Whims published... It's not an expert's opinion, It's not an online diary, It's not a web journal... It is just my whims published

Its more than a month since I posted any thing in my blog. Not that the life was uneventful, I just did not slip into the groove of writing some thing, that’s it.

The month of October was quite happening. I was on the gap between projects, lemme get it straight, yes I was on bench nearly for 20 days :)

In those on-the-bench-days I was reporting to my office in Koramangala. I had all the free time in the world, I frequently visited Landmark in Forum. I used to sit and skim through some of my favorite and latest releases. I read few pages of ‘Go kiss the world’. I remember, I started admiring Subroto Bagchi from the days his columns use to appear in TOI [I think his column used to feature fortnightly on the business page]. I think I should buy this book. Picked up ‘Three mistakes pf my life ‘, but some how it did not inspire me to finish it. I loved Chetan Bhagath in ‘Five point some one’, loved him less in ‘One night..’ now I have become very skeptical about loving him in ‘3 mistakes..’. BTW, currently Im reading ‘PS: I love you’ by Cecelia Ahen. Again my instincts told me to pick this book. But after reading it for 300 pages, Im finding it boring. The theme of the book is fresh and inspiring, but the events that happen with the characters in novel look very repetitive. Lemme see if I can complete it or not. There is book festival starting in Palace grounds, Im planning to go there this weekend.

In the 1^st week of Oct during Dasara, there was a music concert by Shaan, sponsored by a private builder in Palace Grounds. I had been to the concert with a huge gang of buddies. It turned out to be amazing fun. There was also this Mandira Bedi and Samir Soni’s play ‘Any thing but love’ being staged as part of Times festival, but I came to know about it on the same day and did not get passes for it.

Of late, did not get to watch any good movies. I watched Ru-ba-ru for the sake of Shahana Goswami [she is my recent celeb crush ;)]. The idea of the movie was fresh, but ultimately seemed like a failed attempt.

Felt bad to hear Kumble hanging up his boots. He is one of the most committed cricketer I have seen. And a great gentleman too. Dada also retiring after this last Test in Nagpur. I loved Dada for his aggressive histrionics as a captain and as a player too. Who can forget the gentle strokes on off side and his straight sixes over the head of the bowler. The BCCI buffoons seem to be targeting another favorite player of mine, Dravid. Its disheartening to see Dravid failing continuously in this Test series. BTW, check this splendid article by Dravid about VVS on latter’s 100 Tests feat. Both these great players seem to share a nice camaraderie, which is evident from the article. If these great guys are bidding adieu to cricket in the next 1-2 years (forced exit or wishful exit), there will certainly be a void created in what is considered to be the strongest batting line up in world cricket.

Now having been allotted to a project in the last month, I have landed into a whole new milieu, a whole new project with whole new faces. Now the most interesting part is I have been traveling by train to my office!!!! No Im not posted in Mumbai, Im very much in our own namma Bengalooru. Till I start to avail the company provided transport, I am going on my own. I traveled by BMTC for first few days, but every time I got stuck in traffic jams or did not get a seat to rest my ass or every time a manner-less co-passenger stamped my foot, my blood used to boil. And some one suggested the idea of train from/to KR Puram from/to Majestic. I have the luxury of choosing this option, as my current office is close to KR Puram. I have been saving nearly one and a half hour of travel time since then. Even you guys can try out train if your office is in Whitefield / KR Puram or any where near these places. Im not saying this option is better than company provided transport, this has its own woes, but still a lot better than traveling by BMTC.

Ummm.. what else..? that’s all I could think of @ this hour in the night… bye… chau..

