Trip to Cape Comorin

Posted by Anantha | Posted in , | Posted on Thursday, November 26, 2009

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A visit to the southern most tip of Indian Main Land (Cape Comorin) has always been a dream of mine, ever since I read and got influenced from the preachings of Swami Vivekananda in my school days! A colleague of mine is getting married in Tirunalveli,which is about 90kms from Kanyakumari. So I am heading first to Kanyakumari - will be visiting all the interesting places there and then going for my colleague's marriage the next day.
While gathering some info about Kanyakumari, I read that Kanyakumari is supposed to be the only beach in India where you can witness both sunrise and sunset! I think this is going to be really exciting. Though this is kinda obvious from it's geographical position, but I doubt if it is the only beach in India. I mean, aren't there any such beaches near the Souther tip of Gujarat or W Bengal..? Im not sure of that.. For those of who do not know much about Vivekananda Rock, this is a huge rock-island 500 meters from Cape Comorin. Swami Vivekananda got enlightened when he was meditating on this rock in the year 1892. By the way, Swami Vivekananda used to swim to this rock when ever he used to go there for meditation!

Above is the satellite image of Cape Comorin, Vivekananda Rock and the famous Tiruvalluvar statue. Also found this site, giving an exhilarating 360 degree view of the Vivekananda Rock Memorial (be patient when your browser loads the view, do not miss it!)
See ya all.. will blog about my trip once I am back from Kanyakumari.

Life's never so bad that...

Posted by Anantha | Posted in , , | Posted on Friday, October 30, 2009

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A dear friend of mine called me up from UK last night to say that he is returning to India this weekend, as Doctors treating his mother have told that she is having breast cancer. It was evident from his tone that he was broken by that. I tried to fill in some hope and courage in that conversation.
After hanging up the phone, pondering over, I thought that was another whiplash this time for another friend's family from the BOSS above. I say this as another family because; all my buddies have received at least one each in the recent past. A friend's father is suffering from recurring slip-discs, another one's father is living on anti-depressants after some feud with his siblings over some realty, another friend's father is a cancer survivor, a colleague's mother underwent knee cap replacement surgery recently.... And as you know my father is not well from past 2 years. Sorry to say, I am not able to find a single happy and healthy family around.
They say Life is not just about chasing happiness and being happy.. Happiness and sorrow are two sides of the same coin blah blah.. This is all best said and heard in some Satsang. But for a person dealing with all this every day, it is nothing but misery and only misery.
So at this point of time, I can't agree more on the saying, "Life's Never So Bad That It Can't Get Worse..."

Shantaram - quotes 2

Posted by Anantha | Posted in , , , | Posted on Saturday, October 17, 2009

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Any Indian man will tell you that although love might not have been invented in India, it was certainly perfected there- pg 393
Mistakes are like bad loves, the more you learn from them, the more you wish they'd never happened - pg 402

Prisons are the temples where devils learn to pray - pg 404

Hate strangles a man, that's why hate has no great literature - pg 414

The only victory that really counts in prison is survival. Survival is not just about being alive. It's not just the body that must survive a jail; the spirit and will and the heart have to make it through as well - pg 415

People say that money is the root of all evil, but it's the other way round... Evil is the root of all money - pg 444

Pumping iron is Zen for violent men - pg 452

It isn't a secret, unless keeping it hurts - pg 454

Wherever you go in the world, in any society, it is always the same when it comes to questions of justice, We concentrate our laws, investigations, prosecutions and punishments on how much crime is in the sin rather than how much sin is in the crime - pg 472

People haven't stopped believing in love. They haven't stopped wanting to be in love. They just don't believe in a happy ending anymore - pg 504

There's nothing so depressing as a good advice - pg 545

Depression happens only to the people who don't know how to be sad - pg 546

It's better to have a weapon and not need it, than need it and not have it - pg 585

