good luck to Ganguly - Nothing else matters

Aditya writes in from the USA: "Here's wishing good luck to Ganguly in his last series...and fair play to him for having the good grace to retire so he can leave room for a youngster to take his place.... I think an apt song for him at this time would be "Nothing Else Matters" by Metallica:

"Never opened myself this way,
life is ours, we live it our way..."

Nothing else matters

So close no matter how far
Couldnt be much more from the heart
Forever trusting who we are
And nothing else matters

Never opened myself this way
Life is ours, we live it our way
All these words I dont just say
And nothing else matters

Trust I seek and I find in you
Every day for us something new
Open mind for a different view
And nothing else matters

Never cared for what they do
Never cared for what they know
But I know

So close no matter how far
Couldnt be much more from the heart
Forever trusting who we are
And nothing else matters

Never cared for what they do
Never cared for what they know
But I know

Never opened myself this way
Life is ours, we live it our way
All these words I dont just say
And nothing else matters

Trust I seek and I find in you
Every day for us something new
Open mind for a different view
And nothing else matters

Never cared for what they say
Never cared for games they play
Never cared for what they do
Never cared for what they know
And I know

So close no matter how far
Couldnt be much more from the heart
Forever trusting who we are
No nothing else matters

The sound of Silence

Hello darkness, my old friend,
Ive come to talk with you again,
Because a vision softly creeping,
Left its seeds while I was sleeping,
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence.

In restless dreams I walked alone
Narrow streets of cobblestone,
neath the halo of a street lamp,
I turned my collar to the cold and damp
When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of
A neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence.

And in the naked light I saw
Ten thousand people, maybe more.
People talking without speaking,
People hearing without listening,
People writing songs that voices never share
And no one deared
Disturb the sound of silence.

Fools said i,you do not know
Silence like a cancer grows.
Hear my words that I might teach you,
Take my arms that I might reach you.
But my words like silent raindrops fell,
And echoed
In the wells of silence

And the people bowed and prayed
To the neon God they made.
And the sign flashed out its warning,
In the words that it was forming.
And the signs said, the words of the prophets
Are written on the subway walls
And tenement halls.
And whispered in the sounds of silence

I don't remember what was the last song I liked so much .What was yours?

Hotel Taj : icon of whose India ?

Gnani Sankaran- Tamil writer, Chennai.

Watching at least four English news channels surfing from one another during the last 60 hours of terror strike made me feel a terror of another kind. The terror of assaulting one's mind and sensitivity with cameras, sound bites and non-stop blabbers. All these channels have been trying to manufacture my consent for a big lie called - Hotel Taj the icon of India.
Whose India, Whose Icon ?

It is a matter of great shame that these channels simply did not bother about the other icon that faced the first attack from terrorists - the Chatrapathi Shivaji Terminus (CST) railway station. CST is the true icon of Mumbai. It is through this railway station hundreds of Indians from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan, West Bengal and Tamilnadu have poured into Mumbai over the years, transforming themselves into Mumbaikars and built the Mumbai of today along with the Marathis and Kolis

But the channels would not recognise this. Nor would they recognise the thirty odd dead bodies strewn all over the platform of CST. No Barkha dutt went there to tell us who they were. But she was at Taj to show us the damaged furniture and reception lobby braving the guards. And the TV cameras did not go to the government run JJ hospital to find out who those 26 unidentified bodies were. Instead they were again invading the battered Taj to try in vain for a scoop shot of the dead bodies of the page 3 celebrities.

In all probability, the unidentified bodies could be those of workers from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh migrating to Mumbai, arriving by train at CST without cell phones and pan cards to identify them. Even after 60 hours after the CST massacre, no channel has bothered to cover in detail what transpired there.

The channels conveniently failed to acknowledge that the Aam Aadmis of India surviving in Mumbai were not affected by Taj, Oberoi and Trident closing down for a couple of weeks or months. What mattered to them was the stoppage of BEST buses and suburban trains even for one hour. But the channels were not covering that aspect of the terror attack. Such information at best merited a scroll line, while the cameras have to be dedicated for real time thriller unfolding at Taj or Nariman bhavan.

The so called justification for the hype the channels built around heritage site Taj falling down (CST is also a heritage site), is that Hotel Taj is where the rich and the powerful of India and the globe congregate. It is a symbol or icon of power of money and politics, not India. It is the icon of the financiers and swindlers of India. The Mumbai and India were built by the Aam Aadmis who passed through CST and Taj was the oasis of peace and privacy for those who wielded power over these mass of labouring classes. Leopold club and Taj were the haunts of rich spoilt kids who would drive their vehicles over sleeping Aam Aadmis on the pavement, the Mafiosi of Mumbai forever financing the glitterati of Bollywood (and also the terrorists) , Political brokers and industrialists.

It is precisely because Taj is the icon of power and not people, that the terrorists chose to strike.

The terrorists have understood after several efforts that the Aam Aadmi will never break down even if you bomb her markets and trains. He/she was resilient because that is the only way he/she can even survive.

Resilience was another word that annoyed the pundits of news channels and their patrons this time. What resilience, enough is enough, said Pranoy Roy's channel on the left side of the channel spectrum. Same sentiments were echoed by Arnab Goswami representing the right wing of the broadcast media whose time is now. Can Rajdeep be far behind in this game of one upmanship over TRPs ? They all attacked resilience this time. They wanted firm action from the government in tackling terror.

The same channels celebrated resilience when bombs went off in trains and markets killing and maiming the Aam Aadmis. The resilience of the ordinary worker suited the rich business class of Mumbai since work or manufacture or film shooting did not stop. When it came to them, the rich shamelessly exhibited their lack of nerves and refused to be resilient themselves. They cry for government intervention now to protect their private spas and swimming pools and bars and restaurants, similar to the way in which Citibank, General Motors and the ilk cry for government money when their coffers are emptied by their own ideologies.

The terrorists have learnt that the ordinary Indian is unperturbed by terror. For one whose daily existence itself is a terror of government sponsored inflation and market sponsored exclusion, pain is something he has learnt to live with. The rich of Mumbai and India Inc are facing the pain for the first time and learning about it just as the middle classes of India learnt about violation of human rights only during emergency, a cool 28 years after independence.

And human rights were another favourite issue for the channels to whip at times of terrorism.

Arnab Goswami in an animated voice wondered where were those champions of human rights now, not to be seen applauding the brave and selfless police officers who gave up their life in fighting terorism. Well, the counter question would be where were you when such officers were violating the human rights of Aam Aadmis. Has there ever been any 24 hour non stop coverage of violence against dalits and adivasis of this country?

