Out of Race

No doubt there is a race going on among all the news channels nowadays. Every one wants to be ahead of all others, not only in bringing news to people, but also bringing experts and expert reviews. As soon as something happens, there are 'experts' on TV, talking live and on phone on the topic.

But the print media is a quite different. Probably in being good, and more responsible, they do things slowly. I first felt so when I was checking websites of various news channels and newspapers yesterday. As Times of India website was showing 6 blasts, DNA showed 9, whereas Aaj tak and IBN were showing 13 and 17 blasts' news respectively.

Today, when I thought I could read some comments by the best of India's journalists/authors on two days' continuous blasts, I was disappointed to see that Times of India had nothing on blasts by any of them and the entire editorial page, 'All that matters', in their lingo. Then I checked Hindustan Times and DNA, and found that there were no articles on blasts in any of their editorial pages.

It was like coverage of the previous 5 days of the week took away the 6th and 7th days. But the obvious fact is that these authors give their opinions days before these editions come out and nobody tried to change them.

On one hand it's good because had the case been otherwise, there would be only Ahmedabad all over the pages. But then, it's striking that when on one hand everybody is talking about bomb blasts, but these newspaper experts seem to be talking of an altogether different world.

Don't you think they need to speed up a bit?

Real and Fake

I like reading Shashi Tharoor in The Times of India every Sunday. This time, it was about fake things versus real. And here is my opinion which I sent back through the ToI website.

(You can read the article by from the link given in the top right corner, 'Get real, we are living in a fake world', or simply clicking the title of this post, that is 'Real and Fake')

Thanks Shashi.

Pretty right. Absolutely right as far as drugs are concerned, and even in general, I feel we should buy original and not fake.

But sometimes piracy helps those who are not helped by originals. In today's context, I am talking about books.

Previously it was the market of CDs (read movies) that was dominated by pirates. But then, the prices of Video CDs (and even audio CDs) came down and people started buying originals, piracy taking a backseat. And though piracy hasn't been abolished completely, Moserbaer and T-Series are dominating the market with their low price CDs or say, reasonable price CDs.

Back to books now. India has a large market of pirated books. And I have bought a number of pirated books in Bangalore and Chennai, most of them Non-fiction as I used to read whatever I got in library as far as fiction is concerned. I have never liked buying pirated books but then, I didn't have much options. I don't think my parents can 'waste' rupees 495 for buying me 'The Elephant, the tiger and the cellphone' until it's going to help me out with my studies or my job or something equally important. In fact, until I start earning enough money myself, I can't think of buying a rupees 500-600 book. And I feel an average Indian student is more or less in the same situation, with the exceptions of a few rich.

Now, the options I have are:

1. I do not read the book and wait for getting a job first.

2. I stop my other expenses for a month or a half and collect money to buy the book.

3. I go to the market and get a duplicate copy for 70-80 rupees.

I think the third one is the simplest, and the best in my scenario. And in case of most Indian students. Or a lot of them, to say the least.

I still say that I do not like pirated things. I bought Chetan Bhagat books because I could afford one easily and so was the case with The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari. And I feel that if prices are made a bit more people friendly, piracy can be removed to a large extent.

PS: I still haven't bought 'The Elephant...', hoping I buy an original as I'll be joining my job soon.

Blasts

It's 8:56 by my watch. And seems there is a race going on between news channels. Times of India, where I saw the news for the first time had been showing news of 6 blasts and now isn't talking on numbers. DNA is showing 9 blasts on its headlines whereas IBN live claims 17 and Aaj Tak is talking about 13 blasts.

And though they say blasts were low intensity, pictures don't suggest such 'low' intensity. I mean, of course they might have not been high intensity, but the 'low' thing is quite misleading.

As the news came, I was a bit shocked as it was continuously second day for blasts. But the real shock came when I heard my mother saying that there were 14 blasts. I opened the TV and then the sites of IBN and Aaj tak telling me more than I had read.

I still doubts all the figures but one fact is that this day has been really shocking. I had not even changed the 'Are we habitual to bomb blast news now' tag on my Orkut profile when this came up.

