Just like any other kid who has grown up in Chennai I am a part of the innumerous "fans" of Thalaivar. Though I may not belong to those group of people who do the "palabhishekam" and "Rupeemala's" for him , the number of times I have watched every movie of his cannot be counted on my fingers. My mother is still amazed at how I do not tire from watching their repeats on the Saturday 1'0 clock slots. I still remember the adrenaling pumping for each of those dialogues I heard during the second day screening of Sivaji.There were fathers of teenagers sitting around me outshouting their sons , that is the excitement created when Thailavar delivers his punchline.

Despite all his fan following and demi-god status in South India , he is just a laughing stock in the north. The people are amazed at how Rajnikanth does not obey the laws of physics and fail to accept the fact that none of his stunts are graphic-animated, all of it is true - he does not use a stunt double- that is what all of us believe and that is what makes the movie a success down south. We are all believers :).To just give you a sample of what non-believers make out of a Superstar movie , please read this , a blog post by Anuradha Sengupta, a CNN-IBN journalist. The post recieved a response of a meagre 1798 comments to date many of which included death threats and denouncing her skills, all for writing a few lines about her views on the Superstar's latest movie-Sivaji. The beauty of the movie is lost when she understands the dialogue as : Pigs come in herds, lion comes single ; while sitting in a Mumbai theatre. For the same line, Satyam( the theatre) literally vibrated from the audience response. Down south , it is imbibed in our culture to watch a Rajni movie and cheer for every line, hate the villain, buy first show tickets for whooping prices of upto 1500 to display our love for the Man .

More than everything else, a Rajni movie takes cinemagoers to a level never seen before. For which other actor, would producers ever be ready to invest the staggering amount of Rs 80 crores without thinking twice.Everything moves to a new level when the stakes are on Rajni- the music, the camera work, the art , nothing goes unattended. Such is the perfection levels a Thaliavar movie delivers. No other actor in the Indian cinema industry can command such respect, his worst flop gave him Rs 25 crores if I am not wrong ( a self-driven spiritual based venture Baba ) . For ages altogether he has reigned the movie industry down south and of late has started gaining good ground in the lands above too. The distributors of "The Pirates of the Carribean : At the world's end " advanced their Indian release date fearing the Rajni onslaught awaiting in the form of Sivaji. A fact that is well known is that Sivaji's parking costs in Mumbai and Delhi earned more than the total collection of the Bacchan family starrer Jhoom Barabar Jhoom .


Pages altogether can be written , and has most recently been released - "The Name is Rajnikanth" by Gayathri Shreekanth which I am sure is by far the bestseller in lands where Tamil is spoken. We all await with bated breath ,the auspicious moment to see the Thalaivar on big screen for the next time.

To end with, despite all the hype and hoopla surrounding the new Rajni movies, my all time favourite still is ThilluMullu, whats yours ?

For all those who use Google as their default search engine , Google is doing its bit to save energy, please jump onto the bandwagon if you haven't already done it. Taking into account the fact the energy that is spent by an average computer every time the page is opened, an alternate version has been created , which uses the colour black and hence consumes lesser energy.So, from the next time you want to search for something on the internet, please use this link and do your bit to "conserve" energy .

It is not exactly as the title suggests , there is no prom night on the campus of BITS Pilani, but this is probably the closest people might ever to get to the American equivalent , which is for students passing out of high school. But in the "Indian" scheme of things it would even be a disaster to consider anything beyond a school-organised farewell, where most girls try their hand at the sari for the first time .

The event that I am talking would be the momentous occasion - Batch Snaps . This is the time of the year when all 3rd yearites on campus, spend a lot of time trying to look civilized, change their appearance to look good on those "to be preserved for life" snaps and go around begging for formal attire. Once people start pouring into "Skylawns" at the appointed time, it resembles a mela ground with the only things missing being a merry go round and the ferris wheel. A few crushes are revealed and the equivalent of asking anybody out for a dance would be to take a snap with them to always remember our crush during college. We do have our own set of enterprising people who prefer to turn up for this occasion in very "high spirits". Then there is the discrimination based on physical features - height order which determines where you stand in this very important snap . Once, that is done there has to be a detailed analysis to make sure that everybody is seen from every angle , so in all around 45 minutes in front of the lenses and under the mercy of Lord Surya. The show goes on till everybody has taken a snap with whomsoever they know on campus or till the charge in your battery run out ( of course ,now it is possible that you could now contract out your snaps to the Department of Photography on campus, who would ensure that these special moments are never forgotten due to the want of a camera ). Pappuji thrives on the treats that are being thrown around, though I do have no idea of how he keeps track of who has ordered what single handedly on such a hectic day.

The funda behind this idea is that like every other thing, BITS offers a unique experience of college life. This semester is the last 5 months that the entire batch of soon-to-be engineers will be on campus together with us taking shifts in doing an internship for one semester in our final year. The college authorities politely remind us through this process that we are nearing the end of our stay here and might not be around with many of our friends . In many cases this semester maybe the last time we even meet them before we diverge off to pursue our own future . So, yes indeed this is an occasion to celebrate, get ready for and enjoy a few hours before you get back into your room and realize in order to pass out, you still need to wait for another year and give the test the next day as well :).

