Have moved!!

This is to inform the rare breed who still visit this link that i have moved to itsscrapped.blogspot.com hoping to find better writing form. For all those whose comments i have not responded to , sorry, but do continue with it in the new blog space.

Thanks.

CUPLA thoughts...

I was reading thru a cupla blogs when I saw a cupla familiar name in the links list.. Immediately my mind set about thinking when was the last time that I visited this person's blog. It was a tougher question to crack than the ones posed in the Math paper(sure cup) a cupla days back.. And when I arrived at a conservative estimate of about a cupla months. I was ashamed of my negligence of this person's blog and wondered whether this person meant anything to me any longer. This process took me jus a cupla seconds though as the answer was obvious. The person means a lot to me. Why else wud I be wastin my time sitting and updating his blog.

THE PLEASURES OF OTHER'S BEDS

I guess quite a few of my friends will agree with me when I proudly announce that I hold the record for having slept in the maximum number of beds (in the hostel that is). One person who would nod his acceptance rather vigorously is Anirudh Shastry for, for nearly one sem he would come back tired and exhausted from class waiting for the first opportunity to flop on to his bed only to find it occupied.

In the first year when I undertook the exercise of counting the number of beds I had slept the result was 12(some may argue its more and I shall not counter that). One particular record I am proud of is having slept in all the five beds in a room, not mine. ( and yes we poor souls have had to bear with four people for company in a single room for one whole year. I hope someone from NHRC reads this) The strange thing is that when it came to my room I slept in only bed , mine.

I tried to reason out this strange habit of mine and the one reason which struck me almost immediately is that lazing around in other's beds gives you the luxury of dumping stuff on your bed and affording not to clear it up for quite a while. And the second factor is something which I have not quite been able to explain. I always seem to sleep more comfortably on beds other than mine. A recent case in point being the last couple of days when I have been struggling to wake up at 815 (usually I am up by atleast 730) just because of the fact that I have been sleepin on Anirudh's bed (yes its him again).

However much to my disappointment and the joy of others I seem to be fast losing this habit. But then I shall always remember those wonderful times I had sleeping on others beds. ;)

RDB - The movie

The first line of any conversation in any part of India over the past month is most likely to have been "U watched RDB yet?" .. Such has been the impact of the movie on this nation and its youth in particular.

So what makes the movie so special?

One of the biggest pluses that the movie can boast of is how thoroughly natural the dialogues are. This provides for the movie to have a bigger impact as the dialogues are more in the language of today's generation than in some archaic form of Hindi. One of the fascinating aspects of the movie is that almost all the scenes are pretty original in their content and picturisation. The director deserves kudos for the manner in which he seamlessly merges the scenes from the present and past. Especially spectacular is the scene in which Atul Kulkarni and Kunal Kapoor (in their historical characters)converse about how it is everyone's India and does not belong to any community of people.

At a time when the youth of the nation have increasingly been struggling to identify themselves with the freedom struggle RDB presents an opportunity for us to reflect even for just a few minutes the struggle that established the nation that we live in.

Any movie is not perfect and though the director attempts to make RDB not another movie, the second half tends to give the impression that at the end of it all the commercial aspects can never be ignored (not a big fault). However a few other negatives do exist in the movie. One of them is how the party lines of the corrupt Minister is never in doubt. (was this done to get the movie through the present regime?). Also the violent manner in which a peaceful protest is broken up makes no logical sense. And I suppose terrosists would wish that it's so damn easy to do off with the Indian Defence Minister.

Over all.. A bold movie which promised a lot and delivers quite a bit of it.

P.S : I would like to thank the entire cast and crew Of RDB who have helped me break a 88 day silence on my blog.

opinion polls and the actual ones

One of the most eagerly awaited elections in the recent past has come to a conclusion throwing up an absolutely unexpected result. Or was it really unexpected?

What we claim as unexpected is purely cased on the opinion and exit polls conducted in the state by the various leading news channels. It is not for the first time that the pollsters have been found wanting. If one looks at the past three to four years ( I do not hav much knowledge of the polls before that) , the opinion polls have been found to be invariably wrong. The worst case of that being when the BJP was routed from power in the 2004 general elections and the Congress was sweeped into power by the Indian voter. Almost every single channel had predicted a thumping victory for the NDA. And if I remember right only one gentleman , Yogendra Yadav ,if I remember his name right, had suggested that the congress had any semblance of chance in his series of articles he had written for The Hindu.

