Alvida Inzy Bhai

Inzamam Ul Haq has decided to retire from One Day International Cricket. I first watched Inzamam play in the 1992 World Cup as a 10 year old teenager still trying to lift a bat properly. What astonished both me and my brother then was the fact that he was never hurried into playing any stroke, seemed he almost could wait that extra nanosecond thinking "Hmmm now where do I dispatch this ?", and once the answer was found to that question hit it with such precision that the presence of fielders seemed almost incidental to the shot. It is of course another entirely hilarious story that he probably thought an extra minute for "Should I run ?" and was involved in some of the most comical run outs in cricket history.

Over the years whenever the Pakistan team would be batting I would wait for 2 great batsmen to strut their stuff, one the wristy and elegant Saeed Anwar and then wait till Inzy would walk out to bat. From the time he would mark his guard to the running between the wickets there was an element of a laid back attitude, a it-is-only-a-game outlook. This was probably why he could never be a good captain.

He shot into prominence with two excellent knocks in the 1992 World Cup, a 37 ball 60 against an as yet undefeated New Zealand, and then another excellent finishing knock in the final. But the innings that stand out in my memory are A. The match in Karachi of India's tour of Pakistan in 2004. Chasing 350 to win and losing 2 wickets for just 34 on the board, Inzy walked out to bat. And for the next 2 hours he went on to show the world as to why he must be in the top 5 of any list of world class batsmen. Nehra was pulled with a swivel of the hips both in front and behind square depending on the field. Balaji was cut with the gap between point, sweeper cover and third man being repeatedly found. But the greatest joy to watch was his repeated stepping out to Murali Kartik. Driven inside out over extra cover (one of the most difficult shots to execute), and when he strayed on the legs swept fine, square. He almost pulled it off but for Moin failing to do a Miandad and they fell short by 5 runs. (By the way rekommendation read Rahul Bhattacharyas "Pundits from Pakistan" this innings is described in much much better words in the book) B. Again old opponents India this time in India, Ahmedabad to be precise. Needing 316 to win Inzy walked in with Paksitan 183-3 and 20 overs remaining. He again proceeded to play an innings in such a calm and controlled manner that not for once did it look like Pakistan were going to lose. Not even when 1 run was required off the last over and the phlegmatic finisher waited till the last ball to hit a boundary off Sachin. C. Again the opponent is India and this time the Venue is Bangalore, India is up 1-0 in the test series. On the first morning it is 7 for 2 and Pakistan are already in trouble. Enter who else but Inzy and as he stroked and caressed and sometimes bludgeoned his way to 184, it was an education in batting of the "fury under control" kind. The match went onto the final day and a visibly charged up Inzy marshalled his bowling resources well and made sure that Pakistan levelled the series 1-1. Another test innings worth mentioning, when he played with No 11 Danish Kaneria against Bangladesh to deny them a test victory and secure a win for Pakistan.



I was talking to one of my school friends who also used to play cricket for the school, and he once told me that if there is a chase on and Inzy is at the crease, nothing can be more absorbing than watching him bat as he calculates and times his innings precisely. Choosing exactly at what time to accelerate, which bowler to attack and exactly which gap to pierce. In this he was comparable to Hussey and Bevan two other great finishers of limited overs cricket.

Probably the only reason he has never got his due, is due to his poor record against the Aussies. Just as every batsman of the 70's was bench marked with how well they played the WI pace quarter just will it be the test that every contemporary batsman needs to pass against the Aussies in the 90's.And he would always find new ways of getting himself out like obstructing the fielder.

His captaincy was rarely inspirational and usually very reactive. But his press conferences were always known for starting with "First of all Thanks to Allah". In a time when most captains mouth inanities like "We were about 20 runs short" it was always much more fun listening to Inzy say those words.

He was a gentle giant shrugging off Indian audiences comments of "Aloo Aloo" with a wan smile more often than not, well respected and rarely had anything other than a good word for anyone else.

And so in keeping with the tradition of the book we are reading "So Long Inzy and Thanks for all the Innings"

Raid: The dockside

Raid: the Dockside

Vikram Bhatt demonstrates why it is a bad idea to watch "Cries and Whispers" and "Basic Instinct" just before brainstorming for a new method to take money off a credulous audience. While not completely an expedition of suitably clad cockroach-killer wielding amazons out to recapture Diego Garcia, Red does come close, in all critically acclaimable aspects of the matter.

I imagine the conversation must have gone something as follows:

Dyerector: "The last decent movie we made was way back in 2002! Let's do something new, it is a great opportunity moving forward to capitalize on our culturally challenged audience."

Yes-Man 1: "Aye Aye, Cap'n!"

D: "You know..."

Yes-Man 2: "Yes Sir!"

D: "...Actually, you don't. I watched two whole movies yesterday!"

YM1: "I believe Congratulations are in order, sir. How were they?"

D: "Red! Red! I have a new idea for a movie, now."

YM's: "Congratulations, sir!"

D: "This will be a movie about murder. There will be a lot of redness around. In fact, we'll fade from and to red between scenes!"

YM1: "Wonderful Sir!"

And thus, was born Red. The movie starts off with Affitabh pawning his dog at the local, and promptly suffering from the debilitating effects of a hole in the heart (Note that this is not necessarily the same as the aftereffects of having an arrow through a cardioid shape that happens near the ides of February, but for the sake of argument is assumed to be so.) After a long and involved trip through hospital rooms and general cinematography reminiscent of this, we see Affy get a new heart, a bottle of "immunosuppressant" drugs, and promptly celebrate by getting drunk and trying to find out who was the previous possessor of his heart. Affy, by the way, owns a computer corporation called CompTran, when he's not pawning dogs or otherwise falling around in fits (and various other things).

The "immunosuppressant" touch is very nice, by the way. According to the movie, he has to take them for the rest of his life, to prevent the new fluid pump from being rejected by his body (true). His doctor also claims that these drugs reduce infection rate (true, for a certain restricted meaning of infection), and have other most
interesting effects (truth unknown) that form a key step of the plot. If nothing else, it makes one wonder: what poison takes about an hour to act, but once it starts, affects the "immune system" rapidly, but still leaves the victim capable of a spirited rendition of Hamlet's soliloquy?

