Trip to the Indian Embassy

This morning I visited the Indian Embassy in DC for a renewal task. I did not prefer driving; the closest metro station was DuPont circle. It was about a mile from the embassy. I decided to take this long walk from the DuPont circle metro station and today’s 60 degree weather made my walk a very pleasant one. Massachusetts Avenue, this is where you will find most of the embassies in DC. You can find various embassies ranging from many new offshoot countries that broke from the former USSR to the big guys like Japan.

The Indian embassy operates from 2 locations. the 1st location is on 21st and Massachusetts, where you will also find the famous Mahatma Gandhi statue Dedicated by President Clinton in the year 2000, when ever I pass this location, I am make sure I stand in front of the Statue just for few seconds. To me, the feeling of being an Indian can be felt standing at this spot. In case you disagree this with me, I would request you take a walk along this road. Yes it does tickle our proud Indian nerve for few seconds. There was no other statue other the one on the circle [round about].

Surprisingly today the traffic was very low on Massachusetts Ave. I walked to 2nd location on the 2500th block, thinking about recent articles on New York Indian Consulate, I slowly walked into the passport/visa section in the basement of the embassy. It was 9.23am, already there were about 10 people waiting. The counter opened at 9.30am, things started to move very fast. Most instructions on visa/passport applications are published in the embassy’s website, and they are really clear and easy to follow. Like they accept only cash and they don’t accept credit or debit cards. As any other embassy would be, here too officers are strict.

There were few foreign nationals who did not bring proper denominations and few other requirements, they were querying the counter officer for every alternate option. The officer at the counter gave a soft sounding but a stern reply stating the rules. However they seemed little bit upset. I could clearly read it that they were not happy about the answers. However I thought to myself, the music these guys just heard was about 1/100th of what we use to hear in US consulate aboard. At least our consulate has a photo vending machine installed in the building; most who have applied for a US visa knows how sticky the officials would be on the photograph size issue, the size is totally a non-world-standard.

I felt the counter officer did the job perfectly and I was happy to see the token numbers move. My turn was called and quickly the counter officer took my papers, she knew exactly what was required, I had got everything ready in place, and the process was over in about 3 minutes. Yes I timed it. As I stepped out I felt as though I was walking back from a visit to Chennai. I started to walk to back to metro admiring the embassies on the right side.

To get into the DuPont circle station you have to go through an escalator, yes so what? What is the problem here? What if this one is among the world’s tallest escalators, it takes about 2 minutes to travel one way on this. Yes metro can appoint an Escalator hostess to serve peanuts and pretzels during the winch ride. Who ever named it as escalator must be a crazy, yes it was actually a standing winch to me, and who ever built did not care about vertigo;

For me traveling on this was a real nightmare because when it comes to “height” coupled with "movement", I am a full blown coward, I stepped on the first moving step thinking what would happen if the speed increases?, but when “the cat closes its eyes the world goes dark”, I closed my eyes like a kid till I reached the destination. If you visit DC make sure you pay a visit to monster escalator. There was an elevator some where in a shady looking corner, I never bothered to check it, because closing my eyes during the escalator travel is better than being mugged early in the morning.

Have a good weekend folks.

Pics:Dcist.com

Movies I watched recently

I watched 2 movies in about 3 days now, and both the movies raced among themselves quite well to waste my other wise idle time. We hear international cricketers often brag about the Indian team and pass esteemed comment like “Indian team deserves a better ranking” and “have the potential do better” etc, like wise I like to brag one thing about the heroes in the both the movies. Both of them are talented artists but will not hesitate to dump their skill set to the movie masala. Yes I am talking about Arjun and Danush. The 1st movie I watched was Giri, I am very sorry it was simply 175 minutes of bull. The story and the script for Giri can be written on a finger nail. It is up to you to choose the finger, most would choose the middle finger. It is a story about a samurai, who tries to protect his masters. Yes like every movie of our times we have 2 rich families in a racially divided village full of thugs. At the start the first big guy begs the second one [“SerrRRRrruapala adipen” fame] Vennu Chakaravarty, [another very good talent wasted] to take care of his sons who are wanted by the police. But someone in the second gang double crosses; hence they “fully grown” kids kill themselves before being caught by police. Yes! Yet another movie where our police treaded as mere pedestrians. So you know the rest of the story, Vennu packs his son along with the loyal employee’s son to some unknown village, but the villain finds it and comes after them, they split, both the kids are lost. You would guess the rest in about 2 minutes from now. The few good aspects were stunt coordination and proper CG usage. Arjun should divert his effort towards proper script. I wish he works the same to get the script straight. Music D.Iman I did watch 2 songs without skipping after pallavi.

Next movie, Devathaiyai Kandan, Danush, poor guy, must have accepted this long time ago to full his commitments. I wish he does not act in such weak movies that too with a cheap comedy segment, the so called comedy was crude, rudimentary by any standard. Totally lacked humor, in fact the part in which Danush talks to the gods was much funnier and natural. You need to be really depressed to laugh for Karunas and Co who make merry by wasting about 1000 feet of film. The story, a guy sues over his failed love. The girl withdraws her consent hence he takes her to the court. For this script, a screen play of more than 30 minutes will be an over kill. The story sounded very absurd, it is about breaches of trust, Judge [my name sake] allows this and we have about 4000 feet of Court dialogues that puts most to sleep. Finally when the gal accepts the proposal Danush says good bye to her, it seems he wanted to prevent similar incidents in the future.Dam!, in that case I also learnt a lesson never get movies like this in future and waste time by Bloging about it.

What else, hang over is still around in me for Anniyan songs, I tried again couple of times now to get some good points about the album. NOP my review is well intact; may be the CD can change my opinion; Few have quoted lots of old songs and new song influences. Yes! may be copied, but I am very careful in this second guessing game. I do believe “2 composers can think the same”. But at the same I agree there are blunt copies for example Yuvan Shanker lifted the Corrs song Runaway for “Nejodu kalanthidhu” - 7G Ioooo colony [reading this word in tamil would sound too rude]. YSR managed to convince Selvarangan who let him import the violin prelude/Hooks from the song called Runaway for his pallavi. You can watch the song video in Yahoo music section. Search for Corrs+Runaway.

Anyways, before speculating more on Anniyan effort I would wait for the CD, movie should be released in May, may be songs worked for the video until then let me play the waiting game.

Good day.

Anniyan, [Tamil] Album Review

Oscar Films Anniyan, Director: Shankar Music : Harris Jayaraj. The songs are out in OOSAI.COM,

I got to hear it for few times now. I felt it was time to review the songs. This music album was hyped for last six months and had increased my expectation. Shankar switched from his favorite music director ARR. He chose the next best option to Rahman , Harris Jeyaraj, definitely Harris is a talented composer and has produced very good albums in recent times that includes Kakka Kakka, SAMI, Kovil etc, I have been a fan of Harris I can boldly say that we can expect some kind of freshness in his tracks. Before we go into the review, the scale I use to decide the song quality differs based on the over all movie production values and other few factors. With this in mind did Anniyan suffice my expectations? Read further.

The first track I heard was kadal yanai, this song was leaked out few weeks before the audio release. The track starts of with typical Harris kind of lead vocals. Slowly after the 1st minute it starts to drag, why? I failed to understand the words and the music arrangement. What I heard was a bunch of Acid loops being lined up and played without serious musical harmony over weak melody lines. For example the bass part especially in the 1st BGM, sounds clearly acidified. I think Harris has fallen into the Sony Acid pro trap; yes it is very tempting to make easy music. Like every other track build using acid I could not hear any kind of coordination or freshness in these background arrangements. In the pallavi on those “algebra” lines assuming the song’s root to be in D minor, Harris has the talent to change the chord to a G7th at least, but nope instead the boring bass pumps in few lame keys. Adding to the agony, the melody fails to help, I found it very hard to recollect anything from the track. A good point to note was the lead vocals by Nakul [Boys fame?], G.V Praskash and Melwyn. Why? These guys provide some saver mint for the song; they have put forth serious effort on the vocals. However the melody will not help them to prove their talents further in singing, though it would help them if they choose to become “Auctions kings”. I would dare and second guess this track with the climax song from Boys [Sa re ga me] and a song from Dhil [vedum vedum Dhil Dhil]. Bottom line Harris disappoints. A 0 for 1 start but I was not that worried, may be Sehwag on the other end would come to rescue.

The next track was “Kannum Kannum”, it was dance number, and I decided this based on the groove. These kind of straight beats are used by DJs for medley tracks in dance clubs. It starts of with weird tone technically it might be a vocoded voice. My ears, already in a quarter-fatigued mode started to focus on the Lyrics. I really don’t know why Shankar slipped so badly in choosing those words. The words are not so pleasing and did not make sense in most places. There were mere fillers. Once again the same agony, the over all tune loses its way big time. The [u-dance] beats were so monotonous, it sounded like timed washing machine that goes on round and round until the clock turns it off. The major goof up is yet to show up, the lady vocals in the Saranam. It sucks right royally, she tries to scream at high pitched notes beyond her capacity and fails horribly with her so called Husky vocals. I bet the “abathbandavan” “anatharatchagan” Anteris the pitch correcting software” crashed during mixing. A blunt second guess, the beat and tune mix sounds similar in Kovil [College ku povom]. The sax part in particular. Seriously I am still shocked for this careless track; is this for real, is this for a Shankar’s movie? This song is mere waste of time. Score now: -20 for 2, Sehwag goes.

After 2 songs down the gutter, hopes start to fade but, wait the number 3 the wall. Under usual circumstances 6 out 10 times this track might sound very ordinary, but under minus 20/2, I think the track Andang kaka plays the big match saving innings. This tracks started to impress me right away. The major plus point to this track –“the melody” it carries the song all through. What is special, “Rendaka Rendaka” a nice set of new hooks, it works for me, Words are very native and much better than what I heard in previous tracks. The male vocals team Kay Kay, Jassie gift chips in clean power vocals while the female team lead, the naturally talented Shreya does her act quite well. Best thing that made me smile was - “I heard original music and not that many Acid loops”. This track brings in the much missed Harris and his typical arrangements like chord changes using keyboard pads etc. After the first two authoritative cacophonies, I was happy to listen to this track twice in order to clean my ears. This track might make me buy the CD; Whew! Harris and Shankar team seemed to work finally.

