Ae Ajnabi...

Hi Friends,

I was at Gold Adlabs last evening to watch Eklavya. Ok Ok Movie. Had reached the hall pretty early. So checked out the Karaoke-Stall. There was a booth where you could sing on the original music of songs with the vocals removed. After you sang, there was a guy who did all the editing on a computer. He'd mix the best lines from all u'r attempts and put all the pieces together. In the end, you'd get a cd with the final song written on it. He was charging Rs 9.00 per minute. And the whole process - listening (first to the original song), singing, editing, mixing, cd-writing - normally took around 25 mins (according to the guy), that is around 225 bucks. That's pretty costly. So you really can't afford to spend a lot of time on things like listening many times to the original song, or singing each piece multiple times to get it right, etc.

From the list of available songs to choose from, I chose the song Ae Ajnabi from the movie Dil Se. I chose a difficult song. But mood struck and I decided to go with it. The timer starts the moment the guy inserts the cd into his computer and stops when your song is written on a cd for you. I listened to the original song once. I knew it well. So listening once was enough. Then I went inside the singer's booth, wore the head-phones and sang into the mike there. The head-phones were to listen to the music and sing with it. Have been out of practice. But managed ok ok. Goofed up a little in the high-pitched lines. I was always apprehensive about that. Came out of the singer's booth after singing the whole song. Was not happy with the second stanza. So sang it again. It came out better. But I was still unhappy with some of the lines. Couldn't afford more attempts. So I left it for the guy to mix and edit. It took 30 minutes in all. The guy charged 250 bucks. Should have charged 270, but I got a discount!

Here's the link: ae_ajnabi_sridhar.mp3. Download, listen and Enjoy...if you can ;-)

Sorry about the poor quality. I hope you like it. Your comments are most welcome.

Good Morning Valentines Day!!!

Resolutions seem to be working for me these days. All the new year resolutions have been more or less successful so far. And since a resolution needs an occasion to be tagged with, I chose this Valentine's Day to resolve to run every morning.

So I got up this morning at around 5.00 AM. Till 5.30, I did a few things that I do every morning. After that, I wore my old Reebok sports-shoes. They were white when I bought them 2 years back, but are brown since the trek to the Kalsubai Peak in the Sahyadris last rainy season. Haven't washed them after coming back from the trek. But since it was pretty dark at 5.30, it was ok to wear those shoes. And from my experience, I know that most people go for morning walks between 6.00 AM and 7.00 AM. So 5.30 was pretty safe. I don't want to be seen running, until I am sure that I look bearably sexy while running.

I came out of my society, walking slowly. The first running step was the most difficult one. There was tremendous reluctance to start. May be 5.30 was too early. The society watchman and the dogs, all turned towards me, straightened their necks and stared at me with their dreamy and curious eyes. I was afraid that the dogs might howl and run after me if I started running. It was pretty dark. I have had very bad experiences of being chased by dogs at nights. Once, those dogs tore my pants. Those scenes flashed in my mind for a moment. Still, I gathered some courage and started running. I was happy to see that the dogs didn't bark at or run after me. They don't chase people in the mornings. I wonder why. In the day-time it is understandable, but at 5.30 AM it is as dark and as empty as it is at mid-night. Perhaps those dogs have this idiotic notion that only old people and/or good people run on streets early in the morning and only thieves run at mid-night. I'm assuming that dogs are dedicated and committed to catching thieves and ending crime all the time. I started believing this after failing, despite a lot of thinking, to understand why the hell those dogs chase me every night and tear my clothes whenever they get a chance. I ain't a thief. But I guess those dogs don't want to take chances. However, it may not be a valid assumption. It's quite possible that those dogs feel too lazy and sleepy so early in the morning to run after anyone, thief or whatever. They're so human in the morning. I got another proof of this, as I ran a little distance. I saw a dog running after a bitch, wanting to make love. Why do females always make males run after them? Anyway, I always feel early morning is the right time. I agree with the dog! It's never possible to know what the bitch thinks. So it is with all females. Deep ocean of secrets! (Titanic!)

After 2 minutes, I was at the 'Rajiv Gandi Pool'. It's weird - 'pool' refers to a body of water in English and a bridge over a body of water in Hindi. I was running on the Hindiwala 'pool' (pronounced like 'pull'). Somewhere in the middle of the bridge, there was 'Sheetal I Love You' written on the parapet. I wondered who Sheetal was and what she'd think if she read it. And then I thought about the guy who wrote that. It reminded me of an incident during my school-days. Some guy had 'expressed' his love for a girl, a classmate of mine, by writing on one of the walls. It was very prominent and everybody had read it before long. And when the girl came to know of it, she cried like hell.

