+: etcetera :+

Moving!

2005-02-18T23:24:00.000-05:00

I am moving this blog to its own domain : www.stochastica.net. Installing Wordpress was a snap. Choosing a template was not. After discussions, arguments, exchanges of hate mails, and various forms of bribery,Lavanya and I finally agreed upon Quentin. I am customizing the template and and having a lot of fun in the process. So much fun, I forgot to blog!

From the "Did they really do that?" department

2005-02-13T17:38:00.000-05:00

The Times of India and other newspapers selling editorial space. Brazenly and unabashedly. Link through India Uncut.

Yay!

2005-02-13T17:12:00.000-05:00

I am done watching Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I am not going to add to the countless other reviews out there, but I have to say that this is a classic. The hype made me a little leery about watching it, (Lost in Translation, remember?), but any fears I had were blown away in the first few minutes. For the record, I would like to state that I would have liked it even if it didn't have Kirsten Dunst in it.

Syrupy Sunday (or shamelessly deifying Ilayaraaja)

2005-02-13T11:59:00.000-05:00

I listened to Uravugal Thodarkathai again today. Who could have known? That a mere song could move you, hard-nosed and all that, so much. Every chord emotional, every riff tugging at heart strings. That malleable music existed, music that could blend in with whatever you were feeling. A frenzied friend by your side, dragging your mind through an emotional kaleidoscope.

Strangely, all that remains at the end is contentment; joy. And the urge to rewind, replay. A little overwhelmed: At this rate, I am never going to go through the hundred other songs that do similar things to my brain. And as always, shocked: That one man could compose all of this in one lifetime.

Now, this attempt at rendering the Thiruvasakam - an epic Saivite poem - as "Thiruvasakam in symphony". Sixty year old man, at the twilight of his career, reduced to desperately seeking recognition that he so richly deserves. I just wish I could go up to him and tell him that after one Uravugal Thodarkathai, the rest is all fluff.

PS : Realmedia version of the song thanks to dhool.com. Also check out http://thiruvasakaminsymphony.com.

Intellectual Property is for Losers

2005-02-10T22:10:00.000-05:00

Poor Kumudam. They pay people actual money to go gather news. Like this interview with A.R. Rahman - a scoop by all standards, because Rahman can be hard to get hold of. They publish the interview, and what happens?

The smart guys at Cinesouth turn around and publish the interview on their website. Attributions? Bwahahaha. You must be joking. Since Kumudam takes a while to update their online page, it actually appears like Cinesouth did it first. Clever, na?

Aishwarya on Letterman

2005-02-09T22:39:00.000-05:00

Boy, what a letdown. Aish, sporting an atrocious outfit and an even atrociouser accent. Croaking out the last word of each sentence with a funny sounding drawl... Indiaaa and Bombayyy. And then, there was this.: At random instants, without perceivable external stimulus , she would start off this routine that consisted of rolling her eyes at Letterman, followed by rolling her eyes at the audience, then capped off with some laughter.

A completely perplexed Letterman did manage to get a couple of questions across. And got a couple of ferocious sounding replies in return. Innocent sounding softballs ("Were you a young girl when you started modeling?") that got hurled right back at him, with an eye rolling thrown in for good measure. There was a clip from Bride and Prejudice with a wooden Aishwarya in the swimming pool - I heard something about some dude wanting to see India without seeing the Indians, and there was a whole lot of confusion over his nationality ... I was too busy wishing for the camera to pan downwards to hear properly. And no, it didn't.

Manish over at Sepiamutiny seems to think Aish was off color because she took herself too seriously, but methinks she was just being her true self: a bimbo.

Update : This review on Time tells it like it is.

In the lead role, Bollywood goddess Aishwarya Rai is pretty as a picture--a still picture. She appears always to be fluffing her hair for the next fashion shoot. She's got moves on the dance floor; and in the sumptuous and catchy score by Anu Malik and Craig Pruess, she smartly sells a few numbers that try to update the Austen ethos ("I just wanna man who gives some back/ Who talks to me and not my rack"). What she can't yet do is suggest a complex spirit behind the lovely façade

Urgent!