Shanker Mahadevan, a class act opens the next song on a classical note. He sings with an accent all through the song. The lady singer for this song Harini, I have been missing her voice for quite some time. On first go I liked this song; it is more musical with proper chord changes and arrangements. Basically it does not survive on loops. I think I heard the raga Durga/Arabi spread across the tune. I also felt that the song mood should be similar “adutha veetu pen” song, where someone back tracks for the hero. Harini just joins in for few lines and does her job quite well. Prognosis: A well balanced and clean track. Our score now is well within the decent run rate.

Iyengar vettu, title for the next song. Censor can create trouble for this title. For first few minutes of the track we hear “goshti” gAnam similar to Thyagaraja aradhani, the “goshti sings “jagada nandakaraka”. This is interrupted by a low TR kick drum. Ustad Hariharan takes over. He starts to sing a free flowing close Natai in Hindustani format. Old lion prowls around hunts down brigas at will, while Harini neatly does justice to the track. The gambeera natai veenna part in the BGM clearly inspired from a Rahman’s composition [Narumugaiye - Iruvar]. This song did have few distractions, like the pallavi was often distracted by a wood sounding background drum sound [that falls on 4 count of beat]. Beats were kind of boring after some time. And I also felt this, the tune could have been better; and there was more scope for improvisation, the raga was not exploited to its full potential. Both the singing “Hari’s” have potential to execute it, but the composer Hari, thought other wise. If you hear the Pallavi/ Saranam few times you would agree with me. Still I liked the over all song flow and structure. Finally the title theme music, no comments, Need to watch the movie to comment on its sanity.

So, what do you think? Disappointed? Yes, I am disappointed; Why ? Shankar, we all know how grand his production is; His producers would not hesitate to spend, if Harris had wanted Alicia keys, he could have had her sing. I really don’t know why he opted for few mediocre singers. Frankly effort put by him for Sami or LesaLesa is much superior to Anniyan. I think Harris wasted a big opportunity by not giving a rock solid album. He was Rahman’s replacement, hence I expected a flawless or near flawless album. Having said this, I will get the CD in order to hear it on a proper audio system, which can change some of my opinions. Though as of now I am very disappointed. Crude truth - Shankar seems to miss the Big Guy, A.R.Rahman. Hope at least the video takes over and reduces my disappointment.


[Pic: Chennai Online]
Ps:Thanks to Sundar for sending me the links

A Misguided soul

I happed to read an article in a web magazine. The author trashes Kamal Hassan and Rajinikanth in full swing, Dam! , so what? Don’t you trash everyone you don’t like? No that is not reason I called this article as misguided soul. The Author has another great agenda, read further.

He goes on his article to diagnose entertainment preference for people, Tamilans in particular.His prognosis, we are a bunch of tasteless people who clap for mediocrity. More over he makes plenty of absurd conclusions and generalizes our entertainment preferences with ruthless bias and predetermined agenda. “Okay” Drum roll please “Ladies and Gentlemen”, I am happy to introduce Mr. Anand, he writes for OutdatedLook opps OutlookIndia.com.Please Click here to read the Holy Crap

I never understood why he wasted about 200k of data and stationery. Instead he could have just completed the article in one line, you hollow “Tamilans” you are bunch of tasteless people who encourage mediocrity. The End; this could have saved few trees from being destroyed to print this holy crap.

Seriously tell me don’t people in north go and watch Govinda or for that matter so called “the Big B and co” do the same for ages?, Frankly for combinations I find in north, I would find Charuhassan and the new gal Nayanathara Jodi quite interesting. Who is Mr. Anand? To tell me what to choose; may be a communist? When it comes to movie and entertainment, No one can prescribe for anyone. It is personal and subjective. He comments on the new release Chandramuki, it seems characters in the movie sing too much Rajinee praise? So what’s your problem?
AnandJi, you are most welcome to get another P.Q.R.S. VASU to write a script that makes people talk about you. Make your co stars stare at the camera and ask them tell “Anand is a great writer” “he has 50 heads of which few were leased to Ravana” , who cares.

Bottom line in any cine industry, apart from the Movie skill, it is a full blown industry that employs people, so what is your problem? A producer is ready to spend money in this? His crew promises a return. It works for them; there is nothing antisocial like your left wing half cooked theories. After this full blown Rajini hit and run our Mr. Elite takes on Kamal Hassan. He makes the most ridiculous statement of his life time, “No wonder Kamal's fans call him 'Ulaga Nayagan' (Universal Hero). In reality, Kamal's benchmarks can be rather low” , Ayya pulavare, what is this so called better bench mark you know and we Tamilans don’t know?, can you please define this for us? We would like to know this “bench or stool mark”.

After reading this holy crap fully now, I find his claims are generally biased against Tamilans. Frankly outlook is known for their communist tint, a sane balanced writer is rarity from that kind of environment. Remember we Tamilans call condemned automobiles as junk while the governments of your clan call it their public transport. Our preferences are more sophisticated, I don’t want to go there and fight. I have no problems with communism comments and biased opinions in the form of free press; Our India is free land where everyone and everything is allowed to grow. But generalizing and prescribing preference for people increases my apprehension. What AnandJi wrote seems to be propaganda with a preconceived agenda. He uses Rajinee and Kamal to trash Tamilans in general.

The great joke is Mr. Anand questions entertainment preferences of Tamilans and brands them to be substandard. Really? After all we clapped for Ilayaraja who needs no further introduction, but as if this was not enough we got an A.R.Rahman who stormed the country and showed everyone how to make international music using their own culture.

My Bloglogue April 26th 2005

I had taken an oath that I shall not talk about cricket for one full week. I failed! India team might play a triangular tournament in Sri Lanka. Coach Wright after stepping down has made some comments on the selection process. He says our selection methods are totally old fashioned and must under go drastic changes. Why did he not say this before? May be job security, however the point he made makes sense and he is not first to say this, the problem is who will bell the CAT? Nobody, Coach and players will come and go, but BCCI will stick on to this zonal quota system with members from every other time zone, war zone, and ozone will have a chance to push their players regardless of talent.

The music industry in order to make people buy legal music is now experimenting with a makeover to the CD, the latest one Dual Disk, one side plays on a standard CD player as an Audio CD, while the Other Side is a DVD that can be played on a regular DVD player. Yes, the 24bit [Audio/Video/DTS/Dolby 5.1] and 16 bit Audio [Stereo] bundles on the same Disk. Producers can bundle the song video and audio on 2 different sides of single CD.
"Devil & Dust" The new Album from the Boss, Bruce Springsteen was released yesterday in this dual format. These CDs are about $2.00 more than the regular CDs. But users should not mind this surcharge as they would get a full length song Videos with 5.1 Dolby or DTS formats. I wish more albums come out in this format so that music industry can give something more for the price. This album is on sale in Wall Mart for $11.84, hope people welcome this format.

Washington Post reports that ABC has announced that they will be broadcasting a 2 hour special program about the "American Idol". In which they say they will reveal some “starling” things about this contest. American Idol might get into the bad books reason being there were many reports about Corey Clark? He was booted off American Idol couple of shows ago. Reason given was he had some police case under his belt. Clark claims in his book proposal that he had an affair with show judge Paula Abdul, and that she promised to help him pick tunes to sing durduring the competition and to spend millions promoting his career.
Clark is all set release his first album. Washington Post quotes “In its report this week, the Globe, which seems to have the most dope on Clark's book proposal, quotes TV critic Marc Berman saying, "If the charges are true, then this is a huge scandal that could kill 'American Idol.' If a judge and a contestant have an affair, the future of the entire show is in jeopardy." How many watch this program I don’t know, I use to watch for Simon’s remarks, though blunt 9 out 10 times he is dam right on his critique. However for some week I made sure I changed channel as the show became too monotonous and seem to have lost is originality. Yes I hear “it is Fox what else you expect”, who knows soon FOX could come out with a version called “When music producer attacks” or ‘When the Music Judge seduces”.

There was song clip leaked on the web, [Thanks to Ramki for this news], a song from Anniyan sung by G.V.Prakash, might be the same little “kid” [now a teen] who sang the prelude “chikubuku chikubuku railEEE”. He is also the nephew of “my man” A.R.Rahman. Out of curiosity I heard the song on Osai.com I think, on first go nothing impressed me in the track, however it would be too rude on me to comment on a bootleg copy of a speculated song from Anniyan. Hence let me wait to hear the original version before I drop the ball, I still trust Harris and Shankar for their original talent.

Thanks to few who remind me that I am musician first and not a Blogger, Yes I remember I compose music. I will also say that there are few things happening in my music domain. But for now I can only say like Subramaniya Swamy “wait for the Month of August 2005” few things might materialize.

Good day.

My Bloglogue April 25th 2005

Another week! Begins, I managed to watch Chandramuki again over the weekend. I went to the Desi Theater in Fair Fax. First and fore most, why can’t they keep the theater clean? , every row had pop corn to Nachos and cheese left over from previous shows. About a kilo of filth in every row; it was dark and bleakly lit, as many walked over nachos and pop corns left overs . The owners of theater warned that no one should throw papers or anything celebrating Rajnee’s appearance on the screen. It seems it will make the theater dirty, duh! I really don’t know in what way these paper bits will super seed the existing filth of nacho cheese and pop corn already spread across every row in the theater. I don’t want to blame the owners alone here, the fans visiting. Do we all do such things in regular American theaters? Don’t we diligently carry our trash and put it in the bin on our way out? The pity is we make and consume the most number of movies in the world but we don’t have theaters that are suited with common human requirements and culture. And if at all we have one, we don’t want to help in maintaining it. I don’t want to blame all of them, but most of the Theaters I have been are in similar fashion. This is one main reason I avoid going to these Desi-theaters. This is not being superior it is simply common hygiene and being organized. From next movie on, I would wait for the DVD;

What else in the weekend, the dull and most boring show on earth was on TV. Yes NFL draft. Why would anyone other than the players and their family care about this day long program? Why should we know about each and every person who is destined to make about a million a year. I felt this TV coverage for this monotonous program is big waste of time. Any way pundits in ESPN will like it, they are being paid to discuss this bore.

There was a great deal in COMPUSA this weekend, I got a 160 gig Seagate monster hard drive for 55 bucks, [$50 mail in]. Upgraded my system and told a big good bye to XP, wait don’t jump into conclusion, No! Not Linux or UNIX or phoenix [Just added it to keep the rhyme going], I loaded Windows 2003 server. Yeh Yeh “agmark” “hologramed” legal copy. PC is dam stable now [don’t laugh] and works faster than before, until some nerd finds the next security glitch in Windows 2003 in some remote corner of the world. I had XP installed on a 40 gig hard drive. But over a period of 3 years now the hard disk ran out of space, thanks to innumerable patch works from Microsoft. My hard disk had no space further and was running at .00000002 GHZ. Finally! We have some speed.

