Sen's Spot

Tamil political comedy (kalainger )

2009-05-08T12:44:00.001-07:00

Comedy of Errors

2009-05-07T17:06:00.000-07:00

Yesterday i was feeling a bit down and wanted to listen to some songs.My search on youtube for good tamil songs led to this guy who has posted so many videos.After a few minutes watching the video and reading the comments on his youtube channel stocknsurf i was ROTFL.

churake dil mera woh KOREA challi(DOnt miss the last one minute of this video)
**** WARNING *****
people who know even a little bit of hindi will end up having severe stomach pain
********

Muthappa Muthappa

Stephen devassy

2009-05-01T20:52:00.000-07:00

Stephen devassy and karthick jamming

Stephen Devassy and balasubramaniam

unplugged with srinivas

Nitya Kanni - M.V.Venkatram

2009-04-02T12:14:00.000-07:00

Ahh....the book is too good.M.V.Venkatram tells a mythological story of a women , who has a special boon.The boon of being a virgin forever.Venkatram tells a wonderful story with it, actually i found out later that this was based on, one of the mythological branch stories of maha bharatha.But not taking any credit away from venkatram, He just turns that mythological story into a one, that portraits the power structure of our society and what's a women's role in that.He actually goes even further and talks about the mighty and the weak.A wonderful book.

Sayavanam - Sa.Kandaswamy

2009-04-01T12:10:00.001-07:00

A beautiful novel. On the surface it looks like a detailed description of a man destroying a garden.But through various metaphors , Sa.Kandaswamy opens up the novel for various lines of interpretation.Excellent writing.

Vishnupuram - JeyaMohan

2009-03-31T12:19:00.000-07:00

I wanted to write about Vishnupuram and so many other good tamil books that i read.But never got time.Writing on Nan kadavul, i thought i should do a post on Vishnupuram immediately.Immediately became more than a month and still couldn't do it.So i decided to at least write a couple of lines and do a post ,rather than procrastinate for a detailed big post.

Coming to Vishnupuram.This is simply an awesome book.If i have to describe it in 2 words, i would say "Imagination Unbound".I like magic realism and iam a succor for latin literature.But reading a book like this in tamil was an experience in itself.Vishnupuram just stunned me.I kept dreaming about it continuously for sometime , i didn't do that even for gabriel garcia's "Macondo".This is a wondeful piece of work.

The book is divided into 3 parts corresponding to the 3 sections of vishnu and so many other 3 things of hindu mythology.The first part is the best.The second part is a spiritual one which goes into detailed spiritual discussions on hinduism and buddism, most of the stuff in this part went over my head.The 3rd and final is the end/destruction, again jeyamohan's imaginations runs wild here.

This is a huge booking running close to 850 pages.Read it, at least the first section, and transport yourself to another world :).

Nan Kadavul

2009-02-17T22:11:00.001-08:00

Bala has done it again.He has shown the middle finger to the entire tamil film industry.He has broken all the conventional norms of tamil film industry to give one of the darkest tamil film ever.

Yes the movie wont run for packed houses, yes most of the english bloggers with trash it.That's because this is not a movie for the light hearted audience looking for a good time pass or mild intellectual discussion.If that is the case, you should stop with maniratnam, sujatha and kamal(probably watch anbe sivam again, with a slightly ugly looking kamal walking into the sun set with a stray dog).This is heavy stuff, this is bala and jeyamohan hitting you hard with reality.

The movie has its flaws,screenplay could have been tighter, could have avoided lot of repeat scenes from pithamagan, etc etc.But none of this matters as you wont be thinking about them, when the movie finishes.The movie will stay with you for a while and make you THINK AND ASK QUESTIONS.A rarity of rarity among tamil movies.Hats off to bala and jeyamohan.

Inspired kamala hassan videos continued

2008-09-24T17:56:00.000-07:00

###Use IE if you are having problems viewing it in other browsers.Some time Youtube might be in scheduled maintenance mode too###

5)Pachathanthiram and Very Bad Things

Very bad things is a dark and serious movie.Panchathanthiram was the lighter version of VBthings.pachathanthiram has many lift offs from very bad thing.Here is the major one.

Panchathanthiram

Very Bad Things

6)Thenali and What About Bob

Thenali is a full and full copy of what about bob.Here is one scene

Thenali

What About Bob

7)Sathya and Arjun
Sathya is basically a remake of arjun.I don't want to put the whole movie up here.So here is 3 minutes from the first 10 minutes of the movie.

Sathya

Arjun

Talking about remakes.. here is another one
Unnal Mudiyum thambi and Rudraveena.
K.B remade his Chiranjeevi's starring Rudraveena, which was also produced by chiranjeevi, in tamil as Unnal Mudiyum thambi.

Ithazhil - Unnal mudiyum thambi

Lalitha priyakamalam - Rudraveena

Jhanee Bhi Dho Yaaron -Michael Madhana Kamarajan ???

Indian News Channels

2008-09-24T12:51:00.000-07:00

I was talking to my friend in bangalore and he was blasting this lady, sagarika gosh for some comments she made about the right wing parties.I thought I will look up what she said that made my friend that angry.I didn't find what i was looking for but i stumbled on this video.

http://www.ibnlive.com/videos/72492/debate-obama-an-ideal-21st-century-leader.html

(This is a three part video.. looks for links at the bottom left of the video)

I couldn't believe it.The topic was barack and they were discussing the american politics in great detail.I kind of felt that i was watching some american channel like MSNBC or CBS, rather than a indian news channel.This is pathetic.I was wondering is this what every news channel in india is doing. Or is it just sagarika gosh, who being the wife of CNN-IBN's Rajdeep Sardesai gets to do these kind of stupid program?.

Saina Nehwal at the China Masters

2008-09-23T19:55:00.000-07:00

saina doing warm ups at the china masters

Saina Nehwal moves straight to round 16 as she was on a bye in the draw.She will be facing Ai Goto of japan tommorrow.

Saina Nehwal beat Ai Goto stright sets 21-12 21-10.She moves to round of 8 and will face Lin Zhu of china tommorrow.

Inspired kamal hassan part 2

2008-09-21T17:32:00.000-07:00

##### If your having problems watching the video's in firefox or chrome. Use IE, youtube video's seem to work better with IE than firefox :). #####

The post that gets the most hits in my blog is the inspired kamal hassan post.I thought, i will do a youtube addition to that post.So here are some of the inspired scenes/movies of kamala hassan.I will updating this post all week before i take off for my vacation, keep checking this post and the Inspired kamala hassan videos continued post...

1)Raaja Parvai and Graduate climax

Raaja parvai climax

The Graduate Climax

And you wonder why he is not getting an oscar award....

will upload other inspirations of Raaja paravai,"Butterflies are Free" and Sai paranjpaye's "Sparsh" later

2)Enakkul Oruvan and Reincarnation of Peter proud

A short summary of Enakul Oruvan

A short summary of Reincarnation of Peter proud

Comedies of Kamala Hassan

Watching Enakkul oruvan was a great experience. The movie is a full length comedy. checkout some of the scenes

I was so floored by universal hero's acting that i personally gave him an oscar.For someone who has mastered the art of handling heroines, Kamal seems to have problem when it comes to acting with mothers and sisters...

Oscar award 2...
Kamal hassan is confronting with his previous birth thoughts in this song.Check out the scenes in the first musical interludes following the winch scenes.Couldn't help but give him another oscar for this performance...

3)Indiran Chandiran and Moon over parador

Indiran chandiran scenes

There is a slight audio lag in the clip

Moon over parador scenes

4)Kadhala Kadhala and Two Much

kadhala kadhala scenes

Two Much lift of scenes
This was the only video i could get a hold of, it has a russian voice overlay.

More inspired videos from sathya,panchathanthiram,thenali etc continued here.

Saina Nehwal Out of Japan Super series

2008-09-17T08:23:00.002-07:00

Saina crashed out of the japan super series in her first match itself.she lost straight sets to the world no 7 Mi Zhou 18-21 16-21.

Know more about the game here

So next stop for saina will be the china masters super series sep 23-28..

WOW...

2008-09-16T07:27:00.000-07:00

Is India waking up?.A 638 crore plan to improve badminton with transparency on the spending.Wow...

The Sports Ministry has decided to provide state of art training and exposure both at domestic and international levels to 40 Badminton players for preparing the sportspersons for world class performance. Under the Scheme for “Preparation of Indian Teams for Commonwealth Games, 2010, the Steering Committee has approved the names of 35 Badminton players so far, for their inclusion in the “Core Group” of sportspersons . In addition, 8 Indian and 2 Foreign Coaches have also been indentified in consultations with Badminton Association of India (BAI).More here

Saina Nehwal the 2008 Chinese Taipei Open Champion

2008-09-14T11:08:00.000-07:00

She did it.Saina beat Lydia Cheah of malaysia to win the 2008 Chinese Taipei Open Championship.Becoming the first indian woman shuttler to win two major championships and a five star tournament.She beat lydia cheah in stratigh sets 21-8, 21-19.

Next stop for Saina is the Yonex Japan Super Series Open.This is going to be a tough one, lets hope for the best.

Japan Super series Draw

Saina Nehwal makes it to the Taipei Open finals

2008-09-13T09:04:00.000-07:00

Saina Nehwal beat Pia Zebadiah of indonesia yesterday to qualify for the finals.
Tomorrow she will face Lydia Cheah of malaysia in the finals..

shobana

2008-09-12T17:47:00.000-07:00

what a dancer.. check out shobana's performance

check out more of shobana here

Saina Nehwal through to Semifinals of Chinese Taipei Open

2008-09-11T22:52:00.000-07:00

Saina Nehwal made it to the Semifinals of the Chinese Taipei Open Beating Porntip Buranaprasertsuk of Thailand in the quaterfinals.Unfortunatley Maria Yulianti lost. so saina wont have the match with her much anticipated olympic rival.Tommorrow Saina will meet Pia Zebadiah of indonesia...

Saina through to quarters

2008-09-11T08:49:00.000-07:00

Saina Nehwal has entered the quarterfinals of the Taipei Open badminton
she beat HongKong’s Kwan Yi Mong 21-8, 21-12 .
She will be up against Porntip Buranaprasertsuk of Thailand.

Maria has also advanced to the quarters...Saina Nehwal and Maria yulianti match will be the next if they both beat there next opponents :)... can't wait to see that match..

Follow Saina Nehwal

2008-09-10T13:44:00.000-07:00

Saina Nehwal is competing in both the Taiwan open and Japan super series

Right now she is competing at the Taiwan Open

saina made it to round of 16 by beating Mintiang Fu of malayasia on 10/09/08.
she will meet Kwan Yi Mong of hongkong today.

Here is the schedule and results for the Taipei open
http://www.ctb.org.tw/2008/TaipeiOpen/CHINESE_TAIPEI_2008_0910_WS.pdf

The other indian player palying in the taiwan open is P kashyap who has also qualified for the round of 16.
http://www.ctb.org.tw/2008/TaipeiOpen/CHINESE_TAIPEI_2008_0910_MS.pdf

Saina has been raring to go against Maria Yulanti , ever since her quaterfinals loss in the olympics.In this series there is a chance of saina meeting maria yulanti in the semifinals if both of them make it.That would be very interesting to see...

After taiwan open she will take part in the japan super series which is scheduled form (09/16/2008 09/21/2008)

Here is the draw for the japan open tournament.
Click for the Tournament Draw

Saina Nehwal Vs Maria Yulianti Olympics Quaterfinal Video

2008-09-10T09:39:00.000-07:00

My previous video of the olympic quater final match between Saina Nehwal and Maria Yulanti didn't have commentary and most importantly the first set which went to 30 minutes.Here is another video of the match, which has the whole match with commentary.Enjoy

Saina Nehwal Vs Maria Yulianti Olympics quaterfinals Part 1

Saina Nehwal Vs Maria Yulianti Olympics quaterfinals Part 2

Saina Nehwal Vs Maria Yulanti Olympics quaterfinals Part 3

Saina Nehwal Vs Maria Yulianti Olympics quaterfinals Part 4

Saina Nehwal Vs Maria Yulianti Olympics quaterfinals Part 5

Saina Nehwal Vs Maria Yulanti Olympics quaterfinals Part 6

Saina Nehwal Vs Maria Yulanti Olympics quaterfinals Part 7

Saina Nehwal Vs Maria Yulanti Olympics quaterfinals Part 8

LHC - Is this the end of the world ??