So all these leads one to ponder whether opinion polls are indeed worth their money? Has the Indian voter emerged to be a lot more intelligent than he has ever been made out to be? My answer to the former is no and to the latter is yes. The Indian voter has indeed come a long way to a stage where he is voting on the basis of micro issues, issues that affects his day to day life. The voter has shown that no amount of spin-doctoring in the media will fool him and is not carried away by the campaign style and instead on the substance in the campaign. The elections in Bihar are a very crucial indicator of how the common man is frustrated with the governance being meted out. Though caste has also played a very vital part in the victory alliance, the caste equation has changed. With these elections the Bihar voters have joined the mainstream voters across the nation. So may the politicians be aware of the changing ground realities and do what they are supposed to - Govern properly.

what's happened to the indian team

This has been a crazy past couple of weeks for the Indian team and even more so for the millions of cricketing enthusiasts across the nation(ob I count myself among them) . Though in one of my (limited) previous blogs I had admonished the media attention being given to them, at heart I am still a lover of the gentleman's game. The kind of a comeback that this team has done is remarkable. Though it might seem silly to give so much hype to just 5 victories against a team which has never been comfortable with the travelers bag its tough to put this down just because of the nature of the victories. Sri Lanka have been mauled. Indians seem to have put on the surgeon's mask. And when I do put one on myself and dissect the team's performance the results are just amazing.


Unlike the previous tournaments where Indians have done well this is one where every single individual (Sehwag excluded) has produced atleast one match winning effort instead of just two or three people carrying the whole team on their shoulders. Everyone seems to putting their heart and soul into it. And most of all the way that Sachin and Rahul have performed their duties as the senior pros is amazing. One moment which stands out is when Dravid gave Sachin the credit for the promotion of Pathan in the first ODI. That speaks volumes about Dravid the leader and the team man. It is not that easy for any captain to admit to the fact that the decision that won him the match came from someone else's suggestion.

And now to the question on top of everyone's mind. What happens to Dada , the man who was the architect of revival team India act 1. As things right now present a rather rosy picture it is natural for people to forget what he has done for the team. The match winners we see now in Kaif, (I hate to admit it) Yuvraj,Pathan , Harbhajan are all what he created. For the very people who backed him and praised him , to call for the gulliton to his career is disheartening . The team might not need him right now but then Dada deserves better treatment from the media than is being meted out to him now.

THE INDIA-IRAN-US LOVE TRIANGLE LOVE

STATUTORY WARNING: What follows is an amateurs attempt at writing stuff meant for serious reading.

As most people reading this might be aware the Indian Government is facing a rather delicate issue in the important area of Foriegn relations. Though the origin of the issue, the problem of energy security, lies in our own land it has taken on a very important international dimension. This is being seen by many as India's defining moment in its foriegn policy ,so far dictated by the soviets till early 90's and the US of A since then. The whole world has been watching how India has reacted to the whole issue. The problem as stated earlier is a very simple one: India needs a lot of energy nuclear or liquid to keep its economy running and as might happen in any transaction the primary factor is the cost and effectiveness. So now Iran enters the fray. Its abundant resources in natural gas and unexplored petroleum resources make it a viable option. So the whole plan of the Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline makes tremendous sense. Not only does it reflect improved Indo-Pak relations but then it solves quite a few of India's energy problems. Iran having been India' friend also sees it as an opputunity to deal with an emerging superpower as well as be on higher ground in the bargaining table. Since both the sides have a lot to gain from such a deal it was only a matter of time before an amicable solution was reached as happened in early September. Now into the picture comes the International Policeman,the US of A.

As can be expected in any thing involving that nation,trouble crops up. India can not afford to dismiss usa lightly as only a little earlier in the year an agreement was reached with them also to solve our problem of energy security. With the USA adamant on referring the issue of Iran's nuclear assets to the UN and also expecting India's support on the issue India faced a new crisis.Does the Government try to show the world that our foriegn policy remains just ours only and not contain any foriegn influence or do we meekly support the USA. Well , india chooses the latter option. What is further worth noting is that nations smaller than us chose to abstain from voting while we go ahead and support USA's claims(nothing to discount given its well substantiated claims on Iraq).

this decision has lead to the souring of relations between India and Iran when everything seemed to lead up to our relations soaring. In fact one has to appreciate the way Iran has reacted to the whole issue by stressing that though it was upset by India's decision it will not call off the landmark Agreement. But then one can not help pondering whether India has actually come out of the whole things with thumbs up, because not only has it established its backing of the despised yet needed USA, but also due to its present International standing forced Iran not to part ways and lose one of its long time friends.

BUDDHA