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Showing posts from 2008

ebb in life...

The changes in the recent past have been very drastic. The issues that were so crucial don't seem to be issues anymore. Issues with much more severity have taken its place. I don't even remember those now. The people who were so reliable are turning their backs on me. But the others who used to always stick around in need are still there. You feel you have seen everything sometimes, everything working and don't foresee anything. But suddenly things change so rapidly, you even don't get a change to get used to them. Things that you would not even have considered, would be a must do now... if i say that's life, its bound to change again... so be prepared for the worst always.

Thats life now...

...of economic recession, bad movies, wrong office projects, to disloyal friends, to bomb blasts... the ups and downs of life... the mood swings... to everything that should have worked... to flopped plans... to unplanned events... ... and the belief that everything will finally workout.

Just Stumbled upon...

i know that you have changed, i have changed... i know that our priorities have changed... i know you don't consider me of any value nor do i The emptiness is felt and not thought of... but still the emptiness pulls me down... its not being practical i know... ...but i cant change what i feel... i can forget that i had fallen down... but i can not force myself to not feel the pain i had in that fall... people don't understand anything else when they are in love... the only thing that matters to them is that they are love... there is no point trying to convince you now... b'cos you wont even listen to me i know for sure... you may hate me now, and even i may try too... but i have loved you too much, i can't hate you anymore... i don't want to have you back for sure... but being hated by someone i had loved so much is not for sure...

Need to boycott Malaysia Tourism

Was reading the following link sometime ago to know more about Malaysia before deciding to make it my Honeymoon destination. I was shocked to read the following line. "all Malays are required to be Muslim as defined by the Malaysian Constitution." Even though Malaysia has near to about 48% non-Muslim population, it has made Islam the official religion of Malaysia. Non Muslims are treated as second grade citizens in that country. I later realized any country that has a little over than 50% Muslim population ill treats the other part of the population. There is absolutely no human rights for other religion people in that country. Why do we have to bother about the treatment there? Because most of the population are migrants from India and are Hindus. What can we do? Don't go to Malaysia for tourism. Tourism is the main source of income for Malaysia. If we start to boycott Malaysia, they will be under pressure to change their discriminating government policies.

Lajja - The Shame

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The Duttas - Sudhamoy, Kironmoyee, and their two children, Suranjan and Maya - have lived in Bangladesh all their lives. Despite being part of the country's small Hindu community, that is terrorized at every opportunity by Muslim fundamentalists, they refuse to leave their country, as most of their friends and relatives have done. And then, on 6 December 1992, the Babri Masjid at Ayodhya in India is demolished Lajja (Bengali: লজ্জা Lôjja) is a novel in Bengali by Taslima Nasrin, a writer of Bangladesh. The word lajja/lôjja means "shame" in Bengali and many other Indian languages. The book was first published in 1993 in the Bengali language, and was subsequently banned in Bangladesh, and a few states of India. Taslima Nasrin, the writer of the book, has dedicated the book "to the people of the Indian subcontinent", and has announced the beginning of the book with these words: "let another name for religion be humanism." The novel is preceded by a prefac...

The Alchemy of Desire - Tarun J Tejpal

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"Love is not the greatest glue between two people. Sex is" This is how the novel starts and gives you a sneak peek into what the novel is about. A bold, rich in sexuality, sensual novel about art, inspiration and the disintegration of a relationship... Tarun J Tejpal is famous for the sting operations he and his team conducted in exposing misappropriations in Indian defense deals in his newspaper Tehelka. Characters: A name less narrator, his wife Fizz, an American lady Catherine, John(Catherine's father), Bibi Lahori, Gaj Singh and Seyd the homosexual nawab, to name a few. The novel traces the narrator and his wife Fizz's journey from a quiet town to New Delhi, then to a remote corner of the Himalayas. An unexpected inheritance allows them to purchase a country home in the Himalayas. Here the narrator finds a long-abandoned stack of diaries and becomes absorbed by them, so much so with their content, that the physical fires between the narrator and Fizz get frozen....

