American Congress and Sprained knees

President Barack Obama delivered his first presedential adddress to the joint sitting of the American Congress on the 26th of February 2009. It was an interesting, daring and passionate speech from Obama. Being an Indian and watching it from an Indian perspective was an interesting experience. Interesting, not because of the many reforms which he announced but the actions and mannerisms of the congree as a whole. Throughout the speech, irrespective of whether a senator was a REpublican or a Democrat, nobody raised his or her voice and their was an approving and appreciative silence in the Capitol Hill. It was faintly amusing to watch a quiet and positive congress at work as we are used to seeing the Indian Parliament in the news for things like broken furniture, unparliamentary languages and constant adjournments. One thing which completely justifies the very formal attitude of Americans was the constant and sometimes overdone and irritating standing ovations for almost each and every policy or reform announced by the president. No wonder the Americans spend so much on health insurance. A few years of being a Senator and you are sure to have a sprained knee. But the professionalism with which the sessions was held (without the very familiar sloganeering and furniture breaking) was very appreciable. 

Bazaars of Port Blair

Port Blair is the capital of the union territory of Andaman &Nicobar islands. It is a small charming coastal city with great and helpful people. I was on holiday there three summers back and thoroughly enjoyed. it has a great combination of flora, fauna, a rich tribal culture, british ruins, the majestic central jail, the emerald sea, world class beaches etc, etc, etc. When you have all this to see, a visit to the local bazaar sounds and is very boring. Its the same bazaar with almost the same shops you find in every city. While strolling dejectedly alond the narrow lanes as my parents haggled with a bedraggled man about a few worthless trinkets, what struck me as very odd is the lack of dirt and plastic covers. Its amazing how clean Port Blair seems when you are used to the the usual muck and grime type markets. Thereafter, i kept a lookout for stray bits of plastic on the roads and found very very few. Compared with the tons of garbage found in other cities the same size, the bits of paper and plastic is a rounding error. Kudos to the people of Port Blair. We can learn a lot from them.

Comedy for Comedy's sake

There has been a great rise in the number of comedy shows on television. the jokes the participants make there are quite good, though what are not good are the jokes made in films. Half a century ago, directors and script writers had the necessity for a comic character in the film, a few decades later, the same people thought," well, why not have the hero himself cracking some jokes". This idea is now part of a formula for a film which also includes two item numbers, a hero-villain fight sequence in the close vicinity of liquor bottles, the supposedly all important very predictable climax and so on. Here the heroes crack jokes which are written by God knows whom and the film is termed a comedy. what these people dont understand is that is that comedy for comedy's sake often turns vulgar. Vulgarity and comedy are very different. comedy can be satirical but definitely not vulgar. Lets hope that we dont have films which are formula based. its time we had people giving more thought about our regional films.