Happy holidays

The days just don't seem to end. My vacation starts this friday and it seems like it is a hundred years off. The last couple of months have been pretty stressful what with multiple release schedules in office and troubles with bank accounts, loans, cars and everything else under the sun at home. This leave has come at the perfect time for me. The best part is that it is compulsory - all employees have to take the next week off. So I will not feel guilty about running off without closing all issues here. I have added a week more to the leave of my own so that I will be back only next year.

I am going home initially but then the entire family is taking off to Puri. We might even visit Konark and Chilka if we have time. I have never been to Orissa. Actually, none of us have except my Dad. He has been there four times. It is one of his favourite places. We will all be traveling together after a long, long time. I am really looking forward to it.

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Cinema: Two movies

Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye! is not a comedy. Sure it has lots of humour. But ultimately it is a tragic tale of a bright boy lead down the path of crime by his environment and his own greed, taken advantage of by everyone around him and then betrayed by all. It is to the film maker's credit that he manages to tell the tale with humour instead of with the usual dose of glycerine.
It might have something to do with the fact that I am from Delhi but the first thing that I noticed about the movie was its atmosphere. This movie has captured Dlehi in all its avataars. From the posh colonies of South Delhi to the run down mohallas, Oye Lucky! does for Delhi what Aamir did for Mumbai. Abhay Deol and Manjot Singh as the teenaged and adult protagonist are terrific. Abhay is quickly becoming one of my favourite actors in Bollywood today. His just being in a movie guarantees that it will be different from the run of the mill stuff. Paresh Rawal is great in all his roles. I did not understand the logic behind him playing three characters though. If there is some hidden meaning behind it I totally missed it. Both Archana Puran Singh and Neetu Chandra do justice to their roles. The pace flags a little in the second half but not so much as to prove distracting. This is probably where the director's first movie Khosla Ka Ghonsla scores over it with its tight pacing through out. I liked it the open endedness of the story and the morally ambiguous ending. Any attempt to tie all ends would have made it either sermonizing or clicheed. Dibakar Bannerjee set out to make a more difficult movie than his first movie which was an out and out comedy and has succeeded admirably. I would have liked to see this movie become a big hit but that will be tough considering that it does not offer push button entertainment like most audience seems to expect.

Dil Kabaddi seems less like a movie than a collection of random scenes taken from a different movie. It starts and ends abruptly and zig zags in between. For a movie which claims to be a comedy, very few situations have anything funny in them. The only saving grace of this movie is Irfan Khan. He practically carries the film on his shoulders. Khan has all the rib ticking scenes in the movie and does full justice to them. The movie becomes entertaining whenever he comes on screen and goes back to boring when he exists. Rahul Bose is totally miscast as a college professor and also has the most irritating story arc. But then he also has the best (and only) kiss. Konkona Sen is competent as usual, Rahul Khanna has nothing much to do and Soha Ali Khan is incompetent, again, as usual.

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Why should Pakistanis leave India?

