Me or Manoj Kumar

Two of my blogs, which I started long before, are still in draft. One being a tragic love story of a guy and the other being on the Presidential election of The Land Of Opportunity, as everybody truly say. First is in half cooked shape as my story doesn't have much emotions or I myself not convinced scribbling a tragic story. When you can't associate your self to something, even its imagination becomes vague. This is also the reason for second one being in such a state.

So again, as usual, I sat down to blow chunks my ideas or no - ideas. I had just finished chatting with one of my friend, who is working back there where I am born. We discussed about job work (don't interpret as the other job work..ok), movies etc. I told that unless I watch some good hindi movie, I don't relish much. Though there have been lot of good English movies too, like The Terminal, Harold And Kumar Goes To White Castle, Spiderman -2 etc, but still they cannot match the rousing Sholay, Dewaar or for that matter Kal Ho Na Ho and Main Hoo Naa (I think I'm becoming too obsessed with Kal Ho Na Ho or am I becoming SRK fan).

Just as we were discussing things, a thought came to my mind. Ever since I have come here, I haven't listened any angreji songs, unlike before coming here, when I used to listen only Brayan Adams or Bon Jovi or Aerosmith. Though I brought with me the personal CD collection and its always handy, I haven't listened or even hummed a single time. Am I becoming home-sick? No, not really. Then, have I started hating those kinda songs? Not at all. Then there is only one option left, I am becoming a clone of Manoj Kumar, the famous actor, with all desh-prem pouring out from my heart, mind and soul. Yes, now I know why I refused the offer for the job which came my way.

Anatomy of Bollywood Flicks

Commercial Cinema and its Fate was the discussion which got ignited after the movie 'Dhoom'. The apprehension arose in the minds after enduring three hours seeing the vrooom of the bikes which doomed our sunday evening. The last movie which imbued me with delectation, as I think now, was definitely Kal Ho Na Ho. It might be because of the fact it had SRK, as usual in panache, as the hero, with pretty Preity and winsome Saif in fun-filled emotional story and tranquilizing music, for sure, packaged by Nikhil Advani, the director of the movie. Although, personally I feel, Main Hoon Naa, Hum Tum and Lakshya were of better lot, the rest have been equivocal, dull and aloof.

The theme, though quite good for some movies, like Fida, didn't turn out to be good at all. The serious flaw which I construe is the direction of the movie. There is talent in the Gen-X heroes, take for example, Vivek Oberoi in Company or Abhishek B in Yuva but there not many people who can mould the character as they need when directing the film. Why its that when Aditya Chopras or Karan Johars or Ram Gopal Varmas direct the film, its a hit or atleast not at all boring, "well time spent" movies but when others direct the film, the film is bombed? My point is not at all that only these directors are good at their work, they know what they desire out of character, but it seems to be that rest of them don't display their passion while doing so. I may sound very critique of these people but then this is what I percieve.

Another thought that traversed our discussion was why there are some actors who have restrained themselves to Off-beat movies or for that sake non-commercial movies? The concept of the off-beat/art movies and commercial cinema must be annhilated. This is infact is fading with junta, mostly urban, wanting something which is abysmal in thought. The aim of the team involved in making the movie must be to bring something different, not the regular stuff which the audience don't relish at all. Though everytime, the expectation that movie to be hit will be too much, an appreciation if earned must be the reward for the movie. Although the directors can mutate the characters according to their ideas, actors themselves must give their hundred percent, which of-course they do.

Me, Myself and those Steely things.

Sometimes I cogitate, what others are thinking about me, especially when I am in some social gathering. This has happened countless number of times with me. The last time, I'm sure, was the last Friday when I went to that Spanish restaurant with my team for a welcome lunch for one of the senior member who came back to the team after an year or so.

