Game Over

Its literally game over for Pakistan cricket. No country would dare to tour Pakistan probably for another five years. Five years really, is a pretty long period and after five years, Pakistan may not be like what it is today, it may be wiped off from the world map because of its proximity to Al Qaeda.
The attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team is a bit strange compared to the type of attacks they have carried out in the past. They could have caused more devastation if they had wished to but they haven’t. I feel their intention was just to scare away foreigners from their land and prevent any international presence in the future. Luckily they have not taken any one hostage which would have finally ended up in releasing few terrorists and few more attacks like the 26/11. A CCTV capture shows how all the terrorists walk away freely carrying their AK-47’s, from the scene after the attack, just like a stroll in the park, which keeps us all guessing, where were all the security forces?? Chris Broad, the match referee has told in a press conference that they were all like sitting ducks out there and there were no security forces around and the security had vanished in the hour of need. It was all a preplanned attack by the LET, Qaeda and the ISI. It seems they had assured to provide foolproof security, similar to the one provided to the president of the country:-) Without the help of the ISI, such types of attacks are not possible. The ISI headed by the government of Pakistan funds all the terrorist activities across the globe and yet the international community is mum on this issue; they should have bombed each and every city by now. Leaving behind large amounts of ammunition, it looks like their main intention was to create a sense of fear.
Unluckily we cannot choose our neighbors and that is our biggest problem, BDR in Bangladesh, Maoists in Nepal, and LTTE in Sri Lanka and about Pakistan no one needs introduction:-) Dr. Kalam’s 2020 vision will definitely be a distant dream:-) There can never be growth when there’s so much chaos around.
With most of the parts in Pakistan controlled by Taliban, shortly the entire country will be in the hands of the terrorists.

Weird !!!

I was on my way back to my house after a pretty long day at office, a good twenty minute walk from the bus stop to my place. I was very hungry and I wanted something badly so I was rushing towards my house. I generally take the same route everyday.
On my way back I saw an old lady probably aged around 65, standing in front of her house; she was looking at me, may be hoping that I would be of some help to her. When I was almost in front of her house, she waved and said “Baa pa illi”. I turned back to see if it was some one else behind me. Then I looked back at her and she said”neene baa pa illi”. Now I sensed that something was wrong here and the old woman needed some help badly. I went near her house and she requested me to help and suddenly she ran into her house. I was pretty much confused; I didn’t know what to do. I did not want to enter a stranger’s house at first but I decided otherwise, I just wanted to help that poor lady and get her out of the trouble she was in. So many things were going inside my head for those few seconds, to name a few… a probable cylinder burst, fire, some one from her family needed medical attention immediately. I just followed her inside; I was a bit curious as to know what had happened, which made her let some complete stranger into her house and as a result a bit tensed too:-) She was waiting for me inside, I went inside and looked everywhere around, no fire or anything of that sort and I am a bit relieved and a bit more curious and enquired about her problem. She hands me over the TV Remote and says she is unable to view some Kannada channel and her favorite serial had started and wants me to fix it:-) I could not stop laughing, at the weird lady and also at myself may be for overreacting to the situation. She was cursing the cable guy for not responding to her call and she started telling me the story of that crap serial. As soon as I came to know this I just wanted to leave her house as soon as possible. I surfed all the hundred channels but could not find that channel and told her that the only person who can help her is the cable operator. I handed over the remote and while leaving I gave her some piece of advice, initially I did not want to advice a person who is much, much older to me but still I did. I told her not to let any stranger into her house in the future. The way she replied sounded like one responsible old lady but not to be, she said she never lets any one inside her house come what may, but it seems she somehow got the feeling that I am a good guy. How on earth can someone be so irresponsible?Instead of letting a complete stranger into her house she could have easily given a miss to that boring serial.
I then left her house thinking about how strange some people can be:-)

