Manipulation by Shahrukh Khan

Is it now LOUD and CLEAR to all those Shahrukh  Khan and Yash Chopra fans that how their beloved idols DESTROYING the film industry? How they are MANIPULATING not only people's minds but also business of film making?

Why is there no Son of Sardar in my nearby theaters? Why is there only Jab Tak Hain Jaan in my nearby theaters? I would like to go and see Son of Sardar anytime than it's competitor as Son of Sardar is at least honest in its approach, at least it's showing nonsense comedy by claiming that they ARE doing nonsense comedy, unlike it's competitor which is PRETENDING to be serious in disguise of being utter rubbish and nonsense.

I have been observing this trend of Manipulation for a long time now when I see all big shots of media will say nothing but pure praise for all those dim-witted stupid and obnoxious movies by Shahrukh Khan, Yash Raj camp, Karan Johar camp and their chamchaas and chamchis (the chamchi is no more a chamchi now anymore since drunk Shahrukh abused her husband physically, publicly). Only a few years back, any movie which didn't star Sharukh Khan but used to do good business in the box office were termed as 'surprize hits'. My question is Why surprize hit? If people liked a movie naturally, why can't that movie be a hit? Only because it doesn't star Shahrukh Khan? Or, because they are surprized with the fact that  someone earned profit in THEIR manipulated arena?

It's a shame and disgrace to a democratic country like us. Whenever I have tried to say this fact to people, the utter stupidity of Shahrukh Khna fans have only surprized me. But then who else but stupids would be a fan of this rickety, bony and old horse like Shahrukh Khan? Age is no matter, even Amitabh Bachchan looks better than Shahrukh Khan. The face is the reflection of mind after all  otherwise I don't see such an ugly hero in this country, forget about a star.

Sleepless days and nights of Indian movie critics

Every time a movie like Kahaani, Lagaan, Ekalavya or Guzarish releases, the Indian movie critics start having sleepless nights, gastritis, acidity, indigestion and all sorts of un-comforting ailments. Now this is turn of Barfi. 

Reason? 

The reason is that they have to scan each and every second of these movies and have to dig their minds as hard as they can to find out even 1 second resemblance with any foreign language movie! They have such a monumental task before them to complete. How can they rest? So, what if they find even 2 seconds of resemblance with some Hungarian stage play or Italian documentary, they have to establish the fact that everything good that happens in Indian movies are copied from Western movies. 

I often hear people saying "XYZ is such a great movie. They must have copied it from some English movie". Why someone has to copy something from English movie to make something good in India? I can't believe the fact that all people from one country are better than another country in terms of creativity or intellect. I believe just like good and bad people are there in every country, every culture, intelligent and dull people are also there in every country and every culture.

But having said that, this is also true that English and foreign language movies have great influence on the Indian movie and television. If we keep the blame game aside for a moment, then may be this is the time when we should ask the question "why so". In my understanding, this is because America started developing movies and television far before anyone in the world started. So, that makes them the pioneer in this field. In that case, is it but not natural that everyone in the world will look upto them in this field? If someone wants to even study about films, they have to rely on the huge collection of movies what America has been producing for all these years. Can you blame a student for being influenced by his professor?

But what is more important is that what is being copied and how it is used. For example, if someone has created a full story and has narrated the story in his own original cinematic language, but while telling the story, he has used one sequence whose core idea might be similar to some other existing sequence of a Foreign language movie but he has completely developed the idea in the newly woven environment. Also, the sequence doesn’t bear much impact on the original storyline but on the contrary, can be edited also. In this situation, will you discard the director’s effort to create the entire movie in his own right, or will you blame the director of plagiarism for using that trivial sequence? I find Barfi such a movie and blaming Anurag Basu of doing “copy-paste job” would be a crime to his entire effort of making such a poetic movie.

On the other hand, there are other directors in our country, who develop the entire story of the movie combining 3-4 English movies. They not only copy and use the sequences from English movies, but they don’t hesitate to show Indian characters following American culture – For example, they show Indian (the name suggest them to be Hindu) people getting married in churches wearing white gowns. They also shoot the movies in foreign locations to easily portray the copied stories and copied sequences. Directors like Sajid Khan, Kunal Kohli, Kabir Khan, Farah Khan, Karan Johar, Shirish Kunder, Aditya Chopra are few typical examples of such directors. But unfortunately, the great knowledgeable critics of India never say a word against these directors and their movies. They will never say how much copy-paste job they have done. Why so? Is it because of the fact that all these critics are actually paid employees to these directors, producers and these banners?

