Assembled my first ever computer yesterday. Great fun and worked nicely. The new windows 7 is ultra cool. But now I am looking for a monitor. Expensive stuff I tell you..but what can one do? And oh yes I need a keyboard, and a mouse and hmmm...a printer too. And all this because I want to use it for my own home entertainment...If my mom hears this she is gonna kill me
I remember an old joke that went like this :
NASA Space scientists were trying to launch a rocket but the damned thing would not fire even after several attempts. Apna desi scientist then proposed a brilliant idea. He suggested tilting the rocket to 45 degrees and then try again. And voila ! it was successful. On being asked about his sudden brainwave , the desi scientist replied , that he didn’t know but his scooter back home had to be started the same way.
The scooter he was referring to was obviously Bajaj who recently announced that their production line for scooters will close and they would concentrate on motorcycles alone. I don’t know why but the news really did hit me with a huge pang of nostalgia. My Dad had owned a Bajaj Chetak in the late eighties and all through the nineties. And that too after having waited for it for well over two years after placing an order. I have some really fond memories with a mini me standing in front near the odometer riding through the bylanes of Surat. The song for the old Bajaj ad is perhaps one of the most celebrated jingles in Indian advertising history. The “buland Bharat ki buland tasveer” was an absolute masterstroke at a time when India was undergoing economic liberalization. So much so that the word scooter was synonymous with Bajaj just like Xerox with photocopying.
Sadly Bajaj has to close down due to plunging sales which stems from their lack of innovation, a case very similar to another Indian symbol –Premier automobiles. Consumer tastes have also changed over the past decade. Competition from Honda had all but killed them almost a decade ago and a certain loyalty helped them to drag on for this long.
Now they have set their goals to become the top motorcycle manufacturer in India, not an easy task given that Honda is the top dog in this segment as well. But hopefully they will not repeat the same mistakes they made with the scooter and go “distinctly ahead” of competition.
Yesterday the first snow of the season announced itself subtly. Before I could reach home and click something it was over and sunny days were here again. All I got was a Honda Civic ice cream. Blackcurrant with a bit of Vanilla.
Yup it is true, India finally is the numero uno Test team in the world on the ICC rankings. This dream was achieved after 18 months of hard work and nailed after thrashing the visiting Lankans at the Brabourne stadium by an innings. The most satisfying aspect was Dravid, Laxman and Tendulkar being part of this momentous occasion. They are the three remaining from the Fab Four and how I wish Saurav Ganguly was there with them to celebrate, the man who started this rejuvenation and instilled in our listless team, the pride to play for India.
Of the Gen X , Viru and Gauti have, what it takes to become the greatest opening pair in the history of the game and with tremendous youngsters like Vijay, Yuvi, Rohit, Raina & Kohli waiting in the wings, the future looks very flowery.
And how can one forget Gary Kirsten and the support staff who have kept the team fit and raring to go for every game. Mahendra Singh Dhoni is no fluke captain as some detractors would like to bring up everytime. He is an excellent batsman-keeper, a shrewd captain and really at present the only man who can lead India to even greater heights.
Pity the BCCI is reluctant to organize more tests , hence India's reign at the top might be short-lived, but for the moment let us savor this occasion and bask in the glory.
*ing : Ranbir Kapoor, Konkona Sen Sharma Directed by : Ayan Mukherjee
The coming of age premise has always been a favorite ones with filmmakers all around the world right from The Motorcycle Diaries(Argentina) , American History X to our own Dil Chahta Hai. So it was interesting to see another attempt at this now banal topic by casting the latest heartthrob Ranbir Kapoor in the role of a 20 something slacker.
Siddharth Mehra is the spoilt rich kid with a good heart but eventually and predictably, his lack of ambition leads to a conflict with his father and he moves into the house of his friend Aisha, played by Konkona. Here is where he starts his journey of self-discovery.
The dialogue style is very casual and contemporary which immediately helps to identify with the protagonists. On top of which, the screenplay(also credited to the director) has intermittent moments which one can connect emotionally to. It is very honest and very endearing.
