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Book Review: The Namesake – The Immigrant Life

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I came across two postings made on Desipundit, linking to a review of a trailer (yeah, review of trailer) of the movie “The Namesake”, based on the book by Jhumpa Lahiri. Given Mira Nair’s ability to screw things up (except Salaam Bombay), I don’t have much hopes from the movie, though I must say I was very impressed by the trailer. Kal Pen and Tabu look fabolously cast as Gogol and Ashima; I think Tabu will do justice to the role of Aashima Ganguli.

Though I still can’t comprehend why Mira Nair had to take creative liberties, and make Aashima a singer, and set the story in New York – I mean, Cambridge where its set is not too far away! However I hope she’s able to bring out the finer nuances of the book onto screen; after all that is what made the book so memorable.

Below is a review written by me around two years ago; Even back then I had the felt that this was a story so real, that if I stayed long enough in United States, it would be my life. 2 Years hence, I still think the same. This has to be one of my favorite books ever.

Book Review : The Namesake.

While many Indian authors (who most of them have settled abroad anyway), have written about displaced Indians (example: Salman Rushdie) and weaved fantasy stories around them, there are others who have preferred be an on looker and write stories set in India (example: Rohinton Mistry). These writers have similar qualities in their characters trying to find their lost souls back in motherland or stories of pathos in the country. However when an author comes along and decides to take a view of an Immigrant life it becomes interesting. It becomes even more interesting when the view is not presented as soul searching drama or triumph of human spirit, but just a book about normal characters, leading their lives normally.

Enter the Gangulis. Ashoke Ganguli is one amongst those who like so many before him enters the American soil to fulfill his dream of leading his life there, beginning as a student at MIT. While as a student, he is also married to Ashima Ganguli who finds it difficult to accept her new home. Enter Gogol Ganguli a few years ahead, a misplaced namesake to their first son whom they cannot name properly because of a mail lost between the two countries, and who by the time they decide a proper name “Nikhil” seems to have lost himself in the namesake. Enter Sonali a.k.a Sonia, Gogol’s sister, and the circle of family is completed. The Namesake is their journey as Immigrants trying to find their real identity behind their namesake of being in America, and later holding American citizenship. And while it is the former, it is also about Nikhil trying to find a sense in his namesake.

A typical immigrants life begins with student life in America; after studies they germinate to good jobs, good cars and so forth. A marriage later and a green card in kitty, its time to start a family; a family being, its a struggle trying to bind the personal history to the kids who become more American – and thus end up being called ABCDs: people displaced and trying to find their acceptance in the foreign land, while still not ready to let go off their roots. Years later, the parents have let go of their children, lost in their own identity crisis of having embraced a foreign land, without letting the roots of homeland go. The next generation, quite nicely becomes jelled and thus one more family is absorbed into the foreign land; but its the first and second generation that find it the toughest.

Lahiri doesnt boast of telling an awfully touching story or a dramatic novella, but rather weaves a very realistic story of a displaced family. Her characters are immediately believable, and one can relate to such every day characters. All characters, their behavior, their living style make up for a very believable story; Lahiri infuses minimum fuss and melodrama in the proceedings. Events in book are given their due respects, and situations and confrontations presented in the book are much authentic – the coming back to India for holidays, Durga Puja and Christmas, childrens non-interest in understanding their roots, real events make for a riveting story.

However it is not the story per se that holds the readers interest. It is in Lahiri’s observations of nuances in life that makes the book immensely likeable. She is able to bring out the differences of American and Indian life from an immigrants point of view without too many words. Sometimes, it just takes a sentence or two for her to convey her thoughts on conflicting life and ideals. Simple observations like how most first generation Indians dont quite have any American friends to call their own and close strikes a chord somewhere, even me, because its a simple truth. Observations like these are a plenty in the book, and make this a memorable read.

However saying that, The Namesake is a difficult book to relate to. While most of western audience cannot glimpse the nuances of her observations, I would be very surprised if Indian audiences would find her observations real and so true. The Namesake treads a middle path, relating to Immigrants, and perhaps lies in a land it belongs nowhere to. Unless you are an immigrant and have seen the other part of Immigrant life, its pretty difficult to relate to the book. Those who are can and will very well relate to the book. Saying that it should not hinder either western or Indian audience to read this book – for it shows how the namesake of American life perpetually confounds the Immigrants.

Overall
An Excellent debut novel (her first was a collection of stories) A must read for everyone, especially the Immigrants.

Movie Review: The Da Vinci Code : The Da Vinci Mess!

