The Changing Wurlde

This is rather unusual. I just found out that there is actually a videogame based on the Godfather. Now, I knew for a while that there was a game based on Star Wars (surprise, surprise), but this one caught me off guard. This whole thing about all media converging towards one really mixed up smorgasbord (I just love that word) is rather intimidating. We already have movies based on videogames, take fro example Angelina Jolie’s rather infamous Lara Croft movies; then we have movies based on carnival rides, as in Pirates of the Caribbean. And of course, we have movies based on comic strips, Superman, Spiderman, yadda, yadda, yadda. The reverse trend, especially with the Godfather, which, of course is based on Mario Puzo’s MUCH better book, is rather disconcerting.

Convergence, convergence. Something in class I happened to notice today: this girl sitting behind me was not taking notes; she was clacking away at her shiny laptop computer, typing the notes in. I mean, wow!
Pretty soon, the whole thing about opening up a new book fresh from the printer’s will be just lost. Or maybe not.

Meanwhile, entertainment goes to new levels. Remember that Gawd-awful Arnie movie Total Recall? That played around with the virtual reality concept… You take vacations everywhere… but the one constant is you! That could change, with a VR memory installed in your head, you could have memories of going to Mars as a secret agent (with a luscious babe waiting for you, of course)…..

Yes, things are a-changing, and I am too old fashioned to change with them. Or not.

In Canada

After a bunch of false starts, here I am, back in Canada .. again! This time with a bunch of people somehow all connected to the Institute back home... all Bengali and all very nice people, thank you. Also swigging some really fundoo vodka.. I think it is Absolut.. and listening to some very nice music.. sometimes online and sometimes live.. in fact, I just heard 'ye Duniya agar mil bhi jaaye to kya hai' sung by Mohammad Rafi in Guru Dutt's 'Pyaasa'.... neat! Also had some very good biriyani.. ok, lets upgrade it from very good to awesome!

Adios!!!

Thoughts and greetings

Some observations and thoughts.

Americans frequently wish each other ‘hey, how’re you doing?’ as they walk by in corridors or elsewhere. They rarely, if ever stop to find out the answer to that question, though? Does this mean that they are insincere in their display of friendly neighbourliness? Perhaps it does. I am not sure. What I can say is that people in this country are undoubtedly more friendly in their daily behaviour than I have frequently seen back home. Having said that, people here are also, in general sticklers for rules and will not go out of their way to help you. They will stick to the letter, and frequently not the spirit of the law. That is, however an impression, and is tempered by a mild case of xenophobia.

An answer to ‘hey, how’re you doing?’: what if I were to answer, ‘not good at all, my uncle Ravi bit my dog Chintamani and gave it rabies’? What then? How might the other person react? I should try this out sometime.

Reverse racism?
Are brown people racist? Certainly some of us are, but to what extent? I do not have an insight into people’s minds, but there was this famous advert for a skin cream back home which sells under the brand name ‘Fair and Lovely’. I think that mostly says it all. Brown people have, in general a liking for fair skin. For a country where matrimonial agencies exist and indeed thrive, this has profound meaning.

Diversity sucks.
Indians frequently cannot talk to each other. The language problem, of having some 25 MAJOR languages in one subcontinent. Also the problem of having as many cuisines. This is a barrier to economic growth. This also runs against the concept of national identity. The Constitution preaches ‘Unity in Diversity’. What Unity? Why should I listen to the idiots who inhabit the cowbelt and rule New Delhi? Equally so, why should I listen to the idiots who rule Calcutta?

