Apne

Yeah its a very emotional and a typical "deol" movie with all the illogical things happening and all the proper hindi masala including the unnecessary, not so very interesting hindi songs sprinkled all over the 3 hours of the movie, with the ever so frequent reminder of the movie name ... apne tooohhh .. apne hoten hai ... Unfortunately, at the end of the movie, the audience ends up remembering this reminder and nothing else !!!

The real reason for writing this post are all the things that surrounded the event of watching this movie. About a couple of months back, all of us at home travelled out to a lovely town for attending one of our friend's wedding. I had spent a lot of my school years in this town, so it wasnt such a new place to me and my parents. The wedding itself was a beautiful fusion of Maharashtrian and South Kanara culture. The highlight of the wedding was the garlanding event, where the bride and the bridegroom are made to stand on either side of a white curtain waiting for the exact auspicious moment to garland eachother. And just when the moment arrived and the curtain falls down, the cousin and uncle of the bride lifted her up and the groom had to jump and jump and jump more to be able to garland her before she could garland him. Well, quite obviously, the bride won the battle and garlanded the groom first. All said and done, this was undoubtedly the happiest and beautiful moment of the wedding.

After enjoying the delicious luncheon served with 17 various food items, following the wedding, we reached back to our hotel room for some rest. The late noon showers spilled water on our further travelling plans and we settled for watching the newly released hindi movie, Apne. It had been quite sometime since our whole family had been to a hindi movie in recent times and i thought that this should be a "family" movie, which it thankfully was :-) I stood there in the ticket counter after years and it brought back all the memories of those gold old movie watching days. One funny incident happened while I was in the queue. A guy standing in front of me in the queue, who I came to know later on was very poor in maths, asked the ticket vendor how much it would cost him for 15 tickets. After hearing the cost, he hesitated for sometime, and produced 250 rupees and said, give me as many tickets I can fetch in this money. You must have guessed by know for whom he was buying those tickets ;-) That brings me to the lack of this practise in the modern multiplexes. Ofcourse, its illegal business, but then you could atleast be assured of getting a ticket even after reaching the theatre just when the movie is about to start !!! But then, with the costs for watching a movie in the multiplexes zooming further and further up, watching a movie has lost all its charm. I bought 4 tickets, a pop corn and a couple of pepsis costing me less than the cost of a single multiplex ticket !!! And, before you start thinking, the theatre was air conditioned and in great shape. It really gets tough to reason out the amount of money metro people shell on these multiplex movies.

Back inside the theatre, we had to wait for the previous show to get over and then rush in as soon as the doors were opened. We did not want to miss any of those "Paragon chappal" ads :D After the strangely enjoyable advertisements, the movie opened up to huge number of whistles and claps for Dharmendra. The only other person for whom the audience gave such a welcome on the screen was for the now world famous in London and India actress, Shilpa Shetty and the London girl [ ? ], Katrina. Apart from all its flaws and stereo-typical moments, the movie completely belongs to the one and only Dharmendra. This was the first Dharmendra movie that I watched on the big screen. In his golden days he was known for his handsome looks and power fights apart from his true to the heart, typical Punjab da puttar type dialogues. I havent seen many of his movies, but he was said to be the most romantic hero of his era. And is undoubtedly very well known for his acting skills as well. I went to the theatre for this movie without any baggage of expectations and was left amazed by the acting prowess of this fine actor. He was the central character for this story and his expressions and timing were just awesome. He portayed the character of a lost sportsman trying to revive his own dignity through his son, battling through the circumstantial delimma of reacting as a father and the hurt sportsman causing his heart to be emotionally ripped open, with great elan.

Recently, he was awarded the lifetime achievement award for his contribution to Indian cinema. The award was presented to him by the great Amitabh Bachchan, who portrayed the role of his long time crime partner in the epic Sholay. Amitabh announced to the audience that it was his friend, Dharmendra, who had recommended Amitabh's name to Ramesh Sippy, the director of Sholay, for his role in the movie. And what a great pair it ended up being !!! These friends portrayed their roles so beautifully that they ended up immortalizing the characters forever :-) On recieving this award, Dharmendra got emotional and gave a very long and touching speech. That speech just showed what a lovely human being he is. He has very straight forward thoughts and open heart. He openly proclaimed that Amitabh and himself though staying so nearby almost like neighbours still have to travel all the way to London to attend this award ceremony to meet up and get a hug :)

How strange, that sometimes, people staying far away get the time to catch up more often than those who stay so near ...

