Heart Beating Around The Bush

I haven't been inclined to watch a (Bollywood) movie in a very long time now.
Saturday being its laziest, I laboured myself into opening the Amazon Prime Video app, browsed nonchalantly and somehow settled on watching Dil Dhadakne Do

A family that does some much needed soul searching on a cruise. For one, the characters are beautifully layered, each one sketched impressively. I kept searching for a story for the first hour though. The whataboutery keeps meandering here and there...you know something's gotta give and you're waiting for the tipping point but there still isn't a plot that manifests. There's enough innuendo that there's been a past to many of the characters. Yet, it doesn't evoke the curiousness to see the skeletons tumbling out.

A fabulous display of theatrics, especially Anil Kapoor and Shefali Shah...again temptingly layered...beautifully played...which the story pitifully only showcases but never puts to strong use.
I loved the solid acts, but managed to connect with the characters of only Ranvir and Priyanka.
There's also a tiny cameo by an actor playing Amresh Uncle that's very endearing.

A great showcase of acting that jumps aboard the cruise and flounders in search of a tale to tell. 

Book Review: The Everything Store - Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon

I bought this book after I came across another book called Hatching Twitter. Thanks to Amazon's own advanced prescriptive analysis!
NYT has said that this is one of the most well written biographies. I tend to agree strongly. 
Non fiction can be a hard read but author Brad Stone makes sure he straps us into our seats from the word go and ensures we stay with him from cover to cover. 
The book opens with the story of a child prodigy in a school in Houston - ...HOUSTON guys...we've a connection! - and delves straight into the initial career of a young and ever enthusiastic Bezos. 
The conception of Amazon is very interesting and Stone gives us tremendous insight into its formative years. 
Bezos is no ordinary entrepreneur. Withe grit of Hercules, he has braved Amazon through tumultuous waters, where a lesser mortal would've long conceded. 
A captivating narrative of Amazon's growth from strength to strength, Bezos' intuitive investment in futuristic technology and some interesting snippets into his life with a photo spread thrown in for good measure!

It's a story you'll certainly relate to if you are an Amazon user and intrigued by if you aren't still. 

One of my best reads in recent times. 

Dancing under influence

A Sunday as lazy as it was, I was squandering away time browsing social media when I suddenly remembered that my sister used to like a song that featured in the musical countdowns of the 90's.
It wasn't a very popular song and she liked it because she thought Rohit Roy looked very cute in it. Now, neither the film nor the song evidently showed up on Rohit's Wiki and I had to dig very deep into the archives of my brain for a significantly long time, with a few trials and errors, faintly recollecting words from the lyrics before I finally hit upon the right result.


I'll come to it in a moment but in the meantime, my trial and error resulted in unearthing a couple of other incredulous songs:
- Doston ke liye aaj ki shaam hai from a movie called Trishakti starring Milind Gunaji, Sharad Kapoor, Arshad Warsi...and someone else I cannot recollect, amongst a murder of supporting cast known for playing bad guys quite often
- Ab tak hai puri azaadi from Kudrat with a relatively decent cast of Akshaye Khanna and Urmila Matondkar.


Phew, coming to our actual result - it's a song called Humko hone de sharaabi from a movie called Koi Kisi Se Kum Nahin!
Now the song quite falls into the 'so bad it's good' category. The theme is of a friend's wedding party where his three bum chums plead with the bartender and subsequently with the friend's newly wed wife to open up the bar counters. The song also packs in a dream sequence for one of its verses.


I watched the song with much amusement, observing the expressions of the actors, the haphazard choreography and partly also the lyrics. The song has Ashish Vidyarthi, Milind Gunaji (little wonder then that I looked up the other song as well), Mamik Singh (from Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikander), Ashok Saraf (the barman), Kashmira Shah (the reason for dream sequence) and Rohit Roy who does look cute!


It definitely is a so bad it's good song. Cos I ended up watching it twice or thrice over.


And then I thought the film might be so bad it's good too and looked it up.


It starts with Ashish Vidyarthi waking up and realizing it's his wedding and his three buddies who also seem to live with him engage him in the usual pre wedding banter in a very large bathtub. Turns out that they are all cops and Kashmira and Ashok are also cops who show up at that instant to report that some goon's whereabouts have been traced. (This was apparently Kashmira Shah's first movie).


