Living in the present.

Here is a watch that only tells you about the present, and not about the future or the past....hmmm...maybe there's a philosophy in there somewhere !

Original link via Dustbury.

Masters of the game...

Natarjan has a wonderful post about the recent controversy over doubts about Sachin Tendulkar's abilities...

Some excerpts...

Tendulkar went through a lean trot 2002-03 against New Zealand and Australia when a stretch of 12 innings yielded just 209 runs. But he silenced his critics with successive innings (of 44, 241*, 60* against Australia and 194* vs Pakistan at Multan). Then came another run-famine in which he could score just 136 from 10 innings. Tendulkar came out of that spell with an unbeaten double hundred against Bangladesh and followed it with consecutive scores of 94, 52, 52 and 41 against Pakistan. There’s absolutely no doubt that the old consistency and authority are missing, but there is no need for us to become prophets of doom. Is there anybody remotely close - even with his diminished abilities - to replace him? His highest Test average was 59.17 (in his 93rd match), it’s now 56.14 after 129 outings. His top average in ODIs was 45.35 (324th game); after 35 more ODIs, his average now stands at 44.19.

Let’s compare Tendulkar’s position with Matthew Hayden and Adam Gilchrist. Hayden’s Test average had plummeted from 58.97 in 2004 to 51.31 by the end of the fourth Ashes Test at Trent Bridge last year. But Australia kept faith with Hayden for the final Test. The burly opener, who drew comparisons with Sir Don Bradman not long back, began another hot streak with scores of 138, 0*, 111, 77, 37, 118, 110, 46, 47, 87*. Gilchrist’s Test average plummeted from a 61.48 in 2004 to sub-50 last year. The Australian selectors, who do not hesitate in asking their greats to leave when they feel it’s time to leave, have persisted with Gilchrist. Players like Tendulkar, Hayden and Gilchrist are a class apart and deserve special treatment. Remember: Form is temporary, class is permanent.

The last line, though cliched, still rings true...especially when discussing someone of the calibre of Sachin Tendulkar...

Also, those of us that watched the recent game against Pakistan, had absolutely no doubt that the Sachin of old is back...after a sedate start - a maiden or two, tied down by Mohammed Asif, he decided to cut loose after Virender Sehwag had plundered a quick fifty. Then came the classic, over-the-top shots and the lazy drives and flicks of the pads and the wonderful murder that only Sachin can implement...seems like he had taken a nap for a short while and decided to wake up and continue where he left of before all these characters started baying for his blood...I am sure that the opposition, including Pakistan and England (who have made some noises of their own) would be getting extremely worried right now...and be wondering, as always has been the case for the last 16 years or so in international cricket, as to how one can handle Sachin Tendulkar...if such a concept exists !

China claims America...

Well, something that we have all known for a while now - that the Chinese own the Americas...at least financially it seems that will be the case...is now being proved historically.

Apparently a Chinese expeditition led by a Muslim eunuch-warrior from China’s 15th-century Ming dynasty named Zheng He circumnavigated the world and discovered America nearly a century before Ferdinand Magellan and Christopher Columbus !

Here is an interesting question from the above article...

“How have professional historians for so long adopted the fairy story that Christopher Columbus discovered America, when they’ve all known Columbus had a chart — a map showing him the way to the Americas?"

Apparently Zheng's lost capital was in Newfoundland...

Another interesting fact...

The native American Indian people have substantial and statistically significant East Asian — Chinese — mixture in their genes, sometimes up to 20 per cent, 30 per cent and even 40 per cent.

Well...wonder when the Chinese will stake a claim for the land that rightfully belongs to them !

Proud dad...

Let's be honest...I am not a great fan of Shah Rukh Khan's movies...especially post DDLJ...probably the only movies that I liked since DDLJ, were Swades and Main Hoon Na...but that is another story altogether...

What I found interesting was this story...he found time and took the effort to take part in his son's school's sports competition, and not jut take part, but won !

Here is an interesting excerpt...

If you had been a young father at this school sporting event today, you might not have felt inclined to clap very hard.

The announcer was businesslike: “Mr S. Khan, father of Aryan Khan, please come to the podium.”

A 40-year-old wearing a grin familiar to millions stepped proudly forward to receive his medal.

Superstar Shahrukh Khan had just pocketed the gold at the 100-metre sprint for parents at his child’s school sports meet.

And the best part about this article was...

And here’s where Munim and the other young fathers — worrying how to live up to expectations at home from now on — have reason to feel a bit hard done by.

