beware of the blog

toddlerBoolean: a promising new data type for the obfuscated coding community

2020-06-16T14:43:00.000-04:00

It all starts with the following

parent: are you done?

toddler: no I'm done.

This reminds me of the occasional adult failure to use the nuance of mind:

X: do you mind if I change the channel?

Y: sure! go ahead

Programmers -- specifically those who work with Java -- may likely have encountered helpless code where a boolean field or the result of a method returning a boolean value is compared using == (or worse !=) to false or true.

The time has come to offer a balm of sorts for those wounds. There's nothing like granting formal recognition to a mistake abd paving the way for it to become standard practice in a more palatable form.

I give you the toddlerBoolean. Assertion through negation with a cherubic twist.

comics and the reading habit

2017-02-12T21:57:00.003-05:00

For a while now, I have had to boostrap my reading habit. Short stories have usually sufficed in the past. But I might have hit a new low when I reached out for a stack of unread graphic novels this time. This isn't to reflect my view about comics and graphic novels. Quite the contrary. They are a bit easier on me as a reader. I can cheat with a readymade visualisation of ideas instead of trying to do that in my head while reading the words in a short story or a novel. Of course there are many exceptions. Luckily, my stack wasn't biased in favour of exceptions.

I started off with the rather interesting compilation Knight and Squire: For Six, a limited series from writer Paul Cornell with some great art by Jimmy Broxton. This explores the world of Cyril Sheldrake/Knight ("Batman in England!") and his sidekick Beryl Hutchison/Squire. The British atmosphere is a refreshing shift from the darkness of Gotham (although the darkness does survive, balanced by glib takes) and there are generous doses of Cockney slang (none of which is really meant for young eyes and ears) and to top it all, there is the not-unexpected welcome reference to Monty Python.

Next up in the stack came the only example of the exception I wrote about earlier. It was Kissing Mister Quimper, the sixth volume in the Invisibles series. Grant Morrison is clearly on a trip. The work is loaded with references, many of which I am sure I missed; it's also quite graphic; there's a reference to a real-life celebrity that has been redacted by the publishers (a little bit of Googling will tell you what that was). The volume succeeded in leaving me confused. And a tad unsettled. Given that it has been more than 10 years since I read Volume I in the series, I have to wait till I -- if ever -- read all the volumes in a reasonable span of time, before I decide if the point of the series is to send the mind down tunnels where no mind has gone before.

The next item was something from more familiar territory. Tarnished Angel, the fourth collection in Kurt Busiek's excellent series Astro City. Busiek continues to make impressive exploration of the idea of regular life in a world filled with super heroes (and super villains). Good art from Brent Anderson and lovely covers from Alex Ross.

The final item in the stack was a great way to finish off my boostrapping. Neil Gaiman's The Books of Magic. Just like the Sandman series, there's a load of great writing balanced by the style of a different artist in each entry in the collection. And there are appearances from several familiar characters from the DC Comics Universe, including Gaiman's own creations and interpretations for the Sandman series. It all comes through cohesively instead of feeling like a pencil holder of creative flourishes.

After all this, I found myself adequately invested (a fancy way of saying "past the introduction and well into chapter one") in my first Elmore Leonard novel after all these years. It's called The Hunted and it's part of a collection called Dutch Treat. Not a bad way to rejuvenate the reading habit. All I have to do now is keep the flame burning. Otherwise, I'll have to hope I get lucky in the comics section of the local used book store for another kickstarter.

two groaners for the price of none

2015-09-17T12:31:00.001-04:00

What do you think Bappi Lahiri's build tool of choice is? Why Maven of course. "How so?" you ask. Well, haven't you heard this song from Justice Chaudhury? That's where you'll find supporting evidence (मामा मिया, POM POM). (waits for the groans and the rain of rotten tomatoes to subside).

I wonder why I never thought of the carriage return as the possible fruit of a collaboration between John LeCarre (who created Control) and Ian Fleming (who created M). Isn't it a nice origin to have had for Control+M? (recedes into the shadows before bricks replace rotten tomatoes)

haider: Vishal triumphs with his third

2014-10-04T21:44:00.003-04:00

What does one say when a man like Vishal Bhardwaj praised for his skills in writing dialogue surprises you pleasantly by becoming a scribe of visuals?

Should I be disappointed not to find as many memorable utterances in Haider as I had in Omkara or Maqbool, his previous adaptation of the Bard's works?

Should I not see how 7 Khoon Maaf had offered some hints that Vishal was working on being a chef in another form of cinematic cuisine?

