Play some of the games that most of us have grown up with..

For the sake of old times.

Especially I have grown up playing Super Mario and Super Contra. Saw this cool widget and was experimenting with how to add this on my blog. Will come up with some solution soon but for the time being you all can play this here.



Enjoy. Live up a moment from your past or a day when you bunked school for playing Mario at the game parlour. The controls are - Up to Jump, Down to duck, Forward and Backward arrow for movement and Space bar for firing.

Gilchrist Sahab! Control!!

Update - I have heard that Pragyan Ojha and some local player have asked for more money from Deccan Chargers management this year and they are blaming Gilchrist for this. "Gilchrist ne to kuch socha nahin bas bol diya. Yaar wo to wicket ke peeche safe rahega and khaali peeli public Ande Tamataar boundary waalon ko maaregi. Gilchrist sahab socho yaar socho."


His confidence is marvelous. The news of his ascendancy to the captain's rank for Deccan Chargers will take some time to sink in that's why he is letting his mouth do the talk rather than his bat. "Kyon naa ho bhai, Laxman ko uske home ground me peet diya". I only think that he should have been a little bit more careful in the timing of the comment because it's still time that the news will sink in with the Indian fans and IPL is still a bit far away. 6 months is a long time and it might be time that Deccan Chargers (new owners) decide to let Gillie go. It's so easy to find a substitute these days. Well, that's about the consequences if the matter is allowed to let go off the roof but I have heard that the damage control has started from Gilchrist's end.

The MonkeyGate is still fresh in the minds of the Australian cricketers and they just lash out at Bhajji at the first opportunity. Bhajji might have proved himself a spoilt brat and the Australian can sharpen their daggers for him but man Gillie have picked the wrong guy. Sachin is not an idol just because he is a legendary batsmen but also because he is among the best sportsman we had seen on the field in our living memory and perhaps is the player with most number of controversial decisions going against him. MonkeyGate episode brought exposed the Australian cricket from both inside and outside. Even some very die hard patriotic Australian cricket fans pointed their finger against the punter and his team. Gilchrist was no exception because despite of you walking before the umpire raises his finger, you still have to share the same dressing room with some very very dishonest man who feel that they play cricket tough and smart and worse is that they think their approach is right.

MonkeyGate exposed the financial weakness of Australian cricket and reinforced the belief that take India out of world cricket scene and nothing is left to think about. Gone are the days when a certain Australian cricketer can just sledge a Indian cricketer and get away. Gilchrist even can't. Things have really changed but the publicity agents or the book agents still like to believe that writing something controversial about some Indian cricketer might prop up the book sales by a notch. A certain Flintoff might have wrote a chapter against Ganguly and escaped but, then those were really the bad times for Ganguly. Sachin is different.

During MonkeyGate episode Sachin didn't stand up for Harbhajan alone. He stood for the belief that Harbhajan was not the first one to start an argument. He stood for the common belief of an Indian that whatever Harbhajan said was not meant to be a racist comment and he stood for the belief that Australians throughout are getting their way out easily and someone has to stand for a cause. Sachin represented the belief of an Indian that Cricket is bigger than Andrew Symonds or Australia and he stood for the fact that someone has to deliver the knockout punch to Australians in their backyard. What happened next is history. India beat Australia in the next test humiliated them in the one dayers. Billion of Indians still think that we won that test series by 2-1 or at best is that we gifted them a victory in the controversial test because a 'punter' captain and his 'pup' deputy were willing to stake their dignity in front of camera for a victory.

Given the importance of that test series there could be many reasons why Gilchrist decided to paint a different picture of the episode. It could be economical as Indian cricketers doesn't need a book deal to earn financial security. It could also be on the advice of the book publishers who might be worried about the numbers and think that this is the only way to enter the market of 1 billion cricket crazy people. It might be personal also as that was the last series of Gilchrist and he was humiliated both in the test and one dayers by the Indian team. (His scores totaled 151 in 7 innings in teh test and 9 in the two finals that Australia lost.)

