Fans & Fanaticism - Movies & Politics

Some people take pride in claiming themselves to be "fans" of a certain politician or a movie star. The term fan is not seen as a negative connotation but as most people don't realize, it is derived from the word "Fanatic". For all practical purposes words like fanatic and fanaticism are taken in a negative sense which mean excessive, out-of-limits and prejudiced liking of somebody regardless of logic, merit and sense.

Politicians, movie stars and celebs generally suffer from an incorrigible disease called nepotism which they display by transferring their public image to their children or relatives. Politicians make their son / daughter / spouse as their successors as if political power given by voters is their private property. Useless and worthless heir apparents take on the mantle and plunge into the field of politics directly becoming an MLA or an MP. Sometimes even worse, they dream of becoming prime minister / chief minister just because they were born in a particular family.

We can't blame only the parent or the child who does this. Everybody wants to see their children or loved ones in a powerful and successful position. Rather its their so called "FANS" who should be blamed for this unfortunate situation. Without their knowledge, these bigots are rotting the society by accepting and helping worthless, ineligible, selfish successors to adorn the throne just because of their partisan favoritism.

Indira Gandhi became PM just because her father was an ex-PM. Rajiv Gandhi, who didn't know basic demographics about India, became PM out of the blue because of his lineage. Then the power automatically passed on to Sonia Gandhi and now to Rahul Gandhi. Its not limited to one political party. TDP, DMK, Shivsena, BJD, TRS, JD, SP, NC, now YSR Congress and every other party runs family show, thanks to naive fans and cadre. All these so called dynasties were established by able leaders. And his fans (and their generations) have automatically ended up becoming devotees of not only their idol but also his next few generations. So illogical !!!

If there is another angle for this senseless fanaticism, that's "CASTE". We are in a society where exit polls and opinion polls forecast the winner based on number of voters belonging to the candidate's community. Shame. Political parties field candidates based on caste dynamics and voters flock like herd of sheep to blindly vote for their "representative" without realizing what kind of benefit they reap just by seeing a person of their community winning. Weird and sad.

Today we have political parties unofficially affiliated to castes and religions. A Hindu party, a Muslim party, a Dalit party, a Yadav party, a Kamma party, a Kapu / Reddy party, a Brahmin party, a Velama party, a Gowda party, an OBC party, an Atheist party and so on. But the interesting part is that no such caste affiliated party has done remarkable service to the caste they represent. Its senseless fans and their bigotry which propels these polarization of the society, which is dangerous to the very secular fabric of the country.

Thus fans who get blind-folded by their prejudiced and uncritical devotion to their caste and favorite dynasty rot the society by disallowing worthy and sensible leaders.

Movie and entertainment industry is another area where fans give undue and inappropriate worth to people who belong to a certain lineage or a certain caste.

Bollywood, Tollywood, Sandalwood or take any wood, 90% of current lead actors are sons of yesteryear actors. Same is the case with directors, music directors, villains and even vamps. Again, we can't blame those successful stars for passing on the mantle to their children, but how can a movie goer so easily like or blindly worship somebody appearing on screen just because he is a brother or son of some icon. I can never understand this kind of devotion.

I don't really know if caste forms an important factor of liking a movie star in other parts of the country, but Andhra Pradesh suffers from this unfortunate tendency. And the worst part is that fans of those caste based icons spread venom against actors of other castes and this phenomenon has created a polarization which is directly transported to politics too as every caste based matinee idol is associated with some political party (due to fans pressure, they say), again unfortunately.

Younger generation stars of these idols become a massive election rally crowd pullers or are given a honorary title even before their first movie is released. And yeah, fans, fans associations, youth associations clamor at the very sight of their favorite hero irrespective of whether the piece of art is worth a clap or not.

Politics and Movies - These two fields are rotten big-time by self proclaimed fans who are nothing but a confused lot who get carried away by unwarranted bias for caste, lineage and such irrelevant affiliations. May they all get well soon !

Whom to choose between Parents and Life Partner ?

Marriage is THE most important event in anybody's life. It builds new relationships, changes lifestyle, brings more responsibility, matures you as a person. But some people inadvertently fall into a predicament of either compromising on their existing family relations and values to start a new phase of life or uphold old relations and end up not respecting the new relation it deserves.

Parent children relationship in Indian society is much different to that of other parts of the world. Parents don't wait for kids to get self sufficient and move out, they don't expect kids to work part-time to make their own living. From the time they give birth to their children, parents care, love, suffer, protect, pray for the well being of their children regardless of how old their kids are and regardless of the necessity to do so.

For a boy or a girl, parents will be everything; but with marriage, the dynamics tend to change. Attraction, liking towards that new important person of the life, a feeling of sharing the rest of the life, discovering new things about that person will drive a strong affinity which will make life partner as important as parents or siblings. Thats quite natural for everybody.

But just think from parents' point of view. They would be put in a situation to share the love, attention, affection from their child they were habituated to from past 25 years with a new person who came into their child's life some days or months ago. Parents will be mentally prepared, they know thats life, but still their heart always doesn't agree with their mind; it causes loneliness. Its just not fair.

Youth has to understand that parents need more attention and a feeling of possession in that phase. A boy has to assure his parents that he hasn't gone away from the family, but has brought another child for their parents. No guy neglects his parents deliberately, but proper care should be taken to ensure that his parents whole heartedly accept the girl as a daughter-in-law and not just as a wife to their son. It needs a lot of words and lot more actions.

The way of life should not be drastically different post marriage; Thats the first thing to make his parents feel "yes, he hasn't changed". He has to spend as much time with parents as he did before, do the same things, be the same. Thats very important. He has to help his wife in her trials to build confidence in his parents even at the cost of his own ignominy, thats worthy.

At the same time, the boy has to make his in-laws realize that he didn't separate their daughter from them. They have given their daughter away to an unknown family and would obviously be very apprehensive and nervous. Some words of love, some acts of togetherness will make them happy and content about their decision to get their daughter married to him. Treat them like your family. They need that love and care from their son-in-law to overcome the feeling that their daughter is away. After all, they are a family too.

Girl's role is equally important. When a girl enters a new family, she has three choices

• Be a wife to her husband and start changing him to make her dreams about married life come true.
• Try her best to show love to the family and treat her in-laws like the way she treats her own parents
• Try her best to show love to the family and treat her in-laws like the way her husband treats his parents.

Agreed that every girl enters a married life with lot of dreams and aspirations, but the day she decides to change or manipulate her husband to her tunes is the day when happiness in their lives starts waning. However loving her husband could be, no boy enjoys the feeling that he is being taken away from his parents.

The other two choices sound very close, but are different. Girl has freedom with parents, her parents can forgive if she hurts them or behaves stupidly. But for in-laws, the factor of forgiveness and taking it easy doesn't arise all the time. Its nobody's mistake, thats life in simple terms.

So a girl has to try treating her in-laws like her husband treats them or may be better than that. Initial months or a couple of years of such relationship will develop that mutual love, admiration and affection and parents tend to accept daughter-in-law as their daughter and not just their son's girl. That day, girl can not only tune her husband but also her whole family (including in-laws) to make her dreams come true as no in-law would not like to listen to the girl who came from other place to take care of them more than their son.

A girl always feels responsible for her parents too. So if a boy takes care of her parents, that reflects in a girl's behavior towards his parents. Thats a successful marriage. Happiness starts exactly there. And thats a lifetime of happiness.

Now comes the interesting part. How to behave with your life partner after the wedding.

Boy always speaks volumes about his parents to his fiancée, which is very common. Girl patiently listens to everything and says she loves to get into the family and loves the joint family. Even this is equally common :D

After marriage, the boy wants to show their parents that he is not a changed person, and thats really important as per the previous discussion in this article. At the same time, its also important for him to understand that a girl leaves her parents, siblings, old ways of life just to be with him. She arrives into a new family with lot of fears, apprehensions as she doesn't know behavior, attitude, tantrums, temperaments of the new family. This is a great sacrifice which she makes out of love and trust. She deserves a lot of respect and love just for that fact.

Dragging her into his world always works against the relationship. A girl who comes would be the youngest in the family in terms of age, maturity. She may or may not know how things work in his family. She may not know what irritates his parents or what are their ways of life. She may need to face ire of her in-laws. Sometimes she may get dejected, disappointed and would not even have her parents and siblings around to share. She comes into the family with aspirations and dreams and soon gets depressed and drags herself into a viscous web of negativity.

So a guy has to ease his wife into her new life by taking care of her, making his parents understand her habits, not forcing her to do anything which she doesn't like, not restricting her to talk or move freely with her parents, siblings, friends, not making negative remarks about her past life, making her feel free in the new atmosphere, doing things she likes, showering her with love and attention she expects. In short, a boy has to treat his wife as a princess, which would not be a herculean task (and especially if they got married recently) :)...she deserves it !

