Buzz about Buzz

Most of us have already been addicted to social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter. Now we have one more distraction called as google buzz. Is its just another of many such applications or is it really adding value to users. Do we really need one more such application
Why did Google release it even before it was ready in market?
It is known that Google still wants to buy Twitter, and putting Buzz into Gmail might be enough of a threat to bring Twitter back on negotiations. Buzz did not launch in some Google Labs backwater. It is placed front and center in Gmail. Buzz is Google’s strongest effort yet to enter the stream. If Buzz can gain traction it would certainly help Google’s negotiating position with Twitter.
Independent of any pressure it may place on Twitter, Google needs to have its own realtime micro-messaging communications system. This system according to many is just a more efficient way to communicate than email for many types of messages so it makes sense to add it as a layer to Gmail: broadcast your public messages via Buzz, and keep private ones on email or chat, all from the same place.
The other reason Google needed to establish its own social stream pronto is that links passed through social sharing are beginning to rival search as a primary driver of traffic for many sites. Part of Google’s prowess stems from the fact that it is the largest referrer of traffic to many other Websites. It doesn’t want to lose that status to social sharing streams such as Facebook or Twitter. Already, Buzz is helping to boost sharing through Google Reader. While Google doesn’t benefit directly from that traffic (yet), simply knowing what links people are sharing and clicking on is valuable data which can help it improve its search results.

It's now been just a few weeks now since Google launched its Google Buzz social-sharing service and started rolling it out to Gmail users. Much of the coverage so far has not been very streamlined . It had a major privacy issue: the initial list of people you auto follow on Buzz is based on who you talk with most often in Gmail, and that list is public unless you choose to make it private.
To its credit, Google responded to complaints: It's made changes in Buzz to make it more obvious what information the service is making public, and to help you crank up the privacy settings. Users thought their contacts were being made public without their knowledge (in particular the lists of people they follow, and the people following them). They have resolved this issue
Google's explanation of the post-release changes points out that millions of people are now using Buzz...and maybe that's part of the issue. Rather than let a sizable pool of testers outside of Google try the service out before opening up the floodgates, it's gone straight to a full-blown launch. Sounds like the company didn't expect some of the confusion that's happening.
Highpoint of Buzz is that it has one of the nicest photo-album viewers .
Buzz lets users include thumbnails when sharing web links, making them more graphic and attractive (according to Google). One way in which Google differentiates its service from Twitter is that Google Buzz also lets users attach various degrees of access to posts, from completely public, to limited to hand-picked friends.
Quite fun is the Buzz map, which lets you see who is Buzzing in your neighbourhood - (albeit with security risks entailed). This is a good way of finding fellow Buzzers in your area.

People may not Twitter and Facebook anytime soon, but Buzz is full of potential and it can become the third major service of this sort. Given Google's history with social stuff, that's impressive in itself.
But multiple aspects of Buzz in its current form are frustrating. And quite frequently, the service leaves user confused.
Consider the following points:
If you're on a PC or Mac, Buzz is a feature within Gmail and therefore requires that you be a Gmail user to use all its features. But if you're on a mobile phone, it's a separate service, not a Gmail feature. Odd!
* Even in a desktop browser, the Google Public Profiles that are part of the privacy concerns over Buzz don't live in Buzz. Since the Profiles provide personal info that goes beyond Buzz-specific stuff. It is still confusing and ungainly -- if you're in Buzz and want to figure out who somebody is, you'll probably have to click out of Buzz and into his or her Profile...and then back into Buzz.
* There is a yellow strip alongside the left-hand side of Buzz posts for 24 hours which is not explained. One has to figure out that the posts to its right are new since the last time user checked Buzz.
Buzz-in-your-Gmail-inbox feature is also confusing. When someone comments on user’s posts, user gets a thread in his inbox, but it starts with a message that looks like it's coming from user himself, listing his own post . It's especially unhelpful when I'm looking at the message in his own iPhone's inbox, since the subject line is the pointless "Buzz from XYZ," and I have to open the message to see what message is. User can't figure out which post someone has commented on.

