'Boo'let point : the transient state

Slumdog Millionaire: Khichdi with Pesto sauce

2009-01-28T04:13:00.000-08:00

What type of movie is Slumdog Millionaire?

a. Hollywood blockbuster
b. Hollywood indie movie
c. Crossover cinema
d. A western attempt to make a Bollywood movie

Who would you rate the king of lost and found movies where incidents just happen so that you can discover your loved ones coincidentally?

a. James Cameron
b. Danny Boyle
c. Prakash Jha
d. Manmohan Desai

Who would you rate the king of cop interrogation scenes that can be straight of the Gamdevi police chowki ?

a.Martin Scorcsese
b.Danny Boyle
c.Rajkumar Santoshi
d.Ramgopal Verma

Which movie would you describe as the most realistic description of slum life in Mumbai that tugs your emotions and reminds you of Dharavi instantaneously?

a.Harold and Kumar
b.Slumdog Millionaire
c.Dharavi
d.Salaam Mumbai

Which train scene best epitomizes the ability of a person to separate with a loved one as the train gather momentum?
a.Trainspotting
b. Slumdog Millionaire when Jamal loses Latika
c. Hum when Amitabh loses Kimi Katkar
d. Yaadon ki Baraat when Dharam paaji loses his brothers because he jumped early

Which is AR Rehman’s best background score in a movie?
a. Moulin Rouge
b. Slumdog Millionaire
c. Rangeela
d, Bombay

Which is the best dialogue that appeals to people who rely on fate and things beyond their control to justify what happens in their lives?
a. ‘I believe in America’ from Godfather
b. ‘It is written’ from Slumdog Millionaire
c. ‘Mere paas maa hai’ from Deewar.
d. ‘Arrey oh baabu mushoy hum to rangmanch ki kathputliyan hain jiski dor us upar wale ke haathon main hai kab, kaun kahan uthega ye koi nahin janta from Anand.

So you get the drift if most of your answers are a then you have never been to movies more than once a year, Hindi or English. If your answer is b then you have not seen enough Hindi movies since you lived in South Mumbai or somewhere far away from India. If your answer is c you have never seen Hindi movies twice. If your answer is d you will come out of Slumdog thinking why there is so much hype over this movie.

There are some improbable scenes just because this movie had to be in English. Jamal Malik speaks accented English at a Gamdevi police station where Saurabh Shukla is on his best MC/BCs behaviour. The most popular bhikari song in Mumbai is not a Soordas bhajan Mr.Boyle, but Shirde wale Sai baba aaya hai tera dar pe qawwali. And a Latika cannot turn into a Pinto, anyone can recognize her Goanness from a distance. Like the last error, Mr.Boyle never had time for such nuances. He was on a ride to show the worst scenes from Mumbai, lampoon India and its call center culture all in the guise of making a feel good movie.

The movie definitely is feel good but its not Oscar material, its pure kitsch its the same as the British discovering balti chicken and now calling it their own. As a sign of protest, I nominate Amar Akbar Anthony for the Oscars. It had feel good , lost and found, scenes from the slums of that time and everything that makes fate the winner. In a way the success of this movie seems well written but I am sure of buffet of the scenes from several Indian movies would taste better than this khichdi with pesto sauce.

And maybe Bollywood directors should resort to reading books ( beyond Chetan Bhagat) and watching Korean DVDs, we could have made our own Jhopadpati Crorepati (why didn’t they think of that name for the Hindi version?).

The mess that muses me

2008-11-16T00:28:00.000-08:00

The financial crisis is grating my nerves nowadays, not because my portfolio is down to abysmal levels but every tom, dick and henry(paulson if you missed that sitter) seems to have an opinion about it. I mean bar waiters talking about it is the last straw when you are not having a fancy cocktail but a rundown beer.

So here is it guys I thought I will make it simple and apply financial theory to everyday life so that masses can have a field day since the nightmares continue.

Assume that you want to get married to a hot chick but you dont want the risk of divorce. Well is there any insurance like that? Well apparently there was an instrument called a credit derivative. So if somebody did get divorced somebody else will have to pay for the alimony. There was a sophisticated model that told you what you had to pay for this kind of insurance based on your background, promiscuity parameters and financial muscle. This model assumed the universal principle of the total testosterone in the world remains constant and follows the second law of thermodynamics that further shows that everyone's probability of divorce can be converted into a matrix and calculated by anyone who is out of b-school and works in a bank for late hours since he doesnt have a girlfriend.

The problem with this model it that it hides the Johnny-cum-lately behind Linda's Goodman by using cherry picking and other myraid credit rating mechanisms. But nothing told them that there could be an orgy happening anytime or was it happening all the time. The orgy stops not because you run out of fluids but people defualt on the booze. So I guess you get the drift, since this blog is still not R-rated(ratings again) .

Finally one word of financial advice guys. NPV is what makes marriages work, sex is merely a cash flow issue.

Return to rawness

2008-10-02T07:48:00.000-07:00

Raw according to dictionary.com has over 10 meanings but my post is particularly about these meanings. But in every sense of it, I feel like returning to rawness.

1. Not having undergone processes of preparing, dressing, finishing, refining, or manufacture

Processing, finishing,etc are a great part of standardization in any output. It makes it predictable . Organizations are champs at creating processes, even for most mundane issues like entry into an office to complex things like innovation. Most companies rarely move up from the 1 single product or service that somebody conjured up in epiphany or serendipity. Layers after layers of management exist where every layer converts rawness to finished outcomes. A sales head can never replicate the days when he was in the sun selling that latest printer, a marketing head can never replicate the oodles of doodles of his youth, a finance head can never have the fun of error tracing an excel sheet with wrong formulas. Somehow there is a time everyone feels that those raw days were more fulfilling than approving claims and being cced on inconsequential mails.

2. Crude in quality or character; not tempered or refined by art or taste

Look no further than this song in Singh is King called 'tujhe dulha kisne banaya bhootneeke'. Or the English movie Stepbrothers or Forgetting Sarah Marshall. There is rawness to be behooved in some moments of these movies. To appreciate wine or Cubism is an effort, laughing at crudeness is effortless.

3. Ignorant, Inexperienced, or untrained

Somewhat linked to point 1. Again experience teaches you what not to do and so you become more efficient at eliminating inefficiency. Experience teaches you to limit your expectations, which is like eliminating any possibility of greater joy. Plasticity pervades a stimulated life that reads more from billboards as compared to others emotions. In short we all live Truman shows of our own, with distributed audiences and different directors.

4. Unprocessed or unevaluated

Evaluation is a tricky science. Some experts argue that children learn better if there is no pressure of exams or evaluations. Ricardo Semler in his book Maverick also had something to offer against performance evaluation in organizations.

But even a child does more stunts when he knows there is an audience. So can there ever be a return to rawness.. I dont know the answer, I just wish I could do it more often.

On Intellectualism

2008-09-27T00:04:00.000-07:00

There is no point being an intellectual....Why aa....

Intellectualism is great between 2 seemingly old grouchy men swinging a few pegs of Ballantines. It sparkles as a bright light breaking out of the clouds of cynicism that the men wantonly inhibit. It is as soothing as the belief that they wont get drunk in 4 pegs.

But what happens when the same two men go to swanky overlit malls or pubs where the strobe lights mirror the smiles of wannabe Valentines. The same intellectualism tries to snake deeper into the epidermis hunting for the veil that it can get to shield itself from the commonly accepted smartness. This is not soothing unless you get drunk in 4 pegs..

Changing the posts style

2008-09-27T00:00:00.000-07:00

I have decided to give blogging another go... But this time I will write short posts which will linger for a long time... Thats the attempt.. Previously writing a post was an elaborate process..getting the thoughts right, language right, impact right etc....Abhi it will be straight dil se and sometimes dimag se... And there will be lots of Hinglish...No more global attempts...

Mere fans jaha bhi ho wapas aa jao...!

Totally Talli....

2008-08-15T10:37:00.000-07:00

I saw Ugly aur Pagli.

The movie is quite ordinary. But it has some solid positives.

1. The 'Talli Ho Gayi' song ...Its pure mania. The music and lyrics merge mellifluosly with an orchestration that makes it a must have dance track in all booze parties. Then there is Mallika in a non-sexy avatar in a cutish hairstyle, irreverent dressing and casual chic. The choreography is simply mind blowing ...it creates the essence of co-ordinated dancing but with such rambunctious abandon that it is a treat to watch. And add to it the superb singing of Hard Kaur and Anmol Malik...This song is an absolute scorcher.... Full paisa vasool....

In fact I had no doubts on Mallika to have a comic flair...Welcome anyone? ..her steps in that song with Nana Patekar and Anil Kapoor are just superb...It was something latent which Bollywood forgot to exploit in their rush to show her assets...In any case better late than never.

Thanks to Pritish Nandy Communications for discovering Mallika yet again after Pyar Ke Side Effects. Its great to have a sex bomb get normal appeal...

So guys watch out for Mallika the heroine...not the item....

Shallow India

2008-06-22T09:34:00.000-07:00

India as a country has always prided on its depth...dharma, culture, yoga, ayurveda and all the other cliches that are talking points of many an Indian in his global conversations so that he can highlight his self imposed sense of superiority.

Where is all that depth nowadays in that country? I think five years of continuous economic growth has produced tremendous discontinuities in the identity of the country.

"Des badla, bhes badlo" is the new slogan epitomized by none other than the embodiment of India's can do spirit, MS Dhoni. Dhoni once represented the blossoming of small town India when he started out, but today he is another lost icon who has lost not just his hair but also some of his value in the societal ladder. At one point of time more people adopted his hairstyle than John Abraham's but commercialization has dented his uniqueness.

When swagger replaces strength, there is a sea of shallowness that engulfs a country into a sense of self-propogating seduction creating a mirage of achievement. And just like a strong sea can erode a mighty cliff by the bay, the deep rooted Indianness seems set for multiple erosions before it metamorphises and disintegrates in parts.

Inflation is eroding economic growth, hubris is eroding strategy, smartness is eroding intelligence, easy money is even eroding Bollywood's storytelling abilities, individualism is eroding affection. Will we embrace a mean spirit that matches materialism with movement or trumpet a culture that craves success at all costs.

I am not sure, when the rest of the world tries to search for their souls and all they can find are the wrinkles on their temples.

The Rice Ravan

2008-05-10T21:57:00.000-07:00

A few months back, the only rice Bush knew was Condolezza rice. Nowadays he seems to be knowing more about the rice India and China are eating.

Over the last four years in what was called the great economic expansion or another round of exuberance depending on what profession you are in , the world's well off people took $500 bn from the world to build the homes they didnt need. The number crunchers keep coming up with their versions of how high this number can be each time Bernanke makes a statement or another bank reports losses.

So as the global liquidity roller coaster reduces speed, driven by these losses and rising costs of inputs and fuels, the best way is to control the same BRIC economies who were supposed to sustain the growth and deprive them of capital unless they cap their eating habits.

Since the world needs a new enemy since it cannot catch Osama, rice has become the morose morsel. One man's biryani is another man's burden.

Soon, foreign investors are going to balk at rice eating executives from Asia as potential deal breakers. 'You guys eat so much rice, how can you run a company efficiently?'. Already top dealmaking hotels have introduced a set of 'riceless' menus for such investment meetings. The truth is they had no money since their leveraged bets have failed as badly as Britney Spears movement into adulthood.

TCS and Infy are facing a double whammy;the depressed dollar and the lower productivity of their software engineers who are being denied their full helpings of curd rice.

One of the key reasons why Indians have started eating so much is the saas bahu serials. There is a indirect correlation between the quality of these serials and the quantity of rice that gets consumed during Indian dinners while watching these serials. As a first step, Tulsi should take a first step to reduce the number of relatives from 127 to 64 so that we stop eating for others sake.

And Bahus, no more kicking a pot of rice when you enter new homes. Lot of wannabe bride inspired by these Bahus waste a lot of rice trying to perfect the best kick to show off to their in-laws .Hopefully, that will be the last time they will come close to a pot of rice since most of thse new age bahus cant cook nowadays.

I can go on with my rice rants but I have started seeing an alarming trend of some new age female bloggers trying to do their bit for the food crisis. Their suggestions range from using leftovers creatively like todays dosa is tomorrows uthapam, or how to optimize your cooking for the social occasions where Indians dance to kajra re after a few pegs of Black Label or how to use pastes etc.

That is when you know that this food crisis is not a problem at all, just a figment of imagination like Maneka Gandhi's love for stray dogs.

Ban More

2008-01-06T19:04:00.000-08:00

Well someone was called a monkey and it has created a great ruckus and a three match ban.

Now I want some more bans.

Can the word hirsute be banned ? Whenever desis shift to Southeast Asia where the natives have a serious lack of hair growth problem, they have been discriminated because of the rampant hair they publically exhibit on their legs and arms. And an English word that describes it in an offensive way like hirsute does hurt. Do you mean to say that having too much hair on the body is always bad. What if we have a genetic disposition that promotes it, ask Anil Kapoor, Dimple Kapadia felt she was hugging a bear when shooting for some steamy scenes in Jaanbaaz.

I think since the word exists in the dictionary someone will use it and someone will get offended.

The businessworld works on the unstated principle of 'you scratch my back, I scratch yours'. The origin of this phrase can be traced back to monkeys. When the world has advanced so much in terms of technology and business sophistication, I hate the fact that we are using primitive means of conducting ourselves in the corporate world. Since this reference also offends a whole lot of management thinkers from Drucker ( knowledge worker ahem) to Prahlad ( scratching as core competence) , I am calling for a ban to such idioms as well.

I think the entire set of professionals who do mimicry for a living should also be banned. Aping or mimicking has a direct reference to monkeys and I dont know how we can enjoy such primitive acts. Surely Sanjeev Kumar and Ashok Kumar will soon be forgotten, poor guys never looked young when they were around, and now any appreciation to them through such shows cannot be shown. Sad but needs to be done.

On a different note, Bajji has really insulted the entire Sardar community. Punjab offers a fertile ground for both growing crops and spawning galis. I am sure he could have come with better words to describe his emotions.

Random thoughts on social networking

2007-10-28T02:22:00.000-07:00

Nowadays it is not enough if you know people and know to use the internet, it is also important that you are part of a social networking site. Even if you are stuck with primates in Gabon, a social networking site is touted to be more handy than a mosquito repellent. Thankfully the apes haven’t started sending invites as yet.

I frankly find the term social networking working on a very thin sliver of my friend list. Basically if you are serious about networking from a career enhancing perspective, then you would like to do on a largely private basis and not on a social basis. And if you are socializing, then you would rather try to bind with a different set of people on a face to face basis in a pub or café.

Somehow most social networking sites forget a basic operational detail. If I really need something from Mr.X or Ms.Y, I am most likely to have an email address from a business card exchange in a meeting or better still a phone number. Now would I write a mail, or write some graffiti on his digital wall on Facebook? Beats me!

Random colleagues who never talk to me in office show supreme valour in sending Superpokes and other applications that would waste atleast half an hour of my precious online time. Hello how about picking up the office phone and saying lets meet at the coffee machine?

Similarly the whole social network phenomenon makes every man on the road feel that his daily schedule is being tracked like Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan. So you will find the Rapchik Rakesh leaving messages like ‘Today in Kandivali’ and ‘‘Now in the loo’ and so on.

‘Which snap should I put on my social networking site’ has become such a burning issue that counseling services have emerged that can predict the growth of your network to the kind of album you share. Apparently ‘Que Sera Sera’ does not hold in the digital world.

Now social networking also leads to the over analysis of common interests. Gals and guys seeking dates are now able to detail screening level compatibility issues like ‘hey our movie interest match 87.29% and our music tastes match 78.92%...whoppeee!

The other fear is the digital patrol which now friends and colleagues have at their disposal. Don’t be surprised if you are confronted with messages ‘hey whats cooking between you and Ms. Great giggle’. Every move you make, comment you make, the digital patrol will be watching you.

Strangely even the so-called investment in Facebook by Microsoft can be described as a Superpoke and nothing else! 1.6% for $240 mn, phew, what were they thinking lets throw some pocket change at this stuff and see it if it sticks huh!

Its happening in India

2007-10-06T21:38:00.000-07:00

Finished reading “It happened in India’ by Kishore Biyani. Although the book does not offer any paradigms I completely enjoyed it for the following reasons

a) It is written in a very honest and simple manner with Biyani’s unmistakable down to earth stamp all over it
b) It gives a very Indian perspective to the decisions and actions by an entrepreneur who has defied significant odds to be a category leader
c) It talks of a period of Indian business history that you can closely identify both as an observer and consumer

Of course I might be biased since I am a big fan of his Food Bazaar Stores. The social transformation that food retailing had on the Indian middle class family is so wonderful that doing a business analysis of it is like missing the wood for the trees. In a sort of family picnic on weekends, Indian households go berserk on the multiple options, discount offers and invigorating ambience that Biyani had laid out. Even a casual reading of the book would show that Biyani had his heart at the right place, but executed with good business brains to allow Indian household let loose their purse strings (and hence capture large share of the consumer wallet in business terms)

The other reason I liked the book was that it verbalizes some thoughts I have always felt about Indian marketers. Thank God that Biyani said it, rather than a MBA with five years of experience.

The best quote from the book I completely identified was: “Most marketing and advertising professionals are educated in convent schools in large metros, listen to western music, watch foreign movies and speak and think in English.”

And at a broader level, I think the same fraternity frowns upon Indian insights and makes some really big blunders.

Why did it take 7 years for Indian marketers to come up with the 200 ml cola bottle for Rs. 5? Any casual observation would have shown that most Indians did not consume an entire 300 ml bottle and shared that bottle thus reducing both average price realized and per capita consumption. Instead they kept hanging out with one superstar after another in the fervent hope of boosting consumption.

Similarly most of these marketing professionals would frown on everything that masses lap up like Govinda, Himessh Reshamiyya, saas bahu serials. There are radio stations who snootily started with playing only Angrezi music and had to quickly change their strategy to playing jhankar beats. Channels like Star World need the Koffee with Karan and dubbed versions of English movies. My question is simple , where the earlier mistakes necessary in the first place? Weren’t the answers blindingly obvious to someone who has spent sometime on the street?

Then there are some marketers who think the slip between where they see Indian should be(as some % of a global trend) and where Indians are actually are ( the on-ground feel) is just the lack of a marketing budget. So Blow money to bow many was the mantra. But why eat soggy Kelloggs when there is kanda poha, why make kadak chapattis with Pillsbury when there is chakki fresh atta , blah blah.

Ok before readers comment that this is a regressive rant, the common caveats apply. The Indian consumer is changing. The youth are surprising us sometimes. People are paying Rs.50 for coffee and spending over Rs.1000 a month on personal care products. And I am sure many marketers are thinking, segmenting, fermenting and implementing new ideas. But now we have many Indias to cater to instead of the one India that loved Amitabh Bacchan bash up 20 goondas.

The question that could have given an answer would have been how many youngsters in India have grown their hair due to Mahendra Singh Dhoni and how many have done it due to John Abraham. Well if you know the answer, you know where your market is. But John has cut his locks, so the answer just got tougher. Amen.

Hey Raam

2007-09-25T00:05:00.000-07:00

Hey Raam !

I am losing the religious plot from a political and social perspective nowadays.

1) Hindus have started issuing fatwas. A religion that prides itself on being innovative, inclusive, flexible and laying claim to all good aspects of living right from Yoga to Ayurveda, has now resorted to copying tactics from other religions. As Vajpayee would have said “ Yeh koi acchi baat nahi hai”

2) Our Hindu leaders seem to be getting the old Indian cricketing team (not the T20) malaise of not firing on all cylinders during crunch situations.

VHP has become dharma focused rather than karma focused making wimpy statements like “The VHP's main concern was only to reinforce Hindu dharma and it had never indulged in personal attacks or supported inflammatory speeches”. Imagine the number of fatwas that would have been issued if someone had questioned the existence of certain prophets.

And what happened to the fiery Bajrang Dal? How are they so surprisingly silent on this issue? Atleast for the namesake they should sympathize with the monkeys who had been instrumental in building the setu.

3) Then we have the Dravidian dappers, who refuse to see Raam. Maybe the leader should take of his big black glasses for a change. Maybe he will see it then.

And it is strange that a person who has launched a TV channel of his own name, forgot that Ram(Arun Govil) and Sita ( Deepika) exist not only in our hearts but also were members of Parliament.

And even if we question his existence, how do we stop saying things like “Raam Raam” a standard greeting in many parts of India, “Hai Raam” a standard sigh in many parts of India and many other TV serials.

The problem is more fundamental and goes back to the Aryan-Dravidian theories. Now if the Aryan theory is a hoax created by overpaid European historians, then it proves that its antithesis (since every hero needs a villain) being Dravidian is a superfluous existence. So if your own existence is pure vapourware, then why try to undermine an existence so hardwired into the collective consciousness.

4) Now if all Gods to us are just idols then are Indian Idols also new Gods. And who judges Indian Idols? Not our CM for sure. So can Anu Malik and Javed Akhtar tell if Rama is a God. But again, Javed Akhtar cant be neutral because that means Sholay was a fluke, he cant be positive since the Muslims will issue a fatwa against him and if he is negative then Hindus will stop following Indian Idol.

Welcome to the new paradoxical world of our countries politics, ideology and social sizzle. Wait for more fun till the next elections.

Forbidden parking idea

2007-09-20T02:04:00.000-07:00

I had been to Beijing a couple of months back. As the capital of the country that attracts the highest FDI in the world, it is impeccable with wide roads , a good mix of the old and new and amazing cleanliness. You do find beggars and rag pickers as a redeeming feature for the desi who wants to hype the negative and play down the difference between Beijing and Delhi.

Forbidden City was a let down by tourist standards since most of the monuments seemed similar within the city. Tianeman Square was imposing and seemed to have a sense of history even on a normal dull afternoon. Every city with a history needs such a central fulcrum and just a normal glance at this Square can conjure up images of crowds, strikes, marching soldiers and fiery speeches. Of course the forbidden incident just takes away some appreciation but an imposing structure nonetheless.

Coming back to the idea, look at the picture. Its simply a parking lot lock of sorts. If you own the parking slot, you can unlock this and the upper bar will come down, helping you to park at your designated slot. If your trying to hadap someones slot of course, you will damage your car. Simple concept, great execution, no RFID, geo-tagging, sensors and all that shabang.

The place where it would be useful is in corporate offices with limited parking slots. Herein the security guard plays the villain, by saying to the yuppie who has splurged his bonus on a new Swift: 'saab idhar parking nahi karneka, yeh bade saab ka slot hai, bahar park karo' reminding him , his exact place in the corporate hierarchy and pecking order in the food chain. And when he parks outside, his new Swift becomes a collectible for pigeon shit and paan stains.

Most old apartment blocks in India also have a huge parking problem. The space where youngsters used to practise their Tendlyagiri are all lost to the burgoening number of cars. Forget stilt, people might even try tilt parking to get that extra foot to park in the safety in the building. Of course this leads to the tricky problem of who parks where. Drawing lines are of no use if you have 8 cars trying to fit into the space for 5.

Such a device would not cost more than Rs.2oo-300 to manufacture, and would easily have a target market of Rs.30-50 Cr in India. Not bad at all for any entreprenuer.

Jet set to go?

2007-09-18T09:01:00.000-07:00

When Jet Airways listed on the Indian stock exchanges, lot of questions were asked about its seemingly high valuation , its promoter heritage and its international strategy. One aspect which was never questioned was its customer service. Although Kingfisher made it pull up its snooty socks, Jet has set the benchmark in aerial and on ground customer service for a lot of Indian corporates. And in my opinion it continues to do so even in its international flights.

Let me compare Jet Airways and Singapore Airlines on the mostly full Mumbai-Singapore route. Jet Airways has a better flight schedule since its flight leaves at 1130 pm in Mumbai and reaches Singapore by 715 am allowing enough time to catch that morning meeting. Whereas SQ reaches at 830 am on the busier terminal leaving you slightly hassled if you have morning appointments.

Now SQ is probably regarded the best airline in terms of customer service in APAC. But in my travel with them, the style of customer service is a bit cold or seems to come from laborious practice rather than genuine warmth. The worst experience was when I asked for water after the flight took off , the hostess told me that they would be serving 'drinks' shortly. She had to be admonished that water and drinks serve completely different thirsts for her to get me water.

Now water is probably a key requirement in flights and only Jet manages to serve that before take off with a smile alongwith the freshening towel. In fact they are happy to give small water bottles sometimes as well if you ask. The Jet After mint is almost a signature item. SQ has in fact tried to imitate that but they havent been able to get the quality right. Plus Jet Airways hostesses seem to stock extra after mints and happily give that out unlike SQ.

Although Jet has a single aisle flight which can be really painful when there are tussles between the airline crew and passengers for space, it makes up for that with better customer service. But a smaller aircraft also means faster boarding and alighting time. Once Jet converts this route to a jumbo, they could make up for what they lack as compared to SQ in terms of space and entertainment. ( last time 50 heads were craning to watch phir hera pheri on 8 overhead screens on the Jet flight)

For a lot of Indian corporate travellers,flying Jet on overseas routes also adds critical miles that can provide the much needed free ticket for a must-attend wedding or holiday. Thats a reason why Jet has been able to get a good customer mix on their international flights, where you have executives rubbing shoulders parents visiting kids and of course Kesari tours and Raj Travels customers.

What surprises me is how Jet Airways has created a genuine customer oriented organization that can be really world class in the airline industry. Its air hostesses exude a certain warmth and helpfulness that I think could be a key competitive differentiator. But Jet has never got the attention as a probable case study in management literature . I would be curious to know what kind of management practices they have or how do they incentivize and train their staff, what their utilization ratios on international routes are and so on.

Till then, its a tough choice when deciding the airline to fly home from Singapore. Its literally a miles vs smiles tradeoff.

The only solution to global warming

2007-07-04T10:09:00.000-07:00

Till a few months back, global warming to me was one of those typically western Malthusian threats which could only give sleepless nights to a few environmentalists and a few eventful nights to politicians like Al Gore.

But Lord Shiva has opened his third eye and my eyes to global warming by disappearing from Amarnath. Since Shambho Mahadeva is the destroyer according to Hindu mythology, I take it as a key timer in what has been scientifically proven through satellite imagery and what not.

So what do we do. Of course the human body has got used to too many comforts which we can no longer sacrifice even if all the polar bears in the world redeem their furs for scales. In searching the path of least resistance, it struck to me the solution is around us.

The problem which plagues most of us for almost 10 hours a day is not global warming but corporate life. The mundane office talk, the obnoxious boss, the vapid strategies, not only burn precious calories and brain cells but the negative ions in the office aircon and carpets are enough to reduce your life expectancy by atleast 5 years.

