Food for Thought !

The election time is over and we have a new General Secy (Fortunately from our floor). Once again ten days of promises, permutations & combinations and double crossing comes to end. Just hope that the new team can put aside their differences and work for the good of the institute & the students.
I read a post on freedom on my friend's blog (http://comingback2life.blogspot.com). He has raised some questions abt the current generation taking freedom for granted and abt patriotism. Maybe the current generation doesn't feel abt it because we never had to fight for it and hence, we take freedom for granted.
Still continuing with the agenda of seeing good, meaningful Hindi movies. Saw Mr & Mrs Iyer. Its a very nice movie abt how humanity in people comes to the fore in face of communalism with both Rahul Bose and Konkana Sen being perfect in their roles.
Another movie that I saw again was Swades, certainly one of my favourite Hindi movies of recent times and the best performance by Shahrukh Khan till date. The movie always makes me think abt lots of stuff. Let me explain it by an example.
When I was a child, I used to watch BQC regularly. In one of the episodes, the guest personality was Mr Mani shankar Aiyar, current Petroleum Minister of India. Derek asked Mr Aiyar that in India, parents tell children that politics is a bad profession and tell them never to become a politician. To this Mr Aiyar calmly replied that this is the problem. If good men don't go for politics and bad ppl do, u can't expect politics to be good.
Isn't this quotation aptly applicable even now. Many of my friends are appearing for GRE and going abroad for further studies with an excuse that India doesn't have good enough facilities. But if the best people turn away from their responsibilities, how can anyone expect India to become great ?
This is a problem which is visible all around us. For example, Thomso IIT Roorkee's cultural fest. The current team for Thomso is easily the second best because the best people didn't go for any posts. It seems that Cognizance, our techfest will also suffer a similar fate. Do we still have the right to criticize ppl who work for these events ?
Neways, enuff of heavy stuff for now. Hope next post will be a light one.

Books, Movies & Poli

I decided to see some critically acclaimed movies that I had put on the backburner in the last sem because of their duration or because I wasn't in a mood for the heavy stuff. The list also includes two Hindi movies, so here is what I thought of them

The Godfather II

I loved The Godfather but its not the best movie I have ever seen. The reason maybe that the novel was much much better than the movie and comparisons were inevitable. Godfather II has Robert De Niro playing younger Marlon Brando (the part from the book) and Al Pacino as Michael Corleone trying to cement his place. Robert De Niro won an oscar for his performance. The nasal, reasoning voice of Marlon Brando has been portrayed flawlessly by him. I still can't fathom why Al Pacino missed out on an oscar as I couldn't find nething to separate the two. The last scene where he is seen brooding & remembering the family dinner when he didn't want to become involved in the family business is just superb

Black

A long time since I sw an Indian movie like this. B4 this, I thought that Amitabh had given his best performance till date in Deewar (the old one) but I think this performance rates right with it. The role of a mentor for a mentally-challenged girl makes you realize that how much difference in one's life a mentor can make. I don't think that anybody else can come even close to challenging Rani & Amitabh for the awards this yr.

Masoom

I read the novel - Man, Women & Child by Eric Segal in the summers and decided to see Shekar Kapur's movie. Absolutely gr8 songs, presentation and performances. I guess its the only movie in which I liked Jugal Hansraj.

Next up is Muqbool, as soon as I can get it. In terms of books, still reading A Beautiful Mind.

Its time for politics in IITR as Students' Affair Council is to be formed. I see people involved in politics and can't help by wonder. Quite a few of these ppl, criticize Indian politicians accusing them of being two-faced, profit minded etc. But when it comes to them, they do the same double-crossing, buying votes etc. Another thing that comes to my mind from this. I know that ppl involved in various events bamboozle money. Same ppl are the most vocal in GDs abt politicians being corrupt. Can't understand this hypocrisy. I guess, somewhere I am thankful that Indian politicians are illiterate because a corrupt, illiterate politician is always better than a corrupt, literate one.

I think I am getting too senti abt this but this is what I feel. Neways, its raining 2day and I have a three day weekend. What else could I ask for ?

What's In The Name ?

I m back after a long lay off. I hope I shall be able to be more regular in my posts now onwards.

Since the day that I can remember, my name has been one of the unique ones. I mean how many of you have ever heard of a guy named Supriy? Since my school days, ppl have been making unnecessary additions & deletions from my name. The most common variations have been Supriya and Supriyo. There have been some weird combos in which even I failed to recognize that I m the person being referred to like Supbix Shakh, Surya and the latest one in the voters' list of my hostel Suopriy. The last straw was when I googled for Supriy Shah and google asked me "Do you mean Supriya Shah"

In my school days, this used to annoy me a lot with my classmates making fun of me. Slowly, slowly I came to terms with my name and stopped being annoyed.

Some of you might be wondering, why I am blabbering so much abt my name. The most weird case happened on our journey from Indore to Roorkee. There were 4 of us and tkts had been reserved by Kaddy. The ticket attendant came, checked the tkt and asked where is the girl Supriya. We assumed that it was the usual mistake that ppl make but he refused to believe us. On closer scrutiny, we found that the tkt itself had name of Supriy as Supriya mentioned as 21 yr old female. The tkt attendant refused to believe the truth and I would have been penalised for impersonating myself. However, we showed him my insti id and he accepted the error. I wanted to kill Kaddy at that point of time.

I guess that was not the last incident of its type and there will be many more to come. But hey, uniqueness has a price to pay.

In the meantime, I was able to read HP VI on the day of its release and also To Kill A Mockingbird. There have been many more interesting cases too but that for the next time.