Thursday, September 27, 2007

On vacation....


I am vacationing on Devadaru mountains aka Himalayas from Sep 28 till Oct 13. I will be trekking to Gangotri, Kedarnath and drive to Badrinath and Yamunotri. I will validate the recent study on melting glaciers at Gangotri. :-)
I will share my experiences after I get back. In the meantime enjoy my time away.


Everything has a price in life....

6 months ago fans and press were very rude and obnoxious towards Dhoni and his team mates when they lost the World Cup.



Six months later now fans and media are in praise of Dhoni and team....


Isn't kindness a basic human value and should it be expressed only during success? Are we guaranteed of success in every effort and should we be ridiculed and punished if met with failure? Is this something Dhoni and teammates must put up with?

Sunday, September 16, 2007

Emails, chats - Lives in the cyber world


Sometimes I tell my friends don't try to snoop and find out everything that is happening in other's life, because you may not be able to sleep after the investigation. I have also asked some of my colleagues if they would feel comfortable to share their email accounts and passwords, some said yes and some said no. I dont know the reason behind the "No", but may be there is a story. Here is a story from NY Times

Mobile phone and emails are the villians.....


Anyway this article was from NY Times....


By BRAD STONE
Published: September 15, 2007

The age-old business of breaking up has taken a decidedly Orwellian turn, with digital evidence like e-mail messages, traces of Web site visits and mobile telephone records now permeating many contentious divorce cases.

Jolene Barten-Bolender says she discovered a tracking device in a wheel well of the family car.
Spurned lovers steal each other’s BlackBerrys. Suspicious spouses hack into each other’s e-mail accounts. They load surveillance software onto the family PC, sometimes discovering shocking infidelities.

Divorce lawyers routinely set out to find every bit of private data about their clients’ adversaries, often hiring investigators with sophisticated digital forensic tools to snoop into household computers.

“In just about every case now, to some extent, there is some electronic evidence,” said Gaetano Ferro, president of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, who also runs seminars on gathering electronic evidence. “It has completely changed our field.”

Privacy advocates have grown increasingly worried that digital tools are giving governments and powerful corporations the ability to peek into peoples’ lives as never before. But the real snoops are often much closer to home.

Google and Yahoo may know everything, but they don’t really care about you,” said Jacalyn F. Barnett, a Manhattan-based divorce lawyer. “No one cares more about the things you do than the person that used to be married to you.”

Most of these stories do not end amicably. This year, a technology consultant from the Philadelphia area, who did not want his name used because he has a teenage son, strongly suspected his wife was having an affair. Instead of confronting her, the husband installed a $49 program called PC Pandora on her computer, a laptop he had purchased.

The program surreptitiously took snapshots of her screen every 15 seconds and e-mailed them to him. Soon he had a comprehensive overview of the sites she visited and the instant messages she was sending. Since the program captured her passwords, the husband was also able to get access to and print all the e-mail messages his wife had received and sent over the previous year.

What he discovered ended his marriage. For 11 months, he said, she had been seeing another man — the parent of one of their son’s classmates at a private school outside Philadelphia. The husband said they were not only arranging meetings but also posting explicit photos of themselves on the Web and soliciting sex with other couples.

The husband, who like others in this article was reached through his lawyer, said the decision to invade his wife’s privacy was not an easy one. “If I were to tell you I have a pure ethical conscience over what I did, I’d be lying,” he said. But he also pointed to companies that have Internet policies giving them the right to read employee e-mail messages. “When you’re in a relationship like a marriage, which is emotional as well as, candidly, a business, I think you can look at it in the same way,” he said.

When considering invading their spouse’s privacy, husbands and wives cite an overriding desire to find out some secret. One woman described sensing last year that her husband, a Manhattan surgeon, was distant and overly obsessed with his BlackBerry.
She drew him a bubble bath on his birthday and then pounced on the device while he was in the tub. In his e-mail messages, she found evidence of an affair with a medical resident, including plans for them to meet that night.

A few weeks later, after the couple had tried to reconcile, the woman gained access to her husband’s America Online account (he had shared his password with her) and found messages from a mortgage company. It turned out he had purchased a $3 million Manhattan condominium, where he intended to continue his liaison.

“Every single time I looked at his e-mail I felt nervous,” the woman said. “But I did anyway because I wanted to know the truth.”

