COMMA by Vishal

2011-12-25T13:43:00.004+04:00

In Defense

I was forwarded this article by some friends and my own take on this is contained in the comments in red below.

But i begin with a caveat.

This is not in defense of Dubai. I am neither a member of the ruling family (how i wish, because then i could have just said "Off With Their Heads") nor do i work for any member of the ruling family. I am not Emarati and like i mentioned above, this is not in defense of Dubai at all.

My gripe is with lazy journalism (or whatever that seems to pass for journalism).

For those of us who live in the UAE this article is well known. There was a hue and cry when it first came out in 2007. Apart from the establishment denouncing it (you'd think???) most of the expat community too were offended by the lies that were seemingly strung together to form a salacious article.

That the writer Johann Hari was barely in the UAE for 27 hours puts the L in Lazy.

Vanity Fair had a similar article sometime early this year and now while the PIGS of Europe (Portugal, Ireland/Italy, Greece and Spain) begin defaulting on their debts Dubai seems to be on the road to cautious recovery - my company alone hires 18,000+ staff so i guess i know what i'm speaking about.

Does Dubai have its faults?? Hell yes it does (the crazy driving for starters), but is it as crazy as this article says it is. NO.

Anyway for what its worth, my comments for each point in red and like always, i've saved the best for last.

Try not to scroll down before you read the whole post first.

Ciao

Vish

The dark side of Dubai

Dubai was meant to be a Middle-Eastern Shangri-La, a glittering monument to Arab enterprise and western capitalism. But as hard times arrive in the city state that rose from the desert sands, an uglier story is emerging. Johann Hari reports

The wide, smiling face of Sheikh Mohammed – the absolute ruler of Dubai – beams down on his creation. His image is displayed on every other building, sandwiched between the more familiar corporate rictuses of Ronald McDonald and Colonel Sanders. This man has sold Dubai to the world as the city of One Thousand and One Arabian Lights, a Shangri-La in the Middle East insulated from the dust-storms blasting across the region. He dominates the Manhattan-manqué skyline, beaming out from row after row of glass pyramids and hotels smelted into the shape of piles of golden coins. And there he stands on the tallest building in the world – a skinny spike, jabbing farther into the sky than any other human construction in history.

But something has flickered in Sheikh Mohammed's smile. The ubiquitous cranes have paused on the skyline, as if stuck in time. There are countless buildings half-finished, seemingly abandoned. In the swankiest new constructions – like the vast Atlantis hotel, a giant pink castle built in 1,000 days for $1.5bn on its own artificial island – where rainwater is leaking from the ceilings and the tiles are falling off the roof. This Neverland was built on the Never-Never – and now the cracks are beginning to show. Suddenly it looks less like Manhattan in the sun than Iceland in the desert.
Once the manic burst of building has stopped and the whirlwind has slowed, the secrets of Dubai are slowly seeping out. This is a city built from nothing in just a few wild decades on credit and ecocide, suppression and slavery. Dubai is a living metal metaphor for the neo-liberal globalised world that may be crashing – at last – into history.
Did the construction slow down during the recession? Yes it did but so did the same happen all over the world. And unlike the Lehman Brothers nothing crashed and burned quite like that.

I. An Adult Disneyland

Karen Andrews can't speak. Every time she starts to tell her story, she puts her head down and crumples. She is slim and angular and has the faded radiance of the once-rich, even though her clothes are as creased as her forehead. I find her in the car park of one of Dubai's finest international hotels, where she is living, in her Range Rover. She has been sleeping here for months, thanks to the kindness of the Bangladeshi car park attendants who don't have the heart to move her on. This is not where she thought her Dubai dream would end.
Her story comes out in stutters, over four hours. At times, her old voice – witty and warm – breaks through. Karen came here from Canada when her husband was offered a job in the senior division of a famous multinational. "When he said Dubai, I said – if you want me to wear black and quit booze, baby, you've got the wrong girl. But he asked me to give it a chance. And I loved him."
All her worries melted when she touched down in Dubai in 2005. "It was an adult Disneyland, where Sheikh Mohammed is the mouse," she says. "Life was fantastic. You had these amazing big apartments, you had a whole army of your own staff, you pay no taxes at all. It seemed like everyone was a CEO. We were partying the whole time."
Her husband, Daniel, bought two properties. "We were drunk on Dubai," she says. But for the first time in his life, he was beginning to mismanage their finances. "We're not talking huge sums, but he was getting confused. It was so unlike Daniel, I was surprised. We got into a little bit of debt." After a year, she found out why: Daniel was diagnosed with a brain tumour.
One doctor told him he had a year to live; another said it was benign and he'd be okay. But the debts were growing. "Before I came here, I didn't know anything about Dubai law. I assumed if all these big companies come here, it must be pretty like Canada's or any other liberal democracy's," she says. Nobody told her there is no concept of bankruptcy. If you get into debt and you can't pay, you go to prison.
"When we realised that, I sat Daniel down and told him: listen, we need to get out of here. He knew he was guaranteed a pay-off when he resigned, so we said – right, let's take the pay-off, clear the debt, and go." So Daniel resigned – but he was given a lower pay-off than his contract suggested. The debt remained. As soon as you quit your job in Dubai, your employer has to inform your bank. If you have any outstanding debts that aren't covered by your savings, then all your accounts are frozen, and you are forbidden to leave the country.
"Suddenly our cards stopped working. We had nothing. We were thrown out of our apartment." Karen can't speak about what happened next for a long time; she is shaking.
Daniel was arrested and taken away on the day of their eviction. It was six days before she could talk to him. "He told me he was put in a cell with another debtor, a Sri Lankan guy who was only 27, who said he couldn't face the shame to his family. Daniel woke up and the boy had swallowed razor-blades. He banged for help, but nobody came, and the boy died in front of him."
Karen managed to beg from her friends for a few weeks, "but it was so humiliating. I've never lived like this. I worked in the fashion industry. I had my own shops. I've never..." She peters out.
Daniel was sentenced to six months' imprisonment at a trial he couldn't understand. It was in Arabic, and there was no translation. "Now I'm here illegally, too," Karen says I've got no money, nothing. I have to last nine months until he's out, somehow." Looking away, almost paralysed with embarrassment, she asks if I could buy her a meal.
She is not alone. All over the city, there are maxed-out expats sleeping secretly in the sand-dunes or the airport or in their cars.
"The thing you have to understand about Dubai is – nothing is what it seems," Karen says at last. "Nothing. This isn't a city, it's a con-job. They lure you in telling you it's one thing – a modern kind of place – but beneath the surface it's a medieval dictatorship."

This is fantasy. NO ONE IN DUBAI LIVES IN THEIR CARS. Anyway even if we were to - for arguments sake - believe this nonsense the whole point of the story is about bad business sense. Nothing to do with Dubai. If you acted crazy and lived beyond your means you will pay for it. In Dubai or Singapore or anywhere else. And people living in the airport??? Seriously???? Does this crazy writer actually believe that people just wander into the airport and live there or that people can live in sand-dunes.

And quite frankly, why doesn't the crazy woman (if she even exists) just sell her Range Rover?

The security in the UAE is very very strong and no one can seriously live in their cars. Even if it is a Range Rover.

II. Tumbleweed

Thirty years ago, almost all of contemporary Dubai was desert, inhabited only by cactuses and tumbleweed and scorpions. But downtown there are traces of the town that once was, buried amidst the metal and glass. In the dusty fort of the Dubai Museum, a sanitised version of this story is told.
In the mid-18th century, a small village was built here, in the lower Persian Gulf, where people would dive for pearls off the coast. It soon began to accumulate a cosmopolitan population washing up from Persia, the Indian subcontinent, and other Arab countries, all hoping to make their fortune. They named it after a local locust, the daba, who consumed everything before it. The town was soon seized by the gunships of the British Empire, who held it by the throat as late as 1971. As they scuttled away, Dubai decided to ally with the six surrounding states and make up the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
The British quit, exhausted, just as oil was being discovered, and the sheikhs who suddenly found themselves in charge faced a remarkable dilemma. They were largely illiterate nomads who spent their lives driving camels through the desert – yet now they had a vast pot of gold. What should they do with it?
Dubai only had a dribble of oil compared to neighbouring Abu Dhabi – so Sheikh Maktoum decided to use the revenues to build something that would last. Israel used to boast it made the desert bloom; Sheikh Maktoum resolved to make the desert boom. He would build a city to be a centre of tourism and financial services, sucking up cash and talent from across the globe. He invited the world to come tax-free – and they came in their millions, swamping the local population, who now make up just 5 per cent of Dubai. A city seemed to fall from the sky in just three decades, whole and complete and swelling. They fast-forwarded from the 18th century to the 21st in a single generation.
If you take the Big Bus Tour of Dubai – the passport to a pre-processed experience of every major city on earth – you are fed the propaganda-vision of how this happened. "Dubai's motto is 'Open doors, open minds'," the tour guide tells you in clipped tones, before depositing you at the souks to buy camel tea-cosies. "Here you are free. To purchase fabrics," he adds. As you pass each new monumental building, he tells you: "The World Trade Centre was built by His Highness..."
But this is a lie. The sheikh did not build this city. It was built by slaves. They are building it now.

The Big Bus tour is is British owned and they have no reason for propaganda. The UAE may not be a democracy but it is a far cry from North Korea. I've been on the Big Bus tour and while they do mention Shaikh Mohammed and his vision for Dubai nowehere does anyone imply that the Shaikh actually built the city himself. This paragraph is what journalists are taught not to do. Just like the Hippocratic oath for Doctors, every journalist is taught of the immortal words of C P Scott:

"Comment is Free, but Facts are Sacred"

Maybe Joahnn skipped journalism class that day.

III. Hidden in plain view

There are three different Dubais, all swirling around each other. There are the expats, like Karen; there are the Emiratis, headed by Sheikh Mohammed; and then there is the foreign underclass who built the city, and are trapped here. They are hidden in plain view. You see them everywhere, in dirt-caked blue uniforms, being shouted at by their superiors, like a chain gang – but you are trained not to look. It is like a mantra: the Sheikh built the city. The Sheikh built the city. Workers? What workers?
Every evening, the hundreds of thousands of young men who build Dubai are bussed from their sites to a vast concrete wasteland an hour out of town, where they are quarantined away. Until a few years ago they were shuttled back and forth on cattle trucks, but the expats complained this was unsightly, so now they are shunted on small metal buses that function like greenhouses in the desert heat. They sweat like sponges being slowly wrung out.
Sonapur is a rubble-strewn patchwork of miles and miles of identical concrete buildings. Some 300,000 men live piled up here, in a place whose name in Hindi means "City of Gold". In the first camp I stop at – riven with the smell of sewage and sweat – the men huddle around, eager to tell someone, anyone, what is happening to them.
Sahinal Monir, a slim 24-year-old from the deltas of Bangladesh. "To get you here, they tell you Dubai is heaven. Then you get here and realise it is hell," he says. Four years ago, an employment agent arrived in Sahinal's village in Southern Bangladesh. He told the men of the village that there was a place where they could earn 40,000 takka a month (£400) just for working nine-to-five on construction projects. It was a place where they would be given great accommodation, great food, and treated well. All they had to do was pay an up-front fee of 220,000 takka (£2,300) for the work visa – a fee they'd pay off in the first six months, easy. So Sahinal sold his family land, and took out a loan from the local lender, to head to this paradise.
As soon as he arrived at Dubai airport, his passport was taken from him by his construction company. He has not seen it since. He was told brusquely that from now on he would be working 14-hour days in the desert heat – where western tourists are advised not to stay outside for even five minutes in summer, when it hits 55 degrees – for 500 dirhams a month (£90), less than a quarter of the wage he was promised. If you don't like it, the company told him, go home. "But how can I go home? You have my passport, and I have no money for the ticket," he said. "Well, then you'd better get to work," they replied.
Sahinal was in a panic. His family back home – his son, daughter, wife and parents – were waiting for money, excited that their boy had finally made it. But he was going to have to work for more than two years just to pay for the cost of getting here – and all to earn less than he did in Bangladesh.
He shows me his room. It is a tiny, poky, concrete cell with triple-decker bunk-beds, where he lives with 11 other men. All his belongings are piled onto his bunk: three shirts, a spare pair of trousers, and a cellphone. The room stinks, because the lavatories in the corner of the camp – holes in the ground – are backed up with excrement and clouds of black flies. There is no air conditioning or fans, so the heat is "unbearable. You cannot sleep. All you do is sweat and scratch all night." At the height of summer, people sleep on the floor, on the roof, anywhere where they can pray for a moment of breeze.
The water delivered to the camp in huge white containers isn't properly desalinated: it tastes of salt. "It makes us sick, but we have nothing else to drink," he says.
The work is "the worst in the world," he says. "You have to carry 50kg bricks and blocks of cement in the worst heat imaginable ... This heat – it is like nothing else. You sweat so much you can't pee, not for days or weeks. It's like all the liquid comes out through your skin and you stink. You become dizzy and sick but you aren't allowed to stop, except for an hour in the afternoon. You know if you drop anything or slip, you could die. If you take time off sick, your wages are docked, and you are trapped here even longer."
He is currently working on the 67th floor of a shiny new tower, where he builds upwards, into the sky, into the heat. He doesn't know its name. In his four years here, he has never seen the Dubai of tourist-fame, except as he constructs it floor-by-floor.
Is he angry? He is quiet for a long time. "Here, nobody shows their anger. You can't. You get put in jail for a long time, then deported." Last year, some workers went on strike after they were not given their wages for four months. The Dubai police surrounded their camps with razor-wire and water-cannons and blasted them out and back to work.
The "ringleaders" were imprisoned. I try a different question: does Sohinal regret coming? All the men look down, awkwardly. "How can we think about that? We are trapped. If we start to think about regrets..." He lets the sentence trail off. Eventually, another worker breaks the silence by adding: "I miss my country, my family and my land. We can grow food in Bangladesh. Here, nothing grows. Just oil and buildings."
Since the recession hit, they say, the electricity has been cut off in dozens of the camps, and the men have not been paid for months. Their companies have disappeared with their passports and their pay. "We have been robbed of everything. Even if somehow we get back to Bangladesh, the loan sharks will demand we repay our loans immediately, and when we can't, we'll be sent to prison."
This is all supposed to be illegal. Employers are meant to pay on time, never take your passport, give you breaks in the heat – but I met nobody who said it happens. Not one. These men are conned into coming and trapped into staying, with the complicity of the Dubai authorities.
Sahinal could well die out here. A British man who used to work on construction projects told me: "There's a huge number of suicides in the camps and on the construction sites, but they're not reported. They're described as 'accidents'." Even then, their families aren't free: they simply inherit the debts. A Human Rights Watch study found there is a "cover-up of the true extent" of deaths from heat exhaustion, overwork and suicide, but the Indian consulate registered 971 deaths of their nationals in 2005 alone. After this figure was leaked, the consulates were told to stop counting.
At night, in the dusk, I sit in the camp with Sohinal and his friends as they scrape together what they have left to buy a cheap bottle of spirits. They down it in one ferocious gulp. "It helps you to feel numb", Sohinal says through a stinging throat. In the distance, the glistening Dubai skyline he built stands, oblivious.

As poor as the alleged worker facilities are supposed to be no one in Dubai uses holes in the ground filled with excrement as lavatories. Me and group of friends did it once but that was when we had gone camping. Are the workers facilities ideal? CERTAINLY NOT. But are they as bad as this conman suggests. Once again, CERTAINLY NOT.

IV. Mauled by the mall

I find myself stumbling in a daze from the camps into the sprawling marble malls that seem to stand on every street in Dubai. It is so hot there is no point building pavements; people gather in these cathedrals of consumerism to bask in the air conditioning. So within a ten minute taxi-ride, I have left Sohinal and I am standing in the middle of Harvey Nichols, being shown a £20,000 taffeta dress by a bored salesgirl. "As you can see, it is cut on the bias..." she says, and I stop writing.
Time doesn't seem to pass in the malls. Days blur with the same electric light, the same shined floors, the same brands I know from home. Here, Dubai is reduced to its component sounds: do-buy. In the most expensive malls I am almost alone, the shops empty and echoing. On the record, everybody tells me business is going fine. Off the record, they look panicky. There is a hat exhibition ahead of the Dubai races, selling elaborate headgear for £1,000 a pop. "Last year, we were packed. Now look," a hat designer tells me. She swoops her arm over a vacant space.
I approach a blonde 17-year-old Dutch girl wandering around in hotpants, oblivious to the swarms of men gaping at her. "I love it here!" she says. "The heat, the malls, the beach!" Does it ever bother you that it's a slave society? She puts her head down, just as Sohinal did. "I try not to see," she says. Even at 17, she has learned not to look, and not to ask; that, she senses, is a transgression too far.
Between the malls, there is nothing but the connecting tissue of asphalt. Every road has at least four lanes; Dubai feels like a motorway punctuated by shopping centres. You only walk anywhere if you are suicidal. The residents of Dubai flit from mall to mall by car or taxis.
How does it feel if this is your country, filled with foreigners? Unlike the expats and the slave class, I can't just approach the native Emiratis to ask questions when I see them wandering around – the men in cool white robes, the women in sweltering black. If you try, the women blank you, and the men look affronted, and tell you brusquely that Dubai is "fine". So I browse through the Emirati blog-scene and found some typical-sounding young Emiratis. We meet – where else? – in the mall.
Ahmed al-Atar is a handsome 23-year-old with a neat, trimmed beard, tailored white robes, and rectangular wire-glasses. He speaks perfect American-English, and quickly shows that he knows London, Los Angeles and Paris better than most westerners. Sitting back in his chair in an identikit Starbucks, he announces: "This is the best place in the world to be young! The government pays for your education up to PhD level. You get given a free house when you get married. You get free healthcare, and if it's not good enough here, they pay for you to go abroad. You don't even have to pay for your phone calls. Almost everyone has a maid, a nanny, and a driver. And we never pay any taxes. Don't you wish you were Emirati?"
I try to raise potential objections to this Panglossian summary, but he leans forward and says: "Look – my grandfather woke up every day and he would have to fight to get to the well first to get water. When the wells ran dry, they had to have water delivered by camel. They were always hungry and thirsty and desperate for jobs. He limped all his life, because he there was no medical treatment available when he broke his leg. Now look at us!"
For Emiratis, this is a Santa Claus state, handing out goodies while it makes its money elsewhere: through renting out land to foreigners, soft taxes on them like business and airport charges, and the remaining dribble of oil. Most Emiratis, like Ahmed, work for the government, so they're cushioned from the credit crunch. "I haven't felt any effect at all, and nor have my friends," he says. "Your employment is secure. You will only be fired if you do something incredibly bad." The laws are currently being tightened, to make it even more impossible to sack an Emirati.
Sure, the flooding-in of expats can sometimes be "an eyesore", Ahmed says. "But we see the expats as the price we had to pay for this development. How else could we do it? Nobody wants to go back to the days of the desert, the days before everyone came. We went from being like an African country to having an average income per head of $120,000 a year. And we're supposed to complain?"
He says the lack of political freedom is fine by him. "You'll find it very hard to find an Emirati who doesn't support Sheikh Mohammed." Because they're scared? "No, because we really all support him. He's a great leader. Just look!" He smiles and says: "I'm sure my life is very much like yours. We hang out, have a coffee, go to the movies. You'll be in a Pizza Hut or Nando's in London, and at the same time I'll be in one in Dubai," he says, ordering another latte.
But do all young Emiratis see it this way? Can it really be so sunny in the political sands? In the sleek Emirates Tower Hotel, I meet Sultan al-Qassemi. He's a 31-year-old Emirati columnist for the Dubai press and private art collector, with a reputation for being a contrarian liberal, advocating gradual reform. He is wearing Western clothes – blue jeans and a Ralph Lauren shirt – and speaks incredibly fast, turning himself into a manic whirr of arguments.
"People here are turning into lazy, overweight babies!" he exclaims. "The nanny state has gone too far. We don't do anything for ourselves! Why don't any of us work for the private sector? Why can't a mother and father look after their own child?" And yet, when I try to bring up the system of slavery that built Dubai, he looks angry. "People should give us credit," he insists. "We are the most tolerant people in the world. Dubai is the only truly international city in the world. Everyone who comes here is treated with respect."
I pause, and think of the vast camps in Sonapur, just a few miles away. Does he even know they exist? He looks irritated. "You know, if there are 30 or 40 cases [of worker abuse] a year, that sounds like a lot but when you think about how many people are here..." Thirty or 40? This abuse is endemic to the system, I say. We're talking about hundreds of thousands.
Sultan is furious. He splutters: "You don't think Mexicans are treated badly in New York City? And how long did it take Britain to treat people well? I could come to London and write about the homeless people on Oxford Street and make your city sound like a terrible place, too! The workers here can leave any time they want! Any Indian can leave, any Asian can leave!"
But they can't, I point out. Their passports are taken away, and their wages are withheld. "Well, I feel bad if that happens, and anybody who does that should be punished. But their embassies should help them." They try. But why do you forbid the workers – with force – from going on strike against lousy employers? "Thank God we don't allow that!" he exclaims. "Strikes are in-convenient! They go on the street – we're not having that. We won't be like France. Imagine a country where they the workers can just stop whenever they want!" So what should the workers do when they are cheated and lied to? "Quit. Leave the country."
I sigh. Sultan is seething now. "People in the West are always complaining about us," he says. Suddenly, he adopts a mock-whiny voice and says, in imitation of these disgusting critics: "Why don't you treat animals better? Why don't you have better shampoo advertising? Why don't you treat labourers better?" It's a revealing order: animals, shampoo, then workers. He becomes more heated, shifting in his seat, jabbing his finger at me. "I gave workers who worked for me safety goggles and special boots, and they didn't want to wear them! It slows them down!"
And then he smiles, coming up with what he sees as his killer argument. "When I see Western journalists criticise us – don't you realise you're shooting yourself in the foot? The Middle East will be far more dangerous if Dubai fails. Our export isn't oil, it's hope. Poor Egyptians or Libyans or Iranians grow up saying – I want to go to Dubai. We're very important to the region. We are showing how to be a modern Muslim country. We don't have any fundamentalists here. Europeans shouldn't gloat at our demise. You should be very worried.... Do you know what will happen if this model fails? Dubai will go down the Iranian path, the Islamist path."
Sultan sits back. My arguments have clearly disturbed him; he says in a softer, conciliatory tone, almost pleading: "Listen. My mother used to go to the well and get a bucket of water every morning. On her wedding day, she was given an orange as a gift because she had never eaten one. Two of my brothers died when they were babies because the healthcare system hadn't developed yet. Don't judge us." He says it again, his eyes filled with intensity: "Don't judge us."

