Ant and Grasshopper

As a follow up to my previous post, I got an email forward which goes like this:

An Old Story:

The Ant works hard in the withering heat all summer building its house and
laying up supplies for the winter.

The Grasshopper thinks the Ant is a fool and laughs & dances & plays the
summer away.

Come winter, the Ant is warm and well fed. The Grasshopper has no food or
shelter so he dies out in the cold.


Indian Version:


The Ant works hard in the withering heat all summer building its house and
laying up supplies for the winter.

The Grasshopper thinks the Ant's a fool and laughs & dances & plays the
summer away.

Come winter, the shivering Grasshopper calls a press conference and
demands to know why the Ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed
while others are cold and starving..
NDTV, BBC, CNN show up to provide pictures of the shivering Grasshopper
next to a video of the Ant in his comfortable home with a table filled
with food.

The World is stunned by the sharp contrast. How can this be that this poor
Grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?

Arundhati Roy stages a demonstration in front of the Ant's house..

Medha Patkar goes on a fast along with other Grasshoppers demanding that
Grasshoppers be relocated to warmer climates during winter .

Mayawati states this as `injustice' done on Minorities.

Amnesty International and Koffi Annan criticize the Indian Government for
not upholding the fundamental rights of the Grasshopper.

The Internet is flooded with online petitions seeking support to the
Grasshopper (many promising Heaven and Everlasting Peace for prompt
support as against the wrath of God for non-compliance) .

Opposition MPs stage a walkout. Left parties call for 'Bengal Bandh' in
West Bengal and Kerala demanding a Judicial Enquiry.

CPM in Kerala immediately passes a law preventing Ants from working hard
in the heat so as to bring about equality of poverty among Ants and
Grasshoppers.

Lalu Prasad allocates one free coach to Grasshoppers on all Indian Railway
Trains, aptly named as the 'Grasshopper Rath'.

Finally, the Judicial Committee drafts the ' Prevention of Terrorism
Against Grasshoppers Act' [POTAGA], with effect from the beginning of the
winter.

Arjun Singh makes 'Special Reservation ' for Grasshoppers in Educational
Institutions & in Government Services.


The Ant is fined for failing to comply with POTAGA and having nothing left
to pay his retroactive taxes,it's home is confiscated by the Government
and handed over to the Grasshopper in a ceremony covered by NDTV.



Arundhati Roy calls it ' A Triumph of Justice'.

Lalu calls it 'Socialistic Justice '.

CPM calls it the ' Revolutionary Resurgence of the Downtrodden '

Koffi Annan invites the Grasshopper to address the UN General Assembly.




Many years later...

The Ant has since migrated to the US and set up a multi-billion dollar
company in Silicon Valley,


100s of Grasshoppers still die of starvation despite reservation somewhere
in India,


.
..AND




As a result of loosing lot of hard working Ants and feeding the
grasshoppers,
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
India is still a developing country…!!!

Self Confidence

Do you want to see India as a developed country and not developing country? Did you ever feel that Westerners should wait in queues for getting Indian visa? Can this be possible?

Yes, it is possible but not right away!! There are lot of things that need to change in India and among Indians and one of the most important things is to have confidence in ourselves and we should try to encourage ourselves instead of mocking at ourselves all the time. We need to believe that we are capable of doing something that nobody in this world can do.

We always think that the best things in the world are done by anyone but India. We always mock at someone who really tries to do something out of the ordinary. We always discourage them saying we can never match something done by others. Even if somebody achieves something great, we will be waiting for his next failure so that we can bring his success down saying it was a flash in the pan.

Recently India won the T20 world cup. We were all ecstatic. The media carried the team on their shoulders and showered all the laurels. 2 months later, the same team lost a test match miserably. That happens to any team and it is part of every sport. The next day in the news, I saw people questioning the world cup win. People had all sorts of doubts about the world cup win. Someone thought that it was fixed. Someone said we are back to our roots. This is what we are anyways.

This attitude of ours has been very well shown in the movie "Chak De India". Remember those scenes during the world cup where there is a commentator doing the commentary during the matches. He says "Ek baar phir bharat ki sharmnaak haar". Next time you see this movie, count how many times he says this. There is not a single positive thing he says about Indian players. if you look at the commentators from other countries, you will never see them discouraging their team even when they have lost miserably. We should always encourage ourselves. There should be positive critisism but never writing somebody off.

