Kalyug - Avoid!

I went and watched the Hindi movie 'Kalyug' last night. Right upfront, I would like to say that it was not at all my idea and I squarely blame my friend who booked the tickets for the movie. That now keeps me in a comfortable position to completely shred the movie to pieces.

Frankly, it's not a movie really worth shredding apart. Its a story about some a poor unsuspecting soul getting caught in a deep plot revolving around the pornography industry. The poor soul goes on the rampage and eliminates all responsible for attempting to wreck havoc in his life. The storyline was feeble, direction practically non-existent, script unintentionally hilarious and performances earnest but desperate. The human trade and porn industry aspect is hardly dealt with which rendered the 'unique' industry which the movie supposedly dealt with, irrelevant.

The one facet of the movie that absolutely did rock was the music. Rahat Fateh Ali Khan's music and his piece 'Jiya Dhadak' makes you hum as you gladly exit the cinema hall. The only other bit which got you even slightly interested in what was happening was, quite surprisingly, the performance and role of Emran Hashmi. I never thought a day would come when the only saving face of the movie would be Emran Hasmi's performance. What was even more surprising, as another of my friends put it, was that there was not a single smooching scene that he had in this movie! Et the end of Emran Hashmi's career, this movie might well go down as one of the rare ones in which he actually didn't have one such scene.

In conclusion, the only reason why you might want to watch this movie is if you like watching movies that are sure to go down in history (in light of Emran Hashmi's surprising role).

ToI sux

This is a post about stating the obvious - the Times of India sux. As a newspaper at least. As a tabloid, it wouldn't be able to compete with the likes of MidDay et al and hence it sux as a tabloid as well.

The reason for this sudden outburst from me? The main headlines in yesterday's ToI - 'The sexy Bin Laden. What will uncle think?" The story itself was absolutely pointless. It told the story of how one of approximately a zillion Bin Laden's nieces has decided to go public with images of how she looks when scantily dressed. Apparently, she wants to be a pop star!

Wow! What an inspiring tale!

This story came on a day when 11 Members of the Parliament were expelled for bringing disrepute to the House by accepting bribes to ask questions. Personally, I considered that a great day for India's democratic process and a good step forward to cleaning up corruption at the highest level. Even if such people don't stop taking bribes, they'll at least worry that a sting operation may be in the process while they are taking bribes. Somebody's been able to put some kind of fear into such people and the action taken by the Parliament to expel them was commendable. Never before has a member of Parliament been expelled under such conditions. A good precedent has been established.

Instead of reflecting on such a monmentous occasion, the ToI chose to flash a four column article on something which is completely irrelevant to our lives. That story which was covered will not change our lives. But the outcome of Operation Duryodhan will go down in history.

But then, may be all that ToI wants is that people such as me discuss such articles in a public forum like this...

Linguaphobia

I am terrible at languages. It's the truth. As I love telling anyone who will listen, I was born in Chennai, did my primary schooling in Pune, secondary schooling in Bangalore, engineering in Tamil Nadu, am basically a Malayali and have lived for six months in Haryana. The number of languages which I can speak very fluently - 1.5. The 0.5 factor arises from my ability to speak Hindi respectably. The 1 factor arises from my complete confidence in speaking the English language.

It's not an achievement I'm extremely thrilled about or phenomenally proud of. It just happens to be so. It's a fact that I'm terrible at languages and that's it! As simple as that.

It quite irritates me that this world speaks so many different languages and my mouth just refuses to contort itself into the myriad ways required for each language.

Also, if one thinks about it, a language simply requires another person to have a phenomenal memory. Every word in the Englsih language could have a corresponding other word in another language. It's like taking the Oxford dictionary and multiplying it by two. I've gotten myself to roundabout half the Oxford dictionary in 23 years of existence. To expect me to double that number (effectively) in any amount of time less than 10 years is ridiculous. It simply is impossible! And the fact of the matter is that I haven't stayed in a single city for more than 10 years. May that be my humble and feeble excuse.

And this may be a good time to pay my respects to all those who speak more than 1.5 languages.