Wand loyalties.. mistakes visited.

Mostly the perspective of M (my cousin, not Bond's boss).. that as JKR become the publishing industry's pet Goddess.. her editors were no longer able to yell at her.. and hence the myriad mistakes in DH.

Take for example the whole issue of wand loyalties in the deathly hallows... remember how Ron's wand was shattered by the Whomping Willow in CoS? Also remember the dueling club where Snape disarmed Lockhart with nothing more than a quick Expelliarmus? So.. there should have been a few quick lines about how wands can change loyalties if one loses a duel. And Ron should have won Lockhart's wand in the CoS itself... saving the need to buy him one with the winnings from the Daily Prophet in PoA.

The Hallows were never introduced in the context told by Xonophilius Lovegood ever before... and that is a terrible demerit of the series... for as long as I can remember, I have defending JKR against disbelieving Muggles by responding to their accusations of "its magic! Its for kids!!" by saying that "there are rules... she does not pull rabbits from her hat". This feels like a let down.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.

The movie with this name has just zoomed right to the head of my list of great flicks I have seen this year.. just think about it.. Val Kilmer as a hard nosed gay detective (yeah, had to see it to believe it).. Robert Downey Jr. as a small time crook who just turned up in LA on totally false premises (I suspect that was lousy grammar).. he was on the run after a failed boost from an electronics/toys store in the Village in NY when his partner bought the farm and he ended up in a room where they were doing auditions while hiding from the fuzz.. and they liked him so much that they sent him to LA.. and there he runs into his childhood inamorata.. played to perfection by Michelle Monaghan... and well.. Kisses and Gunshots!

BBD's album.

I have added Bibhuti's album to the sidebar for your viewing please. There. I always wanted to use this phrase!

Liberalisation is not a panacea.

As this article by MP Gurudas Das Gupta says, the miracle of the Indian economic growth hides deep rooted ills and problems which have not been addressed.