Vacation to Mama's (Uncle) Place

Summer vacations are round a corner with a very small business of annual exams to care of. With IPL as distraction all school going readers and mainly their parents will have tough time to chose between studies and watching people like yusuf pathan going beserk with six of very ball faced. Its a difficult choice for me as well. Most of us have made plans for vacations. Some must have planned at exotic foreign or domestic locations. Some must have planned for beaten domestic/abroad tracks. Some will plan after series of entrance exams. But i am sure there will be a plan. But amidst this holiday galore and economic freedom to achieve that, have we lost upon an institution called as "Mamacha gaon". Till say about Mid to late eighties (or say liberalization) most of my friends had single agenda to run across to relative's place : be it near or inside pune or be it out of town. Famous songs have been written to depict that excitement.
Its was mostly for a week or (in some cases month) that we use to stay at relatives place. Most of older families never lacked in numbers. We had cousins pouring in at same time and used to have gala time. My own uncle and grand parents used to stay in Dombivali. We children in Pune had great fascination for Mumbai and its suburbs. Reasons: Different life style, local trains , crowd, famous landmarks, food, and most importantly cricket (to play, watch on TV and discuss). Dombivali is a unique concotion: Open gutters, haphazard buildings, mosquitoes, climate ; seemingly not so good place. But due to people there, fun they used to have, it created a unique place. We have some great memories of my own 'Mama's Gaon'. we used to count our days before going to this place.
Have we lost out on this institution. Some people may not agree. But many will i suppose.
There can be many reasons.
Increase in Economic Power: Only way of bringing about change as expected during vacations, was to travel to place where there was no need to spend on hotels and food. Thus public transport was only mode. With high disposable incomes as a result of economy this constraint was removed. With international and domestic arirfares going south it became more fashionable to travel to holiday locations.
Nuclear families: With lack in relations either resulting out of less siblings and more complicated intra family relations, it became difficult to justify 3-4 guests for whole long duration.
Advent of private transport and better roads : With larger number of families having access to Cars, travelling to mumbai /konkan/western maharashtra became matter of hrs , so need to stay was removed from any vacation plans.
Alternate modes of occupation: Vacation camps, interest groups eat a major pie of vacations. I see some kids getting busier in vacations than during academic year. Its out of peer pressure or out of parental pressure for kids to excel in everything.
US migration: Atleast one member of a family has migrated to US . These people holiday mainly in December.
Reasons can be numerous, but i am sure, like many institutions in Society, this institution is on decline. Its worthwhile to revive this. There are many wonderful memories there.
Is anyone planning vacation to his or here Mamache gaon. Do comment.

