Diwali Exhibition time again!

Shveta's been busy all through the month preparing for Deep'08, the annual pre-Diwali exhibition in Bhopal. What is absolutely incredible is the ability of this girl to manage so much. Ailing parents, me at Indore, the showroom at Metro Plaza, and her exhibition. Did I count the 60 people who work for her? I recall how she owned up and managed the entire kitchen during the wedding. And she is barely 30. If she works for any firm, she would be a senior exec in no time. Well, I am absolutely privileged to be her hubby, and to observe her do so much. I will post some of her exhibition pics soon. God bless her. I really really wish her so much of happiness and bliss, and yes, knock on wood!

Are we at a Global Financial Inflexion Point?

The current global financial crisis rings a very strong bell for people who are aware of the 1929 Great Depression and the global socio-political and socio-economic climate then. The Great Depression was the lowest point for capitalism and preceded massive socialistic movements globally, including the rise of fascism. A major part of the world was still under imperial rule and was quite unaware of what was happening in the US and Europe. But the effect was there, and it changed the world significantly. It was certainly an Inflexion Point, using Andy Grove's term for a singular disrupting event that changes the rules of the game in business. It was not the first event that had repurcussions across the globe - the Great War, or the WWI as we know it, was the first one. And it led to major social upheavals and changes primarily in the participating nation-states. Turkey lost the Caliphate, blamed the Armenians for losses in Dardanelles and summarily executed hundreds of thousands in an uncannily similar fashion that the Nazis used decades later. USSR overthrew their Tsar and put in place the first Communist regime in the 20th century. European monarchies were abolished. Then in the '20s the Great Depression happened. Financial terms that were not very familiar the world over ,such as Inflation, became everyday household words. They led in a way to the coming to power of the NSDAP in Germany and the other fascist governments in Europe. 

We all know our history. And thats the keyword today - knowledge. That is the biggest differentiator between all the major events that changed the world earlier and now. Every major crisis is preceded by a string of sub-events. The Holocaust was preceded by the Kristallnacht, the WWII by the rising unrest in Germany over the Versailles reparation terms, compounded by the Depression conditions. Today, in a complicated, globalized world, everyone is aware and impacted by any financial event. Ofcourse, in the early days of the US sub-prime crisis, laypeople across the world, even in the US, did not anticipate the turn of events that have ensued since, but analysts the world over could sense something amiss. Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Lehman, Merill Lynch, AIG, etc joined a host of names that are now familiar in even quaint, remote towns in India. The first reaction in many cases was, has Capitalism as a concept maxed out? Even before Bear Stearns happened, we have been witnessing various crises the world over - and all of us are quite aware of them. Some global - like the Iraq war, the War on Terror , Al Qaeda, and some local - our naxal situation, the Kashmir problem. But these have been largely chronic issues gripping economies and nations over longer duration. A financial crisis ofcourse poses a much clearer danger - in the past few days, in India, we have seen a few major problems already. The Tata-Singur crisis, for one. But a more sinister, ominous event that seems far more disturbing, something that one could perhaps expect in and around 1929 but not in 2008. A CEO of an Italian Multinational getting lynched by a mob of retrenched employees represents that fear. Is this a one off event or could this be a sign of more to come? Things are not so simple today as they were earlier. Events or causes in those times could be stemmed at one place because of lack of awareness. Today, radical extremist organizations only need to use the email or the ubiquitous cell phone to reach out to their recruits, quite like corporate organizations. Rising inflation, spiked up gas prices, exponential rise of consumerism with every individual aspiring to have a better lifestyle, increasing disparity between the rich and the poor  have created a very dangerous cocktail that is laced with other myriad local and not-so-local issues such as ideological or communal differences. Any measure to bridge this apparent gap, by way of reduced/competitive pricing (an oversimplistic example), only results in reduced margins for organizations and further layoffs - like in the case of Granzino Transmissioni which saw the recent unfortunate incident. And that makes the current Global Financial crisis truly ominous. We can only wait and watch how this unfolds.

Won a medium AI skirmish in C&C3!!

Played a C&C3 skirmish and defeated the GDI forces, playing as a Scrin unit...and that too in medium AI mode!! Finally!! Lots of learnings - moving the drone ship to the blue tiberium field early, creating multiple warp centers and producing multiple harvesters, and then queue up scores of vehicles - esp. anti-aircraft ones..Well, I still need to play and win a Kane's Wrath game though.
By the way, this is my 101st post! And to think I opened this blog in 2005/2006 - well, its been a slow start but a good one though. I love blogging now..:-\
Shveta's mom is recuperating, by god's grace. And I hope she really recovers fast. She has an indomitable willpower and she should sail through easily...

Delhi Trip

Just returned from a great trip to Delhi. It was basically meant for my medical examinations at AIIMS and fortunately turned out good - no abnormal condition, but I guess I would need to reduce my weight fast. Nilu is around and we could spend some quality time together - talking, watching movies, playing C&C3-Kane's Wrath over the wi-fi LAN (and did I lose the games royally!), and ofcourse, sharing data with each other. Nilu has a very good repository of stuff and it was a pleasure checking it out. I also got to check out Bapa's new office - at the Bhikaji Cama Complex. A sea change from his earlier offices, the new office is located in a major market complex (which surely is also a matter of concern looking at the importance of his new post and the lack of security there). But what has been inspirational about Bapa always has been his taking everything in his stride without any apparent betrayal of emotions. Ma recently witnessed this oh so prestigious event where the National School of Drama staged one of her plays. Could anything be better than that??

And also could watch Buli mamu and his family for a whole week on TV. The last day was rather eventful - with the Delhi blasts. Bonnie apparently travelled that day via Barakhamba Road, one of the blast sites and we were naturally quite worried about her. My thoughts were also with Shveta and my mom-in-law, who still continues to be sick. I was constantly in touch with them. Bonnie landed up on the last day and spent a few hours with us. She is looking very sprightly and pretty now - which is a great thing. Hope she also manages to get a guy of her liking soon - which would be so much better for her, esp. because she is so well educated and smart....

