New Blog

This is where I blog now

see you there !

CLOSED DOWN

I will no longer post anything here.
This blog has served me for a long time, and I'm rather fond of it, but the past suffocates it now, I want to start afresh and write something different.

I'll put the new URL here as soon as there is one.

Thank you for coming !

Questions for a PGDM

why are food prices rising all over the world ? how is the price of oil determined ? what justification is given for the assertion that wealth trickles down ? what do consultants do after 5 years of consultancy ? what are they good at ? why do derivatives and other financial "products" exist ? what purpose to they serve ? why are the richest and most cash rich sectors (investment banks, consultants etc etc) the ones that create no wealth ? why do people with bad credit histories provide the major portion of bank profits ? why is fractional lending allowed at all ? what controls the amount of money in the economy ? what relation does amount of money in the economy have to real income ? what is real income ? why cant we have a fixed amount of money circulating ? does that even mean anything ? what percentage of consulting income is result dependent ? what percentage of consulting income in india is from family owned businesses and what percentage from government ? why do pgdm related jobs like investment banking and consulting tend to be so elitist and opulent ? why is the guy who makes a better chulha not rewarded more than a man who talks nebulous bullshit in the current economic system ? the pharma business is the most profitable in the world, followed by food, why are these not govt controlled to ensure food, medicine pricing and availability ? who controls commodity prices and availability and how ? who regulates them (both prices and people) ? what justification is given for the assertion that there will be less corruption if the private sector controls sectors that are currently govt controlled ? in a free market, what represents a person with no money ? where did the money lent out in the sub prime crisis go ? if it is circulating in the economy, some one must have it, so why is there economic slowdown in the US because of that ? what punishment has been meted out to the rating agencies who messed up on such a large scale ? why do IIMs need to have such ridiculous fees when they require no expensive labs, no special equipment apart from good class rooms ? do corporations HAVE to increase profits for shareholders ? cant the charter mandate instead a maximization salaries of employees or minimizing acres of rainforest cut ? why should corporations have the same rights as citizens ? why is no human liable for the misdeeds of a corporation ? how foolish is that ?

as more questions occur to me I'll put them in another post. Please feel free to comment and clarify, correct, explain any of the above, or connected things.

Chitrangada is Coming Back !

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I put the same photo again, because I find it stunning. Take a look at this article from Tehelka which gives a good account of her history and the effect she had on people, including me. The article also talks about her upcoming movies and her own reasons for leaving when she did.

Finally, something positive happens to Bollywood !

The Greatest Ever

An article by Rohit Brijnath, this is a moving tribute to Dhyan Chand. It was part of India Today's 100 People who shaped India series of articles. This is the link to the whole article on the India Today website. Notice how shoddily we have always treated our heroes. We are a hugely callous country. We dont deserve our heroes. We certainly deserve our politicians. If you know what this article talks about, and if it does not move or sadden you in any way, chances are, you're Indian.

They say you can judge a man's legend by the quality of myths that surround him. By that measure itself Dhyan Chand was an extraordinary man. To hear tales of his craftsmanship was to wonder whether his stick was designed by Merlin himself. They broke his stick in Holland to check if there was a magnet inside; in Japan they decided it was glue; in Germany, Adolf Hitler even wanted to buy it................

..................................................................................................................................................

........When he fell ill, liver cancer it turned out, and came to Delhi's All India Institute of Medical Sciences, they dumped him in the general ward. A journalist's article eventually got him moved to a special room, but that public memory had to be jogged tells its own story.

In Jhansi they had a funeral, not in the ghat, but on the ground he played on. Players came, but it seemed a little too late. It made it hard to forget the first few words of his autobiography Goal: "You are doubtless aware that I am a common man." He wasn't but he died like one

But we did not

India lost 2-0 and will not be playing at the Olympics in Beijing.

I want India to win . .

against Britain tomorrow in Santiago. India has played in every men's olympic hockey tournament since 1928 (and won 8 of them) and in order to play in Beijing, India need to beat Britain tomorrow in the final of the 6 nation qualifying tournament from which only one team will play in the olympics. India lost only one league match, and that was to Britain a couple of days ago, a very rough match in which 3 players were reprimanded for bad behaviour, and India lost in in the dying moments when Rob Moore scored for Britain to give them a 3-2 win. (bringing back memories of that last minute goal we let in against Poland in Sydney (to make it 1-1), we were 1 minute 41 seconds away from our first Olympic semi final in 25 years.) That was only Britain's 10th win over India ever.

China, Korea and Pakistan, South Africa, Canada, the Netherlands, Spain, Belgium and Australia have already qualified for the olympics. Belgium ? Korea ? and India is struggling ? This story goes back to the 2006 Doha Asian Games when for the first time ever India were ousted in the group stages due to a loss to China who are considered minnows in Hockey. India had won a medal in every previous edition of the Asian games, and apart from a Bronze in 1986, we won either gold or silver. That failure to qualify for the semis and win a medal at the Asian Games meant that India did not automatically qualify for the Olympics. And so here we are . . . Needing to beat Britain to get to the Olympics. and once upon a time Beating britain would have been no problem at all, Pakistan beat them 8-2 or something in the last olympic games, but they have a higher world ranking than us (they are 8th and we are 9th) and nothing can be said about the Indian Hockey team anymore. We lost the league game to them after all.