2008-09-09T10:54:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow is the day, the worlds largest and highest energy particle collider LHC(Large Hadron Collider) will go online.This is the biggest scientific experiment to have ever taken place in the history of science.It is also the most advanced and costliest experiment to have ever take place.This collider will smash protons clost to the speed of light.It is supposed to recreate what the condition where like after Big bang.

Many people are worried about the consequences of this collision experiment.Cause with LHC we are steeping into an unknown area.One of the rumor that has been floating is that the collision could result in small black holes which might eventually grow bigger and destroy the earth.The Scientist community is saying that these kind of collisions happens every day in earth's upper atmosphere.There has been lot of discussion going on on the collider.check it out below

Even though LHC is coming online tomorrow, the experiment will happen only on Nov 26th.

Introducing the Big Bang machine here

Know More about it here
LHC at BBC

Black Holes ??

War War War

2008-09-07T17:53:00.000-07:00

Check out this awesome video.This is a simple english song set on the tune of Tamil/Baila song "Surangani". Beautiful,thoughtful lyrics and nice video clips makes this such a powerful video.

Chetan Anand

2008-08-23T21:56:00.003-07:00

Video of 2007 Indian Open Semi Finals and Finals(Includes some very funny commentary :))..

chetan anand and jwala gutta Interview from badmintonsite.com

Video of SemiFinals match between Chetan Anand and Andrew smith

Part 1/3

part 2/3

part 3/3

Video of Final between Chetan Anand and Boonsak Ponsana

part 1/5

part 2/5

Part 3/5

Part 4/5

Part 5/5

Links

http://www.badmintonindia.org/home.html

Anup Sridhar Vs Shoji SATO(Japan) olympics round 32 match

2008-08-23T21:56:00.001-07:00

Round 32 match between Anup Sridhar Vs Shoji SATO(Japan)

part 1

part 2

part 3

part 4

How is Vijender already a bronze medal winner??

2008-08-21T10:31:00.001-07:00

I was confused.. how come everybody is saying that he has already secured a bronze medal in olympics.he has just won a quater final match.That means there are 4 people in the fray for the medals. so if two guys advance to the finals there will still be 2 losers from the semi final match and just for a second assuming that Vijender loses in the semi's and then he again loses for the bronze medal match between two losers of the semi finals..he will end up as the fourth guy and he wont win the medal.So how come everybody is saying he has already secured a medal for india.

Actually i just found out this.. :).In Olympic boxing,there wont be a match between the two losers of the semi finals for the bronze, but instead two bronze medals are awarded :).so there are four medal winners for every weight class.Hence for the 75kg weight class, all the people who won the quarter finals including Vijender already have a bronze medal... :)

Sushil Kumar

2008-08-21T06:45:00.001-07:00

Wow.What an Olympics this has been for india... another inspiring story...Sushil Kumar the bronze medal winner in wrestling.The second wrestler in India's Olympic history to win a bronze medal in the men's 66 kg freestyle category.

On Thursday, at the Beijing Agriculture University Complex, Sushil fought four continuous bouts but refused to go back to the Athletes Village to take rest after two bouts. It was typical of Sushil, who does not believe in deserting the ring midway through. Born in a middle class family, Sushil resisted many provocations to say good bye to the sport and decided to pursue his dream of an Olympic medal.

Sushil’s father, Diwan Singh, a former wrestler himself, is employed as a driver with the Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited in Delhi. He could not generate enough cash but provided priceless encouragement.More here

Sushil then talked about how his father would get milk for him every morning so that he could be strong enough to train. "He did that for years, without fail. He was sure I could do something big," he said, getting emotional.

Did he know that the medal was coming when he went into the last round? "No one knows that. You just fight. I was tense this morning but Kartarji kept massaging my body the whole day. He is a double Asian Games gold medalist, secretary of the wrestling federation. I felt bad, awkward but he insisted that it was necessary."

It surely was, and Kartar, standing next to him smiled. "We don't have masseurs and doctors here with our team. I was his coach, his masseur, his trainer, his motivator. It was my responsibility to do it. But I would now request the government to give better facilities to the wrestlers.More here

The disbelief grows as one enters the dingy room. It looks dark despite the light outside, and with barely any space to walk between the beds, the room gives the impression of being much smaller than it is. The shelf at the back has a number of trunks thrown together, taking up precious space, but it’s all they have to spare for their belongings.

Sumit, one of the wrestlers who bunks in the same room as Sushil, proudly points out his now famous colleague’s mattress among nine others in the small room. “See, this is where he sleeps. In the summer he sleeps this side, but in winter he moves to the other mattress. We have to manage with just these two coolers, so he moves to be more comfortable,” he says.More here

Video of Sushil thanking everyone

Video of the last one minute of the bronze medal match

Video of celebrations at sushil's home

http://broadband.indiatimes.com/Sports_/We_were_sure_of_Sushils_win/videoshow/3388036.cms

Links
Village boys give India their best show

Insatiable hunger for perfection

Saina Nehwal Vs Ella karachkova olympic Round 64 match

2008-08-20T11:30:00.000-07:00

This is the 2008 Olympics Round 64 match between India's Saina Nehwal and Russia's Ella KARACHKOVA.

Interview with Ella Karachkova

video from badmintonsite

There is an overlapping audio from another match in this video.

part 1

Part2

Part3

Saina Nehwal Vs Maria Kristin Yulanti Beijing 2008 badminton Quaterfinals match

2008-08-20T11:01:00.001-07:00

Beijing 2008 badminton Quaterfinals match Between India's Saian Nehwal and Indonesia's Maria Kristin Yulanti Wed Aug 13.Saina lost the match.Saina after leading 11 3 in the final set, ran out of steam.When they changed places after the eleven, maria took advantage of the air drift at the end of the court on saina's side and raised her game to comeback from 3 11 to clinch the game for her.It was a very competitive game.Look for the court movements of saina and maria.Maria hardly wastes any energy.

check out the match videos here

Saina on questions of her fitness level in the match

Saina remains upbeat, promises a gold in 2012 London

Saina Nehwal 2006 philippines Open Final

2008-08-20T09:15:00.000-07:00

Saina Nehwal became the first Indian woman to win a four-star badminton event when she clinched the Philippines Open in 2006.She defeated Julia Xian Pei Wong of Malaysia 21-15, 22-20 to win the women's singles title.Here is the final match.

Saina Nehwal Vs Julia Wong philippines open final part 1/4

Saina Nehwal Vs Julia Wong philippines open final part 2/4

Saina Nehwal Vs Julia Wong philippines open final part 3/4

Saina Nehwal Vs Julia Wong philippines open final part 4/4

watch video of saina's parents reaction to her win here

Links
Saina creates history, wins Philippines Open
http://www.philippineopenbadminton.com/

Anoop Sridhar 2008 Olympic match

2008-08-19T20:05:00.000-07:00

Anoop Sridhar Vs Marco Vasconcelos
part1

part2

part3

part4

part5

Gopichand who?

2008-08-19T11:17:00.000-07:00

Sport Minister M S Gill on Tuesday failed to recognise former All England Champion and National Badminton Coach Pullela Gopichand when along with Olympian Saina Nehwal he went to meet him in his office.While Gill greeted Saina heartily, he could not recognise Gopichand who was standing next to Saina and asked him who he was."Who are you?" Gill asked Gopichand, leaving him with no other option but to spell out his name. Gopichand is only the second Indian after Prakash Padukone to win the All England Open Champion in 2001 and we hope Gill was only joking when he asked him his name.More here

Here is the video of his semi finals against Peter Gade at the 2001 All England Championship

Part 1

more here

His Finals against chen Hong at the 2001 All England Championship

part 1

more here

Links
Interview in rediff
http://in.rediff.com/sports/2001/mar/14gopi1.htm

Vijender Kumar

2008-08-18T09:44:00.000-07:00

Well, Akhil Went down fighting.Let's look at the others still in the fray.The best medal hope in boxing for india is Vijender Kumar.Check out this video, it gives a good picture of the Bhiwani boxing club.

Although he is a boxing champion, Vijender Kumar is an oddity in India, a virtual one-sport country where cricket is religion.The son of a bus driver who worked overtime to pay for his coaching, Vijender is India's unsung champion boxer.

"My blood boils when everybody goes gaga over cricket," says the 22-year-old, one of five boxers in India's modest Olympics contingent to Beijing this summer.More hereVijender Kumar interview Video on BBC about BBC(problem with firefox?.watch in IE)

Vijender is one of the new generation sports icon of india.He belongs to the new wave of sportmen in india, who are not content with winning an odd match here and there.He belongs to the generation which dreams big and works for it.This boxer with looks of a model's dream does not even stop with olympics.He dreams bigger than that.He wants to box in Madison Square Garden and he dreams of a day when Don king will be his promoter.He is on the way to achieving it.

Want to know how he has already won a bronze medal.check it out here.

Receiving the Arjun award from the president.

The District Administration had forwarded recently a plan to the State Government for setting up a boxing centre in Bhiwani, but Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda had announced setting up a of Boxing Academy to mark the historic victory of Vijender Singh in the Beijing Olympics.More here

2008 Beijing olympics quaterfinals Aug 20

Vijender Kumar Vs Carlos Gongora Round 1

Vijender Kumar Vs Carlos Gongora Round 2

Vijender Kumar Vs Carlos Gongora Round 3

Olympics Round of 16 match on Aug 16th

Vijender Kumar Vs Angkhan Chomphuphuang Round 2

Vijender Kumar Vs Angkhan Chomphuphuang Round 3

Vijender Kumar Vs Angkhan Chomphuphuang Round 4

Videos from 1119sup

Links

Saina Nehwal

2008-08-17T18:34:00.000-07:00

A Rising star in international badminton, she is india's best.One of india's many next generation sportsman/sportswomen who are not shy to mention their intentions and are not afraid of loosing.Focused,determined and fearless, she destroys here opponents with raw power and lightning speed.Even though she is not a naturally talented badminton player, her rise is due to her perseverance and single minded dedication for one sport,Badminton.Her story like many other indian Olympic athletes is one of inspiration.

The tough journey had started. Saina had to be taken to the stadium every day early in the morning and the distance from the house was 20 km.It was a challenge for both of us because I had to wake up early so that we could reach the stadium by 6 am. The training session used to last for about two hours.After attending the training session, Saina had to attend school. This way I had to drive my scooter around 50 km daily as Saina, apart from attending rigorous practice sessions, had to concentrate on studies,” her father explained.The impact of this tough routine began to show in the first week as Saina would often fall asleep on the back seat.Sensing the danger, Saina’s mother started accompanying them on the two-wheeler. This continued for three months.Ultimately, the family had to arrange a house near the stadium in 1999. This time the distance was about 7 km from the stadium.More here

Watch IBN video "Move Over Sania, Saina is here"

Anyway… going into the Nationals, it looks like Saina is the only serious obstacle to Aparna Popat's quest for an unprecedented eight consecutive National singles titles. She's the hottest prospect on the horizon; at 14, she is one of the top players in the country. She's had a string of impressive results abroad, so not many will be surprised if she manages to upset Aparna this time.More here

I just uploaded some of her olympic matches on youtube Here is the match between saina and Maria Yulanti,unfortunately this one has only the 2nd and last set.The awesome first set is not there.If anybody has that please upload. will upload and update the remaining parts ASAP

Beijing 2008 badminton Quaterfinals match Between India's Saian Nehwal and Indonesia's Maria Kristin Yulanti Wed Aug 13.Saina lost the match.

I moved the match videos to a separate post here

All Saina Nehwal posts in my blog

Links
if the video does not play in firefox try IE...

saina Nehwal Philippines open videos

Saina Nehwal Vs Maria Kristin Olympic match video

Saina Nehwal Vs Ella karachkova match video

Video of saina nehwal losing a the junior world chamionship

Video,Asian Games will be tough: Saina

Video:Saina joins Mittal champions trust, Manisha Malhotra talks about saina

Akhil Kumar

2008-08-17T10:10:00.000-07:00

Whether he wins the bout on monday or not.He is a champion.How many times will you see a indian down 2-6 against the reigning champion come out of the ring as a winner and the champion in tears.Here is more about him

Akhil Interview Part 1

Akhil Interview Part 2

Akhil Interview Part 3

Akhil Kumar Vs Sergery Vodopyanov, Final round

Videos from 1119sup

This one from Mani 5577. People are already uploading lot of videos.

