Doodles of a crazy man!

We had a great vacation at Rajasthan last week. I will not be writing in detail about the places, since wikitravel does a better job at that. I will just jot down some of my experiences/thoughts during this trip. *** The first thing that strikes you once you are in Rajasthan is the "color". Blood red, dark pink, bright yellow, vibrant hues of blue and green - you feel as though they finished playing holi just before you arrived. It seems the people here, with their dressing sense, art and music, more than compensate for the arid, barren, vast spaces of nothingness. It is one place in the world where you can wear the gaudiest Govinda dress without the fear of a fashion faux pas. *** Color is very important to a Rajasthani. They have different colors for different occasions - the birth of a child, the mourning of a death, the ending of a mourning, for holi, for diwali. Innumerable types of turbans are worn, each distinctly representing the wearer's caste, sub caste, the reg...

Believe me when I say this, I had not gone to this movie to nitpick. No! I was expecting a nice little film, if not anything path breaking. I remember reading R.Balki's interview, where he had mentioned this. He had been to Amitabh's office one day and there he saw Abhishek getting all wise and parent-ish while Amitabh was very child like. This made him think how would it be if Abhishek plays Amitabh's dad. This is where my friends, like it happens not too rarely, an interesting one line idea fails to shape into a full length feature film. If role reversal was the only thing, a decade back Balki could have casted Dimple as Twinkle's daughter or Esha Deol as Hemamalini's mom. *** SPOILERS ALERT *** Any film that has Jaya Bachchan acting all Guddi-ish, reading credits with fake sweetness is a huge turn off. But I told myself not to get too influenced by this little gimmick. The next scene where the MP Amol (Abhishek) arrives at a school to judge the Vision of India co...

There are two reasons why this movie might run away with the worst movie of the year - one, obviously its horrendous and two, its terribly long. During all the Hurman - Priyanka interactions, I was initially shocked by the amount of screen time Hurman's face was getting. Soon I realized that its because the camera was always behind Priyanka's almost bare back. I was half expecting Joe Pesci to pop up from somewhere and yell - "Wanna know my raashee? I dont know, you should #&*$ing know. Tell me smart guy, whats your raashee? Whats your #&*$ing raashee? What the #&*$ is your #&*$ing raashee?" or something on those lines. The greatest achievement is this movie proved that Bollywood can come up with 12 different names for a girl - yes, who was that idiot who said there are no names other than Pooja, Sanjana, Tina, Simran and Anjali. 2-5-1-6-3-4 <-- Tarantino         1-11-3-7-4-5-8-6-12-2-9-10 <-- Gowarikar You must be thinkin...

How many singers/musicians who are 1 album and 1 movie old can you think of who not only deserve an evening in Dasara, but also can make the audience go crazy with their music? Now that I am struggling to come out with a second name, I am telling you the first name - Raghu Dixit! I love Raghu Dixit's music. I have listened to his music before his "Psycho" became such a smash hit. Much before he was spotted by Vishal-Shekhar. Much much before he was on Orkut, Facebook or Twitter. More than 3 years back, Setty had send me the link of a song. I was simply mesmerized by the music. The musician was Raghu Dixit and the song was "Gudugudiya". I had played it a few hundred times in the next few days. I remembered all these things as I was getting ready to go to the Yuva Dasara concert. I was just hoping the rain Gods would skip being spoilsport, to which they eventually obliged. Even at 5.30 PM, there was a sizable crowd, indicating that by the time the concert starts, ...

The music of "Gulaal" is one of the best that has come out of Bollywood off late. I dont remember an album in the recent history in which I had loved all the songs so intensely. Each and every song is a gem! If only the movie was as good as the music... The sad thing is, I will be least surprised if I dont hear the names Piyush Mishra, Rekha Bharadwaj or Rahul Ram in this year's award functions in music or lyrics category. That is how Bollywood is supposed to be, right? You can listen to the songs here: http://mp3hungama.com/music/index.php?action=album&id=4209 I am so bowled over by this album, I can go on and make a statement that if downloading mp3s were illegal in India, I would have run to the nearest music store and bought this album. Now, I will get back to listening the songs that are running in repeat mode. Ranaji mhaare...

Read this hilarious news in, where else, but TOI today: "Naomi Campbell looked stunning in Vikram Phadnis' saree" Vikram Phadnis' saree? I am grinning ear to ear whenever I think of that line! ***** Q: "How does a south Indian bomb insult a north Indian bomb?" A: By calling it a "bum" :)

Now, let me tell you a story. During 1929, people were affected by "Depression". Or "The Great Depression" as it was called. Thousands died because of it. People across sections were affected. No one knew what the "Depression" was then. There were no CNBC, no economic blogs. Depression from the markets had entered into people's lives. One fine day, there was a cool dude walking on the roads wearing a black T-shirt with the words "DEPRESSION". All the people caught hold of him and started beating the hell out of him. They cursed him, that because of him the world economy was in danger. With just an ounce of life left, the cool dude started explaining people what "Depression" is. Depression is not a slogan on a T-shirt. There was so much depression in their lives, that they had stopped shopping, which was the only known catharsis for the modern man. This had created a huge imbalance in demand supply chain which in turn had caused depr...

Notes on a couple of movies I happened to watch recently: Ghajini The first thoughts that came to my mind was - What an effort? And what a waste? No, I was not expecting 'Memento', but something saner at least. My biggest grouse is that there was absolutely no effort to show the emotional turmoil of the hero, after losing his memory. The only thing was that the hero shouting, huffing and puffing whenever he sees his muscules and tattoos. Who made the movie Ghajini? Director ne audience ko kya banaya? The same answer - "Murga Banaya"! What do Aamir Khan and Minnisha Lamba have in common? So much effort to sculpt the body for such an abysmal movie! I am surprised that nobody made this observation. Aamir has a short term memory loss (courtesy Memento) to make the proceedings interesting. But, but he also has a retrograde amnesia (a la old hindi movies - "woh apni puraani yaad dash kho chuka hai") So basically he has no memory - not the immediate past, not the p...

Disclaimer: Good understanding of Hindi , English , Kannada is recommended. And absolute tolerance towards non-sense is mandatory. I was just thinking about how some proverbs have multiple meanings when you interpret it using multiple languages. There is a proverb in Kannada called " Hani hani kooDidare haLLa " (Same meaning as "little drops of water makes a mighty ocean") Hani = Drop; haLLa = Water body Now, " hani " sounds exactly like "honey". "Honey" is a term used to address a very lovable female (or male depending on your gender and orientation!) Now " Honey honey kooDidare " means adding many such lovable females to your list - which means having multiple affairs. " haLLa " can also be interpreted as in " haLLa hidyadu " which means "to be in ruins". So, this proverb also means that multiple affairs are not advisable. Have you noticed that people from different countries have differe...

Most of the people unnecessarily hype up Akbar's religious tolerance. Not that he was not a religiously tolerant man, but what annoys me is that his other great qualities are completely overlooked in this frenzy. Akbar was not only one of the earliest kings who started the trend of inter-religious marriages, but also perhaps the first king to prove that inter-lingual marriages can work. Who was 'that' wife, you might be wondering right? Its the same Jodha, the rajput princess! "What? we saw the movie and both of them seemed to speak Hindi and as far as we remember we did not see any subtitles when either of them spoke. Are you sure?" If these are the questions you are having, step back for a minute and observe what you had overlooked. Jodha spoke 'shuddh hindi' with an overdose of sanskrit, a language that would have become extinct, if not for those uninhabitable suburbs of Barjatya's Sundarnagar. Akbar spoke his hindi with heavy influence...