If we envy someone for all the right reasons, we're half way to wisdom - pg 607

A good man is as strong as the right woman needs him to be - pg 645

When the student is ready, teacher appears - pg 708

Wars can't change things. It's peace that makes the deepest cuts - pg 728

The best revenge, like the best sex, is performed slowly and with the eyes open - pg 805

Fate always gives you two choices, the one you should take and the one you do - pg 858

Old habits die hard, lie harder - pg 918

It is always a fool's mistake, to be alone with someone you shouldn't have loved - pg 921

Every human heartbeat is a universe of possibilities - pg 932

Following are the lines with which Shantaram ends:
I'd always thought that fate was something unchangeable; fixed for every one of us at birth, and as constant as the circuit of stars. But I suddenly realized that life is stranger and more beauitful than that. The truth is that, no matter what kind of game you find yourself in, no matter how good or bad the luck, you can change your life completely with a single thought or a single act of love - pg 933


Though I love each and every one of the quotes from Shantaram, following three are my personal favorites.

3. Fate gives all of us three teachers, three friends, three enemies and three great loves in our lives. But these twelve are always disguised and we can never know which one is which until we've loved them, left them or fought with them - pg 632

2. Personality and personal identity are in some ways like co-ordinates on the street map drawn by our intersecting relationships - pg 632

1. We know who we are and define what we are by reference to the people we love and our reasons for loving them - pg 632

Shantaram - quotes 1

Posted by Anantha | Posted in , , , | Posted on Wednesday, October 14, 2009

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I finished reading Shantaram! This mammoth autobiographical fiction is penned by an Australian born writer cum armed robber cum heroin addict cum prisoner cum Jihadi soldier cum slum dweller cum doctor in slum cum Mumbai mafia member cum charity organizer cum screenplay writer, Gregory David Roberts!! Yes, you read it right; all these roles/professions (?) are of a single person in the very same incarnation. Shantaram is a rechristened name for Lin (which again is his name in fake passport) or Linbaba, as fondly called by most of the people in slum of Mumbai. This novel was written over a period of 13 years!, literally in blood and sweat as Gregory Roberts himself says. Twice the manuscript was destroyed by the police when he was being tortured in jail.

After escaping from high security Australian prison in broad day light, Lin travels to few countries holding fake passports and lands in Mumbai. From there begins this inspiring and vivid tale of Shanataram. This book brims with one liners and quotes. I am sharing a few with you guys... Hope this inspires you to take up this must-read-book.

The simple and the astonishing truth about India and Indian people is that when you go there, and deal with them, your heart always guides you more wisely than your head. There's nowhere in the world where that's quite so true. - pg 35

The only force more ruthless and cynical than the business of big politics is the politics of big business - pg 52

The truth is a bully we all pretend to like - pg 62

It is the mark of the age in which we live that the style becomes the attitude, instead of the attitude becoming the style - pg 91

The real trick in life is to want nothing and to succeed in getting it. pg 96

Sometimes you have to surrender..., to win! - pg 115

It's a fact of life-on-the-run that you often love more people than you trust - pg 156

We can compel men not to be bad, but we can not compel them to be good - pg 184

The worst thing about corruption as a system of governance is, that it works so well! - pg 186

There is no believing in God, we either know God, or we do not - pg 194

Suffering is the way we test our love, especially our love for God - pg 214

I think it is a part of growing up, learning to control our suffering. I think, when we grow up and learn happiness is rare and passes quickly, we become disillusioned and hurt. And how much we suffer is a mark of how much we have been hurt by this realization - pg 294

Like most things and most people, slum is not as bad as it seems - pg 329

I dont know what frightens me more, the power that crushes us, or our endless ability to endure it. - pg 336

You are not a man until you give your love, truly and freely, to a child. And you are not a good man until you earn the love, truly and freely, of a child in return - pg 353

The contours of all our virtues are shaped by adversity - pg 379

One of the ironies of courage, and the reasons why we prize it so highly is that we find it easier to be brave for some one else than for ourselves alone - pg 381

Im tagged..

