Matinee Maja !!!

Watched some classic movies recently, which were pending from long time :-)

Goodfellas
Schindler's List
A Few Good Men
Fight Club
Godfather Trilogy
Saving Private Ryan
The Silence of Lambs
The Usual Suspects
No Country For Old Men

All the above were recommended by different friends and after watching I would also recommend, the list is endless !!!

If somebody want to really apply their mind, one should watch David Lynch movies (again suggested by a dear friend). I watched MulHolland Drive, The Lost Highway and Blue Velvet. If 10 people are watching these movies together, I can assure after end of the movie everybody will have their version of story. The director treats the audience maturely and give them enough to think and tie the open ends.

Happy Movie Watching,
Hari.

Sachin : The Best Test Batsman

Whenever Sachin creates a landmark (yeah he creates not reaches), the debate starts - whether he is the best batsman who played the game, whether he should get Bharat Ratna, etc.

There is no comparison in ODIs, people always compare the test records. I will also do the same.

I remember last year or so people used to compare him with his contemporaries mostly Ricky Ponting, but in my mind Ricky was never close to him. The strongest argument I had that Ricky has never played against world strongest side - Australia and Sachin has scored more than, as of today, 20% of his runs(3151 runs) and centuries(11) against Australia. A great cricketer is not only who plays well but also how he conducts himself on the field, and Ricky stands nowhere near Sachin on this.

But this year media commentators, critics after realizing that Sachin is incomparable to his contemporaries, they started the comparison with past greats like Sir Don Bradman, Vivian Richards, Sunil Gavaskar, etc. With no disrespect to these cricketers, I feel Sachin stands taller here too.

Although the comparison is not fair, if at all I have tocompare, I would stress on below points:

• Bradman played most of his game against same opposition England and West Indies with almost same set of bowlers. Sachin has played his game against more than 9 opposition teams, both home and away. So I would say exposure for Sachin, in terms of both conditions and opposition, was lot more than Bradman.

• Bradman played only one format of the game. It was maximum 5-6 tests per year i.e. one month on the field. Sachin is playing in the era where players have to play 9-10 tests, 30-35 ODIs and with T20 & IPL around, 20 more matches. Players seldom get a break. One needs a lot of fitness, discipline and strict regime to follow to cope with this calender. Switching between different formats and excelling in all formats makes Sachin a complete batsman.

• Coming to statistics, I agree that Bradman has spectacular average of 99.96, but one has to understand that he played 52 test matches, whereas Sachin has played 175+ tests. If I compare the average of players who has played 100+ matches, Sachin, with 56.54, come second in the list (Kallis is 0.06 ahead of him and I am sure Sachin will take over). In 150+ list, Sachin is at the top (with difference of almost 3 with next, Ricky Ponting has 53.51). I believe this comparison is fair and Sachin tops here too.

• If you see the list of top bowlers of all time(Murali, Warnie, Kumble, McGrath, Walsh), Sachin has played his cricket when all these bowlers were active in international cricket. Even in top 10 list, only Richard Hadlee is the one whom Sachin might not have faced. This speaks volumes about the greatness of Sachin.

• Last but not least, cricket is a religion in India. Whenever Sachin takes the field he carries the expectations of billion of Indians. Definitely Bradman would not have batted with this much of pressure.
  

Should Sachin get the Bharat Ratna, that is another debate. Will discuss sometime later.


For Now... Hail Sachin !!!
Hari.

मंहगाई डायन खाए जात है :(

From Last few weeks the prices of all the household commodities are going up. Be it sugar, milk, pulses, petroleum products onions and latest is tomatoes. Prices have increased by 2-3 folds compared to last year. Government claims that our economy is one of the fastest growing economy of world, growing at the rate of 9%. To me it looks all a eyewash, where economy grows for only a certain class of society. If economy is growing by 9%, then corruption is growing by 900%.

Generally in rural parts, when a person asks somebody about his earning, people say that they earn enough to manage दाल-रोटी (Bread and Pulses). So, pulses and bread are the basic necessities. I read somewhere in one survey that still majority of our population earns less than 50 rupees a day and I don't think that there is increase in that earning in last 1-2 years. I wonder with the current rise in prices how those families are managing their two meals.

