Breaking Head

Sometimes we waste our time and energy on the most useless things in life, like reading Twilight series and moreover that watching the movies on it. I started the novels long ago, first one was good, but I literally had headache while reading the second part. I somehow halfway reached the third part but then I quit. I never wanted to read the last part of the so called "SAGA". I forgot all about it, I was happy with my life. But then one day I accidentally came across the Breaking Dawn part 1 and 2. I took the bad decision to watch it, I am human after all, I tend to do mistakes. The story grows bullshit as it progresses. The shy glances of Edward-Bella on their honeymoon were quite similar to Suraj Badjatya's Vivah's scenes. First part is very slow, wolf politics, jacob's mental status and all painful scenes of Bella makes us nauseated. I almost lost all attraction for Kristen Stewart in the first part.(PS: In second part, she got it back). In this dualogy, edward our hero is no more hero. He is there because first three parts have him. Other cullens has as usual put excessive face-powder on their faces and gave grim looks as always. The end scene of the movie is so predictable and copied completely from the Avatar. The second part's editing and screenplay are so bad that after waking up from the deathbed, Bella moves directly to Edwards and without giving glace towards the rest of family they leave the house, how selfish!! The jacob who was saying love you to Bella suddenly finds his "Imprint" on her daughter. This twist was extremely difficult to digest but I guess Stephenie Meyer was inspired by Woody Allen's personal life.The villian in the story always has larger than life portray, but the Voltouri brothers were so lame that I pity the talent of the casting team. Lot of other vampires are brought into the story who populates the scenes. I hereby declare Twilight as one of the worst love stories of all time.
Peace out. 

Salar Jung

I was on my way back to home for a long leave and had to go via Hydrabad. I reached the city early morning and my next bus was in the night, so I had a humongous day in front of me to spend. There were many options like Ramoji Film City, Nehru Zoological park, Golconda fort and Salar Jung Museum. 90% of the readers would have chosen any location among first three, because going for the museum has least of the fun factor. I chose otherwise, even I was surprised with the choice. All museums I have seen ever have been the part of some one day tour trips of cities or some compulsory college educational tours. I remember, we used to drag our own bodies out of such buildings just like the zombies in horror hollywood movies. But SalarJung museum is the exception. One of my favorite writers Pu. La. Deshpande once wrote that SalarJung is different than any other museum he have ever seen and since then I had a curiosity to see it. I had been in Hyderabad for some 7 months but never had a chance to go there. Today standing on the porch of Hyderabad Central Bus Stand, I had the chance and I took it.

I was accompanied by a close friend on this voyage. We reached the place at 10.30 A.M. The building reflected the prosperity of the Nizam empire. The entry fee was just Rs.10 with free locker. It was the Bazinga moment for both of us, as we were the residents of Bangalore where in Rs.10 no body will even slap you(pun intended/ I know lots of people who would do it for me.) Anyways, when we entered the building with the map in our hands, I never expected that I would be exposed to such a beautiful era of art and antiques. The building had just 2 floors with three blocks, central, eastern and western. On the ground floor, a section is dedicated to introduce SalarJung III, he was the one who preserved the collection of all antiques from his previous generations and created the museum. His real name was Mir Yusuf Ali Khan. Salar Jung is the post of prime minister of Nizam which was given to his ancestors by the then Nizam.

There were number of gallaries from Indian Bronze and printed textiles to sculptures, from mirror art to glass gallary. Each object in the gallary represented the skills of the workers at that time. The fine sculpting on the glasses showed the perfection and carefulness which each artist poured into those objects. Most of the hot blood people of our generation are attracted mainly to the Arms and Armour Gallary. When we went inside, our jaws dropped to see variety of swords, daggers, battle axes, spears, bows. The Jade gallary contains cups, culteries, daggers and arm rests made of fine and exquisite jades. The kashmir gallary contained all shamiyanas and kashmiri cloths/stuffs which reflect the typical kashmir work-designs. The Bidry gallary contains the utensils made by Bidars from different places.(Based on the shapes of the utensils, I believe most of them must have been used to serve liquor). One of the exquisite gallaries that I encountered there was of Persian/Arabic Scripts gallary where many original documents and religious scripts were preserved, written in arabic languages. There is some charisma with urdu words, I may say. They are so heavy and stuffed. I mugged many urdu words to flaunt later in some home-made shayaris. Unfortunately I forgot it now. There were other gallaries like toys, floras and fiona, mainly targeted for the children.

