« December 2005 | Main | February 2006 »
January 31, 2006
A well-targeted AdWords campaign
Google's stock was tumbling in post-market trading today, after its reported earnings missed analyst expectations by a wide margin--about $20bn of market capitalization was lost in less than an hour. As I was watching the price temporarily enter free fall, I couldn't help but notice that an AdWords advertiser had nimbly taken advantage of just this event to cleverly dis Google on their own site. Here's a screenshot of what I saw:
I had marveled to myself at Palo Alto real estate being advertised in response to the GOOG keyword. This sort of targeting though is another level entirely.
Posted by Vishy at 08:37 PM | Comments (0)
January 29, 2006
Funny signs from India
Indians can sometimes be really funny when they least intend to be. One of the themes of this blog is to attempt to explain some things Indians say and do (my Indian English Dictionary hopefully helps a little) so that outsiders find them less funny and take them more seriously. Regardless, there are some things that make me laugh-out loud and are yet inimitably Indian. As examples, I present a few signs I saw on a recent trip to India. I didn't have my digital camera with me at all times to take real pictures of the signs, but I've tried to reproduce them as best as I could from visual memory.
This Chennai road safety sign demonstrates the amazing Indian propensity to sound cool through rhyme, even at the expense of grammar. My mom once won a slogan competition for a detergent named Surf. Her entry was "There is no dispute/Surf has no substitute". At least it was grammatical! Sadly, unlike her entry, it is exceedingly common to find examples of grammar being easily nixed just for the sake of a rhyme. Even when I was dabbling with writing English poetry (didn't we all in our hormonal teen years?), I always stuck to rigid rhyme schemes and couplet forms. Only later, with the mind-expanding influences of poets like e e cummings did I learn to appreciate non-rhyming poetry.
I was stuck in traffic in an autorickshaw in Chennai and I was feeling very irritated. Yet, when I saw the above sign at the intersection, I almost fell over laughing. Seeing God mentioned anywhere on road safety signs is unthinkable in the United States -- Michael Newdow and other Establishment Clause-mongering lawyers would have too much of a field day. Although the sign got my attention and appealed to my sense of humor, I doubt many Americans would find it funny. Can't deny its originality though.
I saw this sign for a mini-mall/shopping complex in my mother's hometown. The spelling of Plazaa shown is probably intentional -- a sort of cool eye-dialect. However, the swastika is almost definitely uninentional. The swastika has been associated with well-being, health and prosperity in India long before the Nazis perverted it for their purposes. Yet, its momentous appearance along with 'German' is hard not to pass by without doing a double-take.
This was a funny, witty and yet strangely humbling chalk scrawl I saw on a temple whiteboard in my mother's hometown. I have yet to see a more succinct expression of the difference between humanity and divinity, viz. transcending characteristically human pettiness.
Posted by Vishy at 04:41 PM | Comments (0)
Vishy's Indian English Dictionary: baba suit
baba suit. /BAH·bah·soot/. A formal or festive suit worn by young boys, say in the tween segment and below. Several masculine-feminine word pairs in Hindi differ only in their final vowel -- feminine words end in -i and their masculine counterparts attach -a to the same stem. This technique is extended to the English word baby, assumed feminine because of the final -i, resulting in a synthetic masculine, baba. Note that baba, on its own, can independently refer to an old wise man. Indeed, several holy men of India have adopted the baba sobriquet, such as Sathya Sai Baba. However, the baba in baba suit takes only after the young boy sense. So next time you encounter the word BABA SUIT garishly painted on a store sign in India, don't go off thinking they're selling intact suits of sheep wool -- y'know "Baa baa black sheep ... and one for the little boy who lives down the lane".
Posted by Vishy at 04:03 PM | Comments (0)
January 28, 2006
Movie Review: Rang De Basanti
[Copious spoilers ahead. Read ahead at your own risk.]
Rarely does a movie overreach itself so much in making an analogy that you become convinced of the analogy's opposite. Rarely does a movie that purports to praise unsung heroes in India's struggle for independence end up leaving a bad taste in your mouth. Yet, we all know that Aamir Khan only picks rare movies like Rang De Basanti.
