Not happy with the way Avatar has turned out, ace Hollywood director James Cameron decides to cast Vijay for the lead role in his next movie.

In an exclusive interview, Cameron revealed that talks are in progress to cast Vijay, but nothing has been finalized yet. When asked what prompted him to make this move, "Well....I spent somewhere between 200-300 million $ making a movie, creating a whole new civilization, worked for almost ten years on this project and when the movie's finally released, there come this guy Vijay just an intro song and a fight and captures the audience completely in a way I can never imagine! And moreover, I realized that my movie lacks depth and intellect when compared to a Vijay movie, because I have been making movies for so long, and none of them worked as great as his. So obviously, I decided to cast Vijay, in my next film"

The director also stated that he'll watch some of Vijay's previous movies like Sivakasi, Thirupachi and Villu before deciding on a final script.

When asked about how he felt when people say this is his best movie ever, he replied "oh no...My best movie, will be the one where I cast Vijay"

The director was especially swept off when he heard the intro song to Vijay's new film which goes like this "you can’t bear it if I beat you, you won’t sleep for 4 months, if you fight with me you won’t go home". With tears of sadness in his eyes, Cameron said "and we have been saying Tom Hanks is a great actor".

It must however be duly noted that Cameron was not the first person to make such a decision. Six months back when Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen hit the big screen, Steven Spielberg in an emergency press conference stated he might cast Vijay as the lead role for his next sequel. When asked why he replied “Well...its obvious isn’t it? I spent so much money on the movie, on graphics and stunt sequences when there’s this guy from Tamil Nadu who could have done what Optimus Prime did with just a wink of his eye!”

Back at home, fans of Vijay decided to sue Academy Awards for not awarding Vijay an Oscar. “Vijay deserved an Oscar for his movie Villu, which was mind blowing. But instead, they give it to Rahman? How is this even fair?” commented a serious Vijay fan. One even went as far as saying that Vijay is a better actor than Kamal Hassan.

Meanwhile the political parties in Tamil Nadu lost no time in taking advantage of this news. The current C.M, M.Karunanidhi said "Vijay has made Tamil Nadu proud by taking us to the international arena. He is a beautiful Tamil son. The Americans finally understand that we too have great actors."Home Minister P.Chidhambaram has hinted he might push for a Barath Rathna for Dr.Vijay which is the highest civilian award given out to an Indian.

The opposition leader, J.Jayalalitha of AIADMK, however expressed outrage "This is one of USA's conspiracies to divide Tamil Nadu by casting a Tamil Actor in their movie. The people of Tamil Nadu must not fall for such devious moves.” She has also decided to go on an indefinite hunger strike against Vijay’s decision.

Dr.Murugados, leader of the opposition party PMK, has also condemned this new development “Vijay has betrayed mother Tamil by deciding to act in an English movie! He is not a true Tamilian"

Dr.Vijay however was not available for comments. Reliable sources state that he's in the borders of Kashmir single handedly killing terrorists side by side with Vijaykanth.

50+ subjects, infinite assessments, more than a thousand hours of lecture; It’s only human or Indian (as in their “spirit”) to expect a guy (the fairer sex is out of contention here for some obvious reasons) to master all the trades of Maxwell, Franklin, Newton, Tesla, Einstein, (an endless list), in four years. As simple as that! Not to forget the demigods Nagrath, Gaonkar, Bakshi(The undisputed Jack of all trades), Bimbhra, Sawhney, Grewal, etc- without whom colleges around India would topple clockwise with a phase shift of 90° . The journey doesn’t end here. In fact it has not even started yet. The journey is defined only in terms of CGPA.

The invention of CGPA has perplexed researchers and even people like Duckworth and Lewis, Geoffrey Boycott &his Granny for its amazing capability to measure the electrical knowledge cells in an EEE student’s brain or electronic knowledge cells in an ECE student. Ditch fun, creativity, freedom and the vision to think beyond the stuff printed in paper. The world for four years starts and ends in “CGPA”. It starts with respect from fellow brains and ends at the notice board where the fate is sealed by companies offering campus recruitments based on the magic letters “CGPA”. The good, the bad and the ugly (even in the literal sense) are magnified easily with these four letters. Off course the bad and the ugly have no place in this world.

