To sting and not bite

Now the English speaking media might deride it as kitsch but it is pure wholesome entertainment. Just like New 'Atta Maggi Rice' gives taste bhi health bhi. Go no further I am talking of common man's news cum entertainment channel 'Aaj Tak'. Now people who think they are too intellectual smirk at it being crass and carrying nothing informative and at the most gossip or flimsy stories. Complains range from the kind of language used to barrage of images and sounds thrown at audience to lower their intellect. What the critics miss is excellent product placement aimed at Indian market.


Let me elaborate. Visit a barber's shop if you are a male, a visit to shopping mall (any other chance to get a high from spending spree) if you are a lady or a nice social get together if you are either of the afore mentioned categories. A common thread amongst these would be banter. Indians have the habit of gossip and its modus operandi is different in different sections of society but it exists. There are some hidden connections between gossip, powers of brain and intolerance, unravel them here. Gossip is not only a networking mechanism but a stress buster. Is some one from the English media taking notes on this! I want this published tomorrow in your page-3 column titled 'Gossip a Stress Buster. Researchers have shown...'. a lot better than itch free pajamas and pain can alter brain.

Now that you my readers are convinced about +ve parts of gossip let us come to the +ve aspects of the new channel. Unlike DD who use unadulterated Hindi, Aaj Tak uses Hindustaniglish (Yes Hindustani = Hindi + Urdu and Hindustaniglish = Hindustani + English).

As wholesome entertainment is promised each aspect of people involved is covered. e.g. there rumor mills worked overtime on Hindi film actress Kareena Kapoor (aka Bebo) and Saif Ali Khan.

• Bebo never came on screen in a bikini, but she will do some exposure in an upcoming flick
  
• Saif is a rock star with this stint with rock band
  
• Saif has Bebo's name tattooed on his forearm
• Astrological charts gave a green signal
  
• Saif's kid was also shown fiddling with guitar with rock star like expressions.
  

Now the readers have to take a note these bullets are only a summary of 1 hour program. People are treated visually with clips to show Bebo and Chhote Nawab's histrionic skills, glam-amorous photos and Hindi movie songs relevant to the issue at hand (Mera Band bajwao song in this case where the protagonist talks of bachelorhood and a woman with red scarf).

To enrich the audience with scientific breakthroughs and latest findings Aaj Tak covered how dinosaurs became extinct because of mosquitos 'ate' them. For visual aid they even made an animated dinosaur getting devoured by a bunch of mosquitoes. How we learned laughter from Monkeys was also a humbling piece of research shared by your channel. Do they show Aaj Tak in Australia? I doubt.

Interviews with movers and shakers of the world like Rakhi Sawant (Video not available), Nisha Kothari by big daddy Prabhu Chawla. His incisive questions about 'Jhumroo' in 'Ram Gopal Varma ki Aag' her mannerisms gave new light to the discussion so I recommend whole heartedly to watch that video. For other celebs check youtube.

Now as guardians of the society it is a duty of a news channel to report any funny business going on. Two executives anal-yze the situation with incisive comments and an adrenaline (Or testoterones?) rush to set the mood('A:Darshak bahut betaab ho rahe honge Bebo ke baare main jaanane ke liye. B: Haan aap to apni seat se uchhal ke baahar hi aa gaye Mr. A').

Like an artists master stroke Aaj tak stung who sting. They exposed a racket of women being used for so called sting operations and even black mail. Aaj Tak dare devils met these girls and posed as industrialists, politicians etc. who wanted to carry out sting oeprations. Now if you know about 'Six Degrees of Freedom' and a claim that world is a small place because every one is connected to rest of the world by at most six links you would not be amazed at what Aaj Tak did. They found a hidden link between these industrialists and your own starlet Babe-O
(noticed the big O ;)). After a lot many breaks they finally revealed the truth. One of the girls of foreign origin named Kareena was caught on camera and then they showed:

Exhibit A: Parde ki Kareena (who was a spy in remake of Don, if you didn't get the connection)
Exhibit B: Asal zindagi ki Kareena (the foreigner in question)

Like answer to good old 'diff' questions in Indian schools subtle difference between the two exhibits where highlighted.

But the sting couple nights back was mother of all exposés. All the hidden links between Hindi cinema and Mafiosi were unraveled. McMohan explained clockworks of financial dealings, Monica Bedi gave her choice of leading man in her biopic: Salman and Sunny.
Aditya Puns-choli talking of SRK's masculinity, Lawrence D'Souza discussing about an attack made on him in 'Satya' style and music director Anwar discussing musical predilections of 'D' and in between would break into one his own songs. Manjrekar's conspiracy theory of Sanzu Baba's conversation with Bhai. All this gave a heady feeling that Ethen Hunt, Jason Bourne, James Bond can't give let alone Da Vinci Code or Sherlock Holmes.

To ye thhe SomeAchaar Aaj Tak, chatkare (aur khatti dakare) lete rahiye kal tak

Update: As I am typing this update at my home Aaj Tak is covering Sanjay Dutt's marriage with Manyata. The channel is all gaga with happiness. Shehnai in the background, pyrotechnics overlapped over the newly weds' photo-op. In true investigative spirit no stone is left unturned:

• Where should they visit for honeymoon.
  
• It is basant panchami today, an auspicious event for nuptials hence expert comments from a pundit ji is taken
• The logistic details of proceedings
• Her dance skills in Gangajal's item number: "Alhad Mast Jawani"
  
• Paste muses of Sanjay and their body of work

Some sound bytes

• Saj gaye Sanju
• Manyata Munna bhai ki
• Kaun hai manyata? Dilwanaz ya Dilnasheen?

Memetic Mutations

The young upwardly mobile junta in India has renewed old traditions especially a large class of youngsters who are:

* Graduates (or about to be)
* Can spout English
* Are Mathematically Able(If 3rd side of a triangle is 4th power of the factorial of 1st two, then How many legs does an average cow has?)
* Can Dream (Suits, Salary and Job to kill for)

If the 1st criterion is not yet resolved they are seen in dingy hostel rooms else in swanky clothes serving time in an organization which is committed to collaboratively enhance corporate opportunities to exceed customer expectations (Link).

The reader by now must have guessed it is the annual pilgrimage of MBA aspirants - The CAT yatra. Like a secret cult they have secret code words: GD, PI, Vocab, Quant, LR which people of the inner chambers know. When a member meets another one the password is "Tayyari kaisi chal rahi hai" or "Kaisa hua" replied by an encoded rant which only their ilk can decode.

"Lag gayi yaar"
"XYZ to phod raha hai"
"Uske itne aye, tere kitne aye"
"Is baar kitna solve kiya"
"Ye speed wala thha"
"Isme accuracy chahiye thhee"

Obviously how can the pilgrimage be without brief sojourns like T.I.M.E. or P.T. and numerous other coaching centers which assure the darshan. Through rigorous mediation and regular players held weekly en mass they cleanse their souls. Those who have faith and determination, the purest of the pure get moksha, nirvana, bliss and those who don't well "Baba bade dayalu hain"

ASCII Me

Thanks to Amit Agarwal I got the link of a kool tool to play for a while :)
ASCGen is a Windows app to convert images into ASCII text. The good part is it is a lot hassle free and gives you few options to tinker around.

To install it on your Windows machine you will need a .Net fix for older machines, as they claim comes with it default.

Have a look at my ASCII self.

गुगली गणित की

a: Research has shown that drinking beer can be good for health by improving digestion, hydrations and couple of other 'tions'. [Accompanied with link to a really low quality, run of the mill article by a popular web portal]

b: Yeah right! It suggests test was done on 25 students they didn't even bother to go beyond their department I guess. Aam ke aam aur guthliyon ke daam! Aye boyz lets haav sum beaah and run for the gawd damn sayks, gotta shauw sum vital staatistix. I would say the perfect work life balance

b: A cutting (no bleeding, slashing and decapitating) research has shown that birthdays are good for longevity! The more you have the longer you live

a: Yeah wacko, another research shows 2 comes after one in series of natural numbers.

This lead me to a diversion towards a geek book I had read titled 'Godel, Escher, Bach' by Douglas Hofstader. In it there is a part where he explains what those mathematicians lost in formal theory do when they are not performing compulsory chores of life.

Some guy named Peano (not it is not a misspelled Piano) did some break through work in this field. These blokes do some really ass kicking work using a snazzy sounding words like axiom, premise, intrinsic property. To deconstruct the crap this guy laid the foundation by propounding few axioms like:

0 is a natural number.
For every natural number n, S(n) is a natural number.
S is successor function so S(0) = 1 and 2 = S(S(0))

Now this might sound like a hyped Hindi Cinema flick gone dud like 'Roop ki Rani Choron ka Raja', 'Asoka' or recent 'Aja Nachle'. Talking of fundu mathematics and then saying 2 follows 1. Even my housemaid with limited knowledge of mathematics knows 2 comes after 1. And what is this business about S? Filling up your pages of thesis by larger font, line height and paragraph setting is different but ssseriously duude flooding it up with S is a lot to grasp. Sounds more like a precursor to Kta Kapoor or kRkakkekskhk kRkokskhkaknk.

