Monday, May 18, 2009

All quiet on the western front


Just finished reading Erich Maria Remarque's 'All quiet on the western front'. Quite an engrossing war novel. Its the story of a nineteen year old german boy, Paul Baumer, fighting in the World War I for a cause he doesn't know or understand is quite intense. Erich participated in the War himself , was hospitalized and lost his mother during that time, so the story is pretty much modelled around his own deep-rooted feelings on the purposelessness of war and the toll it takes on the people who participate in it. He gives away the lopsided nature of the war when refers to the fighting French, British and American soldiers as being inferior to german soldiers but having better rations, weaponry and tanks. In a way, the book is quite similar to Joseph Hellers Catch-22, except that Yossarian accepted the futility of the war and wanted to escape,feining ill health and madness while Baumer doesn't protest, he accepts his duty as a soldier and comes back to the front lines & trenches to do as commanded. Maybe because Yossarian was older. Remarque constantly reflects on the wretchedness and inhumanity of war and how soldiers are plain statistics in a war. Im Westen nichts Neues - nothing new on the western front. Dying German soldiers, the killing of British or French is part of the rigor of war-nothing new. How a war leads to a slow loss of interest in life ,increasing uncertanity of what's to happen when one return to normal work- almost dreading the thought emerges as stark reality through the key characters. Even as the one Baumer adores Stanislaus Katchinsky or Kat , who is so full of joie-de-vivre finally meets a bloody end, Baumer lives on unsure.
The book was banned in Germany and when Remarque wrote a sequel The road back about what would have happened if the soldier survives a war and returns to normal life, both his books were burnt. The movie versions ( 1930 and 1979) did better - both winning oscars for best picture.
Terrific book.

Saturday, May 16, 2009

Archers in town

Dear Mr. Archer,

It was great meeting you at landmark the other day. Must confess that I have read many of your books and at one point, I owned over ten of them.

Have been wondering about quite a number of things about your writing-

a. It is quite evident that none of your books have been made as movies but have only made it to TV versions and adaptions. Do your plots not lend themselves to the movie format or is your asking price too high?

b. Is it true that in order to fight the advent of movies and TV, one tends to write more action centric novels and not character novels that you are good at. At the turn of the last century, there were many great books written -with long elaborate character sketches and a long winding scripts -all of which we bundle together as classics. The world war finished all that style of writing and gave birth to 'cold-war' writing with thrillers from - alistair maclean, forsyth, tom clancy, ian fleming, sheldon etc. focussed on the cold war and espionage. You have avoided all this and focused on drama. Are you afraid of action?

c. Everyone has a specialised in a certain form of fiction - Michael Chricton - science fiction; Grisham - legal, Tom clancy - cold war, Steven king - horror; each has had many movie version successes as action lends itself well to movies. You have stayed focussed on drama, relatiosnhips and middle class aspirations- more TV stuff than movies material.

With Paths of glory being a real life story and your next book being a re-writing of Kane and Abel- maybe you have finally run out of stories. In fact, the last 4 of your books are real life- including your prison diaries. In response to a query on your favourite books, you had said that 'The Count of Monte Christo'( I have always thought your favourite own book 'Not a penny more,not a penny less' was actually inspired from Dumas's novel ) and All quiet on the western front ( you happily signed this one for me) were your best and amongst your own books ,your wife liked 'As the Crow flies'. My favourite is 'First amongst equals'- liked everything about it from the title to the way the story pans out and the way it ends.

Hope to have a book of my own for you to sign when I meet you next time.

cheers
naveen

p.s. You are very right when you say that while we could accept coincidences in real life, we quite dislike them in stories.

What a win !

They say the PM will be the first to do a Nehru encore- do a two term in the parliament.Here's what I think worked for this govt. in teh elections-

1. This election was a formality - the govt. had handled and won in the past year many battles with the opposition so winning this war was a formality. The trust vote; the nuclear deal; the immediate political action after 26/11 - the PC move to Home, the instant CM change in Mah., the pursuit of Pakistan; the immediate action after Satyam- the enquiry, new board, the sale;the stock market management from letting it crash to 7500 and recover to 12000 and even the thorny Jagdish Tytler affair on the eve of elections- all of this in just the last year was a testinomy of a solid working govt.

2. Agendas : The BJP didn't puruse any agenda- they didn't chase the job-loss story, the fiscal deficit, the rising prices, the Satyam scam and just repeated the temple agenda as their leaders fought. The country had moved on. The left lost after three generations of ruling Bengal- they couldn't save the Nano jobs and prevented the nuclear deal which everyone thought was good for the country.