Reckless liberalisation playing havoc

By GURUDAS DAS GUPTA
As Mr P Chidambaram blithely inaugurates one conference after another, buoyed by continuing stunning corporate results, corporate acquisitions and the so-called surveys of the consumer sentiment which find Indians consistently topping the charts, he most gleefully declares: “I cannot see any abrupt or dramatic slowdown of the consumption growth.”
His pronouncements sound even more exalted after the Central Statistical Organisation released figures declaring that the Indian economy has almost caught up with China’s pace of economic development. Incidentally, the government boasts of India’s economic growth as most sustainable; being second only to China’s. Symptoms of their claimed prosperity are virtually omnipresent ~ in the sale of cars, the boom in the real-estate business as also the ring of five million mobile connections sold every month never mind whether or not the fast-track “economic development” has improved the human fundamentals of the masses comprising a billion people of India.
As per the government’s appraisal, there are unmistakable signs of unparalleled upward swing in the economy. Taking this story further, leading corporates in India have succeeded in mobilising nearly Rs 2,34,903 crore from the primary market in 2006. The corporate sector has made overseas acquisitions worth of $8 billion in 146 transactions across the world. The prolific growth in corporate performance is further corroborated by increased exports and inflow of private equity. At least four Indian corporate tycoons have virtually taken the corporate world by storm, innovating, improving, strategising, and transforming dreams into a billion-dollar reality. In one weekend in October 2006, corporate jets of three Indian captains of industry were parked at London as they bid for enterprises worth over $12 billion, almost Rs 53,234 crore. In fact, the financial assets of one such billionaire are assessed to be around Rs 1,27,000 crore.
The story of government-backed corporate success goes even further: between 2003 and 2006, corporate India’s net profit had doubled from Rs 55,716 crore to 1,23,173 crore. It has possibly risen to Rs 1,50,00 crore as companies clock 30 per cent profit. The trend of unusual expansion of Indian corporates is further confirmed by analyses of the performances of individual corporate houses. A giant corporate having 23 million mobile subscribers had launched a joint venture for insurance and mutual funds and significantly hooked up with a global giant to foray into retail trade in India. By the end of the decade the revenue of the group is likely to soar up to Rs 67,000 crore.
This vulgar concentration of corporate wealth and increase in prosperity is exclusively derived from lopsided economic growth. The Finance Minister and the Planning Commission pretend to be ignorant of the hard reality. A closer look at the present economic scenario leads to the evidence of a wild spree of spending on conspicuous and wasteful consumption. The booty from the loot of the Indian economy is virtually thrown to the winds to meet the wild fancies of the consuming classes. Of late, there is a frenzy to purchase expensive foreign aircraft by the corporate entities costing millions with goodies and exotic, luxurious comforts thrown in. Even the birthday parties and matrimonial functions organised by the elite of society involve many a crore. While the source of the funds is rarely looked into, the government is happy; the wedding industry has become a burgeoning industry estimated to be $11 billion a year, growing annually at 25 per cent. This does not, of course, include jewellery sales growing at seven per cent annually and projected to reach $250 million by 2015.
The big fat wedding is the worst global export of India. It is obscene and vulgar. One Bollywood superstar reportedly charges Rs 1 crore for a wedding “event”. A government committed to liberalisation has conveniently freed itself from all forms of social and moral obligations. Therefore, it is not considered necessary to ponder on the evil impact of this spending spree of the super rich of the community even as the majority is denied access to elementary amenities of life.
It is easy to become a billionaire in India today but it is difficult to reduce the level of Indian poverty. The glare of five-star economic growth cannot hide the gloom of those living in the backyard of the economy. Unbridled market economy is playing hell with their lives. The Indian model of high economic growth trajectory, as is abundantly clear today, does not create jobs and even fails to alleviate human distress. While unemployment rises atrociously, the marginal job creation comprises only “distress jobs’, having little or no impact on the poor living condition of the working masses: 10 hours daily work on a monthly pay packet of not more than Rs 1,000 without any elementary statutory benefits. While output per worker has increased, managerial remuneration and profit are reaching new heights, the average real wage has stagnated and even declined. Obviously, the increase in productivity has resulted in accentuating gross income inequality instead of augmenting the wage level.
The majority of the jobless who have no alternative are compelled to fall back on jobs where minimum wage is denied and working conditions remain too poor to improve the living conditions of the employed. The growing divergence between output and employment can be crucially linked to liberalisation, especially to open trade. Since advanced capitalist countries are equipped with modern technology associated with higher productivity, developing countries find it difficult to stand the strain of unequal competition. They, therefore, seek to cut labour costs, adopt improved technology and reduce manpower, employ low-cost labour that is overburdened with an unbearable workload. There is not only an anomaly between output and employment, there is also divergence between productivity and wage level. This is no growth with equity; it is growth with grave inequality generating intense social tension.
If growth is to be inclusive, its benefits much reach the poor. Even after 60 years of freedom, an overwhelming majority of the population of the country, may be as much as 70 per cent, remains outside the periphery of economic development. Such growth does not lead to economic empowerment, nor does it increase purchasing power. The additional wealth that is generated due to high growth is obviously cornered by a minuscule minority. If the additional purchasing power is not generated for a larger number of people and people do not earn enough to take care of minimum basic needs, the growth is obviously not of an inclusive nature. Under an inclusive growth model, economic empowerment and particularly employment would most certainly occupy centre-stage.
Unfortunately, in India, economic growth is largely jobless and the gain of development is not sought to be redistributed among the masses of the people by active state intervention, and, therefore denial and marginalisation are the concomitants of the present economic system. The government does not have the political will to adopt an appropriate fiscal policy and there is hardly any move in that direction to ameliorate distress and deprivation of the masses.
The National Sample Survey conducted every five years indicates in its latest report that the ratio of the national level of poverty is at 27 per cent; even the data prepared by the 61st Round appears to be an understatement. If the non-availability of safe drinking water, absence of educational facilities, medical care, and easy communication are also taken into consideration, the level of poverty naturally assumes a dangerous proportion.
Now comes the crucial question of employment. According to the current Economic Survey, between 1991 and 2004 the number of people employed in the organised private sector grew by a meagre 0.6 million, while it remained largely unchanged in the manufacturing sector. Employment has declined in the organised sector as well. While employment stagnated over the first decade-and-a-half since the economic reform began, the real output of the non-agricultural part of the economy increased by a factor of four, the same number of workers produced four times as much from earlier output, thanks to the introduction of automated systems.
The fact that the reduced manpower is producing much larger output is further corroborated statistically by the data obtained from different enterprises. The largest private steel industry of the country had augmented production five times with half of the earlier workforce. In an engineering factory near Pune, a worker mans 27 machines, of course, with the help of the computer, if the informal sector had produced 10 times the job created by the organised sector, only six million jobs would have been created in a decade-and-a-half, while the annual addition to India’s workforce is between eight million and 14 million. This is a short profile of the jobless character of the economic growth of the country.
The nature of the “unemployment explosion” that India is likely to experience as estimated by Team Lease Services: The current unemployment figure of 13 million is likely to undergo a 15-fold rise and reach the level of 200 million, constituting 30 per cent of the population in 2020. The trend of joblessness has set in with the onset of reforms in the last decade. The aggregate figure of employment decline is 0.6 per cent despite the booming service sector. While the service sector contributes 55 per cent of the country’s GDP, only two per cent ~ less than 0.5 per cent of the country’s 400 million labour force ~ is employed in the sector.
Due to low productivity and unstable growth, even periodic decline of production, agriculture no longer provides viable livelihood to the rural population. In the rural sector, the number of employed every one thousand people has declined from 403.5 in 1992-93 to 399 in 2004-05.
If economic growth has lost its capacity to create jobs, it has clearly not succeeded in mitigating poverty. Agricultural production has declined, the country has lost its food security and even has to live on foreign imports. The Public Distribution System has almost collapsed; it is all a blank ration card. The Employment Guarantee Scheme has not taken off; while 130 districts have been added, the additional budgetary allocation increased only by six per cent of the earlier allotment. The political system has utterly failed to develop the needed social infrastructure even after 60 years of freedom to improve the human fundamentals of the nation. The higher rate of growth the economy has attained does not provide better quality of human life; rather it benefits the millionaires and billionaires at the cost of the poor and lower middle class.

