Om Shanti Om...It sure works!

Ever heard of the term 'Optimization'? Bollywood has had a reputation of prowling forever on the slopes of "Quality Film Making', without ever reaching the pinnacle. Om Shanti Om is an exception.

OSO is not a GREAT movie. Its not going to win an Oscar. Its not an IMDB top 250 contender. But come to think of it: it does what its makers want it to do, and does it damn well.

Starting things off, I was terribly disappointed when "Main Hoon Na" came out a few years ago. Red Chillies Entertainment had got it wrong. They had tried to make the movie something it wasn't. People could choose to see Spiderman hop, or see SRK fly. But India is a big country and people who did not wish to see the Spider ended up making Main Hoon Naa a hit.

OSO is a different package. It is a potpourri of several styles of filmmaking:

(a) The Rajnikanth/Chiru/Mithun flick: One (super)man. A zillion bad guys. Pure star power. Every mannerism of the Hero to go down into history and be worshiped for ages. Interchangeable actresses half the age of our star, who usually dance with him when he is not busy bashing villains/corrupt officials/assorted debris.

(b) The Epic Musical: Sprawling sets. A plot written with (only)the musical score in mind. Elaborate song and dance sequences. Blatant lip synching. Trapezes. Costumes. Back-up dancers. Spotlights. No villains allowed.

(c) The tale of Love...and betrayal : Good guy, Dame, bad guy---->romantic songs----->Jhinchak songs------> murder---->pathetic(hehe) songs----> revenge....THE END

(d)Judwaa Bhai/ Punarjanam/Yaddasht: Maa mujhe sabkuchh yaad aa gayaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


(e) Gabbar mein tera Khoon pee( drink...what were you thinking?) jaaoonga!!: A pitiful hypocrite who gets his due, when everyone gangs up against the poor freak.


As far as OSO goes, you name it and they have it. Its something more profound than a block-buster movie: it is a new genre which has practically nothing new in what it presents, yet holds the potential to make Bollywood one of the most productive industries in India.

The attempt is deliberate this time. There is a shipload of overacting, coincidences which are enormous in their enormity, songs fitted in somehow during most of the first half. Yet somewhere, everything falls into place. Here is a movie which you would actually 'like' to like. No threat from spoilers too. You ALWAYS know what's going to happen, only that you just can't wait to see HOW it happens. Its hard to believe how predictable this movie is.

That, unfortunately for some, is what makes OSO work. SRK's larger than life star power has been utilized to the limit. I admire SRK, but I do not worship him. And that is when OSO hits me in the face and explains why that man rules the hearts of Indians worldwide.

There you have it. That,precisely is optimization. Here we have a film that is so stupid yet so perfect, so revolting yet so enticing. I watched and watched , when my mind said, "This is a load of bullcrap you fool!", but I could not hit the pause button.


To sum up,OSO is a movie that rejuvenates the age old cliches and brings them into fashion. Its the new wine in the old bottle. And you have to taste it.

I listen carefully.....the guy on the first floor is playing a song from: you know what.

The smell of victory.

30 minutes.
27 iterations.
2.5 million atoms.
A linux CRASH course.

Three months is a long wait, even for "highly motivated" [Yeah! right..] undergraduate whiz kids. In my case, it's a computer program that has kept me waiting all this time. As a result, I have nearly killed the budding engineering in me, and unleashed the t shirt clad, laptop wielding , bespectacled geek.

It all started back in May, when everything was beautiful in the sunny subtropical piedmont of the southeastern united states . It was a hard-earned (???) internship at Georgia Tech, Atlanta.
Things went smoothly, and I had a great time stretching nanocrystalline sheets of copper. Everything I hated back in kgp seemed to dissolve in the sheer ease of the work.

It makes sense to remember all the good times, but the ensuing nightmare is pretty forgettable.Faced with the gruesome task of setting up a 6-node computational network in IIT, to carry out the same procedure here, I set out on a journey with a cannonball tied to my leg. The opening lines are an obituary to the many hours wasted in doing something engineers don't generally do: installing packages, debugging third party software, getting drained of creativity in the process.

