of indian tv media..

If one has been regularly keeping a watch on the Indian television media scene, then one might as well agree with what BBC journalist Paul Danahar has to say here(source:prathamesh). The excerpt below sums up the whole idea about the state of media in India as of today.

The former Home Minister Indrajit Gupta was one day doggedly pursued by a young journalist on his way out of parliament.he finally agreed to stop for the news crew, he was asked the probing question. "Sir, would you please say something". The second question was "and Sir, who are you?"

Personally, I think NDTV is by far the best English news channel reporting in India. CNN-IBN is good in parts(I nomally do not miss Devil's Advocate). TIMES-NOW(with its sloppy programming) and Headlines-Today(with its sloppy anchors) suck big-time. Needless to say that the Hindi media is a complete no-no. I am afraid that with time and intense competition the scenario is going to worsen and all we will be subjected to see and know is "Why Udit Narayan has two wives and whom he prefers to sleep with?". How I wish there was a BBC India.

Also if one wants to know what goes on behind the screens, this blog might just reveal it all.

shinema!!

Saw this movie almost two weeks ago. IMHO nothing great about it. Though it is/was being touted as a "different" movie from the Madhur Bhandarkar film making stable, it failed to satisfy my expectations. The best and the worst part of the movie is the sleaze. The best part is that it is there and the worst is that it is not much. ;-) In a nutshell it is a "Page 3" in formal attire. About acting, Rajat Kapoor was quite good but Bipasha lacked the firepower that her character required. I think Sushmita Sen would have been fitting there. Kay Kay's talent has been wasted yet again.

Saw the "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest". GREAT would be an uderstatement. Now some people might argue that the first one was better, then let me tell them that I havnt seen it. The story, visually arresting cinematography, special effects and acting of Jonny Depp are the mind-blowing aspects of the film. Some of my friends did not like the abrupt ending of the movie but I really did not care much about it. They also say it isn't as funny as the first one. Anyways, I enjoyed for about more than 2 hours(yes, the movie is long) and hence its was all worth the money spent.




One of the most awaited Bollywood films of the year is "Omkara" and looking at the trailers the expectations have soared pretty high. I hope it does well.

on the mat and fucked

I just saw it all. Before the imaginations run wild let me clear the air. I am talking about having watched the royal fuck of the foreign minister of Pakistan, Mr Khurshid Kasuri, by the master interviewer Karan Thapar on Devil's Advocate(cnn ibn). LOL. I could not believe that Pakistan had such a foreign minister who could not even answer diplomatically, leave alone being correct and factual. All he could manage was to evade answering the questions posed to him very lousily and blabber rubbish. It must be so embarrasing for the pakistanis to see their foreign minister being stripped naked by the media of a rival country. I will not write much about it because one had to see it to belive me. Evenif you havn't seen it, you can read it here. Though I doubt if reading would be as much fun.

P.S: Karan Thapar Rocks!!!

should india go the israel way?

Poignant images of the city of Beirut:courtesy TIME magazine

I have been receiving email forwards from friends which have been criticizing India's so-called coward policy against terrorism while comparing it against that of Israel's. I cannot blame them for being incorrect, for when the anger of the recent Bombay blasts was fresh in my mind, I too thought that India is being a soft state and why not do an Israel in PoK atleast.

But now , after being more "informed", I think that it would be a folly to compare the situation in the Middle East with the one here. The comparision ends with the fact that both Israel and India are being terrorised and goes no further. The skirmish there, which might as well turn into a war, is like a David v/s Goliath fight where Israel is too mighty for the Hezbollah. And thats not the case here. Here we are talking about two nuclear nations and the repercussions of such a war here would be more grievous and long-lasting. This ofcourse doesn't mean that I wish to undermine the after-effects of current crisis in middle-east on the civilians there. Looking at the above pictures I certainly can't. There are many things we can emulate from Israel like building efficient intelligence organizations ala MOSAD, but certainly not the foohardy of going to war. War cannot be the solution. It is the last resort when the security and sovereignity of the country is threatened, like it was at the time of the Kargil intrusion.

The more the bombs affect the innocent civilians the more terrorists are born among them.
Have Wars ever brought peace in the history of mankind? NO.

is this a weblog or a journal or both?

I am not sure of the answer. May be till date it was more of a journal than a weblog and now I intend to make it the other way round. The explanation given here is pretty much exhaustive and can help anyone categorize any blog as weblog or a journal, only if the content is not very heterogenous.

Anyways, this is just a 7 month old blog and yet to find its true calling, yet to evolve I must say. It is like the rivelet that has just sprung up from the rocks and doesnt know if it going to join another river or be a river in itself , end up in the arabian sea or the bay of bengal. Let it take its own course I say.

a stroll through the "maximum city"

It was not the usual lazy Saturday morning and quite rightly so. The previous night Pankaj had mentioned about his impending visit to the British Council Library and the shutterbug in me had jumped at the thought of visiting the beautiful South Bombay and making extensive use of my Nikon S3.

