Democratic Will

Firstly my heart felt condolenses to Benazir Bhutto, she was a very charismatic leader and she dint deserve to die this way.

There are some interesting turns in Pakistan politics in the past few days, and i couldnt stop but comment on what Democracy actually means in Pakistan (and India). If the people really wanted Democracy how can the Peoples party folks accept a "will" left by Benazir, I am not sure if PPP is Benazir's property that she can leave it behind and dictate on who she wants to be the Chairman and Co-Chairman?

This is nothing new in sub-continent, when Indira gandhi was shot dead Rajiv gandhi immediately became the Prime Minister, the same thing can be contributed here - but I guess the Indians are little smarter, they dont show this as part of the will left by Indira gandhi, but let the MPs select Rajiv.

The general public gets so much carried away by the charisma of these leaders that they forget their right to elect a candidate based on his credentials and just fall into the trap by choosing the kith and kin of the slained leader - this is very unfortunate.

Anywise, hopefully the new year will bring us more cheers and less killings - Here is wishing all you folks a peaceful and a happy new year.

Yet another loss to Aussies...

Yet another loss and more despair for the men in the blue. The ball was turning well and we did have some wickets in the early part of the innings, but too many dropped catches meant that the scoreboard showed 317 instead of something like 250-260.

It just shows how the Aussies can punish you for the small mistakes you make. The Indians have been talking a lot this seris, i dont have a problem with that but you need to perform on the field too, its not as though these players are like politicians who can get away with the talk, you need to walk the walk too and its been very very disappointing looking the Indians loose time and again to the Aussies.

Ahhhhh i dont want to watch another match for sometime......

Happy Days!!!

What a movie. Having seen the earlier movies from Sekhar Kammula, my expectations were way to high for this movie. After a long time booked tickets for this movie 3 days in advance, do not know if I ever did that for any other movie, and the movie has not disappointed me, it was a very good and neat movie.

I may be a little biased here being CBIT alumni and the complete movie is shot in and around CBIT. Apart from Kamilini Mukherjee who plays a guest role everyone in the movie seems to be debutants and they performed like pros. Sekhar needs a big round of applause here for making a movie that takes everyone back to their college days and makes you feel good. There are several scenes in the movie where you can relate to your college, I am suddenly missing all my CBIT friends.

Folks, I would highly recommend this movie to every college goer, if you are from CBIT, this one makes you proud and you feel great that Sekhar is CBIT alumni :)

Sledging

Looking at the Indian teams body language during the T20 world cup was great and they simply played fearless cricket, its was very evident that if you play fearless cricket you can win. Bangaldesh did it to South Africa and Australia, Indian batsmen being more talented than the Bangladeshies they may win more with these strong teams.

The problem with the Indians in this present series against Australia is that they are trying to beat the Aussies in their own game, which may work sometimes and may not work lot of times. You play with your stregth, get motivated with all the sledging and show what you are capable of aka Yuvraj Singh hitting Chris Broad for 6 sixers, that may not happen all the time but we need to show courage and stand up against them.'

Instead of that we are just taking the sledging a little further and we Indians show lot of emotion and let the aussies get on top of us. I hope better sense prevails and we get on top of the Aussies.

The big guns also need to fire, if they dont we should just drop them and go with the young folks, they have performed and they should be given a chance, its ok if they loose some games, they would gain confidence. Meanwhile the seniors should concentrate on the test matches - we have never won a series in Australia - infact i think we have won just 2 test matches in Australia, maybe we should work more on that :)

Nothing personal about it

I like you and we all love you, but you will have to go as thats what company wants it, again nothing personal about it, its not about yourself so much but its about company's priorities. Well so many times some cool management folks would have talked these sentences, but folks its not personal to the guy saying it, but the one taking it you bet its personal.

There is a fine line, sometimes the sentense does makes sense when someone is critisizing the professional part of something and letting the other guy know that he is ok with him but not his work - so maybe it makes some sense there but somehow my feeling is it doesnt make sense in lot of other places.

