movie hitlist (or) why i should not write movie reviews

the recent slew of must watch movies I watched were a real lot of pathetically painful performers… highly disappointing and the plot has been diluted to the point of being so silly, that the only satisfaction that seems to be arising out of watching them is this blog post… at the great personal risk of a RGV-blaag kinda attack, I am writing this, although no one is paying me anything for it…

Narnia II – the sequel to the first one (the lion the witch and the wardrobe) seems to have lost all the magic… the only magic left is some set of weird creatures… sluggish screenplay and even more sluggish characters are better appreciated due to the total humanness of the movie’s leading roles… almost 90% of the movie is devoid of any real magical instance and eventually azlan the lion god finally turns up to end the movie and hence our boredom… prince Caspian turned out to be a real thespian effort and the movie’s title sounds most appropriate in tamil… Narnia, Narnia…

Kuruvi – “kuruvi thalaila panangaya vekkalam aana bomb vekka koodadhu”… this punch dialog in a way sums up the entire episode. Ilaya thalapathi’s stupidest role so far and apparently the movie has been a telugu remake. The hero is actually a superhero… a set of thoroughly disconnected screenplay seems to connect the amazing punch dialog comedy tracks of vivek… amazingly powerful, the hero takes a beating now and then just to prove that he is still human (or maybe that the director suddenly remembered that it was just too much to digest seeing people getting beaten up by a scrawny looking guy by the hundreds… and then the songs… they had crossed being awful and get beyond the point of being unbearable… in fact I could not digest wot I saw and I actually felt very full after the movie for a few minutes after it got over…

21 – can’t say much about this becos it is supposed to have heavy themes in it… Kevin Spacey, Lawrence Fishburne, MIT, Maths, Blackjack, LA etc etc… it is supposed to be so slick and aimed to amaze that they forgot what they set out to do – play blackjack… it turns out more as a thriller where Lawrence Fishburne in his huge menacing form and his rich set of studded huge gold rings terrorizes kids to give him their cash and plastic chips… it turned out to be a movie that seemed to have a lot of sign languages typically reminding me of the “news for the hearing impaired” which used to be shown on DD way back when people were really watching those for lack of better things to do.

Cloverfield – a monster movie shot with a handycam… ok sounds good… so wot wud a guy with a handycam, running around becos of a monster attack focus on? No, not the monster… it would be his stupid screaming friends… come on when people go to the zoo, and take pictures, they take pictures of other people completely ignoring the animals… no ? anyways, I don’t think the monster was worth the time… and considering that it was a handycam tape, there was not much time either…

Arasangam – never expected the thalaivar to make such a forgettable movie… I actually don’t remember much of it… captain takes a small detour from the normal plot of “his best friend did it” to something of a bigger twist… but the rest of it seems same… somebody who is conspicuous by his absence is “Wasim Khan”, but the usual losing of beloved ones goes on. Amazing use of technology though not required for captain, but as I told you, I have forgotten the plot. But the way he cracks the code from a seemingly unsolvable clue – the captain has not lost his touch… in fact he has gained a few… pounds that is… nowadays I can’t see the throat where those great punch dialogs and loads of advice comes from… and soon maybe in the next movie itself captain will abandon his reverse back kick style and just roll over all his enemies…

Dasavatharam – had to save the best for the last rite? A huge wait of over 2 years and kamal gives us this… of course there are a hundred hidden messages in the story (according to a floating forward) but this is what I saw… of the 10 avatars of kamal, 3-4 were good in terms of character strength and depth… others were maybe there just for the sake of being there… and the horrible graphics of the butterflies and the oceans… yugg… I have not even started on the make up yet… despite the 500 man hours that kamal is reported to have spent on the make up alone I see no worth in that. A total plastic mask affair which suited only the killer kamal because of his cold expressionless character… In fact given a chance maybe any tom dick and harry could have acted those parts… unfortunately the monkey was too small and mallika sherawat was too slim and sexy and maybe napoleon was an old family friend and the concept kamal married to a kamal made to look like asin would have gotten censored in a same sex marriage abhorring intolerant country (but dint Vishnu take on a mohini avatar?) else maybe we could have actually seen kamal in 15 avatars and an unbeatable entry to the guiness book… yeah the film is fast paced and you don’t get bored, but nothing goes in either… it is a crazy half baked script and even lesser baked special effects and graphics and it totally falls flat on the attempts at a crazy mohan type dialog exchange at the most serious moments in the movie… the amazing start of kamal’s entry as rangaraja nambi is not capitalized for the rest of the movie, and in fact seems totally unconnected. And the amazing musical scores are as relevant as skimpily clad heroines and bright multicolored heroes prancing around trees and fields… I fail to understand if kamal was really attempting some fancy dress ramp walk or trying to portray himself in the 10 different avatars of Vishnu… God only knows…

