तारे ज़मीन पर - Review

Directorial debut of Amair Khan received a standing ovation in many of the local theaters in my native. After a real long time, I felt there was a movie made in bollywood that made great sense and that touched our hearts. I was able to watch movie at the right time when, I am about to become a dad. To be frank I wasn’t all that excited to watch the movie, I kept postponing the plans for almost 2 weeks after release and was moved with the concept. Here is the brief snapshot of the movie:

Eshaan Awasthi being the key character suffers from dyslexia and therefore suffers miserably at school. Due to his lack of performance in studies, he is constantly nagged by his parents, taunted by classmates and even bullied by older children. His doting mother spent time over his betterment but couldn’t comply with the difficulties of coping with a dyslexic child since she had no clue what little Eshaan was going through.

Finally one day his father decides to send him to boarding, thinking this to be the only viable option available for an improvement. And that’s where Eshaan meets Ram Shankar Nikumbh (Amir Khan), a temporary art teacher at school who is determined to help him, at any cost.

I have so many reasons why every one should watch this movie:

1. First note of appreciation goes to Amir Khan for the excellent debut direction, it was near impossible for any one to deal with such a subject as sensitively as shown in the film.
2. Darsheel Safary as Eshaan Awasthi is very impressive. The mischief in his eyes and a determination to throw back at the world the same shit that he experiences is awesome and at times heart wrenching.
3. Tisca Chopra as Eshaan’s mum has done a commendable job. A very controlled and convincing portrayal.
4. Despite being a superstar and the director, Aamir doesn’t over expose his character and thereby remains faithful to the story at hand.
5. Good use of animation, which in turn interprets a young mind’s imagination.



The thing is children like Eshaan need special care, attention and supportive family members/friends in their lives to cope with dyslexia, which he found in Ram, a trained professional who lends time in molding a better life for Eshaan.

Dyslexia is a learning disability which manifests in different people differently. It’s a friction between the brain and the action it is just about to make. The cause is hereditary which is why one cannot help being dyslexic. Taare Zameen Par may not be an eye-opener but it surely touches ones emotional side on many different levels.
Once again kudos to Mr. Aamir Khan for a heartwarming directorial debut.

Money mantra

Off-late I have developed a great interest in the personal finance field. I never believed in opening a pension account or having a savings account or investing smart in shares. After following couple of personal finance blogs from past 2 years I was delightedly surprised by the changes in my life:

• I think twice before swiping my credit card at fancy malls now
• I talk to executives in banks to wavier service/customer service charges on my account
• I review my account statements twice a month to realize the mistakes I have committed and my future action plans

I recommend all you guys out there to read the following blogs to find interesting and helpful tips on personal finance:

http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/

http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/

http://www.thesimpledollar.com/

I can list more than 25 sites but I feel these 3 sites will be of great help to you.

Have fun and become rich.

Welcome (My first ever hindi moviereview/rating)

I had been to Gulbarga for a long weekend and as usual the trip involved having fun, biking around, eating and watching movies. This time I had decided to watch the most happening movies in bolloywood Welcome and TZP. I went with Dr.Ravindra to one of the leading video studios in gulbarga to enquire for the movies when we reached the shop we realized that neither of the CD’s were available…then we decided to watch any other good English movie..when we asked the shop owner to suggest some movies he was not able to recommend a single good movie J I now realized how useful my watchlist was which I published in my previous blog.

Now coming to the point Welcome is a comedy from the producers of “Hera Pheri” and “Phir Hera Pheri”, the director of “No Entry” and the distributors of “Jab We Met”, this mega Christmas release boasts of lavish locales, chartbusting music (Himesh Reshammiya, Sajid-Wajid, Anand Raj Anand) and major star power; all making it the biggest knockabout comic caper of 2007.

First thing that comes to your mind when you hear Akshay Kumar and Paresh Rawal are together is comedy and fun. Though Akshay does not have a big share in the movie to exhibit his talent…true show winners are Nana and Anil kapoor.

Nana plays Uday Shetty, a don whose sister Sanjana (Katrina) falls for Rajiv (Akshay) whose uncle Dr Ghungroo (Rawal) wants him to be married to a family with no criminal record. In a comedy of errors, Rajiv falls in love with Sanjana and is now faced with the prospect of marrying someone from a crime based family or face mafia style death. The punch line of the movie, which says Marry or die, goes well with the scenario.

