The Heart Says

Short note on 'Sindhi'

2007-02-06T10:01:00.000-08:00

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Short note on 'Sindhi'

Hum bhi agar Sindhi hote
Naam hamara hota #Thadda Mal Guptani,
Khane ko milte papad
Aur duniya kehti #Thaddu ^Mal *kyin Aayo ???

*kyin aayo : How are you doing ?
#Thadda,Thaddu : Cool
^ Mal: (most probably) Shit !!! Oh!Shit

Source : Tilwani-Gupta Sindhi Hindi Dictionary

I wish, I was a Sindhi residing in Indore. There are numerous advantages of being a Sindhi and that too in Indore. My complexion also makes me eligible for becoming a proud Sindhi. I love eating papad also. After reading and hearing about numerous genuine success stories of Sindhis , I plan to adopt Sindhi culture and asssociate with Sindhu Society

I am from a place very near to so called world capital of Sindhi’s. The Sindhi world capital is called ‘Bairagarh’ or ‘Sant Hirdaram Nagar’. It is a modern suburb of Bhopal. I have heard that Sindhi saint ‘Sant Hirdaram’ after whose name ‘Sant Hirdaram Nagar’ is named, passed away in the month of January. Help all, Lord Jhule Lal.

Some of my best friends have always been Sindhis. Tilwanis , Ochanis , Aswanis , Advanis to name a few , who always influenced my life. Some of my teachers, professors and many of my bosses have been Sindhis. There is a show being aired on ‘Zee News’ channel these days which is called ‘Hum Log’. This week the host of the show, Abhinav Chaturvedi aka ‘Nanhe’ of old DD serial ‘Hum Log’ visited Bairagarh Textile Market. The president of the merchant association was a ‘definitely Sindhi’. He said many golden words. Ones those caught my attention were these “We, ‘the Sindhis’ always believed in hard work. We may be making losses in our businesses initially but we never give up. We are real workaholics and will try our level best to make our business a success on the basis of sheer hard work.”

Inspiring, isn’t it?

Some of the traits you need to carry to become a true Sindhi:

-Dress yourselves in White and White (Kurta and Pajama).
-Pajamas should at least be three feet wide.
-Kurta should have golden buttons. Number of buttons? Minimum four.
-Wear white Sandals.
-Wear a neck chain, should appear like a boundary wall railing in shape. Weight should be around 100 grams.
-Wear bracelet in both wrists, made of gold of course.
-Wear 10 golden rings in 10 fingers. Only hand fingers will suffice need not go for leg fingers.
-Let everyone see at least 3 chest hairs. In short, keep top two Kurta buttons open.
-Apply Sandal talcum powder. Must have been bought from Bairagarh or Sindhi Colony.
-Hairs should be easily visible coming out of body vents, oops I mean ears and nose and …No not from eyes!!!
-Motto of life ‘Apna Sapna Money Money’.

I love Sindhis and more importantly Sindhans. I here by declare that from today onwards I should legally be recognized as ‘ Thadda Mal Guptani’ . I make myself the part of this great "*ni" fraternity. I plan to settle down in Bombay’s Ulhas Nagar to become a member of USA (Ulhas nagar Sindhi Association) or the utopic Bairagarh. Being a 'Baniya' myself, I forsee my smooth and quick transition towards new avtar.

Hail Sindhis. Jai Jhule Lal !!!

Movies I watched in the year 2006

2007-01-31T10:57:00.000-08:00

This year unfortunately I didn't get chance to watch lot of movies. I have listed the 37 movies that I watched in the year 2006 along with my rating on them.The best one is listed at top and the worst at the bottom.

Rating <=10 and >=7
Memento
Kinsey
Shrek
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
Erin Brockovich
Kill Bill Volume 2
Casablanca
Litle Miss Sunshine
School of Rock (2003)
Kill Bill Volume 1
Lemony Snicket's - A series of unfortunate events
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
A history of Violence (2005)

Rating between 7 and 6
ICE AGE (2002)
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
Protector (2006) or Tom Yum Goong (2005)
Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (2006)
Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
Superman Returns
Nacho Libre (2006)
Get shorty
Old School
Lady in the Water (2006)
Trainspotting (1996)
Just Like Heaven (2005)
Office Space
Kung Pow : Enter the Fist (2002)
The Odd couple
15

Rating between 6 and 5
War of the worlds
American Pie
The Man Who Wasn't There
American Pie 2
Bedazzled
The Black Dahlia

Rating <5
Three to Tango

Finally Sachin scores a century!!!

2007-01-31T10:28:00.001-08:00

Who is your favorite cricketer? More than three fourth of India’s population will answer this question unanimously and the answer will be ‘Sachin Tendulkar’. As a matter of fact my favorite cricketer is Rahul Dravid. Today Sachin scored a ton after a long gap. His innings against West Indies today shown the glimpses of ‘real’ Sachin , Sachin that we knew , Sachin that we loved and adored , Sachin that we respected , Sachin that we worshipped. I wish he continues with the form till forthcoming world cup tournament. Today Indian team played as a team and result was a total show off . Windies were thrashed like the head of the nail under the butt of the hammer. Wow !!! Siddhu finally got into me. Sachin swayed his bat like the sword of a gladiator who could kill the giant of a dragon by mere flick of his wrist. Whoosh !!! No more Siddhuism. Sachin’s unbeaten century in 76 balls was good enough to warn all other cricketing nations that Sachin is back with the bang and is prepared for the world cup. Sachin showed the aggression and pace that was missing in his knocks from more than last couple of years.

Even after all this, I was sort of little disappointed. I was hoping that Rahul ‘The Wall’ Dravid will score his 10000th run in today’s innings but he just missed this feat by around 25 odd runs. I am sure in the next match against Sri Lanka , he will join the 10 K club.

Best of luck , Team India. World Cup !!! Go get it. I won’t mind sharing my ‘Visa’ cards with Team India.

Never attach yourselves to anything or anything

2007-01-28T10:21:00.001-08:00

I always thought Carroll will emerge out as a winner in the fake reality show “Bigg Boss”, but the result of grand finale didn’t surprise me that much. Rahul Roy really deserved the winner title. He showed a true gamer character and he toiled and earned the win. He kept on repeating that “Never attach yourselves to anything or anything !!!” and this golden rule made him stand out of all other shit headed (except Carroll) contestants. He sort of also proved that faith in God always helps.

Initially I didn’t like this show but since there were no other good options available during 10:00 PM to 11:00 PM slot, I kept on watching it. Rupali was the one whom I hated the most. As a matter of fact, I stopped watching the show when this psycho lady was displaying his weeping capabilities at its best. Once she was thrown away from the show, I resumed watching it.