This fraud Johann goes from Sonapur to Harvey Nichols in a 10 minute taxi ride.
The fact that the distance between the 2 places is about 40+ kilometers and not to mention the famed Dubai traffic jams this is fiction at its worst - or should i say, it is Mission Impossible.

V. The Dunkin' Donuts Dissidents

But there is another face to the Emirati minority – a small huddle of dissidents, trying to shake the Sheikhs out of abusive laws. Next to a Virgin Megastore and a Dunkin' Donuts, with James Blunt's "You're Beautiful" blaring behind me, I meet the Dubai dictatorship's Public Enemy Number One. By way of introduction, Mohammed al-Mansoori says from within his white robes and sinewy face: "Westerners come her and see the malls and the tall buildings and they think that means we are free. But these businesses, these buildings – who are they for? This is a dictatorship. The royal family think they own the country, and the people are their servants. There is no freedom here."
We snuffle out the only Arabic restaurant in this mall, and he says everything you are banned – under threat of prison – from saying in Dubai. Mohammed tells me he was born in Dubai to a fisherman father who taught him one enduring lesson: Never follow the herd. Think for yourself. In the sudden surge of development, Mohammed trained as a lawyer. By the Noughties, he had climbed to the head of the Jurists' Association, an organisation set up to press for Dubai's laws to be consistent with international human rights legislation.
And then – suddenly – Mohammed thwacked into the limits of Sheikh Mohammed's tolerance. Horrified by the "system of slavery" his country was being built on, he spoke out to Human Rights Watch and the BBC. "So I was hauled in by the secret police and told: shut up, or you will lose you job, and your children will be unemployable," he says. "But how could I be silent?"
He was stripped of his lawyer's licence and his passport – becoming yet another person imprisoned in this country. "I have been blacklisted and so have my children. The newspapers are not allowed to write about me."
Why is the state so keen to defend this system of slavery? He offers a prosaic explanation. "Most companies are owned by the government, so they oppose human rights laws because it will reduce their profit margins. It's in their interests that the workers are slaves."
Last time there was a depression, there was a starbust of democracy in Dubai, seized by force from the sheikhs. In the 1930s, the city's merchants banded together against Sheikh Said bin Maktum al-Maktum – the absolute ruler of his day – and insisted they be given control over the state finances. It lasted only a few years, before the Sheikh – with the enthusiastic support of the British – snuffed them out.
And today? Sheikh Mohammed turned Dubai into Creditopolis, a city built entirely on debt. Dubai owes 107 percent of its entire GDP. It would be bust already, if the neighbouring oil-soaked state of Abu Dhabi hadn't pulled out its chequebook. Mohammed says this will constrict freedom even further. "Now Abu Dhabi calls the tunes – and they are much more conservative and restrictive than even Dubai. Freedom here will diminish every day." Already, new media laws have been drafted forbidding the press to report on anything that could "damage" Dubai or "its economy". Is this why the newspapers are giving away glossy supplements talking about "encouraging economic indicators"?
Everybody here waves Islamism as the threat somewhere over the horizon, sure to swell if their advice is not followed. Today, every imam is appointed by the government, and every sermon is tightly controlled to keep it moderate. But Mohammed says anxiously: "We don't have Islamism here now, but I think that if you control people and give them no way to express anger, it could rise. People who are told to shut up all the time can just explode."
Later that day, against another identikit-corporate backdrop, I meet another dissident – Abdulkhaleq Abdullah, Professor of Political Science at Emirates University. His anger focuses not on political reform, but the erosion of Emirati identity. He is famous among the locals, a rare outspoken conductor for their anger. He says somberly: "There has been a rupture here. This is a totally different city to the one I was born in 50 years ago."
He looks around at the shiny floors and Western tourists and says: "What we see now didn't occur in our wildest dreams. We never thought we could be such a success, a trendsetter, a model for other Arab countries. The people of Dubai are mighty proud of their city, and rightly so. And yet..." He shakes his head. "In our hearts, we fear we have built a modern city but we are losing it to all these expats."
Adbulkhaleq says every Emirati of his generation lives with a "psychological trauma." Their hearts are divided – "between pride on one side, and fear on the other." Just after he says this, a smiling waitress approaches, and asks us what we would like to drink. He orders a Coke.

James Blunt released his album Back to Bedlam in 2004 and the song You're Beautiful became a runaway hit. It got so viral that after 3-6 months of being played incessantly on the airwaves it faded from popular culture - just like Celine Dion's My Heart Will Go On from the Titanic soundtrack. Anyone who's visited the Virgin music stores will know that they are fastidiously up to date with the music scene and playing the nauseating 2004 hit in 2009 is once again, for want of a better phrase - Mission Impossible.
Just a small point but it probably serves to highlight this writer's credentials - or lack of them.

VI. Dubai Pride

There is one group in Dubai for whom the rhetoric of sudden freedom and liberation rings true – but it is the very group the government wanted to liberate least: gays.
Beneath a famous international hotel, I clamber down into possibly the only gay club on the Saudi Arabian peninsula. I find a United Nations of tank-tops and bulging biceps, dancing to Kylie, dropping ecstasy, and partying like it's Soho. "Dubai is the best place in the Muslim world for gays!" a 25-year old Emirati with spiked hair says, his arms wrapped around his 31-year old "husband". "We are alive. We can meet. That is more than most Arab gays."
It is illegal to be gay in Dubai, and punishable by 10 years in prison. But the locations of the latest unofficial gay clubs circulate online, and men flock there, seemingly unafraid of the police. "They might bust the club, but they will just disperse us," one of them says. "The police have other things to do."
In every large city, gay people find a way to find each other – but Dubai has become the clearing-house for the region's homosexuals, a place where they can live in relative safety. Saleh, a lean private in the Saudi Arabian army, has come here for the Coldplay concert, and tells me Dubai is "great" for gays: "In Saudi, it's hard to be straight when you're young. The women are shut away so everyone has gay sex. But they only want to have sex with boys – 15- to 21-year-olds. I'm 27, so I'm too old now. I need to find real gays, so this is the best place. All Arab gays want to live in Dubai."
With that, Saleh dances off across the dancefloor, towards a Dutch guy with big biceps and a big smile.

I don't really understand what is the purpose of this point is the article. Apart from being salacious that is. Replace Dubai with New York and Saudi Arabia with Texas and you wouldn't have to change another word in this paragraph.

VII. The Lifestyle

All the guidebooks call Dubai a "melting pot", but as I trawl across the city, I find that every group here huddles together in its own little ethnic enclave – and becomes a caricature of itself. One night – in the heart of this homesick city, tired of the malls and the camps – I go to Double Decker, a hang-out for British expats. At the entrance there is a red telephone box, and London bus-stop signs. Its wooden interior looks like a cross between a colonial clubhouse in the Raj and an Eighties school disco, with blinking coloured lights and cheese blaring out. As I enter, a girl in a short skirt collapses out of the door onto her back. A guy wearing a pirate hat helps her to her feet, dropping his beer bottle with a paralytic laugh.
I start to talk to two sun-dried women in their sixties who have been getting gently sozzled since midday. "You stay here for The Lifestyle," they say, telling me to take a seat and order some more drinks. All the expats talk about The Lifestyle, but when you ask what it is, they become vague. Ann Wark tries to summarise it: "Here, you go out every night. You'd never do that back home. You see people all the time. It's great. You have lots of free time. You have maids and staff so you don't have to do all that stuff. You party!"
They have been in Dubai for 20 years, and they are happy to explain how the city works. "You've got a hierarchy, haven't you?" Ann says. "It's the Emiratis at the top, then I'd say the British and other Westerners. Then I suppose it's the Filipinos, because they've got a bit more brains than the Indians. Then at the bottom you've got the Indians and all them lot."
They admit, however, they have "never" spoken to an Emirati. Never? "No. They keep themselves to themselves." Yet Dubai has disappointed them. Jules Taylor tells me: "If you have an accident here it's a nightmare. There was a British woman we knew who ran over an Indian guy, and she was locked up for four days! If you have a tiny bit of alcohol on your breath they're all over you. These Indians throw themselves in front of cars, because then their family has to be given blood money – you know, compensation. But the police just blame us. That poor woman."
A 24-year-old British woman called Hannah Gamble takes a break from the dancefloor to talk to me. "I love the sun and the beach! It's great out here!" she says. Is there anything bad? "Oh yes!" she says. Ah: one of them has noticed, I think with relief. "The banks! When you want to make a transfer you have to fax them. You can't do it online." Anything else? She thinks hard. "The traffic's not very good."
When I ask the British expats how they feel to not be in a democracy, their reaction is always the same. First, they look bemused. Then they look affronted. "It's the Arab way!" an Essex boy shouts at me in response, as he tries to put a pair of comedy antlers on his head while pouring some beer into the mouth of his friend, who is lying on his back on the floor, gurning.
Later, in a hotel bar, I start chatting to a dyspeptic expat American who works in the cosmetics industry and is desperate to get away from these people. She says: "All the people who couldn't succeed in their own countries end up here, and suddenly they're rich and promoted way above their abilities and bragging about how great they are. I've never met so many incompetent people in such senior positions anywhere in the world." She adds: "It's absolutely racist. I had Filipino girls working for me doing the same job as a European girl, and she's paid a quarter of the wages. The people who do the real work are paid next to nothing, while these incompetent managers pay themselves £40,000 a month."
With the exception of her, one theme unites every expat I speak to: their joy at having staff to do the work that would clog their lives up Back Home. Everyone, it seems, has a maid. The maids used to be predominantly Filipino, but with the recession, Filipinos have been judged to be too expensive, so a nice Ethiopian servant girl is the latest fashionable accessory.
It is an open secret that once you hire a maid, you have absolute power over her. You take her passport – everyone does; you decide when to pay her, and when – if ever – she can take a break; and you decide who she talks to. She speaks no Arabic. She cannot escape.
In a Burger King, a Filipino girl tells me it is "terrifying" for her to wander the malls in Dubai because Filipino maids or nannies always sneak away from the family they are with and beg her for help. "They say – 'Please, I am being held prisoner, they don't let me call home, they make me work every waking hour seven days a week.' At first I would say – my God, I will tell the consulate, where are you staying? But they never know their address, and the consulate isn't interested. I avoid them now. I keep thinking about a woman who told me she hadn't eaten any fruit in four years. They think I have power because I can walk around on my own, but I'm powerless."
The only hostel for women in Dubai – a filthy private villa on the brink of being repossessed – is filled with escaped maids. Mela Matari, a 25-year-old Ethiopian woman with a drooping smile, tells me what happened to her – and thousands like her. She was promised a paradise in the sands by an agency, so she left her four year-old daughter at home and headed here to earn money for a better future. "But they paid me half what they promised. I was put with an Australian family – four children – and Madam made me work from 6am to 1am every day, with no day off. I was exhausted and pleaded for a break, but they just shouted: 'You came here to work, not sleep!' Then one day I just couldn't go on, and Madam beat me. She beat me with her fists and kicked me. My ear still hurts. They wouldn't give me my wages: they said they'd pay me at the end of the two years. What could I do? I didn't know anybody here. I was terrified."
One day, after yet another beating, Mela ran out onto the streets, and asked – in broken English – how to find the Ethiopian consulate. After walking for two days, she found it, but they told her she had to get her passport back from Madam. "Well, how could I?" she asks. She has been in this hostel for six months. She has spoken to her daughter twice. "I lost my country, I lost my daughter, I lost everything," she says.
As she says this, I remember a stray sentence I heard back at Double Decker. I asked a British woman called Hermione Frayling what the best thing about Dubai was. "Oh, the servant class!" she trilled. "You do nothing. They'll do anything!"

For argument's sake i will believe that everything in this paragraph above happened.
But what does it show. British (or expat) ignorance and snobbery at best and slave mentality at worst. But aren't the East Europeans treated the same way all over London? Infact the government here has made it mandatory to have all staff wages paid into a bank account (as opposed to cash) to stop the 'servant class' being cheated.
Some drunk brit mows down some poor labourer and some drunk grannies claim they are throwing themselves at the cars???? Once again, are you frickin kidding me?
And for any idiot who says that the Indians fall at the bottom of the expat bracket has obviously not met the Indians here. Even if you discount the Indian 'servant class' the rest of the Indians probably have a higher net worth than the Emaratis themselves. If you think Bombay is ostentatious, you should attend an Indian wedding here.

VIII. The End of The World

The World is empty. It has been abandoned, its continents unfinished. Through binoculars, I think I can glimpse Britain; this sceptred isle barren in the salt-breeze.
Here, off the coast of Dubai, developers have been rebuilding the world. They have constructed artificial islands in the shape of all planet Earth's land masses, and they plan to sell each continent off to be built on. There were rumours that the Beckhams would bid for Britain. But the people who work at the nearby coast say they haven't seen anybody there for months now. "The World is over," a South African suggests.
All over Dubai, crazy projects that were Under Construction are now Under Collapse. They were building an air-conditioned beach here, with cooling pipes running below the sand, so the super-rich didn't singe their toes on their way from towel to sea.
The projects completed just before the global economy crashed look empty and tattered. The Atlantis Hotel was launched last winter in a $20m fin-de-siecle party attended by Robert De Niro, Lindsay Lohan and Lily Allen. Sitting on its own fake island – shaped, of course, like a palm tree – it looks like an immense upturned tooth in a faintly decaying mouth. It is pink and turreted – the architecture of the pharaohs, as reimagined by Zsa-Zsa Gabor. Its Grand Lobby is a monumental dome covered in glitterballs, held up by eight monumental concrete palm trees. Standing in the middle, there is a giant shining glass structure that looks like the intestines of every guest who has ever stayed at the Atlantis. It is unexpectedly raining; water is leaking from the roof, and tiles are falling off.
A South African PR girl shows me around its most coveted rooms, explaining that this is "the greatest luxury offered in the world". We stroll past shops selling £24m diamond rings around a hotel themed on the lost and sunken continent of, yes, Atlantis. There are huge water tanks filled with sharks, which poke around mock-abandoned castles and dumped submarines. There are more than 1,500 rooms here, each with a sea view. The Neptune suite has three floors, and – I gasp as I see it – it looks out directly on to the vast shark tank. You lie on the bed, and the sharks stare in at you. In Dubai, you can sleep with the fishes, and survive.
But even the luxury – reminiscent of a Bond villain's lair – is also being abandoned. I check myself in for a few nights to the classiest hotel in town, the Park Hyatt. It is the fashionistas' favourite hotel, where Elle Macpherson and Tommy Hilfiger stay, a gorgeous, understated palace. It feels empty. Whenever I eat, I am one of the only people in the restaurant. A staff member tells me in a whisper: "It used to be full here. Now there's hardly anyone." Rattling around, I feel like Jack Nicholson in The Shining, the last man in an abandoned, haunted home.
The most famous hotel in Dubai – the proud icon of the city – is the Burj al Arab hotel, sitting on the shore, shaped like a giant glass sailing boat. In the lobby, I start chatting to a couple from London who work in the City. They have been coming to Dubai for 10 years now, and they say they love it. "You never know what you'll find here," he says. "On our last trip, at the beginning of the holiday, our window looked out on the sea. By the end, they'd built an entire island there."
My patience frayed by all this excess, I find myself snapping: doesn't the omnipresent slave class bother you? I hope they misunderstood me, because the woman replied: "That's what we come for! It's great, you can't do anything for yourself!" Her husband chimes in: "When you go to the toilet, they open the door, they turn on the tap – the only thing they don't do is take it out for you when you have a piss!" And they both fall about laughing.

1. It hardly ever rains in Dubai.
2. Even when it does it hardly makes the Atlantis leak. Maybe Johann could not resist the imagery of Atlantis going underwater.
3. I've lunched at the Park Hyatt myself and the whole design and point of the resort was solitude. Its not empty, it was designed to feel that way. If it were Fiji you'd call it bespoke understated luxury but here you try to hammer home your article where events seem manufactured to fit the profile.