The “A” word (Ar*e*r) is the veto power hidden in every professors book. Play the game by the rules of his book or expect the veto power to be enforced. You are always under the scanner unless you are a member of the Security Council (No, not the first benchers!). Be prepared to shed light from your teeth every time Mr. (or Mrs.) Hitler cracks something even better than Chaplin. Any exhibition of common sense is strictly prohibited. Mr. Hitler is always right. So any freedom of expression will only result in the enforcement of the “A” word. After all, it is the duty of Hitler to help us unfold the magic trait called “Discipline”.

Human brain’s intellectual capacity has indeed evolved and grown over the years. Thanks to our brilliant educationalists for their amazing ideas and infusion of those ideas into the education system. What was virtually impossible to Einstein or Newton or our very own Aryabhatta is a piece of cake today for a college student. Can an Einstein or Newton learn fifty different subjects (each an ocean in its own respect) in just four years? Yes, it sounds funny. How can I expect guys who dropped out of fifth grade to do such a mammoth task? But the highly evolved brains of today can do that with ease. Mr. Copernicus learnt all his life just the single fact that “Sun is at the centre of the solar system”. No offense to him, but he doesn’t know about the nuclear fusion reaction happening inside the sun or the fact that the longest solar eclipse of the 21^st century would happen in 2009. Neither does he have a good C.G.P.A to certify his level of intelligence. I am sure he would never fit in a Hitler’s book. He could have befriended only the “A” word for all four years in college had he existed today. Lucky him!

A few days back my friend said “I learnt 26 letters in my first year of school. To the contrary I have learnt just the two letters “BE” for the last four years.” Funny, isn’t it?

Now switch off the lights, touch your heart and tell me, was that funny?

The biggest cricketing league is back again this summer after lots of setbacks and controversies. Not to mention the recent sensation created by the Fake IPL Player. Within just a few days into the league, it has raised questions of common sense asscoiated with the league.

1. When IPL was launched last summer, it was intended to polarize the country into different teams localized to a city/state, a model which is not new for sporting leagues and events across the globe. The franchise owners of the IPL teams, self proclaiming to be lovers of the game, have lost a touch of common sense in equating business with the love for the game among the Indian crowd. Take for instance, Chennai fans, known to be the best behaved and a passionate cricket loving crowd is yet to see any honest attachment of their Super-kings team with their home city “Chennai”. CSK fans are made to witness a promo of their own team in Hindi- “Enna Koduma Saravanan ithu!” (Chennai lingo,DON’T MIND IT).

Most IPL teams have failed to capture the essence of their own backyard. Sorry, but does that make any sense considering the theme of the league?

2. Sony Max back in 2003 World Cup introduced a female host on screen, for a cricket analysis show with absolutely no knowledge of the game, as a ploy to attract more women towards the game (or was it meant otherwise?). Needless to say the kind of reaction and attention that female anchor generated, irrespective of all ages. The channel is back again this IPL season, with cricket analysts who analyze the matches most of the time in HINDI. If this was again their ploy to increase their viewer base, then I won’t be surprised to see their analysts speaking in Tamil or Kannada or Telugu or Bengali during CSK, RCB or KKR matches in the future. And why is Arun Lal, a distinguished unlucky commentator for Indian matches, known for his English fluency while commentating, analyzing the game in Hindi? Sorry but did I hear an echo prompting “NO COMMON SENSE”.

3. Lalit Modi, the proud chairman and the brain behind the successful league may have caught attention for his dramatic management skills in making IPL possible in a short interval in South Africa. If an event of this magnitude can be set in a different country in just a few weeks, what prevented him from letting Pakistan players to play in the league? Preventing the players to play on grounds of time surpassed in announcing the final list of team players sounds absurd and is a mockery to the professional standards set by Modi himself in conducting the league.