(The author is a CPI member of Parliament)

As the (late) Mad-Eye Moody would have said...

the things I do not know would fill several volumes.. or something like that I imagine. Take for example the fact that the movie Wing Commander is based on a famous video game. I am not a VG player at all.. so this is one aspect of pop culture totally closed to me. I was thinking about this movie because it is the only other movie starring Mathew Lillard I have ever heard of..and Lillard, (incidentally also a Michigander.. who would have guessed, given his accent?) starred in Wicker Park, a nice fillum made totally beautiful by the presence of Rose Byrne (you might remember her from Troy.. that homo-erotic action epic where she was this wonderful piece of window dressing). Again, she does not appear to be related in any way to Gabriel of the same family name... him of the creepy Catholic persuasion... has much to do with Satanic cloak and dagger in so many fillums. Nice for Rose!

Deathly Hallows editorial.

My sis sent me this from MuggleNet Very good reading..

Parseltongue.

Hmmmm.. if you have seen the recent Mel Brook's musical 'The Producers' you will surely recall the hilarious moment when Roger Bart opens the door to Nathan Lane and Mathew Broderick and goes 'yesssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss?'. So if Bart just happened to study at Hogwarts, he would probably open the portal to the Chamber of Secrets half a dozen times a day by mistake. Parseltongue cannot be learnt. It is a gift inherent to certain wizards, most of them Dark which enables them to talk to snakes. Assuming that Ron would be able to open the Chamber of Secrets by standing in front of it and hissing is a ridiculous statement and JKR should have come along with something more plausible. And while we are at it, what is the deal with Fiendfyre? Someone should have let us know that it can destroy Horcruxes. Sure, the fact that Basilisk venom can was long known, or atleast indicated. And that fact that Gryfffindor's sword could also destroy a Horcrux, while not directly told to us, was atleast obliquely hinted at.. and there is a pretty huge mythology/literature about special swords with special properties. But Fiendfyre??? Come on, that made it appear that JKR's editors were yelling for a deadline and she just put that in to save pages.

Wand loyalties.

As my sister pointed out.. wand-lore is not a well read or a well understood subject.. in fact it appears to be one of the more jealously guarded of all wizarding knowledge. But think about this.. if a wand switches loyalty when its owner is as much as disarmed, then what happened to the wands during the practice sessions of Dumbledore's Army in the Room of Requirement? That must have been a huge mess!

So coming back to wand-lore being ill understood... there are only two wand makers cited.. Ollivander and Grigorivitch. Are we to understand that there are no other wand makers of equal stature? Don't these people have any pupils or apprentices? How does the art of wand making get passed on to future generations.. there has been no class taught at Hogwarts which might come close .. say 'Magical Engineering'. Points to ponder.

Art Fair pictures.

Some pictures taken during the recent Art Fair are here.

The Boy Who Lived.

The wait is over, I picked up the book early on Saturday from the Borders on Central Campus and got started immediately. This was slightly impeded by the fact that I was navigating for K on a 50 mile drive to some people's place who invited us to stay for lunch. I made it through somehow and got back to the book. Anyways, long story short (pun intended) I finally put the book down, exhausted and drained late on Saturday night.

Spoilers follow!!!

The Boy Who Lived, still lives. That is the most important point. Severus Snape was always one of the most ambiguous characters and undoubtedly one of the most powerful wizards around.. his murder of Dumbledore at the end of HBP had to be explained. To the partial delight of shippers all over,. he had a thing for Lily Evans.... which does explain a lot... including his undiluted hatred of James Potter.

My theory was true,.... well.. sort of. I had predicted that Harry and Voldemort were Horcruxes of each other... well.. that was partially true.. that Harry was certainly a Horcrux of Voldemort, but what I was not able to give a logical explanation for was the converse.. but JKR did.. and now of course I am butting my head against the wall.. how did I forget the fleeting look of triumph in Dumbledore's eyes when Harry told him how Peter Pettigrew had used some of Harry's blood to resurrect Lord Voldemort? Shame!