IX. Taking on the Desert

Dubai is not just a city living beyond its financial means; it is living beyond its ecological means. You stand on a manicured Dubai lawn and watch the sprinklers spray water all around you. You see tourists flocking to swim with dolphins. You wander into a mountain-sized freezer where they have built a ski slope with real snow. And a voice at the back of your head squeaks: this is the desert. This is the most water-stressed place on the planet. How can this be happening? How is it possible?
The very earth is trying to repel Dubai, to dry it up and blow it away. The new Tiger Woods Gold Course needs four million gallons of water to be pumped on to its grounds every day, or it would simply shrivel and disappear on the winds. The city is regularly washed over with dust-storms that fog up the skies and turn the skyline into a blur. When the dust parts, heat burns through. It cooks anything that is not kept constantly, artificially wet.
Dr Mohammed Raouf, the environmental director of the Gulf Research Centre, sounds sombre as he sits in his Dubai office and warns: "This is a desert area, and we are trying to defy its environment. It is very unwise. If you take on the desert, you will lose."
Sheikh Maktoum built his showcase city in a place with no useable water. None. There is no surface water, very little acquifer, and among the lowest rainfall in the world. So Dubai drinks the sea. The Emirates' water is stripped of salt in vast desalination plants around the Gulf – making it the most expensive water on earth. It costs more than petrol to produce, and belches vast amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as it goes. It's the main reason why a resident of Dubai has the biggest average carbon footprint of any human being – more than double that of an American.
If a recession turns into depression, Dr Raouf believes Dubai could run out of water. "At the moment, we have financial reserves that cover bringing so much water to the middle of the desert. But if we had lower revenues – if, say, the world shifts to a source of energy other than oil..." he shakes his head. "We will have a very big problem. Water is the main source of life. It would be a catastrophe. Dubai only has enough water to last us a week. There's almost no storage. We don't know what will happen if our supplies falter. It would be hard to survive."
Global warming, he adds, makes the problem even worse. "We are building all these artificial islands, but if the sea level rises, they will be gone, and we will lose a lot. Developers keep saying it's all fine, they've taken it into consideration, but I'm not so sure."
Is the Dubai government concerned about any of this? "There isn't much interest in these problems," he says sadly. But just to stand still, the average resident of Dubai needs three times more water than the average human. In the looming century of water stresses and a transition away from fossil fuels, Dubai is uniquely vulnerable.
I wanted to understand how the government of Dubai will react, so I decided to look at how it has dealt with an environmental problem that already exists – the pollution of its beaches. One woman – an American, working at one of the big hotels – had written in a lot of online forums arguing that it was bad and getting worse, so I called her to arrange a meeting. "I can't talk to you," she said sternly. Not even if it's off the record? "I can't talk to you." But I don't have to disclose your name... "You're not listening. This phone is bugged. I can't talk to you," she snapped, and hung up.
The next day I turned up at her office. "If you reveal my identity, I'll be sent on the first plane out of this city," she said, before beginning to nervously pace the shore with me. "It started like this. We began to get complaints from people using the beach. The water looked and smelled odd, and they were starting to get sick after going into it. So I wrote to the ministers of health and tourism and expected to hear back immediately – but there was nothing. Silence. I hand-delivered the letters. Still nothing."
The water quality got worse and worse. The guests started to spot raw sewage, condoms, and used sanitary towels floating in the sea. So the hotel ordered its own water analyses from a professional company. "They told us it was full of fecal matter and bacteria 'too numerous to count'. I had to start telling guests not to go in the water, and since they'd come on a beach holiday, as you can imagine, they were pretty pissed off." She began to make angry posts on the expat discussion forums – and people began to figure out what was happening. Dubai had expanded so fast its sewage treatment facilities couldn't keep up. The sewage disposal trucks had to queue for three or four days at the treatment plants – so instead, they were simply drilling open the manholes and dumping the untreated sewage down them, so it flowed straight to the sea.
Suddenly, it was an open secret – and the municipal authorities finally acknowledged the problem. They said they would fine the truckers. But the water quality didn't improve: it became black and stank. "It's got chemicals in it. I don't know what they are. But this stuff is toxic."
She continued to complain – and started to receive anonymous phone calls. "Stop embarassing Dubai, or your visa will be cancelled and you're out," they said. She says: "The expats are terrified to talk about anything. One critical comment in the newspapers and they deport you. So what am I supposed to do? Now the water is worse than ever. People are getting really sick. Eye infections, ear infections, stomach infections, rashes. Look at it!" There is faeces floating on the beach, in the shadow of one of Dubai's most famous hotels.
"What I learnt about Dubai is that the authorities don't give a toss about the environment," she says, standing in the stench. "They're pumping toxins into the sea, their main tourist attraction, for God's sake. If there are environmental problems in the future, I can tell you now how they will deal with them – deny it's happening, cover it up, and carry on until it's a total disaster." As she speaks, a dust-storm blows around us, as the desert tries, slowly, insistently, to take back its land.

Is water shortage a problem. Yes
But to state this point of your's must you resort to fiction. The part of the paragraph above highlighted in blue is so fantastical that i am literally at loss for words (which for me is quite a feat :-) )
And the last sentence about the dust storm building around them as they talk could belong in a movie by Michael Bay perhaps - it is THAT dramatic.

X. Fake Plastic Trees

On my final night in the Dubai Disneyland, I stop off on my way to the airport, at a Pizza Hut that sits at the side of one of the city's endless, wide, gaping roads. It is identical to the one near my apartment in London in every respect, even the vomit-coloured decor. My mind is whirring and distracted. Perhaps Dubai disturbed me so much, I am thinking, because here, the entire global supply chain is condensed. Many of my goods are made by semi-enslaved populations desperate for a chance 2,000 miles away; is the only difference that here, they are merely two miles away, and you sometimes get to glimpse their faces? Dubai is Market Fundamentalist Globalisation in One City.
I ask the Filipino girl behind the counter if she likes it here. "It's OK," she says cautiously. Really? I say. I can't stand it. She sighs with relief and says: "This is the most terrible place! I hate it! I was here for months before I realised – everything in Dubai is fake. Everything you see. The trees are fake, the workers' contracts are fake, the islands are fake, the smiles are fake – even the water is fake!" But she is trapped, she says. She got into debt to come here, and she is stuck for three years: an old story now. "I think Dubai is like an oasis. It is an illusion, not real. You think you have seen water in the distance, but you get close and you only get a mouthful of sand."
As she says this, another customer enters. She forces her face into the broad, empty Dubai smile and says: "And how may I help you tonight, sir?"
Some names in this article have been changed.

And as the final nail in the coffin i give you, an excerpt from Johann Hari's Wikipedia page.

Amen.!

Johann Eduard Hari (born 21 January 1979) is an award winning British journalist who was a columnist at The Independent and The Huffington Post, and contributed to several other publications. In 2011, Hari was accused of plagiarism and eventually admitted to it. He was suspended from The Independent and surrendered his 2008 Orwell Prize. He also admitted to making Wikipedia edits, under a pseudonym, to attack his critics, and has said that he plans to undergo training in journalism ethics.

In June/July 2011 Hari was accused of plagiarism in his use of unattributed quotations in interviews, where he had reused previously published quotes in place of his interviewees' recorded answers. The Orwell Prize, which he had won in 2008, was withdrawn following a comparison between one of the articles for which he won the award and the original Der Spiegel article on which it was based. He was also shown to have been making misleading edits on Wikipedia under a pseudonym. Hari apologised for his actions, although that apology was publicly criticised.

Hari published an apology and admission of misconduct,^[42] and admitted to using a pseudonym to add positive material to the Wikipedia article about himself and negative material to Wikipedia articles about people he had disputes with.^[42] Hari said he would take unpaid personal leave of absence until 2012 and seek training in journalistic ethics at his own expense.

Merry X'Mas

2011-12-25T08:15:00.002+04:00

To Everyone Who Visits This Blog,

In these busy times, i thank each one of you for taking the time to visit the blog and I can only hope that your time is not wasted and I'd like to think that sometimes, just sometimes i may have also managed to bring a smile to your face.

Wishing you and your loved ones a festive season ahead and may you all be blessed with happiness, luck and good health.

With All My Warmest Regards

Vishal

Movie Review: Mission Impossible 4: Ghost Protocol

2011-12-19T17:38:00.004+04:00

Mission Impossible 4: Ghost Protocol

*ing Tom Cruise, Jeremy Renner, Paula Patton and Anil Kapoor

Directed by Brad Bird

THE LAST ACTION HERO

TheNational Geographic came out with a stunning pic sometime ago (seebelow) which at first sight looks like a simple picture of camels crossingthe desert. When you look closer you seethat what you thought were the camels are in fact their shadows while thecamels are the little brown things being photographed from directly above.

Afterthe mind-blowing vertigo-inducing (believe me this is not hyperbole)scene at the Burj Khalifa, Tom Cruise chases the villain anddirector Brad Bird manages a similar effect. Simply Stunning.

Idon’t remember who exactly said it but I’d read sometime ago a quote (from acritic I presume) which defined a good movie as having “3 great scenesand no bad ones”

Mission Impossible 4: GhostProtocol ticks every box. And more than thrice.

Itmoves from Budapest to Moscowto Dubai(in all its glory) and then to Mumbai (which sadly is hardlythere).

Whileattending the DIFF (DubaiIntl Film Festival) Tom said that he wanted MI4 to be bigger,funnier and faster.

DirectorBrad Bird who has earlier only made cartoons (or animated features asthey respectfully call them) like Ratatouille and The Incrediblesbrings the same breathless energy and suspension of disbelief to this movie andWOW, does he knock it for a six.

Ifyou think the Kremlin blowing up was fab wait till Agent Hunt and team land in Dubai.

Thepacked theatre broke into loud applause the moment the camera swooped over the sanddunes to parade the dazzling skyline of Dubaiwith the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world, rising majesticallyin the middle.

Mostof the people clapping were just proud Emaratis but 15 minutes later everyone, Emaratior otherwise, were at the edge of their seats.

In a kick-ass scene (which is supposed to be even better in IMAX and which alone is worth the price of the ticket) Tom Cruise stands at the edge of a room whose floor to ceiling windows have been removed.

In 1 fluid motion the camera which is initially behind him glides towards him, then swoops over him and out through the open window, looks down and then turns back towards Tom still standing there at the very edge. This is when you realize it is actually Tom (and not some stunt double or god forbid CGI) who is standing there, 130 stories above the ground.

Then for the next 15 minutes of cinematic magic he crawls up, slips, crashes through, jumps out of, runs vertically down the outside and then swings back into the tallest building in the world.

Most of us who were in Dubai when they were shooting the movie know from the local media, which covered it extensively, that Tom did actually do his own stunts and yet you cant help but stare in disbelief.

If Ra-One had just this 1 scene in the movie it would have made double the money.

Of course he was wired safely and all that but even then, just imagine the jaw dropping sight of one of the biggest stars in the world running face down, the outside of the tallest building in the world.

Hollywood can do CGI crap like Transformers and Iron Man which while great time-pass, you always know is a computer generated spectacle. You enjoy it but can never invest emotionally or cerebrally with it.

However when they do make an effort Hollywood can kick some serious cinematic ass.

The story is irrelevant (almost Bond-like with Russian evil guys and missiles launching out of the sea etc) but it is good enough to keep you interested in between the big set pieces.

After Dubai the story moves to Mumbai but not before there is another classic car chase but this time aided by GPS only as everyone is caught in a huge sandstorm.

Now I guess you just have to allow certain cinematic liberties because in the 8+ years that I’ve lived here, I am yet to see a sandstorm like that.

People driving like crazy on the other hand I’ve seen plenty.

Anil Kapoor during the same film festival said that he modelled his character of a filthy rich super flamboyant business tycoon on Kingfisher CEO Vijay Mallya.

Not sure if Mr. Mallya is sleazy (thought I wouldn’t put it past him especially with his insistence on doing the final interview for every Kingfisher stewardess) but I doubt he is as funny a person like Anil plays him.

He seems like Lakhan in a tuxedo speaking English and at about 5 minutes of screen time quite wasted but Anil being Anil has milked this for all its worth so good for him.

And in case you are trying to guess where it is, his palace/mansion in the movie is actually the new Jumeirah Zabeel Saray hotel on the Palm in Dubai.

Colleagues who have visited say it is magical and almost palace like. Poor things haven’t been to the real palaces in India.

And again if you wondered where in Mumbai is that space age automated parking structure, its not in India. Not even Dubai. That was somewhere in Toronto.

But these are small quibbles.

Tom may have gone a little bonkers in the last few years and snapped at TV anchors about medications, sparred with Brook Shields about post natal depression (how the hell did he think he knew more about that than someone who’s just pushed a baby through her vajajay) and then famously jumped up and down on Oprah’s couch but lets face it. He is probably the last of the big super stars.

Maybe a little old but he is leaner and fitter than most 20 year olds and if werewolf-boy Jacob can, Ethan Hunt too can whip off his shirt just as often. Now if only he could get his hair to stand like Edward’s.

When he is in control of the crazy, Mr. Cruise can still deliver box office magic.

As you walk out of the theatre all you can remember is the Dum Dum Dadadum Dum Dum from the iconic soundtrack and the sight of Mr. Tom Cruise dangling outside the tallest building in the world on a rope which is still many metres short of the open window and safety. This time he runs along the building, lets go of the rope, sails through the air and hopes for gravity to get him through.

Even Salman Khan wouldn’t try something like that (Rajnikant, Maybe).

So your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to get to the nearest theatre showing MI4 and be prepared for one of the best action movies of the year.

Shanker-Ehsaan-Loy in Abu Dhabi

2011-12-18T12:42:00.000+04:00

THE MUSIC IS FOR THE CHEAP SEATS.

Friday was the date for the Shanker – Ehsaan – Loy concert and boyo boy did they kick the shit out of AR Rahman.

Better organised. Better Sung. Better choice of songs. Better Interaction. Better everything.

And thankfully without the blind-man glasses that Rahman seems to favour now-a-days.

The show again started 1 ½ hours late but then the predominantlyasian audience didn’t seem to mind much. Neither for that matter did me and my group.

We had been upgradedto the VVIP hospitality viewing lounge where we sat at round banquet tables andwhere both food and alcohol flowed freely.

The bird’s eye view of the stage below was just an added bonus.

The very boisterous (is there any other type) Bengali family at thenext table looked pretty well off but like with all humans and free offers theycould not resist gulping the booze.

To drink or sip would have been such awaste. Waste of time and free alcohol.

I was driving back to Dubaiafter the show so had to make do with sipping a solitary beer.

The rapidly inebriating Bong gentleman also noticed this and as wemet at the buffet, he unhesitatingly suggested I drink faster.

Only we Asians don’t think it inappropriate to advise perfectstrangers on their drinking habits.

“You will enjoy the show better” he laughed heartily obviouslyknowing more than I did.

“Where are you from?” he asked and before I could answer, took onelook at me and decided for me “Must be north-east huh?”

“I have been to Assam,”he said with that certain pride that Bengalis take in their travels “Guwahati,Shillong, Mizoram”

I was bothered less by the fact that he had wrongly presumed my ancestry than that his Geography teacher in school had somehow migrated Shillongfrom Meghalaya and reduced the whole state of Mizoram into a city.

“Good people… Good people” he said approvingly between glugging thelast dregs from his glass.

“Boy” he beckoned the shocked Filipino waiter “1 more whiskey, RedLabel and 1 beer for him” he nodded in my direction.

Obviously he had decided that I was now his friend.

He then glanced at my plate and tut-tutted his disapproval at the saladon display.

“Prawns” he whispered conspiratorially and just incase I hadn’t gottenthe message he shoved his plate in my face to show how to fit atleast 15 jumbo friedprawns on 1 plate. I looked down at the chafing dish and the 2 lonely prawnsthat remained and back at him with what I hoped was a look of disapproval.

He obviously took that as a plea and offered to offload a fewprawns from his plate.

Politely as I could I refused his generosity, and as sociallyinappropriate as it was I didn’t feel annoyed.

A Bengali man offering to part with sea-food is not an everyday sight.Sharing Fish would be a rarity but the more exclusive ‘sea-food” is worthy of a miracle.

Though Christmas is round the corner, this I think was the miracle of Mr. Walker not Mr. Claus.

As we moved down the buffet I helped myself to some pulao and wasagain met with his disapproving look and it was when I reached for the palakpaneer that he snapped.

“Don’t Waste” he hissed “there is Fish and Tandoori and Kababs downthe line. Dinner later. Dinner later”

“Thank you” I managed to mutter before heading to my table.

Unlike the AR Rahman concert the 1 ½ late hours was filled with notsilence but with local winners of a radio contest. And as they are wont to be,a few were good, most average and some others quite frankly bad. This included acompatriot of mine, who sang “Dil ka yeh kya raaz hai” from Bodyguard andhitting every stereotype accent of a Nepali he promptly pronounced Raaz as Raj and then tried to jazz up his bad singing with “Whazzzzup Abu Dhabi????”

“Your fellowman” roared the unmistakable voice from the table nextto me who obviously hasn’t met a chinky he hasn’t liked.

“Come meet my family,” he boomed waving me over with what lookedlike the tail of a prawn.

Rather than risk some more noise from him I went over to say hello.

“This man is from Assam”he told his very alert family who were either bored with the guest singers orjust very interested in me.

“We have been to Assam”said his elderly mother.

Let me guess I thought to myself. Guwahati, Shillong, Mizoram.

“We like momos” his wife chirped in referring to the dumplings thatare of Tibetan origin but now enjoyed universally.

Now we were leaving northeast state borders and entering internationalwaters.

“Don’t be shy, don't be shy” she said, like I were a guest at her house. “Look,look” she encouragingly waved her cloudy looking glass at me.

Only Bengali women can order beer, have their husbands gulp half ofit and then top it with Mirinda to make what is called a Shandy.

“This is same beer???” chided her shocked husband looking at my glass.

“Comeon fellow, you northeasters are good drinkers” said the manwho was already 4 shots down.

Again I would have otherwise been annoyed but there was a faintsense of praise in his voice when he said that.

“Are you mixed??” he then asked without the slightest bit of embarrassment.

I presume he meant my genealogy and not my cocktail.

By now we had long crossed all socially appropriate boundaries forme to feel offended.

“Starting. Starting” screamed his 2 sons who somehow had managed topour themselves a helping each of Coke, Sprite AND Mirinda.

If you are too young to drink alcohol, you must obviously make it up with soft drinks.

Thankfully SEL came on stage at that moment and I moved back to mytable.

SEL know how concerts should be done. Fun, personal, interactiveand with the right choice of songs.

In an interview the previous day, Ehsaan (ever the outspoken one)had commented that the VIP seats were boring people while the real fans werethe ones in the cheap seats. However he must have been pleasantly surprised tosee the VIP’s giving the cheap seats a run for their money as they stood up anddanced along the aisles.

The only complaint was that the huge screen on stage hadvery poor graphics. Infact with the wooshing swirls and spirals it looked likethe screen of a Windows media player.

And yet when Shanker launched into Maa from Taare Zameen Par therewas pin drop silence.

The wife with the shandy who had previously been jumping up anddown was suitably mellow.

“O-Ho! What a lovely song” she sighed long before the song was even over andbegan looking for the ‘Boy’ to ask for another beer.

It was about 10.30pm and SEL then announced that there would be a 15minute refreshment break.

“Why break?” said thedisapproving voice of the mother who had either had too much shandy herself ortotally failed to notice that 90% of the audience unlike us, had been sittingfor the past 3 hours with no food or drinks.

As thepeople below us began to file out to buy their popcorns and beers the Bong cameover to our table to say Hello.

Inbetween introductions he signalled the ‘boy’ for another drink and then like anold friend patted me on my back and told my colleagues. “This boy doesn't knowhow to drink.”

Ifonly he’d met me on a day when I wasn't driving, he’d have seen what we Nepsare like with booze.

“I don’tunderstand this break” he told my amused table “they start late and then thisbreak.”

“Thosepoor people” he clarified, dangerously waving his whiskey glass at the standsbelow “they have to take the bus home. This is too late.”

No onedoes snobbery like the Bongs!

The lightsmercifully dimmed for the 2^nd half and Shanker came on stage to introducetheir next song.

“It’sa simple number from a small movie that you may have heard of” he deadpannedand as Loy played the famous opening notes, Shandy lady next door screamed “KolHo Na Ho” like she’d won the frickin lottery.

