In general

In the current release of our IM server (should be GA'ed soon) , I was mainly working on a HTTP-XMPP gateway. JEP 124 defines this binding.
So , when I saw that gtalk was available through gmail - I was excited : another client (also corresponding server) implementation of this protocol !
But alas , this is not to be : the google folks have a POST based custom protocol for handling this (part of the syntax is pretty weird if you observe the over the wire data !) .
Considering their normal policy of adhering to standard protocol , I was not expecting this from them I guess ...

Moving on ... most people would Kerala would know about the infamous 'Rajan case' - about how a REC Calicut (my college) student was arrested , tortured and allegedly killed by the cops during the emergency.
From Vinod's blog , I came across this link (not sure when this came out though ...) which points to the account of Rajan's father : would be going through it later ... should be a good read.

Check out this for a new definition of 'asshat' , ROFL.