Joe Speak

ചുട്ടു പഴുപ്പിച്ച ചട്ടുകം ഇവന്റെയൊക്കെചന്തീല്‍ വെച്ച്കൊടുത്താല്‍ തീരാവുന്ന പ്രശനമേ J.N.U വില്‍ ഒള്ളൂ. നമ്മുടെ രാജ്യത്തിന്റെ പരമോന്നത ജനാധിപത്യ വ്യവസ്ഥയുടെ കേന്ദ്രമായ പാര്‍ലമെന്റ് ആക്രമിക്കാന്‍ കോപ്പ് കൂട്ടിയവനെ തൂക്കിലെട്ടീതിനു എതിരെയാണ് പോലും ഇവന്റെയൊക്കെ പ്രതിഷേധം. അതിന്റെ കൂടെ മേമ്പോടിക്ക് അന്നവും തണലും കൊടുക്കുന്ന രാജ്യത്തിനെതിരെ മുദ്രാവാക്യവും. ഫ്രീഡം ഓഫ് എക്ഷ്പ്രഷന്‍ എന്ന്പറഞ്ഞാല്‍ " വായിക്കു തോന്നീത് കോതക്ക് പാട്ട്" എന്നല്ല. നിനക്കൊക്കെ അവകാശങ്ങള്‍ മാത്രമല്ല, അതിലേറെ ഈ രാജ്യത്തോട് കൂറും കടപ്പാടും ഉണ്ടെന്നു മറക്കണ്ട. കൊറേ എണ്ണം ഇറങ്ങിയിരിക്കുന്നു - അസ്ഥാനത് മറന്നു വെച്ച സാരൂപ്യവുമായി.

Desktop - the unassuming name for the start up screen of millions and millions of computers all over the world. I have even heard people calling the welcome screen on a Tablet PC a desktop - as outrageous as it may sound, it happens. As an application engineer, travelling around, meeting people, I always get an opportunity to peek into the other guy's computer - be it to read some specifications, to get a company presentation or sometimes even to make friends on Face book and connect on Linked In. And the ubiquitous fact is that almost all of those desktop's are cluttered - with excel and word files, engineering drawings, MP3 files, photos from the company outings, copies of e-mails, weather updates and other menial stuff. I have had instances where the people looking for something on their desktops were unable to find it and excusing themselves with an embarrassed smile - "I need to clean up my desktop". This is easier said than done. The poor desktop is always...

When experienced writers use overly cliched method of writings, or when they have no idea of what they are saying, it can become quite a nuisance for the reader. See the below excerpt from today's Hindu - "The most popular one comprised brown granules imported from Brazil, mixed with a locally produced white liquid, boiled for a few minutes". Here the writer wants to say that the most popular of t he anti-sleep drinks is Coffee. Why can't he just say coffee and get over with it, for heaven's sake? At least it would have reduced valuable printing space, ink, paper and would have been enormously environment friendly. And another instance from Sunday Business Standard, the writer starts his article as follows - "For decades, Indian expertise in designing and building aircraft has developed randomly, with isolated areas of excellence offset by large capability gaps in important fields" - Really, my foot! How in the world the author surmised that the Ind...

ആഗ്രഹങ്ങള്‍ എന്തെല്ലാം ആരുന്നു ചെറുപ്പത്തില്‍ ഇന്ത്യന്‍ ആര്‍മി, ഇന്ത്യന്‍ എയര്‍ ഫോഴ്സ്, നേവി - സി.ബി.ഐ, ഐ.ബി, ആര്‍.എ.ടബ്ല്യു പടിവാതിലില്‍ എത്തിയ ഓഫീസേഴ്സ് ട്രെയിനിംഗ് അകാടെമി "മോനെ ജോസഫ്‌കുട്ടി നിനക്കൊന്നും അറിയില്ല, കാരണം നീ വെറും കുട്ടിയാണ്" എന്ന് മോഹന്‍ലാല്‍ സ്റ്റൈലില്‍ ഇടിച്ചു തകര്‍ത്ത മാതാപിതാ ബന്ധുമിത്രാദികള്‍....... കണക്കറിയില്ലാത്തത് കാരണം നീ വിമാനം പറപ്പിക്കണ്ട എന്ന് പറഞ്ഞ എയര്‍ഫോഴ് സ്കാരന്‍...........(പിന്നേ പ്രോട്രാക്ടറും കോമ്പസ്സും വച്ചല്ലേ ഈ കണ്ട വിമാനം ഒക്കെ പറക്കണത്) എല്ലാവരും ചേര്‍ന്നെന്നെ ഒരു ട്രാന്‍സ്ഫോര്‍മര്‍ ഡിസൈനറും, കച്ചവടക്കാരനുമാക്കി. ബൂര്‍ഷകള്‍ക്ക് വേണ്ടി പണിയെടുകുന്ന ഒരു പെറ്റി ബൂര്‍ഷ - തൊഴിലാളി വര്‍ഗത്തെ, പരിപ്പ് വട-കട്ടന്‍ ചായയെ, ബര്‍ഗെറിലും, കോളയിലും, ഹോട്ട് ചോക്ലേറ്റിലും, പേരറിയാന്‍ മേലാത്ത എന്തിലോ എല്ലാം ഒറ്റികൊടുത്ത ഒന്നാന്തരം ഒരു ചതിയന്‍ ബ്രൂട്ടസ്...............