Speaking of Ham: guess who was responsible for the music for this movie? We need say no more, save the fact that it is an appropriate backdrop to the red-(un)clad heroines that infest this movie. Horrifying visuals apart, the two heroines don't do much more than remind us that we could have been wasting time in more pleasant ways.

To get back to the (excuse for a) storyline, the hero finds out who he stole his pump from. After a certain amount of stalking this person's wife, wherein our hero nearly undergoes a frontal lobotomy by metal rod (which would have improved the movie no end), meets up with the love of his life, and generally scatters a few woses awound. Much unpleasantness later, the movie grinds towards its conclusion, leaving the audience free to meditate on the transience of material (the hero's Breitling watch) and non-material (our temper) goods.

As an interesting aside, we note that the so called tabloid newspaper featured as the hero stalks makes the grave mistake of referring to the "greiving[sic] widow". Maybe she was a graven window, an example of "Arbeit macht grei", but it grieves us to see such examples of shoddy copyediting lifted into prominence by a movie that otherwise maintains uniformly standards otherwise: low necklines, low comedy, low lows, and we low not what else.

To paraphrase the last (or thereabouts) line of the movie: we'd die to have not watched this movie, we may want to kill the idiot who dragged us to this movie, but we're damned fools to have watched it in the first place.

Fundamentally un-sound

About the only thing that could be worse than an Indian cinema is the Indian cinema audience. After two months of this year passed without my voluntary contribution to encourage the great Unified People's Cooperative Industry for the Production of Mass-Viewable Culturally Uplifting Movies, a decision was taken: to watch the great man of Indian cinema direct a greater man in a disastrous exploration of alternative immorality: the copied localisation of two movies from the distant barbarian lands of the west.

All started auspiciously, given the pronounced crowds that make one wonder how this particular multiplex actually makes a profit. The fond hope of watching a movie undisturbed by the grunting masses was rapidly dispelled by the swine that treat a theatre as their theater to demonstrate to a largely uncaring audience that they are now fully empowered citizens, entitled to irritate everyone by talking about most uninteresting matters were present in full force (Hey, it only takes one to contaminate the lot, and when you have a 19 people of an audience of 20 indulging in intricate manipulations of the stock market, the resulting euphony as funny as a phony cry for help.)

Anyway, on to the Bheejoy^[1]-starrer of the modern era: what can you particularly say about a movie that starts with "American Beauty", carefully hacks out the decent parts, and replaces them with, shall we say, material of dubious origin? Consider, for example, the memorable scenes of Lester Burnham on his way to dreamland: replace them with Bheejoy having an extremely irritating fit of laughing that pisses off his wife (and his audience.) And the roses! To add insult to injury, when you copy from a movie starring this person, we may be wrong to expect a swimming pool, but to replace that with a hosepipe is decidedly poor taste added to rank advertising.

The "18 year old" young Angela Hayes is played by Ramboda's find of the year, the young lady whose picture we put on this post to irritate the usual bunch of characters who read this tripe at work. (as an aside, what the hell is a lambada? We know the lambda, and worship it between hacks, but this is a new one.)

Consider, now, a tooth-numbingly stupid brat pretty young thing with exactly two thoughts rattling around in a vast, cavernous blackness otherwise known as "the skull". The thoughts are just the sort of rules Wolfram cooks up for his cellular automata, somewhere along the lines of "water=good", and "old man=want", but that is incidental - replace them with any other rules of your choice, and the resultant emergent behaviour will get you a movie.

A maelstorm of secondhand emotion camouflaged by breathtaking imagery from the Communeast southwest demonstrates how complete Amitabh's transformation from angry young Vijay to sad old Bheejoy is. Ah, and who can forget the other kind of visuals? (Watch carefully, though: uncontrolled exposure has been known to permanently scar the retina.) Add to that the repetitive drone of "take 't light", and it makes you wonder who, exactly, the exhortation to stay "light" was intended for. Certainly not the audience, who were reminded unfavourably of another pet hate. It's all there: the crying, the irrelevant remarks about family, the characters made out of moldy cardboard, and finally, the screenplay (which, by the way, is the real destroyer of this movie - it could have been so much better.)

The Shaven Samurai: a modern parable

A long time ago and a himalaya or two away, there lived a girl called Snow White. Changing social circumstances and norms resulted in her having to leave home and live in a glass house, accompanied (atleast, in the Tadsilwenyan mythos) by seven appropriately named dwarves: Doc, Dopey, Grumpy,... oops. Wong er, that is, Wrong story.

One wonders just what particular version of the story of Snow White the great Master K was thinking about when he made his gritty, realistic masterpiece about the shaven ones. An off-beat one, one hopes.

The 'Seven Samurai' opens with a millety spy listening in on the deeply deliberative discussions of the executive council of some unnamed ship of the high seas of international finance. The leaders of this particular leviathan wish to determine the optimal moment to effect a transfer of ownership to maximise their holdsharers profit. Unfortunately for them, the spy has a conflicting material interest, which is where this story begins.

Spy runs in his hoppy gait to his headquarters of nonmilitary unintelligence, where the spiritual ancestor of General Schiesskopf promptly dispatches an early scouting patrol armed with jugs of rice and pots of sake to gather up renegades from the holy band of people who wield two swords^[1]. Collecting such people naturally affords us an insight into the collected people's character, where we meet the shaven one (who is capable of wreaking havoc by creating a cannonball from two hemispheres of rice), watch him becomes the General, and lead a motley crew of sword-wielding characters in their meaningful fight to do justice.

Much fighting later, we see that Toshiro "Kikuchiyo" Mifune, the only samurai of the lot whom we cheered for, is dead from an bullet, and the last of the financiers have joined him. Our remaining heroes from the best colleges^[2] are left with no utility to their present employer, and thus end up with miles to go before they, well, need to write another statement of purpose^[3].

Seriously speaking, this is a good movie about the beautiful futility of war. After all, maneuvers on the high seas of international finance need a certain time before they can settle down into a steady state.

