The Slumdog really becomes a millionaire at Golden Globe / BAFTA - Oscar afterall isnt far away

I know I am late by atleast a month, but had to write about this, if not for anything just to break the short hiatus from writing :). A.R.Rahman did India mighty proud by winning India's first ever Golden Globe and followed that immediately by winning the BAFTA award as well, for his musical score in the movie "Slumdog Millionaire". The movie overall won 4 out of the 4 categories it was chosen at the GG. What makes this achievement even more significant is that this movie was given absolutely no chance initially and was supposed to have gone straight to DVD.



In my opinion what made the movie tick was its screenplay. The screenplay was adapted from the book "Q and A" by Vikas Swarup. The screenplay made sure the narration never sagged even a wee bit. Two factors I think that worked in its favor amongst the audience here in the US and Europe is its raw depiction of Mumbai and its stuff of dreams, intially tragic but eventually successful romantic angle. That very raw depiction of Indian poverty, societal and caste based differences has ruffled quite a few feathers in India.


No one will deny that these things exist in India. But for people in the US who are so used to picturing India to be still a "third-world country" full of camel-riding, cinema-crazy people("Do you guys have cars in India? I thought you still ride in horses and camels in India" was one of the first questions I was asked by an American when I was in the university);this movie did nothing to change their perception. There were couple of scenes in the movie, which were definitely over the top. Two examples would be the scene where the boy tries to see Amitabh and the other in the studio where Anil Kapoor repeatedly calling the participant a "Chai-wala" to evoke laughter. These things could have very easily been toned down and could have shown a slightly balanced view of things. Atleast personally, I would have preferred if they had shown atleast a few things positive in India. This would have enabled an unbiased viewer could come out of the theater thinking that this story could have happened anywhere in the world -just not Mumbai. Right from the word go, everyone in the movie except for the protagonist and his lover are all shown in bad light.

At the same time, I am not saying that film-makers should show only the rosy side of India. That would help absolutely no one. As pointed by one of my friends in his post India is a country of more than half a billion poor people and there is no point in hiding the reality. Merely projecting the success of a small percentage of people would only give a false healthy facade. People were out-raged back in India because they thought India was projected in the worst possible manner to the western world. My question is are they just simply worried that the Western world would find how bad India is? I doubt if the movie would have evoked the same negative reaction in India, if this movie had been directed by an Indian and just released in India alone.

To be honest more and more the western world learn to interact with us more(they are already doing that quite a bit now)there will be more such movies potraying India for what it is and that is the reality. Otherwise we will be like people blind-folded thinking that the world has gone dark.


.............Will be bak!!!

Mumbai - terrorism and beyond

The November 26th attack on Mumbai put the entire nation in a state of absolute shock, anguish and disgust all at the same time. 10, just 10 people managed to wreck havoc of this magnitude that left almost 200 people dead and hundreds injured. It has scarred people back home and here for life.

As different acts of bravery trickle in, through my blog I would like to salute the brave men and women who gave their lives away defending and helping people in whatever way they possibly can. At the sametime I am extremely disgusted by the reactions from the political parties. When the need of the hour was solidarity each of these parties were trying to get as much political mileage as possible from the situation. Immediately after the attack there were hoardings all around the city with the party leaders' pictures along with the photos of the martyrs.There were quite a bit of mud-slinging between the parties as well.

Deshmukh and R.R.Patil had no other option other than to resign(thankfully Congress had accepted their resignations without a second thought). To be honest for R.R.Patil's comment he should have been imprisoned. Given his position in the state how irresponsible was that. Given all its "Maharashtrian" agenda I have not heard of a single statement of worthiness from the Shivasena. Let's not even talk about BJP at this point. Narendra Modi flies over to Mumbai in a private helicopter to provide *%$@*~ "moral" support. How low can these people really stoop? Everytime I have this question in my mind, some politician or the other never fails to surprise me.

Also recently I saw a video posted here from Al-Jazeera on what is perceived to be a distinct difference in treatment by the government between this Taj attack and the bomb blasts that took place in different suburban train stations of Mumbai. Though this is up for interpretation, I thought it had certain amount of truth to it in the sense that this current attack received much more wide spread publicity and attention primarily because of the no.of foreign nationals involved. I will let you decide on what really the truth is.