Where in the world have all those jolly and laconic film critics gone?  I had immense expectations, when I read all the reviews about Madras Cafe – rare treat, crisp editing, wonderful acting by John Abraham, Bollywood’s answer to “Tears of the sun” and “Blood Diamond”. These were rather hollow - as I was to find out later - comments by numerous critics of the leading news houses throughout the country. Madras cafe thrives to be in the genre of various Hollywood blockbusters, but sadly fails in getting there. The movie depicts the genocide of Sri Lankan Tamils, rise of the Tamil Elam; the lives of innocent civilians caught up in the cross fire, and all along you have the underlying plot of the Rajiv Gandhi assassination. The movie heavily borrows from “Tears of Sun” and “Blood Diamond” and to add the feminine factor, a so called journalist and an actress who speaks back in English like an old gramophone record is thrown in, rather as an afterthought, in the cast. The movie in...

എല്ലാവരും എന്നോട് ചോദിക്കുന്നു, എന്ത് കൊണ്ട് ഇംഗ്ലീഷില്‍ മാത്രം എഴുതുന്നു എന്ന്? പേന കൊണ്ടെന്നു ഒരു ടിന്റു മോന്‍ സ്റൈല്‍ ഉത്തരമാണ് ഇവര്‍ക്ക് ഉചിതം. എങ്കിലും, ഞാന്‍ എഴുതി വിടുന്ന, മടയതരങ്ങളും, ഉപരിപ്ലവമെങ്കിലും, ഫാസ്സിസ ചായവുള്ളതും എതെങ്കിലും ഒരു വിഭാഗത്തെ നോവിപ്പിക്കാത്തതും അയ കാല്‍പനിക കഥാ, അര്‍ത്ഥ കഥാ രൂപങ്ങള്‍ക്ക്‌ ഫേസ്ബുക്ക്‌ ലൈകിന്റെ രൂപത്തിലും, ട്വിറ്റെര്‍ ട്വീടിന്റെ രൂപത്തിലും, ഗൂഗിള്‍ പ്ലസ്‌ ഷെയര്‍ രൂപത്തിലും, വളരെ പഴഞ്ചന്‍ രീതിയായ കമന്റ്സ് ആയും ഒക്കെ പ്രോത്സഹിപിക്കുന്ന എന്റെ ആരാധക വൃന്ദത്തെ സന്തോഷിപിക്കാനും,  അവര്‍ക്ക് മലയാളത്തിലുള്ള എന്റെ പരിമിതമായ അറിവും, അതിലുപരി മലയാളം ആംഗലേയ ഭാഷയില്‍ ടൈപ് ചെയ്യുനതിനുള്ള ബുദ്ധിമുട്ടും ഈ ഒരു പോസ്റ്റില്‍ നിന്നും മനസ്സിലാക്കുമെന്നു ഞാന്‍ പ്രതീക്ഷിക്കുന്നു. എന്‍.ബി: എന്റെ വായനക്കാര്‍ എന്ന പ്രയോഗം എനിക്കുപയോഗിക്കണമെന്നുണ്ടെകിലും, ഇവര്‍ എണ്ണത്തില്‍ വളരെ കുറവും വംശനാശം സംഭവിച്ചുകൊണ്ടിരികുന്ന ഒരു വിഭാഗം ആയതിനാലും അങ്ങനെ ഒരുധ്യമത്തില്‍ നിന്നും ഞാന്‍ പിന്മാറുന്നു.

Came down the empyrean deluge, Caught unawares were the multitude, Mutated was the sanctum destitute Political boneheads turned asinine, Went up in ashes white pristine, So were the hopes of clique sanguine Were the brave but few good men, Not the pack in white, saffron, But those firm in fatigue green  

Being in a continuous state of restlessness and an ever growing conscientiousness - both mentally and physically - of my tummy, has prompted me to give a job in the early morning for my legs. Burn some calories and to show some long lost love for the body. When you hear something like this  pompous, don’t be mistaken, I am not aiming for a flat and hard tummy with six neat packs across, rather I should be happy with a  waistline that will permit my much loved wardrobes to get to their destination up to the belly button. A kilometer in the first day left me short of breath, a set of ten push-ups the next day left me devastated. What I could not achieve by flexing my muscles and shedding sweat, I decided to get done by controlling my diet potpourri. Plans were laid, every contingency thought about - lots of fruits and fluids, go easy on carbohydrates, starch and sugar. But as with every well laid plan, these also went deep down the drain, I kept on adding more and m...

