‘Raavan’ is not the Mani Ratnam movies of the eighties/nineties where human relationships are painted on the broader context of a social problem (Terrorism in Roja, Underworld in Nayakan). It firmly belongs to the ever-shrinking world of the 21st century and the complexity of interpersonal relationships come to the fore. However, it isn’t a run-of-the-mill revenge drama by the genius either.

It has to be rather seen as a modern interpretation of the timeless epic of Ramayana. On the screen the characters unfold and the motives that drive them help you relate to their counterparts in the classic, leaving a uniquely rewarding experience. Mani has admirably adhered to the characters and have not compromised any of their attributes for the sake of novelty. Yet he brilliantly manages to give a fresh perspective in the climax.

Unlike his earlier films, visuals do not just serve as a aesthetic backdrop. In Raavan, it is visuals that tell the story and essentially the defining character of the movie. The unique camera angles from the sideways shots of a dragon fly to the wings of an eagle in flight conveys a jungle filled with eyes. Yet, Beera the forest brigand is an elusive being momentarily seen and the next moment unseen. A maligned force hiding gloriously in plain sight. An enigmatic presence in the teeming abundance of nature. You realise at once that you are truly in Raavan’s “Golden Lanka”.

Camera falls in love with Ragini, played by Aishwarya Rai, from the moment we find her in a raft. It slowly dives into her emerald green eyes and thus hopelessly smitten. It lazily flirts with her, falls into her tresses and even while it momentarily glances afar, only to longingly pan back to her.

Stuck almost claustrophically in a teeming forest, Ravan heightens your senses to a state of alertness. This sensation is almost killed off thanks to the slow progression of events in the first half. But the visual feast continues till the very end and leaves a lasting impression thanks to the mavericks behind the camera.

You can bet on ARR to effortlessly weave the music and background score into the story. The dominant tribal and folksy elements in the score amplifies the experience. Gulzar’s pen again works its magic and sometimes the story relies too much on that magic. For instance, the motives of the bandits are not fully clear and only revealed through the song ‘Thok De Khilli’. This is rather unfortunate because of the odd placement of the song in the heat of the events.

Thankfully, the story picks up in the second half leading to some unexpected twists. Certain scenes are truly hair-raising (such as Beera confronting Sanjeevani) and Mani rewards you for your patience.

I feel Mani has essentially conveyed the essence of Ramayana which is a study of two legendary heroes Ram and Raavan. In fact, Ram and Raavan are essentially the same heroic personality in two different moral planes by mere turn of events. The motives of Raavan were questionable, yet his conduct was indeed noble. In a different context, the roles may have been reversed and yet one might praise the virtuous characters of one versus the other. It is precisely this irony of the epic that the master story-teller Mani Ratnam has tried to portray.

Addendum: Raavanan Review

One of the major flaws of Raavan (Hindi) was the casting. Abhishek Bachan’s overacting and Vikram’s unconvincing portrayal as the ‘good guy’ left audience confused as these characters had shades of grey.

On the other hand, the casting in Raavanan (Tamil) is perfect to a tee. Vikram’s subtle yet engaging performance, keeps you guessing if this brute is even capable of love. The fire and insanity glowing through his eyes justifying the eccentricities of the character. Prithiviraj perfectly suits the role of the duty bound police officer. Karthik also fits in his whimsical yet likeable character perfectly.

The dialogues are also better in the Tamil version. Cheesy dialogues like ‘Is Beera a Robin hood or a Raavan?’ have been thankfully omitted. Some scenes by Vikram manage to convey the visual narrative better. For e.g. when Veera enters Dev’s tent (which he refers to as his palace), his shock-then-anger reaction to his mirror image is quite interesting. It effectively conveys that the Veera/Dev characters are mirror images of each other.

In a nutshell, Raavan was boring till the end of the first half while Raavanan manage to engage till the very end. It is amazing to find such contrast in the movie experience despite identical screenplay and visualisations. So my recommendation is clear – it’s Raavanan all the way.