2005-02-08T09:42:00.000-05:00

Aishwarya Rai, please get in touch with Drew Barrymore before you go on Letterman. Please.

Evolution (this time linguistic)

2005-02-07T22:23:00.000-05:00

Sujatha writes (link requires registration) about how some commonly used English words have been transmogrified into Tamil, with bizarre consequences.

An "assault" job, is a job done effortlessly, nonchalantly. You can do such things only if you are unperturbed by the "tilers" - unimportant pretenders.

When you have a "feeling" for someone you are actually upset.And then the old classic - repair something and it is broken - you probably need a "drinks" or two to drown your feelings.

Another reason to let the language grow. A few centuries from now a Tamil dictionary will list these as Tamil words (with an quick little etymological bow to English...)

A few minutes of bliss

2005-02-07T21:26:00.000-05:00

There is mere music, and then there is this. From the Master himself.
The music rendering colors for a blind girl ...

"When a gentle breeze caresses; colors swirl around in your mind
Thoughts come and go; each a different hue"

My stranded on an island song.

PS: Low quality real audio file for sampling. Go get the CD if you can.

Evolution

2005-02-06T22:26:00.000-05:00

Newsweek has this article on evolution and "Intelligent Design - a critique of evolution couched in the language of science."

I am not sure why evolution made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist - the formation of life might have been a chemical reaction, but it was a chemical reaction that required a number of parameters to be just perfect before it could begin.

Science will probably be never be able to convincingly explain how this set of circumstances came about - it requires a little bit of faith. Literal interpretation of religious texts is fraught with peril because most such works are allegorical, but a little bit of symbolic license and you can reconcile religion with science. Like this article on the ten avatars of Vishnu.

Fuzzy Math

2005-02-06T22:02:00.000-05:00

Fact : The Tsunami destroyed homes.

Fact :The Maharashtra Government is destroying homes that encroach on public property.

Conclusion : Tsunami = Maharashtra Government.

Saw this first on Dilip D'Souza's blog. Now the Hindu carries the same logic. And some people seem to buy into this - caring enough to write back.

Now without going into whether I think the demolitions are right or wrong, all I can say is these folks may have some trouble with the analytical skills portion of the GRE.

National Happiness? Gross.

2005-02-06T21:28:00.000-05:00

In November, Bhutan banned tobacco sales. It's king, Jigme Singye Wangchuk, presumably signed the decree between puffs. Four months later, the king today wants to "cut down on his own smoking".

Excuse the hypocrisy, for it is all part of an effort to increase the Gross National Happiness of the country, which is a quaint way of saying people should learn to be happy - grinding poverty be damned.

Come again?

2005-02-06T20:12:00.000-05:00

Insightful reporting from the Times of India:

One of Bush's strongest election planks was immigration, where he scored over challenger John Kerry particularly on the outsourcing issue

"Strongest plank?" Really? So the 43 total seconds that the candidates spent on immigration reform was actually responsible for Bush's win. How could I have missed that?

No more yearning

2005-02-03T23:09:00.000-05:00

Boy, am I light on my feet today or what. Lavanya is back. After some frantic foraging through her luggage, and scattering a couple of sarees (with intricate work!), I managed to locate a box full of Aavin Pal Kova. Yes, the Pal Kova. If you have never tried it, I pity you. Yeah, it really isthat good. I hurriedly stuffed myself, dropping a few morsels on the sarees-with-intricate work. And finally stopped when I located part of the loot: I am gonna be a good boy, coz she tells me there are more books to come :) Boy, am I light on my feet today or what.

From my Inbox...

2005-02-02T09:10:00.000-05:00

Sent 3 weeks after a party. I swear I am not making this up.

"I'm sorry for bothering you all with this.

