Anti-Brahmanism should stop!

http://in.rediff.com/news/2006/jun/15franc.htm

An excellent article from rediff which brings out the plight of today's Brahmins as a follow up of the one published during May 2006

The author goes back all the way to the Nehruvian era and before and brings out clearly how Nehru was responsible for today's plight of the Brahmins and today's Indian caste society. This paragraph which is quoted below is quiet relevant in this context

"But Nehru went overboard. He made the paupers of yesteryear the saints of modern India, allowing some states to literally hound out Brahmins and other upper castes. He twisted history and thanks to docile historians, made of cruel Muslim invaders and rulers, the benefactors of medieval India"

'The future of this country lies in a unified India, where all castes will find their just place, where all will feel Indians first and belonging to this caste or that one, after.'

RK

Review of Imsai Arasan 23rd Pulikesi – What a movie!

After a long time probably after Vasool Raja here is a full length comedy movie starring the current king of Comedies ‘Vadivelu’ in a duel role. The film is 150 minutes of clean rip roaring laughter with an excellent screen play, grand art direction and superb dialogues

Vadivelu in a dual role as the comic King Pulikesi and later as a rebel leader with a cause brings out almost all the finer nuances of acting with an excellent dialogue delivery full of timing, emotions and great facial expressions which are a real delight to any Tamil movie watcher. Some of the dialogues like the one from the veteran VS Ragavan when he explains as to how twin brothers always have to find each other in a movie and DirectorManobala’s cameo of a poor carpenter's skills are simply too good for words. The songs which are similar to some of the old classic movies like Manohara, arasilangumari etc and the picturisation of the songs in grand scenic locations really provide an air of freshness totally different from the current day loud jarring music and double meaning lyrics. The interview with ‘man of the fight’ in one of the scenes with a character called Sachidanandan like a typical Sachin post match interview and the advertisement of two Drinks called ‘Gapsi’ and Akka Mala’ during the fights are a real satire on the modern day sports and advertisement trends

I am sure that this movie would take Vadivelu to a higher pedestal and earn him some awards and accolades and the film itself might turn out to be huge super duper hit movie. A movie definitely not to be missed!

RK

Mumbaiker’s- Standing tall as ever

It was again the dreaded number 11 and for a change it was 07/11. There were also 7 blasts in 11 minutes and the mindless terrorists had done it again in Mumbai, the commercial heart of the country. However the Mumbaikers as they are now known for their spirit of help, never say die attitude and resilience in the face of adversity came out again on top within 24 hours of the gory blasts of destruction with touching stories of helping the injured and providing relief to the bereaved families. They also in the process started going back to schools, colleges, work, business ,etc the very next day to bring back normalcy and the city of dreams as it has been known all along is already back on track
For a change all the political parities have shown immense restraint without getting into their favourite blame games and hence there have been so far no communal backlashes or fall out. There were many sad stories of near ones being found dead in various hospitals and a boy of 8-9 years was lying critical and unconscious in a Goregaon hospital without any relatives or parents. In the midst of all these gloom there were also few happy reunions including one Fernandes who was presumed dead and his friends found him later in a Sion hospital battling injuries but in stable condition. NDTV as usual rose to the occasion with lots of help lines and SMS messages flashed across to help the victims and relatives including provision of a blood donor database to the hospitals

The blog community has also come in handy with a web site www.mumbaihelp.blogspot.com
with lots of information and assistance for the needy. Let's pray for the departed souls to rest in peace and wish the injured a speedy recovery and salute the Mumbaikers once again for their courage, bravery, determination and community service

RK

Insat 4 C GSLV-Failure or launching pad to success

After years of sweat and toil when the moment of reckoning arrived for the thousands of scientists and Engineers at ISRO, the Insat 4C GSLV turned out to be a spectacular visual failure. The space vehicle was self destructed by the ground systems 60 seconds after take off due to failure of one of the four strap on boosters during stage 1 of the take off and the scientists were crestfallen though they put up a brave face in front of the Media. The only consolation was that for the first time they were forced to successfully test the self destruction program to avoid civilian casualty which had been never tried so far