IBN interview video

interview with his parents video
Links
The indian mohammed Ali ?
Back From the Ropes
Akhil at the olympics
His Bio at Mittaltrust

BBC - Bhiwani Boxing Club

2008-08-17T09:54:00.001-07:00

A tin of covers the boxing arena. A majority of the kids here don’t have their own gloves. And to drink water after practice, the lone hand-pump has to be operated very slowly, otherwise sand particles will start coming out along with the water.You look around and have to wonder, what results will you possibly get with conditions like these? Under normal circumstances, you wouldn’t get anything. But the one thing that cannot be factored in is the passion for boxing that seems inherent in the Bhiwani local.And because of this, despite the very basic facilities, Bhiwani has become the boxing hub of India. More Here

A few days back, Bhiwani was just another nondescript north Indian town. Its unique feat of sending five boxers to the Olympics was known to only the die-hard sports fan.Eight days into the Games the scenario changed, and how. The entire nation --- and probably some boxing pockets in the world --- have been enthralled by the exploits of the Bhiwani pugilists --- Akhil Kumar, Jitender Kumar and Vijender Kumar. The three are on the cusp of rewriting Indian boxing history, and this city now hopes for at least one medal from its quarter-finalist trio.More Here

There’s a reason they call ramshackle Bhiwani town in Haryana India’s Little Cuba.As dusk falls, a strange, new fear grips residents of this sleepy North Indian town — the fear of power cuts, which they never really worried about.Over the past week, outages are the only thing that have come between the residents and their heroes: the four boxers in the Olympics coached by Jagdish Singh, all from the Bhiwani Boxing Club (BBC).More Here

The boxing boom in Haryana has been set off due to systematic planning and execution to promote the sport in the State with a combination of helpful factors like irresistible financial incentives, with the sound support of sponsors and the mush-rooming of boxing clubs all over State, aiding the cause of the sport greatly.More Here

As we talk, adolescent enthusiasm gets the better of a couple of boys. So, you’re not being interviewed? one taunts the other. Oh, just wait till 2012, he responds.By now you know Bhiwani has changed in these past two weeks, so dismiss this as a fanciful dream at your own peril.

THE GURU Behind the success of the Indian boxers at Beijing is the coach who groomed them SAY no to four-letter words, it says on the wall. That, presumably, includes ‘loss’. As India hung on to its boxers’ positive talk in Beijing, smiling at home in Bhiwani was their coach Jagdish Singh. Because along with the hooks and jabs that Singh trains his wards in, thrown in for good measure are these little nuggets on the right attitude.More here

A boxing academy on the patter of Australian Institute of Sports would be soon established in Bhiwani.More here

Video of bhiwani and its boxing club with Vijender Kumar interview

Video Of BBC

Video of the Bhiwani Trio's Feat here.

Links

Born out of nowhere

Bhiwani Boxers

Manisha of Mittal Trust blogs on haryan's boxing achievement

My post on Akhil Kumar

My post on Vijendra Kumar

Struggling to win

bhiwani

Punching through barriers

India at the olympics

2008-08-17T09:29:00.000-07:00

Wow.Is this really happening.Apart from bindra,So many good performances by india.what struck me the most was, how these people over came the obstacles thrown at them to be what they are right now.Everybody's story is an inspiration.But our lack of interest on sports other than cricket(Iam as guilty as anybody else on this) shows on the internet too.Except for the newspapers, there aren't much information available about these sportsman/women.They don't have a proper wiki page or there is not much video in youtube or there is no blogs on there performances.I thought i will blog and provide links to some of the good articles and media available about these great athletes.I have some videos also which i will upload later.

One of the best blogs that i came across was that of Manisha Malhotra a former tennis player, now the administrator for the Mittal Champions Trust.She has put down her journey from 2007 in her blog at http://manishasthoughts.blogspot.com/.I would recommend you read the whole blog from jan 2007(actually there aren't a lot of posts) including the comments....

But here are some of her posts on Abhinav bindra.It will give you an insight into the champion.

http://manishasthoughts.blogspot.com/2007/05/sawadeeka.html

http://manishasthoughts.blogspot.com/2007/05/day-ii.html

http://manishasthoughts.blogspot.com/2007/05/pattiala-part-ii.html

http://manishasthoughts.blogspot.com/2008/08/oh-my-god.html

http://manishasthoughts.blogspot.com/2007/08/back-in-action.html

http://manishasthoughts.blogspot.com/2007/08/whirlwind-tour-of-world.html

http://manishasthoughts.blogspot.com/2007/05/shooting-in-bangkok.html

Mind of Menica - The Convenience Store

2008-08-16T15:47:00.000-07:00

Naveed Mahbub

2008-08-16T15:46:00.001-07:00

M.I.A - mathangi(Maya) Arulpragasam

2008-08-08T14:30:00.000-07:00

Check out one of the familiar tamil beat that is rocking so many around the world.

Know more about MIA here
http://obtusity.blogspot.com/2007/02/notes-from-underground-mia-bird-flu.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M.I.A._(artist)
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4635471

Christian Bale

2008-07-22T09:06:00.000-07:00

My first christian bale movie was machinist.I couldn't appreciate his dedication to the movie much, because , i didn't know him before.I couldn't believe what he had done to himself, till i started watching his other movies.He is one dedicated guy.Just saw batman and thought i should do a post on him.Check out the pics.

In machinist

From http://www.socalworkout.com/wpblog/?p=189

check out Christian's wiki page here

Pralayam,Chaos,Chaos theory

2008-07-12T09:39:00.000-07:00

This is an extension of the discussion that me and robbie are having on the dasa post.The good thing about talking with knowledgeable people like robbie is that, the discussions expand your knowledge base and make you think clearly.I thought i will do this as a separate post so that more people can understand the chaos theory or at least my understanding of it and think for themselves.

This is what robbie told.

"If you remember the actual dasavatharam of vishnu, vishnu appears whenever there is chaos! "pralayam" in sanskrit. This chaos and the chaos theory are the same thing! the word chaos does not have a different meaning. The chaos in physics and the chaos we talk about in english are the same things!!! Vishnu appears whenever there is chaos in different avatars to restore order! This resonates well with the mathematical chaos theory! The movie is also made on those lines! through out the movie chaos is dealt with by different people for different reasons to restore order and finally the tsunami comes in causing more chaos and restoring order of some sort! There is a lot of significance and the movie does deal with the chaos theory!!!"

In shot what it means is, when there is pralayam lord vishnu comes as an avatar to restore order which is kind of similar to the avatars done by kamal in the movie.On the first glance, what ever he is saying might seem right.But if look closely and clearly you can see the difference.First of all

Is Pralayam, Literary Chaos and Chaos of Chaos theory all the same?.

From what i know(Would appreciate some info from sanskrit people),the word pralayam means a natural destruction of a great magnitude or destruction in general or something on that line.But pralayam does not necessarily mean chaos.chaos is confusion, disorderliness,A state where you cannot determine anything anymore.Chaos could be the result of a pralayam but chaos is not pralayam.

The difference between chaos and pralayam is the difference between confusion and destruction.Ok, lets forget the word pralayam.Lets take chaos and assume that lord vishnu comes at a time of chaos and restores order.Fine, that is mythology, compare it with the movie.These so called avatars, are they all created or formed to restore order in a time of chaos.what was the chaos and order that the bush character or tall muslim character or the japanese character, the naidu character,avatar singh or many other characters brought in.what is the chaos and what was the order that was restored??.If these characters , metamorphically mean avatars, why is one avatar fighting another avatar.Why is the fletcher character or the japanese character trying to kill the scientist character??. you can hypothesize even nagesh and K.R.Vijaya as an avatar, but you wont because kamal didn't play it.The only thing that makes the characters that come in the movie as avatar is the fact that kamal acted as that character.Other than that these characters don't have any strong definitions to be an avatar.If you analyze the movie, it does not satisfy both the scientific part or the mythological part.All it means is that Kamal is a bad script writer who presents a confused and unstructured script of a masala movie with lot of hype.Some people even go to the level of describing krishnaveni patti as a varaha avattar, because she shows that FISH symbol in a song.This is all kamal the script writer can come up with.So pathetic.BTW let me write the usual kamal fan response to this,i have heard the responses so many times before."In a masala movie this is all you can do, look at how rajini is making a movie, kamal is lot better".And where did the discussion start, comparing kamal with al pacino, marlon brando and the best director,screen play writer of the world.This is a usual kamal fan trick, start with the best of the world and in the end prove that he is lot better than rajini or vijaykanth.Basically a face saving measure , to cover the fact that , once again kamal sold BS to them.

Ok now lets come to the science part. Is the literary chaos same as the chaos of the chaos theory.NO, the chaos that is mentioned in chaos theory is deterministic chaos.Meaning chaos that arises with in a dynamic but deterministic system.Meaning a system that has some rules and regulation, a dynamic system that works within a well defined boundary.For example we know the initial conditions and the parameters and rules with which the dynamic model is operating.Deterministic chaos is a subset of Literary chaos but they are not the same.So how does this affect the movie?.

First of all there is no deterministic chaos in the movie.I mean what is chaos in the movie.Iam picking something random in the lines of what robbz quoted, just as an example,like the shaivaites vaishnavites fighting. Is that a deterministic chaos?? what order did the nambi character bring to that chaos,poor soul died without doing anything.In another time, another era, would another king would have done the same thing(moving the vishnu statue) with a different result??.If that would have been the case then it is deterministic chaos, otherwise it is a simple random event and that is what all the events in the movie are Random events.The reason why i referenced RUN LOLA RUN in my previous post was, as a movie that was based on chaos theory, the screenplay was brilliant and a genuine effort had been made to bring the story close to the real chaos theory.Dasa is an utter failure from a confused screen play writer, who wasn't sure what chaos theory was.

One World...

2008-07-08T09:24:00.000-07:00

Check out this new viral video.Its so simple, yet powerful.Watch the first two videos and see the difference in the last one...

Read about Matt Harding here at Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/08/arts/television/08dancer.html?8dpc

Dasavatharam - Chaos and Bullshit Effect

2008-06-23T21:08:00.000-07:00

Are you sure the movie talks about Chaos theory and Butterfly Effect.

I read a lot of reviews talking about Non Linearity,Chaos theory and Butterfly effect in the movie.Kamala hassan himself talks about chaos theory and butterfly effect in the movie.But is he right in saying so?.

First off all ,lets talk about non linear story telling. There is no time discontinuity in the narration, the story is told pretty much in chronological order from the king era to modern day tsunami.The hardest thing about a non linear story is that it is easy to write and read, but hard to tell someone in the order it was written. As far as dasavatharm goes, you can tell it in the classical linear way.I mean you can literally start the story as "Oru oorlla Oru raja iruntharam". As far as discontinuity in space is concerned,the characters in this movie don't run parallel its just one big chase story and many insignificant characters that come for 5 mins, the story is no different than bourne identity. The characters are not well developed even to be considered as part of the story, they are pretty much nuisances in the story flow.

People are so delighted about the fact that the movie touches chaos theory.Maybe iam wrong, but i don't see it in the movie.I first came to know about chaos theory in Jurassic park.The chaos scientist jeff goldbumn, explains chaos theory to the lady in the movie.He keeps a drop of water on her hands and asks her which direction it will go, she says one direction but the water droplet goes the other way, next time he says now which direction she says the direction it went last time, but it ends up going in a different path.Then he explains her, even though the starting point is the same,the water will take different routes every time because of the perforations in her skin and hairs on her hand, which induce the change in the water's path.The smallest of change in the path will make the water take an entirely different route.

Well here is the definition of chaos theory."A systems whose state evolves with time - that may exhibit dynamics that are highly sensitive to initial conditions (popularly referred to as the butterfly effect)".what differentiates between a random set of events and a chaotic system is that the chaotic system is sensitive to its initial conditions.The theory is always tested with multiple runs on the same system and how the dynamic system changes the result every time you run it.The idea is to find a pattern , or formula for the chaotic systems behavior.To find a deterministic way to describe a dynamic model.

