How to enjoy a movie by hook or CROOK!

There’s always the dilemma when watching a movie in the cinemas. First, there’s the want of people to go with and at the same time, the silence at the right moments in the movie. You can never get both. If you take people with you, there’s always going to be a dialogue or two that you missed because your friend sitting next to you uttered something that you, now, don’t even remember. What do you do in these situations? Well, here’s an advice to enjoy the movie, and also have loads of fun with your company.

First, choose a movie that you know is going to be boring. Yes. BORING! Your enjoyment level is inversely proportional to the quality of the plot. The worse the plot, the more you’ll enjoy it. Next, choose friends who like crowds and make a lot of noise. The more shameless ones, the better.

And lastly, if you aren’t paying for the tickets, Super! You’ve got your concoction for a great day out at the cinema.

At this point, you might think that I have gone insane, but give me a chance to reason myself out.

First of all, let me lay out my credentials for giving movie watching advice, especially this kind. This advice/suggestion is based on my experience last week watching the movie “Crook” in a multiplex.

Perhaps many of you have already figured where I’m coming from.

Yes, I watched “Crook”. A movie, from what I’ve heard begs to obtain the same kind of review that “Dabangg” did. What? you ask? The review read something like this: “Dabangg is so ridiculous, so stupid, so pathetic that it is actually good!”. Yes, that’s what it read.

I haven’t watched Dabangg. Who in the right mind would after reading such a review? So, I can’t comment on that but this line would apply very well to “Crook”. Good that it was a company sponsored ticket.

Here’s where I would’ve said “I want 2 ¹/₂ hours of my life back”  but surprisingly, (yes it is surprising to myself) on the contrary, I really enjoyed the time. How you ask?

Here’s how:

First, my company of colleagues all understood the language of the movie, Hindi in this case -  A key ingredient for having a good time. How is that a matter, you ask? Well, you’d be surprised how often people go to the movies without even knowing the language and then complain that the movie was bad.

Second, the movie, to its credit had very good music. Being the crazy fanatics that we are, we enjoyed the music like the Low Class Locals without bothering even a little bit that it was a multiplex. After all, what’s the point of sitting silently in an Air conditioned cinema after paying such a high ticket price and not enjoy the movie thoroughly, however crappy it may be.

However clichéd it may be, I’m still going to say – last but definitely not the least, the movie’s plot itself which is what I want to talk about the most but I don’t want to kill the fun for those who haven’t experienced it.

So, a few scenes only:

The plot is about a guy who is a crook in Bombay (Emraan Hashmi) being sent to down under – Australia after his identity being forged by his God father (Gulshan Grover) who is a Police officer. Yes! can you imagine it? Gulshan Grover plays a good man in this movie which absolutely doesn’t suit him. After Hashmi lands in OZ, meets a fat guy from Gurdaspur who’s there to study in a college on scholarship. For some reason, Hashmi always refers to the fat guy’s town as Hoshiyarpur and the fat guy corrects him every single time. This goes on throughout the movie and once Hashmi actually says it correctly but the fat guy, out of force of habit, trying to correct him, says “Hoshiyarpur”. OK, that was one of the funny scenes so sorry for spoiling the fun.

The plot starts with Hashmi falling for an Indian  girl who had come to pick up the fat guy from Hoshiyarpur but actually picks up Emraan Hashmi instead as he impersonates the fat guy.

Hashmi gets a job as a taxi driver from a Punjabi gang who provide refuge to illegal Indian immigrants and finds them jobs. The funniest bit is that after every sentence that anyone in the gang utters, they all one-by-one say “Fact Hai!”.

Many such small nuances make the movie watchable without which the already crappy movie would’ve just been pathetic.

The plot thickens with the flash-back of the heroine’s brother killing his other sister while trying to abort her pregnancy at a very late stage after finding out that the father of the baby was an Australian.

At the same time there’s the outbreak of Indians getting beaten up by Australians for being of a different colour. I thought this bit was over-exaggerated. They show the fat guy getting beaten up in hospital and the doctor explaining his condition to Emraan Hashmi and the heroine.

For some reason, the whole movie though claiming to be set in OZ, always has American accent spoken by the white people. The worst part was when the Doctor informs about the condition of the heroine’s brother who was attacked by Australians. The Accent is a strong Texan. Throughout the movie, I didn’t notice a single white man/woman speaking the frickking Australian accent.

The climax, which was the culmination of all the emotional drama of the entire movie and supposed to be the most serious turned out to be the funniest scene in the movie.

