Categories
Society WTF

I am the change. What else?

“Be the change you want to see in the world.”

It is a quote by Mahatma Gandhi. What did the great man mean when he said this?

That if you want the world to be a more honest place, be honest yourself?

Or that if you want the politicians in the world to be better, become a politician yourself?

Turns out there are people who think it’s the latter.

So if I want doctors to give me better treatment, do I need to become a doctor myself? If I want to see better buildings in my city, do I need to become an architect myself? For better traffic, do I become a traffic constable?

Why is politics and administration “above” other professions?

If a person is honest and does his job with integrity, does he not have a right to complain when his state’s CM is caught taking bribes, just because he himself has not taken up politics as a career?

Next time there is a defence scandal in the news, I guess only the defence people would have a right to talk about it. How would the news channels cover it then?

Categories
Hindi WTF

सदी क्या हुई है भाईसाहब?

किस युग में रहते हैं आप? मुझे लगता था इक्कीसवीं सदी चल रही है. आजकल थोड़ा शक होने लगा है. टीवी पर समाचार चैनल वाले यूं ही परेशान करे बैठे हैं – स्वर्ग का द्वार, रावण की मम्मी, फिल्मी गाने से आकर्षित होने वाले भूत तो हम देख चुके हैं. पर टीवी पर शापिंग वाले प्रोग्राम भी पीछे नहीं रहे. बेजन दारूवाला के राशिफल, और नक्षत्र वाले पत्थर तो हम देख ही रहे हैं, पर अगर कोई ये सब देखता है तो वक्त की बर्बादी के अलावा मुझे नहीं लगता कोई और नुकसान हो रहे हैं.

लेकिन आजकल एक नई ऑफरिंग आई है टेलि-मार्केट में – नज़र से बचाव! फिल्मों ने हमें इसी एक संभावना के बारे में अवगत कराया था कि नज़र से प्यार होता है और शायरी की भाषा में नज़र से लोग घायल होते हैं और मेटाफॉर में मर जाते हैं. लेकिन “बुरी नज़र”, उसके पीछे की बुरी नीयत और उससे होने वाले नुकसानों के बारे में मां, चाची-ताई वगैरह के अलावा किसी और से नहीं सुना था. बेशक घर में कोई नवजात बहुत रोता था, तो नज़र की बात ज़रूर उठती थी, और ये भी चर्चा होती थी कि किस नासपीटे की नज़र लगी होगी. पर सिर्फ ज़िक्र भर होता था. हम उसे विलेन बनाकर झगड़ने नहीं लगते थे – आखिरकार दो पीढ़ियों से शहर में रहने का असर तो होगा, भले ही हम आज भी “नज़र” जैसी चीज़ों पर विश्वास कर रहे हैं. और एक लेवल पर नज़र की बात होती रहती है – यूंही कहना कि नज़र लगी है किसीकी, कहने का मतलब कि वो इंसान तारीफ़ तो कर गया, पर मन ही मन जल भुन रहा होगा. उसकी इस नज़र से हमें असल में नुकसान होगा, ये तो हम शायद सोचते भी नहीं आजकल.

पर टीवी के टेली-व्यापारी चाहते हैं कि हम सोचें. आजकल नज़र को इतनी गंभीर समस्या के तौर पर पेश कर रहे हैं, मानो अगर हर इंसान के पास ये नज़र-शोधक तावीज़ नहीं हों तो बाकी दुनिया सिर्फ अपनी आंखों से देख-देखकर सभी को बीमार, कंगाल और अपाहिज बना देगी. ये दिखाने के लिए जो तस्वीरें आती हैं टीवी पर, उनमें आंखों से निकलती किरणें देखकर सुपरमैन और नागराज कामिक्स की याद आ जाती है.

इतना बुरा नहीं लगता, अगर इतनी बेशर्मी से इस दकियानूसी और पैरानॉइड विचार को बढ़ा चढ़ा कर दर्शक के मन में स्थापित करने की कोशिश नहीं होती कि सारी दुनिया के सारे लोग, खासकर वो जो आपके करीब हैं, आपका बुरा ही चाहते हैं. कि आपके सब दुख-तकलीफों की जड़ दूसरे लोग हैं, और उनमें ये दैवी शक्ति है कि सिर्फ देखकर और बुरा चाहकर आपका बुरा कर सकते हैं. और इतना बुरा कर सकते हैं कि जब तक आप यह चमत्कारी तावीज़ नहीं खरीदते, तब तक आपकी तकलीफें दूर नहीं होने की. वही तावीज़ जो दस साल पहले टूरिस्ट तीर्थस्थानों की दुकानों में बच्चे पांच-पांच रुपये में खरीदते थे, बस खेलने और देखने के लिए. आजकल इन खिलौनों में दैवी शक्तियां आ गई हैं, आपको दुनिया के सबसे बड़े खतरे से बचाने के लिए!