I stopped running soon after I crossed the bridge. Walked some distance and started running again. I took a 'U' turn to come back, via another 'pool' which is parallel to 'Rajiv Gandhi Pool'. I don't know its name. It has lots of street-lights. It was nice to see my shadow running. It looked more handsome than me. Just like my hand-writing. It looks better to me when I view it ulta.

I again stopped running after crossing the bridge. It was almost 6.00 AM. I ran through a residential area called Aundh Gaon. It is a lower-middle-class locality and is comprised of small houses of one or two rooms. A few of them had water boiling outside in huge iron containers placed over buring firwood. Women were sweeping the floors in a few of them. And in a few, I could see women washing dishes. Women get up early and take care of the house and household activities. Men and kids sleep longer.

My limbs began to pain. I headed back towards my house. Walking and running and walking and running. At 6.15 AM I reached home. Next it was dumb-bell time. I have only one dumb-bell. I don't know its weight. I can lift it comfortably though. I got it from a friend of mine. I lifted it 100 times with each hand. I got very tired. I turned the fan on, hid myself under the blanket and slept. Dreams were fast to come. It's a Happy Valentine's Day!

Kuch Hone Wala Hai!!!

Valentine's Day is near by. 2 days to go. As usual I don't have a Valentine. I don't know if it is for this reason, but since this morning, since I've entered office, most of those females, who normally don't give a damn about me, are looking somewhat different. One had put on a particularly bright lip-stick and came walking towards me with a smile...said a 'hi'...then a 'bye'...then a 'stupid'...and went away. Another, a moti, went past me, ithlati-balkhati, in a black skirt...an unusually pleasant scene...and she turned and smiled too. And another, was walking right in front of me in a wonderful yellow salwar-kameez, in a highly seductive way, giving jhhatkaas to her hair once in a few steps, pulling that hanging latt backwards soon after every jhhatka. I hope all these are not hallucinations. I am not able to concentrate on work. I guess the time has come. Kuch Hone Wala Hai!!!

Rats

One of the weirdest places for rats to hide is in the Toilet. They do exactly that in my house. I am fed up. I am scared of shitting. It is really creepy. I am having restless nights because of this problem. I don't know what to do. I keep lots of Rat-Kill in there. But that doesn't help even a bit. Those rats seem to like it. They eat all the Rat-Kill pieces, shit all over the place and then hide inside the hole. They keep coming out whenever they want to party. I feel those rats have developed a resistance to whatever poison Rat-Kill contains. And probably, I am feeding those rats and allowing them to grow. Is it possible that they like me coz I give them all that 'food' everyday?

I keep the toilet-door closed all the time so that they don't move into the house. I even tried sprinkling acid inside and pouring a little inside the hole. Even that didn't help. Those rats had come through the hole from somewhere underground. It reminds me of a story in which some prisoners dig an underground passage to run out of the prison. They keep digging and moving underground. And after some distance, when they dig up and come out, they find themselves in a police-station.

There are lots of cats in my locality. Perhaps this way, the rats keep themselves safe from all those cats. So what if they have to endure human shit! And over the past few days, those rats seem to have figured out that it's safer to come out of the hole during late-night than during the day. But once in every few days, nature calls me at odd times. Like yesterday. And those rats scare me like hell. Imagine, you open the door and you find a huge black hairy dirty smelly creature moving on the white tiles. It's awful. Please tell me some good ways of getting rid of this problem. I'd be very very thankful. Rat-Kill and Hydrochloric Acid don't work. Those rats may actually be stuck there, but I'm too scared to let them out, run after them and kill the damn creatures.

English and Non-Phonetic Scripts

"Entrepreneur" is a such a difficult word to pronounce that I give up the idea of becoming one as soon as it strikes me which, believe me, it does pretty often. The word is such a tongue twister, something in me always stops me from trying to pronounce it. It's so irritating to say it or hear it. Click Here with your speakers turned on, to hear "Entrepreneur". It's pronounced as "ontroprinyure". Nobody can guess this pronunciation by just looking at the spelling. There are many other such words which I don't like to utter. Most of the Hindi Gaalis for example. The same Gaalis in English sound ok and more civilized but less intense at the same time. They don't usually have any impact though. I think the golden rule is - give gaalis to someone in Hindi if you really mean to hurt the person, and in English if it's just for fun. Englis is a phunny languaga na. So use it for phun.

