i am therefore i be

This blog has moved..

2010-12-30T19:29:00.000-08:00

This Blog has moved here : http://arunsarm.wordpress.com/

Excellence Type A

2010-12-28T19:54:00.000-08:00

And what of the wiles of excellence,
That appear to need perseverance,
Always focussed, never still,
By which I mean added to the bill.
With certificates on walls as clearance,
And the pomposity, a bloody nuisance.

Sent from my phone

Old Bollywood

2010-11-20T01:50:00.000-08:00

My latest pleasant pastime is following the work of the lovely Laxmi Chhaya, a dancer in Bollywood during the 60's and 70's. She has inimitable style, great moves and is a stunner to boot. She was for a time, the next best option to the fantastic Helen along with another looker and dancer Bela Bose. Wonder why these women never made it as heroines though..

From Gumnaam (1965), one of her earliest dances in the movies to a brilliant rock n roll number sung by the godly Mohd Rafi. That shimmering gold dress and some great moves here..

Jaan Pehchaan Ho
Uploaded by tommydan1. - Watch more music videos, in HD!

And here is another, this time with Bela Bose from an early Rajesh Khanna film, Baharon ke sapne(1967). Lata and Asha have a crackling time with the mike as Laxmi and Bela dance up a synchronized storm :-) I can't get enough of watching this number..Music by that man, that star RD Burman.

Do Pal Jo Teri
Uploaded by tommydan1. - See the latest featured music videos.

One more, a great Lata number from Raat aur Din(1967). Nargis won a National award for her role in this film as a schizophrenic. Laxmi Chhaya's dancing is so contemporary in this one, a lot of western moves complemented by that very bollywood extra that pumps up the charm.

Awaara Ae Mere Dil
Uploaded by tommydan1. - Watch more music videos, in HD!

Thanks to Tommydan1's HQ videos. And memsaabstory.wordpress.com & Madhulika's dustedoff.wordpress.com whose pages I have spent many hours on, reading with delight every turn of phrase and story. Our common Shammi Kapoor love allowed me to serendipitously find them. Thank you!

Requesting high standards #irony

2010-11-11T19:03:00.001-08:00

Creators of mediocre 'art',
You pop culture tarts,
I apologize for this jousting-offencing,
But will you try being self-effacing..

#wouldliketheirPopArtBetter #lazywordsforlazythoughts #LordMediocrityUsethHashtagsAgain

Thoughts in loneliness

2010-10-01T01:10:00.001-07:00

When the silence screams in my ear,
I tap it gently & put it to sleep.
Other times, when I begin to speak to my angry dear,
I know that silence is mine to keep.

Now you know why the poet's alone,
This isn't poetry, but its maladjusted clone.

The End

Yay! Where it says 'The End', I have, for a brief moment, succeeded in creating an impression of gravitas. Next...gravity.

"Gravity, impression of"

1. Take heavy boulder
2. Drop it on soft mud
3. Lift boulder without disturbing mud too much (especially no loud calls to attention, like "What ho, What ho Mud old fellow...care for a spot of tea then? There, let me dust you off a little")
4. Observe impression that gravity made on mud.

Ok thank you. And really, just what you've waited for all these years.
The End.

er...ok ok. I'm going.
Sent from my Blackberry

After school goodie song

2010-08-17T01:23:00.000-07:00

At the end of school,
My mouth begins to drool,
For icecream and goodies of all kind,
That are oh-so-cool.

Then my Dada says,
Nahin, no and nay,
Your tummy and teeth can't take these,
Every single day.

So I tell him this,
Tomorrow we'll give it a miss,
Just this once, an ice-stick,
Please please plissssss...

To be extended to include balloons, what happened in school today, that's my friend....rooooaaaaaaarrr..scared her.. Etc etc

- by
Joon & Dada

Reco!

2010-07-16T06:33:00.000-07:00

Pointing you to one of my favourite movies of all time. Neo-realism at its best on camera. The Sisyphean 'Man Push Cart' by Ramin Bahrani. Watch watch watch, but be prepared to be moved without being manipulated.

Bahrani has made 3 films and one short & is Ebert's Director of the Decade. I've seen Man Push Cart & Chop Shop, easily some of the best films ever made about the poor and the working classes. De Sica, Fellini and Visconti would embrace this phenomenal talent. Watch people!!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_Push_Cart

Man Push Cart is a 2005 American independent film by Ramin Bahrani that tells the story of a former Pakistani rock star who sells coffee and donuts from his pushcart on the streets of Manhattan.

FIFA

2010-07-11T20:19:00.001-07:00

3 Finals. It works like an inevitable clock for them now. Clockworked Orange.

#badideathatnevertookoff

2010-07-11T07:38:00.001-07:00

Just considered a murder story where the victim is sent up in a hot air balloon and the murderer plots to bring the balloon crashing down by heating the air above it to a tremendous degree.. (and equalizing the temperature of the air below to that within the hot air balloon)

Movie Reco - Agora

2010-07-08T21:41:00.001-07:00

Agora, *ing Rachel Weisz who plays 4th century astronomer and
mathematician Hypatia who was caught in the political movement all
religion is, just like we still are - Watch!!!

Wordiness

2010-07-08T21:40:00.001-07:00

I really think 'Toppling' is a brilliant salted-peanut of a word. The
world will thank Arjun for it one day.

From "The big needle on the clock is toppling around like a top, Dada"

Paul's appalling

2010-07-08T11:39:00.000-07:00

The Traditional German Onion Pie is being replaced on the plate of the regular Joe, er..Jerry, Strudel, Teuton, Oosterbuur, Bratwurst, Bavarian, Alamani, Brandenburger, Germani, by something known simply as the OctoPie...

Bahadur & Bela. Bela.

2010-07-07T21:44:00.000-07:00

Why can't someone make a movie around Bahadur and Bela? For a comic first drawn in 1976 Bahadur from Indrajal Comics was pretty modern.
Probably the first Indian dude to team a kurta with jeans :-) And a live-in relationship with the delectably drawn Bela.
Anyone have any Bahadur comics they can lend?

Travelling in the rain, Dulls my brain...so..

2010-07-07T03:06:00.000-07:00

Line of schoolboys,
Running wet on the main,
Plastic bags in employ ,
To keep out the rain..

Lead spying eyes,
Down memory lane,
While Nostalgia sighs,
Tears down window panes..

Now done with this doggerel, I dust nostalgia off,

So go find your own, Show & tell !!

I'm going Dotty

2009-10-11T09:18:00.000-07:00

This dot is God.

What!!!!???!! You dare to ask me to justify myself??

Soft drink metaphor

2009-10-11T09:16:00.000-07:00

Communist ideology = Red Bull

Judas 2.0 OR Another day in life

2009-06-04T22:35:00.001-07:00

As we walked to Jerusalem,
The men, they shaved often,
And I sold them the alum,
To make their skin soften.

Outside Jerusalem, bright and sunny,
After taking all their money,
I asked of them,
Why they needed to dress up,
To meet their prophet,
While handing me, my neat profit.

Son of God they said,
Would be very well bred,
And disciples,
Couldn't be rotten apples,
An ideal brood for an ideal man.

So I shook them by their hands,
Bought meself some clothes, all new,
And looked dapper,
While they whipped a poor pauper,
That christian, born a jew.

Astro-poetry

2009-05-26T10:11:00.001-07:00

Summer night,
All alight,
In glory and in joy.
While the Sun,
She keeps on,
Fusing nucleii..

Morning time,
News for a dime,
Coverage for dashing casanova.
While far in space,
Some catch trace,
Of colliiding Supernova..

Friend of yours,
Is facing fears,
To make sure he is grounded.
While all around,
In scientific shroud,
Gravity has some astounded.

Explaining all now,
With help from Godot,
Universe for dummies, simplified thus.
While toiling hard,
At scope and chart,
Some labour on, in pure science flux.

In art circles,
An artists pinnacle,
Sees him centerstage.
While some deft,
Measuring red shift,
Gives clues to universe's breadth.

Not just in prose or verse,
Center of the universe,
Some claim to be.
While spaces' geometry,
Forbids us to see,
Universal golfs' starting tee.

Rapt attention,
During dinner conversation,
Over man's contradicting qualities.
While more than a generation,
Of photon emmission,
Shows wave particle duality.

Running out of time,
As you feed in a dime,
To get your rush hour ticket.
While time herself,
And her secret pelf,
Is behind dimensions picket.

2009-03-12T22:49:00.001-07:00

Question : Why doesn't wood melt?

No google, wiki or asking Jeeves of any kind.

Sent from BlackBerry® on Airtel

World Affairs

2009-03-08T04:42:00.000-07:00

This is a reaction to some posts on the 26/11 attack and other numero-nymous attacks including but not limited to men with guns, men with rocket launchers, men with gamchas, men with vermillion thumbs and no love for alcohol, men... bah!

The world is about to end. And people are playing jingalika jinga, doing whatever they want! I am considering settling in New Zealand, but am afraid i'll have to show a lot of zeal. Sweden then, perhaps. Yes, I was saying the world is about to end, but am not in any particular hurry. No general hurry either, because......(down-arrow symbol) I was told by some sources at google that the earth is on its last legs. Which threw me off for a while as I had always seen the earth as a spherical object doing elliptical turnabouts the sun. Legs was news to me, but then as I came to terms with the usage of metaphor I digested the facts - We have only about one tenth of our lifespan left before the sun gets too hot and fries the beejeesus out of us. (beejeesus being water here) About 500 million years. Which is frightfully long and will eventually turn out to be a bore of the most gigantamous propotions. So, like I was saying in no hurry, people are doing whatever they want and as you can see I am a nihilist.

Recommended!

2009-02-17T21:02:00.000-08:00

Do yourself a favour - Go watch Dev D.

Sent from BlackBerry® on Airtel

Blah..

2009-02-04T19:27:00.001-08:00

If no one can know you,
That is true of the other too.
And when one knows,
This truth, it shows,
Because then, what you see is exactly what you take.
Sent from BlackBerry® on Airtel

Supernova

2009-02-03T23:45:00.000-08:00

As he tossed and turned in his fevered attempt at sleep, his thoughts must have circled around how she had gone away for too long the last time around.
Earlier that day, he had woken to a virus addled morning and had found her gone. She would return soon, he had been told.

Now while sleep, set to the pleasant drone of a hurriedly imagined story took over, he floundered in the dark for my face and on finding it said, in a little boy voice "Don't leave me".
My heart broke into a hundred pieces and slid down my cheek as a solitary tear. Arjun, my 2 year old son slept hugging me all night as I wished that the joy he will transform into when Mama returns from her Bombay work trip tomorrow, envelopes his entire life.

Sent from BlackBerry® on Airtel

eGo aWayyyyy...

2009-01-31T11:00:00.000-08:00

Will you trippers remember,
That if I weren't dealing out,
Cards with my mug for joker face,
The laughs would just be on the other,
You, dear Little Tommy Stout,
Finding it hard to keep apace.

- written in mild irritation after meeting some daftness, as usual at a party just now :) this is the one time I'm explaining! :)
_____________________
Sent from my Blackberry

Entertainment!

2008-05-05T00:30:00.001-07:00

Wonders will never cease : http://www.re-discovery.org/

These guys are real. I'm not making this up. For example:

This is because:

Simple, isn't it! :)

Post

2008-05-02T10:41:00.001-07:00

I appreciate people who are civil, whether they mean it or not. I think: Be civil. Do not cherish your opinion over my feelings. There’s a vanity to candor that isn’t really worth it. Be kind.

- Richard Greenberg

Hmmm...sounds right.

Test

2008-04-17T21:44:00.001-07:00

I begin with a test,
To see if this is the best,
Way to entwine,
Facebook with the rest,
Of my online-ness

Fashion Observation

2007-12-27T22:36:00.000-08:00

With the proliferation of the Short Top for women, the lower back has become the most unintentionally exposed part of the female anatomy

Pardon any awkward, I'm from Venus, you Martians suck moments.

First Cause breakdowns, anyone?

2007-12-27T22:34:00.000-08:00

Religion : Attempting to explain Complexity with Byzantium since 5000 BC

2007-09-19T08:46:00.000-07:00

OPM appears in the Thursday edition of Bangalore BIAS and previews a Friday release

OPM*
Presents – Ram Gopal Varma has a tummy ache

It is a slithering, sultry, whiney bas*ard of a night in the summer of 2006 at Hyderabad. In the dark underbelly of Ram Gopal Varma’s Factory headquarters in the city, RGV has begun to suspect that the biryani he is stuffing himself with isn’t very fresh. ‘Why?’ you ask. Well, the dark innards of his belly have begun to ache. The pain isn’t discomfiting enough to make him stop working, but bad enough to send him regular reminders of its existence.

Why is he at work so late you ask? Ever since his film Company released to a rare combination rave reviews and big box office collections, his company has only churned out one flop after another. His financiers have told him that they will no longer play dice with their money on experimental films that explore just the kind of things that Karan Johar’s films do not.

But just what can RGV do? He can’t make straight-laced romances like Johar does. (Lace he feels, is not for straight men) He is only interested in underbelly stories. Preferably dark underbellies.
Having directed or produced films about the Underbelly of marriage (My Wife’s Murder – Anil Kapoor’s life goes kaput when he whacks an irritating Sunita Krishnamurthy), the Underbelly of a peaceful house (Kaun - Urmila Matondkar does a Tendulkar on everyone visiting her house), the Underbelly of a Ghost (Bhoot – How to reboot your house out of a ghost) and the Underbelly of an Underbelly story (Shiva – A remake of his own film) he still aches to make more experimental films, on the way to his life’s ambition of making a classic on the Underbelly of a Belly Dancer.

But aching bellies be damned, all that the audience seems to want is Karan Johar’s stories that concentrate on the chest..er the heart. Romances, with all their skippety-twirly-go-round delight, bah! From RGV’s point of view it looks like the heart is the only anatomical unit that seems to translate metaphorically to hit films in Bollywood. (On a separate note, the chest and parts under the belly are well covered, or uncovered by the porn industry)

Now with his financiers all but backing out completely, RGV is in trouble.
But he feels energized, as he is at his best as a storywriter/director while he is uncomfortable; like the sort of living-the-story exercise that some actors go through to improve their performances.
Now with things falling apart around and inside him he feels that, finally, cause-effect variables have tossed the coin in his favour and his pièce de résistance will soon be engulfed in a flurry of awards and adulation.
As soon as he comes up with his pièce de résistance, that is.

By the wee hours of the night he figures out a way to make underbelly movies which fetch an initial. (Initial, Box Office terminology - Unlike the postprandial cigarette which is always satisfying and more like post coitus analysis which could go either way)
Remake a classic and season it with underbelly sauce! The Factory engine goes into overdrive to decide which classic Bollywood film to remake.

After considering films like Mughal-e-azam (rejected as Dilip Kumar refuses to play Akbar), Mr. India (rejected as Anil Kapoor refuses to play Mogambo) and Baap Numbri toh Beta dus numbri (rejected as Shakti Kapoor refuses to play, except on a couch), the Factory finalises on Ramesh Sippy’s Sholay after a call to Amitabh Bachchan.
Amitabh will play Gabbar Singh. And ensure an initial.

RGV works day and night, stuffing himself with umpteen biryanis-gone-wrong, firing up his innards to complete a masalafied script for the New Sholay. He will have Malayalam superstar Mohanlal play a Thakur equivalent, mouthing immortal lines in exquisitely Malayalam flavoured Hindi. Lines like “Loehhaa geram hei, maar tho hataudah”! Sushmita Sen will play Radha the widow, but will dress in black and will want Gabbar to hang as much as Thakur does and Saambha doesn’t, thus making her a vengeful modern day spiderwoman, albeit of the black widow kind.
He gets to the place where Ajay Devgan’s Veeru is telling Basanti “Basanti, in kutton ke samne salsa mat karna” while Amitabh’s Gabbar is laughing at his bad dialogue delivery when RGV gets a notice from Ramesh Sippy’s office saying that none of the names from the original can be used in his remake.
The uncomfortable setback rejuvenates RGV who is tired of Amitabh’s silly Gabbar-grin and he gets down to reworking the script again.

Dhano the horse tranforms into an auto called Laila with low horsepower and Hema Malini’s Basanti becomes a tepid Ghungroo played by one of RGV’s Urmila-clone muses. Veeru becomes Heero (???!!?) and Jai becomes Raj (a tribute to SRK’s loverboy roles). Thakur becomes Narasimha, an encounter cop whose fingers are chopped off by Gabbar(now Babban Singh), who can’t get over the fact that he can’t give anyone the middle finger in Bombay’s peak hour traffic.

Will RGV, who has renamed the movie to echo his perennial stomach condition succeed in breaking his underbelly jinx in the same week that Bhojpuri superstar Ravi Kissen releases his Ravi Kissen ke Jhaag (soapva banaike ghar ley jae)

Find out when you watch RGV’s Aag releasing tomorrow. But don’t forget to carry some ENO.

* Objects in the Preview Mirror may appear sillier than they are.

Disclaimer: Characters in the above story are not based on any characters in the film. Any resemblance or humour is pure luck.

2007-07-23T10:50:00.000-07:00

OPM appears in the Thursday edition of Bangalore BIAS and previews a Friday release

OPM*
Presents - India’s Temple of Doom? OR Why I’d rather believe in Harry Potter

The curious case of the UPA’s Presidential candidate, Pratibha Patil, has me in a state of shock.
It isn’t just the normal allegations of fraud, loan defaults and the odd linkage to a serious crime, common to most Indian politicians, which we, as a public, are now used to. Well, used to, like we can digest Sunil Shetty singing ‘Hai Hukku Hai Hukku Hai Hai’ to some awfully co-ordinated limb flailing or Chiranjeevi (in tight pants and shiny shirt) with Radhika/Roja/Rambha (shiny towel wrapped around head) singing and dancing to ‘Jammakku Thaa, Kassakku rroo’; i.e. we can live with it, but not understand it for the life of us.
No, coming from, possibly, India’s next President, it is other things she has to say that shock me.
Her unadulterated silliness over the purdah system and the Mughal’s with its clarifications and retractions and on the need for compulsory sterilisation for those with ‘hereditary disease’ are merely politically incorrect starters in the main course of National embarrassment that her Presidential speeches will guarantee to serve. And then there is the matter of her chats with a dead God man of the Brahma Kumaris sect at Mount Abu in Rajasthan. With a President who chats with dead people, India is sure to scale new heights as a tourist haunt for foreigners who want a piece of the mumbo-jumbo ‘Indiana’s Jones and Temple of Doom’ India. Expect spectacular seven-course-meal botch-ups in the coming years.

Unfortunately, as seen with said Patil, the more enlightened aspects of Hinduism and our ‘culture’ are lost on most of its practitioners. Our legacy is an inexplicable set of rituals and ’knowledge’ of our texts, mostly from televised versions, as with the Mahabharata and Ramayana. It seems that our culture and history are being redefined by this new half-baked knowledge in its practitioners and the world press. With Patil as first citizen, misinformed worldviews that associate India and Hinduism to Occult and other gobbledegook will only get exaggerated.

With this as background, in the week the new Harry Potter movie is hitting screens, it has been reported that Shekhar Kapur and Deepak Chopra have ambitious plans of translating Indian Epics onto the medium of film. These movies will be on the scale of an LOTR at a fraction of the production cost. The movies, if and when they are made, will be termed ‘Mythological’. There is an astonishing insight here (yes, astonishing because this column is making claims to enlightened thought, however dim the enlightenment), but first, some background.
The word Mythology (from Greek ‘mythos’, meaning a narrative, and ‘logos’, meaning speech or argument) literally means the oral retelling of myths – stories that a particular culture believes to be true that use the supernatural to interpret natural events and to explain the nature of the universe and humanity. This oral retelling was particularly tough, considering the sheer number of stories that mankind developed in the absence of television (a much more serious issue that the absence of God). It was made even tougher as the tape recorder had not been invented, thus ensuring that every person with a story to tell (which was almost everyone), was left pressed for time. (This explains why the advent of the tape recorder coincided with the population explosion, as everyone had better uses to put their oral skills to)
In modern usage, "mythology" is the body of myths from a particular culture or religion (as in Greek mythology or Indian Mythology).
But it isn’t that simple because the popular and common meaning of the English word “Myth” is that of a rumour, misconception or mistaken belief. This is in marked contrast to the meaning "stories of deep cultural or spiritual significance".
I have observed (however oxymoronically) that the stories and mythologies of pantheistic faiths such as Hinduism or faiths of the ancient Greeks and Romans etc, when translated to film or other media are always termed ‘Mythological’ by the foreign press while one never hears terms like Christian or Islamic mythology. And I suspect this is because the term ‘mythology’ today alludes to the contextually undesirable modern meaning of ‘Myth’.