Well it seems Peano's work was used by Godel to derail Hilbert's Program. The guy like a Bond movie's megalomaniacs wanted the mathematical world to be conquered [Not Safe for Work because you might go mad till you hit the full stop or bang your boss's head]. Like Sauron in Lotar (LoTR) wanted one ring to rule 'em all. Hilbert's grand scheme was to give some mathematical system which can prove all other mathematical systems (like boolean arithmetic, vector algebra etc etc all those things you hated in school/college). So our Bond like Mr. Godel gave Hilbert's medicine back to him by proving his shit can't prove his own shit (:-0, don't ask me further about this else i shall puke a lot of S's and greek symbols on you). Mathematicians cohabit their own little crazy world throwing conjectures, hypothesis, axioms and what not.

SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSShhhhhh.... koi hai!

Physics and the Right hand

Now this is the stuff that would make even Einstein wonder in his grave. His anecdotal genius in his classroom days and Ramanujan's 0 boys with 0 bananas doubt would pale in front of this line of thinking. A genius by the name Mr. M (people from JK, Kanpur esp my colleagues from league of Science with Economics in 11-12 std would know whom I am talking of) had answered simple looking Physics definition question 'What is flux, give its formula?' by something akin to:

ρ = Q /ε

where all the above symbols except the common = and / meant some soopar arcane stuff in Physics. The above formula was not something found in textbooks. So based on a simplistic text search in an NCERT book the teacher, a simpleton, straitjacketed lady, gave a naught to our protagonist. The nearest search result she could get was a formula by some chump named Gauss. (apparently it had another of those strange symbols Φ in it instead of ρ, it all sounds unintelligent greek to me anyways, How does it matter phi or roe? )

With humility and politeness, traits of a true genius, M walked towards the dreaded teacher's table. On a polite inquiry about the zero tagged to his profound answer, madam told him about about the correct symbol to be used and the 'convention' to associate certain symbols with certain parameters in physics.

Right at that moment our iconoclastic Mr. M gave a beautiful reply in his characteristic mumble:

Madam right hand side to theek hai na

(Madam, at least the right hand side is correct)

The poor lady had an expression of a deer caught in headlight, not knowing how to react she slapped our hero in front of the whole class. (I dont remember she used the 'right' hand or the left one for pseudo poetic justice). I could get a glimpse of great Galileo arguing against the mighty dogmatic church. His ignorant colleagues could not appreciate the mettle of his supreme logic. Rest of his colleagues where an ignorant bunch. All he got was some giggles from the girls and guffaws from brats. Man we have no place for people who dare to challenge the convention.

Alas! I think this is why we have such a dismal performance and blatant plagiarism (and this) due to utter desperation and lack of original ideas.

babri masjid kaand

आज इस बात को १५ साल हो गए हैं. क्यूंकि ये मुद्दा लोगों के जेहन मैं फीका पड़ चूका है इसलिए हमारे नेता ( जो दरअसल प्रेता हैं ) कुछ नही कह रहे हैं सिवाय लोकतंत्र का चक्का जाम करने के। ये टोकरी मैं पड़े उन केक्डों कि तरह हैं जो न तो खुद बाहर निकालेंगे न ही किसी और को निकलने देंगे ।

उस समय जब ये बवाल हुआ था मैं काफी छोटा था । हालांकि गुजरात के दंगों के बारे मैं कहा जाता है कि टी वी पर समाचार द्वारा व्यर्थ मैं प्रचार हुआ पर मुझे अछे से याद है इस काण्ड मैं मस्जिद के ढहाने की विडियो कैसेट हर घर में देखे गए थे । इन तस्वीरों मैं से एक तस्वीर मेरे जेहन मैं घर कर गयी, वो ठी दिखने मैं कमज़ोर एक बुजुर्ग आदमी कि जो भीड़ से कहीं आगे आकर पुलिस कि लाठी चार्ज के सामने सीना ताने दौड़ने लगा और पास मैं पड़ा एक बड़ा सा ईट उठा के फेंका । उसके चेहरे मैं एक गज़ब का आक्रोश और पीड़ा नज़र आ रही थी । धर्म के नाम पर आदमी क्या नही कर सकता ये मैंने उस आदमी कि आँखों मैं देखा था ।

हमारी कानून व्यवस्था और पुलिस कि जांच प्रणाली के बारे मैं क्या कहा जा सकता है जब १२ साले बाद आरोपी को न्यायालय मैं लाया जाता है और १५ साल बाद एक साक्षी मिलता है ! जब कुछ ऐसा पड़ता या सुनता हूँ तो फ्रान्ज़ काफ्का कि लिखी ये कहानी 'before the law' याद आती है। आशा करता हूँ इस जन्म में इस मुक़दमे का नतीजा देख सकूं ।

Aaja Nachle or Dirty dancing

Every one knows the story. Some quarters of society had objections over some words in lyrics related to cobbler and goldsmith. BMW (Bahan MayaWati) slapped a ban later to be revoked and some people accusing Mayawati for double standards (Aren't two better than one?)

An interesting part is how the Media analyzes an event and goes meta:
- Film gets banned
- Freedom of Speech
- Finer nuances of traditional professions and caste system in India

then in a separate thread:

- Madhuri's comeback (With oft repeated line: She never went away)
- Madhuri not fit for a comeback
- Theories for comebacks with data samples of Rekha, Kajol, Juhi etc.
- Controversy used to boost box office sale of the movie
- Controversy couldn't boost box office sale of the movie
- Theories of controversies increasing sales

With arguments, facts and theories buzzing around our head like a swarm of deadly bees, we missed a small point. Every day since past week I have listened to the song on Radio and not even a single byte from its lyrics are clipped. If representatives of people are so careful of popular sentiments then they should know a little bit of maths. Number of people listening to the words via Radio has to be much higher than cinema audience then why ban only on screening!

PS: A classic case of the meta nature of media is when media cribs about media!

Devnagri

देवनागरी लिपि पड़े हुए हमे अरसा हो गया । अब जबकि ब्लॉगर ने अपने एडिटर मैं यह सुविधा उपलब्ध कि है कि आप रोमन अक्षरों मैं हिन्दी शब्द लिखें और वह देवनागरी लिपि मैं प्रतिवार्तित हो जायेंगे तो बड़ा अच्छा लगा .किन्तु खेद सिर्फ इस बात का है कि हमारा प्रिय ब्राउज़र फायरफौक्स यह लिपि ठीक से प्रस्तुत नही कर पता। अतः हमे माइक्रोसोफ्ट के इंटरनेट एक्सप्लोरर का उपयोग करना पड़ता है :(

बाक़ी सब तो ठीक है किन्तु हिन्दी की दो मात्राएँ : बड़ी ई छोटी इ जब किसी व्यंजन के साथ मिलती हैं तो गड़बड़ हो जाती है। थोड़ा गूगल करने पर पता चला कि यह बाधा इसलिए आती है क्योंकि ये मात्रा जिस व्यंजन से जुड़ती हैं उसके बाहिने ऑर रखना पड़ता है अर्थात यदि आपको मंदिर लिखना हो तो रोमन लिपि मैं आप : m a n d i r लिखते हैं किन्तु हिन्दी मैं इ कि मात्रा द के पहले आती है। इस का ध्यान माइक्रोसोफ्ट ने तो रख लिया किन्तु हमारा प्रिय ब्राउज़र मात खा गया :(। यदि कोई भला मानुष (या मानुषी) इसका उपाय जानता है तो हमे ज़रूर बताए

हिन्दी लिपि के वैसे तो अनेक फॉण्ट आते हैं पर यदि ये UTF format मैं लिखी जाये तो फॉण्ट फ़ाइल इंस्टाल करने की कोई ज़रूरत नही है।

(If the text is not comprehensible at all: in your browser window click View --> Character Encoding --> UTF 8)

Rakhi Savant and the League of Extraordinary Laydeej (to be read as Lay These)

In the societal sub consciousness (I lauv these heavy words) of Hindi Cinema (not Bollywood as I consider it denigrating epithet) many a leading ladies have left ever lasting impressions, those "sunehre parde ke chamakte sitare" and "lakhon ke dilon ki dhadkans". Like a neat NCERT history book the eons of Hindi cinema are divided amongst divas: Sridevi, Madhuri, Hema and other beautiful etceteras. Those were the days when a mangal sootra was a full stop in actress' reel life and one had to be politically correct in media. Some of the laydeej stood out without getting trapped in heroine-vamp cleave all the while exploring the twilight zone of amorality in principle and practice.