Slumdog*

I had huge expectations for this movie after reading the reviews and hearing from people, I am disappointed. The movie is in bad taste. They have directed the movie not with the intention of making one, but with the intention of celebrating India’s poverty. Which country in the world is free from this problem and who would want to make fun of it???
The movie begins with the cops torturing a guy, only until you realize that the guy is getting thrashed only for getting all the answers right on a game show. Why on earth would police do that? Then that guy starts narrating how the bad experiences he had in his life helped him to answer those questions. If we go by the director, actually none of his life experiences would give him the right answers. There would have been no takers for this movie -
If the hero could have come up with the answers with the help of good experiences he had in his life (i.e. portraying India s rich culture and showing what the real INDIA is)
Some Indian director had directed this movie.
I am not writing this because this movie has shown some bad things about my country but here are a few glaring loopholes in the movie –
1. Cops grill a guy just because he got all the answers right on some show.
2. Two brothers keep conversing in Hindi and suddenly they have an accent, I agree this is an English movie; then why did they not have it from the start.
3. Small poor blind kid tells who the person is on a $100 bill. How will a beggar know that and that too it being a foreign currency?
4. The host (Anil Kapoor) keeps teasing him as the poor chaiwala every time and the audience joins him, Indians don’t make fun of poverty, maybe the people from west do it.
5. Jamaal knows who invented the revolver just because his brother owns oneJ
6. Jamaal gets to find his brothers number in a call centre that provides service to callers from Europe. I wonder why they would keep a local telephone directory that too with mobile numbers listed in it.
7. Police beat him up black and blue and the very next day he s back on show with not even a single scratch on his body.
I bet, I can add more to that list. I have never seen so many flaws in a single movie till now:-)
I have noticed one thing, winning a booker is very easy nowadays, write some piece of crap on India and show that there is no other country worse than this, you are sure of getting one. May be the director lost his job to some Indian that is why he has come up with this piece of crap. Probably the west is threatened by the brand image India and they want to tarnish our image, may be a part of what he has shown is prevalent in India but we have so many other things to be proud of.
There are a few things which add no sense to the script but still its there in the movie just to depict India as a bad country,
1. Children rob a car, Jamaal says this is the real India and the owner of that car hands him a few dollars and says this is the real America. What the f@#k? We all know what the real America is.
2. The scene which shows how mineral water is packed in India.

Probably the worst ending a movie can have, Latika is watching the show on TV and Jamaal makes a call to his brother expecting that his brother would give him the answer to the last question. Phone rings and after few minutes Latika realizes that the phone is indeed with her in the car and she starts running, covers a lot of distance and to the surprise the phone still keeps ringing and obviously I expected her to give the answer after that slow motion run, she smiles, I still haven’t figured out why and tells that she doesn’t know the answer. She had already seen the question on TV, if she didn’t know the answer, why did she have to take the trouble of running all the way and pick up the call??
And there’s nothing like it’s written in our fate, we have to go and take it if we want. If we sit just like that and say why worry it’s written we will get it, there will not be a bigger fool than us in this world. Indeed a horrible message at the end of a horrible movie.

This movie has nothing in it, a weak plot and to add to that a very poor direction indeed, specially made for the west to feel good and try not to feel threatened by a growing force in the world. If you want to spoil your day then go on, watch this movie:-)

* The title of my blog has got nothing to do with the title of the movie; it’s indeed the name which I have given to the director after watching the movie.

A New Year Resolution ;-)

I had never thought that I would make a New Year resolution in my life, but this time around I have made a resolution for the first time. Resolutions are meant to be broken the very next day but I have decided that it will be, for a very, very long time.
I have made a resolution that I would not support any artistes, sportspersons, websites, anything and everything from Pakistan, which would directly or indirectly help them financially.
I have heard people say politics and sports should not me mixed, what the crap are they talking about??? Government of India did the right thing by not allowing our cricketers to travel to Pakistan for the cricket tour. We as citizens of this country would appreciate more if we get to see such type of things in the future; I mean we should cut of all ties with Pakistan, be it cultural, economic or related to sports. If we support them we will also be responsible in some way or the other to the terrorist activities happening in our country.
I will explain how it works; Let’s assume that there are two Pakistanis who earn their living by performing in our country, both are talented and there is a fan following in India, one a very sincere guy who is in no way connected to terrorists and the other funds the terrorist activities. I need not tell about the latter, the first person works hard performs, makes money here and goes back to his/her country, pays tax to the country and now we will be responsible for that tax which he/she has paid which would now be utilized for their army or the ISI which then funds for terrorist activities in our country, so be it an innocent person or a person connected to terror our money will be used against us. So I have decided from now on I will never watch any programs in which there are Pakistanis involved. I agree if I as an individual stop watching it, nothing will matter but imagine a country of billion doing it, then we will definitely be making a dent in their economy for sure;-) It s high time we do something about it, we can’t be mute spectators anymore. Cricket between the two countries should be banned forever. Just imagine the money involved when they play each other. People from all over the world watch those matches and hence big players sponsor huge money and the money generated from tickets and also the money from betting will all be used against us. It will be like, raising fund for our own funeral.
Let’s accept the fact ,we cannot attack a country which has no idea about who is heading the country,is it the P.M. or the Army or the I.S.I.??? If we attack them they might use nuclear weapons against us but that’s a different story then, Pakistan will definitely be wiped out of the world map for sure;-) but we should also be ready to lose one big city which we cant afford to at any cost, so the best way to beat them at this moment without going to war, is to beat them economically ;-) Doing it is a small thing but that will make quite an impact on them, so why not?

