The magic behind Lalu's magic

Ministry of railways says that it is on a profit track and common people admires lalu prasad for not making any increase in passenger fares in the past budgets.But in reality while boasting on the people friendly budgets railway have introduced a bunch of hidden charges in reservation and other services.For booking a ticket now clarkage charge is twenty rupees which was ten earlier.If the ticket is booked from a station other than the boarding station you have to pay 40 rupees.All major trains in the country comes with a superfast tag from last year onwards which again cost you 20 rupees even they run at passenger speed.
In railway clock rooms earlier it was ten rupees for keeping all the luggage, from this year for every luggage passengers have to pay ten rupees each.In last budget railway announced
Three long distance trains from kochuveli to amritsar,darahadun and chandigarh.none of these trains have started its service so far.Members of parliament who claps for every budget are not seen after the budget presentation. The state should monitor how far the budget proposals are executed in the state.unless this happens subh yathra will be a distant dream.

Happy x'mas

Dear friends,It is a festival time for all of us. IFFK just finished.christmas coming in and state youth festival and new year on waiting.we the fourth group takes charge of our blog today.we wish you all a very HAPPY X'MAS

13th iffk went by

8 days and its over. 13th international film festival of Kerala. We press club students can proudly say that many of our faces were among the crowds that pushed and pulled to get a seat. Some of us ended up standing, some sitting on the floor and some on laps!

Few movies came out to be the favorites of many – Yellow House, Machan, The Photograph were some names everyone talked about. Some unlucky folks had to miss all these good ones.

New face Anjali Menon bagged 2 awards – and more than the awards, one could brag about the movie. Her first movie did a lot of what movie-lovers could ask for. Personally, I was quite happy that every actor used his/her voice and there were no dubbing artists.

The 50-years category was – needless to say – nostalgic. Competition movies were yummy and world cinema a little below the mark – according to the reviews. Among the Indian movies, Firaaq drew a huge crowd in, owing to one name – Nandita Das.

Inviting all here for contributing movie reviews!

Adhrisya Thozhan (poem)

-- by Divya T S

Evideyanu nee ariyillenikku

ninnajathamaam roopam

njan kanda swapnangalile midhyayo nee

perariyathoru shilpithan srishtiyo

ushasil dalathilirikkum manjuthulliyo nee

atho,hassikkum sumangalo;

vasanthathin madhuramaam thennoottum bhramaramo nee

ethannu nin roopam ariyillenikkath

sayahnangalil enne thalodum thennalo nee

atho aakashath kanchimmum tharakangallo

enne pulakamaniyikkum snehamo nee

ariyillenikku ninne

onnu mathramariyam ......enn

sukha dukhangalil aaswasam pakarum thozhanannu nee

oradhrisya thozhan...........

Unnathangalil (poem)

-- by Anila

Anavasarathil pradarsippikkan
ente sneham randam tharamalla.

Ninakkath avasyamillenkil
njan athu tharikayilla.

Ente mathram sampathanathu,
njanathin ekadhipathi.
Ente sneham ninakku samarpikkan
njan yachakayvilla.

Oru kaiyil ninakkay
ananthamay nirayunna
pana pathram perumbol,
marukaiyil enthinu ninte
bhikshaykay yachana pathram?

Chakravarthiniyay njanee
simhasanathil irikam.
snehathinte chakravarthiyakil
ninak oppamirikam.

yachakanay nee varendathilla.

unnathangalil ninnu
nam pranayikkum,
unnathangalil ninnu mathram.

Cultural art forms for IFFK opening

Some of the cultural art forms - as shown for the opening ceremony of the 13th IFFK last week. Everyone is welcome to name each of them.

Video 1:




Video 2:



Video 3: Thiruvathira



Video 4:



Video 5: Oppana



Video 6: Margham Kali (sorry about the voices)



One of the following has got to be Theyyam!

