ExpertDabbler

Watched Thavamai Thavamirindhu today.
The feeling it evoked cannot be described in words.
In some scenes i could not believe that this is after all a movie - a form of entertainment and its all performed by professional actors and technicians.

I felt something similar when i read Eric Segal’s ‘Love Story’.
Sure there are some flaws if you are keen to find.
But then this is not a movie. Its an experience. An extraordinary experience.

I am not a party goer. I prefer to have my own private moments and
I could not have asked for a better New Year eve.

Wish you all a fabulous New Year 2006

This is yet another tragedy. Only that this terrorism has metastasized from JK to Bangalore. How far is chennai from bangalore?

Just how safe are we in our own country from foreign attacks? We are happily starting bus transports and sending our cricket team to Pakistan.

We’re seeing it from 93 bomb blasts in Mumbai to Kandahar to the latest IISc. Our politicans hardly learn from the past mistakes. There were reports a few months back that terrorists had crossed the borders during the pakistan earthquake. We are seeing the proof of it now.

I dont want to blast at human rights activists as some people do. Its their job to crib about all that. We know power and authority corrupts and absolute power and authority corrupts absolutely. But its still the state’s job to protect us.

I think its high time the powers that be learn a lesson or two from the terrorism of Punjab and how things are brought to normal there.I have a lot to crib about Israel but their counter terrorism operations is something we need to emulate.

Some of my views in this might make others feel i am right wing. So be it. Yeah i may not be a devout Hindu but it looks like some religous fundamentalist outfits will not stop until they either kill me or forcibly change my religion or my children’s religion. And no, i dont want that to happen.

And in the midst of all this, we the majority community in this country are using blogger for all heated debates on caste. *Sigh*

The last post and some comments prompted me to browse the net on some of the community based sites.

Each particular community has N number of sub castes which one claiming superiority over the others, just like one community claiming superior over other community. But invariably most of them are listed in the backward community lists in TN Govt. notification:)

And also its like if one community person married a person of different community, there arises a third community

A community which has borne the brunt of caste discrimination in yesteryears at some point in time practises the same discrimination on other lower placed community over the years whe it gains the upper hand in a particular region
More than the community based stereotypes, i think this has got to do more with the psychology of a community who finds itself in a position of strength and power.

The one parallel i can think of is the Stanford Prison Experiment which betrays the human tendency to commit any grave crime when in a position of power and authority.

It looks like reasearching on communities/origins, their political standpoints and hypocrisies of the past is like digging a graveyard. what you get then is not exactly pleasant smelling. After all, corpses smell bad no matter which community it belonged to.

Vatsan has written about THAMBRAAS and reservation issue.

I know i have 144ed myself from this topic but felt like writing some parts which i have not written before in my blog. So i thought let me break my own 144 and post it here for once.

I personally think reservation is the most destructive thing that could’ve happened to the Contemporary Indian society.

Those who have the time and effort should go and find out the number of backward castes in the 40-50s and now. They would realise that the number of communities in the backward category has actually swelled over the years.

Those in the forward community has successfully been able to get declared as backward and those in the backward has moved to Most Backward.

Vazhga reservation!!

But I hate reservation for an entirely different reason. Assume you have two children, say identical twins for convenience sake, tell X that he is strong and so can run for 10 minutes, tell the other Y that since he is weak its enough he runs for only 5 minutes. Chances are, in the course of time X will be really strong and can endure enough and Y will be relatively weaker.

So psychologically, by expecting lesser performance from backward communities, we are crippling them in their psyche. Its just another way of saying ‘you are inferior’.

The best way to bring equality is by affirming in their minds that all are capable and equal. So long as this belief is not instilled, reservation policy will defeat the very purpose of its creation. What people from backward classes and backward areas need is some support in terms of information, guidance not some quota of seats. All backward community guys would do well to realise about something called 4 minute mile barrier. Its toughest when you are doing something for the first time among your community circles. Like say getting into IIT in merit.
After that it just becomes a routine.

Vatsan has mentioned “he knows he cant compete against the superior intelligence of the Brahmin and the Forward communities”

This is classic case of conditioning.

What about children where one of the parent is a brahmin and the other non-brahmin? Half-intelligent and half-dumb is it?

For starters, the word intelligence will connote a wider meaning than getting good grades by mugging. There is a lot of research going on in the areas of cognitive psychology. Those who have time can search for one Howard Gardner and his concept of Multiple Intelligence.

According to this concept, Intelligence can be classified into

Visual/Spatial Intelligence
Verbal/Linguistic Intelligence
Logical/Mathematical Intelligence
Bodily/Kinesthetic Intelligence
Musical/Rhythmic Intelligence
Interpersonal Intelligence
Intrapersonal Intelligence

Going by this theory, if Ramanujamwas a genius, so was Mahatma Gandhi or Ilayaraja or Michael Jordan.

If there is one aspect where forward community guys score, it’s in the network in the collective information they have. For eg. I never knew about one NID when I was in twelfth. But my brahmin friend did. This is because his someone’s someone’s someone had done a course there. Whereas my someone’s someone’s someone’s was invariably running a jewellery shop in madurai and thought that was the coolest thing on earth. This can be easily traced to one’s ancestors having an advantage in terms of education.

Now what with google, even some idiot in chennai (me) can talk about Howard Gardner. So that gap is fast closing down.

Regarding reservations for Brahmins…When I am dead against the concept of reservation, the question of reservation for Brahmins do not arise.

