email according to microsoft

It is only now that I see just how significantly Microsoft Outlook (and Outlook Express) have influenced sending, receiving and handling email.

In a bad way.

The proprietary PST format was only the tip of a compost heap. As with most Microsoft products, Outlook accommodates every email storage format as input, but refuses to let you escape the PST when you want to move to another email client. You're locked in. You're left staring at a horrible complicated binary format that eats up a lot of disk space (like you care).

Forums and newsgroups taught me the virtues of plain text, the value of HTML when used sparingly and only when appropriate, the importance of quoting. They also taught me about the flame wars dedicated to quoting/posting. Top posting was bad. Top quoting/Bottom posting and inline posting seemed better. Newsgroup management software managed threads. Every email message didn't have to look like it was responsible for managing the state of the conversation thus far. The corporate world taught me when top posting made sense -- it seemed like places shackled to an Exchange server and Outlook chewing away on everyone's disk never seemed to do well on communication. This meant that emails grew in size as the conversation went on until someone finally realised that one or more people who had to be part of this discussion had been left out. One "copying X" later, we have this snowball all set to mow another hapless inbox.

Until 2007, Outlook did a pathetic job with HTML (you remember all that XML cruft, don't you?). RTF is still around, though, and it's the default format. RTF still sucks. HTML is your best bet if you want to be nice to the Internet and the recipient's disk.

Outlook hates plain text. Make that "detests." Or "loathes." Condescendingly. Don't even bother thinking about quotation markers. Do it yourself. Text wrapping is awful. Outlook also employs what looks like one of the silliest wrapping algorithms ever known. No wrapping for the reader's convenience. If you try adding quotation markers, be prepared to send out email that looks uglier than Emran Hashmi. If you choose text, you get no support from the email client. To this cake of unpleasantness, add the icing of Outlook's "intelligent" handling of line breaks. It decides to strip "extra" line breaks in the copy that the recipient of your email sees. Your efforts in preparing a numbered list just got drowned in cowdung. Outlook can be configured not to do this, but try telling every possible recipient of every email you might send to configure their email client. Just try it. Go on. Try it.

I moved to Thunderbird and the move was painful. My obsession with folders and classification did not help. Proprietary email archival tools seamlessly "integrated" with the email client made matters challenging. It was arduous, manual and painful. At the end of it, I had all my email (except for some annoyances like embedded OLE images and the loss of BCC information) and it was not as demanding of disk space as Outlook was. Lightning was enough to help me respond to invitations and set up my calendar. Helpful posts on the Internet and having worked with LDAP helped me use the Global Address Book as well. There were other things I still needed Outlook for, but I had all my email.

All I have to do is deal with all the mocking snide remarks, the jokes and all that blah-blah predicated on "you Microsoft hater." I also have to learn to accept situations where top posting is unavoidable (this is when I use Outlook for the only -- IMHO -- thing it does well). I long for communities where email helps communication instead of heralding an avalanche.

I also have a chance to understand how even Thunderbird still has its share of annoyances.

I'm sure I haven't seen the last of TOFU, though.

multiplexing choice

I wonder how many users of either ... or realise that the expression can accommodate exactly two choices. Think of an exclusive or in logic, if you wanted some way to remember this. Abuse of the expression to stuff more choices is rife in usage, especially in conversations. A little popup in Eclipse today offered evidence that the Javadoc in Sun's JDK was not immune; Here's the extract from the documentation for the getTimeZone(String) method in the java.util.TimeZone class in J2SE 5.0 (I have underlined the guilty snippet):

getTimeZone

public static TimeZone getTimeZone(String ID)

Gets the TimeZone for the given ID.

Parameters:

ID - the ID for a TimeZone, either an abbreviation such as "PST", a full name such as "America/Los_Angeles", or a custom ID such as "GMT-8:00". Note that the support of abbreviations is for JDK 1.1.x compatibility only and full names should be used.

Returns:

the specified TimeZone, or the GMT zone if the given ID cannot be understood.

a commencement of innovation

I sat in a red chair at the Georgia Dome for the first time in my years in Sprawlopolis , one of many in attendance at Georgia Tech's Spring 2009 Commencement Ceremony for graduate students. After the obligatory blah-blah about "the nation's finest" and the "change the world" dogma, it was time for the meat of the ceremony, paradoxically the one least likely to be entertaining: the conferring of degrees. This is but a litany of names and the only ones who're really happy are the recipients who showed up and their well-wishers scattered in the crowd. However, if you have a place like Georgia Tech that is a melting pot of foreigners and you have an announcer who has to make sense of monikers that only look like different surreal flavours of alphabet soup.

Reportedly, each recipient can, on the piece of paper bearing his/her name, offer hints to assist in pronunciation. But IPA is not something you'd expect to know or use often. This means that most people don't really avail of this opportunity. People have also probably decided that the way their name is pronounced is hardly worth any importance in the ceremony.

This means that those like me in the audience who'd love any excuse to make the proceedings interesting welcomed the innovation of one of the announcers that evening. Faced with so many challenging combinations of vowels and consonants, she decided to be innovative as she tried to get her plosives and fricatives right. And we relished each inventive uttering; here are a few nuggets:

Sneha: snaaihaa
Chandrababu: cha.ndraabhaabhuu
David: daviiD
Madhav: madhaav
Deshpande: Desappaa.NDe
Elangovan: iilaa.Nguuvaan
Mayank: myaanak
Goel: gaaul
Nehil: naaiihiil
Jamsandekar: jamadiikhaar
Chetna: chaiintaa
Kher: kaii-iira
Kolhe: kwaalhe
Pai: peii
Panse: paan-saaii
Patil: paTiil
Devdutt: devaduut

I'd have shown up for the baccalaureate ceremony the next day but the roll call wasn't so promising.

f for franchise

all i wanna say is that they don't really care about us
-- [They Don't Care About Us/Michael Jackson]

Salil just made my day with a pointer to the most significant achievement in the history of voting in India -- the shift to using the most famous digit on the hand to place the mark of a voter. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, all people fortunate enough to (a) have found their place on a voters list in their wretched constituency, and (b) have managed to be able to enter the booth, choose a name and emerge triumphant at having fulfilled their civic responsibility will now be able to respond confidently to the question "did you vote?"; One must note that just how savvy our politicians are -- the state CM clearly has no idea what he just did by waving that digit at the camera; "Hold on," you might say, "this is probably just everyone making light of such a funny thing"; However, I must say, it's going to take a few centuries before the Indian media become open and the Indian politicians are capable of laughing at themselves. Meanwhile, we will do it for them. You may now return to the floor to laugh your guts out.

you paid for this typo

Users of the Oracle database may have seen the following error if they've been playing around with storing hierarchical data and running fancy queries to retrieve them using CONNECT BY:

ORA-30004: when using SYS_CONNECT_BY_PATH function, cannot have seperator as part of column value

Aside from the refusal to use definite or indefinite articles, there's a common misspelling of separator.

I really wish I could remember which series of Dell's projectors is plagued with a typo on the screen that notes that there's no signal. Somehow the misspelled form (singal) made it through all the editorial gates and stood out like King Kong's sore toe on every screen it was splashed on. Talk about sending out the wrong signals.

a momentary lapse of perspective

We return to the world of crapspeak to take a look at one of the finest creations to emerge from this foundry of neologism: the lazy verbose template approximated as "from a/an X perspective." The irony is that it represents anything but the perspective referred to. The variety of values that X can be assigned is astounding; consider programming, finished, usability, scrolling, development, management, QA, sanity, risk analysis, testing, performance. The list is endless; the pit is bottomless; the effluvium is eternal. What may not be obvious is just how these alternatives refuse to want to be strong adjectives. An adjective is what "X" should be, not some posturing noun or noun phrase (or some other part of speech that attempts a competent imitation of an adjective). Crapspeakers have long since decided to strip the phrase of its true purpose (to qualify a perspective) and bandy instead a tasteless aurally annoying stream of verbal diarrhoea that makes your brain cringe with repulsion. Has the crusade for a fresh perspective been abandoned? Or is it no longer fresh from a battle perspective?

nagesh does a godrejini

I must confess I wasn't keeping up with forthcoming movie releases as well, since I had never heard of 8x10 Tasveer until I caught the preview on YouTube a couple of weeks ago. It was written and cut like standard-issue Hollywood actioners with tantalising sprinklings of danger, suspense, intrigue and the like. I have to confess that although the premise was interesting and it was a relief to see Akshay Kumar in a film that was neither like a spelling snafu nor made by Priyadarshan, the usual doubt that this might well be a lift from foreign shores continued to linger. And then against the dark murky depths of somewhere underwater appeared letters in white proclaiming that this was a film by Nagesh Kukunoor. Call this a bias, but I was interested now.

The cast supporting AK and Ayesha Takia looked interesting: Sharmila Tagore, Girish Karnad, Anant Mahadevan (the last thriller I remember him in was Khiladi; I refuse to say more), Javed Jaffrey, Benjamin Gilani (by the Jugalbandi law, he's not going to be around after the first few reels). Aside from Mrs. Pataudi, the bag features people famous on television; it's something notable about Kukunoor's casting. Perhaps it'll become another reason to watch his films.

Another trailer ends with AK standing in a setup that can now only be referred to as a Ghajini setup. This Next-esque film has something to do with photographs and there we have a topless action star in a room that's got its share of photographs on the walls.

