The First rain

So while we were playing Badminton on Tue night suddenly we felt that the roof would cave in on us. Such was the din that the first rain of the summer was causing.

With much trepidation we left office once the rains abated since there is almost always a huge traffic jam once it rains in Bangalore. (There are jams on only two days in Bangalore, the cardiac-arrest-inducing ones on days it rains and the merely frustrating ones on days it does not)



Photo Courtesy : Google search that led to a flickr user by the name Jace.

And so it turned out to be. Traffic was clogged horribly till we crossed KR Puram bridge and as we took the flyover to get onto the traffic free zone we were praying that the radio plays a song that we like, and so it turned out that as we joined the Outer Ring Road a personal favorite "Maula Mere Maula" from the movie Anwar was played.

YouTube link of the song here.

There is something about Sufi Music that is so uplifting, as if one is transported to an alternate universe.

And onto home after a great dinner, we were sitting in our room with the balcony door open and the cool winds blowing in (since ours is a west facing balcony and the summer being hot by Bangalore standards at 38C cool winds are not so common) we find that a friend who is now in the US is online and wants to play Scrabble on Facebook.

We have played maybe thrice on Facebook with A and lost all three times. But on this day everything was going our way and we had a string of firsts. Our first bingo on Scrabulous (83 points at that), 400+ points for the first time in Scrabble. And this is how the board looked at the end of the game :



Result:

NightWatchmen : 454
A : 263.

The Good, the Bad, and the Leaky? No, that's not right...

The rather glaring omission made by the mad cricketer in his post on commentators is (in retrospect) explained easily. Categorisation, however, proved harder. That's not Leaky Washingstone, by the way.

A spirited (hic) PJ

Came up with this one while sipping on a Mojito last Friday evening at Take 5.

Q : What do you call it if you clone a person with infinite capacity for alcohol 8 times ?

A : "Nau"tanki


For the uninitiated, aforementioned person is usually referred to as "tanki" (As in a tank, not to be confused with the LC tank.

The commented become the commenters

It is the season of the IPL, with all the cheer in the air what strikes a discordant note an extremely amplified one at that are the people who at one point of time had their moments of glory unfortunately for our well being on a 22 yard stretch of clay a.k.a as the pitch. And to compund our agony they have not gone mute as yet.



(Photo Courtesy : HT)

Here is a sample of some of them:

Exhibit A: The Improviser

His biggest claim to fame is that once upon a time he would walk out to bat with a person whose batting I would admire more than most.



Sample his commentary:

i. Bowler bowls a dot ball : "This is what a bowler MUST do in 20-20 cricket, vary his pace and improvise".

ii. Aforementioned bowler gets carted over mid wicket for a six : "This is what a batsman MUST do in 20-20 cricket, improvise and hit boundaries"

Our comment : We should improvise and collect all the bowler hats on earth and try and smash them on his vocal chords.

Exhibit B : The Italiciser

His biggest claim to fame is that once upon a time he bowled on a rough patch outside the leg stump of what the rest of the world thinks is the best batsman on earth. (We of course believe we qualify for that honour)

Sample : That was exquisitely timed. The bowler really has to get his line and length absolutely right. And the captain has to ensure that fine leg is really fine.

Our comment : He really ought to stop italicising all his statements before some ex-leg spinners who are excellent commentators decide that he is spoiling the reputation of the clan and decides to do something drastic.



(Photo Courtesy : The Age)

Exhibit C : The Ominous one

Now this man's biggest claim to fame, is err well he has none.

Sample : Gilly has not fired so far this tournament, those are Ominous signs for the bowling team. Shane Warne has really not done anything great in this tournament so far, ominous signs for the batting team.

Our comment : When this man says ominous, the signs are ominous for our physical well being.

P.S : To quote Jane Austen in the times of IPL "It is a fact widely acknowledged that a man in search of a hug from Preity Zinta, on not getting it, cries openly on the field"



P.P.S : If you still insist on watching IPL without muting the idiot box, maybe it is better to listen to this at the end of it so that you do not end up being a homicidal maniac.

P.P.P.S : Our suggestion to SRK that his next show should be titled "Kya aap in commentators se acchi commentary kar sakte hain ?" I think it will be a big hit since almost anyone who gets picked will win!!!!!

The Loaves of Others

Sometimes, a batsman hits a century in 24 balls. Sometimes, a director makes a movie so poignantly beautiful that my stock phrasebook of negative statements (most of which are machine translated from the original Dot) seems woefully inadequate to pan the movie. The Lives of Others is one such movie.

That paragraph above ought to be enough to encourage you to go and watch this movie, particularly since it's been rerereleased in Das Vaterland by the Bulla and Ch- sorry, wrong movie, that would be BharatBulla, er, BharatBala Productions, who were also apparently running an online fillum contest related to this movie.