I am ecstatic: because the frigging thing is working now. But I am not really sure if I have the temperament to continue the same work which I did with such alacrity last summer.


WARNING: I have come to realize that its a highly despicable quality in a popular blogger to describe personal geeky exploits which might infuriate casual netizens. Go back to the post 'Why do you blog' to know the rest of the story. Apparently, the bloggers earning fame and recognition are the thinkers and visionaries of today, who are only too eager to key down elaborate critiques of the changing face of society at best, or write B-movie reviews at their worst. Go back to the first 4 lines of this article and realize that I am NOT one of them.

Experiment

This is only an experiment. Apparently searching for 'siskiwah' on google produces only one result.
If you got here through a google search; that means my experiment succeded.

Why do you blog?

More personally, why do I blog? Why did i start blogging? What keeps me involved in blogging? Why should I spend precious minutes of the day trying to key down mildly coherent text?

Expand the whole thing. Its a WEB LOG dammit, if some of you morons have been too slow to realize the fact.

What follows from now on is nothing but "A portrait of the blogger as a small child" (intentional infringement, but I don't plan to write 'Ulysses' anytime soon) . Since the dawn of Btime (blogger times i.e.) , countless individuals across the world have keyed in still countless characters of text into the world wide web. The web is very resilient, thankfully, and its informative part still easily exceeds the 'blogged' part of it.

It started, quite simply, with the word 'log'. Its a place where you maintain records in chronological order. Its on a network, so you call it a weblog. it contains information about you and your personality, so it becomes a personal web log. Which is all very good.

I don't go through a lot of random blogs but when I do so, I come across topic titles like:

• Eve teasing in India
• How google took Youtube
• detailed character sketches of soap opera stars
• Why Pluto deserves to be a planet.

Each of these is a topic, which is 'supposed' to reflect something/anything about the writer. A blog portrays YOU to the rest of the world. Write about the breed of dog you like. Write about what you ate for lunch. Write about your adventurous trip to Burkina Faso last month. Write about your kids doing well at school. Thats a 'personal web log'.

This doesn't seem to be the way it works.

Some people have their breakfast, and write about how many calories it contained. There are others who eat the same breakfast, but when it comes to writing, they prudently write an epic on why airborne toasts land jelly side down.

Hard to understand, I'll say. A blog is a place for personal traits which reflect to the outside world. The individualism in its content can never be over emphasized. One 'should' blog as a one-way means communication to the outside world. Its your own Pioneer Plaque to people known and unknown. But bloggers like the ones in the cases above do not seem to mind. They write and they write, as if their blog is their own uncensored database of facts.

Is this freedom of speech? Yes, if the entire blog is a literary experiment and its readers are similar literary experimenters, posting similar narrative/expository material on their own blogs.

My question now narrows down to these literary experimentalists:
Why do you blog then? Do you write all that happened in your life today? You wouldn't, because there are plenty of things about you which you wouldn't like the world knowing. Do you write for enjoyment? in that case you don't need online publishing because you enjoy writing as such.
Do you blog to gather attention? Probably yes.

And there you have it. Elaborate posts/comments/discussions about unrelated exotic tidbits in the world. Views of intellectual Utopia, assertions of stone and rebuttals of steel. Neutral perspectives, pros, cons. All this, without a word about the human behind it all. Ever increasing libraries of pointless digital rhetoric.

The creative genius clashes, and more blogs like the 4 above are written. The redundancy increases. Each blogger chips in, trying at each step to prove how infinitely mistaken his/her fellows are.

And to crown it all, this disease is contagious, because it leads me to write what I just wrote, something totally unrelated to my existence, and makes me out to be a literary experimentalist like all those already out there. In an attempt at exposing the irony of irrelevant blogging, I have just committed the crime myself.



and no place for the pretty face feature, but it will return.....

