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What is your idea about a horror movie with a creature in it? Well, it should have innumerable chase sequences with gory action from the creature, more lines of screams than the dialogues are a must and also ritually, it should also feature horrified humans struggling to overpower the being right. Much Like what we saw in “The Thing “or even the recent “Maze Runner”. But this is not true in the case of “Possession”, where the creature is the least horrid part of it. Yet it sutures terror, realistically into the viewer’s eyes even after the movie. Possession, the 1981 horror movie by Andrzej Zulawski reels through the life of Anna (Isabelle Adjani) who asks her husband Mark (Sam Neill) for a divorce without any reason. After a series of altercations, Anna starts to behave strangely and leaves home, an amused Mark initially discovers Heinrich (Heinz Bennent) as Anna’s lover. Mark then goes to meet Heinrich only to discover the fact that Anna does not go there too. He then devi...

The year was 2009, and my brother like every techie was hunting for a car, not just any car, one with a dickie specifically. For Indians, dickie or the boot is not just another colonial vocabulary hangover, it is rather a symbol of status. And this demand was addressed at the best format by none other than Maruti, with their Swift Dzire, the re-booted version of their most popular hatch, Swift. But, Dzire never came out of its maiden name, for people it was still “Swift with a boot”, however, it did manage to sell very well in the market. And after years of its launch, Maruti has finally tried a hand at separating Swift from Dzire, literally. The new Dzire is marketed without the name of its hatchback version and has undergone a massive shapeshift inside out. The new version has undergone a positive transformation from the glued boot car into a proper sedan. With curvy body lines and a snappy front grille, the car stands out from its competitors. The front grille is closer...

“Taxation is theft!” said Murray Rothbard a twentieth-century libertarian, but the twenty-first century India is celebrating the launch of a new national tax regime, Goods and Services Tax, abbreviated as GST. The launch is organized in an extravagant manner with a midnight launch resembling the announcement of Independence for India. The resemblances are very striking, we have the confused citizens across the nation and a clueless administration.                 “ I do not own a computer and at this age, it is not possible for me to even learn it. Even if I buy one I will not be able to afford a staff to operate it.” Says Ramdev, a cloth merchant from his hundred square feet shop in Maruthi Seva Nagar.” They are saying that it is mandatory to have a computer with internet to do the billing, what will I do? ” Retailers like Ramdev are the worst hit and they say that the implementation was in such a short ...

The new power plant in Yelahanka and the people around it “It is a candle,” said Keerthi the eight-year-old pointing at the cooling tower of the proposed LNG power plant in Yelahanka. “They say it is a gas plant, where they make electricity from gas,” said Renuka K mother of Keerthi. Their home at Kenchanahalli village of Yelahanka is a stone throw distance from the power plant that will produce 370 MW of electricity from Liquefied Natural Gas to meet the power demands of Bengaluru. The residents allege that the Karnataka Power Transmission Corporation Limited, KPTCL, the builder of the project has not even come once to them with the mandatory public hearing and they are clueless about the project. This is a plight that they share with the residents of more than a dozen apartment complexes that dot the boundary of the project area. “Earlier we had to suffer the dark fumes that came out of the diesel plant and now I wake up to these large structures and god knows what the futu...

Biriyani-ism, a tale of Bengaluru's own biriyani by Ajith M S Humans love classifications, tall-short, thin-fat, fair-dark, rich-poor they say it makes it easier for them to identify and to treat them 'differently'. What is ridiculous is that they have brought these divisions into food, as vegetarian and non-vegetarian, and most interestingly, they have given character to these discriminations too, non-veg is often erased conveniently from most of the tasty food charts and food reviews even.  Quite conveniently, the MTRs and Brahmins of Banashankari gets itself into most of the must-try lists of Bangalore for their dosas and idlis while Bengaluru’s own Muddhes and Koli saru is often shunned.  Another forgotten master from this fable is Karnataka’s very own Donne Biriyani, which roughly translates into, the biriyani that is served in palm leaf cups, mostly with a mutton embellishment. Unlike every other biriyani, there are versions of donne biriyani too, and the one from C...

