Stack Smashing

As a college student I was highly intrigued by the concept of Stack Smashing. A very interesting article was published by Aleph One, in the 1996 edition of Phrack magazine. The title read, and I can still very well recall it, "Smashing the stack for Fun and Profit".

I tried to write the mystifying code again, and came up with this version.

#include"stdio.h"
void func();
int main()
{

int i = 9;

func();

i=8;

printf("%x\n",i);

return 0;

}

void func()
{
char buff[4];
int *p;

p = buff;
*(p+3) += 7;
}


instead of going to i=8, we branch the return address in the func() to the printf statement.

The stack looks somewhat like this

buff[4] is 4bytes long : 1 WORD
SFP_saved frame pointer: 1 WORD
RETURN Adress : 1 WORD

So we make ptr p point to buff. Then increment it by 3 WORDS in the stack.
Now we open objdump to check the relative distance between the current return address and the desired return address.

$ objdump -d a.out | less
/main
we search for the main function in the elf file after disassembling it. We find the return address after call \; that is the current return address. Now we would branch it to the next statement. It turns out to be 7 locations far. Hence now we replace p[3]=p[3]+7.

The STACK has been SMASHED yet again.

Ordeal of a poor man

This incidence took place yesterday somewhere in Bangalore. I know about this because the person who witnessed this about-to-be-told unfortunate sequence of events happens to be a friend of my cook. “Babu” is a migrant worker from Kolkata, in Bangalore.

Bangalore has a thriving business in the food-beverages sector. Mainly because most working here are IT professionals hailing from various regions across the country. So Babu’s work here is to go to various households across Bangalore and cook food for the people who either fall short of time, or don’t know the art of cooking. It was to be yet another Thursday for him. However, yesterday he had planned to send some money back home where his wife resides, using Money Order, a service provided by the Indian Postal Service.

He withdrew some money from the nearest ATM, and went straight to the bank to avoid getting late for the day’s work. The amount he withdrew was Rs.2500/-. In return he got 2 notes of thousand and 5 notes of hundred. Upon handing over the aforementioned sum to the man at the counter, he got a reply that the notes of thousand were fake. Before going any further I must mention that INR 2500 is a big portion of the monthly income of a cook in Bangalore. He earns this sum by working in various households within a radial region of say around 5km. Coming back to the scene, he was told by the post-office official that he would be handed over to the Police and he would tear the notes. Babu got shivers upon hearing this and began to plead his innocence. He was let off by the officials, after they were convinced that it was Babu’s bad-luck that he got fake currencies this morning from an ATM. Next thing, Babu goes to the respective bank and explains to an official there as to what he went through in the morning. Given it was a government bank, he was asked to go to another desk, and another and so on. However, he clinched on to the receipt which he had received after the transaction in the ATM. On his fourth and yet unfailing attempt, the transaction details were checked by the bank-officials and his money was finally returned back to him.

The poor fellow finally called it a day, and didn’t go to work.

I haven't mentioned any names here other than that of Babu's because there is nothing I would achieve by maligning anybody's image

Copenhagen

This week I got the opportunity to witness another play titled “Copenhagen” written by the playwright Michael Frayn. The play was divided into two parts, with a break of fifteen minutes in between. It lasted for around two and a half hours.

‘Copenhagen’ is based around three characters, “Margrethe Bohr”, “Niels Bohr”, and “Werner Heisenberg”. As the play starts, Heisenberg mentions that he is known down the history line for two things, “Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle” and “his meeting with Niels Bohr in 1941”. The plot revolves around the later; a meeting whose details are shrouded with mystery, till date. The starting few lines as narrated by Heisenberg made sure that the play got all my focus till the end. Heisenberg says, “…No one understands my trip to Copenhagen. Time and time again I’ve explained it. To Bohr himself, and Margrethe. To interrogators and intelligence officers, to journalists and historians. The more I’ve explained, the deeper the uncertainty has become. Well, I shall be happy to make one more attempt.”

