Author: Pran Kurup

Pran Kurup is founder and CEO of Vitalect, Inc.

Movie Review: Chak de! India

Title: Chak de India (means Go India!)
Starring: Shahrukh Khan and a bunch of new comers
Director: Shimit Amin

This is a film that is very different from conventional Bollywood productions. Besides, for a change, Shahrukh Khan is not playing a romantic hero!

The film revolves around how a former Indian hockey captain takes on the role of coach for the Indian Women’s hockey team and transforms the team into a World Cup winning unit! The movie seems to have been inspired by the constant media coverage of Greg Chappell and Team India for a good two-year period. The move makers chose hockey and a women’s team instead. A clever twist that helped highlight a number of issues: women’s empowerment, neglect of hockey, cricket’s overwhelming dominance, the role of a sports coach, team work, unity, the constant pressure on Muslims who represent India.

Shahrukh Khan plays the lead as Kabir Khan. The new comers together make up the Hockey team. The Director deserves credit for remaining focused on the main story throughout with no distractions like song and dance, romance etc. Even the comedy parts were nicely blended into the story line. The cricketer character in the film and the scenes involving him are very well handled. However, the script/direction is not without holes. Kabir Khan disappears for 7 years and there is no mention of what he was up to during those years. When he re-appeared as coach, the media surprisingly didn’t care to talk about it either despite he having taken on the job of coach of the women’s national team. He transforms the team in 3 months! There was very little use of technology in the coaching process either. Kabir Khan’s dressing at the games appeared out of place. Shorts or track bottoms would have made more sense. Instead he was looked like a guy dressed to go to work in an office!

For once, Yash Chopra and crew reached out for characters beyond Punjab and Bombay to other parts of India. Heading south was seemingly painful –the selectors refer to a player from Tamil Nadu, but it later turns out to be a player from Andhra Pradesh, who eventually had little to do in the movie but make up the numbers.

Shahrukh and the rest of the cast put in a fine job. He deserves special credit for experimenting with an off-beat theme like this one instead of sticking to formula. The movie is well made and definitely worth watching. Even if you have a dislike for Shahrukh Khan (for some reason!), this is one of his special films. This is a movie you can easily watch with the kids.

Google Apps: The Good, The Bad and The Evil

Google Apps is by far the best product/service that Google has delivered after its universally accepted search service (plus Adwords and Adsense). Google Apps is a blessing for any small business for sure and possibly for medium sized enterprises, schools and other organizations as well. At a high-level it is Google’s attempt at replacing the conventional intranet/shared server and email with a consolidated hosted alternative. It gives you access to group calendars, Docs & Spreadsheets, a customizable login page, URL etc. In case you are considering Google Apps or are an existing customer, here are a few tips based on my experiences.

The Good

Email Management: The biggest value of Google Apps is its complete handling of email. Of late managing email for small to medium sized businesses has become a major effort. With increasing amount of spam, and endless viruses, maintaining and managing a mail server is a significant ongoing undertaking. Google Apps does a terrific job of handling these tasks and automating its management.

Ideal for Gmail lovers: If you like the GMAIL interface, then Google Apps becomes all the more easier. However, if you don’t like the gmail interface you could easily POP the email to your mail program.

Powerful Filtering: There are useful email filtering capabilities that lets you sort and automatically move incoming mail to appropriate labels. The best part is that these are easy to setup (assuming you like the Gmail interface with labels etc.).

Simplified, UI driven: Common email management tasks (which requires most people to be extra nice to their often temperamental IT support staff) such as creating and deleting aliases, accounts, forwarding emails, setting up vacation notices etc are extremely easy through a fairly easy to use UI.

The Bad

Overly Aggressive Spam: The Spam filtering in Google Apps tends to get overly aggressive with the result that emails that don’t belong in spam often end up there. It is a good idea to search through spam before deleting it.

Elusive Support Email: The worst and most frustrating part about the free Google Apps is that it incredibly hard to send Google a support request! It takes you quite a while to find a page where you can send them a support email. As for a support phone number, don’t even think about it. At every instance you are pointed to some annoying discussion page or some online FAQ where you can never really find what you want.

