2 new things I learnt today

2 items I came across today, which I thought I should record for my own reference later -

1) Michael Lucas's sculpture - 'The Menger Sponge level 3'

Check out this pic (Source).



So that made me look up what is the Menger Sponge? You can read more abt it here.

2) One of my friends updated his facebook status to the following -
THE FACEBOOK TRICK: press up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, b, a, Enter key, then right click and then press up and down and magic circles will appear. The only way to get rid of them are to log off or refresh the page.

I tried it out on Facebook and it really worked and was perplexed why that was so. That is when I learnt from one of my friends that it's the konami code, from an old video game. You can read more about the Konami code here.

Hampi

I recently had to write about one of my travel destinations for my office magazines. Reproducing it here on the blog as well...

Hampi – A UNESCO World Hertiage Site

Last year I travelled to Hampi during the winter and unarguably had one of the most culturally enlightening trips of my life. Hampi is a village in northern Karnataka state, India. It was the 14th-mid 15th century capital of the Vijayanagara empire and is the world's largest living UNESCO heritage site.

The rickshaw ride from Hospet train station will give you hints very early on what’s in store - a temple here, a large rock there. But nothing prepares you for what you see in Hampi - gigantic boulders arranged as if with geometric precision, ancient water ways and of course the ruins of temples and palaces, harking back to a magical kingdom that your grandma's stories always began with. By day two of my stay in Hampi, on a ride back to my hotel on a deserted road, I could swear I saw one of those couples etched in stone on a nearby temple scampering across the road.
Though the temple ruins spread across a 26 square kilometre areas date back to the 14 century Vijayanagar empire, the mythology goes back to Lord Shiva and the monkey kingdom of Kishkinda , that features in the Ramayana.

Though nothing – not even the pictures – can put into perspective the sheer grandeur of it all, I am sharing some images below to give an idea of what you can expect when in Hampi.

1) Virupaksha temple


The Virupaksha temple is located at the foot of the hill called Hemakuta hill is the core of the village of Hampi. The temple, often called Pampapathi temple, is the most sacred of the temples of this place. The temple contains the shrines of Lord Shiva, Pampa and Bhuvaneshwari. We were witness to even a small marriage ceremony in the temple precincts when we visited there.

2) Hampi Bazaar

Starting at the entrance of the temple is Virupaksha Bazaar or market, largest of the many bazaars of Vijayanagara. Each major Temple complex had its own bazaar around which a township developed. This is the only bazaar around which a township of a sort still exists. Domingo Paes said of Hampi bazaar in 1520: "There is a very beautiful street of very beautiful houses with balconies and arcades, in which are sheltered the pilgrims that come to the temple"

3) Tribals having their stores and living across Hampi Bazaar

Some structures from Hampi bazaar still survive to this day, but many have been taken over by squatters or hawkers. And, inside a 16th century colonnaded arcade, one is likely to find a tea shop or a telephone booth. Here we see a group of tribal artisans living within the Hampi bazaar

4) Achyutraya temple – View from the Hemakuta hills

Achyutaraya Temple is a large complex built by an officer of the King Achyutaraya, Salakaraju Tirumaladeva.

Following is a view of the temple complex from Hemakuta hills at night time


5) Ugra Narasimha

This image of Lakshmi-Narasimha, popularly called Ugranarasimha, meaning Narasimha of terrifying countenance. Originally, the icon bore a smaller image of Lakshmi sitting on his lap, which fell off due to an act of vandalism and is now housed in the ASI (Archaeological Survey of India) museum in Hampi. Narasimha with an articulately chiseled and well delineated mane and large bulging eyes and broad chest still retains His awesome charm. He is seated on the coils of the snake Adisesha, who rises behind him with seven hoods, which serve as a canopy.

6) Vitthala temple

Any number of words would fail to do justice to this wonderful monument dedicated to Lord Vitthala or Lord Vishnu. Legend has it that Lord Vishnu found it too grand to live in and thus returned to his own humble home. The Vitthala temple respresents the highest watermark of the Vijayanagara style of art and architecture. Vitthala is the Krishna aspect of Lord Vishnu. The cult of Vitthala or Vithoba, originates from Pandharpur in Southern Maharashtra. Although associated today with Krishna, Vitthala was worshipped in pre-Vijayanagara times as a folk god of cattle

7) Stone Chariot

The Stone Chariot is situated inside the Vitthala temple complex. By far, this is the most amazing monument in Hampi and is often portrayed as the icon for Hampi. Stone chariot has stone wheels which some believe actually rotate. The chariot is a miniature temple. It resembles the temple chariots or rathas in which the idols of the temple are taken out on a traditional procession.

8) Lotus Mahal or Kamal Mahal

This two storied palace, is one of the finest examples of Indo-Islamic architecture, with its typically Hindu base and Islamic superstructure. The palace has nine pyramidal cupolas or shikharas on the second story of which the central one is the largest. The patterns on the arches are typically Islamic in influence.


9) Hazaara Raama temple

This temple for Lord Rama is popularly called "Hazara Rama Temple" because of the large number of Ramayana panels on the walls. This temple is believed to have been the private place of worship of the Royal family. The Ramayana epic is carved in detail. Incidents in the story like Dasaratha performing a sacrifice to beget sons, the birth of Rama, his exile into the forest, the abduction of Sita and the ultimate fight between Rama and Ravana are all carved in a vivid manner. In these panels, the story of Rama and through it the triumph of good over evil is brought out.

Kaminey, just good.

If there is anything other producers can learn from Vishal Bharadwaj and the production house UTV motion pictures, it is how to market your movie well. With all the tricks in the book and some out of the box, from expected Shahid-Priyanka romance rumors to pandering to the artsy school of Vishal's followers, the makers got the marketing machinations right. The buzz surrounding the movie in the week upto its release was so great that one and all were awaiting the release of the movie with bated breath. And then God disposed. The swines flew over the Kaminey's nest, and movie halls and multiplexes in Mumbai and Pune were shutdown by the panic stricken city corporations on the same weekend that Kaminey was to be released. Any producer worth his salt will be able to easily rattle off that Mumbai and Pune constitute about 40-50% of any Hindi movie's opening weekend earnings in India. Rumors suggest that the movie might have easily lost about 5-6 crores because it was not showing in these 2 cities in the first 3 days of its release in India. By Monday when the movie released in Mumbai, the reviewers had mostly given the movie positive reviews, but they had also let out considerable plot lines, and the pirates were out with their copies. In short, the movie lost considerable amount of money, and if it were not for the viruses, it could very well have been a runaway hit.

So it was with huge expectations that I set off to see Kaminey after a long working Monday. Even after reaching the movie hall a good 1.5 hrs early to book the tickets, we got tickets just 4 rows away from the screen. And by the time we walked into the theater it was houseful, on a 9.30 pm show on a rainy Monday. Just goes on to show that probably the virus refused to kill the hype created by the movie.

And then the movie starts. And from there onwards begins the downward spiral. Sure the movie is good, but is it great? Na, I beg to differ.

The movie starts well. An excellent plot. Twin brothers from Mumbai slums getting separated during their school days. As expected they are as different as chalk and cheese, with one added twist. One lisps (says 'f' in place of 's'), one stammers. They haven't been in touch with each other for the past 3 years, and then things turn turtle in a span of 24 hrs and they are forced to come to terms with each other. The first 20-25 minutes of the movie is power packed, and if you lose attention, you will be forced to seek clarifications from nearby seats. The movie introduces a slew of characters, all of them more kamina than the other, and that's why the title.

I won't dwell into the storyline. Just suffice it to say that goodie-boy Guddu (the stammering one) needs a huge amount of money to keep his same night wedded Maharashtrian wife Sweety (the Maharashtrian bit is important in the plotline), for which he needs help from cunning-boy Charlie (the lisping one), who quite by accident chances himself upon an illegal drug consignment and has the entire Mumbai underworld and the police behind him. Everyone has a gun, and no one is afraid it fire it. So there are people killing people in every other scene, and you have to keep pace to remember who was the last one killed and by whom. Which is all good, but by the end of the movie, when there are still at least a dozen more characters left who are still ready to be as kamina as it can get, it begins to weigh down on your nerves. There are just too many characters. Except for Shahid, Priyanka and Amol Gupte, there is less screen space for the the director to develop the rest of the characters. They just don't stay enough with you.

