A Deeper Plunge

Dev D did some deep impacts

2009-02-09T12:14:00.003+05:30

It happens very less often that I see a Hindi film and start tripping on it. One such film is Dev D. Absolute intoxicating. Since Saturday last weekend, I have been tripping on the film and its music. The more I listen to the music, the more impact the shots filmed on those tracks leave on me and I drift into a subconscious trip over the film.

One of the best films I have ever seen in the history of Indian cinema where surrealism in films is expressed so well. In all senses the surrealism in the film is too engrossing - be it be the cinematography, the music for sure, the art direction, the story flow, the forward and reverse narrative in the film, the correlation of the characters, the fast motion sequences, the slow motion sequences, the body mount cameras and definitely the exceptional good use of music in the film.

Amit Trivedi's music is a class apart and the lyrics by Amitabh Bhattacharya, Sheilee and Anusha Mani gets you to trip on the soundtrack for weeks together.

Anurag Kashyap hats off to his talent. Even though the script of the film is not even close enough to the the way the film is made, the script being developed by picking up the instances happening in Delhi in the recent past and somehow connecting to a love triangle as in Devdas, its in true sense a director's talent in film making.

Parminder AKA Paro, Devender AKA Dev and Lenny AKA Chandramukhi AKA Chanda... Characters from Devdas... Its a modern day interpretation of Devdas and the conflicts of characters are highlighted in the film very well.

First No Smoking and now Dev D. One bold Indian film maker to venture into the surrealism territory.

I Wonder Why?

2008-09-01T00:41:00.010+05:30

I wonder why?

It is only the US that faces all kinds of calamities. You pick up any film and there you are - someone has attacked the US. Be it aliens or the terrorists or some deadly terminal disease - everything affects the US.

I was recently watching the Hollywood blockbuster "Independence Day". I have watched it so many times now that I have nearly remembered all dialogues of the film. Then I had this thought that why is it always that the people of United States of America are inflicted to pain and disorder in their lives due to things that generally do not happen elsewhere in the world.

Sometimes aliens come down to Earth to visit US and cause destruction (Independence Day), sometimes humanoid robots comedown from nowhere to hack into the intelligence system of the Government of US and in return some extraterrestrials in forms of meteorites come in and becomes automobiles to counter the threat (Transformers), sometimes nature plays hostile to people living in the United States (Day After Tomorrow & the recent Shyamalan flick The Happening and many more), sometime a cyborg roams the streets of the country killing people (Terminator series). Surprising is the fact that none of these events happen in any part of the world.

India being a hub of software development and back end operations for all major IT giants of the west should have been the most susceptible to attacks of cybercrime. So what harm lies in the recent news article from India TV speaking of Aliens visiting earth and picking up cows from the fields? After all if US films can show things that are completely a mental picture of someone seeing something irrelevant, even Indians can dream of things that do not happen (or may be happening really). As a matter of fact, the greatest brain drain happening to the west is from India and China. Indians are considered to be the most imaginative and creative people in any field of work!

I have a dream to make a fiction. Fictions are something that need not be real or need not be related to humans. I make an alien character in my fiction that can look like anything! It can look like a mossy stone on the sides of a waterfall, it can look like a jelly fish, and it can look like the goo gel that does not have any shape. I wonder why all aliens in the west have features similar to humans? Why do the robots coming into the US from the outer space taking the shape of automobiles, unfold to become humanoid shapes? Why do the alien in Independence Day have two legs to walk and eyes on the head?

I guess there are no answers to what I am thinking. But for me an alien should be something that looks not human. That should not have the humanoid features that should have eyes to see and ears to listen. And the day I visualize one such thing, I promise you to get you something that does not look like what you have been seeing till now in the theaters and clapping your hands in enjoyment.

CLOSER TO HEAVEN

2008-06-23T17:49:00.005+05:30

It was a windy and rainy day when I took off and as I was getting lost in the heavenly beauty up above, I was brought back to reality when the sudden unexpected turbulence swept the aircraft in mid air. Free fall for few seconds and then a sudden surge of the wind power - treating the mammoth aircraft as just a speck of unwanted body hovering in the serene and blissful soul of the whites and greys.

