Computer @ Home

We have now computer (Intel PC) at home. We purchased it in the last week of November, after lot of deliberations, discussionss, at home. Will it come in between children's studies, will it often crash, will it increase the electric bill etc. etc. Anyway, now that it has been installed and working all right, here are my off hand impressions of computer at home.

At office, a PC seems okay, but at home it does seems little out of place. Since I am scared of forgetting passwords, I have kept the same password, which I have for my office account. So sometime I do forget if I am at home or at office. Since we have opted for a LCD screen, and a wide one at that, movies on a DVD Disk look great, and with Creative 1.2 speakers, they sound too great. And my music collection of RD and SD sound fantastic.

I had installed Ubuntu Linux also on it, besides Windows XP and Windows Vista. I thought I will get my children get used to Linux, but so far they have not taken to it. My daughter has taken to computer, say like fish takes to water. She thinks she is a good painter, and the `Paint' programme on Vista helps her keeping that illusion. We soon plan to have internet connection too for the computer, so I may blog more, than I do now.

Sad news

Just heard the sad news that Meera Dev Burman, wife of Sachinda, and mother of Rahul Dev, passed away. May her soul rest in peace.

Greedy?

Yesterday was my birthday. I turned 44, and I turned greedy too.

Every year, on this day, I gift myself a book, since no one bothers to do so. So this year too I went to my favourite bookshop, The Strand Bookstall, to gift a book to myself. I wanted a slim and handsome book.

I spotted Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote. I had heard about this book but never owned or read it. So I picked it up. It was quite slim volume. I was happy. But soon I spotted also To Sir, with Love by E. R. Braithwaite, another slim volume and Thank you Jeeves, by P.G. Wodehouse, yes it too was slim book, and picked these two too for myself.

I am getting greedy and getting old. But I am enjoying it. I mean, well, both getting old and getting greedy :).

Talent lost; regionalism won

So Amit Paul did not win Indian Idol 3, and Prashant who got more votes, won.

Talent lost and regionalism won. Better singer lost; good singer won. Such is life.

I felt very very sad when the results of Indian Idol were announced in yesterday's Grand Finale telecast. I was somehow sure that Amit will win, as he seemed to be such versatile singer, but it was not to be. Sky is not going to fall if Prashant had won and Amit had lost out.

Well, Amit is, in my opinion, a damn good singer. I am sure he will make it big as a singer in Bollywood. I will be watching his career with a considerable interest. Here is wishing you Amit all the best.

Thank you Amit, for giving so much joy with you singing, which was always in सुर; for your wonderul selection of songs, and last, but not the least, for singing O Laal Meri Pat Rakhiyo Bala Jhoole Laalan . Amit, you are the the Indian Idol for me.

Video of best performance, in my opinion, of Amit Paul singing Bulla ki Jaana Main Kaun:

Commuter classics

The title of this post, and the picture on left is borrowed from an excellent blog post which I read a couple of months ago.

The post talked about reading while commuting from home to place of work. Well, I have been commuting everyday for about 4 hours for many years. I generally read newspapers or sleep off, if I am lucky to get a place to sit in the train. But reading classics while travelling seemed an excellent option. So inspired by this post, I completed reading two classic books, back to back, recently.

The books were The Woken in White (published in 1860) and The Moonstone (published in 1868), both by Wilkie Collins. And believe me I had such a great time in reading them while commuting that I actually looked forward to commuting. Travelling became a pleasure rather than a pain. I drew quite a lookss from my fellow sufferers, opps commuters, who seemed to be surprised with my nose in a fat book. Is'nt it almost old-fashioned to travel with a book, when almost everyone in the train or in the bus, has a mobile phone or digital music player to flaunt and play with.

Both the books were very very good read. But I liked The Moonstone better. It is considered to be the first detective novel in English, and even seems to have inspired Arthur Conan Doyle.

The following lines, which appear in Second Period, Chapter 3, describes my own feeling while reading both these books:

Do you feel an uncomfortable heat at the pit of your stomach, sir? and a nasty thumping at the top of your head? Ah! not yet? It will lay hold of at Cobb's Hole, Mr. Franklin. I call it the detective fever; and I first caught it in the company of Sergeant Cuff.'

