An intellect cricketer declares it’s time to move on . . .

One of the greatest legends of cricket, Rahul Dravid will not be seen in international games any more. He was one of the fabulous 4s who redefined Indian Cricket. India and Cricket was lucky to see a classic player like him entertaining us for the past 16 years. A perfectionist who plays every cricketing shot as defined in the dictionary of cricket. He was part of many Indian camps which made histories and he had been a significant contributor in all those games to bring home victories. An intellect cricketer who had high standards for game and played with great commitment. A true servant of Indian cricket who has taken many roles (batsmen, keeper, great slip fielder and captain for many games) and has played at all positions of the batting order. His techniques were of top class and his stroking making styles were classics. His statistics will speak of his long and memorable career. The WALL was part of many long standing innings and partnerships, most of which were classics to be cherished.

He is really an ambassador for the sport, for the Indian team and for India; Cricket will not be the same without him and there were very few chances of seeing a player like him in the future.

Cricket lovers will definitely miss his classic drives and cuts.

Chaos in the city

Chennai, One of the biggest Indian cities is slowly becoming the home for different categories of industries. With more enterprises in each industry establishing their base or branch in Chennai, city keeps offering more jobs and keeps attracting more youth from all over India. Lack of proper Infrastructure for these mass immigrants to the city makes “Life in Chennai little miserable.”

Development of residential area when compared with that of jobs being created is very meager and this creates a situation where people get clogged only to those few (developed) areas where all the amenities are available. Most of the residents are renting the home as only few have the affordability to buy home (because of the huge real estate prices). All these create a huge demand for good rental apartments (in good residential place) and rental values are already increased many folds.

Road infrastructure over the years has been improved a lot with fly-over being erected in parts of Chennai (which had traffic congestions) to ease and regulate the heavy traffic. The increase in the personal vehicle is too huge and its projection increase in the future is alarming. City buses services are expanded and frequencies are increased yet there is still lot more demand. Autos and Share Autos rather than servicing the people actually play a big role in creating traffic congestion and accidents. There is a huge demand for other transportation modes within the city as the city keeps expanding its border every year.

Affordable schooling and hospitals are few and becoming rare. Restaurants have become the kitchens for most of the bachelors and almost every family wants to dine out at least twice a week (or more than that), All these puts the demand for good quality restaurants at its peak and there is an increase in the waiting time, food prices at these restaurants.

Needless to point out the demand for trains, buses and flights going to out station cities and people even cancel their trips to native places if they are NOT getting their tickets in advance. Also there is a huge demand for hang out places other the existing malls and beach.

There is a huge demand for everything in Chennai with more and more people entering the city and trying to use its limited infrastructure. Chennai city planning and development by its authorities has been improved a lot over the years yet it is way below its needs and its need projections in the future scars the metro development authorities. The growth at which city’s population is growing is way higher than its infrastructure growth.

Solution to this demand VS supply gap cannot be easy and will be difficult. Few solutions that I think:

• Far more strong governing bodies with greater vision can make the mess look better.
• Moving at least half of the government administration out of Chennai will give more space for proper infrastructure developments
• Government should mandate any new industry establishment to provide few basic amenities to the neighborhood of their new establishment.
• Moving few jobs to tier two cities
• Schools, Colleges and industries can probably adopt different timings for their daily routines
• Creating self sufficient townships could be solution in restricting the movement of people over the whole city
• Limiting the usage of personal vehicles and increasing the usage of public vehicles is the need of the hour but implementing this would be difficult unless public transportation modes are available with more choices.

Metro development authorities can probably analyze select few developed cities (which mirror Chennai in terms of industry establishments) on their infrastructure developments over the past 40 years and can probably work on the developments. Finally the residents of the city should co-operate well with any new laws/changes to bring in better infrastructure. Do better things today and hope a better society tomorrow!! :)

Life of few in Renganathan Street

I went to hiatus state in the blogging world for quite some time due to laziness and time constraint. Of late I have watched good number of quality movies (English and Tamizh) and one such movie has brought me back again!!