Heisenberg was 39 and Bohr was 55, with Heisenberg having already been awarded the Noble Prize in Physics, in 1932. While Bohr was slow and carefully thought his every move, Heisenberg on the other hand believed in immediate action and not contemplation. They both shared great rapport, mainly because Heisenberg did his research under Niels Bohr in Copenhagen and spent a lot of time with him, discussing theoretical physics and particle nature of matter. When Heisenberg met Bohr in 1941, it was the primetime of German onslaught in Europe during the World War 2. The Gestapo was keeping track of all of Heisenberg’s movements. So, Heisenberg had to convey what he had to, to Bohr with utmost attention. According to Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle both position and momentum of a particle cannot be known simultaneously. He draws a parallel from his principle when asked by Magrethe in 1947(second act) to disclose the words shared during the brief meeting that he had with Bohr in 1941. He says that, he could either covey his regards to Bohr or think about what he had to convey. Similarly he cannot clearly recall what talk they had back then. But he could ramify any worth while conclusion only by re-constructing the meeting, but nothing could be said precisely.

From what I feel, Bohr realized during this meeting that Heisenberg understood how to create controllable fission reaction, and use it for preparing any warhead for the Germans; which could later be used on cities like London, or Paris. Hereon, Bohr resented talking any further on this topic with Heisenberg; and “the meeting of 1941” ends abruptly. However, after the World War 2 was over and they meet again in 1947 Bohr tries to contemplate, failure of the Germans to come up with a nuclear weapon. He tries to dig deep into Heisenberg’s head and fathom why he didn’t come up with a Nuclear weapon. Heisenberg blames it on lack of time and certain pre-assumptions that he had made before hand when trying to create Nuclear Fission Reaction. Over this, Bohr exclaims and says that Heisenberg always made use of mathematics as the initial tool and got his facts right before taking up any problem. He adds that Heisenberg couldn’t have got his calculations wrong and wouldn’t have made presumptions.

The play as a whole was inundated with dialogues and ideas, covering words not just of Physics but also of Politics. One had to really sit through and concentrate on the ideas that were being shared between the three, to get a glimpse of the Uncertain that was talked upon.

Antaheen

I witnessed a Hindi adaptation of Jean-Paul Sartre's 1944 existential play Huis Clos (No Exit). It was titled "Antaheen" (translated to "Endless" in English), and directed by Manav Kaul.

The play is based around 3 characters, a martyred soldier, a beautiful girl who married an older man to make ends meet and a woman whose mystery is unravelled (upto an extent) as the play progresses. As the play begins the new arrivals to hell begin to seek answers to trivial questions like, "Where are all Satan's guards?", etc. However, after a time they realise that they have been subjected to a banished state wherein they cannot sleep, the star-light in the chamber never goes off, they cannot even bat an eye-lid, and they have to spend all their time in this setup, for an eternity. It is an unwelcome state where one can no more go through the biological cycle that he went through back on earth.

This according to the play is Hell. As a matter of fact, every two characters in the chamber turns out to be a torture for the third. Each one of them starts to quarrel with the other and tries to find his own way out. At times they claim that they didn't deserve what they have been subjected to. But as the play progresses they show a shade of what they had been, back on Earth. With the plot's progression they start to confess to most sins, that they think they had committed. However, they still keep the deepest of secrets to themselves. Until they realise that there has been no change in the current environment, right from when they had all arrived. That's what forces them to speak out the main reason why they feel they are in Hell; believing that they would be freed now, or at least witness a change in conditions. The next moment the attendant who had initially escorted each one to this chamber comes back, throws a javelin on to floor and departs. The three charge for the javelin and the stage goes dark. When the lights are back on, the state of the chamber remains the same.

All in all it was a good play backed by some very good performance by the actors.

This is just my interpretation of the play, and could very well have a different meaning all together.

Who do we vote for now?

It's really paradoxical.

The party whom the majority cast their valuable votes for, is the one which caused disruption across the state of West Bengal yesterday. Public properties were vandalised in a manner, which seem well planned.

What does humanity gain out of this? Have we become so deaf, that people take to violence of this order, to be heard.



The unanimous victory on the part of INC/TMC alliance in the recent parliamentary election reflected the tumour of distrust which had built-up over a period of more than three decades, in hearts of the people of Bengal, over the current rulers of the state, the CPI(M).

Who do we vote for now?


Picture courtesy: The Telegraph, http://www.telegraphindia.com

iPod on Linux (Mandriva)

After struggling for 4 hours... i've finally been able to zero in on Banshee.... other contestants were, Gtkpod, Rhythmbox, Amarok.

