Movie Marathon

There is a movie drought in my life, I realised last week. Within twenty four hours of the realisation, I was a card holding member of COOL DALE - the nearest CD Library/Internet Cafe/DryCleaning/Ice Cream Parlor. Now for some serious movie watching ( as opposed to 'serious movie' watching), I decided. Here's a peek at the movies I devoured in one week

ROCK ON : I have a HUGE crush on Farhan Akhtar. The man sings, writes, acts, directs and smoulders. I'm sure someone like that could also make breakfast, the true crux of my crush. One man in a million for sure ( sadly, that model wasn't in circulation ten years back when I was searching ). Re: the movie, I loved it. Loved all the songs. The ending was a trifle idealistic , hence unrealistic. But hey, I don't watch Hindi movies for a taste of reality ( does anyone ?). RockOn has all the necessary ingredients that make a good plot - dreams, unfulfilled dreams , love, unrequitted love, hurt, pain, death, loss and finally a competition where every one realises his/her true self and path.
Rating : VERY GOOD
ps: Even when they were at their intimate best, all that Aditya Shroff (Farhan's character) and his wife did was to look each other lovingly in the eye! Makes me wonder if she had bad breath. Or horror, does he ???

DEV D : There is this new breed of directors in Hindi out to prove that Hindi cinema has arrived. The most telling feature of such a movie is that everything about it is understated. Especially the crucial bits. Take for instance a scene where the hero realises he has grossly misjudged the heroine. In a run o'the mill flick, this scene would be executed with much clanging of cymbals and the works. But in the new age DevD, it is delivered so casually I almost MISSED it !! DevD is the name of the protagonist. A modern day Devdas who asks his Paro if she touches herself ( within the first ten minutes) and asks her to send him her nude photo. The modern day Paro sends him one such picture too. Sacrilege, but real. There is also the prostitute who falls in love with Dev. The script also has the Delhi public school MMS scandal and the BMW hit and run case woven into it. After all that meandering, the film ends on a happy note. Sacrilege again. DevDas and a happy ending ?? A happy ending after all that drinking ? Abhay Deol as DevD was refreshing. He is a good actor and the true inheritor of Dharmendra's good looks. The girls in the film -Paro and Chanda- have done nothing to deserve another shot at acting.
RATING : AVERAGE. Watch it only if you have a lot of spare time .

GHAJINI : Everyone gets excited about a solar eclipse and an Aamir Khan movie. Reasons (i) they are rare phenomena and (ii) are usually a treat to watch. But watching Ghajini was a torture especially since I own a copy of MEMENTO on which this film is supposedly based. Aamir Khan looks his age. His six packs could not distract me from his wrinkles and the weird expression he sports throughout the film ( he looked normal only when he did the whacko act !) Asin Thottunkal was over made up and overemoted to the point where I wanted to shout at her to please stop and get a life. Jia Khan played the role of a medical student interested in Aamir's case. The type that walks into a stranger's house ( knowing fully well he is whacko) all by herself when he is not at home and rummages through his stuff and goes 'EEEEEEEEEE" when he walks in on her. She must also be the only medical student in the world with french manicured nails two inches long ! Altogether a disappointment and a long drawn-out one at that !!
RATING : AVERAGE. Watch it only if you have a lot of spare time and if you are a die hard Amir/Asin/Jia Khan fan.

HELLO: Chetan Bhagat's first novel The Five Point Someone was a good story and a huge success. But while the film based on it is still in the making, his second book One Night At The Call Centre gets made into a film called Hello. The book wasn't great, the movie is just plain bad. Hello makes Ghajini seem like Rashomon. You have jaded actors like Sohail Khan, Gul Panang and Eesha Koppikkar in the roles of young call centre executives. Hello is irritating because it tries hard to be a new age movie and fails desperately. Salman Khan's cameo and Katrina Kaif's (thankfully) guest appearence only added to my general irritation. The climax of the movie was so contrived, I was surprised Bhagat.C allowed his name to be associated with this shoddy work.
RATING : BAAAD.