I was very happy about movies like

• Aayirathil Oruvan
• Goa
• Vinnaithandi Vaaruvaya
• Angadi Theru
• Avatar
• Up In the Air

I wanted to review all these movies in a good way but I would prioritize to review Angadi Theru first and if time permits, I would review them all.

I was not very much looking for this movie in the theatres and went to this movie as there was no other promising new release over the last weekend to watch. The only hope on this movie was the director of the movie, whose first movie was well received by people. So that gave me a zero expectation and fortunately it was more than a good movie.

The movie starts with a Beautiful song followed by a vehicle accident on Chennai city streets which caused deadly injuries to the protagonist of the movie and moves to the flash back of his memories. The movie then moves to the village in Nellai district showing the hero’s family struggling to make their ends meet. There comes one more blow to the hero’s family with the death of his father in an accident, Hero who is school topper has NO other choice other than leaving to Chennai city to work in a Textile retail giant who(employer of shop) employees the members of his caste. Textile retailer recruits only those people who are financially deprived OR those members in the family which don’t have any head of the house supporting them; hoping that those employees would stick to them doing what they want to do.

The movie then brings screen the life of such employees working in Renganathan Street in Chennai.

• Employees are required to work long hours with no rest and are provided shelter. food in worst possible environment as crowds
• Harassments against all employees if they don’t do what the supervisors ask them or if they play around the work place
• Strict and vigilant supervisor who was on look for opportunities to put the employees in trouble
• Employees should not fall in love with those working there

On this difficult environment our hero and heroine falls in love and face their hard times while continuing their work there.

First and foremost I would like to praise the director (Vasanthabalan) for bringing a very close to real life story on screen with an intense screen play. His focus on storytelling and his efforts to make the audience feel “how worse the life of those employees” are his huge plus and needs a mention. Director with few scenes running through the film portrays the life of many people in the Renganathan Street other than the protagonist. I liked this very much. He is really one among the few directors whom we can trust to provide more such good movies in the future and I am very hopefully he will achieve great heights.

Next the heroine Anjali, I really wonder if she was one among those real life employees to play that role with so much of detailed expressions and body language. She is vibrant, falls in love, fears about her supervisor and at the same time scolds him at his back, get anger at her lover when he is confused to choose between love and life and also she worries about job and family. She has performed wonderfully and scores in all the scenes. Finally her expressions during the climax make us feel the pain she has endured. The director must be lucky to get her in this role.

Hero Mahesh is NO less than the heroine in acting and no one would believe that this is his first film. Also I would like to appreciate Director A Venkatesh (the supervisor) who played the role in such a way that even if we see him in real life; we would probably keep away from him. I hope he must have taken a real life example of the character and depicted it.

Sneha plays the cameo role well and nothing challenging. All other characters have contributed their best efforts and fits into the storyline very well.

Music by Vijay Antony and G V Prakash is more than good and fits into the movie with ease. Dialogues by Jayamohan are powerful and add more meaning to most of the scenes. Cinematography in tamizh films these days are more than wonderful and Richard Maria Nathan has done the same.

Movie questions the Humanity and life of those less fortunate workers, Brings light on those Textile Retailer’s arrogance and attitude towards employee, makes feel bad for those employees.

Angadi Theru – An example of best talents in tamizh film industry which depicts the ground reality of Renganathan Theru!!

God – a myth or a miracle!!!

Time is ticking and days are rolling, my mind goes through thought process as usual and as always with many topics crossing my mind for blogging, but I never really found time to put together all the thoughts I had about them. Today, I felt like blogging and picked the most debated topic ever.

Existence of God. This is one of the topics in which I have often changed sides. :) Throughout my life with my experience I can never really take a side about his presence. There are reasons to augment to it.

