Independence day with News Channel

i've never been "the" partiotic citizen of India. its been 62 years since independence and wat status have we got apart from being called "corrupt nation", "polluted nation", "most populated". there is nothing for which india can be really proud of. atleast to my knowledge. Foreigners come over here just to click a pic of this poor country. the heritage/culture comes secondary to them and we give a damn about all these.

was watching tv today morning and i was really happy to see this program called "jai jawan" in NDTV. the program showed the life of army ppl at kargil and a chat with the jawans who were involved in the kargil war. i sit here happily blogging because of some one who i never knew/who i might even never meet in my life fighting for my safety. when i was watching that program came a breaking news "SRK detained at US airport" and the program ended soon and the news reporters got a good piece of commerical news with which they can keep up the TRP ratings of their channel. and then the reported suddenly shifted gears and started "breaking news coming in just now. King khan is detained at the US airport because of his surname".. and then we have the whole set of jobless bollywood fraternity in front of the media mikes shouting at their pitch of why US shouldnt have dont it.

Grow up, guys. whats your problem. as if no other person in the whole world have ever been questioned in such a manner. if it was not for King Khan and if Mr.AAA Khan was questioned by the US, would the media be following them as well. ?? whats so spl about this person who knows nothing other than crying on screen. and what i hated most was that SRK himself called each and every news channel and started sharing his 2 hrs interrogation. and the news channel had their day. "SRK spoke exclusively to Headlines Today". "CNN-IBN Exclusive: Is real imitating Reel for SRK". and worst is this "Share your thoughts of what we should do for questioning SRK-Times Now".. Thanks guys you are all doing a great job,. !!

Then we have the director who knew nothing other than shootin at NY.. Yeah, Karan Johar. It was time for him to share his thots. and he said "SRK is a global icon. you cant do anything like this"..a couple of weeks back Abdul kalam was detained by some airline company. did he do anything like these? then why the hell did SRK make it such a big scene. I know that his yet-to-be-released "My Name is Khan" has a plot similar to this. and I'm 200% confident that this bloody SRK and Karan Johar are doing this to publicize the movie. because they know that the movie cant do a s**t in the box-office. and from now till tonite this is the topic in all news channel. and Times Now has a spl show at 8 30 wit Arnab(one-of-the-worst TV anchors I ve ever seen in my life) on this i believe.

India independence, Swine flu are all second priority when compared to SRK being detained at the airport. !@#&%$^ ..

If this is how we are gonna be, then we can better forget about being a developed nation by 2020. not 2020, even at 4040 we wont be a developed one. !!

First day at T.I.M.E

Joined T.I.M.E recently and you smart guy, you guessed it right !! For my CAT .. Yesterday was the first day at T.I.M.E and it was my favorite class 'Quants'. I've always loved Maths from my school days. Not sure whether i inherited that love from my dad who is a Math Genius himself.. Still remember the last time i got beatings from him for wrongly solving a differential equation during my X holidays !! Yeah ..!! He made me study my XI subjects when I was thinking off enjoying my X holidays. !! I dont know what all I cursed him tat time, but now all those fond memories bring a wide smile on my face and wish that I never got older !!! Back to the Karnataka Sangha School(T.Nagar. thats where my T.I.M.E coaching happens), where I was a stranger to everyone around. The watchman, the aaya and to the hundreds of wanna-be IIM-ites.

Not knowing where to go from the entrance and as a perfect tamilian of not liking to ask anyone else too (!!) was giving a thought of what i should do. And then there came a good-looking gal wearing a t-shirt with a wordlist printed on it. Not to waste any more time, i started going through the wordlist, [:)] and followed her. After finding that she belongs to a senior batch, i found that my classroom was C11. After searching the whole building(even went to the terrace not knowing that there were only 2 floors), found that the class room was actually G1 and not C11.

Settled in the Vth standard classroom(last bench again!) and waited for the staff to come. A small built guy,looked like he was a teacher for the XIth Math teacher, came in and introduced himself as Murali. Everyone in the class stood up !! Found utterly weird to me .. In the company you never do such things, but almost everyone in the room were college students. So that explains it all.