A recent weekend back, yours truly, the cricket mad fiend, and another anonymous person goose-stepped our way to the local, highly expensive tent house to watch this movie. We interrupt the proceedings to remind you that local tent houses in the Pensioners Hellhole charge enough for the privilege of sitting in inflexible chairs with wobbly backs that it tends to attract our favourite breed of two-legged ape originating from the north of our favourite Carcinogenic line across the globe.

For no good reason, we will ignore the differently volumed people who tend to somehow get the seats to the edge of the rows in which the cricketer's good efforts to book tickets well in advance place us. After all, personal attacks ought to be made only on people who can help being what they are. And the bloggers, and the banjo players. And the old lady in (but you get the idea.)

For some reason, I actually had the foresight to take the seat between the two other unfortunates who accompanied me to this movie, which means that instead of having to actually listen to the thought processes of alien movie watchers, I was surrounded by popcorn, which is the sort of auspicious happening that makes me immediately suspect that the movie has a special appearance by Corrino K to balance things out. As it turned out, however, the cricketer had to spend an hour each time listening to edifying statements before he could run to the safety of the rather large and low-ceilinged restroom, while I could enjoy the movie more or less undisturbed. For my own amusement, and to test your patience, the usual nebulous statements about the movie will be interspersed with pearls of wisdom from the couple next to us (conveniently named H and S, for He and She.)

The movie opened auspiciously enough, with "Captain" HGW (no, not that Captain, who shall not be linked to in an effort to keep PageRank from dropping even more) teaching a class of aspiring Staatssicherheit officers how a person is to be interrogated (O Wilt, Wilt, wherefore art thou, Wilt?)

Naturally enough, once this successful demonstration commenced, we (for once, not the Royal we) were apparently treated to the following statement:


H: "Oye, is movie me sub taaitul hain"


We refrain from further comment, and merely observe that it is clear that the language of one Vaterland has inspired an official language of a Vaat-er land to do away with the Neuter gender, leading to much aggravation when we actually had to pass exams for such things.

Soon enough, HGW accompanies his facial-hair endowed superior officer to a play by "Laszlo"^[1], where we meet our heroine (or is it heroin? No matter) of the drama. One thing leads to another, and HGW is put in charge of investigating "Laszlo" for whatever form of thoughtcrime it is that Type 4 artists are supposed to indulge in. Aided in this noble endeavour by the great minister Schlumppf (no, Hempf), a listening post is soon established over "Laszlo"'s residence, and HGW and Sarge Udo settle down to listen in to our officer.

In what ought to be a characteristic of such situations, Schlumppf is apparently in lust with our very own Christa (who is, of course, the previously unnamed heroine of this movie), which is why the HGW's sharp instincts that suspect "Laszlo" of, shall we say, unwanted tendencies to put pen to paper, are allowed free play.

For reasons of his own that have no doubt to do with the listening to advanced classical muzique over telephone wire, a precursor of the modern and holy system of being put on hold by customer disservice, HGW lets "Laszlo" get away with quite a bit of stuff that he might have, with profit, shown to his boss.


S: "ooh he has started liking them"


We also discover that Christa has this annoyingly stupid habit of popping pills:


H: "What medications is she taking?"
S: "For depression" [Prozac in the eighties, of course. Very advanced,
these germans]


Which naturally leads in to a good reason as to why she would be unreasonably susceptible to blackmail. When the inevitable blackmail happens, we get:


H: "Bitchhhhh"


Ah well, the rest of the story need not be told, and while it ought to be worth the watch, you might perhaps choose a more congenial theater. Or, in normal countries, to buy the DVD. It's rare to see a movie that does not exactly go overboard with mawkish sentimentality when speaking about the triumph of humanity uber alles (if such a triumph does happen, you might be entitled to string together a coherent thought or two of suicide.) Instead, this movie sets the right note, and even though it could have profitably have ended about five minutes earlier, does not follow in the footsteps of the Melodious Monkeykar to screw it all up with a sermon at the end. In case you haven't realised already (and have actually had the patience to sit through disjointed ramblings to reach this point, I consider this the best movie of 2008 (er, no, 2006) so far. Which might actually be amusing, were it not for the fact that we watched Anthony Con Hai some time before watching this. And while watching Minissha Lamba might be distracting, we'd rather encourage the cricketer to put a large picture of Amrita Rao in the previous post.)

Of course, there only remains one unanswered question at the end of all this: What would H and S say if they watched something by E I Bergman?

[1] sz z? Zzz!!

Shaurya kya hai ?

Long long ago there was a movie named after some behemoth buses that run in Bangalore. One of the scenes that one remember about this movie is one involving shall we say S**T packaged in a perfumed box. Most new Bollywood movies actually remind me of this scene and it is nowhere more truer than the one that any person of even Forrest Gumps IQ by now would have guessed we watched over the weekend (Hint: Please to read the title).