For a normal kid who grew up in the eighties, Michael Jackson was a part of growing up. MJ – the legend – was a larger-than-life icon. We spent hours trying to copy his moves and create that illusion of ‘Break Dance’, a style of dance that Michael defined and redefined continually. Some of us were pretty good. There was a Michael Jackson imitator in every school or college dancing competition. There were many who could manage a close imitation (Prabhu Deva for instance) but never truly ‘perfect’. To know what’s perfection, one had to rent out a copy of Michael Jackson’s videos. And then watch the jaw-dropping performance for the hundredth time.

Yes, MJ has had more than his share of controversies. The multi-millioniare King of Pop residing in the amusement-park like estate of Neverland Ranch was easy to be hated. Media loved to lampoon every excess of his. But when MJ stepped on stage, when the arc lights shone, something extraordinary happened. When he made his spectacular entry there were goosebumps on every person in the audience. When he moved, the laws of physics would not apply. When he sang, he could dive into pathos and immediately hit a howling yell with remarkable ease. He was in every sense of the term, a performer extraordinaire.

Two days back, in a small packed screening of perhaps a hundred people, I saw one of the most moving homage to this incredible artist. It was aptly called ‘This is It’. Rather than a boring documentary with interviews and flashbacks, the film directly took you to the auditions for MJ’s final tour of the same name. In the next few minutes, you are taken through the gruelling preparations Michael had for what could possibly have been a stage performance never experienced before.

To appreciate the genius of his performances, you need to look no further than the immense amount of improvisation and perfection in every performance of Michael. He doesn’t mime his old soundtracks. He doesn’t even sing to a recorded soundtrack. Everything which happens in an MJ’s show is being performed Live. Yes, today’s teen popstars who can barely mime their performances on stage surely have it easy, don’t they?

As we watch the rehearsals of several iconic hits like ‘Billy Jean’, ‘Thriller’ and ‘Beat It’, you don’t feel for a minute that you are watching an ageing fifty year-old. He effortlessly performs his trademark moves that, despite millions of imitators (including the very talented and cherry-picked stage extras), only Michael could convincingly perform. When he sings, he doesn’t gasp for breath or lose his tempo. He, in fact, single-handedly resurrects his hit numbers performing frighteningly close to what how did when he was a teenager.

As you watch these songs, you cannot help wondering the immense capacity of MJ to entertain his audience. He can stir a range of human emotions be it Romance, Empathy, Frustration or Terror in the deepest possible way through his songs. His audience escape to a world that’s very uniquely Michael’s creation. A surreal world inhabited by gangsters, zombies, and panthers in locales varying from Egyptian deserts to lush tropical rain-forests.

Michael was not just an exceptional artist but an extraordinary human being. In the rehearsals, he treats every artist on crew with respect and humility. He has been credited with supporting more charities than any other artist – 39 charitable organizations – either with monetary donations through sponsorships of their projects or participation in their activities.

His songs broke all boundaries of culture or race. His songs like ‘Heal the World’ leaves a lump in one’s throat and stirs your heart everytime you hear them. For millions of fans, there will be more pop crooners or dazzling dancers, but there will be only one King of Pop. And he will be missed – Forever.

Yes…. This is IT!

Unfortunately, there is no way to escape the tremendous hype surrounding the latest Batman film ‘The Dark Knight’. It spoils a viewer’s experience by raising the expectations to an unrealistic level. Unbelievably, just after I saw the film yesterday, I realized that even the hype couldn’t prepare me for such a fantastic experience. Christopher Nolan’s creation not only appeals to the average film goer but also to the critics establishing a new benchmark against which comic book films will be judged against. In fact, the term ‘comic book movie’ will no longer be understood as a euphemism for ‘bunch of crap appealing to the comic book fans’ anymore.

This multi-climatic, multi-layered, and multi-thematic film is an excellent cinematisation of an epic struggle between good and evil. Through excellent dialogues and almost heart stopping action sequences, the story unfolds rapidly and constantly keeps you guessing. While most action films try hard to come up with one clever climatic arc, Nolan’s Joker gives the audience a maddening parade of climatic moments one after another.

