pilani pics

Unbearable

2012-01-05T06:30:00.000-08:00

From an article by Rajaji in Young India dated 11.07.1929.

Almost every one of these people is in debt. A couple of rupees borrowed carries so much interest per rupee per month and the people earn so little that the debt can never be discharged but grows and grows. It practically sells the man into slavery. There is no legal process but assault and intimidation and coercion do the work of the courts. The creditor is his own bailiff. If no one lent money to these people they would be in a worse position. A debtor and slave feel more respectable than a mere starving beggar.

Has anything changed?

Yes. Even the debtor-slave relation has turned unbearable; even the mere survival has become a luxury.

In the last 15 years more than 2,50,000 farmers have killed themselves.

Dancing with Maharaja

2012-01-01T01:11:00.000-08:00

Ready for the Jan launch - my first fiction.

Ten Down

2011-11-04T07:17:00.000-07:00

I was impressed by Dances with Wolves (Eng/Kevin Costner/1990). I was more impressed to realise that Avatar (Eng/James Cameron/2009) shares its central plot with the Costner's movie. The plot: the saga of how our man becomes a part of the other men and ends up siding with them in their justified fight against us. Replace our man with a US soldier and other men with Na'vi or the Native Americans. Bingo! You get Avatar and Dances with Wolves. I do not say Cameron has borrowed from Costner. It would be like saying all the cop movies are the same; all the love movies are the same. It is just that I am surprised to see how the change in "treatment" to the central plot can lead to two very different experiences; Very different, but classics in their own right. When compared to seven, three is not a pretty figure, but when we append "Oscars" to the numbers, three is equally laudable. Avatar had managed three Oscars, while Dances bagged seven.

When we talk about "treatment" I can only awe at the confidence of director Shankar. Here is a man who teaches with examples. Year after year, starting with Gentleman (Tam/1993) and topping with Enthiran (Tam/2010), the director has made us deliver many super hits. But most of them with the same central theme - one man's fight against corruption. I am happy that Hirani is nice enough to give Shankar 3 Idiots for remaking in Tamil. Immaterial of the treatment, I do not have mood to watch any more fight against corruption by the ace director.

Well, coming back to Avatar, I am reminded of Unnal Mudiyum Thambi (Tam/KB/1988) where a radical from the society's upper strata enters the slums to empower the masses. In the process he fights his people. Well, probably the central plot in these movies seems to be "a reformer/activist's story".

I am not sure if this plot has been tried - rather than our man joining hands with them to help them win over us, the movie can be about their own hero winning us. Like, say, one among the Na'vi collects his fellow humanoids to beat us, the homo sapiens, black and blue.

By the way, only two more months left in 2011.

Miramar

2011-03-23T08:38:00.001-07:00

Wayanad

2011-02-06T06:44:00.001-08:00

Happy Pongal

2011-01-14T23:29:00.001-08:00

Personal Banking

2011-01-04T08:29:00.000-08:00

Today was my tryst with my bank accounts. Have been getting loads of emails and book posts from the banks on a monthly basis, but never sat down to know what they were.

During my school days it was a kind of status symbol or say, some kind of novelty to have a bank account. As such there was no need for me, and a few others like me, as students to open and maintain a savings bank account. Still some of us had opened a savings bank accounts way back in the late eighties or the early nineties, when we were still around Class VII or VIII. I opened my first-ever bank account with the Indian Overseas Bank. The branch was close to our home and the account number had just four digits. One needed to update the passbook regularly. But after the few initial years I never looked in that direction. However on knowing that the bank chaps cut some extra annual charges for non-operative accounts, I made a trip to the bank to withdraw some money and keep my transaction counter on. Gave the withdrawal slip; but the cashier would not give me cash. He said I had not signed properly. I signed again and yet he was not convinced. Foreseeing all this signature-mismatch dramas /traumas, I had just written down my name as signature when I had opened the account as a kid. But quite naturally, my handwriting had improved..er..changed over a period of time. My handwriting as a teen did not match and probably was not supposed to match my hand writing as a kid. Therefore though I just wrote my name this time also, the cashier strongly believed that I was a 420 case. We had moved into the manager’s room by now. Luckily, I finally got out with the cash in hand – but only after explaining the manager and the cashier the metabolic/biological/physical/chemical changes that have taken place in my body and mind over the years and consequent to all these, how my hand writing had also ended up changing a bit!

Among many other peculiarities BITS, Pilani offered, we were asked to open bank accounts for our fees, mess bill purposes etc either with the UCO Bank or SBBJ (State Bank of Bikaner and Jaipur). Till then, I didn’t know these banks even existed. The former, I learnt much later, originally belonged to the Birlas. My father had chosen UCO for convenience sake as the ultra-modern city where I come from probably did not support a few banks and therefore ruled out the options of depositing cash locally in those banks. But the UCO Bank account was a great blessing in disguise, for the simple reason that while the SBBJ counter was inside the academic buildings, the UCO counter was much away and situated close to a redi. This ensured that even during the personal recession times one need not get inside the academic buildings. All one needed to do was just wait for the UCO account to get replenished from home; once it is done take a quick walk, inject some liquidity into the system, and before getting back to the hostel room ensure that the economy does well by having a refreshing shikanji at the nearby redi.

The start of the next stage of my life saw my number of bank accounts – double. Symbi, Pune wanted us to have an account with Bank of Maharastra for the fees purposes. The local ICICI sales team sat outside the college building and coaxed most of us with students-savings account package. They offered a lot of numbers and sentences. We fell, not for those, but for the one most exciting thing they offered us. I guess it was around July 2002 – I opened the bank envelope and took out that shiny plastic thing: a Debit card. A small step for the bank, a giant leap for me! No looking bank since then. Naturally, the BoM account was orphaned for the major part of the year. ICICI ATMs sprang up all over the country. We got fresh notes from the ATMs. Fresh money smelled good. Nothing but just a plastic card came between us and purchases. Another main attraction of the ATM was one could also deposit cash in any other account with the same bank. This was of a great use. We had the power to indulge in a few bailout programs too.

The status of my new HDFC bank account showed “salary” as I moved on to the next stage of my life in 2004. Internet banking facility was a major plus now. Unlike the ICICI ATMs, theses HDFC ATMs were never crowded. They had done a fine supply-demand stuff that in spite of the less number of ATMs one did not have a long queue outside the ATM. Salary account + Mumbai = Danger. Cash regularly came into the account. Cash regularly went out of the account. Internet banking was an excellent catalyst for this process. Till this day I admire this account with the Fort branch and I try to keep this alive. Lets see how far it goes.

September 2005. Within five minutes after getting out of my hometown’s ICICI branch, my dad’s mobile beeps: “Your account XXXX etc has been closed successfully”. Those guys sitting at the bank’s HO had decided to charge me more annually as I was no more a “student” and I was not maintaining the quarterly average of about Rs.10,000 or so. I was neither an “employed” now; and 10K was and is – big. ICICI had lots of processes in place. I never imagined a bank account could be closed in a matter of minutes.

I got the golden chance to open an account with a branch cuddled in the lower ranges of the Himalayas. SBI, Mussourie. August 2007. Salary account, once again. After the initial excitement of getting paid by the “President of India”, so to say, I realised: Government + Salary = Danger. A danger of a different kind. Like before, money still regularly came in and went out of the account. But there was a fantastic mismatch between coming and going. Whatever comes, definitely goes. Whatever goes, need not have necessarily come!

A few months down the line, Axis Bank, Nagpur welcomed me. Further down the line the Sixth Pay Commission report is implemented retrospectively. Internet banking has developed a lot. There are no charges for inter-bank ATM usages. There is no need to quarrel over a signature anymore!

Now I know why I get loads of bank statements.

MMXI

2011-01-03T08:23:00.000-08:00

My pre-dated new year resolution was to complete watching the ten most popular English movies of 2010 before I saw the light of 2011. I missed it. Not the "seeing the light" part, but the resolution part. Though not fully. I was quite impressed with the way The Social Network has been made. These days I login Facebook very frequently. I have developed a respect for Winklevoss bros. Got to catch up with his tiny interview in Newsweek; sounds good. Have checked out Zuckerberg's FB profile too. Thanks to a taut script and the fitting cast, this movie surely does not fail to entertain you. You also get to have an interesting inside view of the most defining feature of today's wired societies - Face book!

Inception is simply mind boggling! A complex concept told, er..shown.. in the simplest and the most elegant way. Wachowski bros had come up with a similar kind of stuff in the Matrix series. But Nolan's treatment is just amazing. He explains you the premise, the concept of dream space, takes you through the story patiently and grippingly - one step after the other. There are no sudden abstract puzzles thrown at you. There are no attempts to test your IQ. There is a single-minded pursuit to thrill you and put you in a different world for about 150 minutes - Nolan has surely succeeded on this front. Eagerly waiting for 2012 - Batman 3!

I just wonder if DiCaprio is still mentally stable. Had seen his stellar performance in Scorece's Shutter Island. Here again, you are just dazzled by the way the movie is conceptualised and presented. Just as in Inception, DiCaprio does a role that has more to do in a different, mental world than in the actual real, physical world. His performance, in both the movies, is so impressive and only that makes me wonder if he still retains the normal orientation we have with respect to time and space. Probably he should have had a kind of debriefing sessions before he was let free from these movie sets and made to live his usual real-world life.

Yet to catch up with the Potter boy, Black Swan, True Grit, Rabbit Hole and The Town. What good is a resolution if its not broken?

Before Xmas...

2010-12-11T05:44:00.000-08:00

Well...Its the time for Panjim Feast!

Photo

2010-12-02T20:12:00.000-08:00

IFFI 2010 is behind

Today is the Feast of St.Francis Xavier

Xmas and New Year are not far

Happy Deepavali

2010-11-05T10:38:00.000-07:00

Its not your fault if you wonder what this photo has to do with Deepavali, a Goan Deepavali to be precise. Branded world-over for the beaches, coconut palms, feni, new year parties, IFFI and much more like casinos, cruises and churches, we did not have high expectations when we ventured out on the Deepavali-eve. "... the whole city transforms into a mela!", we had taken that tip of our friend lightly. It was close to 10 PM. But for the slightly extra crowd near the MG Road and the unusually long queues of cars at the petrol stations we did not find anything that told us what was in store - until we reached Fontainhas.

The thumps from a distant woofers pierced through our car doors as we gradually realised the empty road we had taken was no more. We were stranded in the middle of a traffic hiccup with a couple of cars and two-wheelers giving us company. No respite in sight; we got down. The woofers tried their best to shatter our ears. Waded the crowds and ... Woo!! What was that?! A well-lit, 30-foot massive four-armed dracula.. demon.. beast.. a combination of them was menacingly standing right in the middle of the road. Curled horns, dangerously black nails, shark teeth, bloody eyes. Huge loudspeakers were kept around. Tiny humans happily posed for cameras. Dozens danced around. But hello..tomorrow is Deepavali, are we not supposed to be bursting crackers and visiting temples? Well, for Goans this beast is Narakasur (the villain in memory of whose demise this festival is celebrated) and after such dances and merry, they burn down these demons before the dawn breaks and with that the evil is dead and Deepavali sets. Amusing! This was just one such beast we had seen that night; The narrow roads and wide streets were teeming with many of them. Each beast was unique in its own way. Some were painted fully green while a few were in violet, some resembled modern-day dinosaurs while a few looked like unfinished King Kongs, a few were almost-naked while others were royally clad, a few were gigantic and a few were baby-like, some demons were quite frightening while a few were really cute. Huge crowds migrated from one location to another to catch a glimpse of as many Narakasur as possible. Dancing. Enjoying.

No demon looked like any other. I heard that local groups took it like a prestige issue and wanted to out-perform each other in making these demons as creative and interesting (intimidating?). Even the local FM channels distributed prizes for the best Narakasur. Unluckily for us, the glooming rain clouds had made the organisers advance the competition. What should have culminated after the midnight was finished much earlier. Anyway still there were lots of interesting Narakasurs all over the place and one could not help but just sit back and wonder - how many more attractions will this tiny state offer?!

Varca

2010-11-02T09:56:00.000-07:00

Photo

2010-10-15T03:58:00.000-07:00

Somewhere near Kaziranga...

Robot Kaleidoscope

2010-10-01T14:40:00.001-07:00

Superstar movie - first day. That is very special anywhere. To my utter surprise even the Panaji Inox was almost full for the 11:15PM Robot (not Endhiran).

Coming out at around 2:30 AM into Gandhi Jayanthi I find myself quite puzzled and disappointed. I miss Baasha (Tamil/1995/Suresh Krissna starring Rajni) and Indian (Tamil/1996/Shankar) days. No doubt Robot is a technological marvel and exhibits the homegrown talent in an impressive way yet and is definitely worth a watch.Hats off to Shankar and team for that...but wait a minute, where is the Superstar? Where is Indian Shankar?

Amidst a loose script, world-class graphics, the usual compulsions of an Indian commercial cinema and above all the huge responsibility of proving a point to the world - we lose the Superstar; And Shankar too. Superstar has done a very decent performance as Dr.Vasi and of course quite a great role as the robot Chitti. He has carried the movie skilfully and with ease. Superstar's acting talents are explored once again after a long time. Kudos! But soon the Superstar is engulfed in a maze of computer graphics to the extent that even I felt a little suffocated towards the climax that looked like a kaleidoscope where miniature toy Superstars in black goggles had replaced the usual broken pieces of colourful glass bangles. See it to believe it...King Kong, Anaconda, Godzilla, Globe, Cylinder, Spiral, Drilling bore...you name it you have it!

Director sir, your movies stand out for their taut scripts. (Thanks to the late writer Sujata too). Be it the all-time classic Indian or Muthalvan or the latest Sivaji the script plays a key role in your movies. Though thrilling at places like the hospital delivery sequence or the fire accident pages, Robot's screenplay is much below average and we know it from the "Not again!" murmurs for some songs. They just pop out of nowhere. Further, one vital ingredient in your usual movie recipe is the songs picturisation. Be it Chiku Bukku... (Gentleman, 1993) or Mukkala Mukabla (Kadhalan, 1994), Andankaka Kondakkaari (Anniyan, 2005) you have excelled in this arena. But here all the second half songs look the same with lots of people dressed up in aluminium foils dancing in a tech background. Even the song with full of Superstars was not exactly palatable.

And what was that mosquito sequence in name of humour? Comedy is another area where Shankar-Rajni had done really well so far...but now they seem to have dumped that. Karunas and Santhanam are used a little more than as props. It is a disaster.

Rajni is one of the best villians that Tamil cinema had ever-seen and the movie fails in the attempt to capitalise on that. Robot Rajni is a commendable performance by the Superstar but as you will see the technology and imagination that has run wild, take over from the Superstar. The movie as a whole could not give the high that motta boss Rajni gave in Sivaji in just about 30 minutes. I had that as the base level for Endhiran. I was asking for disappointment.

I liked the movie's plot and am just awed by the kind of efforts that has gone into making it. Robot will probably go down as a highly successful box-office piece and might make the world take a closer look at Tamil cinema, but when will the glorious days of Baasha or Indian return?

(PS: I guess the Tamil version will be a tad better with the Superstar's own voice)

U-Turn

2010-09-20T07:07:00.000-07:00

It was a pleasure to drive down the four-lane NH7 from Madurai to Tirunelveli and then to the tip of India, Kanyakumari. The diesel Indica could not take us above 120kmph though the smooth road offered me the chance. I could experience a complete transformation of what was called a national highway a few years back. Now I get to race on the highways without any harm to anyone (including me), lots of huge trucks save a lot on fuel cost, journeys done by state bus corporations get slightly more comfortable, supply chain companies get to earn more on prompt deliveries, and a customer sitting in one corner of our huge country gets to buy what he wants, whenever he wants at a lower price. A big thanks to the prestigious NS-EW corridor of the National Highway Development Project. These highways will make a positive impact on our GDP figures as well. But wait...I could see a toll gate down the road that is going to take some 50 bucks from me. Well, there is nothing called a free lunch. I better pay up and continue my drive whizzing past the tree-bottom temples and dried-up river beds.

But someone reminded me that I was an honest tax payer; I had paid the road cess too for sometime, in addition to the road taxes I coughed up when I bought this car. Naturally I presumed that all my payments had gone into making these fine highways and it was our basic right to have a good road. Looks like I was wrong. These brand-new four lanes needed huge funds and the petty payments we made were obviously not enough...and of course, there is a host of areas like defence, law and order, education etc fighting for the money we gave. So there is this flashy parade of toll gates from time to time to break the monotony of the long drives and to remind us there is no free lunch. Fair enough.

One fine morning I wake up to see that I have gone almost bankrupt and all that I am left with is an old moped; In search of some job I drive down to the next city on the highway; I am stopped at the toll gate; I do not have anything to pay; I am not allowed to proceed further; I take a U-turn; I decide to take the old highway to the city, though not smooth, it is free for all.

Alas! The old road is no more. I have nowhere to go.

Who Won?

2010-08-24T09:27:00.000-07:00

Scams are not new to us. Every other day the media exposes a major scam with grand levels of corruption. The news comes as a shock first, slowly takes the shape of frustration and helplessness and ends up with you playing with the TV remote to land up in some MTV Roadies or a movie. On the other hand it is but rare for us to come across people who, with sheer grit and against all odds, have done their bit to expose a scam. I came across two such individuals in the recent past. One is a male; The other a female. Both unassuming. Both have had their share of bitter days during their pursuit of the rotten eggs. One of them had worked with a very critical Central agency somewhere in the Eastern side of our country. A part of his job included monitoring the performance of a few topmost NGOs that were tied up to massive foreign funds from a few UN Agencies. Those of us who are even slightly familiar with the way the NGOs function can pretty well appreciate the fact that some of the NGOs/trusts give a tough competition to the Government when it comes to the level of corruption and siphoning of funds. Our man here, a novice then, was a little shaken when he stumbled upon a few facts that tended to expose the murky face of one of the most famous NGOs of our country.

Disbelievingly, at the same time being fair to his duty, he collected the dirty facts needed to seal the case. And as with any other important report, he did not trust anyone else while giving shape to all those evidences and facts he had painstakingly collected. He sat through the nights to stitch that solid report that had the potential to shatter the image of one of the "best" NGOs here. Now he needed the bosses - only the bosses and not any middlemen - to take note of the report. He did mail the report one of his trusted big bosses who takes his review. The big boss gave our man a pat on the back. She was not able to locate any gaps in the report. She had a great case. Our man had a good night's sleep.

A few days after an urgent meeting of the bigger bosses an order knocks our man's doors. He gets his air ticket booked to Srinagar. Calls up Movers 'n' Packers to find out if they operate out of J&K. Interestingly that Agency did not have any office in Srinagar at that time. Our man was to work out of a hotel room. As a consolation he was permitted to take some help from the state government when in need.

A few months later, the high-profile head of the NGO steals the headlines for winning some XYZ international award for some tremendous contribution at the grass root level.

A few more months later our man quits the job after landing himself in a better job - nothing new.

But leaves back a newly-built office in Srinagar!

Songs and Signs

2010-08-07T01:58:00.000-07:00

During our initial days here we were forced to watch Hariyudan Naan (Roughly translated as With Hari) in Jaya TV. We do not have DTH in the guestrooms here and the local cable guy did not have any other Tamil channel. Only Jaya TV gave us good company and in addition to hitting upon many creatively boring programs, we luckily ended up watching this music contest-reality show on the weekends. The idea was the winner of the show would get a chance to work with Hariharan, one of the most versatile and successful singers around. How can one ever forget his “Uyire…” (Bombay/Tamil/1995) that foretold us he was here to stay; and stay at the top. Close to two decades after his arrival Hariharan’s distinctly pleasant voice continues to enthrall us till this day. There are two other eminent South Indian music composers in the jury with, of course, Hariharan taking the centre stage. All the songs are from Tamil movies. There are many contestants and many rounds of the contest. But that thing that sets this program apart is the comments the jury give after every contestant finishes singing. “Very good”, “You can improve a bit”, “You are not singing well”… these are some of the comments that do not find a place in this program usually. Rather the comments are highly pin-pointed and technical to the extent that I do not understand most of them. In many cases Hariharan even sings a line or two to drive home a point. It is lovely to listen to him. The other members of the jury are equally technical with their comments but rather extra-frank – just to help those young contestants blossom as great singers. The show has moved into its final stage where only the last twenty are left. These days I’ve realised music is as technical as chemical engineering or accountancy.

As a kid most of us have a fascination to give “autographs” or keep signing (scribbling?) in the last pages of our notebooks. This usually happens during the History classes or whenever one gets hold of a new pen. It kind of gives a kick. This liking to see one’s own signature in various styles and pen colours continues even during the college days. The “signature” also gets a new status when one opens the bank account for the first time. You try out various patterns of your signature till you hit upon the most impressive one and fix that one in your new bank account formalities. Some of us are known to relentlessly improvise our signatures and keep them contemporary with the changing times just like the way companies like Tata, Videocon have done with their logos. You can witness this stylish evolution of a signature if you pull out all your certificates from Class X to Graduation, Driving Licence, job offer letters, and the bank accounts opened, and arrange them in the time axis. As a kid I too have had a love affair with my signature. But with a difference. I have always had a plain vanilla signature – I just write down my name. Since the usual practice is to write down one’s name below the signature, I write down my name in CAPS just to differentiate it from my signature. At times, a few have even returned the forms to me saying that I have just written down my name while I was actually supposed to sign there. Nevertheless, my love with my autograph continued until May 21, 2010. That was the day I took charge as a Group A Officer in the income tax department. To begin with I had to sign in a specific form meant for people taking over a charge. It was just a single form, accompanied by 12 xerox copies of the same form! Initially there was a kick as it was the first time I was signing profusely with a green ink pen. Over the next 2-3 days I had already hit a century of autographs! Now I have married my childhood love of my autograph and I no more count the number of signatures I make in a day. Rather I have made a few amendments in my autograph systems and I only keep tab of the number of minutes I sign. For example, today I had to sign non-stop for close to 15 minutes. I recommend ADD Gel.

Old Colony

2010-08-02T05:04:00.000-07:00

“Sir, before twenty five years I travelled for 18 hours by train and reached this place. I was doing the right thing at that time. Now my son travelled for 18 hours and got settled in a different continent. It was the right thing for him too.” One could feel pain in the voice of that intimidating, old gentleman who was explaining me about how he had started from scratch and made it big in real estate in Goa, why his son would not like to continue the ready-made, lucrative business here in India, and which ultimately made the old father quit all his projects and pass his sunset days without a sense of security; without his son nearby. He summed up his pain, anger and understanding, “Generation gap!”

The colony (I mean a kind of township, not to be confused with the Medieval times…British colony, French colony etc) where I come from, shares a similar episode. Essentially a middle-class, government servants’ area, the colony today is well-laid out with good roads, water supply, the long-route bus terminus nearby, and individual houses having dozens of coconut, mango and neem trees. The land was all but barren, lined by a metre-gauge railway track, dotted by a few palm trees and thorn bushes, in the outskirts of the city some three decades back. A cent was sold and bought for Rs.100. Today, to get that same one cent area you got to shell out more than Rs.1 Lakh! 1000-fold growth! But more importantly, in these thirty years all those government employees (mainly working with the state government, banks and the then glorious DoT) residing in the area had educated their children in one of those numerous good schools in the city, sent them to professional colleges, got their dreams of their kids working abroad fulfilled, and above all…crossed 58/60 years of age and got retired from their services.