Shaurya seems at a first glance to be a rip off from that Hollywood Movie which stars the intolerable guy who made shades popular. But there are such basic errors as calling
the same Army regiment Rashtriya Rifles half the time and the other half metamorphosing into the Rajputana Rifles. And for some strange reason the director thought that putting a nose stud on Minnisha Lamba (yeah the same one who played a super girl and in the process almost disproving our hypotheses that no role can be essayed any worse than what Rakhi Sawant can) would somehow give her a rugged tough journalist look, well one-nose-stud-no-the-maketh-a-jodi-foster.



There is Rahul Bose (RB) who is supposed to be defending an army man accused of shooting his senior. Javed Jaffrey (JJ) handles the prosecution, and Kay Kay Menon (horribly over-rated as an actor in our opinion looking at his recent performances)is supposed to be playing a brigadier and to mouth:

"You wanna know the truth you cannot handle the truth!"

That seems to be the story. Now to the other things that go up in making the movie, we must say they are all so uniformly mediocre that we think that the producer is an idiot and if he is still alive be a living proof of the adage that "A fool and his money are soon parted". So we first started by saying that the director has no idea of using long shots, then the person next to me said that he cannot use close ups till about half an hour into the movie we concluded that he handled the camera with as much ease as the way the room-mate of TAM did his march past at the turn of the last millennium. Then we get to the sound track, there are songs that pop up like ghosts in one of those dark room of horrors and leave you feeling the same way, cold and physically afraid of the next one. And the music at some places is as inappropriate as a Sanjay Leela Bhansali shot without any hint of ostentatiousness.

But as Manasi Sinha used to tell us long back, go beyond the obvious look at the deeper meaning. Maybe this was a tribute not to Hollywood but to that great man Francois Truffaut and his movie Jules and Jim. There is definitely gay bonding between RB and JJ, nothing more demonstrates this than when both are drunk all JJ can come up with is that RB looked more handsome than him in some attire. Plus when JJ is posted to a different place, the escapades that RB described that the two of them had together we really have to now think of another Bollywood classic Dharam Veer. Maybe at a later time this movie might be called as the harbinger of love triangles where the love vectors add to zero (a.k.a JJ loves RB who loves Nandini who loves RB, by the way Nandini is supposed to be married to JJ).

We must say that the only whiff of fresh air during this whole process of masochistic indulgence was Amrita Rao who looked oh-so-desirable in a white saree.



Some piece of trivia : The Hollywood movie talked about led to a change in a George Michael video where he wears Ray Bans, whether it made him look any cooler is debatable but for sure you can see the camera in one of the close ups in the video.

Finally to answer the question that is the title of this post, Shaurya for us was to spend 200 bucks and since there were 5 of us close to 1000 bucks on a venture such as Shaurya. (Yeah right we know we are idiots and are hence further living proof of the adage we so cleverly bought into this post)

The three (or so) laws of Frustodynamics

Dedication: To the unknown soldiers of HogUARTS.

To keep in line with the Fravian definition^[1] of a blog, we provide below random crap for your amusement.

Once upon a time, in a far-off university called HogUARTS (there exist many other possibly valid names for this place, but we prefer this for what ought to be obvious reasons) there came into being a concept. This was called, for want of a clever acronym, frustness. We leave it to your imagination to deduce the proper state of mind required to conjure up such a concept, and merely remark in passing that while certain other not-quite-"first"-rate institutions may lay claim on the concept, it is to be found in its purest form in exactly one place in the universe.

We elide an explanation of this concept, since it is as much of an in-joke as "Vladimir Vapnik, Cosmic Conqueror".

Much time passed after the above earth-shaking paradigm shift (not to be confused with per diem) occurred, there occurred much research into this concept, whose results we present you (having plagiarised from like-mindless people) below:

The laws of frustness:

1. Zeroth law: The law of pseudomathematical equality
   
   This really requires a pretty diagram to illustrate effectively, but we make do, and state:
   
   "if A is as frust as B, and B is as frust as C, then A is as frust as C".
   
   Roughly paraphrased, this states that equal amounts of frustness do not usually result in noteworthy incidents, but in the event that there is a significant discrepancy in the quantaamounts of frustness, an equalisation process occurs. For example, if individual A was frust, and B was not, prolonged (or in some cases, instantaneous) contact usually results in B becoming at least as frust as A. The second law usually applies in such matters, though...
   
   
2. First law: The law of conservation
   
   "The total frustness of the universe remains constant"
   
   Unfortunately, this says nothing whatsoever of the actual distribution or evolution over time of frustness, and neither does it provide any constructive method of determining said distribution. It therefore suffices to say that if you're reading this, you are a local maxima of the distribution. Cautious application of the first law usually results in your reaching the global maximum. This explains why people of similar frustness levels tend to congregate, as might be proved by your favourite local Orkut groups. Note, however, that the constancy over the universe implies that there exists at least one recycler of frustness somewhere in the universe under consideration.
   
   
3. Second law: The law of entropyincrease
   
   "The frustness of an isolated system increases with time."
   
   Usually used to determine the direction of the arrow of time, this very useful law serves as an explanation of why things are as they are, particularly since it applies, through some oversight, to systems that are not isolated, too.
   