I know there is not much going to happen for this except that there will be POTO or POTA again when the next government comes, but I wish the politicians don't politicize this issue and do something positive together. Though I feel this is going to remain just a wish as this is yet another chance of throwing mud at each other for our leaders.

For the rest, may God help us. That's all I can think of.

And now, Knol

What if Google owned the Wikipedia? Well, now it seems that Google is trying to something of that sort as it has started its new service called Knol, the unit of knowledge. (name trying to remind you of mol/mole of science, I think)

Though being a Wikipedia isn't easy. That too when its a commercial company like Google. I mean, of course there are companies that are much more into money but Wiki is a complete charity so a competition should hardly exist between the two.

For now, the only things I understood are that Knol will have authors who could write on topics as they wish and they can also get ad revenues through adsense for ads on their Knols.

This is supposed to create competition but I expect more of confusion and chaos. So let's see how does this new thing works. I hope Google people get good result for using their Knols of knowledge.

Najibabad. Internet. People.

Today, 4 pm, Bharat Complex Cyber Cafe, Najibabad.

It was not a new thing for me to go to the Bharat Complex. I have been there so many times for internet when I didn't have a broadband connection even though the Rs 30 per hour the guy there takes wasn't right from any standards, I thought.

Still, today I needed to go there as I needed the print out of my Dell Laptop quotation so that I could tell bank how much it cost me.

I went there and told him I needed to get a printout from my mail. After 5 mins he got me a system. I logged in. I got the mail, downloaded the PDF and said, let me check it. By the time I could complete my sentence, he had clicked sign out. Of course, he had no time to check it.

Well, he launched himself into the printer room with the PDF in his hand, in a pen drive. By the time I got in, he told me it was 8 pages long. Pretty fast, considering I'm not slow by any standards. I was sort of shocked and asked him not to print it all and just give one page when he told me he had already given the print command.

I thought it would not be much of a problem as it'd cost me Rs 16 at max and since I hadn't asked him to print, he might consider taking a bit less too.

Guess I was wrong. Not just wrong, but actually shocked when I asked him how much I had to pay and he said Rupees 40!

Rupees 40 for eight, black and white A4 pages' prints which actually I didn't want because I could fetch the price of my commodity on a single page. Seriously speaking, I had to control my anger and I was sort of showing my magnanimity when I handed him the money. The interesting thing is that when I asked him that I and he both knew how much these eight pages really cost, I got an answer that he only knew as he was the one earning. Well, the logic was quite okay but I still wonder how I could justify Rs 5 for a printout.

After half an hour when I was chatting with my dad about the printouts, for the first time it occured to me that buying a printer was a much better option as the guy could buy a printer with the margins he got on every pack of 500 A4 sheets. (500 pages x 5 Rs per page=Rs 2500, almost the cost of a printer) In fact cartridges too could be bought in that much.

I think Najibabad is a pretty self dependent place now, as far as internet is concerned as I can see many people with net connections now, but if you need to go for printouts, and the guy in your mind is the Bharat complex one (as it's one of the best running cyber cafes), consider buying a printer. The same thing as I am doing now.

Shift Kiya.. Kiya... No-kia!

I wonder if there are people on this earth who do what they say. I mean, sometimes it's so difficult. Not generally, but for me it's so. I say something, and do something else.

This time it was my phone. I lost my phone to the rain of Dehradun. Well, most probably, as it stopped working later in the night after the day when it caught some rain. And so, I was going to get a new phone.

I have been a music freak for almost 10 yrs, but I still never had a music phone. So this time I decided to get a music phone. And since I got a digicam, I wanted to have a non-camera phone. I searched, and found that Nokia had no such phone. (!!)

Well, I thought of buying a Sony Ericsson and later decided to go with a MotoYuva. I even found one with a friend of my cousin and finally I was happy with my choice of a new Moto.

The day I had to buy phones (my dad also needed one, as he lost his almost a month ago), I took off on my dad's Nova with him as the driver. (I still don't drive a scooter, or any other vehicle for that matter!)

