Lyrics: Na. Muthukumar
Music: Yuvan Shankar Raja
Singer: Yuvan Shankar Raja

Oru Naalil - Pudhupettai

Oru naalil vaazhkkai inge

Over the last few days MS Dhoni has been fending off questions about his team’s fitness about as frequently as some of his young batsmen have had to fend bouncers in England.

I’m certain Dhoni has his own views on fitness, and I would love to hear them one day, for he is one of the fittest men in international cricket, but as captain – well, he has to say the right things, doesn’t he? His patent response to questions about injuries to his key players has been that they are unfortunate and there is nothing one can do. I agree with him that injuries are indeed unfortunate, but I hope he does not really mean it when he says there is nothing one can do about them. There is plenty you can do about injuries, and there is a very good, logical explanation for why some cricketers suffer more of them than others.

When a player gets injured, it is often termed unlucky, and he is generally spared criticism, on the assumption that it was beyond the poor cricketer’s control. I have seen, during my playing career, cricketers take advantage of this mindset of the fans and media to tackle their insecurities as players: you would often find a short period of poor form quickly followed by an injury absence.

Except in obvious cases, like where fingers are broken while batting or fielding – like with Yuvraj Singh at Trent Bridge – I really think most injuries should be held against players, as you would a poor performance on the field. Injuries too largely happen because of poor performance – off the field. A player who does not forget that he is a top-level international cricketer, even when he is not playing matches, simply does not get injured often.

Kapil Dev, the great Indian allrounder, who I had the privilege of playing with, was one of the fittest Indian cricketers there has been, and there is no better role model of a fit Indian cricketer than him. Was Kapil lucky that he could play 131 Test matches as a fast-medium bowling allrounder, missing only one Test in between, when he was dropped for playing a wild slog at a delicate stage in a match? No, he wasn’t. There was a good reason for why he was so durable.

Kapil’s greatest asset was that he was an outstanding athlete. Unathletic cricketers tend to suffer more injuries than athletic ones, and there are numerous examples in Indian cricket of fast bowlers who were talented but not good athletes. Should the lack of athleticism of a player not be held against him? Wouldn’t the lack of a natural flair for numbers be held against a chartered accountant who keeps bungling up balance sheets?

Kapil was a superb athlete, and admirably, it was an advantage he never took for granted. He may not have given you the impression of being a thinking batsman, but when it came to his bowling, fielding and general approach to fitness, there was no one quite as sharp. He knew his body well and he made sure that he never pushed it beyond a certain limit, but he was also careful to not keep it in cold storage for too long.

During fielding drills, even before matches, Kapil would always throw the ball back to the keeper with real pace, while most fast bowlers I saw, would want to rest their bowling shoulders. Kapil thought different. He made sure his shoulder was always ready and never surprised – in case he had to throw hard for a run-out first ball of a match, for instance. Damage to a body often happens due to such sudden acts, resulting in the player missing games because of an “unfortunate” injury. Mind you, Kapil was not injury-free through his long career, but he planned the rehabilitation well, so he was always ready and raring to go for the next Test. Playing for India meant a lot to him.

Kapil did not let anyone influence him into changing his natural bowling action – though it had the potential threat of creating lower-back problems. He believed that if his body was allowing him to bowl without discomfort, it had to be the right action for him. I wonder, when I watch some of our Indian seamers who keep breaking down, whether they have strayed from their natural actions so much that their bodies have started protesting.

Rest to the body, as we know, is as critical as physical training, for a long, relatively injury-free career, and that is the big challenge for modern-day players: to get time off to rest their tired bodies. But it is also true that a cricketer opting out of an international series is not as big a deal as it used to be; players are usually given their time off without it being held against them. There is always a tour of West Indies or Bangladesh to take a break from, as we have seen.

I saw a couple of Indian players come into the England Test series off a period of relaxation, with chubby faces and bulging midriffs. That’s not something you’d ever see with Rahul Dravid. The only international cricket he plays these days is Test cricket, and he often has to come into the team off long periods of “inactivity”, but each time he turns up, he looks lean and mean. Dravid is another player with an excellent record of long-term fitness in Indian cricket, and he does not even have great natural athleticism to thank for it. What he has plenty of, though, as we all know, is discipline. He is the perfect example of that cricketer I mentioned earlier, who even when he is not playing reminds himself every day when he wakes up that he is still an active international player, only waiting for his next international assignment.

Players who are willing to make sacrifices, I have found, sustain fewer injuries than others, so the next time we see a cricketer suffer yet another pulled muscle, let’s pause for a moment more before saying, “That’s unlucky.”

The bulk of this movie concentrates on humor, which could be easily shunned if not for the performances of the actors. Bala’s films already have a taste of humor which led to the question of why a maverick director like him needed to make a full-length feature film which trusted on humor alone, while skipping the storyline. The movie had incredible scope for a great story, which is unfortunately, not built upon. There are quite a couple of occasions where a brief history between the court case against the ‘highness’ could have been explained. It is all too apparent to observe these potholes.

