i wasn't even shocked when i read that a Rs. 300 crore memorial is going to be built for Dr. YSR Reddy on 1412 hectares of forest land bang in the middle of the Nallamalla forests, which apparently is also adjacent to a tiger reserve. i guess we all have become so used to the sheer ridiculousness of things that probably nothing shocks us any more.
i am not sure how great this man was and there is no point casting apprehensions on a person who now can't even prove them wrong. He was a politician and certainly not the best there has ever been in this country. So i do not understand the need to spend so much money, disturb a wildlife habitat and hurt the environment!!
and i cant even begin to imagine how that 300 crore rupees can be better utilized. if somebody still wants to 'immortalize' the man, they could probably start a good welfare scheme and name it after him. India needs education and food and not memorials, statues and concrete parks.
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Saturday, September 26, 2009
indian bowling attack
i'm watching the build up to the champions trophy match between India and Pak. Too bad that sehwag and yuraj aren't playing today. but even among the players available, i am not sure we have been making the best choices. RP has not been doing great in the past few matches and so i feel we should have gone for Praveen Kumar. he is underrated as a bowler. he is a street smart cricketer and gives his best all the time.
interesting to see who will lead this team if god forbid dhoni dint play. there is no yuvraj the designated deputy, shewag isnt there too. Bhajji? i doubt. My best guess would be dravid!
anyways, the match has started now...happy viewing and hope we do well...
interesting to see who will lead this team if god forbid dhoni dint play. there is no yuvraj the designated deputy, shewag isnt there too. Bhajji? i doubt. My best guess would be dravid!
anyways, the match has started now...happy viewing and hope we do well...
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Lagaan - Blast to the past
on a lazy sunday evening, bored with the internet i was channel hopping on TV and happened to stumble upon the movie "Lagaan" playing on one of the channels and i caught on. Ofcourse I have watched it many times before but guess thats the point i am trying to make.
Anyways, I got watching and thats when i began thinking that this is such a good movie!! And also the great work Aamir had done first acting in it and then also believing in it enough to produce it himself, which also got me thinking about his contribution to modern day hindi cinema through movies like this, Taare Zameen Par etc. Guess that can be a topic in itself for another day.
So yeah Lagaan - it is a nice heart warming story, set in this pre-independent village in India with its own charm. The accentuated language, the typical "issues" some of which are prevalent even today - like untouchability etc, the movie also i think has a great look and A R Rahman's music is out of the world. And the theme of the story itself - the story of hope and winning against odds. I personally am a sucker for under dog triumphs and thats the biggest reason i love this movie. And to add all this, this is one of the very rare instances of India's two greatest passions - bollywood and cricket combining so beautifully and successfully. This was released in June 2001 by the way, and I am sure quite a few of you will relate to watching it in theaters as students with ur college gang and having a ball when the match begins!! I also googled for the reviews the movie got when it released (before it became such a huge hit) and none of them seem to have anticipated the impact that this one would go on to have. Some reviews even ridiculed it on quite a few factors. But boy, did they have to eat their words!!!!
At close to 4 hrs it is awfully long though, which doesn't seem to go well with me these days due to apparent lack of patience to sit through 5 hrs (including the ads on TV). Lets see how much of it i will catch today, but this one sure goes into my collections!
PS: Man, been so long since i blogged, i sure need some discipline in my life!!! guess will try writing short pieces from now on, till i really build some patience to write long posts.
Anyways, I got watching and thats when i began thinking that this is such a good movie!! And also the great work Aamir had done first acting in it and then also believing in it enough to produce it himself, which also got me thinking about his contribution to modern day hindi cinema through movies like this, Taare Zameen Par etc. Guess that can be a topic in itself for another day.
So yeah Lagaan - it is a nice heart warming story, set in this pre-independent village in India with its own charm. The accentuated language, the typical "issues" some of which are prevalent even today - like untouchability etc, the movie also i think has a great look and A R Rahman's music is out of the world. And the theme of the story itself - the story of hope and winning against odds. I personally am a sucker for under dog triumphs and thats the biggest reason i love this movie. And to add all this, this is one of the very rare instances of India's two greatest passions - bollywood and cricket combining so beautifully and successfully. This was released in June 2001 by the way, and I am sure quite a few of you will relate to watching it in theaters as students with ur college gang and having a ball when the match begins!! I also googled for the reviews the movie got when it released (before it became such a huge hit) and none of them seem to have anticipated the impact that this one would go on to have. Some reviews even ridiculed it on quite a few factors. But boy, did they have to eat their words!!!!
