Keepin' it real

Due to the intervention of involuntary and unavoidable forces, I landed up at Hyderabad CENTRAL last night. Upon reaching there I witness the brouhaha and am all curious to figure out its cause. As I walk closer to the crowd I can hear a lot of incorrigible noise which I guessed was some bloke rapping.

Voila!

WAR OF THE DJ’s

The last contestant from the prelims took the stage and tried to put his “shit” together. He got cheered from the crowd and the applause died out just as fast as it started.

It was quite ordinary.

Once he was done, this radiantly hot flesh on bones took centre stage. She was supposedly an RJ on Big FM and looked a lot like Shweta Gulati (the girl who played the role of the bratty Tia on Remix). And well, she began saying something which I’m sure no one took notice of. From where I was standing I knew the reason for this. The cleavage is far more appealing for the eyes than the compeering is to the ears. It was sinister man!

The results were announced and I could sense the disappointment of the crowd for some DJ who had performed earlier in the day (and really well apparently) wasn’t chosen and instead the last DJ to perform in the prelims was who according to me was quite substandard.

What this guy and many others I noticed were doing wrong was this:

They thought that they were still in a club, and the hoards of uncles and auntie ji’s along with chunnu munnu were party animals. And well their attempts of asking the crowd to “sing along” or “Bounce” didn’t really have the desired effect.

Another thing was that the tracks being played were the ones that really had no mass appeal, I mean come on ‘My Name is’ by Eminem was hot like what, a decade back?

And on top of that the WORST thing they did was this: They weren’t ready the moment they took the stage, as in they seemed lax. So what they did was that the moment they got on stage they played some really annoying music (mostly some beats which sounded like the sort of disturbance you get when you get too close to the microphone). Now that too would be fine, what was most pissing off was that this music would repeat itself over and over and over and over, and well never seemed to cease.

I suppose they were so interested in getting the technical stuff right that they forgot the three hundred people who were looking at them. And well I don’t know if you’ll agree, but watching a guy in a tight tee just pushing some buttons and occasionally uttering a nonchalant “yeah” isn’t really that entertaining.

Finally this thin bloke who resembled my favorite African American satirist/slap stick comedian Dave Chapelle, started doing something right. He played the tracks that are currently driving people mad ‘Jhoom Barabar Jhoom’ and got the legion of Uncles and Aunties on his side. Also the jumping and ghoomofying that he was trying to pass off as dance actually worked. The crowd got excited seeing a guy dancing really badly and having the time of his life. He was an instant fav! Also he didn’t keep the crowd waiting with those irritating noise (which sound like gun shots or laser firing) for a prolonged period of time.

I’m convinced that Trance music is the work of Satan!

Memories...

I was cleaning my room and found my old answer scripts. I always made it a point to preserve them, especially the English ones. After the initial splash of nostalgia came the agony. Going through those answer scripts I realized how the teachers meticulously took advantage of our naivety and our gullibility became our vice.

Can you imagine the amount of B.S they fed us while at school? And some of us were indoctrinated so effectively that we continue to believe some of that crap till date.

Remember those essays on the merits and demerits of the Television. I’m sure all of you wrote those essays, and more often than not wrote the same points albeit in a different style. Allow me to butcher them one by one.

TV lets us know what’s happening around the globe. The news and the Discovery channel along with other informative channels like the history channel and NatGeo increase our knowledge base.

Honestly, in the sixth standard most of us weren’t even attracted to the opposite sex, leave alone consider the use of knowledge as a probable weapon in wooing them. At this age, for the majority of us the daily happenings of the political scenario of Palestine didn’t interest us much (I’m not sure how many of us are even interested today). Nor did we really care about the extent to which the Alps beautified Switzerland. And the only reason we might watch the Animal Planet would’ve been because we found the sounds they made funny. We were too busy playing with our friends or joining some classes which would enhance our inborn traits.

We should watch TV with caution because we may get hooked on to it. It also causes harm to our eyes.

Okay, now who the hell started this one? It’s the BIGGEST hoax of our time. Watching too much TV from up close will make you myopic or astigmatic or something like that. Let me clear you of your dilemma, IT DOESN’T HAPPEN! It’s been scientifically proven that kids who are subjected to strain work (to the eyes) such as reading, TV, Computers are at a much higher risk of getting spectacles. However this effect takes place only when their eyes are developing, a process that ceases after 6-7 years of age. So this means that at 11 years of age, you can stay up all night with a packet of chip(s) and commit sins.

Leave the habit, don’t be ignorant!

TV makes us couch potatoes.

So does sitting on a chair from 9 AM to 3 PM with minimum break time and staring at a black rectangle (which might have become green and made of fiber at some places). But we can’t reduce the time at school now, can we? Oh now don’t give me crap saying that there are “games” periods, those are like twice in a week. Are you kidding me?

Somehow using TV for entertainment purposes was considered as a sin according to higher authorities. As if watching Friends was like taking a mural of a deity and smashing it to pieces and two movies back to back was a feat achieved only by the spoilt and delinquent.

Conclusion: The emphasis on writing an idealistic (idealistic according to the society by large) answer scripts (faultily termed as flawless) supercedes the thinking power. Though the teachers at the beginning of any writing activity say that try to be original and creative, they seldom mean it. This is because many of them truly believe in all those aforementioned points. Also students seldom feel rebellious when it comes to writing an essay and would much rather go with the general perceptions of things. So let me go ahead and blame the system, for its always easier to lay the blame on something else, right?

I've been contributing to quite a few other. The links to these blogs is on the right side.

See I've been a sweetheart and pointed it out too(With blood red color).

Do check them out when your're free(and you know what means don't ya)

Let there be rock DOS

The lights came in every hue and looked down upon us. Showering their light contemptuously at the millions of onlookers among which there was I. The place felt like a Rastafarian party. It reminded me of the good old days of ‘Hare Rama Hare Krsna’ being ad-libbed by saffron clad and long haired hippies promoting world peace and legalization of Hashish. There was a cloud of smoke in my vicinity and what more, it seemed to be perpetual. As one cloud would move on, another would strategically take its place. It wasn’t all tobacco, there was a lot of weed too, guess that was the saving grace. And then this stick wearing a dress apparates and he’s wet and is wearing this gigantic hat and I’m like, ‘What the hell is that?’ It’s (He’s) the epitome of glam rock. Steven Tyler.

And almost instantly he gets to work. The previous night Siddharth and me were listening to all Aerosmith songs(a pathetic attempt), so that on the D Day we wouldn’t look like schmucks head banging to stuff we didn’t know while the crowd chanted the song in unison, almost mocking us.

And then the song started. And I didn’t know it. I turned around to see Sid, with empty eyes, as though hinting to him the ignominy of being a fallen pseudo-fan. Sonam didn’t care much. She was too busy balancing herself on her toes, trying to get a glimpse of the onstage act, or so I though.

And then it happened again, the next song too! No clue whatsoever! Zilch! Yet I regained my confidence and started jumping up and down screaming, hooting and well trying to get a hint of the chorus. Boy was I looking like a jackass. My huge overgrown body screaming for me to cease the relentless motion. Telling me that I wasn’t meant for this sort of physical activity. Begging me to stop. And the weed.

And the weed

And the weed

It just kept coming from all directions, as though I was a sort of beacon and it surrounded me.

Tyler sang “Crazy”. Ah finally something familiar. Oh so familiar. The large screens started playing the video and almost everyone’s gaze fell to the young and carefree Alicia Silverstone (who features in the video).

Suddenly my ears get to hear the incoherent vocals from spaghetti clad damsel who is riding a man’s shoulder as though in a rodeo bar. Intoxicated probably because what she was singing didn’t make much sense.