Approx Rs. 275 crores of investment, loss of almost 10 % market share of the commercial satellite space, improved DTH connections and opportunity loss of huge advancements in weather and digital mapping of sub continent were the major casualties. After 12 continuous successful rocket launches the ISRO team failed for once since 1993 which is in itself a huge success percentage as compared to space majors like US and Japan. As pointed out by Dr Kalam the Indian scientists learnt much more from their 1993 failure of one of the early launches then they had during the entire space odyssey prior to that launch and may be the current mishap is a stepping stone for the country to launch it's first fully indigenous space mission with it's own cryogenic powered rockets in 2-3 years

Hope our countrymen would stand by our proud scientists at this moment of unfortunate uncertainty to give them the much needed public support rather than playing the usual blame game.


RK

Banta and Bill Gates

There have been lots of the Banta Singh/Sardi stuff on the net or mails and over a period of time and have become monotonous and part of routine stuff.

But I found this letter from Banta to Bill to be a bit amusing as well as interesting and I thought I can share the same with some of you who might not have come across this one, espeically at a time when there is so much controversy surrounding the release of next version of Windows O/S just to ease up the serious stuff

Dear Mr Bill Gates,

We have bought a computer for our home and we found problems, which I want to bring to your notice.
1. After connecting to internet we planned to open e-mail account and whenever we fill the form in Hotmail in the password column, only ****** appears,but in the rest of the fields whatever we typed appears, but we face this problem only in password field. We checked with hardware vendor Santa Singh and he said that there is no problem in keyboard. Becauseof this we open the e-mail account with password*****. I request you to check this as we ourselves donot know what the password is.
2. We are unable to enter anything after we click the'shut down ' button.
3. There is a button 'start' but there is no "stop"button. We request you to check this.
4. We find there is 'Run' in the menu. One of myfriend clicked 'run ' has ran up to Amritsar! So, we request you to change that to "sit", so that we canclick that by sitting.
5. One doubt is that any 're-scooter' available insystem? As I find only 're-cycle', but I own a scooterat my home.
6. There is 'Find' button but it is not workingproperly. My wife lost the door key and we tried a lotfor tracing the key with this ' find', but unable totrace. Is it a bug??
7. Every night I am not sleeping as i have to protectmy 'mouse' from CAT, So i suggest u to provide one DOG to kill that cat.
8. Please confirm when u are going to give me moneyfor winning 'HEARTS' (playing cards in games) and whenare u coming to my home to collect your money.
9. My child learnt 'Microsoft word' now he wants tolearn 'Microsoft sentence', so when u will providethat?
10. Hey what is this, I brought computer, cpu, mouseand keypad, but there is only one icon with 'MYComputer', what happened to the remaining?
11. There is not even single photo of mine in the 'MYPictures'.. when u will keep my photo in that.
12. There is 'MICROSOFT OFFICE' what about 'MICROSOFTHOME'
Thanking you,
Yours Banta Singh

Hope U enzoy!


RK

Azzurri all the way- Sad farewell to Zizou

What a cracker of a final it was and the Azzurri in blue beat the French in a heart stopping tie break where they scored from all the penalty kicks. Sad part was the Zinedane red card for head butting in to an Italian defender which was caught on camera as well as by the fourth or fifth official. What a glorious career and if his great header before the dying moments had not been stopped by the marvellous Italian goal keeper Buffen , Zizou would have been on the other side holding the coveted trophy for one last time. Instead due to a mad moment of rush of blood he was sent off and this incident may haunt him for the rest of his life. Great players like Thuram and Meckalele were in tears and understandably so since they might have missed the opportunity of a life time to be on the podium by a whisker with that one missed penalty.