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As I walked out of the theatre, I had just one question for Ron Howard – “How in the world do you make a mess out of a book, which was written in form of a movie screenplay!”

I had been waiting for Da Vinci Code since a long time now – having enjoyed the book thoroughly, I was hoping that with Tom Hanks at the helm, the movie would be nothing short of classic. However the choice of director had always bothered me; Ron Howard is not exactly a man with golden egg – his Apollo 13 was a great movie, however none of his movies like Beautiful Mind, Cinderella Man, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, were movies that you would consider repeat-watch material. All his movies since Apollo 13 have had good subjects, however dully executed. Though it must be said that each of his movies always boasted of excellent performances by its lead characters though.

Its sad however, even that is sorely missing from The Da Vinci Code. For most part of the movie, Tom Hanks as Robert Langdon looks totally miscast and out of place – his acting is wooden and listless even if I may so. The supporting cast does no better; Audrey Tatou as Sophie Neveu is just about adequate – she smiles at the right points, displays some amount of intelligence in others, displays sadness when necessary, and for most part plays the deer in headlights very well, as for the most part she is just an audience to Robert Langdon’s “Did you know?!” quiz cards.

Hence, coming back to Ron Howard, I always had my premonition about how good this movie could turn out to be – what I didn’t expect was how bad Ron Howard ended up making it.

Talking about the plot of the movie is pretty much pointless – everyone’s grandmother has heard of “The Da Vinci Code” by now. And in any case, as the subject deals with solving puzzles and discovering hidden mysteries, it is always a plus if you have read the book before you saw this movie; unlike other movies where the movie might suffice, and provide an alternative to those who don’t read novellas, the case with “The Da Vinci Code” is different. Which perhaps, is also its biggest problem as while when translating it into a movie – for there is no conclusive way you can throw up a puzzle on screen and expect the audience to get involved and rack their brains, when its very well expected that the characters are going to solve the puzzle in the very next scene.

Having Dan Brown as the producer of the movie pretty much ensured that Ron Howard would not be given the one most important thing he needed: a pair of scissors. And editing services were never even considered I presume. Which, pretty much shows up in the movie – the movie is languishingly long at 2 hours 30 minutes, and often if I may say, boring! There were several times I was actually checking out my watch to calculate the remaining time; While the part in the middle about Priory of Sion and its real motive for existence and protection of Mary Magdalene’s family tree is dealt with superb control, drama and thrill in the book, the same part in the movie lacks any drama, thrill or the “wow” factor, thereby exposing the very flaws that were very much present in the book as well, but we as readers chose to ignore it over the thrill element – for how in the world can 3 people whose lives are in grave danger actually get into a theological debate about history 2000 years ago? In the book it makes sense – unfortunately in the movie, it looks whacked out.

Sequences like above are a plenty in the movie, where sequences in the book served as good pit stops for quick puzzles, history and hidden mysteries, sadly the same does not come across in the movie very well. The flashback scenes of Sophie seemed forced, so were the scenes of Opus Dei’s Ascetic inflicting pain on himself.

Characterization is also perhaps another weak point of the movie for which an audience cannot really connect to the mysteries being solved – Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) or Sophie Neveu (Audrey Tatou) never comes across as a pair whose life is in grave danger, but instead come across a globe-trotting participants in an episode of “The Amazing Race”. Also, Ron Howard in his attempt to “Offend no one” by making his characters milder, and appropriately changing a couple of dialogues and smoothening them out, ends up “Entertaining no one”. St Peter in Da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” painting is not even addressed, nor is the mystery behind “Madonna on the rocks” – perhaps he didn’t want to take too many chances.

Controversies usually help a movie of such subject very well – why it helped the book tremendously! But controversy generates hype, and too much hype can lead too many expectations, and ultimately unfulfilled expectations. Same is the case with “The Da Vinci Code” – the movie ultimately becomes a victim of its own hype.

The movie is not as bad as critics claim it to be, and its content cannot be dismissed as an altogether ridiculous as well. The subject matter of the book has always been point of debate. Its definitely a one time watch, no doubts, and perhaps a few who didn’t read the book may also find it interesting enough to pick up the book itself. But at the end of it, given the subject matter and amount of information Ron Howard had in his hands to play, the movie could have easily become an instant classic, as the book is edging towards being one.

Coming to the controversies and Church / Opus Dei and all that connection – as Robert Langdon says in the end (now I am sure this was added to the movie), why is it a problem if Christ had married Mary and they bore a child? Would that fact make Christ any lesser god or mortal? If Christ was a man, would it make him any less divine than he is? After all religion is a matter of faith and nothing else. However that debates in itself a point of another post.