At close to 4 hrs it is awfully long though, which doesn't seem to go well with me these days due to apparent lack of patience to sit through 5 hrs (including the ads on TV). Lets see how much of it i will catch today, but this one sure goes into my collections!
PS: Man, been so long since i blogged, i sure need some discipline in my life!!! guess will try writing short pieces from now on, till i really build some patience to write long posts.
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Rendezvous with the past
does it some times happen with you that more than one totally unplanned things happen around the same time all of them still related to one common thing?!
ok lemme explain...about 2-3 days back, i some how suddenly got this urge to watch "Rockford", the Nagesh Kuknoor movie. I have been wanting to watch it for quite some time, because it is about this kid in a residential school. A setting familiar to me, courtesy my own 7-year stint in a Sainik School. Finally now i decided to act, managed to get hold of the movie and watched it. The movie itself was just about OK, those were early days for Nagesh, so technically it was not all that great but you could still see these little heart warming moments that you often come to assocaite with his movies. And yes, I could relate to quite a few things in the movie and it was a nice little trip down memory lane.
About a couple of days later, i was driving some where on a lazy weekend and i get a call from this friend from my school with whom i have been in touch on and off. He tells me that there is a school old boys' meet happening in bangalore that same day and he has been co-ordinatng with some 7-8 other guys who will all be coming and asks me to come too. That was a pleasant surprise to me and I instinctively decided to go. 3-4 such meets happen every year and it has been 10 years since i left school. For various reasons and sometimes for no reason I had not been to a single meet till now!!!!
So i reached the venue of the meet, Officer's mess at DRDO township in Bangalore. I was the first of my batchmates to be there and started searching for familiar faces in the decent crowd that had gathered there. Cellphones anyway have made life easier these days, so i gave up on the search and called up my friend and he said they were still on the way. "Come on guys, we are from a Sainik School!! Punctuality is supposed to be ingrained in us from the time we were 10 yrs old, sometimes by well meaning teachers and at other by screaming, cane wielding army men!", I said to myself. Some more roaming around and I finally found a couple of faces i could recognise, one was a bathcmate and another a junior. And others started trcikling in. Thats when i really started to go back into the past. Majority of my batchmates who came there were from my house - Chalukya House! Sid was there (he is Major. Siddarth now), Kitty, Mallan, Anand then there were Tuffy, Chacha, Mahesh - one batch juniors from my house again!!
Ah it had been 10 years since i had seen any of these people. And these were the people who had a role in making me what I am today. I spent probably the most important 7 years of my life with these guys all the time - 24X7!! These people know some of the most embarassing things about you that u probably did as a 10 yr old kid!!! There was a function going on there, but we went out, and remembered some very fond memories of the good old days - about other friends, teachers, hostel superintendents and house masters, seniors and juniors, school routines, the old slang...man it was fun!!!
It indeed was an evening very well spent and took away some refreshed memories from there...and i couldnt stop smiling all the way on my drive back home...guess old memories tend to do that to you!!
cheers,
chandru
ok lemme explain...about 2-3 days back, i some how suddenly got this urge to watch "Rockford", the Nagesh Kuknoor movie. I have been wanting to watch it for quite some time, because it is about this kid in a residential school. A setting familiar to me, courtesy my own 7-year stint in a Sainik School. Finally now i decided to act, managed to get hold of the movie and watched it. The movie itself was just about OK, those were early days for Nagesh, so technically it was not all that great but you could still see these little heart warming moments that you often come to assocaite with his movies. And yes, I could relate to quite a few things in the movie and it was a nice little trip down memory lane.
About a couple of days later, i was driving some where on a lazy weekend and i get a call from this friend from my school with whom i have been in touch on and off. He tells me that there is a school old boys' meet happening in bangalore that same day and he has been co-ordinatng with some 7-8 other guys who will all be coming and asks me to come too. That was a pleasant surprise to me and I instinctively decided to go. 3-4 such meets happen every year and it has been 10 years since i left school. For various reasons and sometimes for no reason I had not been to a single meet till now!!!!