   
4. Third law: Asymptotic (un)stability
   
   "Frustness can tend to, but never reach, zero."
   
   Since it is far more likely to go in the opposite direction, this law might seem redundant. It's most useful function, however, is both as a reminder that there is a minimum, and that you can't quite achieve it no matter how hard you try.
   
   

Examples of the last two laws are left as an exercise to the reader, rather like this review does.

Disclaimer: No claim whatsoever of originality is made, indeed, it would surprise us if we were involved in this particular formulation of the above laws, since they quite likely date from the time Maxwell's demon's memory overflowed, or even the Carnotaurus.

[1] A blog is...^[2]

 The most over-rated nonsense on the internet. It's essentially someone's rambling, online diary, that links to real sites in order to pretend that there is actual content, (other than the self-absorbed, indulgent crap that makes up most of it).

[2] Our clarification: Anything whose title is a permutation of "random [verb] [proposition] [article] [adjective] [noun]". Note that only the word "random" is not negotiable.

PS: It turns out that this marks a century. How appropriate.

Beatles - And Your Bird Can Sing

Came across this. So decided since we did not have anything blog worthy we might as well do the lazy thing.

The rules are:

1. Put your MP3 player/Media player on shuffle
2. For each question, press the next button to get your answer.
3. You must write the name of the song no matter what.

IF SOMEONE SAYS "IS THIS OKAY?" YOU SAY?
Metallica (Kirk Hammet) - One

Ye Kaisa Jawaab Hua

WHAT WOULD BEST DESCRIBE YOUR PERSONALITY?
Queen (Brian May) - Brighton Rock

Though TAM might say &^@#%@^% Rock

WHAT DO YOU LIKE IN A GUY/GIRL?
Smashing Pumpkins - Geek USA

Puhlezzzz

HOW DO YOU FEEL TODAY?
Ozzy Osbourne - Crazy Train

Finally we get to show off our Scrabble Lingo --- BINGO

WHAT IS YOUR LIFE’S PURPOSE?
Metallica (Kirk Hammet) - Fade To Black

DOUBLE BINGO!!!!!!!

WHAT IS YOUR MOTTO?
Pink Floyd - Money

Aha

WHAT DO YOUR FRIENDS THINK OF YOU?
Jimi Hendrix - All Along The Watchtower

Now we are TALKING

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR PARENTS?
Eric Clapton and Allman Brothers - Layla

Ahem

WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT VERY OFTEN?
Eric Johnson - Cliffs Of Dover

Yeah RIGHT

WHAT IS 2+2?
Led Zeppelin - Stairway To Heaven

Absolutely right 4 is the Stairway to Heaven or for rather large values of 2 it is 5.

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR BEST FRIEND?
Eagles - Hotel California

Not unless it is the Mallu version :)

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
Jimmy Hendrix - Purple Haze

YOU BET WE DO

WHAT IS YOUR LIFE STORY?
Pearl Jam - Alive

And we do it again BINGO............

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GROW UP?
Eric Clapton - Cocaine

Rather than becoming can we sort of become a user

WHAT DO YOU THINK WHEN YOU SEE THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
Sublime - Santaria

We would prefer the former.

WHAT DO YOUR PARENTS THINK OF YOU?
Pantera - Cemetary Gates

No surprise to the zero readership of this blog.

WHAT WILL YOU DANCE TO AT YOUR WEDDING?
Stevie Ray Vaughan - Texas Flood

Rather interesting sight that would be or on second thoughts maybe not.

WHAT WILL THEY PLAY AT YOUR FUNERAL?
Jimi Hendrix - Little Wing

Ok no smart comments come to mind.

WHAT IS YOUR HOBBY/INTEREST?
Black Sabbath - War Pigs

For some reason this leads us to think of a random Forsyth novel.

WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST SECRET?
Rolling Stones - Sympathy For The Devil

Oh yeah absolutely

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR FRIENDS?
Phish - Stash

Phishing is of course a hobby of some of my friends I would like to think. Sadly like Hobbes these are also just thoughts.

WHAT SHOULD YOU POST THIS AS?
Beatles - And Your Bird Can Sing

How apt :-)

Superman tripping on capes

Came across this excellent article on Federers dip in form in 2008 so far. Do read it, fascinating writing because of which we are still great fans of The Hindu.

In other news The Alternate Mobyeus has been to the Hard Rock Cafe in Bengalooru and went absolutely frusth there after having to look at Madonna next to Clapton.

Jodhaa Akbar -- The Review (Or the lack of one)

To all the non existent readers of this blog, we are pleased to start posting once again.

Over the weekend we found ourselves in Fun Cinemas watching Jodha Akbar, if only its title had started with a K we would have been completely convinced that this was an Ekta Kapoor production. For the time being we will have to satisfy ourselves with the theory that the premise proposed in the Antara Mali flick Mr ya Miss has actually come true and that Ashutosh Gowariker's soul had swapped places with Ekta Kapoor while the making of this movie was going on.