Now most of their engineer sons and daughters are abroad, either they are working in some onsite projects or they have got settled there with their spouses and children. Most of the retired parents of the colony have PCs with a broadband connection and webcam to catch a glimpse of their grand children playing in one of the US coasts. All of them have quite comfortable bank balances, mainly due to the compensation received during retirement, including full leave encashment; also thanks to the remittances from their children. Not to mention they are sitting in lands worth a goldmine.

They plan out for a stay abroad for a couple of weeks, to help out their daughters set up a family, and are quickly back at the colony with loads of apparently jaw-dropping videshi stories for their neighbours, who in turn have their counter-stories, equally mesmerising, about their own abroad trips. Nobody here talks of “Generation gap”. All we get to hear is “Milk is very cheap in the US”, “The roads are very neat ”, “It is very cold there!” etc.

The broadband with the webcam does a fine work; their children give way to the US-born grandchildren; one generation gives way to the next generation; the stories and counter-stories continue incessantly in that colony hidden below the tall coconut trees dancing to the monsoon winds.

As per the MPI’s (Migration Policy Institute) ranking on remittances received by countries in the year 2009, China surprisingly (shockingly?) came only at the second place. No marks for guessing who topped the list.

Go Go Goa!

2010-06-11T05:38:00.000-07:00

Somewhere during our great drive from Bangalore to Goa...

Bye Bye NADT...

2010-05-10T15:21:00.000-07:00

It is close to 4:00 AM and I have a train to catch in a short while...

By all probability this is my last post from D-42, Nalanda Hostel, National Academy of Direct Taxes, Nagpur.

Bye bye NADT...

Redemption

2010-04-20T19:32:00.000-07:00

(This is the article I gave for the final issue of our in-house magazine during our training days here. I am not very much used to writing under time-pressures; but had to make this one)

My tryst with the National Academy of Direct Taxes, Nagpur dates back to December, 2007. That was the time of inauguration day of the 61^st batch of IRS Officers. Very soon some thirty of us exercised an attractive option called EOL – Extra Ordinary Leave. We were called the EOL Mafia by the CD of the 61^st batch. Cutting to the present, in a matter of just under three weeks, May 2010, my NADT time warp is heading for redemption. Do I like to be redeemed?

It is said that we don’t forget our first love; many of you would agree the same holds true in case of lectures too. If there was one single thing in most of the then young, raw probationers’ minds (well, it is a subtle way of projecting ourselves as mature, field-ready ACITs at this point of time) during the first month of our training, it ought to be – PL to BK. (Programmed Learning to Book Keeping) It was a great attempt to make all of us of the 62^nd batch, irrespective of our educational backgrounds, sail smoothly through the deadly ocean of Debit & Credit. Being a module of much significance our Course Director sir retained the jurisdiction of PL to BK. After many waves of debit and credit, the cyclones of assets and liabilities, and the pirates of accounting conventions and rules, most of us were in a quite realised what was in store for us during the coming months of training.

From there things passed by us like the oncoming highway traffic; unending onslaught of Income Tax Act and Book Keeping, interspersed with home tests and workshops. They just happened; we just sat back and experienced the Acts happening around us. Suddenly I realised I knew the basics of the IT Act. There was also the highway special patrol in the form of the NALSAR team. Those erudite people came out of nowhere and before they left in a jiffy, our brains were loaded like in those sequences in The Matrix movie with – Indian Contract Act, Transfer of Property Act, Hindu Laws, Companies Act and Indian Partnership Act! It was fun!! In the second module we were enriched with The Indian Evidence Act, Civil Procedure Code, Indian Penal Code, General Clauses Act...wait it is not over yet...and the Information Technology Act – just in the same Matrix way. Wealth Tax also made its appearance from time to time. ALP, DTAA and ratios were the buzzwords now. Luckily, we had pleasant motels in the form of INTAX, Pongal-Lohri celebrations, cultural nights, NPL, audi movies, and of course the Mess elections spread over the year 2009. We continued our run on the highway. Probationer’s Talk stopped us from time to time and opened our eyes with concepts like learning to unlearning etc. Another major takeaway was Discipline = Self discipline + Imposed Discipline.

Of course, it is not possible to forget the great times at New Delhi, Dehradun and Mussourie. Those memories are still as fresh as the recent Malaysian/Singaporean memories. Personally, like many others, I too have dreamt of the international attachment ever since the day I got selected for the IRS! Sitting there at the tax academy of Malaysia, it was heart warming and ego boosting to hear from one of the Malaysians – probably India is the only country that sends its income tax officer trainees for an abroad study trip. Long live NADT.

“In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is” – OJT made us appreciate that. The office stints threw us out of the safe harbour called NADT. We were moving closer towards taking independent charges. The OJT debriefing sessions and the presentations were full of hearings, raids, surveys, ARs, DRs, undisclosed crores, umpteen Sections...in short full of life! Due to our large batch size, more than the actual outdoor stint like OJT, Bharat Darshan or Mumbai module, the group-wise presentations mela that begin once we are back in campus, tests one’s endurance better. You are either waiting for your turn to be on stage and speak out about your earth shattering experiences or you are one among the hundred-plus helpless audience trying to be alert and grasp a point from here or there. In any case this mela adds to your overall personality. Needless to say, no one else in this world can claim to have glanced at 150-plus high quality books in such a short time as we did; the second module book review made this possible.

1-2-3-4-5 banana. Have you got a dog? Great big dog. Dance, dance I like to dance. Two dudes from Mumbai were making us learn Samba. That is how our third module aka Job Worthiness Module started a few weeks back. I guess Samba dance brings good fortune to our Department. JWM is full of action with the highlight, obviously being our posting orders. While most of us restlessly wait for them, the time passes in the form of INTAX 2010, moot courts, NALSAR reports, batch book, TA bills and the king of all – shramdhaan!

Well, having spent eight-odd years of post-graduation, training, job, coaching, waiting, wandering etc etc after graduating in the summer of 2002, topped up with a 16-month IRS training, I badly need to be redeemed now. It is time to have an office desk and see how that feels like!

April 11, 2010

2010-04-19T11:15:00.000-07:00

On Marriage
Kahlil Gibran

You were born together, and together you shall be forevermore.
You shall be together when the white wings of death scatter your days.
Ay, you shall be together even in the silent memory of God.
But let there be spaces in your togetherness,
And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.

Love one another, but make not a bond of love:
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
Fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup.
Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf
Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,
Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.

Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping.
For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.
And stand together yet not too near together:
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.

Finally...I got married to Jayanthi, my batchmate here.

Probably this is a very boring post for such an occasion.. but our story is too long to be told in a post. And I can only think of these words of Gibran now.

:) :)

North Easterlies - 4

2010-03-31T19:51:00.000-07:00

From the monasteries...

North Easterlies - 3

2010-03-29T04:02:00.000-07:00

Kohima, Nagaland. March 6^th 2010. After about a 3-hour bus journey from Dimapur we reached Hotel Japfu overlooking the imposing Nagaland Police HQ building. To be frank, right throughout the journey I was having a strange feeling that straddled around fear, curiosity, patriotism and anger. The islands of bright forest fires scattered over the Naga hillscape also played their role in creating my emotional collage. It took a good night’s sleep for the feelings to subside. Only the previous week I had read about the NSCN’s Muviah’s talks with the Government of India, in New Delhi. I also knew some basic stuff about a few Naga tribes. I have heard a couple of Nagaland administration and bureaucracy stories from some friends serving in this region. But being in Kohima and seeing and hearing things in first person is quite a different world.

Just like Kerala is God’s own country, Nagaland is The land of festivals. You will come across dozens of banners welcoming you to some festival or the other. We got a chance to be audience to a performance of a spring song by the troupe Three Sisters (as we were told). I was mesmerised. Just like the simple yet lively Arunachal dance we had seen in Bomdilla few days back, the Spring song too had very simple structure – no elaborate lyrics or strong music support or a complex tune. But the exquisite way in which those beautiful voices were blended ensured that you are transferred to a different world. A simple string instrument was used for music. I am sure A R Rahman is yet to come across such Naga songs. Else by now Three Sisters or some other Naga band would have been a common name in mainland India. By the way, I am not very comfortable using “mainland India”. But we are used to such a term. Though the innocuous nature of the term can be easily explained purely on a geographical basis, it is not possible to divorce the political, social and developmental undercurrents from the term. Probably more PHCs, power supply, bandwidth and ATMs, more colleges and universities, a dozen successful industrial complexes, and a tangible amount of private sector participation would have made the term “mainland India” extinct decades back. It is quite peculiar that we live in a “flat world” and yet within our country we have something called as “mainland” and some other thing called “Northeast”. Of course there are many other deeper issues that cannot be wiped off with PHCs and PCOs but a good beginning is the secret of getting ahead. On August 15^th 2009 we celebrated our 63^rdyear of Independence.

Apart from the uniformed men the ubiquitous things in the parts of Arunachal we covered are – impressive BRO roads, BSNL and State Bank of India. I was quite happy to see those dinosaurs in the guise of machines trying to broaden the already-fine road leading to Tawang. Two years down the line, if you wish to peek into China across the international border here – just take a jolly drive in this freshly done double lane road. Its as simple as that. Hats off to BRO! When it comes to the ATMs, I had a rare sighting today. In fact this sighting was unimaginably more difficult than sighting a one-horned rhino. You just take a jeep safari or an early morning elephant safari in Kaziranga and you will surely come face to face with these giant animals. In fact herds of rhinos are visible even from the highway. At one place, to my utter surprise, I noticed a herd happily having their evening supper near a neatly sown and irrigated green field. Talk of man-animal conflict! Well, coming to today’s sighting. At last, on the eighth day of our non-stop travels in the region, I had the greatest moment of our trip. It happened in the Kohima market today after noon. I just could not believe my eyes when I spotted a branch of a private bank!! It was an ICICI Bank branch. I just hope that I had missed spotting hundreds of similar other private bank branches/ATMs. I am thoroughly bored of the blue-and-white “SBI Welcomes you” board in every tiny town.

North Easterlies - 2

2010-03-18T13:11:00.000-07:00

Early diagnosis and proper medication can cure leprosy. Incentives to pregnant mothers who take Zidovudine(I guess I got the name right). These are some of the huge, high visibility banners that caught my eyes in Kohima. I have never come across such banners anywhere else in the country. These banners say a lot about the broad contours of the challenges in public health here. Looks like much work needs to be done. I am reminded of the Amartya Sen/Jean Dreze’s words in their book - India: Development and Participation. They resist us from jumping to the models in other developed nations and trying to implement them in our country. Rather, they say, within our country itself we have islands of excellence and the others can learn from them. For example there is a Madhya Pradesh that can teach Bihar how to go about improving its literacy; We have got a Himachal that can provide models for socio-economic progress in Orissa.

There was also a banner “Plant tree with your jhum cultivation”. Jhum or slash-and-burn or shifting cultivation is practised in the Nagaland region. Just as the term conveys, stretches of lands are burnt down and then farming is done on the land cleared this way. No modern implements are used for agriculture. After a few crops when the productivity of the land hits the rock bottom, the farming is shifted to another patch of land. Again, the new patch is cleared by setting the forest on fire. Naturally, this causes serious damage to the nature. But its taking really good efforts to stop such a practice as it is not just agricultural, but cultural.

We got another glimpse of the Naga culture when we were presented with a few Naga dances and songs. The first one was a group song by a dozen old women. The song related to the harvest season and was generally sung during the pounding of grains. This song by these dozen grannies too, just like that of Three Sisters (that's how the three young lady performers of the previous dinner were introduced to us) was very simple yet captivating. The overall technique and style is this – very simple tunes/lyrics, one sub-group starts the song and keeps singing, the other sub-group follows it with a time lag. The effect is astounding. Then came the group dance by the young folks, men and women with their cool moves. Along with the dance, there is a surprise bonus waiting for all those ethanol lovers in you.

The evening was topped with a satisfying dinner. The hosts had tried to make some rotis too. This was a significant relief for all those chappati-oriented-people, who had had a real tough time ever since we entered the Northeast a week back. The staple food here is rice. However, this region is a paradise for the non-vegetarians especially the fish-eaters and the pork-lovers. It was about 9PM when I got into my Naga cottage. We stayed in a tourist village called Tuofema about 40KMs from Kohima. Here they try to keep things the traditional way and every cottage was designed like a Naga hut. Interestingly each tribal group had their own style of huts. By the time I was ready to sublime into the world of sleep inside the cozy quilt the breeze outside had turned into a haunting wind. Good night Nagaland!

That feelings-confusion I had on my way up to Kohima had vanished. What remains is the apprehension if I will ever get a chance to be back to Nagaland. I do not know; probably I might not be lucky enough to be at Tuofema again. But given a chance you grab it without fail. This Land of Festivals is for sure going to make you a better person; a more matured Indian.

(Gangtok. March 11, 2010)

North Easterlies - 1

2010-03-16T09:49:00.000-07:00

I had just a single point agenda at the start of our 20-day long tour of the Northeast – to sight a rhino in the wild. It would give me Nirvana. The Aircel “Save our tigers” campaign also intensified my ultimate desire to see this beast in the jungles of Kaziranga. I did not know whether it was 1411 or 1511 or whatever number of rhinos left in the wild; All I knew was we were quickly losing all our wild animals and the sooner you get to see them, the better. Along with the elephant, giraffe and hippo, rhino is also in the elite, four-member club of land animals weighing 1000kg plus. Even the grizzly bear (Ursus arctos horribilis) is excluded from this league of extra-heavy gentlemen.

Kaziranga was to be covered in the second circuit of our tour. We opened our tour with the Tawang lap. This place is up in the mountains, really up. Apart from the popular locations like Guwahati and Tezpur we also got to spend some nights or stopover for food in Thai menu-like places namely Bomdila, Dzongrila, Jang and Balukpong. But all throughout, the only thing that was in my mind was the Great One-horned Rhinoceros. Even the legendary Ceat-born tough ad was flashing in my mind from time to time.

We were supposed to take some time out in a place called Sela pass. Tawang is in the valley beyond Sela pass that is at an altitude of close to 14,000ft. Apparently the Chinese had come near this point during their intrusion a few decades back. Our Innova was gasping and fuming as we got closer and closer to Sela. Gradually, to my utter surprise I could see patches of half-cooked snow on the both sides of the road. I had never seen snow in my life before. I had missed a great chance during my college days when I stayed back from my group’s trip to Manali. Ever since those days snow has been at the top zone of my to-see list. Our Innova was struggling more.

The surprise was turning into an excitement. The needle leaves of the trees around were sagging with snow. The dark earth was getting transformed into a white earth, snow-white earth, to be precise. The aroma of snow was filling our lungs. We took out our gloves from the backpacks. Upped the window glasses.

With no gender bias and male chauvinism in my heart and mind, I would like to humbly submit that I have observed more members of the female sex using “Wow!!” very liberally. (I hope I have succeeded in saying what I wanted to say without raising feminist eyebrows) Most of the times even the mundane, little things like – neatly laid out salad, a wall poster with a setting sun, aquarium with a few old gold fishes etc – attract this “Wow!!”. Webster's is yet to fit in this term in the “good” hierarchy. Is it good-better-best-wow or wow-good-better-best? The Webster's is as confused as anyone like me. The situation gets murkier when the word “Cuuute” is also thrown in. Anything from an orange-coloured hand kerchief to the modern robotic arms you find in the automobile factories has the potential to attract “Cuuute”. We almost reached Sela.

“Wooooow!!”. This time it was me. I realised there is no other word in the English language to express my excitement. Our Innova had stopped at Sela. We were in the midst of an ocean of white snow; the rocks and the bushes around had taken as much snow as they could; the countless, colourful flags radiating from all the poles around made the place look like heaven; only the chill wind reminded us that we were still very much on the harsh earth.

Sighting a rhino at Kaziranga was only going to be a bonus. Nirvana attained at Sela.

(Darjeeling, March 13, 2010)

For Photos http://picasaweb.google.co.in/sundar.rajan/NorthEasterlies1#

Read/Write

2010-02-23T05:53:00.000-08:00

I do not claim to be a voracious reader; nor you would accept that I am a good writer. Still, in this post, I am going to write about the books I have read last year. But don't worry, this is not going to be like the typical book reviews.

Blink. The White Tiger. Something Like An Autobiography. Imagining India, in parts. Outliers. A Short History Of Nearly Everything. In that order. Interspersed with a few other booklet-books.

The White Tiger was like an entertaining movie. I finished the book in three sittings. (Of course, I am not going to tell you how long each of my sittings were) The beauty of the book lies in its innovative narration and Adiga's lucid, simple writing. The story is presented as a series of letters by the protagonist, a successful entrepreneur, about his rags-to-riches story, to the Chinese premier. And unlike the autobiographies/biographies on the success stories of Ambani, Biyani etc, the fictional The White Tiger exposes the darker shades of a man who wants to make it big in life in India; and for whom any means could justify the ultimate end called - success. And success, for a man from a deprived circle, is only about money. If you are one of those who avoid Award-winning books presuming the awards are given only to those ones that have lots of abstract concepts and hundreds of Spell Bee-type words - please grab a copy of TWT. Your idea will change, just like it happened with me.

"I wish I had come across this book during my school days!". Not very frequently one has that kind of a feeling after reading a book. In fact I never ever had that feeling, until I came I came across A Short History Of Nearly Everything (Bill Bryson, published by Black Swan) In one word this book is just a - classic.

As the name says it all, this 680-page book gives you very interesting insights about things ranging from the tiny atoms to the galaxies that are huge enough to be beyond our imagination. ABHONE is can be classified as a book on the history of science that also doubles up as a repository of wonderful facts, interesting stories behind great discoveries and inventions. This is book that tells us, in a remarkably captivating way, about the way we went about questioning things around us and attempted solving the world mysteries.

The book starts with a section on the creation of universe and goes to to talk about the omnipotent atoms, archeological studies and the size of the earth, cells and the origin of life, before finally ending with the chapter "Goodbye" that talks about the privilege we human beings have had in the planet and the responsibilities that are to be taken with it. The book is also loaded with facts and the facts are presented in a dramatic, yet, well... a factual way. For example while talking about the size of protons he says Protons are so small that a little dib of ink like that dot on this "i" can hold something in the region of 500,000,000,000 of them, or rather more than the number of seconds it takes to make a half a million years.

All I knew about Newton was that he had given us those three famous laws; and even when his pet dog Diamond spoiled his research papers involving sleepless nights of work, he did not get angry with that cute doggy. Had read that story in one of my school English prose books. Well Bryson's chapter on Newton (just like the portions on scores of other scientists/inventors) is a lot more interesting and insightful. Newton's curiosity knew no bounds and it is said he inserted a bodkin - a long needle of the sort used for sewing leather - into his eye socket and rubbed it around "betwixt my eye and the bone as near to [the] backside of my eye as I could" just to see what would happen.

Some of us curse Newton for his destructive invention called, the calculus. Even I have been a victim of this highly destructive device termed calculus; unlike other areas in Maths, calculus consumed an unimaginably huge portion of my memory during Class XII. The engineering days were a nightmare as in a course called AdCal (Advanced Calculus), we were introduced to an intimidating species named "triple integration". Actually that course took away even the tiny bit of reverance I had for Newton; his calculus made me spend sleepless nights. Now, having got to know what made Newton invent calculus, my animosity towards Newton is only increasing...it is said that Newton invented this new form of mathematics - as he was frustrated by the limitations of conventional mathematics (!!) But I am happy that in a way I share something with Newton - while he was frustrated by the limitations of conventional mathematics, I am frustrated by mathematics as a whole.

The book's bibliography/notes alone run for 100+ pages. In the true sense this book is an eye-opener. I really had not thought that science/history of science could be dealt in such a wonderful way, without compromising on facts.

I think our schools need such books; or at least a few lines from such books.

(PS: Continuing with the opening lines of this post, last year I even managed to write a book and get it published)

Engaged!

2010-02-03T09:21:00.000-08:00

A lot has happened over cups of coffee...

27 Jan 2010

In Memory of Memory

2010-02-03T01:18:00.000-08:00

What is your name?

...

What is your favourite colour?

Anandh

Where are you from?

Violet

Which animal you like the most?

Coimbatore

Who is your favourite hero?

Cheetah

What is the highest peak in the world?

Mt.Everest!... No!!...Rajnikanth.....Rajnikanth..

Your game over Anandh. Good try! Your score is twenty. Okay next is Meena's turn. Meena, where is Taj Mahal situated?...

Some of us might remember this game we used to play during our school days. The rules of the game are very simple. Someone keeps on asking you very simple questions one after the other, and you keep answering them. With a tiny modification - you are not supposed to answer the first question. You just let it go and the person poses you the next simple question. Now you give the correct answer of the first question asked. You score a point. Then the third question, and you give the correct answer of the second question. One more point and so on. You score till you end up giving the reply of the question being asked rather than that of the previous question asked. There is also a time limit within which you are supposed to give your answers.

Pretty simple, eh? Just try your hand at this game with your friend. To adjust for your advanced mental faculties compared to that of us during the school days, your friend may be asked to make questions a little complicated like - (Qn 1) Imagine yourself sitting playing in a crowded park across a road. You see a green Maruti Swift pass by. How many tyres does the car have?, (Qn 2) One fine morning you wake up and realise that you are alone in the middle of a huge monument. You take a walk and realise you are inside the Red Fort. In which city are you in?

Most of us might have seen Memento (C.Nolan/Eng/2000) or Ghajini (Murugadoss/Hin-Tam/2008-05). The lead character suffers from anterograde amnesia or also-popularly-known-as Short term memory loss. The hero often clicks with his Polaroid camera to remember even basic stuff like the location of his apartment. Further the walls in his room are fully covered with sketches, emergency phone numbers etc. In short, the person does not seem to remember anything...well, its not "anything", it is "anything new". He is aware of his past. But again, only till a point. He is totally incapable of forming new memories beyond that point. Given all this constraints, he relies purely on his Polaroid and countless sketches to avenge the death of his beloved! That is how the movie plot goes. The movies were a huge hit.

Coming back to our game. Why did you find it difficult to score more than four or five? The answer is in the way we store information; the way we remember things. Very broadly speaking, our "memory space" can be viewed as something made of two partitions. The bigger, robust one is called the Long term memory (LTM). It is like a computer hard disc with unlimited storage space. Also, whatever is there is there forever.The other smaller partition is, of course, Short term memory (STM). Something like your computer's RAM. It has a very limited capacity and things here are ephemeral.

The things that we try to remember go and sit in the STM first. They can comfortably be there for about 10 seconds (roughly), after which they begin to disappear. If one is interested in remembering the information for a longer time, it has to be necessarily sent to the hard disc of our memory. The movie's hero had a problem in doing this after his head injury in a scuffle with the villains. So whatever was there in his LTM, like the duets he had danced with Asin, was readily available to him. No LTM, No flashbacks! Events happening after that injury never went into his LTM and thats why he ends up using instant-photo cameras and Post-it Notes.

So why did Anandh find it difficult to score beyond four answers? To begin with, he hears and remembers the first question (What is your name?). This is in his STM. He does not try to move it to the LTM. Well, no problems there as the next question will be posed within the next 10 seconds and he can comfortably retrieve the first question sitting in his STM, and answer it. The next question. (What is your favourite colour?) There's a discomfort now. Unlike the unlimited capacity of the LTM, our RAM can not handle too many things at a time. Still Anandh somehow manages to store the second question in his RAM; process the first question sitting already in his RAM and give out the answer. By the time he reaches the third or the fourth question he is worn out and his STM shouts out "I can't!".