Do you know that NBA play off has started? Yes on HD too, oh yawn! What is NBA? It is a game where 2 teams try to score points by shooting, or dunking a ball in the basket kept at the opposite side. How long they do this? 4 quarters of 15 minutes each. What do the audiences do? After 1st quarter they forget everything as they would be already in 10th quarter by now. The final quarter decides the winner; just play the 4th quarter and save some TV time.

The Washington Nationals are doing well it seems, it is the new baseball team based out of DC. Though many fans throng to watch the game most told me they never expect them do well, Yes after all they got this team from EBAY right? Truth is they got this team from Canada. Any way, I am not Baseball savvy or “pootu”, I would repeat what Homer Simpson told. Homer gives up his drinking for a month, he acts very sane after this commitment, and he then goes to a baseball game, after 2 pitches he walks out screaming “dam! I just realized how boring this game is”.

Next weekend I think there is an Indian Mela at the fair grounds Gaithersburg, Desi food, music, dance will be highlight. Should go for it and have some good Desi food.

Good day.

My Bloglogue April 22nd 2005

Seattle weather gods are in DC area for a visit hence a dull gloomy rainy day in forecast. In my earlier blog, I had written about Rogers, few of my friends, [Balaji in the feed back] told me he would be booked on web squandering. Actually the case web of squandering takes shape only when you book the domain after the incident, here Rogers booked it well in advance, he has a better reason now, yes! He says he did not want this Domain to fall under unscrupulous hands. He has actually helped Vatican; today this popular domain redirects you to a charity website.

---

What happened to the Thriuvasagam Symphony/ Oratorio by Ilayaraja wasn’t it supposed to be released on Tamil New years day?, check this , what is the status now? May be delayed due to 2 mega releases? What ever, at least what is the new time line? I tried going to this domain thiruvasakaminsymphony.com but gets redirected. It is about time to release this so that no one starts to speculate on this great attempt by IsaiGani Raja.

---

Yesterday, I saw a great movie, yes, kAdal. Basically this is a story about 2 infatuated juveniles; they decide to run away on their own for their kiddy love. The Girl actually moots this idea because her parents force her to get married. We get see how a 10th grade kid and a hard working but an uneducated guy gets to face reality. While we also get see the trauma parents undergoes because of kids actions. But the highlight of the movie was that it showed both the sides of the coin without passing any judgment. It is for you to decide. Screen play was done well, still they could have made it little bit faster.
The trend of reality in Tamil movies is a welcome growth I wish more movies are made in this fashion. Music, like a weather man who never says “100%” rain , I am never convinced 100%, but Joshua Sridhar, has the talent and the freshness in his songs, I liked most of the songs , IMO, the song about Triplicane single life was the best, apart from well contained music, Lyrics added great value to this track. Weakest link for Joshua Sridhar - background scores, I found it really weak in many places, and background music is often a hard ball game to get it right in the first movie. I am sure he would improve in days to come.

I use to wonder why there are no female stars like Shoba these days, but this girl Sandya,[ICE] might go all the way, the expressions and her voice modulation everything falls in place. Best of all she talks using her own voice; Boys fame Bharath underplays the role quite well. So does this little guy in the work shop. Bharath seems to enjoy good breaks and doing better than other little heroes today. Like many of today’s heroes, I really don’t know if he has a producer father or brother to push him. The way he does the lunatic role was impressive. I never expected this end to the movie, may be this was the reason I liked the whole movie. This movie also had controversies, schools in Madurai tried to get a stay order on this movie, I don’t know about the status of these stay orders, but I feel this movie has both the sides and explains the evils of infatuation in a clear fashion. Over all, with perfect casting of characters and a lively story/screen play and good acting, kAdal impressed me for its originality. The director adds a caption saying this was a real story; yes it does look like one.

---

Last week, I had an opportunity to watch SPB live on Raj Digital. This show was not the usual show we often go to, but really a rare one.
Few months ago, along with my friends, I had an opportunity to talk SPB when he was touring USA. I recorded this entire conversation in my studio and Dhool.com published it. Udhaya, [Studio1234 Inhouse Lyrics Expert!] placed a request to SPB. He asked him “ when on tour, why do you pick a standard set of songs ignoring many good songs by old composers?” And Udhaya went on to request SPB to sing 2 songs per composer at least so that world remember them. SPB replied that it was due various factors including the orchestra, they [they includes SPB also] need to know the songs well in order for them to perform. He apologized that he has been lazy to do this properly, but on the records he promised all of us that he would do it very soon.

This was left there, and but to my surprise, in this RajTV show SPB made sure he sang songs of all the composers ranging from MSV – KVM – Shanker Ganesh – V.Kumar –Ilayaraja - Rahman and till today’s Vidhya Sagar. He made sure Laxman Sruthi [Band] learnt the songs and played with him. This show had rare songs on stage like Ragangal 16, ilakanam marudho, Bharathi kannama and many more great songs from the 68, 70, 75, 80 time period. He did it as promised 100% . I am tying to get this DVD from Raj Video, hopefully will find it soon. Thanks to Udhaya for making the great request and thanks to SPB for making it happen. This show is must see for all Tamil music fans. SPB also promised us to create a full Carnatic album, since he made this happen I am sure we can expect this to happen soon.

Good weekend folks.

Mr.Rogers Cadenhead

Presence of mind added with great sense of humor, this is what came to my mind when I read about Rogers Cadenhead, popular computer book writer and the current owner of the website http://www.benedictxvi.com/. Yes the same title selected by the new Pope. Rogers selected few Romanized fancy names from history assuming that one of the names will be picked up as title for the next pope. He booked web domains for all the names he short listed on April 1st 2005.

Bingo he hit the deck, it seems he was traveling with his son when the announcement came, Like a Horse Race fan he was busy screaming please! Lord, Let the name be benedictxvi come on benedict, finally he was blessed, and his domain became the new sanctum that took a web load of 100 hits per second. And many were shocked to visit his website; in the comment section many have been cursing him using various languages. He says he might find a deal to translate his books using the knowledge he gained in few days now.

What do you think his intentions were when booking this domain?, what would be his demands to give up this domain to Vatican? May be a huge sum of money or sell this to an online gamble website or porn to make more dollars, if you think so you are mistaken. He has promised that he will not sell this domain to any kind of “ecommerce” site out there. Then what he wants? He has 5 request to the Vatican, please don’t call it as demands because Mr. Rogers thinks calling them as demands sounds too harsh on Vatican, and his mom is a devoted catholic.

His five demands are really filled with humor.
I. It seems Vatican has built a 5 star facility for the conclave, seeing these facilities on CNN, they were very similar to many Caribbean resorts , hence his first request, Three days and two nights at the Vatican hotel they built for the conclave.
II. Some might get offended by this next one, “One of those hats”. Yes! He wants the fancy looking hat Pope wears. . And he is dam serious about this demand oops, request. If this is not met the deal is off right there.
III. Complete absolution, which means remission of sins pronounced by a priest. They should not ask him any questions for the third week of March 1987. He wants be pardoned for all his sins, especially events during third week of March 1987.
IV. A back-cover blurb from the Pope for the next edition of Movable Type 3 Bible Desktop Edition. But only if he uses the book to create his own weblog.
V. Like the Miss America, Miss World and Miss Universe pageant he wants “World peace”.

Rogers was on the Today show[NBC] this morning, and he was dam funny and cool.Eventually he will give this domain to Vatican, at least in future Vatican should make sure the domains are in place before selecting a name. May be who knows we might soon have a .pope, benedictxvi.pope might be answer to this. It is time to use the dot extensions efficiently, like anything.Damil will be! Vijaykanth or anything.waste, will bring up my blog.

Some Cricket Ramblings

ICC has rejected Gangully’s appeal; they asked him to take a walk. Just a week ago Gangully lost about 70% of his match fees. It is very sad to know that 70% of the money to ICC comes from the Indian Subcontinent, yet we get treated like cattle. We are a bunch of crazy cricket loving fools, we fund ICC. However ICC at regular intervals manages to misuse their power and most of all, this seems have a racial tint. I did not come to this conclusion just after single Gangully incident; I recently read a well researched article by Mr. Anil of Sports Network. Each and every line in this article seemed to make sense or I would call it “Forehead beatings – aka nethi adi”. ICC has the racial stink and awards a second class treatment to the teams from “colored” countries. This seems to be true.

Anil quotes an incident that most cricket follower will remember, Shakur Rana vs Chris Broad, ICC-1987. Chris Broad was given out caught behind by the umpire Shakur Rana [Yes! where is “god” fame] ; however the batsmen one Mr. Broad refused to walk out, he started to argue with the umpire for quite sometime until Mike Gatting dragged him out of the ground. This excruciating behavior of Broad continued for some time, and finally he was axed from the English team for his unprofessional conduct and behavior.

But! Today ICC appoints the same guy as a match referee. His portfolio allows him to manage such offenses once done by him. He is now in charge of punishing people. What a stupid irony?? How can ICC recruit an EX-CON of the game to judge of such behaviors? Do you know during the Australia tour Sri Lankan complained that Mr. Broad spends his evening drinking with the Aussies; how can a judge spend his time with the defendants or the accused? Even an infant will tell you, a special interest rapport is being built by Broad and the Aussies.

Coming back to Gangully’s Ban, I am really surprised why Indian media has not got on to this issue. Hope the world remembers this, [Darren Lehman Vs Sri Lanka Cricket Board Aus/ SL], when Darren Lehman of Australia made racial remarks on Sri Lankan players, he was given a lame 5 match ban, world called it as mere eye wash. But ICC told that 5 match ban was enough punishment. My point is when a player with such a serious behavioral violation is let go with just 5 match ban, how can Mr. Broad award a 6 match ban on Gangully, that too on a logistic violation in spite of the weather conditions.?, don’t you think that this sends a message? Once again Mr. Broad is trying to show off his racial attitude on teams from the sub continent. So might say, hey! Wasn’t Gangully warned enough, duh!