All in all this movie is what would happen if an Opera singer were given stock options a.k.a. so(a)p opera.

We really hope that this movie gives rise to characters like Travis Bickle in Indian society.

By now you would have realized that we do not propose to give this movie any sort of respect by blogging anything more about it, if not then a better post about it can be found here by a much better (and may we say funnier) reviewer.

Mit Mithya, jäh?

(yes, making multilingual puns in languages we don't understand proves that we suck.)

The Academy Awards were announced today, and as might have been expected, Pixar's Magnum Opus on the rendering of multiple hairy animals did win something. This is not about that movie, unfortunately, since the idea of a rat cooking up anything other than Plague a la mode is endlessly entertaining.

Mithya is, at its simplest, a remake of Don. Lest this bring to mind that insipid overhyped Pshaw Rooke starrer, we hasten to remind you of movies like these, which lend their inspiration well (don't you love euphemisms? No? Oh well.)

Mithya starts off well, with a bridge that might have served Guy Ritchie well being turned into the scene of a shootout, and Ranvir Shorey(VK) hiding, terrified, under it as two people who we shall know by the names of Inspectors Ram and Sham do their utmost to adjust the pH of the waters below (It is suggested that any subliminal imagery you might see of curvy horns and con men might be replaced by this. It does not make much difference to the eventual outcome.)

Earlier, our hero plays his part by playing the part of an extra at a film, wherein we first get to see Neha Dhupia(forget her name, at least till the end of this review) playing her part (now, and throughout the movie) as a Cicinnurus regius impersonator. More generally, she does try to cover all the Paradiseae, sometimes with incongrous results (but we are getting ahead - or behind) the story here. Sadly, she's no Zeenat Aman, but then, who could be? She still does provide a restful, if lush, backdrop to the increasingly grim stuff put on screen in the name of realism, though of course, we wonder about the rocky docky imagery.

Somewhen (it is rather confusing) during, before, or after the process of pH readjustment, the inspectors inspect the visage of VK, and find it (as you might have expected) a rare match with the Don, and a reaction of substitution is initiated. There follows a rare comedy sequence reminiscent of the reactions of someone presented with their first digital camera, ending in a barber shop where the shot is taken. Sadly, we never see this theme develop any further, remarks about brains and backsides notwithstanding.

Naseeruddin Shah and That Other Guy Whose Name I Do Not Know play the competition to Don, though in a rather effective way, which provides for a certain amount of restful tranquility as we wait for the inevitable ending to this movie.

This provides a rather nice spot to bring up our main complaint with this movie? Didn't someone say that switching genre mid-movie is bad? After all, there are only a finite number of ways to end a movie like Don properly (or worse, improperly), and the darkly (or otherwise) humourous first half offered so much more potential; particularly when a sane viewer would have been enormously tempted to bail out during the first 45s of the movie, given certain a priori assumptions.

The humour works extremely well, but once we start getting to the unfunny parts (which tend to be as gripping as a bald radial tyre on a bicycle being driven through yet another Himalayan avalanche), the predominant thinking is a wish that whoever did the scissorwork had had the good sense to borrow from this movie. It would have enlivened the proceedings, and probably would not have caused lasting harm to its eventual success at the bocks ofis. After all, if you can inspire a fan site (or a great citizen of the east) into speculating about what the movie really means, you have a classic some decades down the line.

The Company of D

This is not intended to be an attempt to imitate an aging humourist who lost his funny bone about the same time Das Kapital was thrown out of the Kremlin. It is also (most unfortunately) not a review of that gangster movie - but then, reviewing that does not offer much opportunity to pour the hate out. Instead, we try to fulfill (in suitably roundabout terms) a request that you may have seen in the previous post. Note that when you're talking about G's and D's, there usually arises a question that we carefully step around here.

So, there's this little village that could. Unfortunately, the Breeteesh decide that it really could, and go ahead and build a Jail there. Fast forward to a certain long march over long years, when a person wearing a rose and a funny hat decides that the best possible thing he can convert a jail into is a college - after all, the function is basically the same: to keep unproductive members of society in close contact with each other in the hope that the unproductiveness averages out on the long run. It is a mystery to us as to why this college was not named hogUARTS, so that is what we call it.

Anyway, hogUARTS prospered after such an auspicious beginning, with millions of decistudents passing through its hallowed translocation-proof walls. However, such prosperity was soon to end, as, in an unrelated event, the writers of this sequence of bad prose ended up there.

Now it is true that in most large collections of inhumanity, there are usually some people who define the average, and the rest just try to make sure that the values specified for variance and skewness are justified. This particular gathering was no exception: There was D.

And that's all. We avoid carefully all description and implication of telescoping paper carriers. Let there be no accusations of adhering to the letter of the law, while strangling its spirit!

Rendezevous with G or Why 6 hr stop overs at Airports are good!!

