Some vintage pictures of MS Subbulakshmi

MS being conferred the Bharat Ratna


MS with her family




MS with Nehru



MS with Helen Keller






MS with husband Sadasivam







MS with Sarojini Naidu

My post in tamil - கவிதை

காலையிலும மாலையிலும் கனவிலும நி தானடீ
உறவிலும உறக்க்ததீலும் உயிரே நி தானடீ
காத்ல வேணடுமா? கவிதை வேணடுமா?
நிசச்யம சோல்வேன ச்த்தியம சேய்வேன
கவிதை தான வேணடும எனக்கு...
என் கவிதை நி தானடீ

The above content in Tamil is basically a poem, which literally translated goes like this (forgive me for the bad translation, but trust me it sounds better in tamil),

In the morning and in the evening,
In my dreams it is you only,
You are my life only,
If you ask me what do i prefer,
Is it love or is it poetry,
I promise that it is poetry,
Because you are only my poetry.

Well people who can read tamil will understand the literature used. Hope you liked it :)

P2PTV - Watch your favorite sport, movie, program online

No more cribbing when you are abroad in a country which does not speak your language, no more missing your favorite programs, movies or sporting event. Wow now thats music to the ears of people like me who stay abroad and miss watching some nice programs or movies or sports.
Peer-to-Peer technology or p2p makes this possible. So all you need is a p2p software application which helps in redistributing video streams on a p2p network.

Is this something similar to bit-torrent.....

The answer is NO. p2pTV is not the old method of downloading movies, dvds, tv episodes by using bit-torrent or edonkey or other file sharing network, and then watch the videos after completing the download. Nor it’s downloaded short video clips through shoutcast, etc.

Does it cost me something.....

Once again NO (now this is wonderful is it not :)) p2pTV is a freeware or a free software which enables you to watch video streams, including live tv channels from pay cable or satellite tv. Potentially any or every channel in the world can be viewed.

So how does the p2pTV Technology work.....

This does not work the way normal video streaming works, where all the viewers connect to the streaming server, creating congestion on the server, this slowing the speed of viewing considerably.
With p2pTV technology, only few users need to connect to the main streaming server and each users themselves become a streaming server that broadcasts to other peer while at the same time receiving the streaming video from other peer’s streaming server. This greatly reduces the burden on main video streams hosting server, and increases the sources where the media can be streamed from. Thus, the download speed will be higher, and so do smoothness of media playing. Simply saying it works by the age old saying 'Teamwork is the best way to work' so instead off one server, multiple PC's team up and help in the streaming process.

What is the system requirements....

Each software specifies their own requirement, but a general rule of thumb for best streaming quality would be to have at least the following:

At least 1,500 Kbps download speed
Windows Media Player 9 and/or Real Player
Disable Windows XP Service Pack 2 TCP Connection Limit

What are the available p2pTV applications......

TvAnts
ppStream
PPLive
Cybersky-TV
Feidian
PeerCast
Octoshape
Open Media Network
QQLive
Tvkoo

Any issues....

One of the main concern would be copyright. In these free p2p-tv networks, you can find numerous entertainments, news, and sports channels from cable and satellite TV stations. The quality of the streaming video also varies especially on those networks with fewer users. Lagging or intermittent delay and disconnection of video stream is not uncommon.

Are you Scared - The Fight-or-flight Response

Have you ever noticed the way one behaves when one is scared or stressed, we really behave in a different way. So it got me thinking as to why do people react in certain ways when they are scared or afraid.
What are the common reactions when one is scared or afraid,

• Faster Heartbeat
• Heavy Breathing
• Sweaty Palms
• Dry mouth
• Body starts shivering
• Anxiety

While trying to understand why we are afraid i came across this term called "fight or flight" The bodies reaction to fear is known as "fight or flight".

Assume that you are walking on the road at night, and a thug comes in front of you with a knife.
You have two options
1) Turn and walk away (flight), or
2) fight,
even though you know fighting won't solve the problem.