The selling point of this movie is the dialogues and the funny situation where Rajiv tries to transform mafia’s into good citizens. The forced masala and inclusion of Mallika makes the movie little dull. Coming to comedy, the rare comic parts in the movie are when Nana, the don tries his hand at acting in a movie and is courted by Mallika Sherawat. Partly funny are scenes where Anil Kapoor turns painter and is courted by Sherawat again. The climax part has typical Masala comedy is too pointless to be even discussed.

It is worth watching on your PC with your family and friends when you do not have any better work to do than killing the time. It’s definitely not a good idea to watch the movie in the theater. As for the songs, most of them are way below average and are all thoroughly ill timed.

You can rate the movie as 3.5 of 5.

Watchlist

One of the few good things that I feel I did durning my stay in wellington was collecting list of movies that, I need to watch. It was the joint effort of three brains working on the project i.e Me, Anand and Manoj I some how managed to watch couple of them and found them all intresting. So thought of sharing the list...Happy watching.



Phone Booth (Colin Farrell)

Brave Heart (Mel Gibson)

King Arthur

Few Good men (Tom)

Life is beautiful

pursuit of happyness

Seven

Nayagan (TML)

kannathil muthamittal (TML)

Basic

The usual suspects

The Rock

Khadalika marithey (TML)

Payback

Bowling for columbine

Fareinheit 9/11

Chak de India (HND)

The god father

Schlindlers list

Rocky (Series)

Saving private man

Silence of the lambs

Sixth sense

Million dollar baby

Shawlin soccer

Kill bill (1&2)

Passion of the christ

Ong Bak

Da vinci code

Hotel Rwanda

Black hawk down

catch me if you can

City of God (Watch alone :))

Crash

Erin brockovich

The pelican brief

Finding nemo

Lion king

Incredibles

Momento

Minority report

Water world

Shann of the deae

Hot Fuzz

Shrek

Traffic

Constantine

Artifical Intelligence

Pearl of wisdom

It was a drive to a mall to eat Indian dishes in this foreign city (Wellington), our car had hit the parking space at dot 6 and we entered the mall at 6:10pm again in Wellington 6:00pm is 6:00 and not 6:10...the mall was closed and we missed our dosa. I was little disappointed missing the delight and got back into my seat fastening the seat belt hastily :(. My cousin Anand who accompanied me to the mall noticed that I was disturbed for missing the dosa after a long drive of 13kms, he got down to convince me that “What ever happens, happens for good”, what happened next was worth missing the dosa. I got the pearl of wisdom which I am sharing in the log now:



Ages ago, there was a kingdom which had a great king and able ministers.
There was a minister of which the king was very fond of, who always believed in an age old adage, "whatever happens happens for the good".

Once when the king and this minister where having their bouts with the sword, the king’s finger was cut. Then immediately, the minister advised the king not to worry and said "whatever happens happens for the good".

This infuriated the hurt king, who expelled the minister and jailed him.
To which again the minister exclaimed the same saying "whatever happens, happens for the good".

After some days the king went for hunting.
The king lost track and was trapped by the barbaric tribes.
This tribe had a ritual of sacrificing men to their God for the welfare of the tribe.

Before the king was to be sacrificed, it required, that person be physically examined if he was without any amputations.
They found that the king had his finger amputated, because of which the king was freed.

The king returned and immediately released the minister apologising him and explained to him how he was saved.
The minister did not accept the apologies and instead exclaimed the same saying and said that jailing him was for his good.

When asked why, the minister explained that if he was not jailed, he would have accompanied the king and the tribes would have sacrificed him instead.

So "whatever happens happens for the good".

Thought for the day n for the life!!

Today is a May day or international labor day we are working in our office at google. Thank god we are no more a labor but an executive :) the reason for me to post this article is that, I came across a saying which one of my Friend/colleague (shital Rai) has written as her status message on her Gtalk, I was so impressed by the statement that within no time I asked her permission to post it on my blog, here you go:

“Our greatest glory consists not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall”

It is so good to see such inspirational quotes as status message. I have decided to follow the same path and put nice sayings/quotes as my status message.

