Facts n Fiction

Last few days have been quite relaxing and peaceful. I spent as much time as I could time at home all by myself. Days lazing around, watching movies, talking to friends, lunches, dinners, and other leisurely activities were like long awaited bliss that I needed. I wish I could go rewind a little and back to those days in last week. Oh yes, I also took up cleaning and dusting of my house (after a looooong time) – the wall unit, my book shelf, ceiling, sofas, floor and I was blowing off every speck of dirt that my eyes could see. My inspiration and vigour kept rising with every particle of dust that I cleaned. During little short breaks, a hot fuming drink made from freshly grinded coffee powder given to me by a dear friend kept getting my valour back to cleaning again. My “pick-dust-clean to shine-coffee break” act continued from one object to other and from one room to other. I kept rising an inch higher after giving a shiny touch to things below. Finally I found myself standing on th...

Raj Thackeray, Mumbaikar, Marathi Manoos, have recently been in news for quite sometime now for the controversies, violence, their emotions, and so on (I am not naming Mumbai here, as it is always in news for some reason or the other). I have been writing about political melodrama that was going on between Maharashtra Navnirman Sena and the Samajwadi Party or between Raj Thackeray and “rest of the non-Mumbaikar” community. What I was particularly disturbed about was the way in which things were being handled and the violent chaos that spread rapidly across the state. Well, my point was to talk about how politics can exploit anything and everything using the recent “insider/outsider” news story as the medium. It is not that I don’t care or think about the Marathi Manoos , I am one amongst them and take equal pride in calling myself a “Mumbaikar” , as much as Raj Thackeray would take. I was possibly carried with the errant happenings across various cities of the state and my angst flow...

Nearly 40 people beaten up with rods in several parts of the state About 15 state owned transport buses burnt Many shops closed down across the state Numerous vehicles, buses pelted with stones, thrashed down and destroyed Around 10000 north Indians flee from Nasik to their home town Amazing score card for the MNS activists to show off their Marathi asmita (pride). Oh and yes a 55 yr old Marathi Manoos killed as a result of the stone pelting by the ‘dim-witted’ and ‘ill-advised’ activists must have been like a winning shot, kind of receiving ‘Param Veer Chakra’ for the victorious act. What’s the use and what pleasure did MNS chief and his rebellions derive from creating casualties, causing damage to government, public, and private properties. And who takes the onus of the death of the innocent man, who probably had nothing to do with the north Indians and neither with Maharashtra Navnirman Sena. Do we really need violence to portray our protests? And is all this hatred really require...

The equation, “Sena = Violence”, (Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, MNS, this time) seems perfectly balanced this time too. Vehicles burnt, a driver beaten up, Bachchan’s bungalow stoned, etc were some sadistic incidents that Raj Thackeray’s men carried out in Mumbai on Sunday. The nephew Thackeray seems to be duplicating his uncle’s agenda of the “Rights of a Marathi Manoos” . It was indeed an insane behaviour to target the north Indians or the ‘bhaiyyas’ , to be precise for their presence in Mumbai. Innocent drivers, hawkers, travelers fell prey to the political rivalry between the MNS and the SP (Samajwadi Party). Raj Thackeray has been making some arousing statements about the political party and its leader, Amar Singh. He also was upset with Mr. Bachchan for starting a girls school in UP instead of starting one in Maharashtra – “place matters here the most, forget the cause” . I fail to understand why such strong leaders (based on the fan following that they have) cannot react or get up...

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...