Point Your Mouse To

No pun intended, unless you thought of that thing as a mouse. Let's not get into the pun trap, or punt rap for now!

Point your mouse to CircusMouse. Lot of action happening there. And someone likes posts on CircusMouse doesn't mean he's gay for me. Gay for me? Now, as a young thing would say - How gay is that, Sahu? Perhaps he liked this guy's one's only post on that blog. Hence gay maybe.

Random Remembrances.

• India- Australia Cricket Match at Chinnaswamy Stadium. [photos] No, we didn't heckle Symonds. But had awesome fun with Dada, Karthik and Powar fielding at the boundary right in front of us. Cricket will never die in India. And Cricket is a simple game of heart, mind, bat, ball and a couple of guards for safety. The excessively annoying TV coverage is doing no good to the gentleman's game it is it once was. Hope though, is still alive.

• The mid-night trek to Skandagiri [photos] following the match. That I was tired and exhausted would be an understatement, and that I was a bicycle because I was too tired would be a wonderstatement. Puns aside or puns-a-side, I still have no clue about the source of energy that kept me alive during the trek. Thank heavens(we were definitely closer to it) for the life-saving omlettes and tea at the summit. The trek would be incomplete without the mention of birth of Joshi, a person who existed amidst us all along, but we had no idea about him. Thanks to a certain America-bound dude, we discovered his existence and he's been living with us since then. The day Joshi's true identity is revealed would be the day when this polite, gentlemanly, mature Nikhil Kulkarni's make-believe identity will be known. Till then, live and thrive, Joshi.
  

• A Walk In The Clouds, Caffeine, Bhool Bhulaiyaa, Laaga Chunari Mein Aag, Morning Raaga (Oh fuck! How could I forget Apparao and Annapoorna? Wake Up!), Tout Va Bien (Everything Is Alright - that's the movie's name in English!), Un homme et une femme (A Man And A Woman)
  
• A special mention. We were brave enough to watch this one - The Brave One. Clovie, get out of the car! Those who suffered this at my hands, or my mouth rather, after this movie, should feel honoured. Gods (Warner Brothers, that is) have heard us and we have this great news - Warner Bros says “No More Female Lead Characters”?!
  only to be followed by Warner Bros Denies Comments.
  Huh, no reward for our bravery.

• The trips home, the series of forgotten birthdays, the chull that was finally put to rest a minute back (Aw fuck! Commander will go crazy over this!) , the falling ill and getting back to life again, Octoberfest, the Bangalore Book Festival, the visit to that insti, the scary predictions(I should stop doing that now!)......
  

• Pustakaaha
• Londonstani - rudeboy rules, rudeboys rule! Samira Ahmed, Product Marketing and innit! Absolute must-read.
• Games Indians Play - interesting, especially the application of the behavioural economics tools to understand why we are the way we are. In addition to things mentioned here, I want to become a Behavioural Economist. Very fancy it sounds. Absolutely. And that's not the only reason I want to become one.
  
• A book on the best upcoming writing in Indian English edited by Kushwant Singh.
  
• Plans are to read Butter Chicken In Ludhiana during the upcoming trip to Kanpur. If the previous trip out of Bangalore was anything to go by, this one should be great fun! The same refrain again - but that was Mumbai! This one is no less either- Bangalore->Delhi->Lucknow->Kanpur->Lucknow->Delhi->Bangalore. Should be fun enough.
  

PS. Began this post with just the thought of directing readers to CircusMouse, but it ended up being an almost-complete update post. I'm glad it came. Good for the well-being of this world. Om Shanti Om. Huh, the movie's noise these days. Shanti Shanti. Huh, that's Mandira Bedi. Ab Bas. Huh, that's Diana Hayden.

No Hyphen No Fun

Hyphens, are were fun. Sad, they've killed some 16,000 of them. That's leap-frogging leapfrogging into the past. Huh. Perhaps CNN-IBN themselves(now, this one is with the hyphen) could definitely pick up a thing and a quarter from here.

Death Of A Great Brand Or Birth Of A Greater Brand?

