26th November 2008

This time around Mr. Prime Minister, you have to deliver.

Enough is enough.

I had always thought that your ways were sane. This time around the sane way is to go full steam. Please strike when the iron is hot. Get the necessary reforms done. Put down with an iron hand any opposition to what you think is right.

Be adamant, just like in the nuclear issue. You have liberated us from the license raj and nuclear apartheid, now liberate us from this dilapidated security structure.

Obama, Obama, Obama

He is all over the news. Entire centre page of Hindu is about him. This is ridiculous. We don't need to know what dog the first Afro-American President of the US will have. We don't need to know if he will stick to his blackberry. May be it is a little interesting to see the US president go hi-tech, but surely it doesn't merit an entire article on Obama and his blackberry.

It seems very lame that the world summit to tackle the economic crisis should go without any substantial resolutions because Obama is only the President-elect now. For a person who talks so much about change and hope, he needs to do more and needs to do it now.

And finally, it irritates me to no end that he appointed Madeleine Albright as the contact person for relations with India. Madeleine Albright and India go back all the way to 1947. That is surely not a way to change things. Especially when Ms. Albright is a very hated figure in India.

This way, his honeymoon will be over before he becomes the President.

Musical evening

I went to the inter-IIT music evening organized by IIT Bombay's Bangalore chapter yesterday. It was an entertaining evening called 'Moods and Melodies'. It included an inter-IIT music competition and also a fundraising event for the Village Knowledge Centres supported by IITB alumni.

IITM had some superb contenders, but IITK and IITKGP won the prizes. One of the contenders from IITM sang Manna Dey's "Laaga Chunri Mei Daag". I felt that rendition deserved the prize.

It never ceases to amaze me how live performances are better than recorded ones, even if the live performance is by an amateur and the recorded one is by the professional artist. I came back home and listened to Manna Dey's rendition, just to compare the two!

Manna Dey, of course, is a phenomenon. And am currently listening to his Golden Collection. I need to get this CD next time I see it in a store.