Sin City

Las Vegas, the Sin City, is a city where the lights shine all night long. Casino's are so well lit and crowded that you never realise whether it is night or day. Most of the poular one's are based on unique concepts and are pretty well made. I was quite impressed with the Venittian (my personal favorite) and Paris Paris.




The venittian needless to say is based on Venice and has a river that runs thr' the casino and you can even have a boat ride in here... pretty cool eh..



While you can spend time here gambling, you could spend a week without gambling just visitng the various free shows and broadway shows.
However, the main reason why people flock here is to gamble and addictive it certainly is. While, I've played black jack and craps before, i kinda got better insight into the game this time as I was able to spend more time on it (or should I say more money)...LOL. As one of my friend says play by the book and you can't go down too steep. One certainly needs to put some limits as one could keep going on this roller coaster ride or wins n losses. This is where craps becomes more intresting. If you have a great shooter you could go for 10-20 minutes and make more money than most other games.
For high rollers there are table with 100$ starting limits while people like us flock in search of the $5 tables.
In my mumbaiya lingo all I can say is Black Jack can make u feel Jakaas or make u feel Jack Ass...... Keep on dreaming

Tracing my roots

India is a country with a blend of many religions and communities. The country is divided by languages, casts and sects. India has 23 official languages; hundreds of casts and sects divide us; but the spirit of India unites us all. This blog is to give a flavor of the history of my community, the Goud Saraswat Brahmins (GSB) whose population is about 0.3 Million.

Saraswats are people of Aryan descent who had settled down on the banks of the Saraswati River and were the followers of the Saraswat Muni. The river Saraswati eventually dried up (1000 BC) and this led to the migration of the Saraswats to the plains of northern India. Though the exact dates of this migration are unknown, the Rig Veda eulogies the river Saraswati was huge.

During this exodus, the brahmins spread in 3 directions. One group moved to the North and East into Punjab and Kashmir. The second group moved to the East towards Bihar while the third group went down south west towards Gujrat. Our ancestors were with the group that moved over to Bihar.

Around 1000 AD, they moved again this time to Goa, where the land was fertile and trading was begining. It is believed that Lord Parshuram, a Brahmin, also counted as an avatar of Lord Vishnu brought the Saraswats from the northern Indian plains to Goa for the purpose of religious functions.

Between 10th and 13th century the trading community spread across through the sea ports and established bases in Bombay, Thane, Kalyan, Honnavar, Mangalore, Cochin etc.. while the muslim rulers attacked Goa (then Gomantak), some people started migrating to Kudal desh (Ratnagiri) to the north; the Vijayanagar kingdom in Dharwad/ Belgaum to the East; The Kanara to the South; and some down to Travancore in Kerala.

As narrated over the history; Those who migrated to Kashmir called themselves as Kashmiri Pandits, Sind-Sind Saraswats, Kutch-Kutchi Saraswats, Rajapur-Rajapur Saraswats, Punjab-Punjab Saraswats, Rajasthan-Rajasthan Saraswats and Chitrapur-Chitrapur Saraswats.

This in a nutshell is the mythological and historical background of the Gowda Saraswat Brahmins popularly known as GSBs.


References
http://www.gsbkonkani.net
Wikipedia
Kamath.com
http://www.gsbkerala.com/gsbhistory.htm

Konkani - My Mother Tongue

Konkani, my mother tongue is not a very well known language. It got the official status in the Indian constitution in 1992. Hence, I thought of publishing some facts and figures around this.

The language is spoken all along the Konkan coast spanning the coasts of Maharastra, Goa, Karnataka and Kerala. There are about 7.6 million konkani speakers covering all major religions i.e Hindus, Christians and Muslims. Each region has its own dialect, tone, vocab and grammatical differences.

As the Indian culture, the Konkani language has gone thr' a lot of transformation and localization. The Konkani community has Aryan roots (wait for my next blog on my community GSB's), the community came into India and were in the north on the banks of River Saraswat (600BC). A drought there forced them into Goa. During the Porutguese colonialization was the time when the community was forced to fled from Goa for the fear of conversion to Christianity and the community spread to differnt parts especially along the western coast thr' the sea ports of Goa. The communities started at this time (15th century) started gettting local accents and words into the Konkani languages and hence resulted in the various dialects that exist today.

