Narrations...

9 things I'll remember '09 for ...

2009-12-31T17:13:00.000-08:00

Its New Year's Eve tonight and we will wake up to a whole new year tomorrow. Looking back at '09, it has only been funtastic, enriching and an awesome year for me... thanks to all those who wished me a Happy 2009 a year ago ! :)

Here is my list of top 9 things I'll remember this year for... (in pseudo-chrono order)

1) Beyonce's concert in Seattle : I may not be as big a fan of Beyonce as I claim to be, but this was one definite "wow" experience for me.

2) Sadhguru's visit to Seattle and Rams Anto farewell : It was an enriching experience to listen to Sadhguru especially with an open mind as I'm not associated with Isha. It was reaffirming the fact that "Every human being is naturally capable of being joyful". And having lived with joyful beings like Anto and Rams I can't relate to it more ! Anto was our pet at home - the constant source of fun and Rams was the catalyst of fun. We had times of our lives with 5 of us being together. Even when I miss both of them, I'm happy for them for they have found their passions.

3) Raghu's parents visit : Two months of at-home feel with awesome food, unlimited ottals, dumb-c fun ( can't forget Raghu's mom trying to enact a happy face for 'Santhosh' subramanian ! ), horoscope predictions and watching movies together.

4) Tulip trips: Three continous weekends to Tulip gardens with different set of friends each time. A tulip is a tulip is a tulip :)

5) Weekend trips : The gorgeous Yosemite trip during memorial day weekend, the funtabulos Niagara Falls trip during Independence day, the spectacular Chicago trip in summer, the delicious buffet at Saravana Bhavan Vancouver, the happening Austin downtown and a thanksgiving weekend trip to Texas to meet Shashu and Shamu !

6) The RNARA movie quizzes : We, the RNARA gang ( my roommates), started playing this Tamil movie based quizzes and got so addicted to it that we came up with numerous ways to frame questions ( character names, ERCs, Guess from the story, guess the song, BGM, guess the movie from video clip etc etc). We had fun quiz shows organized during the class get-together and other such potluck events.

7) Summer Soccer matches : Thanks to my lead at office, I got interested in playing soccer and we played almost every weekend during the summer here. Enjoyed every bit of it. Also got to see Chelsea playing Sounders when the blues visited Seattle.

8) Windows 7 : The greatest success story of Microsoft in recent times... proud to be part of the team that shipped Windows 7 on time and with great quality.

9) Diwali and the celebrations back home : Had an awesome Diwali at home the childhood-style... sweets, fireworks, new dress and early morning oil bath ! There is nothing like being at home for festivals... Enjoyed all my fav speciality dishes that my mom made. Our first house-warming ceremony and my cousin's wedding made my India trip a memorable one.

Now.. I dont want to bore you guys with "10 things I look forward to in 2010" etc.... Lets hope for a joyful 2010.

WISH YOU ALL A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2010.. Enjoy and spread the joy !

My Beyonce Experience…

2009-04-14T16:29:00.001-07:00

It was a long-time-dream-come-true moment for me to experience a full-throttle Beyonce show amidst a flood of 10K fans at Keyarena Seattle on Apr 1st 2009.

The high-tech design of the concert was fantastic and kept the crowd riveted to her stage presence.

View Full Album

It was 150 mins of high energy concert and was a memorable experience.

( These days for some reason I’m not being enthu’ed about blogging a lot.. but still wanted to record this event in here. Hence this few-liner blogpost :) )

The mystic magician...

2009-01-27T19:44:00.000-08:00

"Music is the easiest way to reach the Ultimate" - an often said tag line by many. But only a very few musicians can make you realize the essential truth in the statement. They can weave magic with music and put the receptive listener in a different dimension of life altogether. A R Rahman is one such magical musician !

From the yesteryear classics like Roja, Uyirae (Dil se) to the recent Ghajini, Yuvvraj, SDM I can feel that his magic grew within me over time. His subtle yet intense music reached a new peak in Delhi-6 and here I'm, joining the league of no-words-to-explain-his-music club. Delhi-6 did a lot of things to me including bringing be back to my blog after an year long hiatus !

For the mystic musician who says ' music just happens within you when you tune in to it', Oscars and other bigger laurels will 'just happen' ! Here is wishing the master all that he deserves in life. Jai Ho ARR !!!

Se(a)ttling with fun in US

2008-01-31T18:15:00.000-08:00

After coming to US last August, I have had so much fun settling in Seattle. Soaking in a totally different culture, the people, the way of life etc - all of these new experiences are adding color to my life :) Today I realized that one thing that I'm not doing frequently after coming here is - blogging! May be there is too much to blog that, the very thought makes me tired and bored of writing one! So I thought it would be a good refresh to my blogging interest if I did a quick run over the new colors added to my life in US ( There is one more interesting reason for this blog post.. read on till the end to know ! :) )

* First of all, the basics... Food and Stay - Rams, Anto and myself stay together in a nice place very close to office. Its been an extended hostel life for us from college to Hyderabad to here... movies, games, jokes and all the fun. We still laugh at silliest jokes and Anto never stops to provide us with a situation to crack a joke :). The best thing is the Foooood. We learnt a lot new things in cooking and with the availability of fresh vegetables, Indian groceries etc we relish home cooked food. In fact at times we feel that we are having nutritious food here compared to when we were in India. And there are zillions of good places to eat out here. My favorites and frequented places are CanAm Pizzas, Taco Bell for Burritos and Chalupas, Mayuri for Idly Manchurian and Bisibela bath, Spice Route for Adai Avial :) . Contrary to the popular opinion that vegetarians find it difficult in US, we had no issues so far :D

* Dharini.... Any guess who this is;) .... She is a sweet girl... She is the light of my way... I follow her and I love her !!! ..... OK dont let ur imagination go wild... She is this sweet girl who is in the Acura Navigation system in my car :D ... GPS, Maps, Navigation system all these are just fictional terms in Indian traffic. But here, most vehicles on road run on this. Its total fun driving car here, exploring unknown places, long drives etc. Thank you Dharini for showing me the way ! ( For those wondering why did I name her Dharini... 2 reasons... 1. I like that name and 2. 'dhari' in telugu means 'Way' ! )

* Hip Hop !!! Thanks to KUBE93 FM this genre of music got added to my taste and am listening more and more of Hip Hop songs now. T-Pain is my favorite. Oh my God, when am driving my car, its T-Pain who will be driving me crazy ! I have never been a fan of English songs... but its been good fun listening to this chaotic yet ecstatic music. 'Bartender' and 'Baby Dont go' top my chart now !

* Texas Hold'Em Poker - Got introduced to this by one of my friends here and got addicted to this from then :). I also got this on my laptop :) (One of the extras for Vista Ultimate users :) ) . We just play for fun with fake money chips and this is so addictive. Especially when you win a few hands this game will drag you in. So when you are just gambling with the fake money you got nothing to lose but you get all the excitement and fun of bringing Vegas home :D

* F.R.I.E.N.D.S and Prison Break... the two great TV serials I fell in love with. Started watching Friends only after coming here and now I have seen all the 10 seasons. What a characterization of each of the Friends ! I thoroughly enjoy this greatest serial of US Television history. And coming to Prison Break, the season 3 is still going on in FOX TV and I must say that the director of this show should be some crazy, smart, out-of-this-world guy ! Scene by scene, dialogue by dialogue this show keeps you nail-biting on the edge of the seat. Gripping screenplay at its helm !!!

* American Football () I had no idea about this game before coming here. I was never a big game/sports fan anyway... But just to see the excitement of Americans over this heavily-intense, strategy game is actually the game for me. This weekend is the Super Bowl where the New England Patriots are taking on New York Giants. All hopes over the most-popular American sportsperson, Tom Brady ( the Patriots' quarterback) to bring home the trophy. Even if you dont understand the game, have a look at this play - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eth7DiPmNp0 - Its the most famous Tom Brady Statue of Liberty Play action. The Sports section of my morning 'Seattle Times' is feeding me the interesting news from this arena . I had hopes on the Seattle Seahawks to reach the Super Bowl this time, but tough luck snowed over them during their playoff match against Green Bay Packers

* And Barack Obama... the agile, young and smart player of the game of politics in US. Even when I cannot vote for the next president of US, I want to be part of this Obama wave in the country. Been following him since his victory at the Iowa causus and can't wait to know the results on Super Tuesday this Feb 5th. Lets see if he can make it up all the way to the White House this time.

Now, coming back to the other reason for this blog... I wanted to finish my homework before I sit for my 'Culture, Communication and English-as-Second-Language' class tomorrow evening with Tracy Stober !! Yeah it's been a nice experience with these classes till now and Tracy and I talk about the American culture, the Business etiquettes, English as spoken and understood by the Americans etc. And at times I explain her about the richness of Indian culture and the beauty of Indian languages !

So.. these are the few things which peps up my stay here. Be a Roman in Rome, Be a Seattlite in Seattle and Be Yourself always - this works for me and am glad about it !

"தமிழ் அமுது"

2007-11-19T15:16:00.000-08:00

அற்புத கீர்த்தி வேண்டின்... ஆனந்த வாழ்கை வேண்டின்...
நற்பொருள் குவிதல் வேண்டின்... நலமெலாம் பெருக வேண்டின்...
கற்பக மூர்த்தி தெய்வ களஞ்சியத்து இருக்கை சென்று
பொற்பதம் பணிந்து பாரீர் பொய்யில்லை கண்ட உண்மை !

Every time I recite this sloka I admire the beauty of it and of Tamil language ! What a simple usage of words to show the beauty of the language. I'm not going to spoil the beauty by trying to translate it :)

And here is one amazing verse from Abirami Andhadhi

தனம் தரும், கல்வி தரும், ஒருன்னாளும் தளர்வு அறியா
மனம் தரும், தெய்வ வடிவும் தரும், நெஞ்சில் வஞ்சம் இல்லா
இனம் தரும், நல்லன எல்லாம் தரும், அன்பர் என்பவர்க்கே
கணம் தரும் பூங்குழலாள் , அபிராமி கடைக்கண்களே

Oh my boy.. How I wish to read all my school Tamil books now !

