Grow up India!!

Just as I was scanning one of the website for the movie reviews and the Box Office collections, my eyes stopped at the section which had statistics of the movie Swades. According to pundits, the movie was never expected to do good in the small towns and in the interiors but the collections are now dipping in the multiplexes also. Overseas, this movie is the last if compared with other SRK movies. What all does this mean?

According to my senses, this movie was tremendous when you compare the direction, music and concept with those of other movies. The display of the characters portrayed by all the actors is commendable. Being a fan of SRK, I must not say this but I like the way he has played the role, calm and controlled. All credits to him and Ashutosh for excellent direction. Even the debutant Gayatri Joshi acted well considering the fact that she was opposite ShahRukh. (Though she had been oppsite to him in couple of ads.)

The film has been labelled as a Moral science class of three and a half hour. But the fact is there are no moments when you feel bored and dull. Though there may be some exaggeration but that doesn't, in any way, mock the idea which is conveyed. The transition of Mohan Bhargava from an NRI who has just got his American citizenship to an Indian with a vision was the cumulative effect of whatever happened to his life. And to portray that all is justice to the plot.

One aspect of movie which makes this seperate from the lot is the theme. Not may directors dream about this and not many of them do just after the unprecedented success of a movie like Lagaan. Bollywood where almost always only Masala movies are hit, movie like this must always be welcome especially when it is genuine effort with a decent result.

The last two dozen hours

Saturday evening was a very pleasnt evening I spent here. After watching the movie Swadesh, I came home and played the songs of the movie on the jukebox. Almost all of the songs had nice cinematography with soothing music. The best part was the style how the director carried the story. Well, the hangover was still there so I sequenced the songs in a loop. A night before I had downloaded the Oracle database and so while listening to songs I was configuring my database. It took me around 3 hours to understand various suble things about the databases and finally I was able to write a short program (in Java) and tested the database connection via JDBC. By the time I did this it was 4 AM in the morning and so I thought before the cock wakes up and yell (no pun intended) its better to sleep.

After a good sleep of 6 hours I woke up at around 10 AM when the sun rays reflected by the glass windows of the opposite building directly fell on me lying on the bed, making me bedazzled in the sleep. This followed by the race of the mice in the stomach forced me to get up and head towards the kitchen (which is 7 steps away from my room) for a glass of milk and froasted flakes. After having the so-called breakfast, I decided to go for grocery shopping as my refrigerator was empty and it has to be filled up with an inventory for the rest of the week. So, I called up my friend and his wife to find out if they had any plans for shopping. Luckily, they were about to leave and it was decided to meet at the subway station at around score minutes past noon. The weather that day was decent with highs towards 40s (F) and not much windy which is much of relief here. But it was cloudy and snow showers were predicted for the next day. After picking up all kind of frozen food and some snacks I got a call from a friend of mine, who just had got a job offer and was shifting to the Bay area, for lunch. I then waited for him and then had lunch at the favorite desi resturant. By the time I was about to leave the place it had started drizzling.

I also had to buy a jacket as the forecast for the next day was really bad and I didn't had a decent apparel to don myself. After coming back, I dropped the grocery items in the house and went directly to a store to buy a good warm-hugging jacket, which was on my shopping list for more than a month. On lots of trials, finally I decided to have one, black in color and 100% pure wool stuff. The whole hour went in making a selection and finnaly we came out of the store minutes before it was about to drop its shutters down. It was still drizzling but the wind now had roller skates under its feet and it was going fast. It was then very cold and the temperature had dropped till mid 30s (F). I decided to have a hot cup of tea and while I was taking a sip, it was the first snowfall of the season and of my lifetime. Woh!! it was great. I could see the snowflakes falling down like the cotton threads blown in fast blowing wind. The temperature now was alomost in 20s (F). The roads became white in few minutes and the cars parked had a layer of the snow on them. I was just seeing all this while taking the sip of the hot tea from the window of my house.

Next day I woke up in the morning at around 10 AM and first thing I did was taking some snaps of the snow veiled neighbourhood. I was late to office so I hurried to get ready. Meanwhile I checked the weather. Oh my god!!, it said its ZERO (F) outside. I was not believing my eyes. Luckily, I had a warm jacket, a muffler, a monkey cap, a pair of gloves and the inner thermals. I put all of these on myself as an armour and was ready to take the battle of chilly winds and the sinking temperature. With all these, I could feel a bit of intrusion in the warmth because of my weapons. Anyhow, I reached office and took a sigh of relief on reaching the protected environment of the workplace. It was an experience and I shall always remeber this day, for sure.