This definitely was not the time to manufacture consent for the extra legal and third degree methods of interrogation of police and army but Arnabs don't miss a single opportunity to serve their class masters, this time the jingoistic patriotism came in handy to whitewash the entire uniformed services.

The sacrifice of the commandos or the police officers who went down dying at the hands of ruthless terrorists is no doubt heart rending but in vain in a situation which needed not just bran but also brain. Israel has a point when it says the operations were misplanned resulting in the death of its nationals here.

Khakares and Salaskars would not be dead if they did not commit the mistake of traveling by the same vehicle. It is a basic lesson in management that the top brass should never t ravel together in crisis. The terrorists, if only they had watched the channels, would have laughed their hearts out when the Chief of the Marine commandos, an elite force, masking his face so unprofessionally in a see-through cloth, told the media that the commandos had no idea about the structure of the Hotel Taj which they were trying to liberate. But the terrorists knew the place thoroughly, he acknowledged.

Is it so difficult to obtain a ground plan of Hotel Taj and discuss operation strategy thoroughly for at least one hour before entering? This is something even an event manager would first ask for, if he had to fix 25 audio systems and 50 CCtvs for a cultural event in a hotel. Would not Ratan Tata have provided a plan of his ancestral hotel to the commandos within one hour considering the mighty apparatus at his and government's disposal? Are satelite pictures only available for terrorists and not the government agencies ? In an operation known to consume time, one more hour for preparation would have only improved the efficiency of execution.

Sacrifices become doubly tragic in unprofessional circumstances. But the Aam Aadmis always believe that terror-shooters do better planning than terrorists. And the gullible media in a jingoistic mood would not raise any question about any of these issues.

They after all have their favourite whipping boy - the politician the eternal entertainer for the non-voting rich classes of India.

Arnabs and Rajdeeps would wax eloquent on Nanmohan Singh and Advani visiting Mumbai separately and not together showing solidarity even at this hour of national crisis. What a farce? Why can't these channels pool together all their camera crew and reporters at this time of national calamity and share the sound and visual bites which could mean a wider and deeper coverage of events with such a huge human resource to command? Why should Arnab and Rajdeep and Barkha keep harping every five minutes that this piece of information was exclusive to their channel, at the time of such a national crisis? Is this the time to promote the channel? If that is valid, the politician promoting his own political constituency is equally valid. And the duty of the politican is to do politics, his politics. It is for the people to evaluate that politics.
And terrorism is not above politics. It is politics by other means.

To come to grips with it and to eventually eliminate it, the practice of politics by proper means needs constant fine tuning and improvement. Decrying all politics and politicians, only helps terrorists and dictators who are the two sides of the same coin. And the rich and powerful always prefer terrorists and dictators to do business with.

Those caught in this crossfire are always the Aam Aadmis whose deaths are not even mourned - the taxi driver who lost the entire family at CST firing, the numerous waiters and stewards who lost their lives working in Taj for a monthly salary that would be one time bill for their masters.

Postscript: In a fit of anger and depression, I sent a message to all the channels, 30 hours through the coverage. After all they have been constantly asking the viewers to message them for anything and everything. My message read: I send this with lots of pain. All channels, including yours, must apologise for not covering the victims of CST massacre, the real mumbaikars and aam aadmis of India. Your obsession with five star elite is disgusting. Learn from the print media please. No channel bothered. Only srinivasan Jain replied: you are right. We are trying to redress balance today. Well, nothing happened till the time of writing this 66 hours after the terror attack.

When the old order…

The Indian cricket team has seen two of their players retiring. The face of the team is bound to undergo a change. Will it be for the better or for the worse? How will the team cope? This is what kids had to say…

http://www.hindu.com/

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"With emerging talent how can one assume that the indian team will not do well."

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PHOTO: S. SUBRAMANIUM

What happens when legends call it a day? Who will take their place? We asked kids what they thought of this and most of them said the future did hold a lot of promise with younger players being given a chance to get in. So as they wave goodbye to the stalwarts there is hope in the future.


Shantanu, a Std. V student of D.A.V. school, thought that it was a positive change. He felt that India would win anyway with the fresh talent they would absorb after Kumble and Ganguly’s retirement. “The fact that they won’t be seen on the cricket pitch does make me sad,” he says. “It’s about time they retired, they have played brilliantly but the team needs to play on,” feels Shashank, a Std. VII student of The Grove School. He also adds that their retirement will not hamper the match but may just dampen the spirit for a while.

Aparajith and Indrajith, Std IX students of St. Bede’s, feel that cricket would never remain the same but its good that they are retiring at this stage as the team needs new players.

Photo: PTI

Sourav Ganguly: Fond farewell.

Akshaya, a Std. IX student of Balalok Matriculation School believes that opportunity should not be curbed and limited to the existing team. “With emerging talent how can one assume that the Indian team will not do well. I am positive that young blood will only work in favour of the team and giving chances to other players is only fair.”

Saying goodbye
However, Tejas a Std. VIII student of Sri Sankara Senior Secondary School feels that Kumble’s loss will be etched in history. He deems that Indian team does have good players both in the batting as well as bowling fields and hence there was no need to fret.

Photo: S. Subramanium



Anil Kumble: Time to say goodbye.

Aaron Fernandes, who studies in Std. VIII at Bishop Cotton’s Boys High School, said that Anil Kumble’s retirement came as a “sad and shocking” news to him. “He is the highest wicket taker in Indian Test Cricket and has been an inspiration to me as a cricketer. I feel he should not have retired so abruptly, but should have retired after the series. Anil Kumble was a ‘gentle giant’ as he spoke less and worked more on the field,” he said.

Sairam Ramesh, a student of Std. VIII, Frank Anthony Public School, feels that Anil Kumble has retired at the right age. “When he started off, he used to get two three wickets in an innings, but now the wickets have become scarce. He has inspired me because he studied very well even as he was pursuing his cricket career.”

Photo: AP

Rahul Dravid: Decisive moment.