Wait...in a TV programme a few days back there was this little girl who went on and on, and finally the person who gave up was the one who had been asking her the questions! How is that possible? Is she an extraordinary specimen?

Somehow she knew there is something called as LTM. On hearing the first question she immediately processed it, got the answer and - stored the answer in her LTM. The second question asked. She got it and stored it in her STM. Gave out the answer to the first question from her LTM. Processed the second question sitting in her STM, moved the answer to the LTM. The next question asked. The same sequence followed. And finally, the person who was asking the questions shouts out "I can't!"

Photo Finish

2009-12-30T07:52:00.000-08:00

Film noir

TN Express...
a part of my life ever since the monsoon of '98

On the way out after a good lunch

AllThreeSnaps(c)MyNokia 3110c

Orphaned Samosas

2009-12-21T03:46:00.000-08:00

Wondering what a photograph of dozens of ready-to-eat samosas and sweets doing here? Well, they are not just an battalion of samosas, crispy potato chips and delicious sweets served along with tomato sauce; waiting to be had. They mark a rare occurrence in our campus. Generally we have a short break after every 50-minute lecture and a long break after every two such lectures. The first long break is a tea-break; the second one is the longer lunch break. Blame it on the soporific tax law lectures or the early morning physical exercises or the late night solid, liquid diets and movie sessions or just the sheer frustration arising out of the mere act of sitting inside the lecture hall for 50 full minutes -there is a sudden outburst of energy after every 50 minutes; that's when most of us rush out of the lecture rooms and make calls, catch up with friends, curse the bureaucracy, have sun bath in full formal wear outside the building, and prepare ourselves for the next fifty minutes. The energy outburst is of a very high intensity during the first long break when the tea, coffee etc is served. Being the winter hot soups are also being served these days. Most of us just wait for the lecturer to officially conclude and the moment we get that signal from the lecturer, there is a mad rush towards the mess workers who wait outside with the tea-can, soup and biscuits.

I feel it gives most of us a kick to fight and earn something, rather than getting things easily on one's lap. All of us here are aware that there is going to be enough of tea or soup for all of us, still we simulate the environment outside a PDS shop in a small-town, during every tea-break. There is a mad rush towards the tea-can. Imagine a minimum of 100-plus fully grown adults making a campaign for the tea-can and biscuits! Terrific! Here, the strategists have an edge. While many of us run and take positions near the tea-can and try to lay hands on the disposable cups kept on the other side, the masterminds conquer the disposable glasses first. Such a strategic move gives them the wild card entry; they have instant access to the tea-can. Their job is done, they have earned their cup of tea.

Among others who had lost out on the strategy there is a chaos and now the war zone shifts from the tea-can to the array of disposable cups. In the end everyone has the plastic cups in their hands and the real fight for the tea begins. Sometimes due to the commotion, many of our fingers lose the delicate balance of the plastic cup with some steaming tea, and a few others end up with heavy tea stains on their neatly-pressed formal shirts and trousers. "Very sorry yaar...". Coming to the biscuits the ones that vanish the fastest are Bourbon biscuits. I too attack them. Usually the salted biscuits are the leftovers.

So how were these samosas and sweets spared? Well, we had a special guest in our campus that day. He is also one of the persons I too admire. Samosa was in none of our minds. All of us were impressed by the talk the person had given in the audi earlier and were obviously interested in having a small talk or a snap with that special guest in the mess lawns, where the samosa-battalion was tantalisingly waiting. Alas! No one even cared about it. (Did you notice this in the photograph...how carelessly a person walks by the samosa battalion?!) No one even turned towards it.

Sometime early December, 2009. The best-ever captain of the Indian cricket team, M.S.Dhoni, visited our campus. It was an inspiring and a very memorable day.

Director's Cut - 4

2009-12-20T10:40:00.000-08:00

Majid Majidi. Children of Heaven. Day 6. December 12, 2009. It was (supposed to be) the final day of NIFF. My excitation level was a little higher. Being the final day of the festival I expected everyone to like the movie and go back home with a happy note - about the whole thing called NIFF. But more than that it was Superstar Rajnikanth's 60th birthday! Even in the promos I had mentioned that COH would start after the screening of highlights from Sivaji - the boss.(Shankar/ 2007/Tamil). COH was about to start at 9:30 PM. I started Rajni birthday celebrations with Sivaji, with the scene where helicopter lands and Rajni stunningly and stylishly comes out as "motta boss". No wonder the applause and whistles lasted for the next ten minutes or so till the movie ended. I still believe that Shankar has truly transformed Rajni to a higher plane in Sivaji, especially as motta boss, and Enthiran (under production) is going to be a trial by fire for the Sivaji team. Having celebrated the birthday it was time to start the final show of the festival week.

COH impressed everyone right from the beginning. The movie is about - just a pair of shoes! I never knew such a gripping and enjoyable movie could be made using this half-line plot! Hats off to the director for also showing various walks of Iran life using this tiny plot. The screenplay also has a few pinches that makes you come to the seat edges. One of them being the sequence where a shoe falls into the stream and the little girl chases it along the stream trying to pick it up. Its a classic! Of course, the climax too. My heart missed beats while watching the climax. We all were sure that the kid is going to come second and win the shoes. He too appeared to be doing that. It was quite a surprise and disappointment to see him win the first prize. It was a kind of anti-climax. Totally unexpected. Now what? Hows he going to get a shoe-pair to his sister? Is he not going to get? Is his father going to know the truth and scold him? Poor boy!

Majidi has given us a great ending. He has written the climax sequencing in quite an absorbing way; he just does not leave us there comfortably, he gives us a twist. Neat job! But that's not the main reason why my heart missed a few beats. Usually I play the movies form the movie files stored in the computer. Only for COH I had to play it directly from the DVD. And you know what, the Computer made the climax much more thrilling and ensured that everyone in the audi had to literally sit at the edges of their seats. Just about 5-6 seconds before the running race is over and everyone fully eager to know who is going to win - the DVD got jammed! We tried hard a few times, it would not move beyond that very same point! Audience were getting restless. I was getting tensed up. One more try; no improvement. We tried opening it using other media players as well, but no change in the script.

The ending could not have got more thrilling.

Thanks to the Computer!

Ultimately, I had a huge relief when we were able to copy the file to the computer and the VLC player was kind enough to show us who won the race and what happened to the pair of shoes! The audience too had a great relief and a feeling of satisfaction; the movie got a warm applause in the end.

Still I had to apologise to the audience (who were very nice) and narrate (!) them how exactly the movie ended. It was a real, thrilling experience. I, and many others, would not forget COH for the years to come. Cheers to Majidi... and that Computer!

Director's Cut - 3

2009-12-17T03:44:00.001-08:00

Day 3. 9th Dec 2009. I had made the promos for that night's movie with the tagline "Come and see what it takes to beat Lagaan". No Man's Land. (Danis Tanovic/2001/Bosnian). Some of you would have seen this movie; most of you would have heard about this movie. NML emerged the winner in the Oscars ceremony in 2002 and I vividly remember that day. I was in my final year of engineering. Dozens of us were in the common room watching the live relay from Hollywood. Lagaan had by then created waves all over the world. The simple storyline of David v/s Goliath set wonderfully in the pre-Independence India, with Goliath being the British and rustic Aamir as David had struck chord with everyone. AR Rahman's compositions had also mesmerised all. Lagaan ran for more than 3 hour 30 minutes without any dullness. Great job by Gowarikar. I remember even one of the IIMs had used Lagaan to teach management! No wonder that dozens of us were waiting for India and Aamir to hold the Oscar.

...and the Award goes to No Man's Land! Huge disappointment, then. NML is just the opposite of Lagaan. While Lagaan takes forward a simple plot in a highly entertaining way, NML presents us a grand plot covering global politics, cultural issues, military mindsets, patriotism, media hypes and a few more in a very simple yet a very hard hitting way - that too in just under 100 minutes! At the end of show everyone was left with a deep impact. It was a worthy defeat for Lagaan. Not many of us had seen such a movie before. The talks between the two men in the no man's land made us laugh at a few places but at the same time those dialogs were quite deep. What an end! I had another night of peaceful sleep. Some of the audience personally congratulated me for choosing NML! I plan to watch L'enfer by Danis Tanovic.

Day 4. Downfall.

In the first place I was not sure whether to have The Counterfeiters (Stephen Ruzowitzky/2007/German) or this movie, Downfall, in the itenary. I decided to go ahead with The Counterfeiters. But just a few moments before I clicked "Print" in NIFF_Schedule.docx, I got The Counterfeiters changed to Downfall (Hirschbiegel/2004/Germany). Though a heavy movie, my friends would like to know Hitler's final weeks, I felt. I had seen this movie a few months back.

Being a Friday the audience count had touched thirty! The majority of them were due to the curiosity-factor. Anyway by then at least 25 viewers was the norm.

Though some more editing would have made the movie more riveting, at the end of the show everyone was feeling - heavy and as a part of one of the defining times of the modern world history. Downfall proved yet again that language does not matter...all it mattered was whether a movie is able to "connect" with the audience, and what is "new".

Director's Cut - 2

2009-12-13T04:39:00.000-08:00

I consider my contribution to the world of cinema to be - over! I have personally been instrumental in making close to thirty people watch Rashomon. (Akira Kurosawa/1950/Japan). Well I do not say all those thirty saw the movie only because of me; I just meant that I had a huge role there. The past one week has been quite tiring and exciting. Being the Secretary, Film Society here I am supposed to screen 1-2 movies every week. These were typically old Hindi or English movies. And generally only 4-5 viewers (including the person who is in-charge of the audi) turned out for these movies. A show is treated to be Houseful if the audience count touches the magical double-digit figure - ten. Sometimes due to the poor turnout I have even felt very lonely and scared in the Auditorium! Well...the only exception to that till the last week has been Andaz Apna Apna. (Rajkumar Santoshi/1994/Hindi). More than fifteen people had come to watch that rib-tickling comedy by the Khans. I too enjoyed the movie. I almost placed a "HOUSEFUL" board outside the auditorium.

To break the monotony and my loneliness in the Auditorium, I hit upon the idea of screening a few international movies. (International means - Non-English/Indian) It was a huge risk and I felt I was driving away even the regular 4-5 viewers. Anyway I was prepared for it. Even if no one else turns out I was sure at least two viewers would; my close fellows here...captive, guaranteed and helpless audience! A personal gain behind this idea was that over the past one year I had seen most of the movies only in my room, on my HCL desktop. So watching a few of those great movies in a "cinema hall" was not a bad idea. And I have this luxury only till this month-end, when my tenure ends and the new FilmSec would take charge. Things got going and I put up the itinerary for the week-long NIFF ~ NADT International Film Festival 2009.

The lineup was - Pan's Labyrinth (Mexico), Rashomon (Japan), No Man's Land (Bosnia), The Downfall (Germany) and Children of Heaven (Iran). I had also planned to screen Mongol (Mongolia). I had wanted to show only those critically-acclaimed movies that were also interesting enough; not the usual slow-paced, art-movie types. I thought, in that way I would help break the normal mindset that award-winning movies are either too slow or over-the-head.

Here are a few lines from the gmail chat I had with one of my good friends (GF) here...just a few nights before the inaugural show of NIFF.

GF: "if u had 2 do a festival 4 urself thn why waste our money on posters"

GF: "so a mixture is always good"

GF: "wht u r doing is social exclusion of those whose tastes dont conform 2 urs."

Me: "i am sure more than 10 will turn up on one of these days!"

GF: "show mithunda's Gunda... best ever B-grade movie made...it was the biggest hit in kharagpur."

I reduced my audience estimates after that chat. I found some sense in what that sensible GF was saying. I felt only the usual 4-5 would turn up to NIFF too. Being shown on weekdays....will even the usuals come? Question mark.

Day One. Monday. Dec 7th. Pan's Labyrinth. All my assumptions about the kind of cinema people would like to watch - were demolished without a trace, for the good. To my utter surprise quite a few number of people started pouring in and by the time the movie ended the count had touched..hold your breath...t w e n t y! Unbelievable! People were ready to take a few steps to drop in and see..."What's new?". Language was not a serious barrier. All that matters was a novelty factor to begin with, and to sustain the crowd all it takes is a gripping storyline and a beautiful narration. By the end of the show...everyone was thoroughly mesmerised by Ofelia's fairy world and equally disturbed by the evil Captain. Day One was a success! I had a good sleep.

Day Two. Rashomon. It is said that Rashomon made Hollywood stop for a while and turn towards Asia. Being shot in black and white I was not sure if it was a good choice for NIFF. Still I went ahead - just to tell everyone what made Akira - the Master. I also wanted to make sure that my friends had something to say when they had to come across the so-called connoisseurs of world cinema. It worked...more applause for Akira. My job was done. That was my greatest contribution to cineworld yet.

The story will continue...

(PS: On a special directive from that GF, I would like to make it amply clear that GF is not equal to Girl Friend. For this post, GF = Good Friend. This GF's name is Smarak Swain @ Mark Twain)

Director's Cut - 1

2009-12-02T09:34:00.000-08:00

It happened at last!! Ever since my Higher Secondary school days I wanted to be a cinema director! Seriously. I am not joking. I don't know from where that dream landed in my brain and heart. But it did. During my earlier school days I wanted to be a Doctor. It is a different, tragic story that the biology classes in our high school days pushed me to opt for the Computer Science group during my higher secondary classes.

September 19-20, 2009. Tanjavur.

I was sitting next to the director of "Kalavani" looking at the monitor! It has been more than a decade since I finished my schooling. It was a great feeling to find myself in the sets of an actual movie shooting. Kind of dream come true.

Beauty in chaos - that is the only line that can truly convey what happens on the sets. You have people running around madly looking for someone/something, assistants desperately trying to get the sets and the props ready, a few men shouting at the top of their voices asking someone to get something to the sets, tea boys shuttling at the location with tea cups/juice bottles, associates trying to explain the situation to the cast/crowd and make them ready for the shoot, huge cables from the generator van coiled around the whole place like hungry pythons, dance masters trying to extract the right moves, the lead artists' vans parked at a distance, a few men permanently hooked on to their cellphones, the curious crowd that sieges the unit, the caterer with his huge tiffin carriers...the list goes on. And at the end of all this repeated over a few months or so - you have a finished movie! That is something truly amazing.

The whole thing hinges on that one person called - Director. Apart from being a highly creative person, a director is also expected to be an extraordinary General Manager. I really don't know how in spite of all the headaches on the sets, one is able to be creative and make others too deliver. Creativity needs relatively calmer mind/environment, as far as I know. For instance let us take the apparently creative task of writing this blog post. Just try writing something or drawing something with a dozen people watching you amidst lots of chatter. It is not going to be an easy task even to write one good paragraph. Just magnify the complexity of the creative task as well the chaos around, say a thousand times, you have a director's job!

The story will continue...

Topper's Tips

2009-11-08T04:59:00.000-08:00

It is going to be off my head and heart in a couple of days. I have been pestering my brother, ever since the summer of 2005, to share the ways that made him the most successful candidate as per the results of the IAS Exams that year. He is a voracious reader. After four-plus years...he has become a writer at last. In the process I too have written a lot. Our book "Topper's Tips" will be waiting for you in the stands in another 4-5 days. Unique Publications, Delhi is doing the job of making our tips reach the needy aspirants in the best form at Rs.95. It is a small-sized book with about 100 pages.

Some background: The IAS Exam is considered to be the toughest and the most tiring exam in the country. Though this Exam does not test one's quantitative skills and analytical bent of mind as good as the CAT does, IAS Exam is a nightmare for the sheer volume and variety of the subjects to be mastered; and the unimaginably long duration of the selection cycle that spans over a year with three stages - an objective Prelim, a subjective and unnerving Main and finally topped up by a Personality Test. Well, I can go on about the exams for dozens of more lines. Cutting it short, it becomes very essential for an aspirant to be armed with good guidance to wade this Exam. We felt we could and we need to help here.

Anyone who is even remotely related with this Exams would agree that right guidance, especially from candidates who have cleared the Exam, is not easily available in a systematic way. Rather, there are thousands of "free advices" and "glorious myths" that end up confusing and spoiling the efforts of thousands of genuine candidates every year.

Topper's Tips is an attempt to clear the myths and share our wisdom acquired over a period of about ten years. Yes, ten years. My brother started with the Prelims 2000, I ended it with the Interview 2009. Luckily we both have cleared the Exam. We sincerely hope this book will be much help to many; and sincere candidates can avoid wasting years in reinventing the wheel.

We have tried to keep the language as simple as possible. We have also put in very practical insights. We hope it is going to be useful. If you happen to come across a copy in the coming weeks, please feel free to write to us.Thanks!

Our sincere thanks to all who made this book possible.

Fingers crossed!

Happy Diwali

2009-10-18T03:24:00.000-07:00

Happy Diwali! Unlike the last year there are no crackers for the background this time. But the feeling is better now.

(I clicked this Tirunelveli Twilight a few days back with a Nokia E63)

Lions, donkeys and angels

2009-10-17T08:45:00.000-07:00

Agreed. I was quite busy with my job as well many other interesting things in life that I found it difficult to maintain my average monthly post rate; But the poor Internet connectivity in our country is the real culprit. Even right now I am not typing this live on pilanipix. I will have to take this in a pen drive and locate a good Internet centre to make this available to you.

Well, my mind is having a words-jam. Words-jam is not like the ones that come in those transparent glass bottles with tight lids and bright labels; it is like the traffic jam. There are thousands of words struggling hard to come out my head at the same time, mainly due to the congestion caused by this delay in my post. The past six weeks have been quite exciting. Before I forget, let me tell you about a sarcastic yet heavy statement I came across today -"Bureaucracy is a donkey manufacturing factory". Well, I could not get any meaning out of it until that gentleman gave the addendum, "It catches lions and creates donkeys out of them". It is in reference to the tough civil service exams that tries to get the best talent available to the manage our country's administration. And how over a period of time we fail to make the best use of this talented human resources, and end up turning these smart fellows into mediocre officials who close their eyes before opening their pens.

I too was supposed to be a lion when I was caught by the civil services exam two years back. It is a different matter that I am not sure whether they caught what they wanted. But, I am sure I have not yet been turned into a donkey!

I am happy to have come across a few who still remain fearless lions even after dozens of years of service. I interacted with some of them today; I felt proud to have been caught. This moment I feel like retyping my earlier post; exactly the same way I typed it a year back. There are a few good civil servants scattered here and there; And these are the ones who keep the system in tact without any implosion or explosion. As one of my bosses said, these are like the angels sent by God in very small numbers - but to the right places, at the right time. I shudder to think of a situation where such self-driven and self-motivated people are absent from the system. With such people around there is enough inspiration!

(October 14th, 2009)

Back to Office

2009-08-30T00:06:00.000-07:00

After a gap of about, exactly four full years I will be back at an office. Though it is just as a trainee for two months, the mere fact that I will have an office, a boss, timings, canteen, probably some place to park myself etc after a huge gap makes me somewhat thrilled. Also nostalgic. I was serving my notice period this day, four years back.

Tata for now... I got a train to jump into.

You know you are an Officer when....

2009-08-26T03:12:00.000-07:00

Just one more to go... The last paper of the Departmental Exam is slated for tomorrow. The Departmental Exams are like the semester exams in colleges. These are a part of the larger bureaucratic formality, apparently designed to ensure that Probationers turn out into full-fledged Officers by the end of their intensive training (If we allow repetition of letters, "intensive" and "insensitive" are anagrams). There are three semesters and two Departmentals here.

From my point of view there is much, much more to these Exams - the foremost of them being the time one gets for oneself. This because unlike the normal days - on an Exam day you are inside a closed, classroom only for three hours at max. On other days it is about seven hours spread over nine hours and the day begins at 6 AM, with the compulsory morning PT. Thus one is choked during the normal days. Exams give me a great relief from all these. Added to this is the special bonus called the preparatory leave, for about a week before the Exams. It is exciting!

Above all the best part of the Exams is that they give me the compelling reason to watch good movies frequently. On the usual days, I am sapped by the end of the long lectures and I don't really feel like sitting in front of the system. But these days we are supposed to have been working very hard for the Exams and that means we need to take good breaks and that means watching movies often without any kind of guilt or discomfort. Also my group-study unit members never say "No" when it comes to opening any .avi or .dat file!

Over the past one week of Exams we have seen some of the best movies I have seen ever... It started with The Virgin Spring (Sweden/Bergman/1960), Mongol (Mongolia/Bordov/2007), The Counterfeiters (Germany/Ruzowitzky/2007), Pan's Labyrinth (Mexico/Toro/2006) and stands with The Downfall (Germany/Hirschbiegel/2004) that we watched last night. It is difficult to single out the best one out of these...however if compelled I would go for Mongol...er...also The Downfall. Mongol traces the life of the most famous person from Mongolia - Ghengis Khan. In addition to the authenticity one can feel in this movie, the back ground score also needs a special mention. It captivates you.

Another "cute" part of the Departmental Exams is that one is offered water, snacks and cups of tea at one's seat itself. During the normal class days the snacks and tea cans are kept outside the classrooms and the whole area regularly reminds me of the ration store where I had fought out for a few litres of blue kerosene many years back. (Just imagine...160 officer trainees v/s 2 tea cans and a few biscuit packets!)But being the Exam time, nobody expects us to simulate a PDS shop situation. Also, being "Officers" it is understood that we can not survive without a cup of tea for more than two hours at a stretch. So...this seat-delivery of tea and biscuits! Good idea!

After seeing the winning side in movies like Saving Private Ryan or say The Pianist, it is quite chilling to see the losing side in The Downfall. Not just the story of the losing side (that we have seen in the Vietnam War movies like The Full Metal Jacket or The Deer Hunter), but that of the last few weeks of the downfall of the greatest modern times dictator; Of the pain of a man whose great vision is shattered; Of the unmanageable shock of a leader as he sees his men betraying him; And of a family and group of die-hard loyals who actually kill themselves as a tribute to Fuhrer. The scene where a mother poisons all her children one after the other in their sleep is sure to bring tears even to the rocks. Bruno Ganz has lived as Adolf Hitler in this movie. Sometimes, he even makes us pity that beast called Hitler. Hats off boss!

Coming to the tea...I just think of those exams of school days, especially my Higher Secondary Exam. I would rate that as the toughest Exam I have ever taken, for the sheer amount of pressure and the stakes involved. But even during those exams, there was no seat-delivery of tea...forget seat-delivery there was not even a tea can anywhere in that vicinity. All one could do was to take a quick walk outside and have a glass of water kept from a huge stainless steel drum in the corridor.

I am an Officer now!

(To know more click here...)

Lazy Photos

2009-08-21T03:09:00.000-07:00

(Window View)

There were days. many years back, when I used to roam around with my bulky Cosina manual SLR camera. That camera used to fill almost half of my briefcase. Today, after a 2-year relation with a Sony 5.1 mp digital camera, I am tied up with a Nokia 3110. Though I take this one wherever I go, it is not for for good snaps; it is just to use the mobile. I no longer "look" for good frames. I also miss those moments of enjoyable, anxious waits in the photo studio...for the negatives to be turned into photographs. Those moments of wait really used to race my heart. I used to remember almost all the 34 or so frames I had clicked, and eagerly waited to see how they have shaped up on print. The moment I see the studio boy bringing the photos (they are generally a slightly wet at this point of time), I literally used to pounce on him. It gave one a kind of high to see the snaps on print for the first time. It is no longer today.