Posted by Anantha | Posted in | Posted on Monday, October 05, 2009

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Sum tagged me..
Below is a list of things that irritate me... that tests my boiling point:
  1. Untidiness and untidy people
  2. Lazy bums
  3. Loud TV volume of my neighbor
  4. Public festivals
  5. The Pop-up ads in websites. They irritate me more when they keep the Close Window button on top left corner. They irritate me to the most when there would be no Close Button for the window and I am just told to wait by a count down timer, stating Ill be redirected to the site in N seconds. What makes those guys think that I visit their news website and get impressed by their forced-upon-ad and will end up buying an Audi!
  6. Poor interpersonal skills
  7. Poor listening skills
  8. Egoistic people
  9. Half baked pots boasting themselves as next Einsteins
  10. Bullies
  11. Plastic smiles
  12. Guys who try to impress any and every girl/female they come across
  13. Reality TV shows and all the daily soaps
  14. Auto drivers
  15. BMTC bus conductors
"Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves"
Carl Gustav Jung
This was mentioned as the GTalk status msg by my friend Suksy. I could not agree more with this saying, as all the above things listed and lot many which I've not listed here, have helped/have been helping me in understanding myself better.

I love people:
  1. Who trust me..
  2. Who have helped in my bad times..
  3. Who are intelligent..
  4. Who understand me
"If you judge people, you have no time to love them"
Mother Teresa
This is another gem of a quote that I admire the most. I have experienced this thing literally happening with all the withering relationships I’ve had in the case of some of my friends, acquaintances and some special people. I make my decisions by mind and not by heart. I am a ‘mind guy’ and not a ‘heart guy’. I wish I could change this virtue of mine… :(
Though these are the things that surface my mind at this point of time, but to see only four entries in the second list against the 15 in the first is surely disheartening. That says I have more things around to hate than to love... :((

I tag Shashi, Saravanan, Suksy n Anonymous aka Deva :)

Wanted - No! this was never wanted and will never be!!

Posted by Anantha | Posted in , , | Posted on Tuesday, September 22, 2009

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Friends,

If you have read any of the movie reviews in my blog previously, there is one thing in common with all of them - all the movie reviews are my movie reco's to you guys. I've never wasted my time and energy in writing a review for a movie which is bad/worse according to me. But this is going to be an exception! I am writing this, because I felt there is no better way to vent my anger out!!

Was forced to watch this movie last evening. As every one knows, Prabhudeva forays into directing Hindi movie this time with a remake of smash hit movie Pokiri(Telugu) originally directed by Puri Jagannath.

  • When Murugadoss remade Ghajini in Hindi, though the plot of the movie was very ordinary, hero seeking revenge for his GF's death, but the 'gimmick' of anterograde amnesia + the greatly talented Aamir Khan carrying the weight of the whole movie on his newly built bod turned the movie into a run away success. But what is Wanted offering us..?
  • Let me say, I have not watched both Telugu and Tamil Pokiri's, even after many of my friends insisted. So I do not know how good/bad they were (after all, a hit movie need not be a good movie and vice versa) and I can not even comment whether it was a bad 'transliteration' that made Wanted look so bad.
  • Wanted's plot would have been apt in the 1970s era. It is so overused, lackluster thing now.
  • Salman yet again proves he is a bad actor. The very few expressions on Salman's face have never failed to confuse me. I always think, what does this expression mean..? Is he worried about some thing? Or is he just making faces? Or is he thinking how to emote this one? Or is he trying to smile while dealing with some problem in his stomach?
  • There is always so much of Salman Khan the star, his attitude, his so called style in all his characters that whether it is Radhe or Prem or Suraj or Aman or what ever, he looks the same.
  • There are so many scenes in the movie that look so 'south', I can not digest them in a Hindi movie.
  • I agree Prabhudeva is a good dancer, but he is that bad a choreographer.
  • There is a repetitive dream sequence in the first half of the movie - whenever Salman sees Ayesha, he becomes Salim and Ayesha becomes Anarkali and 'Jab pyaar kiya tho darna kya' runs in the background. In all these sequences, Salman gives a priceless expression of not-knowing-what-to-do. I probably had the same expression on my face in all those scenes and many other so called comedy scenes.
  • Why are there so many songs in the movie? Why Sajid-Wajid again..??
  • I congratulate Prakash Raj on winning the Best Actor award, but I humbly ask him, why did he do this role of Ghani Bhai? I've seen Prakash Rai doing this weird villain role in so many Tamil and Telugu films; I can not stand him doing the same thing again.