We need to have confidence in ourselves, have positive attitude, encourage ourselves and we should compete at the global level. These would be the first steps towards becoming a developed nation. As always I welcome your comments and suggestions.

Love Story 2050

Yesterday I saw this movie Love Story 2050. It is a flop movie and deserves to be like that. The story is not that entertaining and has a tacky ending. We were subjected to some amateur acting from the hero mostly and sometimes from Priyanka chopra too.

But I would still want to applaud this film for one thing. The special effects in the second half where they show the futuristic Mumbai in 2050 (Though I still think Mumbai will not be like what they showed in the movie by 2050).

For the people who watch a lot of english movies, they would say the special effects are a direct ripoff from movies like Fifth element, iRobot, Star wars etc. But what I say is it is easy to copy or ripoff a story or a scene. You just translate the story and the dialogues and ask your actors to say the same thing and do the same thing. But when you ripoff the special effects, you actually have to redo it. It is not as simple as saying the dialogue.

And I think this must be the first Indian futuristic movie (I have not seen Aditya 360) with such good use of special effects and I am happy that our films have begun to explore the unchartered territories and are producing movies using the technologies comparable to international standards.

Agreed that the special effects were copied and the writer did not use his creativity to create original effects. But this is a beginning. Maybe tomorrow we will create our own effects. Because till now nobody made films with the futuristic theme, now that somebody has ventured, there will be more directors taking on this subject and then slowly originality will start. Recently I saw the promos of Drona. The special effects are awesome in that movie. Even there I saw a resemblance to the movie Mummy in one of the special effects but as I said above, it is a start. I am glad at least we are thinking in that direction.

Film industry's role in changing the society

I always wondered how our films and the film industry has transformed our society, our thinking, our fashion sense. I am actually saying so many things in this post. Let me talk about it one after the another so that I don't jumble them up.

The biggest change movies have made is in the way women are treated, how much freedom and respect they would/should be given. Back in the olden days women did not have any freedom. People never asked them what they wanted and were forced to do whatever the man tells her to do. Same was the case in the film industry. Heroines never had that importance and respect. Then slowly things started to change in the film industry and a lot of actresses started emerging as strong people demanding for their freedom, their respect and slowly we saw the same change happening in our society too.

By 1980s actresses had already got some of their freedom and respect they wanted, but still there were some problems. Like an actress who was married was no longer in demand. Same was the case with actors too. That is why Aamir Khan hid the fact that he was married for a long time until he became a star. That is why actors used to have the secret affairs. And it was an unwritten rule that the actress would stop working after getting married and would turn into a house wife.

After marriage if the boy or a girl said "oh! that actor or actress is hot", it was considered a sin and the husband or the wife could not take it. Not just in film industry but in our society too. Now things are changed. People like shah rukh, Hrithik, Abhishek got married when they just had a few hits and they are still popular. Gone are the days when the actor loses his stock because he is married and no longer desired. Same is the case with actresses. Kajol, Madhuri, Aishwarya got married when they were at the peak of the career. And even after their marriage they are still working. They are still doing the kissing scenes, they are still baring their body out and they still have fans.

This, I would call freedom, broad mindedness, maturity. Now how does this link to our society? our lives? Previously a girl was married off as soon as she turned 21 or 22. Today girls go for higher studies, work for some time and then get married. Even after the wedding, she continues to work and still can say to her husband "Hrithik is hot!!" and can handle "oh! Aishwarya is too hot!!" answer from her husband (I hope they can:)).

I think I do not have to say anything about the fashion influence that films have had on our society. All the make up parlors have been striving because of films. Every girl wants to look like her favorite star, dress like her, walk and talk like her. But it has had a positive outcome too. In the olden days it was not a familiar sight for a woman to wear designer trendy even short dresses and walk on the road. Today it is possible.

Movies have also changed the minds and mindsets of people through their subjects. After Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge movie got released, I saw many youngsters who did not choose the option of eloping and decided to stay patient and convince the parents before getting married. Thanks to a lot of other movies parents have begun to think about asking for kids opinion on some important matters instead of forcing their thinking on them. Look at the influence Rang De Basanthi and Lage Raho Munnabhai had on lot of people.

