The news we might have missed during Obama Visit.

While everyone was overjoyed with the arrival of Obama, there was a small news piece in the thrid page of a leading english daily mourning the death of Sidhartha Shankar Ray. My earlier memories of S.S. Ray was of him being the Indian Ambassador back in 1994, where he had forecasted a tighter Indo US relationship and how he see that coming. It was irony that he died on the Obama arrived India as his first State visit confirming to what Ray had predicted about decade and a half ago.

Definitely his work merited a lot of people mourning his death and at least a front page news. To sum up some of his key achievements:

1.) Chief Minister of WB during 1972-77 and successfully dealt with the maoist rebellion.

2.) Right hand man to Indira Gandhi and was said to be the brain behing the 1977 emergency

3.) Governer of Punjab (1987-89) who along with KPS gill quelled the Khalistan revolution.

4.) Planned the Calcutta Metro, the first in this country back in 1970's.

5.) US ambassador,(1992- 1997), was intrumental of change of India's policy of allying with US and was instrumental in putting business on the India - US agenda.

Ray's sharp verbal duels with his personal friend but political foe - then chief minister Jyoti Basu- is etched in golden letters in the state's legislative history. He also happens to be the grandson of Deshbandhu Chittaranjan Das ( C R Park !!!)

I believe this is a massive loss and 1 salute to this great personality.

fight over an H.

Does H makes that much of the difference. The name remains the same. For instance, my name "Subhankar" has been tampered with free usage of H everywhere as if H is an free electron which can take any place or be removed at will.....shubankar, subankhar, subankar. I never used to take any cognizance of this till today i came across this news piece.

Does it make any difference or is it my sense of indifference. I have stayed out from my state to have that feeling. But is it that important that we use our high pedestal of democracy to discuss this matter on priority. "Whats in a name"...........Shahrukh khan lend a name to Rajni as a goodwill gesture.....

Farmer suicides, illegal mining, rampant increase of naxalism will be have wait till we fix the "H". Thats called living on the "H" :)

Guess the symbol

http://tiny.cc/9z4ea for answer

New york

Check out the pics

New york

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Times Square and Empire State

The Splendor of New York. Taken from Empire State Building.

Statue of Liberty. Ellis Island and World Trade Center

central park , American Museum of Natural History and Metropolitan Museum

Times Square and Empire State

Visit to Madame Tussads, New York

my recent visit to Madame Tussad - Good to see Amitabh being the sole representative from Asia .

Waka Waka

Like the lyrics....also the tune...


You're a good soldier
Choosing your battles
Pick yourself up
And dust yourself off
And back in the saddle

You're on the frontline
Everyone's watching
You know it's serious
We're getting closer
This isnt over

The pressure is on
You feel it
But you've got it all
Believe it

When you fall get up
Oh oh...
And if you fall get up
Oh oh...

Tsamina mina
Zangalewa
Cuz this is Africa

Tsamina mina eh eh
Waka Waka eh eh

Tsamina mina zangalewa
Anawa aa
This time for Africa

Listen to your god
This is our motto
Your time to shine
Dont wait in line
Y vamos por Todo

People are raising
Their Expectations
Go on and feed them
This is your moment
No hesitations

Today's your day
I feel it
You paved the way
Believe it

If you get down
Get up Oh oh...
When you get down
Get up eh eh...

Tsamina mina zangalewa
Anawa aa
This time for Africa

Tsamina mina eh eh
Waka Waka eh eh

Tsamina mina zangalewa
Anawa aa

Tsamina mina eh eh
Waka Waka eh eh
Tsamina mina zangalewa
This time for Africa

Nice song from Lamhaa

Listen to this. Sung wonderfully by Mika

A new Quiz on Bollywood

Do let me know your feedback

A new Quiz URL

In my quest to make the quiz more interactive than plane slide share files, i hit upon this URL where you make interactive quizes. A similar app is there in facebook ( its a dirty app which has lots of Ads and you soon loose interest there.

