Sunday 27 April 2014

An Ode to My Beautiful Wife...



We have walked a thousand miles and will do a thousand more
We'll travel across the world and kiss a thousand shores
A thousand words we said yet a million hidden behind
A glance, a touch, a sigh and spoke volumes of that kind
I held your hand since then, and you never let go mine
I am thousands of miles away, as the golden sun shines
For a lifetime and more, Let us sit beside the fire
Or walk through the jungle, the cities and the shire
Celebrate this life and the lives yet to come
With you babe, in a place - we'll call our home!
 

Friday 27 September 2013

this is a great way to create passport size photos

123passportphoto.com

Friday 20 July 2012

The Dark Knight Rises (but falls short of its own shadow)

After a long long time, I went to watch a movie on its first day.

It was the biggest movie of the year. The dark knight was coming back to enthrall us. Before I watched it I almost wondered what is it that Nolan thinks he can showcase after such a flawless second part of the trilogy. There was always a chance that the finale won't be as grande as is expected because the expectations are almost sky-high. Sadly, that is what happened.

The dark knight rises has everything. It starts with a bang and then unveils a badass muscular giant like villain in Tom Hardy who can match Batman not only in physical prowess and cunning, but also with voice (;-)). He is in Gotham to spread terror and destruction, to bring down the entire city to ashes - A shade of Ras Al Ghul? Oh yes.... there are more of that than you may have thought and you have to watch it to know more.

This badass villain can beat the crap out of Batman, often utters revolutionary dialogues, and apparently likes chaos just the way Joker did. But does he instill fear in you - you who are sitting outside the screen in the bigmovie hall with a hundred other popcorn chewing, girlfriend clad people with a secure life and a home to get back to?

Here Batman is struck with trauma - from losing his only love. He has almost gone back to the initial days of Batman begins, when he exiled himself to the himalayas in search of self destruction before Al Ghul and the monks make him what was his destiny.
************************************Spoiler Alert************************************
All that was nice and good. But what follows does not fit in a batman series as grand as Nolan's was so far. Batman suddenly decides to comeback, a cripple becomes straight without much effort or pain. Bane attacks stock exchange.Then he beats the shit out of batman and locks him up in a hole...Then with a sudden twist he gets all the policemen locked in to sewer. then he blows up a football (the american one which they play with hands) ground. While all this happens, the viewer is treated to a plethora of amazing stunts, awesome CGI work and splendour and destruction. Then finally Batman rises from that hole and wins the fight.
*********************************************************************************

Rather than writing a long post, I would straightaway come to the points I did not like.

1. Bane raised interesting possibilities. He gave away the power from corrupt government and gave it away to common men - almsot a liberator. But what follows next is very typical. Criminals robbing and looting people. I was hoping Bane would bring out the darker side of common men. common men doing what they have been forbidden to do by the society and thus introducing chaos. The chaos brought in by Bane was a forced one. One thing the Joker did effortlessly.

2. That mask of Bane actually takes away half the acting that Tom Hardy has done in this movie. A fantastic actor was denied his expressions. While I understand this was to be true to the character of Bane as portrayed in the novels, it was disappointing nevertheless. All those smart dialogues lost its meaning a tad without Bane's expressions. However, full marks to Tommy that he created much of his acting with his voice and dialogue delivery.

3. Marion Cotillard was pretty flat. Not the enigmatic woman we saw in Inception and her other movies.

4. Batman's picturizations failed to ignite that sense of awe which TDK or BB did so easily. Apart from one scene I don't remember the caped crusader watching over the city from a high vantage point which is such a trademark scene for batman. May be batman is getting old and developing a vertigo!! :(

5. Bane's character wasn't fully developped. We never get a glimpse into why he is what he is. Nolan tries to wrap him with a background. But that's more of a decoy than the story itself.

6. Too much of action, and no real cunning of the vilains. There is hardly anything in the script which wold make you believe Bane is a real man.

There are a few other points too which I would have mentioned here. But cutting long story short, there are serious shortcomings in the script, casting and acting of the movie.

Did I not like anything then? Oh for sure I did. I loved the action sequence between Batman and Bane, Bane's dialogues there and other scenes. I loved Anna Hathaway who was a revelation. But who can dislike a sexy, smart and sazzy catgirl, innit?