If you have to put that in a movie.We should be able to show the initial conditions ,the dynamic nature of the systems and how a small change delta results in a big difference to the result, also the underlying commonality in the chaotic system.One of the best example of the theory in movie is "Run Lola Run".The story is simple. Lola's boy friend calls her to say that he is in deep trouble, he has to give 100,000$ to a gang member or otherwise he will be killed.He also tells her that if she does not come up with the money in next 20 minutes he is going to rob a bank to pay the gangsters.Lola asks him not to do anything stupid and says she will arrange the money and meet him in 20 mins.She runs from her house to her boy friend in 20 mins.she decides to ask her banker father for help.But he does not help her and she fails. and the story ends tragically.when you think that the story has ended.It kind of resets to the point when her boy friend told her everything on the phone.the story again starts and lola runs again.This time the 20 minutes is spent on a different way to get the 100,000.Again she fails and again the movie resets to the phone call from her boyfriend and the next 20 minutes is a different way to get the money.The chaotic system every time changes the end result , but the initial conditions remain the same, the condition that she has to get the money to her boyfriend in the said time.Actually the road in which she runs , the people she comes across are almost the same in the different runs with slight variations.This is not the case in dasavatharam. Dasavatharm does not do anything intelligent like this.It just sticks to the time tested story telling formula, with references to chaos theory in the movie.

kamal's takes a different view of chaos theory, which is that all the events are related to one another and that a chain of events happen for one end result.On that case isn't it true or most of the stories/movies.Why tell an ordinary story and talk about chaos theory.I would say the biggest chaos theory story that ever been written is mahabharatha, where all the thousand branch stories are related to one another and result in one end.

A small sideline story where a character curses karna , which results in his death, which results in the triumph of arjuna and truth.So in his dasavatharam script hasn't done anything special than what was done by the guys who wrote the original dasavatharam(rama,krishna etc), guess they where the first chaos theorist.

If you want to see more chaos theory related movies checkout run lola run,frequency, Butterfly effect etc.Talking about Butterfly effect ,the Butterfly Effect that everyone talks about is the Delta change that is being introduced in the system, which cause a big difference in the end result.

First off all you should note one thing here. Kamala hassan cleverly alters the statement .Butterfly effect is widely described this way.

"Butterfly's wings might create tiny changes in the atmosphere that may ultimately alter the path of a tornado", some say it creates a tornado etc. But in dasa ,Dr.kamala Hassan says that a butterfly's wing flap can cause an Earthquake.Butterfly wing flapping changes the atmosphere and, Let's say that reverberation is exponentially increased due to various reasons and it induces a tornado. At least theoretically it sounds ok.But how can a change in the atmosphere cause an earth quake??.why did he change the theory from tornado to earth quake?The reason is simple, cause the movie ends with tsunami which was caused by an earthquake.This is kamal, the bullshit king at his best.

Let's just assume that we are just following one butterfly wing flap which caused a change in the system, the energy /change that was introduced by the flap of wings kept on increasing exponentially, and resulted in the tornado/earth quake.So the question is what is the butterfly wing flap in this movie.Is it the act of throwing the statue in the sea.On that case, there is a big logical black hole.The energy/ripple/change in the system created by the butterfly is never propagated, that is the chain of events does not pass on from from rangaraja nambi the priest to govind the biotech guy.

So if the statue fell into the sea, which results in shifting of the Teutonic plates(lets just assume), and resulted in the tsunami, then it is just rangaraja nambi , the statue and sea bed which caused everything. what are all the other nine characters in the story doing??.

If you take kamal's words in the movie, you will come to the conclusion that it is not butterfly effect that he is talking about in the movie. But that Dr.Kamala hassan the scientist has invented a new theory it is called the reverse butterfly effect or Bullshit effect.He says his story starts from an earthquake and ends in a butterfly flap.In short Kamal hassan as usual buries the audience in bullshit.By his own words there is no Butterfly effect in the movie.Wake up guys...

Dasavatharam - A simple masala movie, very badly executed

2008-06-23T12:14:00.000-07:00

I saw dasa this weekend and read couple of reviews.Some of the things that i read, forced me to write a review about a movie after a long time.Iam going to do this in installments.As usual, a kamal movie comes with loads of bullshit.The pre release promotional BS and the BS that is very much part and parcel of his movie. Over the years i have come to separate the BS and core of any kamal movie.

First of all i want to talk about the Non Linearity, Chaos theory and Butterfly effect of this movie.

History happening

2008-05-28T09:41:00.000-07:00

"Elections are a lot like life, they are made up of moments.This election is about a moment. This is a moment not just for the United States of America, this is a moment not just for the Democratic Party, this is also a moment for California. … We're at the epicenter of change" -Maria Shriver

History is unfolding before your eyes.Dont just watch it, be a part of it.Seize the moment,support Barack obama.

Puyalile Oru Thoni

2007-06-18T11:23:00.000-07:00

Wow. I Didn't know that tamil literature had writers like P.singaram , till i read this novel.Another awesome novel that completely floored me.

The novel is about the events that happen in the life of pandian,a tamilian living abroad in south east asia.The novel is set in the world war 2 era.After reading so many stories set in the world war 2 era in english.I used to think that there was no good tamil novel(from my limited knowledge) set in that background.Iam correcting that opinion now.This is an awesome novel set in that period with so much information about that time period and about the non resident tamilians who were doing so well in south east asia during that time.

The novel is a cornucopia of information, P.singaram talks about various things in the book.Like world war 2, what was happening in south east asia and how are the characters affected by it.He also puts the war in south asia in context with what was happening world over.World war 2, south asia, off course he talks about INA(Indian National Army),Which had a major contribution from the tamilians living in south east asia.He describes in detail the lifestyles of tamilians from different communities who lived in south asia and how they adapted themselves to the places where they lived.Also there are numerous references to various tamil literatures and some discussions based on them.

Above all the novel is very unsentimental,it is not the usual type which has a few characters and spins a story around them, on there relations ,differences, love etc.This is different, Events happen fast and things keep changing and moving forward.Importance is given to the incidents and environment rather than the characters and feelings.It just takes us on a journey with pandian the main character, who is struggling in this big ocean of life.And yes he faces a lot of storms, what happens to this boat in the storm is the story.

Rusell Peters

2007-06-11T07:16:00.000-07:00

If you havn't heard about him before, Ladies and Gentleman the awesome Russell peters.Check him out

The direct link is here

There are tons of his material on youtube and all over the internet.
***WARNING*** But be prepared, he is very racial,open and uses a lot of bad words..

Russell peters interview in CBC here
Russell on wiki here
His official website

Windows Vista

2007-05-17T06:51:00.000-07:00

This is something that i have been desperately wanting to tell everyone.Please don't buy VISTA.If you want to use vista without any problems you got to wait atleast for another year.The OS is pathetic.None of the old software's are working on it and the microsoft guys are sending patch after patch.

If you have an option on what OS to be loaded on your new machine.Please choose windows XP or some other stable version of windows OS or linux.Not Vista..

Forecast

2007-05-17T06:47:00.000-07:00

After a long time i have been wanting to write something.Blame it on my new job(there is not much to do :) ).So there might be occasional thunder showers , oops posts.

Intresting article in Outlook

2006-10-14T01:26:00.000-07:00

"While we have squandered years whining about its appalling crudity, sex and violence, Bollywood is puréed babyfood compared to South Indian mainstream cinema. Down there, it does not count unless it's third degree. The Tamilians win the Olympics for Horrific Crudity, Sexism and Violence".More

Yamaha Nagari

2006-10-12T22:58:00.000-07:00

Yet another Chiru song, but not that much thaya thaka .A beautiful number , its different that chiru goes into his usual stuff in the interludes.After all its chiru's version of the thyagaraja krithi.None the less an awesome song.

from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UwPFGGlr3c

Good old days

2006-10-05T18:29:00.000-07:00

what will happen when Illayaraja, SPB and chiru go on a rampage....??

One of those crazy chiru songs of IR, saw this song after a long time.What a wondeful composition by the maestro.The orchestration is so rich. Check out the orchestration Guitars,trumpets,congos,violins etc.This is good old SPB singing with frolicking S.janaki.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKjQgHH1M5c

Mahabharatha day by day Description

2006-09-20T14:27:00.000-07:00

check it out here

Carnatic Fusion

2006-08-17T15:17:00.000-07:00

Recently i saw the movie morning raga and was impressed by the carnatic fusion songs.
check it out here.

I came across more fusion songs, thought i will share it here.

1) Raghuvamsha from the movie Symphony

2) RaraVenu from Mr.Butler

3)entharoo from Devadhoothan

kazhcha(Sight) Malayalam -2004

2006-08-15T10:50:00.000-07:00

Kazhcha review up in parallel movies.check it out more

Oru Pulliya Marathin kathai(Tale Of A Tamarind Tree)

2006-07-11T01:42:00.000-07:00

This is by far one of the best books that i have read in tamil.It took me by surprise completely .This is one wonderful book, written superbly by an author who had complete command over the subject and dialect. The man in none other than sundara ramaswamy.What an awesome writer this guy is.

The book as the name suggest is about a tamarind tree standing in a remote vilage in southern tamilnadu. Through the tamarind tree, the mute spectator, sundara ramaswamy gives us a snap shot of the village.It is not about any single Hero or Heroine. It is about the village as a whole. It gives us a beautiful picture of that time period(I was surprised to see that he wrote a novel of this caliber way back in the 60's).The way people lived in those days, there issues, their life style everything is written vividly.

Sundara Ramaswamy is an awesome story teller, he spins stories relentlessly. Stories after stories emerge about the people who live around the tree. Everyone of them interesting and like the various branches of the tree, all these branch stories join into the main one.

Another awesome thing about the book is its language. The authors handling of the local dialect is impeccable. Also he doesn't take any sides in the book and touches many social issues without pointing any fingers.

The book supposedly has gone into many editions and its english translation was released in penguin publications (Iam not sure how the beautiful dialect of that region was captured in english).And it seems to be the first indian book to be translated into hebrew, where it went for two edition. The hindi and malayalam version of the book is also available. Check it out a great book.

Links

Sundara Ramaswamy

The english version in amazon

Books of sundara Ramaswamy

sundara Ramaswamy on Hindu

Anote of sundara ramaswamy writing

sundara ramaswamy passes away

Boston Balaji's blog on sundara ramaswamy

Novel as a critique

sundara ramaswamy on tamil wiki

Examining the India US Nuclear Deal

2006-07-10T01:38:00.000-07:00

Interesting conversation in NPR.Listen to it here

Bend it like carlos

2006-07-07T11:09:00.000-07:00

End of a Wonderful Series.....

2006-07-02T22:58:00.000-07:00

A series win that was 35 years in the making.Good performance by dravid and co.After losing the toughly contested one day series, they had to fight every test match to the last ball and luck wasn't also on there side(lucia match).But they still some how had the energy to bring up a fighting performance in the last test, which was also swinging both ways.A well deserved victory for india at the end of a great series.

world cup special

2006-06-28T15:03:00.000-07:00

check out this awesome goal.

Mohanlal songs

2006-06-26T11:31:00.000-07:00

Here are more songs.. This time it is all mohanlal songs.

onnam ragam from Thoovana Thumbikal
One of the many good movies of padmarajan.This movie has some great songs.check out the others here

Thodar kinnakaley from gandhinagar 2nd street
This is the original of the tamil movie "Anna Nagar mudal theru".This is the malayalam equalent of the beautiful "Methuva methuva kadhal pattu" in tamil.

chinkaaram kinnaaram from Minnaram

vintage IR

2006-06-22T08:30:00.000-07:00

Its always a joy to come across that one unheard vintage IR song.I Came across some of them recently.Here are two video songs, both of them by IR.

kiliye kiliyeThis is from the movie Aa rathri,starring mammotty,rohini,poornima jeyaram,baby anju etc.This song has illayaraja written all over it,typical early 80's stuff.The beats, the guitar(follow the base guitar, how it weaves around with other instruments) and the awesome S.janaki.There is a line "mini mol than chiri(smile) kanan" and off course you know what will happen at that line Sj smiles.Typical SPB/SJ stuff.I enjoyed it immensely.check it out here

Kakothi Kaavil Appoopan Thadigal.
Another melodious malayalm song by the maestro.This one is by Chithra.The song is so familiar.But can't able to figure out the source.Think one of the child artist is actress kaveri.