Rang is a youth drama set in modern day Delhi. A British filmmaker in London, Sue McKinley (Alice Patten) wants to make a documentary narrating the stories of relatively obscure heroes in India's struggle for independence. Inspired by the diary of her grandfather, who was deployed to India at the time, she resolves to bring to screen the conversations and experiences narrated by her grandfather. Set back by budget cuts (because "Gandhi sells" and not these revolutionaries), she decides to travel to India and try to make the movie herself.
Sue gets with a circle of friends, who attend Delhi University, when she arrives in Delhi. This close-knit group includes DJ (Aamir Khan), who immediately takes a shine to her. Eventually, she convinces everyone in the group to act in her film. After a few shaky starts, rehearsals and filming for her documentary commence. The characters in her documentary get the death penalty for taking violent action against the British administration after the inhuman Jallianwala Bagh massacre, which stands in contrast to the nonviolent (and according to some, passive) philosophy espoused by Gandhi. The audience and the actors themselves learn about these heretofore forgotten political events of early twentieth-century India, which revives their national pride. This revival is not without its naysayers, like Karan (Siddharth), who lament the state of India today after all the sacrifices made in its name during the freedom struggle.
Rang has some of the most innovative camera work seen in recent Hindi movies. There are a few jarring, and perhaps intentional, transitions between young revolutionaries who had committed their lives to India's freedom and hedonistic upper middle class college students who sometimes seem indistinguishable from their Western counterparts, save some old school Punjabi charm. However, these transitions between history and the present day becomes less forced and are executed increasingly seamlessly as the actors experience an awakening.
Meanwhile, a parallel plot showing Indian Air Force pilot Ajay's (R Madhavan) relationship with Sonia (Soha Ali Khan) also evolves. Ajay has a passion for flying and for Sonia. He is easily the most 'together' character in the movie, unlike the others, who make fun the primary objective of their lives. Unfortunately, the screenplay neither shows Ajay's journey nor gives Ajay and Sonia enough screen time together, preferring instead to concentrate on DJ's pithily hilarious one-liners and the unheard-of phenomenon of a white chick speaking Hindi like a natural. And therein, my dear readers, lies the problem.
Ajay passes away in an unfortunate air crash caused by defective and cheap Russian mechanical parts in his Air Force plane. This is the Sputnik event that changes the very tone of the movie, taking it from its now-familiar innocuous and jocular setting to its bizarre and grotesque denouement. The corrupt Defence Minister, who is in cahoots with Karan's father (a hapless Anupam Kher), publicly denounces the integrity and character of Ajay, a stellar pilot, after the crash. When it is clear that the incorrigibly corrupt bureaucratic machine will not so much as acknowledge Ajay's service to the nation, our circle of friends get galvanized into action.
A peaceful demonstration by them at the India Gate Soldier's Memorial turns into a veritable Tian An Men Square-style massacre. By this time, the transitions from history to the present day are so smooth that history indeed becomes the present day. In a bizarre scene at one of their frequent haunts, which is almost identical to a scene they played in Sue's documentary, the friends, having now been stirred out of apathy after playing revolutionaries, decide to kill the Defence Minister themselves.
The friends successfully execute, pun intended, their plan and abscond. Clearly, whatever drove them to kill a high ranking government official had banished all semblance of fear in the fugitives so they could just do the right thing. They decide to go to a radio station and confess to the killing on air and explain what motivated them before turning themselves in peacefully to the authorities. Their confession sends shockwaves all over India, resulting in calls of support and criticism pouring in. Meanwhile, the authorities, who I am no longer sure weren't Chinese, lay siege to the radio station and resolve to kill every one of the fugitives. One by one, the friends are killed, not before the audience learns that the proceedings had pushed Karan to patricide.