But there is a way to kill the two birds with one stone. Imagine a world where everyone works on his current job but does not have to go to office. That alone saves atleast a quarter of the worlds fuel and the related emissions. Assuming people would still consume equivalent facilities they work out of home , there would still be 20% savings in power since the so called common areas reserved for unproductive meetings and coffee machine bitching would no longer be needed. Thanks to VOIP, pervasive computing, high bandwidth networks and unified communications and all such convergence, the home office is a brutal technological reality. Not to forget the improvement in productivity gained by working from home and to a lesser extent the savings in electricity to iron those crisp linens just to look important.

Al Gore if you want to be mankind's messiah, please implement this solution. The more I think of it , the more I feel its 21st century's true panacea. In a master stroke it will also return the valuation multiples from Big Oil to software and telecom providers. Every cent of that will go into American coffers rather than Sultanates. Life is calling, where are we?

Himesh Reshamiyya : North India's Rajnikant?

2007-07-02T19:17:00.000-07:00

In India there is a section of media ecosystem that will try to propogate how India is westernizing at a rapid rate. They would give you examples like:

Kids now want to see more of English Premier League than watch Tendulkar swat flies on the field.

Most youngsters just watch Friends and CSI and not Indian idol.

How Himesh songs are heard by only auto rickshaw wallas.

But never have the ratings or any research proved such things. Saas bahu dramas and stage managed music mahayudhs dominate ratings and popular psyche. Channels like Star World and other such premium English channels have ratings in decimal places. Indians may have pasta and sushi with their foreign investors but return home to have alu jeera and dal chawal. They are keen to watch Ash-Abhi wedding photos than know about Rihannas latest album or Paris Hilton's post prison look.

Two releases have proved this beyond doubt.

First, the spectacular release of Sivaji the boss which had a pan Indian appeal with even North Indians watching the movie without any subtitles just to see what the Rajnikant phenomenon is all about. Rajnikant in most of his movies has a sequence where he will speak English and mock it at the same time ( popularized by Big B in Namak Halal) and the masses just love it. In Sivaji he uses words like 'cool' to contemporize himself and stay relevant but still has an earthy touch to it. Sivaji gives the best of Rajnikanth in a movie whose story talks on populist lines about weeding corruption and black money. Masses love such movies and not stories about a racing driver in the US and an Indian-Pakistani romance in Birmingham station. Hardly 5% of the junta can identify with such themes.

Second, the stupendous opening of Aap Ka Surroor: The Moviee . Analysts are saying the movie has got an opening better than Shootout at Lokhandwala a movie that had stars spanning several generations. This proves that mass appeal is still much higher than the so called class appeal in India. The unprecedented opening has shocked all film trade analysts. The movie again proves that there is no trickle down effect but a trickle up effect like gangsta rap and other genres. I was a regular traveller in auto-rickshaws in Mumbai and they swore by Himesh. Soon autorickshaws with the best sound systems with extra jhankaar beats made more money while passengers sweleterd in Mumbai's traffic jams.

I believe the tipping point occured when snooty pubs in Bandra where the so called high income westernized junta come to pay Rs.250 for a small peg were forced to play Himesh songs due to unprecedented requests. There were some DJs who swore by their R&Bs, but they were shown the RDBs by the people who started thronging places which played Hindi music after 10:30 pm. Once the floodgates opened, it was Kajra Re and Aashiq Banaya Apne which made lead-footed Indians to dance away to glory.

The Himesh story is a story of true guts. Guts to stick to a style in singing, dressing and what not. Guts to take on the entire establishment by making a movie which is unabashedly self-propogating but at the self-effacing. Witness the dialogue ' Arre Himesh agar humari naak kat gayi , to gaana kaise gaayenge'.

Hats off to Himessh..........

Munnabhai Circuit going global

2007-02-24T21:40:00.000-08:00

Munnabhai(MB): Arre Circuit, tune suna kya...Tata ne koi orchestra company khareeda hai London mein... chorus mein gaane ke vaaste ..

Circuit(CK): Kya baat kar raha hai bhai...Lekin Tata wale to shaant kism ke log hote hai..woh log jyada band baaja nahi bajate hai...usme to apne Mittal Sheetal baap hai...

MB: Arre nahi re....aaj kal band baaja bahut zaroori ho gaya hai... aaj kal Govandi ka bachha bhi global banna chahta hai...

CK: Glo-baal bole to bhai ... yeh koi naya hair transplant hai kya jo Salman ne kiya hai kya...ya Dhoni ka koi naya gel ka ad aayela hai kya ?

MB: Arre Circuit, tu bhi na local ka local eech rahega... Dekh mein tereko samjhaata hai... Tereko yaad hai na apne dhande ka solid punter ...D company... Woh log Gulf mein sona, Bangkok mein drugs aur Mumbai mein hawala ka dhanda karta tha...
Matlab duniya ke kisi be koone mein sabse sasta aur badhiya maal uthaane kaa aur duniye ke best graahak ko bechna ka.... usse bolte hai global.....

CK: Lekin maamu apun global mein hafta vasooli kaise karega... apun ko sirf maa behen ki gaali aati hai...

MB: Arre Circuit, tereko kya lagta hai global matlab tu jaake London mein kaam karega..arre woh style purana ho gaya hai re...aajkal global matlab to gore chammdiyon se kaam karvayega unke company khareed ke..

CK: Sahi hai baap....matlab apun Bandra mein banian baithke order deyenga...aur woh log england mein suit pehen ke vasooli karega... apne ko toh yeh fantashtic idea lag raha hai...

MB: Tune Italian mafia ka naam suna hai... apun usko khareedna chahta hai...apun bhi global banega....

CK: Arre boss apun ne woh picture dekha tha godfather...maa kasam kya daring public hota hai ye log... idhar to producer ko phone lagao to uski phatti hai....unhone to poora ghode ke sar kaat diya tha...

MB: Isiliye to apun ko bhi vaisaayeech daring ban na padhega... saala cutting chai se cappucino peena padhega...

CK: Arre boss lekin woh to aajkal college ke bacchhe chumma chaati ke beech mein peete hai...apun woh sab nahi karega bhai..

MB: Woh sab baad mein dekhte hai...to ek kaam kar...apna ghoda le...aur nariman point jaa...udhar tereko mumbai ke khadakti dhoop kuchh gadhe suit aur tie aur sir pe teeka lagaye ghoom rahe dikhenge...woh is naye zamane ke global bhadve hote hai... company khareedne aur bechneke ki sadak ke betaaj badshah... kamayenge lakhon mein khaayenge daal roti thele mein ...ghoda dekhte hai pant mein tatti karenge saale... tu lekar aa unko fir apun dekh kya mast setting jamaata hai...

CK: Ok boss, apun leke aata hai un ded pasliyon ko... fir apun bhi dekhega ki karan johar london mein apun ke bina shooting kaise karta hai....

Carcass of a vulturous pundit

2007-02-10T01:24:00.000-08:00

Well there is a vulture who thinks madrasi chicks are not attractive as punju chicks. Arre deva re deva, kab sudharega yeh log.

Firstly the word madrasi. To most North Indians anything south of India is 'madrasi'. Well we know that that the Mughals raped your history but they left your geography intact right? ( the Hindi version puts Omkara to shame)

Now how much ever some North Indians may hate the South Indians , there is one economic fact which is conveniently forgotten. We talk a lot about India's growth rate of 9%. But if one does a state-wise analysis , the South Indian states have consistently outperformed the North Indian states. So because of North India and its lazy bunch, India cannot match China's growth rate.

The other problem is bechare they cannot participate in the great IT and BPO boom which has enriched many a South Indian. Many Punjjus cant code software programs because they lack basic logic. They cant work in BPOs since courtesy is something they have never learnt. Jobs are still getting Bangalored but not Amritsared. Especially a recruiter for a Fortune 500 staffing solution providers should know that.

Lastly there has been a steady deterioration of the so called premier blog portal called desipundit. Most references there smack of favouritism and catering to the least commonly accepted denominators. May be this was a method to create some cheap publicity and ring in the page views. With VC money pouring out of Nariman Points gutters, there might be some motive to for these desi dudes to cash out. Well if you still have the same good intentions you had while starting it, then lets see if you refer this post.

Maybe we need a new debate on what does desi mean? So if I say in a desi group in NY, that 'aaj desi khana khaate hai' does it mean naan with dal makhni or masala dosa with sambhar. Oye yaar pata hi nahi chalta; confusion hai ki racism hai ?

Who let the BRICs out ?

2007-01-24T23:08:00.000-08:00

We all know about movie sequels that promise more than they deliver. Now I guess this affliction has spread to the equity analyst industry and they are adopting the sequel saga style to report writing.

Let’s look at the report that changed the lives of over 1 billion people. Scarcely did the man dangling out of the 8:25 am Virar local or the woman making rotis to send her children to school in 2002, know that they are being watched , researched and subsequently abused in a mind numbing data crunching exercise by two star analysts from Goldman Sachs. Rupa Purshottaman became a household name by seeing something 40 years ahead breaking the thin lines that existed between her and Nostradamus or Bejan Daruwala. Like a cow urinating on Delhi’s streets , four countries economic growth rates were projected for 50 years , a big step for mankind but a small step for Microsoft Excel.

Dreaming with the BRICs: 2003 the original

With a Star Wars type impact , this report asked us “Are we ready”? painting grand scenarios of how BRICs would overtake the G6 counries and be the epicenter of growth in the next 30 years completely changing the world as we know it. Although the model lacked the finesse to predict Shilpa Shetty redeeming Indian pride in Big Brother or Ash being featured regularly on Yahoo , it became the new kundli for India. Instead of reaching for the stars, it was the BRICs report. Foreign investors were greeted not with begging bowls but with a smug assurance that this too shall pass by 2030. Yes some parties believed too much of it too early and lost elections. But India was never going to be the same again.

Then came BRICs 2. 2004

Like fast and furious 2, this report made cars the basis. So within 20 years China was to overtake US as the largest auto market and then a decade later it would be India. The sequel raised further issues on how the BRICs markets would eclipse whole of Europe in 2025 and contribute to 40% of the growth. The trickle of FDI turned to be a flood and soon the Indian stock markets went into a tizzy. Indian companies acquired an unstoppable momentum more associated with sci-fi villains who could put no step wrong. As mobile growth of Bharti eclipsed Bhartiyata, MMS clips of various Indian women were exchanged million times over. Well this was the new India brewing in Barista cafes and places like Upper Worli. Malls, multiplexes, movies and Mallika added a force that pushed GDP growth to 8%. India was surely on a roll to bigger things and bigger flats that could never be purchased by the man in the Virar local.

Now comes BRICs 3

Now we have the final punch: India will surpass the USA in 2050 a feat accomplished by changing growth rates from 5.3% to 8% in the model that knows it all.

How will it happen? The trickle down effect of all the poojas that Abhishek and Ash have done will obviously work. For a country that regarded their marriage more important than the Kumbh mela, there can be no ‘amangal’ any more.

We can have some Deewar type dialogues at the US Embassy in Mumbai. Aaj se 25 saal pehle, tum log hume bheek mein visa dete the. Aaj hum tumhe bheek VISA card se dete hai.

With the India story becoming as saccharine sweet as Karan Johar movies , you need not worry about life any more. It is a one way street , either the Bangalore variety or upward bound only time will tell.

Maan gaye Guru

2007-01-12T08:33:00.000-08:00

In a country that loves sagas and is happy celebrating its own one in every realm, the petrol pump to palaces story of Gurukant Desai helmed by Mani Ratnam with the star power of India's best couple is inspirational to say the least. And the film-maker returns to his top-drawer form by giving us everything that we have grown to associate with him.

1. Narrating refreshingly simple stories sometimes in a cinematic larger than life backdrop with poignantly displayed relationships and clever alludes to real life.(Iruvar,Nayakan, Roja/Bombay/Dil se).

By choosing a business backdrop this time he escapes the idealist trap which he fell into in Yuva, and also gets a much larger canvass, more characters and incidents to showcase his sheer prowess. He sticks to the Iruvar style of screenplay in the meshing of scenes and building pace to chronicle an entire life. So Gurukant Desai starts from Turkey as a petrol attendant, returns to his village with dreams in his eyes, gets almost disowned by his father for wanting to start a bijines, marries a girl for dowry as capital but dotes on her later, fights his way to starting a polyester business and rises to the top.

But Mani's genius lies in weaving wonderful relationships in the saga with scenes that seem natural yet powerful. Some scenes that stand out are the railway station scene where Abhishek agrees to take Ash to Mumbai, his fallout with his brother-in-law and Ash, Abhishek's raw determination to get a trading license, the romantic/emotional interludes with Ash and his interactions with Mithun in the second half.

The resemblance to the Dhirubhai saga also helps in creating a stronger sense of identification with the storyline especially the shareholder meetings in stadiums, largest IPO, dreaming of starting a Burmah Shell, the dubious political approval processes, the fight with businessmen of Parsi origin, exploiting loopholes for profitability and the tryst with a prominent newspaper baron( Mithunda) of that time . But I felt the underetched characters of Madhavan and Vidhya Balan ( granddaughter of media baron) dilute the second half which could have been better utilized to highlight the business battles. For instance, Dhirubhai's famous fending off a bear cartel attack on his stock could have cinematic dynamite in Mani's hands.

2. Career best performances by stars and solid performances by under-rated actors:

Abhishek breathes fire as Gurubhai by combining manic energy, an alarming zeal to get rich, business shrewdness and emotional depth into a life-time role. There are angry scenes where the Bachchan genes spout but he carries off the older man with charming ease. Its amazing how he has grown a real paunch for the movie which is shown in a scene where he rivals his pregnant wife. This performance is just a shade lower than Kamal Hassan in Nayagan.

But the real surprise is Ash, proving how in the hands of a superior director her expressions are malleable indeed. Stand out scenes include the train journey where she bumps into Abhishek after being bumped by her infatuation, her breakdown after she learns about Guru marrying her for dowry and when Guru is struck by paralysis, and in all the songs.

Mithunda as a man who mentors Guru initially but exposes his wrongdoings through his newspaper is amazingly nuanced. Vidya Balan and Madhavan are charming . Roshan Seth as the inquiry committee chairman exudes great screen presence and diction.

3. Brillant Craftsmanship

Authentic recreation of old railway trains, old parts of Mumbai, trading houses and shareholder meetings. Cinematography by Rajeev Menon especially in the scene where Ash runs away from her house at the crack of dawn.

4. Wonderful Music : AR Rehman comes up with a brilliant score with 'Barso re', 'Mayya Mayya' and 'Tere Bina' . In fact the background score consisting of these songs and a pulsating beat meshes well with the intensity of the scenes.

The only letdown from a scripting perspective is Abhishek's speech during the inquiry trial. Although it starts with a bang " Main bania hoon, har cheez bachake rakhta hoon" , it whimpers after that. For the climax of a movie, the dialogues lacked impact.

This time Mani Ratnam has also made a Hindi movie which has no trappings of 'Madrasiness'. In fact the Gujjuness in the movie ' Aav jo, Mota bai' and in the detailing is perfect. In fact if Gujjus can make 'Kyunki Saas' the top watched serial since its protagonists are Gujju, then Guru is going to rock in the territories of Mumbai and Gujarat where most of Dhirubhai's shareholders also resided. In fact theatres in Kandivali and Ghatkopar might have to run extra shows.

Overall its a fine effort from the man whose movies are special and suitable for multiple viewing. Bollywood 2007 starts with a bang with Guru.

Time up Tendlya

2007-01-06T00:43:00.000-08:00

Watching Tendulkar bat yesterday was as bad as Hrithik Roshan getting beaten up by a second rate henchman of Shakti Kapoor like Ulhas Bhai or something.

There are times when stars have to be stars. Whenever a great batsman enters the cricket field, the lakhs of spectators who clap are similar to the expectations you have while watching the titles of a blockbuster movie. Apart from patriotism and the love of cricket, batsmen fight for our attention, just like the best selling paperback, the blockbuster movie or the wine n dine restaurant. If there is a hero who has been delivering a string of flops, he soon loses circulation.

But Tendulkar in some way or the other has been flopping in all big matches. Cometh the hour, gone is our man. Yes he has a huge burden now on his aching shoulders and tennis elbows. No its not to save Team India , but to save the sponsors and talent management who have wagered millions on him.

Today as two legends of the game, Warne and McGrath announce their retirement with their reputations bigger than ever, we are left with only faint memories of the games where our man with the same tennis elbows made them look like club level bowlers in Sharjah and other venues. The man who came down to hit McGrath out of the stands is now guarding his crease like a hyena guarding his carcass from vultures. That too for a rookie like Paul Harris.

Maybe it was a rare day. But sher jab geedad ki maut marta hai na, woh jyada der sher nahi kahlaata. How can a great have an a batting average lower than Brett Lee this year. How can his best scores come only against Kenya and Bangladesh. Today when Laxman and Tendulkar bat together , one looks like a lorry driver with a sputtering engine where as the other cruising on a compact car on a highway. As a movie buff, I remember my childhood days, when Amitabh used to get hurt a lot and then start hitting the baddie, to shouts of 'maar Amitabachhan maar'. I want to do that once before you hang up your boots.

Else its time up Tendlya.

Did you see them in your office?

2006-11-26T23:13:00.000-08:00

Most sports are about competitive spirit, whereas Indian cricket is about survival. In a way its more like corporate life rather than a sport where talented individuals excel at winning. If you look around your office you would find many types of people apart from the Orwellian (big boss is watching you) and Machiavellian ( the new big boss).

1. Kaifian :

Examplary agility to flash access keys to open doors and remember passwords of useless websites that get referred once in a while in annual meetings.
Ability to stay more hours in office than others but still produce indistinguishable output
Seems to show highest level of enthusiasm without the knowledge of why he is clapping his hands more at others achievements

2. Sehwagian:

Last to come and first to leave whether its meetings or regular office
Carries a reputation of ripping apart presentations made by weak kneed juniors in key corporate meetings
Was once a great worker, but marriage, Mayur suitings, growing paunch and scanty hair have tarnished his productivity after 30
Loses promotion opportunities due to weak English, disdain for strategy (oi ki farak padtha hai, jaake becho ) and potential work ethic issues
Gorges on the cheap canteen food ordering bhel puri for key strategy meetings

3. Agarkarian

Was a star performer in the induction program , was noticed by department head but none of his contributions were worth noticing later
Makes 1 brilliant recommendations amongst 3 bad ones thus rounding off a good year ; usually the cost of his 3 bad ones is enough to sink the company
Commonly found in Mumbai corporates hanging out with fellow ghaatis eating wada pav in the evening and leading the Ganpati decorations when the department head is visiting
Claims to be a multi-dimensional asset due to his Ganpati organization skills and dandia playing abilities

4. Dravidian

Carries the look beyond his designation, as if the whole company depends on him
Has a constipated look largely due to dislike for the hygienic canteen food
Highly discreet and diplomatic, makes sure that the business plan is well hidden from other co-workers
Usually inspired by global management experts with poor local flair like Russell Crowe's Gladiatorial management techniques
Displays amazing determination for spending late nights in office trying to solve problems by perspiration with Kaif rather than inspiration

5. Yuvrajian

A marketing star performer with ability to meet impossible sales targets
Usually a big hit with the CEO and all the company gals
Cribs about Mumbai's crowded roads and small houses and calls offsites in the north of India
Would leave the company to a competitor with JIT efficiency just before his marketing plans flop and page 3 parties end

6. Gangulian

An original star performer , now a victim of reorganization politics
Always carries a file with his key project statistics like number of projects completed before time and the market capitalization attributable to him
Still distributes Diwali sweets personally in office reminding everyone of the golden days when he used his shirt to apply glue to a company marketing poster

7. Chapellian

A new development in Indian corporates thanks to the rapid globalization and merger mania ( truth is this guy is unwanted in his own country)
Always shouts the loudest in company strategy meetings raising useless visions for 2010 and beyond when India's GDP would grow at 12%
Speaks with an accent and is highly regarded as an industry expert initially
Flouts all HR policies by pointing fingers at men and winking at women
A white elephant sustained by liberal allowances from the HQ

8. Rainaian

Usually a state topper from Chattisgarh with a know it all look who has come to Mumbai for the first time
Talks about the true India living under $1 a day during marketing meetings and is liked by the CEO who has attended the bottom of pyramid strategy conferences by Prahlad
Thinks annual performance review and Diwali bonus are tightly linked

If you come across them in your office or any other species let me know.

Casino Royale: Coronation of a new Bond

2006-11-17T21:28:00.000-08:00

Casino Royale is not just a Bond movie but a movie about Bond. It’s not about the gadgets, it’s not about the brands being endorsing, it’s not even about the women since Eva Green seems more suited to a romantic caper than having the oomph of a Bond girl. So much so that the maximum exposure is by Bond himself as he walks out of an azure sea with the shortest of shorts revealing his assiduously developed six packs.

The movie is about a new Bond who is as desperate to keep his job as much as the world’s most popular franchise is trying to keep its relevance. If his predecessor Pierce Brosnan could arguably be called the best dressed closed room Bond, then Daniel Craig starts off by showing his brute strength as a man who has roughed out in the outdoors and begins to claw back into the champagne and caviar infused sophistication by the end.

The movie starts off with Bond earning his double 00 status with two killings, 1 gruesome and 1 smooth. The title song follows, slightly old fashioned, reminding me one of the Sean Connery Bond movie titles like Diamonds are forever.

The action moves to Madagascar where Bond is trying to find the source of finance for a group of warlords. In a half sleeved shirt Daniel Craig shows his stupendous fitness in a very well choreographed free flowing action sequence based on the Parkour sport quite popular in London. Its good old action without gun fire or a machismo of WWF. Sadly he gets caught on camera shooting the guy and M as ruthless as ever asks him to lay off for a while.

Although there is good fun in the sequence where Bond breaks into M’s house and uses her password, Judi Dench as M looks pretty jaded in this movie, almost sleepwalking through this role. If Bond is being resurrected in this movie, then maybe there was an opportunity here as well to bring back a M who has this mentor type outlook rather than a matronly demeanour.

Bond moves to Bahamas, does some old fashioned legwork for a change based on which he successfully foils an attempt to bring down the world’s largest airplane. A nice contemporary touch and the villain is revealed who is basically a whiz kid turned financier and private banker for terrorist organizations.

In fact the action sequences till this part are riveting and lend good pace to the movie. Another smart thing that Martin Campbell has done is that by elongating the movie to 145 minutes he gives ample screen time for Daniel Craig to earn his place in the sun and display his superb acting skills.

The weakest part of the movie from a plot perspective is the poker game at the Casino Royale. But though the game is impoverished , the surroundings get richer due to deft direction.

Martin Campbell saves the day by incorporating the transition phase for Bond (see the remarks on his dress sense and Oxford suits, the initial do I care answer to the shaken or stirred martini to the elaborate description later). The best of course are the romantic repartees between Bond and Eva Green. She has some of the best lines in the movie, and the one-liners keep getting better and better. By giving her a beauty with brains kind of charm, the director somehow manages to justify Bonds’ folly of falling in love.

Also by adding two near death sequences, one where Bond loses a high rolling round and one where he is poisoned , the director showcases Daniel Craig’s brilliant acting abilities and this is where he creates the strongest emotional connect with the man who is going to enthrall has for more two more movies contractually after this.

If there is one word that describes the new Bond, it is steel. Right from the icy blue eyes, tough jawbones, to his bullyish English footballer like personality, well chiseled body and his ability to come out of close situations after starting on the wrong foot, Daniel Craig hits you like a thousand bricks. And when he breathes the sophisticated Oxford suit at the end and not wears it and mouths “Name is Bond, James Bond” with a gun in his hand, you know that this man has earned his spurs and Bond is truly back. When the theme music plays for the first time in the movie you know that this is not the last time you want to hear it.

The Dhakka: Pushing cricket to newer heights

2006-11-09T19:04:00.000-08:00

Mein to podium se jaa raha tha,
Mein to Cup ko utha raha tha,
Tujhko dhakka laga to main kya karoo?

We as Indians are not new to dhakkas (pushes for the linguistically challenged). Its as rampant as corruption and poverty. In fact it’s the most common contact sport in India.

Arrey boss thoda sarak na...
Abe ye dhakka bukki kaayko karta hai re?
Mein kya jaan booch ke mara kya tereko?

These kind of conversations are as common as Nadeem Shravan songs in the local compartments of Mumbai.

But now the problem it was a dhakka to Sharad Pawar. A seasoned politician in the autumn of his political career intent on turning BCCI into a cash cow where even the toilet seats of stadiums and body parts of players would be auctioned to the highest bidder. And the brilliance of his financial strategy has been to completely decouple performance and sponsorship. Out of team players like Ganguly can appear in emotionally gut wrenching ‘I will be back’ cola commercial and keeping the moolah trickling in.

So the first set of comments came from the normally reticent Marathi brigade of cricketers who practiced their square cuts in small squares of Dadar. So ‘aay lah’ Tendulkar comes up with the first ‘aayi gah’ salvo in a blatant attempt to secure his batting position. Then comes Gavaskar eager to provide his only soundbytes in the Mandira Bedi dominated ICC Champions trophy. Then come the Shastris, Mores, Dandekars and Joshis and everyone who has held bat or broom in Mumbai. It is sad that Rakhi Sawant the leading Marathi light of the neo-Indian culture has not shed any words of wisdom on this topic. May be she did not get time from her busy Big Boss schedule. Even a man of few words on the cricket field like Azhar has used the opportunity to call Australians uncivilized and Sharad Pawar magnanimous so that his life ban can be lifted.

Australian cricket chief Sutherland has attributed the incident as something which can happen when two different cultures meet. Yes one country which has a culture of winning and the other of whining. So what if Rahul Dravid could not lift the cup, we have to spare no effort in telling these Aussies that they lack the demeanour to play the gentleman’s game.

Moreover the Indian award functions are about the presenters and the cameramen rather than the winners. Usually you would have a panel of award givers that would be more than the members of the cricket team so that every constituency and sponsor is well represented. Again the Australians forgot that.

And the famed Indian hospitality. Athithi devo bhavah. but only if he loses the cup.
“Saale aa jaate hai door se, Boost ke commercials karte hai, humari thaali se khaate hai, cricket ka poora paisa yaha banta hai …aur humi ko dhakka maarte hai.” Well that more or less sums up the Indian angst against the Aussies. An apology is needed, why the celebration couldn’t wait till the presenter had stepped down. Kaha bhaag jaa raha tha kya cup?

This is just the beginning of a new set of interesting battles between the BCCI the money bag and the rest of the cricketing world. With more money you also need more soundbytes, more action and more controversy. So like a good reality show you have the incidents “ Shoaib Akhtar slapping Woolmer”and “John Wright pulling up Sehwags collar”. Soon we will have coaches spitting at players and people throwing mikes at each other. The greatest spectacle on this side of the world is just going to get better.