Lunch with a leader

It was around 12:20 pm in the noon on April 4th 2007, I was eagerly waiting for a special person on lunch table to join us (me & my team mates) it was none other than Director of Google India Mr. Roy Gilbert. Roy heads our entire operations in India and has a great background.

The lunch started with formal introduction and then followed by some official talk’s n finally concluded by thanks. The take away for me from the lunch was:

1. True leaders are always positive in there talks, expressions, answers …literally everything. In short they are people with Positive Mental Attitude (PMA)
2. Makes every employee feel they are special and important to organization
3. Always ready to take more and more responsibilities
4. They have mission n Vision
5. They are always focused on solutions n not problems

The list goes on n on n on……But what, I truly feel is every never miss an opportunity (if you get any) to have lunch, dinner, coffee or spend time with leaders of your organization. The personal experience will give you more insight into a leader’s life than any books can.

I am desperately waiting for many such sessions ahead.

Doing First things First (DFTF)

Here is a piece of management lesson that, I am planning to implement in my life. I hope to see the positive results soon.

Background:
I am most popularly known as Mr. Multi-tasking by most of my friends and family members, the reason being that, I love to do more than 1 task at the same time. (Ex: I joined both M.Tech n MBA same time with just 6 months difference)

Problem description:
The main problem in this multi tasking business is you end up doing less important work first than the most important ones. Very often we fail to prioritize the tasks and end up doing things that are less important than doing the more important ones. (I never say multi tasking is bad instead it is good if you know to prioritize things)

Proposed solution:
Here are the ways to solve the problem described above:
1. Always make a list of projects you want to accomplish (Short term, long term and mid term). Now assign points to each project on a scale of 1 to 10 (1 being most important project and 10 being least important) based on the scores take up the project.
NOTE: People like me who are ok with multi tasking can do the two most important projects first followed by the next most important projects, else you can do one things at a time.
2. It is always good to attach deadlines to the projects (It will keep you focused and has little positive pressure which is always good)
3. Make sure every single task you do is in line with your goal (i.e. every simple thing you do should take you near to your goal)

If you are planning to implement the same then do let me know about the results.

Feels so good to be back home

The last weekend24th March to 26th was the most memorable one. I had been to my Grand father’s place (Mantralyam) to visit him (Sri Raghavendra Swami) after a long time of 5 months. The only place, I feel were love is in air, ur spirits are always high n u r always recharged to take n accomplish new projects in life.

I strongly recommend my friends to visit Mantralayam atleast once to have the best moments for life time.

There are various temples to visit at mantralyam: main temple bing Raghavendra Swamy temple, Manchalamma temple, venkateswara swami temple is in old mantralyam, Tunga river flowing just behind the temple, panchmuki is one of best and effective god shrine about 15km from mantralyam (Auto drivers charge 20 per person and if u take a bus its 5 Rs).

Away from all the typical job routine and usual life u get a chance to do seva (Service) for both god (Inside the temple premises) and fellow humans (Poor people outside the temple). Every time, I am at Mantralyam I feel so energetic and homely.

Some facts and figures about Indian circket

Finally our players came home yesterday (29/march/2007) after loosing the World cup in the early stage. I was shocked to know the following facts:

1. BCCI is the richest circket board in the world (BCCI = 2* all the cricket boards of the world)

2. Indian Cricket players are the only players involved so much into advertisement

3. The head of BCCI sharad powar does not hold any sports experience or academic qualification

4. Highest number of fans following the team

The list goes on n on n on......but wats the use of all the resources when we don’t have a dedicated team.

AD industry n Circket (World cup 2k7)

I am not sure if this is true but today, I heard couple of my colleagues at Google saying various MNC's (Major example AIRTEL) have invested a huge money in India for advertisement. The total amount lost estimated comes to 20,00,00,000 if India happens to loose the match today...It high time for us to pray for our Team Blue.

