Dark was the Knight

For the record I watched 'The Dark Knight' last weekend and so I can join the elite class who says that it is the greatest movie yet to be made from a comic strip. But if truth be told, I did not understand most of it.

I liked Bruce Wayne. Now that's a guy, handsome, rich, owns restaurants (big plus point where A Chatterjee is concerned) and has blondes hanging out with him in choppers. Wow! I thought it was great that he fell asleep in meetings and his company still managed to make profits to sponsor a bat mobile (someday I shall earn enough to own one) and I think he should not have bothered to save the world (or Gotham) because nothing was going to come of it anyway. Batman was yawn..zzzzz...boring.

I am seriously scared of the joker and more scared of people who liked the joker. But I guess, when you act really well and when its the last act of your life, you will give it your best and hope mankind will remember you for it. Heath L - wow!

Coming back t0 the main point, I liked the cars and parties and the good looking people (Harvey Dent - 9.5/10) but I hardly understood the story. However, since every review in town is giving the movie a 4.5 and since I am a very discerning critic, I shall rate this movie...4.3 just to show what a big snob I am.

Mon ami

I guess you can call me a friend if you can wake me up at 3am in the morning and tell me about your breakup. If I listen to what you have to say and then tell you what I think about it, don’t ever think that I am being patient with you. Just know that I care. You can even demand that I drop my plans of going shopping to listen to you talk. Don’t worry that I am missing out on an important thing to do. You are more important than that. Call me a friend if you had a secret that you wanted to hide from the world but were dying to tell me. You know I will never tell anybody else about it. You know I’d feel proud that you trusted me. Or if you bought the latest best seller at a great bargain price and wanted me to know about it…right NOW. I am listening. Or if you spelt your innermost desires and wished there would be someone who made a flying dive across the field to catch them and fulfill them. I suppose you think I am friend enough that I pushed myself from my famous inertia to cook your favorite dishes just because you were visiting us. Because you had fought with your parents and wanted a place to stay. But I never thought that I was doing you a favour. I cooked for you because I wanted you to know that you are not alone. You can call me a friend.


And when would I call you a friend? When I’d think of you every time I could not open a new bottle of tomato sauce - only you know how to do it. Or when you’d send chocolates across three time zones just because I might be in a new place and nobody would know that its my birthday. When you came shopping with me and walked the whole day across the mall even though you did not have anything in particular to buy. When you could drive across the speed limits just in time that I may watch the sunset. Or when you’d call thrice a day inspite of your busy schedule to know if my health was any better. Couldn’t I call you a friend? If I thought of you every time I saw a soft toy dog, I nearly bought one for you that day, but your pet passed away and I could not bear to give it to you. Because you took me to a movie, treated me to lunch and even gave me a gift after waiting for three hours for me while I had nothing to give you but my company. Because I know, you would come running if ever I told you that my bathroom floor was flooded and I did not know what to do about it. Because you could do anything just to make me smile. Make a fool of yourself, sing and make me sing along, listen to me patiently when I told you about my invisible relationships with men and then hold me tight and let me know that things would be alright.

For all the things that you made right…here’s to friendship.

Delighted!

Being inside an automatic car wash facility is like experiencing three seasons at once. I was inside one yesterday and was as delighted as a child.

They start by spraying your car with enough foam to create a soap-snow storm. You can't see what's ahead of you and the conveyer belt simply takes you along.

Then, when you think you're hopelessly lost in that foam, scrub pads that are shaped like giant pine trees (in all colours: red, blue, yellow and green) clear away the soap and brush and clean your car. Its like rainfall in spring washing off all the snow and leaving the sky clear.

But no, your car is dripping wet and you then encounter a blower which like the zephyr winds of summer dry away all the water leaving your car dry, fresh and sparkling!

PS - pity! I was too engrossed to take any pictures. But there will be a next time...hopefully soon!

A few $$$ none the richer

Just discovered a store in this country where they keep DVD’s of Bong movies. Some of them are quite recent, only a year old I’d say. This is certainly encouraging. Better spend $3 on a movie which you can choose not to watch after a point rather than spend $8 not including taxes to watch ‘De Taali’ - where you are one amongst the only six people who made it to the hall. Well, we make mistakes. I was elated to hear about a hall here where they screened only Indian movies and went to watch whatever movie was showing. I came out two hours later with a throbbing pain in my head which happened because I accidentally bumped against the wall in the darkness so that the remaining persons in the hall would not know that I was one of the six who ignored all warnings and watched the movie.

