Book Review: The Salvation of a Saint

Is it possible to kill someone from hundreds of miles away?

This is the fundamental question that Detective Galileo (Yukawa, who is actually a professor of Physics) has to answer.

Intriguing? Definitely. 

This installment of the Detective Galileo series from Keigo Higashino may not match the masterpiece ("The Devotion of Suspect X"), but it is also very good nonetheless.

The plot is simple. 
Yoshitaka was on the verge of divorcing his wife. He is poisoned by coffee spiked with arsenic and dies. The most logical suspect is naturally his wife, Ayane. However, there is a glitch. Ayane was hundreds of miles away when he was murdered. 

Yoshitaka was not a saint. He had other women in his life at various times, and had treated them badly. That includes Yoshitaka's mistress. But none of those suspects is as strong on motive as Ayane. But her (lack of) opportunity to commit the act at the fatal hour is a major obstacle for the investigators.

To add to this, the lead detective (Kusanagi) unfortunately falls for the prime suspect . He just refuses to believe that she could have had anything to do with the crime. 

However, his assistant, a lady by the name of Kaoru Utsumi, thinks exactly the opposite. Her woman's intuition tell her to go after Ayane, even if the facts don't support her theory.So she does what her boss has done for years when stymied—she calls upon Professor Manabu Yukawa.

Yukawa and Kusanagi had damaged their relationship during the previous case ("Devotion ..."), and are not on speaking terms. But Utsumi's interference forces them to work together again. And being thorough professionals, they do that quite well.

Higashino follows his tried-and-tested method of hiding everything in plain sight. When the end is revealed, you might end up kicking yourself for not guessing the plot.

Book Review: The devotion of Suspect X

This is not a "who"dunnit. It is a "how-was-it" dunnit. 
You know the crime, and the criminals. What you don't know is how the crime was covered up. 
The author hides everything in plain sight, and does a wonderful job of it.

The story begins innocuously, with the central characters (Tetsuya Ishigami and Yasuko Hanaoka) going about their normal routine.
Yasuko Hanaoka is a divorced, single mother who works at a restaurant that delivers packed meals. She has a daughter called Misato.
Ishigami is a very intelligent Mathematics teacher. He is a next-door neighbor of Yasuko and Misato.

One day Togashi (Yasuko's loser ex-husband) shows up at Yausko's apartment to extort money from her. He threatens to keep doing this and to intrude in their lives. The situation quickly goes out of hand, and Togashi is killed by mother and daughter.
Ishigami overhears the noises, and puts 2 and 2 together. He offers his help in taking care of everything - including getting rid of the body and also covering up the crime.

Inevitably the body turns up and is identified. Kusanagi (the detective investigating the murder case) starts looking at Yasuko as the obvious suspect. He tries to poke holes in her alibi but is unable to do so. 

Kusanagi frequently (unofficially) consults with Dr. Manabu Yukawa, a physicist and his college friend. Yukawa and Ishigami are also batch mates from the same college.

Yukawa initally does not suspect Ishigami and he only meets him to catch up with his old friend. But slowly Yukawa is convinced that Ishigami is not just an innocent witness. 
Then we are treated to a battle of wits, where Ishigami tries to protect Yasuko and Yukawa tries to unravel the layers of deceit and get at the truth.

In the end, Yukawa does decipher what happened. He is awestruck by Ishigami's devotion which even surpasses his considerable intelligence.


The prose isn't very elegant - probably because this is a translation from a Japanese novel. But it doesn't matter. The substance more than makes up for the lack of style.

My favorite quote from the book:
"Sometimes, all you had to do was exist in order to be someone's savior."

Movie Review: Race 2

Summary: Even if you keep your brain aside, your head will still hurt while watching it!! :-)

Details:

Arman Mallik (John Abraham) is a ruthless rich creep who only loves money and can do anything to get it. His partner-in-crime is Elena (Deepika), who also happens to be his step sister. He was a street fighter and still fights whenever required.

Ranveer Singh (Saif) is out to get revenge on John (for what is revealed later). He takes the help of Anil Kapoor to achieve this. The entire movie is about how the revenge is taken.