It made me realize that to step into the heaven you need to give a test of turbulence - whichever means you take to reach the top. But turbulence don't last forever. The fact that there are layers and surfaces of sufferings-once you surpass those, the life above is as smooth as everyone wants it to be.

Well it was the case when I was flying in the Boeing 737, but does it hold any ground when you are on the actual ground, handling something you really want to execute with thousands of turbulent mind frames and frivolous people around you to make it really difficult for you to reach the heavens and touch the sky.

Loose Ends

2008-06-18T21:52:00.002+05:30

Loose Ends, originally uploaded by hippocampus_13.

And this was the instance when I felt loose from all bounds and responsibilities.

Knots

2008-06-18T21:51:00.002+05:30

Knots, originally uploaded by hippocampus_13.

Life can be full of knots. Knots not only to the progress but also to the way one thinks. This was one such moment when I felt I am tied to something and shot this knot.

The photo was made into a monochrome one to signify life less of diversity.

Filmy… very filmy…

2008-04-07T02:01:00.003+05:30

Of late I have been watching quite a few films. Latest watch was the new Hindi flick “Race”. I’ve been living on the soundtrack of this film for few months now; used the title track for an internal communication A/V for the marketing team of CNN-IBN as well and incidentally the edit pattern I took was a lot similar to how the song in the film is edited.

DON’T READ THIS IF YOU HAVENT SEEN IT AND INTEND TO WATCH THE FILM. I am not revealing everything but a lot.

Well edit patterns can be left aside when I have a lot more to say about the film. I read Rajiv Masand’s review on the film on bookmyshow.com (another Network18 venture) where he has given the film a 4 star rating. 4 stars are more often than not the typical ‘paisa vasool’ films I’ve noticed. Well the expectations on the film died when the director duo came into the picture. So there I was in the theatre of Noida, Centrestage Mall.

Film started promisingly with wannabe Hollywood-ish heli-cam shots that were nowhere near to the skills of the Hollywood cinematographers; maneuvering the camera seamlessly is no joke I suppose. The shots were shaky (or were they intentionally done, director duo?). I imagine they were intentionally done as I don’t see any dearth of funds to hire the best cinematographer in business when Abbas-Mustan can blow away the most expensive cars in the world and the entire film shot in South Africa and UAE (and if I am not wrong, one sequence was shot in the pool side of Radisson Goa too).

The narrative had a style that according to me was not necessary – the reverse-forward style. The script I must say is a well worked out script – must have taken a lot of brains to write such a script. The plans shown in the film were “Baap” of all plans I have seen at least in Hindi cinema. The twists and turns in the film were too crooked. The theme of the title “Race” somehow got lost as the film progressed. The film became a complex array of relationships and accomplices. The un-necessary insertion of songs in the film made it drag a lot; especially after Ronnie’s (Saif) so called murder and Sophia’s (Katrina) appearance as his wife and the song in the flashback then. Similar drag was the entire appearance of Jhonny Lever as the marriage registrar. Could have been better with a plain and simple extra artist and to the point execution.

Surprisingly the second half of the film was much more entertaining when Robert D’Costa aka RD (Anil Kapoor) with his accomplice Mini (Sameera Reddy) came into the picture. RD being a voracious & vociferous detective kept eating something or the other (fruits and later dry fruits) and his cheesy dialogues made the film much light headed. May be the film was rated “A” more because of these than the short (close to) sex scene of Sonia (Bips) and Ronnie.

Some sequences that I noticed used the latest technologies available to the fullest. The scene on chroma (the whole roof top scene) was appreciably very well executed. Laymen in no condition can say the scene was NOT shot on the roof top. The title song “Race saason me” was well filmed. The jib shot introducing Ronnie was mind blowing. The climax racing sequence was well shot and edited.

