And the Awards goes to…Part II

Cricketer of the year

Many contenders across the world - Ponting hitting more than a 1500 runs, Sachin hitting his 35th ton, Shane Warne taking a record number of wickets, Lara becoming the highest run-getter in tests, Dhoni making a great debut, Flintoff for a fantastic year et al. But the award goes to RD, Rahul Dravid, the man lead the country with imagination and was once again consistent in the ODI as well as Tests. He is one player, who has been asked to open, stabilize the middle-order and even keep wickets for the team when the need arose. A man who has so far has had no controversy in life and the only Indian featuring in the A to Z of cricket in the BBC website. Yes D is for Dravid.

Maximum benefit before retirement award for the year

Well Amitabh Bachchan seemed to be all over the place. Every month he had a release, if not in the main role he will make a cameo and make his part felt. If you thought the big-screen was his forte, well he was there in KBC 2 and every other ad from pen to suiting to chyawanprash. He even made headlines for 2 continuous weeks when he was sick. The newspapers in Mumbai had him all over the front page tracking his illness and recovery. God help journalism in this country.

Moral Policing of the year

I would give it to Deputy CM of Maharashtra for closing down the dance bars in Mumbai and making thousands of girls who were engaged in that profession jobless. The effect of that decision trickles down further, thousands of men who were working as waiters and cooks in these bars, another thousand rickshaw and taxi drivers who used to get maximum customers during the 1AM to 4 AM time are all jobless or looking at a lower income. Its also common news that these gals who were in this profession have moved to newer cities and have taken for prostitution. A close second would be the people of Tamil Nadu for the anti Khushboo campaign!

To be continued...

As the fog clears...

The fog at Delhi Airport, created enough and more problems for me and I am sure the rest of us, who were stuck there in Delhi Airport during those fateful days. But does that mean that a naturally recurring phenomenon like fog can hold the capital to a standstill? Wont businessmen, tourists and other people be held ransom to the fog? Can airlines like Deccan, Spice and other just cancel the flights and throw carefully prepared Xmas and New Year plans out of the window for thousands of people.

Well the answer is a big NO. There were solutions to the ongoing problem at Delhi or for that matter any airport in India having trouble with fog. If only a select few pilots of our own private airlines be trained in a technology called Instrument Landing System (ILS), our pilots would be capable of landing in fog and unclear conditions. Only the Indian Airlines has taken the pain to train a good number of their pilots, why wouldn’t they do that, money is being paid by our government. The training is a costly one, as it comes at a price of 10 Lakhs per pilot. Well this is an investment that the private airlines don’t want to take as they are scared that once the pilot is trained in that, then the other airlines will poach him/her.

Well if you are a no frills airline like Deccan, then I am sure they will not invest in equipping their pilots and rather cancel flights left right and center. I think it is left to the Govt. of India to make it compulsory that, you have to train atleast 5 pilots per airline so that the poaching part which is very common in the airline industry doesn’t happen.

Train your pilots or do not fly the Delhi route during December – January. It is better to stay at home and not plan a trip, than plan and spoil the fun.

~sujith

And the Awards goes to…Part I

Well it is that time of the year when you look back and say these were the best and worst of the lot. I am making a personal list of the best and worst for the year of the incidents that happened in India. Official disclaimers apply.

Burst of the year

Goes to the cloudburst on July 26th at Mumbai. How it rained that weekend in Mumbai. Initially it was fun to see so much of water. Then we heard news that the trains in Central and Western Line had been stopped due to excessive rains. I was having coffee at the coffee bay in my office when we happened to look out of the window to see cars and vans shaking in the winds and water pouring like never before. That convinced me to stay over at the office and I am telling you I am glad I did that. Mumbai was drowned but the attitude and the spirit of the people in the city floated to survive.

Change of State of the year

Happened in a state called Bihar. Laloo Prasad Yadav fooled all the people of the state and the country for 15 long years. The bluff was finally called by the same people who voted him to power. It should go as the single most important change in the political history of Bihar. Nitish Kumar, the new CM has a hell of a job in getting the state back to the levels of its counterparts. Hope he wins the battles and wars, in cleansing the state of its backwardness.

Flair in the Air of the year

Kingfisher Airlines is voted as the airline of the year for the kind of service it provided to the customer. It started defining new trends and standards in the industry. In-flight entertainment wrote new chapters on the Indian sky. The year saw the sprouting of a number of airlines, flying to cities which I never knew had an airport in the first place. India started traveling like crazy. To give an example, if your flight from Delhi to Bangalore got cancelled on the 24th of December (mine almost did), then the next one to Bangalore is on the 28th. The only other alternative for you would be to take a unreserved ticket in a train coz the trains are also completely booked atleast a month in advance.