The newly configured Banshee
- syncs all my music and videos on my iPod,
- also am able to sync videos via YouTube now

I dont have much reason for logging back into Windows now... minus the few FIFA sessions.

Other contestants lost out in the following areas:-

1. gtkpod: Very Slow, I killed it twice (kill -9) and I don't know as such about the sync part.
2. rhythmbox: Pretty good, but I can't sync songs between my localhost and iPod.
3. amarok: Can't sync, also Videos are not to be found.

Jerome Syndrome

The very first case of swine flu was reported in our office on Thursday.
In the backdrop of this news came various rumours.

I had just had tens of "gulab-jamuns" (an Indian sweet), the previous day which resulted in a stomach upset. My fear came true when "I browsed through the symptoms of swine-flu on an advisory website.

The symtoms listed were:

• High-fever: I didn't have this.
• Cold : the Bangalore climate, makes me feel that I have caught one.
• Cough: A perenial problem that I have been having since childhood; good that I don't have it now.
• Diarrhea: Just had a cocktail of assortments the previous day, followed by the "gulab-jamuns".
  
• Chills: I have the Bangalore winds to blame.

A score of 3 on 5, is good enough to seep doubts in my head. I have been taking all precautionary measures since then and have been drinking a lot of water. After a reached office today(Monday), I realised that I am not the only one who has such feelings about oneself.

This reminds me of a phobia which Jerome K. Jerome has explained in the starting pages of his evergreen book, "Three men in a boat". Wherein he thinks that he suffers from all known diseases in the world minus one, which happened to be some knee related problem.

Me

Mr. Ramaswamy came across this young lad, when he was on a trip to North Bengal.
He quotes on his blog, "I had been travelling in some of the districts of north Bengal (Murshidabad, Dakshin Dinajpur and Koch Bihar). That was a most humbling, educative and inspiring experience. Living in Calcutta, life can be bleak. But my travels through rural Bengal filled me with cheer and hope, as I witnessed the promise of a new dawn for the people in the land of Bengal. A watershed in my life, self-discovery, roots, renewal..."

Subroto looks very similar to how I appeared, when I was busy running around in the fields of the RIMC. Especially the center lawn.

He is from Bhelapeta 2 village, under Natabari Gram Panchayat, in the Tufanganj 1 Block of Koch Bihar district in North Bengal.

The school children have to cross a wide river by boat every day to get to school, or walk a long distance. A bridge across the river is badly needed. These are the areas, utterly neglected by the ruling party, even though they had been the elected representatives here at every level for years and years.

What? BUG??

Being a developer, every BUG found during software-test phase makes my life hell. However, if seen from a different perspective it also brings to many in the software industry "JOB".

The whole system of software development is such that; BUGs are bound to hit in the nascent phase of Software development.

So why call it BUG? For those who already have an answer to this. Have you seen THE BUG(literally)?

In 1947, Grace Murray Hopper was working on the Harvard University Mark II Aiken Relay Calculator (a primitive computer).

On the 9th of September, 1947, when the machine was experiencing problems, an investigation showed that there was a moth trapped between the points of Relay #70, in Panel F.

The operators removed the moth and affixed it to the log. The entry reads: "First actual case of bug being found."

courtesy: http://www.jamesshuggins.com/h/tek1/first_computer_bug.htm

We didn't start the fire

An extract from "Narcissism and Despair" by Ashis Nandy

The killers who struck at New York on 9/11 and the regimes that claim absolute moral superiority over them share some common values. Both believe that when it comes to Satanic others, all terror is justified as long as it is counter-terror and interpreted as retributive justice. Both look like belated products of the twentieth century, which in retrospect looks like a century of terrorism and its natural accompaniment, collateral damage.

Songs on Singur

TATAs have been in the good books, of most of the people that I know. If I group together the people I just mentioned; they would mostly be people belonging to the upper middle class. The people of the order of Managers working for MNCs earning hefty salaries. I am talking about the people who would never feel the need to buy the Nano themselves, but have an opinion about everything under the sun. I came across an article posted by “Dipankar Dey” on SANHATI dot com this morning. (Thanks to Mr. Ramaswamy)

All pieces of the TATA MOTORS-jigsaw puzzle seem to come to their rightful place. I can now see the complete picture. The real picture.