The boy who came second to Aryan was named Arjun Tendulkar.

Battle of the stars - at a different level !

Left vs Right...

When a certain topic came up, about the so-called American "right" having made a statement that was basically anti-Indian, one of our coterie of friends remained silent...of course, him being a staunch supporter of the American right in all issues, he refused to comment on this, 'cos he was Indian as well, and possibly couldn't make sense of what would be a correct response. I think another friend in the same group, hit the nail on the head...

As with the practitioners of most extremist, conservative ideologies, our silent friend only voices his opinion when the facts support his argument, thus providing a positive reinforcement, and basically ignores any other facts/arguments...like they never existed...even if they plainly indicate the sad causes that they so vehemently support.

Well, it seems that others agree as well, as we see in this post by Ann Althouse. Here is an interesting excerpt...

In the year that I've been blogging I've taken a lot of different positions, some left and some right. What I've noticed, over and over, is that the bloggers on the right link to you when they agree and ignore the disagreements, and the bloggers on the left link only for the things they disagree with, to denounce you with short posts saying you're evil/stupid/crazy, and don't even seem to notice all the times you've written posts that take their side.

Original link via Instapundit.

Movie Review : Hazaron Khwahishein Aisi...

[ Ok Sarat, you have forced my hand...I have been planning this for god knows how long, but been putting it off, 'cos I thought it might be drain me, mentally, to analyze this movie...but now that you have gone ahead and put up your thoughts on it, I shall relent and put up mine ! (Of course, I just took the liberty of "borrowing" the Mirza Ghalib couplet from your blog...while it is freely available online...I was just too lazy to search.)

Spoiler warning: although not much that can be a spoiler in this movie, as everyone probably goes away with a different thought, each time...I usually dislike talking about movie/book endings but somehow my thoughts on this movie would be incomplete and left wanting unless I can talk about it completely...and while I may delve into detailed story-telling at times...it usually is to make a point...maybe not immediately, but ultimately...so, have patience and read at your own risk ! ]

What can I say about Hazaron Khwahishein Aisi ("a thousand desires")? Should I shower Sudhir Mishra with laurels for making a movie that many consider one of the best movies to come out of "bollywood" in a long time ? Did he really intend to capture the angst of youth, the hypocrisy of the times, the moral, ethical and personal characterisations of his protagonists, or were they just side-effects of a brilliant script ? Of course, I am getting way ahead over here...

What is the movie about ? Hmmm....I have different answers, depending on who you are...

• If you have not seen the movie : Well, the movie is about a time in our history that some call shameful and some call historic....the emergency. It intersperses the lives of three characters from varied backgrounds, with varied concepts of life, success, ethics and most importantly ideologies. The movie makes subtle political and social statements, while all the time it keeps you gripped with the events in the lives of these three people...all in all, it could be called a political movie, a movie about personal and social convictions and a work of art...
• If you have seen the movie or have read the above paragraph : Hazaron Khwahishein Aisi is a story of three people at a certain point of time in Indian history. Simple. Nothing more can be said.
  

Siddharth Tyabji (portrated by Kay Kay Menon), is the son of a wealthy judge, who starts out in the movie as an idealist, social reformist, who thinks he can change the world we live in...


Geeta Rao (portrayed by Chitrangadha Singh) ,starts out as a middle-class, English-educated south-Indian girl, who doesn't care much for ideologies or political situations, except for the fact that she is deeply in love with Siddharth.


Vikram (portrayed by Shiney Ahuja) is in my opinion the most interesting character of all...he is the son of an impoverished Gandhian, but he turns out to be of the practical bent of mind...all that he cares about is advancement in life and making money, without as much as a bother about how it gets done...he can be called a practicalist. But what brings him into the mix, is his unrequited love for Geeta !

[ Hold on, you scream...is that what all of this comes down to ? A love-trilogy set in a political environment that goes bad ? A rehash of Haasil ? While that in itself is another interesting movie, the answer is a frank NO ! ]

Siddharth jumps right into his social reform mode by indulging in cleaning up the ills of the caste system in rural Bihar...Geeta gets into a farce of a marriage but is shown throwing social mores to the wind when she travels to the jungles for secret rendezevous with her lover...Vikram on the other hand, stays steadfast in his convictions about making money and rising in the world, all the while carrying a flame for Geeta. What I find interesting about the Vikram character, is his will to succeed at all costs...he is shown to start off by being friendly with the head honchos (Randhir Singh character) of the youth congress...then he doesn't mind using the name and family connections of Siddarth (calling himself a friend of Siddharth) to set up a meeting with the Finance minister, while in reality he detests Siddarth's card-carrying philosophies (this scene, though very important in my opinion, can almost be missed and mistaken as being out of place, if one isn't paying attention)...all the while though, he seems to be the only one who sticks by his convictions...that of personal gain. and believe it or not...sentiment...he continues to support his friend Randhir Singh, albeit secretly, even when he switches parties and loyalties.