Flock

Trying to blog from the new Flock

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2020

Nah, I am not gonna talk about the Twenty20 WorldCup here. Thats for some other day. And before you start thinking, no, it isnt any review of Kalam Sir's India 2020.

While watching the recently concluded Twenty20 WorldCup, I was so very much reminded of the "street cricket" we used to play while at school. This form of cricket, usually played in streets or small grounds, or backyards could be played with teams of any number of players. Me, actually played a lot of matches with a one man team.

You dont need any great pitch for these matches. Any small strip of almost plain ground or even a cement track or footpath in your backyard can very well serve as a pitch. Some small cracks here and there on the pitch can add that extra spin to the balls being balled. Its the unexpected spin and swing that adds more fun to such games.

You dont even need a huge open space. Infact, the less open the space, the more fun. You can have a wall as your boundary. You can hit it first bounce for a six, but if you hit over the wall you are out :D.

On streets, you can have plenty of stand-by fielders. For instance, the cars and carts parked on the road. They come in handy as the batsmen cannot sneak an easy run.

In your backyards, you can have the trees and flower pots as your strong fielders. Ofcourse, if you play matches where the only runs you can score are that of 4s and 6s, then these trees are a great help to the fielding team.

There are many ways in which you can get out. Its not just by being bowled, or run-out [ always the most controversial way to get out ], or by getting caught, but also by getting caught after the ball bounces once. With trees and cars acting as your fielders, its even more fun, since the ball can bounce on them and you can still be caught out !!! Hitting outside the ground premises is usually declared as out and not a sixer.

Having proper stumps is a luxury !! Any wooden plank or wall with stumps drawn in the most artistic ways can be your stumps for the game. To avoid any controversies, people even go for full colored rectangle box drawn on the walls, so that they can confirm being bowled out by verifying the color on the ball :-)

Why stumps, sometimes, even having a proper ball is a luxury. You can play with your home made cork ball, or a rubber ball, or even a good hard plastic ball, especially in closed surroundings. Any deformities or cracks in the ball add more fun and spice with both the bowler and the batsman unaware of how the ball is gonna bounce :D If you can figure out a way to make the ball fool the batsman by making it pitch on a particular place, or in a particular angle, you can reap great benefits from it.

At times, these matches can also be played under lights, not exactly flood lights, but even street lights, or a room with some bulbs in it will also do. Teams usually go for such extreme conditions just because of bad climatic conditions, with heavy winds or rain making it difficult to decide the winner for that match.

Tournaments are usually played on a daily basis, with each match lasting only for a limited overs of 3 to 4 overs a side. With only 2 teams playing in the tournament, its usually the team that wins the most number of matches among all the matches played on that given day, thats declared as the winner. When both the teams have more time to play, the winning team usually proposes to extend the tournament by 1 or 3 more matches, thus giving the losing team equal chance to bounce back.

Apart from rekindling my interest in cricket, this Twenty20 tournament brought back all those good old days of cricket we played. So bad, those days feel like centuries away ...

Usually, the comma gets left out

Read a nice article on how the comma is getting lost in the fast pace of our lives these days. I still remember the school question papers when we were asked to place the comma in the proper place in the sentence. But, seriously, in today's communication, especially the non-business ones, the comma is completely obscure !!!

5ederer

Oh Lord !!! Please make Federer and Nadal battle out many and many more title matches so that we humans get many more splendid tennis to watch.

The 5th straight Wimbeldon title for Federer, equalling the great Bjorn Borg, was nothing less than a war !!! A 5 setter lasting for more than 3 hours with the needle of success playing a free flow see-saw from the champ to the challenger was a great epic to watch.

