Monday, September 25, 2006

Raj Thackeray’s Gift to Maharashtra

Recent News Item 1: Maharashtra Nav-nirman Sena activists threaten the commissioner of the PMC.
Recent News Item 2: Maharashtra Nav-nirman Sena and Shiv Sena followers fight over display of some flags and placards in Vile-Parle.

Older News Item: Raj Thackeray threatens Lawyers against defending the Mumbai blast perpetrators.

Raj, when you broke away from your uncle, you took your own time to frame the ideology, toured Maharashtra to find out the problems people face, criticized your own uncle, the previous governments, policies on the population in Mumbai, roads in Pune and such. There was hope. We thought, at last, the eroding thought-leadership of Maharashtra in politics is now on restraint. We have someone to follow the ideals from not just Shivaji, but also the clichéd Phule, Tilak, Ambedkar, even Vasant Rao Naik or Anna Hazare for that matter. This blog even asked what does Raj stand for. And now we know. But what do we have here? Nothing more than hooligans causing problems and making situations acerbic.

As they say, like begets like. An offspring of Shiv Sena may not be very different from its parent. And though it is senseless to ask this question, I still wonder, how the Prabodhankar would have felt if he were alive today.

Tuesday, September 12, 2006

Tuesday, September 05, 2006

Fanaa review

Aap hindi movies nahi dekhate naa. (You don’t watch Hindi movies, that’s why.) I was chastised by the group for not participating in the intense discussion. I shrugged and nodded hoping it would all end there, but then people discussed something which was as Greek or Latin to me as .NET is to the Perl guy.

“When was the last time you watched a movie?” Someone persisted.

“Umm, very recently actually, I did not have an alternative.”

“Why?”

“Because the bus I was traveling in played it.”

Then I was asked which movie and how did I like it. Everyone swooned over Fanaa and how good it was…. Umm, it was okay – I said a little scared of another rap on my knuckles.

“Okay? How could you say okay? That movie is too good” – Again the Ms. Perseverance.

“Well, it was predictable.”

Now the entire meeting room had question mark on its face.

Yeah, predictable it was – I took the onus of explaining it. Once Kajol identified the things and declared they were Amir’s I sensed, he must be the perpetrator of the act. They cannot kill the hero in the middle of the movie!

Once Amir landed on the snow capped mountains, he was bound to bump into Kajol, and he did. Once he bumped into her, he was bound to tell her – I am the one…he couldn’t have let his chance go by. Once Rishi Kapoor confronted him, he had to die, what good are old heroes for anyway? Once Kajol came to know about the nuclear decoder (or whatever the thing that Amir was carrying), she was bound to contact the military and also to kill Amir.

“But that was daring, no?”

What, hitting a tomato to make red colored blood? Get real, they couldn’t have shown Amir killing Kajol – the movie would have gone bust. Could you have imagined Roza or Bombay with a different ending?

Now, did I tell you, I don’t watch a lot of Hindi movies?