A third video that mixes footage from the trailer and some from the film along with questions answered by Nagesh Kukunoor betrays what might be the film's true raison d'etre: it's a film starring Godrej featuring everyone else (which is no surprise considering the "strategic partnership" with Godrej Security Systems). It looks like the days of Red Bull will be eclipsed by this new blatant sponsor fellatio.

And am I the only one seeing a photographic trend? Aa Dekhen Zara has just hit the marquee (and the dust?) and now this.

Before I forget, the Snoop Dogg on the soundtrack is Bohemia, a Pakistani-American Punjabi rapper who scats away against a familiar menacing brooding dark loop on the title track. Time to click publish.

pulp fiction: made in india: now in english

If you had, as I did, the habit of visiting every raddii store you'd have noticed those books in Hindi, which sported a woman striking a suggestive pose and the name of the author three words long, screaming out in large bold text on top, one word on a line. You'd have probably noticed how similar these covers were to those of the James Hadley Chase novels published by Corgi Books. The same number of words in the author's name too. The name was Surender/Surendra Mohan Pathak and he was (is) one of the most famous representatives of crime fiction in populist Hindi literature.

Back home in Chennai, Rakesh Kumar Khanna, Rashmi Ruth Devadasan and Kaveri Lalchand brought to life an independent publishing house named Blaft. Imagine a list of titles that includes The Blaft Anthology of Tamil Pulp Fiction, Zero Degree and when this key sketch gets real tongue is fork hen is cock
when this key sketch gets real my baby eagle's dream comes true (you may go back and read that again).

To this list comes a fresh addition: The first translation of SMP into English. ६५ लाख की डकैती is coming soon to with the moniker The 65 Lakh Heist. The man responsible for the translation is my dear friend Sudarshan Purohit, who, if you knew him, is a great man for the job. The book's already getting its share of press (consider the March 23, 2009 issue of Time Asia). Consider this a full-blown recommendation to rush to the bookstores to snag your copy. This is too cool to beat.

the big G it is!

It's amazing just how difficult it is to find information online sometimes! YT has finally found some proof that the mind behind the lyrics for Kaminey is indeed the big G:

But having said that, and with all due respect to Rahman, there are other music directors today who are also hugely talented, like Vishal Bhardwaj, with whom I am doing completely different music scores in Kaminay and Ishqiya and Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy. Then there is Ilayaraja, with whom I had a great time reuniting 25 years after Sadma in the forthcoming film SRK.

Ishqiya too. Waah (and duh!)!

crazy kiyaa re!

Who would have thought that Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy would one day join the renegade Anu Malik in the S*xy Hall of Fame? With 13B's Oh S*xy Mama the trio notch several points with the song. We'll get to Neelesh Mishra's fine lyrics fine. A thumping bass and a vocoder-ised voice cannot prepare you enough for a familiar voice breaking in with the mukha.Daa (तीखी तीखी आँखें बोलें). Wait a rapping minute. That's Mr. Harjit Singh Sehgal himself. When was the last time you heard that voice? And it has to be the first time he's worked for SEL. He shares the microphone with Anushka Manchanda and Loy Mendonsa. While the song doesn't scale the heights defined by the title song of Mission Istaanbul, it still manages something memorable for collectors of the ridiculously sublime in the chorus:

oh s*xy mama
won't you do the saa re gaa maa
won't you do the saa re gaa maa
yo s*xy s*xy mama

तेरे बिन रस्ते मैं भूलूँ
तेरे बिन कैसे मैं जी लूं
तेरे बिन क्या मैं beer या ज़हर पी लूं

In an ironic twist, the censorious board decided to return to the prudish antiquated ways of the past and deemed the word offensive, forcing the producers to take the easy way out and overdub crazy instead of the s-word in the promotional clips playing on various cable channels. The song remains untouched in the soundtrack for Yavarum Nalum, the Tamil version of the film. Moreover, the scissors have run differently for the Hindi and Tamil versions: the Hindi one's getting an 'A' certificate while the Tamile one is going to relish the wonderfully ambiguous 'U/A' certificate.

The other tunes on the soundtrack are a moderate mixed bag. ba.De se shahar me.n sports SEL touches and has Karthik doing an Abhijeet imitation. aasmaa.N o.Dh kar's gentle pop is destroyed by the presence of Chitra. sab khairiyat hai might qualify as SEL's shortest song on record: the theme for a TV show in the film comes up shorter than Ram Sampath's Quick Byte on Family: Ties Of Blood. The album's laced with an obligatory remix of every song; the remix of this short track burgeons into a bouncy catchy 4 minute version saved from derision by the incessant opening on snare and hi-hat, a composite electro-clap beat and a coda laced with an electric guitar solo peppered with fervent bends.

Tubby (Indrajit Sharma) and Parik (Parikshit Sharma), with a bucket of credits for arranging and producing film soundtracks, toss in the theme for the film employing clichéd dissonance, ominous piano, threatening strings, moody dark cellos, frenetic interplay, trip hop, tributes to Sandeep Chowta and the obligatory choir.

another melange of malapropisms marches in

Malicious and inappropriate is the patentably Indian abuse of would in places where will was the only choice (and hence, there was no choice at all, really). If someone can tell me how and why this abusage was born, I would (right usage!) be much obliged. Here's a page that opens with a storm of examples. Replace every would you see with a will and you will (not would!) see the correct form of the paragraph.

Next up is a common nugget that enjoyed a short life when we were all in school, because the English teacher was constantly telling you about positive, comparative and superlative forms of adjectives (If your English teacher did not do this, please stop reading at this point and find something else to do, preferably something that does not involve reading or writing). I like to call this the reinforced comparative. You can't blame the users (or abusers, if you will) for trying to take a simple rule for creating comparative forms and choosing to ignore the other rules (after all, it seems inconsistent to have more than one way to do the same thing ... unless you're writing Perl). These hapless souls decide to use more as the prefix for comparative forms. This in itself would not have been so bad if we had people saying "this is more good than that" or "things are more clear now"; a little advice can usually help in such matters. What seems incurable is the replacement of the positive form with the correct comparative form after having exercised the simple rule. This unfortunately gives us egregious exhibits like "this is more better than that" or "things are more clearer now." Want an example? Try Sukanya Verma's notes on a slide in an old Rediff special (ironically about English in Bollywood).

We return to the land of mustard fields, IT stables and cinemalls for our next exhibit, another example of achieving symmetry in conjugation for database actions. If the noun for the verb select is selection, for delete deletion and for insert insertion, shouldn't it be updation for update? Given the host of inconsistencies of the English language, this is the kind of intelligence one might expect in a discarded prototype of an android learning English; this is the kind of linguistic competence people seem to (often incorrectly) assume that they possess. The lessons in English and English grammar in school do not, unfortunately, include a special session to warn the students that all languages evolve and there's enough going on already without them contributing something like this to the melting pot. It's interesting to see that people seem to forget the basic rules of grammar (which, all deities of sanity be praised, have survived the vagaries of time) and indulge, instead, in neological pursuits.

We end this rant into the darkness of despair with another example of the dreaded on a/an X basis. Our sample comes from a warning note on a prominent money transfer portal about currency exchange rates. The authors of the paragraph warn you that the rates change on a dynamic basis. It's nice to know that the rates are not the only vulnerable things around -- the foundation they stand on is also equally shaky. Unless they meant to use dynamic like corporate crapspeakers do, suggesting some sort of executive vitality that is lost on everyone else.

deux and deux

Yours truly is pleased and tickled to announce with geminiform glee that the guess about the second singer on the track heard in Kaminey's trailer has paid off. The singer is indeed Vishal Dadlani. The Vishal/Vishal collaboration is a creative echo of the doubles (Charlie and Guddu) in the film. Reportedly, Vishal Bhardwaj had joined Sukhwinder Singh after kash lagaa (No Smoking) to belt out the track, but convinced Vishal Dadlani to sing the final version. This of course makes me pine to hear the original cut with the director's voice, especially considering Vishal Dadlani's comments about the track (even if they are probably the kind of diplomatic comments people are inclined to make):

Apparently, the song was already recorded and Vishal [Dadlani] was sent across the CD to hear it out once. So impressed was Vishal with the voice in the song that he instantly called up Vishal Bhardwaj and enquired about the singer.

"To my utter surprise, I was informed that Vishal Bhardwaj had himself sung the song. He had done such a brilliant job that I tried persuading him to retain the voice for the final cut as well. However, he wasn't willing to do so and wanted another voice for the song. I am happy that he considered me for the song"

The not-so-Faustian pact signed by the two springs the promise of Vishal (Bhardwaj) singing for Vishal (-Shekhar). Put your hands up in the air now!

Squeeze the day; crack the piggy bank. Now if only some news item would talk about the lyricist.

kaminey: the firft glimpfe

At leaft we now know the official pofter fpelling: Kaminey (the trailing 'y' raifef the iTranf error count, unfortunately). Fahid Kapur lookf interefting (and alfo lookf like FRK in the dark fcenef) and the brief glimpfe of Priyanka Chopra (who reportedly playf a Maharaftrian [gulp!]) ifn't grating.

