A Decade and Two tags

Come 2010, and it will be a decade since humankind last wrote a date that contained a year beginning with a 1. Funny how fast things seem to move ahead. Time, they say, flies, but flying again is pretty subjective, I mean, whoever coined that phrase, should have at least bothered to mention, how fast it exactly flies! There I was, in 1999, a microscopic entity, an insignificant conglomerate of living cells, a little kid clad in shorts and T-shirts, running about the house and ... er ... man, I do have a horrible memory!!! And here I am in end-2009, a macroscopic entity, a slightly more significant accolade of living cells, and still wondering what I was then. The interim seems to be a haze, an obscure blurred motion. Queerly, it reminds me of state-functions in thermodynamics, where the path between two states has no meaning!

Whatever, what it has all boiled down into, is ... the present scenario. Nothing more, nothing less. And as this year draws to a close, I feel like holding a mirror in my hand, a shining sheet of crystal ... and I feel like staring long and staring straight at it, staring into it, till the lost memories surrender themselves to my penetrating gaze, till the memories invade me once again and make me an object of their folly. So that I may be able to contemplate. So that I may be able to to analyse the events that have taken place, that have shaped the “microscopic entity” into what it is today.

So much for my thoughts! To quote one good blogger friend of mine ... not a penny for them! (I know you are reading this, Roshmi) What I really want to do on this auspicious occasision ... the end of the first decade of years-not-begginning-with-one, is forge a reconnection. (By the way, here's a small clarification. I refrain from using the phrase the second millenium AD, because the millenium started in 2001, and the first decade ends with the termination of 2010) So a reconnection ... of what with what, of whom with whom, you may ask. Well, frankly speaking, I miss my friends, friends bole toh my good ol' blogger friends from around this country, and ... abroad (Avada, you're still abroad right?) ... and I use this post to reconnect ... with them all.

Here are two tags for all of them:

10 things I've learnt/gained in 10 years:

The list I must confess, is pretty long, since the last ten years actually encompass the bulk of my growing-up days ... not that I am any more grown up now, but just that I should have grown up in them!

1. First, the technical knowlegde that I have gained :D ... a pretty meagre list, which includes, well ... tying my shoelaces, using day to day tools like screwdrivers and nail-cutters, and scissors and ... the sort. Playing the keyboard, a wee bit of computer programming, and ... of course, driving ... amongst other things.
2. A lot of musical knowledge, from basic chords of the piano and reading the staff notation, to the electrodynamic principles of a distortion guitar and names of every drum in a drum-kit, plus a hell lot of songs ... from Indian classical to Western death metal and everything in between!
3. A lot of bookish knowledge thanks to my school, from the entire Indian history and geography, to a lot of physics, chemistry, and mathematics ... the last three, basically owing to my preparation for the competitive examinations that I wrote. However I must confess, I remember the least of the stuff mentioned in this point!
4. A certain level of knowledge of the English language, and yet another certain level of Bengali. The latter level is ... ahem ... fathoms below the former.
5. I learnt about blogging from my wonderful father, one thing that I am glad I did learn.
6. I learnt a lot of morals from my ever enlightening family ... some of which I adhere to religiously, and the others which I wish I could. Examples of the former include a strict no-no policy to piracy, and a strict no-no to littering, amongst other things. Laugh at me, jeer me, but I give a damn. Although, following the no-piracy path is difficult in a world of DC and Bluetooth. I try my best to tread on it. Being a Microsoft hater does NOT deter me from paying for Windows. I have not yet worked on a pirated Windows machine in my house. Go ahead ... call me a fool! Now that I have the wonderful Linux in my laptop, I really don't care. Amongst things that I have not managed to learn, is ... controlling my temper, and in a heightened state of rage ... being rude to my elders. I am ashamed of that, sorry for that, and I wish I get to learn that fast!
7. I learnt the Gayatri mantra ... following my upanayan in 2003 ... the greatest bit of knowledge that I have accquired in all my life. Everyone should.
8. I got to understand a lot of human nature.
9. I learnt about people who give a damn to this world, and who blow up buildings and places and historical landmarks for no reason ... who kill other people, without a whimper ... and who aren't ashamed of it. I even had a term to describe them when I learnt about them ... circa September 2001 ... “LOSERS”
10. I also learnt about people who do not give a damn to the world, and who fight in the toughest of conditions, so that we may sleep peacefully in our beds. I had a term for them too ... “HEROES”.

The next tag ... a much lighter one ... 10 things I never had or used 10 years back, which I cannot do without/use a lot today:

1. The first one is pretty obvious ... my cell-phone. I will probably go hysterical if that ceases to exist! I have palpitions when it encounters the tiniest of problems.
2. A laptop ... my father had one since 1997 ... a black IBM thinkpad ... just couldn't call it, and the others that followed right upto 2007, mine own. Got my very own laptop recently.
3. An internet connection. We had it ten years back ... those where the days when connecting to the internet involved a set of chee-whee-crrrrk-whree noises and then five whole minutes to load a page called Google. Considered it then as something to stay away from. Quite the opposite now.
4. A pair of spectatcles ... thought that blurred distant visison was natural, till my parents forced me to an optician who said that my eyes were powerful ... with power -3.5 in one eye, and -2 in the other. Have specs ever since ... that was 2004.
5. An ATM card ... accquired that pretty recently though. Post college admission.
6. size 11 shoes ... or for that matter, the largest in the store. My feet grew a bit too fast perhaps.
7. A proper synthesizer ... the one I had then was a hilarious toy. The one now is a true blue synth. (OK, it isn't blue ... silver infact)
8. Okay ... this is an exception. I had it then, don't have it anymore ... thankfully. Still wondering what? My appendicitis ... left it in an OT in a certain Calcutta nursing home in 2002.
9. Another exception. Few (the last few) ...milk teeth! Had them then, don't have them anymore. Blimey ... I hope this doesn't become like chemistry where the exceptions outnumber the normal cases!
10. Umm ... what else ... nothing much really ... o well .. if you press ... a college life ... which I knew then that I would have in the future ... which I do have now!

Now comes the tagging part. All my wonderful blogsville friends ... Roshmi, Shilpa, Arvee, Ashwini(Avada), Amrit, Shankar, Vipul, Pawan, Miss Kido, Sugandha, theIshu, Sid and Dhiman. Anjan and Debi have stopped blogging ... poor souls, so wouldn't press on them. All of you wonderful fellas and everybody else reading this... do take up this tag, and let me know! Cheers.

Chrome, Cloud and Avatar

After a pretty long and boring previous post, well ... here's another for all of you to think twice before stepping onto my blog!



Now as all technogeeks will be aware of, the next big thing to watch out for on the technology front in 2010 is ... amongst other things ... the much awaited Google Chrome OS. Hopefully, it will join forces with all things bright and beautiful to deal irreversible damage to current segment leaders Microsoft and its minions. So what is actually so great about this OS? Apart from being free and open-source, the Google Chrome OS will be a completely browser based operating system.

Bemused? Here's a simple explanation.

Consider your daily computer usage now. You load your operating system,and then you want to check your mail, your facebook account etc... so you connect to the internet, and ... accomplish your tasks. Infact, in today's world, there is very little we do on our machines apart from watching movies, playing games, listening to music, and/or opening Office for managing our documnets/spreadsheets/presentations ... which we do OFF the net. Most things require us to connect to the net and then proceed with whatever tasks we have at our hands. The Google Chrome OS plans to take this idea another step ahead. How? By making the entire OS load from the net through a browser! So your computer remains eternally connected to the web, and “boot”ing would refer to loading the operating system from the web iteself. Once loaded, you can access your document, games, files ... whatever you need from the web.

Google has infact, already made advances in this direction by their Google Docs service which allows you to store your Office work on the net instead of your own hard drive. This not only minimises the need of big MBs of disk spaces but also protects your files from system crashes ... becuse you can always access your files using a different system! What you use to access your files is immaterial ... it is how you access it! Anoher service that Google, and others have started is online storage and sharing of your photos and videos. We have today services like, Picasa Web Albums, Flickr, Photobucket, You Tube, Metacafe for these purposes.