I also got to show some of my Steven Seagal movies to Bapa and Ma, and also one of the gems of my prized collection - the World at War. 

Lastly, our dear pets - Chaman and Godot - were looking their cutest best - playing around with their baby beanies and trying to hump each other (jeez!)..hope the horny Chaman gets a real mate before he dies humping an occasional human leg and a distraught US returned , male, Shih-tzu much older than himself...

I headed back to Bhopal on Sunday after having a rather good break. Wished my dear parents-in-law were better because I feel quite guilty thinking about all the good things as they suffer from ill-health.

Another Lazy Weekend

Spent the weekend downloading Spore, watching TV, playing some Scrabulous and listening to some music..The speed of the net was so bad, I thought our broadband's Road Kill compared to the US' Road Runner. Anyways, as I posted earlier, the lowside was my mom-in-law's getting hospitalized. Got to know she threw up. Poor girl Shveta is all tied up and emotionally distraught right now - I guess a few diseases, such as coronary ailments, cancers and tumors, refuse to let go that easily. They almost always resurface after sometime. Perhaps its like an appliance or a product that  - once it goes out of whack and gets repaired -never remains the same again and has something or the other cropping up that is in some ways related to that ailment. In anycase, the worst part about old people is that they don't stop worrying about their children.

Shveta's mom

Today got to know that my mom-in-law had a relapse of the brain clot she had earlier. For the whole day today, as I was trying to divert my mind elsewhere, my thoughts were with them and I could not stop myself from calling Shveta again and again...I feel so so bad for her and imagine how difficult it is to see one's parents age and suffer from ailments...May God give them strength and quickly heal her..

Swamped with work today!

The last two days have seen a frenetic time in the office, and am inundated with a lot of new projects getting set-up...would have 2-3 more projects setting up by next week and I would be ending up supporting at least 10 projects, and 5 teams besides them!..:((

Memento, Anterograde Amnesia...

Today I saw Memento, another one of Christopher Nolan's psycho thrillers - the last I saw was the American Psycho. The great thing about this movie is its near accurate depiction of a person suffering from anterograde amnesia, a form of short-term memory loss, in a murder mystery setting. The end result is a confusing story that moves backward..I guess IMDB and Wikipedia contain enough spoilers and synopses so I would spare us the details, but it surely is a must see. Thanks, Betu, for recommending this one...

World At War IV

Finally...wrapped up the last two episodes! Whew! I wonder what effort must have been invested in collecting all the information, editing all the footages, sewing all that together into a hell of a series! The advisor to the series was Noble Frankland, the then director of the Imperial War Museum. The last two episodes, though, were not that impressive. Ofcourse, there was no dearth of material, and the first 24 series talked in detail about various aspects of the war: for all the theaters, the scope of the series was covering the strategic, tactical and operational aspects of the war on land, air and at sea. Episode 25 dealt with the aftermath - the process of reconstruction in the devastated lands, the epicenter of all the battle. Huge swathes of refugees moved across continental Europe, quite like zombies. Permanently displaced even at home, since their homes were bombed out. The episode also talked about how other Asian nations, still under European colonial rule got inspired by Japan's exploits - Japan had routed the British out of Malaya , Singapore and many other places, restricting them to a few strongholds such as India. Nationalistic aspirations of many of these countries compounded by a weakened British/European presence made things easy for many to break free. The episodes show colored footages of celebrations across England and many other places, of the American homecoming. Absolutely invaluable stuff, this series. The last one talks about Remembering the Dead - 55 million died officially. Add to this figure the millions who died before the war in related events such as the Great Purge in USSR, the Japanese invasion of China, the partition of India in 1947. All within +/- 5 years of the war.
Back to life post World At War. Spent some time reading some books and playing Scrabulous before dozing off...