[1] Not what you think, sadly. The shorter sword has "Made in IIT" engraved on the blade, (something like Hattori Hanzo would do) while the longer one has "Forged in IIM"[4] painted over the engraving.

[2] They might have been from the Musashi school of ring and sword. That is the same thing, though.

[3] I hope this was just a historical thing. The usual kinematic cinematic disclaimer of "all characters and events [...] fictional [...]" applies here.

[4] It has since been implied to us that this is ambiguous. To be absolutely clear, we mean forged(1) from here, and not forged(2).

A "Scientifically Updated" Post

This post is not our creation, but we found it here.

To quote some of the sections we found quite interesting:

"I would like to request something to all the Movie Fans / IMDb users out there.It is as follows: -> It's OKAY to be Morally Upright but it's necessary to be SCIENTIFICALLY UPDATED first (Especially for those whose academics are from a Non-Science background)."

"if you oppose this movie you not only oppose the Father of Human Evolution Theory -CHARLES DARWIN but also oppose something important that Darwin's theory proves : Human Male is capable of producing Sperms all his Life-Time. In contrast, a Human Female's Menstrual Cycle ends roughly at the age of Forty-Five years. This Fact is enough to prove that a Male is Naturally Designed ...yes, Naturally Designed to fall in love with female counterparts all his life time(Yes,even at the age of 60 years like Mr. Bachhan's character in the Movie or even 90 years) and further still reproduce with the help any number of adult Females."

"This is an appeal to 'Indians' especially. Because it's important to know the difference between a 'Godzilla' and a 'Jurrassic Park'. It's necessary to reject the former and accept the latter. Let's accept the Reality."

Godzilla is better than Jurassic Park, scientifically speaking eh!!!!

HTPL a.k.a Hyper Tortuous Private Limited

Good movies are all alike, every bad movie is bad in its own way.

That is the reason why we prefer reviewing movies that are bad rather than the good ones. This Saturday we had the misfortune of watching Honeymoon Travels Pvt. Ltd. Just re-phrasing what Ian Botham had to say about Pakistan "This is the sort of movie that you send your mother-in-law to in the hope that better sense might just prevail and she might decide to give up the worldly existence that is full of such perils as this movie".

Reasons why we decided to watch the movie in the first place. Sandhya Mridul and Kay Kay Menon. The former is our latest muse after watching movies like Waisa Bhi Hota Hai - II and Page 3. Kay Kay of course is someone to watch out for after his excellent rendition of the word "Hello" in Ek Khiladi Ek Haseena".

The first story started off well when the director got her facts right and talked about the Halley comets sighting in 1986. But little did we realize that a "Its all happening" does not maketh a Bill Lawry. And of course we didn't bargain for Minissha Lamba (yes the same actress who once said in a HT interview that she wanted wider hips) and Abhay Deol making sounds, that one would opine belonged to 101 Dalmatians. (On second thoughts it would have fit only in a scene where all the 101 were being fried to death on an Electric Chair, and not to worry Ms Lamba I am sure the villains pet cat would rather enjoy this) rather than Honeymoon Travels Pvt. Ltd. (As a portent of things to come we have a scene where a 10-year old Abhay Deol hides himself in a trash can, we wonder whether the director was making a statement that all scenes involving him were actually full of garbage.) By the way the super hero thing, well when "Toby Maguire" can play Spider Man and "Halle Berry" Catwoman I suppose anything goes.

Then there is the story concerning Dia Mirza, Ranvir Shorey and Arjun Rampal. Well even though we are biased towards Dia (Her being from Hyd and all that), we think she should stick to hosting award functions and item numbers. Arjun Rampal, well he should stick to doing nothing actually, and Ranvir dude get a life. (Though we might not be the best ones to approach on how to do that!!)

Amisha Patel and some unknown whom we shall refer to Mr X1 from now their story seems to be for lack of better words right out of M&B (Caution: Opening this link at work might cause co-workers to doubt your sanity). People who work in my industry, dudes it is not mount and bonding diagram I am talking about (sorry couldn't resist the pun) rather the great "chick-lit-hall-of-fame" presidents. Anyway Amisha Patel gives ample reasons why she should not act and instead get married to some rich Diamond merchant (pearls actually if you go by the movie). Apparently she is this bubbly Punjabi Kudi, well we can say there is more spice in the kadi we get in our Cafeteria.

The story of Sandya Mridul and Mr X2 is very superficial to say the least and the fine actress is wasted in the movie. One would have expected slightly more discerning choice of roles from her. Even though it is more sensible than the others there is nothing of substance that actually happens in this story in the whole movie and is as predictable as finding IT Engineers or Stray Dogs on Bangalore roads.

Boman Irani and Shabana Azmi play persons past their youth, both have been married before and have suffered the loss of their loved ones. Yet again predictably the daughter of Mr Irani is no bharatiya nari and ends up confiding in Ms Azmi at the end (predictably some boy friend dumping her, we wonder where the hell do such chicks roam around man $%^%). And everything is hunky dory, except the expressions on the faces of the audience.

Finally to the one saving grace, the story involving Kay Kay and Raima Sen. Kay Kay is the typical "boy-next-door" for a change instead of the usual "girl-next-door" (we still wonder why the ones next door to us look like a cross between Queen Latifah and Judi Dench). Kay Kay combs his hair so straight that had it been any straighter Sunil Gavaskar would have been proud. Raima Sen wants toescape the boredom that has set into their marriage. Looking to break free of her "better-halfs" parents home (the way she convinces Kay Kay is probably the only saving grace of the whole movie) and of the strict order by which her husband lives his life. And quite disturbingly there is some difference between the beginning and the end as far as this story is concerned.

We recommend you watch this movie only if you think that the only possible way for you to loose weight is to make your wallet lighter by 200/-. (Then again probably not.......)

