Mood Indigo 05 Rocks!!!

I was associated with the Nation's greatest, biggest, largest, bestest (if there is any such word) College Festival i.e. Mood Indigo at Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay. I spent four fantabulous days there. The atmosphere was simple mind-blowing, not to mention the sheer number of junta that turned up to attend this festival. IIT B was host to people in excess of 10^5 in the four days, a record of sorts, even by MI standards! The reason for that is obvious : Just have a look at the people who performed at MI 05.

Shaan, Vayu, Helga's Funk Castle, Sceptre, P. C. Sorcar Junior, Indian Ocean, Pt. Shiv Kumar Sharma, Pt. Ronu Mazumdar.

Added to this were zillions of other attractions, including competitions galore with lots of prizes to be won. And if you were not interested in the competitions, there were a lot many single females roaming around on the IIT B campus, a highly unusual sight that! I propose to write a lengthier article about it later. Currently, I am recovering from the after effects of partying hard!!!

Beauty and the Beast

This article is really a review of the flick : "King Kong"

King Kong (KK) is the riveting tale of how a mindless, destructive creature is enthralled by the beauty of a New-York girl. In the recent past, I have had a really bad experience with Science Fiction type of movies, because they centred around special effects and failed to deliver on the storyline front. Not so with KK; Peter Jackson (of LOTR fame) delivers a stunning visual saga with a compelling storyline. The end effect is one that leaves the viewer spellbound and asking for more. Some of the scenes in the movie are not meant for the squeamish though and I would strictly advise junta not to take kids along to the movie.

The movie starts with what is probably a theatre in mid-30s era in a depression affected United States. It shows the female lead, Ann Darrow (Naomi Watts) as a performing comedian in the theatre which caters to the "not-so-rich" section of the society. People come their for their daily laughs, which they derive from other people falling on stage and in general making fools of themselves. But the lady hides a secret desire to work on a larger stage, one where the people appreciate her for her acting talent and not just for her foolhardiness. When the theatre closes down, she is forced to the streets and that is where she meets over-ambitious and notorious director Carl Denham (Jack Black). And then they set out for a haphazard sea-voyage with Jack Driscoll (Adrien Brody), as the wiry, skeptical script writer in tow. Carl manages to convince Ann that he is filming a love story aboard a ship that is on it's way to Singapore and he has a narcissist in Bruce Baxter (Kyle Chandler) as the male lead for the film.

Unbeknownst to all of them (although they do later find out), Carl hopes to find Skull Island, a mystical island which is rumoured to have a whole prehistoric ecosystem, complete with local tribals. And they do find the island. Till this point, the movie moves along at a slow pace, and indeed it does require to do that to build up the background. Once the film crew do set foot on the island though, there is no turning back; neither for them, nor for the audience. What follows is a visual extravaganza, which begins when the tribals capture Ann. They offer her as a human sacrifice to the malevolent King Kong. King Kong finally arrives on the scene more than 45 minutes after the movie has started. He does indeed capture the sacrifice, and takes her away. Meanwhile, Jack who has fallen head over heels in love with Ann mounts a rescue mission for her. Everything that happens after that is a blur. Sometimes the action is so fast paced, that people with heart trouble are advised to stay away from the film!

Be it King Kong's fight with three T-Rex's or the fight for survival of the motley band of Ann's "rescuers", Peter Jackson uses CGI to it's best. He has created such a wide and unbelievable array of creepy-crawlies and ghastlies, that one is sure to get a chill down the spine. The ten minute King Kong vs. T-Rex sequence is so intense that you have to grip the seat with both your hands in an effort to prevent your brains leaving your physical self! And then there are the nasty, slimy multi-legged creatures which attack Jack and co., in general making life hell for them in the mission for Ann's rescue. The movie has it's comic moments though. The scene in which Brontosaurs fall over each other in a huge heap is hilarious to say the least.

Where the movie really scores though is in the portrayal of King Kong as the "malevolent-turned-submissive" brute. The eyes of the beast are so real and so full of emotion, they speak more than words could ever have. The bond of the beauty and the beast is depicted marvelously. The visuals, although computer generated, are simply mind-blowing and the scene in which Ann and KK sit atop a mountain watching a sunset is out of this world. It shows a giant who has been captured by beauty. And just as Ann and KK are developing their unnatural 'love' bond, along comes the saviour, Jack. And KK follows them into a trap laid by none other than the wily Carl. Carl has ambitions to take the giant to New-York and earn his millions by putting him on display.