Biggest factual error I noticed in the film added to few other small ones was the climax were Ronnie and Rajiv (Akshay) race for their lives. Ronnie’s car had a break failure and Rajiv’s car was fitted with a breaking sensitive detonator – so both cannot apply breaks but the cars did awesome slides (drifts) on the road. I love cars and am a big fan of stunts done with cars, have done a few myself too; never heard of any car rear sliding (drifting) without hand-breaks (unless it is a very powerful real wheel drive car). It was clearly visible on shot that the rear wheels are getting jammed and the drift happening.

Even there was nothing to expect from the story, there was an expectation for the end that rose while watching the film. For me the film ended without a bang. For me the end would have been much more appealing if both Rajiv and Ronnie were killed in car crashes. But it is the director duo’s imagination and interpretation of the script. I have nothing to say.

If I were to rate the film, I’d go by Rajiv Masand; not for the story but for the execution and the paisa vasool factor. For me it was a good 3 hours of no thought entertainment. And mind it Bips is always stunning but Katrina is more stunning this time.

Is money cheaper or mind?

2008-02-05T01:22:00.001+05:30

Gone are those days when I rode to school on my bicycle with 20 rupees in my pocket and on the way back home, played challenges of breaking record in eating the “gol gappas”. It sounds fun right? Well it mighty was. Life – less complications and competitions to live and sustain in this world where Darwin’s theory of “survival of the fittest”, has become a practical reality.

Sometime I sit back and trot down my memory lanes when a mere 20 rupees was a big asset for me. I spent some and saved most of it to spend on commodities I aspired to possess. Well I had a container of a piggy bank in which I used to collect all coins that came back from grocery store as the change. Month ends were like salary days for me. Counting began on my throne (well my bed to be precise) and ten storied coin skyscrapers used to appear on a piece of cart board. A whole month of savings – a mighty 600 bucks. With all joy and no regrets, my favourite destination used to be the nearest music shop. All confused with the variety of offerings in front of me, I used to pick CDs that would be safe to buy; after all I am spending my one month fortune on something I haven’t heard ever.

This way I made a decent collection of Hindi film songs and some selected English numbers.
Few years went by and my aspiration to get things kept growing. I got a moped in my eleventh standard and I felt on top of the world. I roamed around everywhere in the moped. My monthly quota for petrol was a max of 300 bucks. Well was riding a moped so was quiet efficient on fuel. My pocket money also saw a rise in status. So the 20 bucks graduated to 50 bucks a day. Now my needs also got a bit expensive. After all I am a college going boy now. My college books were more expensive than the ones in school. Even thought the tuitions had ended but my aspirations of becoming a medic didn’t die. Kept trying and studying to crack anything anywhere and run out of my hometown. My close friends had fled and I was among a bunch of strangers in my college. Some of the known ones became unknown and few of the strangers became good companions. I don’t exactly remember, what was my salary structure then (or better to say the so called salary structure). Surely our favourite past time was to sit and chat in our Zoology lab and prepare H2S gas secretly and run away before the lab assistant get to know of the stinking mischief we’ve done in the chemistry lab.

I reached a stage when I HAD to be promoted now. So the next stage came where I became a proud owner of my motorcycle. The latest in the market, swanky green sporty Hero Honda CBZ. Was a great style statement then but alas, my pocket didn’t allow me to flash it around too much. Surely with position, the expenses incurred were properly compensated. So now my daily wage was about 100 bucks a day. So in a span of 3 years I did progress a lot. So was the pace of my progress that I started dreaming big now. Wanted to become something and stand on my own feet. A typical teenage psychology, even though now I was about 21. I wanted fancy clothes but alas could never buy them because of the prevailing racist mentality back home then. My endeavours of getting free from the shackles of my parents was the supreme in my thoughts.

Bored and frustrated of the zoology honours course I was pursuing, the thought of widening my scope of specialization led me to the various competitive examinations seeking admissions to various Mass Communication colleges.

The analogy between Zoology and the field of work I am in currently was rightly elucidated by one of my colleagues today.

Quote: “You have studied Zoology in college and now you yourself are in a Zoo”

I sat back and contemplated. I studied about animals, what if these theories are being used on us? Don’t you think it can happen?
Believe me it is happening.

