Zinda Tha mein...

With an experience that was unique in its own way,I was walking the way back home. "The last three hours were well spent", i contemplated. I was a different man three hours ago, and now my mindset has been altered. I had grown wiser, a new man who is beyond guilt. I began recounting that particular experience of mine. My mind began to see spirals in black and white just the way it happens in movies and i switched into the flashback mode.

I was making my way to the theatre eagerly anticiapting a two houur thriller. The movie board outside the theatre proudly displayed ZINDA and a shiver of anticipation ran through me. I went to buy tickets for me and my friends. The only pinch i felt was due to the fact that i was sponsoring the movie that day. Done with the tickets, we made our way through the crowd (aroung 20 people) and sat comfy in a central location.Guys, thats the advantage when you have little crowd at halls.You have the pleasure of choosing your location.

Choosing the location is an art in itself, as professional movie freaks will tell you. It has many multi faceted tricks like choosing a seat beneath the fan, at the corners so that your view is not blocked, and at the centre so that the acoustic effects are good. Thankfully i was spared of all these acts of skill by my friends. Once perched comfortably in our thrones, we waited for the documentary to end. Next was the turn of colorful models posing themselves for costumes which they otherwise would not even consider touching. Once that was done the movie started off.

The initial sequence of the movie shows Sanjay as a Software Engineer. Guys i had a tuf time swallowing that part, i hope you will be atleast able to tolerate it. My personal opinion is that he should have stuck to something similar to "munna". Well now that u have taken in that part, I shall proceed further. Sanjay(S) has a wonderful wife in celina(c) who makes a very short entry/exit into the movie. The initial rummages with S, C and their friend who has a soft corner for C is quite tolerable. Suddenly the story moves deep into the plot when S suddenly vanishes while he was involved in painting a pier.

Then comes the twists and turns where S is held captive in a room with nothing but for an idiot box as company. Well dumbfounded ?? so was Mr. S. He was given food (yummy Hotdogs !!) through a peephole at the bottom, through which he could see nothing but the legs of the supplier of food. Unable to bear with isolation,he keeps counting the years with marks made out on his arms(typical hero stuff). He keeps himself updated with the happenings of the outside world through the TV. He decides to avenge his captor and so decides to learn martial arts. And how does he do that ??? Bingo !!! by watching movies in the idiot box. Well i hope u can swallow that part too ,but i aint too sure.....


Now if u ve accepted that,(guys u dont have this facility when u r watching the movie)lets get further. Suddenly one fine day,after 14 years,Mr.S finds out that he is bundled out in a suitcase and left atop a tower in the city.(Compare 14 years with the vanvas of Lord Rama)The author does give a mythical touch to the movie here.The story now transcends into the second part where S traces out his villain. And how he does that is another mystery. But MR.S is no ordinary guy. He can smell his food around and spot the cook who made the hotdogs which he had been consuming during his period of captivity. Guess the cook is real good and useless all the same to remain at the same hotel for 14 years. Well Mr. S does this with the aid of a Desi taxi driver (the second lady love for Mr.S).

The method of identification of the cook is pretty awesome. Mr.S manages to recognize the shoes of the cook and thereby recognizes him. I tried my level best to find out the makers of that shoe which can last 14 long years of regular ruf n tuf use. Guys, in case you manage to find it please pass the info on to me. So now coming on to the movie, Mr.S spots the villain, who is MR.J. There ends the first half of the movie, showing the handsome face of Mr.J.

The second part was almost as interesting as the first (if at all u find that interesting). The hero expresses his heroism by a coupl of "teeth pulling" stunts and placid action.The explanation for the captivity of Mr.S is lacking in reality and depth of thought. The playwright could have wrought out something more believable. Then goes the usual stuff of justifying the villains action, hero turning soft towards the villain after he saved his daughter,and finally making Mr. J a good fella afterall.