Hypocrites...

"Moving on" has been heavily overused by various people for their selfish needs. Its not the affair-breakup scenario i am talking about. It is been mostly used to cover up their selfish deeds and mean tactics. They are more than friendly while taking a favor. When you ask for some favor, they behave as if you are some irritating person who has no other work to do. When you try to confront them and point out that they were in the same position before, the words you hear are "move on man". Hell with the hypocrite lifestyle of the people who have crossed all levels of meanness and selfish mentality and in turn term these as "highly matured behavior" and the spirit of living high...BULLSHIT...

Rock On !!! - Its Magik

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Nice movie!!! After a long time a movie which strikes all the right chords. Its a story more about the human feelings and relationships, than the music. The best thing i liked about the movie is its originality. From Farhan singing his own songs to the story to the digression from the usual Bollywood style of film making. At the same time it does not senseless mimicking of the western style of film making. No sense less comedy. No running around the trees, no making fun of Indian culture. Farhan is natural in his acting debut. But its Arjun who stands apart in the acting department and shows that experience makes anything prefect. Purab is best at what he does. "Dil Chahta hai" had done a similar attempt, but had some running around the trees types of compromises. This is a pure break away style. It also does not try to do justice to all the four stories of four friends. It takes only the necessary intersections between their life. The ego between friends, their differences, ...

The Enchantress of Florence - Review

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Sir Salman Rushdie's latest "The Enchantress of Florence" is a story set in Akbar's court in (Fatehpur) Sikri around 16th Century. One day a traveler visits Akbar's court with a letter from Queen Elizabeth I, claiming he is Akbar's uncle. Then he takes you through a journey across continents with Qara Köz, great-aunt of Akbar and the mother of the traveler. The story oscillates between the east and the west, between Sikri and Florence. He brings out the details of Sikri and Akbar's life in such details that you can completely visualize the entire city. Its hilarious at parts, like the instance when Akbar writes love letters to Queen Elizabeth and proposes to marry her and in turn marry the great east and west empires. It is a pure fantasy at parts where he describes about the mirror as a women accompanying Qara Köz or the part where the artist enters and hides inside the painting. The beauty of Qara Köz is described in such exotic and explicit details that...

Love Letters - Play performed by Rajit Kapur

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I went to the Rangashankara to watch Rahul Da Cunha's version of ‘Love Letters’ . The Pulitzer award winning play written by AR Gurney, describes the romantic and poignant relationship between childhood friends Melissa Gardner (Shernaz Patel) and Andrew Makepeace Ladd III (Rajit Kapur) over fifty years. The story unfolds through the letters the two characters have written to one another. The play was first performed in 1988. Shernaz Patel is just so amazing in the way she brings the impetuous Melissa. Even at this age she has so much of charm, its a treat to watch her on stage. Her role of the child's mother in BLACK was excellent. Rajit Kapur is a versatile actor who has no boundaries and leaves me spellbound always. Watch out for some bold dialogs which are a signature of all Rajit Kapur plays. Inspired by Love Letters, Feroz Khan has directed Tumhari Amrita तुम्हारी अमृता adapted by Javed Siddqui and had Farooque Shaikh who plays the politician Syed Zulfiquar Haider and Sha...

updates - again

Well first things first, the bomb blasts have reached my Bangalore... You sick people, if you think you guys can plant some crackers at some busy streets and think your allah will be happy... go get a life guys... Read a couple of books on my way to office. Completed the "Enchantress of Florance" by Sir Salman Rushdie. Review of that book? well no time. Then completed the "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" - Robert Kiyosaki. Now compleating a long awaited book "Alchemy of desire" - by Tarun Tejpal. Got too busy with the work at office. So no more writing of the bolgs in office.

FRIENDS forever?

Some people have a great ability of making friends, "new" friends in a matter of time. They are so carried away by this ability that they forget that maintaining friendship is equally important. They get into your life so easily and make you dependent on them. But when they leave you, you tend to stick around for a while...then you let it go. They have so many friends around that they don't realize when they loose couple of them. It wont affect them as they would have made some more. Times always change and so do the fortunes. They start loosing more friends then they actually make. Finally ending up all alone...