Abhinav Manohar, of Std. IX student of St. Joseph’s European High School, said: “I am a state level under-14 player and Kumble has been my role model for a long time now. I feel he should have retired much earlier. Although Kumble was made the captain of the Indian test game a little too late and he had much more talent to showcase, it is time for him to hand over the mantle of captaincy to Dhoni. What Kumble lacked was a variety in his bowling.” Abhishek Kumar, a student of Std. XII, Decent Public School, said, “There are big expectations from the young guns. I think they will take some time to match the hopes.” Mohammed Arif, a student of Std. X, Decent Public School, called Sourav Ganguly his idol. “His retirement has disappointed me. He had in him a few more Tests. His retirement has created a big vacuum, which will be difficult to fill.”

Jamaluddin, a student of Std. VIII of the same school, felt Harbhajan Singh will take over as the senior spinner after Kumble’s retirement. “Gautam Gambhir has emerged as a good player at the top of the order, so Sourav Ganguly’s absence won’t be felt much.”

Photo: AFP


Sachin Tendulkar : All time favourite.

Meanwhile Shikha of Cambridge school, Noida, was unhappy that soon Dravid will go too.

Shaheer Raza, a student of Std. VI, Mothers Convent School, said “Retirement of senior cricket players is necessary. It gives a chance to the youngsters. It will be fruitful for the Indian cricket if they sit back and guide the new players.” Kulsum Fatima, a student of St. XI, Jamia Millia S.S.S., said that the retirement of Anil Kumble and Sourav Ganguly disappointed her. It was not the appropriate time for their retirement. Other Indian cricket players are now too young; they need the experience of the senior players, she felt while Shyam Rajan of DLF School felt that the seniors have said goodbye at the right time. Omkar Yadav , a student of Std. XII, Shri Krishna Inter College, said, “Retirement of senior players is at the right time. Now new players will get opportunity to play international cricket.”

Decent Public School’s Ram Yadav, a student of Std. IX said it was true that senior players were more-experienced but younger ones should be given a chance to play and lead the team. “M.S. Dhoni has set an example for the youngsters. Dhoni has proved his skill and intelligence in all forms of the game and lived up to the faith reposed in him.”

Why should we ban ‘live’ reporting of anti-terrorist & Hostage rescue missions ?

“Several foreign nationals are trapped in the Taj Hotel Mahal”
“The top management of a multinational corporation was meeting…”
“Terrorists are suspected to be on the 9th floor…”
“NSG troops are about to have arrived in Mumbai…”
“NSG commandos have entered the Hotel…”

Some of the information telecast live by all news channels on terror attack on Bombay last few days.

News channels have an objective—to fetch the latest news and share them with viewers, much before a competitor channel does that. But I feel this habit of indiscriminate live reporting, while a combat operation is in progress, can be catastrophic for the success of the military operations against terror.

Let us just think for a while. Do we really need to know everything on a ‘as soon as it happens’ basis? I feel not. Whether NSG commandos have just arrived at airport, or have entered the hotel or are on the first floor or second at this moment, is not necessary to be revealed to the general public on a realtime basis.

Showing such news live, will be immensely useful only to terrorists and their supporters outside.
Consider this. The commandos only know that the militants are somewhere inside the hotel, but the militants know everything about the movements and positions of their pursuers through TV.
Like:

# Who is on their trail (Army/ NSG/ local police, etc)
# What is their ETA (estimated time of arrival), which tells them, how much time they have before a gun battle would begin)
# Where they are right now, at the main entrance/ just entered their floor
# How is the world responding? Is there pressure mounting on the government to succumb to the demands of terrorists to get the hostages freed (so that they can act tough during negotiation)?
# How many of their friends are alive or dead (so that they can assess their strength)?
# What has been the impact of their strike-how many police and civilian dead, the current morale of police, who all as been detained/suspected?
# Live visuals of the street-to assess a possible escape strategy
# What information about them the outside world has (which floor they are in, their head count etc. And much more…

In my view, all this information, while useful to viewers and relatives of victims, also helps the terrorists/ militants to consolidate their position and pose a greater challenge to commandos trying to hunt them down and/ or rescue the hostages.

Why is our media helping them by airing live all the sensitive information about the anti terror operations?

The common man does not need to know them on a live basis.

Can’t the information & broadcasting ministry think of banning live reporting during a hostage crisis? Let the channels air the news with a delay of few hours, so that the police and security agencies will have a lead time of few hours, wherein terrorists would be as equally uninformed as they are.

Please note that I am not advocating censorship. I am all for free speech and expression. What I am proposing, is that security agencies should have the power to impose a delay of say three to six hours w.r.t live reporting of anti terror operations.

Let the TV channels record whatever they want, but they should be aired only after a gap of few hours. I do not think anyone loses anything with this.

The movie A Wednesday also shares same opinion. I feel the good old days of oncein a day news bulletin was far better.

What do you think?

(This post is dedicated to all the brave police officials and innocent civilians who lost their lives in yesterday’s terror attack in Bombay)

Union Home minister Shivraj patil resigns - Breaking news

Breaking News! Under fire from several quarters for his "inability" to prevent the rising terror attacks in India, Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil resigned, owning moral responsibility for the loss of lives and properties in Mumbai due to the recent terror attacks. The terror attack in Mumbai was the immediate cause for his resignation.

Shivraj Patil's own partymen from Congress and other UPA partners were gunning for his head. The BJP, Left and other political parties have been demanding for Shivraj Patil's resignation for a long time. The UPA government did not want to take any chance over Shivraj Patil in the wake of rising anger and emotion in the public after the terror attacks in Mumbai. Pranab Mukherjee is tipped to be the next Home Minister of India.

Where is thackery now ?? after mumbai mayhem, Raj and his pseudo feelings

Raj and his pseudo feelings. Where is Raj Thackeray & his ‘brave’ sena? Forget about he supporting the country, he didn’t even come to save his own state/city. Over 200 NSG from all parts of the country including Bihar and no Marathi Manoos, have been fighting to take terrorists out of Mumbai. Isn’t it ironic that when we required him and his ’sena’ the most, he was no where to be seen? Hitting on gullible poor Indians, this is the true face of his politics. Use ’solvable’ NON-issues to politicize his career.

Poor Raj

Where is his face now in the midst of all the chaos the mumbai has been under the last 4 days ?? What will he say now?? when the National Security Guard (NSG) with all its commandos came in to rescue the Hotels. They hardly cared about their lives as they fought not just for their countrymen but also for the foreigners saving the country some pride from this adverse situation...

Now it seems hez blaming the NCP Govt. for sending the Mumbaikar - Kakre, vijay and all for sending them to rescue foreigners from the Islamist terrorists The article in zeenews

How easily would his ’sena’ would come and bash people for buying greeting cards on Valentine’s day, his men would bash outsiders for ‘working’ in Maharashtra and now when his own people were brutally murdered, he has no qualms and watches TV in the comfort of his luxury home.