Of course, when Deepak and Shekhar’s mythological releases, we will see that they have adopted the Mahabharata to suit today’s deep cultural and spiritual ideas.
For instance, the Pandava’s will be less than ideal blokes, thus translating them to modern times. Examples:
Yudhishtira will never speak a lie, except when he really needs to, usually while gambling.
Bheema will pay for his excessive eating and will have to go on GM and Atkin diets regularly.
Arjuna will be shown to be the crybaby he really is.
Nakula and Sahadeva will resent being clubbed together always and reinvent themselves as popular DJs Now-cool and Dev.

Yes the five Pandavas will still share a single wife, but for reasons that are deeply culturally rooted. Kunti, having had the luxury of watching TV soaps all day will realize the deeply cultural TV soap truth that families go nuclear because of daughter-in-laws. For this reason, she insists that her sons share one wife. (Other than the fact that the modern version is set in Chandigarh, where the Female sex ratio has fallen to 790)

Amidst such modern day contexts (some positive, such as Bheeshma having no problem fighting Shikhandi, in these days of gay rights) I suspect many of us will see the merit of seeing “culture” as something that is not constant, something that is best as it evolves (and, *wink*, brings with it more national holidays)
For instance, feasting on Bertie Bott’s Every Flavoured beans is a better way to spend your old age than becoming an ascetic with the aspiration of an afterlife spent in sterile heaven along with Yudhishtira, Harischandra and other moral but boring denizens of that supposed space.
This is why I’d rather believe in Harry Potter than any mono or pantheistic idea of religion, afterlife, God, UFO’s or 72 Virginians in heaven.

* Objects in the Preview Mirror may appear sillier than they are.
Disclaimer: Characters in the above story are not based on any characters in the film. Any resemblance or humour is pure luck.

2007-07-10T09:38:00.000-07:00

OPM*
Presents – Aap ka Common Nouns

The Internet has made the world a much smaller place, though Stephen Hawkins says that it only appears so, as he has it from reliable scientists like himself that the Universe all around is actually expanding, which, come to think of it, explains my growing girth. Leaving that expansive topic aside, the Internet is only making the world a much smaller place, metaphorically. So there is no danger of your house shrinking and bringing untold losses to your real estate portfolio. And even if there appears to be such catastrophe in offing because of a shrinking world, it is easily set off by the expansion of the universe.
This expansion-shrinkage is a terribly confusing business and experts in the field including the world’s best Shrinks and Sexologists gather every year to discuss shrinkage and enlargement in a sterile space (Space is often sterile. If you are a man, you know how sterile it can get when she asks you for space).
I decided to use the Internet’s metaphorical powers to find some school and college friends I have lost touch with over the years. After numerous hours of downloading porn, er, searching for them using tools like search engines, social networking sites and blogs I had more or less given up when, by quirky probability I chanced on my friend Kushal Pande’s blog. Only, he had changed his name to Koolshal Pondy and it took me a while to figure out that it was indeed, my friend. Why had he changed his name? Numerology.
What is numerology? Numerology is any of many systems or beliefs in a mystical relationship between numbers and physical objects or living things. This goes beyond the physical relationship that young schoolchildren associate with bowel movements. Yes. Actually. And the damned ‘science’ is driving me insane because of Numerological name alterations. I have realized, to my utter dismay, that forty percent of my friends and several relatives have or are considering changing their names after visiting a numerology consultant (just like Management Consultants, but with other bullsh**)
Numerology, I found, is a counteractive force against the metaphorical powers of the Internet, because said powers are pretty useless without the right data. To illustrate: When Gopal becomes Sugopalen and Vivek, Vivacuous the original names are worth nothing to a search engine.
Post these debacles and being aware of the phenomenon (no, not the Malayalee called Pheno Menon) I have observed a dangerous trend of numerology creeping into language and spelling.
OPM this week deals with a movie that has been similarly affected, Himesh Resham-Miya’s debut, Aap Kaa Surroor – The Moviee, The Real Luv Storiee.

Himesh’s friend, Prashant Chadda who is also responsible for his baseball cap, trench coat and big buckle belt wardrobe malfunction, er, look directs him in this abominably named motion picture. With words that look like they have been in an accident involving mangled steel and a shipment of Oxford Press dictionaries appearing in mainstream media titles, one despairs about a day where a future generation will abandon Spelling as a course and all words will become common nouns. This only magnifies my worries about the future of the Language; worries that have been around since I was introduced to the Sms Generation and Compulsory Regional Language in school with English as an option.
The advent of Himesh Resham-Miya as a film actor overshadows such worries for now, though. I am filled with a mixture of pale hope and indelible dread because of what Himesh- as- movie star throws our collective way. An explanation is in order.

Let us start at the beginning, which is where we should begin considering that Flashback or flashing any other portion is illegal under the Immoral Traffic Act.
Primarily a music director, Himesh Resham-Miya later became the phenomenon (no, not the Malayalee called Pheno Menon) he is for his vocals, which have a distinctive high-pitched nasal twang. Over the last year Himesh’s, unfortunately prolific, musical output has caused my senses untold grief on the Tele and the Radio, in auto rickshaws and from baraat bands (baraat: different from Borat, the movie, but often as grotesquely funny, when relatives of all sizes decide to shake, nay, flail their limbs in joy, allegedly dancing).
Unexpected and inexplicable success as a singer having gone to his head (and symbolically having stayed there as his trademark cap), Himesh now tries his hand, and the rest of himself (he will try his Hand alone, later, on a Puppet show) at being an actor.
Partly based on Himesh’s own life, the movie opens to a Utopian world where Himesh is being thrown out of music directors’ offices, where he is looking for work.
On being thrown out he lands on a terribly plain fifteen-year-old child artiste called Hansika Motwani, injuring her badly and worse, breaking her set of Talking Barbie and Ken Watanabe in Japanese Embrace. The rest of the story involves Himesh playing the forlorn lover and trying to win the minor’s affection by fixing her Talking Barbie set. In frustration he records himself in a squeaky falsetto to substitute Barbie’s talkie microchip. Hansika falls in love with him immediately, injuring herself again trying to break the fall. A desperate and partially deaf Music Director finds the recording and gives him a singer’s job, thus turning him into a huge success before the night is out.
Why should you see the movie? Himesh reveals why he always wears a cap, and it is not a plug for a hair care/growth brand.
Why do I have pale hope when I behold Himesh, the actor? I hope this movie is a blockbuster and he stops singing. It is more likely though, that he’ll both sing and act. That explains the Indelible Dread, huh?

* Objects in the Preview Mirror may appear sillier than they are.
Disclaimer: Characters in the above story are not based on any characters in the film. Any resemblance or humour is pure luck.
**OPM appears in the Thursday edition of Bangalore BIAS and previews a Friday release

2007-06-14T02:14:00.000-07:00

OPM*
Presents – Ocean’s Thirteenth Year

Ocean's Thirteen, a film directed by Stephen Soderbergh, starring an ensemble cast led by George Clooney, Al Pacino, Matt Damon and Brad Pitt is set to release tomorrow. The third in the franchise that started with Ocean’s Eleven has spurred discussions on varied topics including Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, both self same people in India, their adopted kids etc, for months now. Apologetic mentions of the movie are included sometimes when these two very popular stars are photographed at locations like Pune, Cannes and their backyard. (Ex: Brad and Jolie spotted for the 13th time on the Pacific Ocean coastline, Brangelina to name 13th adoption Ocean)
Ocean’s Thirteen is the third in the Soderbergh series following the 2004 sequel Ocean's Twelve of the 2001 picture Ocean's Eleven, a remake of the 1960 Rat Pack film Ocean's Eleven (being a Rat Pack film all the stars consequently die of poisoning. Yes, rat poison) which was itself highly influenced by Jean-Pierre Melville's Bob le Flambeur (French, literally, ‘The Flambeur of Bob’ where several Englishmen spend hours, bobbing up and down, agonizing over what the hell a Flambeur is. No, they don’t find out)
After the hugely successful run of the first two movies, Soderbergh realized that though heist movies (Try: Jules Dassin’s Rififi, Kubrick’s The Killing, George Hill’s The Sting and Sidney Lumet’s Dog Day Afternoon) would always have audiences, the arithmetic progression (with common difference 1) of characters and numerical suffixes in film name could not last for very long.
For example, in due course, when the 212th movie in the franchise is in the making it will be decidedly tough to fit in 212 different characters with as many sub plots into a 2-hour movie. Or for instance, the problems Ocean’s 666 will face, being condemned by religious groups as an act of Satan. If that isn’t convincing enough, think of some far future when half the world’s population will have to play lead roles in Oceans Three Billion Ninety Three Million Nine hundred Thousand Four hundred and Eighty Six? This arithmetic progression of characters, Soderbergh realized, was a very dangerous thing. Imagine the budgets he would have to organize! And the number of Vanity Vans!

Taking this into account, the filmmaker decided to put a new spin on the numeric in the nomenclature, using the numeric to denote something other than a character addition. Thus, Ocean’s Thirteen is about the teenage years of our heisting protagonists. There are rumours that the next film in the Ocean franchise will be Ocean’s Sixty Nine, the terribly interesting plot details for which are available on the Internet as an Oral clip.

Onwards to the movie releasing this week though – Ocean’s Thirteenth Year.

The movie begins with a pleasing close-up (particularly pleasing for the men folk in the audience to note that young George was a really ugly young boy, what with years of gushing from women about Clooney’s looks) of a 13-year-old Danny Ocean, played by a young George Clooney. All the other boys including Pitt, Damon and Andy Garcia join him, each competing for the years Most Annoying Child on Screen award. It turns out that all the kids are juvenile delinquents with a fetish for extra candy (sweets and toffees, not a girl named Candy. Candy, the girl, makes an appearance in Ocean’s Sixty Nine, as do some other interesting fetishes. My lips are sealed though! Anyway 13 isn’t that kind of movie. Kids can watch it, especially illegally)
Yeah, so the kids want extra candy and since this is a heist film, decide to steal it from the Candy Shop run by a 60-year-old failed white singer called 50 Cents for the Candy Bar (played by Al Pacino), who keeps lamenting his failed career as a hip-hop musician blaming his arthritis ridden hips for impeding his hopping.

What follows plays out like a sad rendition of ‘How much is that Doggie in the window?’ repeated over and over. Let me know if you liked the movie. Maybe I’ll send you some Candy.

* Objects in the Preview Mirror may appear sillier than they are.
Disclaimer: Characters in the above story are not based on any characters in the film. Any resemblance or humour is pure luck.
**OPM appears in the Thursday edition of Bangalore BIAS and previews a Friday release

31 May 2007 - Pirates III

2007-06-01T03:55:00.000-07:00

OPM*
Presents – Poirots of the Caribbean

I have had it with Viagra Spam! Every day people called Patricia Webbe, Doco Loco and Porsche Mary send me email about how I can safely buy the performance-enhancing drug cheap, in just a few minutes, over the Internet. Since I am a pretty two-dimensional person (as you’ve all noticed I’m severely lacking in the third dimension – Depth) with severe low esteem, Viagra Spam has had me worrying about whether people know something I haven’t realized yet. I have spent many hours this past week analysing several rather embarrassing things at an anthropological level, involving complex physical phenomena such as levers and fulcrum. After spending several afternoons in despair, I was brought some cheer when it came to my notice that my favourite movie franchise would release its third instalment this week. Yes, Captain Jack and his friends are coming to your neighbourhood, in the summer’s most awaited movie: Pirates of the Caribbean – At Wit’s end.

This week’s OPM takes a look at what the movie promises. We will need a little background info to begin with –

As the second instalment of the franchise was not as well received as the first movie, the studio decided that they needed to change the plot substantially to revive interest in Captain Jack Sparrow and his cohorts. To this end they ran a workshop in the Caribbean (around the same time the Cricket Worldcup was being played there) to rework the script for the third movie. After a tremendous amount of waxing and waning, not to mention some amount of mooning by 3 sexually repressed writers (yes, most of us are afflicted), inspiration hit them when the Woolmer murder flew into the resulting public outrage, across media everywhere. Why not turn the third movie into a whodunit? Due to the inexperience of their writers in writing for the genre they decided to turn to the grand dame of mystery, Agatha Christie and her civilian gendarme protagonists, for help. The intricate universe of characters from Agatha Christie’s books sets up the basis for the movie’s plot, also borrowing heavily from her 1964 publication, A Caribbean Mystery.

The suitably renamed Poirots of the Caribbean sees Johnny Depp reprise his role as Captain Jack Sparrow, but with a psychodynamic twist that would make Freud proud. Captain Jack keeps his name, but inhibiting him, somewhere between his Id and Super ego, is Dame Christie’s well-loved Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot (pronounced Hercule, as in Ridicule, Poirot as in Poor Rot) No, I don’t believe in silent alphabets. I say, call a spade a spade, dammit!

Jack Sparrow is made resplendent as Depp meshes Captain Jack’s irrepressible irresponsibility with Poirot’s droll wit, Jack’s effeminate prancing with Poirot’s haute-couture French suits and Jack’s cavalier womanising with Poirot’s opinion of Miss Lemon.
Johnny Depp puts on several kilos and goes bald to play this memorable character, especially with his anagrammatic bon mots and tongue in cheek humour that causes severe embarrassment to several Victorian women as it usually involves his tongue in someone else’s cheeks.

Keira Knightley plays Miss Marple; a thin sickly girl who misses her friend called Marple sorely and is determined to be in an adventure to find her. Her curiously eponymous character is the object of Inspector Japp’s affections, who consequently proceeds to inspect her at every given opportunity. (Orlando Bloom, a famous flowering tree from the city of Orlando FL plays Inspector Japp) Having to contend with Japp at every step Captain Jack tries to make the best of the situation by quoting the anagram: Menage a trois is an orgies team. (not that this works, but life goes on as Jack continues to savour the joys of savium with Miss Marple!)
To this eclectic mix is thrown in Geoffrey Rush, playing a wretched version of Sherlock Holmes who sports a monkey called Dr.Watson (a brilliant bit of evolutionary reversal that this character poses: a monkeying doctor or a doctored monkey?) on his shoulder.
The villain of the piece, a cross between Moriarty and a Chinese villain called Ichi the Killer is played by Chow Yun Fat (as a result of which, he is very obese)

It turns out that every character ends up on a ship sailing to Europe from the Caribbean, for reasons of their own. Captain Jack is hoping to display some tongue-in-cheek humour for Miss Marple’s benefit when Japp is not inspecting her. Sherlock is onboard, as someone has fooled his monkey into believing that the boat is sailing to a Banana Republic. Chow Yun Fat is trying to lose weight by being the solitary oarsman for the ship.

Things go nutty, when halfway into the Atlantic Ocean; Chow Yun Fat discovers that all the rowing has made him extremely fit. He stops rowing and a row erupts among the passengers.

What will happen as the ocean churns unhappily around this stationary ship and Captain Jack goes on a roll with his pithy anagrams (Dual gender is general dud, Humble arrogance is changeable rumor etc), trying to figure out who will row the boat? Go watch the movie to find out!

* Objects in the Preview Mirror may appear sillier than they are.
Disclaimer: Characters in the above story are not based on any characters in the film. Any resemblance or humour is pure luck.
**OPM appears in the Thursday edition of Bangalore BIAS and previews a Friday release

24th May 2007 - Cheeni Kum

2007-05-27T06:33:00.000-07:00

There are 12 reviews between this one and Salaam-e-Ishq that I have not had the time to post here. Will do it sometime soon.

OPM*
Presents – Cheeni Kum OR A Little Less Chinese OR Sugah Daddy

In this Year of the Chinese Pig, er, Chinese Pig Ear, er, Year of the Pig according to the Chinese calendar, this a truly absurd way to start an article.
Let me start differently and come back to delicious pig ears, Chinese style, later. A little information about China first.
China is one of the world's oldest continuous civilizations, which is very unlike the Australian’s who are rarely civilized, especially on the cricket field. China also has the world's longest continuously used written language system, illustrated by the fact that it takes huge reams of paper and 7 buckets of paint to write simple stuff like ‘Mao was a great leader’. Consequently, it turns out that no one writes that sentence much anymore and that China has the least amount of graffiti in restrooms, school desks and train loos. (For instance, no one goes through the trouble of changing a ‘To let’ board to read ‘Toilet’. Its just too much work)
Ancient China developed four great inventions, none of which helped their civilization for lack of complimenting inventions, paper (no writing instruments), the compass (no travel industry, no boats), gunpowder (no guns, no conquests either because the Great Wall was in the way) and printing (no newspaper companies, Johannes Gutenberg was in Germany)

However, this did not get them down much and they have merrily multiplied ever since, revelling in this pleasurable physical arithmetic, as a result of which there are more Chinese than any other form of human being in the world today. English and many other languages use various forms of the name "China" and the prefix "Sino-" or "Sin-". These forms are thought to be derived from the continuous multiplication of the Chinese, which was deemed sinful by religious missionaries in the Middle Ages (in an encouraging trend in recent years, middle aged people are often tired of the Missionary position, regardless of religion).
As a close competitor in the multiplication race, India shares a unique relationship with China.

This weeks’ OPM takes a look at ‘Cheeni Kum’ that personifies the relationship India doesn’t share with China, suggesting new ways to tackle problems and evolve together.
In this auspicious year to produce babies in China, with Pig ear sales picking up and condom sales bottoming out, Director Balki wisely discards his advertising career to foray into the world of films, taking some courageous stands while he is at it.

Disclaimer: Homosexual and Chinese jokes ahead. I am absolutely certain that the gay community isn’t better or worse than the rest of us, which is precisely why I will take the liberty of cracking jokes at their expense just like I take pot shots at Hair dressers, Punjabis, Malayalees, Germans, Hindus, Himesh Reshamiya, Christians, Navjot Sidhu, Politicians, Adnan Sami, myself and everyone else. We are all pretty similar, except Himesh and the Politicians, perhaps.

Our story starts with a low angle shot of Beijing, which we realize is Beijing through the eyes of our central character. The central character played by Amitabh Bachchan, is Budha Dev, a short pony-tailed man who is up to his neck with his job as the Head Chef at the Beijing Hilton. A bold career decision for Amitabh, considering that this is the first time he is playing a little man on screen. (A role that, in cruel irony, befittingly matches his public image post the UP elections and terribly embarrassing Aish-Shek rituals: that of a little man)

Anyway, Amitabh is a chef who is sick of Chinese restaurants all over Beijing. Ignoring the fact that he is in China, he becomes xenophobic, in a foreign land about the native population. He begins to hate all things Chinese and proceeds to hack away at bonsai’s and noodles whenever he encounters them. At night he kidnaps Pekinese pet dogs named Ping and Pong, Yin and Yang and Mao and Tao selling them to an upmarket Dog Soup company on Tiananmen Square.
He then opens his own restaurant, which serves all cuisines except Chinese. He positions himself as a master chef by publishing a series of cookbooks in pictures. For the average Chinese, a picture cookbook is a huge improvement over reading 90036 alphabets to learn to make an omelette. He becomes a great rage in Beijing and at the height of this short man’s success Tabu I Ching, a beautiful Chinese woman played by Tabu (the actress, not the board game), walks into his restaurant. The chef falls instantly for this dish, knocking over several bowls of exotic pasta in the process.
As we admire Balki’s courage in mixing Xenophobia and Love, he calculates another wholesome number into the equation, by introducing Paresh Rawal as Tabu’s gay father. Paresh falls head over heels in love with Amitabh’s character, knocking over several bowls of the same pasta again (shockingly, this twice-floored pasta is cooked and served to diners at the restaurant)

Soon our main characters visit a crowded pub, where Amitabh feels very wet around the ear. After ignoring it for the first few minutes, he discovers that it isn’t his inexperience but his girlfriend’s pater’s saliva. He shudders and dives into a temporary opening in the crowd, leaving father and daughter to confront each other.
To Balki’s credit his characters, after some contemplation, come to the conclusion that men with homosexual preferences have to take their chances whenever they can. Since there are so few of them out there who are not hiding in little mental closets and shoe cabinets, the gay man/woman just has to hit on everybody he can, to maximise his chances of finding a mate. At bus stops, in theatres, at the circus, at church, in the temples, at art shows, at photo studios and massage parlours, at schools and in offices, at dance bars and stereo shops...everywhere. It is unfortunate. Circumstance does not afford them too many choices.
After all, buggers can’t be choosers.

Thus ends this brilliant movie that one hopes will improve Indo-China relations, inspire homosexuals to free up closet space, reduce population explosion and improve adoption rates by encouraging same sex marriages, help clothing brands sell more Chinos, help this columnist meet attractive Chinese women and enable Balki to make his next film based on the degradation of porn, starring the Big and the Extra Small (no pun intended) B’s.