Girl floats in day dreams from the time the marriage is fixed. She starts weaving a wonderland with her husband and herself as protagonists. But she has to realize that her would be in-laws are important characters in her fiancé's life. She can't live a happy life by dragging him out of his family. A girl is brought up with the thought that she has to leave her parents after marriage. But boys aren't. So boys are not mentally prepared for any kind of transition and if something happens in that direction, they will be heart-broken (except if he is insanely selfish and ungrateful). So girl has to understand this predicament.

A girl also has to realize that her in-laws initially tend to get possessive about their son and hence expecting them to be super nice is only unfair to them. The quicker the girl makes her in-laws realize that she is not here to separate their son from them, the merrier her life would be. The moment she gets cosy and friendly with her in-laws, she can find her husband in her kitty in no time. It may take some time, but definitely happens. Thats the secret, not many girls know.

There will be lot of negative influencers like male chauvinists, ultra feminists, pseudo intellectuals, so called experienced bigots who try to brainwash youth as how to keep wife / husband / in-laws in "control". Beware, thats a slow poison. Heeding to those irresponsible pieces of advice will only turn the prospect of a happy family into a war zone.

A successful marriage need not be an arranged marriage or a love marriage. But it needs a union of two matured, understanding, loving people who can bring two families together instead of ripping apart their spouses away from their respective parents.

So the question in title, whom to choose between parents or life partner ?

Simple answer: You have to choose if parents and life partner are on opposite sides. Do you need to, if they are on the same side ?

So what can you do to get them on the same side ? Whatever on Earth it takes, its worth.

PS: After my marriage, my parents have gone out of their way to share their love to my wife and my wife bypassed me to become their daughter and she treats / calls them Amma and Nanna. So all of them are on the same side and pushed me on to the other side. They never cared and I don't complain either. Touchwood :)

How to be Bad ???

Life is all about actions and reactions and the kind of image, good or bad is created only by the way we act and react to situations and people. If we react favorably to others, goody good image will be condescended upon us or else we will be bad :) So the choice is between being good to others by reacting favorably to whatever others say or being bad to others by reacting according to our convictions. Since I'm not good by any means, I'm here to explain how to be bad :D

A decade ago, I read a book titled "Meeru Manchi Ammai Kaadu" written by eminent writer Yandamuri Veerendranath. It means "You are not a good girl" with a tagline which roughly translates to "But you are a girl with a good attitude". That's a must read not only for every girl, but for every boy too because that teaches how to mould a stable attitude without getting blindly carried away by others' opinions or directions.

World is full of people with perceptions and the bad part is that everybody perceives a situation in a different way. Everybody reacts differently, thinks differently, behaves differently and the definitions of success, happiness, failure vary from person to person. A solution for a problem would not be the same for everybody and everybody will be busy convincing others that their points of view are right :D This is the very reason for arguments, fights and negotiations

Just understand that like all others around you, you too are a person with an identity. You have tastes, thoughts, wisdom, experience, feelings which can guide you to behave in a certain way. Taking a piece of advice from others is always helpful, but the power of deciding what is correct and what is not FOR YOU lies only with you as you are the best judge of your sensibilities and senses.

If you continually live for others, follow their directions, appease and try to impress them, you will cease to live your beautiful life and end up being a pet. Even if you try to appease one person or set of persons, there would be somebody to find faults with you for sure. So never give much importance to what others think about you.

If you talk more, you will be called a chatterbox and boring, if you are composed, you will be called moody and boring :D; if you are dynamic, you are called childish, if you get vocal, you are argumentative and irritating; if you present your knowledge, people say you show-off, if you don't listen to others' advice, you will be seen as immature, if you don't agree with others' point of view, you will be called adamant and resistant. This goes on and on and on and on and...............

And this is not because others don't like you because even beloved ones don't see eye to eye on lot of things we do. Its just because of the difference in perception as I mentioned earlier. Now if we take the element of negativity like jealousy, greed, conspiracy, ignorance, anger, frustration etc, these opinions and images will transform from bad to worse and worst :D

So there is nothing called being good to the world all the time as sometime or somewhere everybody becomes bad in others' eyes. So NO BIG DEAL.

It all boils down to building convictions, developing decision making power and sticking to ideals we believe in. Its just being brutally honest to ourselves and not flowing in the tide of opinions, advices, expert comments :D

But there is a flipside too. You can lead a successful and happy life only if your convictions and decisions are correct for your way of life. Confused conviction is in common terms called as foolishness. So the conviction should be backed by knowledge, experience, wisdom, contingency plan, analytical thought, restraint, resilience, ability to cope up from setbacks, capability to bounce off harsh remarks. Without any of these qualities, having a strong attitude works against you.

There is one more highly confused and abused concept about "Attitude". Showing attitude is generally associated with being rude to others, displaying unnecessary arrogance, being judgemental about others. This is a quality of confused and immature.

People with strong attitude don't give a lot of importance to others' way of life, forget being rude and judgemental. Building attitude is all about assimilating knowledge through observation, study, experience from as many corners and possible and deciding what is right and what is wrong. Its not about being desperate to prove if others are right or wrong or if other should be respected, dominated or humiliated. Don't be bad due to what you do to others, just be bad due to what you do to yourself :)

BAD is the new GOOD. Good is not that good after all. Its BAD. So BE BAD

PS: Now after reading this whole article, its for you to decide if this makes sense to you or not as building your attitude starts right here. If you blindly follow what I wrote here without thinking twice, you are contradicting yourself :D

Music Masti Zindabad !!!

I have never come across any person with their head on shoulders who doesn't like music. If there is anything that can be declared as a universal hobby, thats listening to music, hands down.

Till I was 10, I didn't have any particular favorites and was randomly enjoying all songs played in radio. Those days, my mom was a Ghantasala fanatic and I always tried to decipher why she likes his songs so much. I was not a huge fan of him or any old Telugu songs.

The first time I seriously liked a song and yearned to listen repeatedly was SPB's "Ye Divilo Virisina Paarijathamo" which is a cult classic; and the first song I tried to (unsuccessfully) croon was "Vedam la Ghoshinche Godavari" :). I rate these two timeless songs as two of my first and also all-time favorite Telugu songs.

But if there is any album which took my feet off the ground and made me crazy about music and songs, it was "Aashiqui". The songs in that movie made me feel that Kumar Sanu and Nadeem Shravan were born only to make me realize that listening to music is the best thing to happen on earth. It won't be exaggerating if I say I listen to these songs atleast once a week even today. Yes, I've been listening to these songs continuously for last 21 years. That was the impact Aashiqui had on me. And I remember Aashiqui audio cassette was the first cassette I bought with my pocket money and thats my valued possession till date.

From then, I became a devotee of all Nadeem Shravan songs in general and their songs sung by Kumar Sanu in particular. Their albums that released between 1990 and 1995 are my die hard favorites which I saved in cassettes, then in CD's, then Mobile phone and now in iPhone. Those songs make me nostalgic and take me back to those adolescent years when I related these melodies with love, emotion, romance. My wife always says I got struck in 90's and she never understands why I get so crazy with those songs :)

Nadeem Shravan - Kumar Sanu albums which I can never forget: Aashiqui, Dil Hai ki Maanta Nahi, Saajan, Phool aur Kaante, Sadak, Dil Ka kya Kasoor, Sapne Saajan Ke, Jaan Tere Naam, Deewana, Hum Hai Raahi Pyaar Ke, Rang, Sainik, Dilwale, Salaami. Albums which were released post 1995 missed that touch and I somehow could not believe it was the same Nadeem Shravan of previous years.

AR Rahman: If anybody doesn't like ARR's music, there is something seriously wrong with them. Lot of critics flay his music as westernized which lacks melody. But I'm a bigger fan of his slow melodies rather than his fast beats. Melodies of his earliest movies like Roja, Padmavyuham (Vishwa Vidhatha in Hindi), Duet literally were breath of fresh air for me who was immersed in Kumar Sanu fever. I liked Rahman as a music director who made slow melodies in the era of nonsensical nuisance from his other contemporaries.

Maniratnam brought the best in him with Bombay, Dil Se whereas Shankar elicited fast beats from Rahman which are equally hysterical. The list goes on and on if I write my favorite Rahman albums. But for me Roja, Bharatheeyudu, Bombay, Prema Desam, Premikula Roju, Vishwa Vidhatha, Dil Se, Vande Mataram, Doli Sajaake Rakhna, Sakhi, Thakshak, Swades, YMC stand out. His music is the slowest poison and the irreparable addiction. Period !

