The film has some amazing songs. The combination of lyricist Gulzar and composer RD Burman produced many gems. But I will always rate this as a film where the chemistry was unbelievable.

My favorite song from Ghar has to be the classic Aapki AankhoN MeiN Kuchh Mehke Huey Se Raaz HaiN आपकी आँखों में कुछ महके हुए से ख्वाब हैं (trans: Your eyes are lined with the aroma of mysteries.). The voice of Kishore Kumar and Lata Mangeshkar. What is also interesting about this song is that it is based on Raga Kedar which normally so typical of devotional music (remember the Kedar based classic Hamko Man Ki Shakti Dena हमको मन की शक्ति देना from Jaya Bhaduri’s debut Hindi film Guddi). There is of course anothe great example of using Raga Kedar to creat a romantic mood in the film Ek Musafir Ek Hasina. The song was Aap Yunhi Agar Hamse Milte Rahe

The second song I have always loved is Tere Bina Jiya Jaaye Na तेरे बिना जिया जाये ना (trans: It is so hard to live without you). Watch Rekha who plays the pining housewife, arrange her husband’s photos like a deck of cards that gets blown away with a gust of wind.

Phir Wohi Raat Hai, Raat Hai Khwabon Ki फिर वही रात है रात है ख्वाबों की (trans: It is the night that dreams are made of, once again… ). Set to the Latino beat that was so dear to RD Burman.

Aajkal Paaon Zameen Par आजकल पाँव ज़मीन पर नहीं पड़ते मेरे (trans: Have you noticed lately that I don’t walk on the floor anymore) talks about the heady feeling of being in love. See the video here. This look of Rekha reminds me of the other film Khoobsoorat (check out this clip) made in 1981 that had her singing in films for the first time – the song is Kaida Tod Ke Socho Ek Din. Rekha clearly will not be remembered as a great singer but as one who was never afraid to experiment.

Ghar is what the Gulzar-RD Burman-Kishore magic is all about. I have always wondered whether this is a film one should watch because it shows the transition of Rekha as an actress or just listen to the music. I think I’ll vote for the music.

To read more articles by Abhijit Bhaduri on music click here

In 1994, a maverick called Sashank Ghosh (MBA from University of Jodhpur), left MTV to become the creative head at Channel Vand created a character called Quick Gun Murugan. Those “fillers” in between programs were a rage among the youth. Quick Gun Murugan trailers quickly became the talk of the town especially in the colleges across India. It introduced the phrase “We are like this only” as a tagline that reflected the growing comfort with Indian English. Years later in the film Om Shanti Om, Shahrukh Khan imitated this character complete it the catchphrase “Enna Rascala”! This is an out and out spoof on film heros who duck bullets, thulp twenty attackers without ruining the shirt crease. The character is said to have been inspired by MGR, the cult movie hero of yesteryears in Tamil films.

Everything about the film is tongue in cheek and exaggerated. The storyline is wacky. Quick Gun Murugan (played by 57 year old Telugu actor Rajendra Prasad) , the Indian cowboy drinks whisky and smokes, is loyal to his dead sweetheart (Played by versatile actress Anuradha Menon of “Lola Kutty” fame) and is now on a mission to protect the world from being fed non-veg dosas being churned out by McDosa company run by villain Rice Plate Reddy (played by Tamil actor, director, Nasser). Rambha, plays the buxom love interest of QGM – Mango Dolly. Chaplinesque in its exaggerations, this is not a movie that will appeal to a large base of movie goers. Those who are familiar with the concept of Murugan will appreciate the transition from a 30 second avatar to a full fledged movie.

The memorable part of the movie lies in the way it uses exaggerated literal translations of Tamil and Hindi phrases right through. The movie has been made in three languages, Hindi, English and Tamil The film opens with the zany, “The earth is my bed, the sky is my ceiling, the whole creation is my native place. My name is Murugan – Quick Gun Murugan.” Quick Gun’s sentences end with Mind it!”