Recently I realized that my slippers (Alpine, 10") got exchanged with a someone's else (State Street, 9 1/2") and am not comfortable with the same. If any one of you felt that way [:-)], please email back so that we can address accordingly. You can also reach me on: xxx-xxx-xxx.

Appreciate your help."

Sweeping away the Clutter

2005-02-02T01:26:00.000-05:00

Anyone remember how search pages used to look before Google? All of them (Altavista, MSN, Yahoo, AskJeeves) look the same now - simple and uncluttered. Guess Google made functional a cool thing. MSN.com: A letter from Bill Gates

But till Google finishes the library project, A9 will continue to be my favorite. Search Inside the Book is the best thing in search since... Google.

Buy-bliophiles Anonymous...

2005-02-01T19:36:00.000-05:00

What can I say? Kitabkhana: The 3 am blues . Link through India Uncut.

The Style Invitational

2005-02-01T13:30:00.000-05:00

From The Washingtonpost Style Invitational ..., almost a classic :)

"Jack," said Jill, "I'm on the pill,
With condoms don't you bother."
Jack believed, but was deceived.
Now Jack's a brand-new father.

I also liked this one... an obit-poem for Joseph Zimmerman (who invented the answering machine):

'Hi, this is St. Peter. I'm out at the moment
So leave me your name at the bell.'
'This is Zimmerman, Joseph. I made this machine,
I'm so glad to reach you and not Hell."

Emergency imposed in Nepal

2005-02-01T09:50:00.000-05:00

Another step towards anarchy. Emergency imposed in Nepal.

The Woman Who Pretended to Be Who She Was

2005-02-01T09:29:00.000-05:00

Wendy Doniger is a scholar of Hinduism at the University of Chicago. She frequently throws a few religious texts from India on her couch, and psychoanalyzes their content. I guess she had trouble getting straight answers out of the Gita, and couldn't help concluding that the "the Gita is a dishonest book." A friend once told me about conclusions drawn by people who interpret movies revealing more about themselves than the movie. Not that this has any relevance in this context - that was about movies, and we are talking books - but I just thought I'd throw it out here.

So now, Wendy decides to write a book and the New York Times reviews it. From the review, I could gather three important things:

1) The book seems to have a lot of sex in it.

2) The book was written by Wendy Doniger, who was (gasp) criticized for her views on Hinduism.

3) Wendy's photo on the jacket is cool. Very sensuous. And because she used an old photo of her on the jacket, Wendy is incurably playful. There was so much wry humor in that photo.

How could I not go out and buy the book?

Manish Vij writes wonderfully about this at Sepia Mutiny.

Seventy and going strong...

2005-01-31T13:45:00.000-05:00

Happy birthday Appa and God bless you! You are the kindest person I've known in my life.

Hundred Years of Relativity

2005-01-30T19:05:00.000-05:00

"... in 1905, a young patent clerk named Albert Einstein found the way forward. In five remarkable papers, he showed that atoms are real (it was still controversial at the time), presented his special theory of relativity, and put quantum theory on its feet. It was a different achievement from Newton's year, but Einstein's annus mirabilis was no less remarkable" Read more at the Economist ...

And what does relativity mean to us? Rowan Hooper explains.

If you think you can explain relativity better than Hooper (and do it with pictures) then you should check out the Pirelli Relativity Challenge.

Books : Life of Pi

2005-01-30T18:27:00.000-05:00

Life of Pi, by Yann Martel. Winner of the Man-Booker prize for 2002.

Life of Pi is a book that can be difficult to pigeonhole: it could be a modern day fable, a fantasy with shades of magic realism or just a simple tale of great adventure. But one thing it surely is : a great read.

The protagonist of the book is a young man named after a French swimming pool - Piscine (pissin') Molitor Patel, son of a zookeeper in Pondicherry. In the first 16 years of his life, Piscine manages to shorten his name to Pi, starts practicing Hinduism and Christianity and Islam, and picks up a few nuggets of animal psychology from his father (including "You can never befriend a tiger") - all of which stand him in good stead as his family packs their bags (and a few animals) and leaves for Canada.