Behind the scenes - (A sneak peek into what might have happened behind the scenes)

Deccan Charger management have called him and advised him to keep control. "Arre Gilchrist saab thoda to control karo yaar! Hyderabadi public abhi pichle year ka haal nahin bhuli nahin, ab isse pahle ki log pichle saal ke ticket ka paisa wapas maangne lage uske pahle tum bhaiya maafi maang lo. Ye Sahin Tendulkar hai mamu. Waise bhi we are planning to sell a stake in out franchise and kahin aisa naa ho ki Sachin becomes your master by buying a stake. Pahle socho phir bolo bhaiya.

If stock Market Reaches 1000, How will India get affected?

Today there was a question posted on our bulletin board that if the stock market bottoms down to 1000 then how does the country "India" gets affected?

Well, in most simple terms the answer is that when people were predicting that market will reach 40000 (just last year around this time) they were doing that because our government was basking in the glory of a 8% GDP growth. FIIs were proud to invest in India and apart from Saas (not the Software as a Service but the mother in law) and Bahu, slowly sensex also caught the imagination of every Indian. Nobody wanted to miss the northbound train actually.

Banks churned out funds after funds, companies making break and gears also diversified into mutual funds. It was so easy those days. You want to start a company and have no money? Great, take a loan, pool in some money from your side, find a venture capital and then bring an IPO after 3 years. The venture capitalist will be out with his share of pie and poor investors like you and me who are so damn excited to become a part of this growth story will be sucked in.

You want to buy a car? Wait, buy Reliance Capital, hold it for 6 months and the money will double and you can buy a better car. Why you are wasting the money on insurance man? Put them into a ULIP and just watch them grow. Need a house? Buy it now because the price is going to go off the roof. See, Mr Sarma bought a duplex for 25 lakhs in Gachibowli (30 kms from Hyderabad railway station and 40 kms from the proposed airport) 4 years ago and he is already asking 1 crore for that. Comeon! what are you thinking? The interest rates are also 7% only on housing loan and you get tax benefit extra.

Okay okay but taking a loan is not an option. So I will sell the stocks that I got as stock options. It has already multiplied like 40 times. Well, so you sell those stocks and buy that dream house/car of yours. Great isn't it? Everything is perfect. You work in a company which has brought it's IPO some five years back and made so much money that it can keep a bench strength bigger than some of the biggest companies we have heard of. You feel that all your dreams will come true some day. The market will reach 40000 and you will sell all your stocks to buy a sea side villa and will spend your day fishing and blogging. Well, that is just not going to happen now. It was so easy to do things. But then it is the beginning of difficult times now.

When things were good there was optimism everywhere. People had hope and they were willing to take risk. House prices went off the roof really. For each Munna having 20 lakhs maximum to buy a house there were several Pappus who didn't mind shelling out a couple of lakhs more and were even willing to make a down payment of more than 25%. "Kyon naa ho bhai, onsite jao aur paise le kar aao" was the mantra. Well stock market gave "wings" to "ambitions" to broadly two kind of people. Those who had the guts went on their entrepreneurial mission thinking that raising money won't be a challenge and those who had money and thought that there will be no dearth of opportunities for multiplying their wealth. Both these kinds feed into each other's ambition. Market was just a medium. It was easy to raise money abroad and at the end of the day FIIs were always there to invest. Roads, Ports, Airports, Airlines, Buildings, Malls, Sezs were all fueling the story of growth and development. Company borrowed more and more, people consumed more and more but then suddenly the money dried up.

The banks are not willing to lend, people are not willing to invest, those who have invested are pulling out their money in fear, those who have made losses will cut down their expenses. Those who had plans to fly tomorrow are suddenly thinking ki "chalo bas 24 hours hee to lagte hain train mein" and suddenly Sleeper Class feels more comfortable than the AC III tier ("suffocation jaisa lagta hai yaar, saari windows closed hoti hain").

