Pinnacle of Twenty20 glory

Unheralded they arrived. A new captain with just over a couple of years of cricket under his belt. A team that was refreshingly young. None(including me) gave them a chance. The odds were heavily against them. But they feared not. They played their cricket magnificently and in the most daring of fashions. Won the first ever bowl-out in T20 cricket, decimated England, packed South Africa out of the tournament, denied Australia a place in the final and made a place for them in the hearts of millions of Indians by winning the first ever World Twenty20 Cricket Championships. Congratulations Dhoni and Co.

Well played Pakistan too. What a final it was! After a long time, a major cricket final wasn't decided till the last ball.

Twenty20 cricket too was a winner. Unpredictability was conspicuous by its absence in the last few ODI world cups. But not this one. After a long time, a major cricket tournament unfolded in the most exciting, dramatic and unpredictable of ways. This made it one of the most memorable tournaments in recent times. Cricket, probably, never had it better.

Mahabharatha Revisited - V

The campaigning began. Nakula and Sahdeva hit the road for a door-to-door campaign. They distributed campaign brochures to every household in important constituencies. Where they could not go, mails were dispatched. Being shrewd businessmen, they decided to promote their second-hand-keyboards venture too. They distributed a second-hand-keyboard for free along with the campaign leaflet. This they did despite fervent pleas to the contrary by the people to whom they gave. Those people's minds were filled with memories of keyboards from Nakula-Sahadeva Inc going to flames when the typing speed exceeded a predefined limit. Their kith and kin had been rendered fingerless. But Nakula and Sahadeva didn't recognize the seething anger against them in people's minds.

While Nakula and Sahadeva were thus a liability to PAD, Bhima was their asset. Not exactly Bhima, but the allegations against him. An Olympic medalist boxer facing a ban due to allegations of taking performance enhancement drugs. There was sympathy for him. The allegations against him were a neo-imperialist conspiracy by America, thought a large majority of people. Consequently, countless number of effigies of American President George Bush were burnt. An American President had never been a target in an Indian election before. Also boxing matches were held at campaign locations to fund Bhima's electioneering. Needless to say Bhima was confident of victory.

Arjuna's campaign was more of analysis than anything substantial. He watched videos of successful campaigns of various leaders in the past. He watched it in speeds that varied from ultra-slow-motion to ultra-high-speed. He practiced whatever he saw. He decided, strangely, to campaign only on the last day of campaigning.

DJ was everywhere; On his blog, on the road, on various public fora, on YouTube and many more. He promised tax exemption for blog revenue. He promised to pay more attention to travelogue writers. But he failed to recognize that bloggers and writers alone can't win him even a single seat.

Dr. D - the angry middle aged man of Indian politics - promised toilets for every home. This, he opined, would give some space to think. He also promised to abolish taxes and regularize corruption. The money obtained through corruption, he suggested, would be divided between the person taking it and the Government. This, he said, would overcompensate the money lost due to tax abolition. In this way, he hoped to kill two birds in one stroke.

Karna also campaigned. It was widely reported to be laconic and incomprehensible. Those who did understand, found it very acerbic. And the other grand old men of KAP too campaigned. So did the rest of the KAP fraternal conglomeration.

And Arjuna's grand campaign day arrived. Krish had come to his house to accompany him. With barely couple of hours left for the public rally, Arjuna suddenly developed a fear for public speaking. Krish immediately gave him a copy of the book How to Develop Self-Confidence And Influence People By Public Speaking. Arjuna read it. Developed self-confidence. And speak he did. And influencing people? Results were going to be the only indicator of that.

Preview of final episode: Election results - Will KAP retain power? Or will PAD regain lost power? Watch out for the final installment of this mega series by GuruWrites.

Deadly software PJ

Question: God is everywhere. But why do we get null pointer exception?


Answer: Because God is everywhere, there is no such thing as null. So you can't access something that is not there. So you get exception.

Credits:
The credit for this PJ goes to three immensely insane minds in our team - Sushant, Bharat and ofcourse me.

Hey Ram!

Conferring knighthood to Salman Rushdie hurts minority sentiments. Prophet Mohammad cartoons hurt minority sentiments. Calling Islamic terrorism as Islamic terrorism hurts minority sentiments. Executing a convicted terrorist hurts minority sentiments. Not condemning Saddam Hussein's execution hurts minority sentiments. The list goes on. So also the government's caution to not hurt such sentiments. And one day they tell the supreme court that Lord Ram might not have existed. What about Hindu sentiments? Who cares!

Let us leave aside the sentiments and examine the statement. Even then it amounts to the Government saying that whom Hindus worship as God, does not exist. This is something a truly secular, religion-neutral, government cannot do as it indicates religious bias. But then who is there to question the Government?

Now coming to the issue of Rama-Sethu, which has created this controversy. Ramayana alongwith Mahabharatha and Gita, in many ways, is one of the bedrocks of Indian culture. In this context, Ram Setu has a very important symbolic value. This is irrespective of whether it's is man made or not. Destroying Ram Setu is, therefore, not just a blow to Hindu faith, but to our culture and our heritage as well.

Considering all this, what the Government has uttered, is indeed blasphemy. The UPA Government needs to be strongly condemned not just verbally but electorally as well.

Software movies

It's surprising that movies about software, software engineers and their trials and tribulations have not been made. Well, they(such stories) might not exactly be great material for cinema, but they can be funny. Here are my ideas for software-movies. (It does not require a connoisseur of cinema to realize that these are remixed ideas. So comments to this effect shall not be entertained.)

Mohan - Software Engineer, Godfather
The computer of a software engineer, Mohan, had been infected with virus. His system was completely compromised. This was the grandest failure of the anti-virus system. When the system fails, a new power arises. So Mohan decided to write a highly malicious virus that would consume all data on it's target machine and convert it into a porn film. And the virus was propogated. There was porn everywhere on every single machine on the planet, except Mohan's, which he formatted. Normalcy was restored worldwide although Mohan was acquitted by courts at every level in every country. But the evil corporate houses joined hands to conspire against Mohan. They decided to write the deadliest computer virus to exclusively target Mohan's machine. In a bizarre climax, Mohan dies of common cold much before the conspiracy could come to fruition.
THE END.

Chak De! Mohan
Mohan, a discredited manager at a software firm, resigns. He joins a startup. There he hires fresh software graduates who have failed at-least once in all the subjects in their engineering course. He teaches them the basics of software engineering. He then motivates them to accomplish a tough project in record time. In an unanticipated climax, all of them die.
THE END

End of post.