Joker – Best Villain Ever

The biggest highlight of ‘Dark Knight’ is undoubtedly the character of Joker. Though many phsychotic characters have appeared in Hollywood, Heath Ledger’s Joker is path-breaking in many ways:

• He is an absolute. There is a no background story. He himself gives multiple interpretation of his disfigurement. No attempt is made to humanise or even demystify the character.
• His disfigurement makes him a freak, which he further relishes and emphasizes with make-up. His unkempt and battered appearance is hardly scary, but add the body language and intonations of a psychopath and the result is disturbingly real.
• He is arguably not an evil character simply because he has no moral compass. He master-minds situations which involve dire outcomes yet leaves the details to chance. He, in his own words, is Chaos. He proves that sanity or civility is based on the illusion of order that humans have created. The absence of order brings out the latent insanity in everyone. It is in this chaos that Joker thrives.

As Joker aptly tells Batman in a memorable scene – What would I do without you? You complete me.

Even so with my famous sense of direction, I managed to reach a dead end at an uncrowded mall. Smitha and Bharathy decided it would be a good time to open the tiffin box. I was too busy gobbling down the Bread Upama. While JD didn’t miss the opportunity to tease about the girls’ culinary skills. Meanwhile Jaanavi bought some essential supplies to ‘fuel’ us for the rest of the day.

Cornered in the Quad

Though unfortunately many colleges were closed on Saturday, the most important (and spectacular) one wasn’t. That was Christ Church/College - where Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (aka. Lewis Carroll) taught and in the settings of which based his famous book ‘Alice in Wonderland’ . Some of the nooks and crannies of the place began looking eerily familiar when someone pointed out that many parts of the college was used for shooting the Harry Potter movies. The rectangular grassy open space in the centre (referred to as the Quadrangle) was truly breathtaking. Whenever this happens, that is, stumbling across such breathtaking vistas – the inevitable, the unavoidable happens. The next 15 mins is taking pictures of the individuals, sometimes in different permutations, with our gorgeous view backdrop. Rather, whatever you could make out of the view from the jigsaw puzzle that was created. Newbie photographers like me prefer to shoot just the landscape, but my more knowledgeable friends never fail to advice me - “Da fool, how will others know that you visited that place”. I scratch my head and grin as if I’m a fool and move on. Enough of my rant on photography.

As we went inside the church, a sweet lady noticed our interest in the stained glass paintings and offered to explain. For the next 30 minutes or so, I have never experienced such a perceptive and detailed analysis of a place or an object. It was like she was taking us hand in hand through time. Retelling forgotten tales peppered with humour, unravelling hidden forms from a seemingly complex artwork, pointing out awe inspiring characteristics that would be normally missed by a casual observer, she would weave herself and us across the Church. Hearing I’m from Kerala, she mentioned that she is writing a children’s book based on and elephant from Kerala. No wonder she is so good at story telling besides being patiently meticulous about finer details.

As we made exit from Christ Church, it started drizzling. But we continued visiting most of the colleges which comprise the world famous Oxford University. Being a weekend and vacation time, many of them were closed, but we managed to go inside a few of them. They were quite different from our Indian colleges. Mainly it was designed for a lot less people and had a lot of well maintained green spaces.

If we ever visit Oxford another time, I would surely try out the water ways, as it practically encircles the city. After a fair bit of (window) shopping at high street we boarded our return trains.

Surp- Rising

This Sunday we saw ‘The Rising’, a period drama based on the first war of Indian independence centred around the life of Managal Pandey. I expected a pretty boring retelling of events. I was surprised to find it quite well written both in terms of story and dialogue. However, it failed in numerous areas. The characters were not fleshed out well (even Mangal!) and the songs were jarring interruptions to the serious tone of the movie. I’m not writing a full review here, as the celebrities say, see it for yourself!

Before I go any further, here is a shameless plug on me. In the early part of this month, I was busy attending a week long advanced course on BizTalk, by Deepdive who conducts various training programs for Microsoft on topics which (sic) are not very popular. Besides being very informative, the break from office work helped to clear up my mind quite a bit. Meanwhile, I had the chance to use a Creative Zen player for a couple of days. With the first hand experience of the i-Pod lifestyle, I can now relate to the reasons for its popularity. Enveloped in the bubble of music wherever you go, the Zen brings a newfound zest to your mundane daily activities like commuting.

However, unlike others, music has the effect of immobilizing my thoughts and mesmerising my senses. I say unlike others because, many find listening to music going well with performing any activity especially ones that require a lot of concentration like reading. It is just the opposite for me and if I ever blog, it is often necessary to turn off my headphones for me to proceed. Nevertheless, this does not diminish the utility of the Zen or the iPod. Comparing both, I find Zen a much better buy, because of its additional features like the FM radio or Voice recorder. However, the rocker of Zen is quite dodgy and less accurate to use than the iPod’s wheel, at least for me.