Add to that the non-linear writing and the very unpredictable twists and turns. Which is again not bad at all. It reminds you of Quentin Tarantino's style of movie making. And it would come as a shocker to the Bollywood audience, who are used to being treated as an unintelligible species for most of their movie watching lives. So all this is good, but somehow by the time you reach the end of the movie, there has been so many twists and turns that VB had to resort to a forced wrap-up. And that is where probably my biggest disappointment with the movie is. All the characters in the movie indulge in a climactic gang-war which is hugely unconvincing and unintentionally funny at times. It reminds you of the Priyadarshan type of slapstick movies, where in the end everyone ends up dishooming each other. If Priyan does it, the critics pan him. If VB does it, the critics praise him. Partial, I say.

The film's dialogue is top-notch; VB has written some dark, humorous lines. Take the example of the one of the last scenes where Guddu is explaining to Charlie how much he loves his brand new wife and would want Charlie's drug consignment of coke to keep his wife, and in Charlie retaliates "Toh kya meri kokh ujadega?" (kokh-coke kinda analogy)

The movies boasts of stellar performances from all of its lead actors. Shahid Kapur has put on easily the best performance of his life, and in his varied roles as Charlie and Guddu, he brings an amazing range of emotions from innocence to raw sexuality to the table. It was high time he broke away from his chocolate-boy image, and Kaminey was just the kind of movie that would help him move further in an industry which is increasingly looking for younger actors to take the place of its ageing superstar Khans. Priyanka Chopra has another hit and a gem of a movie in her kitty after 2 consecutive hits - 'Dostana' and 'Fashion'. In her role as the feisty and aggressive Marathi mulgi, she initiates sex and abuses her goon of a brother - all in fluent Marathi. Amongst the slew of supporting characters, Amole Gupte stands tall as the 'Jai Maharashtra' chanting Bhope bhau. But it is easy to see him getting slotted in similar kinda roles just like Manoj Bajpai after 'Satya'.

VB again comes across as a very very good music director, and all the songs in the movie are excellent. 'Dhan Te Nan' will probably remain an eternal club favorite, just like 'Beedi' will remain an eternal jhatka-licious favorite from his previous 'Omkara'. And he does a brilliant job incorporating two brilliant RD Burman numbers in the soundtrack - 'Duniya mein logon ko dhoka kabhi ho jaata hai' & 'Do lafzon ki hai'.

In all a good movie, but it comes nowhere close to VB's previous good movies like 'Omkara', 'Maqbool' and even the kiddie movie, 'Makdee'. His last movie, 'The Blue Umbrella', which I didn't watch, also got good reviews. So it was but natural to expect a lot from Kaminey. It's one thing to deliver an excellent take on a solid Shakespearean tale, or a good Ruskin Bond story; its another to pick a script, write a screenplay, and direct it from scratch. Tough ask. The movie doesn't fail or disappoint completely, but it doesn't rise upto all its expectations. If you tone down your expectations, then Kaminey is quite awfome.

Ignite and Pecha Kucha style presentations

We might all have sat through boring presentations in our academic and professional life where the talkative speaker just goes beating around the bush and takes a good 10-15 minutes to arrive at the point. I know I have and have also dozed through many of such presentations. In this age of real-time instant gratification, how can corporate presentations be left behind? So welcome to the new world of presentations, a new style that is creating a buzz around the world - present all your ideas in a slotted time of 5-10 minutes in 20-25 slides or less. This brainwave is said to have started first from the Pecha Kucha style of presentations. In Japanese, Pecha Kucha stands for "chit chat" and the aim is to come to the point as quickly as if you were chit chatting with a friend. Recently Mumbai hosted its first Pecha Kucha night and the newspapers were abuzz with news about the presenters and their topics from that night. The presenters on Pecha Kucha night in Mumbai were mostly from the fields of architecture or design.

Taking a cue from this style of presentation, the IT and business world are also fast moving to adopt a style of brisk paced presentations. "Ignite" nights are being held all over the world and sometime in November 2008 and January 2009, Bangalore held its first two nights of Ignite presentations. The format for the Ignite style of presentations is to present your ideas in 20 slides, at the speed of 15 seconds per slide. That would give each presenter 5 minutes altogether to present their ideas. The presenters for the Bangalore Ignite night spoke about topics very diverse from wildlife to mountain biking. There was not a specified range of areas where the speaker had to limit himself to. The Ignite nights in Bangalore have been a huge success and were followed by Ignite nights in Pune, and there are some networking groups looking to bring Ignite to Mumbai next.

Our firm too started on a similar presentation pattern lately, and to introduce the firm members as to how to get used to a brisk presentation style, we held our first session of 'Lightning talks' similar to the Ignite format yesterday. The firm members had to pool in with their topics and an abstract by a particular date, out of which 10 topics were selected for presentation yesterday. I was one of the selected participants and I spoke on the following topic "Decoding Indian General Elections 2009". Since we were presenting from Mumbai for a worldwide audience and video conferencing options are not that trustworthy given bandwidth issues, we decided to record a video with the presentation playing by the side and send it across for the conference yesterday. Here is a link to the video and here is a link to my presentation (Pls ignore the weird master slide formatting differences coming up on the slides, I didn't have enough time to work on those). Play both of them side by side, and you can see the slides rotating every 15 seconds with the audio output playing simultaneously. I had fun presenting my first Ignite style presentation, let me know what you think.

Teach India: Day 1

Last Saturday was when I began my first set of teaching lessons to students from local language schools ('vernacular' is a cringe-inducing word, I try and avoid it as much as I can). Thus finally ended my month long initiation into the Teach India program. You can call TOI's Teach India campaign a body shopping campaign looking for volunteers to invest their free time teaching under-privileged kids under the aegis of some non-profit NGO working with such kids. After presentations and talks by multiple NGOs, I chose Kotak Education Foundation working in the slums of Bhandup close to where I stay. Two weekends were then spent with the KEF volunteers understanding the background of the kids, what they expect and how to go about it. Finally we started our coaching sessions with the kids last Saturday. I would be responsible in coaching them on English conversational skills. Some points that I noted from day 1:

1) We were specifically instructed to try and weave in Cricket and Movies into every conversation with the kids. Invaluable advice when dealing with them. MS Dhoni is a huge hit with the kids.
2) I realized how huge Shahid Kapoor is. My volunteer partner, Sanyo & I together have been entrusted with 11 kids. 7/11 kids named Shahid Kapur as their favorite actor. Just goes on to show that the Khans and Akshay and Hrithik have grown too old for an upcoming movie generation's tastes, and in all likelihood, will be phased out with the younger lot of actors replacing them. Shahid with his chocolate boy looks and great dancing skills holds maximum potential. If only, he knew how to act.
3) The kids are very undernourished. All kids that we handle are 14 yrs old, but they could easily pass off as 10-11 yr olds in posh India or even younger in the western world.
4) The boys and girls are really shy to interact with each other. When they were asked to sit with each other, the girls sat on one side and the boys on another. When we try to mix up the girls and boys there was much resentment and for the first hour the group exercises yielded no results because the mixed teams refused to interact with each other.
5) Don't get into written English. Spoken English in itself is a tall task, getting into written English would mean much, much more efforts.
6) This exercise also made me realize the price that India has to pay for globalization. A more globalized India means a more 'English' India. A more English India means that most of rural or poorer India would need to learn a foreign language. If not that, then they would be excluded from the benefits that come from globalization. We really need to figure out a more inclusive approach for growth.

My science project from Std V

I recently came across an article that reminded about my school Science project in Std V.

In our elementary school, every winter vacation we had to do a science project, where we had to research on a subject and make a poster, live project, prototype, etc. on some science topic we learnt in school that year. The best of the projects throughout school would then be selected for a project display that year. Of those, couple of good ones would be selected, and sent for further interschool competitions. I guess this was the standard procedure in most of the schools in our area in those days.

Most of my school projects were quite unmemorable. I remember only two, the ones that I had done in Std V and Std VI. Both these projects were selected for the school level display. In Std VI, I made a poster on AIDS. Std VI would mean 1990-1991. Those days I didn't know anything about sex, and had no idea at all about the disease. I had a neighbour who was studying to be a doctor, I referred to many fat books that I borrowed from her, and made a huge poster. Those were the days when no one, I guess not even most of the teachers had heard of HIV or AIDS, and hence there was a huge curiosity about what I had done. The project got selected for the school level display, but as compared to other live, working prototypes, it didn't hold on its own, and sadly I did not make it then to the interschool level.