I too had caught detective fever. I was so engrossed reading these two books, while travelling or at home, that I was most of the time unaware of happenings around me, and got strange looks from my wife and children at home. Both these books were page-turner, one just wanted to know what happened next. My only complaint about both the books is they are bit too long. But it could be understood that both of them had appeared first in serial form first, and maybe the author was paid per word. Hence this accounts for them being long.

I have many classics in my book collection, so I will be commuter with classics henceforth, and rest of the things be damned. Here is looking forward to next classic in my book collection and to commuting ...

Addendum: Could not help saying this --- Chekhovian irony something humdrum and dreary as commuting combined with something uplifting and, shall I say, character building, as reading classic books.

The next classic I am reading while commuting is Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad.

Email forward ...

Got the following by email forward. Good One ...

Ant And Grasshopper

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.


Modern 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, CNNshow 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 Patkargoes on a fast along with other Grasshoppers demanding that Grasshoppers be relocated to warmer climates during winter.

Amnesty International and Koffi Annan criticizes 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 "Bharat 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 .....

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

Go for it, Amit

The picture on the left is of Amit Paul, who is finalist for the Indian Idol 3. Generally I avoid all music based shows on TV, but for some reasons, unknown even to me, I like Indian Idol 3. I, and my family too, have been watching it regularly every week and we all quite enjoy.

I like Amit's voice. His selection of songs is good. And he sung, in one of earlier rounds, a song which is sung by Panchamda, and he sung it very very well.

Well Amit, go for it. You deserve to win Indian Idol 3. All the best.

Hear and watch how wonderfully Amit had sung koraa kaagaz thaa ye man meraa, from movie Aradhana in the episode which was telecast on Sept. 7, in the video below.

Lost it, found it

It has been many many days since I written a post for my blog. The reason was simple ... I had forgotten my password to my blooger account. Just as I have forgotten it, I remembered it. So here I go again. Or maybe I had lost my will to blog. Anyway.

Not much exciting things have happen. The life in general has been humdrum.

Reading record: finished reading The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai. It was quite a sad book and was set in mid 1980s. It won the Booker Prize last year, and Kiran Desai become only the second Indian to win that prize. Maybe this fact had attracted me buy and read this book. The book had three main characters: Sai, Judge and Cook. Somewhere in the middle of the book the reader were told the name of the judge, but the cook remain nameless, and the reader is told about his name on the last but one page of the book. The review of the book, as it appeared in the New York Times is here

The book I am reading presently is The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins. It is very very good read. Though this book was published in 1860, but is timeless in telling a gripping story, and keeping the reader's attention.

The only movie I had sent recently is Chak De India . Well, the movie was good, and though I do no like Mr Shah Rukh Khan in general, I liked him in this movie. But at the end, if the Hockey, which is national sport of India, needs a movie for its promotion or to be in forefront, then it is indeed a very sad state of affairs. In India, sports means cricket, cricket and just cricket.

Disgrace

Yesterday I finished reading Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee. It is a sad and beautiful book. I found I had a lump in my throat and a wet eye, as I put it down. It is really a sad book, but it is very very well written.

Mr Coetzee conveys a lot with a minimum of words, he writes almost to the point. The first lines of the book are:

For a man of his age, fifty-two, divorced, he has, to his mind, solved the problem of sex rather well. On Thursday afternoons he drives to Green Point. Punctually at two p.m. he presses the buzzer at the entrance to Windsor Mansions, speaks his name, and enters.

The book has only 220 pages. Other author may have stretched it to more and more pages.

The book is set in the post-apartheid South Africa. It tells the story of a fifty-two year old professor, who teaches romantic poetry at a university of Cape Town, South Africa. But I should not tell you more. Please do read this book. You will feel enriched by reading it. BTW, Disgrace was awarded Booker Prize in 1999.

The first chapter of the book is here.

And the review of the book is here.

Favourte Bookmark

The image on the left is that of my favourite bookmark. And lucky bookmark too, for me. Whenever I had used this bookmark, while reading a book, I have been able to finish it and appreciate it too. I have gone through such fat books, Brothers Karamazov, for example, using this bookmark.