On the big black board, he wrote 'Simple Equations' wrote the following

2x=8

3y=9

5z=20

"Can someone tell me whats the value of x,y,z ?" The first question stunned me completely. Is it for this ive paid 16k !!! Everyone else in the room were perplexed like me, and no one was sure whether to answer him or not. With no one ready to answer such a difficult set of questions, Mr. Murali taught us "Take the 2 onto the right side.. What ll you get?? Its 8/2 = 4. Hence x=4". So similarly you get y=(9/3)=3 and z=(20/5)=4 .. Thought he was going a little overboard. Everyone in the room were atleast Engineers and dont they know this !!

Then comes the second difficult question

if x=1, y=1 what is x+2y ?

I thought this class was gonna be a total waste of time and even thought of doing something useful back home like watching Isaiaruvi and Sun Music. !!

But after sometime I found that he was trying to gauge the level of Math knowledge of the class and I found he was quite interesting !! He gave some really cool and complicated problems and the class was on the whole interesting. Couple of problems were really a problem to me.

At the end of the class, he asked everyone of us to introduce themselves. And the whole class was a bunch of engineering students and a guy from TCS. As I was sitting in the last bench, I was the last one to introduce. I told "Sridhar. Working for MindTree Limited". The whole class(including Mr.Murali) went like "Ooooh.. MindTree uh.. !! "

The whole hush meant something like "He is working with MindTree. So he is sure to get into an IIM !! "

"Dei. MindTree nalla company thaan !! Athukum ithukum enna da sammantham!!.Sathyama puriyala. Think I should have told i m working for Kekkaran Bekkaran Company " !!

It's the second day today and the expectations from me have already gone sky high !! Don't know what's gonna happen !! :(

The song that made me cry !!

Having updated my SE with a lil of old-cum-favorite Tamil songs, i knew i was gonna ve a good time in the 2 hr train journey (how many times i am gonna say "2 hr train journey".!! But i feel good when i vent out my frustration) And being an ARR maniac i was happy being partial to load most of ARRs old collection.  I had no idea of what I am copying on to my mobile. Just loaded it til my windows warned me of "no more memory space"

Next day evening, when I was on the way back home, a song started to play with light drum beats in the background.. I was not sure of what song it was and I wanted to keep the surprise till i actually found it.. And then the voice of MSV kicked off the song.. yeah ! most of you, you might have guessed it rite.. It was 'vidai kodu engal naade'  from Kannathil muthamitaal.. I've not heard this song for a long time, in fact couldnt think off when i heard it last.. so i just left the song continue.. but what was actually there was simply unbelievable.. 

The lyrics of the song was so mesmerizing and i had no option but to leave this song in loop for atleast 10 times.. !!  The song which absolutely suited the present Srilankan scenario made me emotionally attach myself without my conscience. The line that brought tears was this

"Kann thirantha desam ange, kann moodum desam inge !! "

The voice of MSV and the magic of ARR(leaving the bgm as simple as possible and letting the lyric do the work)  was at its best.

Many of my frnds(Illayaraja maniacs of course) ve told me that ARR doesnt give classic hits as Illayaraja.. And for all those guys, this one song is the answer.. This song, exactly of 6 mins is an absolute pleasure to listen.. 

PS  : When I started thinking off writing this as a post,  I dint want to write about this, as I've already written a post on the SL scene. But I felt this was a post that i  was emotionally attached to and so continued with the same

PPS : Guys, if you've not listened to it for a long time, please give a try now.. its on my "must-hear" list

Cheers !!! 

Listening to IPL ..

It was this time of last year when cricket just stormed to every nook and corner of India. TV showrooms were mobbed, people had their a** glued to their sofa, SET MAX enjoyed a plump of profit, actors made their publicity stunt even on the stadium. But this year.. ??? Nah, Mr. Lalit Modi.. Though the tournament is wide open, and a series of good cricket is about to follow. there is the X-factor that's missing out this year. Probably the crowd in the stadium .?? May be.. 