As the credits rolled, the movie was dedicated to the many Air Force pilots who lost their lives in peacetime due to faulty and cheap parts in their airplanes. While I don't mean to downplay the shocking corruption at the highest levels of government that leads to these deaths, I was in no way convinced by the movie's obvious analogy between such an unfortunate turn of events and the systematic and unjust repression of freedom fighters by the India's British government. Perhaps the depth of passion in the patriots the friends played in Sue's documentary could have inspired them to run for public office and effect positive change. But for them to do exactly as the characters they played and end up in an eye-for-an-eye bloodbath is something the audience simply does not expect. I felt stunned and manipulated by the sepia lighting and sonorous chord sequences of the 20s into having some unconvincing pet cause of the director force-fed to me.
At any rate, the movie features a soundtrack that keeps up well with its attitude in the first half. The dialogue is punctuated with witty one-liners and rejoinders which underline the talents of several rising actors. Sue is a spunky and remarkably un-stuck up Brit who is but one half of a very credible on-screen chemistry between herself and DJ. Maybe after getting plenty of gori nookie in Lagaan and Rang De Basanti, Aamir will finally pull off a relationship with a white girl that could stand a chance.
Posted by Vishy at 09:50 AM | Comments (2)
January 27, 2006
Vishy's Indian English Dictionary: Naxalite
naxalite. /NACK·suhl·ite/. Despite sounding like the name of a mineral, a naxalite is someone with communist sympathies who believes in and strives for the violent overthrow of parliamentary government (not all Indian communists subscribe to this philosophy; India fosters an enigmatic polity where communist governments have been chosen multiple times in free elections). The word naxalite comes from Naxalbari, a town in West Bengal, where a 1967 meeting marked the birth of this violent movement. Today, naxalites have spread well beyond the borders of West Bengal and have been encountered in a belt stretching across central-southeast India. Many of today's active naxalites are affiliated with the People's War Group (PWG), an organization of guerrilla fighters formed in1980 in Andhra Pradesh to achieve an organized peasant insurrection against elected government.
Posted by Vishy at 08:25 PM | Comments (0)
January 26, 2006
Vishy's Indian English Dictionary: permit room
permit room. /puhr·MIT·room/. An enclosed area in a restaurant where alcoholic beverages may be served legally. Other than in cities with a thriving pub culture, places serving alcohol in India are usually attached to a restaurant or other establishment whose primary purpose is not to serve alcoholic beverages. However, alcohol's status as a controlled substance dictates that it not be served everywhere in the restaurant. Moreover, alcohol is not a native part of Indian cuisine and is generally thought to be consumed only by intemperate youngsters who then proceed to engage in ungainly activities like eveteasing. Therefore, in addition to legal reasons, serving alcohol everywhere in a restaurant would put off families who would like to dine there. By restricting alcohol to a certain controlled area, a restaurant can attract business from both the intemperate youngster and family segments.
Posted by Vishy at 08:15 PM | Comments (0)
January 25, 2006
Vishy's Indian English Dictionary: mess
mess. /mes/. Any place where common meals are eaten. One sense of this word in the West, ultimately derived from Lat. mittere, to place, refers to a common eatery for soldiers or sailors. Although not specifically an Indian English word, mess is used in a wider sense in India than in other major English speaking countries. In Indian English, it can refer to any place that functions as a large-scale kitchen, which may or may not cater to a community that lives together. Student dormitories (usually referred to as hostels in India) have attached messes, where residents can get their meals. Large governmental or other administrative offices have an Officers' Mess, where employees having a certain rank can dine during the workday. Mess is also used self-referentially by several hole-in-the-wall restaurants (which are frequently referred to as hotels all over India, even if they don't offer accommodation).
I should note that I haven't heard anyone use the word mess in the United States for anything other than the amorphous blob of untidiness in a room or for the perplexing intricacies of a situation.