During the process of preparing for either fight or flight, your body does a number of things automatically like,

• Increasing your heart rate to pump more blood to your muscles and brain.
• Forces you to breathe heavily so that your lungs take in air faster to supply your body with oxygen.
• Increases the size of your pupils in your eyes to make you see better.
• Slows down your digestive and urinary systems for the moment so you can concentrate on more important things.

So the next time you or someone else gets scared, you now know as to why one reacts like this.

Lankan Lions had Indian Lamb Curry - ICC World Cup 2007

Sri Lankans clinically annihilated India and there was no secret formula, they did their job for which they were paid for in a professional manner. And what was the job, to go out and bat, bowl and field well. And still their players get a much lesser remuneration than our so called superstars.

Yes this is a game after all, and I would not have been upset had Indians shown a semblance of a fight, but to surrender meekly was simply unacceptable. The Lankans had nothing to lose, but the way they played it was as though everything depended on this match and it was the opposite with the Indians. At the end of this game the biggest smile was not on the Sri Lankan players face, but the Bangladeshi players who had come to see the decimation of the Indians.

I am sure a lot of journalists and news channel would have already written their obituaries about this Indian cricket team. But I can only say is that people should remember that this was a collective failure of team India and not any individuals. We simply did not look like any world beaters.

Theoritically we still have a chance, provided the Bermudians defeat the Bangladeshis. But that is a very very remote possibility, but if Ireland can defeat Pakistan and Bangladeshi can defeat India, we can assume that there is a flicker of a chance, as they say cricket is a game of glorious uncertainities, and this world cup proved exactly that.

Even if we do not make it to the next round, this is not the end of the road for Indian cricket. Indian cricket will always survive, but hopefully the Indian fans learn a lesson out of this and stop hero worshipping our cricket players. Remember they are paid to do a job and they have failed miserably in that job so far and the team and the board should be held accountable for this. I hope the fans do not start burning effigies and vandalising the cricketers house for losing, instead the worst possible punishment that can be given to them is ignoring them or in a way ostracizing them.

Congratulations Team Sri Lanka, you did your job as expected and you were worth every penny your board paid you.

Great Indian City Name Tamasha

I remember couple of years back, when i was in my school used to follow the news channel especially the weather report and used to compare temperatures between the 4 metros, Delhi, Bombay, Calcutta, Madras.

Move to the present day and we see the same report with the metros being read as Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkatta, Chennai. And another city to have changed its name is Bengaluru (the new name for Bangalore), not sure when Delhi will join the band wagon. Not only the metros but many other cities are going through name changes.

So I was wondering what could be the driving force behind changing the names of cities and the following points came to my mind,

1) We still want to prove to the world that we are free and independent, by showing the door to the names given by our former colonial rulers.
2) The old names did not reflect the history, politic, culture and language of the place.
3) Is it one of the populist measures adopted by politicians as it is one of the easiest tasks for them.
4) This is what majority of the people wished and have been addressing the city all the while.
5) Difficult to pronounce.

Well i could not think of any further points (maybe if you do have some please feel free to comment about it).

I believe the government has better things that it can do to a city than just renaming it. Has renaming Madras to Chennai reduced the heat, has renaming Bombay to Mumbai resolved the water logging during rain there, has renaming Bangalore to Bengaluru resolved the Kaveri issue, well it has not.

I for one am neither against or for renaming a city, but i believe there are far more important and pressing measures which the government should implement more seriously.
But if anybody can let me know if there are any other reasons behind renaming of various cities, please do feel to drop your comments.

Sammy

Ilayaraja - The Maestro and The Magician of Music World

Ilayaraja with P.Susheela

Ilayaraja, Yesudas, Chitra and Fazil

Ilayaraja, what an effect he has made in my life by his mind blowing music.

I am not an expert in understanding the finer nuances of music, and i am sure there will be countless debates amongst a lot of critics and experts as to why Ilayaraja may or may not be the best. But according to me he is the best, because i can listen to his music whenever I am in any kindoff mood (happy, moody, sad, romantic) and it actuals betters my mood.

