Shocking IBNLive.com

I went to IBNLive.com as usual to check if there was any interesting news. To my horror, the website uses an intelligent advertisement display on its homepage. A pop-up ad that configures itself according to top news stories. Somewhat like Google ads.

Perched at the top left hand of the home page is the graphic news article about CCTV footage capturing the Delhi bomb blast. Once the website loads, a pop-up advert for Club Mahindra barges in with the words "The Kids have a blast...so did we" - Happy Member.

This kind of pattern matching for displaying ads on a news website is so shocking. Where has common sense gone? Are the techies so dumb at IBNLive that they'll allow this logical error (humane to be more precise) creep into a popular website? And who are the birdbrains who did the ad for Club Mahindra?

Please don't consider this an over-reaction. I thought it was a one-off incident. But it happens over and over when you hit the homepage. I grabbed me some screen shots

IBNLive Home page:

Pop-up ad for Club Mahindra:

You judge this yourself!

Placements & Email-ids and other college humour

The most interesting thing to happen during my college time was the Placement tests. Little known companies (um..I remember i-Soft from my college days), dream companies (many consider Infy their dream company to work in) & 'Get-outta-here!' type of companies (Google falls here) were the subject of many a discussion among aspirants. The serious types used to ponder over sample papers & "study" for placement exams.

And then, there was us. By 'us', I mean, the ones who believed acing an exam involved being prepared for it & using 'studying' as one of the tools rather than poring through 100 pages of puzzles over and over again. I used to belong to a niche group of people who used to hop placement tests just to enjoy the canteen food, while taking the test in a happy go-lucky sort of way. "We will surely get a job once we finish college" was a motto we swore by. "We're intelligent enough to get a job 'somewhere'!!" was another tagline. Tests, group discussions & personal interviews were 'fun'. I actually remember sitting through a technical interview for a company who wanted me to "list out all the Computer Science subjects you have studied in the last 2 years". The focus was on my memory "of" the subject rather than "about" the subject. I should have taken my syllabi, I wondered.

One of the other incidents I remember was the group discussions. One of them was so dastardly organized where the 'discussion' was nothing but a showcase of your extempore skills in 2 minutes. There was no room for discussing anything, just a speech for 2 mins, and you're judged on that. What made things worse were topics like "India 2020" or "Culture in the 21st century". While the topics maybe good for discussion, what exactly is an IT company gaining when they actually spend time recruiting socially aware aspirants? Now, don't get me wrong. I understand communication skills & people skills are very important. The process doesn't guarentee results, the person who judges these discussions determines who is fit enough. When such a process is so people dependent on producing results, why have it as a process in the first place?

Now that the serious stuff is out of the way, I wanted to recount a funny thing that happened. One of the guys filled up an application form for appearing in a placement test of an MNC. The placement co-ordinator called him & said "What is this email id? Can't you get a professional one?". The email id in question was "im2sxy4u". Another gem was "beachboy2000". Even wackier was "name_inrehab". I remember a girl who had an id like "handsoffme_name". I'm sure many applicant email-ids will reflect this trend. One of the side-effects of the "ME!" generation I guess.

My First PC

I have faint memories of my first PC. The year was 1994. I was 9 years old. PC's were something new in India. It was considered a "rich man's" calculator. So, I remember strolling along with my brother & dad into a company called "Minicomp". These guys were one of the first PC dealers in Chennai.

As a little boy wearing knickers & not knowing what PC or Computer really meant, I was told "You will not be allowed to play games". I was furious. How can this new thing we are buying into the family be off-limits to the cutest, chubbiest, second son in the family? After all, I used to get all the attention at home being the second kid. Hey, all second kids do. Ask anyone who was born first & they will recount stories of favoritism of parents to their younger siblings.

In the Minicomp office, there was this fat businessman. In his 40s. He did not have much knowledge of Computers other than the price list each configuration went for. And to every line, he used to add "Our service is great. Other guys will give you the product & vanish. We are there for support" Being the youngest one in the room, I was more interested in the free chai that was given. Also, the air conditioning was something that was new to me, so I basked in the A/C that was being blasted from a 1.5tonne window unit.

My brother had some configurations he wanted to buy in a computer. My dad had only one. The price had to be less than 20k. Anything that comes to 20k was fine. After a lot of bargaining and hardselling, we settled for one which was going to cost 32k. This was to be purchased in installments in the form of Post dated cheques. PDCs were very common in the 90s till Reliance Mobile came & ruined it.