Hope history repeats we get the cup back :)

Power of Positive thinking

I had been thinking reading n discussing a lot about the topics like positive thinking, Success, attitude, law of attraction. Its seriously good to read inspirational books but I some how feel all these books convey the same message:

U R THE CREATOR OF YOUR OWN DESTINEY
-Swami Vivekananda

Still, I recommend ppl to read the following books:


The Effective Executive by Peter Drucker
Megaliving by Robin Sharma
Monk who sold his ferrari by Robin Sharma
7 Habits of highly effective ppl by Covey
First things first by Covey
How to become CEO


And Loads n loads of books...I just dont remember them all.

If u guys need any of these books or good management books....Leave a comment with ur e-mail ID, I will send them over (ebooks).

ICFAI Another example of poor customer support and cheating

I think the month of February is dedicated to write reviews on organizations that Sucks :) big time.


One more classic example on our way is ICFAI University, the money making university which cares least about its distance education students. I had recently conducted a survey in my office and mailing lists before posting this article. 29 out of 36 students lost there money because of this so called business school. Here are the reasons that make ICFAI the top ranked fake university:

1. They sell there own old question papers for 100/paper
2. The grading system is not transparent
3. Every time they make u flunk in exams and ask u to pay a huge amount for re-exam
4. Even after completing the exams u never know what was right and what was wrong
5. The phone numbers on website are Crap…everytime u call them with doubt all u hear is hello and a bang sound
6. They say easy EMI for fees and charge you royally for RS. 65000+ (Even top b-schools like Symbiosis charge u 20 k for distance MBA)
7. Out of every 100 students joining ICFAI only 10 get there degree

The list goes on and on and on……….

I don’t want my friends or relatives or my blog readers to loose there money or being cheated. So think ….n^n times befor joining this university

Best Customer Service Vs Worst Customer Service

I had a couple of experinces in recent past with cell phone service providers in India. I had taken a Reliance connection which was never activated for almost 15 days after purchase inspite of giving them all the necessary documents like passport, electricty bill n telephone bill (True copies). Every time you call up Reliance customer care they give some weared explanation to satsify you. Finally the retailer (Pioneer Communication at Kachiguda Hyderabad) helped me out with this issue by replacing my brand new Reliance connection with Airtel connection. The Business World magzine of this week states that Vodofone has acquired Hutch for $16 billion hope Indians can expect a better service from the new mobile services.

It is Awesome to work in World's best place Google!!!!

As usual Google has re-written the standards for the best company to work for on the planet EARTH!!!! Fortune magazine conducted a survey of over 100,000 employees across 450 plus companies to decide the best place to work in this world, no doubt Google was ranked NUMBER 1. Click here to read the article from Fortune Magazine.

What makes Google No 1? The list of the answer goes on and on and on...As I always say Google is the employee centric company it believes employees are the most valuable ones for the company. Experts like Jordan Rohan (Jordan Rohan is a internet analyst. His consistent track record in calling the ups and downs of search companies makes his thoughts and insights well worth attention) say:

Google = Corporate Campus + University Playground.

A company that was started by 2 PhD students with a million dollar is now 150 billion dollar company. The company that believes in the fact that "Don’t be Evil" has 9000 brave soldiers (Dedicated employees) working for it world wide.

Google has out ranked its competitors with a huge difference in many aspects, some of the facts and figures are:

Best company to Work for Google – 1 Yahoo- 44 Microsoft- 50

Dream company for scholars Google- 1 Yahoo n Microsoft I am not sure 

Number of Resumes sent for Jobs: Google 25 EVERY SECOND Yahoo n Microsoft few resumes per minute or day.

Number of new users per month Google- 75 million, Yahoo n Microsoft need not say its much less 

In fact we can say Google does not have any comparison for the speed with which it is progressing for example: Youtube was taken over by paying 1.65 billion dollar's which no company would ever dare to do, tie-up with Nasa.........

I wish Google all the best and would love to see it on Top in every aspect of business and Technology.

Comments are Welcome.

Ur's
Raghav

New Year 2007 at Srishilam

It's been a long time since i had been to awesome place :) so thought new year would be the right time to visit trult beautiful place (Srishilam). It’s around 180 KM's from Hyderabad (This includes 60 Kms in forest/ghat). Some of the must see place in and around Srishilam are:

Patala ganga (U need to take a rope way to reach here for boating)

Kadli vana: It is belived that great saint Akka mahadevi did her penance in this place before she had the darshana of Lord Siva.