Omisha (Jacqueline Fernandez) is John's girl friend, and has her own agenda. Anil's secretary is Amisha Patel, who only motto in life seems to talk about carnal pleasures. There is also Aditya Panscholi as Godfather Anza. Anza wears dark glasses all the time, presumably because he too does not want to see where the story is heading ...

The plot is wafer-thin. There are the usual twists and turns galore. But while they were enjoyable in the Race, in Race 2 they seem to be put in there forcibly. Also the twists can be seen from a mile away, so the punch is lost.

Abbas Mastan have tried so hard to make this entertaining that they have lost sight of the fact that a story is also needed. So we are treated to an continuous parade of mansions, discotheques, yachts, casinos, etc. There is a lot of skin show - with all the 3 ladies in a "race" for the top slot.

There are many unintentional hilarious scenes in the film - playing cards in high stakes poker being changed digitally due to "micro sensors" fitted in them, Jacqueline's attempts at fencing, John's attempts at acting.

But the icing on the cake is a car being driven out of an aeroplane, and then landing safely because 4 parachutes pop up from the upper 4 corners of the car!! "Allah Duhai hai" is right!! A miracle!!

Saif is competent. Deepika delivers a good performance. But both of them fight a lost cause (the film).

John Abraham proves once more that you can get by in Bollywood without acting, so long as you maintain your good looks. Ditto for Jacqueline.

John wears a constipated wooden expression most of the time, even when fighting.

Anil Kapoor is wasted in delivering perhaps the most lame, vulgar and cheesy dialogues in his entire career. Amisha has a limited role, and you thank your lucky stars for that.

There are some good, some "classic" (the other kind) and vulgar dialogues.

Good

"Dilchaspi kisi na kisi tarah nazar aa hi jaati hai"

Classic (the other kind)

• Jacqueline:  "Men are many, but money is money"  (profound)
• Deepika: Agar life ka one third hissa sokar ki guzarna hai ... toh akele hi kyun (even more profound)
• Anil: Sabar ka phal meetha hota hai, aur usse bhi zyada meetha hota hai ... sabere ka phal
  
• Jacqueline: Aaj tak kisne mujhe is tarah choone ki koshish nahi ki
  Saif: Bura laga toh bata deti
  Jacqueline: Meine yeh kab kaha ki bura laga?

Vulgar

Pretty much all of Anil Kapoor - Amisha Patel ones.

See it if you don't want a story, and are happy with glamour / attempted glamour.

Life of Pi - Review

I found it to be a visual spectacle worth seeing. Ang Lee has used the 3D medium fantastically and created a treat for our eyes.

Do not see it in 2D - 3D is the only way to go.

The story is interesting as well. I had not read the book beforehand, so had gone in with a clean slate.

The story is told in flashback mode by the senior Pi Patel (Irrfan Khan). When he was young, Pi is introduced to multiple religions, and his experiences help him later in his life. This does not go too well with his "rational" father, but he does not get in his son's way and keeps on teaching him useful things anyway.

The main story happens on sea. When going with his family to Canada on a freighter, the ship hits a freak storm and starts to sink. Pi manages to clamber aboard a lifeboat, with a tiger (called "Richard Parker") who also survives.

Pi's epic 227 day struggle for survival in the ocean, with just a tiger  for company changes him drastically. What he experiences takes him closer to God, and the whole philosophy of the "nature" of God.

The new actor, Suraj Sharma, has done a very good job. His interaction with the (CGI) tiger, are the "meat" of the film. Some are funny, some are intense. The tiger has been captured extremely well and makes you feel that he is almost human - lovable at times, and frighteningly predatory at others.

There is a heavy dose of spirituality, esp. in the beginning and end of the film. Some may like it, some might not.

We are told another story about the same sea saga later. Nobody is sure whether the 1st one is correct, or the 2nd one, a mixture of both, or none of them happened. But the beauty is that it doesn't matter.

The main reason for recommending this film is Ang Lee's direction and fantastic use of 3D. The colors in India and the ocean are shown vividly. There is an extremely effective representation of the storm  - water is tricky to get right in 3D, but Ang Lee has mastered it here. The tiger is shot very well - a combination of (supposedly) 4 Royal Bengal tigers and CGI effects. The luminescent shots of the waters at night, and the whale arising majestically out of the water. All will stay in your mind long after the movie ends.

See it just for Ang Lee's craft. If the story gets to you, it is a bonus.