“Bigg Boss” was surely an instant hit but now a days I am happier than before. Couple of reasons; one, I got something to kill my 9 to 10 primetime and SRK is doing it really well. I will talk about KBC a lot later. But the point really was, the way to win in every walk of life is “Never attach yourselves to anything or anything!!!” and more important than that I DON’T want to win in every walk of life.

Doel-Pande making headlines of India's leading News-Paper

2007-01-04T08:13:00.000-08:00

100 Best Products of 2005

2006-12-01T07:23:00.000-08:00

Check for yourself , how many of these are you using ?

My data goes like this:

Heard:24

Seen:17

Used:12

Am I really technologically challenged ???

Naveen

The 100 Best Products of 2005
When you're buying hardware, software, and services, you want the top combination of power, features, reliability, and value. That's what you'll find in these World Class Award winners--starting with the Product of the Year.

Wednesday, June 01, 2005 01:00 AM PDT

All Products Listed by Ranking

1
Mozilla Firefox Web Browser
2
Google Gmail Web Mail
3
Apple Mac OS X Version 10.4 (Tiger) Operating System
4
Belkin Wireless Pre-N Router and Notebook Network Card Wireless Networking
5
Dell Ultrasharp 2405FPW 24-Inch Wide-Screen LCD
6
Alienware Aurora 5500 Performance PC
7
Seagate USB 2.0 Pocket Drive Portable Hard Drive
8
Skype VoIP Service
9
Canon EOS Digital Rebel XT Digital SLR Camera
10
PalmOne Treo 650 PDA Phone
11
Zone Labs ZoneAlarm Antivirus Antivirus and Firewall Software
12
Mysoft Technology Maxthon Browser Plug-In
13
Rio Carbon Midcapacity MP3 Player
14
Webroot Window Washer 5.5 Utility
15
Maxtor H01R300 Shared Storage Drive Network Hard Drive
16
Google Search Engine
17
Netgear 54 Mbps Cable/DSL Wireless Travel Router Model WGR101 Travel Router
18
OnlyMyEmail Pro Spam Filter
19
Sony PlayStation Portable Handheld Gaming Device
20
NVidia GeForce 6600 GT Graphics Board
21
APC Back-UPS RS 800VA 120V Uninterruptible Power Supply
22
2BrightSparks SyncBackSE Utility
23
Moon Software Password Agent Password Manager
24
HP Officejet 7210 All-in-One Multifunction Printer
25
Winternals Software ERD Commander Data Recovery Software
26
Ubuntu Linux 5.04 Linux Distribution
27
Epson PictureMate Photo Printer
28
Mozilla Thunderbird E-Mail Program
29
Cloudmark Anti-Fraud Toolbar Browser Security Plug-In
30
Vonage VoIP Service
31
Cloudmark SafetyBar Spam Filter
32
Adobe Photoshop CS2 Image Editor
33
The New York Times on the Web Web Site
34
Apple ITunes Media Player
35
Seagate USB/FireWire Hard Drive External Hard Drive
36
Canon CanoScan 9950F Scanner
37
IRiver IFP-895 Flash-Based MP3 Player
38
Valve Half-Life 2 PC Game
39
Samsung HL-P5063W Rear-Projection TV
40
Tor Privacy Software
41
LG Flatron L1981Q 19-Inch LCD
42
Dell 3000cn Color Laser Printer
43
BlackBerry 7100t PDA Phone
44
Verbatim Store 'n' Go Pro USB Memory Key
45
Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 SATA NCQ Internal Hard Drive
46
Compaq Presario V2000 All-Purpose Notebook
47
Microsoft Windows Media Player 10 Media Player
48
Canon Pixma IP4000R Inkjet/Photo Printer
49
Best Software Simply Accounting Accounting and Personal Finance
50
Orb Media Streaming Service
51
Flickr.com Photography Site
52
Dell Inspiron 6000 Desktop Replacement Notebook
53
DirecTV HD DVR HR10-250 HD Receiver and DVR
54
ACD Systems ACDSee 7 Photo Organizer
55
Dell UltraSharp 1704FPV 17-Inch LCD
56
Olympus C-8080 Wide Zoom Digital Camera
57
Qnext Instant Messenger
58
IBM ThinkCentre A51p All-Purpose PC
59
SightSpeed Video Instant Messenger
60
Wikipedia Online Resource
61
Cerulean Studios Trillian 3.1 Instant Messenger
62
CMS 80GB USB 2.0 ABSplus Notebook Backup System Portable Hard Drive
63
Nikon Coolpix 7900 Digital Camera
64
Contour Design RollerMouse Pro Mouse
65
Adobe InDesign CS2 Desktop Publisher
66
Shuttle Computer XPC i8600b Small PC
67
IBM ThinkPad X41 Ultraportable Notebook
68
Adobe Premiere Elements Video Editor
69
Dell Axim X30 PDA
70
A9.com Search Engine
71
Toshiba RS-TX20 Digital Media Server DVD Recorder
72
Roxio Easy Media Creator 7.5 Burning Software
73
Plextor PX-716UF Rewritable DVD Drive
74
Casio Exilim EX-Z750 Digital Camera
75
Apple Mac Mini Small PC
76
Google Desktop Search Desktop Search Tool
77
Mitsubishi LT-3050 30-Inch LCD TV
78
Apple IPod Photo Large-Capacity MP3 Player
79
Dell 3300MP Projector
80
FileMaker Pro 7 Database
81
Sunbelt Software CounterSpy Anti-Spyware Software
82
Six Apart TypePad Blogging Tool
83
Acronis True Image 8 Backup Software
84
Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe Motherboard
85
Brother HL-5140 Monochrome Laser Printer
86
Apple ITunes Music Store Music Downloads
87
Internet Archive (Archive.org) Web Site
88
Opera 8 Web Browser
89
Copernic Desktop Search Desktop Search Software
90
Motorola Razr V3 Cell Phone
91
Delphi MyFi Satellite Radio
92
PDAapps VeriChat Standard Edition Mobile Instant Messaging
93
Sonos Digital Music System Streaming Media Device
94
EMC Dantz Retrospect Professional 7 Backup Software
95
Garmin StreetPilot C330 GPS Navigation Device
96
Klipsch ProMedia Ultra 2.0 Portable Speakers
97
Logitech Z-5500 Digital PC Speaker System
98
Antec P160 Desktop Case
99
Corel Painter IX Paint Program
100
Citrix Online GoToMyPC Personal Remote Access

A True Masterpiece: Lage Raho Munnabhai

2006-09-01T22:28:00.000-07:00

‘Lage Raho Munnabhai’ is a movie as wonderful as ‘Munnabhai MBBS’ for the most part and is even better than that for some part. ‘Lage Raho…’ is a pure magic. The amazing movie touches us deep inside our heart. It’s an inspirational movie without heavy lectures. The character of Gandhi Ji has been used in a brilliant manner in here. The movie teaches some genuine lessons. The story makes us feel proud of ourselves on being a good human being. I am not sure whether movie is successful in teaching us to follow Gadhian Principles but for sure attracts the much needed attention on the principle professed by Mahatma Gandhi and that too in such a lucrative, warm and witty manner.