Paid vs. Free: Google Apps has both a paid service (Premium) and a free service. The paid service comes with support and other features (you can turn off ads, archive old emails etc), while with the free service your on your own (or at the mercy of Google as I realized later). I was using the free service for several months and was perfectly happy with it until one fine day Google decided to turn off access to one of our mail boxes! On login the following message was displayed:

Sorry… account maintenance underway

We’re currently performing some unexpected maintenance on your account. While we can’t predict exactly how long it will take, we’re working as quickly as we can to restore access to your email–apologies for the inconvenience.

If you have questions, please contact us at gmail-maintenance@google.com.

We sent several emails and received no response whatsoever. All other email boxes worked just fine except this particular one. I suspect that we were receiving too much spam on this account for reasons unknown to us and beyond our control. To make matter worse emails sent to the mailbox received a warning message as follows:

Technical details of temporary failure:
DISABLED_USER: Account temporarily disabled

It would have been more appropriate and less alarming to recipients if the message said something to the effect that the account was undergoing maintenance, we apologize etc.

Thankfully, switching back to our original mail server configuration (by passing Google Apps) to start receiving email helped us ride the crisis until Google re-started access to the mailbox after 6+ days.

The Evil

Reality: We have used Google Apps for close to year now and believe that Google Apps is a terrific service that I would highly recommend to anyone, especially those who are frustrated by perennial email problems. However, the reality though is that you run the risk of Google arbitrarily changing the rules of engagement, turning off access, not responding to your email and leaving you completely in the dark (among other things!), especially if you are using the free service. Email is an essential, mission-critical service and one can’t afford to run a business or an organization without a fail safe arrangement. So here are some tips in case you are considering a switch to Google Apps.

  • Have a Plan B: If you chose to switch to Google Apps be sure you have a Plan B. i.e., have your email server setup and ready to temporarily switch back in the event of a crisis.
  • Reduce spam: Once you sign up for Google Apps there is a setting to accept all emails that come to your domain and then move the ones that don’t belong, to spam. The other option is to reject/delete emails right away those that don’t match any addresses on your domain. Choosing the later option dramatically reduces spam.
  • Sign-up for the Paid Service: You get what you pay for. There is no free lunch. Both of these are apt descriptions when it comes to Google Apps. Sign up for the paid service (so you get support via email, phone and chat).

Google offers you a great service for free and then enslaves you to the service and then makes life hard for you until you subscribe! Google critics could easily argue that with Google Apps, Google gets evil, contrary to its “Do no evil” philosophy. Nevertheless, a great product/service.

Cricket: World Cup Lessons Not Learned

The Indian team does not seem to have learned from its disastrous world cup performance. The 7 batsmen formula has simply not worked consistently for India in ODIs and seem unlikely to work even in the long run. Team India’s best bet is to go with six batsmen and five bowlers and pray and hope that one of the bowlers evolves into a batsman without losing his bowling (remember Irafan Pathan?) skills. Both Romesh Powar and Piyush Chawla are capable batsmen in their own right and it won’t be far fetched to expect them to come good with the bat over time.

In the first ODI against England dropping Powar, who has been a consistent ODI performers and most importantly a wicket taker, was a poor decision. Three seamers and two spinners (Chawla and Powar), followed by the part-time bowlers would give the bowling a better balance. As for the batting, Gambhir at number 3 is a needless re-adjustment for someone who is essentially an opener. The team can better served at this spot by either Dinesh Karthik, Yuvraj Singh or M.S Dhoni.

The 7-batsmen formula is a product of the Saurav Ganguly era. It worked in the 2003 World Cup but almost never thereafter. It’s time for Rahul Dravid to break out of the past and develop a new approach. Hopefully, the Indian think tank will re-evaluate its strategy for the second ODI else the euphoria of the Test series victory might soon be forgotten giving way to cries for more young blood in the ODI team.