And guess what the ruling party's slogan "कांग्रेस का हाथ आम आदमी के साथ", what a irony... huh !!!

Everytime after price rise, Govt find different lame excuses like floods, rains, drought, etc. I wonder how every year same excuses. Instead of excuses, why there is no action on distribution system, storage, black marketeers, etc.

No Cheers,
Hari.

Atal Bihari Vajpayee Ji : Happy Birthday

Yesterday was Christmas, I visited my Engineering friend Mohit to his hotel. He is in Bangalore for 2-3 months on official visit. We went to MG Road area, roamed around for sometime. Garuda Mall had a theme where they had placed the replicas of some world's famous monuments like Great wall of China, Statue of Liberty, Eiffel Tower, etc. Is was very crowded, people clicking photos.

Yesterday 25th December was the 86th birthday of India's former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. He used to contest the elections from my Hometown Lucknow. Never lost that seat. He is undoubtedly the greatest and best leader of the country that I have seen in my life. He has the personality where opposition also respects him. Coming from a right wing party (and so called communal) he headed the government with the support more than 17 regional parties with different ideologies, that was incredible. He is the first and only non-Congress prime minister to complete his term in the office.

He is a very good orator with amazing ability to deliver speeches. I had a chance to listen him directly, when as a PM he came to Lucknow to address a poll campaign. I still remember that day. Now a days our leaders like Manmohan Singh, Sonia Gandhi, etc just read the speeches written by someone else. I feel a leader who is leading a country should not need a pre-written document to talk to its own people.

I believe he is the best candidate presently to receive India's highest civilian honor Bharat Ratna for his contributions to public life. But, in India where Rajiv Gandhi got this award just because of his 'Gandhi' surname, other deserving leaders has to wait.

Apart from a great leader he is also a poet and written some very good poems. I read his book "मेरी इक्यावन कवितायेँ" i.e. "My 51 poems" and one cannot stop appreciating those.
Some of my favorite lines from poems:

"सिर्फ ऊंचाई ही काफी नहीं होती, उसके साथ विस्तार भी होना चाहिए"
"अपनों को गले ना लगा सकूँ प्रभु इतनी ऊंचाई मत देना"
"आओ फिर से दिया जलाएं"

Today when he is not active in politics due to health reasons, India definitely misses a leader of his caliber. I wish him a very happy and healthy Birthday !!!

Cheers,
Hari.

My first Android !!!

Its Christmas eve. Lot of wishes.

Last Sunday finally I changed my mobile phone. I was using a simple basic Nokia phone earlier. Frankly high end mobile sets never excited me. A mobile set capable of making/recieving calls/messages is more than sufficient for me.

But the whole lot of gaga surrounding the Android OS, I decided that I have to try it once and then Micromax launched their first Android phone A60 at quite affordable prices.

The Micromax ads punchline is 'What did you do to get your first Android ?'. Well I had to make up my mind to buy it :)
I bought it from CROMA where I got additional 5% discount.
This phone has almost all the features, specially my favorite 'Call Blacklisting'. Looking forward to block some Telemarketing calls.
Other useful feature is that one can synchronize the contact lists from the gmail account.
I liked the Android OS very much, the phone has Android 2.1 installed. There are lot of wonderful applications (.apk files) available on the internet.
Thats always a plus side of Open source. I feel Nokia in long run will suffer due to popularity of Android.

Tip : Well may not be of much help, If you are downloading the application on your PC and saving it on the SD card,
remember to disconnect the USB cable before trying to install the application.

Merry Christmas,
Hari.

Back after a long time !!!

Posting here after 1.5 years... Last post was during IPL first season and now 3rd season is over. So its a pretty long time. It took around one hour to figure out the login credentials :)

Well starting tomorrow office is closed for one week due to Christmas and New year holidays. But I am in Bangalore and would be providing product support. So this time not going to Lucknow, first time after 4 years.

There is lot of change in Bangalore's weather in last 3 weeks. First it was hot, then it rained heavily and now cold air, all within span of 20 days.

One get together of old friends of engineering is planned this weekend. Nothing concrete yet. Lets see if it materializes.

Will try to be more regular here now onwards.

Cheers,
Hari.