So, this movie has Ayesha Takia, Aftab Shivdasani and the brilliantly under utilized Ritiesh Deshmukh. Aftab (Abhi) plays Ayesha’s (Amu) love interest and I say this because the movie is about Ritiesh (Paglu) and Ayesha trying to get Aftab interested in Ayesha while the bloke clearly likes every other girl in town. Three of them, best friends since school have now grown up and while Aftab gets written about in magazines for his business acumen, he does not even know the address of his office. Ayesha conveniently works in Abhi’s Dad’s (Anupam Kher) office while Paglu is a venture capitalist whose ventures have never made capital. That does not stop Mr. Deshmukh from wiling away his time helping friend Amu win Abhi‘s heart, while his landlord resigns to writing off three months rent in despair.

Enter Kartika (Rimi Sen), the femme fatale who is the thirty second girl to steal Abhi’s heart, the thirty first being the sultry Neha Dhupia who practices necromancy. Former girl friends include drug addicts and kleptomaniacs, so when Rimi is the social worker who courts the disco by the night, Aftab could not have it any better. The two fall in love while escaping the eyes of Amu and Paglu who by the way, are shown to be constantly at Abhi’s side and things come to a state that Abhi decides to marry Kartika much to the dismay of his friends.Paglu tries his best to stop the marriage and when Amu and he learn that Kartika is not really in love with Abhi but only after his money, Amu also joins the struggle. It is literally a struggle because Kartika is always a step ahead of them until they take desperate measures and kidnap her. From here, the movie gets from bad to worse because they try to make a comedy out of the situation while finding out her true identity. Turns out that she is Anjali who comes from a troubled family and has a troubled past and is now bent on marrying an extremely rich person to make amends for all the things that she has been deprived off in life. Too bad, before Paglu can inform Abhi about Kartika’s antics, the hostage has escaped and framed her sad story in such a way that Abhi is more determined than ever to marry her. A last minute change of mind by Kartika saves the day for Amu who has not been much of a hit with Abhi and our lover boy gets a girl (never mind which one).

Well, I have loads and loads of loose strings to tie after watching this movie. The first one is my purse. There come questions like, shouldn’t Paglu be more concerned about finding means of making money rather than spending all his energy uniting his friends? Is it worth kidnapping his best friend’s fiancé just to stop the marriage? Why is Amu in love with Abhi who is clearly interested in every other girl in town and not falling in love with Paglu who is so devoted? Ritiesh Deshmukh clearly has all the screen time. He is a brilliant actor and its time bigger directors took notice. He has been proving his acting prowess for much too long now to be ignored by serious film makers and has definitely grown beyond the slap stick comedies that we are so used to see him do. Personally, I think he would be brilliant in a negative role in some chilling suspense thriller. Ayesha Takia acts well. She is sweet, dances well and manages to hold her own. I only wish she had a better script. Aftab is dead pan as always, thank God he’s not doing a sleazy role in this movie.

There wasn’t much to watch here, but the songs are good. And as one friend put it, we should have spent those two and half hours in the empty theatre playing “kumir danga” - for those who don’t know Bong, I cannot explain this game except that we played it everyday as kids and it needed lots of empty stairs.

The truth about pencil heels and leasing office agents

Pencil heels are no good when you are walking on soggy grasslands or in a sand volleyball court. For one, they tend to sink into the mud or sand whichever maybe the ground beneath your feet and refuse to rise unless you expend a whole lot of energy in pulling them out. With every step that you take, they sink deeper and deeper and with that their resistance grows more stubborn. While you are doing your best to disassociate them from the surface, they make fast friends with the mud or sand and you suddenly find your precious pair of shoes keeping company with wet sand and muck. Try cleaning them while the mud is fresh and you could leave a permanent mark. If you wait for it to dry and pray that it peels off on its own, chances are that your prayers will never be answered.

Therefore, tread carefully. Never use your pencil heels on well polished floors because your centre of gravity make shift places while you were carelessly admiring the latest iPhone 3G. Never try to step into a car located in an uneven concrete parking lot because they make get chiseled. Never step on a soft carpet wearing them, because they may leave marks. Beware on surfaces covered with muslin like cloth, your heels may drag the yarn along with it. Do not step into a flooded bathroom wearing them because while they might protect you heels from getting wet, there is no knowing what may befall your toes.