- நரேஷ்

Skyscrapers...

2007-11-06T16:24:00.000-08:00

"Given a 2D representation of skyscrapers in which each building is represented by {x1,x2,y} meaning the building is from x1 to x2 on x axis and is of height y, write a function which will draw the skyline" . (Refering the picture below, given the black rectangles, you have to draw the red line !)"

Mar 19th 2004.... Park Sheraton Hotel Chennai.... I was presented with this problem to solve. 1 hour was the time allotted to crack this. I came up with all possible brute force methods... none of them seemed convincing enough to solve this in algorithmic fashion. Time was up..but yet I didn't give up thinking through this problem. Then came a strategy which struck me out of the blue and the solution was correct( or atleast closest to one of the correct ones) ! Bingo.. I was elated and was so happy about that luck or fate which was with me that day ! Least did I know then that solving this problem will remain as one of the important factors of me getting to see these real skyscrapers and skylines :)

Yes. That problem was the deciding question of my interview with Microsoft India and here I'm writing this from my office in Microsoft Corporation, Seattle !! What an amazing journey from the paper skyline to the Seattle skyline...

Life is amazing ! You never know what it is going to present you with in the next second... but thats what make it amazing ! ( Stolen from Kamal Hassan's words from Anbe Sivam... "Adutha vinaadi ozhithu vaithirukkum aaacharyangal pala kodi.... " )

Life at Microsoft India Development Center- Video

2007-04-22T22:13:00.001-07:00

A sneak peek inside Microsoft's Hyderabad facility.

read more | digg story

Rejuvenating Goa... a cherishable trip.

2007-03-13T09:00:00.000-07:00

Goa has all in it to enthuse and cheer a tourist from whichever part of the world, with its magficient and scenic beaches, historical monuments, architectural churches, gigantic fort and a rich Indo-Portuguese culture. The relaxed mood of the city gives the touring visitors a break from the fast-paced city lifestyle.

We, as a small group of 8 ppl, visited Goa for a weekend trip as a team-outing event. We had no other option other than flying air deccan to Goa...as it was the only airline flying to Goa from Hyderabad. But fortunately they flew on schedule this time around, and we boarded the flight at 1PM on Saturday the 10th of March 2007. It was a turbulant flight with the 'pankawala' aircraft and we landed in Dabolim Airport Goa sharp at 2:30 PM. It was a 40 minute drive to 'The Kenilworth Beach Resort and Spa', the 5-star hotel with whom we had the hotel reservation, in the van they sent to pick us up.

We were made to wait for a few minutes in the reception lobby of the hotel and then came a staff who lead us to our rooms. He took us through a path which lead to the beach and then showed us a tent and said,"this is where you are going to stay... Deluxe luxury Tents with A/C". "What !!! Coming all the way to Goa dreaming of a 5-star luxurious accomodation, do we really have to stay in a deserted HUTTTT !!!" - was the reaction on most of our faces. The staff went on to explain the architecture of the tent... "See this is how you open the door to get in... zzzzzzpppppp", he unzipped the door like opening a bag. And I could not control my laughter when he demoed us the way to unzip the restroom door in the same way. .. (Yuckkk... who will have the patience to unzip the door to the restroom when they have other things to unzip :P ) Told him that we are not taking the tents and finally managed to get the good-looking deluxe rooms...( huhhh... now it looks like a 5-star ! :) ). There were hardly any Indians other than us in the hotel and there were only foreign people we could find in the hotel area, coffee shop and the swimming pool.

After having some sandwiches and burgers in the coffee shop, we headed towards the private beach of the hotel. We went for a boat cruise ride to see the sunset and the ride was so much fun with water splashing all over. But yeah it was a turbulant water ride after a turbulant air flight :).

The sunset view from in the middle of the ocean was jus awesome. Surrounded by water on all sides, seeing the sun sink in the horizon -- we were lucky in our timing that day ! After the ride, we came back to the hotel, had a coffee witnessing the manipuri entertainment and went back to the room to refresh. Came back fresh and hungry to the dinner table and the buffet was so inviting with a good variety for both Veg and Non-Veg. Relished the dinner with a nice music by the band out there in the pool side. The night was still young and went to check out the discotheque and the entertainment center they had there. It was near empty and the music was playing with disco lights on the empty dance floor :( . Nikhil, got enthu about the casinos and the poker machines they had and we went on to play a interesting game with jus 10 coins he bought. WE made 20 with the 10 coins, but finally lost all of them. Anand and Ruby later joined to another game of Poker and they also lost in the similar fashion. The ultimate fun was when Archan came with Abhishiktha to play, bought 10 coins and lost all of them straight in the casino ( since casino was only luck based and they didn't want to venture the Poker stuff which needs a lil bit of thinking :P ). It was midnight by then, but still we didn't want to leave that place without shaking our legs for the tune for some time. Danced for a few hindi songs in the dance floor and went to sleep at 1 am.

The next day started at around 7:30 am for me. I wanted to chek out the Open Air Jacuzzi they had for use by the inmates of the hotel. Went there at 8 am and had a nice bath in the gushing water in Jacuzzi. The Jacuzzi was next to the swimming pool and there were no one in the pool as well during that time. So apparently the foreign tourists jus come out during the sun to take sun bath and get back to their rooms after the sun sets, leaving us with a not-so-happening discotheque the previous night and an near empty pool in the morning :P

It was a marvelous buffet breakfast they had there and we really had a heavy breakfast. By around 11 we started for a 'Sight seeing trip' in two cabs from the hotel, the married people took the Honda City and the others took the Esteem. We first went to the most famous church of Goa, The Basilica of Bom Jesus Church and Se Cathedral.

This is the place where the relics and mortal remains of St.Francis Xavier is kept preserved for more than 500 years now.

From there we went to Fort Aguada, the famous fort of portuguese era, made even more famous by the 'Dil Chahtha Hai' spot. Took a lot of poses in the fort and spent almost an hour in this place.

It was almost 3 Pm when we headed for Lunch at the famous Goan restaurant, Midaas Touch in Calangute. The Goan speciality fish dishes are the famous things here and ppl feasted on it. I managed a decently tasteful vegetarian lunch at this place :)

Next we went to the most crowded and apparently happening Calungute beach. It was so crowded and the entire place looked like a exhibition spot :). jus walked on the sea shore for some 15-20 mins and went to the Vagator beach, the rocky beach in the northernmost part of Goa, for a nice bath in the sea. Played in the water for quite some time, got drenched fully, changed clothes and got back in the cab to start back to the hotel. it was a tiring 1 hour drive back to the hotel and we went back to our rooms after the nice dinner buffet.

The next day morning we had already booked for the Dolphin ride and we woke up early to start our ride into the sea at sharp 8:30. The dolphin spot had a lot of dolphins but unfortunately not a lot of them were in a playful mood. Had to keep waiting and keep turning our heads to see dolphins come out of the surface. Catching them in the camera lens was even more tough and we had to shoot some video clips to get them digitized :)

(The Goa gang - Abhishiktha Das, Archan Das, SubbaRaju, Pradeep, Me, Nikhil, Ananda Sarkar, Ruby Sarkar )

After this the gang expect me went for the water sports ( Parasailing, Jet Ski etc) and had lotsa fun. I was feeling kinda sea-sick and chose to stay back in the room taking a 45 min bath in the bath tub :).

Our return flight was at 3 PM and the hotel cab dropped us in the airport. To add to the fun of the trip, we met Cine Actress Ramya Krishnan in Goa Airport and I went and asked for a photo with her. :)

And after the 90 minute flight back to Hyderabad, we were back to the routine after a rejuvenating trip to the Konkan land.

Sainikudu loses the battle...'Prince' the only saving grace !

2006-12-03T21:35:00.000-08:00

Delivering under pressure is no easy task and Gunasekar (Director) fumbled completely with the script for this much-hyped-up movie Sainikudu. I would say Gunasekar actually made an easy task tougher. The stage was a easy-winning one - the expectation was jus for another Mahesh Babu with the typical style characteristic of his previous movies. But this movie is defintely not one any cine-goer would feel happy about. Flawed screenplay and a gripless narration are for the losers. Relying heavily on huge-sets and extraordinary stunts without the baseline of an effective screenplay to back it up is where the movie loses big time.

In fact the concept on which the movie is based on, Student involvement in politics and nation-building - is a good enough baseline. But a confused screenplay influenced by a lot of previous successful movies' tint makes the film boring. The scenes involving Mahesh and Trisha after he kidnaps her - Gunasekar forgot that this is different from Okkadu kidnap and Trisha shows expressions as if she was saved from her marriage. I was wondering whether the director was trying to mimic Bommarilu's Hasini in Trisha's character when she was moving with Mahesh's friends ! Totally the characterisation of Varalakshmi is totally inapproriate. The villain was not at all powerful and was more like a comedian - on the contrary, Mahesh was depicted all-powerful - the net effect being the fight scenes irritating.

But yeah there were atleast a very few saving grace to the movie. Mahesh Babu's presence :) . His expressions,as usual. Picturisation of the Songs.

In short - the Soldier was let to battle alone ... the war is lost.. yet he stands tall !

The 'Soldier' arrives amidst unprecedented hype !!!

2006-11-29T22:05:00.000-08:00

The aura around Prince' fans is buzzing with super excitement today. The much-awaited movie of the year is hitting the cinemas today amidst super-duper hype. The movie as such may be anywhere between an amazing movie to a normal run-of-the-mill (I'm yet to watch it... and will be seeing on only this Sunday :( ) . But I would say the movie crew should be extremely happy jus with the frenzy created now during the opening.