I don’t have any trust or belief on these so-called critics. I detest them. I loathe their boot-licking nature. I never read any review done by any Indian critic. I am sorry but over the years I have found them the most corrupt people of our country. They misuse their power of pen and misguide people by their employer-guided goal.

So, I will never blame Barfi of plagiarism. Instead, I’ll be grateful to Anurag Basu to dare to create such a masterpiece for the most undeserving and ungrateful audience of India.

August, a special month

August 2012 turned out to be a special month for me. I had two long-term dream fulfillment in this month.

Ever since my father passed away, my mother doesn't wear any gold ornament in her hand as she doesn't have any gold bangle. When my father was alive, she used to wear 'ayastha' made in gold, which is a sign of marriage. My mother took this off when my father passed away two years back. Since then, she wears only two citi-gold bangles. Every time I see her hands without any gold ornament, it pinches me. So, last year I started to save in a monthly gold scheme in Tanishq. The plan matured last month and finally I bought two beautiful gold bangles for my mother. Though the purchase practically broke me, but what am I earning money for anyway?

The second dream was to visit Bombay which I could make happen in August, 2012. Since my sister stays in Bombay and also since I have already stayed and worked in Bombay for one year, the dream to stay and visit Bombay may sound very ordinary. But for me, it was one of the most extraordinary events of my life. For me, it was coming out of two of my greatest dreads. I might not be able to discuss everything here, but I'll always remember the August 2012 Bombay trip to be my victory in life.

The primary focus to visit Bombay was to visit the Prince of Wales Museum in Bombay, which I couldn't do in my one year stay there. The trip to the museum turned out to be more astounding than I had imagined as it took six hours for me to visit the entire museum. And, I can only assure everyone that it was worth visiting the place. I wish I had not caught fever the next day, mainly due to the change of climatic condition between Bangalore and Bombay, I believe, I could have one more day to spend in Bombay and I would be able to visit the Jehangir Art Gallery also. May be next time.

Spice Jet and a Cup of Coffee

As usual, I was sleeping as deep as I always do. I can't say if I was snoring. Suddenly the fragrance of food awoke me up and then I saw two air-hostesses carrying the food trolley and selling food items near my seat. Then I realized where I was....I was going to Mumbai from Bangalore in Spice Jet airlines and I was sitting in window seat.

I was not hungry. So, I asked for a cup of coffee as I was feeling cold. They obliged. One sip and I knew that I was having the worst coffee till date. Still I kept sipping the coffee as at least it was a hot liquid, and it was comforting my soar throat. I took out my purse and was waiting to pay for the  coffee. "How much would it be? 50 rupees?", I was wondering in a literally bitter mood.

But cabin crew members never came back to ask for money. As I was again drifting in my sleep land, I was wondering,"Is the coffee so bad since it's free OR is it free since it's so bad?"

Where will it stop?

It was 2006 in Delhi when over a casual discussion, an influential political journalist had told my journalist friend some details about the current political scenario of Assam. He had said that much has been said and discussed about the political situation of Kashmir and the entire world seems to be concerned about it. But what is entirely unknown to the entire world is the political situation of Assam, and the situation of Assam is far worse than that of Kashmir. The political scenario is so bad that suddenly one day the Hindus of the state will wake up to a morning when they will be thrown out of their own houses by Bangladeshis. For Hindus of the state, the situation would be ‘sudden’ but the for those who would be leading the killings, for them the entire situation would be pre-planned and well organized.

My friend was so shocked by learning this that she had immediately called me to tell me about what she came to know. It shook me and my family as well. This fact finding slowly prepared us mentally to shift somewhere in the mainland India before we face something similar to what our ancestors had faced during the independence of India. But surprisingly, over last these many years, whenever I have tried to warn people about this political forecast, people have not believed me; sometimes some people even behaved to be know-all and felt ‘hugely offended’ as I had tried to convince them that what they know is not ‘all’, there is more to it.

