Inspired by the movie “Transformers”...

It’s that time of the year again – IPL. I love it for two reasons; cricket obviously & the fresh stock of advertisements aired in between.

I saw this advertisement of Bajaj DTS-I; immediately the movie “Transformers” clicked in my mind. The advertiser obviously was inspired by the movie Transformers, which closely relates the relationship between man and his machine.

Brief narration of the advertisement - the advertisement is in the parking lot; bikes transform themselves into an endoskeleton, wound up a trye & start playing a basketball match. Technically, they transform into autobots.



In their pseudo avatar, the bikes play basketball as professionally as the yesteryears favorite Michael Jordan or the current champion Dwight Howard.
The bikes play & compete with each other in much the same way as Megatron and Optimus Prime fight in the movie.

After thrilling visuals of around 25 seconds, enters the security; a chap good at his work, since I rarely succeed in waking up the dozing watchman of my building when I return home at night.

As soon as the security guy enters, the autobots transform themselves back to bikes & park themselves where they are.

In a single word, I sum it up as awesome. The background score is an icing on the cake.
It’s not some rock music; it just gels perfectly well with the message conveyed.

Any guy who understands the immense relationship between him & his machine would love this advertises. The advertiser has sophisticatedly conveyed the message that the bikes love to play as much as humans.

Lastly, the advertisement is much better than the minute long anthem style advertisement of Bajaj’s closest competitor – Hero Honda.

One scoring point in this advertisement is that the focus entirely is on the product rather than the celebrity endorsing the product. This goes well with sensible bikers who fall for the bike (product in advertisement lingo) rather than the celebrity endorsing. Simply put, folks love Hrithik, but heck, he’s not coming with the bike; it’s only the bike which I get for the moolah’s I shell out. So I love the straight from sleeve message conveyed in most of Baja’s advertisement.

Microsoft Blunders.

I composed a mail in MS-Outlook & I normally use MS-Word as my editor.
Also, I prefer to keep the spell & grammer check on, to avoid spelling mistakes in my mails to clients.

In one such mail, this is what Microsoft suggested me to change, to make it grammatically correct::



Microsoft - Your Potential, Our Passion. Well!!!

Valentines' Day 2008...

A memorablia for the Valentines' Day 2008...

Obviously, for Dear Bhavna...

Where the Mind is without Fear...

Posting this poem from Gitanjali, with the hope that every citizen of my motherland, India, read this...

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action--
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake...

-- The Gitanjali or `song offerings' by Rabindranath Tagore (1861--1941), Nobel prize for literature 1913, with an introduction by William B. Yeats (1865--1939), Nobel prize for literature 1923. First published in 1913.

Sitaare Screen Par...

Whoa, what a flick. Ah, a movie which almost everyone can associate with, considering we have a movie based on a kid & his exploration in this mighty competitive world.

I would not make the mistake of comparing this movie with RDB or Chak De India, since all three movies belong to an entire different genre.

As for a short brief, the movie is based on a dyslexic child’s - Ishaan Avasthi (Darsheel Safary) journey from home to boarding school, the triggering events for this movement & finally, the successful outcome of the tremendous talent within him.



The tag line: “Every Child is Special” sums up this very nicely.

The script impressively emphasizes on the psychological parameters related to the inability of the student to cope up with the education. The movie further goes on to demonstrates the attitude of parents & the teachers towards the kid – parents are cooperative but still swimming in a typecast sea. Then enters the hero – a temporary art professor, Nikumbh, (Aamir Khan) in the boarding school where the kid is going through a rough stage.

Being a teacher (probably the founder) of a school for the differently able, the art professor takes keen interest in this kid. He dares to challenge the ordinary & goes on to convince the principal of the school about the talent potential in the kid. & finally, he emerges a winner in the efforts. He has been portrayed as a human with lots of kindness towards kids & more so for kids in despair.

On the whole, the movie is peppered well with characters which portray correctly the sorry state of primary school education in our country. As if the educational system is not enough, parental & peer pressure further thoroughly deteriorate the child’s approach towards life & challenges. The movie offers an advice to all parents / teachers to move away from stereotyped mode of thinking to a more refined one, when dealing with kids / students who are not able to cope with the educational sage.

The performance of each of the characters – prominently the kid, his parents & brother & the teacher is highly impressive. Emotionally soothing tune has been filled in at the right places to induce tears in eyes of the viewer. Yeah, the movie may not go well with heartless folks. The cinematography, the stills & the overall package looks very well presented & highly polished.

& the title goes well with the theme, to drive home the message that in fact, kids are the stars on the earth – they ought to be treated well.

Finally, Aamir Khan may hope to pull the movie to international film festivals, since the product overall has been presented very well. “Awesome” is just one word to describe it.

60 years of pride or shame?

August 15th, the day that rings in the minds of most Indians as a day for holiday in the midst of the week. In case it falls on a weekend, most of the lot swears or curses for missing a holiday… & still some curse it for it being a dry day throughout the country. However, few of the lot still take time out to celebrate the freedom gained by this country on this day in 1947. Newspapers, as usual, are strewn around with the achievements of the past 60 years, the most contributing faces of the years gone & most defining moments which left a mark on the history. Here’s my view on the 60th year of Independence & not the 60 years of Independence.



This year, in 2007, India completed 60 years of independence from the British rule of more than 200 years. Unlike a life of a professional working in public sector, 60th year does not bring any retirement to this country. However, at the 60th year, India has finally arrived. It has emerged as one of the safest investment destination for global investors. At the 60th year, Indian bourses crossed the trillion rupee milestone in terms of transactions amount; & in this 60th year, Indian conglomerates like the TATA group have almost dominated the global industry by making its presence felt by way of acquisitions & expansions on global scale. At the 60th year, India has nominated a woman to preside over the country. It’s at the 60th year, India tested its indigenously built missile off the coast of Orissa; a missile which has the capability to land at its neighbors’ capital, if the need arises. It’s at the 60th year of independence that justice prevailed, so as to punish the perpetrators (though not all of them) for the riots that shook the nation more than a decade back. It’s at the 60th year that Indian railways, the largest railway network throughout the world, finally turned around & reported a profit.