3. Leaders - I think Rahul Gandhi symbolizes youth and his entry has led to many many young people joining congress in leadership positions, BJP has none. Modi and Jaitley couldn't reconcile the rest of the leaders. Pramod Mahajan was missed. Not changing Vsundhrara raje scindhia cost them Rajastahan. Lalu ran out of funny one-liners while Nitish attempts to build roads like Hema Mailni's cheeks were rewarded. The PM is an economist, intelligent and clean guy.

4. Work on ground - Rahul worked in the hinterland for the last 2 odd years , making inroads into Mayavati turf, Mamata eroded the left with her victory on Nano, YSR freed hospitals from corporates and gave them to the poor, Karunanidhi delivered 60 lac TVs as promised, Shiela Dixit is awesome - running Delhi like a company and Shashi Tharoor is a cool guy - he walked across and cleared his posters in trivananthapuram. Sonia turned out to be a great leader, selflessly holding the fort together.

The next 5 years will rock.

Sensex at 25000 is my biggest bet.

Friday, May 08, 2009

Now what?

Arun: Hey, listen. Somethings happening to me.
Mohit: What?
Arun: In the last 4-5 weeks, I have met over 5-6 people from my past.
Mohit: You attended an alumni meet or something?
Arun: No, no. These are people from my distant past- my first boss of over 20 years ago, my class benchmate of over 30 years, my school friend after over 15 years and two collegue after over a dozen years.
Mohit: Wow! Must have been fun.
Arun: Thats the point. I didn't find it too much fun to connect.
Mohit: Why?
Arun: It foxed me, so I thought about it for a long time over last weekend. It seems to me now that the issue is over-familiarity. I had already sort of met them. With a linkedin profile peek , flikr photograph albums, facebook conversations , messanger chats, youtube videos, blogged thoughts and the texted twitter 24X7 shadowing, I knew what they had done every minute in the many many years that had passed between when I met them last and now. So when I met them it looked like I had met them last week !
Mohit: Ha
Arun : This is the age of extreme and instant familiarity. Imagine meeting the girl who sat on the same bench as you 30 years back and have nothing to say. Just because for the last 6 months you have exchanged so much information that you were almost on the same bench all along!
Mohit: You are so right.
Arun :The other day I met my first boss of 20 years back and we discussed things we could do together. There was no mention of the 20 years because that was what we discussed over the last 3 months !
Arun : Wonder how our relationships will be defined in the years to come with so much personal information hanging out in public, so furiously, so often.

Zoozoos for Bozos

The current Idea , Lead India and Tata Tea advt campaigns are wonderfully effective.
The fact that they were launched many months ahead of the elections means that they had the time to grow in peoples minds in an non-intrusive way. If they had been launched now, it would have been a normal campaign - communicate brand values by utilizing a current subject making it topical and create resistance in the minds of consumers.
Great marketing - good timing, great execution and packaging.

The Vodafone campaign is the most clutter breaking one I have seen in recent times. The Zoozoos are a rage - think of it - the communities of 26/11 , elections & cricket franchisees, all mostly in teh 25000 to 30000 range on facebook and youtube are half of the zoozoo community , around 65000. That too created with an under 25 days of exposure. For a brand to have lived many lives, it is only expected. Look at brand values of Orange (great recall even now- built on theatre and beethovan concerts) changing to Hutch ( re-built on the pug, innnovation- 10buck pack etc. and many many retail tie-ups) and then to Vodafone ( re-built on the pug+girl story last year , customer service, VAS and now zoozoos ) and yet retaining and growing customers keeping the core premium positioning intact.
Amazing !

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Dated breath and a Demi-God

If Chelsea win in the FA cup finals (and I am praying it will ) and Premier league, Gus Hiddink will turn Demi-God . Not since Jose Mourinho has Chelsea fought like such a cohesive team. The two terrific back-to-back performances, against Liverpool in the league and against Arsenal in the FA cup semis is already making other teams wary. The Liverpool match will rank maybe as one of the finest high-stakes matches palyed by Chelsea. With the see-saw resulting in a 4-4 draw, it was quite a setback for Liverpool. Arsenal began with a lead and went down 2-1 in match with a record attendance ( over 88000 people ) at the Wembley making it an all blue finals in May.
Drogba is in outstanding form just in time - as the Champions league semi-final with Barcelona , the Barclays premier league match with Arsenal and the final with Everton come up over the next couple of weeks.
This new-found Chelsean ability to resurrect themselves from downunder, to react to the goal scored by winning is stuff of legends. The pressure of the scored goal binds the team into some sort of a vengeful fighting machine, bringing out the best in them, and amid great drama and suspence, they score towards the dying moments of the game, so much so that one now assumes it will happen each time.
This team is not for the faint-hearted !