All in all, Da Vinci Code, is well, quite a mess of a movie. Even Da Vinci would’ve preferred redrawing his paintings after watching the movie.

Pandora – Open this box and discover music!

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Imagine you are taking a computer based aptitude test like GRE. If you answer the first question right, the next question is more likely to be tougher. If you get that right too, then the next question may be even tougher. However if you answered it wrong, the computer will very likely ask you a slightly easier question. By the fifth or sixth question the computer has a good idea of your aptitude, and the remaining questions are there to more or less finalize your score.

If only, instead of that monstrosity called GRE, would you love it if your music player played the same Q & A with you to measure your music tastes? Welcome to Pandora.

What is Pandora? It can be best described by the people behind Pandora, from their homepage:

Ever since we started the Music Genome Project, our friends would ask:

Can you help me discover more music that I’ll like?

Those questions often evolved into great conversations. Each friend told us their favorite artists and songs, explored the music we suggested, gave us feedback, and we in turn made new suggestions. Everybody started joking that we were now their personal DJs.
We created Pandora so that we can have that same kind of conversation with you.

Using Pandora is simple. Visit their website (http://www.pandora.com) and wait for their flash player to load. Everything else is explanatory. And if you don’t figure out how to use their player, then you have to admit that you are really technically challenged, and need to get off internet. I mean it – it is that simple to create play lists on Pandora. Just wait for their player to load and follow the instructions.

For an indie music freak like me, Pandora is nothing short of a blessing. I used to spend a major part of my day listening to indie artists on Yahoo Launhcast, and end up hating more bands than I like. Now, Pandora has helped me discover bands that I am more likely to love and keep the irritating ones out, just by my learning my musical preferences, and save my time by not making me hear songs that I would have more likely hated anyways.

Some of their other features also include sharing the radio station that you created; you can also search for other’s stations on their network as well, though none of those features have impressed me. What has impressed me though is the way I can rate songs and reject the songs I don’t like.

For example, based on my musical song, Pandora can play a song that it thinks I may like. I can chose to give the song “Thumbs up” or “Thumbs down” – if you “Thumbs down” a song for 2 times, rest assured that song is never played on the radio station. And similarly, songs rated “Thumbs Up” are more likelier to play on your radio station; you can also create your list of favorite songs by adding the songs that you hear to your list – I cannot iterate what a boon the favorites list has been to me – usually I end up adding a song to my favorite lists, and then using my favorite lists, I then hunt down the songs to download.

The other recent features that they added include RSS feeds for your own play-lists; Using their RSS feed you could create a list of songs you are currently hearing on your blog – already there are plug-ins available for blogger and wordpress; I am sure more will follow very soon. They recently teamed up with squeeze box too offers Pandora on a network radio; I am not sure if that thing will take off as expected.

One may argue that their effort is very similar to last.fm – which is quite true; but the fact that I don’t have to install yet another player and that they have much better learning music engine has drawn me more towards Pandora than any other player.

However saying that, there are some quirks with using Pandora, that one may not find exciting – for one, you can never rewind your play list; their music license does not allow you to rewind to a song that you loved – you can skip songs (thank god!), but for a limited number. As of yet, Pandora does not have any ads on their music, which is a boon in itself. Their service is probably not available outside of United States, which could be a downer; however they will start service very soon. And the biggest complain of them all – Pandora will never play the exact song you created the station with – their license doesn’t allow them to do that either.

In spite of those misgivings, I still think that Pandora is probably the best music player out there right now on the internet. The founders of the site are also musicians, who help them classify songs properly; their founders also maintain a blog on their site, and also tour around the country meeting music fans and listeners – a nice move to connect to your audience and also understand what they are looking for. I hope to attend one in D.C whenever they are next and chat up with them.

To sum it up succinctly – Pandora succeeds where all other online music players fail: Delivering music that you will love. Go give it a try!

*PSST: If you want to know what kind of songs I am listening to these days, click on the “Fun Tags” Link in top navigation 🙂

It tastes the same!

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I have never been a great fan of Thai restaurants. In fact, I don’t really like any of cuisines from Far East Asia – they give me the creeps. And more than the food, I hate entering their restaurants: A typical stench, that of a fish, dead, fried, dipped or otherwise constantly hangs around the area, and most of Thai dishes use fish oil to cook their food, which makes it all the more not likeable. And then the coconut – I don’t understand why Thai food over does coconut – coconuts are meant to garnish, not make a garish preparation.