However, use your pencil heels to express frustration over the agent in the leasing office who does not understand that when the AC in your new apartment does not work from day #1 it’s a result of his negligence and not your ignorance. Put your heels to good effect by raising your feet to the level of your knees and bringing them down on his toes when he thinks you understand everything about capacitors and resistors in centralized air conditions with digital user interfaces. Being dumb has never been easy, but when people take you seriously, don’t just cool your heels, put your action points in service!

I am on my own now and yet I am no longer my own now.

And it feels so good!!!

The Ultimate Luxury

Work in Process

Finished Goods

The ultimate luxury - uttapams fried in desi ghee - Made in USA.

Sometimes you plan for things to work out in one way and they never do. Then in one unexpected moment when you were not looking, all your dreams peep behind you and tap on your shoulder. You turn back to get a glimpse and they suddenly disappear. You are once again left with nothing.

And all who heard should see them there,

And all should cry, Beware ! Beware !

His flashing eyes, his floating hair !

Weave a circle round him thrice,

And close your eyes with holy dread,

For he on honey-dew hath fed,

And drunk the milk of Paradise.

DST

Daylight Savings Time it has been argued has many benefits in countries in the northern hemisphere where advanced economy and work conditions demand such an adjustment. Suddenly, you wake up one morning at 7am and realize that its after all only 6am and go back to sleep or worse wake up at 7am to realize that it is 8am and you are horribly late. Over the years, people have got used to it and accepted it. But it is not so in India. In a country which spans across three time zones – literally Manipur is to the east of Bangladesh which is half an hour ahead of us and Gujarat is below Pakistan which is half an hour behind IST – we have shown lethargy akin to inertia in implementing this concept. So what would happen if suddenly one day we implemented DST?

The ruling party would lose the next general election. Minorities would move to Supreme Court crying foul over discrimination because many would have never seen a digital watch in their lifetime. The government would pass a law that by March 31st everyone should buy HMT manufactured DST compliant watches which the CPI(M) would oppose as being as being pro-America. Mamata Banerjee would declare a 24 hour bandh in Kolkata which would be supported by all opposition parties. Meanwhile, Titan would protest over the deal to grant HMT the right to manufacture DST compliant watches. Several MPs would resign and go to jail over the DST contract scam.

When DST would actually be implemented, there would be a grand launch party where Shah Rukh Khan would dance to the songs of his latest movie and say “Kuch aur wish karo, DST karo!” and Amitabh Bachchan would hold a platinum wrist watch in his hands and smile “Do DST ke boondh, zindagi ke liye” The annual Filmfare awards would be held twice a year on DST implementation days which Aamir Khan would not attend because he never believed in such awards while Arundhati Roy and Medha Patkar would stand outside the auditorium and protest that DST would harm the environment. Ekta Kapoor would modify the script of Kasauti Zindagi Ki where Prerna would marry Bajaj in one DST phase and Anurag in the other. Rohit Bal, Neeta Lulla and Sabyasachi Mukherjee would design a DST line of clothes for the next fashion week where Shahid Kapur and Saif Ali Khan would walk the ramp while Kareena Kapoor would cheer from the sidelines. Dev Anand would make a new movie called “Love in DST” starring a 16 year old girl who was born when 6am became 7am.

Our day and night cricket matches would be scheduled by DST and senior cricketers would not play test matches citing injury, while junior captains would declare that only young cricketers whose bodies can adjust to DST will be a part of the team. The hockey and football federations would protest that in addition to giving preferential treatment to cricket, DST was another means to make these sports unpopular. Sania Mirza would be sued for wearing a DST compliant watch sporting the Indian tricolor that would fall from her wrist during a match. Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupati would once again team up to face the challenge of playing under DST circumstances. The Indian Olympic Association would declare that with DST, India is now truly world standard, and therefore demand that ‘pittu’ be made an Olympic sport.

The common man would be totally confused because Doordarshan would forget to adjust the clock as per DST while the private channels would remember. Aaj Tak would interview people about how they felt about DST. Vodafone and Airtel would face a network outage on DST days and nobody would know the time. Anil Ambani would buy a Rs. 10,000crore DST clock that he would install outside his corporate office and name it after Tina. The Mumbai Stock Exchange would lose an hour on DST days and people would howl in distress because they lost crores in a bullish market. Government employees would demand and be granted overtime in winter. The chief agenda in the opposition party’s election manifesto would be to have two new national holidays on DST implementation days.


Well, thank God! No one’s thought of DST as yet!