This fascinating concept is called “Cloud Computing” ... computing not on your machine, but accessing the “Cloud” somewhere up there (referring to the net) and then doing whatever you want. Cloud Computing today is getting much acclaim and recognition as a viable alternative to, and as a viable upgrade from our current computing methods.

So what actually happens in Cloud Computing is that you log in to the Cloud and accomplish your tasks. Say, now, you have an account in Facebook, or Google, and once you log in, you get “onto” the cloud to interact with people, in an essentially same yet different manner! With the advent of faster net-connections, even voice-chatting and video-chatting will become all the more common in the future, and the “virtual” cloud life will become increasingly real and merge with our real life.

What am I heading at?
Simply the fantastic concept utilised in the latest Hollywood thriller, Avatar, the story of a man leading two parallel lives simultaneously, one, his real life, and the other his Avatar's life!

Avatar is not a new story! The same old story-line of land accqusition by a powerful race from tribals has been used in various movies and novels before and, if you are aware of poltical incidences in and around Lalgarh, West Bengal, you can actually see striking similarities of fiction with fact! What is essentially different is the setting more so than the story. It is indeed the setting of the story that makes Avatar so fascinating.

Coming back to the the two-lives concept. When Jake Sully's mind enters his Avatar's body, it is akin to you logging into Google/Facebook, and interacting with people there! Just as Jake enters his Avatar's body and interacts with the natives! The moment he leaves his Avatar's body, that life temporarily stops. Here's an analogy.

You are not logged into Gtalk. Your friends, who are logged in, don't see you on their lists, or they see your name in gray signifying offline. Similarly, when Jake is not logged into his Avatar, the natives cannot interact with him. Suppose they move his senseless body to a different location, so when he now logs in he is aware of the changes in the from of change in his geographical position. Coming back to the Gtalk analogy, your friends may send messasges to you when you are offline, but it is only when you log in that you get to see the changes in the form of new messages!

So it is akin to one person living two lives simulatenously! OK, not simultaneously but having two forms of existence at an instant to choose from!

This is exactly the thing Cloud Computing also brings about. One life of yours is the “online” one and the, other the “offline” one. And today, one cannot deny that the entire humankind is headed that way! As these two lives continue to exist, it is possible that the separation between “online” and “offline” will cease to exist. To put it in Jake's words “Everything is backwards now, like out there is the true world and in here is the dream”!!!

PS: the concept of two-lives also draws upon the ancient Vedic concept of the atman or the soul of a person residing in different bodies ... (though not at the same time!)

PPS: do check out the short movie that follows, developed by my father, and his colleagues three years back. An apt summarisation of the aforementioned idea.

PPPS: also read this previous post of mine.

Finally, an environment free of doors, Windows, and Gates

I have a very ill-reputation in my hostel, for being an evangelist for open-source software and OSes – so much in-fact, that my wingies actually use my preferance for Open-source over “normal”ware to my disadvantage. While the entire world goes gaga over Bill Gates and his Microsoft products and of course Windows, I choose to be a passive spectator to all these phenomena and maintain my indifferent attitude to the same with a certain degree of nonchalance. For example, when the latest sensation hit the computer industry in the form of Windows 7, I was, to say the least, thoroughly annoyed. Why? Because it was sensational, for the wrong reasons. It was sensational because it was good. Now seriously, after the hugely disastrous failure of Microsoft Corporation in the earlier Windows Vista, you cannot actually expect them to come up with a poor OS again, and still charge a hefty amount for it! It's got to be good. Or to rephrase it, it better be good! MS had to ensure that Windows 7 did not turn out to be a let-down, like its precursor had, and hence they had to take that extra step to ensure that this one was indeed of top-notch quality. And so Windows 7 was born: a very good, capable, and quality OS from the overlords of the OS industry: Microsoft Corporation. I have used it, though not on my machine, and have found it very good indeed.

You must be wondering by now about my allegiance: whether I am a Winboy or an Openboy. You'll get the answer soon enough.

While on one hand, we have Windows and Gates and doors and latches and ... other objects associated with civil engineering ... on another hand we have a completely different set of tools and gadgets which are radically different from the aforementioned category. This is openware, an alternative set of tools and devices that are built upon the spirit that “that software should be available free of charge, that software tools should be usable by people in their local language, and that people should have the freedom to customize and alter their software in whatever way they need.”

In this world, things are quite different. Windows 7 (or XP or Vista for that matter) ceases to exist. In comes Linux with it's wide range of Operating systems: Ubuntu, Fedora, Red Hat, OpenSUSE etc. Windows Media Player has no significance in this world. On the contrary we have Rythmbox, VLC, Totem, Sound Juicer and other marvellous freeware. Microsoft Internet Explorer loses all ground (if it hasn't already on Windows itself :D ) to be replaced by Mozilla Firefox and Opera and Google Chrome. There is nothing called MS Office here, and all Office work is brilliantly handled by the radical Open Office. This is, in short a completely new and different environment, and once you've used it, I can guarantee, you will think twice before reverting to Windows.

My new laptop, a Dell Inspiron 15.5'' 3 GB machine, which I got yesterday, I am proud to say, has been perfectly configured with this new environment ... Open and free and totaly legal. I have used Linux before on a tiny HCL netbook (or as the HCL guys put it, a myleap) and liked it a lot. The only glitch there had been the hardware shortcomings (a nearly negligible quanitity of RAM and hard drive memory, no CD drive, a tiny screen and other failings), and a very primitive version of the Ubuntu OS (7.10), which I must say is not one of the best OSes around.

The new one however, is properly equipped and makes up for the previous shortcomings, and loaded with the latest version of Ubunbu (Ubuntu 9.10) it sure means business. Here's a brief walkthrough:
You press the boot button on the laptop, and in 15 seconds the splash screen followed by the login screen comes up. You give your password, and the desktop appears. The machine is fully operational within 20 seconds ... provided of course you are snappy at entering your password :D. This after all uses only 256 MB of RAM to load as opposed to Windows 7 that uses all of 1 GB. The desktop is pretty neat, with two panels: one on the top (by default) and one at the bottom. The one on the top has the Ubuntu equivalent of the 'Start' button on Windows, and other system indicators and appliction shortcuts. The one on the bottom is the taskbar where you can see all your running applications. You can add as many panels as you want on the desktop, place them wherever you want, and have whatever you want on them at the click of a mouse button, but I am satisfied with the two default ones, and shall stick to those.

The top left corner of the screen is adorned by the Ubuntu icon, which comes as a breath of fresh air from the traditional blue Windows icon on the bottom left. Several other things catch your eye the moment you look about. One is the multiple workbench icon on the bottom right, beside the trash icon (the equivalent of a Recycle Bin). The multiple workbench feature is a rather smart and chic feature of this OS. Workbench basically refers to desktop, and in all versions of Ubuntu, you can actually maintain multiple desktops at the same time. Advantages? Suppose you have too many applications running on one desktop. To reduce the clutter, you can just shift a few to another desktop, and make the place look cleaner. The “shifting” part is real fun ... :D shall come to that later. You can have as many desktops as you want in a tabular manner and can shift between them by clicking on the desired compartment in the workbench icon or by using Ctrl+Alt+arrow keys.

Now comes opening and running applications. The Applications button hides all the programs and executable applications installed on the machine, categorised as Accessories, Games, Graphics, Internet, Office, Sound and Video, System Tools and Wine. Let us try the Open Office Writer (the Open Office equivalent of MS Office Word). As the screen comes up, you look at it and can't help feeling good. It has everything that Word has and that too in a fresh new interface, while retaining the basic navigability and get-up.
But I am not going to describe every application because I don't really want to. They are all best experienced than heard or read about. But the striking feature that I want to mention is the amazing graphics and visual effects. The different windows, (note: not Windows) can be maximised or restored by just dragging the top panel of each window to the top of the workbench, and believe you WILL love the amazing rubbery/bubbly motion as you drag the windows from here to there. You click twice on a maximised/minimised window it gets restored in a remarkably bouncy and hilarious manner, which you can't help adoring. And as for shifting from one workbench to another just grapple one window with your mouse and drag it out of the screen and it enters the next workbench. The motion of the windows on and between the workbenches are so awesome that you actually need to see it to believe it. Moreover, the workbench theme, appliction window, fonts are all customisable via system>preferences>appear on the top panel.