SAD BUT TRUE

I write this with deep pain and anger about the November 26th Mumbai terrorist attack. We Indians, excluding the traitors of our own country I mean to say the politicians, will never forget our great officers who sacrificed their lives for the country. Thank you for saving so many lives without even thinking twice about yours….

There’s a deep sense of anger in me on the corrupt political system in our country, probably a bit more of what I have on those bastards from across the border. This has been going on in our country from so many years and it’s high time we take stock of the situation and see to that it never repeats again. Every time there’s an attack or a bomb blast in our country PM addresses the nation telling that we will never bow against terror and action will be taken against those who are responsible. Mr. PM, the country is fed up with all your false assurances.

Terrorists easily enter our country with huge ammunition hijacking boats, and start attacking innocent people and storm two five star hotels, a hospital, railway station and hijack a police vehicle and start killing people, it really looks like a plot straight out of some movie but it’s really sad and difficult to come to terms with it in real life. The entire country is responsible for this, right from the politicians, intelligence agencies, the system, media and also normal citizens like us who elect these inefficient politicians.

Initially when all this started at around 9.30pm there was news that some gang war has started in Mumbai, how can it be called a gang war when some mother f*&%$ shoot at innocent unarmed people. The state government takes it so lightly and calls the union government for NSG Commandos an hour later and to top it all NSG commandos arrive at the scene only 10 hours later, so many lives could have been saved if the government had acted quickly. When all this started, there were reports that about 40 terrorists entered India and later when Operation Cyclone ended the number came down to ten, what happened to the remaining???? There are some serious lapses on part of our government and they owe an answer to all this mess.

Look at how these irresponsible politicians respond after such a big disaster, Maharastra CM tells in an interview that they had prior information about it but they weren’t specific, what does he mean??? Does he expect the terrorists to call him up minutes before the attack and give specific details? Even then they will fail, I m pretty sure. His deputy in another interview tells that these small incidents keep happening in big cities such as Mumbai… probably we should do what they do to the Defense minister in the movie Rang De Basanti to him and later tell that these incidents keep happening in big cities like Mumbai. And where the hell is Raj Thackeray??? He was telling that he would not tolerate anything against the Marathi community and he is nowhere to be seen now. Come out of the hole in which you are hiding, our brave heroes of the country have flushed out all the scum.

When they had prior information about the threat to Mumbai and about the involvement of ISI, why did the intelligence agencies not take adequate measures?? So many valuable lives could have been saved. A retired NSG commando rightly said the other day that Sandeep (NSG commando) died not because of the bullet but because of the system. It’s impossible to change the rotten system overnight. The change has to come within each and everyone of us to make India a better and safe place in the world.

When everything ended I saw a flash message on some news channel which read Mumbai Liberated…. what do they mean by it, as though those terrorists had taken control over the entire city. Yes this was the worst attack on India but those bastards had attacked only few places in a very big city. Why do the media hype it in such a big way, those coward Pakistanis will be very happy to see such messages on TV. They will feel that the entire financial capital was under their control, which wasn’t the case.

Even the common man like us, is responsible for all this. We blame our politicians for all this but we are the ones who have elected them. When anything like this happens we discuss about how bad the system is, write blogs targeting our politicians, light candles, hold placards and that is it, which we do. Eventually as time passes by, we forget everything and back to square one. Everyone wants a very good system in place but the truth is none of us are ready to clean up the mess, no one wants to get dirty. We have no right to blame the country after all, we have ourselves to blame and each one of us should start working towards making India a better country.

TV Commercials

Most of the people hate to watch commercials in between their favorite programs but I somehow like it. People may say it’s strange but I would any day prefer watching those commercials rather than watching crap Indian soaps on T.V. Lot of creativity goes into directing a commercial. The entire info about the product should come across to the viewer within 30 seconds or so. Ad maker should see to it that the entire information of the product is put into it and it should be as short as possible. If they try to put in more information, it becomes lengthy and boring, and if they try to make it short they lose out on some information about the product. It definitely is a very tough job to balance both. With addition to it the ad has to be creative, so that it stays in the mind of the viewer for a long time.