10:30 was the timing decided and I was as usual late, although by a few minutes only. We were lucky enough to get hold of the 10:45 fast from Thane and luckier to grab the fourth seat( only those who travel in the second class understand its importance). We reached our destination withing an hour. The strong Bombay police presence on the CST station was tangible but I wondered where did they all come from? May be they have reduced the security of some petty politician who might as well turn out to be the next target.I digress.

We reached the BCL within few minutes of touching base at CST. BCL seemed very cool to me, not for the obvious AC but for the plethora of books at its disposal. Pakya got hold of three books, one a p.g.wodehouse, another a thriller Bunker 13(which now happens to be with me) by some investigavtive journalist and the third one was a book on 'Computer Hacking'. After finishing the proceedings at the library we decided to just roam around to make use of my camera and here are those pictures.

Well there is nothing more to be written about this stroll as the pictures speak for themselves.

bhurji?

I have decided to change the name of my blog. Why? Umm..let me analyze.

The name of the blog wasn't representing the blog per se. It instead defined me as a person..a lazzybum. Hence decided to change it in such a way that it represents the content on my blog rather than me as an indivisual.
Now why the name "bhurji"? and exactly what is a "bhurji" by the way? For the uninformed a "bhurji" is a term used to describe a dry-ish masala dish which is just a mixture of stuff in small pieces - e.g. pieces of paneer,scrambled egg,tomato,onion, potato etc. As the content of the bhurji is left to the creative freedom of the chef or the cook, there is nothing unique about its taste or the texture except that it has to be spicy. A very popular variety is the egg-bhurji which also happens to be my favourite.
So what has this food item got to do with this blog? Well, a concoction that a "bhurji" is, whose contents are as varied as they could get, my blog intends to be the same. It already is but still things tend to revolve around me too much. I do not want to write about stuff that is just related to me but expand my ramblings to "anything and everything".

Lets see how tasty this "bhurji" turns out to be.

my thoughts about the football world cup

Now that the real life one month long drama has ended, I thought I might just as well sum up my impressions of the same.

To start with, I must say that I am not a football expert, neither an avid football watcher nor a hardcore enthusiast. Even after watching the tournament all month long, I cannot claim to be any one of those. My previous experiences with the game, be it watching or playing, could be best described as 'occasional'. I had intermitently watched the 98 and 02 editions of the Cup and never had any inclination to keep myself abreast of club football. I am not sure what made me take keen interest this time around, but possible reasons could be the lack of good cricketing action and the urge to remain informed about the most talked about sport in the world.

I would probably rant about two observations. Observations on the field and off the field.

Quality?
Having said about my limited knowledge of the game, I can still say that the quality of football at this world cup has been far from desirable. When we talk about football, we talk about goals and about how flamboyant and free flowing was that striker. But instead of the Ronaldos, people talked about the Zidanes, the Cannavaros and the Buffons, and all that the top goal scorer of the tournament, Klose, could manage is a meagre tally of five goals, the lowest since 1962(source:FIFA 2006 site). All that mattered was how good a midfield or how strong a defence a team had. There was hardly any good show of footballing skills beyond the half line.All this is fine, but to keep a viewer like me interested there have to be goals and goals that are breathtaking to say the least. I longed to see the Latin American artistry and arrogance.
Nevertheless, it did keep me glued to the TV set, most of the time beyond midnight, and the only reason I can attribute for that is the unpredictability of it all. Who had predicted that the Italians would take home the final honours? I bet no one, not even the Italians.In my opinion, Italy wasn't the best team consistently. Every team had its moments and the one which kept its nerves surged ahead(how we all saw zidane lose his cool during the final).

Indian Women and Football
We have all heard stories and jokes about how women hate sports, particularly when their husbabnds/boyfriends tend to neglect them as the result of some "happening" sporting action going on somewhere in the world. I pretty much had the same impression until recently when the conversations with my fellow female friends started with the 'F' word i.e 'Football'. As they began discussing the tackling skills of the Italians and the dribbling skills on the Brazilians at length, I wondered if I had something to contribute to the discussions. Astonished by their knowledge and interest, and ashamed by mine, I thought it was high time I start watching the game seriously. :D. Women did watch football but I always thought it was just an eye-candy for them than anything else. Never knew that they actually had good enough knowledge about the game. Now I know how to strike of conversations with females, an activity which is as tough for me as is using the cricket bat for Ashish Nehra.

To conclude, I must say it was a good worldcup, less of brilliance and full of shockvalue. The final was an icing on the cake, a cake which wasn't as sweet as expected.

kahn they do it??

Just saw a humdinger, the quater-finals of the FIFA World Cup 2006, where the Germans were playing against the Argentinians, and I must say that it turned out almost as I had expected it to.Though a disappointment for me as my Cup favourites Argentina lost the game, it was a treat to watch, as is any game that goes down to the wire.

Watching the Germans kick in one penalty after another with so much precision and authority, I have developed an opinion and it is that this German team definitely has the character to hold their nerve in a cracker. I could easily see it in their eyes, the killer instinct, the strong desire to win for their country. Naturally after this strong win, the Germans must be oozing with confidence and have emerged as the strongest contenders for the Cup.

But the questions remains. Kahn they do it??