4. The PAGE 3 IPL owners, are making more news than the Wisden listed top cricketers for reasons which makes lesser sense than saying Mr.Lalu Prasad will be the next Prime Minister of India .

•  KKR has a owner who doesnt mind a foreign coach bossing his team and eventually ousting his captain,a man who is a demigod to their home city;Sacked from captaincy not on the grounds of performance or ability to lead the team but because of some extra terrestrial theories of their so called successful coach. 

• RCB owner Mallya has no doubt raised eyebrows with his highest bid for Pietersen in the recent IPL auction. What went unnoticed was the exchange of Zaheer khan to Mumbai for the Bangalore lad Uthappa. And does this decision make any cricketing sense? Why would anybody trade one among the best contemporary bowlers of a “Batsman’s game” to a mediocre batsman. If it was because, he is a home lad, then I doubt whether even cricket fans from Banglore would agree to that.

• A celebrity team owner (Big sister :P) on conversation with their team pace bowler commented- “I hope you spin the ball better this time around!”. Sorry, but it hurts now to be a purist of the game after hearing such comments from people who talk absolutely no sense on the game of Cricket. Thanks to IPL for giving them this platform.

IPL may have succeeded in stealing the show biz from Political parties this election season, but I doubt it has displayed any better sense than election manifestos or promises of Indian political parties.

~ I read this excellent writeup about the much talked about movie "Naan Kadavul". Thanks to Arvind.~

Naan Kadavul is a guided tour of the largely unknown world of aghori sadhus and beggars. From a bird's eye view, the two tales would appear largely disjoint and one might get an impression that there is not much in common between the two groups. But, there is actually a strong connection between beggars and aghori sadhus - only that Bala has played it subtle. Both aghoris and beggars belong to the same fictional seventh world. In a way, aghoris are beggars too, only that they chose their destiny. Bala has scripted a few scenes to convey this - the scene where a police constable mistakes Rudran for a beggar when he gets cocaine crazy. There are also sequences where the 'poli-samiyargal' talk about Rudran in the same breadth as beggars. While beggars are depicted as slave workers, Aghoris consider them to be super natural. Naan Kadavul is a tale of two extreme groups belonging to the same dark world. It serves as a meeting point of the contrasting lives of Rudran and Hamsavalli.

The Indian Parliament is a place generally filled with chaos. It is not uncommon to see ministers shouting slogans or hurling accusations at each other. If it’s a parliamentary session, these incidents must happen, or else, our dear ministers will end up having a restless sleep in the night because something very vital was left out of their day to day schedule. The call for confidence votes is not a rarity in Indian history and the days preceding these sessions are perhaps one of the most interesting ones to watch because of the news and rumors that spread around about the extent to which power hungry and greedy politicians go to, to capture power in perhaps the largest democracies in the world. But these incidents generally happen behind the scenes.

The confidence vote that took place on the 22nd July 2008, however, is perhaps one of the best (yes, best!) and the darkest moments in the history of Indian parliament. Best because the Congress government won the confidence vote (a word of caution: I am not a fan of the Congress or for that fact, any political group in India. I am merely a supporter of the 123 agreement) which would allow India to sign the Nuclear deal with USA. Darkest because of the way our politicians behaved indecently just to win power without even the slightest concern for the feelings of the billion people who had elected them to power. Opposition party members walked up to the front chanting slogans like “thief” and “liar” and started waving bundles of cash at the ruling Congress members claiming that they were bribed by their members to vote for them! Some political parties went as far as arranging for the temporary release of some jailed legislators just so they could cast their votes. Some others with medical ailments and other medical treatment were pushed in wheelchairs into the parliament so that they could attend the session. One of the best rumours I heard in this season was that people had stopped betting on cricket matches and instead started betting on M.P seats!(Which minister would vote for which part?!)