Today when I have grown from surviving on a petty sum of pocket money to earning pretty decent (couple of lacs a year), the aspirations and dreams along with expenses have grown disproportionately. Dreams and aspirations have become bigger and better; so have the economics associated with them. Now that I am earning nearly half a lac a month, I feel I am underpaid. The lifestyle has changed so drastically in these six years that I feel amazed when I look back to those days when life was much more fun, much more relaxed and cool headed. In a race to win and to prove the existence of Darwin’s theory of “Survival of the fittest”, we have left life somewhere behind. We have jumped into a boundary where the wall behind you, follows you. So even if you turn back, you see a solid black wall guarding the path to retreat.

Big parties, big fun!!

2007-12-09T01:39:00.000+05:30

I am not a party animal but I generally do not prefer to miss chances to attend parties if I get passes for free. After all parties are a place to socialize and everyone knows the fact that man is a social animal. Well it was a similar occasion when I managed quiet a few invite passes for the so called biggest “Bacardi Blast” happening in Delhi. I became a hero in the eyes and hearts of my “party animal” friends as I arranged passes for all of them. Frankly speaking it was in my interest to get my friends in as it would have aided me immensely to finish my work there and push off as soon as I can.

Everything was going according to what was planned. I was asked to reach the venue with my camera crew by 7:00 pm tonight. As a matter of fact I reached 20 minutes before I was expected there. In the wilderness of the city was the location and it was freezing cold there(I must say party animals don’t even look for a place that has something to cover your heads even if it is freezing out there. May be this is the reason they are called party “ANIMALS”). We decided to take a good look at the place before all the madness starts and people are seen all over and you need to scream at the top of your voices to say something to the person standing just next to you.

The location was a real beauty. A huge landscaped lawn with an equally huge dance floor setup with all disco light equipment, large LCD panels to play out the Bacardi surrogate Ads and the best available twin DJ console with the speakers that can take you off the ground. I was looking forward to a glamourous shoot and an appreciation from my boss (who, out of her sheer love for me, keeps threatening of throwing me out) for the vision I for the treatment of the event. The food stalls were all getting ready with good looking food items that smelled equally good for the large number of people expected. I was terribly hungry and decided to go for the food available. When my hunger centres in my brain got a bit of a stimulus from my stomach, we all decided to go and gear ourselves for the blast we were all waiting for. Time passed buzzing by and so was my non stop buzzing cell phone – party animals prowling for the prey.

I don’t know what to call it – fate or good luck that I walked towards the gate as the people there had seized the production car and was causing trouble getting it inside the venue. To my utter surprise I found some “Khaki Wardi” all around the front gate and the organizers hassled to tackle them. After a moment of bewilderment I realized there is something happening that was upsetting the people from the hosts and the blast came in a way no one could have expected. The party was getting indefinitely postponed because of the always “end of the scene appearance of the police”. Cops running everywhere, warding off every car that stopped in front of the gate, threatening people to put behind bars if they are not heard and all sorts of unspeakable abuses. The party held canceled. My frantic phone calls started. First to my party animal friends telling them the good news that would be bad for them and then calls shot up everywhere – to my loving boss, to the sales contact to the client contact back to my loving boss and on and on.

Probably we were the only people to have visited the food stalls this evening and probably the stall owners have earned only the bit we paid for the over priced little food we ate. All efforts gone waste. All arrangements were to be dismantled even before anyone (except us) could see and keep their eyes wide open, all plans of selling a lot of food and booze gone down the mowed landscaped lawns.

My shoot held cancelled, my passes rendered useless and I don’t know how many words of swears I must have heard with non listening ears from my party animal friends about the fiasco at the “to be biggest blast” in town.

For me I had a blast today, firstly got a jhatka at the motorcycle service station when I got to know about the valve leakage of my first love; reached office and was overjoyed to learn that my favourite cameraperson would be accompanying me and then the unexpected turn of events at the big party I was looking forward to enjoy.

