Guru - All hype or some substance??

It was a class gathering after a long time. The new SOMA body had been formed and the elected representatives had thrown a party - actually they jst sponsored the movie Guru at HUMA Adlabs, the shady yet the nearest mall from IITBombay. Reviews had been good and I had huge expectations from Abhishek and ManiRatnam duo. Gulzar for lyrics was added topping on the family size hot jalapeno cheese pizza. The media was murmurring about Guru being the biopic of Late Dhiru Bhai Ambani. That added to my excitement. All in all I was confident that I was in for a great treat.
The result was however less than satisfactory. Mani Ratnam has filmed the movie in a typical south indian manner, with absolutely no Gujrati feel in village or dialogues or music all of which reselmbled South India more than Gujrat. The story was also very much sweet and it seemed that Mani Ratnam didnot want the screen play to deviate much from a typical rags to riches story. Whatever little the hero did had large implications and saw immediate success. Be it the ease with which an article led to the resignation of the leader of thread business or the ease with which an IAS officer was made to take back his orders is all very naive to be believed. No failure on his part was ever shown except that ever dragging court proceedings which I felt was done poorly. I couldnot believe that a sentimental speech by Guru bhai could let him off the hook so easily. Subplots were weak and arbit to say the least.

Most of the second half could have been used to show struggles in life of the protagonist and a few useless songs could have been left out. All through the movie I kept on recounting how well the movie The Aviator was made and how well did the director bring out the struggles in the rags to riches life of Howard Huges. The court scene in Aviator is one of the best that i have ever watched. Long time to go before any Indian Director reaches that level.

Mithun does a small cameo which is not befitting his capability. Abhishek looks more like Amitabh in his dialog delivery and acting than he has ever before.

According to me a movie which should have made x on box office will gross 2x because of the following reasons (mentioned in the order of the decreasing effect) :
1. Ash Abhishek love affair is brewing hot in India.
2. People were always tracking and looking for Dhirubhai Ambani in Guru Kant Desai (the protagonist). According to me this might even be the no. 1 reason. This was a smart marketing gimmick by the producers.
3. Abhishek's best acting till date.
4. A very strong star cast.
5. Mani Ratnam's flawless direction and technically perfect filming.
6. A R Rehman's music.

Racism Charges - A manifestation of attention seeking behaviour?

As the power shift across the globe happens towards the coloured countries, many complex soft issues are coming to forefront. Globalisation has resulted in increased interactions among hitherto excommunicated communities. Therefore people are probably taking time to understand each other and accept each other as equals and shed the historical notion of racial superiority. For example a British would really find it difficult to accept an Indian as an equal, though his actions may indicate otherwise. It's a result of deep rooted historical baggage and it will take time before the prosperity and power does a reasonable shifts to countries like India for them to be acknowledged as more than an underdog.

This underdog status is doing us more harm than good. It makes us more complacent in lesser time with lesser achievements. We fail to recognise that we are being elevated to a star status because people never expected us to do anything and we are, contrary to no expectations, are doing a few things right. We are very low in the Human Development Index and probably every other social index apart from SENSEX and GDP growth parameter, both of which doesnot necessarily mean a great life for the citizens of India (See my previous blog for details).
This zeal to be accepted into the upstream class of nations has resulted into hypersensitivity. If we dont have mettle clamour and unsettle. We find every small issue, blow it up and clamour and unsettle the biggies and in the end declare ourselves victorious. This is same as the self declared victories of Al Qaida. This attention seeking childish behaviour has resulted into many a racist attacks and indictments.

Shilpa shetty in a recent episode of Big Brother, a very popular Channel 4 show in UK, was called a 'dog' and an 'Indian'. Both are being used to prove that she was racially abused. I really find no sense in it. First of all calling her a dog shows a serious gap in understanding of gender on the part of the caller and she indeed is an Indian. So where is racism in the picture. Also there is every chance that the controversy might be a manufactured one, as it has potential to give cheap publicity to the show not only in UK but across the world.Herchelle Gibbs proclaimed the pakistani spectators as 'Bloody Animals'. Again I find it difficult to elicit any kind of racial connotation from the phrase. Ok it isnot a great thing to say but common, in a heated match things get much worse and the less said about it the better. Moreover Herschelle Gibbs himself is of coloured origin. So why would he abuse his own people, so to say. Again the attention seeking couloured world jumped to the occassion of flexing its muscle and make a issue out of nothing. We perhaps have made ourselves a butt of ridicule by being over sensitive. It gets us nothing but low self esteem.