I know I have probably rambled on some of the aspects of the attack. Let's get to the point now. Everytime a terrorist attack of this scale happens, there are hordes of questions that come to our mind, predominantly the "How?" questions. How did they manage to do this?, How could they pick us of all people? How could this happen in a big city like Mumbai which we had very conveniently assumed to be a safe haven? How could the government let this happen to us? How should we have prevented this? How can we prevent this from happening again?etc.,

As the investigation goes on, as we time and again hear about different terrorist organizations responsible for this heinous crime, I would like to focus on the last couple of aforementioned questions, to prevent this from happening god forbid- again. I have consciously used the term "we" instead of "them" because it is high time we be a part of this organization called the government. I for one very strongly believe that without the citizens' contribution a deep rooted issue like terrorism cannot be eradicated. Moreover you would have heard and read a lot about what the government should be doing in many other articles.I think measures like increasing the security in hotels and other tourist spots is not going to do any good in the long term.

1) Given the current situation we need to encourage citizens to provide information about potential terrorist outfits as and when they come across. People must come forward to provide details about any suspicious activity without the fear of being harrassed by the police. We live in a society which mandates us to keep our ears and eyes open and we need to encourage everyone to do so. The local fishermen had seen the terrorists involved in the Mumbai attack arrive in a tube-boat, though they did inform the police, if the police had taken some action as soon as possible,things could have potentially been avoided. So there are two sides to this, one is citizens coming forward to give information and secondly the law enforcement taking action based on the information.


2) Instead of focussing just on the terrorist organizations let us start focussing on the avenues they get funding from. Once we dismantle this conduit of support the organizations can be dealt with easier.

3) Whether we like it or not, we will have to most certainly start working with Pakistan to strengthen the border security / surveillance and exchanging intelligence, since both the countries have been ravaged by terrorism in the recent past.

4) Police force and the army must be given a free hand in tackling the terrorists.I have read quite a bit about how terrorism was dealt with in Punjab. It was possible only after KPS Gill and Beant Singh was given the freedom to tackle extremists. The result was there for everyone to see.

5) Given the ages of the terrorists who attacked Mumbai, it is very clear that they were targeted and brain-washed into this crime. Youngsters are being definitely misled. We will need to make sure they receive both education and enough means of living. Again even in this we will need Pakistan's help in making sure youngsters on the other side of the border are also properly guided.

Mumbai attack is yet another warning we all needed. We need to act and nip terrorism now.

...........Will be bak

Thaneer Thaneer !!!

I am from Singara Chennai and much much before the term global-warming(and drought caused by it) came into vogue Chennai has been having water problems for as long as I remember. Wait..Wait it is not yet another article about global warming and its effects(though that really seems to be the need of the hour). Though water shortage has been a perennial problem throughout India, I have only heard of the issue elsewhere but having experienced it in Chennai time and time again first hand I would like to elaborate on that a little
further.

When I visited my parents recently in Chennai the water situation was shocking to say the least. My parents despite their problems with their respective knees had to stand in a long line almost every other day to fill water in every small vessel they knew existed in the household.Though I was able to help them out when I was there after coming back to the US I could not help but think about their travails day in and day out and about how they were going to manage the water shortage. The wells have completely dried and the water table has been going down partly because of the fact that the temperature has been reaching record highs bettering itself every year and also because every Tom, Dick and Harry has been digging up borewells one after the other.

More I thought about the condition back home more I felt guilty about the amount of water we use(waste might be a better word here) in the US.24/7 water everytime you open your taps. Despite plenty of pleas by the government to cut down water usage(California is reeling under its worst spring in 88 years, with runoff in river basins that feed most reservoirs at 41 percent of average levels. It stops short of a water emergency, which would probably include mandatory rationing). We all would most definitely panic even if there is a water shut down for a day let alone having to manage your entire household with a couple of buckets of water for almost a week as is the case with people in Chennai. I have been trying to use as little water as possible ever since I got back.