The fourth K a.k.a Random Trip #4 -- Turtle Bay Resort Kundapur

The last trip which was to Belur-Haleebedu (I know I haven't blogged about it) left us very apprehensive of NH4 traffic, so this time we started a full hour earlier at 0730 than the last time around. But this time surprisingly there was not much traffic on NH4, and we did good time reaching Neelamangla soon. After that we took the diversion to NH48. Now NH48 is a two lane highway and has lots of curves and mostly empty compared to NH206 which is pretty much straight and has 4 lanes at most places. But I was zipping at 100kmph on NH48 when I had to round a curve and did a U-turn that made sure we went to 100-0kmph in about 10 seconds and a radius of about a couple of metres. No small contribution was due to the fact that Comfortably Numb was playing while I was driving. Anyway the photo down here will pretty much show how the ABS of my car got tested and passed with flying colors.



We took a diversiona at Channarayapatna and had breakfast at the Kamath there. At around 11am we started and hit Hasan soon and then Sakleshpur. The road degraded a lot from here on and the view was not very scenic either. We were crawling along and the Ghats section roads were atrocious. We somehow managed to reach Mangalore at about 1700 hours. Just before that at around 1500 hours we had lunch at a very shady place called Highway Inn. After Mangalore we hit NH17 and went towards Udipi. NH17 is a very narrow NH and there is a lot of traffic as well on it. So we had to give the car over to our slowest and safest driver.

We were given to believe that the resort was very close to Mangalore so our original plan was to leave Bangalore at 0400 and hit the resort sometime in the afternoon. Instead we left at 0730 and then came to know that the resort is more like 150km from Mangalore. So all said and done we reached Kundapur only about 1845.

Our ounly source of entertainment (my guitar CD and a collection of songs which seemed to have far too many Himesh Reshamiyya on it notwithstanding) was the commentary of the India-WI cricket match on Vividh Bharati. By the time we reached Kundapur we knew the sum total of ODI runs scored by Ganguly, Dravid and Sachin.

There was more disappointment to await us at Kundapur. We were 5 of us and had booked a room for 3 people and a cabana for 2. We reached only to be told that the person suposed to vacate a room had not done so and we 5 of us had to fit into one cabana. We also ended up missing the sunset.

There was a bonfire planned for the night and we just got a few mats and lied down on the beach next to the bonfire. By the time we had dinner and reached the tent all we could think of was sleep.

Next morning we got up at 0700 and played beach volleyball and then went into the sea with the waves. Yours truly realised on coming back that we had not emptied our pockets so our mobile went phut and so did the car remote. We tried a manual enter into the car only for it to start beeping really loudly. After some frantic calls to about 20 different people we found the software hack to open it manually and then finally started off at around 1100 from Kundapur.

This time we decided to hit NH206 instead of NH48 so we went north on NH17 and took a diversion to reach Kollur from where we hit Hosanagara. The drive through this section of the ghats was very good with a narrow winding road but minimal traffic. The view of the forests on either side of us was also truly awesome. We hit Hosanagara at about 1300 and then did good time to reach Shimoga by 1500. We had lunch at an awful dhaba and then drove all the way till the Kamat in Neelamangala where we reached at around 2000 and decided to have dinner there. The meals there were quite awful.

By the time we reached Bangalore the time was 2200 and we had about 50/- and about a litre of fuel left in the car.

The resort is worth visiting and the beach looks great. But definitely to enjoy the resort you need to stay there for at least a day and drive through a better route. Unlike us who reached there and left before we could even have the feel that we are on a holiday.

And yes do not get into the sea with your car remote and mobile phones.

Go For Guru

Guru reminded me my analog design classes. After discussing a high gain Common Emitter amplifier for half the course the next half would be dedicated to something called "De-generation" so that the high gain can be stabilised.

Guru fits the description perfectly, the first half is excellent Mallika Sherawat's role as a belly dancer notwithstanding. One could almost term it path-breaking since Bollywood is usually not known for making movies that are biographical in nature which dont portray the protagonist as a born-angel-society-turning-him-into-mafia-don or a-honest-do-gooder-never-again-to-be-born-on-earth.

Gurukant Desai is an entrepreneur and an unapologetic one at that. In the first half of the movie Guru starts from a small town boy with dreams into one who has pursued them and is halfway there to achieving them. The cinematography is excellent. There are some scenes that stay with you for long, Guru shaking a few shells in his hand with one of Istanbuls mosques in the back ground, Guru and his future-brother-in-law climbing a set of stairs to the top of a temple, and an excellent one just before the interval where Guru and his wife after having a fight are standing on two opposite sides of the road and a tram passes right in between them capturing the poignancy superbly.

In the second half Guru goes on to become the owner of Indias largest company not always following the law. And a newspapers editor is out to get him. He uses a young news reporter Shyam Saxena who is equally ruthless and uses distorted versions of the truth to purse his vendetta against Guru.

But the second half quickly de-generates like the emitter amplifier with an entirely avoidable song, an un-necessary character called Meenu (just to show the soft side of Guru) and a speech at the end which has so much hamming in it that you are left tearing your hair out in frustration as to why a movie that promised so much has to suddenly revert back to the old corny dialogue delivery that pulp Bollywood movies are famous for. (Guru comparing himself to the Mahatma, give me a break) The only saving grace is yet again the cinemtography, an excellent take from the top of a much older Guru and his wife lying on a bed in the small house from where it all started. Some other scenes that stand out in memory are the way the board meetings of Gurus company start from a small maidan to in the end a huge cricket stadium, and where a Taxi Driver tells Guru he could not have done wrong since he could get three of his daughters married by selling Gurus company shares.

The performances are quite simply put excellent. For once Aishwarya Rai playing Gurus wife does not shed bucket loads of water each time something goes wrong. An admirably restrained performance from her. Abhishek delivers a power packed performance, but why the sudden urges in the middle of the movie to try and mouth dialogues a-la Marlon Brando in Godfather or a swagger like Al Pacino!! Mithunda plays a great role as the only upright editor who dares to oppose Guru. Modelled on RP Goenka, Mithunda delivers yet another spell binding performance. Madhavan essays the role of Shyam Saxena with aplomb. And then there is a whole range of support cast that does quite well.

The cinematogrpahy of Rajeev Menon is excellent. And of course when A R Rahman composes music for Mani Ratnam there is bound to be magic and it is true for this movie as well.

Guru is definitely worth a watch, but dont expect too much in the second half of the movie.

Free Verse: Worse is Free.