LUCK BY CHANCE: mmm.. is no secret why I rented this one. Farhan Khan is the lead actor in this flick based on Bollywood and his sister Zoya is the director. Apparently the lead role was turned down by most of today's leading actors. Farhan was the last to be asked and the first to agree. The highly overrated Kokana Sen Sharma plays the female lead and as always plays herself. That lady looks, speaks and acts the same in EVERY movie. Overall, it was a good film. I liked how the plot played out. But in the end Zoya proved to be garden variety when she got ShahRukh Khan to dole out some life-changing, earth shattering advice to the hero, at which he instantly realised all his mistakes and went about redeeming himself.
RATING : 3.95 OUT OF FIVE

DOSTANA: beat the crap out of all the crappy movies i saw. absolutely , decidedly, unequivocaly stupid, insensitive and crappy. waste of time and money. if i had a working revolver ( and knew how to work it) and it had one bullet, i'd line up the director, the producer, abhishek bachchan, john abraham and bobby deol ( in that order) and shoot them. why one bullet , you ask ? because they all deserve to die , but are together not worth more than one bullet.
RATING : Oh-So-So-Poor

DASVIDANIYA: save the best for last. i envy people who have not seen Dasvidaniya because they have such a beautiful opportunity ahead of them. a simple story with an unassuming cast, so beautifully written and acted it brought tears to my eyes. vinay pathak, the lead actor, deserves an Oscar for his work. the lady who acted as his batty and deaf mother was another surprise. even neha dhupia whose role lasted five minutes left an indelible mark. every character well thought of, created and written with care and executed perfectly.

Dasvidaniya is a movie that makes you love movies.

Ghajini, Hello and what not, Bring 'em on !!

The Coming of Age

The spin in vision was all too sudden. Not altogether unfamiliar, but vicious in its attack. In the next second, her forehead hit the wall, in the next she fell like a heap on the floor, the second before she lost her consciousness she could felt blood trickling down her face.

When she came to, her husband was by her side. He had placed her head on his lap and was wiping her face with a wet cloth while crying quietly, uncontrollably. ' Monu is on his way', he said to her. ' We'll wait until he gets here'.

And that was how we found them. A ninety three year old man on the floor with his eighty four year old wife's head on his lap, wiping her face with a blood soaked towel. Neither able to get up, move or even shift positions without help. Waiting for a helping hand.

The sheer agony and helplessness of old age.

The Name Watcher

An ordinary evening at the children's park with kids playing and mothers chatting. My group is discussing pension plans and one of my pals says 'Give Tency a call. She is an insurance agent . She is in 2B". I get home and reach for the intercom, but my fingers stop in mid-dial. Did she ask me to call Tency who stays in 2B or was it Toobie who stays in 10C ?

Welcome to Kerala . Where TOOBIE is as likely a name as TENCY . Where a bass-packed male voice on the phone introduces itself as SIS Stanley!!! Where you'll see garish arches outside wedding halls announcing to the world the coming together of LIBI and BIJLI or SONY and LIJO causing you to pause and wonder which one is the bride and which the groom ???

Kerala is a treasure trove of zany names where a name collector could lose himself in sheer abandon. When it comes to zany names, the cake goes to Central Travancorians. The days I worked in a newspaper office in Kottayam were a delight for a name-watcher like me. A sombre obit news became a piece of classic humour as the departed soul was reportedly survived by a daughter named LOUSY. A fellow name-collector reported sighting a Marriage Today news where the groom was SHITTY. In my six years in Kottayam, I have met three TITTYs. There was even a Titty whose sibling was called BOOBY( well, he was named Bobby but you now how Malayalees pronounce their 'O's). I have 'graced with my presence' the marriage of a girl named SHANTY ( not the desi Shanthi, but the English Shanty), on the invitation of her brother SHALBY. Imagine my shock /surprise when I found that their mother's name was - I swear I'm not making this up- WILBY. What do you suppose the father's name was ? MAYBE, maybe ??

Malabarbarians too are talented in strike-dead nomenclature. I have seen snot nosed little devils in Malappuram named Zia Ul Haq and Zulfikkar Ali Bhutto- yes, the Whole Hog !! My mother had students in Pattambi Govt. College named Prananathan and Madanamohanan. When she says it took considerable effort to keep a straight face during roll call in that class, I can believe her !

Back in my hometown, Trivandrum, a friend of mine claims to know three siblings named Pliny, Pliju and Plissy. One of them is male, take your pick. Apparently there is a Chemistry teacher here who has named his kids after the Rare gases - Iodine and Bromine ! A cousin of mine used to share a bench at Arts College with guys named DIGIT and JWAS ( not Jose, not Jaws, but Jwas). I recall a Genita in my PDC class , who I guess, missed it by just an L.

