Chetan Bhagat's The 3 mistakes of my life

Chetan Bhagat's The 3 mistakes of my life is another of the "pot boilers" (Yeah. The Sidney Sheldon kind. I'd rather call 'em time pass stuff.) that are gripping yes, but are too shallow and simplistic in content(Well, if you think there's any!). The plot has every ingredient that might appeal to the masses ranging from cricket to love (not platonic) to Godhra riots!! This was what pissed me off but at the same time managed to glue me to continue reading it. Sounds oxymoronic, ain't it? I was enjoying ( or may be making fun of it) every bit of it. The novel begins with a suicide attempt scene in a hospital a la Five point someone( I don't know about One night@ call center. Haven't read it). There's also the obligatory "making love" scene. It was all in the five point someone mould. Too childish, too amateurish. The thing that infuriated me the most was the simplistic presentation of the Godhra riots. It was pretty cheap, clearly based on the stereotypes at best and lacked conviction. And the fact that I read this novel immediately after a well written piece like Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges' The Garden of Forking Paths made me frown upon this . Seems like Chetan Bhagat will never grow up. Or may be he doesn't want to. Because then he won't be able to manage a pre-publishing order of 2 lakh copies of the book. Clearly, it is the IIM-A grad in him that's calling the shots, not the writer.

The Don't Quit Poem

When things go wrong, as they sometimes will,
When the road you're trudging seems all uphill,
When the funds are low and the debts are high,
And you want to smile, but you have to sigh,
When care is pressing you down a bit,
Rest, if you must, but don't you quit.

Life is queer with its twists and turns,
As every one of us sometimes learns,
And many a failure turns about,
When he might have won had he stuck it out;
Don't give up though the pace seems slow--
You may succeed with another blow.

Often the goal is nearer than,
It seems to a faint and faltering man,
Often the struggler has given up,
When he might have captured the victor's cup,
And he learned too late when the night slipped down,
How close he was to the golden crown.

Success is failure turned inside out--
The silver tint of the clouds of doubt,
And you never can tell how close you are,
It may be near when it seems so far,
So stick to the fight when you're hardest hit--
It's when things seem worst that you must not quit.

- Author unknown

Nerd's love poetry!

From the movie "Harold and Kumar Escape from guantenamo bay"

For all those who think mathematics cannot be romantic :)


I fear that I will always be
A lonely number like root three

The three is all that’s good and right,
Why must my three keep out of sight
Beneath the vicious square root sign,
I wish instead I were a nine

For nine could thwart this evil trick,
with just some quick arithmetic

I know I’ll never see the sun, as 1.7321
Such is my reality, a sad irrationality

When hark! What is this I see,
Another square root of a three

As quietly co-waltzing by,
Together now we multiply
To form a number we prefer,
Rejoicing as an integer

We break free from our mortal bonds
With the wave of magic wands

Our square root signs become unglued
Your love for me has been renewed

P.S: If you are a strict no-no to obscenity/vulgarity/profanity etc, don't try checking the movie out even on IMDB. :D

Homecoming of the prodigal son

Yeah. I m back at it. I could not resist but to look upon blogging as catharsis. Now, I couldn't stop myself anymore from letting out my thoughts. And why not, after all so many things have changed in the past few weeks. Nothing is the same anymore. IPL has changed the public, media and business perception of cricket, Chelsea finally managed to get past their nemesis, the Supreme Court of India(the honorable is intentionally removed..in a worse mood would've replaced it with an expletive ), the ISRO had managed to place 10 satellites at a time into their respective orbits and above all I have topped in a course out here in IITK for the first time( and how!!). The world is all of a sudden a better place to live in ( or is this because of a change in perception?).

P.S:As always, not everything I pen down here makes sense.

An excerpt

(source : http://www.ibnlive.com/blogs/saurabhsaksena/559/42312/the-curse

-of-being-a-hindu-in-modern-india.html)

Every individual has the right to self respect and dignity, especially from its fellow countrymen. Irrespective of the religion, caste, creed and all other secular lingo, we all should be treated fairly. However, somewhere down the line I feel in the present modern setup of India, self respect of the Hindus has been taken for a ride by media and politicians alike. We have been considered harmless and so nobody cares if there is any sort of infliction on us. For them, it is more important to concentrate on issues which aim at pleasing the minorities. And make no mistake, minorities not only include Muslims, but also Christians and other non-Hindu religions. I have nothing against my fellow "minority" countrymen, for in all fairness I have never even thought of them as "minorities". For me they are as Indian as I am. They definitely need a change in their socio-economic conditions and we all should support the cause. Infact, we have mutual respect for each other and if not for petty politics, there wouldn't be an iota of doubt on our camaraderie.