Sreesanth: Small Town Boy Struggles to Cope with Fame

In the midst of the euphoria of India’s recent series victory, Sreesanth rapid deterioration has gone relatively unnoticed. What would otherwise have been major topic of discussion has been sidelined to a supplemental story. India’s best bet to exploit the English conditions was a complete failure. Ganguly had gone as far a referring to him as India’s “dark horse” for the series.

Sreesanth is a classic example of a small town boy who seems to have lost his way in a sea of big money, media, sponsorship and fame. You can’t drive a few kms in Kerala without seeing a hording with Sreesanth on it. Being the lone player from Kerala in a long time, he is heavily sought after by the regional media. The media in Kerala is obsessed with every move of his. Some papers have even reported on what he ate for lunch!!

In his rise to fame, Sreesanth seems to have traded his small town looks for a Bollywood inspired look of stylized hair with highlights, and earned a notoriety for acting tough on the field (the recent needless clash with Vaughan being an example). In the midst of the Test match he was repeatedly seen signing autographs on the fence instead of concentrating on the game. His comments to the media make little sense and in no way displays a deeper understanding of the game (Sreesanth inspired by Ganguly‘s bowling (!!) and his name being Sree Santh as opposed to Sreesanth among the many gaffes with the media). It appears as though he is performing in front of the camera as much as he trying to play the game. It will be interesting to know if Sreesanth ever had a reputation of being tough on the field in the domestic circuit. It won’t come as a surprise if this were not the case.

It is a pity that the young fellow has not been positively influenced by seasoned stars in the team like Sachin, Kumble, Dravid and Ganguly who have their feet firmly planted on the ground while still being superstars in their own right.

The selectors and team management perhaps chose to drop Sreesanth from the ODI team partly because he needed the break both to get his act together and to be brought down to earth. His inclusion in the 20-20 is baffling but quite typical of the selectors. The 20-20 series gives Sreesanth an opportunity to redeem himself in a form of the game that might not suit his natural bowling style which is best suited in Test cricket. The England tour was a completely wasted opportunity in his career. If he continues to focus on the cameras and less on his game, chances are he might be another Kerala born talent on its way to obscurity.

Bengaluru or Bangalore, Still a Mess

Bangalore — now officially renamed to Bengaluru — the most sought after destination of the expatriate Indian community looking to relocate to India is a city that is gone completely out of whack. It is one huge parking lot! Infrastructure and growth have no relation whatsoever and there is no respite on the horizon. The city roads are clogged with traffic throughout the day and most part of the night. Efforts are underway to build a new airport a good 20-30 kms away from the city. Getting to and from that airport is going to be a challenge in itself.

As for cost of living in Bangalore, it seems to be out of control. NRIs who have re-located to India find it more cost-effective to carry cereal boxes from the US rather than buy them in Bangalore. A Margarita is more expensive at TGIF in Bangalore than in Silicon Valley.

Perhaps the only redeeming feature of life in Bangalore is the climate. It is a lot warmer than it used be a decade or two ago (one more for Al Gore fans!), but it is still the closest to Silicon Valley weather one can hope for. With the name change behind them, hopefully the Karnataka state officials will remain focused on improving the city’s worsening infrastructure.

Chennai, which went though its name change a few years back seems to have a head start! But for its weather, Chennai appears to be a much better planned and growing city in comparison.

