News Episodes

I really dont know what happened to me. Couple of months ago, the only channels I used to watch on TV were very few. Somehow it also depended on the time of the day.

Weekday Morning 8am - 9am: Music Channels (MTV, V, 9XM, etc)
Weekday Night 9pm - 1am: English Movie Channels (HBO, Star Movies, WB, Sony Pix, etc)
Weekend Afternoon 9am-3pm: Hindi Channels (Sony, Star, SetMax, UTV Bindaas, etc)

And one fine day happened the wrath on the Indian democracy or they say it was - Delhi Ramleela Kaand. Neither I am a big fan or supporter of Baba Ramdev nor I am going to put any opinion on paper about his movement. To my utter surprise, I didn't even know who this Baba is. My wife told me that this chap has a big fan following that includes some of the millionaires as well. He has got many medical clinics where they offer free services to the needy. Or WAIT!!! Was it Satya Sai?? Anyways, I got it all messed up because these two exclusively new thoughts was thrown at me at the same time. Anyway, I drifted away a bit.

That particular Sunday morning will be marked special in my life because it totally scrambled my TV viewing schedule. Now it looks something like this.
Weekday Morning 8am - 9am: News Channels (Aaj Tak, Star News, Live TV, India TV)
Weekday Night 9pm - 11pm: News Channels (Times Now, NDTV, Headlines Today)
Weekday Night 11pm - 1am: English Movie Channels (HBO, Star Movies, WB, Sony Pix, etc)
Weekend Afternoon 9am-3pm: Hindi Channels (Sony, Star, SetMax, UTV Bindaas, etc)

Somehow the Hindi News channels have replaced my dose of laughter channels. Special thanks to Live TV and India TV. Thank you for showing the red arrows and blue circles on the screen to make us understand what you are referring to. Thank you for making your news reports even more interesting and keeping our anticipations high till the climax unlike CID. Thank you for covering some of the TV entertainment shows that I used to watch. You saved me a lot of my time by sorting the best episodes from those shows and broadcasting only those moments that I really like.

However, the biggest change that you were able to bring in my wife's mindset about me is something it would have taken me the entire life. She now thinks I have become more responsible and mature. Although I don't see any connection there but the probable reason is that I am over riding her daily TV shows with your news pieces. Interestingly she allows me to do it. Earlier we used to fight for the remote. She used to stick to the reality shows and I try to watch the English movies. But now, somehow she thinks I am more inclined towards educating myself about the happenings in the world. What she doesn't know is that watching your news seems more entertaining to me than watching any movie.

I know that simple thanks would not do justice to the kind of selfless social service you are doing. I know that you are not interested in any monetary gains while changing the lives of the millions of people. I know you chose to give 3 breaks of 5 mins each in a 30 mins news report so that people like me can go back and see what I missed in movie channels.

Without you my life seems incomplete. Damn!! Why didn't I realize that earlier.

Four Bloody Months!!

Four damn months.

I have been screwed up every Sunday really bad. Raj Thackerey has been arrested and bailed out. Chandrayan has been launched successfully depicting the greatest strength that India has got in technology. Another IPL is just going to start. Rainy season is over in Pune and the usual power-cutoffs has started again. Dussehra went very boring. Three trekkings and one very long bike ride to a beach has been completed. Ganesh puja was awesome when one looked at the crowd on the roads everywhere. Started "The 3 Mistakes of My Life" in August and havent been able to finish if off till now - its been three months. Put in papers in office and took it back with a hope for a promotion in a month from now. Gained competency in Permutations and Combinations from which I have been running away since ages and was scared of it like hell........

Yes!! Four bloody months that I last blogged. There are many more things that I might have missed in the list above. But this time, I am not going to promise anything that i will be putting down my thoughts every now and then because everytime I do that, there appears to be break of at least 2 months. Thats not good at all. However, I will try to keep this space posted whenever I get time.

Why do people get married?

Its a Monday night and its past 3am in the morning. Its not that I usually stay awake this late at night on a weekday when I know that I got to be in the office working my ass off for the next entire day. Something distinct happened today that made me think and yeah I do think some of the times. Its not a regular act but yes sometimes it gets really messy.

For some reasons, my phone got discharged today when I was in the middle of a conversation with one of my college friends. It remained switched off for around 1 hour until the time I got back to home and put the phone on charge. As soon as i switched on my cell, a sms popped up

" Mr busy?? why your cell switched off? no mails...no calls? kahan hai??"

