Amreeka Post

Ok! I have to do a देहाती in अमरीका post. I mean its a tradition. I know its practically 2010 and both you and your  'co-brother' have been here. Anyway will try to keep this short.


Biggest achievement so far: Managing to avoid listening to 'New York Nagaram'  even once. Proud of me for that.


Best 'wow' moment: I have had two, the first was the day I landed, and was on the way to the hotel. Utterly unimpressed with JFK airport (and coming from the Hyderabad airport, can you blame me?), and when we hit the expressway, I suddenly caught the Manhattan skyline...that was like wow.... but.


It was day 3, and here I was looking for my subway station so that I could reach 'home'.  I was searching for '42nd Street' station, and was walking while reading my printed out walking directions (courtesy google). At one place, I stopped to take a moment, and looked up.


And there it was.... Times Square. In all its glory
And that was... Wow!!!


First 'am home' moment: Again, there have been a couple. The first was on day 3, when I reached New York Penn station, without looking at or asking for directions.Now my commute to Madison Avenue everyday has become a routine. I walk 'on autopilot' through the streets and from the Port Authority Bus Terminal to the 42nd Street station.  


But the winner is surely when I gave precise directions to an American lady. 


Best Musical Moment: Since we are  giving a nomination and a winner format apparently. The nominee includes, listening to "O Saaya!" (from Slumdog) and "Chaiyya Chaiyya" while riding the metro....i mean the subway...or whatever. But the winner was...


Listening to "Tera hone laga hoon" from Ajab Prem on the iPod, on a cold winter evening walk, when it started snowing lightly and there were loads of dry maple leaves on the empty street. 


Biggest Peeve: American patience. Seriously. And these are New Yorkers, who are supposed to be impatient and rude and all. The other day, we were in a long queue waiting for the bus. And  the lady at the front of the queue is reading something. The bus arrives. The lady continues reading. The bus driver does not honk. The people behind her do not say "Aage jao, diktha nahi he kya?". One lady ahead of me did say "Ah. the bus has come. Its a shame she hasn't seen it yet.". We waited for about 5 minutes, till the female decided to look up, notice the bus and the queue moved. 


And don't get me started with the kids. The kids.... especially in supermarkets. Screaming, shootin spitballs at each other, grabbing food and eating it, riding the carts like the were gokarts, and did I mention the screaming? 


Oh crap! This has turned out to be a rather long post.. will shut up now. Stay tuned for more Amreeka Posts. 

Not again

How difficult is it to remember a birthday? Very. 

Yet again I forgot a very important birthday...one I knew was coming up...and then one day...Wham!! Its passed by.

October 6th was the ...damn! October 9th was the..6th birthday for this blog.

That's right, this is probably one of the oldest surviving blog. I know i mentioned this last year too but it does surprise me everytime I realize how long this little hobby has lasted.


And you know how this started? Well... Long long ago (and am talking about Windows 3.1 on a 386DX with 2MB RAM and a 120 MB Hard Drive) I started my journal. It was on Lotus Organizer. And the main reason I started it was because the software looked like a diary and I thought 'How cool would it be if I had a diary in a software which looks like a diary' (now don't give me that look)


And so it started.  I would type in what was going on in my life in the 'pages'. And if I remember right, the 'posts' were conversational and I was narrating incidents to... well...the future me.


Eventually the 'diary' evolved. I had sections where I would jot down ideas. Write about people I knew.. a chapter about each person. And I would constantly update these sections every once in a while.... of course the golden rule being, never delete what you have said. So each update would be...and update..an appendage at the end of the page with the date. And it made such great reading to see how my opinion on people changed as I knew them better, or as was more often seen, they remained steadfast.


I had sections for stories I wrote, ideas I had and so on.


When I travelled, I used to jot down things in a paper and laboriously reconstruct my 'exact thoughts' when I got back to my PC at home. I also had 'online backups' eventually (on Yahoo! briefcase)


Then Windows 95 happened. And I think the software didn't work too well with it.  Also in a freak accident I remember many posts getting deleted. More than 50% of them.



I realized that I just could not continue this way. So one afternoon when I was in VisualSoft I decided to migrate to an online platform.... the cloud.  (Wasn't I quite the visionary?)



 The first post 'Four Fingered Philosophers' was a copy paste from the diary. And now that I root through the old posts i realize that the first 'original' post wasn't until July in the following year. 