The cops place duty above all else and set out to the goon's den while the wedding guests wipe brows and twiddle thumbs. Then all turns well, mission successful, the heroes show up just in time for the wedding. And then cut to the song where all this exploration began.


This sums up about the first ten minutes.


The movie is rather shabbily made. Raj Sippy does have some successful ventures to his name, but this one goes downhill straight off. If a capable actor like Ashish Vidyarthi cannot emote convincingly, there's little hope for the rest of the cast.
I guess they all signed up because that was the age of action-masala movies and anyone and everyone wanted to be in this genre. The A league of stars had conquered this territory long since.  With a weak script, there's little chance that the tier 3 actors could have taken this film anywhere at all.


I couldn't bear to watch more than twenty minutes in all. Shuddered to think how the crew pushed themselves to make this film. Glad that masala has made more room for meaningful cinema since.

Have a goal

In an internal corporate gathering in 2009, an ambitious young man who had already scaled the ladder half way up, expressed aloud a hypothetical question, 'How do I become the section manager?'.
There was a hushed gasp among the audience. It was as if he had committed blasphemy. One of his peers who recovered from the shock wave quicker than the others gave a generic rebuttal which kind of hinted that ambitions have to be realistic.

Now I don't know how serious the man was when he put up that question, but maybe he transformed it into a goal from that moment on, if not earlier.
Seven years later, he did take over the coveted role of section manager! The hypothesis became a self fulfilling prophecy! The dream came true!

Have a goal. Walk seriously towards it. You'll find a path. The amorphous gradually becomes crystalline. Dreams gradually do become a reality.

Cycling down the memory lane

It was somewhere in class 6 or 7 that I was given permission to cycle to school. My soaring excitement crash landed almost immediately when I saw the contraption I was going to ride.
From behind some ladders, boxes and a thousand random things in the garage, my father excavated a Raleigh cycle. It was a roadster, more colloquially, 'doodhwaalah's cycle'.

"It's good as new.", he declared reassurance even before I reacted. I weakly protested that I was expecting a Hero Ranger or something in that order. I was quickly made aware of the pride of the Raleigh brand with the parts all coming from premium houses across the world and an inevitable comparison to the 'cycles these days'.
Still, sensing my disappointment, he made an offer. He would give the bicycle a new coat of polish and overhauling. "You'll fall in love with it, you'll see..." he portended.
The cycle did gleam a bit after the polish but it was no more appealing to me than it had been in its corner under a cloak of dust.
I lamented once again in protest. And this time, I earned myself a moral homily on his own travails as a youngster, how that cycle was a prized possession from hard earned money, served my uncle faithfully during his college years and the works...

I reluctantly surrendered. Or so I made it seem. There was still sometime for school to reopen and I spent all that time building up my case against the Raleigh. I whimpered, whined, bawled and made every petty complaint about the poor old roadster. It sat in its corner, stoic, dignified, swallowing all the bratty squall with poise.

My father shook his head and sighed deeply but relented a little and gave me another choice - he would slightly modify my BSA Champ by giving it a regular saddle in place of the longish double seat and do away with that unsightly tubular backrest, so that it seemed less of a kids bike.
He got it a dapper looking saddle and the scarlet red Champ instantly oozed the charm of a beach cruiser.
I wanted it to look more raw and punk but the saddle was only as far as he'd take the deal.

The rage among bikes those days was the Hero Ranger, a newly introduced MTB that stormed the streets. I think my cousin had one. Why, almost everyone had a red or a yellow one and I desperately longed to own one myself. Next in popularity was the leaner BSA Streetcat with leaping yellow boom boom shaka laka pumas tattooed all over it. And then was a beefier Hercules MTB. Then there was a muscular Atlas MTB as well. The more genteel city bikes were led by the flagship BSA SLR.

Another league of road bikes was made up by the sleek Hero Hawk, Atlas Concorde and BSA Mach something.

