During these international flights, especially the India-US ones, my heart really goes out for the infants, their parents and the aged people who go through the ordeal. More terrible would be to see mothers travelling alone with infants, or worse, with an infant and another kid. In my opinion, if a husband cannot accompany his wife and kids in an international travel, he should have either not gone abroad or not married.

If the above incident affected you, you can sign the online petition here. I’m not sure how it will help though.

While the news channels tries to make some news out of Musharraf’s resignation, I was disappointed that none of the so called news analysis programmes pointed out that this is dejavu if you turn the pages of even the recent history of Pakistan. A ruler - democratically elected, or otherwise - is always hailed by the citizens when he ascends the throne and (s)he almost always goes out of favour within a few years and is cursed unanimously before (s)he is ejected from the throne. Irrespective of the nature of his wrong doing, more often than not, he is never tried without prejudice and (s)he always has a safe passage either out of the country or out of the world. The new ruler invariably comes with a lot of promise, irrespective of his past records, and cycle just repeats. As far as their stance towards India is concerned, the ruler travels the journey from being almost hawkish when he takes over to being a friend when he steps down (or is thrown out). I don’t expect the current coalition, born out of public sympathy to last very long.

The situation in Pakistan is such that, because of the precedent set, every General will now fancy his chances as the leader of the country. It is so amazing that “leaders” just need to spend some time outside the country to absolve themselves of any wrongdoing and to destroy their past records from the public memory. While the celebrations of Musharraf’s ouster are shown in media, it will also be prudent to show how he was welcomed 9 years ago, even though it was coup.

Times of India Page 3

Seriously, what is it with the page 3 of Chennai Times - a supplement to the Times of India Chennai edition. Everyday it has the same set of photos of “party animals” cuddling and posing in groups almost always with the same attire. Though I agree that the other pages are equally useless, this page just disgusts me. What a waste of newsprint!

I was reminded of those incidents when I read this article of Hasan Suroor in the Hindu today. Writing about an article of a British academic (which is the second piece in that link) where he wants pundits to agree on a set of variant spellings, Hasan Suroor provides some examples which are funny:

if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. Ken Smith of Buckinghamshire New University wants pundits to agree on a set of “variant spellings” of some of the more commonly misspelt words such as “their” for “their,” “argument” for “argument,” “twelth” for “twelfth,”, “truly” for truly and — horror of horrors — “speech” for speech!

I read and re-read this sentence umpteen times, but couldn’t differentiate between the wrong spellings and correct spellings for all the example words, except “twelfth”. Is it the case of Hasan Suroor or the British academic unable to spell the words the wrong way even if they tried to like our musicologists in the first example?

I think the reason for the wrong wrong spellings is because the reporter typed his article in MS Word or some such editor that automatically corrected his wrong spellings without alerting him. Or some editor diligently ran the article through a spell check utility and corrected his wrong spellings . That reminds me (again) of a proposal we did for the US retail chain Lowe’s. MS Powerpoint automatically “corrected” all Lowe’s into Lower without alerting the author. Normally spelling mistakes and grammatical errors are not very uncommon in these presentations, but this was one in which we even got the client name wrong! Thanks to Microsoft products’ assumption that they are smarter than the user.

Coming to think of it, MS editors may be a major culprit for people fogetting (or not learning) their spellings. They don’t even allow them to realize they are entering the wrong spelling.

You need to just watch the first few minutes of the video to understand why Santhanam is not doing well in films. There’s no timing in his dialogue delivery. He seems to be very keen on speaking his lines without caring what the other person is doing.

The current favourite seems to be Subramaniapuram’s “Kangal irandal“. I watched the song once and instantly fell in love with it. I remember when Minnale’s audio was first released, “Vaseegara” captivated people like me so much that we couldn’t wait to see how the song was picturised. When the movie was released, we actually regretted seeing it as Gautam Menon entirely killed that song. Thankfully “Kangal irandal” has been picturized very well. The 80’s feel (similar to Nizhalgal), wonderful lyrics (after a long time), a lovely leading lady suiting the lyrics, some funny portions - very pleasing overall.

Update: Isn’t the beat of the song very similar to “Ithu oru pon maalai pozhuthu“? Also, the nadaswaram interlude reminds one of “Poongathave thazhthidavaa”

For your listening pleasure:

One word - amazing! I just love this programme. Jodi No.1 and all the other immitations should atleast see these dancers once. Hell, if you cannot get dancers like these, atleast get a host like Cat Deeley. Drool!!!