CAN YOU BELIEVE that a movie is getting screened in a multiplex (PRASADs Multiplex, Hyd) with 18 shows a day !!! There are 5 screens in the multiplex and theoretically they can screen 5*5=25 shows in a day. And this movie gets into 18 of them !!! Wowww. Adding to this is PVR Cinemas hyd which is screening this 10 times a day. And literally I was not able to count the number of cinemas in hyd where its opening today.

The reasons I could see for this much of an hype... Mahesh's magnetism in tollywood, Pokiri's success, the directors successful venture with Mahesh before (Okkadu and Arjun), and Mahesh-Trisha's success story in Athadu. Now, Will this movie meet the expectations of over-hyped-up audience ?? We will get the answer soon... Will come back with the review of the movie on Sunday ! :)

Go go go Adhigo...

Sharing the frame with Steve Ballmer !

2006-11-16T04:51:00.000-08:00

A nice photo here to preserve for ages to come... Steve Ballmer, the CEO of Microsoft, came down to our campus at Hyderabad to congratulate us, the Windows team, for shipping Windows Vista. Am a big fan of Steve's vibrant energy and enthusiasm and it feels good to pose for a photo shoot with him :)

( Men in Full suit :(from left to right) Srini Koppulu [VP & MD, India Dev Center], Somasegar [Corporate Vice President], Steve Ballmer [CEO], Amit Chatterjee [General Manager, IndiaDev Windows Group] )

"Naresh Vaayi adangum neram"...

2006-11-13T04:19:00.000-08:00

A quick context to this song-post:
I had an jaw-breaking accident while playing TT in my office on Sep 12th 2006. The lower-jaw fracture was surgically fixed by placing them back in position and arresting my jaw movements completely with strings and rubber bands. I had to remain in this mouth-shut state for 2 full months - not eating any solid food... not talking... no narrations... and was not even able to shave my beard for a month. This period completely changed my lifestyle... shunting my hang-outs... silencing my narrations... restricting my laugh... and tanning my teeth.
This is a song dedicated to this state of mine by my friends with whom I live here... and Raghu is the brain behind this brilliang idea :D

So.. here goes the lyrics of the songs (Lyrics by Raghu and Rams)

In the tune of : 'New York Nagaram urangum neram (Sillundru Oru Kadhal)' (Tamil movie song)

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Naresh vaai adangum neram, angeethi mudiyadhu,
Shikaarum koundhadhu
Aalu illama chutneys um azhindhadhu

Naangu rubber band kulle, naanum enathu vaayum, oomai oomai yo,
Oomai oomai yo,

Kodumai kodumai yo..

Saranam 1:
Pechellaaam kadhai pol ippo solla vaai enakku illai
Thinanum oru chilly paneer saapthu kaasu kodukka iyala villai
Vaayil irukkum AZHUKKU thannai, brush’aal clean panna mudiya villai
Moonjil valarum daadiyai, blade’aal shave panna iyala villai…

Naan inge, pizza angae, garlic breadai vaayil kooda vekka mudiya villai

Naan inge, butter naan angae, indha injury il nam iruvarum vilakam aanadheno… oooo oo oh oh

Saranam 2:
Naalu muzhukka nooru thadavai roti saapdum en vaai
Moonji fulla daadi vandhu, ada ponathey ennadu joy

Panju pola, indha roti irundhum, inda injury’il roti kooda kallu aanadenno…
Vaa doctor, neeyum vandhaal, inda injury kooda century AAi poividume mey mee mee..

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

And here is the rough translation to it:

The time when Naresh's mouth is shut sealed, restaurants Angeethi and Shikaar were closed in loss. The Chutneys restaurant was closed due to no patronage.
Me...myself and my mouth inside this 4 rubber bands in mouth !!! What a state this is ?! Dumbb and Pity !

Stanza 1:
No mouth to keep talking narrating tales...
Not able to eat Chilly paneer daily and pay for it...
Not even able to clean the mouth with a tooth brush...
Not able to shave the hair on face with a blade...

I'm here... Pizzas there... Not even able to feel the garlic bread in mouth !
I'm here.... Butter naan there... This injury has separated us.. Alas !!!
(Chorus)

Stanza 2:
A mouth which eats rotis after rotis in a day for hundred times...
Now all the joy is gone with all the bearded face..
A roti which is as soft as cotton has turned into stone now due to this injury !
Come doctor, if you wish.. even this injury can turn into a century (as in Sachin's century).
(Chorus)

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Here goes the audition of the song - sung by Raghu ! Good effort by him !

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57L5ZaV-WL4

(a copy of the video also at http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4029135817967700755&hl=en )

'Sainikudu'... Music Review

2006-10-24T07:10:00.000-07:00

'Sainikudu' (meaning Soldier) ... the next avatar of Prince Mahesh Babu is expected to hit the cinemas this November. The audio of this flick was released as a 'Diwali gift' to the music lovers. Wow.. what a gift it is turning out to be !!! Harris Jeyaraj, the music director, has given a refreshing and a entertaining album. Even when it can't be termed as exceptionally innovative music, Sainikudu - has nice flavoured songs which I can see clearly fitting the Mahesh's presense on the screen.

Let me individually comment on the songs:
1. Aadapilla - (Hariharan and Chitra):
This is a normal run-of-the-mill Telugu Song. I call it the Hyderabad-Share-auto Genre. A foot-tapping number. Hariharan's voice is the right fit here.

2. Byla Bylamo - (Lewis,Anushka, & Sunitha)
What an opening to this song !!! It turns your senses on.. just by the start.. Zuvvvaanam..jamaikkam..ohzzaana..baley... Great music. A fast jazzy number.

3. Go Go Adhigo - (Kay Kay)
Again a great music. Solo song. Guessing that this may be the title/intro song for the prince. Kay Kay has done a great job.

4. Mayeera - (SPB, Unnikrishnan, Kavitha)
Here comes the masterpiece. Addictive song. A slow melodious number. Melody and SPB - What else you would want from a song. Jus can't wait to see the picturization of this song. Unni and Kavitha sing the anupallavi and saranam. A nice effort by Harris in being choosy about the singers for pallavi, anupallavi and saranam. My top spot goes to this song in the album.

5. Orrugaule Pilla - (Karthik,Karunya,Harini and Malathi)
If you loved "thaiya thaiya" (From Uyirae, Chaiya chaiya (Dil Se) )... you will enjoy this. This seems like a remix of the same tune. the voices also suggest the same. The jolly mood of the song is enjoyable. Harini's voice stands out.

6. Sogasuchooda - (Shreya Ghosal)
This is a melodious carnatic number by Shreya. The Ghatam is superb especially when hearing in head phones :) .

Overall, Sainikudu promises a lot atleast on the musical front. I see this to be a sensational hit. After the blockbuster Pokiri, the expectations from Mahesh in Sainikudu is high and this music is its first success. Waiting eagerly for yet another sensational Mahesh movie.

Table tennis - Corporate lessons from it...

2006-09-30T03:23:00.000-07:00

A game which looks simple and straight-forward to an onlooker... a break time stress reliever to an amateuer... a highly technical and tactful sport for the ping-pong professional..
The above one liner doesn't complete the funda of my table tennis. The game of Table tennis on the corridors of modern day corporate office spaces is a world in itself. I started playing this game only after joining Microsoft and as I got into playing this game more and more I started learning career lessons from it. Sounding weird ?? Maybe, but this is my perspective of the game and the play on and off the field... am trying to put it down in words what it taught me abstract !

As soon as I joined my company there was an intra-team TT tournament happening and it was the motivation for me to start learning this game as early as possible. There were mentors for me to teach the basics of the game, and I got a chance to play a game in the tournament. It so happenned that I won the doubles match played among the beginners in the team ! :) From then on, I almost regularly played this game with friends, team mates and colleagues. My learning curve was slow and steady and today I may not be even one of the great players (in my office), but atleast I can play a decent game which can guarentee me fun and satisfaction.

1. Fear not to lose...
Naturally you will get to meet people with different levels of expertise in the table. I have seen many who hesitate to put their game on litmus test with experienced players. I never fear to take on big players. Fear of losing is the starting point of the dip in your learning curve. Yeah, it will be not be fun when you are thrashed left right and center by your opponent, but it efinitely
enhances your game by leaps and bounds provided you are receptive to the hard lessons it teaches you. If you are of the kind of getting demoralized by gettting smashed, it least helps. My game improved a lot by playing against tough players and believe me I have infact took my game to a level better than those who looked tough for me before.
'Fear not to lose' mantra works the same way in taking up hard assignments in your work. Fear of failure should be the last thing in your mind when taking up challenging assignments. You may lose a couple times, but unknowlingly you would have acquired skills enough to raise your bar high on accomplishments. From then on even your small accomplishments will look
monumental to the world around you !

2. The important stage - do not falter in the last mile.
The game which we normally play in office is a 21 point game with change in service after every 5 serves. In a typical game both the players will be attacking during the first 10 points and will try to be defensive only when they have lost a big lead to the opponent. I have seen a few players who lose concentration when they are defending a huge lead. They falter more when the score reads something like 18-11 and they are leading. From such a losing stage I have won a many times and there has been very less incidents of me losing from a 18-11 lead. The funda is simple, dont enjoy success until its fully achieved.
'Missing out in the last mile'- is a common mistake in corporate world. A big assignment on hand, you thought over it a lot, you designed the solution for it, you burnt midnight oil for solving it, and you got the problem to a stage where it is nicely placed to for the solution. This is not where to relish the sucess and that too at the cost of losing track of the next step. Keep your focus hard on that last mile where the challenge has died, the motivation is low - yet the dragon heads of the problem are just in invisible state. Take it to the logical conclusion and close the loop and then the chapter. Thumbs up !