(First Rain)

Of course no one asked me to throw away that manual SLR and get settled for mobile camera. Probably I have lost much interest in photography. Or another angle to it is - I am getting lazier with age. The latter is more realistic.

(Lazy)

For example, the snap above was clicked while I was trying hard to catch up some sleep. But people who do not know this story behind the snap might think that I have worked really hard to fix the frame, conceptualise such an innovative angle, and the snap too has come out as impressively as planned. Only you and I know that this is a lazy photo.

(Wet Rickshaw)

The Golden Carpet (below) was taken by my Sony before we broke up. I was quite satisfied about this taken in the corridor outside my room, but had it been a few years back - I would have surely enjoyed those anxious moments in the photo studio.

I don't know what I did...

2009-08-04T06:50:00.000-07:00

It was about seven monsoons back I had my first brush with the subject called book keeping and accountancy. (For the removal of any doubts - seven monsoons back means in the month of August of the year 2002) It was called as Managerial Accounting that time. It involved a lots of intimidating terms like provision for doubtful debts, appropriation account, sundry creditors, etc...and the most frightening of them all, the two words that always bagged the prize for the best couple - debit & credit! For some peculiar reasons known only to a select few called the Chartered Accountants, Debit&Credit were always together like Siamese Twins. The subject also involved rampant use of the small, black gadget called the calculator; one got to fill many A4 sheets with lots of numbers partitioned by numerous lines - horizontal and vertical. The final thing that you created was called the Balance sheet or Consignment account or Joint Venture account, based on what was asked in the question. But my answer did not vary much between the questions. Only the heading changed. The marks I got also did not vary much. Only the denominator kept changing! And it does not end there, one is also supposed to draw a horizontal line at the bottom and generate a mosaic of words and numbers under the title - Working Notes.

Coming to the calculator...during those four years that preceded that monsoon seven years back (!!hold on..hold on.. I just meant during my engineering days that preceded my MBA days), I had used my calculator quite extensively. In fact to unimaginable levels. Those people in my college did not believe in words, they spoke the language of numbers - and only numbers. As such I did not have any problems with that, but the real issue was they also expected me to speak the same language. Even in a paper called General Biology, that we did in our first year, there were numerical problems! Well.. not only numbers, usually all the papers also had some very bizarre symbols like.. d, a f, g, s, D, F, y etc.

I was equally scared of these symbols. Especially the last one. It reminded me of Trishul - the Hindu mythological weapon of Lord Shiva and many local deities. It represented the omnipotent, unbridled force that would destroy any evil. But I was using these symbols on a day-to-day basis. I was scared. Naturally. But my calculator was not afraid of any symbol - it had all these symbols and much more. The calculator was called Casio V.P.A.M fx-100s.

But the calculator needed for Book keeping and accounting is like our dhobhi's puny donkey. It has just the 10 digits, keys for the four basic mathematical operations, and the essentials like "=", MR, % etc. But it is expected to do carry loads and loads of clothes that ranged from rags to rich shirts. For instance it is supposed to find out out the right entry for the Stock valued at Rs.8,700 that was destroyed by fire on 25.03.2007, but for which the insurance company admitted a claim of Rs.5,800 only, that too in the next year. Poor donkey! About the dhobhi.. the lesser said, the better!

We are having a small test of accountancy and book-keeping tomorrow.. and I really don't know what I did many monsoons back...

College Days

2009-07-19T02:48:00.000-07:00

My computer's screen has been staring at me for the past couple of minutes. I too was staring at it. I am supposed to type out something. Type out - not just because it has been about 20 days since I updated my blog, but also because I have come across so many things to share with you. One of them is about doctors, other one is about the Indian summers, the need to have a Friend-Philosopher-Guide also featured in my topic list and movies too found a place, naturally.

Also I have been writing lots of other stuff in the mean time and I was not able to find time to scribble down on these hotspots in my mind.

"Happy Days". (Telugu/2007/Sekhar Kammula) One of my close friends gave me this when my train stopped at the Vijayawada Junction for a few minutes, many weeks back. I took out time for this movie only a couple of days back. To tell you in one line, this movie is a must-watch. The film traces the lives of a bunch of friends from the day they enter the gates of an engineering college to their farewell day. Nothing more; Nothing less; And there lies the speciality of the movie. Generally college-type movies try to solve something - a love problem, a friendship problem, a student-teacher relation problem etc - by killing a character or by loads of lecture by someone or by gallons of tears. Say, the film "Kallori" (College. Tamil/2007/Balaji Sakthivel) tries to cinematically trace back the incidents that happened before the grossly unfortunate incident of burning of a college bus, in Tamil Nadu, many years back. It had followed the popular mode of developing a story from news articles. But HD stands out here. HD just shows what happens in those four years in the campus - No problems, No solutions; Just four years.

No one marries anyone in the end; No one kills anyone in the end; A few take up jobs; A few others leave for the US; A few remain undecided.

This sense of incompleteness makes this a complete movie. This imbalance in the end makes the movie a perfectly balanced one. This sense of void gives.. I hope you got the message by now, right? Songs are wonderful. The lead lady looks great; (incidentally she featured in Kallori also!) the lead man also looks smart like Boys-fame Siddarth's close clone. And above all....this is the first movie I get to watch, after many months, that does not have even a single murder or a gun shot!

I too had a happy day :)

(PS: Just now I found out that Happy Days was released about 2 months before Kallori!)

Rains....

2009-06-27T22:37:00.001-07:00

The dry mess

Rain falls -

the postbox bleeds.

(The monsoon is back after a dangerous game of hide and seek. My Nokia clicked this snap with its 1.3 megapix camera, on my way to Sunday morning masala dosa.)

Freeze!

2009-06-22T19:59:00.000-07:00

FADE IN: INT. GRUBBY HOTEL CORRIDOR - DAY (DIMLY LIT)

A woman's face BACKS INTO SHOT, her head resting against grimy wallpaper. She is tense, sweaty, wide-eyed with concentration. This is CLARICE STARLING - mid-20's, trim, very pretty. She wears Kevlar body armor over a navy windbreaker, khaki pants. Her thick hair is piled under a navy baseball cap. A revolver, clutched in her right hand, hovers by her ear. She raises a speedloader, in her left hand, locks it into her cylinder, twists and reloads.

CLOSE ON a guest room door, with a small, wired pack attached to its knob. Suddenly, with a sharp CRACK!, the knob explodes, and the door bursts open.

WITH CLARICE - MOVING SHOT - as she runs around a corner, through a cloud of smoke. She shoulders aside the shattered door and rushes inside, gun at the ready in both hands...

CUT TO: INT. HOTEL ROOM - DAY. CLARICE'S POV - MOVING - as she first sees, sitting on the edge of a bed - a FEMALE HOSTAGE. Black, late 20's, gagged, hands behind her back. Then, SWIVELLING... she sees a startled MALE SUSPECT - white, mid-20's - standing by a window with a rifle in his hands. He is turning towards her...CLARICE drops into a combat crouch, gun extended, and shouts.

CLARICE

Freeze! FBI!

Replace Clarice with My Name, also make necessary modifications with the descriptors like mid-20s, trim, very pretty, you can probably replace them with late-20s, appears to be trim, strikingly handsome! Hey.. don't worry, I have not yet gone mad! That was the opening sequence (as per the script) of Silence of the Lambs. A mock rescue operation going on in some Police Academy in the US. Tomorrow, we have a mock Income Tax raid here. IT raids - technically called - Search and seizures - are the biggest things that come to one's mind on hearing "IT". What has gone into IT raids here so far is long, and longer hours of lectures, mostly interesting. I can tell you very well that, it is not just about showing one's ID card, saying "We are from the Income Tax Department" and ransacking someone's resisdence. IT raids have much more to them. More updates after tomorrow. Till then..

Freeze! Income Tax!

Something like...

2009-05-16T05:30:00.000-07:00

An old pond

A frog jumps in -

the sound of water.

"Well of course if a frog jumps into the water, there's going to be a noise". Is that your reaction to those eleven words and a hyphen? Well, then you simply have no feeling for haiku. Please do not mistake me, I don't say that; It is Akira Kurosawa. At last, after dabbling for a few weeks, I am through with Something like an autobiography by Kurosawa. Rashomon (1950, Jap) comes to most of our minds on hearing the word Kurosawa. Interestingly, in this book Kurosawsa has told his own story starting right from his childhood and ending it with the making of Rashomon. However he continued to make films as late as early nineties. I am not an expert on film making or the history of world cinema, but I have been impressed by Kurosawa's films like Dersu Uzala(1975) and Ran (1985). Needless to mention Rashomon. Andha Naal (1954, Tam, S.Balachander), one of the greatest performances of Sivaji Ganesan ever, follows a similar script as Rashomon. The plot is simple. It is something like the game Chinese whispers that we would have played at some point of time or the other. It is about how a same event takes amusingly different forms when coloured, consciously or unconsciously, by the perceptions and motives of the individuals who report it. (Sorry....I could not make that sentence simpler!! I think I am yet to recover from the hangover of yesterday's Income Tax Act test.) Virumaandi (2004, Tam, Kamal Hassan) also belongs to the same genre of story telling.

The day just before the shooting was about to start, the three assistant directors Daiei had assigned me came to see me at the inn where I was staying. I wondered what the problem could be. It turned out that they found the script baffling and wanted me to explain it to them. "Please read it again more carefully," I told them. "If you read it diligently, you should be able to understand it because it was written with the intention of being comprehensible." But they wouldn't leave. "We believe we have read it carefully, and we still don't understand it at all; that's why we want you to explain it to us."

I was horrified as well curious at the same time while reading that para from the book. Horrified - as I imagined myself to be Kurosawa for a moment; Just a day before the shoot and the assistants saying something like that! Curious - to know Kurosawa's explanation for that. Rashomon went on to win many awards including the Oscar for Best foreign language film. The film's recognition the world over was like "pouring water into the sleeping ears of the Japanese film industry."

Some verses from the book that make me smile...

Cheerful on the way there,

Fearful on the way home.

(Lyrics of a song from his directorial debut Sugata Sanshiro, 1942.)

On the mountaintop

water appears

and tumbles down.

(When I first read it, I was struck with amazement. It was apparently a poem by an amateur, but I felt as if its pure, clear vision and simple, straightforward expression had hit me over the head. My affection for my own poems, which were no more than words lined up and twisted around in different ways, dried up completely. - Kurosawa)

We sing thanks for our teacher's kindness,

We have honored and revered...

.. After the years, met daily as brothers and sisters,

You go on..

..In the gleam of fireflies.

(A few lines from his school graduation day)

Kurosawa talks about a lot of people in his autobiography but film director Yamamoto Kajiro, whom Kurosawa describes as the best teacher of my entire life, takes away the largest share. The next biggest impact on Kurosawa was probably by his elder brother about whom Kurosawa says ...But I prefer to think of my brother as a negative strip of film that led to my own development as a positive image.

Specifically, the last few pages where Kurosawa tells us about film-making are worth a dozen reads. Cinema resembles so many other arts. If cinema has very literary characteristics, it also has theatrical qualities, a philosophical side, attributes of painting and sculpture and musical elements. But cinema is, in the final analysis, cinema. - AK

[By the way, this post is by no means a book review.

It is rather Something like a book review.

And thanks to Anish cheta for gifting me this book]

Status Quo - 2

2009-05-04T09:33:00.000-07:00

I plan to write something about "how to handle extreme rumour pressure" very soon. As most of you know I have been in the eye of the Civil Service Exam storm for the past one month or so. For others let me explain what I meant - a national-scale rumour about the CSE results has been doing rounds for the past many weeks. It went to that extent that my colleagues here even wanted to have a photo session with me based on that rumour. Sundar/Rajan has topped this year's CSE. That was the rumour! Over the past few weeks not even a single day passed in my life without at least five people congratulating me for topping the exam. Such people also called me from diverse geographies like Chennai, Delhi etc. Most of them would also add, "Topping IAS exams is in your family genes", referring to my elder brother's feat a few years back. A few of them also concluded that IAS Rank.1 is a family property. And over the past four-five days the number of callers and the people who congratulate me had only increased. Some of them came to me and even said the marks I had (apparently) scored in the Mains and the Interview, with great authority.

Combined with the speculation about the actual date of the results, my life was quite peculiar. Things reached the zenith today before dying out at about 4 in the evening. But overall I enjoyed the process. It made me learn a lot about people - individuals and groups. I will talk more on this later on a post fully dedicated to rumour - and rumour only. But for a very few people belonging to my inner circle, no one actually knows the adventures I undertook, the dreams I chased - after taking the prelims exam, last year. Looking back I'm quite happy about the way things turned out. But even in that little inner circle many actually expected some truth in that rumour. I'm terribly sorry for them, and really grateful to them for placing such a high level of confidence in my capabilities. Or is it their lack of confidence in the Exam system? I guess it was a blend of both.

I have been laughing away this rumour since the day it reached my ears for the first time. Also from some corner of my mind, Dr.Gopalakrishnan's (ED, Tata Sons) quote always flashed within me. It goes like this - Deserve before you desire. [Something more fundamental to that is - One should want something in the first place. Only after that deserve/desire rule sets in] No no...don't worry, am not trying to be philosophical. I generally believe in cause-effect and usually do not subscribe to destiny/fate etc. Probably had I got the Rank as per rumours I would have started believing in destiny etc. I am happy now. I had full faith in myself and I'm happy that I was able to uphold that faith. I genuinely believed that for the kind of treatment I meted out to the Mains exam this time, even getting the interview call was a great bonus for me; leave alone Topping the exam. And I would have really got confused with my career, again!

I'm happy that I have not betrayed myself; My belief in myself;

My belief that I do not deserve anything, as I did not want anything this time.

I'm also happy that no one can be a Topper just by some miracle.

Now, let me resume the Debit/Credit lessons!

Status Quo

2009-05-02T06:00:00.000-07:00

Pune, July 2002.

Personal Account: Debit the receiver/Credit the giver

Real Account: Debit what comes in/Credit what goes out

Nominal Account: Debit all expenses or losses/Credit all incomes or gains

Nagpur, May 2009.

Personal Account: Debit the receiver/Credit the giver

Real Account: Debit what comes in/Credit what goes out

Nominal Account: Debit all expenses or losses/Credit all incomes or gains

Well, that is the surface-level summary of my life over the past couple of years. I'm still fighting it out with the Golden rules of accounting, as I did over seven years back. In between, many things like soda ash, Kolkata, geography, psychology, Mussourie, modern Indian history, Lalitpur, many exams, Prasad Studios etc have happened in my life...but the status of "studying/under training" remains unaffected. Unfazed. "I'm sure even after a year you will be getting trained or studying something somewhere", that's what Mayur told me this evening. Mayur is heading the sales function of western India (comprising of 4-5 states) for a leading sports apparel brand. We had shared a room for a year from July, 2002 during my MBA days. After passing out in 2004, over the past five years, he had gained an impressive work experience in sales and marketing with the leading brands like Airtel and Samsung. He has also helped his dad set up an edible oil factory and business. Also, my dear cousin brother who was in Class VIII-IX during my MBA is about to complete his BE degree in a year.

My accountancy book is still open. I have to start studying ledger posting in a while. We have some tests coming up soon. I will also be doing a bit of the Income Tax Act 2008 tomorrow. (Wow!! It is a great way to spend a Sunday... you may also try)

And it does not end there. Similar to children of love, this blog is a blog of frustration. (Here is the link to my opening post). (Almost) Exactly two years ago I founded this blog, unable to do anything else, especially preparing for the then approaching prelims exam. I was impatiently waiting for my first attempt result.

Cut to two years forward.

I am waiting for my third attempt result. Nothing else has changed drastically. Of course, I have gained a lot of patience over the past two years and am very well able to focus on the job at hand.

Personal Account: Debit the receiver/Credit the giver

Real Account: Debit what comes in/Credit what goes out

Nominal Account: Debit all expenses or losses/Credit all incomes or gains

CSE Interview - Deja vu

2009-04-03T23:22:00.000-07:00

Unlike two years back, I was more relaxed and probably a bit complacent this time. But I can't say for sure whether I was wiser or not. Most likely not. Unlike last time now both the Chairman as well the Secreatary, UPSC dropped in the waiting room to pep us up. It was really nice of them. I don't know when was the last time the Chairman came to the waiting room. "Some of you will be working here (UPSC) in another 20 years or so...just remember this day. I too was here waiting for my interview many years back.... There is nothing to get scared. All the best". The secretary said something like this. But his mere presence made me feel better. Happier.

Unlike last time, I did not want an escort from home to Dolphur House this time. Omni's Punjabi driver was the lone man with me. It was Sasi last time....he had come to be with me after fighting it out with his bosses for leave, from some jungles in Himachal. This time my onsite support team was Ravi, Sadai and Sunny.

I could see some familiar faces in the waiting room. I had the last slot in the forenoon session. 31st March 2009. After chatting and joking around, I got someone to explain me the Tibet issue. I had a hunch that I'll be asked that. I tried helping a few with "Why do cyclones occur only on the Eastern coasts of continents?" and that day's EcoTimes editorial that talked about the corporate tax rates in our country. I wanted to know about Coastal Regulation Zone and coral reefs, but I could not find someone who could tell me about them. I had a feeling I was throwing away my marks. After convincing myself that I won't be asked on those topics I rehearsed my answers for the most expected question - "Why IAS after IRS?"

Now cutting it short, here are the questions that came my way between 1:00 and 1:30 PM:

Chairman:

How is your training going?

How is Nagpur?

Which is better in terms of cleanliness, your hometown or Nagpur?

How do you get back the money from Swiss banks?

How to estimate black money?

Member 1:

What are Towers of Silence?

What do you know about vultures?

What are national parks?

Is India a country rich on biodiversity?

What about other countries that are rich on biodiversity?

What is our forest cover?

Are you aware of the legislations (Acts) related to environment?

How is that estimated?

Who is the authority to estimate that?

Member 2:

You are a chemical engineer. (I was terrified to hear that!) You will be working in big industrial units that create pollution....in that context what is COD/BOD?

What is bioremedy?

Assume you are a shoe company owner and you are sending two sales persons to a country where no one wears shoes. One comes back to you saying there is no market for your shoes, while the other one says there is a huge market. Who is right? What do you do?

Member 3:

What is transactional analysis?

How will you use psychology (my optional) in IRS?

How to initiate community to participate in the developmental process?

What is the role of NGOs? (I had kind of goofed up here that the Chairman also intervened now)

What is the % of tax payers in our country?

What is the role of IRS during elections?

Member 4:

Don't you think the Election Commission is over-controlling the election process?

Do you see any patterns in the recent Assembly elections results?

What is carbon trading?

What is vote-on-account?

Are you not satisfied with IRS?

Why IAS after IRS? (I was happy on hearing this question. I had prepared it so well you know. But the answer delivery was so poor that the member said - Since you are from IRS I thought you will give a new answer....Anyway you would have expected this question) !!!

Of course, unlike last time I was not satisfied with my answers. However I was extremely happy with my answers to chemical engg questions.... in fact this was the first time ever in my life I have answered to questions on chemicals engg!!

But just like last time I have to wait for a few more weeks to know what's in store...!

CSE Interview - 1

2009-04-03T00:42:00.000-07:00

Here's Vinay's (College junior, First mains) inerview in his own words. I found the write up to be comprehensive, but a little long for a blog post. However, I feel many candidtes are interested in knowing the answers as well, in addition to the nature of questions being asked. That's why I have not censored anything. Hope you don't mind the size of this post. I hope this is useful for those candidates.

Don't worry I'll keep the post on my interview crisp.

*****

28th March 2009.

3:20 PM ( for about 30min)
Chairman: Dr.K.K.Paul

(I opened the door partially)May I come in sir? Yes. Thank you sir. ( walked in. stood beside the vacant chair. Slightly bowing my head....I wished ) Good afternoon madam. Good afternoon sirs. GOOD AFTERNOON. TAKE YOUR SEAT. Thank you sir. ( sat down. I felt that the chair was slightly far from the table. So, slightly got up and shifted the chair closer to the table ).

WHAT'S YOUR NAME ? **DATE OF BIRTH? **NATIVE PLACE? My native place is Kunavaram, sir. It is in Khammam District of Andhra Pradesh. ROLL NUMBER? **SO, U R AN ECONOMIST....& SAID SOMETHING..... sir, I beg to differ with you.......... I beg your pardon. I am not an economist sir. I am just a student of economics. DON'T U WANT TO BE AN ECONOMIST ? Yes sir. But, I did an integrated dual degree program of 5 years with EEE as the major focus area. Even my 2.5 years of job was also based on electronics itself sir. WHERE DID YOU DO WORK? I worked in Pune sir. WHAT DID U DO IN UR JOB? Sir, I was into chip designing....semiconductor design. (then came the immediate bouncer)...WHAT'S QUANTUM COMPUTING? I was taken by surprise.... I started something but struggled..Just a moment sir....paused....Sir, at atomic levels, energy exists at quantum levels. By assigning information signs to these, we try to process data. This is the process used in quantum computing. WHAT IS A QUANTUM LEVEL...Sir energy exits in fixed amounts at atomic levels. These form different levels called quantum levels. CAN WE PIN POINT THE POSITION OF ELECTRONS? No sir. According to deBrogle's principle, the position & mass of ....... IS IT HEISENBERG'S UNCERTAINTY ? Yes sir, thank you for correcting me......the position & mass of an electron.... IS IT POSITION & VELOCITY? Sorry sir. Yes sir. It is velocity...not mass. Position & velocity of an electron can't be located simultaneously. BETWEEN UV RAYS & IR RAYS, WHICH HAVE HIGHER ENERGY ? It is UV rays sir,...... because they have higher frequency. WHY? Sir, energy is directly proportional to frequency. Energy = Plank's constant x frequency. So, UV rays have higher energy. WHAT ABOUT WAVELENGTH ? Sir E = hc/λ. Where h=Plank's constant. C=velocity of light and λ=wavelength. Hence, it is inversely proportional.WHAT IS DUALITY PRINCIPLE? It talks about energy having mass & wavy nature. For example, photon can be treated as a particle as well as a wave form having energy.

