Pirates are strange. I know what you’re thinking; you’re thinking I’m strange for writing something on pirates being strange. But this is one of those philosophical moments when I find something in life corresponding to something as strange as pirates at sea. (AARGH he is a strange one).

I find it strange that pirates sail the seven seas to find something really precious, their “treasure”, only to bury it on some remote island. Now why would you do that? I know what you’re saying “to keep others from getting it you jackass”. But look at the situation here: you’re kind of keeping the treasure away from yourself too!! Wouldn’t it just be better to use some of that loot to buy the worlds best safe and put all the treasure in there? Who I feel worse for is the crew of the ship. Technically a part of the treasure is theirs too yet they can’t get their hands on it because their captain finds it safer to bury it on a remote island.

Those who know me are probably reading this thinking ya this is one of those pointless things that just jump into my head. But no.. there is some point to my madness. Because I feel that many of us in our lives are just like those pirates or their crew. Many of us do hold secrets that are dear to us, that are of utmost importance to us but still feel the need to keep it secret. Things that we want or crave or already posses but are scared to bring it out or use it, for fear of losing the thing that is dear to us, for fear of being ridiculed or many others.

But again the worst thing to happen is still being the crew, possessing something that you can’t lay claim to just yet because you don’t have the power, the leverage etc. But for those who are the crew the question remains once you come to power would the treasure remain in the remote island in the back of your brain?

If it were me I’d dig it up, simple logic: What’s the point of having it if you can't enjoy it? You have it, flaunt it. But for now I still remain a part of the crew, humbly (well may be not so humbly) sailing across the seas of life waiting for my chance to come.

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They are the face of cheap cars in India, and with the advent of the Nano they’ve pretty much become the face of cheap cars all over the world. Well I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, don’t get me wrong the Nano is an achievement; nobody thought that that cheap a car could be made. And the car does look complete, it’s yet to be seen but at least it doesn’t look like parts of it are going to fall off. But after the acquisition of Jaguar and Land rover I think it’s high time the company redid some of its core processes.

Pick up any car magazine and read the review of any car that’s been made by Tata, the Indica, the Indigo etc., almost all of them will say the exact same thing in the for and against column. For: Good Mileage, Reliable, cheap, low maintenance and in the against: looks, build quality. And that’s where I think Tata’s main problem lies it’s not a car that people look to and say it’s a great car so I’ll buy it, it’s the car that everybody seems to settle for, I can’t buy any other car so I’ll buy a Tata.

But now I think it’s high time they changed that image, this is now a company that owns high premium brands like Jaguar and Land Rover. With these acquisitions the company must back itself and take that leap of faith to make expensive high quality cars that everyone knows it’s capable of making.

We are a country that I believe is intellectually one of the best in the world (if not THE best) and shouldn’t an Indian company then challenge automotive boundaries and make some sensational cars. And it’s not something totally new for them either let’s face it the Nano is an engineering marvel, it challenged a boundary and achieved it, now that that’s done its time for new ones. I mean statistically the company is great, it’s like the Indian cricket team was years ago, statistically brilliant but yet they looked domestic and docile, like they shiver at the sight of tall white Australian men. Then came along a bunch of young brats with barely any stats but with loads of attitude and finally some balls and they kicked ass. You are now owners of premium cars brands like Jaguar and Land Rover how many companies can say that, so it’s time to take that leap of faith, make India’s first sports car, make it calm and docile in the city streets and a monster when it reaches an empty stretch, make a premium quality car, a luxury car and please not one that look like the Indica, let’s face it that’s not exactly a good looking car in itself and copies of that with a boot ain't gonna look good either. Face it you’re not Porsche for you to be replicating the same design over and over again (and also note that Porsches are not exactly noted for their design either). Oh that brings me to my most important suggestion: try a new design, radical ones that’ll take your breath away, in the right way.

And I’m glad to say that I see a move in the right direction with the Sumo Grande, it’s a HUGE step up from the older car. Fantastic, but it’s just the starting step we need to see a lot more of these improvements.

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“It’s a sexy new night time drama set in a ski-resort. I just read the script; it’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever read. Ha ha. ITS GONNA BE HUGE!!” – Bobby, from the show Joey (season 1)

This somehow seems to be the story of Bollywood these days, make sure it’s attractive, sexy with a half descent sound track and the rest of it really doesn’t matter. Well I had the unfortunate experience of watching such a movie recently called – RACE.