If Indian Politicians had Two Cows

2006-06-20T18:39:00.000-07:00

10. Mahatma Gandhi: You have two cows. But you drink goat´s milk.

9. Indira Gandhi: You have two bulls. You adamantly consider them as cows.

8. Rajiv Gandhi: You have two cows. You paint them both to get colourful milk.

7. Sanjay Gandhi: Others have bulls. Sterilize them by force.

6. Vajpayee: You have two cows. You distribute the milk among your partners and eat cattlefeed.

5. Advani: You have two cows. You dont milk them; worship them.

4. Chandrababu: You have two cows in Vijayawada. You hook them to internet and milk them from Hyderabad.

3. Jayalalitha: You have two cows. You teach them to cry, "Ammaaa..." and fall at your feet.

2. Laloo: You have two cows. You buy Rs. 900 Crore worth of cattlefeed for them.

1. Rajnikant: You have two cows. You throw them into air and catch their milk in your mouth.

Emotional Reporting

2006-06-08T07:53:00.000-07:00

Check out this video... this is far worse than listening to Krish srikanth or navjot sidhu talking...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5dyM8qa57g&search=cricket%20england
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SuqzdbS3ZvI&search=cricket%20england

The Little magazine

2006-06-05T10:50:00.000-07:00

A great magazine... with lot of short stories by some great writers..check it out.
http://www.littlemag.com/about/about.html

Oh sailabha

2006-05-31T08:35:00.000-07:00

Guys, Any idea what malayalam movie this song is from.It goes some thing like OH SAILABHA.. of course KJY and the actor is Jeyaram... the song is refusing to leave my mind....

Blogswara - My views

2006-05-27T18:25:00.000-07:00

Nobody can say that this is an amateur albumn.Wow, everybody has done a great job.Here are my thoughts on the albumn.

Unnai parthathal entha
I remember seeing just the lyrics of this song when Narayanan sir posted in on the blog.It is amazing to see how those few lines of poetry could be made into such a beautiful song.I heard the song and i started traveling in my dreams.you know how music takes you to places.I thought i will put down my imagination here.

On a lazy sunday morning... i come outside my house in some hill station,i see that it is lightly raining..There is green ever where.All the plants and trees are wearing a new green, a fresh Green.Flowers smiling with water droplets on them.An easy feeling sets into me, I lay down on the swing in the patio and think about my new love, my first love.My mind is singing the song "Unnai parthathal intha kadhal....." :).

Everything about the song is good.It gives u such an easy feel.Music,singing everything is controlled.Baranidaran nice voice.

After hearing this song little later i heard "Mazha Peydha Nalil" :).Another nice song,the music could have been little mellow like unnai parthal,but none the less a good song. Jo's voice is soothing, except for those high points ;).

oru kuju swapnathil
Beautiful song.Nostalgic,melodious and soothing.

shikwhe gille,
Nice song, gives a sense of freedom and Happiness. Only thing that i felt bad was instruments used in the interludes, they kind of stood out and didn't sound good with the rest of the musical scheme.

Alai kadal.
Its a nice song.It is flowing at the pallavi and it gets even better in the saranam.On the down side the musical interludes are very flat and the hard voice doesn't suit the song.May be a female voice would have suited this song better.

sendhamarai...
U can easily fool ur friend that this song is from a new tamil movie.Its that good.I wont be surprised if deva and sirpi use this song in a their movie.Good composition, singing etc makes this a great song.Both MUX and Meera have sung the song well.

Aisi bheegi
This would have been an awesome song, if the song would have been sung without any improvisation, by the singer.Good composition and vocal decoration's in the song.

Vazhvu sezhika
Very catchy instrumentation. sitar, mirudangam,gatam... etc.

Blogswara

2006-05-24T10:27:00.000-07:00

Like everyone iam also eagerly expecting the release of blogswara today.Wishing the blogswara team all the best.

Hello World.... :)

2006-05-24T10:21:00.000-07:00

Just wanted to let you all know that Iam still alive.Iam sorry was not able to reply to all those post and emails enquiring about my break.Was completely out of the blog world.Once you take a long break like this it is hard to restart.But i thought i will log in today and wish the blogswara team and say a hi to everyone out there.

weekend weather

2006-02-13T08:38:00.000-08:00

And it snowed...

It snowed this many inches

rajini and kamal

2006-02-12T14:06:00.000-08:00

I was forced to watch chandramukhi again and was wondering how long rajini will keep acting as a super hero.It is high time he retired or started acting in sensible roles.But the box office hit of chandramukhi mean's that he is going to be there for quite sometime.

I started thinking what kind of titles can we keep for his future movies.Here are a few that came to my mind.

1)Hyder Ali
Now that he has become an actor who represents the antique time period of tamil film industry.This should be apt and it will be an apt movie to follow a title like shivaji.

2)Aruvathil irunthu thonnurru varai(60 to 90)

This is a sequel to his old movie aarilirunthu arrubathu vaarai(6 to 60).The previous one was taken when he was young.Now that he is almost 60 yrs old.He should rather do a movie with this title.

3)Bheeshmacharya

Syncs with the character that is the oldest & important one of an epic.This character is also one that wont leave the battlefield even when it is in deathbed.

What would i like to say to rajini??
I would like to quote something from his own song....

Yettu Yettua manusha vazhva pirichukoo
Nee yentha ettil ippo irukka ninaichukoo

Aitham ettil serkathathu selvamum alla
Aram yettil suttrathathu ullagammum alla
yezham yettil kanathathu voivum illai

Kamal
I thought the narcissist kamal has corrected his ways of trying to occupy the screen and screenplay as much as he can, and has given up his ways of distracting people with gimmicks than doing some real acting.But guess iam wrong, he is going to be back to his old form with his new movie Dasavatharam, where he will act in 10 roles.Hmmm what could his future movies titles be like??.Some ideas that came to my mind

1)Ravannan

2)Lagaan: Once upan a time in Tamil Nadu
Like munnabhai mbbs which was remade as vasool raja.Laggan would be remade in tamil where kamal will play all the 11 cricket players of the laggan team.He will put make up and strain himself to become bhuvan,arjan,guran,kachuva etc.Not sure, he might even do the roles of the 11 members of the opposing team too..Dialogues by crazy mohan direction singeetham srinivas/santhanabarathi/c.sunder or any other jobless director.

3)Mohammed Ghazni
Like maruthnayagam this will another epic drama.This one follows the life of the man who invaded india 17 times.Kamal will come in 17 make up's showing his progression of age.

4)Bharath
This is a sequel to Hey ram.This movie shows the like of saket ram after his friend amjad ali khan dies.saketh ram is again tormented by the violence committed on his friend.He seeks salvation,so he takes the name that his friend gave to him(bharath) and travels through india preaching hindu muslim unity.He goes to all the 28 states and union territories to do it.He changes his makeup for every state and speaks in the native language.

5)kauravas
Kamal plays the roles of all the 100 brothers.Pandavas would be played by 5 great actors but they will appear in the movie only for 50 seconds.The movie would be alll about kauravas..

6)Ayiram thalai vangiya aborva sigamani
He does the roles of 1000 prince who come to take part in the competition to marry the prince.

Not sure he might even do a movie called devargal.

I wish i could tell kamal in Devar magan climax style
"Poongada Poongada Ozhunga Nadingada...."

What happened to me?

2006-02-12T11:47:00.000-08:00

I was in a deep meditative state and i atlast attained Blog Nirvana.A state where comments doesn't matter, stat's doesn't matter , you dont worry about the lunatic bloggers and there is no big urge to tell something to the world :).

Just kidding, was very very busy and hence no post.Iam actually gonna take a break and thought i would do some quick posts before i take a break.

Gilli

2006-01-13T08:55:00.000-08:00

Boston balaji and prakash have started a blog digest in tamil called gilli.Check it out.

Protest against Coke

2006-01-12T14:12:00.000-08:00

Outlook has an intresting article on protest against coke by the michigan university students and its indian connection.

When students of the University of Michigan returned from their winter break this week, they found the vending machines on their campus having no Coca-Cola products.
The discovery sent a round of cheers among students who have been campaigning against Coke for allegedly causing environmental pollution in India (a court case is on in Kerala) and following dubious labour practices in Colombia.

Their sustained campaign, under the aegis of the Coalition to Cut the Contract with Coca-Cola (CCCC), yielded result as the varsity suspended the purchase of Coke products beginning January 1, in the process joining a band of over 10 academic institutions in the US to have imposed such a boycott.more

Also check out this excellent article Get Over The GDP-FDI Obsession by PRASHANT BHUSHAN

Gulzar

2006-01-12T10:18:00.000-08:00

Gulzar, Gulzar, Gulzar. What can you say about this man.It is hard to escape his sensitive words, be it in a story or in a song. If you have a heart and if you can understand his words, he will capture you. He will turn you into a slave, a slave who longs for his words. Gulzar for me epitomizes the best of indian cinema.

He has shinned in all departments. As a lyricist, screenplay writer and director. To put it simply he is a writer, poet for whom cinema is another medium like books to get his literary stuff to the audience. His stories and screenplay carry the same lyricism of his songs.Like a breeze, they cross you, leaving you with a few characters that you will carry with you, all your life.more

Baila Country music again

2006-01-08T09:27:00.000-08:00

Long time back i wrote about this song called Ahankara Nagare.I found a good video copy of that song in itube.It was awesome.Here it is.This is one of my fav songs.This is not a mindless heavy beats stuff,check out the beautiful humming with the main hard female voice, the punjabi chorus,interludes.The song also it has instruments like flute which is used with an odd combination of RAP, Mellam , bangra dolls, then there is a tune that is kind of familiar.

Randiu - Ahankara Nagare (Iraj remix)
check out the song here.
If u r having memory problem run in once and replay it again, the cached replay will be lot better.

Thanxs to raj who gave the link to another song called ninaivugal, i went ahankara nagare through that.Ninaivugal is also a good song.check out ninaivugale here

There are lot of Baila country songs

jTown
Feels like some familiar song but a good one.
listen jtown here

Bathiya & Santhush - Kirikodu
A combination of Sinhalese and Tamil Vocals.
Listen kirikodu here
I would like see the video of Nethra, not sure whether that one is there in itube.

Ran Ran Ran
Ran Listen Ran Ran here
The video is pathetic.But the audio is an intresting number.Again a mix of tamil/punjabi/rap etc...

There are a few M.I.A albumns too in ITube.

Hero's & Heroines

2006-01-06T21:11:00.000-08:00

Everybody have their hero's and heroines and for many of us the word hero's, heroines stop with the silver screen one's. But there are some real life hero/heroine's, who are far more inspiring than the silver screen ones these are hero/heroine's who are really really fighting the bad guys on the street for us.But some how they never get mentioned, they are easily forgotten. Here is one such Heroine.

I wrote about RTI(Right to Information Act) one of the most important law that was passed in recent times, last month. But this law didn't come just like that, there was a big struggle behind it. A struggle that started 13 years back. Lot of people fought for the law.

Parivartan was one of the important organization that used the Delhi RTI act well to fight against the corruption in delhi, mainly with the ration shops.Parivartan was successfully able to make people of many slum/resettlement area ask questions against the ration shop owners. The people started demanding there right and questioning the corruption that was happening at the ration shops.The owners who were making hell a lot of money by selling the ration materials in the black market got irked.

Santosh is a volunteer of parivartan who creates awareness among people about the RTI.Her involvement with Parivartan's efforts irked the ration shop owners. On 13th December 2004 , Santosh was assaulted by two boys in the office compound of Assistant Commissioner of Food (North East), when she was guiding some poor and illiterate people on how to get their ration cards made or names added/deleted in ration cards. She escaped, but she didn't budge she went ahead with her job of helping people.

But she wasn't lucky the next time.On December 30th,

Santosh who was on her beat of Sundernagari's streets was attacked again. An unidentified man, slashed her throat and disappeared in the crowd. People scooped their darling and raced to a hospital. As the tiny girl lay close to death, anger and impatience rose. After several days, Santosh came through, reborn as it were, heralding major changes in the country.

Delhi Chief Minister Ms Sheila Dikshit got pro-active and met Aruna Roy and Arvind Kejriwal to discuss ways to clean up the PDS. They decided to make Sundernagari a laboratory. A new Food Commissioner threw open the stock books for public scrutiny. Penalties up to Rs.5000 were announced. They had won. Kejriwal admits things have changed and people feel in control. Santosh merely smiles, an uncelebrated heroine ignored by the educated classes.more

Recalling the sequence of events, Santosh said, I was attacked for the first time on December 13, but I escaped with only my hair getting cut. I was again attacked on December 30, when a man tried to slit my throat. I have survived two attacks and the next time I may not be so lucky.more

Many people including former prime minister V.P.Singh condemned the attack and backed RTI.It is sad that someone like santosh should have to go through this.And the great thing about her is that she is still doing social work even after the attack.But even after all this she is largely unknown to the people.Thanxs to the media which is more worried about the health of amitab bachan and the new lip surgery of rajinikanth.I think at least we the Bloggers, should write & speak up for these kind of inspiring real life hero's.

