Pichle saat dinon mein…

I loved this song more when I actually saw them perform and when I saw it on a huge screen. Somehow, it was much more intense that way and especially since they did a little foreplay to the song before they started playing and thats when Farhan Akhtar involved the entire crowd. Not that it was something new that he did; but it was more about the way he did it.

To translate what the title says – (stuff that I’ve lost) Over the last seven days. I haven’t been writing much and that doesn’t necassarily mean that I haven’t done much since I last wrote. I don’t feel the need to blog about everything I do these days. Now, I don’t know if thats a good thing, but I like it this way. This entry isn’t dedicated to anything in particular. I just had a few episodes to write about. Also, talk about the movies I’ve watched over the last seven days. Hmm, film critics get paid very well; I’ve heard. Columnists who write about how pathetic a movie was gets paid well too (mostly from rival directors and producers) I dunno, might as well get into junk if I wish to make some more money. But then, I’d have to sell my soul – who cares?

So I watched Mumbai meri Jaan on Wednesday with Chetan and I must say that movie was very well made. It was simple and to the point and it conveyed a lot of complex human emotions wrapped up neatly in 5 to 6 odd lives that were put on display. Paresh Rawal and his junior acted well also I loved Kay Kay Menon’s work. He doesn’t look much of a Menon to me though. But he’s awesome! So I guess that certifies him being a Menon ehh? Soha Ali khan was cute but her dialogue delivery and her sad-scene sucked. She just can’t cry now, can she? Maddy was a showpiece and I’d like to forget that part. I like the guy, you know? The rest as all put into place very well and a perfectly little story emerged. Watching it with Chetan added to the fun and luckily the crowd was smaller cause it wasn’t a weekend. I then watched the movie Phoonk (at home) and late in the night. I thought it’d scare me, but I couldn’t believe me eyes!! RGV – you suck. Whats with the whole black magic shit? I mean, seriously? Horror; I understand, but “Kala Jadoo” please no! Guess he should have titled it “Kala jadoo aur boodhi dadi maa” well she was running around all over the place, “tumko dikhta nahi… yeh kala jadoo hai, ram ram!!” and the hero looks at her like, “What the fuck mom? Did you get high on your pills?” The little girl has tried to act well with whatever she got, but then common RGV is really getting into the league of bad movies these days and here goes another one! I guess he’d be thinking, “gayi bhais paani mein” *sigh* the funniest scene of the movie was when the hero and his accomplice reach this super cool baba! Dialogue:

Baba: (Looking at the hero using a leprostic look) Tumhari bitiyan takleef mein hai… tumhari beti!
Friend: (Shocked from his spine and ready to cry) Aa..Aapko kaise maloom?
Baba: (Smileless smile on his face) Ghatiya sawal mat pooch!!!! (anger in his voice now and thinking to himself; abe, meine script padhi hai, bas kya?)

Hahahaha!! Why O’ why did RGV decide to do this to himself? Sir, if you continue to make moves like this, I’d have to believe that someone has control on your brain and is manipulating you using Voodoo and black magic. What an abysmal display of an otherwise very engorssing subject – Black Magic!