Well, what will be the ultimate result? Honestly I don't know and I can tell you that nobody knows with certainty. All I can speculate is that the shopping mall which was being built on the main road to office might get delayed now (there is no construction activity around). Some of my friends who have bought flats might get their possession late. The metro project might also get delayed. You might not be able to withdraw money from ATMs other than the bank where you have your account. You might not see the charming girl living next door after one month (she worked in Jet Airways). Expansion plan of your company might be put on hold. You yourself will start feeling that suddenly you are using geyser too often and you should save on electricity bill. Carpooling is an eco friendly thing and blah blah blah. The moral is that stock market does not exist in isolation. The mall where you shop and the brand which you shop are all dependent on the stock market in one way or another.

Everything is connected.

Behind the scenes of "Hello"

Watching a movie on it's first Fridays is no more a luxury given the full time status of my job (and well as half of them didn't even survive their first week) so have thought of writing a Behind the scenes post. And that way I might even be able to use a little bit of creativity as well (otherwise most of the reviews are almost the same phir chahe wo Masand Sahab hon ya Raja Sen).

Anyways, this weekend I took the liberty to watch "Hello" in PVR where 80% of the seats were empty. That too in Mayanagari Mumbai on a Saturday evening show. Great! Now even if the producers claim ki "2 weeks mein 40 crores kamaya" then just understand that woh audience ko "KIDNAP" kar ke laa rahe hain theaters mein. (For those who didn't get the pun, I recently saw one ad that Kidnap has earned 40 crores by the end of second week, hahahaha kya majaak hai bhai)

Behind the Scene(s):

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Saaman, Aghaaz, Solaill and Atul all on a conference call with Ketan Bhagat.

Sallu bhai - Bhai Ketan, apan ek movie banana chah rahe hain wo tumhari book hai naa "One night stand bolke" us par?

Ketan - Arre sir, I can't believe ki aapne bhi mera novel "One night @ call center" padha. I can't believe this.

Aghaaz - Arre Ketan bro tune apne bhai ko anpadh ganwar samjhela hai kya? Apna bhai ka novels me full interest hai.

Ketan - Oh No sir, you are taking me wrong. This is my dream come true sir. I use to dream about making movies even in IIT. Sir, meri to saari stories hee filmin rahti hai. You won't find any reality in that sacchi!. It's all about Masala. I think you'll give me the chance to write screenplay as well.

Sallu bhai - Yeah, Yeah, woh sab to tuhi likhega, the only thing is ki apne bhai kaa naam aana chahiye tumhare saath mein as a screenplay writer.

Chetan - Which Bhai? That big brother from Dubai?

Solail - Arre yaar, fansayega kya, phone hai bhai and waise akal to tere mein kam hee hai (whispers to his brothers - teri books padh ke pata chalta hai) but anyways Atul Bhai ki baat ho rahi hai. Resume kuch kamzor ho gaya hai bhai ka, wo kaafi dinon se koi film nahin mili (chali) naa. So, bhai ka resume strong banana hai.

Ketan - Okay okay brother in law. Fine with me. I will still get the credit right? Let's do it.
-----------------

Another conference call

Atul - Bhai I have never seen a call center from inside. Do you think we should do our home work and visit some call center to see how things work?

Sallu - Bhai hamne nahin dekha to kaun sa pure India ne call center dekha hai. Whatever you want to show just do it. Whatever we will show waise hee ho jaiyega. Karan Jauhar ko dekho bhai middle class family ko bhi helicopter mein bitha ke ghoomata hai apni movies mein.

Atul - How many people normally work in the call center at a particular time?

Sallu - How many stars are there in our movie? Arre yaar! it's no use showing more people than the number of our main characters. How does it matter? People are coming to watch a movie and not a call center.

Atul - Okay okay one last question bhai. What is a computer Virus?

Sallu - Bhai you don't even know this. How dumb you are. Anyways ask Ketan. He will give you the correct answer.
---------------------------------------------

Once they were done with screenplay the shooting started. I think there was a lot of pressure from Salman Khan for a guest appearance and aajkal Salman akele to kahin jaate nahin (I am not talking about his bodyguards) so katrina also got a guest appearance.

Atul - Saalu! (he has the right to pronounce Saaman Khan as Saalu and not Sallu) yaar tera woh simple guest appearance where the girl narrates the story to you is not looking good. What do you say?