Greetings!
Gesundheit means ‘good health’ in German. It is something that one might say instead of ‘bless you’ when someone sneezes. But then, as E points out, there are very few situations when one may not say it.
Inshah-Allah means in the name of Allah. It is an invocation which can be used in almost any context. Bismillah ir-Rahman ir-Rahim is said to contain within itself the essence of the Koran, and indeed of all Islam. It means “In the name of God, most Gracious, most Compassionate”. Does uttering these phrases make me a Muslim? I think not.
A Hindu, especially a Bengali Hindu might say ‘Ma Durge’ or ‘Durga, Durga’ which is a call to the goddess Durga.
Having said that, I still dislike those people who come here on F1 visas and start using ‘Jesus Christ’ as their favourite ejaculation. Don’t they understand that this is wrong at multiple levels? First, they are obviously trying too hard to assimilate. Second, they are taking the Lord’s name in vain, not a good thing at all. Third, it sounds jarring to my ears to hear it from one who is pretending to be someone he or she is not.

Runner, Sukanto, Hemanta and some other beautiful combinations.

So here I was, working on a list of RDCs, and listening to Runner sung by the absolutely incomparable Hemanta Mukherjee. And just on a whim, I decided to google Runner and Sukanto. Sukanto, of course is the Sukanto Bhattacharya who composed Runner and other poems, which do not need an introduction if you are Bengali. If you are not, well then, in this case, bad luck. There is no way in which I can even begin to convey the meaning of this song, much less the feelings behind it. I realize that I sound absolutely parochial and that is bad. However, this is one of those things which are .. nothing if you do not understand them. And if you do, they become holy. I found this rather informative review of a few songs by Hemanta on … hold your breath.. mouthshut.com. This is rather strange, I knew mouthshut to be a place where people write reviews on cellphones, cars and cameras. Not songs. Well, the world changeth. And we with it.

Evil Businesses and the fact that they are screwing with us

At the current moment, I am more or less willing to jump off a high rise. Why? Because of that hideous monstrosity of my cable and internet service provider. I mean, they provide internet services, so they should be technologically competent people, right? Or so, one would think. Right after talking to one customer care representative who assured me that the discount code has been applied to my bill, and that I can log on to the automated payment system and pay my discounted bill; I logged into the system and found out that the discount code has not been applied. This is my valuable time you morons! I am beginning to hate large amorphous corporations with an absolutely visceral loathing. Somewhat remindful of Agragaj (I think) from the Guide to the Galaxy. All of them are out to get me. Its personal this time. This is the reason why people become Nihilists and blow up stuff. Think about it; a peaceable, nonviolent bloke like me is contemplating serious mayhem. Why? Because the invisible corporate honchos who control the world are not interested in giving the public better and faster service… the bottom line is all that matters. This is a question I would like to put to my reader: the free market economy is supposed to encourage efficiency through competition. However, if companies decide that they do not need to be competitive or inventive or efficient, they just need to choke off the alternatives available to the customer, then how is this situation different from a state owned bureaucratic monopoly?

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Puri

Yound Karthik and Young Saumen have been busy making puris. I keep hearing periodic expletives about the maida not being of the right consistency. Young Karthik offered me a puri which could be used as a lethal projectile. But I think that their current efforts are better. And Michigan is playing Ohio State and it is the last quarter and things are hotting up. Ok, Karthik just made a puri which looks like a map of.. Kazakhistan?

Please forward to everyone...

Hello there,

Please have a heart and think about my predicament. I have too much time on my hands to do anything useful with my life, hence I am writing something that will hopefully turn into a chain forward (that is, if you are actually as stupid as I think you are). I dislike fast and efficient computer networks, and I like nothing better than to slow and clog them up, so I think writing chain letters is a good way to spend my time.

So please forward this letter to everyone in your mailing list. DON’T LIE TO ME, YOU SICK BASTARD, I KNOW YOU HAVE A MAILING LIST AND YOU USE IT TO FORWARD MAILS FOR THAT POOR GIRL WHO HAS BEEN SUFFERING FROM LEUKAEMIA FOR EVER.

Every time you forward this letter, Microsoft, the United Nations, AOL are all going to contribute ten cents to my beer fund. (I might have said that I suffer from some truly dramatic disease, but the only disease I do suffer from is boredom and headaches induced by deleting chain letters, so I thought I should just be honest and call it my beer fund).