The best part of the movie is the Radio program of Munna , where he tries to solve problems of people of Mumbai on Air. The very first case, the one where Jimmy Shergil has lost seven lakhs of rupees in share market crash, has been filmed in a way that may make some people burst into tears, purely emotional picturization. Another case where the goon spits ‘Pan Peek’ on the wall of the lean guy’s house is also an emotional play which finally fills you up with victorious emotions.

This movie is an excellent mix of comedy and good emotions. Sanjay Dutt again does a wonderful job here. Vidya Balan is really beautiful and her smile is killing. Circuit is flawless. The length of the movie is sweet and the songs are playable. The magic of the movie is the story and how this story has been displayed. Boman Irani did the same justice to the character of Lucky that he did to character of Dr. Asthana in ‘MBBS’.

While watching you will laugh frequently and may even cry also occasionally. This movie heads directly to point where all good movies must go, straight into your heart. Cameo of Abhishek Bachchan was good. Saurabh Shukla did a tremendous job. While old age homers enjoy their Goa trip , you also feel happy for them .

I’ve heard a lot many stories about the title of this movie. So many different titles were selected for this film and finally “Lage Raho Munnabhai” was chosen. In my true opinion, all the previously selected titles were better than the current one except “Munna Bhai LLB”. “Munnabhai meets Mahatma Gandhi” was really an appropriate title. “Munnabhai Second innings” could have been real good.

With sheer simplicity this movie emerges as a screen wonder till the time it wraps up. “Two Thumbs!!!! Way up!!!!!!!!!!!” for this great movie. This movie has made it to the list of my all time Hindi TOP Ten movies. This movie all set for winning uncountable hearts of numerous viewers in coming days. This movie gives us that sneak peek towards life full of illumination and hope. Please………..Please…….. ..Please……..... Go and discover a new life and live that for entire 2 Hours and 24 minutes.

I am assuring you that you have not seen such a great movie in last at least couple or may be three years. If you miss this movie , then you are going to miss a lot.

The longest movie of my life - Part 2

2006-08-31T18:09:00.000-07:00

So the 19:00 show was never screened and so numerous tamil folks, one north Indian (me obviously) and one telugu guy (Ratnaker) were waiting more eagerly for 22:00 show. On further research came to know the root cause of the problem was some kind of problem with digitizing the movie tape. The person responsible for conducting the show in the theatre told junta that this technician knows how to digitize normal American tapes but is not conversant with digitizing tapes for Indian movies. Also did you notice that I just said that person responsible for conducting the show; yes he was also a Tamil guy was some kind of professor somewhere, he was kind of broker cum agent for the show.

As has always happened in the history; whenever a group of people are suppressed beyond their threshold limits for substantial period of time, a hero emerges out of the group and stands against injustice. It was already 22:45. The hero for this group turned out to be a lady , whose toddler was crying. She fired the revolt and raised the voice for people and informed the show conductor that people are suffering here and he should let people know what is the actual status of the show ; are they going to screen the movie tonight or are they just trying to find an escape route as they couldn’t screen the movie tonight. As soon as she voiced the concern, there were way too many others who were raising their voices also. Most prominent being one of my roommates Vijay.

Somehow poor professor controlled the mob , yeah it was a mob of desi tamilians and finally the show started at 11:55. What was I doing during all that time; I was playing video games along with Ratnaker, placed in the theatre corridor. Everyone started settling down and the theater hall was jam packed in just couple of minutes. People were al clapping and whistling and finally movie started.

Kamal hasan’s first screen appearance pulled lot of applause and whistles and shouts and comments and what not. There was a comment in Tamil, of course I had to ask Narsi why are people laughing on this comment and Narsi told me that the guy just commented ‘Kamal is killing everyone, Kill me also’. Wow!!!! What a mind blowing comment.

The film really runs well till the reel that shows intermission written in the BOLD. I almost understood every single dialogue which Kamal had once he reached NY City. The language was English with true desi accent. As happens in most of the Indian movies, that movie takes a sharp ‘U’ turn after intermission; this movie in real sense did that. It was an ‘U’ turn’ beyond imagination.

To be continued...

The longest movie of my life - Part 1

2006-08-30T22:14:00.000-07:00

“Vettayadu Vilayadu “!!! No … this is not a code. This is the name of the latest Kamal Hasan tamil flick. As my apartment mate Vijay tells me, it means “Hunt and Play”. No, I have not lost my senses and I accept that I watched this entire movie that too in a theatre and believe me I watched the whole movie and there were no subtitles being shown.

Story goes like this, I shifted to this new apartment where two of my roommates are tamilians and are die hard Kamal Hasan fans. They asked my friend Ratnaker whom I will be replacing in the apartment and in office and in many other senses, to join them in the movie and he being a telugu guy doesn’t understand tamil asked me to join them. But we are talking about buddyship here, being together in good and bed ..oops .. bad times although we didn’t understand each other’s native language. We (me and Ratnaker) thought that there will be subtitles in English in the movie and we will be able to comprehend the movie. The tickets were booked online in jiffy.

Movie was supposed to be screened at a theatre in Waukegan , a suburb of Chicago. The show was supposed to start at 22:00 Military time. I drove my car to that place with Ratnaker helping me with directions. Vijay was so much excited; it looked as if he is going to get laid for the first time. We reached the theatre at 21:45 and came to know previous play of the same movie that was scheduled at 19:00 was not screened and it will take some time before the movie could start.

To be continued……

Why KANK sucks ?????

2006-08-14T22:16:00.000-07:00

KANK Sucks!!!!!

All those who know me well know well that I am a huge fan of SRK. I always try to watch his movies on Day one. Long live Balu, who arranged me the tickets for this movie in a great theatre in a Chicago suburb and man we are talking about day one. Theatre was great, company of friends in the theatre was great, even the nachos and big tall coke cup was great but ‘Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna’ was anything but great.