Buying your customer award of the year

Goes to the Times of India for their new tabloid in Mumbai, called Mumbai Mirror. With competition catching up with them in the form of DNA and HT, they decided to eat into the Mid-day market by launching Mumbai Mirror. And how do they make people buy their newspaper, well if you are caught with the paper by the company sales people, you get a gift. And this came with the regular TOI free for the first couple of months. How people used to queue up in front of the Mirror sales people in the stations to get their gift, before hopping into the trains.

Year end publication of the year

India Today pips Outlook and the Week to this, with an anniversary issue that tracks their 30 long years in the media. Well it has a nice chronology of events on an year on year basis. Makes for a lot of interesting read. India Today has been there and done it all till the last 10 years, when Outlook came and toppled them in their own territory.

Footballer of the year

There is no doubt in anyone’s mind on this award. Ronaldinho is miles ahead of any active footballer, yes even Zidane, when it comes to displaying footballing skills on the field in the 90 minutes, being creative in his passing, scoring goals dribbling past a pack of defenders and the goalie or when it comes to being his modest self when accepting contracts with clubs. The FIFA Footballer of the year for the second time, European footballer of the year, winning hands down this time. He is one player, whom you would want to watch staying awake late in the night. Clubs and countries beware, he is getting better by the day…

Change in screen award of the year (Bollywood)

Goes to all the fresh ideas that were tried out by Bollywood this year. Starting with Iqbal, a Nagesh Kukoonoor movie, that moved everyone who heard the voice of the character. Movies like Yahaan, Sehar, Sarkar that were different from the usual chocolate love affair genre. Realistic movies, like Apaharan impressed the critic as well as the common viewer. And the hindi actor who stood out was of course the junior AB.

The rest of the list in the next post...

~sujith

Of Onions and Nuclear Reactions

For long, the world has been in awe of the American intelligence agencies. They seem to be keeping track of the whole world, what moves, what comes in and goes out of each country, especially the Islamic countries. CIA & FBI are agencies which have been splashed across the globe as the most equipped intelligence units in the world where, the more prominent of the heroes in Hollywood have played officers of these agencies at some point of time or the other.

Bollywood has tried to ape these agencies in their own style, when it comes to movies. Technically these agencies were better than most of the similar agencies of other countries. I have said most of the similar agencies because; there are highly sophisticated agencies in countries like Israel, like the Mossad, which is on a higher plane. They are too smart of the FBI or CIA any day.

Now coming back to CIA and FBI, well all I can say is that they are hyped. If they were not, then a 9/11 would not have happened, where the terrorists took a plane out of their own airports and created havoc in NY. Nowhere am I saying that our RAW is smarter or something. Well all I can say is when you have such a huge country with technology that has penetrated to levels of 10% level, it is difficult to monitor. On top of that we have our own ethnic problems in plenty, in each and every corner of the country.

But, our intelligence agencies have been able to fool some of the highly sophisticated equipments of our own CIA. This is recent news to me. Yes maybe you guys already know the secret behind the Pokhran blasts. I was discussing with a colleague of mine on how we outsmarted the Americans, who had satellites monitoring our country on whether we are doing any nuclear tests or not. Well we heard that onions were used in plenty during this operation and it was one of the reasons for which the onion price escalated in India.

A quick google with key words “Onion Pokhran”, gave us the answer that we were looking for. Well it seems onion has this property of absorbing radioactive emissions. So when our smart agencies were transferring nuclear material to Pokhran, they were covered in truckloads of onions. So all the Americans could see was onion being transported to this site in the middle of the desert. I am sure they must have gone crazy thinking of why we were doing it.

Well it seems 80% of the entire onion produced in India at that point of time, was used for this purpose. That’s a huge logistic issue which was handled quite well by our agencies. And one of the persons behind the entire show was our very own president Dr. P J Abdul Kalam.

And to continue on the way our intelligence agencies work, have you ever figured out how people are recruited to the RAW. Well no one knows how and that’s a mystery that I would like to decipher. One of my friend’s dad was supposedly (because we are not sure yet) in RAW and one of my friend tried to find out from that person’s dad on the recruitment and all he had to say was, whoever wants to get in will find out and find a way in. Hmm a la MIB…see there I go again behind the American way of life…sudhar ja

India's Airports

A common sight in the the busy airports of Delhi and Mumbai...every day during peak hours

From the World This Week to CNN IBN and Rajdeep Sardesai

World This Week was the first private news programme that I remember seeing in DD, the only channel that was available to us at that time. It used to come on Thursday nites, and then got shifted to Sunday nites at 11 PM. A crisp 1 hour programme, on what’s happening in the world around us. It was a show which did no have any comparison at that point of time.