I somehow feel his latest obsession with sufi music and fusion has diluted his awe inspiring music and I'm not his big fan of most of his recent works.

Kishore Kumar: If God exists, that must be Kishore Kumar. He triggered a tsunami in me when I discovered the genius in him, albeit very late. That happened during my engineering when I accidentally listened to some of his songs and without my own knowledge, I immersed myself in a whirlpool of Kishoreda mania. I so abused myself for having wasted my earlier years without listening to this person who is a vocal magician. The best thing is he didn't learn or intended to learn classical music. It came naturally to him.

"O mere dil ke chain", "Meri Bheegi Bheegi Si", "Mere Mehboob Qayamat Hogi", "Tere Bina Zindagi se Koi", "Chookar mere man ko", "Diye Jalte Hain", "Agar Tum na Hote", "Chalte Chalte", "Kuch tho Log Kahenge", "Mera Jeevan Kora Kagaz", "Mere Sapno ki Rani", "Raat Khali ek Quab", "Pyar Maanga Hai".....I can go on and on till I mention all 250 Kishore's songs which I have handpicked from various sources.

He is the only singer who can bring life to happy, sad, emotional, romantic moods with equal elan. Salute to him and RD Burman who gave him so many memories. Mukesh, Mohd Rafi, Manna Day, Mahendra Kapoor are more classical, but not as versatile as Kishore Kumar.

Lata Mangeshkar, aptly called as Nightingale of India, is a voice of Indian women. Her voice made heroines look good. Enough said ! Alka Yagnik and Shreya Ghoshal have heavenly voices who are taking Lata's legacy forward.

Ilayaraja is another late realization for me. I didn't know why was I so stupid to bypass the haunting melodies created by the one and only Maestro. Ilayaraja's music is the care of address for vocal melody. Instruments only enhanced his songs. Abhinandana is one of my all-time Telugu albums. There is no other album which is more versatile, more melodious and more heart-wrenching in the history of Telugu music..and I don't think any other album can surpass this in future as well. Abhinandana has been, is and will be the best.

1983-89 formed the golden era of Telugu music with Seethakoka Chiluka, Abhilasha, Saagara Sangamam, Sitaara, Anweshana, Swarna Kamalam, Geethanjali. Ilayaraaja's music was the perfect sync for K.Vishwanath's eternal classics.

Many older songs I liked in Telugu were coincidentally composed by KV Mahadevan: Muthyala Muggu ( my mom sings the title song better than anybody. I love the song), Sirivennela, Sruthilayalu are other feathers in his cap.

Fast forward to Indipop era, I so much liked Bally Sagoo's Bhangra Rap ( I didn't know what rap was at that time). Laung Gawacha, Gor Nal Ishq, Nain tere Jeha Hor Disda play in my iPhone very often :D. Liked Lucky Ali's Sifar and other albums, Adnan Sami's series of hits. Gagjit singh's ghazals are my tranquilizers :)

Speaking about singers, I somehow like almost all singers. Sonu Nigam's melodious ghazalized songs (especially in Papa Kehte Hai, Sangharsh), Rahat Fateh Ali Khan and Shaukhat Ali Khan's sufi-ish songs, Devisri Prasad's beats, KK's high pitch renditions - can never get over them.

Though a lot of people don't appreciate, I am a big fan of Himesh Reshammiya and his kind of high pitch nasals too. I never felt those to be annoying.

English music is something I could not immerse completely into. May be due to my inability to comprehend lyrics in my childhood and that carried forward till late teens and by then I missed the chord to get rapt. But among the popular styles, I prefer Hip-Hop, Rap, R&B to traditional Rock, Jazz or Country. Though I love some rock songs like Final Countdown, Battle Without Honor & Humanity and also love guitar and drums, I could not relate much to rock or heavy metal music. And I feel jazz is way too boring for my liking; I don't even wanna talk about Opera. Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Akon, Dr.Dre, JLo are rapper/ musicians I heard and enjoyed.

People can disagree about the kind of music they like, but nobody can disagree with the fact that music is the ultimate sedative, addiction, time-pass, company, friend, filler and hobby one can ever have. So

MUSIC....MASTI....ZINDABAD

Historic Opportunity to India !!!

In the last few posts, I've been writing about cricket, movies, relationships, past memories and took a long hiatus from writing about any social issues or current affairs. But I felt its time I have to get back to one such important topic especially because this is the right time to do so, taking into consideration the revolution started by Anna Hazare.

Previously I have written about how corruption started in India and why is it impossible to stop corruption in the country (India - History of Corruption). I tried to analyze how goons, police, politicians, bureaucrats, media, judiciary, corporate world are helping each other in building an empire of corruption in India. But I guess, its time to take back few words with a tinge of optimism. Yes, I think "Its not impossible to fight corruption in India".

Lokpal Bill is a bill, if passed, will give special rights to a committee to investigate and prosecute any minister, people's representative (including chief minister or prime minister) or any politician or public servant. This bill has been suppressed by the Government for the past 42 years due to obvious reasons.

In the article about corruption in India, I explained that corruption starts at political / legislative level and people at that level influence executive, judiciary, media and corporate. The only problem till now is that politicians don't have a check and even if they are on the dock, they get away with weak judiciary which works as hand in glove most of the times.

India scores very high in human resources, natural resources, abundant talent, global powerhouses in industrial growth, academics and many other fields. India has people-power to work and tasks to be accomplished to develop the country. These people and tasks should be linked in a proper way to convert the country from developing to developed country; which is obstructed in a big way by the lawmakers and lawbreakers together.

The term politics is divine. Politicians are supposed to be those noble beings who strive for the development of the society with given funds without any selfish motives. But the post independent India has been witnessing a kind of politicians who pulled the very word politics in a wrong shadow. Raja, Kalmadi etc are only tip of the iceberg.

All we need is a body or a committee which is independent and which can take the legislation and executive by horns and can act as a judiciary with an iron fist. Current vigilance department, CBI, CID, anti corruption bureau are not efficient enough as they are often interrupted by politicians in various ways. Lokayukta and other Ombudsmen act in their capacities, their power is limited. We need a system to scavenge the society from these insects who are directly and indirectly responsible for India still being the developing country for the last 7 decades. Lokpal is the SOLUTION to check corrupt pests from the society.

The world is witnessing a strange phenomenon of drastic awareness. Jasmine revolution started in Tunisia. Then it took the whole of middle east by storm and first casualty was Hosni Mubarak, the dictator of Egypt. Today Libya, tomorrow Yemen, Brunei etc...May be India is on the list. India needs a campaign or a revolution to liberate itself from the clutches of democratic autocrats. The campaign has started as is snowballing into a war against corruption. Anna Hazare started it, a revolution in its inception, to establish Lokpal bill in its entirety and begin a crusade against corruption.

I first heard about Anna Hazare and likeminded people like Baba Amte back in early 1990's, thanks to sunday eenadu booklet. I was so impressed with Anna who could do so much to develop a village and make it a model village. These are the kind of people we need as our leaders. Not those who want to make money or a living out of politics.

Anna Hazare has been in social work since long time. He was involved in development of a model village and showed the world that politics is not all about exploitation. He showed the difference to the world and then started a revolution to change the whole country. Though he was in active politics, he was never into votebank or electoral politics. He is not affiliated to any political party or any associated groups. 

He is clear about his agenda. He is not afraid of getting mudslinged and branded as anti-establishment. He has taken the mighty Government of India without any kind of ill motives of prosperity. He doesn't boast about his past accomplishment. He knows he personally is not getting benefited even if his demands are accepted. He doesn't indulge in rhetoric, he is not charismatic, but has now become a face of common Indian.

This is a war against corruption, which India needs to win badly. This is the greatest opportunity, Indian masses can ask for to get rid of the corruption bogey. I know my individual support doesn't really make a lot of difference to this great campaign / revolution / war, but as they say, drops combine to become an ocean and am proud to be a drop in the ocean called Anti Corruption Wave. Are you ?

World Cup Victory - Not Just About Cricket

For the last 36 hours, the whole nation has been in a state of ecstasy and thats not going to die down anytime in the near future. So is my case. I'm in the victory hangover and have no intentions of coming out of that. When I saw news channels, I understood how the whole nation of 1.2 billion and diaspora of 30 millions NRIs throughout the world are in a rage of uncontrollable and insane joy and happiness. Now a quick question. Do you remember any other day on which the whole country was so elated with genuine, selfless and heartfelt pride ???