While we are at it, you know what else happens if you forward this mail to ten people inside five minutes, another twenty within the hour and finally a hundred by the time the workday is over? Well, you get booted by that guy/girl/dog/sheep you have been stalking and fantasizing about for weeks. (I assume, of course, that you know a hundred people, you might just have a hundred email IDs in your mailing list which actually correspond to maybe five real people with no lives.)

And if you don’t forward this mail as I tell you to, you get raped by a crowd of mutant mountain goats who will be singing hiphop as they hump you. Your soul rots in a Master’s programme for ever and ever.

Oh, and by the way, if you haven’t already joined Orkut, Gazzag or Facebook and created a crowd of electronic friends with whom you share the completely insignificant facts of your useless life, please join all of them.

Joy-Joy

Meanwhilst, Orkut has gloriously screwed up again by telling me that I will always have good luck in my personal relationships. I remember this singularly awful movie I once saw called ‘Demolition Man’ which has Stallone and Snipes battling it out after being unfrozen from a cryogenic state after what? maybe a seventy odd years. The society of that point has become an exceedingly nonviolent one, somewhat unsure of itself. So we have this random bloke going up to an electronic terminal at a street and being counseled for depression by the computer, which tells him that he inspired feelings of ‘joy-joy’ in people around him.
My point being that this ‘warm and fuzzy’ thing that people like so much is being carried way to far in certain parts of the world while other parts deal with problems like malnutrition, disease and war. There is precious little warm and fuzzy for them. If they manage to survive the next week, that will be something to be happy about.
My suggestion, if it is worth anything is that people, (people, not governments) embrace reality and realism without the rosy lenses provided to them by sanitized news and adverts. Perhaps, it is an indication of my joblessness that such a comment was provoked by Orkut, of all things, but that does not lesson its import.

Canada Roadtrip, Oct 2006 - I

Canada Roadtrip.

Sometime this semester we decided to make another trip. Ok, that was slightly wrong. I am never involved with the decision making process. I was informed that we are going to take a trip down to Toronto. Which, the last time I checked was in Canada. Hence, visas would be required. So,, about a week before the trip, we drove down to the Canadian consulate at Detroit early in the morning. Halfway there, I realized that I did not have my I20, or documents of financial support. All a result of not reading emails. To the great credit of my friends, they did not yell at me, as I might have done. In fact, Young Karthik (YK) agreed to drive me down to Detroit on Friday. So on Friday, armed with documents of financial support, documents attesting to my legal status here as an international student, documents verifying that I am, in fact engaged in academic pursuits at the University and not up to anything nefarious/shady, I legged it to the consulate. The bloke at the counter gave me the once over, then the twice over , and asked if I had been here before. I said, yes, on Wednesday, I was too lazy to get all my stuff. He gave me a nasty look. Now there is something about people in law enforcement/immigration, or related fields… they have this look which gives a perfectly respectable legal bloke the heeby jeebies. I got the heeby jeebies. Anyway, I also got my visa. Yeah!

Weird thing happened after that. This Punjabi bloke all dressed up in a suit and tie asked me for some details on the visa process. Turned out he was a US citizen, but he needed help with the visa application for his aunt. Now why would he need help with paperwork? Well, he did, that is all I can say. So YK and I ended up pretty much filling up his form for him. And I noted this: when talking to Indians in Hindi, I generally tend to switch to this really ‘dehati’ accent. Now dehati means rustic. And sometime this overflows into the conversation, especially in a multilingual conversation. And as we all know, Indians who can speak marginally decent English are the most linguistically snobbish people on earth. Hence my continued unpopularity amongst the English speaking Indian students community over here. That explains a lot.

Onto Canada. Or so we thought.