Anyway, now we all know that the prediction has come true in Assam. Look at the people of Bodo land and see how they have been driven away from them their houses and how they are taking refuge to the nearby state West Bengal. Bodos are the early settlers of Assam; mainly Kokrajhar and Dhubri districts are their own land. Then why are they being driven out of their homes and who is driving them away? There is answer and that is brutal. All those illegal Bangladeshi immigrants who had immigrated illegally to India one day and settled in Kokrajhar and Dhubri districts are now killing and driving away the native people of bodo land out of their own land.

Then the question is why are they doing this? And why did they even come to india in the first place? All those Bangladeshi illegally immigrate to India for work, since they have no work there in Bangladesh and they would simply starve and die in their own country. So they illegally immigrate to India so that they can eat and live. They keep pulling more immigrants illegally from their country continuously to India. After couple of years or may be after a decade these illegal immigrants, who have become valid voters in India, all thanks to Tarun Gogoi government, become the most powerful pawns of the political power game between India and Bangladesh. Now, Bangladesh has an army of their own inside India, all thanks again to Tarun Gogoi government. Then why wouldn’t they drive away natives and create terror? It’s their right. This is what they are best at, creating troubles and nuisance everywhere they go and finally create a religious riot.

Why blame only Tarun Gogoi government? After the independence, all governments in Assam and West Bengal have been build and sustained on the one and only formula – “Invite and worship Bangladeshis. Thwey will vote me”. This is quite easily understandable that the governments don’t give a damn whether their people are living or dying. They are busy summing up their calculations for vote bank and brimming their own accounts. And why blame only state governments? What is our central government going? Do they really consider North East a part of India? Or, are they also waiting for this chicken’s neck to break and be relieved from all this trouble? Otherwise, how can village after village of Assam go inside the political border of Bangladesh and the supreme authorities of our country are not bothered!

Now in this situation what should we do? Kokrajhar has lived its fate. Should we wait for this to happen to Barak valley and follow the trails of 1947 again? How many times will the same group of people drive us away from one part of land to another? How long and for how many generations will we see the same history repeating itself?

I will miss you Batman

"I wanted to see, what breaks first...your spirit or your body." - That was the darkest moment of The Dark Knight Rises.

I think I was the last person to leave the theater with a heavy heart that Christopher Nolan-Christian Bale Batman series is over. I don't know if I would like Nolan's upcoming Man of Steel considering that I never really like the Superman. But I'll always miss Christian Bale as the Batman.

PS. Those who thought Agent Vinod sucks, might like to eat up their words after watching The Dark Knight Rises. I still believe that had Agent Vinod been made in English with some Hollywood A-lister in lead and with the same ditto script, the people of our country would have gulped it with 5 stars.

Insomnia and other Stories by Aamer Hussein (Penguin)

This was a book that I had picked up from Bangalore book fair last year. It was very abrupt decision on my part as I never buy a book without substantial amount of ground work. But this time I relied more on my instinct as the book is published by Penguin press.

I must say I was not wrong. When I started reading it, I fell in love with the author’s eloquence to play with words. Not only words, but Aamer Hussain seems to be an expert in narrating the minutest of human emotions with so much fervor that I could almost feel and smell the cold and bleak winter of London while sitting in Bangalore summer.

This book is a short story collection and Aamer Hussain has written stories based on his experience in various parts of the world. Since he comes from Karachi, the influence of Pakistani literature is unavoidable. Aamer keeps telling stories of fellow Pakistani authors, poets and thinkers who succumb to the political powers and that they are left with no chance to speak their minds freely. His bold approach to criticize Pakistani rulers made me consider him to be one of those free thinkers like Khaleid Husseini or Gabriel Marquez. But I was wrong. His immense and strong hatred for India and the way he explained how some villagers near Jaipur kill and eat almost-alive pigs not only surprised me but once again established him to be just another orthodox Pakistani writer who though does not live in Pakistan but cannot come out of the grasp of age-old mindset. Isn’t the characteristic of poor people same irrespective of what religion they belong to and where they live?

As for me the principle of the author is important and this short story suddenly changed my view towards the high thinking of Aamer Hussein and I discovered Insomnia and other Stories by Aamer Hussein not to be my favorite book.

