Lucia–Kannada movie

One more blog due to the India trip, the movie was discussed big time during my high school reunion and apparently one of my school friends had worked on the movie (don’t remember in what capacity he worked though), Incentive enough to watch isn’t it?, My fellow friends did offer me the pirated copies of the movie but due to lack of time and lack of initiative from my side it never happened.

Now back in USA and alone, I figured lets Google it. Learnt quite a few things about the movie, it is the first crowd funded movie in Kannada  and it has won some awards in the international level, some even call it Kannada’s answer to Inception the English movie. If you want the plot and all such things then there is the Wikipedia, but take my advice and just watch the movie by paying $5(not pirated).

Its not too long, just 2 hours and a few minutes and packs enough punch to keep you engrossed the whole time. Not as complex as Inception but in the bigger picture it is sort of inspired by Inception.

Its truly an edge of the seat thriller and one of the best Kannada movies ever made. The actors are not some hi-flying stereo types in Kannada movie but the ones who were famous for playing the side kicks and comedian roles in Kannada movie. The songs are just out of this world. The story line, direction, casting, acting and pretty much every aspect of the movie is done to perfection and one will be hard pressed to find fault in the movie. I would say almost a perfect movie (I am sure if looked hard enough one can find a fault here and there).

I definitely recommend it for my Kannada speaking friends and for those who can’t the movie has subtitles too. Still with me, you can find the rental here. Please don’t pirate its not just another run off the mill movie.  

Crime Patrol–Dastak

Thanks to my sister-in-law I got to know about this show on Sony television called Crime Patrol. For those from Kannada land who are thinking of shows like Crime Dairy and all, no it is not the same, its different.

It is a set of real life solved police cases from all over the country (the emphasis is on real). The crimes range is wide and open it ranges from  murders, rapes, suicides, scams and trafficking. Thanks to YouTube I managed to catch up on a lot of the old episodes of the same. Here are my observations of the same

• Each week the show is really unique, don’t know how long can keep this but great effort 
• The murders and scams in general are highly premeditated and the do not really happen at the spur of the moment
• On the other hand most rape cases are not premeditated
• The cellphone usage (last call made and cell tower location)  is one of the major tools in the hands of the police
• If the Police really want they can crack pretty much any case, watch the episodes and you will agree with me. In some stories one can see that the police run up and down the country to apprehend criminals.
• At the same time if they do not want to then the case will never get solved, until some other sincere officer takes up the case.
• Some stories are heart wrenching while some stories can make your blood boil
• The police informants play a major role in solving lot of the crimes
• In India we definitely need to tighten up on the way we sell the simcards
• Somehow they managed to show all the higher police officials (ex: Police Commissioner and others) in real good light
• They have covered a lot of high profile cases like Geethika suicide case, Delhi rape case, the teacher recruitment scam and so on.
• Some reason the crimes are mostly in regions of UP, MP, Gujarat and Maharashtra. I only wish they covered cases from other states also. 

I would say it is a good show to watch to gain some confidence in the working of Indian police (still don’t have a whole lot of confidence).

Linux for desktop

I admit since my graduation from undergrad I always had an affinity for Linux and had even built a couple of dual boot systems with SUSE Linux a while ago (read 5 years) and thanks to the unstable SATA ports on my PC and combined with the fact that the power user (Sandhya) graduated with her masters, I lost the interest in maintaining the same. At that time my primary complaints were, I can’t play MP3’s there is no Picasa or the like of and the drivers for wifi and display were all a pain.

Fast forward to 2013, my beloved desktop with its bad SATA ports gave up on me and no amount of repairs by Mr. Windows 7 was fixing the same. Dr. Google was also very little help. I had to retrieve my data from the hard disk so began the experiments with Linux, my first try was the Knoppix live cd that I had for a long time but the problem with that was it does not recognize the external hard drive and can only work with USB sticks less than  than 2GB (Imagine transferring few 100’s of GB of data this way). To get around this I found another Linux distro called Puppy Linux, a really really small Linux (~100MB) install and live boot. Thanks to it I managed to retrieve my data and back it up.

During this process the thought occurred why not try Linux on the desktop. Instead of going with my traditional favorites SUSE or FEDORA both of which had GB of install files I went with Ubuntu. The latest version 12.04 did not fit on a CD (>700MB) so had to start with 10.04 and upgrade eventually (in a  day) to 12.10.

Here are the cool things about Ubuntu

• The installation was a breeze, much much faster than Windows 7
• The upgrades were a breeze too (up to 12.10)
• It managed to find all the graphics and sound card drivers 
• It recognized my wifi and connected to the same, with windows I had to download the software for the wireless card
• It can play YouTube videos and after installing Google Chrome and Chromecast extension it recognized the Chromecast at home
• It even recognized my wireless printer and I managed to print a test page
• After installing VLC media player, I managed to play the MP3’s
• After installing something called Wine and its utilities I was able to install Picasa too. I admit it’s not working completely as I can’t upload files into the Google account from Picasa but I can see my pics organized in the familiar feel I am used to
• There was some trouble with wifi dropping off every few minutes but uninstalling the default network manager and installing a new one solved the same.