Some of the best parts about the movie are the subtle, yet strong statements made in the background....they can almost be missed or even dismissed if one is not paying attention, or watching the movie for the first time...statements in the form of words, images, background, attire, characterisation, etc. -- statements about some of the most revered and notorious people to have graced the spectrum of Indian political history. The brilliance of the script actually lies in these details.

The ending...what can one say about the ending...let me summarise about what happens to the main three...

Siddharth : recognizes the futility and error of his ideological ways and abandons his "social" causes and decides to go to England to study medicine...

Geeta : although she had started out just tagging along with Siddarth, becomes the person with a real social conviction, and decides to stay on and help reform the rural coutryside...

Vikram : In a fit of what some of us might describe as stupid sentimentality, especially for Geeta's feelings...decides to personally take it upon himself to rescue Siddharth, and ends up being beaten to an inch of his life by some country hicks posing as cops, and becomes an invalid...unable to probably even carry a single train of thought...and Geeta ends up caring for him !

Noone of them ends up as he/she started...this probably shows us the vagaries of life...one cannot hang onto a single cause for life...especially when the cause might be a misguided one. and love and respect are perhaps fleeting, ephemeral feelings...the movie certainly has dark undertones...with reality landing on the viewers with in crushing waves...as is evident in one disturbing scene where Vikram gets some bad treatment by the cops, or the sight of the bodies of lower-caste men hanging from a tree, while the upper-caste folks who killed them sit around the tree and discuss a movie plot...

Each time I watch the movie, I seem to gather a new insight - about people, about politics, about society, about personal convictions, about life in India itself...

So you see why I decided to stick with...

"it's a story about three people at a certain point of time in Indian history. Simple. Nothing more can be said."

That's what it really is after all...perhaps I can add that it could be the story of the coming of age of the the first generation born in an independant India.

To quote Mirza Ghalib (who's couplet gives the movie its title)...

"Hazaaron khwahishein aisi
ki har khwahish pe dum nikle
Bahut nikle mere armaan
lekin phir bhi kam nikle"

Well...read Sarat's interpretation of it too...interesting to say the least.

Future of newspapers...

Joseph Epstein writes about the future of newspapers...

Some interesting excerpts...

To begin with familiar facts, statistics on readership have been pointing downward, significantly downward, for some time now. Four-fifths of Americans once read newspapers; today, apparently fewer than half do. Among adults, in the decade 1990-2000, daily readership fell from 52.6 percent to 37.5 percent. Among the young, things are much worse: in one study, only 19 percent of those between the ages of eighteen and thirty-four reported consulting a daily paper, and only 9 percent trusted the information purveyed there; a mere 8 percent found newspapers helpful, while 4 percent thought them entertaining.

The sad part, is that many newspapers are taking the route of tabloids ("compact" rather), by reducing column width and compromising on the content...

This bleeding phenomenon is not restricted to the United States, and no bets should be placed on the likely success of steps taken by papers to stanch the flow. The Wall Street Journal, in an effort to save money on production costs, is trimming the width of its pages, from 15 to 12 inches. In England, the once venerable Guardian, in a mad scramble to retain its older readers and find younger ones, has radically redesigned itself by becoming smaller. London’s Independant has gone tabloid, and so has the once revered Times, its publisher preferring the euphemism “compact.”

Hello pot, crow here...you're black !

Apparently Inzamam Ul Haq has termed his dismissal in the first ODI at Peshawar as "unsportsmanlike" and "against the spirit of the game" !

Moin Khan, in resplendant fashion, lashes out against Rahul Dravid on the issue...

Just a couple of quick questions...

• Shoaib Akhtar's throwing action (notice, not bowling...he does not bowl...only throws - it is clearly evident to anyone who watched the ultra slow motion feeds on television) is within the spirit and the laws of the game ?
• Imran Khan and co's ball-tampering was within the laws of the game ?

