Bangalore Pundit

Lalu update

2005-10-30T20:19:00.000-08:00

Lalu was campaining in Bihar with a Osama look-alike (if you haven't read that news yet). Meanwhile several trains were de-railing or disappearing in various parts of the country, that is a whole different story. Here is what LK Advani has to say about it:

Its a crying shame. Irfan pathan or Sania Mirza can be role model for
Indian Muslim youth, not Osama.

Social evil in Pakistan

2005-10-30T20:10:00.000-08:00

My friend sent this link, which is quite amusing. This pakistani dude finds anyone taking to the begging 'profession' as a social evil. If you are not

deaf
dumb
and/or living under a rock in tora bora caves

you by now can realise that, the social evil is the mullahs and the Musharraf who is clinging to power showing one finger to the mullahs, one to the Paki public and the other to India and rest of the world.

Read on here:

With the arrival of holy Ramadan the number of beggar has once againincreased in all the metropolitan cities of Pakistan. These days theyare everywhere; bus stands, post offices, railways station, mosquesand markets are their favorite haunts. Beggars in the market pursueyou like a shadow. It is impossible to move about peacefully. They arealso present on all the Chorangi's of the metropolitan cities. If youshow generosity and open your purse; you are surrounded by a host ofthem. These beggars include even small children and a large number offemales. The condition is much worse in the holy cities of SaudiArabia where we found (usually) Pakistani beggars. They do not evenbother about begging in the Holy Khana Ka'bah. These Pakistani beggarsusually arrive in Saudi Arabia on an Umrah visa and then remain therefor a month or two. Since a large number of Pakistani devotees visitthe holy land during the month of Ramadan for Umrah and most of themare well-off people, the beggar succeed in securing their alms. Thepractice has been going on for many years but the sources say thatthis time the number of beggars from Pakistan are astronomical. Thereason behind the increasing numbers may be the increasing rate ofunemployment because of which sometimes even white collared men do nothesitate to do begging in foreign countries. A prompt action on thepart of government is required to check this social evil. -WAJIHAJAWAID, Karachi, via e-mail, October 21.

Feet at Home, Competitive advantage

2005-10-18T21:23:00.000-07:00

According to Govindraj Ethiraj (a reporter at CNBC TV18 India), your have a competitive advantage when you make people feel at home. He has a good blog to follow here.

Read the post. It has a pic of the Palm Meadows, the California style villa community that set an example for others in Bangalore.

Idiocy: Indian soldiers help to re-build Pakistani bunkers

2005-10-13T22:32:00.000-07:00

This is really taking it too far. I think we should stop the screening of overly melodramatic bollywood movies to our soldiers. Many Indian newspapers and Pakistani newspaper Dawn report that Indian soldiers crossed Loc to help re-build Pakistani bunker! Why? Should we be helping civilians or soldiers on the other side?

The soldiers crossed a bridge that spans the Line of Control, Col Seghal
said."A few soldiers from the Pakistani side shouted for help to our boys to
clear the debris and in adverse weather conditions our soldiers went across to
re-do their flattened bunkers so that they could sleep at night," he said."If
they (the Pakistani soldiers) want our help and if we want their help it is no
problem," said an Indian army commander as helicopters from the two sides
crisscrossed the usually heavily militarised LoC — something that would usually
involve being shot down

But Pakistanis are quick to deny it (as many bloggers pointed out). BBC has a story

Monday fun: Lullaby contest in Malaysia

2005-10-02T21:17:00.000-07:00

He said the lullaby contest was in line with singing allowed by Islam, which was
to strengthen family ties."This is important. For example, a husband returns
home tired and when the wife sings to him, he can sleep soundly. "When he
awakes, he is a happy man and this will help build a great relationship between
husband and wife.

Read it here

Effigy culture, Burn'em!

2005-10-02T07:23:00.000-07:00

I don't know if there is any other country (other than India) where so many effigies are burnt for some random reason or the other. It is so much, so that I think there is a huge market waiting to be tapped!

Lets just look at the 'effigy burnings' this week (the ones that caught my eyes)

Manmohan Singh (for selling out to the US, by the commies)
PC (for selling out India, by the commies)
Mani Shankar Aiyar (for the fuel prices, by the commies again)
Actress Khushboo (for making some true statements about women's sex lives, by various quasi-militant tamil outfits)
Greg Chappel (by Ganguly's supporters)
Saurav Ganguly (by people who are fed up with Ganguly)

Now, use the oppurtunity and make some quick bucks and send me a contribution for bringing this out.

Do not buy Harry Potter, Stallman sez

2005-08-03T03:24:00.000-07:00

Stallman seems to be annoyed at Canada and the enterprise that makes too much money with HP. Read and and have fun!

It has gems like, "Making Canada respect human rights will be hard". How about USA and rest of the world? Is it any easier?

Bangalore

2005-05-18T09:06:00.000-07:00

Stuff that caught my eyes today in the newspaper:

Businessmen are coming into the city for business and fly back to Chennai for the night's stay. You know why? No hotel rooms available!! Even if they are available, the ARR (Average Rent per Room) is around Rs 8500. Leela Kempinski is 15000 Rs per night if you book on short notice. In Chennai the rates are 60% of Bangalore - can you believe it?
No new infrastructure project actually started in the past one year! Incidentally it is the same time Dharam Singh government completed a year in office....quite an achievement!

Brain Gain

2005-05-17T05:36:00.000-07:00

I was expecting this to happen, hope that sooner or later this becomes a phenomenon. IIT Madras reports 40% less interest in going abroad (US especially).

