Monday, February 23, 2009

India Calling ...

Need an Oscar???... come to the east .... Slumdog has revealed just a few aspects of Indian cultures and poverty at its best. You will find more...

Pinki smiles is one other documentary on India which has won the director an Oscar. Centuries ago, many travellers and foreigners came to india as it was called the golden bird... "Sone ki chidiya"... And they thought they looted everything from india... the britishers, the portugeese.. the mughals..

Nope.. they were wrong ... India still has a tremendous potential to be exploited.. and no it is not it's riches that i am talking about... it's the mediocrity... that the world is trying to cash upon ...

I feel slumdog is a decent movie but it is over rated way above it's standards.... and it has won 8 oscars.

And Anil kapoor says.. "Fantastic!!! Can you believe it??"...

No i don't... As many other indian directors and actors would agree that there were many other great movies that Indian cinema has come up with,,,

The likes of black, swades, taare zameen par, lagaan, ab tak chappan... are rarely acknowledged in the global arena..

Million other rahman fans would agree with me that he has produced better songs than these..
I agree that... the hard work has payed off...but i feel that... the music scores for the original indian movies should also be nominated for the awards tantamount to the oscars...


In these tough times of recession... if you want to have bullish run... come to india... :)

Thursday, February 5, 2009

Random observations

Random Observations:

I solicit the readers, followers of this blog not to expect any correlation between the posted observations...( i know this is redundancy as the topic clearly mentions..."Random Observations"...but still... bolne mein kya jaata hai...). this post is intended to be a big one as i have taken long time to write a new post...


1) I have recently completed the book "Between the assassinations" by Aravind adiga and it is a not complete let down but a bad second one after a good debut. The name of the book is in no correlation with the content and it would have been better if the author named it as "Kittur days". The two assassinations mentioned in the title of the book are that of Indira gandhi and rajiv gandhi. I am not sure whether the incidents are real life incidents btween these to incidents but the content was surely not comparable to White tiger. The story is very much similar to the R.K. Narayan's Malgudi days. I am a very big fan of Malgudi days.. so might be many of you, so i found the book by adiga a bit interesting. The narration as it was in white tiger, very good in this book too. I would rate it 2 out of 5 and recommend you to buy Malgudi days than this one as it is much cheaper and much better.



2) Recently, i have been to warangal, my native place and have been to few temples. due to the unavailability of bike, i had to travel in an auto rickshaw. I have observed that the margins that they strive so hard for are in the range of 1-2 rupees per ride. It has been the same always, but as i have been staying in bangalore for the past 16 odd months, i have observed how totally contrasting the two regions are. I accept that the living standards are very high in bangalore, but margins of 15 bucks(average) per ride in bangalore is really very high. Hardly any auto rickshaw driver in bangalore agrees to abide to the rules of the meter. Time may come when.... the only customers in bangalore malls will be auto rickshaw drivers going for pepe's and wrangler's and chilling out in coffee day's and barista's.
Hope in the times of recession (and due to reduction in the global crude oil prices) at least the prices of auto charges come down.



3) The above pic is from the train from bangalore to kacheguda, which i captured in my mobile camera. It is sheer negligence of the railway department and this lax can be very dangerous. the dc power outlet where there is a facility to charge the mobile phones was kept completely open. This happens to be just beside the sink and rest rooms and thus can be very dangerous. I incidentally warned one of the co-passangers of the peril as he was about to rest with his back towards the dc power outlet.


4) In the wake of the recent developments in karnataka and the actions by sri ram sene(SRS) in mangalore, the chief Pramod muthalik has been arrested and the same person has been released on bail after 2 days. He happens to make a statement yesterday in CNN-IBN that he has plans to ruin Valentine's day in bangalore. He says "Pyaar karne ke liye ek day nahi chahiye. Aaj karo, abhi karo, kabhi bhi karo (You don't need a day to celebrate love. Do it whenever. It's a feeling, why a day?)".....

I have utmost respect for the indian and hindu values, but this kind of moral policing is not just. I believe that the traditional values of India have been and will be carried generation after and generation and there is no doubt about it. But we have to welcome different traditions into our system. It is absolutely the right of an individual how he wants to lead his life , ofcourse not disturbing the communal harmony, and Amen!(So be it!)....

The statement made by muthalik can be easily countered that any other festival in india which are celebrated with great enthusiasm and shraddha.. can be celebrated on any other day.. why have specific dates to do that. For example dusherra which is celebrated on the name of the victory of good over bad... can be celebrated on any other day... why celebrate on that very dashami of the year....



Many more incidents to discuss.... but.. i shall pen down my thoughts...soon..in another post... Till then.. Have a nice time.. Aloha!