My attempt is to shift the limelight towards the not-so-politically-correct and in your face laydeej. Scandals, statements, hookups and sleaze are what they are associated with by popular perception and now so ubiquitous media. I won't backtrack too much down the memory lane. Few such laydeej come to my mind right now. Mamta Kulkarni, Pooja Bhatt, Mallika Sherawat and last but not least Rakhi Savant who gave her iconic statement at KJo's: "Jo bhagwaan nahi de sakta wo doctor deta hai". Surely there have been laydeej before this who had sizzled the screen with a lot of oomph (and aahs and ouches also) but to my mind these come to the fore.

Mamta Kulkarni started it all by kicking some [NSFW*] dirt in star dust [NSFW] cover. She drew the naree kalyan samaaj wommans towards entertainment industry. Antics off the stage were aplenty. Allegedly (not by vishwaniya sutr but allegedly) she was swimming in two piece bikini in a hotel's pool. When informed by manager that only single piece attires where allowed the laydee came up with an innovative solution. Which one of them should I take off Mr. Manager! (flutter flutter, wink wink). I miss this laydee for the entire hullabaloo she could raked up at the drop of a hat or other pieces of clothing. Be it 'zeher hai ki pyar hai tera chumma' with Akshay jhatka Kumar or checking her anatomy in mirror (Karan Arjun, remember Rakhi crying hoarse - 'Mere bete ayenge' in an infinite loop) she was considered archetype of debauchery in popular media. In a private function of Bihar legislators allegedly (again) the hosts played cards on her body laid on table (which game was it babua? Poke her?). Confrontation with Raj Kumar Santoshi in China Town was the last I heard of her before she went in oblivion. Incidentally the item song in the movie picturised on Urmila was used in Moulin Rogue! Any comments on her latest whereabouts would be deeply appreciated (Koi Jaye to Le Aye Meri Lakh Duayen Paye ...).

Pooja Bhatt had it all, looks to kill and cheap thrills plus a big daddy for home made videos (err movies). She made libertine out of women liberation. Her [NSFW] lip lock with daddy was not taken in the right taste by the righteous junta. No one could appreciate her penchant for . Somewhere she went out of all the attention to resurface for directorial debut in an erotica aptly named Jism. Though she was much derided for her 'bold' image she was never an outcast or denigrated like Mallika or Rakhi. The image of a wild child was brilliantly portrayed until Law of Diminishing Marginal Utility took over. The other Pooza, Bedi Bebi that is had her fair share of eyeballs with Kamasutra's nirodh condom. Who can forget the bubble gum popping femme fatale as Amir Khan's juvenile fantasy in Jo Jeeta Wahi Sikandar.

The void created by their departure seemed to be partially filled by few babes who fizzled out, became leading ladies or the cliched sex symbols. They could not manage the art of shock and awe. After Rangeela, all that we had of Urmila kapde-mat-od-kar were nervous twitches and horrendous facial contortions in intense scenes. Bipasha with her husky voice and dusky complexion took up the cause of fairer but not so fair sex. Her non committal statements with John and Dino Morea (is he the evolutionary march of Dino saurs? He too shall get eliminated in natural selection) has become common place and has found no takers. Caress-Mah Kapoor made tectonic shift from frilly skirts to minis. Her innings with Chhi-Chhi was shortlived.but she took her bow at the pinnacle of her career not before becoming too arty, farty. Malaikha Arora Khan with her lustrous thighs seems she invented the idea of item girls. Limiting her appearance she is smug with her hubby. Surely there were controversies, hookups, cat fights, breakups but they where all rumors by some arbit birdie twittering in tinsel town. No one endorsed the birdie so it became extinct.

Not until dare devil laydee from tau's Haryana - Mallika Sherawat came to foray with a bang, seventeen kisses and call-spade-a-spade attitude (Khwahish, I went to watch that despite being down with fever, pop goes the pill) and enough of sound bytes for every one to gorge. She took the horny bull of audience by the horns. No doubt news channels should give her some token of appreciation for all the business she generated. I distinctively remember Star News (which has become schizophrenic after NDTV left them) was showing arrival of a mysterious burqa clad woman amongst a bunch of stars in Mumbai airport. And the sheer brilliance of the correspondent who solved unveiled the secret. It was Mallika Sherawat, Voila! All of this on prime time slot amongst stories of cricket, terrorism, Soniye and Manmoniye.

Studio Pravakta: Kya kaaran thaa jo unko burqa pehen ke ana pada, jaisa ki aap humari footage main dekh sakte hain ki mallika ko ruphale parde pe anga pradarshan karne se koi parhej nahi hai phir wo kya waja thee jiske kaaran unko aisa kadam uthana pada.
(Screen shows umpteen shots of her in itsy bitsy teeny weeny clothes repeated ad nauseam). Aaj humare saath studio main Satpaal ji maujood hain.
Satpaal ji kya maanana hai apka
Iske peechee kiska haath ho sakta hai.

Satpal (A studio rat whose only exposure to sun is by gawking at weather forecast lady): Jee footage main to nazar nahi aa raha hai
par meri tammana to yahee hai ki inke peechhe mera haath hota!

Studio Pravakta: Errr, umm, uh uh uh.
Aap mallika ji ka ye gana dekhiye, milte hain break ke us paar.

Her detractors created much of slander against her. Having a degree in philosophy and being air hostess would have added much to her age they say. My dear friends I say you might have misled yourself. It would have been phallus-sophy or knowledge of the phallus! How hard is it to learn it for this amazon womman. After a lot of myth and mirth the queen bee seems to be letting her hair down for a while. There were some rumors about

And then there was Rakhi Savant. From court cases of indecency to stereotypical jokes by K-Jo’s pretentious fairy friends she had it all until she made the debut. People say she is not intelligent even when she has dual core silicone processors custom made for her (Did she get rid of it? What gigahertz was it running on?). Daring to speak her mind and raring to displaying her body of work (or work of body) she epitomizes chutzpah. The politically correct, convent bred brats and babes get flustered by her persona. Starting with item numbers she became a brand and industry. Mika (who claims Himass baba swept the nasal twang from under his nose) had a taste of limelight and an album all because of this laydee. Sony’s Bigg Boss had a blast because her jo-mere-man-main-hai-wahi-mere-moonh-main-hai attitude. Not to talk of dumb witted Great Indian Laughter Challenge contestants who have a human touch to canned laughter named Siddhu.

GuruUuUuU, billi sher ki mausi hai
Lucknow ke paas amausi hai

Har kaali peeli cheez taxi nahi hoti
Har item girl Rakhi si saxy nahi hoti!

(Please either read this really aloud or increase decibel level of your inner voice while silently reading this to get full effect)


*NSFW = Not Safe For Work

Coup Mandook

Parvez the Prez has spoken after Amrikka's Negroponte came knock knock knocking on Mushy's door (errrr where is the Rice cooking?). His plan to take his style statement from Multan to Milano is quashed. (them angrez perverts want me to take off my uniform, such kinky rascals! ok ok just this one time, can we make it fast). So people are again chained to seats. Will Mushy babe solve the su do coup?

Mushy gave an apt gift on the eve of Children's day. (Come on kiddoze an educational trip to jail for you. Who wants the third degree?) And the good sportsman he is, the hide and seek between him and Imran Khan ended in a Gotcha moment a lot of home videos made by the cricket stal-wart (surprisingly there was no ads of Chintoo Candy prevalent in pirated movie CDs from Karachi).

We have to see whether the mandook(frog) can come out of his koop(well) that he has created for himself. He is giving typical signs of a despot-in-decline by identifying himself with the country and vice versa. Purrvez's relation with Uncle Shyam (Got this phrase from Hari) are getting more obvious, not that we didn't know. Musharraf is giving a nifty potboiler with a lot of emotions and action packed drame with babe (Bhutto), stud (Imran) and buffoon (Shareef). Ek anar, chaar bimaar.

Probably he can come to India to make a movie with Mahesh Butt with some random chick and a pseudo random hunk (read Emran Hashmi not to be confused with Hasmi dawakhana) on an inspired plot 'ek fool teen mali'. A love quadrangle starring Bhutto, Shareef, Imran and Musharraf, but at the end it would be Suuny Paa-ji who would solve the problem by a hand pump.

Kya hota hai jaanane ke liye aaj hi jaye apne paas ke CDwallah ke paas

Su do - Coup

Now that mush has gone mushy mushy with his little toy land we have to know what does Bushy think! Instead it was Condolezza Rice who gave a neutral and aloof answer to the whole drama. (Some one joked that Rice would turn to a big Dosa in her grave due to fermentation)

Some people had an cynical smirk (errr dude wasn't Mush doing that stuff already? What did he do now?). It made me realize 8 [/9] years ago I was sitting in a barber's shop going to grab the Filmfare (whatever glitzy film mag he kept, I love these barber visits because all of them keep one such mag and it pisses me off to wait without them they are kind of equivalent of free peanuts in American flights) that some obscure General in a bollywoodesque thriller has grabbed the toy land from Nawaz not-so-Shareef. I thought kool man, some serious ass kicking going on (I am still wondering no one takes this as a movie script idea). It also made me realize just like Hindi cinema potboilers this stuff is going on and on. Audience is bored of item numbers , revenge story and dhishum-dhishum fight scenes. Even the frequent trips to the loo are not helping yet the movie promises to have a great climax so they are clinging on to the tickets.

