Indian Politics, What is the Way Out?

Hopefully in the next decade, every Indian will have a political party representing his or her region, religion, caste, sex etcetera unless a political restructuring for consolidation happens. While everybody is aware of this as a problem with our politics, only very few is aware of a practical solution. Today's Hindu has an interesting article by Pran Chopra, which explains what does constitutional experts say about this. Here are the excerpts:

"A candidate should be declared elected to Parliament only when he has obtained the votes of at least half the people who have voted. And if no such candidate emerges in the first round of polling there should be a second and last round in which the leader and the runner-up in the first round should be the only candidates. The House chosen in this way should then choose its leader in the same way, in two rounds at most.

The government formed by him should be open to challenge but only by a challenger who has demonstrated, in the same manner, that he has the support of at least half the House.

This single reform can achieve at least three objectives. The House will always have the support of at least half the concerned voters, the government will always have the confidence of at least half the House, and candidates at both levels, knowing that one day they may need the support of at least half the voters will, even in the first round, refrain from casting their appeal on narrow and sectarian lines.

The merits of the scheme are not in doubt. The mystery is why we do not adopt it."

There have been instances when the entire politicians of the country united on a subject, increasing the salary of parliamentary members or overriding the supreme court law on the (dis)qualifications of an election candidate being some of them. Having seen on these political dramas live on the news channels, I doubt how many Indians will really find this one as mysterious as the author finds it!

The Entertainment Politics!

Should IIMs and IITs increase the reservation quota is the latest controversy! There are arguments for and against, I am with those who see this as another political gimmick to mobilise some votes during this election season. And yes, this is another decision without a foresight or ignoring it, about the long term impacts this would create on our education system; the backbone of the present 'shining' state of India Inc. The reservations for the backward classes to be ended within 10 years of independence continue to be the best tool to manipulate a voter's decision, Gandhiji must have foreseen this while he protested against its initial implementation itself! While this remains to be the hottest issue around, another political drama is being enacted by mallu filmdom. The film industry in the state had become officially political with the creation of associations for actors, directors and other technicians. But now, they seem to be playing a different ball game, to capitalise on the divisive arena created by the politicians of the state.

It is said that actor Mohanlal has more fans in the southern part of Kerala while Mammotty has more fans in Malabar area. The first movie which tried to openly take advantage of this fact was Harikrishnans, in which both heroes acted together, the film had a different climax depending on the region it was shown, the hero with more popularity in the region got the heroin! Where do the people from central Kerala belong? The Star of the Masses, Dileep would have thought about this while he came with a movie titled Kochirajav which was meant to make him more popular in central Kerala. The fact that he has played an auto driver and he hails from this part of Kerala would have added to the advantage of churning out such a film.

Usually, in mallu movies people speak the Kottayam dialect which is very close to the print language. But for sometime now there has been some changes to this! In the Mammooty starrer Rajamanikyam the hero spoke the northern mallu aka thirondoram dialect, the film became the biggest hit in the region. Mammooty then acted in another film named Bus Conductor in which he played the role of a member of minority guy from Malabar, the film was well received in the region. And in the latest movie Thuruppugulan Mammooty speaks the central Kerala aka Cochin dialect, with that he almost covered the entire Kerala!

Mohanlal has already tried playing the role of a Muslim guy in Kilichundan Mambazham speaking Malabar dialect, but the film was not well received with the audience. I am not sure about his forth coming films, but it seems like the trend will continue. The fact that heroes like Jayaram and Suresh Gopi who continued with their tried and tested formulae are struggling to give a hit film, also makes this the perfect alternative. I am wondering when will be the time these heroes will start speaking in a gulf-returned-mallu or a US-returned-mallu accent? For long, the Mallus have been happy judging the politicians to find out who is a better actor, the time have come for them to name the actor who is a better politician!

Surprisingly SBI

The boom in the indian economy has made me an investor in stocks. My portfolio includes stocks of State Bank of India. I have read about the vast expansion plans of the bank and have been impressed by the new "surprisingly SBI" series of advertisements they have been using for a brand make over. The advertisements aim to create awareness that despite all the competition from private sector banks it is SBI that is numero uno. After an attempt to open a PPF account today, which is allowed only in a public sector bank, I have come to know the employees of SBI take this change very seriously.

The story goes thus:

We four from my company set out for opening a PPF account which would help us to save some tax, the destination being the SBI branch in Cyber Towers, Hitech City. We had taken with us the address/identity proofs and PAN card that are required to open a PPF account as per the government rules. We reached the bank and went inside, to my amazement the infrastructure looked world class and at par with any other private bank. But inside the bank we could find only to three officers seated and many of the seats were empty. We asked one of them that we have come to open a PPF account, and the reply was nothing one could think in the wildest of imaginations. She said "There are not enough passbooks available" and started doing her work. For sure I was surprised, but thought she must have some grudge towards the guys there at PPF that she gave such a silly answer. We approached another guy who was well dressed and even wore a tie (I am not sure if he intended to surprise the customers who thought they wear ties only if employed by private banks). But his reply was far more surprising "We do not have enough staff to do this, already some fifty PPF applications are pending here". We have got money that we are ready to invest, (for which a private bank would send a hundred executives to you), but these people are telling that they do not have enough staff and passbook. What the hell do we do? We sort of begged to the guy-with-the-tie and the reply was "You can check with State Bank of Hyderabad in the next room".

