Dasavatharam: My review

In what is supposed to be a very ‘serious’ climax scene, the Japanese Kamal Hassan and the CIA Kamal Hassan are involved in a weaponless fight, and in the middle of it, the CIA Kamal Hassan says, “Remember Hiroshima?” To which the Japanese replies, “Remember Pearl Harbour?” And seriously, we began laughing then and stopped only when the tsunami hit.

There were numerous laughable jokes interspersed in the story, but the audience was made to laugh more at the puerility of the story line than at the intended comedy scenes. In fact, we began laughing when Mallika Sherawat came on to the screen with her cabaret naach. Its actually surprising that Sherawat accepted a role as preposterous as hers. Her role is limited to one cheap dance, one god-knows-why marriage, one seductive conversation and then she’s gone, with her own murder.

If you use a little bit of common sense, you can actually predict where all the run and chase is leading to. And you can do the prediction at every single turn of the movie. This is where the movie loses its sheen. Kamal Hassan seems to have copied a lot from the Da Vinci Code into his screenplay, but leaves a lot for the audience to imagine and understand. The screenplay looks very silly at times. Consider these- A RAW officer going out to welcome the FBI agents with garlands in the middle of a serious interrogation of an international terrorist, the FBI people asking the blatantly insane RAW officer ‘What do we do now?’, the ex-CIA agent messing up simple complications, the arrival of helicopters at the drop of a hat etc. You might say- there wouldn’t have been a Dasavatharam without such silly sequences, but that’s the whole point. Why make such a silly movie?

Asin gives a mediocre performance and gets very irritable at times. There were times when her presence was depriving the scene of its seriousness. And its difficult to imagine that the same actress had had me begging for more of her screen presence in Ghajni.

Out of the ten roles that Kamal Hassan plays, I thought only the twelfth century Vaishnavite and George Bush’s roles are where he puts in good performances. All other roles are wasted and never seem to convince. Some roles have been put in only to increase ‘the count’ to ten.

I haven’t seen a movie sillier and more spiteful than this. Watch it only if you have a suicidal intent of spoiling your own evening.

I am out of it

My ‘virtual life’ is in disarray. Google decided to suspend my Orkut account. And for no reason. Its been more than two weeks now and I am, now, finally getting out of the shock that it had inflicted upon me. You know how hard it is to get over an addiction. What I really don’t understand is how Google still keeps those profiles whose albums are filled with hardcore porn content and also those communities which blatantly patronize anti-India terrorism, and victimize rather ‘innocent’ profiles like mine.

The feeling still hasn’t crept in. Even today I sub-consciously log into Orkut but only to see the unmannerly message- ‘You account has been suspended.’

Orkut, for me, was not just a time-pass activity. It was a place where I could meet ‘everybody’. At the recent farewell party that was meted out to us by my college, a friend told me- ‘Life might separate us. What difference does that make? You are on orkut. I am on Orkut.‘ Thats how much Orkut has influenced each one of our lives. In the two years I was on orkut, I made lots of wonderful acquaintances- a few strangers, a few whom I knew but had never spoken to and a few with whom my relationship grew stronger and stronger. And how I cherish each one of those!

I wont be able to scrap you ever again. I wont be able to write you a testimonial ever again. I wont be in your fan list, I cant mark you as cool and sexy and I cant even flaunt my pictures. You might say-’Simple. Start an new profile.’ But I dont want to go through the whole thing again.

But then social networking isn’t over for me. I shall remain active on facebook. Orkut, just, didn’t deserve me!

A time-killing post

(Warning: If you are a student writing an exam in a week’s time, please do not try these at home!)

In a week’s time, the final exams of my graduation life are supposed to kickstart and in the last week, I have been doing everything but studying. I thought it would be fitting to write a chronicle of what I have been doing in the run up to the exams.

So here they go:

- Watched ‘Love Actually’ again.

- Finished ‘Sunny days’ in 2 days. Started ‘The thousand splendid suns’.

- Have been watching the video of Sonali Bendre’s song ‘Jo haal Dil Ka’ atleast 5 times a day.