Guess hindi movies are far from the being different, they invariably have the theme " And so they live happily ever after......". This one too ends in a similar note. For those who ask me, if any movie is different, plz see final destination, Troy, Gladiator, titanic and so on....

That movie really provided the damping force to that day. But i was wiser from my experience that one cannot expect real thriller based on sound logic, esp in Bollywood.

"Faanush banke log jiske hifazat kare, woh film kaise na chale, jise roshan John kare"

My first date with school

As has been the custom, i would like to initially say thanks to somebody who has made me the way i am. Dear readers,if you find anything good in me,anything that is adorable, I would in all humility say that it is not to my credit; it goes to the most wonderful person. Wondering who this person is ? It is none other than my dear school. It seems pretty odd to refer to school as an entity; but it is more than a living thing to me,it has been my friend. It has given me the most wonderful set of friends that one can ever hope to get. This is only a warning to my readers so that they can expect more number of posts on these lines in the future.


Well, this particular post of mine speaks of my first days with school. I was forced to move out from my previous school due to various reasons which is most unimportant. To cut things short i was in quest for a better school. That was when i came across the school which was to change moi completely. Speaking of transformation, it is to be noted that i wasn't before the way i am now. Well, i got admitted into my school not the way i expected, but with a position far better than i ever hoped to achieve.


My school had a sense of mysticism around it especially for newcomers.That was the first time that i heard a school run in shift system. Being in the upper strata of school days we were provided with the pleasure of waking up early in the morning and attending classes at seven. Well i am a lazy bone, the worst kind that you can find on planet earth especially when it come to the art of waking early. But anticiaption made magic that day, and there i was, well in time for school. The first day of our school begins with an invocation to the gods which the hindus call as yaga or homam. That was the first amongst my surprises. The next one was far more influential, we had assembly every morning. The assembly lasted around ten minutes.And i had difficult time controlling my yawns as i was standing right up the line on account of my physical stature.


I went into the class room and was wondering where to park myself.As a fresher i was groping for a sullen corner to seat myself, hiding myself from thousands of curious glances as if i was a piece of artefact from the London museum. One of them came up and said, "hey move your lazy ass, i need to sit! ". Well that were the first set of words spoken to me.I tell you,it was well delivered,mighty well delivered. It scared the crap outta me.Then came the teacher, with a pleasing smile that made me better(still i was very nervous). As the custom is, she asked all of us to arrange in a line sorting ourselves in the process. Then she called up the the one before me to sit in the first bench. Then i was about to move when, horror of horrors she called up a girl and asked her to move to the same bench !!!! What the hell, are we supposed to sit along with girls ??? Though i was studying in a co-ed so far, i had been tutored to see girls as aliens by my previous colleagues.This would be non-agreable for some of my buddies, since according to them,i reached the other extreme during the rest of my tenure. With no other option, i went and sat as the third person in that bench,i could imagine what was to follow.... Another girl came and sat down filling the quota for a bench.There i was, trapped between two aliens !!


But strange thing was, other with a few exceptions were pretty normal as if it were the most common thing in the world.I later came to know that,it was the usual scenario since Kinter garden.When the teacher completed the job she marched off much to my surprise. Then came another, and i could "hear" silence when she marched in. She was our principal who took History lessons for us. The students fell silent more due to respect than due to fear,though i could feel a tinge of both in them.She started off with her lessons straight away, which was the least i expected since all classes on first days were supposed to be closed down with self introductions. Then came a bout of yawn, which was promptly spotted by her. She said ,"feeling so sleepy ? maybe a bit of fresh air could help u out.." ............OUT, that was when I realised the underlying meaning in that. I was being sent out on my first class in that school ! So there i was standing just outside the class,religiously following the LOC of the class. I spent one hour wondering whether i should further pursue my studies or not.