The cutf are furiouf and the backing track if awefome. One fenfef the prefence of the big G what with talkf of dil nicho.De.n and raat kii maTakii to.De.n; if it ifn't the big G but fomeone like Munna Dhiman doing a big G, thif will mark the firft time that VB will direct without him (and would be a grotefque difappointment). I recognifed Fukhwinder Fingh'f voice, but I'm not fure about the other one; by the time the fong got to paife kaa khel I fuddenly ftarted thinking of Vifal Dadlani. If thif turnf out to be true, it would reprefent fomething cool (The headlinef fcream: Vifal fingf for Vifal!!!). The beat if bound to bring back memorief of Mifirlou (ufed fo memorably in Pulp Fiction), which alfo bringf uf to Vifal D'f rendition of the title track of Caf, which alfo evoked memorief of the track and Tarantino'f flick. The race courfe got me thinking of The Killing.

The font reminded me of the font on the Vertigo pofter, but there'f another opening credit fequence that I juft can't remember. Bad déjà vu, no doubt.

Amole Gupte (he who wrote and almoft directed Taare Zameen Par) makef a big splafh (appearancef in Holi and Mirch Mafala notwithstanding) on the other fide of the camera and deliverf the priceleff line अरे फ को फ नहीं बोलेगा तो क्या ल बोलेगा?. That line would have foared through the roof had it included a cuff word -- if ever there waf a fuitable place for one, that waf it right there. Alaf, the deference to prudery in the nation ftill rulef the rooft even in thif decade.

I got the fenfe of a defire to capture natural light without the need to make thingf look gloffy. I don't know if that'f a quality of the film or juft the uploaded trailer.

I love the trailer. There'f minimal expofition and it definitely ticklef your curiofity. Fit! I now have to wait till the foundtrack comef out to calm my eager felf. Viva Vifal!

the music of Billu Barber

While JR eloquently lavishes praise to the deserving outstanding soundtracks of Dev.D and Delhi 6, YT will revive the bags of wordy warble dedicated to soundtracks with a track list that marks a moderate return to form for Pritam, the Friar of Filch, who remained interesting with his "revisions" until he started sounding like assembly-line product. It seems quite fair to connect this to the presence of Gulzar (who first collaborated with Pritam on Just Married) on the soundtrack (well, at least part of it -- but more about that after a few measures).

The 15 tracks are really just 7 tracks, a reprise, a video edit and 6 remixes. The first track marajaaNii opens with a crescendo of triumphant brass, drums and strings that would not have sounded out of place on the outtakes of Muthu. Electronica sets in promptly after this before an energetic male chorus pan-tossed across the speakers. The booty-shaking beat almost distracts you from the surprising barrage of eloquence mouthed by Sukhwinder Singh. When was the last time you heard an item song where the lyrics drew your attention?

ठीक है ठीक ठीक सब कुछ ठीक है
पास है सब कुछ रब नज़दीक है

रब के हज़ूर में कसमें भी खा लीं
दुनिया की औनी-पौनी रसमें निभा लीं

Those last two lines got some people worried -- they thought hazuur was a (blasphemous) reference to the Prophet. One wonders why their sensors didn't kick in when the word floated by in bii.Dii. The meaning's plain to see. The rest of the song doesn't let up as Sunidhi Chauhan enters with a rejoinder. Everything mixes in Punjabi (which shouldn't be a surprise for those familiar with Gulzar's work) builds up to a chorus telling the world to go to hell (civilly, of course). The a.ntaraa offers more excursions into ridiculous rhyme and you can't help smile at जो सर में सोच आयेगी तो पाँव में मोच आयेगी. There's an interlude mixing gibberish (until further notice, that is) followed by the bogus tongue-in-cheek rock guitar storm of notes that, for me, works less as a Pritam trademark than a tribute to the coda of jaaved bhaaii so rele (surely you know where that came from).

We'll stay in the garden of roses, since the big G contributed just two more songs. The first one's the pick of the album. Gulzar's acknowledged skills at adapting to the milieu of the film are put to fine use as he chops up delicious slices of dialect in billuu bhaya.nkar with Ajay Jhingran, Raghuvir Yadav and Kalpana doing enthusiastic justice to the film. Yadav's verbal break offers an interesting counterpoint to the recent silliness about the derogatory casteist overtones of the word barber:

किसी राजा महाराजा को राजू राजू कह के बुलाओगे का? ये बिल्लुआ को हज्जाम नाही Barber कहकर बुलाओ और ऊ भी इज्जत से ... बिल्लू Barber

This clearly tells you that the word that people should have scorned was hajaam. Unfortunately, those that gripe and protest are rarely known for their appreciation of the subtle, let alone the obvious. They choose to throw pebbles at large objects (which must explain why the past is laced with some really interesting stuff got by with ease).

Gulzar's final contribution Kudaayaa Kair is marred by an unexciting arrangement that mixes catchy motifs into a blend that is annoyingly familiar and punctures the promise of the lyrics. There's only so much that Soham Chakraborty, Monali Thakur and Akriti Kakkar can do (and that dying echo of a male chorus going pyaar promises to get as annoying as the Salim-Sulaiman motif that was scattered all over the soundtrack and aural scape of Fanaa turning lassii into brine. Pritam ropes Abhijeet in to assuage any fans of the Jatin-Lalit-championed smooth singer who has the music track switched to a different key to suit his nose ... um... needs.

And this brings us to what happened after the big G had penned three songs. Enter the demand from SRK to include a catchy line in a song. This was reportedly not how the big G worked. There was no compromise and he bid goodbye to the project. Enter Ashish Pandit (Golmaal Returns) and Mayur Puri (Singh Is Kiing) to take SRK's "hit" line and churn out the Hinglish monster ##love## meraa ##hit hit##. It opens with an ominous wall of electronica, a female chorus chanting gibberish and a vibrant thump (which sounds like a reggaton beat), before Pritam regular Neeraj Shridhar warbles away, loading the gaps with orgasmic tributes to Kumar Sanu.

देखा तुझे देखा मैंने हुआ मैं तो crazy
तौबा मेरी तौबा मेरी कुड़ी है तू s*xy
आजा मेरी बाहों में तू आजा baby love me
आँ आँ आँ आँ आँ आँ

मुझे तू ज़रा-सी हाँ इस दिल में entry दे
छुपा ले यूँ मुझको ना रहे कोई exit

है love मेरा hit hit सोणिये
तो फिर कैसी खिट-पिट सोणिये
तू baby बड़ी fit fit
न कर ऐसे खिट-पिट खिट-पिट

There isn't much Tulsi Kumar can do once she comes in with the a.ntaraa extolling the equality of pahalii aarazuu and aakhirii tamannaa. This isn't a spoof of the silly lyric but a virile gym-going cousin. One wonders if the Talwalkars could have made something of this paean to female fitness.

Sayeed Quadri pens the lyrics for the welcome Rahat Fateh Ali Khan break with jaauu.N kahaa.N, but it makes the return to MoreEnglishThanHinglish territory with you got me rockin' and reelin' quite painful (don't be so curious / nothing mysterious / it's only love that's moving all around us / love is so glorious / love is so marvellous / it's gotten so fine since the day it found us / love is glorious). Kudaayaa Kair's here too but only as a phrase tossed into the soft RnB mix.

And this brings us to the pinnacle of Neeraj Shridhar's contribution to his patron, Sir Pritam. He pens the lyrics for a 70s/80s rock anthem tribute belted out by KK, Rana Mazumdar and Suraj (Jagan?). Once the choral chant channelling Carmina Burana and Jerry Goldsmith's work on The Omen served with an icing of brass fades out, the silence is broken by an electric guitar riff (so familiar!) before a chorus belts out some incendiary nonsense:

Burn 'em up like the sun
Make them burn, make them run
No control in their hands
Burning fire he's a man

Whatever that means.

It's Hinglish all the way as KK breaks in:

आगे आगे चलूँ मैं सदा
यही है मेरी अदा
Don't wanna be looking behind

मंजिल की राहों में हूँ
सब की निगाहों में हूँ
I'm on the move all the time

मैं जाऊँ जिधर भी
ये अम्बर ये धरती
कहे मुझे पुकार के

At which point, the chorus returns announcing the name of the song (and presumably the call of the land and sky) e aa o. Very primal monophthongs. You can hear Rainbow's All Night Long and I Surrender as the song goes on (I'm really curious -- is that riff a lift or a clever inspired original lick?). Perhaps more. KK doesn't get as adventurous as Ian Gillian, Dio or Graham Bonnett and the song doesn't get past being a collection of echoes of good old rock.

The remixes exist to serve the purpose that all remixes on Bollywood soundtracks exist to serve. If you are dying to listen to exhortations to lassies to send their dirty derrieres into motion look no further than the Kilogram's Balkan Mix of mar jaaNii -- any merit that the song had claimed is completely lost as things get lost in a trance of punchy whammy dance floor frenzy.

Try telling people that this was the soundtrack of a film about a hairdresser. That'll get you a laugh louder and richer than any of Priyadarshan's PreviouslyProducedProducts could have.

addendum [february 22, 2009]: There's an interview of Sukhwinder Singh that, unless the transcriber got it wrong, offers something interesting about the soundtrack; when asked about the songs of the film, here's what SS had to say:

I have composed one song for Billo[sic] Barbar, written by Gulzar Saab. It is a very interesting song. After 'Beedi Jalile', Gulzar saab has again experimented with the lyrics and one must listen to the song to understand what I mean.