KANK is never ending long boring movie with a story which could have been shown in mere 90 minutes, had it been produced in Hollywood. Johar as always is a showman. He casts all the big names in his movies and this worked well until K3G but here he failed to create an entertainer. Best roles were given to Karol , John Abraham and Arjun Rampal according to me. The reason of course is they didn’t bore you that much. Aah !!!! I forgot to mention the best of the best role. It was played by Karan Gay (not Gay Gay , Just Happy Gay ) Johar. Do you remember, in which scenes did he appear ? He was in the train in the penultimate scene sitting with SRK. Anyway, let us not talk about acting performances here. Amitabh , Rani , Abhishek , Preity and to some extent SRK ; all of them are actors of category great to decent.

As appropriately quoted by one of my patrons, KANK is nothing but ‘switching story’. It starts and crawls and then culminates after more than 3 hours and in between it bores all. The major flaw in the movie per me is its length. Nice editing work could have saved this movie from total collapse but the story and the screenplay tried their level best to make this movie a pure junk. Someone wrote on sify movie review that this is SRK’s best performance after DDLJ. To that guy all I have to say is go F*** yourself. SRK did his best in ‘Swades’ and that consumed all that SRK had for couple of years and it will take him atleast another three years to come up with a performance as good as that.

Gay Johar managed to do justice to the nomenclature of the movie. Movie never said ‘Alvida’, it kept coming back and that too with larger intensity of boredom. SRK still needs to work on lip movement for the songs. He looked no different than how he use to do this stuff in ‘Dil Ashna Hai’ or “king Uncle’. Remember the songs ‘Dil Ashna Hai , Jigar Ashna Hai…’ and ‘Is Jahan Ki Nahin Hain Tumhari Ankhen’ !!! SRK keeps reminding himself that during his acting sessions raising both eyebrows at the same time will fetch him another filmf*** award to him and that’s what he was doing in this whole movie.

Songs were just okay. No real chartbusters in the movie. On the positive side there were some real ‘laugh out loud’ scenes in the movie. Especially the one, when Rani dresses up in leather and enters Abhishek’s room with a leather whip in the hand. You know I wanted to put it in this way only , I could have presented this the other way also. You know what I mean. Amit ji , managed to do justice to his role but if he continues to do roles like this , I am afraid I will have to withdraw this ‘Ji’ suffix from his name.

This is what my conclusion is: I have lost three and half precious hours of my life watching this grandiose crap and Gay Johar will never return my time to me. But I don’t want all of you guys to waste your precious time the way I did. Gay Johar has excreted so much of shit in KANK that lands of Dharma production will never ever need manure from outside to stay fertile.

‘Omkara’: Intensity at brisk pace

2006-07-29T01:00:00.000-07:00

Saif Ali Khan!!! We are talking about complete metamorphosis here. Saif has improved by leaps and bounds in terms of real acting. Whenever people will talk about ‘Omkara’ they will have to discuss ‘Langda Tyagi’. I feel director Vishal Bhardwaj has done everything right with the movie except the selection of the name of the movie. The name of the movie should actually be ‘Langada’ rather than ‘Omkara’. The whole story revolves around the character of ‘Langada Tyagi’ excellently played by Saif Ali Khan.

‘Omkara’ is a no non-sense movie with crisp screenplay and astounding performances. Story is simple, violent, intense and fast paced. Movie entertains you at all the instances. Pace has been maintained throughout. There are no lack lustrous performances or characters or scenes. Every bit seems to be interesting. Talking about acting performances Saif is the clear winner among plethora of superb screen presences such as that of Ajay Devgan , Viviek Oberoi (Note the spelling of Viviek) , Kareena Kapoor and Konkona Sen Sharma. Konkona Sen Sharma is one of the finest actresses produced by Indian film industry in the last decade or so. Naseeruddin shah never disappoints as an actor; can’t be said the same for him as a director (Remember what’s happening with ‘Yun Hota To Kya Hota’). Songs like ‘Beedi Jalile’ and ‘Dhadam Dhadaiyya’ will make you hum and especially ‘Beedi Jalile’ will enthuse a lot of energy in the viewers.

The next big thing to be talked about is the ‘dialogues’. Exquisite seems to be an inappropriate word to explain the quality of dialogues used in the picture. Although some of the dialogues were not clearly audible and understandable because of the native eastern UP language used for them but most of the dialogues are killers. Saif and KonKona Sen Sharma deliver them with all that is required to make you assimilate them.

Lot of bad words and so called foul language has been used in the movie and “R” (US) and “A” (India) seems to be the most apt category in which the movie should be classified. First half is more enjoyable than the second one and mostly because of the classic timing of Saif and excellent catchy dialogues written by Vishal. There’s a scene where an eagle flying in the sky drops a dead snake in some kind of religious vessel filled with wedding turmeric in front of Kareena. There’s another where Viviek Oberoi beats up a man driving a Maruti 800 and talking on the mobile phone. Such scenes make this movie even more intense than it obviously looks.

Ajay Devgan has also done well and so did Vivek but ‘Omakara’ is completely a one man show and the showman is Saif Ali Khan. The power of the intense script and the pacing of the theme make this movie an extraordinary creation. ‘Omkara’ is a must watch. I am not sure about the box office success of this movie but ‘Omkara’ is just another masterpiece for true movie lovers.

SP's movie collection

2006-07-19T06:42:00.000-07:00

12 Angry Men
25th Hour
A bugs life
Alien
Alladin
Amistad
Analyze that
Antz
Apocalypse Now
As good as it gets
Atlanantis
Atlanantis -2
Basic instinct
Big fish
Brother bear
Cast Away
Chicken Run
Crouching tiger hidden dragon
Dial M for murder
Divine secrets of yaya sisterhood
Dog day afternoon
Erin Brockwich
Fargo
Frida
Finding nemo
Forrest gump
Good Fellas
Guns of navarone
Heat
I am Sam
Ice age
Identity
Insider
Kramer Vs Kramer
Last emperor
Laurel and hardy collection
Looney toones gold collection
Looney toones gold collection -2
Lord of the rings -1
Lord of the rings -2
Lord of the rings -3
Manhattan
Matchstick men
Mean streets
Meet the parents
Momento
Monster inc.
Mulan
O brother where art thou
Old school
One flew over the cukoos nest
Original Sin
Philadelphia
Pirates of carrebean
Platoon
Radio
Rainman
Road to perdition
Rookie
Saving private ryan
Scent of a woman
School of rock
Seabiscuit
Secret Window
Short cuts
Shrek
Sienfeld -1
Silence of the lambs
Simpson-1
Simpson-2
simpson-3
Taxi Driver
The green mile
The Hours
The lady killers
The last samurai
To kill a mocking bird
Toy story
Toy story -2
Treasure planet
Wall street
When harry met sally
Wild Things
**Dil Chahta Hai
**Pinjar
**Jane bhi do Yaron
**Munnabhai MBBS
**Lagan

** indicates Hindi Movies

Interesting US Visa interview

2006-07-11T06:05:00.000-07:00

Interesting interview of a L1 visa applicant at US Consulate, Mumbai

(To start with, Counselor is a beautiful charming lady)

Candidate: Hello.