* Objects in the Preview Mirror may appear sillier than they are.
Disclaimer: Characters in the above story are not based on any characters in the film. Any resemblance or humour is pure luck.
**OPM appears in the Thursday edition of Bangalore BIAS and previews a Friday release

25 Jan 2007 - Salaam-e-ishq

2007-04-12T23:31:00.000-07:00

OPM*
Presents – Salami – Ishq

A long time ago as evolution turned monkey into early man a lot of things began to change. Nudity was replaced by modesty and concepts like breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacking came into existence. Some Early People were emotionally drained as they watched animals being used as food and gave up eating meat, thus becoming the earliest vegetarians.
These Early Vegetarians were ill equipped for a vegetarian life since farming had not yet been invented and passed away really quickly.
It was only well after humanity had fine-tuned farming that some people could afford to give up omnivorous ways and go back to being vegetarian as a fashion statement. Some others are vegetarian even today for emotional reasons. They can’t digest animals enduring punishment so that humans can get their nourishment. I want to ask these people how they are sure plants don’t feel pain. Or for that matter vegetables. To illustrate, imagine the pain that potatoes and corn go through when the little ones in their families are plucked to make a stew or a starter. They are called Baby potatoes and Baby corn for a reason. Vegetarians are separating them from Momma and Poppa Potatoes and Corn every time they cook!

Like we learnt in school, man and for that matter, woman is/are Omnivorous.
This brings us to this week’s release, which is peppered with Non-vegetarian humour.

Salami-Ishq (For the love of Salami) is the story of 6 groups of people. These groups are not strictly groups; they are more like 6 couples. Though, not couples in the strict sense; the term ‘couple’ is used metaphorically as in ‘a couple of drinks (till we get drunk)’ or ‘the Indian medium pacer Couple Dev (hopefully Malcolm Marshall)’. The 6 couples are from different parts of the world; from different walks, runs, marathons, hash-runs of life (none, unfortunately from the Bangalore Walk). They are ignorant about each other's existence, but end up being brought together by destiny, fate and the one thing that connects all of them, Salami.

Salami, a commonly used breakfast meat, might sound simple enough but isn’t. Let us learn then, why Salami holds a connection to the lives of these couples. We will borrow from the reams written on the subject by Stephen who hawks a tome called ‘A Brief history of Salami’.

A Salame (plural: salami) is a cured sausage of Italian tradition, which means that traditionally if you have an ill sausage on your hands, you go looking for an Italian who can cure it. The name comes from the Italian verb salare (which is different from the Hindi word aalare, meaning ‘he’s coming’), meaning 'to salt'.
This salt connection is why we must remember to watch this movie with a pinch of salt.
Historically, salami has been popular amongst Italian peasants due to being a meat product able to be stored at room temperature, especially since refrigerators were expensive.
A traditional salame is made from a mixture that may include the following:
-Chopped pork (you have no chopped pork? What? Pigs have wings now?)
-Wine (no, no! you can’t have a couple of drinks with that wine!)
-Salt (yes, we need a pinch of salt. No, not metaphorically)
-Various Herbs and Spices (nobody is really sure which ones to use. No, not the eatery in Indiranagar)

Other types of salami include imported brands, which are ideal, especially as you don’t need to prepare them.
A sneak peak into some of the stories that make up Salami-Ishq:
Story 1:Vidya Balan wakes up in the morning to find an anniversary gift by her bedside. It is a packet of rare South Italian Paprika Salami from her loving husband, John Abra-ham. She is excited as she relishes the feel of the fine meat and understands that the gift is a metaphor for their relationship. They are completely crazy about each other and find it quite difficult to keep their hands off each other.
But where did Abra-ham acquire this Salami?
Story 2:Govinda wakes up in the morning and gets into his colorful taxi(two colors, yellow and black). He rams into a blond called Stephanie who runs a meat-manufacturing unit in Italy. The huge bag of packaged meat that she is carrying careens out of control and large packets of salami are plastered all over the ever present traffic jam, making a continental breakfast of it. They fall in love and the meat is forgotten, which makes their love a ‘pure’ kind of love (as in ‘pure veg food’). Meat being forgotten also works well for Govinda as there is a lot of meat on him that needs to be forgotten.
Characters played by Salman, Priyanka, Anil, Juhi and four other actors of various sizes inhabit the remaining four stories. To find out more about this paean to red meat (not to be confused with communist recipes) go watch the movie.

As you watch the movie, you will wonder if the ticket price you paid is a real world metaphor for a kind of computer fraud called Salami fraud. In the salami technique, criminals/directors steal money or resources a bit at a time. But well, that is your food for thought.

* Objects in the Preview Mirror may appear sillier than they are.
Disclaimer: Characters in the above story are not based on any characters in the film. Any resemblance or humour is pure luck.
**OPM appears in the Thursday edition of Bangalore BIAS and previews a Friday release

Jan 18 2007 - Risk

2007-04-12T23:27:00.000-07:00

You can see, if you are a regular reader of this blog(which is very very very unlikely) that I have reused some earlier material!

OPM*
Presents – Risky Business

Wikipedia informs me that Risk is a concept that denotes a potential negative impact to an asset that may arise from some present or future event. In everyday usage, "risk" is often used synonymously with the probability of a loss. For example, the risk of rain versus how badly your suede shoes will stain.
Further risk could include, rain not affecting your suede shoes versus realization that your shoes are made of fake suede.

i.e. Risk = (probability of an event) x (losses per event)

Now these terribly technical terms will need some explanation.

An event is something that happens. This usually requires movement of some kind, which explains why many people opine that this lazy author is ‘not happening’.

Probability is much more confusing and is directly linked to Heisenberg's uncertainity principle, which postulates that Uncertainity cannot be accurately forecast.
Heisenberg was himself quite uncertain of the whole thing but he couldn't blame himself, as he had already proved that uncertainity was not predictable, unless it was. But one could never tell, for sure.
The ideas behind Probability and uncertainty, struck Heisenberg as he finished cooking an elegant meal for himself. This thought, though, enabled him to create prize winning science papers, while most of us tend to add salt when struck by the very same thought, " Something's missing “.

To put it simply, Probability and Risk are like Bollywood scripts. There is no telling where they could head. To understand the true poignance of this statement please watch Hindi movies where joyously happy families/mothers/elder siblings/fathers/benevolent maids etc realize that they have lost one or more little children at the Kumbh Mela (which, incidentally, was invented by Rajshree Productions as a film setting for losing kids/parents/lovers etc. The Kumbh Mela as such has no historical relevance and was initially created as a film set in the 1930's before it grew into popular legend and culture as a place where pious people performed rituals in the water and young voyeurous lechers checked out the women. It’s a good thing though and everyone goes home satisfied)

Our story starts as the lens moves through a dolly shot (based on the book; Ending Cloning, the day Dolly the sheep was Shot) of a garden in disrepair.

There are trees slouching to protect their space and plants doing badly in a corner as the camera pans to a close-up of our hero who is trembling, clutching a gun.

Run-deep is a Risk Analyst with a leading portfolio management firm.
But herein lies the twist. The Portfolio Management firm exclusively does business for terrorists, warlords, mafia, lawyers and the BCCI. Their market analysts have roam around with guns, to protect themselves from irate clients.

As the story progresses we begin to realize that the story arc is an uncompromising and honest look at an improbable world and shows the same commitment to realism and starkness as a Justice League or Swat Cat cartoon.

It turns out that Run-deep has run himself into deep trouble with a set of clients headed by Osama Bush (President of the international court of lenience for troublemakers) by investing in bad business ideas like the ten rupee diamond, Team India and the Bachchan-Rai engagement. To make things worse Run-deep is a paranoid literalist who mistakes Bull and Bear markets to be gladiatorial battlefields where market analysts fight fierce animals. This makes him very touchy and trigger-happy, especially around animals. PETA is hounding him for shooting at several squirrels, poisonous snakes, vicious dogs and Salman Kahn.

His bugbear, Osama Bush (played by Vinod Khanna) wears a beard to hide the pallor that affects people who have lived their lives manipulating and deceiving people over monstrously flawed ideas like God, Political honesty and nationalism.
As Run-deep has invested his dishonestly earned money in such risky assets, he is baying for his blood.
He kidnaps Run-deep’s girlfriend, Tanushree who is a dancer at a bar called Risque.

Will Run-deep take grave risks to save his girlfriend? Does Osama Bush risk the grave in Iraq and Afghanistan? Will you risk reading next weeks OPM?
Anyway, do remember what this movie preaches – Life mein Risk lena padta hai, which means - don't worry about the risk of rain in Pondicherry or wherever else you are going, but do pack an umbrella.

* Objects in the Preview Mirror may appear sillier than they are.
Disclaimer: Characters in the above story are not based on any characters in the film. Any resemblance or humour is pure luck.
**OPM appears in the Thursday edition of Bangalore BIAS and previews a Friday release

Jan 11 2007 - Guru

2007-04-12T23:23:00.000-07:00

OPM*
Presents – Guru and crew

Our story starts in the little village of Idhar, where Gurukant (played by Abhishek) has been raised by very middle class parents.
Middle class in a village where one is rich if they have a radio. The village of Idhar (Hindi=>meaning ‘Over Here’) has been neglected by mainstream civilization. This is because, when travellers ask for directions to ‘Over Here’ people look at them strangely and say ‘over here is obviously right here’.
But young Gurukant has many dreams. His parents wake him up early and disturb his dreams just when he is getting to the best parts, though. (Parents everywhere are known to do this. This is usually achieved by switching off the ceiling fan or making loud noises over the announcement of something as ordinary as morning coffee)
Su-jata (played by Su-nehri from Dhoom 2) enters Gurukant’s life, while he is lying idly in his father’s fields dreaming vivid daydreams. Su-jata is singing songs in the rain, as that is the only entertainment available in little Idhar, especially as her parents don’t own a radio. She wakes Gurukant when she steps on him and this turns out to be a big step-up for both of them. Gurukant thinks he is still dreaming and proceeds to pinch himself and Su-jata silly to ensure he isn’t dreaming.
A World Famous-in-Idhar romance begins. Tabs are kept on Gurukant and Su-jata by armies of little children who are bunking school to get a taste of reality-television kind of time-pass. Once everyone else has discussed them as an item, the parents are informed and a marriage is in the offing. The astrologer is called in. This is the turning point of the tale and we will require a brief detour to put things into perspective.

Jyotish, a system of astrology, has been part of the Indian way of life for ages. Jyotish is the instructional element of the Rig Veda (the rigging was done at large scale and millions of rupees were lost by the public), and is referred to as the Eye of the Veda (inspiring the later day song, Eye of the Tiger which caused several Save the Tiger environmentalists to froth at the mouth), for its alleged ability to view both phenomenal reality and wisdom, but do nothing about either.
Many Indians believe, without good reason, that humans have fortune and misfortune in life because of karma (a fashionable word in spiritual western company). Jyotish attributes the downs in life to the influence of planets, and religious ceremonies are performed to mitigate bad karma. This was reason enough to inspire people to believe in other unbelievable things like the Aum Shrinkyo sect, Communism, Religion, the Pink Unicorn, the revolving teacup and George W. Bush.
Astrologers prescribe special stones (yes, expensive ones) or meditation techniques using mantras (hit item numbers from ancient times) to those facing difficult or unclear futures as predicted by Jyotish. This is always a good thing, especially for astrologers.

Some astrological terms:
Jaatak Shaastra (horoscopy)- Oh the horrors in your horoscope! Pay me quickly. (Started by the authors of fiction who wrote the Jataka tales)
Swar Shaastra- Your name sucks. Let me change it. Pay me quickly.
Ravi Shastri – The Indian team sucks. Cut their pay.

Back to our story then! The astrologer announces that Su-jata has a kujadosham and that the man she marries will suffer. (Kujadosham is brought on by the effect of Mars, which shows an aggressive nature. Astrology doesn’t like aggressive women, it seems and for a woman to be aggressive is a dosha or a fault!!)
After performing several yagnas Gurukant realizes that he will have to study astrology himself to figure out a way to get married.

He studies hard for a couple of weeks at the University in Benares, but gives up when he realizes that astrology can be made up as one goes along. He gets married and begins to use astrology to earn a living. After considering Gurucan, Gurukant drops the ‘kant’ and becomes Guru.

His fame spreads far and wide (but never near and narrow). His very words are taken literally causing a lot of confusion. Examples:
Guru: If you don’t dream you will be stuck to your village. (Many villagers migrate to cities and vice versa, while still others spend a lot of time ensuring there is no glue on their footwear)
Guru: I don’t want to walk. I want to run (many children run away from school, some men run away from work)
Guru: When you run fast, you raise a lot of dust (P.T. Usha loses the gold at the Olympics, as she is looking back to see the dust)
Guru: I wish I met Mallika Sherawat (So do the rest of us)

But a young reporter (played by Madhavan) realizes that astrology and Guru are ruining the country. He publishes an impassioned plea to see the light (no one is willing to look at the light as there is a solar eclipse on)

The reporter writes:
Do you believe that information in the far past can influence what we are doing now or in the recent past or in the immediate future?
Why do i ask? Consider these facts.
The Sun is eight light minutes away from the Earth, a distance of about 160 million kilometres, which rules out a taxi ride.
So if I were to look at you or Gisele Bundchen from the sun, I would see a picture of what you, or more interestingly, she was doing eight minutes earlier. Conversely, when you look up into the sky and see the sun, you are a getting a picture that is eight minutes old. Over galactic distances the speed of light becomes noticeable. The nearest star Alpha Centauri is 4 light years away. So when we see Alpha Centauri in the sky it is a 4-year-old picture. The universe has about a hundred billion galaxies the nearest of which is Andromeda. Andromeda is 4 million light years away. If someone in the galaxy of Andromeda were to cast his telescope on Earth he would look 4 million years into our past and maybe catch a few glimpses of the earliest flat-faced Neanderthals, with some luck, one of the attractive ones - A 4 million year old picture.
As we peer farther and farther in to space we are peering farther and farther into the past.
All those constellations are pictures from the past too. The actual configurations just now are totally different, because all the stars have moved and it is a completely changed night sky.
Thus, no astrologer can predict anything but the past, based on the stars they see in the sky. Guru especially.

Will Madhavan’s article kick up dust even though he is not running? To find out, watch this melancholy tale with a Dahlian twist. (Not Dahlia the flower, Dahl the author)

* Objects in the Preview Mirror may appear sillier than they are.
Disclaimer: Characters in the above story are not based on any characters in the film. Any resemblance or humour is pure luck.
**OPM appears in the Thursday edition of Bangalore BIAS and previews a Friday release

Coming soon..

2007-04-12T23:19:00.000-07:00

Have been busy experiencing fatherhood. Will put up all OPM articles Jan through April one of these day!
Hope the 2 or 3 people who visit this desolation are doing well.

Cheers!

Jan 4 2007 - StormBreaker

2007-01-07T21:49:00.000-08:00

OPM*
Presents – Storm in my Baby Bottle

The columnist who writes this column is, thankfully, on vacation. Since he is one of those adults, who likes giving young people a chance he let me do this week's preview. He tells me that it makes him feel good, but I think he is just taking time off to buy his wonderful wife some unimaginative presents for her birthday.

Anyway I’m only one year old, so I'm starting really young. Before I turned one recently, I’m guessing I was zero. I have many names. Mama calls me booboo and Cutchupie and Arun depending on the time of day. I have noticed that she calls me Arun when i do stuff I am not supposed to do, so I’m guessing that is a bad word.
After some consideration I’ve realized that I must either be Cutchupie or Booboo. You can call me whatever you like as long as you don’t call me Arun.

This week’s release is a movie called ‘Storm Breaker’ which, I’m guessing, is about someone very like me when I’m breaking toys. Somebody in the movie is definitely breaking storms, though I don’t know what a storm is. Mama says I’ll have to look up the dictionary to find out about storms. Problem is, I don’t know what dictionary means so I don’t know where to start looking. On another note, it is my Mama’s birthday today and I wish her a very happy birthday though I can’t buy her anything, as no one will pay me to break toys or damage nappies, and those are the only things I know to do very well.

To preview ‘Storm Breaker’ I’ll really need to know what all these complicated words like complicated mean. Also, young children like me don't see the world the same way as adults (it helps that our idea of war is GI Joe, while happiness is a stash of chocolate). We usually see things from a lower angle, have difficulty seeing things as a whole, and concentrate only on parts of things - usually the parts we're looking at. So I’m going to sit in a time machine and grow up to write the rest of the preview. (This is easy for us toddlers as we can imagine almost anything. Why!? I once imagined that everyone on earth had become nice, even George Bush! )
Whoosh! (That’s the sound a time machine should make. ‘Swish!’ will also do)

Well, that does it then! I’m 29 years old in the year 2035 and I can do that preview (though not technically as the movie released 28 years ago), without using words like ‘like’, ‘guess’, ‘very’ and ‘so’ so many times.
Presenting then, for your special relish, plump English words stewed and stuffed in the right quantities to add that garnish of silly stupidity to your life: The Storm Breaker Preview

Based on the 1st in the series of books by Anthony Horowitz, Storm Breaker starring Ewan McGregor, Mickey Rourke, Andy Serkis of LOTR ‘Gollum’ fame and that fantastic author/actor Stephen Fry, is the story of young Alex Rider who doesn’t even own a bicycle.
He spends his time thinking up bad humour (much like the author of this column) based on the Matrix movies:

Ex:
The One. Neo. NEO is anagram of The One.I, Alex, will be the new anagrammatic superhero, ENO.
As Eno I will surf the gastroenterical tracts dispelling Agent Acidity and company to oblivion. I will guard the gateways to the intestinal Zion; fight tooth, nail and Smithy etc etc

OR: Other Matrix fantasies gone wrong like -

I will not be The One.
I will be more than that.
I will be The Two.
Buy one get one free.

But when his uncle Ian Rider dies mysteriously while watching an Indian Television channel on board a new airline called the Storm Breaker, Alex is drawn into a terrific ride which shows him unveiling secrets unknown to humanity in ancient 2007. He discovers the great secret of the airline industry and of flight in general. The revelation unfolds, as he reads a painfully slow book called “ Atlas Shrugged and said ‘So what?’ ”, that “flight” of any form on Planet Earth is a great myth.
Birds do not fly.They stay stationary in the air. It is the earth Spinning which causes the illusion that they are flying. The whole flapping of wings routine is to ward off insects, mostly flies.
Consequently, it is also revealed that all the airline industry has ever done is build anti gravity aircraft, which can stay stationary in air and use the Earths’ spin to cause the illusion of having travelled. All delays are caused due to storms as the pilot, whose only job is to ensure that the plane faces the right direction as the earth spins, can’t see which direction to turn the plane. Storm Breakers are a new kind of plane that can see through storms while beating gravity. The problems arise when Storm-Breaker’s promoters decide to reveal the truth about flight to the general public and there is a cry of outrage from the publishers of important journals like the Superman Comic.

Does Alex manage to solve the mystery of his uncle’s death on board the Storm Breaker? Does he find out which daily soap on Indian TV killed him? Will Anti-Gravity Man comics beat Superman sales to pulp?
Watch!

* Objects in the Preview Mirror may appear sillier than they are.
Disclaimer: Characters in the above story are not based on any characters in the film. Any resemblance or humour is pure luck.
**OPM appears in the Thursday edition of Bangalore BIAS and previews a Friday release

Dec 28 2006 - Misc.

2007-01-04T22:04:00.000-08:00

OPM*
Presents – Message in the Cans

Ever since the birth of cinema, Great Film Directors have provided us insights and visions that have affected language, culture and the human condition in progressive ways. Some examples are listed below:
Stanley Kyon-Brick who questioned the usage of bricks in construction, opened people’s eyes to paper homes. The Japanese, in a rare instance of precognition, have been building paper homes for centuries, which in turn protect them during earthquakes. Earthquakes occur due to movements in the Earth’s tectonic plates, which to humanity are as obscure as the innards of a washing machine or the actions of the left footed stillbat (virendrus sehwagum). It has been debated (by very boring geologists with no social life) that the tectonic plates of the earth could be called something else. All of them know that their argument has devolved into a semantic debate, but no one wants to put an end to the endless stream of conferences and conference calls that serve as a platform for free lunches.
Woody Allen gave the world the practise of saying ‘knock on wood’ which can mean different things in different circumstances, for example: if one were buried alive in a casket versus if one were a carpenter. He also gave us the All American term for teenagers falling awake: ‘woody’.
Ingmar Bergman gave us a delightful Swedish name.
Alfred Hitchcock, of course, cannot be discussed here, as this is a family paper.

