Ode to Asterix & Obelix Growing up during an era when WWW stood for ‘World War Warplanes’, comics were our life line. Phantom, Flash Gordon, Archie and Asterix were part of our lives from child hood days. Even today, I treasure my collection of their fabled episodes and may have read them over and over again – a zillion times, and will continue to do so in the future. So, when I saw ‘Asterix & Obleix’s Birthday’, which my daughter had picked up recently, I was almost transported back in time and was drooling to sit down with that book for a few hours immediately. However, with priorities redefined over the passage of time, I set aside a couple of hours on Sunday for the same. I must admit, the few hours on Sunday were a letdown. Maybe my expectations were too high, maybe the big gap between Goscinny’s death and the recent launch by Uderzo, had worsened the critic in me, or simply, father time, which had caught up with the great Asterix and Obelix in the firs...

Simplistic Complexities!!! Complicating simple stuff seems to be the motto of the current era. Value addition today, comes at the cost of the Core Value system in itself. Take Mailing for starters, especially sending out an e-mail from a smartphone. Opt to send out a mail and there pops a list of mail accounts, pick one and the next is a question on plain text or html, answer that and the query regarding attachments needs to be negotiated, and once you think you can now focus on typing the message, you have to make a decision on the input option - QWERTY sliding board, On screen QWERTY and further a single click typing or a SWYPE slide option . . . phew, not sure if my wife can come up with so many questions . . . . This seems to rub off on everything else as well. Take your car for an example. I remember our family’s monster Dodge, half the size of a truck, with complete 7 mm hard steel shell, weighing over a ton. It had just one simple key hole to start the car,...

You are what your Wheels are . . . Show me your Bike or Car, I’ll tell you who you are . . . Possibly sums up the gist of my views in one line. I am a strong believer that a man's archetype, are the classifications of his Cars and Bikes. This is a reflection of his true self, for he is actually living out who he wants to be, through his vehicles. A skinny nerdy wimp may want to be a Macho six packed brute. He knows that the Gym is the longer route. Solution? Grab that monster 1000 CC R1 or a Cherokee or that hunky Hummer H2, rip down the road . . . You think clothes make the man? Think again. Engines speak louder than words, and what you drive says more about you than your costliest 3 piece Armani or the Salvador TuxIcon ever could. The apparel may, at best, get you a second look at a Black Tie Dinner, but get your hands on that drooling Limo, a Maybach if you can afford one, and see the way the world treats a man on a different set of wheels. . . . So, what is the rela...

This little break to Yelagiri had multiple reasons. One, a short rejuvenation stint was required for my daughter, who had just finished her 12 th exams, before getting stuck into preparation classes for her competitive exams, Two, it had been ages since we visited our property, which we invested a few years ago, and Three – the summer heat was bearing down on Chennai. It was time to head for the hills. The drive from Chennai was a smooth one, and being a weekday, the early morning traffic was hardly anything to comprehend with. The 17odd Kms of Ghat sections were so empty that Renault had chosen this time and day to test ride their new SUV’s (which were hooded, to keep prying eyes away), which they plan to launch shortly. The roads are nice and the 14 hairpin bends are innovatively named after the legendary philanthropic icons of Tamil Literature. Yelagiri, the lesser known and shortest hill station to Chennai, is a small little town, comprising of a clutch of villages in Athanavur...

My good friend, Krish Sreedharan’s post on Face book, was the basic stimulant for this blog. His observation while riding a Taxi to work was a simple one, which read “ hmm ... Interesting ... Taxi Uncle has a small portable radio for in-car entertainment :)” That set my thoughts racing. We have indeed come a long way from the days of the pocket radio (a great innovation and a status symbol to carry around those days, especially for cricket commentary inside the classroom) with a plethora of innovative communication devices which actually transforms what was considered as ‘Wishful Thinking’ a few decades ago, into reality. Yet, we seem to yearn for those Good old days and gadgets. Here is an example . . . The late 80’s and early 90’s saw the advent of Mobile phones into India. I still treasure my first Motorola hand phone, the size of a brick or a cordless land line phone from BPL - US West. It had a single line digital display, stored 25 numbers and had a battery which would go ...