The earlier year, when I was in Std V, I had learnt about the concept of good and bad conductors of heat at school. So that winter I was wondering whether I could make any science project with the heat conduction principles in mind. When I checked with my mom, she suggested that since we need heat to cook items, boil rice and pulses, I can think of something on those lines. On further discussion with her, we came up with an idea. Take a small box and stuff it with thermocole, which is used for packing delicate items. Thermocole is a bad conductor of heat. Place a semi heated and covered bowl of lentils immersed in water in the box filled with thermocole and leave it for couple of hours, and the lentils should be cooked and ready to be used. When we actually implemented it, there were couple of flaws and the lentils were not cooked enough: 1) Thermocole pieces when stacked would still leave some air gaps and the heat would escape from the air gaps. 2) The heat was just not sufficient for the experiment. Further working on the prototype led to the following model: Cover the box with black colored craft paper that was available in all the local stores, and leave the box in the hot sun. The black color would attract more heat from outside and retain the heat inside. Also rather than thermocole, fill the box with sawdust. The reasons being sawdust was smaller in size than tnermocole and hence the air gaps were lesser. This option worked fine, and in fact I realized that I also didn't need to pre-heat the lentils in water as much as earlier. I just had to leave it outside in the hot sun. The black colored outer part of the box would attract the heat and transmit it to the steel bowl and after couple of hours the lentils would be cooked enough.

The project was quite successful and appreciated and went upto the interschool Mumbai level with that project representing my school and my ward. Sadly at the interschool level, I did not make it.

It kills me today when I read in the newspapers that a similar idea has been patented as the Kyoto Box and as the world's cheapest solar cooker, and the idea has even got a grant of $75,000 to be developed further.

When I look back on my life, maybe I will count this as one of the opportunities that I lost upon.

Speaking about lost opportunities, an excerpt from David Sedaris' write-up 'Guy Walks into a Bar Car':

"When you’re young, it’s easy to believe that such an opportunity will come again, maybe even a better one. Instead of a Lebanese guy in Italy, it might be a Nigerian one in Belgium, or maybe a Pole in Turkey. You tell yourself that if you travelled alone to Europe this summer you could surely do the same thing next year and the year after that. Of course, you don’t, though, and the next thing you know you’re an aging, unemployed elf, so desperate for love that you spend your evening mooning over a straight alcoholic."

The opportunities lost in my case and David's are completely different, but the feeling is the same.

Click here to read more about the Kyoto box.

Natale Tumchyasathi

I bumped into a long lost acquaintance sometime last month in one of the film fests in the city. Bhushan Korgaonkar, who I used to meet on-off through some of our mutual friends is this quiet, composed person who seemed pretty much at ease in his skin during all our previous meetings. That day, he asked me and Shibu to wait outside the auditorium after the film fest since he wanted to catch up with us. After the film fest when we found him waiting outside, after our initial exchange of pleasantries he began digging into his jhola and took out couple of CD covers. And that’s when he told us where he was keeping busy all these days. Over the last 3-4 years, he had been working on making a movie.

Working as a freelancer journalist some years back, Bhushan had written some article on the art of Lavani dances in India. He had become so enamored by the dance form and the fabulous stories of the dancers that he decided that this needs to be captured on camera. For the past few years on a very meager budget of a little more than Rs. 1 lac per head (along with his partner in this movie, Savitri Medhatul), he had been filming a documentary movie on the lives and times of the Lavani dancers in Maharashtra.

For the unknown, Lavani is a genre of music, incorporating a song-and-dance routine popular in Maharashtra. The word Lavani comes from the word Lavanya which means beauty. The Nirguni Lavani (philosophical) and the Shringari Lavani (erotic) are the two types.

Finally his movie was ready, and when I met him he was going through the post-production process for the movie. Titled Natale Tumchyasathi, (translated as ‘Behind the adorned veil’), both the cover photos had the lavani dancers dressed in colorful sarees on the stage during a lavani performance. While one cover had a close up of couple of dancers showing their faces as they were lifting the veil, the other cover photo showed about 6-7 dancers on the stage at a distance, some of them with their heads covered and some of them with the veils off their heads in various dance poses. I preferred the latter, and told him so. My point being that it seemed more active, more crowded and more colorful.

We spent some more time talking and Bhushan narrated some of the troubles he had gone through while making the movie, and we provided all the encouraging words to let him know of what a fabulous attempt he has made. While all of us would love to do something beyond our routine jobs, there are a very few who move on to a different direction while they are on a steady 9-5 job. That he has managed to make a full-fledged documentary and that too on a topic, not so often spoken about was truly a feat, and I offered my services for any help he might need to get his movie out successfully. While he did not need any of my help, I thought I would at least provide word-of-mouth publicity for his movie. The least I could do is that. The movie is scheduled to be released in a few weeks and it is already creating a buzz in the Marathi literary circles. There have been a few news items regarding the movie, and I am pasting the URLs below for the readers to know more –

http://www.mumbaimirror.com/article/57/20090318200903180306455957e2b03ff/Behind-the-adorned-veil.html

http://www.expressindia.com/latest-news/dancing-queens/434956/

Little Zizou

Lately I have been noticing quite a few things Parsi. News items regarding the feud in the Parsi Panchayat, and a viewpoint into all things Parsi and how it is displaced in a foreign setting in Bapsi Sidhwa’s book ‘An American Brat’. That included with the last week’s dinner outing at Jimmy Boy Café where I had delicious Chicken Dhansak. So an opportunity to relish some more of this very interesting community came in the form of the new movie ‘Little Zizou’. And I was glad to have made good of the opportunity. As the name suggests, it is little and lazy in its scale and ambition, but it is also definitely extremely likeable.

At the helm of the script for some excellent movies (The Namesake, Salaam Bombay, Mississippi Masala – all with director Mira Nair), Sooni Taraporewala finally gets into her own act with this little movie. And she has chosen the topic closest to her heart for her first movie - the delightful landscape of the Parsis in Mumbai and their little, vastly unkown eccentricities.

The director's own son Jehan Batliwala playes Xerxes, a 10-year-old football fanatic who dreams that his dead mother will bring Zenedine Zidane to Mumbai. While Zenedine Zidane is the Zizou, Jehan – the Little Zizou is an ardent soccer follower. His brother Artaxerxes or Art (played by Imaad Shah) is a cartoon-sketching teenager who spends his days trying to construct a flight simulator with his other Parsi friends. Both the motherless boys have to make-do with their father Cyrus Khodaji II (played by Sohrab Ardeshir) who is more interested in making money out of power-plays and politics in the Parsi Punchayat. He is a Parsi fundamentalist who believes that any Parsi who marries outside the religion should be ostracized from the community and not be allowed to pray in the community fire temples. This pits him against the younger, moderate and free-thinking Parsi generation led by the liberal-leaning editor-publisher Boman Pressvala (played by Boman Irani, excellent).

The motherless Khodaji boys detest their father so much that they spend most of their happy moments at their dad’s rival Pressvala’s house. The motherless younger Little Zizou gets all affection from Mrs. Pressvala (the pitch-perfect Zenobia Shroff - a brand new revelation), much to the jealousy of Mrs. Pressvala’s younger daughter – Liana (Iyanah Bativala). And Art hangs around at the Pressvala’s because he is in love with their elder daughter Zenobia (Dilshad Patel), but the poor boy has to pay second fiddle to Zenobia’s love interest, the non-Parsi Arjun (John Abraham, returning to his Parsi roots with this Parsi movie. The other Malayali root of John's is still unexplored).

Most of the movie touches on the premise of the clash of the religious fundamentalists v/s the liberals, which frankly is nothing new in any of the religions in India. We have all, at some stage, sided on either half of this debate. The director uses this clash to drive home the point that protectionism is not benefitting anyone and as the world changes, the older & orthodox values change and give way to newer values.

Things go way too complicated when people react to the articles written by Boman Pressvala. And when Maharashtra politics interferes with the Parsi Punchayat politics, things take a nasty turn. In the middle of all this melee, a host of characters walk in and out of the plot making their relevant points where it calls for. The most touching character of all of them being Mrs. Pressvala’s mother, played by the grand-old dame of the Mumbai’s English theatre, Mahabanoo Mody Kotwal, who turns in an absolutely brilliant performance as the slightly batty, but still full of joie de vivre mother.

