Orange day

Friends with umbrellas and goodies from Connect Singapore

Outside my window

Movies Masti

One of the new indulgence that I have gotten into, here at SJMSOM, IITB is watching movies. Thanks to the gigabit LAN here. I thot it would be a good idea to maintain a list of movies that i have watched over my stay here. This would be pretty useful sometime in future, while retrospecting on how the time wasted on these movies could have been effectively used for a greater good. Note the list is only of the recommended movies. Actual no. of movies watched is much higher.

So here it goes:

1. Shawshank Redemption.
2. Devil's Advocate.
3. Thank you for smoking
4. Reservoir Dogs
5. Saw
6. Pirates of the Carribean, The dead man's chest.
7. Casino Royale
8. Final Destination
9. Happy Feet
10. Finding Nemo
11. Ice Age 2
12. Schindler's List
13. 12 Angry Men
14. Seven Samurais (English subtitled version of original Japanese movie)
15. The Usual Suspects
16. The Raiders of the Lost Ark
17. Good Fellas
18. Silence of the Lambs
19. Hannibal
20. The Departed
21. Forest Gump
22. Enemy at the Gates
23. Primal Fear
24. In Pursuit of Happyness
25. Water
26. The Last King of Scotland
27. Seven
28. The Namesake
29. Notes on a scandal
30. The Green Mile
31. Back to the future 1
32. The City of Gods
    
33. Shrek 3
34. The Vertical Limit
35. Ocean's 13
36. The Prestige
37. The Illusionist
38. Toy Story 1
39. Toy Story 2
40. Monster Inc
41. Ratatouille
42. American Gangster
43. The Incredibles
44. Mr. Brooks
45. Requiem for a dream
46. Sin City
47. School of Rock
48. Hotel Rawanda
49. Born into Brothels: Calcutta's Red Light Kids
50. Run Lola Run
51. American Beauty
52. Sea Biscuit
    
53. American History X
54. The Bee Movie
55. When Harry Met Sally
56. Pan's labyrinth
57. Atonement
58. Letters from Iwo Jima
59. The Golden Compass
60. The Lives of Others
61. Crash
62. Syriana
63. Into The wild
64. Emperor's new groove
65. Dead poet's society
66. Road to El-Dorado
67. Kung-Fu Panda
68. Dark Knight
    

Hindi

1. Dor
2. Khosla ka Ghosla
3. Pyar ke Side Effects
4. Katha
5. Gunda
6. Black Friday
7. Metro
8. The Guide
9. Taare Zameen Par
10. Johnny Gaddar
11. Mithya
12. Aamir
    

STARS this Semester!!

Its that time of the year when SJMSOM, at IIT Bombay gears to play host to the gliterrati of the Indian society. Leadership lecture series, a unique compulsory course for 2nd year MBA students of SJMSOM provides a special platform to interact with successful leaders in various walks of life. Each time a leader visits IITB, a group of student is assigned to study him. The group then exclusively gets to interact with him and has to submit a report on the leadership traits and insights about his personality as a part of the course. This year Prof. Atanu , the coordinator for the course, has yet again managed to get together an extremely accomplished and interesting set of people.

For details about current previous Leadership Lecture Series click here

Guru - All hype or some substance??

It was a class gathering after a long time. The new SOMA body had been formed and the elected representatives had thrown a party - actually they jst sponsored the movie Guru at HUMA Adlabs, the shady yet the nearest mall from IITBombay. Reviews had been good and I had huge expectations from Abhishek and ManiRatnam duo. Gulzar for lyrics was added topping on the family size hot jalapeno cheese pizza. The media was murmurring about Guru being the biopic of Late Dhiru Bhai Ambani. That added to my excitement. All in all I was confident that I was in for a great treat.
The result was however less than satisfactory. Mani Ratnam has filmed the movie in a typical south indian manner, with absolutely no Gujrati feel in village or dialogues or music all of which reselmbled South India more than Gujrat. The story was also very much sweet and it seemed that Mani Ratnam didnot want the screen play to deviate much from a typical rags to riches story. Whatever little the hero did had large implications and saw immediate success. Be it the ease with which an article led to the resignation of the leader of thread business or the ease with which an IAS officer was made to take back his orders is all very naive to be believed. No failure on his part was ever shown except that ever dragging court proceedings which I felt was done poorly. I couldnot believe that a sentimental speech by Guru bhai could let him off the hook so easily. Subplots were weak and arbit to say the least.

