The 'Gilmore Girls' Are No More

After running successfully for seven seasons, the popular American TV series `Gilmore Girls` came to an end on May 15th 2007. Though it can't be termed as an early end to a still popular TV series as it was lucky to enjoy success for seven long years, it definitely was an abrupt end - mostly (I believe) because CW was all prepared to shoot the eighth season if they could work things out with Lauren Graham. The lack of momentum in the last few episodes to mark the end of the long series was duly compensated by a very deserving last episode, which brought back the memories of the better moments that the series had enjoyed and the reason why it had become so popular in the first place.

'Gilmore Girls' started when it had to compete against 'Friends' and 'Survivor' - two of the most popular TV shows ever, and it reached the peak of its success during its fifth season when 'LOST' had debuted and swept everyone off their feet. The TV show is said to be more popular among the family(read female) audiences with youngsters preferring action based dramas more, like LOST and Heroes. But it is difficult to underline the exact reasons behind the success of the series, against such stiff competition, hence I am going to speak just for myself. But first a confession: I started watching the series only in September last year(The first six seasons have been released on DVDs).

The first thing that had struck me about the series (in its pilot episode) was the freshness with which the beautiful atmosphere of the (fictional) town Stars Hollow was captured by the camera. But the strongest reason why I even bothered to watch the second episode was the unique style of humorous and fast-paced dialogue delivery that I had never witnessed before. Then there were numerous references to English literature, classic Hollywood movies, music of all genres, and food from all parts of the world(there is a reference to Indian food too, and gotta love their pronunciation of the name 'Bangalore' ;) ). The generous footage afforded to incorporate the various town festivals(Founders Firelight, Bid-a-basket, and my most favourite: Festival of Living Art) into the main story line is just another impressive aspect of the show. If a TV show can make someone buy and read Proust, go back to watching black & white movies and try out Thai food, it must be one of their favourite shows. While watching its second season, I did call it my most favourite show, ahead of LOST, Prison Break and the other "youth" oriented TV shows.

The TV show also boasts of creating so many memorable characters like Lorelai, Rory, Luke, Sukie, Taylor, Lane, Ms. Patty, Babette, Michelle, Mrs. Kim that got permanently etched in my memory(I personally didn't like the characters from outside of Stars Hollow so much - except Paris). One character called Kirk, played superbly by Sean Gunn, is the stuff of the classics. If nothing else, getting introduced to this extremely funny(quirky?) and likable character is worth watching at least a couple of seasons in my opinion, the character is that good. Here is a sample:


Kirk: This is not how it's supposed to go. I'm supposed to take her out, we're supposed to exhaust my prepared subjects immediately, and then the minute I get up and go to the bathroom, she is supposed to sneak out and leave me here humiliated. Now I have been to the bathroom three times, and I have to tell you, I did not have to go, and every time I came back to the table, she was there and she was smiling, and... hey, did you see her touch my arm? What the hell was that all about?
Luke: I think that means she likes you.
Kirk: Shut up! You take that back!


Lauren Graham, the actress who played the lead role or Lorelai Gilmore, is given most of the credit, besides the creator of the show Amy Sherman-Palladino, for making the TV show such a big success. She did bring in a refreshing perspective to what could have become another stereotypical role and it is hard to imagine anybody else playing that character. Fittingly enough, in recent rankings given by a website to actors brining most value to a character, she was ranked third, behind the inimitable Hugh Laurie as Dr. Gregory House(House MD) and Kiefer Sutherland playing the iconic Jack Baur(24). The other two major characters of the show, Luke Danes and Rory Gilmore, were betrayed by the ordinary performances by the actors Scott Patterson and Alexis Bledel respectively. If these actors were honest to their characters, then they at least weren't charming enough. Rest of the characters were very colourful: Sukie and Michelle were immensely lovable in the first few episodes, Paris was hilarious from the fourth season onwards and Taylor and Kirk were always causing a riot.