It is an extremely simple, small scale and lovable movie. Having made her grand debut in the movies ages ago, Sooni Taraporevala could have chosen any topic that would have raked in the moolah for her, but the fact that she chose the topic closest to her heart speaks volumes about her conviction and love for this project. And the passion and enthusiasm shown by the largely Parsi cast in bringing her vision to reality is there for all to see. The movie is filled with warm little moments that are born out of the director's sharp understanding of the Parsi community, and her ability to bring their quirks and charms to the screen. The movie is entirely well cast, and almost all actors have played their parts convincingly well. Boman Irani as usual stands tall amongst all the characters and Mahabanoo Mody Kotwal left a lasting impression on my mind. The two child actors, Iyanah Bativala and Jahan Bativala also turn in noteworthy performances. They do a great job of being believably vulnerable without overacting the goody-two-shoes type of kiddie characters that one most often encounters in Indian cinema. All-in-all the movie is a very recommended, lazy Sunday watch. A little zany, a little crazy, that’s Little Zizou for you.

Ranaji

Anurag Kashyap is out with a new movie today, Friday, the 13th - Gulaal. After 3 brilliant movies - Satya (scripted by AK), Black Friday and Dev D. (we can safely ignore the mindless 'No Smoking'), I am very eager to watch this new movie. The interest is also quite considerably piqued because of a song - Ranaji - from the movie. Now don't get me wrong, it is not the mujra in the song that has captured my attention. The lyrics of the song, are most interesting. And of course, the haunting voice of Rekha Bharadwaj who has Namak from Omkara and Genda Phool from Delhi-6 to her credit. She certainly seems to be thoroughly enjoying the proceedings and one can rest assured that there would be whistles and catcalls in the auditorium when the song plays on screen. Some of the lyrics of the song go thus:

Rana Ji Mhare Gusse Mein Aaye,
Aiso Bal Khaye,
Agiya Barsae,
Ghabrae Mharo Chain;
Jaise door des ke tower me ghus jaaye re aeroplane

Jaise sare aam iraaq me jaake jam gaye uncle Sam

Sajini ko dear bole, Tharre ko beer bole
Mange hai english boli, Mange hai english choli
mange hai english jaipur, english bikaner
Jaise bisleri ki..
Jaise bisleri ki bottle pike bangaye english man

Jaise har ek baat pe democracy me lagai lagao ban

Jaise bina baat afgaanistaan ka baj gaya bhaiyya band

Composed and written by Piyush Mishra (who is in fact the composer and lyricist for the entire album), this is yet another quirky number making an appearance in an AK film , after 'Emosanal Atyachaar'. There are references to quite a few real life issues in the song (all in light humor though), and one just hopes that there are no controversies around it in days to come and it is accepted with as much interest and enthusiasm as 'Emosanal Atyachaar'. The number is as whacky as it gets. In a lighter vein, it manages to make a serious statement about today's socio-economic condition of the world. It makes references to such diverse topics like 9/11, Uncle Sam, Saddam Hussein, Afghanistan, mineral water, democracy etc. How inappropriate for a mujra number, yet how appropriate for today's times!

Political lyricism thus finally makes a strong occurrence in Hindi filmdom. And it is indeed well sung by Rekha Bharadwaj's intrinsically folksy tones. Ranaji definitely sends out vibes of an ethnic collage of events and stirs it up well with amiable folksy music that can set the desired pace for this blood-curdling political warfare saga.

P.S.: Read Anurag's blog post on the story behind the creation of the movie Gulaal here.

The Oscars are back and how!

The 2008 Oscar ceremony was distinctly a damp squib. I remember having made the journey from my suburban Jackson Heights apartment to my friend's place in Union Square in the cold New York winters to watch the ceremony last year (You see, I didn't have a cable connection at my place). As we plonked ourselves in front of the TV, half an hour into the show both of us got distinctly uninterested in the proceedings, and he got on the phone with some of his friends and I began browsing the internet, hardly paying attention to what's happening in Oscarland.

But this year "the man with no genitalia and a sword in his hand" made a distinct reappearance into public memory. One of the best Oscar shows that I have ever seen, never mind the fact that I have actively been watching the show only for the past 5-6 years or so.

Months before the show, the American economy crashed and people began predicting as to how this year's recession-ridden-torn-moneybags sponsored Academy awards would probably be one of the last shows before the Oscars moved into a connoisseur-audience league like the Tony's. That coupled with the fact that none of the biggest nominees were major worldwide hits (All the 5 nominees for the Top Movie Honors together raked in less moolah than the biggest hit last year 'The Dark Knight'), were enough to predict a doomsday show in movie history when Hollywood moviedom would have to give up its crown as America's culture and conscience building institution.

Thankfully that was not the case, and the Oscars and Hollywood still reign supreme. The show was brilliant, it started with a song-and-dance routince, and ended with the kids from Mumbai's slums stampeding onto the stage to claim the statuette, which all of them believed, was always rightfully theirs and their country's. Jai Ho! said the kids and the entire nation in unison.

But maybe three-and-a half hours before this climactic orgasm, I could not just believe that I had woken up this early in the morning Indian time, to watch another uneventful night at the Oscars. I was hoping they cut-size the show to less than a two or two and half hours so that I could go back to sleep for another hour or so before heading to work. The fact that it was Hugh Jackman who was gonna be the emcee, was even less of a redeeming factor.

The pre-show ritual of the red-carpet proceedings with the usual question of "What are you wearing?", etc was going on when I switched on the TV. In short, all looked good and I was hoping against hope that someone turned up in an ugly outfit, so that the fashion police could dissect their choice and ridicule them to death, just to uplift my spirits. Sadly the Bjorks and Chers and other fashion train wrecks of yesteryear are no longer in vogue, and everyone was prim and proper. What's with this herd gown-pout mentality? The only troupe that I noticed on the red carpet were the very kids who were going to create a mini stampede at the Kodak theatre a good three hours later. What gathered my attention was not the fact that they were an extremely good-looking, impeccably dressed and a beaming-with-pride lot, but an extremely stupid question that Ryan Seacrest asked the youngest girl in the lot, "Who made your dress?" The girl just looked at him blankly. Clearly, Ryan needs a reality check. What was he thinking? I began hoping that Hugh doesn't end up doing a Ryan, when he begins his act in a while.

The main event starts. Hugh makes some uninspired jokes "Everything has been downsized because of the recession." That's new! He starts his song-and-dance routine, which starts off as a very pedestrian affair. But then Jackman invites Anne Hathaway onto the stage, and very, very surprisingly she breaks into a song, and has an incredible voice. Everyone sits up and notices, I am sure she is gonna get some musicals in her kitty pretty soon. The song ends with a very good line, which I fail to note in its entirety during the show and google later up to find out exactly what those last words of the song are. It ends like this "I am Hugh Jackman, and I've waited so long! And no recession can stop my confession or silence my song! These are the Oscars, and this is my creed! I am a slumdog, I am a wrestler, I'll rent 'The Reader,' I'm Wolverine!" And the audience gives the act a standing ovation. So far so good.

After that, comes something new. Five former best supporting actresses, coming together on stage to announce and give away the award for this year's best supporting actress. At first the act seems too much like "Let's induct a new member into our mutual-admiration society". And I wait for them to get done with the act. Penelope Cruz wins for Vicky Cristina Barcelona. Good! She is pretty and I know nothing about the movie.

Then came my best part of the show Tina Fey, and Steve Martin. Ah! for some comic relief. (I googled this part of the show script too)

Fey: It has been said that to write is to live forever.

Martin: The man who said that is dead.

Fey: Yet, we all know the importance of writing, because every great movie begins with a great screenplay.

Martin: Or, a very good idea for the poster *. But usually, with a screenplay.

Fey: And every writer starts with a blank page.

Martin: And every blank page was once a tree.

Fey: And every tree was once a tiny seed.

Martin: And every tiny seed on Earth was placed here by the alien king Rondelay, to foster our titrates and fuel our positive transfers!

(* Ek vishesh tippanni - Was Martin referring to CC2C? The idea for that movie indeed only started with the poster. The poster was the only thing that remained interesting after the movie was seen.)

Next, Dustin Lance Black wins best original screenplay for "Milk." Black says, "To all of the gay and lesbian kids out there tonight who've been told that they're less than by their churches, or by the government, or by their families, that you are beautiful, wonderful creatures of value, and that, no matter what anyone tells you, God does love you, and very soon, I promise you, you will have equal rights, federally, across this great nation of ours." Hanky time! And there's Sean Penn, crying in the background. Oh God! what is this? My eyes have begun to well up too.

Next Jennifer Aniston comes out with Jack Black to present the best animated feature Oscar, which Wall-E wins as expected. But at least twice or thrice when she was on stage, the camera cuts to Angelina Jolie to show whether she was laughing, grimacing, cursing, frowning or being plain indifferent to Jen. I begin to feel sorry for these two girls, they will be stuck in the same competing-against-either image for the rest of their lives. Much like the Jaya Bachchan and Rekha of Indian movies. Even at this age, some 20-30 years after their tu-tu-main-main over AB, whenever Rekha comes on stage, the camera pans to Jaya and vice versa. I was secretly hoping that Angie does something really bad, but that's just me, looking for cheap shots even at places where I should not.