One wonders which song this is, given that there are just three songs to choose from. Or is this a track that didn't make it to the album?

transformations galore: OSS humour

It was a dark and stormless night as I stared at a stack trace from the hearts of the JAXP subsystem of JDK 5.0, specifically the Xalan 2.6.0 snapshot shipped by Sun Microsystems under a modified package:

at com.sun.org.apache.xml.internal.serializer.ToHTMLSAXHandler.comment(ToHTMLSAXHandler.java:360)
at GregorSamsa.template$dot$0()
at GregorSamsa.applyTemplates()
at GregorSamsa.transform()
at com.sun.org.apache.xalan.internal.xsltc.runtime.AbstractTranslet.transform(AbstractTranslet.java:594)
at com.sun.org.apache.xalan.internal.xsltc.trax.TransformerImpl.transform(TransformerImpl.java:663)

GregorSamsa?? Was I seeing visions? An examination of the JDK 5.0 source code (1.5.0_12, to be precise) and the Xalan-J SVN repository told me that I wasn't. All of Kafka's obsession with an individual trapped in a cruel cold bureaucratic labyrinth aside, this is kinda cool in a geeky way. The pun should be obvious if you knew that Xalan's used for effecting XSL transformations. XSLTC (Xalan-J's compiling XML processor) compiles XSL stylesheets into Java classes. A set of such classes is referred to as a translet. A set of steps is followed to determine the name of the main translet class; the final option, should all preceding ones fail, is the built-in default class name, GregorSamsa. Here's the extract from the source code (the comments serve as software development's answer to exposition):

/**
* As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself
* transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. He was lying on his hard,
* as it were armour plated, back, and if he lifted his head a little he
* could see his big, brown belly divided into stiff, arched segments, on
* top of which the bed quilt could hardly keep in position and was about
* to slide off completely. His numerous legs, which were pitifully thin
* compared to the rest of his bulk, waved helplessly before his eyes.
* "What has happened to me?", he thought. It was no dream....
*/
protected static String DEFAULT_TRANSLET_NAME = "GregorSamsa";

ye naaii ho sakataa!

The Saloon and Beauty Parlours Association, the Hairdressers' Associations of Mumbai, the whatever card-foisting Nest Of Naaiis reportedly had a problem with the title of Priyadarshan's latest repackaged ripoff, Billu Barber (the film is a filch from Katha Parayumbol in which writer Sreenivasan plays a barber called Barber [duh!] Balan). The reason offered by Uday Takke, the President of the SBPA, is funnier than any Priyadarshan film can ever hope to be:

We want Billu Barber to be called Billu Hairdresser as barber is a derogatory and insulting term. We choose hairdressing as a profession because it is an art. Also there are many women hairstylists if Billu Barber becomes a hit, women hairdressers will be called barbers too!

Right. This film is supposed to be biographical. What caves do these post-apocalyptic clowns reside in? Don't they know that Bollywood is all about escapist cinema? I don't expect them to understand alliteration and why their alternative title simply sucks (duh!).

Shah Rukh Khan, whose glorified extended special appearance in the film might equal Amitabh Bachchan's in Andha Kanoon in value and audience draw, promptly did the easiest thing he could to tackle the tonsorial tremors: He shaved the Barber from the title. The film has hit the marquee with its trimmed title which will have no doubt confused those who showed up thinking this was a sequel to Billa.

Bathing in the brylcreem of victory at this shave too silly, this trim too traboccant, Takke added more butter to the deadly dish of reason: Barber is a casteist term. Those who think this is an insignificant issue have stunted minds. Stunted minds and unshaven heads ... or undressed naked heads perhaps, since the locally politically correct caste-free term seems to be hairdresser.

is anurag kashyap on a roll?

Dev.D's out in Indian theatres and a few places in the US of A (hint: not here!). An inexplicably discombulated mind continues to prevent me from writing about the music of the film (or of any film for that matter) or about what the film (or any film) seems to promise. But his posts over at PFC, the comments he left at Baradwaj's review of the film and the recent Rediff chat session offered a few nuggets of interest in addition to a glimpse of a bushel of offerings in store. With a release scheduled for Paanch, it seems like the jinx at the box office might well be a thing of the past.

Did you know that our reviewer from hell, Taran Adarsh, is the son of B. K. Adarsh? "Who's B. K. Adarsh?" you ask, scratching your head. The man behind titles like Spy in Rome, Murder in Circus, Harishchandra Taramati, and the most famous of them, the educational film Gupt Gyan released in 1974.

Kashyap's next project is not his SFX-laden big-budget adaptation of the Raj Comics character Doga, but an interesting film called Bombay Velvet (aka mumbaii makhamal, surely) -- what a title! (a cross between Lynch and Lou Reed?) -- based on a real-life personality of the 1960s. The film finds Kashyap teaming again with John Abraham and also stars Kay Kay Menon and Naseeruddin Shah. Kashyap reportedly "roped in two writer friends of his who were the worst critics of No Smoking" These would have to be Vasan Bala and SA Thanikachalam. The writing team also includes Gyan Prakash, a profeesor of history from Princeton. I am all a-guessing about this famous personality.

There's also a reference to writing "low-budget edgy thrillers" two of which are called Happy Ending (duh!) and Chiller Home.

There's a whiff about why things went south with RGV: He cheated on me with another writer so I had to break up with him.

Despite him saying that he's done with writing, you can expect to see a writing credit for Jihaad (produced by Karan Johar; directed by Rang De Basanti co-writer Rensil D'Silva; starring Saif Ali Khan, Kareena Kapoor, Viveik Oberoi) and Shor for Rose Movies (directed by Kunal Kapoor; produced by Goldie Behl)

There's hope that Allwyn Kalicharan will be revived after Doga (A street in Paharganj that figures in Dev.D was the neon-lit foreigner-laden street based on which he had written Allwyn Kalicharan)

The man has lots of interesting rabbits in his hat. Will 2009 be the year of Anurag Kashyap? kash lagaa to that.

Meanwhile, here's the trailer of Gulaal. Warning: not safe for children's ears.

vishal's next?: and now it's aishwarya rai (bachchan)

In 2002, Vishal had adapted a novel called Pas de Quatre by Australian writer I.A.R. Wylie into a screenplay called Timbuktu (or Timbuctoo according to Stephen Alter's book). His choice for the leads were Vivek (now Viveik, if you will) and Aishwarya Rai with Pankaj Kapur in a "key role." Vishal acquired the filming rights, Abbas Tyrewala worked on the screenplay; Pankaj Kapoor reportedly noted some discrepancies; Robin Bhatt was roped in for a rewrite, but things failed to proceed beyond this. Kyun!... Ho Gaya Na killed the love for the real-life love birds at the box office, Vishal moved on to make The Blue Umbrella, Vivek Oberoi returned to strum Wonder in Omkara and Ms. Rai became a Bachchan.

Now, about 7 years later (aka saat saal baad), Rai-Bachchan and Vishal seem all set to team up on what appears to be the same project. Mrs. Rai-Bachchan notes that they had wanted to work with each other "ever since he was the music composer on a project that got shelved." One wonders if this was Hum Panchi Ek Daal Ke starring Sunil Shetty and Ashutosh Rana (in which Vishal reportedly gave KK his first solo song).

There's more about what happened all those years ago here.

[Cross-posted on the Vishal Bhardwaj blog]

lingua typo grammatostrophe

In which we start by noting a more eloquent reaction from JR to the abominable twisted usage of revert. I haven't seen anyone but the denizens of meraa bhaarat mahaan bandying this niggling neologism. If I am wrong, please let me know.

We now move on a few examples of typographical hilarity resulting from the confusion of homophones spelled differently. How else can you explain I think this works for the soul ... to attach soul to the shoe? The speaker is clearly not alluding to moccasins from Motown; the word was sole, but we can't do much with such examples in the English language, can wee?

And there was the IT guy who had picked up a much-abused phrase derived from the contraction of synchronisation and decided to send out an email asking people to be in sink. Dirty dishes done dirt cheap?

Matters of homophonous abuse hardly get better than using ideal when you meant to write idle (drivel's workshop?)

We now consider countable information, a stellar example of which is the use the indefinite article with news (along with adjectival qualifiers). Surely you've heard This is a really good news (I have unsettling memories of having heard this as the token line of English in an otherwise mostly Marathi film)! And this is a really good news? It's a really bad thing.

A cousin of this artifact is countable assistance, best represented by I want one (small) help from you in Indian offices. Perhaps it's time stores sold measuring cups for assistance and aid. It'd add an ounce or two of value to all the favours done.

Neologisms deserve their own post, but I will leave you with another egregious concoction in the kitchen of rabid redundancy: end goal.

working from Hell

How would you like to work in an office sporting all of the following kinds of people:

• X takes all calls in his cubicle on the speaker phone (headsets are available, but X probably is a caveman or a luddite or has strange concerns for his delicate ears)


• A takes a call on speaker phone, hits the Mute button and then abandons his cubicle for several minutes while the call continues for everyone around to hear


• B hits the keys on her phone to dial an extension before picking up the handset thus giving you a cheap reproduction of the alien signal in Close Encounters of the Third Kind


• C is one of many who love who do not believe in conference rooms and choose to have animated discussions in aisles and near cubicles


• D comes from a tribe of people who lived far apart from one another, never understand why the word "whisper" existed in the English language and always carried out conversations as if they were making ISD calls in the 80s


• E probably comes from a family hard of hearing, which explains why he/she believes in configuring annoying ringtones on his/her cellphone to the highest possible volume; to make sure it's effective, E occasionally remains away from his/her desk, leaving the cellphone behind on the table (the experiment is always a failure, because everyone except E hears the phone)

Sarkar Raj: SIGKILL, baby

If Sarkar had RGV blending ideas from the first two editions of Coppola's Mafia trilogy, Sarkar Raj represents an impassioned gung-ho exploration of a motif in The Godfather Part III that a friend had noted. There's a scene in the film that seems to have been the source of this friend's interpretation: there's a meeting of the bosses in an Atlantic City hotel room that takes a violent turn when machine gun fire from a helicopter litters the conference room. It's a massacre. My friend contended that the third edition seemed to punish any time and consideration invested in any characters introduced or revisited in the film. In simple words, "Let me introduce a new character; let me get you interested in the character; now that you're interested, let me bump that character off." This motif was explored in greater clarity and rather unsubtle delight in X3: The Final Stand. You were introduced to a host of new mutants, most of which didn't make it past the final conflict (the final stand, duh). You also had to bid farewell to some characters who had gained your attention over the first two editions in the series.