Check the case, Michael Vaughan vs. ICC. Jan-Feb 2005, [England /South Africa] Anil quotes, “England captain Michael Vaughan was fined a paltry 10% for being fully 5 overs behind in an ODI against SA in February this year, the second time within 20 days when he was found running behind, shortly after a 50% fine for being another 5 overs short of target in late January against the same opponents. “ Why wasn’t Michael Vaughan given the same level of punishment as Gangully? Or let me rephrase, how the hell is Gangully’s so called offense greator than above incident? What was Broad thinking when considering such a punishment? What is the answer?, Yeh Yeh he is protected by ICC code of conduct and he need not explain anything to anyone. If ICC had the Match referee in place when Broad played cricket, for his behavioral values he would have been grounded just after 2 games and would have never earned single pound [physically and financially]

Bottom line, From Jan 16th to April 12th 2005 , Mr. Broad has issued about 9 punishments on teams from Asia, Indians and the Pakistanis suffering the most. With such a rude behavior tagged to his name during his cricketing days, in first place I feel it is really disgusting to see him be the match referee. But then, Why BCCI accepted the terms blindly? Spineless? Pathetic Bunch? Or tally unsettled accounts with Gangully? We will never know, however Mr.Dalmia loves power and he is powerful in the game management, why does he hesitate to take on ICC? BCCI should send a clear message to ICC. “Mr. Broad misuses his power with Narrow racial motives hence he should be banned from the referee box for ever” and for Gangully, it is too much of a ban. His case should be considered.

To conclude my ramblings, the ransacked Indian team and its brand new replacement skipper could do nothing other than forget how Pakistanis trashed them for 4 games in a row now. Gangully departure did not bring in any change. What to do with Yuvraj Singh and Kaif? I don’t know, Yuvraj has never scored if India has had poor start. Kaif’s technique looks very doubtful and for some elites there is still Sachin to blame.

Bowlers on these dirt tracks resembles school league. India needs to rethink a lot and as of today John Wright is gone, Sanjay Manjrakar recently mentioned that Sachin needs to play in middle order, I think I would agree to it now, why? We found Dhoni. Dravid would play 1, get back Gangully, and then Sachin will follow. Also the 7 batsmen lineup has to change. We need good bowlers; however they need good seaming tracks instead of mud pits. Gangully has left a cat out of its bag today; it seems the pitches were prepared with the consent of the team think tanks. What ever, One day cricket will undergo a rapid change before the next world cup, We need a good coach who would get us right on the track, I speculate Allan Border reason, he recently resigned a very good job [Australian selector], and who knows he did it for being the next Indian coach. Anyway, I am just speculating. Who ever is made the coach has a big task in hand. It about time we get multi dimensional players yes one more generation of Kapil Dev, Ian Botham or Imarn Khan who are good in fielding, sensible Batting and shrewd Bowling.

If Indians don’t change their strategy and plan execution it is just matter of time Bangladesh will move ahead of us in the ICC rating.

My Bloglogue April 20th 2005

As I opened the Washington Post this morning, first thing that saw was the editorial cartoon. Gosh, the idea matched mine; thank god I did it yesterday so that I get to say mine was also an original idea. When time permits check the cartoon.

So world is blessed, we have a new Pope, it seems he is from Germany and served for the Nazis, news paper reports says he deserted the army and spent time in the POW camps. What ever, I really don’t care the reason I wrote this in my Blog was, every TV channel were cooking POPE recipe for the entire evening, which eventually made me watch a movie. I leave it to you to guess the movie.

The first half of the movie can be equated to 20 Award films from Malayalam, Bengali, and Kannada combined together. The movie was slow even in the fast forward mode. It was moving like a snail on Booze. One blunt issue I noted was the acting, it seemed totally amateurish “trying hard on something but never works kind”. This is a story about a still maturing rouge boy who sucks in academics. He is a “wastefood” [Danda soru] hence being battered by his hard working emotional dad. He has sets of buddies which includes an “Amul” baby and few more 1st and 2nd standard school kids.

The movie goes further dull when the heroine shows up. The new girl from north settles in the same colony [clue], and on the first day of arrival, she is bold enough to go up and study on the bald roof top [mota madi] where these kids/boys sleep, and in an unhealthy fashion.What? Yeah! 9 out 10 times, sleeping pose these boys give will look gross, meaning they will be stripped out of their so called single piece cloth, popularly known as Lungi. Still this girl never cares after all she is a “working hard” student who mugs up java bean code.

As it would happen right from the days P.U.Chinnaapa,Periyappa and Chitappa, girl's presence seem to reduce our rouge hero tantrums. In a scene where they watch the movie varusham 16, the girl places her hand around his shoulders by mistake, but finds it out later and she goes to restroom, pukes badly and cries. I was wondering this, she was a cool girl right? Who did not care about 3/4 naked sleeping adolescent boys on her first day in the colony; she did not care anything other than mugging java code. But now she is bothered about a genuine mistake of putting her arms around his shoulder, over reaction or what ever, this is not reality. They show a lemon-spoon race where our “boys” peep into adults and pass comments, If you remember “Boys the movie” had few similar reality scenes, Halo! Where are the Decency controllers Vikatan.com, where are they now??

The way our hero talks to elders in the milk booth, in reality - I am sure if anyone talks like this and blackmails about their daughters/wife in public, the person would be whacked alive at least by the police. But here reality is from Jupiter, this is not happening in Earth. Adults are afraid of this yet to be born kid [who has a make up of a 20 year old] and gives up to his threatening statements. That’s it, after this I started praying to new the Pope, please Sir, can you do some miracle to move the movie quickly. My prayer did not work.

Soon as expected after the 15th over a defensive field was set. The hero gets beaten on the bus for the usual act of “Tiffin” [If you know what I mean] etc. She does not complain to the police Duh!, Chapter skipped, in the next chapter, girl seems to have cured this guy and tries to find a job for him, she asks about his special talents, if any. The only special talent I saw in the whole movie was supplying TEA, Horilicks and ringing the calling bell at regular intervals. May be instead of assembling a Bike, he would do well in the food distribution area; hotel supply master whenever the owner rings bell he can supply "oval".

Man that’s it I could not take it this 2 hrs of nothing that moves in the speed rock [yes! It never moves]. I skipped to the final chapter to see the Cliché end, she gets killed and he does things hearing a voice from the heaven Yes, her voice. I also noted that few dialogues were taken from Pudhu pudhu arthagal and Mouna Ragam.

Finally, if I don’t make this point I would not be “RAMABADHRAN-VI” [summa tried a new name for me] . The pathetic part was the background music, thanks to Corrs, some tracks were lifted from their CDs, while background music from Jhonny shows up. Overall music was totally out of place, it was like a radio time filler strings and keyboards playing some music for the heck of it. The Tabla sounds taken from Triton ready made loops were out of tune with the main lead. Dam! Music director failed make this basic correction? [my Dost Arun says: yow! sriki,oops RAMABADHRAN-VIth nan matum camera grains - nellu nu sonna nee nitpicks nu kadha vidara...ippo idhu ennavam!....]

I agree “ethartham” reality is important in a movie, but to watch something like this is a punishment. Example we are standing in a railway gate, where a goods train with 200 wagons passes by; this is reality, what if the director shows all the 200 wagons to pass. Next 25 minutes is nothing but freight trains moving one after another. This whole movie was like this, a poorly made documentary; or may be just few power point slides will do the needful. The pity is I found later at 11.25pm that Pope Ceremony on CNN and Fox had some entertainment value than this movie.

Good day folks,
RAMABADHRAN-VI [For the heck of it, I took my grand father’s name with a roman numeral this seems to be the new fashion now]

Ps: my comment box seems goofed up; I scored my highest comment tally [10] yesterday, but for some reason it is back to 4 now.

THE RED SMOKE

Chandramuki , Movie Review. லகலகலகலகா

ChandraMuki, I drove about 250 miles to watch this movie, reason, the theater they showed this movie had proper sound system that can cater DTS 5.1 , my trip was never a disappointment. When it comes to entertainment values and carefree enjoyment Rajanee Rocks! , yes here too Rajinee comes good and the movie was real fun. Chandramuki is destined be a hit, will make money and also make Rajinee fans like me to gloat about it for next few months at least.

When you watch a movie by super star’s, the mood set is totally different, 3 hours of entertainment is assured. For a common man like me Chandramuki fulfilled this aspect very well. It seems this movie was adapted from a Malayalam script, I have never seen the Malayalam version and I am sure I will not see it because CM worked out better to my taste of entertainment.

The best parts of the movie I liked was “லகலகலகலகா” Man, Rajinee with the tyrant king’s disguise, the way he walks and his mannerism are out of the world, In fact really a cool dude looking villain. I was stunned by the expressions he produced during this episode, the sudden move to chop the head of the illicit lover of Chandramuki is something to watch, CG works well. In my opinion it simply rocks. I kept saying [லகலகலகலகா]“lagalagalga” rest of the weekend. Along with my fellow Rajinee fans, I clapped every time when I heard the word Super! And I did not miss my chance to scold Nazer with bad words when he dares and slaps Rajinee.

Songs, Every song in the movie has been done well with most of Rajinee elements well in place. Devuda Devuda is a pumping song that is going to be heard for some time. I liked the duet between Rajinee and Nayanthara, in which an olive green costume of Rajnee and Nayanthara Wow! who does their wardrobe. Very smart looking costumes and color combinations. Thanks to the director for every color combination on the screen they were really pleasing. In spite of poor singing by Asha, I liked this song which was shot around out skirts of Istanbul.

Vadivelu rock with spontaneous humor and slap sticks. When the “ghost hunter” renders some so called cast which contains the word Holi, Vadivelu reacts to this quite well. The scenes where Rajinee and Vadivelu meets is simply a laugh riot however at times it goes towards double meaning affair. Super Star has fans at different Age range I wish he could avoided those double talks.

Jothika, her big round set of “eyes” helps her to produce some immense expressions, good work by P.Vasu to get those expressions. She took over the climax, some of our friends in the next few rows where commenting and making fun on this climax, fine! They are here to have fun, but soon the intensity created by Jothika shut them down and they closed all their natural openings, they were seen engrossed in the movie. Prabhu’s crying scene deserves an edit, everyone laughed for this, which includes the projector operator also; mind it operator was an American.

The low point in the Malayalam script was when Rajnee explains the full plot, it was more like Sherlock Holmes talking about a plot, it works for Malayalam movie, because they don’t care much for Screen Visuals. In Tamil we care, I wish they had used more action visuals to explain it. However they seemed to have tried a new method on the Flash backs, like Rajnee walking around the actual flashback screen, something like Chris Burmen & co walking and explaining NFL plays on ESPN.