The Brother of the heroine is disillusioned that his sister was killed not by him trying to abort the baby but by the Australian who got her pregnant. There are such blatant logic FAILS in the movie which makes it watchable because that’s what made it funny.

The brother then kidnaps the Australian man’s sister and tries to kill her the same way his sister had dies – On the table, in order to take revenge. This is the climax scene in which the fat guy is made to dig a grave for her while the brother prepares for the murder. As expected, the hero arrives on time and explains the truth and tries to reason with the brother but he doesn’t understand. The fat guy, in the meanwhile listening to Emraan’s speech gets enlightened and revolts against the brother who keeps ordering him to continue to dig. The fat guy finally loses it and kills the brother with the shovel that he was using to dig.

The kidnapped Australian girl is rescued and the story ends there.

Note:  Pay attention to the small dialogues in which lies a little bit of entertainment in the form of it being so pathetic that it is actually funny.

Wow! I am amazed, I could write so much about such a crappy movie. In one line, a lot of good talent Emraan Hashmi, Neha Sharma (perhaps it’s just me but she looks strikingly similar to Angelina Jolie), the Punjabi gang, the fat guy, the brother – all wasted colossally in this movie.

If you are getting a free ticket and some noisy comment-passing, extrovert friends, go watch this movie. Otherwise, don’t even bother.

So, now you know how to enjoy a day-out at the movies by hook or “Crook”.

Check It Out #NewTwitter ft Will.I.Am & Nicki Minaj

Buried Alive

Buried Alive is a book based on a true story narrating the ordeals of a man after being kidnapped while working in Post-war Iraq. The story revolves around an American, Roy Hallums (the Author himself) who works for a Saudi Arabian company, deputed in Post-war Iraq. It is an emotionally painful, detailed narrative by the author.

The nicety of the book lies in the fact that although it details out all the nuances of a kidnapping, the author does it with relative ease and seems to make it sound like it's no big deal. Never for a minute does it get monotonous or boring. It teaches us how to handle adversity and how staying calm always helps.

Everyone, especially children should read this book to find out the ground reality in countries torn by war, like Iraq. It quite accurately describes the situation there. How, even after the fall of the dictatorship, there's a lot to be done, the rebuilding effort required is quite enormous. It would teach us how to face adversity staying calm and composed.

It pokes our conscience about how we forget about such kidnapping incidents as they get too common, about how we don't bother after a while, how we become numb to such events as long as they don't affect us directly in anyway.

The climax is quite dramatic with the US army storming into the building where the hostages are held to rescue them, will, I'm sure,  give you goose bumps.

The book is just 249 pages long and makes for a quick but entertaining read.

Bottom-line: A  great book to read over a lazy weekend with some snack, for entertainment and some provoking some thought towards the goings-on of the world.

Book sample - courtesy:  http://www.booksneeze.com

The Lion and the mouse

The Lion and the mouse

View more presentations from Karthikeyan Ravi Kumar.

My typing speed

I came across this site that throws random words for you to type. Typing comprehend-able sentences is one thing but typing these random words, I realized, is much more difficult.

Check out my score:

47 words

Typing Test

Traffic heaven

Thanks to Bharath Bandh, Bangalore is in traffic heaven. Abso-freakin-loutely no traffic. 80KMPH at tin factory. Nuff said.

Wery Vell!

Im doing wery vell vit dis blog or am I?  This is the kind of spelling that Generation-Y is getting used to. Despite being warned of the consequences of wrong spelling, they are falling prey to using shortened SMS lingo. The worst part is that since it is sub-conscious, they don't even know they're making a mistake.



Image source:  http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/86071414/Workbook-Stock

One more problem is that we Indians don't know the difference between the sounds of "V" and "W". We use them interchangeably. Even while using abbreviations in the SMS lingo, spelling "with" as "vit" is completely wrong, according to me. Although I consider any abbreviation of an already small word to be wrong, I can forgive if it was written as "wit" for the lack of space but "vit" is truly wrong! To understand why, you need to understand how the two letters are pronounced. If you paid attention in your school, you will remember this: "Bite your V's and kiss your W's". This, basically, means that while pronouncing "V" you tend to bite your lower lip with your upper, front teeth and you tend to bring your lips together, as though kissing, while pronouncing a "W". To see a demo visit this site: http://www.uiowa.edu/~acadtech/phonetics/english/frameset.html

Although we Indians understand the right meaning even if the two letters are not pronounced correctly, for a native speaker this can be quite confusing. So, please try to be cautious to use the appropriate sound and letter as required.