In short I am loving my Ubuntu desktop at home and its working like a charm. I know I am in the honeymoon phase and sooner or later will need some sort of reliable windows desktop at home but till then Ubuntu desktop is a thing of beauty.

Eco friendly India

Remember back in March of 2013 when the city of Austin banned the use of single use carry bags and one had to pay $1 or $2 to get the carry bags? I am seeing a similar initiative in Mysore, India. If you shop in the major stores like Sapna Book House, More and Shoppers Stop at the end of your shopping you will be asked the question “Do you need a carry bag?” if you say “yes” then be prepared to cough out any where between INR 1 to INR 5. Pretty cool and nice idea but not a major impact as this value is not shared by lot of the smaller stores which makes a lion share of the stores in India. Also, in my opinion INR 1 to INR 5 is not that big for the people who shop at these locations.

The kicker was when we went to Karanji Lake, a state owned lake and nature park. At the entrance they inspected our bags and took out our “one time use plastic carry bags” and replaced them with paper bags. More about the Lake nature park at some point in the future.

Universal Phone Charger

Found this in the taxi we had rented, pretty nice invention an all in one car phone charger.

Sad no Apple charger at all.

Cell phones and India

In US I have always lived with AT and T as my cell phone service provider, barring a few months of hiatus in which I switched between Verizon and T-Mobile and again came back to AT and T (or Cingular as it was called then). When my wife came along I switched from single plan to family plan and with the addition of smart phones I added data plan but remained with AT and T itself. Every time I had to get a new handset due to my umpteen reasons I have signed a new 2 year contract and gotten the handset at a discounted price. For my usage, there is no concept of prepaid plans or pay as you go but I pay a fixed monthly cost each month. Another point, I am stuck with a locked phone and there is probably no concept of a dual sim.

Now compare this to the cell phone market in India

• There is no contract as we went with a prepaid plan and each street in the city has plenty of places that offer mobile currency recharge. 
• The cost of the sim was INR 100 out of which 81 was reimbursed to our call plan
• The cost of the calls is INR 1 for 1 minute for outgoing and incoming is free and INR 1 per SMS for sent only and received is free, contrast this with 20 cents per SMS both incoming and outgoing in US
• The concept of dual sim is a pretty standard affair and I know a lot of people carry dual sim phones and some even use 2 SIMs one from BSNL and one from either Airtel or Vodafone or something similar. I may be wrong but in general BSNL is a fairly standard feature.
• The killer is the internet plan or mobile data plan as it is called here, for INR 300 one can get 1GB/month plan and for INR 100 one can get 300MB/month contrast this with US where I pay $15 for 200MB/month or $20 for 300MB/month
• Thanks to the Android OS and lack of discounted phones from providers, one can witness true innovation in terms of handset design and manufacturing. One can get an extremely decent handset (dual core processor, ~1GB RAM, 4-5MP rear camera, high resolution screen, dual sim capable) for INR 10,000 or less.
• The price range and feature range of smart phone handsets is also huge INR ~7,500 to INR ~70,000 (Galaxy S4’s and Iphone’s)       
• Another plus is that one can have their choice of manufacturers (SAMSUNG, LG, PANASONIC, SONY, LENOVO, MICROMAX, KARBON, HTC, INTEX, GINOEE, APPLE, NOKIA and so on) contrast this to US where we only see 2 main ones Samsung and Apple with Sony, HTC and LG being the distant 3rd.  
• As I said before the market is highly segmented and in my observation SAMSUNG is one of the few manufacturers who is playing the whole range and I now understand why the analysts were disappointed with Iphone 5c (not cheap enough)

Before you guys pounce on me, I do agree that my analysis/comparison is not apples to apples as in US we have lot more features in the plan plan like free nights and weekends, cell phone  to cell phone free, lots of wireless hotspots and so on. Also, I haven’t played around with budget carriers like Cricket or Virgin wireless in US. 

Men eat 33% more than women

Shocked by the title, its not my statement but a statement by a reputed restaurant called Rajdhani in Bangalore. Don’t believe me, I have the proof below.

During our recent Bangalore visit our good friend took us for a lunch at this Rajasthani restaurant called Rajdhani. The food was wonderful and the service was nice too. In our state of extreme contentment we didn’t look at the bill and paid it off. But my curiosity made me look at the bill once for sake of it and I must say I was slightly surprised to see that I have been charged 33% more than the other 3 persons having lunch with me.

The location of Rajdhani that we went to was UB city mall, the construction of the mall made me understand why kingfisher airlines has gone bankrupt.

Not fair, I fight for equality :).

Innocence of the child

After nearly 15 years and for the first time ever for my 3 year old daughter we are celebrating Diwali in India. Diwali means crackers and if you are familiar with India the moment you start crackers in front of your house you will have bunch of kids dressed in ragged clothes standing in front of your house begging you to share some crackers with them. If you are born and brought up in India you know to ignore these kids as yielding to one means  you are opening flood gates for the rest of the gang to appear.

But for my daughter it was the other way, she was enjoying the crackers with us and some other young kids from the neighborhood and the moment she saw these street kids she became very excited and said “hey look other kids, come join us”, “everybody say hi”. The funny part was we were forced to share some of\our crackers just to send them away.