Should I dispell all the little things that connect Haider to his previous work? The reflections and the mirrors (with all their metaphors) from Maqbool? The return of Tabu and Irrfan from Maqbool? Tabu sharing the mirror with a different man. Most of this is, of course, inevitable, because it's the same actress playing Lady Macbeth and Gertrude.

Should I wish that some lines of dialogue didn't see to explain the rather obvious visual cue?

Or should I just sit back and watch a filmmaker, who is a great craftsman, a wonderful music director, a good singer, a great writer with an appreciation for the spoken (and unspoken) word, paint an ode to Kashmir of the kind that we have not seen in years?

Should I just chuckle and wonder if the chutzpah riff (adapted with credit from Osho talks) is supposed to remind me of an offensive Hindi word (after all, nobody pronounces it the way it's supposed to be pronounced)?

While films like Talaash (the answer lies within) (the most recent example from my viewing) continue to explore the hues of Bombay, I don't remember any Hindi film in recent times that did what Haider has done for Kashmir. All the colour and beauty in the culture and fabric of the place comes up on the screen with a strange mix of verve and melancholy. In sharp contrast to every bright burst of colour is a lurking sense of dread and fear and sadness.

There's all this and more in support of the most loose of Vishal's takes on William Shakespeare. Yes, we have the obvious players, the creative adaptations (Rosencratz and Guildenstern are transformed into a pair of Salmans -- fans of Salman Khan -- running a video store; the ghost of Hamlet's father is interpreted as an appropriately named bearer of bad news; the adaptation of "The Mouse-Trap") and the delightful trinity of gravediggers, but the famous soliloquoy gets adapted to a form that might disappoint those keen on hearing a good Hindi version of "to be or not to be" and the skull of Yorick gets a political twist at a different point in the narrative. Moreover, it's only until after the interval that anything suggesting that the Bard was involved really takes shape. The first half is dedicated entirely to a gripping preparation of the milieu and ends with the "appearance of the ghost" (in a manner of speaking), rendered with an interesting flourish of the camera.

Perhaps this is why very few songs from the soundtrack actually appear in the film. If you were expecting to hear Vishal Dadlani or Suresh Wadkar, prepare to be disappointed. Perhaps this is also why khul kabhii seems a tad out of place and almost a throwback to the obligatory song sequences of traditional Bollywood cinema.

But these are just quibbles in the face of what is, in my opinion, one of the best films of the year. There is so much to relish in the craft -- the visual cues for exposition (hint: watch the nameplates outside the houses); the cameos (fellow screenwriter Basharat Peer appears as the Kashmiri suffering from the "New Disease" (itself a reference to 'Nav Byemaer' by Akhtar Mohiuddin); the examples of Chekhov's gun. There is so much to enjoy in the performances (Tabu, in my opinion, leads the list: it's almost like she was Heath Ledger's Joker to Shahid Kapoor's Batman). There's all the learning in the dialogue (for once, the subtitles slapped onto prints that run in the US were a welcome aid in my education). There are motifs in things people say (looking at things from someone else's point of view). And then there's the sight of Kashmiris stepping out during the crackdown with identity cards. The sequence at the square where we see Haider's new look. And the climax.

Time to see if I can get back to the movie hall and watch this again.

exposition done nicely

2014-10-02T21:27:00.002-04:00

After finding bearable exposition with Michael Connelly and being disappointed at finding Dan Brownian exposition in Michael Crichton's earlier books, I was relieved to find a nice sample of exposition in Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon:

(Now, standing there waiting to have his passport stamped, Randy can see it clearly. For once he doesn't mind the wait. He gets in a lane next to the OCW lane and studies them. They are Epiphyte Corp.'s market. Mostly young women, many of them fashionably dressed, but still with a kind of Catholic boarding-school demureness. Exhausted from long flights, tired of the wait, they slump, then suddenly straighten up and elevate their fine chins, as if an invisible nun were making her way up the line whacking their manicured knuckles with a ruler.)

But seventy-two hours ago he hadn't really understood what Avi meant by lanes, so he just said, "Yeah, I've seen the lane thing."

"At Manila, they have a whole lane just for returning OCWs!"

"OCWs?"

"Overseas Contract Workers. Filipinos working abroad--because the economy of the Philippines is so lame. [...]

See how he uses a flashback at the right place?

There's more than just good exposition to relish in this book and it's time I turned a few more pages. So much for all the regular reading material awaiting my attention.

foot; know thyself

2014-06-19T22:10:00.004-04:00

Q: what is a trochee?

A: a trochee.