According to me commercials can be classified into 3 categories
1.The one that is very interesting, creative and makes lot of sense and we feel like watching it over and over again.
2. Boring and which makes no sense whatsoever.
3. The normal one(straight forward), i.e. straight to the point
I feel the first two types are more effective compared to the third. If it’s interesting then we obviously talk about it and the product gets good publicity and even if the commercial doesn’t make sense we keep wondering what it was really about and we talk about the product which will help their cause. It does not mean that there will be very good sales for a particular product only if the commercial is very good. It really doesn’t work that way. Even if it’s bad it will sometimes work. Basically the commercial and the product should make an impact on the viewer so that it stays in the mind and generate sales.

I got an opportunity to attend a two day course in office last month. It was basically about Personality development and Team building. There was an activity which we were supposed to do, which was quite interesting. Each team consisted of two participants. They had given us a sheet of paper and we were supposed to manufacture a product out of it and market it to the rest of the participants. Everyone came up with their own interesting ideas and we were all ready with our products in no time but no one really knew how to market it effectively. It really is a tough job. The first team presented their product, they were straight forward in their approach and they immediately got into the technical details about their product and about advantages of buying it. There was no creativity whatsoever in their marketing style. People could find out easily the limitations of it and started questioning about it and they could not justify their claims in the end. Another team came with a simple idea, put lots of masala into it, they did not get much into the finer technical details about the product and they made it look funny and very interesting. None of us could find out the negative things about the product as we were all thinking about the way they presented it. No one really cared to know the limitations of that product. Even though the first team had a good product in hand compared to this team they failed because of lack of creativity and keeping it just simple. Any product will definitely have both advantages as well as its limitations. It depends on how well the product is put in front of the consumer. So the normal straight forward ads don’t really work.

There are a few companies from which we can expect really good commercials every single time. Some of my all time favorites are ads from Sprite, Fevikwik, Fevicol, Mentos and now the latest from Virgin is good, the one where a guy flirts with a girl in the train where virgin mobile helps him keep the mother away while he flirts with her daughter. I feel the talented ad makers should get into directing movies because they are the ones who know the value of each second unlike our movie directors.

Beginning of the END????

The hottest topic nowadays, everywhere is about the ongoing India Australia Test Series. To be fair no one had expected India to beat Australia so comprehensively. Everyone had thought that Indians would do well against them at home but looking at the way they are playing they have all the ingredients to become the No1 team in the world. This Indian team reminds me about the late 90’s Australian team where team’s success was not dependent on one individual. The only reason why they are doing well is because of the fact that the team is no more dependent on Sachin. In the late 90’s and almost till last year or so winning or losing would depend on how much Sachin would score. On top of that bowling attack was so weak, I should not be calling it an attack:-) Now if Fab four fail to score runs people like Bhajji, Kumble chip in with the bat. Also there is a lot of variety in the bowling department. But the only thing we have to see is how consistent they will be. Indian Premier League has helped India s cause which many people would think otherwise. They argue that there will be early retirements and huge unnecessary pay package. Why do we have to care about early retirements when youngsters are getting a very good platform to compete with world class experienced players and will help them in the future when they represent our country. And about the pay packages I can say only one thing to those people….. GROW UP!!!!

Australia has been hit real hard with the greats like McGrath, Gilchrist, Warne and Langer retiring at almost the same time… It’s really difficult for anyone to fill in their shoes. Probably with the success rate they had during their period no one thought about the future. They were very happy with the present and did not want to think beyond it. A smooth transition in the team is absolutely necessary, which we can now see in our Indian team. With Ganguly retiring after this series we will see more of this but it will not affect the way it has, for Australia. It’s really difficult to find replacements for players like Sachin, Dravid and Ganguly, but there s lot of talent in the youngsters and playing under them, they will learn a lot and a person like Dhoni leading them, I feel we are heading in the right direction.

Australia s problems won’t end here; in fact it has started now. They still are not able to cope with the retirements and I feel they have not yet thought about the future.Imagine players like Ponting, Hayden, Hussey and Lee retiring at the same time, i guess they will all be around for another two years and they have to look beyond these great players or else they will be in deep trouble, in fact they already are. One has to learn from the mistakes they have committed and I doubt Australians have. Is this the beginning of the end of Australia s domination over other teams???