What happens to Indian Hockey if we dont qualify for the Olympics ? so much history, so much pride, and once upon a time so much glory went with the Indian team's exploits at the Olympics. The coverage in the Indian media (from what I could gauge over the internet) was desultory, and apart from one article on Indiatimes by the coach Joaquim Carvalho none of the articles went to the heart of the situation the Indian team finds itself in. There were no statistics anywhere, (I got a few numbers from a Pakistani newspaper, which sounded like it really wanted India to qualify, if only for the sake of tradition) no analysis, no recoup of the Indian team's recent results, no analysis of the system for qualification of the olympics (I had to go to the olympics website to check which teams had already qualified) nothing. The fate of Indian Hockey in the near future hangs in the balance, generations of pride and a splendid record hangs in the balance and the country refuses to notice ?

Its a shame. Shame on all those who call themselves sports fans and sports journalists in India and shame on the Indian public which obediently drinks whatever rot the BCCI dishes out and refuses to look around for itself - there is greatness and pride in all sport and very very few sporting teams in history have provided as much drama, brilliance, glory, and now tragedy as the Indian Men's Hockey Team.


If I could go back in time and choose a sport again, I'd choose to play Hockey.

Its gone too far

I, P B, hereby declare that I will not watch, read about, talk about, or in any way encourage the proliferation of any event, product, person or subject that has any connection to cricket in India.

Here's a story.

After much huffing and puffing and tension, my exams finally got over on the 28th of Jan 2008. and then, instead of breathing a sigh of relief and enjoying for a few days, I had a take home exam to do to be sumbitted on the 13th of february for a subject we freshers had been advised not to take on account of its advanced nature (and so of course, I went and took it. I insist on finding new instruments for my lazyness to torture me with). I had reconciled myself to my 10 day holiday being washed out in yet another tense period of wasted time and desperate concentrated work coupled with irritated house-hunting (the latter the courtesy of the VUB housing department), but my parents had other ideas. They had decided that I was working too much (hear ! hear !) and needed a vacation. They dint say it, but they clearly thought I was becoming(?) psycho, sitting in my room all day, eating by myself, not meeting people and generally brooding over a cold grey cityscape and inscrutable equations and growing slowly but surely fatter and balder. (all of which happens to be true) So, when my dad visited me on the 29th, he was quite insistent that I finish my paper before friday (thats today) and go meet some friends in Switzerland over the weekend. the more he spoke of it, the more inviting it seemed, and I promised that I'd do something about it. So, after I got back to my room before lunch on the 30th (I was in Brussels with dad) I promptly took my computer over to Aditya's place (apart from being a splendid chap with a large room, his landlord provides free, fast, unlimited download wifi access) and proceeded to watch some 10-15 episodes of the Xfiles well into the night.

I slept feeling quite guilty. So the next day (the 31st, yesterday) I woke up before lunch and found out that the housing problem had been kind of, more or less, solved, but my internet was not working and my phone was lost. Understandably, I thought myself exceptionally vulnerable to attacks by hi-tech psychopaths and alien abductions, so I spent most of the afternoon fixing my internet and finding my phone (which I had forgotten at Aditya's place obviously) and so on. I gave my nonlinear optics a cursory glance and in the night, settled down for another bout of the x files in my room. By the time I slept I had realized that the time had come for desperate measures.

I woke up today morning and decided that I must go to Switzerland and meet the few friends I had there and take a break (theres irony in there somewhere). I realized (admitted is a better word perhaps) that I'd never get down to work unless I gave myself a fixed inflexible deadline. So the obvious course of action was to book my tickets to switzerland and then make myself finish the needful before then. So I thought to myself - thursday I go to Switzerland, spend friday and saturday there, back on sunday, and next semester starts on monday, so by wednesday, I have to finish my exam, attend a meeting in brussels on monday, wind up my affairs in Gent, arrange for my luggage to be shifted to Brussels in my absence, and make arrangements for Aditya (who is staying in my room for a week because his contract expired in January).

Easy.

So I started looking at the various low cost airlines. I needed to go to Zurich, thats where the chaps are, but Zurich turns out to be an expensive place to fly to. So I was prepared to fly to anywhere in switzerland, and there were 10 open tabs with any number for airports and flights and few were affordable. Finally, I saw a list which read something like

Basel - EUR180
Bern - EUR132
Geneva - EUR156
Zurich - EUR1023
Nice - EUR3

AHA ! I said to myself ! finally ! So I clicked on the last dot, filled in my card details, paid, got my ticket in my mail and as I was about to print it out, I saw something that should have been horribly obvious right at the beginning - Nice is in FRANCE !!!!! its 600km from Zurich ! and the flight is on Tuesday !!