It is not as if Chennai has not been getting rains. Infact the annual rainfall in Chennai is in the range of 1200 - 1300 mm. This is higher compared to the India's average rainfall of 800 mm(I got this information from Chennai Metro water). In fact it has already started to rain in Chennai and it is just a question of time before we start talking about water shortage. The problem has been that the water conservation scheme has been horrible. The govt over the years has done absolutely nothing. I was so happy when Jayalalitha announced the rainwater harvesting implementation and she literally forced people to build the simple filter to route the rainwater to wells. I have heard quite a few people thank her for that, if not for the hand-twisting people would not have done anything. Though it was conservation at very small level it was good start.

From there on I was hoping the govt would do much more to store rainwater whenever there is a downpour.As I said rain water harvesting is a good start. Govt needs to start thinking about the following questions and see how best to answer/implement them as soon as possible:

1) How effectively to fill-in many of the local ponds available in and around
Chennai during the rainy season.

2) How can we better clean up our lakes of slush(desiltation as they call it) that accumulates because of wastes thrown in them so that water retention is better?

3) What are the other sources of water that we can tap in e.g: desalination or recycling.

4) Obviously how can we plant more trees given the comstruction mania ?

If we can do something about #1 and #2 we should be able to increase the level of the water table.On top of this we also need to teach young kids the importance of water conservation not so much as to educate them but to encourage them to think about alternative sources of water and how best to use them. I also realize that money seems to be the major factor in many of the schemes not getting implemented but you and I know the amount of money that gets wasted on various other deals.

I am most certainly not an hydrology expert to give pointers but some of these are basic common sense and we have enough brain-power back home to do get the s(hortage + orted + oon). :)

.........Will be bak

Horoscopes predictions - my take!!

Knowing ones future is almost always exciting. Every culture, every country has its own way of predicting the future. Anyone who claims to have the ability to forsee, portend is given utmost importance in the society.

I have extremely limited knowledge about astrology or more specifically on horoscopes, which most of the predictions in India are based on. I am not going to pretend to write a critique on the prediction methodologies, but in a way I am just going to give my take on horoscopes based predictions.







I recently was watching a talk show on one of the Tamil channels where they had a discussion about astrology in general. They had brought two of the most prominent astrologers in town and a staunch non-believer of astrology to the table. Just for convenience lets call him the non believer NA. Just as an outsider with very little sway to either side my observation was that the points that were brought out by NA made good logical sense and I did find that the answers given by the astrologers for some of the questions that NA posed, was far from convincing. For example, at the very beginning of the show, one of the astrologers made a very emphatic statement that "astrology is a pure science and hence it is undeniable". NA's argument was equally emphatic- he brought out that there is no denying the fact that astrology is as old as John McCain (er...rocks) but whether it is a science or not is up for debate. Astrology is based on the assumption that earth is at the center of the universe and sun is considered to be one of the stars revolving around the earth(geo-centric theory)(to which both of the astrologers agreed but then they changed their tune to say that astrology is only based on science and not a science by itself).That is why in most of the Hindu horoscopes you do not see earth as a planetary position and there are no prediction based on its position whereas Sun features very prominently. But it is a very well known fact that universe is based on the helio-centric theory - that Sun is at the center of the universe and the earth revolves around it.

This discussion interested me and after hearing some of the arguments I did a little bit of research myself. I found that the basis for horoscopes is the time of birth. But the question is how can we all be sure about the time of birth and who notes this time down. At least in India, since the dad is not allowed during the actual delivery of the baby only the doctor and the respective nurses are around. So who really notes the time down? In the cases of emergency deliveries, even after the birth of the kid I would think doctors' propensity would be make sure BOTH mom and the kid are okay and not take time to note the birth-time down. So the very foundation of the horoscopes seem to be on soggy soil.

Having established the above two points, in India even after the respective horoscopes are written; from what I have seen there is a vast difference in the interpretation of an horoscope, which is actually scarier. This is probably what irks me the most about the horoscope based predictions. With the same planetary positions in the horoscope there is absolutely no guarantee that two astrologers will have the same set of predictions. Given that, it is also equally appalling to think that people give so much importance to horoscopes especially during match making, which by itself is a topic that warrants another blog.