We are the champions

Whats scenes we witnessed last week at Eden Gardens. Most office system administrators would have complained about heavy load on the network due to constant updates on cricinfo or cricket nirvana. Bhajji sealed the win , with last wicket in the penultimate over. Most of us had given up looking at comfort level Amla and Morkel had during the innings. But in cricket all that you need one deliver for a batsman to get out. Thats the beauty of the game. Ofcourse, the match situation and the bowler/captain 's previous strategies to set up a wicket do count. Such things make test cricket special than say ODI or T20 where all it matters is to hit boundaries. Ofcourse thats also an excitement but these scenes of great defense or holding up an end for 8 hrs like what Amla did is also fun for cricket lovers like me. How many of us would prefer a pizza or a burger over tasty but simple home food like dal roti or pithale bhakri. Once in a while for change maybe we can opt junk food. Test cricket is also enjoyable. For that matter every version has a room, be it ODI or T20 or test. What we need is a balance. People in US get crazy over the fact that a game can go on for 5 days and yet there can be no result. In commercial world, it makes no sense. Also its a national wastage of time resource. But still we love test cricket. We have generations growing over. I dont want to argue merit of other sports over cricket. Fact is cricket has caught our imagination and so be it. There is no harm to be ashamed. Does a US fan is ashamed of the fact that their domestic teams play world series for a sport which is only played in US?
And its special when we know that India will win test no 1 prize this year , after 7 years of Australian dominance since its inception. We flash back to the days of 80s and 90s. 80s more difficult as you had dominant teams like WI, Pakistan decimating us in India as well as abroad.
Even moderate teams like England or Australia used to compete hard in India and mostly defeated us abroad. We had some great players in Gavaskar, Kapil, vengsarkar and some fighters like mohinder, madanlal, kirmani. But we were at bottom of heirrarchy ahead of newborns srilanka and kiwis.
In came 90s with decline of WI and rise of Australia under AB. We were completely sold on to ODIs with advent of satelite TV and liberalization with sachin as national Icon. Our past successes under kapil, gavaskar in 83 and 85 really started this phenomenon. But we invented a formula in Home test to have tailor made tracks where even rajesh chauhan or a raju could have won us game singelhandedly. It was fortune to have world class operator like Kumble to make a kill. But when it came to overseas tour, 19 for 4 , or at best 50 for 2 , were the normal scorelines. The opening pairs were innumerable. then we used to witness master class from sachin in a losing cause. Some times a aggressive knock from azhar or kapil or VVS. All this happened till our horror show in Aus at the turn of millenium. Nadir was the lost home series against proteas, (famous later for other reasons outside than those in the stadiums).
Ganguly is the man who changed the things. We anticipated this dawn with sachin was made captain. But that did not work out. Some things never work out in life as we expect. He also never had team which had true experienced world class talent or clean motives if they had everything else. Ganguly, Kumble, VVS and Dravid were part of that team as well. But they were young , unproven and even their places were not granted.
With advent of Ganguly, we started winning overseas. We had batsmen who could face music of fast bowlers or swing bowling. We had good pacemen who could take wickets and spinners who could be effective even overseas . ganguly had an eye for talent and guts to back them. Thus we had talent of sehwag, yuvraj, bhajji, zaheer, dhoni (also not to forget irfan, balaji, nehra, parthiv) nurtured and matured. Its this core now one of the important cog in No1 test team today, in addition to the master class of Tendulkar, VVS, Dravid as well kumble and ganguly himself). This master class had work ethics, attitude, resolve, which rubbed off onto juniors and took Indian cricket out of fixing chaos, home paper tiger status, poor traveller baggage. But only thing this batch has to achieve is an ICC event trophy ( only one shared champions trophy to show). T20 world cup winning team did not have any respresentation from this class. The last standing survivor of this batch has last chance in 2011. And i think that will be a great tribute, swannsong and most romantic vision for all cricket lovers. Not only to SRT but also to all five. But in life we have seen that we can only hope.. I pray for that. Another person who owes tribute is John Wright who back Ganguly and his proteges. And also to board and selectors for backing Ganguly the prince of Calcutta (ofcourse they had some ulterior motive then under King of Calcutta)
Then we had a debacle in form of Chappell Dravid era. Players were taken out of comfort zones. Ofcourse on test arena it did not hamper much apart from defeat in pakistan, home series leveling against england and pakistan. Also then injuries started creeping up for Tendulkar. Sehwag who later emerged under Kumble after sydney test regaining his greatness was eclipsed in this period. Irfan faded, Zaheer has injury and fitness issue. Bhajji, was taken out of equation.
Worst suffered loss was in World cup 07. But few credits also must be given to Dravid for his conduct in chappel and post chappel era of his resignation, work ethics never changed. We had success for first time in south africa though we lost next two tests. We had win in WI. We best Srilanka at home. Post chappel we won in England.
In came Dhoni with T20 success, but it was resolve of Kumble who was overlooked all the while for captaincy which came handy amidst crisis in Australia. I think we could have much better results had he been given longer stint. Famous sydney test started another chapter of decline of australia coupled by retirements. We beat them at Perth. We then had few setbacks with SA leveling us at home and complete surrender to magic of murali and medis in Srilanka. But even then we had a Galle test and kanpur to fall back upon. Post IPL, we beat Aus at home, england at home, srilanka at home and NZ in NZ and Bangladesh in Bangladesh. Its been a steady rise along with decline of Australia, rise of South africa who beat australia in australia. So it resulted in a pack of Australia, India and SA at top with England just behind. Englands story was strange. They focussed only on ashes and inspite of having potential to be no 1 in mid naughties, they withered away. Also injuries to Freddie, jones, harminson and Vaughan never helped. Now they are rebuilding under strauss along with some south african talent. Pakistan withered away from a good team to average but unpredicatable. Srilanka has given rise to some great talent but their record overseas is not allowing to break in top 3. They cannot boast of even an occassional win in SA/Aus/India.
For india, we agree that we are not the best team now. We are yet to reach that level. We might be on top of rankings for now. But till we win series in SA and Australia there will be a debate.
Also future is difficult as we got small glimpse in nagpur where SA attacked new comers who replaces VVS and Dravid. Else we will fall like Australia did after retirement of Warne, Gilchrist and Mcgrath. We need a bowling allrounder badly. Someone at the level of kapil, flintoff, Pollock. That is the key as we cannot continue hoping to get 20 wickets with 4 bowlers, 6 batsmen and keeper. In case one bowler is off-color or injured then we are bound to lose. In india we can still manage as we have likes of sehwag and yuraj to turn arm over. But if we need to win in SA and Australia we need Irfan pathan badly to deliver. He seems to be only one in horizon as abhishek nayar and praveen kumar have to prove yet in bowling and batting respectively. Our opening pair in batting is fabulous. We need injury free zaheer and a steady partner at other end. Ishant and shreeshant have been erratic but in SA and Australia they have proven to be effective.
And we need few great debuts who will fill in great shoes of Dravid , SRT and VVS who will retire for sure in next 2-3 seasons for sure. We need Ganguly as selector to spot this talent..