Another thing I noticed during the concert was that Steven Taylor isn’t afraid of his sexuality. I understand the whole glam rock set up, but come on…

then there's this....

Oh come on, get a room!

After that Joe Perry announces that the true reason he’d come to India weren’t the elephants or the spices, its Kamasutra. He wanted to thank the nation of a billion where the Kamasutra took its birth and ironically people were forbidden to speak about it as though it doesn’t exist. I mean come on! A country of a billion people, somebody must be seriously getting laid!

Honestly, that is just freaky. Its like a cave! I have never seem a man with a mouth so wide!

Well, the concert was short, or so it seemed, apparently they sang a dozen songs. In between they decided to bring a couple of chairs and chill there.

Tyler was obsessed with saying ‘Namaste’, I think someone told him that it was the Indian equivalent of “Rock on dude!”, coz that’s the zeal with which he kept announcing it. The crowd was maniacal. Millions of yuppies head banging and swaying. I’d say it was a nice experience.

Let there be Rock- UNO

This entry has been due for a really long time and procrastination has been sweet

“Aerosmith are coming to India!”

“Really?”

“Hmm...That’s great. So it’s probably going to be Bangalore”

“Where else?”

“I’m so going to that concert. Yeah! Woo! It’s going to be one kickass concert. I'll be rocking and screaming all night! It’ll probably (main act) start at midnight and go on all night. I will go wild. Wild! I tell ya!”

I comforted myself with the thought of witnessing a rock act in real life atlast. I wouldn't remain a lowly concert virgin anymore. Something to look forward to in the holidays. Now, when someone would ask me the most cliched question that one could be asked during vacations:

Hey Sup/wassup/wazza/whats up? amongst others

And they'd tell me how they have been reading, sleeping, watching TV, going on and on about how they're getting to eat good food as though they'd just been enduring a Somalian summer, I'd have something in my arsenal to top it all.

I WENT FOR THE FUCKING CONCERT, YEAAAAAH!
I reached Bangalore on the 25th, whose dwellers still haven't lifted their head from shame ever since its name was changed to a much less extravagant Bengalooru. The past week had been hectic. Road trips had taken its toll on me. First Vellore, then Mysore, then Ooty and then Coimbatore. Our driver, knowing fairly well that we’d had no idea about the roadways of the glorious state of Tamil Nadu kept on asking us which route to take at each detour (obviously suggesting his preference as well). I guess it was his way of showing that we were inferior, far inferior as far as the topography went. Now that was obviously true, yet parents being the species they are just have to be extremely opinionated on everything. I guess they were trying to instill the habit of self imposed authority in me despite knowing very well that the man behind the wheel was quite the master of puppets here. I still can’t forget the amount of dust that was generated as our mean escape machine (non AC that too) hurtled down the highway, which in fact seemed like a never ending construction site, just that there didn’t seem to be much construction going on. I could feel a second layer of dust accumulate evenly on my face.

Finally I reached Bangalore, with a paralyzed buttock, a battered back and apparently the entire South India covering my face. The concert was a sort of salvation for which I had endured hell (which took a detour from Salem).

Siddharth, Sonam and Me reached the venue. Palace Grounds, Bangalore. The rock haven. We had decided to go about an hour late so that we wouldn’t have to witness the opening act by Galeej Gurus. What greeted me instead was the longest standing queue I had ever laid my eyes on, and quite a dynamic queue it was, with people coming in and joining. It was quite easy to get carried away and label every woman standing there as a whore.

Siddharth led us past the wall of human flesh, and we followed like prisoners of war towards the entry zone. After being frisked on numerous occasions (by now being totally convinced that this was a method of segregating the straight from the gay) by men of all sorts I finally reached the grounds.

I will never forget that sight. If there was ever a near perfect representation of the Poisson distribution that Mr. BKM so vividly tried to explain to us in Prob Stat class, this was it. Each spectator fused into the one standing around him/her to form what was the most massive silhouette I had ever witnessed.

The stage was concert-esque. It might sound blatantly hypocritical considering that this was my first actual concert, for I would not consider head banging to Daler Mehndi as a little lad while everyone around me were yelping “Oye!” and “Purr!” as one. The lights went off.

The shrills were earsplitting. From the corner of my eyes I could already see a bra strap fall off a shoulder (much to the ignorance of the Madame I suppose). The night had just begun.

Aerosmith was in the house

To be continued…

Digging the Past

One of Jolies earliest movies. Hackers!
The first time I saw it, my reaction:
Whathaaa!
Followed by a roaring laughter!

Mother’s day is celebrated throughout the world. On this day children present gifts to their Momma’s/Maatashri’s/Mum’s/Amma’s, it can be looked upon as a payback for all that milk they sucked when they were infants.

Its origin varies from nation to nation.

Some believe that Ancient Greeks sparked off the tradition for they had a festival called Mother Worship to honour Cybele, a great mother of the Greek gods.

In USA, the tradition emerged due to something totally different that what many may expect. There was this woman, Ann Jarvis. A young married cleanliness freak, she wanted to promote sanitation (probably back then they were perpetually covered with dust). During the Civil War she organized the Women’s Work Days, and this legion of her would go around and clean whatever they could find. This trend eventually caught on in 45 states, before hitting the entire nation.

Today is Father’s day

No rich history here. It was just made to complement the Mother’s day, for the sake of secularism I suppose.

Are IIT toppers models?

IIT-JEE!
For many, it spells terror, anxiety and even the ones who dismiss the competition(because they beat it) rather saying that it was fun or interesting would agree that it did give them goose bumps, at least as the days inched closer.

Today the IIT industry has become a huge investment ground with new coaching academies springing up in every nook and corner. There are areas entirely dedicated to the IIT coaching industry and the whole neighborhood thrives on it. The roads are covered with pamphlets and brochures of various coaching institutes.

It’s almost taken for granted that to get into IIT, you have to have coaching. And in many places (AP being the foremost here), it starts from an early age. Sometime it is even before the kid has reached puberty.

Every year, the IIT-JEE topper becomes a national celebrity. His photo comes on the front page of every news paper. He gives countless interviews to various media agencies. And thus the drama starts.

It’s a known fact that many toppers accept money from institutes that haven’t been affiliated to, just so that they can advertise for them. Now the question that needs to be answered is that is this right? This has been talked about on various blogs. Vivek addresses the problem on his blog.

What he's basically asking is that are JEE toppers models for any academy that can be hired? We might say that it seems ethically wrong. At least that’s what our gut feeling says at first instinct.
But then he also says what about a Dhoni who says that a 7 UP made him the brilliant cricketer that he is now, or Roberto Carlos attributing his football skills to the sports-drink Gatorade?
Aren’t these people lying too? So then why should the education industry be singled out? It’s a business after all. The coaching institutes are factories that need ranks because only then will they get more and more students and there never seems to be a plethora of them for newer buildings (branches) keep springing up.


In JEE
2005 2004 Priya Gupta of Delhi secured AIR 2. She was overwhelmed. Smart she was and had joined FIITJEE, a prestigious IITJEE training institute with branches all over India. However a rival institute in the mean time offered jobs to those teachers at FIITJEE who had trained Ms Gupta. When the results were declared, the rival institute claimed that they too were responsible for her success since those teachers now belong to them.

Are IITJEE toppers models?

