Book Buying - How things have changed

I am still a book buyer. Haven't really migrated to kindle or reading using my tablet. 

When I started buying novels, I used to buy them from the road side shop. These are poor quality pirated copies which were available for less than 50 rupees. I used to buy regularly from a shop in Pondy Bazaar. Then after few years (rather many years) of buying fake I became conscious of the fact that I am buying pirated books. 

That is when I moved on to Landmark - That was one of the first book stores in Chennai. The books in this store are priced at MRP. Even then started buying books from there (but kept going back to my pirated store as there were no deals at Landmark). 

Once every year Landmark has a sale (around September) and I make a list of books that I want to buy through the year and buy during the sale. Slowly migrated to Landmark website which had good deals - we used to get 30-40% off through the year. 

Now I have moved onto Flipkart which offers better deals than Landmark. Landmark deals have reduced to 25% max for all books on the net and they still sell at MRP in their stores. Flipkart offers at least 33% off on most books. Now a days it is mostly Flipkart where I buy my books. 

I still go to yearly sales of Landmark. Make it a point to visit all Landmark stores in the city during that time. This sale generally goes on for a month. 

For the first time with the Chetan Bhagat book Flipkart is offering an exclusive sale of the same for first 1 month. The book is also priced at only 15% discount of MRP which was a surprise but expected with the exclusivity. Book is releasing only mid October but it is available for pre-order now. I am not a great fan of his but his books are a decent time pass. My wife loves his books though. 

Will I pre-order now? The answer is NO. I have many books that I have not read so I can definitely wait for the price to fall after the 1 month exclusive period. Not that his books are expensive. You generally get only paperback.

One thing is true for all big Retailers(Flipkart is a big retailer now) they kill the competition by giving discounts but once there is no competition they will start pricing at MRP. You end up spending more than what you used to. 

PS : Landmark closed it's first book store in Chennai recently, felt bad about it.  

Why the negativity?

I wrote a positive blog on the Indian performance in the just concluded Commonwealth games.. Look what Hindu and TOI wrote

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/editorial/the-hindu-editorial-for-india-a-mixed-bag/article6281130.ece

http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/toi-editorials/lacklustre-showing-indias-performance-at-glasgow-games-is-an-indictment-of-the-countrys-sports-system/


We need to take into perspective that nearly 15 events in which we won gold medals in 2010 was removed in this edition. 

Glasgow 2014 - India's performance

India ended with 64 medals in the just concluded Commonwealth Games. This medal count was much lesser than the 101 we got in the Delhi games. The major difference between the two games was Archery, Synchronized Swimming, Greco Roman Wrestling and Shooting Pairs were removed in this edition of the games. In it's place we had Judo, Powerlifting and Triathlon.

We knew for a fact that with Archery, Greco Roman Wrestling and Shooting pairs not being part of this edition of the games we will not match 2010 games in terms of the medal count but it is good to see a higher % of athletes winning medals.

As usual Weightlifting, Wrestling and Shooting are giving a good haul of medals. Boxing was a bit of a let down this time with not much medals coming there. 

As usual we lost to the Aussies in the finals of Hockey. The scoreline was a bit better than last time we only let 4 goals compared to 8 last time. 

It is also good to see us getting close to winning medals in events like Lawn Bowls we lost in the bronze medal match for Men's fours event. 

Some key highlights from this edition of the games

1. Dipa Karmakar was the first female athlete to win a medal in Gymnastics and second Indian after Ashwin Kumar to win a medal in Gymnastics. Ashwin won 2 medals in the last games
2. Vikas Gowda won the second individual Athletics gold after Milkha Singh 
3. Wrestling except 1 individual all Indian Participants won a medal
4. Percentage of athletes winning medal has gone up from 22% to 29%
5. We won medals in the new events added in this edition - Judo & Power Lifting

Some people were cribbing about the coverage (or the lack of it) for the games. I felt the coverage on the news sites and also in papers were good. One let down for me is that it was telecast on Ten Sports and DD also didn't show anything. 

Overall a very good performance by our athletes.  Hope we continue to do this well in the Asian Games coming up in September.

In all this one latest embarrassment as usual has been our officials. Two of them arrested :(

Jiggarthanda - A Movie Review

Watched the Jiggarthanda movie on Saturday.

Cast includes Siddharth, Lakshmi Menon, Karunakaran, Bobby Simhaa (the real hero). This is Karthik Subburaj's second movie after the super hit Pizza.