Do you know that there were only 2 fights in the movie, I felt they could have removed it fully, however there is no Director yet who would be bold enough to give a Rajinee movie without a fight.

Few complained to me that Saravanan was way behind Annamalai or BadhSha in mannerisms and actions. But I feel after a 30 years of SPM formulae I think Rajinee has given a great movie spun around a nice little story for his fans. This contains every element of entertainment. And my technical “nitpicks” and “expectations” on the sound quality, yes DTS has been used properly with background music and sound effects traveling around you. Some elites told me Chandramuki was better than Baba. Let me tell you a bold truth, I did like BABA the movie, it had the entertainment values that I look for from Rajinee. Also pssst BABA was any day better than Alavandhan right!. [wink wink]

Chandramuki, a must see. It is worth $12.00 I paid for it in fact I would not hesitate to pay even $20 to watch his movie. It is being shown in DC area this week end and of course! REPEATUUUU, I will go for it the second time ...! And I will get the DVD as soon as it out.

Mumbai Express - Movie Review.

Mumbai Express, I set to watch this movie in Edison NJ. I had no expectation in my mind in spite of a month long speculation and few half cooked reviews that I read in various websites and Blogs. The first reviews that came in few sites quoted Camera mistakes etc, I sat down there in the last row of the theater with my fingers crossed, not knowing that these were nitpicks generated due to half learnt knowledge or predetermined bias.

My 1 cent cost saver review - The movie Mumbai express is a winner! To add more, I wish all the Tamil movies made from this date onwards follows this movie for its production values. There are no unwanted group dances, punch dialogues, illogical fights that will make even Einstein rethink his theories, and no people “beating” comedy tracks.

And best of all, this is a family movie; you can take your born and unborn kids [pregnant moms] without any hesitation. Kids are going to laugh with you while the ones yet to be born sitting in their mothers womb will be thinking about a carrier in comedy. I did not know that just by saying alphabet ABC we can write about 200 jokes.

Kamal and this team have produced a maters piece of a script. I am sure he has spent years to nail down the script. The flow of the events is so well timed with serious dialogues. This is not the usual Crazy Mohan confusing comedy that often ends with an Auto, Bus, Car, and Donkey chase.

Instead of discussing the story, I will put down what is so special here in my point of view.

Usually, a comedy can be a slap stick, like people can make you laugh using their body language and physical actions or a Conversational comedy, where the script rains with humor. But what we see in this movie is totally a different feel.
As far as the characters on the screen are concerned they are up to a serious task. The feel the pain, they have tough time and face various trouble during the execution of the task. They face unpredicted events and get upset about it. As per the script people on the celluloid are really serious; there have no intention to make you laugh.

Audience, sitting on the other side of the celluloid does nothing other than Laugh. Laugh in the sense, it is the =)) [type this in Yahoo messenger] kind. More over each of the character have motives; there is a primary motive for every character, but they are really not confident to execute it. I have seen the movie its “mad mad mad world”. The motive of each character is kind of similar. However I don’t want take away anything from the script, until this moment I feel this as an original well written script.

Ramesh Aravind , man what a make up, he comes as the Telugu speaking insurance agent who joins the gang. He translates under cover cop in Telugu, “GudaAchari”. The scene that has Kamal, Pasupathy, Ramesh Aravind and Vaiyapuri and his “BaziGhar” is a laugh riot. The voice for Dhina given by Kamal??, he modulates to a lower frequency but expressions are clearly kamal Hassans.

Music, this movie does not need songs and rightly so Kamal has not used any of the songs in full. Background music in apt places, yes where the music is placed is perfect and we never know that music is being played. It is so seamless.
In a nut shell, I would say a “snake and ladder” execution of a plot, at every dice roll, the gang lands on a snake. Hardly finds a ladder. And frankly after the Alavandhan Disaster , Hey Ram the over dose I was irritated , however this movie from Kamal is a trend setter who know Tamil movie will be made differently from now on.

The cast includes
1. Pasupathy, in Dhool Tamil film industry found a new Villain , in this movie we get a talented new comedian.
2. Vaiyapuri, he comes good and underplays so well. [2a Bazi Ghar the horse , plays a major role]
3. Tinu Anand looking Dhina., just sits on the bed and creates a comic riot with Kamal chipping in the dub.
4. Kovai Sarala, a loving sidy sister of Kamal , she exposes 3 types of faces. Amazing lady.
5. Nazar, talks Tamil, Telugu and takes away the movie from others in many places. So does
6. Santhana Bharathi
7. Ramesh Aravind – No better words to describe.
8. The kid, 8a MonishaK
9. Kamal– Kamal is Kamal! This is the best underplayed roll by Kamal; there is a suspense element which I don’t want to give it out! Do you know that Kamal never changes costumes all through?
10. Finally Singeetham Srinivasa Rao, he had many talented snakes and 1 super talented Anaconda to charm. He played his music so well to keep all of them well under control.

I would like to watch this movie another 5 times at least, by then hopefully the DVD will be out, which will make this 5 x n times. Mumbai Express! A land mark in Tamil cinema Why? a good genuine script with a sensible screen play is the only requirement for a movie all other factors comes next.

Please go and watch the movie somehow.

My Bloglogue April 15th 2005

SunTv Special program, I happened to watch the recorded version, hence had the liberty of skipping commercials and few dragging programs. Still the commercials got me on few occasions. First let me give you a score:
Number of persons who told
இனிய புத்தாண்டு நல்வாழ்த்துக்கள் - 3 and
இனிய புத்தாண்டு நல்வாழ்த்துக்கல் - 9 :)

Before you start thinking about my english Blog!, let me move on.Vikram program, Vikram goes to make music with PA.Vijay and Kartick Raja. Kartik Raja manages to compose some backgrounds for Vikram to sing. However PA.Vijay and Kartik vanish in the middle, in general Sema bore. When there is no proper script, even a good actor like Vikram becomes a drag and a bore to watch, I skipped it after 15 pain taking minutes.

Pati madappam : I did not have the patience to sit through the usual gaga of the program. Ruthlessly skipped to the next program; next one was actor singing live music. Yet to watch., because had to rush back to the live show, as they were showing some clips of A.R,.Rahman talking, but this was an old recording recorded during last years special shows. However the announcer Divya Kasturi spoke a very pleasant language, but over all it was mere rehash of old programs.

This was followed by Vijay’s interview. The usual one, Vijay repeating words from his earlier interviews. Played safe with few questions; and mentioned that he is a big fan of Super Star so his movies are bound to have his influence.

Best program of the evening was “Suriya special”, Suriya goes around Chennai city in disguise with hidden camera. He goes around his school St.Beads, takes 12B bus etc. He strikes conversation with many people but most fail to find his identity, or at least they edited them. One person smokes in public and Suriya spreads a message to keep our city clean. Talks about foreign countries where people make sure their country is clean.

Suriya’s command over the Tamil language coupled with his heavy voice, the entire program sounded genuine and refreshing. Finally he goes to a police officer on the street in T.Nagar area, talks to him about Kakakaka, the police officer fails to spot him at the first go, and then he finds a camera around him and starts to enquire. Cat is out of the bag, Suriya comes out of his simple disguise, and police officer is shocked and thrilled to see Suri [that’s how he called him] and liberally sprayed his affection for Suriya. Program concluded by Suri wishing us the New Year greetings.

After this, the never-ending commercials started with Gemini the movie shown in between Movie Breaks [opposite to commercial breaks], too many commercials makes life ridiculous, this movie went on after the news, I changed to KTV. Where new heroes of this generation were bust talking. Chimbu has a beard now and looks just like this dad. He spoke quite freely for questions asked. There were other faces most I don’t know. May be appeared just in one movie;

Chitra’s interview was also good in KTV, she spoke about his padmashree award etc, sang us few song, the sweetness is same what I heard in “chinakuil”. After this it was about time for Sanjay Manju and co. Indians was ready for the game not knowing about the thunderbolt that would strike them in about 4 hours.

hare hare hare hare "A F R I D I" or "A F R A I DEEEE"

An Assault or a Blitz!, What ever! Still it sounds too polite a word to what Afridi did to the messed up Indian bowling attack. Indian bowlers were simply mugged and beaten by Afridi, all this on a day when many predictions were made on the pitch. India set a target of 250. Pakistan came to bat;

Indians had included their 2 leading spinners Anil Kumble and Harbajan. Two spin dudes [ok! Kumble does not know to spin] included on an unpredictable pitch. Like every other Indian I expected good bowling performance from them. But it was a complete turn around, by the end of the 5th over, all the 11 Indian players on the field were added to the spectator count.

They were watching Sahid Afridi thump various kinds of shots that traveled all over the ground. First ball he faced was a leg bye however from then on it was 6 4 6 4 6 4 and so on. Balaji was ransacked for 23 runs in an over. Balaji did not know where to land the ball. However in this onslaught, Zaheer managed to keep his head cool. In this total whack ceremony he managed to bowl a maiden to Salman Butt. However soon Salman Butt was also in the spectator count, he kept his nerve down and started to watch the “abAra Atam” of Afridi.

Captain Dravid was on the hot seat right from the world go. He would have felt the pressure what Gangully faced. For some time Dravid did not know what to do. Had a dazed look in his eyes, who knows he would have asked Dhoni to bowl a spell. I felt he should have asked Sachin to bowl instead of getting Kumble. Kumble started his come back spell with 3 mighty donkey drops; Afridi sent the ball on a tour around Kanpur. It took lot of time for the ball to “come back” from the stands. Spectators around the green park oval would know by now how a shattered, traumatized international cricket ball would look. Most had “dharma darshan” of the white ball that kept coming to their area at regular intervals.

Afridi hit about 9 sixers and same number of fours that took the game away from the Indians. In the 15th over Pakistan were 131. This sealed the game for them, asking rate come down to a puny 3 point nothing. Afridi completed the second quickest hundred in ODIs. If you don’t know by now, the first one is also by him against Kenya. Finally after the second quickest hundred, Afridi wanted to send a message, he is not going to swing like the usual sluggers after their priceless 100, he tried to defend but was bowled by Harbajan. By then the match was well out of Indians reach.

Why did Dravid not give the ball to Sachin?. When Sachin can take the last over pressure, he could have handled Afridi , he has take him out 3 times now. But Dravid had no plans to get Sachin or even Sehwag for that matter. Sehwag would have broken through because he knows the art of shooters. Indians needed just one ball that kept low to Afriri, but it was his day, no one could stop him.