Finally, I watched Rock on! Ajay booked the tickets and I met a sleepy Chetan, a jumpy Ritesh, a usual Ajay and a white Vinay around 9:50 in the basement of Sigma mall. Guess what? Thats where they distribute tickets for the movies which is on the top floor. Do you see what I see here? I wonder what they were thinking when they made this arrangement. Anyway, we finally settled down to watch the movie at around 10:15. Yes, thats right the movie started 30 minutes late and there was a huge crowd out of the cinema hall which nearly choked me. The movie was good. I wouldn’t say its one of the best movies I’ve watched, but it was nice! I liked Farhan Akhtar’s acting and I loved the song – Pichle saat dinon mein. Apart from that the overall music given to the movie was good and the only problem I thought was the part where they stretched the movie a bit. They could have made it shorter and sweeter. So, I’d give this a 7/10. Phoonk gets a 2/10 and Mumbai meri jaan gets an 8.
Coming down to the final and most important thing that happened to me over the last few days. I met a few very talented writers and I was thrilled to be in their midst! Yes, I did sign up for a workshop on creative writing and the first 9 hours with Mr. Vijay Nair and the other guys who came there, my batchmates that is, was fulfilling and I look forward to the coming weeks. Minus of course the session on Shakespear which I really couldn’t enjoy and that I’d say is my personal little problem and I was happy cause the others enjoyed it. The lady who spoke about it was an awesome public speaker and her command over the English language was worth my awe! Also, her vocabulary was way out of my reach and I sometimes found myself running around trying to find a dictionary; but she spoke too fast anyway! I do not have much to talk about it as of now cause it was just one day and I’m sure I’ll discover more as and when I experience more of the workshop and the people. I wrote a few short articles and I felt very good when I read it out later to the class. Also, not to forget the entire class was well spoken and I really needed to meet people like these. More in next.

-Anup

Basking in glorious boredom.

Now isn’t that an irony worth applauding? Glorious boredom? You’d ask with a lot of questions in your head spinning you off into a world of webs of dilemma’s. That sounds like a labyrinth of weeded mazes and sometimes I don’t see light anywhere. But, the thing is, I’m somehow warm, cozy and comfortable within all of this. Even though these may seem like a delicate situation to many where your life has no meaning and its not heading on a fixed path; assuming of course that the human karma’s keep on driving him/her to find that path and finally attain Nirvana. One way or the other you have to come to an end and before you do you’d want to think of yourself as someone who followed a good path into light. I thought I had found that path and was happy that I was moving along life’s waves without needing to fight against them. Guess I got it all wrong. One way or the other there would come a day like this where I’d need to swim against the tide and come to think of it – SWIM! Swim with all my might especially since I don’t know swimming. I’m sure though that I’ve learnt how to swim and I’ve managed to keep myself afloat. I now need a plan to move forward, fight waves and tides and somehow, I feel I’d need someone with me cause I’m no good alone.

Usually, when people get bored or they are living a frame of time where they have absolutely nothing to do – they’d just find something to think of or do. Most of us manage to pass this time without having to try to hard. Mostly because almost all our lives have become a mechanically run human machine where we live to work rather than work to live. So when people like this find themselves in a spot where they have nothing to do, that calls only for two feelings. Either this could meet ultimate joy where they’d go on to indulge and over-indulge in activities they’ve always wanted to do and/or the other feeling where they don’t know what to do, they’re lost and they don’t know where to begin and what it is that they’d be good at next. Mostly such people would think a lot about what it is that they’re doing with the time they then own. Which is probably why it dissolves the very essence of dead-air in their lives which I feel is very essential. It might lead to a few hours, days or months of boredom but trust me, you need this. I’ve been living on the equator of both these feelings and whoa! the heat is at its peak where I am.

I try to do things I like, but somehow I don’t enjoy any of them. For example, I try to listen to some music and I’d get bored of it very soon. I’d pick up a book and try to read whats written. What happens next is something that totally destroys me. Reading words and not understanding them; not being able to drink it with all its taste and feed it to my word hungry brain, sigh, its a clumsy feeling. I’ve loved reading books since ever but somehow, these days books just don’t appeal to me. Especially since I read Love Story – Erich Segal. Thats when I actually learnt that I seem to have a dead heart. She had given the book to me a long time ago and the funny thing is, she asked me to never read it cause she lost her first love after he read that book. I was scared and thus I never actually read the book. Now after I’ve read it, I just feel so sick. I’m disturbed about the way I feel for love and people. I’m scared sometimes that the cloud of gloominess hanging overhead would turn me into someone I don’t want to be. I love being a helpless romantic and I wouldn’t want to change for anyone or anything. Ohhh, I still am a romantic and even though it may sound girly I totally love the idea of being in love and sharing myself with someone and enjoying her half in return. The whole thought still makes me giggle (luckily!)