Counselor: Hello. Why do you want to go to America?
Candidate: Temporary work assignment.

Counselor: What’s CSC?
Candidate: CSC - Computer Sciences Corporation. It is the second largest IT services company in the world (Candidate knew it’s actually number 3).

Counselor: Which is number one?
Candidate: IBM.

Counselor: Why aren’t you working for number one?
Candidate: Sorry!

Counselor: Why aren’t you working for IBM?
Candidate: CSC is a big nice company and I am comfortably working here from last five years and never felt like joining IBM.

Counselor: What’s your salary?
Candidate: In US or India?

Counselor: US?
Candidate: $xx000.

Counselor: Are you married?
Candidate: No.

Counselor: Why aren’t you married?
Candidate: I am getting married next year after my return from US.

Counselor: Will you marry someone in US and won’t return?
Candidate: (Candidate must assure counselor that he will come back to India) No I am getting married next year and I have a fiancé here.

Counselor: Why isn’t she accompanying you?
Candidate: Because we are not married yet.

Counselor: Does she trust you?
Candidate: Yes

Counselor: Are you sure?
Candidate: Yes

Counselor: How do you know she trusts you?
Candidate: I know.

Counselor: When did you go to US for your last trip?
Candidate: Reached US on 6th April 2005 and returned on 10th January 2006.

(Counselor started counting months by counting fingers)
Candidate: 9 Months.

Counselor: Why 9 months?
Candidate: My project lasted for 9 months, that’s why.

Counselor: You were in the US for 9 months, how much did you earn?
Candidate: I was getting a salary of xx000 per annum.

Counselor: Your fiancé knows that you earn this amount?
Candidate: Yes

Counselor: You will go to US and will have lot of fun.
Candidate: Hmm.

Counselor: (Bolt from blue!!!) Did you go to prostitutes?
Candidate: (After a brief pause, getting the composure back coming out of shock) No

Counselor: Are you planning to visit prostitutes this time?
Candidate: No

Counselor: It’s illegal, right?
Candidate: What?

Counselor: Prostitution?
Candidate: Yes its illegal in US.

Counselor: Is it legal anywhere?
Candidate: Yes

Counselor: And here?
Candidate: Yeah it’s illegal in India.

Counselor: How do you know prostitution is illegal in US?
Candidate: My clients told me.

Counselor: So your clients visit prostitutes?
Candidate: No, actually don’t know.

Counselor: Have you ever been to prostitutes here?
Candidate: No

Counselor: How much did you earn, you said?
Candidate: In India or US?

Counselor: US?
Candidate: $xx000 per year

Counselor: Did you pay taxes there?
Candidate: Yes

Counselor: Do you have record of your paid taxes?
Candidate: Taxes paid in India or US? (Candidate had with him documents related to Indian tax)

Counselor: In America.
Candidate: Not now.

Counselor: How much tax did you pay?
Candidate: $yy00

Counselor: Did you tell your fiancé that you earn this much in US and don’t visit prostitutes?
Candidate: Yes

Counselor: You Sure.
Candidate: Yes

Counselor: You will be getting your stamped visa soon.
Candidate: Thank you.

Counselor: Bye
Candidate: Bye, Thanks.

Prasoon's Movie Collection

2006-07-06T10:20:00.000-07:00

2001:A space odyssey
A fish called wanda
Almost famous
America's sweethearts
Annie Hall
Batman Begins
Best Laid plans
Blow out
Boondock saints
Breakfast club
Bridge on the river kwai
Bullitt
Carlito's way
Color of money
Contender
Dead Alive
Deer hunter
Dirty dozen
Dr Strangelove
Dumb and dumber
Erin brockovich
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind
Fargo
Femme Fatale
Ferris Bueller's day off
Fight club
Finding Nemo
Freeway
From Dusk till Dawn
Gattaca
Get shorty
Go
Godfather
Godfather - II
Godfather - III
Goodfellas
Graduate
Grand canyon
Green Mile
Harry Potter 1
Harry Potter 2
High Noon
Hot shots 2
House of Games
Jackie Brown
Kill Bill and Kill Bill 2
LA Confidential
Lawrence of Arabia
Lost World
Mask
Meet the parents
Memento
Mulholland Dr
Mystic river
Office Space
Once Upon a time in America
One flew over a Cuckoo's nest
Panic room
Phone Booth
Pulp Fiction
Reservoir Dogs
Road to Perdition
Saturday Night Fever
Saving Private Ryan
Scarface
Scent of a woman
School of Rock
Sea of love
Seabiscuit
Shakespeare in Love
Shawshank Redemption
Short Cuts
Shrek
Shrek 2
Silence of the lambs
Sleepers
Sleepy hollow
Snow White and Seven Dwarfs
Some like it hot
South part : the movie
Spiderman 2
Strange days
Swingers
To Kill a Mockingbird
Trainspotting
Transporter 1
True Romance
Truth about cats and dogs
Untouchables
Usual Suspects
Wall street
When harry met sally

My Movie Collection

2006-06-26T10:05:00.000-07:00

English

Toy Story
Toy Story 2
Shrek
Shrek 2
Three to Tango
The Matrix
Bedazzled
Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle
Some Like It Hot
Master And Commander
When Harry Met Sally
There's Something About Marry
Adaptation
The Manchurian Candidate
Finding Nemo
As Good As It Gets
Dumb and Dumber
Bruce Almighty
The Mask
The Shawshank Redemption
**Veer-Zara
**Sholay
**Swades
**Paheli

** indicates Hindi Movies

Getting afraid is a must

2006-04-29T01:36:00.000-07:00

University professor

A student comes to this old professor’s place for some personal lessons and doubt clearance on micro biotechnology. Student puts up his queries in the discussion but it seems as if the professor is really worried about something and is not giving attention to the student. Occasionally professor starts staring at various locations in the house. When student asks him about the matter, brooded professor responds that there is a man in the house who is harassing him from last six months and is trying to become someone exactly like the professor and when this puzzled student tries to check if there is any other person in the house, he finds no one and feels that professor has gone psychic and needs a psychiatrist and starts packing up his books and stuff. Then professor stops him and says that he is not mad and whatever he is saying is a truth and then takes the student with him to show something so that the student will believe whatever the professor said. Prof. takes the student with him in front of a mirror and shows him the person who is trying to become exactly like this professor and when camera rolls on the mirror , it shows the student standing with a dark skinned guy wearing a cap who is definitely not the professor. In front of mirror are standing the student and professor and in the reflection of the mirror stand student and a different ugly looking guy wearing professor’s dress and a cap.