The free for all on the streets of Gotham also has its feel. Its brutal and engaging. The welsh accent in Tommy's voice is fantastic. Gives his role a touch of tune and works like charm.Zimmer's music is pretty awesome too.

over all verdict is I loved the movie. But it could not fulfil my expectation. Partly because my expectation was so high and partly because I wanted The Dark Knight to remain the most supreme superhero movie of all time. Because that is the only movie where the superhero remains in the dark...and is a true Knight. TDKR failed to reach that bar set by TDK - which I repent and at the same time cherish because I wanted it to be there.

Wednesday 1 September 2010

One Day at Bus Stop...

He looked at his watch: 12:30. "Shit", he murmurred. Again he was late, Like the last fifteen days.

"What the hell" he thought, "I do not have any work anyway!" Thankfully iGoogle was not blocked at his office and he had installed a pretty cool braingames addon to his iGoogle homepage. He now could play battleship with the computer or someone as idle as him allday. But still, he was anxious to get on to the bus, because in his bachelor life, office also equated to "Lunch" or "Food".

Technology is a bliss! he thought.And he looked above to thank the person above. Only to face the searing sun directly above his head. the temparature in these parts of the world never goes down. And the money one earns never goes up. He was sweating like a pig. His shirt had already given up the deodorant and braced the smell of sweat. His hair was all wet. and He stood in the busstand (or so they claimed though it was practically just roadside) for a bus to go to office.

Today was friday. And the day to party, to hang out with girls at pubs after office. Well these things meant nothing when you are cornered to a city like this. He despised the city, its people, its life, its weather and its food. Not to mention its language. Everything about this city was directly from medieval age. He looked around and looked with pity on the few gents and ladies standing beside him for the bus.

One guy wearing a white shirt and a white dhoti which was folded in half and knotted near his waist. It looked like a miniskirt. He could draw analogy from the scottish national dress - the kilt. However the scotsmen looked nothing like these hideous creatures. There was a girl wih a assortment of flowers on her hair. She smelled pathetic. Moreover she had applied some face powder quite heavily on her face, making it look fairer from the other parts of her body. "These people are darker than the african americans!", he thought. At the same time he felt proud of his complexion and thanked the searing sun above for having his birth elsewhere, somewhere where still existed a season called winter and butter chicken was loved more than pepper chicken.

He's been thinking about leaving this place eversince he came here. He wanted to go back to his city, but alas there are no jobs here. He wanted to go to some other city which were cooler or what his friends usually call "happening". But his bloody project manager wouldn't let him go anywhere. He was stuck here. Parmanently.

He tried a number of stuff to get out of this shit hole. He tried to get into MBA. But all the good colleges wanted smarter people than he was. He tried to switch job, but looked like, someone in america screwed it up bigtime so there were no job for a developper with a 2 year experience.

When he went back to his city after spending one year here, he was astonished to see the city change. It had grown a lot more savvy. There were more coffee shops and pubs, more girls with fewer cloths, more tall flats everywhere. The small town was quite desperate to shed off its "small town" tag, and was galloping towards metropolis-dom. He loved it.

But that was almost one year back and was for only 7 days.
That was when a flight ticket could be bought for 1 rs if you plan appropriately. "Chance illa" now! He's been saving money to go home, to see his girlfriend - Shalini.

Time flies by and doesn't even gives a notice. After joining his job, he became so busy for the first one and half years he didn't notice where he was going. Now was the time to retrospect. He had worked hard in this city. This city was about working hard. Everyone from the porter in station to the tea kadai owner everyone is working hard here. His next door neighbour were a few 20 years odd youngmen. They studied engineering in the city, as was the norm with any medium intellect fellow over here in this region. Those guys start at 7, in unison, at a high pitch voice, to study and continue at that pace, without stopping till 12.

"OMG", he laughed in his mind, he had never studied like that in his whole life. Probably if he did, he would have landed a better job than this. But it didn't matter. He was where he was. And where he was, everything around him, gave rise to a sarcastic smile in his face.

"How long more", he muttered. One bald guy in gentlemanly suffary suit was standing beside him, almost shouting in his cellphone at someone in english. Understandably he was looking for an address and that fellow at the other side of the call, wasn't much helpful. The guy snapped his call, looked at him, and spoke sheepishly,"Execuse me, do you know this place well". For two years he had been doing just that, knowing this place. because everywhere he went, every road he put his footprint on, made him banter, made him sarcastic about the locality, the locals. The man, who was a bit elderly, around in his early fifties, asked him about an address, he didn't know where it was. But thankfully he was talking in hindi. What a bliss. None here speaks that. The man went away. He secretly was pleased at the tamilians bracing of hindi. It was a victory of somesort. The north will win someday, and these "darker-than-the-african-americans" will give way.