Sallu - Yeah you are right. What the hell you people are thinking? You don't have any item songs planned for me?

Atul - Yeah yaar, we have a item song but that would look nice in a female voice (Bang bang bang, zamana bole) and Ketan is saying that bhabhi jaan will be good in that. Waise bhi she is the best pole dancer I have ever known.

Sallu - Arre yaar, you people are just too much. Look, fit me somewhere in that song. Waise bhi Shahrukh is doing item numbers only these days and jab Amitabh sir item number kar sakte hain to hum kyon nahin? So I will take it and Bhabhi ki jarurat nahin hai. I can do something that she even can't.

Atul - what?

Sallu - Arre jiju, all these years of inactivity has made you dumb. I can even dance topless idiot.

So that resulted in a half baked song which makes you feel like you should have reached the theater half an hour late. Man! how many times you reach the theater late and not feel guilty for that?

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Atul and Ketan brainstorming on the ideas -

Ketan - Sir, the movie is short of two hours. Atleast make it two hour movie.

Atul - Okay, I have an idea. We will show the titles and credits for 10 mins. Waise bhi, people take time in settling down in the theater.

Ketan - Whatever you say. You are my "mai baap".

And in low tone he whispered, you dumb I have already got another movie deal and thanks god! it's Amir Khan this time.

So here it is. A movie in which hardly six people work at a time in the call center. The cafeteria is always empty but next moment you see hundreds of agents popping up from neighborhood to attend a conference, call volumes suddenly increase with hoax calls from the agents (to hell with regulations and ethics). Well, anyways the purpose of the movie is achieved from the crew's end.

Salman gets to remove his shirt.
Amrita gets 10 minutes of Camera.
Sohail his chance to play the best role and the luxury to spoil it
Atul and Chetan gets a couple of lines in their resume each.

Well, looking from this point of view, the movie is atleast 50% successful, Isn't it?

Capitalist World teaching lessons in Communism..

The last few weeks have been really disastrous for the financial markets world over. The dust has still not cleared and the primary reason is that when everybody thinks that the worst is over suddenly the worse happens. Every other week a new institution is adding to the stockpile of the debris. Much like the bomb blasts in India these days. When you think that this was the last as police has solved the case, it shocks you again. In Delhi even the debris of the last blast was not cleared properly when terror struck the city again.

Well, coming back to the financial markets, first Bear Sterns failed. Everybody knew that something is seriously wrong with the system but companies were employing good methods to hide the storm inside their account books. The stock market world over reacted to the news driving the wealth of the equity holders down by many percentage points. Very people were able to understand that why when Bear Sterns fails in US, the stock of Reliance Enery goes down in India? Anyways, I can't understand that even now but one thing that I can see is the capitalist world is perhaps teaching some lessons in communism to the world. The supporters of free market are trying to find excuses to cover their theory and the governments who funded fight against communism for more than 4 decades are wisening up to the thought that somewhere something went wrong.  

Bear Sterns was bailed out and has to go for a fire sale price of around 10% of its original value. Lehman Brothers, Fannie and Freddy, Merrill Lynch, AIG, Washington Mutual, Northern Rock etc etc. They all fell prey to one single crisis and except Lehman all others have to enter into an agreement with the government. Just today the news came about Bradford and Wingley and of Wachovia bank. Bradford will most probably be resuced while Wachovia for the time being is on its own to find a buyer who could assume its debt. These were some of the institutions which have spearheaded the financial sector reforms and their failure actually casts a spell of doubt on the efficiency of those reforms. 

Well, the unified message coming out of this crisis is that one country single handedly brought the world's economy on its knees. Some of the American financial institutions are breathing their last and news have started coming from British institution. Bradford and Wengley is the current victim and hopefully within a couple of week many more companies are going to announce the quantum of losses. Over reliance on USA have pulled many economies into this crisis and it's just a matter of time when the government across the world have to go shopping for companies. 

Someone must be smiling even during this bloodbath. I wonder if it's Karl Marx up there. 

