'CAT'astrophic Opening!

Come November and we can see an agog feverish anticipation in the eyes of the students all over India for something they call CAT(Common Admission Test).The discussion forums,newspapers,television news channels and even the music channels do their bit, lest we forget.Lakhs of students in India hinge their future on this one exam,locking themselves up in their homes, neglecting their regular college exams, writing mock examinations; working professionals pray that nothing important comes up during these two months and some even apply for a long leave.
So,why is CAT such an important exam in India?

We Indians have an age old habit of overdoing things.Deifying people and exam toppers is just another facet of it.As soon as a child is born most of the middle class parents would want him to become a doctor or an engineer, and if he has to become an engineer he has to graduate from nothing less than an IIT.So, they start insinuating this prejudice into their minds that all other colleges are mere buildings.During his undergraduate days this kid is told that a technical degree alone is not sufficient to make dough,you need to have a post graduation degree in management as well and from an institute no less than an an IIM,India's premier business school.Lucky if he makes it on the first count,but just in case he is not successful,which is usually the case with millions across the country,he is made to believe that those who make it to these top institutes are first rate citizens and others are mere ordinary individuals.And so every year they put their heart and soul to prepare for this One exam,CAT.
Among the people who apply, there are some serious aspirants as well,who have a set plan in mind and look at MBA not just as a mere money making educational qualification but as an extension to to their profile.But,the percentage of such people is pretty low.The majority doesn't even know why it wants to do an MBA.
Early this year the Indian Institutes of Management made an announcement that from this year onwards the entrance exam is going to be computer based giving rise to a series of debates,discussions,speculations and arguments.And Prometric,was given the job of conducting this.For starters,Prometric,an American company,is one of the leading providers of computer based testing and assessment tools,which also includes exams like GMAT,GRE and Microsoft Certification exams,to name a few.So, the possibility of a goof up was 'expected' to be pretty low.Prometric also did its part in ensuring that there are no surprises for the students on the day of the exam by releasing videos and sending frequent mailers to the applicants.
But,Murphy had the last laugh.The exams opened to a catastrophic start,various technical issues arose, including the computers failing to boot, biometric devices not responding to some as severe as servers crashing at some centres,preventing approximately 2000 exams from being delivered across 50 labs.The authorities though continued to downplay the total incident attributing it to some silly reasons.
I got some pretty interesting responses on my Facebook page on this issue.Praveen felt that the management people needed a refresher course in technology,he also observed that such a fiasco could have been avoided had they taken care of some basic practices or even run it in a beta phase and had tested on a select group of people.Bharath, an ex-IIM graduate, on the other hand felt these were just some teething errors.

Some of the more serious questions remain unanswered though,couldn't something as simple as hardware to software incompatibility be avoided?Couldn't the invigilators at the test venues be given a small briefing on how to handle what or troubleshoot?Shouldn't they have been prepared for something as obvious and as imminent as a server crash or slow delink?These things are taken care of even at a scale as small as college technical fest, this was still CAT,one of the biggest exams in India.
Whatever the reason,one of the toughest and most anticipated management entrance exams painted a very sorry and not so perfect image of the current state of affairs in India; with two of the best in their league(IIMs and Prometric) coming together and yet failing to deliver when everyone was watching,when it was required and when they definitely had to.

Kurbaan:Dissection

One of the most awaited movies of the season,not just because of the lead couple or the banner producing this or the print promotion or the humungous scale of publicity with Saifeena on almost every television channel you switch to but also because it makes an attempt to touch upon the lesser discussed subject of Islam and terrorism.
The story starts off really well without wasting much time on the courtship of Ehsaan (Saif) and Avantika (Kareena) , professors at a college in Delhi.After convincing the girl's father Ehsaan and his girl move to the United States.Avantika was teaching in the US prior to her stint in India and had to return to her college,Ehsaan also follows her in the hope of finding a new job there.After some house hunting they finally move to an Indian suburb.It is there that Avantika discovers to her horror that her husband Ehsaan is part of an Islamic terrorist sleeper cell.She gets the help of a journalist Riyaz(Vivek) whose girlfriend Rihanna(Dia) is killed in a flight accident,by a suicide bombing attack,which was apparently planned by Ehsaan's group.Riyaz,with an aim to investigate this situation himself,infiltrates into this group and tips off the FBI on the day when they were planning to bomb all the major subways.