Rating: 4.5/5

Movie Review – Raaz 3 (Hindi)

A movie that is a worthy successor to “Haunted”! The category is not pure horror, but “entertainment” horror.  If you are looking for classical horror movies, don’t see this one. But if you like the “other type of classic” movies – ones that you can look back on and say “I survived this one”, then this is for you.

Story Summary:

Not much. A fading movie star Shanaya Shekhar (Bipasha Basu) wants to ruin a rising one - Sanjana Krishna (Esha Gupta) to become number 1 again. When “normal” means fail, she resorts to taking the help of black magic. A film director Aditya Arora (Emran Hashmi) who is in love with Shanaya and owes her his career becomes an unwilling accomplice in making the black magic work on Sanjana. In the process, he (naturally) falls in love with Sanjana and tries to help her.

Vikram Bhatt throws the kitchen sink at the audience in trying to scare them. Unfortunately, the sink has rotted and rusted and the only danger that it can pose is a case of tetanus. The film’s attempts at ghoulishness remind you of Ramsay brothers. Blood running out of taps, grotesque creepy characters making “Grudge” like noises, a slimy creature moving around, you name it and the film has it. Vikram even throws in Ganapati Bappa as a last resort (in the hope that maybe He will be able to salvage the story).

The central theme of the movie is that an evil spirit – Tara Dutt (Manish Choudhary) gives Shanaya some magic water that will help possess Sanjana’s spirit. The water has to be given to her by someone she trusts. Since the corner stone of the movie is so corny, you know what to expect.

In keeping with the Bhatt tradition, Vikram has thrown in a lot of erotic scenes. However, they are pretty badly written and directed and so fail to make much of an impact. The music of the film is surprisingly below par for a Bhatt film.

The dialogues of this film definitely deserve an award. Samples:

·         “Science jism ko janta hai, aatma ko nahi” (reminding the audience that Bips starred in Jism)

·         “Yeh meri jagah hai, Bhagwan ki nahi” (reminds you of your boss)

·         “Ek raaz tumhare andar bhi hai...ek raaz mere andar bhi hai jo tumhe kahin ka nahi chodega” (I know what you ate last night)

·         “Jo khak se aya hai vo khak me mil jata hai” (reminds you of what the film will become)

And the award goes to:

v  “If you love me, you can be stupid for me” (intended for the audience?)

What works for the film is the slickness in direction and the performances.

Vikram Bhatt has a good command over the medium and his direction is slick. The 3-D effects deserve a special mention for being quite good.

Esha gives a decent performance (when she is not shrieking). For a newcomer, she has managed to hold her own quite well.

Manish Choudhary gives a good try at being an evil spirit. He is handicapped by the screen play. When you have to make growling noises while alternating between a maggot infested look and a flour-dosed one, it kind of handicaps you. But he tries manfully and does succeed to a large extent.

Emran gives a good performance as usual (when he is not in the mandatory erotic scenes). His acting has grown better by leaps and bounds. He portrays Aditya as a very human character who becomes an unwilling accomplice and then tries to back out after he realizes what it actually is doing to Sanjana.

Bipasha is also good in this movie. She also struggles with having to spout corny dialogues and the forced evil laughter. But otherwise she conveys the intensity of the character and the emotions that drive her pretty well. She is one of the highlights of the film.

In short, see this for entertainment. If you are looking for a classic ghoulish movie, this is not it :-).

Book Review: Dongri To Dubai – Six Decades of the Mumbai Mafia

Book Review: Dongri To Dubai – Six Decades of the Mumbai Mafia  by S. Hussain Zaidi

This is a niche book. It is only for those interested in the underworld, and the stories that lie within their murky world.

The book is like an encyclopedia of crime in Mumbai, right from India’s independence to the current times.  

As expected, Dawood Ibrahim is the “star” and gets maximum coverage. But there are a lot of other criminals that are listed here. Some of the characters are well known - Haji Mastan, Varadarajan Mudaliar, Chhota Rajan, Arun Gawali, Chhota Shakeel, Abu Salem, etc. have been mentioned in various media at one point of time or the other.

But some were totally unknown to me before I read this book.  Sometimes the book resembles the Mahabharata in the sheer number of people mentioned. This can get quite boggling. But once you get past that you start appreciating the research that forms the backbone of the book.

