La Loo !!

The following photographs were taken inside an AC 2 Tier compartment of an Indian Train.

In case you are wondering what the gadgets above are, these are Toilet Occcupancy Indicators, giving passengers inside the compartment an idea about whether the toilets are occupied or not. Trust the Indian Railways to come up with such ingenious innovations.

Needless to say, the indicators always showed the "Vacant" sign irrespective of whether the toilet was occupied or not.

My favorite TV shows

Off late, I have been thinking about some TV shows that I have loved watching over the years. These are shows I can watch again and again, whenever they are telecast on TV.

1. Yes Minister (and it's later Indian version "Ji Mantri Ji")- Classic British humor. For all you fans of "Friends" and other American sitcoms, I believe nothing comes anywhere close to the instantaneous bureaucracy bashing wit of this legendary British show. I loved the Indian version as well, but was disappointed that it turned out to be an exact copy of the original, whereas introduction of a few nuances of Indian politics into the script would have made it many times more relevant and interesting. Alas, the Indian version had too few episodes.

2. B.R. Chopra's Mahabharat - It was this epic TV series that kick-started my fascination with the story of Mahabharat. The production values and manner of story telling in this serial were far superior than the other mythological epic telecast on Doordarshan in the 1980's, Ramanant Sagar's Ramayan (Particularly infuriating were the repetative scenes where opponents used to hurl arrows at each other in war, and the arrows took almost the entire length of the episode to hit each other.). My fondness for the show also stems from the inherent beauty of the multi-leyered story line of this epic. Ekta Kapoor's recent Kahani Hamarey Mahabharat Ki is just a gaudy remake of the original.

3. Flop Show - This is unquestionably the best satirical comedy telecast on Indian television. No show before or after this, has been able to expose the idiosyncrasies of Indian society and the inefficiencies of Indian bureaucracy in the same laugh-out-laud way as this show. Office-Office is the only other show that comes close, but is not in the same league. Even Jaspal Bhatti has not been able to re-create the same magic in any other show since. The amount of humor packed into each episode o the show was truly incredible. Each episode which dealt with a different problem in the life of a common man, consisted of a small joke in the beginning, the main storyline in the middle, and a parody song in the end. Sheer genius!!

4. Star Trek - As a child with a fascination for sci-fi and space, Star Trek had to be one of my favorites. Apart from the sci-fi elements, I loved Captain Kirk's at times arrogant personality and Spock's funnily shaped ears!! "Beam Me Up, Scotty" is my all time favorite TV dialogue.

Worst movies I have seen..

I am not a great movie buff. I watch very few hindi movies. Hence, I am perhaps not the best person to write a blog post on this topic, as I have not seen a lot of gems like Love Story 2050, Bichchu, Oh Darling Yeh Hai India, Safari, Apne etc.

Yet, I have been lucky enough to watch a few landmark movies that will undoubtedly go down as one of the worst in the history of Indian cinema. I call myself lucky since I am sure the number of people who have seen the following films can be counted on fingertips. The idea was not to list poor movies, but the absolute worst of the lot.

1. RGV ki Aag (2007) - This film will almost certainly go down as the biggest disaster in Bollywood history, the greatest damp squib of all times. What strikes you most is the mockery it made of exceptional actors like Amitabh Bachchan and Mohan Lal. Absolutely none of the elements of the original Sholey, like the bond between Jai and Veeru, Thakur's internal angst, Gabbar's menace etc. get depicted anywhere near as well as the original. RGV might have been better off projecting his movie as a comic spoof of Sholey rather than a serious remake, as a majority of the audience came out laughing from the theater at this utterly ridiculous attempt at mimicking a classic.

2. Gajagamini (2000) - To call this movie "bad" is an injustice to it. "Incomprehensible" is a more apt description. Watching this movie was like staring at a Modern Art painting, trying to figure our the hidden meanings behind the abstract expressions. I am sure not many apart from Mr. M.F. Hussain have been able to figure them out. Even Hussain's muse Madhuri was so embarrassed that she did not turn up for the film's premier !!

