Ever since I was a kid, I’ve been a big fan of action movies. After we got our VCP, I remember going up to the videotape rental store close to home every Saturday evening and asking for “some fighting movie”. I didn’t care at all for the story or the lack of  it in any movie I saw. All I cared about was for “action”. After I had whetted my initial appetite for “fighting movies” by watching a bunch of Shankarnag action flicks (CBI Shankar, the Sangliana movies, etc.) my father started bringing home James Bond movies. I remember watching You Only Live Twice and Moonraker back then. I remember watching The Spy Who Loved Me, too, but there was a problem with the tape so I wasn’t able to watch it fully.

Coming back to Darshan and Boss, the turn-off about the fight scene was that it was an unbelievable “brute force” scene. The hero, a rather muscular sort of guy, singlehandedly beats up a whole bunch of bad guys. And it’s not even in the traditional form where the bad guys come one by one. They all come together and attack him and he repels them all simultaneously by means of sheer superhuman muscular strength. There was absolutely no fun in watching it. It was a similar story with the Puneet Rajkumar starrer Jackie, which I saw on TV last weekend. Though it was a rather well-made movie with a nice (and unusual) storyline, it again suffered from the problem of a superhuman hero who would overpower bad guys by means of muscular strength.

Earlier today I happened to watch the “Indian James Bond movie” Goadalli CID 999 starring Dr. Rajkumar. A rather poor attempt to make a “James Bond style” movie in Kannada, with a rather lame plot and underground hideouts involving automatic doors and the likes. The redeeming feature of the movie, though, was the fight scenes, especially the ones with Narasimharaju (who plays CID 888, 999′s sidekick). Clearly recognizing that this fellow didn’t have any means of brawn to beat up the bad guys, the fight scenes were “elegant”, where the good guy uses his brain rather than muscular strength in order to overpower the villains. So you have a gun that fires ten seconds after the trigger is pulled, and you have the good guy getting the bad guys to shoot each other, and things like that. It was a joy to watch.

The unfortunate trend in recent Kannada movies, though, is to make a superpower hero who simply beats the bad guys, which completely takes the joy out of fight scenes. That clever movement to deflect a punch, the use of easily available props to get away from the bad guys, setting bad guys against each other, stuff like this is completely missing from these movies. One reason could be that directors are not imaginative enough to put more care into fight scenes to make them enjoyable (though this is doubtful given that the general quality of Kannada movies in the last 5 years is better than that of earlier movies). The other reason has to do with the actors who play these roles. Perhaps they want to build up a superhero kind of image among their fans, one in which they can do no wrong and are supremely powerful. And a scene where they have to rely more on their intelligence and trickery to win a fight might go against this kind of an image they want to cultivate. Whatever it is, it only goes to remove entertainment value from a fight which could have been a joy to watch.

My all time favourite movie fight scene is from the “original” Don, featuring Amitabh Bachchan. The centre of attraction in this scene is this little red diary which contains all the information about the bad guys, and the good and bad guys are fighting for it. In the mix are a bunch of kids, the heroine, a paralyzed stuntman and of course the hero. The good guys play “monkey” with the diary, and in the process beat up the bad guys. It is an absolute joy to watch and for me that was the high point of the movie. Sadly, they don’t make movies like that any more.

Bob: Damn, I’ve to go to Eve’s party tonight

Alice: Oh, but I thought you actually wanted to go?

Bob: Nope, I have other things to do and it’s inconvenient to go. But if I don’t go, Eve will get hurt.

Alice: I remember you saying the same thing the last time Eve invited you for a party.

Bob: That’s true, but I really care about Eve and don’t want to hurt her.

Alice: Tell me, have you ever told Eve that you don’t particularly enjoy her parties?

Bob: Nope, she would get hurt if I said that.

Alice: So you’ve never told her that you don’t enjoy it. And you’ve always accepted her invitations.

Bob: That’s true.

Alice: So how should Eve know that these parties are inconvenient for you? If she were to somehow get to know, maybe next time she may not invite you, and spare you the trouble of boring yourself at her party.

Bob: But she would get hurt if she were to somehow find out that I don’t enjoy her parties!

Alice: That is your problem, then. You don’t have any right to crib about her parties!

Almost ten years back. My thread ceremony (upanayanam/brahmopadesham/munji). The priest arrives at the hall at eight o’clock, a full thirty minutes late. “My colleagues are coming at 12:30″, explains my father, “and we should serve lunch by that time. I don’t care what shortcuts you use but make sure we can serve lunch then”. Maybe munji rituals aren’t that compressable after all. Come 12:30, there were still quite a few procedures to go. Lunch was served while the ceremony continued to go on.