There are many facts that are already known to the reader – through papers, and especially films. But Zaidi reveals some unknown ones that shed an interesting light on some of the subjects.  E.g. that the mastermind behind the killing of Dawood’s brother Sabir was apparently an avid James Hadley Chase reader and that the actual murder plan was inspired by Chase’s novels.

The book is fast paced, and does not slow down even a little bit. Nor does it feel boring anywhere.

Bollywood has had an unending romance with the underworld and has tended mostly to glorify its inhabitants. This book does no such thing. Pretty much everything is written in a matter-of-fact manner, without any embellishments. Zaidi does not believe in extra adjectives J.

Many of the incidents have been depicted in Hindi films or are well known. Haji Mastan’s dalliance with Bollywood, Varadarajan Mudaliar’s rise from a menial laborer, the attack on Chhota Rajan in Bangkok by Chhota Shakeel’s men. Gulshan Kumar’s murder on Abu Salem’s orders.  Mandakini’s association with Dawood, and Monica Bedi’s with Abu Salem.  The shootout at Lokhandwala (which is described very drily in the book unlike the film). Chhota Rajan’s parting ways with Dawood.

There are a few gruesome descriptions of murders that took place. But these constitute a fraction of the book, and overall does not make the book unpalatable.

The chapters on Haji Mastan and Varadarajan Mudaliar end abruptly. Also there is no mention of Chhota Rajan after the Bangkok attempt on his life. The book’s focus is clearly on one person.

Back to Dawood. The central character of this tome’s “rise” makes for fascinating reading. How the son of an upright police constable (whose name was highly respected not just in the police force but in society as well) landed up where he did is quite remarkable.  

The Mumbai police decided to cut the reigning Pathan gang by propping him up.

This was done (apparently) in filmi style. Senior police inspector Ranbeer Likha is shown complaining about all the problems caused by the Pathan mafia to the journalist Iqbal Natiq.

Natiq replies, ‘Sahab, Sholay.’

‘Sholay?! Have you lost your mind Iqbal?’ Likha asks.

‘You use iron to combat iron,’ Iqbal Natiq tells Likha.

In the bargain, they created a monster that continues to haunt this country even today.

The lack of coordination between government agencies has proven costly in India many times. Apparently the IB (Intelligence Bureau) decided to send 2 of Chhota Rajan’s sharpshooters to Dubai to eliminate Dawood on the occasion of his daughter’s wedding. But they failed to inform the Mumbai Crime Branch. An enthusiastic police officer arrested the sharpshooters on their way from India!

Dawood’s main strengths are shown to be his planning and adaptability. Even when he is forced to shift base (from Mumbai to Dubai and then to Pakistan) he manages to flourish in the new environment and rule over it.

Occasionally Zaidi does deviate from pure facts and strays into conjecture/hearsay. E.g. the assumption that Dawood did not know about the full extent of what was planned for  the 1993 Mumbai blasts. Zaidi’s analysis is that fundamentalism is not an inherent part of Dawood’s character, and that Dawood merely went with the flow for his own survival.

Overall, this book is an excellent compilation. I would recommend it to anyone who is interested in the history of Mumbai’s underworld in general and Dawood Ibrahim in particular.

Movie review - "404"

Movie review - "404"

This movie called "404" slipped by unnoticed in 2011. A friend recommended it to me, and so I bought the VCD recently. It turned out to be money well spent.

The movie has nothing to do with cyber space at all.
It is set in a premier medical institution. Students strive to get admitted in here.
The only dark spot is the despicable practice of ragging, that has become a "tradition" over time.

In the new batch that joins, pretty much everyone is afraid of the seniors. Except for 1 student - Abhimanyu - who stands up to them at each turn.
There is a locked room (number 404) in the hostel of the college that everyone is afraid of. It is the room where a previous student, Gaurav, had committed suicide. Due to rumors of his ghost being present, nobody wants to stay in it.

Abhimanyu takes up the challenge posted by the seniors and occupies the room. The seniors take advantage of this and rag him psychologically, always chanting that "Gaurav is still alive and that this is his room, so get out". There is a professor called Aniruddh who backs Abhimanyu. The professor believes only in rationality, and denies that anything paranomal can exist. He supports Abhimanyu in his struggle.