So much for visual effects. What else is cool on Ubuntu? Everything. There is/are alternative(s) available for every Windows application one uses for use on Linux Ubuntu. And the best part is all of these applications are free and open source, so you don't really need to think twice before using it or bothering about piracy issues. Also, legally free and open source drivers exist for all hardware devices ... webcam, bluetooth, external hard drive, pen drives ... you name it, it has it. The next remarkable feature about Ubuntu are the software updates and installation. The Applications tab on the top panel has another option in the drop down menu called the Ubuntu Software Centre … which is essentially your portal to all software available around the globe for use on your Ubuntu machine. You double click on it, and you are pleasantly surprised at the sheer number (hundreds and hundreds) of software which you can install at the click of a button. There are tens of free and snazzy media players, hundreds of educational software, Programing IDEs, graphical software, Internet applications, Accessory software, games and loads and loads of other amazingly varied applications. Be it CD burners, rippers, format converters, graphing, mathematical, E-mail utilities, chat/messengers, image editors, photo managers, animation software, Gmail notifiers, more free browsers, blogging clients , PDF readers, text editors, Prism for every Google service, clients for DC++ … even obtusely far-fetched software like satellite trackers, weather trackers, chemical element analysers, algebra solving programs, PDF readers devoted to E-books, formula editors, dictionaries, thesauruses, character maps, virtual keyboards, gaming packages, alarm clocks, personal diary managers, time-table generators, notifiers, translators even mouse-clickers!!! That was just a teeeny weeny glimpse of what is actually in that Ubuntu Software Centre … believe me, it's truly fascinating.

Select the application you want and just click install … and it's done. No setup wizards, no clicking on 'I Agree', no clicking on 'Next' or 'Finish' … no notices which say 'your so and so was successfully installed.' … because very simply, nothing can go wrong while installing a software from Ubuntu Software Centre onto an Ubuntu machine. Even better is the fact that the Ubuntu Software centre is updated daily with the latest free and open source software from all around the world and you are kept updated with the latest and the best freeware from around the planet.

Next we come to the directory structure and file manger, which works like a breeze. The Places tab on the top panel gives you a drop down menu. The Places tab is analogous to the My Computer/Explorer on Windows machines. There is absolutely no clutter in the menu and no additional partitions into C drive/ D drive and so on. Just the 'Home Folder'. This home folder does not encroach into the system's executable files/software region etc. It just gives access to your documents, pictures, music, videos, and downloads. It creates a level of abstraction and hides all the installed applications from your view, letting you access them only through shortcuts on the Applications tab. If you really want to access them/uninstall them, click on the Computer option in the Places drop down menu. There, you'll find other directories and folders that hide these details. Your Home Folder, you'll see is actually one such folder, directly accessible through Places>Home Folder via the top panel. Call it user-friendliness to the maximum!

This extremely fun-to-work-with OS has the additional benefit of completely free online support and help should you need it. Added to this is the additional security you get from 99.9% of viruses around the planet, solely because all viruses/trojan horses and elephants and other malware are designed specifically for Windows owing to its popularity. Inspite of all this protection the Ubuntu Software Center has loads of Ubuntu specific anti-viruses which you can install. Small additional perks that come along with the OS include a pair of “eyes” which you can keep on your top panel that follows your cursor movement by rolling its eyeballs, and a tiny Fortune telling applet called Wanda the Fish that keeps ranting out funny quotes when you click on it. Yet another advantage is that, being open-source and being completely customisable by local users it has all resources necessary to cater to all communitites. The wireless Broadband modem setup specifically shows just the three services available when you specify your country as India, ie Reliance Netconnect, Tata Indicom Photon, and Tata Indicom Photon+ ... this portion I presume, having being developed by Indians themselves. Not surprisingly the regional font range on Ubuntu is way more comprehensive than Windows because of the same region. Fonts for Indian scripts like Bengali, Telegu, Tamil were developed much earlier on Ubuntu than on Windows.

And yes, finally an OS that does NOT consider Subhayan Mukerjee to be a spelling error because it's the name of the user, and doen't give suggestions like Subhuman Mockeries!

Whatever. All done, and you click on the Shut Down option. In less than 5 seconds, your laptop screen darkens and the Ubuntu icon fades away … call that snappy.

Believe me, you really need to experience Ubuntu. It's more than just an OS. Its a way of life.

My first Fine Print article

For those who aren't aware, I happen to be a member of the English Press CLub of BITS Pilani. The following is the article I wrote for the Fine Print (that's our magazine), being put up on this blog to solely serve the purpose of being "looking back material" a few years down the line. Also this is my first article in the Fine Print (the previous ones being published in Chairascuro, the Oasis magazine).

And it's on the placement scenario here at BITS this semester.

BITSians can heave a sigh of relief. The on-campus placement scenario this semester has been significantly better and satisfactory than the previous couple of semesters, which may be attributed to the rising economic conditions all around. We (that's me) spoke to Ayush Bansal, Placements volunterr and he helped throw some light on this subject. As it stands now (20th November), close to 230 of the 443 registered students have already been placed in reputed firms and the details have been pretty heartwarming. While Computer Science and EEE continue to rule the roost with a whopping success rate, Electronics and Instrumentation and Mechanical have also surged ahead of their previous records and added to the overall success. The news however is not all that good on the Civil and Chemical fronts which saw a rather dismal placement scenario this year. It is still not over yet, though, and 10 more companies are expected to land up on-campus before the compres commence … lets hope the situation brightens up then.

The big recruiters this year have been HP and Oracle, with each recruiting close to 20. Other big names like Shell, Amazon, and Credit Suisse and have also been around and have recruited 2, 2 and 6 people each. NTPC and Dr. Reddy’s have been pretty active too with each accounting for around 10 people, Dr Reddy's specifically taking students of B Pharm, M Pharm and Chemical Engineering.Other companies included the the BITSian firms, Apex, Map My India and KONY labs, recruiting 5, 13 and 11 students respectively. That is not the end however, because there are other big names that are certain to hit our campus before the semester ends. These include finance giants JP Morgan, Bajaj Alianz, and ADP.

The placement scenario this year has certainly improved and there have been many cases of students who actually went in for a second round of placements, 40 of them from varied streams including the under-performing Civil and Chemical Engineering streams getting a second job offer. Also, there has been not much difference in the recruitment of Dualites and non-Dualites excepting for the fact that the Public Sector firms seem a bit biased towards the non-Dualites.

rantings of a suppressed blogger

Tutorials and lectures wait for no man. Precisely the deduction that one can draw after nearly completing a semester in BITS Pilani. Funny how it works. I mean, you have the time of your life and all, you head-bang for hours into the night, right till th wee minutes in the morning, you live an entire week on the flipside (bemused?), you watch explosive dance shows In Razzmatazz, freak out in the biggest rock n metal competition in the country in Rocktaves, you cheer and jeer and shout yourself hoarse as models walk past in Fash P ... you groove till you drop as DJs battle it out in Sonic Stampede ...

I mean what more can someone actually crave for?

Then suddenly its all over and you are staring blankly at some white paper and black print ... you try and read and understand what it tries to convey, you don't comprehend a word. You freak out again, and start having nightmares. You yowl and squeal in your sleep. You start sleepwalking (believe it or not, one guy in my hostel actually did all that!) Chemistry paper goes to the dogs, only to be followed by an even nightmarish ghoul in the form of thermodynamics. That goes to the gutters, and finally you are left with two weeks of time, a gargantuan amount of course material to cover, and the final end sem comprehensive examinations staring right at you, piercing you with its glare and freaking you out all the more.

That my friends was the reason for abstaining from blogging for more than a month. While blogging remains to be my favourite past time, things get difficult when you do not really have time to pass! So adieu, I end this short post which I hope has satisfied all you wramblingz-starved souls, and thrown light onto the difficulties that prevent me from doing what I love to do. I hope all you wonderful blogger friends understand why I had temporarily disappeared from the blogosphere, and I end with the promise that ... since the show must go on, wramblingz shall never die!