My Name is Bush

"Hello All,
I might be the villian of many movies. I might be subject of many jokes some very nasty ,Ouch!!!
Some people have added that i conspired to have people killed so we could control oil.
Some rouges attacked my country like never before. They hit us hard. They psyched out my people. As their leader, what i did, i wiped them out of my country. I attacked two countries which could damage my country in future. I hit them where it hit most, inside logistics and financial support. In this process, i generated lot of ire. Some innocents would have beenprototyped but those killed also were innocents. I dont want any innocents to get killed in future.
And you can see that apart from one failed attempt, we do not have repeat of 9/11. At least i did my job..... defense rests..."
If i were a bollywood director , i would make a film with this theme; My Name is Bush.
I have not seen movie, neither i know the plot. There is a mention of US president.
Amidst all hype around, i felt a need to give sensible perpective. Controversy was needless.
One wonders if its all a ball game about any publicity is good publicity.
What started with Cricket ended up as political quadrangular series between Cong, SS, MNS and NCP. Needless
Basic point is do our politicians have guts to stand up as hero of my proposed film MNIB. can anyone take hard effective steps to stop repeat of 26/11. I know terrorism has no religion. But all religions need to introspect and remove elements which lead to prototyping. The ping pong of cause and effect should stop. Just because there is persecution which leads to terrorism. and because of terrorism there is persecution. some sane voices should be heard. It has to come from within a community. a leadership has to be developed which not treats communities like vote banks but really works for their good.
We in india need peace. We need prosperity. We need to work on real issues like infrastructure, water, power, cleanliness, civic amenties, remove corruption... we dont need to waste time , resources on protecting a film. We need to fight terrorism. all this is needless. Nevertheless i would not pay to watch any SRK movie as i dont like him as actor. But i would be curios now to see the content. Thats where a controversy helps a film. sometimes you believe if that could be a strategy. You can never know.
Pula had said in asami asami, "bembtya kumbhar ho, gadhvaas kami nahi".... For all us gadhavs... paise phenko tamaasha dekho..