Enroute to Canada, a shipwreck leaves Pi stranded on a lifeboat with a hyena, an orangutan, an injured zebra and an adult Bengal tiger called Richard Parker for company. Soon, all the other animals either eat each other or manage to get eaten by Richard Parker, leaving only Pi and him remaining. The rest of the book is a fascinating account of how the two manage to survive over 200 days in the Pacific, with a flimsy tarpaulin used to demarcate their territories on the lifeboat.

We know Pi is going to survive the ordeal, but it is a tribute to Martel's narrative that he manages to keep the readers curiosity piqued almost constantly. Every thing that happens on the ocean rain, no rain, day, night all bring a different kind of adventure with them : a new set of dangers for Pi, and new ways in which he must overcome them.

When he finally reaches the coast of Mexico with Richard Parker, after traversing through an Utopian island - probably Martel's nod to magic realism - Parker runs away to leave Pi to do the explaining to a bunch of incredulous Japanese assessors. And then Martel throws us a curveball - a retelling of the tale that will leave you stunned (and perhaps a little perplexed). So what is the truth?

The conversations of the author with the present day Pi (that are peppered throughout the book), and the initial encounter with an old man who points Martel to the story add a lot to the aura of believability that the book creates. The only thing that detracts from the book is the occasional preachy tone that it adopts. And the Hindu-Christian-Muslim parts at the start were downright corny. And... no, I shouldn't be nitpicking. This is a wonderful book - one of the very best I read last year.

Fool's paradise

2005-01-30T01:14:00.000-05:00

A pleasant surprise for me over the last few weeks browsing blogs has been the number of Tamil Blogs on the internet. But, much to my dismay almost all of the Tamil bloggers seem to have been struck by a singluar obession - the urge to communicate in "pure" Tamil. Here's an example : the winner of this year's "Best Indic Indiblog [Tamil]".

There are quite a few English words that have become part of colloquial Tamil today. Words like bus, car, computer, coffee, tea, brush, toothpaste, soap are de facto Tamil for the man on the street. The sensible thing to do would be to expand the language to include these words, right? Nah. Not for the purists, the people that would rather travel by a "Perundhu" and drink "Kuzhambi". Dont get it? Don't worry, not many people in Tamil Nadu do either. Go to Madras and ask someone on the street if she uses a "Kanini" (scholarese for a computer) and she'll either laugh you off the street and/or move as far away from you as possible.

So while the rest of the world (Tamil speakers included) browses the web on laptops and clicks on links, the clique of purists would rather use a "MadiKanini" (Gawd!) and use "Chuttis" to traverse the Valai. And by doing so, they hope to influence everyone to follow suit and start talking like them. Go figure. Try as they might, my milkman is always going to say he was "late" because his "cycle" had to undergo "repair."

Every language changes over time. Change usually starts with the spoken word, and starts reflecting itself in the literature of the time. Look at old English - it is almost unrecognizable from what we speak today. Does that make it a lesser langauge? The gulf between written and spoken words is wide and growing in Tamil : not a healthy trend. A language remains vibrant and young by absorbing words and adapting to change - the more insular it is, the sooner it loses its vigor.

Of course there are exceptions : Dubukku has a delightful little blog written in a conversational tone.

Legislating Lotteries

2005-01-29T14:17:00.000-05:00

As I grew up in Coimbatore, I used to take a bus everday from home to school and back. At "terminuses" when buses stopped for a while, the bus would soon be full of people trying to make some money. There were the beggars of various hues, the inji maraba peddlers and then the lottery ticket hawkers: Mostly women and kids who were too proud to beg, screaming "Assam, Manipur, Arunachal Pradesh, Tamil Nadu - oru rubaiyku oru latcham" (one rupee can buy you a hundred thousand). They made a 20% commission on every ticket sold, and they would plead, coax and cajole everyone in the bus to buy just one ticket. Hard work, yeah, but most of them did it with dignity.

