DON

As the titles flashed by , I was transported to the good old school days when weekends meant checking out SONY MAX or ZEE CINEMA for some old Hindi classics . I became a huge fan of Big B after watching Deewar and Zanjeer and the fan became a devotee after Namak Halaal, Laawaris,Don,Sholay,Trishul etc. The timelessness of these were mainly due to Big B,cutting dialogues , R D Burman or Kalyanji Anandji- Kishore combo,masala story and pace of the movies.I would have watched DON,the 1978 blockbuster of Chandra Barot , completely atleast ten times and partially infinite times. Infact I even remember watching the Tamil remake BILLA starring superstar Rajni in Kumbakonam many summers ago and the gult remake YUGANDHAR with a disproportionate NTR . The gult version was horrible and left a bitter taste but the Tam one was pretty good. Thanks to LAN I watched yet another remake of one of my all time favs with the so called Baadshah of Bollywood teaming up with the suave, urbane, gen next director Farhan Akhtar.

SRK has done a great job, given his limitations like lover boy image, diferently abled talents like stammering etc. Though not very convincing as a top notch gangster, he has been able to carry the film on his shoulders well.Kareena in the item number is scorching hot!I wont say the same with respect to her other films though . However the choice of the side actors leaves much to be desired.Thankfully Farhan didn't commit the blunder of showing how martial arts can be learnt in ten days as done by the sexy Zeenat Aman in the original by showing an already trained Priyanka.Sadly the beautiful babe can't emote or dance.Seriously! And Arjun Rampal playing the role of a limping criminal, hell bent on taking revenge on the DCP (Boman Irani) was by far the worst choice. The master of the hamming code ,Pran had great dialogues in the original and made a huge impact. Some of the finest actors in Bollywood like Boman Irani and Om Puri (as the Interpol officer) have been wasted. Boman, though having decent footage doesnt get a chance to display his varied histrionic skills and was a little disappointing. These two chaps didnt get much roles in Lakshya too.

Like any Farhan movie this too has great locales, plush apartments,amazing gadgets, some sensational chase scenes and breathtaking photography which give a totally Hollywood look. The songs were a bit of a letdown but the rocking background music with electric guitar generously being thrown in compensated for the loss .Surprising that Indian directors have no qualms in blatantly copying famous scenes, promos etc.The green posters all over the town give a Matrix feel and the fights have been directly lifted from Bourne Identity. The chase and escape sequences , though well shot , are slightly out of the world though. Can you believe SRK escapes from a plane and fights in mid air for a parachute ?Oh yeah.He thulps his adversary , lands down and sings "Khaike paan banaras waala" after a few minutes !Or Priyanka snatching an injured Don from the cops in the first half by lifting the ambulance with a crane over a flyover when she could have easily lifted Don alone as the cops were already cornered by the gangsters and were unarmed :P. Some thought should have gone into these small aspects atleast.

The last few minutes offer some thrilling , edge-of-the-seat moments like Arjun walking across the Petronas Towers connecting bridge, Boman being made to run over high altitude cliffs and bridges etc ably supported by the stringing of the electric guitar and the camera work. The final scene will surely leave you bewildered and it is the trump card of the film! Farhan's talent comes to the fore in these scenes and one is bound to applaud them.

The bottomline is that first timers will fall in love with the flick , while others can only rue about the current acting talent , which is on the wane. Worth watching once mainly for the plus points mentioned above and to an extent for SRK. But one thing is for sure. SRK cant be Big B. As goes the trademark dialogue Yeh to mushkil nahi, namumkin hain!!!

FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE

Note to self:

1) Mug probability,DI,integral and differential calculus like hell and become an expert by next November. After doing so,mention that you are one prob stud in your resume.The probability of being shortlisted in many companies is pretty high. You might atleast go the last round of Deutsche Bank - 125,000 $ p.a ,Lehmann Bros Tokyo - 110,00 $ p.a, Cap one - dont know, some other company offering 90,000 $ etc. Who knows if luck doesn't desert you,you might even end up grabbing some plum offer ;). Aiming high is not a crime

2) End sems from Nov 22nd. Mug for that. This is also essential for the extra dollars.