Further on the topic of gadgets, I aborted my plans to buy a Nokia 3230 in the eleventh hour:cry:. The main reason being its slow speed of operation and poor industrial design causing dust accumulation. This combined with its known shortcomings of poor/non-stereo audio output, led me to call it off. So it will be a Sendo X2 for me. Thankfully, this comes at a very affordable price tag of £150. However, it is still not having a full qwerty keyboard. My requirement is, as you might have guessed, is a Series 60 smartphone. If only I could get my hands on Lenovo P930 !

Bhute recently purchased a Sony Erricson P910i which, despite its ugly body, is a revolutionary convergent device. It is a serious PDA-killer with amazing audio output (unlike Nokia phones) and a reasonable camera to boot. Its QWERTY keypad though a vast improvement over P800 wouldn’t be your preferred input device.

Other than all this is, of course, my incessant hobby of game development. I spent a good part of last 2 weeks trying out Irrlicht game engine. Now, I’m tring out the Ogre engine. The latter having the backing of a number of commercial and open source projects behind it. My learnings from integrating Blender and Irrlitch is to use the Cal3D format for import/export of skeletal animated meshes.

Okay, movie-time:grin:!

Kinsey

Kinsey tells the story of Alfred Kinsey(Neeson), a scientist who dared to bring the taboo subject of sexual habits not just to the intellectual sphere but also to the coffee table. If you are like me then you will like this Biopic (a new fangled term for biographies). It starts off with a slightly witty scene involving Kinsey (assisted by his wife) training his team on effective interviewing techniques. The rest of the movie is a flashback, starting from his early childhood under a puritanical father. Young Alfred finds it suffocating to advocate the hippocritical causes that his father often required him to. He takes up teaching zoology and gets fascinated by the subject of gall wasps. He gets intruiged by the observation that – No two wasps are alike. Meanwhile, he falls in love with one of his students and they marry. As years pass, his incessant hobby of collecting wasps consumes his life. A newly wed couple’s misinformed notions brings the topic of human sexuality to Kinsey’s attention.

With the same zeal, Kinsey conducts a landmark study on this subject. Unsurprisingly, his methods and intentions are questioned and ridiculed. While this is a film on a serious subject, it is entertaining at the same time. Many critics believe the movie has a lot of relevance in the present American context. Nevertheless, I found Kinsey a touching and meaningful film. Recommended for serious film goers. Verdict: 3.5 / 5.0

Finding Neverland

I found this costume drama to be interesting, because of Johnny Depp. His transformation to the playwright Sir James Barrie is astonishing. He carries his Scottish accent to such a finesse that you would actually tend to believe that he has one.

I would quickly wind up by saying that, this film failed to impress me, perhaps due to over expectation. It is a kind of tear jerker that I don’t appreciate. :roll:. Verdict: 2.0 / 5.0

Constantine

If you felt that the concept of heaven, hell, and angels have been beaten to death on Television, then watch ‘Constantine’. They you would say it again :mrgreen:! But seriously, it did build up quite well. I felt genuinely interested in the idea of a character who could cross to nether worlds. But somehow the movie failed to deliver with its unrelated subplots.

There are some who criticise the movie, for tilting it toward Keanu than the original comics. Since I have never read Hellblazer comics, I didn’t find it a problem. The effects are quite good for a theatrical experience. All in all, above average. Verdict: 3.5 / 5.0

Elektra

Elektra was disappointing to me, as I was expecting something on the lines of Daredevil. They virtually made a hash of eastern mysticm and self-discovery (hint: Spiderman), to make a big budget semi-chick flick. Other than the standard hack and slash sequences (hint: razzle and dazzle), we have some good acting from Jennifer Garner and Kirsten Prout. Verdict: 2.5 / 5.0

House of Flying Daggers

I was entralled by the trailers of this movie, as virtually ever scene looks picture perfect! Being an old Matrix fan, the action sequences also looked promising. Watching the movie, I got thrilled to bits as it turned out to be even better than I hoped for.

