Jas Blog

Its 2:30AM and am not sleeping, there are two reasons. One, its Friday night  and who the hell sleeps on Friday night! Second, I went out to see the movie Wake Up Sid and have come back and cant wait to blog on that!

Cinemax, 10:45PM show and am still feeling as fresh as 5AM breeze in forest on banks of a river in mountains. Credit goes to Karan Johar, for a change. Wake Up Sid is as refreshing as a lemonade and as cool as a cucumber. The story is very well 21st century and urban without ever getting ’sexy’ or ‘adult’ as Yash Raj’s films. I could not help to notice the similarities in performance and music style with Lakshya movie (whose first half is very very fresh and crisp and similar).

When at 8:30PM today my friend told me that he was going for a movie, I had no idea what was there in store, and movie came out to be ‘Wake up Sid’. We left by 9:20 as packed my stuff from Gym, throwing myself in his car with my backpack still on. We raced through the troughs and crests of Banjara Hills Road no.36 to hit Cinemax looking for food inside cafeteria there. A little good news after months and months of gloomy news had me perked up already for the night. Ladies in the eatery there looked finely dressed and two faces just caught my attention for such cute were they! Wearing IIM Indore shirt gifted to me by my friend I sat down with my friend once we got the pranthas we had ordered. Just then I hear a feminine voice address me asking if I was from Indore. I take a look and there stands one of those pretty faces; Boy! she was beautiful! As I clarified that I was from FMS Delhi and the shirt was from my friend only. the simple nods of the glowing face just made the day/night. Human, aren’t we!

The opening shot of the mobie looks so similar to our story, trying to read night out, trying till an hour or two, then hit for food/laptop/net etc and spend crucial 2 hours there, coming back to study at 3/4AM and deciding its better to sleep and study tomorrow. When the results would come, we would decide that next time onwards we will study on regular basis from very start, but then that day never does come and plans are made, scrapped and sublimed.

I really liked acting of Ranbir, it made the evident harsh truths so easy to come out. And the credit here goes to debutant director, Ayan Mukerji. There’s a subtlety with which he repairs the relationship between Sid and his mother (Supriya Pathak). The distance between the two is born out of the different cultures the two belong to. She is uneducated, he is westernised and the twain don’t meet. There’s a grave dimension to the Punjabi mother who tries to speak English with her son, even though it is pretty awful, hoping that it will make her a friend of him as his other friends whom he talk to in English. It’s grave because we know it’s so real, we see it all around us.

Even when Sid ruffles up Ayesha’s place and when she is upset for a reason, it does not get melodramatic, as she doesn’t intend to make him feel guilt from inside, as melodramatic women would do. Instead it is as smooth and plain as a chocolate bar. And Sid’s animated T shirts with perky colors pep the screen up.

Neatly lensed, the movie looks at Mumbai — with love and affection. The picturisation is very vivid and colorful. The painting of Ayesha’s home, the interiors of Mumbai magazine the leads are working for and the  colorful paintings of areas around Ayesha’s home add an array of colors to the story. Amit Trivedi’s Iktara, a song filled with an unbearable lightness of being, keeps the promise made from songs of Dev D. Songs make the movie soar; they help us look inside the head and mood of Sid and Aisha and help carry the story forward.

Actually, Wake Up Sid is a slice of life film. It’s not merely real in concept, but has also been told most realistically, so much so that you can’t help but draw parallels with your own life or with someone you know. There are so many things I have done myself which Sid does, so once the movie ended there was a lightness in the mind and a big smile on the face. While we moved to go back from the cinema (it was already 1:30AM), I wondered if I will again find those Indore people! As my friend went to loo, I just stood near stairs lost in self. After some time I just turned around and saw the Pretty Face. As the I started walking slowly towards their group, the sweet music filled the mind inside me. Just when I was going to approach them, a voice says “Lets go”. It was my friend who had come back from loo, suddenly the music stops, and I look between the two and know what needs to be done. Still next moment I am stepping down the stairs, walking back to his car with mixed emotions. Still appreciating the freshness of the movie, we cozied ourselves in the car, as the speaker stared blurting out the appealing title song of Wake up Sid. It was time to wake up, go home and sleep.

Note: Some truths have been dramatized for intended hue.

Jas Movie Review, People Movie Critics, My Life

Morning of July 22nd 2009. When the dawn of an eclipsed son passed along over India, see the irony of nature – Varanasi, the famous religious epicenter of India, where inhabitation dates back to thousand of years. It is infact one of the oldest continually inhabited cities in the world. Irony lies in the fact that any eclipse, especially solar, is attributed as a very unholy and inauspicious happening. In India, many people often won’t eat because the lack of sun makes food impure, and expectant mothers do not want to give birth on the day there is an eclipse as it is thought some babies could be born with birth defects.

