Indian Culure

When I heard that there were some who were protesting that the cheerleaders' act was against Indian culture, I was sure that the leaders who were protesting have not seen Indian movies.

Shobha De wrote her typically cheeky column on that theme. Enjoy it here.

Rivalry

Bangaloreans take a lot of pleasure out of putting Mysore and Mysoreans down. This incident is from a long time ago.

My cousin was visiting Mysore and he teased me, "You Mysoreans. You have a road called Chamaraja Boulevard Road. Boulevard itself means a tree-lined road. And you call a road a boulevard road."

I: "If I am not mistaken, there is a road called Avenue Road in Bangalore."

Ironical

I found this article in the Metro Plus of the Hindu today - " Where moms are born"

The main section carried this article "A passion project for home births"

Interesting contrast, isn't it?

It is said that truth is the only thing that is reduced when you add to it. Is delivering a baby so too? I wonder.

PS: The first article uses the word birthing. The word "birthing" sounds ugly to me. Does one have deathing at the end of ones life?

Dunlop is Dunlop, Always Ahead

I went to the shop selling tyres. I needed a new tyre for my trusty Bajaj Super. The tyre of the rear wheel was bald. About as bald as I am today, say.

The shop assistant asked, "Shall I give you Dunlop sir?" (DanlapkoTbiDlasaar..? in Kannada).

I said "No, I said I want a tyre for the rear wheel" (illappa, hiMdincakrakke aMthELlilva?))

He was perplexed. He had never heard of any objections to using Dunlop tyres for the rear wheel.

"Why Sir? What is the problem, Sir?", he wanted to know. (yaaksaar? himdincakrak haakidre Enpraablamsaar?)

I said. "Why? Haven't you seen the ads? 'Dunlop is Dunlop - always ahead' I am afraid that I will be in trouble if the rear wheel tries to become the front wheel. (yaakswaami? advartisement nODilva? "Dunlop is Dunlop - always ahead" aMta? hiMdincakra muMdakbanbiTre nangatiyEnu?)

Ultimately, it’s Fun

That was the title of newsreport in a newspaper reporting on the opening ceremony of the IPL T20 that took place in Bengaluru yesterday.

Unbidden, my mind went back to certain other evenings of fun. Perhaps, my mind went back to that because of the reports I had seen about the loads of money that had been in circulation for this whole “cricket” extravaganza to take off.

This post is not a “in the good old days” exercise. Nor do I make any value judgements. I just go down memory lane.

Two of my friends* would come home and we would have tea and some snacks. Then we would walk about three kilometres through the deserted streets of Mysore. The streets would be called deserted now but that would be a fairly normal state for the roads in Mysore then. Our destination? A magical shop called Chandru’s Sound Systems in Sivarampet.

When we reached the shop we would either find a few regulars there, perhaps, or we were the first ones to enter the shop. We would settle down on a bench and lean against the white washed wall. On the way to the shop, we would have come to some decisions, making sure that we had 50 paise among the three of us. The time had now come to execute those decisions.

Our decisions would be conveyed to the reticent, almost dour, Chandru. He would ponderously get up and go into the sanctum sanctorum and come back with two EPs**. The two songs that we had told him we wanted to listen to would now be played. Most often these songs were of Geeta Dutt, as both my friends were great fans of hers. Of course, there would be some songs of Asha (Bhosle), Hemant (Kumar), (Mohammed) Rafi and Talat (Mahmood) and others. One fairly common thread in these songs would be O P Nayyar.

By then we would have bought the privilege of listening to the two songs for a grand sum of 5 paise. (three paise if you wanted to listen to only one song). While Chandru was in the sanctum sanctorum fishing these EPs, we would have ordered tea, (at 20 paise per cup and we would have two-by-three) from the shop attached to Chandru’s. We would sip the tea, from greenish coloured glass tumblers with blow holes in them, and listen to the songs with great attention.

We would drink the tea very slowly with the hope that some other connoisseur would walk in and request some other songs that we liked. If no one turned up, we would spend the remaining 5 paise and listen to two more songs. If we were particularly rich that evening, that is, we had more than 50 paise among the three of us, we would loosen our purse strings and even ask for two more songs or have some more tea.