Anyways...enough of the history lesson. Basically what I just realized while typing this post is why I started this whole thing. It wasn't because you would read it. You are just incidental (sorry!!). Each post is purely for 'Future Me'.


So future vix, I think you could just smile and think a 'thanks' to the present and past me.

Tweet Me This

You can now see my Tweets right here on vixdom.... move your head ever so slightly to the right..and there you go!

Bluh

I am aware of the golden rule of Rahman music - 'Thou shalt listen at least 7 times before passing judgment'

But just listened to Blue this morning in the car.... and all I can say is as per the Rahman Theorem don't expect much from the movie.


Of course the fact that it has Zayed Khan should have been warning enough.

No big deal

Changed ISPs. And my new ISP gave me a domain name as part of the deal. So what does it mean?

Well, starting today you can type in 'www.vixdom.com' in your browser, to visit.

 Ya...I know. Hence the title.

List Ahoy!

Just thought I owed myself and the world a 'non baby' post since I obviously have metamorphosed into a 'proud parent' who incessantly talks about their kid.

Followers of this blog probably know about the 'other blog', where I keep an annual wishlist of 'Things I wish I could buy right now'. I have always liked looking at last year's list and also coming up with one for the next year. Some things in old lists make you go 'What the hell was I thinking?' , while some elicit a 'How pathetic was I'. But I guess the worst are the ones that keep recurring year after year…after year. And make you want to drown yourself in the toilet bowl for simply failing to buy something that you want and can afford. Case in point, a scanner. This year's list has an 'MFD' and an LCD TV…and take a look at the first list….from 2003.

VixList also hosts wishlists from many of you. So go through your old wish list if you can get to it. And feel free to send across your wishlist for this year. Trust me, it's worth it.

Vixlist can be found at:

http://vixlist.blogspot.com/

Introducing Tvisha

 

  

The Rahman Theorem

A few years back, I lost my entire music collection during a 'nerd phase' (I must have been trying to install a pre-alpha version of some Linux based OS or something like that). 


Anyways, I managed to rebuild most of the collection but lost out on a good chunk...a great chunk. One of the things I missed the most was my entire Rahman collection. I have every album of his... I mean every (yes, I had Vandicholai Chinnarasu, Pudhiya Mannargal, Uzhavan, etc etc) album. I was unable to find these songs for the past few years (thru methods both legal and otherwise). But yesterday I struck paydirt. I hit upon a site which had almost all the albums I needed. This coupled with the atrociously fast internet at Microsoft helped me rebuild the Rahman in just under half hour..and we are talking 41 albums here. 


Anyway that's not what I want to talk about... while downloading these albums I realized something, which I will distill in a short simple sentence below (very unlike me, I know). And in order to tie it in to the post title, I call this...


The Rahman Theorem

The quality of music in any A.R. Rahman album for a movie, is either greater than or equal to the quality of the movie itself.

Think about it.

I personally rate the following among his 'worst' ones.... I dare you (I double dare you #$#$# ^*@#) to pick one of these (or any not in the list) where you feel that the movie surpassed the music.


Pudhiya Mannargal
Gangmaster 
Muthu
Ratchagan
Padayappa
Taj Mahal
One 2 Ka 4
Alli Arjuna
Baba
Udhaya
Kisna
Anbe Aruyire
Azhagiya Tamiz Magan
Yuvvraj


See my point????


So in short, if you listen to a Rahman album and it sucks (even after repeated listening), expect the movie to suck like hell.

Holy cow! XKCD did me

More rules

 

Aah! Sequel posts are always a good fallback option. Here are more of ‘my rules’

 

1. Enough with the bridge: I am seriously sick of the coverage on the sea link bridge in Mumbai. We took like 9 years to construct half a bridge folks! That’s right, my friend who visited from the city said that this is just half the bridge, of the 8 lanes which were supposed to be open, only 4 are open now. Why? Because only one side of the bridge is done. And how far along is the other side? Another 8 years probably, because they have barely started work on it yet!

In the time we took to pain the sign as '‘ Yet Another Rajiv Gandhi project by Congress sycophants’, China has completed 4 more bridges, 245 Km of highways, 2 massacres, and painted lead on 4 million toys.

2. Enough with the slum-dog kids: One of the varmints from that over-hyped god awful movie is left without a home? And another one of cretins is getting beat up by his dad? And yet another of those pests cannot afford to go to school? Guess what, they have millions of kids for company. And instead of helping solve *this* kid’s problem, shouldn’t we be helping solve *the* problem?