Nonetheless, given my misgivings, I and my friends decided to visit a restaurant in Bethesda area called Sala Thai (Kiska Saala? U may ask). Now, we being typical desis, always manage to enter the restaurant right when its about to close, or close in ten minutes. Somehow I and my friends love doing that – this was no different, though we called in much earlier about the closing time from the restaurant people.

The restaurant closed at 11.00 pm, we were informed so, and we reached the restaurant by 10.15 pm. We were escorted to our table, and for a change, we were served water before we even asked for it – it was going good we seemed to believe. The waitress who was serving us looked bored to death about her job, seemed snooty and almost didnt want to serve us; The moment we had take one sip of water she declared, albeit in her Thai-English accent:

“Kitchen closes in 10 minutes! Can you order?”

We were like – you just gave us the menu – how about a few minutes?! And because she stood on our heads, we ended up ordering quickly. One of my friends ordered a green curry and the other a red curry – she seemed to take our orders casually and disappeared.

After a while, she re-emerged with our food – wow – that was fast, we thought. However to our friend’s dismay, she had got both green curries, and no red curries. Now, that was a mistake by our snooty friend in taking down the order.

When my friend told her “Excuse me, I asked for a red curry not green”, her answer, as casual as possible, stunned me:

“Oh, I am so sorry” and then suggested “They taste the same!” indicating we should simply lap it up.

I was like, what did she just say? Here were we, one of the best 100 restaurants in D.C area, being told that two dishes taste the same by a snooty waitress.

My friend suggested – “Well I wanted the red curry, can you exchange it?”

And snooty booty quietly replied – “The cook will get angry if I ask him to exchange it!”

Whoa?! And because she didn’t want her dear cook to come down on her, we were supposed to yap her mistake up – because she made a mistake in our orders, we were supposed to eat it up? Unfortunately, instead of walking out (which we should have done!), we simply ended up eating the food. Though, I made up my mind once and for all that it was the first and the last time I would visit that Thai restaurant again. Mind you the food was excellent, no complaints, but this incident just ruined it all.

When it came to leaving a tip, we were still generous to leave a 5$ tip, (which by standard rate is quite less compared to the bill we footed, a point we were trying to make for her service) – her reaction on seeing the tip was that of disgust and contempt – as if she didn’t deserve that for her ridiculous service.

Now compare this with an American restaurant in this area. This is not the first time that we have gone to a restaurant near closing time, but there is a clear difference in the way American restaurants cater to their customers and how others behave – in an American joint, either you are in or you are out – you are not in between. If we’ve been allowed to eat inside, then the service to the table most of the time is absolutely apt and proper.

We’ve been to several American restaurants before, and each time (well almost every time), if there has been a mistake in order, however late it can be, we were given a different dish. At some places, we’ve got discount in our final bill for their mistakes, at others, we were tendered a very good apology either (in extreme cases) – but nowhere have been treated like the Thai restaurant Miss Snooty.

This goes a lot to illustrate why American restaurants make money and in general the service level of any American restaurants – they may not serve the tastiest food in town, but they sure as hell know how to serve their customer!

…Which unfortunately, neither the Indian restaurants, Thai, Chinese or any other regional cuisine here know how to do.

If you are in D.C / Virginia / Maryland area, and if you happen to see this restaurant, give this a miss – pronto!

Movie Review : United 93

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9/11. I still remember the day when “the world” supposedly changed. Hardly 20 days had passed since I had come to United States, and we were still getting used to the vagaries of a new land. I had just joined a Master’s Program, and being in the country for all of 20 days, all we had back then was a house to sleep in, utensils to cook and nothing else – no TV, no music system, not even beds. It required us to be at college every morning, early, if we had to have any chance of getting a system for us to spend time on internet.

9/11 was just another morning like that, when I strolled into the lab at around 9.30 am to find it unusually quiet, despite being full. I was able to find an open computer and was logging in, when a friend of mine hollered “Dude – check that out; Two planes crashed into World Trade Center!” My first reaction to his statement was a laugh, and I almost blurted out that we could be in for a holiday. However a second later, seeing all the serious faces around me (Americans), all looking at the same news on the internet, I realized maybe I did not portray the right reaction to the incident.

The problem was I was a foreigner in an unknown land. I could not relate to the incidents as personally as Americans would. They were not my people, they were not my countrymen, and being fresh in the country, and its sensitivities had not struck me back then. I could probably (and I still do) relate more to the Jalianwala Bagh Massacare because it happened to my countrymen, even if it was nearly 100 years ago.