A dog and sometimes a cow

Yesterday we three friends wanted to have something different in lunch and so ordered three small pizzas in the U.S Pizza counter in the cafeteria and found a table about 500 meters away from the counter and settled.

We were waiting patiently continuing with our usual chit-chat and occasional giggles. Suddenly a small amount of still-being-cooked pizza escaped the walls of that giant oven that I could see from my seat and entered into my nose. I immediately exclaimed "yey, our pizzas are almost ready, I can smell it"

My two friends looked at each other's face and looked confused and puzzled and said "we can't smell anything!"
Me: "Ohhh...never mind...my mother always says that I must have been a dog in my last birth as no fragrance skips my nose and I was a smell-tester in my house"

My two friends started laughing out loud and then one friend suddenly called out "hey, I can also smell it now!!!!!!"
Me: "See!! You must have been a dog two births back, so it came a little later to you" and we all split out in laughter.
The other girl was still looking confused as she still couldn't smell anything!
I told her, "don't worry. You must not have been a dog in last five births of yours!"

The cow part

At the entrance of my office, they have built a small barred-metallic-passage that stops cows and dogs from entering into the office premises. But whenever I enter the office I get so scared to walk on that passage that I take a small detour to enter the office. I often laugh at myself and tell my friends that I must have been dog and cow in my last births and I still have their characteristics in me that stops me from walking on that passage!

A Call

It was around 9 O’clock at night and there was a call at my mobile from an unknown number. I do not take calls from unknown numbers, thanks to my mobile service provider Docomo who calls incessantly everyday for I-don’t-know what all services. But this call was from a mobile number and I answered it.

 

Me: Hello

A male voice: Hi, is this Doell?

Me: Yes

A male voice: Hi Doell. This is Samit Basu. Happy Birthday!

Me (not being able to comprehend what I was listening to): WHAT???!!!!! Is this some kind of joke?

Samit Basu: I can’t really prove my identity over phone. But, I’m really Samit Basu.

Me: But how could you be Samit Basu? How could you get my phone number? How did you know it’s my birthday today?

Samit Basu: Well, your friend Priya had sent me a really sweet mail to call you and wish you on your birthday. She gave me your phone number.

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(I was as awestruck and as baffled as I could be and honestly speaking, I don't remember what I blabbered in that high spirited state of mine, so I am truncating rest of the conversation)

 

So, this was my gift from Priya on my birthday. She had actually mailed and asked my favourite author to call me and wish me on my birthday! And to add to this madness, HE HAD ACTUALLY ACCEPTED! How is that? I slightly remember that I had told Samit Basu about the mails I had written to him after reading Simoqin Prophecies, Manticore’s Secret and The Unwaba Revelation and that he had replied to two of my mails and he actually checked them right then mentioning that I had written him very nice mails! So, it was a proof that it was really Samit Basu who called and wished me on my birthday!

 

It’s almost a month since I had got that call and somehow, it still has not sunk in my mind! No prize for guessing how excited I was and that I was literally jumping around and laughing and screaming! Full marks to Priya for giving the most innovative gift anyone has ever given anyone!

This birthday was special for many other reasons also. This time my mother was here in Bangalore and my sister had come here from Mumbai. So, when we looked back and raked up all of our brains, we came to discover that the last time we all were together was in 2005 in Delhi when my father was alive.

 

This birthday was special for the amount of gifts I have received also. It seems the more I am getting older, the more gifts I am getting J…so I’m not complaining!!!! Here is the complete list of gifts I have got:

1. Casio keyboard (I gifted to myself)
2. Geetobitan (collection of Tagore songs) and a formal shirt (my brother and sister-in-law. My sister-in-law got Geetobitan couriered from Kolkata with help of her cousin!!!)
3. One Salwar piece (my cousin and his family)
4. Two cotton kurtas (my sister)
5. Two books – Switched by Amanda Hocking and Tea for Two and a Piece of Cake by Preeti Shenoy (Priya and Gayathri. Yes, this is the same Priya who had mailed Samit Basu to call me)
6. One purse (which I bought with the money that my mother gave me)
7. One thermal cup with my company name printed (the Birthday committee in my office)
8. One more gift yet to come from a friend who is determined not to give me book anymore and buy a wall clock for me!