Exaggeration is the name of the game. The green shirt, the leopard skin jacket, the cowboy hat, the pot bellied hero and voluptous heroine in a blonde wig all spoof regular characters in mainstream Indian cinema. There are political comments made on traffic in Mumbai, fast food chains (wonder who McDosa chains were trying to point to) to the TV anchors who sensationalize news, the addiction to soap operas on cable tv – nothing has been spared.

That perhaps is one of the limitations that will restrict the number of people who will want to see the film. The audience who wants a clear plotline with no ditracting hyperlinks will find the storyline thin. You know what, there will be movie goers from mainstream cinema, who will not find anything comical in this film. They are so used to the hamming actors that this may just seem mainstream to them. If you loved him in the 30 second commercials, go check out the film. Or maybe you want to become a fan on Facebook.

Summary: This movie is a genre breaker.

Download a caricature of Quick Gun Murugan at http://abhijitbhaduri.com/2009/08/quick-gun-murugan/

You can read more about books, movies and management at http://abhijitbhaduri.com

Here are a few pointers that can help get the most out of the STAs for the organization and the employee:

1. Agree on the duration of the assignment: Many assignments tend to keep stretching beyond the initial term agreed upon. It is just as difficult for single employees as it is for those who are married or have children. (read some of the comments on the article posted here) The problems are different. Agree on the motivation of each player – the employer and the employee. What do they both expect to get out of the assignment – the outcomes, learnings and possible challenges.

2. Agree on the what if scenarios as best as you can: Knowing what role or assignment one could come back to is comforting and reduces anxiety of the assignee. If the business scenario demands a shoter term or extension of the time of the STA, agree on the what-if scenario upfront.

3. Agree on allowances, benefits upfront: The number of home visits, emergency trips back, allowances etc all need to thought through and agreed upon before proceeding on the assignment. It is important to stress how this may change if the duration of the assignment changes. It is also important to think of providing emotional support and anchors during the assignment to the employee and the significant other – especially if they are staying back.

4. Encourage the assignee to talk to others: Especially who have been on STAs – especially if they have worked in a similar or neighboring geography. Assigning a buddy or an employee who they reach out to can help quell some anxiety. Some organizations assign a coach even for the spouse or partner or significant other.

5. Insist on cross cultural training and preferably language training: This helps the assignee understand the sensitivities of working in a different environment and makes them aware of what might potentially be a deal breaker in the new land.

6. Design a re-entry plan: It is hard to hit the pause button in your life and go away on an assignment only to return after the assignment and resume seamlessly. Even if the person comes back to the old assignment and role, the equations would have changed. The colleagues would have changed and certainly the world view of the assignee would have changed. It is a time for adjustment for all – colleagues, employer, employee as well as the family. STAs when handled skillfully can offer a win-win for the employer and the employee. Yet there are plenty of examples of the best employees failing at these. There could be broken homes, messy relationships, disappointments if there is no partnership between the organization and the assignee. So build in the support anchors before you need them. If nothing else, before you go say yes to the assignment, read this research report and then decide.

Download a copy of the cartoon from here

Read more articles by Abhijit on Management by clicking here

I suppose the pyschologists and pyschiatrists – called “shrinks” in popular parlance – have their own code of silence. Once they are certified to practice, they are not supposed to give away the secret tests and techniques about how they figure out if the person lying on the couch is normal or abnormal depending on the response to the tests. To the person being tested this can evoke different feelings eg Awe or Aw (short for awful) and everything in between. So naturally people are anxious – which by itself could tell the shrink stuff about you that you don’t want them to know.

The personality tests are designed to provide insight into the human mind or at least the test takers mind. There are projective tests (open ended) and objective tests (with multiple choice answers). A projective test, lets you respond to ambiguous stimuli which could be pictures (Thematic Appreception Tests), sentence completion tests (eg. asking you to complete the sentence “I have always dreamt of …”) , drawing tests (eg asking you to draw a House Tree and Person) to presumably reveal your hidden emotions and internal conflicts.

