A Weekend Full of Cinema

What can be more tedious than to have to come to office after a long looong holiday? The answer to that is- Having to go to gym after a long looong holiday. Anyway the l.l.h. is finally over and Anik is gone and I'm back at my desk, doing the most tedious job of all... answering 15 different variations of the question "What did you guys do?" (We joined the Ram Sene and beat up other couples, especially if they were irritatingly dressed and insisited on speaking bad 'cool' english).

Apart from that, we watched a lot of movies, some of which had been on my wishlist for a long time. The movies were (in the order we watched them in) :

1. Doshor (Rituporno Ghosh) - We couldn't figure out what the director was trying to say, what his message was, and why indeed he made the movie in the first place.The only saving grace was Ritu-di's presentation, which is soothing to the eye, and Konkona's intelligent acting. Otherwise an irritating movie.


2. Dil Kabaddi( Anil Sharma)- This movie has its moments. But the trouble is, if you try to mix a sex comedy with aantlami, the result is generally acidity. Hackneyed plot. Well-worn treatment, sad acting, low grade comedy.

3. The Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan)- Appy told me this was one of the scariest movies he has seen( and coming from a gore connoisseur, that’s something) , AND HE IS RIGHT! All its scariness comes from the sheer evilness of the Joker. Hats off to Heath Ledger. Villainy doesn’t get better than this.

4.Amelie (Jean-Pierre Jeunet)-This is the most beautiful movie of the lot. It’s sparkling in beauty and intelligence and laughter. The story is as heartwarming as the cinematography is stunning. A very adorable movie (in Bokom’s words – nongra rokom-er bhalo- dirty good). Thank you Appy for this one.

5.There's Something About Mary-This is a funny movie, but most of the humour is of the toilet variety, loud and crass.The story too is inane. The one thing that stays with you is Cameron Diaz, very young, very fresh, very beautiful. It’s good timepass as long as you don’t try to involve your brain too much.

6.A Wednesday( Neeraj Pandey)- Another let-down. While the story is very un-hackneyed and is told in quite a wrinkle-less manner, the movie as a whole is full of tired clichés. The same honest cop brutal cop inefficient cop routine, the very unreal conversations, and the Commissioner’s conference room which seems to have been taken straight out of a Hollywood movie. As a thriller, it falls way short of brilliant. The only saving grace is Naseer’s and Kher’s acting.

I’m currently reading Maximum City – Bombay Lost and Found, by Suketu Mehta. Hope to post you on that very soon. Till then, take care.

How NOT To Be A Bore

A very dear and well loved friend of mine, (let's call him Moby) , has, I'm afraid, completely broken with me. The fault is, of course mine... Moby is the type of person who loves the sound of his own voice,and a week or so ago, after listening to a two-hour long monologue(over the phone), i fell asleep. I fell asleep while he was still talking.And i suspect he didn't find out for a good 15 minutes that there was nobody on this side of the call.

Nothing hurts the ego of a man who thinks of himself as a great orator, than to have his audience fall asleep so unceremoniously while he is talking. This is probably why Moby has not called or messaged me in the last 6 days. And this would also probably explain why he has chosen to IGNORE USER me on orkut. While nothing excuses my bad behaviour, I'd like to draw Moby's attention to a few points, (though i have feeling he is not going to be reading my blogs anytime soon). This is also for any other reader who wants to be sure people don't fall asleep while in conversation with them.:

1. DO NOT act like a know-it-all. It's supposed to be a conversation, not a lecture. An excessive show of knowledge get's on anybody's nerves.

2. Let the other person talk too. Don't take advantage of the fact that s/he is a good listener.

3. DO NOT name-drop. Subtle references to your own achievements will impress your listeners. Referring to the fact that you have successful friends will merely bore them. Moreover, if you overdo it, people will stop believing you. They'll start seeing you as a very sad failure.

4. Show interest in your listeners' lives. Don't make the mistake of thinking that their raison d'etre is to listen to you.

5. Don't talk like an asshole. If someone asks you what you think about a movie, do not go on for an hour about how the director /editor/ whatever was your junior in college and learnt all he knows from you, the ungrateful bugger. Just say whether you like the movie or not.