At a recent family gathering when the topic came to strange names, we decided to hold a competition of sorts in a quest for finding the Strangest One of All. My Shitty and Lousy were shot in Round 1 with the likes of BHAGAVAT GEETHA and QUEEN OF SHEBA ( !!!). But the Grand Prize was claimed by my uncle who knows two brothers in Trivandrum (both high ranking officers in government service) named K.S. ONE and K.S.TWO .

If you ever, ever, hear a name to beat this, let me know...

( And here I am stuck with friends named Megha, Rekha, Raakhee, Laksmi, Parvathy, Roopa, Nisha, Vidya, not to mention Bindu, Sindhu, Asha, Archana, Reshmi, Jyothy. Fat chance of me ever winning the Strange Name Grand Prize )

Just The Way You Are

I've always hated my hair. Hated it for its nature, colour, texture, for it being it. By nature, obstinate and impudent. Colour, a curious hybrid of black and brown . Textured dry enough to entice the bovine. I've chided it for starting so high up my forehead. Why couldn't it have started lower and given me a graceful hairline instead of a forehead !? They say a high forehead is a sign of keen intelligence. I say, I could live with the sign if only I had the stuff (sigh).



Time and again have I tried to tame this beast. My first experiment was when I was a naive teenager at the hands of a smart talking hair dresser. She convinced me she could rid me forever of my forehead shame and cut me a FRINGE. Well, cut she did, blow dried it and hurriedly showed me the door. Barely ten metres out of the salon, ten minutes later, I could feel the damn thing curling upwards. I had to live with those horrible bangs for years. Years when they earned epithets such as 'Devi's Grapes' (and less tasteful ones) as I squirmed inside.



When pay cheques became a regular feature in my life and I realised that as a corporate being, I needed to update my looks (read hair), I went on the hunt again. This time there was plenty to choose from. I could straighten it, poker straighten it or smoothen it....whatnot. I displayed my naivete again by sitting myself down for a HAIR STRAIGHTENING session. It was a torturous three-hour session which left me with a considerably light wallet and a neck ache that lasted for days. I got immediate reactions ranging from " what's wrong with your face" "there's something wrong with you, yar" to ' did you get your hair licked by a cow ?". Not quite the reactions I'd hoped /paid for. Besides these comments which I came to dread each time I came across someone I knew from my pre-hair straightening days, there was the problem of clogged drains at home. Each time I washed my hair or even just brushed, it would leave my scalp in terrifying clumps clogging drains, it would form into disgusting little balls and float all over the place. The husband was evidently not happy.The maid threatened to quit.



Time passed as it is wont to do. My original curly, frizzy friends were back before I knew it. There was a horrible phase when half my hair, from crown downwards, was curly and the other half poker straight. It was a hair style fit for a Martian, only half the country's women were sporting it, all having had an experiment with hair straightening. With more passage of time, the original hair chased out the salon-bought ones and I once again found myself with unmanageable hair and bad hair days. That was when Jawed Habeeb opened shop just next to my house. The most famous hairstyle salon in India, just outside my front door and offering a 25% discount for all hair treatment. It was destiny. I walked in and told a nice looking hair dresser that I do not want to straighten my hair, but I want to do something to my hair. She suggested HAIR SMOOTHENING. Wha, I asked. " Youva hay will not be poker isstraight. It whill honly be issmooth" she told me in Bengali, err.. English. More hours at the salon, more hours persuading family, more money exchanged and presto, I had new hair. Again.



Only it again fell in clumps and I was waking up in cold sweat from nightmares where I lost all my hair in clumps. The salon people suggested I use a particular brand's shampoo ( Rs. 275 for 225ml) and conditioner ( Rs. 450 for a similarly small quantity) and come regularly for hair spa ( each session not less than Rs. 700 plus tax). High maintenance, but at least I finally got the hair I wanted, I thought as I caressed it. That was when I saw her.



Or at least I thought it was her. Aunty R. A very elegant, polished and well turned -out lady who was my mother-in-law's classmate at Stella Maries. I was always impressed by her bearing and attire and wished to be like her in my fifties. But on that day she looked nothing like her old self. In place of her usual starched cotton saree was a salwar -kameez suit a size too big for her. But what truly frightened me was her hair. Usually combed down and not a strand out of place, she had let it loose and it was a shade of orange. She walked up to me and warmly asked after my family. About my work and my one year old daughter. I managed to answer all her questions, but just could not fathom her transformation. It was revealed a minute later when she told me that a year back she was detected with breast cancer and was undergoing chemo. She had lost all her hair and was sporting a wig. A horrible one with a strange color. She didn't linger on the topic and we bade good bye soon after. But I stood still minutes after she left trying to come to terms with her new image.