P.S:
Dedications to all my batchmates and to the institute which has given me my current identity - 2005A4PS340.

Credits :
Vikram Chari insists that it be mentioned that he is enterprising person being referred to in the post.

Blogging is a phenomenon for every man to air his views on anything under the sky. Something I have been considering : Will I ever be penalised for the contents in my blog ? Will my views on the situation in the institution I study catch the eye of an authority and land me into trouble ? Topping the list of my worries are the fact whether corporates care to check your blog to analyse the aptitude of their prospective employee .

I can never know whether employers will go to such extents of wasting available human resources.Though, that will be a good source of employment for the loads of unemployed in the nation. But, am I not allowed to express my views on anything without being put under heavy scrutiny ? Wasn't that freedom among the primary reasons for the success of blogs ? Aren't the corporates intruding on my privacy by doing so ? On the contrary, if I do have complaints against being scrutinised why should I make my views public in the first place ? As long as I crave for readership on the blog, I should be ready to put myself under the microscope.

This in its entirety becomes a simple situation first described by Joseph Heller in a book of the same name - Catch 22.

Journalism has been a profession I admire since my childhood. What first sparked off my interest was this serial aired on good old Doordarshan - " Reporter" where Shekar Suman played the title role. This made me think of journalists as the guys who used to always search for the truth, reveal corruption and help the common man. With time I realised that much of it was made up, but still they were bound to get the correct news to people which would otherwise remain hidden from them.

From what I observed in the holidays, it seems to have taken a totally new and alarming dimension.There is no longer a human touch, nor does there seem to be the time to assert the truth before going ahead with the news. Today it just is a rush to get out first with the news and create a controversy whenever possible.With television news channels popping up everday, the media really has its presence everywhere. But the quality of journalists seem to have gone down really. I could find guys who would not string a few words together properly questioning the nations leaders about their stands on various issues. I seem to be having more knowledge than people hosting the sports sections of various news channels. ( Btw, all the sports shows seem to be handled by women, are there no Alpha Males in the journalism sector !! )

Interviews are just turning out to be fights. Karan Thapar on being interviewed said this " When Kapil Dev started crying on my show, I realised he should not stop, for if he does it would be extremely bad for the show. All that I wanted to do was make sure his tears did not stop, for there are two things that really sell on T.V- tears and children ". I do like the man for his unnerving style of conducting interviews, but he does go overboard at times and this quote from him just portrays the attitude of today's mediapersons.

Two issues which bought out the worst of news channels in these holidays :
1. The Benazir Bhutto Assasination: A private news channel manages to get hold of her husband, Asif Aii Zardari the day after her killing and the first question they ask him is Who do you think will lead the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) in the upcoming elections? All that the man could say was that he had not yet put his wife's body to rest and that was the only issue he was concerned about at that point of time ( Although, he later went on to take the helm is a different issue ) . And yes, what does the Indian media gain by spending hours on the discussion of Prevez Musharaff's regime and how is it going to affect his governing policy ??

2. The " Mumbai Molestation" : An incident which highlited the insecurity in the city of Mumbai had to be given prime importance. But that was not to be done by getting into the privacy of two victims. The victim's reply to television news channels :" I never thought that this would become such a big issue. We did not want to take it up seriously as it would only lead to troubles in our lives " . Shouldn't the journalists have left this news alone and let those two women live in peace, rather than reminding them of the horrors that they had to go through ?

Truly a pity that journalism has come down to such levels. But a few standouts still remain - Nirupama Swaminathan's ( I think I got the name correct ) first hand "politically correct" account of the Bhutto assasination despite being a few feet away from the spot and Rajaraman's bold questioning of the "morally justified " victorious Australian Captain Ricky Ponting.

Returning to my hostel room after spending the semester vacations has finally made me to come up with a new post on my blog. At the end of every semester I am eager to get back home , to the place where my heart is , where my friends are and where I like to spend my time. But am I really heading back to " home" , the same place that I left before joining college ?

Every time I get back home, I am surprised by the number of changes that have taken place . I know many friends who left from one home, which had changed through the span of time that they had spent here and had to go to a new home. Of course getting back to your parents and staying with them is something each one of us will look forward to. But the change in the other terms is simply drastic. I find myself out of place. I am no longer a part of the regular schedule of some of my old friends. I have nothing much to speak about to people whom I used to speak endlessly a few years back. School get-togethers no longer attract any response. I ended up spending most of the last holidays alone at home , with nothing much to do but read books ( which I frankly do enjoy a lot, but did not want to spend my entire vacations doing that ).Everybody seems to have moved on a lot , I seem to be a bit slow at the same thing.

On the contrary, my hostel room - the place that I leave to reach "home" seems to be much more of a comfortable place in many terms . I am used to most of things around here. Friends are around, there are things to be done and life seems to be much more interesting here. Irrespective of great amount of cribbing that most of us do about the acads, mess food and what not, we do end up living here for nearly 8 out of 12 months in a year for 4 years and we get used to the place.

It is again bound to shift once we move on to the next step in our life- career or education or whatever maybe our plans . It is just a taste of what we are going to face soon ," home" will keep changing , likes and dislikes will keep changing, friends will keep changing and we too will keep changing. Although Life will move on , without any change .