Prankster couple

A handsome guy in the middle of night knocks the door of a lone house and the door is opened by a beautiful sexy lady wearing a silky black gown. This guy tells the lady that he needs to make an urgent phone call and his car broke down and couldn’t see any avenue nearby so he needs this favor from this lady to call up someone. Lady says it’s fine and allows this guy to make a call and offers him water. Guy sees a photograph in which lady is standing with another guy with really long hairs and a ultra big mustache and on asking about the mustache man he gets the answer from the lady that the mustache man was his husband and was died two years ago. On mentioning that he is sorry about her husband’s death, lady says she’s not. Lady shows this guy the room from where he can make the phone call and on entering that room this guy finds the mustache man and mustache man starts cursing this guy that what is he doing in house. Terrified guy tries to explain that the lady who opened the door claims to be mustache man’s wife and on this mustache man becomes really angry and tells the guy that his wife was died two years ago. This come as a shock to the guy and when he sees up at the stairs he could see the smiling sexy lady stepping down and mustache man sees nothing. Just before the panic struck guy was about to pass out the couple starts laughing and tell that it was their prank and there was nothing to be worried about. They just did this as they were getting bored. Lady also tells that mustache man has interest in calling souls and was just trying to call some soul from ghost world with the help of the apparatus consisting of a board and a coin. Lady also puts up a question in front of the guy that if he believed that on calling souls can come down. Mustache man had already made a statement that that it was possible to call the souls but sometime it becomes really difficult to send them back.

Mustache man claims that he can call ‘Joe Fernandez’ the car mechanic in five minutes who will help this guy in repairing his car. Then mustache man starts his process of calling Joe’s soul and in the mean time lady keeps on banging the question to the handsome guy that if he believed souls can be called to earth from the other world. Exactly after five minutes when mustache man has finished his process of calling soul, someone knocks at their door. When all of them the handsome guy, the mustache man and the sexy lady are out to the roadway in front of the main door, the hubby-wife couple is in for a shock. There is a wrecked car lying on the road, the driver of the car is dead and no wonder the driver of the car is this handsome guy standing with the couple and who just died in this accident. The soul of the handsome guy explains that he was died in this road accident recently and when the mustache guy was trying to call a soul, he responded to his call and obviously the soul of the handsome guy has to make the final statement and it says ‘It’s possible to call souls but sometime it really becomes difficult to send them back to the place from where they are coming’.

Movie director

Karan Chopra is a famous Bollywood director who is adept at making romantic movies. This maven romantic director is trying to make his foray into something different and for the first time is trying his hands at making a true horror movie and needs a new girl for the lead role. He is presently working on the climax of the movie and for this he needs complete concentration on the subject and for focusing on the subject he is headed towards his serene bungalow in the tranquil valley of Khandala. He directs his assistant that a new girl should be selected for the lead role and he shouldn’t be disturbed at his place in Khandala till the time he finalizes the climax of the movie.

En route he finds a beautiful girl asking for a lift to Khandala. Director stops the car and offers her the front seat of his Honda CRV. Obviously they start talking. Girl recognizes that she is sitting beside a celebrity. She tells him that she is huge fan of him and has watched one of his famous movies nine times and has seen all his movies. Karan asks if she has seen ‘Kabhi Apne Kabhi Paraye’ his latest hit. On this she says she already booked the advanced tickets for this movie but couldn’t watch the movie. She shows the booked ticket also to the director. Director also tells her that his new venture is a horror flick in which he will show that a girl asks for lift on the highway from lonesome men and kills them one by one and he is still in search of a brilliant climax and that’s why he’s heading towards Khandala where he will plan the best climax for his movie. He also inquires if the girl gets afraid by watching horror movies and on this she replies that she is not afraid of anything. The car goes thru a tunnel and it gets completely dark and at that instant girl claims that she was died in the same tunnel ten days back. Karan is now all afraid and sweating. At the end of the dark tunnel girl smiles and says that she was just joking and she’s not any kind of ghost. Karan offers her to have a coffee at his bungalow. The girl accepts the coffee proposal. As they reach Karan’s place it starts raining. The girl asks Karan for using the wash room. As she was inside the wash room power goes off and Karan mentions that there is nothing to be afraid of, frequent power cut is very obvious thing at this place. Girls comes out shockingly and makes the repeated statement that she is not afraid of anything and then she start crying that all you lonesome men are similar and you just want to do the same thing with a young girl. She continues that ten days back she asked for a lift from someone on the highway, the guy who offered her the lift wanted to rape her in the car but was not successful so he threw her away on the road and she died on the highway dismally and dreadfully. She explained further that all you guys are same and now it’s your turn to die. You wanted to write the climax of your movie so here is the climax, your climax will be the climax of movie and suddenly her beautiful face changes into a repugnant spooky grimace and fear has crossed all the limits for the ace director and he is hit by huge heart attack. As the girl sees that the director is getting a heart attack and dying she starts crying and shouting that she is just an actress and his assistant finalized her for the horror movie and she was trying to portray her acting abilities. She snatches off the sticky mess from her face and tells him that it was all false and she is not a ghost at all. But all this explanation was too late to make the director come alive.

Insurance agent

Someone rings the doorbell of the house of a married couple in afternoon hours and enters their house. This guy who just came in, a short guy in formal dress and also wearing a tie and claims that he’s not a sales person. Husband explains to this tie guy that they don’t want to buy anything and he should leave immediately. On this the tie guy turns furious and explains to the couple that life is unpredictable and accidents can happen any time. Bad times don’t come after telling you, anything can happen anytime. The tie guy sees a bunch of bananas in the fruit basket and just a look of this banana bunch puts in lots of unrest in the tie guy. Tie guy takes out a paper and burns it with a match stick. Couple is all stunned and there comes a spray from fire extinguisher from the tie guy and then he again starts explaining that he is trying to demonstrate that accidents can happen anytime. Tie guy takes out a knife, a bottle of poison, a suicide rope and other such ‘death’ stuff from his bag and explains to couple that these things are the means of death and death can arrive anytime. Manifestly the couple understands the fact that the tie guy is an insurance agent and trying to sell an insurance policy to the husband so that he can meet his sales target. Already being pissed off so much the husband explains to the tie guy that he doesn’t need the insurance policy and in no case from such a brainsick like him and takes this guy out of his house.

