A Wednesday!

Why was there not much noise about this movie? Its one of the well made thrillers (if not the best ) in bollywood..very hollywoodish but with lotsa relevance to desi scene..
How ever well made the Hollywood flicks are, I feel am a bit displaced bcos I don’t gel with NYPD or LAPD or their infights and many such trivias that are purely yankee..But that doesn’t mean they shud make movies relevant to all & sundry in the world but my wish always was why not people here make movies of such caliber but very India relevant..
A Wednesday is an attempt at that and a highly successful one!
Remember the telephone booth- a gripping thriller with just one telephone booth as a set prop! What brains to make movies like that..This is nearly such an effort, monumental in our context.
Who better to take those roles that Anupam Kher and Nasrudeen Shah. What a performance..fantastic portrayal! I read somewhere that “ bring Kher as Mumbai Commissioner, he may do a good job, seeing the way he conducts in this role!”..as for Nasrudeen Shah, this shud be right up there among his scores of great jobs he has done.
I don’t think any review of this movie can attempt to say anything about the story or any incident in the movie. Its so intelligent that any extra word can result as a clue to the movie’s suspense! So go see the movie, its really worth it. A very powerful movie with the message just sliding across to you with panache.

'appy Diwali!

I have nothing to add than what was said here last year:-)

role reversal?

Isn’t long since we had some cricket here..thats bcos cricket either has been tooo much or so boring for quiet sometime now..if you see, even the Aussie- Ind series is not commanding any crowd! Bindra or someone talked about lack of facilities in our grounds..regulars here know, i for one has been crowing about this for years ! I hope the board takes it seriously and revamps the grounds with good facilities..atleast I don’t intend going to any ground till they do so. That’s quiet a stubborn statement coming from someone who travelled all the way from CH to UK to follow many matches of the Champions Trophy in 2004.
The talks about the fabfour (or five) will die down for some more time, now that we won. But am sure they are on the wane and deserve the boot sooner than later. Atleast a good youthful team can be built. Dhoni fella really excels whenever he is leading..am sure kumble wud hav muffed atleast a handful times if he were in and may be we wud have drawn or just about scraped with a win. Oh! BTW who wud have taken the Oz wickets in 1st innings then?
I wish Kumble feigns injury like tendulkar(when ever in dubious form) does and stays away, else it shall revive interest in this series bcos Aussies will be given a good chance to bounce back. As for Gangs, good for him- no more politix and no more suspense with the picking of every squad. Its time anyway that he hung his boots. Laxman and Kumble will fade away soon..That will leave tendul & Dravid a couple of years and its ok. May be tendul will chase a couple of more records and this HMV boy shall leave in peace. Not that there are great guys out there waiting in the fringe. Badrinaths, Rainas, Rohits all may be very ordinary players but in lively pitches the same dicey innings of the fab5 shall be emulated by these newbies too, if not better! So its cool if they leave..if they leave one by one, like gangs, lets applaud and don’t make an issue out of it, lest they think we all need them and stay put.
Talking of aussies, its so heartening to see that so much Indianess is visible. They are batting the demons of pitches where none exists, bowling exactly like Indians (I mean before) where the opponents extracts so much pace, bounce, swing and spin in the same pitch and even fielding with drooping shoulders, missing run outs..Oh what a reversal, esp after all that big talk by Ponting before the series. Their media is also behaving like ours, hunting and haunting them for all non-issues.. ha ha..am enjoying every bit of all these off-the-pitch incidents. Here you go, if you were a cricket fan like me once and think its not worth following like before, go and enjoy all these fringe activities..they are funny and engrossing:-)

a dummies guide to this financial crisis!

hey this is hilarious and educative at the same time:-) thanks pradeep for the link!
am just reminded of a sentence i saw long back about capitalism, which wud mean something like - 'profits are privatised and losses are socialised'.. isn't true across the globe? as long as the lehman & other financial firms, oil industry, airlines, big IT (before that bust I mean), etc enjoyed every bit of the fake boom (created by themselves) and all the profits that were garnered then, it was all fine, for them that is! and when they had a big crisis (which anyway was looming large all along because of their style of operation) it had be the governments or in other words our collective pockets that had to bail them out or suffer the loss (indirectly though).

Jet crash land..

Iam not going to talk of the crisis at jet airways or the retrenchment or their management woes..actually who cares? Such financial bubble bursts help a lot, environmentally that is:-)
esp the glorified satta market called stock exchange requires this burst more often! people start thinking- to buy, invest, to fill petrol, to fly, to party even!! That’s good for our planet! Let the consumerism madness go down a bit..
Coming back to Jet - the retrenchment drama, Raj’s intervention (or was it not?), reinstatement- all these action packed drama was the highlight in that busy week of mine..
I couldn't really blog..actually I couldn't read or follow news at all..so hectic was it..but in the midst of all this, this Jet drama interested me the most..or bothered me the most!
There is some crisis in an industry and job cuts are norms esp in these exaggerated economic days..but if these, otherwise snobbish upper class elites, think they are right in approaching Raj Thackarey, of all the politicos, hmm.. shame on them..
And 2moro if he comes back and starts dictating his other pet ordinances, where will all these jokers go? You want some examples? Here we go:
All non-maharastrians lose their jet jobs; all non-marathas go to other states or where ever; all correspondences in jet shall be in marathi only; shift your base to nasik or pune or timabaktu wherever raj thinks he wants it;
BTW he said he shall stop all jet planes from taking off! u think he actually could have done that? Finally, if it is actually ok to go to him to rush for your job loss- never again crib for any of his tantrums and nuisance!

am off!

off to auroville again! this time for a work shop on solid waste management..
we shall be staying at our favorite farm- solitude!
so here we go..so no blogging till thursday..
be good and stay tuned later..