I know you can't remember, so can't I. I guess the previous such occasion was when India attained its freedom in 1947. Its neither an exaggeration nor a literary rhetoric. A victory in a tournament has swayed 1/4th of the world's population in such a way that many of them can easily say thats the happiest day in their lives. Nobody minded being a Gachibowli Diwakar or an Anupam Kher of Darr :) Wearing an Indian team jersey or holding an Indian flag was being considered to be a privilege. Tears of joy, chants of Indiaaaaaa India were omnipresent. All this for a simple win ?? No..

This win has brought a kind of pride in every Indian (including those NRIs who don't really like associating themselves with India). This win has put Indians on a pedestal where others can't reach. This win has asserted domination over other playing nations and ex-champions. This win has bolstered the patriotism that gets generated whenever a team of 11 guys enters the field with INDIA written on their jerseys. This win has upheld the belief of millions who prayed, followed rituals, sentiments for a cause which will no way benefit them. This win has brought every Indian together irrespective of religion, region, intellect, language, status or other barriers especially when everything else in political and other lines was going bad. This win has created a euphoria of national integration. This win has proved a point that INDIA IS THE BEST. So, its not just about a win in cricket.

Like we see morons opposing or criticizing every celebration of a positive vibe, there were few (like Ramgopal Varma) who either want to make some stupid impression by being "different" or don't know how to take pride in such things. But as I said, they are MORONS and matter ends there :)

Coming to my story of enjoyment, it had no bounds. I was closely following most of the matches in the tournament in general and matches India played in particular. Difference in time zones made me go to bed early and wake up by 4 or 5 am, which I would not have done otherwise even if my career or anything else was at stake. So that explains everything.

The last few days since quarterfinals were like festival or a household function which pulled me into this high spirits, sleepless nights, obsession and anticipation. Matches against Australia and Pakistan made me go weak in knees and the finals almost took my breath away. I hardly sat at once place and in the later stages of the match, I hardly sat at all. Cheering went berserk, screamed at the top of my voice till it went mute, brandished my fist till it pained. My white neighbors too cheered for India to show their solidarity, but most of them don't know that Canada too played in the tournament :D. I want to return their favor by wishing Canada to reach finals in the next world cup (only to get defeated by India in the finals). I know that wouldn't happen and my white friends can wait for their lifetime :)

Facebook cheering multiplied the excitement and made me feel like cheering with all my loved ones in a single place. My family (mom, wife, sister, mardal, bava) joined me in this e-cheering along with all my loved cousins and friends. Simply enjoyed it. Those who missed this Facebook cheering part missed a lot.

Coming to the match itself; like the whole country, I too felt so happy for Sachin. He deserves this and the better thing is the whole team were united, charged and motivated to gift these winning moments to the immortal stalwart. The tears which stayed in my eyes after winning, rolled down seeing Yuvi, Dhoni, Sachin, Bhajji cry. I didn't mind crying for this reason. If I remember, the last time I broke into tears was some 14 years back when I got EAMCET results :D

I'm so happy for captain cool as he needed that knock badly. After teaching India how to make winning a habit by getting T20 championship, ICC test ranking - 1, ICC ODI ranking - 2 (now 1:) under his leadership, and after proving what he is made of on and behind wickets, he still needed to make some runs to prove his mettle. Critics who have seen bad phases of demigods like Gavaskar and Tendulkar didn't realize the age old cliche that form is temporary but class is permanent. 11 members can play but captain is a joining thread and if anybody deserves the credit for world cup victory, its him for his team selection, field placement, order shuffling and above all his leadership and driving the unity and momentum, period ! Gary Kirsten's services were priceless too.

Sachin and Sehwag with their intimidating starts,Yuvi with his purple patch, Zak with his deadly missiles, Gambhir, Kohli and Raina with electric fielding and dependable middle order consolidation, Ashwin, Nehra, Munaf, Bhajji who proved that bowling is not India's weakness, taught the world what wonders can teamwork do. Sreesanth, Piyush, Yousuf can be forgiven in this utopia :).

Going back to my post match revelry, I was never so dotty is an understatement :) I violated all traffic rules, jumped signals, honked like crazy for no reason, hopped with joy, jumped with ecstasy, hugged some 100 people, screamed at every Indian looking guy, distributed sweets (bought at Sri Lankan store), shouted at my loudest voice before TV cameras. To keep it short, I was WILD.

I so wanted to write this post in the blog since yesterday but I was too busy with celebrations. Lot of my friends and cousins reminded me repeatedly to document the day in blog which I felt very sweet and humbling. Guys, this is for you. I was so surprised to see that my previous article Bleed Blue - De Ghumake gathered a whopping 263 views in 3 days, more than that of any of my previous articles. I'm sure a lot of them might have thought that article was about World Cup Victory. This post is also for them all :)

Till yesterday my Hawaii recount article was the most viewed article of the blog which had to bow to the cricket maniac world of readers :)

To conclude, just wanted to keep you informed that Bleed Blue became Bled Blue; De Ghumaake became Diya Ghumake; and I'm Loving It :))

Bleed Blue - De Ghumake

I would be crazy if I didn't write a post about Indian cricket team's dream run in ICC World Cup 2011 after the spectacular win against Pakistan. Before even I write something, I would like to scream aloud once...

Yayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy..India defeated Pak in WC Semifinal...OMG...I've been in this hangover for the last 10 hours; could not and don't want to get normal anymore in the near future..atleast till the team lifts the big cup on Saturday.

It would not be an exaggeration if I say that Indian cricket brings the nation together than anything else. Celebrations after Indian victory eclipsed Diwali, Holi, Id, Christmas put together; emotions charged up, people went berserk, patriotism crept in from nowhere and the very name "INDIA" brought goosebumps.

During Ind Vs Pak match, I screamed so much that my voice went mute for some time, my wife went berserk and danced like anything for fall of every Pakistani wicket, my mom wore her lucky mascot saree and chanted vishnu sahasranamam before and after the match, dad's frenzy had no limits, my sister came out of office to be on phone with me to listen to the live commentary for a couple of hours, friends in Facebook, celebs on twitter had a post and comment riot. Never did I experience this kind of delirium and mania.

Bleed blue is an apt campaign as everybody's veins and cells sport blue blood.

1983 was a distant history and nobody from the current generations have seen that. We are sick of finding solace and pride in Kapil Dev's 28 old year glory. This is the right time. NOW is the time for the team to bring that glory back and pamper the 1.2 billion maniacs for the unconditional love and support they have been rendering.

On paper, technically and practically, this team has everything to get to the pedestal and bring the cup home. Sachin "God" Tendulkar doesn't need to prove why is he the only person in this world who is called the God. He has been proving himself over and over again. But this is his last world cup and possibly his last big tournament. An era is soon going to end. He has seen every situation from the last 20 years and is immune to all kinds of bowling attacks. He has the capability, temperament, technique and love of billion plus people on this planet to deliver good result.

Otherwise too, the batting squad is formidable and its a proven fact too. Sehwag, the most intimidating batsman in the contemporary cricket world, Yuvraj, the soon-to-be-man of the series, ably supported by Gambhir, the sheet anchor, Raina, Kohli, both agile fielders and dependable batsmen.

Bowling, though not starstudded, is working fine with Zak at the helm with Yuvraj as surprise package, supported well by Bhajji, Munaf, Nehra (his last over against SA can be forgiven after his performance against Pak). Fielding has been reasonably good.

Dhoni's batting form has been the cause of concern. But in a team full of superstar batsmen, his failure in batting can be tolerated because of two reasons: His wicket keeping has been immaculate and his captaincy is working. A leader should always be a master strategist with his every decision, player selection, field placements, bowler rotations affecting the outcome. A captain should be a driving force for coherent team where players support each other and stand by each other. Thats exactly happening here.

Captain cool has been maintaining his dignity and calm in every situation, never getting into ugly and embarrassing situations, not engaging in rhetoric like Ponting or Afridi. He has proved himself as a better captain than most of the captains Indian team ever had, including Sachin Tendulkar (series of bad tournaments during his captaincy coupled with his own decline in form) and Rahul Dravid (2007 World Cup - India's worst performance after 1979 world cup). Kapil Dev, Sourav Ganguly and MS Dhoni are the kind of captains who build teams and get things done and co-incidentally all three took the team to the finals of World Cup, irrespective of their individual knocks or what critics say. Captain's efficiency is not directly proportionate to the runs he puts on the score board or his individual brilliance.

Coming to the imminent opponent, Srilanka could be a good team but they lost against Pakistan, didn't play against Aussies, defeated Netherlands, Kenya, Canada (all minnows) and NZ before getting into QFs.

Now Indian team has a band of batsmen who can deliver, pack of bowlers who started raising up to the situation, an inspiring coach in Gary Kirsten, an able leader and strategist in Dhoni, immense confidence after victories against Australia and Pakistan, first world cup final at home (Mumbai), blessings and love of 1.2 billion Indians - There is no reason, why Indian cricket team can't be CHAMPIONS 2011.