It is this horse that RGV rides into the ground and he does it with aplomb. By now, one has grown accustomed to his patent-pending MeanderCam, the canted camera angles (straight shots seem limited to indoor sequences) and the loud background score. The campy expressionism of villainy is given a shot in the arm with the rest of the usual suspects (Sayaji Shinde, Upendra Limaye (who spends time singing Hindi film ditties and correcting the pronunication -- "woraa not voraa" -- of his character's last name) and Govind Namdeo. Aside from Ms. World-now-Bachchan, the most prominent addition to the roster is Dilip Prabhawalkar. No time is spent in attempting to get the audience to invest in any character. As with his existing ouevre, this film digs into the sordid bag of real life for some shards of inspiration (Enron, in this case, but just barely). A lot of what happens is strictly a setup of dominos stacked for the final cascade. RGV even returns to The Godfather for one of several turning points in the film. The good get corrupted, the innocent get eliminated, the upright end up being downright heinous. Never showing us the face of a contract shooter must rank as an under-sung achievement. The spoken word is sparse and uttered with grave seriousness. Cool is underplayed even for great punchlines like jaan lenaa jurm hai; sahii samay par jaan lenaa ... raajaniiti. Grief fuels retribution and it all ends with ek chaay laao, perhaps the most outstanding final line in Bollywood cinema for a long time to come.

It would be interesting to see another sequel emerge from the rubble of this pogrom. That possibility notwithstanding, the sequel's more fun if you watch it not as a piece of moderately serious gangster cinema, but for what it's worth: a darkly funny parody of serious gangster cinema and everything that Sarkar took the pain to found.

they actually call them bugs

Or DOGs (Digital On-screen Graphic) in the UK. David Bordwell has a fascinating post on diegetic bugs. These, you must agree, are pretty cool. For those of us, who also foam at the mouth at the words "formatted to fit your screen," however, the TV channel logos, tickers and the auto-fellating ego stamps of DVD manufacturers (especially those churning out DVDs of Indian films) represent something that's anything but. The likes of Eros, Shemaroo, Ultra, Time, Sony/BMG, Adlabs (oh, how can I forget them?) are worthy of the most heinous punishment possible for every time the logo fades in during the credits or signalling the beginning of a song (and dance, if applicable) interlude. It's hopeless to argue the importance of the integrity of a cinematic work (whatever be its perceived value -- for the purposes of this rant, Race is just as good as L'avventura) with these DVD-burning baboons.

I for one would really relish spraying the nethers of each participant from each of these companies with ice cold water while they stand, tied against posts like Thaakur baladev si.nh in Sholay, with the Forrest Gump feather running an infinite loop around their arms, brushing their armpits ah-so delicately as they are forced to listen to a mix tape of Lata Mangeshkar's youthful songs from the 21st century. After a suitable interval, I propose to spank their tender derierres with electric fly swatters as they are forced to watch (with eyes taped wide like those of Alex the Clockwork Orange) a mash-up of all the scenes of Alok Nath from all the Rajshri films he ever starred in.

The floor is now open for bids.

soap for the censors

[link courtesy: Siddhartha]

The Bhatts are back and with swords drawn in a battle with the censors. All this is for Mohit "original" Suri's next film Raaz: The Mystery Continues (aka Raaz 2). The issues at hand are expletives uttered by Kangana Ranaut (who cares? even with an A certificate, the censor board insists that all cussing be replaced by shards of silence) and her nude scene. Any promise of skin in Bollywood is empty and is only a device used in marketing to tantalise the gullible secretly horny audience. Red: The Dark Side (directed by Vikram Bhatt), Girlfriend and Paap (directed by Pooja Bhatt) are just a few examples of such deception. The promise of cleavage remained unfulfilled. And yet audiences fail to learn. It's a Pavlovian success. This brings us to the latest source of brouhaha. Do you really expect me to believe that you're going to pull off a nude scene of substance in a film starring the World's most depressing peon and an overrated femme known for playing personalities with lives laced with despair, grief and trauma? But our interest in the matter lies in the quotes, the priceless utterances that grace such occasions -- utterances citing moral victories, victories of creative expression and evidence of silly arguments:

If someone is in a bath tub, she has to be nude. You don't bathe with your clothes on, right? Moreover, when you would see the film, you would realise that Kangna's nude scene has also a lot to do with audience's imagination.

Ignore, if you can, the inexplicable Indian tendency to use would instead of will. Concentrate instead on the argument made. The defendants seem to have decided that if a film features someone taking a bath in a bath tub, it behooves the camera to present a complete tour of that person's anatomy. What ever happened to the power of the suggested? What ever happened to the legacy of Cat People? Does anyone really care?

Apparently this film was inspired by a Kabir couplet. That's definitely a record. Now it's time to find out what the real source was.

Incidentally, the scariest part of this film is that it features Ranaut's current beau, Shekhar Suman's son Adhyayan Suman; this might well be another Love Story 2050 (unless the Baweja/Chopra thing was a marketing ploy).

nasheman nation and egregious tautology

Typos are such a great source of humour once you get past gnashing your teeth and uttering unkind curses dedicated to the writer. Consider two samples, documenation and defination. The former seems a victim of the syndrome of the disenfranchised letter. The latter is one of the products of an inability to get out of school with the right spelling. In either case, one feels like paraphrasing the late Pancham: ye documenation/defination kaun saa desh hai bhaaii?

The pervasive progress of redundancy in spoken and written English is astounding. Blame it on crapspeak (also known as office jargon, corporate-speak). Blame it on people who don't let the speakers and writers of vacuous phrases just how painful it is to read what they have written or to listen to their bombastic nothingness. Being on the same page, going forward (shudder!), having a full plate, keeping something on your radar, having the bandwidth (wince!), hitting the ground running. All these are obvious stinkers. But what of the minor subtle killers like fellow colleagues (are there any of another kind?), serious danger (talk about undermining a perfectly capable word), mutual cooperation, original source (this packet actually came here from there), local resident (remember the days of 1040NRs?), continue on (the roof? the floor?), chief protagonist, general public (with specific privates, no doubt), on a regular/daily/weekly/monthly basis (what happened to "regularly/every day/week/month"?)? Why not just meet instead of meeting up? Why not just visit instead of visiting with?

Gulaal gets a release date

.

and a poster.

The date, March 11, will most likely take advantage of the festival of colours, although this clearly isn't a film that will sit too comfortably with Khal-Naikaa or Silsila. Those who'd like to know more about what was meant to the smokin' Jesse Randhawa's first Hindi film need look no further than AK's posts on PFC. The immersion into the adventurous aural confections of Dev.D has just begun; one awaits the immensely talented Piyush Mishra's first offering as a music director. 2009 looks like Anurag Kashyap's year. जी जी जी जी जी.

announcing: RMIM Puraskaar 2008

That's the second time in a row that I have delayed my post. Time to go listen to tandoori nights. Vinay is back with the third edition of RMIM Puraskaar. Voting closes tentatively by the middle of this month (not many days left).

The announcement's also posted on the giitaayan blog.

hop and skip

It all started with a Velocity template error on a page in my bookmarks that I decided to visit again. The Wayback Machine couldn't help out of respect for and adherence to the robots exclusion protocol. Googling got me to DZone and thence to an old InfoQ article about changes in the Java Collections API made in Mustang. Two things caught my eye: "skip lists" and "William Pugh"; The former was a data structure that a colleague in one of my previous jobs had introduced me to (not that I learnt more about this data structure later, but I was quite fascinated with what I had heard). The latter is the father of one of my favourite software code quality tools, FindBugs. As it turned out, William Pugh invented skip lists. You would think that I would've got wind of this at some point given that Pugh was not an unknown name thanks to the tool. Yet, today was when the dots presented themselves to me, connected in glee. The final surprise lay in store for me over at the inevitable Wikipedia page for skip lists. The second reference listed on the page is a paper, whose co-author is a good friend.