After 5 years I still feel I am a foreigner in this country, and I still cannot relate to many a thing affecting people in this country. Yesterday when I watched, United 93, perhaps this feeling helped me tremendously to watch the movie unfold from a distance rather than turning out to be a personal experience. I think a British director at the helm also helped the movie stay in perspective as he could afford to cut out the emotions from within and film the movie.

At the end of it, I have to say: United 93 is a gut wrenching mind numbing experience, and equally disturbing.

United 93
In what must be a first in all the years I have visited movie halls in this country, the movie began without any previews or trailers of upcoming movies. I don’t know if it was intentional or not, but I think it helped set the mood. As the film opens with split shots of terrorists reading the Koran and getting ready with their bombs, I couldn’t help but notice that this particular scene was in its elements pretty derogatory towards the Koran, though I don’t think the filmmaker wanted to represent a religion in that light – and even if he did, he was justified to present his view as he saw it. After all, the subject of the movie demanded honestly, not political correctness.

Much has been said and talked about United 93 and its passenger’s heroic efforts combined with sloppiness of terrorists that led to the eventual crash in Philadelphia, much farther from its target of Capitol, and I think its pretty much senseless to re-iterate all of it here. The movie faithfully tries to recreate the journey of that doomed plane, right from the take off to its eventual end. And much of it is shot in real time.

Paul Greengrass understands that merely showing the inboard drama of 40 minutes of United 93 would not only wear down the viewer, but also fail to show the circle of events of the day and perhaps dilute the impact. The movie shifts between events happening on ground and in air, which help build up the tension tremendously. Once flight 93 is airborne, the movie is practically real-time minute by minute account of the flight. More than half of the movie happens on the ground, in different air traffic control centers across Virginia, Boston, Air force base, and Cleveland Air Traffic control centers, where as the movie progresses one cant help but see the considerable tension and chaos building up in the offices and in the plane.

By the time the ground air controllers warn the pilots of United 93 about possible cockpit intrusion its almost too late – 2 minutes after the warning, United 93 was hijacked by 4 terrorists – after the initial hysteria and panic, the passengers of the plane chose to do something about the situation and regain control of the plane, all leading to a cataclysmic crash, of which almost everyone on the plane was sure of.

Without a doubt in my mind, it is the last 15 minutes of the movie which are absolutely mind numbing and disturbing – the chaos, the struggle to break open the cockpit door, the terrorists realizing that they had failed – almost everything that leads to final few moments to the movie and United 93 speeding towards ground make it too much to bear and see.

Technicalities
By casting a cast of absolute unknowns, Paul Greengrass is able to achieve a great degree of authenticity of the passengers. None of the faces that we see are well known, making it all the more believable. A sizeable portion of the cast played themselves, including Ben Sliney (head, Air Traffic Control, Herndon VA), people in the Air Traffic control centers in New Ark, Boston and the Air defense center. Everyone on the ground turns out a splendid performance as do the people in the air.

Paul Greengrass follows his direction style straight out of The Bourne Supremacy – the unsteady camera and attention to detail. Like the former movie, he’s able to work with his material and build up tension and set up the mood, without wasting any time. That this is an extremely well directed movie would be an understatement perhaps.

Much of what happened on flight United 93 is speculation, gathered from the various calls that the passengers made from the plane and the black box derived from the plane. Indeed, with that much speculation, Paul Greengrass had every opportunity to turn this movie into a pseudo patriotic movie with valiant dialogues and jingoistic acts – fortunately he does NOT, and in the process captures the people in the plane as they were. Not heroes – not valiant soldiers – just ordinary people who decided that they would do something to save themselves. Why even the much famous words “Lets Roll” by one of the passengers is not emphasized in the movie, and is almost lost in the chaos.

The final few minutes, though are what I would call masterpiece cinema. It couldn’t have been captured better than this.

Overall
As the movie ended, we were struck by the silence in the hall. Not one of the people in the hall was speaking – all of them left the hall quietly, and those who were talking were talking in hushed murmurs. As a foreigner with not much connection and personal relation to the incidents, I was left shocked and disturbed; I could have imagined the emotions that may have run through the people who related to the incidents. To be fair, I was pretty much disturbed for the rest of the night.

Whether this movie needed to be made or not, I am not going to debate on it; but if someone were to ask me if this was a fitting tribute to the passengers of United 93, then I would without a doubt say: it is.

Please watch this movie.