Indian Idly…

For the last few months, I have been idling away… yeah that is my excuse for not visiting the blog… would you believe it? I didn’t visit my own blog all this while… this is what I realized when I saw the faithful weekly reports in my mails… almost 50% of the hits on my blog were narcissistic visits by me from various computer terminals across the globe – from my home internet, the office, the client location, my house in Chennai whenever I went on weekends and every chance I get on any internet connection… though I don’t know what I was looking for visiting my blog so many times…

and then there were the other faithfuls – my regular readers who used to in their daily surfing route would pass by my blog, see that nothing is written as usual, and file it away for chat discussions to ask me why I have not put anything there… then a further drop in hits made me realize the these faithfuls had given up and were now bypassing it… one faithful even went to the extent of subscribing to my mail feed so that she could be saved the trouble of visiting it in vain and at the same time not making me feel sad that she dint read my blogs…

but even all this is was not good enough to make me stage a comeback… frankly I was running out of inspiration… for lack of better reason let’s assume that that is the reason… because I was definitely not getting screwed at work nor did I have someone like my girlfriend or relatives visiting me… fact is I don’t even have a girlfriend, and since I live in a small pigeon hole also called PGs in Bangalore, no relatives can visit me either…

so what have I been doing all this while… well absolutely nothing… and when you do absolutely nothing you feel like doing absolutely nothing and end up doing absolutely nothing… that does sound like I have accomplished what I had set out to do thereby achieving 100% on the to-do list… but when you set out to do absolutely nothing, absolutely nothing is what gets done… that is what this paragraph has conveyed – absolutely nothing…

this idle mind has not even been a devil’s workshop… on many days I had just felt like sleeping the day off and many times I have done exactly that! And the chunks of time were in such quanta that they did not warrant the start or execution of a new found hobby which was the easiest advice everyone gave when I cribbed to them that I had absolutely nothing to do… ok that is the last time I am using the word, words - actually, here.

but yes, on hindsight I did seem to have been busy for the time I have been out of the blogosphere… it is definitely not that I have been trying to find a new chair that is as comfy as my old one(as one of the faithfuls had pointed out in the comment section before finally writing me off), though that was also part of some odd jobs I have been doing… it is excuses that are as tiny as the achievements that we try to remember during our appraisals or while filling the awards and achievements section in our resumes… but small things nevertheless, they definitely translate to an excuse that actually did eat up my time…at least i like to put the blame on something that is like an excuse.

so, I think I will put those in here as soon as I manage to recollect them… some are actually funny, though it may not seem so while reading it… some are not funny, but again, as I know my readers, it will definitely make you happy (bloody sadists!!!) and that was to some extent a decent excuse as I did not seem to conveying what I wanted to convey on my blogs… I was actually losing some amount of the originality as well… even this title was borrowed from someone’s gtalk status message, and by a sudden stroke of, I would say genius, removed the ‘e’ and put a ‘y’…

anyways, I hope I am back.

..X. .X..

the seperation…

I found her in my new office… soft unassuming not so flashy and not so shabby either… very down to earth but being exploited by someone else… I saved her from that useless monster who just could not appreciate her worth... I just stole her from right under his nose.

We immediately hit it off… a sort of special bonding formed between us… everyday I went to work just to create the warmth with her… and she was always ready to tend to my tired and battered body after the bus rides… when she was with me I never felt the need to look around and this helped me to concentrate on the little work that I managed to do…

Of course there were better things to do with her around than just work… I could just close my eyes and savour in the bliss when her soft body enveloped me and massaged my muscles… or I could let it all be and just relax in her soft contours and dream on… especially on a warm days …

She was a little fat, but that was what made her all the more appealing to me… we were the envy of the whole office, each one wishing she was theirs… but we were quite oblivious to the feelings around us – she shielded me from all these negativities by keeping me happy and comfortable…

Aah those memorable days when we have had coffee and juices together… although I could have had coffee in the cafeteria, I would prefer bringing it over and having them in her company… and the many work related achievements she has helped me in… ummm on second thoughts lets not think about work now…

And then came the day of the management decision… she was made to leave… along with many others like her… they were moving older ones like her to make way for younger ones… slimmer and sexy looking… but the warmth was missing… I will never be comfortable with these new entrants… I might get used to them, but not comfy.

I tried to hold her back… went to the authorities pleading with them to release her… even made up stories to invoke pity in their cold eyes… but all in vain… I could not bear to see her made to stand in a corner with others like her for the final walk out of the doors… I walked back inside cursing my inability to do anything about it.