It can be argued that lesser-than-great and much-lesser-than-great directors can teach us valuable lessons about Life, The Universe and Obesity too. (To get into a debate on the veracity of this statement, please find some boring geologists)
I will illustrate by giving you a sneak peek into three movies that release this week:

Kudiyon ka hai Zamaana is a fantasy, set in a world where hormonal impulses of the sexes are reversed because of a freak accident involving George Bush and some nuclear weapons. This is a world of wide and expansive heterosexual zones where women scout for men in the evenings. A world which enables women hunting in packs of two and three, looking for innocent men and boys to pick up for the evening. Oh Israel! (Forgive me that burst of emotion!)
Rekha, Vasundhara, Kim and Mahima are four friends living in a world that has been recently altered. They come to terms with their surging basic instincts (albeit, later than Sharon Stone) and have just begun revelling in checking out men at the workplace, in restaurants, hardware shops and traffic lights. They are though, very upset as men, who’ve been hormonally altered too, are now playing hard to get.
Suddenly everything in the world changes as Wars are called off and Sport on television takes a TRP nosedive. Greeting card companies have to alter their entire range, as do manufacturers of most other goods since women aren’t interested in shopping for long hours anymore.
Economies are completely shattered due to these changes, before marketing managers around the world figure out that all they need to do is target men in their advertising. Soon men are well informed about bargains on shoes, cosmetics and handbags and drag their spouses out on Sundays to these monstrous ‘Big Sale’ events across assorted malls around the world. The mini-trouser and the backless shirt are invented and there is a big hue and cry over the Big Bee exposing in his next movie. Men take a sudden shine for Italian cuisine, except in Italy where Japanese food is the flavour of the month. Pornography finally becomes an equal opportunity employer and male porn stars have affairs with famous women politicians like Condoleeza Rice. Three million cases of husband beating are reported in Haryana and Punjab.
What happens to the four friends? Will they fight monogamy? Will they manage to catch a few beers during the weekend? The movie helps us examine gender issues and finally decide that monogamy is a sin.

I See You: Arjun Rampal, a great pal of a guy called Ram (very popular in the Ayodhya area), is a doctor who specializes in the Intensive Care Unit or the I.C.U. The rest of the plot is pretty inconsequential the movie only serves to remind us that some models shouldn’t try acting.

I leave you with the poetic message that the third release of the week, Anwar, preaches:
An-war, is bad grammar for One war,
And one war is going just too far,
Like the film itself,
And Santa’s twelve elves,
I’d like to tell you boys,
To order some naughty toys,
And make love, not war.

Happy Holidays!

* Objects in the Preview Mirror may appear sillier than they are.
Disclaimer: Characters in the above story are not based on any characters in the film. Any resemblance or humour is pure luck.
**OPM appears in the Thursday edition of Bangalore BIAS and previews a Friday release

2006-12-29T22:32:00.000-08:00

Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero !

Dec 21 2006 - Happy Feet

2006-12-25T19:33:00.000-08:00

OPM*
Presents – Happy Feet OR God knows

When Charles Darwin wrote his ‘On the Origin of Species’, he would have thought it would lead people to rethink notions of creationism and kill legends of lake monsters like the Loch Ness. Instead, almost a hundred and fifty years later, we live in a world that abounds in theories about both.

One such legend is about Penguins; a fictitious species of animal/bird/mammal that live in Antarctica. Antarctica is a fictitious place, which is supposed to be covered in ice as it is at the bottom of the Southern Hemisphere. The Southern Hemisphere, in turn, is not really at the bottom of the world, as the world does not have a bottom at all. This is because the Earth is a ball of rock that circles the sun in a universe where left, right, bottom and top are only points of view. So it doesn’t matter a hoot if one is on the top or the bottom of a pyramid or whether one is on top or bottom during the three-letter word we do so much of. (I mean eat, you sick people!)
Yes, so Antarctica is a fictitious place that no one has actually visited. Since it is below the equator and New Zealand is pretty cold during winter, people have assumed that this fictitious place has a lot of ice since cold air settles on the bottom while hot air rises. (Observed in top b-schools as well. Hot Air usually lands prime consulting jobs)

As opposed to Penguins in Antarctica, fictitious Polar Bears inhabit the fictitious Arctic region at the North Pole (a large proportion of people in Northern Poland are called North Poles too). It is easy to see that Polar Bears and Penguins are improbable since both are supposed to survive on a diet of fish, and fish are improbable in areas covered in ice! As if fish were some kind of easily available SeaBiscuit! These anthropologists must really stop horsing around!

There is another set of environmental yahoos who claim that many ages ago Polar Bears won in the Arctic while the Penguins won in Antarctica. Won the evolutionary war, that is. These Intelligent Design advocates claim that a great battle was waged between the species, where to keep the balance, the Intelligent Designer helped each species win in a different place. Remember that, according to these Intelligent Design proponents, as India is losing a game of cricket, they are wining another elsewhere, as per the grand design of the Intelligent Designer. The wondrous miracles of the Grand Intelligent Designer or GID (pronounced as in 'Gideon' or ‘giddy’)!! As a side note it must be incredibly boring to be GID on a Saturday evening because he not only knows what programmes are playing on TV but also knows what happens in each one of them.

If there is a GID as most of humanity claims, then he (notice the male chauvinism in this) must have a life very like our own when we produce and create Cartoon films. Characters in cartoon films feel and think like we do, or just like the script we provide them with, as indeed GID in all his omnipresence and omniscience has supposedly given us scripts. It is a wonder then, that ID proponents, instead of claiming that they have figured out the mysteries of Life, the Universe and Obesity by becoming one with, or praying to GID, don’t go a step backward and wonder if GID himself is operating on a script or searching for those answers. But heck, how would I know? GID only knows!

Let us ignore existential questions though, and take a look at tomorrow’s release, Happy Feet, a cartoon film about Penguins and GID.

In the cold fictitious land of Antarctica a bunch of Emperor Penguins are feeling very disenchanted with their circumstance. They are emperors without any subjects. They try going to school and taking on as many subjects as possible, but this does not satisfy them. They go back to their usual habit of hunting down and devouring schools. Schools of fish, that is. Each of these penguins has a special heartsong, which is sung to express love at appropriate social events. These social events are rather drab as many penguins are tone-deaf and none has hands/wings/flaps long enough to clap. What they need is a cultural revolution of sorts. Into this socio-cultural background is born little Mumble who can dance, but cannot sing. He is the greatest tap dancer born to penguin parents, which is not difficult considering that he is also the Only tap dancer born to penguin parents. At parties he is a great hit when he tap dances to everyone’s heartsongs.
This annoys the powers that be and they accuse Mumble of creating the troubles the penguins are having with food supplies, branding his tap dancing evil. Mumble is thus exiled and has to face the fictitious cold of Antarctica alone.

Will he manage to mumble without shivering? Will he find out that the fish supplies are dying out as part of GID’s intelligent design? Will Mumble find GID and wring his neck? Does GID stand for Grand Incompetent Designer, since we live in a bloody incompetently designed world full of silly things like snot, murder, disease and George Bush? I can’t wait to find out tomorrow!

* Objects in the Preview Mirror may appear sillier than they are.
Disclaimer: Characters in the above story are not based on any characters in the film. Any resemblance or humour is pure luck.
**OPM appears in the Thursday edition of Bangalore BIAS and previews a Friday release

!

2006-12-22T19:35:00.000-08:00

You want to know the only positive fall out of Vote Bank politics in our country?

We have side stepped the creationism/intelligent design versus Science argument over teaching religion in our schools!

Dec 14th - Coming Attractions

2006-12-16T22:25:00.000-08:00

OPM*
Presents - Coming soon (er or later)

Making movies is a difficult job. Getting a movie released, though, is even more difficult. It is just like how my friend Shouvik, who makes possibly the best momos in the world, has never sold any. This is because of a phenomenon called Economics.
Economics was a religion founded by Adam Smith in the 18th century based on a book called ‘The Wealth of Nations (and how we can loot it)’ written by the 12th century saint Genghis Khan.
There are of course other reasons why your movie might remain unreleased.

Sometimes you end up making a really bad movie that gets edited by you, the censor board and religious fundamentalists; Edited so much, that often you have to re-shoot, to fill in the huge gaps left by editing the parts you originally thought, were the best portions (usually steamy scenes involving your female protagonist in various stages of undress, very rarely in a steam bath)
For example, I once made a movie that had to be edited out completely, mainly because I was the actor, director, choreographer etc. I was finally left with only the End-Credits and ended up crediting my bankers in hope that they would not sue me.

The director of an unreleased film must have patience and should remember that there is a time and place for everything, though the last time and place where everything was dates back 13.7 billion years ago to the Big Bang, when everything was at the same place at the same time. So some of these movies might have to wait for the Big Fizzle to happen (the Big Fizzle is grammatically the other end of a Big Bang. No not scientifically) to get released. Which is no time soon, not counting other Big Fizzle events like Karisma and Madhuri’s comeback movies or the inevitable end of the affair we all know as AishShek.

Today, we will take a look at some movies that have remained unreleased for a long time, ending with Ka-bull Express (no relation to Ba-Bull Inc. that released last week), which has actually managed a release this week.

Aryan: Aryan is a touching story about a shadow-boxer’s fight to achieve his dreams. Aryan (Sohil Khan) is born to fight. But he is a shy, reticent Chinaman, who rarely steps out of the shadows. Hence, he becomes the college shadowboxing champ and under the tough training of his coach he dreams of winning the nationals. His Love, Neha (Sneha Ulal), is more than just his better half, especially since she’s put on a lot of weight. Aryan needs her to be around all the time while practicing shadowboxing, as he needs another shadow to fight. But life takes a turn when they marry and Aryan gives up fighting and his dreams because his mum told him never to fight after marriage. They start living a common man’s life but this is difficult since one of them is a woman and R.K.Laxman’s ‘Common Man’ doesn’t seem to be doing anything except eavesdropping. Aryan decides to take up shadowboxing again to support his family, but realizes that his wife left him three days into their marriage when he couldn’t buy her caviar and that he has been talking to the shadow of an old vase for several months now. Will Aryan be able to win the Nationals? Is he truly unbreakable? What are the Nationals?
As you probably have guessed this movie has remained unreleased for 2 reasons:
Most of the movie is dark since it deals with shadows
Everyone thought that as a Chinaman, Aryan could never be unbreakable. (I broke the china again! How will we serve tea? I wish China were unbreakable)

WordPerfect: WordPerfect, a tight action thriller, set in the backdrop of The World Scrabble Competition was to be Bill Gates’s entry to filmdom. Then there were news leaks about how he was actually dyslexic (like my godo freeind Snady, er.. like my good friend Sandy) and the movie never could get a release.

Traffic Sandwich: Traffic Sandwich was made as a telling comment on life in heavily populated cities with terrible roads (if I remember right, Bangalore) but found no release in target cities since no one was willing to wade through traffic and drive to the theatre to watch their own lives on screen.

The Life and Times of Ouches Krakkergaard: Never released, as no one knew of Ouches Krakkergaard (an Australian master craftsman who made invincibly tough cricket crotch guards)

Finally we come to Kabull Express, which releases this week. Kabull Express is the story of 2 journalists who go to Kabull in search of WMDs (no not Weapons of Mass Destruction, Well Made Diapers) They believe that people in Kabull have perfected the art of making tremendously well made diapers since they live in a country with acute water shortage. Instead, the journos end up meeting Osama Bin Laden and realize that Osama is indeed not laden with anything (hence Osama bin Laden). Which means Osama carries no baggage but poor old George W will get punished for the baggage he’s been carrying ever since little Osama beat him at Tippy Toe (a game invented by the both of them when Bush Senior was waging the last war over oil.. er Kuwait, which involves stepping on each other’s toes)
In any case, I’m checking out the WMDs tomorrow since fatherhood beckons in January! What about you?

* Objects in the Preview Mirror may appear sillier than they are.
Disclaimer: Characters in the above story are not based on any characters in the film. Any resemblance or humour is pure luck.
**OPM appears in the Thursday edition of Bangalore BIAS and previews a Friday release

Dec 8 2006 - Baabul

2006-12-10T20:38:00.000-08:00

Last weeks' OPM is coloured terribly by a few conversations I had with journo friends about the Khairlanji incident. I wrote it halfway before i had those conversations, as you can, undoubtedly, make out.

OPM*
Presents – BA-Bull Inc.

Truth, like Love, is a many splendoured thing. My version of truth can be very different from your version of it, which essentially means that truth varies with the position of the observer. In some ways Truth is much like Time, a magazine, which Einstein read from various vantage points like on an airplane, in a bus, from a WC etc. He concluded that Time varies from the point of view of the observer and after watching movies like ‘Bags Ban(ned)’ he realized that Time could, indeed, move really slowly.
It is the same with Truth.
For example, while Munnabhai bought the AK-56 for ‘self-defence’, The Govt. of India thought society needed self-defence from AK-56 owners and sued the bollocks out of him.
Similarly, SSoren thought of the removal of his erstwhile secretary as an essential move that brought down his tax liabilities. The secretary’s family, however, thought otherwise and has had him jailed.

Fact, on the other hand, is undeniably based on hard evidence, which does not alter with the position of the observer. Consider, for example, the statement “Coffee is not spelt Kauphi”. There is a certain solidity to this statement, except if you speak in an obscure Malayalam dialect that is spoken in the Gulf. This exception is not really one, as no Malayalee can be accused of being an observer. A linguist, a lecher or a union worker perhaps, but never an observer* (*- This data and extrapolation is based on a survey performed on one Malayalee, the author, who in addition to not being an observer, was also found to be an idiot, with an intellect close to that possessed by the endangered species of suicidal Sri-Lankan worm Serendipitous Cannabis)
Yes, so Fact is separated from Truth because it is usually based on solid evidence. (This led several juice makers around 600 BC to write out a set of commandments on stone to give it a feel of rock hard evidence. It later transpired that a tall handsome gentleman, played by Charlton Heston, eventually broke the stone and ended up stone broke for a while, roaming around various deserts. Paper-thin evidence of this can be found in the terribly undersold publication ‘The Many Poses of Moses’)

It is in the interest of people who want their version of truth to prevail to establish their concocted cock and bull stories as fact. This process can be observed in several areas of Life including and especially in theology, Marxism, other ‘-isms’, George Bush, marriage, politics, Ayn Rand etc.
This week we anticipate the release of Babull, which traces the story of a man who, stuck in the mire of cock and bull, experiences a change of heart in the autumn years of life.

BA – bull Inc. is a PR agency headed by a brilliant spin-doctor Bigbee who churns out Brilliantly Analysed Bull (shi*) to help his political clients further their brand of politics. His biggest achievement is his pro-Victorian systematic multi-pronged strategy against sexuality that has ensured that a nation that does a lot of it (going from a population 40 crores to roughly three times that in a span of 60 years) only discusses or displays sexuality in private. He does this for fundamentalist organizations whose unattractive leaders like to visit Rio de Janerio during the Spring Fest while protesting a film being shot at Varanasi because women with bald-heads are an affront to politicians with bald-pates (all of them, except four women politicians).

He also provides sound bites that assist various cricket personalities field barbs about match-fixing (I can’t even fix a leaking faucet! How can I fix international matches? ), pummelling old men to death (But I thought he was Dara Singh! Chak de phatte!), English commentary (abbsolootely I say!), former captains (Ooh Aah India advertisements) and Indian cricket sponsorship deals (talks are on with Pain Balm manufacturers to support the Ooh Aah India campaign).

At home, he has to eat badly made puris every single day. This is because his brother and partner (business partner! Zyada samajh mein aa raha hai kya!!?), Home Puri, is a man who loves eating puri-saag at home. He especially loves the puris Bigbee’s daughter-in-law makes and when she becomes a widow due to the unexpected death of her husband in a hair transplant operation Home Puri insists that she not remarry.
Bigbee is torn between a keeping this tradition going and escaping eating bad puris all his life.
The torment filled transition from a status-quo keeper to one who reacts to situations with humanity and gut feel is the story that Babull tracks.
When Bigbee breaks the rules and preaches widow remarriage to arrive at a win-win situation we realize that there is more than one important social message that this wonderful movie preaches. One is that breakfast is a very important meal and we shouldn’t miss it.

The other message on widow remarriage, takes the characters 3 hours, 7 songs and a lot of melodramatic situations to arrive at. Isn’t it astonishingly pitiable that in this day and age, as in any other, we need social messages to accept things like widow remarriage, universal human rights, ending child labour, defeating gender discrimination, junking caste and abolishing the Aussie and South African cricket teams??

* Objects in the Preview Mirror may appear sillier than they are.

Disclaimer: Characters in the above story are not based on any characters in the film. Any resemblance or humour is pure luck.

**OPM appears in the Thursday edition of Bangalore BIAS and previews a Friday release

Originally from Infidels.org

2006-12-10T20:33:00.000-08:00

http://www.godlessgeeks.com/LINKS/GodProof.htm

Hilarious!

main shaadi shuda hoon

2006-12-10T05:08:00.000-08:00

Where are the snowdens of yesteryear?

Rocky Balboa

2006-12-01T02:30:00.000-08:00

Check this out !

http://playlist.yahoo.com/makeplaylist.dll?id=1445131&sdm=web&qtw=640&qth=400

23 Nov 2006 - Dhoom 2

2006-11-25T07:55:00.000-08:00

OPM*
Presents – Dhoom (k) 2

In a world filled with crime, the need of the hour is a police officer who can bring things to order. A tough yet sharp Super Cop (like a knife, not a hammer).

In Mumbai, this onus has fallen upon Jai Dixit (Abhishek).
There is, though, a big problem.
The moniker Super Cop annoys him no end and makes him feel like Robocop, as it offends his artistic sensibilities. As an artist stuck in a world of crime and gore, he has had enough. He regularly wears a beard and acts in small, offbeat plays like UmraoJohn on the side, to satisfy his creative urges. Unfailingly, he gets bad reviews and hence has to change his fake beard often, to get new roles. To top it all, his Bengali wife of many years is threatening to leave him, as she suspects that all artists are bisexual. Jai is appalled that she thinks an artist of his calibre would ever have to buy sex and has a raging argument with her (depicted in the form of a song, ‘Crazy kiya re’) She leaves him.

Meanwhile in various locations around the world:

Career travel-writer Mr. Eh (pronounced ‘aye’ and played by Hrithik) is having a really tough day. He is in Namibia, travelling into the Namib Desert in search of the rare mythological animal Dhoomketu (Hindi: “Comet” is also a dog in the DC comics franchise “Comet – The Super Dog”). He finds a tattered copy of the comic on the train he is on and is satisfied.
There is, though, a big problem.
Mr. Eh is a kleptomaniac (Greek: kleptein, "to steal" is an inability to resist impulses of stealing). In sharp contrast to his failure at being a travel-writer, he is the biggest and most successful kleptomaniac the world has never seen.
On board the train is a royal family carrying a 300 year old royal WC (Abbreviation for Water Closet/flush toilet) which has been passed on in the family ever since their ancestor, King GM.Rao, proclaimed that the royal WC would remind them never to be royal pains in the a**.
Mr. Eh pulls off a baffling crime when he steals this worthless piece of loo-t and vanishes into thin air(a minor achievement when compared to the act of vanishing into thick air)
Everyone is baffled as to why anyone would steal a 300 year old WC and a cry of ‘Eh??!!!’ goes up across the world as Reuters wires the news out. Mr. Eh achieves instant fame in cop stations around the world and assorted nut-jobs start researching his life and crimes (just like all the research that is happening just now on topics like ‘Natural Disasters and your pets’, ‘Botox’, Aussie Cricket, Theology etc)

One of these nut-job researchers is a pretty indian cop called Shonali Bose(Bipasha). She uncovers rare and useless tidbits about Mr. Eh including an unbearable and ‘Eh??!!’-inducing list of his thefts. Topping the list are these:

12 refrigerators stolen from Eskimo households
88 shaving razors stolen from the home of the Indian PM
19000 items of clothing stolen from Reiki Saw-an-ant and Ka**mira S ( TV Show plug: Only one piece of clothing left. Watch Big Ba** !! )

Shonali, after a lot of research, comes to the conclusion that Mr. Eh will strike next in Mumbai, as that is where the worlds largest collection of inane artefacts are (Silly state politicians and their sons, aging film stars and their sons, madcap pop artists like Baba Seagull, crazy socialites etc).

Shonali, Jai Dixit and Ali (Uday Chapra), the mechanic-turned-cop, become allies and vow to nab Mr. Eh in Mumbai.
There is, though, a big problem.
Ali can’t connect to his new job, as it has nothing to do with bikes and decides to ask his boss, Jai Dixit, to transfer him to the Traffic Police department.

Around the same time:

Mr. Eh lands in Mumbai still in search of Dhoomketu. He meets Chaandi (Aishwarya), a girl who sells fake silver jewellery. She cons him into believing that she once sold a silver collar to Dhoomketu the dog. All she actually wants to do is travel the world on Mr. Eh’s money thus fulfilling her ambition of being Miss World. She dreams of wearing string bikinis on the beaches of Durban and Rio (much like the rest of us would want her to).

There is, though, a big problem.
That is what follows.

What follows is a mind-blowing action comedy that stretches from the desert of Namibia to the backwaters of Goa and finally to the “Wild n Exotic” Rann of Kutch in northern Gujarat.