The Let Downs:
A major let down of the movie would be the amateurish way in which this subject is handled,showing fundamentalist terrorist sleeper cells as nothing more than the real life versions of kids' spy games.Especially the scenes in which Ehsaan invites Riyaz for dinner and there Bhaijaan(Om Puri) throws a spot offer to come and join their team,believing in whatever story Riyaz cooks up,without even bothering to run a background check on him, makes you laugh at how ignorant the director is about the way these people operate.You don't need to be a secret agent to know all these,switch to any news channel and they'd tell you better.Not just this but the whole planning and execution of terrorist attack scenes were ineptly shot.
The love scenes between Avantika and Ehsaan were aesthetically dealt with but the director could not resist treading the clichéd bollywood path wherein one of the characters is seduced to get important leads and information.
Or scenes where the audience is told that the FBI has clear pictures of Ehsaan yet he roams free on the streets on NY and worse yet teaches Islamic influence on the west at a university.
FBI is shown as nothing more than a weak police department who still rely on the age old method of spot and shoot to catch dreaded terrorists; or goes by the information some caller gives them over phone,without identifying himself.The FBI was portrayed as nothing more than how Indian police was shown in old bollywood flicks.The person who played the cop would do good in a b-grade Indian movie.Per se all these scenes made a mockery of the anti terrorist cells world over.
The movie could have also avoided the blood and gore,especially in the scene in which Avantika had to pull out a bullet and stitch Ehsaan's famous bullet wound.

The Highs:
The movie had its moments.Both Kareena, and Saif pulled it off really well.We have seen Saif grow as an actor and he plays the role of a cold Islamic fundamentalist who falls in love with a girl whom he just wants to use as a tool,extremely well.
The classroom discussion between Riyaz and other students over the image that the west has of Islam and the few dialogues between Kulbhushan Karbanda's character and Riyaz over the Iraq issue or even the dialogues between Aapa(Kirron Kher) and Avantika were well written and extremely thought provoking.
Kareena looked her gorgeous self and has orchestrated the role of a woman torn between love and betrayal brilliantly.
Even the steamy scenes between Kareena and Saif, that have been blown out of proportion and demurred by some fringe group, have nothing to cringe about,they have been done pretty beautifully.
But it is the weak characterization,incoherent storyline and poor direction that are the real terrorists in Kurbaan and start to painfully pall the audience towards the end and also make movies like New York seem like Sholay.
Nonetheless it was a decent attempt at projecting the voice of Islam and moderate fundamentalism in a religion and taking a neutral stance.
I would give it a 2/5

"Happy Weekend!" ;"Oh What? Come again!"

Say the magic word "Weekend!" and it immediately conjures up images of late night parties,shopping,movies,lazy mornings,long drives,getways and all sorts of pleasant things in your head.But having said that, I still don't get what is up with the 'Happy Weekend' syndrome,esp. the techies seem to be the major victims of this blight!

Come Friday and your office bulletin board is all full with 'Bon Weekend' and 'Happy Weekend' messages,not sure how many of them actually mean this. Incidentally, Friday also happens to be the day when the whole office campus dons a festive look,people taking out the best dresses from their wardrobes,the campus is all vibrant and psychedelic giving you the vibes of an imminent festival.You can actually smell a pervasive bonhomie in the environment around.

You finish your work early,skip your gym that day,shut your workstation down,scream a ''Happy Weekend,have fun!'' to every single living entity you come across, grab your bag and rush out of the office campus,flashing your thirty two as if it were your last day at work.Even your boss and other 'serious' colleagues ignore this connivance of yours.
So,your are out of office,better yet you are home,with nothing important to do you log on to your FB/GTalk/Orkut/Wave and post a weekend-is-here-ish message(with god-knows-how-many smilies)!
You go for a movie.Party as if it was your raison d'etre.Get up late,just in time for a late lunch and an early evening snack,it is then that your friend calls you up.So, you get ready and meet her/him at the mall,squander half of your salary buying stuff which even the shopkeeper had given up on.
Now,with Saturday gone and Sunday poisoned, you are down with a widespread weltzmertz; whiling your way through the last few hours of what was your weekend,doing not-previously-on-my-list menial yet inevitable tasks such as laundry.
And before you could say "Weekend!",your weekend just vanished into thin air and before late you would give a serious wtfy look to anyone you jumps around with a puerile 'weekend' excitement.