DON review

2006-11-06T19:03:00.000-08:00

Although I saw Don on the weekend it released, I was waiting for the dust to settle to write a review which gives away the plot. Like many other Bollywood fans, I was dying to see the movie after Farhan had stitched a memorable ad campaign running from Mumbai to Malaysia. (refer my earlier post) .

Firstly, the movie is not a remake but a remix, of the baby doll in the bathtub variety. Farhan Akhtar gives the movie mindblowing gloss, sheen and slickness making it on par with some Hollywood thrillers. But somewhere he forgets that he is remaking Don, a movie etched in lot of Indian minds and not Mission Impossible 4.

The fundamental problem is that Farhan somehow got convinced that to be true to a dialogue "Don ko pakadna mushkil hi nahi namumkin hai" he needs to change the script to show that the original Don ( not Vijay the impersonation) actually survives in the movie. So with this end in mind, he indulges in monkeying around with a well written original script. Don does not die but is in coma in some hospital. Circumstances are created so that the Don can return in the climax. But now if Don has to return, he needs to have a score to settle. And that score can be only if the man who puts him to sleep is the villain.

So Farhan makes the most mind-numbing script change; DCP Silva is the villain and not Interpol chief Malik. This is where the second half and the original's tight coupling of characters and pace goes for a complete toss. To justify an end, he fails to do justice to any of the characters. As soon as this fundamental plot change is revealed you begin to writhe in your seat.

And what makes matters worse, is Boman Irani as the DCP. This is where a specialist like Iftekhar excelled, he was the quintessential tough cop, a face with years of experience and a no-nonsense talking style. Boman Irani with his Parsi paunch does not fit and ends up looking confused and jaded. This also means that Om Puri who has played the cop with great finesse in movies like Gupt is reduced to a nothing role.

Farhan also seriously weakens the central character of the movie Vijay through his twists and turns. Maybe it was deliberate since he knew that Shahrukh could never manage this part well. But it also means the emotional glue that the original had is completely lost. In fact the Vijay even in the initial parts where he meets the DCP is shown as an oversmart Mumbai tapori rather than a bumbling UP bhaiyya trying to eke out a living in Mumbai.

Coming to the key question, does Shahrukh Khan deliver? As the cool, menacing and stylish Don he packs a solid punch. This is the SRK I grew up seeing where the sheer aggression and earnestness overshadowed his acting limitations. It is simply great to see SRK in great clothes playing a man of substance rather than a guy who needs pastel colours and ribbons to feel for his lady love. In fact I believe its time SRK got out of the Yash Chopra-Karan Johar rut and did non-romantic roles for a change. At age 40 and as India's reigning superstar he needs roles of substance. But its sad that Farhan did not even give him a chance to play Vijay properly.

Nothing much was expected of Arjun Ramphal in any case, although Pran in the original had charged twice Amitabh's fees to play this role. Priyanka Chopra breezes into a role conveying both style, oomph and emotion in requisite amounts. Pavan Malhotra as Don's henchman Narang is a complete washout. Well the plump light eyed guy in the original was coolly sinister.

Songs. Kareena's well developed calves lend enough zing to Yeh Mera Dil. Khaike paan banaras as a remix song shot completely out of context in KL is a pale shadow. The best song in the movie is the under-rated Ganpati song Maurya re.Watch out for the brilliant banjo work in the song, reminds me of good old days in Mumbai.

Umrao Yawn

2006-11-03T17:42:00.000-08:00

It is the season of remakes and rehashes, so another of Bollywood's overhyped maestros J.P. Dutta gives us his 3.30 hour long version of the sob story of a 19th century girl who becomes a tawaif Umrao Jaan. Now J.P.Dutta's forte is war movies(Border,LOC) and his cinematography of deserts in Rajasthan. He does manage to get the visual feel of the 19th century and the Lucknow palaces right but somehow it lacks the soul and the kashish of a sob story. And thats being sympathetic.

The first half is hugely boring. It has too many songs and Anu Malik disappoints. Most of the songs sound the same and the lyrics are nothing great compared to the original. Although JP Dutta is making a movie about the 19th century he uses a laborious pace to tell the story. In fact his initial reels look straight out of some NFDC funded Doordarshan serial.

Aishwarya Rai steps into Rekha's shoes and manages to deliver one of her better performances. But Rekha and Tawaif were as much hand in glove as Sanjay Dutt and Munnabhai. Aishwarya does the emotional scenes well but her dancing as a tawaif is too aggressive for its genre. And you miss the sadness or depth that Rekha could convey with her eyes just sitting in ' Aap meri jaan li jiye'. Even in some of her emotional scenes, her natural Miss World aggression spoils it when she speaks dialogues too fast. But she is incredibly beautiful and resplendent through the movie.

Secondly, the romance between Ash and Abhishek is too forced and does not invoke any sparks. It seems more like a professional relationship with lust being a primary driver. JP Dutta could have cut some songs and developed this relationship further. Abhishek finally gets a role where he can justifiably keep a full time beard , but his personality seems a bit rough for some one to get smitten by a courtesan. He does not have a 'shayraana' andaaz, although he is cool in the drunken scenes. And in these scenes he reminds you very fondly of his baap, the god of Sharabi scenes, Amitabh. Genetics how cruel thou art at times..

Thirdly, you have pure comic relief by Sunil Shetty as Faiz Ali a dacoit who masquerades as a Nawab. His Urdu diction is as clear as a Texan speaking French. And he acts as if he is part of 'Alibaba and chalis chor' and not Umrao Jaan.

And JP Dutta can kick himself for casting long lost Puru Raj Kumar as Gauhar Mirza, a role that was played by Naseer in the original. Pathetic.

The movie's saving grace is Shabana Azmi who delivers a knockout performance as the head of the kotha. Her dialogue delivery and acting display her classy calibre. Ayesha Jhulka and Divya Dutta lend good support. Kulbushan Kharbanda another JP favourite is his good old constipated self.

JP Dutta can go back to war and rough terrain movies. He frankly lacks the nazaakat and tehzeeb to make stories with kashish.

Shahrukh, DON and Malaysia

2006-10-06T18:33:00.000-07:00

When I was in India, I would always read about the popularity of Shahrukh movies abroad. How some of his movies are top 10 in UK and so on. So a typical Shahrukh movie's economics are dictated more by overseas revenues and not so much the domestic circuit. This could be because most Indian NRIs belong to what I had earlier described as the struggler generation.

I have been working in Malaysia for a consulting assignment and I realized that Malays absolutely love Bollywood. In fact the government took steps to curb the popularity of Hindi movies and media at one point of time to promote the local industry. Even the biggest FTA channel there TV3 ( more like a privatized DD) shows a Saturday blockbuster at 2 pm and it is one of their highly viewed shows. For instance last week they showed Naach ( quite a decent watch although it bombed in India). If you ask any Malay right from marketing managers to taxi drivers: their knowledge of Bollywood starts from Shahrukh and ends with Aishwarya Rai. In fact on one of the slides I presented , just an image of Shahrukh conveyed more than my 'bulletpoints'.

When you go to Jakarta, another heaven for pirated DVDs, the only Bollywood ones you will find are Shahrukh combos. And the shop assisitant will give it with a strange kind of amusement where you can see in his face ' you guys from India are so lucky to have Bollywood' kind of stare.

One has to admit whether you like his acting or not, you have to admire Shahrukh's media savvy and sheer smartness when he answers questions or projects his image. Last week ICICI had organized a private banking party in Singapore with Shahrukh and all the major newspapers featured that as one of their big stories. They also ran exclusive interviews with King Khan where he had all the best lines.

And now comes the latest triumph of the superstar and his marketing machine. A copromotion between Celcom ( Malaysia's second largest cellco) and DON movie. It has a whole set of freebies from mobile phones to reward points for certain subscription packages. Yes the movie has been shot largely in Kaula Lumpur gives the movie an added boost. Plus next year is 'Visit Malaysia year' to celebrate 50 years of their independence. And right from the immigration counter you can clearly see the number of Indians who throng Malaysia for its great locations at affordable prices ( Great beaches at half of Goa's price) . So its a great advertisement for Bollywood , not so sure for the telco.

I sometimes wonder if we can sell some Bollywood tourist packages to the Malays. I found this collaboration a true indicator of what globalization is all about. Yes we do pay lip service to it in MBA schools and corporate meetings but there is nothing like experiencing true globalization. And there is one man who leads it from Bollywood. King Khan. I just hope DON delivers for all its hype. We need a true blockbuster from Farhan, the music has anyways captivated everyone.

Blockbuster banana mushkil jaroor hai , namumkin nahi.

The era of fragile reasoning

2006-09-30T01:00:00.000-07:00

There is a email forward going around mostly sent by females to men in India about the ‘era of the fragile man being over’ from the advertising industry head honcho,Mr. Alllick Padamzee.

Ad honchos have a tendency to pass off their myopic and parochial views as an extrapolation to the entire Indian psyche. Nothing would be backed by research and an opinion will become an insight. Their opinions would be largely be shaped by what is seen in some parties of South Mumbai and pubs of Bangalore. They will call Lower Parel as Upper Worli just to feel cool. I sometimes wonder the reason ad agencies took donkeys years to make really locally relevant ads like Coke’s 5 or Fevicol or Alpenliebe is because of their lack of understanding of the true Indian consumer.

Coming to the views, lets just look at a few statements made by him.

The young Indian male is in danger of losing his manhood, because of the tremendous advancement of young women who top all the exams and are entering the workforce at breakneck speed.

Well the statistics show that women have a higher pass % than men. Topping all exams is completely different. So if you look at the top quartile you will still find a greater % of men.

Not only are the young women beautiful, well-groomed and intelligent, but also can hold forth on any topic under the sun.

Yes, women in corporate offices are extremely smart and confident and really carry off themselves well especially in some functions like marketing and HR. The woman power of ICICI also shows that they have conquered so called men’s domains like finance.

But if you read some of the press articles, you would be made to believe these women have trounced several odds to reach there. Well if you look at the relevant demographics, these women were not the ones who were trudging 10 km to fetch water in Gujarat or ill-treated by men in the wastelands of Bihar. They are part of the equal access generation who grew up in cities, were taught with as much attention and resources as the men. So is equality of output due to equality of inputs such a great feat ? You can compare rural Rajasthan with Kenya but Bombay will be compared with Shanghai.

Unfortunately, the young male's priorities are still job, marriage and children. However, both men and women are being rushed off their feet by pressures of work. Eventually, all of us will turn into the American prototype: either hen-pecked or serial killers! .

Why is a young male’s priority still a job? ( Most men run away from marriage and children in any case). When this generation was growing up in secondary school, India was a lost cause with more ration lines and few telephone lines. The priority of educating oneself was to get a job and be the guy to share daddy’s burden as a breadwinner. Although girls had equal excess to education, in most middle class families there was no equality of expectations to breadwinning. Nobody minded a girl taking Arts as a career, for a man that meant he was good for nothing. And the state of the job market was that way during that time.
So men growing up in India have a huge pressure of balancing their parents aspirations and their woman’s shopping bag. So there is a learning curve which is going to take time.

Stop yakking about yourself and your achievements, and above all, drop the latest cricket scores. She wants to tell you about her life, her dream. Open your ears and shut your mouth

Unka khoon khoon , aur hamara khoon paani. Maybe men have achievements which they can talk about , women are still dreaming about their achievements. And listening to their dreams is as entertaining as beauty contestants’ answers about Mother Teresa. Latest handbags from Prada are as mundane as Sehwag’s ducks.

Learn how to dance.

Even Abhishek Bachchan’s dancing a remix version of Govinda’s dancing. So we can be ‘like this’ only. There is no point even trying to dance to Himessh (Even the best pubs don’t get attendance if they don’t play him). His songs don’t require grace only momentum.

Yes, I agree the era of the abala nari (fragile woman) is over. The era of the abala purush has begun. The 'able' nari is about to untie the nara (pyjama strings) of the abala purush!

Men have shifted to boxers. Jab na raha nada, nariyon ke chahiye ek nayi ada.

The long tail and Indian media

2006-09-21T22:18:00.000-07:00

Read the book The long tail by Chris Andersen the editor of Wired magazine. The author also had an active blog to test some observations before it went into publication.

The book explains how the abundance of choice caused by the economics of digital distribution and the effectiveness of search and aggregation is bringing markets of niches to the fore and challenging the mass market. The fundamental enablers are

1. Consumers are turning into producers for a lot of content like photos, videos, music and of course blogs leading to democratization of production.

2. The constraints of the physical world like limited capacity and inventory carrying costs do not apply in the digital world. So there can be wider choice to the consumer without the costs of providing that choice. This in probability distribution terms is the long tail.

3. Effective connection of the supply and demand by aggregators like Google, Rhapsody, Amazon , social networking sites like MySpace and blogs.

Now what is happening is that hits are getting smaller. Ratings are getting lower. And the effect is clearly felt in music, books, movies, advertising and information. For instance in a music request service like Rhapsody , almost 95% of its 1 million songs are requested once in a quarter, showing clearly that given more choice, the hits are not the only ones that sell. Long tail as a concept is not radically new, for instance increase in cable channels caused media fragmentation and niche audiences but they still had constraints unlike the abundant scale of digital distribution.

Has this long tail hit India ? Lets look at various categories.

Music:
This is where it gets interesting inspite of all the Himesh euphoria. There is one song which became popular without any mass media attention:the BC sutta song by an obscure band called Zeest. Because of the expletives it could have never been aired on mass media anyway. But its rise has been amazing. It started out primarily in engineering hostels where asking for a sutta ( cigarette) is pretty common. It achieved buzz status when crowds started singing loudly during intervals in a cricket match in Mumbai where Sachin was booed. Then further sharing of the song took place in offices and now it plays in some of the popular discs in Bombay and Delhi. There is also this trend of downloading the original Paki or Arabic versions of some inspired songs of Zeher and Gangster amongst youth. Another example is of a foot tapping Tamil number 'Apiddi Podu' which now has pan-Indian appeal again due to sharing in campuses and offices. So Himessh Bhai thoda beware aa.

Movies:

The first instance of an extended tail not a long tail was the emergence of the multiplex movie. A multiplex had lesser seats per screen but more screens. Thus it needed more movies but it needed lower public to fill capacity. Even though the seats were lower they generated higher revenue per seat. Thus a whole set of multiplex movies was born which operated at a lower budget of Rs. 3-7 Cr. , distributed in multiplexes to recover its money. Sometimes, when you see Rahul Bose in a number of such movies, its not because he suits the role but he suits the economics even better. But there have been no movies which have only been distributed online which became very popular. What we have seen so far is only some movies using so called popular 'youth oriented' blogs to preview and influence popular opinion. But these blogs are still opinions of the writers and lack the sticky anthill like buzz and following or the specificity of subject matter( there are number of blogs in the US only on punk rock for instance) to carry off such opinions.

TV/Video content

Now this is one area where catering to the lowest common denominator has completely stifled creative progress. If saas bahu was not enough , we are now entering new depths of Nari paraya dhan and betiyan: ghar ki lakshmi on Star and Zee respectively. Strategic sameness also pervades news and movie channels. Even the costliest attempt to capture niche audiences, Star One had to become mass based with the TGILC and Nach Baliye. But signs are emerging here too. On a social networking site called orkut.com , there is a community dedicated to fans of an old DD serial ' Byomkesh Bakshi' of which I am also a member. Over the last few months around 1000 members have written to DD to retelecast the serial and apparently it has finally happened.

In fact if you frequent sites like youtube and Desitorrent you would be amazed to see the long tail that has emerged in video clips and nostalgia content. I have managed to find past episodes of Fauji ( Shahrukhs debut on the small screen) and videos of songs like Aa ja jane jaa ( Sunil Shetty, Somy Ali in Anth) being touted as best rain song of Bollywood with a large number of hits.

In fact the Indian diaspora which is desparate for desi content is one of the key enablers of the long tail. Starved of home food but with good purchasing power and speedy broadband connections they are creating ecosystems which a lot of campus junta from India frequents and then popularizes.

Blogs:

Here the jury is still out. I still believe lot of Indian blogs are egoblogs rather than ecoblogs. Egoblogs are ones where the author is more keen that his opinion gets accepted by a few, whereas ecoblogs are ones where the author wants to know the opinions of others to synthesize. Although blogs have improved the choice of information outlets, most bloggers post their opinions on mass media topics rather than create new ones and specific ones. But we are getting there.

Although these signs are encouraging, Indian media firms will still continue to milk the mass market with Himessh, candy floss and saas bahu for a long time since the economics are still loaded heavily in that direction. But give 2-3 years for broadband connections to grow in India and I could be writing a slightly different post here. Atleast I hope so.

My Second Blog

2006-09-20T19:24:00.000-07:00

More than a year of bloggging, some restructuring had to happen.

I have created a new blog fully focused on movie related stuff.

Please have a look at FullyFilmy

Naksha : No Raksha from flopping

2006-09-16T10:34:00.000-07:00

If you think Bollywood is on a roll this year, please see Naksha. You can clearly see a wide chasm between the grade A and grade B movies. Naksha has everything that symbolizes B-grade , Sameera Reddy notwithstanding.

To be fair, Naksha could have been a good Indianized version of many Hollywood puzzle plus treasure hunt movies like National Treasure and to some extent Da Vinci Code. In fact using the Mahabharat and trying to hunt for Karna’s invincible Kavach and Kundal was a good plot.

But the execution is pathetic and the acting pedestrian. Instead of focusing on clues and deciphering them, most of the hunt is serendipitous and silly. Some of the Vivek Oberoi – Sunny Deol confrontations are copied from Rundown a B-grade Hollywood flick with the WWF star Rock. Plus you have to put up with a Liliput kingdom that guards a temple which is not at all funny and an item song for the climax. And Vivek Oberoi trying to speak Sanskrit verses is like Mayawati talking English.

Coming to the actors, Sameera Reddy seriously needs to watch her weight and paunch. She is surely going to be ‘de’ported to the South soon. Plus her make-up and clothes are so garish that even the sex appeal she boasted of in earlier movies is lost. She was strictly ok even in Taxi no.9211 and moving from bad to worse.

Vivek Oberoi already has the worst hair and looks. He is still hanging around due to some promise he showed in Company. But all his roles after that have been downhill. He hams , tries to be cool when he is not and is plain irritating. He just needs to go.

Sunny Deol needs help. His big ego now saddles him with B-grade directors like Guddu Dhanoa and Tolu Bajaj. So they make him shout, bash up goons and dance like jat yamla pagla just like others wasted his fathers talents. Sunny paaji we need some Damini or even Chaalbaaz type performances from you. Get over this phase and find someone who can resurrect your career.

Jackie Shroff is anyways a spent force. He is no longer cool. He is no longer a hero. So he is trying his hand at villainy. I don’t think anyone can save him now except his beloved Subhash Ghai.

Nobody can save this movie from crashing. Just because Pyar Ke Side Effects did not release in Singapore this week, I had to endure this torture.

Some new national songs please!

2006-09-09T21:35:00.000-07:00

I think the whole Vande Mataram smacks of poor timing. With Munnabhai 2 running to packed houses all over India , Bande mein tha dam, Vande Mataram is a cool chartbuster. The movie with no religious ramifications has brought the powerful song back on everyone’s lips. So much for the controversy!

It just makes me wonder if an ordinary person thinks so much before singing a song. In most cases where singing of songs national, devotional or otherwise is enforced, students are usually singing it out of some force. In fact in most schools, the students have to just mime that they are singing and it is usually some old record or a group of chosen singers who are singing on the microphone. Usually the students would be sleepy since this is the first thing they do when they enter school. So from an attention perspective, no student is going to be more than 20-30% involved in this whole exercise.

The only time the attention increases to a crescendo is during Independence Day and Republic Day flag hoisting session where a whole host of national songs are sung from Vande Mataram to Raghupati Raghav Rajaram. Now the latter is more Hinduist than even Vande Mataram but lot of schools do sing it even in non-BJP states like Maharashtra.

In fact if you ask me, the meaning of Vande is a matter of interpretation, it means I bow or I respect and not technically speaking I worship. The problem sometimes is, Muslims believe in the strict interpretation of their religion. Does it mean if they can bow only to Allah, they should not bow to their parents? And I find it strange if some Muslims in their patriotic fervour could have sung the song in the pre-independence era then why not now.

Well the problem is not so much with Islam but petty politics and the lack of issues for the saffron brigade nowadays. Although Vande Mataram is more of an Indian patriotic song rather than a religious, both sides have managed to fuel a nice controversy in the absence of other issues. And the brunt of this would be borne by half interested sleepy eyed students in a school. Why don’t we adopt all chartbusters by Himesh and remix them as national songs, so that everyone can sing it without any problems.

Desh ki Kashish, Sarfarosh hai ….

Lage Raho Rajkumar Hirani

2006-09-02T00:27:00.000-07:00

You dont need maple leaves rustling in New York . Dhobi Talao and Marine drive are perfectly fine.

You dont have to make Amitabh Bachchan do the buffoonery in fur coats and crazy spectacles. There are character actors like Boman Irani.

Everyone need not be dresses in designer suits even while bathing. Heros can look cool in plain shirts and jeans throughout the movie.

You need not assemble the costliest star cost. You just need a great script and screenplay that is thoroughly engaging with a cast of actors who play their parts to the hilt.

Munnabhai MBBS was Rajkumar Hiranis fine tale of a ganster with a heart of gold who uses the power of love and affection(jaadu ki jhappi) to cure various ailments and his lady love. That created a role for which Sanju Baba would be remembered for a lifetime. Only last week I saw the Tamil remake of Munnabhai wherein one of the finest actors of our lifetime Kamal Haasan struggled desperately to create an air of likeability but failed. Its as if Sanju Baba plays himself when he plays Munnabhai or vice versa.

And he is in great form right from his opening entry scene ( I wish I was in Gaiety Galaxy to listen to the whistles for that) to the last scene. Rajkumar Hirani keeps the sequel format in the opening sequence where Arshad Warsi kidnaps a guy from the shopping mall. Its amazing how the director brings us back to relive the old Munnabhai in a matter of 10 minutes. This time the gangsters for a venal builder Lucky Singh to evict tenants and 'hadap' properties.

Boman Irani is back with Lucky Singh and he manages to give the character a mix of malice, caring father and vain humour. Boman Irani was increasingly getting wasted by the candy floss champions(Remember him as Preity's father in Veer Zaara) , it is good to see him back in an author backed role. He is funny when he keeps posing for pictures and morphing them with world celebrities and manages a great Punjabi accent for a Parsi.

Back to the story. Sanjay Dutt is in love with a RJ played with charming wallop by Vidya Balan. He cons a Gandhi contest(more hilarious than the staged hospital scene in part 1) and gets to meet her on the radio show where he has to become a history professor to a bunch of oldies who are playing their second innings at her place after being rejected by their highly aspiring kids. So now he goes to the library to learn about the Mahatma and begins to start seeing Bapu(Dilip Prabhavalkar in an endearing mix of Godbole and Gandhi). After that Munnabhai begins his Gandhigiri or spreading the Gandhian way of non-violence to common day problems.

What follows after that is a peach of screenplay writing which keeps you so thoroughly entertained where scenes, emotion, humour and characters are so finely knit like the sweaters that aunties knit for babies or like your mom serving you a plate of ghar ka khana. Munnabhai wins over the heart of the oldies, makes them play their second innings ( the Parsi gentleman getting married to his childhood sweetheart is extremely cute) . But Lucky Singh cons them out of that house that they stay in as a dowry gift for his daughter. Munna becomes a RJ on Vidyas radio and starts a show that acts as a Gandhigiri helpline for aam aadmis problems and uses that to pressurize citizens to send flowers to Lucky Singh and irritate him. Lucky outwits him initially forcing Munna to confess that he is not a true professor to Vidya. But then how he wins her house and her love back is the climax of the story.

The film has a lot of wonderful sequences like Munna and Circuits discussion on who was Bapu on the motorbike, their jail interactions, Circuits acting as if he also sees Bapu, an old man recovering his pension, and many more.

Arshad Warsi as Circuit is the livewire of the movie, delivering dialogues with such comic timing and elan that you wonder how could Bollywood reject him initially. If Munnabhai 1 saved this actors career, Lage Raho shows his undisputed control on tapori humour. I just wish more directors think of good roles for him although I am not sure if he can deliver one-hero comedies like Govinda in the past.

If Vidya Balan continues eating 4 biscuits with tea for lunch (Source:Rediff) would be the new age girl next door or in MCP terms marriage material. Her sparkling teeth should make her do a toothpaste commercial soon and her dialogue delivery is far better than any actress in the industry. Just compare her RJ Jhanvi to Preity Zinta as RJ Ambar in Salaam Namaste, then you will know who was screeching. Need more of you babe.

Lage Raho Munnabhai deserves a grand applause for its ability to create a movie that is contemporary, rapchik, warm, emotionally rich and fun. Hats off Hirani and lets have more guys like you to take on the candy floss champions.

Well Begun, Half DON

2006-08-31T18:52:00.000-07:00

The most exciting part when I watched Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna was the trailer of Don and Dhoom-2. The Dhoom franchise is a great example of savvy marketing, more speed, more cars, more babes and pure adrenalin with a great cast starting with Abhishek at its helm. It is also one instance of maturity shown by the czars of candy floss.

Coming back to Don. I completely share Farhan's enthusiasm for the original Don. For a movie of its time, it had amazing pace and style except for the scene where Pran does the toughest trapeze act in history. It is also arguably Amitabh's best performance as a star where he digs his teeth into an extremely well-written role both as the bhaiyya and the suave don. Some dialogues like ' Don ko pakadna mushkil hi nahi, namumkin hai'... his paan-filled talk with Iftekhar pronouncing Don as Daaaan were memorable. And Kalyanji Anandji dished out superhit songs and Kishore raised Khaike Banaras to great heights. Even the background score by Babla was pulsating right from the first scene at the hotel.

Welcome to the new Don: King Khan. Well for the superstar this is going to be his true test. He managed to do superbly in Main Hoo Naa. Can he pull this off without hamming too much and given a spectacular style as the suave Don. Well he is looking a bit old especially near his temples but the visuals are stunning, especially the scenes shot at the Kaula Lumpur airport. SRK's last attempt playing a true don was in Duplicate where he was pretty bad. For the original Don's sake I hope Farhan pulls this off.

The music is spot on. The remix 'Don revisited' is excellent. If this is theme song and the background score then you already have a winner. Lyrics of 2 original songs Khaike paan banaras and Ye mera dil have been kept the same with some musical enhancements whereas Main Hoon Don comes with new lyrics. Although Main Hoon Don Remix is better on the listening quotient with its distinctive sound which epitomizes the adrenalin in the movie. Somehow the Khaike paan banaras lacks the energy of the original or maybe the makers wanted to improvise without hampering the original flow and just could not. But if the song is picturised well you could have a winner. But the real treat is Sunidhi Chauhan's rendition of Ye Mera Dil and I am just imagining this as the first song of the movie picturized on Kareena Kapoor and I can already a sense of madness in the front bench. This is going to be scorching. Farhan will have his audience captivated in the first 15 minutes but the trick would be retaining that tempo.