Thankfully the bell or rather the buzzer rang relieving me off my duty as watchman for that class. I went inside and suddenly realised that the students were looking at me as if i were a national hero... Man i got screwed up in the first hour of a school and i was being stared at !!! well, there was some good to achieve out of that punishment. I was known by each and everyone in my class form then on.I had won my first impression and that too with style. I went and sat down in my place silently receiving an ovation that could match a sachin century. well the next two hours were pretty normal as one could expect. And then the bell rang indicating the lunch hour.....

Kaash ....

I was sitting on my bed with the most beautiful object ever exixted, my copy of Atlas Shrugged.I was reading it for the "n"th time....Hey people, dont take me for insane, that book is magical. I was reading through certain sections of D'Anconia's history(D'Anconia is a character in that book)when i was suddenly thinking about "what went wrong in our system of education." Point well taken; said the person in me. I was drifting into one of my dreamworlds, where I was the hero with no competition whatsoever... In this particular dream the hero (moi !!! ) was a teacher.. not the ones that you'd see in real life, but the one belonging to the idealistic realms.



The hero was sitting in his "STUDY" desks thinking about reformation that he'd bring about in the schools.... well this is what he jotted dwon on his "work" sheets...

1. Abolish all weekend assignments, let the students have good weekends every week.
2. Assignments should be made non-compulsary;let the willing do it.
3. All classes should be held for no more than 30 minutes.
4. No classes shall house more than 20 students.
5. Ranking system should be abolished. Lets at least spare the kids of the competition at early ages.They will eventually have to face corporate competition anyways later.
6. Two hours of classes should be complemented by at least one hour of entertainment.
7. Lunch hours should be at least one hour and students should be encouraged to eat at a slow pace.Doctors have proved, it helps digestion and keeps us healthy.
8. Any kind of dressing should be permitted provided it doesnt attract too mudch attention.
9. Attendence should be abolished.
10. Detentions shall be permitted but the students can have an option of choosing the period of detention.

With these ten commandments written neatly in a piece of paper, our hero sat in a pensive mood wondering as to how he is going to implement these in his school. DING DONG went the calling bell... The hero fell dead and i woke up lazily to attend to a sales man selling dictionaries and stuff like that. I showed him out as fast as possible and then with great difficulty resurrected the teacher....



The teacher arose like the phoenix from the ashes,fully rejuvenated and continued his ephemeral thinking. He was now speaking to his set of students about relational physics. And this cannot go without discussing Mr. Einstein... That was when one of the students asked.. "Sir, what would happen if we run around a tree with the speed of light ?"



With that question our hero started vanishing without a trace... So do most of us when we face certain tight situations. All our convictions vapourize when we face challenges. It is but natural that this happens. I slowly woke up (wasnt i sleeping so long?) from my dream and faced reality... Good or bad ,I still like the way our education system runs... I love it, the way it is ...

The camouflage

Well, it seems that my limited set of readers have seemed to prefer my reviews or views. So here goes another experience of mine reading a book.A clue to the readers...I am a reading freak and u shall find many such reviews in the future...Now back to business.... Any book begins with the preface to the author.But i shall not waste any more of your precious time introducing this author. The first of his book that i read was the Da Vinci Code. The book was filled with controversies involving secret societies and christianity. And who doesnt like controversies... Thats the secret of success of that book.Well if u think i'm gonna review that u are thoroughly mistaken. I liked that book,it was fast and pacey,most important of all it was hyped !!! You will be called a fool if u failed to like such controversies and I didnt want to be a fool... so I liked that book...


It was a saturday and i was on my way for a competetive examination. I sat in the train looking gloomy and puffed up due to the heat. It was then that i glanced through the windows and noticed a book seller with his push cart with an expression that seemed to mirror my own. I think that made me pay attention to his miniscule collection more than it deserved. And Dan Brown caught my attention... i called out to that compatriot of mine and asked him to show some od Dan Brown's brainchild. Well i was shuffling through a couple of them trying to gather as much as possible from their synopsis.. Then the train started to move and I ended up with his deception point.