The infrastructure at SBH looked great. The lady at the first desk whom we approached asked "Do any of you have an account here?" None of us had one. "You should find out somebody who has account here to introduce you, the Reserve Bank of India is very strict now-a-days on this rule." But we do not know anyone, none of us are locals. "Then you can check with SBI in the next room". What?!

We then looked up the name boards inside the building to find out other nationalized banks. Only Punjab National Bank and Bank of India were there. My friend told his brother had a PPF account with PNB. We went there, but the guy told "We do not have PPF accounts, you can go to SBI". And the reply at Bank of India was same, though I am not sure if it is a nationalized bank. We then tried Madhapur Post Office and SBI branch at Jubilee Hills but was of no use. After two hours of toing and froing between banks and post offices unsuccessfully we decided to give up.

I have now become doubtful about the validity of the statement "elephants can dance" that they use to indicate that SBI can still perform well in the stock market. I had bought the shares for long term investment but am doubtful now of keeping them for long. I believe it would be illegal if I provide the passbook and staff for the SBI even if I can, so I will put my money in any of the other tax benefit schemes that are less surprising.

Yahoo "Dot" ID

Yahoomail has come with a secondary email address feature. You can create a new Yahoo Id (with a dot if you want) and use this in place of the existing one. But both these IDs will have same account. Read more here and create the ID here. Does this has anything to do with the new version?

Done with Half-Life! Almost...

Today on twenty fourth December, Yours Truly, the owner of this blog is twenty four years old! Assuming an average life expectancy, I have already spent almost half of my life on planet earth. The past had been good and future looks promising provided I put some hard work.

But at this very moment, I must admit I really do not know why I have been doing what I have been doing and what I want to do in life. I have started thinking now-a-days what life is all about and why is I alive here.

I do not want to write anything further but would like to quote from a passage I came across titled Being Twenty-Something, It's Really Hard, the source of which I actually do not know. I think it sums up the dilemma to an extent.

They call it the Quarter-Life Crisis. It is when you stop going along with the crowd and start realizing that there are many things about yourself that you didn't know and may not like. You start feeling insecure and wonder where you will be in a year or two, but then get scared because you barely know where you are now.

You look at your job, and it is not even close to what you thought you would be doing. Or you realize that you are going to have to start at the bottom of hierarchy, and that really scares you. You see what others are doing and find yourself judging more than usual because suddenly you realize that you have certain boundaries in your life and are constantly adding things to your list of what is acceptable and what isn't. One minute, you are insecure and then the next, secure.

You laugh and cry with the greatest force of your life. You feel alone and scared and confused. Suddenly, change is the enemy and you try and cling on to the past with dear life, but soon realize that the past is drifting further and further away, and there is nothing to do but stay where you are or move forward. You get your heart broken easily and wonder how someone you loved so much could do such damage to you. Or you lie in bed and wonder why you can't meet anyone decent enough that you want to get to know better. You question your existence, you're beliefs and all that you thought was right. You go through the same emotions and questions over and over, and talk with your friends about the same topics because you cannot seem to make a decision. You worry about loans, money, and the future and making a life for yourself...and while winning the race would be great, right now you'd just like to be a contender!

Kavyageethikal

Thanks a lot to my friend who forwarded this link to me.

This has the preview of songs from the latest album Kavyageethikal, which are poems by famous Malayalam poets sung by G Venugopal. His first album in this genre Kavyaragam had good reviews, but I was not lucky to hear the songs.

I have heard some of these poems (eg. Saphalami Yathra) a hundred times during the recitation competitions in my school, so much so that hearing it again gives so many triggers along the memory lane and makes my mind lighter and nostalgic.

There are no copyright issues involved in downloading these, because it is provided by the distributors Manorama Music itself for promotion.

Once again, a hundred thanks to my friend!

Yahoo Search My Web 2.0

At last I am lucky to find a user friendly book marking tool for web pages.

My Web 2.0 feature of Yahoo Search is a new service from Yahoo, where you can bookmark and tag web pages, as you find them through search. I have been using Yahoo Bookmarks and was not happy with it, copy-pasting the link was a tedious job. It was easy shifting service, because of the import feature through which I could transfer all my links from Yahoo Bookmarks to My Web. And to add to that there is the option to share these links with my community, which is promptly integrated with Yahoo 360. Good Enough!