Most of the second half could have been used to show struggles in life of the protagonist and a few useless songs could have been left out. All through the movie I kept on recounting how well the movie The Aviator was made and how well did the director bring out the struggles in the rags to riches life of Howard Huges. The court scene in Aviator is one of the best that i have ever watched. Long time to go before any Indian Director reaches that level.

Mithun does a small cameo which is not befitting his capability. Abhishek looks more like Amitabh in his dialog delivery and acting than he has ever before.

According to me a movie which should have made x on box office will gross 2x because of the following reasons (mentioned in the order of the decreasing effect) :
1. Ash Abhishek love affair is brewing hot in India.
2. People were always tracking and looking for Dhirubhai Ambani in Guru Kant Desai (the protagonist). According to me this might even be the no. 1 reason. This was a smart marketing gimmick by the producers.
3. Abhishek's best acting till date.
4. A very strong star cast.
5. Mani Ratnam's flawless direction and technically perfect filming.
6. A R Rehman's music.

Racism Charges - A manifestation of attention seeking behaviour?

As the power shift across the globe happens towards the coloured countries, many complex soft issues are coming to forefront. Globalisation has resulted in increased interactions among hitherto excommunicated communities. Therefore people are probably taking time to understand each other and accept each other as equals and shed the historical notion of racial superiority. For example a British would really find it difficult to accept an Indian as an equal, though his actions may indicate otherwise. It's a result of deep rooted historical baggage and it will take time before the prosperity and power does a reasonable shifts to countries like India for them to be acknowledged as more than an underdog.

This underdog status is doing us more harm than good. It makes us more complacent in lesser time with lesser achievements. We fail to recognise that we are being elevated to a star status because people never expected us to do anything and we are, contrary to no expectations, are doing a few things right. We are very low in the Human Development Index and probably every other social index apart from SENSEX and GDP growth parameter, both of which doesnot necessarily mean a great life for the citizens of India (See my previous blog for details).
This zeal to be accepted into the upstream class of nations has resulted into hypersensitivity. If we dont have mettle clamour and unsettle. We find every small issue, blow it up and clamour and unsettle the biggies and in the end declare ourselves victorious. This is same as the self declared victories of Al Qaida. This attention seeking childish behaviour has resulted into many a racist attacks and indictments.

Shilpa shetty in a recent episode of Big Brother, a very popular Channel 4 show in UK, was called a 'dog' and an 'Indian'. Both are being used to prove that she was racially abused. I really find no sense in it. First of all calling her a dog shows a serious gap in understanding of gender on the part of the caller and she indeed is an Indian. So where is racism in the picture. Also there is every chance that the controversy might be a manufactured one, as it has potential to give cheap publicity to the show not only in UK but across the world.Herchelle Gibbs proclaimed the pakistani spectators as 'Bloody Animals'. Again I find it difficult to elicit any kind of racial connotation from the phrase. Ok it isnot a great thing to say but common, in a heated match things get much worse and the less said about it the better. Moreover Herschelle Gibbs himself is of coloured origin. So why would he abuse his own people, so to say. Again the attention seeking couloured world jumped to the occassion of flexing its muscle and make a issue out of nothing. We perhaps have made ourselves a butt of ridicule by being over sensitive. It gets us nothing but low self esteem.

In this age when Indians and other coloured people are rising to historical successes do we even need to care about racism. The rise itself is a slap on the face of the racists. The best way to disarm the remaining racists in the world is to ignore, just like we ignore a barking dog. Do we argue with it and ask him to take his bark back? Even if it does it gains us nothing except wasted time.

My grandfather used to tell me an interesting story about his childhood. His lower caste friends used to touch the food of brahmin guys while they were gulping down the tasty meal. The brahmin guys would immediately leave eating and rush back home to take bath, while his muslim friends would enjoy the meals. The sikh guys were smarter, they used to move the Kada once over periphery of the plate , while reciting the holy name and thus consecrating the food again. Thus sikh guys were unperturbed by the naughtiness of their muslim friends. We perhaps need to do the same thing. (Please not that this anecdote was used just as an illustration, it is not meant to hurt any sentiments, if at all.) A racial comment should be met with a smile over the ignorance of the abuser and without wasting any time we should continue towards the larger goals. If we donot learn to do that we might end up getting easily deflected from our meals ending up wasting water for taking baths.
(Pic from -> http://static.ibnlive.com/pix/sitepix/01_2007/shilpalead248.jpg)