MADNESS

2007-11-29T22:27:00.001+05:30

Quiet often people speak of a phenomenon called madness. Well madness, according to me, is not a phenomenon but an absolute state of mind that initiates and supplies free flow of unhindered thoughts. It is kind of a syndrome that starts small and then encapsulates lot more than it is expected.

Madness can be categorized into many forms (I guess – more often than not the creative bunch of people earn a nickname of madness). I believe, I too am mad in some way but people might find my behaviour to be completely sane. I cant help it, its just the difference in perceptions. Talking about madness cannot be limited to humanly behaviour or better to say the actions of the head. I encountered an evening on the roads of the capital of the biggest democracy of the world.

Democracy, for many people, gives an excuse to execute their wishes of breaking rules. Rules are mostly formed to benefit everyone and when people crumple this four letter word into the waste basket and prowl on the roads without thinking anything about anyone, the scene comes in front of the eyes that I witnessed today evening.

On my way back from work, I took the way I generally do. The traffic was heavier than usual – well it had to be as I came out of work in the evening today (for a change). Slowly the heaviness of the traffic started morphing into its madness. For some stupid reasons unknown, the municipal corporation of Delhi decided to dig road and thus was a diversion without prior warnings. What else is needed for expressing the madness in people that was heavily muffled and subdued by the rules wizard. Madness was spread everywhere.

Road raged car drivers, cycle rickshaw pullers, public transport buses, trucks carrying loads to two wheel riders, everyone flaunting to glory, the madness quotient in them. Not only were the people on the automotives but also the passersby stopping for a moment to relish the fun of madness. Madness in all fronts; honking horns, revving engines, blinking headlamps and turn lights – poor Mr. traffic signal, working relentlessly to be a meek spectator of the madness happening right under its nose.

Some lesser mad people came out of their big luxurious cars and the comforts of the air conditioners, to moderate the chaos on the road. But someone madder overpowered the actions of the lesser. In a way it was a battle fought with weapons that have no shine or sharpness but with shear anguished temperaments and long and big toys driven by ever depleting energy sources – not to mention the amount of carbon monoxide and other harmful emissions I inhaled stuck in the middle of the whole scene.

At this point if I reconsider my comment made above about ‘Madness not being just the state of the head only’, I am bound to contradict myself. All in all the activities, a non living object, controlled by the human being does, is indirectly executing the commands the head is spilling out. So here again it reinstates that MADNESS is a state of mind.

In this world of multiple quotients, is there a space for a ‘Madness Quotient’ (MQ)? Does the Intelligence Quotient (IQ), the Emotional Quotient (EQ) and the Creative Quotient (CQ) leave some scope for the MQ to grow and flourish or is it that the IQ, EQ and the CQ combined together expresses as the MQ? If there exists MQ (great scientists have been studying human mind and have described every quotient. I haven’t read anything about the MQ yet), is the daunting pressure from IQ, EQ and CQ contributing to the ever increasing values of MQ in today’s man?

UP ABOVE THE WORLD SO HIGH

2007-11-29T22:18:00.000+05:30

At times it might have happened with you while travelling for long distances; you may feel that spending time become a big trouble. This is exactly the situation with me tonight.

People did things to see their dreams of flying to come true. Tonight I am flying and am unable to decide what to do. The extremely noisy and jerky flight to Delhi from my home would be definitely a journey to remember. The rickety cabin and the small overhead compartments of the Alliance Boeing 737 to fill in your luggage, people struggling to fit in their large luggage cases into these that the ignorant airport people allowed as a cabin baggage, the occasional riffs and distasteful glances and glares given to each other from all strangers becoming neighbours for a couple of hours and the good and not so good looking people roaming around in green and maroon sarees and extra makeup; everything is adding to the beauty and uniqueness of the situation I am in.

Imagine; imagine if such a small Boeing taking you to a place that is hours and hours away, where you can only sit and a little tilt of the chair is provided to comfort your back. The comfort too gets on to your back as it hardly supports your back.