Thanks so much, Randall.

how precisely vague do you want to be?

2014-05-20T23:21:00.000-04:00

Estimates are so popular in software development. You know they don't mean much. But those who ask for them defend them fervently and even make good arguments in their favour. Such people are the only ones who reap any benefit from them. These estimates helped them feel more at meetings where they always felt on the spot, because these people often knew even less than you did about what was to be done.

And then someone came up with guesstimate. It's a punny portmanteau and may have become more common, because it added colour to statements that had otherwise become bland. Ears perked up when they heard this word instead. Nothing changed. Things arguably just got obviously worse. When someone wanted a guesstimate instead of an estimate, who could blame you for taking the hint that you were supposed to just throw out a number. High numbers were (and still are) usually scare people, especially when you are talking about how long it would take you to finish something.

This is not to deny that guesstimate does not offer something that estimate does not. A guesstimate is an estimate "based on guesswork or conjecture" (source), it is an estimate that you would provide when you lacked enough information. Statisticians (who coined this new term) would appreciate the distinction, but corporate managers appreciated the sound of the word. The meaningful distinction was lost, because an estimate as practised in management often lacked enough information to begin with. A guesstimate was thus a sassy synonym.

Inevitably, the American propensity to derive a metaphor from the world of sports (preferrably baseball or basketball, both of which are popular in America) gave us ballpark estimate. This likely came from the use of a ball park or baseball stadium to convey a sense of an "acceptable range of approximation" (that and other theories are discussed over here).

It would not be unreasonable to expect to soon hear people asking for ballpark guesstimates. Had there been a larger popular area than the baseball stadium, we would have seen phrases based on it.

There is a lot of good advice about dealing with such requests. There's also good material for laughs and that same source also provides remarkably insightful explanations for useful things like Fermi approximations. Hmm. Now that's something to try out the next time there's a meeting to discussing and trading numbers.

drive to die another day

2014-02-24T08:51:00.002-05:00

A family rides on a motorcycle. It's not just a husband and a wife. There are two kids sandwiched between them, fast asleep while their parents negotiate the snarl that is Indian traffic.

A family on a motorcycle prepares to subvert politeness and courtesy by squirming through a path traced between cars waiting abut and behind one another at a traffic light. The husband, wife and three children are banking on luck (which usually favours such ventures in this country) to get them past this point.

Young motorcyclists practise their racing and navigation chops on roads at the risk of scaring and confusing drivers trying to get home. These beacons of danger are wearing helmets. They're making sure they take all the precautions while putting others at grave risk. They also don't realise that physics does not take sides. All it takes is a little nudge to the equilibrium for us to hear squealing brakes and screams and watch another young life get snuffed in a matter of seconds. Or worse: someone maimed for life, left alive to regret their mistake forever.

Selfishness abounds regardless of the dimensions of the vehicle. Each person wants to rise above the unpleasant jam that he or she is faced with and does it by edging ahead and around, eventually creating another version of the jam further ahead. A motorcyclist and the driver of a cement roller agree in this regard. The larger your vehicle is and the more likely it is for it to create more mayhem, the more likely you are to go ahead and effect chaos. By circumventing the problem instead of confronting it and dealing with it by courtesy and fairness, they only contribute to its growth every minute of every day.

the fall of a typo

2013-11-20T22:06:00.001-05:00

Thank the world of IT to come up with zingers like

I had checked with [the IT department] for the slowness issue. They rebooted it and now the box is performing pretty descent

. First things were slow. Presumably, the box was slow. Now you watch it go down beautifully. Fall is truly beautiful and it's not just about the leaves.

yinless yang or yangless yin?

2013-09-19T11:50:00.003-04:00

Employees of the corporate world are no doubt familiar with crapspeak and its unfortunate and inevitably growing influence on the English language. One of its many contributions is the innocuous (and banal) phrase senior management. I am sure those that drop it in all their correspondence (usually to their underlings far removed) nurse thematically rich notions of meaning and semantics for this phrase, but those of us at the receiving end fail to see the difference between this phrase and phrases like program management and senior leadership.

And suddenly today, I wondered, what about junior management and junior leadership? Are they already anathema? Can there only be senior versions of such life forms?

I could go on about how even management and leadership represent ideas that most underlings would disagree with. Even the suggestion that the two are synonymous is enough to make cubicle dwellers break into a cold sweat (or a hot psychotic rage). But all that is fodder for a longer rant that would be misplaced here)

miscellaneous thoughts

2013-08-31T16:16:00.004-04:00

despair is an anagram of diapers. I am sure we are supposed to learn something from that but I don't know what.

