Sudipta's Life

In spite of the you screaming your lungs out over prejudices of the society and the evils thereof, there is one area where the stereotypes do in fact save lives. Heh heh heh... welcome to the world of medicine. The first time I learned that doctors routinely test certain "classes" of people for STDs or certain ethnic groups for mental problems, that is saying a lot. Regular, educated and well-earning people who are more predisposed to be adulterous because they are from a particular community? Ha hahaha.... oh yeah but it is true... hmm... so much for kleptomaniacs, etc. :P

Look at how naturally the voice of Pran merge with the playback, as does the on-screen Kishore Kumar's. Incredible talent of Mr. Ganguly - singing both voices. :)

 In particular, look at the guy playing the dholak - I am proud of the casting choice for "झूम झूम कौवा भी ढोलक बजाये" :)

All around, or at least in the US media, every inch of progress by the rebel forces in Libya is hailed and announced time and over, with a literal celebration breaking out when the capital was run over. We hear from ordinary Libyan citizens expressing that they are finally free to express what they like, reaffirming the value of the "freedom" the NATO troops and the rebels are bringing to the country. The messages from Col. Gaddafi about his wish to fight till martyrdom for his country are portrayed as a mad dictator's rant. Confirmed news of his capture and death will perhaps make this story less interesting, and we move on to the next country. I am, however, intrigued by a few things. And I am hoping someone who is showering bullets and ammo at the Libyan government forces is also thinking this through. First of all, and this is of my paramount concern, why is the Colonel still sticking up? What is it that he believes in? Armed gunmen running amok through the streets...

In general, they say, a problem of plenty is a good problem to have. For example, if you have too many mangoes in your garden, then you could possibly sell some of them off for money or give away some of them for social "points" - even letting them rot isn't going to harm you at all (except the stench and the missed opportunity, perhaps). The above presents a manageable problem. You have some trees, they grow and produce fruits on their own, and then you simply have to pick some fruits and sell them off, or you can even outsource this. Basically, then, you don't have any capital expenses (you didn't buy the trees), you don't have too much operational expenses (you don't need to water them daily), but you incur some cost while picking the fruit and marketing, which, even after outsourcing, is still a positive source of revenue for you. ( My apologies for the business-speak - but these phrases are very succinct and capture the essence of what I wish to co...

I wish life worked the way I want it to. I wish everyone was transparent, honest, and open about their shortcomings. I wish two people collaborating would work towards a single goal with unified vision and passion, not hankering over who gets what piece. I wish business and collaboration did not mean shams, or overpricing yourself and your value. I wish word of mouth meant an agreement set in stone, where people feel responsible for what they have promised. I wish that people should acknowledge the work others have done before plagiarizing. That recognition for work done should not mean beating one's drum at all times regardless of who actually did the work. I wish people will not hold on to critical information just to create their own value. I want people to open up, and help people with all and everything at their disposal with nothing but a singular vision of success in mind. I don't like false pretenses. I don't like subtle hints and innuendos that are meant to e...

A pretty long video, but very interesting! Make sure you give me a commission when you negotiate your next salary raise :)

So some people  have been telling me, that posting just a song or a TED video is not fair. That does not constitute a "regular" post, you say. Well, it _IS_ a real post, if I say so. And that is because, I say so - I am the blogger who posted those! This post, also, technically is not a regular post. Although I'd say it is. See, the purpose of this 30-day blogging marathon is to get out of the writer's block. I think I am out of it. But this constant pressure to write something everyday isn't fair. You have a life, so do I. And writing so much isn't possible. But the important thing is that I am still posting stuff. The post that I am writing now could have been a final summary post, you know, at the end of 30 days. But screw that! I have just realized that holding on to an idea, a post, or just a thought in the head that wants to be expressed isn't good. In fact, the pursuit of a "spectacular" post can lead to the death of the post itself. ...

I am adding to the numerous existing criticisms of Steven Spielberg's film, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom . And nothing can better portray my emotions about this movie than Shashi Tharoor's review, titled India, Jones, and the template of dhoom . My indignations are just plain rants, but I have some course of action in mind which we could count as revenge. This, in brief, is what the film is about: ... hundreds of millions of people, mostly young and impressionable people who almost certainly had never set foot in the subcontinent, met an Indian family, or read an exposition of Hinduism acquired an abiding image of India. It was of a country where kings and courtiers feasted on stewed snakes and monkey brains, where Kali worshippers plucked the hearts out of their victims and embroiled them in flaming pits, and where evil, poverty and destitution reigned until the Great White Hero could intervene to restore justice and prosperity.  If you have watched the mo...