3. Enough with Kasab: If I see that same old photos of Ajmal Kasab one more time, I swear I will head-butt the anchor of the news show if I ever see her. You know the photos I am talking about:

We have this one:

And this was there for a short spell:

And now, we have this for ever since the trial started:

If your clipart department (or whatever you call it) does not have any new mug shots of him, its okay! It really is! Just show us pictures of Megan Fox during the commentary about the trial. Seriously!

And finally,

Do you see what is wrong with this ad for the iPod?

 

I have no idea how these model silhouettes get their earbuds to stay in place while they prance around to music by the Gorillaz! I have fairly normal earlobes (spent a lot of time looking at earlobes of the general public to arrive at this conclusion), and normal sized ears. And for the life of me, I cannot get my earphones to not fall out even when I am listening to my iPod in a bus!

Is there something that I am doing wrong? Please help me if you can mimic the above moves successfully!

Mmm... time to move on from my PS2?

Here I am....

We all have been witness to an event which occurs only once in our lifetime... 

I am of course, referring to me having a busy work-week. 

That's right, I have been busy.
All day.
For the entire week.

And If I am typing this blog post at 10 AM on a Thursday, its only because I know I have a fully packed day ahead of me.... (and also for one more reason...but more on that later).

Anyway, as things stand, I have  a few things I need to post about, so I will go ahead and try to do so before this weekend. So this can mean either one of two things can happen:

1. You see a flurry of new posts over this weekend, which would be the 'pent up' posts for the past couple of weeks.


2.This remains the only post till sometime in August, when the kid pops out.

If I had to bet, wanna know which option I would put my money on?

Confession Time

Pin drop silence.

White background.

Me in a black t-shirt.

And I am saying

“Mujhe kuch kehna he… kaise kahoon…”

ok ok. Enough of freaking you out.

But I do have a confession.

I love ‘Rakhi ka swayamvar’ on TV. Addicted to it. Can’t have enough of it. Look forward to the next episode more than my daily shot of ‘LOST’.

I was browsing thru the telly and chanced on the pilot halfway through the introductions of the ‘var’s.

It had me at 'hello’. so to speak.

The show which is on NDTV Imagine at 9 PM Weekdays (hey! they better pay me for this plug) is television at its finest. It made spending 50 bucks for TataSky’s Lifestyle Gold pack worthwhile. It has made life worthwhile.

The show features Rakhi Sawant (of course!), a queer recovering compulsive eater host, along with sixteen Neanderthals. The most impressive/entertaining  of which is a Mr. Luv Kapoor or something.  He spouts dialogues like “Jaise Raamji sadiyon se pahele Sita ko swayamvar main jeeta tha , waisi hi kaliyug mein uska beta Luv aap ko jeet ke leke jayega”. Seriously!!! He did! This guy will be picked up by Ms. Ekta Kapoor shortly as the male lead in “Kkyaa merrri zindagi…..” or “Kkkkkaun he merraa jeeevann saathheee” or something equally impressive.

We have an ex India Bulls marketing manager who actually sings well, an ex police man from Kashmir, a UP Bhaiya, a stalker, the missing link between humans and apes, and a whole lot of others.

I would love to blog more about this, but its 8:57 and the best part of my day is about to begin.

Seriously.

RIP

The world will remember you for your amazing talent and not for anything else.... hopefully

Life post #3

Now I realize this is getting to be more than you bargained for. But am going to make you sorry you asked about my personal life and swear to let me be.

Nyways, another one of the anxieties of parenthood (or hopefully soon to be parenthood, but not too son that its before the expected date) is that it makes you superstitious and anal. Even a super logical guy like me makes sure that everything he says (or blogs apparently) is safe. I have found myself correcting my sentences, and adding an ‘*’ with conditions apply followed by a long annexure of ‘subject to’ clauses.

Anyway, today’s post is about the bigger anxiety. That of having to think of a name for your kid. As I had said earlier, gender determination is illegal, so we have to shortlist a boy name *and* a girl name…. (we aren’t too big on gender neutral names… like Kiran for example)

Deciding on the girl name was not a decision at all. I had decided the name as long ago as 2003. What’s the name? Many of you reading the blog, would already know. And the others, maybe you will find out real soon.