3) Watch The Departed,Dhoom 2,Godfather and Guru ASAP after Nov 31st.

4) If time permits watch the film with the same title. You can shout from rooftops that you know Clint Eastwood.

Orkut

The word on everybody's lips seems to be orkut now.All my cousins in the vetti age (>18) are there and I have re-established ties with many of my long lost school friends .Infact thanks to orkut we were able to meet this summer.Ok,everybody knows this,so why an entire post extolling orkut and Orkut Buyukkokten?Well ,read on.Here are 2 interesting conversations.

Firstly my mom seems to be knowing about Orkut now.

Mom: Do you know about orkut?

Me: Yeah,its a social networking site (with the usual nonchalance)

Mom:So what exactly is it about?

Me: Well its open to all.You have to create a profile and then sign in.You can add new friends and also keep in touch with the old friends.

Mom:Is that all?

Me: Hmm there are many communities too.We can join them and participate in the interesting discussions.

(The million dollar question now)Mom:So what do you do?

Me: ( Tightlipped for 4 secs,A 1000w bulb.I cool down,come back to my senses and then shoot out) I keep in touch with my old friends.I participate in fruitful discussions in Iyengar community.I follow other communities which interest me like quizzing,Hindu crossword,Cricket etc.Thats it.

Mom: Ok I heard something called scraps.Dont waste your time scrapping everyone.Do it only if necessary. Also I have read some disturbing articles in the paper so be careful.

Me: Oh yeah sure.No tension.

We digress and that was the end of the convo. The "what do you do" was an interesting one. 339 friends,66 fans, 4669 scraps and 84 communities.That should speak for itself.The things which I do are the usual writing scraps,keeping in touch with friends,scrap book intrusion,etc.I read the scrap books of many of my close friends and follow the replies too. Of course,along with the replies some innocous babe watching. An interesting proof of what I do-

Guy(Some friend's friend) : hi XXX!..how is life going on...good to see u here in orkut....its always good to have good old friends back...so how has life been for so many years...... ("SO MANY YEARS" .rofl)

Girl: who's this?? I don't know u...

Guy: Hey I was your classmate in school.

Girl: Well i dont seem to remember.I really do not know you.

Guy: hi....that was just a way of getting a reply from u....sorry if it annoyed u......nyways....wanted friendship with u .....so what do u do....

Girl: better luck next time!! plzz i can't maintain so many friends... tk cr..

Girl (again) : hey! plzz don't feel bad!

Guy: simply amazing.....the way u denied it....hi funda... i mean i have never seen such a decent refusal.....that matches with ur pic....chalo it was nice talking to u.....as u say i wish i have a better luck next time.....hey dont worry nothing to feel bad about........chalo bye..take care.

Girl: Bye

I do not know either of them. Just felt like posting this,thats all. Anyway me off to Hyd for Diwali ,so advance wishes to all my beloved readers .

P.S : When is the probability of rain in Chennai 100%?

Ans 1) If the Indian team is in Chennai
Ans 2) 1 or 2 or 3 days before Diwali.

It has been raining incessantly since morning . Bunked the entire morning session.Well I would have become a "mamu" if I had donned a raincoat and put fight cycling all the way only to find the class cancelled.So did not take the risk.

I WANT TO...

Tagged by Naren.This one seems to be easy. In fact no fight at all. One of my shortest and quickest posts-10min.Surprisingly I found ready answers to the questions and I am so happy for that.This is after spending so much time for every question in the now weekly affair called quizzes.

1) Read

The count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas and To Kill a Mocking Bird by Harper Lee.

2) Listen

All songs of Kishore Kumar, Mohd Rafi and A.R.Rehman.Hehe no pattern there.

3) Watch

The Usual Suspects,Pulp Fiction,Fight Club-all with subtitles.Tried watching them before but couldn't make out anything apart from four lettered words.I really want to watch these to know why they figure in the list of all time favourites of so many people.Btw I dont find Quentin Tarantino appealing at all.Kill Bill was crap to say the least.Captain/Balayya atleast provide some comic relief unlike Thurman.