Every once a while, an event happens, which blows away some of your straight jacketed preset perceptions. For example, though I was a Broadway freak, a Bharathanatyam based classic portrayal, I always thought, was not my cup of tea. “Flame of the Forest” was one such experience for me – or so I thought. My cousin Sivakumar actually saw this coming, when he called to invite me. “Don’t think your Saturday evening is out of the window, this will be a grand experience, so do come” he insisted. I am indebted to him for his foresight, for I would have been cursing myself for the rest of my life on letting such an amazing experience slip by, for, honestly, I was not too sure of what I was getting into, even when I stepped into the auditorium. The 100 odd minutes that Saturday evening, were mesmerizing, to say the least – a brilliant display of emotions through pure art form – Music, Dance and Drama, blasting my perception away. A Contemporary theatre version of Kalki’s legendary “Sivakam...

With all the records broken by ‘Da Vinci Code’, expectations on Digital Fortress were soaring. ‘Digital Fortress’, though a fiction, actually deserves a place in a technology review. Having said that, it helps in demystifying IT Jargon's, as this book opens the often ‘thought to be complicated’ world of IT Security, to the non tech savvy reader, in plain, simple, easily understandable language. This is woven into an intricate plot, which has the makings of a thriller all the way. The plot sounds a bit geeky for the want of a better word. The National Security Agency is the USA’s finest secret agency. They are responsible for the security of the entire country, hence their ability to gather intelligence is key to their task. As all terrorist communications and other threats tend to be in code format they have a super computer called TRANSLTR which has the capacity to break every code on earth. TRANSLTR does this by using the Borgofsky theory which revolve...

I love my Pad but hate the E-Book. Being in love with the Pad and the Tab is normal, what else can you expect from an eccentric gadget freak like me and so, the E-Book should have been the greatest thing since sliced bread. But when it comes to Books, there seems to be a paradox of sorts getting me. I hardly accept anything that I don’t see reason with and obviously set about pondering for reasons. As a hardcore gadget freak I suppose I should have applauded the rise of the e-book in all its amazing avathar, but somehow, I am in love with the ‘Touch & Feel’ of the paperback, the awesome smell of fresh, crisp paper. I like the fact that I can snooze off at night, leaving the open pages on my chest and pick it up from where I left when I wake up. I love the fact that there’s no charging the real book (more important, not carry an assortment of chargers on even a short travel) and if preserved well, will last a few centuries – think of something like that on an e-book or a Kindle. . ...

It had been over a decade since I went to a movie in a theater and when my daughter wanted to break this jinx, families of Suresh, Shankar and Raja were first to pounce on this chance to convert another staunch home theater coucher to the mo vie hall. Ghost Protocol (honestly, I think this undercover operation by the daughter and my close friends, deserves this name better) was the chosen conversion pad and we landed up at the theater last night, all families, occupying a complete line on the hall.  On to the movie, the star of the show Tom Cruise, the ever young IMF agent Ethan Hunt in pushed to the brink, a kind of a make or break situation, following the CIA’s disavowal, for a spectacular bomb strike on the Kremlin, gone sour. His options, if he chooses to accept it, is to track down the real trouble maker, a Scandinavian diplomat turned demented terrorist (Michael Nyqvist) who has the secret code for a nuclear missile launch, or simply be labeled and guillotined a terrorist ...

From the strange to the sublime, from the bizarre to the brazen, reams and reams of adjectives, anecdotes and analogies have been said, spoken and written on Ramalinga Raju since that fateful day on January 7, 2009. He has been named in fraudulent corporate lists, compared with Jeffrey Skilling, ranked on the Forbes scam list and been termed as an enigmatic personality. Even his jail life seemed to be making news headlines, with scoops on his reading the gita, badminton stint, his request for laptops, mobile, hospital sojourn, bail pleas etc keeping the ticker line moving. As someone who has been part of the Satyam clan for a while, it is still extremely hard to fathom the turn of events over the past two years. Raju, who had been known and projected (and to be fair, exhibited some traits) as a gentle, soft spoken, people oriented, empathetic, caring individual - relegated to the extremely opposite dimension by the turn of events. Yes, my personal acquaintance with him was very lim...