On Aamir khan and Kiran Rao

“Abe Aamir ne maal nahi patayi be...”

I heard Ashwin say this as he was casually strolling through this late january edition of People magazine. The issue features a joint interview of Aamir Khan and Kiran Rao. I had read that interview .It was lovely. I ‘ll tell you what kind of lovely. Once it happened with a guy,a friend of mine who fell for a girl. Almost daily he had these conversations with me about how perfect match they were. I found him somewhat crazy on believing all this lovely goddamn perfection thing. But then there happened an occasion when I met both of them together. They looked real lovely. Loveliest of all the goddamn lovely things that I had ever seen. Reading Aamir and Kiran together gave a similar feeling.:D

Hours later I found myself pondering over Ashwin’s oneliner .

“Abe Aamir ne maal nahi patayi be..”

It was just as simple as that and yet I found is so paradoxical . If asked to name a person who is known for his quest for this illusory term called “perfection”. Aamir khan.No other names come to my mind at least.What makes Aamir Khan put aside all his Aamirgiri (which allegedly is all about mastering perfectionism) and fall for a girl who many simply don’t find appealing enough to match him. But then really no one amongst us is really eligible to rate how perfect a match they are for each other.Personally, I found them lovely.How much lovely?I told you earlier.

Last year around this time only I was reading this novel 11 minutes by Paulo Coelho .At one instance he quotes Plato and it goes like this.

“…… I would quote from Plato. According to him, at the beginning of creation, men and women were not as they are now; there was just one being, who was rather short, with a body and a neck, but his head had two faces, looking in different directions. It was if two creatures had been glued back to back, with two sets of sex organs, four legs and four arms.
The Greek gods, however, were jealous, because this creature with four arms could work harder; with its two faces, it was always vigilant and could not be taken by surprise; and its four legs meant that it could stand to walk for long periods at a time without tiring. Even more dangerous was the fact that the creature had two different sets of sex organs and so needed no one else in order to continue reproducing.
Zeus, the supreme lord of Olympus, said: ‘I have a plan to make these mortals lose some of their strength.’
And he cut the creature in two with a lightning bolt, thus creating man and woman. This greatly increased the population of the world, and at the same time, disoriented and weakened its inhabitants, because now they had to search for their lost half and embrace it and, in that embrace, regain their former strength, their ability to avoid betrayal and the stamina to walk for long periods of time and to withstand hard work. That embrace in which the two bodies re-fuse to become one again is what we call sex.”
“Human beings were once divided and now seek the embrace that will reunite them. That is our instinct. But it is also our reason for putting up with all the difficulties we meet in that search.
I want you to look at me, but I want you to take care that I don’t notice. Initial desire is important because it is hidden, forbidden, not permitted. You don’t know whether you are looking at your lost half or not; she doesn’t know either, but something is drawing you together, and you must believe that it is true you are each other’s ‘other half.”

I may have just risked myself being categorized as the philosophical idiot quoting arbit shit but then what Aamir and Kiran portray today somewhat ,somehow impart some sense to this goddamn illusiory story I read last year.May be there really is an order to all of this which works to bring the two parts together.May be,just may be it can happen to you too. Sensible thing to do till then is to BELIEVE.

Happy Valentines Day to you all.

Love,

Pranav :)

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Do You Need a Valentine?

The Valentine’s week has painted the markets red with much hustle and bustle. Love is in the air. Well, the single hearts must not be disappointed. For, technology market is all hot for you this week. Oh yes!

To start with, Dell phones have already reached India. Dell Venue and Dell Venue Pro. Both top end smart phones with looks you would die for. The Dell Venue runs on Android 2.2 Froyo. It features a 4.1-inch AMOLED capacitive touchscreen with Gorilla Glass protection, an 8MP camera, in addition to a 1GHz processor. It also sports ActiveSync and QuickOffice, and supports Swype text input. Priced at 29,990 INR this perfect one touch 3.5G(as called by Dell) phone is as pretty as your first girlfriend.

Coming to Dell Venue Pro. They have called it a Pro and before you think of it, it has got nothing to do with its Windows Phone 7 platform. It’s a Pro, because comes bundled with a QWERTY slide form factor. Like Venue, it features a 4.1-inch AMOLED capacitive touchscreen with Gorilla Glass protection, but has a 5MP camera instead of the Venue’s 8MP. Unlike Venue, this business oriented device also offers some great gaming applications via WP7’s Xbox Live platform, as well as a range of cloud-based services. Dell’s first Windows Phone 7 smartphone is priced at 34,990 INR. Tempted? I am tempted too.