On the whole the tournament was a great success played over 31 days by 32 teams with great organisation skills from the Germans which was evident in all the stadiums. The German team also conducted themselves very well in spite of their semi final defeat and all credit to Klinsman for moulding these young players in to a great team. However there were few sore points like the low average of less than 2.5 goals per match and the violent aggression resorted to by teams and some times you were left wondering whether you were seeing rugby or a soccer contest. The biggest disappointment of course was that players of reputation like Henry, Figo, Beckham, Ronaldinho, and Ronaldo except in patches all failed miserably and goes to prove that this game can be a great leveller when it comes to individual brilliance and collective success

Well on the personal front it would take some time to adjust to the normal routine after being awake till 2 AM on most of the playing days and it was great fun to be part of the extravaganza


RK

Man of Steel- Lakshmi Mittal

Recently I went through an interesting tabloid article on the meteoric rise to fame of Lakshmi Mittal and how he has managed to make his dream of 200 Million Tonnes output almost a reality across all his factories in the world. Coming from a typical Marwari family in Rajasthan and going out to Indonesia with just 250 USD at the age of 25+, it's an astonishing success story all the way full of determination, courage and a steely resolve literally to succeed. His foray into real estate venture buying out huge UK properties for throw away prices when the market was down and then selling them off as an investment tool for his steel business is an entrepreneur’s dream. His simple recipe for buying and turning over sick steel plants starting with Mexico by replacing most of the multinational management staff with solid Indian Engineers and managers at not even half the costs and at the same time doubling the productivity and efficiency is a tribute to the Indian education system and it's core values even today

His recent fight against the might of Arcelor's bosses in Europe as well as the take over of that group by a Russian conglomerate and finally getting the nod for acquisition by Mittal group is the best an Indian business man might have ever achieved for a long time in the last 50 years since independence.His success against all those multi national giants and various European Governments in the process can make every Indian proud of what we are made of and a fore runner of what's in the pipeline

The ultimate tribute comes from the senior Mittal who started it all when he says' to be known now as Lakshmi's father rather than being Lakshmi being known as my son is to me the real proud moment'

Reminds me of the famous two liner from Thirukural of similar lines when translated to English

RK

' Krish'- Poor Spider Man of India

There was so much hype and excitement about this movie that I finally broke my Hindi movie inhibition barrier of almost 3 years after 'Lagan' and went for this movie. Luckily I didn’t need much translation from my wife or friends which used to be the case since there was nothing much by way of story anyway.

To be very frank it was a disappointing experience and if at all anybody has to get credit it it's only the graphics and animation teams who have done a commendable job especially in the scenes related to circus fire and the climax. 'Annian' which had similar graphics or even Kamal’s 'Alavandhan' were in the same class if not better. Just that the Rithik mania and his ever growing support base from children and teens from all ages might see the movie through. Even the current day kids who can very clearly distinguish animation and graphics from real life dare devilry do not seem to be impressed either and one of the girls who saw the movie with us just shrugged off saying that the movie was a 'PJ' (poor joke in their terminology)
The Future computer concept with some current day bio metric authentication added up was a big joke and the fusion of technology, superman's antics and director’s imagination never really takes off through out the movie. May be the movie would help in selling more Rithik Spiderman masks and similar memorabilia if not anything else

May be another 2 years before I see the next Hindi movie and strengthens my impression that 'bollywood is all froth and no beer' . Reminds me of Ramarajan's song with slight changes 'enna Hindi padam pathallum namma Tamil padam pola varuma'

RK

Art of 'Giving and Living' - 'Charity at it's best'

The Bill Gates-Melinda Charity foundation is creating ripples all over the developing world in areas of Aids awareness/prevention, Vaccines for prevention of diseases, child nutrition and development, higher education etc. He might be the richest man in the world presiding over almost 45 Billion USD empire, but to have the heart to distribute a substantial part of the money to such noble causes with an organized non profit venture and more than that to give up responsibility in his own organisation with which he grew and concentrate on full time charity work from 2008 is an amazing gesture.