“This is a belief deeply rooted in Indian society. Couples are willing to do anything to ensure that the baby is not born on that day,”  Shivani Sachdev Gour, a gynecologist at the Fortis Hospital in New Delhi, told AFP  .

Some astrologers even warned of impending terrorist attacks, natural disasters, and civil wars too. Many also took a dip in holy rivers to cleanse themselves after the eclipse and some avoid cooking and eating during the eclipse.

But do not think this superstition thing is limited to India only, its everywhere. Lets see why people thought earlier that we have eclipses, as per mythology.

PAST

India – In Hindu mythology, Rahu is a snake that swallows the sun or the moon causing eclipses. He is depicted in art as a dragon with no body riding a chariot drawn by eight black horses. The rahu kala is considered inauspicious.

In China, it is believed that the dragon swallows the sun during eclipse. So they would beat drums to produce great noise and commotion to frighten away the dragon while, the Japanese would cover the wells so that the demons in the cover of darkness during the eclipse would not drop poison into them.

In Romania people believed that werewolves and demons ate up the sun during the eclipse. To frighten them away they would light up huge fires and ring church bells would be rung throughout the eclipse.

Tahiti believed that Sun and Moon were in love with each other but still could not be together as they used to fight a lot. So once in a while they meet each other and make love, which causes eclipse.

At a time of a solar or lunar eclipse, there is a recommended prayer (salatul-kusuf) that is performed by the Muslim community in congregation.

Present

Knowledge has changed things now, though it has not eradicated them all. The new age of informed people are more keen to witness the historic event, and accept it as just another celestial event as Leonid showers, Jupiter hole, Mars and Venus appearance. Here are some pics where you can religious faith people enjoying the event.

Sadhus, or Hindu holy men, watch the solar eclipse through specially-designed viewing glasses in Allahabad, India.

Devotees observe a solar eclipse as they take holy dips in the Sangam, the confluence of the Ganges, Yamuna and the mythical Sarawati River in Allahabad.

Photos courtesy – http://ibnlive.in.com/photogallery/1448-2.html

Jas Current Affairs, People Cultures, Life, Philosophy

Aimless meandering around the booking sites like BookMyShow.com surely helps once in a while. Last Wednesday I came across this advert for a live musical being organised in an auditorium near my home in Hyderabad (India) – Mamma Mia, based on the hit – world’s most successful musical by same name.

The show was performed by newly floated Hot Shoe Entertainment Company, celebrating the 10th anniversary of the legendary Greek fable-based musical Mamma Mia. The show is a veritable treat for Abba fans who slip into nostalgia, courtesy pop favorites like Waterloo, Dancing Queen, Money money money and a whole range of ABBA hits. The energy and enthusiasm with which the crew performed, showed they haven’t taken audience gratis a bit. You could see the enjoyment on the faces of crew members as they danced away the play and showered the euphoria, being part of it. The very face of the lead lady here (on the right) who played Sophie, the bride, says it all! Am impressed beyond limits young lady, hats off to your enjoyment of the career, for many lesser and higher mortals miss it. The way she could dance, act and sing at same time, reminded me of a friend from Nagpur who has similar skills.

And to make sure the energy gets siphoned in the audience too, crew invited audience too to be the part of the all time famous Mamma Mia song, which saw about 50 people taking stage and stairs to join the troupe in singing and dancing on the song. As Jeffrey Vardon, co-producer and choreographer, put it this evening – “Mamma Mia has history of running house full and still having 50% of seats vacant as public could not keep their feet from dancing along!“

For those who do not know about ABBA, they were the legendary group of Pop culture of 70s. Mamma Mia just collected their songs and threaded a musical play around it, tweaking the songs a bit. Over here the troupe has made sure the dresses and play’s flow matches the actual movie. The songs, which are sung live by the way, captured that charisma of ABBA. The lady who plays Donna (mother) also happens to be single mother in real life. I must admit I was lucky that I had not seen the original so could take a fresh look at the performance, rather than compare it all the while.

After the play ended on lines of original musical, the two producers came on stage to give a damn neat performance dripping with elegance and panache. The control that beautiful Varalaxmi Sarathkumar showed here, stamped her élan over the final sequence. (see below)

Another thing that happened was that I could not convince any friend of mine to shell Rs.770 for a musical play, so I was left all alone over there (with other families, essentially two fat ladies  in post 50s to accompany me on either side!) to savor the performance. And do I regret it? No way! Maybe one of the best Sundays I have spent in Hyderabad!

