Confused Soul

Matrubhoomi: A Nation Without Women

Posted by Akash in Saturday, January 29, 2011

Matrubhoomi is a story, which draws your attention toward the consequences of decreasing sex ratio in India (true for anywhere else as well). Story starts in a village where if a newborn baby is a girl, she is drowned in a milk-pond. This practice continues and a time comes when there are men and boys everywhere and no women. No marriage has taken in this village for 15 years. Even surrounding villages have similar situation.

The story revolves around a widowed man, Ramsharan, who has 5 children (of course all boys). All these boys are either at usual marriage age or crossed that. Ramsharan is ready to give any amount of money to get his children married but unfortunately after all his efforts, he finds no girl around. Through a Pandit, Ramsharan comes to know about a beautiful girl, Kalki, in nearby village. Ramsharan pays a substantial dowry for Kalki and gets her married to all his sons. Also Ramsharan is widowed since long, he himself wants a piece of Kalki.

Then the story progresses how Ramsharan and his 5 sons shares Kalki everyday. Even though, she is raped everyday by these men, Kalki falls in love with the youngest of the lot, Sooraj, coz of his caring attitude. When others come to know that Kalki and Sooraj are in love with each other, they don’t think twice before killing their own brother. The story continues and we see more consequences of these events.

Overall, the makers raised a very sensitive issue and did justice with this. The movie obviously has some obnoxious scenes as per demand of the story. It is not a kind of a movie, which someone watches for feel-good purpose. But if you are game for meaningful cinema, Matrubhoomi is a must watch. Embellished with some great performances, Matrubhoomi forced the audience to think about the decreasing sex-ratio. If this problem continues, the day is not far when we might the reel situation turns real.

127 Hours

Posted by Akash in Wednesday, January 26, 2011

I have finished watching 127 Hours by Danny Boyle. After Slumdog Millionaire, I had very high expectations from him and he struggled to touch that barrier in 127 Hours.

It’s story of Aron, a mountain climber, who trapped under a boulder while canyoneering alone and resorts to desperate measures in order to survive. His hand comes under the boulder and he struggles to get rid of it, struggles for 127 hours to come out of the canyon. struggles for 127 hours in order to live. Finally, Aron has to cut his arm away from his body in order to get out of canyon.

Danny beautifully showed the thoughts passing through Aron’s mind while he was trapped. James Franco played Aron’s character beautifully and audiences sense the reality if someone falls in Aron’s shoes.

Still I feel that Danny fails to create the magic of Slumdog this time. One reason for that might be coz I as an Indian can connect with Slumdog more than any other subject. But I am still not seeing this movie as any candidate for Oscar. I continue wondering how this flick can reach final 10 in race for Oscars.

कैफ़ी आज़मी साहब की कलम से...

Posted by Akash in Friday, November 26, 2010

I found This poem at facebook shared by someone and couldn't resist myself from sharing it here...

ये किस तरह याद आ रही हो,
ये ख्वाब कैसा दिखा रही हो
की जैसे सच मुच निगाह के सामने
खड़ी मुस्कुरा रही हो
ये जिस्म नाजुक, ये नर्म बाहें ,
हसीं गर्दन , सिडोल बाजू
शगुफ्ता चेहरा , सलोनी रंगत
घनेरा जूडा , स्याह गेसू
नशीली आँखें , रसीली चितवन
दराज़ पलकें , महीन अबरू
तमाम शोखी , तमाम बिजली
तमाम मस्ती , तमाम जादू
हज़ार जादू जगा रही हो
ये ख्वाब कैसा दिखा रही हो

गुलाबी लब , मुस्कुराते आरिज़
ज़बीं कुशादा , बुलंद कामत
निगाह में बिजलियों की झिलमिल
अदाओं में शबनमी लताफत
धड़कता सीना , महकती सांसें ,
नवां में रस , अन्ख्रियों में अमृत
हमान हलावत , हमान मलाहत
हमान तरन्नुम , हमान नजाकत
लचक लचक गुनगुना रही हो
ये ख्वाब कैसा दिखा रही हो

