India

Image Courtesy: AmarChitraKatha.com

True to its name, Amar Chitra Katha has always been the lively comic book with the tinge of Indian culture. When I was a kid, these books were unaffordable to my Mom (and my father never bothered to buy me books), so I always had to read them at libraries. But for my nephew, that is not the case. All of us keep buying Amar Chitra Katha whenever we catch them at the book store. But funny side is that he fancies watching Hattori (!) on Nick, Noddy and Mr. Bean on Pogo rather than read something!
The lovely digital pictures that Tata Sky puts directly to home from the satellite without interruptions isn't helping him much, either.

Looking at this little announcement of sorts on The Hindu today, I remembered how we used to search corners of the library to fish out the unread titles. The number of titles released in this series is huge. I used to enjoy the Kannada translations of these books the most. Apparently, the translations had gone into good hands and we never felt that it was actually a translated version that we were reading. The then ignorance and quality of Kannada on the translated books sometimes made me believe that Amar Chitra Katha first came out in Kannada and was then translated to English (which clearly was not).

Hello all at MoreStore,

We walked into your Store at Nagarbhavi, Bengaluru partly curious to
witness to what extent Aditya Birla has changed Fabmall :-)

But I should say that I was very disappointed with the quality of
supply and the unpolished attitude of apparently untrained personnel.

Several goods that are well beyond their declared shelf life (expiry)
are still dogging for customer's attention. Soft Drinks with labels
stripped off, Soft Drinks with leaked bottles, Dusty packs of fruit
juice, stale vegetables (at the door and inside) are mostly to be seen.
It is a mess! Much of the commodities we see in better supermarkets are
missing.

The Hindu has an interesting article today on Metro Plus that features an interview with Senegalese filmmaker Moussa Toure.

The interview covers his take on various issues, but this comment is striking (especially in the Indian context):

Moussa notes that “Movies make you dream, rather than open your eyes.” The francophone filmmaker feels to bridge the gap between the rich and poor, there has to be a change in the subjects and issues explored in cinema.

Here's another piece that is relevant:

He declares that people who try to be like the Caucasians are the “new blondes of the world”. He states that the Senegalese are the true Africans, as they don’t try to whiten their skins. “We are essentially people of the sea and from the fishing community – so we are recognized anywhere as we have the darkest skins!”

A nice hidden message in it for us Indians, eh? Less "Fair & Lovely" and more sense needed?

The Hindu has a report today about a subsidiary of Disney investing in India's UTV - an entertainment company.

UTV is a company that has produced some very different kind of cinema in India that include Khosla Ka Ghosla, The Blue Umbrella (Chatri Chor) and now Jodha Akbar. While the former two I've mentioned here are good examples of some classic cinema, the latter is a huge budget cinema that would probably line up to Hollywood scale in technology. One of their earliest production seems to be the famous television soap Shanti. I still remember how everyone at our home used to sit together to watch this TV series like they watched Mahabharath earlier or like they watched Mayamrugra(Kannada) just few years back.

whatever it was, it was the innocent that suffered as always.

Bangalore Mirror has this very disturbing story about an unfortunate 26 year old from Bangalore. Quote:

"Pune. Police here have washed their hands off the wrongful detention of a 26 year old techie from Bangalore, blaming telecom major and Internet service provider Airtel for giving them incorrect information. The company has promised action.

Lakshmana Kailash K was picked up from Bangalore on August 31 on the suspicion of having posted insulting image of Chatrapathi Shivaji on Internet networking site Orkut. He was brought to Pune and put behind bars. It was later found that he was innocent.

The police will take up the matter with Airtel for providing misleading information that led to the wrongful arrest of Lakshmana, Assistant Commisioner of Police Netaji Shinde told IANS.

"We did our investigations on the IP address provided to us by Airtel. It is not our fault and Lakshmana should take Airtel to court and not us" he said.

An Airtel spokesperson said: "We are aware of this incident and deeply distressed by the severe inconvenience caused to the customer. We are fully co-operating with the authorities to provide all information in this regard and we are in touch with the customer.

"We have robust internal process, which we review frequently to make them more stringent. We have conducted a thorough investigation of the matter and will take appropriate action."

While media reports said Lakshmana was released only three weeks after the other suspects were arrested, police maintained that the techie was not held longer than necessary.

scary!

If they go arresting just anyone and putting them into jail like this without in-depth verification, it goes to shows how bad the system is. Reminds me of the film [:http://imdb.com/title/tt0111161/|Shawshank Redemption].

And the fact that it could have been any Airtel user! Once into the Police muddle, the present Indian system is a corrupt labyrinth. It is high time that "we, the people" protest such carelessness.

Photo: Cricinfo

It was a jumbo hundred and no Cricket fan in India would have missed watching it today. The [:http://content-ind.cricinfo.com/engvind/engine/current/match/258470.html|second day of the test match at Oval] between India vs England was all batting to watch unlike the last two test matches where the Cricket ball ruled the contest. It came as a surprise to see Kumble stick to the crease and bat like he did - the innings was full of several surprises, not to mention the kind of stroke he played to get to his century! It brought laugh on to people watching it, but Kumble really deserved the century. Congratulations to Jumbo!

[:http://content-ind.cricinfo.com/ci/content/story/304635.html|The Jelly Beans episode] has put a lot of speculation on the attitude of the English team on Cricket field. Lawrence Booth on Guardian.co.uk [:http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/sport/2007/08/01/jelly_beangate_the_unanswered.html|writes in an article probing] the unanswered questions about that episode:

Given the money spent on bowling coaches, computer analysts and masseurs, this comes as something of a relief. But a rumour has reached the Spin suggesting that England employed a similar ruse to unsettle Marlon Samuels during the recent visit by West Indies. And on that occasion, the confectionery of choice really was a jelly baby, standing proudly to attention.

(emphasis mine)

So, if this is what the English team has been doing in tests, should part of its success be attributed to sledging? Surely, it doesn't backfire all the time [:http://content-ind.cricinfo.com/columns/content/story/304671.html|like it did in the last test match] at Trent Bridge. And if this continues, and English team keeps winning (apart from one or two exceptions like Trent Bridge) would England go down in history not just for bringing Cricket to the world, but also destroying it?