Video 7:



Video 8:



Video 9:



Video 10: They are all here. The video is a little slanting, if anyone knows how to bring it straight, please proceed.

arranged marriage

India yilum Middle East rajyangangalilum South Asia yilum innum thudarunna oru achara kramamanu 'arranged marriages athava nishchayichurappikkunna vivahangal'. Itharam vivahangalil vivahathil erppedunnavarude rakshithakkal aanu theerumanangal kykkollunnath. Japanilum ee acharam pin thudarunnu. Iranil sarva sadharanamayi kanunna ee acharam 'khastegary' ennu ariyappedunnu. Samoohika kramangal, astrological laws enniva palikkunna ee sambradayathnte pin patti 'forced marriages' nadakkunnund. Forced marrige gurutharamaya manushyavakasa langhanamanenkilum ithinethirayulla niyamangal mikka rajyangalilum nilavil illa. Europile raja kudumbangalum yathasthithika kudumbangalum ee reethi palichirunnu.

Mazha (poem)

--by Anila

Amma paranju: penninte youvanam
peythu thornneedunna pemari polennu.

aarthirambippeythu nrithamadumbozhe,
minnalum nadavum kootinundakullu,

peythottu theernnathu pin vangiyal pinne
orkkilla aarume innalathe mazha.

peythu nee aatti thanuppicha bhoomiyil,
nin padamudrakal kanukilla.

puthumazha maril madichu peyyumbozha
bhoomiyum ninne marannu pokum.

athininte aanthara nalathil uravayay
urukum gatha kala harsham smarichu nee.

pakaruka nin theertham, peythu thorum
munp
ee chillu pathrathil aakuvolam.

pinneyee pemari thorukilum,
pazhalla sarthakam ninte janmam.

melle paranju njan: venda namukkini
thadavara theerkkunna chillu pathram.

aval peythu thoratte, than swathanthra
padamoonni narthanam cheythidatte.

thalaruvolam ath thudaratte, bhoomiyk
kulirekum amruthamay peythidatte.

hrithil muzhangatte swathanthrya
spandanam
oduvil nadiyil pathiykkuvolam.

About divorces

(This is a slightly long post and lifted from personal blog)

Hmm this should be hard. But I have wanted to write about it for sometime. To put it in one question – Is it a wrong act?

A generation back, divorce must have been the last thing thought of when a marriage fails and unless dire scenarios came up, people chose to stick with the marriage. There might have been exceptions. But today, divorces are not that rare and doesn’t always tell the story of “another man or woman”, or a lunatic-spouse deal. A divorced couple may give the reason “cause we didn’t get along well” or “it just didn’t work out, there was no love”

But was it as easy as that? No, no and no. Divorce is still heard of as a condemned word. “Divorce? Are you crazy? No way am I letting you. You are living with him/her no matter what” – the typical responses of a parent/a relative/friends.

Agreed, marriage calls for a lot of adjustments and understanding – you cant expect two different individuals to agree upon every deal on earth. But that’s not what I am talking about. When a marriage goes to a level where you find yourself unhappy all day and night long, when you realize beyond doubt you can never work it out –what was the point in clinging on? Why was it so important that you had to stick with the person till end of life no matter what? Wasn’t marriage all about making your life happier by spending it with someone you love and care about? When that love and care is not there, why would you choose to ignore it and go on with your lives unhappily?

Cause divorce was still “evil”, unheard of and a shame to kith and kin. People choose to make their own lives unhappy to have the world around them believe they are happy. An idea that always goes above my head.

The argument against this was that young people didn’t really need a reason anymore to divorce, they separate for the silliest reasons heard of. Why I am against this argument was that – whatever silly reason called it for, would they have gone ahead with the separation if there was love in the marriage? Wouldn’t they be the ones who should hate the idea of a divorce more than anyone else if they still cared for each other? Why was this so hard to understand? It was not the silly fights or reasons that was important – it was their decision – they wouldn’t be able to take it if they didn’t really want it! And they wouldn’t be able to proceed if they didn’t want it! Divorce was not a momentary deal! It gives you months to rethink, to reconsider – if all those months didn’t make them want to come back together, it simply means one thing – there is no love!

And then of course the most-fought-upon subject – what about kids? “Cant you live together for their sake?”
What do people think about kids who see their parents fight all day and night? Would kids be happy watching that or would they rather have their parents away and happy with each other? There need not be any pretense about this – kids who watch their parents fight each other shut themselves off in rooms and never find happiness at home. They seek comfort in friends and school and in worse cases, bad influences.