As we were travelling abroad for some meetings the whole of this week, and could not find a direct flight from The Garden City (yeah right!!!) we were forced instead to fly through the "Commercial Capital of India". Plus we had a interminable 6hr stop over between connecting flights. Between cursing my travel agent, my manager, the folks who organised the meetings we realised that one of our old friends G who was unfortunate enough to be yours truly's wingie in the fresher year in an engineering institution located somewhere in the eastern part of the country stays there.

So much Orkutting ensued and we decided to meet. After talking quite some time and figuring out the latitudes and longitudes of where each of us were after landing at the airport we finally met and decided to have dinner at some non decrepit location just outside the airport.

Over something called American Dosa and Manchurian Dosa we reminisced about old times. A thing one notices about good friends is that when one meets them after a long time, it almost seems as though we never were away, conversation flows as freely as Madeira< in a Madhushala. So we began talking about how there was a time when MBAs were done by engineers who had nothing better to do in life and how now engineers who have nothing better to do still work in engineering. (OK that was an attempt at saying that more engineers do MBAs in a not too subtle manner falling flat on its face!!)

Conversation did turn very funny when we listened to the story of one of our more notorious batch mates D. Now D is a dangerous guy, the sort of person anyone and I mean anyone in EILITEPI #1 [1] shudders to be seen around with. Apparently G was infinitely embarrassed by juniors asking him how come that both him and D are from the same engineering institution.

So G came up with this truly astonishing idea. If someone asked G about D's origins before asking D then G would say he is from EILITEPI #2[2] instead of EILITEPI #1. So we naturally asked him but what happens when someone has already asked D before asking G. Then in a true mater piece, G said that he would tell them "Well he did turn up at EILITEPI #1 on a student exchange program with EILITEPI #2". We were clutching our stomachs with laughter. (You really have to meet D to really appreciate this story. If we could inspire TAM we just might get a post dedicated to D)

Then we got to discussing attendances and proxies in EILITEPI #1. Apparently a cheque signed by one of G's friends did not get accepted since the signature did not match with the one in their records. So G who had a long history of signing proxies for his friend signed it and it got accepted.

Another fascinating turn of discussion came up when we got talking about Stochastic Calculus. Interesting stuff G reads and our latest work might just involve a whole lot of calculus but god forbid the stochastic kind.

And so we talked about batch mates who are married, juniors who ask stupid questions, about post grad institutions that now have slots marked for students in classes for them to avoid proxies etc etc

By this time the waiter had come and stood at our table thrice expecting us to get up but we thick skinned just did not get up. After the fourth iteration we did manage to get our asses out of our temporary parking slot and catch an auto to the international airport.

Maybe the waiter was really frusth with us since we realised our watch was no longer on our hands, maybe them aliens had stolen it after telepathy's with the waiter.[3]

And before we finish this we need to say that the Mumbai domestic airport rocks, absolutely. And the international one was a disappointment in comparison to that.



Photo Courtesy : Wikipedia

[1] EILITEPI #1 --> Engineering Institution Located In The Eastern Part of India. Look at first link that this blog links to

[2] EILITEPI #2 --> Another Engineering Institution Located In The Eastern Part of India.

[3] An alterntive explanation propounded by G was that the loops of my watch strap had been torn quite some time back. Us in our capacity of infinite laziness had not fixed it and since the watch was anyway wound quite loosely around the wrist it would have fallen off since Newton came up with some ideas about the earth attracting apples towards it and stuff like that......We prefer our explanation of an inter galactic conspiracy!!

Lost -- The Khoya Khoya Chand Review

A red fuzzy foreground in the left with the heroine on the right, cut to the same fuzziness on the right with another person on the left. Same thing repeated a couple of times before you realise the two characters are the audience of an outdoor badminton match.

Lovers walking on the beach, a scene done to death but in this case both of them are outlines in the sort of half darkness that can happen only just after sunset..

Heroine dancing next to a burst fire hydrant water exploding all over the screen and lot of kids around, yet another cliched scene but just before that happens we have the car in which she is traveling covered by keechad but then that getting cleared due to the fire hydrant water explosion and the movies title track playing in the back ground.

A small kid falls on the road, her father comes and picks her up, the heroine has a fantasy about her own father who in real life abandoned her as a kid.



Such are the images that one carries of Khoya Khoya Chand. The second movie of Sudhir Mishra of whom great things were expected after his first effort, tells the story of writer Zafar. Zafar travels to Mumbai to escape from a family that is loveless. On coming to Mumbai he is sucked into showbiz and his efforts at making movies and the story of the love of his life Nikhat form the rest of the movie.

The movie has an excellent sound track, one of the best in recent times. There are some excellent performances notably by Vinay Pathak. Soha Ali Khan try as she might just cannot emote on the screen as well as one would like. But all too often the movie seems more like a collection of great images, a photo album. Rather than these being incidental to the movie, the movie seems to revolve around them. All in all in us engineers terms this movie lacks flow.

Most charitable comment that my co-moviegoer came up with:

"I really liked what Soha did with her Sarees, especially the combination with the blouse, you know the whole thing!!!"