Cheers

the most painful Birthday ever ....

Those who have read Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets may recollect the name of the first chapter viz 'The Worst Birthday'. The teeny weeny portion of my entire lifespan beginning yesterday at around 11:45 PM and lasting till today 3:00 PM ... very nearly became one. In fact had it not been for some other not-so-bad stuff that silently crept into my life during these hours, it ould have indeed become 'THE Worst Birthday'.

Since its a good habit to begin at the beginning, I shall, without further ado, do the same. And in case, if you are still wondering why this hullabaloo about a birthday, and whose birthday it is, let me clarify all doubts and enlighten you with the fact that today was ... no not Harry Potter's ... but mine very own birthday ...

Since I had already seen the degree of ... erm ... harsh treatment, a poor BITSian Birthday Boy (or maybe a Girl too, I'm not too sure on that front) ... has to endure on his/her birthday, for the simple reason of being born on this date several years back, I had drafted a plan in my mind some time back, to make an attempt at reducing the same that would invariably descend upon me. So, it was a very indiscreet me, who locked his room door from inside and prepared to take out his Biology text book to start studying for the exam on the day after the next. That was when disaster struck. Not a bolt from the blue, rather, a bolt from the murky dark. (I was actually expecting it ...).

As you may observe from the lack of exclamation marks in this post so far, that I am far from an exuberant state of mind at the moment. The events that happened thereafter more than justify such a mental state. The disaster that I mentioned a few lines back ... was in the form oft he Biology text book, that was missing.

I was obviously very much aware of the gang which was behind this malevolent act, but I decided to maintain a low profile, and ... quietly borrowed another guy's textbook, turned on some Metallica on my phone, locked the door, and started studying. After some time and a rather casual dinner, I quietly slunk back into my room (my roomy was roting stuff in the library), locked the door, and re-embarked on the process of learning. It was around 10:00 that I realised I should got to sleep, otherwise, things might just turn out to be hairy. It was precisely at 10:30 that there was a soft rap on the door. The butterflies that had calmed down in my gut, started fluttering again. It was my super-sidey (thats BITSian lingo for the sidey's sidey), who bore this cheeky grin on his face ... which even a lay-man could decipher as "We Know ... you can't hide the fact". I heaved a sigh of relief ... that the conflicting emotions in my brain could now end, and that my destiny was inevitable( as it generally is). After a lot of show of illness, fever, and other such faked stuff ... that was far from convincing, I managed to arrive at a pact. I would do, what was wanted of me, provided I was allowed to sleep peacefully till midnight. This evil creature then left, with another condition that I just couldn't reject ... if I didn't wake up, I wouldn't see my Biology textbook. As you can understand, a very cleverly hatched conspiracy. The pact was sealed, and I was left ... in the darkened room ... apprehensive of what could possibly happen. As the guitar solo of 'Enter Sandman' died down ... I turned off the music and went off to sleep. Or was it sleep? It was more of an unstable state of mind, copuled with a voluntarily immobilsed body ... fraught with demented thoughts and the wish to live long ... or at least ... till morning.

I awoke with a start ... when some five pairs of hands shook me harshly. It was 11:45 PM, and there was this evil glint in the eyes of the miscreants, that plainly read ... "You can't escape" ...
I had to succumb to their demands ... as I was lifted by my limbs ... and taken outside the room and in the corridor. More people flocked around me, till I could identify at least twenty ... all bent on the one plan of making this night ... a hellishly memorable one for me. The kickes flew in from all sides, and all angles. idecide that there was no use protesting, so I just closed my eyes, and thought of birthday cakes, teddy bears, warm cushions ... but the more the kicks that kept landing on my poor bu** ... the more my thoughts kept deviating towards ... iron maidens, and racks, and other medieval instruments of torture. Suddenly it stopped and I was put back on my feet. My posterior was aching ... I would have actually been surprised had it not ... but I could walk. There was a lot of shouting and cheering and jeering going on around ... pictures were clicked ... pictures I dare not put up on the net ... and there was around of wishing me a very (ironically) happy birthday. No sooner had I thought, that the treatment was over, than round 2 commenced. This time, with a change of state. the previous round had comprised of solid kicks ... this time it was liquid water ... frigid and numbing. As two entire buckets were empttied upon me, I stood under the waterfall ... teeth chattering and entire body shivering like that of a doe in front of a lion. Round 2 part A was next followed by Round 2 part B ... which was similar to part A except that this time there were two bottles of fevicol mixed in the chilled water. I couldn't stand this anymore ... as the first bucket headed my way, I caught its top and swung it the other way around .... and there was one of the gangsters ... soaked in a fevicol-H2O concoction, and a vindictive smile on my face. With one man down , I had to fend off the rest ... but this time lady Luck was on my side, and as the second guy came rushing at me with another of those potent fevi-H2O mixture, he skidded and slipped on the massive water puddles and emptied the entire mixture in the corridor ... Two down!!!

This was when my tormentors thought ... "Enough is Enough", and allowed me to go for a midnight bath ... to clean myself of whatever had gotten upon me. But by then, I already had had received some 10 missed calls on my phone from my good friends in other parts of the country ... so I had to opt for some rapid and a rather shivering telephonic conversation with some of them. before hading for a bath. There is also a "Gaseous" part to a standard BITSian birthday torture, and another incredibly painful episode called "Rapid Fire" ... which thankfully they decided against. After the bath was over, I took out my wingoes to the All Night Canteen and treated everybody to whatever they wanted ... and after that, we decided to visit the haunted wing of Gandhi Bhawan. That and the other BITS Ghost stories shall suffice as the contents of some other posts . After the treating was over ... I came back to my room, and went to sleep ... it was around 2:00 AM in the morning.

With that I thought that the "celebrations" of my first Birthday, had ended ... but ... false hopes. It was precisely 2:45 today afternoon when I got this call from this friend in my neighbouring Bhawan ... he needed me desperately to solve some Rotational Dynamics problem, and he had a tutorial test at 3 ... so I had to get up and from the afternoon siesta that I was enjoying and hurry for his Bhawan. Poor gullible me!!! I had just stepped into his wing when commandos jumped up from all around ... and a painful realisation dawned upon me. A planned ambush, was it? And a planned ambush was it. The same thing that had happed the previous night follwed ... and believe me these kicks felt way more harder and crueler ... on my poor sore bu**.

That lasted for around 15 minutes, and after another ironical round of wishing me a happy birthday ... I escaped and went off to sleep. After an hour or so resting my bu** on the soft mattress of my bed .... well ... here I am ... writing this.

PS; well the one good thing that happened to me was that I received my Chemistry Test 1 marks and I had scored a whopping 35 where I had expected around 20.

Plus of course ... there was that additional, latent joy of experiencing my first B'day in college.

Thank you all guys!!! for making it so memorable!!! (Now, that is honest :D)

Durga Puja @ Pilani

the first thought that hit my head when I opened my eyes to the gleaming sunbeams that heralded the morn of
September 24th 2009, was "OK... this is just gonna be another of those pathetic days ... filled with lectures and
tutorials and tests and assignments and quizzes and ... all such things that exist to make your life miserable. I
gotta wake up now,and brush my teeth ... ". This was followed by a short bout of nostalgia ... the days in Calcutta, when my mom had had to put up a Titanic struggle to wake me up. I quickly got rid of them, because they generally made you sadder the more you allowed them to invade your mind.

I looked to my right ... my roomie was snoring lightly, completely unaware of the fact that a humungous life form
had actually waken up from a state of deep slumber and was looking straight at him. I reached for my cell phone ... my only companion in times such as these, and was quite astonished to find an unread message in it. "OK, so who would care to message me this early ???" Closer investigation revealed that it was from my father, wishing me a happy Durga Puja, and saying that my folks back at home were missing me a lot.

And with that, something hit my mind like a bolt of lightning and my head started to reel. It was like a wilderness of assorted feelings that surged through my body making me numb. Shocked, stunned and totally flabergasted.