Google Reader

I was finding it difficult to browse through blogs to check if they have been updated, finally decided to subscribe to Bloglines one week back.

It seems Google Labs' latest offering is a similar feed aggregator named Google Reader.

Bloglines is better as of now, but Google Reader is still in its Beta infancy!

Ennum Nanmakal!

I adore Sathyan Anthikkad, the Film Director.

I adore Sreenivasan, the Script and Dialogue Writer.

But, I adore the combination of the duo more!

I thought I had seen almost all the movies from the duo! But Surya TV telecasted another one yesterday night; Ennum Nanmakal which I had not seen yet and is one of their best.

There must be lots of Mallus who like Sathyan-Sreeni movies, for a various reasons. I tried to find out why I do, and the reasons listed here should be similar with most of those Mallus out there.

I have always been ambitious in life, everybody is. At various stages of my life I had planned my future and all this plans to be affluent had one single aim; to live a in a small beautiful village in Kerala where people do not care much about internet or politics. This dream village had wonderful and innocent people to live with and endless stretches of paddy fields, a small river, lots of coconut and mango trees etc.

The milieu of Sathyan-Sreeni films have been a similar village. I have heard Sathyan speaking passionately about how he would like to spend his leisure time in Anthikkad, his native village and how the place has encouraged him to make films about village life. And more than capturing the natural beauty of the villages, he has been successful in portraying the innocent people of these villages and their lives with at most reality. I think I like these films because while watching them I get the pleasure of living my dream life, at least for three hours.

It is not mandatory that the Sathyan-Sreeni film should have a villain. Even if there are villains, these characters are never mafia dons or suicidal maniacs. They are all normal people, innocent people from villages, who do some bad things in certain situations of life. The story plays all these conventional character mannerisms of heroism and villainous, and the characters just blend into it; and this gives the proximity of the film to real life drama. I specifically liked the characters for I wish and believe that all people are basically good at heart. At the end of the film you love them all, be it villain or hero and wish if you could be there with them in the on-screen village. And there lies the beauty of duo’s films.

My mom's house is in a village near to the borders of Trichur district where it meets Ernakulam district. From there, Ernakulam town is one hour travel where as Trichur is almost three hours. My own house is in Ernakulam, and due to the proximity to the city of Cochin these places are more developed. But the Trichur area being far away from Trichur town has been neglected by the district officials and is less developed. The border line between the districts is a river which you will have to cross by boat. So whenever we crossed the river to travel to my Mom’s house, we used to tease Mom telling this. Because you need to wait by the river side for a minimum of one hour to get a bus, we used to get a lot of time for this teasing. (We would get buses in every five minutes at the Ernakulam side)

In spite of this, I have always liked my Mom’s village better than my own. I have stayed there for two years with my Grand Parents when I was less than five years old. The people there were very friendly and innocent. I specifically remember one old friend of my Grand Father, Kasukka whom I was very scared of and times when I went to festivals like Kodungallur Pooram and Vaakkadappuram with my Grand Father; these experiences have left permanent marks in my mind. The characters in Sathyan-Sreeni films always had the mannerisms of some of the innocent people whom I have seen in there, and the scenes make me nostalgic.

Apart from these, the humor sense of Sreenivasan has greatly contributed to the popularity of all the films. He has never bothered about acting as a dumb character in his own creations. As a script writer, he always handled the subject with maturity and the scenes always had the real life touch to them. From Ennum Nanmakal, I specifically liked the scene in which Sreenivasan proposes to Santhikrishna. That was very original and classy and involved no drama that is usually seen on films in similar situations.

I would just list some of the films here, because each one of them can inspire me to write so much as to create a new blog entry altogether. There best of these films are T.P. Baalagopalan M.A, Sanmanasullavarkku Samaadhaanam, Sreedharante Onaam Thirumurivu, Ponmuttayidunna Thaaraavu, Varavelppu, Mazhavilkkaavady, Thalayanamanthram, Ennum nanmakal, Sandhesham, Golaanthara Vaartha, Veendum chila veettu kaaryangal, Narendran Makan Jayakaanthan Vaka and Manassinakkare. Some of these films are not from the duo, but still they are the best.

Thought for The DAY

Ella Nayinte Monum Oru Divasam Undu!

Yesterday was world Aids day. I have always wondered who decides that so-and-so date can be celebrated as so-and-so day, that today will be X's day and tomorrow will be Y's day. Every day is different and unique for every individual, you celebrate your birthday, birthdays of your relatives and close friends, marriage day etc and mourn the death days of your loved ones. Apart from that, people of a state, nation or religion or locality collectively celebrate special days, which would usually have a well-known history for the day being celebrated as so-and-so day. As a school child, I have come across many Children's Days and Gandhi Jayantis which were holidays. I was taught that these were birth or death dates of some of the famous national leaders. I could assimilate the logic then, for I knew that those people were really great to be honored like that. (As primary school child I was not taught history then, but only knew the name of these leaders).

