I, Me and Cinema

Ok... I'm not going to talk about the history, evolution and consequences of movies here! I'm very confident that a majority of us consider watching movies, "the first thing" over a weekend or a holiday or if we have an evening to spare. I have heard from the older generation that they had a similar fascination for Harikathas (a medieval form of story-telling-singing), Novels, Street-plays (Indian version of stage plays in those days) and bioscopes (Some of us might have seen these devices. Imagine how discovery channel would have been - if it had actually been - a century ago.). I feel this is the best example of minds working beyond the logic and reasoning. I would like to call it the humane tendency (or it's more an anamoly?). We completely surrender our 2-3 hours of our valuable time to this magic world. Not heeding to our logical part of the brain most of the times and letting the lesser half - like the better-half - take control of the minute part (which aggregates to a actually a significant part) of our lives, we inevitably become part of the perfect manifestation of our compromise on the state-of-ideal-affairs. Thanks to this blog, I now clearly realize what could have been going through my mind when I had done it so many times in my life.

Bottom-line: I love movies, but necessarily not all. I tried my best to enunciate my complicated feelings above! Your most favorite 5 movies reveal a lot about you, no?

Going the GenX

Welcome to the world of tablets and smart phones! Thanks to the gadget-freaky world around. While I was coming out of City Central, Chennai yesterday, I remembered the days when I used to stand in a long queue at UCO bank for a money withdrawal. During my summer holidays at school back in the year 2001, my dad and I used to do a small round up of Tirupati(my home town) to pay the electricity and telephone bills, get the passbook updated for our savings accounts from the bank, log a complaint with the cable tv connection provider and book a cooking gas cylinder refill. Since past 4 years, I didn't have to move my butt from the desk, to do any of these things. Bills can be paid online for all the things once can think of and all the things one can't. All the routine jobs like taking the orders are attended to over the phone. We made manual intervention in our jobs as minimal as possible. A decade of IT revolution in the Indian cities has brought tremendous change and hence many opportunities in the first decade of the 22nd century.

Working on PCs has already become old-fashioned. Forget about laptops! With 3G around the corner, Smart Phones and Tablets became a necessity. The local satellite cable TV providers are fading out. 3D TVs and home theatres are hitting the market. It's hard to find someone without a mobile phone! There are always means to stay informed, if you have to or want to. For instance, office mails! It is as if the world is breathing the internet. Tweets and Wallposts are the bed coffees for the net-ridden world.

Do you have some __________ ?

I have always wondered what's the greatest resource anybody has and can use. The first 4 that come to my mind are the elements Air, Water, Earth and Fire. For ages, we have been using these in one form or the other, consistently and efficiently wasting them, of course!

I am just spinning out my own gyaan here. Not going to patent it, so feel free to use it. Question it and validate it! All our ideas, thoughts and memories are 3 dimensional. Time, Space and Emotion. I see a person A and I have a graph in my head which involves my previous encounters with A. Was I enjoying it? How long was it or what was happening around us when it happened? It's all happens so quick in the sub-conscious that we often never mind it. There's something more in there... which is the scale to which these graphs are drawn. It is - as Agent Smith in Matrix trilogy says "is what defines our existense and which drives us". The objective irony of life - Purpose. I would love to believe if it's otherwise. In our co-ordinate space, if we have expectations on something beyond the purpose, it's off the scale.

I'm not against having dreams and hopes for your future. I have my own too. It is on a scale guided by our necessity, apetite, and abilities. As long as you scale the graph well, you are doing it well.

It makes me wonder what's the best thing I can give anyone! It's my "time". You don't have to mark my words. It's blogged! On a serious note, Time's the best asset we have! Every moment, there are wonders happening around us.

Why IT is performing...

I've always wondered what made the IT sector in India hold a larger proportion in the economy. Coincidentally, the Indian ITian Era is marked by the advent of Dot Com burst in the Silicon valley which obviously found a great potential in the cost-effective alternative for the highly paid local work force.

First of all, any human being needs money and it goes without saying that Food, Clothes and Shelter (now it's the TV, the Car and the Own house!) mantra has to be chanted everyday. Human being also craves for a social status - the power to have a say and deal with the issues of concern - and the freedom to choose one's own course. On the top of all, the "EASE" of doing all this. A IT job is a magic pill to earn money, gather assets, have a say on everything they do and freedom to decide what to do! If one has to become a teacher in a Government School or a Jawan in the army, one would need to face the competition with thousands of equally qualified individuals for a limited number of seats but an Engineering graduate from a non-NCERT certified Engineering College also can easily get into an IT company in the third year of graduation, if he/she just sits for a nominal test and answers a couple of (leaked) questions in the interview. If I have a son or a daughter, I would feel, he/she should get educated well and should be employed by a good company and should be paid well. Can you even imagine the situation when you graduate and you don't have a job and stay home thinking about what to do with life? After all, you have a wonderful life in the glass buildings with rotating chairs and dual monitors... pizzas, parties, hikes, coffees, hard & soft drinks, snacks, etc. One side of the coin.

