A Poem

On a lonely street
As you walk by
Moments of truth, you visualize
Places of beauty, you passed by

A journey full of surprises
Mind and heart need to cross by
Utter in confusion, you realize
It’s too late to go back by

Don’t you see, the poem is fooling you
To the same old plot of life and it’s saddening you

Read a poem twice
Artistic and critique eyes
A poem can be a prose
Can be simple, can be short

Need not a poem be rhythmic
Need not be it romantic
But memorable message it need to carry
With passion, substance and style

Don’t you see, the poem is again fooling you
It is leading you, back to you

Live your life on your own rules
So when you look back with critique eyes
It has carried a simple memorable message
But with passion, substance and style

The Game

"Hey Vikas, how was your day?" My replies usually are: "Busy, spent whole day trying to get bear working in the game", "I was trying to get player sit on a chair, smoke pipe, play flute, mine gravel pile". By now you might have realised that I work for a gaming company. Yes, I have been working on 'LOTR:The White Council' game (target consoles are PS3 and xbox 360) for almost 9 mons now and yes, I work for EA.

This is one of the best times to be in a gaming company. The transistion period as it is called when next-gen consoles hit the market and consumers expect games to be the same i.e. Next-gen. Gaming companies thrive hard to create a next-gen experience by taking some ground-breaking decisions and risks. I am happy to be part of this whole effort.

So what is a next-gen game? It is an open-ended question. Come to think of it, it is upto consumer's imagination. Personally, I feel quality of game should be much superior. By that I mean, game should exploit console's processing power to full extent and create a virtual-reality experience for gamers who should believe in the world that they see. If one looks at television screen, he should not be able to say whether he is looking at a game or at a movie. It is easy said than done. Interactive entertainment is gaining ground and people's attention all over the world. I personally feel it is still immature but hopefully next-gen consoles and games would be able to help bridge that difference.

Mahabharata

I completed reading Rajgopalacharya's version of Mahabharata. His writing style comprises of using simple words, small sentences and compiling them into concise chapters. I came to know about some unheard stories of our great epic through this book. I believe every emotion (desire, greed, love, sincerity et al) , social tensions and other facets of life can be found in this epic. We don't have evidence about who wrote this book (of course, if you don't believe Lord Ganesh who wrote this epic, as our mythology claims) but whoever it is has done a great job.

The thing that makes Ramayana more popular than Mahabharata is that Ramayana is a story of victory of good over evil. Ramayana deals the story in white and black whereas Mahabharat deals its epic in grey. There are times in Mahabharata where it would be difficult for a reader to determine who is right and who is wrong, which makes it more interesting due to its alignment with current practical world.

I would love to see a trilogy made of Mahabharata. It would be much better if a director originating from western culture makes it as he would visualise our mythology in his own way and give a global touch to the movie. I strongly believe our mythology if projected elegantly through proper media channels would become globally popular. Anybody up for it, Peter Jackson, u listening ????

Omkara !!!

With a quite few weblinks pointing to this blogsite, you have to be an avid reader to reach here. And if you are an avid reader you might have read lots of good reviews of Omkara by now. Let's take a different angle on the movie in this blog i.e. a negative one. Don't get me wrong, I loved the movie a lot and I can go on and on about it. But pointing mistakes is such a satisfying experience :-). Here are the points where I think movie needed improvement.

1) The movie didn't show how saif convinced his wife to steal Omkara's family necklace. The woman, who gets enraged to the extent that she kills her husband for treachery, should have a strong reason to steal the necklace at the first place. I am sure Shakespeare might have explained about her character in detail in Othello but I believe that was not projected properly in the movie.

2) Viveik's roles should have been much stronger instead of being just a casanova.

3) The history of Omkara's association with bhaisaab and saif's (Langda Tyagi) association with Omkara needed more spotlight. Such character and relation development should be given higher priority over songs. Time has come for good directors to get rid of unnecessary songs from their movies. 'Company' scores higher in this aspect of film making.

4) Enemies of Omakara seems to be have given no respect in the movie. The hero is stronger only if he has stronger enemies. I understand that Omkara's enemies do not need to have much scope in the movie but their history would have helped in understanding the scenario better.

Overall the movie is a must-see one this year.
Rating: 4.5 / 5.0

Dual World

As our current world spends half its time in digital universe, time has come to look upon Heros created and revered by geeks. Yeah, I am talking about heroes of digital world who can give a tough fight to our heroes from mythology and our history. These heroes came to life from video games, comic strips, anime and other medium (which I might not be even aware of). Comic strips seem to be the originator of this whole other world where today's 40+ males can comfortably relate to. In 1970s these same geeks were outcaste and considered to be the losers. But now wives proudly discuss about how their husbands / kids play video games, read comic strips, watch anime and other sci-fi animations. So what do you think how our future looks like. As I can see it, we would end up having two lives: one in real and one is digital world. Due to increasing population the world has become quite competitive and it has become difficult to taste success in real life. That’s where digital universe will provide solace to people. Each person will have alias name, profession, home and life which he will care as much as he cares about in real world. I would like to call this whole prediction of mine as 2084 :-) (Courtesy: "1984" by George Orwell).