The first shop we selected belonged to 'apna subhash' who is popular in the city for his helping nature. ('Apna' was part of his shop's name when I had bought my first phone from there in 2003) By this time 'apna Subhash' had stopped selling cellphones and was only in the business of advising as far as cells were concerned. My dad asked him who had Nokia and Motorola Agencies in the town and he immediately suggested not to go with a Motorola even though he said Motoyuva wasn't a bad phone.

Next we reached Goyal PCO, our supplier of clothing except shirts, pants and sarees, I mean, from towels to bedsheets and caps to socks, the owner of course being my dad's good friend. He there asked him to come with him to Bilal's, who had almost every model of cellphone that was sold in the town. As we talked to the guy sitting behind the counter of Bilal's, the guy suggested us not to go with a Motorola and rather stick to a Nokia. The reason he gave was that we had gone to him with bhaisahab (the owner of the PCO) and hence he would give us the best advice. He also said that he currently didn't have it and it would take him two days to get a Moto as Motorola wasn't in demand in our town.

This time I finally came down. I was all in mood to get a Moto until then but as I heard I needed to wait for two days for a thing that was un-suggested by a number of people, I decided to get back to a Nokia.

I asked the guy what were the prices of 5200, 6300 and 3110 classic. And soon I decided to go with 3110 classic as 6300 was a bit too high on price and even though I was at a liberty to buy that, I didn't want to put in that much money. Nokia 5200 was de hone and hence I didn't want to buy that. Thus I got a Nokia 3110 Classic, once again a Nokia, after my 2100, 2280, and 2600. In the meantime, I got my father a Nokia 2626 that he lost last month and this time I got him a Nokia 1650, making him the third person who bought the model while going with me.

To other cell makers: I have recommended a number of phones from other companies including Motorola, Sony Ericsson and Samsung, and this time I was about to shift to a Moto myself too. But at last, No-kia.

Blogging. Not racing

Everybody makes mistakes. I do too. And here is one that I feel many people do. So did I.

Blogging. A wonderful thing. Something that gives you freedom to say what you want to say. And so people blog. And then they blog, and blog to get readers. That's where the mistake happens.

I was a guy who started a blog as an experiment last September. I kept blogging on and off with business, telecom, and Hindi blogs, hoping they would 'run well'. But in that I lost some of my real blogging pleasure. Still my big world (that's my BLOG) kept going.

And then, there was a block. When I didn't write, due to exams and then unavailability of net and then for no reason. In the meantime I started a blog on music, because I liked that. I thought I'd blog out my views on music because I always liked to make the first opinion.

This was something I was wrong with. I blogged. I gave out my views. But I joined the race I didn't have to. I started thinking more about viewers of blog rather than my views.

And that was One Of The Reasons that I wrote lyrics of three songs from Rock on!! As usual, some time after writing them I searched the song title on Google, and what happened opened my eyes. The top result belonged to a person who had copied the lyrics from my blog. (Don't ask how I know, I can understand if it's copied from mine) On the other hand, my blog wasn't in results. (I m talking top 50, that's what I keep on first page.) This little bad luck was an eye opener for me. This guy who copied my material told me that blogging wasn't a race and there was no point in reaching people with something before others, it's about reaching people with something different, something that is your own, your views you want others to know.

It wasn't that bad because I had written those lyrics because I liked them too, but I was wrong in searching for results and all, of my writings, especially those lyrics.

So if u r a blogger, or ever become one, be yourself and not what people want you to be.

Happy blogging.

Way they copy: Picturespeak

Not a big deal. But it shows the way we do things. This was the NYT site I had visited a few days back.


And then one day I opened the Hindustan Times site, which made me blink for a second, as I thought I had mistakenly opened NYT again. But it was HT only.


Of course both pictures have been taken almost simultaneously. I think it's pretty normal for us. But isn't it showing we don't want to work, or say even think much?

This is with the assumption that HT has copied NYT. In case it's opposite, which is highly unlikely, the same applies to US people. :)

The World is Flat - III

Yesterday I went to a marriage party. Probably I will be giving a description of all that happened later (actually nothing at all happened) but first I would like you to know that I found after four years of my Vellore, I am almost disqualified for a typical marriage party!