But as I grew up, I came across so many other days for which I could not find out the reason behind the celebration. As youngster I came to know about Valentine's Day, Lover's Day, Father's Day, Mother's Day etc. I could not understand why one would love one's mother more on a day of the year if everybody else is doing so, I do not think people who were brought up in traditional Indian culture can assimilate the idea. But there are always people who are benefited and would like to promote the event, the media and Card companies being some. Extremist mindset towards these celebrations has lead to violent protests where people celebrating Valentine's Day have been harassed. I find many of these days stupid enough to ignore, but I cannot agree to these violent protests for it is one's wish if he/she would like to celebrate a day or not and no body else has a say in it unless it creates some disruption to their daily life.

I still find Mallus the most orthodox community among Indians. But even in Kerala, media houses like Malayala Manorama and Asianet have been trying to inculcate this habit of celebrating the days. They have been widely trying to market these days particularly among youth, through various varieties of promotions. And this has resulted in the present generation being more interested in this celebration culture, though they may not know why this day is selected for a particular celebration. I also belong to this group.

Apart from these two, there is a third type of day celebration that is becoming popular, which is generally aimed to create awareness among people about anything be it about Aids or environmental hazards. The World Aids Day belongs to this type. Whole world celebrated the World Aids Day, but I doubt how many know why December 1st was selected for the same. I wonder how many would be interested in finding this out (I for one, would not like to). But there was huge celebrations going on everywhere, every channel modified their icons to add that twisted red tag to them and competed in bringing home the best movie based on Aids to home. Music channels competed in telecasting the best music concerts held world wide, to create awareness about Aids prevention. I was watching one of these shows, where all the celebrations were happening in typical Bollywood style with men and women were performing on stage with barely any dress worn. I could not really get how this was going to increase the awareness about Aids, but I found this more as a promotion to the culture which spreads Aids. Nobody can be blamed, because there is no hard and fast rule on how to celebrate Aids day, and no one knows why this day is selected Aids Day!

Meanwhile my own state Kerala is celebrating an anti-ragging day, to create awareness against ragging among student community. Keralites are lucky that they are able to celebrate a day on everything, good or bad, happening world wide, often accompanied by a hartal. You will find Keralites celebrating in protest of capitalist policies of American Government, Central government policy against rebels and naxalites of Nepal etc. By the vigour with which media is promoting the second type of days (e.g.: Valentine's Day and Lover's Day) and the political parties promoting the third type (e.g.: Anti-ragging day), it is not far when people will spent whole 365 days of a year on the day-celebrations rather than doing anything else.

The proverb (the first sentence) will be more true then, Every Dog Has a Day!

Over a plate of curry...

Yesterday, I had traditional Kerala chicken curry for dinner, Lucky Me! Not only that it has become several months since I last tasted it, this was prepared my classmate in school who has come down to Hyderabad on a job hunting visit. He (yes, he) has become a great cook if not anything else, and the taste of the curry prompted me to offer him an immediate full-time job, as a "guest" cook in our house. ;-)

Being overtly fat (as per our school standards then), this guy was called "thadiyan" in school. Mine was a residential school run by central government; it was always celebration time for us during the weekends when his parents visited thadiyan in school. Actually this parental visit was allowed only once in a month, but some of the parents visited their wards quite often and thadiyan's parents were among them. When they came, they brought packets of eatables good enough to start a new bakery, a major portion of which was shared by his classmates (including myself). I still do not understand if this surplus quantity attributed to their fear of thadiyan being starved once this sharing happens, or to their desire to make him more fattish. Whatever it was, we had a nice time during most of the weekends, for otherwise we usually starved due to the poor quality of food being served in the school mess.

After four years since I left the school, I came to know that the mess-in-charge who had been administering the food supply for students was caught for cheating and was transferred to some other remote place. At present the school has appointed a student committee for running the mess and the students they are getting a very sumptuous food. This guy, the mess-in-charge looked very "pavam" in his behavior and mannerisms, so I considered him one of the very few harmless individuals in school then. Now when I know that he has made us starve (or prevent us from getting better food) for seven years, he seems to be my first example for "looks being deceptive".

And yes, after eating the delicious chicken curry prepared my friend, I have started rethinking about my decision to marry a girl who is good and interested in cooking. After all, who knows my tastes better than me? ;-)

Oil, Oil, We Say...