Movie starts off with a scene from a realty show (which you generally see in almost all realty shows of two people fighting). The hero is a budding director and makes a short film which a acclaimed director (Nasser) claims as a kuppa padam and the other judge of the show a producer claims the movie is excellent and promises to produce Karthik's movie. The producer asks him to make a nice gangster movie - showing DVDs of Scarface, Godfather etc. He nicely says make a movie like these or even make these :)

Karthik wants to make a gangster movie by studying a real gangster. Off he goes to Madurai to study Assault Sethu played by Bobby Simhaa. A dreaded gangster in Madurai. As per the cops a "oru madhiriyaana pyscho". Introduction scene establishes that very clearly. He burns a journalist who writes about him.

Karthik uses his friend Urani (played by Karunakaran - be it Pizza or Sudhu Kaavum or this movie, he is establishing himself as a good actor) to get around in Madurai. Heroine Kayal and her mother cooks for Sethu. They are also saree theifs. He wants to use her but she falls in love with him.

After much struggle Karthik to find out about Sethu, he finally gets to hear everything from his horse's mouth. Sethu also wants to act in the movie. Movie is made finally and this is where the movie turns from a gangster movie to a comedy movie. The movie finally ends in an expected way - which was a let down.

There was a bit of a drag in the early part of the second half.

Kannama song is good but was forced on us. There was no need for such a song in that situation.

BG music is good by Santhosh Narayanan.

In terms of acting Bobby Simhaa rocks as the gangster. Siddharth surprisingly doesn't overact. Lakshmi Menon - not sure why there was a need for a heroine in this movie. Karunakaran as usual does a decent job. Vijay Sethupathi shows up in a cameo.

Overall the movie was very good. Successive hit for Karthik Subburaj.   

Sathuranga Vettai - A Review

Watched Sathuranga Vettai over the weekend. It has been a while since I watched any movie, the last one was Rio 2 (don't think I wrote a review about it).

Disclaimer - I was too sleepy for a night show and was going in with lots of expectations based on all the positive reviews.

The first half of the movie is good with the hero played by Natraj running one fraud scheme after another like MLM, selling a Snake to a businessman, temple hiest, etc. First half is breezy

It is a typical con movie, where at some point in time he gets caught by the person he is trying to con and how he escapes forms the second half of the story. Second half is a drag.

You would have heard all the good dialogues in the radio advertisements so it didn't make much of an impact on me.

The villain makes a good debut (at least I have not seen him before).. Ishaara as the heroine ok.

Overall because of the disclaimers above I didn't like it that much. 

Vaayai Moodi Pesavum - A Movie Review

Watched Vaayai Moodi Pesavum on Saturday night at AVM Rajeshwari. Watching a movie in this theatre after a long time, it is the same lousy theatre. Not sure why they cannot renovate this? They have such a huge space available. The ticket cost Rs 40, which was a huge surprise also.  

Anyhow, coming to the movie this is the second directorial venture of Balaji Mohan after his successful debut - Kadhalil Sothapuvadhu Eppadi. 

Like his first movie this is also a light hearted rom-com. 

Cast includes Dulquer Salman, Nazriya Nazeem, Madhubala (Surprised to see her in mother's role already - still looks beautiful). 

Dulquer is an orphan and happy go lucky guy who works as a sales representative and his only aim is to become a RJ. He meets Nazriya who is a doctor and is in love with another person (this guy comes once in a while, we don't even know what he does for a living). Madhubala plays Nazriya's mother and Abhishek her father. Both look very young to play parents. 

The entire movie happens in a hill station. The people of the hill station suddenly get affected by "dumb flu". Things move along when government bans people from speaking as the flu spreads only when speaking. The entire second half of the movie is like a silent movie with no dialogues. 

Things flow along till the heroine dumps the other guy and falls for the hero and there is vaccine for the flu. 

Others in the cast include - Vinu Chakravarthy, John Vijay, Ramesh Tilak, Arjunan(seems to be a regular in Balaji Mohan's films), Robot Shankar and Pandiarajan. Balaji Mohan himself plays a TV news reader. 

Dulquer does a decent job in his first job. Nazriya has a sad look all through the movie and fits her role well. All support cast have done a decent job. 

Vaayai Moodi Pesavum and Kadhal arai onnu songs are really good. 

Overall it is a decent movie to watch. Good time pass.  