 Can’t wait for the next birthday to come J

Random Thoughts

He is famous....he is loved by millions.....he is chased by his fans......he has a fame that spreads across country borders.....

But at the end of the day he is human, one human who started from the scratch and struggled hard from the zero to today's super-stardom.

So, during some special moments, the moments, which are special for him also, he behaves like anyone of us....

After all, all these years of struggle and success hasn't changed him to a machine from human.

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My reading hours have come down drastically from 2-3 hours per day to even 0 hours. All thanks to my laptop and the fact that I stay so close to office that I end up staying 14-15 hours at office on a regular day.

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My 15 years old days have come back!!!! Those songs have come back to my life again. Thanks Amith :) ...thanks for the Fingertips Fair Collection....as I said before...u're my backup plan...thanks a lot :)

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Are promises made to be broken? I had kept my first promise associated with this city...but the return promise was not kept....

Not Just another Day

As the cruel and cold hands of the clock took their positions, the shorter at 6 and the taller at 12, the clock shuddered with a squeak and started to shriek at the top of its voice. As if it was not enough to kill Siddhi’s innocent sleep; there was something more waiting for her that morning.

Still unable to open her eyes completely, and after successfully having taken the revenge on the clock by slipping it in the pit of silence—only until tomorrow morning, of course—Siddhi could realize that the day was not just like any other day. She could realize herself breathing out of her mouth and her nostrils were blocked and she was having an unbearable headache. She knew what lay ahead of her but was not really ready to face that.

Siddhi had shifted to Mumbai two months back. Getting selected for her dream job, fighting with her parents to relocate to Mumbai from Delhi and settling down comfortably in a PG in Andheri, just two kilometers away from her office, seems to be a distant dream to her now.

New city, new job and new accommodation kept Siddhi so busy, that she kept ignoring the fact that the pollution and tropical climate of Mumbai was causing trouble to her chronic sinusitis. But that day when she woke up with a stuffed nose, headache and fever, she knew that she couldn’t ignore it anymore and it was time for her to go to an ENT specialist.

‘Take a day off and go to a doctor,’ Siddhi told herself.

As she was getting ready to go to hospital, Siddhi suddenly felt very alone and she was upset for being so far away from her house. She missed her own room in her house, those cups of ginger-tea that her mother would prepare for her and her father taking her to doctor every time she suffered from such problems.

‘Grow up Siddhi! You are not a school girl anymore. Stop getting sentimental!’ she scolded herself hard and decided to cheer herself up by dressing up nicely.

‘Pamper yourself, dress up nicely and look good. You will always feel better,’ she remembered her mother’s golden words.

So here she was hunting for her favorite salwar-kameez, matching ear-rings and bangles in her still-unpacked duffle bag. And finally, Sidhhi wrapped herself in her favorite Pashmina shawl that she had got from Jammu on her last trip to Vaishno Devi.

‘Here you go pretty girl!’ she admired herself in the mirror and started feeling better.

As Siddhi was comforting her feverish body in the warmth of her beautiful Pashmina shawl, little did she know that the day still had some surprise in store for her!

Finding out the hospital was not difficult for Siddhi. Her PG mates had instructed her properly. With every passing day, she has started liking Mumbai. She laughed at herself that before coming to Mumbai, how she used think that every second person you bump on in Mumbai would be a filmstar or a gangster!

She got into the hospital and completed the registration process for the ENT specialist. The receptionist asked Siddhi to wait for half an hour, as the doctor was not in yet. She took a seat at the rear row of the sitting lounge and cast a lazy look at the patients and their friends and relatives scattered here and there in the lounge.

There was one more sitting area on the other side of the sitting lounge. There was something unusual there that caught Siddhi’s attention. She could see a very old man sitting in a wheel chair. There was a lady with him, ‘Might be his daughter,’ she thought.

‘He would be more than 90 years old,’ thought Siddhi.

Siddhi could see that the old man was shivering very badly as if he had Parkinson’s. The centralized air-conditioning of the hospital might have been hard on him. The old man seemed very sick and frail and the shivering attack was almost killing him. The lady next to him looked perplexed and helpless as she was rubbing the old man’s palms in a desperate attempt to give him some comfort!