Damn it… I miss my old chair !!!

the rice of the fitness freak…

I recently joined the elite class of fitness fanatics… recently as in some 4mths back… so I am not a new yr junkie (just reiterating the fact I had pointed in one of the previous posts itself)… so when I enrolled it is all so impressively professionally managed… or so it seemed…

Meet the physio they say… “the” physio is actually a group of people with weird looking instruments and weirder ideas… they try to find some fault in your body when there is none… come on man, I am there not to reduce weight or make myself look like the Mr.Prefect… I am here to have a general level of fitness and stamina with a little bit of muscle toning that comes in with a light cardio workouts… which means “I suddenly have a lot of money and I feel that the corporate discount was good enough… and yeah I wont be visiting too often…” so a session of fat measurements using vernier callipers and making me stretch muscles I knew never could be stretched, they found that I had an alarming 6% body fat as against the norm of 5.5% or something like that… so now the nutritionist takes over…

And what a stunning nutritionist she was… I could hear “and here come nutri-marie at 5ft 2inches weighing 170 pounds she is one of the lightest WWE superstars around” in the background… she could stun with a flick of her little finger if she could bend it enough to flick that is… and she asks me what do I eat… and as soon as I start off she is alarmed… “what no solid breakfast?” “what 3 cups of coffee?” “what 3 spoons of sugar a day?” “what no fruits?” and “what – u eat rice? In all the meals?”

Hey!!! I have to survive…

Any south indian worth his rice would have nightmares going to a dietician/nutritionist at any fitness club… the reason – they are so anti-rice… we just can’t leave a tradition of rice hogging southie culture just so that we can try to get into that six pack ab-domain… and what is the guarantee that it will give me that… I mean unlike coffee, the wonder drug that keeps you awake as soon as you have it, wheat does not give you six packs immediately on eating it…

You go to any surd-ka-dabha and order meals… a typical one is with some 3 rotis and a bowl of rice… if you wanna substitute the rice with the roti, you get another measly 2 or if they are generous, 3 rotis… come on – don’t you know that rotis are appetizers… go to an andhra restaurant and order unlimited meals, they serve you some rotis in the start… then comes the unlimited rice… UNLIMITED – get it… if I were to shift to a roti-only-thali I would go hungry !!! for the same money I get nightmares where the rice is accusing me of baseless treachery…

Not to mention the side effects when I am watching other people around me happily feasting on the rice and biryanis… years of rice hogging has given me a voracious appetite… and that nutritionist has the cheek to advice me to have a heavy breakfast – of 2-3 idlies –if I eat just 2-3 idlies I will die of starvation (and please don’t mention that idlies are made of rice and I wont be able to have that too… worse she might ask me to have wheat idlies yuck !!!) and a lunch of 2-3 chapatis, avoid rice – and ? I mean I have to eat a main course after an appetizer round right? And have a bowl of fruit in the late evening…fruit bowls actually make me hungrier – however big they are… that is why I avoid fruits in the first place… and then the best part – have a light dinner… according to her, the lunch was heavy!!!

And where is the coffee in the picture – I need it… it is the elixir of life… Now if only she had looked herself in the mirror, she might have felt a little guilty… what was she trying to achieve, saving the food ration for herself !!!

I am sorry lady… I am not the rich-anorexic-modeling-kids you normally get as clients… I am here on a fat company discount and I am dictating my terms… I am like this only and will be for time to come… I will hog like a pig, make me run like a horse…

customer is king kong…

India is a land of plenty… plenty of people that is… my cynical argument is that that is the reason for the current economic boom and prosperity of the nation despite there being millions of people who cannot affort a basic one meal per day or a roof over their heads or even a piece of cloth to cover themselves…

Businesses in India have woken up to the sudden cash inflow… in India they see many countries – just based on the economic divide… we have people with riches competing with the richest of the world to those competing with those that are starving for basic necessities as well and millions of people at different levels in between… result – we have a market for everything… if I were to launch a simple safety pin priced at a million dollars, I would probably find a buyer, no actually, I would find many bidders for it and I could possibly sell it at 10 million… maybe more.