Winter

Living in tropics has some advantages. You dont have to face extremes of weather. More or less you get warm climate throughout the years . Here in Pune, you have three months of monsoon magic which takes people like me who have wanderlust to the hills around Pune. Summers have their own charm. In pune, thankfully evenings are breezy making things bearable. Modern lifestyle has given us comforts of ACs at work and home to help. Summers meant holidays for us as kids and now for our kids. Dont forget mangoes, icecreams, and ofcourse now we end up filling coffers for vijay mallya. Thats a separate fun.
But whats the most enjoyable part of year is winter. Have experienced harsh winters at some Northern locations, thus know difficulties. There of course we had modern technology helping us.
But for outdoor man like me, its a pain.
In pune, at the onset of november you get 'pink cold' a marathi term translated. Its Gulabi thandi. meaning romantic chill. Sweaters are out and you see punekars taking morning walks etc. Evenings start setting it quickly. Blankets are out. Fans are put off. Then comes in month of year December. Nights get chilly. Thats a great time to drive out. It then starts becoming diffoculy to keep up Morning school timings. Add to that the party quotient and spirits to take care of the cold.
In the newspapers, temperature starts getting headlines. By reading the celcius ( we get confused by Faranheits as used in US, why US has to be different i dont know), we decide whether to wear a sweater or not. I remember a day in my 12th when mercury recorded 3.8 deg. I remember that night , it was unusually cold. Blankets were inadequate. so we took out moms sareers etc. Morning i had a tution class. The teacher himself suggested we go out to a tea shop and have hot tea to help. We used to sit on steel benches which has turned ice cold.
Then we read next day that it was 3.8 deg. a delay of 1 hr was declared by my teacher.
In my school, i had to cycle 3 kms. In those dec/jan days it used to be difficult on saturdays.
it was tough to hold cricket bat. (playing cricket was only incentive to go to school on saturdays as we could stay after school for an hr)
In kharagpur, winters were more severe. Getting up for 8 am lecture was tough. Daytime also we had cold. ofcourse we had holidays in dec and jan used to be a start of new semester. Academics were at ease and spring fest was what used to get the attention span. so overall good funfilled weekends.
In my service days, december meant time to be healthy with early morning jogs. Few winter visits to foreign countries made me taste the dreadful winters. But if one wants to enjoy snow, freezing cold, one can really enjoy.
In my entrepreuner life, December also meant Holidays in US meaning less work load. But plenty of client visits, thus eating outs, parties etc. January meant start of new hopes, aspirations etc.
Winters have been great througout...

N B S visit to Round Table 105 school

New Business School is a leading business school in Netherlands. Round Table India has an opportunity to interact with students and professors on regular basis. As a part of their curriculum, they have an international charity section. They decided to raise funds in Netherlands for worthy Round table india school projects. After a lot of scrutiny of worthy charities they zeroed on work of Round table in Building schools all around india. Within Round Table they had invited proposals from various table units. We at PRRT105 had proposed our permanent project Nerlekar School at Khadakwadi for this purpose. Based on shortlisting, our project was one of the three projects in area they selected. As a part of process they arrived in Pune for cultural understanding as well as school visits. There were 12 students and Prof Rammers who accompanied them.They attended Antarnad program by Art of Living where 2000 vocalists performed. They had industrial visits to Tata Motors and Volkswagen. They enjoyed stay in families and also had few social parties hosted by tablers.
On saturday 16th, we took them to our school at Khadakwadi. They were visiting rural area for first time. They realizes stark difference in India which parties in city and Bharat which lives in villages. They were really moved when they were informed about economic status of students and hardships they face. They were presented to a musical welcome and cutural show which they throroughly enjoyed. They also saw self defense demonstration by girls. They were introdued to national integration theme songs. They really enjoyed it.
They understood school building construction plan. They realised that there was no library so they decided to help that cause. They had already committed 3500 Euros funding for the building. In addition they donated cricket sets to the school. They were interested to see kitchen where midday meal is served.
The highlight of event was all NBS students mobbed by school children from villages for autographs and photos. It was touching sight. They mixed with children nicely while some even dancing with them.
Really a satisfying experience for all tablers of 105...