However, slowly things start taking a toll on Abhimanyu. He starts seeing Gaurav everywhere, and Gaurav even talks to him. His mental state becomes precarious, and the professor starts getting worried for him.

What is really happening? Is the psychological toll of ragging making Abhimanyu see the dead student? Or do ghosts really exist?

The director is new (Prawaal Raman), so some finesse is lacking. Also this is a low budget film. It shows everywhere in the making (a medical college does not have so few students :-)).

Also the film seems to be stuffed with newcomers for the same reason. Other than Satish Kaushik and Tisca Chopra, all the actors were unknown to me.

Other than these flaws, however, the film is totally watchable.

Rating: 3 or 3.5 / 5.

Movie review: Haunted (3D) --> Hindi

Movie review: Haunted (3D) --> Hindi

Saw "Haunted" (3D) today. It is one more horror movie from the Vikram Bhatt factory.

Story Summary:
A property dealer (Mimoh aka Mahakshay Chakraborty) tries to find the reason behind why the house that he is selling is haunted. He finds that a female spirit (Twinkle Bajpai) is being held captive by an evil male spirit (Arif Zakaria) in that house and does unspeakable things to her. The evil spirit refuses to let her go even after 80 years.

Mimoh tries to free the good female spirit by going back in time into her era and getting rid of the evil spirit.


Review:
I watched this movie expecting "paisa vasool" 3-D horror. It didn't live up to those expectations, but I enjoyed it all the same.

I would call it a masala + "IPL" horror film. This is a kind of film that is not pure horror, like IPL is not "pure" cricket - but it entertains!! Also it had a lot of (unintentional) comedy in it, that made us laugh till tears came from our eyes.


The real "hero" of this piece is Mimoh. He is going to be in the same league as the legendary Bharat Bhushan !!
Other actors have a lot of expressions for all kinds of scenes. Mimoh proves that that is totally unnecessary - he has 1 expression for all kinds of scenes!! Whether he is sad, happy, shocked, terrified, sentimental, intimate - all result in the same kind of expression. He could have made a good ghost, actually.

When Mimoh spouted intense dialogues, the theater roared with laughter. Especially the "Iyer", "Iyer", "Iyer" scene (yes, we finally have a South Indian ghost in Hindi films! Progress???)

Also Mimoh walks like a robot most of the time (maybe he was Rajni's duplicate in that movie). And he runs like no other filmi hero has run so far! His style of running is inimitable. Koi Shaq?


Arif Zakaria as the evil spirit does as decent a job as he could have, considering that he is shown as disfigured and generally yucky looking for most of the movie. He does all the required gruesomeness and "sounds" as per requirement. He also portrays lust using heavy breathing techniques that sound like bad Pranayam/Kapal Bhaati .


Halfway through the movie, Vikram Bhatt probably realized that Achint Kaur would also look damn good as a ghost. So Arif enters her body and Achint also gets to don the glamorous maggot-eaten-face, with blood splattered strategically. She also does a "lust" scene with Twinkle that seems to have been deliberately inserted to titillate, but just ends up leaving you feeling gross.

Twinkle Bajpai is no twinkling star. Her acting is just about OK. She plays an extremely dumb character, which explains why the evil Arif chose her as the victim (such an easy target is extremely hard to find).
She does the looking scared part decently. And considering that that is her look for 95% of the movie, that is good enough.

Some of the scenes are scary, others feel deliberately inserted. There are some good 3-D effects. Others are there just to make you feel happy about spending more on 3-D. I watched this on E-Square (Pune) screen, where the 3-D effect was not that great, just tolerable.


There are extremely corny dialogues littered throughout the movie . I think that the Bhatts keep cost down by using underpaid writers and copy-pasting dialogues from old movies.

Best enigmatic dialogue: "Yeh mujhe jaanta nahin, pehchanta hai!" (only 0.5% of the folks in this world understand it, including Mahesh and Vikram Bhatt).


There is a break dance scene where except for his facial expression, Mimoh does a pretty neat job. After all, dance runs in his veins! Koi Shaq?


Getting rid of spirits is done the old-fashioned way - with some national integration thrown in. A Christian priest prays, a Dargah pays a vital part and the Hindu concept of five elements is used.
What more do you want? Eliminate the entertainment tax on this movie right now!!