I think our society is now more broad minded, mature and open and I feel I am lucky to be living in these times. I have seen the society evolve in front of my eyes and would like to see it evolve even more and I know movies and movie stars would play a major role in this evolution.

How does AR Rahman create music

I am a big AR Rahman fan. He is more than a mere favorite music composer. I always wanted to know how he composes music, how he comes up with the tune, how he mixes it with such breathtaking music. I found this website called rahmaniac where someone has spent time with Rahman and talked in detail as to how he composes his music. Here is the link:

http://rahmaniac.wordpress.com/2008/06/28/how-a-r-rahman-composes-a-tune-for-his-film/

Luck

Of late I have been seeing a lot of promotion for the movie " Kismet Konnection " and the actors are asked how much they believe in Kismat and also people are debating on this issue. I had some thoughts on this subject and I thought I should chime in. I believe in luck. I think there is an external force which comes into play in some situations and you get surprised as to how some things worked or did not work for you.

There are many instances where luck has played an important part in my life and I feel it is because of luck and divine intervention. I do not know how to separate these two. For instance during my engineering days, I did not write one of my exams well and I thought I would surely fail. I came home and felt something should happen and this exam should be cancelled. The same evening I heard in the news that the paper had been leaked and this exam will be conducted again.

Another instance is when I went for my visa. The interviewer was not happy with any of my answers. He said I do not have good scores, he was not happy with my answers about funding and I had almost resigned that my visa would be rejected and suddenly he said " I am granting you visa " . I was shocked. I felt like asking " Why are you giving me the visa? " . I do not know if I should call this divine intervention or pure luck.

Having said all this, I still would not say that you should leave everything to luck and stop making your efforts. You need to do all that is required to do to reach your goal but sometimes inspite of all your efforts, you need that last push. I think that is where luck or divine intervention comes in.

What happened in the previous occasions was I made all my efforts. But after a point it was not in my hands and some external force had to push me or help and it did. I will always be indebted to the almighty for helping me when I needed the most.

Reality Shows

Recently I read on the news that a girl got a paralysis attack after she participated in a reality show and the judges scolded her so much that she could not take it. She got a paralysis attack.

Reality shows have been borrowed from the US television and there are indian version of American Idol, music talent shows. In these reality shows in America, the judges say very mean things to the contestants when they don ' t like their performance. That is in their culture and the Americans take it in their stride and do not take it to heart. Even then it is not correct to say such mean things, you can say " Ok I did not like it, you can go " . But they do.

When our Indians copied these reality shows, they copied it frame to frame including their attitude. In our Indian culture, we do not talk so mean in the face. It has been like that always. Take for instance Sa Re Ga Ma Pa show when Sonu Nigam used to host it. It used to be called Talent Hunt show. Unfortunately it is called a Reality show now.

Anyways even then some participants used to sing very bad. But neither the judges nor the host said any thing mean. They always used to encourage the contestants. Now see what happens in that show. The judges themselves fight and say mean things about other judges and other contestants belonging to another judge ' s group.

Another example is MTV Roadies. I hate that show. People say a lot of mean things. All of this is simply aping the west. Americans are not as sensitive and emotional as we Indians. So even if you say the most mean thing, they will not take it to heart. But we Indians are emotional and sensitive. And I would call it our STRENGTH. But as we are always accustomed to aping the west and our affinity to anything foreign, we have learnt to be so mean that we hurt the other person.

I spoke to some of the Americans here and they say Indians are aping America completely and we should not lose some things which define India and Indians. We should only take the good things from the west and not copy everything without thinking.

Hello everyone

Welcome to my blog.In the past people used to write diaries (people still do) but now people do blogging which is the public version of the diary. I admire this medium where you can post your thoughts and people can contribute and pass comments.

I have been blogging on Orkut. But there it does not have the capability of people contributing to it and some of the basic things are missing. So I thought I should move to this site. I would move all my postings from Orkut to here and if anyone has any comments, do make them.

I wish to put in my thoughts about any incident or event or topics which are of significance to me. Also I would like to comment on some of the recent movies that I saw which made me think or have an opinion about it. I also would like to talk about technology.

I would encourage everyone to blog as it gives you a medium to express yourself.

I have one request to the visitors. Please do not use my blog to advertise your websites, products or anything. I would like to keep this as private as possible.