"The other downer was that poor Omar did not get sledged as much when he found himself facing Lee two overs later," Nafees said. "Well, Lee did call him the son of a c*cksucking gayboy pillow-biter, but we didn't actually know what that meant, so it sort of lost its impact. Still, we figured it wasn't a complement so Omar got to smile anyway."
Nafees made a point of thanking Lee for the honour bestowed upon he and Omar, saying: "Truly this is a glorious day for Bangladesh cricket, now get back to the top of your mark you fat, overrated fake blond c*nt."

2006-04-29T11:41:00.000+05:30

A lot of fun can be had on full stomach and full pockets

juvenilia

Amboli view point

2006-04-28T16:03:00.000+05:30

Taking help of extended hands to get the depths of Amboli on camera.:)

Motion picture

2006-04-28T15:31:00.000+05:30

The model in the picture is Andy

Hot

2006-04-28T15:23:00.000+05:30

I can feel the heat of the place in the pic!

2006-04-28T15:19:00.000+05:30

2006-04-27T14:10:00.000+05:30

Tendulkar...

2006-04-24T16:54:00.000+05:30

... will be remembered more for his voice and the cute kiddish face when he entered Indian cricket scene than his captaincy stint
... will make a very bad commentator
... : Ganguly :: Gavaskar : Srikanth
... will always abused by the ever-demanding public – cos he promised just a little too much for him to deliver (especially considering that this is a team game)
... is the most under utilized and under developed bowling talent who played for the Indian team for a long time
... has the strongest forearms among the indian cricketers (Have a look at his throws when he fields at deep extra cover or deep midwicket!!)
...will be remembered for the two nights of madness at sharjah more than all his many other thousand runs put together

Identity problems

2006-04-23T20:48:00.000+05:30

If the current trend of increasing number of "register and then browse" websites (like the online version of certain news sites, movie sites etc etc) , I wont be surprised if blogspot and LJ soon release a version of "register and browse " option in blog surfing also. I dread such a day coming soon, since it would make me create one otehr username and remember one other password. Remembering these not-so-worthy combinations of characters and numbers which create and protect my virtual entity are a real pain

1. Sane usernames no longer viable : From the common Karthik to the obscure beeblebrox, all the names in the world are registered with every website ever established. Even cribbo usernames like "no_more_url" or "give_me_a_username" etc have been exhasuted.

2. Password rules suck : When this whole thing of username password started, it was a simple affair. Then the thieves also found it easy to out guess the password and stuff. The coders got insulted by the ease with which the thieves proved their dumbness and decided to protect themselves. And they did it grandly with obscure and stupid password rules - which even if the actual coder wanted to decipher, it was well... almost impossible.
Well, for a simple headed guy like me, to figure out the whole list of minimum and maximum length of various components of password string, their safest order and their accepted combinations is totally confusing and very much energy sapping (certainly a -ve RoI activity)

3. Changing passwords frequently : This thing is the most painful of all things. Not only do they pain us by forcing us to be stupidly creative with the usernames, play around with anagrams, numerical patterns and combination of Caps and small alphabets etc - they want us to do it often... Ridiculous!!!

Anyways, till the time someone does something abt it, the crib remains....

Have a great week of living a life thru the usernames and passwords.:).

2006-04-21T17:18:00.000+05:30

I wouldn’t claim to have a great lineage of football watching. In fact, I have always been watching only the “Great goals” program and have knowledge only enough to identify the international teams with the color of their jersey with double figure confidence. But when I watched the match of Barcelona vs AC Milan, I felt like I have been missing out on something good. And this feeling was predominantly because of the sight of “Ronaldinho” playing.

He runs fast. He runs faster while dribbling the ball – than anyone else on the field. The man runs hard, hits hard and does not get frustrated when it misses the goal – even if its just missed by a whisker. He wants the ball back with him, so that he can run hard, dribble harder and have another go at the goal. Brilliant force! Abundant dominance of spirit!