In Ind vs Pak match, history repeated as India again defeated Pakistan in WC. In Ind vs SL match, history is again going to be repeated (remember Ramayana ??? India defeated Lanka)


Think Blue, Act Blue, Bleed Blue


Jutaa Hosla, Badal Faisla, 
Khel Jamale, Kasam Uthale, 
Bajake Chutki Dhool Chata de.........


DE GHUMAKE !!!!!!

Generation Shift Through My Eyes

Am getting older and when I see back, all I have done was completing my education, getting married, struggling for career and did nothing else. But when I look back again, I realized that I have seen a complete generation shift or rather a couple of generations during my growth and settlement.

When I recollect various incidents and lifestyles in the past three decades, I realize that some things have changed so drastically that the current generation would only listen to my words in awe, just like I used to listen to my parents or grandparents. Oh my God..am I so old ??  :(

My childhood was completely devoid of technology. No phone, no computer, no video games, no color TV, no dish / cable TV connection. Most of those who grew in 80's would relate when I say this. Only form of major entertainment was radio with a couple of stations which made our days and holidays with all those dramas, song programmes like binaca geetmala, man chahe geet, vividhbharathi, ceylon etc. The anchors of those programs were almost rockstars and celebrities those days. Radio of those days was completely different and milder than current radio mirchi "idi chaal hot guru" types.

Tape recorder was another good source of entertainment because thats the only devise which plays what we like, where we can play cassettes. I remember recording every good song played in radio into my own blank cassettes. The first cassette which I bought with my pocket money was Aashiqui (much later - 1989) and all other cassettes before that were not my kind :D. Walkman was a posh-er way of showing off the taste in music.

Black and white TV entered the scene close by and the TV we had, had a wooden door to shut when switched off. Wow. It had a knob to tune any of the 12 availbale channels, but I never understood what a channel was because the only channel the whole world (for me) saw was DD-1 which we used to follow religiously. There was an antenna on the terrace which we had to turn around and adjust whenever the picture quality diminished :)

Cable TV came into picture much later in early 90's and thus started a revolution of multiple channel color TV's and then bigger TV's, plasmas, flatrons, LCDs and other hi funda technologies. Number of channels increased, quality of the content increased (and diminished in some cases). But now we live in a completely different TV world.

Another facet which the current generation may not even know is a concept of inland letters (blue colored  letters) :). Thats the best and only mode of communications till telephones and internet took the world by storm. Uncles, aunts, cousins, friends used to write me letters and I was on cloud nine whenever I got a letter addressed to me :) It would be surprising for others to know that I used to write and receive these inland letters till final year of engineering (2001) as I didn't have a cellphone.

I also witnessed the era of telegrams. We got some telegrams when some urgent message had to be transmitted. Since it costs much, terse shortcut words were used very similar to the current sms lingo.

Roads were full of bicycles and scooters-for the well off people. Cars were a rarity and even if one is seen, that was either Maruti 800 or Birla Ambassador. Premier Padmini was be a costlier alternative. This was because in pre-1991, Indian economy was not liberated and no foreign carmaker was allowed to market its models in India.

Early 90's saw an emergence of telecommunication sector and telephones, STD / ISD booths were prevalent and flourished until early 2000's when cellphones were introduced.

The most commonly known softdrinks were Goldspot, Citra which are no longer available. But Maaza, Thumsup, Limca are still available. Coca Cola and Pepsi didn't arrive while I liked Thumsup a lot and my mom used to hate it as it looks like alcohol. Lehar Pepsi which came as a competitor to Thumsup became Pepsi. Coca Cola which was banned in India earlier returned and there started a cola-war endorsed by stars. Pizzas, burgers were non-existent when mirchi bajji, paani poori and ice cream were the only junk food available.

There were no multiplexes. Maheshwari theatre in Hyderabad (Kacheguda Cross Rds) was the only theatre with an escalator and we would travel hours to play around that. Every theater had a mirchi bajji bandi (mobile stall) outside the main gate which was busier than stock exchange during the intermission of a movie. Popcorn and softdrinks as a movie snacks came in much later.

Computer was supposed to be the device which only high end offices use and a computer needed a complete air conditioned room with a condition that shoes be left outside. The first time when I heard that a computer was bought by my friend, I kind of felt weird as computers, lathe machines were supposed to be in offices :) Some other guys used to boast that they had a computer at home when their parents bought them a handheld video game :)) Later on playing video games was cool and if you had high scores in Mario or Contra, you are a hero of the school.

Many more such anecdotes flooding across the memory lane :)

I don't know if the current generation kids still feel proud to hold a pen after 4 years of using pencils in school; if they still construct a house made of book-covers after the final exams; if they still play sword fight with broom sticks; if they still play marbles and marampeet; if they still ask two wheelers for lift to reach home faster; if they still play eyes press, lock and key; if they still say shame shame puppy shame if anybody unknowingly exposes their private parts :); if they still collect sportstar cards which they get with a bubble gum; if they still rent bicycles on hourly basis to learn riding; if they......goes on.. Nostalgic

Those were the days which will never come back. Those were the experiences which will be locked in memories and blogs like these but the current and next generations can never experience. But thats life.

• Tape recorder gave way to walkman to iPod
• Inland letters and post cards gave way to emails
• Telegrams gave way to telephones to cellphones to smartphones
• Rotary dialing telephones gave way to push button landline phones
• Computers gave way to laptops to smartphone again
• 12 channel BW TV gave way to 300 channel color TV to LCD to LED to Internet TV
• 35 mm and 70 mm theaters gave way to multiplexes;
• Mario gave way to Wii, PS, XBOX and what not
• Hard photo album gave way to webshots to picasa, flickr, orkut to facebook
• Cassettes gave way to CDs to DVDs to Blue ray disks
• Books gave way to internet; Libraries gave way to Google & wikipedia.
• Bank passbook gave way to ATM card and to web / phone / mobile banking

......and again, thats life. Every decade would be a new generation and this change goes on. Those who don't change with time will be struck in history and remain in oblivion and those who don't remember the history will remain ignorant of the development, progress made and the experiences which would add value to life.

I tried and will try my best to race with the time. Thanks to my older friends, I grew wiser, but thanks to my younger friends, I grew more knowledgeable and more street-smart. The more I interact with people younger to me, the more I know about the newer rules of life they change. Sometimes teenage kids around me make me feel archaic and obselete by their flamboyance and flair in whatever they do, but I promise, am here to stay. I'm observing you, learning from you and will get there very soon :)

Remembering College Days !

2001 - the year I completed my engineering. Its already been a decade and yet everything is so fresh in mind (not subjects and concepts though). After a mediocre show in EAMCET - 1997, my dreams of getting into Osmania University engg college fell flat. With some 4000 odd rank, I had to find solace in admission into GPREC, Kurnool. Counsellors consoled me that its one of the oldest colleges and blah blah, but my dreams of vrooming on a bike in OU campus and putting the city on fire remained dreams.

I was in a beautiful dreamland imagining how my classes, friends, lifestyle would be after admission. But the reality was completelyyyyyyyyyyyyyy and diagonally different :D

When I saw the college campus, I was so excited and felt my dreams were going to be fulfilled there. I felt it was almost as good as OU campus. But I didn't realize that a series of shocks were in store for me :D

First shock: Girls of all branches were made to sit in a single class and boys of two branches each were clubbed to form other sections. nahiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnnn.....all my steam got ejected with a thud. To add to this, seniors warned us not to talk to any girls in the campus as faculty and college administration are ultra-protective about girls. Girls had a separate college bus, separate canteen, separate class and every non-student in the campus is their protector :(

Now you can imagine what a 18 yr old guy would go through, especially after the kind of rangeela dreams about engineering college I had. But if you think thats the rudest shock, you are mistaken. Stay tuned !

My another dream was to get into a company of a cool dudes as I thought I was one. I found a house-to-share along with 3 more students. My room-mates were all much more studious, intelligent than me (all of them got below 1000 rank in EAMCET out of some 1.5 lakh attendees) and all three of them belonged to pakka rayalaseema faction families (one of them even lost his father in faction murders of Kurnool). I felt like a fish out of water, eskimo in a desert, child in a strip bar; Thats how my first year started.

But eventually realized that my roomies were always sweet, protective and supportive to me. I learnt a new way of life through them, a new slang, new words, new attitude, new thinking process, raw energy. Though there were some conflicts in lifestyles and priorities, I came out of that big city snooty guy hangover and started thinking differently. I don't remember what I learned in the class, but I started learning about life as thats my first-time staying out of parents' wings.