The Hobbit

Finally I read one of the J.R.R.Tolkein's books "The Hobbit". It is the first book in the series of "The Lord of the Rings" where he has created his own world of MiddleEarth. I liked the book for it is a kind of adventure where you would be interested to know what happens next, i.e. he has maintained a sound amount of thrill throught the book. At regular intervals in the book the author introduces new characters (new races, in fact): elves, humans, wolves, goblins which makes the story more interesting. Each race has its own strengths and weaknesses and hence are interesting beings. The sudden turn of events on unexpected time seems to be the key to success to this story.

One the negative side, I felt that it would have been better if author had described each race in more detail like, what are their professions, what excites them and why they are friends / enemies of each other. Who are wizards and why they are so powerful. Maybe JRR has taken this into account in his subsequent books. One more thing, adventure doesn't seems like a diffcult journey where you get help from wizard and hobbit on a regular basis. Oops I just revealed some events from the book. For now I feel like I will be reading all trilogy of LOTR series.

Rating: 3.5 / 5.0

A coffee story

I usually avoid posting forwarded emails on my personal blog but this (Akshay Pandit's email) one is really interesting and thought-provoking.

A group of alumni, highly established in their careers, got together to visit their old university professor. Conversation soon turned into complaints about stress in work and life.

Offering his guests coffee, the professor went to the kitchen and returned with a large pot of coffee and an assortment of cups - porcelain, plastic, glass, crystal, some plain looking, some expensive, some exquisite - telling them to help themselves to hot coffee.

When all the students had a cup of coffee in hand, the professor said:
"If you noticed, all the nice looking expensive cups were taken up, leaving behind the plain and cheap ones. While it is but normal for you to want only the best for yourselves, that is the source of your problems and stress.

What all of you really wanted was coffee, not the cup, but you consciously went for the best cups and were eyeing each other's cups.

Now if life is coffee, then the jobs, money and position in society are the cups. They are just tools to hold and contain Life, but the quality of Life doesn't change. Some times, by concentrating only on the cup, we fail to enjoy the coffee in it."

So, don't let the cups drive you... Enjoy the coffee instead.

Irony in Cultures

After having been exposed to more than one culture, I am able to notice some distinct features in each of them. American culture, or should I say western culture, has individualistic and community-centric people. And people of India (Eastern culture) are family-centric. Let me clarify my point here:

Western people care a lot about themselves and how government governs them. They will keep track of government policies made and their impact on people's lives. But they will never like to find out who stays next to their house, I mean, they don't care much about their neighbors. They will perform great amount of community service but (at the same time) will also not hesitate to destroy their own family i.e. divorce their life partners if they think they are unhappy. They maintain safe distance with relatives as well. While eastern people don't give a damn out what government is doing for their benefit and they will not hesitate to filth their surroundings. But they know who their neighbors are and keep great relationship with them. They also tend to maintain a regular healthy relationship with their relatives. So which approach is better. In ideal world, it would be better to maintain a balanced individualistic, familty-centric and community-centric approach. The interesting part would be to come up with satisfactory explanations for why cultures emerge in different ways..

Its never late for Holi blog (And pictures are worth of million words)

Addiction

So how many movies one should see in a week to be called as a movie addict? I think I will comfortably fall in the 'movie addict' zone. Take this last weekend for example. I saw 4 movies in this weekend. And I end up watching about 1-2 movies during weekdays. So on an average I watch 4-5 movies every week. Come to think of it, I also fall under "TV shows addict" . Let me put it this way: there are very few episodes of Seinfeld, Friends, Everbody loves Raymond, Frazier, Yes Dear, South Park and Lost left that I haven't watched YET. My next POA (plan of action) is to watch Simpsons. And my long term plan is to play lots of lots of video games. Afterall, that is precisely why EA pays me.

South Park

In my experience of watching television shows, I would rate South Park in top 3 of my favorites. You already know the reason if you have watched even a single episode of it and for others it would be difficult for me to describe. My advice for you guys would be to "watch it". If I have to pick a single reason behind the success of south park it has to me Eric Cartman or should I say "unbelievable son of a bitch". People love to hate him. He is one of the best defined and well-presented characters on small screen.

I could not resist but watch all nine seasons of South Park in straight 2.5 months. To sum up the series, its all about making fun of general perseption and insulting others in a good way. Ok I will take 'good way' back. This television series makes you sit back and appreciate American culture for the reason which is intelligently stated by an anonymous (I don't who he is :-)) author: "The freedom of a culture can be determined by the measure of extent to which people can laugh at themselves".