Over the last couple of years or so, state governements have started banning lotteries. It started off in Tamil Nadu, and seems to have spread to neighbouring Kerala now. Why the ban? Because lottery tickets are gambling, and gambling is a vice. And Indian Governments love to legislate vice. True, gambling is a problem. But it is a personal problem, not one that society should try and legislate. We know a priest that lives next door to my grandmother's house. Every single day, he spends at least half of what he earns on buying lottery tickets. Once in a while, he would win a few hundred thousand, and promptly buy expensive "jackpot" tickets with his winnings. Now that lotteries are "banned" in Tamil Nadu, you think he has been mysteriously reformed?

Seedy places where you can play "scratch" lottery have mushroomed throughout the state. With legitimate lotteries, the government at least got a piece of the pie. Meanwhile, I wonder what happened to the old woman that peddled tickets in her shaky voice at Gandhipuram. I took pity on her and tried to buy a ticket once, and she told me "Chinna payanukku idhellam vendam thambi" (A young boy like you shouldn't be buying this stuff).

Locked out

2005-01-28T23:12:00.000-05:00

There is an interesting article at Wired about the art(!) of lock-picking.

A few weeks ago, we had been to New York. On our return, we reached home at midnight to realize that I'd left my keys behind. Lavanya never carries her keys around on trips such as these (her cute key chain weighs close to a pound), so mom, dad, she and I were stranded outside our house.

A locksmith responded to our call in about an hour. After a little bit of haggling over the price, he started walking towards the door.

"How long do you think it's gonna take?", I asked him. "Oh, about two minutes, perhaps less," he responded nonchalantly. Impressed, the four of us gathered around to watch him at work. He reached into his bag, and pulled out a long, threaded metal contraption that looked suspiciously like a drill bit to me.

"Is that a drill bit?," I whispered into Lavanya's ear. She shut me up with a cold glance, and turned back to watch him at work. He peered into the lock for a minute, then turned to me and said, "This is easy!" Then he got out what looked like a $50 cordless drill, but for fear of another cold glance I didn't comment. Then he began a rapid sequence of movements, which culminated in him drilling a large hole in the middle of the lock. And he had the gall to turn back and smile proudly at us, like he had just won the Dutch Open. The moron had just bored a hole in our lock, and earned a cool $100 in the process.

We slept fitfully that night - you can't expect to sleep well when all that is stands between you and a potential serial killer were two chairs stacked up against the door. We needn't have worried though - with locks like this, a chair will possibly offer more protection.

PS : The next day, we asked Geetha and Raja, our friends who had hosted us at New York to check with Enterprise if I had left my keys in the rental car. Raja called me back to say they had our keys. Small consolation. A week later, the keys arrived by mail - they were someone else's. A fitting dénouement.

Tamil Cinema Today

2005-01-28T09:15:00.000-05:00

A Vairamuthu interview to kick off the day. First the good news. Vairamuthu is not writing for Rajinikanth's Chandramukhi. But he says, every "micro-second" of his life contains poetry. Like so:

"Princess of Istanbul (!)
Heat up the land with your kisses" (from Mazhai)

He talks warmly about Illayaraja, I think. It is kinda hard to figure out what the man is trying to say. And he also says something about talking to Rahman being a "pleasure." Says their next project is Godfather starring Al Pacino and Asin.

And Rajinikanth? What can I say? Perhaps just a bad wig day.

Meanwhile, Balu Mahendra agonizes over good directors (read : him) not being treated right by Tamil cinema. Poignant story about him talking about salaries with other directors, and realizing belatedly that they were talking in millions, not thousands. I used to like him a lot, but he seems to be stuck in a rut these days.