Later I befriended few like-minded, like-cultured guys and moved to new house in the second year. And girls were my classmates from then. After living in that city for an year, I slowly got acquainted with the town, and with friends as roomies, life became easier and there was no check on me. Gradually a kind of street smartness crept in which turned into arrogance and over confidence. I was literally on rampage for the next 2 years.

Except studying and listening to professors, I have done everything else under the sun. Some 200 friends to chill out with, pocketful of money sent by parents every month, a cook and a dhobi to serve, access to everything or anything. Life was crazy and wild !

Watching second shows once in 3 days, passing letters to girls in classes, writing 10-page love letters to help friends in their love-stories, spending hours in archies / hallmark stores, spending evenings at KC canal savoring mirchi bajji, waiting for girls at a temple near the girls hostel, befriending receptionist at their hostel, one-hour exam preparation, night-out combined study-turned-gossip sessions, long walks (covering two ends of the town), long trips, silly fights, ego clashes, sulks, immature groupisms and all those silly stuff done by every student were part of the routine.

Those were perhaps the most crucial days of my life. I was 19-20 years old, nobody to keep a tab and was exposed to variety of situations: good, bad and ugly; Everyday was an experience and every situation demanded me to decide fast and act smart. I'm sure if I was in Hyd with parents, I would not have grown 5% as wise as I was then. More than academic education, I guess that phase taught me how to live and how to react to situations.

Its said that friendships that blossom during that phase would last forever. I'm guilty of not pursuing some relationships, with or without my knowledge; few are in touch, few aren't. But I feel good whenever I think of them and the experiences, days we shared together. I don't know how many of them will check this post of mine but a tight hug to all those who ever liked me or treated me as their friend: Shyam, Pavan, Ranjeeth, Sushma, Ravi, Raghu, Praseeda, Siva, Srinath, Uday, Srinivas, Kishore, Kavitha, Upendra, Naveen, Aruna, Prem, Sireesha, Chaitanya and many more.

Love, Pyar, Prema etc

Warning: This is a long post aimed at all those single / committed / unmarried boys and girls who have to know a lot about love, marriage, life. Please don't bother if you don't have much time or if you are not interested in this topic :)

Love makes life beautiful and saying this now is a cliché. The word love is a euphemism for a variety of emotions and expressions like liking, affection, infatuation, impression, care, attraction, lust etc. In one of my previous posts (Love Marriage vs Arranged Marriage) I presented my thoughts on what love is, but in this post am referring to the kind of relationship boys and gals enter into before marriage.

Almost everybody close to me has been in some kind of relationship / feeling before their marriage. Some acknowledge and some don't :) There were four consequences for such relationships

1. Converting the relationship into a successful marriage
2. Converting the relationship into a marriage, but not so successful
3. Could not convert the relationship into marriage and got depressed
4. Could not convert the relationship into marriage and are happy now :)

Interesting part here is that those who failed in their love stories don't know that option 2 ever exists and those who converted their love stories into successful marriage don't know that option 4 exists, which mean to say that options 2 and 4 are far overlooked, especially by my unmarried friends, and hence this post :D

Those who are immersed in love with somebody before marriage always dream about a happy fairy tale kinda life post their marriage and thats quite natural. Love really makes their life beautiful because of these dreams of togetherness and a lifetime of bliss. 

Its not very easy for every couple to convert their beautiful dreams into reality because a lot of times, when a boy and gal fall in love with each other, they are so attracted to each other that they subconsciously never put their worst sides before their lover. Both present their best sides and thus made to believe that their partner will be the same throughout, which is not the case in most of the cases. To make their dreams a reality, they have to understand that getting married is not the only solution for this, but they have to continuously understand, accept, support, respect each other after marriage too.

This works and worked for me, touchwood !

I was browsing through the news websites and saw that Chiranjeevi's daughter Srija's marriage is in trouble. After that cinematic revolution and hoisting the flag of love, something has seriously gone wrong now. This is not a rare situation. We find a lot of similar cases in our day to day life. I have seen my very close and loved ones going through this. Hence its not certain that if a couple gets married after their love story, they are happy. Hope all my friends out there who are going through failed love stories find some solace out of this :)

So I take the liberty of reiterating the same old golden rule to all my unmarried / single / committed friends out there. If you like somebody, if you love somebody, be yourself and present your good and bad sides, see if you can accept your gf/bf's good and bad sides before getting into any commitment, because you can't act or tolerate something for the whole life. Its better than going through a bad marriage or a bad break up.

Another rule is never assume you will be happy if you are getting married to your love. The person may change, may show his/her other side, other colors which you may not appreciate. So if you revolt against your parents and loved ones who accept you for whatever you are, just think twice. Liking somebody and being happy with somebody are completely, ridiculously and insanely different. Not understanding this silly point is the reason for the option 2 mentioned earlier in this post.

Break-up management:

It sounds like an MBA concept, but its pure common sense. Not everybody would be lucky to be successful in their love story, but that doesn't mean they are unlucky. May be they are lucky that it didn't work :)

I always feel good for people who break up before even thinking about marriage. Its a blessing in disguise rather than realizing that after marriage and kids naah ! If a boy and a girl like each other, get into a relationship and later face compatibility issues, its better to break up. If you try harder and make it work somehow, both have to live along with such incompatibility for the whole life. Life is too short and too beautiful to waste for somebody you can't live with.

A promise of love and even some physical intimacy should not be hurdles for breaking up with consensus. Lifetime of pain is not worth anything. Yes, it hurts to part ways but a relationship of few months or few years is not as important as your life in next 6-7 decades. Just understand that the person you are going to marry is somebody who is going to give you identity, security, stability, responsibility, love, support, family and everything in your life. Thats far far far more important than ANYTHING before marriage.

Its a happy ending for a love story if both break up with consensus. But the real pain lies in a break-up from one side and agony on another. Thats a real hell.

But just understand that if somebody didn't feel like spending their rest of his/her life with you, its not that you can't be happy with anybody else. It definitely doesn't mean you are not good. You are judged by somebody possibly based on some very unimportant thing. If somebody judges a fish by its ability to climb a tree, whose mistake is that ??

Realize that love stories that end up in marriage are not always successful and love stories which don't end in marriage are not always failures. Life is too important to worry about a silly relationship or commitment you got into for few months. Everybody is destined to get his / her soul-mate who is made exclusively for them. If your love story is a failure, realize that the person was not your soul-mate and you are lucky to realize that before hand. Just wait for the best to happen.

Love as what you understand is not love in the first place. You fall in love only with the person of opposite sex who belongs to your age group only because you dream to live with him / her and lead a happy life. So you don't know if your reality would be as good as those dreams or worse or better. Its a hypothesis. If dreams are shattered, would not you wake up ??? So ruining your precious youth, family life, friends, affection you are coming across from various ends just for a sake of a looser who ditches you is very unwise and immature. Understand that there would be lot of people out there who want to see you happy, smiling and playful.

Your reality may be better than your dreams. Who knows :)

I really wish all those who get married with your love lead a successful married life and all those who could not convert your love into marriage also to lead a successful married life (with somebody else, who turns out to be your soul-mate).

Demolition of a Culture

I remember when I was a kid, my parents used to take me to tank bund almost once in 2 weeks. That was a perfect getaway which gave a holiday kind of feeling then and I guess its the same even today. The lake on one side of the road and statues/park on the other side always attracted me.

Later my telugu teacher inspired me to see the statues at tank bund as a part of our education tours. At that age, I felt so happy and informed to see Gurajada Apparao, Kandukuri Veereshalingam, Alluri Seetharamaraju, Kavitrayam (Nannaya, Thikkana, Yerrapragada) and various literary, political, social and cultural icons of Telugu heritage. Thus the statues became a part of my education and childhood memories.

Demolition of these statues caused grief and a kind of unrest and uncomfortable feeling in me. Its like something close to my heart was destroyed. Statues will be reinstalled for sure but this mad act has created a friction and lack of confidence and trust among regions yet again, only much deeper this time.

Demolition of statues is a direct rip off from Talibanized Afghanistan. Now this is happening in my city. This is unacceptable and unforgivable.

Relating the demolition of these statues to success in Telangana movement is completely insane. Those 33 statues include statues of Pothana, Rudaramadevi and few eminent people from Telangana too. Even if the number of Telangana heroes' statues are not proportionate, it doesn't warrant for demolition of other great people. Those icons don't deserve this mistreatment for the very reason that none of them committed any injustice to Telangana. Potti Sriramulu when started a movement for Andhra Pradesh, never suggested any discrimination against Telangana, neither did any of the social workers or respected cultural icons whose statues were demolished. Issues propped up later due to mismanagement and vested interests.