- Spent endless hours on Youtube watching random war clips and presidential speeches.

- Endlessly Orkutted.

- Tried my hand at sketching. Did a fine sketch of a sea, a setting sun, a few birds, a rock and a woman on a rock. And I managed to put them all in the same sketch.

- Have been drinking atleast 6 litres of water a day, evoking complaints from folks at home.

- Spent almost two hours thinking up the design of a space-toilet.

- Have gone through the syllabus book atleast 10 times in 2 days.

- Have been taking the new Xeta on long drives, including a couple of ‘very long ones’.

- Have been spending 2 hours a day switching between Channel V and MTV.

- Read every single news item on newspapers (DH and DC) in the last week.

- Compared the offer letters of two companies (Ta and Ad) for a long long time, and finally decided that the former has the better offer letter albeit not the better offer.

- And also had a 30 minute telephonic conversation with lesbi during which we journeyed through the length and breadth of Karnataka on ‘Google maps’, searching for a place for a post-exam class trip.

So thats how the last week has gone. And I have spent 40 minutes here writing this post. After this, I have decided to finally watch the last one hour of ‘Pulp fiction’. And then go to sleep.

Adios.

Common sense prevails

Today’s fuel price hike didn’t surprise me one bit. If one had been following the rising graph of international crude prices over the last few months, one would have known that this was on the cards.

But the timing of the hike could prove detrimental to the Congress’ aspirations of coming back to power in the next general elections. Keeping that in mind, I should, in fact, laud the courage of the UPA government in its endeavor to save our ailing petro companies. The petroleum secretary made a very important point on television today- ‘What situation would you like? Paying marginally high for continuous supply of fuel or a complete stoppage of fuel supply?‘

There was no way the government could go on retailing fuel at a subsidized rate. The Swaminomics column on TOI made a very important point. By granting large subsidies on fuel, the Government was literally paying an average of Rs.100 to every vehicle owner in India whereas the lower class got no such benefits. The column called it Bogus Socialism and I totally agree with the author. (And also read this)

The time has now come for us to start thinking. The price hike gives us a good reason to increase our use of public transport. It also makes a good case for us to start using alternative sources of energy.

And no matter how much the BJP and the Left make a hue and cry over this in the coming days, I am sure that if they had been in power they would have been compelled to take the same decision.

I got tagged..

This is the first tag I am doing.

This is what I am supposed to do.

1. Pick up the nearest book.
2. Open to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people, and acknowledge who tagged you.

So here it goes:

1. Here’s a book, right on my printer. Sunny Days by Sunil Gavaskar. The book came out of my cupboard just yesterday. And I guess this is the seventh time I am trying to read it. Every time I have read it, I have aspired to be an opening batsman in the Indian cricket team. It was a childhood aspiration- to be an opening batsman. Then as days passed by and as I kept on losing my middle stump every now and then, I decided that I should be an umpire. Then I couldn’t make out if the batsman edged the ball or not, so I decided that I should be a commentator. And in the end, my microphone commentaries came nowhere close to being as good as being my keyboard ones. So I finally decided to blog.

2. Page 123! This is an unvisited section of the book.

3. Here’s the fifth sentence: ‘The journey from Colombo city to the airport takes longer than the air journey from Madras to Colombo’. (Doesn’t this line sound familiar to Bangaloreans? LOL)

4. And here are the next three sentences.

‘Solkar and I went to see Vishwanath off at the airport and I have never seen the good humoured Vishwanath so upset as on that day’.

‘As we were driving to the airport, he did all the physical exercises one can think of excepting standing on his head to prove that there was nothing wrong with his knee’.

‘Vishwanath is tremendously popular, and we were all disappointed that he had to go away particularly since he was fit to carry on’.

5. I got tagged by Gammafunction and I take this ‘privileged opportunity’ to ’solemnly’ tag the following:

Keerthi, The Melting Pot, Daya Vinci Code and Beads of dew.