Confusion Rules Large!

How often in ur life are you faced with a situation where you notice that the roads ahead are winding at an unconscionable pace,when everything you see looks like one giant jigsaw puzzle and you have no clue on how to get across.Not because your hands are tied,not because you have to contrive something out of ordinary to come around it but because you just don't feel like it.The situation in itself is not insoluble as such,but sitting idle and whigning over things doesn't make it any better either.Every single entity around you importunes you to act but nothing can shake you out of this comatose sleep.You choose to be blind,choose to protract things to suicidal limits.Why?You don't have an answer for that!

Repost:Art

[Repost of an post on my other blog,as I post,I don't think anything has changed as such,our nature continues to be the same]

The recent incidents of the attacks on Chandra Mohan, a final year Master of Visual Arts student at The Maharaja Sayajirao University who was arrested by Sayajiganj police from the university campus on Wednesday,has stirred fresh controversy of "Moral Policing'.

I feel 'moral policing' is an euphemism and a more polite way of imposing the conservative and narrow ideas to impede the regular flow of fresh ideas and what they call aping the west and following their 'culture insensitive' ideas.

Chandra Mohan,who is originally from Andhra Pradesh, has been accused of hurting the religious sentiments of Christians and Hindus in the district and has been booked under Section 153 (A) for promoting religious enmity and hurting religious sentiments with nefarious intentions like creating riots.

There are a few things that I feel I might never understand..
What exactly is this Moral Policing all about?
Do we need Moral Policing?
Is there any way we can justify the fuss that VHP/ShivSena...
activities?

The younger generation is mature enough to know and understand the difference between what is right and what is not.Mimicking the west is a totally different concept.I really do not understand if a couple chooses to go around in park,is it such a big crime that they get beaten up for that,what gives the police this right and what gives these activists the right to beat up anyone.

Issue is not just about celebrating Valentines Day/or any other day neither is it about sitti8ng in the park with your friend.It is about imposing your ideas and ideologies over others.

How an individual chooses to live is purely his/her wish.Policing for all the right reasons has never been criticised ,consider the incident of the recent raid on the Pune rave party.

The past incidents of the moral policing by these activists include,
Damaging public property on Valentines Day,what harm did the shopkeepers do,they were just doing their business and destroying their property is illiegal,Police chooses not to book cases against these people of the fear that,they might be the next target physically,politically etc.

Attacking Private Parties...

any the list goes on...

Again coming to the Chandra Mohan issue...

What I could not understand is the difference between real /genuine ART and gimmickery

I was just watching a news item on NDTV which said (as all of us all will agree) that we can never justify the actions against Chandra Mohan by a group of VHP activists led by Niraj Jain...
but if we talk about the works...
many famous artists said that many works were mediocre and aimed at drawing negative publicity and most of the concepts were not new...
the college authorities say it was just a part of the internal examination but the people who visited this include many Art collectors and exhibitors etc. in thick number....

Well...this is just another dimension to this controversy...

Are the art pieces that rake such controversies are really ''Good" works of art or as the news item put it just a few Mediocre repeats aiming at those 15 sec limelight!Well...this argument might never end!

Ban(d) Karo!

What is the Indian Government going to ban next?Memory?
It was a book on Jinnah now it is a movie on Nehru's relationship with Edwina.
Can't politicians have a private life?Does it make him any lesser if he was in a relationship?We have always drawn flak for this prudish scrutiny of anything.It is this squeamish behaviour of the Indian government that gives you the illusion that you are being kicked into the Victorian era.Some of the objections raised in the script submitted to the I&B ministry are outright lame!
Government has this strange habit of poking its nose into everything/anything it finds objectionable,how you define objectionable is the dicey part.May be it comes with the way we Indians eulogize our leaders,so much so that we make gods out of them,sample the Nehru family or even Gandhi for example.No one can question the fact that they have been some of the greatest leaders world has seen but they were ordinary people when alive.India Today had to black out its cover story on Gandhi,an interview with Gopal Godse.Recently Sach Ka Samana(Indian version of Moment of Truth) also triggered a similar storm,worse yet in the Parliament.Wonder if this is all our MPs have time after those puerile debates sponsored by the taxpayer.
Free press has always been this long-unfulfilled dream of the world,not just the intelligentsia but the hoi polloi in general.With some fine boundaries though!