Random Walk of Life

Opening Mood: Good Morning Bangalore!
Opening Song: Lakshya - Title track

Saw Subhash Ghai’s movie Black and White yesterday. If not anything, I must say it is a th0ught provoking and a brave attempt by the man who has been known to make only potboiler commercial cinema.

WARNING!: Possible spoiler ahead!

The movie is about a young Fidayeen who comes to Delhi with a mission to blow up the Red fort on the occasion of Independence day. And how is plans his attack, the people he encounters, the clash of ideologies and finally the decision that he makes. Anil Kapoor portrays Rajan Mathur, a resident of Chandni Chowk, and a professor of Urdu at Zakir Hussain college. New comer Anurag Sinha portrays Numair Qazi, the Fidayeen.

The movie begins with a slow pace, introducing the characters, and setting up the premise. It is in the second half that we see the real characteristics coming out. The ruthlessness with which Numair is ready to execute people whom he believes do not follow Islam is really shocking. One wonders what could have made a young man like that to become a fanatic, who knows nothing in life but upholding his interpretation of Quran.

There were a couple of really hard hitting sequences in the movie. The scene where Numair goes to an MLA to ask for a Independence day Pass and finds that Hindu and Muslim youth leaders offering bribe to the MLA to get some private favors and making it clear that the rivalry is purely political. This was followed by a scene where Numair’s cousin, who owns a travel agency, trying to sell a Hindu Pilgrimage package to a customer with pthe passion that Numair simply couldn’t identify with. He concludes that the Muslims in this country have sold out. When his cousin tries to explain him the concept of “customer is the king”, he tries to attack the cousin, asking him “What right do you have to call yourself a mussalman? And if you cannot be a mussalman, what right do you have to live?” This sequence where he openly displayed his fundamental nature, did shock me for a second.

It takes the murder of Rajan Mathur’s wife, Roma Mathur played by Shefali Shah, by Numair’s accomplices, and Rajan’s mature reaction to it, that forces Numair to rethink his ideologies. Inside the Red Fort, just before he plans to execute the attack, he senses the first speck of doubt about his actions and decides to abort the mission. And subsequently asks the question, “What is the right way of Jehaad? What’s greater in Jihaad? Killing and Dying? Destroying or Saving? If it is saving, what is it that we are saving ?”

Throughout the movie, Numair’s ideology was that of a single minded Fidayeen, who would not deviate from his mission, and never question his ideologies. He was a man, for whom following the Quran was the only way of life. So the abrupt change of heart inside the Red Fort does come as a bit of surprise. That in my opinion is the only problem with the movie. However, one could argue, that these thoughts were taking birth in his mind right from the moment he encountered the different types of Muslims than the ones he was used to in his native country, and Rajan’s reaction and comments inside the Red Fort only triggered the freeing of these thoughts. If this was the case, I feel it could have been portrayed a bit better.

Nevertheless, it is an honest attempt. I would suggest you go watch it

Closing Song: Main Jahaan Rahoon - Namaste London.
Closing Mood: Hungry for breakfast!

Opening Mood: TGISunday!
Opening Song: Dhoom Again - Dhoom 2

We had been to Parika yesterday night for dinner. It is a restaurant on the CMH road, which serves mangalore cuisine. If you love neeru-dosas, sannas, kori-rotti, tangy and coconutty fish curries, this is a place you should visit. The food is excellent. We had Kori-Rotti, Bangde-Masala (Mackerel curry) and Neeru Dose. Both the fish and the chicken curries were beyond par excellence. Only my grandma’s curries could top these. And the place is not very expensive either.

However, the biggest let down was the service. It was a bit slow, I found the waiters a bit too grumpy. Probably they had a long saturDay. Oh yeah, the price for the fish curry mentioned in the Menu Card differed from the price on the bill. The explanation given was that the price depends on the size of fish, which we thought was outrageous since it wasn’t mentioned in the menu card.