I am wondering, why I have been so lazy in keeping up with my favorite past time of writing and why I have unceremoniously ignored my brain child, my inception, conceptualization of my ideas, my affiche - Joe Speak. I don't have an answer, apart to say that the past couple of months has been quite eventful, rather tumultuous, a roller-coaster  ride with many ups and downs - more of ups than downs, and the most precious commodity of all - time, was the crucial parameter missing from the daily ingredient of the life elixir I was drinking and living. The rust of laziness has eaten into the once shining bronze, but the conscious efforts that I am making now to do away with the rust, I hope, will make its mark, and the bronze that was an architectural and literary splendor will regain its lost glory, for ever to be marveled. 

It has been very long since I have been here, in my favorite cyber abode, writing non sense and asking other people to read the same. To get the numbers right and exact, 33 days have passed so forlorn after my last blog.  This was a sort of hibernation period for me, the words not coming out, being stuck somewhere in the vast neuron myriad of the brain. It seems the spark plugs were a little rusty owing to the cold December and the never ending, but ever looming apocalypse. Now that the world has not really ended – in the apocalypse sort of way, and that the cold is abating, I feel like writing again. Now what comes into my mind is a famous quote by Germaine Greer, an Australian journalist. “ Writing is a bit like shitting...if it's coming in dribs and drabs or not coming at all, or being forced out, or if you're missing the rhythm, it's no pleasure at all”

Argo,  **** yourself!  I tried to count how many times Ben Affleck and his Fake Studio Six buddies will say this punch line in the movie Argo. As usual, I failed, I lost the count. Based on real events, famously referred to as “The Canadian Caper” Argo is the directorial outing of Ben Affleck, after The Town. Produced by himself and George Clooney, Argo tries to depict the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis and succeeds in doing so to a great extend, rebuilding the movie from available photos and one would presume, with countless interviews with the hostages and John Mendez, the CIA ex-filtration operative who tried to get them out. Ben Affleck plays the harried John Mendez, estranged from his wife and his “buddy man” with great élan, the rest of the crew carries out their part to perfection. One would say that the filming of the events that happened in 1979 in a seemingly innocuous manner, though with certain amount of uncertainties, as too dramatic. Everything happens just i...

And it is again Obama for the second term in the White House. The exit polls had given Obama a slender but a good chance of winning the race to the most powerful job in the world. Mitt Romney, the conservative Republican, came back strongly from a primary defeat to John McCain back in 2008 and enjoyed a great probability in the polls to be the America’s first Mormon president. As the race was nearing its crescendo, Mitt Romney fared well in the debates, and the Republicans thought they had a good chance of getting in to the Oval office. Then came along the devastating cyclone formed in the turbid waters of Atlantic, Sandy, second only to Katrina in its destructive power wrecking havoc in the eastern cost of America. Both the contenders stopped the electoral sparring and engaged in relief activities with Obama leading from the front. This served Obama’s and the Democrats presidential aspirations a real boost and the final lap saw Obama leading Romney by over 100 seats. The majo...

A girl sitting and leaning from a two wheeler, and feeding a stray dog in one of the busiest and crowded byways in Trivandrum pushed me in to a retrospective mode. It has become a fashion statement these days to be an animal lover, or an environment activist. There are hordes of these lovers whose blood will boil at the sight of slightest misery to these canines and bovines.  Tourists come from as far as America to the beaches of Kerala and feed the strays. Off course one can presume that these are the wealthy and affluent, who can afford to catch a business class to the third world India and feed these homeless vagrants called the street dogs. Then there are a certain class characterized by the paternal and maternal love lavished up on the four legs. Here, the otherwise well to do human off springs are brushed aside, and demoted to a secondary level of hierarchy. Dogs and cats occupy the preferred seats in the family vehicle and at times safety seats and seat belts are mandator...

It was a great relief, to exit from a very rare Air India flight at Trivandrum which had flown in from Dubai. The great relief was in that the flight was not cancelled and that the temperature outside was twenty four degree Celsius, twenty degrees cooler than the hot and arid desert climate from which I have escaped. Getting out of the airport was rather hassle-free, and I moved to the cab which was designated to take me home. I opened the right side door only to realize that the passenger seat in India was essentially at the left side – some of the desert habits had rubbed itself on me, though my stay was rather short. The cool atmosphere around me soothed my ailing heart and the skin for that matter. Three months out in the desert was not a small feat in itself. Dubai – Land of dreams, as the saying goes in numerous Mallu masala flicks, turned out for me soulless without any real life to it. All the glitter and glamour, for a lesser layman, could be amazing. It just turned out...