5 Cities in 5 Months - Is it so easy to bomb a city in India?

Jaipur, Bangalore, Ahmedabad, Surat and now Delhi, five months and five different cities. One thing which is common in all the blasts is the ease of execution. People just come on bicycle, scooter, bikes, cars, etc. They park it somewhere and it simply explodes. After months and years of beating around the bush our intelligence machinery and police department comes with interesting inputs about how the scooter/car was stolen from ABC place, how the cycle was bought from ABC shop and what was the explosive used (which is predominantly RDX). I remember that the investigation report of Mumbai serial blast contained a detailed report on the pressure cookers as the bombs were sealed in the pressure cookers and were kept in the train compartments. Police traced the make of the pressure cooker, the distributor and then they were wondering that out of the 8 pressure cooker purchased, only 7 exploded and they have no details about the eighth one. (May be the guy who was given the responsibility to plant the last one might have threw the bomb in the sewer and decided to run away with the pressure cooker. What a steal. On being quizzed about the suspects, the police was double sure that they have crossed the border. In Ahmedabad police was actually looking for the old cycle sellers because the bombs were left on the carriers of the bicycles.

Well, nothing much happened in Jaipur blast case, Bangalore blasts didn’t hurt many people so no body took it seriously and then Ahmedabad happened. There is something special about Gujrat these days. Camera and press follows Narendra Modi like they are waiting for him to err so that they can simply pounce on him but somehow this leader never fails to inspire. Suddenly bombs starting popping out of every gutter and sewerage of Surat. They were found hanging like guavas on trees and a possible disaster was averted due to the alertness of police. As usual they traced the stolen car, the various number plates and even made some arrests. And when everybody thought that “okay bad times are over and let’s start enjoying the shopping malls again” suddenly the terrorists decided to jolt the capital.

Great feeling it gives. Our honourable Prime minister tabled his statement against Mr Advani in lok sabha during the recent debate and was seen flashing the sign of victory in front of camera (so uncommon of him but anyways). One of the sentence was “How can a country forgive a home minister who was sleeping when terrorist was knocking at the doors of Lok Sabha?” I guess he should do some introspection now. I don’t know another era in Indian history when so many bombs exploded in so little time. How come he or his home minister will be forgiven by the people of the country? 

It seems that terrorists are striking at their will. I sometime wonder that how easy it has become to terrify people and how easy it has become to pacify them by making a statement like “We all need to stay united at this hour of need”. People forget easily and this Delhi blast will also be forgotten. Not much water has gone under the bridge since Ahmedabad blast but then it seems that terrorist are not afraid of the law and order, they aren’t even afraid of the police machinery and well why not? Government is afraid of taking a decision on Afzal’s hanging because of some political reasons, they are against POTA or any law parallel to that and some of the stake holders in the government even support organizations like SIMI.

It seems that there are people who think they are capable of doing anything, anywhere and anytime. They don't even spare a holy month of Ramadan. The failure of our machinery and lack of commitment to fight terrorism is acting as a booster to that will. Well, as the bomb blasts are slowly becoming a part of our subconscious (aaj yanha fata kal wanha fatega) I guess soon the security people stationed in front of important buildings will get back to their regular routing of chatting with each other while the metal detector keeps beeping. Nobody cares if somebody comes with a bag full of explosives and decides to explode some place in any city. If the big cities are not safe then imagine about the small towns. Perhaps terrorist are not targetting small towns because it looks less glamorous.

Image is copied from the http://www.bbc.co.uk .

I am Back.. Finally..

Before leaving for Hyderabad (for my job) I speculated "if I would be allowed to blog @ my new job?" Well, I am not. So that's one reason for the delay. Another reason being the new schedule. In a way I am allowed to blog but only on the company's own website (moderation issues and all that) so I choose to rather wait and wait and wait.