Incasewe hadn’t heard his wife’s beer induced voice, the husband proudly looked allaround himself and repeated “Kol Ho Na Ho. Kol Ho Na Ho”

And inwhat must be a masterstroke of body language, he not only nodded his wife’s knowledgeof trivia but also somehow managed to nod himself another drink from the ‘boy’

Theywere unnaturally quiet over the next few songs and it may have been becausethey weren't aware of the numbers or the fact that they were now all stuffing themselveswith ‘dinner’.

The closingsong was Senorita from the recent release Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara and as the audience danced theend to a fantastic concert the whiskey-shandy drowned table got up to join inthe revelry.

Differentpeople dance in different steps but this whole family seemed coordinated and dancedlike like they were holding an imaginary round object in their hands andthrowing it at the stage. Repeatedly.

Seeingthat we obviously weren't doing the same the shandy-high wife hopped her wayacross to us and shouted over the music “Tamato, tamato”

A fewof my friends thought she was just a drunk woman rambling incoherently but I knewwhat she meant. It certainly wasn’t during this song in the movie but I knew the family wereimagining the Tomatino festival in the film.

From awonderful movie about self awakening and finding yourself, all that this familyremembered was the Tomatina scene.

Andfrom a wonderful concert with 3 artists at their peak, I am sure all they’llremember next week will be the free drinks.

And Prawns.

LOTS OF PRAWN!

Andmaybe, a 'mixed' boy from the north-east who wasted all the free drinks.

Butthe music!!! What music?

That is for the cheap seats.

2011-12-05T14:43:00.001+04:00

Athithi devo bhawa?

Subservient or hospitable – where to draw the line.

Tom Cruise arrived in

India

on a whistle stop tour which included Delhi, Agra and Bombay. It is importantto mention here that it was for the promotion of his new Mission Impossiblemovie and not a private visit.

He’s been doing that all over the worldfrom Europe to Japan to Dubai next week where thefilm is being premiered at the Dubai International Film Festival.

The movie was filmed in Dubaiso I guess the premier makes sense for the producers but I’m not sure it says alot for a film festival where the star attraction is the 4^thinstallment of a Hollywood potboiler.

On the other hand the other ‘big’ film beingpremiered here is the Yash Rajproduction “Ladies vsRicky Bahl” so I guess it’s not fair to complain about MI4.

Clearly we are not in Sundance or Cannes.

But I digress.

Getting back to Delhi.

Like a visiting head of state, Tom was ‘received’ at the Delhi airport by Anil Kapoor who is hisco-star (which is stretching the term for a5 minute role) in Mission Impossible 4: Ghost Protocol (who chooses these names).

AK then escortedhim to Agrawhere Tom allegedly fell in love with the Taj at first sight (as faithfully recounted by ace journalist cum guide AnilKapoor) and marveled, astounded that such a monument could have beenbuilt in the 15^th century. Wonder what’ll happen when he visits thePyramids or the Great Wall

“WeScientologists have such ugly buildings” he probably thought to himself “MaybeI should look at these Islamists.”

They then flew to Bombay.

‘On a private chartered plane’ - as the Indianpress breathlessly reported and in the absence of any actual footage they(India TV) replayed the scene from Pretty Woman with Julia Roberts being escortedinto a private plane by Richard Gere.

AK could probably pass off as the desiGere but I doubt Tom would look good in a red gown (rumours of his sexual orientation notwithstanding).

By then ofcourse there were carefully‘leaked’ information telling us that in Bombayhe would be put up at the Taj (the hotelthis time) in a suite which allegedly costs 10 lakh a night andwhere the temperature was to be controlled at a steady 23 degrees.

The room was also to have a system toplay his collection of blu-ray discs and a private gym (obviously not whistlestop enough if you have time to watch movies).

And probably also a stool in thebathroom so that Tom could reach his toothbrush.

OK. Ok. I kid (pun intended)

Anyway AK then decided that he and wifeywould also move into the Taj for the duration of Tom’s stay in Mumbai.

“Thecommute from our home in the suburbs would have taken too long”justified AK.

Too long for what?

Well I don’t get the logic of this butprobably AK knows better.

What if Tom sir were to sneeze and thereis no one with a hanky close enough. Who knows?

Anyway while arriving at the Taj, Tomand AK were apparently greeted by about 200 screaming ‘fans’.

“TaamTaam” they screamed andgiggled and giggled some more when Tom stopped to wave at them.

Some smart ass journalist there thendecided that since there wasn’t a chance in hell of meeting Tom, he wouldrather interview some of his ‘fans’

“Are you excited to see Tom Cruise?” he asked them.

“Cruise Kaun?” they asked back

“TOM CRUISE. The guy you were justscreaming for/at” the journalist explained.

“We don’t know any Taam” they snappedback.

“Then why the fuck were you screamingTaam Taam like lunatics?” said the irritated journo.

“Because we got paid 150 rupees per hourfor that, that’s why” they snapped back. “Anyway who is this Taam?”

“He is a Hollywoodsuperstar” the stunned journalist tried to explain, helpfully adding “fromForeign”

This ofcourse caught their attention.

“Which one, which one?” they excitedlyasked

“The one in the blue shirt with AnilKapoor”

“Ooh that one” they replied feeling suddenly sheepish “we thought the short man was Anil Kapoor’s bodyguard”

Tom Cruise was here on a promotionaltour for the movie which I am pretty sure was funded by the production team sowhy the need to receive him at the airport and escort him around is what Idon’t understand.

Host him and be hospitable but get alife for yourself too.

Move into the same hotel??? Isn’t thatlike stalking?

What could possibly have happened? WouldTom have been lost in the corridors?

Will Tom reciprocate the favour when AKvisits LA?

Will he escort AK to see the Grand Canyon?

Will he move into the Hilton with him?

Bollywood stars are hero worshipped by abillion strong population but they would rather live in reflected glory.Foreign glory.

Next time AK goes to LA we shouldprobably stand outside his hotel and scream at him. In an American accentofcourse.

“A-nal, A-nal”

Movie Review: The Dirty Picture

2011-12-04T16:55:00.001+04:00

The Dirty Picture

*ing Vidya Balan, Naseeruddin Shah, Emraan Hashmi, Tusshar

Directed by : Milan Luthria

Music: Vishal Shekhar

Produced by: Ektaa Kapoor & Shobhaa Kapoor

Just before the movie begins, as peopleget settled into their seats with their popcorns and nachos, it’s interestingto listen to their conversations. You are all sitting in a confined space so it is not even eavesdropping.

The couple next to me this time was oneof those know-it all husbands who lectures (not informs) his wife of what hethinks is the god given truth. And like with all Indian men of a certainvintage, it is usually delivered with the finality that assumes women wouldautomatically not know these things.

“Because it is about Silk Smitha, thismovie will be a hit in the south and will not do well in north India” he said with a confidencethat bordered on arrogance.

Then showing the attention span of a child he took the last bite of the donuthe was munching on and declared “My donut is not good. Too much chocolate andnot enough bread.”

Well I sat there and both agreed and disagreed.

I agreedabout the donut (more on that later) but disagreed about the hit status.

This movie is about a vamp with largeboobies & little inhibitions and men everywhere love breasts. Period!

There is nothing north or south aboutthat and if the weekend collections are anything to go by then it just provesmy point. The Booby Picture is a BIG hit.

Vidya Balan plays Silk which is looselybased on the tragic (is there any other type) life of Silk Smitha but it couldbe the story of any vamp of the 80’s like Nylon Nalini or Polyester Padmini.

Infact for that matter it could be aboutanyone even today.

Girls who are good enough to titillate inprivate but not respectable enough for public consumption.

I am sure that even as bindaas as RakhiSawant tries to be, watching this movie must have been like an epiphany forher.

The garish clothes may have gone butBollywood, I doubt, has changed much.

I won’t go too much into the story as itdoesn’t have much and hence my agreement with the donut comment above.

Just like that over-chocolated donut,this movie also has too much of bosom, cleavage and double entendres. All of that is allvery good but like that donut again, the absence of bread/story is what makesthis movie averagely entertaining.

There is a wonderfully colloquial wordin Nepali called ‘nyaakka’ to express the feeling when you have had too much of agood thing that you stop desiring it. Something akin to being fed-up but meansmuch more in Nepali.

The Dirty Picture is like that. Greatinitially but after the story-less bosom has been let loose for more than 2hours it starts to get a little nauseating.

“After a woman has shown everything,what else remains” says a character in the film and after the initial shockvalue, this movie too descends into banality.

But there are some great performanceshere.

Vidya is very brave and not only doesshe play against type but also discards vanity for this role. The fat cheeks asshe wastes away towards the end may be prosthetics but the flabby belly is realand she flaunts it absolutely uninhibitedly. For an A list Bollywood star, thisis unthinkable. She lacks the raunchiness that the original Silk probably hadbut makes up for that with her acting. Whether it is the naughty sounds shemakes when disturbed at home, the bath-tub staged interview or the impromptudance-press conference in front of a reporter’s house, she sets the screen onfire. Can’t think of any actress who would/could have done this.

Naseeruddin Shah has always been awonderfully modulated actor and here he gets to play the main lead who is alecherous ageing superstar and he bites in deep and delivers the bestperformance of the film.

Never getting out of character he playsSmashing Surya with such glee that (in the immortal lyrics from Delhi Belly)you actually love him - like you hate him - like you love him.

“You’re a genius sir, Genius” says alackey and he replies without the slightest trace of modesty “I know, but itis a curse. It’s a curse”

In a scene that got some of the biggestlaughs in the theatre, the 60+ actor plays a college student who’s just comehome with a first-class-first degree to his mother.

It’s sadly ironical that the ladyplaying his mother is not only younger than him but that a few films earliershe was actually his heroine.

Even sadder is the fact that this is notjust funny in the movie but that it is also true in reality. Even now!

While studying at St. Joseph’s college in Bangaloresome friends and me were once hanging-out after class and noticed somecommotion around one of the classrooms.

Curious, we went to check and saw thatit was a movie being shot with the reigning Malyalam superstar Mammoty.

And hewas playing a college student. A 1^st year one at that.

Now I know that this was quite a fewyears ago (during the 90’s actually) and that some time has passed but the onlytime when Mammoty was eligible to be a college student was when

India

was still not independent.

And closer home, hasn’t Amitabh playedboth lover and son to the likes of Waheeda Rahman and Rakhee?

Emraan Hashmi has a badly written andunconvincing role but it must be a sign of his performance improving because heis actually quite likeable. And as is mandatory with him he does get to sing asong (absolutely unnecessary) and ofcouse snog the lady.

Tusshar (for some reason without theKapoor surname) is so miscast that he looks like an idiot. He should have beennaïve but he plays it like a fool. And when he breaks into the Oo la La song youcan see why he is soo miscast. But I guess with your sis and mom producing themovie you should get to have somebenefits.

Anju Mahendru has some delicious fun,smoking a cigarette and playing some gossip editor which I’m sure was based onthe legendary bitch from Stardust, Devi.

So all in all, a pedestrian scriptlifted by 2 great performances.

So Oo Laa Laa to the 2. Naseer and Vidya.

Boo to the rest.

P.S. There is a great nakka-mukka tamil-ish song that keeps coming up which is electric.

Movie Review: Rockstar

2011-11-12T14:17:00.000+04:00

WARNING: Don’t go to watch Rockstar if you tick any of the boxes below:

• You don’t like movies that make you think

• You like to be spoon fed every point and subtlety is lost on you

• You expect movies to have a proper start, middle and an ending in an episodic way.

• You need your movies to end in a ‘climax’ where ‘something big’ happens (like that awful communal-riot-ferris-wheel-white-horse bullshit in Mausam).

• You just listen the tune and not what the lyrics are saying

• You have the attention span of a MTV music video.

The rest of you can safely watch Rockstar which, while not perfect, must be one of the most honest musical-love stories to come out of Bollywood this year.
Ranbir (JJ or Jordan), an aspiring musician gets thrown out of his house after a row and his family refuses to take him back. Ever.
If you wondered why they were so cruel just because he wasted his time with his guitar and refused to join the family business, then you’ll have missed the interplay between him, his loutish brothers and his overtly affectionate bhabhi.

When JJ snaps at her, he confirms all the suspicions that the brother must have always known but denied. For a patriarchal north Indian man, the loss of face there is worth abandoning his brother because to admit his wife was at fault would mean he himself wasn’t man enough to satisfy his wife.

Subtle sub texts like these run all through Imtiaz Ali’s movie. After Jab We Met and Love Aal Kal this must be one of his best.

JJ is told that like all true artists he can only be great once he knows pain and heartbreak. For this he singles out the stunningly beautiful and rich Heer from the posh St. Stephen’s and then courts her with such tactless blundering that he is convinced he will be rejected and heartbroken enough to become a great artiste.

Here I’m sure it’s no co-incidence that Nargis in this movie is named after one of the legendary doomed pair Heer-Ranjha.

Again for a hindi movie, its nice to see that its not love at first sight for both of them. For him she’s just a means to his end. For her, after the initial shock and disgust, when he tells her that he actually doesn’t like her, he becomes a welcome and safe distraction from her impending wedding.

They gallivant around Delhi and then Kashmir (brilliantly captured by ace DOP Anil Mehta) and just before her wedding day she realizes she may just feel a little more than friendship for him.

She has menhdi on her hands, its cold, she asks him for a hug, and then a longer hug and in that embrace she is a goner.

On her wedding day, as she sits before a mirror, clad in her bright red Kashmiri Pandit wedding dress, he comes to just say hi.

The next 5 minutes is one of the best written scenes of the movie,

“How am I looking?”
“Very nice” he says with a lump in his throat.
“Do you want to ask me something?” she volunteers
“Huh??”
“Because if you do, I’ll tell the truth today” she dares
He pauses, unsure of what to read in her words and also of what he is beginning to feel.
“Yes” she replies for both of them, to the own question in her mind with a finality that sets up the rest of the movie.

Jordan, from that moment, you realize is doomed. Doomed to be consumed in the unexpected and unattainable love.

Stunning scene. No drama, no hysterics, nothing said out loud. And Yet…

The movie belongs to 3 people. Ranbir, Rahman and Chauhan.

Ranbir is spot on as a performer and while not good looking in the conventional way he has talent to spare in spades. Just imagine the much better looking Imran in this movie and you’ll know how badly wrong it could have gone. Here he channels both gaucheness and angst and as the end credits roll you can almost feel his pain and loss. Look more closely and you’ll realize he also makes you understand the conflicting lure and the frustration that comes with Fame.

Nargis looks stunning and acts decently but is clearly out of her depth in many scenes. Kareena was Imtiaz's original choice before Ranbir came on board. If only they werent cousins. What an explosive talent fest that would have been.
AR Rahman, not only scores the music for the movie but also the background score and this must be his best score since Delhi 6. I remember a couple of months ago, I’d read a magazine (Tehelka or Open) which had cleverly gotten a rocker to review the music. The fool’s contention was that the music was a fake rock album. Now if Rahman was releasing a rock album called Rockstar with 14 rock numbers it would be understandable to review it like a rock album. But here the movie maybe called Rockstar but the story is about the evolution of a small town boy into a rockstar and every song is spot on. And as the cliché goes, the songs grow on you over time. Tum Ho (both versions with Kavita Krishnamurthy and Mohit Chauhan) must be one of the loveliest tracks this year. And even more haunting when watched in the context of the film. If Sadda Haq sounds so good, its no coincidence because the guitarist on it is the Aussie girl Orianthi who apart from being the lead guitarist for Michael Jackson was also named by Rolling Stone as one of the 10 best female electric guitarists.
Kun Faya Kun is a worthy follow-up to Khwaja (Jodha-Akbar) and on a quiet night listen to the jugal-bandhi between the shenai and guitar and its ebbs and flows. Divine.

Mohit Chauhan: If lucky, singers get to shoulder the burden of the entire album and make it their own and here Chauhan faces the challenge and comes out a winner. He sings every possible type of song in the album. Finally this talent gets his due.
Here, he is to Ranbir, what Asha was to Rekha in Umrao Jaan and Lata to Meena Kumari in Pakeezah. He becomes Jordan's voice.

The first thing you hear over the titles (in Ranbir’s voice) and the last thing you read during the end credits (in English) are the immortal lines of the 13th century Persian poet Rumi.

“Pata hai, yaha se bahut door, galat aur sahi ke paar, ek maidaan hai. Main waha milunga tujhe.”
(Out there, beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I will meet you there.)

If you get the essence of those 2 lines, you’ll get what Rockstar is all about.

2010-11-30T05:00:00.000+04:00

AIDS KILLS.

This is not fear mongering but a simple fact of life.

BE SAFE. STAY ALIVE.

USE A CONDOM.

MISINFORMATION AND NON-AWARENESS ABOUT AIDS KILLS MORE PEOPLE.

SPREAD THE MESSAGE.

SAVE LIVES.

Break Ke Baad: Movie Review

2010-11-28T10:55:00.001+04:00

How About Giving The Audience a Break.

BREAK KE BAAD

*ing Imran Khan, Deepika Padukone, Sharmila Tagore

Music: Vishal Shekar

Directed by: Danish Aslam

Lilette Dubey is walking around among racks of clothes with an assistant.

A young girl comes up to her holding a blouse and complains,
"This is too loose.”

With a perfect mix of exasperation and derision in her voice, Lilette deadpans
“Someone get her some bigger boobs.”

Such a terrific line deserves a much better movie.

Break ke Baad is essentially about 2 losers.

Gulati (Imran) who is a sad little clingy puppy and Aaliya (Deepika) who is a lying scheming bitch.

It’s hard therefore to warm to such characters.

Obviously inspired by the Adi Chopra- Karan Johar school of filmmaking, this is a poor imitation with even poorer characters.

During an extended title sequence we see the 2 grow up as children when they shared Mr. India dialogues to their teenage years where they both jump on trampolines (here a young Imran is played by the cute kid from Kuch Kuch and Fanaa who has now grown into an awkward, lanky teen with a surprisingly hairy back).

Then come the lead pair.
Imran as a sentimental romantic who drives a yellow beetle and who ought to grow some balls and Deepika as a deflowered bitch who smokes cigars and calls her mother by her first name.

Changing gender characteristics must have seemed great on paper but is a total misfit when executed on screen.

Deepika has long legs. Seriously long legs. And that’s always an asset to have when our acting isn’t very good. Flaunt your legs to distract from your acting.
Ask Bipasha, she’s been doing it for almost a decade now.

So when Deepika tries to be sassy and comes across as sour-pussy just ignore her and focus on her legs.
If you really like your girls sassy, get a DVD instead and watch Jab We Met.

And which young Indian calls her mother (Sharmila Tagore as Ayesha) by her first name?

That’s not sassy, that’s just bad upbringing.

The only good part about this mother-daughter story is that their being muslim is never made obvious. Infact till Sharmila talked about her ‘Abbu & Amma’ I hadn’t even thought of them as Mozzys. For a Hindi film this is certainly a big deal. After all isn’t that how we live our lives? Thank god for small mercies.

Imran helps his father run a cinema and seems bored doing so while Deepika wants to be an actress which her mom disapproves of. The mom seems pretty open minded and modern so I was not really sure why she disapproved? Maybe having been a superstar herself, she could see that her daughter’s acting abilities were limited.
Maybe…
Who knows?
Frankly, who cares?

Anyway she goes off to study Mass Comm at the Gold Coast University and puppy dog follows her there when he suspects she maybe be being screwed ‘in queue’.

Initially he drives taxis and even works at some forklift operation inside the airport. Driving License, Security Clearance… what’s that? Bollywood has never heard of these things.

Anyway there he finds his true calling and becomes a chef and opens many restaurants.

She meanwhile walks across a stage at a college play as an Egyptian (but dressed as a Greek) and gets offered an international film because, as the casting director helpfully informs us, they need an Asian character. Never mind the fact that while shooting the film she seems to be dressed more like an African safari than ‘Asian character’.