I checked the sender and I couldnt believe it. Rechecked it. Yes it was her - a very old school friend of mine - Pooja (name changed for maintaining anonymity). There was a time when I used to talk to her on a very frequent basis - almost twice in a week. Used to confide with her everything. As soon as I shifted to Pune, the frequency of phone calls died down to like once in a month. Obviously when you are not in touch with your old pal for such a long time and suddenly you get a message indicates that something has gone wrong. I replied the message with a call but nobody picked up. After a few minutes she called back and as usual she talks as if we have been talking everyday. She took a deep breath and said "Asheesh, I am getting married. Next month and you need to come". Literally shocked, I was not sure what to say apart from congratulations. Gaining composure, I started acting normal and started questioning about the guy and how things happened so quickly that nobody got to know about anything. She had answers to all the questions which actually had made me think uptil this late at night.

Million dollar question that I have been trying to search an answer for tonight was
"Why does anyone get married?"
I havent got any reassured answers from any of the married couples either. Guy is 28, girl is 25 so they should get married. What on heck of an answer is that to a very complicated question yet simply put. My argument is what is so different if the guy is 28 or the girl is 25 and what difference would it make if the guy had been 38 and the girl being 35? Rituals and traditions say that a girl needs a guy to look after her. How long can a family support a girl when they know that she had to move to her husband's house anyway? I say what bullshit!! Hasnt the girl started living independently after she got a job of her own. And why is this all about girl? Doesnt a guy want a girl as a life partner? Questions are very intriguing when someone starts thinking about them seriously.

They say you need some life partner with whom you can share everything. Havent you been sharing everything with someone till date? You are 25+ dammit and I am sure you must have been sharing everything with someone, someone close, some good friends or family as a matter of fact. Have you been at any point of time in need of a girl or guy partner to share everything you have got? Pooja told me that the guy she is going to get married is now working in London. She hasnt seen him. They have got engaged without their presence. Their parents met up in a temple and exchanged rings between the families. Pooja was at her place of work and the guy was in London when the engagement was done. I couldnt believe my ears when I heard this. Engagement without the presence of the persons who are going to get engaged!! How weird is that and what the heck is it all about?? Is it some kind of joke or something?

Coming back to the question again "why does anyone wants to get married?"

• If its a girl, the society doesnt allow her to remain single after she crosses her silver jubilee birthday. The bloody society points fingers at her and her family every now and then and makes her life miserable without any choice but to get married to any-other-guy whom she finds decent enough to settle down with.
• If its a guy, there is no bar for him and he can continue living his so called bachelorship till the time he wants. But still then he wants to have a family, someone who loves him and care for him. So he gets married with a girl whom he expects that she will love him the way he wanted to be loved after marriage. Its the same story for the girls too who are bold enough to face the pinching society and do what they feel is right.
  
• God has created man and woman on earth together so that he doesnt have to play any role in keeping the generation moving forward. God really had been acting as a lazy ass and of course he is. How long can he take these responsibilities? Thats when the role of men and women comes into picture and just to make the mating process legal, a term "marriage" got created. This also avoids a very dangerous disease that we all know what I am talking about - aids.
• Love or arranged marriages then?? Both of them have got their own charm. Some are lucky to experience love marriages and some are lucky having them arranged and some are luckiest to have them both. But does it matter at all? I personally could not yet figure out how can anybody go for arranged marriages when you dont even know the other person with whom you are going to spend your rest of the life with - share your room, share your bed, share your kitchen, share every goddamn thing that you have been using for your own.

I live in a big flat with 3 bedrooms and the rent is pretty high. So I put up a notice on our notice boards in office mentioning that 'Flat on shared rent available. Internet, water, electricity, tv, fridge free. Everything else is on sharing basis.' Other day, two of my colleagues turned up to stay in the flat. One of them turned out to be a pain-in-the-ass. There was no other way I can get rid of him because he was paying for whatever is on sharing basis. Life had really become tough to get back to home after work. And this situation aroused because I didnt know the person in advance and I allowed him to stay with me.

Does arranged marriage sound any different? What if your partner turns out to be a real jerk and you are not at all comfortable staying with him/her anymore. How long are you going to compromise? If you are really compromising, what is the extent that you can go upto? If nothing works out, is divorce the only way out? I really dont have any explanations to all these at this point of time - not because I am feeling sleepy but because nobody has got any justifications for anything like this. Even if you ask a divorced couple about the reason of being separated, I am damn sure you wouldnt get a better answer than 'It was really hard living with him/her anymore. So I left'. I would give such a blur answer a point of less than 1 on 10.