Now as i wrote this article im hearing the news about the resignation of the home minister Shivraj Patil facing the intelligence lapse in mumbai. I seriously think that its time the UPA led govt. had to tighten its belt to curb the violence and peaking violence reaching newer highs everytime it strikes.

Wonderful story...read till the end (Kindly dont avoid)

An wonderful story i got through the chain of mails... I think we all have something to learn form this....

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Monica married Hitesh this day. At the end of the wedding party,

Monica's mother gave her a newly opened bank saving passbook.

With Rs.1000 deposit amount.

Mother: 'Monica, take this passbook. Keep it as a record of your marriage

life. When there's something happy and memorable happened in your new

life, put some money in. Write down what it's about next to the line. The

more memorable the event is, the more money you can put in. I've done the

first one for you today. Do the others with Hitesh.When you look back

after years, you can know how much happiness you've had.'

Monica shared this with Hitesh when getting home. They both thought it

was a great idea and were anxious to know when the second deposit can be

made.

This was what they did after certain time:

- 7 Feb: Rs.100, first birthday celebration for Hitesh after marriage

- 1 Mar: Rs.300, salary raise for Monica

- 20 Mar: Rs.200, vacation trip to Bali

- 15 Apr: Rs.2000, Monica got pregnant

- 1 Jun: Rs.1000, Hitesh got promoted

..... and so on...

However, after years, they started fighting and arguing for trivial

things.They didn't talk much. They regretted that they had married the

most nasty people in the world.... no more love...Kind of typical

nowadays, huh?

One day Monica talked to her Mother:

'Mom, we can't stand it anymore. We agree to divorce. I can't imagine how

I decided to marry this guy!!!'

Mother: 'Sure, girl, that's no big deal. Just do whatever you want if you

really can't stand it. But before that, do one thing first. Remember the

saving passbook I gave you on your wedding day? Take out all money and

spend it first. You shouldn't keep any record of such a poor marriage.'

Monica thought it was true. So she went to the bank, waiting at the queue

and planning to cancel the account.

While she was waiting, she took a look at the passbook record. She looked,

and looked, and looked. Then the memory of all the previous joy and

happiness just came up her mind. Her eyes were then filled with tears. She

left and went home.

When she was home, she handed the passbook to Hitesh, asked him to spend

the money before getting divorce.

The next day, Hitesh gave the passbook back to Monica. She found a new

deposit of Rs.5000. And a line next to the record: 'This is the day I

notice how much I've loved you thru out all these years. How much happiness

you've brought me.'

They hugged and cried, putting the passbook back to the safe.

Do you know how much money they had saved when they retired? I did not

ask.I believe the money did not matter any more after they had gone thru

all the good years in their life.

"When you fall, in any way,

Don't see the place where you fell, Instead see the place from where you

slipped.

Life is about correcting mistakes!"

Taare Zameen Par DVD: A treat for film fans

One of the most important things about acting is that you should not act." Advice, among the very first in Aamir Khan's first lecture to the 60 or so children of The New Era High School (the boarding school in Panchgani) who gave up their winter break to appear in Taare Zameen Par (2007). I'd been looking forward to the Taare Zameen Par DVD set because after the Lagaan DVD set (which I absolutely loved, as discussed here), it was the second collector's edition offering by the actor/singer/director/producer. The T-Series release (notes here) is all that's available and only in India -- a friend was kind to send it my way (there's more on the DVD format/release below). And was it worth looking forward to or what?!

The case is shaped like a textbook. Its durability in the long term warrants some concern, but that's minor when its contents are considered. This is how the discs are packaged:

A booklet introduces the characters. Full marks to whoever designed the cover for reminding us of our notebooks and how we were required to present them. It's very nicely presented from the inside too, here (right) is a sample page (click on image to enlarge):

There's Ishaan's flipbook, which I'll stay away from for fear of playing spoiler to those who haven't yet seen the film. And this is perhaps the only still image of the Taare Zameen Par pencil on the internet, which could mean one of two things: 1) Bollywood-themed pencils just aren't very popular; or 2) I need to get a life :o)

There are replicas of two beautiful paintings (I'd estimate they're about 8.25 x 10.5 in) by 'eminent watercolourist Samir Mondal made especially for the film'. If you've seen the film, you know how beautifully they were used. (If you are a fan of paintings, samirmondal.com has some fine examples of the artist's work.) Here's a sample:

Disc 1: The film, and director's commentary

The commentary lasts the length of the film, and is in English! Aamir makes it clear at the outset it has to do not with describing the scenes, but in sharing the challenges faced in the filmmaking process -- what they liked, what they disliked and edited out, and what they disliked but kept (and why). It's a gift for fans of film -- and it's amazing to learn even bits of the detail that went into every little shot. To learn that the background score was often played live by Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy on the sets. Or that Aamir sought help from the Maharashtra Dyslexia Association throughout the project. Or that it took eight evenings to shoot a five minute long sequence in twilight. Or that the song Kholo Kholo Darwaaze was almost edited out (no!). Or that the final scene had over 1200 children. There are countless such examples. There is even an interesting story behind Darsheel Safary (Ishaan Awasthi), Sheru and Johnny!

What was great about the commentary was that there was no hesitation to identify flaws and accept mistakes. It's not the typical fluff we find elsewhere. Think of Aamir's criticism as almost a lessons learned session for him and his crew, and an eye-opener for some of us who know very little (if anything) about filmmaking. The commentary also includes references to his past works and what he learned from them that he incorporated in his work ethic as director, which is a real treat if you've seen the films he mentions.

Aside: About the only thing he did not discuss were the posters/pictures of two sports icons -- Sachin Tendulkar and Roger Federer -- in the kids' room (click the image to enlarge). If you've been reading his blog, you'll know he has dedicated posts to each of his favorites (on Sachin, on Federer)! Should have been brought up :o)

Disc 2: Making, Deleted Scenes, Panel Discussion, Stills, Trailers

a. The making is fascinating. You can watch it (at these links: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3) thanks to fellow Aamirian SkorpionChik! It was amusing to hear Lalitha Lajmi (Guru Dutt's sister, her role in the film mentioned in this post) say, "I became like a teenager when I saw him."

They didn't mention this in the making, but this sequence, not related to the film, was hilarious. I'd bet the dance steps by Tanay Chheda (right, he played Rajan Damodaran) here are adapted from Rangeela (1996). Hilarious!