Courtesy: http://subramanians.blogspot.com/

1. I watched the debate through CNN IBN’s streaming video. At the time of the vote, the speaker took a voice vote first and then said, “the ayes have it, the ayes have it…” and the opposition pressed for a division. Our friend Sagarika Ghose didn’t understand that a division has been requested. So, she interrupted the live video and announced that the UPA has won the confidence vote before her co-presenter intervened and educated her live in front of the viewers. Not willing to be put down, she said, “But in the view of the speaker, UPA has won”. After the electronic vote was over and the results flashed, Rajdeep came on the screen and mentioned that UPA has probably won. Sagarika Ghose again made her point, “Rajdeep, just to point out, CNN IBN has been predicting for the last 2 days that UPA will win”. Wow, she’s the new Nostradamus.

2. I think there was a confusion in the electronic voting (i.e. 50 odd members didn’t vote) because the instructions were so confusing. I don’t understand why every time confusion reigns at the last minute during the vote. The Secretary General didn’t appear sure on what instructions to read out. He read out only the instructions for voting from the lobby and the Speaker was having a cross-talk with some MP. Suddenly, the electronic voting process began.

The best part of the journey was the movie “Kalloori” I watched on the flight from Chennai. I enjoyed every bit of the movie. The initial story kept reminding one of April Madhathil and 5star in parts, but obviously this movie is at a different level (it is a reminder of a real incident that happened a few years ago in Tamil Nadu). The story and screenplay are very simple, but the settings and the actors infuse realism into the movie. Except for the leading girl (who looks gorgeous, but still suits her role), the movie makers have shunned glamour and opted for actors who will suit their parts. Excellent selection of actors I must say! The country-side settings, which are crucial to the story, have been captured very well. The acting is above par for most of the time, considering most of the actors are novices. Except for the heroine, it is difficult to even find the names of the other actors who played crucial roles in the movie. The music is also excellent without being pompous and suits the overall story very well. I liked the first song that takes place in the bus very much.

The movie kept reminding me of my own experiences in my engineering college. It was for the first time I had the company of students from the rural background. Many of my classmates came from Tamil medium schools and hence, some lecturers taught the initial classes in Tamil.

I just realized that Shankar produced the movie. What a guy? I mean Shankar as a director and Shankar as a producer cannot be more contrasting. Look at the list of movies Shankar has produced - Kaadhal, Imsai Arasan 23 am Pulikesi, Veyyil and now Kalloori. (Ofcourse, Shankar also seems to have produced Mudhalvan and Arai Enn … Kadavul which are outliers in the list). It is very difficult to choose these small budget movies that involve first time directors and, more often than not, novice actors. But Shankar seems to hitting the jackpot every single time.

I could see 4 people in my vicinity in the place who were also watching the same movie. Actually, the other Indian movie that was among the options was Race (Hindi). I couldn’t help thinking Kalloori’s budget should have been less than the salary of each of the leading actors of Race and still Race couldn’t have been crappier. A good study in contrast, again!

Not that he was playing poorly, but it was just amazing to watch how much effort he had to put to get a single point. Like for one of his serves, he just changed his plan the last minute and served it short and high so that he could volley. When Nadal was serving, he started moving around like how batsmen do in the last few overs in a cricket match. I didn’t like Nadal’s game, but I think the way he kept running and returning whatever was thrown at him was super human. He just seemed to defy the uncertainty principle with his power and precision. Now that Nadal has barged into “Federer’s part” of the season, it remains to be seen how the year progresses. Normally Nadal’s game plateaus post-Wimbledon, but this year may be different.

Though the general opinion is otherwise, I somehow like a sport being dominated by a single person - an icon. I cannot prove it through data, but I feel the attention to a sport increases whenever an icon dominates it. Schumacher readily comes to mind. Even in tennis, nobody remembers the period when these non-icons win Grand Slam tournaments. It might be probably because hero worship in ingrained my psyche.

1. I get too embarrassed whenever I recall some embarrassing situations I have been in, so much so that I need to do something rash to get over it, like banging my fists on the floor or suddenly accelarating insanely if I happen to recall something when I’m driving.

2. That brings me to my second quirk. I generally get lost in thought whenever I’m driving all alone. I start thinking about some random things that I normally forget something important I would have been doing just before I started and wanted to continue after I reach my destination. Sometimes, even when the drive is just 20 minutes or so, it feels like I had been driving all day when I reach my destination because I would have been imagining too many things.

3. Even at this age it is very easy for me to migrate into a world of fantasy. I imagine myself to be the PM, to be a player in the Wimbledon finals, so on and so forth.

4. I don’t like taking photographs when we visit places because I feel that it once I take the camera out, it becomes the sole point of interest. One more reason I dislike taking photographs is probably because I dislike seeing myself in one.

5. Even after so many years of experience, I get uneasy before getting into any conference call irrespective of the duration of the call and the number of participants.

6. I can never watch any of those thrilling matches especially when the team / person I support is losing. I just switch off the television or turn to a different channel.

Okay, compiling this list was quite tough.