No this is not due to inflation… too much money chasing too few goods is not the case… yes that is there too, but it is definitely not the problem because if it were it would affect the business men as well… it is a callous attitude typically contributed by the Indian consumer himself…

If we go back to the annals of Indian history we have always had someone categorized into “traitors”… these people typically used to sell off their fellow countrymen to invaders for no better deal than what maybe they would have all had gotten had their been a united effort at nation development… but no, Indians have always thought that they were always better than fellow Indians… not that they deserve better, that they can afford better…

If a fellow Indian is getting screwed at some service offered, the first sympathy of other Indians would go to the service provider… for example, if I am in a queue for a movie ticket, the guy behind me would grumble that I am taking too much time in buying tickets rather than that the guy issuing the tickets is taking too much time to give the tickets… and the businesses make the best of it… even if they fall short on their delivery promises they would always find a buyer for their crappy service…

The finest example is the pizza delivery 30 minute promise… I have never seen deliveries happening within 30minutes… but never have I seen people getting it free… why… because we know that the guys who are gonna go hungry are not the pizza delivery guys or the pizza makers… it is the guys who ordered it… because I definitely don’t think that pizza if it were ever returned would translate into a loss for the company… because in all probability, the pizza would find a buyer among the many people who want to flaunt their buying power and are still waiting their turn outside the restaurant…

Definitely we cannot boycott the goods and services because these are bare essentials… there was a recent fwd about the real estate boom which implored all peoples to stop buying houses for a couple of years so that the builders could actually feel the impact of a joint boycott… but that mail is getting forwarded like a hot cake but in a different sense… the psyche of the guy forwarding the mail is explained using the game theory… “if I forward it to some 10 people and they boycott the buying of the flat then I would end up getting the flat cheap…” the problem with this idea is that all the people reading the forward are Indians… and hence we think alike…

Businesses no longer look at customers… they look at target segments… because things average out in a bigger population… it is a statistical funda applicable to India definitely… gone are the days when the business people used to bend backwards to treat customers as kings and that the customer is always right… wait… I don’t remember those days at all… I have only seen an attitude of “the customer is right, so what? I will find somebody else…” according to them customers are just monkeys providing amusement with their rantings… but maybe king kong would get a better response because he is a big monkey – with due respect to racism…

New years resolutions and stuff…

mmm… actually I have nothing to write about… but I did not want to give up on my new year resolutions so soon… I want to blog often… more often than I am currently doing. This is definitely not going to be a list of resolutions that I want to keep and then fail to do so and later on somebody digs up the archives and sues me for not keeping my resolutions… as if I care…

well anyways, before i start boring you I have already broken one resolution (refer above)… another one is to not procrastinate… well for those who don’t do hindu crosswords and have not come across such stupid sounding bombastic words in english, I meant – putting off work for later… so here goes my first blog post for this new year – although a little late (thank whoever thot of that “better late…” proverb…)

I actually don’t know what to write… I cannot recap what happened the whole of last year… hell I can’t recap whatever happened yesterday… my memory is so short lived (thank god for that) and so a recap of 2007 would be so factually incorrect that I would get more brick bats than the… the… the er whoever is the recipient of the maximum criticism last year…

So, I look for inspiration within… nope much as I break my head, I wont write about my new year resolutions… no way… million other peoples have written it already… and have already started following it… just the other day, just like any other day I went to the gym only to find it extremely crowded… the other day was the 2^nd of jan and note that it is not my new found new year resolution about fitness… I went to the gym just like any other day – I am a regular!!! And there were so many people there at the machines that there was a queue even at the weights section – the maximum demand for the lightest dumbells… and what a sweat everyone was working out… but wait a minute… where is that hum of the ac…

And yes of course the treadmills are the worst hit… any body and everybody is so obsessed or should I say paranoid about cardio work outs… and the first thing that jumps into the head is the tread mill… so we have a whole bunch of waist size 40s panting and heaving at the belt at a godly speed of 3km per hour hanging onto the support bars for dear life… and they will put in all their will power to make people wait for the whole 20 mins… because 20 minutes of using a treadmill is more value for money than 1 minute at the weights…

What is so pissing about the increase in the crowd and the hence the waiting time is that there is no proportionate increase in the number of pretty faces and the sex ratio… so should we safely assume that more men are getting unhealthy and our women are already possessing that perfect body… too bad that there will be more eyes for that few tight tracks doing that routine on the steppers…

Well come to think of that the new year is a time when the male hormones are at their peak… it is something like the full moon for werewolves… so women who feel quite comfortable and safe generally walking half naked into a mob of drunk sex starved local people should actually abstain from it on new year eves… especially in cities that are considered safe like mumbai, delhi and bangalore… all these liquor manufacturers must be sued – haven’t we all heard that drinking alcohol and smoking tobacco makes you impotent… then why are all these men behaving like this…

It is not just the people, but even inanmate objects like wooden platforms behave strangely on new years… like the one in chennai that stubbornly refused to support the weight of all that people on it… it was the effect of the new year moon… the hotel authorities were so careless to have overlooked the effect of new year on wooden supports… the fact that there were about a million people precariously perched on the platform to welcome the zeroes on the clock had nothing to do with it… sue the greedy hotel authorities who brought in unaccomodating hostile timber…

