India the SUPERPOWER

We hear this so often. India has come of age. India is a globally known super power these days and no one can ignore India anymore. But have we ever wondered how true is this?

Take some recent instances which prove this to be wrong. First, the episode of Shilpa Shetty and Jade. This incident still goes to prove that Indians are still facing racist remarks all around the world. This piece of news got all the attention as it was involving a big bollywood star like shilpa shetty. What if it was you or me?

Next, we can take the episode of Mohd. Haneef, who was framed by the australian authorities and when they released him due to mounting international pressure , we see an arrogant Australian Govt. who is refusing to apologise. They fail to recognize this as an insult to to a country and a community rather than an individual. At least, their co-citizen Ponting was reasonable enough to aplogize to Sharad Pawar after the incident during the finals of champions trophy.

And last, the present England-India cricket match, where England are unable to register the fact that they have both the luck and weather Gods pitted against them in the favor of India and are involving in sledging and all other unparliamentary behavior on the field. And to add to this the umpires don't seem to take notice of that at all.

All this makes me beleive that India still has a long way to go. For me, we have not gone much ahead of the station where Gandhi was thrown out of the first class compartment in South Africa more than a hundread years ago.

If .. only if..

There are moments when you feel overwhelmed and lamented at the same time. You feel you could rewind your life to re-live(read re-plan) some parts of your life again. I had these kind of mixed feelings when I attended the BarCamp Bangalore 4 today.

Overwhelmed because the aroma of intelligence in the air was filling my heart with happiness, sad because I was a guest in a place where I dream to be a part of. It was a dream for me once to be a part of IIM-B. But this happened to be my first visit there.

Lets take the architecture first. (P.S :I am not a hardcore architecture analyst to give this review but just trying to put up some feelings. ) Awesome piece.. The half finished look makes one wonder if some construction is still going on or what. The big blocks used gives the building a royal look. The unpainted look gives the building a feel which cannot be matched by any ( or may be all paint was used by likes of Shankar for painting roads and mountains). The lush green campus, creepers on the walls, the rainy cold weather of the day all added to the magic. The hostel blocks are also made of the same blocks and are equally aesthetic in look. Not to mention of the infrastructure available, most of the campus is Wi-Fi enabled and each hostel room contains a wired network in addition to that.

After relishing all this for a full day, I wish life had a rewind or re-boot switch with which I can go back to the past and plan and prepare to join IIM-B again. But then, the bird in bush may be more tempting but not always better than the one in hand. And when I think which feeling is more dominant in me about the day, I would definitely say it has to be the feeling of an accomplishment of participating in such an event . How wonderful it would have been if... only if......

Details of the events and experiences will follow soon. Keep watching this space.

Cheers. :)

Click here for the album link.

Future of Indian cricket

Headlines read " India NOT in world cup 2015". The story starts this way... India is out of the contention for playing in world cup 2015 after losing its final qualifying match with Canada in the ICC qualifying tournament held here in Sharjah. .......

And it continues with intricate details of the match played which are not of concern to us for this blog. Believe it or not I dream of reading this headline. I mean I yearn to have this piece of newspaper in my hand soon. Before you jump into conclusions of calling me a traitor or some one who hates cricket or some one who is pessimistic, I would like to explain my point.

I feel this should happen because the current Indian team, its management, coach (or no coach) and the selection process are all hopeless ( to put it very mildly). Ever wondered how many selection flaws keep happening and how poorly the richest cricket board in the world is managed. After 2007 world cup debacle we had the board taking some stern steps like linking performance with pay but for how long... Even before India played a single series they reverted back to their old ways of grading players into A,B and C grade and paying them according to their grade which God only knows was decided on which ancient match. Regarding the selection process, we know players are selected into the national team from the ranji and other domestic cricket matches.(* Conditions Apply) But how are players selected for ranji. To be a part of a prestigious cricket club in India you need to be at least from an upper middle class family. How many from the lower and lower middle class really get a fair chance to play and try for the ranji teams? And as soon as someone gets selected for ranji next target for him is to appear in the national team. And they make their debut at the age of around 20. So where is the bench strength of India team. Just to give an example how things should be , a player of Mike Hussey's caliber made his debut into international arena at the age of 30 + .

