Saturday, 24th January 2009

The Namesake

A book that has intrigued me for a while now was The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri. Recently I enjoyed reading the book and decided to compare the book to the film. That was foolhardy because there is no way a 90 minute movie could do justice to the Lahiri's writing, which is characterized by her elaborate descriptions of struggles, anxieties, and biases. In the book no gesture, no sorrow was spared but all of that was missing from the movie.

The book does a great job to chronicle the nuances and details of immigrant psychology and behavior. However I felt that some of the comparisons made between western and indian-immigrant cultures were too harsh and unfair.

The story describes the struggles and hardships of a Bengali couple who immigrate to the United States to form a life outside of everything they know. Through a series of errors, their son's nickname, Gogol, becomes his official birth name, an event which will shape many aspects of his life. Gogol struggles with his Indo-American identity and subsequently changes his name to Nikhil.

When I moved to the US, I too naturally expected that my name would be butchered down to three characters, but I didn't mind it since i have been addressed as such ever since I was born. I personally like my name and the obvious 3 character version of it, but what about people who dislike their own names. After all they played no part in picking it. Some people always felt so embarrassed by their own name, as if they feel like they're causing someone pain just by being who they are.

Now that my name has been made famous by a book and a movie what next, and is A rose by any other name is still a rose?

Posted by Nikhil on Saturday 24th of January 2009 at 12:59:26 PM in Life in General | Books Reviews | Fun

Monday, 19th January 2009

Resurrection

It finally happened. I resurrected my website from a state of utter neglect and while I was at it, gave it a nice facelift. There is still plenty of ideas and work that I want to put into it, but desperation to put out an update got the better of me. The new "crumpled paper" theme is sweet, and for those of you who prefer the older theme, it is still there and you can switch to the "classic" theme on the fly.

For the geeky-minded you will notice that the site is now completely AJAX powered (with a jQuery flavor). The ability to switch themes highlights a nice design principle of seperation of presentation (UI) from the model (data). This design allows me to plug-in new themes in future. I'm also working on a version which uses the silverlight plugin. To achieve this, I'm developing a basic XHTML renderer for silverlight but that might take a while. Building this gave me a greater appreciation for the work that goes into developing a HTML rendering engine for browsers.

Not quite as historic or momentous as the historic event that unfolds tomorrow, but atleast it is a good milestone. Now if only I can overcome the writer's block and write something intelligent!

Posted by Nikhil on Monday 19th of January 2009 at 02:46:09 PM in Life in General | Fun

Sunday, 28th December 2008

Cavalier-ism

Over the past few years i have turned into a basketball fanatic. I guess some of the reasons would be

Hard to keep up with cricket with the timezones playing havoc

I started School in Cleveland a year after LeBron James had his great rookie year and hasn't looked back taking Cleveland Basketball to new heights. (To say that i'm a fan is an understatement!)

The Cleveland Cavaliers have a genuine shot at the championship ring this year

It is an easy sport to pick up and loads for fun, besides any excercise that gets my bum off the couch is good

This year i've been following the excellent start the Cavs have been having to their season. My most hated team is the Boston Celtics. Not only did they beat my second favorite team "The Lakers" in last year's finals after inching past my Cavs in the conference semis, but they are the single biggest impeding force standing in the Cavalier's path. Besides isn't it mandatory to hate teams from Boston (Red Sox, Celtics, Pats). Boston as a sporting town has had a lions share of victories and it is about time they started to share the wealth.

I have great appreciation of Kevin Garnett's (KG) skills as a basketball player, but his demeanour (especially on the court) leaves a bad taste in my mouth. The constant swearing, grimmances don't make for pretty viewing. This coupled with "Drama Queen" Paul Pierce and his antics make me hate the Celtics even more. I was wathing a highlights video the other day and managed to capture and freeze a frame that shows a rather scary looking KG on the side lines.

For now i'll take pride in the Cavs 25-4 start to the season and pray that the good form continues whilst quietly wishing ill for the Celtics so that i won't have to see expressions like the one above. Go Cavs!

