Football Save and Must Watch I say

And finally got a good game of Football. Our club being heralded with the champions tagged were challenged by the rest of the "stars". Till mid time, our team was down with 1 goal and the goal keeper had to quit due to some unforeseen circumstances. So literally i was picked from the crowd to play as Gaolkeeper. As expected i rose to the occasion and saved 3 back to back goal attempts. The one which was favorite to me is given below. The reason being that it was a good kick and was at an angle which could have easily gone into the post had it not been the timely block from my end.

ToastMasters and Sine Die

I have recently joined Toastmaster Club, SAP Chapter. It is a club dedicated for improving public speaking and the systematic way the proceeding takes place does impress one and all. Its all about removing the fear of public speaking. As a part of curriculum , i gave my first public speech today in the ice breaker session. The sole purpose of the ice breaker session is to get to know each other. And generally , these are very light and humorous session wherein every one shares their lighter moments of their lives. It is very informative and the first window where we get to know the speaker in a better way. BUT...i am different.

I took this opportunity to depict a college riot situation about 11 years ago and how i had actively participated and created ruckus in the campus. I spoke about how i charged the policemen , hit them , narrowly escaped being caught and was absconding for couple of days. I could write a comprehensive details about this but i leave it to some other blog.

Jai Jagannath

If we trace the origin of "Juggernaut", we will obviously see that it comes from Jagannath. He is the most revered god in my part of the country. Famously know as the God for the poor people, he is a integral member of every oriya family. The fact is anything auspicious always starts with his name. The first wedding invitation is given to him in person. Jagannath Temple Puri is still standing tall with 11th century. It is the testimony of an engineering marvel. Very few large structure still stand strong beside a sea for so long. None to my knowledge. You have to see it to believe it. The Puri Temple Kitchen feeds more than 1,00,000 people every day. Supply Chain Marvel.

BJB travesity

Humty dumty sat on a wall
Humty dumpty had a great fall
The fall was big and hollow
To shake the earth below
Responsibility blame game
What a shame
Throwing out the mutineers
Wonder what would be left overs
As the ruling party celebrate
We should deliberate
On what the situation would be
With no strong opposition to be
Do we call this democratic
With party system autocratic

Humty Dumty sat on the wall
Humty Dumpty had a great fall

Prince Danced

The Reality Show "India's Got Talent" had a grand culmination with Prince Dance Group wining the coveted title for the year 2009. I would not delve into their team composition of Daily laboureres nor how under priviledged they were and how it was a typical "underdog" story who managed to win everyone heart.

But i would like to mention how "mature" Sekhar Kapur was in his role as a judge. I have been tracking the judges long enough to say that he was class apart in his comments when he gave his comments. He was honest, humble and honorable. His comments were very informative and ofter reflected his artitistic imagination. In the final episode, when "other" judges were "beautifully , magificently etc" giving accolades to a gymnast group from Ujjain, he referred their act to be a painting in a canvas where their each discoherent individual performance were filling up the canvas and making it beautiful. I doubt any current judges will have that level of maturity to appreciate an effort. Truely, he was the actual prince and the actual content of the show for me. And he "danced" beautifully for me.

Looking forward to see Sekhar in the second edition.

August 20

Apart from being the birthday of one of my closest, it was marks the 65th birth Anniversary of Late Rajiv Gandhi, the youngest prime minister of India. He is credited with with some landslide changes in the India History. He represented youth and was the one who reduced the voting age to 18 years from 21 years. He increased the sports budget by manifold. He brought the telecom revolution which saw setting up of "PCO" in every nook and corner of country bringing in higher connectivity as well as more employment. He sowed the seed for the IT development in India which now employees largest number of people in India.

I still remember standing on the barricaded road along with huge crowd to see his caravan passing. He was waving towards the crowd standing on his jeep. He stopped and talked to few people. He was leaving for Sriperembudur after his Orissa trip as part of election campaign......

Jaswant Singh Ordeal

BJB finally did it. As expected, it had to act and it did not disappoint all by expelling Jaswant for writing a Book. That brings about a question deep inside me - in case we are affiliated to any organisation are we not allowed to think on our own. I don't need an answer neither do i have one but that leaves with some question which has started haunting me.

Does one shows his loyalty by blindly following the path of organisation. I know that there were some common ground based on which one joins the organisation which can be either ideas, ambitions and goals. One of my Management professor had put it succinctly with a simile to the ways Algae survives. Algae consists of amoeba. Amoeba in search of food come together and form a a algae. When the optimal size of algae is reached, it takes the help of wind/water and other medium to reach to a position where they can find food. Similarly people make an organisation to satisfy some of their needs - ambition , goals etc. But is the organisation that binding enough that we are forced to change our basic thought process. Then it can be visually seen as an amoeba forcing its way out algae and the algae unable to reach it destination. So whose benefit is it do be out of the association. Probably both and hence the necessitates separation. Here the Algae (BJB) with their Hinduvta mindset made this decision to dissociate itself with one of its amoeba ( Jaswant) as they felt that it was detrimental to their longer run. No wonder the amoeba should be sulking.

Now putting the liberal hat, now the logic should be applied to the citizen of a democratic country. We should be devoid of any rights as exercising any right may lead to any conflict of the general charter of the country. Slowly it will evolve to a dictatorial democracy leading to ultimate dictatorship. Then there would not be any difference between a taliban chalking out Sharia and government rule. Hence, apt utilisation of our rights are an necessity to maintain a healthy democracy. Thought should not be suppressed and appropriately vented out. They cannot be.

