Governance you say?

There has been a lot that’s going on this week which made me question the IQ of people governing us or planning to govern us and wonder what are they snorting in their free time and whether they are willing to share. First up was the raid by Mumbai police on a ‘rave’ party, which is brilliant move I must say. Total respect; take a bow whoever used the complex calculation to reach the decision that the party in question WAS indeed a rave. Pity those people who decided that the best place to organize a rave party will be in the middle of the town AND advertise about it on Facebook too. Unrelated, I have found myself searching for rave word far often after this to see if someone is planning something in my locality.

 I wasn’t even done with showering praises on Mumbai police when our esteemed leaders of opposition decided to take matters in their own hands (no pun intended) and stumbled upon the brilliant idea that not letting anyone work would be a very effective way to bring down petrol prices, which were increased by the evil government to bring down exchange rates (pffffft). So, they declared a bharat bandh, which was voluntarily supported by people who are earning around 80000 per month and get offended by, believe it or not, cartoons. Let me take this opportunity to highlight that as I child I was terribly offended when Dexter made fun of his low-IQ sister. Never the less, since it was a bandh so, people were not allowed to go to work, public transport was stopped and buses were burnt just in case the act wasn’t effective enough. Do you have a better idea to bring down petrol prices? Logic wasn’t our minister’s forte anyway. Last I read petrol prices have actually come down by 2 rs. No, Mamta banerjee hasn’t expressed her happiness yet and all cartoonists who could depict her otherwise have either been locked up, or have abandoned the profession completely. also, Kapil Sibal.

  Govt has such gems working for it/us that some guy actually managed to calculate the total loss incurred to country because of bandh. Yes, an actual figure. I have got to find the person and learn how this is done (In your face, Sheldon cooper!). Some calculation that. I bet Mumbai police is involved here somehow but that is just my gut feeling. Speaking of Mumbai police, now it is mandatory to get a drinking permit before you decide to indulge in your favorite drink in Mumbai. Yes, it is a rule. The card states that you need to consume alcohol ‘due to health reasons’ (I would have pointed out the irony here, but I trust your intelligence). This card should be on you every time, especially if you run into police at a rave party or you should consider shifting base to gurgaon where the number of rules you have to follow is inversely proportional to your monthly salary (not applicable to women after 8). I whole-heartedly recommend a bharat ratna to the person who came up with the idea of issuing license to drink and maintained a straight face while announcing it like a real rule. However, it would have been of tremendous help if they mentioned the agent’s numbers to get it done at the earliest. WHAT DO YOU MEAN IT CAN BE COPIED? There certainly has been no issue with fake passports now is it?

  But I am not complaining about either of the so called problems because a paper down south has hailed Rowdy Rathore, which is a remake of a remake, an outstanding movie and at the time of writing Salman khan has confirmed that bodyguard (produced by reliance) is going to have sequel.

  So all is not bad then is it? Awesome government we have. Hip hip hurray!

So long, champ!

This post was due for a long long time. Actually should have published when Dravid announced his retirement. Oh before I forget, I am going to jibber jabber about him in this post (those who feel strongly about sachin and bharat ratna in the same sentence can stop reading now). But I was caught up with my ‘saving the world’ work that I do on a daily basis which involves attending calls, writing mails and other important stuff I am damn sure you CANT do on a daily basis.

  But last night when I saw Dravid on TV screen, it struck me that this could be the last time he is seen on cricket field taking fairplay award because no one is actually sure of he will return for the sixth season, which I hope, he doesn’t. Because asking dravid to play in T20-20 is like eating carbide induced mango. It just doesn’t fit and you end up hating it.

  Basically there are two types of cricket viewers in India, a) those who like dravid and b) those who are stupid. I don’t consider myself a big cricket buff, heck I cant even sit through a 50 over match. But there are something’s I just love about the game, dravid being one of them. He represents probably the last generation of gentleman cricketers; the one’s who walk away if they think they have nicked the ball even before waiting for umpire to raise his finger.

