Anniversary Special: Discovery of “LazyMan”

There was time not long ago I used to here this mythical stories married man being lazy. It was all over be it movies about couples, television or any conversation about couples that you ever overheard. Though, I didn’t believe it much.

Laziness is something which is almost impossible for a man to be unfamiliar with, throughout the history men have actually been competing with other lazy animals for dominance, so that only man survives. Dodo, one of the laziest and popular birds in recent history was made extinct by another lazy animal and most probably it was sub-species of social animal known as “Married Man”.

Laziness comes to the male character unknowingly since childhood, especially Indians, after being spoon-fed and pampered. That’s how we grow up, getting everything without having to make much of an effort. By the time man grows up he remains totally unaware of his super abilities, till he gets married off course.

For women, men have always been one dimensional figure preferably known by words such as stupid, dog/kutte, pervert, and for married women it’s always ‘lazy’. It does takes a wife sometime to realise how movable a man can be and in most of the cases they turnout to be immovable, even then this immovable property still offends his ‘laziness’ title by twisting his fingers on tv remote, on mobiles and computers.

A wife’s sixth sense comes to this realisation soon (usually after a year) that there is inherent relationship between man’s DNA and sofa design and they stick to each other. On the other hand, it is always incomprehensible for (lazy)man why things have to happen and needed to be done!! (I guess this is the reason why lazyman despite being available in abundance is not popular as spiderman or superman if someone dare shout “lazyman” for help in a public space then a lot of heads will turn on and then they will quickly turn-off as well.)

I think at this point of time wife names married man as ‘lazyman’ for perpetuity. Then, it makes appearance in your conversations, one out of ten, and most probably it is the first word that falls into married man’s ears, when he runs into argument with his wife. Soon, this word spreads like wild fire and married man discovers that it is by this name that he is more recognised in the neighbourhood and social circles. But, smartly married man makes out that ‘lazyman’ is a common noun, which he can easily masquerade in public, but at home he is more comfortable with this identity.

The Blackberry Punishment

I finally got nailed by my company; it firmed up with the final brick in the wall by handing over me the final tool in corporate slavery- the blackberry. It’s an amazing instrument that shrinks world further and personal life even shorter. It makes you so smart that you end up reading mails twice on lot of occasions.

I tried to get feel of it, keeping in hand itself was quite a task in the beginning. After trying to hold it in hand for several times I tried putting it in the traditional blackberry way- on the waist. It was like a policeman putting his gun in his holster, I tried on right side then left side, but it looked funny on me, I looked like over-promoted pandu (constable).

I tried to sooth myself trying to create a style of picking blackberry out of its cover, james bond came to my mind and for a moment I felt great. The “007” background score rang in my ears, then I took it out in slow-mo in the same way as double 0seven does, I did it a few times in the office lift (which I avoid to take), I was in haven but then I realised that it required too much of leg-space and I possibly wouldn’t be able to do it everywhere. Then, I tried ‘good bad and the ugly’ style in true cowboy fashion. I think it is preferred style in the corporate world as it gets things done. But, its rash, jerky and fast way to pickout you phone and it might even injure a bystander in most cases. So, I decided to drop this style and made mind to pick-out my cell like a common man does in his boring life.

Even as I had ended my flirtation with new blackberry had ended in dismay, I realised for most it had just began. Blackberry creates it own set of onlookers. Suddenly guards at my office realised that I had one and they assumed that my position in the company had climbed a few notches up, though in reality it wasn’t the case, but it still had impact on them, they became more formal in the mannerism. Then, there were “the others”, who were amused with blackberry on my hand, I looked too young to have it and definitely didn’t fit into the image of mid-level-mid-age-grouchy person.

People still can’t help talking about it when they see me with blackberry for the first time, their love for this instrument really surprises me. For me, it similar to the school days punishment when teachers used to put a not behind your back and you used to pretend that it was really cool and used to show-off.

When Pajamachaaps Reunite with Queens

During my school days my classmates were greatly inspired by a hindi movie ‘jo jeeta wahi sikandar’, especially for classification of lousy guys with low sense of dressing guys as ‘pajamachaaps’ and then there were well dressed babes called ‘queens’ after their school, no names for well dressed dudes. My friends preferred themselves being ‘pajamachaaps’ chasing queens, which I despised. I thought those days were long gone until pajamachaaps made comeback. I’m not talking about myself, neither my friends nor colleagues, it’s about my organisation.