I have been brought in an environment, where I was supposed to believe that there is a God who plans things for everyone in this world and his plans will be executed no matter what we plan or what we try to execute. I was also made to thank god for offering the life that we are leading now and was made to pray to him for better life or things in the future. And I was also thought to believe that if I do bad things, god will punish me, so I must behave in good ways. So being from such an orthodox religious brought up, I never really had a chance to think there is “no god” and it’s everything what you does, decides your life.

During my high school days or college days, I started to hear the argument from the atheist believers that “there is no god and it’s our action that decides our future.” We leave everything to god and never believed in ourselves or in our potentials there by resisting ourselves from achieving great things in life. Then my mind got confused and then there came the thoughts like

• If he is really the creator, why cannot he create people with good thoughts, so that people really don’t need to go through bad experience to learn from the mistakes that they make.
  
• Why he created people with inequalities in the life and lifestyle that they experience
  
• Also why there are quite number of talented peoples who never really got better life style, while there are so many rich people who are not really talented?
  
• Why not everyone is getting the opportunity to prove their talents that they have
  

Questions just kept rising with every day incidents that happened around me (and with every Kamalhassan film, I started to watch :)) and I was left with no answers to them, making me to believe as if there is no god.


As days rolled by and when I moved to corporate days, things looked better. I believed that my good thoughts and actions are yielding me better results. But then came the days, during which I was supposed to believe the factor of luck in the life. I started feeling as if there is no luck for me, in proving my talents or achieving things in the way I wanted to do. Days rolled by and I went through some good times and some bad times, during which I really didn’t had much of involvement with the things happened around me except that I was doing my job. Of course like everyone, I started thinking about god when I went through some bad times in my life.
This time I started believing there is really this creator

• Who gives things to us when we are ready to take it and he plans things or events which mould ourselves to take the things that he offers to us.
• We must just continue to do our job in good ways and he will take care of the rest
  

And I am very much sure, that there will be days in the future that will make to believe in atheism or in god. But over the years of experience, I now firmly believe that performing rituals in the name of god is stupid thing that a human can believe or do. It’s not just by making a business deal with god that we can really make things happen.

I have just given a glimpse of thoughts that crosses my mind when I think about god; I know for sure, there are more points that can be added to both the side.

Well I believe this is one of the topics in which I can never really take a permanent side. :) Catch you with some crisp and interest topic in the future.

Do drop your opinions and try taking a side on this topic. :)

Academy Awards A R Rahman

Congrats A R Rahman on achieving the most deserving award for his talents, This is a moment of pride for every Indians and Indian film makers. This best explains the fact that when we deliver or expose our talents to global audiences, they will be honored definitely. We still hide most of the rare talents (not only in film making but in every other industry) that we inherit and they were never delivered or reached to the global audience. Time is changing and world has started recognizing the best talents that we have.

Few more facts that I would like to quote about A R Rahman, Western world is greatly impressed with the leisure work of talented Rahman (the music for this film was composed on rahmans holiday trip to London) and I was wondering, “how the world is going to react”?, if they are going to hear his most impressive works. I strongly believe that “this is just the beginning and there will be more to be honored for Rahman and the talented Indian film makers”.

I was constantly following the Academy award nominations for the year 2008 and have watched most of the films which were in the nominations under different categories; I was not taken by surprises when Slum dog millionaire took home 8 Academy awards. This film was welcomed in a great way by all the western people.

Well as a viewer who watched last year’s Academy award ceremony, I was not impressed with this year’s award ceremony as the function lacked elegance with the design of such an aesthetic stage giving us a feel of watching a Game show. Host of the show, Hugh Jackman (X-Men star) tried his best to present the most expected award ceremonies in a best way; he and the ceremony team could not succeed in it. Wishing the team best luck for a better show next year.

Quantum of Satisfaction …

Quantum Of Solace - A Sequel to casino Royale movie, as always a Sequel movie rarely outsmarts the original version.

It’s a good action film with one of the best plot to make the movie goers thrilled and NOT a bond film which we always wanted to see. The story had all the elements to keep our eagerness growing. One of the big reasons being it’s one of the shortest bond movies running for just 106 minutes.