The Ninth Configuration and Legion convince me that William Peter Blatty has a way with dialogue, surrealism and plotting. All I need to do now is find a copy of the film adaptation of the former book. He did a good job directing The Exorcist III (adapted from Legion).

The blurb on the back cover of Ramsey Campbell's Obsession is terribly misleading. You would think this was going to be an extended take on The Monkey's Paw or a thinner elder cousin to Stephen King's It. Mercifully, it's neither. This is a rather simple psychological tale that works quite well even if you discount a supernatural presence completely.

Another pick from my pile of random acquisitions from library sales is Headhunter, a book credited to Michael Slade, a pseudonym for three trial lawyers in Vancouver (it is now used, evidently, by just one of them and his daughter). The novel chugs along with three narrative threads set in three different times. It employs additional devices (like switching the standard third-person narrative to a first-person narrative that misleads you with its purpose) to good effect to elevate the standard serial killer piece to something more rewarding.

Love Kills by Dan Greenburg is another example of a novel that makes the standard serial killer piece interesting with narrative devices. Right from the first chapter till the end, this novel goes back and forth in time with each successive chapter and switches focus (chapters told with the hunters as the protagonists mixed with chapters from the point of view of the killer). Also tossed in for good measure are the occasional police report and generous doses of humour.

stephen king liked munson's book and that worked for me

2013-07-25T15:53:00.002-04:00

I stood before my shelf of paperbacks wondering which one to read next and finally decided to try Ronald Munson's Fan Mail only because its dark cover had nothing else but the title and the author's name in red and a glowing blurb from Stephen King (A fantastically crafty nail-biter in the Ira Levin tradition. I loved it!) instead of a tantalising drawing or sketch.

And I found it hard to find good places in the narrative to put the book down while life and sleep took over.

This doesn't mean that I had discovered a rich trove of literary achievement. It just means that it was the proverbial page-turner for me. For good reasons (more about that below).

This also doesn't mean that an endorsement from Stephen King is a guarantee of any kind that you will like the book (although in this case, it did for me).

The story of a beautiful TV anchorwoman who is the object of the obsessive creepy attentions of a secret admirer on the deranged side of the fence called "The Watcher." It is told entirely using emails, faxes, messages left on answering machines and transcripts of recorded conversations. I've had mixed results with such a device (worked for me with The Anderson Tapes and didn't with Death of a Politician). This alone can make this book seem unfilmable (something that has happened with an Ira Levin work before). Although Sidney Lumet managed to do well with The Anderson Tapes, a similar exercise with Munson's book would require a significant departure in material and setting. A heaping bowl of To Die For and Confessions of a Dangerous Mind along with generous doses of John Waters might work, but it still feels too stale. Perhaps some David Lynch and David Fincher for good measure. Oh! And perhaps Oliver Stone in his Natural Born Killers mood.

But I digress.

Not entirely.

Just like in Condon's book, you find yourself laughing at and with some of the characters in the book. Unlike Condon's book, though, the turning of pages ends appropriately. There's almost no fat in the book.

And of course, no flights of expository fancy. What a relief.

Back to the bookshelf now to find the next rabbit. Thank you so much, Mr. King.

did crichton have a dan brown phase?

2013-07-23T13:38:00.002-04:00

I just finished reading a copy of The Terminal Man, Michael Crichton's second novel after doing really well with The Andromeda Strain. There's woefully little to the plot and the bulk of the book is dedicated to exposition showing off all the research in the areas of mind control, psychomotor epilepsy, police reports (there's even a recreation of a report for a death in the book), advances in cutting-edge medical research (call it "bleeding edge" if you will) and the like.

And I thought of Dan Brown.

And then I remembered writing that I had preferred Crichton over Brown for doing a far better job at exposition than Mr. Brown ever could.

And yet, here I was looking at a novel that could well have been written by Dan Brown, except that the actual narrative was written crisply -- had Mr. Brown written this novel, it would have been thicker with some more exposition and with more pages devoted to the narrative recovering after an ambitious dive into the sea of exposition.

And now some questions float through my head.

Did Michael Crichton have a Dan Brown phase?

Does Dan Brown represent a stage in the evolution of a commercial writer of pulp thrillers?

Does Michael Crichton represent a later stage in this evolution?

Will Dan Brown evolve into Michael Crichton?