Thanks to my daughter we managed to do some charitable act, though a small one. I don’t know how long will this innocence will last but is fun till it lasts.   

Economic percolation

I remember back in my engineering days when Dr. Manmohan SIngh (current PM of India) had started the process of liberalizing the economy with the idea of more job growth and greater economic strength. By the time I left India to US I was able to witness the economic growth mostly in the technical field (aka software and BPO) and during my visits back to India I saw the transformation slowly impacting different strata of the society but never witnessed it reaching all the way to the bottom. This time around I can say it has almost reached all sections of society. Here is how I justify the same.

I have spent most of my time in this vacation in Mysore and went to the famous Mysore Mall (yes Mysore also has a mall now) and to the retail store called More (a retail chain by Birla group). The first time I went to the mall was to buy sandals and the next time was to buy a phone, when went for the sandal shopping I visited quite a few stores and each store had few common features one was a  bunch of young employees in the age group of 18-25 employed to help the customers and each store had a security guard whose duty is to stamp the bill while you are leaving. The second time I went I mostly spent time in the Reliance electronic store and here the ratio of employees to number of aisles was the same as other stores but with a noticeable difference in the age group (wider range than others). I am not sure what they are paid per month from what I heard it is apparently in the range of Rs 6000-10000 per month and since most of these stores are retail chains they also need to provide employee benefits like retirement funds and so on.

The story at More was a different one, the employees seemed mostly direct imports from a near by village. If it were to me I would have guessed that the average age of the employee is 16-18 but my father-in-law noted the fact to me that it is illegal to employ age less than 18. True to the norm in India, there were 1 or 2 employees for each aisle and every few aisles had a uniformed manager. This apart from the cashiers, the security and other managers. 

One can argue that the entry of Dominos and McDonalds had similar impact but in my thinking the scale at which these retail chains are creating jobs is massive to say the least. 

Last but not the least is that the house maid at my in-law’s house managed to lease a house for Rs.125000, keep in mind she is not educated and barely knows how to read and her primary occupation is to work as a maid in multiple houses. One can argue that such cases are rare but I am impressed by the fact that such things do exist.

On one side I am happy to see so many youth being employed but on the other hand I worry as to what is the future career paths for these countless youngsters, will it lead to the same problem USA has in terms of high school dropouts and not many following through to college? something to wonder. 

Quality improved due to dependence on machines

Today morning while heading to office, I noticed the garbage truck in front of my house machine handling the recycle bin. It is a fairly sophisticated piece of machine which has sort of 2 claws which picks up big bin and dumps it into the truck storage bin without almost anything outside the truck. The way the machine handled the bin made me realize, that the bin must be made of some high grade plastics.

Then the thought further extrapolated into the daily house hold items like kitchen utensils and clothes. We need the kitchen utensils to be good quality to survive a few years of loading into the  dish washer, we need clothes to be colorfast and strong to sustain the abuse in the washer/dryer. Granted the machines have something called a delicate cycle and can be used for delicate clothes and dishes but in a typical house hold who does not employ any domestic help at all the delicate cycles are usually a rarity. In my personal experience if a daily utility stuff cannot sustain the dishwasher, we tend to shelve it away or try not to buy the same brand next time.   

So, my conclusion the quality of the daily utility stuff is among other factors driven by our dependence on machines over humans for cleaning and sanitizing them. 

Does the name India itself brings out the “take it easy” attitude

My daughters tourist visa to India expired and had to be renewed for the upcoming trip. After my first experience of sending by post, I decided to personally go and drop it off at the office in Houston. This time around Travisa is no longer the company it has been transferred to a different one called BLS international.

The new company is pretty professional and their website is pretty detailed. After due diligence and processes, I made an appointment for a particular day at 11:00AM. I showed up at the office at 10:45AM and here is how the conversation went

BLS: Hello, may I help you

me: Hi, I have a visa appointment for my daughter at 11:00, should I come back as it is not 11:00 yet

BLS: No you are fine, can I see your appointment letter

me: Sure, here you go

The lady looked at it once and started looking for my daughters name in her list of appointments sheet. She had a total of 3 sheets of paper and going by the font size I would guess a total of 50 odd names. She glanced through the whole list once and couldn’t find it and meanwhile I was getting slightly worried.

BLS: the appointment is in this name right? (pointing at my daughters name on a sheet)

me: yes

She handed me the first sheet and asked me to look through if I can find it while she looked through others. I took the sheet and looked at the appointment times it was sheet for appointments from 9:00-10:00

me: Maam, these are for appointments from 9:00-10:00 but mine is at 11:00

BLS: Oh yeah, found it

She marked my daughters name with a yellow marker and asked me to take a seat.

Assuming the BLS lady marks up all the names that has showed up for the appointment, there were only a couple of marked up names on the sheet I was looking at and couple more on the sheet the lady from BLS was looking at. So, does this mean people made appointments and never showed up during their appointment time? I think that is the obvious conclusion. If they haven’t shown up during their time then will they show up at some arbitrary time as they please?

