Tuesday, September 25, 2007

RAMA Needs Birth Certificate Now!!

Just a few weeks back India discovered its own foot and mouth disease, where it was one’s mouth and someone else’s foot. So, ASI guys were asked a simple question if RAMSETHU was natural or manmade? Being hard thinkers and hardly working they thought the easy way out - why find out the root cause when you can actually uproot it! So they came out when Rama didn’t exist so what was the need to prove anything about Ramsethu! In a country where so many departments equipped with all resources and evidence can’t crack a simple case - our ASI chaps concluded that pre-medieval God didn’t exist, woha!!

But that was not enough, so Mr Karunanidhi thought he can help it out, so he added Rama’s technical know-how to the simmering question.

Oh, so now Rama needs birth certificate and other documents to prove his existence and his capability. In our country where history and knowledge was long recorded and protected (also for selfish means) in human memory and not in documents it’s stupid to only look out for documentary evidence. So, documents may not reveal everything every time. Yeah, we really need to document everything to make a proof but can we just rely only on them especially for unwritten history. In a country like ours where anyone and everyone can get such certificate, not to forget the media reports of fake Indian voters ID (with photographs) made in the name of Osama and Musharraf. So forty years down the line Karunanidhi family can go on to make claims about Osama and Musharraf being Indian and holy warriors!! Who knows that might be possible.

Now tell me why Rama needs civil engineering degree for Ramasethu. In a fully democratic country like India, where most of the politicians have got some nook or the corner named after them without any contribution and when Manmohan Singh can become PM without fighting elections, why Rama needs to build Ramasethu himself? Like a common man and globally known business practice, Rama would also have subcontracted Ramasethu work to others!!! Afterall Chennai didn’t become Outsourcing hub just like that, hehehe!!

Such stupid comments by Mr Karunanidhi were not enough for himself. He goes on to say that Valmiki commented that Rama was drunkard. I say so what!!! So many of Hindu Gods used to drink, what does he exactly wants to say? Please complete the sentence, man. What’s even more stupid is that for Karunanidhi Rama never existed but Valmiki from same era existed and why because our dear Karunanidhi found his membership card of “Tamilnadu Writers Association”. Hahaha, bang on Mr Karunanidhi, we really need your logic.

The same Karunanidhi who uses his atheisms to mount attack on Rama goes on to ban “Da Vinci Code”, a movie with some theory on Christ for hurting Christian sentiment. Wow, so much for our secularism, you can bash up anything native. And add to it, our government also teaches us one theory – AIT (Arayan Invasion Theory) as the only theory and that too by dropping the word “theory” from it so most of the people can’t even think that there can also be several other theories on same subject. This same theory is used by him for his divisive politics.

Well you might be thinking that I’m just trying to defend Rama, but do I really need to protect him against a man who himself doesn’t have any social, moral or ethical credential worth mentioning. The man who practices bigamy (against law of the land and can’t admit legally) and who lies to protect his murderer son from killings of innocent civilians or I may say “Innocent Dravidians” talks about Rama’s lies. The same man who pulls down sari of ex-CM in legislature thinks he can take moral high stand against Rama?!! Give me a break. He is not the right person to challenge Rama. But do you really think morally and ethically bankrupt person like him is worth listening? May be to some, especially those who are insecure about their own identity and in need of “Tamil Idol” without realising that their biggest demi-gods MGR and Rajnikanth are non-tamil identities. Will Karunanidhi dare question them?? Can they even dare tear posters of those two demi-gods?

Saturday, July 07, 2007

New Seven Wonders – the Marketing Farce

Just a fortnight back I discovered that the whole world was rushing to elect the “new seven wonders” of the world. Media frenzy had heightened and everyone in India was busy covering it. Every TV channel wanted SMS to be sent to it or voting to be done through its website. Someone painted Taj on his body and someone was sporting Taj haircut. A few companies even started media campaigns and then Taj songs started appearing on the television. Finally, when mails started pouring in my inbox, I knew it was my time to make my contribution.