Most of us have stronger admiration for things that are beyond our reach, the farther it is, the stronger our admiration would be. This peculiarity pushes us most of the times into a sorrow over our inability to acquire it. And much time is spent on things that are inaccessible and unavailable. But how often do we try to observe the things that exist around us? And how much we would have observed them and how many times do we have appreciated the things that are in our close reach, most of us will have a ‘nay’ within. The campus of our very own college, Kristu Jayanti College has one such example, most of us spend a good amount of time loitering through the circumference of it but efforts to understand and appreciate the most beautiful thing in the campus, its trees and plants are very rare. To start with, the patch of greenery beside the playground is home to over a dozen trees. Amongst it stands a majestic shade that students loosely refer to as, ‘the wisdom tree’. It is, i...

  AN ESCAPE TO THE ISLAND By Ajith M S   Trying to find sleep inside a crammed budget airliner is a task, especially when your tummy is filled with excitement and heart empty enough to fill countless memories, hence the time was ripe for a cinematic gaze into the serenity of the dark skies through the window while it whisked us through boundless darkness across the Indian ocean. Into the heights of it, we were greeted by the pilot, “good morning ladies and gentlemen we are now cruising at an altitude of 32,000 feet at about 780 kilometer per hour,   we will be commencing our descent to the Don Mueang Airport, Bangkok shortly“. Don Mueang Airport is Bangkok’s oldest airport that serves budget carriers exclusively, it does save a lot on flight charges if we book our flights to Don Mueang than to the posh and busy Suvarnabhumi airport of Bangkok. Choosing Don Mueang or DMK also comes with another advantage, the queues for visa on arrival and immigration there are...

  Flattered by chapathi,  when Pizza met chapati Ajith M S My mom and I are truly impressions of each other, during my early days I used to think of her as someone who imitates me, later did I realize that this resemblance was not learned but was something that came in, bloodwise.  Among the traits that were passed, the one thing that we had very much in common was the fact that we both were buyers, we loved buying which included even the eatables. But we both tanked miserably in culinary expertise, thankfully we had my dad to fill in there, a man with heightened sense of cooking. It was his absence that pushed us into the kitchen instead of the tables, being a Sunday it was ritual for us to cook something special, and my resolute mother decided to do the shopping for lunch leaving me with my long pending assignment work. An hour later she walked in without heavy shopping bags, surprisingly, and to my amazement she came to me and took out a bottle that read ‘sauce-p...

The Software biggie has announced Rs. 13,000 crore dividend bouquet for its shareholders in FY18. I nfosys CEO Vishal Sikka announced the Q4 results of the IT major on Thursday the 13th of April in Bangalore at the company headquarters. The event comes at a time when ripples across US and Europe are moving towards nationalist policies threatening the Indian IT industry and its workers. The numbers  The results have projected a growth of 6.5-8.5%, lower than the forecast by analysts at 7-9%, the company posted a revenue of  Rs. 17,120 crore, lesser than the last quarter revenue by 866 crores. And the company's net profit stood at Rs 3,603 crore. The highlight of the event The biggest announcement, however, is that the company will pay its investors Rs. 13,000 as dividends from the next financial year onwards. "The company currently pays dividends up to 50 percent of the post-tax profits and it has decided to increase this to 70 percent of the free cash flow from...

Storm water drain near Kormangala clogged with filth Problems with the storm water drains needs urgent attention before the next big flood Bengaluru, the landlocked capital of Karnataka has to depend on a system of  storm water drains  (SWD's) or rajakaluves both natural and man-made to discharge rain water. Unfortunately, most of these drains are encroached and have multiple floors of concrete over them. Added to this is the presence of large sewer pipes which run alongside the SWD's eventually obstructing its flow. Analysts point out these as potential factors that can lead to massive floods and lethal diseases. The ignored past “During rains, the swell was at Nagashettihalli lake, not our homes,” said Rayappa a second generation laundry worker pointing at the tall walls of Antariksh Bhavan, the headquarters of the Indian Space Research Organization near his dwelling in Bangalore. Rayappa could identify the depressions and tracks which led to the now d...