The bus was coming. Heavily crowded, it looked almost like a Mumbai local train. He started jostling for getting on. Finally he could place a foot on the last step and tried to hold one of the rods across the windows. His hand slipped.

He was terrified, and the bus had just picked up speed.

suddenly a darker than dark hand came out of the crowd and caught his company ID tag. The bus pushed ahead.

[Disclaimer: This is not my point of view but that of the protagonist.]

Friday 7 May 2010

Drinking

I am a born drunkard. Yet I am losing the charm of drinking day by day.

I mean I can't drink by myself. With most of my intoxicated friends away, there is no company to drink with. In between I had developed a few online friendships with like minded people, with whom I used to drink while chatting on virtual forums. (i know that sounds like a loser but that is the best i could manage)

Now all those guys are either married or dead.

I think I need a few rounds of Vodka to kick myself up. But you don't get vodka in Chennai. All you can manage is a nice overpriced bottle of Black Dog. But office doesn't allow me to reach the liquor shop (in local words: TASMAC) before 10.

Oh my life is so fucked up! :-(

Thursday 6 May 2010

Censorship

Censorship of media has always been a topic of major debate. While many countries have adopted no censorship policy and have reduced control of government

over media, there are many countries which still today continue to uphold strict control over contents of media. Its tough to take a stand on either side as

there are strong arguments and counter arguments. However I feel that censorship should be on the part of the people or consumers rather than at the part of

producers or the government who may try to control production.

A censored media means, you get to see what you are being shown. The choice for the people reduces drastically. Moreover such a control by government over a

media may harm the quality of content that will be available. let's take an example of china, where the media is fully controlled by Chinese government. This

means the Chinese people will be limited to the view point of chinese government only and would not be able to see/listen to any program that criticises the

government or provides a counter argument to a government policy. This is harmful for the society.

A censorship of content also demeans the congizance of the viewers. It has to be understood that a bad program or an offensive program will be summarily

rejected by the viewer sooner or later. Although this has implication on the traditions and cultures of the soceity but censorship should not be the answer

to that. Many countries like india censor TV programs to avoid, nudity, religiously offensive programs. This trend is evident in middle eastern islamic

countries as well. This has to do with the culture of the region. Nudity, blasphemy etc contents which generally offends viewers are often termed as normal

in europe while it is not so in Asia. Also we need to ask ourselves, have the society matured enough to depend upon the cognizance of the viewers and let

them choose what to see and what not to? This may be a very difficult choice. A religiously abusive tv program has the potential to cause huge social unrest

and disharmony among large multicultural countries.

Often a program is supposedly an offensive one whenever it ridicules a section of the community, or shows a counter philosophy or shows the dark side of a

particular faction. This may be done as a constructive criticism as well, which is good for the community. This may have been done as a brilliant work of

satire. But not everyone has the apetite for this, and the government may choose to censor such a program which otherwise would have become a brilliant piece

of work. Thus the government devoids the soceity in such cases.


Censorship in my view causes two major issues. One is to completely devoid the user from a counter view point which the government may block if it doesn't

agree to it, thus cropping the viewers spectrum. Secondly it undermines the viewers intelligence in judging between a good and a bad program. Government

simply has no role to play in it and should stay away from censoring anything. A viewer has a right to watch what he likes to watch and listen to what he

likes to listen to.

Thursday 29 April 2010

What Do You Do at Office?

Ten things you do at Office:

1. Read google news.
2. Read some more google news.
3. Read Cricinfo.
4. Look up for useful stuff in Wikipedia like: Cannibals of India, Megapodes of Andaman, Financial turmoil of the mid 1920s etc.
5. Pick up the headphone (connected to your phone and not IPOD) put it on your head like you are doing some very useful talk.
6. Don't forget to put the phone on mute. Do speak up a few times in between of course while on mute.
7. Go for 3 coffee breaks.
8. Go for 3+3 Cig breaks.
9. One lunch and two breakfast and two tiffin breaks.
10. If someone asks you something about the area of your expertise, respond: "Yah, I will look into it and get back"
11. Don't ever get back. That will be asking for trouble.
12. Check the date thrice in a day (especially in the last week of a month).
13. Read and re-read the salary check 5 times to ensure your company is not looting you (on the first week).


Many more to come...offices are after all supposed to be hectic!