Coming back to my dream, the next day, BCCI is dissolved and all the money in it is used for conducting a national level talent competition for cricketers where anyone can participate and then a team is constituted for each ranji team from where the national team is picked up.(*Conditions Apply)

And then...........well lets not dream too much.:)


*: I am taking an ideal corruption free selection process into account for this.

Saluting the true Indian Spirit

To the question of which is the most memorable event of your life , he answers ( not in his exact words) " Removal of pain of a young girl affected by the polio and her ability to ride a bicycle after using the light weight Floor Reaction Orthosis made by using carbon-carbon material was the most memorable event in my life."

I am not talking about any hi-tech doctor , I am talking about our honorable President Dr. Abdul Kalam. ( Read: former President if you read it after July 25). This was spoken to a gathering of IBM employees as a part of their annual gathering called the INNOVATION AND LEADERSHIP FORUM held at Bangalore on the magical date of 6/6/06. Many believed it to be the date of Satan, but for me it was one of the happiest moments of my life. A day when I was really proud of my country.

Mr. Kalam spoke about IBM, its history,its founder, its path towards innovation for more than 45 minutes which concluded with a standing ovation from the more than 30000 people gathered there. Such was the power of his speech. He had gathered more information about IBM , than may be any of the IBMers gathered there.

Coming back to his favorite moment, he came about discovering this light weight material while doing some research for rocket launching while he was with ISRO. But he found true happiness when it came of use to a young girl who used artificial limb made of that material was able to ride by bicycle in front of him. Thats compassion according to me and thats what India has been showing to the outside world. His life can be an ideal example not only for Indians but for the whole world as to the fact that our origins have no relation with the heights we can reach in our life. And that the higher you reach the more compassionate,humble and gentle you become.

P.S: This is not one of the numerous mails getting circulated canvassing for a second term for Kalam as the President.

tring! tring!... The bugger!

Imagine... Monday morning 9.30 AM ..you set off late from your house for office due to whatever reasons and you are stuck in a very bad traffic in the Hosur Road.. You still happen to maintain your cool and wait patiently wait for the traffic to clear so that you stand some chance of reaching office in time.. Suddenly your mobile rings.... Thinking it is a call from office as you are late for the meeting scheduled.. you sideline your bike (which means you allow another 5 to 10 vehicles to pass you in a minute's time).. pick up the phone seeing a new number which you cannot identify.. you remove your helmet and then put the phone on to your ears.. and then you hear a recorded message from hutch or airtel( P.S. : Such calls are more frequent from the former than the later)... you feel like scolding the person on the other side of the line in all goddamn languages you learnt all through your college life.. but there is no one to listen to you.. angrily you disconnect the phone and start back on the road but by the time you do this you have lost at least 15 mins of your time as the traffic is growing now.. and you are stuck again..

This is the height of consumerism... a mobile subscriber already subscribed to a particular service gets a tele-marketing call....And worse so... the call is immediately followed with an sms informing you of the same scheme... These are not the only useless calls which we get...There hardly goes a day when we do not get a call selling credit cards.. or personal loans or some health insurance or some country club membership... It is really pathetic.. We cannot (read should not) show the anger on the person making the call b'cos this happens to be his/her profession.. But what we need to think is .. is this the correct way to sell a product...

I am thinking now how to end this blog... I mean, what solution can one give.. may be chuck the mobile phone altogether... Oh! I am getting a call on my mobile... Need to attend it and find out if it is a useful call...

A peep into the future!

It is Dec 31 ,2022. Some amusing news about the year that went by.

Indian cricket team still on the look out for the correct "winning" combination for the next world cup in 2023.

Microsoft still holds 90 % of the desktop market with the latest version of windows. It has announced that it will not support Vista any more , however, migrating from vista to the new OS is not recommended. New OS needs to be installed from fresh.

US is still on the lookout for Osama Bin Laden who released 14 videos this year as compared to 13 last year warning the western countries of the growing power of Islam and Al Qaeeda.

US has set 2025 as the deadline for complete removal of troops from Iraq as there is still some political "imbalance" there.

After razing Pakistan, US has North Korea on its target list. Sources say.

Rajnikanth still is the biggest super star of the country at the age of 73. He still happens to be the biggest money spinner in the country.

Kamalhaasan still waiting for the right time to start his mega venture marudanayagam.

Vijay has remade the latest Burmese movie into Tamil which ran to full houses all across the state. In this film he plays a policeman disguised in the form of a milkman.