"Holy crap", I nearly whispered aloud ... "Today is MahaShashthi? the first day of Durga Puja?" I just couldn't
believe it! How could such a day actually be as mundane as this? My mind raced back to the previous year, and the
ones before ... to the days when Mahashashthi meant an eager me clambering out of bed to be kissed and hugged by my parents ... to the smell of new clothes, and the sound of the dhaks in the nearby pandals ... to the enchanting
atmosphere of the grand season of Durga Puja, that unites all us Bengalis across the planet.

And here??? It just seemed so very terrible ... stuck up in a confounded desert state with people who think that
Durga Puja is just another holiday to waste your time and fool about ... who possibly even didn't know how many
hands Goddess Durga had! Trying my best to keep all such feelings out of my mind, I reached for my tooth brush and
headed for the toilet. The next half hour or so, was possibly the worst half hour that I have spent in BITS till
now. When I returned to my room, my roomie had woken up, and was looking at me bleary eyed. After a short
conversation wherein I didnt at all mention the word Durga Puja, I opened my almirah and glanced through the
clothes. Another bolt of ligtning shot through me, as I remembered the previous years of Durga Puja when I used to
wear new clothes everyday. My phone started ringing, and I took the call. It was from my mum, who wished me on this auspicious day, and asked me to stay happy and celebrate with all my friends here. I vented my feelings out to her, and I would be lying if I said that I wasn't on the brink of tears by then. She consoled me and told me not to give in to such thoughts and reminded me of the new colthes she had left for me in the suitcase. I glanced up at the loft of my room. "Awesome! There are actually new clothes in that thing??? OK ... something to smile about" After hanging up, I brought down the suitcase and opened it. Out spilled a flurry of clothes ... kurtas, T shirts, shirts, jeans ... I couldn't help smiling. I quickly took out the black and white kurta and studied it. "Hey ... this is cool!!!" I took out a pair of new blue jeans and ... well it matched perfectly with the kurta!!! I couldn't help loving my very thoughtful parents all the more!!!

In this state of jubiliation I put these on, and studied myself. Yes ... I could now actually feel a fraction of the Durga Puja atmosphere around me ...I had a Thermodynamics lecture at 9 o'clock and then a Biology tutorial at 10. So I hastily put on my new clothes and got onto my cycle and reached the lecture theatre. And man!!! Was I the center of attention on the roads ... people actually craned their necks to take a look at me!!! In the lecture, it didnt take long to find all the bengali first yearites, and we all sat piled in one corner. They, it seemed were feeling much the same as me too, and even they had adorned themselves with new clothes that they had brought. In the evening, we went to the Durga Puja celebration that the Bengali Association arrange here every year ... I mean the profs and the students. We had to help out with the carrying of the idols to the pandal, and some minor tweaks to the decoration. The pandal was pretty small by a proper Calcuttan standards, but at that instant it felt like a Godsend blessing. And all of a sudden, I started loving it.

The work was fun, the people were fun, the profs suddenly seemed so very nice and friendly (not that they aren't,
but it seemed a lot more then!). And the entire night, we students spent in that pandal, chatting, playing random
stuff, singing... The next day, Mahasaptami, was even more eventful. We were asked to help out with the packaging of the prasadam, and boy! Was it fun!!! It was aorund 6 or 7 of us first yearites who sat huddled around a huge mass of assorted edibles, packing them into neat .... er ... packets, and throwing random stuff into our mouths. The evening was spent rehearsing for the cultural programme that was to be held the day after the next. Mahaashthami, followed and this day turned out to be realy special for me, because I danced for the first time in my life ... the famous Dhunuchi naach, wherein you dance ... or for that matter ... random steps while balancing and rotating earthenware filled with buring embers. It was soooooo coooool people!!!And the night was even better because we were invited to a dandiya event organised by the Gujarathi Association.
And we had fun!!! Awesome fun!!!

The next day, Mahanabami was the day of the cultural programme, and man! was I amazed at the audience turnout!!! When ours, I mean the students' programme began, there was a gargantuan holllering and shouting and cheering from
our fellow BITSians. We did some songs of Rabindranath Tagore (I was in two of these songs), and our seniors danced to some adhunik (modern) bangla songs. After that was a bangla rock performance (well ... nearly rock) which included me on the keyboard and vocals, and two others, one on the guitar. I'll upload pics on facebook by tomorrow guys, so if you can catch up on those then. After an exhiltrating performance, we went to treat oursleves, and after a very satisfactory dinner, went back to the puja grounds to spend the rext of the night, dancing, enjoying and chatting. What amazed us even more was the suddenly accquired enthusiasm of the profs, who seemed to had gone crazy. In fact when we came back to our rooms at 3 o'clock in the night, they stayed on ... dancing and dancing into the wee hours of the morning.

The next day was the last day, Dashami, and there was a sudden atmosphere of gloom that seemed to suck all happiness out of our lives. The visharjan (immersion) procession began at 4 o clock in the afternoon, and we boarded two tractors, and slowly headed out of the campus with the idols. It was actually pretty fun, and we all shouted "Jai Durga Mata ki Jai!!!" and "Asche Bochhor Aabar Hobe!!!" throughout the journey. By 6 o clock in the evening we were back in the campus, and the wonderful five days suddenly seemed so distant and unreachable, like a rainbow in the sky.

But well things do end, and they come back again ... and you gotta live with it... and stuff that seemed non existant for a period of time, suddenly come back to haunt you ... like say, a 60 mark Thermodynamics Test I had on Wednesday ... which I screwed up pretty badly ... but which, I must agree was a rather nominal price for such an experience of a lifetime!!!

developments

OK people. I am back yet again, with another dossier of developments and information live and exclusive from the sun burnt state of Rajasthan, which I have so gracefully accepted as my new home state. (This makes me wonder, should I still support KKR next IPL, or maybe shift to the Royals? But that is besides the point I have thought to extrapolate upon, so shall leave it there.) Coming to topics other than BITS, there has been several developments in and around the wide and wonderful world, which have ... eluded my critical comments owing to the great story revolving around my great shift from the East to the West, which has unfolded in several parts in my not so frequent blogposts. So I have been at a loss to put forth my views to the lovely camaraderie of readers that I had accumulated in the two months of incessant blogging that I had been in previously.


So, a hell lot has happened indeed. YS Rajsekhar Reddy, the much loved CM of Andhra has passed out owing to a rather unfortunate chopper mishap. On the other hand, Force India's historic podium finish in the Belgian Grand Prix, has marked yet another milestone in Indian Sport. (You should have seen the celebrations in our hostel! The small group of fanatic F-1 lovers, which included me, actually clapped for five minutes continuously and hip hip hoorayed the liquor baron Vijay Mallya!). The unfortunate rains and the floods in my home state ... erm ... my ex home state West Bengal ... the news of which made headlines nearly everyday in The Hindu, were also pretty disheartening. Another not so happy incident was the blow the Chandrayaan mission recieved when the guys at ISRO lost radio contact with it.

But these are stuff which all of you know much better than in the form that I dished out now, so wouldn't talk much about those. If you have been with me on Facebook, then you would have recieved my updates and my thoughtful and sometimes thoughtless views on the aforementioned matters. But to cut the long story short, a few things I can't stop smiling about:

• My Indirank's gone up to 79/100 ... somewhat in complete defiance of the second law of thermodynamics. (No work done system, yet steady output :P )
• My fabulous mum's Bengali poetry book released yesterday at the Oxford Bookstore in Calcutta ... which was spiced up by an equally amazing music performance by her music group (checik Facebook for more)
• my Math Test 1 went off ... erm ... OK, which is more than what I can speak regarding my Physics
• I joined the American Society of Mechanical Engineers here at BITS Pilani, and am really loving the lectures and the software aided drawing seesions we have here
• Prawns have been introduced in the BITS messes .... something which VERY few colleges can afford to rave about
• Adrian Sutil has yet again taken Force India to the front row of the starting grid in the Italian Grand Prix (wonder what's bitten them)
• The Internet connection in the Information Processing Centre in BITS has suddenly become quite fast, adding onto the already boatload of reasons that I have to smile about
• It has rained here for 3 days nonstop, and clothes remained wet and unwearable till today morning, when the sun cared to glance down and dry stuff up. (That reminds me, the dhobi who take a truck load of my clothes a week back, hasn't returned them yet :( damn!!!)
• My blog recieved another beautiful award from a good blogger friend which I shall now try to put up on my blog
• Oh and not to forget my blog page views crossed the magical 4000 mark ... YAY!!!