And of course, once again, that the world is flat.

I and my dad reached there sometime after 7.30 pm (courtesy dad, who thought it'll start in time) and found that the dinner hadn't started. (anything new??) Our hosts took us to a banquet hall where mahila sangeet was going on. (!!!)

Well, it seems something has changed. It was a mahila sangeet program, held in a banquet hall, with a DJ and a dance floor, and with a dinner following. Of course, purush, that is fortunate males, could join the proceedings and the sanctity of mahila sangeet was kept only by the fact that there were only females on the dance floor.

The sangeet was also wonderful and got more wonderful as I was sitting there in the banquet for almost 45 minutes. The first I remember being played was a traditional Dhoom taana from Om Shanti Om that was being supported by the dance of a lady of almost 25 (+/-10, keeping in view my record at guessing ages of people) and I was wondering how Vishal Shekhar could make something that didn't even belong to their age. Accolades!

A few minutes later, which seemed to pretty long with the dance, there were small children of my mohalla (no relation with college mohalla) who jumped towards the stage. No, it wasn't children anymore. I had been out of town for too long it seems. Now it was a girl in her teens who was imitating Katrina as the hall was filled with the tune of Zara-zara touch me. And then, after another traditional dance on Aaja Nachle and maybe one or two more songs, it was a number of school and college going girls that captured the DJ as it played Kajrare followed by some typical DJ tracks, and the girls kept on rocking with dances that I never knew existed in my town. Not in mahila sangeet at least.

Finally I was getting the point. In the five years I had been out, having seen the culture of mainly metros, living with students from entire country, I had forgot there was a similar progress going on in my town too. And that too, at a speed more than in the big cities. The number of young girls and boys who were getting good exposure to metro culture was increasing. Basically, it was the same people I had been with for the past five years. And now, I was meeting them. Surprised. Shocked.

Maybe I have not been very clear in what I have said. But try to get the meaning if you can. ANyways, there was something else I am pretty clear about. My disqualification.

Having stayed at college for four years, my diet has changed. I eat a lot now. But that happens only at home it seems. Yesterday in the party, I could not eat most of the things. I mean, I didn't like the quality of North Indian dishes because I was eating only at home. And I didn't like South Indian at all after staying in Tamilnadu for 4 years. Nor did I want to have South Indian, actually.

Just had a few little things and a poori with a sabji, and I came back after one ice-cream.

Disqualified. Mom says I won't be going to the next marriage party. Thanks mom.

Women's Game

Rolex. IBM. Anything else?

It wasn't like I was searching for jobs in multinationals. And Rolex would not offer me one anyway. It was the things I was seeing in the last match of Wimbledon. Reason: It was mens' singles.

First of all, please be clear I have no knowledge of tennis except that Leander Paes lost to America's Andre Agassi in 1996 Olympics (hope I'm correct on year) and that it's the game played by Steffi Graf, Monica Seles, Venus Williams, Serena Williams, Maria Sharapova, and of course, Sania Mirza.

So, back to the topic, I was seeing this 'boring' Mens' singles thing between Roger Federer and Marat Safin. And though I could understand by the way the match was going that they were playing well (otherwise I wouldn't know their names, too) I didn't find it very interesting, or not at all interesting if compared to the last two matches where respectively Venus and Serena defeated their Russian and Chinese opponents.

I mean, seeing those girls playing those strong backhands and fronthands (I don't know if that term exists in tennis) is something worth watching. It's mesmerising to see how one little girl makes the big lady in front of her move here to there with her tricks (though it didn't happen that many times) and how beautifully (or dangerously) they show their joy when they win their games, sets and matches. (phrase lifted from Suhail Seth's articles, eventually a 1988 movie too)

But what is there to see in those Mens' Singles?? (or even doubles, for that matter) Why do people see them at all? I mean, if you want to see muscular men doing big action, why don't go for some Hollywood movie? (I hope there are not many 'bollywood only' people who watch tennis, that too mens')

Or maybe there is something worth seeing in the game too. Since I see Cricket, I know men like games, and maybe those guys play really well, so they can watch them play. But then, in a game where even the audiences don't shout during the game, what's the whole point in watching the GAME??