Change is good. Definitely. Hutch is now Vodafone. Good? Not very sure. More than its SIM cards made it into our mobile phones, Hutch - the brand, had made its way into our hearts. Not entirely impossible, but it will be very difficult for Vodafone to replace Hutch. Let's see. We'll let the brand do the talking. Of course, we'll do the talking ourselves. Using their phones and services, that is.

It was an interesting experience last night, being a witness to perhaps one of the biggest brand transitions of our life time happen on the ground. Transition it was, of the Hutch signboards being replaced by those of Vodafone.

The Hutch signboard. Perhaps one of the very few still left in the city at that time of the night.


Loosening Tied Ends - I


Loosening Tied Ends - II



Call Disconnected


Dialing A New Number


Connection Established!


Call Continues


New Up, Old Down!


New Connection Firmly In Place.


While I was taking these pictures, the owner of the shop of which the board was being replaced was giving me a very menacing stare. Apparently, he was under the impression that I was from Hutch/Vodafone and was agitated with the fact that his shop's name was wrongly printed in the signboard! Talk of a deal running into billions of dollars and not enough attention to such important details! Hope they get it right soon.

Rebranding at this scale always comes with some very amusing stories. That of UTI Bank Axis Bank, for example. Do not know how much the re-branding exercise cost them, but it definitely cost them much more in Karnataka. Everyone saw the Axis Bank boards with a certain patch covered and over-written by hand, due to a mistake in printing of the boards.


PS. Here's the Hutch Is Now Vodafone TVC. Decent, but not as nice as the Hutch commercials. Wonder if there will be any at all, as nice as the Hutch commercials.

Oh! It's September 11 Today? The Mumbai Trip Update

I do not know what hidden energy was it that made my dead-twice-over brain to remember that it is September 11 today. More so because our flight back to Bangalore was canceled at the last minute, at 6:59 am IST to be precise. A technical snag, apparently because of a bird-hit. Interesting coincidence, we get a lot of time to rest here in the Airport and it is peaceful here. Scary!

I'm not sure if I am alive. If I am not alive, how the hell am I writing this? I think(think? Can I? Then I must be alive!) I'm living on the Mumbai air, the highest quality oxygen one can ever breathe. There is something about this place that draws me closer to it and makes me fall more and more in love with it everytime I visit this place or stay here.

Carrying back from Mumbai - memories of those days in Mumbai with Scott, Cafe Leopold, Cafe Mondegar, Mahalaxmi, Haji Ali, Raghuram's Scraping Wealth At The Bottom Of The Pyramid and Missile In The Toilet Bowl theories, Trishna, Momos with Kaak, sweat, heat, rain, Desi Chicken at Harish, Mocha at Juhu, that and all that!

Update: Reached Bangalore safe and mentally unsound sound. The day was quite eventful - starting at 5 am, three security checks, sneaking out and back into the airport, the slow and patchy internet connection which we paid for and the really fast internet which was available for free! Have I figured it yet? Here's an attempt though. Mumbai is very humbling, the more one discovers Mumbai, humbler one feels. Mumbai makes one's survival instincts stronger, makes us aware of the fact that no hard work is hard work enough. There's always someone else working harder than one is. There's so much energy, hope and optimism in the Mumbai air. One might be the queen of any land, but while in Mumbai, everyone is the same. But for the Queen of Englad though, they built the Gateway Of India!

Filmosophy

Apart from those well spent 2-3 hours, one of the best things about watching movies is that one discovers interesting connections between the characters in the movie philosophers.

• In A Fish Called Wanda, Otto's favourite philosopher is Nietzsche.
  

• In Little Miss Sunshine, Frank is America's Number 1 Proust scholar. [Marcel Proust] And Dwyane is shown reading Nietzsche in the movie .

• In The Namesake, Gogol is named after Nikolai Gogol. Gogol's The Overcoat is an important character in the movie.
  

Then, do good films like these and philosophy go eye in brain? Just like romantic movies and Mills and Boon books go hand in hand? Or probably something else in something else? Wouldn't want to get into the innards of this now!

The Curious Incident Of The Quote In The Night Time

The problem begins when you do not know what to do with it. The problem only gets worse when you don't know what to do without it.