Well, bottomline is I am really confused and dont know what to think at 3:30am in the morning. So I better get out of here and take a cozy nap in my soft bed. And I promise I will never think about all these complicated questions again in my life and neither should you? Believe me, it can really go worse if you cannot handle it properly.

Good night, khuda haafiz, alvida, sayonara
Signing off
MAsh....as usual!!

Playstation 3 or XBox 360

Now dont at all think that m acting kiddish when I speak about video games. Its not just a video game which one plays with a freaking brick game in it. Its a 35000 bucks playstation dammit with high definition graphics which makes all the gaming experience frigging real.

So, when I thought of buying such a console, only two names popped into my mind:

1. Microsoft's Xbox 360
2. Sony's Playstation 3

Now lets me elaborate which one of these to buy if you are new to these and confused with which one should you go for.

Sony Play Station 3:

This product looks good. Doesnt matter what it has and what not, as long as it has got a sony tag on it, it will sell.
Pros and cons (written in a jumbled up manner - sorry but thats how i always think):

• Slick console.
• If you are planning to keep it in your glass cupboard, it will surely gonna add a whole lot of zilch to it. The black version looks like an alien spaceship which has come to earth for a total annihilation
• Blu-Ray disk which is the future technology of DVDs. Dont put much thinking on it because i was also not able to assess what it actually meant.
  
• It has got a huge amount of space in it in terms of gigs. So no matter what you store, how big you store, you gonna end up in having space all the time.
• Can play DVD movies
• Can be used to surf web
• The games when played on it, gives you a feeling of happy-go-lucky
• Few problem with the graphics: [a] when u look into sunny area standing in a shady garage or house, the screen becomes almost white. [b] Antialiasing is not that good as in foggy scenes, the nearby bulbs and fires are not quite visible. [c] The blood coming out of a soldier doesnt look so real - lacks clarity and doesnt give a feel that you have actually killed somebody

Microsoft Xbox 360:

Now this is a real champ. White and Black model are the famous one in market but you will get many fancy outer body - be it pink, orange, commando theme and literally anything, you can get anything you can think of. Well apart from this what i found interesting is the interface. Its much better than the PS3, all colored up and easy to use.
Few features that one should look for in Xbox 360:

• Heck of a speed! All the cars in Need for Speed Carbon go zoom with greatest quality in texture and lightening
  
• One can literally plug anything into this piece of holy crap and get into the thing vis-a-vis iPod, Zune, SD cards, Memory sticks.
• The lightening effects in the game are really sharper than PS 3
• There is a online community forum too where a XBox user can log onto and do whatever he likes - challenge other players, download music.
• Speaking of music, whereas PS 3 is for photograph lovers, XBox is for music lovers. If someone takes a wi-fi connection, they can literally download mp3 files location in their computer nearby.
• Best price - lot cheaper than PS 3
  

Now the question is which one did I buy? Straight answer is neither of these! I found Nintendo-Wii to be a far better option but still searching for its dealer in India.

Case study & small Brainstorm

Many times a thought comes to Mr Xyz's mind that why the hell is he on earth? Its not that it comes very rarely....actually its frequency of occurence is much more than that of a resonating fork...yeah and its intensity is as high as the swinging bridge that crashed down because of the soldiers marching over it (if you are a regular newspaper reader, you might be knowing what I am talking about)

Lets come back to the bloody question and try to answer it. Things are not the same in Mr Xyz's life. He has been brutally exploited, drastically tortured and tremendously demotivated. He always thinks "What the fuck has happened to his life? It wasnt used to be like this before!". This very question is intriguing him everytime he goes to bed. Yes, his life used to be pretty smooth a couple of years ago. He used to wake up praising the wonderful morning, dine with thanking God to provide him good food, walk with a light and tensionless mind, and rest in peace dreaming about some wonderful experiences. So, what the hell has changed everything now and if there is anybody's fault, who's that?

To solve this case study, lets look at the problems and try to get to a solution or at least dig the cause of the problem. Here are few of the things that would help us achieve in this brainstorm:

• Problem # 1: He used to wake up as soon as the clock hits 7am which apparently has shifted to at least 9 am that too after snoozing the alarm clock for an infinite minimum number of times.

Probable Cause: Human body is designed to have a minimum of 8 hours of sleep daily. This problem might have originated because of late night sleep.

• Problem # 2: Mr. Xyz used to be big fan of food. He used to eat so voraciously as if he had been starving for food for quite a long time. If one can observe the situation now, he just eats to stay alive and most of the time he diverts his mind from food by talking over phone at the same time.