We reached Eva Mall. I got down from the bike. Hemanth told me to face the music first and drove to basement to park the bike. My phone rang for the 4^th time. “this is too much…”, this time it was Rakhi speaking. Before I could reply, I saw Rakhi and Sri waiting near the entrance of the Mall. I said, “we have reached, I can see u gals..”. I could listen Rakhi saying, “at last.. they have come” to Sri before I cut the phone. I strode towards them. Both of their faces were angry red. I think this angry red shade is inimitable by any artificial coloring agents. The shade can be seen only on the cheeks and the nose tip of the females whom you have made to wait for an hour for the dinner. I greeted them and blamed on the traffic for reaching late. Though every one curses Bangalore traffic, but it surely has rescued all the late comers/goers like us. Seeing an Archie’s gift wrap in my hand Sri’s angry red face shed its inimitable shade and returned to the usual fairness. The very sight of her BDay gift had pacified her. It was for Sri’s BDay treat we four had gathered for. Café Masala in Eva Mall was her own choice; we guys had no problems with any hotel in Bangalore as far as we are getting a free meal. Hemanth appeared making ‘we are really really really sorry’ face. Sri patted hard on his back in acknowledgment. Rakhi said “you guys are so late I think the reserved table would have been given away to others by this time”. This time I genuinely felt sorry for the girls for the effort they have put in to come early and book a table.

Sri was enquiring the receptionist for the booked table. A suit clad guy escorted us to the table reserved for us. It was a table for four. Sri and Rakhi sat next to each other, leaving Hemanth and me no option to choose but to sit next to each other. The very next moment I felt the place was just nice for both of us guys, as we got to face the people in that room, where Rakhi and Sri were facing the boring wall hanging behind me. My eyes took no time scanning all the beautiful females in that room and shortlisted few of them for the further scrutiny.

starters
As decided before only, we chose to go with buffet for dinner. My eyes were planted on a female on the diagonally opposite table. That was a gang of 6 adults and 2 kids. The female I was looking at must be wife of one of the three morons there. I believe any guy however intelligent looking he is, who accompanies a beautiful female becomes a moron for the other men in that premise. This could be called as one of the postulates in the huge book called Letch Sutra which I am penning. Hemanth and I are no survivors of this rule, as we became 2 morons with 2 nice looking females for other men in that hotel.

Ok.. the starters started descending on our table. We were waiting for it with our sleeves folded. Hemanth felt it wudnt be too nice to make Sri wait for her BDay gift till the end of the dinner. He handed over the gift to Sri. Sri said thanks to both of us with a 10 inch wide Julia Roberts smile. I told her to unwrap it and see the gift. As if she cared to wait for my consent, she had already started unwrapping the gift. Most of the females I know unwrap the gift similar way, they do it with so much of care not hurting even a single piece of cellophane used to wrap it. Unlike we boys who love tearing any paper given to us. The gift was a soft toy, a puppy peeping out of its dog house. The roof of the house was pink in color and Sri lovvved it. She re-iterated, “Thank you so much guys”, with a 10 and a half inch Julia Roberts smile this time. We started belting the buffet.

Hemanth was teasing Sri for her weight issues, Sri in return was pulling Hemanth’s leg for his lazy looks. Rakhi was laughing for and against the three of us. Sri was also giving a fair share to my canine teeth and receding hair line. Though my canine teeth are not the things I am very proud of but my receding hairline has never been a concern for me. My mother and my sis worry about it a lot. Chhmnn.. I forgot to update you on the beautiful female in the next table. How rightly some one has quoted, ‘all the desirable things on earth are either illegal, banned, expensive or married to someone else’. In between our conversations I made it a point to check her out. Every time our eyes met, My heart got a mild electric shock. She looked the most beautiful when she was sipping the soup from the edge of the spoon. The strands of her hair slid down to taste the soup in her spoon. She displayed the slightest discomfort and quickly grabbed and restricted them behind the lobes of her left ear. I felt she flaunted her left cheek to me. This time my heart failed almost. Aloo tikki in my plate appeared like pacemakers to me for a moment.

main course
We were done with the starters that were served to the table. That means we had to walk to the place where food was kept for buffet. That also means, that opens the door of opportunity for Hemanth and me to check out some more females on our way to the food and back to our table. We did it no different. I got to see the face behind that English music that was being played all this time. It was actually a talented singer, who was singing all this time, which I actually had thought was a tape that was being played. All I could say about his singing was it was melodious but I did not understand it. I cant distinguish the genres Jazz, Blue, Reggae.. et al. According to me there are only two genres of English music. The music I like and the one the one which I don’t. So this talented guy was playing the former.

