Endhiran

I had a weird experience yesterday. I found out that the Phoenix theatre(owned by Reliance Big), a block from my apartment, was showing Endhiran. So, I went for the movie at 7:30 pm, and since the theatre did not do a good job, the movie hall was only 1/3rd full. So here I was, a not so hard core Rajni fan - not the kind who does Pal abhishekams - watching the movie in a quite enjoyable way, even before it was released to the die-hard fans in India (7:30 pm was only 5:30 am on the day of the release in India). Man, was I lucky yesterday.

For the first ten minutes, I was wondering whether I had wasted 2 and half hours of my time , but as the movie progressed I was really impressed. Rajni's acting is even more enjoyable without his over-reaching heroism. Good job Shankar!!!

One for the polls

 Watched this movie recently. Cho Rocks!!!

I was pretty surprised  that the state of politics was this bad in 1971 itself. If that was the case, it is pretty good that we have made progress over the past 40 years inspite of such politicians.

News media, a terrorist mouthpiece?

Winter, and gross stupidity of people who should be responsible compels a blog entry.


The goal of terrorists is well known - terrorize people

How to achieve it?

Simple - ensure a hundred or so people are killed and leave it to the news media.

The news media ever in search of drama, will hype it and give it a whole new dimension , enough to ensure people don't go about their normal business for long long time.

The number of people killed in road accidents in India is around 90,000 while the number of people killed in terrorist attacks even in a year like 2007-2008 is around 6000. The media will help save more lives if it focused on road safety. Oh! but of course doing the right thing will not bring in viewership or ad money. I guess CNN-IBN learned this quickly, I was pretty impressed with some of the investigative reporting they initially did, but they soon learned that sleaze sells better, their website is no different from a tabloid's now.

News reporting is a responsibility, it has a significant role in nation building. In a country of a billion people, there is always the possibility for negative incidents, these should not be highlighted, positive incidents should be highlighted to instill hope in people.

Yes, the rest of the world is not very different, when consumer confidence is important to kick start the economy the American media bombards people with negative news.

The news channels in India have had some positive impacts, for one - their coverage led to the several high profile criminals being convicted, but the media definitely needs to do some introspection and come up with a code of conduct.

Crouching tiger , Prancing dragon

I have always envied China, for its decisive one party government. Its rate of development has been meteoric when compared to that proffered by the direction-less coalition governments in India.

But two recent incidents have made me reconsider, a few months back when Tibetans protested for greater autonomy, China smothered the region with brutal repression. At the other end of the spectrum Bhutan(whose defense and external affairs are handled by India) became a democracy, in spite of the people there being satisfied with the Monarchy.

Bhutan has set a trend for the world by measuring its progress by gross national happiness whereas Tibet, once a Shangrila of sorts, has been turned into a simmering volcano.

I now wonder, is the development really worth the sacrifice of freedom of speech,expression and religion? not to mention cases like the man made famine of 1959 which caused millions of deaths.

I also wonder if the drastic difference in the development rates is simply a reenactment of the hare and tortoise story?Will the crouching tiger leap? and is the story of the dragon a mere myth?

A difference of 6 months

Elections

I was watching a presidential primary debate on CNN. Every candidate was talking about how he/she would usher in universal health care.

I am pretty surprised that no one spoke about how they are going to handle the volume as a result of this. No one seems to be questioning whether the present infrastructure is capable of handling increased volumes. I would think that increasing the number of doctors and taking steps to reduce the cost of medical education would help bring down health care costs. Maybe they could find ways to reduce opportunistic law suits that drive up the cost of health care. Anyways I am not very knowledgeable about this issue, but that brings me to another point.

While I believe in the virtues of a free market system, and think it played an important role in making US a world power, I have also noticed a few drawbacks to it here.

A developed country should ensure that every citizen has easy access to

1) Health care
2) Higher education
3) The law

but all three of these are extremely expensive to a middle class citizen here.

Apt

This is one of my favourite Tamil aphorisms

Paramasivan kazhuthul iruntha pambu kaetadhu "Garuda Saukiyama"

Adhuku Garudan sonathu" Yavum irukum idathil irunthu vital yellam saukiyamae"


It puts across a fact of life so wonderfully, and also explains why we people act the way we do at times.

I am not going to attempt translating for the fear of distorting it.