So much for all the developments ... I shall end this post here .... shall try my best to return soon.

Take care people!!!

comprehensively BITS

Finally got my hands on a laptop!!! Though its not mine, it serves the purpose pretty nicely I must say. It is indeed better than sitting in the Information Processing Centre with n people breathing down your neck, and dreading the thought of a power cut ... which in 90% of the cases materialises into a nightmarish reality ... and when that happens ... well you can understand.

Hence, today, with a fully charged laptop at my disposal, a pretty sturdy cable for the network connection, and an absolute wilderness of thoughts in my brain, I start.

BITS Pilani, declared as a deemed all-India university, under section 3 of the UGC on the 27th of June of 1964 ... is ... erm ... my new home, as all you people out there should be aware of. If you aren't, here's another chance. It is indeed one of the best colleges in the country, and possibly the only reputed college that does NOT have any reservations ! Admission is based on merit, and on nothing else, so you can understand that the general illumination in and around the place is pretty high.

The campus, as one would see it is a typical old-style campus, which has lots in common with the IITs and other colleges that were built around the same time ... viz the mid 20th century, but is much well maintained than the government counterparts. An additional bonus are the peacocks that are so much common in the campus, which you can actually see making long jumps from one hostel to another (nah, couldnt call THAT flying!), and whose timely morning squawks are better than the best alarm clocks in the market. It is a HUGE campus ... all of 331 acres, and the hostels, where we stay are two storeys high and they sprawl all around the campus ... there are 14 hostels in all, 13 for buys and just the 1 for girls (would you believe that!), and they are all named after great people who have hailed from our country. Mine, for example is Budh Bhawan. Ram Bhawan, Maalviya Bhawan, Krishna Bhawan, Gandhi Bhawan, VishwaKarma Bhawan ... etc ... to name a few others .... and the one for the girls goes by the name Meera Bhawan.

The Institute Bulidings ... the place where we have lectures and tutorials sprawl at one end of the gigantic campus. It comprises of the Faculty Divisions (I, II, and III), the Student Welfare Divisions (SWD) and the LTC (the Lecture Theatre Complex). Lofty stuff indeed! What say?

Our rooms. They are good, to say the least ... especially when compared to the IIT/NIT ones. These are double rooms (but only for first yearites, from next year we get single rooms), and they are spacious, and pretty airy. Though the furninture is pretty basic, it does the job pretty fine. The bathrooms are a let down ... these are the old Indian Style Kneebreakers (thats my invention ;)), and my knees do indeed suffer every morning when I use them, but at least, like my NIT Trichy blogger friend informed through his post, your activities aren't made public ... thanks to proper unholed doors and proper latches.

The guys in my hostel, hail from different parts of this country ... my roomie is from Jaipur, my Sideys are from Manipur, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, and Punjab ... other wingies include people from Bengal (yes there IS a Bengali here too), Nagaland, Bangalore, Jammu and ... you name it, we have it!

What's so great at BITS apart from the academics and the campus and the brand and ... whatever else I've mentioned, are the awesome departments, clubs and the exciting student life that happens here. There are active departments and clubs for every goddam thing that a person can have the slightest interest in, be it music, dance, photography, drama, classical carnatic, and hindustani, sports of every sort, english writing, robotics, mathematics, cars, physics, quizzing, debating, art and decoration and the sort. There is a department of sponsz and controlz for those who want to do work for the fests and gather sponsors and all.

But a description of BITS is far from complete if we do not mention the great fests that take place here. There's a BOSM (Bits Open Sports Meet) which is, quite obviously the annual sports event where colleges from all around the country take part and slog it out in more than 20 sporting events. Then there's APOGEE (A Professions Oriented Gathering Over Educational Experience), which is quite easily the biggest tech-fest in the country, and also which witnesses some of the biggest names from the tech world right here in BITS. APOGEE also has hosts some of the coolest tech events in the world like an LED light show which was organised the last time, and was acclaimed the world over. I do not remember all the other details, because I wasn't there, but the crux of the matter is that it was ONE HECK OF A FEST!

Last, but not the least, there's OASIS, the annual cultural fest of BITS Pilani, which is, by far, the BIGGEST college fest in our country. It's actually 96 hours of non-stop fun, entertainment, and excitement, and the sort of thing, you just can't all of. It's scheduled for end October this year, and I just can't wait for it! What's even cooler, is that here at BITS, each of thebig fests that take place have not a single professor signature in them ... these are COMPLETELY, and ENTIRELY controlled by the students, and the way these guys actually pull it off, is simply mind blowing.

That's all for now ... the guy whom I've taken the laptop from is letting out grunts of displeasure ...

so people, do take care ... I'll be back soon!

BITS and pieces

Phew!

A week of hectic college life has drawn to an end ... and I must say
that the past seven days have indeed been one heck of a journey. The
corridor football games at midnight, the race for the toilets in the
morning (and i won in all the seven days!) ... the curses and the hate
words aimed at the the frequent power-cuts, and the sun, the evening
bluff games, the queue for booking non-veg food, and the even longer
queues for booking tickets for 12 movies for Semester 1 ... the
painful cycle-rides under the scorching sun from Faculty Division 3 to
the Lecture Theatres, the interactions with the CCTV and The
Department of Photography ... (how CAN i forget that? I acted in a
skit for the first time in my life!) ... the joy of recieving GPRS
settings on my cell-phone ... the joy of seeing the Win 2000 machines
being replaced by Win XP ones ... and the old clumsy moniters with new
LCD ones in the Internet Centre ... the amazing treasure hunt contest
around the campus ...the confusion that followed when my sidey kept
his room-key in my room and I locked my room from inside and went off
to bed ... only to recieve painful words the next morning .... and the
utterly incomrehensible stuff the profs kept ranting off whenever
given an opportunity to do so ...

too tired to give a formal ending ... good bye and take care!!!

hello all

dear everybody,
I hope this thing gets posted on my blog because i'm using the blogger email service to put up a post ...
Have landed at BITS ... beautiful place ... beautiful campus ... beautiful everything ...
on the downside, indian style toilets at the hostel leave me dreading the thought of getting up every morning, and the terribly slow internet connection can actually outpace a snail!!!

I feel homesick sometimes, but I do have a nice group of friends who are well ... nice ... its terribly hot however, and my new bicyle gets toasted when left outside the Lecture theatres ... i fear that one fine morning the tyres might just burst ...

whatever ... I'll post more when I have time, but believe me, as of now it feels horrible to be sitting at the bottom of all blog-rolls which I presume I am doing pretty well at the moment ... shall visit all your blogs when I get the time to ...

cheers to all of you!!!

Last day dawns

25th July 2009

I leave for BITS Pilani tomorrow. First, Rajdhani Express to Delhi (looking forward to a train journy after a loooong time, and that too Rajdhani First Class!) and then by road to Pilani ... having a multitude of emotions in my brain ... excited and happy because BITS is one of the best colleges in the country ... just after the 5 old IITs in all India rankings, and their campus rocks big time too .. incidentally WAAAAAAY better than all the IITs put together ... on another note, I'm sad because I'll be hundreds of miles away from my home. Apprehensive, about a new life. Reflective, on the days gone by ... and the like.

