Kindle 2

Well, I thought digital books or eBooks can never replace the good old paper books but I think, I’ll have to think again.

Amazon’s first generation digital book reader – Kindle never caught my fancy, but I couldn’t stop myself from googling more about their recently launched Kindle 2.  Its a slick, iPhone like gadget which has a potential to become a next revolutionary toy after an iPod.

They say that you can use it for over 2 weeks without charging and it weighs only 10.2 ounces! You can take notes while reading, use the inbuilt dictionary, make it read the text for you, download new books using the 3G wireless network and even listen to songs while you are reading. I really liked its ability to download newspapers and magazines daily.

So, is Mr Bravo going to buy it?
No! Because I can get a decent Acer Netbook at the same price ($370) if not less and can do lot more things apart from just reading ebooks. And who wants to carry dozens of gadgets for doing 10 different things?
Chill.

Slumdog Millionaire

You might have ignored this film before assuming it will be documentary or some sort of a multiplex-type movie, but its everywhere now and you just can’t ignore it anymore.

I watched it and liked it. I also read the negative comments from few ‘patriotic’ people who think its an attempt to show the world how poor Indians are. Some politicians are even asking for a name change. But is it going to change the fact that the majority of India lives in slums?

People like me who grew up in the big cities of India carry a very good image of the country. We assume that there are shopping malls and multiplexes in all the cities of India. We are under the impression that everyone earns a decent salary and leads comparably better lifestyle. For us, poor and hungry India is an old news. We call ourselves ‘Super Power’.

Well, thats not the case. And this film has just reflected this reality.

After watching the film, my perspective changed dramatically. I realised that there are poor people everywhere around me. They work in my office as office-boys, they sell Tea and Cigarettes roadside, they work in un-human conditions at a construction site to earn the daily bread. Suddenly I started to see all of them.

I thank Danny Boyle, the director for showing us the harsh reality which we were continuously avoiding. Reality is, there are local Mafias wearing politician’s mask, there are people who live in slums, there is child labour around every corner of the street, there are people who molest girls in the name of saving morality.

If you really want to change the title of the film, please change it to Slumdog Mirror.

- Mr Bravo