The tragic part of the movie comes when King Kong dies in trying to "protect" his loved one. He falls prey to the bullets of the fighter planes and the scene which shows his gradual fall from the building to the ground is heart rending. There is absolute silence and you can hear your heart weeping for the poor, mute soul of the beast. The emotions in the creature's eyes are there for all to see. It is overcome with grief at losing the "thing" it treasures so much; the "thing" which it has loved unselfishly and has had one hell of a time protecting. You can see the pain it is feeling, not so much from the bullets as from the prospect of never being able to see the loved one again. And after his departure, the only scene which sticks out as a sore thumb comes on. Just after Ann loses a "loved" one, enters Jack. And she immediately runs into his arms. We don't want to see that. We want her to mourn for King Kong.

The movie is brilliant and the reason I chose the title that I have for the article is because of Carl's comment, which aptly sums up the film :

"It wasn't the air-planes that killed him. It was beauty that killed the beast"

Pressure and it's derivatives

This article is not a physics lecture. It has something to do with parental and peer pressure, a thing often experienced by students all across the world. Notice, I say all across the world and not just India. This is because the phenomenon is uniformly distributed across the globe. In India, it's manifestation is in the form of exams and the need to earn six figure incomes whereas in the west, it is seen in the form of the need to belong somewhere or be recognised for what you are.

The fallouts of this are immediatley obvious. Pressure is not good for everyone. Not everyone has the capability to withstand it. So, people succumb to it. Take the case of the student who recently committed suicide in IIT Bombay. He was aghast at having failed in some examination/s. And apparently, he did not have the self-confidence or belief to face his parents or his friends, which is why he chose the easy way out. I know that it's wrong to speak in a negative way about the deceased, but I cannot help it. I have no sympathy for the person who chooses to commit suicide. If there is anyone I do feel sorry about, it is the parents of the boy. What a waste of their efforts in bringing him up all these years.

Parental pressure is a term coined by certain psychiatrists who connived together, to fool people into parting with their hard earned money. It is so easy to blame somebody else for what you are today. And none better and easier to do the same with than your very parents! Because my parents forced me to take up Medicine, I am a failure today. Because my father was a strict disciplanarian, I am the under-confident person that I am today. We get to hear such comments all the time. I agree that some parents are obsessed with their child's future. In the sense that they often end up taking decisions for the child and in such cases the above statements may be valid. Still, there is a limit to being pushed around. In the formative years, the parents' decisions are probably for the best. However, they need to be questioned if they become too controlling or obtrusive. If a person says that he/she chose Engineering not out of his own choice but because of his parents' wishes, he/she can only be pitied. By the time you are 18, you are "supposed" to be mature enough to take decisions for yourself. And if you allow yourself to be pushed around even then, nobody can help you.

And then there are the people out there who go by what their friends say. They are no better off than those who go by what their parents say! Apparently, the boy who committed suicide had an aptitude for Computer Engineering. He however chose to take up Physics at IIT Bombay over Computer Engineering at IIT Guwahati. I am willing to bet that he had been told by his seniors or "friends" that IIT Guwahati is no good. While seniors' and friends' advice can come in handy, you need to make sure where the person who is giving you the advice stands. Does he/she have a personal agenda? What could be the motive, if any, of the person criticising some place or person? Find answers to these questions and then decide for yourself if the person is genuine or not. And if you fail in recognising someone as genuine, never mind. There will always be a next time. If you choose a wrong person, you can commit it to memory to ensure that you will not repeat the same mistake again.

I am sure that people will raise objections against this post. I am sure they will fall into one of the two categories that I have described above.

Competitive Examinations

It is that time of the week again when I sit down and think over significant things that affect the future of my motherland. Competitive exams of all sorts are important, in the sense that they claim to separate the "elite" from the also-rans.

There has been a lot of debate recently over the nature and format of competitive exams for admissions to all sorts of institutions. But none created as much stir as the declaration by IITs that the format of the "Final Frontier" i.e. the Joint Entrance Exam (JEE) is going to be changed. For starters, there need not have been any debate. The IITs are an autonomous body, formed by an Act of Parliament. They are not answerable to anyone and they can conduct their entrance examination in any way they wish. The way they went about it, however, is questionable. Why should they claim that they are making the exam "easier"?

