Ripples on the brain

After the bird flu scare in India, some government agency came up with this “brilliant” ad that I am still unable to comprehend. The ad I am referring to is the one that features Sanjay Dutt and Fardeen Khan (or Prakash Raj and Venkatesh, if you are watching its South version) where one of them makes a futile attempt to grab a chicken and the other watching it remarks “Kaun kehta hai ki Indian chicken healthy nahin hai“.

Now what I don’t understand in this ad is what is the correlation between a chicken being healthy and the same chicken becoming a healthy human food. Aren’t these two things completely different? Any animal can be healthy by itself, but need not be healthy for human consumption. Am I wrong?

Did you watch Devil’s Advocate this Sunday on CNN-IBN featuring Karan’s interview with Rahul Bajaj, the new Rajya Sabha MP who has caused a political realignment in Maharashtra. Well if you didn’t you should definitely read this. Or if you think you don’t have the time, I’ll paste some interesting parts of the interview here.

Part I

Karan Thapar quotes Rahul as saying he’ll be a fool to enter politics to which Rahul responds:
Rahul Bajaj: I don’t know which of us is mad I am not. That’s for sure.

Part II

Karan insists that since Rahul is a MP, he is a politician to which Rahul disagrees and Karan responds that Rahul’s logic is flawed. Rahul’s response?
Rahul Bajaj: Where did you go to school Karan?
Karan Thapar: Is that relevant?
Rahul Bajaj: It is very relevant because your logic is illogical.
Karan Thapar:If it is relevant I will tell you. I went to Doon School, Cambridge, Oxford and I know a lot about politics.
Rahul Bajaj: I went to Cathedral, St. Stephens, and Harvard, slightly better than you in every respect. So I understand logic. But I am a humble man unlike you.
Karan Thapar: I am not sure you are showing humility at the moment. You are showing a lot of defiance.

Part III

This is the one I liked the most. While answering a question, Rahul sees Karan referring to his notes and this is what follows:
Rahul Bajaj: Don’t look at your questions, you should have them memorised.
Karan Thapar: I am not looking at the questions, I’m looking at a quotation, so I get it right.
Rahul Bajaj: You should have learnt it by heart before interviewing me.
Karan Thapar: I am afraid your words are not so important that I would want to learn them by heart.

PartIV

Karan suggests that by getting the support of BJP, Rahul has damaged the relationship between the Bajaj family and the Nehru-Gandhi family.
Karan Thapar: But is it now a relationship in the past tense? Have you damaged it?
Rahul Bajaj: I have not at all damaged it. I think it will be better for the Congress and let’s check with Soniaji.
Karan Thapar: Well that’s your privilege and prerogative, I am afraid I don’t have access to her.
Rahul Bajaj: You don’t? What a shame, Karan.

:). I checked up Karan Thapar’s past interviews for the same program (the one with Arjun Singh was a very good one and was also well circulated in the web). But none of them was as interesting as this one.

I really admired both of these guys, not for the cheap quarrel that they had, but for the way they communicated despite facing each other in front of the camera. I’m sure each just loathed the other during the interview but both of them still talked fluently and had a go at each other at the first opportunity. At work and other places, I always end up getting tongue-tied when I hear something ridiculous from the other side. I get tensed but don’t respond at all. I have tried a lot to maintain my external calmness and respond fittingly in such situations but have never managed to do it to my satisfaction. That is the reason I really enjoyed the way these two guys responded especially Karan Thapar’s response in Part III.

I had a wonderful time with some of my ISB friends yesterday. Two guys working in Bangalore had come over for the weekend and together with 5 other guys in Chennai, we went for a movie and then to a restaurant and then came to my house to watch football. A guy who was recently engaged brought his fiancee along and that made the get-together more interesting with some severe leg-pulling.