Member 1:
Mr.Vinay, YOU DID MSc IN ECONOMICS. TELL ME WHAT IS GAME THEORY.Sir, it is application of mathematics in economics.....infact in many humanities studies.
(he started disapproving...by nodding his head sideways..... I raised my tone some what higher & answered fast ) Sir, it helps in decision making when our decisions are influenced by others' decision....(TO THE CHAIRMAN)....I DON'T THINK SO..... To my knowledge, this is what I know sir. OK THEN, WHAT IS NASH EQUILIBRIUM? It is an equilibrium condition in which the players have taken their optimum decisions & they don't need to change them. I DON'T THINK SO..... YOU MUST HAVE STUDIED ABOUT THE WELL KNOWN ECONOMIST THOMAS FRIEDMAN WHO IS A STRONG VOTARY OF FREE MARKET ECONOMY. WHAT DO YOU SAY ABOUT THE PRESENT FAILURE OF FREEMARKETS? (CHAIRMAN STARTED SAYING): DO YOU AGREE THAT LIBERALIZATION IS A FAILURE? Sir, I don't think it is a failure of liberalization & free market economy. It is actually a failure of Regulators. It is due to lack of transparency. Sir, infact, in the name of liberation......sorry, liberalization, they misused the freedom given. So, I don't think it is a failure of freemarket economy. DID YOU READ THE BOOK "XYZ" (SOME ECONOMICS BOOK). No sir. WHY HDI IS GAINING IMPORTANCE NOW A DAYS ? HOW IS IT BETTER THAN PCI? (I was about to start) DO YOU REALLY THINK HIGHER PCI INDICATES DEVELOPMENT ? (I was about to start) SHOULD WE USE HDI MORE THAN PCI? Sir, higher PCI does not necessarily mean better development.Actually, it is the welfare & satisfaction of people that matters. For example sir, Middle East has higher PCI due to petro-dollars. But, they are poor on many social indicators. I feel satisfaction of people is important. As HDI includes longevity, literacy, decent standard of living, it is a better indicator than PCI. Even if a country has higher PCI, it may have disparities. Infact, precisely, because of this the 11th Five Year Plan talks about 'inclusive growth'. WHAT DO YOU SAY ABOUT HDI DIFFERENCES IN INDIAN STATES. FOR EXAMPLE STATES LIKE GUJARAT ETC. Sir, in India, states have HDI disparities. For example, Kerala has lower PCI but has the highest HDI due to focus on welfare sectors. DO YOU KNOW ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTION OF PAUL KRUGMAN? Yes sir, he got Nobel prize in 2008 for his New Trade Theory. WHAT IS IT? It talks about international trade. Unlike the "old" trade theory of Ricardo..... (He frowned....)Sorry, it is actually the original trade theory of Ricardo which talks about a country acquiring comparative advantage in particular goods. Krugman says that over a period of time, different countries may acquire comparative advantage with respect to a particular variety of a good. This improves the choice available to customers in different countries. IS THERE ANYTHING ELSE ABOUT HIS THEORY ? Sorry sir, I know only this much. Pause. Sir, may I add one more point. He also says that over a period of time, the costs also come down because of economies of scale and this helps in international trade. NO, THIS IS NOT WHAT I WAS LOOKING FOR. (he leaned back into his chair.....as if he got disinterested with me & my answers) OK VINAY, TELL ME THIS..... WHAT DO YOU THINK ARE THE PROBLEMS WITH INDIAN PLANNING ? DO YOU REALLY THINK THERE ARE SOME PROBLEMS WITH OUR PLANNING ? Sir, our 60 years of planning has been a learning experience sir. We have been experimenting, learning & improving as per the times. I feel more than the problems with planning, the problems with implementation are the major problems. As such our planning has been good. Infact, we moved from centralized planning to decentralized planning & bottom-up planning. WHAT ARE THE PROBLEMS WITH IMPLEMENTATION ? Administrative inefficiency, corruption, lack of monitoring, lack of proper feedback mechanisms. For example, lot of attention is given to Budget but hardly any attention is given to the outcomes out of the spending.

Member 2:
YOU ARE FROM ANDHRA PRADESH. WHAT ARE THE POVERTY ALLEVIATION SCHEMES OF YOUR STATE ? Sir, INDIRAMMA is a major program. It is for the improvement of infrastructure in rural areas. Also in towns sir. It stands for Integrated Novel Development of Rural Areas & Model Municipal Areas. IS IT COMPLETELY FUNDED BY YOUR STATE? Sir, it is actually funded using Bharat Nirman funds plus state govt funds. Sir continuing with the poverty alleviation schemes, there are schemes like Rajiv Grihakalpa etc...... Jalayagnam is for creation of water potential.....then there is a program called Telugu. WHAT ABOUT RURAL EMPLOYMENT SCHEME. Yes sir, thank you for reminding me about NREGS. Infact, it is implemented very well in Andhra Pradesh because of people's awareness & participation in social audit. The people's awareness is very high due competitive politics & media sir. WHAT DOES NREGS PROVIDE ? Sir, it assures 100days of employment to one adult member of a family to do manual work. WHAT IS THE STATUS OF NAXAL PROBLEM IN YOUR STATE? DO YOU THINK IT HAS BEEN EFFECTIVELY TACKLED? Sir, I feel naxal problem has been well tackled in AP. First of all there was political will sir. Infact this is what that is precisely lacking in other states. A special police force called Grey Hounds was set up. They were given special training, latest equipments and good incentives. And most importantly sir, as the Naxals were pushed back, development schemes started moving towards remote areas. Government teachers & doctors started going to villages. Government employees are now daring to go & work in remote areas so that Naxals don't reclaim those areas. And this way they handled it in long-term & short term perspectives sir. That is by tackling it as a law & order problem as well as a development issue.

Member 3:
YOU STUDIED IN A JAWAHAR NAVODAYA VIDYALAYA SCHOOL. WHY WERE JNVS SET UP? Madam, they were set up by Mr.Rajiv Gandhi....Late Prime Minister Mr.Rajiv Gandhi. He studied in Doon school. He wanted to provide similar quality education to rural & poor people...poor students at affordable rates....infact almost free of cost. They focus on all round development of students. They also emphasize on national integration. We have a migration program in 9th class for 2 years. South Indian students have to stay in North India & vice versa. JNVs focus on all round development of students. HOW STUDYING IN JNV HELPED YOU? Madam, first of all, getting selected into JNV in 6th class at district level itself gave me confidence. It helped me to realize that I have the potential & raw material and all that is required is performance. Education is not the only thing that I learnt at JNV madam. It helped me to face life challenges better. JNV gave me opportunities to develop good social & communication skills. We had to shift to English medium NCERT syllabus in 9th class. I studied in Telugu medium till 8th class. This transformation was a challenge to me & faced it well. JNV also helped me to broaden my horizon. DO YOU THINK JNV SCHOOLS ARE A SUCCESS ? Yes madam. Largely, they are a success.

Member 4:
YOU ARE A PRODUCT OF PILANI. HOW DID YOU GET IN? WAS IT BASED ON ENTRANCE EXAM OR BASED ON NORMALIZATION OF BOARD MARKS ? Sir, during my time, the admission was based on normalized scores of Board marks at 12th class level. Now, they have shifted to entrance exam. THERE WAS SOME CONTROVERSY RAISED IN PARLIAMENT REGARDING THIS ENTRANCE EXAM. ARE YOU AWARE OF IT. IT WAS ALLEGED THAT ENTRANCE EXAM REDUCES THE CHANCES OF AP STUDENTS. Sir, I am not aware of it. But, I feel that because of the good coaching facilities available at class 11-12th levels in AP and the kind of factory type of education the students go through, they are securing the highest number of admissions based on entrance exams. So, I don't feel the apprehension is valid sir. HE EXPLAINED ME THE PARLIAMENT ISSUE. Thank you for telling me this sir. WHAT IS THE IMPACT OF GLOBALIZATION ON ENGINEERS ? Sir, globalization gave lot of opportunities. There was flow of FDI, capital, technology. So, many got employed. It helped us to tap our potential. It increased the craze for professional education .....especially IT education. HOW MANY ENGINEERING COLLEGES ARE IN AP ? Sir, I think about 250.ARE YOU SURE? I am not sure sir. I know for sure that there are about 150 colleges in & around Hyderabad itself sir. So I feel it could be about 250-300. but, I am not sure sir. HOW MANY ENGINEERING STUDENTS PASS OUT EACH YEAR IN INDIA ? Sir, I think about 5 lakhs. ARE YOU SURE. I am not sure sir. HOW MANY IN AP ? Sir, it is about 90,000.WHICH STATE PRODUCES LARGEST NUMBER OF ENGINEERS ? Sir, it is AP sir. NO, IT IS TAMIL NADU. Thank you for telling me this information sir. DO YOU KNOW WHO PROPOSED "XYZ" ? ( SOME CONCEPT...SOME JARGON ). No sir. IT IS "MR.ABC DEF" ( SOME NAME)Mr.ABC DEF.....Ok sir ( I repeated the name, while nodding my head ). YOU STUDIED IN LITTLE BUDS SCHOOL. WHERE IS IT ? Sir, it is in a place called Kothagudem. ITS IT A TOWN ? Yes sir, it is a small town. It is a coal mining centre. The famous Singareni Collieries mines are there.

Chairman took over again:
WHAT IS NANO TECHNOLOGY ? Nano tech operates at 10 power -9 meters level. At this level, we try to harness the material properties for applications. We tap the energy, increased surface area etc for applications. For example,carbon nano tubules have higher tensile strength and light weight. They can replace many of the existing materials. WHAT ARE THE APPLICATIONS OF NANO TECH? Sir, nano tech is used in manufacturing sector, aero space industry, in semiconductors and electronics. Etc. WHAT IS THE NAME OF CARBON AT NANO LEVEL ? IT IS NOT CALLED SIMPLE CARBON. CARBON IS FOUND IN MANY DAILY USE GOODS. FOR EXAMPLE GRAPHITE CONTAINS CARBON... TELL ME THE TERM USED FOR CARBON AT NANO LEVEL. Sir, I am not able to recollect it. I can try it if you can give me some hints. "ABC DEF" ( SOME SCIENTIST NAME) No sir, I am sorry. "LMN XYZ" ( ANOTHER SCIENTIST ) No sir, I am sorry. I am not able to get it. WHAT IS AI ? Sir, it stands for Artificial Intelligence. It is a branch of computer science and it deals with taking decisions in a dynamic manner. Unlike the normal ways of calculating logic using '1' or '0', yes or no, or black or white, it deals with intermediate logic levels sir. It also deals with learning dynamically from past experience like humans & animals and facing novel situations and challenges. (SUDDENLY) WHAT IS KASHMIR ISSUE ? (I was baffled.....firstly, for the sudden change of topic. Secondly, as to where to start, where to end..... this is like compressing a 60Marker into a 2Marker !! I started speaking something in a haphazard manner. Then stopped. Took a pause ) Sir, I will explain it in historical perspective. Pakistan lays claim to Kashmir saying that it is a Muslim majority area. India stresses on the accession done by the king of Kashmir. The 1948 UN Resolution proposes for a plebiscite but only when POK is evacuated by Pakistan. Now, India is making efforts at making the LOC itself irrelevant by increasing people to people contacts, trade, transport etc. India says that Kashmir is only one of the issues to be settled. The other issues are also there like Siachen, Sir Creek etc. but, Pakistan insists on solving Kashmir issue as the most important one. (No reaction / lead question !!) DO YOU KNOW ABOUT THE LITHIUM BATTERIES USED IN THE CELL PHONES. THEY ARE SMALL & EFFICIENT AND HAVE LONG LIFE. THEY HAVE OTHER SUCH MANY BENEFITS. ( HE WAS OBSERVING ME WHILE TELLING THIS LONG....LONG QUESTION) DO YOU KNOW WHICH COUNTRY PRODUCES THE LARGEST AMOUNT OF LITHIUM? No sir. I am not aware of it. WHICH ARE THE RARE MINERALS OF RAJASTHAN ? Rare minerals of Rajasthan, sir ? ( I asked back, stressing on the word 'Rajasthan'). YES. Sir, I am aware of rare minerals of India in general but not Rajasthan in particular sir. YOU HAVE GEOGRAPHY OPTIONAL. Sorry sir, I am not aware. ANY ONE WANTS TO ASK ANYTHING?

The 2nd Member took over (Who asked me on Andhra programmes) YOU WROTE YOUR EXTRA-CURRICULAR ACTIVITY AS TREKKING...... Yes sir, trekking & jungle excursion are some of my hobbies. WHERE DID YOU TREK? Sir, around my native place. It lies in the fringe area of Dandakaranya forest region. I used to trek on small hills. While working in Pune, I used to go to the hills of Western Ghats around Pune. During monsoon season, it is very pleasant and nice to trek there sir. THERE IS A PROGRAMME MEANT FOR DANDAKARANYA REGION. WHAT IS IT? I am not sure sir. I am aware of the Backward Regions Grant Fund scheme meant for the backward & naxal affected Districts. NO, NO. ITS NOT THIS. Sir, is it Salva Judum ? NO, NO. (CHAIRMAN JOINED): IT WAS DURING 60S. DO YOU KNOW ABOUT IT ? No sir. I am not aware of it. 4th Member took over:( Who asked me on Pilani. Engg. ) BITS, PILANI GIVES LOT OF SCOPE TO IMPROVE COMMUNICATION SKILLS. WAS IT SO IN YOUR CASE ALSO? Yes Sir to a large extent. But, in my case, my schooling at JNV helped me greatly at the initial level. IN WHAT WAYS BITS GIVES OPPORTUNITIES? Sir, we have many activities that are conducted by students. There are many clubs, departments, associations. Even there are student elections to choose office bearers. WHAT ABOUT THE "LANGUAGE LAB" IN BITS CAMPUS ? Sir, I feel it is meant for higher end literary activities. To a large extent, student activities help us in improving social skills. DO YOU THINK AP PEOPLE ARE NOT SO GOOD AT COMMUNICATING IN ENGLISH ? Yes sir, unfortunately, many people are not good at it. ( blunder ???? prejudice or slip of tongue ??? ) WHAT WILL YOU DO AS AN OFFICER TO IMPROVE COMMUNICATION SKILLS ? Sir, I want to answer this question from my personal experience. I studied in Telugu medium upto 8th class and then shifted to English medium. Sir, I feel language depends on the sub-conscious mind. If one is good at Telugu.... I mean one's mother tongue, interms of being expressive, creative, spontaneous and confident, he can be good at any other language. For example sir, vendors selling in Goa beach speak 4-5 languages. May be struggle for existence makes one learn what is necessary. ( I was in full josh & momentum.....but, abruptly, he said ) OK STOP. (INDICATED HIS HAND TO THE CHAIRMAN)

Chairman: OK. YOU CAN LEAVE.
Thank you sir. ( I got up from the chair, stepped aside. But didn't push the chair forward) (slightly bowing my head): thank you madam. Thank you sirs. (then moved out ).

*****

Thanks Vinay!! Good Luck!!

winaykumark at gmail dot com

Quickie!

2009-03-24T09:56:00.000-07:00

Just like most of you, I too am supposed to be quite busy with work during the middle of a week. However, sometimes we do come across a few interesting things even amidst piles of boredom and monotony of Wednesdays...

This is cool! Hats off to blogs...and babus!
http://www.ceowestbengal.blogspot.com/(Also please take out time to go through the comments for the posts. Interesting! )

This dude was my.. sorry..I was his batchmate during my Pilani days in the late 90s..
http://www.businessworld.in/index.php/Corporate/Smooth-Journey-So-Far.html

Gen..http://rajeevchandrasekhar.blogspot.com/

Okei.. see you all after a longer break.

I would be having a "..natural, directed and purposive conversation” with a few erudite and respectable people in a couple of days, in Dolphur House. I hope they like me!

Random

2009-03-10T07:03:00.000-07:00

Time runs.

The day I locked D-42 for the official Delhi/Dehradun tour seems like yesterday. But the desktop monthly sheet here says it was a good 15 days back. Don't worry..this post is not going to be a summary of my life over the last two weeks, ...not because it is going to bore you, but because it is impossible to capture this time frame with the keyboard. Here are some random lines.

* It was great feeling to be inside the campus of our Parliament...I also took a stroll in those corridors with the imposing, jurassic pillars. Flashes of the Tamil film Iruvar (Maniratnam/1997) came to my mind. Also the greatest speech given by Sh. Jawaharlal Nehru.

* Felt quite privileged to be inside Rashtrapati Bhawan. You got to see it to believe it....it's an amazing place...palace! I was reminded of a few scenes in Muthalvan. (Shankar/1999)

* Beyond a point, it was really difficult to resist the gulab jamun or the samosa that featured regularly in the high teas. I will check up my weight tomorrow.

* Government job, generally = hierarchy + conformity + meetings

* Really impressed by two speakers during our module on NRM (Natural Resource Management) at Dehradun. One was on tigers... I think we guys (human beings) are really screwing up all other species on this planet.

* Getting out of a comfort group is really difficult for most of us.. but is it really needed to attach oneself with new groups often?

* Mussourie has always brought me a deep feeling of nostalgia. This time was no exception...the only difference being that, the feeling was deeper this time.

* Naan kadavul (Bala/2009) is not as powerful as his earlier films. But this one is far superior to SDM (Boyle/2008) that claims to have covered the Indian reality in a really real way.

* It is just a beginning for ARR...he will rule the music world in the years to come.

* Indian Institute of Petroleum. Mokhampur. Mixed feelings. I had worked on developing a DCC (Deep Catalytic Cracking) catalyst there. Sorry..not to scare you..I was just trying to recollect my project title. I'm scared now.

* Early morning walks can be really refreshing. But, getting out of the warm quilt in a cool, early morning....?

Btw, this photograph was taken around 0730 hours at FRI (Forest Research Institute), Dehradun. Try to go there if you get a chance...you'll feel like being in some heritage university campus in Europe.

* Got the chance to taste the best set of vadas made ever.. Thanks to the Mussourie friends...and the cook, Karnan. Cooking: art/science = 80/20 or 100/0 ?

* Idea might be a bad idea when it comes to roaming. Either the network is not available or your balance drains out at jet speed.

* Loved Dev.D. Missed 13B. Waiting for Gulaal.

* How often you feel like being alone? Daily/Weekly/Monthly? Or hourly?? Well..if you are around with more than hundred and fifty people at any point of time for a prolonged time..it definitely got to be hourly.

* Hard work pays? I'm not sure.

* It is painful to see the way railway tracks and the trains on them shredding Rajaji national park and making elephants' lives a dog's life.

* Some apparently well-educated people are extremely unaware of basic public manners...esp the ones who shout and laugh loudly till late night, even during train journeys.

* Knowledge is power supreme.

* Imagining India. Innum sila sindhanaigal (Some more thoughts). India: Development and Participation. Something like an autobiography. In which Annie gives it those ones. 50 Psychology classics. Got. Not read.

Oh!! Even before I could complete typing this my Idea network has already vanished!

I should make it a point to take my BSNL when I go back to Delhi for my personality test in another two weeks' time.

:) :)

2009-02-27T21:16:00.000-08:00

The Seven Habits

2009-02-19T05:39:00.000-08:00

With the very short period of time available with me to type this post, let me take a walk down the memory lane to brush up the pages of one of the books, among the very few books, that I have read fully in my life. The book is one among the million books that claim to have sold over many million copies...It is Stephen Covey’s The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. I’m sure this book would have genuinely sold over many million copies; and millions of people would have been benefitted by the book. I had a brush with this book in the late 90s, when I was a bright* Chemical engineering graduate. The book had a huge and spontaneous impact on me. And till today I clearly remember what those seven habits were....but the problem is that I just remember them. Those habits exist only in my mindscape. Over the past one decade or so those seven habits have tried hard to jump out of my mental makeup and see the real world, but only in vain. Not even one of them could face reality so far.

And things have gone to that extent that here I’m about to tell you about another set of seven habits – The Seven Habits of Highly Defective People

Habit 1 – Don’t work. Just network.
Habit 2 – The best decision is no decision.
Habit 3 – Be safe; Be with the crowd.
Habit 4 – Over-promise; Under-deliver.
Habit 5 – Talk like an expert.
Habit 6 – Delegate everything; Claim everything.
Habit 7 – Be everywhere; Do nothing.

More Habits are welcome....
Any?

[*Though I was never even close to being a bright student..it gives me a good ego boost whenever I say that I was a bright student]

I know...

2009-01-23T06:25:00.000-08:00

I know you will bring it.
But am not sure if its going to be one or two.

(At this moment am not getting into the debate whether we really need the US to acknowledge our talent.)

Freedom Regained

2009-01-17T03:04:00.000-08:00

I’m not a product of my environment; My environment is a product of me. This or something very close to this is the opening line of The Departed. But in real life I have not heard many people say that. However, I very strongly feel that most of us have such a thought, consciously or underneath. After all, who wants to be controlled? I too am one of them. I do not believe in God of any form; not yet. I do not openly believe in destiny. I have always maintained that destiny is a creation of losers to rationalise their past. I rate my freedom as one topmost thing in my life. Probably that is why my father hesitated when I told him of my decision to take the UPSC Exams. He felt, apart from being very low paying, the Government jobs also did not offer one space; freedom. I did not heed his advice. But today, after spending quite a considerable time (by my standards) with the Government and more than three weeks at the National Academy of Direct Taxes, Nagpur, I have concluded there is a supernatural force; a power that is omnipotent; an overwhelming strength. There is no escape from it. That force torments me throughout a major part of the days here. I’m no more a free bird. I did try and still trying hard to overcome it, but I’m still on the losing side. One of my friends asked me to be sincere during our early morning yoga sessions. “That will help you”, he said. I took that advice very seriously and moved from my usual last row to the very first row of the yoga sessions; forgoing much of my freedom. But even after that I have not seen any progress in my fight against that Force Supernaturale!

One another friend, an intellectual, said, “Try moving from the last bench to the first rows in the lecture hall”. I thought about it for 48 hours; but did not try it. That was beyond my risk appetite. I was finding out other ways to overpower my enemy and take charge of my life. One of them was to take two ball pens – one blue and the other one black – and keep myself busy by underlining the key terms and take down the learning points in my brand new register. By the end of the day the plan produced something very strange. My register had a few pages of bi-coloured scribbling. It looked like that of an infant’s first-ever attempt with a pen. I felt more ashamed. In the attempt to ward off sleep and keep awake in the lecture hall I had lost control of my handwriting too!

Yes, that force that has thrown my life out of gear is – sleep.

Over the weekend I’m hoping to find the best possible game-plan against sleep during the lecture hours. Usually interest and attention go hand in hand. The more we like to do something the more attention we show to the job. (Forgetting other extraneous variables like incentives, salary, food etc.) But I genuinely feel my sleep is not due to the scarcity of attention arising out of a total lack of interest for the subjects taught. I like the IT Act, just like I love other things in life like playing saxophone, scuba diving, double trap, rock climbing, blind-fold chess etc. And I owe full allegiance to my job here.

Okay, let me take stock of the terms that have gone into my mind over the past four weeks here. Well...IT Authority, firm, search and seizure, heads of salary, exemption, Shaw Wallace, immovable property, junior artists, previous year, basis of charge, HUF, vigilance case, four corners of law....Oh! Good! The list goes on and on. I never even imagined so many things could have entered that soft, light thing in between my ears. Hmm...I think have acquired something special; probably the exceptional ability to exist in the two extreme states of consciousness, Stage IV NREM sleep and being fully alert – at the same time!

I’m excited! I really don’t know when I got this ultimate gift of life; anyway it does not matter now. Am happy I got it!

I did a bit of google to find out whether such a case had been reported earlier or not, if someone else too possessed this special and unusual control over his/her conscious or not. As usual the result had thousands of totally irrelevant web pages. But I was lucky enough to spot one source that gave me the precise info. (But I’m not sure if that is authentic) And I’m quite elated now, as the only person who had a power something near-similar to what I have is – Arjun. No no... not the one in politics or cinema. But that one Blessed by none other than Lord Krisha himself. It is said that Arjun can sleep or be awake even for years together as per his own wish.

The Black Van

2009-01-10T10:57:00.000-08:00

It is not usual for Manikumar to get woken up by his alarm; even on the days of his exam it was always due to his mother’s nudging or a splatter of water by father that he got up – quite irritated and hesitant or directly jumping out of the bed – depending on whether it was his mom’s or dad’s day. But today he is fully awake at 5:55 AM. He is lying in his cozy bed, waiting for the alarm to go in another five minutes. It was exactly 7:20 AM when he reached Malai Mandir. The last time he had come here was on the New Year day – January 1st, 2009. He was with his two other flat mates that day. The three had the hangover of the previous night’s party. Mani drinks occasionally. His New Year resolutions – 1) read one big book a month 2) save Rs.250. Looking at his track record I think “big” is anything above 35 pages, it included Filmfare also.