In this age when Indians and other coloured people are rising to historical successes do we even need to care about racism. The rise itself is a slap on the face of the racists. The best way to disarm the remaining racists in the world is to ignore, just like we ignore a barking dog. Do we argue with it and ask him to take his bark back? Even if it does it gains us nothing except wasted time.

My grandfather used to tell me an interesting story about his childhood. His lower caste friends used to touch the food of brahmin guys while they were gulping down the tasty meal. The brahmin guys would immediately leave eating and rush back home to take bath, while his muslim friends would enjoy the meals. The sikh guys were smarter, they used to move the Kada once over periphery of the plate , while reciting the holy name and thus consecrating the food again. Thus sikh guys were unperturbed by the naughtiness of their muslim friends. We perhaps need to do the same thing. (Please not that this anecdote was used just as an illustration, it is not meant to hurt any sentiments, if at all.) A racial comment should be met with a smile over the ignorance of the abuser and without wasting any time we should continue towards the larger goals. If we donot learn to do that we might end up getting easily deflected from our meals ending up wasting water for taking baths.
(Pic from -> http://static.ibnlive.com/pix/sitepix/01_2007/shilpalead248.jpg)

Psychology of 'congratulatory' spamming

At my school SJMSOM,IITB, its not uncommon to hear someone or else cracking something or other everyday. The first triggering mail intimating the good news is a really pleasant one, but more often than not it forebodes coming of a tsunami of 'reply to all' (RepTA) mails congratulating the feat. The problem is that 'reply to all' being most benign of all the buttons available on a UI(user interface) , conveniently places all the available addresses within the reach of the mail and sets the target on many an innocent souls. For example some informed soul mail the congratulatory mail announcing the achievement to all the people in the class/school mailing list, which has the ability to torpedo 54 to 120 mailboxes at a single click on a button. The address field of Sender 1 reads:
To:
CC:
The first guy to spot the mail does yet another RepTA to personally congratulate the acheiver and manages to do the following:
To:;
CC:
The domino effect continues till people get fed up of the whole RepTA sequence and wait for something more interesting to come their mailbox's way.
What I didnot understand was what drove people to click the dreaded RepTA button. If people were genuinely interested in extending their wishes to the Mr. Achiever , they could have dropped the person a personal mail. Why spam numerous mail boxes with his wishes for the guy in question? Is it because people want to be in action? Or iz it becaaaaz they want to show the world that they indeed become happy at others' achievements and that they are one from the 'social' breed?
I decided to test it and eventually managed to test the junta on two occassion. Both of the times after quite some spamming I moved the discussion to the bulletin board ,which is meant for sharing ideas,news etc. among SOM(school of management) guys. And on both occassion there was hardly any action on the threads. Suddenly people who were hell bent on using the innocuous RepTA button somehow didnot feel the compulsion to get to the thread congratulating the Achiever. It was not that it required considerably more effort to visit the thread and register their sentiments, for I had provided the link in the mail and it was a matter of clicking the link and posting. Also it had the obvious advantage of not spamming the mailboxes. This made me think and think hard.
I am not passing any judgement here for my test were done only twice and people did respond to the threads. It might be that all enthu junta would have already spammed and so no point in visiting the thread and posting. My argument might be absolutely incorrect. I am absolutely aware of these possibilities.I am just stating things here.
So what can be done to prevent people from RepTa syndrome. I have a few suggestions:
1. The moment someone clicks on RepTA, the email client should send an electrical pulse to the user's bum so that it hurt everytime someone tries to RepTA. This would lead to sensible usage only.
2. All the innocent victim should reply personally to the first guy who does a RepTA. So if the RepTA leads to invasion of 54 mailboxes then the perpetrator should have 54 mails in his mailbox the next moment. Give him the the taste of his own medicine,54 times .
3. Simple yaar disable the RepTA button. Make the person type down the contacts in the To box everytime, this will use to the judicious use of key strokes and mouse clicks :).

Any more whacky ideas??? Post in the comments...