I stuffed my plate with all the varieties of food that was there and returned to the table. While returning I got to check out another female in deep necked black dress flaunting her not-so-nice cleavage to all the men in the room. In my early teenage days I had this weird perception that all females would have perfect cleavages. May be I had developed this prejudice after seeing some Hollywood actresses. As I grew up, the facts and ‘FIGURES’ ‘BUST’ed this myth. Hemanth and Sri followed me to the table with full plates. I think Rakhi was still surveying the variety of food there. I occupied my seat. Hemanth insisted on swapping his seat with Sri’s. Sri sat next to me. May be Hemanth was interested in sitting next to Rakhi or may be he was uncomfortable sitting next to a guy u see. That’s quite normal. Rather those kinda abnormal instincts are not yet considered normal in India. Rakhi came and sat in her place. One pokari kid of my diagonally opposite table looked least interested in food and was running around the table. He was whirling a woolen hood (kinda) in one hand. Once it slipped out of his hand and hit Hemanth’s back. Thank God it did not fall in any of our plates. Sri felt amused but Im sure Hemanth must have felt like folding that kid in his woolen hood and throwing him away. Hemanth hates all kids. I too hate kids when they act unruly. All kids act unruly all the time.

delicious desserts
Sri started taking all our snaps. Sri took the snap while Rakhi had spoon in her mouth, took snap while Hemanth was cleaning his lips with the napkin. Forget how she took my photo. I look bad in all the poses. So it did not really matter for me. We started the final round of course, the delicious desserts. I again made sure each variety of desserts has occupied a fair share on my plate. After getting it to the table, I glanced all the other plates to check if I have missed out any thing. Sri said, “basundi is yummy”. Shaks.. I missed out taking basundi. Sri told me to taste it from her porcelain bowl. I tasted and said I will take a full bowl in the next round of desserts. Sri exclaimed, “you wanna go for another round…?!?! there is still space in your stomach..?” I said, “my digestive organs stretch or shrink depending on the price of the buffet” All grinned hearing my comment.

We decided to leave the table only after I finished my second round of desserts. I bore an expression of killing 100 enemy soldiers in the battlefield. Sri paid the bill. All 4 us walked out of the hotel. My eyes were still hunting for the babes around. Bingo!! There I saw 3 RED HOTT babes waiting in the lounge. They bore Arab/Iranian looks. All were blondes. One of them had her eye brow pierced. Sri and Rakhi insisted on using the stairs to go down. I had no problems with walking but missed the sight of those 3 HOTT babes.

I said aloud what I was thinking, “those must be some exotic dancers”. Others nodded in agreement. I continued, “I believe they will be paid only 3 to 4k per performance”. I could see disagreement on Rakhi’s face. She was about to give the right compensation details of exotic dancers, but Hemanth quipped, “Oohhh 3 to 4k per PERFORMANCE is it..?” and winked @ me. He stressed the word performance. I giggled and said, “I was talking about dance..” and laughed. Sri caught the ‘mean-ing’ of ‘performance’ this time. She said, “thooo u guys are always like this”, looking at Hemanth n me as some lower forms of life.

We came to the entrance of the Mall. Hemanth and Rakhi went to the parking lot in the basement for getting their respective vehicles. By that time, the same 3 babes appeared in the coffee shop. They did not seem interested in spending lot of time there. Two of them came out of the coffee shop. The third one was buying some frappe (kinda) inside the shop. All the three were wearing short white tops and skin tight jeans. The waist line of the jeans and the short white tops seemed like lovers who have fought for some silly reason; both just did not wanna meet each other. Leaving me no option but to stare at the fair skin exposed to the cold air of the night. Sri noticed me letching, she said “Ananth.. Stop it.. ur acting too cheap today”, she was slightly angry. I smiled sheepishly. By then Rakhi and Hemanth drove their two wheelers to the place where we were standing. Rakhi looked like a fat Eskimo in her heavy jacket, Sri wrapped herself in stole and sat behind Rakhi. I again became pillion for Hemanth. We all thanked Sri for the nice treat. Rakhi n Sri disappeared in the traffic, I asked Hemanth to drop me till the door as it was already close to 11 in the night.