So, there we stood. One of the few people in our colony to own a PC. Bought at an overhead to my dad's already meager salary. Thankfully, mom was teaching & her school was taken over by the central government. So, we could afford the big buy. As 3 guys came over to our house with the mammoth like PC, me & bro stood amazed. The sheer size of the Monitor (monochrome) and the CPU left us baffled. This machine is what costed 32k we pondered.

Once the PC was installed, there were rules to using it. I was not allowed to touch it without my brother's permission (oh, how I hated him for having all the power to access the PC). And so began my journey into Electornics & IT. We had a TCP/IP dialup connection. Modem with 14.4kbps as maximum dialling speed. VSNL account that had to be accessed using Hyperterminal with a username/password. No graphics, only unix style internet access.

It was fun using that PC. I used to play games like "Doom", "Dave" and "Duel". We upgraded it in a couple of years time to accomodate Windows 95 & a sound card (Creative Sound Blaster AC'95). The original configuration read something like Intel 386, 8MB RAM, 540MB Hard Disk, 3'44'' Floppy diskette drive, MS-DOS operating system (5.1 i think Update: It was Windows 3.1 on top of DOS 5.1), Comptech Monochrome monitor, Microtek Dialup external modem with maximum speed 14.4kbps.. Man, it was a super cool PC.

I had friends over & used to play Fifa (the first one) and Duel. Thinking about those days, brings a lot of nostalgia. The moulding of a half-geek (no, I won't admit I'm a tech geek ) who ended up taking to discrete mathematics & computer algorithms like he does to sambar vadai & mini idlis. To this day, I cherish the memories of touching my first PC, being lucky enough to adapt to a new world order. 3 Cheers to Monochrome PC users. We are an ancient species.

P.S: Minicomp didn't survive after 1996. They shut shop!

Just Another Monday

So, with all that behind, I bid goodbye to the cruel world of MS.NET and welcomed Java with both hands. Now, since my Intranet is based on MOSS, I've been forced to visit .NET again to develop a test webapp. Grrrr
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Speaking of MS, Jerry Seinfeld & Bill Gates are acting in a new Microsoft Ad campaign to "start conversations" about MS. Its been panned among the techie crowd as a cheap imitation of the Apple ad campaign. Not seen any ad yet, but will youtube it soon.
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I watched two movies over the weekend. First up was Dark Knight on Friday. I liked the movie only for Heath Ledger. I just could not follow Batman's dialogues because his voice was all muffled. But the joker, man..what a performace. The second one I saw was Rock On, last night. I have to say, the final track is a cheap rip off School of Rock's final Battle of the Bands song. And just like another Hindi movie, the over senti & stereotype emotions are a big letdown. The only difference was the theme of Rock Music. Replace that with Hindustani or some other form, and you can still sell the same story. So in effect, the movie was nothing about Rock Music or the sub-culture of music enthusiasts in India. I've been in the music industry & trust me, nobody signs contracts the way the guys do it in the movie. The saving grace was probably Arjun Rampal & Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy's music.
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There is a church festival happening in the Annai Velankanni church right behind my house. Its a major boost to the local economy around, but for residents like me its a nightmare. I had to wait in a traffic jam for 30 mins just to get out of my house & cross the main road into the nearby colony. As usual, the Chennai City Traffic Police were sleeping on the job & the whole area went beserk.

I visited the beach & trust me. The worst thing that can happen is when a festival & a Sunday co-incide, to produce a mammoth outpouring of citizenry which bloated the whole beach's air. The aroma of peanuts & fried corn filled the air while hundreds of street hawkers had landed upon the beach to sell their stuff. As it rained last night & this morning, many people from far off were stranded on foot paths & on the verrandah's of shops like Food World & Nilgiris.

Its a sad sight to see every big event in this country mis-managed when we pride ourselves as the best managers in the world. What's more sickening to see is how your tax money is spent in the form of free TVs to the Below Poverty Line folks, wasted fly-overs where they are not needed & basically pork barelled into the constituencies of MPs/MLAs. Sigh, somethings will never change.
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Have a great week ahead!

The Story of Besant Nagar

Sometime back, I wrote an interesting post on the street cricket culture & my experiences with it.

And I quote "I was a street-cricket-playing kid brought up in a middle class (back then) neighbourhood, a paradise for retirees & ex-central government officials. The reason I used the "(back then)" was, nobody will believe you if you try saying "Besant Nagar is a middle class area". Anyone who owns a house here can now sell it & buy an island in the Seychelles."