However, while the above may be a short brief of the happenings which may pride India for its achievements in the 60th year of independence, there are still some shortcomings. There are still a lot of people surviving below poverty line & sleeping hungry while the government warehouses which stock the grains are stocked beyond their capacity... There are still people whose lives are wrecked by natural disasters like rainfall since there are no disaster management systems in place. The financial capital of the country – Mumbai – still comes to a standstill when the rain God’s go berserk on the coastal city. And the people of the city are so used to being tested for their resilience that it has become a part of their life, to expect a day or two off, every year, due to heavy monsoon; and when the rain God’s are cool, mafia & politicians test their patience, in form of bomb blasts & bandhs. In the 60th year, a ruling CM of a progressive South Indian state shamelessly humiliated the opposition party member in the most disgraceful manner. In the 60th year, India still suffers from a monolithic bureaucracy which aggravates corruption. In the 60th year, the communal divide still exists & every spark of the divide is fuelled so as to result in a fire. In the 60th year, the members of the assembly openly threaten & assault a Bangaldeshi writer in presence of the media, & roam around scot free. Her fault: expressing herself freely in her book.

Hence, there’s still a long way to go, for India to become a superpower. Ironically, at its 60th year of independence, India is still termed as a “potential superpower”, rather than a “superpower”. It’s still “speculated” to be a sound investment decision. It’s still termed as a developing country, rather than a developed country. Consider Japan, which was devastated after the nuclear bombing in 1945; but the country has succeeded in almost all its endeavors, so as to churn out auto companies like Honda, Toyota & Suzuki, the brands which have been ruling the auto market in India. & while this may sound dependant (rather than independent), unless the politicians of the country are not accounted for their work, their callousness & their fraudulence, the next 60 years are also not going to be any better. Next year may be better than today, but may not be at par with what the developed countries like Germany & Japan would be then. Hoping the politicos’ become instrumental in the growth of the company & strive to put India into the top most countries of the world, I wish all the readers an Happy Independence Day…

Flying by Local Class…

Many centimeters of newspaper editorials have been devoted to the rising commercial aviation in India, its accessibility to the common man & an overall change of times in the domestic travel industry. The ease of reach ability of these services can be attributed to the recent spurt of no-frills, low-frills, & extra frills airlines to cater the domestic junta out here. But there's more to it than that meets the eye. This is my attempt to look at it from a different perspective.

Based on my experience of flying from Delhi to Hyderabad by one such no-frill airline & from Hyderabad to Mumbai by another low-frill airline, the service encountered therein urged me to blog about it.



Ok, few of the things that characterizes flying in domestic sector are:

1. The passengers are not allocated a seat number along with Boarding pass. The result being that as soon as the boarding commences, passengers are hasty to grab the seat nearest to exit or a window seat, as per desires. In most cases, first time travelers would vie for a window seat to get a peek of bird eye’s view. I can already imagine a situation in future, when the cabin crew would be offered some chai-paani to book seats as per the choice of the passengers – similar to what a coolie does in unreserved compartments of express trains.

2. After the boarding pass is allotted & one waits at the lounge, one would witness a scene similar to state transport bus stands. Various airlines have counters placed near the lounge exit with their representatives yelling at the top of their pitch to announce departure of their respective flights. Like, when waiting at Delhi airport, I heard one such rep announcing: “XYZ airlines ICXXX Delhi to Bangalore – boarding has started. Everyone, please form a queue at gate # 2”. This easily reminisced me of the conductor standing next to a bus in Jaipur bus stand: “Bus # 7202 Jaipur se Delhi ke liye nikalne wali hai.” This was not comparable to a railway station where a sound system is used to make announcements.

3. For the same matter, Hyderabad airport is comparatively better since it has a functional sound system in place to announce departure & arrivals of the flights. Or may be, in Delhi, the presently installed sound systems may not be able to manage the rush of flights.

4. The ordeal of flying by evening & late night flights is tumultuous. On an average, these flights are usually late by almost 30 to 45 minutes, which frustrates the passengers waiting at the lounge, subjected to the chaos & rest rooms comparable to the one found at railways stations & bus stands.

5. Within the flight, one can have only month old magazines to read, high priced snacks & subdued service from cabin staff. Well, these aspects can be justified by calling it a no-frill airline.

6. The saga of suffering doesn’t just end here. At the destination airport, collecting the checked in baggage & commuting from the airport to the city by auto / taxies adds to the woes. Well, this happens irrespective of flying by a no-frill, low frill or extra frilled airline.

On further thought, the private aviation companies cannot do anything about this state of air travel.

Considering the simple economics, when I recently traveled from Hyderabad to Mumbai, I paid a total of 1,574 bucks. Out of this, only 199 bucks ends up in to the airlines kitty. Rest of it is tax. Meaning, a substantial chunk of the airfare finds its way in to the government coffers. Hence, even though airfares have decreased, the government coffers must be brimming with the tax revenues. Screech! Brakes! The buck stops here. Once at the behest of government, it may not be considered fair to expect any better service or any fair account of money paid as tax

Finally, I hope that when the private players take over management of the airports, the experience improves overall, which is essential if ITDC is keen to make India as a favorable tourist destination. Else, foreigners traveling to India would carry with them similar memoirs of “Flying by Local Class”…