Then again, not all coincidences are meaningful.

nominal irony

Satyam is such a nice name for the firm that represents India's contribution to the kind of newsmaking last dominated by the hubris of Enron. I really wish someone would write something about Satyam's firm in the vein of Malcolm Gladwell's article in The New Yorker titled Open Secrets. As with most such fallouts consequent of corporate socialism and executive greed, the employees down below earning pay for putting in hours of work are going to suffer most. The timing's rotten too. Those in favour of reeling in the lines hurled out to cheap herds of code monkeys across the seas have a great exhibit. The other biggies in Indian IT service providers are probably rallying to DEFCON 1 with each passing day fearing that a pair of smart eyes might just notice the creativity in their accounting (should such creativity exist). Indian filmmakers, meanwhile, are probably balancing their stack of news reports and oft-played scratched DVDs of Wall Street, Antitrust and Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room as they attempt to find ways to squeeze an item song featuring Shilpa Shetty and Amrita Rao making out in family-friendly fashion in the Gobi Desert into a Mahesh Babu starrer based on the whole deal. Ram Gopal Varma could play Ramalinga Raju, but it could add an edge of the surreal and the darkly comic to a film that, minus the song and dance and weepy drama and synthesised sympathetic violin motifs, probably aimed to offer a "serious" family entertainer. Oh! We could even call his sons Shivam and Sundaram. We can then all join in to sing along with a remixed version of that Lata classic laced with transitivity:

ईश्वर सत्य है
सत्य ही शिव है
शिव ही सुंदर है

And hence, ईश्वर is शिव and also सुंदर. Quadrupled equality or triple beauty. Take your pick.

shut up and blam

At the risk of alarming people, I have to admit that my heart goes out to James Joseph Cialella Jr.

If you're like me, your blood curdles when you're sitting in the movie theatre and hear that annoying cellphone ring or that wretched form of human life sitting nearby jabbering away. If you're like me, you might occasionally politely let the source of this free disturbance know what pain he/she is inflicting on you. If you're like me and this is one of those desii theatres, you don't even mince words and even mix in simian growls and cynical asides. But even I would never do what I admire Mr. Cialella Jr. for doing. When a father and son nearby were talking away while Fincher's The Curious Case of Benjamin Button was playing, Mr. Cialella Jr., having tried the verbal approach and even the rather subtle move of throwing popcorn at the offspring, pulled out a gun and shot the father in the arm. He then returned to watch the movie until the cops came to arrest him.

It's extreme. I would never be able to do this. And yet, I'm cheering away.

and i wonder

How many different words have been used by those that name all the strip malls that inundate the American geography? I've seen pointes, places, plazas, villages and squares. I'm sure there are more I don't remember and more I haven't seen.

We all remember Sssshhh... (aka S4H3), don't we? One wonders if his appropriation of Jigar Muradabadi's couplet sabhii a.ndaaz-e-husn pyaare / ham magar saadagii ke maare for the song sapane is the only example of the Bollywood lyrical machinery lifting from this poet.

How many people noticed that Anu Malik was lifting his own stuff when he did the title song for Main Hoon Na? Try dha.Dakataa hai dil from Baazi.

Was I the only one who thought of Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy's be-imaan mohabbat from Ek Aur Ek Gyarah (one of those rewarding songs that seems devoid of any of the SEL trademarks that seem to pepper most of their work these days) when A. R. Rahman's aziim-o-shaan from Jodhaa Akbar started playing?

Didn't anybody notice how Pritam smartly took the a.ntaraa of aage bhii jaane na tuu from Waqt, sped it up, added his trademark wall of synthesised bricks and tossed it out as the a.ntaraa for the Usha Uthup song All Night Long in Dhol?

Did you know that If you navigated to the 00:13:38 mark in your copy of Emmanuelle in Space, you can hear the beat loop that underscores maa.Ngataa hai kyaa in Rangeela?

Did you spot Jatin-Lalit reusing the melody of the a.ntaraa of aa.Nkho.n me.n kyaa in 1996's Khamoshi: The Musical two years later for the second interlude of jab kisii kii taraf dil in Pyar To Hona Hi Tha?

Don't you think it's just a coincidence that an earnest riff played by the string section the second interlude in Anu Malik's teraa cheharaa mujhe from Aapas Ki Baat finds a sibling in the opening of the a.ntaraas in Pritam's lamhaa lamhaa from Gangster?

extracts from the reading list

I have to toss a sop to coincidence when the phrase tout court shows up in two books that I picked up at the public library on Christmas Eve. I'm sure the phrase is not uncommon, but I have to confess that I haven't seen (or noticed) it before. As a tribute to the coincidence, here are some extracts from each book.

The first is the third book in Donald Spoto's series on Alfred Hitchcock. Spoto's name and work is known to any serious Hitchcock fan; A well-turned copy of The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock, the second volume in the series, lies in my bookshelf (gathering some dust, I must regretfully add). Employing a pun, Spoto calls the new book Spellbound by Beauty and it covers, as is evident from the title, the Master's obsession with his leading ladies (and especially blondes). Spoto has been accused of starting to paint a rather uncomplimentary picture of Hitchcock as a person, starting with his second book. This third book, as the preface indicates, seems to promise more material that is bound to offend those that hold Hitchcock in high regard, as a creative genius without blemish. But, as Spoto also points out, genius has never been free of a life peppered with hurdles, sorrow, hardship and personality flaws:

Writing or speaking anything other than the highest praise or failing to promote the most affectionate encomia for so august an icon as Alfred Hitchcock has become, in the eyes of many, equivalent to cultural sacrilege. But the craft of biography requires that the shadow side of subjects be set forth and comprehended - otherwise, their humanity is diminished, their pain minimised, and those they hurt are ignored. Any appreciation of Hitchcock's art and life must take into account the enormity of his psychological, physical and social suffering, as well as that which he (perhaps unintentionally) caused others. From his suffering came the obsessively recurring themes and the constant sense of dread with which he continues to astonish, entertain and enlighten.

The other bit comes from the wonderful introduction by Anthony Burgess to the compilation The Best Short Stories of J. G. Ballard:

Ballard considers that the kind of limitation that most contemporary fiction accepts is immoral, a shameful consequence of the rise of the bourgeois novel. Language exists less to record the actual than to liberate the imagination. To go forward, as Ballard does, is also to go back -- scientific apocalypse and pre-scientific myth meet in the same creative region, where the great bourgeois novelists of tradition would not feel at home.

The complete text of the introduction is available in the Google Books preview of the book.

The final extract (did I say two? I lied) comes from Emmanuel Carrère's book I Am Alive and You Are Dead: A Journey in the Mind of Philip K. Dick. It's a succinct description of what happens when a cult figure acquires mainstream acceptance and recognition:

Given the uniform Vintage editions of his complete works and the many articles about Dick that have appeared in both academic and popular journals, his fans must feel a little like the early Christians did when their faith was officially adopted by the Roman Empire: triumphant, of course, but also slightly nostalgic for the days when they lived in the catacombs. The Happy Few cease to be happy when they are no longer few. Dick has become part of the mainstream.

a farewell to YACCS

The precious few visitors that this ego-fondling portal of extremely biased rants and raves may have noticed the results of a forced rhytidectomy. As I attempt to restore elements from the old platter, you, dear visitor, may have noticed that the comments that you may have left/noticed/read/responded to in the past are gone. Kaput. Poof! The kind of thing Griffin was known for. Here's what happened.

It all started in 2002, when YT started blogging with Blogger. It was free, easy, reasonably popular, but lacked certain features that today's bloggers take for granted. One of these was support for comments on posts (yeah, duh!). Google's acquisition of Blogger didn't help matters too much. Comments arrived, along with some other features, in 2004. So what does a hapless blogger do till then? Try a third-party offering. Haloscan and YACCS were the leading offerings then. A mental coin was flipped and I chose the latter. It had its problems, but then so did Haloscan. Procastination and the lack of any easy way to migrate comments from YACCS meant that I never adopted the new commenting system in post-Google Blogger.

The first cog in the merry wheel came in 2006 with a big redesign featuring a new templating system, a more interactive editing experience and more reliability. The only hitch was that YACCS didn't support this new system yet. So I stayed with YACCS, but made a mental note that I'd have to try and find a way to migrate the comments from YACCS to the Blogger system -- either with some convenient piece of software out there or by churning out some code myself.

The final blow fell recently on August 19, 2008, with the announcement that the YACCS service would be discontinued starting December 23, 2008; here's the text of the announcement reproduced from the main YACCS page:

YACCS will discontinue service on Dec 23, 2008

YACCS will discontinue its service on December 23, 2008. After this date, you will no longer be able to access comments, either on your site or through the YACCS homepage. Please download/archive your comments before this date. Thanks to all the supporters, translators and bloggers who have supported YACCS over the past seven years.

This left me no choice but to move to Blogger's commenting system. I went all in and adopted the new templating system as well. As I still continue to restore pieces from the original portal, I know that I'll have to write some code using the GData Blogger API. The good thing about YACCS is that it allowed me to export my comments in CAIF. That's the Comment Archiving and Interchange Format, something that Marcus Campbell came up with.

Thus I bid adieu to Hossein Sharifi's creation that has served this blog well for what few comments it managed to invite.

was Rock On! meant to Bollywood's first rock movie set in the future?!

There's a moment in Abhishek Kapoor's directorial début Rock On!, as the title song plays in the background, when the camera pans across a set of posters adorning the wall.