Life in general

1) Wake up at 8:30
2) Leave for office by 9:30
3) Check office mails to see whether there is anything that needs immediate attention
4) Work for 2 hours
5) Take a lunch break
6) Start working again
7) Take a coffee break.
8) Back to work
9) Drive home
10) Eat food
11) Do some timepass
12) Go to sleep at about 1 am

Well, now i am figuring ways out to improve this schedule. There are many ways and I firmly believe life can be more interesting.

Lost

After getting some good reviews from my colleagues and friends I finally took up watching american TV show 'Lost'. I am used to sitcoms but this was a whole new expereince for me. I got instantly hooked upto it (like others) and watched almost all (37 odd) episodes in 3 straight weeks. Here are some of the reasons why you should watch it:

1) Production quality is very high. You can easily rate picture quality experience of Lost to a cinematic movie.
2) Although concept is not new, characterization stands at the top.
3) The story is totally script driven.
4) The makers have kept the suspense exceptionally fresh which makes you feel watch subsequent episodes at the earliest.

Tipping point

Well, this is not a review of 'Tipping point' book which everybody might have assumed by now. I always think about the 'tip system' as something which has been forcefully imposed on the society. Why one needs to tip a waiter for his service. From what I understand that is exactly why he gets paid by the restaurant.

I had discussion with my roommates regarding the same. Interestingly we came up with some of our own reasons about why and how 'tip system' started at the first place. Here are some of them:

1) Waiters don't get paid well. So that is why customers decided to pay them with gratitude.
2) Customers always look for some kind of royal service on their tables. So it was not a diffcult plan to come up with paying some extra money to waiter and expect some special service from him.
3) Customers wanted to impress their dinner/lunch buddies so they paid more than expected to prove how human they are.

This 'tip system' has now currently gone out of control and restaurants proudly print on their menus in bold letters to remind customers than if the group is more than 6 ppl then 15% of tip would automatically be added to the bill. Now that is insane !!!!

My Photos

Now that I have a good collection of photos, its right time to post it on blog.

Rang De Basanti

Well, the vedict out there is pretty good. And fortunately, I agree to the bollywood verdict after a long time. I happen to see this movie on the first day of release. I can say this comfortably that RDB is one of the most experimented projects in Indian cinema. I consider this movie in the same league of Lagaan. Its not surprising that Aamir leads in this movie. The impressive thing for me was that Aamir is one of the characters in the movie and the script is so strong that it doesn't revolve aroud him. Rahman is always likeable. The message of the movie is pretty clear. We should have such movies very often. If I were in place of Rayesh Mehra I would have changed the ending and replaced it with a happy one. The catchy name, attractive colors of the movie and ofcourse the script revolving around the current youth seems to me the recipe for success in current bollywood.

Just Like That

I am impressed !!! This is the best blonde joke ever !!!

Five point someone

After hearing some good reviews about the book, I finally bought it in India. One of the reasons of its popularity, I feel, is its cost i.e. 95 Rs. The book is easily accessible to people of the country where most of the books are read by downloading and printing the content for free. Conceptually it is a 'Dil Chahta Hai' version in book format. The actions that 3 characters (protagonists) take in this book will land them in big shit even if they do not belong to IIT. So that brings me to another conclusion for the book's success i.e. readers are happy to know that IItians are normal people just like us. Another good thing about the book is its title which makes buyers take notice of it. Characters are well-defined and their contrast nature is appreciable. So what you take home after reading the book: some of your college memories and a good message: its OK to screw life up until you are a student, then you might not get another chance :-). To become old and wise, one should act young and stupid.

Welcome bloggers!!!

Its high time that I edit the bloglinks I visit frequently. I am glad to add links of my good friends' blogs. Welcome Nilesh and Deepa!!! Well, Nilesh is not a new blogger but knowing that Deepa also blogs motivated me to add these people and create a network of our college grp, the wish that finally came true. Its really nice to know that Mumbaikars also blog as opposed to Punekars who blog about anything and everything!!!
Nilesh, are you listening?

Who am I, I am a New Yorker

Just happened to had a great blast last week. I spent about 6-7 days in New York: economic capital of the world. Ok, I was trying to make a big deal out of it, my apologies !!! So what did I see: Empire state building, Times square, Intrepid museum, cruise around statue of liberty, American museum of Natural history, Museum of Modern Arts, Central Park, Rockefeller Centre, St. Patrick's church, Ground Zero, Wall street, brooklyn bridge, Madison Square Garden and of course subways. I used to travel about 6-8 miles per day in Manhattan just to feel NY air.

Here are some of my interesting observations:

1) NY is a morning city. Most ppl work from 7am - 4pm. The peak hours in trains are from 6am-8am. I was really surprised by it.

2) If you are visiting as a tourist make sure you rise early and make to places before 4pm.

3) Travelling by subways is pretty cheap and you can travel any distance with the same fare.

4) The skyscrapers will blow your minds off. Every brand name that you have heard will have it s headquarters in NY (ok, I am jumping the line again)

5) Best part for me was 2-hr afternoon walk in Center Park.

One thing that I would like to suggest is visit as many places as you can, you will learn something and build memories from every place, Amen !!!!