By the time he reached the idli shop at Munirkha it was almost 8:30. The sambhar here reminded him of his very old granny back at Pollachi. He makes it a point to visit her during every trip down South. Though they quarrel very often, they both bonded like school pals. It was his granny who taught him fishing, during his school vacation many years back. The local ponds over-flowing after a lavish monsoon have always fascinated the little boy. He learnt swimming in one of those numerous ponds that dot the landscape surrounded by mountains and coconut trees. It was also his granny who rescued Mani from his father who almost killed him when he had come to know about Mani’s smoking habits. I think Mani would have started his smoking career with beedis. But his last stay at her home was not something to remember for both of them. In fact Mani hurled the watch she gave him to the corner of the verandah and vowed that he would never meet her again, before rushing to the bus stand. I think the watch he is wearing now is that injured watch, revived. Do watches also have nine lives?

It is almost 10 o’ clock now. He has a brief talk with the Pollachi granny before saying “Sari” and hanging up the phone. He has an appointment with his former colleague Ranga, in some time. Ever since Mani’s first day at his earlier office Ranga has been his FPG. “Sorry Mani..got tied up with the routine stuff”. It was five minutes past 11:00 when Ranga met Mani near the Central Park. Mani wanted to lunch with Ranga today but they had to settle for a brunch. It seemed Ranga had some major work lined up at the office. “Success is not about winning, Mani – it is about fighting when you have almost lost”, Ranga said looking directly into our hero’s eyes. It was almost 1:00 pm by the time they both reach the Rajiv Chowk Metro station. In the last two hours or so they both had jumped from Satyam scandal to their old sadistic boss to Delhi winters to Katrina Kaif to elections to Taj blasts to the next table babe to Shimla trip to poor food to Sania to crazy fathers to many more places until they reached APJ Abdul Kalam. It was at this point when Ranga closed the topic with that punch dialogue. Mani returned Ranga Rs.1600 and the mobile phone he had taken from him two weeks back, before saying “Bye”.

Mani rushed to the PVR nearby and managed to get the ticket for the 1:30 PM show. He had watched the Tamil Ghajini more than four times; the last two times being a back-to-back show in his flat-mate Gopi’s laptop recently. Mani regarded Asin as the most charming lady on earth. He had been waiting restlessly for the last two weeks for Aamir Khan's Ghajini. It is different matter that he did not understand Hindi beyond “Teek hai ji”. “Why are you so late?! I don’t think they will allow now”. After much coaxing Dr.Selvam got the staff accept one unit blood from Mani. In many government offices the only policy followed is closing the work exactly at the fixed office hour. 9 AM to 5 PM means – a possibility that the staff will be present anytime after nine; certainty that nobody stays even a second beyond five. Even the blood donation counter at this medical college hospital is no exception to this rule. But Dr.Selvam has always had the reputation of finding his way out. They were back benchers in school. Mani had boldly written a love letter to their tuition friend Banumathi, who also happened to be the daughter of the most famous chartered accountant in their town. And he took this great risk – just for a plate of chicken biryani and a bottle of beer. But for Selvam’s diplomacy Mani would have ended up getting killed by his own father! It was 6:30 PM when Mani walked out of the hospital. He looked exceptionally satisfied and fresh. He was also happily holding Selvam’s wedding card in his right hand.

The auto rickshaw meter read: Rs. 42.60. Mani handed over a fifty rupees note to the autowala and started to walk towards the internet café without turning back. He had got three new mails – two offering him tips to reduce the waist line without cutting down on sweets, and the third one was from Banu. She had sent a forwarded mail having some funny photos, as usual. He replied “:-)”.

Shining soap bubbles. Stuffed giant elephant toys. Couples sitting beyond the reaches of light. Pink-coloured-cotton candy sellers. Young men running behind their two feet tall kids. Glowing mini-parachutes landing on the dark lawns. Bunch of teenagers commenting on the oversized aunty in red saree. Helpless children selling masala tea. Impeccably dressed defence men. Bhel puriwalas doing a brisk business. Transgenders continuing with their harassment. Photographers promising a print in 10 minutes. Amidst all this was standing the imposing structure – India Gate. Mani is not someone really patriotic or interested in picnics. But a mere visit to this place inspires him like nothing else. I don’t know why. The crowd looked highly under-sized for 8:45 PM, Saturday.

“I will be there by 10 at the PCO down the street”. Before Mani could hang the phone he heard Gopi saying impishly, “Someone is waiting for you here, be fast”. Mani tried calling a number. He dialed twice. I think the number was out of reach. Or was it the other person did not pick the call? He looked a little gloomy while paying Rs.2 to the man at the booth.

“Welcome my king!” Gopi excitedly said while opening the door. Mani got a little uneasy on hearing that. “What’s wrong my dear? Everything is ready!! It has been a very long time since we had a...guest!” Mani disappointed Gopi by giving vague reasons like head ache, mood out etc before getting inside his room. “OK..leave him”, the third person told Gopi, who still looked greatly puzzled at Mani’s strange behaviour. “Ok…take this at least”, Gopi barged into Mani’s room with some rice and chicken pieces on his plate. Gopi was again confused by the way Mani hugged and thanked him. “So much courtesy for a plate of food?!” Gopi wondered before getting lost in his world. He had shelled out almost five hundred rupees for the guest.

The next morning. Old habits die hard. Mani did not wake up to the alarm’s call at 6:00AM.

It was around 10 o’ clock when the black mortuary van arrived.

It was a nylon rope.

Happy 2009

2009-01-04T04:59:00.000-08:00

At last, after 12 months of exams, doubts, love, hate, fun, hope and life am back at where I belong to...at least for the time now.

(Probably, the IT Act and the Rules is not the best way to wish someone a happy new year, that too with a week's delay.)

Lamp-Palm

2008-12-19T03:41:00.000-08:00

After many years I got a chance to be at home during the karthigai vilakku festival..

This was shot during a random drive on a rainy day...

White Rangoli

2008-12-07T23:02:00.002-08:00

One of the highlights of the festivals and occasions back home is the huge kolam. White Rangoli. The one below is a kolam painting.

Ridiculous banking

2008-11-29T22:34:00.000-08:00

It is not advisable to post in a blog frequently. 1) It bores the readers 2) It makes the reader realise the truth that the blogger does not have any other job in life. But many big things happen in a short time...

What?!! Hari made the car come to a screeching halt on hearing the Kotak Bank customer relations executive say that over the mobile. I almost hit the dash board; they call it inertia.

{{
Due to some strong reasons I'm taking off the remaining portion of this lengthy post on Hari's banking experience. I hope I would get a chance to bring it back...Thanks.

}}

M.F. II

2008-11-29T13:17:00.000-08:00

I'm really surprised at the way the post M.F.Hussain has got connected with many of us. Firstly thanks to BlogBharti for linking the post.I'm very happy about it.

I'm also thrilled to get an extraordinary Comment[anonymous] to that post. I feel that Comment needs to be seen by more people; felt by more people. I do not want it to get lost. So here it goes...

"A recently turned 'civil servant', from a totally non - civil service background, my time in the district is showing me what I never ever saw, imagined sitting in a metro, even when I was studying for this exam. What I do see now is not something I can explain and thereby answer all the questions put up on the blog or reply to the repeated accusations of the terrible bureaucracy. But I can say, that there a million little and big things that the bureaucracy takes care of, every day, every minute, at least in the districts. People's lives are run by it, depend on it. What appears in the newspapers is always and only where the administration has failed. But each day, I personally see, so many people being helped, being protected by the very same bureaucracy.

In a short span of 3 months, I have seen and understood that, something I did, because of which an entire village came to thank me, took my side when local media and politicians came to accuse as usual, did not get published and will never get published and people at large will never know. BUT, I know, and that village knows, and respects me - as a bureaucrat - for what was done.

I can confidently say, that the bureaucracy is NOT the monster it is always made out to be. It has its shortcomings - many of them too - but it binds,coalesces and smoothens things out, in a way that people may not even realise. "

Thanks for that...!

People like you build that one village that fought Caesar...

MCA

2008-11-24T20:44:00.000-08:00

All of a sudden I realise I have been affected by a disease. I really don’t know when it happened. But am sure it has happened. Even a few in my close circle confirm that. I googled and to my relief I found that I’m not alone – there are many, many around. I have been living alone for quite some time now and in an attempt to break my monotony I met up with one of my uncles.

But you could have come in an auto rickshaw…you see the roads are clogged everywhere and…the traffic jam. And your bike..what’s the mileage? I gave a random number between 40 and 50. He continued, Yeah! That’s obvious. You see…the dense smoke coming out…and the noise. The filter needs to be cleaned…and the battery is also old. Once you do that mileage would reach even 80 or 90 (kmpl). I had a Bajaj Super scooter…it used to give me 75. It was excellent. I nodded. Laughed loudly; inside me. But these auto fellows…we should also go for CNG autos like in Delhi. But that was also not a success. In Sydney…
He continued his world tour and presented me a snapshot of the latest energy technologies. 20% fact. 80% fiction. I nodded. In the mean time I saw the neighbour barging in. He joined the talk. You read today’s [news]paper?! In the GH, they had interchanged two dead bodies…and only after the cremation the families found it out! Now looking at me, Where did you get that specs? I answered. You see there is a slight deviation in the power…I can see it from this angle. The image is abnormally distorted. My father was an eye doctor…Yeah…these days the opticians use computer, machine etc to check our eyes…during those days it was just a small lens and a newspaper…the prescription was perfect. You should go the eye hospital down the road here. They.. He continued. It ended in: Exams were difficult those days…not like now. I felt suffocated.
His wife joined us. The TV was on. A comedy show was going on. We laughed for a while. She started abruptly, looking at my uncle. Did you not try the v-si booster for your TV? Those grains in the corner…our TV is crystal clear. I wondered what that damn vsi-asi stuff was. You have spent 320 rupees extra!! Her talk ended.
The little kid who had been to the school, returned. He flung his tiny shoes in different directions, threw his bag and ran up to his dad to snatch the TV remote control. Pogo channel. Hey….kiddo. Get back from the TV…the UV rays are not good for your eyes. And give me the remote…we can watch Animal Geographic. The kid did not look up. I continued: We should watch TV from a distance of 6-7 feet away. But that LG DiNeX is fantastic…we can even sit with our noses touching the screen…it is a very advanced...yeah..TV. Advanced TV. I finished with: Exams are getting easy these days.

My google results made me know a few more things about the disease.

Name: MCA – Multiple Collateral Advicerosis
Whom it affects:Everyone is vulnerable.
When: MCA sets with age and reaches a peak around 65-70 years of age. However Sciences journal reports cases with double peaks, with the first peak setting around 40-45 years of age. In some highly exceptional cases triple peaks are also reported.
Symptoms: The patient starts giving out free advice (ineffective and boring counseling sessions conducted without any apparent need thereby inducing a feeling of suffocation to the victim). One more peculiarity is that the patient will cross the thin boundary between fact and fiction, in most cases unknowingly, due to the overwhelming desire to talk (or write*) and being heard.
Cause: APA’s Psycho and Hayward Medical Review 2000 point out MCA could possibly be due to the presence of the speech organ – mouth; also due to the improper affecto-cognitive behavioural tendencies bordering around narcissism and the lack of sympathy for others.
Diagnosis: Cellphone test, Newspaper test, FM radio test and Blog test*.
Treatment: A trans-national, multi-cultural, collaborative research in under progress in an undisclosed location in New Delhi, India.

Until then...keep giving!

[*appended after the recent pathbreaking studies at the Linguistics dept, University of Blogotham, New Yolk]

M.F.Hussain I.A.S.

2008-11-24T01:12:00.000-08:00

"How are you able work under corrupt, criminal politicians even after studying so much?"

My tryst with the creature called civil service began almost a decade ago when my brother got ready to take his UPSC exams. Today both of us are “civil servants”. (I’m yet to figure out who were Uncivil servants!) Over the last many years we and my other friends here, have come across those questions in various formats, from different corners. They usually move around –
o The system is beyond repair
o The system is corrupt
o You have to follow the orders of politicians
o Transfers and punishment postings
o No single man can make a difference
o Don’t waste your brain

Every morning the newspapers show us how the state has failed us – bomb blasts, lack of basic facilities, murders, communal clashes, leaking PDS, red tape, poor infrastructure, corrupt bureaucrats etc. Yes, it seems the state and a major part of its agencies – Courts, Assemblies, Bureaucracy – have failed. BUT we are able to hold together as one nation purely due to the fact that there are very honest, able men and women sprinkled here and there. These men and women ensure we do not lose hope, completely. I’m reminded of Asterix and Obelix. As it goes, during the time when a vast expanse of the known world was under Caesar, only one Gaulish village stood out; they gave Rome a real pain; these people made sure their independence was not negotiable. But for this one village Caesar would have been the real Emperor. Every soul would have been his subject. The people I’m talking about are like that village, without them there would be no hope. No future.

And, as we know, if all of us move away from the dirty world of government and administration for these reasons, our future will not have even one single village to fight odds…

Well, I do not mean that being in the civil service is the only way to contribute to the country. I don’t ask why M F Hussain is wasting canvas and cans of colours instead of being Sh.M.F.Hussain I.A.S., Secretary-Ministry of Rural Development. Also, there have been many officers who have quit the service to do better work! But civil service is not something one needs to avoid for frivolous reasons like “working under illiterate politicians, under constant fear of transfers and punishment postings”.

It’s good to remember our quotes-man George Bernard Shaw – Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.

Whether we like it or not, democracy is in the DNA of our Constitution.

Give time a break...

2008-11-18T09:26:00.000-08:00

I wish I had come here earlier; I wish I had more time here.

Puduchery beach.

Wallpaper

2008-11-09T21:13:00.000-08:00

I don’t know about you, but I have always wondered how someone is able to have a crystal clear goal about their career. No, I’m not talking about the little kids who invariably shout out “Doctor”, “Teacher”, “Collector”, “Police” etc when asked about their ambition in life by adults, who themselves are confused about their careers. [Here again I'm not sure what the urban, gen-next kid has to say on Ambition. Probably she would like to become a Software engineer, Scientist, Fashion-model, Pilot, Prime Minister.] I’m talking about many of my colleagues, friends etc who often say their goal is to become – a successful and famous entrepreneur like NRN, the Chief Secretary of a state, the Managing Director of X company in Y years, the most popular doctor in the town, a millionaire before A age. I feel all these people are really lucky…they know where they need to go. They strive to reach their destination. They are busy in pursuit.

But some people like me are notorious for the wavering mind; the swinging career path. More than the euphemism of “Multi-talented” the straight, simple word “Confused” fits our category better. In fact one of my big bosses quipped “Would you be changing your wife too?” It was just his frustration that came out as I was overly concerned about the variety in my job, during a mid-year review many years back. Somehow this idea of a “specialist” does not go down very well with me. How can someone spend a lifetime doing just one thing? I wonder. So, sitting back and pondering, in a highly confused state, I was happy to get a call from a longtime friend. I would remember at least one line of the whole conversation for many months (at least) to come; she said “Life is not about reaching somewhere. It is about traveling happily”. Probably the original version was by Aristotle or Socrates or someone like that who had spent a lifetime giving out quotable quotes…but that does not matter now. I am taking those timely words anyway. I have already popularised this quote in my circle here; and everyone seems to be satisfied with it. They stop asking about my ambition, goal etc the moment I tell them life is an interesting journey that unfolds as we go. Probably they decide I’m too philosophical to give a direct answer; or they are trying to memorise it to pass on as free-advice to many others!

A few days back I got a mail from one of my earlier bosses (not the one who came for the mid year review!). He too helped me out of this confusion. His point was that we got to have a clear distinction between job and career. We often mix up these two and land up in a pretty job while the career chosen might not be to our liking. True. But please do not ask me more on that. Think for yourself – it will be much better than mine. For sure.

During our preparation for the campus interviews we were asked to be clear on the two main issues:
1)Why me for this job?
2)Why this job for me?

There was an enthu-pot in our gang and he used to say “I want a job that would either add value to me or a job to which I can add value”. That was his tagline immaterial of the company he was applying for. Based on the company his follow-up explanation would change course during the interview. He is with India’s most famous software company today. These days I’m highly inspired by his old words. But I have modified it to suit me; and shut mouths. It goes like this: “I don’t want a job that would bring me name; I’m looking for a job to give name”.

Have in mind I’m a hardcore Super Star fan.

Wondering what is that image of the hanging disco lights or aurora borealis or multi-coloured sperms doing here?

Osamu Shimomura, an assistant at Nagoya University, Japan, was put on a frustrating study of the glow on the remains of crushed molluscs, as his professor did not want to cripple the careers of his research students with this difficult, unrewarding task. It was 1955. That study lead Shimomura to the Friday Harbour, Washington where he collected about 50,000 jelly fish every summer and ended up accumulating 8,50,000 (!) jellyfish for his studies. Imagine waiting at a harbour, every summer, just to collect thousands of jellyfish! Heights of specialisation!

Today we all owe a lot to Shimomura for his discovery of GFP – Green Fluorescent Protein. He is one among the three who received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry this year. To quote Frontline, “…GFP has become an extraordinary and widely used tagging tool in bioscience, using which scientists have developed ways to watch processes that were previously invisible, such as the development of nerve cells in the brain or the spreading of cancer cells.”

These disco lights are my desktop wall paper now. They are the GFP planted inside a mouse’s brain!

When coming to talk of Shimomura’s drive to have shared a major part of his life entirely with thousands of dead jellyfish, he did not seem to have any great confusion or catchy quotations; he just got this to say – “…. The point is that… I don’t do my research for application or any benefit. I just do my research to understand why jellyfish luminesce and why that protein fluoresces. There are many, many [undiscovered molecules in nature that emit light]. Interesting at least to me.”

Wow!

Pudhiya Vaarpugal

2008-11-05T04:14:00.000-08:00

“Dhom-tana dhom-tana…” – a dozen angels accompanied by this humming having a special place in our hearts as the eternal background for any romantic sequence is from Pudhiya Vaarpural (PV). One of the landmark films of Barathiraja, PV released in 1979 was also the launching pad for K.Bagyaraj as a hero. Late 70s was also the period when Tamil cinema was seeing a transition – both in terms of the filmmaking styles and the lead artists. MGR-Sivaji Ganesan era was gradually making way for the new combo of Rajni-Kamal – the twin stars that rein Kollywood till date. The movie themes that underwent a transition from mythology to raja-rani stories to social issue themes to the ones built around very strong characters, reached a new level with Barathiraja shifting the production unit from the sets and cities to real, live villages; creating a path breaking film – 16 Vayathiniley (1977).

The raw and simple village life – with people looking awestruck at anyone with a pair of trousers, little kids running behind the rare motor cars, villagers gossiping under the shade of huge banyan trees, old grannies giving out their readymade advice and proverbs, lush green paddy fields dancing like waves, little kids shouting out their lessons sitting in crude rooms called schools and the beautiful damsel singing amidst acres of bright sunflowers – was never thought to be a place for a successful cinema plot until Barathiraja’s entry. PV established this trend that had started two years earlier with 16 Vayadhiniley.

If 16 Vayadhiniley explored the interface of the villages with the city-life with a perverted doctor’s entry into the rural landscape and how he cheats a local girl, PV is about a nice school teacher who gets posted in a village. Here, fuelled by the womanising, widower village-head, the villagers manipulate the teacher’s good intentions leading to unexpected turns in the story. The village-head’s character is parallel to that of Parattai (Rajnikanth) in 16 Vayathiniley. Goundamani is cast as the yes-man of the villains in both the films. In a way both these films reflected the slowly changing socio-cultural milieu of a village due to the overall progress of our country.

Rati (Rati Agnihotri of the Ek Duuje Ke Liye (1981) fame) is splendid as the village beauty Jothi. The director had put her to the best use by cutting short pages and pages of dialogues into just a few close-ons of her expressive face and extreme close-ups of her eyes. Sometimes her expressions are enigmatic. (The cutting short of dialogues was also another major trend that was gaining ground in Tamil films around that time) Bagyaraj, needless to say, has given an impressive debut performance. But as we are used to his typical voice these days, it is quite difficult to get adjusted to the stranger’s dubbed voice coming out of Bagyaraj’s mouth. However Bagyaraj scores full mark as the dialog writer for this film. The conversations look so natural; they are convincing; gripping; and even humourous. The social worker character though not well-developed, creates a pivot to move the story. Jothi's father - a nadaswaram vidwan - reminds us of Kamal Hassan's brother in Unnal Mudiyum Thambi, released more than a decade after PV!

An intelligent and soulful re-recording by Ilayaraja recreates the moods of a village and makes you a part of the life there. Remember, this was one of the early films of the maestro and one could feel the mark he would be leaving on Tamil movies in the years to come. The Barathiraja-Ilayaraja team continued to captivate us till as late as the early 90s with Nadodi Thendral.

Shots with the sun over-head could have been avoided. There are also a few continuity problmes with the light. Otherwise the cinemotographer has done a decent job. Many scenes have camera movements that add to the effect. The initial temple sequence where Shanmugamani-Jothi take lovely looks at each other from behind the tall temple pillars is done well. PV also uses symbolic scenes that were used quite liberally in those days. The one showing blood oozing from the mouth of the nadaswaram chillingly conveys the old man’s death. The burning of the chokkapaanai on a Karthigai Deepam day in the climax, and the lighting of it by the village-head’s son also stands out in meaning. In fact, even the insane son of the crooked village-head is symbolic in itself!

Another highlight of the film is the village festival sequence with transgender artists performing for the villagers. This lengthy folk sequence also manifests as the setting for the trigger plot for the climax. One is reminded of the opening sequence of Paruthiveeran (2007), released almost three decades later!!

The film gets built gradually with the unfolding of a beautiful love story between the new teacher Shanmugamani and the local beauty Jothi. The evil village-head who is attracted by Jothi, plots and throws the good-hearted teacher out of the village accusing him of a rape and murder; he also goes a step further by marrying Jothi off to Amavasai (Goundamani) and asks them to live in his house so that his lust can be satisfied at will. What leads to this point and what happens after this is the film.

Though there are not many sub-plots in this movie, the twists and the spontaneity of the film keep you glued till the end. And the end falls in line with the title.

Pudhiya Vaarpugal is a classic.

PS: Bagyaraj is presently making a movie with the same title. This movie is going to be a grand success if it matches even a quarter of the benchmark set by the original Pudhiya Vaarpugal.

Fashion

2008-11-02T13:14:00.000-08:00

Madhur Bhandarkar has excelled the art of interestingly exposing the dark underbelly of a popular part of our lives with a strong female character. It was party journalism-Konkona Sen in Page 3; business world-Bipasha Basu in Corporate. Now, fashion industry-Priyanka Chopra.

Meghna Mathur (Priyanka Chopra) breaks away from her conservative home in search of her dream of making it big in the dark world of fashion and modelling. What happens to her is the story...

It is worth a watch.