Will Dan Brown ever evolve?

open irony

2013-04-03T21:39:00.002-04:00

In September 2012, the OpenJDK bug database moved to JIRA. Elsewhere, in the JIRA Knowledge Base, we have a page telling us that the OpenJDK is not supported for running JIRA. Those who are familiar with the phrase "eating your own dog food" (or if you are a company like IBM, the more exalted version, "drink your own champagne"), will now probably wonder about this. In other old news, The OpenJDK wiki uses Atlassian Confluence.

paes leander, don't hurt 'em

2012-12-19T20:59:00.002-05:00

The film is called Rajdhani Express and offers another example of HowNotToMakeAMovieTrailer (too much text flashing into the screen from a new corner each time mixed with almost every plot point minus a twist or two, served with one-liners designed to be bookmarks for the editor to cut). Jimmy Shergill is on the roster as is Gulshan Grover. Both have been known to be kind to smaller films (remember Grover in Souten: The Other Woman?). This film will likely be a smidgen bigger because it marks the début of tennis star Leander Paes.

"Having grown up on films like the "Lawrence Of Arabia", "Sound Of Music", etc, I am all for the old school of filmmaking. (director Ashok Kohli)

The full name was Rajdhani Express: Point Blank Justice. Now, as a token of respect for the eventual plight of all viewers, the full name was changed to Rajdhani Express: An Unsafe Journey. The full name now appears to be Rajdhani Express: In Search of Dignity

4 Passengers. The Elite. The Intellectual. The Consumerist. An Underdog (hint: Paes).

It is possible that the voice you hear for Paes is not his own (source). Another case of Celina Jaitley and Lisa Ray. Fret not. You're here for more than that. You're hear for the almost inevitable badness that the trailer promises. Prepare yourself by watching Ajay Jadeja's début in Khel: No Ordinary Game!!!.

He calls Leander Lee. His last name is Kohli. bahut lii!

If you're itching for a plot synopsis, try this. Meanwhile, ex-lawyer Ashok Kohli is already working on his next project, an adaptation of the Bard's The Taming of the Shrew.

aiyyaa: mainstream meets oddball

2012-10-14T21:14:00.000-04:00

Rani Mukerji goes down Vidya Balan lane and does her own Dirty Picture (with aplomb, gumption and enthusiasm)
the first half works really well in setting up the oddball universe
after the interval, SSH kicks in, unfortunately
great showcase for Pune and Punekars (Sambhaji Bridge, Subodh Bhave, Satish Alekar)
Hats off to Amitabh Bhattacharya for the lyrics (please, just listen to them really carefully)
nice touch having the laavaNii backing dancers in savaa Daa.clar wield digital video cameras
Finally a film that features a poster of Chashme Baddoor (in addition to introducing fandom for Farooque Sheikh and Deepti Naval and resurrecting the name Dhurandhar)
A Bengali star plays a Maharashtrian girl who falls for a Tamilian played by a Malayali star (you can spot the accent when he speaks his lines in the second half) and gets her cue for Dreamum Wakeupum (this film's ooh la-la) from Silk Smitha dance with Chiranjeevi in a Telugu film called Goonda (you wonder why you've heard that name before? Surely, you've seen golii maar, the rip-off of Michael Jackson's Thriller): this is seriously twisted
What's this obsession with the statutory warning about cigarette smoking? The opening has the English and Hindi warnings presented on the screen with Rani Mukerji reading them offscreen; this shows up again after the intermission; each time we see Meenakshi's chain-smoking (literally!) Dad, the statutory warning reappears at the bottom right of the screen: This is just as bad as those tickers marketing cigarettes in those videotapes from the Gulf in the 80s and 90s. Please, Mr. Ramadoss and ilk, stop it!.
Sachin Kundalkar does really well expanding a story from ga.ndha into an oddball romantic comedy, but just needed some tighter editing and shuffling of sequences in the second half (ijjat paapaD, allthough quirky enough, just feels like a drag in its fuller form: it might have fared better intercut with another scene, waakaDaa could well have become the song for the closing credits)
most awesome device that later goes unused: the voice of Vividh Bharati providing introduction to and commentary about the goings-on
You can see Kashyap's universe growing in the references: John Abraham, Dev.D
+1 for featuring The Blaft Anthology of Tamil Pulp Fiction, Volume 2. Make that +2.
subtitle goof: Azharbhai Chawl for Azerbaijan
which part of Tamil Nadu was Surya's mother from? I thought I spotted some Malayalam in her Tamil

playlist for an autumnal walk

2012-10-13T12:22:00.000-04:00

a gypsy's kiss (deep purple, perfect strangers)
friends (led zeppelin, the bombay sessions (bootleg))
a.Nkhiyaan (füzon)
johnny gaddaar (shankar-ehsaan-loy, johnny gaddaar)
ruu-ba-ruu (a r rahman, rang de basanti)
kandisa (indian ocean, kandisa)
drive (r e m, automatic for the people)
four sticks (led zeppelin, the bombay sessions (bootleg))
knocking at your back door (deep purple, perfect strangers)
everybody hurts (r e m, automatic for the people)
man on the moon (r e m, automatic for the people)
help (deep purple, shades of deep purple)

why viacom?