I tried my hand at getting certified (CCNA) and all I could do was attend classes worth 11 grands and that was just about it. I couldn’t collect enough energy to go answer its test and get the certificate which would be very helpful for my career. I then tried my hand at music – the guitar to be specific and this was in unison with Chetan and Ajay. They went onto complete the first module and Ajay can already play the guitar very well (taking into consideration his natural inclination towards music and sticking with it over the past 10 years) and Chetan can play a bit too. I chickened out like a little bitch cause I somehow couldn’t do what I thought would be easy. Like Ajay said this wasn’t easy and it took a lot of practice and patience. Patience is something I don’t quite have and I’ve been trying to meditate to bring some into me. Anyway, thats alright; like I said, I did not want to be naive at anything. I’m ok where I stand and I’m more than happy to enjoy the music Ajay makes and trust me when I say that I’d write lyrics to the music he makes one fine day. I’m sure that will happen. I recently had this fantasy of attending some tutoring on creative writing and I’m looking forward to getting some information about coaching in Bangalore. Let me see where that takes me.

Sometimes, I feel like I need to escape! Run away someplace where its green all around and I’m living in the wild. But hey! I need to have like loads of money with me to buy all the food I need. I’d surely like to live like Chris McCandless in the movie “Into the wild” but with real time food, you know? I don’t think I can live off fresh meat and weird herbs. Guess thats what killed him in the end. I wouldn’t mind a couple of aliens running around too. They could teach me some of their new age technology and probably take me for a spin in their cool shuttle. You know that kinda stuff works, right? Aliens and UFO’s always seem to show up at scarcely populated areas. So, I’m thinking, Scotland or Ireland maybe. Riding a horse is something I’ve always wanted to do! That’d be fun, but I worry about how bad it’d be for my groin! So, yeah, I know I think of weird things all the time. I’d blame the movies I watch for the way I dream. I’ve been watching a lot of movies off late and I feel proud about how hard I’ve been raping Airtel. Working from home has been an amazing experience but I don’t think I’ll do it very often. It kinda cuts you off people and the loneliness then starts eating on you. I; luckily, have been doing just fine. I’m happy that I finally managed to write this. Its been eating me from my insides over the last couple of days. I hope to attend those classes on creative writing. I love writing!

-Anup

61 years of freedom, really?

Independance day
Mera Bharat mahan.

I don’t want to sound cynical here but come to think of it are we are really free from the so called “Gora raaj”? The white mans rule on us coloured people, is it really over? Well it never has and it never will. We have always been under the western rule. Earlier it was forced upon us and they captured our land and stole our wealth. But now, its sad that we are slowly moving towards their culture trying more and more to westernize or if thats not what you’d refer to it, lets call it globalization. The world turning into one? Bullshit. We have always been a gullible little pup to their pomp and glory and have always tried to adopt their ways of life. I’m probably just speculating all this and what I feel can be ignored, but then for how long? Lets continue living in the shadows of our ancestors – they were brave.

Anyway, I did not intend on writing a cliched post but then I felt the urge and when I feel like typing, I’d better get it out cause else it sits on my head, grows so heavy on me that I lose sleep and I have to be ready for work tomorrow. I’ve been feeling so very lazy. I don’t like this part of me. The part of me who’d just want to sit at home, enjoy the drizzle, get a cuppa tea and relax. Makes me feel bogged down and bored of life. I don’t want that feeling to sink it cause then it just makes me sad! And I decided to write to get over the Nostalgia. Yes, 15th August always reminds me of my school days.