All was not well with this series though. After the first few seasons, it kind of became repetitive; there was also a lot of filler material in the last couple of seasons. The entire feel of the show got changed in the seventh season after Amy Sherman parted from the series giving the reigns to David S Rosenthal. The real spirit of the show was finally visible once again, for one last time, luckily, in the very last episode of the series which ends with Lorelai and Rory at the Diner having coffee and Luke making Pancakes for them in the background - so reminiscent of the very first scene of the first episode of the series. I hope to watch the series again sometime in the far future, but irrespective of if that ever happens or not, the sweet memories of 'Gilmore Girls' and Stars Hollow and Kirk will be there with me forever.

Dhoom:2 is Double the Masti and Double the Paisa Vasool

It's the season of sequels and remakes right now in Bollywood. The good news is that the film-makers are not just trying to ride on the popularity of the original films to make quick money from the sequels, as proved by the sequel 'Lagey Raho Munnabhai', which is making even more business, and earning even better critical reviews, than the original 'Munnabhai MBBS'. Another success story is currently being written at the box office by the sequel of one of the biggest hits of 2004 i.e. Dhoom. In line with the success story of 'Lagey Raho Munnabhai', Dhoom:2 is getting better reviews than its first edition and the industry pundits are predicting that it will be the bigger hit of the two. The age of sequels and trilogies has arrived in India.

If you liked the movie Dhoom, be ready to be completely blown by the Dhoom:2 experience. The primary reason for the success of Dhoom, and now Dhoom:2, is the unique combination of novelty and simplicity. Nobody would've believed that a bike-movie like Dhoom would get such a positive response from the Indian audiences, who are more attuned to the melodramatic movies of Karan Johar and Yash Chopra. Dhoom created a new page in the history of Indian cinema and Dhoom:2 takes the legacy forward in great style. The film of course cannot be compared with the timeless classics like Mother India or Deewar; nor do they come even close to message-oriented serious entertainers like Lagaan and Munnabhai MBBS. Instead, Dhoom quintessentially belongs to the genre of light, fast paced, action thriller movies whose success stands on a simple philosophy: Do not ever bore the audiences. Though not an intelligent or a captivating script, it scores where other similar attempts fell flat on their faces. It is also here where Dhoom:2 also does the job so well; it retains the spirit of simplicity of old Dhoom, yet takes the entertainment levels to the next stage. Hrithik Roshan has bigger star appeal than John Abraham; riding high on the success of the past year, Abhishek Bachhan is much more confident as cop-in-the-t-shirts than he was in Dhoom; Aishwarya Rai's experiment with the new look is refreshing and the film uses a much bigger budget for the action scenes and the picturisation of songs. The viewers are the winners in the end.

Dhoom:2 starts in the same way as Dhoom, with an unbelievable(?!) robbery executed effortlessly by the perfect conman - Mr. A(Hrithik). But more important is what it does NOT start with: Hrithik Roshan growing up as a child in a rural village, where the merciless villain murders his righteous father prompting him to take the wrong path. If he is a thief, he is a thief; no time spared for the justifications. In fact, the viewer is made to love the coolness associated with all his robberies, no place for any moralities here. The robbery is then followed by the dazzling entry of Abhishek Bachhan on a motorboat. The pairing of Abhishek Bachhan and Uday Chopra a second time in this film might take it next to the now legendary pair of Munnabhai and Ciruit. For some reason, the chemistry between Abhishek and Uday Chopra never looks as great as the characters seemed to have demanded. They entertain the audiences with their own style of comedy nevertheless.