However, some of the positive scenarios included a wonderful display of acting by Vishal and Arya – though the latter didn’t have much scope, Arya tried to justify his role and must be critically applauded. Vishal’s acting, though flawed, seemed to capitalize on the scope and the platform laid by the story. Perhaps, Vishal must be taking on less-commercial films and must try to focus more on building his career by establishing himself as an actor who doesn’t give just commercial films, but also critically-acclaimed movies. And he’s teamed up with just the right person in this venture. Arya, as always, gave his best shot and lived upto the scope of acting offered by the role. If not for the subtle acting, the movie might not have justified the ticket’s price.

Bala, being one of the trend setters in Kollywood, is just 5 films old and has a long career ahead of him. It would be unfair to negatively criticize him in venturing into a genre not suited to him – rather, not explored by him. He has tried his hand at a new genre that would add variety to the otherwise dark films that he’s directed (it should also be noted that you don’t miss the presence of Bala in the film as the gripping last 30 minutes of the movie was typical Bala’s tale that ends with a twist in the tale). Bala, I’m sure, must have learnt a lot of things and took away a lot of points from this movie.

Despite numerous negative reviews, I’d say that Bala hasn’t refrained in a corner and avoided a good story altogether. It’s just that he’s failed to build up on the plot, which isn’t a big crime – come on, let a man make mistakes sometimes. One cannot argue that the movie isn’t spectacular in the visuals. His direction isn’t bad at all. Considering the number of occasions that he’s revived the careers of many actors like Vikram, Surya, Arya and now, Vishal, it’s best to give the director a break and let him think things over so that he continues to deliver the kind of movies that he does.

Yuvan Shankar Raja can be easily forgotten in this movie as his background music doesn’t live upto the expectations, atleast not for me. His father, the Maestro Ilayaraja, could have handled it better. Again, Yuvan Shankar Raja must have explored a lot from composing music set in the villages.

Overall, the film is interesting, but has failed to live up to its expectations. The actors have given a performance of their lifetimes. It is safe to say that Vishal’s career would take a turn. It’s a great learning experience for the others.

Verdict: Good performance let down by a loose storyline.
Rating: 65%

 The Rorschach inkblot test is a method of psychological evaluation. Psychologists use this test to try to examine the personality characteristics and emotional functioning of their patients. The Rorschach is currently the second most commonly used test in forensic assessment, after the MMPI, and has been employed in diagnosing underlying thought disorder and differentiating psychotic from nonpsychotic thinking in cases where the patient is reluctant to openly admit to psychotic thinking.

There are ten official inkblots. Five inkblots are black ink on white. Two are black and red ink on white. Three are multicolored. The psychologist shows the inkblots in a particular order and asks the patient, for each card, “What might this be?”. After the patient has seen and responded to all the inkblots, the psychologist then gives them to him again one at a time to study. The patient is asked to list everything he sees in each blot, where he sees it, and what there is in the blot that makes it look like that. The blot can also be rotated. As the patient is examining the inkblots, the psychologist writes down everything the patient says or does, no matter how trivial. The psychologist also times the patient which then factors into the overall assessment.

Using the scores for these categories, the examiner then performs a series of mathematical calculations producing a structural summary of the test data. The results of the structural summary are interpreted using existing empirical research data on personality characteristics that have been demonstrated to be associated with different kinds of responses. Both the calculations of scores and the interpretation are often done electronically.

A common misconception of the Rorschach test is that its interpretation is based primarily on the contents of the response-what the examinee sees in the inkblot. In fact, the contents of the response are only a comparatively small portion of a broader cluster of variables that are used to interpret the Rorschach data.

Everyone would have created a Yahoo! mail account and probably left it untouched for years. The main reason for this is the interface and functionality which is irksome in yahoo! when compared to Gmail. Gmail have been ruling the email world and is considered the most functional email client. But Yahoo! has done a recent breakthrough with its new Yahoo! Mail Beta which is still under testing and has a beta tag. But it is tempting the trial user to shift his focus towards it. The interface is simply beautiful and smooth.

But the problem is that many people in India have not got the invitation to try it out. Only some countries have received the invitation. So now I describe how to get the new yahoo! mail beta without their invitation.

• Open your Yahoo! account.
• Go to your account information page (by Clicking Your name hyperlink and then "Account" below it)
• Go to "Account Settings " tab and click "Set language, site and time zone "
• Set the "Regional Site and Language" to "Yahoo! UK"
• Then save the settings and log off.
• Log in again and go to the mail page
• There an invite to get the new Yahoo! beta will be present next to your name hyperlink
• Click it to get the new Yahoo! mail beta.
• After all this , set your "Regional Site and Language" to "Yahoo! India"

Now you are all set to enjoy the new yahoo! mail beta. Good luck !

One of the greatest earthquakes in the world – 8.9 on the Richter Scale, rocked Japan the aftermath of which triggered a massive tsunami that rose 4 meters and devastated the coast of the small country. The quake, recorded to be one of the worst in the history of Japan, even for a country famed for earthquakes, shook the world, split the ground through fissures, and evoked a tsunami which alerted 50 countries world-wide. Horrific pictures and videos of Japan were taken which included debris being swept away by the tsunami – light-planes, ships and cars being treated like garbage, waves crashing on the coast and sweeping the streets of Japan.

