Yeh Mera India

06Nov09

Another superhuman effort by the great man… another middle order collapse…. another harakiri by a ‘promising’ youngster (in Indian cricketspeak ‘promising’ is the euphemism for ‘mediocre’)….and another defeat when it seemed impossible…not to mention another six hours wasted followed by heartbreak…..jai hind

But of course who says it better than Greatbong. Its truly 90s redux

http://greatbong.net/2009/11/05/it-is-still-the-90s/#more-3461


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Lecture by Dr.Arvind Gupta

06Sep09

On Saturday we had an amazing lecture by Dr.Arvind Gupta. He has worked for past 30 years on developing simple low cost tools (especially toys) to teach science to children in rural India. He currently works at IUCAA. It was truly inspiring to interact with him. More info about him can be found at http://www.cse.iitk.ac.in/~amit/arvindgupta.html.

He also runs a website on which he has posted information regarding these toys: http://www.arvindguptatoys.com/


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Don’t Worry Be Happy

01Oct08

Dear readers(I think there are only a handful left now),

I have been extremely busy in last few weeks in one thing or the other. So I was not able to post anything new. But yesterday one of my friends questioned whether I am still committed to blogging or this was like one my many passing fads . So this post is to assure you all, who still have the patience to  visit my blog once in a while, that I am still committed to the cause,so to speak. In fact those who know me well ‘can see a steely glint in my eye’ (a la Ricky Ponting) and it ‘means that there are a few blog posts around the corner’

Cheers :)


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A Big Bang of Laughter

29Aug08


First of all I must confess that I make a conscious effort to stay away from popular TV serials, especially those 45 minutes per episode, 25 episodes-a-season, 7 season sagas. These perennial adventure, mystery series cum soap operas irritate me a lot. It’s not that they are shoddily produced or illogical like a Kekata Kapoor melodrama (well, sometimes they are!) but they have this peculiar quality. They make you watch one episode after the other for endless hours after which you do not obtain any tangible output.

Still, The Big Bang Theory is just a sitcom so I was less skeptical when I started watching it. ( For the uninitiated, TBBT, produced by Chuck Lorre, was introduced by CBS last season.) And I must admit that I was instantly hooked to it!

TBBT basically follows a ‘Beauty and the Geek’ theme. Dr. Leonard Hofstadter and Dr. Sheldon Cooper are physicists at Caltech who share the same apartment (they ‘live in separate heterosexual bedrooms’ according to Leonard). But their personalities are quite different. Leonard is extremely smart but he wants to live a normal life. He makes a conscious effort to interact with ‘lesser mortals’. On the other hand, Sheldon was a child prodigy (He has two PhDs. The first one obtained at the age of 15). He is one of the smartest guys on the planet (a ‘beautiful mind’-type genius) and he knows it. And he also makes sure that everybody around him is aware of this fact. But however I like him the most because there is certain innocence in his social behavior which is quite charming.

They also have two friends who visit often. One of them is Howard Wolowitz who is an engineer working on a space program. ( Sheldon makes some scathing remarks about engineers. In one of my favorite episodes ‘The Jerusalem Duality’ he refers to them as ’semi-skilled labour’ and ‘the oompa-loompas’ of science. Roald Dahl would have been pleased!). He is Jewish and a sort of a retro-nerd. He wears clothes which have been out of fashion for last 20 years or so. He knows six languages and is a bit of a lech (‘I am a romantic!’). The second is Rajesh Kuthrappali who is an Indian guy with a tendency to become completely mute in presence of the fair sex.

However, their lives are completely changed when they have a new neighbour, Penny. She is your usual dumb blonde type. However, Leonard is instantly smitten and starts dreaming about her (‘Our children will be smart and beautiful’). He constantly tries to establish a romantic relationship with her. Sparks fly and we never cease to roll in laughter. No episode is boring and the gags keep coming in.

But I have one complaint about the storyline. All the characters have stereotypical and extreme personalities. Sometimes you almost expect a joke if you follow ‘all the geeks are nerds’ line-of-thought. And Penny had to be a waitress at the Cheesecake factory!

Still a truly great comedy which keeps us laughing like a drain throughout!


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Viru – The Dark Knight

10Aug08

I know that the title of this post might be a bit perplexing. “What is the similarity between Virender Sehwag, The Sultan of Nazafgad and Batman aka The Dark Knight,the famous vigilante from
Gotham city’, one might ask, ‘apart from the fact that they are both male, Homo sapiens and have got something to do with the word ‘bat’?”. The only character from the Batman saga which has a slight similarity with Virender Sehwag can be the Penguin, played in the movie by Danny DeVito, with his bald patch and a visible paunch. Jokes apart, the fact is that Sehwag played an incredible innings in the Second test match between India and Sri Lanka which reminded me of the alter ego of Bruce Wayne. It was arguably his greatest innings till date and perhaps the best innings by an Indian in the last few years.

I have heard of that famous innings by Sunil Gavaskar at Bangalore against Abdul Kadir and co. where the pitch was said to be not even fit for a Kanga League match. I have also heard the stories of the innings by Sachin Tendulkar at Chennai on a deteriorating fifth day pitch against the sly Saqlain Mushtaq, where India crumbled on the brink of what would have been a famous victory when he got out after a defiant century. But this was the first time that I witnessed such a masterful display of batsmanship and sheer determination. It seemed that the phrase ’standing among the ruins’ was coined just for this innings of Sehwag as he took the Lankan bowlers on with vengeance when every single one of his illustrious colleagues looked like ‘a damsel in distress’. Sehwag cut,punched,drove,hooked and lofted all over the ground the Lankan offerings while Dravid stumbled, Tendulkar foundered and Ganguli wobbled away.

The Lankan bowling line-up was formidable one consisting of the spin wizard Muralidharan and the new boy wonder Mendis, not to mention Vaas, the old fox (I must say that I have no respect for that whatsisname, the other pacer. Anil Kumble bowls much quicker.). Sehwag singlehandedly taking on the firm of M&M when our famous middle order was shown its way to the pavilion in no time by the spin duo was like Batman taking on the Joker and the Riddler all on his own when Gordon and Lucius Fox fled and Alfred, the butler simply said ‘Good luck, Master Bruce’ and bowed out…(I know that the Joker and Mr. Muralidharan don’t have much in common except the fact that both can be aptly described as ‘The Smiling Assassin’. I am sure that Muralidharan is quite an affable person with an impeccable character, except a minor flaw that, IMHO, he seems a chucker. But every die hard Indian cricket fan will agree that Mendis is really the Juggler incarnate!)

And what makes this innings more important is that the confidence of the Indian team was at its nadir after the ignominious defeat in the first test in less than three days. It needed the Batmanlike rescue act of Sehwag to lift the spirits of the crestfallen members of the Indian dressing room,which resembled Gotham city. With the Indian middle order failing for the fifth time in this test series as I write this post, all I can say is “Let us bow to The Dark Knight” ….


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What ho,Blogosphere!

08Aug08

After much vacillation I have finally decided to start my weblog. The hesitation was mainly due to my deep aversion to piece together my random thoughts to write something non-technical. This characteristic is already noticeable since I am already at a loss of words. ( I have no idea as to what you are supposed to write in your first blog post! I have seldom read the first posts of any of the blogs I follow). All that I can say is “stay tuned!”

Adios!


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