2012-10-04T21:36:00.002-04:00

dear mr kashyap, Weeks have gone by since Gangs of Wasseypur never hit the marquee in the US. Weeks have gone by since "rumours" that this was part of some innovative strategy for handling releases overseas. Weeks have gone by since Gangs of Wasseypur II failed to hit the marquee in the US. The official DVD of part I is now available at Amazon.com. Theatre rips and the like have already been making the rounds at Indian stores in the US. I resisted getting one, because I really wanted to watch these films in the theatre.

I got the feeling that I'd even watch each twice. Just like Kill Bill. I watched both parts twice. In the hall. Call me nuts. And I loved the soundtracks of both. Same here. Sneha Khanwalkar helmed what I think is the best, most original soundtrack of the year. I do not anticipate anyone mustering anything remotely close to this.

But alas. When movies like Paan Singh Tomar and Shanghai and your own That Girl in Yellow Boots (but neither Gulaal nor No Smoking) made it to the marquee here with ease, what stops something so much bigger? The machinery of releasing Indian films in the US seemed to have improved over the last few years instead of making obvious overtures to profit by importing mind-numbing product starring known names and stars of various candelas? Did Viacom want to release the two parts as a single unit (like Grindhouse) and test the limits of the patience of the fidgety Indian audience and the uninterested owners of weather-beaten theatres screening Indian flicks? I have no way of knowing. How long did Viacom plan to wait before sending prints (or packets of bits) over? After the last DVD bearing an illegal rip from a theatre has been sold? After the last torrent for these rips has been left without seeds online? I have no way of knowing.

What I know is that I am extremely disappointed. A few years ago, I'd envy my friends back home each time a smaller more interesting film hit the multiplexes (the saviours for such small films). Things seemed to be improving but now with this film, I wonder if we're heading back to those days.

If this is how Viacom 18 plans to treat their projects, I hope that you and other directors whose work I find interesting will find alternatives that will allow your films to reach a wider audience and generate more revenue so that you are not treated as financial risks. Even UTV (whose DVDs are unfortunately sullied with watermarks just like the rest of them) would do.

Thank you for your kind attention.

for the benefit of m/s IT

2012-09-30T20:27:00.001-04:00

Here are a few things that I think, will help you, oh well-paid-person-of-the-IT-profession-for-whom-English-is-a-language-undeserving-of-attention.

You update things. Not people. You are also a person. So stop asking people to update you. Ask people to simply "let me know." Stop offering to update people. "I will let you know" is a simple alternative
You are not a batch processing system. You are not a terminal. You are not a text box waiting for data. So stop asking people for input. Stop thanking them for it. People offer suggestions, hints, advice. Take the appropriate thing and thank them for it
The words gentle reminder can never be gentle for the reader. One could bet the universe that the person you sent that to is even less pleased to work with you than before. Try writing something that you would actually say to the intended recipient, if you had to pick up the phone and talk to him or her.
Stop writing PFA or Please find attached. This is not a treasure hunt. This is not a request. You have attached something to your email, because you thought it would make your email more useful to the reader. Most modern email clients make it very clear to the reader that the email has attachments.
Stop looping people into an email thread. There is no known meaning of the word that can explain what you are trying to do. Add their email address to the CC field of your email and explain clearly why you have added more people to the thread. Be nice.
Stop asking people to revert to you. Here is a summary of the different meanings of that word. I hope that will explain why what you have been doing is funny, grotesque and rude at the same time. Respond and reply have not yet been excommunicated from the English language. Please consider these more appropriate words.

I wrote a post a few years ago about some other things that you may have ended up saying or using. If you can ignore the venom in the post, you may find some more useful tips there.

Consider also this site that serves up several samples of writing that you may find familiar. Although the site presents them for a few laughs, it can also serve an instructional purpose: if what you write in emails or what you say resembles any of the samples on this site, consider changing your ways.