In the film Casino Royale, Daniel Craig has been portrayed as the MI6 agent who took the 007 status recently and he is maturing as 007 through his assignments. As he is the new 007, he is reckless, emotional and vulnerable, which was evident from his love and trust on Vesper Lynd (Eva green).

In QOS he is chasing the secret behind his lover's betrayal, which also coincide with his next assignment of identifying the organization and its motto, which wanted to loot his winnings from Casino Royale.

As he chases down Mr. White (one of the member of Quantum organization), plot for QOS widens where he meets one of the daring members of the organization - Dominic Greene.
-Greene's character is portrayed as less competent person which is one of the big draw backs of the movie. Generally Bond villain will be equally competent as he is.
-Bond is sleepless (because of vesper’s death) and has been portrayed as a man with vengeance; this portrayal itself is not quite expected for the role of bond, who is expected to be more than a normal human.
-Also madam M's role of trusting and distrusting bond in each other frames is less seen in other bond movies. I guess madam M is given more screen space in this movie and that can be avoided in future editions.
-Lot of efforts has been spent in the Stunt scenes, yet the outcome is less impressive.
- The locations for this film (although shot in six countries, more than any other Bond film) give us a feel, as if we are watching an old bond movie. Probably the plot demanded such locations and scenes.

The film revolves around the concept of scarcity for natural resource WATER (which is some what a relief from watching only oil as the important natural resource and also as the only resource which is scarce in availability).

Bolivia with scarce water supply suits the plot but then the country with less GDP per capita, sounds little odd for an internationally daring and dangerous business organization (chased by MI6 and CIA) to go behind its water supply to draw money from this country.

Daniel Craig has done good justice to the role and performed to the scripts demands; in fact he is excelled in all the stunt scenes in both the movies. This bond just needs a right director to cast him as the bond that we always wanted to look.

There will be sequel to this version, where bond might identify the Quantum organization and will destroy it.

Hope in the next sequel probably they can portray bond as more matured 007 (who is not just a cold hearted (Serial) killer) and who is less vulnerable to enemies and to emotions. Probably the next film might satisfy the thirst for watching a charismatic bond (which we got to see in Sean Connery and Pierce Brosnan editions).

Directors should understand that there are more action heroes (like tom cruise . . .) nowadays, who does actions in an international plot to rescue the world. Their films too are welcomed well in box office.

Not just the international plot which is expected from a bond film, people expect bond to be little more elegant and charismatic than the normal action heroes who also save the world from crisis.

When pierce brosnan left the bond role, director & production team have already uplifted the role of bond and he has become too smart for his enemies and can never be defeated easily.

Director and production team claim that they stick to the original portrayal of bond character. But had Ian Fleming be present now, he might have given more elegance to the character and the bond’s portrayal might have gone beyond what directors imagine now.

This film just console our thirst for seeing the bond (more action and less elegant) once again in the screen, could not make us more happy. Yet it’s always pleasant to watch bond films. Meanwhile, Where is the catchphrase, “Bond, James Bond” in this movie QOS?????????

With quantum of satisfaction and immense of eagerness to watch the Bond 23 on big screen...

Shrewd leader calls it a day!!!!!

One of the news that took me by shock in the recent days was "sourav (i love to call him as sourav) calling it a day".
I m one of his greatest admirers, he is one of the best cricketing legend and best captain for india, even we can say one of the best captain in world cricket.

when everyone liked sachin, i don’t know the reason why I liked sourav, note the fact i too love sachin’s cricket, sachin is a master/ legend who is incomparable, yet something was special in sourav that made me his diehard fan, more than his cricketing ability i liked his
-> shrewd leadership quality,
-> fearless attitude to fight for the game . . .