We planned to start driving at 5 am. Chamaree would be driving her Prius. And if YK was Very nice and Very safe and Very conscientious, then Maybe he would get to drive for a Very Short while. Depending on C’s discretion. 5 am would be called ‘kaak bhor’ back home. This translated to ‘crow early morning’, the only reason being, I guess that crows wake up way before other people/birds. But passing lightly over Indian crows and their diurnal patterns, C and I told YK and Young Krishnan (YR) that they would have to be ready AT 5 am, or bad luck. Now having traveled with these people before, I know that such dire warnings have little meaning for them. But we assured them that our threats to leave them behind were for real. Oh, and by the way, Courtney(Co) was also coming along. She lives at AA and knows C through ballroom dancing (an activity I admire, but have no desire to participate in.. but more on that in a later blog.)

And then Katerina(K) called. She had plans to fly to NY as far as I knew. Turned out that those plans had to be scratched because she thought that fall break was for the whole week and not merely two days as per the academic calendar. Oops. She wanted to know if we had space for her. I turned her over to the mistress of ceremonies, C. C hemmed and hawed, and YK saved the day by volunteering to drive his L’Mobile as well. YR decided to drive with YK. So that was settled. Then after negotiating with K about a suitable pick up time early in the morning, C (with nerves suitably frazzled) decided to call it a day.

The next morning dawned, or rather didn’t. Clouds hovered in a peculiarly offensive way on the horizon. C’s Prius pulled up and I hopped in. The L’Mobile following, we drove off in almost complete silence. The Prius is a petrol-electric hybrid, and behaves like a stealth car at times. YR navigating the L’Mobile.

Those offensive clouds stayed offensive, and with time, instead of lighting up, the skies stayed disconcertingly dark. Imagine this; driving along in the early morning, in vague darkness and periodic bursts of rain sweeping across the windshield, very much out of a post apocalyptic scifi movie.

And Anirban sez....

"Attribute it to our superiority as an erudite, scholastically accomplished, and culturally advanced race."

you missed out one point Akash: that we are vulturally advanced as well..... incidentally other races are equal to us in this particular respect.....

The above statement shows that your views are biased without enough statistics.....
have you ever visited the music schools, drama schools anywhere outside Bengal? As for example, Pune or anywhere in the South?? I haven't but I believe that there are states equally good and capable...... by which I mean that there are people in other states who are quite advanced culturally and at times better than you and me....... IISc for example: Prodyut-da, Anand, Ananth, Karthik and a few others are truly good singers/musicians ..... not all of them are bongs....

For that matter, are you capable enough of judging the superiority of some Pandit in Bengal (Pandit Anindyo Chattopadhyay in Tabla for example) vs some Pandit outside Bengal? I am not, so I refrain from writing nonsense, in general. That is the problem with all of us..... which includes me as well.... we boast of our ancestors without ever thinking of doing something original or encouraging someone else to do something creative..... we spend a major time of our life as critics.......

"What Bengal thinks today, India thinks tomorrow"

has changed into:

What the USA thinks today, Bengal criticizes tomorrow, and replicates the same day-after-tomorrow...... unfortunately, we were born on earth Akash.... not in the sky..... realize that! It is good to be proud of your race, but remember that we are not the best...... at least at this point of time.

Can the situation be changed? I don't know... I have never thought about it before...... and I have my small little life to live and make a few others happy.....

(Incidentally, USA was just an example.... I won't hesitate to replace it with Russia, Cuba, or for that matter even Iraq.... forgetting about the advanced nations.)

The Dance is finally here!!!

Yound K's dance debut is here!!!!!

Diwali blues.