A short story: Gods and lights

(First of all, this is a work of pure fiction. Any resemblance to anybody dead or alive, theists or atheists, spectacled or non-spectacled, man or a woman, must only be sheer coincidence. And for god’s sake, its not my story too.)

“Excuse me. Can you please stop doing that?”

That broke me out of my trance. That had surely come from the girl seated to my left. I turned to her and there she was, staring at me. “Huh-uh!? Doing what?”, I blurted out still unsure what her problem was.

“Stop doing that nonsense you just did, the thing you just did when we passed the temple”, she said.

I stared at her. I tried to think what I had done. But my thinking was hampered by the sight her face had to offer. She was not someone blessed with an unassailable beauty, but she had a pretty round face adorned by round thin rimmed spectacles. I hadn’t taken much of a notice of her earlier. She got into the bus at Jayanagar and had not found a seat in the section reserved for women. Seeing the empty seat next to me, she had come and pushed herself into the seat and had left out a heavy sigh of exhaustion. And after that, she had opened a book and begun reading.

“What are you talking about?”, I said, completely befuddled by then.

“Arre. I was talking about the act of prostration you did in front of the temple. That was the sixth time you were doing it. Six temples and six times you go through the routine. And each routine lasts-what- 40 seconds? I am getting irritated here.” Her tone indicated that she was indeed miffed.

I stared at her. She explained it alright, but my confusion had just doubled. I had only paid my salutations to God at each of those temples and had muttered a two line prayer. But I do that all the time. I do that whenever I see a temple or anything holy. It was an act of sub-conscious more than the conscious. And there I was on that bus, trying to find words to explain it to that attractive stranger who had taken an objection to it.

“See. I don’t understand what your problem is. I do that whenever I see a temple. You might say that my devotion to God is a little exaggerated. But I don’t care what you think. This is the way I have lived my life. The sole reason for what I am at the moment is God. And its my duty to seek his blessings. I don’t see any reason for that to irritate you”. I realized that I had lost my temper, but I did my best to hide my boiling emotions.

She was probably taken aback by my sudden outburst. But she had invited it. It was all her fault. She was now staring at a point past me, out of the window. I waited for a response. She looked at me, half-smiled, nodded and opened her book and began reading.

It began to rain. It had begun as a drizzle and then had steadily grown heavy. Knowing Bangalore’s weather over the previous few evenings, I was sure that it could turn into an inclement thunderstorm. The splattering of the rain drops on the roof of the bus was now deafening. And the traffic was stagnant on JC road. I continued to stare out of the window, now oblivious of the girl. The rain had taken most of the two-wheelers off the road but that gave no respite to Bangalore’s traffic.

“I am sorry”, she suddenly said, without warning. “I am a staunch atheist and I find such excessive adulation towards an idea as crazy as God’s preposterous. I know you wont understand. But I think I have a few things to learn. I have to learn not to belittle others’ beliefs. I am really sorry if I hurt you in anyway.”

She had looked very pretty earlier while she was creating a confusion inside me. And she looked even more prettier now. Probably that was the reason why there was an old adage about how apologizing makes people more cleaner and beautiful.

“Thats ok. But may be you have to change your idea about God”, I said, smiling. She smiled too.

“Thats more or less impossible. And to copy your own line- This is the way I have lived my life. Anyways, I had vowed that I wont pick up the topic of God during any conversation with anyone. Lets stop this.”

I laughed and she joined me in laughter. ‘She is a crazy girl’, I thought. The bus had made its way through the traffic and was now at Hudson circle.

“What’s that book about?”, I asked. “The way you are reading it, it must surely be a very interesting one.”

“Oh yeah. It is. It’s a novel about an American president. And his sex scandal featuring a Hollywood actress”, she said emphatically, showing the cover page of the novel.

I was surprised at her casual tone when she uttered ’sex scandal’. I, being one of those few men who flinch at the word ’sex’ or anything related to it, the surprise turned to shock in a few seconds.

“Oh its about Bill Clinton and the lady- whats her name- Monica or something?”, I asked. My limited general knowledge coming to some help.