Now that our Army and police have cleared the streets of Mumbai the self appointed moral guardians of our society have started stepping out from under their beds. Shiv Sena was the first to proclaim their return to action with another of their all too familiar diktats. They have proclaimed that all Pakistanis in Mumbai have to leave the country. I was watching a Shiv Sainik on TV calling all "rashtra bhaktas" to join them in driving out all the Pakistanis in our media yesterday. Their main targets are basically the people who are trying to make a name for themselves on the various television talent shows. Apparently, they (Shiv Sainiks) respect their(singers', actors', etc) art but they do not need Pakistanis in Mumbai. He also said that all producers and directors of television serials have been served notices to expel Pakistanis from their shows or face rashtra-bhatks's wrath. It is funny how these people are so creatively challenged that they cannot even come up with new speeches for their different agitations. Replace Pakistanis with North Indians or Muslims and you will get the speech they used in their "agitations" against those people. What is not so funny is how these people, who presumably represent a significant number of our countrymen, can never come up with anything that is constructive for our society. They are obsessed with dividing and destroying the fabric of our society. What harm have any of these Pakistanis done to anybody? They are ordinary people who are trying to realize their dreams with their hard work and dedication like millions of other Indians. How will driving them out help us? Why target them? The answers are simple. Driving them out will not help anybody but these people do not carry AK-47s and hence can be attacked without fear of retaliation. The people who attacked Mumbai did not ask for Shiv Sena's permission before entering Mumbai. They attacked Mumbai in broad daylight. They were easily recognizable after they fired their first shots. Where was Shiv Sena then? Why didn't this band of rashtra-bhakts come forward to protect their rashtra then? When all of Mumbai was out on the streets expressing solidarity with the victims of the attacks the leaders from Shiv Sena and MNS were conspicuous by their absence. Raj Thakeray has not issued a single statement since the attacks. The fact the a Bihari has been hounoured by the Maharashtra Governor for saving the lives of many Indians with no regard to his own life during the attack on CST has probably put a seal on his big mouth. I am waiting to see just how long this seal lasts. Probably, till he decides that the public has forgotten this inconvenient fact. We will never be able to face the enemies by dividing and persecuting helpless people or by pointing fingers at foreigners. Doing so will only serve to justify the actions of these extremists. The only way to face them is to become so strong and united ourselves that these enemies give up trying to divide us. In view of this fact, I submit to you that the only people that Mumbai and India do not need are these Shiv Sainiks and their copies.

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The newly awakened

Would the Mumbai attacks have caused such a furor among the public if they had been directed at the usual targets? There is no doubt that these attacks are completely different from those in the past, both in their nature and their intent. But they are not so different when it comes to the body count. The serial blasts in Mumbai claimed more lives. And as for the symbolic value of the targets, they are definitely not more important than the parliament. So why is it that this time we are so angry about it? Is it because this is the first time that the victims are not just the common people on the streets or trains? Is it because this time the victims are the people who "count" in our society, the ones who actually have a voice? People died at CST just like they died in Taj but I do not hear about their miserable fate on TV. Our society has traditionally shown a strange kind of apathy whenever the nameless and faceless people have been affected by violence of any kind. Take the last serial blasts in Mumbai. The media sang about the spirit of Mumbai for a day or two, the authorities offered condolences and things went back to just the way they were. The people who survived the blast just took the same train to wherever they had to go the next day. There were no protests, no vigils and no calls to change the system. This time things are different. TV screens have been taken over by celebrities who have suddenly woken up to the threat of terrorism. Chat shows are filled with current and has been Bollywood stars talking about how unsafe the country has become. Media is filled with accounts of how angry the people are. I do not understand who are the people they are talking about. The "aam aadmi" has been frustrated and frightened for years now. Who are the newly awakened people? Are they they people who are not affected by bombs in trains or richshaws because they do not travel in them. Have they suddenly started to realize that they too are vulnerable? If the answers is yes, it is both pathetic and encouraging. Pathetic because there is this vast segment of society which just does not matter, people whose lives and deaths do not evoke any reactions from any one who has the power or the position to better their lot. Encouraging because maybe finally, the two classes are identifying with each other. All that remains now is to unite the political class with them. Or will they have to become victims themselves too before that happens?