The 2 sets that Federer won were decided by tie-breakers. The other 2 sets Nadal won by breaking Federer, 6-4 and 6-2. Federer had more unforced errors than Nadal. Federer had fewer winners at the net than Nadal. Nadal had broken Federer's service more number of times than Federer broke Nadal. Nadal won the fourth set 6-2 and was on a high when the match moved into the deciding set. Forget about winning 5 titles in a row, Federer was on the verge of losing this match !!!

So .. what does our hero do ?

5ederer had an ace up his sleeve, literally !!! The first game in the decider set, including the first point, he won with an "ace" :-) He knew that if he went for rallies, Nadal was coming to the net and winning those points. Ofcourse, this cant happen for each point, and we were lucky enough to see these guys fight it out again in the rallies. No drop balls, just plain placement. Make the opponent run from one corner to another, flirting with the base and side lines. An awesome game of tennis was on display on a bright sunny evening at the Center Court in Wimbledon. Nadal once, did come to the net and made Federer run from corner to corner, and the straight forehand return that Federer hit in reply to the net game of Nadal was just divine !!! It reminded me of Girish's forehand shorts straight down the TT table , when you expect him to be hitting it cross on the table. The only thing you can do for such beautiful forehand shots is just stand and admire. Thats precisely what Nadal did for this beauty from Federer.

Once 5ederer broke Nadal to lead 4-2, there was a sharp cry of joy, something rarely seen from Federer. Both the players knew that Bjorn Borg's dream of witnessing his record of 5 continuous Wimbledon titles being equalled would eventually come true today. You could see Nadal's shoulder sagging, and as if adding insult to injury, Federer showered more and more aces on Nadal, totalling 24 to Nadal's single ace, making sure that all doors for a Nadal comeback were cleanly shut.

The thrill and joy of watching this match can hardly be expressed in words. You got to watch it point by point and have yourself mesmerised in a beautiful game of lawn tennis.

Bartolli Roks !!!

******* Blogging this on 07-07-07 *******

Its a once in a century date !!! But then, isnt any other date a once in a century date ? ;-)

Watched a great fighting match of lawn tennis yesterday on center court. I so very badly wanted Bartoli to win and was very happy to see her win. The best thing about her game was her focus and composure. She didnt lose her composure even after winning the match. Ofcourse, may be she just didnt express her joy. After losing the first set to the world number 1, by 6-1, it was a complete uphill task for the humping and breathless Bartolli, who has a very strange style of serving from very close to her body. You could see her real game only in the second set when she was just focussing on getting just one point at a time and was very much helped with the numerous unforced errors from Henin. They had really long and very long rallies all throughtout the second set. It was Bartolli who was doing the running in the initial games, but later on she started playing on the weak forehand of Henin and started making her scamper all around on the court for every point. It was as if, she was taking a revenge on Henin for all the running she did earlier. There were really great classy strokes in the rallies where it wasnt much of luck that played, but the skills of the players that made watching the match even more interesting.

Once, Bartolli broke Henin in the second set to lead 6-5, there was no looking back for her. She had completely broken the confidence of Henin. Bartolli won 7 straight games from that point on to lead the penultimate set by 5 games to 0. Probably the fact that Henin has never made it to the Wimbeldon finals [ or is it just that she has never won the Wimbeldon finals ever ? ] started playing on her nerves and you could see her shoulders sag. From nowhere, Bartolli started finding her form playing some very beautiful forehands, pushing the ball to the far corners, reducing the match to a mere cat and mouse game, with Henin being the unlucky rat who was caught by the cat, knowing all the time that the cat was just playing with it and death was inevitable. Bartolli kinda made this evident, when she had some pity on the world number 1 and literally handed one game to Henin sparing her the embarrasment of losing the final set 6-0. Bartolli won the match 1-6, 7-5, 6-1. A phenomenal comeback I have witnessed for a long time now.