When the physician advises me to go for my annual health check up there is this apprehension about what hidden time bomb might the tests reveal. If instead of physical health it is about mental health the wait for the final judgment is worse. In projective tests there is no right answer. So it is difficult for you to argue with the shrink. In the Adventures of Legionnaire Beau Peep comic, the shrink shows a card with a straight line drawn on it and asks Beau Peep what it reminds him of. Beau Peep says, “Woman”. The second card has some circles and triangles on it. “Woman”, says Beau Peep to the military shrink. The third card gets the same response and the shrink asks, “Why does everything remind you of a woman?”. Beau Peep retorts, “Who has been showing me the dirty pictures?”

The most popular projective test has been the Rorschach test, a series of 10 inkblot plates created by the Swiss psychiatrist Hermann Rorschach for his book ‚ÄúPsychodiagnostik,‚Äù published in 1921. (See one of them reproduced above). Quick look at it and tell me what you see in that inkblot. If you knew that the answer you had first thought of shows you to be, let us say, “disturbed and psychotic”, would you still articulate your first thoughts?

These inkblot cards have been around on the Net for a while – since 8 Dec 2007 on this site, for instance. The New York Times reports that psychologists are incensed that someone among them has loaded not only ALL the ten inkblot tests on to Wikipedia but also the most common answers for them.

“Yet in the last few months, the online encyclopedia Wikipedia has been engulfed in a furious debate involving psychologists who are angry that the 10 original Rorschach plates are reproduced online, along with common responses for each. For them, the Wikipedia page is the equivalent of posting an answer sheet to next year‚Äôs SAT.”

Magicians never tell their tricks. Or so you think. There are several sites (here’s one) that reveal secrets of magic tricks that a magician may take years to practice and demonstrate. Are you trying to deprive someobody of their livelihood by sharing their secret? Is that the adult equivalent of telling a two year old that there is no Santa Claus? Should some things remain shrouded in mystery?

There are sites such as Webmd.com that laypersons can access and learn from. You can know about the disease, the myths and facts, learn about managing the condition and know what to do about it. Here is a neat quiz about how to reduce your level of Cholesterol). Has the presence of this information reduced the earnings of doctors? The last time I stood in queue to meet my physician, it did not seem so. While knowing the full form of ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) can make you look like Sigmund Freud to your co-worker, it will hardly impress your doctor or shrink. Besides everybody in the world does not read Webmd.com on a daily basis. MIT has made all its course material and lecture notes available to the whole planet for free. Check out this link and that has in no way impacted the number of people clamoring to join MIT anyway. The more zealously you protect information, the more people want to pry open the secrets. The more accessible it is, the less of a forbidden fruit value it has.

You may argue that if a criminal who has been “coached” on how to respond to the inkblot by his or her lawyer would escape detection. For that matter the Snellen’s Eye Chart is also available on Wikipedia. If you mugged it up before going for your drivers’ license, you could fool them into giving you a license, but you are the one whose life would be at risk. The smart trick would indeed be to not mug up the test (like in this case) and get the necessary glasses so that you do not make a spectacle of yourself. The test is not intended to be a lie-detector anyway.

So my advice to the fretting psychologists: relax. This too shall pass.

Read more articles by Abhijit at http://abhijitbhaduri.com

Just how do they do it? The premise is simple. Past behavior patterns forms a basis to predict what you are likely to do in future. The premise works on getting hold of huge masses of data that can be analyzed to look for trends and patterns. Every day we produce loads of data about ourselves simply by living in the modern world: we click web pages, flip channels, drive through automatic toll booths, shop with credit cards, and make cell phone calls. Now, in one of the greatest undertakings of the twenty-first century, a savvy group of mathematicians and computer scientists (The Numerati really) is beginning to sift through this data to dissect us and map out our next steps. Their goal? To manipulate our behavior — what we buy, how we vote — without our even realizing it.” As you swipe a credit card to pay for purchases, pay at the toll booth through a pre-paid tag, blog or leave a comment on a website, visit the dentist or even write an email or sms a friend, you are creating a big electronic footprint that says something about you. When any such data is collected over time some patterns begin to emerge. When this mass of data is analyzed to look for patterns, it builds up the probability of behavior patterns. You got to hear Stephen Baker explain how this book happened in this video before I share my interview with the man who brought the word Numerati into mainstream.