Ben Stiller and Natalie Portman next. Ben doing a routine which I don't quite understand. Maybe one of those Seinfeld type of jokes which only people in New York could understand, in this case maybe only the 200 odd crowd in Kodak theatre could understand.

Beyoncé joins Jackman onstage for a musical medley. She looks fat, sings well, and I can't wait for the entire song-dance routine to end. When will they get me my Indian song-dance routine? Wasn't this supposed to be India's night out at the Oscars? I so want to dance to O Saaya and Jai Ho, and show this angrezi waltz-schmaltz my thumbs-down.

Next some 5 best supporting actors from the past come on stage to induct a new member in their tribe. The only interesting guy here - Cuba Gooding Jr, who is introducing the nomination for Robert Downey Jr from Tropic Thunder. He introduces the role as that of an American actor playing an Australian actor playing an African-American guy. And he screams to Robert, "Pls leave the black roles for our brethren." Funny! But by now, the whole world knows that the award just has to go to Heath Ledger. So none of the other nominees even care to give an anticipatory act for the cameras sake. The Ledger family comes on stage to collect the awards. My eyes well up again. Many in the audience are sniffling.

Next are the music awards, and what I have been looking forward to for most of the night. Rahman wins his first award for the best score. And he is really humility personified on stage. Probably the movie is a reflection on his life as well, a rags-to-riches tale, someone who has really gotten where he is only by his hard work and determination. This is indeed a recognition long due for someone as talented as the 'Mozart from Madras'. He says "Mere paas maa hai", in reference to his mother who accompanied him to the awards show and then says in Tamil "Ella pughalum iraivanuke (All glory and fame is to God)". How Indian of him to dedicate his award to maa and bhagwan! I am beaming with pride at the Indianness of the moment.

Next a group of garish pink dressed girls run onto stage unexpectedly and begin dancing to loud dhol beats, when I realize that they are dancing to the tune of O Saaya, ringing in the next category for Best Original Song. Rahman sings well and really kicks ass in the next performance for 'Jai Ho' with the loud yellow salwar kameez clad girls, dunno their names. When his name is announced again as the winner for Jai Ho, he says "I always had a choice between love and hate in my life. And I chose love and I am here" How original and how true! How refreshing too!

Next Danny Boyle is awarded the best director for "Slumdog Millionnaire". He could as well be dancing with Shilpa, John and Abhishek to Shut Up and Bounce when he received the award, he literally bounced up and down systematically thrice on stage before coming on to the mike. "My kids are too old to remember this now, but when they were much younger, I swore to them that if this miracle ever happened, that I would receive it in the spirit of Tigger from 'Winnie the Pooh.'" He really seems like a 50+ year old child.

Next comes my best part of the evening. The Best Actress award. Like everyone I am rooting for Kate Winslet. Now who doesn't like her? She is sweet, too honest, too original, and too curvy not to be liked. And I really love her since I saw her blue-haired "The Eternal Sunshine of the spotless mind". Here's Sophia Loren, Shirley MacLaine, Halle Berry, Nicole Kidman and last year's winner, Marion Cotillard, to present the best actress Oscar. Suddenly this induction of a new member into the mutual-admiration society doesn't look too tiresome. It's for Kate, and only Kate, and God knows how much she deserves all this and much more. MacLaine tells Anne Hathaway she's going to win more awards, and, "By the way, I think you have an extraordinary voice." Hathaway sobs and says, "Thank you, I love you!" As Hathaway's chins quiver, I am openly weeping. What is wrong with me? The moment is kind of lost when Sophia Loren refuses to let go of her tea-pot pose while introducing Meryl Streep, but it still sustains. And then, Kate Winslet wins the best actress! Now I am openly crying and hiding my face behind a news paper, so that my mom doesn't see me weeping for some girl winning a statuette. She is a hard core Shobana fan, and doesn't really care for anyone else. She does ask though "Isn't that the girl from Titanic?" This is too much for me to handle, my mom knows my favorite actress. I am sniffling openly. And there Kate goes on to break my floodgates of tears, when she says "Dad! I wish I knew where you were seated so that I could see you. Pls whistle or something"...and Phewhoo! goes the sound of a whistle somewhere in the auditorium and all heads turn to see the Dad who inspired this beautiful and so deserving Best Actress.

As if this was not enough, Robert De Niro, Ben Kingsley, Anthony Hopkins, Adrien Brody and Michael Douglas appear onstage. "How did he do it?" asks Robert De Niro. "How, for so many years, did Sean Penn get all those jobs playing straight men?" Uproarious laughter. I had just watched Milk yesterday, and the weepie that I am, had cried even in the theatre when the end credits were rolling. What a powerful performance! I am rooting for Sean Penn to win the award, though I know that most of the world wants Mickey Rourke, the comeback kid to win it. And when Sean ia announced the winner for the award, I let out a gleeful, victorious "Yes!", as if I am together in this fight with Sean. "You commie, homo-loving sons of guns!" he gushes from the podium. "I did not expect this, and I want it to be very clear that I do know how hard I make it to appreciate me, often." Still crying, my tear ducts are poised for a fresh torrent. And there he goes "I think that it is a good time for those who voted for the ban in gay marriage to sit and reflect and anticipate their great shame and the shame in their grandchildren's eyes if they continue that way of support. We've got to have equal rights for everyone."

And of course, lastly Slumdog Millionaire wins the best Movie award. And like Alice lost in wonderland, the Zubinas and the Azhars rush onto the stage, and the whole world breaks into a standing ovation for the message that last act of the event is portraying. How there is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow! How there are still hopes and dreams in this world full of despair! How everyone is happy for the kids and the city that the kids are from and the country that the kids are from, how it is such a fine example for everything that is worth hoping for in this world! Jai Ho! And cheers to the sincerest and most heartfelt Oscars I have ever seen.

Dev D.

I saw Dev D. yesterday. One of the best Indian movies I have ever seen. There are many brilliant scenes in the movie, but there are some that are just stuck in my mind. So much so that I had to write about them:

1) Dev, tipsy and dopey legged gets into a bus. He sits besides a middle-aged woman. The woman gives him the suspicious, judgmental look that women and men that age and above save exclusively to be thrown with venom at young girls and guys. He reeks of alcohol and grass. The woman covers her nose disgustedly with her yellow dupatta. As with Indian women and men that age and above, she considers it her bounden duty to offer him unsolicited advice on how to conduct every aspect of his life, undeterred by lack of qualification, expertise or experience. Dev continues giving her a blank stare and there when I was expecting an outburst from him asking her to shut up, he goes on and does something very startling. I am still laughing.

2) With his addictions, Dev has lost so much weight that he fits into a medium sized bucket, where he is seated and Chanda is scrubbing him with a loofah.

3) Chunni, who is Chanda's pimp with a heart of gold, has a white wife. She just has a single scene where she opens up the door when Dev knocks on it. It is left to the viewer to figure out how Chunni ends up with a white wife. Most probably one of his lays who he had taken up as a wife later on.

4) The bandmasters are rendering 'Emosanal attyachar' in the background. They are playing the band for Paro and Bhuwan's shaadi ki baaraat. As the song reaches a crescendo, Paro forgetting the Indian bride's suggested behaviour of self-restraint, gives in to the music and begins dancing with gleeful jhatkas. After a while, she realizes her folly and gets back to the Indian bride act, with a sheepish grin.

5) Paro cycling to the fields with a mattress on her cycle, the mattress being where she plans to lay Dev.

6) Chanda is extremely upset that her suicidal father killed himself rather than holding her in his hands and saying a few words of consolation. At exactly that moment, Dev takes her in his hands and says exactly those words.

There are very many small gems like these in the movie, which I can go on writing about. The movie is abso*#$@ingly brilliant. Must must watch! Hats off to Anurag Kashyap.

Book Review: The ThoughtWorks Anthology – Essays on Software Technology and Innovation

The Thoughtworks Anthology provides a peek into a diverse set of topics, views and perspectives held by some of the Thoughtworks firm members. The book consists of thirteen insightful essays on modern software development practices, most of them challenging some long held views. The book is aimed at several different audiences right from Project Managers to Business Analysts to Developers to Testers. There is no single central idea to the book, and all the thirteen essays touch a wide range of topics. Not having technical expertise in some of the topics hampered my understanding and I skipped those; I wouldn’t comment much on them in this review. The quality of the different essays varies widely but in a word, for anybody in the software industry: Recommended

Various Chapter Highlights:

1) Solving the Business Software “Last Mile” – by Roy Singham, Founder and Chairman, and Michael Robinson, Technology Principal.