The claim that the student is under a lot of stress due to competitive examinations is hog-wash. Who, or rather, what are these people trying to shelter the "kids" from? Life itself? Life is full of stresses, as any professional will testify. And by making the students' work less to get into the Premier Institutes of the country is not a good idea. Some may counter this by saying that even if the exam is made easier, only the best will go through. I beg to differ. By making an exam simpler, the examiner's job is going to be made tougher because the number of students doing well is going to be increased. We can only wait and see as to how easy the exam really is.

Getting admission to IITs is not an easy thing. And it should not be easy. The cream of the nation should make it there. Not some kid who cannot handle pressure and who took the easy way in to IIT. It's nothing but a mockery of all the students who have got admission to IITs till date. Didn't they have stress in their life? You bet, they did. They must have had parental and peer pressure to do well in their respective board exams, because most of the parents still consider getting admission to IIT a chance thing, whereas the future of a student in Engineering is "secure" through the conventional method. In spite of all these pressures, these students managed to get through. And now, people who cannot handle stress will make it to IIT. Do they think that life within IIT is simple? It's time to wake up and smell the coffee.

The whole purpose of competitive exams is to give you an idea of what lies ahead. And in a country like ours, with such a huge population, competition is bound to be great. Therefore, kids need to know how to work under pressure. What are their jobs going to entail? Do they think that working professionals do not have stresses? They have their own deadlines; work has to be finished on time, not just to satisfy the customer but also to have peace of mind. And a competitive exam that is tough is the way to prepare oneself for the main examination that lies ahead : LIFE.

The sort of competitive examination that everybody should atleast appear for, once in their life-time, is the CAT. This is a no-holds barred, out and out, cut-throat competition examination. It is the sort of an exam which gives you a feel for the life that you are going to face ahead. A manager has to think on his/her feet and the CAT prepares one for it. Similarly, the JEE prepares the student for the life he/she is going to face in IIT. Making the CAT or the JEE (or even the GATE, for that matter) simpler is defeating the whole purpose of holding the examination in the first place.

I am sorry. This post hasn't quite turned out the way I had expected it to. I had thought of writing an article which would bring out the finer aspects of a competitive exam. Why it is necessary in a country like ours and the reasons why students graduating from IITs/IIMs have it in them to take on the best in the world. But then, this is the way the article has come out. I think that all the current students of IIT will agree with me. The JEE needs to be made tougher if anything. Also, it should be made leak-proof. In the sense that there are increasing incidents of people "cracking" the exam before the exam date.

The Inside Story

No. This post isn't an expose of a governmental goof up or some scoop like the Tehelka scam. This article is about an issue close to my heart; one which I am probably going to base my M. Tech. Project on. It is about Indoor Air Pollution.

As Mumbaikars, we know all about Air Pollution. Newspapers constantly barrage us with information about the breathability status of the air in and around Mumbai. While it is true that the status of air in Mumbai is bad, it may not be as bad as the journalists make it out to be. I think it is simply a case of misuse of journalistic freedom, in the sense that the values reported may have been changed for the sake of making a huge hulla-bullo. The average Mumbaikar goes about his life anyway; he doesn't give a damn how much sulphur dioxide (or whatever it is that the newspapers claim) he is breathing everyday. He knows that the status will not change. What he doesn't realise is that the situation doesn't change because he doesn't want it to. Controlling air pollution is like trying to prescribe a medicine for the common cold. There is no specific remedy. The best way is to ensure that you don't get a cold. Similarly, air pollution should be controlled at the source itself. Once the pollutant leaves the industry or the vehicle from which it emanates, God only knows where it will go, what it will do. As an example, consider this : When a volcano erupted in Mexico, some dust particles were found to have reached Mumbai. That is the sort of unpredictability that goes with Air Pollution. Which is why you should take all the values given by various sources with a pinch of salt. And which is why each and every one of us should take an active part in preventing air pollution whenever and wherever possible.

But this is only about Outdoor air pollution, what I want to talk about is the one that happens Indoors. Yes, there is something as Indoor Air Pollution (IAP) and which has been realised in the western countries years ago and only recently has research been started in India about the same. Let me give you the background data about IAP.