The photo of Stephen Baker with his cat Rock Sand is courtesy the private collection of Jalaire Craver.

Here is how my interview with him went:
AB:. Who is the reader you wrote The Numerati for? What impact did you hope to create in the reader? Do you think your book has made the Math nerd cool?

Stephen Baker: I wrote the Numerati for people like myself. They don’t think much about math or computers, but are interested in the forces shaping the history of our times. I knew as I wrote it that the book might disappoint the true Numerati, that they would likely look to it for a level of detail and technical insight that it lacks. But most of them have been surprisingly generous in their responses. More than one has told me that his mother can finally understand what he does.

I can only hope I helped people to understand how cool math nerds are, and how fascinating their work is.

AB: You have mentioned the work the Numerati are doing in various areas like Marketing, Politics, Healthcare, Blogging, fighting terrorism etc. Where are we most ahead of the game?

Stephen Baker: The Numerati are by far the most advanced in marketing and advertising. These are areas where they can afford to experiment widely, and make lots of mistakes at a very low cost. If you think about it, Google has built a empire on educated guesses.

AB: You have been exploring the concept of Friendship for sometime. What is the best measure of friendship – the secrets we share? The ones we yearn to meet again and again? The one who shares our deepest secrets?.Has the social media made it tougher to have the sense of privacy that builds depth in a relationship? So much so for having 300+ friends on Facebook.

Stephen Baker: I think the best measure of friendship, as you say, are the secrets you confide in your closest friends. (Of course, we have ways of dividing different secrets among different friends.) Maybe it’s taking some people time to figure out the nature of online friendships. But I think the younger generation will teach us all how to protect the fragments of privacy that add depth to our friendships. Privacy itself, though, is a shifting value, and it always has been, through history and cultures. It will continue to evolve.

AB: You have been a journalist for 20+ years, a published author for a year and a very widely followed blogger* for a few. Why have corporate blogs not been as successful as you predicted in your cover story in Businessweek.

Stephen Baker: The power of a blog, as in so many other endeavors, is tied related the amount of control one cedes. Successful corporate blogs, and there are very few, give full and unfettered voice to the public. They interact with it, and learn from it. And that conversation attracts more people. The problem with corporations is that they want to control the message. They control comments and publish press releases. Usually the result is a dreadful bore.

In my defense, I don’t think I predicted that corporate blogs would be such tremendous successes. The most important point for corporations, from my view, was to take blogs seriously, to monitor and interact with them.

This has to do not just with blogs, but all of the other grass-roots activities of networked people. Think about it: The Obama campaign, Linux, YouTube, Facebook. This is a huge story of this decade. (And all of these phenomena produce mountains of data for the Numerati to analyze.)

Read more about The Numerati at http://thenumerati.net/

*Stephen Baker’s blog was rated by NY Times as one of the Top 50 blogs to watch

Why Facebook is a challenge

The experience of growing up online will profoundly shape the workplace expectations of “Generation F” – the Facebook Generation says Gary Hamel - the management guru. Very clearly if you are one of those who believes that you are now with it because you now know how to use email, you do not belong to the Facebook Generation. Dear Gary, you will be happy to know that I am no stranger to Facebook. As someone recently mentioned that you haveto be on Facebook (which I am even if it is really tough) to be considered cool.Many teenagers continue to express deep angst at the enhanced age generation who have now taken over as Facebook users. When a website has like two or even three generations using it simultaneously, it clearly is a message to the youngest of the family to move on and seek online shelter for the homeless someplace else. The young and the young at heart cannot necessarily share the same cool hangout spots.