Google Lively

A new service launched by Google where you can create your virtual world and interact with other people's virtual world. My First try at it...

My Office Ad

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3 Mistakes of my life - Book Review

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The third book by Chetan Bhagat. This retains the simplicity of writing and spice of bollywood movies. Some argue that his way of writing is cheap and crap. I say compare him to the writers of his style, not the west inspired, west mocking Indian English writers. His story starts with him meeting a character of the novel, Govind. His two friends Ishanth and Omie. Set in Gujarat in times of the earth quake (January 26, 2001), WTC attack (September 11, 2001) and the burning of Sabarmati express (February 27, 2002). The main characters Govind: Business man Ishanth: Failed Cricketer Omie: A son of a priest Vidya: Ishanth's sister and Govind's love interest. Ali: A budding cricketer Mamaji: Omie's Uncle Parakh ji: Local politician. Pandit ji: Wholesale dealer. He takes you to Australia and back. You have mathematics combined with business combined with cricket combined with a romance combined with religion combined with politics. All the ingredients required to make a movie a hi...

Sarkar Raj - Govinda Govinda Govinda....

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Watched this movie yesterday. After the flop show "RGV ki Aag" i was reluctant to watch this movie. But the promos and reviews set my expectations high. The movie starts slow, very predictable and the usual bollywood masala flick. The best thing i had liked about "Sarkar" was the photography and the fast pace of the movie, specially in the second half. This movie lacks both the aspects. The camera work is sloppy, specially the part where AB Sr walks into the hospital room and the camera is moved from one side of the bed to the other side from under the bed... it looks so very artificial. The entire movie is shot in closeup and the lighting is also a bad job done. There are no punching dialogs. All are repeat of the part 1. The speeches of AB Jr are all cutout and replaced by "Govinda Govinda..." If he was given actual dialogs for those speeches, it would have been of more impact. AB Jr dies in the end and Mrs. AB takes over the Sarkar Raj. The part III of ...

Well some updates..

First, something which got me excited today. I got a message on my google mobile maps saying there was an update available. As i always do, went for it and to my surprise found it has evolved into a GPS / Navigator. It pinpoints my exact location on the map and gets updates as i move around. Thats COOL !!! Now i will never get lost !!! Well the fuel price hike... getting on my nerves for the first time. On one hand people are getting free sops and on the other hand some people are paying heavy tax and paying a heavy price on the things they buy. What the hell... I realized yet again that i am a bad at conversations. Got verbally bashed up yesterday from a friend after talking nonsense. I mean sometimes you just can't do anything other than suggesting people some "useless" options which sound so stupid. Started reading Chetan Bhagat's new novel "The Three Mistakes of My Life" pretty interesting plot. He still holds on to his narrative best. Just while readin...

Petrodoller and Petroeuro

There was an article in Rediff.com on oil economy. The US economy has been always dependent on the OIL the world buys in petrodollars and its foreign policy dependent on the arms sales around the world. A handful American banks control the oil prices. The OPEC nations also have huge investments in these banks. Recently a middle east country invested hugely in Citi Bank. The OPEC countries also gain from the rising fuel prices. To break away from this strong hold, countries like Iran and Russia have come together to form a parallel petro exchange and petroeuro. It was Iraq who started converting its oil trade to Euro. This was the main reason for the American invasion of Iraq. Now America is behind Iran. But it wont be a easy cake as Iraq, as the government of Iran has the strong backing of its citizens. Moreover they have a stealth Russian support.

The Indian Ocean Concert

Had been to the Indian Ocean concert in The Grand Ashoka, Bangalore. Video:

The whole of India under one rule?