Probable Cause: The food that he eats now is not good enough. There is a huge difference of taste when one comes down from Northern India to Mid-west.

• Problem # 3: Dreams used to be pretty good before. All the woolgathers that Mr Xyz used to dream about gave him a sense of happiness. These dreams have now been totally occupied by snakes - ranging from small to big ones with big heads.

Probable Cause: There are numberous interpretation of snake dreams. Some say that these kind of dreams usually comes when one is closer to death. Some advocate of having a greater sex drive depending on what kind of snakes come in the dreams. Even some others say that dreams are just all bullshit. Watch something good just before sleeping and one will surely think about it at night.

• Problem # 4: Mr Xyz has been totally diverted from his work. He doesnt like to work his ass off as he used to do before. There hasnt been a time when he would have thought of leaving whatever he is doing and start all over again.

Probable Cause: The work that he is doing now might have lost the charm and would be out of the interest zone of a particular person when he feels exactly the same. Its actually the perfect time to switch the job if he isnt satisfied with the kind of work he is doing.

• Problem # 5: He has been wasting a lot of his time in watching crappy movies now-a-days. This wasnt Mr Xyz at all. Everybody used to get surprized when he pops up a discussion about movies and role plays.

Probable Cause: Movies are mere reflections of a society. When a man/woman doesnt know, what in Jesus's name, he/she could do to tackle a problem, he/she gets an inclination towards movies where the issues are solved very wisely in a fantasy world.

There are few other problems too which I dont think it is worth explaining here. Anyway, with all the problems mentioned above and also their corresponding causes, can we get to a conclusion about "What exactly has gone wrong?"

The answer is very simple but yet very complex. To do a little comparison, these problems were matched head-to-head with few of the existing problems googled on internet.

- 15% match was identified with phobic neurosis.
- 40% match with mental disorder and some difficult-to-pronounce-disease whereas
- 95% match was found with an article that talked about falling-in-love.

Boys will be boys and Girls will be girls

I am back again and this was infact a major gap. Wont happen again.

After a long time, got a chance to read some newspaper. Point to note here is that I normally dont order newspaper at my house because I dont get time to read those nonsense stuffs at home. Went to office today (yes and that too on a saturday just for time pass) and get hold of some coffee along with today's Times of India. Skipped the front page because its always boring, directly went to the last sports page but there was no point in looking at it because it always contain the same news that India lost a match by an innings and 250 odd runs, came the last page and the paper reading was over. Then came the complimentary papers which contain all the interesting news and masala part. One article that attracted my eyes was "Boys will be boys and Girls will be girls". It mentioned that Boys think about sex every 4 secs and girls do it in every 10 mins. And there was a whole lot of explainations and craps which are not worth mentioning at all. But it had a valid point and if one thinks about it a little seriously one will get to know many hidden facts.

First, the fact that the article stated wasnt entirely true. Speaking about the guys which I can say for sure, they dont think about sex every 4 secs. No, they dont. Infact they think about it all the time. Actually it depends on the age group. Till 10, they dont even know what sex is. From 10 to 25, they think about it all the time. Between 25 and 35, it reduces to 3 times a day. From 35 till 50, it further reduces to even worse numbers and its once in 10-15 days. From 50 till death, it again comes to 'all the time' but the body doesnt allow them to do so. And all these, I am not saying just like that. After reading that article, I asked few of my colleagues from various age groups and this was the data that I recieved. Cannot say much about girls because I didnt find it comfortable to ask girls about this directly. Moreover I dont have any interest in getting beaten up by sandals of various numbers and brands that I dont even know. So lets presume that the figures mentioned in the article is true for girls. So what does all this mean???

Lets see!! You are in the age group of 10-25 and you are going on a hot date with a super hot lady. Lets say, you take her to a very romantic restaurant or a very happening place like disco, pub or whatever. Just remember that its 'all the time' for the boy and 'every 10 min' for the girl according to the my survey and that of Times of India. So, if after 10 min of the start of the date, the guy turns to the girl and asks "........"

and

Bingo!!!!!!!!! there he goes.

I would say "What the fuck". Theoretically, going by the survey this should have happened but practically it rarely happens or probably never. Just wondering how much sense all these surveys make.

But one thing all these validates is that today journalists have got no other important news and start feeding their newspaper with all the illogical things one can find in this world and make a fool out of the readers.

Along came Mary !!

There was a girl named Mary. As usual there is also a guy in this story named Aston. And this story revolves around these two characters. Just for the sake of saying, its not at all the story of "There is something about Mary".

Lets start with a flashback!!