The restaurant was selected by one of the team members and it was near our office premises. The menu card was also available before one day. It was pre-decided menu and comprised of starters with drinks (non-alcohol, ofcourse!!) main course followed by tea/coffee and cookies as dessert. The dessert reminds me of one the luncheonette where for dessert, the menu card said 'desert', interesting eh! So I decided to have Grilled Chicken Burrito. The name suggested it to be some exotic dish and so the vignette below its name which said 'Chicken and rice wrapped with tortilla bread, sprinkled with shredded Cheddar cheese and served with beans and vegetables'. So I thought of tring out this dish. The other reason for choosing this dish was that the other dishes either had beef/shrimps or was totally vegeteranian, both sometimes can be very bland in taste.

Before this, there were some starters which comprised of tangri kabaab types something, and egg wrapped appalams, both palatable food with some vegetable salad. The name for both I'm not sure, but they were delicious. This was served with soda of our choice. By the way, here even cold drinks are called soda. I wanted to have my favourite drink, Coca Cola ( not the diet one, which I see more famous here), but they were the men in Blue, the Pepsi Guys, so I went for Sprite. In front of me, there was a big shot of our team, who seemed to be au courant, especially in the American politics and elections which are around the corner. Full time people around were listening to him about his view, facts of American politics, its Presidents etc. I was sitting like a dumb, laughing when I could catch some joke or when I see other junta smiling or laughing. I was very conscious about my attitude and behaviour. Anyway, after that came the main menu.

Let me describe the dish, visually. This was a small chicken pieces, conglomerated with rice and wrapped with what we call roti. Besides this, it had dal makhni and some lettuce leaves with some tomatoes and onions cut very fine. Total desi style. Everybody started eating with fork and knife. Wonder, roti aur chicken choori aur chaaku se, yuk!! Anyway, I also started eating, but it was totally uncomfortable for me. That reached the height and I was embarrassed when my knife touched the ground. I could figure out that other junta also was also not confortable with it, so I decided to use the natural knife and spoons, the hands. Thus, reducing the chargin.

Finally, the dessert had some cookies. Fortunately, you don't need those steely things to consume these. That was one afternoon, very hard to forget.

Its back home.

While perusing the sport section of the newspaper, I came across a feature on Olympics, sort of slideshow for all of the 24 Summer Games. The most intersting fact is the definitely the unsubtle one : returning to the place where it all began.

Athens, 1896. The first Olympics in which 245 , all men, participants from 14 nations contested in 43 events. The American tripple jumper James Connolly becomes the first Olympic Champion. Paris was the second venue for the Olympics held at 1900, with approx 1020 contestants, including 21 women. Charlotte Cooper of Britain becomes the first woman to win a Championship.

The next Olympics were held at St. Louis in 1904. The important feature about this was the Gold, Silver and Bronze were awarded for the first time. Then comes 1908, London becomes the Mecca for sports. For the first time, athletes march into the stadium by nation, which grew its count to 22. The next to host the games was Stockholm in 1912. The number of contestants reached to around 2500 and it used electronic timing device, unofficially, and public address system.

The World War - I veiled the spirit of sportsmanship and 1916 games were cancelled. After world war, the games again opens in Antwerp, Belgium, in 1920. For the first time, Olympic flag and oath are used in the openning ceremony. In 1924, Paris becomes the first nation to host the game twice. This time the partcipating countries rose to 44 for 126 events. The total athletes touched the figure of 3000 for the first time.

Amsterdam adds itself to the cities to host the games in 1928. Here, the protocol was establish for the Parade of Nations, Greece leads and the host nation goes last. The next to pop up on the list was Los Angeles, in 1932. Photo finish and automatic timing devices were used for track events. It was in Berlin, 1936 which became the first games in which the lighted torch was carried from Olympia to the site of Opening Ceremony.

War again thwarted the games, this time World War - II for consequetive two terms: 1940 and 1944. The enthusiasm and energy was back in game again and this time London was chosen to host the games one more time. The games were for the first time broadcasted on home television. The next to host the games were: Helsinki, Finland (1952); Melbourne, Australia (1956); Rome (1960); Tokyo (1960). Mexico City was the next to organise the games in 1968. Here for the sex test were required for the women. In 1972, Munich was the organiser of the games.