Dravid won the toss, Ravi Sastri confused the toss and told Inzi won it, However Dravid might be wishing that he had not approach the match referee to say he actually had won the toss. India batted on a sticky wicket, ball was moving in the air and the bounce was unpredictable, at times ball kept really low reminding our good old Abidali or Madan Lal. If Chinaswamy pitch was similar to the Banglore roads, this pitched looked like a Volley ball court. India lost 3 quick wickets to Ul Hassan, India is yet to deal him properly. In fact even the mighty Aussies struggled against him in the recent VB series.

Dravid the new captain took the pressure well and started to get some runs with 3 middle order players coming good. Yuvraj and Kaif, of which later played remarkably well. Dinesh Mongia, The official replacement for Gangully hit a quick knock with 2 massive sixes that helped India to pile up a “respectable” sum of 249. Pakistan was set to score at a run rate of 5 on a so called misbehaving wicket. Commentators were cautious this time, because they simply gave the last game to India. We then know what happened.

Btw: Gangully was seen laughing to himself in this 5 star hotel lobby. He knows that he narrowly escaped the 20,000 ton trash talk on the internet and the media. A Blessing in disguise for him; I am not going to the watch the next one day this weekend. Yes I have paid for it; yes $25.00 is good chunk of money however I cannot take the pathetic and pitiable Indian losses any more.

Have a good weekend.

My Bloglogue April 14th 2005

a Followup segment, in my album review for Mumbai Express, I had written these lines,
Listen to the jazz guitar part in the song….the jazz guitar has thinner sound than acoustic or regular electric guitar. It will sound really soft. Frankly the way it was played sounds Prasanna to me. However I don’t know if he really played a part in this. This is now confirmed by Prasanna himself. Click here.....

One more major story on Mumbai Express, the audio has been released by Kamal himself via his new audio company. However there seems to be some chaos with hyped sales numbers, this I came to know via Dhool.com yesterday. I tried to cross check with my contacts in audio business few of them told me it does look shady. It seems Kamal has claimed that he sold 200, 000 tapes/CD on the first few days of release. But most audio stores don’t seem have the album out yet. After all this might be an hype created by Kamal to offset Chandramuki sales which really sky rocketed to more than 200,000 copies in about a week.

Usually when you distribute an album, you might get an advance payment, rest will be paid based on sales, the distributors don’t pay you in full however it is speculated that Kamal wants the entire money in order to stock the album. Many have also questioned the cost of the album, MSRP - Rs. 45 a copy, mind it this contains only 4 songs. I feel it is time for the Audio companies to stop being greedy, this kind of attitude and poor business plan will soon start to justify piracy by all means.

Over to Cricket news, Gangully has been asked to take a break by BCCI and his pal Mahendra. Both men don’t see eye to an Eye. They have records of feuds in the past. BCCI on its part rushed and changed the captaincy. But now Gangully has appealed to ICC, this puts BCCI in a catch 22 situation. They cannot ask Dravid to walk away from the offer on the other hand Gangully can play until ICC decides on the appeal. Mind it officially Gangully has not been dropped yet. Moreover added to the agony of mismanagement, Mahindra now says BCCI has recalled the TamilNadu batsmen Sriram in place of Gangully. When asked about this to the actual selector Kiran More, he has replied that he is not aware of such developments. [Urrrrrrg].

IMO, BCCI should not have presumed on Gangully’s appeal and it’s after math. More over it looks now that BCCI is trying their best to nail down Gangully Why? his immunity has come down drastically due to lack of performance. There are only 2 right things, just drop him sighting his poor performance or instead of the guessing game of bureaucracy allow him to play. But professionalism and BCCI is a perfect example of an Oxymoron.

Anyways tonight, mostly Dravid will be walking for the toss and I hope he wins the toss and the game for India. All the best to Captain Dravid, if Dravid wins rest of games for India, we might never see dada Gangully again. However It is sad to see one of the top players for India making an unceremonious exit.

SunTv is pumping in New Year specials today, I am at wok but got my replacement DVR, everything is being recorded and I will get to see them tonight. The best kanna best - I have the advantage and pleasure of skipping the over dosed commercials. BTW:I surfed onto a Sun TV serial by mistake, I have no clue about the name, but was that “Saritha” ? wow wow man! at this rate soon the postal department will allocate a separate Pin code to her.

Good day folks.

Sachien, Music Review.

Wish you all a very happy Tamil New Years day.

Sachien, it is not a typo, may be yet another superstitious way to spell "Sachin" or a safe way to avoid being sued. This movie is one among many gang bang Tamil New Year day releases, hence it was a prudent move by the director to name the movie as Sachin oops Sachien, a house hold name in India. People will remember this name along with other famous movies. This is also a Vijay’s movie, hence it will be filled with punch dialogues, quick camera and mind blowing CGI work. Music composed by the new comer Devi Sri Prasad.

Point number one, I appreciate Vijay, Why? When Mani Sharma stepped into the Tamil field, his first Major break was for Vijay, they gave the hit “aL thOta boopathy”, which was the trendsetter to todays 6/8 craze. It is very nice of Vijay to work with new composers. Most big time stars try to stick with well experimented or favorite composers. Nothing wrong in this approach they do it just for convenience sake. However Vijay permits the director to choose new composers, this is a big deal today in a commercialized Tamil music environment.

This album competes with 2 big wigs in the rig, Vidhya sagar for Chandramuki and Ilayaraja for Mumbai Express. Already I have discussed both of which Mumbai Express is technically a superior musical package. Kamal and Ilayaraja takes Tamil ears to the world of Jazz and Big Band. I am not here to compare composers. Everyone has their own potential and talent.

Let us move on to the songs. For any album the first song is the entry point that makes people to listen further. It should simple kick ass. In this album the cute hook vocals, Jinaku Jinaku gin gin chiku Jinaku Jinaku gin --- SACHIN captured my attention. [I hear, Sachin nu peru sonnale porume, Jalra adika I would not hesitate.]. Shankar Maharaj Devan opens with a bang. Sings few Hindi words like the natives and adds his usual power chorded vocals. Song has all the ingredients for new Tamil song, Catchy pallavi, “vava va en thalaiva va”, guitar and slap bass/main acoustic bass, peppy foot tapping beat loops etc. However the tune becomes kind of boring after few minutes why? The element that I did not like in the song was the percussion and drums, they are a turn off or to put it politely, they sounded cliché to me. I expected some more real hand percussion that would make the song more powerful. The programmed drum loop makes it kind of monotonous after some time. I expect more natural sounding drum programming. A good drum programmer will do it well. I felt Devi Sri Prasand could have experimented with some more hand played “local” percussions. Frankly in short genuine “Tara Tapata” sounds would add another 10000 watts to the song. But he works on requirements!, The package from Vijay & co. comes with fast cuts, colorful choreography hence that can take the song to an all together different dimension.

Next song Kanmoodi Thirakkumbodhu, composer himself sings the track. First the Plus point, this song does not contain any wanted sounds. It is paced nicely like Mustafa Mustafa don’t worry Mustafa. The 1st BGM has some Spanish guitar works, if you let me second guess, lots of A.R.Rahman or may be Haris Jeyaraj influence however everything on the better side. Turn off, when the singer goes off key in few places. Anateris pitch correction could have saved some portions of the track. Another [interesting] thing I noted was the chords, “80s style” similar to Eurthymics “sweet dreams “ [ 1 and -3 Aminor and F major combinations). In spite of few flaws in singing, frankly I liked this song. I would play it on my Van stereo while driving to work stuck in the DC traffic. It is metered so well.

Malathy screams and opens the next song “Gundu manga”, Male voice, “Jassie Gift” the Music director who scored for the 4 student movie. He brings in new accent to Tamil songs, good or bad, few more songs will decide, Malathy is flawless in her pitch. But it is about time that she offers some variety. Over all a folk song set be a dance number. Standard 3rd song in any movie, hopefully the choreography has the potential to take over KTV for next few months.

Dai Dai Dai Kattikkoda, opens with a Synth harp + Koto tones, with English introduction, same beat meter as of Gundu manga. Words are really different. “Vadi en Bombay Beeda, odaikatha Goli soda” some might not enjoy it. However I did, it is typical Vijay song where Devi Prasad is put to test. He comes out with the latest fashions of adding Caribbean rap vocals etc. The First four lines of the Saranam though the words are kind of ok, the tune then on is just a filler to complete the song. Prasad should have worked more on this melody lines. 2nd BGM had some programmed drums then on song becomes dragging and predictable, when I was about to skip, the pallavi came back again for the last time, here there are some backing vocals, and I wish this was added through out the song.

Instrumental Theme, totally a synth Euro music with few Indian instruments, it does not fall into my taste of instrumentals.

Final song, Vijay opens with Tamil, Hindi and Telugu dialogues for his fans. And he presents them with some more goodies; Yes He sings the song and comes good too. The words are once again typical and impressive. Vijay goes off key in few places however it is Vijay, so no one will really care.
Check out the words. Some Tamil purists will not like it, but I liked it. Very similar to Vadi vadi en natukatai . The second BGM song speeds up and comes back to the normal [adlib from the song]. This track is a typical Tamil song you could find around today. I bet this song is going to rock every Tamil channel, why? Vijay & Co.

Did Devi Sri Prasad do it well? Well yes and a no. However I feel youngster has taken the pressure quite well. Three songs in the album definitely have the potential to be called as hits. Added to his advantage Prasad’s music will be packaged with the “Vijay” charisma. Bottom line after all, this movie competes with other 2 big movies. We need to wait and see what the majority decides, Will I get the CD, largely depends on the combination, the song video and the movie.

My Bloglogue April 12th 2005

So!, Indians managed to lose an easy win. Gangully finds himself in deep trouble. He is now banned for 6 games for slow over rate. Very soon, even staunch Gangully Supporters like me will think twice to bail him out in future. Gangully and Captaincy, I know I have bailed him, defended him on various occasions, today for some time I will give up little of my ever lasting bias for him. I felt Gangully should have sent Kaif in his place. Basically he came in and wasted about 33 balls to score few runs. During this period we could have scored another 20 odd runs that could have saved the game. Any way after the game postmortem is easy! Frankly DADA Gangully is banned and out, very soon selectors will say TATA Gangully, he might have to have to car pool with John Wright. For now I don’t mind the real captain [pic below]- to lead the Indian team.