I know a girl who saw a psychiatrist as part of her parents having problems – the first thing the doctor asked her was “do you have an affair?”. The stunned girl said no and wondered why he should ask her this when the problem was with the parents. The doctor explained “Usually kids who face such problems at home end up having boyfriends/girlfriends at a very young age”
I know, no business of his, but well it showed that doctors expect kids to go “in the wrong direction” (since he obviously considered an affair wrong for a 17 year old) when their parents were having trouble with each other.

I strongly believe that kids would be much happier if parents who fought each other stayed away and still managed to spend enough time with them individually.

Divorce is not really a hard deal to understand. Cause what reason prompted it was not all that important unless it’s a case of serious misunderstanding – even then if there is love in the marriage, things sort out. But if there is no love, please don’t live frustrated lives forever – you had a choice. If you wanted to avoid divorce, take a lot of care on whom you marry – that’s where your decision really matters. But then humans make mistakes and a mistake may be hard to avoid, but not so hard to correct.

Shoes at Bush!

Video of Bush-shoe-attack

Amazing. A journalist actually dared to throw shoes at President Bush on his “surprise visit” to Iraq. Surely that must have been some surprise!

The Third Eye

The symbol of the All-Seeing-Eye has always been part of Earth's creational mythologies and mysteries. As all of reality is a metaphor - there are many connected to the symbol of the eye.

The third eye can see beyond the physical as it looks out through the chakrasystem when we meditate or look for answers from higher frequencies.

The 'third eye' can be activated to perceive higher dimensions

'Third eye' development, imagination, and visualization are important ingredients in many methods to separate from the physical form. Intuition is also achieved through 'third eye' development. Knowledge and memory of the astral plane are not registered in full waking consciousness until the intuition becomes strong enough. Flashes of intuition come with increasing consistency as the 'third eye' as activated to a greater degree, through practice.

As the brain enters deeper states, our consciousness is less concerned with the physical state and our 'third eye' is active

The pineal gland is occasionally associated with the sixth chakra (also called Ajna or the third eye chakra in yoga). It is believed by some to be a dormant organ that can be awakened to enable "telepathic" communication.

Welcome to the world of Blogs

Since the beginning of this century Blogs have been very popular throughout the planet. Blogging has turned out to be the easiest way to express and publish yourself. Here are some terms that are related to blogs:

* vlog - A blog comprising videos
* sketchblog - a site containing a portfolio of sketches
* photoblog - one comprising photos
* tumblelogs - Blogs with shorter posts and mixed media types
* Blogosphere - The collective community of all blogs
* blogroll - increasing popularity through affiliation
* Blogware - software specifically designed for creating and maintaining weblogs
* Moblog - combination of "mobile" and "blog". A blog featuring posts sent mainly by mobile phone, using SMS or MMS messages
* edublog - a blog written by someone with a stake in education

(these are only a few of the hundreds of blog-related terms - anyone is free to contribute some more)

The term "weblog" was coined by Jorn Barger on 17 December 1997. The short form, "blog," was coined by Peter Merholz, who jokingly broke the word weblog into the phrase we blog in the sidebar of his blog Peterme.com in April or May of 1999.

ban of smoking

The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has implemented the ban on smoking at public places in India from October 2onwards. The ministry issued the notification for the ban under the Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products (Prohibition of Advertisement and Regulation of Trade and Commerce, Production, Supply and Distribution), Act 2003. At first glance, it’s very clear that the law will make the smokers incapable of smoking anywhere they like. But the question is whether this law will prove more effective as compared to the previous law or not? Central Health minister Anbumani Ramadoss had said that according to the GSR 417(E) declaration of May 30, 2008, the new law, which was implimented from October 2, 2008, is a renewal of the old one. That means the old was not much effective in controlling ‘public smokers’. Then what will be the end result of the new one .
Central Health minister had said that,” In the last ten months in England around 45,000 people have quit smoking and he expects something like this to happen in India soon”. But the population of smokers and social situation exist in India is quite different as compared to England. So there should be a strict enforcement of the new law. Cigarettes contribute 85 per cent to the total excise revenues collected from the tobacco industry, amounting to Rs 8,500 crores. So the question is whether Ramdas is ready to cut these profits, given more than twice that the amount is spent by the citizens of India to cure the diseases caused by tobacco every year. There is no dearth of laws in India. Most of the laws are helpful, but fail due to slack implementation. Let’s hope that the new law, which came to effect from Mahatma Gandhi’s birth anniversary,will prove effective for the better health of the nation . A special squad to find law breakers is necessary. Otherwise, the law would be like the closed circuit cameras placed in Delhi at the time of serial blasts.