From a listing of the top 20 cliches of the newspapers of the great vaat-er land comes this tarnished (dis)inspiration:

We wish to ensure a level playing field
if you are in the red,
so that, at the end of the day
you will, time and again,
be found in the black
rather than become a fly by night
thing that requires a last-ditch effort
leaving no stone unturned.
We await the eleventh hour
with bated breath
thinking: better late than never.
You watch those who rushed to the scene
cry all the way to the bank
and then call it a day
as time is running out
before we can up the ante
then happens a freak accident
in hot pursuit
of facts shrouded in mystery
that ensure survival of the fittest.

The cliche distribution itself is present (as an image) on some other blog, so do search around to find it. It's a lot more impressive than (one more) proof of my insanity.

Murder in Milan

Unfortunately, I don't remember whether Agatha Christie ever wrote anything with this particular title. No matter, since Patricia Highsmith did write a similar piece that promptly (or not, in this case) got converted into that thing the twisted writership of this blog really likes: a reason to remember and revile another antibiographical waste of nonbiodegradable DVD. And unfortunately, for the same reasons, too (Kate Hep... err, Cate Blanchett not being one of among them.)

The Talented Mr. Ripley[1]

Mr. Ripley is the untalented nonentity who believes that it is better to be a fake nobody than a real one (though he does achieve both extremes rather rapidly) unlike his better performances as a ludlum hyperhero, or a dumb pickpocket, who were probably too uncultured to consider such solipsistic syllogisms.

On his way to nobodyness, Our Man in the Mothballed Suit manages to commit murder, perpetrate mayhem, and generally make life unbearable for all those doomed to sit through this generally awful waste of two hours, that should have been better spent studying John Hinckley's reasons. Better murders too, since they do not have to contend with razor-sharp oars.

To be fair, The Talented Mr. Ripley might actually be a good thriller, if you can get through the parts that make you yawn, the parts that make you wish you had the editing scissors (if not a fast-forward button) handy, and the parts that make you wonder what a thriller actually is.

[1] To increase the ratio of weird google hits to weirder ones, we
'ereby hembark hon ha program to scatter hour 'aitches habout.

Colombus in the time of Christmas

**** DISCLAIMER : All characters are fictitious and if you know who they really
are do not read ahead. It can be detrimental to their careers ***

1000 Hours 23-12-2006:The portents for the tour were not very good when we took
a wrong turn when joining the ring road itself. That made G very
reluctant to take directions from any one who said "Go straight" after that. But
as R pointed out "The Law of Averages would mean that we were less likely
to make a mistake in a territory we did not know." Traffic till we hit NH4 was
moving so slowly that some Snails in "Who comes last ?" competitions would be
put to shame!! But once we hit NH4 there was no looking back.

We first had to go through a toll gate where we needed to pay 21/-. After much
searching and finding a 1/- coin we got out through that toll only to miss the
Kamath and deciding to have early lunch. B had told us that we needed to by-pass
Tumkur and take the Gubbi road to join NH206. We did hit the correct road only
to lose it and travel through Tumkur and re-join the same road later. After
hitting Gubbi and joining NH206 the next landmark was Tiptur. At Tiptur there
was some blocking of the NH and we had to take a circuitous tour of Tiptur and
asking all and sundry how to reach Arasikere. We finally managed to hit
Arasikere at around 1400 hours. Just before we reached Arasikere we had lunch
at a place called Varun Dhaba. The spicy Dal that we had for lunch was just a
precursor for things to come. After gobbling down 12 rotis, capsicum masala
and all such we hit Kadur where two national highways intersect when I was
fast asleep.

There was quite a funny incident involving a shop-keeper Aunty who took R to
task for not learning Kannada even though he was in Bangalore for 5 years. We
escaped by a smattering of Kannada we knew. Though we did not have the strength
to reply to "Are you a pure telugu guy ?" So the next time you are on NH 206 do
stop just after you cross Tiptur and talk to her.

After Kadur we hit Tarikere at around 3 in the afternoon. After that the road
visibly degraded in quality. After taking a diversion to Shimoga from NH206 and
then taking a Tirthahalli by-pass after asking a couple of people we finally
were on the road. (Special mention must be made of a direction giver who told
us to turn right but used his left hand to indicate turning left. Eventually
we had to turn left.) After that the route was very picturesque and we made
good time to reach Tirthahalli by 1730 hours. A total journey time of 7.5 hours for 350km.

B was there to meet us. After freshening up the first place we went to eat
Bondas had no bondas so we had to do with hot Chilli Bhajji and not-so-hot
Aloo Bhajji. Then we went to a Mela which was taking place there. We were
astounded by the hepness of the mela. For those who don't know our lingo this
means that the BQ there was of a few 10's of helens. As compared to the local
ones that we see on Forum, Garuda or Brigade Road which involves low rise jeans
or tank tops and all that superficial-made-up-oh-look-at-me-I-am-so-hot
pukefest that we are used to. The colombus ride took the wind out of us and
yours truly whose remark of "Aah that thing is not so scary, let us try the
giant wheel" left having a T-Rex's foot in mouth syndrome.

And then we all planned to get drunk. After sipping lots of Vodkas the effect
on R was as follows:

1. Lights he saw were trailing away.
2. An octagonal shape first became heptagonal then circular.
3. He then tried finding a bride for G and that too from zee workplace.
4. After lot of persuasion we came up with a name of a married and old plump
female.
5. After that we had R enacting out the new 7-Up Mallika ad.
6. R : "I think we should order 60+60+90=310ml of Romanov"
7. R : "I want one 30ml".
B : "You can either have 60ml or 90ml, not 130ml"
R : "Ok get me 1 space 30ml"
G : "It still is 130ml"
R : "Ok get me one underscore 30ml"
G : "It still is 130ml"
B : "How about 10ml+10ml+10ml"
R : "What the hell is that!!!!"
Finally of course we made him drink 60ml more.
8. Then he went after the director of our group.
9. Then A questioned the credentials of our CTO.
10. R then decided to write a mail to the CTO to tell him what an
un-enviable state he was in being the mentor of A and all that.
11. At this point dinner was over and the fun carried over into our room now
involving another female who apparently had turned up in Pink sometime and
had taken up G's fancy.

