In the foot steps of their father ..

The title adage used to have good feeling to it until recently in India. With the recent elections unleashing a flush of offsprings following their father's path, I wonder how many of them are deserving to get a head start in their political life just because of the initials or last names, as the case may be. It should also be mention that such a question of qualification can often be applied to their popular parent as well.

History has very very few instances where an offspring equalled, if not excelled, his/her accomplished parent. Few names come to mind Alexander the Great, Rajendra Chola (son of Raja Raja Chola) but in theses cases, both generations we illustrious.
Back to India, see the following slide show from Rediff on the young blood infused into parliament this election time. In the name of Father and Grandfather
I do consider the following off spring either outright useless and/or ill-qualified to get a headstart just because their so called "lineage" - Here are my rankings

10. Rahul Gandhi / Sonia&Rajiv - all over India.
9. Agatha Sangma / Purno Sangma from Meghalaya.
8. Scindia Jr. , again with zero experience, from MP
7. Sachin Pilot in footsteps of Rajesh Pilot, with zero experience.
6. Omar Abdullah / Farooq Abdullah of J&K.
5. Supriya/ Sharad Pawar of Maharashtra.
4. Muraleedharan / Karunakaran of Kerala
3. HD Kumaraswamy / DeveGowda - Karnataka.
2. Akilesh Yadav, son of Mulayam Singh Yadav - heard he was a roudy.
1. Leading from the top and beating others hands down is the Karunanidhi clan from my homestate of Tamil Nadu -- his sons Stalin, Azhagiri (both rowdies), daughter kanimozhi, nephew Dayanidhi Maran. Barring Stalin, all the others have not even worked for the party for a decent time when they overshot other party functionaries to ministerial berths.

Of course, the life time achievement award in this category should go to "so called Gandhi" family who have been capitalizing the Gandhi name better than Mahatma's real descendants themselves. While the others in the list have been able to maintain the nepotistic tint only for 2 generations, the "Gandhi" clan is in its successful 5th Generation and still counting (money too in recent years) - Motilal, Jawaharlal, Indira, Rajiv&Sonia, Rahul....

Oh my God, let my country awake.

Dubiously enough, me and my son had to pose for this post. Sepia tone supposedly gives a bit of backdated historic touch to a normal photo.

Horror

During my grad school days, I got a liking for the "X-Files" series and used to get DVDs from local library and watch it around night. Invariably, the haunting music and theme will interfere with my sleep that day but couldnt resist the thrill of the series and finally ended up watching all the volumes my local library had.

After a long time I got a chance to watch another similar creation. This one is a movie in Tamil - titled "yaavarum nalam" - (adapted from a Hindi movie by name "13B"). I felt the same thrill if not more, than what I used to get watching X-Files. Would definitely recommend it if you are have a taste for the paranormal. In addition to the story/screenplay, what stood out and made the film worthwhile was the audio and video. The audio was amazing, using bass to convey much of the horror and to top it all was the video from India's ace cinematographer P C Sreeram. What caught my attention on the videography was unlike regular horror movies, he dint use unable-to-see dim lighting - lighting was perfect plus he used unusual angles of the camera (his forte) to bring out the thrill of the moment. More so, thankfully, again unlike vanilla horror movies, he dint have the camera handheld for most of the time, constantly giving the manual shake to the viewer and creating headache for viewers like me. Different experience after a long time..

Attached pix of a cactus plant taken at Torrey Pines State Reserve, La Jolla, CA.

Making a difference

A family friend of ours informed us about a non-profit social service organization in our state Tamil Nadu in India. Its founded by a friend of his, by name Senthil, who left a lucrative IT job he was enjoying in the US to start this organization back home to make a difference in people's lives. The movement is called "Payir" - a term used to refer agricultural crop. Kindly see his work here at Payir. The individual is driven by Gandhian values of self-reliance of communities and value of truth. Needless to say, in today's world, that path is not going to be rosy. The least a person can do by sitting here in the US would be to donate money and not claim it in his tax deduction. Lets try to do that first and, a second step, take more responsiblity and contribute to movement by spreading word around, lending some time and material to it.

Today's picture is actually a street light captured during an overcast day. I was able to get the extreme ends of dynamic range without clipping.

Detroit runs out of gas

This week the media time is fully dominated by the "swine flu" pandemonium/concern. Over NPR, I heard an interesting fact - the flu virus, christened H1N1, is actually a "HYBRID" of swine, avian and human flu viruses. On hearing this I couldnt help comparing this to the state of auto industry in US. Here are my thoughts.

1. (read this in Jay Leno style) The US automakers are so lagging behind in innovation that even a flu virus was able to beat them to produce a successful "HYBRID" strong enough to make an uproar among humans. Thats how bad the US auto industry is .
2. When the detroit big three went to DC for begging money they flew into DC in their own private jets. Even I know that its a bad idea. And after all these, we still wonder why the auto industry is in doldrums with such pea-brains at the helm.
3. Guess what, after the above fiasco, the private jet industry in kansas reports (quote NPR) that its orders are down because of this bad publicity.
   
4. Steve Breen of the San Diego Union Tribune has this cartoon in his pulitzer prize winning portfolio that nails the coffin on the auto industry bail out stunts. Even the capitalists realize the futility.
5. As a "communist-who-knows-it-wont-work", its disheartening for me when I observe that the auto industry is the only highly "union-ised" industry in an otherwise capitalist country. Not sure if the failure and union-isation are related though.
   

In this post, featured is a 1980 Corvette (my only favorite american car-line) with the pic warmified a bit on redzone to give the period feel of 80's.