Konkani is a language having its roots from Sauraseni Prakrit which is also the root for Bengali and Assamese.
If one has to see the diversity of today's Konkani language, one should travel the Indian west coast. In Bombay, they speak in Marathi accent whereas in Konkan, they stretch the words so that no outsider can understand!. The Hindus of Goa liberally use the Portuguese words whereas the Christians use it as if it's a Portuguese dialect. In Karwar and Ankola (locate), they emphasize the syllables, and in Kumta-Honavar, they use consonants in abundance. The Konkani spoken by Nawayatis of Bhatkal is very melodious with smearing of Persian. People of South Kanara do not distinguish between nouns of Kannada and Konkani, and have developed a very business practical language. They sometimes add Tulu words also. The Konkani of Kerala is drenched with Malayalam, and the Konkanis of north Karnataka add Kannada verbs to Konkani grammar. The city-bred use a plenty of English. To write Konkani, Kannada, Nagari, Roman, Arabic, and Malayalam scripts are used and this way, Konkanis declare themselves as members of world family (Vishwakutumbi). There is no other language with a possible exception of Sanskrit that a language is written in so many scripts.


The communities that speak konkania are:
Hindus
Marathas
Bhandaris
Gaud Saraswat Brahmins
Chitrapur Saraswat Brahmins
Daivadnya Brahmins
Konkani Lower Castes
Muslims
Kokani Muslims (Costal Maharashtra)
Navayath Muslims (Bhatkal, Karnataka)
Christians
Goan Catholics
Roman Catholics (Mangalore/Canarite)
Others
Janjira Siddis
Yellapur Siddis

References
Wikipedia
Kamath.com
http://www.gsbkonkani.net/

Don - The Remake or Remix

Don ka remake karna muskil hi nahin, na munkin hain

When I saw the New Don, a few months earlier, I felt it was kinda different from the Don I remember; So I spent the weekend watching both the Don movies; the 1978 Javed Akhtar and 2006 Farhan Akhtar versions. I would classify this a remix rather than remake. Farhan is obviously INSPIRED by a lot of movies and has made a mdeley into the original plot of Don.
The main plot has been inspired by DOn (obviously) as well as Face off. The stunt scenes have been inspired from The Matrix, Rush Hour and XXX(the action movie.. don't get any wrong ideas here).
Some salient differences are
1. In the original movie Don dies, but in the remix version, he is replaced.. call it the face off twist.
2. In the end, Inspector D'Silva turns out to be the Vardhan as opposed to the Interpol Malik ... playing the public mindset i guess
3. Jasjeet has been promoted from a small time treasury crook to the upscale computer expert aka hacker.
4. The seventies slogan was Hum Do Humare Do, the new slogan is have a single Kid. This idea is promoted by Jasjeet having a single kid as opposed to 2 kids.

Now the bigger question, Whoz the Don of the Indian movies Big B or SRK... seems to have been the buzz with media a few weeks back. Although am not a mega fan of the Big B, there is no denying that pretty boy SRK is nowhere close. While Big B plays Don and Vijay with 2 different personalities; SRK does a cliche job at it.
As far as acting is concened, I believe Aamir and Ajay Devgan are much above SRK's rank. Abhishek bacchan has been evolving a lot and his versatile acting in the Bunty n Bubli as well as Bluffmaster shows an evolving star.. SRK... face it... You can't do a stereo role and try to call yourself the Baadhshah

Opening Statement

It was a Monday morning and I was out on the road on a long drive to orlando, except that it was not for disney land but to work :( . On a typical long drive I spend an hour on a conference call with my team and then the rest of the time goes pondering over stuff discussed. But today was different. It was a holiday in India. So here I was on the road driving for about 200 miles with nothing to do.
Empty mind is a devil's workshop and I started thinking over my to do list and so on... The radio was playing Pink Floyd's Keep talking
Why won't you talk to me
You never talk to me
What are you thinking
What are you feeling..........
I then started to think of all the times I've wanted to blog. I had registered here over a year or two ago...... Did I blog... The answer is obvious.... I'm the king of procastination when it comes to these things. So I decided that I was going to start blogging ...
My topic for the next few months is going to follow 2 different series.
First would be dedicated to the people who've shaped up India's economy. This would not be limited to Industrialists but would span across Politicians, Technocrats, Literary gurus and visionaries.
Second, would be on topics that come as general issues ailing us.. which is general tp stuff

Then came the topic of the site. What should I name it .. I thought of a lot of names that rhyme with the most fav talk shows going around; but in the end I thought why not name it after something that we used to call our late night discussions back in the college days... Bakwaas Mandli.
As casual as it might sound, bakwas mandli can be very informative.We've had many a good times over hours of hearty discussion. It could start with gossip and then get into debates over politics, life, future, economy.. sky is the limit.... Actually this idiom doesn't make sense here coz there can be trippin' sessions where sky is not the limit ...LOL Anywyz... All this thought is making me nostalgic and that might be my first topic of the blog or should I say second.
I guess I stretched it too long.. adios for now..