Cogent Thoughts

Ever since the concept of reality TV has started picking up in India, 4-5 years back, it seems as if our nation has got a new national anthem. Everyone, people from all age groups seem to be smitten with the reality show bug. Fame, money, glitz, glamour and not to forget instant result is lucrative enough to grab anyone's attention. No wonder why? Every next person wants to be the next Indian idol, the next MTV Roady, or the next Cinestar. Fame, never used to be just a word, people used to work really hard for it. But now fame has become all so accessible and INSTANT. All thanks to this emergence of Reality TV. But what do you think… about Reality TV? Yeah! I have been thinking about this topic since a long time; have had several arguments sometimes with couple of friends and lot many times with myself trying to figure out what do people working on Reality TV trying to come up with? I have my firm viewpoint about it which title of my post would’ve explained. People claim it is anot...

Amongst the plethora of features that Gmail has, Buzz is the latest add-on. It has given gmail users a platform to share their views, links or any kind of information with the world. They can link their Picasa, Twitter and blogspot account with Buzz and speak their mind and heart over the web. All your updates in any of these sites that you link with your Buzz account, will automatically get reflected in Buzz. You needn’t post the same information on each site separately. Means, no more shuffling between various tabs—twitter, picasa, gmail—you get all in one window. Plus, you join Buzz and you instantly get access to 170 million plus gmail subscribers. Sounds cool! But this consolidation is not fool proof. Updates on the linked sites don’t get reflected instantly. There is no sorting order in which updates are shown on Buzz page. The one with the max comments or views gets displayed while the rest are hid in the background. There are other tiny-miny flaws as well which make us doubt Bu...

The best part of living in a metro like Delhi is that you are always on your toes, either for work—professional or personal, or for fun. Whatever that may be, the point is we virtually spend more time on road, amidst the traffic, rather than with our loved ones. No pun intended. And all thanks to the traffic jams and the mess on the Delhi roads; all thanks to the revamping of the city and the constructions that is going on to prepare it for the upcoming Commonwealth games, roads have almost become second home for most of us—people who daily commute from one end of the city to the another for work, studies. Depending on traffic, I spend around 4-5 hours, and the good thing about it is that more time I spend on road, the more chance I get to observe things which I often miss out on. Innocence of kids, laughter of the elderly couples on the street, beauty of nature… Sometimes it is the brutality of nature or cruelty of human that grabs attention. Today I wanna talk about the later. I have...

What say? Creativity at its best or something else?

Ever since elections were being announced, one question that has been bothering me is who I should vote for: the party or the face? Really, finding an answer to this question was a tough fight. While my mind kept telling me that go with the party my heart insisted go with the face. And ultimately my heart overpowered my brain—I went with the face and decided to vote for someone, whose parties’ ideologies I don’t readily believe in but that person however looked promising. I have had long conversation about the same with my sister, who was against my thoughts of voting for the face. She said, “Don’t you know the man you opt for is not going to govern your locality. By selecting a man whose party’s ideology you don’t believe in you would be giving a chance to the party, you don't really wanna come to power? Do you want that?” No, that is not what I want, but I also can’t vote for someone just because he belongs to a party, he must have certain qualities of his own right? Qualificat...

Everyone is praising Gulzar for his beautiful composition 'Jai Ho', the song which has suddenly become kinda national anthem for all--more so ever since we got an Oscar for it. People of all age groups seem to be smitten by this song, they are using it as their ringtone/caller tune, politicians are using it as a slogan (you know i even heard (may be read) somewhere that someone from Congress is trying to approach Gulzar. what for? For penning down slogans/songs for their election campaign. I don't know if it is true, but if it is then ...let's not even go there). But I was just wondering, is 'Jai Ho' one of the best that Gulzar ever wrote. I don't think so. No, not that I didn't like the song, I really liked it. But this is not the best that he has ever written. No, I have nothing against Gulzar (if that is what you could get from my statement); he is a legend who have had always been my all time favorite lyricist. He has given us a whole bunch of beauti...

Hold on guys and gals, I am not claiming that. Someone else feels so. No he is not a pakistani, atleast his name doesn't suggest so. And he is not even a Muslim. He is someone called Steven Meurrens,a guy who did his BA in Political science and Chinese language from University of Toronto. I got my hands on one of his papers, well not exactly hands I was just browsing the net when I got one of his papers. It says "Kasmir is legitimately a part of Kashmir". (You can read his paper here http://www.scribd.com/doc/6497429/Pakistan-Has-the-Legitimate-Claim-to-Kashmir) Now ever since my childhood, or should say every Indian ever since his birth, must have been hearing about Pakistan's 'true/false' claim about their possession on Kashmir. They claim that Kashmir was a part of their territory and we, the Indians took it away from them. How, when, India did that, they neither have any proofs nor do they have any valid reason for the claim, but they insist that “Kashmir ...