As the puntastic title of the blog suggests managing army, jihadis, Bush, judiciary, pet, political opponents and at last the public is like a su do ku problem. All the numbers have to be placed at the right place under constraints. If at the start you place a number at random out of free will or folly it becomes hard to backtrack later when you know you did a mistake (Mushy: Yikes what will Bushy think of me, and these unkempt pyjama-chhaps don't know anything about style statements, they dont have any dressing sense, I should be strutting my stuff in Lycra Style awards) Will Mushy babe solve the su do coup? Will he make it to Time Su Do Coup challenge or will he follow his elder dictators? For now "milte hain is break ke us paar"

Koffee with Kafka

In a Kafkaesque moment for Lakshmana the innocent techie was put under bars for defaming Shivaji. 'Shivaji who?' was the question he asked and pat came the reply 'Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj you bozo!'. ('I never met him! What is his email id? Is he available on orkut?'. 'Orkut ya thats what those chircut's said, you are under arrest').

The policewallahs tracked the ipaddress to his home tipped off by Lakshmana's Internet Service Provider (ISP) of defamation in orkut community. I can imagine these state sponsored goons come into action when political masters say 'shoo, get fetch him boy, aaaaah good boy' or 'go nab someone for me instead of a fetching newspaper today' Reading through the article at his point I thought they might be trying to find street address, pincode and all in the ipaddress let alone the cryptic 'crosses' and 'mains' popular in Namma-Bengaluroo so might have landed at the wrong place.

The gruesome ordeal Lakshmana K. had to go through was shrugged off by these cyber-illiterate cops through an irritating, irresponsible, condemnable comment: "We made a mistake, so what" that too coming from a senior police officer. Meaning "We had just put some guy behind bars for 50 days, look we played fair, it was just a random thing it would have been your next door neighbour or even you, you see. It is our duty to put people behind bars, there are so many of them, it is good to keep the cells engaged you know. A little bit of jail boosts your moral and our appraisal too"

Halfway through I made uncanny resemblance of Mr. Lakshmana K's plight to that of Joseph K protagonist of Franz Kafka's dark story 'The Trial'

Though we are becoming cyber-aware but the people sitting high a top don't know a thing about computers, probably checking emails thats it. It is this same ignorance and a systemic stupidity we had a blanket ban on all blogs throughout the country! ('Its for those IT kids to know, to do computers, God knows what do they do sitting in front of monitors, in our good old days the typewrite was enough')

The interesting part to look for is will the ISP concerned give a verbal/written apology in person or public or provide some compensation ('Probably an offer/scheme! Pay some insane amount of money and we won't tell them what and whom you did last summer') or just another automated kasht-mar care reply ('welcome to rambharose ISP service, press 1 to get behind bars, press 2 to contact your friendly neighborhood cop,')?

He knew it

He knew it, the hunch , the gut feeling (ewww not the bowel movement). All the things he heard near vending machine. Logs, messages and all the jargon spouted over by the rookie sysadmins over a cup of hot coffee spouted by the machines as intelligent as them (talk of natural stupidity not artificial
intelligence).

Straining at the terminal pieces of code presented themselves to him in indented glory. The sudden glow and warmth ran across his body like a spotlight. He could visualize invisible vision of unseen orb in silence and the voyeur behind it. "It is for your own safety!" "Yes big brother as you say"

"Did I just pick my nose" "Sorry Big Brother" "Think hard.... concentrate .... close that Gmail window, firefox icon can be recognized from miles" "Oh come on, keep a window of source code open .... at least the one with tons of ugly text" "Yes kool, fingers near Alt-TAB ..... switch the windows as soon as the undead comes, swallow that you.....".

He tried hard to put a Murphy blind over himself. "Don't peer over the cubicle there are a bunch of semi androids there also ...". The stifling humidity as if it is void that you are sucking in as air, still even though it is void it scratches the walls of trachea the tongue just feels a dull sensation". "He could feel some one breathing down his neck, the stench, the hot humid masala laden air giving blows of disgust in him"

And

Burrrrrrrrrrp

Arrrrghhhhh
EWWWWWWWWWW

"Grosss, that was hell lot of sambhar for a breakfast MAN, get a life and go back
to your monitor"

Medi-sin

"Our studies have shown drinking tea reduces the chances of heart diseases by 11.3%"

"A recent research has shown results that drinking tea with a lesser amount of milk leads to 16.8% chances of damage to the liver"

"Research has shown that people with pets have more chances of living longer"

Such obscure and confusing research where there is no mention of samples, methodology, reports etc leave readers in a quandary. Imagine people like me who are so weak in probability [The probability of a probability coming out more than 1 was quite high in my case].

Things get messier when statistics move from food to lifestyle. The results are not conclusive, often misleading and do not declare that they have been recommended by a professional doctor/practitioner. Increasingly the print media is moving towards such aimless pseudo-scientific banter ranging from health to even dating and etc. Giving tips on housekeeping and recipes was great but to giving an opinion regardless of the person whom it is intended for, her/his situation etc. is according to me unethical

My research has shown that having more birthdays is good for you, the more you have the longer you live!

Lyrix

Now this was outrageously cheesy, campy and tending towards kitsch. People must have seen the latest promos of Farah Khan's film Om Shanti Om, her ode to bygone cinema era. I really can't believe Javed Akhtar has written these lines for the song - Dard-e-Disco.

Now what is that supposed to mean. SRK worked out so much for his abs and puny torso that he broke a bone or two while disco-ing? The initial lines are the stuff usual words and constructs Hindi cinema lyrics (not Bollywood it is a denegrating word) are made of. And there are some good Urdu words thrown in. The hackneyed lines make me remember the brilliantly humorous movie Chashme-Buddoor (starring suave Farukh Sheikh, girl next door - Deepti Naval and a host of other likable characters). It had a great take on the typical song and dance routine in Hindi cinema. The song went like: Chham chham Payal, kaise ho paagal and all the inane stuff that rhymes.

Coming back to Om Shanti Om. The song took me by surprise after listening to lyrics the recent dud movie - Cash where a despo Shilpa Shetty look alike (errr or is she her sis) cries out for her MindBlowing Mahia! (Aaj Tak watchers was there any hidden connection between her and Mahendra Mahia Singh Dhoni?). She did a hell of Job to Blow [Blowing Minds you dirty minds!]

I never expected this from Javed Akhtar. Probably it was some else who screwed and made the singers sing it, probably it was some underworld don who made them do it instead of extortion to get pure kicks out of the whole meaninglessness of it.

Or does he suffer from multiple lyricist disorder! He has a Sameer residing in him! Or just like Aks (Amitabh Bachchan, Manoj Bajpai, Nandita Das) Sameer enters his body and makes him write these lines to vamoose into thin air leaving even him agape.

AI vs AP

Well the much hailed fruits of Artificial Intelligence are not bearing for the market I think looking at Artificial Personality can be a good option. Prof. Alan Turing gave Turing Test as a benchmark of AI where a human judge has to converse with a human and a machine through a natural language. The machine passes the test if the judge is not able to conclusively say it is a machine with which (s)he was conversing. Quite a subjective parameter but gives a complete picture.

Further developments lead to much hailed poster boy of AI: Expert systems. After this came less 'glamorous' (readd stuff from which sci-fi is made of) more nerdy interpretations and implementations but the core remains the same. There is something such as 'intellectual' tasks that a human can do and we should strive towards making machines do it. So there is a notion of a problem or a question and its resolution.

Where as if we go back to Mr. Turing and see his test in a different light essentially he is talking of creating an Artificial Personality. Surely the judge can test the person on the other side by giving 'intellectual' task/problem/question but overall if you want to see it is a case of personality that we are looking at and not 'intelligence' per se.

BTW this article triggered the dormant thought in me

Wax and Vain

LOL is the word

Aishwarya Rai, the much touted queen bee of Hindi Cinema, the crossover dream of India and latest addendum to Bachchan parivar had her wax doll displayed at Tussads, New York



Is the wax model an exact replica of the lady? I think it is the other way round! The lady with frigid expressions is an abberated replica of the doll! Aberrated because she can flutter her eyelid. Somehow the virtual overwhelms the real. Case of simulacrum turned on itself! A reflexive hyperreality?