Once again people this is Bolywood so screw you for looking for reason and plausibility.
Characters here don’t have enough money for rent but get a beachside villa for 100$ a month. They fly business class to and from Australia like they were going from Chandni Chowk to Connaught Place.

But by this time you are past caring…... About 2 ½ hours into a movie if your nachos have more crunch than the storyline….its usually not a good sign.

At one point when Imran is gloomily sitting after a break up, Lilette sighs at the drama queen and mutters.

“I blame these directors who keep re-making Devdas and turning our youth into such miserable characters”

Maybe she should look at blaming some other movies.

Afterall Devdas has only been remade thrice.

This DDLJ inspired trend however, seems to be never ending.

Kuch Kuch Hota Tha…… Aaj kal…. kuch bhi nahi.

Do ungrateful girls deserve diamonds???

2010-11-24T12:16:00.000+04:00

UNGRATEFUL LITTLE WRETCH

Indian ads by and large are pretty good and constantly up to international standards where wit and originality are concerned. And yet a few slip through the net.

Last evening I was watching TV and multitasking as usual.

Unless it’s a really good program or something very interesting I usually do something while watching TV. Sometimes I’m on the laptop surfing the net and chatting with friends or most often I have a magazine or newspaper at hand. During ad breaks I usually continue reading till something catches my ear.
And most of the time it’s the really good things that get my attention.
Last night was the opposite.
There is a jewelry company called PC jewelers and their new ad is just plain stupid.

It begins with the wife at the mirror while the hubby is lying in bed.

“Your ears look rather small” he teases her.
“You should have seen that last year before we got married” she shoots back a trifle irritated.

He then places a beautiful diamond and emerald earring on her ear. She oohs and aahs.

Next Scene:

“Your wrists look a little small” he continues teasing her.
“You didn’t say that when we were dating” says stupid wifey who not only seems to have forgotten the earring she got but also the fact that it was a similar teasing which had gotten her those earrings.

As expected he slips a diamond and emerald bangle on her wrists.

Next Scene:

“Your neck is looking very thin” says the adoring hubby.
“Why did you marry me then” says the crazy bitch who clearly doesn’t deserve any of the expensive baubles that hubby dearest seems to be bestowing on her.

Of course he does slip on a huge whopper of a necklace round the neck of a wife who is either very very slow witted or just a bitchy shrew.

Crazy Woman!

If you are going to have s tory in your ad, is it too much to expect it to be sensible?

He should have just wrung her neck and given the jewelry to another girl.

Now THAT would have made a great ad.

2010-11-21T17:10:00.000+04:00

a new beginning

"The secret to a rich life is to have more beginnings than endings."

- Dave Weinbaum

Dear All,

Welcome to the new look of the blog.

Its been many years and so i thought i'd revamp the blog a bit.... change a few colours, a few designs but the quality and style of writing (for better or worse) will remain the same.

Hope you like it and thank you once again for your regular visits. I promise to be more regular from now onwards.

With Luv as Always.

Vish

Guzaarish: Movie Review

2010-11-19T01:27:00.003+04:00

GUZAARISH

*ing Hrithik Roshan, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan

Music & Directed by Sanjay Leela Bhansali

When Guzaarish opens there isn’t the long mandatory casting, it’s just the producer’s logos and then the title and then the screen goes black. Pitch black.

Then somewhere from near the left, the screen seems to almost tear towards the middle and you realize its Sophia (Aishwarya) drawing the curtain in a paralyzed Ethan Mascarenes' (Hrithik's) room. Then with the eternal Charlie Chaplin song Smile (from Modern Times) playing you see a montage of shots of Ash caring for the quadriplegic Hrithik.

The movie is filled with such similarly stunning scenes which look like gorgeous paintings.

Sanjay Leela Bhansali can certainly frame a scene.

Pity there is not much more that he seems to be able to do anymore.

He is certainly not without talent. His Khamoshi (about the deaf & dumb) was way superior to the overrated and over styled Black and his Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam had more pain & longing than in all the garishness of Devdas. But here he seems to be like a wannabe European director.

I don’t want to sound elitist here but I have a strange theory.

All vernacular students always say they are as good if not better than the convent educated ones. Rich, spoilt snobs is what they usually refer to them as but somewhere deep down this animosity hides a want on their part to belong too.

To be one of the boys, to speak English as comfortably, to flaunt labels with élan (why else do you think small town boys and girls love their fake Versace’s and D&G’s).

SLB is also a small town boy and after his initial commercial success he has started to crave for critical acclaim. He wants to be the Indian Zeffirelli, the Indian Kurosawa, the Indian Kieslowski. It would be so much better if he just tried to be the Indian Bhansali.

Calling Bhansali a wannabe is probably a bit strong but just look at Guzaarish.

Hrithik’s house looks like an old church on the exterior but is styled like a Tuscan villa on the inside, the characters speak more in English than Hindi, they are all named Rosy, Maria, Sophia, Ethan or Neville, Ash plays a nurse but is dressed like a Spanish flamenco dancer who is ready to burst into song and dance at any moment (which incidentally she does do), her hair and make up is so perfect it’s a wonder she finds time to attend to him (which is probably why the poor guy hasn’t shown any improvement in 12 years) and with such a repertoire of Indian music at his disposal and for a avowed fan of Lata Mangeshker its strange he needs to use English songs like ‘Smile’ and ‘Wonderful Life’ (sung by Hrithik himself and sounding much better than his disastrous singing debut where he had droned on and on about some ‘Kites in The Sky’).

Hrithik is a very good actor and when he is not grinning maniacally, he actually manages to convey a lot of the pain and suffering like at the end of the Udi song or when he is interacting with Omar. But these moments are far and few in between.

Which brings us to Aditya Roy Kapoor.

This boy has a lot of talent and behind that strange afro is also a very camera friendly and charismatic person. He manages to steal almost every scene he is in and with Ash and Hrithik its saying a lot.

The Kingfisher swimsuit model Monikangana Dutta also makes her debut and while she hardly has a couple of scenes she is not as wooden as most models usually are. Infact when she is dancing (by the way why are Magicians dancing anyway) with Hrithik on stage she actually reminds you of heroines from the past. There is a certain timeless quality about her face.

Ash is as beautiful as ever but has matured into a more sensuous beauty and in some scenes she actually reminds you of Penelope Cruz in Almodovar’s films. But all she seems to be doing in Guzaarish is flashing her eyes; at Ethan, at Omar, at the Lawyer, at the Judge, at the servants, at everyone, so much so that when her husband arrives towards the end and slaps her, you almost thank him for putting us out of this misery of bad acting.

It is much easier to relate to a poor hardworking nurse if she is dressed like one and not in monochromed Sabyasachi creations.

Hell in the last scene she is dressed like a Latin seductress with Ukrainian hair.

Is there anything good about the movie I hear you ask?

Well there is a short 3 minute dance solo that’s shot like a dream with Hrithik floating and dancing with a ball and somehow not managing to look like a pansy.

There’s Ash dancing with her hands in a bar called Martins but which strangely has a big Buddha head on stage.

There’s the set design which, in isolation, is beautiful to look at. Isolation being the operative work here as it has no correlation to Ethan's supposed financial condition.

The saddest part is the whole thing about euthanasia. This has been trivialized so much that you wonder if it is just a plot move to dramatize the whole movie.

Of all quadriplegics, Ethan seems to have the least reason to petition for mercy killing.

He seems to be hale and hearty (inspite of what the podgy doc keeps popping up to tell us), he has the latest breath activated wheelchair, he has a nurse who hasn’t taken leave in 12 years and for a paralyzed man who cant tell when he has passed urine or stool he seems to always get aroused while getting a massage...... so apart from sheer boredom and/or sexual frustration I didn’t see why he needed to die so urgently.

Hell, he even has a radio show of his own. He is a frickin celebrity RJ.

The court scenes are a joke. The first one at court has the 2 lawyers behaving like juvenile kids emotionally screaming in the absence of sane argument. Then after Sophia has had her moment of screaming at the judge (in English) the next court scene moves to Ethan’s house.

Why?

Apparently because His Honor felt sorry for Ethan's outing but also because why should Bhansali have the drab courtroom and the dreary dock when he can frame his characters in the courtyard of the Mediterranean villa with Ethan seated at the foot of a sweeping staircase.

Its frivolous nonsense like this that makes this movie so sad.

Pretentious. Pretentious. Pretentious.

Shit even Golmaal is better than this. At least it’s not trying to be something it isn’t.

If we all petition Bhansali for a better movie next time will he listen to our Guzaarish?

If wishes were horses even Ethan would ride.

G'bye till next time.

Movie Review: Dabangg

2010-09-22T21:02:00.004+04:00

HOW DO U SOLVE A PROBLEM LIKE DABANGG???

HOW D O U CATCH A CLOUD AND PIN IT DOWN??

DABANGG

*Salman Khan, Salman Khan & Salman Khan

Music: Sajid Wajid

Directed by: Abhinav Kashyap

Salman Khan can do many things.

Act, Cry & Dance may not be some of those things and for an actor you’d be forgiven for thinking that it would be catastrophic but fear not because he can do a few other things that a few other actors cannot do.

Strut, Prance and Swagger.

And trust me, no one in Bollywood can do it like him (except maybe for Akshay Kumay on a good day).

Dabangg is a movie with a storyline so clichéd that many times it just does away with the whole pretence and just lets the main actor flounce around the screen. And boy-o-boy does Salman do it well.

Taking off from last year’s Wanted this is what (and here is where the filter coffee drinkers begin to swear and rant at me) the Rajnikants, the Chiranjeevis et al from the south have been doing for ages. And very successfully too.

The multiplexes are very city centric and as much as the audiences love their New Yorks and their Genevas where they hope to take their holidays, their hearts actually beat for the heart of India.

India is the only place where they will settle down for good.

They will carry the latest Birkens and Vuittons but the money that comes out of that will still pay for the bhelpuris.

‘Ravioli a la Toscana’ sounds very fancy on the lips but the tongue will still crave for vada-pau and puchka.

Dabangg is so desi and yet packaged so well that even Multiplex (and Overseas) audiences are flocking to the theatres. That bhojpuri guy, Ravi Krishan has been doing it for ages but it took a Salman to make it fashionable.

I can imagine many rich young kids congregate in their latest cars at the hippest clubs wearing the latest labels, suddenly proud to be part of the desi experience. Enjoying what they always turned down their noses at.

Dabangg is pure heartland masala fare which with Salman’s star power is suddenly palatable to the snobs too. Desi chic if you may.

The dialogues are cheesy, the moves even more so but then again Salman does it so well you cant help but laugh at the whole experience and in between the laughs you realize you’ve actually enjoyed the movie.

The music is also pretty good this time round but Munni is a disappointment.

A major one.

Malaika is OLD.

She’s lost so much weight that she looks haggard. The oomph that an item number requires is sorely missing.
And its ironic that the best item number that bollywood has produced to date (Chhaiya Chhaiya) also starred Malaika. What a pity.

And apart from a great tune a song also needs to have great writing to sustain it and make it truly memorable. It isn’t a coincidence then that 3 of the greatest item numbers have been penned by the incomparable Oscar winner Gulzar.

Chhaiya Chhaiya

Kajra Ke and

Beedi Jalaile.

Sonakshi Sinha (Shatrughan’s daughter) makes her debut here and thankfully unlike her brother Luv (who also made his debut a few months back in a movie whose name I can barely even remember) she can act. Her role is half baked but she manages to makes a mark. And in this Salman lovefest that’s saying a lot. Girl’s got great presence.

And great eyes. Tere Mast Mast Do Nain….Mere Dil Ka Le gaye Chain.

She can do the Vidya Balan type of roles and again like Ms. Balan, if she tries short skirts and looking hot she’s gonna fail bad.

So is this the way Bollywood is headed?

I hope not.

Paapri Chaat is great fun no doubt but now that we’ve also had a taste of the pasta lets embrace the variety.

Every other movie can't be a Dabangg. We’d die of boredom.

Have heard Dhobi Ghaat is great.

Till next time…

As usual

Luv

Vish

2010-08-11T09:14:00.001+04:00

FLIGHTS OF FANCY
(with excerpts from the New York Times)

It has certainly been a long time since a “Flight Attendant” was a glamorous job title. When people dressed up to travel and when the journey was as important as the destination.

With cheap airfares and budget airlines, everybody seems to be flying.

The hours are long, the passengers are crass (this is the most polite word I could find), children are let loose everywhere and then there is the security.

Take off shoes; Take off belt; Take off ugly clothes (ok I made up the last one but dont you wish it were so).

It must certainly make some of the crew just put up their hands and go:-
“TO HELL WITH IT”

And on Monday, at Kennedy International Airport, a JetBlue attendant named Steven Slater did just that.

When the plane had just landed and was still taxing, a passenger stood to fetch his luggage.

Now how many times have we all seen this? And every time I always end up asking myself 'Where are those dudes off to? What can be the hurry?'.

As the American newspaper report goes:-

“So the passenger got out of his seat to retrieve his belongings from the overhead compartment before the crew had given permission. Mr. Slater instructed the man to remain seated. The passenger defied him. Mr. Slater reached the passenger just as he pulled down his luggage, which struck Mr. Slater in the head. Mr. Slater asked for an apology. The passenger cursed at him instead.”

And what Mr. Slater did next is what all of us at various times have also dreamed of doing.

He calmly stepped back, went over to the plane’s galley, got onto the plane's PA system and cursed the bloody hell out of the passenger for all to hear.

“I’ve had 20 years in the airline industry,” he screamed at the end, "and it's ENOUGH!"

Not sure if this public outburst was enough he then pulled the lever that activates the emergency-evacuation chute and slid down, making a fantastically dramatic exit not only from the plane but, I imagine, also from his airline career.

Oh and by the way, on his way out of the door, he paused and grabbed a can of beer from the beverage cart.

After sliding down the chute he then ran to the employee parking lot and drove off home where the cops were waiting for him.

He was arrested at his home and charged with felony counts of criminal mischief and reckless endangerment.

According to his online profiles, Mr. Slater has been the leader of JetBlue's uniform redesign committee and a member of the airline's in-flight values committee.

Neighbors in California, where Mr. Slater grew up, said he had recently been caring for his dying mother, a retired flight attendant, and had done the same for his father, a pilot.

Postscript: A neighbour reported later that “Mr. Slater had a big wide smile on his face when the cops brought him out, like, 'Yeah, big deal.' "

And meanwhile a former flight attendant, Janet Bavasso, who lives next door to Mr. Slater in New York, found nothing mysterious at all.

"Enough is enough -- good for him," Ms. Bavasso said. "If he would have called me, I would have picked him up from the airport myself."

Next time you reach for the overhead baggage, think about the crew and if you really want to risk the move…

Do you? Do You? DO YOU?

GO AHEAD PUNK…. MAKE HIS DAY.

Munni is Really Badnaam Now

2010-08-10T13:01:00.004+04:00

GIVE A DOG A BONE-R

IT seems semi-naked women strutting their stuff is not enough for music video makers anymore.

In the song Uai Maa from the album Uai Maa Uai Maa (why twice?), which will release next month, some cheap 'model' named Survi Chatterjee will be seen travelling the world in search of a man who can 'satisfy' her.

Unsuccessful in her quest, she returns to India and romances Bhojpuri actor Raja Chaudhary (of Shweta Tiwari beating fame) but he too fails to give her the pleasure she wants.

Finally, she is seen kissing a dog all over and then making love to it under the sheets.

Not surprisingly, the news of the video hasn't gone down well with animal rights activists.

Survi, who incidentally has been in the news for filing cases of molestation against her boyfriend and a producer, said, "My intention is not to hurt anyone's sentiments. An animal can't speak on its own, but it needs love too. We have shown how much we love animals in our video."

The problem is that her idea of 'showing love' seems to be more tuned towards bestiality than the affection and bonding normal people feel for their 4 legged friends.

"The theme is about me not finding a good person even after travelling the world. Finally I find a dog that is better than men and love it instead," she added forgetting to add that she decided to do it under the sheets.

As much as i hate them, where are Raj Thackeray's men at times like these.

Meanwhile..... in civilised A-List productions we have more crazy happening.

In the new movie Dabangg there is an Item number called Munni Badnaam Hui where the lyrics seem to plunge new depths of nonsense.

Munni Badnaam Hui... Daaarling Tere Liye.
Main Zandu Balm Hui... Daaarling Tere Liye

Even if you can stop scratching your head over how someone can become 'Zandu Balm', ponder on this...

Who is the hero?

Salman Khan.

Who is the item girl dancing lewdly all over him?

His sister-in-law Malaika Arora Khan.

Maybe he should have just danced with the dog.

Just saying....

Luv

Vish

The Bollywoodisation of News

2010-08-08T12:46:00.006+04:00

IDIOT IS AS IDIOT DOES.

WHAT ASSES?

Bollywood has taken over even natural calamities.

A few days back an unprecedented cloudburst over Ladakh led to more than 200 deaths and hundreds more are missing. The airport at Leh (the highest in India) was partially washed away making relief and evacuation flights difficult. Thousands of people are still stranded with no food or essential supplies

But what did the news channels and media lead with?

"RANCHO'S SCHOOL WASHED AWAY! " screamed the headlines and the bloke on India TV even managed to tensely remind us that the school where 3 Idiots was shot and where Rancho taught was washed away but, he helpfully added, the students were safe.

Then to reinforce that fact they kept showing clips of the movie with the children’s (actors in the movie) heads circled in red forgetting perhaps that those kids were probably not actually students of the school or for the matter that Rancho is just a fictional character.

Zee News (which seems determined to plough the depths of banality) went a step further.

“The children are safe,” said the wide eyed anchor, and then with an expression, which was supposed to be distressed but which just came across as cross eyed and cross browed, asked in breathless anticipation, “but what about Centimeter?”

For those of you who haven’t watched the movie, Centimeter is the chottu tea boy from the college who later joins Aamir Khan in Ladakh but who most certainly is NOT still actually working there as a teaching assistant.

WTF?

Somehow after this, ‘IDIOT’ seems too tame a name for these weirdoes on TV.

What have we come to? Seriously.

Can’t we even digest news if not coated within a bollywood context?

Have we really become that dumb or for that matter that heartless?

THINK.

Coz those news anchors certainly don’t.

FYI: The school’s actual name is The Druk Pema School and is (or was) situated 15km outside Leh town on the Leh-Manali highway.

Till next time...

Luv

Vish

Donkey forced to parasail

2010-08-05T09:14:00.003+04:00

DONKEY KONG

I dont know if you managed to catch this bit of news but last week animal lovers were left aghast when news reports came in from Russia that a donkey was forced to parasail. Yes you heard right. PARASAIL!

Russian holidaymakers at a beach were left shocked after a donkey was forced to parasail off a beach as part of a sick advertising stunt.

The animal, braying in terror, soared above the southern village of Golubitskaya while crying children below echoed its screams.

The stunt – intended to attract people into parasailing at a private beach club – backfired after police began investigating allegations of animal cruelty.

The animal eventually landed back on the shoreline in an ‘atrocious manner’ after being dragged through the water and sunbathers rushed to rescue the frightened donkey and were lucky to stop it from drowning.

‘The donkey screamed and children cried,’ said a regional police spokeswoman in what must certainly be an understatement.

But even more disturbingly no-one had the brains to call police.

Instead people reached for their cameras and bombarded a local newspaper with phone calls.

Russian police last night admitted that the trail has gone cold as they hunt to find the donkey owner, who was responsible for the horrific animal abuse.

'He has done a runner, he has gone into hiding,' said a police spokesman.

