This is what happens when you have a pissed of crystallographer

Half a million dollars worth of research down the drain, not to say several the possibilities of several PhDs. This woman has a lot to answer for. Details follow:
http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_13108834?nclick_check=1

Reddit on relationships

1. Reddit is full of losers. Read this thread to find out why.
2. I am one of them.

Yes! Prayers can also be outsourced!!

To India, where else?

What meteor shower?

So, I found myself standing out in the parking lot, trying to block out the glare of the halogens with my hands. And then suddenly a meteor streaked by. I legged it upstairs and pulled my camera out. And drove off on Pontiac Trail to find a spot where there would be no pesky ground level lights. And no meteors. None at all. Disappointing. But then, on second thoughts, today meteors, tomorrow Triffids. Perhaps it is better this way.

captcha of the day

10 wildly historically inaccurate movies

(mostly pertinent only to Hollywood)
are here. Observe that our man, Mel Gibson makes it to the list thrice. As SouthPark would have it, it hurts, it hurts!

Lakshya, Dhoom and Dhoom 2.

There are Hindi fillums and there are Hindi fillums. I have often wondered why really good Hindi cinema does not get the attenshun it deserves and why crap floats up to the top and makes so much money. A case in point is Drohkaal, a cinema I have already blogged about. A more recent example is Lakshya, which is based on the 1999 Kargil war.

Briefly, a slacker finds his way into the Indian Army through the proverbial series of unlikely cooincidences. The discipline of the Indian Military Academy proves too much for him to handle and he decides to quit. Except that he just goes AWOL. When he gets back home, he is greeted by (in sequence): relief (his mom), disapproval(his dad) and contempt(his girlfriend). Something inside him goes, quite audibly 'click', and he heads back to the IMA. His CO takes him back, but not before hammering out a very well deserved punishment. They say that the life of a GC (Gentleman Cadet) at the IMA is harsh to the point that after graduating as Second Lieutenants, these young men find life at the LoC(Line of Control in Kashmir) quite relaxing. This is what our protagonist goes through, and after graduating, he is promptly posted to Ladakh (the highest battleground in the world, where the Indian and Paki armies have been facing off for 25 years). His regimental CO is the venerable Amitabh Bachhan who in one of his most masterly understated roles yet, points out to the youngster at the unit welcome dinner that "one billion Indians sleep secure in the knowledge that you and I are awake, and watching over them".

Prophetic words, for shortly afterward, in the spring of 1999, an Indian goatherd spots armed men sneaking across the LoC. Afghan mujahideen, backed by Paki Special Services Group and the Northern Light Infantry had built fortified bunkers on our side of the LoC. The Indian and Paki forward commanders have long had a gentleman's agreement to collectively withdraw from the border in deep winter, a time where both sides lose men to exposure and not bullets. The Pakis, not being gentlemen, decided to use the opportunity over the winter of 1998 to move men and materiel over the LoC. This started the Kargil war, where over 500 Indian officers and men died. The Pakis admit to losing 350 regular Army soldiers. Unofficial estimates put the number of Paki and mujahideen dead at above 3000. Perhaps we shall never know how many people fell in the snow. But what is known and recorded by scribes from the front was the immense bravery of the Indian Army. The Indian officer ethos is summed up in the simple words 'follow me'. The disproportionately high officer casualties suffered in the taking of Tiger Hill and Tololoing came from brave young men leading from the front.

Lakshya means 'goal' or 'objective', and the objective of our hero in the film is an unnamed hill, which is a Paki artillery observation post. Was it Point 5353? It is never mentioned in the film. We share our hero's desperation as he leads his team in an almost sucidal assault up a sheer cliff. Lakshya was a rare film, one that showcased bravery and sacrifice without ever descending to jingoism. And Indian audiences rejected it at the box office.

In return, Bollywood gave us movies like Dhoom and Dhoom 2. Both of which are lame and brain dead. And people loved them. We deserve that shite that is served to us in the name of cinema. Before leaving, check out these clips from Lakshya:
1. IMA graduation
2. The unit welcome
3. The ascent

Drohkaal

The Naxalite movement/revolution/terrorism scourge (take your pick here) has been a major issue in the Indian political stage for several decades. In 1994, Govind Nihilani directed 'Drohkaal', (literally 'The time of revolution'), which is a film about the battle between Naxalites and the police in an unnamed Indian state (Andhra Pradesh..?).

I am not going to delve into the politics of the issue. But the film... dear Gawd. That was brilliant. The way the interrogator, Abhay Singh (Om Puri) sees himself folding to the will of his enemy, Bhadra (played by Aashish Vidyarthi) is nothing less than the best of le Carre. The story hinges around two double agents in Bhadra's terrorist cell. Their controller is DCP Abbas. Then Bhadra is himself taken in a chance encounter at a highway checkpoint. But to the consternation of Abbas and Abhay, Bhadra appears to be pulling strings from inside his cell. Bhadra proves to be totally immune to interrogation, and matters suddenly escalate when he orders a hit on his interrogator's family. Loyalties blur and every other man who wears a khaki uniform could be working for the other side. This is a hauntingly powerful film which does nothing to prevent the feeling of rising hopelessness which we share with Abhay Singh, and to a lesser extent, Abbas (Naseeruddin Shah). A movie to watch and think about.