Each person spends about 80% or more of his time "indoors". Indoors being classified as home, office, public buildings, resatuarants, pubs, bars and all sorts of buildings where one is basically sheltered from the elements of nature. This is why indoor air pollution is the "buzz-word" in the environmentalist community these days. All these days we were worried about the pollution "out there", while right under our noses (literally and figuratively) contaminants such as carbon monoxide, respirable particulate matter and what not were creating havoc. Let me explain why indoor air pollution is so significant. When a person is outdoors, the sheer volume of the atmosphere more often than not works in his favour, by diluting the contaminant concentrations to values way below the harmful. This may not necessarily be true in case the person is indoors. Poor ventilation and sheer ignorance on part of the person may lead to the person taking into his lungs things that were never meant to have met the mucus in the nose, let alone the alveoli. The contaminant has a greater chance of entering the blood stream of a person indoors than it has outdoors. Dig this : we are probably at more risk at our own houses than we are outside!

I do not want to be an alarmist; a person who shouts that the world is coming to an end just because a flood took place in Mumbai just after a tsunami hit the eastern coast of India. Agreed, both events have a very low probability, but that does not mean that they will never occur. It's like this : The rains that hit Mumbai on the 26th of July were the sorts that occur once in 500 years or so. But that does not mean that they may not occur again the coming year. It is just that in the long run, when an average is taken, the value will come out to be once in 500 years. We are luckier than the western, developed countries in more than one ways. For starters, ours is a tropical country, which means that we seldom have extremes of temperature. A direct consequence of which is we need not have air-conditioned or heated residences or offices. The sun, of which we may be critical at times, is helping us lead healthier lives! Our country is constantly buffeted by winds from all sides. So, even in our houses there is, luckily, enough ventilation to get rid of the pollutants before they can become a problem.

There is however another problem here. We care the least about the person who loves us the most. No, I am not talking about girl friends / boy friends. I am talking about our mothers. They spend a lot of time in the kitchen, cooking up meals for us with loving care and attention. And what do they get in return for that? Possibly, the chance of smoking the equivalent of about a dozen cigarettes a day. Why? Because of the burning of the LPG. In an improperly ventilated kitchen, the chances of proliferation of carbon monoxide are much, much greater than in a properly ventilated kitchen. So, if your mom complains of fatigue after spending some time in the kitchen, it is probably because carbon monoxide has robbed her of some vital oxygen. Much work has been done in this area and it has been found that nothing works as good as an exhaust fan. Forget the electric chimney and other costly devices. The cheap and easily available exhaust fan can work wonders for the kitchen. There is the small matter of cleaning it once in a while, but that is true for all devices.

One last thought as I finish my article, the vertical growth of Mumbai is going to mean only one thing : lesser ventilation for out houses. Multi-storeyed buildings stop the winds, especially the buildings which are located on or near the sea-coast. So, as we get more and more towers, the wind velocities are going to go only one way : down. And then, there is also the matter of supply of water and electricity to the people living in these buildings. As it is, the people in the suburbs of Mumbai are facing power outages of an hour or two everyday. In such circumstances, it is rather unfortunate that the government is not doing something to control the burgeoning population of the metropolis. Agreed, the rising population may be our strength in the years to come. But this population should not be concentrated in few cities like ours. It needs to be spread out over the whole country. A high population density has many problems associated with it, the primary one being the chances of outbreak of a contagious disease.

Well, it seems that the "Inside Story" turned out to be more of a social commentary a la Michael Crichton in State of Fear. I will try to be concise the next time.

The first of a series

Hello all.

As I set out on this new journey, I have hope in my heart : Hope, that some day, all the critiques I present here will be peer reviewed, found to be useful and be actually implemented. I am serious. It's not like in my other blog where I am constantly making fun of the status of my country India. I hate the situation; I want it to change. But stuck as I am in the rigmarole of daily life, I seldom find the time to do something useful for the country. There is however one thing that I can do to help my poor country. Which is this : after studying in Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, I am not going to utilise whatever little knowledge I have gained here for the benefit of another country. This is another way of saying that I will not Quit India!

So, with eternal hope in my heart, I set out for the review of the nation that is India.

P.S Unlike my other blog, this is probably going to be a weekly updated blog.