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Divided we totter

Mumbai police was not able to protect Taj and Oberoi from terrorists even though it had received information about their plans in September. It did not have resources to guard the hotels and also protect the rest of Mumbai from being ravaged by Raj Thakeray and his goons. The ATS chief who died fighting terrorists at CST was busy investigating Malegaon blasts done by Hindu fanatics from within the country. He probably didn't even get time to plan for threats from outside. Our public is more interested in real or perceived insults exchanged between communities than in threats from outside. We are all fighting against each other - Marathis vs. north Indians, Hindus vs. Muslims, south Indians vs. north Indians, Christians vs. Hindus, tribals vs. non-tribals, lower castes vs. upper castes. The list is endless. The ironic part is that in all the fights all the communities involved use the same arguments to justify their violence. Apparently, "someone else is always trying to humiliate them, demean their culture, rape their women, take away their jobs, or inflict some other horrible injustice upon them. They are just returning the favour". Is it so surprising that somebody from outside will try to take advantage of the situation? Every time we have fought against each other some one else has been there to exploit it to his advantage. All this makes me think. Can we really blame outsiders for trying to use our infighting to his advantage? After all, if we have so little sympathy, kindness, consideration or respect for our own people, why should an outsider have any such feeling for us? Our behaviour after the attacks has only served to justify the fact that we deserve to be taken advantage of. Look at how our leaders are behaving. The home minister of Maharashtra dismisses the attacks which took 200 lives as a "small incident". The chief minister of Kerela calls the home of a fallen soldier not worthy of a visit from his dog. Every political party is out to gain political mileage from the attacks. Every celebrity wants to turn the event into a PR drive. Every security agency is busy trying to pin the blame on somebody else instead of analysing and rectifying its own errors. If this is the way we react to these attacks, how will ever prepare ourselves for the attacks that are bound to happen in the future. We know they will happen but we are just not ready to give up our petty concerns and unite against them. Ariel Durant might have not been speaking of India when she said that a great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within but it sure fits us more than any one else in the world today. But we, as always, will just not listen.

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I am back...

Its good to be back after such a long time. My last post was two months ago. So many things have happened since then and I have so much to write about. I don't really know where to start. Its probably best to talk about the present first but I have had a completely uneventful week so there is nothing to talk about there. The week before that I bought a 6 DVD pack of Guru Dutt's classics and held a Guru Dutt film festival over the weekend. Needless to say, I was the only attendee. But more about that later.

I have been buying a lot of DVDs lately. The sale section at Crossword is to blame for that. They have a "Buy 1 Get 2 Free" offer going and I just could not help myself. I got Blade Runner - The Final Cut, Flags of our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima for just 600 bucks. I also bought the anniversary edition DVD of Lagaan at half the price. I also bought a whole lot of books. The great thing is that I didn't have to spend any money on them. I had got Crossword gift vouchers as prize for something I did at work and I spent all of them. I will ramble on and on about my purchases later. Right now I have to go for lunch. Bye...

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Mothers and sons

Margaret Alva has alleged that the Congress Party sold tickets to politicians before the Karnataka polls and that tickets are given on the basis of inheritance rather than on merit. While the first allegation has to be proved, the second can be easily verified by a brief glance at the list of nominees fielded by Congress in the last couple of polls. Neither of the two allegations are as earthshaking as the electronic media - perennially starved of news - would have us believe. Given the state of Indian politics it would be surprising (though probably not news worthy) if any aspect of our democracy is found to be free from corruption. I am pretty sure the opponents from the other parties have the same skeleton in their closets as well. This is the most probable reason they are not making as big a deal out of Alva's revelations as they could have.
The bit about inheritance being more important than merit is even more ridiculous coming from someone who has spent her life serving a party which has been ruled almost uninterruptedly by a single dynasty for the last five generations. Inheritance has always been of paramount importance in the Congress Party since it first came to power. In fact, none of the rulers from this dynasty have had any claim to the throne - either because of their talent or their experience - except for their inheritance. Ms. Alva is not concerned by the lack of democratic spirit in her party. She is merely miffed that her son was not allowed to benefit from the lack of it.

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Chrome continued

I finally managed to try out Google Chrome. It was not a good experience. First of all, let me clarify that I know it is a Beta release and is probably not a reflection on how the product will turn out to be in later versions. However, being a software engineer myself I am aware of the standards a Beta release from any decent self-respecting company should meet. This release does not meet those standards. My take is that Google never meant to release Chrome for at least the next couple of months. They were forced to do so because information about it leaked out. Given a choice they would have resolved some of the major problems, stabilized the product and then announced it to the world. This is borne out by the nature of problems plaguing this release. The problems are mostly related to memory consumption, stability, compatibility, etc. These are short-term problems which are typically taken care of during intensive testing cycles which this release missed. On the other hand, the design decisions that went into Chrome are fundamentally sound and should pay rich dividends later in the product life cycle.
I did not sit and go through every feature of Chrome. Nor did I consciously compare it with other browsers in the market. Here are my impressions of the basic product in isolation:

User-Interface - Chrome continues the Google tradition of minimalist product interfaces. Google has maintained this tradition in all of its products till date and has been the gainer for it. The Chrome UI is very elegant and it does not miss out on any major functionality. Combining the address bar and the search bar is a very cool idea. Of course, once Google unveils the API kit to develop add-on plugins for Chrome, everyone will be free to add his/her own bit to the UI and mess it up. But then it won't be Google's fault.