This day was in the making for a long time now ever since it became clear to the Left (Communist party) and the Opposition parties (BJP) that the Congress would go ahead with the Nuclear Deal. The Left denied the deal because they claimed that by signing the deal, the government was swaying away from its pre-election pact for a CMP (Common Minimum Program) one of whose main objective is pursuing an independent foreign policy. The opposition parties opposed to the deal because they felt by signing this deal, India will not be able independently pursue her ambitious nuclear program which involves building, testing and commissioning of indigenously built nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons [in short, the left and the oppositions parties basically claimed the same thing, but they put it in a different way (probably because being political opponents themselves, they were too egoistic and would rather show that their views were independent than just simply accepting what each other said)].

Now the question is why did this deal create a hell load of problems when it came up? Mainly because of the following reasons:
1. The fact that India was able to enter into a nuclear deal with the U.S without signing the Non Proliferation Treaty or NPT didn’t sit well with the Nuclear Suppliers Group or NSG (a panel consisting of 45 countries concerned with the control of trade and restriction of nuclear technology and raw materials).
2. Most people were claiming that the nuclear deal was not worth its money as it would only boost the power generated by nuclear energy in India from 3% to a mere 6%.
3. The gravest concern of all was that by signing the deal, India will end up revealing military secrets to the U.S and thereby become the “puppet” of U.S.
4. The deal will go waste if USA decides to disrupt supply of nuclear fuel.

In this article, I shall explain why this deal is not bad after all.

Section 123 of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 states that the United States of America shall not enter into any sort of nuclear deal with any country which has not signed the Non Proliferation Treaty. In order to over ride this section, the Hyde Act was passed to make India an exception which would enable it to enter into nuclear trade with the U.S even though it has not signed the NPT. The U.S congress had passed this act based on India’s involvement in promoting international peace and the fact that she has been using her nuclear program only for peaceful and domestic purposes.

Since this deal pertains to section 123 of the Atomic Energy Act, this deal is called the 123 Agreement or the Indo-US Nuclear deal.

The NSG is 45 country panel that involves in monitoring the trade of nuclear technology, nuclear fuel and restricting nuclear proliferation. The fact that India was able to enter into a nuclear deal with U.S which is a NSG member did not sit well with the other members. After days of U.S diplomacy, the NSG finally agreed to the U.S proposal even though India has not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Hence our first point is not an issue anymore.

“In return for nuclear technology and fuel, India will be investing an approximate of $150 billion in American companies. For what, a mere boost from the current 3% energy that is being produced from nuclear technology to 6%? It’s not worth it! We might as well invest this money back in Indian nuclear program and reap huge benefits!” Now this might sound to be a pleasing alternative to many, but it wouldn’t do much to help our cause because the problem we face right now is shortage of nuclear fuel which can be solved only by importing it from other countries. For instance, there must be a minimum of 1000 parts per million (0.1%) of uranium in a uranium ore for it to be economically exploitable. But the average concentration of uranium in the most uranium abundant place in India only had a meager 0.06-0.07 % of uranium in it. Due to this problem , the existing nuclear reactors are not able to run at their full capacity producing less electricity because of which many new plants have been delayed.

And moreover having not signed the NPT, for the past 40 years India’s nuclear program has been independent and isolated with the rest of the world because of which we had to develop our own indigenous methods for our nuclear program even though we were inexperienced at the time-which is a truly Herculean task. During the late 1950s and early 1960s, nuclear energy consumed almost one-third of the entire Indian research budget. Instrumentation, fuel fabrication, metallurgy of materials, and reactor design were all indigenously developed. But we can’t carry it any further from here. Adding to not signing the NPT, the nuclear weapons test made by India in 1974 and 1998 caused major states to impose sanctions on India which completely shut us down from the advancement made in nuclear technology in other countries. This along with inexperience in the field has caused a lot of problems for India’s ambitious nuclear program.