That movie has that perfect formula or should I say recipe for the “masala movie” (I’ll get to that in a bit) it had the glam quotient, hell it even had 3 heroines to make up for Sharukh Khan. And it had the songs (you have to admit Pehli Nazar Mein by Atif Aslam is a lovely song). And it had twists a lot of them. And I got my money’s worth. Yet you may be wondering why I seem like I didn’t like the movie, let me explain.

First point, “RACE” is a thriller and I got my money’s worth because I was laughing though the movie at the sheer lack of sense in it. Second point, like I said the movie had twists; unfortunate thing though was that it had ONLY twists. I mean the movie was like an f1 track with only turns there was no flow to the story just twist after twist after twist. Then there were some stupid stunts, how kids suddenly show up on scooters on a deserted highway in the middle of a high speed race? I don’t know. How a car after jumping of a ramp and landing blows up? I DO NOT KNOW. Oh by the way it blows up on the spot, that is up and down no forward movement at all, after jumping of a ramp at 100 kmph.

So basically I thought the movie was totally worthless as a thriller. Yet fans of Bollywood, who seemed to like the movie by the way, all tell me the same thing “Why look into it da? It’s a masala movie?” Now I want to ask what kind of a film industry are we running where such mediocrity and stupidity is accepted so easily? It’s like saying “Oh I expect a dumb movie, I just hope there are lot of babes in it”.

If you want a total popcorn movie fine do it, but at least have some common sense in it, some surprise element in it, not the same ridiculous stunts that you can see coming a mile away (if u ever end up seeing the movie you’ll see what I mean). Also, more importantly, don’t keep double standards, don’t applaud movies like this one and see it 4 times and at the same time ridicule Rajnikanth movies, trust me you ain’t far from getting there.

By now if many Bollywood fans are still reading this they probably hate me, but don’t get me wrong Bollywood has talent, serious talent. They can make sensational movies like Jhankar Beats, Dil Chahta Hai, Swadesh, Rang De Basanti (sensational concept), Tare Zameen Par etc etc. And those are just the recent movies if I get into the older ones the list gets a LOT bigger. All I’m asking of all you Bollywood fans is: Should somebody who knows what this industry is capable of just accept stupid, senseless pure glam movies like the ones coming out today? Food for thought?

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Simply had to post this one. The man made some mayhem of his own in the dunk contest and forever rid the misconception that big guys (centers and power forwards 7ft plus) cant dunk well. In the dunk shown above his "superman dunk" he rose from barely a foot inside the free throw line and rose so high that he had to actually chuck the ball into the basket instead of reaching there and dunking it. I mean for flair alone he had to win it. Check out the other dunks if possible, its probably all over youtube by now. And if you're a basketball fan u simply MUST.

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Was just surfing for Grammy news and I came across this article where Natalie Cole, famous singer and daughter of the even more famous Nat King Cole (sensational singer), said that “Winehouse’s wins sends a ‘bad’ message”. I got to be honest I knew there would be someone who says something like this about her wins. And I want to say: GROW UP.

The Grammy’s, of all things, aren’t given on the basis of whose singing, its given on the basis of WHAT they are singing. Be it a drug addict, a cocky rapper or a legend all of them are based (well at least should be based) on their music and music alone. No one can deny the fact that she did make a great album, from what I’ve heard of it it’s different, catchy, more old school, earthy simple tones. Its different and its nice, hell Kanye West, probably the most arrogant guy around, told Mark Ronson (Winehouse’s producer) “You deserve it as much as I do and I deserve it too” now that is as close as anyone is going to get to a compliment from that guy.

Now how is Winehouse’s wins sending ‘bad’ message? Did anybody really think that drugs were the reason she made great music? She’s not Jim Morrison people, she had a good producer and she had talent, pretty simple. As far as her addictions etc goes, she’s paying for her misgivings she’s constantly a tabloid favorite, having shit written about her all over and having people like Ms Cole ruining her perfectly well deserved Grammy’s. Yes, seeing her does send me a message and that is that try my best NOT to be like her, if I must take anything from her it would be how she in spite of having all these things going against her managed to make such great music. And THAT is not a “bad” message. She deserved it so she won it, period.

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Have u ever seen this show on Vh1 called “Then and now”? Nice little show, but I’m not here to talk about the show, I’m here to talk about the thing they play at the start of the show, it’s an interesting little animated opening video of, in their eyes, the evolution of music through the ages. It starts of with a Jimi Hendrix like character playing a little riff then he morphs into a disco character and the tune morphs a bit too, then comes a long haired heavy metal/ hard rock kinda guy who like plays a distorted version of the same tune and then he morphs into a fat blinged out hip hop guy, and that’s the end of the video.