  So the image on tv was not pleasant. Will miss seeing him on field but I am glad he hung up his shoes at the right moment. The slow motion videos of him getting bowled on Australia tour were very painful. I was not angry because he was unable to score, I was disappointed because he got bowled. Mind you we are talking a batsmen who made the whole Australian bowling attack consisting of likes of McGrath, Gillespie and Warne slog for the whole day in Kolkata without giving away anything. They had to resort to negative bowling (they positioned most of the players on off side and started bowling on off stump) to stop him.

  Every cricket critic you read agrees unanimously on the fact that dravid style of batting is the closest it comes to ‘textbook in action’, so I am not going in the details of technique. And since I have not seen Richards, gavaskar or border play, dravid is the man for me. The good guy, team man, perfectionist.

  Maybe, just maybe 20 years from now, while watching some match I will get to mouth the dialogue ‘you know in our times when dravid used to take field……..’ to my children.

  Honor was mine, sir! You will be missed. \m/oO\m/

Arjun: indian animation turns a page

Finally, I got to see Arjun. It has been in making for more than 2 years now. All thanks for Disney, without which, Indian cine-goers could not relish a home made animated blockbuster, which, for a change, doesn’t look like a drawing board of a 2 year old kid. Yes, despite being a fanboy of animation movies I have skipped all the good, bad and HOLY MOTHER OF GOD homemade animation movies dished out in recent times. 

 My love for animation movies goes back to my school days when I loved reading Nagraj, Super Commando Dhruv, Bankelal, Doga (I feel sorry for you if you haven’t heard of these guys, read up!) along with Spiderman, Batman etc. So while some of you were busy sweating it out in the field and getting into relationships, I was in my fantasy world of comic books, cartoons and video games. So much so that a stuck stage in Mario meant continuous slogging for hours. On related note, not being able to rescue or at least see the princess remains one of the biggest disappointments of my childhood, others involved something called marksheets(pfffft).

  This was before I had heard of Disney-Pixar or the likes. I love animated movies because of the freedom it bestows upon the creator. The only limit is the imagination. If you can imagine, it’s possible. The good part of reading fiction is you are free to imagine it the way you want to. The more vivid imagination you or the more interesting picture author paints, the more you enjoy reading it; and the sad part is when you see it reduced to mere mortality in live action movies. Ask any harry potter fan and he/she will tell you how disappointed they are with the movies, though personally not big on potter, i agree. Its actually tough to create fiction in a live action movie because of expectations and that’s where animation scores. 

  Now imagine what it can do to the epics like Chandrakanta, Alif Laila, Vikram Baitaal or a Hatim Tai. I did not add Mahabharata to this because they will require at least a trilogy to show it completely which doesn’t seem feasible right now. But you do get a glimpse of how awefantasticsome would that be, if and when, they actually decide to do it in the process of watching Arjun. You are left gasping for breath with the lavishness of the whole frame when the protagonist jumps in the pond to spear the goldfish. I could only compare it with what I saw in B R Chopra’s work , which wont be fair, because frankly speaking I wouldn’t have bothered with this movie if it weren’t for him. He made Mahabharata interesting for me with whatever means he had at his disposal at that time.

 

  Animation quality of Arjun however is generations behind Pixar’s other works like UP or Ratatouille but this has certainly set the wheels rolling. People that be, will notice animation movies as a sustainable market and who knows we might even get to see a full blown ‘Rajnagar ki tabahi’ featuring Nagraj and Super commando dhruv battling it out with Grand master Robo in a action packed 3D blockbuster or a KroorSingh in all his glory (YAKKOO). After all Toy Story was an experimental movie too.