Diwali is the festival of lights. It coincides with the Bengali Kali Pujo. The previous year at AA, I attended the Diwali ceremony put together by the Indian students association. Now this is the point at which I make a pre emptive apology; I realize that people have classes and research and dating and myriad activities to occupy their time with. Hence the very fact that a ceremony was put together is something to be admired. And one who had absolutely no constructive role to play should really not criticize the people who put their time and energy into making this happen. Hence, I should, in all decency shut up right now. But then, my dear reader, astute person that you are, you must have noted that I am not, in fact, shutting up. I have things to say at this point. So let me go ahead and establish my credentials as a critic. I have been part of the organization and logistics of cultural events of substantially larger size and scope in my institute days. I have suffered the consequences of being a part of a not too well organized cultural team and I have also been a part of a very well organized drama team. So here goes. The previous year, we started off by reciting some random shlokas from our religious texts.

First point: distinguish between culture, a fun party and a religious event. Mixing these is a skill that Bengalis and only Bengalis (amongst Indians) have perfected. Attribute it to our superiority as an erudite, scholastically accomplished, and culturally advanced race. This, in spite of our known prejudice against organization! Hence, my suggestions: practice helps. Knowing which shloka from the Bhagvad Gita you plan to recite beforehand is a good idea. Also a good idea is practicing the correct intonation. There is nothing more upsetting than hearing someone barbarically butchering Sanskrit. That language is holy, people! Get my drift? And there is no shame in rehearsing. Asking each other what to do next is pretty sad. When you are doing something, the value of which is as much emotional as it is ritualistic, then get the rituals right. Stupid pagans!

Second point. If you cannot sing, do not sing. Karaoke bars exist for a reason. Importing karaoke into a random evening’s enjoyment is undiluted evil.

Third point: coming up with a little skit is a good idea. Not rehearsing destroys the effect, however. Also, using the old brain for writing a halfway decent script is an awesome thing to do. The alternative, which was what we were exposed to, happens to be shite.

Fourth point: people, please do not applaud the brain dead antics of these people on stage just because they happen to be your friends. The argument, ‘they just need some encouragement’ applies to someone writing an exam/applying for a scholarship/a third world country taking its first steps into democracy. For self delusional people with karaoke microphones, we have straitjackets, and a variety of socks to stuff down their throats and gag them with.

Hence, this year, when I found out that the graduate school was showing Hotel Rwanda, I decided to go there instead. Not one to miss a dinner anyhow, I asked Rachna to get me a dinner coupon (we have to pay for these things, before someone calls me a cheap so-and-so).

Hotel Rwanda talks about how a Hutu hotel house manager cajoled, lied, arm twisted cops, militiamen and UN peacekeepers in a desperate effort to save the lives of the Tutsi refugees who were sheltered at his hotel. C’s blog has a much better description here. But, two things; first, unless it happens or has happened to your own people, somehow we are insulated by several protective layers to the horror of what actually happened. If that were not the case, then an enlightened world would have adhered to the Versailles treaty, or the Geneva convention. We would not have fought the wars that we have. Death so unnecessary and so avoidable would cease to be just a spectacle on CNN. The second point being that while the director worked to make his characters three dimensional, somehow the effect remained that of fiction: we are/were/never will be part of that story. Mousumidi told me to see 1947 Earth, which deals with the issues of the Partition. That is on the cards.

Dinner was good. The Gulabjamun was made of granite though. I decided to keep my remaining teeth and gave up on it as a bad job.

Borat

Saw Borat, or

"Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan"

this weekend. Quite a riot. The review is here.

LOTR blues.

Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky,
Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,
Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die,
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.

Listen to these lines again. Do you feel the any hint of the mystery and majesty surrounding it? Recite these lines again. This is a portent of cataclysmic events about to overtake us. The Dark Riders are on the trail of the Ring of Power and Minas Morgul prepares for the war, which will bring on endless night.

Yes, Tolkien’s masterpiece is a magnificent tapestry brimming with colour and might. This is quite possibly the greatest heroic romance written in English.

This past week.