This bit reminded me of Aamir in the song Hosh Waalon Ko Khabar Kya in Sarfarosh (1999 -- reviewed here) and Mangal Pandey (2005 -- reviewed here).

Just like they did with the Lagaan DVD, they have footage here from the narration of the script. Here are Aamir and his wife Kiran responding to "Tom and Jerry ka baap kaun?"

b. The seven deleted scenes are a treat too. Hosted by Aamir (sporting his Ghajini look this time, complete with the haircut and following the workout routine for the film). Much better than the deleted scenes in Lagaan, I'll admit. Some of them were rather short (even less than a minute long), enough to question them being edited out. There was even a scene with a qawwali! This is also where the original title of the film is shared -- it was to be in English, and had nothing to do with 'stars'. If you cannot wait to know, I wouldn't mind giving it away.

c. The stills gallery was a welcome surprise. It has scores of images from the sets, with some really good captions (reminded me of Bollyviewer!). Sample this:

d. Aamir moderates a discussion (in Hindi/Urdu) on dyslexia, its symptoms, approaches to combating it, where to go for help, and some generic parenting advice, with a panel comprising: Medha Lotlekar, Educator; Vrajesh Udani, Child Neurologist; Masarrat Khan, leader of the Maharashtra Dyslexia Association; and Dr. Harish Shetty, Clinical Psychologist. The discussion is much more direct in raising awareness of dyslexia and other conditions. It is very welcome (especially for teachers and parents in India -- the issues aren't often discussed head-on), because it is the source of inspiration for the film. The best advice for parents might just be to encourage children to foster a culture of inclusion, and to not be disillusioned by the stress of competition -- move forward, but take others along.

It is here that Aamir shares his views on the ineptitude of academia in India to deal with learning disabilities. Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) and Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), and their differences, are discussed in fair detail. So are autism, down syndrome, and other mental challenges. And it is here that the film's tagline -- Every Child is Special -- is applied using even more real medical and academic frameworks.


Disc 3: Background Score
As noted in this post, I'd written to Aamir the day after I saw the film, requesting a background score release. Maybe several thousand did, or maybe it was intended all along. Whatever the case, it's great that they released it, because the score is brilliant, and carries a narrative of its own. In that, it is to me as good as the soundtrack. If you haven't seen the film and get your hands on it, maybe you could try listening to the score first to see if you can guess the progress of Ishaan's many moods through the film?! That'd be a fun exercise. Nikumbh Ishaan Montage is by far my favorite track. It's very, very well done, and the harmonica, guitar, piano and drums are all beautifully combined.

In Disc 2 (part 'a' above), Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy discussed how cool it was to play live on the sets. Must've been fun, and very challenging. Here's Mr. Loy:

A note on the DVD formats
If you do not have a region-free DVD player or cannot connect your computer to your television set, I suggest you wait for the U.S. release (the first ever of an Indian film by Walt Disney) which should make it by the end of the year. The Disney DVD release calendar doesn't yet have the information. I've always wanted to sound like an official correspondent, so I can finally say that a Disney Films representative who was contacted for more information declined to comment (read: never replied to my e-mail :P). A search for 'Taare Zameen Par' on the website returned no results as of 10/11/2008.


And finally
I'll hope to have more information on the U.S. release as we move forward. This T-Series release in India is, as the U.S. release will be, a welcome addition to any film collection. The special features and director's commentary make the set well, well worth experiencing. For its primary audience, the Indian market, it is perfectly compiled, and we can only hope that our local release will have as many goodies. Thank you for the treat, Aamir bhai!


Set Rating: 4.75/5 (Excellent!)
I cannot stop singing praises for it :)

Abhiyum Naanum (2008) - Trisha, Prakash Raj

Banner: Duet Movies, MoserbaerCast: Trisha, Aishwarya, Prakash RajDirection:

RadhamohanProduction: Prakash RajMusic: Vidhyasagar

Track List
Azhagiya Azhagiya - S.P. Balasubramaniam
Chinnamma Kalyanam - Kailash Kher
Moongil Vittu - Madhu Balakrishnan
Ore Oru Oorile - Kailash Kher
Pachai Katre - Sadhana Sargam
Sher Punjabi - Rehan Khan
Vaa Vaa Yen - Madhu Balakrishnan
Ore Oru Oorile - Instrumental
Vaa Vaa Yen - Instrumental
Pachai Kaatre - Instrumental
Azhagiya Azhagiya - Instrumental

Megaupload Link
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=EYPBBJJ7

Rapidshare Link
http://rapidshare.com/files/149051342/Abhiyum_Naanum_Tamilterminal.Net.rar.html

Kind-of Quotes

If you can dream and not make dreams your master....
If you can Think and not make those Thoughts your Aim...
If you can meet with Triumph & Disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same
If you can fill the unforgetting minute
with 60 seconds of distance travelled
Yours is Earth and everything in it...
and whats more.. ??
You'll be a MAN my son, You'll be a man

dont worry about the people in your past;
There is a reason they didn't make it TO YOUR FUTURE

i was born genius but education ruined me

It breaks your heart to see one you love is happy with some else, but its more painful to know the one you love is more unhappier with you.

you cant stop what is coming

imperfection is beauty; madness is genius; its better to be absolutely riduculous than to be absolutely stupid

Im a NUT but i can SCREW well

Im so good at being bad

life isn't about finding yourself; life is about creating yourself

Jurassic Park Creator Michael Crichton Is Dead

He had truly led us into his world of imagination through his fiction works that were fascinating and are usually told out of time.... like they say he is a prognosticator who knew where these Technologies would lead us to and had lot of imaginative intuitions on the implications of the technological advancements..... its really a worrysome news for all readers and his followers like me and is indeed hard to digest his sudden demise even as we were expecting his next Fiction work....

So sad to agnise that after his NEXT, its nothing.. we miss u crichton.....

Chuppandi AKA Subbu

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Jurassic Park Creator Michael Crichton Is Dead
Swapnil Bhartiya, EFY News Network (Thursday, November 06, 2008 11:13:26 AM)

The magician who brought alive dinosaurs has died at the age of 66.

Thursday, November 06, 2008: Michael Crichton, the author of the phenomenon Jurassic Park, died Tuesday at the age of 66. He was suffering from cancer. Crichton was a multi-talented person. Regarded as the father of techno-thriller, he was also a film producer, film director, medical doctor and television producer. His books have sold over 150 million copies worldwide. His works were usually based on the action genre and heavily featured technology and tried to peep into the consequences of misuse of technology.