So I am finally in Hyderabad, settled in my new house (a rented one) and am happy that now I can blog courtesy my Reliance Broadnet conncetion (however slow it is, it is still good enough to post blogs). I was promised an unlimited 300 Kbps however it comes out that it's not Kilo Byte Per Second but rather Kilo Bits Per Second and the difference is it's 8 times slower than the promised connection. Reliance is good at making money and see they even fooled a guy having computer engineering background. Well, initially the sales person promised full download speed but the maximum I got was around 30 Kbps so finally I asked about my plan. He simply told me to divide the maximum speed by 8. On futher enquiry he told me that "Sir, this is the way, you always divide the maximum speed by 8". His emphasis was on the number 8 and then finally it clicked that okay so it' s the difference between bits and bytes.

Anyways, I am not in mood to change connection because first, it's really difficult to get one and secondly Airtel and Sify are equally non-reliable so it's fine. I'll stick to it for some more time. It seems that lots of things demands my attention and I am failing miserably in time management. Will be back soon this time.

Why Charu?

The news came out yesterday that Charu Sharma was sacked by the Bangalore Franchisee from the CEO post of the Royal Challenger team. I am not sure whose decision it was to make him the CEO? Had it been Vijay Mallya then going by his records (tastes) Mandira Bedi should have been put ahead of Charu. So you see, sacking Charu is not a mistake but a correction.

Rumours are there that Katrina Kaif has to shoulder the extra responsibility for the time being as Mandira Bedi is busy with her anchoring commitments. Meanwhile the franchisee is also thinking about tying the compensation of cheer leaders to the number of boundaries hit and wickets taken by the Bangalore team. It's largely being felt that they are being paid for nothing till now. Well, the cheer girls have been spotted in one of the famous temple last day praying for the team. In these dire circumstances thankfully Bangalore has someone to pray for them because the fans are better off wasting money on Royal Challenge rather than wasting time and money on Royal Challengers. At-least it saves the time.

Updates...

One reason for my prolonged absence from blogging scene was the lack of internet access at my home and the scorching summer heat killed the will to walk to the nearest cyber cafe. To top it off, I got a bad form of corn in my foot where the corn caps proved to be useless (they are useless anyway). So I got operated on 8th of April and it was so bad that even after one month there is a hint of limping in my walk.

My Job - I am joining as Associate Consultant in the Enterprise Solution (ES) unit of Infosys at Hyderabad on 12th May. There will be a 2 months training program after which I will be relocated to my base location. (A lot of traveling indeed) I don't know whether Infy allows me to blog about my life at Infosys but hopefully I will try to keep the flame alive.

Have a lot of posts due and I am dying to write one on my experience with the Indian Railways. Will pen down it soon.

Thanks readers..

A big thank you to all of you who have responded to my earlier post on the plight of the migrant workers in Maharashtra. Thanks for the comments and mails. The issue is growing out of proportion and even the Maharashtra government is not doing anything because this "son of the soil" is such a sensitive topic that nobody dares to speak against it. The saddening thing is that Maharashtra is not new to this kind of hate politics. The senior Thakrey started all this in 70s against the South Indians and now the junior Thakrey who is the self proclaimed successor of the Thakrey legacy is targeting north Indians now.

Anyways the good thing is that even after the extended hate campaign of 70s South Indians still continue to flourish in Maharashtra so the same thing will happen this time. Another good thing is that the government in Bihar and Bengal are rising to the challenge. Traveling across Bihar I witnessed some change. Though it still has a long way to go but these baby steps will definitely add together to become the giant leap. I saw roads being repaired, new roads being built, Bhojpuri film industry flourishing (well this thing really has a long way to go before they get wider group of audience, they are still very vulgar) and education sector being liberalized. Fitting it all together, there will be increased job creation and opportunities for the students of Bihar (among the most talented in India) to study in their home state. A rough estimate shows that the state looses around 8000 crores every year that the Bihari students spends outside. Add this with the fees revenue going out to substandard educational institutes in states like Maharashtra, Karnataka, Delhi and you see what kind of opportunity is there.

Well, the hate campaign is likely to continue till the elections and if the Thakrey looses it then it might escalate also with addition of some more states. The will to fight is lacking in the government and they have to pay the price in one form or another. No wonder big corporates might come into picture sooner or later.