Telangana movement started with the pretext that Telangana, its people, culture and identity are facing injustice and insult. Now the so called upholders of Telangana identity are committing the same injustice and insult to people of other regions of Andhra Pradesh. Victims have become oppressors now. Tables turned big-time.

If those who participated in million march or whatever feel they are marginalized or discriminated, they should understand that the same treatment should not be inflicted on their Andhra or Rayalaseema counterparts. Cursing Andhra people, destroying their property, heritage, respect don't only widen the gap but also dilute the sympathy of fellow Telanganites.

In my previous post about the issue (Who Developed Hyderabad ?) I wrote about the heart-burn of Telanganites, but its become irrelevant now as the movement has turned into a revenge seeking platform and I would hate to associate myself with people doing such acts.

Other side of the coin, media should not incite hatred among masses because they were attacked by some goons during million march. This propaganda will only put two regions on opposite sides of a huge chasm. Politicians, especially those who never raised a voice against much destruction that happened in Telangana and Seemandhra in the last 2 years, should observe restraint by not adding fuel to fire by referring to the same incident again and again. Goons who committed this vandalism must be brought under scanner, but the government has to avoid witch hunting during the process.

Bottom line: Everybody has to understand that movements should aim at showcasing their issues but not demolishing culture, vandalizing heritage or physically, mentally or verbally inflicting other parties in contest.

Pakka Filmi

Before you think this is another boring post about my favorite movies, actors and actress, Hold On ! It may be boring but not about actors and actresses :D; Few days back, one of my friends accused me of being an acute movie buff (I'm just a movie buff, btw :P). He doesn't like the idea of living on movies and strongly feels movies and entertainment industry diminish productivity of any individual.

I can't agree more but was thinking what would we be without movies and television. Just thought to account all that I learnt from or all that I would have missed if movies were not there in my life.

• I would never have built my english, hindi and in a way my telugu speaking skills if I was not exposed to movies of those respective languages. Even if I wanna learn a new language now, I'd start watching movies of that language first :)
• I would never have laughed so much in my life without watching comic scenes in the movies.
• I would not have known about the concepts of love and romance at right age if I hadn't watched all those love stories and scenes in movies :)
• I would not have known how to communicate, impress, flirt, talk, convey, express my mind eloquently if I hadn't imbibed so many witty lines I heard in movies.
• I would never have known the beauty of poetry, asthetic values, richness, creativity hadn't I seen these in movies
• I would never have listened to any kind of music, if filmi music, songs and singers didn't attract me with their haunting melodies, soulful renditions and foot tapping numbers.
• I would never have imagined the beauty of Swiss alps, American skyscrappers, Niagara, Eiffel Tower and other exotic locations if I didn't see those in movies.
• I would not have known most of the socially and culturally sensitive issues, if those were not portrayed in the movies I watched.
• I would never have understood the way things work in various businesses, communities, societies and industries, if they were not shown the way they were in hard hitting movies
• I would never have seen all those beautiful women, handsome hunks, cherubic children in awe if I didn't have chance to see them in movies.
• I would never have known what spoilt lifestyle was if I hadn't watched those movies filled with opulence and elitism.
• I would never have known that dirty under-bellies, underworld ever existed if I hadn't watched all those gansgter and crime related movies.
• I would never have become matured if exposed just to my circle without knowing how world functions which I understood from movies.
• I would never have known the intensity and magnitude of negative feelings like anger, revenge, frustration if I hadn't watched those revenge dramas.
• I would never have known the history, heritage, religion and culture better just by reading, if they were not depicted by mega TV soaps or period movies.
• I would never have learnt that world is full of good, bad and ugly people if I hadn't watched heroes, villains, heroines, vamps in movies.
• I would have remained naive if I hadn't seen scheming, conspriring thrillers.
• I would never have understood what fashion, trend and vogue were if thats not portrayed in movies I watched.
• I would not have dreamt of a luxurious and successful life if I didn't watch movies because I saw luxury and success in viual media before aiming for that.
• I would not have written this blog-post if there was no topic such as movies :)

As said in Telugu there are 9 emotions; haasyam (humor), roudram (anger), srunagaram (romance), bheebhatsam (disgust). bhayankaram (terror), karunyam (mercy), veeram (heroic), adbhutham (wonderful) and one more which I don't remember. All these emotions and reactions to these emotions are built in any human with the kind of expereinces he witnesses, watches or faces.

Movies or any visual media are so popular because they inject one of these navarasas in the person watching something on the screen. Most of the audiences identify themselves with the situations they are in or they would (or would not) like to be in and if that identification clicks bigtime, the movie will be a blockbuster and the actor will become a superstar.

It goes without saying that movies form a very big influence in everybody's life (with or without knowledge or acknowledgement). Life is all about being PAKKA FILMI !!!!

One Year of Active Blogging

Though I've officially started blogging in 2007, I took a loooong sabbatical before resuming active blogging on Feb 25, 2010. Yes, its been an year that I'm putting my thoughts in black and white and it has now become a sort of my alter-ego, collection of my reminiscences, my mirror image and a perfect gateway to my views and ideas.

Earlier, I used to get wary as I didn't know who the readers were and what to write. But once I decided to make the blog a transparent medium to reflect whats going on in my mind, everything fell in place. Being a voracious follower of news and current affairs, I had (have) an opinion on every topic, but lack of platform to present my points of view and thoughts made me look for an alternative where I could express all my thoughts on every topic, be it political, religious, administrative, relationships, my own progress, setbacks, convictions, suggestions, lessons, confessions, memories, memoirs, so on and so forth. I don't consider myself to be a very good writer, but all I try is to translate my mind into words which make some sense.

Whenever I feel happy or sad or ecstatic or low, I resort to blogging. If you browse through various earlier posts, you can find that most of the writings are impulsive and direct Dil Se. I have been caustic and acerbic on few topics when I personally felt distressed due to any issue. I wrote like a child when I felt happy after my birthday surprises or vacation trips.

I know the world is too busy and there would be nobody who would patiently listen to me or care to ask me about what am doing or what am I thinking about anything. Everybody has his own life and its completely natural that we don't have a lot of time for others feelings or views. But I always felt this is a space which allows me to be myself. I feel good after writing a post. It brings in positivity and gets me out of blues, almost everytime.

An icing on the cake was the kind of response and readership I got for my writings. I'm so humbled that people appreciate my way of putting down my opinions in a rather simplistic lingo without getting elitist or catering to galleries.

6800 views from 27 countries and 38 followers after one year of blogging is hugely encouraging and it keeps me on my toes to post more articles as I know there are people who try to relate to my writings or atleast who try to keep themselves abreast with my thoughts irrespective of whether they agree with me or not.

My Inspirations: 

Undoubtedly my wife has been the biggest inspiration. She introduced me to the concept of blogging with her blogs , I was so inspired by her writing skills, that I always wanted to write like that but am sure, I don't have that poetic affluence, creative head or mellifluous flow which she possesses. The only complaint I have is that she doesn't write often and she never publishes her blog in other media to get some readership.

Sree has been a constant source of encouragement, inspiration and always been a positive influence on my blogging. Her blogging skills are par excellent. I can no way reach her readership, command on languages (she's unparelleled in putting her thoughts in English and Telugu with equal flamboyance). I always look upto her blogs http://sreeszone.blogspot.com/ and http://sreemadhanam.blogspot.com/. After Facebook, Twitter and Orkut, Sree's blogs are major sources of traffic to my blog :)

Thanks guys !!!

And Thanks everybody who has ever read my blog, and thanks to all those who ever thought my piece of work provoked some thought or emotion in you and all those who appreciated, supported, commented and encouraged me.

Love Marriage vs Arranged Marriage

Two different schools of thought and often two conflicting opinions. Whenever the debate arises as which is better, the opinions are highly polarized and often subjective. But what I believe in is that success or failure of a marriage is not dependent on the kind of marriage it is, but the attitude and decision making prowess of people involved in it. And this is the very reason we don't see only one kind of marriages being successful and all others a failure or vice versa.

There are people from older generations and few in gen X too who look at the word "Love" with contempt and this is because they associate the very word with some kind of negativity and often use love as a synonym to lust or immaturity. This school of thought vehemently advocates arranged marriage and the kind of family support and thought thats put into those kind of marriages.

I often fail to agree to that as most of the cases, arranged marriage is set based on few set parameters like looks, financial status, job security and caste. I can't think of any other factor in consideration. The whole decision in taken in a matter of a month usually. Based on that, two lives get intertwined for 6 or 7 decades after that. I don't say arranged marriages don't work. Such marriages have all the ingredients to make it a good alliance, but the basis on which they are fixed has to be expanded.