Tata to nano

hmm..but only temporarily..
The mamta & pinkos together had a great show at singur,Bengal! I was impressed and was following this funny politrix for once, since that could disturb the environmental disaster called Nano. I had expressed my doubts about it being one lakh - am sure the excise, surcharge, steering, wind shield etc will all be charged extra. Thus pooh poohing the fact that it could be a one lakh car..all said and done, any cheap car that shall be pumped in bulk in to the market is a straight recipe for disaster. and there were some parties (BJP aint?) asked for a reservation of some numbers for the poor aspirants! ohmegawd..how do they spell such brilliant ones in their press meets, without rolling or LTAO?
back to Nano: one cant select between lefts and mamta (oh! another state like TN with such glorious choice), still I liked the after effect. Singur unlike most other offers, was a fertile land and close to the city- that too a very populous one. It was the rice belt of bengal, am told, like the cauvery belt here in TN..so am happy it went out of WB. another reason is that any setback to pinkos, i shall be happy:-)
When the whole media was speculating it could go to AP, Karnataka, orissa, bla bla.. Gujjus stole it with such ease. Each time our media esp the english one screws it up, am happy no ends. Modi might have done good by pulling the carpet and the gujjus wud always present effectively and are so enterprising, any sane CEO wud choose them. More so Modi- I saw him in action, when he was selling Gujarat in Swiss just after his first tenure. It was mindboggling. So no wonder that Guj got it..
but IMHO its better off being there near the west coast than in south or east. the more delayed it is, better off the environment is. I wish some more stumble blocks comes its way and more drama unfolds..seriously, i don't mind the industry & economy taking a beating than the ecology!

sigh..sigh..

It’s a shame that the solution to many issues incl conversion, retaliation, ideological differences, theft or just about anything seems to be killing..you saw I mentioned theft there and did u guffaw? Man! The problem in Assam this time started with a theft (of some petty livestock) and got blown up in to a religious battle.
Coming in a country in which even the kings never colonized after winning wars, when the order of the day was infact otherwise!
The religion itself being an opium and not-to-be-taken-seriously-evil, is posing so many problems..If there is no balance in handling it by the govts it can be a very nasty problem in future. Conversion or not, religions shud not be let beyond the earmarked space that they deserve. Else it can only blast. (oh, yeah- pun intended)
While on conversion and its effects see here for a westerners view! and for a local view, here.
what serious kick all these conversion industrialists have? Why cant they just use these huge funds to get food to the poor masses in Africa & Asia?

BureaucraZy !

Another peek in to our democrazy filled with bureaucrazy!
There's an expansive lake (close to 200 acres) near my place and slowly its being shrunk..since it really swells up during monsoons, there was not lots of encroachment there. But of late, there is rampant encroachment as well as wild growth of some shrubs too. (julilflora & kattamanakku). So some of us took it up on ourselves, took out a signature campaign and had a petition drafted. Then we set out to give it to the collector, who on paper can do away with all the menace and make it a dream come true lake.
Sigh sigh..but we only imagine such stories right? Have we ever heard of one in real life? Not me atleast.
Using some influence we try and wriggle out an appointment with the collector. Time and again u wud have seen it mentioned here about how the time esp ours, is valued and esp. by the govt machinery. Here too we were given a 930am appointment. We reach there (after 2 hours drive) and find that he has gone some 70 kms away and his sec tells us he will be back by 1030..then that becomes 1130, 1230 and atlast at 1330 he comes..rather we get a call saying he has gone home for lunch and we can meet him there (bcos u were referred by that ‘someone’)..I cringe bcos some 200 people are waiting below as that’s the general public grievance day.
Then as we reach there he gives us 1.5 minutes and passes the buck with such an ease u feel bad that u came to him instead of the table he points to. Then he looks at you like ‘u still here?’ and then when we insist he has to intervene and he can do lots to revive it, he nods and collects our petition and sees us off- literally(i.e. he sees and u run off!)
All along from the morning since we were waiting none of them in the whole office of a big collector cares to tell u his schedule or the very fact that he is not there.
I don’t deny there shall be last minute rushes, some political necessities, urgent issues, lopsided priorities, etc..but on the many occasions that I have gone to them (be it anyone) there is just no meaningful interaction, information or time sense. The 200+ that has been waiting from morning still were there without any info.
Hail democracy!

But one small solace, its in this same system that I find another IAS – gutsy and well meaning lady who I happened to bump in to and who gave all her support and still stays so. She has assured to get this thingy moved with her presence/pressure. She is my hope now as much as she is the hope for pallikaranai marsh land and waste management at source @ Chennai!