So, I think, I have thrown it out in the last sentence. I didn't, don't, see tennis for game. I see it for timepass. And for those girls. After all, I feel it's a women's game.

Of Blogs and Blogging

For a long time now, I m off blogging. I mean, the real blogging- My big world. I do not know when it exactly happened, but I changed in some way. I felt I was no more able to write. But probably it was something else. Probably I wasn't getting enough exposure- to world, to worldliness.

It was those days of college (not very long back actually, it's just a few months old story) when I felt like writing on everything and used to start scribbling anywhere, hardly half of that reaching my blog. But since the day I left college, the time I was on a trip to Madurai, Bangalore, Kanyakumari and Kodai, I lost touch. And then, even when I got net back, I did everything, including writing on my music blog, but didn't really BLOG.

I thought it was because I was staying home and not getting out. But today, after reading a new blog, I sensed there was something more that was wrong. I wasn't trying new things. Not even those that did not need me going out. Reading. I wasn't reading books. And I wasn't reading many blogs either. The only blogs I read were those from my friends, but the real thing, my habit of reading a number of random blogs was gone.

And probably that was the reason I wasn't writing. Probably it was the lack of enough incoming that resulted in lesser outgoing of thoughts. Probably I wasn't discussing enough. And now that I have found the reason for my inactivity, which is at least what seems to me, it will be worth seeing for me if I get back to 'the writing' or not.

Wish I do.

Mark Burnett is Smarter Than a Fifth Grader

Kya Aap Paanchvi Pass se Tez Hain?

Well, if you really are smarter than a fifth grader, you are going to admit that you are NOT smarter than a fifth grader. At least on the show.

"Main Paanchvi Pass se Tez NAHI Hoon!"

If you have seen the episode of 'Kya Aap Paanchvi Pass se Tez Hain?' where Pragjyoti Samal won a crore rupees, you must have seen the rules and must be clear why I think so. But if you have not, keep on reading.

'Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader', the show which is copied in India as 'Kya Aap Paanchvi Pass se Tez Hain' was created by British television producer Mark Brunett. And the guy made a little pocket in the game which not only saved millions of dollars of television producers, but also kept the sanctity of the game by proving that nobody was smarter than a fifth grader.

The pocket is that after answering ten questions, when the winner has a crore rupees in hand, she is told that she cannot use cheats anymore (completely fair) and told that she WILL HAVE TO ANSWER THE QUESTION ONCE IT IS DISPLAYED.

That is, the players are not allowed to quit the game at the last question. If they see the question, and fail to give the right answer, they are sent down to rupees 2 Lac, from One Crore. (Bad, actually.)

I think any person who is smarter than a fifth grader will like to save the crore rupees in hand rather than risk them, and proudly ADMIT that she is NOT smarter than a fifth grader.

PS: To Guys, Sorry for the use of female pronouns. But then, no guy has won a crore rupees on the show yet.

Dyslexic me

I never knew what it was until I saw Taare Zameen Par. But my writing was not legible for most of the Homo Sapiens. Or Hetero, for that matter.

Then, I somehow passed class twelfth, with the help of my parents who never sent me to a punishment boarding school. My mother made a genius out of me by making me learn everything by heart except for the maths that was dealt by my dad and his hand of which my head had become used to.

And then, my world changed. From somewhere I got the fact that a computer did not need me to write. In fact, there was a software (God only knew what a software meant. In fact I never understood where it was SOFT!!) called Microsoft Office which made your work very easy, I could make mistakes and wait for a red line to come below all the wrong letters I typed. And though my grammar wasn't bad, it told me with a green line whenever I went wrong. On top of that the keyboards did not have any letters that could confuse me. I mean there were only English letters on the keyboard (No Russian as my teacher told!!) and that too, only capital letters. I could differentiate easily between 'b' and 'd'. It was simply the difference of 'B' and 'D' with the caps lock off which was shown with a light.