Posted by Nikhil on Sunday 28th of December 2008 at 04:21:32 PM in Fun | Sport

Saturday, 27th December 2008

Movie Reviews over Christmas

There are a lot of movies to see this holiday and Oscar season. My highest recommendation is to go see Slumdog Millionaire. The story of a young boy’s tragic life which accidentally prepares him for the questions on a game show is a brilliant underdog story filled with director artistry that you seldom see in any film. Because the movie deals with a boy growing up in the worst parts of India the movie teaches the audience valuable cultural lessons and insights at the same time entertaining us.

Another great movie that i watched was Gran Torino. I haven't seen many Clint Eastwood movies but from what i've heard and read online, this was one of his best performances. I would not argue with that. Although the story line is fairly thin,Eastwood makes the film work mainly on the basis of his screen image.

Revolving around the story of Walt Kowalski (Clint Eastwood), a retired Ford employee and decorated Korean War vet, the movie explores themes of loss, coming to terms, friendship, and ultimately, sacrifice and redemption. Words like "masterpiece" or phrases like "tour de force" seem cliched and misleading, so it is hard to summon up a definitive word to describe the themes and feelings that Gran Torino evokes. One thing for sure, it was poignant enough to leave an impact on me.

Posted by Nikhil on Saturday 27th of December 2008 at 12:51:03 PM in Fun | Nonsense

Friday, 26th December 2008

Five Point Someone

It has been a while since i read any book which wasn't a selp-help book or a technical one, so it was a refreshing change when i got buried in a novel over the holidays. This was a book that was recommended to me by a dear friend who is a big fan of the author and i would whole heartedly agree that Five Point Someone is a fun read.

Five Point Someone is a story about three friends in IIT who are unable to cope.The book starts with a disclaimer, "This is not a book to teach you how to get into IIT or even how to live in college. In fact, it describes how screwed up things can get if you don't think straight."

Three hostelmates - Alok, Hari and Ryan get off to a bad start in IIT - they screw up the first class quiz. And while they try to make amends, things only get worse. It takes them a while to realize: If you try and screw with the IIT system, it comes back to double screw you. Before they know it, they are at the lowest echelons of IIT society. They have a five-point-something GPA out of ten, ranking near the end of their class. This GPA is a tattoo that will remain with them, and come in the way of anything else that matters - their friendship, their future, their love life. While the world expects IITians to conquer the world, these guys are struggling to survive.

Will they make it? Do underperformers have a right to live? Can they show that they are not just a five-point-somebody but a five-point-someone?

Posted by Nikhil on Friday 26th of December 2008 at 06:15:35 PM in Life in General | Fun | Book Reviews

Thursday, 25th December 2008

To Blog or To Not Blog

At long last, i've decided to come out of hiberation and back to the blogosphere. Co-workers and friends alike have chided me for not blogging and the state of my website and i had to resort to lame excuses.

The blogosphere has come a long way since it becomes popular and almost everybody and their grandmoms have blogs which make it less of a novelty each passing day. Often I step back and wonder if there is too much information that is online. The recent historic election campaign turned us into news junkies. But how many blogs does the world need? In a presidential election dominated by the Internet where for the young chunk, the internet was their major source of information.

The opportunity for us to express ourselves is wonderful. Having to read all of those opinions isn't. Back when i first began my site (2004) there were more people reading blogs than writing them. It isn't quite the same anymore. And even if most blogs are skippable, there are one, two or couple dozen worth checking a couple of times - or maybe three or four times - a day just to make sure you aren't missing anything.

Capitalizing on the information overload, then there are sites that are supposed to help you sort the wheat from the chaff on all the other sides. They filter stores, aggregate ones that they think you should read and use some sofisticated computer algorithms to do their sorting. Other such sites rely on the readers to do the heavy lifting. So if sixty-three percent recomment a story about how twilight is a movie for the teenage soul, you better read it. Or that article about a Russian blogger who says that Obama might make Sarah Palin Secretary of State.

Posted by Nikhil on Thursday 25th of December 2008 at 10:25:18 PM in Life in General | Fun | Humour