Religious functions are notorious for serving lunch late, and the religious purpose of the function is often used as an excuse to do so. I fully support religious freedom, and fully appreciate people’s choice to perform whatever ceremonies that they want. Keeping guests waiting while you do that and delaying their lunch, however, I think is gross disrespect for the guests’ time. And the sad thing is that religion is usually given as an excuse for this disrespect of time.

When you bring religion into a debate, it sometimes becomes tough to pursue a rational debate. In religious functions, if you were to make even the smallest noises about the timing of lunch, you are accused of being inconsiderate, an ingrate, and for having come there only for the food (I don’t know if the last mentioned is actually a crime). It is disrespectful to leave from such functions unless you’ve eaten, and so you are trapped into cancelling other appointments, and staying on until they actually decide to take pity and serve lunch.

I’ve brought up this topic in family forums a few times, and each time I’ve been chided for making such a big issue of something trivial. I don’t, however, understand how lunch is a trivial issue. And how disrespect for people’s time is a trivial issue. I have decided that the next time I attend one such religious function, where there is potential for the hosts to waste guests’ time by serving food inordinately late, I’ll take along a framed printout of Leigh Hunt’s Abou Ben Adhem. And tell them that all their prayers and respect to god will have no effect unless they also respect their fellow men.

My wife comes from a different kind of family. They are religious but can be described as being more “secular” (her name (Priyanka) might suggest to you their political leanings). So she grew up doing poojas and keeping vratas on all sorts of random Hindu festivals, but also blowing candles on her birthday and calling up “Santa” and getting Christmas presents also. Yeah, you look for compatibility on several axes when you’re searching for a long-term gene-propagating partner, but political leanings are usually low down on that compatibility list.

Last year, I totally and completely failed to appreciate her celebration of Christmas, instead treating it as yet another random holiday, before and after which nobody did anything at work. I failed to give her any gifts, or organize any “christmas events” for her. Yeah, the in-laws came over, we had set up this little crib based on dolls we’d purchased in Sri Lanka on our honeymoon and all that (unfortunately we misplaced that set, else we’d've displayed it as part of Dasara too, this year), but I must admit I’d failed to “celebrate” the festival. And in my defence, it was never a festival that I had celebrated, so “forgot” was actually a valid excuse.

So this year we decided to have a Christmas party at home. Basically called a few friends over, most of whom responded with astonishment (thanks to my RSS legacy), but were kind enough to land up. And once again we searched hard and found that “crib set” and set it up. And started playing Christmas carols, until I got bored and switched the music to Black Sabbath, which nobody really minded. Much alcohol was consumed (especially wine, given the Christmas spirit), plum cake was had and Chinese food ordered in.

In the intervening years I’ve found myself becoming more and more socially liberal. It probably started when I moved to IIMB; I think that was the time I stopped being judgmental of people based on their backgrounds, and stuff. That was the time when I started respecting individual rights, and those leanings got stronger as I slowly opened up, joined a libertarian-leaning mailing list, and realized that this was actually what I (as a person, irrespective of my background) was about.

On a foreign vacation earlier this year, thanks in part both to the lack of interesting vegetarian options and the availability of fairly succulent-looking meat, I stopped being vegetarian. A few months after that I participated in a “Ramzan meat walk” (though I didn’t consume much meat during the walk, since a lot of it was ‘hardcore’). I find it silly now that I’d actually joined a group of hostel-mates that campaigned for a “vegetarian table” at the hostel mess because the non-veg food “looked too gross”. But when someone starts singing “Silent Night”, I only remember that variation that a chaddi dost and I had come up which changes the song’s lyrics in a way that it ends with “and two souls become three”.

Given a chance, if I were to register as a voter and there were elections tomorrow, I might still vote for the BJP, following family tradition, but that would be more in line with economic thought and lack of options rather than my conservative background. I oppose the forced 11pm shutdown of Bangalore pubs, but don’t care about it enough to join protests on that front. If the government subsidizes Haj and Kailas Mansarovar Yatras, I demand that I get funding to attend the Pastafarian conference in Texas. And I still intend to open my autobiography (whenever I write it) with the lines “As Babri Masjid came crashing down, I celebrated. It was my tenth birthday and we had a party at home … “.

So, should I keep my old Size 36 trousers, when my waist size has stabilized at a comfortable 34 for over two years now? The argument in favour is that given my eating habits and inconsistent fitness regimen, there might come a time sooner or later when I might actually need those 36 size clothes, and I’ll be spared of a shopping spree then. The counter (this is what the wife advocates) is that by giving away my Size 36 clothes now, I’ll make it that much costlier for myself (leave aside the health concerns of becoming fat) to become fat, and that will keep me more interested in remaining thin.