Anywise, i guess pepsi folks used it well when they were not the official sponsores for some cricket tournament, they came up with the slogan "Nothing official about it" :)

India is the T20 World Champion

Whewwwwww what a match, this was one exciting finale. In the last 7-8 years there was Australia in every final of the world cup and their agression made sure that the final was always a one sided affar.

After a long time India and Pakistan, two most unlikely teams with not so good fielding records have made it to the 20-20 final. I was feeling a little let down with India's batting today and thought 156 was never going to be enough. But hatts off to the captaincy of Dhoni and some gutsy bowling from Irfan and RP, they set the match very well for India.

The myth that Indian cricket doesnt exist without Tendulkar, Dravid and Ganguly will just need to remain that..a myth. The youngsters have shown how the exuberance of youth can win matches for India. If the trio was there in the semi final they would have choked at the sight of the mightly aussies, but this team was just different they fought and fought till the end.

I always felt if we needed to be World Champions then we need to beat teams like Australia and South Africa regularly, and my word what have our boys done they went onto beat England, South Africa, Australia and Pakistan - a truly world class performance :))

Now for a small secret, I have let go of my train tkts to Blore and booked the flight tickets for the next morning to see the match........shhhhhhhhhhhhhhh its a secret, jut keep it to yourself!!! The extra fare for the flight is worth every rupee (and more) as India gave a memorable day to cherish. Never dreamt i could see a world cup final where India will win and way to go Dhoni we all owe you one :)

Working from Hyderabad this week

This week I am working out of Hyderabad, its very convenient to work out of Hyderabad and spending some quality time with parents. Somehow this time around the work has been more hectic and I am not really getting any time to do something else apart from sitting before my laptop.

WFH sometimes is not an advantage, when I am in the office I get sometime to go out for coffee or socialize with the team and things are much easier, but when i am working from home i am glued to my laptop for most part of my time.

But one great advantage working from Hyd is cause of my parents, I can happily behave as a kid and everything is taken care of by them, now thats something you do not want to miss :) And if you are in Hyd during Ramzan days - Haleem will make sure you are occupied in the evenings!

Visitors from the US

We have a lot of visitors this week from US so its going to be a hell of a week, the complete motivation for this blog has been lack of sleep :)

Having said that lot of business gets done during this time so I am actually not complaining, I can get stuff thats been hanging fire for a long time out of the way.

Quick Tirupati trip

Felt the urge to go to Tirumala, packed the bags and we set out to Tirumala, there was huge rush and our regular AAD that my FIL arranges couldnt get thru - Majorly due to his efforts we could get another darsanam and felt very blissful :)
You always should plan a trip to Tirumala as if you dont you end up being in a huge line for couple of days and get stuck. But any amount of planning wouldnt be good enough if he doesnt want you there :)

Kodaikanal trip

I needed a break very badly and got it with the August 15th - made it into a long weekend and spent some good time in Kodaikanal. It was a good break and definately eased me from my regular stress, more on it when i have little more time :)

Hyderabad Nawabs

After a long time I have seen a very funny movie - Hyderabad Nawabs was just hilarious, you will need to understand some of the old city slang to enjoy it more, there are parts where there is Telugu, so if you are from Hyderabad you will not have any problem understanding the movie. Parts of the movie may not be suitable for kids, but the overall movie entertains you no end, its a well made movie and i highly recommend it.

The movie is about two taporis who fall in love with a chicken seller and how they do everything in their power to win the chicken sellers daughters. Story is nothing new but its basically situational comedy that has been treated very well. So, if you are stressed out with work this is a best movie to go for :)

Hyderabad Nawabs

After a long time I have seen a very funny movie - Hyderabad Nawabs was just hilarious, you will need to understand some of the old city slang to enjoy it more, there are parts where there is Telugu, so if you are from Hyderabad you will not have any problem understanding the movie. Parts of the movie may not be suitable for kids, but the overall movie entertains you no end, its a well made movie and i highly recommend it.