World At War - III

Saw episodes through 24 since my last post on the subject. The episodes covered the genocide, the endloesung or the Final Solution to the Judenfrage, or the Jewish Question or Problem. In its distinct, crisp and accurate manner, the episode took us through Anne Frank's house in Holland, to the Nuremberg Laws of 1938, read out by Goering in the Reichstag, with Hitler and the NSDAP leadership looking over(the videos obviously accompanied by Laurence Olivier's baritone voice), the kristallnacht of November '38, then moving over to the rise of Himmler from a small time horticulturist to the earlier years of the Munich Beer Hall Putsch, the formation of the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler and marginalization of the SA, the outbreak of the war and the commencement of the death machines - starting with the Dachau model camp, to other innumerable camps - each surrounded by ancilliary posts using forced labor to oil the war engine. Episode 20, the one focussing on the genocide, showed some morbid, graphic video clips of the camps at Auschwitz and Buchenwald and other places such as Mauthausen and Madjanek where initially the Einsatzgruppe shot their victims by the thousands. The video was peppered with interviews of Karl Wolff, Himmler's adjutant, many jewish survivors, other SS soldiers and leaders, some of Hitler's staff like Heinz Linge and Traudl Junge, etc... Particularly interesting was Wolff's witnessing Himmler's visit to Auschwitz and witnessing the slaughter of some of the jews. Apparently, a jewish shooting resulted in some of the brain matter getting splattered all over Himmler's coat, which made him turn all pale and green with sickness. Wolff tried to help keep his boss maintain his cool. Some of the subsequent measures to the Judenfrage included the Wannssee Conference - attended by the likes of Eichmann and Mengele and chaired by Heydrich to expedite the final solution, since each country acquired added to the count of jews and other "unlikeable" elements into the lebensraum, and also because extermination by shooting had its effect on the Waffen SS units and that it was not very efficient. And then came the Zyklon B enabled gas chambers - stills showing naked women and men lined up, children separated from their mothers, piles of belongings and personal effects - including prosthetics, wigs, actual hair, teeth...there was also a clip on the medical experiments.A very moving bit, something I was not aware of earlier, was that a number of the inmates, albeit a very small number, committed suicide by jumping onto the electric wires surrounding the camps. Pictures of some of those people was so moving, since it captured the expressions of helplessness and despair.. A very interesting bit was that most of the jews in the Occupied areas (Netherlands and other scandinavian areas) were told that they were being taken for resettlement to the east, and the video clips actually show a good number of affluent or middle class jews paying to be transported first!!! The very thought, the scenes and clips of the death camps, the death marches, still sends shivers down my spine - even after reading so much on the subject. To think that rational men, ably armed with the latest that technology, or science could offer, would be no different than the Hutus and Tutsis of Rwanda and Burundi in their bestiality and hatred towards other "inferior" fellow human beings or the untermenschen. The episode ended with a scene of the dead and decomposing in the liberated camps, and a particularly stirring colored video clip of large bulldozers picking up piles of skeletal, naked bodies of jewish victims of the Holocaust. Apparently, post the surrender of Germany, civilians were forced to visit the camps and see for themselves how their beloved NSDAP resettled the jewish people. Some of the people are shown reacting to the sight with utter horror. Olivier says in the accompanied narration that apparently a mayor of a german town, and his wife, after going through such a visit, returned back to their place, and committed suicide - out of utter horror, disgust and shame. Its been about 63 years and already we are seeing a revival of neo-nationalistic and in some cases, anti-semitic sentiments in many parts of the world.
The other episodes dealt with the Pacific theater - something that I am not as interested as perhaps the Asian people of the South East must be - the Pacific theater and Imperial Japan's surrender. Episode 24 is on the Bomb. It has clips of Robert Oppenheimer giving his famous speech quoting the Gita - the "I am become Death, the destroyer of the world" one. Priceless video clips of the american operations across the Pacific islands including Saipan, Guam, Tawara, the Palau islands, Phillipines, Iwo Jima, Okinawa and finally the Flying Fortresses flattening Japanese cities with tons and tons of bombs. Japan was almost at its knees and its envoys pleading in front of Molotov which was denied as Russia declared war on Japan over Manchuria in mid 1945. The West, after the German surrender, was increasingly scared and hostile towards the intentions of USSR, and rightly so. While the USSR justified its occupation of the "satellite" countries (many of whom, like Poland, felt betrayed by the Allies' not coming to their aid), its declaration of war on Japan must have rung alarm bells across the US, since wherever the USSR waged war, it occupied some or all the territories. And communism coming so close to the US would truly have been unsettling. It would also have given them unprecedented hold over a huge part of the globe, as the Japanese had occupied much of China and the Indo-China. Truman and Byrnes decided to drop the Bombs without informing any of their allies to gain greater bargaining power. The Cold War must have sent its first wave of chilly, cold winds across at this time, cold enough for the US to raise hell in Japan. Some of the Japanese ministers and policymakers interviewed in episodes 23 and 24 mention the sentiments in Japan even when everything was lost. Apparently, even after the two bombs were dropped, 99 of every 100 Japanese people wanted the war to continue, since they feared for their emperor and believed in fighting to the last man. Apparently, even a 1000 atomic bombs would not have shaken their resolve. But the emperor going on radio, informing the people of their decision to surrender to the Allies on Potsdam terms, really took the people aback. The video clips show people crying and the general reaction. What is ironic is the Japanese considering the Americans brutal - yes, 20th century warfare introduced a different kind of warfare unknown to the practitioners of conventional warfare of the preceding centuries - but the Japanese calling Americans brutal?? After Nanking? Just because it was mano-a-mano and not wholesale bombardment? Haven't people across ages realized what they ask for when they wage wars? ...What definitely was not excusable was the use of the atomic bombs...but I guess it was necessary for the world to realize what it could do and what the consequences of an atomic war could be. Had it not been, it would just have been a classified test in the Mojave desert unknown to people, who would have invented the bomb (and perhaps used it) anyways. The rest is history. But I believe, what is unnerving is that history repeats, and rather, has to repeat itself. People start forgetting the affects of war, death and destruction and are forced to experience it first hand when they reach their heights of hubris and arrogance, as the citizens of Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany realized. I feel most for the victims of the warring nations - those who had nothing to do with things, but became unwilling parties. The Occupied countries in Europe and Asia. The Jews , gypsies, romas, poles..the Chinese, the Malayans and the Russians who must have died in such huge numbers. Somehow the feeling is not the same for the thousands of Indians who got killed when Islamic invaders came into the country through the ages - partly because we don't seem to be learning from anything. We still choose to be divided along caste and religious lines. Reading any journal or book on India in the 19th century or earliers seems as if it all happened only recently. Nothing like the homogenous people in other countries who atleast have some common beliefs, have some sense of integrity and propriety. We always remained vulnerable to attacks and reacted to each attack with emotion rather than as a cohesive force. We are a spiritual society, but there is nothing spiritual about being a divided lot...heard we may have an exclusive women-only IIT. Soon there could be a Muslim IIT, a Hindu IIT, etc..and then the communal riots across...hmmm....an endless debate, this.

Kidney woes...again...:(

Its been ten years since I had my pelvic-ureteral junction obstruction operated upon, and more than five years since I last got a "DTPS test" done..and now seems like the old problem is surfacing again..heard that some kind of fibrosis sets in often after a PUJ obstruction surgery, which may result in a secondary obstruction , or the formation of stone, etc. In either case, it may lead to urinary tract infection and may damage the kidney (already distended by as much as 10mm)...:((

Busy being Scrabulous..

Heck no - This is no take on The Eagles' latest hit, but of our getting hooked on to www.scrabulous.com, the addictive online Scrabble game. Too bad that it got pulled out of Facebook. Got to know scores of weird words such as kern, wert, qat, and tons of hours poured into innumerable matches with people across the globe. Scrabble couldn't have been more fun than this. Wish the Agarwalla bros were less greedy for the sake of the fans and sold it to Hasbro/Mattel in Jan when they offered them $10 mill....ah well...game on!

Max Mueller's Cambridge Lectures (late 19th cent.)