I still believe it might have been a hoax, she might have stood there herself and people would have believed it ;)

Freshhhhh

Let's look at some of the mint ads which force you to think out of the box or make you wonder where's the box itself! Mentos: Supposedly eating Mentos brightens your otherwise dark corners of brain and you become uber genius by embarassing others for your squeaky footwear in a classical music concert (in SSS no it is not Senior SchutzStaffel, Herr Hitler is in peace with himself, it is Surbahar Sangeet Sammelan) Or it can be about fooling your prof (who is anyways teaching law of addition i.e. it is associative) , thereby taking you to newer forms of intelligence. Elevating you from your aam zindagi to a new kewl mentos zindagi. Chlormint: The first ad with the paanwallah showed Indians are deeply involved in philosophy that the ultimate revelation and the truths can be known on a nukkad. The existential dillema's of western trained mind of rationales, reasones and cause and effect analysis are eliminated by quasi-Zen like unquestioning the question. The whole question of 'Hum Chlormint kyun khaate hain' is answered by a paanwallah. On the other front the still-in-70s Pappi gets to know dimensions of other kinds while musing over kissing habits of SouthAmerican fresh fishes (yes Saiyyan more Guppy, dete nahi pappi). The latest one is about the eternal and timelessness of the world and specifically of chlormint. It is so subtly put by a paying homage to the India's best sport (no procreation doode but kabaddi) Orbit White: Orbit has consistently used gaay mata (holy cow!) as its symbol the great animal specialist with English deeply rooted (and routed) in India. Dr. Dhurandar Bhatawadekar shows the sheer power of Orbit. Doc in a subtle and sublime manner teaches us that after all man is a social animal. A brilliant mix of entertainment, education and advertisement - enterducads!! Coincidently Utpal Dutt played the role of ace detective Dhurandar Bhatawadekar in Hindi Move Rang Birangi (1983). The ad captures way globalization will make a new Indi-English where Orbit is needed by all bachelor-men and bachelor-women. The ad always ends up with Mr. Butt-of-a-wader giving a Eureka moment. Its working! Minto-Fresh: Now this is the ultimate social leveller. The ad creates a unique blend from Laila-Majnu tragedy (albeit this is not), rural amorous aspirations and the forward looking lad from mera gaon mera desh. The message is not hidden behind incoherent syllogism but a simple message: 'Laila ko jab karna thha impress majnu ne khayi minto fresh, bole to ekdum fresh'. The end shows reversal of the fairytale of Frog Prince with the villain turning back to his frog-dom. But there are literalist people who can't read between the frames Polo: For the diehard mint fans for whom life is what happens between fag, Polo is the still the Dalda of Ghee! Offlate it has bear the brunt of punk ads but the image of old man dancing away to young tunes (unfortunately I am unable get the video/image of the really old ad) still lingers in my otherwise cluttered mind. The tagline still holds strong: 'Mint with a whole' which has sustained many reactionary ads and tomfoolery. The latest one shows a granny finding 'kiss ka hint' from Polo power mint.

A Ketchup of Kitsch

Hindi Cinema or should I say Bollywood has further crystallized the already stark abyss between the so called class, mass and kitsch!

I used to relish Zee Cinema and (late entrant) Star Gold for movies like Zakhmi Aurat, Red Rose and a host of other movies which could not get the recognition from masses (and the sneering critics sitting smugly atop the ivory tower).

The lost gems and voice of hundreds of hungry (and whistling) junta a race loosing out to multiplexed, perplexed crowd (seriously its been a while since I have gone in a multiplex).

The last hope for kitsch is also dying, have a look at Star Gold's movie schedule for today (13th Aug)

02:25 V Trailers - Star Gold
02:30 Jawani Diwani
04:35 Main Meri Patni Aur Woh
08:10 V Trailers - Star Gold
08:15 TELE VIEW MALL
08:30 Jhankar Beats
09:00 23rd March 1931 Shaheed
13:30 Khakee
17:00 Sarfarosh
20:30 Swades.... We The People

String of characters - 2

Now this post is awesome: Passion for Cinema
[Note it is in Hindi]

Actually I found Tej Sapru an interesting character actor and my mom had told me that he is a veteran actor named Sapru's son. So after writing String of characters I was trying to do some manual web mining (how bout making Amitabh the new generation web miner in High tech Kala Pathhar?!?, no no please no brickbats for this crass semi-tech PJ even I couldnt digest it so barfed it out) and got hold of the link - awesome piece of work, just need to touch up the language a little bit.

quarklore's take on work

काम का काम है हो जाना
और हमारा काम है चादर तान के सो जाना

Jagjit Singh and Ghulam Ali

Well the concert did take place, but the overall experience was a tad disappointing the last solo from Jagjit Singh at Ambedkar Bhavan, Bangalore. There was something missing with the whole arrangement. A ghazal concert where sound and proper acoustic setup is utmost importance the organizers missed the whole point.

To start off there was a lot of problem Jagjit Singh had to face because of audio and repeated howling because of feedback. He had to point that time and again. He also seemed to be in a hurry to finish it off. Personally I prefer still the old school ways of harmonium, tabla to accompany a crooning voice rather than violin, keyboard and flute. Somewhere the sounds didn't blend to create magic.

Ustad Ghulam Ali was a pleasant surprise, all the while he seemed so enthusiastic and cheerful even amongst his instrumentalists. Jokes and अठखेलियां where a plenty as was some serious facts about ghazal, nazm, raag in a light manner to inform audience. His attitude was great that people should not only hear the stuff but also understand it well and get to know a little bit of nuances also

One thing that I liked about Ustad Ghulam Ali was he could not stand improper behaviour from the audience be it howling, whistling or clapping in between shers and he handled the audience in firm yet polite manner with a touch of class. All the while it seemed he has taken us to a ride in the world of ghazals where we are sailing in a vast ocean of emotions with him enjoying the twists and turns with the audience. An extremely humble and yet humorous person.

The overall setup was not that good an experience but it was great listening to the great Ustad whom I had till now met only through digitally embossed circular disks

Amul Macho

Somehow I like the word Macho. Not because of the obvious allusions towards a popular North Indian expletives but the way it is pronounced, the way your lips move to produce that sound. Anyways this is not about psycho-sexo-lingual aspects of English words but the Amul Macho - Toying ad. I have a special affinity towards the ad not because of the sexual connotations but use of the word 'toying' and how I got to know the difference between toy and toying,

The ban has added a feeble thread to debate of censor vs. sensual (errr) censor vs. freedom of speech. Well it is really hard to decide who should decide what people ought to see? Cultural chauvinists and conservatives will bay the blood of maadarn (modern), fair lasses (or was it laissez-faire?) and west-apers

And the moderners would heap invectives over desis, bhaiyyas and behenji's about freedom of speech

What about us, innocent people who just want to build over our Engliss vocabulary?

Media

Well yes blame it on media and hype.

me·di·a

1.	a pl. of medium.

2.	(usually used with a plural verb) the means of communication, as radio and television, newspapers, and magazines, that reach or influence people widely: The media are covering the speech tonight.

–adjective

3.	pertaining to or concerned with such means: a job in media research.

(taken from dictionary.com)

Well nowadays media has gone super-meta. Media bashing is done in media itself. Talkshows, debates etc all heap invectives on media and how we are going the western paparazzi ways.

Well coming to the point it is related to our dear and old Sanzu baba - the apple of sore Indian movie watcher's eyes. Few days back surfing through TV I watched Times Now for few seconds. They where juxtaposing Mr. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi with Mr. Sanjay Dutt (vald Sunil Dutt) on topics of Gandhigiri and getting jailed in the same Yerawada Jail, Pune. Everything under the broken sun was discussed his new tax free payroll of INR 7 per day to his career plan of promotion to INR 9 (errr or was it higher?!). It was only a minute after that that a second news item started bashing media over going gag over Mr. Dutt and ignoring fate of an innocent child being held in prison because his dad is incarcerated and the maternal grandparents are willing to accept it!

gold and glitter

All That is Gold Does Not Glitter but who would want to wear it?

Is there an anthropological study of codo-sapiens? Or at least psycho-social study of the large swath of techno coolies?

Quines

Quines are really intriguing things. In computer programming it means a program that print itself, reading its source file and printing is a trivial thing. Do try the exercise it is a fun thing to do.

Quines are named after "Willard Van Orman Quine" an American Mathematician and Philosopher. He gave Quine's Paradox. The paradox means that a statement can be paradoxical without having reference (e.g. This sentence is false ) or Demonstratives e.g.

The statement to below is true
The statement to above is false

The basic funda is to take a phrase, put it in quotation and append it after quotation and the resultant sentence should be grammatically correct. i.e. make a sentence like "X"X
e.g. take a phrase 'has three words' so our sentence would be:

"has three words" has three words

“yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation” yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation
(This one was from Mr. Quine)

Not all of them will be paradoxical but they are interesting enough to mull over

is some fixed point theorem which states that in any sufficiently powerful language (programming or natural language) it is possible to construct Quines.