“No stupid. Monica Lewinsky was not a Hollywood actress. The characters in this book closely resemble John F Kennedy and Marylin Monroe.”

And that put me off. How can a girl, whose acquaintance I have received just a few minutes back, categorise me as stupid? May be she was very loquacious or something like that. But I thought it was slanderous to call me stupid. Or am I being a little puerile in refusing to accept what I really am - a stupid? A little distance away, the lights which embellished Bangalore City Corporation’s palatial building were put off, probably due to a power failure. The thunderstorm raged on.

<to be continued>

Its not BJP’s victory, its our victory

As the news began trickling in that there might not be any more games of coalition politics in Karnataka, I guess the entire state heaved a huge sigh of relief. After four years of torment by the deeds (or misdeeds) of coalitions, there was no way we could take more. For me, like most people I know, it was not a question of who would be ruling us for the next five years. It was, rather, a question of whether the torment will end. And thankfully, and hopefully, the torment is over.

I thought I will put in a few words about each of the parties here. So here they go.

Let me start with the JDs. Reduced to 28 seats and devastated. Well, what I don’t understand is how they got those 28 seats. A friend of mine once commented that only ignorant fools will vote for JDs this time. And I couldn’t have agreed with him more. Their symbol might be of a lady farmer but all that the JDs symbolises to the people of Karnataka is opportunistic politics and betrayal. And there is no doubt that given a role this time, they would have done the same. How can a national party be so insensitive to people’s needs? And today, after their loss, I see on TV a former office bearer of the JDs blaming the mis-administration of the Election Commission for their loss. What a ridiculous reason to give!

Coming over to the congress. Something is wrong with them. Over confidence? Internal bickerings? The hoopla surrounding Krishna’s return didn’t work. Siddharamaiah’s charisma didn’t work. Rahul Gandhi’s road show didn’t work. Six potential chief ministerial candidates campaign and all they get is 80 seats? And anti-incumbency against the other parties was supposed to be working in their favour! Well, first of all, they didn’t give tickets to the right candidates. The congress candidate in my constituency slept through the campaigning phase. Nobody saw even a picture of him until the election day while the BJP candidate had a well publicized campaign. A party of the congress’ calibre cannot afford to have such men contesting elections. They got their strategy entirely wrong.

BJP will hold the reins alright but we should not forget that even they have not got an absolute mandate from the electorate. Karnataka BJP is a largely inexperienced party and the political ineptness on their part might dominate headlines in the days to come. Yeddiyurappa was Chief Minister for a week and a week was enough for him to make a government contract go in his son’s favour. They have come to power after sitting years and years in the house warming the benches and I can imagine a few MLAs already licking their fingers and thinking about using the next five years to double their personal assets, through methods perhaps best left untold.

Samajvadi party made an entire family go out of business and the BSP can be forgotten as one of those myriad failed experiments of Mayawati.

Lok Paritran is seriously in need of HR managers. They might have the IITians and now it looks like they desperately need a few from IIMs. No party can hope to win elections by campaigning through forwarded e-mails. And if they are in lack of funds, I don’t see them making any fund-raising efforts either.

And for the independents, its time to start counting money.

After a brief hiatus

There suddenly seems to be no time for anything these days. There were a lot of things I wanted to write about but could not for the only reason that I never found time to write. There have been a couple of ideas brewing in my mind all these days, which I will put in the form of short stories in a few days. Ever since ‘Speechless Conversations’ came out and ever since the admirations for ‘Sinchana’ started flowing out, everything I see in life has begun to inspire me to write, to put it in the form of fiction. So the next time I write something and say its fiction, you might not be wrong if you guessed that it was real. But anyways, as an author, I have the liberty to deny a few things!

The last couple of weeks has been both tiring and memorable. While on one hand I have been stuck with the project and the project report, on the other hand the days have dished out numerous moments of joy and nostalgia. An official farewell was meted out to us which turned out to be absolute fun. Well, I know that farewells are not supposed to be fun and the clichéd adjective that is used for ‘farewell’ is ‘tearful’. But ours came nowhere near to being tearful though it turned out to be quite emotional in the end. Then there was also the disco. We danced like crazy, mostly to kannada numbers and there were also bits and pieces of Shakira and Jenny Lopez.