This Site is a neat one, but has some of key drawbacks:

1.) Does not support picture ( facebook app does it but again its not neat)

2.) Does not support Video and Audio

3.) Does not support single questions.

If any one come across such a site which has all these, please mail me subhankar@gmail.com

Here comes a small quiz on this site.

http://www.goquiz.com/quizzes/bollywood-90s.html

Answers IPL Main Quiz

Answers to the IPL main Quiz

Answers IPL Main Quiz

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Indian Premier League Quiz

The main quiz conducted on 21st May

Ipl quiz Main

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Ipl teaser

A set of 10 questions. More to follow along with Answers

Ipl teaser

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5th Grader Geography Quiz

Contributed by Hrishikesh Trivedi.
Geography 5th grader Quiz

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For Answers http://www.slideshare.net/Subhankar42/answers-geography-quiz

Tribute to Mr. Cricket

Today Pakistan had their worst nightmare come true as Mike Hussey (AKA Mr. Cricket) rescued Australia from a dire situation and won them the semi final single handedly. The game was well placed for Pakistan. First half of Austailian batting order had been sent back to their dug outs. Their last recognized pair of White and Hussey struggling to cope with a ever rising run rate things seemed very comfortable for Pakistan. By the worst of their imagination pakistani's would have never imagined that they would not be going to their third consecutive finals from this position. The wickets kept on tubling with Australia having to do a daunting task of chasing 53 runs from last 24 balls. But Hussey kept on the fight, puffing and running the 2's when the sixes/ fours were not coming. They managed to somehow maintain the asking run rate around 18- 20 runs mark. But they kept trying. Last over, it was 18 run required. Only 1 run was scored from the first ball and the game was almost over. 5 balls, 17 runs. Pakistan fans started their celebration. The pakistani player even were getting prepared to do the victory lap. But in cricket, there is a cliche - Game is not over till the last bowl is bowled. Then Pakistani players were struck by Hussey exploits. And before they could recover, the game was over. The next 4 balls produced 22 runs. Australia had won the match with 1 ball to spare. Hussey final score was a splendid 22 ball 60.

Now some stats about Mikes Hussey:
1.) He played for the Chennai Super Kings in IPL
2.) Might have attended the parties.
3.) Played the warm up before T20 world cup.
4.) Saved australia when they went to problems against Sri Lanka
5.) Took Australia to their first ever T20 finals

Its the passion you bring to the game and not the reasons...Elementary Mr. dhoni.

Sports Quiz

Questions contributed by Abhinash

Sporting quiz

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weeping democracy

Curious Case of short Pitched Balls

I just pulled out the definition of short pitch ball - The ball pitched outside the good length and rises above waisted height. By pitching outside the good length, it prohibits the batsman to come forward and the only way to tackle it is by staying at your place or going back foot. There are couple of shots which are be played - a offside slash or a defensive stroke or a lawn tennis slog to the mid wicket region and the hook and the pull. I am sure there are many more shots which can be innovated.

So in other words, we have ways and methods to tackle the short pitch deliveries.

And with the new rules that a bowler can bowl only one bowl above the shoulder height, it is a risky proposition to attempt for more than 1 short ball in a T 20 or One day format. So at a maximum we can get 20 short balls per inning in a T 20 match. I am assuming that 1 bowler bowls one per over and he is a seamer. One a average, each team has 4 seamer who bowl 16 overs. So we will have 16 short pitch balls. It accounts to 16/120 (~13% of the bowls) which are pitched in a short length.

But in India's match against Australia and west Indies, we lost our early wickets ( around 50% of the wickets) to well directed bowls. Just wondering if we had not attempted any shot for these balls !!!! If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.

And also a note to Selector, like we have a specialist for slog over, let us have a specialist for these balls as well. May be states which have Mohali and Chinnaswamy as their ground can definitely produce cricketers who can be well equipped to handle this problem.