‘The old man needs something warm to wrap himself in immediately.....may be a shawl…..what if he collapses now......I have a shawl..... I won’t die without it.......but it’s my favorite shawl.....what should I do?’—all these thoughts kept cluttering Siddhi’s mind.

She decided something in her mind. Siddhi slowly took off her shawl and started walking towards the old man.

‘Excuse me,’ she told the lady with the old man.

‘Yes?’ the lady replied with a question in her face.

‘Please take this shawl and wrap him up. He’s shivering badly,’ Siddhi told her. That lady took the shawl without any word and hurriedly wrapped the old man with it. The shawl was still warm with Siddhi’s body heat. The comfort that the old man felt was visible on his face. He smiled back at Siddhi.

The hospital reception was calling Siddhi’s name for the doctor visit. The doctor had just arrived. As Siddhi started walking toward the doctor’s chamber, she knew that the she wouldn’t get her shawl back but surprisingly, she didn’t feel bad. On the contrary, she was feeling very good!

Siddhi could feel her blocked nose opening up and her headache going down slowly. Surely, it was not just another day in her life.


Note: This is a true story with some exaggeration! The fist part of the story is my imagination and last part of the story is my sister's story. I had written this story to participate in a story-writing competition in my office.

View from my terrace at 6 o'clock in the morning

Story vs Story-telling

While watching a movie, ever felt like that the movie shouldn't end? I felt the same while watching Dhobi Ghat. I felt like watching some more days of those characters....reading some more pages of the Mumbai Diary...

But unfortunately most people go to see a movie to see the story.....many people don't understand that more than the story, the way of story telling is more important in a movie. So, when I was about to watch Dhobi Ghat, my room mate said that she and all her friends hated the movie and they didn't understand the story and she warned me not to watch it. But after I had finished watching the movie, when I said that I loved it, she was looking at me as if am an alien and told me 'I think you should get your brain checked'. So I told her that this movie is for a niche audience and I fall in that niche like many others who loved watching Dhobi Ghat like my brother and sister. She seemed a little pacified.

It's difficult for me to explain why I liked the movie, except for the technical aspects like editing and amazing sound engineering, but I liked the way the story was told here, since I believe that the way of story telling is more important than the story itself. And when the way of story telling is not dependent on the story itself, the movie watching becomes as delightful as this.

For example, the way of story telling in Dhobi Ghat is so unique and so much independent from it's story and the characters within, that you can actually fit ANY movie story in this format and present it. It's amazing, it's like a variable that can take the form of any value.

And more importantly, the story is also something which has no fixed beginning or fixed ending. The typical Yash Chopra, Karan Johar or Farah Khan pattern of story telling would have killed the story.

Few other movies that I can think of right now whose story-telling was unique and flexible enough to be treated as variable are - Hazaron Khwaishein Aisi, Jab we Met and Andaz apna Apna.

Beg Borrow Steal

All the three attributes listed above are bad attributes of people.

But we do beg for various things to our very near-ones like parents, siblings, spouse or best friends. But what about begging for extra starter items, which caterers bear all through the party venue, in a typical Delhi buffet party? How cheap is that?

But we do borrow things from our very closed ones when we need to attend some function and we realize that we don't have good clothes. But what if somebody borrows clothes for marriage....for his OWN marriage? How cheap is that?

But we do steal those cake pieces and sweets from the fridge when mom is not around. But what about stealing tissue paper rolls from the office toilet or stealing towels from the Rajdhani Express train? How cheap is that?

From the childhood our parents teach us about morality, honesty and other such qualities. I always used to think that all kids are being raised with the same teaching in their respective houses. But I am wrong. There are parents who teach their daughter how to keep her husband under her control like a pet, they teach their daughter how to tell lies swiftly to their in-laws so that she can fool them, there are parents who appreciate their son when he comes home with a stolen good from office or Rajdhani Express train, there are parents who teach their son how to be fraudulent to deceive someone. They teach their children how to be a fraud, a liar, a thief, a dishonest mother and a bad person. How cheap is that?

I practice Pedagogy!!!

