COMMANDMENTS NOT RESOLUTIONS

Tis the time of year when resolutions get made (and broken) but till then, here are some commandments for those of you who are married and for the other fortunate non-married ones as well.

Merry X'Mas and A Happy New Year Too.

Enjoy.

Vish

Commandment 1.

Marriages are made in heaven. But so again, are thunder and lightning.

Commandment 2.

If you want your spouse to listen and pay strict attention to every word you say,

talk in your sleep.

Commandment 3.

Marriage is grand -- and divorce is at least 100 grand!

Commandment 4.

Married life is very frustrating.

In the first year of marriage, the man speaks and the woman listens.

In the second year, the woman speaks and the man listens.

In the third year, they both speak and the neighbors listen.

Commandment 5.

When a man opens the door of his car for his wife,

you can be sure of one thing:

Either the car is new or the wife is.

Commandment 6.

Marriage is when a man and woman become as one;

the trouble starts when they try to decide which one.

Commandment 7.

Before marriage, a man will lie awake all night thinking about something you said.

After marriage, he will fall asleep before you finish.

Commandment 8.

Every man wants a wife who is beautiful, understanding, economical, and a good cook.

But the law allows only one wife.

Commandment 9.

Every woman wants a man who is handsome, understanding, economical and a considerate lover, but again, the law allows only one husband.

Commandment 10.

Man is incomplete until he marries. After that, he is finished.

Bonus Commandment story.

A long married couple came upon a wishing well.

The wife leaned over, made a wish and threw in a penny.

The husband decided to make a wish too.

But he leaned over too much, fell into the well, and drowned.

The wife was stunned for a moment but then smiled, "It really works!"

KHOYA FRICKIN CHAND

Hi. Me again.

I just remembered something and thought i'd share it with you guys and gals (you have to be politically correct now-a-days you see)

Anyway as i mentioned earlier the movies here in UAE are released with both Arabic and English sub-titles. (Some English movies even have French ones so you can imagine how much 'fun' it is to watch a movie with half the screen filled with scrawlings)

Anyway I went to watch Khoya Khoya Chand the other day with some friends. Initially we were distracted and that distraction quickly turned to surprise and shock as we began to read the sub-titles. From what I understand, the sub-titles should be explaining the scene while trying to remain as close to the spoken word as possible. In this case the person doing the sub-titles must have been very angry on the day he sat typing.

The characters would be saying dialogues like, "Batameez, tum apne aap ko kya samajte ho?" while the translation would read "Fucking Bastard, who the fuck do you think you are ?". Even benign ones like "Naa, tum yeh film nahi kar payoge" became "No, you are not fucking fit to do this fucking film"

After a couple of the F words flashed across the screen, I thought i'd count how many and began but quickly gave up when i reached 18. And we were barely 30 min into the movie.

Granted that the movie is about loss, pain, despair etc but none of the characters seemed angry enough to warrant such liberal interpretations of their dialogues.

Does anyone check them before they are released? Just wondering....

And speaking of sub-titles, when they try to sub-title the songs, well sometimes it can be quite hilarious too...

I can't quite get it as yet.

In Jab We Met, a sad song is playing in the background as Kareena gets ditched by her boyfriend. They translate the full song hilariously and if that was not enough, at the end of the song there is a passage when the singer is singing the raagas. Pa Ni Sa Re Ga Ga Ma... Ni Ni Re Ga Pa and so on....

I looked down, and what do you know??? The english sub-title read Do Do Re Fa Fa Me... Re So So La La Ti

Unintentionally distracting and funny.

And I can't read Arabic but I managed to see that it's version of the sub-title too was keeping up.

I wonder what is Do Re Me Fa in Arabic ?

A Gift Of Gratitude

• Life is partly what we make it, and partly what it is made by the friends we choose. ~ Tennessee Williams

I have been thinking long and hard about this post.


Initially I thought that this was a private matter and thus not necessary to be published in the blog. But as G.B. Stern said, “Silent gratitude isn't much use to anyone.” Esp when there is already so little genuine goodness to be found in the world.

Faithful readers of my blog will know my friend, Ms. Jashoda Chettri from Sikkim.

Apart from being one of my biggest fans she is also the source of great encouragement and has, at many times, been instrumental in overcoming the writer’s block that seems to settle on me from time to time. Furthermore she has also managed to get my humble blog published in the newspapers.

If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is 'thank you', it will be enough. - Meister Eckhart


Recently, I happened to be quite tactless when corresponding with her and I would have understood if she would have been furious. However she managed to see the positive side in even that gaffe and that just amazes me.