Latest Prediction for 2014 elections

Uttar Pradesh
BJP - 35
Congress - 8
SP - 20
BSP - 17

BJP will find it very difficult to cross the 35 mark as their organization structure fell apart after being out of power for nearly 2 decades. Even if they have support not sure if they can convert it to votes. This in itself is a tall order considering the fact that they have only 47 MLAs (12%).

Assam

One of the states where every pollster is agreeing that Congress will do well

Congress - 10
BJP + - 3

Punjab

Congress - 8
BJP + - 5

SAD is having a huge anti incumbency and that should really benefit Congress and the fact that they had some strong candidates also helps.

Tamil Nadu

BJP+ - 3
ADMK - 26
DMK - 10

Even though the alliance that BJP had formed looks formidable on paper they cannot win many seats. 3 is the max that they can win.

Andhra Pradesh

Congress messed up big time with the Telengana and the alliance/merger with TRS. However, there will be goodwill in the Telengana region which will help them win few seats.

Congress - 12
YSRC - 10
BJP + TDP - 12
TRS - 8

Chattisgarh

Raman Singh scrapped through in the assembly. He will do slightly better in the LS

BJP - 7
Congress - 4

Bihar

BJP - 10
LJP - 2
RJD - 10
Congress - 5
JDU - 13

Even though people are saying JDU will have huge reversals don't think that will happen. With a 3 way contest expect all 3 combos to get almost equal seats. BJP best case can get 3 more seats

Haryana

Vadra factor will play here.

BJP - 6
Congress - 4

INLD will get some of the anti incumbency votes. BJP at best can get 1 more seat. AAP can also play a spoiler here for BJP

Karnataka

Congress - 20
BJP - 6
JDS - 2

Best case for BJP is to get 4 more seats.

Kerala

LDF is still in ruins which only helps UDF

UDF - 14
LDF - 6

Odisha

BJD - 15
BJP - 4
Congress - 2

Gujarat

BJP - 22
Congress - 4

Gujarat has to vote for Modi. I wouldn't be surprised if one of the 4 seats that Congress wins is Gandhinagar, Modi is known for such things.

Maharashtra

BJP - 12
Congress - 14
SS - 10
NCP - 12

I strongly feel that MNS will still play the spoiler for the SS + BJP alliance even though they are primarily fighting only the SS. Best case for BJP is to win 5 more seats

Madhya Pradesh

Some strong candidates will ensure that Congress gets to double digits.

BJP - 19
Congress - 10

BJP can at best get 3 more seats

Rajasthan

This will be huge win for BJP like the assembly elections

BJP - 20
Congress - 5

Delhi

AAP - 2
Congress - 2
BJP - 3

Goa

BJP - 2

J&K

PDP - 1
Congress - 3
NC - 2

Himachal

Slogans like Dil Mange more will not work here

BJP - 2
Congress - 2

Uttarakhand

BJP - 2
Congress - 3

The rehabilitation post the floods will cause damage to Congress. BJP can win 1 more seat at best case

Tirupura

Left - 2

Sikkim

Congress - 1

Nagaland 

BJP+ - 1

Mizoram

Congress - 1

Meghalaya

Congress - 2

Manipur

Congress - 2

Arunachal 

Congress - 2

Union Territories

Congress - 3
BJP - 3

West Bengal

TMC - 25
Left - 12
Congress - 5

Jharkhand

BJP - 5
Congress - 6
RJD - 1
JMM - 2

BJP at best can win 2 more seats

Total
BJP+SS+SAD+TDP+LJP = 195
Congress+NC+RJD+NCP+JMM = 179
SP - 20
BSP - 17
Left - 20
DMK - 10
ADMK - 26
TMC - 25
YSRC - 10
JDU - 13
JDS - 2
BJD - 15
TRS - 8
AAP - 2
PDP - 1

How can BJP get to power?
BJP+ at best can add another 15 seats which will take it to 210 seats.

Another 62 -
TMC is completely ruled out with the recent utterances by TMC and BJP
SP is also ruled out
BSP is possible ally which will give them 17 seats
JDU and JDS are ruled out
Left is completely ruled out
BJD is a possible ally which will give another 15 seats
YSRC/TRS cannot be an ally as long as TDP is there in NDA
PDP is a possible ally with 1 more seat
Either ADMK or DMK could be a possible ally which will give them 25 or 10 seats.

Even then they will not be able to reach 272 unless they get few from the UPA like NCP or JMM or RLD. RJD and NC won't move over to NDA