Back to B.Tech days

Often it takes a kick in the ass to shake someone up. What if it is kicks,50 odd, literally. I entered the grihasta asharama and bid adieu to the formiddable and probably the most exciting quarter of my life. In the process quite a few chappals, feet and palms registered their mighty presence on my butt. The atmosphere was similar to that of B.Tech days probably better. And everyone, I am sure, enjoyed making scapegoats out of the latecomers to the party as they too bore the wrath / frustation / release after a hectic summer placement schedule. Its good to see people joining you in the celebration and makes your life seem meaningful and worth living. At the same time I again questioned myself as I do on my birthday.Why should I celebrate my birthday? Whats so great about it? What have I done for the world that is today rejoicing on my birthday? 25 yrs and I have been able to do just enough to fill up just one side of A4 sized paper.
The questions were all the more pinching as I had just returned from a discussion about entrepreneurship conducted by Subroto Bagchi, COO Mindtree. The videos of interviews of V.G. Siddhartha, Founder Cafe Coffee Day and Capt. Gopinath, Founder Air Deccan were still echoing in my head. They made revolutions they made seem so simple to achieve. Inspiring as they were most striking feature was the passion they had for their mission and their unassuming demeanour. As I walked out of the cozy audi at the Welingkar's my heart was still scanning for the omnipresent beautiful damsels in the campus, the mind was still with the videos and the personalities that I had just witnessed so closely.
Welingker is indeed a place to be. With beautiful cyber squatters in the literal sense (there were people with laptops squatting on the floor busy orkutting and checking mails) all round it seems all to irrestible to spend last two academic years of one's life. I am sure it proves a great release for all the frustated souls who come to do MBA. Also its not difficult keep yourself motivated to attend all the no longer tasteess lectures.

Two faces of India

"India shining" a deserving to fail campaign, which eventually did fail, had surprised me with its failure. I always thought how could a country growing at 8% annualy, attracting second largest amount of FDI, haven for jobs, IT destination of the world, growing manufacturing hub, 3rd largest economy in PPP terms and thousand other such distinctions, not shine. I thought that it was strange that people didnot buy it.
Then one day i happened to be walking towards my office, Infosys Technologies, Bangalore, with usual nonchalence and realised something which had never occurred to me.
Check out the backdrop of majestic infosys buildings against the slums around it. One is the
showpiece of indian entrepreneurship, worldclass facility and indian growth and development and the other negates it right in front of it. How can we live with a dual face is what has always amazed me. The growth indeed is exclusive.
Indian population is like a pyramid with huge base and less height. The people at the top are few but as we move down the portion of population deprived of the height increases rapidly. In my mind there are lot of reasons for this.
First and foremost is IT disillusionment. IT earns forex and is a huge margin business. IT is top end industry with lot of glam factor and is considered hi-tech and it is easy to justify it as the real sign of indian growth since anything related to intellect is easily professed by the high and mighty "supposedly intelligent"of any country in the world. The people involved earn very high salaries and its easy to spot them in posh localities, malls etc. The banks are crazy about them. Credit card issuers consider them as their king. In short everyone's talking about them. This leads to the misconception that everyone is like them. They probably represent not even .1% of the indian population. People often mistake the rise in no. of software engineers as inclusive growth. The 70% of population which thrives on agriculture is left out of this development and still is not accounted for in the scheme of things. In the current five year plan the agriculte growth has been just 1.5% compared to 4.7% in the previous plan. Growth in IT for 2005-2006 has been 28% and has been double digit growth for the last many years. Thus .1% of the population has seen high growth and 70% pretty low growth. Is India growing???
Sensex is devil no. 2. in a world is driven by money. Indian companies are doing well. How long is a question to be answered, but currently they are cynosure of every world investor's eyes. People assume sensex is directly correlated with the state of economy. People assume that growth in sensex reflects that everyone is doing well. The world media gungho about the indian bourses have conviniently ignored the darker and grim face of indian state of affairs.
Therefore its time to reassess the euphoria about Indian story. We need to take care of the regioinal and demographic imbalances in place. Else we will be faced with irreversible social consequences. Naxalites are a case in point. Farmers committing suicides is unfortunate. Soon they may revolt. India is not what is obvious. There is a whole lot of people who constitute India. We need to consider everyone and not the ones who make us feel good about the state of affairs.