Dug from Project Gutenburg, a collection of lectures delivered by Friedrich Max Mueller,the eminent 19th century philologist and indologist, to a class of young Cambridge students who had just passed their Indian Civil Services examinations, What I read was an eye-opener. And strangely, the books and accounts I have read of other "indophiles" and Raj writers often smack of racial prejudices that it seemed that this document was a modern work and not something written /delivered 120-130 odd years back. To quote a passage from his second lecture on the stereotypes westerners carried of Indians:
"I believe there is nothing more disheartening to any high-minded youngman than the idea that he will have to spend his life among humanbeings whom he can never respect or love--natives, as they are called,not to use even more offensive names--men whom he is taught toconsider as not amenable to the recognized principles of self-respect,uprightness, and veracity, and with whom therefore any community ofinterests and action, much more any real friendship, is supposed to beout of the question.
So often has that charge of untruthfulness been repeated, and sogenerally is it now accepted, that it seems almost Quixotic to try tofight against it.
Nor should I venture to fight this almost hopeless battle, if I werenot convinced that such a charge, like all charges brought against awhole nation, rests on the most flimsy induction, and that it hasdone, is doing, and will continue to do more mischief than anythingthat even the bitterest enemy of English dominion in India could haveinvented. If a young man who goes to India as a civil servant or as amilitary officer, goes there fully convinced that the people whom heis to meet with are all liars, liars by nature or by nationalinstinct, never restrained in their dealings by any regard for truth,never to be trusted on their word, need we wonder at the feelings ofdisgust with which he thinks of the Hindus, even before he has seenthem; the feelings of distrust with which he approaches them, and thecontemptuous way in which he treats them when brought into contactwith them for the transaction of public or private business? When suchtares have once been sown by the enemy, it will be difficult to gatherthem up. It has become almost an article of faith with every Indiancivil servant that all Indians are liars; nay, I know I shall never beforgiven for my heresy in venturing to doubt it."
The best passage of this lecture is this:
"Now, quite apart from India, I feel most strongly that every one ofthese international condemnations is to be deprecated, not only forthe sake of the self-conceited and uncharitable state of mind fromwhich they spring, and which they serve to strengthen and confirm, butfor purely logical reasons also, namely for the reckless and slovenlycharacter of the induction on which such conclusions rest. Because aman has travelled in Greece and has been cheated by his dragoman, orbeen carried off by brigands, does it follow that all Greeks, ancientas well as modern, are cheats and robbers, or that they approve ofcheating and robbery? And because in Calcutta, or Bombay, or Madras,Indians who are brought before judges, or who hang about thelaw-courts and the bazaars, are not distinguished by an unreasoningand uncompromising love of truth, is it not a very vicious inductionto say, in these days of careful reasoning, that all Hindus areliars--particularly if you bear in mind that, according to the latestcensus, the number of inhabitants of that vast country amounts to twohundred and fifty-three millions. Are all these two hundred andfifty-three millions of human beings to be set down as liars, becausesome hundreds, say even some thousands of Indians, when they arebrought to an English court of law, on suspicion of having committed atheft or a murder, do not speak the truth, the whole truth, andnothing but the truth? Would an English sailor, if brought before adark-skinned judge, who spoke English with a strange accent, bow downbefore him and confess at once any misdeed that he may have committed;and would all his mates rush forward and eagerly bear witness againsthim, when he had got himself into trouble?"
The last sentence, said almost 130 years back - how many times do we see this even today? How many times do we hear about a western nation insisting on extraditing a westerner commiting crime in a third-world country of dark-skinned people (and judges) to ensure a "fair" trial? (well, the pun obviously intended)...hmmm...guess somethings can never change. But I thank God that the world has its fair share of Max Muellers..

News of a Kidnapping

Started reading Marquez's The News of a Kidnapping, a journalistic account (in Marquez's inimitable and magical style of narration) of a string of actual kidnappings of some journalists and high profile people in Colombia during the height of the Cartel menace there. I have just finished 45 odd pages of the almost 300 page book and have absolutely fallen in love with the gripping tale. Its a departure from the other books I have read of GGM - The General in his Labyrinth, Chronicles of a Death Foretold. But even then, you get a sense of the amazing interweaving of classic magic realism with a real life drama unfolding in the avenidos and casas of Bogota, The Extraditables (the body of drug dealers most prone to getting extradited to the US, headed by the one and only Pablo Escobar) who seek recourses such as kidnappings as a measure to weigh upon the political leadership headed by Gaviria to change the Extradition policies of Colombia. For me, the setting holds a special place in my heart since I was a part of the team working for an IT project for Banco Concasa spA, a Bogotan bank a long time back - in 1998-1999, and we were told that our onshore personnel were strictly instructed to use the shuttle provided to them from their hotel to the office premises and not venture anywhere else. Bogota was, like Manila and Baghdad, a dangerous place to be in during the Cali cartel menace. And we could easily have been mistaken for locals, with similar physical features....I though am quite intrigued by South America and would love to make a trip to all those exotic and esoteric places rich in Mayan, Aztec, Incan and the myriad other cultures that have formed the rather strange (and quite India like) culture there....coming back to the book, I guess through the writings of Borges, Marquez, Fuentes, Paz, and many others , we get to sneak into that unique culture with a lot more awe because through their eyes, it looks all the more magical...

Our final Olympic medal Tally for 2008

Its finally over for us and the results are there for all of us - 1 Gold, 2 Bronzes. Thank you, so much, Abhinav, for atleast increasing viewership of the Games this part of the world. Hope we move from the All Limp Picks to some better picks next time (London,2012)...

Sun xVM Virtualization and Ubuntu Hardy Heron installation today

Downloaded and installed the Sun xVM VirtualBox virtualization software today on my office machine and installed Ubuntu 8.04 "Hardy Heron" on it. Working like a dream. I recall working on the Apple Mac OSX Tiger's terminal window and using the sudo bash commands (and that had actually taken me by surprise since I had never known earlier that the Mac is UNIX based or has a kernel support of some kind)...