Thank you for your kind attention. I remain, humbly yours, suffering in silence.

the legume of love

2012-09-01T21:02:00.001-04:00

When the hit item song aa a.nTe amalaapuram made it over to Maximum from its original home, the Telugu film Arya, all it needed was lyrics in Hindi to support the main catchphrase that made it over as is without translation. And Raqueeb Alam obliged. The girl objectifying herself in the song offers herself as a pliable cool car, as an explosive firecracker and tightly guarded unexplored territory while constantly reminding her prospective driver/lover that she is an atom bomb. The cornerstone of it all lies, however, in the chorus:

haTaa de chhilakaa aa mere dil kaa aa khaa le muu.Ngaphalii

Loosely translated, that's strip away the shell of my heart and relish the peanuts (roasted, presumably).

anti-popular

2012-07-12T22:55:00.001-04:00

All the three leading contenders for stealing the torch away from CVS as the version control system of choice have names that no marketing department would have ever chosen. Corporations who sell software invest a lot of money either in their in-house think tanks of agencies specialising in branding and only names that are optimistic and positive, names that suggest innovation and aspiration are chosen.

Who would pick the name subversion? The word means an attempt to overthrow authority. It's also a nice pun on its purpose (version, my dear lost reader, version!).

Who would pick the name git? The word has only pejorative meanings.

And then you get mercurial. The word has both marginally complimentary and often uncomplimentary meanings.

Which brings us to ClearCase. Commercial. Bloated. What a deceptive name!

The moral? If it's got a sly name, it's probably better for you.

where are the gangs?

2012-06-23T10:39:00.001-04:00

Friday, June 22, 2012: Gangs of Wasseypur hits the marquee. I go to Google Movies to check the showtimes in my area. Zilch.

Huh?

Refresh.

No dice.

Nowhere.

Wasseypur?

Saturday, June 23, 2012: According to NowRunning, the film is not playing anywhere in the US of A.

Wasseypur?

What happened?

Did the producers and distributors of Teri Meri Kahaani (puke!) strike a deal with their associates to delay the release of Kashyap's opus so that they could get a few more dollars?

Did the irate masses of Wasseypur take over Congress and the Indian film distribution circuit in the USA?

नाम बोल! कह के लूँगा!

shanghai: whither progress

2012-06-10T12:13:00.002-04:00

As the red-on-black end credits for Dibakar Banerjee's Shanghai started scrolling up in an otherwise empty theatre, that rare feeling of wanting to sit in for the next show kicked in. I also wasn't sitting through the end credits out of habit with an open eye for trivia and familiar names; I was also thinking about what I had seen.

I was thinking about all the attention to little details to embellish almost every scene. I was thinking about that ball bouncing into what should have been an otherwise serious hearing; I was thinking about the desperation in every pore and crease of Anant Jog's face. I was thinking about the chaos of protest, of impassioned mobs and of fervent futile idealism presented in the brightest hues. I was thinking about each song loaded with the sharpest lyrics in many months. I was thinking about the item song that fit so well in the narrative, that was interrupted (as it would have been in real life) by the appearance of a political biggie. I was thinking about Abhay Deol's accent and how it added the extra something to his poise and demeanour without standing out as an acting exercise. I was thinking about Emraan Hashmi turning a new corner and doing what might be his best work as the pornographer/video photographer with horrible teeth. I was thinking about how almost no character in the film really seemed truly white or truly black. You could understand the futility of those driven to ill deeds in the quest for something better than their wretched conditions. I could understand (and perhaps not stomach) the pragmatic path that some people had chosen. I also saw how justice could seem as rich as skimmed milk. I liked how the last time we see the hospital is introduced as a sound that makes sense later and then continues as a long shot tracking faces and ending with a tear.

This is a fine film worth every anna (or whatever the lowest meaningful denomination is today in inflated India) of your ticket's price. But this film is not going to entertain you in the least. You won't really enjoy the fervour of bhaarat maataa kii jay because it's after all a paean to dengue and malaria as well as to the Golden Bird of yore. You can't ogle at the lady sashaying and wiggling away in imported kamariyaa because the song is never allowed to stay long enough to titillate you. You don't have a 5-minute obligatory sad song running over a montage of sad people. You don't have jingoism making it easier for you to take sides. You just sit and squirm each time you laugh or smile, because you realise that it was no laughing matter at all.