Ash's introduction in her new tanned skin look and anime-girl costume is stylish too. She looks as cool as Angelina Jolie from the Tomb Raider series - until she opens her mouth that is. It is one of those aspects of the film that could have been better handled and the criticism should be directed towards the director in this case. A bit more effort in handling Ash might have made her iconic(or at least as slick as Shilpa Shetty looked in Dus). A victim of similar lack of attention or importance is Abhishek Bachhan's character; where every detail of Hrithik's dare-devils is given maximum attention, even the background music doesn't excite the audience much when Abhishek outsmarts Hrithik for the first time at the interval time. In that sense, it is an out and out Hrithik Roshan's film and the other characters are there only to support him in blowing away the audience's imaginations. He was the cynosure of all teenage girls' eyes and they didn't care if they were gasping too loudly every time Hrithik was shown doing the dare-devils on the screen. Uday Chopra did slightly better in this film than in the earlier Dhoom, surprising the audiences by bringing smiles to their faces on at least one out of five attempts. His day dreaming humour continues this time with Bipasha Basu, who has a forgettable role in the first half where she only has to fill the frames with Abhishek Bachhan.

Only one song succeeds in setting the stage on fire - Crazy Kiya Re, and with its fast beats and great hummable tune, not to forget Ash in the brand new look, it might be the strongest reason if you decide to watch the movie again. The last song is also full of energy and brings the entire cast of the film together on the dance floor. The rest of the songs are almost forgettable.

The film is completely devoid of any logic though, so remember to keep your brains at home while going to watch this movie. This is no intelligently written one-upmanship game between the cop and the thief. Hrithik uses one of the dumbest tricks to do all the robberies and Abhishek comes with even dumber ways to catch him. But you wouldn't be watching Dhoom if you were looking for a serious cop-n-thief chase game, now, would you?

On the whole, the film is a completely fun-filled, exciting, roller-coaster ride for those who enjoy light-hearted action films. If attention-grabbing stunts, thrilling chases, heavy background score with minimum bollywood-ish drama is what makes an entertaining film for you, then look no other way; Dhoom:2 will cross all your expectations.

MyToday.com: A Public RSS Feed Aggregator

(Having a general idea about RSS feeds will be helpful in understanding the following review more completely. If you don't know what RSS feeds are or what their significance is, a simple introduction to this technology is available here. Simply put, instead of having to visit different websites for reading different kinds of information, RSS feeds allow all the information from multiple websites to be collected at one place)

The creators of MyToday.com call their website to be a 'Public Aggregator', differentiating it from the commonly known private aggregators like the popular Bloglines.com service. What is the difference between the two? Basically, its about the flexibility and control in one(private aggregator) and simplicity and ease of use in the other(public aggregator). In a private aggregator like Bloglines, you start with a completely blank slate; you have to manually add every single RSS feed that you are interested in to the aggregator, which puts the responsibility on the user to dig out the most interesting web sources that are present on the Internet, but it also gives complete control to the user about which feeds are actually collected by the aggregator. If you are a control freak, you need something like Bloglines.

But for the vast majority of the web users, the exact source from where the information is pulled is not very important; they may only care about the subjects that they are interested in: like news, entertainment, sports etc. Even otherwise, not everyone may be in the know-how of which websites are the most popular ones on a given subject. This is where a knowledgeable third person('Editor') can play an important role: collect the RSS feeds from some of the best sources on the Internet and then categorise them under different subjects according to the type of content that they provide. The users can then just select the subject of their interest and can get the most interesting content in that category conveniently collected at one place. For example, a user can just go to the "Blogs" page on MyToday.com where the feed content from all the popular blogs(yes, Sepia Mutiny, Desicritics etc are all there) are collected and presented in a user friendly format.

The interface of the website makes use of modern web technologies("Web 2.0/Ajax") which makes it easier for the users to view and navigate through all the feeds in the shortest time possible. Feeds are collected together under different panels allowing a user to expand(or collapse) the select panels to see(or hide) the feeds under only that panel. If you are like me who believes that only "The Hindu" follows responsible journalism practices(just a meek attempt at trolling ;) ), you can make the "News" page look like the following image, with all but the feeds from 'The Hindu' being hidden from the view.