Right now i am away from my family I owe it to his music to keep me sane. I owe him a big thanks for bringing a smile and peace in me whenever I listen to his music. Hopefully someday I will get to meet the maestro in person, so that I can thank him personally for all the happiness he has brought to me and millions of other music lovers.

He is truly one of a kind and a living legend, a maestro and a magician of the music world.

Slaying of the Bermudians by Team India - ICC World Cup 2007

After the loss to Bangladesh earlier, finally our Indian batting line up showed why we are counted amongst the best with an imperious batting display against the unfortunate Bermudians. I say unfortunate Bermudians, because I do not think our Indian batsmen would have played in a similar fashion had we not lost to Bangladesh earlier. Congratulations TEAM INDIA, super effort. It was an amazing match to watch, especially while India was batting and the way the sixers and fours were being struck.

Now it is time for some introspection, lets look at the positives and negatives in the game against Bermuda.

First the positives,

• Virender Sehwag back amongst runs (I would still not say back to form), but the runs scored (albeit against Bermuda) will definitely give him some confidence.
• Sachin Tendulkars execution at the end, he showed that big shots can be played with proper cricketing strokes and he can score runs when the ball is old as well.
• Yuvraj Singhs imperious innings towards the end, which shows we dont have to overtly depend on Dhoni to up the rate with big shots during the latter stages.

Now for the negatives,

• Saurav played very well given the context, but he has to learn to avoid playing too many dot balls. Even in his innings yesterday, there were 70 dot balls. It is fine against Bermuda, but it is going to hurt against better teams.
• Agarkar the bowler, even though he took 3 wickets he was not bowling in the right areas at all, and he could get clobbered if he does that against Sri Lanka.
• Our bowling in general, does not appear to be potent as we struggled to bowl out the Bermuda team, the winning margin looks huge, but we had good chance of being the first team to win by a margin of over 300, an opportunity which we did not grab.
• Fielding in general has left a lot to be desired, of course it cannot be changed over night but we need to have a better body language while fielding.

Of course most of the negatives has been a long standing problem. But I do not think we should be tampering with our team now, because I believe many people would be expecting Irfan Pathan to replace Agarkar. But I think Irfan the bowler could become a liability against Sri Lanka. If at all they wanted to try him out, they should have done it against the Bermuda team and given him a chance to regain his bowling confidence. But my gut feeling is India would play Pathan against Sri Lanka instead of Agarkar.
As regarding the batting, I guess it should be Uthappa opening against the Sri Lankans, because recently he had a ball against them in the series in India, so he will be confident while playing against them.

The next game between Bangladesh and Sri Lanka is going to be crucial, with all due respect to Bangladesh, let us hope that the Sri Lankans score a resounding victory over Bangladesh. This will help us a lot, provided we defeat the Lankans when we face them.

Lastly I would like people to stop criticizing Dravid and his captaincy, he has been such a selfless servant of the game for our country. He does not care even if he does not bat as long as the team wins. Of course there are many more things that he has done, which I will save for a later blog.

Come on TEAM INDIA, we believe in you, defeat the Lankans and get to the stage two of the world cup.

Sammy

India Lost to Bangladesh - Now what

India lost yesterday to the so called minnows i.e Bangladesh team. Any person who watched India and Bangladesh for the first time will be scratching his or her head as to why Bangladesh are called the minnows of cricket and not India after seeing their performance yesterday. And ofcourse just for the records, there was another huge upset yesterday when Pakistan lost to another so called minnow Ireland.
There will be a lot of criticism and post mortem from the highly emotionally and charged Indian cricket fans.

There will be a set of fans saying sack Dravid and make Dada the captain,
Some would say Sachin Tendulkar does not score when most needed,
Some would blame Chappel,
Some would blame the selection committee,
Some astrologers would try to make a name for themselves by saying I predicted India losing to Bangladesh because neptune and pluto were copulating

The reason is simple and straightforward, TEAM INDIA as a whole played badly.
It was not any other reason. A majority of us Indian cricket fans are unfortunately not a fan of TEAM INDIA but fans of individual players in the team. And this has what allowed some of the experienced so called Superstars get away with absolutely abysmal performances, because they know that their fanatic fans will see to it that they are not going to be dropped from the team. I am not saying that we should not like individual players, but what I say is that do not idol worship them and make them Gods or whatever, we should learn to enjoy the positive feedbacks when they do well, but at the same time learn to accept the negative criticism.