Despite all the developments on the net, none of the social networking sites have found an answer to the Three E-mail Challenge. Put simply it means, with friends it is tough to exchange more than three emails on a subject without running out of steam. Let me explain what this is all about. In the pre-email era, the probability of meeting someone from school or college was remote. You met a couple of them at the airport or maybe if you missed your flight, the way I met Pingy after years. A freak snow storm had left me stranded in a remote town and that’s when I met Pingala Reddy, my class mate from school. While he wasn’t my best friend then, I must confess I really enjoyed meeting him after so many years. Right after I got back I wrote him an email (email no 1) thanking him for his hospitality and how much I had enjoyed meeting Pingy and his family. That I would love to host him and his family when he would visit my part of the woods next. Pingy wrote back instantly (email no 2) saying he will take me up on my offer for sure. I wrote back (email no 3) that he was welcome to do so any time and that my family would love to meet the Reddy family. This email was followed by silence. The point being that with friends who you meet after years it is impossible to have an email exchange beyond the three. Facebook doesn’t have a solution either. After many years Pingy wrote another mail (enclosing photo of family vacationing in Spain) and asked me if I was planning another trip to visit him? This was email no 1 of this exchange. In email 2, I responded that a family vacation in US would break the bank and hence not on the cards unless he offered to fund the trip. Pingy sent a cryptic smiley  in email 3 as a response. We haven’t corresponded since. See how going beyond the third email is a challenge.

I met Rascal Rusty at Dubai airport last December. He was running to catch a flight but managed to convince me to sign up on Facebook before he rushed off. All the blokes of our class were evidently getting buttonholed into joining this social networking site that all the college kids had discovered a while back. I signed up and promptly added Rusty to my list of friends. I trawled the site to look for more classmates. Slowly I found Joy and Gur there as well. I now had 3 friends on Facebook. The community was growing. The only thing was that I did not quite know what to do after that. One day I learnt how to write on the facebook wall. Spray can in hand I went and wrote a bold “What’s up?” on all three walls. Joy ignored me. Gur replied “Nothing” and Rusty said that he was traveling for the next 2 weeks to Venezuela and will respond after he is back. The three email challenge has been replaced by the Facebook version of it.

Meanwhile I got a friend request from a person who I could not remember ever having met in my life. I accepted it simply because of the compulsion to not be seen as a boor who would not say hi to a stranger. That’s how Josh became my friend. He had 462 friends on facebook. He was clearly a popular beast. He could well be the next President with such a large number of friends to support him. By now I had discovered how to peek into his photo albums and heck, was I scandalized by some of them. Since he is a friend I will not share with you what I saw beyond gently hinting that Josh has the lifestyle of a rock star if the photos were anything to go by. The next morning I found that he had thrown a sheep at me. Thrown a sheep? Whoa !! What’s that all about. What was I supposed to do at this act of unprovoked violence? Should I throw a knife back to show that I was not to be taken lightly. I thought of asking Rusty, Joy or Gur for advice. Then I remembered that in most murder mysteries lesson no 1 is if someone threatens you, do not broadcast it. So I decided to be discreet. The next morning I found Josh had sent me a patch of green earth. The fellow is finally coming to his senses I thought and wants to make peace. I have decided to keep quiet and see if this fellow is serious about gifting me real estate.  With the falling prices of real estate this fellow probably thinks it a bargain to pacify me with a nice 4 acre plot. Hmmm… I wonder if I should forgive him by accepting the “patch” as he likes to call the plot. I changed my mind. I maintained a cool aloof silence which got Josh to send me a poke on Facebook. How does a poke get delivered? Maybe someone comes home, rings the bell and without exchanging even a hello, pokes you and goes off. I am really ticklish and hence I stayed home without answering the doorbell for a day. I was wildly successful in throwing the “poke delivery person” off track. They could not find me. I have since then been discovering one new surprise everyday. There is a quiz which lets you learn what you were in your previous life or scary ones that discover how low your IQ is. Today I checked my Facebook account. I think Josh is crazy. He sent me a party hat. He is mistaken if he thinks I will forgive him so easily for throwing a sheep at me and that too when I had done nothing to provoke him.