To me there is no central authority for these astrologers, to say whether they are right or wrong. I would like to equate astrologers to doctors in that they have people's lives in their hands except that astrologers are not accountable for any of their prognosis and remedies (generally to compensate for a particularly unfavorable planetary position). I say that astrologers have people's life in their hands because lot of families take major decisions based on astrology. I have a friend of mine whose father forced him to take the Commerce group after the tenth grade because he was "destined to become an chartered accountant" as per predictions from a very well known astrologer. This was done despite the guy not having any interest in accounting. That he could not even come close to finishing his Chartered Accountancy is an issue hard to ignore. I also have a very close relative of mine whose horoscope was matched not by one but three astrologers and after getting a collective thumbs up from all, her marriage took place with a lot of fan fare.Her husband died three months of her marriage and she has been single and struggling ever since. I am not naive to squarely blame her situation on astrology but if the predictions are all too powerful why did not any of them see it coming? This is what I mean by they not being accountable for. Can you go back to the astrologers and ask them on why this happened and where it all went wrong? They can very easily turn back and tell you that the birth time or the horoscope itself was incorrect i.e predictions are only as good as the data that is provided to them.


If a doctor's diagnosis and his treatment is incorrect there is at least a possibility of a patient suing him. If an astrologer's prediction and its consequences go wrong why is that we only then do bring fate into the picture ? So in my opinion astrologers need to be bound by a central law of their own and the law should be known to public so that they can see where each of them is going wrong or at least we can confirm their findings. Though it is a long shot ideally I would like every astrologer to give their predictions in writing with a clause that if the predictions do not turn out to be true they can be sued :).

The bottom line is this, astrology may not necessarily be a science and it is up for interpretation. I am not against it but make sure it is at least accountable to a certain extent. I am positive that this is a message lot of people already know but are hesitant to accept.


I am not going blatantly lie saying that I am not interested in knowing my future.I seriously do.But the methodology that is being used today for predictions forces me to rethink. Do I have a better idea than horoscope and astrology? No. Can I live without knowing what is in store? Hell yes!!!



.....Will be bak

Jungle

Iam in a jungle now,
With birds chirping around me,
Trees swaying as if advertising its shades,
Sun is now in a mood to play hide and seek
Sometimes announcing its presence aloud,
Mostly not,with the aid of the cloud,
I dip my hands in the river,
It returns my handshake with a shimmer,
I cry out with all the astonishment,
"What a beautiful day it is!!"

At that moment I wake up in my office chair,
With none of that sweet air,
I am nomore in the majestic realm of nature
So another day passes by,
I still wait for that day to come,
With my screen saver reading
"Awake and Arise"
Yes I am
I am still in the 128th floor of this Concrete Jungle

Remade Clas"sicks"

The recent spate of films masquerading as remakes of classic is definitely not for me. I for one very strongly feel that classics are better off being left alone than being "digitally mastered" by the present crop of directors. I dont know if there is genuine lack of stories in the film industry or is it just that some producers have enough money to throw at these guys to see if they can "re-create" the magic. I dont know.

Some may argue that these movies are made so that today's generation can enjoy the movies of yester-years. Certain movies stand time and that's why I think they are christened classics. For example, The God father is a classic, where you see it, when you see it and at what age you see it. For me, there are plenty of India movies where any director/cast cannot make full justice to the classics. I cannot imagine anyone else playing the role of Nargis in Mother India. There are plenty of South Indian movies as well which can maintain their pristinity only when left untouched. For me , movies like Nayagan,Swathi Muthyam,Sagara Sangamam,Zanjeer,Mughal-e-Azam,Sholay - are just amazing classics. And I for one feel even if you have the same actors doing those respective roles it would not be the same.

I watched "Billa 2007" recently (yes thankfully only recently) and in my opinion the movie was an absolute disaster. Though I agree that the movie was stylish it was no where near the original(which itself was a remake from Hindi).