And then there were so many more things that happened that I have forgotten them over the last few days at work… new year now looks like years ago… to me it is just another holiday hopefully spent at home in front of the TV switching between the 8 or so free to air tamil channels that show some movie simultaneously… so while superstar is romancing nagma in one channel I wont miss out on the punch dialogs of captain on another or a good comedy track on yet another… a very nice example of mix and match at work thouch totally out of context… maybe we can launch a make your own movie idea… or a remixed movie… hmmm that sounds like a nice business plan…

So on this note I close this post… it has been waiting for a nice ending and I have been like working on this here and there… lots of things have happened already and I will have to start writing about them too… and yeah better late than never… like so many of my orkut mates who are still wishing me…

HAPPY NEW YEAR…

mein, meri lappie aur woe

my laptop has to be in the geriatric hall of fame. This fossil was dug up by our ceo on his archaeological expedition cum vacation somewhere in the remote locations of the Antarctic… or it was maybe somewhere in the hot locales of the USA… but yeah somehow this artifact was unearthed… thus this piece of prehistoric paleolithic processor came to be in my company… and has stayed on in the company since then… actually we should say “thus the company stayed on since then…” but since we pride ourselves in being a modern IT company we will live in the bliss that the laptop came after the company was founded…

so when I joined this great organization, we were given a t-shirt that said “since 1852”… ok ok not 1852… but yeah we were given a t-shirt that was left over from last year and a laptop… for me it was “the laptop”…

it is a simple dell d600… maybe it is a cryptic clue for “direct from hell” or “the devil” himself… but it is the beginning of all my woes. First it has been handed down through generations – manhandled and each and every key has taken the beating of centuries. And the top right hand corner of the lid is actually worn thin with all the scraping aways of the old label of the previous owner and the track pad is so smooth that your finger just slides without actually moving the mouse pointer… the indicator leds have grown senile and continuously blink on and off in different colors with absolutely no meaning…

and then the internal organs have also eroded with age. The wireless adaptors keep searching for adaptors that are not available ultimately realizing that the adaptors were anyways disabled. But then like most senile beings the memory is short lived too and the search begins pretty soon again. But the normal wired network is always unplugged even with a full blast network… (of course the modem is working fine I checked it… I am not that dumb, ok…) my lotus notes always locks my mail account – come on boss, it is my official mail, I can read that during my office hours…

Funnily my laptop was the only one in which there is a dvd drive that does not have the combo of cd burning too… but of course now you understand why dell buried it in some excavation site to fossil away… so when I pointed it out to the helpdesk guy he promptly made another laptop as the one with the unique distinction of having the non-cd-burning-dvd-drive… aah the wonders of the ultra-bay technology… I was just awed by his dedication that I quickly took my laptop away to my cubicle to test it in privacy lest the owner of the combo drive were to trace it to me and demand it back…

and the helpdesk people have ingenuous and fool proof ways of finding out the fault in your laptop. They take it up and hold it near their ears. If it makes a “krr krr” sound then your harddisk has crashed. If it makes no sound, then they shake it till it rattles and then say that the screw is loose there and tighten it and give it back – and they wont forget to make you close the issue and mark it as satisfied!!! And why not? The laptop worked so well under their hands. Is this what is called artificial intelligence?

Speaking of intelligence, the laptop has a mind of its own… first it waits for me to do some very important work like being halfway through a blog post or better still, a very interesting blog post that I was so enthusiastically typing away that I even forgot to save it even at the title…

(wait that reminds me… aah ctrl + S 10 times…)

Ok… where were we? … yeah, when I am in the middle of something very important, like a blog post or a chat, it decides to hang… that is it… freeze… frozen… I have to force shut down and restart the system as the great “ctrl+alt+del” combination is rendered useless here. But the system is not finished with me yet.

So much for Mr.Gates’ panacea of shut-down-restart – it does not go all the way – stops at the blue screen(not the death wala) without the login prompt. Ok another force shut down restart.