The evolution they’ve portrayed is relevant too – Hendrix and other rock legends ruled in the 60’s then disco took over in the 70’s, then with the death of disco came the rock and heavy metal age with groups like guns n rose, nirvana, metallica etc in the 80’s and 90’s and now, this is the interesting part, has come the “Hip Hope Age”. Well according to them in any case. And I agree with them, I think this is the hip hop revolution, I’m not saying that the other genres are dead or anything. I mean lets face it all through the 60’s 70s and 80’s and 90’s other genres did exist, except that they were less prominent than the controlling genre of that time. And (unfortunately) now is the time of Hip Hop (If you disagree your probably in denial or both deaf and blind).

The question I’m hoping to answer in this post is why? Why is it that people are more in tune these days to hip hop more than anything else? Why is it that more mainstream genre’s are trying to infuse bits of hip hop in them (pop and rnb being HUGE examples)? Somebody said (I think) “the world is going too fast to have time to stop and smell the roses” and I think that’s exactly whats happened to music too.

Think about it, all you have to do in hip hop is remember one tiny little tune, which generally is a small beat, and a main single phrase, generally the name of the song itself. Its true, the music part is plain to hear and as far as lyrics go all that matters is that one phrase (face it no self respecting woman would dance to over half of the hip hop tunes if they cared what they said, its only for hard core fans who are keen to pursue rap or hip hop). Pick any song, 90% chances you’ll see its true.

It’s sad but people don’t have time these days to follow a long elaborate solo or the little picks and bends of a guitar, or the small variances and flows of jazz or the shear dominance of a voice of soul. All I’m hoping now is that genres don’t fade out, like the disco, to being barely followed by a small group of cult fans who people look upon and think “those people are weird”. And just like I hope food wont become a pill someday I hope music wont become any more shorter in the time to come or its just wont seem like music any more…

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Remember the good old days when somebody heard Stephen hawking talk and people went “hey that’s weird.”? But as time went by some hip-hop producer somewhere pressed the wrong button and got a similar robotic voice and somewhere in his tiny brain Paris Hilton went “That’s Hot”. And boom in comes the invasion of weird voices in music (kanye west’s stronger being the best example of the robotic voice).

I think this whole thing started with the Akon featuring Alvin and the chipmunks in “I’m so lonely” ( I know I know it’s an insult to Alvin and the chipmunks but hey it did sound like them). Now akon himself has a weird voice over that with the chipmunk thing I didn’t know if I was listening to a normal song or a song in an animated film. But somehow everybody loved it, then the dude was everywhere, almost everyone featured him sometimes even in stupid things like gwen stefani’s escape where all he did was go “woo hoo hee hoo”. Then comes the real reason why I think Stephen hawking should sing – Tpain (I think Akon’s prodigy). For those of you who are wondering who he is, he’s the guy in kanye wests “Welcome to the good life” song. Now that dude barely sings; he sings something and its digitally mastered to have a huge robotic ting to it, and again people gobbled it up. Now he’s everywhere, his own song bartender, ft akon btw, is a big hit and people are having collaborations with him all over the place.

All this makes me wonder, what the hell do need to have to be in hip hop? DEFENITELY not voice, it was never a big issue in hip hop anyway, face it most of them are there cause the cant sing, even more so now with people digitally adding to the voice. So that’s not it voice doesn’t matter, music is not the issue cause that comes from producers. Lyrics may be? Ha right?! Have u ever actually read those things!! So what is it? Only thing that comes to mind – contacts, period. Well is it just me or is that just plain sad for anything that calls itself a genre of music….

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“IT has ruined Bangalore;” “Look at the congestion and the traffic;” “Culture has taken a toss” (and my favorite); “Youngsters earn too much and have no culture anymore” etc etc. These seem to be the quotable quotes from various discussion groups splashed across the newspapers from day to day. The big question: “Is IT bad for Bangalore?” Before I get into the details, let me just get one thing of my chest: if you (whosoever is reading this) actually thinks that IT is bad for the city what in God’s name can you do about it? IT has been here for a long time and is here to stay, period. Accept it.

Now addressing the question at hand: is IT really bad for Bangalore? Well, obvious things aside one must acknowledge the fact that love it or hate it, IT put Bangalore on the World map. Sure it was the Garden City, the city with great climate and great people etc all this did make Bangalore a well known place but that was in India, tops. And ironically those are the main reasons why IT ended up in Bangalore in the first place. But like someone truly said “Any publicity is good publicity” and so slowly with the advent of IT and the outsourcing biz terms like “Bangalored” (someone whose lost his/her job to outsourcing) came up and one by one it became the IT capital of the country and got a spot on the world map. Now you can’t say that’s a bad thing.