Still debating whether BJB did the right thing or not. And i am not at all talking about the way they did as i don't have much information of it.

Wall is Back

"Old soldiers never die; they just fade away!"
- General Douglas MacArthur, 1951.

I am delighted with the fact that now Dravid can now time his retirement from Team India playing in his blue jersey rather than playing for any domestic/ IPL side. For critics, who say that he is too slow, he has hit one of the fastest 50 in ODI ( in 22 balls). For people who say that he is only " test fit". he was instrumental in Royal Challengers reaching the IPL T20 Final. A man of his caliber deserves better treatment and he has got another chance to don the Indian cap. Hopefully, the younger brigade around him will learn to cope the shorter balls and about 100% team commitment. After all, he is the only Indian to be named the ICC player of the Year (2004) and all the highest scores which other Top Indian batsman made had able support of Dravid on the other end of the crease - Ganguly's 183 in Taunton, Dhoni's 183 in Jaipur, Tendulkar's 186 in Hyderabad, Laxman's 131 in Adelaide. Its only ODI statics. Team India will surely benefit with this inclusion.

All the Best Dravid for this stint in ODIs.

Happy Independence Day

Xcelcius : It seems finally i got addicted to this fascinating analytical tool. The graphical power of this tool is great. Was planning to upload a xcelcius file, which will give a geographical view of an analysis. Pulled out some statistics from 2001 census about India to make this flash file. I believe this is only the tip of the iceberg. A lot can be done by leveraging this analytical tool with Ondemand capabilities.

(Please hover the mouse over the states, to see the related statistics.The Top right corner shows the state population and the pie shows the breakup)

Flash File 1

And talking about religion and literacy rates, i got vinatage datapoints of 1991 ( when the new states of Jharkhand , chattisgarh were not yet created.

Flash File 2

"At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new…India discovers herself again."
Jawaharlal Nehru
(on Indian Independence Day, 1947)




And Wishing you all Happy Independence Day.

Not so old music

Unable to catch sleep, I swap channel to settle to B4U music. Got reminded on some old songs.

Khiladi _ wada raha sanam. 1993. Abhijeet and alka giving voice to jatin lalit compositions. Shot at table top matheran and mahabaleshwar which I visited in 2007

Chamtakar_ is pyaar se meri taraf na dekho. Anu's melody voiced by alka and kuamr sanu. This song was constantly on when I did my joint study with my room mate back in rec days

Maan_nasha. Udit narayan singing to tune of sanjeev darshan the then protege son of shravan. Some how they got lost in
the crowd. Inder kumar first flop. He was delivering huge hits till then like dil,beta. Success is shortlived if you don't innovate. Saw it in my engineering days

Deewana Mastana_ mummy mummy. Udit singing to this one of last laxmikant Pyarelal compositions. David dhawan then was a man with golden hand. This song features nitin desai, son of the great manmohan desai dancing with Juhi.

Show finished. Now to the new songs which I am sure must have been plagerised.

I used a mobile phone to post this blog through email.

Cloud computing_ saas and haas reading stuff on it and wish to write on them soon.

3 movies to choose from

It seems lethargy is creeping in. The vigour for writings blog is waning down. So mustering up all the energies to write this one. Recently watched 3 movies - Love Aaj kal, Black Friday and Sardar. Three different genre and three different approaches of film making. To be honest, each one was a good watch.

Love Aaj kal - Good Watch. Feel good movies are always a good watch but may not be good movies. I had more expectation from Imitiaz Ali. It was a hard effort but the repeatability spoiled the essence of the movie. You can find all the traces of his last 2 movies - Jab We Met and Socha nahin Tha - the first one being three worded movie title with reference to past tense - 'tha', 'met' and 'kal'. Coming to the stories, you ll find same peppy "metrosexual" dialogues which are also borrowed from Saif's Hum Tum and similar laundry list. It seems they wanted a tried and tested approach as it's Saif's maiden approach. The film USP is the double track where undoubted the older love story was much more clearer and easier to understand. The newer one a pot pouri of Hum Tum, "jaane tu ya Jaane Na" where Saif's makes himself to cry to tread in the tested waters, is a utter confusion. The repeatability also also has the worst effect on Rahul Khanna who has to nurse his battered ego in this movie (yes the same "main yahan kya gaane ka khet dekhne aya hoon" in Jab we met). Overall , it can be a good watch for all but for me it was a big disappointment. Imitiaz - Look forward to your next one.

Black Friday - Again a imitiaz connection. We have a 2 minute role played by imtiaz smoking and couple of dialogues as Yakub Menon, Brother of Tiger Menon. A very well directed movie by Anurag Kashyap. The devil lies in the details and he has captured it succinctly. The details of the Mumbai Blast and all the epilogue, prologues and aftermath of the event are well depicted.

Sardar - A biopic watched after a long time. It was a commendable job bringing the life of " Iron Man of India" in the silver screen. The good part of the movie was the humane side of sardar as shown in the movie. You catch the story of Sardar by internet searches or wiki study but the mvie is must watch to depict the thought process of the leader as we went through the partition of the country. One of the memorable screen is the one where he is discussing the waving off of loan component to Pakistan during partition. He right fully says that his intentions are honest but if something goes wrong the future generations might not understand the real intent behind his decision and may not at all appreciate the circumstances in which he is performing those decision. The conviction with which Paresh rawal has played the part is awesome. Another memorable scene is the one where he mentions to Lord Mountbatten that he would not rest till he has his fruit basket completely full with all the fruits in reference to annexation of princely states in India. So anyone keen on the political situation of India during the partition time, this movie can be a good watch.