The perfect 10 on the uneven bars was awarded to famous Nadia Comaneci of Romania at Montreal in 1976. Moscow was the next to host in 1980. But the cold war had gripped the world. US boycotts the games and other 65 nations to decline the invitation. India won the hockey Gold here. Los Angeles again host the games but this time Soviet Union together with 14 nations boycott the games.

Seoul, South Korea in 1988, Barcelona, Spain in 1992 and Atlanta in 1996 were host of this great sports festival. Atlanta witnessed for the first time record 79 nations in the medal tally and out of them 59 winning the gold.

The last meet happened in Sydney, Australia. The feature of games were around 200 nations partcipated with more than 10,000 contestants for 300 events.

2004: Greece. Its back home.

La dolce vita

From the unforgettable trip of Tampa/Orlando, I returned back to my city on Monday morning. Just when I was about to reach my abode, I got the call, on my cell, from my Boss. There was some outage in the production because of some database transmutation done by some weekend patches they installed. And because of this I had to stay office the full following night.

The next day morning, after coming from office, I was drooped from lack of sleep and was in state of drowsiness. One night out and the the whole body was in state of restlessness. But the day was comp-off so had no problems. Anyway, to tranquilize myself, I put on the internet radio, one of my favorite pastimes here. In this land, listening to "my types" of songs , this is the only way. There was a programme going where people were calling on to answer some easy questions asked by the DJ. There was whole lot of junta, buzzing through phone, to answer the facile questions. And in between were the cool and romantic new filmi numbers - "Kyon, Ho Gaya Na" types. Then, there was a young girl who came in the call. Before he could participate in the contest, her line got disconnected and all other people who were lined up started buzzing. After few minutes, this young girl comes up again in the show. Luckily, she got the telephone connection again. This time there was no problem and she could answer those dumbo questions.

The programme continued for an hour and after that the winners were declared by the lucky draw. And as a wonderful surprise, that young girl was the chosen one.

Is life's like that?

A spree with chum and lotssa rains.

The dream all started from the college canteen. That 10:30 pm programme every night on the music channel showing lotssa women (and men too!!) dancing on the beats of jazzy and rocky songs. Usually it was the Miami beach where it used to shoot it. And it almost came true when I visited the state which had the city of I always dreamt to visit.

One of my very good friends had been in that state for quite a long time. So one of the weekend, I decided to visit him. It had been a long time that I met him. I logged in on net and made my reservations and reached his place on one Friday evening. It was dark when I reached there and so I was hungry. But inspired by the advertisement which said "Khoob jamegi jodi jab mil baithenge teen yaar: aap, main aur bagpiper!" we decided to have some drink before food and went directly to one bar cum casino, playing cool hard rock. It was great. After the sharaab, it was time for kabaab (No shabaab!!!), so grubbed some chicken with lacchedaar parantha. The whole combo was awesome. While having dinner, we chalked out the plan for saturday and it was time to visit Disney World - The Magic Kingdom.

The day started at 10:00 am when my quilt was pulled away by my friend. After refreshing and brunch we started towards the destination in his sedan with decent CD player and cool collection of songs. It was an hour picturesque drive. It was bit humid so we had put an AC on and loud music. After parking the car, we entered the amusement park. It was long train which took from the parking to the park's main gate follwed by the big ferry boat. The park had the whole city built inside and had a big castle built in the centre. This was Cindrella's castle. The park had all the cartoon characters: Mickey, Minnie, Donald, Goofy, Pluto and many others. It was simply amazing. Among other things there were many rides and roller coasters, jungle cruises. Till 3:30 pm we were hopping from one ride to other till we ran out of steam. After muching some stuff, we were back to our vigour. By this time, it was cloudy and it was getting darker and darker, coutesy the blackish grey cloud which had veiled the whole town. We were just about to enter the Haunted Mansion, an interesting spot full of excitement. By the time we made the exit from it, it was raining cats and dogs and there was no likelyhood of it getting stopped in near future.