And since I got to decide the girl name, Sandhya got to the power of veto for the boy name. A fair bargain I guess. So she made a list of names which were :

* Modern

* Uncommon

* Region Neutral

And I added the following conditions

1.  Should go well with his last name

2.  Cannot be easily ‘manipulated’ into an insulting nickname

3.  Sound ‘good looking’

Now, (1) can be easily explained. In my jaat, we do not have a last name. We use our dad’s name as our  last name. My name is Vikram Mohan. My dad’s Mohan Seshadri. My neice is called Samiksha Vijay. So logically my kid’s last name would be Vikram…. a really sucky last name to have admittedly. But more on this later. The girl name, btw, so totally goes with her last name.

As for (2), allow me to give you an anecdote. I had a classmate called S Prem, he would spend most of his school life as ‘sperm’. I think I made my point here.

Condition (3) is a tough one. What’s a ‘good looking’ name?. Some names conjure up a decent looking face in your imagination while some are better left alone.

So how do I come up with a ‘good looking’ name? Ideally a nationwide survey would be nice. But I took the easy way out. I put up each name proposed by Sandhya on google images and saw the mugs that it spat out. Once I showed her the faces of the possible namesakes, she vetoed it herself. (smart eh?)

We have more or less decided on the guy name too. I have run it through my family and though the results are not highly encouraging, we might stick with it. You would have guessed by now that I am not going to tell you the name (its supposed to be bad luck). But I will let you have a look at the mug shots of the namesakes from google images. Who knows, maybe you might actually know (or be)one of them and guess the name yourself.

Girl namesake faces:

 

 

 

Boy namesake faces:

 

 

 P.S. If you are indeed one of the people featured above, sorry for picking up your photo from the web. If its any consolation, both me and the wifey think you look decent enough to want to name our kid after you. :-)

Life post #2

Life Post #1

For those who are not in the know, me and Sandhya are expecting. The stork is scheduled to make the stopover sometime in mid August. Of course, we do not know the sex of the baby since sex determination is illegal here in India.


Now, when for the past few months I have got the 'dad anxieties'. I have started worrying about things. Wierd things. One of them is this.

When growing up, most kids learn basic skills from their parents. Boys of course, rely on their dads and vice versa. In the good old days, the 5 year old would want to grow up and 'be like daddy'. After my ' train driver' phase, my dream job was to eventually work in a bank and earn three thousand rupees. Not only that, I wanted to be surrounded by tonnes of paper files and have an Air Cooler in my cabin.

My first fear is that I am not equipped to teach my son any useful skills. I realized this while watching Lost (to which me and wifey are hooked on to) and pondering over my fate if I had been on that island. Not only that, imagine the episode where my backstory was told.... on second thoughts, don't imagine.

Unless the kid needs to know how to create a wicked PowerPoint deck or an Excel based tool to track work flow and measure  value created.... then I would be a kick ass dad.


Secondly, when my kid asks me what I do for work, am I supposed to say 'Strategic Sourcing Consulting' ? No way in hell, my kid would win a 'my daddy strongest' argument. My only consolation is that the father of the kid across the desk would probably be a code monkey with an equally lame title. 


Aah, I have acquired 4 new grey hairs while composing this post.

This guy is goooood....

Its no secret that I love comic strips. In recent times, I have found only two three strips which have been consistently funny. Two of them are Pearls, and Basic Instructions.

The third is amazingly an Indian strip. Now it is my opinion a cold fact that no Indian strip has ever been funny yet. ( No! Dubyaman sucked man). People who read either DC (its TV guide more specifically) or HT know who I am hinting at. 

It's Rajneesh Kapoor's strip, "This is our life". Sample the below yourself and decide. 
Funny! Non-pretentious, and original (to my knowledge). 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Would have loved to link to his site... but couldn't find it... 

Life post #1

In the past year, I have got two (yes, 2.0) emails that the blog doesn’t talk much about my life, and they visit to kind of catch up with me.

In my defence, Vixdom (as the title intends to suggest) is about me dispensing my ideas and whatnot. It isn’t meant to be a personal journal. I did start a ‘brief history of mine’ blog which was a journal and the results were very discomforting.

Only when I read the excruciating details of my life in black and white did it strike me. My life is spectacularly boring. In fact reading it was such a torture that Dick Cheney wanted to buy the rights to it.

Vixdom….is a blog about nothing (Sorry Mr. Seinfeld). But when your life too seems to be ‘about nothing’ (and i mean that in the best possible way) it does make sense (to the mad hatter perhaps) to write about my life.