टीवी भी क्या करे? एक मीडियम ही तो है. इसी टीवी पर नैशनल जियोग्राफिक के कार्यक्रम देखता हूं, और इसी टीवी पर दुनिया के एक हिस्से को पंद्रहवीं सदी की ओर जाते देखता हूं. शायद यही है वह भारतीय संस्कृति जिसके लिए इतनी मारपीट चालू है.

Categories
Uncategorized

Then, Now and Will Be

Kidakaka had tagged me over three months ago. And I took so long to finally finish writing it. Turns out it’s become pretty long.

THE TAG
Two questions in each category answer them and then tag your friends from the blog-o-sphere. Leave a comment on their blog letting them know they have been tagged and you are all set.

THEN
Your oldest memories

  • I vaguely remember a flood in Calcutta, because I loved the feeling of water filled in our rooms at the old house. All my life this memory somehow also makes me feel I’m in East Asia.
  • I insist to my grandpa that I want to eat fish. He being a vegetarian (he used to wear a janeu/yagnopavit), still goes to the market to buy fish for me. When it was being cut, I happened to be around and saw the blood coming out of its fins. There was an instant realisation that fish are also like us – they also bleed, they also must be feeling pain. Ergo, I am a vegetarian ever since.
  • All of four years, the young rider in me wants to ride my uncle’s bike standing outside our house. I stand on the kick-lever, trying to start it, and the bike falls upon me. Safely enconsed in the gap underneath the bike, I patiently wait for anyone to come by and help me out. The noise startles everyone in the house and they rush out to look for me.
  • Back in the good ol’ times when 9AM on a Sunday meant Ramayan on Doordarshan, on one such Sunday my mother was busy cooking lunch so that she can get down to watching television from 9 onwards. And I was hungry. And I kept asking her for something to eat. She had to ask me to wait. With unending energy inside me, I started looking for things to do. One of these things I realised was pulling off the wooden pieces at the base of the cabinet underneath the stove. “Why do they need those?”, I thought, “let me remove them”. Fine idea, except that it is the same stove which was being used to cook lunch. I pull out one of the pieces, and then everything on the stove tumbles down on me, including boiling hot cooking oil. Severe burns ensue, and after quite some time under medical care and lots of care by mom & dad, my life came back to normal. I became much, much quieter though.
  • Back in the old days when I used to be 7 something, we used to celebrate Chhath pooja in the factory which now belongs to my uncle. Still remember the fun we had there. We used to play hide and seek between the huge machines and rolls of paper, and sleep on piles of cut paper.
  • Got my first computer, a 486 with 2MB RAM. I was a BASIC geek, but the assembler had left a folder of Prince of Persia on the hard disk. I was hooked! It was amazing for the times, and I could not separate myself from the computer since then. And the feeling when I saw my first “coloured circles” that I had coded in Qbasic – nothing now can match that excitement.
  • Thanks to a Hindi-movie laden upbringing, I was a Hindi fillum ka hero, and any pretty girl around my age would be my prospective heroine. Can’t count how many times I have simply “fallen in love” at first sight 🙂
  • After my grandpa passed away, we were all staying at our old house for around a year. I had tons of friends there, and we all loved playing cricket. One fine day one of the boys said he wanted to bat. I agreed, and went behind the wickets. We never had wicket-keepers in those games, but I had seen it on TV and wanted to try it out. The boy who was bowling, meek chap that he was, always rolled the ball on the ground instead of throwing it. The batsman, Ravi Shastri fan it seems, wanted to hit a six on every ball. So he takes a swing at the rolling ball. The bat he was holding had a crack between the handle and the blade – with his swing it came unstuck, the blade went flying towards the pavement and the handle’s sharp wedge found my skull. With immense pain I started crying. I had thought it would be a bump, but when I touched it, I was shocked to find that the skin had broken apart there – I could feel that the cut is around an inch deep! I was drenched in blood, and everybody was looking at me with horrifying expressions. It so happened that a neighbour was passing by, recognised me, wrapped my head with a big piece of cloth he was carrying and took me home. I still have the scar on my forehead to show.
  • Once my cousin and I went out of the house to play cricket. So we carried the cricket bat (yes the same one) and since there were no balls to play cricket in the house, I stuffed a deck of cards in my pocket (!? Don’t ask. I couldn’t answer it then, and I can’t answer it now) while going out. Once we were outside we “realised” that we couldn’t play because we did not have a ball with us. So I come up with an idea – that we should walk. So we walked. And we kept walking. And walking. And walking. And we crossed many roads. And we reached the factory. Rushed in the compound and sat in a chair in one corner. My uncles and cousins were playing cricket near the compound’s gate, and they obviously saw us go in (we walked in the middle of the game). So they come rushing in. By that time my mother had already called everyone to tell that the kids are missing. Hours of lectures, to me and to mother and grandpa (for not taking care). The whole experience was fun by the way 🙂
  • As a kid who used to be dropped and picked up from school by my parents or someone designated, there have been times when I have been waiting till evenings in the school compound. When all the kids have gone home, when the classrooms are being closed, it is lonely, gloomy. And I had heard the story of a Calcutta schoolgirl who had fallen asleep in class on the last day of the term and stayed locked in the classroom for an entire month – she even ate her shoes and clothes in her futile attempt at survival. And I used to think “Am I important enough for my folks?”. Anyways, one such time the school authorities could not wait with me for so long, so they sent the gatekeeper with me to search for my house. All I could remember was “then there is a gully on the right, and then there is a gully on the left…”, no landmarks, no street names, and I referred to roads, streets, highways – all as gullies, as long as they began with a turn. They figured that I knew the way well enough to reach, only that I didn’t know how to articulate it. I finally reach home, to a worried mother, who was wondering all this while if I was at school or I was picked up from the school and was in the office. Turned out that no one was designated that day to pick me up, and everyone had forgotten thinking that somebody else must be going.