The movie is about two taporis who fall in love with a chicken seller and how they do everything in their power to win the chicken sellers daughters. Story is nothing new but its basically situational comedy that has been treated very well. So, if you are stressed out with work this is a best movie to go for :)

Whose line is it anyway...

Line has a different meaning in different games, was watching Wimbledon finals a couple of wks back and Federer almost lost the game as he got agitated about the call being wrong, it was barely on the line and the point went in favour of Nadal - so agitated was Federer that he lost the fourth set without any fight.

In cricket the rule of line is totally different, the line belongs to the umpire and the batsmen have to cross the line for a legal run, if they are on the line they can be given out. So many times in cricket matches are decided because the batsmen was just in the crease or just out of it.

So, if you are playing different games makes sure you know that the line is not constant everywhere and things can be different :)

No time...

Things have been rather busy and just not getting enough time to blog, having said that I have always believed that there is nothing called No time for something, its all about time management :)

Anywise, with the appreciation of Re, the software consulting firms looks like want their employees to work for 6 days a week, these consulting companies have become big and they are the most pampered lot of the industry, companies like Wipro,INfy, TCS and Satyam have more than Billion dollars of revenues and TCS has a Billion dollars per annum as their profits and you know what they are exempted from lot of taxes :)

These folks have made a lot of money with Re's weakness and now they will need to take the Re's appreciation also, whats a big deal its plain and simple business proposition.

Indian team without a coach

At last the confusion just took its tool, the BCCI did not want Dav Whatmore and Graham Ford did not want the BCCI. Anywise not sure if we really need a coach also we win only 50% of our games anyways, we can atleast save some public money atleast not having a coach.

So the India team is off to Ireland and England tour to play one day games with Ireland, England and South Africa, there will be 3 tests played against England too.

Hopefully in the tests VVS Laxman will get a chance, he hasnt played any cricket after the south africa tour, if we want him to play well in Australia tour later this year he needs some cricket up his sleeve. Ironically Laxman has never scored a century in England, maybe this would be a good time to do that.

Meanwhile England team has been on a role beating the Windies 3-0, India may give a little more tougher fight, i am not so sure if they can handle the pace of Hoggard, Harmison and Sidebottom(new guy). Panesar really played well against Windies, but I am hoping we will not have much problem with him. Anywise best of luck to the India team, lets hope we have good games :)

Back from Hyderabad

Had a very good break going over to my hometown Hyderabad and spending some quality time with my parents and in-laws. Father's day happened to be part of the plan and even though we feel every day is supposed to be a father's day or a mother's day I prefer my wife Ritu's philosophy and celebrate every day as a festival.

As most of my earlier trips to Hyderabad have been I catch cold and cough as soon as i land in Hyderabad and have to deal with it for a week or so. My sincere thoughts are that there is no straight forward cure for cough and cold, it has to go thru the routine of a week before it goes away...

Coach - Guru

A very successful Director of Engineering at Sun once said introducing himself that he and his managers were like Coaches, werein they are going to see that all the Engineers have what they require but at the end of the day the Engineers are the ones who will have to do Innovation and product development.

If you look at some very successful pupils they would have had gurus who were tough and gave vision and made them work really hard to reach it, they would never give you shortcuts or would never accept anything but the best. Dronacharya, Chanakya, Parashurama are some of the greatest gurus from the mythology that i respect a lot.

So, coming to the Indian cricket team, do we have the guts to listen and digest the truth? We have too many superstars who cannot be obedient disciples as they have a feeling that they are bigger than the game, for them it looks the nation pride comes after their own personal gains.

Greg Chappell was a tough task master, the Chappell brothers are known for their frank opinions, they do not try to manage anyone and thats where Greg failed.

