chaotic order

"Jab Tak hai hum" - The final hurrah of Yash chopra. A bit of nostalgia seeped in as the movie ended. We have been entertained , titillated, and drawn into romantic fantasies of Yashji for nearly four decades now. His movies actualized the dormant desires inherent in the common man. Three hours of pure magic . Vibrant hues of nature mingled with variegated shades of romance and eroticism filled h is canvas. His heroines draped in sumptuous costumes, dancing in exotic locales, murmuring sultry platitudes - have redefined romance on the silver screen for ever. His story lines often brushed the edges of conservatism - probing into those areas of human relationships that have always been in the dark. Adultery, incest and all those taboos of society were presented to the audience with an empathy rarely achieved by an Indian director. An era has ended with this film but i am sure the soul of Yash chopra has left an indelible mark on Indian films and will continue to reverberate in

Life of Pi - Wonderful One of the most challenging and persistent existential question is this - What am I - stripped of my material comforts, emotional bootstrapping's; without belief,surviving with barely enough to assuage the pangs of physical needs, bereft of any kind of psychological anchor whatsoever in this whole wide world ? Do we really know ourselves?. What would happen to us if we a re uprooted from our comfort zones and bought to face complete annihilation of what we believe ourselves to be. Not many movies have attempted to answer this question at a very deep level. "Cast away" was one such film. The almost surreal performance of Tom hanks as an individual completely surrendering his identity, his persona - to merely stay alive and return to the world with a new perspective on life,living and priorities is a must-see for every youngster. In my opinion, it is one of the best movies that I have ever had the privilege to watch. "life of Pi" is a

The year 2012 has ended on a melancholy note for us. Democracy in India is now in the crossroads of world polity. The jubilation that we once had on achieving our independence has now become a faint memory. The greatest experiment of Parliamentary democracy anytime in history is now showing signs of septicemic decay ; which if left to rot may lead to disastrous consequences for generations that ye t to come. The founding fathers of our nation were men and women with uplifted vision and dreams in their eyes ; and when they to came to debate and codify the constitution : they did so with immense faith and belief in India and its inhabitants. They were optimistic that we as people of this country would be a beacon of light to other emerging nations on how a society that has roots that stretch long time backwards can adapt themselves to modern ideas, and be supple enough to accommodate new thoughts streams without forfeiting the basic rights and dignity of an individual which is the prima

Chess : Stray thoughts on a lazy Sunday evening: An quote from G.M Hartston's monograph on the Czech opening in the game of Chess " Chess doesn't drive people mad, it keeps mad people sane" A rather interesting thought crossed my mind yesterday as i sat musing with an old faded chess book in my balcony. NIIT's Brand ambassador is the legendary Chess wizard Vishwanathan Anand - a child prodigy whose supre macy in this game has virtually remained unchallenged for close to three decades now. In an age when products and services have come to be promoted by voluptuous curves of nubile ladies , six pack abs of moronic looking hunks or ludicrously juvenile pranks of aging Bollywood actors and sportsmen - the image of a young Anand showcasing "intellect" reinstates ones inherent belief in the sanity of selling an idea. Anand may not be in the league of the most sought after icons , but there is an element of composure and poise he brings to NIIT as a brand; whi

The hanging of a convicted terrorist - My opinion.  Death penalty is legalized crime. One of the fundamentals principles of Justice is that, no man, however malicious his acts may have been, can be committed to death by law in a democratic polity : unless it is the “rarest of the rare cases”. Around one hundred and ninety countries across the globe have abolished execution as a form a punishme nt. Since 1995, there have been only four instances when Death penalty has been imposed in India. Ironically, the last two sentences were carried out in a matter of last few months; of Kasab, and now Afzal Guru. I have no doubt in my mind that we cannot tolerate communal violence in any form, more so in the name of religious or racial fundamentalism and its scary manifestation: terrorism. We have to deal with these ugly weeds with appropriate measures of strength and justice. But the question that remains unanswered in me is this: Can a “hanging” moot out the cause of this psychological decay? M

Dark Zero thirty - the ramifications of 9/11 and the ugly globalization of torture.  What happened in those fateful moments between 8.30 and 10.00 A.M on eleventh of September 2001 , as the twin towers disintegrated ever so slowly into earth, with almost a billion people across the globe watching with disbelief the collapse of the symbol of financial power - will forever remain etched in hist ory, as the day when the political polarization of the globe was irrevocably and in many ways irredeemably changed and rewritten. America stood dumbfounded at this audacious act of terrorism. The collective psyche of its people were badly shaken out their reverie of being the most impregnable nation in the world. Amidst the ruins of the twin towers and innocent corpses, the nation found their identity rattled. And out of this cauldron of insult, embarrassment and deep wound, they unleashed upon the world a witch hunt for Al Qaeda and its various tributaries. The hunt for Obama bin Laden had began

The Union Budget - the heart beat of an economy. A few stray thoughts and reminiscences. I remember vividly sitting in the back rows of a packed lecture hall in Chennai a couple of decades ago, waiting for the arrival of Nani A Palkivala , the eminent lawyer, Jurist, ex ambassador to the USA - to deliver his yearly talks on the budget. I had just then read his remarkable book " We, the peopl e". a compendium of his speeches and writings on a wide range of topics of national interest; more importantly : the ones on the yearly Union budget. Nani walked in exactly at 6.30 P.M. A few minutes later, he started speaking extempore. His opening lines still resonate in my ears. Nani began  " This is not a budget to make you deliriously happy or to drive you to the verge of suicidal despair. It may be regarded as a good budget in bad times, though it might have ranked as a bad budget in good times ". So he went for nearly two hours; dissecting the budget, unraveling the hid