Sometimes back my organisation merged with a company that is better know in the public eye as a ‘media’ outfit. On the D-day, when all employees came together to celebrate the formation of new company, my colleague gasped while looking at the employees of other company. They were starkly different from our fellas, who are simply dressed but largely with no sense of attire to be worn in corporate environment. I guessed the other guys needed to project image for being a media outfit; I could see my colleague almost felt like pajamachaaps not because of one or two persons but because it was the crowd. I know how dangerous crowds can be, if you ask a Mumbai teenager which college he wants to go, it wouldn’t be collage’s acclaim or toppers’ list but ‘the crowd’!! Man, crowd really psyches you up. I knew that this newly acquired ‘crowd’ had over-glossed us, it was creating clash of class in the newly merged environment, “we are better than those types”, which people do to get upper hand.

Anyways, employees started getting swapped in new setup. But, despite intermingling you could still identify ‘the crowd’. One of my colleagues hated it, while my other colleague started to enjoy the change, suddenly grass was greener on the other side, and remarkably he identified ‘the crowd’. As it happens in the movie, ‘queens’ really didn’t look up to the ‘pajamachaaps’. In all this I realised that there was uncanny similarity in their attire, it was their style. The style made all the difference between the old fellas and newly acquired fellas. It was as if they had special induction lecture on corporate fashion, what they can wear and what they can’t; which shades of eyeliners would do and what was strict no..no. Nothing like it ever existed in the subconscious of employees of my pre-merged company.

I didn’t feel bad until after a month, when I realised that spiky hairdo of a guy survived for more than a month. This never happened in my five year career that a hairdo survived the corporate dictate. Maybe it was too much of shock values for old fellas of my organisation, may be no one gave damn to the five year old hair style, heheeehe!!!

Unfortunately, our old junta is still pajamachaap but some are happy with ‘queens’ around them. ‘The crowd’ still thinks (I believe that) they are ‘In-thing’ in the new company. Superiority and inferiority of egos gets settled in same old way, one-upmanship of work. The company still remains worried about the bottomline as it was before this brief period of honeymoon. As it happens in corporate marriages some people shine while others whine and a minuscule of us are just there to enjoy it!!

An Indian Cut Above The Rest

After long time, actually many years saw a true ‘Contessa’ lover. The guy driving it looked like aged hippie in love with all things Indian!!!

Yo Momma !!

There are very few television series that ever get made on youth sub-culture, and most of them come from west (largely the US). Americans are good at highlighting some of them, which in case of India unfortunately remains unexplored. VH1 new series “Yo momma” is all about trash talking competition on the streets of US. It is different from our regular desi jibes, which are centered on some abusive words.

Guys from neighborhood (somewhat like Mohalla committees in our case) come together to challenge each other in bad mouthing competition. Contestants are young street-smart junta, both male and female. White men still struggles to match his off-white cousin, they don’t have this creative venom spitting ability, which is clearly dominated by ghetto junta.

Competitors throw a few lines on each other but, the best part of the show is reserved for trash talking on the show title – yo momma, where each competitor hurl really nasty comment on other beginning with “yo momma”. These are very delightfully creative, ugly and disgusting one-liners that go beyond our regular maa-behan ka ashirwad or the arguments that you hear on roads. The most decent ones that I can recall were “ yo momma so cheap…made in china written on her a**” and “ yo momma is like public toilet….free and disgusting”. You can gauge the level of trash talk as some are ‘beeped’ by VH1 itself, if it were to pass Indian censor board probably whole 20mins would have been beeped up. Thankfully the series is not much talked about program on the tube; else there is little hope that a program with youth bad mouthing in the name of “MAA” would have been aired at all.

Conspiracy Theory: Pakistan’s Takeover by Taliban & Alqaeda

The aftermath of Mumbai terror attack has already begun; it has succeeded in widening the rift between India and Pakistan. Indian government is already talking of increasing the number of troops (which won’t stop terror attacks anyway) to put pressure on Pakistan. The janta like us, which is already fed up of government’s inaction, wants hot-pursuit of terrorist as payback. This is more or less likely to create war like situation. The fight to finish is all what Junta wants, but is this what ISI & its bed fellows Taliban-Alqeada wants too? What’s the larger conspiracy?