3. Badhti Ka Naam Daadhi (1974) - This movie, which must have been conceived by Kishore Kumar during of of his eccentric fits, was an attempt to recreate the magic of the 50's hit "Chalti Ka Naam Gaadi". The horrendous nature of the movie is aptly illustrated by the absurd premise of the story. A rich old man mentions in his will that he would give away his fortune to the person with the longest beard. The lucky man turns out to be Kishore Kumar, whose beard it longer than his height itself. the rest of the film has a few goons chasing him with scissors, and the Kishore Kumar dodging them successfully. The least one expected from a Kishore Kumar movie was some good music, but this film was a monumental let down on that front too.

4. Jaani Dushman - Ek Anokhi Kahaani (2002) - Raj Kumar Kohli's suicidal attempt to remake his 1976 hit Nagin and launch the acting career of his son Armaan Kohli. The saying "Money can't buy everything" is apt for this hopeless film. It is very apparent that the makers spent a fortune in trying to re-create special effects of major Hollywood blockbusters, but it seems that they completely forgot to make any attention to the storyline itself. How else can you justify the hero of the movie just having a couple of lines to speak, inspite of being present in almost half of the scenes. Anyone watching this film should not forget to catch Sonu Nigam doing some of the worst acting ever seen on the silver screen. No wonder no one has heard of Raj Kumar and Armaan Kohli ever since.

Note:- I have confined my selection to A list (big budget and leading star cast) films. I have not looked at B grade movies like countless Mithun-da flicks (Truck Driver Suraj, Kaliya, Chandaal to name a few) for my selection, since such movies are meant to be poor by definition.

I am sure readers of this post would recall many other equally horrible movies they have seen. Comments invited.

Arbit Choudhury turns 4 !!

Today is a very special day for me. Today Arbit Choudhury celebrates his 4th Birthday!!

The last 4 years have been an incredible journey for us. When we first conceived the idea way back in 2004 - it started as an attempt to create humor out of our B-school lifestyles, textbooks, syllabi and jargon. Today, the flavor of Arbit humor has expanded to cover corporate life, business lingo, management concepts, and occasionally even social happenings.

Comments, criticisms, encouraging mails and most importantly unwritten and unspoken support that fans have given Arbit over the last 4 years have kept us going.

To mark this special occasion, we have released a new version of the Arbit Choudhury website www.arbitmba.com today, replete with cool features like Tag Clouds, Rating Widgets etc.

This is in fact the 3rd version of the Arbit website. Today, let me go down memory lane and display the various versions of the Arbit Choudhury Website over the years..

Arbit Choudhury Website V1.0 (launched on 16th January 2005)

Arbit Choudhury Website V2.0 (launched on 5th September 2006)

Arbit Choudhury Website V3.0 (launched on 5th September 2008)

I Bowled at Geoffrey Boycott :-)

Readers of this blog know that I am a big Cricinfo fan, and visit the site quite regularly to get my dose of Cricket news, articles and stats. A few days back, I had posted a question in the "Bowl at Boycs" section. Mr. Boycott has replied to the same here. (My question is the 4th in the list.)

Chakravyuha Demystified

As I have mentioned before, I have been fascinated by the epic tale of Mahabharata since childhood. I have frequently pondered over the numerous nuances of the story, trying to figure out how and why things happened as they did, and what was the hidden message behind it all.

One of my areas of interest has been the Chakravyuha formation used by Dronacharya to kill Abhimanyu. I have often wondered what the formation actually looked like, and why was it so difficult to breach? I have been trying to uncover the answers to some of my questions through some internet research. As with any epic that has been handed down through countless generations, the anecdotes from Mahabharata have been interpreted and presented in various ways by various people. Since I have encountered various interpretations of the Chakravyuha incident as well, I have tried to stitch together a theory that satisfies most of them.

Why was the Chakravyuha so difficult to breach?

The most plausible explanation I have encountered is as follows:-

The word Chakravyuha is made up of Chakra meaning circle or ring and Vyuha meaning formation.