Eh, what's up, doc?

Ultraviolence is a difficult concept to pull off in a movie, and apart from a few Arnie movies dating from the great eighties, there have not been too many good efforts in this direction by hollywood. QT did do an exemplary job in a two-part movie, but by and large, the best movies of this kind have always been made in India.

From Rojni saar's stunts that manage to violate both general and special relativity (usually at the same time), to Sunny paaji's attempts to imitate Bond, we have had an abundance of movies that make use of violence to distract the viewer from seeing the 747 that's looping the loop through a gap in the plot. Of course, this assumes that a plot exists: take, for example, consider yet another Pshaw Rooke starrer that (regardless of our opinion of both Sush and Amrita Rao) should never have been made.

It is therefore appropriate to consider Shoot 'em up as Hollywood's reply, complete with: fresh produce producing fresh corpses, bullet physics that overshadow Rojni saar's two-gun makeshift howitzer shooting bad guys behind a wall[1], and the particularly unique brand of humour that results from trying to do things seriously, much like a Michael Moorcock novel. In fact, when people set out to tell a story like this, they start by combining together chopped bits of 35mm reel stolen from the celluloid graveyard, stitch by painful stitch. When eldritch lightning finally powers up unknown devices made to give such a creature life, the creators end up running screaming from it, only to be pursued and caught, since the poor thing is lonely, and wants a sequel (or perhaps two or five, but that is beside the point.)

The movie opens innocently enough, with drunk Agent Smith sitting at a bus stop trying to drown his sorrows in lukewarm coffee. Er, no, make that Mr. Smith, and it's difficult to say if he's in Washington. A much-pregnant woman hobbles past him, pursued by a carload of trash driven by a lone thug, and Schmidt decides to pursue his duties to ze vaterland, by promptly dispatching the thug and all its clones, while simultaneously attempting to discover whether the mail-order degree that he received in midwifery was worth it.

To cut much of a long (non)story short, Mr Sch err, Smith ends up with a baby in his hands, and marches off to meet "DQ", played by the Bellucci herself.

Midway through this, Mr Smith suffers an identity crisis brought about by the consumption of fresh produce, and thinks he's the wabbit himself. Naturally enough, this means that Sam turns up, played ably by Paul Giamatti, an ex-FBI-profiler turned into hirer of clone armies for ze greater good of ze greater number. Much hilarity ensues.

Unfortunately, beyond this point, the story is really a tattered transparent cloak over the container lorryful of gunfights, which makes it rather difficult to describe much more, but certain items do stand out: the one rat-power Leonardo-made lock, the critical-velocity-defying vertical gunfight ending upon a helicopter and body-strewn rails, and of course la Bellucci. Doesn't leave much out, does it? An IMDB reviewer recommends watching the last part of the first trilogy of Bourne instead, but I'd suggest watching both: it's a quick way of propping up a few economies. And remember, for those people who cannot yet watch the whole of Kill Bill in one sitting, this is useful training.

[1] I've never actually seen this. Youtube links, anyone?

A Panoramic review of Manorama -- Six Feet Under

Long long ago there was Veeru and not too long ago he gave birth to Prof Ajoy Chokorborti who mouthed these immortal lines to the ISI chief in the greatest spy movie in Hindi cinema history :

"Do baat"
"Ek tum godha ho"
"Doosri baat, yeh Amreeka hai Pakistan nahin jo godha
sadak pe ghoomta hai"

And then was born Ajoy Chokroborti's brother. Now chota chokroborti who also goes by the popular name Abhay does not have it in him to pull off movies about love stories of spies. But what he can do is play off beat characters like trying to catch the last local train with the highly improbable occurence of a former Miss India who has grown fat for company, a "marriage fixer" or a super hero married to a super heroine.

He pulls off another role as a complete loser in life (mirrors the life of the author of this post, except no one publishes my stories and I do not have a wife who has two absolutely fabulous dimples) in his latest movie. We for sure appreciate the characters he chooses to play.




We have already mentioned one of the female leads, the other one is played by the ever droopy Raima Sen.



The story of the movie revolves around the loser when one lady approaches him to take photos of her husbands peccadilloes. The reason she chooses him is that in a small town a writer is considered a detective (On the lines of in the land of the blind a one eyed designer is considered a project lead). His book that sells exactly 200 copies and sinks without a trace has a cover design more reminiscent of James Hadley Chase rather than a Conan Doyle or a Agatha Christie. Now go figure why either the loser or Mr Chase are popular among women.

And as he takes those photos life as he knew it goes for a toss. People out to bash him, stelaing his bike prompting him to take his old rampyaari a.k.a scooter out. Plus in between he almost manages to have a live in relationshsip with Raima Sen. The story has more twists and turns than the hips of the item bomb in a number and does manage to hold your attention till the end. Unlike other movies in this genre which end up in either a moral lesson which one stops appreciating after third grade or everything is shown to be hopeless with "the-bloody-system-is-rotten-to-the-core", this one leaves you with a pleasant feeling. Though it is supposed to be a thriller, the movie is a slow moving one and grows on you. More in the Le Carre class rather than Forsyth one would say.