Has been pretty average with usual things like a grading deadline, which I made by the skin of my teeth, and an exam which quite effectively took the wind out of my sails. This was also Election Week and the Dems are celebrating. Michigan seems to have stayed mostly blue. In response to the election excitement, I shrugged myself out of my usual political apathy and did some reading/listening and talked to people around me. Knowing this is Ann Arbor and the people I talk to usually are University (read liberal) types, that lead to a certain lopsided (no, that is a strong view), lets say one sided view. However, Proposal 2 has been passed. The President of the UM's address is here. Also included here is what the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative has to say. On a completely different line, Pradeep has given me a poker lesson, and as a reward, I have included him in my blogroll (j/k). My cousin M is visiting this weekend and the weather is busy conspiring to ruin any ideas of an outdoor day trip. Drat! That seems to cover things, and oh, my roomie's car gave him a nasty turn yesterday when the transmission went kaput. He was quite shaken up.

Why big business sucks.

Business, and the way it should be conducted.

Ok, the US of A is the land where dreams come true because of the incredible strength of the capitalist economy and rags to riches stories actually exist, right. And India has the ossified, moribund economy where most things are till under Government monopoly, and hence, by definition, inefficient, right?

Wrong.

This blog is to complain about big business and what it does to small people. I came here last year, just an average joe international student with no social security number(SSN) and no credit history. The SSN arrived really quick (both the people at the University as well as the Federal building downtown very pretty sweet about it). The fun started after that. Credit history is just that: a record showing that you pay your bills (especially credit card bills) regularly and may be considered a ‘safe bet’ by someone offering you a loan. There is a slight chicken and egg problem here: one may not be approved for a credit card without a credit history, and how does one create a credit history without a credit card? Yes, this beautiful piece of irony was not lost upon me. Thankfully, my credit union was sweet enough to give me a credit card with a very modest spending limit: a good way to build up credit history.

The big phone companies were something else altogether, though. Back home, prepaid plans are the rage, because they offer flexibility and are quite affordable. Here prepaid plans are quite exorbitant. Phone companies like to tie you down with a one or two year contract. Then they offer you a cheap phone for free. But this takes credit history. Which I didn’t have. Oops! So they asked for a 500$ to 1000$ cash deposit. Which I didn’t have either. So my solution (and this is true for many international students) was to ask a senior to apply for a cellphone in his name. He was nice enough to help me out. Voila! I was connected! This was last year.

A week or so ago, my handset started acting up. I realized that it had given up the ghost and decided to take this opportunity to get off my lazy butt and get the phone transferred to my name. So I legged it to the local dealer. Who told me quite unequivocally that it couldn’t be done. I simply wanted:
1. To get the number transferred to my name.
2. A new handset.
3. A new plan, with less minutes each month.

The bloke told me that I was asking for the moon. Now, I know it for a fact that rival phone companies advertise that one can switch service providers and keep the same number. So why was this so difficult to imagine? Me lost and thinking ‘what????!!!!’.

I took several deep breaths and said to the bloke, ‘imagine that a bloke goes to college with a cellphone taken in his father’s name. When he graduates and gets a job, he wants to change the cellphone to his name. Could you do that? Yes? THEN HOW IS THIS DIFFERENT?’
It took a lot of convincing for the bloke to do the job. Of course he did it! Just turns out that it required that he think for a moment. Now this is a difficult thing to ask for.

This is what throws me off. Back home, I could get a dealer to do this in nothing flat. In fact, I have had better service from the government owned services. This is supposed to a part of the thinking ingrained in a businessman: get the job done, give the customer what he wants. At least, that was the way it was back home. Here is seems to be: follow the rules, lose business, and then go blame outsourcing and immigration.

Bottom line: big business is not always more efficient. Any organization is as flexible and as efficient as its juniormost underling. In this case, my phone company should simply be extinct with the kind of survival instincts it seems to display.

Comment.

My office-mate tells me that beer is cheaper than therapy.

That time of the day.