So i reached the venue of the meet, Officer's mess at DRDO township in Bangalore. I was the first of my batchmates to be there and started searching for familiar faces in the decent crowd that had gathered there. Cellphones anyway have made life easier these days, so i gave up on the search and called up my friend and he said they were still on the way. "Come on guys, we are from a Sainik School!! Punctuality is supposed to be ingrained in us from the time we were 10 yrs old, sometimes by well meaning teachers and at other by screaming, cane wielding army men!", I said to myself. Some more roaming around and I finally found a couple of faces i could recognise, one was a bathcmate and another a junior. And others started trcikling in. Thats when i really started to go back into the past. Majority of my batchmates who came there were from my house - Chalukya House! Sid was there (he is Major. Siddarth now), Kitty, Mallan, Anand then there were Tuffy, Chacha, Mahesh - one batch juniors from my house again!!
Ah it had been 10 years since i had seen any of these people. And these were the people who had a role in making me what I am today. I spent probably the most important 7 years of my life with these guys all the time - 24X7!! These people know some of the most embarassing things about you that u probably did as a 10 yr old kid!!! There was a function going on there, but we went out, and remembered some very fond memories of the good old days - about other friends, teachers, hostel superintendents and house masters, seniors and juniors, school routines, the old slang...man it was fun!!!
It indeed was an evening very well spent and took away some refreshed memories from there...and i couldnt stop smiling all the way on my drive back home...guess old memories tend to do that to you!!
cheers,
chandru
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
My attempt at gymming - yet again!!
first things first, i think i have taken a bit of a literary liberty with the word 'gymming'...not sure the word exists, nonetheless you get what i mean :), purists be damned!!!
There is always a time in one's life when you take a long look at a full sized mirror and think that you could do with some repair and maintenance work on that body of yours. There was a time when i used to be very lean, almost like a skeleton and now even though I am not really heavy, I have accumulated some fat around, thanks to desk jobs in air-conditioned offices, comforts of the lift, pizzas and all sort of junk and good old laziness. So this desire to work out and burn the fat has always been there. But what has been sporadic is the actual willingness to go to a gym and walk the talk. In the last 1.5 yrs, this has happened for about 4 times. And each time it has lasted for exactly a week :P
Now I dont know if it happens to everybody, but with me after every session during the initial days, i feel very proud of myself and as if I have acheived a great deal. And so I decide to reward myself with a break from the work out for the the next day!! Then one of these days, the one day break becomes a big barrier and I dont feel like starting it again the next day, and then goes the whole enthu down the drain. And thats how another of my attempts at "being fit" ends.
So, like I mentioned in the title of this post, I am currently on my fifth attempt. This time I have raised the stakes a notch higher. I have taken up annual membership of the gym I am going to and have paid up quite a sum towards the full year's membership charges. Now I am hoping that the thought of having invested so much will drag me to the thread mill. But knowing myself as well as I do, I wouldnt bet on even that keeping me motivated enough :)
As of today, it has been about 15 days since I registered and I think I have done about 7-8 sessions. Not bad going by my previous attempts. Lets see what is the fate this time.
By the way, guess where I should have been right now instead of sitting on my laptop typing this post!! Yep, in the gym, lifting those stupid weights making weird faces ;)
So there you go, its not difficult to guess where this is headed. Anyways, lets hope I succeed this time. I sure will keep you posted.
cheers,
Chandru
There is always a time in one's life when you take a long look at a full sized mirror and think that you could do with some repair and maintenance work on that body of yours. There was a time when i used to be very lean, almost like a skeleton and now even though I am not really heavy, I have accumulated some fat around, thanks to desk jobs in air-conditioned offices, comforts of the lift, pizzas and all sort of junk and good old laziness. So this desire to work out and burn the fat has always been there. But what has been sporadic is the actual willingness to go to a gym and walk the talk. In the last 1.5 yrs, this has happened for about 4 times. And each time it has lasted for exactly a week :P
Now I dont know if it happens to everybody, but with me after every session during the initial days, i feel very proud of myself and as if I have acheived a great deal. And so I decide to reward myself with a break from the work out for the the next day!! Then one of these days, the one day break becomes a big barrier and I dont feel like starting it again the next day, and then goes the whole enthu down the drain. And thats how another of my attempts at "being fit" ends.
So, like I mentioned in the title of this post, I am currently on my fifth attempt. This time I have raised the stakes a notch higher. I have taken up annual membership of the gym I am going to and have paid up quite a sum towards the full year's membership charges. Now I am hoping that the thought of having invested so much will drag me to the thread mill. But knowing myself as well as I do, I wouldnt bet on even that keeping me motivated enough :)
As of today, it has been about 15 days since I registered and I think I have done about 7-8 sessions. Not bad going by my previous attempts. Lets see what is the fate this time.