The TATA motors were due to come out with the world's cheapest car named “Nano”, in November 2008. To the general Indian mass, TATA is a company which always lives up to its promise and delivers on time. But then, just weeks before the first car was supposed to roll out; there was mass uprising in Singur where the TATA Nano factory was being set up. The reason being that the fertile land of the farmers was taken away from a majority of them by force. The person leading the protest was Mamata Banerjee, who was later made a scapegoat by the TATA, and the ruling Left Front in Bengal in the name of “Enemy of progress”. By doing this Left Govt. seemed to have forgotten the fact that more than 50,000 small or medium sized industries had vanished from West Bengal within a span of 20 years.

TATA needed time and money, which it did not have then (end of 2008) to come up with the car as promised. So it took benefit of the circumstance, by having done the following:-

• It used to its advantage the unhealthy competition among different states to attract large capital.

• Effectively use the parliamentary politics as a business strategy to convert an internal crisis into an advantage.

• Finally, involve the government as a business partner (either directly on indirectly).

In return the TATAs gained the following

• It earned/added 5(five) crucial months to the deadline. (November, 2008 – March, 2009).

• Low production cost: The cost to produce cars became way low because of the following reasons. Since January, 2008 the following trends have been observed.

• The prices of cold steel have come down by 28%.

• The prices of rubber have reduced by 19%.

• The excise duty levied by the Government, has reduced from a sixteen (16 %) to an eight percent (8 %).

• Equally importantly, the prices of Crude Oil have come down a landslide 51 %.

• It even generated much needed revenues in times of global financial crisis. The buyers were asked to place deposits in advance. Which earned them a whopping 1 billion dollars. They were in much need of this money after having spent as much as 2.3 billion dollars in the JLR acquisition deal; form their running costs.

Singur was supposed to be the factory cum set-up where major car parts were not to be manufactured, but assembled. The project in Singur was abandoned in October, 2008; however, till today the land on lease has not been returned to the rightful owners (farmers). Off recently TATA has even expressed the willingness to renew the lease agreement. All of it sounds like a well planned strategy. TATA might return back to Singur in the near future for as long as the nexus between them and the ruling party continues. But then, for what the rest of the country thought as disgraceful on the part of Mamata Banerjee, she has proved them all wrong in the recent parliamentary elections (held every 5 years). Her party the “All India Trin-mool Congress” has won 19 out of 42 seats in West Bengal, and her allies have secured 6. That makes it a total of 25/42 seats in West Bengal for the UPA. That's the highest ever seats won by parties in alliance, who are opposed to the agendas of the Left.

Reference: http://sanhati.com/articles/1484/

Yet another Saturday

Saturday, is the day I admire the most in a week. The only closest contender would be a Friday night. I usually go to play soccer with my friends from SAMSUNG. Just on the previous week we had played against two Korean sides. However, this weekend I had something else in store for myself. Sreenath, my project manager had planned out a weekend trek, he had his own reason for this, his wife was going to arrive back in town the next morning. The plan was chalked out within a matter of few hours, and the only confirmation of it was a mail in our inbox, that we need to be present in M.G. Road the next morning dot at six.

I had doubts until next morning whether I would be able to make it to the meeting point on time or not. After all, I've always let the sun rise before me. My alarm rang at five in the morning and that's when the “Battle of Loo” was won. It was predicted that my evil side was about to experience a land-slide victory, its manifesto was, “Just go back to sleep, it wouldn't take you more than a few minutes”, On the other hand the angels in white, reassured, “You're gonna regret it babe! This is a trek you don't wanna miss”. So in the next very fleeting moment I was out of my bed, racing against time to make it.

We all got together within the expected time-frame and decided to go forth in our journey 90km. Away from the city to a place called, “Savandurga”. It is believed to be one of the largest monolithic rocks in the world. We reached there in about 2 hours time, by the looks of it, the rock which was of the size of a hill looked majestic. The best Savandurga is that, that there is hardly any grass on the surface of the rock, as a result of which there are no foot-marks to be found, which one can trace to reach atop. So, now we had to find our own path. This reminds me of Graph Theory, searching for the best possible path. Mind you, best possible doesn't necessarily mean the shortest. Just when we had begun our ascent I realised that I was stuck, and I couldn't contemplate going downwards either as the slope was high. Needless to say, since I am writing this down, I came out alive after a little work around.