Our five characters chase their dreams and each other through Greater Rann (8500 sq km) and Little Rann (5500 sq km) almost endlessly, till they run out of fuel, at which point they do a plug for a brand of Extra Premium Petrol.

Who will win at the Rann of Kutch, while the others remain also-rans? Will Jai Dixit fixit? What will Mr. Eh steal this time? Will it be Chaandi’s bikini? Will Shonali wax eloquent on a beach somewhere (like I always say, Wax before hitting the beach!)? Will Dhoomketu ever be found? Is the movie called Dhoom 2 (Dhoomketu) only because movies like this appear only once in many, say 76 years, like the Halley’s comet? Is this a good thing that we must be thankful about?

Watch the movie tomorrow to find out!

* Objects in the Preview Mirror may appear sillier than they are.
Disclaimer: Characters in the above story are not based on any characters in the film. Any resemblance or humour is pure luck.
**OPM appears in the Thursday edition of Bangalore BIAS and previews a Friday release

16 Nov 2006 - Casino Royale

2006-11-22T21:34:00.000-08:00

OPM*
Presents – Casino Royale (OR) I’m a big Bond fan

The Cold War, Wikipedia informs me, was the protracted ideological, and economic struggle that emerged after World War II between the United States and its allies and the Soviet Union and its allies.
This global contest was popularly named The Cold War and sometimes the Olympics, since not much action really took place.

Instead, the "war" took the form of an arms race involving nuclear (new weapons which clearly looked like weapons, hence new-clear weapons) and conventional armed forces, which, in some low-IQ areas of the world like Arizona and Kazakhstan involved army training based solely on arms-only running races to train for the arms race everyone was talking about.
The greatest fear during the Cold War was the risk it would escalate into a full nuclear exchange and in the absence of Spam, this was big deal. Both sides developed deterrence and detergent policies that prevented problems from escalating and provided means of washing ones’ hands of any responsibility in case problems escalated.
The other insane trend during the Cold War was that many more people bought refrigerators and air-conditioners to keep up with the Joneses or the Gorbachevs, depending on which side one was on. Ice-cream manufacturers set up their cold chains at a furious pace ending in desperate American and Russian salesmen trying to sell ice cream to penguins.

During the same period, the MAD comic cartoon strip Spy v/s Spy inspired the setting up of the FBI in USA and the KGB in Russia. Governments bought huge quantities of dark glasses, overcoats and Fedora hats to equip their spies. Soon, the Feds and KGB operatives were well dressed and indistinguishable from any other secret agent, which was a major victory in itself.

Britain, which was having a cup of tea while all this happened, woke up to the buying frenzy pretty late and could only get some top hats and tuxedos on the market.
This led to the formation of a different kind of Secret Agency in Britain. It was a masterstroke that ensured no one took it seriously. They called their agency MI6 and their secret agents were called Double Zeroes. Soon afterwards they leaked MI6 jokes on the spy market and the Feds and KGB men were soon cracking up on jokes like “No wonder they are called the ‘Am I six?’(MI6) while the British Double Zero agents were undercover (usually with wives of Fed and KGB men)

Today we track the beginnings of the most famous Double Zero agent ever, James Bond, in this weeks release ‘Casino Royale’.
It all starts as James Bond goes about getting his double-zero status in a taut 10 minutes action sequence that involves him going through a test at MI6. There are several mannequins that he has to fight and he passes the test when he remembers to french kiss all the female mannequins while demolishing the male ones. This done, his boss, M instructs him to don a tuxedo and bring down Le Chiffre (the chauffeur, in French), the man who is bankrolling global terrorism. Le Chiffre is a bad man (a la Gulshan Grover, but minus the bad acting) and spends most of his time at Casino Royale, a casino at Montenegro (since renamed Monte, post the Colour Slur Era). He has been on a golden streak at the slot machine for well over three years and is just very excited to hear the coins tinkle as he keeps winning. Terrorists including G.W.Bush, Laden and Ricky Ponting, regularly stop by and scoop up cash he keeps winning, as he is very involved in his winning streak.
James Bond attempts to draw Le Chiffre’s attention away from the slot machine and towards other exciting games like Roulette (a small French jam roll) and Blackjack (since renamed Jack, post the Colour Slur Era), and ends up very depressed when he can’t.
M advises Bond to pull up his socks and get back to his task. This adjustment of socks results in serious injury to some of Bonds’ foot ligaments and he limps right into Vesper Lynd (not the obscure Scandinavian wrestling technique, a woman)
Vesper Lynd, it turns out, has a serious problem speaking her name and hence tends to attach herself to the other persons’ lips as soon as preliminary greetings are exchanged. Bond is terribly attracted to a woman who kisses him before he says ‘I’m Bond, James Bond’ and proceeds to knock back a few shaken martini’s, by the end of which he falls asleep and cannot be stirred.
There is hope still though; as Bond carries with him several unique gadgets that could help him succeed in his mission. (including three varieties of pocket comb + expense calculators, 14 ear buds and a tube of an obscure Indian gum called FeviBond) Which of these gadgets save the day? Is it the Yoko hand massager that 007 is carrying which will persuade Le Chiffre to give rest to his tired hands?
Will Vesper Lynd finally manage to say her name before she meets unsavoury and ugly men, like myself? Will Bond ever get up from under the covers? Are all men beta versions of James Bond, the alpha male?
Watch Casino Royale to find out! I am tomorrow.

* Objects in the Preview Mirror may appear sillier than they are.
Disclaimer: Characters in the above story are not based on any characters in the film. Any resemblance or humour is pure luck.
**OPM appears in the Thursday edition of Bangalore BIAS and previews a Friday release

Viva !

2006-11-14T23:39:00.000-08:00

Yeah ! My reaction to life too, Ol' Blue Eyes !

Nov 9 - Vivah

2006-11-13T19:27:00.000-08:00

OPM*

Presents – Vivah (OR) Are Marriages made in Heaven dot com?

Circa 14-16 BC : Ancient Greek Times

Mankind has lived life in a paradise, without worry, thus far. Epimetheus meets Pandora and tells her never to open the jar she has received from Zeus after which they proceed to make uninhibited love in the gardens.

However, Pandora's curiosity gets the better of her and as Epimetheus sleeps on his comfortable bed (comfortable beds were the norm in Ancient Greece. There were no other kinds of bed, as they were living in Paradise, which now is only a biryani joint in Hyderabad) she opens it, releasing all the misfortunes of mankind (plague, sorrow, the Australian Cricket team, greed, Indian Television soaps, old age, Himesh and worst of all, Clothing)
When Epimetheus wakes, he finds his bed has bedbugs and Pandora now wants to be called his wife. Inhibited lovemaking and Headaches follow immediately. Marriage is invented.

Circa 4-6 BC : India

Mallanaga Vatsyayana is born to middle class parents in the Golden Age of the Gupta dynasty. After experimenting with drugs for a short while he decides that he needs something more potent(this was mostly because the only drugs available were Homeopathic drugs).

He goes on to write the Kama Sutra, which becomes a major hit but earns him no royalties. His book, though, influences people of the time to reconsider the institution of Marriage. For sometime, everyone has a lot of fun, but when the scions of the Gupta dynasty decide to give up marriage, their progeny end up with no surname. Thus other opportunistic armies invade to claim the throne and it is curtains for the Gupta dynasty and the Vatsyayana period.

Circa Modern Times: India

Rajshri Productions (est. 1947 AD) has a new leading light, Sooraj. Sooraj decides to make movies about the phenomenon of marriages in India, and goes on to tell tremendous stories about wealthy people, many brothers, dogs, black-bucks and love, set in the background of weddings.

In the 21st century, Sooraj brings us a brand new tale with the usual ingredients. This week we look at what his Vivah, promises.

In a superb break of tradition, Sooraj decides to look at the ‘golden period between engagement and marriage’. ‘Golden’, surely because of the large amounts of dowry discussed during the period, but I must restrict myself from making social-historian like observations.

Gentle, soft spoken Prem (meaning ‘Love’), the scion of one of Delhi's most prosperous business houses, has grown up living in the fast lane, surrounded by Bengali friends who call him Prem da.
Now the thing with Sooraj is that his heroes are always called Prem and the promos proclaim loudly that Prem is Back. Where is Prem back from, you ask?
Prem is back from Sweden where the girls are all beautiful, with terrific metabolism and their idea of a good workout is… er. I’m told this is a paper for the entire family, and though I did try telling them that the ‘entire family’ usually happens after a good workout…. oh well, what the hell! Families depend heavily on storks delivering babies at the doorstep, children.

Yes, so Prem is an eligible bachelor who is just back from Stockholm and when his dad (Anupam Kheer) sweet talks him into meeting Poonam, promising him a trip to Amsterdam in return, he gives in. Poonam is a homely girl (don’t ask me what that means!) who has lived her life in the quaint town of Madhupur (don’t ask me where that is!) raised by her uncle (or chacha), Mr.Chacha. She calls him Chacha Chacha and everybody spends a lot of time dancing badly everytime this happens.
The rest of Madhupur are all Poonam’s relatives and there are several Tai-jis(professional tie makers), Nunn-ads(evangelical advertisements), Par-dadis(grannies with wings) and Ji-jus(Yes men). Large portions of the movie are spent explaining the relative positions of each relative in the Grand Madhupur Opera, which preaches that Nuclear Families Bomb.

When Poonam and Prem meet they have an awkward, formal exchange of words which is mostly because Prem has an itch to run away and Poonam is talking from under the veil/dupatta that girls in Madhupur don at all times.
These problems are soon overcome though and they have a deep, meaningful conversation that goes thus:
Prem (talking like he did in Stockholm): So you’re ready to get it on, eh?
Poonam (talking about her veil): But I already have it on.
Prem: Way to go girl!

The couple soon discover that they are sole mates, since they wear the same brand of footwear and this opens Prem to the idea of modernity and tradition co-existing, resulting in their engagement.

Prem and Poonam now enter the most magical and romantic time of their lives. Six months fly by happily. Just when everything is set for the wedding Prem decides to party hop one last time. This creates problems, and it will take God’s grace to ensure that the couple overcomes their difficulties.

Will Prem get some action tonight? What is the historical context of Dupattas? Will the couple have to register on a marriage website? Where does Time fly and in which directions? Who is God?

To find out watch Vivah that releases tomorrow!

* Objects in the Preview Mirror may appear sillier than they are.

Disclaimer: Characters in the above story are not based on any characters in the film. Any resemblance or humour is pure luck.

**OPM appears in the Thursday edition of Bangalore BIAS and previews a Friday release

2 Nov 2006 - The Departed

2006-11-07T02:14:00.000-08:00

OPM*

Presents – The De(e)part Ed(itorial)

Hello Boys! Here is a poser.
Between you and me, how many times have we gone to a fancy Italian restaurant and felt like absolute Neanderthals while the women in our lives ordered, very authoritatively, a completely indecipherable dinner, which looked like this:

Salad – Caesars Salad (But Caesar is ancient Roman history, you thought!)
Side dish – Avocado with something balsamic (which you guess is a new Scandinavian country)
Pasta - Black pepper fettuccine for Her and Angel hair pasta penne primavera for You (the pasta is always mind boggling and between the penne and the spaghetti you are sure its curtains for Sergio Leone curry westerns and Angel hair in your food. Also you are pretty sure now that Fibonacci and Muesli are pasta variants)

Yes, so between you and me, how many times have you felt like Early Man when you visited an Italian Restaurant? I’ve felt like that every time! Which means, even if you haven’t felt that way, atleast one out of every two men have felt like Early Man. Agreed it is very small sample size, you statistically inclined Nay Sayers! On another note, it should be noted that statistics were invented by men, most likely Early Men (who were, of course, the first breed of superhero), to tell lies convincingly.
Sample Early Conversation:

Early Man 1 – I got that tyranonoses with one hit to its nose.
Early Man 2 – That is because on 12th Marchinoiry (the Roman calendar hadn’t been invented yet. Neither had the Romans) at 5.43 pm I performed a choke slam on it. It was obviously weakened by that encounter. That was the same night I choke slammed 84 Trachiblockednoses and 14 Leakynoseblowers. It is well documented.
Early Woman – Come eat the wonderful pasta I just made.
Early Men – huh??!!?

Yes. So men have been struggling with understanding Italian food for ages. This week ‘The Departed’ by that fantastically fast and furious director Martin ScorCC (easily better than the Yamaha 125 CC) documents these struggles in modern day Boston.
Based on the 2002 Hong Kong movie, Infernal Affairs, ScorCC accelerates the story to suit Western audiences. Infernal Affairs was loosely about, sex in the kitchen, described by a restaurant owner Chow Chow Toh Yun Fat Hotahai. Chow Chow would famously say “Those Infernal Affairs in the Kitchen” each time someone complained of less Munch in their Manchurian or suo moto usage of aginomoto in their food.

In ScorCC’s movie the action starts in Downtown Boston at the offices of The DeepArt Editorial, a monthly Fine Arts magazine, run by two gourmet chefs turned recipe publishers. Leo and Matt (played by Leo DiCaprio and Matt Damon) are pretty riled with everyone in Boston as the DeepArt Editorial is selling only a handful of copies. Worse is that though the articles on painting and sculpture have got fan mail their Italian Recipes are not being appreciated.
They meet a marketing professional Madolyn (Vera Farmiga), who, after segmenting the market, tells them that the best bet would be to target the Mafiosi in Boston as they are all Italian. After some deep mining she finds out that the most discerning connoisseur of Italian food in Boston is the mob boss Jackie Boy (Jack Nicholson). Jackie Boy regularly bumps off waiters for making him wait and usually achieves this by dining at Boston’s best Italian joints (no connection with marijuana).
Leo and Matt are convinced by Madolyn’s analysis and can’t get their eyes off her legs because she has really long legs that extend to the South Pole, especially in a photograph taken at the South Pole. As soon as Madolyn realizes their primal interest in her she walks away really fast (helped along by her long legs that ensure she wins the Boston Marathon the following year)
Consequently, Leo and Matt make an appointment with Jackie Boy, who in turn promises to increase their papers circulation within their TG of gangsters.
Now, Jackie Boy is a respected don as he is the only one who knows what to order at Italian restaurants. This is because it has been several generations since the first Italian people broke ship at America and with cross-pollination in large numbers (especially among varieties of Italian flora) it has become tough on gangsters to keep their Italian heritage. Jackie Boy cannot fight these socio-economic challenges though he throws a big Boston Tea Party and is forced to admit failure to Leo and Matt.
Leo and Matt, who have been stewing in their own gravy (a small kitchen accident), do not take this news well and join forces to become Leo Matt El Inc, which goes on to toy with Jackie Boys’ pasta every time he orders one.
Jackie Boy is frustrated as his penne is served with shredded cheese and his Zucchini is always an Italian called Zucchini who proceeds to sing him an Operetta called ‘Ri’ in sotto voice.
Jackie Boy surrenders to Marky Mark and Alec Baldwin, who play conmen disguised as coppers, since he maintains that jail cuisine is better than badly made Italian food. The conmen proceed to retire on the money that the mob boss pays them every week to avoid eating badly made Italian cuisine, by investing in a mock jailhouse for their SIP (Silly Italian Person not Systematic Investment Plan).
Watch this movie today, if you empathise with Italian gourmet challenges! Also, today’s question:

Why didn’t the good boy ever eat the Ganache tart for dessert?

* Objects in the Preview Mirror may appear sillier than they are.

Disclaimer: Characters in the above story are not based on any characters in the film. Any resemblance or humour is pure luck.

**OPM appears in the Thursday edition of Bangalore BIAS and previews a Friday release

26 Oct 2006 - Umrao Jaan

2006-11-03T06:47:00.000-08:00

OPM*

Presents – Umrao Jaan OR Another Beard Tale

It is the summer of 1855 AD, in Lucknow, the capital of Avadh. It is the same year in other places around the world too, but not necessarily summer.

In the streets, Umrao Jaan Ada’s songs are a rage:

Dil Cheez Kya Hai (‘My heart is a cheese ball’, when cheese balls hadn’t been invented yet too!!)
And
Yeh kya Jageh hai Doston (‘Where the ****** hell are we?’, a later day rock anthem)

An integral part of Urdu literature, Mirza Ruswa's 'Umrao Jaan Ada' is an Urdu classic not to be missed. Umrao Jaan, that releases next week, is a paean to that great Urdu book, with some historical inaccuracies and major script changes thrown in.
Much like ‘The Symbol formerly known as An artist formerly known as Prince who was formerly known as Prince’ we track the life of Umrao Jaan Ada backwards, in flashback, just as Urdu is read.

Lets give this some irrelevant historical context first:

Bahadur Shah Zafar is a harassed man. As the last in the long line of Mughals he is irritated that he will only appear as a footnote in history textbooks later and furthermore will feature in a Doordarshan teleserial.
The British are bothering him and he hates parathas since it reminds him of the Marathas. This is because ever since Shivaji made fun of Aurangzeb’s name the Mughal Empire has been in decline.
To top it all, he hasn’t been to a party in ages since it has become a habit to decline (invitations).

Wajid Ali Shah, the nawab of Avadh is a harassed man. The British have exiled him to Calcutta and men with ‘Nawab’ as first name are walking around Lucknow, his capital, robbing him of exclusivity. He frequently has altercations with common men that go thus:
Wajid : I’m the Nawab of Avadh
Marble Slab Layer : I’m Nawab

Harassment, thus, has hit an all time high in 19th century India. Anti-harassment laws are laid down (and this is even before the workplace for women was invented)

Umrao Jaan’s story begins set in this historical context, though she begins her story named a different name. Born Ameeran, to a poor family in Faizabad, she gets kidnapped by Dilawar Khan, a local malcontent, as her name suggests a rich father. When Dilawar discovers that ransom money is out of the question he sells her to Khannum Sahib in Lucknow. Khannum Sahib, in spite of the name, is a woman who runs a Kotha in Lucknow.
A Kotha is a place similar to the modern town of Kota in Rajasthan, but much cooler because of the Mughal marble used.

Since the Mughal Empire has been in decline, for over a century, Men folk have taken to sitting around and growing beards. This is an excruciatingly slow and tedious process that involves waiting, which they have no patience for. (As you can figure, Barbers had it really tough during Mughal decline times and were only saved by the invention of the profession, ‘Hairstylists’)
So the men folk, they’d troop into Kothas as cricket stadia hadn’t been invented in India yet.

Kothas, hence, were a good business to be in, though they would never get a Nasdaq listing since they weren’t equal opportunity employers. Women like Khannum Sahib trained the girls that came in to be proficient in performing arts like music, dance and poetry. The girls in turn used these skills to keep men occupied while their beards grew.
Ameeran, who had changed her name to Umrao Jaan (That U.M.Rao Life) becomes proficient in all the performing arts and belts out hit after hit. As she gains on the popularity ratings, she changes her name again to Umrao Jaan Ada.

Nawab Sultan, played by Abhishek Bachchan, is a really harassed man. He doesn’t know whether he is a Nawab or a Sultan and has been rejected by 18 women. This is mainly because he writes Urdu forwards and every woman ends up reading his ‘I love you’ notes, as ‘You love me’.

When the harassed Nawab Sultan visits Khannum’s Kotha and leaves a note for Umrao Jaan, she falls in love with him, as she is dyslexic and reads his note right.

It takes them three years to meet though, as Umrao likes her men with a full beard. In the three years, Mangal Pandey has grown his hair and kicked off the 1857 revolt. The British, though, have retaliated and laid siege to Lucknow.

As Umrao and Nawab clink their Rooafzah glasses together, the British enter Lucknow and throw everybody out. They become the rulers of Lucknow but soon realize that there is no longer anyone to rule over.
They locate Umrao Jaan Ada at Faizabad and hire her as an ambassador for Lucknow, to attract people back to town. For a brief period, Umrao is known as Umrao John, as a telling comment on her British connections.
Will Umrao Jaan ever get the Gazette office to make changes to her name? Will Nawab ever be able to shave? Who is John?
Watch Umrao Jaan to find out!

* Objects in the Preview Mirror may appear sillier than they are.

Disclaimer: Characters in the above story are not based on any characters in the film. Any resemblance or humour is pure luck.

**OPM appears in the Thursday edition of Bangalore BIAS and previews a Friday release

19 Oct 2006 - Jaan-E-Mann

2006-10-26T03:41:00.000-07:00

OPM*

Presents - Jaan-E-Mann - Geometry Fail :(

Love triangles can be complicated. Especially if you failed geometry in school.