Most bikes never retained their factory appearance in the hands of school goers. The chrome fenders were tossed away, handle bars were altered or covered with black duct tape, factory stickers were peeled off, kick stands were hoicked out. Essentially scuttled to the bone. Raw and Mean.

I pedaled away to school on my mutant BSA Champ, partly relieved to be spared the roadster, partly still anxious of being potent troll fodder. Well, trolls feed on anything.
The Champ had a smaller wheel diameter and I had to pedal twice as fast to keep pace with my Hero Ranger friends. Once a school friend offered to switch his bike with mine on a ride home. I was elated. Only for a bit. His Hero Hawk was not only a little too tall for me, he'd kept the brake lines very loose, almost as if they didn't exist. I pedaled enthusiastically and my face went pale when I crunched the brake lever towards the handle grip and the brakes didn't hold. I somehow managed to bring the bike to a halt and he gave me a wicked grin. I was never happier to be back on my Champ.

Then we moved to high school. I'd ridden the mutant Champ for several months now. But high school ego would no longer allow my pride to ride a little boy's bicycle. I wanted a legitimate bike. And then I got good marks in....no wait, I actually went on a hunger strike at home. I knew what I'd ask for.

And so one fine morning, I rode in on a brand new BSA Streetcat GCX, much to the awe of my classmates. The GCX was an improved version of the street cat with accessories thrown in. It came in dual tone body paint. Mine was black at the front fork. The rest of the frame was all white. The stickers were fluoroscent green, yellow and pink. It had a cool black fenders and a carrier with a puma reflector.

I took great care of the GCX. Shined it quite often. Made sure it retained its original appearance. I would admire it endlessly. Felt devastated when the first nicks and scratches appeared. Used markers and paint to cover them up. After all, I needed only black and white. Was even agonized at the first flat tyre for the fear that the puncturewallah may mishandle the bike.
There was another guy (I think his name was Gautam, he shifted to another school soon after) who also had a GCX. Now this person had subjected his bike to various alterations and kicked dirt often. I felt pity for his poor bike and simultaneous pride for my own. It somehow spurred me further to maintain my bike even better.

My romance with the GCX continued till the start of PU College. I was told to use a Luna to save travel time. Oh come on Bangalore, cut the chuckle.
I thought I would keep the GCX forever, even though I rarely used it anymore. The tyres went flat eventually and the bike spent its retirement in the same corner as the Raleigh. Oh, btw, the Raleigh had been given a sentimental farewell around the time the GCX arrived. The Champ also bid its adieu subsequently.
And when I moved to Bangalore, I realized the GCX must move on as well. It went for a nominal sum and hopefully had a good second innings somewhere.

A few years later, biking interested me once again. I bought myself a Firefox Roadrunner and some gear to go along with it.
"It's fast!", I told a friend. "Even with you on it?", she quipped. Valid point, given my current physical disposition.
The Firefox is on a sabbatical for sometime now. The last time I took it out, I lost an expensive cable lock on the road.

Writing this blog makes me want to put the Firefox on an impromptu ice bucket challenge, dust it a bit and hop on it, into the breeze once again!

Sound Off Music

Quite suddenly this afternoon, for no particular reason, I was reminded of the time in high school when I decided to join the school band.

Cannot recollect if it had a name or it was just called school band. I wanted to be a part of my friends from class who played the bugle! This was the most popular instrument on the band or at least the one most auditioned for.

There was an underlying reason why some students had signed up for the band.
Memory doesn't serve me well but I think it was the following:
The band played for the morning assembly and then regrouped for practice immediately as well as during PT sessions.
This gave a legitimate chance for the boys to skip the boring first period - which was probably Kannada or Hindi (any subject for that matter would warrant a bunk!) and also avoid the seemingly torrid PT classes held under strict vigil of the PT masters.

I was not even sure I was looking for an escape route from those classes but was excited enough that there was apparently one. So I went to my bugler friends and asked, pleaded and begged them to include me. They said the group was full but they could consider squeezing me in!

They first gave me an informal audition. I couldn't play the bugle to save my life. I tried with the fullest blast of air that could've blown away a little fluff of cotton and some dust off the table. But the bugle just gasped and whimpered even as my face and ears went red from the effort. My judges grinned and chuckled but I pleaded yet again and they relented.