I’m proud of being a K.B convent product and that I’ve studied there without interruptions for 12 years. I’ve known from my peers, classmates and people I know that most of them tend to skip schools. But in my case, I’ve been very lucky and I was a part of the most awesome school ever. Independance day celebrations used to bring out a lot of colourful things in our school. Sports, concerts and others amongst the charade of things that were done during that week. Practise sessions used to be the most fun part where we’d get to miss classes if we were part of one of the plays, skits or songs being enacted. Ohh and the others who don’t take part in stuff like this get to wear colourful clothes and hold flags and run around school corridors the whole day without having to keep our hands folded behind our backs and thats like the one day where we don’t need to form a file when we walk. Its happiness all around. Teachers look prettier on that day and they seem to be extra nice to us too. We sing songs, get sweets and then we have the friends hangout time which used to be awesome too! Ghosh… I miss school. Mostly because I used to have loads of friends there and I was a comic so I’d get quite a lot of attention. Thats when I realize how drab my life has become. I miss my school mates and I miss them all the time. They were going to meet up today, dunno what happened of that.

I’ve got to get onto a 12 hr shift from 6 AM in the morning tomorrow and I’m not at all thrilled about it. So I’m just going to finish this off and here’s wishing all my fellow Indians a happy Independance day and lets just try harder to reach where we intended to go rather than following someone else’s culture blindly. Enjoy their ways, but stick to our own is what I’d say. Bharat mata ki jai!!!

-Anup

Chetan ko gussa kyu ata hai?

Hahahahaha!!! I laughed like a crazy guy from the time I dropped Chetan at M.G road to the time I reached home and then some more before I finally dozed off into blissful happy sleep. Thanks Chetan. You are funny. So, I’ll answer the question in some time. For those who don’t know hindi, here’s the transliteration: What makes Chetan angry? In our case it includes when and why. Hindi can imply a lot of things and thats why its the language we prefer amongst friends. Best to fuck up your brains with. Uhm, before I get onto the peach, I’ll add in some tuti fruity. Quick, gather around… pep talk!

My thoughts about two movies I watched over the weekend:

The Mummy – Tomb of the Dragon Emperor: Sucked to shreds when compared to the other two mummy counterparts. I mean, I really missed those Egyptian mummies which seemed so much more capable of wrecking havoc and smelling bad. Chinese tombs, shape shifting “Dragon” Emperor. The word Dragon is used a bit too much and I’m tired of cliches. I like Jet-Li though and some part of all their hilarious action was good. Seriously, the scene of war was funny. These weird funny ass dead skeletonized creatures running around with parts of their skeleton falling off once in a while and their commarades helping them with those parts. Crazy as hell.

The Dark Knight: More than 2 hrs of wasted time, I’d say. Not my kinda movie. Chetan was kinda excited after the movie. I wonder why. Probably he likes bats!? The Batman here looked hunky but gay. I hated the lead actress and I found her face to be a little out of shape. Mr. Clown was the only bright side to this movie. His acting was outstanding and his facial expressions and all the comments he threw in here and there were sadistically funny and yeah, that was just about it. We did not get to see a lot of batman-type gadgets. The ones that were shown were pretty cool but a few more of them would have been nice. It was a long movie and I really could have done without watching this one. Especially not worth the 200 bucks I spent. Ohh and add to it the 200 odd on rickshaws!

That being said – Saturday was fun. we went to M.G road after the movie. We here – Ratheesh, Chetan and I. Chetan wanted to look up some classes on VMWare, or did he? *winks* we did everything else but that after going there. Roamed around, some shopping here and there and ohhh the most fun part; bowling!! We went bowling at Ameoba and it was awesome. I enjoyed every minute I bowled and finally I also got to kick Chetans ass at bowling. Ameoba seems like a fun place and it wasn’t too expensive either. 10 rounds for Rs 150. So for like Rs 300 we’d get to bowl for like 30 minutes approximately which seemed good enough and I love the sport.