Another officer said: 'It’s amazing that onlookers didn’t knock his teeth out there and then. But in fact no-one complained, not a single person.'

And now after its readers expressed their horror and concern for the donkey, the SUN newspaper of the UK has bought and brought the donkey to London.

I seriously dont know what is more disturbing.

The fact that the poor Ass was forced to fly or that the Ass has now become a global celebrity.

Your thoughts??

Till Next Time

Luv as Usual

Vish

Movie Review: I Hate Luv Storys

2010-07-04T13:18:00.006+04:00

A LOVE-HATE MOVIE

I HATE LUV STORYS

* Imran Khan, Sonam Kapoor, Samir Dattani

Music - Vishal Shekhar

Director: Punit Malhotra

In an upcoming film (Once Upon A Time In Mumbai) there is a song where one of the lines goes like this:

“Tere sang chain bhi mujhko, tere sang bekarari hai.” (With you I find contentment and with you restlessness too.)

Watching I Hate Luv Storys I had a similar experience.

For its genre and for what it was promising to be, it was a fair deal. And yet there were moments when my concentration was wandering and I was left thinking of various other things like did i turn off the lights in my flat or should i go for indian or chinese after the movie (food that is in case you are wondering).
And like I’ve always said, whenever that happens at the movies it is never a good sign.

IHLS is not a bad film. Infact it has many things going for it, like a soundtrack that’s both rocking and soulful, lead actors who are photogenic and from the yuppie gen-x, costumes, art direction, cinematography everything is top notch, but all the individual parts somehow don’t come together as a cohesive whole.

Imran Khan playing J or Jay Dhingra looks fairer, prettier and more delicate than Sonam and I suspect the director realized this and in many scenes he’s made to sport a stubble. He is very earnest and can act well too but the guy seriously needs to get two things in control. His Pout and his Eyebrows. In many scenes, his (extremely bushy) eyebrows seem to be acting independently of the rest of his face.

Fascinating? Yes! Interesting ?? NO. Unless you happen to be a hair care specialist.

And then there is the pout. With Imran (and I guess the tween girls must love that very pout) it has always been quite pronounced but more so when he is lip synching to the songs. Watch him in the title track and during ‘Sadka Kiya’. Nemo pouts less than Imran.

Sonam Kapoor plays the filmy Simran (presumably after Kajol’s character in DDLJ). Last year in the Indian version of GQ, the irrepressible Shoobaa De was asked to comment on the current crop of heroines and for Sonam, she had this to say: “Pretty but Very Boring and with Zero Sex Appeal.”

Well, what can I say to top that?

Don’t get me wrong, Sonam is very pretty (and fashionable) but there is something very ‘behenji’ about her that never seems to transcend into a matinee idol status. In the Sadka Kiya song, she is dressed in the obligatory chiffon sarees with blouses that look suspiciously like bikini tops and yet as she reclines on an artistically placed dead-wood she arouses no passion whatsoever. Kajol & Kareena can show more oomph with a glance. For me Sonam is the A-List version of Amrita Rao.

Samir Dattani plays Sonam’s fiancée Raj and his character is again so one dimensional that right from the time he comes on screen with his fugly shirt you know he doesn’t stand a chance in hell. I know he’s the second lead and that J and Simran are meant for each other but when will Bollywood learn that when you begin to flesh out the secondary characters, you make us care more about the turns in the story. Poor Raj here is such a caricature that you never feel for Simran & J’s breakups simply because you know Simran cant possibly love that cardboard cut out that is Raj.

J’s friend. I don’t know his name but the fat friend gets some of the movie’s best lines and rocks them every time. His delivery, timing, expressions are all spot on. When the usually non-sentimental J begins to fall in love and comes rushing into the office asking where’s Simran, Fatty deadpans “Kyun, kya tu uske baache ki maa banne wala hai?” (Why, are you pregnant with her child?) or the time when he shows J his hilarious and yet apt graph about the Hot quotient of girls versus their ‘natak’ and somehow how this is all tied up in Profit and Loss.

TV star Aamir Ali plays the Movie star in IHLS and he is suitably wacky and obnoxious. I don’t know if he was modeled on Salman Khan but he brings the house down when he parades around in tight jeans because the girls allegedly ‘love his tight butt’.

Music: Vishal Shekhar give what is probably their best soundtrack ever. The title song is rocking and Bahara, Bin Tere and Sadka Kiya are all very hummable and memorably picturized. On the album Bahara has a Chill version sung but Rahat Fateh Ali Khan and it’s a surprise this is not used in the movie. Its much better than the Shreya Ghosal one.

The director is Punit Malhotra who’s the nephew of fashion designer Manish Malhotra and so the look of the film is great with tees and skirts snug and fitting but somehow the script seems a little loose.

Great to look at and a not a bad way to pass the time at the cinemas but IHLS leaves you a little ‘bekerar’ for more.

Simran looks pretty, J looks prettier and Raj is Fugly. But Love & Passion?? Naa! Not in this movie.

But can you blame them?

After all the title song HAD warned us…

“Mil gaye jo chora chori,
Hui masti thodi thodi.
Bas Pyar ka naam na lena,
I Hate Luv Storys.”

A MODERN FAIRY TALE?

2010-06-27T13:40:00.002+04:00

WAS CINDERELLA FILIPINO??

On some of the regional channels (MBC2 & MBC4) there is an ad for a home shopping network/program.

It shows a Filipino maid vacuuming the floor while the 2 daughters of the house come down dressed to go out.

The expression on their faces however seem to suggest that they aren’t very happy.

The mother (with back to camera) wields a remote and zaps them one by one.

ZAP!

The 1st daughter gets a sparkling new dress with a long shiny necklace.

ZAP!

The 2nd daughter too gets a new dress with lovely dangling earrings.

ZAP!

What happens to the Filipino maid??

She gets a sparkling, shiny new vacuum cleaner.

ZAP! And they all live happily ever after.

WAIT A MINUTE.

WHAT WAS THAT?

The idea is obviously from Cinderella but then I always thought that the whole point of that story was to warn against mistreating people.

Political correctness can at times go overboard but can you seriously show the poor Filipino maid happy just because she got new equipment?

ZAP! Even in a fantasy they aren’t treated as human beings.

The Filipino embassy is usually quite potent where workers rights are concerned.
Maybe they should also begin to worry about workers image too.

Just between us.

Ciao Till Next Time.

Vishal

Movie review: Raavan

2010-06-19T20:33:00.002+04:00

THIS 'RAAVAN' IS NOT BAD. BUT SADLY THE MOVIE IS.

RAAVAN

*ing Abhishek Bachchan, Aishwarya Rai, Vikram, Govinda

Directed by: Mani Rathnam

Music: A R Rahman

Lyrics: Gulzar

Mani Rathnam has a problem.

He does not speak Hindi. Nor does he get the subtleties that go with knowing the language and so its just my guess, but I think Raavana (Tamil) is going to be far better than this stilted snooze fest that is Raavan.

I remember while studying in Bangalore we stood in line outside a theatre (this was before the multiplexes came in) and almost got lathi charged just because some friends of mine wanted to watch Bombay: first day first show.

And being a huge Manisha fan I tagged along even though it was in Tamil.

I did watch the hindi version later and even though I don’t understand Tamil, it seemed a far superior version.

In Raavan the characters seem to spew ‘dialogue’ and hardly ever talk.

I have no idea about Vikram’s body of work (he is allegedly a National Award winner) but seeing that this was made for a north Indian audience, a fitter body would have been better. Unlike the south, Bollywood prefers its matinee idols a lil less rotund.

Seeing Vikram running in slow motion with his paunch jiggling (with shirt tucked into jeans no less) was not a pretty sight and no amount of Ray Bans could compensate for it. The worse part was that his role was half baked too. What a start to Bollywood. There's no way he is ever going to make it here.

And Abhishek Bachchan hams away to glory with not a single nod to subtlety. His “Jhig-jhig-jhig” and “Bak Bak Bak” dialogues were comic when they weren’t supposed to be and towards the end in a crucial scene when Ash repeats the same (Bak Bak) back to him the whole theatre was left giggling.

I think when Mani conceived the film, the character Beera was supposed to kidnap Ragini with an intention of killing her and taking revenge on her husband. The evil towards Ragini should have slowly given way to grudging Respect and Confusion followed by a something resembling Love.

AB Jr. makes such a mess of this role that you never fear his character so then finally when love blossoms it is not interesting at all. He seemed to be making eyes at her all along.

Except for the last 5 minutes, he never really becomes Beera.

He is always Abhishek Bachchan. Of the movie’s 2hr 20 min running time, Abhi’s Beera is always a caricature never a character.

For Aishwarya this is possibly her best performance to date. She is consistent and even though the dialogues given to her are mostly screeches and wails she does remain in character throughout even though her makeup seems to do the same too.

Sometimes shot in extreme close-up, its quite distracting to notice fine mascara after 14 days in the jungle in the rain. The villages where Beera takes her, seem to be the poor adivasi type and yet when Ash is given a change of clothes in the jungle she gets a nice Fab-India type of sari. Ethnic chic??

But boy oh boy is she looking fabulous. You cant take your eyes off the screen when she is on and as much as Abhi may try to distract you with his odd eye makeup she is luminous and shot like a dream by Santosh Sivan and V Manikandan.

Talking of which, the cinematography is the only thing about this movie that is world class. Breathtaking is an understatement as the 2 veteran’s cameras captures every detail of the forest and infact some of the shots (if you are interested in photography) will blow your mind. Some of the swooping camera work would definitely not be possible without cranes and seeing the location you wonder where they put them in the first place.

The music however is a major disappointment with the best song (Ranhja Ranhja) used only fleetingly for Beera’s sisters marriage. The other great song Jaare Udd Jaa (not on album) is performed by A.R Rahman himself and comes in parts during the movie and then in its entirety during the end credits (Ab iss shareer ke sirey khol dey / Aur goongi aatma ko bol dey.)

Rahman drops the ball on this one and almost recovers it with the haunting Jaare, but its too little too late.

Govinda (quite aptly) is given the role of Hanuman and unlike the loyal & heroic character of the epic he is more of a comic here. A fat bloated side kick. But he does the best he can with this one.

All in all Raavan is a beautiful and sad film.

Sad because it comes from a director who is india’s most talented and experienced story teller.

What a sad day. Maybe he should just go back to telling his stories in the language he knows best.

Tamil.

Till then we’ll just have to make do with Kaminey’s like Vishal Bhardwaj.

2010-06-09T08:55:00.002+04:00

INDIAN ? YES. IDOL ?? PROBABLY NOT.

After a great start to season 1 Indian Idol has been going steadily downhill. Season 3 had a nepali winner in Prashant Tamang but as even the most Gorkhakli-ko-chora among us will admit, his singing was mediocre at best and the only reason he won was neglected nepali pride rather than artistic merit.

The judges too have been going from bad to worse.

First it was Udit Narayan confusing himself (and everyone else) with his History and Geography and then you had a tone deaf (but very pretty) Sonali Bendre who looked more lost than the contestants.

So this year it’s a bloody relief than we have great judges - with big egos (Anu) and even bigger noses (Salim) – and a high quality of singers.

But then again, as always they are looking at the ‘complete package’ and not necessarily 'singers' so anything can happen.

Let the games begin.

Shashi Suman, Patna

Shashi is allegedly a classicaly trained, and he started off with what was possibly the best performance to date when he sang Jaane Tu. But after that it has been downhill for him too. He’s still not bad but he has yet to be outstanding like the first time. He is also eminently forgettable. I just found out that he has also provided the backing vocals on More Piya from Rajneeti

Winning Chances 65% : Too boring to be a complete package.

Sreeram, Hyderabad

One of the best and seems to be on the upward curve with his singing. Spoilt it when he sang Rahman's Guzaarish, improved vastly with Pritam's Tu Hi Meri Shabb and then yesterday nailed the Rabba Rabba from Monsoon Wedding. And what a performance it was. The best singer of the 10.

Winning Chances 45% : Why? Because people from the south have far better things to do than vote for Indian idol. Don’t believe me?? Ask Karunya.

Bhoomi Trivedi, Baroda

The ultimate hindi heartland girl. She can sing western numbers but falters when given a purely hindi song. Pretty and non-controversial.

Winning Chances 80% : Pretty. Check. Young. Check. Good Voice. Check.
Whats not to like.?

Shivam Pathak, UP

A big fan of Sonu Nigam and sings almost as well. He’s very clever (or lucky) in the choice of songs. They have all been audience friendly (including yesterday’s Khaike Paan). Judges love him.

Winning Chances 80% : Judges love him and till now it looks like the audience loves him too. But he better beware of the Anu Malik curse. Whoever Anu praises the audience seems to love to vote out. Not because they love the contestant less but probably because they hate Anu more.

Yashraj Kapil, New Delhi

Started well. Great sympathy factor with the visual of his father kneeling in front of the judges still fresh. Then he started to sing. Not great at all. Then he began to talk ('I compete with only myself' he said) and it got worse.
Was getting the tween girl vote for his boyish looks and then last week he decided to show Swaroop how to swim and he lost all remaining ‘girly’ votes when he flaunted his ‘man-boobs’ on national television. Bad move.

Winning Chances 30% : Not a fav of the judges and I wouldn’t be surprised if he gets voted out this coming week (unless the ‘madam’ from Cal goes first)

Rakesh Maini, Agra

The real dark horse in season 5. He has the good-heartland-desi-boy appeal and the most important fact is that he sings great. And consistently. He has rarely been bad and the last 2 weeks was mind blowing.
Simple and to the point. Just great singing.

Winning Chances 70% : The makeover isn’t helping him. He looks better but where’s the drama in that. If I remember both his parents are very old and both have recently had eye surgery. He needs to bring them on stage. Preferably with walking sticks. Better if they also have eye patches on. Sure winner then.

Naushad Ali Kawa, Jaipur

At every episode Naushad has been called the “Rajasthan ka ab tak ka subse handsome contestant” and even though he has not yet fallen prey to that absurd flattery his singing is beginning to falter. NO range too. But then he is eminently earnest and with the voting public that’s always a good thing.

Winning Chances 88% : Rajasthanis have been known to vote for one of their own (remember the Idol 2 winner ??) and he might just have the edge over compatriot Swaroop. And then there’s the hair. I have yet to see a reality show contestant with long hair who has lost. Think about it.

Swaroop Khan, Jaisalmer

No one can match him in folk songs. Period. But Anu (for once ) was spot on when he called him over-confident. The word I would have chosen is ‘Arrogant’ but you get the message.

He massacred Pankaj Udhas’s Chitti Aayi Hai and has come back with Nimbooda yesterday but he does seem to have taken to Bombay rather well. I have a feeling he’d have abandoned that turban of his a long time back if it hadn’t been for the votes.

Winning Chances 65% : He’s a great horse but also a one track pony. A cocky one track pony. And for Rajasthanis Naushad seems like a better bet.

Arpita Khan, Kolkata

Arpita wowed everyone with a stunning performance of Khalbali. Then she dressed in a gaudy sari to sing Bindiya Chamkegi and the only thing that image of her reminded me is of a ‘madam’ sitting in some kotha in Sonagachi. I know its not fair and I also know that its probably sexist too but like poor blind Meghna found out 2 weeks back, your look do matter.

Winning Chances 20% : She has always been in the bottom 3 and if Mr. Man-Boobs doesn’t pip her to the end then she’s definitely out this week.

Tia Kar, Mumbai

She’s the weakest singer of the lot. Big Deal.
She has been victimized and that’s made her the underdog.

She has been mocked and she’s gotten all the sympathy.

She looks hot, she can rock the smile and baby, oh baby, can she cry.
Who cares about the singing.

Winning Chances 50-50% : If her fellow contestants know better they will stop picking on her. Let her just sing. That’s the only way to get her out. Else she’ll be crying and getting the trophy.

But that’s just me.

What do you guys think???

Let me know……

Luv

Vish

2010-06-05T22:06:00.004+04:00

DONT CONDEMN THIS MOVIE. JUST CONDOM IT.

RAJNEETI

Director: Prakash Jha

*ing Arjun Rampal, Ranbir Kapoor, Katrina Kaif, Ajay Devgan, Manoj Bajpei, Nana Patekar

I’m a sucker for deals and special offers even though I know I most often don’t really need that ‘something free’ that comes with the main product. And when it happens in a movie its even more annoying. Rajneeti is like 2 separate movies.

Pay for the movie you expected to see and they’ll throw in a bollywood potboiler for free.
The difference between the first and second half is so distinct that you wonder if it was the same director who’s made the whole damn movie.

The 1st half is stunningly gripping and things and events move so fast you cannot help but sit up in your seat and take in all that’s happening.

Its not perfect ofcourse. Naseeruddin Shah is wasted in a miniscule role and then further insulted with an outrageous sex scene. As fine an actor as he is, the words ‘sex-scene’ and ‘Naseer’ don’t usually don’t go together in my head and after seeing it on screen it is even more revolting.

The problem begins in the second half.

Now twists in the story is always fun, infact there is nothing I like more than to be surprised but they must come with a reason. They have got to be plausible.

A couple of years back came a movie called “Race” in which there were so many twists in the story that I wasn’t sure if Bipasha was Saif’s lover or sis-in-law or aunt.

But Race was a big hit you may say. Yes it was but then that was a different kind of movie. Houseful too was a hit a few weeks back and that too was a different kinda film. But when you begin to talk of Rajneeti in the same breath as Race & Houseful I think its not a good thing.

Politics is a dangerous game but this movie takes it to heights. So many people die around the principal characters that it’s a wonder the junta is still voting for them. And even in UP & Bihar I’m sure major politicians don’t go shooting opponents in broad daylight.

And if things weren’t odd enough there’s even an item song which ends almost as suddenly as it begins.

Performance wise however there are some gems.

Nana is quietly reassuring as the Krishna like character while the dependable Bajpei is saddled with a strangely Rajput inspired wardrobe.

Katrina looks pretty as always and her acting is not bad. The problem is that its not great either. While watching some scenes I was just wondering what Madhuri Dixit (one of Jha’s previous heroines) would have done with this role. Or even Kareena.

Ajay Devgan is given a role which in old movies would have been done by Gulshan Grover and the one scene where he really gets to act is so silly it becomes embarrassing.

And based as this movie is on the Mahabharat, it’s the crucial Kunti-Karna scene. What a shame and what a waste of what should have been an explosive and heartrending scene.

The 2 best performances are from the main leads Ranbir and Arjun. Ranbir’s role is longer and seemingly more complex but its Arjun who’s stunningly believable as the central Indian politician. His wardrobe, his mannerisms, his unkempt hair and even his slightly dirty/sweaty face is what anchors this movie. When he dies, the movie really loses its soul and turns into a senseless melodrama topped off with an even more ridiculous climactic shootout.

The worst performance is from Shruti Seth (she’s the girl who brilliantly played Kajol’s friend in Fanaa). She’s otherwise okay but in her seduction scene with Arjun she really, really hams it up. So much so that she seems to get an orgasm even when Arjun is just talking to her. And she wants an election ticket from Sitapur. You have got to be kidding me.

The other odd thing about this movie is its birth rate.

Everyone seems to be getting pregnant with just 1 lay in the hay. Ranbir’s mom, Katrina, the foreign girl… every major female character gets the bun in the oven after just one shag. So remember it girls and boys….. you gotta condom your sex.

And for a movie on Politics it’s a shame that the only message you take back is birth control.

What a pity cause the first half was really really good.

Maybe they should have just condom'd their pens after that.

More later

Luv as Usual

Vish

2010-06-03T11:57:00.002+04:00

Dear All,

I know its been a long time but with a new job etc..... you understand, dont you?

Anyway here's one of the sweetest stories that i've read and like always i want to share it with you.