There is also a button at the top of the website that allows all the panels to be collapsed or expanded with a single mouse click. What I did not like in the interface is the way the actual content is presented to the users: whenever you click a feed link, it takes around 4-5 seconds for the 'balloon' to pop up and show the content to the users. Sometimes it appears as if the website is not responding to the clicks at all(I scrolled away from the view so many times!) and some other times the balloon pops-up little away from where you had actually clicked. At least some feedback regarding the content being fetched from the server can be displayed(ala "Loading..." message in the GMail interface) at a corner of the web page. Another thing that I did not find impressive is the completely different look of the home page from the rest of the pages; I think the home page should not be so distinguishable from the remaining pages. There should also be a head/main menu at the top of every page containing the links to all the categories, which will save the user from the pain of having to constantly go back to the home page to select a different category.

A very impressive feature of the website is the concept of "Reader Lists". In a way it directly adds to the variety of the feeds as collected by the core editorial team. A 'Reading List' is a list created from the RSS feeds that someone else is tracking on a regular basic, allowing the other users to see what he/she(an editor of a newspaper, a technology freak, a popular blogger etc) is reading frequently on the Internet. For example, if you want to be the next Aaman Lamba on the South Asian scene, make a start by following his reading list which is available on MyToday.com here. If you think that the RSS feeds that you personally keep track of might be of some interest to a section of the netizens, then send a request to MyToday.com to create a separate reading list for you(submission details are on their home page). With more reading lists thus created in the future, it should be one of the most interesting services provided by the website.

I found it strange to see the official blog and wiki of the website being hosted on free, publicly available services like wordpress.com and wikispaces.com. I don't know what the exact requirements with respect to the blog and wiki were that did not allow them to host these softwares on their own servers, but whatever they were, in my opinion, hosting the blog and wiki outside of their own domain will severely affect their brand image(professional vs casual players).

A surprise is in the store for you: the website is avaiable through the mobile interface too! Just browse to this location through your Internet-enabled mobile phone and enjoy the service on the go. Unfortunately, I couldn't test this feature in time.

Overall, I am impressed by the usefulness of this website for a non-geek user who wants to browse through the latest stories published on the Internet from one central location, through a convenient interface. For the control freaks, they promise to implement the ability to add one's own feeds to the website in the near future. When that day comes, a user can both browse the most popular articles as collected by the editorial team and add their own favourite feeds from the Internet too - a perfect combination of simplicity and flexibility.

For more information:
MyToday Home
MyToday Blog
MyToday Wiki
Aaman Lamba's Reading List
What are RSS Feeds?
What are Feed Aggregators?

IndiaGram: del.icio.us for the desis

IndiaGram is a new online bookmarking service on the lines of the popular del.icio.us service but with a focus on the Indian community. You can use it in place of del.icio.us to store your online bookmarks or, more interestingly, you can use it to keep a watch on what interesting India-related websites are bookmarked by the other people. The most recently bookmarked websites are shown on the first two pages; and there is a link that will take you to most popular bookmarks too. An added feature of this service is that you can vote for a particular bookmark if you find it interesting, acting very much like digg.com!! This in fact is the most interesting feature for me. Just like del.icio.us, it supports tagging of a bookmark with different labels, but its impressive enough to show the tags using the cloud view by default, which means a better visual idea to the users about which tags have the most number of bookmarks. A user can also opt to keep some of the bookmarks private(a feature that was added only recently to del.icio.us) or can share it only with their friends(yes, you can add your friends to your account!). So a lot of options to chose as to with whom you want to share a particular bookmark.

The registration process is as simple as it is with del.icio.us. Where as del.icio.us remembers you forever after your first login(at least if you keep visiting the website fairly regularly), IndiaGram gives you the option of remembering you for 2 weeks time. It also allows the registered users to post comments on any website that is bookmarked on it!! You can see all the recent comments posted by the users in the right sidebar. It has good help on the wiki(with a guided tour of how to do the basic things; don't believe me? see this!!) and a google group for asking questions and getting relevant support.