So I searched the site and then started looking for the information. Out of curiosity I wanted to know who the organisers were. I was expecting UNESCO or some other reputed organisation but to my astonishment it turned out to be some vague outfit – NOWC( New Open World Corporation). A corporation!!! I was stunned, and then I tried looking for more info on this organiser, after all why the hell was it interested in declaring seven wonders. Belonging to a country where more or less everything is regulated, you are tuned to only some with authority organising such events. I know most people are gonna to object my thought, why we always look for authority, why can’t anyone on his/her own organise such event. Well, I agree with it, but can we be dragged into all such activity by anyone and everyone. Can anyone just come and say “hey this is best !” sure they can, after all we can find numerous media house that come out with top 100 on everything from business houses to people. Do we give damn? Nah…

So what’s the credibility of the organisation that nobody heard of and nobody knows what kind of contribution it will make to those architectural wonders.

If you check the website they tell you the purpose of having seven new wonders is to revive the concept of architectural wonders and start a new concept of people selecting their wonders rather than experts. So, its not experts deciding but people making their choice. But is it actually people’s choice? Since you can vote only through cellphone and internet, you know how many people in Africa, S America and Asia will be able to vote, so it will be partial. And with everyone propagating their national wonders, you can make out which are going to winners.

What’s more its website talk about “selling official license” on products and services related to new7wonders. Now you will think it will come down to “Guinness book of world records”, actually its worse. n7w sells its mobile voting rights to mobile operator like ‘Airtel’ in India and guess what - Airtel mints money in name of Taj. Similarly websites increase their number of hits through voting. That’s not all, n7w will make toys claiming its rights and even worse travel services and retail concepts based on n7w, so in future you cant even open ‘seven wonders’ theme shops without their permission. They walk away with all money even without putting a penny or having to do with those architectural wonders, there isn’t any mention of the organisation talking of preserving such wonders, but that won’t stop it fooling around with all of us.

Thursday, March 29, 2007

SecondLife: New Wave, My Predictions

More than three years back, someone started a virtual life community, SecondLife, where anyone can create his/her virtual persona/character and it develops a community. Soon I forgot about it, but it didn’t end there. A few months back, one of my friend came and told me how much he loved Secondlife and how it had evolved - you can buy a piece of virtual land, so many companies had opened virtual stores and virtual shoes, cloths could be bought for your virtual life; they even started their own currency. He loved it so much and had become addicted to it. This was frustrating to me, why the hell people were spending so much time to make themselves up in virtual life? What gratification they got doing by wasting time in creating virtual characters and dressing them up.

It was freaky to find so many young people indulging in it and mostly Americans; I lost no time in terming them as childish and the ones who were more hooked to the virtual life than the real one. Anyways, even that didn’t put the issue to the rest. Few days earlier I saw a report - some hotshot from IBM was telling that they had developed a system wherein people can send sms to virtual characters and users could also transmit the sms to people using their virtual life characters, and added that this would set stage for next level evolution of communication in virtual and real world.

Well, when I thought this fad would die its natural death, it came back and probably it may grow even bigger this time. Then I started thinking what else it could evolve to? So, here is my take on what this virtual world can evolve to! People would surely enjoy reading and sending sms for time being through Secondlife though such effort may not last but who knows it may evolve to mms video massages of SecondLife characters speaking to you. If something like that happens I bet it would be a big hit, people would love watching animated videos of their characters. I guess most of people would be sending weird and freaky massages, specially the times when people are angry with someone.

But what if SecondLife also becomes an alternative to e-cards and people start wishing each other through their characters (specially those valentine ones, guys would get a better tool to purpose- really hidden virtually visible), I think that will nail e-cards business out of business. If something like that ever happens it won’t be limited to a few such offerings. If people become so hooked to sms on SecondLife then they might also like reading their massages on SecondLife with each character reading out the massage, what if you open your mail and your boss says “you are promoted”, I believe such stuff would be a real rage and it would pose serious challenges to e-mail providers like yahoo or hotmail.

Such developments may lead to a lot of such companies starting up their own virtual life portals to protect their market. I know most of you people now will not believe if I say all the social network sites may start using virtual life characters to make it more exciting or SecondLife itself may become social network site like Orkut where every user would have animated character and can talk to other, I know its kind of weird but it may have a future prospect. Then the real and virtual life would get immersed(or, shall I say, messed up) in each and there would be a thin line to differentiate.

But this is not all, my biggest out of the world idea is, if companies start verifying virtual characters just like the online signature and then you can shop online in real life using your virtual life character, man that would be massive, it will blow everyone’s mind. I know most of you reading this may feel like banging their head on wall but what if it really happens, I know most of it wont happen any soon but probably some will in next few years.