6. If you don't know nuts about something, don't venture to comment/ advise people on such topics. If your line is film-making, do not give career advice to people in the commerce/corporate line. If you obviously don't know anything about khisti khamari, stop trying to give gyan about it to people who do know. Do not scatter wisdom about sex if you are still a virgin.

7. DO NOT be an AANTEL. Nobody likes an AANTEL.

8. DO NOT repeat your life tragedies to people more than once. The first time, people empathise. All subsequent times, they merely act polite and pretend to listen.( Honestly MB, i still don't really know what that SRFTI caper is all about. Everytime you say SRFTI, my mind switches off)

9. Try not to be self centred and egotisical. That always helps. Don't talk about imaginary achievments. It doesn't impress people. It makes them pity you.

10. And last, whatever you do, DO NOT talk incessently(I mean with zero participation from the other side) for more than 10 minutes. Moby's best is 45 minutes. He does not know this, but many a times while he's talking, I've put the phone down, gotten up to make a cuppa tea, drunk it down, and come back to my seat without him realising even once that I've been absent.

I realise that I've probably hammered the last nails into the coffin of our friendship, but it was in a good cause. If this helps Moby or anybody to hold the attention of their audience in future, I shall not have written in vain.

Hope everybody had a happy weekend.

Re-start

The good part about new year is that it gives you hope... one more chance to get it right, one more chance to make new promises, and the lovely, lovely hope that this time I'll keep them all... this is my year!!!

It takes about two weeks for me to get back to reality... It may be a new year, but its the same old me.

My resolutions this year include being regular with this blog. If i have any readership left, welcome back... Here's to another year of hope...

Adventures are Injurious to My Health

My friend Sagar, when he was jobless, used to be an enthusiastic rappeller. Rappeling, I found out from him, is the activity of scrabbling over huge rocks for no discernable reason.
My friend Kiran has discovered and unleashed the mountain biker in himself.Earlier, he restricted himself to football and the occasional clandestine fishing boat excursion off the coasts of his native Kerala. Now he saddles his bike and vrooms off to Leh from Delhi every other weekend. He also rafts and does various other scary things.
My jeej is an experienced para-glider/ bungee-jumper/ air-floater/ something of the sort that requires you to fall miles through the air. He is also tattoed all over.
My brother spent the previous month in a series of god-forsaken tiny villages in MP, voluntarily working for an NGO. He lived without electricity, toilets, phones/ network coverage, and in constant threat from naxalites, hostile tribals, and wild boars. On his way back, he bathed in the very dangerous Allahabad sangam, with half charred dead bodies from nearby cremation grounds floating past.

When I talk to these people, I hear them tell me how they nearly (always nearly) lost their lives, how they saved somebody else, how they enjoyed the most spectacular views, and how they are going back next week for more. Then they ask if I’ve done anything interesting lately, and I say “ I… ummm…. I…. oh, I’m reading a new book.”
If these people wrote blogs, such blogs would be full of cliff hanging, breath taking, soul chilling adventures, not boring home-office-friends posts. But of course they have much better things to do than write blogs. Go snorkeling for instance.

Actually, no. I do get my share of adventures sometimes. Some mornings, I accidentally get off my bus while it is still moving (!!). And once, not many weeks ago, a mad person chased me across the street a couple of yards with a brick in his hand (then he saw a foreigner and lost interest in me).

But there must be something wrong with me, because I do not tie ropes to myself and clamber over boulders, I don’t swim around in diving gear hoping to meet sharks, I do not jump into extremely unsafe looking rafts/ rope-cars/ skis, and I DO NOT jump out of airplanes, no way. Not only do I not do these things, I do not crave to do them. That must make me sub-normal. Maybe I am missing a hormone or an enzyme that drives these people to their insane hobbies. Yes, I would like the lovely views and stuff, but I’d rather spend my holiday in bed, thank you, and see the views on my computer when my friends send me the photos.

PS: What drove me to write all this in the first place? My colleague asked me this morning if I’d like to go rollerblading with her on Sunday(that’s tomorrow).

I said “ummmm, I’d love to but I have a book to finish.”