But what works for the movie, in bigger light, it also pulls it down. In between these moments, there seems to be nothing much going on. There is absolutely no development of any kind, and with the exception of Konkona's character , no one seems to have undergone any change. In other words , the Sid we were expecting to wake up, never really gives us that impression that he has changed. The conflicts or difficulties faced by Sid and Aisha with the world and among themselves seem to be easily resolved. e.g a girl just arrives from Kolkata and is immediately a column writer for a trendy magazine....can't swallow that one.
A word about the music - (S-E-L and Amit Trivedi)It is awesome especially the Iktara song. Performance wise, Anupam Kher as Sid's father, Supriya Pathak as his English-challenged mother are superb and come up with seasoned execution. Sid's friends are also fantastic. although they seem to pop up randomly. Konkona Sen Sharma impresses as always and looks charming.
Wake up Sid ultimately though belongs to Ranbir Kapoor who takes gargantuan strides in the acting department, a role he makes his own with some tremendous eye expressions.
The movie despite its slow pacing is refreshing because of its subtle treatment and believable characters. Watch it for Ranbir alone, who forces us to wake up to a new star on the horizon.
Well not quite Indian PM style but I was in Washington DC the past week to catch the tourist attractions I had missed the last time I had been there. This time I went to the International Spy Museum which houses exhibits used by spies from all over the world.
A unique feature of the museum is its controlled entry, where visitors are given 5 minutes to memorize details of one of 16 spy profiles they are to assume (fictitious name, age, place of birth, destination, and so forth) as their "cover" before they are allowed to proceed into the exhibit area. Each "cover" is subtly assigned a mission on the plaque bearing their details, but completion is not required. Later while touring the museum visitors may test themselves at an interactive display on how well they remember the details of their selected spy identity. They may also be stopped occasionally by museum guides acting as "police" and "questioned" about their assumed identity. (Source : Wikipedia)
I was highly impressed by the exhibits and lots of other interactive tools. One of them also involved crawling inside air-conditioning ducts to eavesdrop on conversations happening below. All the gadgets we have seen in James Bond movies actually exist in reality and the most deadly one I thought was the "lipstick pistol".
There was also an entire section dedicated to Cold War espionage with a particular incident narrating, when the Allied forces tried building a tunnel under the Berlin Wall but not knowing that the Russians were well aware of this operation two years in advance due to the presence of a British double agent in the Allied ranks.
For me as a person who has grown up reading espionage thrillers by Ian Fleming and Alistair Maclean, the experience was exhilarating. The CIA which has contributed to the museum's design has been criticized for romanticizing the profession with their interactive rools but then without them it would have been half the fun.
Don't miss this if ever you are visiting the capital of the United States.
*ing : Kevin Spacey, Russell Crowe, Guy Pearce, Danny DeVito, Kim Basinger Directed by : Curtis Hanson
Once in a while a movie comes along which is old-fashioned in its treatment but doubly effective and it provides an irresistible treat for cinema lovers like me.
Director Curtis Hanson expertly adapts James Ellroy's novel and Brian Hegeland's screenplay based in the 50's Los Angeles, a city which is rife with corruption and racism. The story centers around three cops who have their own style and means to solve crimes.
Jack Vincennes(Kevin Spacey) is the attention seeker who has made a name by catching celebrities in compromising positions like dope or sexual fetishes. Bud White(Russell Crowe) is a hot headed cop with a soft corner for women. He doesn't wait for answers but pummels them out of criminals.The third is Ed Exley(Guy Pearce), who is a college educated, ethical and out to prove a point officer. Their lives collide when each one finds himself investigating a massacre at a coffee shop that also has a cop in its body count.
At first they jockey for attention but as their inquiries lead them inside an intricate web of police corruption, racist attitudes, prostitution rings and malevolent agendas, they realize that they are safer together on one side.
Every scene of L.A. Confidential carries a brutal realism about it. Right from the tracking of suspects to the brilliant interrogation techniques, the screenplay carries enough narrative twists to hold you on the edge of your seat.
All three actors, Spacey, Crowe and Pearce play their roles to perfection and demands of the script. The other characters are also well sketched like Kim Basinger's role as a call girl (Man is she hot!!)
Art direction is excellent as usual as the locations speak for themselves showing a morally contaminated city. In this age of high tech gadgets, sci-fi thrillers and senseless SFX, L.A confidential delivers a masterpiece of noir cinema that is gritty and disturbing but satisfying as hell.
