THANKS FOR COMING :)

Changing Exam Patterns

1995: answer all questions

2000: answer any five

2005: write either a or b

2015:ONLY read the question

2020:THANKS FOR COMING!!!:)

Thanks to Iceman for the thought provoking sms.

Padma Bhushan Mr.Yash Pal seems to have suggested

a mind-numbing(literally) idea of scrapping exams.And

Mr.Sibal is playing "race against time" in trying to

implement the mind-numbing idea in just 100 days.

Like the adage goes "pain is inevitable but suffering

is optional" and hence making exams optional!!!Excellent !

just satisfies the law of nature.

But what makes Mr.Sibal think that kids are pressurised

and in his words "traumatised" by exam is something vastly

beyond rugged comman sense!

The obverse is being conviniently overlooked.

kids are not pressurised by exams but by the famine

of oppurtuties in our nation.A lot of them cant deal

with the consequences of exams more than exams.

I hope a proper discourse

goes into this or he will have to come up with an equally effective way of gauging

a students capabilities,by which it doesnt remotely mean that exams ensure fine minds!!

PAGE PALS

Book club for all book lovers.Join and have fun!!

CLICK HERE!!

FAST AND FURIOUS

Witnessing a long vacation at the brink of its end gives an oppurtunity to reminisce the irreplaceable moments of life and a chance to remorse that we humans are bereft of the power to staunch the flow of time.

A long vacation spent in the college.
A vacation which you never want to see ending but time conspires to fleet fast and furiously just to confute you.But like they say good things come in small packages..!

Its terribly discomfiting to learn that we will no longer be able to

bunk classes,
adorn the canteen,
flick projects,
yank assignments,
devise plans to keep ourselves occupied while the lecturer is mercilessly hammering away,
cram for exams,
work only on deadlines,
fish for petty reasons to irritate your pals,
savour all the rumours circulating the campus,
being chronic last-benchers,
implore for attendance,
unplanned head trips,
flurry around organising events and participating in them....and what not?!

Golden times,Golden memories!!!

IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT!

This is an extremely illuminating sms conversation happened one night between two friends

verbaliser no.1: "ask for the impossible v'd love to oblige"..nice line aint it?

verbaliser no.2: yeah apt!where did ya find it?or your own

verbaliser no.1: i wish it was my own ,its the tag line of zuri hotels and resorts

verbaliser no.1: gandhi's spectacles r worth 20 lakhs ..our Indians r sentimental fools...wats ta need for wasting so much money??!!

jai ho!!

verbaliser no.2: Those ppl somehow got hold of gandhi's stuff man.Our Indian gov never even bothered to retrieve em back.

verbaliser no.1: il tell you ta story of spectacles..brace yourself..

verbaliser no.2: okay.im all ears.or eyes to be precise

verbaliser no.1:There was this great grandson of ta nawab of junagarh who after partition asked gandhi for inspiration....okay?

verbaliser no.2: okay.So gandhi gave his glasses?inspiration?

verbaliser no.1:Bapu handed over ta spectacles to him saying "these gave me ta vision to free india"

okay?

verbaliser no.2: How ta hell did ta junagarh guy surrender it to those bloody americans??

verbaliser no.1: Those glasses went into the games of some american who discovered its historical value! okay?

verbaliser no.1: He decides to auction em...N outta nower ta whole of our nation wich din even bother abt em

is feeling guilty all of a sudden!! emotional drama!

verbaliser no.2: bloody drama! if they care so much,why dont they buy it back?Dont tell me they dont hav ta money for tat??!!

verbaliser no.1: now now my dear ...ta junagarh chap din find em inspirational i guess!

verbaliser no.2:bloody hell.Then he should've said-bapu gimme something more inspirational!

verbaliser no.1: oh no no...its comin to India to adorn our crumbling museums!

terz a twist in ta tale...

verbaliser no.1: when v all know wat our bapu has done isnt tat inspiration enough!

but ofcourse v hav ta jhakaas movie viraasat!!

verbaliser no2: wats anil kapoors viraasat got to do wid bapu?

verbaliser no.2: where the hell do they have a museum fit to keep such treasures?some vandal will steal it

eventually! like tagores nobel was!damn the entire govt!!

verbaliser no.1: yeah seriously i remember it was all over ta news for lik 2 days...n then vanished!

thin air! public memory is so short lived!!

