Justice Delayed but not Denied

The hammer was finally sounded for the last time in the fourteen year old Mumbai Blasts case and it quite likely seemed to be the death knell for Bollywood star Sanjay Dutt. The Munnabhai was sentenced to Six years RI and was also fined 25,000 INR.

Bollywood star Sanjay Dutt was jailed for six years on Tuesday for getting guns from gangsters involved in India’s worst bombings, ending an epic trial that transfixed the country with tales of terror and revenge. Dutt, an immensely popular star known for his macho anti-hero roles and troubled private life, was found guilty of acquiring illegal weapons
Reuters

I won’t go into the details as there already are over 400 news articles doing the rounds of the web but IMHO, it was just about right. He got what he deserved. I know that people won’t agree with me but I feel that one has to look into the events from a 1993 standpoint and not from 2007! We all know how affable and gentle or Sanju baba is but that has more to do with age mellowing him down rather than an innate softening of the heart or the demeanor. Back in 1993, he was parley to a deadly weapons transaction, and though it stands as a small event in comparison to the bombings, it still is punishment-worthy. May he be resilient enough to overcome this ordeal which, again IMO, may be much more tougher that the past fourteen years!

Related: Dutt Chronology | Lazybug’s Opinion | Bollywood Boo-Hoos

A Trip to Charminar

Its been exactly 2 years, 10 months and 23 days since I have made Hyderabad my home and I haven’t visited the Charminar even once! Visited in the sense that I have never gone there with the express intent of seeing it – I have passed by on numerous occasions but have never really seen it! That blemish was sorta eradicated yesterday when having nothing better to do on a lazy Sunday, we trooped off to the old city with the express intent of seeing the Charminar. As we made our way from Somajiguda towards Charminar, the changing landscape and buildings around us showed us plainly that we were moving from the newer city into the old city. Roads were a bit more crowded (though they are everywhere in Hyderabad nowadays!), houses and shops were cluttered closely, the architecture was old-ish and bordering on dilapidation…even the area names through which we traversed underwent a sea change – Raj Bhavan Road to Lakdi-Ka-Pul to Nampally to Afzalgunj to Patthergatti – it was like a trip back into the past! But that is what Hyderabad is – a quaint mix of the old and new alike!

Done n’ Dusted

500 Posts

WordPress T Shirts

WordPress.com has jumped onto the branding bandwagon and is selling T-Shirts with the WordPress Logo on it. An announcement as to this effect was made today on the WP Blog. It is a great marketing idea that would surely boost up the popularity of WordPress. People wearing it will be asked – what is WordPress? – and thus a word-of-mouth spread of the blogging platform will induce more users (hopefully). And maybe this branding line will increase into more products such as caps, mouse-pads, bumper stickers, mugs and all kinds of whatnots! WP has an exclusive shopping site that will be selling these products and the first one is this good-looking T Shirt. And I’d have purchased it but for three reasons that are stopping me:

• I loathe the red color
• A convenient size mayn’t be available (though the site has sizes upto 3XL one can never say with British sizes!)
• The cost+shipping works out to around 1200 INR which is kinda on the higher side for an collarless T Shirt (even though it is from WordPress)

A more viable option for me would be to print a decent-sized and high-res image of the WP Logo (maybe with my blog address beneath it) on photo-transfer paper or Iron-on’s as they’re called, and transfer it onto a plain Tee of my size/color/choice

Do Not Call

Hello Sir, I am calling on behalf of YCYCY Bank. This is regarding personal loan sir. Good Morning Mr. Chittaranjan. I represent the Preferential Insurance company. We have some excellent Insurance options for you.

Hello Chittaranjan Sir, would you like a lifetime free credit card from PTI bank?

I am sure many people have received the exact same type of calls at inopportune moments and at unearthly hours of the day. One gets tired of saying No!; Thanks but no Thanks!; I don’t need any of those! kinda statements. Most often than not, we just disconnect the call without listening further. No offence meant to the telecallers (who are just doing their job) but it really gets on the nerves and makes me scream out loud! Is there any way out from such disturbances? There seems to be….

GTalk Smileys

Smiley: a colloquial term for a small symbol, made out of ordinary characters but often representing a smiling face, inserted into an e-mail or news article to indicate that a message or comment is humorous, ironic, or not meant to be taken seriously!!!

We use Smileys almost on a daily basis – be it over IM convos, Bulletin boards or discussion boards or even in plain email communications. Now whilst Yahoo! and MSN have a niche set of smileys, Google Talk does not have any dedicated ones i.e. there is no emoticon or smiley toolbar from wherein smileys can be added onto the IM’s. But it does have some in-built smileys that can be typed in via the keyboard as common key-combos and which automatically get transformed into animated smiley icons. Now everyone might be knowing about the commonly used smileys like the smile [:-)] or the frown [:-(] but GTalk has a few more smileys that can be used via the keystroke combos. Here is a pic showing the GTalk Smileys and the key-strokes to be used for getting them:

My First Tamil Movie

Being an ardent watcher of English and Hindi movies, I never have given much preference to regional language movies – even towards (my mother tongue) Telugu movies. I rarely watch Telugu movies and that too only those which have already seen some success. In light of this, it was pretty surprising (even to myself) that I sat up till late into the night to watch a Tamil movie!!! The movie in question was the much-acclaimed and award-winning Autograph. I had watched the movie’s Telugu remake and had an ok sorta opinion towards it. But when the Tamil version was playing on the telly, it kinda lured me into watching it!

The movie is about memoirs and remembrances. The hero travels to all the places he has lived in the past and remembers his past memories. He meets his childhood friends, college mates and work-colleagues and invites all of them to his impending marriage. But mostly it concentrates on his relationship with three women across his life – a childhood romance, a college lover and a friend and mentor while at work. He ultimately marries a fourth girl in the end! The movie is reminiscent of the Raj Kapoor flick Mera Naam Joker wherein the hero encounters different women at different stages in life but the treatment meted out in this tamil version is slightly different though. The tamil version had the director Cheran himself donning the lead protagonist’s role with Gopika and Sneha playing the female leads. Songs are pretty melodious with the opening song Gnyapagam Varudhe being the best of the lot.

P.S: Are you wondering how could I sit through a full-length Tamil movie even though I don’t understand a word of it?? The movie had English subtitles throughout that helped me a lot

Fitness Funda

Health is Wealth! Or so the wise people say. Indeed, in today’s fast-paced life, people are neglecting their health and are sacrificing their well-being-ness in favor of more materialistic pleasures. Moreso in the corporate world where waistlines are increased in pursuit of deadlines; blood pressure shoots up the charts akin to the profitability chart; calories are accumulated as rapidly as accolades!!! In such a scenario, I was pleasantly glad to see that our office ppl. have taken the initiative of starting several fitness-aimed programmes. One of which is the cardio-workout styled Aerobics.

The word aerobic means with oxygen. Aerobic exercise is any repetitive activity that you do long enough and hard enough to challenge your heart and lungs. In order to work your heart and lungs hard enough, you must get your largest muscle groups involved. They include your legs, glutes, back and chest.

We started the aerobics sessions today and it was fun! A couple of stretches and pulls kicked off the regimen and it gradually paced up to include kicks (mild ones mind u!), lunges and sit-ups et al. The only grouse was the music which wasn’t pacy or fast enough! So here’s hoping that this regimen will get me back into shape soon enough (though that depends on the longevity of the programme and my own commitment to it ) So 1 -2 -hup – hup – hup…..