Consider the commentary in this year's IPL.. Hilarious.. What comedy.. And you've even Kishan Kahaniyan(KK) (Ravi Shastri.. impressed by FakeIPLPlayer :) ) blabbering.. Yesterday's match between Chennai and Jaipur. KK was there at the toss and as usual started yelling with the mike !! This is what he said, if i could remember correctly.. "Kimberley, are you ready for yet another fascinating game of cricket".. (No response from the crowd, and the camera man himself had to shout a big 'yes').. "So, we've Javagal Srinath, the match refree and we have the two captains.. MS Dhoni of the Chennai Super Kings and Shane Warne of the 'Kings Royals of Rajasthan' " .. WTF .. You are on air and you make a cent percent blunder with the Team name of Rajasthan Royals !!  I couldnt stop laughing.. Even Shane Warne and MSD had a good chuckle.

Then we've the Sandy Mandy Babe(Mandira Bedi, again impressed by FakeIPLPlayer :) ) with a player of a team who lost the toss. (Couldnt gather which team and who the player was).. Her question "Are you happy that your team lost the toss " ..  What !! :) who would be happy losing a toss. The player was out of the team and the best question comes on now .. "Are you happy that you are not in the team ".. Give me some break. Got to jot down all these, but it keeps on coming and I'm losing track of them..  Who would not agree to sit in the bench and get paid a hefty sum. !!. She is distracting the viewers from these stupid questions by showing her off .... So the next time you see her dressed up like that, dont fall in her trap but be ready for some great comedy questions.. 

Then you've Ranjit Fernando,.. Yesterday's match between Punjab and Hyderabad. Jayawardene was playing well.. and you know what his commentary would've been.. Even a mere push to long-on at 30Kph for a single is hyped as if he has hit six sixers in one over. And the commentary ---> "Thats a beautiful, elegant,classic shot on the front foot and the ball races to the long-on who desperately tries to stop the ball ".. Even before he completes the word "classic" the bowler would've been ready for the next ball.. 

Lakshman SivaRamakrishnan.. How can I forget him.. I think even if he is in the commentary box, he used to watch it on TV.. There would be a fielder at third man and the batsman would ve nudget it down for a single, and as soon as the batsman strikes the ball "thats a brilliant shot for a boundary.. " and when he sees third man fielding at it, he would change.. "but there is a fielder at third man and thats smart captaincy. it would ve been four if he has not been there ".. 

As if no one knows that if there is no fielder, it would reach the boundary. 

With Harsha Bhogle coming up, there could be some respite to the appalling commentary.. But let's see. With Rameez Raja coming up, we've got a Pakistan flavor to the tournament. Have to chk out what he's gonna tell.. Throw in Aamir Sohail into this team and the commentary would rock .. !! 

I think Set Max made a smart move by buying all of them for a mere Rs. 10,000 for the whole tournament !!! 

@guys : Check this out.. Absolute Comedy .. http://content.cricinfo.com/iplpage2/content/site/iplpage2/hearhear.html

Cheers !!

"T.Nagar, SriLanka"

how many "yet another day" posts i m gonna write. !! i myself have got no idea. its been pretty boring as always and to work on a saturday was even boring. the heat in chennai is unbearable. 35+ deg cel always..( from morning 6 am to midnight. )

was just catching up some action with "The Big Fight" on NDTV. Topic: SriLanka issue. I hardly have any idea of the history of the tamil's sufferings in this emerald island(thou there was a lil' bit of an eye-opener by means of 'Kannathil muththamitaal'), but to see the papers with headlines "6,500 civilians killed in the last 3 months" was something that pissed me off. whether it is tamils or kannadigas or sikhs, these kind of killings need to be STOPPED.its a difficult debate to come up with a conclusion on who is responsible for all these, but i feel the govt could ve acted better with approaching this issue. A truly emotional one and these ****ing political parties have made it into a political issue and started begging for votes. *****rds !!! i m not in support of LTTE or the SL military, but if its the LTTE behind all these there is no question of destroying them completely without a trace. but if its the SL military who are on the wrong side of these ?? .... No answers !! 