And, we have more. Nokia’s much awaited E7 is hitting Indian shores this week. The device made waves back in September 2010 with its thin form factor that squeezed in a sliding QWERTY keyboard. It’s much the same phone as the N8, with few differences which include an 8MP fixed focus camera (with dual LED flash) instead of the N8’s 12MP auto-focus Carl Zeiss branded camera, and, the presence of a full-fledged document editor instead of the N8’s document viewer. Right now the device has been roughly priced at 37,000 INR. We expect the prices to sidle down to around N8’s as it lands to the Indian markets.

Adding whip to the cake, If by any chance were you longing to try your hands on one of the WP 7 devices, just after Microsoft's official launch date in January 2011, then you are invited to experience the joy of ordering HTC HD7 on Flipkart for a price of 31,000 INR on a click of your mouse.

So, with such beauties around, What do you say? Do you really need a Valentine?

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The Ideal Scam (Adarsh Ghotala)

Scam Scum Series  ( The year 2010 was one big precipitation flask for the Indian democracy. Call it crowning corruption or extremely cautious media whistle blowing, the fact remains. India saw scams surfacing like never before in the last few months. We, at aS have started this scam scum series to enlighten our readers about what went rotting in each of these scams.)

Read, and comment.

Adarsh. The Ideal.
My list of rare oxymoron words just gets increased by one, when I write ‘The Ideal- scam’. A classic story of how soul-less the Indian politicians and the bureaucracy has become, the Adarsh housing society scam uncovers the dark face of Indian ‘Afsarshahi’.
Scamming the nation in the name of Kargil war heroes and their widows is not only unethical; it’s immoral.
What ‘they’ wanted us to know: A 6 storied structure is proposed to be built in the colaba area of Mumbai, very close to the lands of Indian navy. The benefiters of the to-be-constructed apartments are the Kargil war veterans and their widows. The site comes in Mumbai’s CRZ (Coastal Regulation Zone), and it gets cleared at the state level. Barring small social activists, no major hue and cry occurs. The construction starts, and a 31 storey building appears out of nowhere.
What ‘they’ did not want us to know:
1. Instead of the Kargil war veterans and widows, politicians and bureaucrats get the apartments. Many influential and high end  public faces, as big as the then honorable chief minister of Maharashtra, Mr. Ashok Chavan himself make sure that the apartments get allotted to their ‘family’ members. ( Mr. Chavan was the revenue minister in 2000, when the civilians were allowed Adarsh membership. He got apartments allotted to his mother in law and two other relatives). A total of 21 bureaucrats face legal action for occupying the apartments that had been cleared for the ‘patriots’.
2. The 31 storey building is near two military supply depots that store ammunition and fuel, and a transport engineering facility that has armoured vehicle. Hence, it’s a security threat to the nation.
3. The Adarsh complex, which falls under Coastal Regulation Zone –2 norms, gets cleared at the state level without getting clearances from the union and the state environment ministries.
4. Under CRZ-2 norms, the maximum height of the building should not have been more than 30m. The building stands at a height that’s definitely more than 100m.
5. Rules are constantly modified to benefit the babus. The state government permits commercial establishments in the building, agrees to modify plot reservations, allows use of an adjacent bus depot’s Floor Space Index and relaxes the income criteria for society membership.
6. Market rate of one equivalent flat in the Colaba locality of Mumbai: Rs. 6-8.5 Crore
    Flats allotted at the rate of: Rs. 60-80 Lakh (625-1000 Sq. ft. 2bhk and 3bhk flats)
7. Military officers also involved in the allotment of the plot.
The whistle blower: The Right to Information Act, 2005 emerged as the unsung hero of this scam. Without it, all the social activists, even as big and famous as ‘Medha Patkar’ would have continued to cook up nothing but a dog’s dinner. Special mention needs to be given to a Juhu based social activist called Yogacharya Anandji, who has compiled more than 300 pages of documents on the Adarsh case, which includes the list of allottees, CRZ violations and the role of MMRDA in the scam. He had also filed 14 RTIs in this case.

What becomes of this scam is a matter of time. Mr. Ashok Chavan has already lost his CM chair. The bureaucrats are running away like thieves. Out of the 103 Adarsh flats, 30 already have been declared ‘Benaami’ (meaning having false or no taker). Army, Politics and Bureaucracy, each is trying to wash off its hands from the shame-game.
The latest orders of the Environment ministry of India (dated Jan 16th 2011) can be viewed here. It talks about demolishing the entire building within a span of 3 months.
Let’s just hope that the blind escape stampede does not lead to another scam, in which the babus feed money to the officials to cut off their names from the register under the CBI’s eyes.
Alok K.
(References: TOI, Hindu, HT)

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