Chetan
Fumy Chetan

Coming to the fun part – Chetan ko gussa kyu ata hai? So this happened while were returning from the batman movie. Now Chetan and me have varied tastes for almost everything. Food, clothes and movies too! So, yeah, I liked this shiny black blazer that was being displayed in one of the shops there and I said, ohh I like that! Here Chetan began with a cross telling me how my choice wasn’t all that good. And what I thought was that as usual, he was in for a word fight so I begin counter attacking him and telling him how weird his choice of clothes were! Within 5 minutes Chetan fumbles and stumbles with rage and anger pouring through his eyes, nose and mouth and he blabbers some shit which I’m sure I don’t remember and neither would he, but he looked hilarious. Instead of getting angry all I got was a funny feeling in my stomach – SUCCESS! Hahaha, I managed to piss him off. I learnt something here – Chetan isn’t a kinda guy who’d get angry easily. He’s a chilled out person 99% of the times and he’s a very funny charecter who’d make a joke out of everything. So what hurts a person most is if you poke on their choices and what they side for. Thats where it pains easily. Quite a weapon. Chetan is a sweet guy though, he managed to apologize with like 8 minutes flat of being rude to me and all I could do was giggle. For the first time, my ego did NOT kick in and I’m happy that I’m in the company of really good people who do not mind apologizing. Chetan, you rock re, no hard feelings whatsoever.

-Anup

Crumbs of me.

I don’t know why, but I suddenly felt like typing out a few things about me. It may or may not interest the mass but then, these are good to know things about me:

  • I WAS fat. You can’t call me that anymore. I know; I sound like I’m trying to justify to someone, but thats not the case.
  • I love the colors blue and black.
  • I don’t like wearing formal clothes.
  • I’d most usually be seen in a pair of jeans, a t shirt with a pullover/coat/jacket or a shirt.
  • I am particularly picky about clothes and shoes and I base my first assumptions on people just based on their footwear.
  • Speaking of which, girls who’d wear floaters with a pair of white socks; I find them very appealing.
  • I love egg biryani but on a regular diet I’d like more of my kinda south Indian food to be in the menu.
  • That being said, I can’t eat outside everyday and I prefer to not eat and live off of fruits (these days) rather than eating out.
  • Discrediting those who have accused me of being a foodie, I’d like to clarify that I eat to live and not vice versa.
  • I depend on my glasses to be able to see the world. I’m nearly blind without them.
  • I am not attracted to shiny objects, but yes, I like gold. I like the rich feeling.
  • I love spending money. Money that I have and money that I don’t have.
  • I have very few friends and I try my level best to keep them around me.
  • I dislike the mob. I dislike anything thats hyped up; for example F.R.I.E.N.D.S! Common guys, for the love of god! Get over it, will you?
  • I was for a short span of time in love with the vague idea of being in love but I think I’m managing to crawl out of it now.
  • I have been in love and I don’t feel sorry for myself. I’ve loved with all my heart and love has been special.
  • I tend to over think and I’m still trying to lead myself out of the sinkhole I’ve thrown myself into.
  • I tend to live in a constant state of denial where I know that X is right, but I am not X. I cannot take this and I try to reason.
  • I don’t fully understand why, but sometimes, I don’t like my awesome car.
  • I love music and I can’t live without it.
  • I am single, not too quick with witty jokes and I do not drink or smoke. Overall, I’m one of those boring kinds or so you’d want to say.
  • I’m a movie buff and I can watch almost everything that I download and everything thats showing in PVR.
  • My current denials: Bangalore isn’t a bad place to be; I am happy; I am not in love with her; I have friends.
  • My stress busters – Barney, Robin, Ted, Lily and Marshall.
  • My most prized asset: My sister. I don’t think I have told anyone or even her, but she’s something I’d never give up on.
  • My idol: Dad (However big a pain you be!)

Well, thats all that I can think of for now and its time to hit the sack. We’ve planned to go to watch “The Mummy 3” tomorrow and duh!~ Vinay has booked tickets for the 10 AM show. Thats good somehow. Good for me cause I won’t sleep much anyway, I know. I fought with mom today for no apparent reason and she hung up on me. Damn! What is it with me and women? Why do all of them like to bang the phone on my face? Except for Sneha of course and thats why I love her so god damn much. She’s patient with me and she talks to me like I’m some kinda awesome guy. Thanks a lot. Nawwww, no! I’m not being extra good cause its Raksha Bandhan *winks* I really love you!

-Anup