Match started about an hour late, Sachin and Viru started of with sheer power, flood gates were open, this time both the reservoirs started to flood the area with runs. Sachin turned on the “Sachin” mode, he was striking the ball like he used to about 2 years ago. He never slowed down even for moment in this wonderful innings of 123, he was finally trapped by Cramps in his hands and thighs went to play a tired stroke and was bowled, by then India has piled lots of runs. Viru, was run out because of his casual attitude, it was not prudent for the dashing opener to underestimate the infield. Just before then, he escaped a close call by being in between the ball the stumps, but the next time Yunis khan got his man and Sehwag was short of the crease. But this got Dhoni, who once again started of with blasting strokes and went to support Sachin. Dravid, Yuvraj blasted some valuable runs to lift the score above the 300 mark.

When Indians stepped into the fielding arena there was no need for the skipper to adopt a defensive strategy. They just needed to attack the Pakistani batmen, however Gangully had a defensive field, why/? Thanks to our new ball traders, bowling was below par, in fact very bad Balaji in particular. Afridi was going with fill steam who capitalized the poor line and length. Added to Gangully field placement, Batsmen scored runs at a rate of 7 and above.
As if this was not enough, Indians started to bowl a negative line on the rough. Sachin was aiming at a leg side line; he has done this in the past and been very successful. However I don’t know why the hell Murali Kartik was asked to bowl similar line to Sachin on the rough. I felt he should have bowled his usual orthodox off side line that would have forced the batsmen to play against the spin. Finally after 8 overs Gangully lets him bowl his traditional line and at once India got a break through. Yes, it was kind of late but India now had some scope to get back in the game. But once again Indians were casual; Yuvraj dropped an easy sitter for Malik. Both the batsmen [Inizi and Malik] milked the Indian bowling and fielding for singles. This is the main reason for them to reach such a huge total. I was thoroughly disgusted to see Indians loose an easy game which should have been won by Indian hands down.

I am yet to recover from it, however, let me cheer myself,
Jinaku Jinaku gin gin chiku Jinaku Jinaku gin --- SACHIN!. way to go!.
[Thanks to the hook words from Vijay’s movie Sachien, listen to the song, va va en thaliva by Shanker , music Devi Sri Prasad. ]

Mumbai Express - Audio Review.

After a long time, this week 2 giants of Tamil motion picture domain are destined to release their movies at the same time. On Tamil new years day we get to go to Super star’s Chandramuki and World Hero’s Mumbai Express on the same day. This includes people in US also, in places like New Jersey both the movies will be screened for a week or so.
[Pic www.Indiaglitz.com]
Mumbai express, as per various chatters and the buzz going around the industry and among many Kamals fans, it seems Mumbai Express is a comedy movie about a disorientated family [and I say based on the songs, it is a family of big-band musicians], some have speculated this to be an adult comedy. Some of my pals speculated Malcolm in the middle or The Simpsons, I really don’t care, I just want to laugh and will go for both the movies. Coming back to the review, I have already reviewed Chandramuki in my earlier Blogs. Now let us take the express train.I finally got to hear the songs from Mumbai express. Music by “Ilayaraja”, who incidentally should be getting out his much awaited Thrivasagam in Symphony now renamed to Thrivusagam Oratorio for Tamil new years day. Tamil music today targets the youngsters who seem to crave for crazy fast paced grooves and songs; hence most current day movie makers will go for a composer who caters to their needs. But it is no surprise to me when Kamal recalled his musical favorite for this movie. On the first go, Kamal’s trust in this esteemed composer does not go waste. Let me assure you that I am not over estimating anything here. I am known to be very skeptical when it comes to Ilayaraja. Why? Basically I cannot take mediocre stuff from a composer of his standards.

Let us move on, First song that caught my ears tight, was “Yelae Nee Yetipoo”, this has the word Mumbai express hence the Title song. This song starts with lots of dialogues in Hindi in the background. The Kamal’s voice opens with an upbeat feeling. Hope you remember “oram poo oram poo rukumani vandi varudhu”, just the opening made me to recollect that song, however in this song you will really find sweet music and very tight drum programming. Lady voice joins in with some cute accented singing. The sax part in the middle drips more essence to an already pepped up vocal parts. The “Saranam” is the best why? The spacing of the lead tune with the crunching guitar parts is simply awesome. This is unusual for Raja to compose like this after late 90s. In this song they explain Mumbai!, the second BGM is filled with dialogues seemed too long and dragging, they should have edited this part, Instead I would like to hear more music.

In simple words, Yelae Nee Yetipoo rules, I am sure this song is going to kick ass in days to come. Apart from the melody lines, the sounds and programming in this song is worth a mention. Whew! Go hear it now.

After this song the next one follows with a musical bang. This time the composer choose swinging jazz for a song that titled ”Kurangu kail malai”, Wait it is only the title, the music simply swings around you. [Another famous Swing Jazz: The Pink Panther opening theme]. Tippu and Kamal sings, this song reminds Karthick Raja to me, may be he programmed it.

Kamal tries and comes good in singing blues like vocals with a rough singing in the opening lines. The big difference is the musical quality we all know in the 80’s is heard through out this song. Yes, the keyboard chord placements are raja Trade mark and there is no single composer till date who could imitate this. I would put it as the coolest Song in recent times from Raja’; second BGM is something you need to hear and feel the sax and drum/percussion parts for yourself. Totally feels like few monkeys jumping around you. The BGM closes with grand finale; yes you would feel like watching a Broadway show. I am big band aficionado, yes! If you have been jazz /big band concerts at times some people will tell me they don’t understand what is happening? True, in this song also, the placements are so complex it can confuses many ears, the second BGM is of that kind and I call it serious music.

Poo poothadhu, In my opinion,Man of the match aka the song of the album. Once again we hear the Jazz kit, I feel Raja must have attended a jazz festival just weeks before composing for this movie. This is 98.5 smooth Jazz. The male vocalist Sonu Nigam, justifies the composition well with proper Tamil pronunciation. There is no Random word Rounding off [aka.choosing the nearest possible pronunciation] like his counterparts from north, Udit in particular.

Listen to the jazz guitar part in the song, you many ask what is the difference between a guitar part and jazz guitar part, answer: the jazz guitar has thinner sound than acoustic or regular electric guitar. It will sound really soft. Frankly the way it was played sounds Prasanna to me. However I don’t know if he really played a part in this. There were similar songs by Raja in the movie called Time, which was one of best albums by Raja in recent times. Though the Jazz Drum playing or programming sounds like an electronic instead of an acoustic kit, it is near natural. Some of the best songs by Raja were done during the 80’s, more than the previous song this song tickles similar senses in me when I hear it.

Other 2 tracks, one is “vandematram” failed to impress me because of being situation based. There should be a reason for doing it this way, Singers pull and push the song. Note this point and let us see if my guess is right. Kamal should be the conductor of a band. The vocalists/ instrumentalists should be singing and playing based on this hand moment. So they drag and pull the tune as per his conducting actions. Just my assumption, however still I feel he could have chosen some other song instead of a famous patriotic song. Let us hope for the best.There was also an instrumental music track. Well programmed music, over all I don’t see many natural instruments in most songs.

Will I get the CD, Yes by all means, I would advice you to get it right away from a [Desi] CD store, my usual claim: Please don’t download it from a pirate.

My Bloglogue April 11th 2005

As expected we lost the one day in the jinxed arena. India has hardly won there, so I really don’t know why we have to play there in first place. Anyway, we lost! I don’t think Indians were outplayed by Pakistanis, Indians were careless and the new ball bowlers were totally poor. Asish Nehra in particular, he seems lose it to his angry attitude, he is caught often using bad language, especially when someone in the infield mis-fields during his bowling; however he forgets that his fielding ability is worse than Dilip Doshi, he never cares to improve. I think he needs a therapy or something.

So Mr. Savior-I and Mr. Savior-II [Sehwag] failed for India, so did the talented and freshness injectors Kaif and Yuvraj singh. But who cares, there is Sachin to take blame for not playing again, yes, Sachin seems to be still on a run draught; Today I read in the post that Tiger woods came back with power to retain his lost place, I hope Sachin also does well in days to come. He did have a very good average before his injury. But he has not scored in this series till now, hence his critics have a good “poha” to munch.., I wish he gets runs soon. Irfan batted well however he is still out of form in the bowling area, this is worrying, but I still maintain that he is much better than Agarkar.

Gangully issue, I see many, Ok! Ok, few comments in my comment box on Gangully. Very conveniently we have forgotten the fact that Sourav has 2 portfolios. He has been a successful captain for the Indian team. Our captain Kirk has taken the team to place where no captain has gone before. Performing twin task has been always an issue to any Indian captain. This includes SMG, SRT, KD and many others. Their captain role has always had an adverse effect on their specialized ability. For this reason, we need to give Gangully few extra days to catch up with reality.

The most ridiculous item of the day was Match referee report on Indian captain. He forfeited Sourav’s pay for the game. Let me ask you, will anyone agree if their income is with held after an ass breaking day at work? Reason: “You failed to complete your task on time” Don’t we all get an extra time from our boss? You might ask me then how can we deal this so called dull slow over rate and constant field adjustment by the bowling team?

In my opinion ICC is an idea less group of people Yes, I mean, it. For example instead of penalizing the captain alone, why can’t they come up with another way of penalizing the team instead? Like NBA or NFL why not have a shot or a ball clock. A bowler has to bowl a ball within a minute else it is a no ball. This clock is reset every ball, and umpire has the right to stop the clock. ICC has to make the team feel the time pressure. It is not the captain alone, and there were tons of drinks breaks due the hot weather, Mr. Match Referee should know about the Indian heat conditions before making a call.

This salary forfeit idea is against the labor law by all means. This has to be stopped.

Tonight, we are ready for the next one day, my Dish-DVR crashed on Saturday due to continues recording for past month, I spent the whole day talking to various support levels, no remedy worked, finally they agreed to replace it for FREE!, I should get another one soon by mail. Hence Today I will have to swap my primary receiver to the one we have in our family room.

Indians will make bowler changes, Agarkar might be recalled [urggggg!] or I wish Balaji recovers from his injury. IMO, Bowling is the major area of concern. We need to restrict them to 250 odd and our opening batsmen need to deal the Ul Hassan factor. Everyone seems to struggle against him.Toss will the key again.