Indian film makers, for long, have relied on love triangles to give them story angles. It is rarely though that film makers have attempted anything more complicated.
For example, the love quadrilateral or the love polygon. Or the severely interesting, Love Pyramid, where the object of love is at the top and everyone else is at the bottom. The top of the pyramid is usually inhabited by women of breathtaking beauty who do not necessarily suffer from asthma. Examples include Greta Garbo, and closer home, divas like Madhubala. These people are at no disadvantage even if they are geometrically challenged.
At the bottom of the pyramid though, it is a very different story. The bottom is usually inhabited by men of negligible or no character. Examples include but are not limited to Me. The big problem with being at the bottom of the pyramid is that, like Tutankhamen, one is usually dead. (Proven by the fact that I am, almost always, a dead bore)

There are several interestingly geometric love plots which are rare and enthralling. One, which is found only in America, is called the Love Pentagon. It is a big secret and is kept undercover most of the time except once when Bill and Monica visited.

If it is difficult for film makers to come up with complicated love geometry, it is just as bad for characters stuck in straightforward love triangles. This is because one has to know whether one has the right-angle on the triangle and since Pythagoras is dead there is no longer any hypoteNews to explain it.
All these struggles are well documented in tomorrow’s release Jaan-e-mann.

Jaan-E-Mann is, obviously, about three people. It starts off ten years in the past on a college campus.

Salman plays Jaan, a 40 year old man masquerading as a college student. He is losing hair and has developed a fetish for rock-star hairstyles. Hence the masquerading, to enable wearing wigs. As a college student who has 40 years of life experience he has several advantages over his 20 year old peers. For one, he has watched far more sitcoms and knows many more jokes. This makes him a great hit with the girls in college.

Akshay plays Mann, an 18 year old genius with dreams of being a mover and shaker on the stock exchange someday and a really bad haircut. He comes from a lower middle class background and having been deprived of basic necessities in life like Cable Tv, he has never watched any ‘Friends’ or ‘Will and Grace’. As a result, he knows no jokes at all and hence gets flustered every time he meets a girl, which fortunately is only twice(once a mannequin and the other a rajasthani puppet)

Preity Zinta plays E, the youngest of 5 siblings. Her 4 older sisters, A, B, C and D are played by relatively unknown actors who do not even know the basic alphabet of acting. Since the movie begins in the period when the Internet Revolution started in India, email, e-commerce and E become the craze of the college.

Both Jaan and Mann have email ids but pass out (of college) before they can express their love for E(to her, not to each other)

Ten years later, in the present day, things have changed. Broadband rates have, happily, hit a new low.

E has a completely new wardrobe. Mann is a successful stock-broker and has a 300 dollar haircut. Jaan has a nine year old son, Naan, and has had hair-weaving done. Anupam Kher does a brilliant job as Jaan’s son Naan and is instrumental in bringing our protagonists together again thus:

Naan: How are babies born??
Jaan: Errr… Storks deliver them at the doorstep…
Naan: I want to go to the Stock Exchange NOW!! Waaaahhh!!

Jaan and son make their way to the Stock Market as Mann walks down from his cabin to grab a vada-pav for lunch. E happens to be at the stock market for reasons known only to the scriptwriter. Ten years after they last met; our lead characters meet each other again in a stock Yash Raj movie scene.

Its fireworks all over again for Jaan and Mann, but mostly because it is Diwali. Jaan, to keep his chances of dating E alive, claims that Naan is only his dwarf friend. Mann, who hasn’t watched any sitcoms yet, doesn’t say anything at all. Naan thinks E is a stork and proceeds to try to pluck some feathers. Jaan explains this act by saying that Naan is a dwarf who plays a clown in Boris Karloff’s circus. At the mention of a clown, E runs away screaming her name over and over again. It turns out that she is coulrophobic.

What follows is an entertaining tragi-comedy of errors that can only be watched, not described in words. This was the reason they worked without a script in the first place!

As a tribute to geometric genius through the ages, here is a conundrum for you folks: There are two kinds of lines. One is the straight line. Which is the other kind of line?

* Objects in the Preview Mirror may appear sillier than they are.

Disclaimer: Characters in the above story are not based on any characters in the film. Any resemblance or humour is pure luck.
**OPM appears in the Thursday edition of Bangalore BIAS and previews a Friday release

12 Oct 2006 - Don, The Chase Begins

2006-10-14T21:26:00.000-07:00

OPM*

Presents - Don (‘t) do that!

Remakes are the order of the day. They are even remaking poems. William Blake’s wry observation on the meaning of life, which goes: “Little Fly, thy summers play, My thoughtless hand, has brushed away” has been remade into an observation of party hopping nightmares:

Your Little Fly
Is open hey!!
Is your thoughtless hand, on holiday?

Yes, so remakes are the order of the day (including this sentence). People are remaking everything from songs to Tarla Dalal’s cooking to movies. I even remade the coffee that I botched up this morning!

The thing with the business of remaking is that one has to start at the beginning. Sometimes even before the beginning, in the past.
This makes remaking a movie a very difficult thing to do involving several precursors to filming. Chief among these is that one has to first, watch the original. This can be pretty annoying especially if you are looking to remake movies like YHTKH, HKSKN or James (sitting through one entire showing of such movies usually ensures that the thought of remaking is quickly rethought and disinfected)
Even if a filmmaker zeroes in on a yesteryear-hit things can go severely wrong at the scripting stage. Today, we will look at some of the pitfalls that the makers of the new Don faced.

In the 28 years that have followed the release of the original Don the Average Indian Height has gone up by about 2 inches (according to statistics provided by Indian Trouser Manufacturers). The new Don though, is shorter by about 6 inches. This is rather unfortunate and makes it very difficult for the filmmaker to show him as a larger than life character (smaller than life heroes don’t work in regular Bollywood fare).
They decided, hence, to set the new movie in Malaysia, where height statistics make our protagonist suitably larger than life.
This done they set out making changes to the script, where necessary and otherwise.
For starters, all the female characters would wear shorter clothes than in the original since they were Indian women of average Indian height, who did their shopping in Malaysia. Also Roma was renamed Aroma, to give her character a unique oriental flavour resulting in metaphysical moments like:
Don: (as he looks for spare bullets, during a gunfight) I can’t find anything! What is this, Aroma?!!!?
Aroma: Oh, that is just the smell of gunpowder
and
Don: (appreciating the wine tasting class that Aroma has enrolled him in) : Oh, Aroma!
Aroma: No! You need to taste the wine, not smell it

The original character Jasjit, had to be rewritten too since there are no careers left for Circus high wire walkers in the absence of all circuses except Navjot Piddhu, in the present day. So the new Jas-jit is a JIT consultant (a Japanese management philosophy which gave the world the farcical face-saving technique of the Just-In-Time marriage) with fake degrees, who gets injured when a huge wedge falls on his foot. After this huge wedgie, he has a permanent limp (which is understandable if you went to the same school as I did).
Moving the story 28 years ahead while retaining its original appeal meant giving the characters a retro look and retaining some original songs.
A great deal of planning and detailing was done on the new version of ‘Khaike pan’ that essentially involved finding a blue shirt with floral prints.
Also, Don, since he is a Malaysia based underworld don, and not a regular white-collar office-goer wears his tie inside his shirt. Thankfully they decided not to do a superman with his innerwear.
All this was done at a huge cost to the makers (as well as the audience).
True to the contemporary setting, the new Don is very gadget-friendly and always carries an iPod and a cool new Blackberry, which make him painfully slow during fight sequences, as he is worried about damaging them. Gadgets also provide fodder for conversation and light moments especially when Malik continuously mistakes ‘pass me some black berries’ for ‘pass me the Blackberry’.
The biggest script challenge was to ensure that none of the present characters ever watched any Indian TV in case they saw reruns of the original Don and hence figured out what happened next. This was an additional reason to set the movie in Malaysia where there are only 3 porn channels (including a news channel called Hot News and a sports channel called Water)
The basic plot remains the same except that they decided not to bump off the actual Don, retaining him in captivity, much like his Versace ties. The masterstroke is the Promo, which shows Don with his face enveloped in smoke, in spite of the ban against depicting cigarette smoking onscreen. This was achieved by shooting in really cloudy conditions in Ooty.

It is easy to see that the biggest movie of 2006, DON is a high-methane, twisted roller-coaster ride, with just the right dose of clamour, action, suspense, romance and rerun quality.
Of course, they called it Don-The Chase Begins only because they were hurrying to catch the October 20th Diwali release.

* Objects in the Preview Mirror may appear sillier than they are.

Disclaimer: Characters in the above story are not based on any characters in the film. Any resemblance or humour is pure luck.
**OPM appears in the Thursday edition of Bangalore BIAS and previews a Friday release

5 Oct 2006 - Zindaggi Rocks

2006-10-11T03:36:00.000-07:00

OPM*

Presents - Zindagi Rock Bottom

The thing with most women is that they love their jewellery. Not only their own, but also all the stuff in jewellery stores.

This is a problem for the post-metrosexual man who marries/dates this kind of woman, who, it turns out, is every woman but Condoleeza Rice. Now, obviously, since women like jewellery so much it must be plenty likable. A race that makes the world go round, one that treats animals and men with so much care and compassion can scarcely be off the mark.
But for the men who these women condescend to date and/or live with, Jewellery is a big conundrum. One theory that is going around is that Jewellery was invented shortly after the invention of Marriage. This was because after the first few years of marriage men, invariably, ran out of gifting ideas on anniversaries, birthdays, makeup days, make out days etc. Women, at this stage helped men out by inventing Jewellery.
There is another theory making the rounds, which claims that Marriage itself was invented by women to be able to invent Jewellery later. This rings true when you realize that women wouldn’t be marrying just to stay with us men. Especially me.

Zindagi Rocks, a movie that explores the tragic obsession of one woman with Diamonds, answers none of my questions on jewellery, even partially.

Sushmita plays Kria, a Magnificent Woman and a singer who sings for a travelling circus, and is billed only next to Crudus, the Entertaining Clown. Her other colleagues include her brother Karam, the Phenomenal Talent and Loin, a Great Animal Trainer.
The circus is run by a failed Ad agency copywriter with a flair for the descriptive who calls himself Mahesh Batt, the Former Copywriter.

The film begins with a glorious, soprano-like rendition of ‘Diamonds are a girl’s best friend’ by Kria, a sequence further enhanced as she sings while performing a complicated trapeze act that involves her stunt double and some standard issue trapeze equipment.
She ends the song on a high octave landing on the net with a flourish. The audience erupts, but this is primarily because the circus elephant is on the loose and there is pandemonium in the paying public. Everything settles down when people realize that it is only a baby elephant that is on the loose. However, when Loin, a Great Animal Trainer performs his act with lion cubs, there is pandemonium in the paying public again and they start demanding a refund. Everything settles down again as Crudus, the Entertaining Clown performs a crude and hilarious version of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. This act includes several very sad jokes in poor taste like “when in Rome, do a Romeo”. The paying public enjoy the act hugely mainly on account of the fact that Crudus has forgotten his pants.
At the finale, Kria performs ‘Diamonds are a girl’s best friend’ again, to much outrage among the paying public.
This happens throughout the season (precisely 3 days) and we begin to realize that Kria is obsessed with the ‘Diamonds’ song. We also realize that Crudus never forgets his pants, he just doesn’t have any!

In the audience every night is Shiny, a man who has won seasons tickets to the circus. He is to be Kria’s Knight in Shining Armour and everyone is pretty disappointed when he is never shown in anything but Corduroys. Shiny, a budding psychologist, has done world famous research in trying to answer questions concerning jewellery that include but are not limited to:
-Why aren’t American diamonds satisfactory when only a trained jeweller can tell the difference?
-Why is Platinum so expensive when it looks like steel?
-Why is White Gold?

At the end of the season, i.e. the third show, Kria breaks down after yet another rendition of Marilyn Monroe’s ‘Diamonds’. Shiny rushes to her side and becomes her Shrink (mainly because he’s not been getting his daily dose of viagra). She is taken to his clinic, where, as she rests on the couch, she is very keen to know where he bought the very comfortable couch.

After much discussion on jewellery and the 1953 Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell movie, “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes”, the solution to her problem strikes Shiny while he is fiddling with his iPod.
He realizes that Kria is not mentally ill. Nor is she obsessed with rocks of any kind, including diamonds. Her problem is that she only knows ONE song.
Everything ends well when he buys her the new Microsoft Zoon and gifts her several disks of pirated music.

* Objects in the Preview Mirror may appear sillier than they are.

Disclaimer: Characters in the above story are not based on any characters in the film. Any resemblance or humour is pure luck.
**OPM appears in the Thursday edition of Bangalore BIAS and previews a Friday release

28 Sept 2006 - John Tucker Must Die

2006-10-11T03:35:00.000-07:00

OPM*

Presents - John Tucker comes Unstuck

I envy people. No, not all people. But people who eat junk food all their life and then develop a negligible potbelly when they turn 45.
It just isn’t fair! These people never get their just desserts! They just keep having as many desserts as they want.

I, on the other hand, have lived my life in the fear of that extra kilo. I’ve dined on Atkins, supped on the GM diet, run a couple of half marathons and am still about 8 kilos overweight.
People like me, to pace our wardrobes to our waistlines, continue spending small fortunes every year. We have believed, for unreasonable amounts of time, that the Slim Sauna Belt is worthy of Design awards. (This is usually the amount of time it takes to call the sales line, tell a bewildered sales person that you would actually like to order the belt, assure him it isn’t a prank call, receive the product and open the packaging to find that it isn’t that design-hot. The pain is worse when you realize that even though they call it the slim-sauna you cant really use it as a belt for your pants as they haven’t made belt loops that large as yet)
Us, obesity-prone yahoos, have also realized that gym is called gym because it is for gymnasts and athletes and all those people who keep sportswear companies going. We are always going to be the fat ones chugging away at the treadmill and providing encouragement to thinner and fitter people, much in the way George Bush provides mirth to all.
It is for us that they invented liposuction. Nobody knows why it is called “Lipo-suction” though. They understand the suction part, but no one has dope on what ‘Lipo’ is. Lipo rhymes with Hippo, come to think of it.
We have followed studies in vague magazines like Vogue about how Weight watchers in USA have more success at watching their weight than people in India and other Commonwealth countries.

All the assorted mysteries that intrepid obese explorers have been trying to unravel are cleared up in this weeks release “John Tucker Must Die”.

John Tucker is the world’s most famous liposuction expert. Hence the name, John Tucker. He is also a handsome man with jet-black hair who claims to be only 29 years old. No one believes him and there is a cry in social circles that John Tucker Must Dye (his hair).
As a liposuction expert, he has built a huge fortune thinning down wealthy obese clients including Paris Hiltown, her Chihuahua, and Fatboy Slim, the rap artist.
Fat people flock to him much like huge herds of flying elephants, as his liposuction procedure, remarkably, leaves people with great skin and a great basal metabolic rate.
There are rumours though that he sells all the fat he accumulates, mining his celebrity clients, for huge sums on online ecommerce sites for the celebrity crazy. The CIA and the IRS want him to come clean, else his fat is on the fire.

The story arc goes on to show how John Tucker, with the help of his three girlfriends, Tomie, Dickie and Harini, clears up his name by showing that he has never performed liposuction. In an almost famous court scene he says:

Tucker: All I know about Liposuction, is that Lipo derives its name from the old Latin word for “The Head”, i.e. The Lipo of the family, Julius Caesar.
I’m only a gym instructor with 7 anaesthetist credits at Medical school. I have never given Lipo. (He gets warned for using bad language in court for this)
All I do is anaesthetize my clients and wrap them up in my Giant Sauna Belt for about 3 days. It really works. Call 800 200 9898 today! (He gets warned for using marketing language in court for this)

It all ends happily when NASA cancels 17 space missions to commission 3 Giant Sauna Belts instead.

Somewhere in the subtext was hidden for me the answer to why Weight Watchers in USA do better than their Commonwealth counterparts. In USA they watch the pounds. We are watching the Kilos, damn it!

For actual dope on Liposuction go to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liposuction

* Objects in the Preview Mirror may appear sillier than they are.

Disclaimer: Characters in the above story are not based on any characters in the film. Any resemblance or humour is pure luck.

21 Sept 2006 - Wickerman

2006-10-11T03:27:00.000-07:00

OPM*

Presents - Wicker Doors

You know that it would be untrue,
You know that I would be a liar,
If I were to say to you mom,
I couldn’t get much higher

Come on lady, lift me higher
Come on lady, lift me higher

Mommy I really need that lyre
Yeah, yeah, yeah
Lift me higher
Lift me higher yeah yeah

- Little Jim Morrison

Jim Morrison’s father, Morris, who named him Jim Morrison, was a man who married a Gym Instructor. Jim’s mommy was weirder than his father, if you can believe that. She insisted that every desire of little Jim’s would be met if he climbed trees, the taller the better. Jim, whose childhood ambition was to own a lyre and play it after he set fire to his home, just couldn’t climb Rosewood trees as he was in love with a girl named Rose. The lyrics above, were written by Little Jim, as a tribute to his struggle to get a lyre. The poems he wrote about his childhood aspirations formed the basis for the lyrics he wrote for The Doors later in life.

This week’s release is a movie based on these early years of Jim’s life. Since it is only about Jim and not about the band ‘The Doors’ it is aptly called Door.

Oops, or is that Door without an extra o – Dor! I’ve no preview, unfortunately, for Nagesh Kukunoor’s Dor, so we will take a look at what Nicholas Cage’s “The Wickerman”, that releases tomorrow, is about.

Wickertionary.com Unabridged (v 1.0.1)
wicker /ˈwɪk ər/ Pronunciation Key [wik-er] - A flexible branch or twig of a plant such as willow, used in weaving baskets and furniture

Cage plays a man who owns a furniture store that deals exclusively in Wickerwork. Unfortunately the branches and twigs he’s been getting as raw material are only as flexible as his own facial muscles. This means that he can only make wickerwork curtain rods and walking sticks. The curtains come down on his business soon enough and he decides to experiment with wicker till he finds the best wicker possible. In the course of his experiments he has an accident involving a truckload of wicker and 3 espresso machines.
When he wakes up he finds he can spin webs of wicker a la Spiderman. He jumps off his balcony only to realize that wicker webs don’t stick and is badly hurt. This doesn’t deter him and he becomes a superhero – WickerMan!

To get buzz going he advertises in the personals column offering his services as WickerMan Superhero. This done, he worries about a costume and a secret identity (he has neither but is not naked). As he doesn’t have the body to carry off the innerwear-outside style adopted by so many superheroes, he wears normal clothes bought at the mall.
He begins receiving calls for help, but usually when someone wants a wickerwork sofa mended. In addition to this, he has no friends, as the better-known superheroes are an exclusive set. He has to settle for 2nd and 3rd grade superhero friends like CycleRepairMan, WatchMan, YesMan and ManFriday. They sit in a pub all day in hope that honest citizens will need their help. CycleRepairMan helps a child with his tricycle but that doesn’t really bring them cheer.

Meanwhile, on the Internet, a fat evil nerd called Newman is spreading WickerMan jokes like:

Superman: Lois, I wish I knew my own strength! I can never fix your plumbing without damaging everything.
Lois: I know what we’ll do. Lets call on WeakerMan!

Or

Batman: Vicki, all my underwear is in the laundry. What do I do?
Vicki Vale: I know what we’ll do. Lets call on KnickerMan!

WickerMan, all upset and riled turns neurotic, writing poems like-

Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
I’m a schizophrenic,
And so am I.

Finally he decides to invent his own mission. He pretends that he has been called upon to investigate the disappearance of a young girl, Alice, who was last seen next to a rabbit hole. Newman ruins it for him by asking questions on National TV about Lewis Carroll.

WickerMan breaks down and confesses on Oprah, after which, in gratitude, he weaves up a wicker chair for her on the show. All ends well when he is given hundreds of orders on the show and WickerMan becomes a millionaire.

* Objects in the Preview Mirror may appear sillier than they are.

Disclaimer: Characters in the above story are not based on any characters in the film. Any resemblance or humour is pure luck.

Aham Mudha Asi

2006-09-28T21:49:00.000-07:00

I love it when people wax eloquent over words said or read, and soundbites like 'deep meaning' and 'profound eloquence' emerge.

It offers deep profound eloquent insights into those people.

OPM* - SHIVA (or) Shiva’s Regal Story (or) The Shivers

2006-09-18T21:07:00.000-07:00

Last week, Objects in the Preview Mirror came out into the world with no warning or explanations. Like a blackhead or a Nadal 3rd round loss at the US Open.
This week, I intend to set the record straight and make the intent of this column even less clear.
Being an avid movie watcher I have gathered one very important fact. This is that people will continue to watch movies however unreal, miscast, boring, tepid or unimaginative the promos are. This column, hence, is dedicated to all those moviegoers who will continue to watch movies in spite of them being written about here.
Once in a while I aim to give you some small relief, hopefully comic, to fill in the time between driving, working and living in this city.

Today we will look at what Shiva, that releases tomorrow, could be about.