Links:
Attack on activist blow to RTI Act
Right To Information Agitation
Attack on santosh
Akshaya writes on Safdar Hashmi

More......

2006-01-06T06:20:00.000-08:00

As akshaya has put it in the comments section of the previous post.The argument is getting very complicated.when you read so many views on the same subject and if every one is talking sense then it does get complicated.But everyone should be aware of every other view points.Here are more thoughts...

Quota, quota everywhere, not a job in sight!

D'souza has provided links to his old post on reservation here.He put's out details of how the mandal comission recomendation where made here

Here is an article by arun shourie on social justice.

Aravind's views here

Success of reservation

Reservation arguments...

2006-01-05T08:07:00.000-08:00

There seems to be lot of discussion happening on reservation in the blog world.The best is this one at acron.some very good points raised by vasu.

http://greatbong.blogspot.com/2006/01/reserving-my-table.html
http://www.desipundit.com/2006/01/03/reservations-in-the-private-sector/
http://srivatsanmurali.blogspot.com/2005/12/reservation-and-brahmins-updated.html

Updates

2006-01-04T12:30:00.000-08:00

Two reviews, John cassavettes A woman under influence and Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of Will up in International Movies.

Blog Updates.......

2006-01-02T11:35:00.000-08:00

Iam adding another blog.A movie one :D.Yeah what else am i goona write about.Been writing a lot about movies. thought i will organize them so that i dont have to put everything on the main blog.The new one is for international movies.But iam not going to write about the usual hollywood flicks.Iam going to write about the international master directors.So presenting you my new blog International Movies.

I have posted a story in my story blog dreamweaver called oldgar house.This is not a straight forward story, it uses a metaphor.check it out.

Wishing Every one a very Happy New Year.

2005-12-31T11:13:00.000-08:00

New blog - Focus india

2005-12-27T11:06:00.000-08:00

Focus india is a new group blog started by a bunch of us.I will be posting my political thoughts out there from now on.

Iam kicking of the first political post on that blog today.The topic is Tommy Hilfiger and the cotton farmer. check it out here

Anjan Das movies

2005-12-26T07:52:00.000-08:00

Anjan Das's two movies

Iti srikanta and

Saanjhbathir Roopkathara

are up at alternate movies

www.ihateganguly.com

2005-12-23T13:48:00.000-08:00

Didn't know that there was a site called www.ihateganguly.com.The site now has become cricketwatchdogs.com, the reason is on the old site.It says

"With our short-term goal partially accomplished, we now embrace our long term mission — to be cricket’s watchdogs by fostering healthy debates. 'You will be directed to www.cricketwatchdogs.com shortly'.

Their short term and long term goals here.The site has 3,236 registered members.

check out this funny quiz at http://www.cricketwatchdogs.com/192.html.

Outlook has an article on Kumble, one of the most underrated bowler both in india and abroad.

Random notes on some movies

2005-12-23T02:03:00.000-08:00

War of the worlds
If someone asks you which is the biggest comedy movie of 2005.You can name this one. This movie could be classified in pretty much all the genre, it is a family, drama, sci-fi, thriller, comedy movie which will horrify you in your dreams. Spielberg seemed to be running out of ideas .where is the creativity that made him take movies like duel. This movie has alien attack stuff routine. It first looked like spielberg was re doing his old classic 'encounters of the third kind'.But the movie was a family sentiment one.Alien tripods attack humans.......iam feeling weary trying to thinking about the movie and the story and iam actually not sure whether there was any story in the movie, if at all if there was any story i deliberately erased it from my mind. The climax is the most comical of the whole movie, the reason that they give for the death of the tripods is pathetic i was laughing out loud for 5 minutes. Spielberg thanxs for this wonderful comedy.

Majaa
It had the easy feel & structure of a malayalam movie, but don’t have a clue why vikram choose to remake Thommanum makakallum of all the good Malayalam movies available. For there is nothing great about this story, it belongs to one of those pathetic malayalam movies.Compared to Thommanum Makkallum, pasupathy did a better job than lal and manivannan was no were near Rajan P. Dev, vikram was ok.

Who ever this guy shafi is, he seems to be very average with screenplay and pathetic with story. Hero and heorine are at logger heads. One day in order to take revenge at heroine's villain father, the hero ties the Mangal suthra casually on a street to the un expecting heroine. What does the heroine do?. She honors the sacredness of the mangal suthra and accepts the worthless rowdy as her husband and they lived happily ever after.

K.B style scene

scene 1 person X: For shafi creativity means...
scene 2 shafi buying vegetable: Kilo enna vella??

Paheli
Amol Palekhar movies seemed to have grown leaps and bounds in its aesthetic contents. Paheli which follows his pleasingly picturised 'Annahat' is another great movie in the cinematography dept. For any movie shot in western india brings the magic of those parts with it.Amol palekhar gets my appreciation for not letting shahrukh khan hijack the movie with his so called ACTING. The movie based on the beautiful Rajasthan folk story duvidha, talks about a women who falls in love with a ghost.The ghost and the real person becomes metaphors for physical and spiritual, dream and reality etc. Above all the movie is about giving the choice to the women, which again follows the same theme of Amol's previous movie Anahaat.

A magical folk tale like this gives the freedom for the director to escape reality and traverse the magic land. But somehow Amol didn't play that card too much. Not sure whether it was because he didn' wanted his core theme of a women making a choice on her own getting lost in the excessive fantasy part of the story. Could have been a lot better, but none the less a nice and different movie.

Wax house
A thriller story about a bunch of people who get lost and end up in an isolated wax house and you guessed it right somebody kills them one by one, until the heroine the only person kills the bad guy and escapes. A ok movie, does its job of scaring people.

Mindhunters
Another thriller starring val kilmer, L.L.cool J.It is about a bunch of FBI recruits who are taken to a isolated island for profiling practice. Some mysterious killer profiles them instead and kills them one by one and of course the heroine gets away at the end.was ok.

Interpreter
Sydney Pollack's interpreter is an ok one. Follows the story of an UN assembly interpreter who over hears an assassination plan. Not much scope for sean pean, so he is wasted. Not a big thriller but a ok movie.

Charlie and the chocolate factory
Jhonny Deep is awesome in the movie, through out the movie he expresses himself like a kid/girl. Otherwise its a kids movie which i might have enjoyed a lot, when i was 10 yrs old.

Two pathetic chick flicks.
Bewitched and The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.Like the indian masala films there is a hollywood masala formula on how to take a chick flick and both these movies follow it to the core.It is better to watch a TV commercial over and over on an endless loop rather than watch these movies, you can save yourself the trouble of puking.

ONG BAK the thai warrior
The movie has a typical kung fu one liner story, which is to find an excuse for the hero to fight in different places. What makes the movie special is the supposedly no-string attached action sequence by the hero. But if you watch the movie as such, then the action sequence will hardly impress and the story will put you to sleep.

Munich

2005-12-22T07:16:00.000-08:00

Spielberg's movie munich is getting released tomorrow. It is supposedly based on the munich massacre of 1972.I feel both happy and sad.Happy that one of the greatest counter terrorist operation "Wrath of God"(iam not sure whether it has any connection with the famous werner herzog movie of the same name made in 1972) is being made into a movie and sad cause speilberg is making it.

The story of munich is the massacre of 11 israeli athletes at the munich Olympics by the Terrorist of the Black September group.Black september is a group connected with the PLO and 5 of its terrorist held isreali athletes at the olympics village hostage and then murdered them.The important thing was this that the, whole incident happened in front of millions of viewers world wide. All the media that was covering the olympics covered the massacre also.The operation ended with the terrorist blowing up the helicopter in which they were about to escape, killing themselves and all the athletes. PLO got it's media exposure. It was double happy, not only did they succeed in getting across there message to the world, they also made israel loose face before the world.

What resulted after that was the secret operation "wrath of god" ordered by the iron lady of Israel, Golda meir. THE most deadliest secret service organization in the world is not CIA or KGB, it is the MOSSAD. some of MOSSAD's operation or stunning & precise.The very existence of israel in a hostile neighbourhood has been the result of some great operations & intelligence information by MOSSAD.

By the orders of the prime minister The black September group was hunted down and the brains behind the operation including Yasser arafat's favourite Ali Hassan Salameh. The operation was meticulous, agents were sent world over they followed the suspects for months before the assassination attempt and there were some mistakes also. which exposed Israel’s intentions.

But their success made the terrorist go into hiding into various parts of the world.But MOSSAD came after them, directly with its agents and indirectly through some hired specialists. It is said that when a terrrorist is assassinated, the family of the dead athlete will get an anonymous call. The caller will just say that we want you to watch the TV news tonight, and when they do watch, the headlines will be that the terrorist responsible for the murder of their family member was assassinated that day.The telephone calls where supposedly made by isreali secret service.

It was an ambitious operation worth telling as a movie, watching the whole operation as a documentary in discovery channel itself was exciting for a MOSSAD fan like me.But the sad thing is that this movie is being done by spielberg. He will invariably muddle the movie with sentiments and elevated music and family drama. After watching war of the worlds iam little afraid about this movie, Actually and iam not able to overcome my nightmares of "war of the world" to go and watch this movie. I wish some european director had directed this movie in a cinema verite style.But only the usual spielberg/maniratnam style of taking a sensational story and messing it up with family sentiments is what is available.

Anyways,every operation by MOSSAD is an exciting novel. Forget the rober ludlum books, read books on MOSSAD operations .Read their role in safeguarding their country in "Oh Jerusalem" by Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins. MOSSAD has numerous successful operations.

Some movie based on MOSSAD operations

Raid on Entebbe:

One of the stunning rescue operation every made. Israel commondo's rescued the passengers of an israeli airplane which was hijacked by Palestine terrorist and grounded in uganda.The ruler that time was Idi amin dada, who was sideing with the terrorist and was not co operating with israel.The operation was done without Uganda knowing anything, it was surprised when the rescue operation happenend. Dont want to give out how the operation was done. watch it.

There is another verison of the same operation "victory at entebbe",not sure about that one cause this is the version that i saw.This verison has some actors who took part in the real operation.

The Man Who Captured Eichmann

This is a movie about the post world war MOSSAD operations to capture the escaped NAZI generals.One of the important guy was Adolf Eichmann(played by Robert Duvall), who was the emigration officer responsible for sending the jews out of germany and then was responsible for transporting the jews to gas chambers. He seemed to have sent over five million Jews to their deaths by way of his trains. MOSSAD wanted him and whole isreal wanted him.He was hiding in Argentina, again MOSSAD planned the operation to perfection and gets him back to isreal without the Argentinean government knowing anything. How they transport eichman back to isreal is an interesting climax to the movie.

Links
MOSSAD
RAW and MOSSAD

Blogswara??

2005-12-22T07:05:00.000-08:00

Well Jo is doing it.Check out this first musical collabration of the bloggers at jo's site.
http://www.joplanet.com/blog/2005/12/announcing-bloggers-music-album.html

Karuthu meeting

2005-12-21T06:17:00.000-08:00

Karuthu Forum's first meeting will be held on 22.12.2005 at

Tag Centre,
69 (36), T.T.K. Road, (Opp. to: Shankara Hall),
Alwarpet, Chennai 18

Z

2005-12-20T22:12:00.000-08:00

Z is another classic cinema verite style movie.It was a huge hit in US and was nominated for 4 oscars, including best picture and best direction. It got 2 oscars, for best foreign film and editing.

The movie is based on the real life incident of the assassination of Greek Leftist leader Grigoris Lambrakis.The movie starts with the assassination of the leftist leader by the right wing mob in a public place before the eyes of the police and people. The right wing group which is backed by the military makes everyone beleive that it was an accident. Pressure from the left wing brings in a judge to investigate the case.The powerful military tries to suppress the investigation, but truth is revealed by the efforts of a straight forward judge and a journalist.

What makes the movie interesting is its cinema verite style which focuses on the incident and not on the characters to present an engaging and energetic movie. It employs lot of rapid cuts. Where by, scenes flow into one another fastly. There is no setting up scenes are slow opening and gradual narration of the situation, the movies cuts from one incident to the other rapidly and maintains the edgy feeling all through out the movie.