The cinematography is quite good except that maybe they should stop doing stuff from the Ram Gopal Verma school of filming where every scene is done with a "look-at-me-I-can-copy-from-the-best-when-it-comes-to-technique" philosophy. One would think that with greater experience the director would leave things more understated and subtle.

There is just one song in the movie which is just about right for this one. But definitely could have done with a much better sound track. Considering the movie is based in Rajasthans desert one has the scope for a really great theme, am thinking what Tarantino would have done.

Before we forget, the guy who played Mr Pignon in the hindi version of Dinner game also has a role and speaks Hindi with an impeccable Marwari accent. Special marks to him for swallowing his whole breakfast in one gulp everyday.

All in all you are much better off watching "Manorama Six Feet Under" rather than sitting at home with nothing else to do and end up watching "Six Feet Under".

Fanny and Alexander (1982)

Long ears ago, when cranial hair was ample, and optimism had not yet made its entry into the red list, we had this great opportunity going forward of getting to study in a hot, dry, cold, and wet place north of the Tropic of Cancer. Given the natural tendency of such places to accumulate dubious characters, we had to run into our esteemed cricket-mad fellow fowl fellow. (Who, you will notice, has not commented on the boys in light blue finally managing to thrash the boys in green black and blue without excessive punctuation.)

Much mayhem involving assorted bits of Silicon and chunks of Gallium nitride followed, the details of which are elided as far as possible to spare your tender years. The central result of this, however, was that yours truly was pressurised (in one case, literally) into watching some true gems of Bollywood, such as the incomparable trinity of Cabby Khushi Cabby Gum, Bog Boon, and some indeterminate shaw rooke starrer whose name had mercifully receded into the dim mists of memory, even if the resulting trauma had not.

Anyway, the purpose of boring the lot of you to tears was to set the stage properly for the introduction of a much better family movie by that master of cinema, Ole Bergman. Without (too many) side trips, we therefore proceed into a review of Fanny Och Alexander

It's a family movie, just another family movie. Instead of cricketers dreaming about their family before hitting themselves on the head, we proceed into a Christmas celebrations of three generations of Ekdahls at the turn of the last century. We meet the hypertensive Oskar, the philandering Gustavus Adolphus, and Professor Carl, all of whom form a part of the intricate tapestry that is this movie, along with their mother, their kids, and the rest of the household.

Seen with a jaundiced eye, it is just the story of Oskar's death, his wife's (a card-carrying member of the party of svensk blondsk that make Bergman's movies watchable most of the time) remarriage into a rather doctrinaire religious family, and the subsequent end of that marriage, all seen through the eyes of young Alexander, her son. However, it is the sort of storytelling with the little details (Hamlet and kind people, anyone?) that make this an enjoyable movie - its length notwithstanding.

Irony might be...

Someone who says:

If she is particular about manners, there is a good chance she will be particular about grammar. Please revise your old copy of Wren & Martin.

Following that right up with:

They [i.e. multiple such points as the above] are only the necessary condition. Not the sufficient condition.

Leaving aside the fact that it's been a long time since I looked inside W&M, relying on the old ear to tell the difference, aren't we short an 's' or two? Oh well, you only get what you ask for.

The rest of the blog is hilarious (and definitely not work-safe), so parts of the null-set that is the readership of this blog might enjoy it.

Donald vs Atherton

Here is a blog entry that has Atherton's description of the torrid spell that he had to face from Allan Donald at Trent Bridge in the 1998 series. Link courtesy India Uncut.

We did not have cable at our house till mid way through 1997. And I began watching test cricket seriously on TV with the 1997 Ashes where Steve Waugh's feisty twin hundreds with a split webbing on his right hand left a lasting impression. While this one might not be in the same class one has to remember that the bowling was Allan Donald and not Dean Headley, Darren Gough class. Atherton was maybe an unsung hero for the English through the 90s mostly because they never won anything. But he had a combination of fairly good technique and bloody-mindedness that helped him through this spell. And it is also because of flatter pitches and bowlers who bowl medium pace that jokers like Ponting score so many runs these days!! Can't really see Ponting surviving this torrid examination.

Maybe Sreesanth should watch the video of this spell to know what agressive pace bowling is all about rather than change his action every couple of deliveries or bowl one foot no balls.

Lyreeex

While we were working today our xmms playlist had zee songs of a Hindi movie called Bazaar and were listening to a song called "Karoge Yaad To" and we were mighty impressed with a particular section that goes:

Gali ke mod pe
Suna sa koi darwaza
Tarasti ankhon se
Rastaa kisi ka dekhega
Nigaah door talak jaa ke laut aayegi

Make sure you listen to all the songs of this movie, really great soundtrack must say.

P.S : The movie is also great by the way.