December 21, 2012

For the past few days, a lot of our news channels have been beaming all kinds of news stories into our homes. One of them is the alleged Doomsday forecast of the end of the world as we know it on December the 21st, 2012. I checked it on the net and found many sites, including Wikipedia entries on the subject. Apparently, this date is the last date of the Meso-american calendar that was used by the ancient Mayans. The end of the day does not indicate the end of the planet, but the end of a major epoch, and a major upheaval across civilizations, perhaps leading to major changes to life on Earth. However, seems like post Y2K, not many people are very serious about doomsday forecasts. But still, in many pockets of America, it seems, people have again started stocking food, duct tapes and what-not. As if these things could actually help people fight natural or climatic changes (as professed by the 12/21/12 followers, there would be major geological changes and some are even claiming polar reversal - without elaborating on the causes or the source of energy to effect such a radical change)....and as so common across the US, there are tons of merchandise available (really wonder what makes people buy such stuff - if they really believe in this stuff, its just 3-4 years for them (or us, rather) to live. What, therefore, is the big idea behind building a whole, new merchandise industry behind this date?)...

Delerium's You & I

Been awake quite late today - to finish off a presentation (not quite finished, but I guess I would wrap it up tomorrow in office). Listened to some chill-out ambient tracks and absolutely fell in love with Delerium's You & I. The voice of Zoe Johnston is so captivating in this track. I am yet to hear the other Delerium tracks that I've got - just been hooked on to this one , and of course, Serenity..Listened to this number continuously for atleast 4-5 times before shutting off my laptop..

World At War - 2

Saw a few more episodes this week of my favorite series of a long long time - World At War. At times I think that prior to the Internet age, the most intellectually stimulating things had invariably been created in the land of the Queen - be it the Oxford English Dictionary, or the Encyclopaedia Brittanica, or the Wisden Almanac, or this series...The episodes that I saw, post my last entry, included Germany's Unternehmen Barbarossa, the absolutely wonderful episode 10 - on the kriegesmarine's U-Boats. What has fascinated me so much has been the footages of some of the top Nazi and British characters and their interviews..be it Grossadmiral and subsequent Reichspraesident, Karl Doenitz, or the Reichsminister for Armaments, Albert Speer, or the last surviving awardee of the Knight's Cross with Oakleaves, Swords and Diamonds, Adolf Galland..I could continue writing pages after pages about the series, and about the absolutely impeccable quality of the documentary...

62nd Independence Day today

Today is India's 62nd Independence Day - a day spent quite lazily at home - with some net browsing, some TV channel surfing and watching some movies. And ofcourse, talking with parents and mulling over the grim news of the past few weeks - of the untimely deaths of the sons of two of our close family friends...
All the news channels were busy debating about our political degeneration over the years - politicization of religion, the Kashmir crisis, Musharraf's imminent ouster and his probable options now. Michael Phelps' umpteenth Olympic gold and our umpteenth loss in Cricket (and our eternal optimism on the Olympics front...am I being too cynical? Oh no..I have been to some of our National sporting facilities and know for sure that anyone coming out of those places cannot even compete with our neighboring countries let alone qualify for the Olympics) constitutes our sports news. Still remember the 1988 exhibition soccer match between Mohun Bagan and Brazil's Sao Paolo that I happened to see from the Jawaharlal Nehru stadium stands in Delhi..did we lose 20-0, or was it 25-0?? The best part was that I was caught on the TV happily sleeping with my mouth gaping open and apparently the commentator said that my expression said it all about our state in soccer..:) Well, all this is still a much better option than listening to some inane celeb gossip that hogs our other channels. Fortunately, atleast for now, our entertainment channels haven't been able to create products like Britney or Paris Hilton yet..we still have much better things to do than to track the number of times any of our female celebs got pregnant..and I really dread that day when we have our own local versions of those bimbettes..Today's also Anup bhaisaab's birthday. Tomorrow is Rakhi and I'm waiting for Bonnie's rakhi to arrive. We may end up the day tomorrow at Ajay bhai's place...

The Muttley and Dastardly series over the weekend

Last weekend I saw the Muttley and Dastardly series that Nilu shared with me a while back. Absolutely love this duo, especially Muttley (who also is/or bears a strong resemblance with Mumbly). He absolutely reminds me of our incorrigible Chaman, with the same shaggy look and the protruding lower canine teeth. I really wish at times that Chaman could snicker like Muttley - the trademark wheezy, asthmatic and vicious sounding laugh - or the trademark rashaffasharashaffasha grumble. And whenever Dastardly asks Muttley in the Stop the Pigeon series if he wanted a medal for his rescuing efforts, Muttley responds with an enthusiastic "Yeah Yeah Yeah" ..:)...hats off to Iwao Takamoto for creating these characters - and the other characters like Penelope Pitstop (I love the Hooded Claw and his "I'll get you Penelope")..:-\

India's first individual Olympic gold...finally!

My early morning trip to work got started with a pleasant news - that Abhinav Bindra, one of our rifle shooters, bagged the first individual gold in the 108 years of India's tryst with Olympics. Finally! Someone! Our nation of a billion people now has someone to look up to. Anyways, I should not be talking all this. Sports as a profession is a tabooland for most of us Indians. We are trained to man the "Backoffice" of the world. And you can't be caught playing at work, can you? Well, there are exceptions - Rajyavardhan Rathore got us an individual Bronze last Olympics. So what if Jamaica's got more medals than us? Does Jamaica have the most expensive sporting federation on their soil (our Board of Control for Cricket in India)? Who cares about performance -who cares if we are a bunch of underachievers when it comes to team games? For us, it takes only one guy to do something - add more (even two doesn't help - look at our Tennis wunderkinds - Paes and Bhupathi), and we have squabbles, politics, tons of endorsements, aspirations to become cine-stars - anything but being good sportspersons. Our brightest stars are solo achievers - Vishy Anand in Chess (can't we have an Olympics Chess event ever??), Rathore and now Abhinav in rifle shooting, Sania in Tennis, Padukone in Badminton, Ramesh Krishnan in Tennis...(can't count many there too...ah well!!)..Hey, when would Age Of Empires get into the Olympics??