Domestic Airlines in India: Pains and Gains

With the consistent growth in the India economy, domestic air travel has dramatically increased and competition among Airlines has become cut-throat. It is understandable given that there are plenty of new airlines and a glut of travelers. Unused to handling such high traffic, the airports around the country are struggling. The result is that over 40% of the flights are late according to a recent study. My personal experience with delays on domestic airlines in India was 100% and this includes flights on Kingfisher, Air Deccan, and Indian Airlines. In general, the travelers are not very demanding, and airline employees don’t seem particularly concerned about delays. It is common to find announcements about the departure time being made well after the previously scheduled time has come and gone. In general, a “chalta hai” mood prevails on both sides. The real concern however should be on safety standards. I noticed that several pilots on domestic flights in India were actually foreigners, a clear sign that there is a shortage of trained manpower in India in the airline sector.
Internet Booking: The good news is that there are many online booking sites that cater to domestic air travel in India. The bad news is that they are still very poorly developed. The user interface and reliability are way below the mark. After you enter your credit card number, be prepared for a blank screen! Sometimes you go through the process of completing an entire form and the “submit” button does not work! If you call their toll free number, in all likelihood, the customer service agent will hang up on you all of a sudden because (I hear) they have aggressive customer call duration metrics! Besides, they never call you back.

Positives: On the positive side, there are flights available if you wish to travel, unlike in the past where it was just Indian Airlines all the way. Day trips for business are a possibility assuming you can manage to get work done despite factoring in delays. A 1-2 flight to Bangalore, plus 2-3 hours in Bangalore traffic, plus a couple of hours of flight delays still leaves you with a few hours in the day to conduct business. When there are delays, airlines do call to inform you, though this happens quite often after you have arrived up at the airport. Kingfisher offers “really cool” check in services by airline personnel carrying a mobile device, like the car-return services in the US. A great way to cut down the lines.

India vs. England: Second Test Day 1

With intermittent rains cricket in England seems to be a permanent start-stop affair. Besides, playing under these conditions is a challenge in itself. Indian bowlers did well today to restrict England, though they could have done better if they had shown more consistency. When Zaheer bowls well, Sreesanth gives it away, when Ganguly bowls well RP gives it away and so the story goes. Different venue, different players, different times, but the predicament is frustrating similar. The story of Indian cricket. All in all, India appears to hold the upper hand at least until India’s famed batting line up caves in on day 2. Having restricted England on day 1, its obvious that India should wrap up the tail, notch up a decent lead and knock out England. But alas, India is not Australia.

If I were to guess, India would manage a small lead of around 50 runs and make this Test that much more interesting. Ultimately it appears as though the weather will hold the key in this Test match.

Book Review: Inspite of the Gods: The Strange Rise of Modern India

Title: Inspite of the Gods: The Strange Rise of Modern India
Author: Edward Luce

This is a well researched book that addresses the various changes happening in contemporary India on the social, economic and political fronts. The author has met with people from so many different walks of life in India ranging from politicians, god-men, bureaucrats, businessmen and women, IT employees, etc., and put together a very interesting book. He nicely combines these meetings he has had with historical aspects like India’s politics over the last 60 years to come up with observations and interpretations.

A very insightful book and highly recommended for anyone who has an interest in India. The author displays an excellent sense of humor throughout the book. So even though the book is 400+ pages there is never a dull moment.

Here are a few interesting parts of the book (there are too many to capture, but here are a handful):