Now it does not recognize my OS… the bios says that… what cheek!!! Force shut down restart no.3…

now slowly my login also happens and my personal settings come up one by one on the system tray… hey wait… are we done? That is it? Only 4 icons… there is something definitely missing… aah !!! where is the network icon that says unplugged with that huge red cross? That is it… no network adaptors loaded. Another restart – this time I do it the normal good way – start menu etc etc… but then, there are some programs that tired of being mistreated being called as and when the OS is restarted that they refuse to shut down…

ok, now that we are experts in force shutdown restart we can do it anytime… easy… but no network icon this time too… next time and the time after the next too till I lose count… finally the frustrated me turns to religion – there is no particular god for computers, but I generally invoke all of them – it is good to keep them all happy you know, you never know… and even then no network… one more time, this time with more bhakthi and shraddha… yaay… that is it… the network is up and running too…

I almost do a jig, but then since I don’t want to make an over enthusiastic noise and make Murphy angry again… so I go back to see what is left over of my blog post – haha gotcha… trick question… with friends like Murphy, you should not even think about the blog posts… and the friends who were patient enough to wait to hear my story of why I had just rudely logged off in the middle of listening to them bitch about their companies and bosses…

But despite my best begging skills the helpdesk will not believe and give me a new laptop. It seems that the top management and the marketing people are looking at brand ambassadors for enhancing our company image and they need widescreen and faster processor speeds in their laptops to download all those pictures of prospective models… of course we are talking about images of great ceos and company heads and leaders here… not those cheap skimpily clad (clad?) ones out there… you pervert…

Till then I think I will have to live with collecting new spare parts… today I got a new hard disk… previously a new OS… next time a new motherboard maybe… then a new key pad… slowly I will have enough to make a new laptop within a realistic period of say 6 more months…

PS. ssh don’t mention the cd drive switch to anyone ok… thanks…

taare zameen par…

I can’t help envying ishaan… he is so lucky to be dyslexic… or am I abnormal to think of a feeling like envy when everybody else is shedding copious tears in sympathy of his abnormality… woe betide the heartless me…

How normal is a normal kid in the third standard… come on…

Teacher: class today we are going to study plants. Plants are the green things that you see on the roadside and parks… sometimes they look good with flowers and fruits then we call those places where these plants grow gardens… Can you name some plants…

Student 1: Rose plant

Teacher : very good

Student 2: Sunflower Plant

Teacher: mmm good

Student 3: tomato plant

Teacher: good good

Student 4: Brinjal plant

Teacher: mmm good

Student 5: white rose plant

Teacher: mmm ok, but somebody has already said a rose plant…

By this time there is a mad commotion in the class to name a different plant and show off and so by quite some time the class has exhausted almost all know plant names… and then there goes up an excited hand to name a plant that is not yet named…

Teacher: yes Anand…

Excited student: miss… steel plant…

Teacher: unh !!!

And with one casual sweep of her hand gesturing me to sit down, she killed one of the future, maybe the only, competition to mittal and the tatas… gone… nipped in the bud… (haha got that pun… I am a natural !!!)

Then by different episodes which I am too shy to expose here, my creativity was beaten out of me so that I could lead a normal life… occasionaly though it does try to surface, but then it is easily curbed due to the infinite yogic meditation techniques and tai-chi and feng shui I have been taught at school and also managed to research on the net…

No… I didn’t suffer from dyslexia… and I was a pretty good student academically too… that was until some other friends of mine decided to take over my responsibility and let me focus on er…other interests of greater consequence… so I definitely don’t envy ishaan for suffering from dyslexia and getting to act with aamir khan… and he actually shares the dubious dyslexion of his condition with aamir khan himself… (ok ok that word play didn’t look as good as the pun, but I am working on it…)

So why do I envy ishaan? At least he had a teacher who told him thinking of steel plants was ok and helped him to learn the difference.

Ishaan is lucky… the dreamy eyed kid that he is portrayed to be is the way that kids should be… let their creativity run wild… let their inquisitiveness be unhindered… and find more kids like ishaan act in such movies and make more such movies…

Yeah aamir khan’s directorial debut TZP is an awesome must watch movie. It got 4 stars in the TOI, but I am ready to give it millions of stars… it is impossible to quantify in terms of stars the intangible ROI from the movie… ok to cut the crap and put it in layman’s terms the individual performances are great… including the khadoos dad who seems to have no feeling for his son… and it would be an understatement to say that the kid and aamir khan have done justice to their roles… the whole performance is so natural that it is unnatural to believe that they are acting… even the crying scenes don’t make you cringe in emotionless boredom…

Of course the movie has its mistakes and some dumb scenes, which is probably the reason why the one star was penalized by the TOI critic… but the overall delivery more than makes up for the deficit… the way ishaan learns that he is abnormal and the way he is unable to understand that he is actually having a problem can’t be better portrayed… and there are so many subtle moments in the movie that help us appreciate the amount of perfection attempted…

And the best of all is the magic of the kids… the kids are made to behave in the most normal way even though they are extremely special ones acting in aamir khan’s special movie (at least the media says so)… unlike some movies where 8 year old kids are mature enough to arrange a wedding of their dad with his college best friend by just reading their mom’s letters, these kids are acting their age. Even the paintings done by ishaan despite his high IQ only portray his creativity, to which age has no significance and does not show him as a da Vinci or a Picasso… The songs are good too… especially the “tumhe sab hai pata hai na maa!!!” is so soulful, that ishaan’s silent acceptance is so perfectly balanced in it.