On to other news, the cable news networks were boring people with the so called Royal wedding. Technically IMO, a 60th wedding ceremony, [aka 60am kalyanam], do we really need to know Where, when and how a frog Prince and his keep to the left honeymoons? -- EEPIP [Enku en periya idathu polapu]

Sun TV is gearing up for the Tamil New Year programs, yes same Solomon Papayya and his cronies will be arguing again on some topic, this time hope it is Sun T.V. serialAl paithiyam pidikumA pidikkAtha. It seems Vivek has a special show; I really don’t know how he negotiated his way through SunTV. They have been avoiding him and ignoring him for long now. We need learn the trick from Vivek, I might to have to go to work on 14th , hence if I get my DVR ready by then I should record and enjoy the programs..

Good day.

My Bloglogue April 8th 2005

Tonight India takes on Pakistan on a so called jinxed arena; Yes! India has lost about 5 times here and has won only on two occasions. Dravid mentioned today that Dhoni should be playing at number three. I had echoed similar opinion in my Blog few days ago. Yes! Dhoni should be playing number three this will keep the bowlers thinking as the batsmen at the other end is also capable of firing at will.

---

Gangully scored a century 105* here way back in 2000, against South Africa, I was in Seattle Washington at that time. At least to calm down his critics I want Ganguly to score some runs tonight. One more point to note is Sachin, there are 6 one day games and since Sachin failed to fire in the first three, the next 2 games would be the most crucial games for India. They need to win them in order to nail the series. By the law of averages Sachin should be pumping in runs soon. Hope he scores in these crucial games. I would really want him to get back into his world cup groove.

---

Agarkar factor, a friend had made a comment in the feed back section stating I was too harsh on Ajith Agarkar and it was unwarranted. In fact I was too soft this time. If you count the number of recalls Agarkar had in spite of mediocre performance, what I feel still holds good and it is justified. Take Mohanty, he was sent home in 2001, Why? He just went wicket less in just 2 games that too after a successful tour; he was simply dropped and was never recalled. My claim is in spite of mediocre performance Why Agarkar gets a recall? Why don’t they even consider others? Or why can’t we find another bowler? Oh! Here is stale defense - He is an all rounder with humongous talent. Duh! The Aussie tour, the number of ducks he hunted during the tour earned him many titles, recently he might have scored few runs in Pakistan agreed, but his first priority is being a bowler who is expected to bowl well. He hardly does so with the new ball in recent times. He never learns from his mistakes, he is too causal and lazy. I wish other cricketers have the same luck and push Agarkar has!

The truth is when ever I cribbed on Agarkar, my luck or his luck he scores some runs with his bat, so be ready to type a rebuttal message to me tomorrow.

---

Indian eves are in finals of the Women World Cup. They zoomed into the final by beating the defending champs “The White Ferns”, yes the female version of the Black caps. I really don’t know why?, I have special feeling if any team from India beats a team from New Zealand. Basically it might be jealously, how the hell blacks caps be rated better team than India by the ICC? Any way, congratulations to the Indian team, they will be facing the Aussies in the finals. All the best ladies, go win the cup for India. The Men in blue might get the message for the next world cup.

---

I read this in rediff.com - Azar is on news again, in a report to be published in the outlook magazine mentions some notes given to the CBI by Azar in which he kind of confessed about his involvement in the match fixing scandal. This hand written document was recovered during a tax raid in 2000. The note also made some hasty criticism and baseless comments on Sunil Gavasker, Ravi Sashtri and the master blaster Sachin. The report is scheduled to be appearing on April 18th issue of out look.

Have a great weekend folks.

Srikanth's ClipToon

My Bloglogue April 6th 2005

Do you know the news, get a paper towel you might puke when you hear it. I was about to when I heard about it, “Ajith Agarkar” somehow found his way back into the Indian team. There is a Gretel [sister of Hansel] for him in the selection committee who drops pebbles to guide him back into the team. Balaji was declared injured, seriously Irfan is about a million times better than Agarkar and there are other bowlers in waiting list with better merits than Agarkar. I really don’t know who pushes for a mediocre player like Agarkar. I thought the roach has been exterminated.

Pakistan team insured for 20 million rupees for the 4th one day to be held in Ahmedabad. More than 15,000 police and army personals to be deployed to prevent trouble; is this necessary? To play a game in sensitive areas, anyway Indians played in Karachi so why not Pakistanis play in Ahmedabad. I wish things go smoothly here. India is not a banana nation and we should set an example to the world. This is a sport and should be treated as Sport.

Dhoni Factor, I was bit upset when the selectors dropped Dinesh Karthick; however at least for now, Dhoni’s selection proved that he is worth the money. I also feel India should go with the newly discovered batting lineup - Sachin, Sehwag, Dhoni, Ganguly, Dravid and so on. We have to find a “real” all rounder instead of “Agarkar”; after all we have not found another Kapil Dev. It is about time to find one.

I read few Tamil Blogs that seems to have a perpetual Sachin abusing habit coated with a liberal standing in the middle attitude. They seem to enjoy this crude form of happiness when they see Sachin or Gangully fall cheaply. Few were magnanimous enough to call Sachin and Gangully has "Pazam perusugal Putacase", what’s wrong? You might ask, Yes everyone has their opinion I agree, but I feel it is pity to see people have a very short term cricket memory.

In fact in my opinion, the 5 wickets Sachin picked in Kochi saved the match for India. But this was mentioned as “pure luck” yes! Inzi’s wicket was sheer luck, and Sachin took 5 wickets on the same ground when he played last, yeh! Coincidence, Duh! What can we say? The one writer goes further to prove his cheap taste when he describes the wickets of Sachin and Gangully etc. Halo! Please take the past 15 one day matches and check Sachin’s record. Let us forget his batting average for a moment, but his Strike rate! Don’t you feel that his strike sends a message to a new ball bowler?

In the same game Dravid slowed down significantly when he was nearing his 50. I do not know how many noted this, I did. But did not care much about it; these small things should not come in my way to appreciate a genuine cricketer. Dravid, yes he is in his top form now, In that case don’t you feel that he could have saved Banglore test. Why did he fail? Where did the so called Savior of India went? One writer adds that he has now added Sehwag into his lists of Mr. Dependable. Remember? My joke about the Responsibility monkey! The Gangully factor, he is about 50 runs away from this 10,000 still there are souls out there singing “hey there shaky shaky”.

I can also provide bunch of statistics to prove facts like Dravid played a dam slow game in the past or Sachin saved India or Sachin failed etc, however not worth my time. Bottom line, this “current” [note it] form of Dravid and Sehwag should not issue a free ticket to ride on Sachin or Gangully. Hey if you don’t want to remember the slow cycling Dravid, welcome! I don’t care about your medical condition, if your long term memory is intact you would know Sachin or for the matter Gangully better and what they have done for India in the past

My point is, if you have really followed cricket without any Bias, the current Indian team composition is the best lineup in these past 3 decades that I have been following cricket. This composition helps “every player” to perform at regular intervals. This should not be tinkered at least till the next world cup.
Ok enough of cricket,

Songs in Mumbai Express are out, it seems it sold much more than expected. I should get the CD in about a week. I heard one song sung which sounded totally sequenced. Any way just another 3 days wait before I get a review out.

Chandramuki should be released on April 14th, there are special shows in New Jersey area. While reading Tamiloviam yesterday, I saw an advertisement banner for Chandramuki on their website. On clicking it I found out that this movie will be screened for 1 whole week in New Jersey. I planned to take a trip to watch the movie. Sure! we will get it in DC also. Last time I went to watch a Rajinee movie on big screen was in Chicago, I was in IOWA during that time.

Good day.

My Bloglogue April 5th 2005

Funnel clouds and Tornado are never spotted in India; however yesterday about half a billion people witnessed Tornados and Twisters that made land fall in the costal town of Vizag/Waltair Junction/Vishakapatanam., however you want to call it. Yes, Pakistanis were caught between powerful tornados and the strong winds that continued till the end of the Indian innings. Even few Small sized tornados managed to rattle Pakistani bowling during the tail end of the Indian innings.

As mentioned yesterday Toss was vital, Gangully won again for India. While walking in Sehwag and Sachin had a game plan, Sachin was supposed to give quick strikes to this partner and watch the developments, however Sachin was run out by a direct throw from Yuhana. Bad luck to Sachin, he was out by just 2mm, just enough for the replay to spot. In my opinion he missed a wonderful batting wicket. When Sachin departed in the third over India had already made 26, Yes, “Ubayaam” the inform destroyer INS Sehwag, that had docked in the port of Vizag few days ago.

Indian think tank made a drastic change that clicked. Instead of out of form Gangully, Dhoni, the new wicketkeeper was promoted to the number 3 slot, just to do some pinch hitting. It worked for India, he not only pinched the Pakistani bowling and he did more, he trashed every bowler to every part of Vizag. India had an unbelievable run rate of +/-7 all through the innings. First three overs from Sami cost him about 33 runs, while Sehwag hit Afridi for 4 consecutive boundaries. India scored 50 in about 5 while Viru completed this 50 in about 26 balls.

Inzi and his men were totally out of sync, the only Pakistani bowler with some juice was Naved Ul Haasan, and he was going for 6.0 while donations from others were pouring in double figures. INS bomber Sehwag scored 70 runs in about 40 balls, his strike rate was around 200 aeronautical miles. In short - "Dharama adi".

Sehwag was out when he tried to lift over midwicket and was caught. Inzi assumed the agony was over, but! Wait, it was the Calm before another storm; Gangully came in and tried to play positive cricket, but lost his stumps again. Pakistani celebrated this calm before storm, that’s when Dravid joined Dhoni , that’s it, Runs started to flow at will and in this process Dravid scored 50 and Dhoni completed his first 100 for India.

Later Dhoni perished after a breezy stormy thundery 148, but it was not yet over, the gritty Indian Tail Wagged big, Yuvraj (15 off 10), Laxmipathy Balaji (17 off 13) and Zaheer Khan (17 off 9) pushed the score to 356 for 9. Balaji and Zaheer added couple of huge sixes to their account. 356, was a big ask for any team in any ground under any condition, Pakistan came close, but India won at ease and I also think Indians played better planned cricket and took the match right royally.

After the Banglore test loss, I mentioned that Indians need 2 wins to be back on the pedestal, yes it is here, time to adore them.

Ps: I happen to hear a track from Mumbai Express, Poo pothadhu, by Sonu Nigam, Kind of a Smooth Jazz fusion number in Tamil. The Jazz kit sounds very familiar, may be someone played it live using electronic drum kit. Raja has given one more hit, I also speculate may be his eldest son helped him in this; I do hear shades of Karthik Raja. Most sounds seemed to be from Korg Keyboards, Triton in particular the Reverb is so familiar. Before speculating more, I should the CD by this weekend; I will post a clear review then.