Doesn’t it?

Nuff said

 

I still stand by my statement that cartoonists are the philosophers of this era.

Are you 18 or older?

I recently put up google analytics to get some stats on who read vixdom. Interesting results to say the least. Thought you might be interested in a few stats.

I got 16% of traffic through a google search on the keyword ‘pornography’

This confirms yet again the fact that sex drives the internet. Long ago, I had put up this article. This is one of the very few posts which I ‘copy pasted’ from another source… but it’s about sex (kinda) and so it gets the hits….almost 2 years since it was originally posted.

My Ladakh trip report, remains popular, averaging 2 visits almost every week.

We have some mysterious ‘repeat’ viewers from Singapore, Sri Lanka, Switzerland, and New Zealand.

I call it mysterious, because I do not know anyone in these countries. So its kinda wierd (and flattering) that someone there finds it worth their while to keep visiting vixdom.

A surprising number of referrals from google images.

For a personal blog with very few images, I find this surprising. But maybe all these referrals are for the ‘sex post’ mentioned above. Even so, if google spits out my site for a search on ‘pornography’, google sucks.

This remains one of the most popular posts in recent times. Surprizing!! And now that I have linked back to it, maybe I can help it stay in the top for some more time. Clever eh? :-)

77% of people visiting stay for under 10 seconds :-)

I love this fact…. and am not surprised. Some horny bonehead in Morocco (another country I got a few visitors from) wanted to see naughty pictures but ended up in my site… would love to see his expression… (uh..on 2nd thoughts, I would rather not) when (s)he lands up here.

Go Chargers!

 

V

:-)

Gult in Amreecia

 

 

Rediff forums are always a sure bet for something interesting… almost every discussion meanders off to a pointless discussion (mostly north vs. south).

I chanced upon (my colleague actually) this beauty in the discussion on an article on Satyam layoffs. I still think its actually a spoof by the writer himself… seems too funny to be true….

 

update: you might want to click the image to view it completely.

jack jack attack

am watching ‘something’s gotta give’.

jack nicholson is one guy who you can just watch while he talks. think about it. I cannot think of another actor who is so totally engrossing when he is just talking…. makes you think about how amazing it would be to watch jack yack away in a tarantino movie.

btw, the one actor who is totally engrossing when he is doing nothing at all is bill murray.

p.s. hbo is such a prude. in the subtitles they refuse to show the word ‘sex’. so you have jack asking the doc “can i have?”

Ilekson Phever!

In case you don’t know it, I do enjoy politics. And by that I mean, I like to know what’s going on, and watching election results is one of my all time favourite ‘time passes’. My earliest memories of election  counting days are good ones. Since the counting spanned across days and Doordarshan used to telecast movies (a rare commodity in those days) all day.

Now, I get my jollies by switching to the channel ‘sponsored’ by the losing or trailing political party, and watch the hosts and ‘experts’ try to grapple with the inevitable.

Before going any further, maybe a quick confession is due. I did not vote in this elections. This is the first time, since I turned 18 that I have not voted. I have two reasons excuses for this:

1. I had booked my tickets to Bangalore before the election dates were announced.

2. Even if I was here, my name wasn’t on the list….. this inspite of submitting the required forms and stuff.

Coming to this election, It was an interesting one.

In the center, I was rooting for BJP. Not because I wasn’t happy with the current government’s tackling of internal security, but because it appeared inevitable that a UPA government could be formed without Left support. And that is something this country cannot afford.

Now that it appears that UPA will win, I am actually fine with it. Because the Left has taken a beating and will not have a say in the budget and policies.  I expect a good budget and market now.

For the state, I really was confused. I am was a supporter of Chandrababu Naidu. Until he started promising free TVs, cash, Nintendo Wii, Lip Guard, Underwear, disposable panties, and so on.

I hate the present Congress regime in the state. Mainly because of the CMs obsession with naming the state after the Gandhi family. I am afraid another term would lead to Hyderabad being renamed to Rajivabad. But the saving grace was that they are now the only openly anti Telengana state party.

The result for the state is not yet clear, but it does appear that Telengana state would remain a concept for the time to come. And that is the silver lining for me.

Overall, I am happy with the results in both state and central elections. But for reasons I didn’t expect.

A long winded (and probably pointless) post

I had blogged earlier about 'Religulous' and how I wanted to talk a bit more about it. Well, here we are.