Or rather, the post should be titled "Why I saw the same Delhi Belly that everyone else did". This post is sort of in response to a review of the movie by Greatbong on his DNA India column: Did I see the same Delhi Belly as others did? So let me begin with what I do agree with him about, in terms of the movie (or its shortcomings thereof). All of these, for sure: No, I did not find putting a “b****c***” every few words and the generally endless stream of unimaginative profanities (save the one about the car) to be a sign of Hindi cinema’s newfound boldness and maturity. I cringed every time we were asked to believe that Imran Khan, who looks like he spent half his life in a beauty parlor, is actually a down-on-his-luck, unwashed and filthy bachelor who lives in a dingy apartment with his slacker friends. I find nothing progressive and gritty in actually showing people toiling over a toilet bowl. But what I do find funny is the fact that there is a fat slob of ...

In less than 6 minutes, you shall be entertained and informed about the dangers of blogging as well as of, well,  being a guy:

Never underestimate the stupidity of testosterone! :)

Reference: Confessions of an all-nighter Yes - I am posting this at 9:30 am. Yes - I am happy and elated. No - the achievement is different this time: haven't written down 1000 lines of code Yes - it was productive work, and I have learned to use a new software which will be useful for me for a long time to come. No - nobody clapped for me at 7:30 am this time either! :( Yes - this post (like the last one) is technically a cop-out: not those ponder - laugh - hate - ponder ones I usually post. Yes - I still want to continue my quest to report success to myself. And yes, many many more posts are coming.

One of the best dialogues ever delivered. Do enjoy - and fight on your first night!

Boys will always be boys, they say. And rightly so - since the basic urge to show off or brag never seems to go away. And I use the idiom here to denote the sentiment of competitiveness rather than people of a particular gender: please don't lose the point of the post amidst all the he/she madness. When you are talking about little kids playing on the field, the bragging rights can be earned by who can throw a stone the furthest, or who has taken the most number of catches. See, those numbers matter. However, when you talk about geeks at the computer keyboard, the metric for this comparison changes. Before I delve into the details, let me set the record straight on some things. Your idea of the computer geek might be the meek nerdy guy with glasses hunched over his laptop who can barely look at a girl straight in her eyes. Sorry to break this news to you, but such people are rare and do not make your typical software engineer in the real world. We do in fact play football, drive...

I keep getting ideas from time to time. These little moments of inspiration usually occur out of nowhere. Sometimes, the idea that pops into the head is related to something I am working on, such as: "Oh perhaps if this screwdriver had a magnetic tip, it would be easier to use". Most of the times, though, these are just random ideas which pop up during absolutely irrelevant times. For example, when working on one software project, I am reminded of the exact configuration on some totally unrelated machine that would solve someone else's problem. The point being: they come aplenty, and they are not necessarily related to the task at hand. Now, such ideas are of two kinds. One kind are improvement ideas, or "feature enhancements" in software engineering lingo. The others are quick fixes to problems that I might have been pondering about for a while. The third set of ideas (which, although I began the paragraph with "two kinds" still makes sense), is th...

If there is one sport in my mind, where it is simple non-stop adrenaline where one has to be both tough and skillful at the same time, it is football. No, I am not talking about American football here - neither do I want to call it "soccer" as that word seems to take away the glory from the sport. I would let John Cleese clarify this detail before I speak my own mind about football itself: I do have an appeal, however, to all the modern heroes of this game: please grow some balls and become men again. See, otherwise it becomes difficult to call you a hero. The strange thing is, when a child is growing up, the act of faking an injury never comes naturally to him. However, suddenly on the day when the school is playing another, or even just Class VII section A is playing section B, people start dropping left and right, writhing in agony. Tough guys who would easily take a blow from a hammer to their shin bone without showing the slightest pain suddenly become these pan...

It has been a while since I had any Apple products. The iPod which my former room-mate had given to me has been with me since then. And I repeat - really awesome sound quality, hard disk space, etc. but maybe I would never buy one myself. Apple fanboys in general are very defensive about their stuff. Actually, almost all PC users have told me at different times that once you switch to a Macbook, there is no going back. I, for one, never really got used to one. Maybe because I was already too steeped in the Windows interface, or even the Linux Gnome interface, or perhaps simply I missed using the middle finger (ahem ahem) for whatever reason. Another thing that constantly bugs me about the Mac OS is that the programs never really end. That bottom bar keeps getting cluttered more and more, and whenever I used the apple machine I had that gnawing feeling about some weird program eating up my precious memory and CPU cycles. I know, I know - there is enough (and literally plenty) of mem...

There have been many-a-post sitting idle in my drafts. The urge to write something and get it out of my system has been plaguing me for a while. This particular video from TED actually inspired me to try and write at least a post a day for the next 30 days. Do watch the video and take up your own pledge. And wish me luck!