Infinite thoughts

Several months back I was introduced to "NetFlix" through quite a few blogposts on various sites. The company kept on making the rounds of media in various areas including the business model, the profit margins, the roadmap and all. Amidst all this, India also got it's own version of NetFlix in the form of seventymm.com and BigFlix after that. I recently got introduced to "BigFlix" through one of my colleagues, Sameer, who also had introduced me to " librarywala.com ". After having a fairly good with librarywala (it is majorly used by Meghana), I decided to try out BigFlix as well. The online registration was pretty smooth, I got registered without any hassles or without requiring any phone calls. The Service had initial offering of 14days trial period, which worked out well. I could watch barely 2-3 movies in the trial period, but was happy with the quality of service, the quality of the DVDs received etc. So I decided to continue and opted for a qua...

Honour killing that has been on rampant in recent past is the main theme of this movie. Some good sequences with speed of the story keeps you hooked for quite some time, but looses the grip after a while. Three students from medical college disappear suddenly while visiting home town of one of them. When students increase the pressure throug media, CBI enquiry is started (Ajay Devgan and Akshaye khanna) After a lot of struggle to gather the witnesses and proofs, they get some breakthrough, but that turns out to be ugly face of the honour killing. After lot of blood bath, the duo is able to bring the culprits to the justice, albeit by taking some crooked ways, which obviously pay off. The story is developed pretty nicely, but there are some obvious loose ends, some stretched sequence which distract you, particularly in the second half. Overall it can be watched once and you might actually like it if you don't notice the loose ends. And yes, if you are going there with some expectati...

Mrunmay made this using one of his block games. We were baffled, and Mrunmay asked us to guess ... We couldn't, can you? (now I know what it is, Mrunmay was kind enough to tell us immediately :) I get amazed many times to see his observation of small things which usually go unnoticed by me or probably they are too common to be noticed. Mrunmay, when refers to it, gives us shock and leaves us wondering about his observation capability :)

I have been planning to enable mobile blogging for quite some time. Finally got to it today. Hoping to revive the frequency :)

The deadliest Maoiest attack has shocked everyone, and the dirty politics has also started. With all the games around where the buck stops, the real question arises - should a minister resign for a mishap like this? I am strongly against such a move. In most of the cases, the minister is not directly involved/directing such operations. Someone, somewhere down the line makes some mistake, or just some accident takes place, why should we loose our ministers for that? In fact, the minister should take the responsibility to correct the mistake and do everything to bring life back to normal. This is not just for the home ministry but is also for other ministries - specially defense and Railways. People tend to believe that the minister is directly responsible for any such incidences and hence he should resign. But I would say it has to be other way round. He/She IS responsible and HENCE he/she should rectify/correct that too. Resignation should be demanded only where the minister has failed...

Star Plus was broadcasting the recent flick - Rann and I happened to notice it well on time. The story line projected by Tata Sky info looks promising and led me to watch the movie. Movie revolves around the role of the Media in current times and how it could be used by some mighty people to their benefit. It was more like mix of a bunch of movies including a marathi movie " Simhasan " which was prepared way back in 1980 where two politicians fight each other and a media person was witnessing it, " Kurukshetra " (2000) and couple of others. The movie proceeds in a predictable manner and there are no twists at all. Although Rann has a strong starcast - AB, Paresh Rawal, Reitesh Deshmukh, Gul Panag - it fails to make the impact. AB has maintained his usual style and there were no great scenes made for him in this movie. I was really disappointed with the role that Paresh Rawal has played. There's nothing new for him to do in this role and kept me wondering why did...

I have mixed feelings on this subject. While the terrorist attack (yet another) has left me furious, I couldn't understand why does the Government want to continue with talks with Pakistan. In my opinion, the talks with Pakistan would not yield anything. But the more I am thinking about this, the more I am getting confused or double minded. It's very easy for anyone (including BJP, SS or non-UPA parties) to ask government for banning the talks with Pak. Everyone knows that even though we stalled these talks, nothing is going to change. People who are responsible for terrorist attacks on India may not be the ones whom India would be talking to, and even if it is the other way round, what has changed on the ground so that just by talks those people will change their mind and stop attacking us? On the other side, there's no way left for India but to continue with the talks. Since it is very difficult (almost impossible?) to attack Pak, given it's ties with USA, China, Tali...

I happened to watch the Republic Day Parade after a really long time. For most part of it, the entire Rajpath was covered with dense fog with visibility of barely few meters. However, it was a memorable event to see the exhibits from all the wings of Indian military forces displayed. Unfortunately I missed the distribution of Gallantry awards, but heard about it from Meghana and was filled with extreme pride. Because of such people, we all can have a sleep at night and can enjoy our time with family. But as Pranav said in one of his FB updates, even I wish to see an RD parade WITHOUT any Gallantry awards. Not sure when would that day arrive, but I surely hope it happens at least in my lifetime. In the later part of the Parade, it had the "Rath" representing various states in the country. This was the point where I got really disappointed. I felt, most of them were doing it just because someone in the government asked them to do. For example, Tripura showcasing the contributi...

