Power of Net

This is for those who have the access and the bandwidth and of course the inclination....Saw OSCAR on the net along with replying mails and taking calls. In the process also saw some of the clips of previous year's oscar.

Shortlisted a few movies which I wanted to see - Got Invictus & Precious will get Hurt Locker tomorrow.

Clicked a link and found a site where we can see online movies for free and these are classics like Roshomon from Kurosawa, or classic french, german movies etc.

All in the span of 24hrs and no I am not 23 yrs old I am 40. Can I do this for a living.....Amen~!

PS: In last 3 years all my travel tickets, hotel reservations and ocassionally ordering of food has happened on the net. My wife is a google map addict whether is an audi where a play is playing or we have to go a jungle lodge which is in the midst of jungle (obviously!!)....

Both my kids 10 yrs and 7 yrs have e-mail account, they chat and they have just started a blog. Thank god, they have not asked the above question (see pic)

Up in the air & Avatar 3D IMAX effect

The OSCAR connection made me grab the DVD, last time I was in CMH rd, Bangalore hoping that the quality was good and thank god! It was. Liked it but not exactly was super wowed by it. I am one of those list maniacs…need to see all the Oscar movies and those gets nominated for cannes etc. Last time, after a long gap of 3 – 4 months I saw Wrestler, Milk, Benjamin…..and all 3 were masterpieces in it’s own right. (More about them in another post sometime….)

It’s a nice story about recession and how a person’s job is to go to various organizations and tell them on their face that “You don’t have a job from tomorrow.” And he has to say it because that organization does not have the guts to say it. It took some time for me to get a hang of the concept….but it was not about that.

The story is all about how a young rookie who joins the company and finds a much better way of sacking people (by a third party remember pls). Her plan: Set up a call center, have a video conference call and sack the person. Advantage: You save on travel, hotel bills and cover more ground in the same day. This is completely in contrary to what our man wants…He wants be the 7^th person in world to clock some 10 million miles, loves travelling for 300 odd days in a year has a membership and privileges of all the best hotels in US and hence his life is super efficient and super simple and of course he does not believe in marriages only kinky flings. He enjoy’s the luxuries / privileges which comes for free, has no accountability (unlike the people he sacks), he has to just go and tell them…"Tomorrow is your last day…so start packing…” See the contrast! It was quite stark actually.

So the usual learning, unlearning happens and our man start believing in relationships helps out his sister, the young rookie in her new job (she quits because one of the lady she served notice jumps from a bridge and kills herself.) By the end of the movie he is a changed man.

Net – Net: Storyline was quite predictable, acting was quite ok. I am sure the girls & women would be swooning over George Clooney’s charm and wit. I might be really a wrecker here but I am not a big George Clooney fan but I enjoyed his Ocean Series like I enjoyed Shahrukhs Om Shanti Om. (I am not a big fan of Shahrukh either) but the only movie where I found him different was Syrianna which was a movie with a message and some solid acting.

Just like SRK gets nominated for almost all Filmfare awards I guess the unemployment storyline and the message of hope gets the OSCAR juries nod.

On the contrary,

I just came back from Mumbai and saw Avatar in 3D IMAX, it’s just mind boggling. I saw it for the second time. The first was also in 3D but there is just no comparison between 3D and 3D IMAX. You can only experience it to believe that a movie can be made in that scale and with that vision and detailing. See it to believe it. That’s what I mean by the OSCAR effect. And yes I will be rooting for it.

I will not regret the late night "Avatar" show after my work in Mumbai although I had an early morning flight to catch, but “Up in the sky” ....well, it kept me wrapped in some nice thoughts for a while before I drifted off to sleep. Anyways good look Clooney bhai may the best man win.

Holi - Convenience & Traditions

This year Holi was on Monday which was not a holiday (being in Bangalore). Natasha Appartments that confluence of culture thanks to the IT brigade and dominated by North Indians decided to play "Holi" in the morning and have the "Holika Dahan" at night. In real world "Holika Dahan" happens the previous day.