Watch this movie with an open mind, and you won't regret it. If you look for Omen or Poltergeist or "The Ring", you are bound to be disappointed.
Relax, chill, and enjoy the show!!

Found this nifty tip on the internet. You can blog directly using MS Word (Office 2007/2010 only) .

Just open Word, and select New --> Post.
If you are posting for the first time, then you will have to enter the credentials for the blog account (in my case, Blogger or blogspot.com).

Once you finish your post, click "Publish" and voila! Your post will be created!

BBB zindabad!!

BBB zindabad!!

This is a post thanking the BBB (Better Business Bureau --> http://www.bbb.org/ ) for their help in getting an issue with an online merchant resolved for me. And hopefully it might help some other folks if needed in the future.

It all started in Sep 2010. I had ordered a few perfumes from FragranceX (http://www.fragrancex.com/) using my credit card online. The perfumes didn't come even after 3 months. So I wrote to them asking about the status.

Then started a series of "the package is in the mail" kind of replies. It was always the same story - "We have shipped the package, you should be getting it soon." Pretty soon I got frustrated and asked for a refund after 6 months had elapsed. But even for this request, I got the same replies - how much time is one expected to wait until a package comes from the US to India???

Then finally I thought about contacting BBB - USA. Basically BBB is an organization that holds businesses to a high standard, and only businesses with a high degree of integrity and trust make it to their list.

Snippet from their site:

BBB works closely with local, state and federal law enforcement agencies, providing them with valuable information on potential frauds. Many times we are the first organization to know about a developing scam and alert authorities and the public.

I opened a case with the BBB. It was assigned to the New York chapter as FragranceX is based nearby, in NJ. To cut a long story short, after BBB followed up with FragranceX, the money got refunded!

The main thing to note for me was that I am based in India. Yet BBB helped me get a refund from a company based in the US.

Thanks, BBB!! I wish there were more organizations like you!!

Spare a thought for Gary Kirsten

Spare a thought for Gary Kirsten

The Indian cricket team is being lavishly praised, and rightly so!

But in the midst of all this, let's spare a thought for one man who has played a major role in us winning the World Cup - Gary Kirsten!

Gary came in after hurricane Chappel had left a trail of destruction in his wake. Many players had gone off-track in their careers - the most notable being Irfan. Others were low on confidence as "great" guru Chappel had messed up their minds.

Gary brought about a sense of calm to the team. He was the perfect coach for Indian conditions. He adjusted to our way of thinking, and went about his job systematically & sincerely.

He was always in the background, working hard at building team morale. He got in mental conditioning coaches to inspire the team at just the right moment.

At the same time he was very good at giving technical advice to those who were floundering; Gautam Gambhir being one of the most prominent ones to benefit.

Gary never said "I am the coach and whatever I say goes!". He always said "This is Dhoni's team". I don't think you would find a single Indian player who has bad things to say about him. And in our country, that counts for a lot :-).

Thank you, Gary. Hope you come back and take up this task again ...

IE 8 opening tabs slowly? There is a solution!

I recently upgraded to IE 8. The major problem that I faced with it was that a "New Tab" would open very very slowly - it was painful!
Then I did some Googling and found a post that said "Turn off Java Add-On for IE 8". And that worked! Now new tabs open like a charm ...
So in IE 8

1. Go to Tools --> Manage Add-Ons
2. Select "Toolbars and Extensions".
3. Disable the following 2:

• Java(tm) Plug-In 2 SSV Helper
• JQSIEStartDetectorImpl Class

Both are published by Sun Microsystems, Inc.

No need to restart IE - it should speed your browsing experience considerably.

Problems with opening CHM Help files from Network or Internet?

If you have problems opening/viewing CHM files that you downloaded, then this is how to view them properly.
This is due to a feature in Windows that tries to be overly helpful ...
Link: Problems with opening CHM Help files from Network or Internet - Rick Strahl's Web Log

Top funny source code comments

Some comments written by developers that are too funny for words.
Link: Top funny source code comments | cObaia.net

Poem from the movie "Seher"

Poem from the movie "Seher"

This is one of my favorite poems (Hindi). It is from the movie "Seher" (starring Arshad Warsi, 2005).
I don't know if this is from existing literature, or was written just for the movie. Either way, it is too good!