14 years ago:

Mary and her family just moved into an entirely new place. Big city, new people and everything around was new and so was her school. She stepped into her class with a smile on her face and a glaze in her eyes. Those were enough to raise the tentacles of the guys. Every eye was sparkled, every mouth wide open and every heartbeat went high. Even Aston was quite surprised to feel the high pulse rate which he normally doesn't get, because he never got attracted to anybody till that very moment.

She sat in the first bench and Aston as usual used to sit in the very last bench to keep an eye away from the poking questions of the teachers. Just to mention, only those people prefer to sit in the first bench who are either prepared with all answers, do their homeworks regularly and can sing quite beautifully. While Aston was a dumbass in all these, Mary was superb. Totally opposite characters so to say. Speaking of which, Mary was flamboyant, talkative, beautiful, fun, jolly and naughty. Aston, in contrast, was dull, dumb, book worm, shy, totally hopeless guy. Usually, Aston was never got attracted to any girl. Putting up in another way, he was shy enough to talk to a girl, infact he used to change his course of path if he used to see any girls coming in his way. But still then, there was something about Mary that made Aston go crazy.

He tried to talk to her, let her know what he was feeling. But Mary was always surrounded by her friends and never was found alone. Moreover, Aston was actually not able to gain his total courage to go upto her and start a conversation. Afterall, he had a reputation built up against his name of being a member of hate-feminism-group.

Both of them used to take the same school bus for commuting. She again used to sit in the very front seat and Aston used to take up a seat at the back in such a position that he would be able to get a clear picture of her all throughout the journey back to home. Luckily they stayed just a couple of kilometers away, as in neighbor colonies. And these two colonies used to be hardcore rivals when it comes to Cricket. So they normally used to have cricket matches every now and then. Aston saw an opportunity to go to Mary's colony often and he joined his colony's cricket team. When he finally took over the position of captain of his team, he used to visit Mary's colony frequently and spend most of time in there just in the name of meetings and arranging schedules with the opponent captains. All these because he was pretty much excited to see Mary taking a walk with her cute little dog every evening. That was the only motivation for him to live upto. But still he didnt get a chance to start a communication yet.

4 years passed and still the scenario was the same. Mary didnt even notice that there was a guy in her class who had so deeply fell for her. The only thing that she knew about this guy was that he was a complete nerd, jerk and weird. Mary used to sing amazingly and was in the school prayer team. Aston tried to get into the prayer team too but his pathetic singing couldnt help him. So he tried his hands on being the commander so that he can stay close to her. He used to stand so close to her that among all other voices he was able to distinguish Mary's voice pretty clearly. He never used to miss any of the prayer sessions or even any of the classes, no matter what, with a hope to see her at least once in a day. And teachers used to think that Aston was a very studious and regular guy without even knowing the real reasons. But by this time Aston was so much deep into trouble. He was mad about her. If he wasnt able to get a view of her for a day, he started remaining sad. She took all his minds away. But still there wasnt any talking between them.

8 years ago:

In the meanwhile, the 10th exams got over and the list of the students for 11th class were posted in the notice board. As soon as Aston heard this news, he rushed to the school. He found a large gathering of students and parents checking their scores and admissions. Aston tried pretty hard to get inside that crowd and took a look at the list. The first thing he started searching was the name Mary. He browsed the entire 100 students list but didnt find it. He thought he might have missed the name, so he searched again. But no success this time too. He got frustrated and started blaming the person who printed those results. But he tried to find the name again but luck wasnt with him at all. All of a sudden, his friends started congratulating him for securing the highest percentages in his section. Actually, he was so obsessed with Mary, that he didnt even looked at his own score and when he was told by his friends, he looked at his results and tried to feel happy about it but he couldnt. All throughout the summer vacation, he had been thinking that there was obviously some kind of error in the result and probably Mary might show up in the class itself. Came the D-day, the very 1st day of class 11th, but Aston's eyes were not able to find Mary in the class. So, he attentively listened to the roll calls thinking that her name might be called up if she wasnt able to make up for the class on the very first day. But God was never with Aston and he felt miserable.

He started finding about her whereabouts. He went to her colony many times and asked people that he knew but no luck again. After a lot of search, he actually got to know that she had taken admission in one of the colleges. He was elated because she was still there in the city and didnt go anywhere else. As soon as he figured out her college, he started standing in front of her college every evening to at least have a glance of her. But God again didnt help him out much in there. For complete two years he stood there almost every evening eating junk food, but wasnt able to achieve anything. His faith in God started fading away.

