Just Me - India

Rating: **

This is a book that starts off with a great promise, even the few lines summary in the back cover page interests you. But it fails to deliver completely.

It is a story about the lives of few individuals working in a Call Center. This story is apparently told to the writer by a girl whom he meets in the train. It starts off fairly well, but loses track very soon, and goes on and on about their relationships with one another. It is almost as if, the writer wanted to write some sort of a relationship book. More than 50% of the book deals with that - something u were not expecting from a book with this title !!

The last few chapters of the book are unbelievably bad. Almost as if the writer was in tremendous hurry to finish it. After reading this, there is no interest left to read an earlier book by this same author: Five Point Someone.

Highlights:

• The book is correctly priced only at Rs 95.
• Not a very big book, easy to read (large fonts).
• Storyline, not very good. Too much focus on discussing relationships of all sorts. You start wondering - whats going on !
• The end is bad, and not well-thought out. Rushed finish.

Can anyone write something and become an author?

Rating: ** 1/2

Overall a fun movie. It is set in a village, that is poor and in debt. And then someone wins a 1 crore lottery and the fun starts. The cast is good. The comic timing and laughter value is average, not excellent. It manages to make u laugh.

Highlights:

• Good actors, make you laugh.
• Does not pretend to be anything other than a simple village based laughter riot. Succeeds somewhat.
• No songs in the movie, a rather short movie.
• Dialogues and situations could have been even more funnier.

Rating: *** 1/2

Its a movie that could have been much better.

The overall theme and style of movie making is interesting and different. A story about young folks who are disillusioned by the 'system' and decide to take revenge in their own way. It draws some parallels between different eras - one of the pre-independence, and other of 'today'. It was a good attempt, but in my opinion it did not really work completely.

Some highlights:

• Aamir Khan and rest of the cast have done a good job
• Music is ordinary.
• Story and Screenplay is interesting, could have been better, especially post-intermission.
• is a fairly big hit...

This is really a nasty movie, deserving very little pace here. Even if you do not have anything to do, do not see this one. I did not see it beyond intermission.

Don't the directors see their movie post production?

I do not know for sure, but it looked like a rip-off from some other movie, and the rip-off went horribly wrong.

That summarizes it. :)

It is amazing that the some ministers in the govt. of India are introducing a legislature, to provide for Reservations in the Higher Education. Its nothing less than a fraud, being perpetrated on citizens.

What is it about, when did it come into being?

• This idea was mooted by B R Ambedkar, widely regarded as author of Indian Constitution.
• The idea was to reserve some percentage of seats in government and government enterprises for certain castes.
• It was not purely based on those who were economically underprivileged, but clearly based on castes.
• Although to be fair - the castes identified were those that were indeed economically unerprivileged.
• Over a period of time, this list kept growing, and more castes where added to the list.
• The original idea was to do away with reservations after a few years, by which time it was thought the underprivileged would have gained some ground.

What went wrong with this idea?

• It was not a well-thought through idea. Instead of guaranteeing reservations to those with poor economic background, it sought to guarantee reservations to belonging to certain castes.
• The reality is there for everyone to see. People belonging to these reserved castes continue to remain as poor as they were several decades back. A few government jobs is not good enough.
• It is a well known fact that, government insititutions in India over several decades since independence have been inefficient and even corrupt. What  benefit can reserved jobs of such institutions bring to them.
• There have beens innumerable cases, where people obtain false certificates - stating they belong to a certain reserved castes, to gain these jobs.
• Any job or a position not gained by merit, is likely to not bring merit to the job at hand. All jobs should be a give and take relationship. The employee performs, the employer pays. Guarantee of a lifetime of a job irrespective of performance will bring exactly the kind of results that government owned enterprises came up with.
• Politicians of every hue used it as a tool to gain votes. They not only continued with reservations (against the original mandate), but sought to increase the pool of people who would qualify for reservations, and even attempted to enhance the scope of reservations beyond govt. enterprises to private enterprises.

What is happening now?

• Government is trying to introduce reservations in premier higher education institutions (IITs, IIMs etc.)
• The very reason these institutions are considered meritorious is that admissions are based on merit. This very foundation is supposed to be changed!
• This is clearly happening for political gain by the party in power. It is shame that no other political party will oppose this move either, because they too dont want to lose votes from people who stand to gain from reservations.
• The reserved category of castes are viewed as vote banks by these politicians.

What is need of the hour?

• Primary Education is the need of the hour. The people from underpriviledged background do not even have access to decent schools, and clean drinking water. We need to start with basics - and this should have happened decades ago.
• Get the schools functioning. It is a well known fact that even teachers do not turn up in these schools, and very often are not paid at all or not paid well. On what basis then we expect the students to show up !!
• A large number of people remain illiterate, get that going first. Get the illiteracy rates down to zero. Basics.
• By all means give equal opportunity to all citizens. And this is acheived by providing  better schools, education, economic help, food, healthcare, drinking water to citizens. Let people strive for excellence. Thats where true happiness of achievement also lies.

Adios.