Since we got there early in the morning, the climb wasn't that tough, otherwise the rock gets hot by noon and the climb becomes far more difficult. We found a lake in the middle of our course and decided to squatter there for sometime. The lake exists around the area where there are ruins of an old fort. The name Savandurga comes from “Savina” meaning death and “Durg” meaning fort. In other words the fort of death. Offenders were thrown down, from the top of the rock. We spent most of our time there.

After that we made a final move towards the top, we reached there without much hassle; I on the other hand had banged my head on a tree branch which was protruding near an ascent. There is not much space on the top, by much I mean it can cater to around 20-30 people at a time. There is a temple dedicated to Nandi - the ride of Lord Shiva, the only other thing present there is a flag-post.

After a brief photo session we decided to get back to our car (Sreenath's Indica). We had our lunch in a dhaba on the highway and were dropped back at M.G. Road. By this time it had begun to rani heavily, and Indro was confused searching for his bike which he had left there in the morning. For a while we thought that it was towed, but on our second scan we spotted his blue Honda Unicorn, standing right where he had left it. There were tens of bikes parked on both the sides which caused the fuss.

We went to Blossoms and I bought few books there, “A passage to India” by E.M. Forster, “Three men in a boat” by Jerome K. Jerome, and “The Odessa File” by Frederick Forsyth. I am currently reading “Birck Lane” by Monica Ali and I'm think of reading “The Odessa File” next.

THINK

A comment by philosopher Alan Watts (from the "Houseboat Summit" panel discussion in a 1967 edition of the San Francisco Oracle) reflected a growing sentiment of the times:

"Our educational system, in its entirety, does nothing to give us any kind of material competence. In other words, we don't learn how to cook, how to make clothes, how to build houses, how to make love, or to do any of the absolutely fundamental things of life. The whole education that we get for our children in school is entirely in terms of abstractions. It trains you to be an insurance salesman or a bureaucrat, or some kind of cerebral character."

Soccer Competition

This Saturday (2nd of May), we participated in a Soccer tournament, organised by the Korean community based in Bangalore. SAMSUNG was represented by 2 teams.

SAMSUNG-A comprised of Rakesh(GK), Inyub(DEF), Sony(DEF), Stan(ST/MID), Vinod(ST/MID), HARI(ST).
SAMSUNG-B comprised of Brijesh(GK), Rana(DEF), Amul(DEF/MID), Jenny(ST/MID), Tarun(ST/MID/DEF).

The SAMSUNG team plays with Chelsea's 3rd KIT (yellow) for the year 2008-09 season.

A total of 8 team participated in the knock-out competition; played in an indoor stadium, which was covered by net from all the sides including the roof. This meant that the game would never cease, to give us some respite until the half-time or the final whistle was blown. Each half was played for a period of 15 minutes. Since the ground was small and the number of players less, we were on our toes throughout the span of the game.

Both the SAMSUNG teams made it to the semis. A first match win was all it took us to get there. We were to face more formidable opposition this time around. SAMSUNG-B (the team that I played for) won the first match by a comfortable 12 goals to 2. We faced an aged but agile Korean team in this match, but our physical presence made it difficult for them to find any breathing space on the field. I must admit that as defenders we were playing a physical and man-to-man game to make up for lack of skills on our part. SAMSUNG-A on the other hand won their 1st match too, with a score of 13-9, they were 0-3 down in the first 2 minutes.

In the second match we took the lead in the first 2 minutes, but the opposition donning "Juventus" jerseys hit 3 into our net before half-time, the score read 1-3. In the second half both sides attacked fiercely on the opposition goal-posts. Our number of shots on goal was far higher than the, total number of shots taken by the opposition team, however the opposition goal-keeper was at his prime form, which was furthermore augmented by the cheers of many a Korean girls witnessing a not-so historic match. The second half seemed like a stalemate and both teams could salvage one goal each. The match ended with the scoreline reading 2-4. We didn't qualify for the finals. Throughout the span of 30 minutes it seemed that there was a warrant raised against my name, courtesy my show in the previous match and people were determined to badger me to broken limbs. Thanks to the good spirit of our opposition, we were never in a mood to crib over the loss. We bowed and shook hands, just as we did before the kick off.