While newer processes like Agile, SCRUM and TDD have allowed us to deliver high-quality software quickly, it still hasn’t helped us resolve the problem of “the last mile”. In the author’s words “This “last mile” is the part of the process that happens after the software satisfies the functional requirements but before the software goes into production and starts to deliver value to the business”. This essay was easily my best pick in the entire group of essays, and was worth the entire book alone. How many projects that we have worked in go “live” as quickly as it is produced?

2) One Lair and Twenty Ruby DSLs – by Martin Fowler, Chief Scientist

3) The Lush Landscape of Languages – by Rebecca J. Parsons, CTO

Nothing too new. If you need to refresh your memory about the difference between various programming language, then read through this essay.

4) Polyglot Programming – by Neal Ford
The author in this essay start off by explaining what polygot programming is by saying "The word polyglot means speaking many languages. Polyglot programming leverages the separation of language and platform in Java (and in C# as well), allowing developers to use specialized languages to solve specific problems. We now have hundreds of languages that run on the Java virtual machine and the .NET managed runtime. Yet, as developers, we don’t leverage this capability enough.". In the next few sections, they show us some examples of applying polygot programming. Didn’t understand much.

5) Object Calisthenics – by Jeff Bay, Technology Principal
A really thought provoking essay. While we all code in our day-to-day lives, the author suggests nine rules to code, which could make programming easier to understand and large project code respositories easier to handle:
i. Use only one level of indentation per method
ii. Don’t use the else keyword
iii. Wrap all primitives and strings
iv. Use only one dot per line
v. Don’t abbreviate
vi. Keep all entities small
vii. Don’t use any classes with more than two instance variables
viii. Use first-class collections
ix. Don’t use any getters/setters/properties.

6) What is an Iteration Manager anyways? – by Tiffany Lentz, Project Manager

This essay provided some new insights into the role of the SCRUM Masters and Iteration Managers as opposed to the traditional Project Managers. It talks about the roles and responsibilities and restrictions with an IM. While many people believe that the IM is just a weaker version of the Project Manager, this essay explains how this is not true, and how the two roles are quite independent in their job profiles

7) Project Vital Signs – by Stelios Pantazopoulos, Iteration Manager

If you are reviewing a project, in the middle of, say, the 10th iteration, when the project is a 20 iteration project, how do you gauge the “health” of the project? The author here comes up with some quantitative metrics, called Project Vital Signs, which help an outsider identify the “health” of the project:
i. Scope burn-up: The state of scope delivery for a deadline
ii. Delivery quality: The state of the end product being delivered
iii. Budget burn-down: The state of the budget in terms of scope delivery
iv. Current state of implementation: The real-time state of the system delivery
v. Team perceptions: The team perspective on the state of the project (Personally, my favorite...something new)

8) Consumer-Driven Contracts: A Service Evolution Pattern – by Ian Robinson, Architect

Do your SOA from the consumer side not the provider side, excellent idea.

9) Domain Annotations – by Erik Doernenburg, Technology Principal
This essay advocates the use of domain-driven design, which follows the idea that during development, the primary focus should be on the domain and the domain logic. Should be very interesting for those into domain-driven design

10) Refactoring Ant Build Files – by Julian Simpson, Build Architect

11) Single-Click Software Release – by Dave Farley, Technology Principal

If you are planning on building an end-to-end continuous integration release systems that will deploy large, complex applications to whichever environment we choose at the click of a button, then this is the chapter you need to read. The essay had some good points for the deployment process

12) Agile vs. Waterfall Testing for Enterprise Web Apps – by Kristan Vingrys, QA Consultant

This essay gives a good overview of the testing life cycle, the different types of testing, and testing environments. The first few sections narrating this should help refresh the testing news and views that are well known. The author then covers topics such as issue management, the tools you need to use for testing purposes, reports and metrics. The essay is concluded with discussing the testing roles for different members.

13) Pragmatic Performance Testing – by James Bull, QA Consultant

This essay gives us an insight about what performance testing is, and gives detailed explanation about the four key elements: requirements, product performance data, communication, and process. The author concludes this essay by explaining how to link all these together, how not to drop behind, and finally how to bring an issue resolution process to close. Again, nothing new, something we have been hearing for long, but do not imbibe quite frequently in our day-to-day proceedings.

Altogether, some really good essays, some just fillers, but overall the book is quite relevant, timely and definitely recommended.

Book Review: The Omnivore's Dilemma - A Natural History of Four Meals

A fab new addition to my list of interesting-reads, 'The Omnivore's Dilemma'-- a gift to me by a colleague, who is quite a foodie just as I am -- is a book about food. To elaborate, not just "about food", in fact it's all about food and about all food. Not just cooking and eating food, but it's also about the production, evolution, industrialization, emotion, environmentalization, consumption, digestion, and philosophization of food. While it is primarily a scathing look into all that's wrong with the food industry in the US of A, it's a good read for anyone who wants to nip the fowl in the bud, if the food industrialization crisis is just about hitting their country. What Michael Pollan, the author, set out to do was to describe the creation of 4 different meals. This would take him to farms, feedlots, grocery convenience stores, forests, and hidden mushroom gathering sites all over the Americas, while discussing the social, political, ecological, and economical aspects of the food chain. Following were the four meals that he focussed his writing on:

1) Industrial - A fast food meal dinner brought at a McDonald's drive-through and consumed in the car itself
2) Industrial Organic - Organic food bought at a local Whole Foods, and cooked at home with other organic produce
3) Local - A farmer’s market meal from Virginia’s Polyface farm, cooked at home with other local produce (things produced and consumed within a defined geographic boundary)
4) Hunter-Gatherer - A meal for which Pollan hunts the meat and gathers the mushrooms himself

While 'The Omnivore's Dilemma' is by no means an iconic book, or even quite a literary achievement, I would still deem it as a must-read for all. Absolutely essential, especially for Americans, and Indians who are fast driving into the fast-food lane. With increasing nuclearization of our traditional Indian joint family system, we are coming to depend more-and-more on McDonald's and KFC for our daily bread and more. With this book, Pollan aims to throw more light on all that's wrong with the lifestyle of comfort that we are choosing for ourselves. While food in India has still not reached as much a state of remote-control as it has in the USA, it is interesting to read how we are falling preys to the consumerization of food and in turn harming our own lives, and the world as a whole.

How did we reach this situation?

Where to begin from? Maybe from corn (Meal #1 starts with the evolution of corn), starting from how the American government subsidizes the corn industry at the expense of the land and, most disturbingly, the health of its people; to how scientists at places like McDonald’s conspire to turn corn-—which is outrageously cheap and plentiful-—into millions of different products, from Chicken McNuggets to the stabilizer in the dressings you put on your “healthy” salad, not to mention the zillions of chemicals derived from corn—-from HFCS (high fructose corn stabilizers) to xantham gum to edible essences.

The cornification of our body and lands is an important issue, yes. The bigger issue, though, is the treatment meted out to the poor animals that go into making our fast food -- the tortured, diseased animals whose miserable lives are rendered into that flavorless disc called the tikki or the patty. That meat comes from a cow that’s fed an unnatural diet of the plentiful and really cheap corn, as opposed to its biological and evolutionary propensity for grass. This change in its eating pattern leads it to break out in numerous diseases while crammed mercilessly into lots, standing in piles of their own shit. Which again means numerous antibiotics that go into their feed to prevent them from falling ill and falling into a "depression" which might trigger them into riots. As one could expect, there aren't many positive sides to the industrial meal, the production and consumption of which is a waste of money and energy, topped with disgraceful animal living conditions, exploitation of labor, absurd government subsidy structures, and vast ecological damages leading even to global warming.

However gruesome the scene that Pollan tries to portray with beef and pork, he doesn't try to push for a vegetarian agenda. Human beings are actually animals with a carnivorous evolutionary pattern, and hence it is but natural for mankind to be eating meat. The fact is that with the discovery of agriculture, mankind found an easy access to a vegetarian diet, and hence turned omnivorous. It’s only a new phenomenon that with the industrialization of agriculture and animal farming, we are getting into a harmful pattern of producing and consuming food.

