Page 3

Bollywood is still alive and kicking, though just barely. Madhur Bhandarkar has once again made a great film in Page 3. As his earlier masterpiece Chandni Bar, this one too covers a gamut of topics that we see in today's society. Everything from high society, fashion, Bollywood, underworld, media and child-trafficking is covered in this wonderful film.

Several scenes leave an impact:

• The editor of the newspaper who says that the bigger the party, the better the coverage, the higher the sales.
• The dual lives led by the high-society businessmen and hostesses.
• The new encounter technique discovered by the police inspector.
• The absolute lack of respect by the attendees at a funeral.
• The discovery of child-molestation by one of the high-profile businessmen, and the fact that he picks up those children from an orphanage run by his wife!
• The gut-wrenching scenes that follow, in which the expose is silenced.

The life of the reporter Madhavi (Konkana Sen) comes full circle in the end. Starting out as a Page-3 reporter trying to do more meaningful journalism, she goes on the crime-beat with ace reporter Narayan Rane (Atul Kulkarni). She exposes the child-molestation scandal, only to be fired from her job. She gets a job in another newspaper, only to resume her original Page-3 reporting.

Everyone, and I mean everyone, has given a first-rate performance in this film. Konkana Sen, Atul Kulkarni, Sandhya Mridul and others. But the cake is taken by Boman Irani. Till the end one cannot make out if he's on the good side or the bad :-)

7.8 for 3+ yrs???

Veerappan was telling me about an interview he had taken today. The candidate was a 3-yr experience software developer, previously working at a cellphone-making company in Bangalore, and at a car-manufacturer in Noida for the past 3 months. The guy was getting a compensation of 5.5 per year in Bangalore, and a whopping 7.8 per year in Noida. Now that's something! He was expecting a higher compensation if selected here. If he gets that much, I'll have to fight it out with HR or just quit!

Smash the stack

Awesome page for refreshing some compiler- and programming-related fundas:

Smash the Stack!

Surprise visit

I got a call at work around 6:45 PM, and the voice of the caller was vaguely familiar. It sounded like one of my colleagues back at the univ, but that was a far-fetched idea. So imagine my surprise when the caller identified himself as Sac! He had come to the city for a few days out of his hectic holiday to des. We decided to meet around 7:30, and passed time at the nearby theater complex. Catching up with news from other colleagues at the univ was quite fun. We were there till 9:40 when we parted company. A pleasing unexpected encounter.

Wilbur Smith after a long time

Bro got a Wilbur Smith novel from his college library. Just the kind of fast-paced racy story I was waiting for. After reading Angels and Demons by Dan Brown which was quite heavy with the intellectual stuff, I can now relax with the latest one from Wilbur Smith. Although based in South Africa like his earlier novels, this one's no longer related to the Courtney and De La Rey bloodlines. It's more to do with terrorists and hijackings.

The "matchmaking meet"

I had my first pahaNe-dakhavaNe session yesterday. I'd already posted that I was very nervous, and the jitters grew as the hour approached. At 5.30 I could hardly keep still. There was no reason really to be so jumpy, but first-timer's nerves are always like that. Aai and Mru told me to change into something more presentable, dressed as I was in faded jeans and old shirt which they found unacceptable. I changed after much persuasion.

The girl and her parents arrived punctually at 6. She was quite tall, about 5'4", and looked somewhat better than her photo suggested. But still her face wasn't all that special. We all settled down in the living room, and both parties were at pains to break the ice. After the usual banter about the weather (which had suddenly become very cold), the two of us were sent into the bedroom to have a private talk.

To say more about her: she was quite fair and had the typical KoBra ghaaray doLay. She had left the body-shopper company she'd mentioned in her mail and joined a smaller networking-oriented company. Opportunities to go to the US were pretty limited for her, but she said she wouldn't mind if she were asked to go there. She wouldn't say whether she wanted to settle down there, or go on a short-term work basis. She asked PLENTY of questions about my company - even down to what the payscales were! I tried to be as open as possible and asked her quite a lot of questions about herself, but her answers were pretty short. The main thing was she asked VERY LITTLE about myself - mainly limited to some brief questions about my schooling, my MS and what kind of movies I liked. I kept waiting for her to ask something more, but the questions never came. After about 25 minutes, after our snacks, and after a moment or two of awkward silence, the question came: "Have you finished asking me questions?" I was amazed... no stunned. But there was nothing else to do or say, so I agreed and we went outside. After a few more minutes of random conversation, they were ready to leave.

In conclusion, it's definitely a reject from my side. This is the first reject I have given after meeting a prospective girl. Earlier rejects had been based either on photographs or mismatch of patrika. Let's see how many more of these programs I have.

Machine down

Came to office this morning to find the blue screen of death when I switched on the monitor. And the computer wouldn't boot - to be more precise, it kept rebooting automatically. The sysad spent the entire day trying to bring it up! And the reasons he gave as to why the machine was behaving so erratically were vague at best. He finally had it up and running around 7 PM! The upside was an official reason not to work :)

The big day is here

Yeah, I meet a prospective bride today evening for the pahaNe-dakhavaNe program. I am nervous as hell. The only consolation for me is that is on home turf. I've absolutely no clue what we're supposed to chat about during this "meeting". The girl is pretty well-educated - BCS, MCS and MCP, with some Japanese certification, and working in a reputed body-shopper company. The funny thing is I don't remember what she looks like. I had seen her photos when she had forwarded them to Aai. That was more than a week ago, and I have absolutely no recollection of how she looks. That's a frightening prospect!