Next day morning began with hot dosas for breakfast. Yours truly ate so many that
B's brothers wife decided not to serve us and pointedly disappointed us by
serving A and R. Point to be taken note of "Don't eat like a barbarian when a
human being who is not your mother is making dosas, eventually you get kicked
out" (I probably had 15-20 before I stopped)

Next we trekked on top of a hill, that totally tired us out. But the view from
the top was quite good. Legend has it that you cannot build a house unless one
goes on top of this hill and builds a small one with stones.

And then I showed off my expertise at hitting a single stump by hitting one in
about a zillion tries. What didn't help was the fact that I was the only one
playing for the cricket team.

After that we went to a place close to Singeri where we saw fish that were
about 100 times the size of ones that you see in a Aquarium. R tried to
catch them but they would just slip out of his fingers, so he consoled himself
saying that it was a soothing touch he was giving them.

After a bit of rest and a bath we drove to a place called Kondadri where we
could see the sunset. The view was astounding and G was really happy
since he could drive till almost the top and didn't have to burn a calorie of
energy.

On the way back we realized that Bondas had yet again finished and we had to
make to do with Chilli and Aloo Bhajjis and Vadas this time around.

After having dinner in a basement restaurant in downtown Tirthahalli we decided
to call it a day and hit the sack.

Next morning was Akki roti for breakfast and after the experiences of the
previous day both me and R finished quite soon. We started at 11 not least due
to the fact that I needed to change the frame of my spectacles. Drive back was
uneventful till Gubbi. After Gubbi we managed to scratch B's car. This time
though we ensured that we stopped at Kamath and made sure we had Bonda soup
there so that B could claim that he fed us "Bondas" on the trip to his
hometown.

But the drive from Yeshwantpur back to our houses was terrible and by the time
we reached Bangalore it was 2000.

So ended our trip to Tirthahalli.

The Wizard "Down Under" is going Out

Cricket has lots of facets, but none as interesting as Wrist spin or Leg spin. It is a particularly difficult form of bowling in that it is bowled with precisely the opposite action of what one would naturally bowl
after picking a ball i.e. Offspin.

And so most of crickets leg spinners have been freaks right from the days of Clarrie Grimmett and Bill O'Reilly down the years to Richie Benaud to Bhagwat Chandrasekhar and Abdul Qadir. If there is one thing that unites all of these bowlers is that though their bowling styles varied from the parsimonious (Grimmett) the ultra agressive (Reilly and Qadir) the purists delight (Benaud) to the freakiest of them all (Chandra) they all fascinated audiences the world over.

And so in this era of post 1990 also we had 3 contrasting leg spinners, the conventional leggie who would bowl the flipper as well as the googly with equal ease Mushtaq Ahmed to the accurate quick Anil Kumble and to the topic of the post Shane Warne.

And so the game of cricket will loose a lot of its shine when probably the greatest character in it Shane Warne a.k.a Hollywood is retiring. (I am sure pretty soon Dev Anand will make a movie on his life).

As a batsman you treat spinners as the item number of a bollywood movie a la Rakhi Sawant. They tease you with their flight and the great spinners dont mind being hit for a few boundaries before they set you up with a sucker of a delivery and you think to yourself in the pavilion "What was I thinking!!!" (The hero also thinks the same after Rakhi ditches him and the heroine consoles him at the right moment, me I have no heroines to console when I sit and think like that but we digress). Another thing as a batsman is that you prefer leg spinners since they give you more room since the ball is turning away. But what made Shane Warne such a great bowler was that even though he didnt possess a googly and pretty much lost everything of the flipper after his shoulder operation, was the in-drift he would get. As a batsman a leg spinner getting the ball to curve in the air towards your legs is like a 2-wheeler overtaking your car from right behind your blind spot. You always have that uneasy feeling at the back of your head when you play them.

And then there was his attitude. Post his shoulder operation he won half of his wickets purely by playing on the batsmans mind. It was interrogation of the highest order something that would probably even oershadow what our own Karan Thapar tries on Devils Advocate.

My enduring image of Shane Warne: Second test 4th day SCG 1997-98, Jacques Kallis has played 110 balls for 45 and has almost saved the match, Shane Warne is bowling the zillionth over of the match. Warne bowls a ball, curves in Kallis has the line covered but the ball somehow sneaks through the millimetric gap created between bat and pad by Kallis being a shade late and Warne has his 300th wicket in test cricket. It rains at the end of the fourth day and almost the whole of the fifth, this wicket was the turning point of the match.
Have a look at the photo. Excellent stuff.

And so I finish this post by some Lyrics from Black Sabbath's "Wizard" :
"What a batsman thinks when Warne is onto bowl":

Misty morning, clouds in the sky
Without warning, the wizard walks by
Casting his shadow, weaving his spell
Funny clothes, tinkling bell

Never talking (Not strictly true!!!)
Just keeps walking
Spreading his magic

"Now what the batsmen think":

Sun is shining, clouds have gone by
All the people give a happy sigh
He has passed by, giving his sign
Left all the people feeling so fine

Never talking (Ok he has plans of being a commentator so again not strictly true!!)
Just keeps walking
Spreading his magic

Three reasons

Three Reasons I should have been a South African cricketer:

Reason #1

Reason #2

Reason #3, also the reason behind why Neil McKenzie needs to be in the SA Cricket team.

P.S : Wondering how they are related, they all belong to the WAG club of SA cricketers.

Black Friday

Well reason why I am cursing a Friday of all days is this.

As a person who has always rated style over substance when it comes to batting (yeah yeah I know it is in my genes after all, look at these Hyderabadi Cricketers)it is definitely sad news.

In an era where the emphasis has been on gluttony of runs, heavy bats and powerful strokes, Martyn was like a whiff of fresh air. Without a doubt we can say that Martyn was the David Gower of the first half of this decade.