The track also comes with Morya a Ganpati song, which is a smart move rather than great music. Its been years since we had a street style raw Ganpati song and this song will deliver with Shahrukh in a white shirt and orange pheta. There is another song Aaj ki raat which has a clear ' Raat baaki, baat baaki' hangover. But since it has to be the climax song , something better was expected.

Overall Don's music is a good mix of nostalgia and club/groove feel. Well begun half DON.

The new corporate smokescreen.

2006-08-07T18:42:00.000-07:00

The fight against smoking is reaching its final frontier. According to the latest European Commission ruling, employers in Europe are within their rights to refuse jobs to smokers. So just like dogs and coolies got classified in the same category, the same now applies to smokers and non-productive workers. In fact the advertiser who ran the ad in Ireland that proclaimed smokers need not apply said “If these people can ignore so many warnings and evidence, they do not have the intelligence that I am looking for. Smoking is idiotic”.

How things can change in the span of 50-60 years. Earlier, rings of smoke accompanied with thoughtful expressions were the harbinger of creativity. The ultimate American export of consumerism, Marlboro man gave smoking a sense of ruggedness and machismo just like the riveted jeans he wore. Hollywood movies reinforced its cool image, and localized versions like Rajnikant’s ishtyle gave it further popularity. Commercially, it was a cash cow. High margins, cash to be ploughed for new investments and of course political greasing.

Before the Erin Brokovichs, came the gradual clamping of the weed. Crowded commutation options like airplanes came first. Then came public places. Then came central air-conditioning which meant workers had to go out for a fag. Although when they return, no amount of Clorets can get the Marlboro stink away. Soon the smoker carried the brunt of wasting office time on a pursuit that was anyways non-productive in the long run. But coffee break gossip and status update meetings were allowed.

Thus the smokers’ status as the pariah at the beginning of this century is confirmed. I am predicting that this century’s target will be fat people. Just like high taxes on cigarettes, fat people face new forms of economic disincentivization. Outsized people end up paying more for clothing since a discount retailer like Walmart doesn’t stock their size since they do not make economies of scale. Waist size 38 never has the same variety as 30-34. Moreover fat people stand a higher risk of spending their well earned fortunes on medical care due to the higher propensity for diabetes and heart disease.

But worse are the social pressures. You can never be fashionable like the devil(usually a marketing executive) who wears Prada .You will be given discourteous glances at the escalators and airport check in counters. As you sulk into the chair with your paunch of prosperity, slimmer people will assume that you don’t contribute as much as them to the company. You cannot participate in the diet discussions during lunch hour which would make the Atkins diet come under Maslow’s higher order needs and not the lowest. Sooner or later the companies will start thinking that fat people are naturally unproductive like smokers. They just take more time for everything from walking to digesting food and hence waste mission critical office time. So why not avoid them also. The only way fat people can avoid this is by calling fatness a disability so that they cannot be discriminated against. But that seems a far fetched idea when you compare with the CEO’s new vision of a lean and mean corporation. Reduce or retire !!

Golmaal: Masti maalamaal

2006-07-20T20:19:00.000-07:00

Pull together : two actors with great comic timing whose talents were not spotted easily in Bollywood, Arshad Warsi after Tere Mere Sapne and Sharman Joshi after Style. Of course Arshad Warsi had to wait till Munnabhai MBBS and Sharman till Rang de Basanti to get noticed.

Add the deadpan Ajay Devgan with coloured hair and a newly chiselled body making an entry reminiscent of his debut in Phool aur Kaante.

And Tusshar Kapoor who has perfected roles where he needs no acting like being invisible in Gayab and this time he is dumb.

Add Rimi Sen the standard heroine for multi-star cast comedy movies. Well she needs to watch her hair as well as her dressing, she has lost the Dhoom appeal.

Paresh Rawal, the standard torch bearer for comedies and a pleasant surprise in Sushmita Mukherjee who looks naughty even when she is playing a blind grandmom.

Golmaal is classic leave your brains at home Bollywood cinema, though not in the same league as Hera Pheri. You just have to like the chemistry between the characters and wait for the comic sequences dished one after the another. And there is enough of that which makes the movie very watchable.

The first half hour is quite trite with standard college scenes like a shouting principal who hams to the hilt and leaking question papers although none of the heros resembles a student. The movie gains traction once the four land in a blind couple's large house and Sharman Joshi becomes their long lost grandson and Ajay Devgun his voice. You can completely shut your brain henceforth ( like how can a blind couple maintain such a big house and so on) and wait for sequences and characters to jut the screenplay. Some sequences are hilarious ; the attempted rape on Rimi Sen, the parody of Black and AK Hangals Sholay sequence, the proposal to Rimi and Tushar Kapoors Chinese billi and Arshad Warsi and Sharman instigating each other to end Devguns dadagiri.

There are 2 characters who liven up proceedings big time, Vrajesh Hirjee playing the servant after the treasure with his snake-like action stunts. And Babli Bhai the don after the treasure, its the same guy who is the first con in Bunty aur Babli. He sits with a life jacket on a boat , is hard of hearing, speaks Subhash Ghai English like who will the saves for kaun bacheyaga inhe. His cronies play goti (marbles) on a pool like table on the boat and astound with their dumbness. There is a classic interaction where Babli Bhai gives Rs.5 to Vrajesh and says " Nagpanchami mein doodh pee le."

As you must have guessed by now, the movie has more lukkha boyish humour than family humour, especially if you add the gaalis and Tushars (non)mouthing of them. But the cast shows amazing comic timing. In fact there are places where the superfast editing makes you miss a dialogue/nuance or two. In summary, Golmaal makes an ideal weekday watch after a bad day in office rather than a weekend watch in a multiplex with expensive popcorn.

Terror strikes Mumbai

2006-07-11T08:36:00.000-07:00

Terror strikes again. This time it is a series of clinically well orchestrated blasts on Mumbai's lifeline local trains at peak hour. There is a pattern which SCREAMs global terrorism ( Delhi Akshardham and Bangalore the IT capital sometime earlier, and now the financial hub) but India remains committed to peace and hope. Even though more people will be killed in these blasts than either the NY bombings or London tube blasts, our country will never wage a war against terror . The epicenter of global terrorism is so close to our country that although tremors are common in places like Kashmir we still need events of higher Richter scale to wake us from the slumber that believes all is fine when doves and buses are exchanged.

Coming back to Mumbai. You are not a Mumbaikar unless you have clung to those iron bars in suburban trains battling hordes of passengers. ( yes this definition excludes South Bombayites). And when you see images of stations like Matunga and Mahim on news channels, it sends shivers down your spine. It just reminds of how natural a sitting duck Mumbai is. How easily the city can be attacked and thrown into disarray.

And you feel sorry for Mumbaikars. Any professional in Mumbai is 1.5-2 times more productive than an average professional in the country. In which city will you get an auto rickshaw driver returning exact change in the middle of the night? Where will you get to see sheer human dexterity at work like the guy at Status restaurant takeaway counter in Nariman Point who serves biryani at peak lunch hour. The efficiency of the dabbawalas. The value proposition of the Udipi hotels. In fact, anyone who puts in 8 hours of work after braving the commute of 2 hours is a hero. These are the people who make up Mumbai and its never say die spirit. Not the Bollywood heros whose only tribute to the city will come as an opening remark in a baritone voice about 'yeh hai Mumbai' with snapshots of Dharavi and local trains.

No other city has its psyche so shaped by its means of commutation as Mumbai. Thats why the pictures are so horrific and the experiences gut wrenching. Again like the floods of June 26, it will be Mumbaikars who will help their fellow bretheren. The authorities will come late as usual. Star News will show the same clips 50 times over with as much sensationalism that their reporters can muster. People will sing paens to the Mumbaikars resilience. In the irony that will follow, people will need the same local train desparately the next day to reach their place of work. Life will return to normal within a week. And the city will never sleep?

Bolne bhi do yaaron

2006-07-02T09:32:00.000-07:00

Sorry Kundan Shah(maker of Jaane Bhi do Yaaron), could not resist this lift. And sorry readers for writing Hindi in English.

Tarneja: Tumhara Singapore trip kaisa tha Mr Dmello

Dmello: Hum log abhi bhi bahut peeche hai. Yeh India Shining udhar ke saamne sirf ceema bulb hai, waha to poora suraj hai. Waha chalne ka rasta alag, gaadi ka rasta alag. Aur koi aadmi ya kutta raste pe nahi sota hai.

Tarneja: Lekin idhar bhi aaj kal Singapore ke tarah malls aur apartments hum bana rahe hai. Aur Singapore mein ek aadmi ki haalat yahake kutton se buri hai. Tum waha thook bhi nahi paate ho, lekin yaha kutta masti se tatti bhi kar leta hai.

Dmello: Oh Tarneja tum bhi kya bakwaas karta hai man. Singapore mein 2 building ke beech mein swimming pool hai aur tumhare paas ek bahta hua naala. Udhar woh log planned development karta hai, ek mall ke samne kabhi traffic jam nahi hota. Aur tum ho, In-arbit mall bana dete ho lekin uske bahar traffic terabit ho jata hai. Tum builder log sirf apna paisa ke bare mein kyon sochta hai?

Tarneja: Tumlog bhi to sirf paise ke bare mein sochte ho, janataa ka nahi.

Dmello: Tum bahut bolne laga hai Tarneja. Metro project main tumko nahi dega, Chhotani ko de denga.

Tarneja: Hum bhi tumhara kaafi khyal rakhte hai Dmello. Winks at his secretary who inches closer to Dmello.

Dmello: Accha hai. Bahut accha hai. Airport banao, Mall banao, metro banao. Lekin humara bhi fayda hon chahiye Tarneja.

Tarneja: Kyon nahi. Humne aapke liye Singapore se khaas Kaya toast mangvaya hai.

Dmello: Oh ye kaya toast jo Singapore ke har food court mein milta hai. Tumlog yaha pe foodcourt kyon nahi banata.

Tarneja: Yaha pe food courts ki koi zaroorat nahi hai. Humare Udipi bhaiyon ne ye market bahut pehle se capture kar liya hai.

Dmello: Udipi hotel me chhole aur sambhar ke beech mein jyada farak nahi hota hai. Foodcourt mein har cuisine ka exclusive taste to aata hai.

Tarneja: India mein foodcourt jyada chalte nahi hai. Kyunki ek to Indian consumer lazy hota hai. He likes to be served and wont drop his plates into the bin even at McD etc. Aur foodcourt franchisees in some places logon ka sar kha jaate hai by placing 10 menus in front of them and asking them to choose.

Dmello: Ye Indians bhi saale kabhi nahi seekhenge. Ghar ko saaf rakhenge lekin bahar bahut ganda karenge. Aur sarkaar se safai maangenge. Ye desh kabhi nahi sudhar sakta until deshwalen sudharenge.

Tarneja: Hum to sudhar rahe hai na. Tharre se Glenfiddich pe pahunch gaye. Tum bhi pahunch jao Dmello.

Dmello: Kya karega man. Ye Mumbai Shanghai kabhi banega to pata nahi. Lekin apun roadpati se karodpati zaroor banna chahta hai.

Suitcases are exchanged for contracts and the great Indian dream lives on.

Hum honge kamyaab. Hum honge kamyaab. Ek din. Ek din.

Krrish review

2006-06-29T18:38:00.000-07:00

It takes time, effort, money and liberal doses of cinematic madness to create a blockbuster. Krrish has all the first 3 but it falls behind on the fourth and thats where I still think Mr.India still remains India's best superhero movie till date. Yes of course Anil Kapoor with all the hair on his body cant match Hrithik in prowess. But then you cant expect Rakesh Roshan to match Shekhar Kapoor.

Rakesh Roshan is one of those directors that typified the mediocre 80s of Bollywood. All his movies had good plots but the execution was over the top, melodramatic and sometimes vulgar. Kala Bazaar, Khudgarz, Khoon Bhari Maang, Kishen Kanhaiya, Karan Arjun were all hits but they were engaging in parts. They also had the useless Nitin Mukesh singing in his nasal voice. People crib about Himessh but Nitin was horrible. He actually made good songs sound bad.

But things changed once Hrithik arrived. Rakesh managed to spruce up his act to catapult his son in arguably the best hero debut ever on Indian screens with Kaho na Pyaar Hai. Then came Koi Mil Gaya , threats from the underworld and now Krissh. Hrithik was firmly established as a kids hero although he still has to deliver a big hit without his dad.

Well if you go to Krish expecting slam bang superhero type action and thrills, you will be very disappointed. Its basically a masala movie where the action only comes for 15 minutes. But those 15 minutes are worth the price of the ticket. In an amazing combination of Singapore darshan, special effects and pure adrenalin, Hrithik jumps , flies and zooms over busy Singapore streets in those pulsating few minutes which leaves you craving for more.

Coming back to the rest of the masala. The movie starts well with Rekha raising her grandson with Bournvita and Tide washing powder ( product placements) wearing stiff Kanchipurams and lush lipstick. And in true old Amitabh fashion, the boy transforms into an adult in the background of chasing a horse. deja vu . Then comes a boring phase where Hrithik plays Tarzan jumping around trees and talking to animals. Priyanka Chopra plays a bungee jumping tourist who accidentally jumps into his arms and the customary love story begins. The Bahadur comedy track is funny in parts and Manini De as her friend manages some infectious comic timing. Pretty Chopra suffers a bad Sridevi hangover for the first half as if she had seen Mr.India many times to rehearse for a superhero movie. Well the superhero wants to go to Singapore but his overprotective grandmom tells him the story of how his father was mercilessly exploited for his prowess by an evil IT head who wanted to build a computer to see the future. But finally she relents when Hrithik promises not to display his powers publically.

The second half actually has some deft touches of screenplay. The Chinese circus artist as an alibi that Hrithik uses , the fire at the circus and return of Sharat Saxena livens up proceedings. The parts where Priyanka Chopra tries to showcase Hrithik's powers to save her job at Star News is not funny. ( Again here you are reminded of Mr.India. But Annu Kapoor as a mad boss and Archana Puran Singh are poles apart. I still laugh at those scenes where Annu meets but doesnt see Mr.India) . Plus the suspense is too tame and the action is very shortlived. Naseer as the villain is half baked and not sinister enough for a superhero film. And the music both songs and background score sucks big time. You wish Rakesh Roshan had used someone better than his brother.

Krissh will make tons of money. Its already grossed Rs.100 Cr. It was promoted and marketed well. But it could have been a bigger and better blockbuster. Alassssshhhhhhhhhh....

Kaha gaye ye Bollywood gems ?

2006-06-06T08:03:00.000-07:00

"Hoton pe aisi baat, to dabake chale aayi "( Jewel Thief)
"Jab tak hai jaan, jaane bahar mein nachoongi " ( Sholay)
"Yamma Yamma , yeh khoobsurat sama" ( Shaan)
" Anhoone ko honee kar de ,Amar Akbar Anthony"
" Oye oye, gazar ne kiye hai ishaara ( Tridev) " and many more such songs.

Whats common to all of them is that they are all climax songs from Bollywood of yore. Songs that are now slowly getting extinct in the new marketing heavy Bollywood. Climax songs were characterized by the following
1. Skimpily clad heroines singing a catchy song usually with props like daru bottles that would flow freely as the muncipal drains in Mumbai.
2. A huge kumbh mela type aggregation of villains ranging from Bob Christo, Papu Polyester, Shakti Kapoor, Anand Balraj to champs like Raza Murad, Gulshan Grover and of course Amrish Puri. And in that rare moment of weakness when the double intoxication of wine and woman induce the bathroom singing Indian Idol in the villain, the movie would reach its earth shattering climax and the heroes would crop up to pound the living ketchups of the villains.
3. Usually the heroes would be locked in custody and at that end of the song would have got the energy or the strategy to break the chain or lock. Just the thought of having to dance around trees with the heroines used to stimulate their brains to ideas. Or they could be in obvious disguises that would completely fool the villains. Long moustaches, a big mole, a turban, a velcro strip like beard and other fancy dress stuff leased by Maganlal Dresswala would be the common disguises.
And then there would be the action se bharpoor gun fights and dialogue baazi to create a happy ending and der aaye durust aaye police would come and arrest the left over villains.
Oye oye ... such golden moments of a bygone Bollywood era.
The other mandatory items that are dying a slow death are :
1. Entry scene/entry song for the hero. Here the best scene would be Ajay Devgan entering college with his two legs split between two motorcycles in his first movie Phool aur Kaante. A close second wud be Suniel Shetty in his first movie Balwaan where he jumps from the 21st floor, lands on his hands, does a push up and then begins bashing up the goondas. And look at Shahid Kapoor now. He did not even ride a bike in his first movie. Hero banne chale hai barkhuddar.
2. The super titillating rain song for the heroine to display her calling cards in Bollywood. Here the best is of course Raveena Tandon's Tip tip barsa paani in Mohra.Well Kareena and Priyanka are still light years away from such a dynamo performance.
3. The separate comedy track where Johny Lever and Shakti Kapoor could elevate ordinary scripts to watchable ones. Well the age of specialization is upon us. In the main movies, hero khud comedy karega like Akshay Kumar or else we have to wait for the pure comedy movies of Priyadarsan. Pappu koi to chalao chappu...

Readers(if any) also please comment if I have left out something any of your favourites from a bygone era.

Fan-huh?

2006-05-28T19:11:00.000-07:00

One critical question in the movie Fanaa is what should drive a person " Ehsaas (feelings) or Zaroorat (needs) ? Maybe the director himself was confused between these two poles and the movie comes across like Indian food in foreign land, it fills the stomach but not your heart. In a Zaroorat driven country like Singapore where I watched my first Hindi movie on foreign land, it was just another tick for the weekend.

Well there are times success is a bad omen, especially when you have directors like Kunal Kohli. Kunal Kohli, down memory lane, used to host a movie show on Zee TV where he would excel at one thing, prostrating and grovelling at any Yash Chopra movie that hit the screens. He even gave a five star for Dil to Pagal Hai the crappiest movie that could have been produced in pastel colours. He tried to replicate that style of movie making, but failed miserably in his first attempt. Then he got his second chance, Hum Tum, a never ending soggy tale somewhat redeemed by the performances of the lead pair. with school going caricatures that are now part of film marketing folk lore (when will the marketing head of YashRaj stop bragging about that in every interview).

Now he gets his third chance, so he gets bolder. He plays his marketing cards.

He creates a brand new pair of oldies, Aamir Khan with a fast receding hairline and Kajol with ever expanding eyebrows. Then he tries the masala of mixing terrorism and love so that the second half can have some action scenes. And he has to turn Kajol blind so that his second half can be justified ( arre yaar Kajol has not seen Aamir in first half, so he doesnt recognise him when he returns as a terrorist). Plus he rips off old Karan Johar's Kuch Kuch Hota Hai so that kids can ask the most pesky questions and make their parents fall in love again.

The result fails of course because Kunal Kohli is not Mani Ratnam. Firstly the lead pair lack chemistry. There are times in the movie where you feel the complete lack of intensity. And a blind girl coming from Kashmir falling for a tourist guide is too rapid although her parents are very encouraging.(A brilliant Rishi Kapoor and normal Kiron Kher).Second problem is more fundamental. Its very difficult to believe that a terrorist can romance a gal the way Aamir does in the midst of bombing Rashtrapati Bhavan. Come on guys, the Indian security forces are not such easy meat. And well terrorists on a mission are deadly serious. Even a brilliant performer like Aamir Khan looks a bit jaded and confused in the second half. Hence the movie neither scores as a love story nor as a thriller.

But the movie still has a lot of positives. The breezy first hour is fun with the shero shayari style pataoing in Delhi and Aamir Khan playing the role he has perfected 'the witty road Romeo'.People blame Shahrukh's stereotyping, but Aamir is not far behind , 75% of Rangeela's Munna, Ghulam's Sidhu, DCH's Akash, Raja Hindustani, RDB's DJ is the same. Well Kajol sometimes forgets she is blind and ends up acting through her eyes . She is a lot better in the second half when she regains her sight and acting skills. 2 Lilting songs by Jatin Lalit, Chand Sifarish and Mere haath elevate proceedings. The altercations between Sharat Saxena and Tabu( Intelligence chief) are fun. And like all kids, Rehan Junior brings some relief in the meandering second half. Ravi Chandran's cinematography is first rate.

And Kunal Kohli also gets some perverse pleasure by wasting Shiney Ahuja and Lara Dutta in inconsequential roles. Saroj Khan's choreography slips a few notches compared to her loud announcements in Nach Baliye. She cant even get a proper Kashmiri Republic Day dance right.

Thus the story of a blind gal fall in love over a Raju guide who is a terrorist in disguise, gaining her eyesight after losing her virginity only to find the same Raju taking shelter in her Kashmir house while fleeing from the Indian army and losing him all over again has all the right ingredients tries to fulfil cinematic zaroratein but fails to evoke the ehsaas of other love stories.

Random ramble on forecasting foolishness

2006-05-18T21:05:00.000-07:00

Call it a bloodbath , call it a carnage, call it whatever Udayan Bose wishes to term it on CNBC . It’s a 826 point fall. Actually the absolute numbers are scary but in percentage terms around 7% for a market at 12000. I am no expert on the markets, in fact I doubt if anyone is.

One of the prime reasons given was that FIIs (in grey suits that dignify their greed) are selling because they are about to be taxed. Just note how the market always goes up due to fundamental factors like the booming GDP growth, great middle class consumerism and always falls due to sentimental factors like rumours of taxation, FDI restrictions and left govt in Bengal. Ever wondered why markets do not fall on rational expectations. Because it means all these FIIs, fund managers and a lot of us were smoking dope or in some specific cases speculators and hedge funds had run amok.

During my break between jobs last month, I read a book titled ‘ Fooled by randomness’ by Nicholas Taleib. In a refreshingly simple but intellectually sophisticated way, the writer manages to educate us about how randomness and not superior wisdom or intelligence is a significant and decisive component in markets, business and hence careers. From the first question he asks in the book “If you re so rich why aren’t you so smart”, you are immediately drawn to his writing style and you start reminiscing various pub and coffee table discussions like “ arre yaar yeh CEO kaise ban gaya, boss that banker is chhaaping a 20 lakh bonus this year and so on”.
Through interesting examples like “if you keep sending a report to a sample size of 200,000 where 50% get an up report and 50% get a down report , at the end of eight quarters there would still be 12500 people who would rate you as a genius for predicting markets so accurately”. Now extrapolate that to 2 million and you know where the fat bonuses of many fund managers are coming from.

The most wonderful insight is on how humans cannot think expected value. Imagine someone told you there is a stock that has a 95% probability of gaining Rs.100 in a week and 5% probability of losing Rs.2000( assuming it is within the circuit filter). The expected value is actually – Rs. 5. He explains how we associate a low probability of an event to determine the risk of an investment rather than the extent of loss or expected value. Most of us would actually buy such a stock since it seems ‘less risky’.

There are other good fundas like if you decrease the frequency of observations there is lower volatility because of the reversion to the mean. So basically do not watch Udayan Bose and CNBC everyday and get mini heart attacks but watch him (or your stocks) once a month and your health would improve.

The author also clarifies that his observations should not be used as a recourse to cynicism and laziness. He just urges to be more wary of stock analysts, traders, consultants, poll forecasters and news anchors and others who take themselves too and the quality of their knowledge seriously & those who don’t have the guts to sometimes say: I don’t know....". By the way I think the markets will bounce back today since FIIs have been net buyers of F&O yesterday , so there will be some squaring up.

CNN IBN now , NDTV later

2006-05-17T22:54:00.000-07:00

Indian politics is now passing through a 'predictable phase' due to the remarkable accuracy of the exit polls during the recently concluded state election. It also saw the upstart channel CNN IBN emerging as a strong competitor to NDTV. It is ironic that his one-time protege Rajdeep beat the pasha of psephology Prannoy Roy in his own game.(Although Yogendra Yadav with his beautiful state of Bengal was pretty unbearable at times). But where CNN IBN scored was in the brilliant onground reporting by Sagarika Ghose ( daughter of ex DD honcho) . Her command over the language and the ability to remain as fresh as a daisy in the hustle bustle of political reporting was amazing. Barkha Dutt is surely passe now as the face of English news. Times Now can slowly be written off. One of their lead anchors is so brash and no better than a fisherwoman on a Virar local.

While I was flipping between CNN and NDTV, the bearded badshah of English news was very much in form, his calm and inquisitive tone with liberal doses of Eton polish still charming as ever. But somehow his one-time protege Rajdeep takes political reporting to a greater level, pulling punches and puns, raising the decibel levels when needed, showing excitement and energy on screen. Rajdeep loves politics and his style suits Indian politics whereas Roy's classy demeanour would suit topics like fiscal budgets and foreign policy. But in a way Prannoy Roy defined the news industry as it exists today in India and his talent selection record is impressive.

Through a programme called World this week in an obscure time slot of 10:30 pm on DD, the man showed us how the Salmas and Rinis of DD were good looking announcers and not news reporters. World this week with the amazing elegance of Roy was a cut above the rest. I remember staying awake longer than my normal doze time to catch this show. To a GK enthusiast like me that show was probably the only window to the world( though that was also a time when newspapers covered more than page 3). The unmistakable tabla sound and the graphics showing NDTV as lines is still alive in my memory. That alongwith Sidharth Basu's quizzes set the intellectual standard. After that came his election and budget specials on DD.

I believe the BJP victory in 1996 was to a large extent due to their leverage of media. All their politicians were extremely camera friendly , ruled the debates and had the best quotes. The pregnant poetic pause of Atal , straight talk of Advani, the studied response of Jaswant and the young turks Pramod Mahajan, Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley. Look how the BJPs fortunes changed once Venkaih Naidu started dominating media events with his Udipi hotel owner style retorts.

But lets not forget , English news hardly figures in the ratings. The masses love the Sansani, pardafaash and what not of the Hindi channels. But to be fair to Hindi channels, their technical finesse is almost as good as the English ones. But their anchorsespecially the ones of Star News are merely props and do not actually know much about politics or what they report. And most viwers of English news would watch election analysis rather than vote. Amen

A new leas(h)e of life

2006-05-15T20:07:00.000-07:00

When the India shines , the more confused I get...

Who is buying all the property that is available in the cities...?

Even if all the property is bought will the valuation of real estate stocks be justified... ?

Why do so called intellegentsia in the country try desperately to hate Himessh when his crooning glory is creating mass hysteria ?

Is this kind of anti-Himessh attitude restricting the creation of mass products and services?