That time of the day,
When I want a smoke.
Just before class, to get ready,
During class, to help me concentrate,
And after class, to relax.

Just before lunch,
With a small cup of chai.
Right after lunch,
With a large glass of cold coffee.

Late in the afty,
To chase the day’s blues away.
Early in the evening,
‘cos its early in the evening.

The pre-dinner beedi,
Nothing quite like it.
The one after dinner,
Quiet contemplation of existentialism
And a cigarette to help.

And finally at midnight,
(the constant danger of running out of smokes)
the last one of the day,
always tastes the best.

(I have quit smoking and regret it wholeheartedly.)

He who comes from hell is not afraid of hot ashes.

He who comes from hell is not afraid of hot ashes.

This is the tagline of the movie ‘Anniyan.’ Now why, you might ask is this bloke watching a Tamil movie? Not as if I know the language. But anyway, a bunch of Tam people got the movie and insisted that I sit down with them and see it. Now there are many better was of spending a lazy Sunday afty, in fact, going to lab and working is a good one.. but I decided to give it a shot.

So here goes,: Anniyan means ‘foreigner’… and this story is about a regular Tam Brahm bloke. (Tam Brahms, or Tamil Brahmins are one of the most orthodox.. [read pain in the arse] group of people on this planet. They do have some redeeming points like being very cultured and all that.. but they have a very well deserved reputation for being properly disliked all around.) Yes, so this bloke likes to follow rules and is really unhappy that people around him do not. (This is India, people). And he slowly transforms into this avenging angel who extracts hideous vengeance for transgressions of a seemingly trivial nature. Then there is this chick who walks around draped in a sari most of the time. Of course, he louvvs her. And she couldn’t care less. So when he gets the proverbial boot, he transforms again.. and becomes this hip bloke who romances chicks all around. Now mind this,, it doesn’t take much to be hip in Chennai, the heart of Tamland, but he does go and become a model or something to that effect.

It is important at this juncture to throw things like logic and sense out of the window, surviving most Indian movies is not possible otherwise. Right, so back to the movie.. this new avatar of our protagonist starts wooing the chick, with perfectly superb results… I mean standard fillum ishtyle, they dress up in shiny horrid jeans and manage to look retarded(the guy) and in some really skimpy clothes and look HOT (the babe). And they run around some high rise office/mall/INOX complex (again, the days of the hero and the heroine running around mere trees at public gardens are long gone, these days the more posh the locale, such as the interior of a five star hotel, and the more cheesy and ridiculous their antics, the more the song becomes popular). Singing some weird song which apparently involves the bloke comparing his babe to, in sequence: cappuccino, nokia phones and someone called Sophia. Yes, the meaning of the song was lost on me. Speaking of which there was yet another song which was vaguely erotic and had the hero promising to do massage the chick with olive oil. Now this left me totally bemused. Ok, to be honest, I was just reading the subtitles, and that was what came up.. but there is no olive oil in South India! This is a logical paradox. Conclusion, there is sense, there is nonsense, and then there is the stuff which happens inside the heads of Tamil lyricists.

The pick up line. This deserves its own entry. The gurle standing at the bus stop, the guy comes up on his motorcycle (again, a mainstay of Indian movies) and says, ‘hey Nandi, lets go somewhere and do the yo-yo!’ Yes, that line made me fall off the sofa laughing.

Anyway, so this guy has three personalities at last count.. the regular bloke, the avenger and the Don Juan. Yes! Multiple Personality Disorder!! Come to think of it, it reminds me a lot of a really awful Sidney Sheldon novel I once had the misfortune to read. But let me not spoil it further.. there are precious few Indian mainstream movies made which have a semblance of a plot. This is one of them. For all the inherent corny-ness, its still quite watchable. And the chick is hot. http://www.anniyan.com/

Blue!!!