verbaliser no.2: Ask them to remember abt movie stars and politics.

verbaliser no.1: ta term is viraasat not anil kapur my dear r u hungry?

verbaliser no.2: oh ok.No sweetheart.Not hungry.Even if I was,id hav to resort to cannibalism.Now you would'nt want dat would ya?

verbaliser no. 1: how would it matter?u can do no harm!ok ok ta story!ta twist...

verbaliser no.2: I might gobble you up then-not that youre tempting.You wouldnt even fill up

half my tummy,ill have to only chew on your bones!wats ta twist?

verbaliser no.1: ta maha twist in ta maha tale of ta mahatma's spectacles is....

ta antiquities and art treasures act 1972...okay?

verbaliser no.2: Elaborate....

verbaliser no1: it doesnt permit a private individual to either import or emport an item of historical value!!ridiculous!

verbaliser no.2: wat if ta item was exported or imported before 1972?

verbaliser no.1: now ta rub in ta tale...Indians don want ta damn contraption of emotional value to go under hammer n they just

wanna buy it off...but u cant coz of ta act!!

verbaliser no.2:Funny!!haha.Ought to giv ta lads who framed that law an ovation.They're creatin so much newsthan they did in their entire living times.

verbaliser no1: dats of no concern since v r trying to import it in 2009!

verbaliser no.2: haha!Use em,bend em,propose em,dispose em.So simple.Bloody Indian bureaucracy.

verbaliser no.1: gandhi shud regret not takin care of his eyesight...u hold on to it till i finish eating...

verbaliser no.2: The entire fiasco wouldnt hav occured if hed worn lenses or had a laser surgery!gobble

up your noodles am loving this!

READER'S DIGEST!!!!!!

Email forwards  with colossal company logotypes? …..understandably tolerable!

 

Spams  with subjects like-“SO HUGE MY BUDDIES WERE SCARED” or

“HAVE AUDRINA BEGGING YOU  TO EAT ” or 

“YOUR CHEQUE IS WAITING”

or 

“WANNA FEEL LIKE U’RE IN VEGAS”…..majorly unbearable!!

Thank goodness there are spam filters.

 

Pop-up windows with snazzily coloured matrimonial websites which practically blind you and downloadable smiley sites which dont make you smile….outrageously irritating!!!

Mighty lord bless the browser designers for pop-up blockers.

 

Now the most punk,sleaziest,tackiest,the most insanely frustrating,the most exceptionally

Innovative and torturous publicity drive is what I’d like to call “BUY IT OR NOT PAY FOR IT” stunt!!

This is something pioneered by a magazine of cult status namely READER’S DIGEST.

 The strategy involves three simple,VALID and intensely effective steps:

 

(1)Make a compilation of 4 wretched and distressingly snubbed novels of authors who were born,brought up and are famous on planet mars.

 

(2)Devastatingly attractive packaging of the above with some freebees.

 

(3)Sending it across to a subscribed reader who hasn’t renewed his/her account in ages.

 

The rub lies when this package gets followed by another equally attractive mail consisting of a NOTIFICATION asking you to pay for the order which you never placed

Else promising you serious action!!!!

 

MAIL

Following my previous post   I recieved a mail from a friend presenting to me an obverse of the issue which was stunningly neglected.Here it goes....

"well each person interprets this kind of a protest differently! Like
you've said that you're confused why they chose the colour pink, I am
confused with one more thing, why did they choose that particular
garment to represent  "women". It sounds dirty, or vulgar even, first of
all because it is a piece of clothing, since it is used in intimate
areas... and second of all, the colour is something which subtly hints,
anatomically, at womanhood. so the combination of the garment and the
colour has many overtones which does not really go with the protest. If
you understand all these inner dimensions of what is being presented to
Mr Mutalik, you'd probably think that this is somewhat of an "in your
face" effort to make those Hindu fundamentalists get used to the idea of
powerful, independent and social women.
How about this? well, if they really wanted to represent the protest
made by cosmopolitan women against people advocating Hindu radicalism by
an object or a piece of clothing to be precise, I feel they could've
chosen something like the Little Black Dress, or an Evening Gown, or May
be perhaps a cheap Wedding Gown?? well, those might be costly, but then
they're really speak for themselves.
Besides I was not impressed because, you cannot be sure everyone buys
new garments to send. I'm quite sure there would've been women who
would've sent what they would have been using..... In the view of the
protest and the want to insult the Hindu outfit for violating women's
rights it is the right kind of thing they deserved. But then, not to be
forgotten is the fact that having done such a thing they have well and
truly gone against the term "ladylike".
AS I said before this is my interpretation of the events that happened
after the attack. You can say that extreme situations call for extreme
measures."