It all starts when Shirke is appointed Minister of Sport. Shirke is a lazy corrupt man who decides that gambling is a sport and ties up with Drug Dealers who want to invest money in casinos.

Meanwhile:
Shiva is an honest cop who pays for his chai and paan even though he doesn’t consume either. (Several people leave him cash for chai-paani)
His main grouse is against gamblers of all kinds. This is because all through his adolescence, his father, a tabla player, would lose at gambling and then practice his version of the teen mar on him (not the percussion rhythm, the practice of hitting teenagers)

Shiva gets an intelligence report from a stool pigeon in Shirke’s offices that Shirke has connections with Drug Dealers.

Shiva gets riled when he hears mention of Drug Dealers, because of his aversion to gambling and Dealers of all kinds.
Thus starts his war against the Dealer cartel. When he arrests 37 car dealers on basis of their visiting cards, he gets demoted.
His girlfriend, Nisha Kothari, a yellow journalist promises to put him in touch with someone who can help.

Enter Karriappan. Karriappan runs a Dvd piracy cartel. He has problems communicating with people because his entire vocabulary is in the language of Film. His driver never understands when he asks to rewind (reverse) the car and gets fined by the police twice for parallel parking.
In spite of these troubles, he runs a professional Dvd piracy outfit called
“Pirates of the Karriappan”. Being a bit of a pervert, all the women on his team have cards that say “Privates of the Karriappan”. This is his second favourite joke. (His favourite is – What is the difference between Mallika Sherawat and RGV? One has a lot to show, while the other has a lot to say.)
No one except Nisha Kothari has ever laughed at either of these and he is forever indebted to her. Nisha is actually a great actress who manages to convince Karriappan that she was laughing with and not at him.

Shiva meets Karriappan to discuss strategies to get at the Drug Dealers. Karriappan gives him box sets of Karan Johar movies that will compel the Dealers to fall in love amidst blossoms and sunflowers. He also tells Shiva that he could have a bright future as an actor and that he must prepare himself for an actor’s life. In the Interrogation Chamber Shiva starts focussing the lights on himself. This foxes all the criminals he interrogates and they confess to crimes they haven’t committed. Shiva thus solves 27% of the cases in Indian criminal courts in 14 days. This is a better record than any policeman in fiction and he gets rewarded with a trip to Brindavan Gardens.
All the Drug Dealers are there with bouquets in hand romancing Nisha Kothari who is now enjoying her work as a fulltime stool pigeon, instead of churning out crap for yellow journals.
Shiva rounds up the drug dealers and they confess that though they have been shirking work at the casinos because of the box sets they received, this is actually a good thing. They give him evidence against Minister Shirke, who has also been shirking work, which, in his case, is not a good thing.

Shirke is jailed. The Drug Dealers become Drug Lords when they get knighted for no reason, thus ending Shiva’s war with them. Nisha Kothari falls off a stool and gets fired because as a stool pigeon one really has to stay on the stool. She joins Karriappan’s team and he hands her a card that reads “Privates of the Karriappan”.

* Objects in the Preview Mirror may appear sillier than they are.

Disclaimer: Characters in the above story are not based on any characters in the film. Any resemblance or humour is pure luck.

Preview - Naksha

2006-09-18T21:05:00.000-07:00

OBJECTS in the PREVIEW MIRROR*

PRESENTS, today’s release Naksha – Unlock the mystery? OR Funhouse Mirror Tales

Jackie Shroff is a very irritated man. He can never get a good shave or a haircut since every mirror he finds is imperfect. Some mirrors flatter his person while others bloat his face up or distort his body. He is tired for he can’t answer the question ‘What do I look like? Am I fat? ’ This is killing him, as answering this question, is an essential step towards answering other philosophical questions like ‘Who am I?’ (No, not the Jackie Chan movie, the philosophical question)
He decides to stop looking at mirrors and hence doesn’t get a shave or a haircut for 17 months.

He is an archeologist, but can’t spell to save his life. His card, hence, reads,
JS – Archieologist. Combined with his unkempt appearance, passing his card around causes people to guffaw, usually with derisive rejoinders, usually Archie comic rejoinders.

JS, a suffering neurotic, with a very dangerous case of split ends, is at wits end. His obsession with finding out the answer to the question reaches a crescendo when someone mentions Archie comics at his nephew’s school and he cracks. Once cracked, he decides to find the legendary mirror that was once owned by Snow White’s aunt. This mythical mirror is supposed to be perfect and comes with a bonus CD which makes the mirror speak ( It is not known if the Mirror is a great conversationalist though ). JS has heard of a map which, well, maps out the route to take to get to the Mirror.

What he doesn’t know is that there is a map which maps out the route to take to get to the map itself. This map is with a traffic cop called Inspector Allosius. Inspector Allosius is a shy, part malayalee, officer of the law who has recently been demoted from a crime branch cop to a traffic cop. This happens because he solves some high profile cases and when the heat is on the powerful criminals, they go at him hammer and tongs and get him demoted. As a traffic cop Allosius is having a terrible time as he is shy and hence can’t give anyone directions on time. He is, though, very respected in little Danbolim as he is the only one who has read anything connected to philosophy. No one knows that he has only read Sophie’s World and actually thinks “Locke, Kant, Marx and Hegel” are words in the English language. This is demonstrated when he says “Please, you Kant Hegel (can’t haggle). That Marx (mark) shows that you crossed on to the wrong lane. Any more and I’ll have you under Locke (lock) and key!”

Sunny Deol and Viveik Oberoi are brothers, but step brothers. They have different fathers, hence different surnames. Sameera Reddy also has a different surname but is not related to the deol-oberoi brothers. They play college kids who are lost. This is because they have a car. And a map.
Two men, a girl, a map and a car.
I rest my case. They are lost.

And they are all pretty riled up, blaming each other for being lost, while not singing barely melodious songs to atrocious dancing by one of the deol-oberoi brothers.

As JS passes them they are shouting at each other “Go look at yourself in the Mirror. Can’t even read the map that we have!!!” JS, having Locke-d himself away from society for so long , does not understand the sarcasm in the statement and decides that he must steal the map from them.

What ensues is a whole load of action packed car chases and confrontations between Deol and JS, memorable among which is this exchange:

JS – I’m an Archieologist! Gimme the map.
Deol – So what if you are an Archieologist, I watched Mahabharat and Ramayan on Television.

After taking a couple of wrong turns everyone involved ends up at little Danbolim town. They stop at the junction to ask for directions and meet Allosius.

Deol - Hallo.
Allosius – Not Allo, my name is Allosius, sir.
Deol – Can you give us directions to Bangalore?
Allosius – (mumbles incoherently)
Deol – (screams) Can you give us a good map?
Allosius – (hesitantly) All I have is a map to a map
JS – Well that is it!! Give it to me!

JS follows directions and finds the Mirror. The Mirror is really old and looks like it has hitchhiked across the world. The bonus CD is all scratched up, but when JS looks into the mirror it answers that famous question about life, the universe and everything and says, in a loud, booming voice : 42

JS, appalled at his own girth, waists no time and rushes to VCLC to lose weight. They cut his hair off and immediately charge him for 5 kilos of weight loss.
Sunny Deol goes on to manufacture a sunny smelling Deo called Sunny Deo. Viviek gets busy marrying Sameera Reddy, but receives too many phone calls and gives up.

Ps: Allosius gets reinstated as a Crime Branch cop when he, unwittingly, directs some infamous criminals to the Police Station.

* Objects in the Preview Mirror may appear sillier than they are.

Objects in the Preview Mirror - KANK

2006-08-10T22:52:00.000-07:00

This is a sneak preview into the world of Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna that releases today.

KANK, for Director Karan Johar, is a major departure from his earlier films.

The film starts not with not One but Two marriages happening.

Shah Rukh plays Raj Malhotra, because he is Shah Rukh.
Rani plays Anjali, in the absence of Kajol.
Abhishek also plays Raj Malhotra, because, well, who doesn’t want to be Shah Rukh? [Except 743 nuns, 23 Buddhists and 3 elephants]
Priety Zinta plays Zuleika, because of her Persian lineage.

Priety playing Zuleika is Karan Johars' metaphysical twist, showing how much he has matured as a savings bond...er..as a director, incorporating characters with foreign lineage thus keeping pace with globalization.

So two marriages.
As all people involved are traditional people in abbreviated clothes, the women, as is custom, take their husband's name post marriage.

Due to this tradition, Shah Rukh becomes Anjali, Abhishek becomes Zuleika and Rani and Priety become Raj Malhotra.

As is expected, this causes a lot of confusion and when Shah Rukh wants to kiss Anjali, he is appalled that he has to kiss himself. Another brilliant scene is when, his wife, Raj Malhotra wants to watch Mani Ratnam’s Anjali and Shah Rukh (Anjali) walks out midway because he is traumatized.
These scenes are filmed beautifully and make it worth Shah Rukh's facial acrobatics.

Abhishek, who plays Zuleika, has his own moment, when he is expected to shave since he has a woman's name. He has trouble with his visiting cards and loses 23 clients because he passes them the wrong cards. Abhishek also has to fend of 12 Iraqis who fall in love with his name.

Rani and Preity do not face too many problems, as they are househusbands. Except on Karva Chauth, when they can’t decide whether they need to keep fast. They also spend a few thousand rupees at the hair stylists’ getting short crops befitting men (in spite of Mahendra Dhoni).

Both couples finally decide that the best way out of the confusion would be to relocate to a foreign country where they don’t understand Indian names.

They apply for Visas at the British consulate. Raj Malhotra, though, gets late for the visa appointment. Both Raj Malhotras. This is because they can’t resist going to the Annual Sweater Fair in Chennai. This causes Anjali and Zuleika to be very upset and marital discord sets in, mainly as they are upset that Raj Malhotra didn’t pick up sweaters for them.
Which is why the promos read, ‘A Fair that broke all relationships’. (What’s that? You are saying it reads ‘An Affair that broke all relationships”. No no.. You are mistaken. I suggest you watch the promos again)

This is when they meet Amitabh Bachchan, who plays Amitabh Bud-chan, a flamboyant half Chinese man who lives on Budweiser beer. He is the Head of Operations at the British consulate, who gets close to being fired for being flamboyant and making too many stiff British upper lips flinch, by sporting a ‘French’ beard. He is saved when he explains that there is no ‘British’ beard as such, else he would sport it. All in all he is a good sport and saves the two couples from watching ‘Tu Hoti toh kya Hota’, a mind numbing comedy based on the Mile High Club by Mr. Shah.

Post this good deed he quotes from Romeo and Juliet (II, ii, 1-2) to the couples in a God like voice -
‘What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other word would smell as sweet. ‘

This resolves all differences between the couples and they decide to go back home.

The Shakespeare quote inspires an Udipi hotel owner, who is standing nearby, to make a movie based on Othello. He calls it Om-Kara Bath.
Also the quote creates a flutter in flower markets around the world and at the Amsterdam Flower market, Roses are sold as Sunflowers, Mrs. Barney, Ronaldinho and McDowell’s Number One.

The movie ends with a solemn hurrah to Shakespeare in the form of Britney Spears performing a dance number…hence Shake Spears.

* Objects in the Preview Mirror may appear sillier than they are. Send in your objections to OPM.bias@gmail.com

Pay this Forward please

2006-07-05T23:37:00.000-07:00

On World Tibet Day, say this with me - on your blogs, on sms, on email:

FREE TIBET

Read this on Dilip's blog : http://dcubed.blogspot.com/2006/07/tibet-from-14th-floor.html#comments

Superman Returns - Preview

2006-07-02T23:35:00.000-07:00

This is a preview to Superman Returns that I wrote a week before it released in India. It was sent to the publisher of a small Bangalore based paper that I will be doing Previews for. Previews in this vein.
The paper turns Daily next month from its present weekly format. My article will appear every Friday. Yes, theyve made a big mistake.

Objects in the Preview Mirror

Superman Returns - But from Where??

Lex Luthor is a happy man. Insanely happy. He considers changing his name to Lux Lather as a tribute to his diabolical world domination plan, but fails to get the Gazette Office on phone.The plan involves stolen crystals from the Fortress of Solitude - Detergent used on Planet Krypton which Kal-el's mother packed for him surreptitiously in case Kal-el needed a clean white shirt. The gravity on Earth combined with the ultraviolet rays from our yellow Sun have the same effect on the detergent as on Superman. One crystal can make an entire lake foam. Lex Luthor plans to hold the water resources of the world to ransom as he,with the 17 super value packs of super-detergent he has, can make the oceans of the Earth foam. The thought leaves Lex foaming at the mouth and his ugly henchwoman gives him mouth to mouth resuscitation which makes him further ill. He recovers though when his henchmen recount glowing tales of how he sent Superman away in the first place.

Previewers note: Superman on his home planet Krypton was called Kal-el. The super detergent was called detergent and his mother was called Mother.

Lois Lane is a happy woman. Happy Homestead Happy.Her husband considers changing her name to Lois Six Lane Highway as a telling comment on her weight gain in the last five years but Lois gets through to the Liposuction clinic before he can reach the Gazette office on phone.She loses a 100 pounds and then hits the gym with a vengeance. Unfortunately she hits the gym instructor with a 100 pound weight and has to leave the gym. As she is leaving she runs into the man who runs a Botox clinic next door who tells her that Botox is better than the gym for her wrinkles just like Liposuction was better than the Slim Sauna Belt. She gets back home to find her husband still trying the Gazette office. She reminds him that it is a Sunday and one can hardly expect the Government to work on a weekend when they are tired from not working all week, especially with the government exchange program they have with the Govt of Karnataka. He agrees and they head out to catch the latest Batman movie 'Batman Begins to Get Lucky'.

Perry White and Jimmy Olsen are two really happy dudes. Perry White considers changing the name of his newspaper, The Daily Planet, to ‘Very White’ as a tribute to his very successful detergent brand ‘Very White’, but cant get through to the Gazette Office.Jimmy Olsen considers picking up the phone at the Gazette Office ,where he has been employed for five years now, but decides not to.

Previewers note: The Perry White and Jimmy Olsen subplots are underdeveloped.

Where has Supe been all this while.? Cut to the backstory of how Lex Luthor sent him away:

Lex Luthor floats a rumour while on vacation on his yacht in the Caribbean that Superman or Kal-el was not born on Krytpon but in Cal-cutta and hence the name Kal-el. Also that The Fortress of Solitude was actually The Fortress of Solitude for the World from Superman and all its multimedia was built by the CIA including the Jor-el images that were actually of a major Hollywood actor called Marlon Brando. He also feeds this rumour by
releasing on the black-market an Indian Documentary called 'Hum kisi se Kam nahi' starring then unknown actors Akshay and Suneil, involving the story of how Colonel Chikara looked for a rare Indian green cheese called 'Krypton'. After viewing this documentary Supe is convinced of his Calcutta origins and flies of in search of his roots. He spends ages looking for his roots, which are difficult to find, owing to the fact that he isn't a plant.

Previewers note: This backstory is played at superspeed and it is likely that you will miss the details

Cut to Present day:

Superman is a struggling actor in Kollywood called Kalel Bose. He has grown a stubble and wears his cape as a chadar a la Guru Dutt in Pyaasa. He has no work as regular heroes in regional films jump over tall buildings and fight 74 villains at once with ease. He has also been rejected as a journalist in Calcutta as he does not read bengali and, more importantly, doesn't own a jhola. He spends his time eyeing all the doe eyed bengali women aided by Supervision.

Cut to Metropolis, which is a hot bed of crime especially on the Metrorail where they need a lot of polis..er police.On the Metro a Scandinavian homosexual sells soup to meet men socially, or well, economically. His soup is always bad and his sales cry of 'Soups up' is usually met with exclamations of 'No good at all!!' from customers who taste his abominations.

In Calcutta there is a football match, a strike and an agitation to bring back Ganguly on. Superman, to pass time, decides to use superhearing to scan the airwaves. The first thing he picks up is 'Supes up to no good at all', several times over as the soup seller is having a field day on the Metro.
This worries Supe no end and he begins to think that Superman impostors are wrecking good old Metropolis. He decides to Return.

Hence Superman Returns from Calcutta.

The rest of the story revolves around how Supe foils Lex Luthor by flinging all the super detergent into space, thereby creating 17 new galaxies where living things are foam-based instead of the standard issue carbon based lifeforms we are familiar with. This means they live really slippery lives and several beings make their millions selling grip products like Velcro.
There is also a subplot as to how Supe is no longer attracted to slim and pretty Lois Lane as he now yearns for buxom Bengali girls with lovely doe eyes.
Things slowly fall back in place for our intrepid superhero though and he does his routine of saving the world from certain destruction several times over.
Now if only Jimmy Olsen picked up his calls !!

ps: Calcutta was renamed Kol-katta to pay homage to the years Supe spent there.

Disclaimer: Objects in the Preview Mirror may appear sillier than they are.

2006-06-01T00:42:00.000-07:00

I took a test at www.politicalcompass.org and this is where I stand.

Not one worldleader for company anywhere close to where I am plotted on the graph:) I knew it... with no power comes no responsibility.

I am Pro Reservations

2006-05-31T23:39:00.000-07:00

I am pro-reservation in a few areas:

Train and Air tickets
Movie tickets
I believe in having reservations about making friends with murderers and rapists
Restaurant reservations are a big help
Also, I am generally a reserved person

In spite of being pro-reservation I have close friends, (especially a certain Icecandyman) who are Aunty-....er Anti-Reservations. Needless to say, these guys haven't watched Da Vinci code and Fanaa yet. Lucky bast****!

2006-05-30T05:15:00.000-07:00

Theta iota sigma iota sigma omega epsilon rho epsilon iota tau beta epsilon gamma iota nu sigma !

Afternoon Fantasies

2006-05-29T05:43:00.000-07:00

A.T. Cross, the manufacturers of Cross pens, demand royalty money from Christians, for usage of their brand name.

*inspired by a maharashtrian cricket great

Movie Watch

2006-05-28T22:57:00.000-07:00

Fanaa - Worth one watch if u have nothing else to do. Only for Aamir's charm in a few portions of the first half and Kajol's elevation of frames in certain portions of the second.

DaVinci Code - Murder. Stay away. Tom Hanks is Bad. No chemistry between Audrey Tautou and him. Silas is as menacing as a white skinned 70's masala movie thug. Everyone is miscast.
Only Ian McKellen saves a few scenes with his presence.
Ron Howard had A Beautiful Mind once.

The Fanaa Preview

2006-05-25T22:36:00.000-07:00

Aamir plays Aamir Sohail a failed cricketer turned guide in Delhi.Kajol plays Fann, a kashmiri girl with a scandinavian sounding name.

In a dramatic meeting sequence, Aamir smashes a ball for the first time in his life for a six, but the ball slams into Fann's head and she turns blind.

Nobody sees this happen, not even Fann:) , but all the action has been caught accidentally on someones mobile camera. [product advert]

Aamir is booed by everyone cuz he has been playing with kids, not like michael J though. He has only been playing cricket. What MJ does, I hear, is just not cricket.He gives up cricket for good and becomes a guide. He is good at his job as he has been a big(even if he is a small man) Dev Anand fan for Ever. {As an aside, no one has figured who the elusive Ever is, or what Ever's connection is to making people Dev Anand fans or the general scheme of things, ever. Often people have been frustrated at the very mention of this mystery by reacting sharply "WhatEver!"}

Back to the movie:

So Aamir becomes a guide.

He does very well at it and soon has hordes of people booking him on for a tour of Delhi [ Including 18 Italians who want to be taken to a deli, who are sorely disappointed ] On one of his tours there are 3 or 4 troublemakers who are out to make, well, trouble [why make trouble and not chewing gum is anybodys guess] .
When Aamir, grandoisely, tells people at the Red Fort that what they are looking at is the Red Fort, the troublemakers holler 'Why Red' ? [this slogan was picked up by an ad agency copywriter, who goes on to make the 'Gimme Red' campaign. He reasons that if people were today asking the question 'Why Red?' they would soon want 'Red', just like it has happened with several other things. For example: Email, Flying Returns, Pets, Health Food, Yoga, and to a certain extent among some sections in India, sex ]

Aamir handles these troublemakers with ease by urging them to make trouble elsewhere, the Narmada Bachao Andolan or at the Plachimada Coke agitation. This done he gets back to describing the wondeful history of the Red Fort. His History channel like discourse elicits periodic oohs and aahs from the crowd [this is more so due to a horde of mosquitoes and in part because of a french nymphomaniac]
Fann, meanwhile, wanders into the Red Fort since she takes a couple of hundred wrong turns, and ends up walking into the guide and his group of tourists. She askes Aamir, " Char pav aur do dozen ande dena. Kitna hua? "
In a moment of cinematic brilliance and of love at first sight, Aamir replies, " Kitna nahi. Pyaar hua hai mujhe " Fann immediately falls in love with Aamir thereby proving the proverb, Love is Blind. [ It is another matter that she thinks he is the neighborhood baker who she had set out to meet, and sees great potential in turning the bakers brilliant pav into a money spinner, or a money fast bowler, if you will have it that way]

The remainder of the story is pretty simple. It is revealed painfully slowly that Tabu[who plays Taboo, a world famous board game manufacturer] owns the camera that has recorded how Aamir smashed the ball that made Fann blind. To recover the camera, Aamir disguises himself has a terrorist, though in threatening letters to Taboo, he mispells this as Terrowrist, owing to his days as a wrist spinner.
Finally he wins a game of dice and Taboo gives up the evidence.