Taking a guess here,since it is a visa for India and looking at all the people present there it will most likely be people like me who have booked their appointments and have not shown up. My thoughts on this incident,

1. If one cannot keep the appointment that too for a visa then why make it in the first place?
2. Would we do the same thing if we were applying for visa for any other country like Europe or while applying for USA visa from India?
3. I am fairly certain the people who booked these appointments are fairly educated and in some sort of white collar job. So, why this don’t care attitude for the Indian visa? 
4. Does the name India itself brings out the “take it easy” attitude in people?
5. For BLS, If you can make an appointment and can still show up anytime then why keep these slots for appointments?
6. For the BLS folks, since you know this is the case then why not just organize the appointment names in alphabetical order and be done or why not do the TRAVISA way and do on first come first serve basis. 

To be fair, I didn’t pay attention to the names to guess the origins of the people who did not show up for their appointment nor did I talk to the BLS folks to know how this business work and my post is based solely on my singular experience in that office.         

iOS 7 first impressions

Over the weekend I updated my Iphone 4s to iOS 7 and here is my take on it

• I think the colors and hues are done to impress teenage girls. The more neutral look that the previous OS used to have is gone. At the first look I hated it but now its been a few days and I am getting used to it.
• The control center is pretty nice and slickly done, The OS now has a built in app to enable the flash led and use it as a flash light. Finally I could get rid of the ad driven app that I was using to do the same.
• The notes app used to have a selection of fonts and now we have to be satisfied with only default no choices.
• The camera app is re done nicely, it has a ton of live filters built in.
• Safari web browser is also redone, I like that it has the options on screen to make browsing private. I must warn you it will take a few minutes of getting used to as the default mode is full screen.
• The timer, safari apps are aiming for a 3D feel. 
• Finally any icon can be moved anywhere and can be grouped with any other one, for ex: in ios6 I couldn’t move the passbook or Newsstand from the main screen and keep them with other unused apps.
• The introduction of itunes radio is cool but I think it has a long way to catch up with apps like Pandora. At the first launch the radio had trouble finding my Wifi.
• The weather app has onscreen animations like the Android OS
• The maps on Apple still have long long way to go, on 1 instance it couldn’t find a location I was looking for while Google maps had no trouble finding the place on the second instance the app was predicting my arrival time ~20mins later than my GPS and Google maps. The error is not a big deal if it were for a 3-4 hr journey but in my case it was little over an hour long journey. 
• The battery drain is slightly faster with iOS7 than with the previous version, not a big deal and not a big concern.
• The background app killing reminds me of the old Palm OS and Android (instead of holding down on the app till we get a red bar at the end like we did in the previous OS, now just flick them up)
• The i-message interface also reminds me of Android. I hope the i-messaging works better with this OS as I had a lot of trouble using the i-message  in iOS 6 and had switched over to Google voice and whatsapp.
• Sorry no SWYPE keyboard yet.

On the whole the OS seems to be doing a catching up with Android, not too happy about that.

D-Day Hindi Movie

Spoiler Alert: I may have disclosed part or parts of the plot of the movie. 

Last night me and Sandhya managed to catch the movie D-Day, an extremely well done Hindi fictional movie on nabbing Mr.D from Pakistan and bringing him to India. So far I have seen quite a few so called thriller movies in Hindi some original and some pirated either from Hollywood or from other languages in India itself, this sits almost at the top.

To be fair, In the past Bollywood has taken up good story lines and manage to goof it up pretty badly, few movies at top of my head are Zameen which was based on Indian airlines flight hijack to Afghanistan and the movie Qayamat which is supposedly a rip off of Rock and many more like that if I think hard. Both the movies made me twitch and turn in my seat, I couldn’t take them for more than 15 mins.   

Watching the movie it appeared that Rishi Kapoor has thoroughly enjoyed playing the role of the gangster. The roles of vulnerable Wali Khan played by Irfaan Khan is very well portrayed. Of course Arjun Rampal as the silent assassin is also well played. Sad that Huma Quareshi and Shruti Hassan does not have much role to play. I must appreciate the casting director for doing such an excellent job. Most movies will either have a good first half or good second half but this movie will keep you at the edge of the seat till the very end. 

The thing that stood out for me in the movie is its boldness in terms of its dialogues. I felt the story line stayed pretty close to reality, the cat and mouse game is very well shown. Of course there is a love angle also which is some what short and does not hamper the narration.

I am not saying it is a perfect movie as I was able to find quite a few loop holes that I failed to explain to myself. One will fail to understand how the character of Irfaan Khan sitting in Pakistan is openly communicating using an old Nokia phone with his handler who is the head of R&AW sitting in India. One would expect needs to be a highly secure line. 

But if you are in for a good thriller and a Hindi movie, then I would definitely recommend D-Day.

As I said before, it is a fiction and one of those things that we Indians keep thinking to ourselves “if only it can happen like this”.

Precious moments

I have no remembrance of what I was thinking and no idea whatsoever about what is going on inside Avni’s brain. But together this made a pic to remember. Many thanks to Sandhya for capturing this moment.

Life of Pi – The movie

Long time ago, I remember reading the book “Life of Pi” and being thoroughly impressed by it. I don’t think I ever thought that some one would venture to make a movie out of it and that too it will turn out this good.  In my experience, there are only few movies that I could say the movies surpasses the books they are based on and I am more than willing to accept Life of Pi is one of them.

