A R Rahman bags 3 oscar nominatioins!!!!!!!!!!

A R Rahman nominated has got 3 nominations for OSCARS!!!

the man whose best will always be his next has got 3 oscar nominations.

Long pending recognization for the maestro , he has single handedly changed the bollyood mucic for nearly 2 decades and deserved many ocsars long back.

I must admit , iam happy and exited for Rahman but certainly not surprised.

bye bye chennai

Finally i will be going back to bangalore .  

When i came to chennai 5 months back, i have to admit that i was not very happy to come here, mostly because of the stories i heard of the people who were illtreated /cheated / faced language issues etc. and also because i was comming from karnataka to tamilnadu. 

But now, on the day iam goning back to bangalore, I have mixed feeling about chennai. 

True that autowala's here ask for more money as soon as they realise that you can't speak tamil, but they also dont take you for a ride. I myself have traveld in auto many times, some times late in nght , sometimes very early in morning , but i was never taken for a ride. Auto;s though they demand high amount from you,  but are pretty dependable and friendly once you strike a deal and start your travel with them.

I have not faced a great deal of language problem here, true that people reply to you in tamil when you start the conversation , but once they realise that you dont understand their language they try to comminicate with you in whatever way they can. Not because they dont want to speak to you in any other language other then tamil, but because they are proud of their language and have not been in a situation where they had a compulsion learn any other language.

I dont see any reason why one should not take a pride in their mother toungue, in a way i respect them for the love they show to their language. 

Chennai'tes are conservative, but things are changinng. from what i can understand from the discussion i had with locals here, they are quickly changing.

I would certainly remember chennai for the rest of my life, i would also remember that it was here, sitting in my hotel room i watched

Obama become first african american to become president of USA

Attack on Mumbai (India)

as far as city goes, i would not forget

evening walks on Marina beach (longest beach in Asia)

walk on the crowded streets of Usman road in Tnagar.

Chettinad food

a variety of idli's and chutneys they prepare here, if i would not have come here i wouldnot have known that there are somany varieties of idli's available. 

the collection of cotton and silk clothing they have here is amazing and one cannot forget the vast designs and variety of gold ornaments you can purchase here.

One thing i really wanted to , but missed was the trip i have been planning to take on ECR road to mahabalipuram. 

I would certainly like to come back here to enjoy the food, shop, and take a trip to beautiful temples they have in this state. 

Till then bye bye chennai

Tech Savy Advani

While surfing the net, i came across following websites

http://www.lkadvani.in Web portal of LK Advani 

http://blog.lkadvani.in   Blog of LK Advani 

I was pleasantly surprised at this initiative , Also came to know that BJP is going Obama way by using youtube and other social networking sites on Internet for their election campaign. 

I would really hope that LK Advani (prime ministerial candidate of BJP)  takes more interest and takes some time off for his blog and continues this even after the election campaign (irrespective of results) 

after this initiative of BJP iam eagerly waiting if Rahul Gandhi(could be prime ministerial candidate of Congress)  will come with similar strategy.  I would love to see him using Internet to communicate.

I would also like to see all the parties put their manifestos online and also details about the candidates they are contesting. 

Recession , "How long will market down run continue?"?

In office, while reading news paper i came across the following article

"Nicolas Cage took just a minute to vanish away with one car in the 2000 Hollywood blockbuster 'Gone in 60 Seconds', but the jobs seem to be disappearing at a faster rate, with companies laying off at least one employee every 10 second to cut costs and fight the economic crisis. " 

could not stop myself from writing the below interaction I had. 

This Mornimg while i was on my way to Airport to catch a flight for chennai, I was watching comic act of Abhiskek and John in Dostana movie on LCD screen, Chauffer had a intresting question for me.