Lets say some one decides to remake Nayagan(for people who dont see Tamil movies, this is a great movie and hence make an exception) and for some weird reason decides to cast our very on Simbhu as Velu Nayakar(I still cannot forgive him for draining my $10 on his "Vallavan" sometime back - Dont you dare laugh but yes I did watch it in the theater and please dont ask me why). Talking about classics- "Vallavan" is a must watch too- as I said earlier, irrespective of when/where you watch, Simbhu's histronics will make you laugh your intestines off).Even just imagining the scenario of Simbhu featuring in Nayagan makes me puke( If you think I am underestimating Simbhu's acting ability, please talk to your closest Tamil friend.This is also a test to see how true and good your friend is. If he ever says Simbhu is good, he is your worst foe :D, stay away from him).Everytime I think Kollywood was becoming saner again with some neat movies, they always manage to find ways to get lost. If earlier it was a whole slew of sex-oriented movies, now its time for remakes of old movies. The only consolation being that Bollywood is well and truly "ahead" of us!! :)

Will be bak

...................P

Marketing to the fore

There is an age-old adage that "a good product will sell by itself and there is no need to market that". I have always wondered if this is always valid. I do realize that
this might be a topic that has been beaten to death but I would like to give my spheel of things based on my limited observation of certain markets and tactics used by
different companies at different times and why they did what they did.

I think most of us would agree, that any product good or bad always requires certain amount of marketing, and that certain amount would be heavily reliant on not just the quality of the product(which includes the features)but what kind of market the product is serving, the demographic it is trying to address and what the competition of the product is(or more precisely what the competition is/isn't doing to market their product eg:Pepsi vs Coke)

I have always been amazed by the marketing's ability to make a product tick despite the product having certain technical frailities. iPOD I would say is a cracking example
of how they beautifully employed different marketing strategies to make sure the product reaches the masses. You might argue that it was one of a kind music player - I
agree certain techincal aspects of it is very impressive(it was the first to introduce the touch-wheel using cap sensors). But what makes me analyze this product is the fact that Apple has managed to take technology that has been around for a some time now (ATT Bell Labs first introduced their Mp3 technology way back in 1991) and make it an instant hit by incorporating subtle changes to the player itself. Despite the fact that iTunes has not had the best of reviews people are more than willing overlook this for the "cool" factor it offers. Apple in all its campaigns has made no bones of the fact that this products' target audience is the age group between
15-30. If you notice their ads carefully they always make sure the white heads phones are always prominent (which by the way was another master stroke- until that point all
of the mp3 players came with either black head-phones or color matching the player itself). I can go on and on about how well the marketing team of Apple has done not only to get the initial buzz going with both the consumers and the media alike but also to sustain people's interest at the same after the product release.

If iPOD gained immensely by their marketing strategies it got me thinking on whether there were products which were decent in terms of quality but never made the cut by
their bad marketing campaigns alone. But it was very hard to come up with one(though there have been plenty of goof ups in terms marketing, I doubt on whether bad marketing alone
cut short a product's existence) which kind of means that marketing takes the word to the public but there is no questioning that from thereon its the product's quality that ensures its life or lack of it.

But at the same time one needs to also consider the product and the market you are playing into. Let me illustrate what I mean with the example of strategies used to market movies wherein they market through any available public medium- television, radio ads,hoardings,campaign by the people involved in the movie through interviews and promos and offlate there is also another strategy wherein they pre-release portions of the best song / sequence (though the studios claim these were stolen and released without their knowledge - increasing occurences of the same makes me doubt it) in the movie to arouse extra interest. What the producers have learnt over the years is that even if the movie's content is not great with intelligent campaigning they can ensure a good opening . And if you have sufficient number of prints you can infact get a substantial portion of the investment back in the first couple of weeks of the movie's run.

On the contrary, there are products which do not require much of marketing because over the years the respective products have established themselves to be very reliable in
terms of quality. One product that immediately comes to mind is the "Prestige" pressure cooker. This product has been around for as long as I remember and there are very few ad campaigns that I have seen this product feature in. So in general marketing is required for an initial "sell" to have the potential customers enthused and sometimes to make sure the customers updated on what is new with their product etc.,

So the bottom line is that even the best of products require certain level of marketing for the customers to take notice and from thereon it's the product's quality that takes precedence, but the marketing only takes a back seat then and does not vanish. I realize I have made the statement couple of times in the article :). This is true even for each of our careers where you have constantly invent ways to market yourself to make your employees take notice.

....................P