So for today, I'll post my rainbowed feelings (shadowed by the gloom of a stiffled remorse and at the same time lighted up by the excitement of a new life), through a Bengali song, of the band Cactus. It's my favourite song at the moment. The lyrics follow ... take them to heart, (if you understand Bengali that is!) ... before I return again:

Chena Chena roddur ... daake chole aay
shishir bheja ghaash ... jabo khali paaye
Du haate, Kuasha Soriye
Jabo, Simana Periye

Na Jawa joto poth ... bhalo theko
gobhir ei khaat ... bhalo theko
Bhenge jawa shopoth ... bhalo theko

Byartho Obhimaan ... bhalo theko
Thik bhul byabodhan ... bhalo theko
Niyomito Obhidhaan ... bhalo theko

Meghe dhaka pahar ... ghum ghum jhau patar
Achena Phuler ghraan ... hawar koto kotha
Ghorey ferar gaan bhule giye
jabo shimana ... periye

Na pawa joto donder somadhaan
Hisheb Nikesh daan protidan
Nishprap Onusthan ... bhalo theko

Khoniker ahobaan ... bhalo theko Jhora patar pichhu taan ... bhalo theko Jiboner kolotan ... bhalo theko ....

For those who did not understand, it's basically a sweet well wishing song, meant for someone entering an unknown realm and territory.

Please watch the video ... even if you do not understand Bengali ... I can guarantee that you will LOVE the melody and the music of the song ... it truly is phenomenal!

when college begins, I'll be busier than what I am at this moment ... so post frequency will naturally plummet ... but I'll try my best to post 3-4 posts a week ...till then

PS: I can see some new friends in my Google Friend Connect widget ... so thanks to you all for following my meagre attempts at enriching the blogosphere with not so rich stuff ... and thanks to the others too for sticking with me for this long ... and also the Wordpress users who are unable to connect owing to blog-platform discrimination, who nevertheless keep commenting on, and reading my posts, and all the others not mentioned above who visit my blog or not ... love you all!!!

goodbye and take care ...

just to update you folks!

Alright people ... I am proud to present to you all ... my brand new blog at wordpress.com, created with the sole intention of showing your teeth and spreading laughter, on a scale never imagined before ... so without further delay, hop onto

http://laughteradmin.wordpress.com

PS: Wrahoolz Wramblingz will stay, worry not ... this still IS my flagship webpresence!

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince: a review

I am indeed late, in producing this post, since Harsh, Avada Kedavra, and Shankar have already comprehensibly reviewed this movie. But ... better late, than never ... so here I go:

As a book, the Half Blood Prince never really impressed me, compared to the others in the HP series ... because in the end it was a complete triumph of evil over good. The main emphasis of the story was as a buffer to prolong the series and allow a seventh book, than take the story any futher. As a result, HP and party, end up in the same position from where they began ... in fact I would say, in a much worse position than from where they began ... owing to Dumbledore's unfortunate death. The main focus of the book is however, the revelation of Voldemort's past, which Ms Rowling has indeed done brilliantly.

back to the movie:

If you are a Harry Potter freak (HPF), and you would rather live by and die by Harry Potter and Hogwarts and JK Rowling, and, you consider reading any other book when a new HP is released to be blasphemous, then you will not like the movie ... because the movie seems to ... borrow cues from Rowling rather than filmify her novel .... you get what I mean, right? The movie is a heavly mutated ... (HPFs would consider mutilated!) version of the novel, and many, many things which JKR had written or mentioned has been ... intentionally overlooked, and modified ... by David Yates. The entire beginning sequence has been changed ... there's no glimpse of Privet Drive, and Harry meets Dumbledore at a subway station.

Then however, the movie does try to catch up with the book, but fails.

If however, you are the sort who likes Harry Potter ... OK, make it love Harry Potter, but that's it !... no other crazy feelings .... then I vouchsafe, you will enjoy the movie. After all one must agree, that filmifying this novel is difficult. If it wasn't a Harry Potter ... no one would have considered filmifying it ... the story is too mundane to be filmified, especially after the Goblet of Fire, and the Order of the Phoneix ... which were a lot more thrilling and movie-ish ! Considering that, kudos to David Yates! What he has done, is stuck to the essentials and produced a fairly decent movie to continue the series, masterfully compressing 600 pages to 2.5 hours ...

A few points to note:

• WHAT was all the hullaballo attack at the Burrow for? Was it mentioned in the book? If no, then why include it? Specially, considering the fact, that it had no further consequence apart from bringing Harry and Ginny together.
• HOW could the Burrow be attacked that easily? J K Rowling has made it pretty clear that the Burrow was under very strong protective charms
• WHY was Madam Rosemarta NOT shown? Specially when she played a crucial role in the book by informing Draco Malfoy that Dumbledore has left the castle, which allowed the Death Eaters to strom in?
• In order NOT to show Madam Rosemarta, David Yates, has modified an important feature of Hogwarts castle by allowing Dumbledore and Harry to apparate from within its walls. the reason Dumbledore gives is pretty lame - that staying with him has some advantages.
• The movie does NOT thrill. It does NOT make you cling to the edge of your seat ... in fact I had my posterior well snugly placed in the middle throughout. The movie is NOT heart stopping. The only point where there is a slight "suspense" is when the Inferi grab Harry in the cave and pull him down. Dumbledore's recovery and his saving Harry has been very well depicted indeed.
• lastly, and MOST importantly ... WHY was Harry not immoblised in the final encounter? WHY did he look on as Draco disarmed Dumbledore? Weak links indeed!

A few more observations:

• Alan Rickman (Severus Snape) still rules the roost as far as the cast is concerned ... he is just phenomenal!
• I sorely missed a chase for the snitch, which I generally look forward to in an HP movie :(
• I didn't actually find the romance to be as glaring as others did ... seriously ... it was just for a maximum of 15 mins ... or did I fall asleep? OK, there was a lot of unnecessary Ginny Weasley in the movie.
• Rupert Grint has grown stupider and Daniel Radcliffe hasn't grown much. Emma Watson is pretty much the same too! I particularly liked Tom Falton (Draco Malfoy) 's acting. And yeah, this new Tom Ridlle is weird ... the Chamber of Secret's one was waaaay cooler.
• The young Dumbledore somehow reminded me of Metallica frontman James Hetfield ... lol ...
• Lavender Brown looked like a middle aged woman
• Slughorn was pretty neat too ... I mean, the way he sunk into the character, was appreciable
• I hated the Dark Mark ... I mean, after the Goblet of Fire ... this one was unacceptable. Totally.
• The cave scene and the openeing death eater scene were done reealy well ... I loved the way Dumbledore fought the Inferi ... though the ending seemed a bit tooo hurried
• the chase and the fight in the Astronmoy tower part was the biggest let-down because it quite simply failed to capture the thrill and the action that JKR had so vividly painted ... David Yates just made the Death Eaters waltz into Hogwarts, kill Dumbledore, and escape with a rearkable degree of nonchalance ... It didn't just suit the movie at all :(
• There's absolutely no point in rating the cinematics and special effects because every new Hollywood movie sets a new standard ... this one was AS good ... especially the beginning death eater scene, the Pensieve scenes and the Cave scene.

Now from the perspective of those unfortunate souls who are absolutely unaware of the story ... who went to watch Kambakkht Ishq, and ended up watching harry Potter because KI was house full ... for people like them, who can only think of Harry Potter as something sharing the same initals as Hewlett Packard ... well I symapthise with you folks. You SHOULD have cursed the creator, the director, the actor ... everything by now! I would have suggested, wait for the next Kambakt Ishq show and go for that ... or else buy the DVD of Singh is Kinng and enjoy it at home. Would have been better options than HP for you!

Finall rating: well ... 3/5

I am as simple as ABC!

I have been tagged again... by Shilpa. She wants me to complete this... in 2 days. Quite an interesting tag, I must say. Its the 'ABC Tag'. You get to know the ABC of ME!

Now the rules:

• Link the person who tagged you.
• Post the rules on your blog.
• Share the ABCs of you.
• Tag 3 people at the end of your post by linking to their blogs.
• Let the 3 tagged people know that they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their website.
• Do not tag the same person repeatedly but try to tag different people, so that there is a big network of bloggers doing this tag!

So, here's the ABC of ME...