On a more personal front, I have been feeling on cloud nine since yesterday after being fascinated by the awesome MotoRokr E6. It truly rocks !!! A touch pad screen with clarity better than my laptop, sound clarity unheard of in Motorola phones [ well, its about 3 years back when i tried a Motorola mobile and was so very dissappointed by its sound clarity, the most basic part of a mobile. ] I have been hooked up to the FM Radio that comes with this handset all day long. Except for RealPlayer scrolling list being very very very slow, everything about this handset is just so very cool. The coolest thing being that its based on Linux ;-) and probably the main reason for *not* making a huge hole in my pocket. Great video recording with 2 Mega Pixel screen with 1.4X focus zoom, that comes with a 1GB storage space for mp3, pics, video and a business card recognizer, its centuries ahead of my first mobile, the Sony Ericsson T310.

Nightout at Lokhandwala

me : Hey Reddy, can you quickly complete that review in another 30 minutes ? I need to check-in the changes before i leave today
me : Pat, did you create the investigation report and upload it ?
Pat : yeah ... done .. I have started working on the new bug already
me : Good .. Raj, how far have you reached ?
tring tring .. tring tring ..
Raj : I think we need to [ tring tring ] change the implementation ...
tring tring ...
me : just hold on .. will take this call .. hi Niv .. how are u ? ... what ?? today ?? night show ?? dude ... its already 7pm !!! how will we get the tickets !!! ... its friday night !!! i have got to finish off so many things .. btw .. which movie ?? haha ... yeah, how does it matter !! .. 10 pm show ?? hmmm ... let me think for sometime ... no no .. wait ... count me in ... :) .. ok .. will start by 9 from here...


Thats how the plan for the night out originated. When I reached the theater, I found out that the other 2 of my friends who had pulled me in for the movie, were actually celebrating their temporary freedom from their wives who were out of town :D One of them was hell bent on seeing "Lokhandwala", and the other 2 of us were ready to just watch any movie. Since it was a friday night, It was impossible to even expect a ticket. The only hope was that it was the night when "Sivaji" got released !!! .. we were hoping that people would be too interested in Sivaji and we can get the tickets for other movies. But, I guess, almost all who came there had the same thoughts :p This got confirmed when no tickets were available for all the movies at the ticket counter. We decided to fall back on plan B. Just go out and eat at the food court. Surprisingly, the service was fast, and we finished eating in about 40 minutes. We gave the movie a final last shot and to our luck, with only few minutes left for the movie to start, we got the tickets for "Lokhandwala" !!!


We were hurrying to enter the movie hall, when our eyes chanced upon a known face. But, it was the height that puzzled us. Was he the one whom we were thinking he was ?? The hair style matched the posters we had seen him in, but definately not the height !!! After a good stare we realised that it really was our own "Uppi" , a Kannada movie actor better known as "Upendra" !!! Boy, what wonders can camera tricks do !!! When i saw him in his world class movie "A", he looked like he was atleast 6 feet tall. But only after seeing him in person, we found out that he was just about 5'6" in height.


We entered the movie hall talking about Uppi and were surprised to see that the movie was just about starting. We felt bad on missing the "comically" made so very funny commercial ads :D .. Given the backdrop of events based on which the movie is made, it was terribly sad to see the way it was made. The main shootout that happens covers only about 15 minutes of footage in the almost 100 minutes of the movie span, that too after adding the emotional drama of gangsters calling up home confessing their mistakes !!! now, how real is that ??


The movie definately tries to glorify the police and it does it in a good way, but could have taken some "inspiration" from Die Hard kinda movies and concentrated more on the planning aspects of the shootout itself. It was funny how Sanjay Dutt disposes off the bullet proof jacket as an unnecessary garment when the whole police force of about 100 officers is all wearing it religiously. The gory scenes make the movie a bit more harsh. And I have no idea why a movie based on such a serious event should have songs !!! Are the publishers so paranoid that the movie wont sell without songs ? They should be really paranoid now with the utter failure of the songs themselves .. they neither fit into the story, nor do they avoid people from leaving the movie halls for a quick smoke.


Well, after the movie, we ventured out back home on empty lanes filled with pockets of ever vigilant dogs who thankfully stayed away from showing their skills at running along our bikes. It had been years since I reached back home at 2am !!! Just the thought of entering home at that time, drove me down the memory lane .. to the good old college days of living life as if there was nothing like a "watch" ever invented .....