Speaking of photos

2005-01-28T08:39:00.000-05:00

Amazon is starting to establish itself as a "technology" company. After pioneering "search inside the book", they've come up with this : the block view thing on its yellow pages is a great new idea. They have pictures of almost every block in select cites, and you can view storefronts, and browse the whole block virtually. Take that for cool!

Talking about photos, Google's Picasa picture organizer is typical Google: simple, efficient and indispensable.

How to kill a Mocking Bird? (Or the coolest flash animation you've seen)

2005-01-27T21:51:00.000-05:00

How to Kill a Mockingbird - Created by Anthony Scodary and Nico Benitez

Link through Manhattan Transfer

Heard in passing...

2005-01-27T17:06:00.000-05:00

What do Indian software engineers and porters at railway stations have in common?

When they meet each other, the first question they ask is "What platform do you work on?"

Serves you right...

2005-01-27T13:51:00.000-05:00

My parents and I had been to a puja at a friends place, and they had catered food from an Indian restaurant called Madras Cafe. That reminded me of something.

Lavanya, Manoj and I had been there a while back. It had opened up about a year ago, and over time, the food had gone from above-average to bad, and I heard they had lost their chef. So we hadn't been there in a while. But it was the only South Indian fare in town and sometimes you have this overwhelming urge to eat dosas.

We go in, and a waiter we hadn't seen before seats us. He brings us water, and I ask him if he was new. He tells us he runs the place with his brother. Then we order Sambar Vadas with a little bit of trepidation, because on three past visits, the sambar had tasted stale.

So imagine our surprise when the Vadas were actually quite delicious. I was so pleased, that when the waiter came next to fill water I startup a conversation with him:

"The vadas are good today. The sambar has a different flavor."

"Thank you. Must be the new chef we got."

"Oh ok, that explains it. The old chef sucked big time, his sambar was atrocious. I'm glad you got rid of him."

"I was the old chef."

We hurriedly finished our food, and havent been there since. Plus, they opened a new restaurant called India South nearby. Oh, and whenever we go there, Lavanya does most of the talking.

The New Yorker: Fiction

2005-01-26T19:46:00.000-05:00

An old Jhumpa Lahiri short story that appeared in the New Yorker, that I dug out from my bookmarks. Not a bad read. She writes well, but the whole "Travails of a Bengali Family in the US" routine is starting to become a little boring.

Did I hear that right?

2005-01-26T13:24:00.000-05:00

If you thought this was funny, here are some more jokes for you...

Look here. Yeah, you're right, a picture, like in one of them comics. Isnt that hilarious? Why, there are so many such funny pictures like this, it' like an entire collection of comics.

After you are done, you should go to this blog and write to the advertisers, so that they can sponsor more such hilariously funny clips. And while you are at it, condemn the radio station for being such spoilsports and suspending Miss Jones.

And then rot in hell.

PS : Music For America has some excerpts.

Update : They just suspended the radio show indefinitely.

Sprint and McDonalds suspend their ads, from hiphopmusic.com , which I found through Navin's blog. Nice.

It's a matter of time, stupid!

2005-01-24T22:28:00.000-05:00

Finally, the Straight Dope on a question that I lost so much sleep over. Apparently, whether you walk or run, it's the amount of time you do it that counts.

Now that I know this, I am gonna start working out tomorrow. Yup. Seriously. Meanwhile, if you get one of these , please send me an email right away. I know a guy who used to be the personal banker of your rich uncle in Nigeria that wants to get in touch with you.

This is why you took this domain away from me?

2005-01-23T23:10:00.000-05:00

www.karthik.com

More Conceit

2005-01-23T21:59:00.000-05:00

This can be hard to believe, but you have to trust me (and this source)

Ajith Kumar's next movie is called God Father to be directed by K.S.Ravikumar. No, don't start laughing yet. Funny as it may sound, that's not the joke. Supposedly this movie is based on the real GodFather. And Ajith Kumar is studying Al Pacino's "body language and mannerism" so that he can act just like him. Bwahahaha.