By now, Fann has left Aamir for the real baker, who drops a whole heap of flour on her head, but in a large tin. The impact restores Fanns' sight, though she is an absolute sight with all the flour over her. As she opens her eyes to the the world again, Aamir confronts her with the evidence, saying he intended to destroy the tape, but has decided to confess instead. This melts Fann's heart and she has to be treated for cardiac arrest. The baker dies getting her to the hospital, while Aamir, who is famished eats up all the pav in his bakery.

It all ends happily as Fann inherits the bakers' fortune and Aamir does not have to pay the baker for any of the pav he ate up. Fann marries Aamir and becomes Fann. A...... FannA.

Ps: The movie is called Fanaa and not Fanna, due to numerological reasons. Dejaan Baaruwaala and Munita Senon where consulted.

i am therefore i be

2006-04-23T08:11:00.000-07:00

Ok. The tepid reopening.

i am therefore i WAS, but now I'm off

2006-02-18T05:53:00.000-08:00

The END

2006-02-12T04:53:00.000-08:00

this was a comment I made on someone's blog, but I'm lazy, so here goes:

Oh! for a world where Pooja is a hot chick, Holy Communion is that fun thing we all like to do, and Mullah is vernacular for lottery money !

my own web

2006-01-15T05:37:00.000-08:00

My life is completely inspired by what Uncle Ben told Peter Parker, on the day he eventually got killed by a burglar. {Marvel Comics - Amazing Fantasy #15 (August 1962). }

"With great power comes great responsibility", said the old cartoon...er..old man.

I have no power whatsoever, and hence it follows that....

2006-01-04T23:07:00.000-08:00

Temporary Shutdown

Bhagwan

2005-10-31T06:41:00.001-08:00

It said " He reigns " when I got this image from another blog. Couldn't resist though. Any better ideas?
Personally I liked Bhagwan best in the 1950's movie song " Shaam dhale, khidki tale, Tum seeti bajaana, chodd do.. " He was quite awesome back then.. Especially in Albela, along with Gita Bali which had that super number ' Shola jo bhadke, dil mera.. '
In an allegorical masterstroke his parents decried the Wand-happy School-teacher image that God was made out to have , when they named their child Bhagwan Dada .

Mujhe Bhagwan mein bahut vishwaas tha, until his movies began to falter.

Read about the making of Albela, the movie that made Gita Bali a star and a tribute to Bhagwan at http://www.screenindia.com/20020215/ftrib.html

No offence meant to any athiests. Agnostic comments welcome. Unitarians too. And everyone else.

E! news reports:

2005-10-26T09:45:00.000-07:00

Mick Jagger is rumoured to have spent all his millions wooing a supermodel with cocaine.

Today Mick, is a half baked Disney name. Wrong sentence.

Today Mick, is as heartbroken as he is bankrupt, for he hasn't been able to convince the object of his affection to reciprocate his love.

Pithily put, A Rolling Stone gathers no Moss.

Kate,meanwhile, in the absence of Jagger's millions, can only get Pepsi.

To be or not to be [pshaw!] Whether -That is the question

2005-10-16T21:55:00.000-07:00

'Weather', the word, has some interesting history.

The word for Weather was originally Whether. And for good reason.

Weather was called Whether because of uncertainity.

It was used synonymously with the word 'whether', that we all know, for ages, before somebody decided that there was money in it. These chaps decided that they needed to modify the spelling to gain respectability.

And thus Whether became Weather.

So the chaps on TV or the Radio station are only Whether Forecasters. And as we all know from Heisenberg's uncertainity principle, Uncertainity cannot be accurately forecast.
Heisenberg was himself quite uncertain of the whole thing but he couldn't blame himself for that, as he had already proved that uncertainity was not predictable, unless it was. But one could never tell, for sure.

So don't worry about the Weather/Whether in Pondicherry or wherever else you are going, but do pack an umbrella.

*Dan Brown Inspired Info:*

The more precisely the position is determined, the less precisely the momentum is known in this instant, and vice versa. --Heisenberg, uncertainty paper, 1927

Or, to put it simply : Ek ka pata toh dooja laapata { to understand the true poignance of this situation please watch Hindi movies where the mother/elder sibling/father/benevolent maid etc etc realize that they have lost one or more little children at the Kumbh Mela(which, incidentally, was invented by Rajshree Productions as a film setting for losing kids/parents/lovers etc. The Kumbh Mela as such has no historical relevance and was initially created as a film set in the 1930's before it grew into popular legend and culture as a place where pious people performed rituals in the water and young voyeurous lechers checked out all the women in their wet clothes. Its a good thing though and everyone goes home satisfied) }

The idea behind Heisenberg's Uncertainity principle, struck Heisenberg as he finished cooking an elegant meal for himself. This thought, though, enabled him to create prize winning science papers, while most of us just add more salt when struck by the very same thought , " Something's missing " .

55 word stories

2005-09-13T20:39:00.000-07:00

Everyone is writing a 55 word story. It is good timepass except that I am not very good at counting beyond seventeen.

There are many questions that bother me, though:
Why a 55 word story? Why not a 54 word story? Or a 291 word story?

But I have two such stories, myself.
Three maybe.

___________________________________________________________________

He sat in class gazing out of the window at the playground.

Teacher Mohan caught him and said, 'Say sorry ten times'.
So he stood up and said ' Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry '

Teacher Mohan was part psychotic and hit him over the head harshly, screaming ' Can't you count, you idiot??!!! '

____________________________________________________________________

He walked towards the edge of the cliff, but slipped and fell screaming " help help help help help help help help help help help help help help help help help help help help ".

It was a long way down.

He sounded like a barking dog in a comic strip, with a typo in the baloon.

2005-09-11T02:50:00.000-07:00

Le plus ca change, le plus c’est meme chose

eh?!!

2005-09-03T05:28:00.000-07:00

India pledges 5 million dollars for Katrina relief operations @ http://in.rediff.com/news/2005/sep/03katrina.htm

2005-08-31T20:26:00.000-07:00

From an year and a half back, on a Saturday afternoon, when I used to work for someone else :

bahwahwah bahawahwahah bahahwahwahahah bahahawahwahahahah...and so on and so forth in a complex arithmetric progression...
but then..hum hum ho hum hum ho hum hum hum ho hum hum ho hum... aapke hain kaun?
and ofcourse..hai hukku hai hukku hai hai..hai hukku hai hukku hai...

All of which is neatly encapsulated in the pithy "Why me?" .
I will now take a bow.[ with severe flourish ]
- Bow -
Now I will take an arrow.
And will shoot it into the throat of the guy who is responsible for my presence in office on a Saturday afternoon. Any afternoon.
But I want neat deaths. I dont want him to spill his larynx and half a litre of blood when i shoot him in the neck. I want a spotlessly clean dead body. So that i can reuse my arrow without having to clean it. Which reminds me of Mahabharatha on Tv. It was really neat that they got back clean arrows.
There is no point to this parley.

Cracking the Code again and again and again ad nauseum

2005-08-19T09:32:00.000-07:00

From our news desk :

At the high tech ex-Meguro* facility of Kawasaki motors, performance testing is a very serious deal.
Their benchmarking process is the most well kept secret in the Motorcycle industry.

Author Dan Brown reveals the secrets in his new book ' The Kawasaki Code ' [ sidenote - the hindi version will have a different version as his last book The Da Vinci Code, did not go down well with the leprosy-averse public in the Hindi heartland. (well sorry, couldnt resist) ]
It has come to our notice that the cracking of the code and the performance testing benchmarks at Kawasaki have to do with Cows and a popular japanese alcoholic drink.

The name Kaw-a-saki has its origins in this performance testing benchmark..

* - Meguro is the company which Kawasaki took over to start their motorcycle operations. Helped by the knowledge of the Meguro company which Kawasaki had taken over (Meguro was the oldest motorcycle company in Japan) the company moved into the production of big bikes around 1966. The model was called the W1 (650cc).
This in-depth research was inspired by the highly motivating Mr. Dan Brown

Movie Review - The Rising

2005-08-16T04:38:00.000-07:00

Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to allother countries because you were born in it. (George Bernard Shaw)

The very fact that I am posting an amusing perspective on patriotism a day after August 15th, would make you think that I am not a very patriotic person.
I will have you know, though, that in some moments of diffusion I do feel patriotic surges ( in the form of goose bumps usually and sometimes even an overwhelming feeling of love for the idea of our nation ) given the right stimuli.

An engaging movie with a patriotic theme is one such small trigger. On Independance day I was hoping to feel some partiotic poison.

As the clock struck 00.00 am on the 15th of August, I watched in horror some insipid and half baked scene in the movie Mangal Pandey : The Rising.

Ketan Mehta should have called this Mangal Pandey : My Failings

Terrible ! Do not watch.

2005-08-16T04:36:00.000-07:00

Check this out to be transported back in time :

http://thecomicproject.blogspot.com/

This is a service to society.

2005-07-25T07:22:00.000-07:00

Page 273

Event Horizon !

2005-06-25T08:24:00.000-07:00

Theta iota sigma iota sigma omega epsilon rho epsilon iota tau beta epsilon gamma iota nu sigma !

2005-06-17T02:06:00.000-07:00

The birds flying , the wind swells,
And all that cloudy curd.

The sky is like everything else,
Absolutely absurd.

Apologies.

linus torebaldus

2005-05-12T09:56:00.000-07:00

What do lines remind you of?
Geometry in school. Architectural Diagrams. Road maps. Limits. Boundaries. Electricity Bill Payments.
A line is that which has length, but not breadth or thickness.

There are two kinds of lines.
The first is the Straight line. A straight line is the shortest distance between two points in space. There are several unsolved problems relating to Straight lines and their relation with concepts arising from quantum physics. For example; Wormholes, Straight Lines bent in space. A lot of research money goes into Straight Lines now a days.
The other kind of line is completely ignored.

Ofcourse...I mean Gay lines. heh heh

2005-05-12T09:53:00.000-07:00

Slowly but surely, because of the growing trend among men folk in the film industry towards obesity and the evolution of a taller, more robust aspiring starlet the Casting Couch has become rather inadequate to afford a comfortable fit.
More and more, it is now being called the Casting Ouch.

2005-05-12T09:48:00.000-07:00

How many of you men have been molested by other men who prefer the same sex? [ On a different note, how many of you people are happy with the same sex every night? ] And when you did become an unwilling recepient of these same-sex affections, how did you feel about it?
Once, at a crowded pub, I felt very wet around the ear:)) and after ignoring it for the first few minutes, discovered that it wasn't my inexperience but someone's saliva. A man's at that. I shuddered and dived into a temporary opening in the crowd. I didn't feel too much revulsion, only the whole thing felt very absurd for a while.
Then it started eating me. What if men at the gym were lusting for me too? And what about my boss backslapping me this morning? No more football. No more football.
Because of the whole public stereotype of the pretty gay boy and my active imagination i imagined for a while that i was slowly transforming into a proper birdie. But my ass still felt reasonably firm. So i got out of that hallucination, thankfully.
Then after some contemplation i came to the conclusion that men with homosexual preferences had to take their chances whenever they could. Because there are so few of them out there who are not hidden in little mental closets and shoe cabinets. The gay boys just had to hit on everybody they could, to maximise their chances of finding a mate. At bus stops , in theaters, at the circus, at church, in the temples, at art shows, at photo studios and massage parlours, at schools and in offices, at dance bars and stereo shops...everywhere. Its unfortunate. Circumstance does not afford them too many choices.
After all, buggers cannot be choosers.

2005-05-12T09:45:00.000-07:00

Those Marauding Eskimos...
They came, they thawed, they conquered.

Flashback

2005-04-27T20:26:00.000-07:00

Written when I was younger, but it still makes a point, unlike what i come up with nowadays. Who'd have believed it ???!! In the Organisation of Life, i must be the Pointy Haired Boss, rising to absolute incompetence with age :)

====

As I read the paper or when i glance at the news-at-eight a strange terror strikes me deep. I wonder what i'd do if I were confronted by a mad mob determined to murder anyone not their own. A mob which fuelled by religious sanctions, rapes and kills. A criminal mob driven by politics and fascism. Maybe I would cower shamefully and submit and beg them forgivance or owe them allegiance.
As an Indian, today I'm entitled to kill in the name of religion. In good style I can also fulfill all my other satanic urges, humiliation, rape and arson. Someday soon our dodo impulse might possibly lead to gender based cleansing. All the men trying to kill all the women and vice versa. That is not a very absurd thought considering that extreme atrocities which affected either, or rather, all sides in Gujarat have been accepted by most of us, without more than a shudder or a public squeak. I have the birth right to be extremely xenophobic. I think i'll first eliminate the muslims, then the christians, then the sikhs, then maybe the subsects within the hindus itself. In fact i'll eliminate snotty nosed children and oily haired bus travellers also to make sure things turn out aesthetically comfortable for me.
It'll be such a long and satisfying scalping...one after the other, forgive me if i've forgotten anyone. In the end I can sit and watch the ruins. I think it'll be a nice and unique picture. Saffron and green can mix into a very exciting blood red.
I want today to leave this country. I want to leave it because I'm scared, scared of what it will do to harm me, scared of what it might make me. Leave it or make it disappear. Make the blinding bright shades of saffron and green disappear. A few years ago, a younger me was very thrilled when i felt patriotic surges as i heard the National Anthem. Today I am drained, without feeling, even ashamed at times when I begin to think that being an Indian is one of the few identities i have left.
Maybe we could drop these calling cards of being hindu, sikh, muslim, brahmin, christian, dalit, adivasi, communist, malayalee, maharashtrian, bihari, pakistani, indian. Maybe we can just be human. But that would be a Utopia and i would have wasted your time. The point is.. today I just want to be left alone. By everyone made dangerous by defined boundaries like belonging to "X class" or "Y caste". All of these killers and hatemongers have 2 legs and 2 hands, the same as me.
I'd much rather fight purple hued aliens or 14 legged killer ants. There would be dignity in that.

2005-04-27T05:30:00.000-07:00

This happened a few years back and the other juvenile of the piece is often seen on these pages.
I call this.....

Self-Evict Convicts!

We went to a little pub last night,
With intentions of tanking up allright,
Over philosophical smokes,
Just the couple of us blokes,
Raved and ranted and attempted,
several metaphysical thoughts demented,
We finished our beers, one a mite faster than his peer,
But that is to be expected said the slower one, for all the alcoholic tales you've spun,
We must have a couple more, otherwise it'll be like never before,
But the wallets hang a little light, splurge now and tie our belts tight?

Oh that is for later to think, now let us just concentrate and drink!

So we drank some more, blithe spirits unthinking,
Daily paper crossword solvers, we could have both been,
Living like we were drinking, blithe spirits unthinking.
Order something cheap to eat, this is a rather meagre treat,
But it'll have to do, for it'll feed another round of golden brew.
So a small bowl of green peas, gives our stomachs some small relief.

Topical reruns, old strains but new trials,
Too tired to talk about, talks which we could do without,
Slow conversation, thoughtful parleys with oneself,
Sequential trips to the men's room, results in a new joke in full bloom,[most pubs here dont need a ladies room..the ladies room board gets me going everytime!!]
Squeeze dry the thought, laugh a lot...
Slow conversation once more, knowing we could feel deja vu if we ignored the realization,
Decision made, no more honey marmalade!

We must go for dinner someplace, good food and more taste!
But the money crunch, we wont have enough to buy tomorrow's lunch!!!
Lets ignore it again, and get some coastal andhra cocaine!Yes!
We are in agreement, our thoughts concurrent.
Lets ask for the cheque, (what a pain in the neck!)
I look for the head waiter, and i shine when the thought hits me square,
Listen dear friend of mine, when did we last do something practical and asinine??
You mean, you don't mean, No! Ok, lets see it through!!!
So sequentially again, we were'nt that poor, but we shot right out of the door!!!!

2005-04-27T05:21:00.000-07:00

There was once a beautiful amatuer astronomer. All the extra money she made as a model on television was spent to feed her passion for looking into the night sky at the stars. She was fascinated with every twinkle up in the night sky. Every night she would sit with her telescope and squint into her 33 inch telescope.And every night her dependant boyfriend would ask her not to screw her eyelids up like that.Eventually she could no longer model.

Wrinkle Wrinkle, it'll Scar.

2005-04-27T05:17:00.000-07:00

I once had a large gay following, but I ducked into a side street and lost him.

[A day in the life of many of us]

2005-04-15T09:36:00.000-07:00

I think [blah blah blah blah blah] and I really believe [blah blah blah blah blah]. Your opinion is flawed, can't you see it. Its staring you in the face dammit ! What i think is that [blah blah blah blah blah].
My favorite music [blah blah blah blah blah] is so superior to your fav music. He has no class because he actually wore those horrible [blah blah blah blah blah]...
and so on...
The most I'll give you is that this my opinion/your opinion is more or less shaped by our completely exclusive set of experiences.

But i still think you are absolutely low IQ / irritating / foolish / stupid and so on . And pig headed to boot !

And I think I am somewhat redeemed by blogging this kind of social historian-like observations-piece ! Guess who is pig headed?

2005-04-11T21:15:00.000-07:00

When I was young, Doordarshan ran the wonderfully campy series Vikram-Vetaal.

[Background score] Vikram Vikram Vikram Vikram...Vetaal Vetaal Vetaal Vetaal, Veeekraaam aur Vetaaaaaal...Viiikraaam aur Veeeeytaaaal...

Every episode started with King Vikram [ actually Trivikramasena played by legendary ham Arun Govil ] getting to the simsapa tree in the middle of the cemetry with his sword drawn. First he would jump up and down trying to reach the corpse. He would then, dressed very happily in orange, climb up the tree to get to the corpse. This he did by doing some tacky acrobatics, which esentially involved hooking his ankles together and swinging towards the corpse. He would do this for a while and would finally manage to cut the corpse possessed by the Vetaala [ played by a very good man who agreed to do the role, aptly named Sajjan ] down. On hitting the ground the corpse would invariably, howl in pain and Arun Govil with his Ramayana hangover would at once become immensely concerned about the Vetaalas well being. He would rush to the vetaala and then the vetaala would laugh a hysterical laugh and the corpse would move by its own volition along the ground with Vikram chasing it in vain. Then the vetaala would fly back up the tree laughing all the while. King Vikram would steel his being and set out once again to cut the corpse down. This time he would do it with immaculate timing, outwitting the vetaal, without blinking a single wooden eyelid. He would then swing the corpse over his shoulder and set out. The corpse/vetaal more or less rode piggyback on Arun Govil, like one of those popular and excrutiatingly painful ordeals one has to go through when dealing with 4 yr old kids. The Vetaala itself was very funny to look at with a voice like old timer villian Jeevans'. It had a powder caked face, a flowing white wig and horrendously lip-sticky lips that opened wide in a leering grin, which in turn revealed an absence of teeth. [Background score repeat!] Vikram Vikram Vikram Vikram...Vetaal Vetaal Vetaal Vetaal, Veeekraaam aur Vetaaaaaal...V aur V... The deal was that Arun Govil/Vikram was not supposed to say a word till he got the Vetaal outside the Smashan ghat. Now Vetaal would say, "Raasta kathin hai, Chalo rajan, main tumhein ek kahaani sunaata hoon".He would then weave a tale about some Jataka-tales-era characters which would finally end in a moral dilemma. The best part about these tales was that, they were always populated by the same set of junior artistes in different outrageous hair do's. Then Vetaal would say," Batao Rajan, ab is samasyaa ka kya hal hua? Agar aap jaante hue bhi, nahi bataayenge, toh main aapke sar ka hazaaaaron tukde kar doonga " Wonderful! And Vikram, he would be forced to solve the problem like a moral, god fearing Deep Blue computer. In a jiffy. And in a jiffy, again, Vetaal would rise up and away back to his Tree Joint saying in sepulchral tones, " Ha Ha Ha...ab tu bolaa, toh main chala...ha ha ha" And he would fly using the same technology they used to make Hanuman in Ramayan fly. And Vikram would run chasing him again...ad infinitum it would seem. Luckily the series ended:) But, Subconciously, our feeble minds were irrevocably altered by the travails of King Vikram and slimy old Vetaal. My attitude to philosophy has been shaped by Vikram-Vetaal almost completely. Including and especially InDUHvidualism.

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