Prannoy Roy, the bearded anchor and producer of the show, became a household name in India. He built his name and image to such a level that anything he presented came to be taken as the gospel truth or the most reliable information on the waves. Be it the election analysis or the budget analysis, his crisp analysis and getting the best out of the guests that he interviewed was uncomparable. There was one more anchor, Appan Menon, who sadly is no longer with us. He was also a gem of a reporter and a star anchor. I still remember the few minutes of airtime that was allowed to express condolence to this great reporter, where it was edited bits of Appan Menon, saying “ this is Appan Menon, reporting from Washington, London, Beijing and where not.

When Prannoy Roy split with the Star Group and started his own news channel, it was welcomed by one and all again. A refreshing change, as there was no good English news channel and it fitted the need gap very well. Most important at that point of time, there was a dedicated group of individuals, who left Star along with him in search of a new identity. Prominent among them were Rajdeep Sardesai, Barkha Dutt, Sreenivasan Jain, Vikram Chandra, Sonali Chander and others. He had a good team and all the individual presenters made a name for themselves.

Among the second string of news presenters, the personality who impressed me the most was Rajdeep Sardesai. He was emotional, authoritative, had a strong point of view and was matter of fact. He had a charisma to carry an entire show like the Walk the Talk, which was a debate where high profile personalities clashed on the controversial topic of that week. He knew how to get stuff out of the panelists and when to make them shut up. He conducted some of the most high profile interviews during the elections, with Laloo Prasad Yadav being the best of the lot. His contacts across the Political and Bureaucratic class are immense and looked like the next best Prannoy. His programme, Turning Poitn at 10 PM was an analysis of the day’s top stories. But I am yet to see him do an Election or Budget analysis with the clarity of a Prannoy.

Barkha braved the Kargil war and got accolades for her reporting of the war and the turmoils at those times. She was a celebrity over the fortnight and is still famous for that. Other than that she has tried to anchor some programmes, but to no good effect. She still reports some of the more important stories in NDTV.

Sreenivasan Jain, somehow was always overshadowed by Rajdeep and more recently, was good in covering the election reports from the South of India. His handling of the Walk the Talk, leaves mush to be desired. His Mumbai Live was just a little off the cuff. He doesn’t look and talk like a mature journalist at all. The rest of them were just ok kind and there was no one to carry the NDTV bandwagon forward.

When Bunty and Babli got released, Prannoy Roy allowed the 9 PM news to be presented by the actors of the movie. Well journalism gave way to a commercial possibility and they sold their ethics for a few lakhs of rupees, a la TOI. Well, Rajdeep had some issues before this, but this was the last straw. He quit NDTV and there were many rumours floating around as to what his future plans are.

His plans have finally borne fruit in the shape of another grand joint venture in the media industry, this time between CNN and TV 18. The channel, called CNN IBN, has viewers sticking to it just on the Rajdeep name. But the channel is trying to portray some more faces to the people of this country. Let me wish Rajdeep all the luck for this new venture. Not that I know him personally, but just a wish from my side.

The 100 best products of 2005

PC world came up with this list

Interesting read...

Money for Questions and the Fallen Star

I have heard of people paying to get answers of exam papers in this country. But money for questions!!! Well one of the most popularized sting operations ever did just that, catch politicians taking money to ask questions in parliament. The sad part is that, this is not the first time this has happened. Well it is the first time someone has done a sting operation to this effect, but it has been happening for sometime now.

The price ranged from Rs. 5000 to Rs. 50000. The problem with the system is that the politicians who have been caught have blamed opposition parties to unknown forces, in tarnishing their image. And don’t be surprised if these people are let off with just a petty fine and warning, instead of suspending from the party and parliament and making them ineligible for any elections ever.

With the Indian team for the 3rd test having no place for the Captain courageous, Sourav Ganguly, it looks like he has played for the last time in Indian colours. If Ganguly makes a comeback into the team (and I mean by only his cricketing skills and not with any political pressure) from here, it will be truly commendable and also will show the new blood in bad light who have been given an opportunity to encash on their talent and youth.