Taliban & Alqaeda want to open two fronts for Pakistani army by just fighting on only one of them. Taliban & Alqaeda are already engaged in low intensity war with Pakistan over control on tribal lands in western Pakistan, they also have intention to bring whole of Pakistan under shariah rule. Their main objective is escalation of hostilities or even war between India and Pakistan. With escalation, Pakistan would match up India’s military build-up in its eastern border; Taliban as it has been hoping to gain control of large chunk of western Pakistan would intensify its fight with Pakistani forces. If Taliban & Alqaeda’s dream of indo-pak conflict comes true, then it would give them unprecedented chance of overthrowing civilian & military establishment of Pakistan.

For Indians it is sticky situation whether to set their guns blazing or think of protecting Pakistan from turning into state of anarchy. I never thought that in my life we would have to think of protecting the “state of Pakistan”. If we escalate the situation probably Pakistan would crumble in a few weeks time (Pakistan is already on IMF loan to avoid bankruptcy), which would please our Janta. But, it will also bring Jihad and alqaeda to our doorsteps atleast five years earlier than anticipated (CIA has estimated that Pakistan would be a failed state by 2015).

Taliban & Alqaeda wants to divert US attention by targeting its citizens in third countries so as to keep them engaged, though this alqaeda strategy mostly likely is not going to work, but any American imitative of bombing terrorist hideouts is less likely to benefit India, as most of them are in Pak-Occupied-Kashmir. Probably random assaults on terrorist camp would work but we will have to look at our old gyan “saap bhi mar jaaye aur lathi bhi na tute”(in this case jihadis being saap and Pakistani government being lathi). Otherwise India would have to be prepared to fight Taliban & Alqaeda, which will have “ready-to-die” foot soldiers from Afghanistan and Pakistan under it.

That 90s Fad !

First promo of SRK’s new movie is out and it features SRK crooning love song in some chandni-chowk type locality. Watching the song I realised that SRK is in complete getup of gone by era of 1990s. In fact everything in the song reminded me of 90s.

SRK’s formal shirt & trouser with sports shoes is totally reminiscent of my teenage fashion in early 1990s, when formal trousers and sports shoes were rage. Rappers had brought this fashion and every party had guys in this attire and white sports shoes doing break dance. Whenever I look back at those old photos, I always remember where did I get this thought of putting sports shoes with formal dress?

Anyways those days are gone, so are the days of youth driving bajaj chetak. 90s were also the last days for scooter riding youth. Ever since motorcycles got associated with machismo, scooters got dumped. Scooters became synonymous with “uncleji” type personalities. SRK riding scooter probably would be perceived as one such character by younger generation. Another thing now perceived with old people is “Mustache”, which SRK sports in the movie.

Facial hair lost its charm and died slow death in 90s, when it started disappearing from young faces. I remember by the time I was in college in late 90s, hardly anyone carried the family tradition of mustaches over smooth look. SRK’s mustache deprives him of smooth look but he does try to compensate it with his cuteness, whether he would succeed or not is yet to be seen but he has indeed succeeded in taking people back to 90s.

New DTH Service

The new DTH serive is in town....Direct To Haven

The Syndrome

It was late in the evening and I was surfing through the television, Seinfeld was on a channel. Despite watching the series numerous times, I again hooked up. Seinfeld is kind of spiritual…ageless body timeless mind, nothing changes over period of time. Seinfeld was facing “you gotta watch the baby” problem. He was bugged with friends inviting him to watch new born baby. That episode reminded me something similar, the numerous syndromes that I observed in young people and my friends, in particular.

Just few years back, some of my friend suffered from “when are you getting married?” syndrome when they got married. One of my friends got severely affected by this syndrome. His obvious question on every call used to be “when are you getting married?” After a few friends got married, I realised that it was odd-man out feeling that made him constantly ask the question for assurance that he was not alone. Anyways, my friend’s question to all of us was answered after some years.

By the time I was married, he already had headstart….. to another syndrome-”when are you having baby?” he had worked out all timelines (no, I don’t mean time to make call to us), the human clock, biological clock and most importantly family clock. Earlier he wasn’t persistent with anyone. But, now he feels the need for all of us to join his club simultaneously. Now, we hear all the clocks and amazingly I also had to hear the dialogues that even my parents haven’t said to me. The trouble with this syndrome is that the only time it gets cured when you join their ranks and in some severe cases people become of them and also act like the ‘syndrome’ guy.

How China's Communist Goverment made Beijing Olympics Logo

Amnesty International's report on China

Saving Private Batakh !!!

