The first one

Has anyone noticed how similar South African fast bowler, Andre Nel looks a acts the way the character Cramer (Michael Richards, I believe) behaves in Sienfeld??

Now that selectors have finally got rid of Ganguly, all I can feel is a bit sad about the whole thing. Although, I am not one of Ganguly's maniacal Kolkatan supporters, I am not one to disregard him as well. So, I think the selectors have been a bit hasty in chucking him out of the squad. He might have been given another go in the third test, if not as a number 6 then at least, as an opener. If Indian team management can send Irfan Pathan as an opener then why not have Ganguly open as an experimental move. Gautam Gambhir has looked a wee bit low on confidence in the recent inings. Also, I do not buy the selectors and some past players logic that as a senior player, he must be played. IMHO, he might be kept in the squad and the better person on the day might be taken in the playing eleven. And this might be made clear to Ganguly beforehand. Bad behaviuor, attitude and all, no one can question the guy's fighting qualities. So, probably, he should have been let to live one more da...

Since, my emotions have now ebbed having seen the movie nearly 3-4 days ago, I'll not be as eloquent/scathing as I am generally prone to be ;-) Here, I'll generally list down certain facts that occured to me during the movie. Firstly, I found the movie underdeveloped. By that I mean a movie that promises more when it starts but delivers considerably less when finished. Considering that Ram Gopal Verma (referred to as RGV henceforth as done by my fellow bloggers) attributes this as his greatest effort till date, it whimpers more than it roars. Not that the movie is bad. Rather, the movie is just not good enough. Satya and Company were far more assertive and assured in their makeup. Sarkaar, on the other hand ends up a bit too restrained. Probably, the expectation of emulating the cult series "The Godfather" proved a bit too much. Let me try other explanations. The movie didn't had much weight. I wanted to get consumed by the movie. I wan't. Mere staring and ...

Firstly, the movie is wrongly titled. There is no war in the movie. Cause there can't be any one sided wars, can it? Mars Attacks Revisited or Attack of the Cloaks or The Running Cruise might be more appropriate. So, now that we have established the correct name of the movie, lets go ahead with the plot. Oops. There isn't any. Ok. Never mind. At least, we have the Tom Cruise. Cruise?? Hell, he didn't jump on the couch this time. Why did he have to restrain himself to hamming and running and generally irritatingly yelling at the kids? He even got under a table. At least he shoudl have climbed on it. Ok. Ok. What about the special effects?? Umm...they are ok, good actually. But only in some scenes. Watch them on TV rushes instead. Ah...Direction? I'll comment about that when Speilberg completes the movie in the sequel (which is never going to happen). Lets move on to Indiana Jones, Stevie..

Well, the title refers to a Hindi word meaning commotion. And thats what seems to be the state of Indian cricket journalism, post Chappel selection. There is too much being written about him and his methods, even before a single match has been played under him. He has been regularly touted as The Professor (there goes your invention, Deano!) who has come in and now will teach all cricketers out of form/luck/attitude/technique/health/prime/etc, correct methods to acquiring cricketing excellence in four simple steps. This is completely mindless. And mindless aftermath it would be when India again loses despite having a master tutor like Chappel riding with them. As for Chappel himself, I don't think he has been handling media well himself. He is certainly not helping matters by touting Sehwag as the future captain and branding Sachin as past his prime. Though, he is fully entitiled to his views, he must learn to keep them to himself and work with the players concerned through individ...

Looking at the rate at which Brian Lara is raking up centuries, he would get to that 35th century mark, much desired by a certain Sachin Tendulakar, first. He has been in sublime form right from the start of the South African tour and is running full steam ahead into the Pakistan tour as well. On top of that, Lara doesn't seem to be habouring any injury worries as well. With Sachin out for at least four months and West Indies scheduled to play about 5 tests(2 vs Sri lanka, 3 vs Aussies) by the year end, the mark doesn't seem entirely out of reach. And Lara might not be playing for that 35th century as Sachin seems to be these days. So, that might give him a slight mental advantage. Anyways, we spectators are in for a good race for sure :-)