I took an intermediate decision today. I held on to a couple of large trousers which I used to really like, and gave away the rest. So that has partly eased the space constraints in my wardrobe, while still retaining a small number of “big” clothes. But given the frequency with which we undertake clean-up drives at home, I never know when the next time will be when I’ll have to make the decision about holding on to these loose pants. So what do you suggest?

That’s all there is to this. It’s quite a simple concept. Unfortunately, it lacks wider appeal, hence this appeal to you to increase its appeal. Be careful, though, sometimes if you say “I’m going to give XXX a ticket”, there is a good chance that people might think it’s insulting, or disrespectful, or that you’re being too arrogant. But yes, otherwise, I think the ticket is a rocking concept.

PS: I’m beginning to see some sketches of a movie script in here. If you want to further develop it, contact me.

I was studying Computer Science at IIT Madras, and was in my final year of the course. Most of the class wanted to go to the US to do their masters, and along came a rumour (possibly substantiated given how universities in America work) that membership of elite clubs such as MENSA was a good bullet point that might enable admission, and offers of aid. Most of my classmates had signed up enthusiastically. The rumour had misled me, in the sense that I had assumed there was little to the exam apart from a bullet point for foreign apps, and had stayed away.

It was a Saturday, and the entrance test was going to happen over three sessions. MENSA entrance is one of those tests where they “recycle” question papers – the papers are taken back at the end of the test, and given out to the next batch. The nature of questions allows them to do this – they are mostly pattern recognition, and are quite hard to “describe” in the absence of the question paper. Sometimes someone else who took the test prior to you would have made marks on the question paper, but it is best you disregard them, for you never know how well they’ve done.

Friends who had written the test in the first batch told me that it was a tough exam. That it was all about pattern recognition and stuff. They also mentioned that for the third session, seats weren’t filled up and they were still taking on-the-spot registrations. I think the entrance fee was a hundred bucks or so, and I made a spur of the moment decision to write the test.

IIT was a hard time for me. For most of my time there, my confidence was at an all-time low. Except for one term, I never did well in academics. Extra curricular activities also floundered, and I would find myself wasting phenomenal amounts of time. I had developed a fear that I wasn’t good enough, and it was feeding onto itself and making things worse. Given my indifferent performances both in class and outside, my peers, too, didn’t have too much respect for me (IIT is strictly meritocratic that way, I must tell you), and that only contributed to my self-doubt. Given that I was going to graduate soon, I knew I needed a stimulus to break out of my rut, and so far hadn’t figured a way out.

MENSA, the exam that I had enrolled for in the last minute, unexpectedly proved to provide the stimulus. It turned out that in my entire Computer Science class (most of whom were double digit rankers in the IIT-JEE, and half of whom had better CGPAs than me), I was the only person to have qualified the MENSA test. I remember a couple of others coming close. Most, including a number of the top rankers in class, hadn’t even come close to qualifying. If my confidence levels were higher earlier, I might have yelled out a “howzzat”. In the event, I didn’t require it, since the success in the exam was enough of a stimulus for me to do well in CAT, which followed, and generally break out of the rut.

In the event, I ended up not joining MENSA. I got a letter asking me to come for a welcome party, where I had to pay a fee to become a lifetime member of MENSA Chennai. I knew I was going to move out of Chennai in about three months’ time, and I thought it would be a waste to become a life member of the Chennai chapter. I remember writing to the Bangalore chapter after I moved back, but the responses were vague, and I never joined. That letter from MENSA which declares my success in the examination, though, sits proudly in my “certificates folder”. And for some three years hence, the fact that I had cracked the MENSA entrance test had adorned my resume.

I’ve never been an “RG” (IIT term for someone who doesn’t hesitate to pull others back in order to get ahead of them), but in this one situation, I had taken great pleasure in my classmates’ failure to qualify for MENSA. For a good reason, I think, since that was responsible in setting me off on a successful run that would last close to two years.

Liverpool, of late, however, have played differently. Their Number Ten (figuratively, since he wears seven on his back) Luis Suarez is the one usually left alone upfront when the team is defending, while the number Nine Andy Carroll tracks back to help out in defence.

The logic of this policy is two-fold. One, an additional big player coming back to defend means greater ability to win defensive headers within the box (think of it in terms of winning rebounds in basketball). Secondly, Liverpool under Dalglish have preferred a pass-the-ball-out-of-defence method rather than clearances. This means that when the offence breaks and a counterattack is to be launched, the ball is more likely to be played along the ground to the forward rather than up in the air. And Suarez is the more likely of the pair of forwards more likely to make use of that.

So what is the concept behind the conventional wisdom of leaving Nine upfront with Ten dropping back into defence? The typical strategy in English football is to clear the ball out of defence rather than passing it out, and the big number nine is well positioned to receive it upfront. The big nines usually also have the ability to ‘hold up’ the ball, to allow his team-mates to join him. The number ten, being quick, is able to quickly join the number nine in attack.