The book in case one has not read, is the story of a boy named Pi who for some reason  gets stuck on a boat with a Bengal tiger in the middle of the pacific ocean, how he managed to reach the land and the bonding he made with that tiger forms the rest of the story. I loved the book for it offered different perspective on life, on the life of animals at zoo and the funny narratives about how the boy was named Pi Patel while the rest of the family had normal Indian names.

The movie has gone a few steps beyond and I loved the way they have added Irfan Khan’s character (playing the adult Pi Patel) as a wrapper to the whole story. The narrative is amazing and the photography is mind blowing. I must admit parts of the movie were too real for my taste, but that’s the way the book is written. Every single actor is in their true elements. The ying and yang with father and mother playing the head and the heart roles is brought out really nice. In short it is a master piece and is worth the time.

To describe my own experience of watching the movie, after a hard day on Saturday. I was pretty tired and wanted to sleep off but on insistence of Sandhya (who had seen it before) I sat to watch the movie saying to myself that I would watch for just half hour and then sleep, but little did I know that I would be so engrossed and occupied with the movie that I sat through the whole movie of nearly 2 hrs and few mins. Keep in mind, I have read the book and I know the ending and there is no suspense element involved in the movie for me. 

ps: I should have caught this movie in an IMAX theater but as luck shall have it I saw it at the comfort of my home.

The magic of Disney

Sometime in May 2013 my company announced a mandatory week long shut down during the July 4th weekend. I was confused as to what to do for a whole week and where to head to and Sandhya suggested Disney world, Orlando. We deliberated for a few minutes and decided to head there for 4 days with 2 days extra for travel. I am glad I did this, at the end of 4 days, none of us wanted to come back and had to literally drag our feet to the airport to return to Austin. 

In my stay in US, I have been to several theme parks (couple of six flags, couple of sea world’s, Hollywood studios and also the Disney Land LA) and before we reached there my impression was this place probably is a mix of Hollywood studios and Sixflags. I was wrong, it was as the name said a magical place. It is probably the one and only theme park that I felt, I wish I had more time to spend here.

As the title of the blog goes we spent more than half of our time in Magic kingdom and the other half was split between Disney Hollywood studios Disney Animal kingdom. My 2 and a half year old was thrilled to meet the characters of Disney like the princesses, fairies, the Mickey the Minnie and Buzz and Woody. She also had a lot of fun dancing in the street parties and also watching the shows. In short she had a blast and so did we. 

One thing to admire Disney is their transportation logistics. To reach magic kingdom we had to go drive the car, raid a tram and then ride a mono rail. All of which was well manned and was very very efficient. I remember coming back one night after the fire works (~10:30PM) and the place was really crowded but it didn’t take us more than 15 mins to reach our cars and the drive out of the parking lot was also real smooth and no congestion what so ever. Considering the scale of operation they have in Disney world, makes me wonder how many people and contractors and temporary workers they need to employ for a smooth operation of the place. Their fast pass system also deserves some appreciation, if utilized properly can save a lot of time (Keep in mind they have fast passes for most but not all shows and rides).

The one and only crib I have about Disney is their lack of good food inside the park. They have lot of ice-cream shops but 1 or 2 burger places and 1 or 2 restaurants which typically have a wait time of 45mins or so. If you are a vegetarian like me then the options reduce drastically.      

One piece of advice, if you consider a Disney vacation then do not spend the extra money on options like park hopping and all, from my experience it was a useless thing for we did not have time or energy to jump from park to park.   

I can’t end the blog post without mentioning a word about the FL weather, the months from May to October is what they call the hurricane season and out of the 5 days we were there we had rain on 4 days. The rains won’t last too long but are pretty intense while they last. So, if you are there buy a poncho and keep moving. Also, pick a rainless night and watch the fireworks from magic kingdom and the show right before that (can’t remember the name).

In the end there is no denial it is an expensive vacation, it is a place where you will spend a lot of money on stuff toys and plush toys and all such stuff. Not to exclude the flight tickets, park tickets, the stay and so on but a worthy visit.

The abortion debate

I don’t understand the stands of these so called republicans. On one side they believe everything should be persons choice and government should not interfere in any aspect of a persons life including owning a gun to paying taxes and so on but in the same breath they want to ban abortion in whatever time and way possible.

Passing absurd laws of banning abortions altogether and not even in case of genetic diseases like the one in North Dakota is border line ridiculous and madness. If the government wants to pass such ridiculous laws like these, then the government should be ready to take responsibility for everything from mothers health, child birth to child bring up and more care/support for ones whose kids are born with genetic diseases that would prevent them from leading a normal life. But wait, that is against the republican principle.   

For me it is simple, choice should and definitely be of the mother. All said and done, it is the mothers body and mind that has to go through the changes required for baby’s development. That said, I am not proposing a free for all, when and where possible abortion but allow a minimum time of first trimester or so and after that only allow if there are medical conditions like genetic diseases that warrant such a move. 

I guess some would say, they are republicans and not libertarians.

Dear Delhi,

What’s happening to you or what has happened to you?, why are the women or children specially girls are not safe in the city?, One thing I always wondered is, if this is the same state of affairs across the country and Delhi being the capital of the country these incidents are coming to light more often?  