Syberia

I played Benoit Sokal's eponymous Syberia. An epic of an Adventure game, its an absolute treat just to watch each frame of the game. The details are superb, and we travel from esoteric, sleepy alpine hamlets like Valadilene - ofcourse, after solving very complicated riddles that almost make us a part of those locales - to Barrockstadt, where I am currently at. You are Kate Walker, an American lawyer in the storyline. An acquisition bid by a toy company brings you to an Austrian town of Valadilene, the HQ of the Voralberg family. The town is a beautiful, sleepy town, but surprisingly has 2-3 visible inhabitants. The rest of the inhabitants are automatons - clockwork characters with a soul element added to them, thanks to the genius of Hans Voralberg, a mysterious member of the Voralberg empire. Kate's seemingly routine work gets murkier by the news of the death of Anna, the head of theVoralberg empire, the very day of her arrival at Valadilene (and this is almost where the storyline starts). Her boss, a ruthless Jay Jonah Jameson type character based out of NY, doesn't want her to return without closing the deal. And so, in the absence of Anna, Kate would have to find the mysterious brother, Hans, to complete the deal...and what follows is a very interesting process of clue-finding and investigating and solving, and traveling eastbound - from Valadilene, to Barrockstadt, to many other towns across Russia into Siberia...all amidst an incredibly beautiful setting. A must have game...I am enjoying it more than The Longest Journey and Riven. But I love this genre (not as much as I love RTS games though). I also have another of Benoit Sokal's titles - The Sinking Island..haven't played it much though...

Banzai!

Today I saw the World At War episode 6 - the Pacific theater of the war. The episode beautifully elucidated the build up to the Japanese intrusions in Manchuria - including its quitting the League, its brushes with USSR for the huge coal deposits in Manchuria, and how the imperial army switched directions and moved along the Great Wall into mainland China. What was unique about this war, the Sino Japanese one, was the absolute ruthless and barbaric nature of it. Apparently, even the Nazis were taken aback by the nature of the war. Nanking is quite famous, or rather infamous for this. Apparently, there was this competition between two rival generals of the imperial army to behead as many people as possible and in one day each beheaded hundreds of Nankingians. Peking fell, Shanghai followed. Due to the presence of Europeans who were also there for material benefits, Japan got into the Axis alliance. The episode then took us to the Indo-china region and how they finally got into war with Britain for Malaya and Burma. Britain at that time was fighting on multiple fronts - in Egypt against Mussollini's forces and Rommel's Afrika Korps and also facing the Luftwaffe Blitz. The Japanese advances weaned the Africa units of some of their reinforcements. Rommel could therefore push Wavell's forces east to near Tobruk. The tug of war continued for a while (Episode 8 is about the African wars) in the Middle Eastern/Mediterranean theater. I often use words like "Ging Ming!" with Shveta - meaning "save us!" (or "save me"?)...seems like when little girls were being carted away for persecution in Nanking, some lady in the European occupation areas heard their cries and those cries haunted her for the rest of her life, after she knew what happened to the people there.
To think that all this happened 60-70 years back seems strange. USSR lost more than 25 million people, Germany about 7-8 million. Who does bodycount in poorer countries?...Globally some 40-50 million or more must have perished in those 5 years. And yet we are 7-8 billion people today!!...

Ye Olde Bayeux Tapestry...

The Bayeux Tapestry is a historical artifact, commissioned by Odo de Bayeux ,the half-brother of William the Conqueror, one of the early Norman rulers of England (arguably the earliest)..its a large piece of woven cloth and kept in a museum in Bayeux, Normandy. It reveals a lot about the 11th century customs, and has many stories of bravado woven into the huge tapestry - including folklore, scandals of the time, tales of bravado, intrigue, coronations, whatnot....here's a sample..

World At War

Today I saw the first two episodes of the definitive WWII series - the World At War. Directed by Jeremy Isaacs and narrated by Sir Laurence Olivier, the series set a trend for well researched documentaries. I had never before seen a video clip of Paul von Hindenburg going to the hustings, or those of people like Lord Halifax or the MPs in the House of Commons during the start of the WWII. The episodes talked about the causes that led to the war. Since the scope of the series was much larger, and included both the Pacific and the Atlantic theaters, the focus of the series was not as much about Hitler and the persecution of the Jews but the political situation in Europe, and mostly from the British perspective. The best part about old documentaries is that , while they are not as objective and clinical as the current lot, they could interview people who survived the war, or were key players during the war. That is not possible now. The series was produced during 1969-1974 : Churchill was dead already. But people like Sir John Colville (interviewed in episode 2: The Distant War) were still alive and discussed the political situation at the time Chamberlain stepped down (or rather, got unceremoniously booted out) and Churchill, the adventurer, stepped in. It discussed how Lord Halifax couldn't make it since no one from the House of the Lords had made it as a PM in 40 years! Anyways, the need of the hour then, in 1940, was to get an old military hand, not an ex Chancellor of the Exchequer. I really wonder what it would have been had the king okayed Halifax's nomination and rejected Churchill....the following year, Britain was to face the brunt of Luftwaffe's raids. Under Churchill's leadership, the Royal Navy and RAF could contain some damage.
The episodes also have clips from the private collections of people like Eva Braun (though this particular film that I am referring to, a short intimate color film short circa 1939, can be found on YouTube)..it looks quite strange to see a young, attractive girl trying to flirt with a man her father's age. And Hitler acts his Fuehrer image. His lackeys - Himmler and Heydrich are shown posing in front of some document - perhaps their "Die Endloesung der Judenfrage". I also read somewhere about the children of the Nazi leaders. While some were very repentent and disgusted and chose not to get married, like Niklas Frank, some like Himmler's daughter became the driving forces behind post war Nazi organizations such as Stille Hilfe, ODESSA, etc..
YouTube has its share of some real good videoclips - color and otherwise - of Nazi leaders including Heydrich, Himmler, Goering, Goebbels and others...Anyways, thats a digression. I would strongly recommend the World At War series to anyone interested in WWII history. I am adding other videos to my collection too - have Leni Raufenstahl's Triumph des Willens and Der Sieg des Glaubens..