"Michael's talent out-scaled even his own dinosaurs of Jurassic Park," says Steven Spielberg, the director of 1993's Jurassic Park. "He was the greatest at blending science with big theatrical concepts, which is what gave credibility to dinosaurs again walking the earth. In the early days, Michael had just sold the Andromeda Strain to Robert Wise at Universal, and I had recently signed on as a contract TV director there. My first assignment was to show Michael Crichton around the Universal lot. We became friends and professionally Jurassic park, ER and Twister followed. Michael was a gentle soul who reserved his flamboyant side for his novels. There is no one in the wings that will ever take his place."

There is a very interesting anecdote. During his undergraduate study at Harvard University, Crichton copy-pasted an essay by George Orwell and submitted it as his own. But the essay of Orwell was marked as 'B' grade. The experiment of Crichton worked, and he learned that the mediocre people just cannot appreciate the quality work.

Chaos was one of the focus areas of Crichton's works. Most of his plots portrayed technological developments going out of control and thus leading to chaos. Jurassic Park, The Andromeda Strain, The Terminal Man, Airframe or Westworld – they all have the same focus, technological advancements going awry.

Expressing his grief at the unfortunate demise of Crichton, Arvind Mishra, secretary, Indian Science Fiction Writers' Association, said, "If anyone is to be given a sole credit to popularise science fiction in India and take this genre to even gullible masses through his epoch-making writing -- Jurrasic Park, it it no one else than Michael Crichton."

The author who wrote the famous lines in Jurassic Park, "Life breaks Free...But life finds a way" has finally gone to an eternal sleep from where he will never wake up, leaving us behind with a lot to learn. And remember his warning, "Let's be clear. The planet is not in jeopardy. We are in jeopardy. We haven't got the power to destroy the planet - or to save it. But we might have the power to save ourselves."
-- Swapnil Bhartiya

Bhuvan, ISRO's new eye in the sky - ISRO's take on Google

AHMEDABAD : Imagine if you could count the lions in Gir or fishermen find concentration of fish in the sea, just by dragging a mouse on a computer screen. Space Applications Centre of ISRO has just made that possible by an innovation called Bhuvan.

Bhuvan, meaning earth, is the addition to the numerous scientific innovations by SAC and is a satellite mapping tool, just like Google Earth or Wikimapia, but allows you to zoom far closer than the aerial view from a chopper. If Google Earth shows details upto 200 metres distance and Wikimapia upto 50 metres, Bhuvan will show images upto 10 metres, which means you can easily see details upto a three floor high building and also add information.

Announcing this at the Indian National Cartographic Association (INCA) International Congress here on Tuesday ISRO chairman Dr G Madhavan Nair said, "Bhuvan will use the data recorded by the Indian satellites only. The prototype of Bhuvan will be ready by the end of November and ISRO is hoping to officially launch the service by March next".

He added that while other mapping sites take four years to update, Bhuvan will be upgraded every year. "This will be able to give you an image from only 10 meters away", he said to the excited gathering.

Unlike the other two webmaps, Bhuvan will focus only on the Indian sub-continent.

"With Bhuvan we will be able to produce very local information which will be specific to only to our own country. This information available from this mapping system will be useful in addressing very local problems like floods, famines, infrastructure development, education and much more," Nair said.

"The information on Bhuvan will be layer wise and the options of viewing filtered information will be available. Inputs from a lot of local players, like farmers, fishermen and likes who know the local area in and out, will also being integrated in Bhuvan. This is for the primary reason to make it of more use to the general public," he said.

WHAT BHUVAN MEANS

Google Earth Bhuvan

Zoom levels up to 200 mt Zoom levels up to 10 mt

Single layer information Multi-layer information

Images upgraded every 4 years Images upgraded every year

No alternate viewing options Options of viewing on different dates

Uses international satellites Uses Indian satellites

Feel Like Working ???

If you feel like doing some work, sit down and….

Wait until that feeling goes away.

How to build your inhouse magazine.

An excellant slide presenation

View Upload your own

Indian Video Vaults like youtube for Desi Janta

as manishxing reports
After the huge success of youtube and being aquired by google for 2.4Billion dollar, lots of indian startups are coming on same domain to make it big like youtube. Not sure if any one can become as big as youtube but definately some of the companies would give birth to focused content for desi junta .

I have compiled a list youtube clones for desi content with there alexa ranking..

rajshri.com : 8,407
videodubba.com : 62,078
apnatube.com : 67,576
meravideo.com : 77,517
aapkavideo.com : 93,864
konkan.tv : 108,342
tumtube.com : 167,170
punjabitube.com : 210,495
toad.in : 332,292
infeedia.com : 411,612
canaravideo.com : 434,736
4indian.tv : 471,324
sixer.tv : 476,685
crictv.com : 537,556
connectfilms.com : 568,903
merovideo.com : 918,255
tubedesi.com : 952,068
motionflicks.com : 1,110,983
layfile.com : 1,696,130
nautanki.tv : 2,297,228
desiscreen.com : 3470,560

IIT IIM Grads introduce in mouse to bell the CAT

I stumbled upon this cool free portal for CAT guys http://www.catindiaonline.com/. The site offers online mock CAT tests. This site s very different and has many more features than what one may think of. I must say catindiaonline.com impressed me from the word go! Their test framework is quite cool and analysis part is something that I bet that you can’t find anywhere else. Their best part is their in-depth analysis that gives gory details of one’s performance - topic wise, difficulty wise, time requirements wise, comparative analysis of performance etc… etc… The analysis really blew me off and very precisely pointed out the issues with my preparation. In the end, I found there is something call recommendations which was recommending me how you should have taken the test to maximize your score…they didn’t ask much to register and everything seems really cool…Go and check out its fun to try it irrespective of CAT aspirants.

How to build Google like team

1. Teams size should be less than 5.

2. All leaders no followers.

3. Don’t hire spotless people, Look for spots in the people which matters the most.

4. Punish mediocre success and reward excellent failures.

5. Don’t award TOP 1% and create 99% people unhappy. Award TOP 99% and Fire rest 1%, create 100% happy employees.

6. Freedom to loose = Celebrate failures = Team which looses most wins on creativity.

7. Kill “Lick my ass” kinda managers.

8. Kill project meetings instead go for drink parties and fight over your creative opinion.

9. Don’t work on a project instead own project.

10. Bring design and creativity in all aspect of work.

11. Don’t work when your energies are low as your work requires the best times of the day.

12. Fire managers and buy Leaders.

13. Creativity is driven by stomach so don’t work with empty stomach instead eat best food you love.

14. Don’t earn money earn reputation.

15. First build the product than collect the requirement than do project planning than test it and if it sucks.

Repeat the above cycle.