Psst.. next performance of the crew is in Banglore, then Mumbai before they leave for Dubai and Colombo.

Jas Current Affairs, People Life, Music, My Life

Had tried to see the movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind many times before but then every time it was at about 1AM in Friday or a Saturday night and I would leave the movie in very starting as it was too slow for that hour. All the while I have been hearing from people about how great the movie is, but never knew about the storyline or the theme for it. Surrealism has always attracted me, and am glad I watched this movie today!

Such a mentally gripping and vivid capture of surrealism can only come out of European mind, so it is no surprise to know the movie is directed by a French director Michel Gondry. The film uses elements of science fiction and neosurrealism to explore the nature of memory and romantic love.

Story
Emotionally withdrawn Joel Barish (Jim Carrey) and the emotionally dysfunctional, Clementine Kruczynski (Kate Winslet) meet each other for the first time at a beach in Montauk, New York, and subsequently become romantically involved. However, they fall out of love with each other. Clementine discovers the services of Lacuna, Inc., a firm that is able to erase all specific memories from her mind (of Joel). Joel cames to know about this and himself opts to have his mind wiped of all memory of Clementine too.

During the process Joel realizes that his memories of Clementine are being erased in reverse order. As he experiences in his mind the earlier, happier times with her, he realizes that he wants to stop the procedure and keep the memories of Clementine. He begins to fight the mind wipe by trying to hide Clementine in the deeper memories of his mind but realizes that he is not able stop the mind wipe. Before his last memory of Clementine at the Montauk beach house, on the day they first met is erased, she tells him she loves him and says “meet me in Montauk.”

Joel wakes up the next day, decides to skip work, and goes to Montauk where he meets Clementine (who is now a stranger). Unaware of whom each other is, they quickly bond and begin to form a new relationship. After returning to the city, Joel drives Clementine to her home where Clementine finds her Lacuna file in the mail and plays the tape from it for her and Joel. Clementine travels to Joel’s apartment. She finds Joel with his own Lacuna tape and holding a drawing from their former relationship that was missed out when he handed over his possessions to Lacuna. They both become aware of their former relationship, and that it had flaws. The two recognize that their previous relationship may had problems based on their past relationships with other people, but decide not to let those failings prevent them from seeing each other… and trying again. The movie ends with them in a teasing snowball fight on the Montauk beach.

Personal Rant
We all have the memories that we will like to just forget; they say that it takes for wounds of hurt to heal and I would point that the yes the time would heal, but how much time is what we decide on our own and that is the main thing. Some people takes few days and others few years. We never forget our first love and for people from advanced culture – our first parents! Blessed are those who found spouses in their first love but others go through hell. Then there are people who have an embarrassing experience which they would just like to forget while others have trauma to be forgotten.

US researchers said in 2008 that they were able to selectively erase memories from mice in a laboratory, raising hopes human memory afflictions like post-traumatic stress syndrome can one day be cured. But then how many of us who would wish for these memories being deleted, be actually ready for deletion? These memories may be tough on heart but then they are lined with something we always cherish deep within. Yes, it is for the people who have suffered greater at the wrong hands, not for those who suffered at the right hands, for we the latter, shall keep and protect these memories deep within for ever.

Jas People, Update Experiences, Movie Critics, My Life

This is one question that is hurled towards me every now and then. It would start as that I saw your blog, nice posts… and then the inevitable pops up, “How do you get time to blog?”. It has not made me to ponder ever, but when one of my company’s director asked me this question, I gave him my usual answer of passion and interest, but it really made the right side of my brain to step in.

I remember reading a blog post of my blogger friend, Sara. Her husband had once marked her blogging as a hobby as she blogged during her free time only and she retorted, “NO!!- I think blogging is not something you can do when you find time. It is compulsive, it can be so dominating and demanding!! You get some idea in your head and your fingers start itching to type in-spare time or not, you have to do it.
It keeps on gnawing at you from within.
And its like a heavy rock you carry on yourselves and keep feeling the weight of it, unless its typed in and posted on the blog.”

I agree. Once we start sharing our thoughts via blog, it takes on from just a casual writing to an effort of a worthy reading (may not be true for all!). So I told my director that if he realised, most of the posts were done late in night or had many drafts before they could see the light of the server just because I would be too tired to complete it!

Personally, blogging keeps me alive. I need to breathe my thoughts, if my work gets monotonous then the urge heightens. We all are in a rat race and something that makes us a worthy in own eyes is very vital, and that is where my expressions come. I do not write the blog posts to get advertisement money (there aren’t ads anyway on blog as of now!), so expression becomes paramount.