Besant Nagar is now a hub for commercial outlets, and is buzzing with activity till 11PM which by the standards of our area is very late into the night. But what is the story behind this place? Part of me always wanted to be a historian, or just someone who put many facets of a place/people on paper. I always loved doing it & will try to tell you about the history of Besant Nagar as I know it.
Wikipedia gives only the bare minimal account of what my neighbourhood is. Having lived for 23 years in the same place, I have first hand knowledge from talking to retirees, morning walkers - ol' mens club, reading Chennai historian Vincent D'Souza and best of all, my alma mater Kalakshetra Foundation (although the sources I'm linking in this post are from Wikipedia, because no other website has detailed a write-up about these topics). I studied in the 'Besant Arundale Senior Secondary ' school that was founded by Theosophist & noted Bharatnatyam revolutionary, Rukmani Devi Arundale. Rukmani Devi, fondly called as 'atthai' among the students, was a revivalist who re-invented the culture of the Bharat Natyam dance form. She was an everlasting presence in the serene campus that is Kalakshetra. She didn't live long enough for me to see her in person, but her philosophy & words are still repeated on every Founder's day. The anecdotes that were recounted by various speakers used to enchant the audience, gripping them in the tales of an extraordinary woman, who worked towards a more peaceful world.

Annie Besant, from whom the name "Besant Nagar" originated and Dr.George Arundale were visionaries in the Theosophical movement, around which the area in South Madras (ne Chennai) developed. The Society is still a landmark in the South Side of the city. Dr.Arundale married Rukmani Devi before they started the Society in Adayar. Jiddu Krishnamurthi was a protege of Annie Besant, who was marked to takeover the reigns of developing the Theosophical movement. However, Krishnamurthi went his own way in his spiritual beliefs which led to Annie Besant being disappointed. To make sure he had something to fall back on, if he didn't succeed, Annie Besant purchased 6 acres of land around Adayar river;in his name. The other parts which surrounded the Besant Arundale Senior Seconday school & the Kalakshethra Campus that wrapped around the school, were purchased by Dr.Arundale and given to Rukmani Devi, to run the schools under the banner of Theosophical Society of India. The Besant Theosophical High School (BTHS) still exists sandwiched between Besant Nagar & Thiruvanmiyur, the road adjoining it being a lifeline for motorists to commute between the two areas.

In current day South Chennai, Kalakshethra Colony, i.e the land extending from Kalakshetra gate till Spencers Daily (the erstwhile Food World) or Church Road as it is referred or the more recent Karaikudi/Dhaba restaurant, fell under the border of Rukmani Devi's land. The stretch from this junction till Theosophical society was bundled into what became "Krishnamurthi Foundation of India" or KFI. Presently, KFI is a school (following ICSE) beside the Society. All the other parts (which comprise of present day Besant Nagar as we know it) were sold in the late 70's to raise money to run the schools. Rukmani Devi was running the Kalakshethra College of Fine Arts & the CBSE school (Besant Arundale Senior Seconday) while KFI trust ran the KFI school. Most of present day Besant Nagar, from the beach & its parallel roads came from the land that these two visionaries sold to the Government of TamilNadu.

To this day, I have fond memories of growing up around the Kalakshethra Campus. Climbing trees, sitting with your legs folder in class, addressing the teacher as "Teacher"was common instead of the "Ma'am or Miss" followed in most schools. Fine arts which were compulsory for all students (I actually learnt Carnatic music as a rule :p, but have forgotten everything).The uniforms which followed Indian tradition; pyjama kurtha for boys & half-saree/pavada-dhavani for girls; were a highlight. No footwear was allowed inside class. Punishments included watering the garden & ringing the bell at the end of the day. The classrooms were huts or cottages which had polished stones for flooring & hay stacked roofs. We did not have fans or lights as the roof kept most of the heat away while the small pockets on the walls let natural light in. Once in a week, upon nagging by the students or by choice, the teachers used to take classes under trees. The art classes we had were always held under trees & landscape drawings were a big hit among students.

Besant Nagar has its charm, the slow uneasiness with which life moves on. The fierce urgency of office-goers, the chirpiness among the morning walkers, the camaraderie among retirees who meetup everyday along the beach, the community bonding that poured out during the earthquake & tsunami and much much more. Although I do have qualms about the current status of Besant Nagar, becoming more commercial and destroying the peace & quiet that once existed, one visit to the above mentioned places rejuvenates me. The Olive Ridley turtle walking in Elliots Beach is one of the activities I thoroughly enjoyed during my schools days. It is one of those quests where you go around the beach looking for turtle eggs & store them safely in a safe house, where the turtles will safely hatch. They are then re-released into the sea thereby making sure the eggs are not eaten away by predators.