Coming to love marriage, most of the current generation kids would prefer this as this kind of marriage provides an opportunity to know each other, like each other and decide if the rest of lives can be spent together. Again we see all kinds of examples here too. The success and failure of love marriages depends on what factors the guy and gal consider to know if they are compatible and their wisdom in analyzing the same.

Lot of youngsters mistake that liking or love can make their life happier. What they don't understand is marriage is not only about love or liking. Liking somebody and being happy with somebody are two different things. They have to understand that those they like or those they are liked by may or may not have that capability or attitude to keep their spouses happy for rest of their lives.

People who advocate love marriages have to answer themselves if they can be sure that the person of opposite sex is demonstrating his/her negative attributes too as it doesn't always happen during the courtship. The kind of compatibility issues rise only after two people start living under the roof. Once those differences in opinion start, the way the couple handles those situations is the key for successful marriage. Now this is applicable for both love or arranged marriages equally.

Liking towards one person is just one of the factors to marry that person as there are more important factors. Love can propel the marriage for may be 5 or 10 years. After that there are more factors which come into play. Security, comfort, support, understanding, humor, ability to resolve differences - from these factors, love automatically evolves which keeps the couple happy for the next half of the lifetime.

Love is something which is gradually developed after continuous interaction, mutual understanding, complementing each other's weaknesses, supplementing each other's strengths and being a shield of support for the partner against the whole world. Attraction, romance or infatuation towards each other don't die for decades if these factors are proportionately managed in the married life. Now this is a secret of a successful marriage.

Just because a guy and a gal are made to see each other for 20 minutes in presence of 20 people, neither can know if they can be a compatible couple for life. On the other hand, just because a guy and gal know, like each other and enjoy each other's company, it doesn't mean they can be happy thereafter too. Both these approaches involve judgement. So if parents are better judges if their kids can be happy with some person, arranged marriage will be magical. If kids can judge better than their parents, love marriages are good.

So it all depends on judgement of people involved and factors they consider, not the kind of marriage.

The magic lies in reaching out to each other, trying to accept each other's qualities, respecting each other and continuously working to keep the fire on for the entire life.

PS: I don't belong to any school of thought as mine was a love story which was turned into an arranged marriage. I`ll write about my views on pre-marital commitment and their implications in my next post.

Change in my Voice

Recently I watched Colin Firth's "The King's Speech" where the protagonist plays King George V1 who overcomes his stammering problem with speech therapy. The movie is reasonably good but I got so nostalgic about the concept of speech / voice therapy which I myself have undergone (though not for stammering or stuttering reasons).

My case was more peculiar which not many, who knew me after 2006, know about. Till the age of 26, I had a different voice. Yes, I mean it !

So all my relatives, childhood friends, school friends, college friends and few ex-colleagues identify me with a voice which I didn't sport anymore after 2006. Lot of them suffered from a panic attack when they spoke to me in recent years :) And when I made my new friends listen to my old voice recordings, they look at me with disbelief :)

Just like any adolescent, my voice changed at 14, but it was softer and low. Thats the voice with which I made all my classroom seminars, presentations, group discussions for admissions, cracked job interviews, presented product demonstrations to clients, closed sales deals and on personal front made friends, entered into a relationship with my girlfriend. I never missed that macho kinda loud voice as I always believed more in content and gist than the channel of communication;

In March 2006, I suffered from a bad cold and my voice became hoarse for a while, but soon returned to my  normal soft one in a week. But I realized that I could shout or talk louder in my hoarse voice during cold than in my normal voice and then tried to talk in a hoarse tone deliberately. After some more practice, I felt that the hoarse tone was a bit softened and resulted in a distinct voice which was louder and more authoritative than my other (read: normal) voice.

After that day, I had two different voices !!!! And yes, I mean it again :)

I deliberately started using my new-found voice with new people I met and they liked my voice. My family and fiancée though initially got shocked, slowly got used to my new voice and in the course of time, my voice evolved completely and didn't look affected a bit. I was amused at my own voice therapy and entertained myself by reading a same sentence in two different and distinct voices :)

I never faced lack of confidence due to my old voice, but my new voice has brought into me a huge confidence factor as the efforts which I would have put in projecting my points of view with older voice were dramatically cut down by my new voice. Though my knowledge, conviction and presentation style didn't change with the new voice, the way opposite person perceives me changed a bit.

But the challenge was using my new voice before old pals or old voice with new people :). I didn't want to confuse myself and others and hence started talking in my new voice with old friends and colleagues too who were alarmed initially and then amused. They concentrated more on my voice than what I was intending to speak. It was fun.

Eventually I realized that I lost my old voice. I was shocked at the developments. Then I browsed through various voice therapy related books and online resources to know the reason for this phenomenon and realized that my old voice was not exactly my voice, but just a sound coming out of some unusual channel. If you got shocked by this, just imagine what I would have gone through :)

Yes, the voice which I used from the age of 14 to 26 was not my original voice. It happens with some kids that they subconsciously get shy of the adolescent developments and try to mask those to avoid peer embarrassment. Without my own knowledge, I might have done the same which resulted in a squeaky, soft and low voice. Thats the reason, that voice was blocked after the discovery of my original voice which was dormant for 12 full years :)

PS: I've been teaching since 2007

Taare Dimaag Par !

Just like the whole country and diaspora, I too liked Aamir Khan's "Taare Zameen Par". The story of a dyslexic boy and his parents' indifference towards his trouble was heart-wrenching. The appreciation the movie and the child-actor got was very well deserving. BUT....there was a certain kind of social message which kept me pondering over and over. The same message was subconsciously inserted in "3 idiots" as well.

Both these movies say that nobody should be forced to do something which they don't like and every kid or youth is entitled to pursue his / her career in their areas of interest. It sounded very idealistic and correct to most of the audiences, but I beg to disagree.

In TZP there is another scene where the protagonist slams parents for encouraging their children to stay ahead in competition. Since the child in subject was dyslexic, it was understandable, but what if the general audiences try to implement that advice ?

In my childhood, I always wanted to be a watchman (gatekeeper) as I saw they had a kind of control over who comes or goes out of the gate. After few years, I thought being a bus conductor was the coolest job. But I'm so thankful to film industry that no one made movies like TZP then; had my parents taken that message seriously, I would have been left as a gatekeeper or bus conductor now. (I don't mean any offence to those occupations as there is a kind of dignity and respect in any kind of honest job. Just that my life would have been very different that way ).

Just like Maddy's character in 3 Idiots, I was not interested in engineering. Infact I hated physics and later machine design in mechanical engineering. My parents pushed me towards technical field which I joined reluctantly. But after earning engineering degree, I entered into my favorite field (MBA - marketing) and in a way my technical background paved way to my management PG in one of the premier B schools. It has diversified my knowledge base, confidence and career horizon.

People who get influenced by filmi theories often mock at rat-race students plunge into for competitive exams and rigorous training it needs. But thats inevitable and there is a reason.

Even if 2 lakh students appear for engineering entrance in a state like AP, almost 70% of students end up in some engineering course and will have good career prospects. There is some kind of career waiting for not only brilliant, but also average or below average performers. Now can we say the same for those students who take their hobby as a career ?

If a kid wants to pursue his career in painting, cricket, singing, dancing, acting or any other talents, can he afford to be average or below average to make a living ? Can every talented or passionate cricketer play for Indian team ? Can every talented or good looking struggling actor make it to the tinsel town ? What is the success ratio ? These are some very fundamental questions that need to be answered with some minimum common sense before leaving the destiny of any kid to his / her juvenile decision making prowess.

Career security is as important if not more than passion. Those who are interested to make a living out of their passion too have to make themselves self sufficient by earning a comfortable living and then strive towards their hobbies rather than living in fool's paradise. Or else they will have to see stars all over their brain throughout the life and Taare Zameen par will end up being Taare Dimaag Par !

PS: Those who are born with a silver spoon or those who can live with basic amenities with no inclination towards worldly or material pleasures are exempted from my theory

Rest In Peace Thathayya :(

While am writing this post here, my grand-father is lying down there without a soul; I can't believe it and I don't want to believe it !


Hero of my childhood - Head of my Family - Multifaceted Scholar - Able Administrator - Voice of Thousands - My grandfather Sri S. Venkateswara Rao garu is no more


He gave me an identity when people respected me when I was a toddler just because am his grandson. My association with the sarpanch garu / panthulu garu made me chinna panthulu to the masses of the village, when I was hardly walking on my feet.


He is the person who taught me that power is not a privilege, but a responsibility and respect can't be demanded, but should be commanded by deeds and actions. 


He showed me what dignity, elegance, knowledge and grace are all about with his mere existence. 


Rest in peace, Thathayya :((


You will live forever in the knowledge, values and ideals you imbibed in us !