sourav is one of the cricketer who has been constantly under the pressure created by media (for performing poor in 3 games out of 10) and by his roles n responsibility (opener, captain), even though under such massive pressure circulating him almost from year 2000 (when he started leading team india) to till date, he has delivered what best he can do. generally even great players failed when they are under pressure (needless to strike examples, we all know many of it).

he is the one of the indian cricketer who has been criticized and speculated more than anyone in the recent times; writing about him has been a business for media and they kept writing abt him. it has become a habit for them and even people like to read the news which often portrays him as bad cricketer and person with worst attitudes. worst part is that he has NOT been praised by the media even when he has done well. .. . his bright side was always kept under the dark.

there are people and players in our life, who gets the unfortunate luck of being criticized for doing ANYTHING wrong and not been praised even when they deliver SOMETHING good, sourav is one of the elite member in this unfortunate club.

selection committee dropped him even for the "REST of the Indian squad" in the irani trophy in early September this year:-
Dada during his press meet to inform us that the current test series will be his last one said "How long would I have played? Maybe, up to 2009. Maybe, seven more Tests. For that I was not prepared to take any more humiliation,"
this statement really moved me . ... one can understand how much it has hit his heart.

And here is what sourav added to the above statement "If a gun is held at your head, how far can you bear it. That too after playing 450 matches. I played badly in only one series. But others are not dropped. I have scored the highest number of runs after comeback,"
he has played 311 ODI and 110 test matches and scored close to 19000 International runs. Player with such caliber and history, was not even eligible for playing in a DOMESTIC match in india? are there players (new or old) who out formed him in the previous series in sri lanka or in Irani trophy???
as sourav said, he has been humiliated . . .

when the speculations over sourav's cricket future were almost dumped, by simply accepting the fact that sourav is no more in indian squad, he made one of the greatest comeback in world cricket ever,
he was included in the Test squad for the away series in South Africa in 2006-2007. He ended as the highest Indian run-scorer in that series and went on to slam back-to-back hundreds against Pakistan at home, the second of which was a glorious 239 in Bangalore.

after his comeback in dec 2006, he is STILL the highest run getter among all other indian test players during this period (dec 2006 to till date).

i would also like to quote few more important things; he was the man behind too many brave strategy changes (in the right way) in our indian ODI format; such as
- shuffling the players position based on the game need
- going with 7 batsmen and 4 bowler strategy.
- changing a regular batsman into wicket keeper batsmen . . . .
(in india, wicket keeper has only kept wicket and batting was his second priority for 30 years of ODI cricket, very few exceptions were present before rahul dravid was assigned a role of wicket keeper).
- who took the brave decisions to have positioned great players like sachin, rahul during the slog overs to score more runs
- and more to list.

all the players had a worst time in their cricket life and it was the case with sourav too . . .
- he also failed at too many ODIs (not ONLY he) and
- has poor foot movements (even he has it till now, although he has improved on lot better than it was originally)
- poor runner btn the wickets

but he is also the guy
- who times the ball next perfect to sachin/lara in the world,
- who squares (cuts) the ball as perfectly as rahul,
- he s one of the best (or rare) left hander’s who outburst at off spinners (generally off spinners has a good edge when bowling to left hander’s)
- fighting with only few players for most no of six hitters in ODI
- who's captain abilities are praised by most of the cricket players in the world

past is past, anyways I am happy with his retirement as I don’t want such a great leader to be humiliated anymore and I m happy to have seen his wonderful innings over these 12 years. More over everyone has a day to quit ... and “all the run machine will stop at one point of time”!!!!

one thing, i just wanted to make a note. .. he is the next best indian batsmen (at least by statistics) after sachin and he is one of the best indian captain so far, he deserves a better farewell (even if not a great one)....

we will miss such a great leader . . . . (I still feel, I have provided only very few facts abt such great leader and player).


Kind note: This Blog might be little (or very) long and might have bored you through its course of journey, I will be sharp and up to the point next time. Comments and criticism are more welcomed as I would also love to see the world from your eyes. :)
See u thro’ my next blog … some time soon.