Aston's life then took a U turn and he was compelled to leave that city to go for higher studies and become an engineer which he didnt at all wanted to pursue.

6 years ago:

Aston finally left the city but usually used to come back to his native where he left his heart with a hope that this time he is gonna find her and tell her everything that he has got. But God didnt show any sympathy to him and he kept wandering. In the meanwhile, 4 years of college life had totally changed Aston altogether. He gained so much confidence that he was not at all afraid of talking to any girls anymore and in a sense he was totally ready to take heads up and speak his heart out to Mary if he happens to find her. In every girl he met in his college, he was searching for Mary in all of them but he couldnt find any similarity because of which he preferred to stay away from any relationship stuff. As time passed by, Mary and her smiling face began fading away from the minds of Aston. By the time he got his degree, he was totally over the Mary effect and was open to all. He began to think: As this has been a long time, Mary wouldnt be there in the city anymore but if he ever got a chance to meet her once, he would speak everything up right away without worrying about the results. Who knows she might have got married by now.

1 year ago:

Life was moving pretty smooth for Aston. He got the job he always wanted. He was independent. He started taking decisions of his own. But all of a sudden, after a booz session, Aston got to know from his intoxicated friends that Mary had been seen in a marriage party and that she had been doing a job there itself. Although Aston was totally out of control after having 4 large pegs of cocktails in a pub, his eyes sparkled, his mind started working again and he ran all his resources in the city to get her phone number. And finally after two months of hard search he was able to get hold of her number but wasnt sure what he was gonna talk about.

Mary wouldnt even remember him. They didnt had a talk for the entire period they were classmates. So there wasnt any slight chance that the name Aston would ring any bells in Mary. But then, he decided to speak up everything in the first phone call itself because he might not get a chance to speak to her again. So he picked up the cell phone, connected her number and the ring started to bell. He was profusely sweating in the month of December which was considered to be the coldest month in a year, he was nervous and he cut the phone off. He took a deep breath and tried again, but no success this time too. He dropped the plan and thought to carry forward whatever he had been doing so far without taking much tension in life. But then, he wasnt able to sleep at nights thinking that he has the contact number of Mary with him for which he had been longing so dearly, because of whom he changed himself totally just to have a talk with her and now that he has everything, what is that which is stopping him. After 3 days, he called again with a solid rock heart and a i-dont-care attitude. And this time he didnt shut off the call. The bell rang and a sweet voice answered the phone. Yes, it was Mary and it was Aston talking to her. Infact she was able to recognize him as the same old jerk and moron. Aston was on the cloud nine that his so many years of search had finally ended. But he wasnt able to speak everything up as he had decided earlier. She was the same - jolly, fun, a little bit serious and naughty. After a few days, the frequency of phone calls increased. The talks were never-ending. They started to hover around every kind of possible topics one can think of.

Thats it...Flashback over and lets get back to the present!!

Now:

Finally both of them got a chance to meet over a coffee after 14 damn hard years of when Aston saw Mary....

What happened next??? Even i dont know much. Probably Aston or Mary might be able to take over the story further from here.

Om Shanti Om Review

Om Shanti Om. When you say this word, is there anything else ringing your bells. Well let me help you out. Its the song in Karz (starring Rishi Kapoor and Tina munim i suppose), its the proverb that Sadhu-sant used to say umteenth times in mythological movies, its the word that you say after you finish up your daily prayer routine and blah bla.

Came November 6th 2007 and the only meaning this term has got is "hey its the Farah Khan movie with mindblowing Shahrukh abs". I say what the crap. People have gone crazy, girls who stopped loving Shahrukh have started loving him all over again and guys who hated him for some reasons started hating him more because Shahrukh deliberately doing the same thing over and over again adding to these guys' ruthless distaste in him.

Coming to the movie again, following is the summary of who-is-doing-what:
Movie: Om Shanti Om
Release Date: 6th November 2007
Director: Farah Khan
Genre: Drama/Romance/Drama and more pathetic drama
Tagline: He was a junior artiste. She was a star. For some dreams, one lifetime is not enough.
Cast and Crew:
Shahrukh Khan as Om Prakash Makhija and Om Kapoor
Deepika as Shanti and Sandy
Arjun Rampal as Mukesh Mehra
Shreyash Talpade as Pappu Master
Rani Mukherjee, Zayed Khan, Vidya Balan, Juhi Chawla, Priyanka Chopra, Shilpa Shetty, Arbaaz Khan, Malaika Arora, Salmaan Khan, Amrita Arora, Kajol, Mithunda, Ritesh Deshmukh, Saif Ali Khan, Dharmendra, Lara Dutta, Sunil Shetty, Rekha and many more. The list is just unending.