But for me the current problem could be avoided ( In case we defeat Sri lanka Comprehensively and WI are royally defeated and by the stroke of Luck which has been perennially benevolent to MS Dhoni ,qualify for Semi's) by just avoiding the short ball.

IPL Season 3

The final curtains have been drawn for the IPL season 3 .Modi has also lisped a "brave heart" speech with trembling hands moments before he was ousted as the IPL Commission"err". The stable teams members will be again put under auctions this year.
Next year we will see a different demography to all the teams adding to the extra 2 teams. Pune franchise has gone ahead in naming it league as warriors (Sahara Pune Warriors). Kochi probably will stay. We will have to wait and watch. Meanwhile as we analyse the performances of the all the sides , we will see a method emerging out of madness in the way T20 is played nowadays. Some of the marked changes from IPL 1 to IPL 3 were.

1.) Spinners: There is a growing dependence of spinner. Spinner have evolved to be force to reckon with. This season, 4 out of top 5 wicket takers were spinner. Kumble boasted of the best economy rate for majority of tournament. R Ashwin was the regular opening bowler. And Prgyan Ojha ended with the purple cap.

2.) Return of classic cricketing shots: the flat bat shots existed but classic cricketing shots counted for majority of runs scored in this IPL. The people scoring them were regular test cricketers, Sachin, Kallis, Saurav, Dravid, KP , Murali Vijay.

3.) Brute force is good in short term: There was a tactical use of brute force instead of using it through out the match. MI tried to over do this by sending KP (Pollard) late which resulted in their loss. But this had worked for them for majority of the tournament. Yousuf has been thoroughly read by all teams and he is prey to short ball. He could not score in the second half of the season.

4.) Innovation: The shot making has evolved. Now we have new shots like the Dilshan Scoop and KP's Switch hit which is also added new variety to the armory of the batsman. In bowling, we have the Dilhara's slow bouncers, Ashwin's carron ball etc. And in equipments, we have the Haydos mighty mongoose bat which showed its prowess in their league match against Delhi.

The next season will see a new set of players for each team. It will decide the allegiance for the floater public like me whose cities do not have IPL team. Last 3 years had my affinity towards RCB as most of my Idols like Dravid, Kallis were playing for it.

Wishing for a grand IPL 4 !!!! As Gilchrist, Tendulkars, Dravid have comfirmed to be Back.......Till then rooting for RCB for CLT20 at South Africe.

Some tips for RCB

Being a die hard fan of RCB, it is painful to write this. May be it will dampen the extent of grief which will prevail on me on seeing my favourite side going down irrespective of having the batting prowess which boasts name like KP, Dravid, Ross Taylor, Utthapa, Kohli, Kallis.

Shaky Start: Pandey was a intentional omission has he has been instrumental in giving RCB a shaky start every time RCB went for the Bat. 2 overs, 5 run...and not staying long enough.....Getting out and leaving the team in a quandary.....in 6th over...

Absence of a quality 5th seamer.....those 4 overs are costing RCB heavily.....They contribute of more than 40% run conceded..pankaj singh - 54 runs in 4 overs.and the kohli's and KP who try to fill up are also taken for runs....

Wrong strategy : Leaving a lot for the end. rather than pacing the innings both while chasing or batting first. While batting first, around 50-60% of the runs comes in the last 4-5 overs. Where as while chasing, they are always a looking for that good over after the 15th one. So, in case the wickets go( for majority of the case when they lost), new batsman are never able to get their eye to propel themselves for that over. We cannot expect Taylors and Utthapa to recreate their magic everytime they go out batting. maintain a steady run rate from start. Middle batsman should have their eye in.

Some of the tips can be :

- Have PK back to take care of 5th bowler and additional batter.
- Manish Pandey should come down 6th down or replace him by Sriram, another all rounder. Take a chance by sending Kohli to open.
- Have a sense of purpose for the first 6 overs and DO NOT rely on the utthapa to do the wonders everytime.

Wish they follow at least one of the suggestion and i am sure their performance will improve.