It was a year before when my manager told me, during my appraisal meeting, that I have to improve my oral communication skills. And yesterday my new manager in my new company gave the first positive feedback as "you have got good written and oral communication skills". If you are wondering what I have done within one year to improve my English, I would have to admit that I have not done anything except that I was more conscious about my Mallu accent. In the appraisal meeting with my first manager in my first company, though there were many things that I had disagreed regarding his feedback, some of them which ultimately lead to me quitting the company later, this one about my bad oral communication was one I whole heartedly agreed. (Even he had opined that I was good in written, so no issues there)

Till I left Kerala for my first job in Chennai, my notion was that Mallus had the best accent in the world. The widespread belief in Kerala that Malayalam is the most difficult language to speak when compared to other languages and thus Mallus can easily speak any language in the world made me proud for being a Mallu and for knowing Malayalam. In fact I still find this statement true, but with an exception, Mallus can speak any language easily but with a Mallu accent.

My pride for being both a Mallu and a linguist was shattered soon after I came to Chennai. My training batch in my new company consisted of three Mallus, all from my college, and others from Tamil Nadu. We were trained on many subjects, being from non-computer background and these classes were handled by different people. A self introduction was a usual routine in these classes. I realised that there is something wrong with how we Mallus introduced that we are from College of Engineering Trivandrum, because our fellow Tamilians started repeating this as if we were singing some song or something. But I could not really make out what is wrong? Many of our seniors had joined this company earlier, and once we did the intro, some of these trainers would say "Ya, I guessed it by the time you said "College"!" What??

The real problem became clear when we had our Personal Development Training towards end of our whole training schedule. This was handled by a lady who was a consultant and had much experience in the field. Part of the training class was about accent, and she began to discuss about typical Indian accents starting from north India. I did agree with her and did laugh with others when she told how people in north won't say "Z" in zero and all that. Atlast, when she came to Mallus I must admit I was surprised, more so when other students were laughing as if this was the funniest of them all. When she told Mallus pronounce "O" as "Oo", I really did not get it! Then she told about a previous incident when she was teaching the same stuff for the managers of a reputed company in Chennai. And when she said Mallus pronounce "O" in Oil etc wrong, one fellow Mallu in the audience asked angrily "What Madam, we say Ooil, Ooil...What is the problem?” I was pacified when she admitted that Chennaites are worse as they pronounce it as aail.

I have been trying for the past one year to get rid of my Mallu accent for English, which I think has become successful. But I must admit, after two years of living outside Kerala and after getting all these positive feedbacks about my communication in English being good, I am still afraid when I pronounce "O". Am I saying it right?

B L A C K

Brilliant! That is the word I would like to use to describe the film Black directed by Sanjay Leela Bansali. I hadn’t seen the film yet until its TV premier in Star Gold yesterday. I do regret now that I did not see the film in theatre. Black is definitely a bold attempt from the director, it challenges all the conventions of a contemporary Indian film be it art or commercial. I have seen only one Bollywood film that made watching a film a treat to all my senses, and that is Sholay, but these two films are of extremely different categories. I do not think this as a reason that makes Black special?

The uniqueness of the film lies in the fact that it is difficult to classify the film as commercial or art, based on the conventions we usually use for the purpose. I have always liked the art films by internationally acclaimed directors like Adoor Gopalakrishnan. But these films are always made within low budgets, and usually are made for film festival audiences. At times you have to wait for these films to be shown on TV, the producers know that this film will not be appealing to masses and they refrain from spending money in releasing these films in theatres. The net result is that these films are devoid of the modern filming techniques which combined with the mood of the film, makes it dull for watching. But in Black, Bansali has made the settings look like those of a big budget commercial Bollywood film (or even better than that), and created an aura that you would feel watching a classic academy award winning English movie. Also the characters use English as lavishly as Hindi.

The director has made the best out of his actors, all of whom have performed well. The story is about a girl Michelle McNally who is blind, deaf and dumb, and her teacher Debraj Sahai who tries to give her a normal life. The roles are played by Rani Mukherjee and Amitabh Bachan respectively. The little girl Ayesha Kapoor who enacted the childhood of Michelle McNally did a great job. I liked many scenes in the film, the one in which the little Michelle says her first word "water", the one in which the teacher looses his memory due to Alzheimer’s disease while he was at an ice cream shop and the last scene in which he realises that his student has graduated, are some of them.

J. P Sippy has quit film making, so I cannot expect another Sholay. But I am eager to watch next film by Bansali, and am sure it will be on a theatre screen!

War of the Worlds: Internet Version

Bill Gates must be a bewildered man!

I am sure he is very busy now-a-days pondering on how to crack down Google! Not only because MSN search has not become popular, also because his company Microsoft is losing employees who are leaving to join Google.

Meanwhile Google has launched two new products within the last one month. Google talk is a messaging service similar to MSN or Yahoo messengers. But its edge is in the VoIP integration and the simple interface. I have not used it, but those who used the voice messaging told the clarity is very good. Meanwhile, Yahoo has released version 7.0 of its messenger which is voice enabled. Buzz is that Microsoft is trying to buy some VoIP or P2P company; meanwhile eBay has bought Skype, the premier company in this segment.