A change of seasons

Well, even though this post is a continuation to the last one, I can hardly identify with my state of mind when I wrote that last post. Coming as what may seem a reversal of views, I can, at this point of time say only the following:

"Twenty20 cricket lives, and its here to stay in India."

my reasons for the drastic deviation from my previous opinion are too overwhelming to neglect:

http://www.cricketnext.com/news/india-are-twenty20-world-champions/27119-5.html

Only one problem however:
The Indian team gets Rs. 8,00,00,000 (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)
I never stop wondering where this money could have gone.


The following is a new feature. It's called the 'Pretty face of the day':



Ashley Force---- American Drag racer [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashley_Force]

Raging twenties

This is only the 2nd time in my life that I am commenting on Cricket. The last time was in a district level essay competition. At times I am amazed to notice my lack of interest in the game, even when it happens to be the only game in India which is capable of driving people mad.

A week ago (it was the the 20-20 world cup started) I heard about this new phenomenon called 20-20 cricket.

What's worse, there was a frown on every face, when I said..."Yeh 20-20 kya hai?"

As if the irony of the above statement was not enough to establish my ignorance of the game, people seemed to enjoy what a moron I was, asking the stupid question. So, Test cricket was the 5 course meal. ODIs were the fast food. What's this....the candy, or the pick up lunch?
I must say that the whole idea of Twenty20 cricket evades me. Its like creating a form of the game, which as far removed from the game as possible. See it simply, without the embellishments- a volley is thrown at you, you swing your willow, people cheer.

That is actually all that there is to cricket, but only if you're seeing cricket for the first time in your life. We Indians know better, I am sure. Many of us grew up hearing this stuff from people 2 generations above us. We have witnessed matches and seen history being made. The indian peoples with so much of the sport imbibed in them need not be told how the game's to be played.

More about the Twenty20 phenomenon. They started it in England, a place where football has done to cricket what cricket has done to hockey in India. The cricketing administration found itself heading towards bankruptcy, as it became apparent that the teams they were spending loads of money on, were no longer the people's pets. The only way to reverse this alienation was to go the football way.
That sure makes sense, but does India need to follow the same philosophy?
To be continued

you'll never get bored of this...

no need of an elaborate description...the picture is comic enough. If it does not animate, right click and "view image" in firefox

The (in)famous five: part 3

We arrive at the culmination of this mini series, with space reserved for the biggest ( read this again) character of the whole story

Rajat a.k.a Giant a.k.a Bheem: Luckiest guy among us. Having a project advisor who does'nt expect his students to work more than 2 hours a day, and a Campus Recreation center with more facilities that an indian athlete can expect. The guy is most tempoed about any kinds of physical and ethnic indian entertainment opportunities e.g.
....playing cricket on the basketball court at 12 midnight
....watching mahabharat episodes incessantly which earn him the epithet " Gadadhari bheem"
....doing the 'sourav ganguly whirl' at Tybee island, Georgia.

Stuck for the summer in a cross-racial tieup where he incidentally speaks the best english, rajat looks to make up for the disadvantage by socialising among the Iron Men/Women of the institute.

Useful tags: Bheeshan-Bhoddo, "Mein CRC jaa raha hoon", "Shaant Gadadhaari Bheem, Shaant!", "Maine RK ka khana khaya hai. Kuchh bhi kha sakta hoon."

Aims from the Internship: Mainly fitness, but 'not working' as much as some of us was his advisor's fault after all, not his.

The (in)famous Five: Part 2

Singhee a.k.a Mukul a.k.a Chuchchu: The only 'experienced' guy among us. His past visit to the US armed him with ample skills at finding means of recreation. Things were going great when a hammer, made of lightweight multifunctional magnesium alloy stuck him, and since then the recovery has been all but complete. Apart from making commendable strides into the realm of materials, he is determined to ransack all outlet malls in Atlanta, and buy any dirt cheap item found by the virtue of one of his umpteen 'stroke of luck's. Now relaxing out somewhere in pennsylvania and elsewhere, with some new machine he got from ebay.