  I have my fingers crossed. In the mean time, go watch it on the big screen. And those who are stick stuck with the idea of animation being for kids, GROW UP!  \m/oO\m/

James Moriarty vs. The Joker

The showdown of , what I call, the two best negative or rather characters with a different view of what is 'right', in fictional work history. There might be many others but no single character caused so much mayhem into their ach-nemesis’s life such as these two. Moriarty is projected as the mastermind scheming criminal who is behind every wrong that takes place in Europe while still remaining behind the scene, whereas joker is projected as the mastermind psychopath with a twisted sense of humor and is dangerously unpredictable.

For those living under a rock and/or not a fan of either graphic novels (read comic books) or the works of Mr. Doyle’s, Professor James Moriarty is the arch-nemesis of Sherlock Holmes (go shoot yourself if you just asked Sherlock Holmes WHO?). The only villain Watson believes had holmes right up on his toes. Joker is considered batman’s arch-nemesis because he stands against the very idea of goodness.

Apart from there being a difference of 100 years in the birth of characters in the fictional worlds, they are indeed similar in some aspects. I have always believed that joker, what we know and believe him to be, is inspired from moriarty’s character. When I say inspired, I mean idea-wise. Moriarty was a mathematical genius and was offered mathematical chair at a university but resigned in the years to come because of his, as holmes put it, ‘strong criminal streak’. Although joker has a rather mythical birth story, the aftermaths of the character are modeled pretty much on the brilliant but twisted mind that he possesses. He is always shown as the exact opposite of what batman stands for. Batman was tested for his analytical skills time and again by penguin, riddler, scarecrow and others but none came close to making batman question his own belief. Joker has nothing to prove to anyone. He believes that if your belief can be molded, manipulated and changed; it stands for nothing. His ‘war’ is not against batman per se, but he wants to show Gotham city by defeating batman’s ideologies that they are not worth following.

On the other hand, moriarty is a genius that is just amused by the brilliance of holmes and is constantly taunting him by leaving enough clues, which he knows only sherlock can decipher. He once mentions that he does this for fun because he felt intrigued by sherlock's mind. Even though Sherlock has always referred to his elder brother as a more gifted observer than he is, moriarty has proved him wrong. Moriarty’s way of functioning is behind the curtain where he protects every criminal under him by charging them an amount of their ‘gain’. And since Sherlock has proved his brilliance by solving a number of cases, explains why he is so adamant about defeating him.

The similarity also steps up from the fact that these characters truly believe that whatever they are is because of their counterpart’s. Not to miss that Batman and Sherlock are , in all originality, detective's. But while Sherlock does it for fun to stimulate his mind, batman does it because he feels indebted to the city.

What makes these villain distinguished from others is the closeness they share with their yang’s. It’s never about the material gains for any of them. Joker wants batman to agree that his ‘misplaced sense of self - righteousness’ is meaningless while moriarty wants Sherlock to accept his defeat by asking him to jump to the valley on his own because he lost.

The writers of joker were, at best, planning to keep it a psycho prankster but the interpretation drawn by the directors/writers in the later years have given birth to the idea behind this post. While I sincerely believe that Sherlock is a more thought out, researched work; joker takes the cake as the best supervillian ever written.

For reference, I suggest watching ‘Sherlock’ on BBC (guy Ritchie version is CRAP) and any of the Batman movies or animated series featuring joker.

Do you agree or you have another character who you think beats these two to pulp?

Do share \m/oO\m/

World according to my mom

I was terribly caught up with things to write stuff. Okay maybe not that much. this is one of those old drafts that i wrote in between posts. posting it because i have not been able to come up with something in a very long time.

Let me start by saying I am not going to do a tare zameen par-esqe post here, if you are looking for the crying material, aap galat aa gaye hain(you have come to wrong place)

I am not sure about other people but my mom seems to live in some other world and she has some notions, which she believes is right. Well I prefer not to argue with that because you can’t argue with mothers. It’s THAT simple. DUH! They are mom so they are right. I am trying to list how my mom sees the world. Here goes:

I am the smartest there was, there is and there ever would be: oh yes. This one’s a classic. Even when I used to weigh somewhere around 100 kg’s I was healthy and not at all fat. Humanity never saw a smarter person than I was/am. Greek gods WHO? And if I eat properly I might even look like hritik roshan.