At least the Indian team did what they had to do, within the laws of the game...the above instances are really illegal...what say Mr. Moin Khan and Inzy ?

Update : Cricinfo's readers seem to have given Inzy a pasting for his comments...and this incident was also a very defining moment in cricket "history", remembered by one of the readers of Cricinfo...

Unsportsmanlike, Inzamam says, "deplorable" Moin Khan adds. Where was their good sense when they joined the entire Pakistan Team in unison and with full throated ease along with their captain Wasim Akram to appeal against Sachin Tendulkar in the '99 Test at Calcutta when he collided with Shoaib in the second innings after grounding his bat. Sachin was not out then according to both the law and spirit of the game, whereas Inzamam was quite a few paces out of the crease and had a good chance of getting run out if he hadn't patted the ball with his bat.

"Democracy" !

An interesting cartoon in the Washington Post's daily cartoons list, about Google.

"Don't be evil", eh ?

Sad loss for Bangalore...

Wing Commander G R Mulky, co-founder of the Karnataka Quizzing Association (KQA), passed away on Feb 4th, 2006. He was fondly referred to as 'Wingco' by Bangalore quizzers, most of whom had come to accept him as a permanent presence at Bangalore's premier quizzing venues.

As one comment on his obituary points out...

When Chitragupta meets him, the questioner will be Wingco!

How apt...how very, very apt...Rest in Peace, Sir !

Update : The Mythic Society, where quite a few KQA quizzes were held...and place of fond memories...
Above photograph from Quizfan's blog.

A god send...

...to beer lovers !

Indian history...

Varnam now hosts a new blog about Indian history, titled The Palm Leaf.

Here is an interesting post about the Aryan invasion theory and other historical "facts".

Varnam also has a post about Mahatma Gandhi's last words, titled the Rashomon effect.

Dogs chasing cars...

Scott Adams has an interesting post on his Dilbert Blog, about the Hamas victory in Palestine.

Here is the post...

You know the old joke about the dog that chases cars – “What would he do if he caught one?” I was reminded of that when I read that Hamas won an election victory. I imagine a room full of Hamas leaders looking at each other behind closed doors and saying, “Oh crap, we won.”

And I imagine the Israeli leaders sitting around behind closed doors and saying, “It just got a lot easier to find the people we want to kill.”

I have to think it will be difficult for Hamas to reconcile the whole “destroy Israel” platform with “We’ll all be at the Parliament building at noon talking about how to do it.”

I’m writing this on Thursday the 26th. I predict that Hamas will start softening their position by the time you read this. Or maybe they’ll wait a few weeks just to make it seem like they thought about it. But it’ll happen.

Now, I'm just wondering, if the left front felt the same way, when they won as many seats as they did in India's parliamentary election the last time round. Even they were surprised when they won, and were probably wondering what it is that they could do now...I guess even as they joined the UPA government, their ideologies (or the pathetic excuse that passes for it) was diluted...the noise made by them on the various programmes and ideas of the government seems muted...I guess it is with a sense of shame that one can be anti-establishment and revolutionary, when one is the establishment !

English Kabuliwala...jolly good !

Sir Rob Young, former British High Commissioner to India, is to potray the role of the much-loved Pathan from the Tagore classic, "Kabuliwala" !

Permanent Devotee Number !

Devotees of Lord Ganesha, at the famed Siddhivinayak temple in Bombay, will now be able to avoid long serpentine queues and be able to get a darshan, after registering electronically-stored fingerprint impressions and acquiring a permanent devotee number (PDN) !

An exceprt...

Under the Siddhivinayak scheme, a devotee is expected to get his finger prints scanned and register with the temple trust. The system will not give any room for discrimination between the general public and a VIP.

Interesting...as for the non-discrimination part, we shall have to wait and watch...

China teaches India...

In light of the strike called by the "leftist" airport unions, this article in the Indian Express explains as to how these "comrades" can learn from the Chinese model, where aggressive schemes have been launched to modernise and even privatise airports.

India teaching China ?

Apparently India can teach China lessons in manufacturing ! Here is an interesting snippet from the article...

With few exceptions, the world-class manufacturing facilities for which China is famous are products of FDI, not of indigenous Chinese companies. Yes, “Made in China” labels are still more ubiquitous than “Made in India” ones; but what is made in China is not necessarily made by China. Soon, “Made in India” will be synonymous with “Made by India” and Indians will not just get the wage benefits of globalisation but will also keep the profits - unlike so many cases in China.