Simply put, there are things which we need to do and there are things which we want to do. The second one can fuel the first and first one can kill the second. The level of compromise is the only thing that we decide over here.

Jas People, Update Experiences

You may ask me to mind my language, but if after reading this post you still believe in saying these words to me, I would ask you to mind your language.

One morning of Nov 2008, Shamsia Husseini and her sister were walking through the muddy streets to the local girls school when a man pulled alongside them on a motorcycle and posed what seemed like an ordinary question.

“Are you going to school?”

As they replied affirmative, the man pulled Shamsia’s burqa from her head and sprayed her face with burning acid. Three pairs of men on motorcycles began circling the school. One of the teams used a spray bottle, another a squirt gun, another a jar. They hit 11 girls and 4 teachers in all; 6 went to the hospital. Shamsia fared the worst. Scars, jagged and discolored, now spread across Shamsia’s eyelids and most of her left cheek. Her vision has started going blurry now, making it hard for her to read.

Atifa Ali, 20, left, Shamsia Husseini, 17, center, and Fatima Sakhi, 19

You may discount it off as an one off incident, after all Taliban and and other fundamentalists are making news for all wrong reasons daily. But let me bring more knowledge on latest events to your indifference. At least 98 people from an Afghan girls school were admitted to a hospital on Tuesday (yesterday) for headaches and vomiting in the third such episode in three weeks, officials and doctors said. Officials are suspecting gas poisoning.

Students were lining up outside their school in northeastern Afghanistan when one girl collapsed, said the school’s principal, Mossena, who was herself in a hospital bed gasping for breath as she described the event. She said a strange odor had filled the schoolyard. Then other girls started passing out. Ms. Mossena said she did not know what happened next because she collapsed and woke up in the main hospital in Muhmud Raqi, the capital of Kapisa Province, which lies just northeast of Kabul. The episode was the third in three weeks in which girls became sickened at school by what the authorities described as a gas cloud. A similar event took place late last month also in Parwan, when dozens of girls were hospitalized after being sickened by what Afghan officials said were strong fumes or a possible poison gas cloud.

Local mosques are splashed with posters shouting “Don’t Let Your Daughters Go to School”.

There was an ancient crime called Sati earlier in our customs of ancient India. This is a bigger crime as Sati was done under a belief, which itself was barbaric and savage. But such incidents are done under hatred and need for a male dominance sparked by the jealousy. This is worst! I do not believe in judgment day, but I hope it comes for these rotten souls where they get damned and anathemized to suffering themselves equivalent to what they have caused to every single human ever.

The impostors of God/Allah should see themselves to understand their own mentally ill psyche. One who can not value a lady as a mother, sister or a daughter; who can damn her to burqa to hide her body and face and then rape them throwing off the same burqas, who beat their own women and lecher around at the sight of other women, who teach the others the Allah/God’s way of living and then filth around in liquor and opium wilting the same lives of Allah/God’s children, who talk of eroding the other reliogions than theirs, but promises to leave if given money/Zazia, blackmailing their own self… this ONE is surely one of the worst social bastard of our time.

What answer do we give to them?

“My parents told me to keep coming to school even if I am killed,” said Shamsia, 17, in a moment after class. Her mother, who like nearly all of the adult women in the area, is unable to read or write says, “The people who did this to me don’t want women to be educated. They want us to be stupid things.” And I can not agree any more with her.

I do not know what Islam Taliban is teaching, what Hinduism these Sena people are preaching and what sikkhism the ‘Babbar Khalsa’ was teaching. Any teaching where a person hurts some one else, where a decision of one is imposed on other is a stinking fake teaching.

Sources:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/13/world/asia/13school.html?_r=1&ref=global-home

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/14/world/asia/14kandahar.html?_r=1

Jas Current Affairs, People Cultures, Experiences, Philosophy

I have been seeing this particular YouTube link from Vaneet, a close friend of mine, as his status message and GTalk pings kept throwing this URL at me. Coming from a person who is really passionate about the dreams and pursuit of them, I should have guessed it.

The video is of Susan Boyle singing ‘I Dreamed a Dream’ song from Les Miserables,  the longest-running West End musical in history. Based on a french novel by same name, this musical, set in early 19th-century France, follows the intertwining stories of a cast of characters as they struggle for redemption and revolution.

