Ithihaasan-Malayalam Blog

Am glad to announce the official launch of my malayalam blog-ithihaasan. From now on, all my articles in malayalam will be posted here. All the previous malayalam articles that I posted here have been moved to the new blog. Check it out now and subscribe if you like...

http://ithihaasan.blogspot.com/

your crusader Praveen

Sam 'Bahadur' Manekshaw-India's greatest soldier

He was India's greatest soldier who led us to that great victory against Pakistan in 1971. His exploits on the battlefield are as legendary as his thoughtful and witty quips off it. He was one of the only 3 Indians ever to travel in a car adorned with 5 stars, given to the Field Marshal. He was one of those rare breed of military men who showed the courage to take on the political establishment, most notably the defence minister V.K.Krishna Menon and PM Indira Gandhi. More than all that, he was a great human being. With the demise of Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw, India has lost an one of a kind soldier, who inspired thousands to join the armed forces. Still now,almost 30 years after he hung up his boots, he's worshipped like a God among army men.

The funeral happened yesterday at Wellington,TamilNadu. What perplexed everyone was the absence of India's military and political leadership at the ceremony. No one, the President, Prime minister, defence minister or any of the chief of Armed forces turned up to pay their respects to him. It indeed speaks volumes on these respected people's attitude. They all flock with their families to celebrity weddings, cricket matches, funerals of dirty politicians who can best be called 'waste of semen' and to parties hosted by businessmen. Yet, they couldn't spare half a day to honour a man who has contributed so much to the country. We all know they don't care about such things.Atleast, they could've made a show of it by making a brief apperance, as they always do. Most of them used 'protocol issues' as the reason for staying away from the ceremony. Am not sure which protocol says that they shudn't attend a Field Marshal's funeral.

A man of Sam's stature doesn't deserve to be treated like this. This was a man who defeated death more than once in the battlefield. No one will ever forget his immortal words "I got hit by a mule" after surviving 18 bullets during the world war II or his "sweetie" call to Indira Gandhi. Let us all salute this courageous man whose inspiring leadership and brilliant thinking gave India one of its greatest victories ever. Sam Bahadur ki Jai!!!

your crusader Praveen

Pick This Flick 1-Run Lola Run

Starting today, am gonna start a weekly column in my blog- "Pick this flick". You can expect to read about an interesting movie, not necessarily new, every week. I'll start off the column with one of the most unconventional movies I've ever watched- The German movie 'Run Lola Run'('Lola Rennt' is the original German title). Directed by Tom Tykwer and starring Franka Potente as Lola, this is one hell of a non-stop roller coaster ride for 1 hour and 20 minutes. 'Pulsating' is what I'll say, if asked to describe the film in one word. The film starts with Manni, Lola's boyfriend messing up his job to transfer 100,000 Deutsche Mark to his mafia boss. He forgets to take the bag as he gets out of a suburban train. A streetside beggar goes away with the money. Manni makes a phone call to Lola asking her to rescue his life. He will have to pay the money to his boss in 20 minutes, else he'll get killed. She promises to somehow get him the money. Thats when the exhilarating ride kickstarts.

Lola starts her incredible run to save her boyfriend. The film proceeds on to show 3 different scenarios and what are the results by proceeding in each of the scenarios. Am not going to write anything about it, as its better to experience it yourself than be told how the experience is. In each of the 3 different scenarios, the timing and actions change a bit. The end result of this small changes are very big and beyond our imaginations. A small change in the way a person run can cause unimaginable changes in the lives of the people passing by. We can see small echoes of the popular 'chaos theory' and 'butterfly effect' in this. There's not a single moment of slow frames in the film and you'll find yourself running alongwith the script at breakneck speed. A thumping soundtrack accompanies the whole length of the movie. The soundtrack, heavily loaded with trance, is one of the many charming aspects of this movie. I've also heard somebody mentioning about the use of the colour red. Its there in almost every scene, right from the lady's red hair to the red ambulance. The movie raises so many questions about time, destiny and life. But in the end, it all boils down to a question of 'What if'-What if I had not bumped into him? What if I didn't take a left turn? This movie shows the immense possibilities of life in its simplest way possible. Go, get the DVD, jump on the couch and start running with LOLA...

your crusader Praveen

Welcome Dell...Adios to dear desktop
And atlast it happened. Am blogging from my own brand new laptop. After bidding goodbye to my desktop back home in Trivandrum, I been surviving on the lousy systems available at cyber cafes and the blocked up systems that my company provides. For the last many months, I been facing that dreadful message "Our policy doesn't allow you access to this particular website". And this list of particular websites include all the email sites, our own blogger, some well-known proxy sites and all other sites which they find unsuitable for us. But, being jobless @ office or for that matter, having light work has its own advantages. Armed with the slogan "Company blocks, I unblock", I went on discovering new ways of accessing my favourite sites. I found out new proxies everyday and they kept on blocking it somehow the very next day. This hunt for proxies has gone on for too long that now am using a proxy that I got from the 27th page of google search for "gmail proxies". And this proxy has the record for the proxy which survived the most without being detected by the prying eyes of the policy makers. Also, surfing from office is a hard task if you are a person who cares what others think about you[thankfully, am not one of those]. Anyway, its goodbye to all those days.

Now, am safely surfing the net and writing blogs from home, safe from the prying eyes of my workmates. The only problem are the room mates who are hatching plans to investigate about my online escapades. Hope they will fall flat in that attempt. Coming to my laptop, its a DELL Inspiron 1525 system with Intel core 2 duo processor, 2GB RAM, 160 GB HDD and a 15" monitor. I got BSNL's new EVDO net connection after a long wait of one week. Now its blog @ home again after a long time. By the way, just thought about my PC which is now lying unused in my room like an old man awaiting imminent death. Its been my constant companion from my 10th class till the completion of my engineering. Apart from me, its the only other person(yeah, I consider it as a human made up of flesh,blood,bones and some shit) to have known all my secrets(not that I have many:P). Now, its old enough to be declared as a 'computing museum'. So with a big bow to that computer which has seen many historical events that I went through, I start blogging from my new laptop.

your crusader Praveen

13-ophobia

This post is inspired by Dickson Abraham's post on Paraskavedekatriaphobia. If you are wondering, what the hell that is, its the fear of 'Friday the 13th'. Anyway, according to him, my fear can be classified as triskaidekaphobia, just the fear of the number 13. Am not a person who believes in such silly stuff. But there's a solid reason behind this particular fear. This happened when I was in 8th standard. My roll number for that year was 13. Usually my roll number for all years been numbers over 30, as my name starts with P. But mysteriously this year, I was 13th on the roll. But I din't give it much of a thought as 13 was just like any other number for me, back then. Things began changing when the exams and marks started coming. I was a bit studious till 7th standard and used to be in top 5 of the class till then. Suddenly, this year I found myself failing in exams and especially maths. I din't pass for maths that whole year. In the final exam, because of the teacher's kindness, I somehow got through. Anyway, after that year I was relegated[in my opinion, promoted] from ICSE to the state syllabus. All this maybe due to some other causes but even today whenever I see the number 13, it causes butterflies to flutter in my belly.

your crusader Praveen