Now the reality. The buying power of a small group is increasing exponentially thereby heavily influencing the pricing of goods and services. Those living in New York or London or Mumbai or Bangalore would exactly know what I'm talking about as they pay their house rent, taxi fares, buy groceries, clothes and dine in the restaurants. This situation is so much a contrast to a country in which agriculture has a major share of economy and the people are dreaded by population explosion, settlements in the low-lying areas, floods affecting the crops, global warming, air, water and land pollution, water problems, hunger and malnutrition that the IT explosion is viewed at as a capitalistic conspiracy by the government. The Satyam fiasco and the recession played a major role in leveling out the craving for scintillating IT jobs. This part of the century has to be labelled the IT Retrospection Period in India as it served as an eye-opener for the over-valuation of limited assets. The worst-affected in this transition being the emigrants.

While I jot down the thoughts just for the sake of summarizing the situation, I can't help thinking deeper and deeper about what can be done! Do you have any thoughts?

Just thinking ...

A question which is continuously pestering me these days, "When it comes to writing or even speaking, ideas are half as sparkling as the thoughts are...". I recently learnt "Qualia" is what they use to describe that exact feeling. What do you feel when you sit on the shore and look at the waves and see a couple of children playing while their mom tries to pull them off the waters? Or when you listen to a guzheng's or santoor's notes? I only can say it feels like a drizzle or I get reminded of a flower blooming but one knows how it is if one experiences it. May be that's why they say, you can only be shown the door, you have to open it yourself.

It is this that each of us yearn for! Every time we feel it, every time we ask for more and more of it! We are craving for it all the time. No?

The Hidden Rasika

As usual, I have completely ignored the major part of my life while talking about lot of less important things. Music, I think it's like a strong dose of medicine to a chronic illness. Need to keep taking it in continuously no matter what! Once you start liking it, I doubt if you can ever get over this fetish.

Whenever I sit for practicing my Janta-swarams, I remember the pitying look on a friend's face while asking me, "Do you really like Carnatic Music?" ( Which is more "Are there still people who like Carnatic music?") and follows it up with "Don't you want to learn playing some instrument instead?". And I answered "Sorry, buddy! I can't really help it!"

After trying my hand at Laya learning Daphli, Tabla, Octapad, etc for a brief period, I decided it's time to tune the 'Shruthi' in me. Here I am starting on a musical journey! Thanks to my Guru, who rightly said "Shruthirmata layah pita|"

Let's see what's in store.

PS: Can't help it! :-P

Hor(r)o(r)scopes

A prospective Hindu bride (groom) is bound to have faced this "Horror" term atleast when she's (he's) in India. God knows what's in store for the couple who might not know each other by face, but their birth stars are always there to decide their fate! Doesn't matter if you are getting married to a martian from neighbouring solar system, you should wriggle through the compatibility check on the computer first (Thinking... which moon sign would Martians consider? Does Mars in that solar system has single moon? What if no? ). Man, we are living in the 21st century for sure!

With bride's parents keen on getting the agreement signed off at competitive prices, grooms, like IT jobs out there are negotiating best deals and fixing prices for their lives. Under any case, there are the astrologers who derive pleasure in predicting scariest possible consequences and link it to our sun/moon signs (wonder what is wrong with poor Earth, which lets Sun or Moon focus on us at that gory hour) and of course with a ready plan of action (named Prayaschiththam - as if they stop the rotation and let the Sun or Moon focus on the 23 and 1/2 deg latitude crossing 82 and 1/2 degree longitude - allright, now. Stop sneering! - within a radius of 300 kms). Some go to such extremes that they say your life's documented already by a revered sage and they'll give you that if you pay X (a 2-3 digit number decided based on demand-supply curve) bucks!

With more than a billion plus residents, Match making business in India can be considered a promising area where if not for extensive research atleast a full time course in the top management institutes is definitely worth the investment. Just think about an MSA - Masters in Superstitious Astrology or a PGDM - Post Graduate Diploma in Marriage/Match - (thereby) Money - making from a premier university!

Here's a piece of advice: If you can't runaway and get married at Uncle Sam's, be prepared.