Happy Diwali

2008-10-26T09:09:00.000-07:00

Happy Diwali! Felt like bringing festive mood to the Chennai Clouds. :) I could hear a lot of cracker noise in the background now. By the way, I think I should have told you something more in my previous post. The Chennai Cloud snap was shot with a very basic Canon digital camera; and more importantly I had posted the snap without modifying it like - changing the bringhtness, colour, hue etc. It is actually a colour phototgraph, not a black and white one. On that monsoon evening with those intimidating clouds draping the west side, the whole world was in black and white...

I believe in destiny - not before venturing into something; but after things had happened. To me destiny is not something that controls us; it is just a supreme explanation of the past. Why all this now? Just before my Exams started a week back these things came and went -

* Usually I watch a film daily. The choice of the film is purely based on my mood. Sometimes I have a mood to choose films with peculiar titles. Just two days before the Exams, "Serpico" attracted me. It was based on a true story. Frank Serpico is an honest cop with the New York police. He pays a heavy price for being a straight arrow in a department that is entrenced in corruption. Serpico loses his dignity, girl friends, aides, and even mental balance at times. Towards the end he is decorated with a medal in recognition for his bravery in action. But he exposes the corruption in police; and quits the department! The film closes with Serpico waiting in a port - with just his pet dog by his side. He moves to Switzerland.

* Kiran Bedi's interview was in one of the supplements of The Hindu. She says earlier she was serving to earn; now she was earning to serve. Just check this out. She had spoken about the difficulties she had to face while cleaning up the police system here; and how she ultimately got to quit it!

* One of my friends had called up. During our talk I found out I had missed the police job last year by just 2-3 marks.

I like Thirukkural.

The one that comes to my mind now is "Though you guard it well, what destiny does not decree disappears. Though you cast it aside, what fate calls yours will not depart". Verse 376.

Chennai Clouds

2008-10-20T05:24:00.001-07:00

After a gap of, I don't know how many years, I get a chance to be in Tamil Nadu during the monsoons here. While many treat these rains that come around the Diwali time to be a spoiler, to me - it adds a whole new mood to the festival. I still remember those wonderful days when we used to delicately fry (without oil, of course!) the damp crackers in a pan before using them on the pouring Diwali morning...

Plan B?

2008-10-19T21:03:00.000-07:00

Some of my friends were quite eager to know what kind of questions one gets in the Civil Services-Main Exam (a.k.a. IAS exam) conducted by the UPSC. Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Five papers. While the last two papers - English and any Indian language - were only qualifying in nature, the first three papers would matter a lot in deciding whether one got a chance to sit for the personality test in April 2009. Two papers of General studies (GS) and one Essay paper. As it gets boring to type as well to read the entire paper, I have given samples from the GS papers.

* "The emergence of new social classes in British India was the direct consequence of the establishment of new social economy, new state system, administrative machinery and Western education." Discuss. (150 words/15 marks)
* Golkonda Fort (20/2)
* Bring out the pros and cons of Special Economic Zones (150/15)
* Nor' westers (20/2)
* Discuss the major extra-constitutional factors influencing the federal polity in the country. (250/30)
* Discuss the composition and functions of the Union Public Service Commission. (150/15)
* Discuss the problems in achieving National Integration in India. (150/15)
* The conditions of urban poor are more deplorable than that of their rural counterparts." Give your views. (250/30)
* Lakshmi Mittal (20/2)

The above are from the GS - I paper. The GS papers are for 300 marks each, and one gets three hours for each paper. There is a two-hour break before one takes the GS - II paper.

* India and the New World Order (150 words/30 marks)
* India-Nigeria: Abuja Declaration (20/2)
* Indian diaspora and Bollywood (20/2)
* Access the performance of India in attracting Foreign Direct Investment(FDI). (250/30)
* NAMA (20/2)
* Universal Declaration of Human Rights. (150/15)
* INTERPOL (20/2)
* In what way "Medical Biotechnology" and "Bioengineering" are useful for technological development of India? (250/30)
* Spintronics (20/2)
* Sappan (20/2)
* Components of Robots (20/2)
* A question on representation of data by a suitable diagram.(like histogram, pie chart etc) (6 marks)
* The mean monthly income of a person is Rs.18190 and his mean monthly expenditure comes out to be Rs.17930. What is his average monthly saving? (2)

Essay paper. One gets to choose a topic from a basket of six topics. The essay paper is also for three hours. It carries 200 marks. No specific word limit.

* Is an egalitarian society possible by educating the masses?
* Discipline means success, anarchy means ruins.
* Urbanisation and its hazards.

Four more papers are remaining. Two each for the two optional subjects that one gets to choose from a range that stretches from Russian literature to Zoology.

Well, let me be frank and tell you what I felt during the Exam. I sincerely hope that the UPSC reduces the age limit for the candidates (without affecting the number of attmepts one gets. this can be done by shortening the cycle time of the Exam) I thought I was very old to sit and take this Exam, which anyone above 21 years can take. But at the Exam centre I felt I'm quite young! I genuinely feel hundreds of candidates are wasting the wonderful phase of their lives by mechanically appearing in the Exam, year after year, for many years. Some of my friends have spent more than five years in this Exam, without any result. It saddens me.

While I agree that dreams need perseverance, what hurts me is the fact that many candidates do not have a Plan B. So suddenly one fine morning, after exhausting all the attempts over the years, one realises one does not have a place to go. One is not equipped to find a decent job; an alternative career. My sincere wish is that the Civil Service aspirants while chasing their dreams, should also work on their fallback options - without mindlessly escalating their commitment year after year.

If-else

2008-10-15T07:39:00.000-07:00

I had CP-I and CP-II during my initial years of engineering. CP = Computer Programming. We were taught C and UNIX. One of the special features of my college was that the students had the option of attending the classes of any lecturer (instructor), of their own choice. This was possible as the same course was taught by many lecturers. Based on one's convenience and need one was free to attend anyone. Convenience, because the different lectures handled the classes during different hours. Some of them in the mornings, some in the second half. Generally, most of us avoided the post-lunch classes - for the obvious reason.

This method of teaching was like a free market. It boosted the competition among the instructors; jacked up the quality of the lectures; gave consumer (us) choices. I guess around six instructors handled CP-I. The most famous one was a lady instructor. She was brilliant; her overflowing classroom stood testimony to the fact. Students used to reserve seats for her class well in advance. Even the carpet area was crammed. In fact, left with no choice a few even sat outside the classroom to just hear her! That was the price the market (students) paid for quality. I was like a venture capitalist. I attended a new comer's lecture. There were some three other students in his class. We felt privileged. Sometimes, lonely as well!

Wait a minute...I think I wanted to say something else in this post. Yeah..it was about choices. If there was something that we used in most of the programs it was the If-else loop. It comes quite handy in all programs. The syntax goes like this:

If (condition is met)
{do this}
else
{do this}

Right from the simple program needed to check whether a word is a palindrome or not to huge programs needed to hack passwords, one had to use the if-else loop. I wish real-life decision-making were so simple!

In real life the problem is not generally with "what to do" but it is with the "condition to be met". For example, on a Monday morning following an extended week end, if you are confused about which dress to wear the problem is not with the availability of choices, but with the "condition". For example, if (?) {khaki trousers, white full shirt} else {jet black formal trousers, sky blue full shirt}. Most of us have the choices, but "?" is the question mark! What is the condition to be met? Is it comfort/professional need/attitude/need to impress/something else? In this case, let us assume the "?" is to impress a team-mate. Based on this the if-else loop runs and we get to decide what to wear.

But the problem far from being over, as the answer to the "?" changes every morning. There are many other variables that go on to decide what comes in place of "?".

In fact we all have a separate program, whose output replaces "?" every morning. That program has many variables and a few more if-else loops! This coupled with an array of choices, especially for the ladies, creates a very complex multiple if-else loops whose output gets into the actual program, which again has multiple if-else loops that decides what one wears on a Monday morning! And just remember, after all this program was to decide which dress to wear!

What about the complexities involved in deciding, say a career or a spouse or a car? Mind-boggling! I do not dare to even attempt thinking of those programs in our heads that go into making such decisions! Added to the complexities is the fact that the output is highly subjective. What the programmer perceives as the correct result might invite insults from others. This typically happens when I see yellow Esteems with loud music! So, in many cases the outsider's perception about the quality of the output would also be getting into the if-else loop as a variable. But again, the weightage given to this variable varies from one to another. People with conformist mindset give this variable a very high weightage. On the other hand innovators and leaders might assign a default value, int wt=0. I say leaders because, though they might assign a good weightage to what others say they also a separate program to check up whether what is being said is sensible or not. For instance, there was a widespread dissent within the Congress party when Gandhi withdrew the Non Cooperation Movement abruptly after the Chauri Chaura incident. It was a highly unpopular decision during those times. But the leader, Gandhi, stood by that. That was because Gandhi had "filters" in his program. Those filters out rightly took the default value if others opinion swayed even a bit from his path of non-violence.

And that yellow Esteem was just to drive home the point; not to tell you that you could be a great leader if you have a car with a crazy colour!

But what decides whether one just follows or decides? I think education has a major role to play here. As someone had said Education is what is left once you have forgotten all the facts; education is not about asking students to memorise multiplication tables, the periodic table and the Clarke's tables! To put it simpler, the role of education is to shape one's personality. The teachers and parents are the ones who decide what type of person a kid turns into. Whether a kid becomes one more sheep in the herd or a pioneer depends on the kind of learning s/he is exposed to. Right from the nursery school days, importance is to be given to shaping a child's thinking. The child should be given more and more chances to take decisions; the child should also be made to know that it is okay to fail, as long as there is a learning from the bad decision. None can take 100% perfect decisions, all the 100 times.

Of course in shopping malls I have seen many tiny children instructing their parents where to go, what to buy, when to eat etc. The parents also oblige. I'm happy about it as long as it does not teach the kid how to be stubborn and win your way! It might be confusing, but yes - there has to be a delicate balance between being stubborn and being innovative; being a conformist and being an explorer. Who says parenting is an easy job?

But inside the classrooms, where the kids spend a major part of their lives, very little is done to kindle original thinking. In most of the schools the teachers' main goal is to keep the kids under "control". While I have a high regard for the teaching profession, I'm not okay with the system that makes a little kid memorise 16X16, but fails to make him/her ask "how?"; the system that helps little kids memorise the elements in a periodic table but fails to make them innovate; a system that wants you to follow others - not decide for yourself.

Bubbles

2008-10-12T10:37:00.000-07:00

My Hero

2008-10-04T07:39:00.001-07:00

I was quite amused to see an exclusive showroom of Reynolds pens down the road. I still remember the little, fair kid who cutely stroked his face with his tiny finger, in that old Reynolds ball pen ad that ended with the tagline – Reynolds – The pen the world prefers. During those days I was thrilled by the ad; also by the lean white pen with the blue cap. I had it in my shirt pocket, during many days of my middle school life. It was a kind of fashion statement. The blue cap of Reynolds protruded elegantly out of the white pocket of my uniform shirt. Months rolled and dark pink or jet black cap of Reynolds pen replaced the blue ones. Reynolds had come out with pens that fully matched the colour of the pen’s soul – the refill. No more white body. The pen was of a single colour right from the head to the tail. Black was my favourite. The most frequently done activity with the pen was – practising various styles of my signature. Some were neat; some chic; some like the ECG report. Usually the last pages or the inside of the outer cover or some boring pages of the text books had such signature specimens. Signing in different fonts gave me a kick. It probably made me feel very important and popular. It probably gave form to the creativity inside. It probably told me, “Look, once you are a big man your signature is going to be a plain, boring one. Better try out many designs now and be happy”. Yes, I have a very bland signature now. I just write my name above the dotted line. In fact in one occasion the person collecting the filled application asked me why I had written my name in the box provided for my signature!

The pen policy of our school forced many of us to have two sets of pens. We were not allowed to use ball pen in the school. So, while Reynolds pen added to my style quotient the actual dog work was done by a good old fountain pen. It was usually a Camlin or King of Kings pen during the high school days. It required a lot of skill to fill ink in these fountain pens without turning the fingers blue with Bril. A kerchief or a bit of white cloth from an abandoned vest was always useful. Fountain pens also had another problem – they can go dry at crucial times. Some teachers do not like students to borrow pens while the classes go on. Some fountain pens found it interesting to go empty during such classes. During such times it required a specific knack to borrow a pen from someone, without getting the teacher’s attention. But as I grew up the Reynolds cap was replaced by the shiny, golden clip of the black fountain pen. It gave a high.

“Made in China” was not something really bad those days. Or was it “Made in Korea”? I’m not sure. But Hero pen was something that defined one’s personality those days. The dark brown(?) body and the golden cap can never be forgotten. The pointed nib produced an excellent flow of words. But the pen took some time to get “set”. During the first few days after purchase the writing was somewhat sharp and the flow was not very pleasant. But in a matter of another couple of days, Hero was one’s best friend. Hero just effortlessly swam on the white sheets of paper. I had my Hero with me for more than 5-6 years, right from my Class XI. I gave my XII Board exams with that pen. Apart from the classy touch and royal look another attraction of Hero was the ink filler it had. Though the capacity of the filler was not very much it ensured that Bril did not spoil our fingers anymore. Also, the capacity was quite sufficient to complete one paper of the Class XII exams. It was quite a delight to go to school with a set Hero in the pocket. It really gave me a kick. I had tried a black Hero too for some days; but it did not get set. My favourite Hero was with me well till the end of college life. I was quite sentimental about it. In fact, if my memory is not very week, I guess my Hero had found a place in our Class XII group photograph too. I’m happy about it. Generally, like many others, I too was not comfortable lending my Hero to someone. I had a spare one for borrowers.

It is a different matter that I did not get a chance to use that Hero extensively after the XII Board exams. My quality of preparation, intelligence level and the nature of exams in our college compelled me to settle for very ordinary pens like – the blue Reynolds!

Untitled 2

2008-10-03T11:05:00.000-07:00

Untitled 1

2008-10-03T11:00:00.000-07:00

Cries and Whispers

2008-09-20T22:34:00.000-07:00

I have been going through a mental turmoil since a few days back – some personal, some professional. While the personal category does not vary much in between us; the professional side might. Lying on a mat in a neat, owen-like room on an open terrace, I watched a few movies. Thanks to Lenovo. Well, the problem has nothing to do with the hot sun and humid air. But with what I saw. After having seen films like Pithamagan, The Silence Of The Lambs etc I actually thought I can endure any form of violence on screen. I, along with a few others, had also developed the knack of discussing blood on screen, quite objectively. Though I personally might not want them shown on screen; these bloody scenes did not actually terrorise me, or even move me.

I had been to the libraries of one of the film academies in Chennai and a friend gave me a few films that fell in his “Classics” category. The Green Mile. (1999/Eng) I am not someone who is up-to-date with Hollywood films. No wonder I had not seen this movie released almost a decade back. Excellent movie! The way Hollywood blends reality with fantasy is just amazing. The film is superbly realistic to the point of giving space for fantasy; the film is also a fantastic dream that permits practicality. The script maintains the "What next?" feeling till the last moment, and never lets you to take off your eyes. Casting of the film also needs a special mention, especially the person chosen as John Coffey. He clearly sends a chill down the spine; he is also pitiable. You feel like crying with him.

The film makes you hopeful; it makes you sick. It makes you cry; it makes you hate. It makes you see life. I wish I had seen this movie on the full screen, when it was shown in my college years back.

I checked out the Oscars 2000 list. I was eager to know The Green Mile’s standing. Any guess? If you have not seen the film you may do that before making the guess. Yes! You are wrong! Films like American Beauty, Boys Don’t Cry, The Matrix, The Cider House Rules etc ensured that nobody from the The Green Mile team was called on stage! Incidentally, The Sixth Sense too met the same fate that year.

Well, where is the turmoil I was speaking about? I also watched Cries and Whispers. (1973/Swe)

Sadanand Menon

2008-07-09T06:03:00.000-07:00

This gentleman is not a freedom fighter or someone like that, so don't feel bad if this name does not ring a bell. There are some people who are actually good at their job - be it dancing, driving, toilet cleaning, teaching etc. There is the next bunch that strives to be good at whatever they do. The third, funny group has people without any skill whatsoever. However this noisiest bunch craves for attention, identity. So how does this group go about making news? Just check this out.

Addendum:With reference to Muthuvel's comment - I would not have had any problems had that so-called film review been published under the title I hate Kamal. But when it is given as a movie review - it makes a mockery of the readers as well. I really don't know how this "movie review" passed the editor's desk!

And something interesting is happening here. Earlier I was irritated.Now am thoroughly baffled by the way the media's minds work!

First day, first row

2008-06-16T07:58:00.000-07:00

I had the double privilege of watching the much-hyped Dasavatharam on the very first day of its release, from the very first row. The film opens like an epic and progressively falls flat till the end. However, hatsoff to Kamal and Co for executing such a complex script. Watch the film just to know there are still people in Indian cinema, who at least dream of global standards. Great efforts!

By the way looking at the blog archives I realise it has been more than two months since I did something here. And that's the primary reason for this post. Thank you!

The real me

2008-04-13T04:51:00.000-07:00

I did not want to write on anything even remotely connected with the interviews as I felt it was already an over-dose of it. But the exigency of the situation warrants me to break this resolution!! The situation is this – after reading that series on interviews, and getting some tips over phone and emails some of my friends have concluded that I’m some kind of a superman of interviews. They think I have mastered some secret techniques to crack any interview. Initially I was happy with this image, but when I actually dug deep into my memories of interviews, what I saw was just ridiculous episodes full of naïve replies and brainless reactions. And thus was born this post.

I should have appeared in a little over thirty interviews till now, including the mock interviews I had taken for last year’s exams. Out of these a major portion – thirteen! – went in getting me a campus placement some four years back when I was about to passout of b-school. I should have been in the group of students having the poorest strike rate.

During those days Infosys, and BPCL were my dream companies. After sitting through the routine of PPT (Pre-Placement Talk) of Infy I was quite happy to hear that I was short listed for the interview. In fact there was no GD (Group Discussion) component; it was direct interview for some twenty five of us. After floundering with some basic info on my summer project the last question I faced was “Which career path you would like to take in Infosys?”. I was totally blank as I did not remember distinctly the two career paths these guys had explained during their PPT. Without finding a better answer, with a confused yet confident look, I just said “Sir, the consulting..er..the second career path that was shown in your presentation, I mean the analyst…mmm..yes sir”. “Okay, thank you Rajan”! Infosys dream shattered.

To make us (the MBA students) more sellable to the companies our institute had organised some mock interviews. These mocks were shot with video cameras and were then played in the classrooms – to practically show us where we failed and how to improve, how to refine body language etc. My mock went on well and I was as usual very confident inside the room. I was very happy that I handled well but there was just one thing that went off the mark, and this was shown to the whole class when the video was played. The panel was asking me something like this “Okay Mr.Sundar, tell us what kind of programming you would choose if you are heading a media organisation?” Here is where the innocence (brilliance?) of Mr.Sundar comes to play, beaming at the panel, “Sir it is actually a very difficult question to answer”. Laughter all over the classroom. The best part is that some even congratulated me for that smart answer.

A major debacle that refuses to go away from my memory is the interview with SRF, during my last semester of engineering. To put it briefly – irrespective of the branch of engineering, most of us were aiming to get into software companies. And companies too did not have problems picking a chemical engineer for java programming. The aptitude tests as well the interviews were aimed at checking only the logical/analytical thinking/programming knowledge of the students. Nothing connected to their actual branch of studies. As luck would have it was severe recession in the year we passed out, 2002. Software companies did not turn up.

I landed in the interview room of SRF ltd. The very first question “How was your apti?”, “Sir, the gen apti was okay. The technical apti was not that okay”. (The gen apti has mathematical/logical questions; the tech apti had questions on chemical engineering subjects) There was a sarcastic smile on the gentleman’s face. I got the signal that it is going to be a tough time recollecting those chemical fundas that are about to prop up now. Those stuff that I had learnt for a week the last week, those I should have learnt for a year, a year back. What happened for the next 10-15 mins was something like ragging. It started off with the basic question that one sees in the Std.VI science books “What happens when a ship enters a river, upstream from a sea?” I remembered the school book answer and gave it, quite excited that I could crack this fluid mechanics problem; forgetting I was expected to answer like a chemical engineer and not like a school kid. A battery of questions followed, just to re-establish the by-then-well-established fact that I knew just the spelling of chemical (is it not chemikal?) engineering and nothing beyond it. The difficulty level of the questions took an inverted-U shaped curve and ended somewhere close to the X axis. It was “Ok, at least tell us the author of your mass transfer book”. Having been through the roller coaster ride till now I was still feeling dizzy. “Sir….mass transfer..Treybal..Smith..Mm..sir..,TP1…sir..” Those gentlemen went mad. The next two minutes are censored here. I emerged out of the interview room with a nod and a sheepish smiling. Life is bigger than chemical engineering, I told myself.

My WIPRO interview during the MBA campus placements is a landmark episode in itself. After having cracked the GD – it was in fact one of my best GDs. (the other one was for BPCL) I as quite confident as if already I had made the job. To fuel my confidence level, there was no panel as such to interview me – it was only one interviewer. Can’t I convince just one soul to offer me the job? Of course, I can. Full of confidence and a little arrogance I happily took the Marie biscuit this person offered me during the interview. “Why do you want to join us?” By now I was very sure that I was already a WIPROite. Nothing that I had prepared for this question came to my mind, as an instant answer I just told him “..because WIPRO does not have any training programme for its fresh MBA recruits. I would like to start working rightaway..” I remembered hearing in the PPT that the training session was not conducted the previous year. But looks like it was a case of selective perception. He shot back, a little disoriented, “What! It was an aberration last year. In fact we are known for our training programme”. Needless to say what happened with my tryst with WIPRO.

Serendipity can kill. It was the summer placement season in the b-school campus and I, the smart engineer, was short-listed for one of the promising companies that also offered to pay us well– the same old SRF!! It is not over here. After the basic Hello, introduction etc of the telephonic interview, the caller asked “Do you remember me?” Within a second, though I hated to do so, I realised it was the same person who ragged..sorry, interviewed me in BITS some months back! He added “How is your chemical engineering now?” I said “Not any better than some months back sir, but my management is good”. He did not seem to bother about the second part of the statement. Anyway, I was not in a great mood to care for it. After all, life has more than chemical engineering.

First day, first show

2008-03-31T07:41:00.000-07:00

My friend Sadayappan (BITS-Pilani, Dual degree - Chemistry/CompSci Engg) had his interview today. This was his first mains, second attempt. He had worked with an IT firm for some time before taking the exams. This is what happened inside Mr.E.Balaguruswamy's chamber today for about 40 mins, in Sadayappan's own words.

"Chairperson:
Did you have anything outside? How was the tea?
Tell me about your district (for 1 min).
You should have got a good placement in campus? Then why did you leave the job?
What is dual degree?
Which is the by-product? Chemistry or computer science?
What are your hobbies?

1st member:
Tell me about food adulteration. How it can be controlled?
How did coco cola give different test results in the span of one week?
What are the methods done in for testing these kind of beverages?
How would you stop food adulteration as a bureaucrat?
Tell me some of the problems caused by computers.
What is impression finding? How well it is developed in India?

2nd member:
What is governance? (I had already mentioned about 'governance' in one of my earlier answers)
What is good governance?
'The government which governs the least is the best government'. Comment.
What is literacy rate in your State?
How often it is calculated?
Do you find any pattern of literacy in your district?
What is the burning issue 'today' ? (inflation)
What is the government doing today to tackle this issue ? (cabinet committee)
Tell me where who have come close to the government.
Do you know that your financial benefits (w.r.t fifth pay commission not sixth) will be less here when compared to software job?