A comment I would agree with fully (with my own experience)

"IITian Arun John, a software engineer who worked in Texas for seven years, is one of them. Late last year, he came to settle down in Bangalore: "The US is a good place to spend some years. Not to work your whole life. I hated the idea of working for a lifetime in the US," he says."

Article here on Rediff

High tech among low tech

2005-04-30T06:07:00.000-07:00

hal_dhruv_2
Originally uploaded by bengalurean.

Some more of HAL Dhruvs among the mess that can be called as the great Indian wiring trick. In Bangalore, the high-tech capital, people make everything from Sukhois to Satellites, write code that runs everywhere, but wiring is a different story :)

HAL Dhruv choppers

2005-04-30T06:01:00.000-07:00

HAL Dhruv choppers
Originally uploaded by bengalurean.

Indian made choppers from HAL (Hindustan Aeronautics, Bangalore) on a test flight. They fly these cool looking things daily above Bangalore's skies - This one on a nice sunny saturday morning.

People affected by Mushy

2005-04-28T10:09:00.000-07:00

Apparently they seem to be on both sides of the border!

Normally sane Ayaz Amir lost it completely over the current visit. Read it here (check out the archives if it has moved. Title is "Not even Munich, simply a meltdown")

He asks, "What gates of Somenath was he hoping to bring back?". I hate to break it to Amir that India ain't the same place when Ghazni came and Pakis ain't the Arabs or Mughals.

Another gem:

"India doesn’t give a damn for the ‘soft’ face of the Kashmiri leadership as represented by the Hurriyet. Its main concern is not to engage with anyone in Kashmir politically but to crush insurgency in the Valley militarily, for which it thinks this is the best time, thanks to the last of Musharraf’s historic u-turns: this time on the “core issue” of Kashmir."

This has to be realised some day! I hope this is the beginning...

We'll buy $7Bn worth of Boeing aircraft!

2005-04-27T04:03:00.000-07:00

Norman Mineta was here and announced open sky policy a few weeks back. Prior to that Condi Rice was here. Miraculously Boeing now grabs the deal for close 7 Billion greenbacks (largest in recent times!)

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_world_business/view/144638/1/.html

Airbus is not really happy. But I am finding it hard to believe that there was no American "pressure" or some "compromises" made. It is definitely very interesting. Acorn has blogged this and has some theories, I am not really sure!

Where are the anti-globalisation/anti-outsourcing people? I think this must be protested. You made Indians do business and they are giving business back to you. Must be bad, right?

Someone to match the former iraqi information minister

2005-04-25T22:24:00.000-07:00

After reading my previous post, my friend forwarded this link to me:

http://www.thedailystar.net/2005/04/26/d50426011815.htm

I couldn't resist this statement:

"I think people of Bangladesh are now living in a better condition compared to people of many Indian states like Rajsthan and Kerala," he said. " In my view, our people no longer give the impression of being from a typical third world country."

This dude is putting the former Iraqi information minister to shame.

By why, oh why? Everybody is taking a potshot at Kerala? Only people who can give a 'fitting' reponse (which could be even more hilarious) is our reds. Any takers?

Eastern frontier

2005-04-24T00:32:00.000-07:00

What the hell is happening in Bangladesh border?

If you are unfortunate enough to rely on Indian media on what is happening in the recent firings and counter-firing incidents between BSF and BDR (Bangladesh Rifles), then you are rightfully in a confused state. The print and TV media coverage gives an impression that there is unprovoked firing by BDR and we are losing BSF jawans for the aggression. If you listen to Bangladeshi official press releases they claim the opposite.

Thanks to Blogosphere, many news items from independent media and bangladeshi media has been unearthed. Here are some that you will never find it reported by TV news:

India is building a fence that goes within 150 yards of the no-man zone, which seems to be the cause for BDR getting un-easy. But seriously, I think it is in their best interest to let it continue so that illegal migration stops and hence innocent b'deshi citizens need not die. Firing at BSF is not going to be productive
BSF has received shoot at sight orders and does not mind executing it (see source below)
Export and import at the land port (Benapole) has been stopped by India (BSF). Is this helping Bangladesh?
Source: The new nation.

Unless the government(?) in Bangladesh decides to take control of their border guards, more and more people will have to die (according to the same source above, one civilian is killed by BSF every five days!) and that country will lose out on the trade.

2005-04-17T07:19:00.000-07:00

How do I start the blog? A movie review does not sound like a bad idea:

Mumbai Express

I went to see Mumbai Xpress (@ PVR) expecting the usual Kamal Haasan style comedy and not really disappointed. Kamal has tried to deliver a original comedy, where the "situation" IS the comedy and not anything else. Here is a review with some minor spoilers. This time he did it without Crazy Mohan and other usual suspects for screenplay / dialogues. Singeetham S Rao fills in for that.

Some highlights of Kamal's home production:

First Indian film shot completely digital
Kamal's character is a deaf person (what else? Everything else is done isn't it?)
First time more "subtle" elements of comedy is introduced to audience (may not be rewarding commercially)

Plot:

Three guys in Mumbai's slums plan to kidnap the son of a wealthy real estate developer. But it turns out that they have to involve a new guy in the plan (Kamal) and another guy attaches himself to the plan (Ramesh). Once the act has been committed rest of the characters - boy's mom (Manisha), illegitimate father (Nazer) all come into picture and it turns out to be a riot.

Things I enjoyed:

Ramesh Arvind as a telugu speaking insurance agent :). Authentic and convincing.
Acting by the plump kid (who gets kidnapped by Kamal)
Various moments (example: people are rummaging through the garbage looking for money near dhaaravi. We get to see war ammunition, cannons etc in the garbage :))

Irritations:

Digital to film conversion - it really sucks. Either we should do digital projection or stick to film.
Manisha Koirala
Not so well conceived climax