Another such word is "Rendezvous". I hate it. Click on the link to hear it. It's pronounced as something like "Rondavu". This sounds like a Hindi gaali. What I don't understand is, if "Rondavu" is the way it is supposed to be pronounced, why spell it as "Rendezvous". English is full of this kind of words. Ok, I know English is not phonetc and all. But that's the point...why the hell is it not? Isn't a script meant to be a symbolic depiction of sounds of a language? And even if English is not phonetic, that doesn't give you the liberty to spell words in some way and pronounce in some other way for no good reason. It's totally unnecessary. It seems like a bunch of mischievous people sat together and invented this confusing script and defined its inconsistent usage, just to have some fun. Can we do something about it?

Laguage is a medium for verbal expression. It's for communication via speech and sound. For any language, there have to be words which have meanings and fixed ways of pronunciation. A script is a set of symbols by which we can write whatever is spoken, so that it can be read later on to produce the same sounds as if we are hearing all that. So a script is a way of storing data, which can be retrieved as and when desired. The process of "Reading" a script is to convert it to lingual sounds.

Assuming that all languages are on an equal level in terms of having words, meanings and pronunciations, let's try to understand how having a phonetic script is better than having a non-phonetic script. In case of a phonetic script, there is nothing like a spelling. If you know the script and the syntax, you can write any word, any sound in any language. The concept of spelling becomes crucial in case of non-phonetic scripts like that of English, because even if you know the entire alphabet, you cannot spell any word straightaway coz those alphabets don't behave in a reliably similar way at all places. So you have to "know" the spelling as defined by some authority. As a result, such languages end up consuming a lot of your memory to remember the spellings of all the words you know. That's an inefficient model to follow. Why not have a phonetic script instead? Learn the script and you are done!

Another advantage with phonetic scripts is that you can program a computer to read them. That's possible because when the rules are fixed and are consistently followed, you can always program a machine to work according to them. For non-phonetic scripts like that of English, there are more exceptions than rules, which will result in inefficient programs and the output will be a mess. Pronunciation of names is one good example. Mis-Pronunciation is less likely if names are written in phonetic scripts. With non-phonetic scripts, the computer may need a huge database of all the words with their correct pronunciations. You may not bother about wasting some memory of the computer and there could be algorithms to browse the database faster for each word, but all that is absolutely unnecessary. And what about the new words that keep getting added to the language? And imagine, probably we've already created such a database in our brains when we learnt written English. May be, our brains are too fast and efficient to make this clutter noticable...And I guess, as I am typing this article, the way I'm browsing my database - words and sounds to their spellings - is opposite to what I do when I read something...so the brain might need to work harder when I read or write in English, thereby consuming resources which I could otherwise have contributed to the clarity of my thought.

It's impossible to get rid of English or its script at this stage. We've come too far away with English to replace the language or its script with any other language or script. It's grown to become the laguage connecting people all over the world. English has to stay, inspite of all the problems associated with it.

come on India !!!

There are many in my office who sit and stare at their computer monitors all day without doing anything. Actually there is not enough work to do. From my work-experience of 2.6 years in the software industry in two companies, one very large and one medium-sized, and from what I come to know from my friends about their companies, I can confidently say that there is a great deal of disguised unemployment in the IT industry. It is just that nobody is worried about it coz the salaries are still quite high as compared to other sectors and on top of it, IT seems to be on the boom. It's creating jobs for our enormous young population. Probably, this disguised unemployment is inevitable for some time, given the fact that we have recently started rowing upstream.

We have indeed followed a unique model - of trying to grow by expanding the services sector first. But we must also start thinking of other possible areas of growth and not stay obsessed with IT forever. One may argue that there are booms in retail, energy, etc. and some revival of the manufacturing industry as well. That's correct, but the problem that is eroding our growth story is lack of adequate skills in our work-force. We have people, in numbers like nowhere else. Yet, we are not doing enough to educate and train our young population so that they can contribute efficiently. A lot of screws need to be tightened at all basic levels - of education, administration, culture and mind-sets. The government needs to set the right frameworks for the private sector work in, and to prosper by exploring and creating new opportunities, so that more and more jobs are generated for our youth without compromising the growth of the nation.

We need more responsible leaders. And for that, we need well-informed and judicious citizens. Let's make our democracy more meaningful by encouraging and electing the right people to lead us. It's time we stopped getting carried away by the age-old maladies that have been crippling our societies. We need to enlighten and empower each other and create a new and prosperous India. The world is looking at us. Let's not close our eyes.

Tagged...

Here we go...a tag taken up from Sindhu.