3. Know when to play second fiddle.
Playing a singles game and a doubles game of TT is a different strategy altogether. More than your game you need to understand your partners game for the synergy to work for your team. And in TT, your game is not the same everyday. One day all your shots will be on the right place and the very next day your may not get your placements right. So if your partner is not getting his shots, you assume the attacking role and let him play second fiddle till he gets back his rhythm. Same the case when your partner is going guns over the shots, defend or play for his shots. The other side of this co-ordination story is - Stay cool and play your natural game even when your partner loses all your points with his bad game.
Being an effective team player is as important as being a good individual contributor. Marching towards a common vision as a team requires taking leadership, taking ownership and playing second fiddle at appropriate times. Read the competencies of your team mates and play an effective team player.

4. What do you want out of the game...
This is the interesting perspective... Not all persons who come to the TT board come with the intention to win the games. After all this is not a tournement/trophy to fight for everyday. The main purpose for such TT gaming sessions is relaxation from stressful work and for sheer fun. What gives fun is different for different people... For me, winning games is fun and occasionally taking miraculous shots gives enjoyment. But for others it may be... hitting amazing shots...or may be defending a lightning smash... attacking with Muttiah spins etc etc. And at the end of the day, there is no point in playing defensive and winning 10 games when hitting smashes alone will give you the fun. Play what keeps you thrilled !
Similarly employees expectation out of work differs with person to person. Some want huge challenges and enjoy fighting with them day in and day out. For a few, a cake walk work gives no pain. Let me not get into the work-life balance issues, but work-life balance is a No-worry factor when you love your work. In that case work and life are no separate things for you. The
work is part of your life. I'm here. I have nothing to balance as work and life are no two things for me. Understanding what you want out of your career depends on your view of the work and how you take on it.

5. The game reflects your attitude :)
A few games of TT with a person and I can, to a decent extent, judge the attitude of the person in general. A person who takes a lot of risks in the shots in TT ...so will be his code, risky ! :)... A defensive person who just returns your placements will be defensive in catching a lot of exceptions in his code... if u hear a person screaming "Mann, the ball is broken, the rubber is dead, the lighting is not enough" in the TT table, you are most likely to hear"Those onsite teams were lazy, the system was not responding, the support was not enough" in your team meetings from him.

hmmm.. I donno whether I made sense in my writing above. But wanted to give shape to my thoughts as I'm sitting on a
medical leave at home due to a jaw breaking accident while I was playing this same game of Table Tennis :)

Air Deccan... Complicate n fly !

2006-09-26T06:25:00.000-07:00

I have flown Air Deccan quite a number of times and have actually found it decent enough a carrier for domestic travels. It was only recently I had to face the real face of this irresponsible and customer-unfriendly airlines.
We, as a group of 5 ppl, booked our flight from Coimbatore to Hyderabad. Due to change in plans, we had to cancel 4 of the passengers on that ticket and reschedule mine to a later date. I did the rescheduling and had the printed leaf of the same. The other guys cancelled their tickets from the Air Deccan travel desk at Bangalore airport. Here starts the drama. It was very specifically made clear by my friend that the cancellation should not affect the rescheduled passenger (that is me). Even the staff on duty there affirmed that it will not be affected. But they did the perfect wrong thing - cancelled the entire PNR. I was roaming about in deep interior Tamil Nadu and was unaware of all this. The sad part of the story was even my friend who was cancelling the ticket bothered least to reconfirm the cancellation. Blame not them, they were in a hurry for their flight and were happy with the word of the executive in keeping my ticket intact.
For me, this was a costly affair. Not just in terms of the money... time... strain... mental agony... I was jus using Coimbatore as a transit location when returning from Tirunelveli to Hyderabad. Went all the way to airport with a ticket - not knowing that its actually cancelled a week ago - and was sent away from the check-in counter.
The incredible pain was the way Air Deccan people at Coimbatore handled this. I clearly explained them that the tkt was cancelled by mistake by the Air Deccan office at B'lore. He was least bothered about my shouting... in fact I realized that there were already a bunch of dissatisfied and fiery customers yelling at them for different problems.
To my bad luck (it later turned out to be a nice time, is a different story) the flight was presumably running full which denied me the chance to buy a new tkt for the same day. So had to finally book the next day flight and went to my relatives place there.
After all this the flight next day was my worst flight ever till date. They happily rescheduled the flight from 12 noon to 6:30 PM and typical of State-run buses, introduced a new stop in Cochin, delayed the take off from there to attract passengers and finally landed at 9:30 PM at hyd. uffffhhhh.
This made me realize that flying with Air Deccan, the proclaimed *low* cost airline of the recent times, infact is the costliest affair, costing you in all kinds. So here I go, I join the elite club of "will-not-fly-air-deccan-again".

Airtel Super Singer - a talent hunt and the drama around it...

2006-07-09T23:20:00.000-07:00

If channel surfers who hasn't had an oppurtunity to watch this Airtel SuperSinger contest aired every Fri-Sat 8PM happen to pause in Vijay TV during the time, they are bound to get confused as to whether they are seeing a program of the sorts of "Sapthaswaram" or "Kutram- Nadandhadhu enna ! " or a typical-mega-serial !!! Yes, this program, which goes with a caption "Tamil Nadu's mega Voice hunt" - has all the drama on top of some exceptional singing talent from budding young singers.

The core of the program - its life - is the exhibition of some nice talent and the nice job of the judges panel in quantifying the subjective decisions. Aspirants who wanna earn a chance to sing in the music of Harris Jayaraj have to fight out a stiff competition in front of a jury of acclaimed singers of the likes of Unnikrishnan, Anuradha and Srinivas and and even prove their talent singing along with current playback singers. The idea is good, the concept is beautifully conceived but unfortunately there are a few things which denies the viewer a pleasant experience and even worse, put the contestants under tremendous emotional pressure at times defeating the spirit of music.

The unnecessary melodrama in between the performances trying to create a hype... falls out of place for a music show. I'm sure that commentator is inspired by the "Kuttram Nadandhadhu enna" show and creates the same aura here :D ... winning only the unpleasant faces of the viewers. Putting a big "Rejected" mark on the faces of those who missed to qualify to the next round spoils the spirit. Music belongs to the heart - winning or losing is just external to it. Videography of contestants crying off the stage added up with emotional music, sentimental pleading for SMS votes by those who lost - are totally weird.

While wishing the participants all the very best in their careers... I would love to see the Vijay TV crew do something about keeping up the good spirit of the show and Music.

A typical 'hyderabadi' evening...

2006-06-18T02:50:00.000-07:00

Saturday the 17th of June 2006 :

We, the threesome of Bhai Me and Raghu had a fantastic Saturday evening with a hyderabadi flavour to it. Started somewhere around 5 in the evening.... had snacks of the likes of button idlies and Bhel puri at Eat Street alongside Hussain Sagar lake... Drove to Prasads multiplex from there.. struggled for parking... found a space in NTR garden parking... aimless roaming about inside the complex... 2-3 times of trying our luck to get to watch a movie by standing in the box-office queue again-n-again... shelving out 20 bucks for the 'most hygienic' Sugar cane juice ;)... sneaking in the internet bookers slot to get premiere seats for the blockbuster Telugu movie 'Pokiri'... artificial thrill at the 'Scary house'... a fast-pitched movie with the right pinch of masala to spend the early-night... and how better can we finish the day other than the midnight biryani at Ohris.... It was so fulfilling an evening to cherish.. :)

View from the prestigious landmark of Hyderabad !

2006-06-06T03:46:00.000-07:00

This is how the roads leading to Charminar typically looks during the day. Is there anyone seeing this...who can change the face of this landmark location of the splendid city ??

Fun n frolic at 'the Queen of Deccan'...

2006-04-26T10:44:00.000-07:00

This city is definitely young and happening... Rightly called the Queen of Deccan, she has the youthful exuberance in her... Pune, the cultural capital of Maharastra, beckoned us to give us a dream weekend of life.

It was all decided in few hours and with utmost adhoc that myself, Raghu and Ranajoy will travel to Pune to spend the weekend with our friends Arvind, JP and Pavithra there on official trip. We took the Raj National Express bus (the Raj travels ppl think that they are operating an airways with just a small difference that their 'flights' cannot fly... but otherwise they give online reservation, PNR numbers, boarding pass, cabin baggage- checkin baggage fundae, personalized headphones and what not.. :) ) . It was a comfortable journey ending with a sweet surprise of the terminus being just opposite to Taj Blue Diamond where we were supposed to get to. Went in to the luxurious hotel and woke our friends up to get ready to start the weekend.

Went walking to the Osho Teertha park in Koregaon Park area. It was open for entry only upto 9 and 3 of us ( the late comers) didn't get a chance to explore the interiors. After that energizing walk we headed to Shaniwaar wada fort. It was a rustic structure and history dates back it the period of Peshwas. Even when there was nothing interesting as such inside the place, we made it interesting with our orkut-photo-shoot session. There was a summer camp kinda thing going on for small kids there and it was so sweet to watch little kids listening agape to the story-teller-girl.

Next we went to the close by Ganesh Temple, even when Raghu was whining to come there as he felt temple visits predominatly take time off the schedule for other interesting activities. But yet that place was calm and we had a good dharshan of 'swambhu' Ganesha there.

It was scorching heat by this time and watching movie at INOX was the best option to while away the afternoon. So went to INOX multiplesx and reserved tickets for the matinee show 'Ice Age 2' movie. Had lunch at 'Only Parathas' - where there were more 100 varieties of Parathas (btw, the restaurant is pure veg one). Had tough time shortlisting and deciding the paratha and had nice, filling parathas and shakes.