But all good things to come at a price. The problem that Bangalore had is plain and simple- it grew too fast for its own good. Companies poured in, job opportunities increased and boom population explosion. Then came the problems that everyone complains about: Traffic: reason is the city grew up so fast and was so obsessed with getting more famous that there wasn’t any time to improve the roads and other infrastructure. Can you blame the government at the time for it? Sure if you are a very cynical man, because sure there might have been stuff the govt could’ve done but things happened too fast and we all know things can go wrong when that happens. The then in charge Krishna govt did do its bit and his regime is still considered a good one by most in the city.

Then the next most common problem that everyone complains about: the congestion and the inflow of “non-Karnataka” people: reason: now like every Hollywood celebrity knows you can’t get famous and not attract the paparazzi, not that I’m comparing the “non-Karnataka” people to paparazzi but basically I’m trying to say that you cant get famous and not attract attention to yourself. Be it person or place that gets famous others are going to want to find out what the big deal is all about. Best example, all the people going to America to study or get a job why is it? Simple really it got famous and that’s where the money is (was) and we want a piece of the pie. Are those saying that “non-Karnataka” people are bad saying that their kids shouldn’t go to America or any other country or state to earn more money? Think about that.

Then of course my favorite the “youngsters are earning too much and losing their culture” excuse. Consider this scenario: I’m an employer I come to a parent and say “I’m not going to pay your son or daughter too much money, I’ll just pay him enough to keep him/her going, or else they’ll lose their culture!!” now if you rightfully say that a parent would agree to that then all is not well with you up there. A parent is always going to want their kids to earn well to do well in their lives and similarly youngsters are going to want to earn a lot of money too, for many reasons. Now if they do something “bad” with their money or “lose their culture” because of the money they have to spend its not really IT’s fault is it? Its up to how the kids were bought up that’ll affect how they use their money, period.

I almost forgot another crowd favorite “crime in the city has gone up”. IT’s fault? Why not? Now you must know we don’t live in a perfect world, Eve did bite the apple and evil and misery does exist in the world today. And a city coming on the world map does attract the wrong kind of attention too. What can you do about it? Beef up security, better safety measures, better police patrolling etc etc. and unless I’m mistaken these things come under the police dept and the government and city council NOT surprise surprise IT.

All things aside IT has helped Bangalore, IT has also brought some problems with it. Now the problem that actually happened was that Bangalore was the first city in India that all this drama happened to at such a large scale. Due to which like it or hate it, it became a sort of guinea pig, (no insult intended) all I’m trying to say is it became the test subject from which other cities looking to be a part of the IT boom learnt from. And it learnt a lot too: what to do, what not to do, how to prepare etc. case and point Hyderabad: improved the infrastructure and roads before the IT boom hit it, provided the infrastructure necessary. How did it learn all this? By watching Bangalore and what happened there.

So before you go answering another newspaper questionnaire or survey asking if “IT is bad for Bangalore?” and before you compare it with Hyderabad etc and before you get all set to point the finger, look around you and to yourself you might see many targets hiding in the bushes so as not to get the finger pointed at them.

PS: Like it?, Hate it?, got an opinion on it?... comment it

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Everyone has at sometime been so angry that they just wanna break something. When something you've been looking forward to doesn't work out, something else follows up and thats when the chain starts, one thing goes wrong then the next and boom you're so pissed you just wanna punch someone's lights out.

One thing that has always managed to calm me down was pure metal, i mean i hear that distortion guitar on full blast and someone like Hetfield shout out from behind it, ah now that brings bliss sheer bliss. But thats the strange thing isn't it, logically speaking something more calm more soft should generally soothe you back to normal. sure smooth calm music does that too, but not the same way that metal does. Metal gives u a satisfaction like you've actually let all of that pent up anger out. where as smooth music just plains pushes all that anger under the carpet.

I wonder why metal does that though? i mean think about it, you're angry and angry, enraged music calms u down. My theory? well i think its purely because when you're surrounded by that kind of music you're surrounded by that amount of anger so at that instance the amount of anger in you and the amount of anger around you is equal almost. So in your own little world you're normal now, as opposed to the "normal world" where you would be one angry guy. but in your angry world of metal your normal and i think its that thought that calms u down eventually and the anger just flows out of ya and boom you can get back to the real world.

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