Girls are waiting to trap me: since I am so smart, every girl (single or otherwise) on this planet is plotting ways to trap me with her charm. Oh yes I have been interrogated so many times (albeit anonymously, and generally speaking) that I can vouch for that. The advice comes in the end ‘you should be careful’ I have tried telling her that some female has to be actually blind to fall for me, but MOM’s.

Those who are thin, their mother’s don’t love them: (also, good kids should be FAT! ) I have no clue who made this rule but the moment I say I don’t want to eat this much because I will put on weight, she has this sentence to say ‘you know if you become thin, people will think I don’t love you, I don’t want that’ and then ghee’s and butter’s start making anonymous appearances in my food. I simply cant fight this logic

I am thin/I am NOT fat: it’s impossible, and I repeat IMPOSSIBLE for me to convince my mom that I am FAT. No matter how much pot bellied I am, every time I reach home for holidays, the first sentence after asking how my journey was, is ‘you don’t eat? You look thin’ and when the weighing machine comes into picture, she has the option of IGNORING it altogether.

Don’t trust banks: she still prefers post offices for fixed deposits because she knows the guy sitting there. That’s it. Her logic being ‘how do I tryst the guy who I don’t know with so much money? No wonder these people don’t give passbook these days’ and mind you, post offices give better returns on investment. also, how can you trust a person who handles so much money?

Everyone I know is trying to con me out of my stuff: my mother can never make herself believe that the person I hang out with ALSO has a family who can feed their offspring. So I should be careful with my stuff because people will take it and wont return. its only when she meets the family, is she convinced that these guys CAN actually afford a life but the rest continue to remain THIEVES.

I think I have grown up but I haven’t because . . . . : Oh c’mon don’t tell me you have never heard of this line with the situation appropriate word in the blank. Oh so since I cant clean my clothes, bed sheets, bed, dustbin, fridge, car, scooter (pick any random cause). Its very tough for her to believe that I find the pile of cloth just fine. Tell me if some one has won this argument, I will bow to them.

If only I were a little more religious: I should be a little more respectable towards all baba’s and saints and what not. Because what they say is right. DON’T. Yes no logic applicable. Since they sing bhajan all the time and have 2 cents worth of advice on every darn problem, they should be followed. Also, people who don’t go to temples are WASTE.

I always thought my mom is a little weird but having lived in engineering hostel for a very long time (there is a joke in here somewhere), my mom was just being well, a MOM. All mom’s are like that.

Does your mom have a point of view you would like to share? \m/oO\m/

indian railways and me: 2 stories

*This post was written for 'Around The World With Expedia' contest by Expedia.co.in (http://www.expedia.co.in) for indiblogger #ExpediaIndia*

For as long as I have started travelling, every time there is something, someone in the journey that make me want to shoot myself during/after the journey. So I wont be doing justice to those ‘characters’ if I write about each of them in one post. Domestic flights are short duration and hence I can choose to NOT talk and pretend to be sleepy all the time. Ergo, I have tried to write about 2 of such experiences, which happened during my date with Indian railways. Without further ado, here goes:

Exhibit 1 - Where ‘s my Seat?

When Bangalore bound Karnataka express left New Delhi station I had no idea I will develop suicidal tendencies for weeks to come after the journey. I was travelling alone and was on middle berth which is the worst Indian railways could do to you after taking away your money and not giving you something to sit/sleep upon (read waiting). Next day around noon a mother and daughter entered the compartment. Female looked a little around 25-ish give or take 3 years (oh yes she was cute) and was accompanied was her bodyguard-cum-mother. She kept mentioning how many diseases one could have traveling in sleeper class so I gathered medical student. It was during lunchtime that they took out something to eat that the mother turned to me and fired her first shot

Aunty- beta what is your caste?