A screen grab of the time-lapse of cell division (source: Franchisee Films) When technology takes our eyes to birth of life The leaderboards of Youtube is occupied by two, time lapse videos that will blow your minds away, for it captures the creation of life or in simple words the birth of an organism. Shot by an independent film-maker  Francis Chee  who is famous for his wildlife documentaries on YouTube. The video shows the birth of a frog right from its single-celled beginning. Time-lapse photography, the technique of shooting a bunch of pictures at a fixed time interval and merging them together into a video, is not a new trend. It was used in film-making as early as 1890's by surreal filmmakers like  Georges Méliès' . However most of the videos concentrated either on flowers, landscapes or celestial occurrences, most recently the time lapse from the International Space Station offered a different perspective. part one (Source: Franchiseefil...

Imagine your living room with Every article about future of interactivity speaks extensively about virtual reality and augmented reality , every industry, from media to retail is prototyping one or the other form of these from urban centres to village corners. It was brought to the corners of India also, during the  national election campaign by BJP to bring omnipresence to Narendra Modi. The breakthrough However, existing virtual reality technologies use bulky headsets and can only be delivered to one person at a time, Lightform , a startup from San Francisco wants to create disruptions in this scene. Their technology is based on projected augmented reality or projection mapping as they call it. This technology has already amazed the world several times, it uses projectors or in some cases a single projector connected to a computer to create illusions on normal objects and environments. The tech behind This technology is also complicated as it requires seve...

A n expert in the field of understanding the functioning of brain,  Deborah Yurgelun-Todd once did a study where a group of people in their 20's were compared with a group of 40-year-old's and she found out that the younger group takes decision with their emotional part of their brain and the elder ones with the rational part or in simple words decision making capability is poor for the younger ones.               Now consider the decision-making process before selecting a partner, it is definitely a complex process and try imagining a younger you, deciding to get married based on gut reactions, isn't it terrifying. Unfortunately, this discourse is significant even in this 21st century India where 102 million girls were married before 18 years and 125 million boys before 21 years of age, that is roughly 30 and 42 percent of the corresponding population. The gravity of this issue calls for a deeper understanding of it. A closer...

How many Indian students studying abroad, had to face a post like this on facebook, none will be the obvious answer. Yet, this is a reality faced by Africans in India. The Indian obsession with lighter skin colour is a billion dollar reality evident from the worth of the Indian fairness cream market which is more than Rs. 3000 crores.This obsession, however, is manifesting in several unimaginable ways especially over the African community living in India. African nationals, mostly comprising of students and medical tourists, are served a differential treatment by the Indian public most of the times. They are often typecasted into being drug peddlers and prostitutes. They are attacked and abused on a daily basis in the country. Scaringly most of the attacks were led by unruly mobs who unleash violence without any humanistic regard. Added to this list are the unnatural deaths of African nationals which are often dismissed as drug overdose deaths or accident deaths, the re...

V ideos are at the podium of Indian internet consumption charts. With almost 432 million mobile internet users and a data speed average of 4.1 Mbps, Indian mobile internet users are buffering actively into videos.  According to the Visual Networking Mobile Index by the networking giant CISCO Indian users logged in from their mobiles to access video the most, currently, at 49 percent, this figure is expected to grow to 75 percent by the year 2021. Leading the roster is Youtube undisputedly with over 41.2 million regular users , Facebook video, from the social media giant, also is catching up with over 430 million views just in the month of December. video Create your own infographics There are few interesting subtexts in this growth story, The growth of user-generated content on youtube  Youtube, India's largest video-on-demand service has seen a huge influx in the percentage of content generated by commoners, it now stands at a whopping 90% according ...