Agreed that in a medium like twitter and SMS, the restriction of the number of characters makes us innovate to fit what we want to say under the limit, but is it okay to do the same in other places, especially in formal communication? I don't think so.

This isn't the end of it. Even grammar is going to the dogs. Usage of capital letters in the middle of a sentence, usage of all capitals, abbreviations of words that had no standard expansion, utterly wrong usage of punctuation marks, the list goes on. This is utter non-sense! Ask youngsters and they consider this kind of murder of the language to be "cool!”.

Although spell-checkers are a useful tool, they're not an intelligent one. They can identify wrongly spelt words, but they do not know to identify the context correctly, all the time (though with new improvements in technology, this is trying to be attempted).

See this example: http://writingenglish.wordpress.com/2006/09/18/ten-common-writing-mistakes-your-spell-checker-won’t-find/

This leads to the use of rightly spelt wrong words in a sentence. A typo could be forgiven but usage of a wrong word implies that you either do not have a basic sense of the meaning of words or didn't care to spend an extra few minutes to revise your document before hitting the send button which can prove disastrous to you especially if you are a job-seeker.

Whole novels are being written with such language and they go on to become bestsellers! This is outrageous. Youngsters committing mistakes is one thing but THIS is intolerable! How can someone call themselves a writer when they don't even know basic grammar? That's outrageous, don't you think?

A request to the people who use abbreviations/SMS lingo etc - please do so with caution. You might say it is OK with friends but it is not. When you actually have to use the correct language, you sub-consciously use your habitual version without realising it. Try to use proper language to the maximum extent possible. I'm not saying it is taboo to use SMS lingo but try not to. Use it sparingly, only when you have to save characters in the text box. Not only that, there is some etiquette to be followed in different contexts. Please follow them to the extent possible. That is my humble request.

Let me know what you think. Do you think SMS lingo usage is justified? Do you think grammar is of no importance? Etiquette plays no role in today's scenario? Comment on it below.

Request: If you find any errors in my blog, please point it out. I’ll make the correction. Some errors creep in despite our best efforts but I assure you they wouldn’t be blatant.

Midnight reading

Due to my aunt coming over and staying at our place last night I had to go through some inconveniences. What you ask? Well, you know. The usual. She arrived almost at the stroke of midnight and no, that doesn't make her Cinderella. Rather, quite the opposite.

I was woken up by all the commotion of someone arriving from out-of-town. The regular greetings, how are you’s, what's happenings, created quite a whim in my household. Well, I can forgive all that. Mind you that I hadn’t gotten up from bed. I pretended to be fast asleep but neither my mom nor the guests paid any heed to that and continued their conversations right into the night after the very late dinner. I was so irritated that I didn't get any sleep.

I braced myself for appearing to be rude and gathered enough courage to tell them to shut up. They did but not for long. My aunt called up someone  on the phone and happily started talking, and really loud at that, as if it was during the day and no one was around.



Image source: Getty Images

Quite unnerved by all this, I decided to study the book which I was supposed to have anyway, which I had procrastinated doing. Perhaps the bright light that the tube emitted made my aunt shut up for good. The air was cold from the fan and it was quiet now. I was wide awake by now. Whatever little sleep I had in my eyes had disappeared. I continued to read.

It is then that I discovered quite an amazing thing. I had completed four chapters and looked up at the clock to find out that only an hour had passed. It was 1:30A.M. The previous four had taken me almost three days to complete. “Wow!” I said to myself.

Perhaps that's how the proverbial phrase “Burning the midnight oil” came about.

I had done this once earlier at 3:00A.M. but not at 1A.M. like this time. So, it has convinced me that reading after midnight is quite effective provided you are wide awake and anyone wanting a serious read should try it. Probably one could sleep during the day to stay awake during the night.

Have you done this or wanting to? Share you experiences.

College - Massachusetts or Madras?

I stumbled upon this site http://CS50.tv while searching for lectures on Computer science. The lecture videos on this site on the course “Introduction to Computer Science” were so impressive that I decided to probe a little more about the admission process and getting into Harvard and a few other American Universities. It is then that the stark contrast between our Indian system and the American system of Higher education jolted me. Here are some insights that I had derived…





First and the most distinct difference between US and Indian Colleges is the importance given to extra-curricular and co-curricular activities. Most Universities, if not all, in the US have a credit based course system. So, you get credits for every useful contribution you make to the university and towards your personal development. In the freshman year, which is the first year of college, you get to taste all the varied branches of study of your choice and have to choose the subjects you want to major in only before the beginning of the second year (Sophomore). This gives the students a very good exposure and inside view of all the courses offered by the University before making the choice. Compare this to the Indian system where a 12th pass adolescent, with all the hormonal surges, makes the choice of course based, mainly, on peer pressure and half-baked knowledge of the courses from their seniors. About 90% of the students don't even know what they want to do in life at that point.