A communal India and a liberal US?

BARRACK HUSSEIN Obama will become the first black American president. He gave an answer to remarks from around the world that America would not tolerate a black man becoming its leader and silenced them. When Obama decided to compete at the presidential election, the first question that arose was, “Is America really ready to vote for a black president?” The notorious racial mentality of the Americans, especially the Ku Klux Klan’ brawls against the blacks for many years, gave rise to this question. Earlier, two people, describing themselves as neo-Nazis, were arrested for allegedly planning to murder Obama. They had targeted dozens of black people since they felt that the blacks were not suitable for ruling the country. This only strengthened the question if America was ready to vote for a black president.

The ancient relationship between America and the black community can be traced to the slavery business. So the American government denied the black people the right to vote in elections at the time. Now too a black man / woman can vote in U.S only if he / she is familiar with the country’s constitution. It is for this reason that most of the black people in the US don’t have an ID to vote.

There was also a section of Americans which had resolved never to vote for blacks. But when the election campaign kicked off, a survey conducted by TIME magazine found that most of the people belonging to the said section had changed their mind. This manifested itself in Obama’s speech during his campaigning. He said “Race will not affect the outcome, because while there are some whites who are unable to bring themselves to vote for an African-American, there are many thousands of Afro-Americans who are determined to make their votes count”. But now his view of the whites has changed thanks to the election results and according to them, “colour does not matter here in U.S; what matters more is moving the world forward with the right president in White House”. Reports say that 44 percent of white women and 56 percent of white men voted for Obama.

Some historians made the way clear for Obama by revealing that he was the 6th president with black ancestry. They underlined that former presidents Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Warren Harding and Calwin Coolidge had African ancestors which they kept under wraps for years. According to some poll findings, some blacks doubted that Obama would understand their problems. The hard-working man for the rights of blacks and Americans had the answer to it: “it is important that stories like mine are not used to say that everything is okay for blacks.”

Barrack Obama, a 47-year-old graduate of Columbia University, spent four years, heading a community development programme for poor blacks on Chicago’s northern side. His father was a finance minister in Kenya and his mother was an American anthropologist. Born in Hawaii, he spent most of his life for the welfare of the black and the poor. He is a democrat from Illinois and is the senate’s only black member.

A record turnout of around 130 million was forecast, suggesting newer and younger voters registering and that favoured Obama. It is quite clear that this younger generation created history by electing Obama. For them the most important problem was not racism but the economic crisis which had cut jobs and also led the country to be scoffed at by all the other countries. The country also wanted its soldiers to return from Iraq. So they didn’t mind Obama’s skin colour and religion (note his Muslim middle name, which is ‘Hussein’) but considered him as the right person to lead them. These changed the mindset of the Americans and ensured victory for Obama.

It should be a remarkable lesson for countries like India, which adhere to the motto ‘unity in diversity’.
Nowadays, regionalism, communalism and racism are the key words which decide the future of Indian politics. And of course communalism is at its worst in many states like Maharashtra, Jammu & Kashmir, Bihar and Jharkhand. As India gets communal, Americans are prepared to take a great leap forward – they are prepared to shed racism. Nations that still live under oppression and tyranny can find hope and motivation in USA’s commitment to liberty.

In conclusion, we can recall the Republican candidate John McCain’s statement, which he made after his defeat: “If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, tonight is your answer”. But it is not merely because America is a place where all things are possible. Now listen to Obama’s victory speech “It’s been a long time coming, but tonight ...changes have come to America”. Yes, the change has come and also a 40-year-old dream of Martin Luther King Jr has come true

First group starts on December 1st

The first group will start posting on the blog from December 1st. The group members are

> Karthik
> Aneesh
> Asha

> Manu
> Saji