We had 30 min time for the movie and went inside Pantaloon to while that time away. We got really nice and cheap T-shirts here and I got a chudidhar for my sis. It was show time by then and we reclined to our seats at the cinema hall. The movie was nice and enjoyable one much to my expectation and the 'Ice Age'-INOX Combo was fantastic.

FC Road (Fegusson College Road)... The heart of the city which no normal person would ever afford to miss visiting... was the next place we went to from INOX. We had amazing Dosas at Vaishaali... The place is claimed to be famous for its unique sambhar.. but in my opinion the authentic South Indian sambar we have at Saravana Bhavan Chennai easily wins over it in taste. The place was crowded upto every inch and we could feel the buzz around the College road. After the nice tiffin time we climbed Parvati Hills, a 100 step high hilltop temple. One more friend of us Amod joined us after the temple visit and we got back again to FC road for Cafe time at Cafe Coffe Day. Baristas and Cafe Days at FC Road are phenomenal happening spots of the city. Time jus flees past if you are jus around this place. Here is where you get to see the best of 'Pune Factor' ;) .

Even after all this roaming about, me and Raghu weren't tired and were in the mood of wanting more to see more of Pune. So here we start at 9:30 in the night from Taj hotel to E-Square multiplex. Roamed for abt 1 hr in this place without any serious intention and direction and had dinner at the food court. The interesting part was when we tried to gain entry to the discotheque here (yeah.. it had stag entry)... but jus when we decided to try it, the gatekeeper there refused to admit us thanks to the sandals on Raghu's feet :-( . So we had no other option to ditch that place, calling it sour grape. Got back to hotel calling it a day and slept in the comfortable bed.

The next day (sunday) started with we taking a Skoda and Ford for cab service and heading to Mathura Restaurant at JM Road. It was an authentic Maharastrian restaurant and all of us ordered Thali as suggested by the bearer there. Amazing lunch it was with different kinds of Rotis, Aaam Ras, Matki ki dahi, Onion sprouts, Kadi etc... Enjoyed the time here. We were full that we thought of spending a lazy afternoon at a nice shopping place doing window shopping. So Pune Central was a good choice for this and here we go.. entering Pune Central with NO intentions to shop (atleast me). It was around 1:30 in the afternoon. We felt that Raghu has not done any significant shopping of late and wanted to push him to spend for something there. He went on to buy a 'typical Raghu kinda' T-Shirt and we were happy abt it. Within this time our Sharma tried a Sherwani, thought a lotttt abt it and much to our expectation rejected it (or in his own way, postponed the decision of buying one). I never knew what was in store for me until I saw an attractive Cargo. Punted the option of buying it, but when I saw a nice black casual shirt coudn't resist my temptation to try the shirt with the cargo and bingo, I decided to buy them. (Remember I had no intention to shop and in fact wanted to desperately avoid spending.. but yeah it never works out for me ;) ) ... It was not all over... We felt that our friend Ranajoy still didn't get anything there and since he had interest in sunglasses we went there before exiting the place. I started trying a few glasses there and since I already had sunglasses in my wishlist for long went on daringly to buy the costliest piece there from Ray ban.

So... here I go.. with all the new attire I got from Central...

Destination next was the Marzorin ice cream parlour at MG Road. This road was full of shopping and lots of ppl happily walking over the road as it is closed for traffic during the weekends. From here we went to Chathurshringi temple again a smal hill top Durga temple. The panaromic view of the City from here was too cool in the night. The one high-priority things which remained uncovered till now was Chaat items, for which this part of the world is famous for. So went to Mannmeet chaat centre (yeah. again to FC Road :-) ).. had some good chaat stuff and Pani puri before we got back to Taj for packing our stuff for the return.

Here comes the end of an awesome weekend we had at Pune... Boarded the Raj express bus at MangalDas road.. had Taj biryani (packed) on board and we were back in Hyd right on time in the morning.

Movie reviews...

2006-03-27T06:13:00.000-08:00

Wanted to write posts for some of the movies I got to watch in the recent past, but didn't have time to individually write for each. So here is a single post with a quick review on the movies I watched in the last one month...

1. Rang De Basanti - Hindi - PVR Cinemas.

I watched this on the same weekend when PVR was open at Hyderabad. The envi suited the best : a nice new Cinema hall for a revolutionary movie of recent times. I liked the entire movie except for the picturization of the songs - I have no idea why the cinematographer chose to randomly shake the camera during song sequence. The crux of the movie was good and the screenplay was also apt. ARR, as usual, was awesome in the background score. Overall 8/10.

2. Taxi no 9211 - Hindi - PVR Cinema

Man, this is an nice movie if you have patience and interest to study the subtle characterization the directory has tried to do with the two different personalities. The movie was good enuf entertainer and Nana Patekar's performacne was soooo good. The music is a treat to your ears and PVR Sound system added flavour to the music. Overall 7/10.

3. Happy - Telugu - PRASADS Multiplex (2 times)

This is the movie which tops my recent favourite list. I was so so happy to watch this even for the second time. Genelia is amazingly awesome in this film and her character was like a breeze. Even when I'm not that good in understanding Telugu, I understood each and every dialogue of this movie and the screenplay was perfect. The comedy was good, Allu's performance was natural and apt. I loved all the songs and the way they were picturized. "Chal chal chal chal mere saathi.. hum ban gaye hyderabadi..", "Happy", "Hate U" were the nicest ones. Genelia - 10/10 :-) . Overall 9/10.

4. BluffMaster - Hindi - Home Theatre :-)

When I got the bluffmaster audio CD it was more than two weeks after the movie was released. The audio enthralled and excited me so much that I desperately wanted to watch this movie in PVR or PRASADS. But they were not screening this movie anymore. But still I was on a pursuit to watch this movie somehow and managed to buy a VCD of it. After seeing the movie, I thought "Why didn't it strike to me that, if a movie is not running anywhere in the city even when its just 3 weeks after its release it means the quality of the movie is only to that level". It was a junkest movie of all sorts with hardly a few plus points, one of them being Priyanka's beauty. Otherwise the film has nothing in it (of course, except the good music) to keep the audience seated happily in their seats for 3 hours. Overall 4/10.

5. Malamal Weekly - Hindi - PVR Cinema.

My expectations out of this movie was very low to start with, after seeing the trailer before. I know that it is a village story with not-so-hyped-up star cast etc. The first few minutes of the movie was proving my expectations... but, man, as the story began to ravel and complicate it became so interesting that the overall movie looks to me now as a revolutionary, daring and a successful attempt by director Priyadharshan. The story is simple, but the screenplay is complicated and funny. The comedy is novel and natural. Amazing movie worth watching. Overall 9/10.

Pics Courtesy : Indiaglitz.com and the respective movie official sites.

Mirror magic...

2006-03-17T02:04:00.000-08:00

Through the Kaleidoscopic mirror... There were lot of such interesting mirror reflective demo stuff all over the Mirror magic section of Science City, Kolkata.

The next one is pretty interesting pic It was fun seeing mee all around the conferencing table ;)

And the next one is a cool serendipitous shot... We were trying to take a picture of the Vidhyasagar sethu from inside a restaurant and it had a reflection of my face on the glass pane of the Window !

A cool new colorplus shirt I bought...

2006-01-30T22:53:00.000-08:00

I still remember...

2006-01-26T22:41:00.000-08:00

Wondering what does the above picture signify... Read on...

"My Experience at the Empire of Luxury"...

Jan 26th 2001 - When I was in first year, I had an unforgettable and an adventurous visit to the Le Royal Meredien, a 5 star hotel in Chennai which I then called "Empire of Luxury". All of a sudden, I desired to roam about in a luxurious hotel and decided to go to this place. I didn't have a nice formal dress that time and was ordinarily dressed. The weirdest thing I did that day was choosing to go there in a bicycle :-) . As expected the security folks in the hotel stopped me in the gate and looked at me as if I stopped there to ask for some address. When I said, "My uncle is coming from Bangalore next week and he wants to know the tariff of this hotel as this is kinda close to the airport. Can I get the tariff card from inside?", that person hesitantly said "yes, but you can go only upto to the reception as visitors are not allowed inside." Then I asked him a question - he would have never encountered such a question before as a guard of a star hotel - "Where do I park my cycle?". He literally didn't have a answer to this and told me to park it outside in the road near the entrance. That junk cycle didn't even have a proper stand and I finally had to rest on the walls of the hotel right in front. It would have been a rare photograph had someone captured the cycle parked on the entrance wall where the name of the 5 star hotel was carved in glittering stone :-)

So after gaining such a dramatic entry I went inside and as a formality went to the reception first to enquire about the tariff. After some 2-3 minutes of discussion with the reception people, I generally roamed about the lobby area of the hotel. I was in no mood to get out of the place and went roaming about each and every place inside. Checked out the big screen TV inside the bar there, went in lift to have a panaromic view of the swimming pool, browsed through the menu card of every restaurant before I realised that I have been inside for almost half-an-hour now. When I came out of the hotel after all this, I saw the security ppl restless and trying to call someone in the walky-talky. He,after seeing me coming out, hanged the phone, came to me and said, "What were you doing inside? Just now I was about to alarm our security guards inside that some 'mysterious person' is inside the hotel for half an hour". I smiled and said a big sorry before I escaped from there in the bicycle :-)

This story - when I came back and told my friends in the hostel - became so popular that during my birthday party that year my friends asked me for a treat in Meredien. I promised them "Sometime in my life, I will definitely give you all a big treat in Le Royal Meredien, Chennai". Those words still ring in my ears and I remember this entire story during each birthday.

This morning I wanted to blog about this after seeing the Yahoo Reminder in my desktop.

Birthday number 23...

2006-01-25T05:28:00.000-08:00

This Jan 23rd I successfully completed my 23 years of existence in this world ! (Is that an achievement is a separate thing :-) ). Neways, I had quite a memorable day with grettings, gifts, wishes and blessings from my near and dear ones.