Once they choose their course, they're stuck with it for the next three, four or five years. Some of them go into depression, not able to cope up with the work load that the course demands or having chosen a course that is diametrically opposite to their interests. Even after passing out from the course, successfully at that, 80% are considered unemployable. Why? You know why!

Now, going back to the US counterparts. Credits are awarded for any which way you prove your mettle. If you are a good sportsman, you are awarded sports credits for every training that you attend, for every match you play and for every game you win. If the student is interested in a project that benefits the society at large or the society within campus, he’s given credits. All this adds up. (S)he’s not penalised for not attending class, not performing extremely well in exams. Exams aren’t the be all and end all of it.

This doesn’t mean that people don’t need to study. The students at US universities work much harder than their Indian counterparts. As far as I’ve heard from my friends who have and are studying in US universities, everything is practical. You are swamped with assignments, projects and experiments that demand the application of the knowledge you have obtained in the classroom. It is not rote learning and vomiting in the exam paper as it is here. The courses are very demanding.

To add to it, the lecturers & books here spoon feed the students, making them lazy.

I'm guessing that this part of the reason foreign universities (in the developed world) produce quality than quantity of graduates. Here in India, every dog on the road (pardon the language) has a University degree. It is too cheap, too accessible and too easy to get a degree in India. Whereas in the US, nothing is as subsidised. Either you perform well to get a scholarship or be born in a filthy rich family to get a degree.

Another point about the US higher education is that students don't join a University course immediately after high school. Most of them work for a year or two, learn to earn their living and pay for their schooling themselves which inhibits many of them being able to afford or even preferring to get a degree to advance themselves, but those who do and everyone else realise the difficulty and value of the degree that they've earned.

I would like to say this at this juncture. In the US, degrees are earned, here they're awarded!

At these times of major education system overhaul at the primary level by our Education Minister Kabil Sibal, hoping to have something similar at the University level as well, I rest my case.

SunFunday? Some tips to get through the work week

I’m an ardent fan of Garfield like the rest of you are but I don’t corroborate with his idea of flying to another country like Ibiza on Mondays because it is not yet a Monday there. Although Mondays mean going back to work/routine/grind, call it what you may, for me it is just a day that is 5 days from the weekend.



Yes, I’m being very optimistic but those who know me well would also know that I’m a practical guy. I firmly believe in the old Tamil saying that goes “ ALavukku minjinaa, amirthamum visham” meaning “Over the limit, even the divine nectar can turn poisonous”. So, when I’m saying this, you can believe that it really works.

Try it. Next Monday, start counting down to the weekend and you’d see that the week will whizz past in a jiffy and before you know it, Friday evening would have arrived.

Another reason that I’ve observed for Monday blues is inadequate sleep the night before. The person who’s well slept on a Sunday night enjoys the week ahead. For most people, Sunday means Fun. They plan(or not) their Sundays with all sorts of activities that stretch late into the night too. This is the gravest of mistakes that lands you in a soup on a Monday morning. I, for one, plan everything for the Friday evening. Though, I’d be dead tired, I stretch myself to finish as much as I can on a Friday evening. Finish all household tasks, catch up on all movies/TV shows that I had missed during the week etc during Friday nights. Going to movies, hanging out with friends, completing tasks that spilt over from the Friday, everything else is done by Saturday evening tops.

I know that I’m no sportsman/athlete or even a person who takes care of his body well but nowadays I try to play on a Saturday weekend just for fun, if not for anything else. I feel more rejuvenated that way.

Then comes the Sunday where I get up late, keep things in place for Monday morning like Ironing clothes, polishing shoes etc., activities that don’t take up too much effort or time or intellect. These are completed in an hour or two after I wake up and have a nice meal, watch some TV, listen to some soothing blues/jazz numbers during the afternoon and sleep. Make sure to get up before 16:00 so that you don’t stay up too late. Have dinner, max, by 19:00 and go to bed by 20:00 if nothing interesting on TV. If there is any then you obviously don’t want to miss it so go to bed max by 22:00. Never exceed that time.

Get up a little earlier than usual on a Monday morning, say at 5:30, do your usual morning activities and leave for office. This also helps you avoid the Monday morning Traffic rush.

This schedule gets me up & running on a Monday without any stress and makes my Sunday a Fun day with the week ahead quite pleasant.