If I have to sum it up in one word – “too good”… ;)

I am alone !!!

I pity will smith… I can’t spend a short weekend alone despite having a television filled with millions of live programs involving live people and he spends 3 years in a world that has no other fellow human being. It is a real scary movie. No I am not talking about the stupid screaming zombies who are always asleep during the day… the whole idea that you are the last man on earth is what is extremely scary…

If I had been him in that world, I would not have lasted 3 minutes, let alone 3 years. I would not have wasted so many bullets trying to kill all those virus infected zombies. Just one bullet would have been enough. (Here I have a small question, when people bite the bullet, do they get time to chew? Probably I should write a letter to that organization in switzerland. But what is the point when I am the last human on earth… nobody would be there to answer back.

Scary thought. When almost 30% of your batchmates are in the same city you are living in and quite a few of them are in the same area, you should say “how can you say that you are feeling lonely ?”… yeah rite… it actually goes like this.

Me: hey dude1… wanna go to that movie “abc”?

Dude1: hey why do you want to go to abc da? And it is a stupid movie. The actors in it are all commercial stars. Lets go to some slow boring play where we will have lots of time to appreciate the individual performances.

Me: er… actually at that reminds me. There is a K-serial I want to watch. Maybe we will catch up for dinner sometime after u finish the play eh?

Dude1: ummm… ok… but then I will actually be some 200kms away in another city because the play is running only there. Bangalore is too fast paced a city for that kind of plays.

Me: huh ok, how abt lunch at a place near your house tomorrow?

Dude1: you mean I have to move 10 meters away from my place… how could you be so cruel?

Me: ok ok… fine… chalo… enjoy your play… maybe we will catch up some other time.

After sometime:

Me: hey dude2… wanna go to that movie “abc”?

Dude2: hey, no man… actually I have some work at office today. Hey lets do one thing… why don’t we wake up around say 4am in the morning go for a short jog for about 10kms, play football with a few guys and jog back home. And all this on an empty stomach. And once you reach home you will get one nice juicy tiny cute orange!!! Exciting no ?

Me: huh… yeah… actually I was planning to get sloshed tonite, so I won’t be able to wake up that early tomorrow morning.

Dude2: Hey no probs man… I will wake you up…

Me: er… actually I would be too disoriented after that party… moreover my physio has said that running after drinking alcohol causes cramps in the muscles due to the anaerobic respiration cycle…

Dude2: How about next weekend?

Me: yes man!!! That sounds good… chalo will call u next Friday.

Dude2: ok ciao bbye!!!

Me: bbye (phew!!!)

After some more time

Me: Hey dude3… wotsup da… wotcha doing ? (see I learn fast… no “want to go to that movie abc” line)

Dude3: nothing da… am feeling damn bored. Just donno wot the hell to do… am so vella and I don’t feel like watching a movie on my laptop… or tv… or even sleeping…

Me: same here da… hey say how about we catch a movie… heard that there is a cool movie abc running in a nearby theater…

Dude3: yeah I know… but will you get tickets for this weekend? There is no point going to all the trouble and finding that there are no tickets. Bangalore is a very crowded place man… tickets are sold off even before the movie is released…

Me: yeah, but no harm trying rite… I will chk on the fone booking… or the internet…

Dude3: they never pick up the phone da… or else it is always engaged… and the net never has more than 2 or 3 tickets at a time…

Me: ok, then how about going to that arcade and play some pool and bowling and some video games…

Dude3: I don’t play video games da… they never interest me… and the bowling ball is so heavy and you have to do all sorts of gymnastics to play pool… sounds like too much work…

Me: yeah da… there is nothing to do… this is one useless city… we are so bored to death…

Dude3: yeah… we can do nothing but crib about it…

You know it is very difficult being the bored one in a group of bored ones. And it gets so boring that I get hungry and I have to order some food – I hate eating out alone. Thanks to these friends I know who to blame when I get that bulge in my midsection – I don’t get any exercise yaar!!!

So what do we do about it? We blog !!!

Here and here !!!

PS. “I am legend” made me really appreciate the crowded Ranganathan Street of chennai.

scary story

scary story

claimer: this is a true story

Our boss announced that we were in dire need of a team outing. We were working too hard to meet the deadline and we were close to losing our marbles. Tempers were flying and mistakes were becoming pretty common. We needed a break. So we decided to hit it.