The day started with celebrations in the midnight when my close friends hosted a cake-cutting party for me. Cakes and sweets added sweetness to the occasion and it was followed by birthday bumps and kicks. Raghu, with his weird kicking action literally made everyone roll on the floors with laughter. It was amazing fun. My friends presented me with a nice musical greeting.

Another important aspect of such celebrations is the cake-abhishegam. Have a look at this to know how innovative our people were in this art :-)

Next is even better photo..."Feeding the birthday baby ;) "

"I wish I have a phone book entry called 'SweetHeart', before next birthday :-) ", I told, when ppl kept pushing me to tell a birthday wish. BTW,this is just a wish and not a resolution.

This weird "language problem" of mine...

2006-01-02T00:16:00.000-08:00

"Languages Known" column of my resume looked like this...
To Speak - Tamil, English
To Read - Tamil, English, Hindi, Sanskrit.
To write - Tamil, English, Hindi.

So far so good... Now, after I'm here in Hyderabad for the past 18 months, there is a huge influence on my lingo by the conversations I have different kinds of ppl in the society here. Hyderabad is the capital city of Andhra Pradesh where Telugu is the official language. Since it has a huge infiltrated population, it is a nice cosmopolitan city in the sense that you will find people talking in other different languages including Hindi prominently.

Before I came here, I was never worried about my language because I knew I can manage to speak Hindi and in most of the places English is always the default. But it wasn't really that easy as I had to interact with telugu-only-ppl. The security at our aprtmnt, our house owner staying downstairs, our maid, my car service ppl - can speak only in Telugu. This necessitated the learning of Telugu in me and I was happy to have a chance to learn a new language.

But here started a new problem - The invasion of Telugu in my lingo, slowly had a negative effect on my Hindi fluency. Unknowingly Telugu words peep in to my Hindi conversations and vice versa. No I'm confused. I'm fluent talking in neither of the langiages that I cannot choose one of it to start a conversation with a person who knows only Telugu and Hindi. And all these is making me less expressive these days and I'm not the same verbose narrator as I used to be before :-( .

One example of my confused language : Our maid, seeing a new cot in our house, asked me "When did you buy this?" (She asked this in Telugu). I thought for a second and ended up answering "Yesterday hi kareedh liya", and started laughing to myself on my Hindi+English answer to a Telugu person :-)

Is there anybody who can fix mera vichithramana language problemuu ???

Agra...The empire city of the mughals...

2005-11-29T01:36:00.000-08:00

{{ This is in continuation of my previous post on our travelogue to Delhi }}

If you have great interest in history and are an admirer of monuments and forts then Agra has lot in store for you. It is a small city with just a few tourist attractions yet it is the place where one of the seven wonders of the world, The Taj Mahal, is. Five of us (Anand, Archan, Anoop, Yogesh and Myself) had a nice day at Agra and it was indeed a nice experience to see the Taj.

We started off from Delhi pretty early in the morning in a Qualis cab and we left Delhi outskirts before sunrise. Agra was approximately 200 KM from Delhi and it took just 3 hr 15 mins to reach Agra as it was in the morning and the highway was free. We just had one pitstop in the journey where we refreshed ourselves with some chaaya and coffee. Baaluwala roaming around with bear, doing some tricks with it and begging for money was a common sight here in these areas.

The first place we visited at Agra was "Akbar ka Sikandar" (aka Sikandra Fort). This is the tomb of Akbar supposedly built by Akbar himself. As he was skeptical about whether his descendents will build a monument for his tomb, Akbar made sure that he had one by building it himself well in advance ;) . It was a nice big place with lots of monkeys, deers etc. We had some photo sessions here and pushed off to our next destination.

I was anxious to see the Taj, as I was waiting for reality to unfold my imaginations built in my mind about the Taj Mahal. The cab has to be parked some half-a-km before the Taj entrance and from there no oil-driven vehicle is allowed to proceed. There were battery-driven auto rickshaws and they came as a package with a guide for Taj mahal. The guide was a knowledegable chap and he briefed us about the history involved in the building of Taj. The entrance to Taj is a high raising which has 22 domes on top of it , 11 on each side. "They represent the 22 years which was the time it took to build the wonder", the guide told. Mumtaz was the dearest of the three wifes Shahjahan had and it was in her memory that he built this wonder. He has infact built some memorials to his first two wives also, but they were just some unattractive,insignificant structures in the front of the Taj entrance. We took lots and lots of photo here in Taj as we climbed to the first floor to see the mock-ups of Shahjahans and Mumtaz' tombs.

The next one is the group photo which we took sitting on the "bench" (There is literally a biiiig queue waiting for their turn to sit on this bench and take a snap with the Taj in the background).

This is a nice couple I saw at the first floor of the mahal. They were enjoying the beauty of the Taj with Yamuna in the backdrop. Managed to sneak in a snap of them ;)

We had Lunch at a decent hotel there. We were hungry so the real taste of the food didn't matter a lot. Our next destination was Agra fort and we reached there at around 12:30. Again we caught hold of a guide right from the parking lot and he had loads and loads of history to tell us while roaming about in the Agra fort. The first thing he showed us was a huge bath tub which was used by those yester year rajas to bath. He took us to a mahal which was supposed to be the bedroom of Shahjahan and Mumtaz. It was a beautiful place with a fountain (not functioning now though) in the middle of a building which hosted 362 servant maids of Shahjahan. The photo below is the one which we took sitting in the parliament of the mughals from where Taj mahal can been seen on the backdrop.

The guide then took us inside the Sheesha mahal (Glass Mahal) inside which it was full of glasswork along with some tablas mounted on the walls. It was total dark inside and the guide used a candle light to demonstrate the sparkle of the room. It had some fountains etc in the middle, which was supposedly used by Shahjahan for some perverted activiities ;)

It was almost 2Pm by the time we finished Agra fort and Fatehpur Sikri trip looked like a risk for a moment as Anand, Archan and Anoop have the reception to attend in the evening. But we were not in any mood to miss it, so here we start a 37-km drive to Fatehpur Sikri, the second capital of Moghal empire.

It was a hour drive to Fatehpur sikri and history says that Akbar built Fatehpur sikri as a backup to his kingdom fearing that his sons will destroy the empire. He infact had it as a capital of his empire for sometime before he was forced to get back to Agra due to severe water crisis. There is a worship place inside the sikri and tourists today donate some amount to perform worship according to the customs. We bought some saree kinda stuff from the vendor and offered our reverence to the place. The most-famous historic place "Buland Darwaza" is here and we started back to Agra after getting some snaps with the Darwaza in the background.

We reached Agra at around 5 and me and Yogesh got down at Cantt Railway station before the cab started back to Delhi. After having some light tiffin at the RS, me and yogesh went for a shopping spree in Agra. Thanks to a pestering rickshaw-wala, we went to the Govt Handicrafts showroom and it had all the important things to buy at Agra. I bought a bamboo silk saree for my mom and a Taj mahal marble-model for home. Yogesh got some rugs and sarees for his home. We then bought the Agra special pethas from a nice sweet shop (supposedly the main shop which is famous for the pethas), and then got back to RS.

It was a nice journey in a 3rd AC coach and we reached hyderabad safe and sound after a much-satisfying 3 day escapade to Delhi and Agra.

Expedition to Delhi, the glorious City...

2005-11-15T02:24:00.000-08:00

For long, I was waiting for an oppurtunity to visit this beautiful capital city of India as I have heard about its rich heritage and historical glory. It finally happened this November as one of my team mate, Mayuri Diwan, invited us for her marriage with Anuj (also works with us here in Microsoft) at Vasundhra Garden, Vasanth Kunj, New Delhi on Nov 12th. So here goes my travelogue of the beautiful 3 days I spent in the city...

Day 1 (11th Nov 2005) : No wonder Delhi is the capital city of India...
{Hyderabad Airport -> Delhi Airport -> Guest House -> New Delhi RS -> Connaught Circle -> Palika Bazar -> Guest House}
I travelled alone to Delhi on this cool Friday morning in an Air Sahara flight which left Hyderabad at 9:45 am and reached in time at 11:45 am at Indira Gandhi Terminus,Delhi. Had a nice flight,and I was able to see the Lotus Temple and FerozShaw Kotla Stadium from on board the plane before it landed. Mayuri arranged for a nice cab for picking me up from the Airport and I had my first glimpse of the Delhi roads, traffic before the Maruti Omni reached the DRDO guest house at Qutab Institutional Area. The guest house was a nice facility and I chillaxed a bit before I was invited by the Guest house warden for Lunch. Nice simple Lunch it was and I was fully charged for the evening expedition.
I had to go to the Railway station for cancelling a couple tickets and I planned to finish that first. That guest house had a big road/tourist map of Delhi and I understood the overlay of few of the places of Delhi just by the first look at it. Caught an auto from the Guest house and in fact I explained to the autowala that this railway station is near Connaught Circle (thanks to the map at the Guest house), when he himself wasn't sure of it. During this auto drive I saw a few important places of Delhi like NCERT, IIT Delhi, AIIMs etc. The real glamour was when he drove through the Raj path. That stretch looks awesome with this majestic Rashtrapati bhavan and India Gate.

I reached the Reservation office at the ND station and it was a really huge hall with 50 counters for reservation/cancellation of the rail tickets. But still I had to wait for nearly one and half hour to get my work done and this was the least interesting part of the whole trip.

My next stop was the famous Connaught Circle, which is the big shopping area at the heart of the city. That was really a huge circle, but it was so interesting for me that I came round the circle for 3 times. I had no intention to shop and that kept me rolling on an on without a single stop at any shop. The Palika bazaar is an interesting place. I can call it the temple of piracy, as you can get any illegal, custom-evaded, pirated, unauthorised, spoof-branded items on earth there. It is the helm of bargain buyers and bargain margin is unimaginable there. Basically the shopkeeper starts off with Rs.500 for an electronic good and can come down upto Rs.50 if have the time and energy to bargain. I remained a window-shopper here also, amidst calls from the shopkeepers advertising lucrative offers.