The other factor behind leaving the number nine upfront is that they are usually one-dimensional players, with the only abilities being to win headers and hold up the ball. They are either no good in defence, or have big strikers’ egos that prevents from joining defence effectively. Number tens, on the other hand are more skilled all-round and are more likely to come of use in defence.

In this sense, Carroll is not bad at defence, and more importantly he is young and out of form, which makes it easy for Dalglish to force him to track back while defending. So far, it seems to be working.

In the course of a rather elaborate shower this morning, I started thinking about the global economic crisis. I thought of the crisis of 2008. I thought about the Arab countries where there is revolution. And I thought about Greece. And I began to wonder how such events had been handled in the past.

A long time ago, most parts of the world were ruled by kings. People assumed kings had divine right to rule, and they rather gladly parted with a big part of their income as taxes. These taxes would go into the treasury, and be used to finance, among other things the administration of the kingdom. Those were times of great wars and battles, and hence it was important to keep a ready army, and the treasury also financed that.

The best thing about being a king was that you weren’t really questioned about your spending, and thus kings could also spend a substantial amount from the taxes they collected on themselves. On living a life of opulence, keeping several wives or concubines while large parts of the population went without any, on building monuments to their fathers, their forefathers and to themselves. If Behen Mayawati were a queen, for example, nobody would’ve dared to question her expenses on erecting statues of herself.

This lack of accountability did have an up-shot, though. The large surpluses that were generated for the royal treasury by means of squeezing every last ounce of blood from the subjects (who willingly gave it, remember) meant that kings could invest on art and architecture. Thus, palaces funded artists and musicians. Grand buildings and mausoleums and temples were built, and intricately decorated, the results of which are being seen today in terms of increased revenues from tourism. Sometimes, though, the kings would over-reach and spend much more than their kingdoms could possibly finance. What would happen then?

At first, there would be an attempt to increase taxes. For a while, people, still in the belief that kings were gods, would give in. And then they would begin to protest. And refuse to pay further taxes. In effect, they would go on protests ‘against austerity measures’. In the light of these protests, the king would need greater use of his army in order to consolidate his power. But his treasury would be dwindling.

With the army over-worked, but the kingdom’s finances tight thanks to a depleting treasury, dissent would start to brew in the army. Getting wind of this, a neighbouring king would see an opportunity. Soldiers would be bribed, though one cannot really call it that, tempted with higher salaries backed by a stronger treasury in order to change allegiances. And the neighbouring king would declare war.

The beleaguered king would now come under pressure both internally and externally. He would not be able to keep up the fight for long. The war would soon be lost and the king would either be dead or captured. And the people would gladly accept the new king as their new god, and start paying taxes to him.

The unfortunate thing about this parallel now is that there is now no neighbouring country to Greece that could possibly pull off an audacious annexation. Even the US, the attacker of last resort, has its own set of trouble. Essentially, Greece has chosen a good time to get into trouble – at a time when everyone else is also in trouble. And this also means that the people of Greece will continue to have no respite from this politics. In the medium run (Hail Gebreselassie) they will have no choice but to accept austerity.

The auto rickshaw in front of my car was close to the kerb. The jam meant it was stationary. There was a boy walking on the pavement, maybe in his early teens. I saw him walk closer to the edge as he approached the auto rickshaw. I saw his hand move swiftly, and then his legs. He was speeding into one of the numerous alleyways that stem off from TCM Royan road. It was clear that he had snatched a gold chain that had been worn by a woman in the auto rickshaw.

One man got off the auto rickshaw and ran after the boy. I don’t think he would’ve made much headway, for the boy had too much of a headstart. Also, the thief had escaped into familiar territory, inhabited by familiar people, some of who might have actually encouraged his crime. The chaser didn’t stand a chance.

Make me wonder how one could control such petty crime. The speed at which it all happened, no one would have been able to “get the face” of the thief. Since it was far from an intersection it is unlikely there would’ve been CCTV cameras. The traffic, the twilight, the crowds on the road and the lack of them on the footpath meant the chances of the crime failing were really low. In the worst case, the owner of the chain would have held on to it and the boy would’ve run away empty handed.

I’m sure the crime would have been reported. A gold chain costs a lot, and the family in the auto rickshaw didn’t look particularly well off. But the case would’ve got buried in the midst of several other similar ones. As long as the thief was careful to not strike too often, which would’ve brought him unnecessary attention, there would be no way he would get caught. And given the geography there was little onlookers could do.

So I wonder once again, how are we supposed to control such petty crime? At this moment, I don’t have an answer.