Why is it that the public have to enrage and then only the police get into action? and I do appreciate the police for their swift action in getting the arrests done. But the irony is that the Delhi police, on one hand refused to register a complaint of the missing child and once the child is found in semi conscious state, they manage to arrest the culprits in no time. That too the culprits had fled Delhi to a distant state. So, form what I can see the efficiency exists in the Delhi police, all they need is motivation either in form of a carrot or a stick.

One cannot blame the police alone for not preventing the incidents and making Delhi more safer, because the victims involved were a 5 year old and another one is a 10 year old. Both of whom were molested by their neighbors, people whom they and their parents trusted to an extent. Of course one can blame them for not registering a complaint of the missing kid when they were asked to and not showing sensitivity once the child was found.

One thing I would definitely blame is the fast track court, its been almost 4 months since the bus incident and one person has already apparently committed suicide. So, where is the judgment, I am waiting with baited breath. Or the fast track just means it would be a few years instead of the usual few decades. For me the bus incident is a open and shut case and a judgment can be passed in a day, let alone months. 

Of course the mouths of our leaders better be sealed, do they even know that the recent victims are not women or teens but children?. Our esteemed PM said he was deeply moved, then what? is there an action or law or some such sort or should I be satisfied by the fact that he was moved?  

The thing that is bothering me the most is that of the 3 incidents that came to light in the last few months, there are a few in their teens and some in their early 20s or so. It tells me that there is something wrong with the way we as a society are handling the younger generation. Where have we gone wrong? In the case of the 10 year old girl, what happened to the golden rule “do not do something to others that you do not want them to do”?  or what we call the sense of belongingness, the kid was your neighbors daughter for gods sake.

One thing that is common amongst the cases is, all the culprits were under the influence of alcohol, so if the government can do anything other than just saying “ we are moved” is to do something about alcohol availability and sales. Oh, sorry that will be impossible due to the lobbying groups.

On the last note, after the last two incidents, I am in agreement with Sri Sri Ravishankar when he says, for all these atrocities to stop we need to uplift people by educating them on the spiritual path.

Democracy or Lobbycracy

The recent defeat of the gun control bill to make background check mandatory in the US congress has made me wonder, do we really have a democracy or we are living in an illusion of democracy.

All through this year, all the news media that I follow have been reporting that more than 90% of Americans are in favor of gun control and are in favor of background check and the only organization that is firmly against is the NRA which has an active membership of close to 4million people.

So, if most of the American people wants one thing why is the elected representatives are against it?, aren’t they worried about their re-election (ideally that’s what should happen if democracy were to be working in its full sense). But what I am witnessing is that senators are worried about the lobbying group (read NRA) than the people who elected them. Another way of looking at it, the media reported it wrong and only the urban elite who form the 10% and not 90% want the background checks . 

To think further, the bill at question is background check. People are scared of being in a federal registry of owning guns. But aren’t you in some form of registry when you own a car, when you get a drivers license or for that matter when you get a speeding ticket, granted not everyone will have any of the above. Its mind boggling that anybody can walk into a gun show and buy a gun without probably even have to show any id before buying while you need all sorts of documentation before one can buy a car (insurance and all such).

To an extent, I feel people are getting paranoid for no reason and it is a shame that the senators are so scared of the NRA that they refuse to talk about Guns and Control in the same sentence. 

The curious case of Sanjay Dutt

The esteemed film actor who has had multiple life’s in movies and one of the few actors who can claim to have hits in Indian cinema in almost every decade since the 80s.

The recent supreme court verdict that said he has to spend about 3 and half years in jail has let some media and people uproar. There are people on both sides of the story with his cine friends and fans saying he should be pardoned while the other intellectual community saying, he deserves more tougher punishment and should suffer the same as others involved in the case.

When the verdict came out, I was on the side of the intellectuals and was thinking he deserved more but reading this lengthy article on Tehelka made me re-remember the 80s and the 90s one more time. It was the time when our cine stars like Anil Kapoor used to watch cricket match with Dawood Ibrahim, it was the time when the underworld used to finance most of the Hindi movies, it was the time when our A-class cine actresses used to perform shows for the underworld dons in Dubai and other places. It was time before the economy was opened up. It was a time when it was fashionable to pose with underworld dons and share drinks with them. In short, the nexus between Bollywood and underworld was real tight. Needless to say most of these came about right after the blasts of 1993 and before that it was all hunky-dory.

What I said above is the history, now to the facts. Sunil Dutt (Sanjay’s father) was hated for doing relief work for the Muslim community (we know who they were). If the Tehelka article is to be believed Sunil Dutt’s own party members distanced him.  The family was getting threatening calls. Now the choice came about, should the junior Dutt have trusted the Indian police to protect himself an the family against a mob attack or try and do something on his own. He went the other way on his own. His possession of assault rifles and grenades made me think he is off to a war or something but that is a useful way to protect against a mob attack (assuming he knew how to use it).