The problem here according to me is that, since these IITJEE toppers are normal guys and girls next door, their word is taken more seriously than say a Milind Soman advertising for Nivea cold cream or the sorts.
Also in the case of celebrities like actors and sportsperson, the public has seen them grow from rookies to superstars where as in the case of an IIT topper only the final outcome is presented.
Another problem is after tenth grade the student is rather gullible and well in most cases so are his/her parents and doesn’t know which institution to join, seeing AIR hailing from a particular institution will make him/her want to join it.
Another major reason why it feels wrong is because in the case of a sports-person, celebrity you know that its like a lottery, as in only 15 people make it to the squad, or only 3-4 movies are successful each year, the point I am trying to make is that, whether Sachin drinks Boost to improve his performance or smells Agarwal incense sticks, it doesn’t matter to the common because he doesn’t want to be a cricket. But as opposed to becoming a cricketer or an actor, IIT is very much reachable, with 12000 people being called this year (including all the lists, Ok I've included reservation seats, that’s not the context here).

Do ponder over it…

Life in Metro

I saw Life in a Metro Yesterday.

I had heard from friends who had seen the movie that it was worth watching. But I didn't want to watch it because I was afraid I already knew the plot. I mean come on how hard could it be to guess? The name of the movie is Metro. Obviously the movie had to thrive on sex and more sex. Sex in the elevator, sex in the car, sex on the rooftop and sex with multiple men. And obviously this isn't the exhaustive list.(Thats impossible!). There would have to be a lot of stress, because once you earn so much and don't sleep(sleeping for rest not pleasure, pun NOT intended) work-related mostly and well the stress would lead to huge differences between the couples(mostly married ones) and this would again lead to more stress and they'd find solace in ..well...sex. With another person obviously. Some how Indians never get into drugs. It's either women or Booze(or both). At least that's what they show on the golden screen. Drugs are mostly forbidden territory, a taboo not worth chasing. But drinking bottles of poison, consuming unfathomable number of tablets(they never mention what those are, they are either really small like homeothepic medicene or really large ones, like rat poison) and newly introduced into the list, courtesy of Life in a Metro: Phenyl.
And the movie would also have few item numbers thrown in between(ok so I was wrong about this one) and because the director wouldn't want gay activists butting in, ergo a dash of homosexuality would have to be thrown in albeit it would HAVE to be something like how it was projected in Page 3. You know, being caught in the act, betraying a beautiful innocent girl in the process.(Co-incidentally it happens to be Miss Sen here as well, are they hinting something here?)
As it turned out, the movie was somewhat on those line but the director or rather the script-writer made one thing very clear: YOU CANNOT BE HAPPY IN A CITY.
Well even if you are, its short-lived. Because someone will fall short of breath or semen(though not necessarily in that order). Every two minutes feelings keep developing. And I keep insisting that it's the music that does this is. Its been stereotyped. Make a girl laugh, say something while looking her in the eye(with some really sentimental music playing in the background) and eventually all the moments will flash in her head and she'll leave her current hubby/boyfriend/fuck-buddy and come after you, running(either on a railway platform, road, beach etc).
This is fine.
But then something happens. Its almost as though the script-writer is contradicting his earlier gospel and goes against the stereotype and makes one of the couple accept the truth. Family is important. You can't leave your hubby(even if hes been having the best sex of his life for the last two years and you have been getting NOTHING AT ALL). I guess that's to show that its a man's world and that women have to endure everything(which isn't necessarily true, though as it turns out in most cases they have to).
One of the greatest gifts given to women is their power to weep. Seriously you have to be a real bastard if you don't sympathise with a woman who is crying, and to add to that the background score, its a fool proof combo. For directors, this is a steal if they capitalise on it. So even if a girl knows that she is sleeping with the man who
1. Is married with a kid
2.Is her boss
3.Will give her perks in return
she feels that maybe someday after relentless hours of fucking she'll change his feelings towards her(whore) to something else(love of his life).

The worst part is that she is successful in doing so, but by that time someone else has come into her life because you can only love someone who takes care of you when you being the douche bag that you are drinks a bottle of phenyl because your boss who was initially humping you just to let out his stress won't love you.
So well conscience comes into play and as usual messes everything up.

Also, the director very clearly wanted to show one simple fact. Old people can't have sex. They can sleep in the same bad and even have a live-in relationship but can't fornicate. Nay! That is unthinkable. But that's discrimination don't you think? Everyone around them is getting some and they have to kill the poor old lady(played beautifully by Nafisa Ali) before she gets any with her boyfriend(Dharmender, oh yes it was quite a treat watching him as well. Everytime he's day "I love you" in his "Main tera khoon peejaonga" tone, I just couldnt help sniggering).

Eventually they had to end the movie, so they showed that everyone is happy the way they are, as in the respective people they were with(or without) and that the hulla gulla should stop. It was almost like a stay-order had been passed and no more fooling around was allowed.Otherwise, if the story was to continue, we'd end up having 7 factorial relationships(read elementary permutation and combination on how).

The music was good, really good. They got these bangladeshi and kashmiri dudes to sing. They blended it into the movie by actually casting them as full time singers in the movie. At any given high or low, they'd appear with their band baja(and guitar/banjo) and start singing. Kudos to them!

Partly fictional, partly real

During a conversation:
'I'm going to miss you a lot' said I
'Oh come on, why think about whats going to happen? Besides you can't change it, so might as well get over it' was her retort.
'Was it easy for you to come up with that line?' I asked

She didn't reply.

During another conversation:
'....and well, that's about it. You're leaving tomorrow. It's going to be tough, one whole month.' I said
Here I was pouring out my feelings to her, telling her how much I am going to miss her and she was nonchalant about the whole affair. I felt almost a rage build up inside me and wanted to scream at her face
'How can you be so opaque?' is what I wanted to lash out at her, but somehow refrained from doing so.
And we carried on with our regular conversation and I continued to make her laugh but deep down melancholia was slowly settling in.

The next day, I was all groggy eyed when I logged online and realised that an offline message was waiting for me.

Damn, I’m going to miss talking to you so much. I’m already dreading it. I’m going to miss the way you talk, the analogies you draw, the way you make fun of everything, the way you make me laugh, the way you irritate me, the way you get worried about me…everything.

I just stared at the screen for a few minutes.

All you chai lovers, this is how tea is made! This is a small tea factory called well...The Tea Factory, in Ooty. They took us for a tour arond the factory. So here's the deal:




In the first step, the tea leaves are heated and all the moisture is removed from them. Once dried, they are pulverised and made to dust.
This dust goes on a conveyor belt and is further dried
I guess this just smoothens it and well spreads it evenly and enters the googy.

The googy is a rotating hollow cylinder, entering which the tea gets its granulated shape that we're so used to seeing.
What goes it has to come out.
Here its placed in large trays and raked till the color changes to brown
These are now transfered to the fermentation chamber

After they are fermented, sorting takes place.

And well thats about it.

Looking at the factory, I pondered over how less an initial cost these machines would take and that setting up a tea factory isnt all that difficult. The machines are simple mechanical ones(which I confirmed) and well process as such doesnt require much labour too(unless done on a very large scale). The returns are huge as compared to the low initial investment. But yea, you gotta be next to a tea farm, this tea factory grows its own tea.

When Orkut results in Death

We hear about it so often, yet unless it happens to us, we dont tend to take it seriously. Be it having unprotected sex, drinking water which isnt clean or meeting people after getting to know them from chatrooms/social networking sites.
Its hard to figure out a person's intentions when he is online because he can seem to appear anyone he wants to be.
You can state that your passions are Hiking, Bungee Jumping and Rocket Science and that you've got the perfect figure(despite any of that being true). But the power of an avatar or lack of face to face conversations can also help 'psycho's' hide their identity quite effectively.
Recently a girl and guy got to know each other through Orkut, became really close pals, wrote each other sweet testimonials and the works. The guy was already married. They fell in love and met...

Find out what happened next...