"Pedagogy is the study of being a teacher or the process of teaching. The term generally refers to strategies of instruction, or a style of instruction. Pedagogy is also occasionally referred to as the correct use of instructive strategies." - wikipedia.

That's my work, that's my job but I never knew about this term. Sounds interesting.

If you want to read more, visit the following link:

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

Office Office

They say “This is not just another run of the mill project. This is different. So, you guys need to gear up and walk that extra mile to deliver the best product”

But they say this for every course I work on. Where are these run of the mill courses made? I want to work for one....that'll be relaxing I assume.

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I know winning a spot award is no big deal. But I am happy for having won one :). But more than that, I am happy to receive those Shopper’s Stop vouchers. I know I would have never visited that unreasonably expensive shop to buy anything unless I had those vouchers.

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Every day habit of swiping the identity card innumerable times has gone to my head to that extent that some days back instead of pressing the doorbell at home, I was looking for my identity card to swipe and open the door!!!!!!!

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Those days and late nights of work are back when I forget the entire world and get glued to my system. I came to know that I love this when I didn’t have this. I love it and I enjoy it.

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The ink in my pen is over. I am damn happy. After a long time I have the pen with me long enough to run short of its ink!

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My friend had got a brand new collection of Salil Chaudhury’s songs from Kolkata, on my request, and she handed it over to me in office. I was jumping with joy! That was the time when I was having crazy hours at office leaving every day after 11pm. That day also when I was leaving at the 11th hour to catch my 11pm cab, the security stopped me, and found the CD inside my bag and CONFISCATED it!!! I was awestruck but didn’t have time to get into any conversation as I was getting late for my cab. The next day when I went to meet the duty manager, he said that they would check the CD and if they find it blank, they’ll return it to me and if they find any data in the CD, they would break it. Almost in a breathless condition I asked “what if there is music in the CD?”, “We’ll break it”, he said coolly!!!!

I didn't know what to do. I spoke to my manager, team lead and everybody said that this is unfair but this is the company policy. Big thanks to my friend Chandrima, who actually got the CD from Kolkata, somehow convinced those stone heads and they agreed to return my CDs. A lesson is learnt and now I submit even the Flipkart parcel also at the reception if it contains CDs.

6th January, 2012

This year was the best day as compared to any other 6th January till date!
On 5th January I came to know from FM that the Hindi version of Vinnathandi Varuvaya, which is Ek Tha Deewana is finally releasing and the audio was going to be available in the market from 6th January, 2012. Whoever decided this strategy, no wonder, had ARR’s fans in mind.

So, me being me, immediately placed an order for the audio CD of Ek Tha Deewana with Flipkart with the help of my friend Chandrima.

And wow wow, I got the CD right in my hand on the very next day, i.e. on 6th January, 2012!!!!! I returned from office on my toes and, what more, I inaugurated my laptop by playing Ek Tha Deewana audio CD.

This was the best way I celebrated ARR’s birthday as far as I can remember!
The review on Ek Tha Deewana is yet to be drafted hence posted. So, peoples, please hang on for some time. Itz cuming soon!!!!

I got a life of my own

I got a life of my own

What does this really mean?

Well, it means:

1. Being able to see a doctor when I am ill.

2. Being able to eat healthy food and not something which is stale, too much spicy or rotten.

3. Being able to have a blanket or quilt while sleeping in the winter in Delhi.

4. Being able to switch on the fan when it is summer in Delhi.

5. Being able to buy necessary goods like umbrella in the rainy season to be protected from rains and in summer to be protected from the sun rays.

6. Being able to buy necessary goods like sandals (when the last sandal has broken down), bags (when the last bag has tore off), warm clothes during winter, cotton clothes during summer.

7. Being able to talk to relatives on special days without checking on the mobile phone balance.

8. Being able to wear the clothes of my choice.

9. Being able to read the kind of literature I want to and being able to appreciate what literature I feel to be good and being able to criticize what literature I feel to be crap.


When I was living WITHOUT having ‘all of the above’, I used to feel like Not Having a Life. Now when I have liberty to have ‘all of the above’, I understand what it feels to have a life of my own.

My First Post

This is my first post from my own laptop, of course after having internet connection in it.

How does it feel? It just feels great :D