On the Valentines...

14th feb has never been fruitful for me. So I always dream about it as I cant really do much about it. But I guess it will be fun to share a story which is well, a nice read, though it has no relation to the famed 14th feb, i dont have such luck :P Though I think it is an interesting story none the less and has love angle, BIG TIME...So here it goes..

The spirits were high that day. After all Deewali was nearing and all the guys were going home after a long gap. All the lads were unusually happy. The atmosphere in the hostel was like nothing we had seen in past few months. So here I was , with lads,in 129,packing my stuff and eating left over namkeen from the previous night. I was the first to leave as I had to take a different bus than and the whole group was to take another bus some time later. So they were all helping me out with my packing and the bonhomie was rare. My things were not been thrown, not a book being taken out of my bag so I was quite, dont know wat..

Anyways, so we got hold of my belongings and went outside. Now these friends of mine, how could they be so generous, I still have no idea to the day. As I was signing the attendance register at the hostel gates, my eyes fell upon a girl, coming from the girls hostel side, carrying a handbag. I had not seen her, ever in the college, and she was quite pretty. None of my friends saw her coming and she stopped by chat with some other girl. So I did some quick thinking. What if by any chance she is also going my way? So I hurriedly signed the book and asked my gang to leave and I told them that I will go alone from there. But those rascals, dont know what had got into them. They were hell bent on not leaving me alone and pushed and wheeled my protesting frame all the way to the college gates. She was still talking to the girl till that time. So I thought, okay, i still have time. But I had underestimated my lads. I mean, they were getting all so worked up, trying to stop each and every vehicle and they finally pushed me on a TRACTOR and I was transported to the bus stop, alone, with that girl nowhere in site.

Thanks to my gang, I was standing there, feeling like kicked away by friends in the time of need.Anyways, I was not going to give up. I decided to wait for her. I left one bus, I left another, all in all I let go 3 buses while waiting for her, with crowds mounting with each passing bus. And finally, she came in all her glory in a jam packed auto rikshaw and I sensed she was alone. So it finally felt like a win win situation.Then the bus came.My prayers were answered as she hopped on to the same bus and sat next to me. Deewali for me had started and how ! After ten minutes of not looking at her, I turned towards her to start a conversation and the first blow struck.

Its hard to imagine to sleep on a short bus ride, on a bumpy road and there she was sleeping, with head resting on the bag in her lap. How could she? I mean that was one crowded bus and it was hard to sit in there as well. But she managed the impossible, girls always do that. So I sat back, planning my next move with Udit Narayan, singing "aye ajnabi" in my ears. We were both to get off at some intermediate stop to change the buses, that much I had gathered when she asked the conductor for tickets. So the plan was to start a conversation at the stop and carry it to our destinations, which I was hoping to be same.

So finally after 40 minutes of agony and Udit Narayan and Sonu Nigam, the stop came and we got off. Now was the chance. I knew I had to do it now, it was now or never. I had never started a random conversation with an unknown girl, so I started to get freaked out. 10 minutes were wasted and somehow I had a feeling she knew that I was looking at her with my uneven and low confidence gaze for some time now. And then came the opportunity...

The roadside vendors always crib about the change. An unsaid rule in these parts of world is that one should always carry some small currency while traveling. But this girl had not followed it and I was going to gain from it, I had to. So when the kurkure wala started to argue with her over the change, I started to move towards them with the solution in my pockets, hope in my heart and stars in my eyes. Finally, I thought, a chance was there and I had to take it. And then the death blow struck...Shut !

When you are going to help the girl of your dreams when she needs you the most, you dont expect a heavy and a very very very familiar voice calling out your name in a crowded place. I mean lets face it, who does? So I decided to ignore the voice and kept on moving. But the voice got even louder now and more urgent as well. I decided to have a look. And when I turned my face, I was confused, shocked, amazed, horrified, terrified and all those feelings which a guy can feel, when he sees his elder brother, hanging from the door of a slow moving bus, shouting at top of his voice, waving frantically and asking the conductor to stop so that his dear little brother can join him. Just imagine the visual. Only 1 thing came to my mind, "bro, what the hell are you doing in this bus, you are not supposed to be here and for god's sake where the hell is your car?" And why do you have to be here only now. And all I could utter while shuffling my face between the girl and my bro was a feeble "bhaiya, hi" . And I was pulled into the moving bus by an outstretched arm of my bade bhaiya. Hell, I was not even able to look at her face for one last time. I say it one last time, because that was the last time, I saw that girl. I gathered she was just there to visit some one. So I left with bhaiya, talking of how bored he was feeling in the bus so far and how slow the driver was and all...And I never had a chance even to ask her name..

So thats a story, which I will remember all my life. No matter how I hard I try whenever I am going to see my bro, I will be reminded of the cruel game that my bro, that kurkure wala and fate played with me. My gang and my bro, they dont know that in trying to be so benevolent what they did to me :P And never again I met anyone remotely related to me in buses or the places I dont expect them to bump into me. And for my gang, they were never so happy again I guess, I never again got to see their senti side :P

The quote by Chetan Bhagat's FPSO seems so accurate here
Life screws you when you least expect it to do so.
cheers to life :)

Jai Ho ????

It seems the dust wont settle down on " SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE" until it wins the Oscar for The best motion picture for the year 2008. Way to go Danny Boyle, you will also be awarded the best director award for making this piece of work of yours. So let us all, at least me, wish that Feb 22nd comes asap and slumdog gets relegated to just another movie that won an oscar as fast as possible because thats what it is, another undeserving movie that should not have won anything, leave alone a golden globe, a BAFTA and a very very sure Oscar...