Amitabh Bachan still features in every third movie that comes out of Bollywood making him the busiest star in Bollywood.

The only post office in the state of Karnataka ( GPO Bangalore) vacated its main building and moved to a single room. This still is the largest post office among 14 post offices spread across the country employing more than 300 people throughout the country making it one of the largest PSU in the country after railways.

TCS declares that it will recruit close to 1,00,000 people this year for its new operational facility in Rajapallayam.

Land prices are set to fall next year. Claim experts. Land prices touched an all time high last year in Chennai and its suburbs with a ground costing more than 15 crores .

India continues its growth as the biggest outsourcing unit for US. India is now the 3rd biggest super power in the world after US and China.

Rahul Gandhi manages to draw crowds yet again in the UP election campaign but failed to woo voters to vote for him as he lost his election to the lok sabha from Rae bareilly.

BJP planning to conduct a Rath yatra from Delhi to Ayodhya to start the construction of Ram mandir in the disputed Ram janmabhoomi.

Google became the biggest company among all this year . it is a Fortune ONE company now.

Bangalore's traffic woes continues inspite of the successful completion of the metro train linking the entire city last year.


And as for me, I am still trying in vain to put on weight.

Happy "Anniversary"!!

We love to remember the past. So much so that we end up remembering all the bad /good things which happened to us that day. But seldom do we realize that what we are doing is not just remembering the event but also creating some unwanted disturbances(in and outside the mind).

For example, every year we all are aware of the tension that grips the country on 6th December, the day Babri Masjid was demolished. We even went out of our ways to "celebrate" 10th anniversary of the fateful day as if it was some marriage or birthday to be happy about. Same is the case with the anxiety we are now generating about 7/11, the date which Bombay suburban trains saw a blast. We have special features and programs across all news channel covering it in full detail.

Are we doing the right thing here? I am of the opinion that instead of concentrating on genuine issues and events we still want to cling to the past and re-live its mourning. By doing so we are giving anti social elements who were the reason for these fateful events a chance to pride upon themselves. I am not of the opinion that such days should not be remembered at all. It should be. But as a day when human spirit truimphed over evil . As a day when people irrespective of their social and economic backgrounds helped each other come out of the agony. Why not celebrate the day when India truimphed in the India-Pakistan 1971 war for instance? I don't know how many of us even remember that date(It is december 16 1971, courtesy Google). Why not celebrate the day when the first Indian super computer was manufactured? Why not celebrate the day when India won its firts olympic gold or the world cup?or any such wonderful moment.

It is absolutely essential to learn from the mistakes but to achieve this the "anniversary" celebrations should concentrate on what loopholes lead to so and so disaster rather than concentrating on the goriness of the event. Lets try to rediscover the optimisim in ourselves and that would add much more colors to our life other than RED.

CNN-IBN Blog: down down2

This is in reply to the below blog in CNN-IBN.

http://www.ibnlive.com/blogs/anuradhasengupta/164/2079/thank-you-sivaji.html

To answer your questions one by one:

1)We agree that you did not review the film. may be you are not supposed to do also. but you have no rights to call all those who waych sivaji pigs. including yourself into that category doesn’t make it any less offensive.

2)It is not about the regional films thing. just one question on this. which is the film in any god forsaken language which generated this much hype.which was multiplied by all the news channel including CNN-IBN.

3)We are not only protecting Rajnikanth the person. We are out there to protect Rajnikanth the actor as well. For your kind information Rajnikant is a very good actor. If you want proofs for this I would suggest you watch some of the old movies by Rajnikant (for your kind information Rajnikant has also won national awars) and in Sivaji also he has done enough hard work at the age of 58 and the mere fact that the entire movie stands on his able shoulders shows his status.

4)If you can call all who watched Sivaji as pigs then you better watch out and protect yourself from these pigs.

5)Making money is not a bad thing for films and if you are of the belief that whichever movie is not making money is good then i am sorry you are in an absolute minority. The very logic behind pointing out that Sivaji made money was that it has reached so many people and so many people have liked it to watch it shelling out so much money from their pockets.

6)You can understand the story of the movie without knowing Tamil, agreed. But what about the dialoghes of the movie and the healthy comedy track of the movie. If you don’t know that dialoghes are the highlight of a Rajnikanth movie then I am sorry.you need to do some more homework before you see a next Rajnikant film.