Moreover, India relies on imported oil for some 70 per cent of its energy needs. India being a developing country, relying on a non-renewable source of energy is not a good option (even though nuclear is non-renewable, it however has a longer life than most non-renewable source like coal or oil). It would be wiser to invest in alternative sources of energy.

Taking all these points into consideration, it is worth spending $150 billion on the deal for importing fuel and nuclear technology as this will help us run our nuclear reactors with better efficiency and also help fill the lapse in technology by importing foreign reactors.

The third and perhaps the gravest concern of all is that by signing the deal, India will end up revealing military secrets to the U.S. This is indeed a wrong claim. India has a total of twenty two nuclear reactors of which 14 are for civil purposes and 8 for military. The deal asks India to separate its civilian nuclear reactors from the military ones and only the civil reactors will come under IAEA inspection so that India can maintain 0% transparency when it comes to maintaining its military secrets. THE REACTORS USED FOR MILITARY PURPOSE WILL NOT COME UNDER IAEA SURVEILLANCE. Hence the gravest issue is not an issue after all.

Moving on to the 4th point regarding USA disrupting fuel supply: The clauses of the agreement clearly state that on the event of a fuel supply disruption, USA will negotiate with the member countries of the NSG to keep the fuel supply to India going on. On the event that USA decides to end the agreement if India tests a nuclear weapon or because of some other political reason, USA will have the right to ask India to return the borrowed fuel and technology. But the US government shall compensate India for the losses incurred because of the termination of the deal according to the current market status. THE US GOVERNMENT SHALL COMPENSATE INDIA FOR THE LOSSES INCURRED BECAUSE OF THE TERMINATION OF THE DEAL ACCORDING TO THE CURRENT MARKET STATUS!

So even the 4th point is not an issue after all!

Opponents of the deal claim that India will not be allowed to test nuclear weapons as the deal clearly states that on the event that India does test one, USA and other countries whose nuclear technologies India will make use of will be dismantled. One important fact is that, in the present day scenario, no country including the US is not allowed to test WMD (Weapons of Mass Destruction) or Nuclear weapons. In the even that a country does, UN and other world nations will impose sanctions on that country.

Then in the event of a nuclear war? NATO countries argue that in the event of a nuclear war, the NPT will be suspended and NPT or not, all countries involved in the nuclear will be allowed to test nuclear weapons. So India being disabled in the event of a nuclear war is a completely illegitimate concern.

India being a developing nation has to divert its attention on alternative sources of energy. Solar and Hydel are also a possible option. Investing in it would appeal to many rather than nuclear energy. However, generating power using these methods in a large scale is very costly and India does not yet have the technological sophistication or technical knowledge for that. As of now, it would be wiser to invest in nuclear energy than any other source. India’s elites in nuclear sciences have taken a lot of effort to refine the deal to better suit it to India’s purposes. Questions regarding India’s independent foreign policy and military transparency can be laid to rest.

Taking all these discussions under consideration, the Indo-US nuclear is not as bad as many people proclaim it to be. On the other hand, it might be one of the best of its kind.

Note:
I was skeptical to write an article on the 123 agreement because this topic is out dated by at least 7 months. Busy college schedules and other things have kept me from writing this article as this topic is time consuming and requires a lot of research. But I was surprised to see that many of them haven't even heard about this deal. This prompted me to go ahead with this article.

A lot of issues (silly ones most of them) have not been discussed here mainly because of the size of the article. I have cut short and discussed only the main issues pertaining to the Indo-US nuclear deal. I hope the article was informative enough. Your comments will be welcome!

Mother Economy not content with the bankruptcy of multi-billion dollar banks in the U.S, has unleashed the latest scandal to hit an already staggering Wall Street. Madoff’s Hedge Fund Scandal. Bernard L. Madoff, the former chairmen of the Nasdaq Stock Market, ran a hedge fund that turned out to be a fraudulent Ponzi’s scheme that racked up to $50 billion. The ripples of the scandal are already being felt with banking giants HSBC holdings of Britain and Santander of Spain losing $1 billion and $3 billion each.