Being on the receiving end of electronic spying can be particularly disturbing. Jolene Barten-Bolender, a 45-year-old mother of three who lives in Dix Hills, N.Y., said that she was recently informed by AOL and Google, on the same day, that the passwords had been changed on two e-mail accounts she was using, suggesting that someone had gained access and was reading her messages. Last year, she discovered a Global Positioning System, or G.P.S., tracking device in a wheel well of the family car.

She suspects her husband of 24 years, whom she is divorcing.
“It makes me feel nauseous and totally violated,” Ms. Barten-Bolender said, speculating that he was trying to find out if she was seeing anyone. “Once anything is written down, you have to know it could be viewed by someone looking to invade or hurt you.”

Ms. Barten-Bolender’s husband and his lawyer declined to discuss her allegations.
Divorce lawyers say their files are filled with cases like these. Three-quarters of the cases of Nancy Chemtob, a divorce lawyer in Manhattan, now involve some kind of electronic communications. She says she routinely asks judges for court orders to seize and copy the hard drives in the computers of her clients’ spouses, particularly if there is an opportunity to glimpse a couple’s full financial picture, or a parent’s suitability to be the custodian of the children.
Lawyers must navigate a complex legal landscape governing the admissibility of this kind of electronic evidence. Different laws define when it is illegal to get access to information stored on a computer in the home, log into someone else’s e-mail account, or listen in on phone calls.
Divorce lawyers say, however, if the computer in question is shared by the whole family, or couples have revealed their passwords to each other, reading a spouse’s e-mail messages and introducing them as evidence in a divorce case is often allowed.

Lynne Z. Gold-Bikin, a Pennsylvania divorce lawyer, describes one client, a man, who believed his wife was engaging in secret online correspondence. He found e-mail messages to a lover in Australia that she had sent from a private AOL account on the family computer. Her lawyer then challenged the use of this evidence in court. Ms. Gold-Bikin’s client won the dispute and an advantageous settlement.

Lawyers say the only communications that are consistently protected in a spouse’s private e-mail account are the messages to and from the lawyers themselves, which are covered by lawyer-client privilege.

Perhaps for this reason, divorce lawyers as a group are among the most pessimistic when it comes to assessing the overall state of privacy in the digital age.

“I do not like to put things on e-mail,” said David Levy, a Chicago divorce lawyer. “There’s no way it’s private. Nothing is fully protected once you hit the send button.”

Ms. Chemtob added, “People have an expectation of privacy that is completely unrealistic.”
James Mulvaney agrees. A private investigator, Mr. Mulvaney now devotes much of his time to poking through the computer records of divorcing spouses, on behalf of divorce lawyers. One of his specialties is retrieving files, like bank records and e-mail messages to secret lovers, that a spouse has tried to delete.

“Every keystroke on your computer is there, forever and ever,” Mr. Mulvaney said.
He had one bit of advice. “The only thing you can truly erase these things with is a specialty Smith & Wesson product,” he said. “Throw your computer into the air and play skeet with it.”

Satham Podathey


Director Vasanth has made earnest efforts to make Satham Podathey, a so called tamil thriller, something that the industry rarely gets to see. There is definitely a social message in this movie since the script is based on a real life incident. But does the movie convey the message in the right tone and at the right time? Does the movie credit or discredit Vasanth? Will it make noise in the box office?

Sh……sh….sh…..

Handling thriller subjects is not new to Vasanth, but he has miserably failed trying to handle too many storylines in a single movie. The narration pattern was not convincing. Predictable plots, too many storylines, immiscible music and script, lack of emotions in a few pivotal characters makes this movie feel amateurish. What happened to the KB DNA in Vasanth?

The story is simple unlike the way it was handled on the screen. It is about an impotent alcoholic married who marries Bhanu without informing her or her family of his condition. Though her family asks her to walk out of the marriage she believes that Ratnavelu too didn't know he was impotent till after their marriage. Bhanu, a women from the old school decides to stay with him and instead adopt a kid. Her suspicion grows when he asks her to return the adopted child and reaches the flash point when she attends the call from “Alcohol anonymous”. Subsequent events and cruelty by her husband brings an end to the marriage.