Separate process for each tab - This is one of the design decisions that will have long term gains. Having separate process for each tab will insulate them from one another minimizing browser crashes. It will of course add a lot of overhead in terms of resource utilization. So if you have a not-too-high-end machine forget about Chrome. Also, as of now the product is too unstable to show any benefits of this design. Browser crashes are pretty frequent.

Grouping tabs into new windows - Another great idea. Often when I use a browser for a long time I end up creating a lot of tabs which I subsequently want to move to a new window. This feature will let me do that.

Incognito - A special window whose activity cannot be tracked? Great for watching porn. But enterprises will probably want to be able to disable this feature on corporate networks.

Buggy product - Some problems that I faced:

1. I had opened five tabs and was browsing through the Times Of India website watching news clips and reading articles. After one hour of browsing the memory consumption reached almost 300 MB and the machine became very slow.
2. I closed the browser but one instance of the process continued to show up in Task Manager. I had to kill the process manually.
3. On Vista, if a browser instance is running, the machine hangs when trying to hibernate.

All in all, Chrome has the potential to become a great browser in the future but I am not going to use it till it becomes more reliable.

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Chrome woes

Google launched their new web browser yesterday. They call it Chrome. I am dying to install and try it out but for some reason it is just not starting up. Every time I try to start it, it gives an application error and shows an irritating smiley. The error log says that some essential files have not been installed. Downloading again and reinstalling does not help. Granted this is a Beta or trial version but I still expect some reliability from a software I install on my machine. And surely I should be able to expect better quality from Google. What makes it more frustrating is that hundreds of other people have already been able to try it out successfully. The web is full of reviews and screen shots. Meanwhile, I can only sit and sulk.



The offending screen.

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A Lazy Sunday

00:10 AM:
What!! It's midnight already!! Should really go to bed now. Have finished season one of LOST. This is a good time to take a break. Wait, lets just take a peek at season two.

03:15 AM:
Can't stay awake any longer. Have finished four episodes of season two. Going to bed.

06:30 AM:
It's morning already? And a hot and cloudy one at that. Feeling hungry.

07:00 AM:
Am sick of having noodles for breakfast every damn weekend. But its easiest to make. Why can't we have Chicken in Atta Noodles? It will be some variety. Feeling sleepy. Think I will go back to sleep.

10:30 AM:
Is that a door banging somewhere? Its very quite otherwise. Am I sleeping or am I awake?

01:00 PM:
Can hear noises outside my door. Roomies must have got up. Lazy bones!! Lets join them. Have to decide what to do for lunch.
Oops... they have already bought mutton. When did they go out? Whats the time? O my God! Its one already. I slept for that long?

02:45 PM:
Finished lunch. Mutton curry was delicious. Lets finish the remaining episodes of season two.

04:30 PM:
Did it have to rain now. It is making me feel sleepy. But I won't fall asleep. Otherwise I will have to spend the night awake. Now lets see where was I in LOST. Episode 16 or 17?

10:30 PM:
Must have fallen asleep. Whats the time? Shit!!

10:45 PM:
We have some mutton left over from afternoon. Just have to make rice.

11:30 PM:
Dinner is over. Now, since I will not be able to sleep anyway lets finish season two.

00:30 AM:
I was watching LOST. When did I fall asleep? What the heck!! Just turn off the lights and go back to sleep. Have to get up early tomorrow. Hope it does not rain in the morning. Have to go swimming . Already missed it on Saturday.

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