Is corporate India in its Arrow shirts and Zodiac ties forgetting that there are only 4 mn HHs in this country that earn greater than 5 lakhs p.a to spend on what they are selling? (source: NCAER)

Or is the survey by NCAER grossly understating income due to three reasons : Black money, repatriation income and a large population that has 3 working members in a HH ?

Now I can afford to hate the bloody India and its questions for a while. I have come to take a global rather Asia-pac view to life and business. Shifted to Singapore. I can now escape Schrodingers uncertainity principle in my observations, wishfully thinking.

Blame it on the Brahmin

2006-04-29T09:07:00.000-07:00

Some parts of the country are witnessing agitations against increased reservations to OBCs and there are other parts trying to ascertain if 50% is good enough since such tribes and castes are steadily increasing. In this background, a few fundamental questions come to my mind.

How can we as a developing country allow the future of education to be dictated by past prejudices and definitions that seem anachronistic in real India. In most debates about reservation , the Brahmin is made to out to be the enemy based on past crimes like not allowing lower castes into temples and not teaching them. But the truth in rural India nowadays is that the worst crimes against lower castes are perpetrated by non-Brahmin castes like thakurs etc. If you want to know the plight of a Brahmin in India, ask it to someone who has scored only 75% marks in science in 12th std in Tamil Nadu. Thankfully the BPO boom has ameliorated his suffering to some extent.

There is a need to distinguish between the two types of crimes; resource discrimination( access to water , land and education) and emotional segragation ( temples, rituals and name calling). The latter was in hindsight not that heinous. Denying access to land and water was. Education is a tricky thing to evaluate. A lot of what Brahmins learnt was ritually necessary but commercially irrelevant. For instance, learning mantras and the Vedas was part of the process of becoming a Dwija. (The Brahmin is also known in Sanskrit as dwija, the twice born, a man becomes a true brahmin once he gains the education in the sacred texts). In fact a bulk of today's Brahmins are as good as any other caste since very few have the time and inclination to be a dwija . So in a strange way, the Brahmins of today can also call himeself any caste and gain access to reservations.

Talking of commerce,most Brahmins earlier lived a life of austerity and tried to be self-preserving by marketing God and his thousand avatars to whoever would give a decent dakshina and daan. The luckier ones got jobs as advisors and accountants in the offices of kings. Even among Brahmins there would have been a natural inclination to learn the skills to end up in a kings court. As kings courts gave away to governments and bureaucracies and complexity increased, all the learnings paid off and Brahmins had a field day. (Well the same history repeated in the 90s thanks to the software boom). But as bureaucray became politicized and a vassal in the hands of politicians , skills ceased to matter and Brahmins were eased out.

Under this backdrop, I really think the Brahmin is unncessarily victimized by the proponents of reservation. As a non-dwija he has given up his roots long back. His comfort zones in administration are no longer open to him. His vote is least necessary for anyone to make a government. But he continues unfazed his strife to be what he always was : a knowledge worker (excuse me Peter Drucker). Trying to get the ever increasing percentages in schools and colleges to secure a good living, trying to find a sense of balance between his roots and modernity, trying to be competitive always. In a strange way , I salute the spirit of a Brahmin.

We dont need no education

2006-04-12T23:53:00.000-07:00

Optionally backward classes have been given a further boost , they can have 27% reservation in reputed institutions like the IITs and IIMs.My engg college had 50% reservations and my observation was that the OBCs were economically better off than SCs/STs. So I believe that these classes are optionally backward and not due to discrimination by any superior classes.

But anyways, why restrict reservation to education. Reservation should be extended to non-educational sectors too.

For instance, I can never enter the film industry because I am neither Khan nor Kumar. Similarly I cannot be a VJ because I am not from South Mumbai or Juhu. So there have to be reservations there. There are other peculiar cases. There is a strong case for reservation for Tamil women to be heroines in the Tamil film industry. It is dominated by Bombay rejects and non Tamilians. Khushboo, Simran , Nagma, Laila , etc etc. Also there has to be reservation for Lata Mangeshkar in the music industry since she has completely stopped singing after the Peddar road flyover incident. Maybe she would vacate the flat if her employment is guaranteed.

In some jobs like secretaryship I find an oversupply of women from 2-3 communities. For instance, has anyone seen an Iyengar secretary ? Similarly there are entire industries dominated by members of certain communities. Stock broking for instance is dominated by Gujjus. Again we need brokers of all communities and castes. Other jobs which really need reservations are truck driving ( Oye paape) and nursing ( Simbly mallu) . Maybe there are too many South Indians in accounts also. Reservations in such jobs are badly needed to break the monotony.

Sports is another area where I think we should have reservations. So what if the time taken to run 100 m is same as 400 m. We have to be fair. The quota system in cricket was a step in the right direction. People were tired of seeing cricketers from Shivaji Park in Mumbai. Bengal tigers showed us how matches could be won.

So once we take a holistic view to reservation, life would be probably more interesting.

Fashion Week Dwitiya : Live

2006-04-04T21:51:00.000-07:00

A fitting welcome to summer was full of misfits. The Lakme fashion week that was supposed to swing the sweatometer, raised a lot of heat and showed a lot of t**. India is finally global even in fashion. We have wardrobe malfunction like the advanced world. So what if we cannot have nudity on the ramp like Milan or Paris. We do it our style.

I believe the TV channels have missed a big trick in their maddening rush for TRPs. Instead of bidding $612 mn to see an Tendulkar bat with half an elbow and a rustic Sehwag try to swat flies instead of deliveries, channels should have paid cool bucks for the Fashion week. They could have then had a SMS contest to see "Kaun banegi draupadi" and who would drop the most clothes. Then they could have sold the TV clip rights to all the news channels who follow the mantra of 'steam, sensation and stupidity' when it comes to airing news.(even the latest entrant CNN IBN actually had a news item on top 10 kisses in Hindi cinema). They would run a story called 'Lakme mein Laaz ki kami' or some shit like that. Another profitable business model is of course MMS clips which fails to get monetized because of the piracy.

I bet by next year, we would have astronomical bidding for the Fashion week. It would be telecast live and would be preceded by shows like 'Extra fittings' which would have a noodle strapped Mandira Body and a strapless Malaika Rora hosting it. And to add to the fun it would have Sidhu and Srikanth. Sidhu would start the statements like 'fashion models are as innocent as freshly laid eggs but its the chicken designer who is causing the flu'. And then Srikanth would rotate his nose 90% left and right. Of course to the public it would appear that he is trying to smooch Malaika. He would then mutter in Hindi 'yeh log kyon khelta hai sorry kholta hai mujhe pata nahi, lekin maza aata hai.'

It would then be followed by an Asian Paints Pitch report. Out of work Saurav da would go and examine the wood and the lights on the stage and predict if the stage would cause models to slip and the clothes to fall. And if there is no problem he would take off his T shirt and clear the ramp. After that there would be the Reliance Hello Kholo aur Jeeto contest where one can predict the models who would have a wardrobe malfunction. As the telecast goes on there would be a Chevrolet Optra Wagon wheel which would show piecharts of the body parts exposed the most, legs, back side, etc. And as soon as the golden moment occurs it would have a bunch of sponsors like a Kodak moment or the Alpenliebe Sardar dancing on a 'dil le gayi kudi' tune.

There is so much potential untapped that Fashion weeks would never be the same again.

Nightin - geli ka?

2006-03-26T10:02:00.000-08:00

50 years ago, a voice ruled the airwaves and the collective imagination of India. That voice belonged to Lata Mangeshkar.

Today that voice might be as screechy as an old Fiat starting out of Parsi Colony. It might be part of at max one Yash Chopra movie in a year. But you cannot write off this voice since its still very strong.

Five years ago, this voice successfully hampered the progress of Mumbai by protesting against a flyover that would be at the same height as her bathroom. Unfortunately this voice does not know the modern sound proofing techniques like wooden boards or fibre glass. So one million people have to shout , honk and increase their stress levels while passing through Pedder Road.

Do poor people in shanties ever crib that they cannot excrete when new roads or railway tracks are built on their favourite shunting grounds. Believe me such a 'pressure' can be higher than that of not being able to practise a few alaaps. Today lot of shopkeepers face the loss of livelihood thanks to the road widening program of the BMC. But such people dont have a voice. Millions of people lead a sandwiched existence in crowded trains so that a few CEOs can jog to office.

I think we as a city should welcome the exit of Lata Mangeshkar by immediately starting work on the flyover. If we have already booed Tendlya , Lataji can easily be shooed for the city's progress.

Its Boo time folks

2006-03-21T00:38:00.000-08:00

Indians have finally come of age. Booing is cool. Mumbaikars (or is it Mumbhaiyas after the influx that never stops) have desecerated their god . Tendulkar was given a standing 'boo'vation after scoring just 1 run when the junta had turned up to watch an innings they would cherish, paddle sweeps notwithstanding. Is this the coming of age of the Indian audience or is it that Tendlya was a soft target only time will tell.

I think we as a nation need more booing across spheres. Let me make a list of my favourite boo spots would be.

1. Femina Miss India contest: Oh my God. With every passing year , the answers get more trite and self conscious. There should be a Boo meter to rank the 25 contestants all aspiring to shed their clothes in the Bollywood movie they can lay their hands on after the contest. Words like world peace , Mother Teresa, poverty , upliftment would significantly amplify the Boo meter.

2. Movie premieres : You know yeh movie kaafi hatke hai. It has 5 songs , 2 fights and 3 emotional scenes. Nowadays movie makers have also taken marketing lessons and make statements like "its all about loving their parents". So the boos should be amplified for movie makers who over intellectualize their mundane offerings like Karan Johar and Mahesh Bhatt. We also have marketing heads of studios like Yashraj who praise their Hum Tum cartoons in every interview related to marketing of movies claiming it to be the biggest invention after sliced bread. Give us a break guys. Jo chal gaya wo bik gaya.

3. Equity whiz analysts on CNBC: Blame it on the roaring sensex and the race to find the bigger fool who would continue investing in stocks. As the PEs heat up, the stories to justify them turn more convoluted.

CNBC : So Mr . All Lick Share dalal, where do you think the Sensex is headed.

Mr. ALSD: I think the Sensex could either move up or down or stay flat at these levels.

CNBC: What stocks would you recommend

Mr. ALSD: We are bullish on the capital goods and construction sector. They would benefit from the economic growth.

CNBC: Arent valuations are stretched ?

Mr. ALSD: Well they are , but there is new liquidity in the market which keeps chasing these stocks.

Boo boo for both CNBC and ALSD for carrying on the triteness.

4. Shekhar Suman and Sajid Khan: When will we as a country overgrow them ?

I am sure we as a country are very under-booed. We dont have the equivalent of the Razzies or the years Worst or Rotten Tomatoes etc. There should be a boo-meter on TV channels where people can vote through SMS when somebody is crapping eloquently. Please feel free to make additions to the boo- spots. Boo.....

Taxi no 9 2 11 : Wada Paav

2006-02-28T03:28:00.000-08:00

I am falling in love with the Ramesh Sippy Productions style of movie-making. Their movies are smart, thoughtful and entertaining. If Bluffmaster was Mumbai Udipi , then Taxi no. 9 2 11 is Wada Paav, juicy, spicy and churns your stomach a bit.

Nana Patekar, darling of many a Mumbaikar comes up with a performance that takes us back to his Krantiveer days. As a frustrated cabbie who has changed many jobs due to a distinct contempt for life and others, he is first rate and elevates the movie a notch. The rest of the cast barring Sonali Kulkarni is good wallpaper( especially Sameera with her expanding girth can cover a lot). The best part of the movie is that it has been entirely shot in Mumbai. The depiction of the chawl in which Nana and Sonali stay is so wonderfully realistic , I wonder if some chawls should be preserved before they fall prey to the bulldozers of Tarneja and Kaamdhandani.

Milan Luthria the director is back in form. His first movie Kacche Dhaage ( Ajay Devgan, Saif Ali Khan, Manisha, Namrata) was an interesting road movie and the altercations between Ajay ( a village stud) and Saif ( a yuppie) were good. He manages to carry that experience in the interactions with Nana and John ( a spoilt millionaire). Although John is no great actor, he has escaped the wooden touch that marks other models. Dialogues are pedestrianly Mumbai. Some sequences, the one at the police station and the one where Nana tells his son " Bat tera hai na. Fielding kyon karta hai. Tendulkar banne ka, Kaif nahi" are hilarious. But the humour is always situational. And the situations and characters seem straight out of Mumbai life. Thats where the movie scores.

The first half of the movie ends with Nana swearing vengeance when Sonali walks out when John tells her that her husband is not an LIC agent but a taxi driver. In the second half , Nana tries to wreck John's chances of getting his family property as his own family life crumbles.The scene where Nana comes to meet his son in school for the last time is touching. In trying to outdo each other they learn that their attitude to life is at fault rather than the other person. I thought the end was too tame , a sadistic end would have suited it more but that would not have ensured box-office success. Wohi finally bolta hai, Bombay ho ya Bhatinda.

Again Vishal and Shehar come up with a brilliant music score ( Dus, Salaam Namaste, Bluff Master, Zinda). They are on a roll. Traffic hai , kaha hai Bijuria, paise ki bazariya, Mumbai nagariya. A must see.

Turning hostile

2006-02-22T10:25:00.000-08:00

Want to save your job ? Turn hostile... It works in courts , so why not in offices. Today 6 years after Jessica Lal was murdered at a Page 3 party in Delhi , all the accused have been let off. One critical development was that most of the key witnesses including actor Shayan Munshi turned hostile. Sometimes I wonder if any rich and famous guy would ever be caught and punished by the system.

The fear that scares the living daylights out of me is what happens if I or someone very close to me ever gets entangled in this system. Most Indians associate a 0.03% probability to such an event in their lives. The common refrain especially in Mumbai is "Arre yaar, chup chap apna kaam karo, panga mat lo, summadi se nikal jaao, apne ko kabhi kuch nahi hoga". Some people even try a dash of philosophy " Tune kisika kuch bigada nahi na, to tera bhi kuch hoga nahi, kabhi kabhi thoda adjust kar lena ka ". Proponents of this philosophy would also say "Jessica Lal should have just obliged and made those drinks which were demanded. She was after all an employee at the hotel and kyon faltu mein panga liya usne". Maybe here the panga could have been avoided. Middle class morality would even go to the extent of saying " Page 3 party thi. Page 3 log. Pata nahi kaun sach hai , kaun jhoot hai."

But the question goes beyond the Page 3 crowd. Manjunath's murder at the hand of local mafiosi defeats all the above common arguments given by Indians on why this cannot happen to them. He was doing his job , he was not attending some wild party and he was as middle-class like most of us. Today most of us would be at our wits end if we are coming back from office at night and we witness a murder . Today most of us dont even help a driver whose car has broken down in a peak hour traffic jam . Today although we have zero faith in the system, we dismiss the event of we being caught in its vicious grip and denied justice as a statistical improbability. I dont what is wrong , our knowledge of statistics or our belief system.

Even if this years biggest hit RDB portrays an extremist step , most of us reviewed the movie as " Arre yaar, first half ekdum timepass tha, I dont advocate what the movie preaches as a solution". The breezy first half in the movie is akin to the good times brought by 8% economic growth and low interest rates. The second half is what we all try to dismiss , that we are still years away from a clean system where the offenders are punished .

The new ball battle

2006-02-17T20:32:00.000-08:00

The pitch has been laid for a new battle for eyeballs whenever a cricket ball is bowled on Indian soil. Through a stunning bid of $612 mn for all commercial rights for BCCI cricket, Nimbus Communications has raised the level of the game to an astounding high trying to match the upward gyration of the Sensex. This includes domestic and international rights for all cricket matches played in India by the Indian team for a period of four years. For the 22 Tests and 55 ODIs in this period, the sum works out to an astounding $3.7 mn (Rs.16 Cr) per day !! How will this money be recovered is the million dollar question.

Nimbus has played a masterstroke by becoming an aggregator of rights. Unlike broadcasters who have an uni-dimensional view when they buy rights, Nimbus the intermediary would use market dynamics to maximize value for the rights. For example, if ESS had won the rights , they would just look at advertising and subscription revenues for their channels and they are stuck with it for four years, as no other broadcaster would purchase it from them if they are not able to monetize the rights. But with Nimbus , the entire market opens up. It can slice and dice the rights and sell it to the maximum bidder. It could follow the classic investment banking model of being the book runner after cornering a large block. So it can sell the rights to Zee for one year and it would know that next year ESS would be more desperate to gain lost revenues and hence bid more. Similarly it can pit all content distributors, broadband players and radio players against each other and profit from the 'fight club'. Since the sum of the parts(individual bids of different players) add upto $ 550 mn , that would be a fair estimate of the demand function. So the gap that Nimbus has to bridge for breakeven is $ 62 mn. Given the competition amongst sports channels in a one-sport country, India cricket is essential for their survival especially when the Indian team is on a roll doing Anhonee ko Dhoni.

How will the cost be recovered at a macro level ?. Although India has 61 mn cable households, the cable operators do not pay broadcasters for more than 5 mn of their base. So even if each operator pays Rs.50 for a sports channel, the annual number adds upto Rs.300 Cr ($ 70 mn). This at a 10% growth rate, would mean

$ 320 mn over 4 yrs. Typically advertising revenues on a cricket day can be between Rs.2 - 3 Cr per day. So at roughly 150 days , it would translate into Rs.500 Cr($ 110 mn) if the economy continues to be good. If DTH and other platforms garner 10-15% share over 4 yrs, they should add another $ 50 mn over 4 yrs. International distribution should get another $ 75 mn. Add radio rights for another $ 20 mn. All this adds upto $ 575 mn. So unless sports broadcasters are able to increase declarations from cable operators to 8 mn, the rights would not be profitable for all players in the value chain. And if cable operators do not increase declarations, consumers would bear the brunt by having to pay Rs.50-80 more on their cable bills.

Welcome to the brave new world of cricket broadcasting. The only people laughing their way to the bank ( I dont know if its Swiss or Indian) are Sharad Pawar and Co for running the money machine called BCCI. In four years they have quadrupled the revenues from Indian cricket, a great growth story.

Velatimes day

2006-02-12T23:08:00.000-08:00

Again there has been the usual uproar over Valentine's day. Some angry mobs have burnt Archies cards and raised a furore over the collapse of Bhartiya Sanskriti, etc etc.

Valentine's day is another epitome of a typically Western fad " Loving someone on one day is enough to ameliorate the guilt of a year of neglect ". Its not just about Valentine's day, its about all their other days Fathers day, Mothers day. So if you give a card to your mom or beloved on one day, they will forgive all your sins ( like leaving wet towels on the bed) . The better the gift , the better is your compatibility outlook in the short-term. Its a classic commercial exploitation of a personal space. At a deeper level, it just trivializes something that has greater depth and meaning. As Mr.Timetable pointed out in Dil Chahta Hai, a couple has the option of remembering so many days that they can relate to rather than be a slave to the calendar. Valentine's day can never be as important as an anniversary.

As for the loads of frust junta, this day is another opportunity to date someone. If there is enough pressure from both sides not to spend Valentines day at home watching Kyunki or Friends, then a date is a very mutually convenient option. But even in colleges, Valentines day cannot match Rose day. Rose day atleast when I was a student was probably the most important event in college, putting all other days to shame. It would usually happen 4-5 months into college time, which would give enough time for screening, scanning, preening , leaning , and whatever. Rose queen was a babe's permanent claim to fame. For the boys, roses are pretty inexpensive and light on the pocket. Again Valentines day has limited appeal.

As for busy executives , its the best excuse to scoot home early especially when the boss does his motivational bit for the entire quarter "Arent you going to spend some time with your beloved on Valentines day?". And then you step out of office and spend 3 hours to reach home since half of Bombay has done the same.

A generation awakens to sleep again

2006-02-09T10:26:00.000-08:00

Dialogue of the year by Aamir in RDB " Ek pair past mein aur ek pair future mein hai , isliye present mein moot rahe hai". Shayad hum present ko loot rahe hai aur isliye woh lut rahi hai. As numerologically correct Rakeysh Mehra and UTV gross Rs.35 cr for a well made movie in the first week, a generation has apparently awakened to the power of Bollywood if not something else. When I was in my teens, Sunny Deol was the only hope for India. His style was simple, shout so loudly at the opponents , stun them and hit them really hard. But such a style is fast disappearing like the hair on Sunny paajis head. When I was a kid, it was Amitabh bashing up 15-20 people in his anger against the establishment that gave me that security that India was fine. But today Hrithik Roshan himself needs extra-terrestrial help from Jaadoo . And Abhishek Bacchan cant shave. Jo apni muh ki gandgi saaf nahi kar saktha woh desh ki naali kya saaf karega.

All this is worrisome. As I battle traffic jams in Tulsi Pipe road and the Western Pothole Express for 3 hours everyday just to claim the company's petrol allowance, I have forgotten the past like the bhoot of a Tulsi Ramsay movie. Incidents like a group of people who did not allow me to get down at Andheri since I boarded a Virar Fast, the ration shop owner who did not sell wheat even though he had stocks, the Maha aarthis that saw Mumbai burn and closer now, the days Mumbai submerged and has emerged in 6 months without solving any of the old problems, come to my mind and go. Certain incidents like Manjunath's sacrifice to battle the petrol mafia still remain etched but I cannot help wondering if anything is going to change in UP and Bihar. I cant help feeling that this generation's cinematic metaphor is Shahrukh a la Gordon Gekko of Wall Street. He made the NRI so cool that tons of us can write any damn code to work in the USA. Money and a great standard of living is all we yearn for.

Maybe the protagonists of the movie thoda jyada hi character mein ghus gaye and imagined themselves to be the new Krantikaaris. But when the movie juxtaposes the sepia tinted fervour of Bhagat Singh and Azad with the drunken revelry of Siddhu and DJ , I somehow feel todays problems are trivial in comparison. And more importantly unlike 1920s there is no unifying force. Today if lack of proper roads is a crib for 10 mn Indians , then pains of relocation due to the building of highways affects another 20 mn destitutes. For every one suicide like Kuldip Randhawa who apparently got bored of her life (mein kya mar gaya tha kudiye), there are 20 farmers committing suicides due to crop failures. I just hope urban dudes do not start committing suicides for not having a girlfriend , that would be hitting rock bottom. Today what is a problem for you is a livelihood or luxury for atleast 2 others.

So radical solutions like killing a defence minister for MIG crashes and proclaiming it aloud on media appear neat when seen within the context of the movie but feel utopian when you step out of the movie hall. In that sense the movie is perfectly true to its screenplay and the characterization of its protagonists. This coupled with brilliant execution and excellent performances from the entire cast ( Om Puri in the role of a Muslim father reminded me of Tamas, a Govind Nihalani telemasterpiece) make RDB a treat to watch. Pepper that with witty one-liners ( Prasoon Joshi) and a pulsating music score( AR Rehman showing why he is still leagues ahead of Reshammiya) and you have a blockbuster. I just felt that the juxtaposition of history and present towards the end was almost caricaturish , but was a great metaphor in the first half. It reminded me of school, when I used to love reading the Indian Independence Struggle especially the Bhagat Singh and Netaji part, but even the healthiest of respect could not prevent me from drawing beards , moustaches, bandanas to the freedom fighters and have a feeling of fun and guilt at the same time. Thats exactly how I feel after watching Rang de Basanti.

Himesh the rock star

2006-02-04T09:30:00.000-08:00

2005 had two anthems , Kajra re in the first half and Aashiq banaaye aapne. While the former had the might of the entire Yash Chopra ecosystem working for it, the latter had one man ... Himesh Reshammiya. He composed the music and sang three songs. He reaffirmed India's love for people who sing with their nose rather than their mouths like Mukesh, Kumar Sanu, etc. His new album Aap ka Suroor where with his paunch , cap and stubble he is projected as the new rock star. Plus his Jhalak dikh la jaa from Aksar is already emerging as a super hit. Himesh is a refreshing change in Bollywood where outsiders have rarely made it big. Himesh was first introduced by none other than Sallu in his landmark movie Pyar kiya to darna kiya where he introduced 3 music directors Himesh, Sajid Wajid and Kamal Khan. Himesh was the luckiest of the lot probably because Sanjay Jumaani added an extra M to his surname.

His biggest hit before 2005 was Tere Naam another Sallu hit. The deep emotional nature of the movie and of its songs left a solid mark in the non-metro centers of the country. It was an instant rickshawalla hit in Mumbai, the barometer for mass tastes. Then came Aitraaz that had its share of hummable songs and then who can forget Just Chill where Katrina's gyrations added extra oomph to the song. But the definitive moment came with Aashiq Banaya. The song with heavy Sufi style vocals was greatly embellished by Himesh's nasal voice and the song was the hottest hit of most night clubs. In fact his singing has completely overshadowed his composing. For instance , most people have forgotten that he was the music composer of Kyun Ki which had some very hummable songs " Dil keh raha hai tumse yoon rishta jod loon" and the title song.

With his new album T Series has decided to cash in on his immense popularity. Move over Sonu, Himesh is here. Lets see how long this hero lasts. Sirf Jhalak mat dikh la jaa.

Is Aamir going the Kamal way

2006-01-15T10:16:00.000-08:00

There was a time in the 90s in Kollywood, the film world down South. A brilliant actor was flexing his muscles and entering areas beyond acting. Scripting, direction , make - up, the works. Soon fights with leading directors started, messing with scripts began, ghost - direction were common. Kamal Haasan was running out of directors who would put up with his interference. The magic he had unleashed at a time when Kollywood was dishing better stuff than Bollywood ( I still believe it was too much body hair on Anil Kapoor and Sunny paaji) was waning. Mani Ratnam and he gave Nayakan, Singeetam Srinivas Rao and he gave Apoorva Sahadorgal (Appu Raja). His initial attempts were good ( the script of Thevar Magan (Virasat) and SatiLeelavati (Biwi no.1 a real cheap imitation). But then megalomania followed and he was writing, directing and acting under his own banner. Plus a divorce and relationships with co-stars ran the gossip mills.
Today when I look at Aamir, his approach, his interviews and his personal life , I get a whiff of the same odour. Mangal Pandey was the biggest blockbuster flop of 2005. An actor takes a year and half to grow his moustache and hair. He does inane number of retakes to get a shot right. The movie takes four years and tests the patience of a movie goer for another three hours. Yet the man in his interviews and especially his Toyota ad gives an impression of having fallen in love with himself and the art that he portrays. He has disagreements on most scripts he reads. There is not exactly a queue waiting at his doorstep to sign him on. The way he arranged his second marriage had streaks of madness. He told in 'Walk the Talk ' on NDTV that he would consider direction very soon. I just hope that we can still get the cool Aamir of Dil Chahta Hai, I just hope these correlations dont have a high degree of significance. Waiting for Rang de Basanti to unearth further data points.