Other major victims are Royal Bank of Scotland Group losing $595 million, hedge fund Man Group losing up to $360 million, France's BNP Paribas losing $466.9 million and Japan's Nomura Holdings losing $302 million.

Another major player who lost money in the scheme is the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (Adia), the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund which has indirectly invested up to $400 million with Madoff through Fairfield Sentry. Speaking of which, Fairfield Sentry, a part of Fairfield Greenwich Group is the single largest loser of this scandal, has invested $7.3 billion solely in Madoff.

The list doesn’t stop here. It goes on with other victims being charity groups, small time investment managers and real estate groups. As of the latest update, a French investor Thierry de la Villehuchet, the co-founder of Access International which had invested €1.5 billion into Bernard Madoff’s fraud-hit scheme was found dead in his New York office afraid his clients might turn against him in court.

The scandal couldn’t have come at a worse time what with U.S on the verge of a recession and Wall Street giants looking towards a bleak future because of a financial crisis which experts believe might be the worst ever since the Great Depression of the 1930’s.

A few days ago, the news of the death of the great technician and sound Engineer Mr.H.Sridhar came as a great shock to me. Right from the days of Roja, he's been working along Rahman and is not an unfamiliar person to any A.R.R fan and even has a huge fan base of his own, which is a very unnatural for any Sound engineer. His contribution and passion for sound and music will live with us forever !

Recalling Mr.Sridhar, BlaaZe has written,

For the first time in an indian studio, there was a gentleman who came up and spoke to me about RAP... real rap music history.. to the legends... to the way it worked.. and that he loved the Baba Rap! To me, he was the ultimate man of musical knowledge unlike anybody i have ever known.

Mr. H Shridar.

Wisdom personified.

Ever since my first meeting with him at Panchathan studios, to every single song i have ever done with A R Rahman, he has been the man behind the sound. He taught me, ' how to hold a mic - correctly.' yes - he taught me how to monitor myself. He taught me how not to get caught up in this hustle of an industry, and he has patiently made sure that everytime my voice is on a song, it would sound 'just right' because he made sure it did.

When we toured the US, he was so amazing ! He was a man who would do so much work, and still be smiling. His smile was infectious, and i long to see that smile again. A longing which is not allowing me to think or write in clear ways. ..

During one of the tours in the US, we were at a huge basketball stadium, and he was engineering the sound for our concert from the centre on his console... on the walls around were jerseys of famous basketball stars, and as i shot that on my vdo cam, he mentioned that i should give him a copy... it still is with me... i need to give it to his sons, though my guilt is killing me for my laziness to act then.

In Atlanta, during our last tour, he came with me to the music store and he told me to buy my current 'in-ear monitors.' He was very busy, but took the time out to get me that set and taught me how to use it too. I joked that one day, i would use it a concert where only he would do my sound...

recently when the credit lists for yuvvraaj were out and my name was missing, i had been told that he wrote the credits and yet they printed wrongly... due to all the mess, it finaly came through that he had Indeed written it correctly, yet they* messed up.. he was truthful, sincere and a gem of a human being. I miss him a lot.

About 2 weeks earlier, on the last few days of slumdog millionaire mixing, i spent some nice nights with him in studio. He was smiling, working and puffing along... he reminded me not to smoke! He spoke about so many things that nobody else knew about rap. who will i talk to now?

He then mentioned how he had made my voice sound so smooth on the Dating song, for its hindi release and he had enjoyed it. He was there to make sure we sounded good, always.

He spoke to me about the thirukural song, 'Respect,' which i dedicate to him, as he loved the way he had mixed the voices so precisely... When you guys out there hear the song, you will know what i mean. Respect to you, Sir.. Respect for your life's dedication to music... Respect to your loved ones... Respect to Sound... ... for your sound lingers in my heart always and forever... in all i do... and all i hear... With Love... and prayers... ... ... though i may never have told you straight up - I love you man ... /blockquote>