With more than 10000 runs in One Day cricket and 5000 odd runs in Test cricket, he has proved his worth over the years. But in the last couple of years, there has been nothing substantial coming from his bat, though his captaincy has been undeniably remarkable. But this is not tennis where we can have a non-playing captain. The problem with having a Bengali superstar is that they won’t let this issue or any issues die down on its own. They will take emotions to the streets.

I like the songs of Parineeta. Pretty decent music for a first timer, Shantanu Moitra. Never heard of him before this movie.

What is there in a name change???

Well the biggest issue to have rocked Bangalore in the past one week has been the suggested (or rather forced) name change to Bengaluru.

Now there have been cover stories, radio chat shows etc on this. An interesting argument by a college student during one of those live shows on radio was

"First of all improve the condition of roads here in this city. Then you call it whatever you want to."

Well that sums it up.

Now back to the name changing habit of our cities, which are obviously based on the social ethos of the local population.

Well with this change except for Delhi all the other major cities have undergone a name change.

Good old Madras has become Chennai
Swanky Bombay changed to Mumbai
Communist Calcutta became bengali Kolkata
Techno Bangalore will become Bengaluru

Whats left...
Hyderabad to Hyderabulu (i dont know whats the original suggested change)
Delhi to Dilli, else Nayi Dilli.

I do not have any issues with this name change. When Tri+Van+Drum changed to Thiruvananthapuram, none of us raised any issue in Kerala. But when Mumbai underwent the name change, I heard a lot of grumbling in Kerala, mostly because it was brought about by Shiv Sena. But I doubt if the Marathis had any problem with it.

An interesting thing is that when I travelled Kingfisher for the first time, the GPS in the flight was showing Bangalore as Bengaluru. Imagine, the techno savvy Vijay Mallya himself, calling his city by that name, thats something. I feel the local people would prefer it to be named in a manner thats suitable for their local language/dialect whatever. What is wrong in that?

The problem is with all non-kannadigas (in this case) who have difficulty in pronouncing the name now. I would say please adjust.

All said and done. There should be a limit to which you go about changing names. You may ask, who draws the limit, I have no clue. But it gets to you when you call Connaught Place as Rajiv Chowk (politically motivated) and VT station, Chathrapati Shivaji terminus ( religiously motivated). If you want to take off anything remotely British from India, its a tough ask.

~sujith

Dedicated to some memories of Trivandrum

Some of the images of TVM city remain with you wherever you go. These were the ones that I took while I was in the KPN bus enroute to Bangalore city.



This is the new underpass in Palayam. Probably, this is the single new construction of infrastructure in the city after the Technopark. It was supposed to reduce the traffic clog at the junction, but there is hardly any traffic on this road, so lets hope that it wil take care of the future traffic.



The Public Library at Palayam. Well, as the construction suggests, it was built by the British. Not as popular as the British library in the city, but it is much bigger and poorly managed. I have been inside couple of times.




That’s the Chandrasekhar Nair stadium. Named after a person who was a senior officer (dunnowhat was his post) in the Kerala Police who was immensely interested in Sports (football I guess). Most of the Trivandrum League matches are played here, with SBT playing there home matches here in this ground when they were playing in the NFL. It is a floodlit stadium, which has also witnessed a couple of International friendlies. But the new stadium at Ernakulam has overshadowed it in the recent past. It also provides a huge space for the movie posters to be pasted.




That’s the brand new Secretariat building. This houses the new assembly room, which is considered a state of the art building. The whole premise is breath-takingly beautiful, with nice gardens and fountains in the front. Never got to see the inside of the building. Built in traditional Mallu style is a mix of the modern with the traditional.



That’s Pattom junction. The place where I spent most of my time after school. I stayed close to the school which means I stayed close to this junction. It was nice hanging around with friends after class and seeing them off and then going home. The junction has been widened, but the tree in the middle of the junction is still there.



The first mall in Trivandrum. It came long before all the hi-tech malls came up in other cities. Built in 1994 or maybe even before, I am sure there are still some office spaces which are vacant. Built by the Trivandrum Development Authority (TRIDA for short) and situated in Kesavadasapuram, rightly called Kedaram. Ajeesh and I have very good memories of this place in 1996 when we escaped a major panga with some local college gang. I think this place is still not a very cool place.

So that’s about it about some of the places that I could take snaps of in Trivandrum

~sujith

Some memories of TVM through the lens and windshield

It rained like crazy in TVM for 1 and a half days continuously.

Rain soaked TVM was a plesant sight. Most of the roads were empty on the weekend.

~sujith

A wedding, an accident and some technology

I reached home at 8AM, had to go for my cousin sis' wedding. The problem with Hindu wedding is that most of the things are decided on muhurthams and other rituals.