तो क्या मुझे तुम ज़िला ही लोगी
गले से अपने लगा ही लोगी
जो फूल जुड़े से गिर पड़ा है
तड़प के उसको उठा ही लोगी
भड़कते शोलों , कड़कती बिजली से
मेरा खिरमन बचा ही लोगी
घनेरी जुल्फों की छाँव में
मुस्कुरा के मुझको छुपा ही लोगी
की आज तक आजमा रही हो
ये ख्वाब कैसा दिखा रही हो
नहीं मोहब्बत की कोई कीमत
जो कोई कीमत अदा करोगी
वफ़ा की फुर्सत न देगी दुनिया
हज़ार अज्म-ए-वफ़ा करोगी
मुझे बहलने दो रंज-ओ-गम से ,
सहारे कब तक दिया करोगी
जुनूं को इतना न गुद्गुदाओ
पकड़ लूं दामन तो क्या करोगी
करीब बड़ती ही आ रही हो
ये ख्वाब कैसा दिखा रही हो|

Death is temporary

Posted by Akash in Wednesday, November 24, 2010

हम सब अपनी ज़िन्दगी में धीरें-धीरें मौत की तरफ बढते रहते है, रोज़ हर पल, हर सांस के साथ... कुछ लोग थोडा धीरें मौत की तरफ भागते है तो कुछ तेज़ी से l कुछ रोज मौत से आँख-मिचोली खेलते है, इन लोगो में भी २ वर्ग है: एक वो जो मजबूरी में इस खेल का हिस्सा बनते है और दूसरे वो जो इसे एक खेल समझते है l यह सब अच्छा लगता है पर कब तक... सिर्फ तब तक, जब तक तुम्हारा मौत से सामना नहीं होता... पर जैसे ही मौत सामने आती है, ज़िन्दगी एकदम से प्यारी लगने लगती है l उस वक़्त हमें एहसास होता है की अभी तो हमें और जीना हैl पूरा जीवन एक फ्लेशबैक की तरह हमारी आँखों के सामने चक्कर खाने लगता है, सिर्फ चंद घड़ियों में l मज़बूत से मज़बूत इंसान भी ज़िन्दगी की तरफ भागने लगता है... सिर्फ कुछ विरलों को छोड़ कर I

कैसी अजीब बिडमवाना है, की हम अपनने जन्मदिन पर जश्न करते है... पर यह भूल जाते है कि हर जन्मदिन पर हम इस दुनियां को छोड़कर जाने के और करीब पहुच जाते है l मैं यहाँ एक निराशावादी कि तरह बात नहीं करना चाहता लेकिन यह बोलना चाहता हूँ कि मौत तो बस एक धोखा है l अगर आज हम आइन्स्टीन को देखें, मदर टेरेसा को याद करें, महात्मा गांधी को देखें तो क्या यह लोग वाकई में मर गए ? क्या थॉमस अल्वा एडिसन आज भी बल्ब कि रौशनी में जिंदा नहीं है? क्या आजाद भारत कि हवा में भगत सिंह, चंद्रशेखर और बापू कि खुसबू नहीं आती? क्या शून्य इस्तेमाल करते समय हम आर्यभट को भूल जाते है? नहीं न, तो मौत तो सिर्फ एक छलावा है... क्यूँ न हम अपने जीवन में कुछ ऐसा करें कि हमने भौतिक जीवन के अंत समय में भौतिक जीवन का मोह न सताए |

Interview Tales

Posted by Akash in Tuesday, November 16, 2010

One of my colleagues was taking an interview for a development position in my company. The experience she told us after the interview made us ROFL. Here is the excerpt from that interview:

…
…
Interviewer: Can you write a program to sort an integer array?
Interviewee: Sure…

Interviewee took some time for writing that program and running some test cases on paper.

Interviewee: (Showing the paper to my colleague) Here it is…

After having a look at the program and having a code walkthrough with some test cases.

Interviewer: Can you please tell me the complexity of this program?
Interview: Maam, this is not complex, this is very simple program.