Walking in the air thousands of feet above the ground always gave me kicks. But this flight kicked me as when I stood to walk on the aisle, it shook me off balance that almost made me topple on to a fellow passenger. With the ears plugged with music from the laptop I am typing this piece in, the noise around is hardly avoidable. My eagerness is to find the beautifully lit surrounding that is seen just before the flight touches the capital tarmac. The glossy and the glamorous aerial view worth witnessing is a spectacular piece to witness and experience. I long to see the view as many times as possible and wish to capture the spectacle through the lens of my camera but; alas the DGCA does not permit shooting overhead and the limitations of the equipment I carry around.

As I see many laptops drawn on the food tray of the seats for the occupants of the seat behind it, I feel there are people who are writing like I am to get rid of the boredom that is journey up above the sky is emanating; some might be really those workaholic types, finishing off the last bits of work that needs to be presented the following day in some glossy or not so glossy office in the capital or the neighbouring areas. Alas! I am flying to face the start of endless and tireless work that I am expected to do; reach office everyday in the morning and then forget your way back home. I sometimes feel had the reverse been true (i.e. reach home and forget the way back to office), like-minded people like I would have been among the happiest lot in the whole human race.

Happiness is ultimate, for which one strives for, makes efforts for and spends sleepless nights to earn money to be happy. The modern day context of work leaves apart the concept of happiness out of office. You are supposed to be happy at work, while executing a job or by making the organization earn huge profits. The concept of enjoyment out and away from work has gone and hidden itself, reluctant to come out completely. It has become a commodity that can be experienced in small packets that comes and disappears very very quickly.

Yeh jo public hai……

2007-11-29T22:05:00.000+05:30

If I say the words “television producer”, what comes in your mind? A life filled with luxury, glamour and gloss with lots of money, name and fame? (My media professional friends whoever is reading my mind, this question is not for you.) Well the reality is something that is far from what you think. Actually it is one job that you all creative people would love to hate. But I don’t hate every bit of the job.

I guess there are very few jobs that actually make you interact with common people. Being a TV producer is one among them that gives you the opportunity to get through to various kinds of people. Some people you come across are because you are meant to meet them and help them and seek help from them; being a part of the network you belong to. There are some people whom you just bump into while executing some of the job requirement that I hate to do.

Some instances of life dealing with lives of other people teach you the prevailing hardcore realities while some just happen to leave an imprint in some corner of your memories. This has often happened with me while shooting some stupid visual in the middle of a road or a crowded market place with the professional cameras we employ; I get to hear some marvelous theories from people living in the world of oblivion from the not so fascinating dream world.

As I was shooting today in a crowded market place of South Delhi, my roving ears and my searching eyes could catch something I always sought after. Someone standing at a distance from me was closely watching our activities and postulating a revolutionary theory about how the viewfinder in my camera works. What are these two people looking at with their eyes and heads towards the sky (My camera was mounted on a tripod that was taller than both my cameraperson and I)? My anticipation of overhearing the golden words came in a flash. Thanks to his companion who asked him what are we looking at? Won’t you like to know what he said?

“Yeh jo machine hai isse log doori napte hain… Aur yeh log dharti se aasman ki doori nap rahen hain”

Another funny person came up to me with all giggles and broadest smiles and asked me from which channel I am. Thankfully he was not the Newton kinds. But he had very weird aspirations. He wanted to come on TV and he was more than keen for that. He said

“Aap yeh sab faltu ke photo kyun utar rahen hain. Meri photo utar lo aur TV par dikhao”

To this request of my dear wannabe John Abraham, my already irritated cameraperson asked him to get rid of his clothes and stand among the crowd we were shooting and pose for us. I guess this was the hardest blow to his consciousness, for he didn’t show his face again.

This was not the end. One smart and learned citizen of India came to us and spoke to us very courteously. He asked for our identities and on knowing from where we belong, his fundamental right to freedom of expression of opinion suddenly came into full flow and he started opining on the political scenario of the country. For heaven sake let me work without interfering when I have nothing to do right now with the bad or not so bad political condition of the country.

What I have observed while closely working among various people, there is always a hunger for expressing ones opinion on any matter that person feels is not right or could have been something else. It is no one to blame for the prevailing frustration and ignorance among the people of this country. It is the politicians on whom us common people believe and when we find that the elected representative from the people, by the people and for the people turns his face to everyone and becomes from the people, by fooling the people and nothing for the people that such expressions of exasperations are bound to happen.