Once our coffers had run dry and no others had come to the shop to request for songs, we would reluctantly leave the place. We would then walk through Sayyaji Rao Road in the Mysore market area, still humming one song or the other we had heard that evening and return home after an evening well spent.

* The two friends are still my friends and are Chini and Suresh (Ramdurgkar)

** EPs are Extended Play gramaphone records with a song on each side of the disc.

Pssssssst: It was a bonanza if someone from the nearby Maharani’s (womens’) College Hostel came at the same time to listen some songs. There were a few, though not many.

Software Bug

The earliest computers contained electromechanical relays for switches. One day a computer started malfunctioning. A lady working on it was asked to troubleshoot. She went behind the huge computer and started to search for the cause. What she found was that some insect had got stuck between the moving and fixed contacts of one of the relays. She removed it and cleaned the contacts and the computer started working again.

When she emerged from the back of the computer, someone asked her what had happened. She said, “I found a bug”

This was how the word bug acquired the meaning of an error in computer hardware or software. Then it also gave rise to words such as debugging, debugger (ouch!), etc.

This is the broad outline of a story and the details I have given may be wrong but the essence remains.

Why this story now? A friend of mine has given a new meaning to the term software bug.

The social behaviour of many ‘software people’ irritates a lot of non-software or 'normal' people. It bugs them. So – “software bug”.

Note: I myself am one among the ‘software people’ as I work in a software company, even though I do not take any part in the software creation process. So, if this post bugs you, I am a software bug!

Busy Keying in Text

Beware of Phishing

I had not seen my mail yesterday. Today, when I saw a mail from a very dear friend, I was happy. I opened it in a hurry to find that he was in some mess and needed money. I hit the reply button to assure him that I would put things in motion immediately to send him the money.

He had gone to an African country as a member of a UN mission and had lost his wallet and cards and needed the money to get out of the place.

As I started typing the reply, all sorts of red lights started going off in my head. If he was on a UN mission, why would he ask me for money? He must be having other team members with him who would help him.

The spellings were all wrong. OK, could that be because he was under pressure?

The mail ID from which the mail had originated was different from the one that the reply screen had.

The give away, however, was that his profuse protestations assuring me that he would return my money as soon as he was back in India. If he needed money, we are too close a pair of friends for him to be so reassuring. We go back more than thirty years.

I slowed down and scrolled up the inbox. I found another mail from him telling me that his ID was hacked and I should ignore the earlier mail.

I called him, half way across India, to be told that he had received a mail purportedly from his mail service provider asking him for his login and password and he had given them!!!

Of course, it was from Nigeria. Phishing and Nigeria are so closely linked that they are almost synonymous. So, beware. Anything out of Nigeria nowadays is suspect.

What a pity that I wrote of my childhood hero from Nigeria in an earlier post and have to write this now!!!

BEWARE!!

Das Leben der Anders - Movie

I was excited to see that a German movie was running in Bangalore - called "The Lives of Others" in English, the original title being "Das Leben der Anders".

I enjoyed the movie thoroughly. Hearing so much German and understanding so much of it, was exciting. Above and beyond all that, the movie is very good. Good acting, very good direction - almost a bare essentials kind of movie.

However the fun part of it was that it was my first movie in a theatre in a mall. I went all the way up to the fourth floor of the mall and was told that the tickets are issued in the basement - car park. Suitably poshly, it was called the box office. Not the 'tikket kountru' as it is known in the local lingo.

I went to the fourth floor again clutching the ticket (poorer by 170 Rs, a huge sum, having grown up seing movies for less than 1.70 Rs) and I was frisked and made to pass through a metal detector. Then I headed for the nearest door and found my seat and stared at the screen in disbelief. A sweaty Rahul Bose leaned against a wall and was having a conversation with an equally sweaty guy next to him. I did tell that guy at the counter, sorry box office, that I wanted to see this German movie! I whispered to the guy sitting next to me and asked him if there were other theatres in the same complex. He said that there were. So I ran out to find out the one I wanted to be in.

Then I studied my ticket and it said Screen 3 somewhere in the corner. Ah, that was some help. A green illuminated Scrn 3 glowed somewhere in the distance. I ran in and took my seat and the right movie started.

I hate government offices since they make me feel like an illiterate. This new fangled multiplex with many screens, is not far off. The only difference was that I did not have to bribe anyone!

All that trouble was worth it since the movie is very good.