Meal #2 wasn't exactly a remarkable read, except for some pertinent issues raised by Pollan. For example, is it better to eat a "conventional" apple from a farm down the road, or an organic one flown in from New Zealand? And just what is "organic," or "free range"? And does all "organic" food actually mean good?

For meal # 3, Pollan spent a week working on Polyface Farm, a self contained grass farm run by a man named Joe Salatin that raises cows, chickens, pigs, turkeys, rabbits, etc. Salatin describes himself as a "grass farmer", the ideology behind it being that the grass sustains most of the living beings in his farm, starting from the ruminating cows to his customers who end up buying the commodities from his farm. The idea is that instead of importing nutrients in the form of chemical fertilizers, Salatin uses a very well planned and intricate system of animal rotation to raise everything using only his own forest and pasture land. According to Salatin, grass grows better if it is nibbled on (but not overgrazed), and with this system Salatin has turned an overgrazed wasteland of a farm into a very efficient and productive plot of pasture and forest. So the cows graze on one part of the land just right, and then he moves the cows to another part. They are followed by the chicken who nibble on the cow dung, to take out its nutrients and spread the grass seeds further; which are then followed by the rabbits and the pigs in a very systematic and proven dance. What it results it is in eggs with the most carrotish orange egg yolks, and thick muscle bound whites, and farm produce with not even the slightest bit of artificially produced fertilizers or pesticides. This was my most interesting portion of the book, and I would recommend this book to all just to go through this particular section. At the end of one particular cycle, when Salatin begins selling his produce at the local market, people come driving all the way from about 50 miles afar to buy things from him. This is what Pollan stresses as "putting a face" to your farm; trying and learning more about where your food comes from. Sample this writing: "But imagine for a moment if we once again knew, strictly as a manner of course, these few unremarkable things: What it is we're eating. Where it came from. How it found its way to our table. And what, in a true accounting, it really cost. We could then talk about some other things at dinner. For we would no longer need any reminding that however we chose to feed ourselves, we eat by the grace of nature, not industry, and what we're eating is never anything more or less than the body of the world"

The final meal was about as close as one could come to the whole hunter-gatherer model. Pollan hunted mushrooms, wild pigs, and random greens and fruits to make a dinner focused on things that he "found" himself. This was quite an easy read, and again raised some pertinent questions.

There are so many more interesting points that were highlighted in this book, that, if nothing, I at least came out enlightened by the reading of this book. And hence I would recommend this book as a very essential read for everyone. If you want to live healthy and eat good, start with eating what's right - for yourself and for the environment. As for the money part of eating right, let me defend it with Pollan's argument "Americans today spend less on food, as a percentage of disposable income, than any other industrialized nation, and probably less than any people in the history of the world. This suggests that there are many of us who could afford to spend more on food if we chose to. After all, it isn't only the elite who in recent years have found an extra fifty or one hundred dollars each month to spend on cell phones (now owned by more than half the U.S. population, children included) or television, which close to 90 percent of all U.S. households now pay for. Another formerly free good that more than half of us happily pay for today is water. So is the unwillingness to pay more for food really a matter of affordability or priority?"

Book Review: Once Was Bombay

Captioned as a compelling portrayal of a dying city, the author Pinki Virani, in the back page summary of "Once was Bombay", lays her forthrightness on the line

"Who killed Bombay, once India's trend-setting city and commercial capital? its politicians or its underworld? When did this city of gold turn into a cemetery of dead souls and dreams?"

With lines like this, Pinki sounds like a nay-sayer denying Mumbai of its share of glory, and wanting me to distance myself from this book. Umpteen times before have different city dwellers compared today's Mumbai to the Bombay of yore. And while it's great to reflect on past days of glory, what is hugely overlooked that the modern ways of living, travelling, eating and enjoying are here to stay, so it would matter more if we think around what we can do to make our lives better given the existing framework.

Nevertheless, with an unsure mind I began reading the book. The preface started out with a scathing write up of how each one of us have made ourselves into an island neglecting the vast seas of the city surrounding us, all the time fattening ourselves and our purses and letting the city go into a rot. And while she does warn that like the island of Mauritius, the waters will definitely rise one day robbing us of everything that we have worked so hard to build, she also sets the tone that it is still not too late to turn back and save the city. After the 26/11 strikes on Mumbai a warning like this does sound sound enough. And with a heavy heart and reflections on how I have been neglecting the city all my living years here, I turned the page to further stories.

The book comprises of three novellas and four short stories, to be read as stand-alone or inter-linked pieces (the stories are interlinked in their themes, contexts and surprisingly they are even interlinked by a song "Goli Maar Bheje Mein, Dhichkyaon" from the RGV cult classic "Satya"). What's also interesting is that the book sings paeans to the honest officials in the Mumbai Police department, starting with Vijay Salaskar. If I had read this story before 26/11 probably I would not have known who Salaskar is, and it would not have made a deep imprint in my mind. But when Salaskar mentions about the perils of his thankless job, it strikes a chord somewhere in my mind. It's a sad and sorry tale that we learn to respect an individual's contribution to the society and world at large, only after his death.

Moving on, sadly the first chapter "Crime and Punishment" is probably the weakest link in the entire chain of stories. I had almost put the book aside after I read the story. There were too many thoughts muddled in a single paragraph and too many grammatical errors to ignore. It looked like when she started writing, she began writing with fire, and did not pause to rephrase and correct herself when the fire died down. Sample this. "The man shot is Vallabh Thakkar, known to appease all kinds of gangsters as long as he could continue putting up his buildings. Manish Shah is aware of this, so when Vallabh Thakkar suggests he develop a portion of land, Manish is hesitant." I found the mix of present and past tenses confusing. The story is about how real estate in Mumbai is controlled by the land mafia, and how it is out of bounds for the common man to get into real estate business. A respectable couple of friends who run a construction business make a brief foray into real estate development. But they are wound up in the web of deceit laid by the mafiadom in the form of squatters, thugs, killers and kidnappers. Almost immediately the two men are caught up in this web which ends tragically for one of them. Virani provides plentiful, fascinating background about the Bombay dons -- Arun Gawli, Chota Rajan, Dawood Ibrahim -- and their rise to power.

Thankfully, I survived my initial reaction and survived the remaining book, and how. I finished reading the remaining portion in a single sitting, it was THAT interesting. The second story, "Mazagon, Bombay-10" (Reminds me of how Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra, has used Dilli-6 as the title for his new movie which is based in Chandni Chowk, Delhi) is a gentle, rambling story, and autobiographical to a large extent. Pinki Virani grew up in Mazagon, in a Muslim family. Her father ran a glass and crockery shop in Bhendi Bazaar, and her mother's ancestors were originally Parsis who converted to Islam a few generations earlier. The story describes the history of Mazagon, the migration patterns of the Parsi community, the present scenario, the lives of the daughters and women-folk and the effect of the 92/93 riots on this largely Muslim area. This story alone compelled me to finish the rest of the book. Here is a brief excerpt from the story depicting how that part of the city got its name.

"Surfacing like Bombay's six other islands as a dense combination of fish shit and rotting palms, was Machcha grama or the village of fish, Matsyagram in Sanskrit. [It also began to be called] Maazghar, or the central portion of the house, or the centre of the seven islands [of Bombay]. The British anglicized it to Mazgon, the Prasis called it Mazagon, the Gujaratis and Ismailis named it Majgaum and the Marathis, Maazagaon, their village. When the natives left the predominantly British high-walled fort area to settle on the outskirts, in adjoining islands, the Christians built a little village within Mazagon for their parents, and they called it simply that, The Village; the rest of Mazagon referred to it as Mhatarpacady, the quarter of the elderlies"

"Salvage, Savage" which is another novella is also an interesting story. It's largely about Pakya, a thug who is moving up the ranks, and Chhagan Bujbal who she sees as the only honest politician around. The peeks into Pakya's life are irresistible -- his purple cellphone, his actress girlfriend, his background. Chhagan Bhujbal's tirade seemed very unconvincing and discontenting. But, Chhagan Bhujbal? Yeah right! And while she names every other politician by name, she does not name Bal, Raj or Uddhav Thackeray by name. Guess finally even she wanted to save her pretty face from being blackened.