Bhanu’s brother, Raghav comes in as a walking stick lending support when she is decrepit. Then the usual sympathy wave creeps in the reel. Raghav’s friend, Ravi sympathizes and decides to marry Bhanu. After a few reels of chases romance blooms between the two. When we all thought the grey clouds had all gone by, Rathnavel re-enters their lives. The happy marriage turns awry and leaves viewers gaping.

Painful moments:
1. I always thought blood was thicker than water, but that is not the case with Bhanu’s family. Her mother, father and brother completely failed to emote through out the movie. Bhanu’s brother reacts like a third person when he tries break the news of his sister’s death and when he tries to comfort Ravi after Bhanu’s death.

2. Music and story must always be hand in glove. All Songs except Idhayam Pesukirathey fail to fit in with the script. Background score took away the fizz in the script. Why did Vasanth have to force in so many songs for a movie with a great script?

3. There were a few immiscible moments in the movie. Ravi singing with children in the beginning of the movie, Ravi referring to Banyan organization. Neither Ravi nor the organization seems to get proper mileage from each other. A very shabby screen play.

4. Story telling is an art and you have to be a master in it when you want to take it to the reel. The first hero Rathnavelu is shown in the movie as an alcoholic, but during the six months he lived with Bhanu he never comes home drunk and there is no smell of alcohol in the script. Then suddenly the director plays the “Alcohol anyonmous” card to out him to his wife. Though meal looked great and the aroma was appetizing but when tasted it was a salt less meal.

5. Comedy track was not necessary for this movie. Trying to get Venkat Prabhu for a 2 minute worthless comedy could have been definitely avoided.

6. The logical clues and dots that Ravi connects to trace Bhanu seem very shallow and lack excitement. The old wine in the new bottle doesn’t appeal.
7. The director was not clear about the message that he wanted to convey in his script and when it gets close to bring down the curtains he realizes and hurriedly tries to play the social message of “alcohol ruins lives” and makes a hotch potch of the story.

8. Cinematography was neither great. Some long shots like the Cochin bridge and Santhome Cathedral and some close shots failed to build the element of suspense in the story.

9. Poor editing and logical flaws were present through out the movie.

The first half of the movie was dull, slow and predictable and I was hoping for some Vasanth magic in the second half, which never came. On the way back home, I jogged my memory looking for highlight moments in the movie. I didn’t need more than a few fingers.

Comforting moments: Every cloud has a silver lining.
1. Performance of Prithviraj and Padmapriya definitely is the only reason to keep the audience till the end.
2. Prithviraj’s comedy is like the rain on a summer afternoon.
3. Rathnavel playing the victim card and psychopath card brings some life in the script. But in the movie he is as lost as we are, always guessing and wearing a quizzical look. Is that how psychopaths are supposed to look?
4. Ithayam pesiyathey songs makes you stick to your seat hoping for another breather in the movie.

Was the movie worth for the money?
No way. Audience were restlessly digging into the popcorn tub and gulping Coke to get to intermission and soon after the intermission they were found wiggling in their seats waiting for the movie to end. Definitely there was a powerful script but Vasanth lacked the maturity and finesse in his story telling.

Mr. Vasanth if you want to hold the mantle of KB, you need to shed the sheepish smile and get serious with film making.

Satham podathey (don’t make noise) will make no noise in the box office.
Krishna...Krishna ....Krishna....

Sunday, September 9, 2007

Salvation from torturing Innocent kids?


We continue to live in the dark ages......
Sometimes it makes me wonder, Is America really a nation of sick and demented people?
In a country where people breathe technology and argue science over religion, some are blinded by sectarian fervor. Where is law and what is government doing when minors are thrown on the streets?

I am not talking about Charles Kingsley's "The Water Babies" kind of a fairy tale.

One community in Utah is chasing out teenage boys from their homes. Religious head instructs parents to shoo their kid away for not confirming to the rules of the sect. You can be banished from the house for watching movies, surfing net, but the sect thrives of polygamous relationship. For males salvation is only through polygamous relationship. The head of the sect is serving time in the jail for his sex crimes.

To keep the sect alive and principles intact the sect needs more females than males and hence they are happy to expel males in the family. As a result of being thrown away from home at an early age, life is only a bed of thorns for them. Most of them become school dropouts and some of the boys end up as criminals, drug addicts, and as a result they lose their child hood and go around like a rudderless boat.