Blame it on my cousin. She ha sbeen instrumental in turning a socialist like me into a lover of cheese! Blame it also on my Bengali heritage: the appreciation of good food has pretty much been hard wired into my genes. Right now, I am a big fan of Daniblu, specifically Rosenberg Daniblu.

These are dark days.

Before an exam, that is. Hence, no detailed blog...

My critic

I seem to have picked up a critic. Someone, in fact who seems to be quite a fan of Nachiketa. Interesting.. go look at the not so complimentary comment he put on my post on ...maybe 29th Sept.

For what it is worth, I still think that Nachiketa's music sucks. But its nice to have many opinions.

Ode to the Binary God

Ode to the Binary God.

Give us, your unworthy servants,
Thy benediction of ones and zeros,
Lead us into that promised land,
Where all executables are created equal,
And no code ever crashes.

Where buffer space is infinite,
And scripts write their own syntax.
In the name of the God,
The Gracious and the Merciful.
Thou art the Root,
And thou shall be obeyed.

Bone Marrow Registry

Yesterday was an interesting day. It snowed. I donated some DNA to the bone marrow registry. What is this thing? Well, you donate some DNA, like cheek swabs and give them your contact information. They type your DNA and keep it on record. When someone (like a leukaemia patient) needs a bone marrow transplant, they type his DNA and scan it against the library. When they find a match, they call up the person involved and ask him if he wants to make a donation. Donating bone marrow is a surgical process, and not quite as easy as donating blood. But lives can be saved because of this. Read Chamaree’s blog for more details.

The other side of it is that my DNA is available on record forever. I am not sure that this database will not be available for forensic purposes. And in this day where the previously rigid line between law enforcement and security is becoming rather blurred, we cannot say who will do what with al this data being amassed. Hence, as C put it to me, if I end up raping and/or killing anyone, I have pretty much had it. And as my office mate Pieter puts it (he also registered), ‘got to turn over a new leaf, got to leave the life of murder and mayhem behind.’

Snow and PanzerGrenadiers

It is snowing again. I do not like the snow. In fact, I really despise it. The reason I despise snow has not that it is cold and all that; I mean that too, but there is a more deep reason involved. Around thirteen or so years ago, I happened to read a novel called ‘PanzerGrenadiers’. This was about a division of German soldiers attached to armored regiments (hence Panzer) during operation Barbarossa. This was, of course, Hitler’s ill advised attempt to attack Russia. The book ends, as did the war for many Germans dying in the snow. Trying to get their machine guns to fire while the winter hardened Red Army, which they had thought to be decimated turned around and hurled a hundred divisions and armour at an absolutely incomprehensible scale at the Wehrmacht. And at one point in the book, a German soldier turns to his friend and says that, ‘the snow belongs in picture postcards’. My sentiments exactly.

UNIX hurts

But ma, it hurts!

Use UNIX. Even if it hurts. It will make you a man, my son. This seems to be pretty much a philosophy of most UNIX users out there. This blog is inspired by an interesting link Pradeep sent me. Pradeep is an inspired geek who, quite surprisingly has a life beyond UNIX.

UNIX is used by mathematicians, physicists, certain engineers and other masochistic folk. Most of the stuff about having absolute control on the hardware and all that is true. But then, it is an enthusiast thing. The whole point about efficiency is completely lost when people write three hours worth of code and debug it for two days to solve a problem, which they could have done with pen and paper in ten minutes. But then, that just happens to be the nature of the beast; physics is at a point where computation is frequently the only possible approach. Enter UNIX, with all its ungrateful children. And very, very quickly, you realize that you are thirty, single, either anorexic or have a junk food paunch, very little hair, no social life (talking to other geeks at department lunches does not count), no friends (here, I mean people who do not know what the Schrodinger wave equation is, or don’t care). People have stopped talking to you because you frequently mumble to yourself on the street. Mostly in Hex.


There is still time. Dump the UNIX machine. Get a Mac. Get a life.

By the way, the Macintosh OS X runs on a UNIX foundation.