Its quite easy to blame all this on fate and take the easy way out, but come on! Be sensible.
This is the guys profile:
(You can still see the girls testimonial I think)
http://www.orkut.com/Profile.aspx?uid=348385650417627297

And this is the girl's:
http://www.orkut.com/Profile.aspx?uid=11725203022944506305

A Tout le monde
Be careful on any social networking site or any of the chatrooms. I know it sounds like I am sermonising here, but its been happening to so many people and its so easy to fall in the trap.

You lie so much that you believe yourself

-Metallica

My days in Bangalore have been quite relaxing and I think I have exceeded my sleep quota(if ever there was one) by a massive margin. Finally the D-day has almost arrived and its tomorrow. Sonam, a close pal from BITS has also come to head bang(though I dont kinow how much of that can be done with Steven Tyler singing) with us fellow rockers and spent the entire day with us. A substantial part of it went watching the movie "Shootout at Lokhandwala" and well...what can I say I was impressed.

The movie is from the White Feather production house, which was co-founded by Sanjay Dutt. The movie says that it was based on true rumours and that it was. Closely connected to the Mumbai Blasts and Dawood Ibrahim and other superstar tags, the movie was rather entertaining. Just one thing, there seemed to be no twist in the tale. Its like, fine , agreed, its cool and all, killing dozens of people and wasting excessive amounts of bullets but there is no twist. But my oh my was I excited.

I realised its probably because of the background music.

Damn, they hype it up so much. Everytime, Vivek Oberoi starts smoking a cigerette or pops a cap in someone's head(thats nigger for shooting someone down), this really cool music starts playing in the background, without which the act would seem..quite bland. And then there is this choir that starts giving backing vocals and its like, oh my god, killing people is like so cool, even though you know what they are doing actually happened and its outright illegal and wrong.
The movie quite clearly tells you the repercussions of being an outlaw and more importantly, messing around with higher powers(such as larger dons living in dubai) can really screw matters and end up with you getting killed. You're much better off being a sycophant.
The incidents are apparently mostly real( I verified that by wiki-ing and googleing for over 2-3 hours). The career graph of Maya Dolas, the notorious gangster played by Vivek Oberoi can be plotted and is something like this

Co-incidentally this is also the Stress vs Strain Graph of a untypically brittle material as shown on Wikipedia.
The movie has a nice tempo and there is not a single moment when you feel bored, just that the director has a wonderful way of pissing the audience by sneaking in two item numbers without any meaning and which are totally irrelevant to the plot thus giving the movie its aesthetic value. Also, Tushar Kapoor must be the funniest hit-man ever. The director has really tried to make him look like a macho-man, but has miserably failed much to my amusement.

However, after wiki-ing about the Lokhandwala shootout, I stumbled upon ULHASNAGAR. Its apparently a major gangster town and its sarcastically said(though has known to be true) that there are killings in this town on every tuesday. Surprisingly the literacy rate of this town is 80%(according to the 2001 census), when the national average was only 60%.

Though I've never been hooked onto the technical world and well gadgets werent really my objects of desire, but in the last few weeks, I've frequented the webpages of WIRED.com than ever before.
Was doing some random googling some days back and found this interesting article.

After reading it and a little bit of wiki-ing on comcast, this is what I find out

"Comcast has a policy of terminating broadband customers who allegedly use excessive bandwidth. Comcast has declined to disclose a numerical bandwidth limit, arguing that the limit is variable on a monthly basis and dependent on the capacity of specific cable nodes. Comcast claims this policy only affects users whose bandwidth consumption is among the top one percent of high-speed internet customers."

Top 1%????
Thats top 1% of the second largest ISP in the USA. Though Comcast officials claim thats 0.01%.
And sometimes comcast bills you excessively for porn that you never ordered, there have been instances where people have been billed for nearly 1500$ for porn, sporting the Indian mentality, thats about 75000 rupees, now thats a lotta porn, A LOT! And they give you a bill, where the porn ordered is one after the other within a gap of 5 seconds.

By the way, there have been recent updates on the Comcast Issue that the article above talks about, read it here at
http://comcastissue.blogspot.com/
Its highly amusing.

One look at the consumerist website and you'd get to find out that there are thousands others like Frank and Elizabeth.

Google's cache is just amazing man!
I found a poem, written by moi, which was published in The Hindu during the whole NIE(Newspaper in Education) phase and which I thought had gone astray forever, for I lost the only hard copy that I had(misplaced would be misnomer). Years down the line, I type in my name into the coveted search box(just a regular ego search) and voila! Guess what I find?
A poem written by me when I was in class VIII(always had a little bit of a fascination with roman numerals).

Though the cache can have its repurcussions later on. Imagine blasting someone(boss maybe?) on a personal blog, you know just a regular vent of fury and then later realizing that it was all a big mistake once the head has been cooled. But those words will be etched for the world to see and you cant take them off( Techies, can they?). So think hard before you hit that publish button!

First and foremost let me apologize for the small picture, this is the maximum it would stretch, so for those who dont have a 6/6 or something close, its going to be a struggle.

Right, coming to the point!

INDIA-TODAY has done it again! Time and time it manages to piss people off with its surveys which has the opinions of 400 teachers(atleast it was the last time I checked). Their tiff with BITS hasnt yet been resolved and well their rankings without a doubt are pretty fucked up.

What is surprising is the inclusion of VIT at the number 14th spot, thus making it(as they claim on their website), the best private engineering college in India. Being a Bitsian, I would love to give the VIT publicity dept. a piece of my mind, if the authorities decided to step up to me.

What is also surprising is by how much the Outlook and India Today Survey differ, every year. I remember last year Thapar College(TIET), Patiala crept through every ranking onto a coveted 8-9th position and this year its name hasnt even been mentioned in the top 25. Can a college really fare that badly in just one year? And can VIT which was at 35 something last year become the best Private college of this nation of a billion?

IIIT-A ahead of IIIT-H? Seriously? IT-BHU at 18? And since when was IIIT-A's reputation better than that of DCE or NIT-W and other biggies?

Are the chaps at India Today(and AC Nielson) really putting in effort while coming up with the rankings? Year after year, we see the rankings where the top 5-6 spots are taken by the IITs arranged in a random order, and the other spots keep shuffling like a deck of cards. Its been 5 years and seriously they cannot take the public for granted anymore. Many people tend to swear by the ratings because they feel that since INDIA TODAY is a credible magazine, the rankings will also adhere to those standards. I havnt seen this years Nasscom Survey which appears in the OUTLOOK magazine yet, so I guess the cussing regarding that should take some time.

P.S: If you notice all the categorial ranks you'll see that they form a nice pattern, at least in the case of IIT's and also NIT-T etc.

I have just finshed a mini trip down south.

Actually it wasnt that mini. I made the following observations

Road trips can be a bitch when they span for over a week and your legs start behaving in a funny manner.

Ooty is one dirty town, it should be nicknamed the 'Cradle of Filth', and the place has got a mind of its own. The clouds are supposed to come into our rooms early morning, instead they choose to chill out a few hundred feet above and decide to piss over us, just for the fun of it.

There seems to be a Hutch monopoly in Ooty, trying to find an airtel top-up is about as difficult as finding a Bose product within your budget.

The more greek words in the name of a hotel, the worse it is.

Just because you're late and its been hot all along, you cannot go to a hill station with no warm clothes and say to yourself that 'Aah, its gonna be cool'. You know why? Coz its not gonna be cool, its gonna be COLD. And theres a difference.

Its quite amusing to see foreign tourists stare at a sign board that says : Indians 5 rupees, Others 500 rupees(We accept only cash!).