The reason for writing a review for this particular movie is neither that I liked nor that I hated it but I just wanted to put something down on paper regarding the fact that what a jerk am I to listen to what people say and waste 3 precious hours of my life which I will never get back again. But anyways, let me try not to be biased and jot down what I truly feel.

The plot starts with the copied Karz song in 1970s or something when Subhash Ghai's movie was being shot and Om Prakash (Shk) was a junior artist in it standing in the audience and clapping. This fella has got ambitions to be a superstar someday or the other and recieve an award for being the best actor. He meets the well established actress Shanti (Deepika) and tries everything to win her heart. But this poor lad's heart gets broken when he gets to know that Shanti is already married and was about to have an illegal child of the then famous producer Mukesh (Arjun). The drama begins there and its was a non stop till the end. Woh kehte hain naa "Jab tak film ka ending sukhad nahin hota tab samajh lena ki filam khatam nahin hui hai" - crappy dialogues....eeeak!!

There is a song from the movie which is hitting the top list in the music world and i dont know how and why. Its Dard-e-disco. I never liked it and i guess will not be liking it in future. But there is one song which i liked the most among all the worst songs in it - Dhoom tana. It has got old movie style sets and the song has also got lyrics and music similar to 1970s. Nice one but not that much good that you gonna remember it for more than a month. Coming back to Dard-e-disco, there is a hype about it because Shahrukh has shown his 6-pack abs in it. The crazy world and i dont know why people start doping just because of money. God save them and their future old age.

Speaking of dialogues, you must have noticed innumerable number of times how much overacting shahrukh khan does. Here he proves it again and gets rid of this fact and acts even more jerkily with too much overacting to get digested by a common man. I dont blame him though. People mostly his fans specifically the girl fans want him to overact and so he does. Go and watch the movie if you really want some overdose of overactings by him and his lead actress.

Rating: 3 out of 10 (-3 for making it a horror movie which i dont like at all, -2 for the genuine overactings, -1 for the crappy songs which you would certainly skip if you are watching on a dvd or computer and -1 for a stealing the concept of Karz with few changes)
Feedback: It just so and so movie.
Advice: Can be watchable but you need to have full stock of popcorns and soft drinks with you so that you can have some good time eating it if you ever get bored by the dialogues
Lessons Learnt: Never ever believe what people say and waste your time. Go for what your heart says. Just because Farah has good contacts with athe film industry and she can make all of them come to the stage in one single song, doesnt make a movie hit. Main Hoon Naa sucked and so does this second try at making a movie. People should stick to what they are best at. She is good at choreography, not movie making or even directing one of them.

Oh, did I mention that Deepika is a real hottie!! You can well watch it for her if at all you hate Shahrukh Khan. I did watch it only because of this reason.

Saawariya Movie Review

There has been a lot of hype about this movie for quite a long time. I have been thinking what this heck is all about. Its just another Sanjay Leela Bansali movie where there is gonna be emotions, drama and the movie will end with a happy note but the audience will still have tears rolling down their eyes thinking that the movie should have extended a little bit more till the time they feel happy about one of the characters they love.

Adding to it, to my utter surprise the DVD print of this movie is online after just three days of its release. Thats kind of weird but I was happy that afterall I will get to watch this so highly awaited and anticipated movie with a clear full screen view.

Here are some tit bits about the movie:

Movie: Saawariya
Director: Sanjay Leela Bhansali (please not the extra 'h' that he has added to bring good luck)
Tagline: When he first fell in love...
Cast:
Ranbir Kapoor as Raj (God knows who the hell is he)
Sonam Kapoor as Sakina (Goddess knows what does she think of herself)
Salman Khan and Rani Mukherjee (Nice and very nice as always)

When I first saw the trailor of the movie few months back, I was under the impression that Salman and Rani are in the main lead and surely this is gonna be a super hit. Not because of Salman but because of the combo of Rani and SLB (yeah Sanjay has changed his name to some freaky initials which took quite a while for me to understand). Later on, when I realized that they are just having a special appearance, half of my interest in it was lost. But then the remaining half interest was so much that it compelled me to surf the internet to look for the lastest and clear print of the movie for 2-3 days continuously. And finally I succeeded in finding one.