For a place that has so much history packed around its origin & name, this area of Chennai will always remain etched in the memories of its residents. The memories of living here are bound to remain in the hearts & minds of residents for eternity. I hope this little tidbit article enhanced your knowledge on some little known aspects of the heritage we proudly wear on our sleeves.

P.S: If you want to do a write-up about your neighbourhood, please publish. I am a junkie when it comes to reading the history of various places from first hand experiences/sources. Thoughts & your comments are highly appreciated

Perils of Babudom

One of things you can do to understand why India's goverment is still stuck in a timewarp of its own creation is to try getting a passport. Or renewing it for that matter. Trust me, its a pain in all the wrong places. Other ways to find out how bizzare the so called "System" works is to try getting a driver's license, or any kind of transaction at corporation/state/central goverment level.

Coming back to the passport, the place which is in-charge of anything to do with your passport is called "Shastri Bhavan". Its a building which is a throwback to the 60s with those old fans, desks arranged haphazardly & tons of files with weird numbers all over them. Imagine the change management that goes in for such a place. A newbie would take months if not years to get accustomed to working in such an office. What with files (actual papers stacked) with names like "TNG09/11W/08A/87654". The 87654 being a series. I would go mad in trying to figure out the system.

So, its no wonder the government employees basically take their work very lightly. Trying to find out which file to refer to is a task in itself. My passport has this unfortunate thing of having a "B" instead of a "K" in my address. From March 08, all passport applications regarding change in address/name/spouse name inclusion come under a behemoth called "Form 1". "Form 2" is another mammoth that deals with ECNR stamping, observations & miscellaneous stuff. So to change 1 letter in my address, the new "System" is to actually apply for a new passport. The only people who know this info (since 4 months is 'new process' for many folks) seem to be the ones manning the "MAY I HELP YOU" counter.

The MIHY counter does everything but help you. A steady stream of 100 people crowds this line starting at 3 AM every morning. People coming from far off, people who've gone through the rigors once to understand they have to come early next time and then there are newbies like me. I reached the office by 7.45 AM, to find 200 people in the MIHY counter. After 3 hours of waiting in the sweltering heat of Chennai, I finally got my chance. I told the man "Sir, I have a small correction of address" and pointed out how the ignorant guy who filled up my passport in the first place, replaced as B for a K. "Sir, you have to register online. NEXT!!". I was enraged. "Thats it? Register online? Whaaa?". "Sir, online registraion is must. Otherwise, you can wait in the 2nd counter. But I think he has stopped accepting applications now". I turned to the 2nd counter, 200 people were still in the queue. This was a snake like line running parallel to the MIHY queue. And the first counter guy said "I think he has stopped accepting" so loud that I'm sure even if I tried jumping the queue and moving into the 2nd counter, I would be out of luck. 2 hours of filling out the form, 1 day of leave, 3 hours of standing in a useless queue, all down the drain for just 1 line of information. "Register online". If I had known that was what was to be done beforehand, I would've done it. I did not go through any agents to live up to the notice advising so in the website. “Please do not encourage middle-men/ agents”. But my mails to RPO went unreturned. My calls were never answered. And after I had done everything myself, I left the place with frustration writ large on my exhausted face.

After that, I took the easy way out. I spoke to a travel agent who said they will do everything up to fixing an appointment & preparing necessary documents for a fee of Rs.300. By 1.30 PM, I had a fixed schedule of what I had to do. All this for a fee of Rs.300. Its not rocket science you know. If the passport website gives the specifics, I would not have had to go through the whole incident. I came home & my dad was giving me a resigned look. "Navin, this is India. This is how things work. You need patience to survive". I gave him a very cold look & said "I understand".

The babus of India, had their say. The same guys who stood there smoking at 9.45 AM while 200 people waited in a line for them to open a counter which was supposed to be open by 9.30 AM. The same guys who promptly work only upto 12.30 PM although their day starts only by 10.30 AM. The same guys who had union posters plastered all over Shastri Bhavan, playing petty politics & indulging in name calling against their own government. The same guys, who I hold responsible for why India continues to inch towards growth while their counterparts in China leaped towards prosperity in no-time. It is then I realized, "This is a government within a government". The peril of being a citizen & expecting a functional apparatus to make life easier for people was laid bare to me yesterday. Unfortunately, it will remain so for a long time to come.

More-Over

Don't you love it when you have food fights with a good dose of humour? This caught my attention at Food Court this afternoon:

"Dei! You had a very large sip. I won't give anymore more for you. No! No more more!"

P.S: 'More' is Tamil for butter milk. Btw, I thought butter was made from milk! How does diluted curd mixed with some spices make it buttermilk? Weird.