The trip started from Hyderabad via Vellore and then to Blore. From there we headed towards Mysore and finally to Ooty. We came back from Coonoor via Coimbatore, Salem, Hosur and finally back to Blore City which greeted us with arms wide open, awful downpour and a traffic jam that I'd never forget.

One complete year has come to an end.Well, almost.

My first year away from home. Living on my own. With people I had never met before(umm ok I knew some of them). My first year in BITS has been nothing short of overwhelming. There were times when I was on a high(literally), then there were times of extreme melancholy. But all in all there was no monotony, no boredom. My seniors say its the enthusiasm of the freshies that dies down by the third year because in this little place, there is only so much that you can see. I beg to differ, its about seeing the same thing in different light everyday.
I made some really close friends. I mean the guys who see you in your underwear trotting in the hallway will stick on with you till the every end won't they?
I am in love with the campus. I wont go to the extent of calling it plush, but well its somewhere there. Walking on crisp leaves, finding n+1 gates that lead us outside the campus(some of which were created from mere orifices), giving refuge to dogs(I never would've imagined oing that any where, I'm mongrel phobic), living on fluids and so much more. I've learnt more from the people here than I have from the books. Does that sound like a convenient excuse? Probably.
I have been termed as the "notorious chappal thief" for the obvious reasons. Its a tag I have to live with for the rest of my bitsian life. I have seriously never worn so many different kinds of footwear. One of every hue, one on each leg, each one so different from the other.
I have learnt that breakfast is the best thing BITS can offer in terms of meals from the mess, for thats the ultimate high and nothing can get better than that(I hope you're getting it).
But above all, its the freedom. Freedom is what you make of it. You can either get wasted, or not do something constructive, its all cool. This place lets you be.

The following is a note I found in the corridors of my hostel yesterday night/today morning:




There were talks of Our President APJ Abdul Kalam coming to the campus of BITS Pilani( thats where I reside incase you've forgotten). My sources tell me that he was approached thrice and finally succumbed to our persuasion and is now coming to our campus in less than 3 hours.

The campus has had a almost-massive makeover. The roads have become visibly cleaner, atleast the roads facing the main institute building. The leaves will continue to fall and I have never seen a rake in the campus, maybe they are stored in a secret chamber somewhere deep inside the campus. The graffiti caused by the bird scat will also not cease for we dont control their metabolism and a pigeon/crow genocide will probably have an undesirable effect on the campus I suppose.

There have been marking on the road using fresh white paint, so that the chauffers of his excellency will not get lost in our huge campus, where one can easily lose ones track if one isnt careful enough to follow the huge gigantic signboards which can be found on every corner of the institute.

The rickshaw pullers, the redi wallahs and other members of the working class have been disposed of for the day for we want to present a "hi-tech" image of the institute, which it is ofcourse.

Its not at all strange that out of 6000 odd people around 1200 students have been shortlisted by a highly confidential process which is unknown to many(hence bearing a testimonial to its confidentiality), for there's always a next time.

The clock tower and the roof tops of all bhawans(hostels) are infested with snipers who will hunt you down incase you move an inch faster than the average human response time, for they are extensively trained.

All in all, seems like its going to be a good show.

I recently got to know that Lucknow University(LU) is going to scrap some courses off the list. The reason? Too many students with criminal records are taking up these courses. These include Criminology,Criminal Justice and Social Welfare amongst others. In an effort to cleanse the university of its hooligans, any student who has had a criminal record in the past has been expelled.

Personally I find that extremly amusing.

The college authorities say that political leaders and anti-social chiefs join the college and take up these courses to camouflage their activities to pollute the educational environ by contesting for the Lucknow Univ Students Union(LUSU).

Oriental studies and Linguistics has also been proposed to be scrapped. I want to ask, how is this going to help?

The authorities say that they want to remove all those courses which arent preferred by the "regular " students.

Its bizarre.
Every computer in my hostel is playing just one song. This is the very song that everyone keeps humming while in class, mess or even the bogs(bathroom of graduating students). It is this song that keeps me up all night because someone or the other keeps singing it. And the versions change too, newer lyrics keep getting added to the existing ones, the tune too changes ranging from classical to hip-hop to thrash. High-pitched shrills, baritones and echoes can all be heard from dawn to dusk.
The song? Zombie by the Cranberries.
Okay! Agreed that the song is decent, but the sudden enthusiasm? It was sung by a guy during one of the inter-hostel contests and since then everyone has been going ga-ga over it. Its been circulated to every computer through the LAN. Every comp I see, I notice a media player icon on the desktop with "Zombie" etched on it.

I keep on forgetting that I have a blog and that I am supposed to update it every now and then. That should change I guess.

Weather has been quite unpredictable lately. Just when everyone thought that the few millimetre of rain in pilani's quota got exhausted, we get these bolts of lightning and sandstorms with winds blowing in at high velocities in all directions and the rain spanking the earth. Co-incidentally there the forces of nature have always intervened on the even of all the major exams that we've had so far.
Recently I developed few ulcers in my mouth, I infer that its from the lack of vitamin B complex in the healthy and nutritious diet that is supplied to us here at Vidya Vihar. Its pathetic, really. Can't eat anything spicy or solid. Having been living on curd rice and frooti, Bah! I am sick of it!

And congrats to Martin Scorcese, for finally getting the golden dude with the sword.

Orkut.com

A creation of Mr. Orkut Buyyokoten, a Stanford-ite and an employee of Google, which ensured that the vetti(jobless for those who aren't accustomed to the Bitsian slang) are never left jobless. It's re-united many lost friends, spread the message of many events and also ruined many lives(oh havn't you ever been addicted to it?).

It is supposed to be a forum for healthy interaction. It has all these communities based upon people's interests, which one can join. One can read and contribute(if he has joined) to the topics in each community.

There are all types of communities, and I mean ALL types. You got communites on popular and not-so-popular TV shows, movies, personalities, brands and also stuff like "The Pope should break dance" and "Bitch make me a sandwich" which is about guys telling girls to STFU make them a sandwich".

Coming to these communities. When you join any of these communities on orkut, you are demonstrating your affiliation with them. Rationally speaking, it would be expected that since you've joined these communites you should take part in the proceedings.
Yet we see that people join the communities and remain "dormant" for extended periods of time, sometimes even indefinitely.
Many a times, joining communites becomes an obsession. You just want to join more and more communities. You know you've really lost it when you join the community called "I have joined too many communities" . And then to top it off, you also have the community "Orkut Rehab".

Now for the ultimate question. What goes on in these communities?
One would expect that the community would be brimming with meaningfull discussions on the topics associated with the community. Enthusiastic members chipping in with their valuable opinions on the issues posted in the community forums.
Lets take the example "Gladiator", the community dedicated to the Oscar Winning Ridley Scott beauty. A quick glance at the forum will introduce you to the following topics:
#Give only one word for MAXIMUS
#let us make Gladiator the number one rated movie of all time
#Want to be my friendzzzzz
Out of the 200 topics in the community only 2-3 have received replies in double figures.

In another community "Internet Addicts", one of the posts read "How many hours do you spend on the internet?"
The active members of the community enthusiastically answered in succession
"atmost 2 hrs..Or sometimes 3 to 4 hrs.There was a time when I spend almost 8hrs. continous for 3 days"

"hmm.. so i m really addicted :D
12-16 hrs daily.. :)"

Almost all communities that have a substantial number of people are flooded with irrelevant games. In one of these games the last person to post wins(does that explain the smirk on my face), in others you have to answer a queston with a question. I am not against these games, do what ever you want out of your free will, but keep a separate platform for this will you? I'm sure having posts such as "Will you go out with the person above you?" in a "Aspiring Cricket Writers" community is quite relevant ;)

Also observed is a phenomenon that in every community there are a number of posts in foreign languages such as portuguese and spanish. So in an IIT-JEE aspirants community you find stuff like "FOTOS DO FLAGRA DA CICARELLI NA PRAIA"

To witness this phenomenon just create a community open to all and dont assign any moderators and voila!

