Dhobhi Ghaat

brilliant camera work. OKish storyline. So So movie. Just like a manufactured normal page in a daily newspaper in Mumbai.

But yes, a good background score, by some foreigner I guess.

And why does Shai have a foreign accent. She could have had had a parsi a dhinga kinda accent.

Hobby of the moment: Finding gaps in the education sector where ideas can be explored.

Book of the moment: Arvind adiga's other book was crap. Now reading The Finkler Question.

It was surprising to realise that Dad and Mom know so much about Dhoobi Ghaat. A lot more than me actually as their two main sources of knowledge remain the TV and the newspaper, both of which I personally desist.

There is so much they want to talk I guess, but I am not open to conversations. Simple Harold Pinter types of conversations, but I am myself hung up about marriage & how to better manage my workplace.

There is this gap between myself and my parents, like we live in two different worlds. I live with them but still my thoughts, my actions, my expectations, my confusions are so different, or are they? Though they have brought me up , my existence is also a function of the surroundings which they sent me to initially, and the ones which I choose to go to later on.

Yasmeen in Dhoobi Ghat reminded me of Ruksar's story.She should be somewhere in Saudi. Married, mother, happy.

Totally jobless weekend comes to an end. More officing around but thank Britishers for their enslavement that we could fight them, get freedom and get an off, bang on a Wednesday.  

Public mai sansani , ek baar

From Wiki

A stereotype is a held popular belief about specific social groups or types of individuals. The concepts of "stereotype" and "prejudice" are often confused with many other different meanings. Stereotypes are standardized and simplified conceptions of groups based on some prior assumptions.

When a kid grow up those around the kid, mostly his parents and relatives start stereotyping him/her like 

• He yells like hell 
• She is of quieter type
• He has no interest in business
• Whatever he tries he fails

etc.

From these stereotypes and our own experiences about life, good or bad, emerge ideas like

• He has to be fixed. Like fix a job, a marriage etc.
• He has to complete his education, he has no mind for business

So when one is on the other side, say on the inside/ receiving end of these ideas, one generally revolts. Trying to assert otherwise, and in the process helping to strengthen the stereotype. And the ideas that come are

• Why can't people leave me alone
• Why not just allow me to learn from my life and keep me out of your prejudiced viewpoint

And life turns into a melange of these ideas, jumping from one to another. Sometimes, me stereotyping people, at other times trying to fight the stereotype that has been fixed like Samuel Taylor Coleridge would have called it, an albatross. 

_________________________________________________________

Ryan Bingham: [on getting through airport security] Never get behind old people. Their bodies are littered with hidden metal and they never seem to appreciate how little time they have left. Bingo, Asians. They pack light, travel efficiently, and they have a thing for slip on shoes. Gotta love 'em.
Natalie Keener: That's racist.
Ryan Bingham: I'm like my mother, I stereotype. It's faster. 

_________________________________________________________

Ryan Bingham: I thought I was a part of your life.
Alex Goran: I thought we signed up for the same thing... I thought our relationship was perfectly clear. You are an escape. You're a break from our normal lives. You're a parenthesis.
Ryan Bingham: I'm a parenthesis? 

Blow Up

So there is this get together that gets organised. For all direct reportees present and past of an ex boss of mine. About 15 people turn up, with barely 2-3 people missing. A testimony to the popularity of my erstwhile boss.

We have people from all possible banks there, you name it and either people have worked there or are working there.

Only I am an anachronism. Except me, each one has struck on to their profile.

Looking back, am I happy, content, relieved or disappointed that I walked the path that I ended up walking, which in itself was more of an accident. I don't know.

With complete disregard to humility, I guess it would have been a trifle boring to be like any one of them. Walking a beaten path.

But yes, I have paid the price for the way the things have turned out.

Say we have another get together in 10 years, I can kinda guess what each one of them will be still doing. But what about me. Is it so easy to guess outcomes or future where you are not involved. Is it that difficult that your judgement starts getting blurred as soon as you involve your own life into future projections.

Ameros Perros. 

Happy New Year 2011

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•  Somebody who interviewed me more than a year back said, he expected his start up to be successful and gross some 500 Cr by 2015. I said, Bullshit. I don't care how much sales will your start up do in 2015. My only measure of success of a start up is survival. If it survives till 2015, I would say it has been successful.

•  This blog has survived for about 5 years now. I don't remember the last endevour which I partook in, which kept me engaged that long on the same thing. They say my attention span is a fleeting function. They always do. Kisi Kshanbangur ki mahatvakanksha vyarth hai 
• I wanted to draw a normal function for the function of distribution of my posts vis-a-vis, a normal function with the same mean and standard deviation. If I aggregate all my published posts, Mean = 3.11, SD = 2.87. A normal function with those values is below, though I have screwed up the x axis part and hence the function does not peak at its mean. You can say it has been randomly x axis justified.  
• I was trying for a long time to figure out what exactly is on the y axis. Finally after a long research I rediscovered the Gaussian function. 
• Finally, like any work of statistics, this analysis hides more than it reveals. The total published posts are 165, while the total written posts are 199.