The recent coverage of "Gujarat revisited" did make me think that Hindus have been sidelined into oblivion. Agreed, there were lots of Muslim casualties and it is a despicable act of barbarism to kill innocent children, women, and others. Rightly so they have been given coverage to show the ghastardly side of the politicians. However, was there not even a single Hindu who lost his life in the riots? Leave that, even the media coverage of "Gujarat revisited" did not for once make an attempt to sympathize with the karsewaks who lost their lives. That was equally shameful on the part of the murderers and those karsewaks were innocent too. All these days, media termed the Godhra train carnage only as "the aftermath of Godhra" and in a split second the news turned to the innocent Muslims who were killed in the riots. Even a common Muslim felt the pain of the massacre of the karsewaks so why couldn't the media capture the trauma their families went through? Why couldn't the likes of Barkha Dutt who were capturing possibly each and every house of the Muslim victims for the primetime news did not for once go to the karsewak's family? Why were all the cameras turned to the Muslim rehabilitation camps and none to the Hindu camps? I have also felt the pain seeing media bits of the way riots shaped into a deadly massacre. Infact, majority of the common Hindus condemned the shameful act of genocide and attacked the Gujarat government for poor handling of the situation. We all felt the pain of our fellow Muslim brothers and I am definitely sure they had also felt the pain when the karsewaks were burnt alive and helpless.

Then why did the media not capture that part of the riots? And to top it all, how derogatory it felt when the deaths of the innocent Karsewaks in the burning train were termed as sabotage by few men to induce polarization, to gain prominence. How shocking it was to see the politicians leaving no stone unturned to prove that the train carnage was accidental and not preplanned just for the sake of their insatiated urge for more votes. In just one action, they jolted the self respect of the Hindus. And it is not only Gujarat, the Kashmiri Hindus have also not got significant media coverage for reasons well known to the media. They and politicians awake on this issue only when assembly elections in Kashmir are about to happen. And in all honestly, why will they cover such stories? They shall not gain anything by inciting the Hindus for it has been historically proven that we don't really feel loss of self respect for anything and everything. We believe in the "sab chalta hain" ("everything goes") attitude. Why will the politicians talk about issues pertaining to Hindus? We do not form the chunk of their vote banks. And even if we do, we celebrate the voting day as a national holiday staying at homes.

We are not asking for favors. We also do not mind our dear PM to suddenly wake up and announce reservations for "dalit Muslims" as if dalit Muslims are not a subset of the larger dalit community. We have been seeing this for quite a long time and now we have become thick skinned. What we request is to feel for our sufferings in the same vein as others. We also have a sense of self respect and dignity and expect fair treatment meted out to us. It is high time that media acts responsibly and in an unbiased way. We have already lost hope in our politicians. Hence, media becomes all the more potent. I am not undermining the goods media has delivered. However, there is always some scope for improvement and this is definitely one grey area where the media needs to pull up its socks.

Hopefully, there will be an all out attempt on the part of the media to rehabilitate our Kashmiri Hindus just as they are doing for the Gujarati Muslims. At the end of the day, it is an Indian that will benefit and not a Hindu or a Muslim.

Vande Mataram

I should start with none other than Pirates of the carribean-At world's End.A splendid movie it was with a truly complicated plot.It was not a movie that was made to just cash in on the goodwill of its prequels,because if that were the case the entry of Jack Sparrow(ooh I'm sorry..Captain..Captain Jack Sparrow)would not have been so delayed.Some dunderheads (I take the privilege of calling 'em so) found the movie boring because these self-proclaimed rational thinkers miss a point that one is ought to watch movies from an artistic perception rather than scientific.(I beg to differ in case of Sci-Fi which by the way is the most hated genre by me).The "calypso"part was refreshingly new added another dimension to the plot and of course made a lot of sense.I being an ardent Depp Fan would rate this movie somewhere around a good film and a must watch.

another dimension!!

Yes,for the past few days I've been so bored by the lack of activity(or presence of 2oo many activities??)that I've decided I'm gonna add another dimension to an already clumsy personality of mine,viz.reviews of films I've seen.well,this might seem to be the most stupid or most creative idea but as "Ed Wood" says often there is a fine line separating the most idiotic and the most brilliant thoughts.