More than anything if this THAMBRAAS will put up a united face and put an end to all the brahmin bashing happening in all the media, I will be very happy. But then as monu has rightly pointed out, there is just too much gossiping and politiking among the brahmin community, not to mention elitism. Anyway its their business and let them do in the manner they deem fit.

Its one of those etc. etc posts.

Book Review:

Read One Night at the call center. I love Chetan Bhagat’s witty natural style of writing and its ssooooo tempting to put this book in the category of Five point Someone. In fact the book is almost as good as FPS(Five Point Someone).

But the God, The social awakening message about call center, the filmi romance especially at the end makes it a notch or two below FPS. But those who touch this one looking for that characteristic Chetan Bhagat wit and humour, he’s in full form as usual:)

Article:

This article from Scott berkun was really brilliant and the best part is you don’t have to be a techie or designer to relate to this. We all go through what Scott goes through but just that we are not in a position to quit our day job as Scott did:)

Request:
I have a request to all my friends who have a digital camera.

One of the main headaches for any graphic designer is the searching of appropriate images to use in their designs. For eg, the theme would be “Represent Financial Services”. For that we would be hunting the web for an appropriate dollar image or someone reading the stock index in a business newspaper.

There are several popular websites on a search basis but the catch is that they are all copyrighted material and purchasing sometimes might cost a few hundred dollars.

My request to all those digicam owners is to shoot as many pics as possible on a particular theme and post it in some online portals like http://www.istockphoto.com. www.Istockphoto.com usually comes with an image for 1Dollar, but you can also post images for free. There are also several such free image portals, only that the quality is not that great when compared to commercial images. All this would change
and its all in our hands. If open source software can give commerical software a run for its money, why not community driven free images?

This would be of much use to the design community.

http://in.rediff.com/money/2005/dec/26bspec.htm

http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html

http://www.charityfocus.org

http://ugkrishnamurti.org

http://www.gladwell.com/2005/2005_10_10_a_admissions.html

If only you tried any of these sites, you wont regret it:)

–> click here for Minbimbangal update

There lived a “poor” lady P. Her area too was inundated as was almost every area in the city in the recent rains. But she was not personally affected. No floods entered her home. The Chief Minister of the state, announced flood relief of Rs.2000, a saree and dhoti to all the poor who had been badly affected because of floods.

This “poor” lady promptly took out her ration card, ordered her maid servant to stand in Q in the ration shop, got her token and on day 1 of relief disbursement, got her quota of Rs. 2000, saree and dhoti.

In a guesture of true magnanimity, she gives the low priced saree and dhoti to maid servant and pockets the 2000 bucks which the government had given.

Blame it on my naiveté. I had all along thought that Rs.2000 was a consolation amount given by the Government to all those who had lost whatever precious little they had in the floods.

I also came to know this is not a one-off incident.

All this raises a question. What kind of a society are we? Is this the kind of values we want the next generation to practice?

I just don’t know.

India remains a poor and developing country because of the beggar mindset of even some of the rich people.

As a man thinketh.

Sardar Patel Award for National Integration - Kiran More.

And the mega serial continues. One suggestion, the selectors can also think about recalling Sunil Gavaskar, Mohinder Amarnath, Kapil Dev and even Ajit Wadekar based on their “experience”
–> click here for Minbimbangal update

After exactly 1.5 million years, my photo blog gets updated
Well, today i got a chance to freak out with my camera and i landed up in Chennayil Thiruvayaru concert in Kamarajar Hall where “Ghatam” Karthik and his group were in full flow. Since it was morning there was not much of a crowd which suited me very well. They charge 50 bucks for a 2 hour concert.

I waw listening to a live classical concert after a long time and thoroughly enjoyed it. The tempo was perfect with all the standard ingredients of a classical renditon -a brief “aalapanai” right upto “thani”. But my purpose was to listen to the concert and also click some photos. I’m not too knowledgeable in classical music.

Today was also the first time i shot with my Nikon 70-300mm zoom which i bought recently. Overall, i was satisfied with the lens. The color rendition was good. I was hearing mixed reviews about this particular lens since this is more of a budget lens and not really premium segment. A typical paisa vasool lens. This alone cost me 130 USD. The lens behaved very well except at the maxium focal length where it kind of soft. This was mentioned in all the reviews and was true too.

The photos were taken pretty much from one side of the auditorium as i did not want to move about here and there and disturb the performers on stage.

I have uploaded some photos. Special mention has to be made about one cute superstar whose name i really don’t know:) This cute fellow should be about 3 years of age. He was curious about my camera. A kid is a delight for every photographer and so i decided to photograph him. On which he kept raising his right index finger even as i started clicking. I initially thought he was asking for one more photograph and went ahead but the finger raising never stopped, then decided it was for ‘moocha’ and started searching for his mom. His mom comes all smiling from behind and then casually told me, “No, he wants your camera!!!”

There was this other boy who was a bit older, he came straight up to me and strangely addressed me ‘Sir’. “Sir, enna oru photo edunga” was his order:).

When i agreed smilingly, he immediately came back with his friend and said “Enga edukalaam?”. I asked him to come near me and sit as those seats were vacant.

He sat and i clicked. When he saw the results the addressing immediately changed to “Anna, Photo nalla vandhirukku, thanks Anna”

Idhu enna logic?
To sum it up a very worthwhile experience - music wise and photography wise. As usual i avoided flash except for subdued flash one shot of the kid. The ISO setting in digital SLRs is a big boon for available light enthusiasts like me.

Planning to do more of this in the days to come.

And last but not the least, this update is dedicated to Jo Chetta for enquiring about my photo blog time and again