P.P.S: More is to be pronounced as you pronounce it in the word "Anymore". Similarities to names like Kiran More are deeply regretted.

There goes the Neighbourhood

I was a street-cricket-playing kid brought up in a middle class (back then) neighbourhood, a paradise for retirees & ex-central government officials. The reason I used the "(back then)" was, nobody will believe you if you try saying "Besant Nagar is a middle class area" . Anyone who owns a house here can now sell it & buy an island in the Seychelles.

Coming back to street cricket, this is a place where friendships flourish & enemities first rear their ugly faces. In the street that was our 22 yards, the neighbours took quite a liking to shooing us off. It is in this serene atmosphere where you learn some of the best & first lessons in life.

Down the road (near my house) was what we called "No man's land". This famed piece of barren land was a local legend that it had molehills filled with snakes, the thorn in the weed-littered plants all around were poisonous and so on. Most of it was myth, but making 10 year old boys belive that is a strain.

The rules were pretty neat. One shot into any of the houses, you're out. No running runs. Funny how that term was derived. I'm sure it was used through the street-cricket fraternity of Madras. A running run, is when you have to run to get a run. Pretty simple ain't it? One pitch catches, 2-byes, 3-byes were like adding salt & pepper to taste to your favourite soup. If you felt like having it, you did. If not, it didnt make a big difference. Shoes were not worn much those days. Bare feet & a mean look on your face like you were going to become Tendulkar the very next day, were essential to winning mind games.

Bowling was generally what you call "Chucking" now. The batting teams useless batsmen were generally made umpires. One wheel of a cycle was used as stumps. There were some awesome 'bowled' wickets were the tennis ball used to get stuck to the spokes like you threw a knife to a dart board. Oh, tennis balls were a must. It was in the interest of protecting the players body parts (;-)) that rubber balls were banned. The toss was always taken with a one rupee coin & if a captain chose to bowl, he was considered an idiot. Captains were not chosen by a bunch of hypocritical businessmen like in the national team. Somehow, captains were "annointed" by the players themselves. If someone brought his stumps that day, he was captain. If a guy's cycle was being jeopardized, he was made captain to reassure his importance. And so on.

Out of this rag tag bunch of kids, you could seperate the boys from the kids. The ones who used to cry over getting out fairly (it always seemed unfair to them), the ones who played selfishly (kids who used to go home after getting out soon), the ones who were real leaders (leading the way in retreiving the ball from the Mad uncle's house) and the people who used to wuss out because they had to go drink horlicks at 6 pm sharp.

Street cricket built character, integrity & guts into the tiny, knicker fitted little mean machines. It was good we didnt have PS 3, Ipods, Xbox, PCs, DVDs, CDs & Satellite telivision back in 94. I could have never learnt the importance of playing outdoors, as I regret now that even If I wanted, the roads are too crowded. Too bad kids these days have to exprience street cricket in this obnoxious, choking environment of the city today we call "home".

Sigh! Sometimes you wished you could rewind time....

Cloudy

You ever wondered why the clouds get so dark n all gloomy but there is no sign of rain yet? Kinda like the time when you see the signs of an something that you've been waiting for to happen, but it just refuses to take place..

Like this one time, I was gonna see a boxing match in college. You know, the usual departmental fights that take place in any college in Chennai. This was between CSE & EEE departments. There was a bunch of guys who I was with, cheering on the confrontation, being the hypemen to the performers. And boy did we expect the fight to settle all scores.

4 pm was when it was set to happen. A crowd of about 20-30 folks from each class gathered up at the basketball court. It was kind of like Rocky with our pony being the Italian Stallion. The clouds started getting grayer, the mood very gloomy, the looks on the faces one of tension like the roof of our house will fall anytime. The guys arrived at the court, gave a long stare at each other as the crowd cheered on. We were about to witness the first fight of our college lives.

And then it happened. Some lousy guy had ratted on the event to the security guards & they barged in. Now these guys were clever. Suddenly from nowhere a basketball was thrown in & one of the boxers picked it up. They then started playing one-on-one. What was supposed to be the fight of our lives, was changed into a boring basketball match. The guards were baffled. So they just drove everyone away, "Go to class" they said.

A ray of light swept the court. The sun had come out again. Everything seemed happy again. The fight was called off and for some vague reason, it never happened again. As before, the enemity between us computer folks continued with the electrical guys. Atleast for another 2 years.

We had just been robbed of something spectacular in our college lives. Somehow, we assumed the fight would have happened & our lives fulfilled if it had rained instead of the sun coming out again. To this day, when I see the clouds getting gray without any sign of rain.. I look up to the sky and ask "Why?".