If you think that you would like to support this new service, you have several options with you:

1. Get registered and start bookmarking your sites with it. Vote others' bookmarks that you find interesting. Post comments on your favourite websites that are bookmarked on the site.
2. Add a link/badge on your website. More details on how to do it are available here.
3. Blog about it!!(or in simple terms, spread the word about it)

Remember that its still a beta service and your use of the service and your feedback would be very helpful in improving the quality of the service in the final version.

For the techies:

I had come across an interesting open-source product called Scuttle few weeks ago(on a newsforge.com article) which does most of what del.icio.us does, and a few other things, but with the difference that you can actually install it on your own server and then use it. This allows one to think of myriad ways in which such a product can be used: bookmarking for only the internal network(employees of a company, students at a university etc), private bookmarking for a closed group(project work etc), bookmarking for a niche target. IndiaGram is one such service that uses Scuttle behind the scenes to create bookmarking service with the focus on the Indian community. Unfortunately, IndiaGram has nowhere indicated that they are making use of the Scuttle software; they shamelessly copied the about page of Scuttle and replaced their name with IndiaGram. Rakesh informs me that the Scuttle project is indeed credited at this page on the help wiki. Prakash informs me that all the changes that they(people behind IndiaGram) have made to the Scuttle code base are released back to the community in the true spirit of the Free(dom) software - a praiseworthy gesture.

This article describes Scuttle in good detail but it also contains a few mistakes(some of them corrected in the comments). A demo installation of this product runs here. If your server meets the basic requirements of Apache + PHP + MySQL, then download it and give it a try!!

Amitabh Bachchan vs Shahrukh Khan: Google Fight!!

Ever thought of pitting the superstars of two different eras against one another and see who is more valuable among them? It seems like child's play these days if one knows how to use Google for the purpose. But how many could have imagined that a person would come up with a creative way of finding out the real worth(yes, in dollars!!) of various celebrities from Google's point of view? Soam Acharya takes us on a fun ride in an article published on Desicritics evaluating the price tag attached by Google Adwords to different Indian celebrities if you want to use their names as the keywords for the ads you want to place with it. If you don't understand what I am talking about, you surely need a crash course in Google Adwords! Head straight to Soam Acharya's blog article for more details on that, but here is the interesting part:

Amitabh Bachchan-------------$1.36
Om Puri-------------------------------$0.36
Shahrukh Khan-------------------$0.34
Aamir Khan-------------------------$0.20

Shame on the Khans!! Now that's surprising, isn't it? With Shahrukh being termed as the heartthrob of the entire nation and Badshah of the box office, Google Adwords doesn't seem to share the same opinion. Still, $1.36/per click for Big B definitely looks like a steal, ain't it?

Google Search:
Amitabh Bachchan - 1,690,000
Shahrukh Khan - 2,430,000

Google Fight:

Other interesting statistics awaits in the category of the female actors:

Shabana Azmi-----------------------$0.69
Rani Mukherjee--------------------$0.43
Aishwarya Rai-----------------------$0.28
Kareena Kapoor--------------------$0.25

Phew!! Shabana Azmi more valuable than even all the male actors except Amitabh! Google Adwords seems to have a better taste when it comes to these actors than the Indian viewers it seems ;)

Do read the complete article here. Author's blog is here.

Performancing Firefox 1.2 Released

Performacing Version 1.2, a blogging extension for the Firefox web browser, was released a few days ago. Its pretty stable and has added a few useful features with this release:

1. The interface looks good. Or my eyes were not working well until now.
2. Upload images and files to an FTP site and then link to them from the blogs. Upload images from within Performancing and upload files from anywhere in the browser(its added to the "Performancing" sub-menu of the Firefox context menu.
3. A button called "Metrics" allows easy access to the metrics of your blog(if you are using Performancing to track your blog).
4. When you add a new blog to Performancing, it automatically detects the settings for the popular bloggers(blogger.com, wordpress etc).