Enjoy

Vish

John Blanchard stood up from the bench, straightened his Army uniform, and studied the crowd making their way through Grand Central Station. He looked for the girl whose heart he knew, but whose face he didn’t, the girl with the Rose.

His interest in her had begun thirteen months before in a Florida library. Taking a book off the shelf he found himself intrigued, not with the words of the book but with the notes pencilled in the margins. The soft handwriting reflected a thoughtful soul and an insightful mind. In front of the book, he discovered the previous owners name, Miss Hollis Maynell. With time and effort he located her address. She lived in New York City.

He wrote her a letter and invited her to correspond. The next day he was shipped overseas for service in World War II. During the next year and one month the two grew to know each other through the mail.

Each letter was a seed falling on a fertile heart.

The romance was budding. Blanchard requested a photograph, but she refused. She felt that if he really cared, it wouldn’t matter what she looked like.
When the day finally came for him to return from Europe, they scheduled their first meeting – 7.00 p.m. at the Grand Central Station in New York.

“You’ll recognize me,” she wrote, “by the red rose that I’ll be wearing in my lapel.”

So at 7.00 he was in the station looking for a girl whose heart he loved but whose face he had never seen.

I’ll let Mr. Blanchard tell you what happened:

“A young woman was coming towards me, her figure long and slim. Her blonde hair lay back in curls from her delicate ears, her eyes were blue as flowers. Her lips and chin had a gentle firmness, and in her pale green dress she was like springtime come alive.

I started towards her, entirely forgetting to notice that she was not wearing a rose. As I moved, a small provocative smile curved her lips. “Going my way, sailor?” she murmured.

Almost uncontrollably I took one step closer to her, and then I saw Hollis Maynell.

She was standing directly behind the girl. A woman well past 40, she had graying hair tucked under an old worn hat. She was more than plump, her thick-ankled feet thrust into low-heeled shoes.

The girl in the green suit was walking away quickly. I felt as though I was split in two, so keen was my desire to follow her, and yet so deep was my longing for the woman whose spirit had truly companioned me and upheld my own. And there she stood. Her pale, plump face was gentle and sensible, her gray eyes had a warm and kindly twinkle.

I did not hesitate.

My fingers gripped the small worn blue leather copy of the book that was to identify me to her. This would not be love, but it would be something precious, something even better than love, a friendship for which I had been and must ever be grateful.

I squared my shoulders and saluted and held out the book to the woman, even though while I spoke I felt choked by the bitterness of my disappointment.

“I’m Lieutenant John Blanchard, and you must be Miss Maynell. I am so glad you could meet me. May I take you to dinner?”

The woman’s face broadened into a tolerant smile.

“I don’t know what this is all about, son,” she answered, “but the young lady in the green dress who just went by, she begged me to wear this rose in my coat. And she said that if you were to ask me to dinner, I should tell you that she is waiting for you in the big restaurant across the street. She said it was some kind of a test.”

……………………………………..*………………………

“Tell me who you love,” Shakespeare once wrote, “And I’ll tell you who you are.”

2010-05-16T20:51:00.003+04:00

Dear All,

I am alive :-)

I am well :-)

and I am still writing.....

I am in transition between jobs (and houses and all other changes etc) and am a lil swamped lately...

will definitely write again soon..

till then

Luv as usual

Vish

Home BLOGS Part 2

2010-04-18T13:02:00.012+04:00

OF SCHOOLS, MISTS, FILMS & HOME

Dear All,

As promised here is a second collection of mini-blogs about Darjeeling.

Please do write in to tell me your thoughts. Any thoughts.

Enjoy

Luv

Vish

BETHANY

As nursery/primary schools go, there is nothing in Darj yet which can beat good ol’ Bethany.

Of late Himalayan Nursery and others have been giving it some stiff competition but frankly where Discipline (even for the poor teachers), Standard and Quality goes, there’s nothing that even comes close.

And yet it never seems to get the full credit it deserves. When schools in Darjeeling are talked about, it’s always NP, SP, Loreto &. MH (and in that order too).

If Wordsworth once claimed that the Child is the Father of Man, then Bethany is certainly the foundation on which many a Paulite, NorthPointer or Loreto-ite have built their individual structures of excellence.

And amidst the ever growing concrete jungle that is Darjeeling today, the school still stands proud and unchanging like a miracle of an oasis.

What a relief. What a bloody relief. And may it never change.

P.S. I am not writing this out of any bias. For the record, I did my pre-school in Miniland Nursery before joining NP.

DAS STUDIO.

I seriously doubt there is any one in Darjeeling who has not stood waiting at the counter in Das Studio. Waiting anxiously with that thin strip of paper/receipt in hand even as ‘daju’ would go into the backroom to bring out your envelope of photos.

As he came back you would look carefully at the size of the package in his hands. (ok you dirty minds, dont get ideas)

If it was bulging (sorry for the choice of words but do try and keep you thoughts clean) then you could be happy that of the 36 exposures, at least 30-32 had developed into photos. Never mind that many were blurred or than many had close-up’s of the startled photographer's face.

“Khai herau tah, kina click hudaina,”(let me see why its not clicking)- turn camera towards yourself and - “CLICK” the flash would go off followed by an exasperated “HAAETH-TERIKA”.

But they were all valid photos. At that time, anything that developed was considered valid.

“Amboo, sabbai chattees print aayo?” younger cousins would ask in shock & awe and a renewed respect of your photographic abilities.

However if the packet looked thinner than usual you could be sure that atleast 1/2 the film was wasted.

And the worst part was you never knew exactly why .

Was it because you hadn’t taken the picture well or was it because that smart-ass cousin had opened the back of the camera before the film had ‘rewinded’ fully or maybe, just maybe the dajus at Das just screwed up and blamed it on you. But you never knew. You didn’t have the choice of knowing. You just accepted what you got and yet strangely it seemed all the more interesting.

Then once you paid the amount you’d slide across the counter in order to let daju deal with the next customer. Remember you’d only slide across the counter to the corner, not leave.

You never left Das without going through the photos first.

You and everyone else who came with you (and some uncles/aunties who happened to be in Das at the time) would then huddle over heads and shoulders almost as if you were on some kind of discovery.

And you know what? It was a kind of discovery.

By virtue of the film having been loaded ages ago the final prints would always be a revelation.

Conversations at the counter would range from “haer katthi moti thiyo tyas bela” (look how fat she was in that photo) or “bechara ramro manche thiyo, chito maryo” (poor guy died so early) or “ha ha Samir lai bell-bottom ma herna” (look at Samir in those silly bell-bottom pants).

Births, Deaths and even Fashion changed between Shooting & Developing.

In today’s 12-megapixel-digital world such innocent wonders seem so far away.

Unless ofcourse, you visit DAS STUDIO.

The décor is the same, the huge pictures of mountains are the same, the ‘lab’ seems the same and even the daju’s are the same.

As my friend put it so well, “Maybe they are film not digital”.

Maybe....yeah, maybe.

PRESSURE COOKERS.

As I walked the streets of Darjeeling and visited friends and family, one of the most common sounds was the “hissss” of the pressure cooker.

The month before I left for my vacation to Darj, the washer on my pressure cooker went bust.
Not the big rubber one that goes round the lid but the more smaller one which is in the middle of the cover surrounded by a nut.

Anyway, after scouring almost every hardware store in Abu Dhabi for the same, I not only did not find a replacement but was instead given unasked for advice.

The Asian shopkeepers were invariable sympathetic and suggested I ask some relative from India to send one for me (imagine the courier cost).

Meanwhile the Arab (Middle-Eastern) shopkeepers were either confused at to what it was or their advice was simple. “Why don’t you just buy a new cooker?”

Maybe cooking with a pressure cooker and repairing things endlessly are both unique South-Asian traits. Or maybe i'm just a kanjoos. Between us.

THE WHAT?

English maybe the lingua franca and all that jazz but it is also wonderfully adaptive.

I doubt there is any other language which lends itself so easily to distortion.

Like the UP-Haryana belt which has numerous shops luring you with either “Child Beer” (under-age drinking?) or "Child Bear" (animal farm?) or the even more confusing "Chilled Bear" (poor cold animal?).

It is almost always hilarious and apart from the humour, I personally think that it all adds to the whole flavor of each place.

And Nepalis spelling in English can give the Indians a run for their money.

Whether its ads enticing you to eat some Bugger or Chinees food which promises Momos (dumplings) but also offers some Mom's on the menu.

However while these miss-spellings and odd phrases are funny in day to day use, it ceases to be funny in places where accuracy is paramount.

The doctors clinic, where misspellings can quite literally be a matter of your life and death is the last place where you’d expect this. Even if the printer did make a mistake you’d think the learned doctor would have noticed it.

At a clinic in Darj I saw the following sign.

Lord help anyone who has a foctus problem.

THE MALL

Darjeeling can be anything you want it to be. Cold, Romantic, Mysterious, Startling or all of the above. And sometimes at the same time.

Having eaten too many of the Keventer’s breakfasts I decided to go for an early morning walk around The Mall. If you approach it from the left side and go past Bhanu Bhawan, the moment you cross the Governor’s House is when the best part of the walk begins.

March still had the nip of winter and as the clouds began to rise from Lebong below, we were left walking, surrounded by a mist so thick it seemed like cotton candy.

In such an place the voice seems softer, the conversation more clandestine and your steps just that little more stealthy.

And as we walked, faces (both familiar and strange) would appear out of the mist for a few seconds of exchanged greetings or discreet nods before melting back into the fog behind us.

Is everyone generally polite in Darjeeling or do I just know more people here, I silently wondered.

As we approached the Mahakal Mandir area, a monkey emerged from the fog and ran across in front of us and almost as if nature was taking a cue from him, the wind shifted and the mist cleared for a moment.

Just for a moment, but in that brief moment Kanchenjunga appeared before us in all her majesty.

Clear, Proud and Magnificent.

And in that same moment Burj Khalifa suddenly seemed so small.

Jey Gara, Jaso Gara, Jata Sukai Laijao Malai....

Home is really where the heart is.

Till next time and more darjeeling memories.....

STRADDLING FAULT LINES

2010-04-17T21:01:00.004+04:00

CHASTITY FAULT LINE

Just yesterday i blogged about the lunatic zealots who are giving all muslims a bad name and almost as if on cue comes a news story about something similar.

What can i say, but repeat.

Someone, please save these people from themselves.

Till next time and more positive topics..

Luv

Vish

EXTRAMARITAL SEX CAUSES EARTHQUAKES, CLERIC SAYS

GULF NEWS: 18.04.2010

TEHRAN: A senior Iranian cleric has claimed that dolled-up women incite extramarital sex, causing more earthquakes in Iran, a country that straddles (seriously, no pun intended) several fault lines, newspapers reported on Saturday.

"Many women who dress inappropriately ... cause youths to go astray, taint their chastity and incite extramarital sex in society, which increases earthquakes," Ayatollah Kazem Sedighi told worshippers at Tehran Friday prayer.

"Calamities are the result of people's deeds," he was quoted as saying . "We have no way but conform to Islam to ward off dangers."

The Islamic dress code is mandatory in Iran, which has been under clerical rule for more than three decades. Every post-pubescent woman regardless of her religion or nationality must cover her hair and bodily contours in public.

Offenders face punishment and fine. But this has not stopped urban women from appearing in the streets wearing tight coats and flimsy headscarves and layers of skillfully applied makeup.

Iran is also prone to frequent quakes, many of which have been devastating. The worst in recent times hit the southern city of Bam in December 2003, killing 31,000 people -- about a quarter of the population -- and destroying its ancient mud-built citadel.

The Sania-Shoaib Love Farce

2010-04-17T20:23:00.004+04:00

WISE MEN SAY.. ONLY FOOLS RUSH IN...

In the movie The Queen, at one stage a frustrated Tony Blair says of Her Majesty and The Royal Family:

“Somebody save these people from themselves”

Today I feel a similar sentiment towards the Indian Muslims.

Now let me make it clear at the beginning itself that I am not some Hindu fanatic nor that this post is anything remotely close to that.

I think that Muslims in general aren’t bad but that a few crazy lunatics hijack the whole faith and subsequently the whole debate about tolerance etc.

They have literally been giving fodder to the right-wing Hindu nutcases to label them as a bunch of 3rd century lunatics.

And all this over just 1 wedding. Sania & Shoaib’s.

I have been watching the whole Shonia (as its now being called) drama with an increasing sense of shock and amazement.

Look at the facts:

Sania met and fell in love with Shoaib. Frankly what she saw in that bumbling fool (watch his press conference) is besides me but that’s her choice.

Suddenly someone named Ayesha Siddiqui came out of the woodwork to claim she was already married to him a few years back.

The ‘nikaah’ allegedly happened over the phone after exchanging photos.

Shoaib on his part began to spin more stories than a spider on Viagra.

First he claimed he did not know of any Ayesha. Then he claimed that she tricked him by showing a picture of a slim beautiful girl. (Instead of the obviously obese and ugly Ayesha was the part left unsaid)

When he found out about this he did not go ahead with the wedding.

His sleazy brother in law, Imran, then came on Pakistan TV to explain to a disbelieving public about how a Pakistani captain could be fooled by such trickery. Imran told viewers that the girl who enticed Shoaib over the phone, was in fact her clever friend. He also told us how when Shoaib went to Hyderabad to meet his bride-to-be many times, she was never there.

The family, I believe, came up with some excuse nor the other; she wasn’t in town, she was unwell and in hospital, she was in another city where she was trying to convince Yuvraj Singh to marry her. (Ok Ok I made the last one up but frankly the story is so crazy it could probably be true).

I don’t know about the veracity of the wedding but the interview made 1 point very clear.

If not a liar, Shoaib was certainly a stupid, stupid guy.

Ayesha’s mother, not to be left out, came on Times Now to give her side of the story but in place of facts she just shed some serious tears. “I-am-crying-so-I-must-be-telling-the-truth” seemed her only defence.

Ayesha meanwhile came on a private Pakistani TV channel (phoned in actually) to claim that she not only married Shoaib but that she even had a miscarriage.

Then as if to prove her mental sanity (or lack thereof) she claimed that she still has the blood stained clothes from her miscarriage. (Who else but a lunatic keeps such mementos?)

This girl was clearly crazy but my question is; What was her family doing? Why were they not putting an end to this nonsense?

Shoaib meanwhile went from bad to worse.

Even as Indian TV channels were gleefully broadcasting clips of him practicing his dance steps in Sania’s house, another TV channel dug out an old clip of him admitting to being married to a “Hyderabadi girl”.

The very next day he was in front of Sania’s house facing the media and lying through his teeth and claiming that he has never been married.

But as a certain Mr. Bond once taught us, Never Say Never.

The next day we were informed that religious leaders (who and why?) had gotten involved and a compromise was being hammered out.

Shoaib would divorce Ayesha (who he claimed he hadn't married) and pay her off (an allegedly 15 crores) leaving him free to marry Sania.

Phew. Finally over. But wait a minute.

As another old axiom goes: It Aint Over Till The Fat Lady Sings.

Or in this case a fat Imam who issued a fatwa condemning Shonia.

They were allegedly living together in Sania's house before getting married and the Imam apparently got his knickers in a twist over Sania’s lack of the same. Or so he imagined in that fertile sex-obsessed mind of his.

The wedding scheduled for the 15th got hastily advanced and the 2 finally got married to (hopefully) live happily ever after.

Apart from the sleaze, there is a hundred things wrong about this story.

Just look at how it makes the Muslims look.

Marriages happening over telephones? (ha ha and not even over a webcam???).

Imam’s more worried about some engaged couple’s sleeping habits rather than more important things.
Religious leaders facilitating massive pay-offs.

What The Fcuk! Seriously???

The VHP-RSS-Shiv Sena etc must be delirious with joy. This is exactly what they have being trying to taint the Muslims as and here we are. Such lunacy.

And not a single sensible Muslim came forward to denounce this farce.

And that is the difference.
The silent majority.

Its not that the Hindus or Buddhists or Sikhs etc don’t have lunatics among them. The difference is that people from the same community immediately slams such nonsense. When the Shiv Sena went after SRK there was an immediate chorus of condemnation.

And yet as this Shonia farce played out, not a single prominent muslim came forward to call out this nonsense.

So can you help but say…..

Someone save these people from themselves.

Till next time and more blogs.

Vish

P.S. If I am not mistaken, a Muslim guy can legally keep 4 wives at a time, so what was all the insistence on divorce all about?

Home BLOGS

2010-04-12T18:56:00.010+04:00

UPDATED

Nischal da has kindly sent me a pic of "Orient Restaurant" so you can all check out the over-spelling of the word.

See Below:

OF HOME 'MADE' STORIES and OTHER THINGS

Hi Guys,

I was recently in Darjeeling for a short 2 week vacation and on the suggestion of some friends i'm doing a series of short mini-blogs on things that are uniquely Darj.

Just a way to remember the lil things that make Darj home for so many of us.

Let me know your thoughts.

Luv

Vish

RAIN

Visits home always involves lots of aunts and cousins who either come visiting or invite you over for lunch or dinner.

During one such visit by an elderly aunt when she had retold almost 3 hours of old family stories my eyelids began to droop and before there could be some more family drama I stood and went to the window to gaze at the mountains. At that moment even the mountains seemed more interesting than my old aunt's even older stories.

This was when I first noticed a few stray drops of rain fall on the windowpane. Bored and desperate to break the seemingly unending flow of ancient stories, I turned to the group of relatives in the room and mentioned that it looked like it was beginning to rain.

That was all it took to transform my old frail aunt into an opera worthy performer.

Standing up and belying all traces of her age and health she bellowed:

“Pani Paryo. Luga Uttha.” (Its Raining. Pick-Up The Clothes)

With her voice still ringing in my ears, I could only stare; stunned at the volume she was able to produce from such a frail body.

This shock was made even more amazing by the fact that there weren’t any clothes to pick-up.

Or for the matter that this, wasn’t even her house in the first place.

The flavour of Darjeeling is in the rain. Definitely.

---------------------------*---------------------------

ORIENT. OR IS IT?

Everyone who’s grown up (or studied) in Darjeeling will know of the famous hangout:
Orient Restaurant.

Atleast the ones who were born before 1990.

Those innocent childhood days had no internet cafés to spend hours over nor Facebook friends to report mundane status updates to.

All we had were boyhood tales & hamjayega jokes. And they were usually told & retold over steaming plates of momos & thukpas which were washed down with Goldspot and Thums-Up and sometimes, maybe something a little stronger….lets just say something that required a little more brewing.

Maybe that was the reason that among parents and elders, visiting Orient didn’t have quite the same innocent distinction as maybe Penang’s or Benis café did.

So going into Orient was almost always done on the sly. And furthermore by virtue of being situated at a tri-junction of what is possibly some of the busiest streets in Darjeeling, entering Orient also had the added danger of being spotted by some relative or the other.

“Papa ko sathi, Gurung Uncle le dekheko thiyo re tah….” and all that drama.

And maybe it is because of this very reason that I had never realized that on the entrance board, both the words “Orient” and “Restaurant” has been miss-spelt.

And how have they been miss-spelt?

Well, you’ll just have to look more closely the next time you are in that part of town.

I am still too scared to stand in front of Orient and take pictures… who knows, that Gurung Uncle may still be around.

Note: This pic is courtesy Nischal da

---------------------------*---------------------------

TAILORS

The zip on my suitcase had come off courtesy some over-eager baggage handlers at Bagdogra airport and unlike the UAE where things like this are usually disposed of, Darjeeling has a neighborhood tailor who’ll pretty much repair everything that can possibly be fixed.

That new jeans needs to be shortened? No Problem.

I need a cover for my car. No Problem.

The house needs a curtain? No Problem.

Shower Curtain?? Still No Problem.