Has anybody ever noticed that the third child in the family has the most refined features of all the siblings? I should say, sharpest to be more accurate. My observation is - the more the number of children a couple has, better the features of the next born child get. In my generation of kids, three was a generally accepted number. Four kid families were rare. One kid was considered good family planning. But two to three, generally, was the case. And I have heard a couple of interesting remarks whenever there was gathering at our house or when some friends of my parents came over. One being that the third child was an "accident" with a "if you know what I mean" kind of (sheepish) laughter. (Apparently, nobody was paying attention that a seemingly harmless kid lurking around had started to get a know how into their world ;-) Coming back to the third child theory, in my section in school, there were at least 7 to 8 (may be more) three sibling students. And in most ...

I was appalled by some of the comments that the aspiring coaches of Indian origin made on the selection of Greg Chappell(/them being not considered) as Indian cricket teams coach. Sample some of the comments by Ajit Wadekar, Ashok Malhotra, Amarnath etc at cricinfo http://content.cricinfo.com/quote/content/page/156062.html. I fail to understand why they are raving about an Indian not been given the opportunity to coach. Before John Wright came along, there were only Indians all the way. And what did they achieve? Did anyone know that the Cricket Team HAD a coach before? If anybody knew, how many attached any importance to it? Not many, I guess. All these stupid comments are a further testimony of their incompetence. The only Indian worth considering, Sandip Patil, quietly rejected the offer without making any hue and cry about it. And he was worth considering only because he had proved it. He had taken a far lesser team to the World Cups semis, Duckworth-Lewis, rain, boycott and all. H...

The force is stronger in this one :-) Finally, got to see Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, yesterday. Pretty decent. Definitely better than the last couple of prequels. And it did stoke my fire to see the original series once again, mostly to see the flashes between Obi Van Kenobi and Vader. It would be interesting to see their interactions now that I have seen their relationship and parting encounter and note if they come across as stranger in the original series or not. Lucas has also been able to tie up the loose ends put forth in the last two prequels, nicely. It does indeed serve as a good docking point for the "A New Hope". Guess, they should release the original series again, at least in India. So, take out your sabers and run to the temple ...

"He/she can't act!!". How often have youn heard this? Plenty a time, I guess. I mostly get amused when I hear this. This sets me thinking because this comes from ordinary, plain vanilla people like you and me (Well, I am not that plain ;-) ) who one would suppose donn know a whit about acting. What IS Acting? In my opinion, if somebody doesn't seem unnatural on screen, he is doing ok. Thats how the so called non actors like Akshay Kumar, Salman Khan, Sunil Shetty.. etc have survived more than a decade in the industry. Of course, they might not make u cry when they themselves shed loads of glycerine on screen. But generally, they won't make you inflict injuries upon yourself. To be concluded ...;-)

So, Team India (BTW who has coined this team india crap??) got a new captain, though only temporarily. A lot of debate has been going on in the past about Rahul Dravid replacing Sourav Ganguly as India's Cricket Captain. Who is better?? I think, a comparison is not at all fair at this point. But I still think that Dravid might not prove to be as good a captain as Ganguly. Ganguly has done the hard yards. He has practically built this team from nothing (which is slowly withering away). He is definitely a better man- manager in my opinion. He chides and makes up (remember his fisticuffs with Srinath). And he has won battles both on personal form and team front. Dravid, if he takes over, will have a slightly easier task. First of all, he has a clutch of talented/proven players already available to him. Secondly, he does not have to bring in a culture change in the team. He has already done that with Ganguly. So, his task is promarily to get that burning desire back. Or, may be more i...

And Team India has got it seriously wrong. Whats wrong with these guys? Although, Afridi is a far better batsman than he is given credit for, Indians should have had a plan against him. I don't think they had/have any considering that in every other match he gets away with a blistering knock against them. And today, he absolutely pummulled the Indians. Time for the team to get its act together.

Blogger has got it wrong too. Why doesn't the time and date setting get hold of my comps date-time-zone automatically??