More details are here. An image uploaded using Performancing's new upload tool is here:



(This is my first post from Performancing 1.2. If you see "Powered by Performancing" somewhere here, then it is also a new addition to this release.)

Update1: thanks to buddy mastmallu for digging this post.
Update2: here is the procedure to add spell-checking ability to the performancing extension. i couldn't get it working though.

powered by

It feels good

Being a positive person that I am, positive developments that have taken place in the country last longer in the memory than the not-so-positive ones. Here I share a few of them.

We all know about the political party Paritrana formed in January 2006 by the IITians. They had announced that they will be contesting the 2006 Tamil Nadu assemblty elections and recently finalised 6 constituencies to contest these elections. They have requested one and all to spread the word about them. Not a lot of voters from Tamil Nadu should be reading this blog, but just getting absolved of the duty of 'spreading the word' is our job, isn't it? I have done my duty and you decide if you want to do yours or not ;)
You can interact with the members of the party at the following forum: Paritrana @ VOA
Story on Hindu. Story on Desicritics. Their Official Website.

Ever heard of an ISO 14001 certified village? Namakkal, a southern district in Tamil Nadu with a population of 53,000 became the first village from India to get such a certification. Thanks to Municipal Chairman S. Gandhiselvan, his associates and the general population in the village, they say:

[it] took three years to put in place a system that brought it international recognition. The certification is given to any organisation that uses technology and maintains internationally acceptable standards in services and develops an environmental management system in which water, air and sound quality are maintained.

Complete story is here.

An initiative on the Internet means it has to be the Indians settled in the US or another foriegn country. The initiatives themselves are good but I have no idea how many people living in India are going to be influenced with them. One such initiative is Voice of Ambition; in their own words:

We at Voice Of Ambition are experimenting with the idea of creating India’s First People’s Radio using the technology of podcasting. You can hear the programs on the site without any hassle for free. As we want people to voice their opinions and desires we have on the site a presentation which will tell you how you can send your audio to us using podomatic.com so that we can podcast it to the world. We also have tutorials and links to help you record audio. So having said this we encourage you to record your audio and voice your opinions to the world.

They have articles, podcasts, forums, pictures from India etc. And a very energitic team which has resolved to make VOA a success. Do register yourself with the website and participate in the forums if India related issues really interest you.

With all the political debates related to South Asia(predominantly India right now), things are getting really heated up at Desicritics. Its a bloggers network(part of Blogcritics.org) and you too can become a member and post articles there if you are blogger. Though it contains quality reviews of the latest books, movies, music albums etc, articles belonging to a lot of other categories too(technology, business, opinions, short stories etc), but the articles related to south asian politics is what attracts the most of the traffic. Head straight to their main page.

Hazaar Chaurasi Ki Maa: A 10 Out of 10 Movie

I went to watch this film with very little expectations. That is because i had read Amitabh saying in one of his interviews that this should have been a short documentary and not a full featured film. after watching the film, i must say that he couldn't have been more wrong than that(assuming that the interview was a reliable one).

This particular film was closest to my sensibilities, which only a very few films are. The film was very opiniated one, which means it was that much more difficult to get the nod of a large section of the audience. There are only a few films in which I felt satisfied after every new development in the story and never thinking that it could have been better than that. What more, we were told at the end of the screening(yes, it was a special screeing by Moving Images) that the writer Mahasweta Devi, on whose book this film is based on, had felt that the film version is better than even her book version. Kudos to Govind Nihlani!