I had lost this bookmark somehow, and I had lost hope of finding it again. I thought maybe I must have given it in a book which was borrowed by one of my friend. I was very happy to find it again among one of the book, a few days ago. I am now using it for Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee, book which I am reading presently.

The charm of this bookmark is quote by Desiderius Erasmus . Wikepedia tells me that he was a Dutch humanist and theologian.

More quotes by Desiderius Erasmus are here

Tashakor, Khaled Hosseini

Recently I finished reading The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini.
I had seen this book a few months ago on someone desk, and liked the story line, as was described on the back page of the book. Oh this book is about redemption, I had said to myself and I must read it. Since I purchased the book to which I take fancy to, instead of borrowing it from someone, I purchased it during my next visit to my favourite bookshop. I finished reading it recently. I really liked it. It made for very good reading. I would recommend it strongly. The plot summary of the book is here.

Tashakor (which means thank you in Persian) Khaled Hosseini for writing it.

वाह वाह Mika

The Guardian reports:

Did the release of Paris Hilton from a Los Angeles jail merit the media attention it received? That question reached a critical point for one US cable news presenter when she refused to read out the lead item on a popular morning breakfast show.

"I have an apology," presenter Mika Brzezinski told the host of MSNBC's Morning Joe programme, "and that is for the lead story. I hate this story. I don't think it should be the lead."

Wah Wah Mika Brzezinski. I salute you. You did the right thing, which is very rare in today's world. How I wish Indian newsreader do the the same, at least once, when cricket appears as a lead story. Or the so-called celebrities gets married or does something, in which we may not be interested in, and it appears as a lead story.

The video of Mika doing what she thought was right is below.

Happy Birthday Panchamda

Rahul Dev Burman (June 27, 1939 -- January 4, 1994)

Wish you a very very happy birthday, Panchamda. Today, June 27, 2007, is the 68th birthday of Rahul Dev Burman. Wish he has alive today.

I was overjoyed to discover on You Tube a most wonderful song composed by Panchamda: `Mera Kuch Saman' from the movie Ijaazat, which was released in 1988. For this song, the singer Asha Bhosle won the National Award for best playback singer, Gulzar, who wrote this song, got the National Award for best lyricist, but Panchamda, who composed this beautiful song, did not got National Award for best music director. In fact, he never got a National Award for his composition, which is a shame.

The video of the song is below. Note how Panchamda has turned bland verse into a melodious, hummable song. Panchamda you were truly great.



CNN-IBN pays a musical tribute to R.D. Burman:




Amitabh Bachchan pays tribute to R.D. Burman


Rishi Kapoor pays tribute to R.D. Burman


A tribute article

ये कश्मीर है

I am still too busy with my office work to blog about my last month's trip to Kashmir. In the meantime here are some more pictures taken at Kashmir. Click on the picture to enlarge. I promise to start writing my posts about my trip to Kashmir, from next week.

House boats at Dal Lake, Srinagar

Bird's Eye view o Dal Lake, Srinagar

Shikaras at Dal Lake, Sringar

Snow at Gulmarg

One more picture of Gulmarg, Kashmir

Pehelgam, Kashmir

River Lidder, Pehelgam, Kashmir

Breaking the Break

I came back to office, as scheduled on Friday, June 1. As expected, lot of work had piled up for me, hence I could not post a post, and break the blogging break. I found some time today to write something.

I will, of course, write detailed posts about my trip to Kashmir, soon. Kashmir was better than what I had expected. We had great fun there. Children loved Rajdhani Express and loved the snow at Kashmir.

Here are three of the photograph, among many which I clicked with my Canon digital camera. I took more than 450 pictures, some good and some pretty ordinary.

Blogging Break

I will be away for 32 days from my office, from where I blog, from Monday, April 30 to Thursday, May 31.