"How long will the market be 'down' ? " 

He continued with his version of recession and how is it effecting him " As the new airport is far from city, I thought there will be huge demand for airport transfer, to cash in on this demand, I have bought a new car on EMI's" he continues looking into the rear mirror probably to check if i was paying attention to what he was saying " Due to the recent market 'down' situation , followed by terriorist attack ... , people are not traveling these days" . by this moment I was thinking , How many more professions has this economic downrun effected? . He continues in same breath" I didnot get any trips to airport from last 1 week. thank god that i got my first drop to airport last evening , since then you are the fourth passenger " . I told him that driving such long hours for a strech is not good for him, he needs to take rest. he was quick to reply" I usually sleep while waiting for passenger to arrive, usually there will be a gap of 2-3 hours from the time i drop one customer to to pickup another" . I asked him if he has another pickup after he drops me, "no sir, its close 6 AM now, people tend to take BMTC volvo services during the day light and today being tuesday, we dont have any business passengers" (i presume he meant business passengers usually come on mondays) " sir, Last month i arranged money for EMI with much difficulty, dont know what is going to happen this month, I hope to get more passengers once market is 'up' and people start traveling" . he said while looking over his sholder whith lot of hope in his eyes.

By this time we reached airport, he handed over his card to me, requesting me to call him directly if i need any further airport transfers.

Terror and aftermath

We all know about the 26/11 Bombay terrorist attack, First of all it was an attack on entire India and its nationals and not only on Mumbai. 

Now after 2 weeks, what have we learnt?

Let’s start by politicians

1. BJP is trying to make a political agenda out of this attack
2. Congress , who did ‘act’ by removing Home minister of India and chief minister of Maharashtra , but what’s more comical is , it took more then 7 days for ‘high command’ to decide who will be the next CM. the delay was to make sure that the new CM is a Marathi and gets a vote bank in the next election.
3. And there are other parties which who are greater culprits

 Police

a.       Police is doing a good job, but they are hampered by the lack of proper training and the proper equipments. And to top it corruption!!

b.      What irks me is the leak of information to ‘media’ , why do police need to share each and every detail on investigation to media?  Let’s have media briefing in which the information required to be disclosed should be disclosed.

c.       Disclosing the CCTC footage of Taj when terrorists were inside hotel should have been avoided by police. I mean what are you going to gain now by disclosing these things to media? I believe these information’s should be purely confidential and should be used to investigate and not put for exhibition

Media

a.       Media is still showing the same pictures of the attack again and again and then is parallelly running a show on how to over come the trauma of terror. Can the media stop showing the pictures of Taj in flames or the pictures of CST station floor covered in blood?

b.      Instead of having the big fights or face the nations, or showing that some TV channels has ‘warned’ govt by bringing some piece of wood through the sea again and again, why cant the media play a constructive role here?

c.       The most funny and irritating part is that media acting as our neighboring country from where terrorists came. There are some PIL’s floating around to limit the information media should broadcast about the security force’s plans and actions during these attacks(which I completely agree) . Now when this point is brought up, our media wants “Proof”(so does our neighboring country) that their live broadcast has put the life of security personnel and guests in hotel at risk. What do you want? Bring back one of the dead terrorist and ask him if he was watching the live news and was he using the information passed on by these news channels?

People

a.       All of us are living in fear and in anger, fear because these things can happen again and to anyone and anger because govt is not doing anything (other then playing vote bank politics)  

b.      We have to accept that we are to blame for the condition today, after all who has selected these politicians? Lets be more responsible.

 

Media in India has a huge role and has played that role to success in more then occasion, what we need now is media playing an important role in exposing these political parties and their corrupt agendas.  And bringing the true pictures of these politicians.

People on other hand should know more about the political representatives , learn about the candidates you are going to vote, choose the right candidate who you feel could bring in the change required and please vote!!

There are some good organizations (political parties) aroung such as professional party : http://www.ppi.net.in/htmlsite/AboutUs.aspx?Id=28  , learn about these parties. 

Learn about the agenda and manifesto of the party/candidate you are going to be represented.  Please be responsible, its us who need to bring in the change and there is no better time then NOW , its now that we have to be responsible and its now that we take steps towards a better tomorrow.

 

Please be responsible and please vote