Was curious to know if the whole of Indian sub continent was ever under a single rule. Some claim that the one and only kingdom to have occupied the whole of Indian sub continent was the Mughals. But reading through the history, found that many Rajput kingdoms were still independent all throughout. There were the southern kingdoms of Mysore ruled by non mughals all the time. The Great Maratahas were almost always undefeated. There were only small times of 5-10 yrs that they were not in control of entire Maharashtra kingdoms. Most of the times the mughals ruled only the north regions of Delhi which is often confused by many as the entire Indian subcontinent. So the claim of some scholars that the muslims ruled India for 700 years is totally misleading. The other kingdom that came near to a absolute dominance was the empire of great Asoka. He had managed to conquer the entire Indian sub continent including srilanka. When he adopted Buddhism his control was absolute on the sub continen...

Just stumbled upon...

i want u to be mine and mine and mine alone when i look in ur eyes all i see are the lies the tears that i cried when a part of me died im hurting inside as i run away to hide when u said dat u loved me i told myself its true i lied to me, and so did u -shirley-

Guhantara Cave Resort - Office Team outing

Had been to Guhantara Resort which boosts to be Asia's first underground cave resort. It was arranged from our office as a team outing. We reached around 9:30 AM. Had some team building games. Around 1:30 we had lunch and from 3:30 there was a DJ who played some pathetic music and some danced on that music as well. Some of the snaps can be found here . A Sample video can be found here and here .

Happy birthday to me...

Happy Birthday to me...Happy Birthday to me...Happy Birthday to me...Happy Birthday to me...Happy Birthday to me...Happy Birthday to me... Well almost all my friends who were expected to wish, wished. Was not as grand as last year...but this was not bad at all. But no scraps, no calls from some expected friends. nways thats life i guess...

Jodha Akbar

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Had downloaded this movie over torrent, but after seeing an initial 15 mins decided to watch it on a BIG screen and it was worth the wait and the extra bucks spent. A full 10 of 10 for the technical progress made by the Indian film technicians. Actually a 9 of 10 for the final battle which was shown with just a handful of men was very prominent visual drawback. Something like a CG crowd simulation should have been used to show a huge army (something like LOTR). Hrithik is not that suited for the job of Akbar and Ash as Jodha is some what watchable. The costumes are very well designed (Neeta Lulla). It deserves a 10 of 10. Ashutosh Gowariker has handled the Hindu-Muslim conflicts very well in the story. Specially the adamant behavior of the mullahs and the mulvies for constructing a temple inside the fort of the mughals. The abolishing of the religious tax on Hindus is also very stressfully shown. This is something which our politicians have to learn. Music my A.R Rehaman is as always ...

The Race...

There is always a race to get ahead of what you have. But no matter how much you progress or upgrade yourself there is always a long way to go and you find yourself much far behind. I am trying to get at higher bandwidth for my internet. I started with a dial up connection with a connection speed of 14 kbps and today i want at least 2 MBPs to download all the movies in the DivX format from the torrent sites. Now i have a 256 kbps which takes on an average of 12-24 hrs to download a 700 MB movie. I was still sulking at the ISPs for not providing me that much bandwidth, i read an blog article which says HD Movies are released on torrents which are on an average 19 GBs per movie. huh... I got a 2 MP digital camera which became obsolete in an year. Then i went for a 4 MP upgraded model and people were already talking about a 8 MP and even a 13.2 MP. The 2 MP digiCam used to create a file of 2 MB size photo, the 4 MP creates around 3 MB file. Now i have almost around 20 GB of snaps and have...

The Fireflies Concert

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Had been to this "fireflies" concert on Kanakapura road. This was a overnight concert from 6: PM to 6: AM. Bands from all over India were there to perform. From Gazals to fusion to Bengali folk to Qawali all were included. Over all a unforgettable experience. Videos can be found here.. Firelfies 1 Fireflies 2 Fireflies 3 Fireflies 4 Fireflies 5 Fireflies 6 Fireflies 7 Fireflies 8 Below are some of the snaps...        

Rama...