This isn't a review or anything. It's more along the sidelines of something that I was thinking about while watching it. Bill Maher, interviews a few people about the bible and generally expresses his disdain over how 'religious nuts' believe without any proof.

If you know me personally, you would also know that I consider myself an agnostic. Isn't that what a guy who "doesn't know-doesn't care" is? If there is one thing that I find strange it's the 'non-believers' (atheists). These are people who are sure that god does not exist since there is no proof of his existence. They reason that we need a proof to verify every single fact. Well, as things stand, we do not have sufficient proof that god does NOT exist either (this is complicated due to the fact that people conveniently keep changing their definition of who/what god is). And if atheists want to continue believing that they are right despite the lack of proof against god's non-existence….they are … believers.

I will leave you alone for a minute so you can reread that bit and make sense of it.

This post hasn't reached its topic yet.

Back to Religulous. Bill interviews a Rabi (jewish preist), who attended a holocaust denial conference. Basically these are people who believe that Hitler did not mass murder jews before World War 2. Bill, who is a staunch and vocal supporter of the state of Israel, walked out on him since he just could not accept the fact that someone could deny such a …(intense music here)…well established and globally known piece of history.

Okay…. Now this is what I am wondering.

Can we be absolutely, without a doubt, sure that any of the events that we have been told are historical facts, actually occurred? I don't mean to come across as a conspiracy theorist. So let me explain myself here.

For the sake of simplicity, can we divide the past into 'before video/photographical evidence' and 'after'?

So things like the Ramayana, Mahabharata all the way down to the Mughal emperors would find their way here.

Mahatma Gandhi, the freedom struggle, World War II, Ganesh drinking milk all the way down to the recent terrorist attacks would be in the 'after' category.

Right?

Let's tackle the former. We do have historical remains, artefacts, (the Taj Mahal for god's sake!!!), etc. etc. to support history. I can (but won't) argue that these could be explained by any number of bizarre theories (Aliens anyone?). Historians themselves contradict each other on several issues. Our journalists and media today are a bunch of thieving weasels. Do you believe every fact you read in your newspaper today? What reason do we have to believe that the people who wrote about the kings (and gods) were any less corrupt? I think it's romantic to hope that in the past everyone was honest and committed.

Coming to the 'history after proof' era…

Can we sub-divide it into 'before photoshop' and 'after photoshop'? By photoshop, I mean to include every one of these techniques which can be used to concoct or alter audio/video/photographic material.

You can probably construct the rest of my argument here… Again, I am not implying that everything we believe is false. I just think, we can never ever be 100% sure…of any 'fact'. I never went to space. I haven't even seen a space shuttle. I have just been told that people went up there and took pretty pictures, which I have seen. It's easy (and convenient) to believe that and go ahead with life. And that's why we do.

Let's say we all die out all of a sudden (its more probable than you might think). And some (bored) alien race was rooting through all our tapes and photographs. Would they be able to differentiate between 'fact' and fiction? A documentary and a movie? Think about it.

 

Hara Bhara Kabaab

Me and Sanz also part-observed Earth Hour. You know, we were all supposed to turn off all our lights for one hour in the evening today and help fight global warming and all. We turned off all the lights, but we did keep the TV on. Watched Juno. Liked it just as much I did the first time. I figured I was entitled to keeping the TV on since we already have a 2 hour power cut everyday, so that's me, Fighting climate change on a daily basis. I also wore this cool 'Earth Hour' t-shirt. So am way ahead of you buddy…unless Mr. Gore, you are reading this blog.

But anyways, do check this site called Frogg. And while you are at it, open another tab and visit http://www.treesforfree.org/

C'mon. Don't act pricey. You are velaa right now. I know that.

At long last

I checked with the relevant authorities, and they confirmed that this doesn't count as a 'comeback post', so I don't have to make up excuses or give reasons. As a matter of fact, I am guessing you guys are used to the pace of the blog now.

Anyways,( btw, if you subscribe to Reader's digest, check this month's issue for the article on Indian english) I wouldn't want to dispense with tradition alltogether. So let me fill you in on what's going on in my life...


There is of course, the BIG news. The giant, humongous one. But we will keep it under wraps for now. Unless, of course, you already know about it. In which case ... 'Shhhhh!'