Shikar was the next place of visit. Its on a hill top around 10 KM's from Srishilam, it is believed that if u are able to see the kalsha (The olden structure on top of shiva temple) you will attain moksha (U will not have any re-birth's)



I felt this was the best way to celebrate New year...We had a great time reached Hyderabad on Jan/1/2007 in the night. It took almost 2 days to come out of that beautiful holiday mood.

In the beautiful land of Nizams

It is a great feeling to be here in Google Inc at Hyderabad. The company, I always wanted to be. It’s been really long time since I have posted anything on my blog. Now there are loads of things, I would love to write. All the new experience about Hyderabad, about new house, new friends, new work, new work environment, new culture, new language, new new…new…n so on.

Hyderabad:now what do I say about this awsome city...It rocks (except the hot weather). some of the facts and figures about this place that, I know are:

It is the 5th largest metropolis in India. It has about 63 lack people living in (Of course increasing every minute). City were Hindus and Muslims have co-existed peacefully from ages. It is the emerging information technology (or IT) and biotechnology hub of India. Hyderabad and Secunderabad are twin cities, separated by the Hussain Sagar (bound by the 'Tank Bund'), a manmade lake made during the time of Ibrahim Qutb Shah in 1562. The Charminar (Urdu: "Four Minars") monument, built in the center of Hyderabad by Muhammad Quli Qutb Shah in 1591, is a commemoration of the eradication of a plague in the region.

The place were, I stay is a mixture of old city and hi-tech. No wonder, I have started using "mama and ma ke kirkiri 10 times in every sentence".

To summarize this place truly rocks and it’s a privilege to be part of this company and city.

Working with company like Google is a joy in itself….the experience is tough to be explained in words. I feel, I am in an university learning more n more stuff each day rather than working for any company. The team here is Awesome!!!! I am not supposed to write about my company or work so sorry…..that’s against our policy.

Google’s third R&D head hired on 17th Oct.

Google India (Bangalore R&D team) hired Ram as it's R&D Head. The R&D Head is none other than, Yahoo!’s chief technology officer in India, Prasad Bharat Ram. For complete article click Here.

Want to be an entrepreneur???

Hey all,

Every 10 out of 12 graduate dreams of being a successful entrepreneur. Unfortunately none reaches the goal...this may have millions of reasons...no money, no idea, no god father...n the list goes on. My question is did every one who owns a company had all these to support them? and the answer is no...It just takes few seconds to realize our true dream n march towards it.

I was doing a backend research on this and fortunately reached this piece of web http://onstartups.com/ which speaks about what it takes to be an entrepreneur.

This is a dedicated community for entrepreneurs. Dharmesh Shah is the guy behind this site and has done wonders in the field of startups....I would call him as meta entrepreneur (An entrepreneur who does through research and has rich experince on startups)

All, I would say is browse through his site, realize your true dreams and potiential and start working towards it.

It's not who you think you are that holds you back but what you think you're not.

Got offer from Google

It was around 9:15 am on 16th October, I woke up from my bed...did the usual prayer while opening the eyes and the first thing, I did was saw my mobile phone. Wat do, I see now 1 MISSED CALL. Guess who it was???? Yes the call was from Google Inc's HR. I gave a call back to check wat was the call about???

HR said: "Raghavendra hi, your papers have been approved by our US team and You have been selected. Congralutions" I was literally on air. happiness knew no boundaries...the moment i heard this I started jumping n danging.....since i was on call, I could not do it for a long.

She said we will be giving you the offer letter tomorrow....This one day was really heavy for me...I said ok.

It was around 2:30 in noon the HR calld me again and said , I will extend the offer to you now will taht be fine....I said ya great. Got the offer n Google rocks man.

The offer letter said joining date will be 30th October, I was happy but had the doubt will these guys (My current employer) relieve me on time? I said ok to sheela but still had that doubt, will I releived???

I went to my manager and explained him the whole senario, he said its great to know that u will be joining a firm like Google but sorry we cannot releive you by 30th, we have made strict rule to releive all the employees only after 1 months notice.

Things went on....I am joining Google on 13th November.

Raghavendra
"Nothing is my efforts everything is his grace"