The east wing of the building contains the antiques from China, Japan etc. The chinese art work is extremely magnificent and deeply carved white marbled art works make your jaw drop naturally. The Japanese dragon paintings and dummies are quite appealing. Though the translations on few of the chinese paintings are extremely hilarious, one being 'चांदनी रात में नाचती भजन मंडली ' for the dancing chinese monks made us laugh our asses off. After looking through all of the eastern gallery, I started realizing the prosperity which Salar Jung possesed. The mediocre thoughts like "How did Salarjung managed to keep these many things as collection, where we can not find good place to live in bangalore" came to our minds. That moment I understood one thing, Royalty is what comes automatically, we can't pretend it. Anyways, after conquering eastern wing, we were pretty exhausted and needed some break. There was small canteen, we had some snickers and we started off again
The western gallary is marvellous and just awesome. There are 5 consecutive gallaries, the first one was European paintings. The painting were damn good. Earlier, I always used to think, watching in the movies, how can people keep on staring at the paintings for so long, but now I tell you, some paintings capture your attention so deeply that your eyesight get magnetically fixed on the colors, on the shapes, on the imagination which painter wanted viewer to experience. The painting of psyche, I found extremely artistic. There is a common notion that European paintings take help of nudity to make art more profound, but in those paintings it was art which defined nudity, not vice-versa(Anyways, that's my personal opinion). Yup, and there was one more painting gallary in Indian section which was titled Modern Paintings. The abstract paintings there made no sense to me. I believe, I still dont understand art quite well, because some of the paintings I found quite annoyingly senseless to be put on show. Ok, lets get back to European gallaries. Next was the Porcelain gallary which had some fancy stuffs like mirrors and mazes created using porcelain arts. Later was the glass gallary and I tell you that was just awesome. The glass wares with different shades of colored glasses were looking so exotic that even drinking water in it may tantalize you. The Venice, Istanbul, Belgium glasses were breathtakingly amazing.

Finally I will tell you something like A must do and  A must don't in museum. The veiled Rebecca is the best masterpiece in the whole building. Don't miss it. The sculptor G.B.Benzoni created it on the white marbel. The veil and wrinkles on it shows the miraculously divine talent of the artist. When you are wandering in the central block, you will find quite a fudge about some alarm and people will be gathering into the open hall with Alarm clock to see the magic. But there ain't any. We had been sitting there for 15 mins earlier to check what is all that about. In simple words, its extremely lame mechanical alarm rings. P.S.: This whole event could sound quite appealing to children, as we saw many of them gasp in utter bewilderment. When we had finished every gallary, we saw the watch and it was 4.30. The realization hit us like a bombshell, we had been in the museum for 6 straight hours. There must have been something really wrong with us. But we were fully content.

I would recommend everyone to once visit SalarJung once in your lifetime to know how rich was our culture. Mankind needs art because it reflects the cultural evolution which is the soul of Civilization.

Negotiator

I live in Bangalore, this statement is enough for anybody to forecast my monthly expenditure. Out of my total income, 1/6th of it goes to house rent, 1/3rd goes on the food (reasonable...taking into account my bad food habits) and lets say another 1/3rd goes on shopping clothes and other daily needs, most of you must have came to conclusion right now that I may be saving 30% of my income.( Frankly speaking I respect those of you who did all the above calculations in mind, I had to open the calculator to get the remainder of the distribution), but you have misunderstood it completely. If there would have been any RFIDs infused on the paper money of this last distribution and if you could monitor them on GPS kind of screen, you won't find them static in the lock room of some bank, they will be found on the streets of bangalore. I know, nothing of the above statement makes any sense. In short and simple way, the Bangalore Autowalas are all eating all my money.

I have been to many big cities, including Pune, Mumbai, Hydrabad, Nagpur but the way autowalas charge in those places seems much decent amount as compared to what happens in bangalore. The people with their own vehicles cry for the petrol prices but they dont know our pain. Atleast their money goes for petrol in their own vehicles. The only way to protect your money from these Dementorous creatures is by improvising a quality within yourself called Negatiation.

Now don't get me wrong but being negotiator is not that easy job. Lets go through the alogorithm of negotiation with the autowala. Remember this is some risky business, the moment you take out your negotiation weapon, so does he. Its like in those sci-fi movies where the villain gets as much power as hero has.

Step 1: Spot him.
This statement looks plain but has many hidden meanings. Your pray is mostly the ones which are going on the same way as you has to go. Mostly avoid the parked autowalas. The only reason they are parked is because they were stubborn with their negotiating terms with previous customers.

Step 2:Hide your needyness
This is very crucial moment, don't show your needyness to the enemy. Ask him casually. It should feel like you are not that desperate to reach the destination. If you miss this chance, he gets the advantage and later it becomes very hard to score the game point. Ask him whether he is free or not? Best practice suggests not to ask for the destination in the first question. This lights up the curiosity in his mind.