IPL Pics. Feroze shah Kotla - Delhi Vs Mumbai - 17th march

Avatar Deja Vu, this one in Orissa.

Final Verdict: Ishqiya 'Ran'n

Last weekend, it was a movie marathon for me with two back to back movies : RANN and Ishqiya. And the public verdict was that Ishqiya was an outright Box office winner and did well in comparison to RANN.

In my opinion, RANN is a very well made movie and Ishqiya is a bad one. Being a Amitabh fan had nothing to do with that.RANN was a clever ensemble of able cast who put up a noteworthy performances to justify their selection. Amitabh lead the pack followed by Riteish who also did come up with decent performance. RGV did showcase the nuances of the Media world and its incessant struggle to balance the actual News with commercial reasoning for its existence.

And Ishqiya started where "OMKARA" ended in terms of Dialogues. The east UP dialect filled with profanity was the showcase of the movie with a weak story woven around to support it. It was a clear contrast with RANN where good dialogues supported a good story.

And as shown in RANN, commerce always win in short term. Hence, Ishqiya with more commercial elements ( songs, beautiful heroine, bombs, gun shots, and profane dialogues) is an outright winner.

what a bite sirjee

awesome hunger to win a match.This eternal teenager could not control himself to grab a bite.

View from Petronas Skybridge

I tried capturing the view from the skybridge of petronas tower, Kuala LumPur

I See you

Still to come out of my avatar experience, yet to experience the 3 D effect, i am posting this latest music video by Leona Lewis - I see you:

Interesting pic

Pic from a oriya film poster : Now this Bond will definitely give Daniel Craig a run for his money.

High Time that cricket be made be the national sport

With this current fiasco on Indian Hockey, the non payment of paltry 25 grand to the hockey staff for their international travel and washing dirty linens in public, i strongly feel that there is a long standing need that we need to replace our national sport to cricket for the benefit of all other sports - if not hockey.

If this what happens to a national sport, then its high time that we replace hockey with cricket. By doing that, we will not feel pity about hockey every year and play a blame game without doing anything. We will not get inspired which will fizzle out in short term on a release of a hockey related movie. We will also not feel bad when we read a small article about Indian hockey team beating the world champions in a neglect corner of a newspaper. This is not what a good team deserves - they require encouragement and not pity. I hope by removing the national sport tag, we will be forced to encourage them.

The above paragraph stated why we do not need hockey as our national game. These are the same reason that we want cricket to face the same ordeal which the great hockey has been facing over the last couple of decades. Small news about cricket are made headlines, players made idols, mediocre performances are glorified (with due respect to dew :)), commerce ruling over performance( ICC softening on Kotla Fiasco) etc. Indian cricket is on decline, world no. 1 is a misnomer and if performance of the team is any indicator then we are in to see a "mortgage crisis" type of a disaster in India cricket ( the reason being same - the valuation exceeds the underlying asset).

Then we need to pity on them. And hence to make the entire nation again to "feel pity and do nothing" about it , we need to make it a national sport.

Idiotic Anger

With this "idiotic" fiasco on and tempers flying all around, it seems that the so called celebrities are resorting to very shameful activities to find the media share to market their products free of cost. My visit to a local book shop just made me realise that the people are buying the book in hordes and the movies sales have also broken all the records unforeseen in Bollywood. The logical end to this staged drama is nobody will do anything and one party will apologize to another when the entire hype and hoopla about the movie will die down. So then they will again get their media share which will again give a boost to their book/ movie sale. Its a big bad commercial world out there where nobody hesitates to malign each other ( even though staged) to get monetary benefit and media space. Its all about TRP nowadays - Good Bad and Ugly. Again will Media realize this or still carry to play to their tune. One More question, what would have happened in case the leading actor of movie had washed his hands off from the controversy as he is not a affected party. Would the media taken this amount of interest then....some questions are better not answered. Like the common man R K Laxman, we will not speak at all.

In search of another blog platform, i tried with Opera blog which is quite cool.

http://my.opera.com/subhankar42/blog/bride-hunting