So, there it goes.
Movie starts, I am so very excited.
Movie continues, I started chatting with friends and watching the movie simultaneously.
Movie continues till interval, I put on the TV to watch some comedy serials alongwith watching the movie.
Movie reaches climax, I opened winamp and started listening to songs of Linkin Park at high volume.
Movie ends, I dont know what happened in the end because I totally lost track of what was going on in the movie and who the hell cares.

That was my experience and there goes the biggest super duper expensive flop of the year without even catching any of the eyes.

The reasons behind it being a flop what I can think of are:

1. The movie starts in such a set that bores you to the utmost point
2. Every now and then it has got songs in it which you wouldnt even like to lend your ears to. Please let me know if you wanna listen to the songs and I will help you out to literally watch the video songs and that the entire movie. Remove the songs and the effecive length of the movie with dialogues is not gonna be more than 15 mins.
   
3. The lead actor was portrayed as if he is a sexy item bomb, wrapped up in a lungi and showing off. I mean i wonder how many of the guys would like to see those scenes. They should have put a parental guidance in the beginning of the movie that should say "Strictly inappropriate for the people who are straight"
   
4. The girl in the movie was not at all hot from any angle. So, no hope from that side too
   
5. Even before you know whats going on in the movie, you would have completed half of your sleep and dreamt about Kangana Ranaut thrice.

The biggest lesson to be learned is that the name SLB doesnt mean that the movie has to be good and watchable anymore.

Rating: -100000.... out of 10 (yes you read it correct.. thats negative)
Feeback: It sucked, it licked and still I am not pleased. Thats the kind of horribleness it has got.
Advice: Dont at all think of wasting your money and time on it. But yeah if you want to go with your gf/bf for some other reason, i would strongly advice to go for it because you will get a lot of time to do all your stuffs and most probably the entire theatre would be empty. Good luck

Do you smile frequently? Think again!!

Three people are sitting on the other side of a round table and looking right on to your face asking one simple bloody question: Can you give us explanation why your results are not correct and most importantly, delayed?

Do you have any idea what expression in these kind of situations would perfectly fit. As far as I knew, till today, a smile can bring no harm to anyone. And so i did - a smile which i always wear on my face. But i had absolutely no idea that the saying did not say anything about you and what consequences it can bring to you. What it meant was for the sake of others. Try smiling in such a scenario and the most likely answers, rather questions, you gonna hear are:

"Why the hell are you smiling?"

"Does your smile mean that you are not at all serious about your work?"

"What do you think you are?? Are you out of your minds?"

"I haven't seen a ridiculous guy like you before"

"Do you think what I just said was a joke?"

"Well gentlemen, I don't see anything constructive coming up from this meeting. So, lets call it off for today. Lets give this chap a little time to save his ass in explaining the big managers about the loss of 2 million dollars"

blah blah....

But did you realize something. They have forgotten the fact that we all are engineers who haven't done anything right at the very first time. And if they mess it up in the first place, they dont touch it the second time. And if at all they do, write it on rock, that they gonna fail the third time too.

Now I really think: Does that old saying about smile have to be modified a little bit? If yes, in what respect. After a few googling, i ended up analyzing some of the quotes that seemed to be famous to me till now :

• "No matter how small, a smile on your face tells all" - This is what affected me i suppose. A big smile refers to a big blunder that you made and in addition to that, it also conveys that you are not even sorry for it.
• "If you find a friend without a smile, give him one of yours" - Well, i would certainly like to give 50% of my smiles to the one i hate the most so that he gets screwed daily. Any takers?
  
• "A smile a day" - And literally means exactly one smile per day. You go beyond it and O'boy you are in a deep trouble. Most of the people took this proverb otherwise and twisted it such a way that nobody thinks about what it really wants to mean.
• "If you smile you can change yourself, others and your future" - One thing missing in this statement is '....for the worst unimaginable things'.
• "Everyone makes mistake and thats why there is an eraser on every pencil" - I just want to kill the guy who wrote this or even uttered it for the first time. Its the mouth and the voice thats gonna keep your ass moving if you do a mistake, not a speechless smile.
• "A smile is worth a thousand words" - Surely it is but not a thousand words. Its just three words that it translates in such a mess 'I dont care' !

There are millions of these proverbs which do not at all make sense if applied in such situations.
The best one that i liked and has got all the intelligent thinking behind it:

"Every tear has a smile behind it"

I dont think anything other than this would better suit the situation that I am talking about. I really need to find the guy who quoted this and congratulate him for his great achievement and the intensive research that he did for coming up with such a wonderful one liner.

So, the question still remains. Do you really need to smile all the time? If yes, then why does it screw you up? If no, what are the criteria when you shouldn't be doing it?