So you have two days off every week and you are all alone in metropolitan city like Dubai. You have 48 hours to yourselves and you are free to do anything you pretty much like – well as far as the rules allow it. The night life in Dubai is amazing to the extent I have heard about it. I have not yet had the luxury to go out and live the life to the full at the amazing pubs or discotheques yet.  My activities are pretty much diurnal. The desert heat boarding fifty two degree Celsius does not give you the luxury to go out any time you like. Still I have had braced the searing heat and went out a couple of times – once the world famous Burj Khalifa and second time to the Dubai Marina. I have seen The Burj many times in the movies. It always was so intimidating and big to watch the Burj in all those movies. Millions and millions has been spent in building the world’s tallest tower and the first impression that I had was “My gosh! Why did they make it so ugly?” The towering...

There are times when life takes an unexpected turn – for the better of for the worse. Sometimes uncertainty looms like a huge expecting cloud, ominous and dark. You feel that you are all alone and are being dragged down into the whirlpool of desperation. People deride you for your lack of strength and meekness of character. You don’t have a place to call as your own; you suddenly miss the familiarity and keeps on thrashing blindly for a handhold. You feel that all your talents has been drowned down the drain in a single day, all that you thought and held were precious vanishes into thin air. Heavy and harsh words pierce you like arrows. It hurts more when this comes from the unexpected quarters. And you cannot express your feelings as easy as you used to do. You have to face being called a quitter, and are worried all along about being wilted down under the pressure. You are not yourselves any more. The controls are handled by someone somewhere; you have to walk through the line th...

Dubai – One of the most happening cities in the world, very vibrant yet mellow, very radiant yet sleepy. Like the sides of a coin, Dubai has two faces – one that encompasses all that is modern and other that embraces the traditional. I landed in Dubai hardly a week back, and I am already missing my home. But then every body misses it I presume. The hot, arid and sandy conditions are sure to degrade some, at the same time the glitter and pompous city life draws others like fire flies. Some escape unscathed while others get grounded. Some come here for a better life, some just for the fun of it. The first thing that strikes you is the heat. The heat here is so permeating and all encompassing which kills the soul and mind. One might as well like the heat, because it follows you all the way around, and reminds you every day that you are in the middle of a desert. I am yet to see most of Dubai , but I feel there are surprises in store for me. There are so many places to explor...

MY FIRST MODEL AIRCRAFT F lying the Beech Craft baron, Lear Jet or the Bombardier CRJ700 was not enough for me, I decided to get into the building a flying machine. Though I use the demo version of a popular flight simulator for my flying lessons, there are skeptics – of course mislead, misinformed and narrow minded – who insists that anything you play on a computer needs to be a video game. I have time and again explained the nuances involved in flying an aircraft, most importantly a jet in the class of CRJ700, to these terrestrials, but in all counts have miserably failed. I took videos of difficult landings, take offs, stall-spins, and acrobatics I performed to convince these bipeds. But alas! Their adamant stand of the simulator being just another video game always prevailed. This was when I decided seriously to get into aero modeling business, though I would admit that the thought has always been there, in the back of my mind, waiting for a trigger. As the ...

Derailed! Derailed, but chugging along, no particular destination in mind. Our country is chugging along, totally losing its direction and its purpose. The great vision of men who fought and gave their lives for the freedom of this great country is getting blurred and blurred.  Rampant corruption- pernicious and permeating, starting from the great echelons of power to the lowest clog in the machinery of the government, undisciplined people, chaotic traffic system, interstate rivalry and strife, people killing each other in the name of religion, the caste system, racism, and discrimination based on ethnicity truly characterizes the modern India.  The outer shell, the shell that the politicians, the religious leaders, me and you want to project is that of prosperity, industrialization, military power, suave and savvy. But the cancer, that carves the inside hollow, day by day is being so easily covered up, so easily forgotten, that the danger of this great civilization being b...

2012 – The New Year dawned on us 13 days late. The entire world was celebrating the feast and the joy of the new year on 31 st December and we might have been the only exception in the whole beautiful world. It is a very good feeling to know that you are different from the mass, you might stick out like a sore thumb, but still you will stick out. We guys decided to celebrate our new year a little late – 13 days late in the beautiful state of Goa, the tiny state bordering the Arabian sea. We had great many plans, and we had two days. We charted carefully the best beaches in North Goa, the best in the south. We had in mind the Se Cathedral, the Old Goa, the forts, the pubs and the vibrant night life of Panaji. We landed in Goa on an evening and decided to head out to Colva beach as it was the nearest to the railway station. We checked into a small but good hotel. That night we had a candle light dinner out on the beach. It was one of the most memorable experiences that we had - the coo...