Well if you think Indians are much better than Americans hold on your malicious tongue. Haven’t you read about female infanticide? Mothers dumping their newborn girls in dustbins and some of them even feeding their babies with Kallipaal, a kind of poison extracted from cactus. Thomas Friedman’s is right, “The world is flat” and there are Poothnas’ and Chatakasurs’ everywhere. We love creating a world and era of destitutes.

Man has tampered with the ecosystem and now he is tampering with his community and house. If Darwin was around he would come up with a new evolution theory, “Over the years of mankind has evolved to become more intelligent but they still remain to be most dangerous and selfish, sadistic animals on the planet." Animals kill their prey only for food, but mankind kills for their greed. The self perpetuating engine of greed in man will only stop when the last one is left behind on earth.

Some of us have hearts to share our wallets and do check book charity for destitutes, but do we have hearts to stop such cruelty? There are definitely a few things that money can't buy.

If given a choice I would choose to be born in the animal kingdom where off springs get more love and care without expecting anything in return.

Did someone say It is a mad, mad, mad world?

Read more of this article on NYTIME (Free, registration required)

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/09/us/09polygamy.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=all

Saturday, September 8, 2007

Ammuvagiya Naan

Do you recall these lines sung by TMS?

“Yendha kuzhandayum nalla kuzhandai than mannil pirakayile
Avar nallavar aavathum theeyavar aavathum Annai valarpineley”


Ammuvaagiye Naan is a powerful story of a girl growing up in a whore house and challenges she faces when she wiggles out of the cocoon and merge back in the mainstream society.

For no fault of hers Ammu is sold to the lady who runs a brothel house by her drunkard father after her mother’s demise. While rest of the toddlers in her age grow up with dolls and toys Ammu grows up watching new guest come in every hour and to the moan and groan in the house.

The director brilliantly portrays the growing up of Ammu in the first 15 minutes while she patiently waits for her flowering to join the trade.

It is a norm for all members in the whore house to assemble before their guest to be hand picked. The 6 year old asks why she is left alone in the game when her sisters usher their guest to the rooms. The queen bee of Rani Madam (brothel house) says she will be in the game when she grows older. A few of the scenes are chilling to the bone and brain.

Call it the quirk of fate or whatever, the turning point in the story occurs when Gowri Shankar, a writer by profession comes to study the brothel house. He hands picks Ammu from the hive of bees to understand a prostitute for his next novel. At many places the movie reminded me of the book “Memoirs of Melancholy Whores” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. For some lust leads to love and for some love leads to lust, but this story belongs to the first category.

Though Ammu approaches him in the same way she services her clients, but Gowri Shankar does not get physical with her and decides to spend time for the money. In the genre of men who look at women as mere objects of enjoyment, Gowri Shankar stands tall. He carries a lot of sympathy for Ammu which eventually blossoms into love when he sees Ammu’s attitude towards the profession and life.

When asked how she carries no regret or shame, Ammu says she considers flesh trade like any other profession. Since Ammu has never grown up in a home with normal parents she doesn’t seem to understand the concept of husband, marriage and family. When Gowri proposes to Ammu she laughs and dismisses his indecent proposal. Finally he convinces Ammu for a marriage.

Ammu who came across so far in the movie as a slutty character matures to a committed housewife after marriage. Gowri earns a place on the pedestal when he says "I will let you sleep alone and enjoy the peace on the nuptials night. "

But very soon fate or coincidence brings Ammu face to face with her customers from the past. Ammu wiggles like a worm in her skeleton and she turns her eye cavities and ours into lagoon. While Gowri caringly dismisses her past and get the burden off her shoulder blows off the past like the flakes of dandruff. There is no arota of suspicion on Ammu's or her character after marriage and Gowri doesn't shy away from introducing Ammu, an ex-prostitute as her wife even in front of her clients from the days of flesh trade. This reiterates "Every criminal has a bright future and every saint has a dark past." Gowri needs a standing ovation here.