Here are some more for fun:

"is a sentence with no subject" is a sentence with no subject

"is a Quine statement" is a Quine statement

"is a sentence fragment" is a sentence fragment

Klisht Hindi

Heard of words like shishu, twacha, poshan I am sure images of an advertisement should prop up in your mind. Such pure Hindi is to be heard in advertisement let alone Hindi news channels

String of characters

On popular demand esp. Desh and Bulbul I have to write more on these fellows. Let me first make my stance clear. I neither revere nor despise the unforgettable, forgettable characters who have bedecked the silver screen for ages. They popped up in my mind because of the habit of looking at unforseen and forgotten spaces, a habit best cultivated by observing junior dance artists in P.T. dance sequences (1-2-3 types dances where half of the time hero is clearly watching the choreographer)

There are few common traits that these people share, they occupy a of your psyche where only a quaint image lingers with left over remembrances of queer accent or strange character portrayal. It is in general very hard to associate their names with their images.

Satyen Kappu: He has done various roles most remembered one is Sholay's Raam Laal, the best context specific help ever made. All that the Thakur had to call out was RaamLaal in his deep baritone and master's task would be done. Most of the times he used to be finished before the movie ends or would be weeping/whining on various things.

Jagdish: I think he and not Iftikhar has the most number of appearances as police officer without a single promotion in his life time :)

Sudhir: Now sudhir is a character which very few people can recollect. He is the fellow with long downward turning mustache and queer thick foreign accent Hindi. To aid your recollection he was one of the brothers in Satte pe Satta.

Tej Sapru: Now this one is a bouncer. Tej Sapru was epitome of road side gangster, college baddy, goon's son etc. He dominated the scene in 80s and 90s like no one else. Remember the show manager in Tezaab. Or the baddy in Saajan who tries to rape Madhuri Dixit and a crippleed Sanjay Dutt tries to save him. I guess the best AHA moment belongs to him because of the contrast between persistent presence and relative obscurity. Trying to google tej sapru results in some lawyer named 'Tej Bahadur Sapru' of British era.

Macmohan: It is easy to remember him with his all encompassing beard thin and frail frame. His most memorable role was that of Sambha in Sholay where he had only few lines. Interestingly he is uncle of starlet Ravina Tandon.

I would not include A.K. Hangal here as he is quite well known by his name and his lines in Sholay 'Itna sannata kyon hai bhai' but many people do believe he was born old :)

Do check out later i will continue this :)

PS: another good habit is to go on staple diet of movies on Zee Cinema and Star Gold

string of characters

Remember Iftekar(man with record polic officer roles) ? MacMohan (Sambha) ? Satyen Kappu (Sholay ka omni present raam laal)? Bob Christo (Quintessential phoren baddy)

We should document such people whom no one remembers by name but faces. A typical reaction would be 'oh that guy' and a smirk :)

words

Some of other stuff from my side. Photos belong to Saurabh

http://flickr.com/photos/visio/509032043/

http://flickr.com/photos/visio/421224382/

http://flickr.com/photos/visio/509253022/in/photostream/

http://flickr.com/photos/visio/521356406/

मेघ

ज़ुल्फ़ों के काले मेघ, दिल मैं गम बरसाते हैं
दर्द के फूल खिलते हैं जब सामने वो आते हैं

zulfon ke kaale megh, dil main gam barsate hain
dard ke phool khilte hain jab saamne wo aate hain

प्रतीक अग्रवाल कायल

quark's dilemma

B.Tech. is Bachelor of Technology OR Bachelor because of Technology?



If it is that important to study pros and cons of everything why limit yourself to constitution?

Quark's Law

Moore's law, Murphy's Law, this law, that law

Now comes quark's law: 'There exists one more law than the number of laws you can count'

Structures

"Web site" baffles Internet terrorism trial judge

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/security_britain_internet_dc;_ylt=AszIY5m_8gyrEPggaWSqKdgjtBAF

This is an apt example of how internet and www is changing our society and yet formal structures of our society are still unaware of this or don't have anything in place for this. Lawmakers and dealers are still groping in dark about cyber-crimes primarily because our law like mathematics works on a set of axioms (which are fundamental rights, consitution etc.) and derived truths (laws which adhere to these) so we would need to incorporate these things in the axioms itself. Describing new age things in old age terminology will backfire one day. Describing website in terms of published books or equivalent wont work

Mahatma, Bapu, Gandhi

It is really hard to talk of Mr. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi in India without being in extreme. Awe, Disbelief, Reverence, Negligence are few of the emotions in which you have to delve or others would make you delve on topics related to him.

This post is less on Mr. Gandhi and more on 'on Gandhi'. Recent past has shown Gandhi revisited, re-analyzed. The best part is analyzed because he has been hailed as a messiah, prophet, avatar, the perfect soul, the Christ who took others pain, the man who never did anything wrong. We have started giving flesh to his soul, making him human, fallible. Accepting that heros are fallible, spiderman can fail, there is sweat under his arms.

We have started accepting his limitation and power e.g. Lage Raho Munna Bhai. Puritans and fundamentalists have codified Mr. Gandhi in dhoti, khaadi and charkha. But this new Gandhigiri is less on Gandhi and more on our perception of Gandhi, how should his principles be interpreted in new age (or should they be reinterpreted) . What he said and did was best for his times and situations. Applying them rampantly in space and time is a blatant insult and probably not all of his teachings can be used. (Imagine government some special occasion giving goats to poor people because Gandhiji used to drink goats milk, Doode! those poor fellows would feed the goat or their children?!?).

We have also started coming to terms with his personal life and his affair with Mira (I am yet to read Mira and Mahatma and other related text to comment in detail), his tumultuous and destructive relation with eldest son and never talked of family life.

The worst that we can do with great men is to create there statues, put them in pedestal, codify there teachings and sayings and elevate them to a prophetic status of idealism from where they are a mute spectators of there own insult.

From 15th Aug/26th Jan based Attenborough's 'Mahatma' we have moved to Lage Raho Munna Bhai. From 'prerak prasangs' (inspirational anecdotes) we have moved to deeper and more professional studies on his life.

साधो रे

साधो रे ये मुर्दों का गाँव - अग्नी

http://efreakyshare.blogspot.com/2007/05/sadho-re-by-agni-video.html

अति उत्तम प्रणय पत्थर (Rock) और दोहे का

कहाँ थी ये अग्नी अब तक
किस सीने मैं दबी थी ज्वाला
अब जो छलकी है तेरे उर से
पीने दे यह जीवन हाला

- प्रतीक अग्रवाल 'कायल'

Dil ki aahaten

chand lafz apni zindagi ki kitaab se hame bhi padao
kya beeti kaisi beeti kuchh hame bhi sunao
kis panne pe kaun mila, panna palatate bichhad gaya
kahaan syahi ke daag lage hume bhi batao

Indian debacle

As i am a bona fide Indian i have to comment on Indian cricket teams performance and have to give my expert comments on what should be done next. What is the best strategy, should Chappel be kicked out or Dravid be spanked?

I feel the team needs to rest, rejuvenate themselves. There is too much cricket. Players are not puppets. Give them a break. Every batsmen a good one, bowling is just okay, all of them have proved themselves so no need to revamp the team apart from certain policies like one should be kicked out (or allowed to cool your heels) with assurance that you will be taken back when you are ready. There has to be a stable opening batting line up. India plays 3-4 opener

0x49 0x6e 0x6e 0x6f 0x76 0x61 0x74 0x69 0x6f 0x6e 0x00

Bummed! Flustered! Sounds Greek!
Is it a puzzle? a code? a key to Aztec gold or secret of Da Vinci's sexual orientation or Michelangelo's link with Al-Qaeda?
The answer is Innovation. It is simple hexadecimal representation of ASCII code for innovation. (What an innovative thought eh ;-) )

Yes the innocent word innovation. Knowledge industry, flat world, globalization, information age blah blah to the nth power.

Every one is crying hoarse, look at us we are an innovative company. We lay a lot of emphasis on innovation. We want our employees to be innovative. We always innovate
Holy crap! No one cares as long as the monies are coming

Read some serious stuff here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innovation and start innovating

(what an innovative blog)

Moore's Law

Number of transistors on an integrated circuit for minimum component cost doubles in every 18 months. (Reference)

Well I propose new Quark's Law of idiocy. Average 'level' of programmers dwindles by half every two year.

By level I mean the kind of work you do, the kind of work that get proud of(if you get a chance to do so).

\

A programmers problem in C language:

How do you print a new line of information on a console?
printf("\n");
Turn the problem into itself, recursive
How do you print the symbol \ followed by n on console?
printf("\\n");
Then how do you print the symbol \ followed by \ followed by n?
printf("\\\n");

\ is a popular way to express the inexpressible because new line is a concept not an axiomatic symbol like: a,b,c
Just as one uses . to denote an end of line in English language. So whenever you have to comment about the dot you have to write d followed by o followed by t (as I did few characters back) or use '.'

Surely our computer and there arcane languages are no contender against our evolutionary advanced hair covered CPUs

ब्लौग अब हिंदी में

गूगल भाई साहब को पता नही कहाँ से पता चल गया की हमें हिंदी में टाईप करना बहुत अच्छा लगता है

भाई बहुत मस्त चीज है यार

क़सम से मजा आ गया हिंदी मैं टाईप करते हुए एक अजीब सा एहसास हो रह है
मैंने पता नही कितनी बार कोशिश की होगी अलग अलग सॉफ्टवेयर use करके
धन्य हो श्री अमित अगर्वाल का जिन्होंने हमे अवगत कराया इस feature se
Digitally Inspired

Tagged!