Energy Crisis

India is making a lot of progress with more new billionaires being minted every month. The focus on software industry sometimes takes away from what are more pertinent problems- Water and Power. Mumbai faces worst water crisis in current years. Similarly, the business of electricity invertors is booming. It is no wonder that VCs have identified water and energy as the mega opportunities for the next few decades.

The crunch of energy has led Indian strategists to believe that the only solution to India's power problems is Nuclear Power as a result we signed the Nuclear Deal to import fuel and technology. Power problems are faced by all developing nations and United States of America too went through such a crisis in the 70's. As a result of it, presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter promoted the use of renewable sources of energy like solar power and also increased the mileage standards for the automobiles from 13.5 miles per gallon to 27.5 miles per gallon. This helped to create a global oil glut during mid 1980's. But as things eased off, the focus was shifted. When Ronald Regan became the president, he let the tax incentives lapse for the Solar Energy Research Institute and stripped of the solar panels in the white house installed there at the time of Jimmy Carter. He also reduced the mileage standards to 26 miles per gallon.Looking at India's energy model, we are adopting a model, quite similar to US model. Looking at successful energy models, Denmark's model is the most inspiring. Denmark also faced an energy crunch in the 80's and as its power demands grew, it had to look for alternative sources of energy. At that time, 99% of Denmark's energy requirements were met by the Middle East oil. To change that scenario, the government decided to go against nuclear, and went ahead with the scheme of levying high taxes. Japan too adopted such an approach. In Japan there is higher tax on bigger vehicles and the taxes on oil per gallon are also very high. In Denmark, to reduce electricity consumption, a CO2 tax was introduced. When the consumers saw a CO2 tax in their bills, they automatically resorted to an energy conservation approach. You might think that Denmark's economy would have slowed down. No, it has risen by about 70% since 1981 and there is only about 2% of unemployment there.The model of nuclear powered energy model has also been successful and countries like France get 78% of their electricity requirements from nuclear energy. But the atomic path has had its fare share of negative effects. The two major accidents that have happened in the nuclear era has been that of Chernobyl in Russia in 1986 and the partial meltdown of core at three mile island in 1979. So it is a very risky proposition. But since now to power our economy forward have decided to follow a high energy print, we could be in for tough times ahead, in terms of our oil consumption. Being an agricultural nation we could have come up with a more ingenious solution, similar to that followed by Brazil, when it started a national program to produce ethanol from sugarcane. Today, between the domestic oil production and the ethanol industry it does not need to import oil. India today is highly depended on oil. Now that global oil prices have gone down, the government is thinking to reduce the price of petrol and diesel, rather than helping out the oil companies to recover their losses incurred during the last few years. Right now there seems to be a gloomy prognosis for our economic recovery, which is heavily dependent on energy and power.
Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Nobel-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), said India had to curb its high-polluting coal consumption in the near future or risk burning through its reserves. "There's going to be a major constraint in supply of coal and if we don't bring about a shift to a more sustainable pattern of energy consumption and supply India is going to face a major crisis," he told reporters in New Delhi. He added that India was projected to import 750 million tonnes of oil and 1.4 billion tonnes of coal a year by 2031 and 2032. "We have already become major coal importers and it is a myth to believe that India has unlimited mineable quantities of coal and that we can use as much as we want," Indian-born Pachauri said. According to the International Energy Agency, more than half of the world's energy demands by 2030 will come from India and its fellow emerging economic powerhouse China. Already among the world's top 10 oil importers, India is expected to become the world's fourth-largest by 2025, according to US government data. The Ministry of Coal projected India's coal imports for 2008-2009 to be around 58 million tonnes. Coal currently provides just under 55 percent of the country's massive electricity needs, resulting in a huge carbon footprint on account of the country's 1.2 billion population. Pachauri urged India to improve energy efficiency and make "a very rapid move" to use more renewable sources of energy.