Step 3:"Which route SAAB?"
Be careful. This is one of the evaluation question from Autowala point of view. He will ask you that from which route you want to go? The main motive is to know whether the passengers are regular or foreigner to that area? Don't fall for it. Mostly he will give you two options for the route. Take any one with atmost confidence.

Step 4:"Kitna loge?"
Don't just step into the vehicle. If you get in without asking this question, you have lost the battle. Ask him first. There are some crooked autowalas who will counterask, "Aap kitna doge?", but never ever answer it, it his way of judging your negotiation skills.

Step 5:"Are humko kya bahargaon ka samza hai?"
These autowalas (especially bangalorian) will tell you stupidly large amount of money. Just boil up and throw this dialogue. I remember, once I opted auto and asked him to take me to some place 4 and half kms away, he told me 400. I actually liked his frankness, but I was about to say F word to him cause just few months ago, i went from Chennai to my hometown in Rs.396(it was general boggie, terrible journey, lets talk about it later someday). Anyway 400 is such a ridiculous figure for autowala to ask. But remember, this is bangalore. They have no shame.

Step 6: After reaching the destination
So far you have negotiated properly and both of you agreed on some decent figure, you hop in, auto goes on and you are about to reach destination. But this is not the end of war. When you get down, you take out some money and give him a note. He says frantically, "Change nahi hai...", you know you don't have it either. Then he fake-check his pockets. Finally gives you lesser money back and starts auto casually, when you count it, you are shocked and you make him notice about the remaining money, he replies curtly, "Change nahi hai...", same words different ascents and before you know what is happening, auto gets into the smokes of his own exhaust.

You realize that all above cautions are in vain. It was all in the destiny. The RFID trackers moves smoothly over bangalorian roads....

Code Farmers

In the last century, what was the most persuaded job in the world? Farming, yup most of the ambitious people had their own farms, they used to pour all their talent and yield profits along with the crops. Farmers were the driving force of the nations. Coming up to this century, there is no need to highlight the name of the occupation where every ambitious aspirant want to strive into. It is that workforce which is driving the larger part of economies of the countries like India. Those group of people are called Code farmers. You may be tempted to call them software engineers but it is like calling the botanical scientist as a farmer. Most of the people working in software industry are just re-writing the codes. Innovations and practice are extremely different things.

They work in big international IT firms, day and night, just as the farmers used to work into the fields. They work hard over the software development cycle, just the way farmers work along with weather cycles. They work in teams and expect the outcome, sometimes undesirable changes makes their software development waste just the way un-welcomed rain does with crops. Today almost in each next door, there is a software engineer in the family. Terms like code approval, testing, agile methodologies are not only confined to corporate board meetings but have entered the daily chitchats of housewives. Every year, lakhs of graduates are entering into the market and this giant software devil is eating them all without any hunger satisfaction. But the day will come when this devil will be stomuch-full, what will happen to this extremely educated crowd when they become jobless. Anarchy will follow the un-employement. The offbeat downs in the market are the danger alarm for the upcoming hard times. What could be done to solve this issue? Engineering is the youngest branch of science and computer technology is the youngest branch of engineering. Unlike other core fields, there are many new ideas, concepts, technologies, theories yet to be discovered and explored. The innovative approach towards technology will lead to more and more opportunities for this nuclear mob of young talent. Let us make this century, the biggest milestone of human progression.

Entangled

You are sitting in front of your laptop and suddenly the urge rises in your mind, to listen to a song. The desperation surprises yourself, but before you could understand the intensity of that urge, you find yourself searching the headphones. You think for the moment that for all these times, these were laying in front of me then what was in the fraction of that moment which changed everything and now you put them on hurriedly. You start the song and plug them in. Before you could respond to the melodious voices and rhythmic music, you see the wires of headphone are all entangled. You want to enjoy the song but your mind tells you to clean up the wire mess. You pick up the intertwined dump of wires and try to clean up the knots. For the first minute, you try feverishly, in the back of your mind you realize that the song is going on and you are missing all the beautiful pieces of music. Still you concentrate hard on the knots. Suddenly you realize your temples are wet. Am I sweating? You ask yourself startled. You know that you are tensed, but you can not grasp the notion that few knots are making you tense. Then you realize that its not the wire knots, its all about your life. You think your life has many such aspects which you need to work on. The more you try to work out things, more complex they become. A simple, trivial thing suddenly takes shape of giant trouble. The entangled knots seems to clench your throat invisibly and you struggle for the breathe. The more you force, more tightens the grip.