The PINK drive

After the savage antics of the so called moral police whose objective was to blatantly rape all morals behind democracy,has started the campaign to save feb 14th.And how are they

doing it?By the alms-giving of "pink scanties" to the sene chief.

For which the outrageously flagrant sene chief is going to be returning 

pink sarees.And has also claimed to get all dating couples in karnataka married!!

So now its just got down to pink scanties vs pink sarees.

 Now what really has been bothering me is not the campaign but the color chosen for the campaign.

Pink ,the color of warmth,affection and a color strongly associated with contemporary girlhood,

the color of joy and happiness which was once upon a time allowed to be garmented only by the

elites of the elizibethan era.Its quintessentially a color of celebration.

 

I fail to figure out the association of pink with this agitation!Is it like a drive to save girls

or culture or praxis ??

THE FILM FESTIVAL

Art cinema is quite something very puissant in the way of communicating with the audiences.
Extraordinarily unbent no coincidences,no miracles just pragmatic.

Oflate I had the privilege of savouring some of it in the very altruistic theatre fest Bahuroopi.
Movies I managed to watch were Roots by Marvin J.Chomsky and John Erman,Amistad by Steven spielberg...
both of them based on slavery.One showing the unsuccessful pursuance of freedom by a slave and the latter showing the victory of humanity over politics.

The movie Amistad was scheduled to be screened back to back with this other movie called Cry Of Freedom.
And being dead timely we arrive 15 mins late for the movie and enter the room flashing the cell phone torch(which was am sure quite annoying to the others) to find our way and this usher rudely interrupts us asking us to put off the light...we do so...and realise there is no seat available..so we go and ask him if we can sit on the ground...he says-"movie is about to end but you can still sit"!!
Obviously enough it was the previous movie still running...so we get out and wait for it end.
After about 10 mins we go in again expecting Amistad to have started and since we didnt have a bat's vision we flash light again...but this time annoying this old man enough that he mutters to the man beside him-"AYYO!!EVERY 10 MINS THESE GALS ARE COMING AND FLASHING LIGHT"...
Nevertheless it was all worth as the movie was outstanding.Another over-the-top movie we caught up with was a spanish movie called sea inside,theme being mercy killing.
All in all an unforgettable festival.

A TALE OF TWO BRAINS

This is a tremendously hilarious analysis of the functioning of the male and the female brain and is perhaps damn on-key!!...

THE BUCKET LIST

Iam not really an ardent movie viewer...I prefer reading over watching stuff since laterly a movie is just a transmutation of pages into visuals(ofcourse not that I dont watch em at all!).But on the suggestion of a friend I watched The Bucket List.It features the lambent Morgan freeman and the endearing Jack Nicholson substantiating a bucket list.

I was excogitating if all of us had a ken of our respective deadlines, life would have been so much more different.We would just have to make that special effort and go the extra mile to realize the most perfervid desire and thats it...you would never get caught up in a vicious circle!...so that way you could not just die quenched but also live mirthfully!

The bucket list shown in the movie goes something like this....I guess...
1.Witness something truly majestic
2.Help a complete stranger for a common good
3.Laugh till I cry
4.Get a tattoo ....et cetera
If bestowed with a chance to create a bucket list ...ofcourse one would include all his torrid desires ...if you were also to include something extreme you had to realise for/on someone else.....what would it be?

The CRAZY CATCHER

Holden Caulfield a very infamously famous fictional character who bears the brunt of wedging
some unforeseen occurences both positive and negative.

He is somebody who has successfully glorified dereliction.The character has influenced innumerable artistic works including
television....psychedelic rock music...and has also been equally controversial(supposed to have influenced john lennon's assasination).

Everything about the character is so damn significant....his lecherousness,even his name...rightly pronounced as hold-on caul(a protective membrane for embryos)-field.He is churned up by the terrible realities of the world and resorts to alienation as its solution,and has his own profound theories for everything in existence.



Now the relevance of the image...I discovered it somewhere dont remember where...its the image of the little lake near the Central Park South(new york city) which holden
caulfield used to visit in his seek out for ducks.