While the state is facing power shortage and with no sustainable solution visible in the near future, experts feel that renewable energy resources could be highly effective in solving problem
Though solar energy, if made grid specific, can do wonders in solving the energy crisis of the state, lack of political will-power is the biggest hurdle in effective propagation and subsequent use to generate electricity.
According to an expert on renewable energy resources, "Solar energy is the ultimate solution. The wind sector is progressing fast and as of today, India is generating 7,400 MW of electricity through wind. Solar photovoltaic is lagging behind due to some hurdles."
Solar thermal is already well accepted in the country. Solar dryers, water heaters have directly contributed in conservation of electricity. But due to some technological limitations solar photovoltaic has failed to gain necessary popularity.

3 Idiots and Me

Once upon a time everyone amongst us was in college. We had great dreams, some unique vision about our life. We went into the world from the college with great enthusiasm. We made random decisions which after 10-15 years have made us reach where we are now. Life has taught us some hard lessons; life has been very generous sometimes. Life has given some really beautiful moments and some very challenging. But we have enjoyed the journey. But again college days really were the best days of life. Why all this thoughts?
Reason: I happened to come across a cult movie released very recently 3 Idiots. In the movie the main three (or 4 if you consider the comedian colleague who is modeled on to most of us who are in rat race) protagonists meet 10 years after graduation. Movie took me back to those days. I am of the opinion that each one should have at least a year of hostel life to make their education complete. It invokes bonding which we have seen that run through lifetimes. We were also subject to intense academic pressures but also enjoyed a life secluded from world (we being stationed in remote town as per Jawaharlal’s Nehru’s vision of IITs). We had our friends, hostel mates, seniors, juniors as a part of extended families. Thankfully in those time internet was just newly launched and only computer exposure was in labs. We had many extra curricular activities. We enjoyed a lot and suffered a lot through hardships like lack of basic amenities like toilet, water. We had to eat refugee camp food etc. But we then enjoyed it. It taught us perspective. Education was good: definitely it taught us to manage things in life irrespective of whether you know the subject or not. Some topics really made us interested to know the subject. That’s not what is called excellence but effectiveness. That’s what makes even elite Indian institutes to churn out good managers, good performers but very few original scientists or innovators. They have to go out of Indian systems to enable them with those skills. But mere mortals like me are happy to be part of this great Indian dream. Our vision was to create new Infosys but not Google…
Coming back to Movie review, it’s a well made movie. It runs through cliché and predictability why typifies Bollywood. But it excels in performances and sheer new idea of story. It tries to address a problem but that is hardly any novelty. We already knew that we cannot create Nobel laureates within IITs. It has general appeal as it touches each one of us and taking back to our college days. Each one of us had faced academic, family pressures. Each one of us had those peculiar professors. Good marketing, presence of Aamir khan, great directorial touches has made it cult movie like sholay, ddlj. Movies has some really funny moments: Virus speech, Chatur speech, induction motor start, many more.. Movie also sends a good message that what matters is journey and not the end. Success will follow you pants down if you enjoy your journey.

There is hue and cry about the fact that movie glorifies ragging and also has resulted in few suicides. I think its bit too harsh on the movie. I agree movies do inspire reaction in real life from immature audience but that’s a problem for all movies as a media form of expression. It’s our value system that is at fault. There are far many catalysts than movies which influence us.
For those who have seen engineering and hostel life from inside will find it more appealing. Movie will surely be the reflection of own experiences. That’s what makes this movie more effective.