4) Visit

Munnar. A few friends of mine went there recently and I fell in love with that place after seeing the pics.

5) Buy

Oh so many!!! Digi Cam,Pseude mobile,Swatch :D

I shall also brand my wants as "realistic" as that seems to be the buzzword now.

SALAAM NAMASTE

Hi, Hello ,How do you do,Fine thank you!It has been a long,long time and I thought it would be fine to clear the cobwebs and dust my blog. It has been gathering dust for a month.Even my room generally breathes life once in 15 days. My body thankfully hasnt been subjected to an IITian form of life and I can proudly say that I take bath daily albeit at odd hours.Guess some of the guys who chat with me between 10-12pm would have known my erratic bathing timings.

The sem was damn painful initially mainly due to the long distances. Of course I dont mean travelling 1-2 hrs as most of the engg guys do. Any distance greater than Jamuna to MSB,which might be 1km is "long" for me.I have been fortunate enough in having my places of study quite closeby .The farthest I have encountered was my school which at the max would have been about 4 km . Actually I cant believe that I used to cycle down 4 kms then because I find cycling so painful now. Probably with advancing age things which seemed pleasurable once stop being so.

By an odd quirk of fate I suddenly find myself too busy.I have a quiz almost every alternate week and a spate of assignments to do. Assignments have been there every sem,only that this sem we cant copy most of them and some require original ideas. Of course original is a euphemism for googling or askjeeving on your own computer.Atleast this has provided the impetus to do something on my own and its surely time to rejoice as I have finished almost all the assignments on time.sadly laziness got the better of me and I am yet to submit two of them.A couple of assignments require some sort of a survey.And one of them is about FMCG etc.Surely we will be shown the out gate without any mercy whatsoever unless we hang our ID cards and produce them first like some FBI agents.What tragedy has befallen me! An engineer doing a salesman level job :P .Thanks to the turn of events in the past month I can now proudly claim that I am no longer vetti (=jobless, for those unacquainted with the word). I shall go a step further and announce that you will be offending me by calling so. Henceforth people are advised not to even inadvertently address me as a vetti,as its tantamount to insulting.

I have started playing football.Its interesting,only that more running is required.Cricket is so peaceful in that way.Of course I dont run much even in cricket.Let alone running, my footwork is also pathetic and after 15 odd years of batting I still cant get the cover drive right.Somehow my legs simply refuse to move when required despite my having a predilection towards cricket.Coming back to footer I am still in the learning process and have just learnt how to take a kick.I now play (I mean weekly once or twice)as a striker ,thereby masking my inability to run much and also in the process being able to play football. Dribbling ,hoodwinking etc will take time.All is fine with football,only that the term "beautiful game" somehow doesnt go well with me as I find it a tad "unbeautiful" and violent.

Btw if you haven't watched Salaam Namaste you haven't lost anything.Just check out Jaaved Jaffery's comedy track in that.Really hilarious. DON's audio has been released and the title song is really cool and sung beautifully as always by Shaan.The music is too good in that song.The rest are ok types.Udit Narayan,SRK and Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy have murdered "khaike paan banaras waala" with new beats,SRK chipping in with limericks and all crap.It will be interesting to see whether this Farhan-SRK combo can match one of Big B's biggest hits. Post KHNH only Swades was good. The rest sucked big time. Once again continuing the talk about movies sadly Chiru's Stale-in {Stalin} isn't doing well.The mega star seems to have lost his touch with 3 straight flops. JIllunu oru Kadhal has been dismissed as a worthless movie and even ARR didnt give his best. The biggest hits this season have been Bommarilu in Gult and Munnabhai in Hindi and haven't watched both of them. What about Hollywood? Bole tho??? :P

And finally posting this on a day after writing two quizzes on the same day,followed by preparing the ppt for the intern viva tomorrow.This is supposedly the break. Atleast now are you convinced that for a change I am really doing something??

FIRST ANNIVERSARY

Firstly Happy Birthday to my blog.