I admit that for a while I too was mesmerised by Orkut and in this frenzy joined many communities aimlessly. Before I knew it, there were 356 communities on my profile. I figured out that if I spend a minimum of 2 minutes on every community every week, I'd end up spending 1/30*356, thats nearly 12 hours.
Now out of these 356 I hardly checked out 50-60 communites (even if once in a bluemoon) and actively participated in less than 15.

It is also observed that regardless of the number of people that are in a community, the active population is limited to a very small fraction. The vast majority(like me), just join the community and then forget about it. And this vast majority makes up those huge 6 digit numbers.

I am right now in the process of un-joining all those communities(about 98% of the origianl number), though I must admit its going to take a long time.

-Rishabh Kaul

I am suffering from what most of you refer to as a writer’s block. The earlier sentence was thus framed because I have never suffered from a writer’s block before, or if not that, then for a very long time at the least. I use the word “suffered”, as though it’s some sort of disease because it is. It a really pathetic feeling to have when you have the drive, but you lack the what’s that again? Yeah, that’s how it is. I don’t even know what’s missing.

Generally what happens when one suffers from this terrible disease is that one cannot bring one’s self to write anything that remotely makes sense to the target audience(if there is one intended) and neither to ones own self(which is actually bad). This is usually because one is devoid of any ideas in one’s cerebrum, which I believe is the main controller in our brain (something like the brain of the brain)

This is what generally happens.

Sometimes what happens is this:
Your brain gets overloaded and you don’t know what to do. By overload, I’m referring to all those ideas that are jam-packed in your brain. And yes everyone has ideas.
Now when you feel like writing something, and get the pen to paper or your finger tips to the surface of the keyboard(which ever suits you), in your brain there is a volley of random ideas each of which is quite unique and would make for an excellent write-up, story, play-you name it.
The initiative for your writing something is generally a central theme, a rough mental picture of what you are going to write, and then gradually you build up on this skeleton until something concrete comes up. And finally you polish that and voila!
Now this train of ideas in your head clashes with your central theme. Before you start to build up on this central theme you are confronted by a few thousand other ideas and you feel like including all of them somehow in this write-up of yours.

What you do then is erase whatever you have written up till then and start over.

By now you would have guessed that this is a case of infinite recursion.

Okay,perhaps not infinite.

I've got my holidays going on. And what better way to spend them than to watch movies. I've started watching Hindi ones. I started off with MAHAL.
Its a 1940's thriller.
Let me first give you the gist of the movie and don't worry I wont give out the plot as I've been doing so far for the last few movies that I've written about.
The movie has Ashok Kumar, Madhubala and a Mansion starring in it.
Shanker has recently acquires a mansion at a govt. auction. Upon reaching there he gets the low down on the folk lore about the Haveli. According to this, the builder of the house dies soon after building it. His fiance can't bear the shock and dies thereafter. Shanker sees the painting of the builder and is shocked to find out that he's a clone. As the clock strikes two he hears a lady singing, whom he cannot initially see. He truly believes that he is the reincarnation of the builder and that they are meant for each other. What follows next is an obsession. He goes totally crazy thinking about her. Every night he is hypnotised by the song of the dame. He gets married to another lady. She has a hard time with her man considering that he is mesmerised by another woman.
She soon starts going insane and complains to the police about his husbands ongoing flings. Watch the movie to know what happens next.
What I enjoyed the most about the movie was the simplicity of the plot. Its wasnt anything fancy, but it gripped the viewer for the entire 2 and a half hours that the movie was playing. The cinematography was out of this world. Black and white truly is the way to go for horror flicks and thrillers, given that the camerawork is good.
Also, let me confess that I am truly in awe of Madhubala's beauty. She had the sweetest most beautiful face of her era if not of all time. ALL she had to do to get me addicted to her was to raise one eyebrow and deliver a dialogue. I vow to watch as many movies of her as I can in these holidays.
The music of the movie too is quite splendid. Yes! This is the movie which has the Lata Mangeshkar classis "Aaayega Aayega Ane wala...".

Casino Royale is the latest Bond movie.
Bond movies have that charm associated with it. Something is so cool, so sexy and so suave about these movies.
So how did I feel after seeing this one? In one word: Strange. Strange good? Strange bad? Umm..I really don't know, just plain strange.Right coming to the point. Bond movies is mostly about the gadgets and the girls. If you remove either one of them the movies becomes too bland.
This movie had hardly any gadgets. A watch was just a watch, an Omega yes ofcourse, but all it did was show time. A phone was only but a phone, used to make outstation calls and send messages. No knives coming out from sleeves, no camouflaged cars, no cameras in a pen. Even a gun is used in the most primitive way, like a stone, used to hit masses. It was sort of very bollywoodish with a lot of Dishum dishum, running around construction sites and very little sex.
The bond girls too! Very disturbing. Ok Eva Green was decent, but the other latino one whose name I cannot remember was hardly mention-worthy.
The movie shows the scenario when Bond has been just assigned with the 00 status (the 00 in 007 means license to kill). There is this dude Le Chiffre, who is a sort of safekeeper for terrorists. He plans to blow up a plane, the largest of its kind on the Miami Airport, Bond stops this. Now to recover the losses associated with the plan failing, Le Chiffre organises a Poker game in Texas. Bond somehow manages to get inot the playing 8. Now Bond has to somehow win the game, thus making Le Chiffre bankrupt, thus busting his tushy because then the scum of the earth will be after his ass. Le chiffre will have to seek refuge and MI6 will capitalise on this.
The plot as such is very un interesting and to some interesting confusing.
Daniel Craig. What's with having a blond Bond? And whats with that body? He makes Pierce Brosnan look like a stick with genitals. The acting as such was quite ordinary. The movie induces several yawns, especially during the 2nd show. The director Martin Campbell, who co-incidentally also directed former Bond movie Goldeneye, decided to make this movie very realistic, as in Bond was stripped of his demi-god status(which one probably acquires when one is made a double O). However that sort of disappointed me. Bond isn't supposed to be realistic. He isn't supposed to have blood stains, he isn't supposed to be held captive. He is supposed to fight villians in a suit and leave the scene without a scratch. He is supposed to RIDE his cool car, not faint in it. Everyone has been marvelling about the fact that the realistic bond is cool awesome, how they love Daniel Craig, well I miss Mr. Brosnan.
But then on second thought, maybe thats just me.

I just saw one of the coolest movies ever ade, or atleast thats what I thought of it.
Pulp Fiction.
Tarantino is god. He is a genius with the camera. The way the movie was made, the way how the lives of different people merge together, the way it ALL makes sense finally. It's brilliant!
Here is a dialogue from the movie which I feel just has to be put up on my blog.
Its the character of Samuel L Jackson, Jules. Here goes:


There's a passage I got memorized. Ezekiel 25:17. The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of the darkness. For he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know I am the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon you. I been sayin' that shit for years. And if you ever heard it, it meant your ass. I never really questioned what it meant. I thought it was just a cold-blooded thing to say to a motherfucker before you popped a cap in his ass. But I saw some shit this mornin' made me think twice. Now I'm thinkin': it could mean you're the evil man. And I'm the righteous man. And Mr. 9mm here, he's the shepherd protecting my righteous ass in the valley of darkness. Or it could be you're the righteous man and I'm the shepherd and it's the world that's evil and selfish. I'd like that. But that shit ain't the truth. The truth is you're the weak. And I'm the tyranny of evil men. But I'm tryin', Ringo. I'm tryin' real hard to be a shepherd.