Dir: Mahesh
Cast: Sudeep, Ramya
Music: V Sridhar

First of all, the reasons why I wanted to see this movie – The posters of the movie seemed interesting, The director was a debutant, Sudeep was donning an interesting look, Music was superb and last but not the least – my intuition said its gonna be an interesting movie. Hence I went to see Mussanje Maatu.

Pradeep played by Sudeep is an RJ, a happy go lucky person, meets depressed Tanu [Ramya] in a train from HubLi to Bangalore. Pradeep hesitantly inquires the reason for her depression, but does not get an answer from Tanu. And predictably by the time Pradeep alights in his destination, Tanu would have left. Pradeep keeps searching for the interesting girl he had met in train. Along side, the screen play gives an elaborate introduction of Pradeep’s job profile. He consoles, suggests solutions and fills hope in the lives of depressed callers in his show Mussanje maatu. Thus he is quite an integral part of many lives of radio listeners in the city. As the viewer was given a glimpse of Tanu’s depression, she also gets to dial in to the show hosted by Pradeep. Then they get to meet up, talk, shop together, roam together and what else… Pradeep falls in love with Tanu. If you are a regular watcher of commercial movies of South Indian languages and is used to the little predictable twists here and there and a happy ending, you can never go wrong in guessing the rest of the story.

Talking about the different technical departments of the movie, debutant director seems to have chosen a safe script and is heavily influenced by the usual masala in the movies. His talent needs to be assessed when he comes up with a more creative attempt. Sudeep is refreshing with his hip new look suiting his profession, looks ultra slim too. Sudeep impresses with his mannerisms and dialogue delivery, but his-both-hands-always-in-pocket-style looks repetitive. About Ramya, she has gone past the mark of chubby and looks plump; she has to think seriously about reducing. I did not find her acting special in the movie. Rest of the cast has nothing much to do. I seriously don’t understand why Anu Prabhakar accepted the role of Ramy’s friend, she has no special role to play in the story.

What disappointed me was so-so cinematography, less effective dialogues and below average art direction. Not to blame the cinematographer [Sundernath Suvarna] completely for his work, may be viewers' expectation has increased seeing other cinematographer's works post release of Mungaru Male, GaalipaTa etc. Though the scenic beauty had nothing to play special in the movie, but it is sad to say there was not a single scene in the movie which made me say the camera work was ‘waaaww’. Oh did I forget to mention there are lot of scenes in the movie shot in and around Sankey park..

Any love story keeps open the gates for plausibly effective dialogues, but this movie had no such dialogues. About the art direction, it disappointed me in the very first scene. Viewers needed no extra effort to notice the yellow cloth (!!) bearing the name HubLi, which was pasted poorly on the actual name board of which ever town they shot that very first train station scene in.

Now what impressed me most is the music of the movie. ‘ninna noDalentho’, sung by Sonu and Shreya is another gem of a romantic number, ‘kaddaLu mansanna’, sung by Kunal Ganjawala is simply superb and rest of the songs are also very pleasant. Thumbs up to new music dir, V Sridhar for his commendable debut.

It was purely Imtiaz Ali, the director of the movie who drew me to watch this one. I was impressed by his first movie, Socha Na Tha. That was simply marvelous.

Had this notion about the plot of the movie, like strangers meeting during a journey and then falling in love and then marrying against the wishes of each others family and then living happily ever after. Though this might seem like already-told-1000-times bollywood potboiler plot, again I repeat it was my expectation pinned on the director that added Jab We Met to my must-watch list.

Jab We Met is the story of a foolhardy, innocent Punjabi girl Geet who wants to live life on her own terms and our hero, Aditya (Shahid) is the only son of a business tycoon whom Geet meets during a train journey.