The film deals with the complex issue of naxalite upsurge in the West Bengal during the 1970s. Following are the keypoints of the film from my point of view:

1. Young lads from rich and affluent families also became part of the naxalite movement(HKA has a similar theme, in the Bihar setup) hoping for a better future for the neglected sections of the society, carrying a dream to change the entire structure of the world, bringing peace and prosperity to everyone. Jaya Bachan's youngest son, played by Joy Sengupta, plays the character of one such guy.

2. From the point of view of the youth, they are doing the noble deed of cleaning up of the system. From the point of view of the system and the administration, these people are nothing but the criminals. Interesting angle added to this is the point of view of the family and the relatives of such students-turned-naxalites: Joy's father(Anupam Kher) and his siblings treat him as a criminal and consider him to be an embarrassment. The father tries to completely erase him from his memory once he gets killed in the police encounter.

3. Jaya Bachan represents the other side of the society - the part which has no point of view at all. They don't understand what is right or wrong with the system, what is meant by standing against it, what are the rights of the common people and how they are flouted by the adminstration. She loves her child more than anything else but yet fails to understand, or even know what his dreams are. She donned this role with perfection and she looks nothing but the character itself.

4. Seema Biswas represents that part of the society which pays for the sins committed by the others. Her family has one son - a naxalite, and three daughters. As the son would be the torch bearer for the family in time to come, he is the one who is properly fed and properly educated by the parents. With the hope that he will get a job for himself as soon as he completes his education and will then take the burden of supporting the family on his shoulders and will marry off his three sisters. Its a pitiable condition in this scenario for them to lose him after investing in him for 20 long years. The family is deep in the trenches with the father not being alive anymore, mother not in the health to take up domestic work at others' houses, the family having to meet the expenses with the tution earnings of the eldest daughter and by selling off the home utensils. Who will marry off the daughters now? How would they be even surviving for very long? what wrong did they do for having to face all these troubles?

5. The cunning way in which the politicians deal with the naxal upsurge is beautifully handled by the director. No point in explaining all that here though; the moral of the story is that you always are at a disadvantage when you chose the violent path. You don't even know to which side you belong. To give a real fight, especially in a democratic setup, you have to be in the system; otherwise you are doomed.

6. The oppurtunity to have a second thought on what went wrong for them with the naxal movement, why they have failed, should they have done anything differently etc was given to Nandita Das's character. It was a real pleasure to see such a young actress(it was one of her first films*) putting up with such an impressive performance. The scene where Milind Gunaji interrogates her was by far the best in the film. Her first interaction with Jaya Bachan raises a lot of thought-provoking questions which do not have too many obvious answers. These two scenes take the film to a completely different level.

7. The engagement party of Jaya Bachan's daughter is just another high point of the film. It has humour, it has satire, it has pain and it comes at an important phase in the film.

8. The film ends with Raghu's dream (almost) coming true. The difference: his own mother, Nandita Das and the other colleagues now work by being within the system. His mother works on the documentation of the human rights. Nandita Das works with the tribals. so on and so forth.

The film is so strong in the ideology yet its presented in such an interesting and entertaining format, a film couldn't get any better than this, isn't it?


*The credits of the film suggest that it was the first film by Nandita Das. But she had already worked in Fire(1996) before this film.

$ I used the names of the actors rather than the characters as I have forgotten almost all the character names.

Google Page Creator: A Visual Tour

I just played for a little while with the latest offering from the Google Services - Google Pages Beta. I took some screenshots in the process and am uploading them here. They are all self explanatory, so sparing you people with my commentary.

Google Pages Welcome Screen

WYSIWYG Interface of Google Page Creator

Creating a New Page

Editing a Page

URLs Can Be Validated

Preview After Adding 4 Sample Links

Layout of the Pages Can Be Changed

An Example of a Different Layout

Preview of the New Layout

Manage All the Pages Using the Page Manager

Uploading images and other resources and adding them to the web pages is also possible and very simple to do. Google Pages should come very handy for creating the individual profiles, simple personal websites or maintaining one's todo list. Register with Google Pages to get an invite if you haven't already got one.