Blogsearch is an add-on to Google's search service, which is dedicated only for searching blogs. It is anticipated that the tool will make blogs more popular, as it will be easier to find blogs of an individual’s interest.

Meanwhile Yahoo is trying to popularize Yahoo360, its blogging and networking service, through Yahoo messenger. It is also trying to integrate Flickr with rest of its services by enabling login with a yahoo id. Flickr, which was bought recently by Yahoo, is a photo sharing service. User can add friends or family as contacts and set privileges for the photos to decide who should see them and who should not. There is a provision to create groups similar to yahoogroups, but only to share photos. I think it should be integrated with yahoogroups so that all the existing members can use it without registering again to the groups in Flickr, I believe they have plans to do this. Most of these services are also provided by Orkut, similar service from Google, which has recently started integrating it with Gmail login. But Orkut site has always some problem or the other. Yes, it’s still in "beta" version, like most other services from Google, but then beta is not an excuse which can be used for years.

As end users, all we need is some patience and the curiosity to try out these new products. By the time all this predictions of popularity and success in between the product wars of these companies consolidate, we shall have a better cyber world. Till then we shall wait keeping our fingers crossed.

Sensor the sensual surveys.

Yuk! That’s what I felt while going through this week's edition of Outlook and India Today. It’s quite sometime since these journals have endorsed the art of surveying to increase their circulation. And the subjects selected had been as sensational as they could make it, those related to sex and city being the most preferred. But this week's editions are the most vulgar of them all. India today has created some survey questions while Outlook has printed pictures akin to those which would be seen on a porn magazine.

I do not believe in the conclusions of any of these surveys, I doubt if too many people take it seriously. But the magazines have made it a habit to conduct surveys on subjects varying from sexology to technology and print them with large pictorial illustrations on maximum pages of an issue, leaving not many pages for news and articles. No body except these magazines can vouch for the authenticity of these surveys, though the results give an impression that these are largely conducted in metros. But then, they need some unorthodox opinions to make it interesting for the readers, opinions which may not always be obtained by actually conducting the survey. So you can't guess what is actually happening behind the scenes.

One thing is for sure, whether you as a person like it or not, these magazines are going to roll-out too many issues on related subjects in the past also, because “they do not running a charity organization” to ignore the increase in circulation by to these surveys and the related content they print. We need to have some sort of censoring mechanism to decide what can and cannot be printed on these journals. Introducing a rating mechanism for these magazines based on their content can also be considered, like how we do for the films currently. Otherwise it would not be long, when these so called journals would roll-out with surveys on subjects you wouldn't have dreamt in your wildest imaginations with contents that would give a stiff competition to porn magazines, I doubt if that is already happening. Also in place should be an authority to check and validate the methodology of conducting these surveys and conclusion of the final results.

TWTWTW - Hyderabad Tour

That Was The Week That Was. Last week was the most happening, busy and enjoyable week I ever had in Hyderabad. My family was here for five days on a visit to Hyderabad. We toured the whole city and covered almost all the famous tourist destinations. I was having fever which would have become a show-stopper but I managed to carry on so that they made maximum of their available time here. The itinerary is below.

Day1. 18th AUG.

I had already decided to avail the standard tour packages from any of the travels for City Tour and Ramoji Film City tour. So today I decided to go the places which would not be covered by this tour i.e. Snow World and IMAX theatre. It was 12'O clock in the afternoon by the time we started from Madhapur. We first went for a visit to Hyderabad Central in Panjagutta, which is big shopping mall owned by the Pantaloon group. After that we went to Mangatrai Pearls and Jewels, again in Panjagutta junction. Mangatrais are the famous vendors of the Hyderabad pearls and also give a huge discount for corporate employees. My mother purchased some pearls and they gave us a 30% discount on the final price! The next planned destination was Snow world, but by this time I was feeling the grip of fever more, so we decided to drop the plan and went to IMAX instead. Prasads IMAX is the biggest multiplex theatre complex here in Hyderabad with five screens. After taking some snaps, we went for a walk to Necklace road near Hussain Sagar. An exhibition of agricultural products were happening there, which my parents found interesting. We returned to the room by 6'O clock in the evening.

Day2. 19th AUG. RAMOJI FILM CITY TOUR

I had gone to this place 4 days before, on 15th of August with my friends and had found the place boring. So the expectations were low and that may be the reason it was better this time. The place which is just a cluster of shooting locations has been converted to a tourist spot with few rides and all that. There is not much that you would find entertaining for a whole day. If you go by a tour package, the buses would start only after the closing ceremony at 5.30 pm. So you will have to find something or other to spent the day. We took photographs from all the possible places we could, especially the ones which we had seen in films like Darling Darling and Udayananu tharam. They have two tours inside the campus in the red buses you see in the film Udayananu Tharam. First one will take you through some of the shooting places like Taj Mahal, Golden Temple etc. I found the second tour more stupid. It will take you to a cave called "Kripalu". I doubt if the entire structure was carved out, though they claim it was found during some excavation work. Anyway they have done and are doing some sculpturing using cement and uses video projector to show a dancing sculpture, in which century do they think the tourists are from?. We started from the place at 5.30pm, after the closing ceremony. I think the visit would be more interesting if you plan it for half a day.