Story takes the expected twist when both miss the train in one of the stations. Geet blames Aditya for missing the train and almost orders him to leave her to her actual destination, Bhatinda. This gives enough time and space for both to fall in love with each other. Its the situational comedy intelligently woven in the script and the simply silly Geet that keeps you engaged till the interval. Not to forget decently complementing Shahid for all those nice acts by Kareena. Let me tell more about Kareena later.

Having narrated the first half of the story nicely, I feared for the highly predictable second half to go in typical bollywood ishtyle. But Imtiaz intelligently avoids all the clichés of bollywood and saves Jab We Met from being just another average Hindi film. Kudos to filmmaker.

Thank God dis movie doesn’t have a duet between Geet and Anshuman [Geet’s boyfriend, played by Tarun Arora], Geet's family doesn’t play antakshari here, chintu-bantus of Geet's family don’t act as messengers between hero n heroine. Thank God these kiddos don’t even act as love gurus. These things make the movie jhara haTke.

Dialogues sprinkled with humor, fabulous music scored by Preetam. Guys you might have listened to ‘Ye ishq hai’, ‘tum se hi’ and ‘mauja hi mauja’ but do not ignore ‘aao ge jab tum’, soul stirringly sung by Ustaad Rashid Khan, Its an awesome song. That’s my favorite too.

I would call it as one of the best performances of Shahid and there is lovely Kareena. Let me make one point clear that Im not a fan of Kareena, rather I’ve loved to hate her for her roles in movies like K3G, Yaadein and Mujhe Kuchch Kehna Hain. But Geet is so so so adorable, that by the time the movie ends, any guy would have started loving Geet madly and in turn would have ended up started liking Kareena!!

Watch it guys, don miss it. Watch at least for the sake of sheer pleasure of watching Kareena in her best role till date.

Budhdhadev Gupta is the owner of one of the finest authentic Indian restaurants in London. He is 64, still a bachelor. His say is that he did not find any interesting female to marry till date. He is a perfectionist when it comes to cooking and serving the best Indian food to his customers. He also considers chefs are best artists in the world. No.. don’t question it or object it. When Budhdha can taste Zafrani Pulav and can tell us the quantity of all the ingredients in precision of grams, we just have to accept chefs are indeed great artists or should I say great chefs are indeed great artists. Budhdha seems to have no great bonding with any one except his aged mother and a kid next door who is fighting blood cancer.

One fine day a mistake of cheeni for namak by one of Budhdha’s chefs makes Budhdha to confront a beautiful customer of his. That’s Nina [Tabu], a spinster from Delhi who is currently staying in London. I swear I did not get the purpose of her stay in London. Budhdha challenges Nina that Zafrani Pulav available in his restaurant is the best, without knowing the cheeni for namak mistake by his chef. The next day Nina returns with tasty Zafrani Pulav. Budhdha finds out the mistake from his chef and decides to apologize to Nina. What begins with a cup of coffee for asking apology slowly and steadily builds up as a strong bond between Buddha and Nina. Budhdha surpasses the usual emotions like jealousy for another male talking to his woman, the initial jitters in man woman relationship.. etc etc I loved Amitabh doing all this so convincingly.

Bhalki, director deserves a great amount of credit for depicting the romance between Budhdha and Nina delicate yet elegant and surely not frivolous. There is always great amount of risk involved in narrating the romance between old man and a young man or vice versa. I have even watched few movies which fail miserably in depicting this kind of relationship. Either they look silly or unreal. But that is not the case here in Cheeni Kum. Another great thing about the characterizations of both Budhdha and Nina is that both being so sure about their unusual relationships and being so sure even about getting married to each other. It feels nice to see two souls being so sure in love! Does it come by maturity..? I liked the banteringly romantic conversation between Amitabh and Tabu throughout the movie.