HoFD is a Chineese (you would watch it with subtitles) romantic story set in ancient China. All the elements (ie filmi masala) you would expect in a commercial film are here – action, romance and drama. Nevertheless, the sensitive portrayal of every character makes it stand out from the regular cartoony ones one sees in such movies. After seeing it, one cannot help remark – Hollywood, you better watch out. Highly Recommended. Verdict: 4.0 / 5.0

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

Any serious sci-fi fan, would have read The Hitchhiker’s precisely because it never takes itself seriously. The film tries to bring justice to the wild and wacky imagination of Douglas Adams and more or less succeeds in doing so. Having read the book, I found the characters to be almost the way I had pictured them. Some of the sequences are also literally breathtaking. The animations showing the contents of the Hitchhiker’s guide are quite funny and well made.

All in all, a nice entertainer. Recommended. Verdict: 3.5 / 5.0

This post turned out to be a huge post. So huge that I could almost hear it squeeze itself into the MySQL database when I published it. Pays for being late. In fact, pays for being me:wink:.

Sin City

I must admit that Sin City was not initally on the top of my list. But I guess it was my over-expectation to blame. After wading through the 3 graphic novels (or more commonly called “comics” :smile:) of Frank Miller, I cannot praise the director, Robert Rodriguez, enough for taking pains to recreate the grim and dark (literally) world of Sin City. The sparring use of colour and full length digital cinematography brings a unique feel to the movie which is faithful to the graphic novels. SinCity is actually 3 stories which are intervowen into one. Barring a few coincidential meeting points, they are independent stories. Hence, like most Rodriguez movies (eg. Spy Kids series) there is a huge star cast, but this time they are not mere cameos. All the heroes (Bruce Willis, Clive Owen and Mickey Rourke) are the stereotypical toughies with voilent streaks. Their inner turnmoil is brought out so well that these characters leave a strange aftertaste even after movie is over. That, IMHO, is the acid test of a powerful movie. Jessica Alba has done an impressive job as Nancy. However, I was somewhat disappointed by Brittany Murphy who I hoped, from her previous performance in 8 Mile and Girl, Interrupted would steal the show. In fact, Rosario Dawson has given a classy performance as Gail. Rodriguez has certainly made his point by shooting an entire film without film- Digital cinema is the future of cinema, whether the studio guys like it or not. Indie film making is once again possible, heartening news for movie enthusiasts like me :razz:. Conclusion, recommended but not for the weak of heart.

The Girl Next Door

A lil bit of background on why I choose this movie must go here. I used to be a big fan of a Discovery Channel program called PMFK, short for Popular Mechanics for Kids, in my school days (ok, even now :oops:). Though I thoroughly enjoyed the program, it was hard not to eye the elegant hostess, Elisha Cuthberth. Well, it was quite apparent that she is a promising actress and this movie indeed proves that intuituion turned true. The movie starts with a memorable college video-like opening sequence. The main character is Emile (Matthew Kidman) who is an academically brilliant but a bored teenager. The story could be best summarized by the title itself, a really attractive girl moves in next door. From the sound of it, it might appear to be a another typical teen movie. But the plot turns in the most unexpected ways. Alternating between humour, thriller and romance; this movie has it all. I would say if ‘American Pie’ series was made in this way, it would have been a much more wholesome movie. That I guess is a real big complement :wink:. Well… recommended.

Citizen Kane

You must have guessed by now… time for a bit of background. This all time classic is a must see for anyone interested in cinematography (like me, hehehe). The unconventional angles, visual story telling and deep depth of focus:shock: have been effectively used in this black and white movie, made in 1941. But even if you are not interested in all this, ‘Citizen Kane’ is a Orson Welles (who acted the lead and directed this) masterpiece that is still greatest movie of all times in the hearts of many movie lovers.

Coming Soon…. :arrow:Kinsey, Finding Neverland, Constantine

Another important news, lest I miss, is the dropping of the Amendments to the Indian Patents Act, 1970 . I’m sure all right minded Indian software professionals heaved a collective sigh of relief, as this is not just a victory for Free Software movement, but addresses a basic right of expression. Incidentally Europe is passing a similar law :shock:and hopefully they’ll follow the path demonstrated by India.