Posted by Vishy at 08:14 PM | Comments (0)
January 05, 2006
Blog Zeitgeist
Before I realized it, it has been a full year since I started posting to this blog. I have really enjoyed writing the various posts. My first goal has been and will be to continue putting out posts that will be useful to someone in some way. That, and to be the World's Largest Repository of Useless Knowledge. I am sure I haven't reached the second goal yet, but that doesn't prevent me from calling myself that, does it? I hope my regular and semi-regular readers keep coming to this blog for more of the same and I hope I get some new readers too. The next year will be interesting ride, to say the least, but I hope to keep the posts coming as often as I spot something I think my readers would like.
Well, for what it's worth, here's a few fun facts from my server logs over the last year:
• I got 50,869 hits from approximately 6,650 visitors, approximately 6% of who added my blog to their bookmarks.
• My blog is still worth $2,258.16.
• The top 5 most commonly searched term that led to my blog, i.e. the top few things that my visitors thought I was an authority on are: Numenoreans, French beards, nonveg jokes, prepone (see bottom) and indian aunties.
• I got my first marriage proposal via a blog comment.
• The IP addresses of my visitors came from 80 countries, the top five of which were the United States, India (.in), Australia (.au), the European Union (.eu) and the United Kingdom (.uk)
• Only 40% of my visitors used Internet Explorer! My readers are clearly technically savvy for roundly rejecting a browser that has a real market share upwards of 80%.
• Nearly a third of my requested files are XML/RDF files, meaning that they are from regular readers who use RSS readers.
• With respect to time of day, I got the most visits at midnight EST (say, when my U.S. readers were procrastinating on a late-night assignment) and at 10am EST (procrastination time in India -- 8:30pm). I also have a peak at 9pm EST in bandwidth in hits, which I think comes from comment-spamming bots.
• My top reader has been Punya and linking to his great blog is the least I can do in return.
Well, thanks for a good year. Thank you come again.
Posted by Vishy at 08:25 PM | Comments (0)
January 04, 2006
How come India is five and a half hours ahead of UTC? Isn't that not allowed?
To set the record straight, such as it needs to be, a country's timezone relative to UTC (I am too much of a geek to use GMT) is what the government of the country decides it should be. There are no international conventions or regulations that require the difference between a country's standard time and UTC to be a whole number of hours.
Now to the separate question of why India chose its timezone to be UTC+5:30 rather than UTC+5:00 or UTC+6:00. India's geographic extent spans two timezones but it chose to go with one 'half' timezone rather than two 'whole number' timezones. I am unable to find a normative reference as to why but have encountered two reasonable theories that try and explain this unusual choice:
a) The 'Head' Theory: Picking the median of the two timezones means that India does not have to implement Daylight Time. Although it's a bit of a stretch in India's extremities--especially the far east--it can pull off maintaining the same time throughout the year by picking the median of its putative standard timezone and daylight timezone. Daylight Time is in wide usage throughout the world but retains its notoriety for being the source of confusion twice a year. Presumably the standards-makers of India enacted this timezone for the convenience, or perhaps they did not want to impose the complexity of switching time twice a year on a population (then) embattled by illiteracy, poverty, hunger and other problems more fundamental than keeping time.
b) The 'Heart' Theory: India underwent a painful Partition in 1947, when it and Pakistan were granted Dominion status by the British Crown. After such a cataclysmic, nation-rending event, the government did not want to divide the country along yet another parameter.
Perhaps in the spirit of compromise advanced by the latter theory above, for what it's worth, Indian Standard Time is defined to be the local time at the Allahabad Observatory at 82.5°E, which is exactly five and a half hours ahead of UTC. Allahabad (known sometimes as Prayag), while not along the exact center-line of India, lies well in the Indian heartland. It has had a long history as a culturally sacred site and has been significant as the hometown of the Nehru family, which produced many of India's early heads of government.
If you thought India was weird in its choice of timezone, try Nepal, which maintains standard time at UTC+5:45 (no, really). India's choice of timezone also introduces weird discontinuities in standard time because the parts of India east of Bangladesh (UTC+6:00) still have a standard time of UTC+5:30. Oh, and by the way, Myanmar (UTC+6:30) and Central Australia (UTC+9:30) also have half timezones.
Posted by Vishy at 10:26 PM | Comments (1)