What were you doing ten years ago?
February 1999
Preparing for ISC, nay for the JEE. Going mad playing games. Had found the internet over a year back, so was going mad trying out Shellsock, Caltiger and any means of getting cheaper internet. Was sorting through piles of accounting papers, working in TCS’s E-X. It sucked.

NOW
Your first thought in the morning
Aah 7? So my roomie is late for the gym! Great. Anyways, let me sleep for another 10 minutes, and then I’ll go out for a jog.

Oh, it’s 8.00!!!

If you built a time capsule what would it contain?
The necessary parts to make it work, right?

WILL BE
This year…
It’s just begun. Let’s see if I can manage enough leaves for the Himalayan Odyssey. And enough money to pay off a major part of my debts. Otherwise I just want to go home for a week or so.

What do you see yourself doing 14 years from now?
Don’t know. 14 years ago I wouldn’t have thought I would be anywhere near what I am today, so taking a guess is useless.

All I know is
I want my parents, both of them, to be healthy, comfortable, happy and proud of me
I want to be published by then
I want to have a loving and happy family

I TAG
Anurag
Rachit
Gauravi
Neeraj
Ankit

Categories
Photography

Which camera should I buy?

If you’re interested in photography and have been frequenting online community sites/pages related to photography, you probably know the patterns and trends that the discussions and newbie questions there follow.

The most common and frequent question I guess would be “which camera should I buy?”. There’s nothing wrong per se with the question. It is quite valid a question. But of course photography is a unique skill, which (much like graphic design or sound editing or even the poor keyboard player in the band), has this nagging and insurmountable issue that for many outsiders, the photographer’s skill is non-existent or not as important as the tools (read hardware/software) they use. In light of this, insiders tend to get irritated with this question assuming that by just buying “the best” camera the person asking the question intends to become a master. Moreover the way this question is often asked and discussed by the person asking the question reminds one quite often of the frame of mind of a car buyer – he’s probably looking at mileage, comfort, style etc. rather than seeing the purchase as a means of expression.