Starting from the obligatory Che Guevara to a handful of photographs of John Lennon scattered about to one of The Beatles, one of Guns N Roses, a Rolling Stones poster sporting John Pasche's famous lips logo on a jean pocket and then, finally, Shepard Fairey's cover for the 2007 Led Zeppelin compilation Mothership. Whoa! Hit pause please. A few bits of dialogue in the film tell us that 10 years have passed since the band performed last for the contest. That camera pan was part of the flashback. This means that the present (featuring our former band members going through life like it was an endless novocaine trip) takes place in 2017 at the very least. It's nice to see that the film didn't have a dystopian view of Indian rock. Rock on!

trailer plug: DEV.D

This post was long overdue. For those who haven't seen it yet, may I point to the theatrical trailer of Anurag Kashyap's forthcoming film Dev.D, a contemporary take on the Sarat Chandra Chatterjee classic based on an idea by Abhay Deol. The trailer offers a quick trip (no pun intended) into a daunting, intriguing world of myriad colours and sounds (try combining a street dance party brass band and some angry rock along with a cool hook called emotional [pronounced: e-mo-san-al] atyaachaar) fuelled by addiction and the quest for love in its many twisted forms.

Elsewhere, there's a tame poster along with a more adventurous one (courtesy: PFC).

Amit Trivedi, who handled the excellent soundtrack of Aamir promises another exciting mixed bag for this film:

We have 15 songs for Dev D. All the songs will be played in the background. There are four lyricists.
[...]
It has world music, Rajashtani folk, head-banging rock, street band baaja, an Awadhi song, Punjabi song and 1980's[sic] Euro-pop song.

As that wasn't enough, try appearances by the dance trio The Twilight Players in the film.

update: [december 18, 2008]: The official website boasts more of the variegated palette along with NSFW elements (you thought they were joking about "Lustline," didn't you?). The Tamil dirty talk is especially recommended for chortles. It's bandwidth hungry though and takes its time to load, so make sure you have a tank of patience before you click through the phantasmagoria.

the lord is my business

[february 02, 2008]

The first 20 minutes or so of Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood (after just the film's title as far as opening credits go) play out like a silent movie lovingly filmed to exploit the rich possibilities of widescreen until the silence is shattered with a Good Evening from Daniel Plainview right before the scene introducing us to him and his audience. Anderson eschews intensified continuity (a term due to David Bordwell), a technique rampant in Hollywood today featuring enthusiastically edited frames devoid of much information (Bollywood has probably taken this several miles further by presenting caravans of meaningless frames). Instead he sticks with patient long takes and a relaxed approach to a narrative embellished by a powerful score from Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood. The score, which employs real instruments, is effectively eerie, reminiscent of the haunting motifs of Bernard Herrmann and the work of György Ligeti. All this only emphasises a towering consuming performance by Daniel Day-Lewis as the towering satanic Daniel Plainview embodying the American spirit while giving us a character unpleasant, unlikeable and compelling. I enjoyed watching the uneasy (unholy?) alliance between commerce (Plainview) and religion (the charismatic preacher Eli Sunday) as much as I did the measured steady pace of the film. The final act, however, has me in a pinch. I was impressed with its audacity, but I also felt cheated as the end credits rolled out like those in a silent movie. I just hope there was something I missed, something that a second viewing at some point will help me understand. There's no denying, however, the power of the film with all its warts and confounding elements.

dibakar banerjee speaks and regales

PFC notches another big fat feather in its cap with a no-holds-barred conversation with Dibakar Banerjee, who scored with Khosla Ka Ghosla and whose bold second effort Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye! managed to survive despite the unfortunate timing of Bombay's terror weekend. This is strictly NSFW (you get Delhi-style cussing, comparisons between precisely measured filmmaking and porn flicks among other things) but it's worth every minute. And there's a lot of praise for .

whom were they apologising to?

[cross-posted on the Passion For Cinema blog]

I wasn't alone in wondering why jalate hai.n from Onir's Sorry Bhai owed something to ballo from Rabbi Shergill's Avengi Ja Nahin. It isn't surprising, really, when you notice that Gaurav Dayal, the music director for Onir's flick is credited as the music programmer and producer for ballo on Rabbi's album. Rabbi sued, but unfortunately the courts didn't heed the wisdom in the Krazzy/Sampath case. The Delhi High Court put a stay on the film forcing the release date to move past November 28, 2008, but eventually caved in and lifted the stay. The observations made justifying the court's belief that there wasn't enough water in Rabbi's claim to bathe the horse of plagiarism are worth a shipment of guano:

We are of the view that the main constituent of the song is the melody and some similarity in the rhythm of the accompanying acoustic guitar can't be sufficient to infer that the music director has plagiarized Shergill's song. In any case, even the lyrics are completely different. So, we are, prima facie, of the opinion that the movie song is not a reproduction

Perfect. The dimwits seemed to have chosen to ignore the similarity in the melody. Also, did anyone listen to the lyrics of both songs? Methinks there's more evidence of a filch there (if anyone cares). Here's more:

[T]he division bench judges also heard the song in the chamber to conclude that the only similarity between the two songs Jalte Hain from the movie and Ballo from Shergill's album was "in the use of guitar". This apart, HC said, "there is some difference in the use of accompanying sounds, comprising other instruments."

So much for being qualified. One hopes that, despite the Supreme Court's refusal to do anything useful in this matter for now, the second RS joins the first RS in finding justice.

déjà bro

A promo (courtesy: PFC) is out for Onir's next directorial venture Sorry Bhai. The film's already got enough press as the return vehicle (or one of the release vehicles) of Chitrangda Singh. Although lyricist Amitabh Varma returns, the music director this time around is Gaurav Dayal. The song on the promo is a KK song naa jaane khoye kahaa.N. It's a dulcet melody with gentle orchestration that begins as an echo of Vivek Philip's work for My Brother Nikhil, but the tune develops into a set of melodic fragments that sound so much like Ballo on Rabbi Shergill's new album Avengi Ja Nahin. Coincidence, something more, anyone?

it makes me wonder

If I call you because I'm unable to connect to the Internet, why do you have automated messages telling me to go to your support website for troubleshooting tips? Is there a secret avenue to the Internet when those merry lights on the modem aren't blinking (a mainstream way of telling me that there's no way I'm getting online)?

Did Asha Bhosle sing any more kar le pyaar kar le songs besides one for Kalyanji-Anandji in Sachaa Jhutha (worried about that spelling? go sue the namers of the film) and the unofficially-tuned-by-RDB S D Burman song in Talaash? And that Talaash song seems to contain the seeds of mai.nne dil abhii diyaa nahii.n from The Train, the soundtrack that marked the entry into Bollywood of the music company formerly known as Polydor (it since became PolyGram which became MIL which became Universal).

How can you sleep at night by using a euphemism like rightsizing to describe a layoff? Even euphemisms should have their limits.

the records of ultra-violet rule

A ghastly spelling like Yuvvraaj at least ensures that you can get your own domain (unless some challenged speller got there first for entirely different reasons). Ghai's next plunge features a lot of firsts. This is his first film with Gulzar as the lyricist. This is also his first film featuring Salman Khan and his first film featuring Mithun Chakraborty. Unless you count their cameos in the SRK vehicle Om Shanti Om (right; that song in Naseeb upset the delicate balance of connections back then too). It's also his first film featuring Zayed Khan. Now that's something. You've really got something stinking in your stable to get the likes of that form of life on the roster. First film to feature Katrina Kaif too. Does that even count as a record? The waif's a hit thanks to being great stuff to look at, figuring in a ton of brain-dead box office busters (Race, Singh is Kiing) and being in the news for being the muse of the beefiest cake in town. Choosing the cello as her instrument of choice is but an obvious move to attempt to steal the thunder of Celina Jaitley's bikini-clad violin stunt in Janasheen. For the sheer low coefficient of clothing, Ms. Jaitley might still emerge (no pun intended) the winner.

The still above offers some hints at what lies in store in Ghai's bloated opus. Salman Khan looks like he's blind; Anil Kapoor can't read; that old dame can't play and lassie can't figure out what she's doing in the frame. Meanwhile, the production design looks on. As a parting note, I believe the pronunciation of the film's strangely spelled name should be "U V Raaj" which adds a nice South Indian touch to the proceedings in addition to a certain unintentional nod to physics. Then again, UV rays are not visible to the human eye and this is clearly analogous to the film's merits. Over-exposure to UV rays causes sunburn; another analogy is plain to see. This spelling also fortifies a belief that Ghai is working on a light trilogy. After Black and White and UV Rays (it's not hard to go from Raaj to Rays), one wonders what the "showman" will come up with next. Yellow Mein Hari Piya?

local boo

Creative Loafing, the generous rag of witty riches, has filed for Chapter 11. This isn't as newsworthy as the mess in Wall Street (in which taxpayers lose their money while the executives of the bailed-out AIG partied at St. Regis Resort). Meanwhile, one of those space-filling op-eds on the state of MARTA shows up in the AJC. Insufficient funding and unfair restrictions. Blah blah. The piece doesn't talk about the complete lack of monetary input from the County of Cobb to MARTA, despite the progressive presence of MARTA buses at Cumberland Mall (especially on Sundays when the good ol' boys governing Cobb deemed it fit to shut CCT down). The presidential candidates, meanwhile, continue to "debate" offering more text that should be fed through text retrieval engines -- heck! build a tag cloud -- instead of really promising anything useful. It's the two Joes (Sixpack and Plumber) at one end and "despite being articulate he seems to have that cocky air that cost Al Gore the election to the friendly neighbourhood apocalypse." All they say is like some of those papers you study in graduate school or like abstract poetry -- you make your own meanings; they are essentially saying what you want them to say. They ain't talkin' nothin' that'd help me. Streamline the management of work permits and work visas. Fix your data management systems so that the DHS, USCIS, IRS and SSA resemble a homogeneous governing ecosystem instead of a tragically fractured version of Babel. Project Mayhem makes more sense than any of the drivel about "fixing" health care. Stop running it as a business. Same thing for this gasoline "crisis." It's all hopeless. Everything's a business. That rickshaw driver back home asking for "half return" ain't got a thing on governing bodies that just don't understand the importance of transit in resolving a problem of consumption. Oh well.