In the mean time we got the news that SAMSUNG-A had pulled off a victory in the semis, after a nail-biting penalty shoot-out. There full time score read 6 all. So the final was poised to be played between CHELSEA and JUVENTUS. On any other day I would have gone ALL-IN for the Turin side, as blues have never been in my good books and I am a Gunner. But then it was Stan and Co. going full barrel into the finals. The Korean side which defeated us sometimes back ended up defeating SAMSUNG-A as well, with the final score reading 5-6. The match was well fought, with the Korean side having a slight edge over the opposition, throughout the match.

Taking Over

Life only comes to a standstill when I think of the moment when I first met Steph. The downpour was heavy that night, and the sound of rain-drops hitting the earth was like a semi-charm asking me to leave my study and get soaked in the first rain of the year. There she was laughing and screaming, hands spread out to the Gods. How possibly could someone have hijacked my idea? It was supposed to be my share of Joy, the usual world of silence and dereliction.

She had just come out of a broken relationship and wasn't keen on continuing any conversation with me. Even while she said she didn't wish to talk, she spoke. She spoke about herself with an air of confidence which only intrigued me more towards her. I said to myself, “Here she is, the Vice President of Taggart Transcontinental”.

We haven't seen much of each other ever since we had a quarrel, and went our separate ways. No rains have enticed me ever since; the bittersweet moments that we shared does come into my head like a smörgåsbord of joyful memories once in a blue-moon. This is another such day.

It is drizzling today on the first week of Jan, with the only difference that it is day break now. Content with my Bohemian life woven around a small Utopian world; I open my eyes to the cuckoo's song. I hurry up to collect the newspaper left unattended on the porch. The smell of morning coffee fills my nostrils with a re-assurance that it's different. While I am doing that, my gaze crawls on to a face with an effervescent smile on the cover page of today's Daily.

Here she is; I start to smile with Stephanie once again. Next thing, I plant a kiss on her photo and go back to the place which had been deprived of any form of Joy ever since. She seems to be on her envisioned path of righteousness, and here I am at the same place, where it all began. This is my turn to laugh, and scream and spread my hands out to the Gods.

JFFS2 non-existent inode BUG

On Wed, 2009-03-04 at 05:43 +0000, AMUL KUMAR SAHA wrote:
> Hello David,
>
> Environment : Flex-OneNAND 8Gb, Apollon Board, linux-2.6.26
>
> I have just started with JFFS2 .
>
> We were running fsstress on 5 Boards for 5 Days .
> On 2 out of 5 boards, we observed the message "requestied to read an nonexistent ino",
> On Repetition, the BUG seems to be random.
>
> Dwelled inside the code and thought of a possible scenario for the occurence.
> I found the following explanation to it, appropriate; to my minimal knowledge :
>
> 1) 2 or more processes(say, P1 and P2) handling
> GC(jffs2_gc_fetch_inode) enter the function jffs2_iget almost
> together, before getting a mutex_lock.

They shouldn't be very close together -- GC is protected by the
alloc_sem mutex, and shouldn't be happening concurrently at all. But
maybe it's one thread doing GC while another thread is actually trying
to open the inode in question for real?

> 2) When a request for a lock is raised, one of the processes(P1) gets
> the mutex_lock(&f->sem) and the other one waits.

It uses iget_locked(). The first caller will get a _locked_ inode with
the I_NEW bit set. It will go ahead and fill in the inode appropriately,
then call unlock_new_inode() to clear the I_NEW bit and unlock the
inode.

Then the second caller will return from iget_locked(). The I_NEW bit
won't be set, and it'll return immediately. So I don't think your
scenario is possible.

> 3) P1 deletes the inode-cache(f->inocache), and releases the lock.

Why would it delete the inode-cache? Doesn't that only ever happen in GC
when the final physical node of the inode has been deleted from the
medium?

> 4) Now, when P2 ends up calling jffs2_do_read_inode with 'inode->ino'
> available locally in that function (unaware of the fact that, this
> particular inode was just destroyed).
> 5) JFFS2-Error with the message "requestied to read an nonexistent
> ino" is displayed.

Hm, can you make that a WARN() and show the backtrace?

> In the mean time, I have come up with my own fix to this situation.
> Just wanting to know if my explanation makes sense, so that I can go
> ahead with posting the patch in mailing-list.

You might be close, but I'm not convinced you have it exactly right.

