Sania Nehwal's Heroics at the Australian Open 2014

In a country where Men's cricket is the only sport that gains the attention of the masses for international accolades, unfortunately, the amazing feats of Indian sportspersons in other highly competitive sports sinks into oblivion...
As the elegy written in a country church yard goes...
"Full many a gem of purest ray serene
The dark unfathom'd caves of ocean bear:
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air."

but then there are a few like Dhyan Chand, Prakash Padukone, Pullela Gopichand, Leander Paes, Mahesh Bhupathi and Vishwanathan Anand who make it so big that they stick to our memory and keep reminding us why Indian sports is not only about cricket... I am sure Sania Nehwal is now in that list of greats. Thank you!

NDTV: Saina Nehwal Wins Australian Super Series 

22 sachets of sugar in your standard cup of coke... that is outrageous!

Here is a video that you must watch. It is an interview with Coke UK's president. Interviewer Paxman brings some dirty information about Coca Cola to light and this is how the Coke UK president reacted.

Paxman interview's Coke's UK President 

Having a calorie count on coke cups (jugs to be more accurate) is the extent to which Coke is responsible to the consumer... If Coke actually tells you that there is an equivalent of 22 sachets of sugar in your one standard cup of coke, will you still buy it? calorie counts are like useless disclaimers, they are not designed to genuinely inform the consumer, they only pass on the blame to the consumer... the "you saw it, yet you drank it, so don't blame us" approach. What a shame!

Matured Girls

When I started watching Judd Apatow's Girls I was really disappointed... It wasn't a comedy that it claimed to be. It was more drama than comedy. In fact it was no where close to being funny... So I stopped watching it... But I happened to watch it once again this week and I was pleasantly surprised. It was good. Girls seems to have matured as a comedy - rich back stories have been established for all main characters and in the past few episodes of this season it has emerged as genuine comedy with lot of subtle humor. Way to go!

Vube: From an annoying pop up website to good quality video sharing website...

First off, a confession: I am a sitcom junkie... Although I have subscription to cable, I cant schedule my day around the sitcoms, so putlocker, gorillavid and the likes come to the rescue. The best part about it is the convenience and the shorter ad-free duration... well, not exactly... whenever I click on a putlocker or gorillavid video link it takes me to one of their annoying sponsors' webpages... some of these are legitimate companies like Gillette, others not so much... or not at all, if you know what I mean. Of late one such annoying sponsor link has been that of a video sharing website called vube... I normally close it right away, but sometimes when the video that I want to watch takes time to load I get to listen to the vube video that starts playing in a pop-up window. Surprisingly, almost all the music that I have heard in it are really really good. Like this one, by a bunch of amateurs. http://vube.com/Fresh+Ré/hdBzCkHuZx/L/vote?t=s
We have heard of viral videos, but this website is becoming viral... I was ignoring it when it opened up in pop-ups now I go to it to listen to new and cool stuff. Check it out. 
Here is another cool animation video from vube: http://vube.com/DreamVision/dHeY7iPO3X?t=s

Towards Anarchy - An Utopian Order

My initial reaction to AAP's dharna in Delhi was one of ridicule... I felt that AAP should realize that it is no longer a political outsider who is free to engage in ad hoc protests against political insiders but they are now an incumbent insider and they should act more responsibly towards their constituents... But after taking a closer look at the recent events in Delhi I now get the feeling that AAP is aiming to march towards a notion of democratic governance (you may call it Kantian Anarchy, if you will) that the great EMS once envisioned... But Kantian Anarchy is utopia and it certainly can not be achieved over night.

IMDB: Status order stability despite rigged quality ratings

I checked the IMDB top 250 list after about 5 years... I am not a risk taker when going to the movies and IMDB served the purpose of informing me about the quality of a movie... The IMDB top 250, I felt, was a very reliable list of best movies the world has seen. But several movies made in India never made the list even when their individual rating was above 8.5 and some times above 9. For example, Nayagan, Roja and The Apu Trilogy were rated by the Time magazine as some of the best movies every made based on careful evaluation by two seasoned movie critics, but these movies were not in the IMDB's all time top 250 list. It perhaps had to do with the number of people rating it and many Indians were not even aware of IMDB back then and the predominantly US users of IMDB were ignorant of Indian movies. So, I made peace with that. But I lost all faith about the list when (that was also the last time, before now, I remember checking) Dark Knight Rising topped the chart... Not that it isnt a good movie or a bad movie (it certainly wasnt my kind of movie), but the movie was only a few days old... how come so many people rated it as a perfect 10? Then I realized the power of numbers... it might simply be that Batman fans would have gone out of the way to rig the ratings to pay tribute to Heath Ledger. Anyway, the IMDB top 250 list lost its credibility.

Today after about 5 years I checked the IMDB top 250 again... and I found, as usual, the status order at the very top has been restored... Shawshank Redepmtion was at the top, Godfather I and II were at second and third spots respectively, and Pulp fiction was at number 4... of course, Dark Knight was still undeservingly sitting in the top 5, perhaps the impact of 2008 rating riot by Batman fan's was still having an impact. But that was not the surprise... As I scrolled through the list, I saw three Indian movies in the top 150 and 1 more in the top 200... These do not include Gandhi and Slumdog Millionaire, both of which are films made about India but arent Indian films. So, Indian audience have started attacking IMDB. The funniest thing was, all of these four movies are by Aamir Khan. Not one from actors like Kamal Hassan or Mohanlal or directors like Maniratnam and Sathyajit Ray. So the message is clear, Aamir Khan fans are very very active in IMDB. I would not be surprised if we have populist melodramatic movies by Sharukh Khan, Salman Khan and perhaps even Rajnikanth in that list

http://www.imdb.com/chart/top

Devayani Khobragade's Case: An Example of US Double Standards on Human Rights

At the risk of being ostracized, can I say that all these negative reactions against Devayani Khobragade are a bit too extreme… First, she is a Indian diplomat and there is a protocol for dealing with diplomats and I think the US authorities, by convention of diplomatic immunity, crossed a line - they had no right (at least going by Article 29 of the Vienna Convention) to arrest her and press charges and confiscate her passport... that is ridiculous. Second, law of the land aside, I am really surprised that the US authorities are willing to press charges on someone (even if they werent a diplomat) who pays their domestic helper 30000 rupees a month… that is actually how much (often times way lesser) your own corporations pay for their talented “back office helpers” and “Information technology talents” in India... In fact this is far higher (approx. 40% more) than how much a Foxconn employee (Apple’s associates in China) makes in a month. So stop bullying. I am not saying that Devyani Khobragade is a saint but if she has violated “human rights” by paying her domestic helper below minimum wages, then aren't all your corporations operating in developing nations guilty of the same sin?