Dave Whatmore played this superstar card very well before the beginning of the match, when he made a statement that he hopes that his Bangladeshi players do not get overawed by seeing the Indian superstars. Our players must have taken that seriously and thought that this is going to be a walk in the park, and yes it was because most of our batsmen walked in and walked out immediately.

All said and done, Bangladesh played outstanding cricket, it was refreshing to see their teen brigade bat with so much maturity and responsibly.

Team India is not out of the tournament yet like their other famous counterpart Pakistan, but they have to play as a team and not like a bunch of superstars if they have to go to the next round. Also the Indian cricket fan should pray that Team India does well and not just a Sachin or Saurav or Dravid.

All the best TEAM INDIA.

Sammy

What Women Want - An eternal mystery

Couple of weeks back, I saw a movie starring Mel Gibson and Helen Hunt, called What Women Want. Definitely not the latest movie, but well I happened to see it while channel surfing. It was a funny one, but then at the end of the movie I started to wonder as to what actually does a woman want.

Well there is a saying that even the great Sigmund Freud could not really figure as to what goes in a womans mind and that was a big regret for him before he died. I for one out of my experience with my wife, know that one of most important things that a woman wants from her guy is to remember things (which i am bad at), right from anniversaries, first meetings, first gift (there is a nice song from Hum Tum which also speaks of this) etc. Of course this is not the only thing that a woman wants, but much more as well.

One of my friend (a woman), had actually blogged about it and enlisted below are what she felt where some of the things that women want from her man,

Sense of Humor

Attention

Shopping

Touch Feel

Eye Contact

Gifts

Respect

Fantasies

Compliments

Cuddling

Dont want Men in Boxer Shorts

Click here to read her blog

Friends I am looking forward to hear from you all as to what according to you do women want.

Saurav the Dada or Saurav the batsman...

All of a sudden there is a media frenzy about Saurav and how the tiger is back, which makes up for very good reading. But the same Saurav was taunted and there was a frantic call for his head to roll when he was being a burden on the team. Chappell was commended and appreciated by the same media and fans for calling a spade a spade and dropping Saurav from the team. That was the best thing to happen to Indian cricket, and it was a master stroke by Chappell and Dravid, because that move stirred the dying tiger and revived his hunger.

Let us compare the Saurav of today and the Saurav of couple of months back (I am going to purely stick to his test performance).

Let us analyse his test performance in 2005 and 2006 against two of his best years say 1997 and 1998 (as he has played many tests during those 2 years). This comparison is purely going to be of Saurav the batsman.

Saurav's Test Stats

In 2007, he has played 7 matches, scored four 50's, and averaged 69.40

The stats above clearly shows the huge difference in what Saurav was when he started and then his form later on wained. Even the century he made was against a lowly Zimbabwe team. But earlier he was the worlds best left handed batsman (offside play = God).

It was not that he lost his talent, but that was the phase were he was taking his place for granted, he was in the team when proven performers like Lakshman and Kumble were being dropped or rested (whichever way you prefer to call it). This added to the pressure on Ganguly and his place in the team was questioned. We can accept that he was a good captain, but how long could he have survived just on that, the team looks up for a leader to perform and he was found wanting when it came down to performace. There were many more articles on paper and news channels asking for the axing of Ganguly. In stepped Greg Chappell and Saurav was dropped. The decision was commended by many at that time.

A few months away from cricket was what Saurav needed. A fitter and hungrier Saurav, the Saurav of the 90's is back. His innings in South Africa and his last ODI innings against the Windies has shown that Saurav is back.

Welcome back Saurav, India needs the Saurav of 90's and not the Dada of early 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2005.
Thank you Chappell and Dravid, dropping Saurav was a master stroke from both of you. The Bengal tiger has started roaring again.

Just go get the world cup for us Saurav

Sammy