The imagery showed a massive whirlpool in the Pacific, with waves swirling into it, consuming a poor ship. Devastatingly, an oil refinery had burst due to the earthquake which triggered fires to add to the ongoing damage. Concerns over the nuclear reactor in Japan, over leaks, is also a thing to worry about. The quake, the worst since the boxing day quake and the tsunami, ranks fifth in the list of worst earthquakes in the world.

Video courtesy – RT News

The quake also rocked the Parliament of Japan, with the ministers running for shelter. The quake was felt all over Japan, with the people anticipating the possibility of the tsunami, which, sure as intended, swept the coast. The damage, caused by the earthquake, is estimated to be over a billion dollars, with the oil refinery bursting and the nuclear facility being shut down.

Let us all pray for the people of Japan and that such disasters never happen again.

Genuinely inspired by friends, and articles that are littered across the web, acclaiming the advent of Facebook and the like, I believe that information sharing is an important aspect of everyone’s life. We need access to the latest news, or information, all the time. The speed at which information is delivered is also an important factor that determines if a system is efficient and qualifies our necessity.

SNSs provide such services and have clearly emerged out of the shadows. However, the quantity, or the depth of information, that these sites provide, are frugal. For instance, these sites limit the number of characters that a user can post. While this may be right in the sense that people do not normally want to see so much information cluttered in their spaces, it is sometimes insufficient to express our ideas clearly. This is very much possible in blogs, which is how I’m sharing information with YOU right now. I’d then, for instance, copy and paste the post’s link in my profile for everyone to see. I’m referring this concern only to SNSs that limit the quantity of text that the user can enter, at any given time. You must know that there are certain sites, like Ning, that provide a blogging service within their social network, to share loads of information.

Within social networking sites, developers from around the globe, develop applications that pull information from the users and use it for their purposes. Though SNSs most definitely warn people of letting their personal information out, people still want to use it for the sake of fun. And regret later. Photo tagging is another concern where any person can let out anyone’s information without their permission. I would suggest the sites that they include a feature which allows a user to permit his/her name to be tagged on a photo. Blogging, in a sense, is more secure.

Sometimes, it so happens that people lose patience of reading paragraphs of text and yawn after seeing a long article. Movie reviews and music reviews are fun, but not informative articles. Videos are better than text anyway right? So, why not post videos in a profile? I agree to a certain extent that videos speak a lot louder (no pun intended) than pictures and text. However, information, such as tutorials, can be further explained, like snippets of code, in plain text, rather than videos. This also allows reusability of code(copy and paste it dude; why bother looking at the video again and again?) too. In this aspect, social networking sites do a better job than blogs, with fetching us videos that our friends post. However, not quite good in explaining things in detail.

One final characteristic that makes blogs excel SNSs is the language. When we practise writing a big article, we increase our vocabulary as well as the ability to express ideas clearly. Creativity included. If you’re working on your blog hard enough, you wouldn’t even need a typing class. It’d clearly be a typing practise and improve accuracy. We often tend to decrease our vocabulary while using SNSs, messengers and chat applications where we shorten words and aren’t worried about grammar. I don’t mean to say that it’s bad; I realize that it is informal, but think about it. You do lose grasp on the verbose you learnt. I did. I almost scourged the Web for words whose usage in sentences I forgot.

I finish this article by establishing my opinion that SNSs are good, but please, do not get addicted to it. Blogging is much better if you spend some time in it, articulating your thoughts on good articles and share useful information.

-Suresh Gururajan

Embarking on a story that narrates the lawsuits that the founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg faces, David Fincher does a very good job in yet another fine movie of the modern times, to add to his collection. With Fight Club, Fincher created a cult following – with The Social Network, he has created another masterpiece. Rottentomates.com has critically acclaimed it with a 97% fresh rating out of 251 reviews. It says that the movie is “impeccably scripted, beautifully directed, and filled with fine performances” and that “The Social Network is a riveting, ambitious example of modern filmmaking at its finest”.

The cast, including Jesse Eisenberg and Justin Timberlake, have done a fine job that greatly contributes to the depth of the film and goes along well with the audience. Aaron Sorkin, with his wonderful screenplay, has made himself, a strong contender for the Academy Awards. Overall, it’s a teamwork that yielded a treat for the audience and acclaim for the filmmakers.

Poster

The movie tells the tale of a narcissistic genius, with an ambitious notion to make a virtual society, and the lawsuits he faces as a result of these. Here’s a summary: On a fall night in 2003, Harvard undergrad and computer programming genius Mark Zuckerberg sits down at his computer and heatedly begins working on a new idea. In a fury of blogging and programming, what begins in his dorm room soon becomes a global social network and a revolution in communication. A mere six years and 500 million friends later, Mark Zuckerberg is the youngest billionaire in history… but for this entrepreneur, success leads to both personal and legal complications.

Rating: 4.6/5

Verdict: A strong contender for the Academy Awards, this is a must watch film, especially for techies.