A lot has happened in the last 2 weeks. Media attention on a certain Bollywood star’s blog has grown exponentially, a liquor baron’s foray into cricket has proved to be a damp squib, exit polls have hinted at the return of coalition politics in a state which went to polls to root out coalition politics, an international airport is finally set for inauguration, a legendary leg-spinner has hinted at coming back from retirement, on the other side of the planet a war between a black man and a white woman has never seemed to end, at a border a ceasefire was broken and not far from the red square a certain ‘red’ football club made history.

As for me- I did pretty well to get over a bout of severe depression, got enticed by G again, got over G again, cheered for the Royal Challengers all through the IPL, completely forgot about this blog and went on an exhilarating journey from the first world war to the second world war through America’s great depression and the Nazi Germany and Pearl harbour- through Howard Fast’s Second Generation.

Did you vote?

- My first vote turned into a rather hilarious moment for the booth officers. Anyways, it didn’t take me more than a second to press the button on the EVM- in fact I didnt even see the EVM properly- I saw the symbol, verified the name and pressed the button. The already amused booth officers went ‘he’s a man in a hurry. let him go‘. Only after coming out of the booth, did I realize that I had left the voter ID on the table. I went back in and they had another reason to laugh.

- A week before elections, I had made up my mind to vote for the candidate and not the party. But even on the day of the elections, I didn’t know who were the candidates in my constituency. Thats because no party campaigned in my area. Just like us, even the parties were confused as to which constituency our area actually belonged to. And so nobody took a chance and that meant we were almost ignorant of our candidates. So, I decided to vote for the party totally ignorant of who the candidate was, what his agenda was and even how he looked!

- It was disappointing to know that only 44% of registered voters in Bangalore went out and had their say in the elections. And I am sure that out of those 44%, most were first time voters like me. What the hell were the others doing? And its even more disappointing to know that ‘the others’ mostly belong to the so-called educated class. The next time you see anybody going up in arms about any public problem or expressing ‘this government is useless‘, ask him if he had cast his vote. If ‘no’ is his answer, call me too, lets kick his ass together.

- The exit polls (though I am for banning them in phased polls) hinted at a hung assembly again. Though these are still early times to speculate on final results, the results of the exit polls looks like our worst fears are all set to come true. Again.

- If you are a voter staying in a region going to polls in phase 2 or 3, you have an opportunity to ensure that we don’t submit ourselves to coalition politics again. Go out and vote.

Its not impossible you see!

Scenario: A job interview for a job that you desperately want. Last question. A right answer could seal the job. A wrong answer could put doubts in the mind of the interviewer.

Interviewer= Mr. BD

Candidate= Me.

here it goes..

BD: This is the last question. I have a GK question for you. You ready?

me: Yes sir. (GK question? OMG. If its geography or Politics, I am damn sure I will be right. If its about movies or music, I am a dead duck. My fingers are crossed )

BD: I want you to connect two things for me. Give me the connect. Ok? By the way, did you like TZP?

me: Ok. And yes sir, I loved TZP. (Connect question? I dont enjoy them. Shit!)

BD: Ok. I want you to connect Risky Business with Refugee.

me: (WTF! first of all, what are they? I am dead. I am dead.)

BD: But I have an offer for you. You can ask me 5 questions regarding the connect.

me: (I smile at him. Thank god! It doesn’t look that bad now. I have those 5 questions. Let me now think about the connect.)

BD: (a minute later) Well. I told you can ask questions.

me: Ok sir. Here’s my first question. This ‘Refugee’ thing. Are you talking about the Hindi movie?

BD: (laughs) I thought you knew it. Anyway, yes. I am talking about the movie.

me: Thank you sir. (Shit! Now he thinks I am a dud! Why do people always ask questions about movies you havent watched? Refugee! Who were the actors in it? Abhishek Bachchan right? And there was Kareena Kapoor too I think. God! This is a real tough question)

me: Sir. Second question. This ‘risky business’. Is it also a movie?