Incidentally this blog's 1st birthday and my 1st day of M.tech fell on the same day.As always happens when you put maajar fight to attend a class {go walking from Jamuna to CAD lab -better put as Taramani to Velachery} we did not have any classes yesterday.Today's first hour had only 7 students from the dual degree stream.Out of the 5 courses I have,only 2 courses have the no. of students in double digits.Surely ,as I have already mentioned,proxies,sleeping in class,attendance % just equal to 75 have met with a premature death.Already two Profs know our names.The last hour was interesting.There were about 34 students.Needless to say,most of them are from JNTU,OU,AU -all in AP.More than 70% have been sponsored Mtech programmes from DRDO,ISRO,TVS and some have more than 5 years work experience!By a conservative estimate they would be atleast 27 years old.How can someone have the enthu to study Mtech at that age when they can as well do something "consistent with their age" ;).Surely one feels odd sitting with 25 yr olds all around.And finally there is an awesome female in my class,who is also in that sponsored programme,but sadly she is married.I obviously did not go down the bench to see her toes,she had the cliched "maang mein sindoor".Anyway everything is new and I feel like having entered some other college!Lets see how life is with the uncles.

AGAIN ARBIT MAXX

I had to put a night out yesterday even to complete the project report.Procrastination kills.I would like to catch hold of the guy who taught me this art and shoot him from a point blank range.Am I playing the blame-game? Chill people,passing the buck is my birthright.

I am done with the summer internship and boarding the Hyd bound train on Saturday at 4pm. My mom has already packed my schedule till 8pm on Sunday.The doctor has agreed to look into various means of creating rifts with my best friends- running nose and sneezing at 10 am.

It seems some soul who is preparing for IIT-JEE came to know of his mom's colleague's son who is in IITM (read me), and is hell bent on spoiling my first evening at home .Our man wants to have some fundaes on cracking JEE. Welcome home my dear.I will bombard you with all the gibberish on earth. I will teach you the concept of night out.That should suffice for the time being.Proxies,sleeping in class will follow soon. Of course I will also ensure that you get ragged to death if you happen to come to IITM for spoiling my 1st evening as my dear friend
does wants this intellectual session as soon as possible and cant wait for a few days.

There have been clear cut and strict orders from my side to my mom. (1)She should not cook the wretched potato ,better known as aaloo atleast for a few days.If found doing so it will be mercilessly thrown into the gutter. I have been downing aaloo daily thrice-breakfast,lunch and dinner for the past 2 months.Solid spherical aloo,Aloo balls floating in a liquid,gelly type aaloo, aloo sandwich,chapati-aloo,poori-aloo,aloo in dal,aloo with beans,aloo with cabbage,aloo with kovakayi{dondakaya in gult.dont know the english equivalent) to name a few. Have missed out aloo raitha.No wonder I have become like aaloo now. Most of the boot-cut jeans have become skin tights now. Probably my mom can now narrate a story bordering on the lines of the fat pig Empress {in Pelican at Blandings} which refused the potato offered by its master Emsworth at Blandings. (2) She should not cook "Swathi saathumdhu". Swathi is my sister.She eats only if the saathumdhu (also called Rasam) resembles red coloured water without any other vital components like seasoning,coriander leaves etc.If found doing so it will be decolourised and used as water.{Filtering is not necessary as it does not have solid particles }.I am sure my sis will prevail after 3 days.Lets see.

This reminds me of the peculiar way of naming some of the food items in our family. Most of these dishes have a name as a prefix. For instance "Lambu Narayanan kuzhambu". Narayanan is a tall,famous Tam cook in Hyd and I love his kuzhambu or sambhar. So I can take credit for having coined that.The term in (2) has also been coined by me.I don't know with what dishes my name has been associated.I shall have to ask a couple of cousins for that.I only hope its not a "Rajeev aloo".

TV will not be there for another year.Thats ok,not at all a problem as I have new excuses up my sleeve for watching night shows and loitering about after dinner.Helmet is compulsory in the twin cities now thanks to that super lady cop Tejdeep Kaur and I do not have one .Hope the cops dont pull out much from me if caught without a helmet on a 2-wheeler.

Thats it for now.Hyderabad here I come!