The most outrageous cigarette

Here in Indore, there is a cigarette shop (and I can bet there are others too) that "makes" some unique kinds of cigarette "garnishings"! Well, until now, I had only heard of people going to a cigarette shop and asking for their favorite brands, but here, according to a colleague of mine, you could also ask " Ek Classic bana do" (i.e., make me a Classic). The shopkeeper would promptly fish out a Classic cigarette stick and put it on his counter. Next, he would fish out some pastes, garnishings, spices, etc - roll the cigarette over the paste, sprinkle the garnishings all over it, insert a clove through the open end of the cigarette stick. The final output looks like a colorful cigar like contraption. I bet it must be interesting to smoke that, though it might be quite heavity nicotine laden. As such, Classic is a premium brand here, and the final output must be making the stick twice as expensive...:-) guess the people of Indore are not just crazy about food. Who thought of cigarette toppings and garnishings!!

Die Hochzeit -2

Come 24th (and 25th), we were scouting for guesthouses, making trips to the jewellers (Lalchand Jewellers - a major jewellery house on the Janpath, right infront of the Ram Mandir), fixing the menu and hotel banquet halls for the groom's as well as for the bride's guests...what a pain, managing a marriage event is!!! I guess that made me stick to my resolution to not have kids . Also visited were places like Wood Art (written as "Ood Art" in Oriya). The stinkiest part of the day was getting grocery . There is a market managed by the Municipality corporation there that one needs to wade through to get to shops. I was reminded of my days as a kid going to Bhawanipatna and shop around - kids like Pablu were small and it usually was me, Reeti and Bonnie trudging to the shops...Reeti and Bonnie used to invariably get stuck at some trinket corner..gosh, some comparison. Anyhow, this was a trip made by dear old Bapa and me - and all through the way, Bapa was talking about how bad the idea was to go for our own pad instead of booking rooms at some guesthouse...
There were other problems around the house - the backyard had poor drainage and a lot of waterlogging...the shed had water logged in it, and no light or fan, and the cook and his apperentice were waiting at the verandah, grumbling away to glory. We had to fix Hotel New Marrion to provide us with some janitors and cleaners, and the day (or the next) was spent cleaning the place...Someone sent over a deep freezer to stock fish and meat for the meals planned for the next few days...the kitchen was eventually stocked...and various battles were being fought on various fronts...to think of it all now, the logistics involved was mindboggling...to ferry guests and relatives without getting them irate, providing a streaming supply of hot tea, jaljeera, snacks, etc or providing provisions for people to sleep...

The first among our relatives to come was Narayan mamu and maeen, early morning on the 25th..along with a girl who was his "jhiyaari" (niece). Looking at her, anyone could have written her off as a 7th or an 8th grad student - and she turned out to be a BA final year student!!! I guess Neutrogena and Oil of Olay should come and study our young town girls and try to learn the secrets behind their youthful looks...in our house, the ground-floor constitutes two rooms, a hall, a kitchen, the backyard, a loo, a living room and a stairway to the first floor. The guesthouse that has taken our place on rent had provided ACs in each room, and a TV with Tata Sky dish connection in the living room. That room, and the TV, were to become a centerpoint for the whole clan for the duration of stay....its amazing how people could watch TV during a marriage program but...guess anything can happen..
Nilu landed in the afternoon of the 25th and it was great to see him. Kumarmamu , maeen, Bonnie and Pablu also came that day, and we were also expecting Sangeeta "Baby" maeen , Pupul and Appu to come that day - the Howrah Puri express was 20 hours late due to flash floods and re-routing of trains..it was quite apparent that Kumarmamu and maeen had to parallely plan for Reeti's marriage - I guess all the girls are going to get married off between 2008 and 2010 - well, not all but the oldest 3. Pupul would be the endangered category person remaining in the clan.


Ahh..its 3 AM and I am still awake!!!...good nite, mates!!

Die Hochzeit von meiner schwester..

Just returned from Bhubaneswar - its been a week already since we returned and what a whirlwind of a time it was. Things are still etched in my mind..It all started for us on the 20th - Shveta and I left via Bhopal to Delhi, where dad and my sis were waiting. Ma had already been in Bhubaneswar for a week or more, shuttling between Cuttack and the Palashpalli house. We were to fly over the weekend to the City of Temples and a lot had to be done. The issue was not just packing - it was a last moment change of decision from travelling by train to flying - and lugging in some 200 kgs of luggage. The idea seemed daunting, and yet - by the grace of Amma, we could manage to carry everything and reach BBSR. There were a few people waiting for us at the airport - to take us straight to the CRPF guest-house. (And at this time, we were to discover the depths of dumbness in the drivers of our cars, but thats wholly besides the point..)...it was quite ironical, and comical, that we, the outsiders, navigated our car drivers to some of the most well-known landmarks of their city, and landed up at the CRPF guesthouse. The guesthouse, located at the CRP Chhak near Nayapalli, is in the midst of a vast, highly secure campus. There were hardly any local personnel there. We were to unload, carry a box of mangos that we were carrying with ourselves (incidentally, the mangoes were from our trees at the Delhi home) to Cuttack..cutting to the chase, we soon left for Buli mamu's place in Cuttack...a sumptuous lunch awaited us - couldn't thank Mili maeen enough for the highly unusual and delectable tandoori chicken (marinated in coconut), sausages, fish, etc that constituted the spread...however, I have been watching over my weight - which is a legacy of my wanton days in the US, so I ate moderately less than what my belly permits. A lot of things were getting discussed - politics, jobs, Shveta's under-lip piercing, Putun's marriage, Reeti's impending marriage next year - before we headed back, alongwith ma, to the guesthouse...ah well, before we had even gone to the CRPF guesthouse after our landing, we had gone to pay a small visit to the Palashpalli house. Its truly amazing how fast things got done in those few days before our relatives started coming - there were tiles getting fixed and in many places there was hardly any flooring...ACs got mounted, etc!!...It seemed almost like building a house in 2 days!!.This was the 23rd, and the mamus and Nilu were expected on the 25th. We were also supposed to scour the town for good accos for a lot of our relatives coming from all parts of the state - all kinds of guesthouses. Got to see some really seedy and unmanaged places owned by some of the richest govt. departments..i guess I'd be lynched if I disclose about them here...also, we were to distribute some cards too..so, a lot of stuff was there in our plates already when we came into the town..I guess I would post some videos and pics in my subsequent posts...its 2.30AM and I am going off to sleep - very bored, sleepy, depressed and lonely right now...hope to complete the posts in the next day or two....keep watching this space (if you have any interest in knowing about the "monsoon wedding")