Another great thing to the movie is that no country or place is mentioned, even though it is based on a true story the movie does not mention any place or country and it is taken in a way that everybody will relate to it with their own country and political situation. That is what exactly happened in USA, people in US related the Yves Montand character to JFK.The movie by making the story generic, has transcended time and has become a story of suppressed democracies all around the world, rather than the story on one single incident that happened in greece.

Z is always mentioned with battle of Algiers as a good example of the cinema verite style.Z also has other commonalities; it was also shot in algiers. It was a french movie about a greek incident shot in algiers.

Jean-Louis Trintignant

Unlike battle of algiers "Z" had some international stars like Yves Montand, Irene Papas & Jean-Louis Trintignant starring in it.Jean-Louis's acted in Eric Rohmer's classic "My Night at Maud's" the same year.

I wasn't aware of the fact that Greece was under military rule as late as the 80's.And how did that happen?. Same old story, a CIA backed coup.

The movie is simply an ode to democracy.

COSTA-GAVRAS was the son of a Greek leftist leader who was denied admission to study film's in USA cause of his fathers communist background.

Poetry - Pablo Neruda

2005-12-19T19:48:00.000-08:00

And it was at that age...Poetry arrived
in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where
it came from, from winter or a river.
I don't know how or when,
no, they were not voices, they were not
words, nor silence,
but from a street I was summoned,
from the branches of night,
abruptly from the others,
among violent fires
or returning alone,
there I was without a face
and it touched me.

I did not know what to say, my mouth
had no way
with names
my eyes were blind,
and something started in my soul,
fever or forgotten wings,
and I made my own way,
deciphering
that fire
and I wrote the first faint line,
faint, without substance, pure
nonsense,
pure wisdom
of someone who knows nothing,
and suddenly I saw
the heavens
unfastened
and open,
planets,
palpitating planations,
shadow perforated,
riddled
with arrows, fire and flowers,
the winding night, the universe.

And I, infinitesmal being,
drunk with the great starry
void,
likeness, image of
mystery,
I felt myself a pure part
of the abyss,
I wheeled with the stars,
my heart broke free on the open sky.

It's a shame

2005-12-18T21:51:00.000-08:00

Can the ganguly issue get any worse than this?.I used to respect Somnath Chatterjee, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee & Soumitra Chatterjee.They are all turning out to be bunch of jokers in this issue.It is a crying shame that this issue is going to be discussed in parliment.I think we can soon expect a discussion why mithun chakraborthy is not given Bharath Ratna in the parliment?.when a farmer is dieing every 22 hours in vidharbha,when there are so many pressing issues in the country to be discussed.The important thing that these benglai politican's want to discuss is why a poor performer like ganguly was dropped from the team.

Atleast this joke has opened a bigger discussion on the selection proses.The BCCI should come out with certain rules on the selection process.A criteria or a point system for selecting someone into the team.That would have prevented this whole controversy.The team would have dropped ganguly a few years back.

Emotional cricket

2005-12-16T06:17:00.000-08:00

Ganguly sacking issue is being talked by everyone from film stars, MP's to the BCCI cheif. Just dont understand what all these people have got to do selecting a cricket team for india.This is far worse than the politics that is ruining cricket. Sourav has become the new symbol of Bengali identity which is being crushed by the rest of india. And bengali pride can be restored only if a no gooder like him is re instated into the team and plays for the country for the rest of his life.Seriously if not now, when can we drop saurav?.

The problem with indians is most of them are so emotional that they start thinking with their hearts and not with their brains. It does not matter that australia, england, south africa, pakistan all have a strong team now.All that matters is that the bengali pride should be restored, we will see to the performances later.

There seems to be total confusion from many of the peoples who are commenting. Many peoples are saying that he should have been given a honorable exit.Yes agreed, he deserves that.But when did saurav say that he is quitting from international cricket.If sourav would have told everyone that he is quitting at the end of this series or next series everybody would have understood it and let him stay.Only because he thinks that he has lot of cricket left in him, he has been dropped like any other non performing player.He can proove himself at the local level and come into the team when ever he wants.

The scare for most of the sourav fan's is that he cannot raise from his present level.If he really has that same batting fluency that he had few years before.He would score centuries after centuries in the duleep and ranji trophy and obviously he would be noted.But we all know the truth, he is not going to do it.It is going to take some time for him to get back his batting skills.He is not the old sourav he was.So with all the antics everyone is letting this non performer piggy back on his past records and the fact that he was one of the successful captains.

We cannot keep him for his old records or cause he was a former captain.The only reason why he was in the team was cause he was the captain and he was backed by dalmia, otherwise he should have gone long before for his non performance.

Saurav still contributes to the opposing team by his sloppy running between the wickets.You can see how double careful sachin is when they are both on the crease, and for that matter anybody else in the indian team is little doubtful when it comes to saurav.The reason why saurav cannot shine even in local matches is, even a rookie bowler from a tiny state knows how to get saurav out.He still hasn't corrected his big mistakes or even seemed to have made any efforts in that direction. Imagine you are making yuvraj and kaif sit in the bench when this non performing lazy guy is given the cap.

Kiran Moore and greg chappell have done what india needs.International cricket is not a Rajinikanth movie. There are no superstars in the team.A player should be evaluated only on the past 10/15 matches. Records should not matter.If he has been failing consistently he has to go and correct himself at the local matches and comeback, that holds good for sachin too.To put it simply, a player should make himself worthy of the indian cap which carries the aspirations of a billion people.

China massacre's protestors

2005-12-15T09:33:00.000-08:00

China shot down around 20 villagers of the Dongzhou province.They were demonstrating against the lack of compensation for land confiscated by the government to build a power plant.

Believing that local officials had stolen the compensation funds, farmers have staged protests outside the construction site since October. Local fishermen also charged that the project would spoil fishing in a lake.

The state-owned Guangdong Red Bay Generation is building the power plant as part of $US700 million government project to supply electricity needs to the region’s booming industrial and urban development.

The confrontation was typical of the tension across China between economic development, which runs about 9 percent a year, and farmers' desire to retain the land that they regard as security for their families. The tension is particularly acute here in Guangdong province and the Pearl River Delta, where during the past two decades of economic liberalization, factories and dormitories have steadily eaten away at the rice paddies, corn fields and fruit orchards that used to flourish in the warm, wet climate.more

Gael Garcia Bernal

2005-12-15T05:44:00.000-08:00

The people who are seeking a fair trade by the WTO have some celebrity voices to support them.One of them is Gael Garcia Bernal the man who played Che Guevara in the Motor cycle Diaries.You may think he is supposed to change after understanding and acting the part of an inspiring character like che Guevara.But actually gael has been as activist for quite sometime.During the iraq invasion the atmosphere in USA was such that any one who spoke against iraq invasion was considered a traitor.Becuase of that the whole hollywood kept its mouth shut during the 2003 oscars. Nobody dared to open their mouth, which included many champions of free speech. Very few people expressed their opinions against the iraqi invasion at the oscars.Off course michael moore gave his famous impromptu speech and adrian broody his sentimental one.Other than them there was another person who stood up and talked against the invasion, it was Gael garcia bernal.He had became an international hit with Amores perros , Yu Tu Mamá También and was asked to introduced the Oscar-nominated song for the mexican film Frida.

Before doing that he gave a small speech.He didn't go ballistic like moore, he was calm and composed in the speech he quoted painter frida kahlo. "I don't paint my dreams, I paint my reality " and used that to say "The necessity for peace in the world is not a dream, it's a reality. We are not alone. If Frida was alive, she'd be on our side -- against war".

So he has been an activist for quite a while.His current support to the aid group Oxfam's campaign for fair trade at the World Trade Organization meeting in Hong Kong is kind of personal.He say's he was moved by the plight of his uncles, aunts and cousins whose farms are suffering under free trade.

"Bernal said U.S. corn imports flooding into Mexico at low prices under the North American Free Trade Agreement are driving Mexican corn farmers out of business, endangering a crop that has a long tradition in Mexican culture. He said the genetically modified U.S. corn doesn't taste as good as white corn grown in Mexico".

Read more about his views here

Links
Us corn dumping in mexico
kofi annan urges to end trade distorting subsidies

Thavamai Thavamirundhu

2005-12-14T12:11:00.000-08:00

The movie is simply life through the lens. Cheran seemed to have started a new genre with this movie, i would like to call it Nostalgic-Realism. Lately his movies deal with themes that dig into every ones heart and bring out those treasured nostalgic/sentimental moments. His success lies in the way the script triggers those emotions in every one who is watching the movie. He was able to do that well in autograph, but in this movie even though he has done a good job, i feel it is little incomplete.

The movie narrates a story that you would have definitely come across somewhere. Somebody might have told you about their father or it might remind you off your own dad. A story of a typical indian father, who sacrifices everything for his childrens.It follows the life of Mr.Muthiah through the eyes of his son ramalingam.No wonder he was able to take a movie for 7 hrs.You can take a movie running for 1000's of hours if you start making movies about the sacrifices of an indian parent. But the movie will be remarkable only when it focuses on a well defined story. Cheran has failed here.He just presents a man life plainly and meanders into various things other than the idea of a father's sacrifice.

Autograph was a man's journey through his love life which comes to a beautiful conclusion at his marriage. There was a definite structure and end in autograph but TT lacks that. This movie could be ended in many places, like when the son takes his parents to madurai and makes them happy.They reap the benifits of their sacrifices.Happy days from now on, THE END.Or as soon as the father dies,when the father's important question is answered, when the father feels that he is complete.But cheran has dragged the movie 10 minutes after the death and shows how he takes his fathers responsibility, by which he is shifting the focus on himself than on the father.

Cheran basically failed to understand the fact that the hero is rajkiran and not himself. His major screw up lies there. The movie's central point being the father, it should stress more on him and his sacrifices. But cheran occupies as much time as rajkiran, in the movie.His love life and how he suffers in chennai plays out for almost 45 minutes. These scenes could have been edited and presented in a concise manner than the played out "kadhal" style city scenes. And i dont understand cheran's logic behind putting sabesh & co as music directors for a senti movie like this.

Well that is the bad part, but the movie has lot of good things to offer.First off all cheran has to be appreciated for taking a movie without heavy masala.There are so many stories in every family that could be told beautifully, but directors hardly venture outside the masala formulae. Cheran has showed that a beautiful movie could be made from simple, daily life subjects and still touch people deeply.

Another thing that i like about cheran and Bala is there realistic approach and their use of the backdrop. They go back to the roots.The effect of maniratnam on the contemporary tamil directors is, everyone is now trying to define "what is hip?".Visually pleasing movies with shallow, stylish characters and city backdrop have become the defacto standards for tamil movies.Cheran and bala are two guys who go back to show the tamil nadu that is beyond chennai.I was delighted to see the beauty of the ramnad/sivaganga district in the silver screen. The Noongu vandies and maavilakku made me wonder when was the last time i saw them in a tamil movie?.Jeez, how city centric tamil movies have become.If at all if you see a village it will be gopichettipalayam or kovur in tamil movies.Seeing Sivaganga on screen was very refreshing, it is one of those beautiful places not many people know about.The movie has excellent art direction too.

On the acting front cheran had made everyone act well.But he himself failed. Like illayaraja's who thinks that he has a great voice,cheran also is harbouring a wrong idea that he is a good actor.If some one is floating a petition pleading cheran not to act, count me in.Raj kiran has done a nice job and saranya was awesome. The last saranya movie that i saw was raam, where her acting was very good and now this movie has made her my favorite. There is an interesting scene where the dad rajkiran asks his son about his future. what kind of a work that he can do, where he can find a job etc. The mother saranya does not bother about anything, she cuts there conversation many times only to solve her biggest concern. what kind of a dish she has to prepare for her son. Her son's future does not matter, all she is worried about is what kind of a chutney she has to prepare for dosai.Yes this is a realistic movie.

The anni character was also good. Raj kiran has done a very good job,I wont use superlatives for his acting, cause this is how normal acting should be. Tamil audiences have been made to believe that over acting and dramatics are great acting. We need movies like this to show us that an actor's purpose is to get us involved in the story more than dramatics and self promotion. Imagine if raj kiran's role was done by kamala hassan(Its another thing that if he acted in this movie he would have acted the roles of the two sons also).He would have used a make up that will totally change him. There will be 20 interviews on how he was applying the make up for 3 hours and how much trouble he took etc.Which would have been totally un necessary to the movie. Can u imagine kamal doing a scene like raj kiran's chennai visit. There is not much of dramatic acting there, but those few words "Yaen pa ippadi panney" is enough, you can feel the pain of that hurt soul.If it would have been kamal, it would have become a dramatic crying(howling) and over acting scene. The story might not make an impact on you, but definitely everyone will come out and say what a great actor he is. The actor wins, the story suffers. In order to do these kind of characters you have to feel the character from within, in your soul and when you feel it inside you, big expressions hardly matters. Over acting and makeup gimmicks are for people who cannot feel the characters within them. Raj kiran, job well done.