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Favorite Color: Green
Favorite Food: Pani Puri 
Favorite Month: December (Sarkaye Leyo Khatiya Jaada Lage!!!)
Favorite Songs:
- Ae Ajnabi (Dil Se)
- Kyon Chupate Ho Mann Ki Baat (Mann)
- Dil Mera Churaya Kyon (Akele Hum Akele Tum)
- Aap Ki Kashish (Aashiq Banaya Aapne)
- Mere Khwabon Ka Harr Ek Naksh (Jism)
- Bebasi, Dard Ka Aalam (Baabul)
- Chand Sifarish (Fanaa)
- Tadap Tadap Ke (Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam)
- Chand Chupa (Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam)
- Musafir Jaane Waale (Gadar)
- Kya Karein Kya Na Karein (Rangeela)
- Raat Ki Hatheli Par (Refugee)
- Papa Kehte Hain (Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak)
- Ghar Se Nikalte Hi (Papa Kehte Hain)
- Bin Tere Sanam (Yaara Dildara)
Favorite Movie: Life is Beautiful
Favorite Sport: None
Favorite Season: Winter (again - Sarkaye Leyo Khatiya Jaada Lage!!!)
Favorite Day Of the week: Saturday (Start of the weekend, and Monday is far away!)
Favorite Ice Cream Flavor: Strawberry
Favorite Time of Day: 6.45 AM (Can sleep some more!!!)

8 CURRENTS
Current Mood: Tired of being idle.
Current Taste: Teekha-Meetha Mix!
Current Clothes: Jeans-pants to cover the bottom and a full-sleeves Shirt to cover my top.
Current Desktop: Lara Dutta's hot pic!
Current Toenail Color: Don't color nails. So it's the natural nail color.
Current Time: 4:35 PM
Current Surroundings: Cubicles all around, with people "working".
Current Thoughts: Nobody comments on my blog :-(

6 FIRSTS
First Best Friend: Vikash and Gopu (KG-I). We used to sit together all the time. Also did a lot of mischief together. Once during KG-I, three of us peed out through the class-room window. It was my idea. To me that made a lot of sense at that time. It was cruel to send small KG kids to the same toilet where big-big high-school kids used to pee. It was a scary toilet and we could never pee whole-heartedly over there. Moti-Miss, our class-teacher, saw us peeing out of the window and shouted at us. Being the leader, I had to shout back. Maine bhi madam ko bol diya: "Aap log jo chaho wo karte ho, par hame kuch nahi karne dete!"
First Screen Name: yvsridhar
First Pet: No pets ever.
First Piercing: None
First Album: Lata Mangeshkar's Remixed songs by Sonali Bajpai.
First Movie: Pyar-Mohabbat (Govinda and Mandakini Starrer) (As far as I can remember)

6 LASTS
Last Cigarette: 1st July 2006 (First and Last!), Didn't check the brand...I was drunk.
Last Drink: Smirnoff Vodka, Dec 24 2006...Quit Drinking after that.
Last Car Ride: Maruti 800, took a Lift from office to Home...about a month back.
Last Movie Seen: Traffic Signal, decent movie.
Last Phone Call: Kuvalaya Singh, frustoo career discussions!
Last Book Read: Life of Pi, great story.
Have You Ever Broken the Law: NO! ;-)
Have You Ever Been Arrested: NO
Have You Ever Been on TV: YES! On "Hello Bilaspur", Bilaspur's local channel. All those who cleared the JEE from Bilaspur were interviewed.
Have You Ever Lied: NO! (any answer to this question cannot be relied upon, unless another question is asked to test its veracity)
Have You Ever Kissed Someone You Didn't Know: Never Kissed anyone:-(((

5 THINGS
Thing You're Wearing: dark blue underwear, white baniyan with short half sleeves, blue jeans, full-sleeves brown checks wala shirt, titan watch, woodland shoes, dark blue socks, spectacles with black metal frame & glass-lenses.
Things You've Done Today: Lots of failed attempts to blog on various topics since morning.
Thing You Can Hear Right Now: my neighbour, a Project Manager, talking loudly on fone.
Thing You Can't Live Without: my comb
Thing You Do When You're Bored: call someone.

 4 PLACES YOU'VE BEEN TODAY: Office, and nowhere else.

3 PEOPLE YOU CAN TELL ANYTHING TO: Myself, Myself, Myself.

2 CHOICES
1. Black or White: Black. White gets dirty very soon and very easily.
2. Hot or Cold: Hot!

1 THING YOU WANT TO DO BEFORE YOU DIE: Fall in Love!