3rd member:
Tell me about Tanjore painting.
What was the issue of badminton and bird flu?
Which badminton event was stopped because of that?
What is your opinion about the coming up of malls?
Explain character, integrity and honesty.

4th member:
How is chemistry going to help computers?
Tell me about C 60 and its applications.
How computer is going to help chemistry?
If you become collector in your district which issue you would address which today's collector is not able to solve?
How will you tackle political pressures?
Will you resign your job when you are harassed and will you go back to software sector?

Chairperson:
What Sadayappan is the interview over?
Do you have anything to ask us?
Be frank..Do you think we five (referring to the interview board) can solve any burning issues?

..thats how it ended.
Many technical questions I flunked. Overall it was cordial. The board helped me to keep myself cool."

For more details sadayappan@gmail.com

The D-day CSE Interviews - concluding Part

2008-03-30T00:45:00.000-07:00

The CSE Personality Tests start tomorrow. At this point of time there is not much to add but just that - Be yourself. Do not lose your cool.

Have in mind that you are already in the top one per cent and its just the finishing touch that is happening today.

Just be natural. All the best!

The high decibel days CSE Interviews – Part II

2008-03-18T05:09:00.000-07:00

The results are out, and as usual there are many shocks that make us believe that the theme of UPSC happens to be “uncertainty”. Here I just have one thing for those deserving candidates who have failed to make it – something much bigger is waiting for you. Just take time out, and get ready for the next onslaught at the exams. Success is just a matter of time.

Here we will see what is to be done during the high decibel days – from the time of the mains results to the day before interview. To save my time as well make it more readable for you this is given in a kind of FAQs format.

Should I join coaching?
Yes and no. Yes – if you are looking forward to taking some mock sessions. No – if you are going to solely rely on the coaching to understand what is happening around you. Though the rapid current affairs classes are useful in making you aware of where to focus and where not to, they are not useful in terms of the depth of coverage. In fact it is not possible for the institutes to do that within the short time frame. The coaching classes are done under the presumption that you have done your groundwork well. Also try avoiding religion/caste-based coaching institutes.

“I do not feel confident, I’m overloaded with facts”
Unless one utters these statements, one is not going in the right track! Given the nature of the interview it is very normal to feel pressurised, insecure etc. Take it in the right spirit; the following steps might help boost your esteem levels.

• Be thorough with your mains form
• Be systematic in acquiring and absorbing information
• Take time out, think about key issues like – women empowerment, terrorism, corruption, democracy etc. (this would help in handling the third category of questions confidently)
• Maintain a positive outlook
• Visualise/Mentally create the interview environment while practising answers for the expected questions like Tell me about yourself, why civil services after BE-MBA? etc
• Give quality mock interviews
• Just have in mind that this is not a knowledge test

About mock interviews?
Never be afraid to appear in mock interviews. In fact mock sesions form the backbone of the preparation. One should definitely give 4-5 mock interviews. Do a benchmark mock interview in the next 3-4 days. Take another 2-3 mocks in the last week of March, depending on your interview date. And the final mock about 2 days before the actual D-day. Take the help of quality coaching institutes, seniors, and those who have appeared in the interview earlier.
Ensure that your first and the last mocks are with top quality people. A bad feedback can spoil your career! Take the last mock in your formal/interview attire – especially if you are not used to wearing tie, blazer etc – for men, and sarees – for women. (Am making it so explicit just to avoid some ridiculous comments from CosmicNoises)

How to improve communication skills?
This is something that is totally under our control, as we often see people from villages around towns like Tirunelveli start speaking US English within a few weeks of joining a call centre. If they can, why not you? The next two weeks are enough to significantly improve one’s oral communication skills / spoken English. Also, just remember that the interview is being conducted to recruit civil servants not news readers or receptionists – you need not have any hi-fi accent; just clear, confident, communication is expected.

• Read aloud for about 20 minutes daily. This can be a news item or the editorial. If possible record it once and hear it. This will come a long way in helping you.
• Speak slowly, do not rush while speaking.
• Rehearse/Visualise/Voice out. Especially answers for the expected questions like How will your hobby, watching films, be useful to you as a Police officer?, Why should you be made an IFS officer? etc.

During the interview -
DOs:
• Smile. Be pleasant
• Maintain a confident posture
• Listen the question carefully
• Take 2-3 seconds before you start answering. In fact, even for the questions like What is your name? take some time to answer
• Be flexible. If you really see a point in what someone else is saying, accept it
• Maintain eye contact with all the members from time to time
• Feel free to say "sorry I don't know", when you actualy don't know something

DON'Ts:
• Enter the room without the Board’s permission
• Take your seat without being offered
• Place your hands on the desk
• Speak fast
• Have a casual attitude. Don’t utter words like – ya / ok / cool etc
• Make bold body gestures
• Guess answers without the Board’s permission
• Argue with the Board. If you have to disagree with someone, do it politely
• Compromise on values

Just remember these points over the next two weeks, use in your mock sessions and by the time of your interview, these will be a part of your habit. Else one is likely to flounder under pressure on the D-day.

Keep head cool! Good luck!

Before the results are out...CSE Interviews – Part I

2008-03-16T05:00:00.000-07:00

After silencing his critics with his bat in the final matches of the recent one-day series in Australia, Tendulkar had the following to say on his hectic season, “….These are the demands cricketers have to prepare for. Its tough when one plays a day/night match, gets back to the room, packs the bags and takes the morning flight, settles down again and be mentally prepared for the next match”. You have toiled your way through the tricky prelims and gruelling mains spanning over a year or many – Congrats! But the war is far from being over. Just get your body and mind ready for the last lap of the CSE. This is the shortest, yet the most crucial lap. Shortest, because in a matter of another 60 days one gets to know what had happened over the last many months of preparation. Most crucial, because there is a huge chunk of marks waiting to be scored. It might be needless at this point to remind that every single mark matters.

In this Part we would see what one needs to do / have done even before the mains results are out. The next Part would cover the high intensity period – from the time of the mains results to the Interview day. Part III would speak about things to be done on the D-day.

Firstly get the purpose of the interview very clearly. (By the way it is officially called the Personality Test) These are some of the pointers taken from the UPSC site about the interview “….natural, directed and purposive conversation”, “…to reveal the mental qualities”. This means that it is not going to be merely a question-answer type interview or something like the viva voce one gives in college. Interview is not a test of one’s knowledge – that has been tested thoroughly over the year – it is a test of one’s personality and suitability for the career.

Questions like What are your views on the Rs.60,000 crore farm loan waiver?, What do you think is the lasting solution to the Tibet problem?, Tell us something about the recent developments in genetics etc are not intended to check whether one is a walking wikipedia or not. They are intended to unfold one’s personality whether one is –
• having the capacity to provide social leadership
• showing interest in the world affairs across a variety of areas
• open to learning new things
• honest and value-bound
• able to make logical explanations/judgements
• able to communicate confidently

(Don’t waste your time wondering whether all the civil servants who have scored well in the interview possess these qualities or not. Though it is quite an interesting time-pass it erodes your belief in the system. And that’s not the best thing to do now)

Having got the purpose of the interview, it time to move on to the actual preparation stage. We can broadly classify the interview questions like this:
• Mains form
• National/World events
• Situational/Personal

Your Mains form is the primary tool of the panel to unfold your personality. Handle it well and more than half the battle is won. The most important thing is to be thorough with every single item in the Mains application form. Thorough means knowing at least two levels in that area. Every single item means, well, every single item. For example, if you have filled the mail address as abc@gmail.com, Expect questions like Why did you choose your mail address with google?, Do you think google earth is a threat to our security?, What are your views on MS-Yahoo takeover battles?. I hope “Thorough” and “Every single item” are clear now.

In your register allot a page for every item in your Mains form; brainstorm and jot down the most relevant questions under the item. At this stage your aim is not to look up for answers but just to think of possible questions. You may team up with 2-3 others to generate such questions. For broad areas like home state and district you classify the questions under categories like Historical/ Geographical/ Political/ Economic/ Social. This structured approach will help you in generating varied questions as well managing information.

Start looking for the answers from reliable sources like Government documents, authentic websites, college brochures etc. If possible just write down some pointers near the questions or just give reference to the answer source. Keep the sources ready in the form of printouts/paper clippings/softcopy etc. Be systematic; else be ready for nightmares towards the fag end when one finds it almost impossible to manage information. Prepare on your academic areas as well optional papers on similar lines. Get the basics right.

Once you are ready with your Mains form its time to move towards the second category – national/world happenings including science and technology, art, sports etc. Identifying the key areas for this section is also quite easy. For example – China Olympics/ Sub prime crisis/ Chandraayan/ Coral reefs/ Rural developmenmt/ Hybrid cars/ Judicial activism/ Kosovo/ AIDS/ Pakistan politics etc need to be prepared well. Sit as a group and generate such topics under some broad headings. Develop questions under each topic and be strong with the basics. Here again rely on authentic sources for information.

Don’t you think you are wasting your MBBS degree by opting for civil service?, As the PM's Special Economic Adviser what would be your take on balancing growth-inflation?, Whom would you prefer – an honest but inefficient officer or a corrupt but smart officer?, Why do you prefer IAS, is it because of the power and dowry it fetches you?, As a DM what would be your immediate and long term steps to curb naxalism in your district? Such questions fall under the third category. Generate many such questions, sitting with your group of friends. The answers do not need any help from external sources like the net, all answers are inside you. Probably you may speak with some seniors to get the process going. Just take time out, spend hours on such questions and develop a very clear thought process on issues like integrity/career preference etc. Unless one is ultra confident on such issues, it will not be very difficult for the panel to spot your weakness. Be careful!

While the third category can be prepared in the days after the results, the first two areas need more time and form the foundation. So get going….!

There is an interesting, very useful book “Interviews Redefined” by Sh.M.K.S.Sundaram. This book is a compilation of interviews of many civil servants. It can give you a very clear perspective about the nature of questions to be expected and more. My interview preparation started with this book; though I do not claim to have made some exceptional marks am kind of happy with my 195. Also go through "India after Indepedence" by Bipin Chandra, and "Development and Participation" by Amartya Sen/Jean Dreze. Need not memorise these books, but be selective and get your fundamentals clear.You may also check out Guhan, Anurag, Vivek.

On Certainty

2008-03-07T20:08:00.000-08:00

Uncertainty is something that makes most of us uncomfortable. Be it a train delay without any prior announcement or the exam results that takes us by surprise or presidential polls or the time someone takes before accepting the red rose you offer – we are not comfortable anywhere. The common theme here seems to be “control”, or “ensuring certainty”. So we have a battery of tools to make life more certain – beginning from simple checklists to six sigma techniques, from a price list in a mandi to high-end gadgets that guide nuclear missiles, from horoscopes to mega investments in branding. Life is full of practices that are aimed at reducing uncertainties. We want our environment to obey our orders, or at least intimate us in advance whether we will be in control or not.
So far it is fine, but we also derive significant sadistic pleasure when we see people who are surrounded by uncertainties. That explains why cricket is a very popular game. The game is built of uncertainties (glorious?) of different varieties – batting, bowling, fielding, running between the wickets and these days even sledging and umpiring uncertainties. Did the spinner abuse the opponent’s forefathers or not? Such news makes it to the headlines. This liberal mixture of uncertainties makes it an enjoyable game. Player’s uncertainty; viewer’s pleasure. The IPL auctions also prove an interesting point – it is an extremely well-paying job to handle uncertainties. The profits an entrepreneur reaps is also exactly for the same – the reward for the risk she takes, the uncertainty she handles. The same case with cinemas or a story – the more thrilling (uncertain) it is, the more complex the story gets, happier the audience become. That explains why the so called art films or documentaries generally don’t do well, while masala movie makers have a bull run. Masala, by definition means a mix of varied flavours. It keeps one guessing – there’s a song now, humour there, anger here, some romance sprinkled, sentiments and stunts strewn. The finer the uncertainties are blend, more the producer earns. Here again we can not take extreme uncertainties - we always want the hero to win in the end!
So why is it we love uncertainty in others lives and not in our own? Is it because we want to be the most dominant one? There are many millions who are not sure about their next meal or whether they will live to see the sun tomorrow. Here certainty has to do something with the very basic question of survival. The gene inside them wants to live and replicate, drives them to ensure food, water and family. Or even here is it the question of who is dominant – who can find food, water and the best partner against all odds? Does everything in life boil down to what the genius said some 150 years back?

Read Only Memory

2008-02-24T07:13:00.000-08:00

One of the classy products of the massive, memory-machine factories that run across the country in the name of "schools", I thought it is not a bad idea to have a look at how a normal student is expected to learn here. (I would restrain from giving macro solutions) I still remember sitting with my incomplete Mental Arithmetic book - III as late as my VII standard. With dad near me, tears in my eyes, and total frustration in my heart I tried very hard to solve those nightmarish, yet simple problems. Of course by then I had memorised multiplication tables till 16 X 16, as expected. (By the way I do not remember beyond 11 X 11 these days.)Still there was neither confidence nor interest in me to take that III std book.
A very high score in my XII, engineering from a pretty impressive college, an MBA degree after that - all these things have not done anything to destroy my basic fear for fractions or percentages. Though somehow manage these things now, the basic hate remains. For your kind information, I have learnt French during my higher secondary classes. But today beyond "bon jour" I know nothing in French. This is because I just memorised those ten French lessons and the solved papers of earlier exams - and ended up making a decent score in the Board exams. Be it mathematics or language our system does not seem to differentiate - it is just the plain, vanilla Memory To Rescue. But even to memorise and remember things better there are sure shot techniques - our schools do not teach them also. So what exactly happens inside a school? I do not know much. While we were always asked to study well, how many of us were told how to study? Very few. Our society might not be really ready for an exploratory approach to education (the Tare Zamen Par - types), the schools can however ensure children get some basic tips on learning and remembering.
Here are some -
* Before starting to read any chapter, just flip through the pages of the chapter
* Read the summary of the chapter
* Go through the questions given at the end of the chapter
(These steps set the mind ready to accept and link information)
* Have a time-frame for each chapter.Realistic targets
* Avoid other distractions
(Our households strictly follow this point, by switching off the TV sets.Full marks here!)
* Do the chapter in manageable blocks rather than finishing at one go
* Try to read at one specific time period everyday
(The fixed schedule of schools and tuitions takes care of this)
* Wherever possible create personal relevance to the material studied
* Revise. Revise. Revise.
Above all just remind them life has more to do than school and exams. See I have managed my life without yet completing that III class Mental Arithmetic book!

No blogging

2008-02-15T02:24:00.000-08:00

Blogging is like smoking. It is a good time pass essentially, and this made me pick the habit about a year ago. It is not that I have never written anything in my life before that. I have always been associated with some magazine/newsletter or the other, willingly or without choice, knowingly or innocently, throughout my school-college-b-school-work-GoI life. But this new phase of writing started as a time-pass tool, like smoking. For more on this you go to my first post, please.
Smokers, left to them, would not generally care whether the people around like the exhaust that comes of their mouths. I too, generally do not care whether the person sitting at the other end of the comp likes to read what I have typed. Of course there is a concern somewhere in the mind for the poor readers. But the concern is not big enough to make me more considerate with the keyboard.
Smoking adds to one’s style or the cool factor, and this is one of the main reasons why many teenagers light their first cigarette. Though long past the school days, this blogger also believes that blogging makes him cool! Not everyone is as stylish as Rajni when it comes to smoking; I have come across some really pathetic posts, even in this blog. However one always tries to kind of flip the cigarette or rub the matchstick on neighbour's arm hoping to light the stick. The same strive is there among many writers, including this one.
A smoker without a cigarette, standing next to a smoking smoker actually gets to smoke for free. And that is what many bloggers do - just lazily browse other blog sites. For that matter that is one thing I do when having lots of time, pretty decent net facility and neither any new mail or scrap nor the mood to write something.
I have seen many smokers put off or throw their cigarettes midway, abusing some distant relative or a neighbour who passes by. The power cuts and the network problems one faces in the numerous net cafes around remind this. I do not trust Autosave anymore, after having retyped two or three posts till now. Things beyond one's control, things that irritate the most.
Of course, the "kicks" given by smoking and writing can not be compared.(By the way, as late as my Tenth Class I used to write writing as "Writting". Looks like since school days, I was so interested in writttting!) But writers also get a kick after completing a work, regardless of the quality of the work. The only thing is that for bad posts the kick is from outside.
Some smokers feel that they are rebels; they do not want to be contained by the myopic definition given to "good habits", they believe that nobody can chain them or none can snatch away their freedom.Read my dear friend Muthuvel's blog and you will agree to what I say.
Smoking is a costly affiar. Who says blogging is for free?

Happy 2008!

2008-01-17T22:41:00.000-08:00

The number of films watched in a cinema hall is a good indicator of how one's vacation/break has been. The scorecard goes like this: On a normal vacation time - without any festival releases - an average of three films a fortnight is supposed to mean a peaceful vacation, where one could do everything planned, at one's own relaxed pace. Going by that this has been my most hectic break. Considering the festive mood spanning across Christmas and Pongal for about a month - I have managed to see just four movies in cinema halls. The first one being Kallori, while the finishing touch was given by Pirivom Santhipom, a Pongal release.

Directed by Karu Pallaniappan I think this film tries to explore the plight of a gregarious girl when she is made to sit at home by her husband, who spends most part of the day at work. Complicating the matters is that there are not many neighbours in their area, also the fact that the girl got used to the happy joint-family of her husband before the couple got shifted to the new location devoid of friends. This concept has the power to create a psycho thriller or a new look at life style issues or a captivating family story. Even films like Chandramukhi can be made out of this theme. Caught between some of these ideas and that of making a realistic family drama the director ends up giving us nothing that stays with us.

For more than two hours of watching the film I was expecting some thing to happen - a twist here and there or an intelligent sub-plot somewhere or a refreshing song or some fine comedy that does not stand apart or an interesting screenplay - but what I got to see at the end was closing curtains. I think this film was made with the sole intention of making a contra film. With films like Paruthiveen/ Mirugam/ Polladhavan etc going rounds the producers thought it was the best time to make a family drama with no single negative character, thus breathing a new life into the Tamil cinema world. In short you feel like coming out of watching a few episodes of a typical mega-serial at one go. However this film does not exaggerate life. I also liked the novel way of the initial title rolls. The song sequence that shows the Chettinad marriage is well-done.

Bombay Theatre - this is the only DTS/AC cinema hall in our city. This was my main criterion while deciding on this film. The other one being the proximity to my home. My next choice was Vikram's Bheema.

Ethics in a coffee cup

2007-12-19T11:13:00.000-08:00

There are a few coffee/tea/vending machines - CVM in short, in the Academy-Mussorie. These CVMs have slots for certain tokens that one could to get for five rupees. These 5-rupee tokens would make one eligible for a cup of coffee etc. But the speciality of these CVMs is that these can be operated even without these specific tokens.(Unfortunately, I relised this only during the fag end of our Course there) This is by inserting any one Rupee, 50 paise or even 25 paise coin in the slot, instead of the 5-rupee CVM token. These CVMs are so intelligently designed!

I would have hardly taken four or five cups of Re.1 coffee when a friend disturbed me with some ethical lessons. He (not she) said that i was doing something immoral, cheating the CVM owner grossly. (i was paying at max only one fourth of the actual) As i was anticipating this issue to crop up some time or the other i did not have any difficulty in quickly countering this with my ready-made defence.

My primary line of defence is that it is purely the owner/designer/operator's job to ensure such glaring design flaws are rectified - after all the whole business runs around these tokens. It is also very obvious that these guys are well aware of this loophole, as the CVMs are opened on a daily basis to recycle the tokens and for accounting purposes. So if someone can be so very careless about his/her interests - probably due to sheer laziness - why should someone else be branded unethical?

In turn, I was posed with hard questions like - Is it ethical to takeaway items from an unmanned, open shop? Will you consider it ethical if someone picks your mobile phone while you are looking the other side? etc.

Need your help. Can I advise my friends in Mussourie not to waste Rs.5 for a cup of coffee or should I send a DD for Rs.16 (Rupees sixteen only) to the CVM operator?

Last minute

2007-11-28T21:21:00.000-08:00

We are supposed to complete all our relieving formalities by today evening, returing this laptop is also a part of the activities. Before coming to Mussourie some three months back, I was very confident that I would be able to at least maintain my posting average of about one new post every week, if not better. But that did not click. Now am confident of something that is going to workout - I will not be able to make any new posts in the next 10 days! Lots of location changes in the anvil before I reach Nagpur on Dec 9th. See you then.

Btw, this is one of the very few good snaps I took here. Thanks to Arun's idea of posting more snaps.

Creative tests

2007-11-23T03:39:00.000-08:00

I remember hearing in one of those psychology coaching classes that it's really difficult to objectively measure - most of the mind-related variables like intelligence, attitude, interests etc. And creativity is definitely not something that lends itself to metrics. Who is more creative - Maniratnam or George Bush? Can someone give a clear answer? No.
However that never deters us from designing tests that are most likely to measure creativity. The famous psychologist Guilford is known for developing many such tests, like Remote Association Test, Unusual Uses test and many more. Torrence Tests of creative thinking are also famous, such tests measured one's originality, flexibility, fluency and elaboration - thought to be the components of creative thinking.
Over the past two days I'm also testing myself on these four parameters, though that was not the intention of the individuals who administered the tests. Some good things happen without planning, they say. Coming to the tests, here are some of the items that really tested my creativity.

* Test 4/Item 4: India is secular but Indian politics is communal. Please comment.
* Test 3/ Sec B/Item 7: What is the key assumption adopted in this working estimation model of social capital? (A complex Chemical Engineering-type formula followed this item)

There are many other gems, however I would like to end the list with this -
* * Test 5/Item 1: Why is the study of history considered relevant for a Civil Servant? Discuss.

Kamal - the boss

2007-10-28T13:01:00.000-07:00

Got back from the village visit just a couple of hours back. Till the time I get ready with some real post just check out this interesting stuff.

http://www.hindu.com/cp/2007/10/26/stories/2007102650010100.htm

Village (Re)Visit

2007-10-19T11:59:00.000-07:00

Same time three years back, I should have been following up some work in Tupni/Padli/Mojap or something like that. These are some villages of Okhamandal, Jamanagar district, Gujarat. As an MT (Management Trainee) with Tata Chemicals, I was expected to do a rural stint for 2 months. It was my first real experience of the Bharat and enjoyed every moment of it. Especially the exposure visit with about 50 Gujarati villagers to Bhuj, conducting some gram sabha meeting, lots of masala tea, sensitising the little chaps in the locals schools about sanitation and personal hygiene, long drives in a very old jeep with the super-driver Rambhai, stay at Tupni - that was the Dussera time too!, clicking some good and many not-so-good snaps, eating groundnuts - straight from under the ground, taking the Tupni Sarpanch's bull for a walk - was really scared, singing "Athaanda Idhaanda Arunachalam naanthaanda..." for the villagers, doing some PRA work etc.

In another three hours' I'm supposed to get going for the week-long village visit of the 81st Foundation Course, LBSNAA. This time I'm going to a village in Lalitpur,UP. But I feel, over the last three years, my skill-level when it comes to doing things like this - has in fact gone down! Will be happy if this feeling remains still a feeling even after this village visit; and not a reality.