Facts n Fiction

Subscribed over 10 times (BSE+NSE) and that sends a gush of excitement among many investors, both savvy as well as rookies. Everyone around has been, and is still talking about the Reliance Power IPO that opened for subscription yesterday. I saw many people opening DEMAT accounts just to apply for this IPO and many still finding ways to apply for the Reliance Power IPO. We Indians are really crazy about Reliance, with many of us mostly driven by emotional sentiments of what Dhirubhai Ambani did to the middle class community decades ago. I heard someone even saying that you should invest blindly in anything that begins with “REL”, maybe true, maybe not, only time will tell. I was going through some writings/analysis/forums/articles today to know more about the frenzy of this Reliance Power IPO. Interestingly, I received an email from one of my close friend on “Why not to invest in Reliance Power IPO”. It seems it is a piece of blog; I tried to search the Internet for its link. However, ...

I know I am too late to watch and write about this masterpiece – Taare Zameen Par, as a lot has been already said and written. Anything I write would be just a repetition. However, I found it difficult to control my temptation to write something about it. I have started to write and suddenly I am blank and running out of words to write anything. A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Form all the positive and goody-goody adjectives with the above set of alphabets and that would be precisely what I want to say about the movie, the kid, and Aamir. Cheers.

2007 for me has been a year full of movies, with the highest number of movies I watched in a year. Moving to Pune and leading a “hostelier” lifestyle has increased (and improved) my affinity to films. I watched too many films and in every possible way – theaters, CDs, DVDs, and the best of all was in Neeta Volvo while traveling Mumbai to Pune and back on weekends. To begin with, I was quite impressed with “A Life in a Metro” the way it presented things was quite shocking – in a way a Madhur Bhandarkar style. And such a stunner from a debutant filmmaker was even more impressive. Two movies that, I guess had a good background research were “Parzania” and “Black Friday” , both very well made, based on real life stories and incidents. The next beautiful cinema work I watched was “Chak De” , and it soon faded off my “Metro” hangover, as the best movie seen till then. It was thoroughly inspiring movie and again mirrored the way we still think of women and undermine their capabilities. Ano...

Waiting for the signal to turn green, I was all set to zoom off the signal and reach movie theater at the earliest. No, I was not getting late for the movie, I was well in time, 90 minutes in advance for the movie. The “rush” and “hurry” was to secure a parking space. Yes, lately things have been worse with so many cars flooding the streets all of a sudden. Go anywhere and to parking your car is no less than an art of jugglery. Front-reverse-look left, right-take turn-squeeze in-no luck-take reverse-search again, is the kind of stunt I required to do every time I needed to park my car. I had just contemplated a situation, thinking about the launch of Tata’s new Rs. 1 Lac car. Popularly deemed as the “Peoples Car”, this affordable family car would supposedly transform many middle class dreamers into car owners. However, the car’s entry seems to be a little misfit; imagine the number of cars that you will see around when every single household will own one. The Indian economy already bo...

Right from Rakesh Roshan in "Khatta Meetha" singing “Thoda hai, thode ki zaroorat hai” to Mr. SRK saying “Thoda aur wish karo” , and we all included in between, nobody seems to be satisfied with what we have. This sentiment candidly reflected itself when I looked (and heard) people around me lately. I had experienced a similar thing long back when I was with a BPO. And now I am into IT sector, a growth story just preceding retail and realty boom. When in BPO, I saw people hoping jobs for a meager Rs. 5,000 raise and still continue with the similar work at the new place. From Intelenet to Daksh to WNS to Spectramind, it felt like a touch-and-go game. Many of them just juggled their careers in Mindspace, Mumbai, supposedly a heaven of call centers and BPOs. And things haven’t changed much, now I see people leaping (at the same level) from one IT firm to the other and to some other. Reason – 10% rise in salary and may be more. Truly, the quest for money does not end. I am not ...

Last Saturday, while in Mumbai, I witnessed a power failure and ‘no-electricity’ condition in some places that I visited that evening (strange coincidence, I thought). I was kind of irritated and while sharing this distress with my friend, I came to know about an initiative “Mumbai Unplug: Batti Bandh” . However, my friend wasn’t sure about what it was either. I later found out that Mumbaikars can voluntarily switch off their electricity on Saturday for an hour from 7.30pm to 8.30pm. This was something that had derived its inspiration from Sydney’s “Earth Hour” concept, an initiative to fight against global warming. Some articles in newspapers next day carried detailed information on the “Batti Bandh” initiative. However, all reported that the response to this initiative was poor with people participating only in few pockets of the city. Many corporate houses, restaurants, offices, residential complexes took part. However, hoardings, malls, and multiplexes remained brightly lit. The ...

You will make a fool out of yourself if you go to watch “Dus Kahaniyaan” with intentions of finding something common in the 10 short stories shown in the movie. There is no common plot, no common origin or end between the stories. This anthology of short films is nothing but an attempt to showoff, polish, and learn directorial skills. All fail however. I did not understand what Sanjay Gupta, Sanjay Dutt were trying to do with all the money that they have, as “Dus Kahaniyaan” turns out to be a real messy viewable experience. One would quite surely get impressed with the style, camera effects, shots taken etc, but that’s if you don’t understand movies. The content and the story telling are pathetic. I think Ram Gopal Varma is good at this – taking some stories and weaving them into a thriller. The short stories, “Matrimony”, “Zahir”, “High on the Highway”, “Sex on the beach” are a real pain and unbearable in terms of content quality. All these just bring out negative elements like d...