Goodbye, Dogmatrix.

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Dogmatrix.com

It is time.

Over the past two years, we at dogmatrix.com went through several ups and downs, but mostly the latter would be more prevalent to say. Today, we decided it is about time for us to let go. Change is never easy : we fight to hold on, we fight to let go; but we’ve decided to let go off something close to a close coterie of people. We are letting go of dogmatrix.com. It is about time, and we think it’s the right time for dogmatrix.com to shut down.

There’ve been many noteworthy incidents over the past two years that defined dogmatrix.com, but the most that come to our mind are the way dogmatrix.com helped us to define friendships across borders and countries, in a way we didn’t think it was possible. A meager effort it may have been, but at the end of it, we at dogmatrix.com feel that there has been much to gain than to lose out. And the best part of it all, when we look back, we don’t quite know how much we gained. Friendship, perhaps, is the biggest we gained out this effort.

At this juncture, it would be very appropriate to thank several individuals without whom dogmatrix.com would not have been possible:

At the very beginning, Guru deserves a lot of effort he put into the design, layout and overall look and feel of dogmatrix.com; sorry mate – things didn’t go the way they should have been. Nonetheless, his skills in web design need a special mention. Two years thence, he lives now in Bangalore. Dogmatrix.com wishes the best of luck to him.

Roo, or Rupanjana gave us the tagline to our site: “Don’t go barking up the wrong tree” which instantly was a hit with us. It was tongue-in-cheek yet, completely original to the theme of our website. In addition, her stead fastness and support even before dogmatrix.com came alive cannot be unaccounted for. She’s always been one amazing writer. She’s now married and perhaps lives in UK. Here’s wishing her the best of luck too.

A round of appreciation must also go to Vivek, a brilliant writer, and the most prominent member of the dogmatrix.com community. He wrote most articles on dogmatrix.com and kept the site alive even when dogmatrix.com seemed like reaching its end. His efforts have not gone wasted. it was because of him dogmatrix.com had a habit of staying alive. He still lives with Uncle Sam, and can be occasionally seen here and there on blogs. He still remains, however a brilliant writer.

Many thanks must go to Bhumi and Nirwa too for their contributions in coming up with topics, polls and ideas to motivate our community. Nirwa, especially for continuing to post something or the other to dogmatrix.com to this day whenever she can.

And of course everyone else who read, wrote and commented and made this community deserves a special mention too, though we did run out of words to thank you all.

A fair bit of statistics too needs to be disclosed too at this point I guess. we had 88 members on our site, leading to a contribution of 165 reviews on our site. And some polls and forum topics as well were alive on dogmatrix.com. Some reviews were just brilliant, some others were not, but they all contributed to the dogmatrix.com community.

Signing off, it must be said that whilst dogmatrix.com perhaps remain a closed community, its impact on some individuals and organizations cannot be disregarded, and are perhaps best left away unsaid.

Lastly, the friendships that dogmatrix.com helped grow and nurture, has perhaps been the biggest gift to all of us who valued it. We have grown much closer, much richer and better friends over these two years, thanks to dogmatrix.com. And this has been the biggest outcome of this effort.

And the future? It holds bright and clear! There are so many ideas buzzing around our heads. We may or may not explore those ideas. Our spirits to explore something different still remain the same. We may at some point come up with a different idea and see how it works. We may do something different altogether. dogmatrix.com helped us define many things that we could not do; perhaps we may pursue those ideas.

In the end, it is apt for us to say that dogmatrix.com is not quite the end of journey for us; it is just a stop for us to change cars.

Thank you for being a part of dogmatrix.com community.

Adios,

Admins @ dogmatrix.com


It is hard saying goodbye to something you’ve been involved in for 2 years and spent a considerable amount of your time on. And yet sometimes, it is time to move on. Dogmatrix was a site co-founded by me, and the jEDI. It was a great journey through these 2 years, wherein I made some great friends, and had the oppurtunity to meet one too in Ahmedabad.

At the time DMX came out, there was a need to educate, need to create a space of our own, and a community where we could share our opinions. DMX achieved all three; After 2 years though, life and its vagaries have taken its toll on all of us who were involved in the site – people have moved on, life’s changed dramatically and things are not the same anymore. Given the predicament, and also considering some of the facts that motivated why DMX ever came along into existance, it seemed a bit pointless to continue the effort anymore.

But at the end of it, there are no regrets. I got a lot of things back from DMX, and there is nothing more I could ask for from it.

This post is dedicated to Dogmatrix, or DMX.