But the ACs are on, sir!

I'm really fed up with the cliché mentioned in the title.

After hearing these words for years together, I've come to the conclusion that we, as a society, lack AC sense.

Whenever I raise this issue, people often try to tone me down by asking me whether I use AC at home too. But unfortunately for them, I’m a proud owner of an AC that I won in a TV contest some five years ago, which I’d otherwise not have bought. (These kinds of weird arguments continue to go on in our society. E.g. If you want to insist on speaking, say, Marathi instead of English, you are praised by everyone but only if you know English in the first place; otherwise you will be ridiculed)

So wouldn’t I have any right to protest against bad air conditioning if I don’t have an AC at home?

You’ll find ample of poor air-conditioning examples at almost all the places you visit viz. Hotels, Restaurants, Discos, Offices, Cinema halls, Trains and so on. The first reply to your complaint or protest is nothing but the same “The ACs are on sir.”

In most of the offices, the centralized ACs function badly. It might be chilling in one corner while sweating in the other corner, and people are least bothered about it. Often in meeting rooms you will find people crying to have the ACs switched off. The result is ten people suffocate in a closed meeting room, meant for five, thanks to the switched off ACs.

The most important thing people don’t understand is that the issue is more of air circulation than the “cooling” caused by ACs. I won’t mind if you keep all the windows open and just put fans in the office. AC is not at all required for good circulation of air, except for a couple of really hot months in the summer.

If you agree with me then include “+1” in your reply otherwise “-1”

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TRAI'n reforms

Telecom Regulator TRAI has taken a good step announcing to impose heavy penalties on telecom operators for unsolicited calls.
The DoT has also suggested a Do Call Registry (DCR) instead of the present Do not Call Registry (DNC) which, if implemented well, could benefit millions of telecom subscribers.

While the service providers are the mains culprits, the banks are no lesser evils either. Whenever we register for mobile banking or just give our mobile number to the bank as a contact detail, it then immediately gets circulated among the telemarketers who work for all the major banks. No sooner did I register for Citibank last year than a telemarketer offered me a personal loan from Deutsche Bank.

The same is the case with credit cards. Whenever you apply for a credit card of one bank, all the banks (through telemarketers) will line up to you to offer their credit cards; golds, platinums and so on.

There are few mobile applications that could be used to buy movie tickets, train tickets etc. The first thing they ask is your mobile number; and once we fall into their traps, we are bombarded with ads that are rarely relevant, or our numbers are shared with (or sold to) the telemarketing agencies.

TRAI should consider making it mandatory for all the companies, which distribute these kinds of application, and banks not to share the mobile numbers of customers to any other company, and this should be strictly monitored by the telecom watchdogs.

So in addition to the telecom operators, TRAI should also penalize Banks, Telemarketers, and all those who share or sell our mobile numbers to other agencies.

Managing Corruption

Transparency International has just released its latest Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) and has placed India on the 72nd position among 180 nations.

Insider news: India was actually placed well below 20 but our great politicians "managed" the CPI to move India down the ladders at 72nd place.

Cheers!

My Take on Jodhaa-Akbar

I was quite pleased to watch Jodhaa-Akbar on the very first day of its release. I really liked the sets, while the picturization was quite outstanding. The war scenes, especially those involving cannon balls, were really mind blowing. Though I'd certainly not call the movie in the same breath of Lagaan or Swades, still I must say that Ashutosh Gowariker has done a great job.

It's very hard for anyone to believe that there was any kind of love between Jodhaa and Akbar as theirs was just a political union. But Ashutosh has successfully implanted some "love" components and that too quite seamlessly in the story, which show his class. Some examples include showing Akbar's respect towards Jodhaa's feelings and faith, and Jodhaa's boldness and beauty true to the character of a Rajput Pricess. Both Hrithik and Aishwarya have been excellent in their respective roles.

Ashutosh Gowariker's brilliance is seen in the melodious song "Khwaja Khwaja" where he has shown that Akbar is so overwhelmed by the praise of Khwaja Moinuddin and the beats of the song that he forces himself to dance with the other performers.

The picturization of another song "Azeem-o-shan.." is truly superb. The performance of the artists is very organized and well directed.

So far so good but there are few points I'd like to raise which seem hard to digest.

1. It's been shown that Akbar's sister was not pleased with the concept of the "muslim" Akbar marrying the "hindu" Jodhaa. We all know that the Mughals invaded India with their huge armies, and they had no business bringing women with them all the way from Persia, Afghanistan etc. So in most of the cases the only option, which they enjoyed a lot, was to marry hindu girls (I strongly believe that this was precisely the reason why people used to marry off their daughters at the age of as low as 10-11). So the concern expressed by Akbar's sister in the movie, and in general, doesn't make sense.

2. By no stretch of imagination one could think that the prayers sung by Jodhaa in the janaankhana were louder enough to be heard in the durbar of Akbar.

3. Akbar's dialogue "Hum Hindustan ko galat hathon me nahi jaane dengey", just before a war, seems devoid of logic. Just the fact that Akbar was born in a Rajput Fortress doesn't make him a Hindustani, as we all know that the Mughals were invaders.

Overall this movie is certainly worth watching. I've always been an admirer of Ashutosh Gowariker. I consider his "Swades" above anything else produced during the last decade.

I'd love to see a grand movie on Chhatrapati Shivaji from the same director.