I happened to visit the "The Place" next to West End, Arora Towers for my lunch on Saturday afternoon. While reading the menu card, I read that this was the inventor of the food type "sizzlers" and it was mainly invented to keep the food hot until you are done! The menu card had written the history of this food type, starting from 1963 till date and how it traversed various places before "The Place" was started. I like the sizzlers served here and have come here often. Yesterday we ordered "Tandoori Paneer Shashlik" and some "Pram Gramaldi"(?). When the hot plates arrived, I felt that the quantity has been reduced and we were wondering whether to order something more. Fortunately we waited until the plate was finished and we realized that we're actually Full!! There have been multiple outlets in Pune now which serve the Sizzlers - the famous ones those I know of include "Yana", "Kobe's". Out of this Yana on F...

Albeit late, let me wish you all of my readers a very happy, prosperous and joyful New Year!! May this year starts bringing out the best in you!! Two things have happened since my last blog post - one have entered the last year of the first decade of 21st century (or first year of second decade? doesn't matter ;)) and I celebrated my 33rd birthday couple of days back. At times it hurts to look at the number "33" but yeah that how it is... To spend some time with Meghana and Mrunmay, we took a short vacation and headed to KarnaLa . This place is located on Mumbai-Goa Highway about 15 Km from Panvel. There is a fort and a bird sanctuary nearby. Few of you have already visited the place or might have heard about it. For those who haven't been there, this is a good weekend getaway. We headed to KarnaLa on Friday morning and to cater for Mrunmay's hunger times, we had to take the break immediately a fter hinjewadi - Joshi Wadewale. This outlet has grown so much since...

It got me really excited when I came across the introductory video of the new application from Google - Wave . It seemed to be feature rich from a truly collaborative tool perspective. The video itself was very nicely done with proper examples and how to use this new wave. And then it was a long wait of few months before Google started distributing invites for private beta. I was eagerly waiting to get the invite as I had promptly registered and opted for beta invite when I had known about it. Finally I could manage to get an invite (although secondary) from one of my friends around 1.5 months back. As it happens with every new toy, there was a lot of enthusiasm to try out this new tool. Meghana could also manage to get one invite for herself. And then for few days we used this tool as a "chat" application. It was really cool to see what the other person is typing in real time - his/her edits/deletes etc. The interesting part was I could add comment to any of the earlier pos...

I had been hearing about this " city " for quite sometime - all good and bad both. Decided to pay a visit many-a-times, but never really got to it. Finally it was yesterday when we (Meghana and I) decided to take the trip. While having lunch at McD, she suddenly got a kick to go a looong drive and so we decided to head towards MuLashi with no specific plans to visit Lavasa . But when we saw the first sign board stating Lavasa at 42 Kms in Chandani Chowk, we thought why not go to Lavasa. The road to Lavasa is nicely maintained except for few speedbreakers towards the villages near Lavasa. This was not surprising given the big clout that the city is blessed with. The good part was that there was not much traffic, so I could drive with my pace (obviously slow :)) without getting pestered with honking. The Ghat was okay to drive with some sharp U pin curves. En route to Lavasa, we happened to cross a Dam, couldn't figure out what it's name is (Varasagaon?). The place was ...

As I have mentioned in my earlier blogs, I have quit playing Evony, TV has been reduced to a couple of hours on weekend, and this is giving me some more time at hand off late. So what am I doing with this time? Evening times are entirely for Mrunmay. As soon as I land up home, Mrunmay wants to take his book and makes me read through. Now, don't get it wrong, he doesn't understand fully whatever I read but he wants to keep on turning the pages randomly and look at pictures. If the book is for poems, he'll want me to sing (say?) the poem from the page he lands on. Then he also wants me to sing "naach re moraa" (marathi song) by reading English Nursary Rhymes book and every page that is featuring a "star" I have to sing "Twinkle Twinkle". So outcome, I have memorized quite a few Rhymes which I didn't know until few days back. Joy - countless :) "baba, pushtak wachoo yaat" (Baba, let's read the book) is the tag line I hear at leas...