Zinda : alive but not kicking hard

2006-01-12T10:50:00.000-08:00

Sanjay Gupta's (Kaante,Musafir,Plan) films are usually the dark clouds in the candyfloss of Bollywood. They are technically sound heavily inspired versions of firang movies where the protagonists are the ones you would avoid bumping into on the streets of Mumbai. Zinda is probably his darkest. Every frame of the movie has a black hue and depending on the narrative, it is used to convey pain, monotony, despair and vengeance in varying degrees.
Zinda tells the story of Bala (Sanjay Dutt) a software engineer in Bangkok.Very difficult to visualize Mamu coding but we shall pardon that since Sanju baba delivers a knock-out performance. Bala is locked into a room by an unknown entity , where he is served a diet of fried wantons thrice a day . His only window into the outside world is a TV that surprisingly shows a great variety of channels. He learns through news on TV that his wife has been murdered and he is responsible for the same. Sensing vendetta he uses the time in confinement to strengthen his body by fisting rocks and copying Chinese martial arts on TV. He is finally set free after 14 years. Now Bala has to find why has he been kept Zinda for 14 years in this fashion.
The chase begins well where Bala uses a Hindustani taxi driver ( I thought that was NY trademark but here Lara Dutta is an interesting improvization to bring in the glamour quotient). He samples fried wontons at several Bangkok restaurants and manages to catch someone who leads to the place where he was confined. The confinement is actually a cool business model run by Raj Zutshi where in strict confidence they adhere to contracts of torture.
The tools used by Bala to kill are particularly gruesome, using hammers to knock off teeth, and drilling machines to amputate limbs and lastly Sanjay Gupta also throws in some Kill Bill type swordfights. One clue leads to another and finally we know that John Abraham is paying back some of the coins that Bala had dropped. The film is limited by John Abraham's limitations as a villain at times.John can look cool, but menace is completely different. Also the premise of the vengeance does not instantly appeal but it lingers on your mind. It reminds of comments you make on a daily basis. The denouement is a bit cliched and filmi.
But Zinda is nevertheless gritty and different. The whole styling of the movie definitely leaves an impact. And Sanju baba manages the entire range of emotions and of course action really well. Songs Zinda hoo mein and Yeh meri Kahani come at right times and are really soulfully written to suit the mode of the movie.In fact the music album comes with two versions Club and lounge with remixes of both songs and 2 addl songs. Sanjay Gupta once again proves he is probably one of the best technicians in Bollywood and has the ability to do further wonders if his scripts get better.

Some reserved comments

2006-01-05T09:21:00.000-08:00

Two recent HC judgements have brought reservations for Muslims back into the spotlight. Earlier the AP High Court quashed the 5% reservation for Muslims enacted by the AP Govt (a poll promise) and now the Allahabad HC has barred 50% reservation in the Aligarh Muslim University.

Now it is a known fact that Muslims remain disadvantaged in terms of employment in both public and private sector. The figures show that only 3-4% of posts belong to Muslims whereas they represent 14-15% of the population (actually figures could be higher when you include illegal immigration from Bangladesh).

The history of reservation in this country is a mixed bag. There has been steady emancipation of the backward classes since the implementation of the Mandal recommendations in states where casteism played a key role like UP, Bihar and Rajasthan. But in the same states, the caste-based politicization has increased the cleft between the various castes. In a way each caste waits for an opportunity to get back at the other and the reservations have made sure that there would be some caste member who can bend the law. But atleast in this case, there was enough causality between casteism and backwardness of such classes in this states.

The case of Muslim backwardness is stranger. One factor behind the perceived discrimination could be the higher growth rate of Muslims in India in the last decade, so the country's lower rate of growth could not accomodate this. Another factor could be that more Muslims choose self-employment over service. Moreover there have been enough Muslim role models like SRK, Azhar etc in non-employment based options like Bollywood and sports. But there are some other issues that plague this community like appeasement politics that creates simplistic solutions like reservation to complicated problems and lack of leadership to increase education and awareness. Ghettoization of Muslim communities prevents access to mainstream schooling in some cases even in cities like Mumbai (name a good school from Dongri or Behrampada). Also some strict adherence to the religion also prevents the community from practically embracing the open opportunities in this modern world. Another factor could be the % of Muslims from traditionally backward states like UP and Bihar could be higher thus proving to be a double whammy.

All said and done, reservations do not provide a complete answer. Even reservations over a long run change the social fabric. A case in point is Tamil Nadu , one of the earliest states to adopt reservation. Although the backward classes have benefited tremendously due to almost 80% reservation, the poor Brahmin is disadvantaged. Many Brahmin students do not get admission to good colleges inspite of excellent marks ( witness the big Tambram contingent in places like BITS and IIT). In fact popular Tamil cinema make the Brahmin a butt of ridicule and ribald jokes.

I guess the time has come to think of the Mandal reservation as a one-time ticket. If the chief bread earner has used it , his son cannot use it unless they continue to be economically backward. Otherwise the reservation system would cause serious mediocrity in the class and over the long run hurt classes that currently have no reservation.

The Sting Circus

2005-12-29T03:16:00.000-08:00

2005 would be best remembered as the year of the sting. It made Hindi movie plots come alive on your small screen. It made public the best guarded open secrets of Bollywood, politics and crime, the hottest newsmakers iof this country. With catchy taglines like Shakti ki aurat bhakti, Aman ka ujda chaman, politicians ke poll khol and IG ki ayyaashi , news channels had a ball going anywhere with secret cameras and shooting anything worth half an eyeball. Sadly tsunamis and petrol pilferage were not hot enough. Sting was the new fling of popular culture.

Now stings are approaching reality. There is already the case of a person catching his seniors taking a bribe because they did not pass on a cut to him. I am predicting that stings will be a regular feature in the Indian corporate world. Certain examples could be

Sales Strategy Summit : or the Scapegoat Screwing Session

In the first hour devoted to official work in the 2 day drunken revelry (3 S for tax purposes) , the CEO asks his Sales Head why are sales slowing down. In the boring corporate Powerpoint presentation with a mash of graphs no one understands or wants to know, the Sales Head manages to show it was not his fault but the wrong category strategy that the CEO ordered. But the CEO feigns complete ignorance(corporate amnesia at its best). The Sales Head unveils his sting video...

Cut 1 the CEO is shouting ' I think this category will grow. I dont care if you think otherwise. My belief is your command.Go do it'...

Cut 2 CEO at a page 3 party extoling virtues of the competitors products.

Cut 3 CEO at a shopping mall where he admonishes his wife buying his company's products.

Result: In the drunken merry making that follows, Sales Head gets double his bonus for managing growth in a dying category.

HR interviews

'As you know Mr.Alec Smart , our company is paying you the CTC benchmarked to the top quartile of the compensation survey conducted by Screwit and Co. Plus our company offers a great environment and has policies designed to motivate and take very good care of the individual'... Ms. HR Hingorani completes her spiel to the confused MBA with more jobs than his fingers can hold. After joining he realizes that the new VP has shrunk his role, Finance has decided to make employees bear FBT (fringe benefit tax) to show a higher EPS and the only employee motivation was coffee and bitchy conversations. As HR launches a 3P(Productive People for Profits) program for impressing the CEO , Alec Smart does a video on HR Hingorani.

Cut 1:on how she actually recruits outstation candidates to help fuel her hubby's real estate broking business .

Cut 2:on how she rates 30% on productivity since she spends 4 hours a day discussing nail enamel, lip gloss, restaurants and clothes with her staff who look upto her as the diva of corporate dressing

Cut 3: On how she sleazily tries to seduce the CEO.

But Alec Smart eventually gets fired . HR Hingorani has the last laugh as she removes him for sexually harassing an intern with a morphed video.

No Lights, camera , action . Playing at an office near you. The Sting circus. Beware...

So whats new

2005-12-26T02:05:00.000-08:00

How many new years should one celebrate? As soon as one drinks to glory to forget all the mistakes of last year which is typically not exercising and not cutting on drinks, one is faced with another new year within a month. In Jan you will have Tamilians celebrate Pongal with all the bulls they can lay their hands on, in March you will have Marathis make a pot with Gudi Padva and in April you will have Baisakhi and Vishu for two polar sides of this country Punjab and Kerala.

Atleast the Indian new years typically come at harvest time, hence anyone celebrating it will have something to look forward to, new seeds, fresh crops, new clothes, summer holidays et al. Whereas 2006 promises to me more of the same, the glassy exterior of a stuffy office, traffic jams on Tulsi pipe road , the same boss, blah blah. New year is actually like most Indian festivals a triumph; in this case its of marketing over common sense instead of good over evil.

New year 2006:Where you have to 'buy' yourself momentary joy at a price that will never justify the most extravagant optimism you have for the new year. Where you will end up celebrating the new year in your car as you wait on Andheri-Kurla Road to get into the Leelas for the Mardi Gras party. Where you will spend the new year in bed trying to nurse a hangover. Where you will break your limbs trying to dance but will be left with whom you started the new year with. And then having to prove later in office that you had been to the best new year dig in town.

At least the 90s were better. There was good old DD that did a new year wrapup in terms of news and movies. Then you had Jaspal Bhatti cracking a few vile jokes. As the screen blanked out, you could sleep peacefully wondering what new resolution to make.

A good marketer sells hope, but a smart person manages expectations. If there is nothing to expect, a good nights sleep is the best way to begin the year if it promises to be as bad as the last.

Bluffmaster: Mumbai Udipi

2005-12-18T21:50:00.000-08:00

He is the man that millions of women in India "go fida" over. And he still ends up in a goofy Superman T-shirt while escorting his papa from Lilavati Hospital. He has given Govinda's pelvic gyrations a stylized makeover and replaced the 108 teeth smile with a hungry naughty look that gives coolness to essentially tapori steps. Thats the new star for you. Abhishek Bachchan. The country's newest darling in his first solo shoulder movie. The movie had a bumper opening due to the rap song rendered by the man himself and a marketing glitz that cleverly masked what the movie is all about and created audience interest.

Rohan Sippy has created a smart movie. And if one goes to watch it like a Mumbai Udipi meal, then its enjoyable (No al-dente, no mineral water, KISS, no hatke). The screenplay is pedestrian at times but is livened up by good dialogues and performances. Abhishek plays a con man with just 3 months to live and a fiance(a wonderfully realistic Priyanka) who can take his lies anymore. So what does he do to make his last few days memorable? He prepares a best practices manual to be kept in the conmen knowledge management system. Well not quite. He decides to train Riteish Deshmukh to pull off a heist to avenge his fathers discomfiture. And the man to deceive is Nana Patekar , someone who does an aarti in front of the mirror and various other idiosyncrasies.(I particularly liked 'yeh dialogue likh leta hoon, baad mein kaam aayega' in his interactions with AB).

One good thing about this movie is that it is completely shot in Mumbai. So you can catch a glimpse of Carter Road CCD to the standard Marine Drive to the view from the tallest residential building in Mumbai ( wow to have a ked like that). Rohan Sippy also pays homage to Shaan by using it in a critical scene of the movie. I dont know why debutant directors can never get over this urge. In fact Nana's character has a self-deprecating humour that seems to humble Shakaal. So how could this be a tribute as claimed by Rohan in his interviews? ( another marketing stunt or evolution). Plus the end is a bit oversmart but cool.

Plus even in a con movie, Abhishek and Priyanka manage to work up enough mush thanks to those intense eyes of no prizes for guessing and candid expressions of the other. Riteish can now be a cool second hero/sidekick revelling in a role as a phattu ( Reminds me of Amol Palekar at times). Nana is a breeze. Boman Irani is now getting very stereotyped and hammy. Songs are well placed and extremely hummable . The variety dished out by Vishal Shekhar is amazing. From the remixes of Mehmoods Sabse bada rupaiya , parde ke peeche and do aur do paanch to the Iranian 'Boore Boore' to the bhangra-funk 'Say na', these guys are the ones to watch.

Bluffmaster is medu vada... you can crib about the sambar being too sweet, the chatni being soggy but you will bite in and enjoy nonetheless.

An analyst on hymn street

2005-12-09T01:48:00.000-08:00

Some cultured vultures , some new generation Indian and of course Chutney Spears have got so hassled with my earlier post 'Marutis who sold their monks' that I sometimes feel like Uma Bharti. In writing, usage of extreme poles always attracts attention and thats normal. But some further 'mediocre' thoughts from my side.

Should we junk sanskrit just because it cant give jobs? The script of both Chinese language ( Mandarin and Cantonese) is very tough to learn and is very old . Nobody in China should learn or write it. If they learn it also , they wont get the BPO and IT jobs which India has. So lets not learn even Hindi or mother tongue, Sanskrit to door ki baat hai.

In sheer capitalist terms, why cant things several hundred years old be a big opportunity for India. One-third of Americans consume alternative medicine and its a $ 10 bn industry there. Why does Ayurveda provide a much holistic cure for some illnesses than allopathy. Yoga with different versions of it ( Bikram, Iyengar et al) are slowly taking over fitness machines in the US. Give me the chicks at the gym anyday boss, who will eat all these bitter Pith nashak kadhas and perform the akhandbhujasana.

Should the spirit of human inquiry be crushed just because the process means digging into something old. Well paleontologists dug our evolutionary past to discover dinosaurs which was interesting to know but practically useless( of course smart people like Spielberg made millions from it).

Why do self help books sell more than management books. Why are so many people in the world in search of a greater meaning to life inspite of achieving all material wealth. Most self-help books prescribe nothing but a ritual . The previous best-seller Stephen Covey had a rational core whereas the latest Robin Sharma has a spiritual core that gleans a lot from some old Hindu ways of life and religion.

But some dudes feel religion is irrational . So are a lot of things we humans do . Even the most rational breed of analyzers better known as economists are junking their rational choice hypotheses. We all love to think we are rational but while standing at the shopping mall with twenty five shirts to choose from, we might be making irrational choices and still not be sure if we made the right choice.

Everyone loves the seduction of logic and order. Unfortunately gaining insights by reading and synthesising multi-threaded information pathways is difficult. Ask anyone trying to research or do a Phd . Most scientific papers are writings where the simplicity of thought is lost in the complexity of equations and other scientific terms. The Vedas or other religious texts are no different in terms of degree of difficulty. But if one believes there is no benefit like enjoyment and practicality(essentially lower order needs which every man achieves with temporal imbalances) in reading or delving deeper, dont even try. You would be worse off than Schrodingers cat.

The other big crib is "hey dont blame us , nobody taught us , didnt give us a for dummies type textbook blah blah". Well dudes no one taught us sex education we all learnt it in our own unique ways.

At the end of the day, everything is a personal choice. Collectivism even in India is finally a summation of millions of different views, and I am just on a quest to form a view. But let us not delude ourselves into thinking that a community of 15000 bloggers represents a fair sample of the vast population of resident and non-resident Indians. Issues still affect real India but may be not virtual India.

In a lighter vein , what is a Sanskrit name like pundit doing on the gateway of Indian blogosphere?

Amen to that.

Bollywood 2005:bubbling ahead

2005-12-08T02:10:00.000-08:00

One year has almost whizzed by and the Bollywood factory is in fine form. Looking at the releases for this month, Neal N Nikki, Ek Ajnabee and Family look very promising. Ek Ajnabee has Big B in uber cool suits and his towering screen presence would be best savoured at multiplexes. Neal N Nikki will be another attempt by the czar of karva chauth,chiffon and candy floss to reel another story about Indian hypocrisy about kissing, skinny dipping and premarital sex. But we will end up enjoying it like most of his movies.Family is a movie by Rajkumar Santhoshi, who is probably the most underpublicised director in the country. His last movie Khakee was dark, exciting and powerful.

Going back this year, it started off with the breezy Dil Maange More whose title epitomises the current spirit in Bollywood. Good production values , corporatization , increased multiplexes and a plethora of TV channels and newspapers that need movies as a staple diet has really helped. Of course the scripts need a lot of improvement and nepotism is a huge issue. Zayed, Fardeen and more such star sons cant act. But this year probably belongs to one star and his son. Abhishek Bachchan stands tall as the man who can be naughty , adorable, funny , serious and droolworthy. And his dad with a killer schedule has shown with a vengeance like good Scotch whisky, maturity matters. The duo gave India the biggest hit of the year "Bunty aur Babli" and their serenading of global item Ash in Kajra re had the nation dancing. They also gave us the best Factory movie Sarkar where one could learn how to hold a tea cup in style and how business can be managed by just stares and glances.

The other big successes were the comedies, each one trying to outdo the other in crass humour, trite situations and number of biwis per person. The best in toilet humour was Kya Kool Hai Hum where Ritesh and Tushar ran amok with the corniest lines possible. It had all the school level jokes ( D K Bose anyone?). But had some great situations with Ritesh trying to patao Bobby Darling and a pundit who does last rites being got for a marriage etc etc. The next was No Entry a clean lift of a Tamil movie Charlie Chaplin but it was funny thanks to an in form Salman singing 'Tan Dole mera Man dole' on seeing a snake while hanging from a cliff. And absolutely zany songs like "Adi di da Adi di di, just love me" sung by Anu Malik. Then came Garam Masala which had Akshay Kumar and John Abraham competing for attention of 3 air-hostesses. This fourth Priyadarsan comedy after Hera Pheri showed that his formula was finally wiliting. The problem was that unlike his earlier movies the number of characters(remember Babu Bisleri) were too low and situations very trite. Akshay carried his funny act with the entire jamboree cast of the old 'Awara Pagal Deewana' in "Deewane hue Pagal". This had better situations and more characters with Paresh, Shahid, Suniel, Om and TV's funny man Rajesh Menon adding to the madness. And Anu Malik's heavily Bhangra Pop inspired music was better.

Page 3 was probably the best hatke movie that entertained and provoked at the same time.

This year had a lot of critically acclaimed movies that didnt get box office success. One of them Paheli also went to the Oscars. The other one Black with superb performances by Amitabh and Rani did reek of the standard Bhansalisms, melodramatic excess and overdone interiors. Then we had the sugary sweet Parineeta which was an ordinary story with good songs, Vidya Balan and the naturally dumb Saif. A great marketing effort by Vidhu Vinod Chopra but had a 60's kind of feel with brilliant performances.

And then Yash Chopra made Preity and Saif the uber cool duo of the country in Salaam Namaste and everyone in the country was wearing pink and discussing live-in relationships and saying "Ekzaktly" for everything one agreed with. But the movie that according to me had cool written all over it except for the last twenty minutes was Dus. Chhota B and old tharra Sanjay Dutt with Shilpa Shetty's kicks thrown in for good measure. And again super hit songs Dus Bahane and Deedar de. Talking about music, we also had the usual Mahesh Bhatt camp giving musical hits like Zeher and Aashiq Banaye Aapne. "Woh lamhe" and "Aapki Kashish" still rock most pubs in Mumbai.

The most high profile flops were probably Kisna, Shabd , Shaadi no.1, D(will we have A aur M based on Abu Salem and his paramour) , Lucky, Kaal and of course Mangal Pandey where Aamir Khan after ten thousand retakes gave us how not to mix commerce, naach gana and history. Looking forward to more First Day, Fourth Shows next year. And a few more international film festivals whenever there is an overdose of Bollywood.

full on croaking , hit n hopping

2005-12-07T02:15:00.000-08:00

Phew!! ... Visits to my blog on a particular day have surpassed all records ( although it maybe only one-tenth of popular ones like the page 3 of Indian blogging(guess guess)). All thanks to a 'dogmatist', 'regressive', 'fundamentalist' post.Wow I can easily be a member of the the 'non-secular' alternative party in India . Like most youth in this country, I have grown half-knowing what true Hinduism is, why some rituals exist, why we pray , blah blah. But rather than rubbishing it, I am just determined to dig deeper and find what, why , when etc etc. However going by some extreme responses which sounded like foreign investors staying away from India because they saw some cows on the roads of Delhi, it seems the baby is out with the bathwater and without the Johnson soap. There is a clear need to separate concept from context and precept from practice. Things degenerate for a lot of reasons including human greed and war between religions. Every religion sometimes faces the need to be harsh and stricter in times of despair. But a certain portion of that austerity continues to flourish even later by force of habit. For instance, the world awful was supposed to mean full of awe a praise rather than the way we use it today. The problems in this search are many:

1. Unfortunately there is no Navneet type guide to all our texts. And pray tell me which texts is it the Vedas, is it the Gita.... well I dont know.

2. Even our parents or grandparents dont know the meaning of a lot of things we recite or do.

3. Time/practicality. Will it get me my this years bonus or promotion.

The path/journey would atleast leave me wiser than reading Mumbai Mirror.

And it definitely gets the hits on the blog. That should be enough incentive.

Till then its back to watching Tanisha's cleavage and bad hair with in Neal n Nikki. What a song...

Nikki Bakshi.... cute n sexy...full on rocking...hot n happening.... aarghhhhhh....

The marutis who sold their monks

2005-12-04T22:44:00.001-08:00

As India proceeds on its 8% brave new world growth rate, as the intestines of an aging superstar get more prominence than the rain ravaged interiors of Tamil Nadu and as ' naughty becomes in and nice is out' since the czar of candyfloss claims it in Neal N Niki, I always wonder how Hindu roots, rituals and traditions would evolve in the next 5-10 years. Usually there is one section of the young generation , which believes that most of our rituals are crap.They dont know why a shraadh should be performed every year, why a sacred thread should be worn, and have forgotten to pray with verses . There is one section that believes in God but not in the ecosystem that comes with it , the pujaris and the pyres. There is one section that just follows their parents and performs activities as per their wishes just to avoid any confrontation. There could be many other sections.

What is of acute concern is the amount of time we spend to gain insights into the Hindu religion and its philosphy either through experiences or reading. It is unfortunate that most youngsters learn a foreign language like French during school for better global prospects rather than Sanskrit. Knowledge of Sanskrit enables one to atleast understand the various mantras chanted during a ritual or the scriptures in the Vedas. Another barrier is the mental block associated with the effort required to understand or experience. Sample this ' I went to Enigma this weekend; it rocked' versus ' I went to a Rudrabhishek pooja yesterday'. How uncool . Today's generation is making choices without adequate knowledge. Its a strange vaccuum where the joys of materialism after years of Brahminical restraint and the vapidity of mainstream media have left us very little time or inclination to find and know our roots.

However the outside world is now exhorting the virtues of the Hindu way of life with all the marketing chutzpah associated with it. For this look no further than 'The monk who sold his ferrari'. The wisdom of the fictional 'Sages of Sivana' mentioned there is no different from the journey of self-improvement advocated in the various texts. If one starts seeing the holistic picture based on 'using religion as a means to spiritual bliss and being a better person, the wonders of yoga and ayurveda for a healthy mind and body, there emerges a beautiful path to being a better person which is what everyone strives for. My next post would be how all the modern thoughts of self-help and science and lot of our age-old wisdom are the same.

As a start let me leave an interesting thought: We all know that E= mc2 where E = energy , m = mass and c= velocity of light . If one studies Hindu mythology we have a multitude of Gods. Well all our Gods are just different manifestations of energy and God and all the mythological stories are physical forms ( the m part) of that energy. In fact if one reads some ancient shlokas, they describe the arrival of some Gods as "prakashit" and prakash in Sanskrit is nothing but light. In fact some of the world best healing technique "Reiki" is energy based. Now there are enough dots like the above. We all need to connect them in our unique way on this journey to wisdom. And there is no destination, the journey is all that matters. No wonder some sages in the Himalayas as claimed even in the "Monk" are more than 100 years old.

Spiritual experiences

2005-12-04T22:44:00.000-08:00

As India proceeds on its 8% brave new world growth rate, as the intestines of an aging superstar get more prominence than the rain ravaged interiors of Tamil Nadu and as ' naughty becomes in and nice is out' since the czar of candyfloss claims it Neal N Niki, I always wonder how Hindu roots, rituals and traditions would evolve in the next 5-10 years. Usually there is one section of the young generation , which believes that most of our rituals are crap.They dont know why a shraadh should be performed every year, why a sacred thread should be worn, and have forgotten to pray with verses . There is one section that believes in God but not in the ecosystem that comes with it , the pujaris and the pyres. There is one section that just follows their parents and performs activities as per their wishes just to avoid any confrontation. There could be many other sections.

What is of acute concern is the amount of time we spend to gain insights into the Hindu religion and its philosphy through experiences and through reading. It is unfortunate that most youngsters learn a foreign language like French during school for better global prospects rather than Sanskrit. Knowledge of Sanskrit enables one to atleast understand the various mantras chanted during a ritual or the scriptures in the Vedas. Another barrier is the mental block associated with the effort required to understand or experience. Sample this ' I went to Enigma this weekend; it rocked' versus ' I went to a Rudrabhishek pooja yesterday'.

Sell off Bihar and UP

2005-11-21T08:43:00.000-08:00

In a shocking incident, one of my batchmates was shot dead in UP. A crime so brutal and heinous. Is this the reward for honesty in this country? Has the value of a human life become so low that it can be crushed like using a paper tissue after lunch? To what end the dollars we are trying to attract when we cant protect basic human rights in a democracy. Is it for this , lakhs of students gave the CAT yesterday ? ( well the truth is not everyone gets the dream jobs that are reported in the papers).

This is not one freak incident in UP and Bihar. It happens day in day out. Anarchy reigns as humans refusing to follow the rules of people who never follow any law of this country are mercilessly slaughtered. I really wonder if there is any worth of having these states in our country. Let them be a separate nation and fight to death. In the Mahabharata, the death of Krishna causes infighting among the Yadavas to increase. Maybe the curse continues.

Bandra ka king kaun?

2005-11-19T10:36:00.000-08:00

As multiplexes continue to mushroom in India, there is one multiplex in Mumbai that has a sinister charm to it. Yeh aisa theater jiske line ki lambai se pikcher ki pitaai ke baare mein pata chalta hai. I am talking about the Gaiety Galaxy(G7) complex in the queen of Mumbai suburbs. Its another wonderful example of the fusion that exists in the pseude environs of Bandra where continental food, swank pubs, snazzy discos, six pack abs, designer outlets and chiselled bodies jostle with the Jay Sandwich Stalls, Bandstand, Linking road market and the roadside kebab stalls. As you enter the narrow alley , you will see crowds swarming in and out giving gaalis to the motorists or vice versa. The multiplex has an astounding business model. You will always get a ticket, either at the counters or in black. In fact the reason why this business model works is that for guys who are lazy and work just in time on fridays to catch the 930 show, most multiplexes with their always unreachable call centers and the ticket prices of Rs.150 plus never works. In G7, you are assured a black ticket of the 'latesht' movie in town for Rs.100.(dus ka bees) . Plus samosas at Rs.10 and old style Simba popcorn at Rs.10. I have never gone disappointed from this place even if the movie was just average. And better still if you can get a counter ticket which is Rs.55 for balcony and Rs.35 for stalls. Ideal to sample the trash that Bollywood dishes at times. Great to see the public enjoy when Bollywood dishes out Kajra re. Vulgar at times to see the real front bencher crowd. Scary sometimes when gangsters sitting beside you reminensce while watching Ramus movies. Always good to get a healthy touch of real India after discussing multi-million dollar business plans to cream the market. G7 .. jhakaas fulltoo paisa vasool.