Conceit

2005-01-23T21:11:00.000-05:00

This's got to be the funniest thing that happened this week. Remember K. Balachander? The ultimate talent scout who introduced both Kamalhassan and Rajinikanth to tamil cinema. Visu's sole competitor for the honor of having every movie of his feel like a stage drama. The guy that introduced numerous novel concepts to Tamil cinema ... Like using a hand to tear days off a calendar to signify the passage of time. Or using rapid shots of an assortment of news magazines to signify (you got it) the passage of time. Yeah, that guy.

So he watches the latest big blockbuster in Tamil - a sensitive movie called Kadhal that has won rave reviews. Impressed, he praises the director. And then tells the heroine Sandhya, "You are the next Saritha." Saritha? Ok. Whatever.

Later he talks to the press and deplores the state of Tamil movies today. Says movies are becoming vulgar. And then follows up with the punch line for his joke: "I will make a movie like Maro Charitra to rescue Tamil cinema from the depths to which it has sunk." I laughed hard, then read the comment again, and laughed hard again. If you dont get the joke, go watch Kalki. Or Duet. Or any of his 90 other movies.

Since then, the movie has been announced

Cardkeys of the Future

2005-01-23T17:01:00.000-05:00

I love the Science and Technology content that the Economist offers, culling neat ideas from all over the world, and explaining them lucidly. Here's one I thought was especially smart.

Cardkey readers are ubiquitous at almost every office building in America, and the cost of running wires when you want to add an extra card key reader can be prohibitive. December's technology page has this stunnigly simple idea to make card key based systems cheaper: Just make the cards part of the network. A cool application of the idea of decentralized networking.

Read more at Economist.com Technology Quarterly

Storm in a B cup

2005-01-23T11:13:00.000-05:00

Ok, a horny dude checks out some Latino websites, and comes across a video of someone bathing. When replaying the video for the 19th time, he realizes with a gasp that the girl in the video bears more than a passing resemblance to Trisha, a popular Tamil actress. So horny dude forwards said video to his equally horny friends. Friends forward some more, and in all the frenzy the Trisha look-alike video gets magically transformed into the Stolen Trisha Bathing Video. One of the friends was very kind by nature, and so he posts the video on some website, and soon the video is the most popular Tamil movie of all time, beating Padayappa hands down. Hmm… maybe not, but almost. Wait, please read the whole blog before you go googling for the video.

Now since Trisha doesn't watch Indian movies, she had no idea all this was happening. Until some loser that does watch Indian movies brings this "Indian" movie to her mom's attention. Livid mom goes to the media, and over a two-week period, makes a series of statements that provided an immense amount of publicity to the movie in question. And some comic relief to people who wanted a break after repeatedly watching the same two-minute clip. Among other things, she claimed (with a hint of pride) that the girl couldn't be Trisha, because she was strewing her clothes around in the bathroom. I don't know about you, but that increased my respect for Trisha.

Finally, Trisha threatens to complain to the police, and collections skyrocket some more. In fact, this is the highest grosser of all Trisha movies. As in all of her other movies, Trisha didn’t act in this one either.

Now the newspapers and magazines join (birthday) suit. Almost every newspaper worth its salt carried the story, although the respected ones used small typeface to maintain their reputation. (No, the Hindu is not worth its salt.) Finally, a tech-savvy editor figured out how to make screenshots and published them in his magazine, only to get arrested. One of the “investigative” journals went on to claim that the movie was shot in Hyderabad using a micro-camera and that a member of (who else?) the mafia did it. Wow! Sure, the original horny dude could have been Telugu, but to call him the mafia is a bit of exaggeration I wish I had thought of first. Link here.

Last I heard, the police were using “body-structure experts” to figure out if the girl is indeed Trisha. As a side note, have you ever wondered what the coolest job in the world was?