There was melancholy in the wind, as we had to leave then. My shoes got drenched with water, my jeans got wet till knees and whole lot of rides were stopped due to bad weather conditions. So we decided to call it a day and started back to parking lot. Since it was almost 7:30 pm, we headed towards an south Indian resturant for some snacks. On the way, it rained so heavily and I must confess I have never seen such heavy pour. The visibilty got reduced to almost 20-40 mts. Slowly and steadly, we reached the destination. We were like strangers there, bare footed (the shoes were fully drenched) and jeans folded till knees. We had quite a hevenly dinner followed by filter coffee (which made me nostalgic about some moments I had with friends on weekend morning with Sangeeta's filter coffee). Finally , we returned back after crossing the traffic jam covering some 10 miles on way back.

So it was the end of an adventurous but an awful day, thanks to Lord Indra.

To Date or Not To Date

Last night it was very late after writing the short exposition. So I woke up from the dreams of sweet memories of places of which I have no more reminiscence, very late. I seriously ponder why the only bad dreams always have the hangover the next day. Continuing.. I must not say it late, it was noontide, when sun was high and shining like nonpareil. I was late to office so had to hasten the daily morning chores. I didn't had time to even have a glance on the newspaper, on which I usually spend most of the time in the early hours of the day. So I just picked it and put it on my bag, thinking I may read on the way to office.

I started over the frontpage which had coverage of the security covers and measures among other important news. Going over the pages of the paper I reached the editorial section. The section had opnions on Bush foriegn policy and the New York Stock Exchange measure of upgrading the hardware for the brokers. But the most interesting column was on how the technology helps in you when your date is going jangly. One of the cellular company has come up with a scheme "Save-A-Date" where the subscriber can fix a time where there will be call on the cell and if its not your day and your date is not going good just take the call and walk away. But if its going great and you feel the day is splendid, miss it.

This can also be used in case where you are irritated by your spouse, give a call to yourself or for children to avoid parents and their arid advise or the employee can use this to escape from his boss, may be.

Technology at its best, isn't it!

Once Upon a City

New York City. Its more than the sum of its people and buildings. Its modern, snappy and perhaps the caiptal of business like the ancient Rome.

The history of this city goes back to 1600 when it was Dutch colony, today's Lower Manhattan, was the township of New Amesterdam. Later of that century saw the invasion of English colonial empire. England, at war with Dutch known as Dutch Wars, seized the colony for the duke of York, thereafter naming it as New York. Britishers occupied the city until the end of war of Independence. After that, New York became the captial of US for sometime, infact the first capital. By this time, it became the largest city of US. The 17th century saw the laying of buildings in grid pattern, the construction of Croton water system by connecting the lakes. The development in economic front saw the emergence of Bank of New York. By 1840, New york had become the largest port of the nation. The character and the style of the urban life was changed dramatically by substancial Irish and German immigrants. Not to mention of the Statue of Liberty,151 ft high statue, gifted by France on July 4, 1884 in Paris. On October 28, 1886, the Statue of Liberty was officially unveiled on Bedloes Island. 1898 saw the adoption of charter thereafter New York City became the city of five boroughs: Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, Bronx and Staten Island. The subway network started as early as 1921 and still remains the best subway across all cities.

The city has now become the top most defintion for jobless. People flock from all over the world in search of earning a good living. The city has its own enchanting spell. The reason lies in the fact that society engross masses not from America or Europe but from the whole world. The Russians, Germans, French, Indians, Chinese, and all others. Due to this conglomeration of culture emits synergy, charisma and diversity. New Yorkers,as they are called, living in their own style which is savoir-faire and smart. A typical weekend afternoon at Central Park, a paradise in the concrete jungle, fills in the mind and soul the frivolity, youth and even sometimes chutzpah. People relish their activities here, which covers almost a tenth part of the Manhattan. Baseball, American Football, cycling, skating, boarding, dancing, skate dancing and what not. And also, you can have moments for yourself in the serenity of nature.

The complete potpourri of the society makes New York greater than city, perhaps a nation in itself, diffusing the aroma of consanguinity.