…. The house is getting repainted. The last time was 6 years ago – just before KD & R got married.
Various shades of white. Have to go curtain shopping. am planning to trawl through Oshiwara for some furniture over the weekend.
So for the next 3 weeks? there are strangers in the house. Rani is permanently poised for attack. She doesn’t seem to have the phrase ‘stand down’ in her dictionary. She seems to think that ‘stand down’ is for sissies.
Everyone is getting fidgety. And as we live with one room less between us, with the temperature outside rising, … i would say that we are in for an interesting summer 
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Last week i had the chance to feel like Simon Cowell. I was judging a set of student films. Phrases such as which butcher did you use to edit that; or was the camera broken; or Is there a point to this; or where is the script; wtf, wtf, wtf; oh god – please let this end; cut, please cut, pleeese – crossed my mind.? ? One of my co-judges leaned across and whispered to me, I know it is ametuer, but does it have to be so bad? And bad it was. In the four years that i have been teaching, i usually find student films to be quite good. They have a germ of an idea – and they can express that idea. What is usually lacking is technical sophistication – but since we aren’t looking for narrative sense more than visual sense- it is fairly ok for now. But this lot – was just plain bad. I have never seen such an unstructured approach to work. There was one film that had a germ of idea and was fairly well put together – the rest were a waste of everyone’s time and energy (and that includes the people who made them). And it is not so much the students’ fault – as much as those who are supposed to guide them. This is unmonitored, unguided work – and student films are not supposed to be made with no input. And it is not the fault of those who guide – they really don’t know too much about the media – either in terms of theory or in terms of practice. The fault is of the University of Mumbai for introducing courses like this – without ensuring that there is a) competent faculty to teach it; b) adequete infrastructure to support it. The body of work that i reacted to is part of the Bachelor’s in Media Studies programme offered by the University of Mumbai. One of the ‘paid’ courses. Parents pay an average of around 15k per annum for a variety of these so called professional courses. This includes a bachelor’s in Management, Bio Technology, IT etal. The fact that there is a demand in the market for cattle fodder – and these courses somehow manage to fill the numbers – no way deters from the fact that the courses are not really khaas. Students are better off doing a general BA or a BSc and specialising at the time of their Masters. The courses neither have the theory to give one an academic rigour, nor have the infrastructure to give the practical orienation that is needed, nor indeed industry backing to ensure employment.Courses like Bio Chemistry are run without either faculty or lab. It is someone’s future that we are talking about. End of the day the blogging world may go up in arms against private sector instutes like IIPM for their claims, but what when the University of Mumbai puts out programmes that don’t deliver?
Technorati Tags: IIPM, University of Mumbai
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A pic from Mars, with a high res camera ……
Space the final frontier …….
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Sonai Gandhi pulls it off the second time around, and comes out smelling of roses. Forget what the political commentators say – talk to the rickshawalla and dukanwalla and the bai.This gives the family a great opportunity to leave Delhi and camp in UP. And by the way if 44 odd MP’s have to resign on the issue – it looks like a mid term poll. Which really may not be a bad thing for the Congress. And of course, Sonia Gandhi, private citizen can hit the campaign trail a whole lot earlier than the rest in Parliament. The BJP has come off looking like the Indian cricket team – snatching defeat from the jaws of victory – may be a new improved tactic would be not to get so personal and strident when dealing with Sonia Gandhi – especially if they don’t want to make a martyr of her.
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Everytime the Congress hands the BJP an advantage, the BJP reciprocates in kind. Between The Congress’ bungliing in many cases has been countered by the BJP’s foot in mouth and auto canibalism problems. And then the focus on non issues – office for profit _ the Congress gifted this one to the rest – ; jinnah – wtf was Advani thinking of; terrorism, Bush’s visit – the list is fairly long.Its almost as thoguh everything is becoming bi polar for the heck of it. Why isn’t some one raising a stink on 2 more MIG pilots dead, why isn’t there a furore on the lack of a trickle down effect, why isn’t there a uproar on the state of the criminal justice system, why isn’t there a walk out on backward classes and farmer suicides. And all these are cross party issues. Where are the policy based arguments? All this posturing seems to be aimed at just one thing – keep all our attentions diverted from the real issue – where is our tax money going? ? This is a very effective zero sum game. Balance of power remains constant, and the electorate gets screwed in the bargain
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CAG indicts DD for wasting funds. and the litany of waste is shameful. Public Service Broadcasting does not mean loss making and boring television. Just look at the way the BBC has capitalised its content globally. Despite the headstart that DD has had in braodcasting, it has little saleable archive. Its sad – DD should be our first choice of viewing – given the fact that it has the highest possible reach and the resources to make truly watchable content. But, somehow it does not. Oh for a vision at Doordarshan !
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As one Bachchan departs from the Parliament, the other Bachchan – Big B – returns to work on the shoot floor. I must admit that i have been missing his presence on the idiot box. What ever said and done, the man lights up the screen, and still manages to touch a chord with the viewer. I only hope that the press will leave him alone, and focus only on his work. It must be kind of embarassing to see your intestines on national television.? Amitabh Bachchan deserves more than such gross invasion of privacy. Leave him his dignity, and let him get back to what he is best at – entertaining the nation.
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Outlook on the worst dressed Indians – Amisha Patel
Her case of disproportionate assets shows no improvement. And her Barbie-in-boots look only makes it worse.
Ahem, the photo is worse than the comment And in the same issue the Goebbels Brazen Blitzkrieg Bronze awared to Arindham Choudhari for:
For inundating the media with self-reverential and self-referential self-endors ements to IIPM.
And the pic is worth a zillion words.
Technorati Tags: Amisha Patel, IIPM
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The last time I was at Lohegaon – the IAF base – a few of years ago,it was for a project (a show). At that time i interacted with a lot of pilots from the IAF. They seemed to be some of the least sexist people that i have ever met in my professional life. They didn’t seem to make any assumptions of ability based on gender – either that, or they were very good at hiding it. I honestly think that it was the former. One of the people that i met there was a lady who flew transporters. We generally got chatting and i asked her if she could fly fighters. She said that women weren’t allowed to fly fighters. And somehow that statement contradicted all that i had imbibed at the base. I really didn’t see the men there having an issue with women flying fighters. And today that impression is vindicated. Senior members of the Indian Air Force backed the idea? have of women flying fighter planes.
Having imparted training to female pilots for transport aircraft and choppers for 15 years, senior IAF officials and researchers now strongly believe the time has come to open the doors of fighter cockpits to women cadets as they have been consistently performing at par with their male counterparts.
Stories like this give one hope! Well, hats off to the men in the IAF for being gender blind, and may their tribe increase.
Technorati Tags: Indian Air Force
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