Enough of serious talk. In fact it is much more serious than the nature of what follows. With the context set firmly in place, I’d like to present the most typical answers that this question gets. Enjoy 🙂

typical answer 1
I own XXX, and I’m happy with it, therefore XXX has to be the best choice ever. Go for XXX. I’ll accompany you to the market if you do. And I’ll hug you for it.

typical answer 2
Buy the cheapest available camera, and save for good lenses. Lenses make the photograph, not the camera body.

typical answer 3
Don’t bother with brands and models. Buy any one. It’s the 12 inches behind the camera that counts.

typical answer 3a
Don’t bother with brands and models. Buy any one. People can take amazing shots even with a P&S, even with a Cybershot/Powershot/Coolpix, even with a Motorola L6 camera!

typical answer 4 (generally a response to typical answer 2)
But the cheapest available camera has serious compatibility issues with most lenses. What’s the use of buying the camera and saving for the lenses if all you can use then are exorbitantly expensive lenses?

typical answer 5
<Link to an older thread asking the same question the 1000346th time>

typical answer 5a
Why don’t people go through older threads before asking???

typical answer 6
This community is a treasure trove of information, and is an indispensible tool for so many of… (copy-paste the same copy for the community from a previous thread)…. I appreciate your question, but did you know that (shock of shocks!!!) you can search for the information you want here, and all you wanted to know about what you want to know is just one click away? <Link to search query in that forum that says “best new camera”>

typical answer 7
Nikon rules.

typical answer 8
No. Canon rocks.

typical answer 9
Haha! All NGC/sports/fashion photographers use Nikon.

typical answer 9b
Haha! All NGC/sports/fashion photographers use Canon.

typical answer 9p
Have you checked out my one camera per brand shootout where Pentax’s base model (only model actually) kicks Nikon & Canon’s sorry a$$?

typical answer 9o
But I thought Olympus was good so I bought a E420!

typical answer 9o[ii]
I liked the photographs I clicked using my Olympus mju (especially the one of my dog chasing a shoeflower), so I bought a E410!

typical answer 10
Olympus/Pentax/Canon/Nikon fanboy!!

typical answer 11
Don’t listen to these idiots. Buy a H3D-II. 50 megapixels baby! (droools)

typical answer 12a
My daddy, the rich man that he is, gifted me a pro-level camera belonging to XYZ brand, so though XYZ brand rocks, the cheaper cameras of XYZ brand are crap and those using such cameras are morons. Don’t ask me why. I just know. Remember I’m using the expensive camera here?

typical answer 12b
I am a pro photographer (read, I get paid to click photographs) and I have the most expensive camera XYZ produces, so though XYZ brand rocks, the cheaper cameras of XYZ brand are crap and those using such cameras are morons. Don’t ask me why. I just know. Remember I’m using the expensive camera here?

typical answer 12c
I work for a Dubai seth where I get paid in millions of dollars every month and with all that overflowing cash I bought myself the most expensive XYZ camera in the market, so though XYZ brand rocks, the cheaper cameras of XYZ brand are crap and those using such cameras are morons. Don’t ask me why. I just know. Remember I’m using the expensive camera here?

This piece was written for one of those online photography forums, so a couple of these might not make sense to everyone at first, because they might be specific to certain people I have interacted with on that forum.

Categories
Uncategorized

Ek Vodka with Coke!?

Saw Dev D. Liked it. Loved it, in fact.

The only thing I could not understand were the drinking habits of sadda Dev. He lives in the UK the major part of his life, and he picks up a habit of drinking Vodka only. Vodka the beginners’/connoisseur’ spirit. Indian kids who start drinking start with Vodka. Mainly because it’s tasteless, so get high without having to bear with the strange tastes of other liquors – after all those are acquired tastes – and does not smell when you go home. For connoisseurs, Vodka (alongside white Rum) is the base of many cocktails. I would have thought the hero of the movie, phoren return that he is, would have more refined drinking preferences. He instead chooses to guzzle Vodka neat – not even with a green chilli.

And when he’s not drinking Vodka neat, he’s mixing it with Thums Up or Coke. Did you hear that? Vodka with a cola! Whatever happened to the lime twist, good ol’ Sprite or a simple lime wedgie with Vodka?

Good thing he did not ask for “Bacardi ka Vodka”.