Looks like immense profoundity flows when one is reading Mark Haddon. It's A Spot Of Bother right now.



PS. The quote indeed came in the night time. At 5 a.m. Quite the right night time.

PPS. Only he can come up with quotes like these - I am atheist in a very religious mould.

Movies - Towards Achieving My Aim In Life

Not that I'm going to become another Madhur Bhandarkar, but watching as many movies as one can has never made anyone a bad film-maker, has it? So much ado for a movie update. But seriously, if I had only seventeen more days to live, I'd make start working on a short film Right Angle. I might as well start working on it right away, but why not? I need the space and the time for it, the luxury of which I do not have right now. Here's the list of movies I watched recently-

• Not a 17% contented child as mentioned here , I can probably die a 23% contented child now. Have finished watching all movies made by Vishal Bharadwaj - Makdee, Maqbool, Omkara and now, The Blue Umbrella. Each of them is brilliant, with Vishal's earnestness and honest approach standing out. Watch The Blue Umbrella in a theater, otherwise one wouldn't be doing justice to the wonderful cinematography by Sachin K Krishn. I'll be following Abhishek Chaubey very closely now on. His work till now -
  
• Screenplay, dialogue, Associate Director - Omkara
  
• Associate Director-Maqbool, Makdee
  
• Associate Director & Screenplay-The Blue Umbrella

• Chakde! India - decent good movie. Couldn't have come a better time for it to do well. Independence Day, prosperity(?) all around, things looking more hopeful than ever for our country(yes) and for the youth(?). Pop-corn patriotism is very convenient for today's generation who do not have much time. Convenient for the producers too, pop-corn patriotism sells. On a related note, this is Celebrating Freedom from CircusMouse, our new blog. We don't have a description for it yet, please visit it and helps us find one. Warning : Very chaotic there.
  

• Naagarahaavu - the first of Puttanna Kanagal's movies I've watched. Ramachari's character is perhaps a better representation of the angry young man of those days. Even better than Amitabh's roles then? Not sure, need to watch more movies of the 70's to be qualified to answer this. But I liked the character played by Loknath the best. Ade namma speciality!
  

• Ananathana Avaanthara by Kashinath. Kannada industry needs more people like him. People like him, Upendra, Jaggesh whose work maverick, unconventional approaches add a new dimension to Kannada film-making. But what has happened to Sunil Kumar Desai to make a sub-standard movie like Kshana Kshana? Forget the review, Shri Desai has set certain standards with his earlier movies. At least live up to them, Sir?
  

• Movies I caught up with now, as they released during the time of my shift to Bangalore -
• Guru - huh, they shoot it in Karnataka and pass it off as Gujarat! The movie fails to capture the magnitude of Dhirubhai's empire. Perhaps his story is such that one can't put it together in a 3 hour movie. Maybe one can, if they do away with needless songs and not give extra time to characters just because they are played by Aishwarya Rais and Vidya Balans. Ratnam Sir, is Mahabharat still on? Forget Lajjo, make Mahabharat. Please!
  
  
• Honeymoon Travels Pvt Ltd - Minissha Lamba, Minissha Lamba, Minissha Lamba, Minissha Lamba, Minissha Lamba, Minissha Lamba. Well made movie.
  
  
• Ek Chalis Ki Last Local - This movie would be more tight and crisp if unnecessary songs and sequences could have been done away with. Nonetheless, it was about Mumbai Meri Jaan and that more than makes up for all the shortcomings in the movie. Laree Choote. At the last count, it was 2643 - number of times I've played it.
  

• Movies I slept half-way through -
  
• Choker Bali - will someone please explain why it is such an acclaimed movie? Maybe I do not know the meaning of the italicized word. Finding its meaning should be a rewording exercise.
  
• Yatra - my yatra to bed only got faster while watching this. Again, will someone please explain everything about this movie. Art movies, more often than not, are definitely enjoyable. But this one wasn't.
  

PS. Why Madhur Bhadarkar? I used to study and run a video cassette shop at the same time. I developed a liking for movies. I would watch all the movies in the theatre, first day first show! More in this interview - here.