Now lets dive into the movies:

Closer

Closer, shot in London, is a movie adaptation of a brilliant play by Patrick Marber. The star studded cast and an equally stellar director Mike Nichols (of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” fame) easily made it to my must-see list for this spring.

Closer is a brilliant, modern drama on complex relations. Each of the actors – Natalie, Jude Law and Clive have portrayed the characters with precision acting. Notice that, I have intentionally left out Julia Roberts who, I feel, could have done better. At some point in the movie you would hate all these characters, perhaps with the exception of Natalie. Natalie is definitely one who stands out in the ensemble. She is sensual and vulnerable at the same time.

Though very slickly shot, the movie offers no absolution or conclusion. It remains a vivid commentary on human relationships. The brilliant visual story telling style by jumping time spans effortlessly, shows the mark of a seasoned director. Highly Recommended

Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl

To be honest, I was put off by the title, thinking that it is another boring Hollywood ship story. I couldn’t be more far from the truth. Based off a Disneyland Themepark ride, ‘Pirates…’ is a thorough entertainer transporting you instantly to the wild and adventurous world of the pirates.

This is one movie, which will make you stand up and notice one brilliant actor whom we have often ignored – I mean, Johnny Depp. Immortalising the quirky, swaying, yet always-at-his-wits anti-hero “Jack Sparrow”, Depp has proven yet again that he is one of the most versatile actors in the industry. Sprinkled with witty one-liners and dazzling with visual effects, you cannot afford to miss this joyride. Highly Recommended.

Incredibles

When I landed in London (i.e. Christmas time), I always kept wondering aloud – what’s the big deal about Incredibles? I mean I can understand it being sold in every store as one product or the other, but entire Streets with humungous cartoony cutouts?

Well, now after seeing the movie I must say, guys…. Pixar has done it again. Before I tell you why this is my all time favourite Pixar movie, a little bit of background. Pixar is one of the rare movie houses with 100% success rate in hollywood. All its previous six movies were pure animations (no live actors except voice-overs of course). It is the first movie in Pixar by an outsider – Brad Bird from Warner Bros. who joined Pixar causing minor shakeups. As they do in every movie, ‘Incredibles’ has created new benchmarks in computer animation. An incredible amount of path breaking wizardry in algorithmns and simulations have gone into every frame. Clearly this is one of Pixar’s greatest strengths.

The story revolves around Incredible family with superhero parents and superhero kids as well. Despite this, Incredibles is a typical American family that I’m sure that everyone can relate to. This makes it very beliveable and immersing yourself in the story, letting you forget the fact that the characters are (sic) computer generated. Though the movie is long (longest Pixar movie ever), it rushes at a maddening pace in a cartoon like fashion. This one is likely to be one of those favourites that you won’t mind seeing again and again. Highly recommended.

(To be continued…..)

Srini, one of the key members in our project was leaving, so we thought we would plan a night out and see ‘Swades’. In short, it is one Hindi movie I would be proud of showing off to the rest of the world. Every scene shines through with an ‘Ashutosh Gowariker” touch that those who watch Lagaan would be able to relate to. Unlike being an idealistic story about an NRI’s nostalgia, it brought out several complex and interconnected issues connected with it. Yet it had a simple and down to earth message. Shah Rukh Khan has been, thankfully, considerably mellowed down for this role and the lead actress Gayatri Joshi delivers a tad stoic yet commendable performance. It doesn’t end there. Every single person in the cast gives you a thoroughly impressive performance.

One cannot help but compare Swades to the social awareness movies of the past. But there is a silent, subtle and yet moving characteristic of the movie that makes it contemporary. The harsh Indian landscape never looked more beautiful when captured by the wide angled lenses of Mahesh Aney. It sometimes reminded you of the Vande Mataram videos by Bharatbala productions commemorating 50 years of independence. The shallow depth of focus in the living room scenes was very dramatic but annoying as well. A R Rehman’s music complements the film very well and is an aural treat.

Certain scenes and dialogues are very quite engaging and memorable. While certain others tend to be more like a sermon. Well, in conclusion, the movie does make its point. Unfortunately, it doesn’t climax in the epic proportions as Lagaan does, but it is a different movie isn’t it?