On another line of thought, are there any purist Bengalis out there who are offended by the portrayal of Paro and Debdash, by the maligning of the ‘pure love’ between them and the ‘pure lust, err… love’ that Chandramukhi had towards Debdash? Why aren’t we seeing any theatres being ransacked, any viewers being bullied (on the lines of Mangalore et al). For that matter, where are the fans of Shah Rukh, Madhuri, Aishwarya or Sanjay Leela Bhansali who would get offended by the hedonistic take on Sharatbabu’s most popular story outside of Bengal?

Categories
Society

Real-Life Gandhigiri

History is being made. In true Gandhi style.

Mind it, these are not spoofs of the events we have read about in our history text books. These are actual, serious movements by people who mean business.

Whether you drink, don’t drink, go to pubs, don’t go to pubs, if you want a safe and free environment for Indian youngsters where no one should be forcing upon them their idea of what is ‘moral’, then you must join the Pub Bharo Andolan. If you happen to be a woman as well, then A Consortium of Pub-going, Loose and Forward Women is for you. And if you’re feeling particularly generous, or want to do things Munnabhai style, then the Pink Chaddi Campaign is for you.

All the power to movements against moral policing by the likes of Muthalik et al!

Categories
Branding & Advertising What works?

Asian Paints: dada-dadi

I have been seeing this advert on television for some days recently, and think it’s effective.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdvF7DK6ysI&hl=en&fs=1&w=425&h=344]

Now why do I think it’s effective? In line with the previous posts on advertising (which include quite a few reviews and dissections of ads, now that I look back at it all), let me write about this ad right here right now. Okay? So here goes.

What works:

  1. Humour. Whichever ad has humour as a strong point, it’s always the first point for me. It grabs attention, entertains and makes the ad memorable. One person’s misery is another person’s humour. And in this case, the dadaji’s misery emanating from his weak memory provides moments of pride for dadiji and amusement for the rest of us.
  2. It’s a story! Stories engage us. We love hearing and telling stories. Once upon a time we painted the house… nice! And the characters from the story tell the story in autobiographical mode… nicer!!
  3. Lather, rinse, repeat. The story is in loops. We get to understand it after two of the loops – dadaji is reminiscing about an incident from old times and remembers one artifact of the story, while dadiji knows that he has made a mistake, and corrects him. By the third time, the audience is onto the game. We already know dadaji would again be making a mistake, and dadiji would correct him.
  4. The product. The yellow bungalow is prominent in the frames throughout the ad. I think the way Asian Paints present a house in their ad is well-defined in their minds, and they do it exceptionally well. Right from the first frame I could tell it is an ad for an exterior paint, most probably from Asian Paints.
  5. The story communicates the benefit very well. Memories may fade with time, but the paint would not.
Categories
Society WTF

No Love Please, We are Indians

Hoardings warn dating couples in Srinagar, and the local police are against this stand, but elsewhere according to this news item, the police itself is the moral guardian which caught the couple in question and raised charges against them.

Is India being Talibanised, or is it now being governed by frustrated men? How a couple kissing anywhere at all constitutes public harassment is beyond me. It is definitely a matter of victimless crimes. And as usual, the Indian administration believes in meting out instant harsh, harsher, harshest punishments to the ‘criminals’ indulging in these ‘crimes’, while criminals who actually harm others intentionally are tried in courts for years while they live on taxpayers’ money. That the taxpayers themselves are being harassed like this for public displays of affection is not important.

In high school, when we were given an idea of the Indian administrative system, and the Constitution (note the capital C, denoting infallibility and perfection), we were given an idea that India is a free land, where every Indian is free as long as they don’t hurt others. We believed it to be true. And were mighty proud of it.

Now we realise, through witnessing such incidents, that it’s not as free as one would think it is.

We’d rather bow down to anyone and everyone’s fragile sensibilities, including (and especially) the religious type, than stand for freedom and peace.

Another reason why governance should not be concerned with social propriety and should be concerned more with security of the tax-paying citizens.

Categories
WTF

More Questions: Got Any Answers?

How can a specialized mall and multiplex activation agency be a one stop solution for all my marketing needs?

How can we see a ‘Best of…’ CD for a band whose entire discography consists of only one album?

What is the meaning of “Indo-Foreign”?

Why do you have English subtitles when characters speak in Chinese in a Hindi movie? I mean we are still okay with credits in the Roman script/English, but dialogues? Do we have French subtitles in Hollywood movies when the character speaks Italian?