The next hair pin bend in the story happens when Gowri successfully completes his novel on Ammu's life and gets short listed for the National award. While Ammu’s client from the past suddenly appears to be the deciding authority on the jury panel. He asks for a night with Ammu in exchange for the National award for Gowri. Call it the test by providence or the seeds of past karma, both Ammu and Gowri excel in sacrificing their life to make each others dream come true. The high point in the movie comes when Gowri calls her wife to accept the award on his behalf. The hole theatre sheds tears for them. This is a new chapter in their lives and all our lives.

Kudos to
1. Barathi, a new comer successfully executes the Herculean task of metamorphosing Ammu from a child in the first half of the movie to a mature adult in the second half, something that even seasoned actors fail to accomplish. She wins this tight walk rope. The palette of emotions she shows from her little experience in the indsutry definitely wins her a seat in the list of promising stars. A bold theme for a new comer and definitely a break through in her career.
2. Parthiban – It is definitely a milestone in his career. One can see shades of personal experience and industry experience in his character. The pause in his dialogue delivery changes the landscape from comedy to love to sympathy. He shows great sensitivity and sensibility playing a role of a writer, may be his real life experience comes in handy in reel life? Only Parthiban can fit this character.

3. Music – Could have had more depth in the lyrics, but songs on the whole were soothing for the ears and gelled with the story line. The back ground score was perfect to convey the mood changes. Sabash, Sabesh Murali.

4. Director – Debutant director, Padmamagan is bold to take risk with such themes for his first movie. Completely out of the box, bold and sensitive portrayal of women, realism of whorehouse makes this movie earthy and heavy. The contrast in the real world and brothel world brings the best of Ammu, Gowri and Mahadevan. The 2 hour movie packed with realism, crisp and hard hitting dialogues adds to the success apart from cast and crew. We are hopeful that there are a few thinkers and a few more KB's in the make.
My verdict:
This movie is a revolution in TFI (Tamil film Industry) I already see a few Balachandars’ out there and TFI is definitely seeing genre of intellectual movies on controversial subjects such as prostitution, a long haitus after Thapputhalangal and Arangetram. For a change this movie doesn’t portray guilt and shame in the oldest profession but rather shows how women become victims of circumstance and how society and men can be large hearted and open minded to redeem them from the profession and bring them back into the mainstream society.

There are a few slips and cliched scences here and there, but we will ignore them looking at the bigger scheme of success. Though many rolls and reels in the film left us gaping at harsh realities of life, the last few scenes in the movies marooned our corneas and left our cheeks wet. Each of us was busy hiding our curling lips and flowing tears and from our neighbors. My windpipe was chocked, my tongued was tied and I left the hall with a heaving heart. It took me couple of days to get out from the frames of the movie. I only hope more flesh traders and visitors to brothel house watch this movie to understand the themselves better. I hope our menfolk will learn from Gowri Shankar how to treat women with love, care and respect.
My last comment: If you haven't given yourself an opportunity to visit the whorehouse it is okay, it is not a sin, but it is definitely a sin if you don't watch this movie. Don't waste time visiting these links, get your tickets now.

Want to hear from some of the brave soldiers behind the movie? http://videos.oneindia.in/watch/1291/specials-ammuvagiya-naan.html
for more reading on Born into brothels

Friday, September 7, 2007

Mylapore autos and Manhattan Cabbies


What is the striking similarity between Manhattan and Mylapore, Kennedy International Airport and Chennai Central Station? Any guesses? Well it is the same haggle, fleecing passengers, rude behavior, and heated exchanges between the driver and passenger.

There is also another striking similarity between India and NYC. Surprised? The Asian culture of picketing lines, calling for a strike, taking taxies off the road spreads to the streets of NYC. NYC cabbies are no different than our auto guys protest here for fare revision and electronic meters and. They have opposed installation of GPS and provision for credit card transactions in their cabs. The cabs that decided to ply on the roads charged a premium and passengers went on a ride-share basis. Doesn’t this sound like our share auto concept?

Who is supporting and front ending this strike? Well It is an Indian…

“Bhairavi Desai, the executive director of the taxi workers’ alliance, called the job action a “resounding success,” as did Edward F. Ott, the executive director of the New York City Central Labor Council, an A.F.L.-C.I.O. umbrella group for the city’s unions.”

Habits die hard and is this what Thomas Friedman means “ The world is flat”?

Did someone say life is same everywhere?

For detailed reading on this visit: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/06/nyregion/06taxi.html?ref=nyregion&pagewanted=all