the oven of promise

The Nose has returned to pay tribute to one of the finest paeans to the feathered kind ever written in Bollywood, you are my chicken fry with a track off the forthcoming Karzzzz. The song's called Tandoori Nights; it must not be confused with that TV show featuring Saeed Jaffrey and it also holds no water to that Nagesh Kukunoor project called Tandoor that's seemingly stuck in development hell. This is not your average Chicken Tikkarzzzz ladies and gentlemen; this is not a patch in the slightest on the genius of the bejewelled Bappi. This is a predictably nasal earworm boasting nothing special. Sameer's lyrics, however, are quite promising (notice how he uses the title to fill in the creative gaps) right from the intoxicating mukha.Daa riffing in tribute to Anand Bakshi's antics in his collaborations with Viju Shah, even boasting a quote from a soul hit; Does anyone know where that short riff came from? I know I've heard it somewhere but the brain's a-baking right now:

the nose
(tak ta na na na (tandoori nights) * 3) * 2
samaa sharaabii dono jahaa.N sharaabii rut rawaa sharaabii diladaar ve
hawaaa sharaabii terii adaa sharaabii ye fizaa sharaabii diladaar ve

sunidhi
tanhaa tanhaa hai dil, tanha ##tandoori nights##
if loving you is wrong, I dont wanna be right

the nose
rabbaa rabbaa merii jaan jale (jale (jale (jale)))

sunidhi
ta ta na na na (tandoori nights) * 3

the nose
tere bin, tere bin merii jaan jale (jale (jale (jale)))


sunidhi
ta ta na na na (tandoori nights) * 3

both
(ta ta na na na (tandoori nights) * 3) * 2

active intransitivity

Is it just my brethren (read: holders of an Indian passport or bearers of an Indian PAN card or recipients of a fat monthly income commensurate with their ability to churn out code that make Halahala look like Kwality Ice Cream) or are other people afflicted by the rather curious tendency to confer the status of ambitransitive upon verbs when using them in the present continuous tense. It's either that or an incorrect switch from passive voice to active voice. The do-ee appears to become the doer, but it's only a deception. A grammatical wolf trying to pull the wool over your tired eyes. Consider the line "The page is not displaying" -- my friend, "to display" is a strictly transitive verb; this means that the displayer has to display something. Perhaps you meant to say "The page is not being displayed"; this would mean that you were trying to activate a passive entity, which is something that works in the context of freedom struggles and revolutions but not grammar. Cease and desist otherwise you will be killing.

cyberlink's user abuse

Let me tell about this little pile of buffalo offerings called Cyberlink PowerDVD DX. This software to play DVDs ships with Dell computers and represents a new nadir in software usability. Put your DVD in the DVD tray and slide it in and voila, this menace begins to start up (sometimes even bypassing the magic Shift key). In order to offer the best in convenience it "un-mutes" your speakers and turns up the volume so that, if you're sitting there with headphones on, your ears are in for an aural pounding. And if you shut the damn thing down, it even "mutes" your speakers so that you don't have to do it yourself. Did I mention there's no notion of saved "preferences"? After you've recovered from the sound blast and have managed to regain control of your mouse or the shortcut hardware controls to adjust the volume, you realise that you have to wade through all that "unskippable" guano thanks to the software's obsequious refusal to skip the UOP flag. If this is one of the DVDs that begins with one of those loud annoying anti-piracy ads, not even God can save your eardrums. All said and done once you've managed to get past the noisome studio logo and distribution dross and have finally started with the movie, don't worry about such useful things as a time counter. Just sit back and pray you don't have to start the DVD up again and put your ears through another ordeal of decibels. The only reason I don't use VLC is because it's decided to go batty and play DVDs in fits and jerks. If I wanted an epileptic meltdown, I'd ask for one. A pity. Time to get ready with another DVD now with fingers close to the special key in order to bring down the volume levels.

bappi's back and the truth hurts again

[thanks to Karthik over at I2FS for the pointer]

After raking in a load of dough with the Addictive victory a few years ago, Bappi's back in the news thanks to You Don't Mess With The Zohan using Jimmy Jimmy from Disco Dancer and giving him due credit. It's irony all over again and this time it's because the Bappi hit was a filch from You're OK by disco duo Ottawan. The Calcutta Times interview also includes the classic befuddling line Ottawan copied from me!. A 1980 song is a copy of a 1982 song. Who did it? The Time Traveller, no doubt.

maverick malik does it again: but no one noticed

In addition to being a font of trashy songs (disco bhaa.nga.Daa from Ganga Jamuna Saraswati, Daddy Cool from Chaahat) and the under-sung classic Do me a favour let's play holii (holii (holii (holii))) from Waqt: The Race Against Time), Anu Malik's also been a champion of the bold and shocking lyric. The stellar example was Sexy Sexy Sexy from Khuddar, a song that caused a storm not when the audio cassettes and CDs hit the market, but when the clips started doing the rounds on countdown shows (Karisma Kapoor's skimpy outfit didn't help matters much). The watered-down version (replace all occurrences of sexy with baby: mercifully, we didn't have lines like he's a sexy elephant) joined the film in the bin of the forgotten forever (a pity, since its convoluted plot and heady mix of Bollwood tropes offers great fodder for a meeting of the sofa spuds).

Years later, after going through an incongruous phase of being a critical darling for stringing decent melodies while working with above-average lyrics, Mr. Malik has returned to flood 2008 with stinker after super stinker starting off with Anamika. Another furball in the kitty was the limpid soundtrack for Love Story 2050 released on the day of American independence. This is a Bollywood skiffy featuring Priyanka Chopra as Zeisha and her man Harman Baweja making his début as a Hrithik Roshan-lookalike. Listen to the classic score that Vangelis conjured for Blade Runner and then weep, wail, lament and convulse in syncopated grief as you listen to Malik recycle tropes from You Only Live Twice (the opening string riff shows up in miilo.n kaa) and Jaanbaaz (Lover Boy's a.ntaraa starts off sounding like an Anu Malik melody and then starts sounding like rejected material from pyaar do pyaar lo). The little gem on the soundtrack is the fruit of a collaboration between Alisha Chinai and Mr. Malik (once again, since the Khuddar song had Ms. Chinai warbling about what people called her). The track opens with a soundscape of electronic sounds against with Ms. Chopra zestfully looping corny lines with as much oomph as in permitted in family-friendly soft-core fare:

Zeisha (pronounced: zaay-shaa). She's tomorrow's woman that yesterday spoke about. She's a mystery. She's an enigma wo (pause) ek raaz hai.

As the track moves along the railroad of rejected samples, Ms. Chinai renders an oh-so-familiar onomatopoeaic riff, before launching into the line that marks a new frontier for Mr. Malik:

Hey you, lover boy. Will you be my toy?

Over and over and over just so that you don't miss it. Lest you are confused, this film was never (I repeat never) going to be called Toy Story 4. The next line, when it finally shows up, registers a knell of danger: kheluu.N khilono.n se phir to.D duu.N; Ouch. Does this mark the first ode to Steely Dan III from Yokohama in Bollywood? "All I can say is that we have not left any musical note or poetic phrase unturned" says lyricist Javed Akhtar in the liner notes. But only the macrobian Mr. Malik could have shown the way. Ave Anu.

killing of the green

The latest bill from a utility company looks different, it's more compact. One of the notes offers more information:

We are pleased to introduce our new and improved monthly billing statement featuring an updated design, new colours, easy-to-read layout and improved arrangement of resident account information.

Sure. Whatever. A drop in rates or a concession would have been more welcome, since the old format wasn't as confusing or intimidating as a BellSouth phone bill. Going green with e-billing is, however, a good way to cut down on the paper trails and stacks in your house (or wherever it is that you store your statements and bills). An electronic version is easier to store, back up and carry around.

However, the final note mentions a new e-bill service. This means I can "go green" and "go paperless" (except in the hall of judgement, if you're living in the US of A).

There's been a strange surge of campaigns for going green. The commercial real estate company owning your office building was probably handing out energy-saving 30 watt bulbs. There are probably handouts sitting a tray (let's ignore the trees killed to create those handouts) championing green computers and pro-green HVAC settings. In a city like Atlanta, you'll also get the "drive less go green" camp, whose arguments are weaker than those of the "drive less save money on gas[oline]" camp. All this is fine and dandy, but I'm waiting for the tax subsidies. There's nothing like a tax cut to get more people involved -- expecting people to go green merely for warm and fuzzy reasons like "saving the environment" or "making it a better place for you and for me" isn't practical.

On the other hand, you will always have utility companies like Georgia Natural Gas that still do not give you a chance to stop the paper bill. You can sign up for OCC (Online Customer Care), you can now even make payments through their online portal without a fee (instead of using your bank's e-Bill Pay service), but you cannot stop them from sending you a paper copy of that PDF you just downloaded. In the eloquent words on the "Electronic Bill Notification" page, You will continue to receive a paper bill. No chance of seeing the Green Green Gas of Home (sorry for that bad paperless pun).