I was just reflecting on it and thought....Holi was never about ..holika dahan or victory of good over evil. It was always about convenience & fun over traditions.

When I was a kid it was about going all over the campus, having bhujiya, sweets, chota kids crying, bada kids doing dadagiri, the teenagers looking for their opportunities (I mean boys).

In college it was about bhang and it's after effects. Some one crying for 3 hours, someone holding on to a pole singing for hours and few of us in the mud n water tank. And yes lot of mis happenings. My IMT friends will remember....

This year, I didn't want to go down and put gulaal on peoples faces whom I hardly knew, so just put tikas on each other, kids went down had a blast came back completely drenched....

Above: A photograph of the way Holi is played in Delhi. This was 2004, ya that's me , reema and the kids...Gosh! I will never forget that one...

How talented a person can be ?

I saw Paa on 1st Jan and was awestruck with Amitabh's performance. I mean at times we can rave about a performance or a role and at times you just soak it in. It just goes inside and stays with you for a long time. This was one such movie. The only other riveting or intense performance of Amitabh (in recent years)I can think of was in Black.

About a week back I got hold of the Paa soundtrack and heard Amitabh sing "Mere Paa" and I was like..."I can't believe it." If you listen to the song the only image which will come to your mind is "Auro". That's when the title of my blog and the thought stuck me.

Above Pic: Along with Amitabh, we have Nikita who has been singing in choir for last 2 years and Joyeeta in her first. I can't act like Amitabh but I am a proud Paa who (as I have started believing today) has 2 daughter who have unlimited talents:-)

Choice & Trust

For as long as I remember the operative word for me has been “choice”. I think it followed the “objectivity” phase post Ayan Rand or maybe these were both sides of the same coin. Not very important really, but these words underpin my philosophy of life. 15 – 20 years back when you are fresh out of college you are experimenting with various things relationships, jobs, a different lifestyle, you are reading a lot, getting in with touch with lot of different individuals, trying to fathom their views. As you are do that you are filtering through your choices and forming an opinion of life and it’s expectations. In these years “choice and objectivity” were the primary drivers because these are rational choices you were making and trust followed only after you made the choice.

I call this the “western view”. We start believe that in a relationship, if things are not working out it’s better to tell quits than suffer go thru this daily verbal duel, mind game. But I have seen several divorce cases around me wherein both parties feel that they have exercised their choice too fast and probably they want to come back. I had a similar very strong view on arranged marriage. How can 2 individuals who don’t know each other can actually come together. It was an insane thought. Today most of us believe in this western view.

If you take the same example of arrange marriage or if you take the guru shishya concept or the concept of spiritual leaders like Buddha it was always trust first and then choice. You trust that the marriage is going out or a Buddha can lead to enlightment and hence choose him as a guru or master. It can never happen the other way round. Can you make a “choice” without having “trust”. Take any situation or an individual you are exercising a choice because you trust “that person or yourself” that it’s going to work out. I call this the “eastern view”.

At one level it sounds very basic but for me it was a paradigm shift because it has changed the way people look at me or what they want from me. It’s very easy for me to make a choice because I am making that choice and I want the other person to deliver (that’s the typical western way of looking at things “give me first and then I will give you” and that’s an easy equation to establish). But when somebody else is making you as a choice or choosing you it’s because they trust you to deliver. If you are not delivering you are actually betraying their trust (that’s the eastern way “I will honor your trust”). Just to make it more practical put yourself in a son, father, husband, boss’s (you as a boss) shoes and then try to look at the difference. I am sure most of us play these roles for the 80% of the day and probably things will be in perspective.

That does not stop me from me “making my choices” as an individual – I chose to write this post at 3 am because the thought have been knocking on my head for some time but I know I will still get up at 8am to wake up my kids for their badminton class which they should not miss because I don’t want to betray their “trust”.

Above: Joyee's interpretation of our dream home....probably inspired by her jaipur trip.