But the deed was done. The gods had spoken. there was no turning back. . . . . since then, I have bought myself a nice medium sized backpack and a good North Face jacket (my first major non food expenses in europe and they wiped out my savings for january) and helped Aditya move to my room and fixed an appointment to wind up my room contract on tuesday afternoon. I leave for Nice on tuesday night, reach there at 10. I'll spend a day or two around Nice I guess and then go to Switzerland either via Grenoble or Milan (I've been to north Italy, so Grenoble seems a more interesting but less convenient option) and my flight back from Geneva reaches Brussels at the exact time that the first class of my next semester is supposed to start. I dont know where I'll stay in Brussels when I get back and what I'll wear to college on the first day, but I dont care.

As usual, I'm in a tight corner, but I can assure you, its a lot better than being rooted in front of a flickering screen in a dark room feeding on cheap vicarious thrills ! I'm looking forward to wide landscapes, the sea, the mountains, the flavours of faraway cities and the winds of foreign lands :-) Should be fun, especially after 4 months of motionlessness :-)

And there is the small matter of doing 2 months worth of work in 2 days, but thats routine. Thats precisely what my Bachelors degree was about :-)

Thats Chitrangada Singh - for those of you unfortunate enough never to have seen her before. Her first movie was the superbly made "Hazaaron Khwaahishein Aisi" (2003) - a movie that lingers in the mind long long after its over. It is set in the 1970's in Calcutta and traces the stories of 3 characters who - in all their flawed tragedy - symbolize the spirit of those times. But the movie goes further than that, it makes the viewer ask himself fundamental questions about his own ideas of morality and idealism. It left me slightly disturbed and slightly sad. I watched it more than a year ago, and it still comes back to me sometimes, undiminished in its power, pain and the aftertaste of melancholy. And the most stunning performace in the movie belongs undoubtedly to Chitrangada Singh. 'The Lamp to the other characters Moths' as someone put it. She carries herself superbly, and is polished, understated, intelligent, sensual and flawed in her choice of men (in my opinion anyway :D ) Shiney Ahuja puts in a splendid performance in what is his debut movie as well, and his character provides the conscience for the movie, an upwardly mobile, ambitious and crude, but faithful and passionate counterpoint to the self righteous, misplaced and ultimately fickle idealism of the well heeled and well off. A movie well worth the time, surely one of the most remarkable movies ever made in Hindi.

Chitrangada acted in only one other movie called "Kal - Tomorrow and Yesterday" (2005) which was a well made thriller aimed at the so called multiplex audience. And then she got married to "ace golfer" Jyoti Randhawa and has never acted in a movie since. Mr. Randhawa had better be shaking up the golfing world in a big way soon, because he has taken away the lady who is Indian Cinema's best young actress by a long long way. Had she continued (and she still can come back) she could have been to our generation what Smita Patil was to the last. A beacon of intelligence and beauty in a world populated increasingly with 'item girls'.

She will be missed !

__________________________

ख्वाब तो मैंने बहुत देखे है, लेकिन दिल लगा कर खेले हुए बरसों बीत गए. शब्द बड़ी आसानी से निकलते है मुह से, मन मे महल बड़ी आसानी से बनते है, लेकिन डाव लगता नही है मुझसे, ज़ंग लड़ी नही जाती, मंजिल तै नही कर पता हूँ मैं - लाब्जों की दीवारों के पीछे छुपकर मुकर जाता हूँ मैं. हारना तो मैं जानता ही नही हूँ - मैंने खेलना ही कहाँ सीखा है ! ख़यालों मे खोया, फ़र्ज़ निभाना भूल चूका हूँ मै. बडे दिन हुए सिर उठाके चले हुए - हर मोड़ पे गलत रास्तों पर बिखर जाता हूँ मैं.

"हजारों ख्वाहिशें ऐसी
की हर ख्वाहिश पे दम निकले,
बहुत निकले मेरे अरमान
लेकिन फिर भी काम निकले . . "

I have seen the light

I write this to remind myself of that fact.

Exams, Cricket etc

I've become very bored and too comfortable in the middle of the exams. I liked my subjects while I was studying them, I was excited, but now that the exams are here they have become a drag. I fail to see how performance in an exam can be a good criterion for judging a masters level student's aptitude for research, and they are certainly a HUGE waste of time for all concerned, so I'm very surprised to find the intense, lengthy exam periods these people in Belgium have. I am keen to get done with them as soon as possible and get on to the next semester of learning. I am quite disappointed to find that "careless mistakes" are still very much a part of me, and my math exam which could so easily have been a triumph has left me feeling quite disappointed and a little bit helpless. To be honest, at least some of the lack of focus that might have resulted in the mistakes I made will have to be attributed to my excessive involvement in the tumultuous exploits of the Indian Cricket Team.

There have been reams and reams written about the Sydney match, and I have soaked it all up. I have read every blog, every article and followed every comment and its aftermath. I have seen all the videos on youtube and I have reached the conclusion that the whole matter is too obvious to comment on, and that I have nothing to add to the huge body of material already published (and indeed, is still being published). But, I do support the Indian team, not just because they are the Indian team and the underdogs but because most of them are gentlemen worth emulating in many respects.

I do wish they'd come up with some steely performances and win though. I miss India !


Update (20-01-2008) - Yesterday, they did exactly that ! A magnificent win at Perth !