Are you getting some tagged mails from a friend or from someone you had mailed sometime back?


Get 'Digitally Inspired'

:-(

Jean Baudrillard no more

News Article

About Jean

Kotable Kotes

Everyone should perform above average!
(Duh! mate what will happen to the average?)

Microsoft Access is not working today!
(hee hee hee hee no comments dude)

Is there a mathematics where no objects are equal to themselves!

Mirza Asadullah Baig Khan Ghalib

Yeh na thee hamari qismat..

Yeh na thee hamari qismat keh wisaal-e-yaar hota
Agar aur jeete rahtay yehi intezaar hota

Tere waade par jiyee ham to yeh jaan jhoot jana
Keh khushi se mar na jaate agar intezaar hota

Yeh kahaan ki dosti hai bane hain dost naaseh
Koi chaarasaaz hota koi ghamghuzar hota

Kahoon kis se main keh kya hai shab-e-gham buri balaa hai
Mujhe kya bura tha marana agar aikbaar hota

Huay mar keh ham jo ruswa huay kyun ka gharq-e-dariya
Na kabhi janaza uthata na kahin mazaar hota

Yeh masaael-e-tasavvuf yeh tera bayan ghalib
Tujhe ham wali samajhate Joh na badaakhwar hota.

T R A N S L A T I O N
I N
E N G L I S H

It was never in my fate to meet my beloved.
Even if more years of life was to me allocated, I would have been still awaiting the prize cherished.

If you think that I had been living on your promise, it is a lie.
For, if I had faith in you, would not of joy I would die.

Woe betide, my friendship, that the friends give pious advice and sermons they deliver.
I need someone on whose shoulders could I weep, who could allay my grief and my fears.

Whom should I tell that the night of sorrow is full of pangs.
I would not have resented the death, if it comes only once.

Disgraced, as I was after my death, why didn't I drown in a river or sea.
Neither, there would have been a funeral, nor tomb erected for me.

The marvels of ethical problems and your statements full of meanings.
I would have counted you, "Ghalib" amongst dearest friends of God; if only, you had not been a lover of drinks.

This is the translation of one of Ghalib's ghazals by Mansurul Hoda, author of the Urdu book "Dusra Rookh." He is one of the scholars of Ghalib poetry. He has translated many Ghalib ghazals and also published many articles on different Urdu poets and their poetry. He can be reached via e-mail


Taken from: http://members.tripod.com/~Hoda/mansur.html

ab neebu ki taazgi aapki baniyaan main - Dollar Baniyan
now get lime's freshness in your vest - Dollar Vests

Heard this from radio while commuting to office

ROFLOL, ROFLMAO

Eklavya

Brilliant! Bravo! and kudos to Mr. Chopra to make a thoroughly perfect movie. Excellent work of picturization. He takes whatever is required out of tradition, mythology, dialectic discussion of right and wrong, caste system and ignores the crap. What I really enjoyed was the pace of movie with good twists and turns in the story.

He has made me believe again that story and script are the heroes of cinema. I thought it to be another bleak, 'ART' movie and why the hell is he not showing his story in the promos, but when you do watch the movie you will realize that it is the story which carries the whole weight.

Another point is Mr. Chopra doesn't go overboard with scenery, art as does Mr. Bhansali where actors are mere puppets strolling or living in front of a picturesque background. Let the background be background because it is meant to be at the back Mr. Bhansali.

Amitabh Bachchan at his best. Now this is what is called acting. Not to make people cry or laugh because politicians and Mr. Chidambaram are best at it but to ACT. To behave as some one else
to personify some one and when you see Mr. Bachchan you wont be watching Mr. Bachchan. You will be seeing Eklavya.

So it is with most of the cast. Boman Irani really great, Jimmy Shergill in a small yet well done role. Saif very good (though not as overpowering as Langda Tyagi)

A must watch for those souls who are fed up with crass comedies, heart wrenching NRI drama, bleak underworld stories (Actually the term underworld is a misnomer because we all carry our heaven and hell with us)

Things that I despise but do watch. No reasons, no infatuations, no obsessions

Crazy Kiya Re...... :: Aishwarya Rai with skimpiest frock she has ever worn
Tofee with Taran :: Mutual Back patting pack of brats and babes and a karan johar
Sawaal ka sawal :: Body huggin Tshirt on a toads body SRK. Funky video
Great Indian Laughter Challenge:: from class to crass, I still await a good laugh

Code for Thought

Requirement, value for customer, usability, testability and all the other 'ilities' are debilitating. We need the hackers (not the password stealers), artists, craftsmen in our coding/programming industry.

It is good to take note of formal procedures, processes etc. but coding/programming is a human activity involving a lot of thought and creativity. One should experiment a lot. Write code for the sake of it, don't think about its usability or better write code for yourself. A nerd wanted to solve a problem of formatting text data and existing tool could not do it. The person concerned being the lazy programmer that he is, decided to over-kill the problem with a general-purpose tool that he could use in at least one other place and lo behold it is Perl made by Larry Wall.

So start making your own code, tools which solve your own problem chances are that others will also be facing similar issues. Or better write code for fun, just pure unadulterated joy. Work as the child plays in a sandbox

Sexy & Sex

I'm bringin' sexy back (Yeah) (dhinchik dhinchik and all other unspeakable sounds in Just-In Timberlake's latest song)

Don't know whether this gentleman is speaking about bringing a sexual renaissance or talking about posterior of an alpha female!

But no no no sexy has no connection what so ever with copulation not even the hint towards it.

Sax man! Saxy phone! Sexy Car! Sex Bomb! SAX!

Yeah these are some of the words I hear often and wonder what has car, phone or bomb has to do with coitus. In this age of seduction everything has to be sexy. Even your ads have to have sexual undertones to it

Dabaa ke piyo!

Choos ke khao (Parle Orange)!
In the last case if you have seen the ad then you will realize that the kid is no archetype sample for Dr. Freud's Oedipal study but he needs to suck on an innocent candy as to make a gesture of a kiss. Talking of advertisements made in a bad taste!

Aam (the common)

no no this not any of Indian Hindi movies (Bollywood smells of American fixation, foreign fetish and reactive self perception of Indian psyche) like 'Daag the fire', 'Eklavya the royal guard'. Aam in Hindustani means common, though it also means the tropical fruit - mango. I am considering the common aspect.

'XYZ toothpaste daaton ki sadan se lade aam toothpaste se 10 guna zyada' (XYZ toothpaste fights tooth decay 10 times better than common/ordinary toothpaste)

'Kisi bhi aam detergent se de behtar dhulai' (Gives a better wash than any common detergent)

Now I am no ad or media expert but this doubt still lingers. Where are these 'Aam' toothpaste, detergent, nappy, etc sold. Who buys them? 'Aam' people?

I think these 'Aam' set of products are the only non existent products which give such a tough competition! Talking of hyper reality Mr. Baudrillard are you listening!!!
Hello !

(In the quest to be different we all are same)

Valentino Diwas

Phrases like Special Day, V Day, D Day, Just another day, Love is in the air (but I only see air pollution) are all hackneyed phrases over used abused misused. Spoken over and over and over to the point where my brain marching ahead in its evolutionary path silently ignores these noises as they hardly contribute furtherance of the species and nearly nill in the process of natural selection.

Valentino Diwas is a conspiracy played out by archies, hallmark and all goody goody stuff producers. Mass produced, templatized love. Diamonds are forever well they have been here forever!

Does Newton's Second Law apply on live pigs?

What a silly question to ask. But do ya have the answer. You sure have to keep the pig on a frictionless surface and then apply a force, then calculate his mass and acceleration of it. Air resistance yes our dear old friend would come back, so keep him in a vaccum. Surely he will die in that then you wont have a live pig! What the heck what does it matter it is alive or dead or even a pig?

The point is the physics we have is so constricted where even an elephant can be reduced to a payint maass (point mass in my physics teacher's rendition of the word). Every observation and every nature of universe has to fall in the rule, whatever is incongrous an abberation, a deviation, an outlaw. Do ya see the similarity in majority democracy and cultural xenophobia? A short respite was seen in chaos theory (which is a effusive name of non-linear dynamics)

The second point is that the day we consciously used laws which are universal (applicable to anyone) we started generalizing stuff and started on the quest of universal theory of everything. The same rules should apply to nearly every object (or all objects of specific types like subatomic particles). The day we concluded that apples and planetary bodies are moved by the same force we started seeing them in the same light as a 'payint maases'. This basic minimalism of experiment, the construct of system, surrounding and observer are all signs of modern science.