Like the italian Neo realist Vittorio De Sica's classic "The bicycle theif", the question in this movie is also the same, being a good father.I can't recollect any tamil movie that was made on father son sentimental relationship like this.Its an area director's dont venture that much.I can only think of very few movies, like De Sica's "The Bicycle Thief", Roberto Benigni's "Life is beautiful" and Gul Bahar Singh's "Dattak".Cheran has ventured in that "road less traveled" and produced a nice movie, a movie that talks about a father who's whole purpose is to not fail in his duties as a dad.Raj kiran asks, THE important question at the end to his son."Did i fail to fulfill your wishes?". Essentially meaning Did i fail in my duty as a father?. A defining moment.The very purpose of that man's whole life is in question.What was the reply?. well you have to see that in the movie.

The movie has lot of holes and it could have been done in a better way. But compared to its contemporaries, it is a great movie. You may find some fault in this movie like me, but I dont think anybody can out rightly reject this movie. Cause it is bound to touch the heart of anyone who sees it, Which in itself is a success for the movie.I hope cheran will correct his mistake in the future, which includes putting a full stop to his acting career, and keep making quality movies. Overall, kudos to cheran for taking a movie which deals with an universal concept. All he has to do is polish the edges and make a well focused presentation to transcend the regional barrier.

India: A million mutinies now

2005-12-13T18:46:00.000-08:00

Who can tell,analyze and give various perspectives about charu mazumdhar, Periyar,bal thackrey, ambedhkhar, mahatma gandhi,Namdeo Dhasal, bindralwale and many more in the same book?.Only Naipaul can do that.

When i started reading the book I was still thinking of how to write a review for 'India: A wounded civilization', cause i was so overwhelmed by that book.He questions the basic indian pshyce and shakes the foundation of your thoughts.I was first skeptical of venturing into another naipaul book when i am still not completely out of his previous book.But unlike the wounded civilization, million mutinies wasn't that overwhelming.In wounded civilization, it was all naipaul's perspective, but whereas in million mutinies, naipaul interviews lot of people and there thoughts are are echoed by naipaul.Naipaul does put his opinions also but very less compared to wounded civilization.

I dont know how to classify this book, this can be called a travelogue, cause naipaul travels to bombay, chennai, calcutta, lucknow, kashmir and punjab.He gives us a background of the place and makes us meet various peoples from these regions giving a brief idea about these places.

But naipaul does not stop with a travelogue description, he goes about his business of analyzing and providing critical views on various subjects.We meet different peoples in these regions.A shiv sena party guy and a muslim who lives in a bombay slum.A mylapore brahmin and K.Veeramani of the anti brahmin Dravida party, journalist, politicians, publishers and many more.

Talking about the dravidian movement he comes to MGR and says this.

It was said that at his death some 18,000 files were waiting for his attention.One of the things he had done was to abolish Madras corporation.So madras was in a mess,with mounds of rubbish everywhere.It was as though this too, was part of the revolt of the south,this violation of the old ideas of purity.

Through these people he gives an idea about what is compelling these peoples to do what they are doing. what is going on in there mind.One important guy that he talks to is Mr.vishwanath who is the propreitor of women's era magazine.During naipaul's discussions with him, vishwananth utters some strong statements

The hindu religion is a conglomerations of faiths,500 religion or faiths.We've had reformist movements against orthodoxy.what happens is that every reform movement degenerates into a sect - the lingayats, the arya samajists everybody.Buddha rebelled.Mahavir , the founder of jains,rebelled.Guru Nanak rebelled.It is a long list.They rebelled and degenerated into sects and became as orthodox as the previous orthodox people.

I think religion is the greatest curse of mankind.It has killed more people, destroyed more property, than any other thing.Even today- northern ireland, middle east, hindu,muslims,sikhs, all fighting each other in india.The oldest profession is not prostitution.It is priesthood.

At first many of the topics that are covered seem unrelated.It looks like more of a political view of things happening all around india.But naipaul beautifully sums them up in the end.He looks at everything as india trying to identify itself, a country mutinying against its cultural baggage and past.The sign of change happening, the sign of growth and progress.

To most what happened in the punjab was a pure tragedy.. it seemed that sikhs bad brought this tragedy on themselves,manufacturing grievances out of their great success in independent india.It was as if there was some intellectual or emotional flaw in the community, as if in their fast ,unbroken rise over last century there had developed a lack of balance between their material achievements and their internal life, so that though in one way so adventurous and forward looking in another way they remained close to their tribal and country origin.

Dalip a reporter.

Because i was not impressed by bindranwale.I knew he was not guru gobind singh.I knew he was just being used by indira congress to harm akali party in punjab.He was an ordinary man on whom greatness was being imposed.why should the community accept him?.Why should general shabeg singh not judge him as a man?.why were people just impressed by his angry looks and the armed men around him?.He was not an intellectual, not a thinker, and he was not a pious man.

Talking about the british scholor he quotes from one of his letter...

Great 18th century british scholor Sir william Jones wronte in 1786 to his friend.I shall never cease thinking,that rational liberty makes men virtuous; and virtue happy:wishing therefore ardently for universal happiness,I wish for universal liberty.But our observations on Hindu is too just;they are incapable of civil liberty;few of them have an idea of it;and those who have do not wish it.They must, they must be ruled by an absolute power and I feel my pain much alleviated by knowing the natives themselves... are happier under us than they were or could have been under the sultans of delhi or petty raja.

"They are incapable of civil liberty.They must be ruled by an absolute power".The words expressing the imperial views of that time.But the sad thing is most of the countries below the equator havn't come to terms with not being ruled by an absolute power and civil liberty.

Naipaul talks a lot about Sir william jones who came ot india to make a fortune of 30,000 pounds and made 50,000 in 11 years.He also says he gave back to india a lot. William jones seems to have interacted with many sanskrit scholors and translated many plays like kalidasas's shakuntlam.

The point that made the biggest impact for me was when naipaul said that if not for people like sir william jones, he who was growing up in trinidad before independence could have never had a chance to read about a book like shakuntalam, cause sanskrit was supposed to be the language of gods and only priests and upper caste people could read it.

Another great example of his interesting observation skills.Gandhi the upper caste guy is bare bodied or scantly clad in the pictures where as low caste ambedhkar is in coat and suit.That simple observation makes you think so many things.The insecurity of a group, the way the society looks at them etc.

The book starts in bomabay and after reading few pages, i started seeing the similarities between it and sukhethu's Maximum city.I just wanted to make sure my assumptions were true and i saw this sukethu's interview.

Who provided literary inspiration for you and the book?

Joe Mitchell’s Up in the Old Hotel and Joseph Liebling taught me how to write about cities. Plus Ryszard Kapuscinski, V.S. Naipaul — I mean, lots of Naipaul. I read him like a textbook. I very much disagree with many of his political viewpoints, but that whole arc he has in the three nonfiction books on India — An Area of Darkness, A Wounded Civilization, and A Million Mutinies ...more

Another great book by the master.

Links:
http://naipaul.blogspot.com/

WTO:India Talks tough

2005-12-13T16:52:00.000-08:00

The WTO talks are underway.A bunch of guys are going to decide the future of million of farmers around the world.The funny thing is that most of the big organizations are well represented by the western countries, but the developing countires are not.

Pascal Lamy

Pascal Lamy, WTO director general is a former trade commissioner for the European Union who took over the WTO post this past fall. As EU trade chief he twice called the WTO "medieval" after the failure of ministerial conferences in Seattle in 1999 and Cancun, Mexico, in 2003.

Good news is that india is talking tough.Commerce Minister kamal nath said.

No WTO process can isolate India. WTO talks cannot be completed without India on board. We are ready to take the blame if our concerns are not addressed. We are not here to make statement of good intentions in one area and have specificity in another area.

There can be no agreement in dribbles. There has to be specificity in the area of reductions in farm subsidy and market access in agriculture for developing countries.

We want to do what we are supposed to be doing. But what are you (developed countries) going to pay (as subsidies to farmers) is not acceptable," he said, adding Indian agriculture was not ready for subsidised imports.

With the present agrarian crisis happening in india.Lets hope the govt holds it's stands and not budge under pressure.

21 Grams

2005-12-12T19:11:00.000-08:00

The movie starts with scenes of different characters going about there own life and with every incident you come to know that there is a big time and spacitial discontinuity happening in the story.You are left in a state of confususion cause you are not sure of the time period in which things are happening.By this time you should guess that there is some latin writter or director behind the movie.Yes that's right the movie is directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu,the mexican director of Amores Perros.Like Amores Perros this movie also involves 3 characters and one accident that binds them all.But this is very different from amores perros.

---------story-------
The three characters in this movie are Paul Rivers (Sean Penn) a mathematics professor on the verge of his death, ex-con Jack Jordan (Benicio Del Toro) who has reformed and have taken to god to save him and house wife Cristina Peck (Naomi Watts) who is happyily married.Jordon is the driver who causes an accident and it affects all there lives.Paul river fights for his life, naomi watts fights to forget the past and come to terms with her present while jordon's spirituality is tested after the accident.
------------

Apart from the narration style the great thing about the movie is its cast.Three awesome performers have given wonderful performance in this movie.Sean,naomi and Bencio have done a wonderful job in this movie.Not many people are going to appreciate the narration style for sure.But even if you dont like the narration style, you can watch it for the acting.

The narration style actually does not add that much to the story like amorres perros.In this movie actually it dilutes the impact of many emotional scenes as the spacial and time jumps keep happing all through out the movie.you dont see a scene for a long time and before you could fully grasp it the scene cuts to a entirely different time and emotion.

All the characters in the movie represent certain things.Paul Rivers who knows the worth of a life is able to forgive, help. Cristina Peck who wants revenge represents hate and grief.Jordon represents guilt and repeant.Through these three people we go alternate between these emotions to understand the value of a life.

A movie is worth watching for the innovative naration style and the awesome performance of the lead actors.

After the farmer's suicide........

2005-12-11T12:41:00.000-08:00

In my previous post green revolution i wrote about the agrarian crisis that is happening in india and how it is responsible for the death of so many farmers. Actually that is only part of the devastating thing that is happening in the farming community.

More than 20 cotton farmers ended their lives – and many others continue to do so in the dusty villages of Vidarbha, after the NCF toured the region. One estimate suggests that a farmer is committing suicide every 22 hours, and that rate, fear farm leaders, would accelerate over the next three months. Vidarbha alone has reported 110 suicides since 2 June 2005. That is since the fresh agriculture season commenced in the cotton belt.

Sadly, even widows are following the footsteps of their husbands who ended themselves in the past seven years.

what happens when a farmer commits suicide?.Is all his problems solved?. Maybe all HIS problems are solved. But what happens to his children?. what about his wife?.what about the debt?.

India together has a very good article on this titled Vidarbha distress and the end of innocence .It talks about the families of the vidharbha area farmers who committed suicide.

Vidarbha - When cotton farmer Digambar Agose, 55, swallowed pesticide in Malvagad village near Mahagaon town in Yavatmal on January 18, 2005, his 12-year-old son Madhav became a debtor by inheritance. Today, ten months after his father committed suicide, Madhav toils from 6 am to 8 pm to herd the cattle of a big farmer for a paltry Rs 20 a day. Education? Forget it. He has to help his mother Rukmabai feed the family. Then, he has to tend to his three younger siblings......

In village after Vidarbha village, amidst the graves of farmers, young girls and boys are fast losing their innocence to a piling debt and daunting responsibilities, after the suicide of their fathers. In every farming family that has seen the headman commit suicide, the children have eventually dropped out of schools to take up the plough and work like the beasts of burden at tender age. Girls are among the worst hit. Problems prop up when they get ready for marriage. Finding a groom for a girl whose farmer father commits suicide proves to be tough. The prospective groom could reject the proposal for two more reasons: One, the economic compulsions of bride's family would force the marriage to be a low-key affair, and two it could shift some of family responsibilities (including debt of bride's father) on to the groom. "That's why many families don't report the suicides, fearing for the social ramifications," says a high ranking police officer who asked not to be named because the issue was politically delicate.more