Some sources describe the Chakravyuh is a formation consisting of 7 concentric circles of warriors rotating in unison[5]. This is supported by the way the formation is depicted in the famous TV series Mahabharat [7], by B.R.Chopra, as shown in the snapshots below -

Another representation of the formation is in the shape of a 7 layered rotating spiral. Images on the Wiki page for Chakravyuha illustrate this [1].

I personally feel that the spiral formation depicted in Wikipedia is more credible than the 7 ring formation, as it is also engraved in some ancient Indian temple sculptures.

The Chakravyuha was specially difficult to penetrate since the attacker is not able to focus on a still target in front as the targets keep changing with the rotation of the Chakras. Even if an attacker can penetrate one ring and get inside the Chakravyuha, the rotating nature of the vyuha makes sure that the ring he has penetrated closes behind him. As a result, the attacker is trapped within the Chakravyuha.

How did Abhimanyu come to know about the way to break the Chakravyuha?

It is well known that Abhimanyu learnt the method to enter the Chakravyuha while he was inside his mother's womb. But there is some confusion on who actually mentioned the method to Abhimanyu's mother Subhadra. While most versions mention that it was Arjun who was explaining the method to Subhadra, some versions mention that he heard the method from Krishna [6]. But the thing that is consistent across versions is that Subhadra fell asleep midway and hence Abhimanyu could not listen to the way one could exit from the Chakravyuha.

Now to the major question.

What exactly was the technique for breaking into the Chakravyuha?

Here are some of the inferences I have drawn based on my research.

The rotating Chakravyuha consisted of warriors of various caliber. The Other Pandavas were not able to breach it because of 2 reasons. 1. They attacked the stronger warriors in the ring and were repelled. 2. As soon as they started to get an upper hand on one warrior, the ring rotated and another Kaurava warrior confronted them.

Abhimanyu overcame this by attacking the warriors to the left and right of him, and not the ones directly in front. [2] . As the ring rotated, the gap he had created to his left or right came in front of him and he penetrated with Chakravyuha. He repeated the same for all the rings.

Another version of the story states that Arjuna had mentioned the "right time to enter" and the "right words to enter" the Chakravyuha to Abhimanyu [4]. This seems to indicate that there was some sort of key to the jigsaw puzzle using which Abhimanyu broke through the maze. The key perhaps indicated the weak points in the formation, which should be attacked in order to break through them.

As he broke through each ring, Abhimanyu defeated one great Kaurava warrior after another. He trounced Jayadratha, Dronacharya, Karna and Aswathama in the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th rings respectively[5]. It was after he had penetrated 6 rings did all Kaurava warriors join hands to attack him in unison, that resulted in his demise.

But there are some more questions that I am yet to find answers too. Like why could Abhimanyu not apply the same method that he used to enter the Chankravyuha, to exit from it as well? What was the difference in the method between entering and exiting the Chakravuyuha? Perhaps Kaurava’s joint attack into him could be the reason, as he didn’t even get a chance to apply the same logic of entering the Chakravyuha, in getting out of it. But this is just a guess from my side.

I suppose we will never be able to get exact answers to all these questions. As it is said in the Mahabharat, only 4 people; Abhimanyu, Arjuna, Krishna and Pradyumna; knew how to breach this formation. Since Ved Vyas, who recited the great epic, himself did not know the secret, how could he mention how it was supposed to be done in the story.

I have based this blog post on the limited amount of information I have been able to rummage through the Internet. For all you know, I might be completely off the mark in my conclusions. Anyone reading this blog post who can share more information about the Chakravyuha formation in Mahabharata that can help be refine this article is welcome to post a comment here.

References:-

1. The Wiki entry

2. Mahabharata - A Modern Rendering - Jayadratha's Moment

3. Mahabharata Summary - Abhimanyu

4. Chakravyuha - by Adil Jussawalla

5. The Crest Jewel: srimadbhagwata Mahapuran with Mahabharata

6. Master the Mind Monkey: Experience Your Excellence - By Anand Patkar

7. Chakravyuha Episode - in Mahabharat TV Series by B.R.Chopra