Tradition, Culture and Modernity in Technology

Whatever I say hence forward, there is no point in argument, analysis, debate. Just listen to it. If you feel sensible okay if you find it insensible then gurrrrret. They are ramblings put to words.

Words are birds,
they can fly
They can make you happy
and surely you can cry

Technology is seen as something really modern. Modern is out of the world, ahead of its times, ahead of norms, beyond the present. Like the second face of Janus facing to the future.

let me get to reality, let me take an example:

F = ma

If I say this equation (if you consider this as an equation) is from electrostatics you will have a short snort at me, and ask me whether I have heard of Newton.

Well who says F should always stand for Force, m for mass and a for acceleration????????

There are patterns of behavior which are followed for various reasons:

Ease of use: conventions. You create conventions to shorten the expression F stands for Force etc.

Formal processes: Just like a bachelor's program, degree education or upanayan sanskar

Rituals: to denote transition from one stage to another and tell the same to others, promotion, bachelor party, project handover, joining party, company leaving treat.

Basically traditions are also communication through human actions in groups. When you are getting married you tell the rest of society I am marrying so and so. Otherwise go fuck somewhere in a shady corner who cares?

and yes technology doesn't always mean IT or a software running in a dumb chip

Software and Freedom

Free Software Foundation vehemently supports free use and distribution of software. It is some thing like you get a good code you can share it with your neighbour. Once can't deny the role FSF and Open software has played in computing industry.

The freedom as proposed by fsf has a slight glitch. The code may be free to use but not easy. Let us take freedom in political domain. In all modern democracies freedom of people are ensured by rights and a right of expression is mentioned which is like a core, a base around which other freedoms rest. That is why importance to journalism is given even though it has no formal role in constitution. So is our software.

Let me explain. How many times have you [I am talking to Linux users] cursed your machine for not able to do something in your work, do you hate working on a console the whole day? The point is it comes free you can always download source of anything from net change it and start using it but the trouble in changing. Look at the amount of documentation, forums which one has to consult to.

It reminds me one of the Franz Kafka's short stories [which are extremely metaphorical]where a man always came for justice on door of law and the gaurd always refused him to go in. When the man was about to die gaurd told him you never went in the gate was made for you only.

So we have created free software but you have to be a geek or a coding god to understand and create your own stuff. My basic premise is software or code is software usage is an act of expression so whenever I tell this windows to do something someone has thought over and made windows such that it would be nice for me. But the glitch is that how could he think about all the possible needs of me. In such a diverse world with myriads of requirements who would go on making software for others.

We should create platforms where the user has more control over the system not in terms of open ness but ease of use also. Freedom needs its own enablers and checks and balances as well.

K era

That K in title is not for Kyonki Chhaachh bhi kabhi dhahi thee. But for Knowledge With a capital and silent K.

It is a Knowledge economy. Global economy. Religion can be seen as having a source of knowledge.It can be the secret knowledge of the unknown [paradoxical hunhh], the right way of living, secrets and history of cosmos, or ethics. Common things about religion is the interpreters of knowledge or the gate holders of heaven, the learned people who bring common men, the lesser mortals in contact with divinity, supremity. They are agents of ascent.

But knowledge economy starting from printing press threw them off-gaurd. It brought that withhold virgin of knowledge to common man. Who can learn, read, discuss religion as they like. The role of the interpreter, the gatekeeper reduced to a peon. Now the same knowledge economy is going through a rift. Knowledge which was thought as free (so was water once) is a capital which has its own Capitalists.

There has been a fundamental shift in power or perception of power. It has moved from Land [Agriculture], Resources [Feudalism], Capital [Industrialization], Access or Control [ Post modern- Management Era where managers have control over other people's money]over cash to Access or Control of Knowledge. The line between last 2 is still blur.

Well coming back to knowledge pundits, the people who sit over vast heap of knowledge patent and IP protection is one of the things they have created to withhold knowledge.

PS: The word knowledge above is still a little bit blurry to me and i am sure even to knowledge manager and knowledge workers....

Binary Files

Binary files are bytes or streams of 0s and 1s which computer's hardware can understand. On the other end we have source code which is series of literals and enlish like keywords which are "human understandable". Source code is a set of instructions intended to achieve some desired goal/objective/functionality. These two broadly are the two ends of spectrum of software industry.

Terminology may differ. People in OOP would make source files and class file representing them but the fact remains same. Machines and humans dont understand each other's langauge. Part of the reason the situation remains same is architecture of computing machines taken. When they where made machines where thought of as number crunching monsters. So there hardware was designed so as to compute addition, multiplication and all the logical stuff needed. Then from computing we moved to word processing and office automation which thpugh required totally different features. These features where mapped on the same hardware and general purpose machines where made. This is a separate topic of discussion. Lets not move in hardware lets just talk about the SOFTware.

Language incompatibility amongst machines and humans led to creation of this spectrum. Human readable source code on one side and machine readable binary on otherside. Source code in all its essence represents human will which gets translated in machine instructions. What happens in between? If i am the master and computer is the slave then why do i need big big companies to make my PC understand what i want to do.


Software in real life would be flexible to allow user to express her/his whims and fancies. The way we currently do it is that binary would read from a file/setting/property and change its behaviour. If you want to change "behaviour" of a program then either we have to change the "settings" somewhere which the binary would read and determine what to do. Notice that the binary is to check the values in setting and perform some action. Now behaviour of binary hasn't changed.

Next Best Thing

Wondering for the next killer app, the next breakthrough. Gazing through crystal ball for whether Microsoft will still be there in future and world would still use the same computer languages (Only if "computers" exist then)

Let me take a guess. First one observation. Please look at the keywords "computer languages". Why is it a language? It is an expression of desire from a user to be fulfilled by the machine.

What model current industry follows is that through market research or direct customer interaction and various inputs from resources people develop a software for a user.

The programmer made it as a "source code" i.e. human readable instructions which aim to achieve a goal. Now the typical software would encompass all the scenarios, environments, situations that a user can present and various actions it can do with the software and make the software according to that. So the user has no control.

If user wants to modify or change the software then he/she has to either get it recompiled or developer has provided options, menus, configuration files which will change softwares behaviour. What Free Software Foundation thought that it should be completely FREE and open to change. FSF though has brought a large shift in computing industry (in some other unintented ways) but it did not become the killer app.

What future requires is expression of thought and desire of the human. It can be in GUI by which I dont have to type may be i could write by just waving my hands in air or some wierdo thing. It can be in terms of logic programming where programmer only tells what is to be done not how. It can be a break through in GUI wherein I dont have to write in a linear fashion within a box.

We have studied generations of computers but not generations of users. Nowadays users have become sophisticated. You can expect some level of familiarity with computers. As Alvin Toffler envisioned in Third Wave we would be having prosumer. The line between a producer who creates a product for a consumer and they interact through an entity/interface known as market would blurr. Soon people would be programming themselves.

Now here take a word of caution. They would not be writing complex piece of software in C, Java or some other shit then compiling it and loading them but then software itself would be highly configurable and better languages would develop to express user's desire

In our technical jargons and mumbo jumbo we have forgot that computers are means to an end not the end in themselves.

Magic and Science

Magic and Science always seem opposite things. Magic is wonderful and unexplainable whereas basis of science itself is explanation. An explanation which is universal can be understood by anyone. But fundamentally they are same in one point that is wonder. Good magic and good science are always wonderfull to look at. The new age has denied both. If I tell you that soon we would be all mechanic zombies with infinite computing capabilities embedded in our neural systems then you would think ya ya ya it is possible. Magic inherently is science and vice versa. What looks magic to one has a science behind it. Remember all the great magicians where great intellectuals, had high IQs and where really intelligent.

That magic has gone out of technology domain. Where if you see a moving train on a huge screen you would run for your life. That awe for the unexplained as dimmed. May be it is because we have lost our curiosity. The scietific zeal. How many of us think how are things made how are things done? When science has entered electronic domain our experience of technology the internals, the dynamic has been remote.

To be more clear let us take example of mechanics and electronic/software. Engineering itself comes from wod engine. In my discussion it would mean a system not necessary and "engine" or a tangible machine but a system which has various components which is designed and implemented to fulfill a particulare requirement or desire.

In mechanical engineering you can visualize that if you pull this gear it will pull this part,this part will rotate and so this part would move by this amount. Your imagination and visualization depends on everyday experience. In software and even in hardware it becomes increasingly abstract and remote. It is always very difficulto to explain the software "design" and "architecture". How can you explain a server "running" and client listening . How do you explain or visualize what software does. The mental image that you make may not be necessarily the same the other guy makes.

One way is software documentation where by words and diagrams one tries to explain and "represent" various parts, connections, behaviour of software. The other is sorce code. It is the human readable form of actual thing that runs on machine. But increasingly we need better mechanisms to represent them. What a function does and how does it achieve this. We should move out of the standard documents in a hierarchical folder concept.

Crazy Idea: We can simulate a physical thing i.e. a machine, physical set up by software can we simulate another software using a software ?