The Hindi movie scripts are much more intelligent and complex these days catering to the equally demanding audience, Prabhudeva should get updated before he even thinks of his next Hindi movie.

Love Aaj Kal - not a great work of Imtiaz Ali

Posted by Anantha | Posted in , , , , , , | Posted on Thursday, September 10, 2009

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As evident from the title of the movie, it is an attempt to juxtapose the 'love of yesteryears'(of 60s to be precise) with today's 'modern love'. This is a comparison of the love as an emotion and as an expression and how it has changed during the course of time. There are two story lines of the couples, Veer and Herleen (Saif and debutant Brazilian model Giselli Monteiro) and Jai and Mira (Saif again and Deepika). The love story of Veer and Harleen is simple, cute and innocent and touches the heart. They hardly talk to each other throughout the movie but convey a lot through their silence. Where as in the story of Jai and Mira, they are the perfect representatives of today's Gen-Y (or Z or what ever) world. They love by mind and not by heart (according to Rishi Kapoor who plays the older Veer so adorably), who choose career over love, who throw a party to their friends on their break-up, who are spoilt by choices, who are more 'practical' than their previous generations. Now that's quite a lot of things to tell in the story of just over 2 hours. Though Imtiaz was successful in narrating the story of Veer and Harleen (quite a simple and easy job though), he seems to have lost grip in telling the story of Jai and Mira. The love story of a pair which is torn between the decisions made by head over heart has not come so endearing. The attempt to show the characters of Jai and Mira as confused pair, yet they themselves thinking that they are very firm about their decisions taken in life is not successful.
That does not mean the movie is not good, it is certainly a good movie, but not to the standards set by the same director in his earlier movies like Jab We Met and Socha Na Tha. Love Aaj Kal has it's moments, is funny in parts, is touching in few scenes. As a matter of fact, my favourite scene in the movie is the one in which Harleen brings a cuppa chai hiding behind her dupaTTa to Veer who would have travelled all the way from Delhi to Calcutta just to have a glimpse of her. The other one being Jai just making it to the airport to bid farewell to Mira.
I liked Saif more as Veer than as Jai. Saif seems to have done some homework in bringing across the body language and gesticulations of a Punjabi munda of 60s and it has worked very well. He has done pretty decent job as Jai too. Deepika looks stunning in few scenes. Not sure if I am the only one who is having problems her dialogue delivery. I feel it is some what not perfect, not right. But if we have lived with two left feet of Saif all these years of his acting career, who seems to have no interest in improving his dancing skills, then Deepika is pardonable. Just check Saif struggling to shake his hip in the song 'Twist.. twist'. The credit of managing Giselli Monteiro as Harleen by giving her hardly any dialogues should go to Imtiaz. Rishi Kapoor as older Veer is simply superb. Of all the songs by Pritam, I liked 'Chor Baazaari' sung by Neeraj Sridhar, Sunidhi and 'Aj din..' sung by Rahat Fateh Ali Khan.
Overall, the movie is good, but not great. Love Aaj Kal looks like the best work of any debutant director from Yashraj Banner, the movie seriously lacks the spark of Imtiaz Ali.

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