Me- *shocked at the question* excuse me?

Female – mom wants to know what caste you belong to?

It was unbelievable

Me- I am (still clueless about why she deemed that necessary)

Aunty- here, have this (she offered the mixture and fruits that she was peeling on a plate)

Me- (making my WTF face) frankly speaking aunty, I don’t like to eat from strangers on a journey.

I have had enough so I got up and left to stand near doors. There is something about sound of a moving train that makes you forget a lot of things. I could not believe this, how could they? What if I didn’t belong to the caste they were looking for? And gods help the patients this female is going to see after she graduates, or whatever doctors call it, because they never actually do.

I went back to take my purse when I saw that the female was reading my book; she waved and mentioned that she took it. Boy, Wasn’t I grateful for the heads up?

I was starting to question words like sanity, civilization etc.

Several hours passed, I was standing near gates (yes I like it, can do it for hours) and NO I DON’T SMOKE, STOP ASKING ME FOR MATCHSTICKS.

It was when I returned I noticed that the female was sleeping on my (middle) berth and her mother was on lower berth.

Now seriously, WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE?

I woke up the mother as gently as I could because trying to touch a woman my age in the dark wont look good and past results weren’t too promising

Me- aunty, she is sleeping on my berth and…

Aunty- *before I could finish* Yes she said she wanted to sleep there.

Me- *stunned* ok so where do I sleep?

Aunty - go to upper berth, I am sure you don’t mind

Of course I didn’t/couldn’t, what choice did I have?

Exhibit 2- It’s a child; oh were they your sleepers?

It happened on last day of Feb ‘12 when I was returning from home and got upgraded to 2^nd ac, which I hate for so many reasons one of which being they are full of patients and children’s. Either you agree with me or you haven’t travelled in railways enough.

Guess what? My compartment had, surprise surprise, BOTH (oh yes a patient AND a child). The moment I saw the drapes on and lights off, prayers came to my lips automatically ‘PLEASE GOD, not this one, PLEASE’

“Oh this is my berth!”

I noticed a patient on my lower berth and a crying-talking baby on the other side. What more could have I asked for?

Oh did I tell you that the mother believed in ACCIDENTLY using slippers without asking? Oh yes I found out when she came back from washroom after attending to her kid’s washroom needs and stuff. The wetness gave it away. She didn’t ask, if you wanted to know. The child was exceptional to say the least, he kept saying he is hungry and refused to eat when his parents brought food and kept crying during the process. Look children are cute and stuff but when you are trying to sleep and some person keeps yelling at everything, well lets just assume normal human behavior is predictable.

I was trying very hard to sleep amidst all the ‘OH MY GOD TRAIN STARTED’, ‘DO YOU KNOW HOW TO GIVE INJECTIONS?’ ‘OH I LIKE MAGAZINES, LETS BUY’ and other things I didn’t bother to listen in highest pitch its humanly possible, but it was like the universe didn’t want me to sleep. In the mean time some guy in other compartment decided that this could be the best time to watch Agneepath in the Dolby digital sound speakers

Every time I got down for going to loo or some fresh air, I had to ask that female for MY sleepers, s-l-o-w-l-y because hey, there is a patient in the compartment.

THIS IS COMPLETE MADNESS.

I patted my back for being patient in the whole journey when I reached New Delhi and ran straight to the metro for the fear that these people will ask me to help with there luggage.

These are some of the instances when the people I met weren’t interesting. There are many more, If you ask. The one where there were 8 people on my berth, the one with a professor uncle, person who didn’t know about torrents, the guy who liked himesh, the ‘CAN I SIT IN YOUR PLACE’ guy…the list is endless and every time I board that big-ol’blue vehicle a new story is waiting to unfold.

have you had a story to tell in your travel? share

\m/