F our months has passed since demonetization, and Prime Minister, Narendra Modi is at his all time popularity heights with the election victories in over three states. Indisputably, the demonetization saga truly was a historic event of modern India. This definitely calls for a look back, number wise. The numbers of demonetization Reportedly banks have received 14.97 trillion rupees of the 15.4 trillion rupees of currency demonetized. But, there has not been any official account of the exact figures. The state, however, expected a large chunk of money to get filtered out in the process, this led to a slew of changes in the objective of the whole exercise. There were upheavals of global scale against the policy from academic, economic and political poles. Among the voices against it, there were reports of low cash component in the illegal money flow system of India. Despite all this, the government completed the exercise completely without any partial rollbac...

The residential areas of Indiranagar has seen an exponential rise in the number pubs and eateries R esidents of Indiranagar, Bangalore, furious at the establishments, mostly pubs for ruining their peaceful existence have taken the matter into the streets. The residents, mostly senior citizens, have organised night protest marches across the area. "What we have to say is on the placards we hold. This protest is to show the disconnect between Governance and Resident Welfare," a resident said. Protest by Indiranagar Residents from Ajith M S on Vimeo . They allege that mushrooming of pubs and other eateries in large number have made drunken brawls, obstructive parking, loud music till three in the morning a common thing.Several inspections by Karnataka Pollution Control Board have found noise levels considerably higher than the permissible limits. Commercial establishments are strictly prohibited in residential areas with a road less that 40 feet as p...

    For representational purposes only (Source: pixabay) R apes are the most talked about crime against women, but strangely this is one crime where the offended is given more attention than the offender. And, the identity and circumstances of the offended is given prominence even during the court trials. Tabulating the offenders The offender is often dismissed either as a stranger in frustration or one who is provoked. This construct will be disturbed by the crime statistics of 2015 released recently by the National Crime Records Bureau. The statistics characterised the offenders in accordance with their relation to the offended. Rapists of India Create pie charts These numbers add to the goriness of the offenders, it was observed that a total of 488 rapes were committed by the father, brother or grand father of the offended, 2679 cases were committed by close relatives and a whopping 9508 cases by neighbours alone. In total 95.5 percent of the reported ...

Kerala budget 2017-18 an overview from Ajith M S on Vimeo . A quick overview of the Kerala budget 2017-18 presented on March 03rd by the Finance Minister Thomas Issac.

Dalit and tribal appeasement has been under the accusals against every ruling party across years, yet when it comes to figures the matter is of great concern. As India marches towards another financial year with better GDP forecasts, the numbers concerned with Dalits and Tribals does not seem to be adding up with the debates and talks from the state and public alike.  Even the budgetary allocations are not spent. Let us look at the spent versus unspent figures from the previous budgets.  tribal and schedule caste unspent Create line charts In numbers, this unspent amount is eight times larger than India's agricultural budget, enough to fund India's rural road construction projects for the next 15 years, it is also larger than the gross domestic produce of Nepal. If India were to distribute this 2.8 lakh crore among all of India's 250 million STs and SCs, each of them would get Rs. 11,289. This disparity exists in a place where Dalits and tribals f...

N ews, the only non-violent desire that every human possess, started as hearsays, folks or to the best as government proclamations until the seventeenth century. News got democratised, structured and organised after the advent of “ Relation aller Fürnemmen und gedenckwürdigen Historien ”, world’s first weekly newspaper.  During the early days, newspapers were textual and serious yet popular. They only carried columns of text, and it took two whole centuries for the first headline to ornate newspapers, this heralded the first method of condensing information into smaller and fewer words devoid of textual pleasantries. It was followed by the use of illustrations in the year 1806 by ‘The Times’ and later as pictures during the 1880’s by ‘The Daily Graphic’. The birth of Infographics During this same period in a parallel timeline, infographics were progressing steadily but confined mostly to science and technological illustrations. It first appeared in a book named ‘Rosa Ursin...