32 days is a long time in a person's life. Part of my vacation will be for our visit to Kashmir (see post below), and for the rest of days I want to be away from emails, spam emails, blogs, comments, computers and the virtual world. I want to take a break from the virtual world. I promise to myself that I will not walk into a local cyber cafe to check emails, blogs, etc. etc. (I do not have a computer at home). I want to see the REAL world. I want all days to be like Sunday, I want to be happy, for those 32 days.

So, there will be no updates on this blog, till I came back on Friday, June 1, 2007.

Mission Kashmir

Last year, we (that is me, wife and my children) had gone to Mahabaleshwar, via Pune. Now train journey from Kalyan to Pune is just two and a half hours. After reaching Pune, my daughter was disappointed with such short train journey, and had said `what, we are already there'. After another one and a half hour journey from Pune to Mahabaleshwar by road, she was doubly disappointed. Well, children, unlike us adults, are passionate about journey, especially train journey, rather than arriving at a destination. For them Life is a Journey.

I had promised my children at Mahabaleshwar that next year we will go to a far far away place, with lots of train journey. So, this year we are going to visit Kashmir. And that too by Rajdhani Express, via New Delhi. Insha Allah, if everything goes as per plan, we will board the train on Thursday, May 3 and will be at Sringar on May 5. Of course, I will record all the interesting details about the trip and the people whom we will meet, and will, of course, blog about them.

One keep reading about Kashmir, but all for the wrong reasons, in the newspapers. I also read it in books, as child, that if there is a paradise on Earth, it is Kashmir. I want to see the paradise.

And yes, I purchased yesterday Canon PowerShot A550 digital camera with 7.1 megapixels, 4x optical zoom lens, especially for the Kashmir trip. This is my first digital camera. Hope I will be able to click some good photographs. It will be a crime to go to Kashmir without a good camera and come back without good photographs.

Good-bye Lara

Brian Lara announced retirement from international cricket last week. What a player, and what a way to go. He could easily have been around for few more years. It is little sad that his team lost out narrowly the last match played by Lara. After the match, which was against England in the on going Cricket World Cup 2007, Lara told the crowd: "I've had a tremendous time playing for the West Indies. All I ask is, did I entertain? If I entertained you, I'm happy. The unanimous response from the crowd at the stadium was YES. Yes, Lara, you did entertain us. Whenever Lara was batting in a match, which was shown on TV, I made it a point to watch, even for few minutes. I was sure that I will get to see at least one exquisite stroke. And I was never disappointed. Thank you Brian Lara for the wonderful cricket, and those exquisite and elegant strokes. None could bat like you.

It will be fun to watch who will break Lara's World records of 400 and 501 runs in an innings in Test and First Class matches, respectively. I personally believe they will remain in Lara's name for the long long time. Maybe for ever.

आओ kiss करें

BBC reports:

Actor Richard Gere has sparked protests in India after kissing Celebrity Big Brother winner Shilpa Shetty at an Aids awareness rally in New Delhi.

The video is below, watch it if you are inclined to see it. It does not seem a kiss, but just a peck on the cheeks. Yes, Richard Gere almost falling on Shilpa and she bending backwards, makes for good viewing। Both are obviously good actors। The matter should have been left to that. But trust our media to blow the matter out of proportion and various organizations to be unhappy about it. A kiss is just a kiss. Better to kiss kiss than war war. But happenings like this are ready-made or heaven-sent for our media and also our so-called (protesting) organizations. यह तो उनिकी रोजी रोटी है।




Below is video of Shilpa Shetty expressing her anger over media coverage। शिल्पा को ग़ुस्सा कियूं आता है। देखियी ईस विडिओ में।

मेरा भारत महान

यह मेरा प्हेला पोस्ट हिंदी में है।

मुझे बहौत ख़ुशी हुई जब मैंने देखा आज ब्लॉगर के dashboard मैं के ब्लोग्गिंग हिंदी में भी की जा साक्ती हैं।

मैं ब्लॉगर और गूगल को धन्यवाद देना चाहता हूँ। मेरा भारत महान। और गूगल भी महान।

और आब गूगल समाचार हिंदी ैं भी है।

तो भारतवासियों हिंदी मैं ब्लोग्गिंग केजिया और दुनिया को देखा लिए जिया का हम भी कीसही से कम नहीं.