And as usual throughout the whole episode pretty much every magazine wrote what they wanted to, truth be damned. A little bit of googling might have revealed the truth, but the truth ain't that spicy. Why is that not very surprising?

PS: Someone got a link to the video? You can only gather so much from grainy screenshots.

PPS: No, I don’t have the grainy screenshots anymore.

Gape, then Gasp, then close browser

2005-01-23T10:50:00.000-05:00

This has been a good year for that miniscule segment of men interested in celebrity wardrobe malfunctions.

Kirsten Dunst's bikini top decides to move away just a little bit when surfing at St. Barts. Again at St. Barts, Anna Kournikova has a brain malfunction, and decides to check out what is inside her, um, clothes. No, no links for you. This is a family-friendly website.

Ok, who wants to pay for Aish to make a trip to St. Barts?

Poor Mr.Pinto

2005-01-23T01:47:00.000-05:00

All the Indian Blogs seem abuzz with a story about this guy called Rohan Pinto plagiarizing content from numerous other blogs and putting them up on his site as his own. (Details here.) Amit Varma also touches upon the fact that plagiarism is not restricted to the blogosphere. Why pick on Mr. Pinto? He is just a symptom of a wider malaise.

Several online-only Indian publications do the same thing,and try to make money out of it. Case in point: http://www.cinesouth.com/ plagiarizes almost all its content from newspapers and magazines and passes it off as their own. Cinesouth is brazen enough to have a section called "Nangal Suttavai" (Stolen Content) which has articles and interviews from several magazines and make it part of their paid section.

As a society India doesn't really care about plagiarism. Every other Hindi movie seems to have Hollywood roots. Most of the popular composers have plagiarized at least a few songs from somewhere. ( http://www.iespana.es/i2fs/) . Even one proven instance of stealing, and a western composer would have lived the rest of his life in ignominy. We dont care : we will still watch "inspired" movies ; listen to "influenced" albums and generally pretend like it never happened. And we blog away furiously about the Pintos, while listening to Anu Malik's latest.

Books : Laboring through the Baroque Cycle

2005-01-22T23:00:00.000-05:00

I like Neal Stephenson a lot. His Snowcrash and Diamond Age were my introduction to Cyberpunk, and the follow up to these books - Cryptonomicon turned out to be a bestseller and possibly his best book to date. I loved the numerous digressions , the insider geek-jokes, and the irreverent tone of the book. Whole pages (and sometimes chapters) were dedicated to things had at best a tangential relationship to the plot. Like a whole chapter filled with a bad short story written by one of the characters. Or (really) Perl source code for a cryptographic algorithm he describes in the book.

And so I looked forward to the Baroque Cycle, a 3000-page trilogy about the Baroque Age. Quicksilver, Confusion and The System of the World - one book every six months, starting October 2003. Stephenson's fictional creations cohabiting the book with Hooke, Wilkins, Newton and Leibnitz. This was going to be so good.

Not really. The Baroque cycle is a bit of a letdown.

Sure, there were some good segments. Jack Shaftoe was cool. So was Eliza. The board game that Eliza organizes for French noblemen to explain financial concepts was hilarious. The Royal Society sounded like a fun place to work in: Hooke seemed like a cool dude, and Newton a grumpy old bastard. A big chunk of the second book was devoted to India, and there were some intersting nuggets that I didn't know. I'm not sure if this is true, but apparently, the women of Malabar (Kerala today) were so sexually promiscuous that most of the time kids didn’t know who their dads were. And thus started the tradition of children taking the mother's last name. But I digress: In between the good parts, there was so much pointless fluff that any half-decent editor would have gotten rid off. And try as hard as I did, I couldn't find a plot. Sometimes the book felt like I was reading a smart schoolboy's scrapbook filled with newspaper clippings from the 17th century. The whole is so much less than the sum of its parts.

Note to Neal: Digressions are cool and all that, but digressions don’t make a book. Not a 3000-page book. And you forgot the plot!