My name - in Egyptian Hieroglyphs

I am back in India - and back to my old ways...I stumbled upon an interesting site today , hosted by University of Pennsylvania - called Write Like An Egyptian...so what the image on the left represents is my name, in the ancient pharaohic script...:)

New York,New York

A lot of things kept me busy and away from my blogsite but here I am, back again..wanted to complete my log on my Washington-NY trip before I started forgetting the itsy-bitsy details..

We left Washington on the 23rd afternoon - in fact it was almost evening. Our vehicle, the Santa-Fe, had Furqan, Lalit and Amit, and we were closely following the Chevy Uplander belonging to Rakesh and Manish. Those guys started off from the Comfort Inn with such confidence, we thought we were all set to reach NJ in good time. I and Furqan were in no mood to get lost within the labyrinth called Washington streets again. But lo, within minutes of leaving the place, Rakesh lost the way and we were again heading towards the familiar territory - on the road next to the Arlington Cemetary, heading towards the Lyndon B Johnson park and again seeing the all too familiar DC skyline - the Washington Monument, the Capitol - all looming on the left. Actually we were still in the Arlington-Falls Church, Virginia area, which is like what Noida is to Delhi. In fact, much closer to that since DC is a very small area. But somehow, during the day, our instincts were much sharper and we could again get back to the route with some detour into a residential area, taking a reverse turn and catching the 395N. The road after that was very clear - catching the 95N till a particular exit (there is a fork from which 95N goes to Pittsburgh and then towards Boston and the other to the NJ Turnpike through Baltimore and the Delaware memorial bridge). The journey was really pleasant - Furqan was to drive for most of the journey and then Lalit to take over the last leg to the Best Western near Newark International in New Jersey, our destination. The road is a little confusing if you keep looking at it while driving - there are a lot of old streetmarks that have gone faint and have been replaced with new markings and that makes the road look like a mesh of dividers. To top it all, the speed limit mentioned was 50mph and everyone was shuttling at 80!. The familiar tunnel near Baltimore and the beautiful sky-line, the marina that was quite visible, and then the all-to-familiar overhead signs for Johns Hopkins and University of Maryland passed by. I so wished at that time that I could get admitted to one of those schools. I am truly in love with that entire area - Washington, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Richmond are all in about 80-100 mile radius and are loaded with historical places and hallowed names - quite like London. We passed by the Delaware Memorial Bridge, which looks quite the Brooklyn Bridge and is all covered with a bluish-green tinge that reminds you of the Statue of Liberty. We stopped at a rest area and did not take an exit - this one was like a mall, and very unlike all the rest areas we have seen in other states. This was on the Turnpike, at the NJ-Delaware state border or close to that.Icy cold and windy night, typical of north-east US - we relieved ourselves, grabbed a few packets of chips (I had a fag - couldn't help it), picked up a bottle of coke (yes, crazy us for not going for some hot cup of coffee!!) and then sped off. The entire journey between DC and NJ is dotted with tolls. People carry something called an EZPass, but typically for a non-pass holder, the one way trip would take you back by about 20 dollars give and take a few bucks. The traffic, the number of lanes, and the fact that it is close to sea and is difficult to maintain, justifies it.

The entire place between Washington and New Jersey seems like one single city in the night - all lighted up, and heavy traffic much through the night too, and the lanes. And the worst part - if you catch a lane and think the road signs would guide you through the whole journey like in the rest of the country, you are mighty mistaken - most of the exits have names instead of numbers, and there are "Exit Only" signs on multiple lanes. So if you don't stick to the right lanes in such high speeds, you can easily land up in some exit and get into a ride of a few miles to get back on track...

So we were happily going on on the NJ Turnpike, looking at our maps all the time to stay on course, until we started realizing we had overshot the right exit. We, naturally, took the next exit available, to a gas station, to ask for the Best Western near the Newark Liberty, our destination. The guy gave us a direction to catch the turnpike again and then take a particular exit. We did that, and were again heading towards New York - while we could see the Best Western, one of the tall buildings in that area, we were not sure of the exit to take, since most of the exits were for the Newark Liberty airport. We finally managed to reach the hotel after a few turns around that place. The hotel is owned by one Ravi Patel - real good, recommended to all. I could see the Manhattan skyline and Statue of Liberty clearly from my room window. It was about 10.30 in the night when we reached. Next to the reception, when the others were collecting our room keys, I noticed a flyer belonging to some muslim restaurant dishing out halal meat dishes. I showed it to Furqan and he went berserk - he had not had meat since ages since all meat available on retail is jhatka. We ordered a large chicken pizza just before things closed. Amit Lathiya was also famished and ordered a veggie. It was apparently the last order - as luck would have it - since other pizza joints like Domino's were closed by then. And was it tasty...We then went to sleep for the next day trip - which was Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island in the morning, from the Newark station, to Central Park/Madison Square, Madame Tussauds, Time Square, Rockefeller, etc all through the day..

An interesting T-shirt I looked up on Amazon...

What would you call this??...selling at 17.95 dollars on Amazon..

:))