I first watched him bat in the 2001 Ashes and was instantly hooked. Even the best of balls was dispatched with a minimum of fuss, the balls were stroked (He probably took what Wasim Akram said in an interview "Treat the ball like a beautiful lday" too literally) rather than hit, the bat working like a wand in the hands of a magician. One could see the unadulterated look of bewilderment coupled with wonder in the eyes of the bowler when the deftest of touches or prods would make the ball race away on the turf. He had the look of a person who has been denied his due when batting, his sheer hunger for runs indicated that. He probably should have played more than 100 tests but for some stupid ruthless policy of the Australian Board that chose to axe the junior most player who scored much more than most in the batting order for a batting collapse against SA in 1994.

Over the years I have watched some superb knocks from him the centuries in the sub continent in 2004, the world cup final, the champions trophy innings this year. But he would probably be the first one to admit he was off tune in the 2005 Ashes as well as now. So it is good he is retiring when people ask "Why ?" rather than "Why not!!".

So heres to Damien Martyn the sublime, one of the last style gurus of the art of batting.

Time your kills

What is good advice to the Amerigo's Army player also tends to be good for the aspiring psychopathic serial killer too. After all, the two tend to be the same kind of person living in different worlds.

Sadly, this is on a different topic. The great Caleb Carr, author of two books on early american psychopaths, the people who inspired criminal psychology to its current state ("analyze this", "analyze that", and one thing and another), decided to write about something more modern, and therefore suitable to the current crop of airport hoppers, and came up with Killing Time, a post-apocalyptic post-dystopian postmodern post-everything-else novel. It's enough to inspire you to go postal.

Normally, you tend to associate old Hawksley with the India caricatures, but reading this one impresses upon you (with a pneumatic hammer) how accurate Hawksley actually was. The Great Indo-Pak Nuclear Conflict tends to be an old favourite of post-* writers, with Carr providing an abject lesson on how to mess up. His deceased president "Rajiv Karamchand", for example - a name probably made up after skimming wikipedia PHD-class research (ignore for now the fact that if someone actually has a genetic history of both Rajiv and Karamchand, (s)he has to just not drool when making public appearances to be perpetually elected.)

We're probably better off not dissecting the story, beyond mentioning that it is a complicated pile of horrendous coincidences mingled with gratuitous insults to the readers intelligence interspersed with leaps of faith over steaming pollution-filled seas. Actually, no: it's just 'Atlas Shrugged' meets 'Timeline', updated with an even more disgustingly superhuman (assuming such a thing to be possible) cast.

My favourite line in the book is where they say that they've hoaxed religion, and so now need to hoax science, to keep things approximately even.

In other news, taking off ye olde spectacles[2], closing one eye and squinting with the other might make Eva Green look rather like la Bellucci might have in her younger days, which is a good thing. The rest of that movie defies comment, though. The Iron Flamingo must be regretting franchising his hero.

[2] Dangling reference. Where's [1]?

Wild Strawberries eaten in The Silence lead to Cries and Whispers

...due to food poisoning. We'll ignore any effects that mingling with alternatively qualified multiculturally uplifted self-expressive individuals may cause. (Today is political correctness day.)

Bergmania is a pandemic disease that can affect even the die-hard Mithunda fan[1]. SIR model apart, the usual cure for this is identical to any vaccination: a small (or, as in this case, large) dose of the organism causing the disease in the first place. It appears that the pensioners hellhole is now safe from this disease, if the diminishing crowds at the screenings were any indication. (At least, until the next crop of new-age cellphone abusers cinema fans is spawned by the machines.)

Without more background noise, let's do a blinkered breakup and breakdown of a set of truly great movies:

1. Smultronstället (1957) aka Wild Strawberries
   
   An escapee from the deadly Borg, Professor Borg is finally honoured for his desperate deeds and dashing bravery in support of the enterprise by some sort of medal, and so is on his way to an unfortunately named Swedish university. A few dreams, hitchhikers and accidents later, he discovers the meaning of life. Unfortunately, we are not the recipients of such information.
   




2. Tystnaden (1963) aka The Silence
   
   A great entertainer, this one - not least, because it was punctuated rather effectively by an operatic rendition of "The Two Rings".
   
   IMDB notes parenthetically that this movie was the Lady Chatterley of Swedish cinema, which is perhaps appropriate. Like that book, it is long, rather boring and at best, pointless. And given what it opened the floodgates for, you wonder if it might have been better if it was banned.
   
   



3. Viskningar och rop (1972) aka Cries and Whispers
   
   This movie is in colour, which seems somewhat appropriate, as the director had discovered a new special effect when working in such an unfamiliar medium: the fade. A lot of fades to and from Red (black is so mainstream) intersperse the tired old cinderella story of the sick and wealthy heiress, her grasping sisters, the devoted slave and the rabid prince. Well, maybe not the last one.
   
   

All in all, movies you should not miss. Use high-CEP weapons, though.


[1] 80's action heroes, personally. Bruiser Willis, Steven "Eric"
Seagal und die Gubernator, vhere are you when you're needed?

Randomness

The random article feature on Wikipeida is quite interesting. Found this random article on The Oxford University Invariant Society.

No wonder then that the co-author of this blog calls himself the Alternate Moebyus. Though never seen him wearing the six colors of the Rubiks cube at the same time.

Four Books and Er Two Movies

It has been a long time since I posted, been horribly busy at work. But have managed to finsh reading 4 books and watching 2 excellent movies.

So here are the reviews:

1. The Life Before Us ("Madame Rosa") by Romain Gary -- Good book. But even better than the book is the interesting biography of the author at the end. Do read it if you havent already.

2. The Vines of Desire by Chitra Divakaruni -- Stupid and useless book. Dont even try reading it leave alone buying it which in a moment of temporary madness I bought. How could I have missed "From the author of the Mistress of Spices" which was staring at me right on the cover. As my English teacher in class XI and XII at school used to say (unlike most others I had), that dont use twenty words when two can suffice. Apparently Ms Divakaruni did not have Ms Baljeet Kaur teaching her English. Long winded sentences, flowery language, I think she would have gotten a lashing from Ms Kaur.

3. Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai -- Again an excellent book. Not since RK Narayan has any author written fiction with such characters in them that you could almost exclaim "A guy exactly likes that lives down the street". Surely a must buy and I am now planning to read her first book Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard.