  • Sri Sri Ravishankar: “It was like Jesus was shooting a shampoo advertisement” referring to Sri Sri Ravishankar at his ashram; “His answers were more like that of an agony aunt than a prophet” referring to his responses to audience questions. Those who follow Sri Sri Ravishankar and his Art of Living philosophy are bound to be pretty upset with the author. He makes a “somewhat hasty” connection between the Guruji and the BJP, the RSS and the VHP. The book characterizes Sri Sri Ravishankar’s movement as “evangelical Hinduism” much like the Pat Robinsons and Bill Grahams of the West, though the Art of Living prides itself in being religion agnostic and supposedly does little to promote Hinduism. Surprisingly, Matha Amrithanandamayi does not feature in the book.
  • Sonia Gandhi: When Mrs. Gandhi offered to pour him some tea -“It felt like Queen Elizabeth was offering to massage my feet”; The author seems to have been in awe of Mrs. Gandhi. “Its hard to believe that Mrs. Gandhi would approve of such sycophancy”, the author writes following which he refers to the exaggeration of her oratorical skills by her biographer. It begs the question as to whether Mrs. Gandhi could not have influenced her biographer not to indulge in such sycophancy herself. In another discussion, the author characterizes the Cong-DMK alliance (despite the DMK’s soft corner for the LTTE — which was behind her husband’s murder) as “political pragmatism” rather than opportunism. The author portrays her entry into politics as one driven by deep dissatisfaction with the state of the country while its widely believed in India that she was just paving the way for the Rahul Gandhi (and/or Priyanka’s) entry into politics. He does however write later in the book that she “hopes for their success yet fears for their safety”.
  • Inter-caste Marriages: The author makes an interesting observation about inter-caste marriages. He writes that inter-caste marriages are very common in the IT sector in India while they are less common among the India software professionals in the US. “Long distant nationalism is often much more conservative than its parent”. In the same chapter titled “New India, Old India” he rightly points out that, “Many Indians take as part of their conventional wisdom the view that India’s traditional moral values are better than those of the west”.
  • Amar Singh’s Residence in Delhi: The description of Samajwadi Party MP Amar Singh’s residence was mind boggling to say the least. “In each of the main rooms Singh had given pride of place to one of the most expensive items of home entertainment in the world: the 60-inch plasma screen Bang & Olufsen TV. Each retails for $60,000 in India”; “We seemed like characters in a Bond film, with Singh about to feed us birds of prey” referring to the tour the author received of Mr. Singh’s residence.
  • Terrorists: The author’s theory that India’s Muslim community has not produced terrorists was an interesting observation though unfortunately this theory has become questionable in light of the recent findings after the Glasgow attack.
  • Tamil Nadu: The author provides a balanced and insightful view of the state of Tamil Nadu. “…it possesses something very valuable that is not evident in most of the north: a civic society. It is much more difficult to hijack public space in Tamil Nadu because there is a large urbanized middle class which accepts the need for rules that everyone should follow, even if they are not followed all of the time…” As someone who grew up in the state I could clearly understand and appreciate his analysis and admire his insights.
The book has no shortage of such interesting insights and its impossible to capture all of them in this review. The author is the Washington Bureau Chief of the Financial Times and is married to an Indian. He has lived in India for an extended period of time and this has helped him do extensive research and write the book. It is always very difficult to write about another country merely by living there for a few years in a manner that is whole-heartedly acceptable to everyone who has grown up in that country. Those who have deep prejudices one way or the other and hence dislike the book, should treat this as an outsiders view and give the author the benefit of doubt instead of accusing him of any bias. If you view this book from that perspective, its hard to deny that this book is a very interesting read and the author deserves all the kudos for his excellent research, analysis and insights.

Technology Irritants

Technology has become a part and parcel of our lives – email, blogs, software applications, cell phones, blackberries, sms etc. etc. This also means there are no shortage of irritants, courtesy of what has become everyday technology. Here are a few of my technology irritants:

  • Safari on Windows XP: I was required to install the Safari browser to test something but eventually gave up on it. The Safari browser for Windows looks cool but doesn’t work well on Windows XP. After a couple of installations I managed to get it to work, but soon found that it does not let you accept an https site unless the site has a valid certificate. Most browsers give you the choice to “continue” and access the site anyway. Also, I noticed that if you select Firefox as your default browser in Safari (settings), it will promptly fill your desktop with a bunch of shortcuts to Firefox which you can’t remove until you quit Safari.
  • Spam in Gmail: Gmail sends email to its Spam folder even when its not spam. Even after repeatedly marking them as “Not spam” it continues to do this. Having to go through the spam folder is a pain!
  • Support from Google: Can you find a way to send support email to Google from any of their free services? It is virtually impossible to find a support link on their site. I guess Google expects you to search and find your answers and not bug them with support email 🙂
  • Search in Yahoo IM: Yahoo has a nice feature of saving your chat transcripts, but there seems to be no way (at least that I could find) to search the transcripts!
  • Firefox Crash: Firefox browser crashes sometimes with no message whatsoever. It just vanishes from the screen! (happens to me on the Rediff site)

If anyone out there knows anything about any of these, I would love to hear from you!