Aravind Adiga - Profoundly Indian - UMA MAHADEVAN-DASGUPTA

An excellent article in Frontline about the Indias new celebrity - Aravind Adiga... Aravind Adiga’s Man Booker Prize-winning debut novel, “The White Tiger”, is the story of India’s underclass and its life.

IN June 2006, in an essay titled “My Lost World” published in Time magazine, Aravind Adiga wrote about a personal search he made in the Indian city where he grew up. That city was Mangalore, nestled alongside the Western Ghats on the Karnataka coast. Born in Madras (now Chennai) in pre-liberalisation India, Adiga spent his early childhood years in that city before moving with his family to Mangalore, where his father worked as a doctor.

In Mangalore, Adiga first attended Canara High School and then St. Aloysius High School. Despite the loss of his mother to cancer shortly before his secondary school leaving certificate examinations, he reportedly stood first in the State. He knew the importance of education. “When I was growing up,” he wrote in the Time essay, “young men of all religions were united by shared values of hard work, enterprise and a desire to get out of Mangalore as quickly as possible. My brother left when he was 18. I left when I was 16. Many of those who got out never returned. There was no need to go back because the place never seemed to change.”

Adiga left Mangalore in 1991 when his father moved to Australia. Returning to the city 15 years later as a journalist with Time, he found it vastly changed. The population had doubled. Shopping malls and high-rise apartment buildings had reshaped the skyline. There were now five medical colleges, four dental colleges, 14 physiotherapy colleges and 350 schools, colleges and polytechnics.

The new affluence seemed to have come at a price, however, as Adiga wrote: “I met neighbours, relatives and classmates, and each had done well in some way – one had his own house, another a car. But each also had some sorrow we could hardly have imagined. A Catholic friend’s daughter had married a Hindu, and her family no longer spoke to her. A Hindu friend’s daughter had been divorced by her husband. Divorce, extramarital affairs, interreligious marriages, homosexual flings – the doors of experience had swung open in Mangalore. The small city had grown up.”

Looking around the transformed city, he also noticed “a group of drifters and homeless men, some carrying rolled-up mattresses” – part of the underclass who seemed to have been left out of the story of India’s growth. Adiga was curious and troubled by the sight, and during his travels in India as a journalist, he wanted to find out more. The White Tiger, Adiga’s Man Booker Prize-winning debut novel, is the story of this underclass and its life – begging for food, sleeping under concrete flyovers, defecating on the roadsides, shivering in the cold, struggling, in the 21st century, for its freedom. The White Tiger gives this underclass a voice: one that is intelligent, savagely funny and quite unforgettable. It is a voice that seeks out and understands the power of beauty: “If you taught every poor boy how to paint, that would be the end of the rich in India.” But it is also a voice of anger and protest, and it is almost completely unsentimental. “I did my job with near total dishonesty, lack of dedication, and insincerity – and so the tea shop was a profoundly enriching experience.”

The novel is structured as a series of letters written to the Chinese Premier by a former car driver from Bihar. Why the Chinese Premier? “Because,” the narrator Balram Halwai, now based in the city of Bangalore, writes, “the future of the world lies with the yellow man and the brown man now that our erstwhile master, the white-skinned man, has wasted himself through buggery, mobile phone usage and drug abuse.”

Balram explains, further, why he is writing in the language of the “erstwhile master”: “Neither you nor I speak English, but there are some things that can be said only in English.” Things like Balram’s story of “entrepreneurship”. The Premier of “the Freedom-Loving Nation of China” is apparently interested in the story of Indian entrepreneurship; Balram, the narrator of the novel, is an entrepreneur based in the city of start-ups. His story, he assures his addressee, will not be found in the white-washed version or the cellophane-wrapped pirated copies of business bestsellers that are sold at traffic signals: “Don’t waste your money on those American books. They’re so yesterday,” he writes. “I am tomorrow.”

He is, furthermore, “The White Tiger” of the title: “A Thinking Man/And an entrepreneur/Living in the world’s centre of technology and outsourcing Electronics City Phase 1 (just off Hosur Main Road), Bangalore, India.” The India of that address is actually two countries in the novel: one of “Light” with access to education, health care, good roads, electricity, running water, as well as hope and justice; and the other of “Darkness”, where there is only deprivation and injustice. Balram’s story is about how he clawed his way out of the Darkness into the Light.

Balram, or Munna as he was named by his parents in the Darkness where he was born, is the younger son of a rickshaw-puller, “a human beast of burden”, in Laxmangarh, a tiny village in Gaya on the banks of the river Ganga. One of Munna’s first lessons in growing up comes when he follows his family members on his mother’s funeral procession. “My mother’s body had been wrapped from head to toe in a saffron silk cloth, which was covered in rose petals and jasmine garlands. I don’t think she had ever had such a fine thing to wear in her life. (Her death was so grand that I knew, all at once, that her life must have been miserable. My family was guilty about something.)”

Refusing to call him “Munna” because that is not a name at all, the teacher at the local primary school gives him a new name. But Balram is not destined to remain in school for very long: there is a wedding in the family, they have the girl, and therefore, as Balram writes, they are “screwed”. The family has taken a loan to pay for the wedding and the dowry, and they must now work for the moneylender to pay off the loan. So Kishan, Munna’s brother, takes him out of school and to the tea shop where they will spend their future working as “human spiders”, mopping the dirty floors or smashing chunks of coal against a brick.

Years later, while telling his story, the narrator reflects on this part of his life: “Me, and thousands of others in this country like me, are half-baked, because we were never allowed to complete our schooling. Open our skulls, look in with a penlight, and you’ll find an odd museum of ideas: sentences of history or mathematics remembered from school textbooks (no boy remembers his schooling like one who was taken out of school, let me assure you), sentences about politics read in a newspaper while waiting for someone to come to an office, triangles and pyramids seen on the torn pages of the old geometry textbooks which every tea shop in this country uses to wrap its snacks in, bits of All India Radio news bulletins, things that drop into your mind, like lizards from the ceiling, in the half hour before falling asleep – all these ideas, half formed and half digested and half correct, mix up with other half-cooked ideas in your head, and I guess these half-formed ideas bugger one another, and make more half-formed ideas, and this is what you act on and live with.”