In the film, this is recited when a dear friend of one of the characters is killed.

Is kaali thandi aag ko
Wapas kar raha hoon main
Aur isi ke saath lauta raha hoon
Ye safed mitti
Ye gatiheen paani
Ye bairi hawa
Aur ye athaa aakash
Jo goonga hai

Yun to main jaanta hoon Ishwar
Ke Tum jaante the
Ke ek din main ye sab kooch
Isi tarah Tumhe wapas kar doonga ...

Day before yesterday I tried logging in to my Yahoo account, the one I am using since many years. I got an error message saying "This ID is not yet taken". I started panicking - was my account deleted by mistake or by a hacker maliciously????

Then reasoning took over. I tried to create a new account using the same ID. That attempt failed saying that the ID was not available as it was already taken. Phew! That means the ID was valid. First validation!!

I then sent a mail to that ID. It did not bounce. Double verification!!

Next I tried to contact Yahoo customer care. Here the fun part started.
For contacting Yahoo mail support services, the prominently visible
support links require you to login to mail first!! What about cases like mine where I can't login in the first case?? Nobody though of that?? :-O

The "help wizard" has support for cases where you have forgotten your ID or password, etc. But nothing for login errors in the system itself.

Googling revealed that there is a Yahoo mail for mobile link that usually works even if the rest of the login system kicks you out. I tried that at http://us.m.yahoo.com/p/login?.done=http%3A%2F%2Fus.m.yahoo.com%2Fp%2Fmail%3F



It worked!! I could access my mails!! Triple verification!!

I went back to the Yahoo mail help site. Somehow I found a link that does not require you to login, and sent feedback. (It is so well hidden, I may not find that link again :-) ).

After 1 day, I could miraculously login again. There is no response to my feedback mail, but I am still happy! :-)

Overall: Usability of the customer care section of Yahoo needs big-time improvement. Requiring folks to compulsorily login to contact Customer Care is just bad design!

The God of Tall Things: Interactive story [Link]

A very funny story - read if you are a programmer.
Link: The God of Tall Things: Interactive story

Movie Review: Kites

Movie Review: Kites

A little late to be writing this review, but who cares?


Some highlights of Kites - The Patangs:
--------------------------------------------------
1. There are places in the movie where 10-15 mins go by and nothing has really happened.

2. Mori is not beautiful. Most of our Indian film actresses are better looking than her. She has been chosen for other "qualities".

3. Hritik gets beat up/shot frequently. And you don't care.

4. You actually wish Kangana had a bigger part even if she is playing her standard "mentally disturbed person" role (Nana Patekar and Kangana don't have to act nowadays - they play themselves in all movies and get paid too).

5. The best part of the movie is when it gets over.

6. This is an "international standards" movie, but no person from any nation might like it.

7. They can save money and make many "MacroMan" ads by using sections of this movie.

Exchange: Unknown Error 0×80040600

If you get an error message from exchange that has "Unknown Error 0×80040600" in it, then you are not getting all your emails from the server. The cure for this is to

• Clear "Deleted Items"
• Press F9 to get all emails

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Worst "classic" movies to see before you die (Hindi)

There are classic movies, that are praised by everyone (e.g. Gone With The Wind). And then there are the other type of "classic" movies - ones after seeing that you can't imagine why they were made in the first place.

These I call as the worst "classic" movies to see before you die.

I can proudly say that I have lasted through the
following:
--------------------------------------------------------
1. 
Gunda (Mithunda) --> Family movie - provided each family member sees it

separately! Has characters whose names you can't take in public. See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunda_%28film%29
This
movie should be part of the "10 classic worst movies to see before you
die"
list. Words fail me ...

2.  Jaani Dushman - Ek Anokhi Kahani (Terminator
+ Punarjanam+ Iccha dhari
saap + ... )  --> All time entertaining movie -
you can see it at any point
in the movie and still enjoy the
madness!!

3.  Clerk (Manoj Kumar): Has scenes showing
a) Completely
out-of-shape Manoj "Bharat" Kumar and a grossly overweight
Shashi Kapoor as
college students
b) Curing heart attack with 2 battery cells - scientific
breakthrough!! -->
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JtoYmOZFQE


There
are others. But if you manage to last through all these 3, you will find any
movie good!!