They shouldn't have killed Tonks. This was one character I really liked... and I get the feeling that this was done only to up the body count.. rather unnecessary.. in my mind. If JKR wanted more gore.. she should have killed Prof. Flitwick, or even Prof. McGonagall. Oh, and yes, some loose ends were not tied up the way I wanted them. For instance, it was okay to satisfy the legions of shippers by making sure that Harry/Ginny and Ron/Hermione get together.. but what about Luna and Neville? Also after the Second Battle of Hogwarts, Arthur Weasley should have become the Minister of Magic. This did not happen. Anyway, the long journey is finally over and it has been worth every moment.

More speculation on Harry Potter.

Snape. The most enigmatic character in the whole wizarding world. For my money, also one of the most powerful and understated people around.. the first time that he set eyes upon Harry, the latter's scar began hurting. What does this mean? Snape cannot be just a bad guy.. he is simply too complex for that. Snape has his own very complicated morality, and he has simultaneously shared the confidence of the two most powerful wizards of the age, both of them deadly foes. To balance such a fine line takes nerve and imagination. Snape has both in spades. I push for him being involved in what has to be a final confrontation between the Dark Lord and Harry and being the deciding factor in what will perhaps become a Mexican showdown.

I had for a few moments entertained thoughts of Fawkes being a Horcrux for Dumbledore, just as Nagini is speculated to be one for the Dark Lord.. this would be nicely symmetrical..but then Dumbledore was simply too good to kill wantonly to create a Horcrux. Even during the battle in the Ministry atrium, he never used a killing curse on Voldemort. Then I remembered that JKR has squished this idea already. But perhaps, the rising from the ashes symbolism will carry itself out elsewhere. Fawkes is important, this is something I am convinced of.

Less than twelve hours to go.

There are less than twelve hours to go before the worldwide release of the seventh volume of the Harry Potter series, 'HP and the Deathly Hallows'. The internet is rife with speculation. Is Snape good or bad? The local Border's, where I have put my name down on the pre-order waitlist is organising a HP midnight party with a quiz and a debate. I just told my labmates about how excited I am.. they are not fans. Quite a damper.

My own pet theory is that Harry is a Horcrux for Lord Voldemort, well that part of the theory is quite widely accepted.. in fact this made its appearance right after HBP. Well.. my theory goes on to state that during the infamous Adava Kedavra performed 16 years ago in Godric's Hollow, there was some kind of transfer of souls between Harry and the Dark Lord.. which has manifested itself in several ways:

1. Harry's scar burning when the Dark Lord gains in physical strength in GoF.
2. The fact that Harry and the Dark Lord can 'see' what the other sees in OoTP.
3. The wands! Harry and Lord Voldemort both possess wands which have a phoenix feather core. The phoenix feather comes from Fawkes, Dumbledore's pet phoenix.

Anyway, all will be revealed tonight!

Art fair, back from Boston, etc.

Yes, me back. for what it is worth (nothing), me back at AA and at the current moment concentrating a protein sample. Boston was amazing.. T and J were the best hosts possible.. they are people who have been great friends from the Institute days, and it is wunnerful to be able to go meet them and see that the ole magic dosti is still there, and stronger still.

I spent some time with JD and DP in NY and NJ.. we stayed at this place called Union City just across the Hudson river(there was that strange business at the Hoboken Terminal of the NJ Path Line.. but no time spent on that).. amazing view of the NY skyline at night. We explored NY by day and got hilariously trashed at night. Ok, here is something that people should know.. there are plenty of small businesses in and around NYC where people accept plastic, but their credit card machines print all 16 digits of the card no. which they are not supposed to do. Never happens in AA, Chicago, etc.

We got to see the South Sea Port, took a long walk along the Brooklyn Bridge.. what was that movie now where Shahrukh Khan ran down the bridge.. thus giving it an immortal place in the mind of the Indian cinema-going public? Then we ended up at this kabab place in the Village.. very nice! I could get to love this city.

Finally, we rode the Chinatown bus to Boston, and then to Dover, New Hampshire. We met up with our friends who are the University of New Hampshire.. they drove us to Durham, their pretty little town. The place is wonderfully quiet... in fact, so much so that I would get cabin fever in a week or two. A fun night of music and adda followed.. and then it was back to Boston the next day. I caught HP&OOTP there. More later.

Vacation time.

I am taking some time off from work (but not, it would seem, from orkut, or blogger). This post is from Boston, where the weather is rather disappointingly like AA. Anyways, I particularly like this city.. so fun.

Needs to be told.

A friend sent me this story about India's widows being shunned by their families and being basically thrown out on the street after their husbands pass away. For a society that prides itself on the respect given to the elderly, this is a shame. Read the story here.