Guess i should have have my warning bells ringing when i read that title. But the devil (the one in my cooking blog) intervened. Well i sat reading it the rest of my journey. The story is about some ET stone found at some forbidden place in arctic(or antarctic.. doesnt make a difference). Then politics makes its entry with the president making a publicity stunt out of it. Now the heroine is a top official (guess dan brown seems to prefer women,all novels of his, has a woman who is smart and a top brass) who is nominated to check up the truthfulness of affairs.


Just when we feel that the story line is like a tamil movie, the story drifts into the line quite ennervatingly. Guess the author must have been influenced by a couple of tamil movies. He seems to have picked out the most obvious twists in the story, made it look as if it was the most expected thing in the world. There are sacrifices too ... a "side-hero" sacrifices himself for the lead pair.Man, he sure must have taken some efforts to make it as uninteresting as possible.


Half way through the book and you can predict whats gonna happen. The villain is a double agent and a top brass,a superior to the heroine. The heroine trusts him implicitly in the beginning and exposes him at the end. A bomb blast a couple of murders and the villain dies. The man who was suspected by everyone suddenly is totally innocent.Well after these unEXPECTED events the reader is left to wonder where the art of thriller writing is going towards. Well the story ends with the theme "and lived happily ever after".....


God help me,i thought after i completed reading it. The first thing that i did after i reached home was to ring up my old book sales point. That was the real shocker.... he said "No,i wont stock 1000 copies of a book".... So my dear frends it lies in my shelf till date as an outcaste, never disturbed from its position of pride.... The book was indeed a peak in the DECEPTION point ....

When luck chases you....

This is probably the first time that i am writing about some controversy. For beginners, it is better to start off with some easy target. Well i decide to start off with Dada... The trouble with him is that he always gets into trouble.In fact it is luck that chased him. There are many situations that clarifies this statement of mine.


He is considered as the luckiest captain for India as we won laurels overseas especially at Australia(We had drawn a test, which is the best performance of India in Australia :( ).He followed it up with a wonderfully crafted victory against Pakistan at Pakistan.These were un imaginable a couple of years ago. The reason for such victories ?? Luck..... Luck had chosen to chase dada throughtout the year.....


Mind you, that was good luck. "When u ride on luck, remember u ride on a edged sword", that was said by no one else but me... Well coming to the point, we find that despite his lucky run as captain his induividual performance has not been as good as his captaincy @li@s luck.Most of us were gagged by the wins, that we failed to oopen up against the individual performance... As the saying goes, "the team wins... that is more important" .. this is said by most of the players and not me....Remember, the players who say this, are the performers in that match(they say it at the end of presentation ceremony).


That was when luck began to come in torrents for our dear dada, the difference being it was "bad luck"... The good performances by the youngsters at the home level was becoming too good and they had to be recognized. So started the deliberation over dada's crown. What else, but bad luck, would you call it....The change of coach at the precise moment when dada was at his lowest point of his career.His luck worsened when the coach switch took place. When one thought it couldnt get worser, the email leak came out as a blot out of the blue.Thanks to the speed of the electronic media, half the population in India was aware of it in a jiffy. When you get into trouble with big guns, you are bound to get shot.The tussle with the coach had cost dada more than it cost the coach.


So far,it has been pretty much talked about...In general,it is a rule that is better followed... "When you are in deep shit, keep your mouth shut".. Seems that our dada did not know this and got into trouble in yesterdays Ranji match, for coming late to bat...That too after being debarred in the bowling department for running in the danger area. He shouldnt be getting himself deeper into trouble after being selected miraculously in for the tour of Pakistan....


Well i am no expert in politics... hey arent we talking about cricket ? well politics is into cricket as well. So it seems okie here... Its just plain common sense that i think should be applied here. Well dada was once upon a time playing well,but certainly not these days.... The days of the tiger are dimming now. The only suggestion that i can make is that he should have volunteered to be out of the team and get back in royally after regaining some form, rather than persisting in the team and putting more pressure on himself after each failure/match (both are synonymous)... Better run from the scenario when bad luck chases you ........