Day 2 (12th Nov 2005): The city of grandeur...
{Lotus Temple ->Greater Kailash->Qutb Minar->Chattarpur Temples->Akshardam Temple->India Gate->Raj Path->Parliament->Mayuri Anuj Marriage at Vasanth Kunj}

This morning Yogesh and Anoop joined me after they landed at Delhi in the Air Deccan flight. We had breakfast and started off to the Lotus Temple (Bahai Temple). The Lotus temple, which is based on the Bahai faith is an architectural marvel in itself. We were on the right time to that place and we participated in the morning prayers of the temple. Bahais preach unity of God more than anything else - and the prayer had hymns/slokas/verses from different religions.

Our next destination was the shopping arcades at the Greater Kailash. We roamed about this place and got a nice gift for Mayuri's marriage. After this shopping we got back to the Guest house and waited for Anand and Archan's arrival there.

With Archan joining us for the afternoon, we booked a cab for roaming about in Delhi and we got a nice chap who didn't look like a chaffeuer. He was just another funky looking fellow of the city and seems this is how cab-drivers in Delhi look like ;) . But the nice part was we had a guide in him and he seemed to know places in Delhi well. We went to Qutb minar first and finished it in just an hour or so.

Form there we went to the Chattar pur temple - the HiTech City of Temples. That is basically a big stretch of temples on both sides of the highway. Sky high Trishuls, Hanuman statue etc were the interesting pieces here. Most of the idols there were life-sized and were made of pure gold. Below is the couple of snaps which I took there...

We started off to Akshardham temple from there. It was no less than an wonder... Way too artistic and aesthetic, this place looked like heaven on earth. The great depth and detail of artistic work on the walls and ceiling of the temple is astounding. I'm running out of superlative adjectives to describe the beauty of this place. There was a tight security vigil and scrutiny at this place as this was very recently inaugurated and there was a terrorist attact at the Gujarat Akshardham Temple. The sad part was that we weren't allowed to take our cameras inside and had they did that we would have definitely ran out of our camera memory there itself. Such was the grandeur and beauty of this temple complex.

Now comes the important places to see in the capital city of India - India Gate and the Rajpath. By the time we reached India gate it was almost 6:30... So we lost that day-view of the India Gate. But nevertheless, we had a nice view of the India Gate which hosts the 'Amar Javan Jyoti'. After spending some time at the India gate, where our official photographer Anoop practised all his photographic skills to zoom-in to the Amar Jyothi and the Army-Navy-AirForce Flags, we went for a drive through Parliament building. When we tried to capture the Parliament building in our cameras from the other side of the road, a few armed security ppl caught hold of us and asked us to trash the photos. After this we got back to our guest house to get ourselves ready for the wedding.

The wedding happened at a place, which has almost 20-30 wedding gardens in the same locality. That made the reach to the place the toughest one, with jam-packed traffic on the roads. But we managed to reach the place almost in time for the Barhaat. The wedding garden was decorated beautifully and richness showed in every aspect of the wedding. There was a dance at the entrance as part of this barhaat and this is the first time I'm seeing a typical north indian marriage live.

The major attraction of the marriage was the splendid variety of pure vegetarian food they had to serve for the guests. It was like 'Name a vegetarian food on earth and here you have'. Soups, Mocktails, North/South Indian, Chat items, Corn, Fruits, Italian, Continental, Chinese, Rajasthani, Marathi, Punjabi.... thus started the list... It would be the toughest job on earth to list all the food items made available there, as the food item variety outnumbered the number of people who attended the "well attended" marriage. Tremendous stuff... Amazing... I have a video of the food counters there. Jus a photo here...

I was dressed in a marron colored Kurtha for the evening. We presented the couple with gifts and pushed off at around half-past-midnight.

Day 3 (13th Nov 2005): Plunge into the Mughal history at Agra...
{Akbar ka Sikandar->Taj Mahal->Agra Fort->Fatehpur Sikri->Agra Cant RS}
(( It is getting toooo lengthy here... Let me blog this separately as a big entry with the photos of THE TAJ. ))

Bangalore Trip... A memorable weekend

2005-10-20T05:56:00.000-07:00

Oct 15-16 : Bangalore

It all started off in a spark when me and Arun were thinking of ways to watch the recent blockbuster and asin-starrer "Ghajini". "Why not travel to B'lore for a weekend and watch it with our friends there?" - "Ok Done" was the immediate consensus between a few of us. So we started on 14th evening by a special train to Bangalore to spend the weekend.

We had nice journey in the train and we were discussing some interesting aspects where Anbu pretended to give gyan to us on things which were supposedly based on his experience. But he only managed to bore us and we crawled to our berths when the night was young.

At Bangalore, We had a warm welcome there at the station with Hemanth,PSV, Baghu and Gokulnath coming to receive us.

That afternoon, we had lunch at "Sahib Sindh Sultan" an authentic Indian hotel with a flamboyant ambience. We had Mohan Kumar and Arunachalam joining for lunch here and it was a great Lunch together as a big group.

It was 3:45PM by the time we finished Lunch and it was time for our much awaited movie show -- Gajini at PVR.

The movie was a good thriller and is definitely of worth-watching calibre. But the inexperience of the director was evident at many a place where he tried to fargo logic for want of typical cinematic masala. Thats typically what contemporary directors do and thats fine with most of today's cine goers. So a one-line review of the movie - Good, Asin-awesome and a couple of nice songs. So purpose solved :-)

After the movie we roamed about The Forum doing nothing more than window shopping and the 'obvious' thing at a happening place in the city. We had some good south-indian dinner and got back to Hemanth's house.

Now is the interesting part. We started to play the 'Business game' (one of our favourite board-games) with our hosts there. We divided ourself into three groups such that each team had a Hyderabadi and a B'lorean in it. Baghu stealed the show obviously for wrong reasons ! He took ages to cast the dice for each round and proved a huge bottleneck in the otherwise 'rapid' game. Talking strategies (aka non-sense in Business game) , calculating the positions, and negotiating for unpreferable deals, Baghu dragged the game so much that even our "Saadhuest" (Composed) JP cannot tolerate his awkward game. Finally the game ended where me+Gokul won and Raghu+Hemanth came second. Our Strategy King Baghu lost badly inspite of his partner JP's nice play :-)

We captured the rare moment of Baghu casting his dice and here is it.

The next day (Sunday) we decide to go to Indian Institute of Science (IISc) where our friend SriRaghavendra is studying and we reached there at about 2PM after a nice Lunch at Sri Krishna Cafe. IISc was really a cool and green place with vast green areas, trees, pathways and natural beauty. It looked like a "raajaangam" (Kingdom) in itself. We had photo sessions there with our Raghavendra and spent some 1 hour in the college.

Couple of snaps which we took there

We went to MG Road and Brigade road then, had some exotic icecreams at a parlour and returned back to Hemanth's house to give time to JP and Arun to complete their Yoga duties for the day.

We started back to Hyderabad in a Volvo bus, before which Anbu did not miss to call on his long time friend, who also came to the bus station to wish him (and us also) happy journey. It indeed turned out to be happy journey and we reached our place safely before 9am.

Nice time to remember for life, indeed.

Saraswathi Pooja...

2005-10-12T09:33:00.000-07:00

Some snaps of our Pooja room during this Saraswathi Pooja/Vijayadasami.

Life and fun at Hyderabad...

2005-10-10T10:01:00.000-07:00

We the techxperts at Hyderabad - are a unique bunch of people having fun-filled life in our own style. Our weekends flee past in a flash because we get together and enjoy being together.

A glimpse of what if making our life enjoyable.....

Jp and Bhoopesh have taken their culinary skills to a new heights that we have nothing less than virundhu (feast) at home most of the days dining as a group of no-less-than 10 ppl. Bhoopesh's kadala chutney, JPs aloo fry, Raghu's pulihoras, Arun's papads and to an extent my poricha kootu are few of our best finds and we feast on them.

We never rest even after a heavy Lunch and Hyderabad always has a new place to enjoy during weekends - be it ice-cream parlours, parks, cafe-day or road-side bhajji stalls. Our Baleno and Corsa make Hyderabad look small and we go places adding to fun and frolic.

Few of our folks have started practising Yoga and they sincerly follow the guidelines and regularity of performing the kriyas. If you hear some weird animal/bird like sounds - you are most likely to be near our houses :-)

Then comes our interesting board-games(BG) night. Business game takes the ice on the cake. BGs may come and BGs may go... but Business will never get out of our memories. If Bill Gates can do "Business at the speed of thought" our Raghu can play 'Business' at the speed of thought. He just needs a few people to sit around the business board and throw the dice, rest is in his hands. With Kalyan joining us these days for BGs we burn midnight oil to think stategies (or act to think) for trading coffees and shipping corn in Puerto Rico.

I can write endlessly here about our enjoyable life here. But I'm keeping it incomplete at this for our friends to add more as comments.

To be part of this elite group is more fulfilling than just a career at your dream company. Wanna be part of the fun? Come join us !!! Celebrate being together.

-- Adding a mail which Rams sent to few of us recently---

From: Ramasamy Pullappan
Sent: Monday, October 10, 2005 14:19
To: Naresh Chandrasekaran; Jayaprakash Narayanan Sampath; Arvind Sharma; Arun Kalaiselvan; Raghuram K R; Bhoopesh Veluswamy; Balasubramanian Ganapathy; Vimal Kumar S.; Duraisamy, Parthiban
Cc: Anto Anthony Muthu Joseph Henry
Subject: it was a great time yesterday

Guys,

I think it was a great day yesterday. Pretty much the hostel days: revisited.