GMail has got it wrong. They don't provide the user the facility to create their own folders. This is seriously annoying if one has a some daily/professional mails coming all the while which one doesn't necessarily want to remove but which eat up your inbox view nevertheless. Hence, personal/directed mails are harder to find. Labels are just not good enough. Search is good but folders are better. No point in wading through the junk to find some obscure mail that you want to make a point to your friend. :(

Because Art is an imitation of life and not life itself. So, I would like to work for the betterment of the quality of life rather than merely portraying it in some form or the other.

Why am I drawn to the movies? Why do I flock to the various theaters spread across the city week after week? What do I get in those 2 hours that I can shun the real world with all happiness? Who are those other people filling up the rest of the seats in the theater? These questions, every now and then, pop up from nowhere and make me wonder. so, I'll jot down a few things that have occurred to me over the past few years. 1. Life and movies: I find movies reflecting the life around me in some way or the other. Sometimes they are a saga of the triumph of the Human Spirit. Sometimes they depict the complex interplay between Man and Woman. Another time they paint the picture of humungous imagination (All those sci-fi flicks). Still another time, they paint human misery in such realistic colours that one is forced to take stock and realize how lucky one is not facing that same situation (war flicks, Black??). 2. The Craft: I am intrigued by the craft - the camerawork, the direction, the...

Oops...I lost all that I had written because of some curious mix of key presses. :-( Ah! Well... Audience, of course, is the parameter of success. And for a filmmaker, it definitely is. And by that paramater, Sanjay Leela Bhansali has surely succeeded. At least in my book. He made the audience go blank. After the movie. Generally, the noise, the clatter, the laughter, the chit-chat after the movie will give you an idea about how the movie has fared in terms of audience acceptance/rejection. In the case of BLACK, I found the audience curiously quiet. Were all of them affected by the movie? Were they moved? I would not know for sure. But I certainly was. Probably, the people were too. Or, somebody in there would have screamed when an already aged Amitabh touched(or at least gave an impression of) the lips of a young, in all its glory, Rani. Somebody would have whistled. It made me uncomfortable. I was afraid of the people reaction. The scene passed. And the director, too. Nobody m...

I am on a week off from work (well deserved, mind you). I have been reading Atlas Shrugged a bit, the novel, of course. After about 50 odd pages, I am, frankly, disappointed. Ayn Rand is as indifferent as can be in this novel as compared to the widely acclaimed, the Faountainhead. The characters act and look the same. They pretty predictable as well. There is too much blabber as well. Also, I can't understand her fetish for creating strictly one dimensional characters. Though, I u nderstand her depiction of (and sort of identify with) an uncompromised self upheaval, I can't really see why some of the characters act as complete idiots. The contrast if at all needed to be emphasized is not served well by this kind of character conflict creation. All in all, I would recommend either of the 2 novels but not both. Because, if u understand Ayn Rand in the first, there is not much left to be understood in the second. A minor note: I found "The Fountainhead" to be brilli...

I have become quite known in my office circle for propounding theories about anything and everything in sight and related to human relationships. I have also been lovingly(grudgingly) branded "Aaj ka Freud (misspelled as fraud)" by a certain well known celebrity across my cube wall who also happens to share my office circle. I have also seen some kids reading some heavy handed philosophical stuff from which they seem to get affected quite easily. This has given me quite a neat idea to write about such stuff (or mostly my findings) in some form in this blog. The ways in-fame are mysterious ;-)

Its been quite a while since I wrote anything. Hmm...probably a good sign, who knows. Nothing much has changed since I wrote last. I have pondered about my state almost every single minute since. My Mom has made her usual remarks about her already found a bahu with only date to be fixed and about all the exploits of my not yet 2 feet bhateeja. My dad, now leading a happily retired life, is anxious about my non chalance/disgust about every possible thing life has to offer (and a wife being one among them), and is learning computers himself. Given his enthusiasm, he will surely beat me to the post which should give me some jitters, I guess :-) I have also watched my usual quota of movies. In between, I have slogged quite a bit as well. So, all the more reason to hate what I do or more accurately not (want to) do. This seriuosly is turning out to be an anti climax though frankly, as the wise would say, it should be starting. I have also sufferred my old childhood friend for the past 2...