Commonwealth games 2010

I did not know what to expect of commonwealth games. A few years back I heard the news that New Delhi is gonna bid for Olympics 2020 and is gonna build a sports village. Having won the bid for CWG, 2010 - the capital has a farsighted vision of going for the olympics. I shrugged off and said to myself "what is the big deal, if the medal tally is not going to go up from single digits?". As with any Indian - growing up in a crowd could hold you down. There are always doubters and lack of recognition, which percolates deep into the minds questioning whether sports is worth as a career?

When I heard there were issues with CWG, I honestly felt that media is blowing up the issue and piggy backing on a few minor issues. On the flip side, I did not believe the organizers as well. As they say "the proof of the pudding is in the eating". When it came to a point where CWG were about to be called of, I thought there will be some money transfers here and there to make it happen.To my surprise and to my cognition, the govt. was hell bent on making the event a success. The presence of Dr. Man Mohan Singh overseeing the happenings, made me rest assured that things are in full swing. Still, I was not expecting anything out of the ordinary.

Like many, I didn't catch the opening ceremony live. The next day, I saw pictures of the ceremony as a netizen. Reading through the article, I was consumed in by the list of acts put together for the ceremony. I searched all over, and with help of my online co-ordinator in Las Vegas and facebook - I got the recorded version of the ceremony. The sounds of Indian drums filled my mind. The young tabla maestro at the epicentre of the drum blast, enjoying the beats of India - gave me goosebumps and bliss. The events were well thought off, though for a little jag in line formation from top, all seemed fantastic. To top it up, performances by Hariharan, AR Rahman. What more can you ask for?

I thought, ok, now the fun ends. Tomorrow onwards is the boring part. We are gonna get delirious coverage of media from England, Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, Canada et al. For a change, India's time has arrived. They said the focus of organizing this event is to make India as a sport conscious nation. I could not understand what they meant by that, by then. Personally I like to follow tennis, table-tennis, boxing and wrestling. India was primed in all these sports and that made a hint to my perception on the notion of "sports-consciousness". Over the course of the CWG, listening to raucous cheers, live coverage, fist-pumping and adrenaline rush - the event was more than an administrative success for me. For it upheld its objective. The sight of athletes feeding off from crowd-support and oppositions wilting with the pressure made it even more appalling to watch.

I often hear people say, "Sachin makes me a proud Indian". WTF, I say to myself. As a sports lover, I want to see the tussle, team tactics ,the sweat, the hunger and "never say die" attitude - not just talent. Cricket is a team game, and we can't be proud for having individual brilliance. If not just for the medals, I can see better support-system for the athletes these a days and crowd-recognition. Hope the sponsors are listening.

The infrastructure, the outlook of Indian sports have really moved on from family tradition to individual expression. I am hoping that these are signs of days to come. bfn

Endhiran

The hype is unavoidable, partly by the developers but mostly by the hardcore fans all over the world. Was sincerely looking forward to it and shouting like hell, and whistling made us deaf through the titles. Movie starts in the research center, but wait a minute what in the hell are Karunas and Santhaanam doing in the lab. Ok, accepted, they are computer graduates specializing in robotics working as apprentices to thalaivar. Moving on, they are working on the final stages of a decade long work of Rajini (Vasi endra vaseegaran) in hope of building the perfect android humanoid. What is an android humanoid, android refers to mimicking human appearance to a robot and humanoids are ones that are modeled on human skeletal movement system. 

Vasi manages to come up with the perfect humanoid, capable to live in real –world which is a draconian ask for the best of robots today. Chitti, the robot seems to be on the learning curve, learning human emotions like “Why people lie, why people cry, etc”. As usual, Shankar throws science here and there to make the movie from a part of his PhD work. He tries to explain the absence of human rational behavior in Chitti. So Vasi is forced to add human psychology, emotions and other feelings into the routines of Chitti. From the camera’s eye the skin of Chitti is just molded plastic so how he feels the wind or a kiss is left to our own perception. Love the larger than life fighting, style and maassu of chitti in his fights and innocent nakkal nickel over the first half.

Chitti learns everything from medicine to martial arts. He is a built in electro magnet, able to communicate in any protocol through infrared, wifi, radio frequency and what not. I have to take the plot of Chitti reasoning with mosquitoes as a joke, even though he speaks in the bzzzt language. But all this from just a few units of electricity, you have to be kidding me. Terminator thought better by using a mini-nuclear reactor powered fuel-cell to charge the robot. Traditional battery storage, ha ha haa. Ok for motor movements, but for vision projection, communication and electromagnetic force, you ought to have though better.

I don’t go into the plot of the movie, but the songs seem to be loosely intertwined in the picture. You feel like suddenly you have changed the channel to MTV, listen to the music and come back. For beginners they should have at least used some part of the music in the background, the BGM seems to be empty for me.

Don’t kill me with the concept of human-robot hybrids, intra-species mating is observed to be a common factor like the case of Liger. This is through fluid exchange, in captivity. I would have agreed to any sort of bio-fusion, even spiderman for heaven’s sake. What about robot and human, the screw will impregnate an ovum, ROFL. Even if you are able to synthesize a fertilized egg, that could be conceivable in a woman, it grows with “oxygen, water and blood” or “current, silicon chips, nickel”. Please let us leave it here.

With regards to cinema making, Rajini looks awesome in the movie. Can’t dance to his own standards, but the performer juggernaut rolls on. Music is awesome, camera and photography is cool, the locations are exotic, but no life in the movie. The characters just make up for the number and hardly use up the screen space, meaning there is no scope for others in the film except Rajinis and Aish.

When there is a force, there should be a similar force to tackle it. Battle of transformers, terminators, aliens VS Predators. If not there should be extreme outwitting from humans to win it over the much able robots. Nopes, the Goliath fells over and got his head cut off by David. It makes a good fairy tale but doesn’t warrant a movie.

I felt a big headache after the second half of the movie. Though have to say majority of the scenes look good. I have my fair share of doubts which I have posted above. Can watch once for the Rajini factor, but not worth to watch it over an over.

P.S: In reality, robots are doing a fantastic job in precision cutting, painting, load handling which means they are larger or shorter in size and need not necessarily have to mimic human movements. Advanced robots do a dance or play a game of football, covering a few issues like getting up from a fall, in built AI to track opponent behavior and realization of a goal state, yes GOAL state. A concept of a complete android robot is way beyond today's technology.

Terminator, Bicentennial man, AI and Wall-E are a few of my favorites in this genre. Wall-E is more of a fun and watch with kids movie. Terminator explores the destructive capability of an intelligent android. Bicentennial man is the learning curve of a robot over the issues of humanity, slavery, prejudice, maturity, intellectual freedom, conformity, sex, love, and death. A.I defines how tough it is to train a robot human emotions. Shankar seems to have found and lost a match with all the above concepts