Day3. 20th AUG. CITY TOUR.

A day's tip through the famous tourist spots in the city. The Southern Travels bus for the tour picked us from Madhapur, but the tour was officially started from Birla Mandir at 9 O'clock. Then we went to Golconda Fort, there are about 300 steps to be climbed to reach the top of the fort from where you can see almost whole of the city. The Quli Qutub Shahi tombs also can be seen from there. Then we went to Salarjung Museum, from there the Mecca Masjid and Charminar which are ride-through, Sudha Car Museum and then to Nehru Zoological Park which was the last destination. Only one hour each was allowed at Golconda, Salarjung Museum and Zoo park due to which we could only have a glance of things. The time duration was obviously not enough but this helped to cover all these places in a single day.

Day4. 21st AUG. CHARMINAR AND MECCA MASJID.

My father was not happy that he could not see the Charminar and Masjid in detail, since both were ride through in the city tour package. He was also interested in shopping at the place. You have lots of jewelers and ladies item shops near Charminar. So after visiting my office at Hitec Sity we went to Charminar. I should say that we made a wise decision. The view of the Masjid was magnificent. The Charminar was an experience, the view from its top refreshing. Mecca Masjid was built using the sand from Mecca, I am not sure it is the story since my guide on previous day did not explain it well. We also bought some chains and all that from hawkers. Then we left to Secunderabad railway station where my brother was to catch the Chennai Express by 4.15.

My parents left the next day, on Monday. In all, the trip was memorable and I am happy that I can now leave this place without any regrets, at any time.

Water Water Everywhere But...

It was raining continuously for the last one week, here in Hyderabad. All the lakes, that are existing (including Durgam Cheruvu lake in Hitech City) or has become non existent by encroachments were full, unable to contain any more water. Newspapers carried photographs of submerged houses, and there was fear that the situation will get worse. But then the rains stopped and water began to recede.

The same however did not happen in Mumbai, India's industrial capital. Rains poured 94cms of water within 24 hours, beating the earlier high of 82cm in Chirapunji. The city choked, came to a complete halt with no power supply and dead telephones. People spent whole night in their offices or railway stations or even double-decker buses. I could read about the "spirit of Mumbaikars" in newspapers, which I came to know from friends working there.

It is raining heavily in Kerala for the last two days, flooding many of the places from Kotayam to Kannur including places in Palakkad which was drought hit one month ago. I do not know yet what is the situation today, and am wondering which place is the next target of monsoons?

The most astonishing fact had been the performance of Indian stock markets. It seems they have become resistant to all this, both NSE and BSE have been rising constantly for the last two weeks finding new all time peaks even though BSE stopped trading for a whole day due to the floods! As of today, this trend looks eternal!

9/11, 7/11, 7/22...!?

The 'War on Terrorism' is paying off. But who is benefited?

United States of America has always tried its acts of global policing at anywhere it gets a foothold. At the pretext of global peace, they have helped militant groups across the globe to implement their selfish interests as a nation. Consider any of the world’s problematic places, Palestine, Kashmir, Afghanistan or elsewhere, Americans were there either to create the problem, or to worsen it by helping one of the clashing groups which they think will give them some benefit. But eventually, all of these issues have blown out of control, and that is when they finally try to act as peace makers!. Its like, create an issue and then find ( or pretend like trying ) a solution to it! This can be largely attributed to the lack-of-enough-problems-to-solve within the country itself! They had to pay the price for this when the 9/11 attacks on World Trade Centers happened. Ordinary American citizens, who have only heard about the people getting killed elsewhere, probably by the American marines, should have had a real shock experiencing the same. President Bush declared it as attack on world peace and launched "the war on terror"!So far so good! Then the biggest mistake happened, not by US or 'terrorists", but by the nations which decided to join the war on terror.

What really happened was a change in the battlefield, and not a new war as such! The so called terrorists, who were once trained by America for their own advantage (read Osama bin Laden), decided to take the war to the land of US from elsewhere. But US succeeded in making the rest of the world believe otherwise, that it is a war to be fought by all of them. They could also get other nations' troops to Afghanistan and Iraq, even when the United Nations was against all this! And then follows 07/07 and 07/22 series of blasts in London, the capital city of the major ally of US in the war on terror.