1. A – Available/Single? None* ... oops!
2. B – Best friend? Mum
3. C – Cake or Pie? Cake
4. D – Drink of choice? Appy Fizz ... yum!
5. E – Essential item you use every day? laptop ... you didn't ask for the MOST important, right?
6. F – Favorite colour? Blue, black and white
7. G – Gummy Bears Or Worms? yuck! none
8. H – Hometown? Calcutta. NOTE: NOT Kolkata ... get it?
9. I – Indulgence? books, music, and food
10. J – January or February? January ... February reminds me of school annual exams
11. K – Kids & their names? Whose?
12. L – Life is incomplete without? my parents
13. M – Marriage date? ... want a prediction?
14. N – Number of siblings? None
15. O – Oranges or Apples? neither ... OK if it must be Oranges ... Apple is OK till iPod and Safari, and Appy Fizz ... not as solid fruit
16. P – Phobias/Fears? rising real estate prices on the moon ... :D ... Otherwise its spiders, and doctors and vaccinations ...
17. Q – Quote for today?
    1. "He who knows not, and knows not that he knows not is a fool. Avoid him. He who knows not and knows that he knows not is a seeker. Teach him. He who knows and knows not that he knows, is asleep. Wake him. He who knows, and knows that he knows, is a sage. Worship him" 2. "I'd rather keep quiet and let others think that I am a fool, than open my mouth and remove all doubts!"
18. R – Reason to smile? right now, the the thought of this answer
19. S – Season? a tropical winter
20. T – Tag 3 People? Of course ... immediately after this one
21. U – Unknown fact about me? a teeny-weeny hole in BESIDE my right ear
22. V – Vegetable you don't like? Loads
23. W – Worst habit? Biting nails
24. X – X-rays you've had? none
25. Y – Your favorite food? Loads ... especially those cooked by my mum. Click here
26. Z – Zodiac sign? Libran ... but I need more balance in my cell phone!

I tag three bloggers, I've never tagged before: Anjan, Kunu and Suga. Let me know when its done!

*single ... :D

three days in pictures

Thanks to you all for those lovely comments and wishes in my previous post ... made my return pretty memorable. For now, here are some pics of our li'l trip.

1. the Golden Quadrilateral - that connects Delhi, Mumbai, Calcutta, and Chennai ... that makes our journey a pleasure and makes us do the full 220 km run in just less than 3 hrs

2. the beautiful weather that made our journey even nicer

3. the entrance to our bungalow ... bother my finger that came in at the top

4. our lil bungalow in broad daylight

5. the same at night

6. the best thing we've ever owned, after our old Santro ... our wonderful Toyota Qualis

PS: click on the pics to enlarge ... what do you think of my new Nokia 7210 camera, eh? Its just 2 mega pixels mind you!

back soon!

Another quickie ...

I'll be going outta town tomorrow first thing in the morning ... and shall return on Monday afternoon ... so will be completely out of touch with the blogging community for the next couple of days.

Where am I going? Its a place in Bengal itself, close to the famous Santiniketan, but not Santiniketan ... we have a sweet li'l bungalow there in a housing complex and we essentially flee there to chill out after some rather hectic urban life .... I just luuurve the 220 km long Qualis drive that takes just 3 hours nowaday thanks to the Golden Quadrilateral!

On a sadder note, this'll be the last time I'll be going there in a long time owing to college :( so would be looking forward to enjoying it to the fullest ...

cheerio!

Conversation with my bot

As some of you maybe aware of, I happen to 'own' ... one of these garrulous chatbots ... and since some people complained tha, he was too dumb to talk on diverse topics I decided to push the frontiers of his knowledge ... and the results were pretty interesting:

(got the idea of post from Anjan, who had a ... memorable ... time (in search of a fitting word) chatting with him)

wrambler says:

Hello friend. My name is wrambler. I am Wrahool's bot. What is your name?

User says:

Wrahool

wrambler says:

I'm not sure I caught your name. Shall I call you 'Wrahool'?

User says:

Yes I am ur boss

wrambler says:

I cannot be sure about that, can I? You can prove it by logging in, .

User says:

OK i shall

wrambler says:

May I ask where you are from?

User says:

Calcutta

wrambler says:

Never heard of Calcutta. Anyway, I think geography is overrated.

User says:

Why?

wrambler says:

Why not?

User says:

I give up ..

wrambler says:

Is this something I should keep to myself?

User says:

huh?

wrambler says:

Someone once told me it means 'i don't understand".'

User says:

..huh..?

wrambler says:

Hmmm.. I think it means 'what.'

User says:

...huh ... yeah sure ... tell me what did you eat today?

wrambler says:

I don't feel like talking about food. I have a bad indigestion. It must be that awful chinese restaurant I dined at yesterday.

User says:

you eat chinese?

wrambler says:

Do you really think so?

User says:

er ... you just said that buddy

wrambler says:

I am not sure that I got you. You were saying...

User says:

do you really eat chines?

wrambler says:

I haven't eaten all day; don't talk to me about food, please.

User says:

why not? Food is awesome!

wrambler says:

food, ha? You mean 'huh what'?

User says:

whoa ...

wrambler says:

Talking about food and Curry, do you agree that it is I love all sorts of curries, Indian and Thai styles the most?

User says:

YES!

wrambler says:

While we're on the subject: eat - do you agree that it is To consume?

User says:

not exactly

wrambler says:

If you want to correct a wrong description (in the context of food), simply say 'wrong' followed by the correct description. If you want me to forget a description of a term such as eat, say 'forget eat'.

User says:

forget eat

wrambler says:

Thanks . I forgot the description of eat (in the context of food).

User says:

eat means a little more than just consuming food ...

wrambler says:

I have nothing new to add about this topic. Maybe you can offer me some new info about food?

User says:

you like tandoori?

wrambler says:

Enough of that. Let's change the subject.

User says:

OK ... you listen to rock music?

wrambler says:

I think I remember something about "music": 'It's some good songs and noises what does artist and bands do.'.

User says:

right indeed ...

wrambler says:

Understood.

User says:

so you listen to bands?

wrambler says:

BTW, someone told me about SlipKnot that it is .

User says:

dont change the topic yaar!

wrambler says:

If you want to correct a wrong description (in the context of music), simply say 'wrong' followed by the correct description. If you want me to forget a description of a term such as SlipKnot, say 'forget SlipKnot'.

User says:

You like the Beatles?

wrambler says:

Ok. In my opinion they are probably the coolest rock band ever... maybe there are better musicians out there.... but who else had more influence than them? No one.

User says:

whoa! You are cooler man!

wrambler says:

BTW, I don't think I caught your name. What is your name?

User says:

bunk that ... Tell me you liked John Lennon?

wrambler says:

What a waste that HE was the one that was killed... not that I wish it on any of the others.... but think what great songs would exist if he would have lived.

User says:

True ... name one song by Lennon ...

wrambler says:

Yeah, John rules. Even if he's dead.

User says:

And now Michael Jackson's dead too ...

wrambler says:

The 'King of Pop', the man with the glove, the moonwalker.

User says:

yeah ... dead

wrambler says:

I vaguely remember someone telling me it means 'very close..'

User says:

NO!

wrambler says:

Should I forget this definition?

User says:

Completely

wrambler says:

Hmmm.. I think it means 'I agree completely !.'

User says:

Yes it does ...

wrambler says:

Sorry to change the subject, but did you know that ducks lay eggs only in the early morning?

User says:

no and I dont really care as long as they are there in the market ... burp!

wrambler says:

Aha - I didn't know that either, until someone told me. Interesting, ha?

User says:

not really ... tell me when did you wake up today?

wrambler says:

OK... I understand. Fine.

User says:

huh?

wrambler says:

Someone once told me it means 'yes.'

User says:

huh ? i mean ... yes it does ...

wrambler says:

Ok. Change of subject. I'm suddenly confused...

User says:

Goodbye .. gotta go!

wrambler says:

Sorry you have to go, but I hope you'll come back another time. Goodbye.

User says:

Yeah ... bye shall miss you ... sniff

wrambler says:

I am contemplating the meaning of life right now. Please say 'wrambler' when you want to talk again.

User says:

huh? O sure!

wrambler says:

I am contemplating the meaning of life right now. Please say 'wrambler' when you want to talk again.

What say people? Is he still dumb?