He always wondered where the ducks went during winter.Like I said every thought of his was momentous.I couldnt figure out the duck disappearing theory...although i'd lik to believe that he is talking about temporariness...

And the image is supposed have ducks in the background...but I have to admit I cant
see them!! can you?

Make PEACE With IMPERFECTION

Like its said "the pursuit of happiness is the motivation for life"....

We never seem to be contented with what we have.We are always focussed on what is wrong with something and our need to fix it...which i guess leads us to feel disgruntled and hence dysphoric.
Why are we always in the quest of something better than we already posses forgetting its something we yearned for sometime ago!!!Perhaps thats the jugular of us the "fallible human beings".

Inspite of the cognizance of the fact that nothing is perfect and nothing is likely to be perfect
why is it so hard for us to make peace with imperfection?Is there really a possible way to do so...or are we just bound to strive in a constant battle of setting things aright and perfect....

Quoting John Lennon-"Life is whats happening while we're busy making other plans".

We incline to postpone our gratifications,our happiness often convincing ourselves that "someday" will be better than today...that "someday" never arrives!!!
Why is it reckoned that the supply of happiness,pleasure and contentment is rationed out and is
not limitless?!!or is it really that way!!
Is striving for imperfection really a worthy goal??!!

CELEBRATION??

Hurray!!! yet another booker for India!!Arvind adiga wins the Man booker prize 2008 for "The white tiger".


Indeed a moment of joy and pride for India.Havent yet read the book perhaps will do it soon...but from what I can gather the book exposes the dark side of India.But is it right on the part of Indian authors to cash on the dark side of India?Isnt it like demeaning India before the world? And to top it all it is a work of fiction if not to uplift the image but to disparage it even further.


India will be construed by its readers as a country with invincible poverty,ever looming illiteracy,esurient beings,abandoned kids,grubby streets,trifling governance,nepotism,larceny and ofcourse as the land of corruption.

Iam sure my perception is not largely cogent since a book is just a piece of art!but it does leave an impact on the minds of the readers... So should we celebrate the booker??

HOLIDAY time...frenzy time

Its dasara time and hence holiday time for all the school kids. 

Every available piece of flat land  around my house and in its vicinity is being used to chase the cherry.Cricket is like the hobson's  choice for all the kids to keep themselves occupied

all  day.Its like they are on a spree to obliterate their surroundings.Not like I havent experienced this  before 

just that I havent seen it in this kind of intensity.Curtsy 

our state government for making yet another nugatory rule that 

all schools ought to have a common vacation time for dasara.... 

Its quotidian to find kids playing cricket in the evenings 

but it gets freakin chafing when you have to listen to -

quibbles over "out...no...not out",squallings of "run out" and "lbw",

and roars of "howz dat" for like 50000 times a day....

          But what is most admirable about this whole thingy is the 

insouciance these kids possess.Just some wood,a bouncing cherry

and a piece of timber and they are all set to play the gentlemen's game the way it should be played unlike our national paladins who get moolah for it and yet they fail to retain the sanctity of the gentlemen's game.

ANYTHING FOR YOU MA'AM

Dint like the book much though....as its too striking,dramatic and full of happenstances just like a pure hindi masala flick.Nevertheless it had a few "winning over" excerpts-


"When will it be right,I dont know
What will it be like,I dont know
We live in hope of deliverance
From the darkness that surrounds us."
-Sir Paul McCartney


"There is one thing u've got to learn
Life is full of twists and turns
You've got to break the rocks in the hot sun,
For the tide to turn
If there is night..There has to be dawn
Life goes on......."

SOME SMALL JOYS

One seems so focused on what he wants from the future that he forgets to be thankful to the past for allowing him the life he has had. True, there always seem to be people for whom nothing is ever good enough. But there is little we can do about them.

There have been several little joys that stick to my memory to this day and will very probably go to my funeral with me. Regardless of any changes later in my life, these little shifts in my growth will never get overshadowed.

On a look out for an important document I ended up with stuff more momentous...
my slam books,loads of paper cutouts,photographs...which roped me to implant vignettes into my memory. During the process I realised how great a cricket devotee I used to be,prompted me of those few chums ive gotten disconnected with,raked up those kerfuffles which happened during the lunch breaks in the school,those quibbles over celeb paper cutouts,those flyspeck raslings during the game(I remember one in which I actually knocked this dame's tooth out)....these incidents so bantam yet so powerful,pedagogic and entrenched that its hopelessly impossible that they get erased from your mind.