From our prior experience, we suggest Sunday afternoons to be the best time to visit the place. They have additional mangalorean delicacies on Sunday afternoons. And ask about the prices before you order. Else you might be in for a surprise

PS: After dinner, we went to Corner House for a trial DBC test. K and I ordered DBCs for ourselves with chocolate scoops instead of vanilla scoops. While I finished mine, K struggled to finish his/her first one, cursing the cake! However, he/she still claims to have confidence in his/her digestive system and wants to go ahead with the bet. So keep watching this space for updates

Closing Song: Aaja Ve - Sona Mohapatra
Closing Mood: Hungry! Breakfast time.

Opening Mood: I’m full after the dinner.
Opening Song: Saawariya (Reprise) Saawariya.

I watched two bollywood movies today afternoon. Dus Kahaniyan and Om Shanti Om. And I liked them both.

While Dus Kahaniyan reminded me of Jeffery Archer’s short stories: Short, crisp and a nice li’l twist in the end. OTOH, Om Shanti Om was a real tribute to the 70’s Bollywood and it did so by being deliberately pretentious!

Okay, the details - In Dus Kahaniyan I liked all the stories except the first two. Matrimony and High on Highway had nothing new to offer. Both were based on the concepts I have grown up seeing in regional movies. But the other stories were very well written. Be it the dilemma that the mother faces in Pooranmasi, the dilemma of hunger over religion that the “shudh brahmin” lady faces in Rice Plate, the sweet story about destiny over decisiveness ,i.e Lovedale, the importance of living every moment in Gubbare, or the cool editing to make up for the lack of a story in Rise and Fall. Zahir was okay okay and Sex on the beach was definitely scary in parts! But I like the concept very much. It’s like buying a full day’s ticket to watch a bunch of twenty20 cricket matches. It’s highly unlikely that you will be disappointed in all parts

And coming to Om Shanti Om, I had heard enough about the movie, and had even been narrated the whole story. So the first half was not very funny or exciting. That’s one bad thing about reading reviews (If you’ve not read the movie, don’t read further! you might get biased). However, as they say “imitation is the best form of flattery”, this movie truly imitated the various different mannerisms of the people in the film industry. If there was one single sequence I would want to single out as the funniest, it would have to be the Filmfare awards where Abhishek Bacchan is one of the nominees for the best actor award! And of course, Shah Rukh Khan ensured that his money doesn’t go waste, by adding an Item number (with himself!! Yuck!!) and the other song with half of the Bollywood in it. The ending I thought was brilliant! I mean it was like saying, “Impossible is nothing! We can better it!!” It’s a fun film. Watch it, but please don’t THINK

To a fun filled weekend!

Closing Song: Tum se Hi - Jab We Met
Closing Mood: In mood for another movie or a good book!

Had a busy two weeks reviving the Cpu-Hotplug effort. Two versions have already been posted and the just finished porting the third one against the latest kernel version. And that’s when I finally got around to use Git.

Git is a source code management software project started by Linus Torvalds and now maintained by Junio Hamano. There are probably a million howtos out there,on how to use Git, but I followed the one which I thought was easier for me to follow, given the nature of my job.

Kernel Hackers’ Guide to Git

I cloned the git repository and created my own branches, ported the cpu-hotplug patches. For a person who had been using quilt all this while to create and maintain patches, git is very useful. The best part is that you could actually see the whole development process since it keeps track of each commit. So for example, if I wanted to know how a particular file, say kernel/cpu.c has changed over years, I just type

git whatchanged kernel/cpu.c

and you could see every single commit that went in since version 2.6.12 something. Pretty Amazing!

Next time I am wondering why a particular ‘if’ clause exists in the code, using git, I can find out, who added it, and what was the changelog look like when it was added.

Other than that, you could also checkout a particular kernel version say 2.6.18. So instead of maintaining a whole bunch of compressed kernel source files, all I need now is a git repo and maintain different branches for different development projects that I am working on.

The other cool utility was StGit. It’s a quilt type of a utility that allows you to create new patches, push and pop. So developers already familiar with quilt can use that with atmost ease.

Hope to discover more useful features with continued usage

And here’s to a Great Weekend ahead!!