BCCI is the richest cricketing body in the world and I do not know why we should have Honororay posts for a rich club? So, if this mess has to be cleared firstly we will need a strong BCCI being run professionally and accountability needs to exist on every decision that they make, once this happens they can decide who should be the right coach who will get them the results they want with a vision and a tough task master who just sees his goal, thats when we can produce the Arjunas, Chandraguptas or the Sivajis...till then we will just be a mediocre side that will have a win % of 50 even after having 2-3 minnow teams added in the cricketing world :)

Bheja fry

One of the funny movies i have seen for quite sometime, it was very funny and enjoyed every bit of it. Bheja fry can come under the unconventional movie category and its a mix of english and hindi, so we cannot categorize it into one language.
There are rich socialites who get some innocent artists - make fun of them and enjoy their weekends untill they find the main character (sorry do not remember his name) who plays with the rich socialities till the very end...a must see for all the folks who like to have clean fun.

Indian idol

It is amazing how young folks come and sing the way they are singing, i was never a fan of any singing competetion, but for the past few weeks i have really been looking forward to watch this.

Another reason i like this is because of Javed Akhthar, i like this guy, he speaks his mind - doesnt really feel bad to call a spade a spade at the same time never tries to put someone down.

On the other hand Anu Mallik sucks big time, he has always copied and all his stardom is owing to his smart plagiarism and he talks like GOD, for the past couple of days he isnt seen on Indian idol due to some fever and I hope he doesnt have good health till we are done with this season :)

Oscars...

Staying on the topic of movies I do not know why the Indian movie makers are very crazy about oscars. Oscars are not really a benchmark for Indian movies, there is only one category called a Foreign film category and all the different countries and languages in the world compete for that one slot.

The sensibilities and sensitivities of Indian movies may not be something that western audience/judges would understand or appreciate and I dont mean to show any disregard towards oscars, they are a barometer for movies produced in Hollywood and they would remain so.

Maybe the film industry itself is divided and the so called judges are partial towards one group or the other and this may well be the reason for having no respect towards most of the Indian awards.

One more thing that really pains is about the name Bollywood, Tollywood and Kollywood - this is just so very stupid, we should try and be competetive rather than being copycats, by calling our differnt language movie industries this way we are degrading ourselves. We have no dearth of talent and some of the greatest movies and actors come from our country, so folks be proud of it :)

This blog doesnt mean i dont watch english movies, I love movies - movies of all the languages i understand!

sanivaram...

Preety good saturday, started off with some traditional telugu food (chitrannam + bendakaya) home made mirchi bajjis and couple of wonderful telugu movies - Missamma and Godavari.
Missamma is a comedy movie and Godavari is what i call a cool telugu film which is very neat and fun :)

With little introspection i feel that any telugu guy would require is a good movie and great food.

Caption

Well one of my team mates had a caption on the T shirt which read:
"The more i try to know women, the more i like my dog"

Now, I will leave it to your imagination what you would want to infer, but just be careful with the women and the dog :)

Movie with the team

Took the team out for lunch and movie as Navneeth was leaving and this was an outing we planned to say goodbye to him. Went to Tiffany's for food and the movie planned was "Shootout at Lokkandwala".

When you are going in for a Rs 100 non-veg buffet you always have your own suspicion on what you are eating, so i couldnt relish the food for the same reason, the fried chicken was decent and i was happy with it, but when it came to the mutton that was on the menu i wasnt sure if it was mutton or was it beef, as economics makes more sense for that to be the later than the former.

We had time before the movie so i hit upon a music shop to buy some CDs and as luck would have it i found some wonderful combinations in telugu at a very decent price, but the shock came in when i went in to buy Dhoom2 CD, it was way too expensive, i was telling myself i have been hearing the downloaded songs for free and now i become a good citizen and come to buy the CD and its priced at Rs 220, the reason - it has signed autographs of Hrithik, Abhishek, Bipasha, Aishwarya and the other guy. I wanted to test out my newly bought sony music system so i give in and buy it at that price. Now off to the movie....

This movie had 4 stars in some popular english daily, i was expecting a decent movie, there were too many heros when we saw the posters, there was Abhishek who was totally wasted as he just tries to chase some goons and gets killed, do we need a star like Abhishek to do this...dont know..
The movie is nothing but a trash, lot of violence and looked like someone who totally got inspired by all the Ram Gopal Varma underworld flicks and made a collage out of it...

Anywise, if it wasnt for the company of my team, i would have been bored to death!