The naming biz or say re-christening thing really excites me, off course its non-profitable biz. In last four years (of my professional life) I have seen happiness, despair, hatred, anger and affection all boiling down to one thing- naming the culprit. It’s the naming part that we all love and being named is the most dreadful thing to happen, though sometimes it doesn’t. Mostly, it irritates the person who is called upon with such name.

I know most of you would be thinking…what the heck so much for a name, who cares about it. But, I must tell you, it isn’t as simple as it sounds. We are very careful and meticulous about naming a person. We like to see how it resembles on our friends, colleagues, bosses, nemesis and the ‘character’ in the office (who is nature’s invention but our discovery).

Also, this damn naming thing goes through evolution, on quite similar lines of your professional life. I didn’t realize that how much of it I had already seen until sometime back. Personally, I don’t like naming people after animals; kutte suar and sandh all sound like Chinese new years and their main course dish; and anyways it’s pretty tough to match animals. But last year was kind of exception, I would say.

On usual day, just another brickbat between my colleagues turned into mother of all naming convention/invention (only, according to me) and then came the word “Batakh”. Suddenly they were hurling it on each other; I didn’t know the reason and I also failed to see why!!! Its pretty tough imagining person as batakh, though we have English alter ego of batakh –duck, but I’m not sure if it has the same characteristics as I can fit lameduck on face of our PM but same doesn’t go with “bakakh”. May be because “batakh” is desi and it doesn’t have those English traits. Also, I found it hard to fit batakh on lotsa people (probably my sample size was wrong) and probably I needed to do more clinical testing to find its active ingredient. But, before I could possibly do that one of my colleague left us (I mean organisation!!) and then I was left desolated.

For past three months “batakh” has almost ceased to exist. I didn’t hear anybody hurling it upon other and no character was added to its much needed persona. “Batakh” has become endangered specie and I don’t want it to die due to lack of people’s participation. So you…guys go out and find who can be worthy of being “batakh” in and around you, add character to it and also to the people…make it memorable…. make ‘batakh’ of your day!!(I don’t know what it really means).

So, ladies and gentlemen, I give you……………Batakh!!!

Ulta Run at 10K

Running 10k was quite a different experience in Bangalore. I don’t know if it was fault of my company or the sponsor of the run, I got a bag full of chilli powder, pasta and not to mention the most useful item-soap. Probably they thought precipitation and scorching sun will make me use it. I never got it why anyone would like 1kg on his back to run 10k. So, I ran but carried only my little i-pod to minimize the load on my body, I didn’t wanted to look like those wannabes who can’t run without music but probably I looked more like them. Just after completing a kilometer most of the people realised two things, one, that 10 km was big distance and second, the usual Bangalore problem-planning and execution. A lot of people cribbed why it didn’t start a few hours early. Anyways, their anger was cooled down by hurling mineral water bottles on runners. But, so many plastic bottles dismayed all those environmentalists who were running for it. 2km down the run, people started kicking those plastic bottles, though initially I didn’t mind it but when it started hitting me then it really bugged me. What bugged me more was that with every kick on those plastic bottles the whole ‘clean Bangalore’ thing got booted big time.

After 3kms some people realised that they had phones with them, so people got busy with their phones. I overheard one fella, in his slowmo walk, lecturing someone how important this day was for him and how much he was doing for it, I really could see it. Some people started clicking their memorable photos of the event, missed having not brought my phone, but not much longer ‘coz media was there motivate everyone. Whenever and wherever cameras appeared people started running and showing how motivated they were!! A lady even ran in other direction following cameraman, people were busy asking which tv channel was covering them; some even called up their family that they were LIVE on a channel. After realising how entertaining run was, a few kms through the run I also realised how it brought people together. While running, we asked each other how many kms had passed by, then suddenly other two persons realised that they were from Microsoft and Yahoo. I saw rivalry fading into friendship; they even started discussing their work. I never realised the potential of networking in such places. I didn’t know how many from our HR team were running, but came to know that head hunting sure has immense potential in these runs. I even tried finding someone from same industry but unfortunately there were none in the sight, I could only sulk.

My best part of run came when we entered Cubbon Park; there was a group of cheerleaders cheering the runners. But runners noticed them only when their ‘HUHAA HUHAA’ was reciprocated by barking dogs!! Laughter came out inadvertently. Well I took that moment to thank all the dogs; afterall this city has gone to dogs. Just a week earlier I had to take their permission for running in early morning or even late night. I walked 3kms to be identify by dogs of my area on first day, else I would have ran that 10k on last Monday itself. I thanked them for their grateful gesture.