Well, I heard it was some Bill Gates who made this SOFTware. My friend Titu told me that Aamir Khan did not tell Bill Gates' name in the movie but Bill Gates actually asked his company people to make this software to help dyslexic people because he was also dyslexic. Titu also told that someone told him Bill Gates was told how to write by a teacher called Steve Jobs and this was actually where the movie came from. He also told that Aamir did not mention Bill because he did not want to put Bill Gates' name with Leonardo da Vinci and Albert Einstein.

Anyways, whatever it was, I got a great idea and finally I am a computer engineer now. But there is some difference. When I was dyslexic, I could write some letters on paper, but now I am a typing expert and cannot write a letter on paper. I understand letters now but I do not understand paper and pen anymore.

Now my alphabet is not ABCDE... It's QWERTY... I think I am more dyslexic now.

Well, whatever, I liked the movie. Aamir Uncle is great. And so is Titu.

My Name on TV

19th May, around 10 AM. It was the SRK vs ICC story running on Times Now, a channel I haven't seen much and is not on my list of favorites. But as I was surfing channels, I liked a story, started watching it, and soon made an opinion.

Pretty normal.

And then I decided to send my opinion through SMS at the number they were displaying.

Quite rare.

Soon I sent a message to 58888. (I didn't read the number actually on TV, I remember the 8888 from the days I used to read The ToI and know that we've to add 5 to all such numbers now) The message read, 'Cricket never had franchises. And now that it has, the owners should be allowed to boost their teams' morale in the way they like.', followed by my name and city.

I waited for a few minutes (thus seeing Times Now for the longest time ever, more than half an hour) and saw the ticker running which read, 'I see nothing wrong in SRK sitting in the dug out. He has the right to support his team. Harshit, Najibabad.'

Thus, I saw my own name on the TV (for the first time of course) with a different opinion than I had stated, an opinion that was being given under some other name sometime earlier.

Thankfully they had not flicked my opinion to the other side of the question and my opinion shown there was at least supporting the same cause as mine. Still, I got some truth of the news channels and once again felt that blogs are the best medium to express oneself since TV can twist the opinions of even existing-nowhere people like me.

C Naught Minor

Dennis Khuraijam, or simply Dennis, has always been a strange creature, right from the day I first heard his name. Even after living in the same hostel with him for one year, he is as big a mystery to me as he was on the first day.

All I could understand of Dennis in past two years is that:
1. He is cool.
2. He doesn't care for anything other than that.

And even though I know that I don't know him, there have been instances when Dennis has shocked me. One such was when we were listening to 'Ajnabee shehar hai' song of Jaan-e-mann one day. Generally Dennis doesn't much listen to Hindi songs except very few favorites of his, those too getting occasional chances. In fact he is not much liking for Hindi movies as they are mostly 'bad copies' of those seen by him in English, or sometimes even Korean etc. (with subtitles of course).

Still, Jaan-e-mann was one of his favorites because it was 'fresh'. Anyways, while listening to the song, i.e. Ajnabee shehar hai, I was talking casually about how well Sonu Nigam had sung the song. For those who don't know me, I don't have any 'proper' knowledge of music but since I listen to music a lot, I consider myself nothing less than an expert.

So while talking, I simply said "Kitne high scale pe gaaya hai yaar!" (on what a high scale has he sung it!)

"I think it's C naught minor."

It took me sometime to understand that Dennis had told me at what scale Sonu Nigam had sung the song. It was a sudden shock for me as I didn't have any idea that he might have this deep knowledge of music. I mean I don't know whether it was right or wrong. All that mattered was that this guy who was listening to my time-pass blabbering about songs and music actually had some knowledge of music.

Later he told me he had learned to play guitar and probably keyboard and hence he knew that much. Whatever it was, I got something to remember for a long time, something that always comes to my mind when someone talks of notes and scales of music. The 'C Naught Minor'.

I love echoes.
I want to hear my name when I call out yours.
Yes, I love echoes.