Another problem is the case has run for nearly 20 years and as the saying goes “justice delayed is justice denied”. It is kind of weird to impose a sentence on a crime like this (charge of possessing and destroying an assault rifle, never fired or killed anybody) that was committed 20 years ago, they could have let all the people off with fines and community services. Another problem with this long gap is it removes an entire generation that lived the times and understood what it was like and adds a generation that has no understanding of the whole issue in hand.

All the above said, I am not advocating that anybody should be above the law. My points of view are only for this case.

Catalog choice

Catalog choice - The best tool out there to stop the spam from coming to the mailbox (not the email but the land mail).

Our mailbox used to get so much junk and unwanted mails that once when we were out of town for a week, the mail lady stopped delivering the mails to our mail box and started with holding all our mails and parcels at the post office. I even lost the note that said our mails are being withheld and began to think that some how my mail is getting stolen. Then a short trip to the post office and the good lady delivered me a big basket full of mail and said “your mail box was overflowing and hence I stopped delivering”. After weeding through all the junk mail, I finally ended up with the 10% of the actual mail that I was interested in.    

At around this time a good friend of mine introduced me to Catalog choice, as the website says – it works on reducing junk mails to your mailbox. The registration process is pretty straight forward and in my experience it really works. For ex: I used to get a bundle of junk mails from company called Red-Plum (they bundle every possible thing from CVS to HEB to Walmart to Papa Johns and so on) and it is always addressed to resident and once I added this to catalog choice, I have stopped receiving mails from them. Now, I don’t have to check my mail every few days and can go up to a week easily without my mailbox overflowing.

Give it a try, it is good for you and the environment and best of all, it works.  

Mahashivaratri at the Austin Hindu Temple

Thanks to my daughter and my wife, for the first time in over a decade of my life in USA I managed to get to a temple on the day of Shivaratri and I am glad I did.

For the few hours I spent in the temple, I was impressed by the way the festival was celebrated at the Austin hindu temple, they had abisheka pooja every hour starting at 5:00PM going on till midnight or later (not sure) and were also providing milk to people to pour on the Shiva Linga. On the food front they were providing prasada pretty much through the night. Considering most of it is run by volunteers, it was a pretty well run show. Keep in mind, unlike other festivals where there is a concentrated time in which the temple usually gets a bulk of its visitors, this festival is a marathon process. 

Usually I will be the last person to pour milk on a shiva linga (essentially a black stone) but this time around I stood in line and participated in the process. It was a unique experience, for the time I was pouring milk, my mind was pretty still and thoughtless. One can call it a few moments of meditation. To an extent it made me understand the meaning behind some of the rituals and ceremonies.    

Another laudable effort by the temple committee is to draft a calendar that is applicable to Austin (USA) region. They still have these calendars, in case you want it.

Looking back nearly a decade ago when one of the founding members had called some of us for a meeting to talk about a hindu temple in Austin, I had snubbed him off but now I am glad they built this place of worship.  

Oh my god - movie worth a watch

Last year (2012) there was a movie called Oh my god released with Paresh Rawal and Akshay Kumar as the lead and I had completely discarded it for I was skeptical of Akshay Kumar after his disaster of a movie called Joker and weird movie that became a hit Housefull-2. But some how this year a friend of mine mentioned that it is worth a watch and was available on Youtube, so I took a chance.

The story is different than any movie I have seen before, and it is something that is relevant to the present times. It is the story of an atheist  Guajarati businessman who loses his business to an earthquake and his claim is denied by insurance company for they do not cover damages that is considered “act of god”. So, the businessman files a case against god himself, since he cannot summon god himself he calls the heads of various religious organizations (watch the movie for I do not want to spoil and dilute the reasoning behind this call) and what happens next is the story.

The movie is some what a summation of all my adult life thoughts on god and his presence. The movie does make a ton of fun on blind faith and belief that we carry on specially in India. The logical arguments in the movie has the potential to make one think hard. It has a good and happy ending too and a very nice message in the end, not sure how practical it is though.

I recommend the movie and it is worth a watch.  

A letter to Lance Armstrong

Dear Lance Armstrong,

I never thought I will write this but what the heck, when I am in a jolly mood to write to the NRA why not you. First things first, congratulations on making Oprah Winfrey richer and helping her ailing cable channel. Btw, what was your cut for admitting on her show? Also, are you on Botox or something, for your face lacked the expression when you admitted to a guilt.

For me, you seemed proud of what you have done. I was amongst the ones who stood by you and believed you to be innocent back in August 2012 when USADA bought allegations and you sheepishly agreed to the claims. Come to think of it, I was a fool. here is why, there were a lot of colorful trigger points along the path including you divorcing your first wife right after your cancer recovery and dating celebrities like Mariah Carey or the worst one when you were spotted with one of the Oslen twins. But like many fans of your wins and your charity I happily ignored these warnings and bought the LiveStrong bands almost every year (thankfully never wore them).

Now that you are a father, how do you tell your kids to be truthful and nor cheat in their lives?, or for that matter how did you manage for this long to look yourself in the mirror and fight all the claims about your cheating, may be you can write a book on how you managed to keep your conscience clean while cheating left and right. It could be a best seller like your book on cancer recovery.