What else? Oh ya... I broke up.... with google chrome. It was a fling I tell ya... pretty young thing and all that but at the end of the day, i realized that I missed the stability of firefox... but it is hard to say goodbye, so I do use it on and off. But as of now, its firefox for me.

Saw a few movies. Three of them I would wanna talk about.


Delhi 6: Ya ya! I should have posted long long back. After all, I did see this movie first day. Anyway, I actually liked the  movie. Honest! Ya, the ending was long winded and actually weird, but the rest of the movie. good stuff. Watch it if you haven't. Don't listen to the others (unless of course, even they asked you to see it).


I liked the music (Duh!!), Abhishek Bacchan (was very happy to merge into the mileu and play the observer). But I mostly liked the fact that the story was very .... R.K Narayanish.No no! In fact, it feels like an R.K Laxman illustration of an RKN story.  Think about it, the whole movie feels like one of those amazingly simple but chock full of detail, artworks you would find in any Malgudi based novel. So many characters, no actual story line. You just sit back and breathe it all in. I could feel the love the director had for his home city. And that (I think) was his actual intention.  Special mention of the song which blended Chandni Chowk with Times Square. Amazing!!!


The second is actually not a movie but a documentary. Its called Religulous. I would want to talk about this in detail, so am hoping I actually do.


On Saturday, I took appa to see 'Naan Kadavul'. I was impressed with his previous movies, but felt that somewhere it was quite pretentious. For example, Vikram's character in 'Pithamagan'... he was a man after all, not an ape. Why would he go about grunting all along.. 


Anyways, Suffice to say I wasn't 'blown away' by his past work. 


I was with this one.


I don't remember the last time a movie made me feel that I had witnessed a milestone. This one was. Oh sure, I found a tinge of the same pretentiousness in this one too. And the lighting felt very artificial. But all that is forgiven.


By the end of the movie, as the Hyderabaadi audience walked out, I was sure that a majority of them didn't really like it. But the crowd was silent. Love it or hate it, but everyone knew they were affected by what they had seen. 

I know you hate hyperbole as much as I do, but let me indulge just once more.


I realize that that title now is a proclamation by Bala... for he created a universe. He picks stars, if he wants to. He can dispense with them at will. He can weave humour into scenes depicting the most miserable and wretched humans on earth.


Its a proclamation by Illayaraja. He can command violins and other musical instruments to lend depth to a scene in ways nobody can.


I was sure I wouldn't want to see it again since it was so heavy. But I guess I will just  to soak up the nuances. But would I recommend this movie to you? Am not sure.

Weasel's day out

Have I  been busy? Hell no! Did I have nothing to say or share? Slim chances, since I have been primarily responsible for my colleagues and family wearing out their eardrums. 

Have I been lazy? .... uh.. anyways, I do have lots to post about, but while we wait for me to be less lazy, (a complete cure is not in the realms of possibility scientists say),  I decided to  realized what a weasel I was, and so am 're-posting' one of my earlier posts from Vixlist for a wider audience... (vixdom has a double digit readership, compared to vixlist's half digit)

Anyhoo.. here goes nothing...

Any similarity to 'new rules' is purely intentional.

1. Can the dabbawallah talk - Next time someone talks about innovation in India, no mention should be made of bombay dabbawallahs and their six sigma ratings. Oh and while you are at it, stop talking about the surd who converted a washing machine into a lassi maker. If out of a crowd of 1,20,00,000+ people we need to harp on the same two innovations, let's face it. We are NOT.

2. No Cheese at Mac - Anyone caught taking a photograph at a McDonalds, at the bench with their hand around Ronald McDonald should be shot on the spot and hung from a stake as an example to others. And as an addendum, anyone taking touristy photographs at lame locations like the local mall, multiplex, public toilet etc. can be shot as well. 

3. Diss the B - Next time the Big B appears in a Big C grade movie, bitch about his performance, his role  and his choice. Don't diss the entire movie and single out the Big B for being 'the saving grace'. No he isn't. The worst thing about Aag was the Big B. And the movie had Nisha Kothari if you remember. 

4. Hose the host - And the politician and the movie producer who says 'The Indian public is smart. Give them credit.' No we aren't. We watch K serials, hug movie stars and buy them expensive gifts when we appear on their show, use our clothes as a substitute for tissues, vote for career criminals,  and listen to bhangra. 