And what is more, his “personal touch” will put most multinational customer service providers to shame.

I have to admit that I don’t visit the Tailor often, heck, for that matter I don’t even go back home so often. Yet when I went there with my suitcase the first thing he said was…

Kaile aaunu bhayeko? Dubai ma, hoina? (When did u come? You’re in Dubai, aren’t you?)

And here in Abu Dhabi the supermarket I visit almost every day probably doesn’t even know I exist.

Home. Aaah.

---------------------------*---------------------------

BENIS KO AALU

This, as every true-blue Darj gal will tell you, is actually not 100% accurate.

If it were taken literally, every tourist would probably look for Beni’s, locate the café and then complain about the horrid aalu they got there and curse your taste.

What Darj people mean when they mention the above is actually a small shop located opposite the café. It has no name, no signboards and at first glance you can barely imagine that such a place could be famous.

However having eaten there ever since I was a kid, for me, it has always been just “Benis ko aalu dokan”.

It probably took a jaundiced NRI eye to notice that the actual place they do the cooking in is a small room directly above the shop. And guess what? It has a window through which you can see the kid (or child labour depending on how you look at it) stirring the huge pot.

And the place is not even tall enough for him to stand straight.
So as a result, he’s always hunched over the pot as he stirs.

The secret of the taste of Benis, I dare say, is probably coming from his sweating brow.

But then who cares.... the cold in Darj makes everything fine again. Even Germs.

---------------------------*---------------------------

FOR THE LOVE OF THE FLAVOUR.

There is a new brand of condoms in India. Its called Manforce.

(Now whether the name in any way recommends rape or any kind of 'forced' entry is another topic for another day. )

For today I’m more interested in the flavours.

Selections like strawberry, banana (obviously), bubblegum, vanilla etc are the usual suspects when it comes to prophylactic flavours, but remember this is an Indian condom, marketed to Indian tastes. And so guess what they came up with?

What else but “Pan Pleasure”

Now I would usually associate chewing paan with a guy.

Not that women don’t chew paan, but if it were to be an obsession, I’d think a guy would seem more appropriate.

And if I am not mistaken, flavoured condoms don’t really do much for the ‘wearer’ as opposed to the ‘partner’ so I’m really confused as to who exactly the target audience for this is?

Unless ofcourse it causes a ‘tingling’ sensation and you like a ‘tingle while you fingle' - so to speak.

Khair... Jaane do

---------------------------*---------------------------

CALENDARS.

Long before Vijay Mallya began customizing it with skimpily clad girls, Indians (and you didn’t have to be famous for this – you just needed a giant size ego) were printing and distributing calendars freely.

But Greed always trumped Ego so the calendars were usually 1 big sheet with a picture (usually of some God) with flimsy date sheets to rip off at the bottom.

This time at a friend’s house I happened to see one of these calendars.

Now apart from the fact that he was a LIC Agent there really wasn’t any other justifiable ‘qualification’ for actually printing and distributing calendars.

Maybe he just liked to see his name in print. Maybe he needed to make a point to someone. Maybe…. I don't know..

But to be fair it was also mentioned that he was a Gold Medalist of some kind.

But going by the spelling, just the spelling.... I’d say not a very good one.
Maybe he just 'made' the gold madel.

Till next time ........

NEW MOON: Movie Review

2010-04-09T20:45:00.005+04:00

OLD MOON IN A NEW BOTTLE

Dear Friends,

I was on a short vacation and therefore i could not blog.

Anyway before i come to some blogs on Darjeeling soon, here's a review i have been holding off on for more than a few months now.. Let me know your thoughts.

Luv

Vish

THE TWILIGHT SAGA: NEW MOON
MOVIE REVIEW

I have been holding off on writing the review for New Moon for almost half a year now.

Most of my friends loved it but I just did not go ga-ga over it. I found it stupid and surprisingly over-the-top.

Maybe I was in a bad mood while watching the film. I gave it the benefit of the doubt and didn’t write anything. However last week on my flight back from Delhi I watched it again on the inflight selection. And guess what. It was still bad. Still ridiculous.

In the movie, after it is advertently revealed that Jacob is actually a werewolf, the vampire loving Bella and him walk in the beach and have the following conversation.

Bella: So you are a werewolf.
Jacob: I guess so.
Bella: Isn’t there anything you can do about it.
Jacob: Its not a lifestyle choice Bella.
Bella: Aah OK. I guess so.

Friends of mine in the US who saw this movie reported contrasting reactions during this scene. The tweens were going “aaaahhhh” but most of the adults were laughing at the sheer sight of Bella & Jacob talking about it like it were some minor issue.

So the only real reason for its massive success has to be the teens and the teenagers or “tweens” as they are now known.

Anyway I’m getting ahead of the story here. Lets start at the very beginning because as Ms. Julie Andrews taught us, it a very good place to start.

When Bella (Kristen Stewart) wakes for the first time in The New Moon she’s horrified by the nightmare she’s just had. That is, as she looks out on a flowery field, she sees her future, as Edward’s (Robert Pattinson) beloved who is an old woman. The horror apparently is that she is aging. After all, she suddenly wakes up and remembers, it’s her 18th birthday already.

This ‘tragedy’ is somehow made worse when her dad, Charlie arrives in her bedroom with gifts and jokes that he’s spotted a gray hair amid her glorious thick brown tresses.

Well, it’s just too much.

Bella, being the drama queen who takes herself way to seriously, rushes to the mirror to assure herself that she’s not, in fact, old.

For most of us in our late 20’s and 30’s this is just plain silly. Stupid and Silly.

Feeling Old?? And that too at 18? Come on, its even more silly than having a love triangle between a werewolf, a vampire and a stupid old 18 year old girl.

But for the tweens, this taps into their inner angst where 25 is unimaginably OLD and where anyone over 30 is automatically Uncle or Aunty.

It’s no surprise then that Bella turns this bit of angst into her recurring desire, that Edward turn her into a Vampire i.e. have hot vampirish sex with her (again something the tweens seem to always have on their mind).

Not that it matters. As everyone knows by now, Bella and Edward are all about delaying gratification. They gush, they pant, they touch foreheads and maybe just maybe, kiss sometimes.

But the fact that 3 more films have to come out of this means they need a few more problems. So Edward suddenly and quite inexplicably decides that Bella just doesn’t belong in his world. He doesn’t want her, he says, and in addition, he asserts “You’re not good for me.” Strangely the stupid girl believes him and begins a very long and boring 15 minutes where she longs for him in angst. (Yeah baby its all about the angst in this movie.)

Edward of course is not “gone”. He keeps appearing as a smoke-ish image to warn Bella not to be “reckless,” which of course she (being the stupid girl she is) keeps being in the hope that she will see his smoky image again. Seriously, where is SKYPE when you need it?

Anyway after she finally gets tired of moping around and hitching rides with Hell’s Angels, she decides to visit Jacob (Taylor Lautner) to get him to fix some bikes (??). He falls in love, she gets reckless again, she falls and he does what he was paid to do in the movie. He removes his shirt.

Bella—and every tween in the audience—gasps.

In an example of very bad, corny writing she says breathlessly, “You’re sort of beautiful!” Maybe that white faced wimpy bloodsucking leech isn’t her only option. Maybe. Just Maybe.

But there’s a complication. But of course.

Even as Bella begins to softly caress Jake’s abs (and for the sake of the tweens he is almost always bare-bodied), he reveals that he’s a werewolf. Which leads us to the beginning of the review where I mentioned their ridiculously mundane conversation about something so radical.

“You’re-a-werewolf-OK-Great-Now-lets-get-on-with-it” kinda mundane.

Then for some agonizingly slow 30 min or so of the movie, Bella begins to ponders her future while Jake turns into a wimpy lovesick wolf-boy and Edward prepares for a strip-tease in Italy.

And yet… all this drama leads exactly nowhere.

You don’t have to be an expert in the Twilight series to know that Bella actually has no option. That Edward who’s determined not to have sex with her is always the “one.”
Wolf-boy has no chance of sinking his fangs (or any other part of his) into her.

New Moon then hurtles towards a big flashy climax (no no, not that type of climax) that’s both hilarious and comically camp. During a meeting of the Volturi, Aro (Michael Sheen) tells Edward and Bella that they will have to be killed for breaking vampire laws. Edward has shown himself to the humans. Too bad Aro doesn’t know that Edward’s girlfriend has a wolf waiting as a second suitor. Imagine what he’d have done then.

Anyway during this ‘meeting’, the Volturi are shocked on discovering Bella’s special gift.
Namely that the cocky vampire mind readers can’t read Bella’s mind.

Now it’s not clear whether this is because Bella is really special in some way or because she really has nothing in her brain. I’d personally go with the second option but then what do I know.

I am not a tween.

The sad part of this climax is the waste of 2 great actors; Michael Sheen (having some great fun as he gets to act so over-the-top) and Dakota Fanning (whose power is to make a victim believe she is feeling pain which she does by looking sternly at the victim). Fanning in particular has less than 4 minutes of screen time and yet in those 4 minutes she makes you wonder what wonders she could have done with Bella’s role.

The 3rd installment in this saga, Eclipse, is coming this summer.

Unlike the tweens, I’m not panting in anticipation but then who knows.......

Maybe they’ll finally have sex. Maybe they’ll even have a threesome.

We humans live in hope afterall.

ONLY IN NEW YORK

2010-03-11T11:58:00.004+04:00

HA HA, HE HE, HEY HEY, HO HO

I have mentioned many times over the last few years about this absolutely awesome website called "Overheard In New York" which lists random conversations overheard all around NY and submitted by fans of the site. Any one can submit and then the editors choose the best ones and post them on the site.

The conversations are hilarious alright but the ‘headlines’ that the editors at the site give it are sometimes even funnier (in red).

Enjoy and do remember to bookmark the site. On a depressing day there’s nothing better to perk you up than examples of fellow human beings spouting absolute nonsense.

Below are some of the choice ones from the last 3 weeks entries.

Enjoy & Luv

Vish

Eh, That Could Mean Anything.

Fat woman #1: Listen! I am telling you that that bitch stole my cat! I am absolutely positive that she mothafuckin' stole my cat!
Fat woman #2: Girl, she probably did, she's crazy. What made you so damn convinced that she did it?
Fat woman #1: Because I got a mothafuckin' text message from her sayin', "meow."

--Liquor Store, Brooklyn

...Like, One That Makes You Thin?

Woman: And she's dying from some disease.
Man: Well, is it a good disease?

--57th & 7th

That's Cold.

Younger pharmacy clerk: I'm cold.
Older pharmacy clerk: That's your problem.

--Duane Reade

How Kids Learn to Offer Bribes
Little boy, whispering to brother: That's a cop. He can arrest people.
(brother starts tickling little boy)
Little boy: Arrest him! Arrest him!
Cop: Sorry, kid. I'm off duty.

--5 Train

Supernanny Calls That "Time Out With Extreme Prejudice"

Dad to screaming kid: Stop screaming! Stop screaming! Do you want to go to time out?
Screaming kid to dad: It's too cold for time out!
Dad to screaming kid: Then we'll do it on the subway!
Screaming kid to dad: There's no time out on the subway!
Dad to screaming kid: There is if daddy leaves you on the train.

--42nd & 7th

Who Doesn't Love a Jazzhandjob?

Woman: You mean you didn't like having sex with her?
Man: Well, I mean, she was just too... jazzy afterwards.
Woman: Oh, I know. Don't worry, that's just how she is. I thought it was weird at first, too.
Man: Excuse me, when did you start fucking my girlfriends, you little whore?!

--Madison Square Garden

If I Could Read Minds, I Wouldn't Be Homeless, Ma'am

Hobo: Spare some change, ma'm?
Woman: Ugh, I don't have any change, I'm going to yoga. Why would I carry change if I'm going to yoga?

--The Strand

Romance in the times of Twilight.

Girl to boyfriend kissing her hand: Are you kissing my hand or wiping your nose?

--Central Park

Sit Your Ass Down, You Overcompliant Child

Mother to son, at semi-crowded subway: Where's Alliyah?
Son: I don't know, somewhere over there.
Mother: Alliyah!
(Alliyah walks over)
Mother: Where were you?
Alliyah: Over there.
Mother: Sitting down?
Alliyah: Yeah.
Mother: Then why'd you get up?
Alliyah: (shakes head and rolls eyes)

--F Train

How Was Your Martin Luther King Day, New York?

Nurse to Asian woman at free blood pressure screening: Ma'am, you need to get your high blood pressure checked out by a doctor.
Asian woman: No English.
Elderly black woman: I speak Chinese.
Nurse: Really?
Elderly black woman: Yeah. Ching-ching-ching!

--Harlem

2010-03-11T11:21:00.004+04:00

ITS A QUESTION OF A QUESTION.
EK SAWAAL KA SAWAAL HAI

After the last few morose topic I thought I’d give you some light things to ponder over.

Here are some Questions you just CAN'T answer (and if you can then do write back to let me know).

You dont need to ponder too much... they are all in a light vein... remember "Agar Rupa ki baniyan pehnoge toh.....toh...toh..Rupa kya Pehnegi??""

Enjoy.

Luv

Vish

Why doesn't Tarzan have a beard? What does he shave with?

Why do we press harder on a remote control when we know the batteries are flat?

Why do banks charge a fee on 'insufficient funds' when they know there is not enough?

Why do Kamikaze pilots wear helmets?

Why does someone believe you when you say there are four billion stars, but check when you say the paint is wet?

Whose idea was it to put an 'S' in the word 'lisp'?

You know the speed of Light but what is the speed of darkness?

Why is it that people say they 'slept like a baby' when babies wake up every two hours?

Are there specially reserved parking spaces for 'normal' people at the Special Olympics?

Do married people live longer than single ones or does it only seem longer? (LOL....I know it is not really a question but I couldnt resist this one.)

How is it that we put man on the moon before we figured out it would be a good idea to put wheels on luggage?

Why do people pay to go up tall buildings and then put money in binoculars to look at things on the ground?

Why do toasters always have a setting so high that could burn the toast to a horrible crisp, which no decent human being would eat?

Why is there a light in the fridge and not in the freezer?

Why do people point to their wrist when asking for the time, but don't point to their bum when they ask where the bathroom is? He he he

Why does Goofy stand erect while Pluto remains on all fours? They're both dogs!

If quizzes are quizzical, what are tests? (Dont answer that..)

If corn oil is made from corn, and vegetable oil is made from vegetables, then what is baby oil made from?

If electricity comes from electrons, does morality come from morons? (Again. Try and refrain)

Did you ever notice that when you blow in a dog's face, he gets mad at you, but when you take him on a car ride, he sticks his head out the window?

Does pushing the lift button more than once make it arrive faster?

Why do the Alphabet song (ABCD..EFG...HIJK...LMNOP) and Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star have the same tune?

Now Stop singing and get back to work.......

Actor Dies After being tasered.

2010-03-10T15:52:00.004+04:00

DEATH WATCH. WATCH DEATH. QUITE LITERALLY.

Its always sad when someone dies but even more so when it could have been avoided.

A porn actor, Andrew Grande, was pronounced dead this morning at a Florida hospital.

The 23-year-old was in the middle of filming a new reality show when he got into an argument with a girl. Someone reported the disturbance and when the cops arrived one of the police officers tried to arrest Andrew.

He resisted and quickly shoved something in his mouth, which was later found to be Marijuana.

And that's when things turned deadly for him.

Since he was resisting arrest, one of the officers 'tasered' him to restrain him, but the jolt forced the contents in his mouth to lodge in his throat and he began to choke.

The officers desperately tried to save him by using the Hiemlich maneuver but the bag was just too big and by the time the paramedics arrive, he had already passed out. He was dead by the time they reached the hospital.

And just because he was in the middle of reality show, there is footage of the entire ordeal, which you can watch below.

I must warn you that it's pretty disturbing and not very easy to watch and for that matter i cant even believe the cameraman kept shooting.

So Sad & So Tragic.

Vish

IMP: VIEWER DISCRETION STRICTLY ADVISED.

Cry Baby Over Milk

2010-03-10T15:21:00.003+04:00

YET ANOTHER MILK STORY...

A Company called E-Trade debuted an ad during this year's Super Bowl.

And at this stage if you dont follow american football or have any kind of interest in Lindsay Lohan its probably a good idea to stop reading.

Anyway the ad shows 2 kids (babies actually) video chatting.

The boyfriend had apparantly not shown up the previous night for a date with his girlfriend and claims he was working on "diversifying his portfolio" on E-Trade.

The suspecting girlfriend then asks..

"And that Milk-o-holic Lindsay wasnt there??"

Even as the flustered boyfriend is asking "Lindsay???" UP pops a baby girl's head onto the screen saying angrily "Milk-o WHAT??"

Now Miss Lindsay Lohan has had her troubles with the paps with her boozing and alcoholism so she claims that they were mocking her in that ad and wants a cool $100 Million as compensation.

And quite incredibly she also goes on to claim that like Oprah and Cher she too is known world wide by just her first name.

Yeah....Maybe in Cuckoo-Land.

Anyway she claims she saw the ad and called her mommy in tears asking;

"Mommy, mommy how can anyone be so rude?"

Cry-o-holic Anyone???

Enjoy the ad.

Luv

Vish

Honey, I Sprayed the Cops

2010-03-09T14:01:00.002+04:00

THE MILK OF HUMAN KINDNESS ??

Wow. Sometimes there comes a bit of news which just makes you speechless.
Seriously. There really isn't much you can say except state the facts and here they are.

An woman in Arizona, USA (where else), was arrested for public intoxication Friday night and taken to jain. There she was given a prison uniform to change into and while doing that she apparantly "sprayed" the cop who was booking her in the face with BREAST MILK!!!

Seriously. SERIOUSLY.

What is wrong with some people?!!

And it gets crazier here.

Apparantly in the USA (again, where else) breast milk is considered as third degree assault in a court of law and so the crazy woman got another charge added.

Over here all i can say is that I dont know what i'm more surprised about.

That something like this could even happen or the fact that it has happened often enough for there to be legislation about it.

WOW.

And that poor cop???

He had to be DECONTAMINATED!!

Check out the news below.... unfortunately they still have not released the cctv tapes from the prison of the actual 'act'.

Enjoy

Vish

CRAZY IS AS CRAZY DOES

2010-03-07T09:26:00.002+04:00

FARM ANY BABIES TODAY?

I am in the mood for some net-lecturing today.

Have we seriously gone net-crazy?

By now many of you must have heard of the South Korean couple who let their 3 month old baby daughter die of starvation only because they were too busy raising their ‘virtual’ child online. Both unemployed, they would spend 6-8 hours in the nearby internet café where they were obsessed with a role-playing game called “Prius Online” in which they nurtured a virtual girl named ‘Anima’.

Bottle feeding the poor baby only once everyday, they spent hours upon hours online making sure that ‘Anima’ got her virtual milk on time.

On September 24th when they returned home after spending the whole night at the internet café they found their poor baby dead and promptly went into hiding at a relative’s home from where they had the cheek to issue a statement.

It said: “I’m sorry to my daughter and hope she doesn’t get sick in heaven.”

Now let that be a lesson to all of you who spend hours on your ‘farms’.

Your children & family may not exactly be starving for food but they are starving nonetheless.

Starving for your time and attention.

Think of all the real things you can do for your family and loved ones the next time you go to plant some virtual ‘strawberries’.

BTW did you notice that in that report about the Korean case the virtual baby was called “Anima” but there was no mention of the poor ‘real’ baby’s name.

Neither by the reporters nor by the parents in their statement.

And That’s Sad. Very Very Sad.

Till next time and hopefully some better news.

Luv

Vish

P.S. How many of you were thinking of Googling ‘Prius Online’ even while you were reading the article above? Shame On You.