Bloggers times

2005-11-16T22:35:00.000-08:00

If one looks at Desipundit , the latest blogger fad seems to be retiring from blogging. The two notable ones although I have never read their blogs seem to be Chetan Call Center Bhagat and Chandrachoodan. Maybe there will be interviews where bloggers would say 'my blog was ahead of its time' or the audience didnt fully grasp what I was saying. Luckily no one tells mera blog thoda hatke hai. For all you know the next big thing could be the comeback. So you take a break and then return like Mithun did in Elaan or Amitabh in Mrityudata or Govinda in Sukkh. As one can see comebacks have definitely not been successful. It could be one way of avoiding the bloggers block when the creative fluids are at an all time low. Then there could be some bloggers who would make a mockery of comebacks like Jimmy Amarnath in the Indian cricket team. In cases like Chetan Bhagat , he is now above blogging judging by the popularity of his book and would want to be regarded as a writer and not a blogger who writes.
The other once popular trend that seems to be waning is the physical bloggers meet, an idea that I thought was an oxymoron in some sense. Something like Amazon opening a bricks and mortar book store. Most people engage in online activites so that it provides them a convenient shield and the ability to don a new avatar. I am sure if some good looking babe turns up for a bloggers meet , she would get some hits in the next few days even though she writes about the shampoos she uses. I still remember the a/s/l days when chatting took off in India. But blogging is done by seemingly more mature or in the words of a TOI journalist elite people. We are probably not as mainstream as the levels TOI would want everyone to stoop too but we still have a long way to go.

Hutch Tata ya Bharti : Kaun hai baat ka saathi

2005-11-10T10:07:00.000-08:00

Hutch has now set new parameters for lovers on a budget .

The 10 Rs ka I love you to be used at the end of the month.

The Rs. 50 wala propose.

What the ad doesnt say is that yeh sab karneka baad you could still burn a bigger hole depending on your girlfriends appetite for talking which unlike oil reserves is not a scarce commodity . Hence if your I love you works you might become a post-paid customer. The thoda Hutch key ad does everything right strategically speaking. The prepaid customer was always fleeced during recharges where the talk time was only 70% of the price paid for the recharge. So giving a full recharge instead of a 'cutting' recharge is total paisa vasool. And Hutch for its prepaid customers makes a significant departure from its upmarket positioning usually associated with it. Instead of the animated boy and girl or the Hutch kutta, you have heartland hero Irfan Khan. Although the ad appear laborious at times, it makes the necessary impact.

Contrast that with the new Tata Indicom ad. Following this ad and finding a Tata Indicom outlet are equal in terms of difficulty level. After the decent 'insaan phone leta hai baat karne ke liye' ad , the brand has committed harakiri by changing the tag line to 'insaan phone leta hai tarakki karne ke liye'. And tarakki means receiving Japaneses guests apparently, and Kajol dons a kimono for the entire ad. But you feel tarakki means becoming chinki since their growth rates are higher( note the 50 chinki extras dancing behind Kajol).Plus there is this long lost brother of Devgan who is unable to receive calls since he doesnt recharge on time ( Tata Indicom offers 2 yrs of incoming without recharge). The whole ad looks like a Bollywood script gone awry, like Tulsi Ramsay trying to make a Manmohan Desai lost and found story with Chinni Prakash as the choreographer. When will Tata Indicom succeed?

Airtel has gone back to its Express yourself campaign. The ad has great Hindi " Dil ki baat batakar to dekho, apni bahe failakar to dekho' but its not evocative as the original that I had mentioned some weeks back. But Airtel continues to maintain a clear lead over Hutch in new subscriber adds.

Surprisingly Reliance the market leader has hardly added a decibel to its marketing ads but is sitting pretty with 14 mn subs. Would be interesting to see what they come up with.

Praying in God's own country

2005-11-07T05:24:00.000-08:00

If any regular reader of this blog ( the count would be in the low single digits) was wondering where I was (count in decimal points), well I was having a nice vacation in God's own country Kerala.Hats off to the tourism marketing guys for coming up with such a phrase to describe this state. November is probably the best month to visit Kerala, when the abundant monsoon has washed the state lush green and the rivers and streams at their ebullient best and the weather is refreshingly warm with light showers in the night.

Kerala is naturally endowed with a very unique topography. The combination of the sea, the intricate network of backwaters and lakes , the concluding ranges of the Western Ghats and the bountiful rains that nurture lush plantations and forest is just unbeatable. Inspite of being a popular tourist destination, the state still seems unpolluted and clean.

The other wonderful thing that not many non-Keralites know about are its temples. There is some ethereal beauty in the way Kerala temples are built and run. The low entrance, the long tiled roofs, the big courtyards which can put jogging tracks to shame, the way of using sandalwood and diffused lighting in the sanctum sanctorum to create different images using the same idol are unique to Kerala temples. There are other aspects like how the priest still maintains a distance from the devotee while giving prasad,(the prasad is dropped into the hands not given) although the neo-liberals may find it casteist. The temples really make you pious as if the designers knew how to create a pious and devout ambience that stands out compared to the garish design of some other temples in India.

But the spoilers are that most temples insist that you need to wear a dhoti if you are a guy and saree or skirt if you are a gal. Apparently the custom goes that one cannot stand with feet apart in front of God , hence any outfit like pajamas, jeans, trousers that clothe each leg separately are not permitted. Even ladies who normally think salwar kameez is a traditional non-offensive Indian dress are forced to wear a saree. But the smart generation has found the long wrap-around skirt to rescue them from such rituals. As for guys its a twin blow, the first one being to find the right balance while walking in a dhoti and the second being forced to expose one's paunch, hairy chest by taking off the shirt. Its almost as if God wants to make you so uncomfortable and in a way belittle you, that you pray to him to find solace and seek blessings. Its a strange spiritual experience making me believe that a certain discipline and a different attire is needed to maximise the results from praying.

God's own country, devil's own people.

Turtles can try

2005-10-24T22:37:00.001-07:00

After watching a Hindi movie a week , I decided it was time to savour the best of Asian cinema at the Asian Film Festival currently running in Mumbai. The deal looked paisa vasool. At Rs.300 you can watch almost 20-25 movies in a week. Moreover Inox with its movie ticket price of Rs.150+ was one of the venues. Not bad at all... and the first 3 movies I saw were just that..not bad.

Frankly I had high expectations from a festival like this. I had expected movies with dark undertones and metaphors that would remind me of the days when DD used to show the NFDC movies in various languages where the protagonist would spend fifteen minutes eating rice and fish and the camera would stay on the morsels dropping from his mouth, sticking to his moustache etc etc. I realized that my overdose of Bollywood and Ramus dark underworld movies were not exactly the benchmarks to compare. But I realized one thing, good cinema is about the simplicity of story-telling rather than over-emphasis on technique. And story-telling is about characterization and direction is about making the actors respond to stimuli, environment and be true to their characterization.

The best movie I saw was "Turtles can Fly" based on the the story of an orphaned boy who leads orphans in Kurdistan, an orphaned state. As the villagers wait for the Americans to overthrow Saddam's oppressive regime, we are treated to the leadership and resourcefulness of a 14 year old boy named Satellite who runs a neat racket collecting American mines and selling them for the utility of other American goods like satellite dishes to watch CNN and arms for self-defense. As the world crumbles around them with no future in sight, Satellite with his zeal and genuine compassion creates a future for the band of boys with a smartness now very much part of his generation. (witness the scenes where he installs the satellite dish but first watches the banned channels before tuning into news and his usage of English words in between to show off).

In between he finds time to get infatuated with a young girl who wants to kill her child , an outcome of a brutal rape. The girl's brother is a boy possessed with powers to see the future that Satellite discovers and marshalls to help the village and his band of boys. But as the Americans finally occupy Iraq, the war finally has no winners. Satellite loses his leg trying to save the young girl's kid. The girl succeeds in her mission of killing her child and commiting suicide. The boy who could see the future finally cant save his own kin. And finally economics overtakes bonhomie as Satellite's close friend leave the village for the city with the promise of America bartered peace benefits.

The movie creates an adorable hero, provides the learning of making the best of adversity, looks at humour even in grave situations but at the same time elevates human spirit above the parochialism of politics and greed. Amazing direction by director/writer Bohman Ghobadi and great performance by the kids.

Middle class majboori(mazdoori)

2005-10-18T02:42:00.000-07:00

Mumbaikars are actively celebrating the HC order which put brakes on the indiscriminate conversion of mill lands into swanky high rises and malls that hoped to convert Mumbai into Shanghai. Unfortunately the pictures of Shanghai that our Government had seen, only had the tall buildings but not the infrastructure in terms of water, sanitation and roads below it. But even in the HC ruling, 1/3 of mill land can be used for low cost housing by MHADA which is good for the lower classes, 1/3 can be developed into apartments for the rich ( at Rs.9000 to 12000 psf at current market rates) and as usual the middle class gets the rest which is reserved for "open space" where they can have the customary bhel puri on a weekend outing. Thats what the middle class usually gets in this megapolis :the short shrift .

The lower classes have the support of goons and vote-bank politics (the two factors have a 0.8 correlation) and the upper class have the support of money and connections ( again a 0.9 correlation) . What does the middle class have bad governance and 35% taxes. ( what should have been a 0.7 negative correlation).

The middle class has nowhere to go and no messiah apart from the economics of P Chidambaram whose 8% growth rate ensures a basic standard of living. Yes one does feel like canned sardine while travelling in the train, valets scorn at your old Marutis while parking, the Good Knight mosquito mats is the biggest household expenditure rather than milk, hearing dhinchak music in the auto is good recreation and so on. What can you do if only the poor and rich can afford places to stay close to your place of work?

The middle class has some silver lining.Like the cathartic experience of getting 1 kg free of sugar with 5 kg atta at Big Bazaar and other such freebies at malls that redeems the flashback images of the friendly neighbourhood bania cheating you with magnets attached to weighing scales. The saas-bahu serials which continue to redeem their faith on the maxim that Good will win over evil. Its another matter that the same middle class will bribe God with Rs.5 at the hundi rather than pay a bribe to the contractor to get things done.

The other wonderful thing about middle class behaviour is that their tastes are driven by economics rather than attitude. Its not that middle class mothers are anti-fashion, they are against " higher prices for less cloth". They watch more Hindi movies as it is more paisa vasoool for a Rs.100 ticket since you get to see 3 hrs rather than 1.5 hrs in case of an English movie. But now serials like Sarabhai vs Sarabhai have started poking fun at such middle-class habits their USP.

Thus the middle class has no place to hide except for his 600 sq.ft paradise in North Mumbai hoping to catch some sleep before catching the 8:20 local next day after a small prayer to Lord Ganesh.

Why men cant be just men

2005-10-16T23:09:00.000-07:00

Today just being man enough aint enough mate. You dont have to be super man (bhala uski brief meri brief se red kaise) either. Just when we had scrubbed our faces clean with all the apricot and walnut scrubs we could lay our hands on and shed glycerine tears during mushy senti movies, the officiandos have decided that metrosexual is passe. The problem with the metrosexual has always been its over emphasis on form rather than content by the media. The creation of this stereotype was more to sell more cucumber face packs and the romantic idea to women that there are guys who would cry with you while watching Kuch Kuch Hota Hai when SRK dumps Kajol for Rani. I always felt that the target segment for the metrosexual concept were women rather than men and the objective was basically to sell products to losers . But successful metrosexuals had a field day and became frustosexuals when it became too much of a good thing.

Next we had ubersexual ( not to be confused with kubersexual, which is basically men who spend a lot on paid sex). Ubersexual was supposedly a metrosexual with a cause. He had some principles like I wont drink on Tuesdays probably. But the key difference was that men wanted their masculinity back. They wanted to spend more time grooming their mind and manners rather than manicuring their nails. Thus ubersexuals were closer to real successful men and JWT rated guys like Pierce Brosnan, Donald Trump and Bono as the top ubersexuals. The metrosexual was finally shown the mirror, with warts on his mind rather than on his face.

Now finally the Western world has discovered the heteropolitan, which is surprisingly similar to what a large percentage of urban Indian men would be. According to Men's World , "The heteropolitan builds a picture of a man who can`t be pigeonholed as either a binge-drinking, skirt-chasing new lad or a preening metrosexual who spends more time in the bathroom than his girlfriend. Today`s man is a `heteropolitan` trying to balance looking good with pub culture, and career success with a happy family life." Cheers!! It seems what I always was is now cool, the guy who drinks on Friday but visits the temple on Saturday and goes shopping with folks on a Sunday. But I trust this to change soon, since such an image is a marketers nightmare.

Finally, I believe if u strip the sexuality and the polity, men can be divided into the following types...

Know man: The nerd who will know more about Windows XP rather than where to take a girl

Show man: The dude who believes life is a stage and he is the only actor

Flow man: One who lives for the moment and tries to maximise output/input.

No man: The over blown metrosexual .. Karan Johar types

Additions to the above are welcome !

The Rajnigandha effect

2005-10-16T21:56:00.000-07:00

It is often said that advertising is a reflection of society . Advertisers may not have the best timing, but sometimes they do create an impact with their hyperboles. A case in point is the Rajnigandha ad which talked of an Indian business house buying out some entity similar to the East India company in an overdose of patriotism. But this is no longer some paan-chewing bravado but serious business. Indian companies are aggressively scouting for foreign acquisitions and cash rich houses like Tatas, Reliance and Birlas are at the forefront. Incredible India is going after global giants. With valuations at record levels due to the stock market boom some Indian companies are within striking ranges of really big ticket global cos. I wish some of this enthusiasm would rub off on the IT biggies like Infy, Wipro and TCS, its time they bought a management consulting firm to take on Accenture and IBM.

Smart release

2005-10-15T07:03:00.000-07:00

In the songs of Bollywood, if it rains it pours. The same logic can be applied to the frequency of release of good movies. About a month back, there was a deluge with No Entry, Iqbal and Salaam Namaste. Thanks to absolute lack of competition, Salaam Namaste a pedestrian concept movie with a screechy Preity Zinta dancing with a helmet tucked in her tummy has grossed Rs.62 Cr. The Rajpal Yadav movie showcasing the frustrations of a small town guy with a taller and better looking wife did not warm the cockles or tickle the audience. Mostly superstitious Bollywood has a practice of not releasing movies during the Ramzan month. This is either a legacy of the era where movies where extensively financed by the underworld from Dubai. But in this era of fleeting consumer attention, it would be better if smart movie makers use this slack month to release movies rather than stacking it up during the Diwali holidays where the probability of success when pitted against the biggest releases. Bollywood good or bad , thy movies still are the best weekend timepass. Rather than Transporter 2.

Lane arbitrage

2005-10-09T22:40:00.000-07:00

Its a question which confounds me daily when I drive to office. Does changing lanes based on short term anticipation of traffic help you reach your destination faster or sticking to the same lane works out better in the long run because these short term nudges although create lot of action they finally dont translate into motion.

The worst form of lane arbitrage exists in Mumbai and its roads. Imagine this. You are driving on a four lane highway ; close to a signal the right most lane is for the vehicles want to turn right. But so as u plod along the lane left to this, there will be road warriors who would take this rightmost lane and just before the signal would switch on their left indicators to get on to the lane you are driving. And you are left with the " Hum kya gaddhe hai, lane discipline follow karke chala rahe hai" expression which you feel in India when you try to instill the virtues of discipline and watch others getting ahead without following it. For some Indians especially if you are born towards the North of the Vindhyas this is a matter of smartness. "Arre yaar tum aage nahi badhoge to koi aur badhega".

And the bigger the car, the bigger are their discipline breaches. Most drivers in such cars think their masters are no less important the Prime Minister and their time is at a premium. (maybe thats what these drivers are made to believe). And the bigger car bestows a certain arrogance and the bulge to deal with any eventuality. And if its a company car, sone pe suhaga ! Compared to these drivers, I feel truck drivers are a sensible lot.

So what do people zinging or zenning their middle class dreams do? Grin and bear it or in the Rome, do the Romans or wait for the big company car.

A true 'Bharti ya' brand

2005-10-07T02:50:00.000-07:00

Its interesting times in the mobile services market in India. Bharti is apparently now targeting the ABCD segment. Which means all social workers like maids, drivers and carpenters should have one. (other workers like call gals already have multiple numbers). In Tata Indicom's ad , Ajay Devgan can be either a non-urban customer or an urban worker; smartly alluding to two segments with one ad. Although I dont understand the tagline 'insaan phone leta hai baat karne ko'. Tell me do dogs buy phones ? Maybe the popular Hutch kutta ad has confused people.

Although Tata Indicom's ad is good due to the star power and catchiness, Bharti's ad is better in execution. Especially the one where auto drivers at a junction reach for their mobiles when they hear a ringtone, but its a cycle rickshawalla who is actually receiving a call for a phoren savari. Then comes the smart business logic ' go mobile for Rs.200' and then in a microfont size 'includes talk time of Rs.50', just showing that the prepaid model of targeting these lower income segments will also be profitable for Bharti.

I have always admired Airtel's advertising campaigns. Their idea of creating a signature ringtone with A R Rehman was brilliant; and they still continue to use that tone. In a masterstroke they elevated the brand without having to talk of talk time , rates etc. Then came the almost magical 'Express Yourself ' campaign stunningly executed with excellent imagery and creativity. It showcased the ubiquitous utility of the mobile phone through the situations ( a fighting couple, a bride entering church, an irate mob) but converted a rational purchase decision to an extension of one's voice. And from that Bharti's market share has kept increasing to being the biggest mobile service provider. Yes they did make the obvious and easy mistake of celebrities endorsements through SRK, Kareena (aargh) and definitely Sachin. (wonder why marketers sell their brains to hang out with these stars). Now they are back on track to scrape the bottom of the market.

Kudos to Sunil Mittal and his marketing team. A man who neither had the financial muscle of Reliance or Tatas nor the access to international experience like Hutch. No wonder FIIs are hanging on to his stock dearly.

kyunki TV bhi kabhi nahi thi

2005-09-29T23:46:00.000-07:00

Lot of people believe the K-serials led by Kyunki.. are depressing , sad and in short crap. And wonder how these maha sagas can run for so long with their makeovers, changeovers and takeovers. Like I had written earlier, things work not purely because of the content but the messages convey. I believe the following reasons endear these serials to Indian women (aged between 30 to 60).

1.Apnapan : - . The saree and salwar clad characters shown in these serials seem more apna to the segment rather than the redheaded mini-skirted bimbettes in Remix. The serials also celebrate the traditions and rituals that this segment grew up with and does not want to vanish in India with their generation.There is an immense feel good factor to finding bahus like Tulsi or saas like Baa.

2. Assertion of power in the house . ' I cooked the food, sent kids to school , taught them , cleaned the house, cooked again , kids watched their cartoons, you watched ur news, now give me my space i need to watch this however convulted the scenes may be'. Letting the women watch their K serials is the least the non-metrosexual male can do for his dame. And men are happy to follow this path of last resistance.Most women have a busy day till 9:30 pm till the last utensil get washed. The K serials is their own space in the claustrophobic one-TV household.

3. Perverse pleasure in comparing with the ideal. If you cant love them, embarass them. Most women watching such serials are searching for role models in their own worlds. Most bahus like embarassing their saases by comparing them to the vile characters and vice versa. Similarly husbands get the brunt from characters like Mihir or Karan. Or kaash mera beta iske jaisa hota etc etc. And since most households have just one TV it keeps everyone in place or in check. Ekta mein hai shakti hai !!

The Anya(other) movie industry

2005-09-28T02:06:00.000-07:00

Sometimes the good commercial movies from the South (the top 3 or 5 ) raise the scale of movie-making in this country to greater levels. And the directors who did this like Mani Ratnam and Priyadarshan, have made their mark in Hindi cinema also . In fact Priyadarshan has brilliantly adapted his situational comedies to suit the Hindi masses. Somehow one director who has not done it so far is Shankar. But since he is just 6 films old, he has time on his hands. But his latest movie Anniyan(The outsider) proves that he has elevated the art and technique of translating a soulful story into celluloid canvas to greater heights.

Commercial movie making is about having a strong core theme which is then embellished with characters, songs and memorable situations. Sholay is about an ex police officer revenge over a dacoit using two crooks. And then you add layers to the core, Basanti, the jailor, Soorma bhopali, create situations etc etc..

Shankar's mastery lies in movies with political message and a strong anti-establishment ethos. Anniyan tells the story of a Rules Ramanajum, a Tamil Iyengar who is irked by the indiscipline of fellow Indians who spit from a Mercedes Benz on pedestrians. Basically a 'loser' in todays world , even in love where his friendly neighbourhood babe feels he is damn boring. This leads to him developing a multiple personality disorder . So you have a Rules Ramanajum in two more avatars .. Anniyan the do-gooder who will set right the wrongs and Remo a rampwalk model who will serenade and pursuade his lady love with all the MTVian tricks. By defining your core in such a novel way, the writer gets a screenplay that can be wide and creatively leveraged. And the focus shifts from macro corruption ( builder-politician-mafia nexus) to everyday micro corruption ( railway canteen contractors, errant electricians) .

Add an actor like Vikram(shot to fame with Tere Naam's original Sethu) who performs all 3 roles with aplomb. Add Harris Jayraj's music. Add Vivek's comedy as the cop's mumbling assistant. Add a logic to killing offenders by novel methods(getting swarmed by a herd of buffaloes, getting deep fried in oil, having your blood sucked out by insects in a ditch) using Garuda Puranam as the textbook. Add a stunt using Matrix style action in a karate school where Anniyan fights 50 karate students and tries to kill the babe because she paid bribes to register her house. Add smaller Iyengar nuances like the depiction of Mylapore temples and the kacheri. Spend a cool Rs.25 cr. You have a commercial blockbuster which ousts Rajnikants Chandramukhi from the top. And still looks and feels like a product leagues ahead of Dhoom or Koi..Mil Gaya. Commercial cinema that is intense, engrossing, thought-provoking and enjoyable at the same time. A healthy mix compared to the candy floss of Karan Johar at one extreme and Varma's harsh realism at the other.

The free credit card fraud

2005-09-26T01:57:00.000-07:00

Most banks in India have now shifted to giving free credit cards for life and promising a whole lot of freebies ranging from add-on cards to your pet dog to free entry into some shady pubs.

This is probably another paradigm thrift in the retail banking industry.

Most credit card owners used to convince one bank to give a credit card for free in the first year which most banks used to agree. Next year when asked to pay the yearly fees they used to approach another bank and manage a free card from them. To the banks chagrin, they used to use the credit card more like a debit card unlike the USA by paying the entire bill promptly before the due date. Thus the banks were saddled with unprofitable cribby customers.

But look before you leap into this free card jamboree. There are enough clauses that would make banks make money. They are

1. An absolute amount ranging from Rs.250 to Rs.500 as late fees instead of a percentage of the bill amount. So even if you forget to pay a small bill of Rs.200 you will end up paying more than that as late fee.

2. A non-usage fee of Rs.150-250 for non-usage. So if you forget to use this free credit card for a period of 6 months, then again you have to pay up.

Plus some things would never change like the lousy customer service where you have to actually press a wrong button on the menu like ' lost my credit card' to actually be able to speak to some customer service agent in the limited time you have. In fact I have noticed that sometimes half a days work is lost in assessing the customer service desks of these banks, reminding you of the good old days where a Mrs.Lele at a PSU bank would handle all your problems if you went between 9am to 1 pm there.

Thus using the ruse of a free credit card, the banks are trying to gain atleast Rs.500 worth of non-bill related income from us. Foretold is forewarned.

Democratization of supari

2005-09-22T10:53:00.000-07:00

The case of Preeti Jain giving a supari to Arun Gawli to bump off Madhur Bhandarkar has some startling facts. The first thing is that the supari was only Rs.50000. I believe Madhur would have been quite dejected to know his 'market value'. In fact , the latest bragging rights in the film industry is now 'bhala iski supari mere supari se jyada kaise'. The other key thing is that if the rate card of the underworld is properly analyzed and extrapolated, the supari for an ordinary person in Mumbai would be around Rs.15-20000. The influx of cheap immigrants into Mumbai has continuously decreased operating costs of gangsters. At this rate, the target market (no pun intended) of Indians who could use supari as a service to settle scores with bosses, neighbours, house-maids and what not is actually close to 10 mn as per latest NCAER data assuming that people can spend 5% of their annual income on a supari if the need is really huge. I just hope this need is not converted into demand., or else dhanda will get even more ganda.

Return to innocence in marketing

2005-09-15T22:37:00.000-07:00

Marketing in the new age assumed that everyone wanted to look a million bucks, have a great figure that would put the hourglass to shame, prefer six pack abdomens over a pack of cigarrettes, practise scuba diving instead of channel surfing, wear the latesht fashion and be cool and be in.

After sinking millions of dollars, marketers are realizing that people just want to be themselves rather than just doing it. Yeah they will crib about their expanding paunch, but they might not punch it back in with a strenous workout. Also the huge comfort factor of seeing very ordinary men getting cute chicks in public places and in real life without any Axe Effect is practical evidence that either wannabe advertising doesnt work or girls are just unpredictably dumb at times. In the interest of women's liberation I believe its the former. Talking about women, the anorexic alacrity amongst women to get into shape to wear tight jeans is not happening . Adjectives like pleasantly plump , lovably loaded have given well endowed women greater appeal after Kate Winslet showed with aplomb in Titanic. Companies founded on a diet revolution like Atkins have now filed for bankruptcy. Health consciousness is definitely there but a six pack ab or 36-24-36 is not the only sign of good health.

Welcome to reality advertising.Nike has launched a "'Big Butts, Thunder Thighs and Tomboy Knees" campaign aimed at 'everyday women' (would that be an antonym of babe in times to come?). An excerpt from the print ad "“My Butt is big and round like the letter C, and 10,000 lunges have made it rounder but not smaller. And that’s just fine. It’s a space heater for my side of the bed. It’s my ambassador. To those who walk behind me, it’s a border collie that herds skinny women away from the best deals at clothing sales. My butt is big and that’s just fine. And those who might scorn it are invited to kiss it. Just do it.” The precursor to this trend was Dove's Real Women, Real Curves' campaign which showed plump women using a cellulite-firming lotion.