By the way, guess where I should have been right now instead of sitting on my laptop typing this post!! Yep, in the gym, lifting those stupid weights making weird faces ;)
So there you go, its not difficult to guess where this is headed. Anyways, lets hope I succeed this time. I sure will keep you posted.
cheers,
Chandru
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
The Great Indian Cricket Tamasha!!!
have been wanting to start a blog for ages now, even created blogs - twice - but never could get myself to write anything. There are other reasons also, lemme see if i can put them down some other time. But here i am now, my first ever ramblings. And IPL probably isnt too bad a place to start with.
I had been to the opening ceremony-cum-inaugural match. First things first, the opening ceremony was brilliant. Laser show was good, fire crackers awsome!! The Washington Redskins Cheerleaders were there too for good measure. Although i must add, i am sure this wouldnt have been anywhere close to being as spectacular as some of the other opening ceremonies, say Olympics for example. All the captains were paraded before the crowd and no prizes for guessing who got the loudest cheers!! Sachin-God-Tendulkar! Now this is the reason I am sceptical about the concept of city based teams working in India just yet. Dada also got huge cheers when he stepped out for a round of practice. Here cricketers are demi-gods transcending the boundaries of team, city and pretty much everything else. Compare that with fierce home support that city based teams in the English Premier League draw. Leeds United are among the most supported teams by attendances in the stadium and they currently play their football only in League One, which is two levels below the premier league. So how well IPL does in that respect? Lets wait and watch.
And the cricket itself on the opening day was a disappointment. I have not committed my 100% loyalties to any team yet, but for the obvious reason that I live here in Bangalore, I am rooting for the Bangalore Royal Challengers. They had a disaster of a match first up. First conceding a mammoth 220 odd runs and then being bundled out for 82!! I for sure dint enjoy it one bit, although Brendom Macullum displayed some breathtaking display of attacking batting. And it was almost hilarious to see Rahul Dravid and Wasim Jaffer walk out for the royal challenegers' pursuit of 220 runs in 20 overs!!! I like Dravid, he is in fact one of my favourite cricketers, but then it was visibly so out of place that situation.
All in all the whole first day of IPL left me with mixed feelings. It has only just started and great things are being said about its own future and also how it might end up harming the future of the other forms of cricket. Should be interesting, these 44 days of IPL. Lets see how it all develops from here.
I will try to keep writing about various things...again lets see how it goes :)
thanks for stopping by...
cheers,
Chandru
I had been to the opening ceremony-cum-inaugural match. First things first, the opening ceremony was brilliant. Laser show was good, fire crackers awsome!! The Washington Redskins Cheerleaders were there too for good measure. Although i must add, i am sure this wouldnt have been anywhere close to being as spectacular as some of the other opening ceremonies, say Olympics for example. All the captains were paraded before the crowd and no prizes for guessing who got the loudest cheers!! Sachin-God-Tendulkar! Now this is the reason I am sceptical about the concept of city based teams working in India just yet. Dada also got huge cheers when he stepped out for a round of practice. Here cricketers are demi-gods transcending the boundaries of team, city and pretty much everything else. Compare that with fierce home support that city based teams in the English Premier League draw. Leeds United are among the most supported teams by attendances in the stadium and they currently play their football only in League One, which is two levels below the premier league. So how well IPL does in that respect? Lets wait and watch.
And the cricket itself on the opening day was a disappointment. I have not committed my 100% loyalties to any team yet, but for the obvious reason that I live here in Bangalore, I am rooting for the Bangalore Royal Challengers. They had a disaster of a match first up. First conceding a mammoth 220 odd runs and then being bundled out for 82!! I for sure dint enjoy it one bit, although Brendom Macullum displayed some breathtaking display of attacking batting. And it was almost hilarious to see Rahul Dravid and Wasim Jaffer walk out for the royal challenegers' pursuit of 220 runs in 20 overs!!! I like Dravid, he is in fact one of my favourite cricketers, but then it was visibly so out of place that situation.
All in all the whole first day of IPL left me with mixed feelings. It has only just started and great things are being said about its own future and also how it might end up harming the future of the other forms of cricket. Should be interesting, these 44 days of IPL. Lets see how it all develops from here.
I will try to keep writing about various things...again lets see how it goes :)
thanks for stopping by...
cheers,
Chandru
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)