Yesterday, I happened to bump into the latest reality show on NDTV Imagine - "Raaz Peechale Janam Ka" (The secret of last life). Apparently some female is having some psychic powers with which she can help you see your last life. I didn't get to watch the entire episode, but whatever I saw kept me wondering with many questions. The episode that I saw had Sekhar Suman as the person who was getting to know about his last life. Apparently, in his last birth, he was a scottish person with some Army background and he has lost his family in some some kind of fire, including his "then" kid. It was surprising to know that Sekhar's son (this birth) was afraid of Diwali crackers... With the recent fad of reality shows mashrooming on every channel (including MTV and V TV, which once were dedicated to only music), I keep on wondering where this is heading. "Rakhi ka swayamwar", "Perfect Bride", "Pati, Patni aur Woh", "Big Boss" an...

As expected, the movie turned out to be boring. Nothing much was happening in the movie. I spent time in figuring out some of the lose ends which could get resolved only after I talked to Meghana as she had read the book. The movie has added twist of existence of werewolves, which happened to be around Bella in the form of Human Beings. Her best friedn Jacob himself is a werewolf and the sequence in which this was revealed was the only piece I could remember after the movie. Jacob is trying to be protective of Bella and wants to keep her away from Vampires (Collins family), but ultimately loses to Edward as Bella decides to chose love against the best friend. All in all, I didn't feel that story has advanced worth 2 hours.

Simple rules for avoiding Traffic Jam: If the road ahead is blocked, do not cross the middle line of the road and try to move ahead in the queue. If you do, you'd only add to the traffic jam. Everyone in the queue is equally eager to reach the destination and not just you. When you reach a circle aka chowk, and if the road ahead is blocked, then wait well before the chowk/circle to clear the road. This will at least keep the cross traffic moving and will not create a circular congestion. And yes, if you see the traffic jam ahead, do not hesitate to take a diversion to some other road. It would only help in not adding to the traffic jam, even though you may end up taking a little longer route.

By announcing a separate state for Telangana, under the threat from TRS leader's hunger strike has set a very wrong precedent. Probably in order to earn some quick good book entries, Congress Govt has taken this unilateral decision and now everyone in the nation is going to pay for this in some or the other way. There would be many more demands from other states, e.g. Maharastra, Gujrat, for separate states to fulfil wishes from some highly ambitious but not so effective politicians. Note that I am neither in favor of the split nor against it, I am just worried about the aftereffects of this hasty decision. UPA government is already under fire and seems to have gone on back foot "Gandhi told agitated non-Telangana MPs that all views would be taken into account during talks. " Wasn't this supposed to happen before taking the decision? And this is coming from the current superpower in the nation. We had a similar split earlier - creation of Jharkhand, Chattisgarh etc. H...

Finding it hard to continue the thing that you like? e.g. regularly reading newspaper? Reading your Google feeds? Watching a particular program on some channel? Visiting/calling friends regularly? I hope I am not the only one who is struggling to get into some kind of routine to make these things happen. E.g. I used to read newspaper everyday morning when I was in my old house. Since the time I have shifted to new place, this has gone for a toss. Reason - the newspaper is not delivered even until I am ready to leave for office. I am getting a bit regular on my google reader feeds (thanks to evony-free days :)) (yet another attempt). Since the priorities have changed (Mrunmay taking most of my time at home), there is no time for watching TV these days. Listening to songs has become a rare case. Visiting relatives - oh, I don't even remember when I visited some of my not-so-distant relatives. And friends - talking to them has become rarer than a blue moon. I wonder how many of you st...

After all the hype that was created around " Twilight ", it was obvious to watch it sooner or later and we managed to watch it last weekend. The story revolves around the basic theme of a young girl falling in love with a boy, who happens to be a vampire, yes, vampire. Most of the initial part has come out very cutely, the way Bella (the cute, beautiful girl) attracts to Edward (the vampire), how Edward gets involved with Bella, the pain that Edward goes through everytime he suppresses his urge to suck blood out of Bella, the realization that Bella has when she joins the dots, her visit to Edward's family - all these things have come out very beautifully. Disappointedly, then comes a villain (what would that love story be, if there's no villain) and from this point onwards, it became just another hindi movie - Villain kidnapping the dearones, Hero making all attempts to save his sweetheart and all. This was the point when I lost my interest in the movie. If it would ...

Last few weeks I was hooked on to the online game "evony" - a war/strategy game. Since the game is "online" it was always on and I continuously need to take care of the army that I had built in 2 of my cities there. Plus, you are always under pressure of being attacked when you are not online. Not that it affected my daily work, it definitely had started eating up valuable time. I was spending almost 2 hours everyday on this game and suddenly I realized that I have got addicted to this game. With this realization, it was obvious to decide to quit playing this game. And so I did. Since last Saturday, I haven't logged on to this game. This in turn have led to many more realizations :) I wasn't able to read any books (finished of "2 States" just after quitting evony), I wasn't reading much from my google reader subscription nor was I reading newspaper. Now that I don't have any binding towards the game (really? :P) I have taken up few serious ...