Interviewer: (Surprised) I am talking about the complexity of the algorithm!
Interviewee: Maam, I can assure you that this algorithm is not complex and very simple to implement.
…
…

This was the story of that interview and when our colleague told this to us, we asked her how did you stop yourself from laughing in his face.

panoramic view of Jawahar Lal Nehru Stadium

Posted by Akash in Friday, October 15, 2010

Problem Space vs Solution Space

Posted by Akash in Thursday, October 7, 2010

There is a colleague of mine who starts proposing solution as soon as a problem is described to him. This is a natural phenomenon not only for him but also for many others and ‘others’ includes 2 types of people.

Who knows deep about the architecture; have knowledge of all the flows and algorithm used and can give great insight by putting their suggestions.
Who starts thinking about the solution as soon as problem is stated and not try to find the actual cause first.

This man belongs to second category and start thinking about the solution without completely understanding the problem, investigating about the root cause, thinking about side-effects of proposed solution (hack in most cases) and thinking of a better way to solve it actually.

The goal of this post is not to bash a person but the process of solving the issue at hand. One, who belongs to the second category above should first think about the actual problem and then start thinking of solving it. A good developer is the one, who doesn’t write more code but the one who writes code to address actual problem.

Debugging is a process, which require a deep digging in to the material you have, finding the root cause and then start thinking about its solution. We can see the actual behavior as shown in following chart.

But actually, these people start thinking to fix the bug ASAP and expand the VIOLET pie to the GREEN rectangle as the goal. Which is the worst thing we can do and can devastate the system. Due to this:

Hacks come into the picture; rework is being done again and again
People need to clean up their code; less productivity
Understanding doesn’t develop
Every time a problem happens you need to start all over again

In short we can say that one can never convert from category 2 to 1 (as described in the beginning). If you want to lie in the first category, follow above pie chart step by step. If you are not following percentages (approximately) as given, you are not doing in right.

Basically debugging the problem in ‘Problem Space’ is as necessary as fixing the problem in ‘Solution Space’.

PS: I found a very nice example of the side effects of this behavior here.

Twitter: discover what's new in your world.

Posted by Akash in Thursday, September 16, 2010

There is buzz about #new twitter in the web but I'm still waiting to experience the same. @twitter, please send me the invite ASAP. have a look below for what's in store for tweeple...

I don't wanna office on Monday...

Posted by Akash in Monday, September 6, 2010

I like Mondays as a normal weekday but my reasons of not liking it if I have to go to work:

Traffic: Seems people sleep with boots on Sunday night so that they can start at 6:00 am on a Monday morning for work. Anytime of the day, you will get busy roads, polluted atmosphere, honking, jams... blah!!! blah!!! blah!!!

Radio: Monday is like a nightmare for those who depend on their car radio on the way to office. Seems all the RJs go on rest after a tiring weekend to let housekeeping guys take control of the recording rooms. Pathetic songs…

Rains add-on: As if this is not enough, Indra dev is in full mood this season and promised India not to let a single soul remain sundrenched.

CWG 2010 Zindabad: A few years back, when Delhi grabbed the CWG 2010; Delhites thought that Delhi will be more beautiful and better place to live. But all those hopes are fading like ashes with current situation. Debris all around, incomplete work everywhere etc etc… Now Delhites are living in fear if the work would ever complete after CWG... (Delhi Metro* is an exception)

People eat and breathe work: On Mondays, everyone seems eating and breathing work. Whether it’s lunch table, a walk out, way going to work, way returning from work, new papers, RJs, tele-marketeers, mailbox, internet, Facebook, IM everywhere... Work related talks are part of air and enter your nostrils forcefully even if you are armored with a mask.

PS: The good thing is that you see fresh faces on Mondays :D

* I am a big fan of Delhi Metro and this is the only project which looks like fulfilling its promises and make travel better.

Tempus 2 an awesome slow motion video

Posted by Akash in Saturday, August 28, 2010

When I first saw this Video embedded in a bog, I thought of going through initial few second of it but when it started, I could not take my eyes off the screen and didn't think of anything else in those Se7en minutes. This is beautiful and entertaining and every shot is well thought and brilliantly executed. Please go through it and enjoy the world of creativity and design.