I was still thinking about her when the driver asked me to roll down the windows as the AC was not working. As the car gathered speed, the wind whipped my hair over my face. As I slowly pulled it away and felt it between my fingers, I realised there were tears in my eyes. No more experiments with the dears, I love my hair just the way it is.

Pareto in times of Recession

A close friend of many years was on the phone this morning, almost in tears. Her husband had been behaving strangely of late . He who was meticulous in his attire ( and shaved twice a day) was going out dressed sloppily with an unkempt stubble. He who broke into a rash at the mere suspicion of a cobweb didn't bat an eyelid when a cockroach walked past him. While none of this escaped her notice, she didn't quiz him hoping this phase would have its run and fizzle out. When it didn't show any signs of going away, she broached the subject with him. Her husband admitted to being depressed and the reason for his depression was, hold your breath, the global economic meltdown. Are you going to lose your job, she asked. Not before half the company does, he replied. Will they cut your salary, she asked . No pay hike but no cuts, he replied. Is there a transfer threat, she persisted. Of course not, he tittered. Then why is your chin forever southwards, she demanded to know.

What actually bothered this man was the thought of not creating records at work. You see, up until the global meltdown took India in its stranglehold, he was a star performer, a record creator, a record breaker. But now he was just another executive. The very thought made him a wreck. His wife tried to cheer him up - said look, as Indians go, we are blessed. We have our own house, two healthy, lovely children, good lifestyle and sufficient savings for the future. Even if the recession were to eat us out of home and hearth, we would still have each other and our kids. If nothing else, we'll start tapioca farming in Kerala, she joked. Her husband didn't crack a smile nor did he respond.

She cried over the phone that he cannot see or count his blessings. His happiness, his life's breath is his job. He is happy when his daughter brings home a merit certificate, but happier still when his team lands that huge contract. He smiles when he sees his infant son flip over on his tummy, but he beams when his supplier thumps him on the shoulder. His family does bring him joy, but his happiness comes from his job. And now that very job was letting him down. He actually felt there wasn't much to go on for.

Years back I was told a true story of this hugely successful entrepreneur who was asked to come for a meeting with a bank to finalise a Rs. 20Cr deal . Those days in India there were only two companies providing that particular service, of which his company was deemed the better. The contract was almost his. But he asked for a change of date. The Chairman of the bank demanded the reason. He answered truthfully that the day set for the meeting was his son's birthday and he had promised to be there. The Chairman and his troops went ballistic. Had he asked for a change of date owing to a sudden business trip across the globe or even across the road, they would have understood. But this they didn't. Without further ado, the contract went to the alternate service provider. A loss of Rs. 20Crores. Not a joke. Yet he chose his son's birthday over the crucial meeting. He probably felt that his promise to his son was worth far more than a few crores of rupees. His life was not all about winning contracts, it was also about finding happiness in the happiness of his dear ones.

Of all the theories that make the world tick, there's one that I particularly like - Pareto's Optimality. Pareto's 80/20 Optimality originally stated that 80% of Italy's wealth was with 20% of its population. One could substitute Italy with any other country , county or family and the theory would still hold good. Look at the man in the first story who spent 80% of his time and energy at work while in truth , in reality, that only ever gave him 20% of real happiness. Differently put, his family which could actually complete him, his sense of self, which could contribute to 80% of his happiness was actually receiving only 20% of his attention. In terms of time, the man in the second story also probably spent only 20% on his family, but that 20% was non-negotiable. It was quality time with family which he was unwilling to trade for anything in the world. The 20% which multiplied and returned to him as 80% .

It is a very simple law. Straight forward and in your face. If only you could see it...

Post Script::

Story 1 : Between the time it took me to write this blog and post it, my friend's husband was offered a very generous amount of money by his company in return for his promise to not leave them for four years. The company didn't want to lose one as smart and sincere as him. He came home from the meeting, asked for a second helping of his favourite dessert and demanded to kn0w what the hell that cobweb was doing over that corner. My friend dropped all that she was doing , ran and hugged him and said "Welcome Back".

Story 2: The next year, the bank was back. They realised after a year's trial with the other service provider that our hero's work was the best after all. He bagged the next year's contract, surely without missing his son's birthday!