I know this generally happens that you realize only later about the good-times during your college days. For us, when we were at ISB, around 6-8 of us stayed close to each other and even at that time we felt we were fortunate to be in each other’s company. We had a gala time after our placements ended and roamed around everyday. Even in that tight schedule of a one-year MBA program, we met at a friend’s place atleast once in a month and watched a movie over the weekend. It also helped that all of us liked volleyball and played together.

So, when we came to know that all of us could meet this weekend, atleast I was looking forward to it eagerly, more so because I am staying alone at the moment. I must say yesterday wasn’t a disappointment. We chatted for close to 5 hours, first over a cup of coffee, then over dinner and then over a football match.

My greatest disadvantage with my friends from my under-graduation days was that though many of my close friends are from Chennai, they live very far-off from where I live and hence meeting them regularly was an ordeal and it never materialized. With my ISB friends, atleast right now, many of them are living close-by and hence have similar likes and dislikes of the places around our residences.

But, with the “scare” of marriage around the corner for most of the guys, the test will be whether they’ll have the same enthu to meet their friends immediately after marriage. Even yesterday, the guy who had brought his fiancee along didn’t watch the movie that much. I’ve experienced this in the US when 4 of us where very close to each other and tried to roam every weekend. However, as people started getting married, they generally shunned their trips every weekend and tried to stay indoors (”Wifekku udambu seri illai” used to be the general excuse ). I think it normally takes upto a year or two after marriage when guys realize the futility of the exercise (i.e staying with their wives rather than friends) and come out again to be with their friends .

When my present employer gave me an offer, the commute was the first thing that bothered me. I’m in Thiruvanmiyur and my office is in Tambaram Sanitorium. Again when I had my induction program in Bangalore and had a choice between Bangalore and Chennai, the commute was something that played in my mind over and over. Was it better to work in Bangalore considering the office there is near Koramangala where I could stay?

Finally, for some reason, I decided Chennai was better for me. Again I had 3 different options for commuting - take my car all the way, go till Guindy in my bike and then travel train from there or take a bus from Thiruvanmiyur till Tambaram on the Velachery Road and then to Tambaram Sanitorium. I tried the first two options and for the moment I am sticking with the more comfortable one among the two - car.

So far, I must say, I am enjoying my commute. The long distance drive on a highway (okay, GST road cannot be compared with the new roads, but still it’s a good one to drive on) accompanied by music from FM radio just refreshes me both in the morning and in the evening. I have become a regular listener of “Kittu Maama, Susi Maami” in the morning and “Kisu Kisu Geetha” and “En Uyire” (yeah, I know the last one is a very silly program, but the song selection is generally good). Surprisingly, I no longer listen to my favourite RJ Suchi’s “Hello Chennai” any more. I guess it is more due to the better songs available in “Kittu Mama…“, than anything else.

I have learnt/observed a lot things driving for 1hr 45 mins, 40kms up and down (guys in bangalore, can you think of it? 20kms in 50mins):
1. Never go behind ambassador cabbies. Mostly they don’t change their gears at all causing a bottleneck after a disturbance on the road and cannot go faster than 50km/hr.
2. Bigger lorry drivers are very responsive. When you honk, they exactly tell you if you can overtake them or not. Whereas tempo and mini lorry drivers are exactly the opposite.
3. Drivers of Maruthi 800 believe that they are on a motorbike. They can never stick to their lane and they always try to come on your left, however farther you are from the median on the road.
4. There are a few thathas driving huge cars (even Innovas!) on the Chennai roads. They drive in their own world, go in the right-most lane possible, leave a gap that can be covered by 3-4 cars between their vehicle and the one before them.

I was pleased to read this article from The Hindu as I was also thinking on the same lines a couple of weeks ago. The article compares the banning of the DaVinci Code by the TamilNadu government with the past track record of the very people who run the current government.

The film Parasakthi, for which the dialogues were penned by the current TN CM, contained scenes that denigrated temple priests and talked ill of idol worship. While this film was released without any censorship by the TN government of 1952, the current government thought it fit to ban the DaVinci Code “as it affected the sentiments of the minority community”. I am very sure not even one of the persons responsible for banning the movie in TN had an idea of what the movie was about.