Back home:

Its been close to 3 months since i moved to this so-called place called "THE T.Nagar". and for the last 3 months(or should i call it the 'Quarter' !! ) ve tortured with the noise here. living in one of the porchest areas in chennai(Adyar) for more than 8 years, it was a hard job to mentally adjust myself to this place. but truly this place really sucks.. Noise, Noise, Noises.!! People here have a 

high-decible voice and they scream for almost everything. and my family too have increased the voice level too.. to speak to my mom in the next room, i should shout at my throat to atleast have her attention !! More than the noise, the crowd that comes over here, !!  OMG !! Unbelievable !!.. and to walk thru 'the most crowded streets in the world' (wat else, Ranganathan street) daily is no joke. my first day to office from T.Nagar happened like this. 

6:00AM.. Got up, dressed neatly, polished the shoes(a big mistake ?) and stepped in the Ranganathan street. then a young north-indian guy stamped right on my feet. ..! ! WTF man !! took 5 mins for me to polish and this bloody guy took a micro-second to spoil tat 5 min effort .. and u no wat i asked 'Sorry'.. never knew why.. Professionalism?? u could call it like that. and it was that day i decided, that i shd never polish my shoes and have successfully kept my promise till date.. then i started to play a game of how many people i stamp on every day. it used to be in the negative during my early days, which typically means ppl stamp on my feet more than i do on them.. but for the past few weeks i m improving and i m becoming a 'seasoned stamper' !!!!! 

Planning to start a summer coaching camp on that. Any takers ?

Will be right back soon.!

Cheers !! 

World dance to his beat !!

Its yet another post about this music maestro A R Rahman. What a moment it was when he got the most coveted Oscar awards. I'm speechless. Lot has been said about Slumdog Millionaire(SM). Whether its a movie that won accolades by showing the darker side of India to the not-so-familiar west audience or is it Rahman's best ever album or does it deserved to get hyped by the media of this magnitude. what ever it is or whatever sides you take, its simply an undeniable point to praise what SM has done to India. 3 Oscars and the mumbai slum kids walking down the red carpet along with Brangelina, Kate Winslet, Steven Spielberg . Aren't these enuf to put an end to all your pessimistic questions?

SM has definitely shown the poor side of India. So what.. Isnt that the truth? So why do we feel so hard to digest it. But as Rahman told on the stage, the movie was all about 'Hope' and with the western audience so crazy about that word (thanks to Obama) this movie was really meant to be there. 

But what a week it has been for the ARR and particularly to the Indian Music Industry. Yes there have been so many composers better than ARR. My dad tells me Mohd. Rafi was the best, my mom chooses Illayaraja and i pick ARR. One thing that i noticed when ARR was on stage was the humbleness and the kind of calm and composure (thankfully he dint cry.) he displayed holding the 2 oscars was simply out of the world. (Oru intra-department level college competition la fake panni jeyichaale naanga elaam antha alavuku aatam poduvom) And the best of his short speech came when he uttered the word 'elaa pugazhum oruvanuke'. I was on heaven. It's so beautiful to hear someone to spk in tamil when the whole world is watching and I had goosebumps all over. 

ARR was shrewd enuf to include hindi also in his speech to make sure that the so-called 24*7 news channels dont go ga-ga over it and organize shows such as 'Why A R Rahman spoke only in Tamil but not Hindi during the Oscars' with some less-known celebrities joining from Chennai and Mumbai.

yes. the award has come off late for him. but i feel its good for him and for all of us. if he had been awarded Oscars long ago, he might have concentrated more on his hollywood projects and there by we might have missed some of his best compositions.. (jashne bahara for e.g)

All said I'm very excited for him. Looking forward to the kind of celebration and welcome he is gonna get coming over here.

Way to go ARR !!!!

PS:BTW does anyone know what's his next project ? is it 'Sultan-the warrior?' 