Monday, April 20, 2009

Socha hai - the answers.

Answers to the Javed- Farhan Akhtars song from Rock on.
Aasman hai neela kyon? – This is due to dispersion of light, technically called Rayleigh scattering. As light moves through the atmosphere, most of the longer wavelengths ( red, yellow, orange) pass straight through however, the shorter wavelengths ( blue) are absorbed by the gas molecules and then radiated in different directions. This scattered blue light is what makes aasman neela .
Paani geela geela kyon? – Simple principles of adhesion, cohesion and surface tension apply here.Water’s molecular structure makes it good at forming hydrogen bonds and bipolar bonds with other materials. That's why it's so good at adhesion (sticking to things). Liquids like water, alcohol and kerosene have less surface tension and low viscosity so they wet the skin, leaving a thin viscous residue on the surface. ON the other hand liquids like Mercury with high surface tension don’t wet .
Gol kyon hai zameen? – The circular shape is due to the gravitational pull of the earth. It pulls all nature towards its core resulting in a shape that is circular.
Silk mein hai narmi kyon? – Silk is manufactured from the nest of silkworm,which is made up of liquid secreted by silkworm,It is not fibre like cotton so is much softer.
Aag mein garmi kyon? – Fire creates an exothermic chemical reaction that agitates & excites the molecules in an object. This agitated motion of these molecules creates heat. The more they move around the more heat they give off. This heat is transferred through the air and can be felt by us through radiation.
Do aur do paanch kyun nahin? – This is defined by the numeric system – sum of two even numbers is an even number. Now, don’t ask 6 kyon nahin !
Ped ho gaye kam kyon? – Afforestation – trees meet many human needs – paper, rubber, furniture, transport. Also leading to global warming – Al Gore’s fav subject.
Teen hai ye mausam kyon? – Rotation around the suns orbit creates varying intensity from the Sun leading to 3 seasons. In some parts of the country , theres no rain so its more like summer all year round !
Chaand do kyon nahin? – There are two moons ! Earth has two moons; the first one is the one we all know called 'chaand ' the second is 'Cruithne' a 3 mile lump of rock that takes 770 years to cycle its orbit. A collision between our planet and another body created a debris which got caught in our gravity and formed the moon.
Duniya mein hai jung kyon? – This is metaphysical – quite beyond physics. Tribal survival instincts lead to war and will continue to do so. Some parts of the world are still evolving – defining new reasons for fights and redrawing boundaries.
Behta laal rang kyon? – Corollary to the above. Jung leads to laal rang. Purely physical.
Sarhadein hai kyon har kahin? – Purpose keeps vitality, differences create eliminiation of options and Darvinian theory leads to survival of the fittest.
Behti kyon hai har nadee? – All matter flows from high to low till even – rivers originate from the high mountains and hills and flow into oceans
Hoti kya hai roshni? – Millions of tones of Hydrogen is converted into helium every minute in the Sun creating immense heat & light. In the night, the Reflected light from moon gives the ‘roshini’
Dost kyon hai rooth te? – Transactional Analysis in play here. The three stages of Parent – Adult – Child create many permutations of behaviour, one of them is an emotional blackmail. In negotiations when you don’t want to argue logically, you assume a child state and ‘rootho’ , creating a temporary artificial advantage.
Taare kyon hai toot te? –Keep in mind that shooting stars really aren't stars at all. They are debris from space buring up entering earths atmosphere
Badalon mein bijli hai kyon ? During a storm, a build up of electrons in the upper layers of the clouds causes Lightening. These electrons are attracted towards the positive potential of the earth, but air’s stiff resistance doesn’t allow the electricity to pass through easily. When a huge potential has been accumulated, the electricity forces its way through the air molecules. This causes a lot of friction and hence releases a tremendous amount of heat energy causing thunder. Lightning usually strikes the highest point and the most positively charged area. This is becuz lightning looks for the easiest way out of air.
Sanaata sunaee nahin deta – newtons first law- matter remains in motion till external force acts. Sound is created by movement of air molecules. If molecules are static, so sound is ultrasonic and one can’t hear it.
Aur hawaein dikhayee nahin deteen – air made up of various transparent - gases Nitrogen, Oxygen, Argon, Carbon Dioxide, Neon, Helium, Methane, Krypton, Hydrogen and Xenon
socha hai… ye tumne kya kabhi? socha hai… ki hai yeh kya sabhi?socha hai… socha nahi toh socho abhi
socha hai… kya kabhi… hota hai ye kyon?