The other stories "C'mon Barbie...", "...Let's go party" (she connects the stories with the titles too), "A Modern Morality tale", "The Lala in Winter" are all well written and provide very interesting tidbits about the city we live in. The book is classified as "a non fiction, rich in memories and insights", and sometimes it becomes difficult to point out how much is fiction and how much is true. But to be fair to Pinki, she has done a great deal of historical delving, to provide the reader as complete a picture as probably possible. The language of the book is a bit terse, especially when she writes in the tones of the localites (Bambaiyya Hindi, replete with names like Salim Sandaasiya), even the English is the local mix mash of English, Hindi and Marathi ('She would think like that only, na?'). The book is an absolute delight for anyone who has lived in Mumbai for a while, and are interested in the underbelly of the city.

Book Review: The Red of His Shadow

'The Red Of His Shadow' is a brand new novel by Mayra Montero written in Spanish and translated into English by Edith Grossman. This is her fourth novel to be translated into English. Her previous works which have been translated into English (again by Edith Grossman) include In the Palm of Darkness, The Messenger & The Last Night I Spent With You. Cuban born Montero is one of biggest post-boom generation writers from Latin America. And all her works including this one are brilliant representations of the Latin American lifes of the poor and the downtrodden. Much like the poverty stricken streets of rural India, people in this part of the world are also plagued by heat, rodents, illicit liquour and a range of superstitions.

The Red of His Shadow is a breathtaking novel, a contemporary love story with the power of a Greek tragedy that takes the reader deep into the mysterious world of Haitian Voudon or Voodoo. This enamouring world of occult is so strange, yet pretty close to the 'Tantrik' and 'Baba' ways of Indian quackdom. The disturbing tale is inspired from the true and tragic love story of Simil Bolosse and Mistress Zule, the leaders of two warring factions or gagas or voodoo societies. Bordering on the bizarre, we read about black magic ceremonies where one leader bathes in the blood of more than 100 goats to see the other leader dead. The story also touches upon the miserable plight of the downtrodden Haitian immigrants who work in the sugar-cane fields of the Dominican Republic. Each year, tens of thousands of Haitians cross into the Dominican Republic to work as cane cutters, where they are subjected to the most pathetic working conditions patterned after the cruelest slave regimes. Because of their miserable plight, which remains till the end of their days, the workers have no recourse but to cling to their religious beliefs, imagining of some day of freedom. Out of this blind faith, builds forth groups called 'Societes' and gradually many societes congregate into the Gaga: a form of worship, a dedicated guild that few can penetrate. Led by powerful "Masters" or "Queens", the Gaga takes out its annual procession or pilgrimage through the fields that surround the sugar mill. This journey, marked by ritual stopping points, lasts for three days starting on Good Friday and ending on Easter Sunday. Frequently one Gaga crosses paths with another Gaga. The encounter can be absolutely cordial or extremely bloody. This book describes different events and lives leading upto the culmination with the crossing of paths between two warring Gagas led by Mistress Zule and Simil Bolosse. To help the readers understand the story well, and to represent the different routes that the voodoo procession takes through the country side of the Dominican Republic, there is also a map of the Dominican Republic and neighboring Haiti at the start of the book.

Where Montero brilliantly succeeds with this story are her extremely strong characters. The book begins with Zule Reve, the young mambo or priestess of one of the Gagas. At the age of 12, Zule, the wild and willful only surviving daughter of a cursed family, is anointed mambo, or priestess, of a powerful Dominican Voudon community and undergoes a seven-year apprenticeship to gain her position as a Mambo. Jeremie Cande, her loyal right-hand man is a mixed breed, a Haitian "China man", who remains tied to Zule as her protector, servant, a lover spurned but still hopelessly in love and consumed with jealousy. Anacaona is a Dominican woman living among the Haitians, a rare occurrence in a society where scorn and hatred for Dominicans has been built into the Haitian mindset since Dominicans wrested themselves free of Haitian rule in 1844. And finally there's Simila Bolosse, a Haitian renegade once Zule's lover and now her enemy, who has pledged to cut her to pieces if she refuses to join forces with him. As these characters circle and confront each other, Montero portrays a terrifying world poisoned by hate, greed, and sexual jealously, in which people cast spells to torture and kill, and, where the capricious gods, mount, or possess, their worshippers to enact bloody dramas of their own.

Essentially the story is that of love lost turned sour turned into political rivalry between two very powerful individuals. In illustrating the story thus, Montero writes with fire and acid. With Haitian poems that speak of love, lust and revenge. And thankfully without any kind of helpful or instructive or redemptive Christian-influenced finale. It's a ripping read, which most books that cut across cultures are not, and the story is seductive and glorious. The ending is blunt: It may not leave you satisfied, but it will certainly shock you.

The New Year

It didn't start off well for me, neither did the old one end well for me. The problems of the old one kept running into my hopes for a splendid new one. For once I was willing to suspend my disbelief in all things good, and party my way off to a wannabe great start to a new year. But that was not to be! A week since the start of '09 and I think I am already down into the pits. Financial losses galore, the gloom of the recession biting into whatever bit of job remains in hand, and turmoil on the home front have all begun to take a huge toll. I remember a similar situation 10 years back, when I definitely did moonwalk into the troubles of depression. Then I converted into a loner, stopped going to school, took to travelling alone to distant parts of Mumbai city and just sit on some sidewalk and watch the world pass by. I went to lonely movie halls and saw porn movies galore sitting besides other loner losers wanking off their hard ons. I used to leave home early in the morning, and come back home late in the night, and my parents used to be happy in the belief that I am studying my ass off to glory. The examination results that came in a few months later were a shocker, not for me, but for my parents. I was surprised that I failed in just one subject, my parents were surprised that I ended up with the first failed subject in my life. The depression days continued for about a year, after which I pulled up my socks and put my life back in order. Sadly, it was a very difficult and steep climb up and today I might have been in a much better position in life had I not had that worrisome bout some 10 years back.

Today looks similar, in fact even bigger, at least then I didn't have to worry about where my next meal was gonna come from. And as my emotional resilience is down in the shatters, I hope that "The Tough gets going" really works for me.

Just yesterday at work, I felt as if I had died and, for some unknown reason, was still breathing. Humiliation is something you can't put a price label on, and quantify the loss.

I always maintained in my life, that I want to do work that I love, rather than work for the sake of collecting money. I know this is a ridiculously privileged attitude since so much of the world must concern itself with getting food. But I was (and still am) one of the privileged: I've always had clean water, clothes to spare, enough to eat. But still sadly enough, when you lose money that you had managed to accumulate after some years of hard work, that's when you realize that although money is not what you worked for, when it goes away, it does bite.

I have spent days agonizing over "How could you, why did you, why couldn't you, why me, what's the matter with the world, where's justice" kind of questions, to realize that these questions are better left unanswered, rather they will remain unanswered because no one knows the answers. Not even the experts. I have also been eager to blame someone else -- anyone else -- for the mess I am in. But after sucking myself into a Katrina of blame games, I begin wondering where does the blame end?

Unlike many people who lost everything in the stocks and scams, and unlike so much of the world, I still have money to live day-to-day. I am still working, and I am still living and eating well, and there is still nothing else I would rather do, than do the work I am doing right now. But still. I go to sleep at night oscillating between ranting about the world and being terrified that I will lose my job and I won't be able to keep my house. Then I realize that, for me, the real suffering is not living without money; it's living with this rage. The devastation is bad, but if I don't allow myself to feel this, then I can't learn what there is to learn. I will not see, for instance, that I participated in my own downfall by not adhering to sound processes that my workplace believes in.

And while my downfall is really, really minor as compared to thousands of crores of investor wealth that got lost in the equity bourses, and so also my humiliation as compared to the embarassment that the chief of Satyam, R Raju has to face when he revealed that he has fleeced the company and its stakeholders of 7000 crores, I still can't stop the blame game. Even when well wishers snap at me advising me to gather my wits, I accuse them of not being sympathetic enough with my concerns. And if I don't engage in blame, I see the answer clearly: because I believed in something else more -- I believed in accumulating. And when you believe in accumulating, you see what you don't have, not what you have. My relationship to money was no different from my relationship to food, to love, to looking good: I never felt as if I had enough. I was always focused on the bite that was yet to come, not the one in my mouth. I was focused on the way my partner wasn't perfect, not the love that was. And on the chiselled body I saw on a gym boy poster, not the health that reflected from my rounded cheeks.

Although there is the loss, there is also the necessity -- the urgency-- of staying in the moment. The money I lost will never come back. And some sadness to grieve for the same is justified. But from the path of sadness I often wander into fear -- what if my parents or I get sick and we can't pay the medical bills, what if there is an accident and I can't work, what will I do when I get old -- I'm lost, too. I need someone to guide me from this path of fear back to the path of sadness back to the path of contentment. And happiness. And I need to realize that I need to look inside me for finding this someone.