Delhi 6 - A disappointment for a A R Rahman fan

After the stupendous success of RDB, Rakesh OmPrakash Mehra(ROM) is back with his latest 'Masakali' Dellhi 6. The theme of the movie is not something extraordinary. Its what we have seen in a lot of Indian movies. Probably a mix of Anbe Sivam's 'You are the God' theme and Bombay's 'Muslim- Hindu culture terrorism'. 

Roshan comes from America with his grandma so that she can spend the final leg of her life in the Indian soil. He comes here and as any other foreigner feels the difference the moment he lands  in the Delhi airport. He watches the news channel in the airport telecasting a Breaking News of a 'Monkey man running amok in Chandi Chowk'. This Monkey(Kala Bandher) episode doesnt stop there. You believe it or not, that's the heart of the story !!!! !!! 

He meets up with Sonam Kapoor who wants to be the next indian idol. How this 'Kala Bandher' creates a cultural divide between the muslims and the hindus and how Abhishek ends the  whole episode (you guessed it right with a good emoting dialogue in the climax. C

mon thats how it should be at the climax.)  and joins with Sonam Kapoor forms the story. 

Now for some review from my side. Sonam Kapoor has very less to do in Delhi-6. Looks great in some scenes especially the Masakalli Number. She is gorgeous except for a little over-sized nose. Abhishek as usual carries him well through out the movie, but after seeing his performance in 'Dostana' I think I expected a bit more from him. The other characters , Rishi Kapoor, Atul kulkarni have done well as they've very little to do.

But .. But.. But.. All these said there are in fact a lot of disappointments, particularly for people like me who dont understand Hindi fully but still go for a Hindi movie because of one man called 'A R Rahman'. Would you believe of all the tracks in the album only 3 songs where in full in the movie. My personal favourite 'Rehna Tu' was just for over one minute. !!! Or the title track 'Delhi 6' sung by Blaaze and Tanvi was also for just over a  minute. With some of the best songs composed by Rahman (I would rate this much better than the oscar nominated SlumDog Millionaire) in recent times, its really unfair to cut short these songs.  But the good thing was 'Masakalli' was there in full. A lot has been said about this song, but its my turn to tell it. What lyrics, what singing and mainly what kind of music by the genius. Particularly the humming that starts off the song is mind-blowing. Its very unique. I dont know if any of you have noticed this, in the last stanza of the song there is a sound very similar to the sound that comes when someone pings u in gtalk. Everytime i hear that, i would check whether someone had pinged me !!!!!! Believe me i'm nt exaggerating. As I said all the songs are trimmed and you've almost 6 songs in the first half(including Masakalli).  

The next most disappointing was the number of minutes given for the 'Ramayan' drama tat was staged. That was pretty too much. I almost felt like watching the full 'Ramayan' serial. the editor could have included some songs for those scenes.  All said the first half of the movie is quite boring but the second half is ok..

So would give **1/2 out of 5 for 'Delhi 6'. Dont go with high expectations and come out with satisfaction.

It's all because of Andhra Mess !!! :(

After having a ton of white rice and curd at the Andhra Mess, its almost an impossible task to sit down, think of y ur code is not working. But stil thats my situation here.. I suddenly forget what is the difference <> the If.. else and For Each loops.. The code i've written seems to be the most ugliest piece of code u would ever c.. i myself can't understand what those 100 such loops are doing in that function(now that's Maintainablity... thank God, its working but.)

My eyelids are almost shut, but the camera just above my head keeps me awake. It's really difficult to sleep when u know someone is grabbing a video of you sleeping, you know... i dont know what they're gonna do with that video... probably upload it in YouTube and put some slides like 'Software Engineer caught sleeping in office'..!!Then, the URL just spreads like the BushFires in Australia and will finally find a place in your office mail inbox i guess.. (Hope you all see me soon there)

I've 5 issues to fix today and I know I'm not gonna finish it off in anytime soon.. Coding while sleeping may end up leading to more issues. So y take chances.. So right now am gonna sleep off with my Visual Studio running in the debugging mode(thats the way to indirectly tell someone that you are really WORKING..)

Good Night all..