I’ve shifted to a new apartment in Ilford. The owner, Manjeet, is an interesting guy. He is a lawyer with a Punjabi accent peppered with British intonations. Today I will give a long and hard look to the empty kitchen stove because we have to know each other rather well in the future. This is how I intend to start my tryst with cooking. I expect it to look burnt, tattered and spilt over in the future but now its all clean and shiny. Ilford has a tremendous influx of immigrants from the Indian subcontinent. As a result rows and rows of shops selling Indian merchandise. This comes as a mixed blessing, the downside being a lot of cultural inbreeded, which I strongly despise.

Ok time to talk about Offshoring. Everywhere one comes across this is new four-letter word that has about 6 extra letters. Now that I’ve seen an entire project end-to-end, I feel it’s a good time to sit down and analyse. Offshoring is like a reality show based pop band having a lot of talented people but doing mediocre stuff and making a big hit out of it. Offshoring is like a radio DJ who has a peppy and colourful audio personality but might be a complete shocker in appearance. But seriously, offshoring a trade-off between actual work and constant communication. I feel at the end of the day, software development is not like manufacturing. You cannot clearly delineate roles or exactly estimate processes. Offshoring needs to come out of its manufacturing world past in to this intellectual domain. Time has come that we (as in, Indian software industry as a whole) consider improving the offshoring techniques and infrastructure rather than assuming that all is well and run after the next big thing. We cannot afford to loose what has come to become our USP.

The taxi driver was a spiritual seeker in disguise. When our discussion meandered into yoga, he knew even the Sanskrit terms for every chakra in the body (there are seven for those who don’t know). No amount of information provided by the ‘Travel Kit’ prepared me for the labyrinth called the Airport. Of course the old trick of “Uncle, uncle can you tell me…” works. But the simplicity of the answer dumbs you down at each attempt.

It’s actually simple. You reach the airport and wait for Check in. Check in is necessary for the non-cabin luggage (usu. 2 pieces) but starts 3 hours before departure (a term not very confusing till you meet its alter-ego ‘Arrival’!) Check in is the first time you would see your luggage being X-ray screened. Then a tag is bound around each piece. Then you move towards your airline’s boarding counter. A female wearing heavy makeup (ok a PYT) gives you a plastic card called boarding pass and a boarding pass by the Indian govt. at this point your luggage is weighted and your check-in luggage crawls out of your view into a cave curtained by leather strips.

Whew! No more luggages to trolley around. The next counter you’ll see is the immigration. Produce your Work Permit, Boarding Pass & Passport. Now begins your long wait for the security check because it’s done only half an hour from departure. Don’t fret, what I did was use up all my remaining coins (you don’t need them anymore) in the Local call and STD booths. Securities check does a body scan and cabin luggage scan. I realized quite late that you cannot carry scissors or knifes in your cabin luggage. Sadly, I surrendered two shaving scissors at this stage. Finally you get to board the aircraft.

My co-passenger was another guy from Infy called Sameer. The Swiss airhostesses are as expected – stunners. I greeted one of them in German, which really struck a cord. Next time she conversed in German and with a bit of struggle I replied. The window seat afforded a absolutely stunning aerial view of Bombay. Trust me with all those yellow streetlights and buildings at night, Bombay looks scintillating. I was quite impressed by the in-flight entertainment system, and finally got to see the flick “Cat Woman”. It was not very impressive or gripping. But somehow I like the anime-like qualities in such movies and hence enjoy them. As a result, I slept very little.

For horror fans, the styles of horror utilized have been slightly expanded. It is a familiar formula. Perhaps, gruesome makeup has been added to the series of close-ups of hysterical characters, sudden appearance/disappearance of strangers and conservative use of ambient light. The really killer is the sound effects. Personally I felt that it has been overused. The script was heavily flawed. There is no direct connection between the movie and its title and there is no motive or a good explanation for the events. The only notable performance was that of the boy Master Ahsaas, who contributes a lot to the spookiness of the movie.

Surprisingly, the best thing about watching this in a theatre is the crowd. When I was watching The Exorcist, I was in the balcony circle and you could hear genuine gasps and squeals. But the VS crowd was a lot more mischievous. Their witty comments made the dragging scenes quite entertaining.

For me, the most amusing part was the location. The story is set 23 kms from Pune. Hey that’s where I live! Seems I have to check my Vaastu soon ;)