5. Forget 1983 - I am told that we won the world cup in 1983. I had no clue since we pretty much suck at cricket and especially during the world cup. The only people who had a right to celebrate the anniversary of winning the cup are the people who actually won it. (Which they did). The morons across India who celebrated that day can be shot along with the Dabbawala talkers and McDonald posers.

6. No dotcom ads - What are the top websites that come to your mind? Google. Yahoo. Rediff. Amazon. etc. What don't? BigAdda.  iBibo. BharatStudent.  I don't want the owners of these websites shot. Not even the broadcasters. Not even the pimply teen who *has* to register at every new social networking site that crops up. Shoot the VCs who fund these supposed 'next google' dotcom idea.

7. Show the door to these endorsements - Shahrukh telling me he loves his pepsi is one thing. Shahrukh telling me he loves driving his Santro? AB (and now) SRK askin me to use Navratan oil? A few years back we had Sachin Tendulkar riding a TVS bike. Are these guys kiddin me? Shoot the next MBA passout ad agency executive who comes up with the idea of using Shahrukh to endorse whisper ultra. And while they are at it... shoot the next creative director who portrays a church wedding for an ad. Last I checked, we are still a hindu major nation and yet all our ads and movies show people getting out of churches ( Race  and Tata Indicom ad anyone?)

8.  Cricket bashers - Next time some hockey or tennis or football nut says that Indian public should support other games and not be obsessed with cricket... don't shoot em. Ask em to go to Brazil and propogate test cricket. 

9. Hindi fanatics - The next moron who tells me that I need to know Hindi numbers (and hindi in general) because 'afterall its our national language', should first name every member of the Indian Hockey team. After all its our national game.

10. Shoot anyone named Ekta Kapoor. - Do I need to elaborate why?

So I say....thank you for the music

For giving it to me.

The Oscars don't mean much to me. A.R Rahman was a genius even before he had the two golden statuettes handed over to him. But If it brings him more fame, (and it will), and bring his music to more people. That's good enough for me.

Now to watch the Indian government go gaa gaa over him and hand him awards because of  western recognition.

I see the king’s fanny

Just finished seeing the toast of the season. Am of course, talking about 'Slumdog Millionaire’. The movie which supposedly has put India in the news…for all the right reasons and wrong.

Its raked up the Oscar nominations and of course critical feedback. So when I set down to watch it (on a  pirated download …same pinch to Shobha De) I was all set to hate it. Partly to be seen as ‘not part of the horde’ and partly because I expected it to suck. (Think The namesake, Welcome to Sajjanpur , Hey Ram! et al, of which our critics croaked in praise of).

I didn’t hate the movie. But I have got to say I got pretty close.

Let’s cast the supposed realism with which the director has depicted Bombay aside. Let us suppose that the movie did take place in an alternate universe.

A universe, where ‘slumdogs’ from the streets, and goons, and police wallahs and bhais speak in a ratio of 90:10 of English and Hindi just so that they can ‘look realistic.’

A universe where Indians suddenly dropped their counting systems and started using Millions, Billions etc. (But stick to 20 Million for the prize money. Why? because that’s 2 crore…)

A universe where people forget to be politically correct…even on live TV and jeer at a chai wallah. Much like the villian from B grade 90s potboilers where the villain took pride in his kameenapan.

Where KBC…i mean WWTBAM is telecast live….

Where the host of a show took personal interest in the possible gouging of money by a contestant. Maybe hosts in this universe put money from their own pocket and paid winners.

I could go on. But leaving all this aside, I just had one tiny problem with it. It was …a bit of a bore. Not very. But surely in parts. And the ending? [SPOILER ALERT!]

When the elder bro was tossing all the cash in the bathtub and shot the bhai after burying himself in it I was anticipating a humdinger of a plan to escape or something. Maybe I missed out some bit earlier where he said that was his lifelong dream or something…to be buried in cash i mean. But whatever, I lost it.

What really gets me is the @$$h0!es at the academy are so damn phony. The oscars have become (to quote my bro) a ‘bizarro’ Filmfare award. While Filmfare blindly selects the highest grosser as the best movie, these guys use box office gross as a measure to weed out movies. How else could you explain this PoS movie making  it but not The Dark Knight? hell! Taare Zameen Par deserved a nomination if this movie is the benchmark.

But if anyone deserves one, I hope ARR gets it. :-) Pity the movie didn’t have any ‘naach gaana’. The music is the best part

List On!

The draft of my birthday resolutions is now up.

update: Wish you a Happy New Year!!