One can pay back the loan of gold, but one dies forever in debt to those who are kind. - Malayan Proverb


I am not perfect (seriously) and I can be quite quick to judge others. So it constantly amazes me when others surprise me with behaviour which is quite the opposite.

It cannot be easy for them.

So for all that and more I want to take this opportunity to say a humble “Thank You”

You are a wonderful person Jashoda, and deserve nothing but happiness.

Thank You once again.

A true friend is someone who thinks that you are a good egg even though he knows that you are slightly cracked. ~ Bernard Meltzer

THE KING IS DEAD. LONG LIVE THE KING.

CONDOLENCE:

Last week was a sad day in comic land. Personally I am not a big fan of comics and absolutely hate slapstick, which comics by the very virtue of their medium usually have to be. Most of the popular ones irritate me.

Garfield; too smug, Wizard of Id; repetitive, Andy Capp; 1 dimentional, Non Sequitar: Too long (anything with over 50 words is a story not a cartoon strip) and so on and so forth.

However there are 2 that I absolutely adore. Calvin & Hobbs and Dilbert.

Last week Dilbert's Pointy-Haired Boss made his most solemn announcement - Asok the Intern is dead. The IIT educated supergeek with telekinetic powers, who charmed millions of readers with his innocence and geekiness, is dead.

"I am sad to report that Asok the Intern died during a test of our moon shuttle prototype," the evil cartoon boss announced. "Before he left, he put a sample of his DNA in a jar," the Pointy-Haired Boss added. "His plan is to reincarnate into his own clone."

That however, initially seemed doubtful, as Carol, the crazy secretary, had used the jar to store her candy.

Before he was sent to space on a prototype shuttle with a co-pilot who just 'happenned' to be a little bit 'grim', Asok had made his first appearance in March 1996 seven years after Dilbert was launched, and even though Dilbert's creator Scott Adams has never ever mentioned his nationality, in the website’s character sketch he does mention that “Asok is common name in India where it is spelt Ashok”.

Not only was Asok a geek he was utterly lovable as even the vilest characters in only Dilbert can be.

Today morning he has been cloned/reincarnated and is feeling a little nuts and you have to check out the strip to find out why exactly, or should I say why literally. Suffice it to say that the little dusky Indian intern has become caramelized, sorry, Americanized.

So Asok is Dead. Long live Snickersok

Speaking of cartoons, the animated movie is big business in Hollywood.

Shrek, Toy Story, Ratatouille etc have made huge bucks and so why should India lag behind. In the beginning the ‘animated’ movies were downright embarrassing and looked like they were sketched (drawn is too strong a word) by children. Initially underestimated as children’s movies the success of Bal Hanuman and Bal Ganesh and Koi Mil Gaya and Krrish (which were a success only due to the kids dragging the parents to the theatres) Bollywood has now woken up to the potential of animated movies.

Yashraj Films had teamed up with the biggest player in this genre, Walt Disney Studios and is making the first big budget feature length film titled Roadside Romeo.

The trailors of it are out and it is about a dog (voiced in true Hollywood tradition by a ‘star’ Saif Ali Khan in this case) who wants to be an actor. The clip is about his audition for a movie and like the proverbial hindi actor, Romeo dances, sings and recites soliloquies - both dramatic and comedic. The animation seems to be of very high quality and Saif’s unique Winchester School accented voice is quite apt to give character to the dog who is quite aptly named Romeo. It doesn’t hurt that current squeeze Kareena is voicing the canine love interest.

I don’t know how the preview was released in India but here in the UAE it also had English subtitles. And therein lies the interesting part as the English subtitles were not only different but in fact classic Hollywood quotes. Check out the difference between what Romeo says and what the subtitles read.

Romeo: Mere paas bungla ha gaadi hai bank balance hai, tumare pass kya hai ? (Amitabh Bachchan - Deewar)
Subtitle : I could have been someone, I too could have been a contender… (Marlon Brando – On the Waterfront)

Romeo: Senorita, bade bade desho mein aise chhoti chhoti baatein hoti rehti hain… (SRK – DDLJ)
Subtitle: Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you are gonna get… (Tom Hanks – Forest Gump)

Romeo: Kitne aadni the? Sardar do. Phirbhi waapas aagaye… Khali haat .. (Gabbar – Sholay)
Subtitle: You want the truth? Yes. No. You can’t handle the truth. (Jack Nicholson – A Few Good Men)

I can’t quite get the reason for that but I am sure the international market is also being targeted. Let’s see how that turns out when the movie releases in Summer 2008. Maybe it is the time for Bollywood to finally emerge as a global player.

More Soon.