I was reminded of TV rooms, hostel lan ;), those gud discussion lying on each other in crowded beds, those rip-roaring laughter, those oattals, those funny older-day-recollections and of course, eating together some very very gud fud.

It was great! I am thankful to each one of you for it.

(I hate formalities. But I felt this deserved a special mail)

~Ram

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Our family worship tour - A deep dive into beliefs...

2005-09-14T04:06:00.000-07:00

Date : 6th Sep 2005.

Beyond religions and cultures, one thing which is unianimously present in every person is 'belief'. Everyone has belief in some thing or other which guides the way they live. Most of us will agree that there is some Eternal power whose magnitute, physics, logic are beyond human logic and cognizance. Each religion and culture tries to give some physical dimentions to the Eternal power which is deeply tied to the beliefs of the sections of the people. Let me not try to get into the complexities of this huge theory... the crux is - every tradition and ritual/rites has a deep sense of belief under it which is giving them the ultimate meaning. (I'm recollecting the verse from the Tamil movie 'Anbe Sivam' - If you believe that you are the God, you are")

Our family also has one such belief,a strong current of which is flowing among us, - before each auspicious function (like marriages etc) we have a tradition of "getting utharavu (permission) from our family deity" for the same.
This time we went as a huge family, with most of our relatives joining for the worship, to Devikapuram Pachaivaazhiamman Thirukkovil, which is a remote village around 50 Kms from Vellore. Many devotees believe in the unmatched powers of this presiding deity,Pachaivaazhi amman.

We started at around 6am in the morning, in a 15 seater van and reached the temple at around 9. We had a nice breakfast in the middle of the journey and it is always enjoyable to have tasty food in journeys. My grandma, who is a staunch devotee of the deity, (for that matter she is a devotee of every God/Goddess of Hindu religion), started her preparations for maavu vilakku (lighting of a lamp made of flour and ghee). My uncles had their bath there and wore madi (pious) dhothis and towels. My uncle performed all the abhishegams and archana to the amman there. Now is the interesting part. The pujari of the temple, Arunagiri by name, is known was doing something called varunithal (praising the God and calling him to come and bless). Arunagiri along with my uncle went to a place nearby to perform a special puja and they brought the deity to the temple. After that he placed a lemon along with flowers on the deity's hand and started chanting some folk-verses. This is the utharavu stage and we all waited for the deity to push the lemon and the flowers on my uncles hands. All of us were waiting with eyes wide open and at the moment when the lemon fell down our emotions knew no bounds and nothing was in our mind at that moment except for belief in the eternal power.
One thing I can say for sure - If you have unflinching belief in something, the belief itself can do wonders.

One more interesting time of the day was the lunch we had midway in our return journey. It was total fun to have the food on the roads of a village. After all, it is this mother nature which feeds us with all the food we eat and having our meal sitting on the lap of mother nature is a blessing for us.

Windows Vista - A clear view of your world...

2005-08-01T22:56:00.000-07:00

Windows means a lot to the world and it is no more just an Operating system. It is a phenomenon - in bringing people's dreams to reality and enabling them to realize their abilities. It is a platform - not just for a host of applications but for the millions of professionals across the globe to base their innovation on. It is an art - carved by the smart brains of geographically and culturally diversified technocrats. It is a marvel - in winning people by heart.
Now Windows takes a new incarnation in the name of 'Vista'. There are no limits to innovation in today's digital world and Vista is all set to form the backbone of the next revolution. It means a lot when it comes with a caption "Windows Vista brings clarity to your world making you clear,confident and connected". It is really going to be cool and easy to organize your data and play with it on your PC. Vista comes with a magnetism to attract people to their PC and do amazing things in life.
What gives Vista this magic to make people's life easier - it is it's life. Windows Vista is phenomenally different from its earlier versions in every aspect of an Operating system with an extra flavour of goodness.

Vista gets its basics right !
"Things should just work" - this is what the world expects out of Windows. Vista got it foundation set right and it solves most of the user's problems in reliability, accessibility, deployment, manageability, privacy and security. It is easy to deploy with a significant decrease in the OS install time. It is secure to the core with an enhanced security model and will keep the hackers at bay. Getting the foundation right was a significant focus throughout the development of Vista.

'Information' - Organize them easily !
There is a growing demand for easy organization, searching and retrieval of information stored on a computer. With the introduction of Virtual folders and the improvement in the search indexing engine, 'information' will be at your ease with Vista. With the built-in dynamic searcher in the Start Menu, it is going to be absolutely easy to start your programs and applications. Searching and retrieval is going to be cool with the easiness in manipulating the keywords and other metadata of files.

Developers - It is fun time for you now !
WinFX - is the next gen platform for the IT developers. The two great pillars - Windows Presentation platform and Windows Communication Platform - gives you the power of the next-gen developer. Your applications are going to look cool and great on Vista and enables you to realize your business dreams.

Stay Connected - In an easy way !
Vista is highly configurable in terms of its weight and it can sit on any device ranging from high-end servers, desktops to tablets and smartphones. It knows the language of the wireless era and keeps you connected always. All your network management and configuration is going to be easy with the built in support for a secure wireless network.

Document solutions for all !
You can do a lot more with your Vista in the documents world. Printing with the Metro format of documents will capture your eyes and heart. It is just that cool. You will love to print your photos digitally and keep them close to your heart. The printing industry is to face a revolution with this Metro format of printing. Enterprise customers will find the scanning, imaging and faxing solutions just apt to their business needs giving them a seamless solution in the document space.

Surf with a smile !
Here comes a long due from Microsoft for surfers of the internet. IE 7.0 will make browsing experience a pleasure with the tabs and built-in support for RSS/XML feeds. You are devoid of security and spyware/adware worries with IE.

All with a Coool face !
Vista - strong by virtue - is also beautiful by a cool face. The GUI will capture you by all your senses, with the glass windows and intuitive interfaces to its various facets. The 3-D animations to the Window jus makes you fall in love with it.

In All - Windows Vista delivers on the promise of allowing people to use their computers more effectively and confidently to achieve their goals and pursue their passions.

Now go get ready for Windows Vista !

2005-08-01T22:54:00.000-07:00

With my Corsa !

Yet another scintillating performance by Unni...

2005-07-28T01:45:00.000-07:00

My joy knew no bounds when I heard that my favorite carnatic vocalist,Shri.P.Unnikrishnan, is coming to Hyderabad for a carnatic concert. It was a cool Wednesday evening on 27th July and I was overcautious in making myself to the auditorium more than 1 hr before the concert, to make sure I secure the best place in the hall.
Unni was sparkling in a green kurtha and was accompanied on stage by Vittal Ramamoorthy, on violin and Ganapathyram on Mridhangam. He started with a 'Thodi' varnam.. Era Naapai... He captured the ears of the audience right with the first song.
He then went on to Shanmuga Priya with a melodious "Andavanae Unnai nambinaen"... His delicate rendering of the composition took me by all senses. The main song was a Sankara baranam. The Aalap was excellent but he could have selected a better song for the main rendition, as the one he chose was not popular among the mass and also seemed dull. Nevertheless, he captured the audience with a bang, when he started his Raagam-Thaanam-Pallavi (RTP) in Keeravaani. Wow !!! I never have heard such a beautiful RTP in my life. The entire hall was patting the thalam in sync, which enthused him more to tweak the ragas and making it a jewel in the crown.
He also gave a couple Thukkadas in Telugu, "Raa Raa Chinnanna" and "Brahmam Okate". Three and half hours have passed by then and he was still fresh and energetic, so were the audience, to present a foot-tapping Thillaana.
Overall, It was a good refresh for my carnatic interests and it was a typical Unnikrishnan touch which did it again for me.
I even had a 3 minute chat with him after the concert where I congratulated him for the marvelous RTP. I requested him to come to Hyderabad for more such concerts, for which he nodded with a smile.

Review on the concert by THE HINDU - http://www.hindu.com/fr/2005/08/05/stories/2005080502320300.htm

My opinion on The Hindu's new look !

2005-04-17T23:38:00.000-07:00

------------The published version-----------------------------
THE HINDU - Monday, Apr 18, 2005
http://www.hindu.com/2005/04/18/stories/2005041807301200.htm

The new design and look are pointers to the quality of the content. They capture the minds and hearts of the readers. Congratulations to the design team and the editorial board of the newspaper. But it is also true that there are many other newspapers with a similar look.
Naresh Chandrasekaran,
Hyderabad
---------------------------------------------------------------

----------My original write-up---------------------------------
Sir,
“Appearances are deceptive” may not be the case for The Hindu print editions now, as the newspaper is now ‘quality by design’ and ‘quality by content’. The new design and look shows the quality of the content and captures the mind and the heart of the readers. Kudos to the design team and the editorial board of India’s national newspaper. But I think the new look is only new to The Hindu and not to the newspaper world. There are many other newspapers in the market which have similar looks and nothing in the new design is revolutionary to make The Hindu stand distinguished among its competitors. It would have been great if you had come up with a design which is unique to The Hindu.

Sincerely,
Naresh Chandrasekaran.
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My letter to the THE HINDU editor...

2004-12-01T10:37:00.000-08:00

THE HINDU,Monday, Nov 22, 2004

The Mutt affairs
Sir, — I refer to the article, "The challenges before Sri Vijayendra Saraswathi" (Nov. 19). It is true that the restoration of the lost image of the Mutt is the prime challenge now. But this is clearly not the time to worry about the next Madathipathi and the empowerment of the junior Sankaracharya.
Establishing the truth in Sri Jayendra Saraswathi's case should be the priority.
Naresh Chandrasekaran,
Hyderabad

Hello world...

2004-12-01T04:24:00.000-08:00

This is my first post to my blogspace...
Watch out this space for more to come straight from my heart...

Celebrate life !

2004-12-01T04:16:00.000-08:00

Naresh.Cool Image