And because this is hardly an entertaining film, I fear that Dibakar Banerjee's brilliant adaptation of a Greek novel that already sired a classic in 1969 will find few takers. It will get the good notes from people who cannot influence the masses enough. It may survive with a recommendation or two from the few that may have ventured to the cinema halls and picked this instead of Ridley Scott's compelling Prometheus or that execrable piece of dung called Rowdy Rathore. But it will not change the inevitable results this weekend: Prabhu Deva's latest directorial venture will surely triumph. And India will continue to progress.

madagascar: lucky the third time in 3D

2012-06-02T20:44:00.001-04:00

They walked in for a free preview screening of Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted on a nice bright Saturday morning. There were lots of kids in attendance, as expected. The usher welcoming everybody said "Disney" instead of "Dreamworks" (or did he?). As soon as the Dreamworks logo appeared, everybody in the theatre realised that this was the 3D version and not the 2D version (which was what the organisers of this preview had planned to screen).

Guess what was missing? 3D glasses. Oops. Scramble! Confusion. Voila! A box of 3D glasses is procured and packets are distributed in two flavours -- one for kids and the others for the grown-ups.

The lights go dim again and the logo appears. Oops. We still have a problem. The 3D on screen does not mix well with the 3D glasses and what you get is a mix of blurs, offset contours and general distraction. Screen off. Lights on.

They finally go and fix the projector (presumably this was 3D streaming out of a 2D lens). The third time is a charm and everybody sits back to enjoy a fun-filled romp in 3D. Dreamworks does a great job with the colours. There are a lot of good jokes and sequences and Frances McDormand makes a great splash as the villainess of the piece. Some of the jokes clearly work only for grown-ups: there are jokes that just expect you to know things that only a grown-up would; there are also jokes that challenge what kids should hear and see. Pixar manages a better balance in this matter. The crew of the first two films is back, but the penguins don't get to show off much. King Julien XIII gets more to do and his sub-plot offered the most fun of all the sub-plots.

If you're a fan of Clerk, there's a sequence that will look familiar (No, I am not kidding!). This is surely just a wishful coincidence. The makers of this film can hardly be expected to have seen Manoj Kumar's cult classic.

If you're an Indophile, stay for the end credits and watch a long roll for the Dreamworks crew from India.

lanka: good ideas don't go all the way

2012-05-27T21:22:00.002-04:00

Lanka opens with a young doctor (Tia Bajpai) who, after treating a wife beaten up by her husband, goes berserk and treats the husband to a mixture of rants and punches. Evidently, she has done this before and is now forced to take a leave of absence to cool off. It's a very heavy-handed sequence delivered with camera setups, staging and dialogue that make you wince. These are the awkward trappings that often mar the product of low-budget films with good ideas and a crew with barely functional chops and not enough inspiration. Back at her house, this young doctor looks out at the city and, with a very stilted waxing inner voiceover starts the familiar journey into a flashback as she pens the story that forms the core of this film. You then see the first glimpse of Manoj Bajpayee, the villain of the piece and the reason you are crossing your fingers for this film.

Bajpayee's character Jaswant Sisodiya is the big powerful baddie in Bijnor, Uttar Pradesh. Our heroine Anju is here because her father is the Chief Medical Officer. Unfortunately Anju is also Sisodiya's keep and the family cannot escape thanks to constant guard by Sisodiya's men. All this sets the stage for a saviour -- our hero, chhoTe (Arjan Bajwa). Sisodiya dotes on chhoTe, because he is in debt to chhoTe's father, who cared for him and even went to fatal blows for him. chhoTe also happens to be rather hot-headed and this helps us with the obligatory fight sequences.

The fight sequences are not the only familiar element from mainstream cinema that you get. There's also the item song and the song to adorn the burgeoning of love (the lovely shiit lahar). Mercifully, except for the item song nobody else indulges in on-screen lip synching.

It's a pity then that Bajpayee still does not get enough of his due from the script. We all know how this is going to end and we are just waiting for things to unfold before the flashback ends. Yet director Maqbool Khan does not take advantage of the film's running time to explore our primary characters, and Sisodiya in particular. We always tend to see Sisodiya in the context of other players. It is to Bajpayee's credit, however, that even in such scenes where his character is likely to be lost in broad strokes, we get hints that there's more to Sisodiya than the clichés would have you believe. We can see that he cares for chhoTe; we never see him behave like a violent thug exercising his power and yet his love for Anju has taken ugly proportions. It's an unhealthy possessiveness. The impassioned retort near the end of the film gives us a chance to see what makes Sisodiya tick, but unfortunately it's two hours too late. You only have to look at Ronit Roy in Udaan for an example of how to do such a "bad" character right. Someone like Vikramaditya Motwane is what Bajpayee needs and not the slumming in Inteqam, the exploitative mess of Jaago, the regressive drama of Swami or the futility of an enterprise like this.