There are more things that I ought to be thankful for. They may not mark turnabouts in my education or my personal life, but they affect the whole of my worldview in small but significant ways. We all need them for perspective and should remain ever thankful for them.

Charles Schultz Philosophy

The following is the philosophy of Charles Schultz, the creator of the "Peanuts" comic strip. You don't have to actually answer the questions. Just read straight through and you'll get the point.

1. Name the five wealthiest people in the world.

2. Name the last five Heisman trophy winners.

3. Name the last five winners of the Miss America Contest.

4. Name ten people who have won the Nobel or Pulitzer Prize.

5. Name the last half dozen Academy Award winners for best actor and actress.

6. Name the last decade's worth of World Series winners.

How did you do? The point is, none of us remember the headliners of yesterday. They are not second-rate achievers. They are the best in their fields. But the applause dies. Awards tarnish. Achievements are forgotten. Accolades and certificates are buried with their owners.


Here's another quiz. See how you do on this one:

1. List a few teachers who aided your journey through school.

2. Name three friends who have helped you through a difficult time.

3. Name five people who have taught you something worthwhile.

4. Think of a few people who have made you feel appreciated and special.

5. Think of five people you enjoy spending time with.


Easier?

The lesson: People who make a difference in your life are NOT the ones with the most credentials, the most money, or the most awards. They are the ones who care.

CLEAR HAI

Lately ive been obsessed with commercials on tv more than tv shows.Besides being short,they strike the right chord and deliver the message in practically the most innovative way possible,and surprisingly everytime.Above all you dont have to suffer the pain of prophesying-"what happens next?".
Some of them can be so effective that they almost get entrenched in your mind,besides the fact that they can also be highly deluding.I can still distinctly recollect
the very catchy "kya aap close-up karte hain..."commercial,
the very musical "bole mere lips...i love uncle chips" commercial or
the peppy "doodh doodh doodh...piyo glass full doodh" or
the very cute "i love you rasna" commercial.
After ages having seen a filmstar on a bajaj scooter (shahrukh in chak de india) reminds me of the very patriotic "hamara bajaj" commercial.

Of late commercials dont just market the product they also market the image of the endorser.And with celebs whom we consider local Gods,endorsing products,has taken marketing up by a couple of notches.Commercials can also be highly deceptive and dangerous.

A couple of such instances are.....ads like "fair and lovely" or "fair and handsome" which portray the idea of becoming successful by turning fair are i think promoting sheer racism,and ofcourse the very recent "sprite" commercial teaching guys how to have more than one girl friend and still be truthful to each of them.

But the saddest thing is that we are willing to get allured by these commercials.

Ignited minds

India since the past decade is known to have been on a developing streak.
With around 70% of it being comprised of the working class,India going great guns testifies the tremendous value addition done by the working class of the nation towards its path to not just a financially empowered nation but also towards a much edified society.
The overglamorised image of the elite society getting portrayed all over like never before is more inviting than anything else to a working class young mind aspiring to be a part of the jaunty society.This serves as a motivation to the ever dreaming young mind.
But the obscene and life threatening competition offered by the world kills their aspirations and desires in the process of achieving them,some prove their mettle some just recede.Their minds constantly work in several directions for their future planning.
They are in an incessant battle of testing their own dexterity in terms of ingenious and complex thought process,inventiveness and the ability to take critical decisions.They are always at the crux of their life’s momentous decision making processes.
Amidst all this frenzy the essence of living has ebbed away from their minds.The negative side is given more a thought in terms of fighting it and surmounting it,and that’s essential but the positive side also needs to be basked and talked about,which is I think done but sporadically.In my hunches the positive side of life is that what you have and not what you want to have,regardless of the set of problems you have(which comprise the negative side).
And I strongly believe this will help taste the real goodness of life.

Anti-piracy

I have never quite understood why the debate over piracy rages on.Well its true that if you have created a piece of work,it matters a lot to you,but then its not the same stuff as plagiarism.Piracy may be the cheap selling of the products.....but then i strongly feel that obscurity is far greater a threat to creative artists and authors than piracy.
Atleast in piracy you have your name on it.And the credit remains.So rather than playing around with words and leading movements against piracy,the best thing to do would be to march towards an open source movement.