4. Indian Summers by John Wright -- A book of a handful of anecdotes. But to the discerning reader who wants to read more than just a confrontation that Sehwag and Wright got into or a faux pas with VVS regarding TV commercials there is nothing much. You gain no insight into what went into making a team that would frequently roll over when push came to shove into a team that could push the Aussies to the limit. Diasppointing would be my opinion of the book. It does have some amusing sections though, like when he sees a lanky lad smashing the bowlers all around and Wright assuming that it must be the new batting opener Shiv Sunder Das only to turn out that it's the opening bowler Agarkar.

Right now am reading The Glass Palace by Amitav Ghosh. Review to be posted soon.

Also watched 2 excellent movies:

Pulp Fiction -- Excellent movie as only Tarantino can come up with. Watch out for Bruce Willis's girl friend talking about pot bellies and how they are different from a tummy. Man some movie it is.

On the Waterfront -- The movie on which Ghulam was based. Watch out for the famous taxi scene betweenMarlon Brando and Rod Steiger. Apparently to convince Brando who was a huge superstar at that time to act in this movie the producers decided to show him a ceratin up and coming young actor's audition for the role. It worked and Brando signed up. The "up and coming young actor" answered to the name of Paul Newman.

Going, Going, GongStar!

Boy meets girl
girl loses boy
girl meets boy
girl loses boy
girl loses boy
girl loses self

What can you say about a 0.4-year old movie that flopped? (Apart from rendering its thoughtful story and sensitive message into a form suitable for machine translation into Lojban, that is.) It seems to have gotten rave reviews elsewhere, so we feel it is our bounden duty to correct certain impressions that may be formed upon the tender and uninformed minds that tend to watch escapees from the Bhott stables.

Let's see, where do we start? The very beginning of the movie throws it into flashback mode, which is a curiosity - most cliched fiction tends to hold to the belief that your life flashes before your eyes when you drown, and not after a terminally bleeding shortsighted cop with meghalomaniac tendencies shoots you in the shoulder using a weapon that can be almost guaranteed to hit anything but the target at that distance.

Oops, did I "spoil" the story for you? Appy-polly-logies.

To continue, consider this guy - India's answer to Rowan Atkinson, who can out-act everyone else in the movie in spite of (or perhaps because of) having fewer words to say in the whole movie than are in this self-referential sentence. Also starring in this movie are the cereal kisser as the sharpshooting bar-singing empathetic dedicated diamond-and-coal (or similar unmixed metaphor, I forget) cop from "Indian Intelligence" who is out to make the arrest of his lifetime, with such success that, well, goes quite literally to his head. King Kongna, who manages to successfully distract the viewer from the fact that she can't quite act and speak at the same time, is the third angle (or side) to this convolutedly straight plot, and is perhaps the only reason to consider watching this movie at all.

Hm. That many long sentences later (which I hope your eye jumped over, as it should over this,) we move on to what this movie teaches us: For perhaps the first time in Bollywood movies, here is a movie with the music done almost right. (The other thing it did teach is that movies should be watched comfortably, but that is a whole different story.)

Oh, and I almost forgot: it's based on two real people (the cop being, most unfortunately, the creation of a fertile and scintillating mind?) who would be most thrilled to see their fate, since as far as I know, they're still alive.

Omkara

Omkara is an excellent movie. Period.

After Maqbool (an excellent adaptation of Macbeth), Vishal Bharadwaj has come up with another adaptation of Shakespeare, this time around it is Othello.

And you fall in love with the movie right from the first lines of Langda Tyagi portrayed excellently by an ever improving Saif Ali Khan. The screenplay is exceptional, the music is great and the songs dont seem to have been inserted just to fill time, rather they flow with the movie.

For once Kareena Kapoors role didnt have me reaching for a brown bag to puke in. Casting her in the role of Dolly Mishra our own desi Desdemona, she looks every bit the extremely beautiful woman that she is supposed to play. Look out for her trying to sing Stevie Wonders "I just called to say I love you".

Ajay Devgan plays the role of a brooding Om Shukla (a.k.a Omi Bhaiya), Othello in the original. I thnk far too many people give a lot of credit to him for playing such roles. I think its as easy for him to do these serious no-fun roles as it is for Shah Rukh Khan to play Rahul the lover boy. But again excellent casting.

Konkona Sen Sharma plays Indu or Emilia in the original and comes up with yet another brilliant performance. Two of her scenes stand out in the whole movie, the first one when she teases Ajay Devgan after he gets Kareena to elope with him and the other one at the end where she looks like the devil incarnate.

The directorial touch here introduces Bipasha Basu as a dancer of the more "exotic" variety, and I guess she never looked hotter in any of her other movies. And the lyrics by Gulzar for both her songs are exemplary.

Vivek Oberoi flatters to decieve when he plays the role of Keshav 'Kesu Firangi' Upadhyay, Cassio in the original play. He does do a decent job, but then when compared with the rest of the cast he does come up short.

And finally we come to "Langda Tygai" played by Saif Ali Khan, Iago in the play. This has to be the performance of the movie, and probably the best ever by Saif. The look on his face when Kesu is made bahubali is priceless. There are so many more scenes that stand out in your memory : The bridge scene with Raju, the drunken binge just before the item number, the scene with Omi just as they are about to kill someone, where he amplifies the seeds of suspicion that are there in Omis mind about Dollys fidelity. I wrote the review late just to see how much I remember of Saifs performance and it seems to me that most of it is still there at the back of my mind.

Special mention must be made of Naseeruddin Shahs performance as bhaisaab, the scene where he tells the guard to reverse the train is abosultely hilarious.

Coming to the screenplay and dialogues, both are magnificent. Theres a song called "Jag Ja" and its shots are film making of the highest order. Dialogues, they are too good and are in the local dialect. So if you have problems with strong language or cannot understand Hindi spoken very rapidly then you are better off skipping it or watching it on DVD with sub-titles though I wonder whether it will have the same effect as watching it in a theatre and understanding the language.

All in all a great relief to watch Omkara, after watching Junk Movie #1, Junk Movie #2, Junk Movie #3, Junk Movie #4.