It's 3.43, or so claims the clock on my roomy's computer. Remember the comprees I had mentioned few posts earlier? Well, they're here. 5 more to go. Then, I'll be free. But its rather strange, that I've not felt homesick at all these past few months. Guess I love this place too much, but then lately I've been feeling rather lonely. I dont know why. I'm sure its not homesickness, its just plain loneliness.
Bharti Yadav is back in the news.
Flashback:
Right, so there was this dream boat she was in love with, a college-mate. Her brother didn't like this bloke, and so he along with his cousin decided to eliminate the lover, Nitish Katara. So they kidnap him while he's out to attend a marriage and then murder him.
Try looking at the whole situation from her point of view.
Bharti Yadav after a while turns hostile and has been like that ever-since. She makes claims such as "Nitish" was just a friend.
Now the family is also quite powerful, the dad being an ex MP. So she must have been a lone warrior in this when the event took place, considering the Katara family couldnt do much. Bharati must have got threats from her brother and cousins on numerous occasions. Her family too must have been pressurising her to shut her trap, on top of that she is a girl and I am sure mustn't be having much of a say in the house. So they pack her off to London. Media wants a piece of her too.
She too must be feeling that since she has lost his lover already, none of this is going to get him back. Maybe there is so much love between the siblings that occasionally killing ones lover doesnt really affect the other person. Or maybe she loves her life way too much.

This is a picture I had taken when I was in Delhi. This was taken at the underground platform of the Delhi Metro. The picture according to me quite rightly peeks into the human psychology, the way we humans think.
Notice, how the woman near the stairs is actually contemplating whether to take the stairs or to take the "more" preferred option.
Would you rather wait in line, a line which would move so slowly? Or instead take the stairs?
What frustrates you more? Waiting in a long congested queue? Or having to walk that extra step?
Keep this between you and me: I took the stairs!

Lagey Raho Munna BhAI
V for Vendetta
Forrest Gump
The Shawshank Redemption
Saw 1
Saw 2
Lost in Translation
The Italian Job
Euro Trip
Lucky Number Slevin
3 of these I wasnt seeing for the first time.
Apart from this numerous episodes of South Park, Scrubs and Clips that are objectionable to society(need I mention more?)

This pretty much sums it up. The last 3 days have been entertaining afterall.

hero of the day by metallica. Thats the song I am listening to right now. Its quite different from any other Metallica song that I've heard. Now I am not questioning Metallica's originality, but its just that most of metallica's songs have that mystique associated with it, that dark feel to it. This one strangly doesnt sound like that. It almost sounds happy. Ive yet to look into the lyrics, but even then...

Winter has hit Pilani late this time, or so I have been told by those who have been here for longer than I have been. Winter coming in late means winter leaving late. It also means more torture, especially with the comprehensive exams(nicknamed compre's) inching closer towards us.
Ah! The compre-s. Its like a swarm of bees. Buzzing constantly. You can hear it, but can't quite see it. See it clearly that is. And then it becomes clearer, and you realise the horror of it all, until the day when it presents to you its full form. Standing in all its glory, it looks down at you. And you know this moment will either make you break you. Ok, maybe I am exaggerating a little, but its still important to a certain extent.
Leaving academics for the time being, our fest Oasis, was sort of a let down. Its probably not that the fest was bad, its just that I didnt have as much fun as I'd have wished for. Let me not go into the reasons as to why that happened. All I am saying is that, sometimes we expect too much out of something and hype it up. In reality, it isnt that big a deal.
Come to think of it, nothing is, is it?
People always try to glorify things, amplify things, exaggerate things. They make things appear to be something that they're not. Sometimes, its so much that, the thing doesnt even relate to the initial thing anymore.
So much effort is put into packaging a piece of information so that it suits the crowd that the actual essence of that information is lost. By the time a version of an incident reaches your ear, what you get to hear is something totally different from what actually happened.

I just wrote what was on my mind!

cheers
Rishabh

Its been a while.
I know I hav'nt blogged for quite some time. Now I understand why Smita stopped being such a regular blogger. College liffe rocks!
The next few weeks are going to be very tiring, because of the work ahead, but I am looking forward to it.
So much has happened in the last 40 odd days, and I want to mention all of that(well almost) on this space, but then I doubt if this post will remain as long as I intend to keep it.
Infact, I feel like ending this post right now. Yes I know, this is'nt right by blogging ethics(if thhere exists any).
Right. Bye.
Wait for more.
Rishabh

Disclaimer: This post is with reference to people of my age group or somewhere close, so if you're 4 years old or 35 years, the thoughts might not apply to you. But then again, I'm not preaching. So sure, go ahead read.

Holidays. Now it is a relative term is'nt it? The word "plan" is almost synonomous with holidays. The moment we declare to someone that we have our holidays going on, they just HAVE to ask "So, what are your plans". They just HAVE to know.
Something is always expected to be done. Free time, is meant to be utilised meaningfully and efficiently. Why? Because otherwise its wasting time.Why? Because this time will not come again.
So everytime we(or atleast me) get a long break, we make up a list in our head, as to what to do this time. We feel that now, since we have holidays, we can do so many things, because we're FREE(do you see whats happening?). You feel you are free, because you have holidays, as though the rest of the time you were religiously doing your work like a Subba Rao.
Subba Rao is defined as the every day office going sincere guy, now this classic definition was given by my friends on Orkut

Ok! So now you have this list of a thousand(am I exaggerating? Really?) things in your head, that need to be DONE. Things like shedding the extra fat. Watching "tons" of movies, visiting places,reading.

Now lets face it. How many of us actually end up doing this? Yeah, some of you feel we make excellent use of our time. Congrats you are one amongst a very very, trust me on this one, VERY small community(hey when I said "feel", I hope you actually mean, otherwise I sleep whole day and say that I made excellent use of my day). Its virtually impossible to make "excellent" use of one's time. Its just not done. Yeah, we often hear things such as, "focus", "dedication", "commitment". Most of the time we arent that focussed. We're focussed to some extent, but not to our full potential. Now we shouldnt be surprised at this. The science students, who have studied basic physics, know that the "ideal" scenario doesnt exist. There IS no perfect machine, there IS no perfect fuel, there IS no perfect presidential candidate(obviously in INDIA, the president can't do much, so he should just wear a name tag saying "hello, I love peanuts"). Hence, we can safely assume that there is no perfect brain, which can utilise all the time it has got. Hence perfection is a relative term used to signify who is the least dumbest, or who is the least wrong, or who is the least boring amongst a group of people.

Coming back to time management, the strange thing is that when we dont have holidays, most of us are actually more focussed than when we have holidays. Now this is simple enough right? So what does it tell us? WHEN YOUR ASS IS ON FIRE, YOUR GOD DAMN EFFICIENCY INCREASES. Obviously according to the second law of thermodynamics, the efficiency will not be cent per cent, but oh well.