Which is a greater event? FIFA World cup or Olympics? Economist gives some reasons as to why World cup may be better than the Olympics:

1. Countries in the past have manipulated Olympics for political purposes. The examples it provides are Germany in 1936, US and Russia during the cold war and now US and China in the 2008 Olympics. In each of those cases, the political strength of the respective countries have been reflected in the medals tally of the Olympics. However, the countries that have reigned superior in the FIFA worldcup are third world countries who have no similar standing in world politics.

2. Wealthy countries were/are able to create machine-like athletes who win laurels for their country(eg. Russia and now China), but the same cannot be done with football as the game requires skill and technique that cannot be mass-produced.

I personally feel that though skill and technique are more important in games as compared to athletics, if it wishes, any country can mass produce that too. It is just that traditionally some countries are stronger in some games and it creates sort of a vicious cycle where the youngsters emulate their stars and enter the games in which the country is already strong. The US dominance in tennis (though now dimished to a certain extent) and the domination of table tennis (ping-pong) and badminton by the yellow race come to mind.

Thappi thavari Selvaraghavan-Dhanush combination padathukku poiten!

This was my first Dhanush movie. He seems to use the same expression all the time. After some 10 minutes into the movie his acting became so monotonous that I couldn’t continue looking at the screen. I don’t know what Selvaraghavan wants to convey through such movies. The media seems to go gaga over him for no reason. The “special effects” in the movie were so bad that one could easily make out. A case in point is when Dhanush injures people around him with a knife and blood is shown to be pouring.

A special mention needs to be made about the theatre where I watched this movie. I was under the impression that the theatre in Nagerkoil where I watched Gemini was the most galeej theatre that I could have ever entered. I was proved wrong by a theatre in the heart of bangalore. Half the seats didn’t have a cushion. Even if they had, the seats were so narrow that the only way to sit was to place your hands between your knees!

The saving grace was this conversation that I overheard between two people while the movie was on

First: Dei ivlo nadakkuthu, Sonia Aggarwal la kaanum?
Second: Avla evano konnuttaan da.

First: Yaaru da avala konna?
Second: Ava annane konnuttaan.

Just then Dhanush uttered a dialogue in the movie that Sonia Aggarwal would be safe with her brother

First: Dei machi, thappa sollitte da, ava innum saagale?
Second: Dei pesama padathe paaru da, evan evana pottu thalraane puriya mattenguthu!

Aamir, I have a question for you. How did you suddenly turn an activist just around the time of release of “FANAA“? Why didn’t think about Narmada Bachao Aandolan when Medha Patkar started it? Or atleast when Arundhati joined it?

I was irritated to see him in almost all the news channels two weeks ago. He was giving a recorded interview in one, talking live with viewers in another one, talking with Kajol again and again in yet another one. How did he suddenly think of supporting NBA? He read about it in the newspaper and felt for it. Oh! Didn’t NBA feature earlier in the newspapers? What did he think about reservations? He feels that meritocracy should prevail and no section of the society should be disadvantaged. Wow! What a fresh thought? Why couldn’t anyone think this way? In a sentence he’s provided the solution to the reservation issue!

I think Aamir is the first person in Bollywood to manipulate media so effectively (okay, atleast differently) for his movies. He did it successfully with Rang de Basanti (”It is a phenomenon”, Siddharth would claim when he was at Infosys Hyderabad where there was a special screening of the movie) and tried it to some effect with FANAA.

But this time he didn’t get to talk anything about the movie, so he resorted to other gimmicks. By banning the movie in Gujarat, the government, knowingly or unknowingly, generated more interest and possibly more revenues than what the movie could have achieved through a normal release in Gujarat. My respect for Aamir (whom I even now hold above any other star in Bollywood) is definitely dipping.

Aamir is definitely not alone in using novel ways to publicize his crap movies. Namba Simbu is trying something similar with his sudden interest in Nayanthara before the release of Vallavan.