All you need is to take a deep breathe and search for the endpoints of the headphones. Same applies to life. Rather than smashing here and there, you need to get to the root of the problem and improvise your decisions. If you work out things one by one, there comes time when you achieve a skill, at that time, how much ever may the wires be entangled, you will never fail to open it. Eventually, we need to understand one thing, life is full of opportunities, rather than feeling sorry for the lost opportunities if you take care of oncoming ones, you will find yourself humming to melodious music of optimism. After all, if you miss the song, you can always play it back. 

Redemption

I have done many bad things in my life knowingly or unknowingly. I may have hurt many people without intentions. But as Gita said, there is always chance for redemption. I felt the urge to punish myself to understand the pain of others. I remembered the way mentioned in the ancient christian organization called Opus Dei. The believers used to crucify their body with the knifes or other lethal instruments in order to clean up their sins and ask for forgiveness to the almighty. But I choose the most dangerous and perilous punishment for me, I decided to watch Ra.One.

Within first 10 minutes, I almost fainted. My roommate misunderstood it thinking I may have slept, but I reached deep levels of unconsciousness. Next day I again started from the point where I left. But I guess my body and mind was not strong enough to sustain the pain. Finally on 3rd day I completed the movie. The movie starts with some lame actress explaining the impossible technology in very crude way using jargon words like waves, virtualization etc. What made ShahRukh khan to create the South Indian character with curly hairs. It was a total mismatch. His lame repetitive jokes with ayyo as prefix or postfix were pathetic. Shah rukh giving lip-sing to Akon's voice was a perfect mismatch. Out of nowhere, the lights on mainframe servers starts blinking when everybody is enjoying in the party. 'Something evil is taking shape meanwhile when nobody has any clue', is typical bollywood script writing. Ra.One taking Takashi's form and that Chinese guy walking through the public with devil eyes are perfect cinematographical copies from movies like Matrix, Resident Evil. The train chase sequence ended with the copies from Speed and Spiderman. Whole CST station showed to be collapsed for no good reason. And the pathetic ending where a 12 years boy reincarnates the G.one using high end technology with home desktop. Ohh..I forgot Arjun Rampal was also there in the movie na?? He may have thought the whole shooting as some modelling competition as he could flex muscules all over his body but could not move a single muscule on face to give some expression. I thank the script writers of Ra.one to end movie when G.one reborns, because the Marriage of Kareena with Shahrukh would have reached the digestive limits of even typical bollywood watchers and rather than normal people, zombies would have come out of cinema halls.

There were movies like Tashan and Chandni Chowk to China, but no one can ever replace Ra.one. This movie will also have special place in my heart (called crap) and my hard disk (called non-recoverable permanently deleted data)

A talented writer with Mediocre writing

Some 6-7 years ago, one book came into market, named Five point Someone and it created a wave of passion of reading in Young Indian Crowd. It was written by an IIT graduate and IIM passout. All the Engineering students felt that story, a story of their life. I too liked it, not only because it resembled our life but the whole narration was very appealing and intriguing. Writer Chetan bhagat was accoladed for pioneering this writting style in Indian Literature. Then came his second book, 'One night at call centre'. Many people felt disappointed after reading it. But he was becoming mature with his writing skills. There were some similarities with the script but it felt mere coincidence. Then came his third book, 'three mistakes of my life' which was in real life, his first mistake. It clearly portrayed his script repetition. The mediocre guy being our hero has many problems with his life, which he tries to resolve and fails. In this depressed situation, he finds the love of his life and things start changing, he starts enjoying life and bamm...he makes out with girl...?? for no good reason..but chetan has something in his mind, reader neglects this illogical turn of events. And finally this hero of story realizes that how much deep shit he is into...(so does the reader) and some typical melodrama happens and this narration pauses, we come back to reality when this hero of ours is telling his dukhbhari dastan to real chetan bhagat. Then Bhagatji proclaims the ingenious and innocence of hero telling him you did what was right at that time, and on the note of happy ending the novel ends.

With each passing novel, he is disappointing his readers. Because there is repetition of concept, repetition of writting style and moreover I felt he stopped writing for the sake of making novel. He seems to write some story which would feel appealing to some bollywood director/producer to make film on it. All the bollywood masala he tries to stuff in his story messes up everything. The dispute of rights on story during Three Idiots made his image to be more desperate for public recognition. After being full time writer, expectation from him increased many folds as many Indian readers were keeping eye on his upcoming ventures. His latest book Revolution 2020 disappointed me the most. It has no proper plot, story has two protagonists but one is emphasised over other. Complication of a girl is dragged for no good reason. Anyways I am not saying he is bad writer. He definitely is good writer, he has written some very good columns indeed and a guy who has been through best indian institutes of technology and management is no doubt smart. Expectation is weird thing, once it starts you have to keep up with it otherwise it ruins you.