For eg: The groom came with his people to the Mandap before 9AM, as it was rahu kalam from 9AM to 11AM. The wedding was at 12 noon. Imagine the poor guy sitting in his shaadi clothes for so many hours. Well to keep them amused there was this music troupe belting out the latest Malayalam and Tamil songs, very loudly. Well before he and she both got into the pandal to tie the knot that ties them together for the rest of their lives, there is this strange custom. They come in to the crowd, look for the senior citizens and fall at their feet. This is supposed to be a blessing ceremony. Well the worst thing is if they forget to fall at the feet of someone, as in they missed out on someone, thats it, that person will not only crib then, but will do so for the rest of his/her life.

And the wedding got over as soon as the bride left with the groom and party... no actually after the food was served and everyone had their stomach's fill. We got moving as we had to visit the grrom's place at 4PM. So we were driving down the main junction in this town and I was sitting in the front with my bro. Something happened that I cant forget for a long time to come.

There were 2 teenage girls (later came to know that they were sisters), holding each others hand and waiting for an opportunity to cross the road. We saw them and honked the car just to warn them. The younger one saw this and withdrew, but she didnt pull her sister back. We braked and skidded for some 3-4 metres, but the girl was already in the middle of the road. We hit her, she fell on top of the bonnet, it was as if I could feel her body weight on the car, bounced off it and fell on the road. I took off my seat bealt and got off, by which time this girl had also stood up and walked to the side, which was now crowded with people, wanting to know if anything happened to the girl.

When I reached the girl, her mom and sis were already asking her, if she was alright. She said she was fine and then we saw a drop of blood falling down her neck, from the back of her head. My aunt who is a doctor was also in the car and she did a prelim check up. I got off with another aunt of mine and they took her to the hospital. It seems she just had a scratch on the scalp and shoulder, nothing serious. We filed a report in the Traffic Police Station with the doctor report and and got back to the wedding.

Enough happenings for a single day I guess. But before I sign off I have to tell you about the technological advancements in Kerala. The KSRTC (Kerala State Road Transport Corporation) , which is considered as one of the defunct part of the government have adopted technology like no other division of the government. The conductors have this billing machine, which prints the ticket, instead of those budles of printed tickets, that they used to carry once upon a time. Well, I dont think many states have adopted something like this.

Rest later.
~sujith

Strings from Pakistan

There are bands and then there are the ones from Pakistan. I do not know why the country is so restricted when it comes to music, movies and fun. Perhaps the religious sentiment is keeping it down.

I had a once in a lifetime chance to visit Pakistan, but then I squandered it. We were in 2nd year at IIMC and it was the historic test series in Pakistan. My friends had bought the tickets and everything and all that I needed was permission from home. Ya I did not get it and ended up not seeing one of the best test series played between the two countries. Well my friend’s went had a great time there in Pakistan and came back and told us the stories.

The movies, well no one has heard of the good ones at least, if there are any. But couple of actresses have come and acted in Bollywood. The latest one to come has been Meera, who has acted in semi-skin flicks. Well not gorgeous, but a pleasant sight to watch on the screen I guess. And at least the crowd in the stadiums justifies my argument that the Paki gals are beautiful. Better still, have you seen Wasim Akram’s wife??? Now you know why he has diabetes!

Coming to music, well there are numerous bands that play fundoo music. None of the Indian bands show this kind of machismo when it comes to the music they shell out. Be it Jal, which had the original “Woh lamhe”, which was remixed and put into a hindi movie. And recently there are many Paki songs featuring in the hindi movies. I think it is cheaper to buy the Paki songs and put them in Bollywood movies. Goa recently forwarded me a song, titled “Sutta”. The song is by a band called Zeest and it is dedicated to all smokers and dopers of the world. The music is awesome and the lyrics abusive. Has a lot of MCs and BCs in it, but it is a classic.

The most successful of the Paki bands has been Strings. I remember when we were in Engineering their first album was released, or that was when I first started hearing the song “Duur”. It caught on to us when we had just joined Patni. During our training days, we used to sing it inside the bus. And this was a popular song in the numerous daaru parties we had. Then they came back with their new album, Dhaani. It was another classic.

Well the reason for this blog is another song from Strings, called "Yeh hai meri kahaani", its an OST for the movie Zinda, starring Sunjay Dutt. The song is haunting and it gets to you after you listen to it couple of times. The lyrics are just too good and seem to be as slow and haunting as the song.

~sujith

Last nite at Church street