Disclaimer:
This piece was inspired during a conversation with the great Oirpus. Not only is this piece dedicated to him, all litigators are requested to contact Oirpus.

Some of our Bollywood techno music is truly inspired. The opening music of the title song in 'Dus' sounds exactly the same as the graph plotter in office.

Bean counting and calorie counting will eventually kill the Bong. I used to love eating my slices of bread with butter and jam on both sides, till I discovered that I was gorging on a heavy duty bread which carried 110 calories per slice while my diet obsessed room mate asked me not to have more than 1000 calories a day! Butter does not find a place in my grocery list anymore, but jam has sneakingly made a place after I decided that I needed an alternative to chocolates. Its jam session all the time these days and as long as I don't know the specific calorie count of what I am eating, I exercise no restraint - pun intended.

Now that chocolate is out of bounds for me, I have been counting the omnipresence of it in my life and suddenly I'm realising that so many things are going to change now!

1. No more chocolate cereal for me - have replaced it with a killer bore of vanilla and almond cereal.

2. Chocolate chip cookies - my best friend when I was
a) Bored
b) Reading a storybook
c) hungry
d) Had nothing to do
e) Depressed
f) Feeling full after a heavy lunch
is now about to give way to lime flavoured nachos. I am already dreading the prospect of getting double depressed by missing the chocolate chips when I am depressed.

3. Chocolate flavoured milk - low fat or plain milk with Bournvita/ hot chocolate/chocolate Horlicks is now going to yield to plain, humble and lowly low fat milk. I cannot think of an alternative right now and that's making me triple depressed.

4. Chocolate cake, pastry and brownies - I don't know how I am going to refuse cake on people's birthdays and play the spoil sport. I don't even know how I am going to sit and watch people eat chocolate cake right in front of me.

5. Chocolate ice cream - I am trying strawberries for the moment. Something healthy and tastes so different from ice cream that it will hopefully help me forget me what ice cream is like. I always detested the shocking pink colour of strawberries but shock therapy is what I am in for at the moment.

6. Chocolate covered doughnuts (sniff sniff! tears) - plain bagels/bread?

7. My favourite bar of chocolate - full milk, full sugar, full fat whatever! - Heaven help me! I really don't know the answer.

I guess you can take chocolate away from me, but you cannot take me very far away from chocolate! Literally, no matter what a store stocks, it always has chocolates. It is impossible to go anywhere without stumbling on some product of chocolate. Even as I speak, I see a chocolate coloured coffee mug right next to me and it is making things more painful than before. As I said, bean counting and calorie counting will kill the Bong someday!

Cool wind in my hair

No Hotel California this one. I have moved into a new room where the heater does not work properly. The previous occupant was a rather "hot" woman who did not need a heater to keep her warm. This coupled with loads of rainfall, temperatures tending to freezing points (aah! I do not understand all the C and F anymore - everything is about how it "feels like") and the fact that I am sleeping on a wooden floor (the people who made this apartment could not afford wall to wall carpets and I cannot afford a bed) has helped me acquire a really hale hearty and healthy cold. I sneeze anytime of the day, my teeth clatter all the time in the cold and I am always shivering and yet I refuse to wear warm clothes because it looks ridiculous when other people around me have started wearing next to nothing clothes. After all, fashion always has a price to pay. This time its in the form of Tylenol.

Table of Content

Back Home	Out Here
Walk on the left side of wings in office	Walk on the right side of the narrow passage in office
Boss yells "Onnesha!@#$ ekhaane aaye" Me: 'Aaaaaaashchiiii"	JL: Unwayeshea Me: I'll be rite withya in a moment Jim
Theek achche	Aowkay
Files	Daaquments
Nobody asks "how are you" first thing in the morning. Its usually "code ta shesh hoyeche?" Me: Naa:-((( aaro time laagbe	"Good Morning Unwayeshea. Howeru dewing today" Me: Guuuud..:-)))))
Lunch - tiffin..Ma ka haath ka khana. sniff sniff!	Lunch in cafeteria. Er….does brocolli contain beef? No? then please add it to the topping. Pepperoni is just a cute Italian way of referring to the salt and pepper wala pepper right? Add it by all means!!!
Parties: Coke or Fanta?	Parties: White wine or Red wine?
Free cardomom tea from the vending machine. Accompany DJ and SS to the vending machine and yawn while they have coffee.	Free french vanilla decaf from the coffee maker or 60 calories per serving hot chocolate which I always have first thing in the morning.
Proxy server blocked: No Yahoo Mail, Rediff Mail…	Gmail, Orkut, Rediff Movies, Blogger...
9am: empty office. Nobody around to appreciate your punctuality.	8am: everyone deep into work. Gosh! I am late!!!
8pm: sneaking out of office, hoping that nobody will notice.	5pm: Bye J :-)))) Have a nyice evening. :-)))) J: Biiii Unwayeshea. Cya tomorrow!