Anyways, you famously claimed to Ms. Winfrey that you will work every day to win back your fans. I am still waiting to hear more, piece of advice drop the Botox and come out with your true self with some emotions. Also, please stop working with USADA to help them bust bigger drug rings in return for less stringent sanctions on you. If you really feel guilty, do the right thing but without expecting returns..

Not anymore a fan

-M

A letter to the NRA

Dear NRA,

Your recent ad criticizing the president “are presidents kids more important . . . . “, I think is fairly foolish. Yes the president and his family are more important to America as a whole. You know history better, if not just re-visit the way President Lincoln was assassinated and the formation of the secret service.

That said, I am not following your argument of armed guard at every school. I want to send my daughter to a school and not a jail. Besides, your short sightedness on this issue is pretty remarkable. Here is why, every day I pass by a school near my neighborhood and almost everyday I see a bunch of kids (20 to 30 of them) playing in the play scape/park and the play scape is visible from the road, what do you think prevents someone to open fire from a moving car and kill a bunch of kids and get away even before your armed guard posted at the front door can make his way back to the play scape area. Or for that matter what about all the daycares and private pre-schools that operate in the country, do we need armed guards for them too?.

Ok, even if I buy your argument for school security guard, what is your solution for the Virginia Tech problem, one in front of every single department and for Aurora problem, one in front of every theater and a public place where there is a possibility of more than 8-10 people gathering? Oh wait, that would mean increased government everywhere, which is antithesis for the republican party you all support.

But I agree with you on one thing, banning assault weapons is just an eye candy thing that the president has done. For I do agree the assault weapons constitute less than 10% of the total gun violence in the USA.

So, please drop these ridiculous ads and focus on promoting responsible gun ownership and having fun with guns. Please do not keep quoting the second amendment again and again, for as I have indicated in my previous post that argument is also borderline foolish. Have faith in America and people of America to keep democracy going for it has been strong for last 200 years.

Hope you enjoy the read 

Delhi case–my thoughts

A heinous act was committed in New Delhi, capital of India on the night of December 16th. It managed to create an outrage in many parts of the country and now the wave seems to be shifting towards Pakistan crossing the LOC (The politicians must be saying, thanks Pakistan). Some questions have been bothering me for a while now.

• I am wondering if the outrage is against the act itself or the heinous nature of the act had everything to do with the outrage. I would go with the nature of the act.
• If the victim hadn’t been that severely wounded and succumbed to her injuries, would the police had acted as swiftly as they did and would the government had pretended to act as they did by setting up swift courts and all.
• If by chance the victim were not a medical student working at a call center to fund her education but were in questionable employment, would we have had the same reaction? or would we have said, she got what she deserved? 
• If there is a supreme court order that prevents any bus with tinted windows and curtains to be operated on Delhi roads. Why was this bus never stopped for almost 2-2.5hrs of its drive time. All it would have taken was 1 police constable to stop the illegal bus. It was not middle of the night, it was between 8:30/9:00PM to lets say 11:30PM.
• In the light of the above comment, why did I not hear a bunch of suspensions in the Delhi Police pay roll?
• The male victims account of the events is also questionable, after being beaten badly (it appears he appeared on a wheel chair for the interview) where did he find strength to pull the woman victim from being mowed down. The bus did not go for a second try in mowing them? I believe they were robbed of everything, so where did he time the 45mins of the police discussions.
• The comments from the spiritual leaders like Asram Bapu and our so called political leaders including the son of our present president is sending chills down my spine. Not because of their comments but because nobody managed to throw a shoe at their face (Yeah, yeah it is a democracy and people have the right to speak).
• In terms of the lawyers representing the case, I think they have picked the case just be in the lime light. I don’t even want to talk about the comment made by one the defense lawyers.
• Regarding the so called minor accused in the case, assuming he did most of the carnage as has been reported why not just try him as an adult and hang the damn thing.
• That day will be sad when the accused are awarded lighter sentences because of the so-called torture they endured during the police custody.

Kannada rhymes DVD by infobells

If you were born in Karnataka in the 80's or 90's and your parents were not too sold out on “convent” culture, you probably grew up hearing some of these Kannada rhymes 

• ನಮ್ಮ ಮನೆಯಲೊಂದು ಚಿಕ್ಕ ಪಾಪ 
• ನಾಯಿ ಮರಿ ನಾಯಿ ಮರಿ ತಿಂಡಿ ಬೇಕೇ
• ರೊಟ್ಟಿ ಅಂಗಡಿ ಕಿಟ್ಟಪ್ಪ 
• ಆನೆ ಬನ್ತ್ಹೊಂದ್ ಆನೆ

Now imagine these rhymes and much more like this being beautifully animated and made into a DVD. That's what infobells has done. I must say, they have done a wonderful job. The DVD flows as a musical narration of songs and is captured as an interaction between a small girl “Chinnu” and her pet dog “Pappu”.  

Thanks to my sister-in-law for introducing us to this. My 2 year old daughter just loves this DVD. Its one of her favorites and she calls it “Chinna – Aane”, referring to the pictures on the DVD.

The company Infobells seems to have a YouTube page and looking at the same, looks like they have translated the rhymes to multiple languages (Tamil and Telugu).

I do consider buying more DVDs from the company and will keep you posted on those when time permits.