If we see the physicality of poverty (“My father’s spine was a knotted rope… cuts and nicks and scars, like little whip marks in his flesh, ran down his chest and waist…. The story of a poor man’s life is written on his body, in a sharp pen.”), we also see the carefully protected lifestyle of the ultra-rich: security guards, Alsatian dogs and, literally, bags of money.

The two worlds intersect within the strict bounds of the master-servant relationship. In Laxmangarh, the rich landlords are a pack of animals – stork, buffalo, wild boar and raven – who feed on the village until there is nothing left for anyone else, and the rest are forced to climb onto the packed buses that lead to the world outside – Dhanbad, Calcutta (Kolkata), Delhi – to find work.

In Delhi, the rich are driven around in air-conditioned cars, protected from the pollution that takes years off a man’s life. But Balram, as he drives the rich around in their cars, will always be a member of the world outside – a member of the servant class. The servant who washes his master’s legs in a bucket of dirty water and massages them; the servant who pours out the drinks while keeping one hand on the steering wheel and an eye on the road; the servant who can be smilingly cajoled into taking the rap when his employer, in a drunken haze in the middle of the night, drives the car over a small, dark ragged shape that might have been some sort of small animal but actually turns out to be someone’s child.

SHAUN CURRY/AFP

Aravind Adiga with the 2008 Booker Prize, in London on October 14.

Even Balram’s God is a master who demands gratitude for the scraps he gives him, as we read in one unforgettable scene. Once, returning to his village, Balram climbs to the top of a hill, to the black fort, and looks down at the view below him. “Up in the blue skies, God spreads His palm over the plains below, showing this little man Laxmangarh, its little tributary of the Ganga, and all that lies beyond: a million such villages, a billion such people. And God asks this little man: Isn’t it all wonderful? Isn’t it all grand? Aren’t you grateful to be my servant?”

Born in Chennai, brought up in Mangalore, writing about Delhi, and living in Mumbai, Adiga loves Tamil, speaks Kannada and writes in English. And in this language of the “erstwhile master”, without exoticism and without sentimentality, he has written a profoundly Indian story. It is not as if other writers have not written about the other, forgotten side of India.

For example, Amitav Ghosh, whose novel Sea of Poppies also appeared on the Man Booker shortlist for this year, has written memorably, with rich detail, compassion and wisdom, about those on the margins of history and geography as has Kiran Desai, in her Man Booker Prize-winning second novel, The Inheritance of Loss. Adiga’s prose is not quite so elegant, but the force of his writing comes from its savage humour and its strength of feeling.

The pages of the 34-year-old Adiga’s novel, however, are different, in their dark humour.

They are also incandescent with anger at the injustice, the futility, the sheer wrongness of a life such as the one from where a bright little boy called Munna, who was later called Balram Halwai in his school records, and then called the White Tiger of the jungle because of his good performance during a school inspection, was pulled out of school and told to smash coal for a tea shop. Where private armies roam about the fields, men and women live sad and stunted lives, and dreams are cut short even before they are fully formed.

Uma Mahadevan-Dasgupta is in the Indian Administrative Service. The views expressed in
this article are personal.

Indians fear Adiga's Revelation - Telegraph Reports

Indians fear Aravind Adiga's 'The White Tiger' says too much about them - Telegraph reports

Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger was praised for highlighting the injustices and poverty present in the rapidly changing India when it won the Man Booker Prize, but now many Indian critics have expressed outrage at the judges' decision.

Many Indians feel that Aravind Adiga's Booker Prize winning novel - The White Tiger - presents their country in a poor light Photo: EPA

For some, Adiga's savage indictment of the way the rich treat the servant class panders to western prejudices.

"I felt the book took us back three decades," said folk art expert Ritu Sethi. "It had every stereotype going in it. The BBC used to show nothing but cows on the roads for years. We're back to that with this book."

Others criticised the novel for being dull and demeaning. Author and playwright Manjula Padmanabhan dismissed it as "a tedious, unfunny slog".

She agreed that much of the recent hype about India as an emerging superpower was dishonest and complacent but asked: "Is this schoolboyish sneering the best that we can do?"

Having bought the book, affluent Indians may shift uncomfortably in their seats. The daily inhumanity shown by the rich towards their domestic staff in The White Tiger is something of which many will realise they too are guilty.

The fearful crime which the protagonist Balram Halwai commits will send a frisson of fear up their spines.

Adiga says the Indian middle class is paranoid about servants and their "laziness", "greed" and "thieving" tendencies but expresses amazement that, given the huge disparities of wealth, so few actually commit any crime.

"Look at the intimate access that servants have to their masters in their homes, and yet there are very few murders or attacks. But that doesn't reassure the middle class. It is becoming more insecure than before because it is richer now and has more to lose," says Adiga.

The White Tiger marks a new departure in India by portraying the emotions, sorrows, and aspirations of the hitherto invisible poor. For Adiga, his achievement is capturing "something new" in India, a stirring, a glimmer of a refusal by the poor to accept the fate ordained for them by their masters.

But this flicker of an "awakening" does not mean the end of the current social order where the poor slave 24/7 as cooks, cleaners, drivers, nannies and maids so that the well off can feel comfortable.

"The system is beginning to deteriorate but it remains. It will remain, but with higher levels of crime and lower levels of security," says Adiga.

The author looks at India with the perspective both of an insider, having grown up in India, and as outsider, having emigrated for years and then returned.

"As an immigrant in the US and England, I was an outsider. I spent a lot of time being confused, trying to figure things out. That was how I understood how Indian villagers feel when they move to the big cities for work," Adiga says.

William Green, former Time Asia Edior understands why the book has raised Indian hackles. "It is an unsettling novel, it touches very raw nerves, but I think he captures the complexity and subtlety of India in fiction in a way that you don't see in journalism," he says.

For some Indians, The White Tiger is an appalling regression. Just when they thought they had finally shed the old image of India as a land of poverty, cows and snakecharmers and started being respected as a hi-tech, prosperous nation, along comes Adiga to, as it were, rub their noses in the dirt again.

"I used to hate Naipaul for talking contemptuously about India, about how cleaners mop the floor in restaurants by crouching and moving like crabs and all that talk about Indians defecating in the open," said a freelance editor, Anjali Kapoor. "Adiga is the same, focussing on everything that is bad and disgusting."