7)Well at least now you appreciate things. Thanks. The same energy is being shown by Rajni and all those who were a part of Sivaji. Pls try to appreciate them as well.

8)Well we agree and sincerely hope this is true.

Pls try not to hurt in future.

CNN-IBN Blog: down down

This post is in reply to the below post from CNN-IBN.

http://www.ibnlive.com/blogs/author/164/2061/anuradhasengupta.html

Once upon a time there was an excellent news reporter named Rajdeep Sardesai. He split ways with NDTV to start a new news channel amidst huge expectations. After seeing him in NDTV people hoped here was a TV channel which they could relate to and which will speak the truth.

But alas, how wrong were they….. After their site ratings fell after the abhi-ash wedding news died off. They chose a rather cheap gimmick to gain back their popularity. This event happened on July 02 2007 when a blog writer from ibnlive.com, Anuradha Sengupta(now fondly called as pig in the replies to her blog) was chosen to be the scapegoat for this cheap gimmick.

They put up a review of tamil movie Sivaji. There is nothing wrong in reviewing a movie and putting a bad review to it but what was disheartening is that the esteemed lady does not understand Tamil and she chose to see the movie in a theatre with no subtitles. Which means she could not understand the head and tail of the movie. Moreover, the language she used and the way she has brought out her so called “frustration” is really disgusting and is not expected out of a respectable news channel ibnlive.com.

But then, after giving it a thought and after waiting for a day, we got to understand the real purpose of the blog. By wednesday July 03,2007 the number of replies to the blog stand at 965 . Now a computer prodigy can tell as to how much traffic this could have created in the site. Hence, in a day due to Sivaji the popularity of the site ibnlive.com grew . So apart from the 150 crores sivaji is supposed to make, this goes as an additional credit to the movie.

A small request to ibnlive.com. In future if you want to increase the traffic , we have some other wonderful suggestions which cannot be disclosed in public. There are lot of sites which generate more traffic .( Hope you got which sites we mean here).

A rotten apple spoils the entire basket. Hope, ibnlive.com continues to remain what it was a couple of days back.

Sincerely hope none of the other news channel follow suit.

Kanaa Kaanum kalangal: Lets dream

For all of us school life happens to be a very cherished part of life. For some like me that happens to be the best part of life. How we wonder we could re-live those moments now almost 7 years after it was over. Well.. for those of who , who feel this way and those who understand tamil to relive those wonderful moments though with new set of characters whom you can identify with.

For those who do not know what I am talking about here.. I am referring to a tele-serial being telecast in vijay TV mondays to thurshdays 8 PM , very promptly named " Kana Kanum kalangal" which roughly translates to "Period when we dream". Well its really strange for me to run to house from work early just to watch this program but here I am doing it. The serial has characters everyone will identify with during their school days. It has situations which all of us must have undergone some moment in our schooldays. It has gangisms,competition,jealousy,love,hatred,friendship etc. etc. and each of these you can associate definitely with. Apart from the main characters of the serial who are split into two self-formed groups always competing against each others and pulling each others legs, we have an entire set of supporting cast who play the roles of teachers,parents and some other small roles like the policeman etc. And everyone excels in their performance. My personal favourite being Pandi(black pandi as he calls himself), with him on the screen it is a laugh riot all over and you forget all the tensions which you carry home from work. The dialogues are well written keeping and observing the present student community in mind. The characters have become so famous that they have started getting chances in movies. We have characters from affluent families and we have characters from families of very modest means to put it mildly . We have characters from a highly intellectual family to a family of grocery shop owner. We have divorced parents to a orphaned girl being adopted by adorable parents. Hence, with limited characters ( in comparision with other mega serials where there is a new character every week to keep the show running) this show strikes the correct chord with all.
The best part of the serial is the delicate balance which it strikes. There has to be someone bad to showcase someone as being good. But showing school children in bad light can have adverse effect on the children.This is handled very nicely by just giving grey shades to characters and that too with some sort of ( though not completely convincing) justifications, which tells us a major lesson of life that none of us is perfect. It is the situations which bring out the real character in us.
To give further details will be like giving away too much. I would recommend this to all who want to re-live their school life once again through these characters. But please don't watch it without knowing Tamil as you will not be able to appreciate the dialoghes and its beauty.Lets get into dreams... and dream about the most wonderful part of our life..with open eyes though.