The video has become a rage it seems on YouTube, because the lady who comes to sing it gives a background about herself first to public in the famous ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ show. Picture this, an old English lady from a village down Brighton (it is more rural than any other place near London), 47 years old as per her claim, comes on stage and is sneered at contemptuously by two of the three judges and many among crowd. But the moment she starts singing, the very first few words evoke a strong turbulence in the very folks. Singing at the age of 47, these lyrics do grab a lot more gravity (check the lyrics at the end of the post).

I have already put in almost four years of my life in work and almost all of rest in studies, and dreams have been the oxygen for me. But lately I have started having other thoughts, of leaving the control to the Almighty and take retirement from dreaming. Somehow it seems the more you try to control the things, the more awful you feel when things just do not move in positive direction. So the lyrics left a very intense impact on me, leaving me hold a Requiem for the Dreams I dreamed of changing the world as per my wishes!

I dreamed a dream in time gone by
When hope was high,
And life worth living
I dreamed that love would never die
I dreamed that God would be forgiving.

Then I was young and unafraid
When dreams were made and used,
And wasted
There was no ransom to be paid
No song unsung,
No wine untasted.

But the tigers come at night
With their voices soft as thunder
As they tear your hopes apart
As they turn your dreams to shame.

But there are dreams that cannot be
And there are storms
We cannot weather…

I had a dream my life would be
So different from this hell I’m living
So different now from what it seems
Now life has killed
The dream I dreamed.

Youtube link for the old village lady who has taken the Web2.0 by storm!

Jas People Life

Today we had CEO of Cognizant Technology Solutions (my current employer) visit us in company campus. The 6k+ employees were all bubbled up to see the one of the youngest CEOs of a company of this scale. Having heard about him from management, followed his internal blog, I was not having much of an image about this guy. Most of the business dailies of today were shouting about Cognizant being a contender for Satyam Computer Services Ltd, especially with Wilbur Ross making statement about a joint bid with Cognizant for Satyam. With only three bidders left in fray (L&T Infotech and Tech Mahindra being other two), the campus is surely abuzz around the coffee machines. And not to forget that Satyam was the one which mentored Cognizant, a joint venture between Dun & Bradstreet (76%) and Satyam (24%), when it was formed. That surely had put more focus on the man with the red button – Francisco D’Souza.

Francisco D'Souza

Now what would be the image of a CEO we would have? A wise old man, silver or white hair elegantly showing the years of experience and an air of formal composure which stamps the authority. Francisco was totally different. Still looking like a homely man in mid thirties as in this picture on right (his actual age is 40), he brought that shine in the eyes of all his associates (and am not dramatizing!). Damn it man! Such a young CEO? I mean we have such CEOs for self styled start ups, but a global giant of almost 3billion USD… this young!

As he answered few questions about his own personal life, the image of a high handed CEO came crashing down. He was such a plain person with simple straight answers, even his accent wasn’t ‘phorein‘ (slang for foreign – as in western). A son of an Indian Foreign Services (IFS) employee, he got a great global exposure as his father kept shifting as per his job cycles. He talked about how when his family moved to Hong Kong, he could find only one English medium university and that too taught only night classes, so he started working in mornings. That is when he taught himself programming to make some money on the side as a contract coder, something which was going to change his life forever. And he says that life’s best moments came to him by chance.

That was teens. At 24, he was already a part of Cognizant Technology Solutions, an American it services company that was created to leverage the India advantage. At 33 he got elected as Chief Operating Officer of the same company and four years later, he was promoted as CEO of it. What stuck me was that he said that when CEO position was offered to him he first thought of his family. He understood what would it mean to take up the CEO role, and for him the family came first (he has a boy and a girl). Only after he was convinced he could juggle both, did he say yes to then CEO – Lakshmi Narayanan. And he lives by that even today, saying , “Children do not need too much time from you, just quality time.”  And he makes sure he spends quality time with them before they go to bed, when he is at home.

What hit me and most of us the most was that when asked what would you advise to your associates, his reply was prompt and precise – “Take risks”. The questioner had to wait for few seconds and ask back, “That is all?”. “Yes!”, Francisco replied with an assurance and smile, the whole auditorium was filled with sounds of claps.

Addendum
This is my third employer, first and only one post MBA and I already have seen three acquisition headlines about my employer! When I was at Adobe Systems, ‘we’ took over Macromedia. Being an ardent user of products of both , I was just gaping at the headliner. Coming to Cognizant in July 2007, it announced the acquisition of Market Rx, a pharma analytics firm, some time later. There was some more acquisition I guess by Cognizant between that and now. And now Cognizant is already in news as one of the three bidders for Satyam Computer Services!

I sure am a good catalyst for inorganic growth!!

Jas People Experiences, My Life