Tags: "baal" , a gary moore ring tone, "****ji!!", " Is weekend party rakhte hain", " Aaj hum lab mein hi soega", "Abe ******* ko agar mera project de do toh 3 din mein khatm kar dega", "HAAIN!!!!!"

Aims:
1. PhD????? ummm mm maybe still a 50-50
2. Phone conversations: wow! is there a limit?
3. getting things cheap, and cheaper, and cheaper, and cheaper, and...sigh

Me, a.k.a Tiwari: The third person is a good way to remove a lot of unwanted bias...so here I go------------

Tiwari, known by his last name probably because his first name seems to have jumped straight out of some hindu mythological epic, is the (non-unanimous) Pj king of the (in)famous five. His jokes leave the original inhabitants of tumlin C2 ( that's where we lived) gasping for breath, and looking for ways to eradicate the source of such misery. Bobbed down by the fact that he is still underage by american law for...ummm you know what, sometimes he finds himself with his tastebuds numbed while others enjoy the MEAL.
Pretty particular about correct hindi in a pretty bengali company, tiwari always looks to have his share of puns.

tags: " kareGA nahi kareGi", "mujhe MRDC janaa hai", ....." i am waiting for more contributions

Aims:
Sorry, I do'nt know a thing. Why else do you think the blog is named the way it is?

Deepti: Well, no a.k.a s here. She has the advantage of her name being pronounced correct everytime, unlike any of us. The infinitely many implications of her name render it unnecessary to look for any nicknames.
Deepti has many passions in life... academics, academics and more of the same. As an individual who takes pride in analyzing the contents of textbooks, her aims in life always remain as solid as Georgia's Stone Mountain. She looks to take any opportunity of aimless tourism on weekends, and that's the way she sees life.

Useful Tags: " Teeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!", "Jayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!!", singsong intonation, " mera presentation toh ban chuka hai", " aaj gall se mile the"

The (in)famous five : part ONE

It has been more than a month since i have been in atlanta, and the experience has been rewarding to say the least. While a major part of the weekday-day passes in the lab, its predominant blandness is more than compensated by the phenomenal weekends. Yes, thats a change i would like to see in life back home too, where a weekday is pretty much the same as a weekend, except that we do'nt wash clothes [i do'nt call it laundry because it sounds so American] on the former [:)].
An FT always comes with a purpose (for non kgp people, an FT means foreign training). Of the hundred or so kgpians who embark on these profitable(literally!!) errands every year, the diversity of expectations deserves a mention here. As far as i am concerned, my information has been limited to this state of Georgia, and the only worthy examples i can quote are 4 co-kgpians with me on this trip, along with yours truly.

These descriptions are entirely subjective, since i am the only one contributing. For readers who have got a mention here, the text below is entirely without malice, and I hope not to be sued for that. Sorry for the handicap to non-kgpians in understanding parts of the following, but i have tried to keep these descriptions as real as possible.

1. JASSI: He was and is (and will probably remain) the hermit of the gang. His aims and expectations from the trip are:
- getting himself as close as possible to being a professor in mechanical engineering.
- improving his culinary skills,much to the relief of the rest of us.
-maintaining a 'higher than normal' thermostat when it comes to defining 'cool weather' and 'cold beverages'. suspected source: a common cold attack in 2004. visible effects: abstinence from any fluids below body temperature
-maintaining the severe lack of tempo from all sporting activities, even if it costs less than $1 a day.
useful tags: staple food, rice, microwaved juice, khana kya banega, alkesh jee, lab janaa hai, usko chhod kar koi bhi restaurant,

to be continued..........

Halfway through????

Its a guilty feeling indeed, to start this process of documentation at such a point when fun comes not in islands, but significantly larger chunks. It fails to do justice to the rest of my very eventful life, which has had its share of highs and lows. The problem is that human memory is too fleeting to take care of it all, and now that experiences are arriving every second day, I have resorted to the highly popular,yet addictive, 'insecure' and 'timekilling' activity of blogging.