--
dwmw2

Once

There are a very few movies, which brings me into a state of undefined utopia. “Once” happens to be one such beautiful movie. The guitar riffs played on the streets of Dublin, got me going for my guitar, which I hadn't touched for what seems like a week. Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova defined all things related to them by means of their music. The joyous music of people who have have had their share of tragedies in life was overwhelmingly beautiful. All the songs played in the movie have been written by their group.

The song "Falling Slowly" won an Oscar for the best original song. Hansard in his speech disclosed that this movie was completed using 2 Handycams, within 3 weeks and it took them just 100,000 (Dollars probably).

Irglova on the other hand is also an amazingly gifted musician. She was born in 1988, and is the youngest person ever to win an Oscar in that category. Following are her words, sfter she received the Oscar,
“Hi everyone. I just want to thank you so much. This is such a big deal, not only for us, but for all other independent musicians and artists that spend most of their time struggling, and this, the fact that we’re standing here tonight, the fact that we’re able to hold this, it’s just the proof that no matter how far out your dreams are, it’s possible. And, you know, fair play to those who dare to dream and don’t give up. And this song was written from a perspective of hope, and hope at the end of the day connects us all, no matter how different we are. And so thank you so much, who helped us along way. Thank you.”

Domino Transplant

domino transplant
n. an organ transplant in which a donor’s heart and lungs are transplanted into second person whose heart/lungs, in turn, is transplanted into a third person.

Shourya (left) and Siya (right) with their mothers at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital after undergoing a successful Domino transplant, dated 19/02/2009

Moral Policing

What is moral?
The lexical meaning of the word "moral" is "pertaining to, or concerned with the principles of right conduct". If asked individually I would say that, morality differs from person to person, depending upon what he deems as ethical or unethical.

All the rhetoric that we are getting to hear these days’ courtesy media and public conversation on moral policing caught fire soon after an organisation decided to harass women who were found in a pub. It was not the first incident of its kind, for in the recent past more and more such organisations have taken to such heinous measures.

1. A cine-star and a tennis sensation both young women are ostracised by various political and non-political organisations for speaking on the matter of sex and precautions before marriage. Given we have the second highest population in the world living with AIDS here.
2. Anna University in Madras bans women from wearing T-shirts and jeans in the campus. According to the VC, students (men) were distracted from their curriculum.
I would have prescribed immediate medical attention for each one of the decision makers/thinkers of these organisations.

India is a very young nation, the current era can be considered as her adolescence period, wherein she is experiencing a rapid change in the way issues internal to it are now being handled. The young Indian brigade has gotten a new vision of opportunity, ahead of it; these are the people who don't care to vote and are not politically involved. On the other hand are the aged power holders. These are the primary decision makers on whose command many ignoramus youngsters would be ready to take to violence; this is another class of our society which is not able to withstand the audacity of the educated Indian Brigade. The chauvinist male who once had full control over the women folk in their family now is facing a hard time trying to stop his wife or daughter from going to a public cafeteria.

By the law of land, no individual has a right to disrupt the lives of others. "Moral Policing" organisations have taken to cultural reformation in an uncultured way. Once again, for a person who has never been to a pub, would deem a pub as a haven for the people with no moral values or ties. Days of national freedom movement were far different when the nation as a whole decided to boycott the foreign-made dresses, and took to khadi. Today the same carriers of national movement in the name of Indian culture, do so in broad daylight with "Iron Maiden" printed on the back of their T-shirts. The zealots themselves first need a lesson or two on Indian culture. Where does one draw the line at the "western" influences in India?

While polygamy was once considered a privilege of the rich in India, it is now considered amoral. Even if Raj Kapoor was the icon of India few decades back, he made sure that no female members of his family would take to the film industry, on the other hand he cast many a charming women opposite himself in the movies. That is exactly the point that I am trying to address to. As time progresses the human perception towards a concept changes too, and it becomes a part of the society until the next generation takes reign.

I strongly condemn the acts of cowardice performed by the perpetrators, on helpless women. However a section of society posting pink-underwear to the perverts as an act of retaliation sounds like an equally sleazy act to me.

I am not an apostle of cultural policing and hence would avoid discerning the moral from amoral. For I believe, its all about self governance. One should believe that what he is doing is correct and try and refrain from battling over his philosophies with others.