;-)

I am now mastering the painful art of killing time while pretending to work. I was always great at staring into nothing for hours and hours together. But now the brain must function overtime to invent work that never existed and act like I am very busy doing it. Greater men and women have done it before me and its now my turn to be baptized in fire. I am sitting right next to the person to whom I report daily and it is my job to convince him that by doing nothing in particular, I am actually doing a great job and adding my bit of kinetics towards pulling his company to the next generation of progress. I have had an easy beginning so far, and I suspect he was beginning to regard me as a genius of some sorts. Then, in a moment of carelessness, I slipped and confessed to him that I did not have much to do. Since then, the chips have been down and my image has taken a beating. But the brain will once again rise to the occasion and find avenues for restoring my reputation as the master of deception.

Ducking under pressure

So I succumbed to the delight of grilled duck again last evening and also to tiramisu and chocolate soufflé despite my vows to lay off fat, trans fat, high carbs, low carbs, good and bad cholesterol. I tactfully avoided fiber which I should have gorged instead and grabbed for fried calamari which was now going to glue itself to the rest of my adipose-why don't you just leave me- tissues.

If adipose tissue is so light as to float in air, why are fat people so heavy?

Large chunks of ice float in water, fat also floats on water.

Last weekend, I walked in ankle deep snow for almost an hour and still did not catch a cold. But sometimes, I can just walk out of home in perfect weather and come back home with a cold. Murphy's Law exists. Behind me the skies darken, its going to rain very soon. I don't have an umbrella, but its been a while since I got wet in the rain.

Rain

Sleet

Icicles

Snow

Ice cream - I've gotto stopit now!!!!

Ugh!

I am selfish. Earlier, I would never spend money on myself. Rather, most of it would be spent on buying things for others. Now, it is just the opposite. I am selfishly buying things only for myself, without a thought for others. I am even making excuses for not buying things for them!!! And to think that this is the season for forGIVING

Ugh!

Thanks to AB's generous pile of gifts on my b'day among other goodies, I am now the proud owner of a box of premium assorted dark chocolates. My will power is a rocking boat in the ocean of temptation and abstinence. I take a longing look at the chocolates and shut the box. I try and count the calories -the nutrition facts clearly state that they're not enough to make me wrestle sumo after the box is finished- on the other hand, I so badly want to fit into that black and white shirt that is making me look like a puffed balloon these days. My obsession with the chocolates has turned me into a depressed maniac. I devoured 4 chocolate chip cookies at breakfast and a huge chocolate brownie at lunch to forget that box of chocolates. When it did not work, I ate a giant slice of chocolate cake to get over it. But visions of the box linger on. I see it in front of my eyes after every mean, whenever I am hungry and during those malicious TV commercials on desserts.

I am now thinking of meditation and yoga. Maybe Tai Chi and shadow boxing. Suggestions are welcome. Meanwhile that box lies next to me as I blog, invitingly......

Old Vistas Revisited

Yesterday I ate sushi for the second time. The first time had been in a buffet meal with something of a pretension of a shushi - but yesterday was the real thing. I felt like a cat stealing fish before it is cooked. The Indian palate is such that without a strong sauce (wasabi with soyabean) nothing tastes good. I dipped the sushi in the sauce and gulped it in one go. Aaah heaven!

I had duck for dinner too...a new meat for me. I don't think I liked it much, so I am not very keen on having duck again. I tried Thai pad noodles which was a tad bit sweet. But I have a sweet tooth, so I liked it.

Then I had fried ice cream with cherry sauce. It was like a cresendo of an opera. Could not have asked for more....

Earlier in the afternoon, I managed to drive on the highway, overspeeded and did not get caught.

Must check my stars. Yesterday must have been a good day. The boss left office at 3PM and my home made pasta finally tasted good.

Day after

Age: one more

Location: center of my universe. Away from everyone I care about, yet close to all.

Mood: meditative. Does love at first sight really exist?

I want to: speak my mind.

I wish I could: rewind time and be here.