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A puppet show which i saw at Rangashankara. This was a play completely executed with puppets and computer graphics. A notable thing about this was that the story was manipulated at the end by Lord Rama not accepting Sita and Sita taking "Samidhi" at the end.        

Photos decorated on my office walls...

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Mithya - Movie review...

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After reading a the reviews in the papers and with expectations from the previous movie (Bheja Fry) with the same team. Not able to wait to get people along and go to a theater, Downloaded thru torrent and watched. It was a big disappointment i must say... The team is best know for its comic timing and fresh humor. They have done what they are best at, but not exceed the expectations. A confused romantic story does not fit well into the comic movie. Vinay Phatak is not visible in the script. He was the soul in the previous movie "Bheja Fry". Naseruddin Shah should stop acting in comic roles, he is better off as a serious actor. Bottom line: Don't keep any expectations, you will enjoy the movie.

Elections in Pakistan

With Musharraf's men loosing the power and the opposition all set the rule the country, once again fears looms large all over the world about a possible free hand for Islamic terrorists. There are two aspects for this. 1. The American forces will still have their way as it does not matter which government rules in Pakistan or which idiot has the control over the critical border between the sane and insane worlds. They will threaten (to bomb Pakistan to stone age) and make them their slaves. 2. More over Pakistan's government, no matter who rules it, has no control of the terrorists inside or outside the country. So it really does not matter for the Americans to attack the terrorists deep inside the Pakistan's land. The puppet government will mearly a eyewash to the rest of the world that everything is in control.

Modi Charisma...

A very nice article about the biased media on Modi. GOD save the King !!! ...he was being projected as a future prime ministerial candidate... ... he is undaunted by hypocritical political correctness and persists in calling a spade a spade.... ..."In your heart you know he is right." It struck a chord.... ...Modi has shown that good politics lies in not allowing cronies to cream off taxpayers' money; and that good economics involves zero tolerance of waste and inefficiency.... ...He has succeeded because he has come to personify courage and integrity.... ... Let's hope Modi stays the course. Let's hope he injects politics with a dose of freshness....

Implications...

The news headlines are scaring me, the Islamic terrorists spreading their wings deep into the Indian subcontinent. Places like Hubli, Belgaum and Gulbarga have a very high population of Muslims and there have been many instances of communal clashes during India Pakistan matches, when the Muslim populations come out openly in support of Pakistan's team or on occasions of Independence day for hoisting the Indian tri-color on some "claimed to be" Muslim grounds. There has been a steady rise in support for fundamental islamist in those areas with many madarsas sprouting all over. These areas have proved to be a good breading ground for such anti national terrorist organizations. It does not come as a surprise, the recent findings of terrorist training camps in those regions. There are news reports in the media about possible suicide attacks on Advani and Modi. Assassination of one of those leaders would for sure create havoc for the Muslim population. The Gujarat riots have a...

Jugari Cross - Kannada play

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Finally went to this play at Ranga Shankara with my entire family, something which i was trying to do since a long time. Jugari Cross - Kannada play for 105 mins, written by Poornachandra Tejasvi and directed by Nataraj Honnalli. Poornachandra Tejasvi is the son of “Rashtrakavi” Kuvempu. The play starts with introduction of Jugari Cross and goes on to be a story of a treasure hunt. A couple goes to a market to sell beetle nut harvest from their farm. Some local goons hide some drugs in their bag on the way. The rest of the story is about how the goons chase them and the couple stumble upon some old scripts which turn out to be a map to the treasure. The striking point about the play was the vivid range of people from all parts of karnataka. Decided to watch it for "Poornachandra Tejasvi"'s name !!!

What am i doing these days??

Well after getting married, things are back to normal. Well actually not absolutely normal, my project got scraped (but my job is still secure :) ) and i have tons of free time. I am trying to get organized everything, from my movie collection to my laptop to my desktop to my life... Trying out different formats of video to catching up with all the technical stuff thats was left out in the recent past. Hope everything settles down soon.

Irresistible...

They're Holy Grails, irresistible precisely because they're out of reach.

Blog on the go...

Published from cell phone.