Many leaders and organisations talk about corporate social responsibilities and community service but very few practice what they preach and the IT community as a whole can be proud of Bill Gates in this aspect irrespective of all the controversies which surrounds Microsoft's monopoly practices and the plethora of legal cases. I also went through an interesting friendship story between Warren Buffet, the second richest guy in the planet and his association with Gates for many years and one of the common bonds between the two apart from bridge games has been their intense desire to donate for charitable causes. So much so that Buffet has officially announced that substantial part of his surplus would go to the Melinda-Gates foundation

As usual politicians and opposition back home have found fault with the foundation saying that Gates is trying to promote Windows software all over India with such contributions for Aids awareness and free software’s for universities. Anyway as a culture most of the Indian politicians are similar to the famous frog story which will neither come out on their own nor allow others to climb up the way out

We can all pick up a leaf or two out of such great guys and contribute in what little way we can to the community around us. I mean Gates and warren, not our politicians!


RK

Dubai- A diaspora in dire straits??

Some statistics based on a survey from a Gulf news article on the subject and you really start wondering where the Expatriates especially in this part of the world would go from here?

http://www.gulfnews.com/business/Business_Feature/10043395.html

20-30 % increase in cost of essential commodities, rent, transport, education etc.

Less said about rent the better. Minimum is 15 % and goes upwards by even 100% in many areas. Getting a decent 1-2 bed room flat in areas like Burdubai, Karama,Quasis, etc are almost impossible and is a nightmare most of the time

Pay growth of just 7 % in last year with almost 39 % of the sample having no increase and worse 3% having a reduction compared to last year

44% of those interviewed deciding to share accommodation with other families or sending their loved ones back home out of sheer frustration

Only 9 % savings on total income as compared to almost 30-4o % few years ago and worse still 41% no savings whatsoever

Depreciating Dollar and the resultant impact on the business and profits

This is just the tip of the iceberg and we also have the low income workers mostly from construction group who slog it out for 10-12 hours a day in temperatures of 45 degrees+ and leave in crowded accommodations with poor hygienic conditions with a meagre salary of around 250 USD per month on an average. Some of those also leave in 5*5 bed spaces or worse even sleep in cars in the night paying around 50 USD per month only to use wash facilities

Dubai may be well on target to become the city of sky scrappers and dazzling man made islands carved out of the sea which are no doubt world class wonders in its quest to become another Shanghai, London or Newyork. But where does the common expatriate go after living for years in this country and contributing as best as he can to the economy and in the process also uplifting his own standards of living and savings back home. There is also another argument that nobody forced these people to come out of their home country and they should accept to live with the reality or simply pack up the bags and go home. Easier said than done!

Truly a case of Diaspora in dire straits which was predicted even 7-8 years ago by one of my Mentors in an article in Business world in 1997-98 for Gulf Expats as a whole.

RK

Battle of waterloo for the 'biggies'

For once I was right. Brazil and England which never looked convincing were knocked out in the quarters. France survived by the skin of the teeth and play Portugal for a place in the finals. Germany and Italy have become confident by the day as the tournament progresses. I still would like to bet on Portugal who have never won a world cup final and have entered the SF after a gap of 40 years. Figo, Christiano and Deco all look too good on current form to take their team to the coveted title.
Having seen all the hype about the great teams and star players on paper and lured into taking up a world cup exclusive connection at a premium, I must confess that the quality of football on display is quiet ordinary and I have seen much better league games of Europe and Spain. May be the pre tournament drills and extensive practice sessions have taken a heavy toll on the stars. English foot ball player's girl friends and wives got better coverage then the stars themselves for obvious reasons and needless to say that was much better display on view than the football played by their more illustrious boy friends.
Anyway it's the end of another era of players like Ronaldo, Cafu, Ziedane, Figo, Beckham, to name a few once this WC comes to a close and the world foot ball would never be the same again without these icons
To me the biggest mystery so far has been the non induction of the wunderkind 'Messi' into the Argentinean team in spite of the lead against Germany. May be the coaches know better than lay men like us.

In the midst of all this soccer euphoria I still can't forget cricket and the 'wall' stands as majestic as ever among the ruins against West Indies in the final test. We can be proud that we have such a player as a captain who stands by example in sports though as a country we don't have any football super stars

RK