The response to the incident has been variant, the British government, as expected, denied that war on terror has anything to do with it. But I, like most of the people with common sense, would like to strongly disagree. Particularly after knowing the whereabouts of the suicide bombers. The bombers, obviously Muslims, were not from any Arabic country but were immigrants whose parents settled in Britain several years ago. So these youth were born and brought up in Britain, studied in institutions of that country and were "nice-to-live-with" guys to their neighbours. Why do they decided to kill themselves, and take many others along with them? Does they do not have any love for the nation or the people who gave them shelter? And how did they, having educated from the best institutions in the world, become prey of islamic extremism? Or how did the so called terrorists manage to persuade these young and well educated people to become suicide bombers?

I think the war on terror made it happen, it made the job of terrorists easier on convincing people. The very cause in this case being the joining of British army in Iraq for "restoring peace". I read in yesterday's newspaper that the death toll of Iraqis has gone up to 24860, which is far bigger than the numbers 4000 at WTC or 100 in London. Then there is the abusing of prisoners, abuse of Koran, and so many other stories that can be used to "motivate" these guys to challenge "their" nation. Had Britain had not joined the war on terror, it would have been difficult though not impossible. It would have been difficult to create a justifiable picture so as to persuade these well educated youths to do this brutal act. Because the Koran or prophet condemns suicide and on jihad, When a man asked "What kind of jihad is better?" the Prophet had replied "A word of truth spoken in front of an oppressive ruler."

Now, as I write this, there is widespread fear among the Asian-looking community in Britain about alienation and racism due to these attacks. And the British government is worried that this can create further disturbances!

So finally who have won, and is the war on terror a success?. Answer depends on who answers it, whether the nation which launched it or the "terrorists" whom it targeted!


P.S: The answer also depends on what is the actual intention of US is, for which it is using war on terror, and which me, the poor chap, does not know at this moment. I think like me, all the "poor" chaps will have to wait and watch! Then, there is this saying by Martin Niemoller which makes me afraid, especially when my mother country is the new found ally of United States of America.
"First they came for the Communists, and I did not speak out because I was not a Communist. Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out because I was not a Trade Unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me"

Payarum Arippayum Pinne....

What do they tell "Payar" in Hindi or in English? We did not know till yesterday, until we decided to cook Payar curry.

I, Jose and Ben decided to cook dinner. But the "Payar" which I had bought from Foodworld had finished. So we had to buy it, and had no time to go to the Foodworld outlet at Jubilee hills. I suggested buying an "arippa" also, a device which is used to remove water from cooked rice. Now, none of us knew what they tell for "payar" or "arippa" in Hindi, English or Telugu. But now that we had decided to cook, we had to buy! So we started off. We went to the local stationary store at Madhapur from where we usually buy utensils. I explained to him in Hindi that we wanted "the device" to remove water from cooked rice. Luckily the guy understood, but he did not have "the device" in his shop. He advised us to go to a near by bigger shop. So in order to make the discussion that was going to happen at the new shop simpler, I asked him what they call this device. And he replied in Hindi, "Chaval se pani nikalne ka barthan!" Utensil to remove water from cooked rice!

In the new shop however everything was on-display, so we could handpick the "arippa" and buy it without much problem. Next one was "payar". Unlike arippa we could not explain what payar is! We checked two shops from outside but there were no payar packets visible. Losing all hopes, Jos decided to try his luck. He went to one of the shops and started making some actions with both hands and explaining in Malayalam that he meant "payar". Ben and I started laughing and obviously the shopwala did not understand anything. We were about to leave the shop when somebody asked from behind in Malayalam "Payarano vangendathu?" Do u want to buy Payar?

The guy who was standing beside us was a Mallu, and knew what they call Payar in Hindi. Finally we could get payar for our dinner! And by the way Payar in Hindi is Moong!

To code or not to...

I am confused and little frustrated. The guy at onshore does not think my design will work. He wants it another way, in a much simpler way actually. He cannot be blamed either. The problem is, I like to write code that is confusing at first sight! :-) (Its just COBOL, so confusing code here refers to a set of nested IFs and PERFORMs and no hard-to-crack coding concepts)

My requirement is to include a provision in the existing code, to check for two new possible values of an existing field. I knew that there are two options to do that. Either I could add some more IFs to the existing set of loops or I could replicate the existing code and use the new values of the field in place of old ones. The first option would make the code a little more confusing but need only few changes and second one would require replicating all the junk in four existing paragraphs. I preferred the first one, but my onshore reviewer tells me that other one is better. I do not want to do it, and do not agree with his comment that my code will not work. (I am sure he got confused by the code! ha..ha...ha...)

I have been sitting idle from morning, thinking whether to make the changes or wait till night to talk to this guy and make him understand my code.

I have had a similar experience in my previous company, where I made some similar "beautiful" coding which the reviewer, a guy with 20 years of experience on the system did not understand (which made me proud of my coding skills), but agreed to proceed with. But the code had a small bug, which became evident on the first day of production run, when the program crashed!

This previous experience and the lack of interest to sit here till night persuades me to think otherwise. I will do what my reviewer says!!