Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Why do u have to make things so complicated ?

Getting quality entertainment was never easy. It cant get harder. After 8 hours of "No Work" at office ( " No Work" is more tiring ) I thought of doing something interesting. But as many will tell you its never easy to do interesting things when you are in a new place surrounded by new faces. The only resort was to watch a "Movie".

So ,S and myself went to the nearest INOX and decided to watch "No Smoking " . We could not have made a worse decision. I had made an informed decision by deciding to watch "No Smoking" since one of my friends whose recommendations I trust had told me that "No Smoking" is a pretty neat movie.I am not listening to her recommendations again. Directed by Anurag Kashyap (of Black friday fame ) ,a star cast which included John Abraham, Ayesha Takia, Paresh rawal and a off track story line , the movie promised to be good.

I used to debate that Indian directors dont make movie on off track subjects because there is no audience for that kind of stuff. Well now after repeatedly getting disappointed I am convinced that bollywood directors are best at making the usual romantic melodramatic happy ending movies.Did Anurag not see his movie before releasing it to the audience.? And if he did then did he "understand " what he made. ? Paresh rawal is Baba bengali or something in the movie who frees people of their addiction to smoking by killing their family members or cutting their fingers.He works in a dungeon which cannot be accessed by anyone. He is supernatural.the movie is supernatural.Nothing is real about the movie. The movie has a chilling distance from its audience. The director shows what he wants unmindful of his audience.One can keep scratching one's head but one cant keep track of the events of the movie. The only good thing about the movie is the visuals. Yeah , If u like John then its a treat for you. You can see a lot of him.

All I can say is that if Bollywood wants to be different then for God's sake stop taking half measures. If you want to make an unreal movie then set the right tone. What good is a movie if after 2 hrs of intense concentration and spending over 500 bucks one could not understand the movie. For S , yeah she liked John.

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

50-50 or 20-20

Cricket and Sensex have undergone more changes in last 3 months than anything else in India.. We saw India winning a test series in England after 21 years. Sensex hit an all time high. It crossed 19k. But the biggest miracle happened when India beat the world champions Oz in the semis of twenty20 to enter the finals and eventually defeated their biggest rivals Pakistan in the finals to win the first twenty20 world cup. We won the world cup after 24 years and almost everyone believed that tis world cup was no less than the one we lifted in 1983 under the captaincy of the legendry Kapil Dev. Just when we thought that Indian cricket will dominate the world in the coming years , Oz proved us wrong in grand style. I have been watching lot of cricket lately and there is no doubt in my mind that Indians are no less talented than Aussies. I even once did a one to one mapping of the players of the two teams. Both the teams have immensely talented players. What is it which makes us crumble against Aussies? The answer is clear. They defeat us in the mind before they defeat us on the field. It is not the lacking in cricketing skills which cost us the Future Cup.It is surely lack of mental strength. Lets face it. We are not mentally tough. I do not know if Indian team and BCCI have done anything to address this issue. Why is it that everytime Aussies lose quick early wickets they bounce back to put a formidable total on the board. In similar situation Team India just collapses. The difference is evident. Character. We need to have trainings not only for batting, bowling and fielding but also a significant amount of time needs to be dedicated to make players mentally tough. I think thats what make the difference in a tight match. Players need to be inspired. They need to be made fearless like warriors. Rahul's resignation of captaincy took everyone by surprise. He could not do well in this series and we have started talking about his retirement or whether he should be dropped from the side. This kind of thinking clearly demonstrates that we do not have any respect for our heroes. For those of you who want Rohit Sharma in Rahul's place please go through Rahul's batting in the One day series in England. His batting in England could have inspired a poet. I think we Indians are a little impatient in this regard. We are very judgemental too. Dropping players for a couple of games might be ok but asking about their retirement is too cruel.We need to understand that the fear of getting dropped may not get the best out of players.
With the series already lost I am still optimistic about the one t20 game at the end of the series. If India can win that it will make me immensely happy. At times it is better to be master of one thing than Jack of many :)

Getting into the Groove

This is my first. Yes, the first blog. Earlier,my tryst with Blogging, Blogology and Bloggers was limited to occasionally reading few blogs posted by my close friends who wanted my comment on their blogs and and yes debating about the pluses and minus of this whole blogging affair. To be honest my first impressions of blogging were not good. I used to dismiss the idea of blogging thinking it was just another "In Thing" and "Juvenile". One of my very close friends S once quipped that there is an unsaid agreement among Bloggers which is "you read my blog and I will read your blog ". So the whole concept of blogging looked like "time killer". Now I realize I could not have been more wrong.