BD: (his laugh is louder now) Yes. (and continues to laugh. I laugh with him too)

me: Sir, I have never heard about that movie. In fact I am not good at ‘movie questions’.

BD: Oh. Ok. But why dont you give a try? You still have three questions, remember?

me: (three questions! my foot! Forget the answer. I don’t even know what question to ask next. What a risky business I am in!)

me: (I have asked 2 questions so far. And evoked only laughter both the times. By the way, this refugee movie. Wasnt it ‘refugee’ where both Abhishek Bachchan and Kareena Kapoor made their debuts? Well, I atleast have something to work on now. Suddenly, I see light!)

me: Sir. Third question. In Risky Business, was the lead actor making his debut?

BD: Wow! Excellent. Man, that was fantastic. Yes, the lead actor in risky business was making his debut. Now go on.

me: (LOL. That was right? I m not as bad as I think I am. Anyway, I still have work to do. So I have two actors, Abhishek and some ‘X’. And they made their debuts in Refugee and Risky Business. Now what? Dead end? )

BD: Think. Think.

me: (What the hell do I think? 2 more questions to glory. Or 2 questions to a heinous defeat. Shit! I think thats all I can do. Its all over. Well.. Wait.. )

At this point, I have to stop writing this in dialogue style and tell you what exactly was happening in my mind at that moment. I was all set to tell Mr. BD that I was inefficient to answer this question. It was simply too tough. I had come this far- I mean I had worked out that both films had actors making their debuts. That was the end of my genius. And I had nothing more.

And at that precise moment, it all came to me. I cant stop myself from comparing it to Newton’s apple. It happened all of a sudden. A flash in the memory. And I knew the answer. Until then, I was thinking with my head bent down, looking at my sweaty fingers as they twisted and inter-twined with each other. But the thinking was now over. I had the answer. I looked up at BD and smiled. You know what? I think it was the kind of smile that Tom Hanks gives in the movie ‘The Da Vinci Code’ after he figures out that Mary Magdalene was right beneath the inverted pyramids at the Louvre.

Let the dialogues continue.

Me: Sir. I think I know the answer.

BD: Yeah? Really? Tell me. Lets see if its right.

Me: Its ‘Dyslexia’ sir.

BD: (doesnt show any emotion) Ok. Why don’t you explain to me how you arrived at it?

Me: Well, Sir, you wouldn’t have mentioned TZP before asking this question for nothing. There was a purpose to it, isn’t it? Abhishek was dyslexic- thats what Aamir Khan tells his students in TZP- and he made his debut in Refugee.

BD: Ok. Thats right. But what about Risky Business? You knew nothing about it. Do you know who played the lead role in it?

Me: It has to be Tom Cruise sir.

BD: (There.. suddenly I see exaltation on his face) Man, that was excellent. Brilliant. You got it right. Hope you enjoyed the interview. blah blah blah….

Well, that was how my interview went. How many of your interviews have gone into a cliffhanger of a climax like this one? Though I was cursing Mr.BD for using such questions for an IT job interview at the time of the interview, now I feel that the question really made me feel better. I got an opportunity to throw in a last punch. And I hit it right at the spot I wanted.

And I have to reveal something. I knew nothing about Risky Business. But how did I know that Tom Cruise made his debut in it? Well. I took a guess! But it was not a wild guess. I had read somewhere that Tom Cruise was dyslexic as a child. And that made me take the guess. And that part in TZP where Aamir Khan shows the pictures of famous personalities who also suffered from Dyslexia- I slept through it. So I don’t know if he shows Tom’s picture there but I remember Abhishek’s picture. If you have watched TZP, and I know most of you have, please tell me if Aamir talks about Tom too.

PS: 1. And if anybody in Adidas is reading this right now, why don’t you get Adidas to sponsor this post? Doesn’t this post concur with your tagline- ‘Impossible is nothing’?

2. I got the job.