IS DEMOCRACY TRUE IN THE LARGEST DEMOCRACY OF THE WORLD?

……woh sab janti hai!!!

Gigs Are Getting Smaller And Smarter

2007-11-29T21:32:00.000+05:30

I still remember when I saw a computer for the fist time in my life. In my school, I touched it for the first time; the feeling of excitement was intoxicating. Then came the phase of learning; we were taught how to boot a system using a floppy disk and working on the DOS operating system; basics about the working of a computer and the generations of computers till then. PC 386 being the fastest then we learnt how to draw outline drawings using “LOGO”. To draw one circle, it took us a lot of effort and thinking to recall the command and to use it in an effective way to get the desired result. Yes I am talking of those days when the PC had just started to become small and was driven by commands… not clicks of mouse.

Thinking of a high density floppy was a big thing as the most common ones had storage capacity of a few kilobytes. I still remember the levels of amazement in us when we got the new computers with the reduced size floppy drives and storage capacity of 1.44 MB. What remarkable achievement it was in the computer world when the need for speed and storage was fast increasing. Another blast of surprise and enthusiasm hit me when my uncle got a new Gateway 2000 computer from the States and it had the storage in few hundred MB. What a remarkable achievement it was for me to tell my friends that I have used a machine that is a generation advanced to the ones we had used regularly then and having a hard disk and storage of few hundred megabytes. Also was a big achievement when I got the first chance to hold a mouse in hand. The damn mouse was uncontrollable!

Parallel to the development in the storage segment of the computing world, the printing and the peripherals were also developing at a real fast pace. When the old dot matrix printers were the only ones available in our country, I got a printed colour card from my uncle in states. What more to say about those childhood days when you get hooked and transfixed by something that you have never imagined and you get to see them in your hands. My card became instantly a big point of attraction not only among my classmates but also among those ignorant computer teachers who knew nothing more than what is written in the text books. We figured out various possibilities of how the colour came on paper – ink ribbons of various colours getting placed in front of the print head when the colour needs to be on the paper… or may be thinking that one colour is printed first and then the other and then the other and so on… the paper gets so many hits of the head as many colours it needs to show. Childhood – I tell you – the phase of your life that is the imaginative best.

The next level of excitement came when the first windows operating system machines came into being and there were no commands to execute an operation but just clicks of mouse on various icons – Windows 95. Never had thought then that some day a new version of Windows will come and will be called Vista; had never imagined that there can be other operating systems that can drive the computer better than Windows. Even when I learnt about the various operating systems that exist, who had thought that these systems someday will be compatible to each other; that Macintosh operating system would support Windows XP!

And the storage world has expanded in a way nobody could have imagined. From the first 32 KB floppy that I have seen to the present Terabytes of storage – it was this short time span of a decade that it not only bloated up in space but also squeezed itself in size. Compare the sizes of the first floppy you’ve ever used and the 1 GB card in your mobile; there is a multi fold jump, both increase in storage space and decrease in size of the storage medium. Today nearly thousand times the storage space of those floppies can be accommodated in a chip of about one-fiftieth its size.

I bought my first computer about 5 years back spending a lot from the papa’s pocket. When I look at it now, it looks like a piece of junk. It was the best possible configuration then; now it is getting difficult to dispose it off for even five thousand rupees. Now that I am typing out this write-up on my laptop, I am bound to get the feeling of what happened to my old computer with my laptop too. Today it is new and so I have spent so many hard earned bucks. What about it five years from now? Will it become a piece a junk like my first computer became or will technology take a U turn and come to a halt. Who has seen the future?

Is this speed and power of processing really needed by humans? Is this syndrome of instant accomplishment of needs leading us anywhere? Will humans remain humans or will they be taken over totally by the machines? It is for you to decide. For me technology is a boon – but to a level that does not interfere with the little bit of humane we are left with.

BE MORE HUMAN!!