Related post : Dinkar

2006-04-20T18:16:00.000+05:30

Tips to increase comments/hits on ur blog

Write well (Writing in form of bullet points may not be the best way)
Do not have ur with blog title with words “Random”, “ramblings” etc… everyone knows that blogs mostly have arbit random ramblings
Preferably have a feminine pen-name (Maybe this was the strategy the famous tam writer Sujatha followed in his early days:)... jus kidding!)
Link to good sites – hoping for a return favor . Don’t expect “The week” and “The hindu” to link you back; I meant link to good blogs.
Somehow bribe/hack or earn a link onto popular sites like kaps or india uncut or desipundit
Having URLs like 'www.aadisht.net' or 'www.lazygeek.net' gives the blog a touch of sincerity. Blogspot URLs need to have definite superiority in content to compensate for the uninspired URL.
Frequently post pictures (nice ones) of hot women (like tam movie women : take care to tread the fine line of beauty and vulgarity) and sivaji THE boss’s pictures as and when they come into circulation in the forwarded mail circuit
Reply to all your comments in separate comments – just to give respect to the people who cared to comment and also to artificially increase ur comment count – which hopefully will feed into more comments
Do not have a site counter which reads something like “28” or “53” when you already have similar number of posts up on ur blog.
Adsense reduces aesthetic value of the blog in general. Unless you are sure that its going to give you a few dimes a month – its definitely not worth the definite disappointment which google assures.:)
Never update more than one post at a time
Never leave the blog fallow for more than couple of days – these blog readers are never such good loyalists!:)
If nothing works, write about tamil or hindi movies – afterall aren’t blogs the modern era’s kumudam and ananda vikatan which people read during office hours.:)

P.S: If hajaar enthu, then write about IIPM - you never know - it might still work!!!:)

Indian cricket

2006-04-20T09:37:00.000+05:30

We are playing too many matches off late. No time to relish a victory to the extent it deserves
Players are being picked, dropped, deified and dumped based on innings, one match and one session
Crazy statistics making fun of statistics themselves – Soemthing like “Last three matches whenever Irfan pathan took a wicket in his first spell, India has emerged victorious” – These statisticians need to be taught the basic fundas right in terms of sample size and imbibe some sensitivity of confidence levels with which they can infer stuff like these.:)
Dravid as an opener – somehow doesn’t feel right
Agarkar is the luckiest person I have seen in the sporting scene to get so many chances to prove oneself
Maharashtra and Bombay – back as the seat of power in Indian cricket – hope it does not give rise to more manjrekars (Do I see one brewing up in the form of Wasim jaffer?)
Sidhu and srikanth are entertaining, no doubt – but can we see harsha bhogle back on TV, talking about cricket? Please!
Greg chapel loves footage
Sehwag : almost a dozen matches in India :: Ganguly : A chance in the windies – Is it fair? Or worse, if he doesn’t get a chance at all??? (Given the fact that we have tried a handful of openers in the last couple of series (Gambhir, sehwag, jaffer, dhoni, pathan, dravid, yuvraj and uthappa) – Its only fair that ganguly also finds his name in the list of openers who got a chance to prove themselves.

2006-04-17T15:23:00.001+05:30

Quantifiable + athletic = sport.
Quantifiable and not athletic = game.
Non-quantifiable + athletic = athletic spectacle.
Non-quantifiable and not athletic = watching Bay Watch on T.V.

(C) Econometrics slides, Prof T Krishna Kumar (IIMB)

Lykosmagee's thenmozhi

2006-04-12T15:34:00.000+05:30

Based on recommendation of a friend, read this book called Thenmozhi yesterday . Its a screenplay - waiting to be made into a movie (according to the writer) : Very easy read, intermittently humorous, quintessential tam-bram story, IIT madras lingo, Trisha special appearance and insight into arranged marriage. Recommend this read purely on the basis of the RoI from this book - 1.5 hrs, good fun, funny insights.

Do read and comment back.

2006-04-11T15:36:00.000+05:30

"The more I love the idea, the less the money i make".

- (C) Gapingvoid

2006-04-11T10:44:00.000+05:30

Detroit like thingie at the Inorbit malad, bombay... signs of a definite boom in retail sector

Somebody stop yuvan...

2006-03-28T14:33:00.000+05:30

... for he has started to sing almost all his songs... give up!