Ad(d) value

The little sweet doggy is back with a little girl this time. During the debut match of IPL, the thing I enjoyed the most after Mccullum's innings was the series of Vodafone ads.

The little dog wetting the tickets for envelopes by licking them was an awesome sight. The interesting part is that Vodafone doesn't come into the picture anywhere until you are completely held by the double innocence of the girl and the doggy.

And then, they simply write their message in big letters, such that it reaches every single heart.

I mean, when you watch it for the first time, it sure does.

Even before this, Vodafone has made beautiful ads for their alerts' services, the best one being for the art of living alerts.

Of course, nobody has forgot the 'Kabhi kabhi mere dil mein khayal aata hai' ad where a guy sings one song through out his life and at the end you get an almost statutory warning telling you 'Zyada gaane sunen' (listen to more songs).

I just hope they keep on making such ads, which not only add to their customers, but also make the entire experience of watching TV great.

Torch-Light

There are innumerous ways to come into limelight. Especially when you are in India. But sometimes people use these rare things to get themselves into limelight, like the Olympic torch.

Use of Olympic torch to come to limelight is not really new. It has been pretty usual to run with the Olympic torch in order to get the limelight around yourself. But some people feel that this way, the torch doesn't give the best of its light. And so, they find better ways.

One such way is recently found by our just-arrived sports minister Mr. MS Gill.

Mr. Gill found out that stopping people from running with the torch will not only give him a brighter light in the media, it will also give brighter light to those who are being stopped. Probably that's the reason he has advised politicians and film stars to stay away from the torch.

Anyways, the Olympic torch this time has given light to a number of people, from Tibetans wanting their freedom to Amitabh Bachchan commenting on Mr. Gill, and from Sachin Tendulkar to Rahul Gandhi. And to Mr. Gill, no doubt.

Fall of Grand Old Orkut

No more Orkut.

It's not my new year resolution in the middle of the year. It's something that Orkut has done to itself.

Well, to be more clear and specific, we can say that Orkut has become 'facebookised'. And thus comes the fall of the grand old Orkut.

For now, all I'm feeling is that the grand old Orkut got afraid of the increasing or increased popularity of Facebook and decided to go the facebook way, adding a number of applications from music iLike to typeRacer and readingSocial to Bible Verses and IndiaDekha.

Which, I presume, is a bad, bad decision as I have seen a number of people who have found it difficult to cope with the facebook and thus have sticked to Orkut, without even deleting their Facebook accounts, for either they did not care, or they did not know how to do that.

I feel it may also trouble people who were first time netizens and found Orkut the 'simple and best' system to just stay in touch with friends.

Although, on a positive side, the new Orkut may be more interesting to people who were finding it difficult to pass more time on Orkut.

But overall, I think it's a negative thing for the grand old Orkut.

How to react?

I was supposed to be shocked. And so I was. But the fact is that I was confused too.

Today, when I reached the library gate, I saw the face of our librarian that had become somewhat horrifying and a lot detestable for me. But the way it came to me, that was unexpected by all means.

It was her photo kept at the gate of library, with a garland over it, smoke of an incense stick, and a note that read, "We deeply regret to announce the death of our librarian Ms K Kalaichelvi."

For a few minutes I could not understand if it was truth or I was dreaming. And if it was a dream, was it good or bad? Well, it wasn't good, to say the least.

Cause even though I hated the lady, I couldn't think of something like that happening. It was just, just frustration against what she used to do, and so many people do here. And understanding that, I tried not to think bad about the lady, at least now that she was no more.

But the fact is that I couldn't think much good about her, and in some way, I was feeling a bit guilty for that.

Anyways, the facts were facts, and the hatred was hatred. But now, it all exists in the past tense only. So it's better I forget all those things.

One more thing, I feel, maybe it's only a feeling though, but I strongly feel that the thing she could not do putting up hundreds of boards in the library and using all the good and bad means, (sorry!) she did it when she wasn't there as the library seemed to be in the most silent of the moods today.

Well, now, only my apologies for talking anything bad I did talk about the dead. May she rest in peace.