A picnic in the wooded area behind our tech park was suggested. It was not actually a wooded area. It was actually an abandoned construction site. People said it was cursed. The land was bought by a leading construction company and they were building huge office complexes to house the ever-growing software population of the city. But some misfortune fell and the great entrepreneur died in that very area. The place was deemed jinxed and the company lost all its money and was another riches to rags story. Effectively it was an abandoned building site with half finished walls and floors and ceilings and overgrown with trees and bushes. It was abandoned for quiet sometime that it actually started looking like a forest. Rumor had it that it did have some wildlife too – snakes and stuff.

But we were an adventurous lot. So we packed a huge picnic basket and some cricket gear and some more games with big balls and started off. We found a clearing and fixed our cricket pitch there. A game of limited overs was followed by another and then another and then another till we were tired and hungry at the border of collapsing.

We attacked the picnic basket. Slowly our energies returned and our bodies were hydrated again. And we were just relaxing in the cool winter sun chatting up on each one’s old times and laughing at the goofs of our client.

And then it happened. The ground shook. A steady thump-thump as if some distant pile driver was boring into the earth. Only it grew slightly louder with every thump. The trees in front of me parted and out peeked the head of a tyrannosaurus rex – looking directly at us.

There was no need to tell us that it was hungry. And we did not care to find out if it really was. The guy next to me screamed and that set off the t-rex’s roar and then everybody screamed. The t-rex started towards us. A split second later all of us started too… in different directions. We headed for the trees hoping to get a good cover.

But I was the wise one aka smart-ass. I looked around for a second, analyzing my situation. The stone buildings were a little further away from the closest cover of the trees. And it was not running away from the hungry dinosaur but would actually mean running a slant path that was closer to the monster than the others. But I had always prided myself in not following the crowd and I would live up to it today as well – if I lived that is … Gulp !!!

Much as I try to make others believe that I actually stopped and thought out my options for a second, I was actually not thinking at that time. I just ran and since I hated crowds I just ran towards the half finished buildings. The predator followed its instincts it is easier to catch the odd man out – I mean the odd dumb animal in the herd as it usually makes a mistake that causes it to go slower than the herd. I watch a lot of discovery and animal planet. And today I like the chosen one.

I could visualize the animal behind me – snarling and madly hungry… it would only be a matter of time before I lost track of time. I did not have time to think if it would be painless or how would it feel inside the stomach of the beast if it were possible… yeah I know – it is gross, but how else can I fill more words here?

I hit the trees before I was caught. The animal hit it a moment later, panting heavily too. The new medium had momentarily slowed its pace. But it was used to it – after this was its playground and we were the visitors, and was gaining its lost momentum. I could suddenly see the white stones of the unfinished walls just up ahead and I put on a new burst of speed with renewed hope.

The t-rex sensing my new hope roared out and as expected increased its speed too. Then as its hot breath almost hit the back of neck I took a sideways plunge into the nearest opening I could find. I skidded through the gravel and sand in the half laid floor watching the surprised t-rex skid in its momentum outside. I turned just in time to see the other side of the wall coming in to hug me but I could do nothing about it. My head hit it with a sickening thud and I lost consciousness.

I don’t know how long I was out cold but when I woke up it was still sunny outside. I looked at my watch and it showed some time close to 4 pm. I was unconscious for nearly 2 hours. I looked around the place I was in. It was a small room with a part of the wall crumbling away on one side. And that is when I found that it was not over yet.

The t-rex was still nearby patrolling the area – waiting for me to surface so that it could well u know what. I held my breath and stayed silent and unmoving till it crossed. Even though I had read that t-rex can only see moving objects my lying motionless was because I was petrified. Slowly the t-rex went farther and farther away and slowly the air in my lungs went out as I exhaled noiselessly.

And then it happened.

Beeeeeeeep!

The t-rex paused, listening. I quickly saw my watch that was lying a little away, probably came off when I collided with the wall. I grabbed it and pressed some button to stop it from beeping more. But the keys themselves beeped when pressed and moreover the sound was not coming from the watch. It was my cell phone alarm.

BEEP BEEP BEEP !!!

I frantically searched for my cell phone, but the damage was already done. The t-rex had seen me move for the watch and now I was jumping around like a monkey to find my phone. It turned and started running towards me. BEEP BEEP thump … thump … thuMP… thUMP… BEEP BEEP it was getting closer and closer and there was a roar. I could hear the ground vibrating now and the thumps went THUMP THUMP… my body was shaken roughly…

The t-rex opened its mouth to roar again as it closed in on me; I watched in horror unable to move…

“DUDE… YOU ARE LYING ON TOP OF YOUR CELL PHONE… SWITCH IT OFF AND LET ME SLEEP IN PEACE”… roared the voice of my roomie.