Paresh Rawal is good as Tabu’s father. Amitabh is marvelous as Budhdha. I do not think anybody else could do Budhdha’s role so convincingly in the whole of Indian film industry. Tabu looks gorgeous in salwars. I liked her performance in this movie more than in Chandni Bar or Astitva. Though I liked the kid-next-door, I did not quite like her characterization in the movie. I want to repeat Rajeev Masand’s say on this. “I love kids being kids, but not acting like matured adults”. Ilaiyaraja’s music is truly awesome. Feels heavenly to listen to ‘Jane do na’ in Shreya Ghosal’s voice.

At last I beg to differ with the title of the movie. Cheeni Kum is actually very very sweet :)

RGV introduces Vijay to us by few naive conversations, as mentioned below:

Vijay confesses while narrating his story, "...its the insecurity that haunts a human being at this age.. insecurity of growing old... insecurity of nearing to death... a reality no body wants to face.. and when I am at this juncture of my life, Jiah enters into my life.. giving me the hope of reliving my youth.. I just found solace in her proximity...”

And in another scene, Jiah asks Vijay: "its how long have you been married to Amritha?"
Vijay: "27 years.."

Jiah: "27 years!!!!", exclaims. " .. So how is it..?"
Vijay: "what..?"

Jiah: "ur married life..."
Vijay: "hmmmm.... no complaints..."

Jiah: "i thought you would say, great"
Vijay: hesitantly justifying himself, "yeah... no complaints means... means… it was great"

Jiah:"u love ur wife..?"
Vijay pauses for long and nods his head, "hmm.... yeah"

Jiah: "why did u take so much of time to say that.."
Vijay just smiles feeling he is exposed... searches for words to defend the cause of that pause...

Let me make it clear that there would not be any trail of infidelity between Vijay and Amritha. But its just that as any other relationships on earth, theirs would be going mundane... without any attempts by both of them to revive it. Then enters the fountain of youth - Jiah, a friend of Ritu who comes to spend her holidays in Vijay's house. Bringing a new hope into Vijay’s life. Who admires his photography.. who ridicules him with her PJs. I liked the personality of Jiah, for which I again should admire the script writer and the director himself. She is dusky, bold, unpredictable, young... her thick dark brows.. the long untied hair, tousled always... the way she gyrates in her 'short shorts'! I feel Jiah had everything that would attract Vijay. And guys, if you are expecting a physical relationship between Jiah and Vijay, No ur wrong. These kinds of relationships need not get physical always. All you find in the whole movie is a peck on the lips of Amitabh by Jiah. The rest is all just clean cheerful and playful acts between them. And if you are wondering then what exactly are both of them expecting out of this relationship.. Its a mere nothing.. Its just the moments they spent together.. the cheer that brought to both of their lives..

I stronlgy agree such relationships are just too impossible to be tagged by a name. Those relationships just exist and when it gets exposed to the Hippocratic society, it just chokes everybody's lives, including the lives associated with these 2 chaps. Thats what happens
here in Vijay's case also. No body understands his emotions towards Jiah. But it would be presumptuous to express his feelings for Jiah to his wife, his teenage daughter. But Vijay does it... knowing his life would become hell after revealing this dirty secret to his family members.

They just force Jiah to leave their house and punish Vijay by abandoning him. Vijay just wants to live rest his life in Jiah's memory. I do not feel there could have been a better climax than this. Jiah's exit is as unpredictable and swift as her entry. She just leaves his house leaving loads of memory fuelling Vijay to survive, if not to live; in her absence. What better way to say she was that cool fresh breeze in his life...

Some creeds of people have objected the storyline, saying it is against Indian values. But I just say, ‘Indian values’ is too heavy a term used to protest against such a movie. This is just a movie about an unconventional emotion narrated in a convincing fashion. Its just a dirty secret any aged man would want to dig deep in his heart, Its that secret any blue eyed teenage girl would never ever would reveal to her parents... Let’s just accept it the way it is...

4got to mention, Amitabh is superb as Vijay, Jiah is too perfect playing Jiah and hats off to RGV. I even liked the treatment RGV gives to whole of the movie... majorly gloomy yet green...