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Brilliant commercial from the folks at Nike.

IndiaUncut points me to an article in the Times of India which tells the story of how not so innocent minds are trained to perfect the art of copying in exams. I wonder why they go to all that trouble? I understand that children are interested in learning all that they can about this oh-so-very-necessary skill but why damage your reputation when there is an easier way out of this mess?

The solution that i advocate is not something that I cooked up now. It has been tried and tested to great success in a certain school. For the purposes of this post lets call the school 'The Turbaned Flower.' (He who can see, please do that.)

Ya now it so happens that 'The Turbaned Flower' while having a bunch of students excellent at extra curricular activities, did not have many academically brilliant students in its ranks. Now any self respecting school should have at least a 100% passing rate for its students in the SSC Boards. It was all about reputation. Anything below 100% was just not done. But with the kind of students that the current batch had, anything above 90% looked quite impossible.

So off goes the school's trustee to meet the management of the school which was going to be the center for the Board exams. After a little persuasion and not so little amounts of money, the management of the school agreed to provide Guide Books to all the students of "The Turbaned Flower."

Examination time came. Everything went as planned. People took due care not to score 100/100. Everybody passed. The students were jubilant. The management was ecstatic. The parents were stunned. And all was right with the world.
Woke up to see Papa getting ready to leave for Goa. He was supposed to attend a congregation of fathers from almost all the churches which are a part of the Jacobite Syrian Orthodox Church. Amen to that.

Mornings and lethargy are synonymous for me. I find it a chore to drag myself out of my bed. And so being incapable (by choice) of doing anything productive i was just walking around the house, occasionally giving the walls a meaningful stare. Then finally Papa was all set to leave. I asked him how he proposed to reach the railway station and he said that he would probably catch a bus. Cool I said and asked him if I should get a rick to take him to the bus stand. Mom was there and on hearing my suggestion, she crinkled her forehead, frowned and said, "Do you have any clue how long you will take if you go to fetch a rick?". Ouch. I may be slow but this was casting too great an aspersion on my ability to fetch a rick. But hey if they don't want it then why force it upon them?

Mummy and Papa started discussing how he was gonna reach the bus stand. After much deliberations over God knows what, they decided that he will catch a rick. Ahem, did anyone mention that earlier? I told dad that "Hey so what was it that i suggested earlier?" He had one of his nervous smiles ready, its not nervous actually its almost shy and ya he looks kinda cute with that smile on, you have to see it to get an idea what its like. Ya so where was I? Ya he gave one of those disarming smiles of his and just said' "Ya."

Dad and Grandpa eventually walked the whole distance. Much faster than the rick i could have called over of course.
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Yesterday I watched Umrao Jaan. This was in continuing with my tradition of watching every movie only after every man, woman, their dog and if its people from the cow belt then their cow too has watched it. Needless to say the movie was a big bore. Lets get down to lists again:
  • Aishwarya sounded asthmatic.
  • Abhishek sounded bored. (obviously)
  • Nobody had a clue why they were doing this movie.
  • The songs were fabulous; for the people who own stocks of companies that make pills for headaches. Sigh. Wish i had watched this earlier then i could have tracked the stock markets and maybe could have earned a quick buck.
Now that this part is settled lets get down to the real reason why i started writing this post. After every bad movie that i see I have to rant and rave about that to as many people as possible. Neha was not an option as she was my comrade in arms in passing snide remarks throughout the movie. So then it had to be Maddy. She said that i was a prejudiced git. No she didn't use those words but that was the gist. She said that I was heavily prejudiced in favour of international cinema. And she finally concluded that just because Indian cinema doesn't have the technological brilliance of our western counterparts we shouldn't ridicule them.

That brings me to a very important point. When we watch a movie are we trying to seek more than mere entertainment? Do factors like sympathy play a part in how good a movie is in our eyes? Does the fact that a movie has the hottest pair in tinseltown make it any better? Are we objective when we watch a movie or are we subject to too many factors that bear little or no connection to the actual matter?

Or am i just asking too many questions? Because a study shows that people think more when sleeping than when they are watching TV...

God i will have to stop my rambling.
Recently Neha had the misfortune to step on a poor insect. It promptly showed her that trampling people without their permission is just not done. And it was one smart insect if you ask me: it chose to voice its protest not through its own feeble buzzing but through Neha's belligerent bellowing. It managed to bite/sting her in such a way that to this day we have not been able to find a single clue as to where exactly did it inflict the wound. Neha shows me a mark to prove that I am wrong.....

But to continue with our story, Neha showed why she was competing against the Niagara falls for the maximum quantity of water that can pass through any point in space in a given period of time. And her exemplary performance convinced me that Niagara was just not competition. She let some of that salty water fall on my hands and when she hit me - don't ask why, its a mystical ritual - ya so when she hit me, water actually splashed all over my face. Men fortunate/unfortunate enough not to have water fountains as sisters will never understand what happened but then thats a minority. If not a sister then a girlfriend can always fill in.

All this resulted in deep pain for me: I had to carry her around and this resulted in unbearable agony to my 17 year old - performing like a 70 year old - back.

Moral: Insects are bad. Bad for your sister and more importantly bad for your back.
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Alone
Originally uploaded by Khalid .
Beautiful.
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WTF? The first two letters mean what the...