Anniversary Special !

A week back, a year had passed by and I almost didn’t notice it. Though, I remembered it and everyone did remind it was my first marriage anniversary. Good thing that a year of married life passes away and you don’t feel it, probably don’t have marriage blues in the beginning. The week coincided with three of my friends getting ready marriage and they all asked me how I felt like and what my experience was.

Though I could hardly recollect (see the impact, man) but I tried for them. I realized that by the time you get married, you are so molded in your personality that its hard to adjust. It is even more difficult to adjust to traits of other persona or even make other adjust to your personality. And that too for everyday, I think it is quite a mission impossible task. If your habits match then it is good as it is duplication of activities (as said in our biz lingo). But if your habits are different then it is mostly fun, sometimes its weird and sometimes its fight. When it is fight, it is really tough. Because, when you are newly married then it is really difficult to fight, I mean REALLY difficult ‘coz you are really not sure if you should argue!! If you can then you don’t know how long and how far you can take it. If you do indulge in fight with a friend then you can go and make up with your friends after a week but that time you don’t have in marriage because by that time damage is already done. To undo that damage you have to damage something else- your money. That why for whole year I have been trying to preempt such situation; me and my wife have been practicing and hurling those filmi punches (and we never forget to add that background), so if we are angry we make it look really REAL. I must tell you that I still don’t experience in facing assault of all kinds of kitchenware, so can’t tell you how you can defend. In all, you may forget anything but you remember what time of night you have to reach your home. And, yeah what’s case of hair loss, I still can’t make a right guess, if its Bangalore water or marriage taking toll of my precious hairs. Sure, would like to believe its water.

Mysoaru Infy

I remember how my friend looked down towards company like Infosys, “now even infy is calling for interview. Probably it was IITans arrogance towards desi ITservice company or may be they all think that they also can create Infy like company. Whatever may be the love and hate case for our desi IT companies but I realized how much Infy is valued by the people (especially by the parents of employees) when I stood in the line to enter its Mysore campus.

The scene at the campus gate is almost what you see on railway tracks. The only difference there was that the first class ac, second class and general passengers all stood in one line (this is quite an achievement for a company if it can bring people from different classes to do new kind of slavery). And, you can look from the parents’ face- their kids had made it. Well, the jaws fell when everyone entered the campus and shutterbug almost automatically started clicking. One can see the amazement on the faces; probably no one had expected this inside India or people just thought they were in some foreign country (as it was clean and gardens were not identical to public parks) with a English speaking personal tour guide who happened to be your family member and also infy’s new breed of mouth publicity campaigner. I was very much impressed with infy’s campus and why shouldn’t I!, after all if you combine office space with residential college plus malls + theater, resort + sports complex and not to mention gardens, probably it’s the one of its kind in India.

And you can see the impact on junta that Littered all over Mysore was bothered about pushing cans into dustbin. For parents, 3star hostel facility definitely signaled that their kids have arrived. Every parent was more than happy to be in foreign like locale so what if they didn’t go to any foreign country but were sure their kids will definitely do it afterall its considered a part of package. For those staying in campus it’s different, it’s the anticipation of joining the new age assembly line (which most of experienced persons in this field hate it). This always reminds me of Pink Floyd video of kids in mask moving seamlessly in a system. I hope infy’s learning center comes out with some solution to this modern day slavery in quest for everything 24/7 as everyone’s life has become busy despite all this automation as its men who become critical in all these automated operations thus becoming more miserable with more hi-tech. As for Mysore I liked it more as a sleepy town than anything else but I know it won’t remain that way afterall companies with graveyard shift have already started erecting offices and they aren’t sparing graveyards either.

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?

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.

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.

Train to Nowhere

On my trip back to Hyderabad, a man came and asked me if anyone was sitting on the opposite seat, hearing “no” he sat down. He enquired when train would reach Hyderabad as he was taking kids to enroll them in a madarsa at Hyderabad. My radars caught those words, I had a look, a look seeking lots of answers. Just a few days back media was splashing mews of poor socio-economic condition of muslims in the country and once again the popular (and politically beneficial solutions like reservations were sought). I had lotsa questions for this man, but despite knowing that almost none of madarsas did not provide for any certification exams, I asked him so they have any provision for SSC or HSC exams, thought it would probably make him realise where he was heading kids to!!!
He plainly said NO, even those which let students to appear privately or open school, fair miserably coz students were never prepared for it.