I stood before the band master. Unfortunately he had a throat condition that wouldn't let him speak. He hissed, rasped and gesticulated something which could only be translated by the oldest and long serving members of the band.
He apparently asked me if I really meant to join and if I would be able to play the bugle. It didn't even occur to me if a basic level of competence or talent in music was required to enroll for this much coveted part.
I was mentally forming a statement of work of how playing the bugle was a life long dream and how much I wanted to be a part of...of..... I began to stammer an answer but he quickly hissed and gestured something to my friend and dismissed us.

'You're in!' my friend gushed. 'But be warned...', he continued sinisterly ..'he can call anybody's bluff!'. I wondered how that was possible in a group of buglers unless he singled me out. Then I'd be a sitting duck. I decided to maintain a delicate balance between looking too relaxed and going red in the face and ears.

The next day at assembly, the class teacher was puzzled not to find me in the class line. A few of my classmates gawked, seeing me with the bugle on stage. A couple of them had already called my bluff and gave me thin smiles.

Post the anthem, I scurried away with the band to celebrate my unsolicited freedom from the first period. Bugle practice!

I harrumphed, hooted and blew my lungs out into the bugle. It made arbitrary sounds. The band master watched me intently. He slowly walked in my direction and towered over me. 'Play', he hissed.
With a squeaky mental prayer, I tried again hoping for a miracle. The bugle merely burped. I blinked rapidly as my throat went dry.
My friend quickly covered up for me, 'Maybe there's something wrong with this. Try the other one...', he handed me his bugle. Oh yes, the accomplished players were allowed to mark and keep their bugles. They shined them every now and then with immense pride.
I wasn't very successful with the other bugle either. 'One last chance tomorrow...', the band master waved a finger and walked away.

Skipping the first period didn't seem like much fun, especially with the threat of the band master dangling over me.

I don't remember if I quit the next day or a couple of days later but that ended my brief tryst with music. I have since made one or two meek attempts at the flute, harmonica and the keyboard with disastrous results!

For now, am just content tapping on the steering and humming along with the radio when I drive....!

Agonypath: A test of patience

Can someone please tell me why Agneepath should be adjudged any differently from those zillion mind numbing masala flicks that are promptly panned by critics..

Agneepath's only defense in pleading not guilty, is that a film of the same name is a leaf in the majestic ouvre of the iconic Amitabh Bachchan, now being played out again by an ensemble of accomplished actors. Not good enough for a pardon.

A remake of fiction takes greater meaning when the story is portrayed in contemporary sense. Agneepath doesn't. But for giving new faces to the main players in the plot, it just seems like taking a by-road to Rome. Same wayside sceneries, same destination.

The Agneepath of yore, though much later bestowed with a cult classic status, was commercially unfruitful I am told. So besides the fact that it could be Karan Johar's emotional tribute to his father, I fail to see the point in a remake of this kind.

The movie is dreadfully long and beyond a point, I lost interest. The parts that evoke appreciation involve the introductions of newer characters into the story, including the telly quaking Chikni Chameli.

We've seen a chiselled Hrithik Roshan muster all brawn and beef to rise like the phoenix and deliver a telling blow to fell his nemesis in many a Kaho Naa Pyar Hai. What else is new here! He's more engaging whenever the wily schemer in his character flares to the surface from the undercurrent. To his credit, he is sincere as always, consciously staying away from becoming a spoof of the raspy original Vijay DC.

Priyanka's task is to alleviate this arduous journey with lighter moments. Somewhere, it becomes a replay of her 'so excited to marry' character from Kaminey. She does give it a fair shot though. Btw, whichever wise man said marriage is a death sentence, take a bow here sir!

It may have been a fascinating thought to cast Sanjay Dutt with head and brows tonsured. Again, if the purpose was to inject a higher voltage of menace, it doesn't really work. Rishi Kapoor's Rauf Lala succeeds to a greater degree in this aspect.

It's quite a fussy movie wanting a share of everything - song and dance, romance, item number, blood gore and rationale and doses of cinematic liberties.

Hmm. Not very amused. Wait for the cable release if you can. Maybe the wait itself won't be longer than the movie!