I have no issues with what it portrays. Portray poverty and slums, you have all the liberty to do so. Sensationalize it, I have no issues with that as well. Its a fact that there are slums and people live in those conditions which are appalling and no human deserves to live like that. So show it and if people get to know about what its like to be in slums, fine, good job, u need to be lauded.

But at least make a good movie man. I mean seriously, Slumdog is the most over rated movie in the recent history.
Its direction, after the kids grow up is poor, narration after that point goes haywire..It kept me going till Jamal left Latika with his bro at the hotel..after that, no.
The character of Latika is more of an object other than a human being.
Dev Patel is totally blank and has a same lost look through out the movie and for this consistency he gets nominated for best actor at BAFTAS..amazing.
Mahesh Manjrekar...dude u are better when u stutter..
And the King of them all, the grand daddy...ANIL KAPOOR..he overacts, he hams his ways through all the questions and movie.And again shoddy character development for him as well..
To top all this, there are so many flaws in narration and inconsistencies that sometimes you feel as if your intelligence is insulted. Take for e.g. 3 things which Boyle guy tries to enforce upon us as Cinematic liberties..
* Darshan do ghansham...is written by GS NEPALI for a movie Narsi Bhagat in 1957 not surdas as Mr Boyle wants us to believe.
* Bloody Chaiwala does not know who's picture is on an Indian currency note ? Is the lad retarted?
* And the best...In a school in slum, they are teaching..THE THREE MUSKETEERS..wow and that too, in ENGLISH !! Okay we get the point that movie is in english so, they speak english...but hello ? Its sad that the researchers boyle got dint know that these kinda schools use HINDI as a medium of education, not ENGLISH !!

So other than these three, there are so many glaring errors that make this a shabbily researched and poorly executed movie. Yes, the kids were brilliant, uske baad the movie falls flat on its head..

So leaving all the technical points at a distance, lets shift the focus towards the Indian people who are so in awe of this movie that they will start naming their kids danny and jamal and latika or even prem ( as if we dont have any Prems). What makes u guys fall head over heals about this movie ?

It has nothing new to offer. Yeah, for the firangis, Slums of Mumbai are the India they want to see, so there it is guys, u have your wishes fulfilled. Now all you firangs dont need to carry yourselves to the slums with cameras hanging around your necks to photograph India's poor. You have slumdog..cheers !! Any Indian knows what goes around in India's cities. WE know how poor people cope with their lives. We are so awed by the famous autograph scene from the movie and i am surprised. Lets face it guys, travel on early morning Shatabdi from chandigarh to delhi...i bet u will see lot more s**t and bottoms. even the s**t wasnt new.
Ask ourselves why are these firangis prasing this movie so much. Havent you noticed that these firang tourists do nothing but try to capture poverty of India through their lenses? They seem to think this is what India is and this movie re-affirms their faith.
We Indians have a problem. Sometimes we dont get up to speak our mind. Sab keh rahe hain to movie achee he hogee, to main bhee keh deta hun its awesome and all.c'mon guys, we have made far superior movies than this on this subject as well. We have shown mumbai's underbelly in far more engrossing manner in movies like Amir and Mumbai meree jaan, even Ramu's Satya. These movies show all this but without sensationalizing the whole issue. Their is a praise slumdog wave and we are riding on the crests of that wave.
And it is quite shameful in fact to know poeple coming to know about slum conditions after this movie. I guess some of us need to wake up. Thats the only good thing Boyle did by showing some of us the part of our society that they have so conveniently forgotten. Leave alone mumbai, each Indian city as a result of exodus from the villages has huge slums. And this is a part of our social and economic evolution. Each developing nation goes through this phase and after a long struggle, the divide between rich and poor will narrow down in a long run. London had huge slum areas during the Industrial Revolution era and after the prosperity increases its reach, it all begins to even out. But India hasnt reached that levels as yet, so yes, slums are a reality and it takes Boyle's pathetic attempt at movie making which makes some of us realize this reality, which is the sad part.

At the end, I would just like to say, it should not be another Danny Boyle or any other gora to inform us about our socio-cultural realities next time around. And lets start watching movies of firangs with same ferocity and hawk eyes with which they watch ours and ridicule them. And Mr. Danny the Trainspotting Boyle, I know, your insides are all smiling like monalisa, coz u know u havent made anything special and you are getting all this praise and laurels when you dont deserve them. Luck accha hai tera,boyle...All the best for oscars and vanish as soon as possible.

Padma Awards !!!

HAHAHAHAHAHA............
Akshay Kumar for his contribution to art and cinema has got a padma sri. Is this some kind of a joke ? what is his contribution other than crap movies which have no sense(Cc2c proved it..BIIIG Time) !!

Aishwarya Rai for the contribution to art and cinema. This sounds a bigger joke alright. Whats her contribution ? she has barely acted in 25 films most of them stupid and flops as well !! May be the only reason is she is a bahu of bacchans who are friends with SP's Amar Singh , who has a reasonable clout in Indian political system.

When will this jury start celebrating the real deal ?? Why were Vijender Kumar and Sushil Kumar left out ? Are their contribution less than these two moronic so called Superstars??

As for Akshay Kumar, I just hope he gives this award as well to someone more deserving...and start contributing.