I further asked “How they compete, don’t they feel lagged behind?”
He replied awkwardly “its Religious education”. Then TTE came and made perfect interruption. Later that man got busy with his religious thread.

I felt loss of chance to ask him and convince him to better take kids to some other school. After all how many madarsas and students do we actually need to keep religious knowledge alive? Do we actually need these students to pile up over existing levels of Maulvis?
Will madarsas ever produce best architects, Sufis, poets, scientists and industrialist. Isn’t all this is required by so called muslim world. How come getting away from it, will do well for them.

Few weeks back, I saw a talk show; it had around 50 muslims comprising audience to discuss their financial condition. It was hard to believe that only 1 in 50 had life insurance, none had medical insurance, almost none of them wanted to take loan for any purpose and some even felt bad at interest being credited to their account on their on savings. Now, tell me what exactly government should be doing? Doling out financial incentives, provide for reservations or simply try to change their perspective and economically integrate them. I know what most of you exactly think that government would do !!

Makes you CRANK

Crank. This is the movie that I watched last weekend. Its one of those super stylish slick flicks that gets you hooked.

The movie creates a new genre in film making. This movie tries to mix videogame visuals into the movie and you will be surprised that it succeeds; in fact it delivers beyond anybody’s expectation. Crank also adds some other elements of action oriented videogames; it is fast faced, violent with some amount of blood shed, good action sequence, nudity (more or less compulsive these days) and non-stop.

After Wachoski brothers brought comics strip style action scenes into movies, Crank brings a new style of cinematography. From the scene one the movie runs like a videogame. The camera work is totally what you see in new age 3-D videogames, it follows the hero from different camera angles. Combine it with slick editing and fast pace camera work, you get the mind blowing action treat. Like all videogames it too has incredible but not death defying stunts.

Plot is simple our hero, Jason statham, the Transporter movie guy (known for no brain all brawn kick-ass stuff), plays the assassin, poisoned by his rival. He has one hour and needs antidote. So he runs for his life and thus trail begins. Needless to say to you should look for logic here, coz that guy does lotsa stuff to keep him alive- getting electric shock, half nakedly standing on bike, driving car on escalator and much more, believe me I’m not telling the most interesting parts.

I bet when this movie will end, you will count it as cult classic.

Gandhi versus Bhagat Singh: Guns and Roses for Oscars

Now that both Lage Raho MunnaBhai and Rang de Basanti are vying for Oscars. They are up against each other again. Who will win this time?

Historians have fought who should be taught more in schools. Almost all non-pro-gandhians were thin lined in the books and their contribution/relevance limited to a paragraph (and for Mahatma they used 1.5 line spacing on word file, hahaha!!; this used to be my trick in mba days). I remember the school days when guys used to voraciously used the defend Gandhi and Bhagat Singh against each other. As their means to end were different actually poles apart, those arguments used to get polarised.

Coming back to the movies, both the movies have been extremely liked by the junta of our country who are terribly confused the condition of this country and looking for solutions. Both the movies lead in to this direction (solution). RDB has Bhagat Singh in backdrop while Lage Raho has Gandhi in focus. Now question is who will make it? Which movie Americans will identfy with?

Well, Gandhi is a well know figure (1 Oscar old!). And this time he is giving not only NON-VIOLENT solutions for political system but also PEACEFUL solutions to all personal and social problems. Devoid of all negatives, he is likeable as usual, probably more for the American souls, who are in desperate need of peaceful solutions to the mess created by them at home and abroad.
On the other hand, RDB has revolutionaries guiding the youth to take matters into their hands and try to find solutions, which turn out to be VIOLENT. The movie tries to put youth on dock and solutions they can look up to, violent or not? It leaves youth to debate decide. I don’t know how much Americans will identify with RBD and the measures taken by the youth in the movie. I don’t know if the Americans, already tired of domestic violence and killings in the society will really look up to RDB, will they really approve of killing their own politicians, I mean can anyone imagine Americans ever approve murder of Mr.Bush.
I think not, they would rather rally around their leaders no matter how corrupt they are. Thanks to Bush’s biblical statement of Us or Them, all the violent means have been dubbed as Terrorism by Americans for their convenience. So, will Americans ever vote for terrorist actions??

I really don’t know which one they will choose? Will RDB dance all the way or will it be Cheers for Gandhi (with dry glasses!); or will they neglect both?