Although these campaigns use the extreme to appeal to the average, it seems finally presentably pretty is better than prententiously pouty atleast for women. For further discussions one can visit women's sites like http://michelemiller.blogs.com/marketing_to_women/2005/08/nikes_new_ad_ca.html

http://www.resonancepartnership.com/resonance_partnership/2005/08/and_what_is_the.html

As for men , I guess we still have to slog to be metrosexuals before someone thinks of a "Smelly Armpits, Paapi paunch and Lazy legs " campaign.

Some random observations

2005-09-14T10:35:00.000-07:00

The ban on plastic bags in Mumbai and the increase in newspaper pages is a good coincidence. Most vendors are making paper bags out of Mumbai Mirror, the 'raddiest' news tabloid. More pages, more bags.

Times of India has a launched Indian Idol contest for Ganpati idols. But the entire campaign is strangely in English for a highly local festival. Loksatta has conducted this contest for years now, wonder this attempt by TOI would be successful.

The Punjabification of India is rapidly happening. In many Ganpati immersions, the revellers were dancing to ' Dil le gayi kudi' and such songs rather than ' Deva o deva tumse badhkar kaun'.

Monsoon Menace revenge of the pit has exceeded all predictions. The Western Express Highway is a ride on the moon.

salaam e saste

2005-09-10T11:43:00.000-07:00

I watched Salaam Namaste, a movie whose promotions had 'cool' written all over it. Uber cool Saif Ali Khan and super chirpy Preity Zinta. A pair who look stunning together on screen. Concept of live- in relationship being tackled in Bollywood for the first time. But alas ... the film fails just like the protection which Saif uses and gets Preity pregnant before the intermission. And the movie looks a remix of Hum Tum and Kya Kehna.

Yash Chopra may have thrown out the Karva Chauths and the sarson de khet of Punjab , but his minions the so called new age directors still dish out safe escapist fare even when they have good themes. So you have the standard Non Resident India setting, since London is passe, its now Melbourne.

Formula 1. If you have problems living upto parents aspirations in India or 'do your own thing' or 'lead a great life', leave India and head for phoren shores. So you have Preity who is a RJ plus medicine student, Saif an architect by profession a chef by choice.

Formula 2. Show a lifestyle abroad that only Indians can only dream of even when they are abroad ( ask any software engineer worth his H1 visa). Gizmos, clothes,cars, plush sea-facing houses, the works. Standard Yash Chopra style. Nothing original as Bablis kurtas. Only chic, avant garde stuff.

Formula 3. Stay clear of any complications. Live-in can be shown happening abroad where there are no prying neighbours. No pesky questions asked by anyone except for Javed Jaffrey in a great cameo as an Indianized hybrid of crocodile Dundee, a Sindhi Jhotani in cowboy boots.

Somehow with all the right ingredients and casting, the movie leaves a bland taste instead of a spicy tadka. The time(footage) spent on the live-in relationship per se is too small, the pregnancy comes up too early, the humour inspite of Arshad Warsi's timing is cliched, the songs except for the title track and 'My dil goes hmm' are mediocre, the emotions seem a bit forced and overall it feels like an over marketed concept movie trying hard to be cool. Yes there are some mushy scenes best enjoyed by people in love and few funny sequences, but no salaam for this attempt.

Kohinoorean opportunity

2005-09-07T07:52:00.000-07:00

It had the potential to be an Indianized Da Vinci code. I am talking about Sahara One's hyped Kohinoor, a serial launched on prime time. Taking enough creative liberties, the plot wonders whether the Kohinoor diamond the Britishers was a fake. But somehow the promos, the casting and publicity never made the impact a novel concept like this to create tune-ins. Contrast this Sony's desperate marketing attempts to make a creatively spiceless Fame Gurukul succeed. Another bright idea seems to be going down the tube. Where did it fail ?

The TV business is about two things content and marketing. On the content side, one cannot churn out blockbusters all the time but a balanced portfolio mitigates risks. The key decision is " What is the scale I mount my production at ". This is where Star always hits the right buttons. Take KBC for instance. It was a big bet. An ageing superstar, an unknown format and loads of prize money to be sunk in. One needs a horse sense in the media business to know 'when to bet big, and when not to'. And the rest is history and flawless execution ( of course, who can forget Sidharth Basu's quiz questions). Where the content is not great , clever marketing can still salvage to a great extent. Indian Idol, Kavyanjali, Millee are examples. But even the best marketer cannot flog a shoddy product for long. Jassi Jaisi Koi Nahi is a classic case.

Sahara should have put big muscle behind Kohinoor. There were hardly any known faces in the cast, whereas they have tried celebrities ranging from Karishma, Raveena, Sridevi earlier. Plus the promos inspite of a great musical score hardly aroused interest. At the end of the day, I believe in the TV business one needs either good content or decent content with stars and good promotion or you outsource the content creation to participants. The last one is what reality TV and Indian Idols are all about.

Anatomy of attitude

2005-08-30T05:19:00.000-07:00

Over the past few months, I have been curious to understand how a person's attitude gets formed or how does one become 'cool'. To ease the analysis, let me separate the world into two spheres; one being the Theatre of Perception and second being the Sphere of Reception. The theatre is the sphere where one is being looked at, analysed, dissected and then classified and sometimes crucified. This theatre could be walking on the road, college, office, retail mall , pub, basically any place where public perception is important in determining your worth and coolness. The second, the sphere of reception are places like your home, company of your close friends where perceptions do not matter , 'you are what you are'.

In the theatre of perception, there are three determinants of attitude. The first determinant is DNA. This is like the hardwired chipset of a computer. So suddenly if at age 16 one wants to come across as intelligent, it would be very difficult to do so unless ones DNAs do a trapeze act. Thankfully intelligence is so old-fashioned that smartness and google can get one out of most situations, nowadays. So there is something in the science of genetics which makes people born to a great pedigree cool. Saif Ali Khan is after all a Maharaja's son even though he wears baby pink T-shirts in Salaam Namaste.

The second determinant is your receptivity to the signals God, the world and other mortals keep giving. This is influenced to some extent by the alignment of stars when one is born, so a Leo is likely to be more aggressive. These signs are only indicative, nothing causal. Like good properties or bad properties in metals, they need the right catalysts to come on their own.

The third determinant is finally the softwiring which gets influenced by the catalysts and the ambient environment. The first 2 determinants give an exposed negative with certain characteristics but the third is the developer fluid. The most important catalyst is parenting. A dad who names his son Ramanathan Kosarapalli has killed almost 80% of his son's coolness potential. Unless the son manages to change it to Rock during his college days. Kids who are named Siddharth (Sid) are named lucky instead of born lucky.

The economic conditions of a kids upbringing also matter. A rich kid can be himself since money is not a concern, but a middle class kid has to be what is best for his family. Plus if that means spending more time solving complex differential equations to determine the specific gravity of cow's urine then he has little time to evolve to being cool. Rich kids have huge margins of safety ( euphemism for dads deep pockets).The other influencers are of course peer group, education and exposure to situations. If you hang out mostly with nerds, then your biggest kick would be to complete Age of Empires rather than read Erich Segal's Love Story.

But once you are in the Theatre of perception, looks do matter. There was a statistic that showed handsome and tall men performed better than others in life. So what if you dont have good looks, big pockets or a good name? The only option is to make every act in the theatre count. So the way you carry oneself, the clothes you wear, the way you handle a traffic cop, way you handle your boss, the sum total of all your interactions in a time sensitive world can give you some coolness. But if thats also lost, welcome to the world of uncool.

Career swaps

2005-08-28T22:25:00.000-07:00

Imagine the following situation, there is a person A who is bored of a consulting career and wants to experience the thrill of joining a startup with its attendant risks and rewards. There is a person B who has been in a particular industry , but has stagnated a bit and can only join a startup/smaller org at a senior position. But currently his personal priorities prevent him from taking risks and he wants to join a consulting firm as an industry expert. It would be great if a career swap could be arranged for A and B. Like in derivatives, the key issues remain

1. Liquidity: Greater the number of people , greater the possibilities of swaps

2. Information/Credit risk: The more intangible the information, the greater the difficulty in structuring. So unless a proper rating system is established one cannot swap a A rated consultant with a B rated investment banker for instance.

3. Efficient market: Either good intermediaries or an efficient market is needed for such swaps.

One way for such swaps, is to have exchange programs between companies, just like the way it exists in various management institutes of different countries. It would be a great structured way of escaping corporate boredom that sets in a year or two.

100 chances of seeing the same face

2005-08-26T02:34:00.000-07:00

The number of channels in India have exploded. But has anything changed fundamentally.

I still see the same faces who were around when I become a TV buff thanks to the pursuit of a boring engineering degree .

Shekhar Suman stole viewers' hearts with Dekh Bhai Dekh as Somu. A brilliant sitcom with great casting. The same Shekhar Suman now desperately tries to be comic on a few new comedy shows on Star One and looks stale and boring.

Sajid Khan is still around. He started with his Ikke pe Ikka on Zee Cinema. And his best probably was 'Kehne mein kya harj hai' on Sony where he used to review movies and pull up everyone in Bollywood. He then went into hiding since he overdid the parody and the flimsy egos of the industry were hurt. Then he made amends and latched on to SAB TV. And now he is back on Super Sale on Star One which vaguely reminds me of Tol Mol Ke Bol one of the earliest shows on Zee TV. What a full circle the circus has come to.

Javed Jaffrey was brilliant in his shows on Channel V in the late 90s. Flashback and Rewind were the best film based shows and his takeoffs on Pran and yesteryear heros was good. He alongwith his brother Naved and friend Ravi Behl gave us Boogie Woogie which was enjoyable for a long time thanks to the ready wit of the hosts and slick presentation. Today the entire set of characters is back on Kaboom a new dance show with Prabhu Deva.

I would not mind if someone got some brilliant TV actors of yesteryears.....Rajit Kapur, Pankaj Kapur ...SRK ??

Gods instant gratification

2005-08-23T04:28:00.000-07:00

I had been to a South Indian temple in Mumbai. Matunga to be precise on Sunday. I dont know why some temples make you pray devoutly and some do not. Especially in Mumbai, temples are a commodity, there are more temples than sulabh shouchalays here.

As luck would have it, some key poojari ( priest) had come from Kerala to perform a pooja. As a result the darshan inside the temple was closed for around forty five minutes. During that time, all kinds of thoughts flew through my mind.

First phase was of deep devotion. I prayed for almost ten minutes . Then I started wondering I was either asking too much or repeating too much of the same things. Then I wondered whether I should be global(let me shine in my job) or specific(i should be promoted asap). After that came a phase of exasperation due to the wait time. So everything was cursed at. In an age of instant e-alerts, instant gratification is what the new generation needs. Why cant there be e-prayers or something, why does one have to wait, why there is a pujari between God and me, why should my darshan be dictated by his rituals blah blah.

The third phase of enlightenment dawned after half an hour had passed. He is the supreme Almighty after all. You came to see Him, seek His blessings. One can wait for half an hour for a skin specialist to clear pimples, prepaid call center of Hutch to provide a response, for a meeting which will give business if you listened to some curses, but cant wait for the Lords darshan? "Yaar ariva un maya leelagal, harihar nandanaye" ( who will understand your maya leela , O Lord) . We can all understand a bit if we all listen to the clues He gives all the time.

Independence day irony

2005-08-15T23:06:00.000-07:00

A couple of days before Independence Day, the vendors and street urchins who sell lemon-chillies and balloons at traffic signals shift to selling flags and other such memorabilia. In fact they also have moved up the value chain from selling just flags to decorative pieces.

In the few seconds that car onwner gets, he decides either to buy it as a token or really muses what this country has given him. Especially with the Mumbai floods, his view on the country's progress would have taken a nosedive. I would not be surprised if this year flag sales in Mumbai have been lower than last year.

The impact of the vicious circle is so cruel. The people who have been most affected by the floods are the ones making flags, paav, dabbas etc which keep Mumbai running. But the epidemic scare has made people wary of buying dabbas and other stuff coming from places most affected by floods. Thus the affected people face a double whammy. Loss of savings/property plus loss of livelihood due to lower business.

Patriotism still continues to be sold by the people who are the most afflicted by poverty,malnutrition and other problems plaguing India to the people who have benefitted by the globalized and relatively better India. The people living in slums were the first to help the people trapped in cars during teh deluge. The car owners can say they pay high taxes which the government fails to utilize properly, but can they say that slums need to be removed so that faster highways enable better cars to zoom. I believe if this divide is not addressed soon we are going to see an alarming rise in crime or public violence. Just look at the stares when one stands in the separate line for first class to book a railway pass when there is a line of 25 at Andheri station. You will know what I am talking about.

The new 'pub'lic sound

2005-08-15T07:52:00.000-07:00

"Tanu kaala chashma lag da ...." "... kajra re"... " deedar de" .. where would you expect to hear these songs?

A. From a Punjus car in Delhi with CDs sticking out on the rear window

B. From an auto rickshaw in Mumbai

C. From the happening pubs in Mumbai.

Its unlikely that your answer would be C. But surprise, surprise its true. If one goes to pubs like H2O in Bandra, the queen of suburbs in Mumbai, one would hear these songs. Its a new trend in a city which sweared by English songs while drinking, but sweared in chaste Hindi after the drinks. Yes there are dudes like Nikhil Chinnapa who say they would puke if pubs play Bhangra music and have gone underground to create some new type of sound. And yes there are some DJs who would refuse to play such songs unless the clock ticks past 11:30 pm or such sacred time. What has started this trend?

If one analyzes the standard clientele of the average pub or disc, its usually the wannable starlet types, or BPO workers smoking away the labour arbitrage or frust MBAs who are reluctant to pay cover charges when couples enter free. Obviously the starlets would find it better getting dance practice for the jhatkas and matkas from Hindi music rather than trance music. The BPO workers represent a generation that during its teens listened to Backstreet Boys, Boyzone and other such boy bands. So they are content with the occassional 50 cents , Superstar and other such hip-hop interspersed with Dus Bahane. That leaves the confused MBAs who listened to rock music during engineering (98% of Indian MBAs are engineers) . They cant go head banging in a disc.Plus years of lack of interaction with the fairer sex makes them gravitate to Hindi music's jhankaar beats with an intensity thats unparalleled.

Plus any DJ worth his tatoo can make extra money when the P-Series of the world make remix albums like Cute Kitten Mix or Barking Hyena Mix. Especially when the Raghavs of the world have attained global fame mixing bhangra beats , nonsensical English and whatever they could lay their hands on. So everybody is following the moolah and consumers do not seem to be complaining.

Tere Music mein aisa khoya jiya , .... ( Raghav you rock dude)...

Family feud unlocks conglomerate discount

2005-08-10T05:06:00.000-07:00

Earlier in the 1980s, Wall Street invented the conglomerate discount theory to make sure large conglomerates demerged so that investors could understand the fundamentals of each stock better. Though it was all a stunt to create more fee income. Just like the urge to merge 70s were. In India nobody worries about conglomerate discounts. In fact conglomerates are liked for their financial muscle and growth prospects . Unfortunately there are no Charlie Ergens in India who would launch a DTH platform on a Chinese satellite that had 60% chance of failure. All first generation entreprenuership in India is limited to software services. As soon as an IT guy sees 10 warm bodies who can code, he thinks of starting a company.

I am very happy with warring brothers. Not because they provide great fodder for the media with AGMs that look like soap operas. The Reliance AGM was full of such things, the elder brother holding out his hand to his mom and entering the meeting. Elder brother thanking younger brother for contribution. Younger brother coming to the stage and re-iterating "mere paas maa hai". Great saga. Such sagas are also increasingly global , with Lachlan Murdoch leaving to go back to Australia to his mom.

The good thing about such family feuds is that they unlock conglomerate discounts. Reliance stock moved up from Rs.500 to Rs.700+ , once the feud got over. Plus every shareholders gets some stock in the demerged special entities. And Reliance Capital has been a stock market darling. Ek se bhale do, do se bhale teen..Dhinak din din.

What i fail to understand

2005-08-03T10:19:00.000-07:00

I have not blogged for a week due to the torrential rains in Mumbai. I had written on my blog about "Monsoon Menace: The revenge of the pit" on my blog before the monsoon. I never dreamt the revenge would be this brutal. A collection of thoughts I had over the last week.

1. Why does Mumbai get such a step-motherly treatment from the center? Considering its contribution to India's direct and indirect taxes, Mumbai's infrastructure is a national shame. Delhi-ites will continue to remain the country's fat cats with the metros, commonwealth games, wider roads, cheaper cars, etc. But if such a calamity had struck Delhi, there would have been more deaths due to suffocation in cars. Attitude is where Mumbai wins hands down. We might just have 0.03 acres of open space per thousand inhabitants, but we have great space in our hearts. Tales of how Mumbaites helped themselves and fellow citizens abound.

2. So much for Mumbai's resilience.? We will discuss and debate, crib about infrastructure, blame politicians, BMC, Govinda et al but by next week catching the 8:37 local would be the only focus. Mumbaites for all their diligence and professionalism are surprisingly self involved. The truth is apart from the snobbish South Mumbaite and the film stars of Juhu lane, Mumbai is nothing but a teeming ant colony of middle class workers chasing 2 square meals of different sizes and dreaming of buying a flat one station ahead. The others in the city like the mafiosi and Gujju businessmen have other revenue targets to chase.

3. Why did Lord Indra retain South Mumbai's snobbishness? North Mumbai bore the brunt of not only the rain, but the bane of higher FSI and rapid expansion. Why are the mill lands that present a golden oportunity for the city to set right some of its imbalance, being squandered to fill the coffers of real estate musketeers masquerading as messiahs. I thought sale of mill lands would bring real estate prices down but they keep going up.

4. Does the city just have too much money? And does the taste of money leave Mumbai's politicians as toothless tigers ?

5. Lastly. Is chasing 600 sq ft of dreams after sixty fights for every inch every day a happy occupation?

Comedy Renaissance

2005-07-21T11:11:00.000-07:00

Its raining comedy on Indian TV screens as broadcasters want to reach an untapped audience that is "switched off from TV" or associates popular entertainment with saas bahu tear jerkers. This is a refreshing trend and Star One leads the pack. The best of them is " Sarabhai vs Sarabhai", which provides arguably the classsiest humour on TV today. Brilliantly directed by Deven Bhojani ( A popular comedy artiste himself) , S vs S boasts of a great star cast lead by veterans Satish Shah (Indravadhan) with his 30 yrs of experience and Ratna Pathak Shah(Maya) who oozes class. Its plot about a South Mumbaite marrying a middle class gal provides a wide range of comic possibilities and the writers are spot on. The next is Instant Khichdi with its slapstick humour about a family that is rich but very dumb. And surprise surprise the Great Indian Laughter Challenge hosted by Sidhu and Shekhar Suman has emerged the top rated show on Star One.

Zee is pursuing this genre through Zee Smile through a mix of movies, reruns and new shows. Last week I managed to catch Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron, Chaalbaaz plus one of their shows 'Bechara Big B' seemed quite funny about a bhulakkad Rakesh Bedi. SAB TV which was the only channel totally focused on comedy now has serious competition.

I think comedy as a genre really provides an anchor for flirtatious viewing. And in todays stressful lives, a hearty laugh can be the best exercise. But the real problem seems to be lack of comic talent. I mean Shekhar Suman, Satish Shah and Rakesh Bedi are really old wine. Jatin Kanakia of Shrimaan Shrimati fame at one point of time was the face of comedy on TV screens. And also some of the participants on the Laughter Challenge were too pedestrian. I hope this renaissance does not run out of steam soon. For sheer inspiration, the writers can learn from how Friends sustained viewership for so long.

Diminishing marginal readability of posts

2005-07-21T02:43:00.000-07:00

I have been facing a bloggers block for the last few days. There were a few supply side constraints like working out of conference rooms and full day meetings. The key concern I had was if I dont blog regularly enough would the miniscule readership base disappear. And if I write some posts for the heck of it whether the perceived quality go down. Like any media business I believe there are some driver shows and some filler shows. 60-80% of revenues of any big channel come from prime-time. So there is appointment viewing on primetime and flirtatious viewing on the rest. Is there something similar in blogging also.. that some posts would be good and attract a lot of comments whereas some posts would go without comments.

In trying to analyse the blogosphere I came up with classic consulting 2 by 2 to guage the popularity of current Indian blogs. The two axes are

1. Frequency : High to Low

2. Nature of blog content : Short update to medium long viewpoints/analysis.

If one looks at the most popular blog Kiruba it falls in the top left hand corner, high frequency short updates about happenings and events.

The top right hand corner usually the best position in 2 by 2 could go to Youth Curry although the quality of posts is not consistent. Since Rashmi also runs a youth mag, she can think once and write twice. But this is the most difficult corner to occupy for a long time.

The other on is the bottom right hand one would be blogs of Govindraj Ethiraj the CNBC editor, very infrequent long analysis driven posts.

People who update their blog infrequently and just update that they have switched shampoos or made pasta at home would mostly be read by their friends only.

Ok thats it for all the analysis and 2 by 2s, I need to figure out a way of writing more frequently on my blog.

An 'original' problem

2005-07-15T10:21:00.000-07:00

This week's Brand Equity carried an article that debated whether one's origin effected output in creating good advertising. Many of the recently successful creative whizkids like Prasoon Joshi 'boast' of small town backgrounds. The small-town feel was also one of the prime drivers behind successful campaigns like Coke's Paanch. I believe that one's origin or the environment in one grows up in esp. the teen plus youth shapes one's minds and can lead to business insights which are not easily understood.

At one extreme in the corporate world is the condescending South Mumbai stereotype. In all likelihood such a person would have never smelt armpits standing in a local train and would ask questions like " do people buy cars in Mulund" and so on. He would swear that Dharma and Greg is the only show worth watching on TV and would be scandalized if somebody talked about the entertainment value of Bollywood failing to realize that "Independence day" is as good or bad as Mithun's "Cobra". As he imagines Indians drinking more Tropicanas instead of Masala Chaas and eating Kelloggs rather than kanda pohe for breakfast, he is best suited for the small MNC firms where style and pedigree are given more weightage than substance. As the losses mount in such firms trying to force Indians to change their habits, such guys learn the hard way through the ubiquitous consumer research. Its good to know which is the pickle fork, but achaar is best licked from hands.

I think if one looks at ad campaigns in general and their vapid ideas, one can strongly sense the overbearing presence of such stereotypes in that industry. There are very few original " we are like this only " Indian ads like the Fevicol, Uniply or Alpenliebe Lagey Raho campaigns. And I am sure the recent DNA campaign is created by South Mumbai types. Maybe the target market is only South Mumbai because most of the people shown as booked subscribers seem that way.

Alex Kuruvilla former head of MTV admitted that "You do not get consumer insights by asking a bunch of kids from Malabar Hill in South Mumbai to decide what the rest of the country wants to watch." Cheers to that quote. I will write about other corporate stereotypes in my next post.

Dus bahane to see the movie

2005-07-11T10:20:00.000-07:00

1. Slick Hollywood ishtyle action: Allan Amin discovers kudos, for making this the Dhoom of this year.
2. Sunju Baba as a vulnerable yet tough anti-terrorist council head: He seems tailormade for such roles and the front benchers absolutely love him.
3. Abhishek Bachchan's arrival as the neo cool dude of India. He has spunk, style and screen presence. And his dancing is as unique as his baap. He seems more real than Hrithik, the beefcake.
4. Shilpa Shetty's opening kick in the movie. Suniel Shetty could learn from it.
5. Pankaj Kapoor's return to screen after a long time. Maqbool was more than a year back. He is menacing and funny at the same time.
6. Look and feel of the movie is really cool. The cars, clothes and locations. All except Esha Deol and Raima Sen. Esha Deol as a bimbette is like Prannoy Roy hosting page 3
7. Music. The title track , shaadi song and item song are foot tapping.
8. Well ... err....
9. Hmm...
10. Arre yaar isse jyada expect kyon karne ka Bollywood se, itne main paise vasool hai baap.

Thank God for the G7 Multiplex at Bandra, Mumbai. It has an efficient black market, you can actually get calls on your cells by the touts for 10 ka 30.

2015: Singapore outsources army to India

2005-07-09T03:39:00.000-07:00

In a landmark defence agreement , the Singapore Government has decided to outsource its defence requirements to India in a 5 year deal. This marks a high point of a co-operation process started in the mid 2000s where India started giving greater access to Singapore's investment entities and banks to India. Today DBS is the largest bank in India after having gobbled ICICI Bank and a host of others. Temasek has assets worth over $ 100 bn under management.

Speaking on the occasion the charismatic Prime Minister of India Rahul Gandhi waxed "This contract breaks new ground in sealing India's position as the number one outsourcing destination of the world. Today 75% of financial transactions of the world are processed in India. This power which enabled us to secure a permanent Security Council seat is being leveraged further to provide both benefits of scale and technological prowess to countries who now believe that maintaining armies is no longer a core competence for nations in this new world economy where capital, ideas and talent flow seamlessly. We have set ambitious targets to scale up this new outsourcing model."

The Premier of Singapore said " Singapore is now such a melting point of cultures driven by commerce, that the concept of nation state and what it stands for is nebolous and susrprisingly irrelevant. Over the last few years we faced immense problems in recruiting and maintaining our army. This model is a step in the right direction."

Sarcore

2005-07-07T09:40:00.000-07:00

A film-maker who champions the cause of hard-hitting cinema (opposite of candy floss), an actor whose potential still seems as unexploited as the gas reserves of India and an inspiration that is possibly the grittiest story written by man. When you combine the three you expect a blockbuster unparalleled. One doesnt get that but one comes out feeling that the director gave his best. Right from the first scene where an old man whose daughter had committed suicide post rape comes to Sarkars den to seek justice, you are captivated by the screenplay by the ace director. The altercation scene between Sarkar and his errant first son on the dinner table, the meeting between Sarkar and Rashid the other goon who wants to trade in narcotics are brilliantly shot. Unlike Godfather, Sarkar is a Robinhoodized do-gooder/ a parallel system like his son describes him. Abhishek Bachhan as the second son who returns from the USA fits the role. Even the romantic angle between Abhishek and Katrina is given good scope. Just as the first half is rivetting and predictable, the second half is exceedingly tame. The climax and the decimation of Sarkars villains is too hurried. I wish Ramu had taken more time of the audience. In trying to adapt the Godfather, Ramu puts in a Chandraswami , a dude as Rashid the main villain and Silvermani as a caricature as an assortment of villains against the Sarkar. Somehow the movie ends as a promise not delivered. To be fair to Ramu, the Godfather has been made in different shapes and sizes by Bollywood throughout the 80s and 90s. And Mani Ratnam's Nayakan was a brilliant adaptation. Also Ramu has delievered hits like Shiva, Satya and Company which dealt with the underworld. The story had to be trite. But the execution and performances are flawless. Ramu is necessary in Bollywood to contain the excesses of Karan Johar and Yash Chopra. Sarkar the movie was necessary just like the protagonist's parallel system.