Its because we're so excited to do so many things, we actually forget the essence of it. We read a novel, because we feel its something interesting, not becase we have to just read it. We have to lose weight because we want to get back in shape because it gives us confidence, so quit imagining yourself getting laid by Tera Patrick. So one reason is because the whole aim of getting a job done is lost.
Another reason why things seldom get done is becase we dont have proper guidance. Trying to teach ones self the computer language C
from a book takes time. You're much likely to complete the course(leave alone being fairly decent in it), if you learn it from some institute under proper guidance. You're definetely much more likely to shed those extra pounds if you enroll yourself in a proper gym with guys to train you there, rather than just go to the gym and pretty much fool around with the machines there and ending up seriously messing up that fragile body of yours.
Another addition to the list of distraction and probably the one that is potentially the most perilious of them all is the Internet. Yes, the internet is an ocean of knowledge, a treasure house and atmosphere of intellect, Ok now for the reality: How many of you log on to the net with the intention, "Today I am going to learn something new and useful, because the internet is a powerful advantage that I possess and must use it wisely."??
My point exactly.
Yahoo messenger, Orkut, Hi5, You tube. Damn!
I wanted to read so many books this summer, managed to read a few: The Fountainhead, Freakonomics, works of Khushwanth Singh and few other disappointing starts.
After watching Tom Dick and Harry, I had vowed not to watch the rubbish being made in bollywood for the rest of my holidays, and will dedicate myself towards experiencing classics(indian and western).
As of now I've seen Fanaa, Gangster, Krrish, Superman Returns and The Angrez(The Angrez has to be one of the FUNNIEST movies ever made).
Classics: zilch
I wanted to travel, visit pune, bangalore and whole lot of other places. Finally all saw was Jammu and Delhi, the hottest places to be in summer. Ok the jammu trip was more of a compulsion but every bit worth it. Getting to meet cousins is a good compensation for getting your ass burnt at 44 degrees.
A lot of time was spent Orkutting, Instant Messaging, hanging out with friends, driving lessons(ok not much just an hour a day), talking on the phone.

The guilt of not doing much in the holidays was overshadowed by the joy I got in spending time with my near ones. In the end, what matters is how you look at things.

I love sales. Especially when it has to do with branded stuff. Especially shoes!
I had to get a pair of sneakers because the other one despite serving me almost 2 years, was in a pitiful condition. Plus it was part of the college shopping list, SHOES. One pair formal, another informal. The latter remained unticked in the list.
So, shoes is one department where I always prefer branded stuff because of the durability.
So we set off for the ADIDAS store, there is some sort of sale going on there. I spend nearly an hour there, making the poor guy there bring nearly 7-8 pairs, always finding some problem or the other. Too white, too expensive, too many features, too fucked up....finally I liked one, that too quite reluctantly. I decided I would visit the Reebok store just 40 yards away, and if I didnt find anything there, I'd come back here and buy this pair.
Went to the reebok, didnt see any sale offers put up. Went in anyways. Now Reebok store made the adidas one look like crap. These guy had a huge shoe collection, and I mean huge! Generally the shoes are placed on a small stand on the wall, we see them, select them tell the guy we like it, he goes into the store room, gets the shoe of our size, and thats how it goes. This shoe stand is generally as high as a normal person (5'7) can reach by stretching his hand. Reebok's wall had shoes on it upto a 2 storied building. I am NOT kidding. This is the store next to the Loft shop in panjagutta(Non hyderababis, dont even bother).
I was staring at all of them like a puppy with his tongue hanging out of his mouth.
I put on some pairs and finally selected one I liked. The model of the shoe is called "Tempo Runner"




another angle




Now as I get up, the guy there tells me that there IS an offer going on. With every purchase of 2490 and above, you get a Reebok shoe worth 2490 free. And the free one is pretty good too, as generally one wouldnt expect it, during sales like these. Its awesome I tell ya!!!



acha this is the free one, its called 3D Runner LP, here's another pic of it

This is going to be my home for the coming 5 years (if things go as planned). I've got admission into the Msc(hons) Economics course of BITS, Pilani. For the ones who arent acquainted with the Msc(hons) programme of BITS, its a dual degree, which means I get to do Bachelors(BE) in Engineering as well as a subject of my choice(I chose economics). The engineering degree depends on your first year CGPA
As far as I know, BITS is the only college in INDIA which offers such flexibility. So, Woohoo!

Latest Johar Flick

Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna
Yeah this is the latest movie from the Johar house of films. Karan Johar is gay agreed, but his movies arent as gay as him.
I quite liked Kal Ho na Ho.
Right, so the cast is also a typical KJ cast filled with all his buddies, Big B, Abhishek Bachchan, SRK, Rani Mukherjee and Priety Zinta. It apparently has cameos by Riteish(WTF is wrong with ritesh) Deshmukh and Arjun Rampal.
Story is supposed to be that SRK is married to Priety where as Rani is married to Bachchan Jr. Now things would be chilling as long as each couple minds their own business, but by chance or fate or whatever you call it, SRK and Rani meet, and become buddies, and then probably something more?? Wait for the movie. Yes, Big B is supposed to be this flamboyant(a la Vijay Mallya) daddy of Bachchan Jr.(How original) I think Karan is addicted to NYC. Because this one is NYC based too.
Here's the trailer of the movie,



The music of the movie was released in mid june(according to wikipedia), and the movie is scheduled to release in India on August 11. Awww, I will either be near a beach or in the middle of a desert by then.

There is this one song called MITWA in the OST. And Oh My God, its awesome! It really is, I just heard it once on TV during one of these promotional shows and fell in love with it instantly. You know we often come across these songs, whose punch line sounds oh so wonderful, but when you listen to the entire song, You sigh in despair and disappointment. But for once you wont be disappointed with this one. MITWA is really good, I've been listening to it all night today(or tonight whatever). Here's the link to the song as well.
http://www.apniisp.com/songs/indian-movie-songs/kabhi-alvida-naa-kehna/339/1.html


P.S: Please Please Please, for the love of god(or satan), call the movie by its full name instead of KANK, KANK has to be the worst short form of any movie ever made!

While talking to my friends, we occasionally use the word RnM i.e Raped and Murdered, to strike a comparision. For example: "Hey dude staying in his class is worse than getting RnM." And we have a good laugh, because the context here isnt a serious one. But what when someone is getting RnM? And what if everyone knew the accused was guilty(even the judge)? And what if after all evidences(such as DNA sampling), the accused still roamed free?

Justice, in any form, shouldnt be denied. Delaying it for a 10 year span is as good as slapping the victim on the face and telling them to get lost.

Priyadarshini was a third-year law student at Delhi University, when she was found strangled in her uncle’s Vasant Kunj residence. She had been raped, injured 14 times and then strangled with a wire

The main accused Santosh Kumar Singh was her senior in college.On the morning of January 23, Santosh was seen knocking for entrance into Priyadarshini's uncle's house, where she was living, in the Vasant Kunj area of Delhi.

On january 23rd, she was found dead in her apartment. Evidences point to the fact that she was raped, before being strangled to death by an electric wire and her face battered by a motorcycle helmet, beyond recognition.

Delivering the judgement, the Additional Sessions Judge. J.P. Thareja said of Santosh, that though he knew that "He is the man who committed the crime," he was forced to acquit him, giving him the benefit of doubt.Further adding,"The CBI in the matter of DNA evidence has not acted fairly. It tampered with the evidence of clothes of the deceased and also the blood sample of the accused."

I guess that says it all.


Following a public outcry, the CBI then appealed the district court's verdict in Delhi High Court in April 2000. But there have been no presentation of evidence or hearings in the Delhi High Court well into early 2006.

Meanwhile, according to his lawyer, Santosh Singh got married in 2004, and as of February 2006, was leading a happy family life and practising law in Delhi.

Sunday, 23rd July is her birthday. A war cry for justice in the heart of Delhi, a protest that shakes the pillars of the Govt. and one demand - Let justice be delivered immediately.


Are you ready to give her justice?



Join us :

Venue: INDIA GATE
Time: 4:30 p.m.
Date: 23rd July, 2006

Feedback: justice4priyadarshini@gmail.com
To sign the Petition for retrial in Priyadarshini Mattoo Case click here:
www.petitiononline.com/mattoo/petition.html

Blog:
http://justice4priyadarshini.blogspot.com

Here is the CNN-IBN Video on the topic.