After few moments again there is a doorbell ring and insurance agent gets in again. He says that it has started raining and he forgot to pick his umbrella and then pulls a pistol and again starts explaining why the couple needs to take this policy. As soon as the agent looses his concentration the husband punches off the agent so that pistol should fall away and in their encounter a gun shot sounds and what becomes visible is a bullet shot over left kidney of the insurance agent.

Revenge from the family

In a dark rainy night, a handsome lad is on his way to Pune from Mumbai in his SUV and is attending a call on his cell phone from most probably his girlfriend. While talking he sees a lady whose sight is not at all clear and feels as if he has hit the lady. He stops the car and asks if that lady was Okay. Next morning he finds himself in a police station and two cops were standing in front of him who are hitting him and beating him to inquire why he did this. The handsome lad says that he doesn’t know anything and he doesn’t remember who brought him here and also asks what happened to that lady on the road. Cops feel that he is making up all this and just want to confuse cops from the actual charge of killing a guy.

Sometimes later a middle aged irritating lady enters the jail cell and asks the Police inspector to show her the killer of her son. When she sees the handsome lad, she becomes furious and starts beating him and asks him why he did that. Cop tries to calm the lady and starts inquiring the lady about his family and son and if his son was married. Lady responds that her husband is in Pune currently and her son was married and her daughter in law was not having good character. She deserted her son and ran away with some other guy. On this the handsome guy whose one hand is tied with the help of hand cuff to the window of jail cell, starts making horrific faces and starts uttering in a dubious mixed voice of a male and a female and narrates that she is Sudha, the daughter in law of the lady sitting beside the police inspector. He/She announces further that her mom in law is lying. She used to love her husband and her family very much and she also used to call her mother in law “Maa”. But these people never cared about her and killed her. They burnt her alive after spraying kerosene on her body. So she stuck herself to this guy who was passing by the road last night and whom you have caught and thru his body killed her husband. Obviously the old lady is in a fix but inspector feels that the handsome lad is trying to just make a case for himself as if he is mentally ill and hence he shouldn’t be sentenced any kind of severe punishment .Jokingly inspector asks this lad even if he believes that he is Sudha who was murdered by his parents in laws and husband but how can this be proved in the court?

The furious soul of Sudha residing inside the body of handsome lad gets furious. She comes out of the body of smart lad and enters the body of police inspector and kills the old lady on the spot from the Cop’s revolver. Now Cop understands the whole story and buries the dead body of irritating lady with the help of his assistant and the handsome smart lad and asks the young lad to head towards where he was actually headed. As soon as young lad starts his car he hears the voice of Sudha and finds a lady sitting in the front seat beside him and she had a terrifying face. She definitely looks like a ghost. She explains to this young lad that she has got nothing to do with the lad. He just needs to drop her to Pune as her father in law is still alive. She will stick to some different person this time and get her work done.

Grandma’s stories

A group of middle or may be primary school students is wandering in a deep forest near the resort where their other patrons and teachers are staying for a school picnic. This forest is a spooky one and some of the kids are terrified and feel that they should head back to the resort where everyone must be waiting for them. But as collective decision comes out, they start to get inside the deep jungle. Deep inside the jungle they see an old lone creepy mansion and feel puzzled that why is there a house inside the jungle so deep and whether anyone lives in that house. But they also understand that it’s getting dark and they should reach their hotel in the resort on time. But as soon as they start to head back, it starts raining and they have nothing but this obscure mansion to hide in and protect themselves from the rain. There they meet an old lady of age of their grandma. Kids inquire if she lives alone there. She says that she lives there with her servant Sukhia and presently she has sent him to bring the medicines from the city as she was not feeling well.

One kid inquires if grandma gets scared and feels afraid residing their alone; she asserts that to be true. One of the boys in the group claims that he is not afraid of anything. Grandma tells him that ‘being afraid’ is a must and there is no other choice. She says that she will narrate six stories to the group of kids and after that they will definitely get scared. Grandma keeps on telling the stories one after other and as and when any kid leaves the group for loo or having water, he/she gets killed and their souls return back to the room where grandma is narrating stories. By the time grandma has finished her five stories all but one kid are already dead. This is same kid who claimed that he is never scared. To this grandma accepts that he won the challenge as he was never afraid. This kid then inquires the grandma that she told them that she will be narrating them six stories but she has only told them five. On this grandma responds that she has already finished all six stories and the sixth story was told at the very beginning and that was the story of herself and her servant Sukhia. This kid is in a shock now and tries to escape from the mansion but could never make it.

Next morning, on the news telecast on a news channel, this was being read by the news reader “Five young kids were found dead in the old house inside the deep forest. All of them died because of heart failure and it’s very unusual that kids with such small age can get heart failure. The only reason for their death is fear. The caretaker of the old house Sukhia has stated that the house is vacant from last many years and before that also the only resident in this house was the old lady owner who stayed there alone. She died long back when she sent him to bring medicines from the city, but before he could return to the house the lady was already dead. She loved kids very much.”

From the Upanishads

2006-04-27T03:52:00.000-07:00

"You are what your deepest desire is;
As you desire, so is your intention;
As your intention, so is your will;
As is your will so is your deed;
As is your deed, so is your destiny"
- The Upanishads

Stock predictions by an amateur

2006-04-23T11:21:00.000-07:00

BSE Sensex has already touched 12K and causing a lot of worry for small investors like me. Neither I am an expert of share markets nor I am a self proclaimed stock guru but in this note I am about to make some predictions for some stocks. No one including me is sure about how true these predictions will turn out but I want to give it a try. As the markets are already cruising at all time highs and most of the market persons are enjoying the party, I don't want to predict anything negative or in other words I want to predict the future of some stocks that I believe will provide handsome returns to the investors in six months time frame. I will definitely do appraisal/reality check of my predictions on October 23rd 2006, which is exactly 6 months far from today and will check how good I was at this. I am not trying to influence any reader to buy these stocks but will definitely appreciate their views and interest in these predictions. My predictions are neither based on ‘technicals’ nor ‘fundamentals’ but are also not based on just gut feeling or intuition. I will now straight away put forward the list of stocks that I feel will provide handsome returns in medium term. To be more quantitative I am predicting that these ten stocks will provide a return of more than 20% before October 23rd 2006. Here comes the list of these sweet stocks:

1.NTPC
Current Market Price: Rs. 136.10

2.Welspun India Ltd.
Current Market Price: Rs. 117.15

3. Gujrat State Petronet Ltd.
Current Market Price: Rs. 36.25

4. Bank of Baroda
Current Market Price: Rs. 229.20

5. Petronet LNG Ltd.
Current Market Price: Rs. 53.65

6. Reliance Natural Resources Ltd.
Current Market Price: Rs. 28.95

7. Arvind Mills Ltd.
Current Market Price: Rs. 101.50

8. D-Link India Ltd.
Current Market Price: Rs. 118.00

9. Indo Tech Transformers Ltd.
Current Market Price: Rs. 204.00

10. Gitanjali Gems Ltd.
Current Market Price: Rs. 175.00

I am hoping for the best.

Communication meeting and American Pie II

2006-04-20T04:36:00.000-07:00

I always believed in rules and loved to follow them but with age and time I have discovered that following rules always doesn’t help and even if you want to follow rules, there will be too many people around you who will not allow you to follow rules. Rules apart, I am so much pissed of with all political activities going on in my project that I hate to associate myself with anything, which reminds me of being associated with my project or organization. Although I have always felt grateful to my organization but these days I love to detest my project activities and that too because of just couple of persons in the project.

I don’t want to miss the original boat of ‘Communication Meeting’ thing. This ‘Communication Meeting or ‘Comm Meet’ in short is a quarterly organizational event wherein the bigwigs of my organization address the common employee and presents to them the figures of growth, future, past and present and blah blah and blah. Some kind of two ways communication shit it is. :-D Most of the times it’s a two hour event in some nice hotel in the town and is generally culminated with ‘High Tea’ which is nothing but a refreshment / snacks party. This one time in the super summers of Indorian April , I planned to skip this meeting but also didn’t want to stay back in the office. The scheduled time for being at the meeting was 2:45 PM, so everyone in the office started pushing off at around 2:30 PM and so did I. At the right moment on my way to the hotel where this meeting was planned I took a great left turn towards my house. I reached home, had super cool water from newly bought earthen pot. I changed my dress and changing here means removing some of the clothes, got into my natural summer costume i.e. vest and boxer. Then I booted my laptop. Saddled in the pirated DVD of ‘American Pie 2’ in the DVD drive. While enjoying the movie, I took proper care of taking breaks (not the commercial ones of course) and those breaks were for having some ‘Indori Sev’. I’d have loved Act II extra butter popcorns in place of ‘Indori Sev’.

Once I finished watching the movie, eventually I turned off my Laptop and went for enjoying a sweet nap. Evidently the movie was just OK, but it definitely was more enjoyable than breaking my lean ass on the hard chairs of ‘Hotel Celebrity’. As wise men say ‘ A friend in need is a friend indeed’, I got a call just at right time from one of my good friends indicating that its time to hit the office again and Dang!!! I got ready and was in the office at the most suitable time. After reaching office, I discussed with people around if there was anything important in the meeting and the reply I got from everyone was unanimous “You missed deep shit”.

51st Annual Filmfare Awards 2006

2006-02-28T09:23:00.000-08:00

I know that there are a lot of movie awards being distributed these days and hence there is a very bright chance for movie people to get an award in one or the other award function. Somehow I still feel, ‘Filmfare’ awards are better off than other contemporary movie awards and the reason that convinces me about above idea is that ‘Filmfare’ awards are the oldest. Awards have never been a prudent or justified scale to judge the quality of a movie or actor or any technician. I just want to point out some shortcomings (my view) of ‘Filmfare’ Awards 2006 and believe me views and ideas expressed in this note are solely mine.

First of all, I feel ‘SRK’ deserved at least a nomination in ‘Best Actor’ Category. ‘Black’ was adjudged the best movie and I somewhat agree to that; after all I am not a miracle worker. ‘Abhishek Bachchan’ was adjudged ‘Best Supporting Actor’ and I feel role played by ‘Atul Kulkarni’ in ‘Page-3’ was more powerful than that of ‘Al Pacino Bachchan’s’ in ‘Sarkar’. ‘Akshay Kumar’ was ‘Best Comedian’ and ‘Javed Jafferry’ from ‘Salam Namaste’ didn’t even get a nomination in that category. “ Whos the hells care abouts that ? Crocodile’s Aaass”. One of the moot topic must be nomination of ‘No Entry’ in the best film category.

I respect ‘Gulzar’s’ art of lyric writing. He has penned some of the best lyrics in Indian movies. He never wrote mediocre songs. Although many people find his lyrics obscure and abstract but he has never tried to get cheap with any of his lyrics. In ‘Filmfare’ awards 2006 , he has been adjudged best lyricist for ‘Kajrare Kajrare’ song from ‘Bunty Aur Babli’. One of the lines in the song goes this way: ‘Ankhen bhi kamal karti hain , Personal se Sawal karti hain’. Check the word ‘personal’ here. Seems like Hin-glish songs are doing great these days and therefore renowned poets like Gulzar are also forced to write Hi-nglish lyrics and highlight is ‘Kajrare’ is the best song of year 2K6. Another surprise was the ‘’Best Singer’ award which was given to ‘Himesh Reshammiya’ for ‘Aashiq Banaya Apne’. Nostril singing is again in vogue. ‘KL Sehgal’s’ soul must rest in peace.

The most comic category of ‘Filmfare’ awards was not the ‘Best Comedian’ one, instead it was ‘Powerhouse of the year’ award. “Will Smith, you are most welcome in India!!!!” and the welcome song sung by ‘Shiamak Davar’ was hilariously funny. Watch rerecording of the event , whenever you get a chance to check for yourself.

Less bad is better than more bad. Obviously , in the universe of so many bad awards , 51st ‘Filmfare’ awards were not that unfair.

Movies I Watched In The Year 2005

2006-01-02T14:16:00.000-08:00

Classics (My Rating 10.0/10.0 to 8.1/10.0)
The Godfather Part II
The Godfather
The Shawshank Redemption
Forrest Gump
Goodfellas
Fargo
Schindler's List
Alien
Silence Of The Lambs
12 Angry Men

Excellent(My Rating 8.0/10.0 - 7.7/10.0)
Psycho
Se7en
Cinderella Man
Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade

Very Good(My Rating 7.6/10.0 - 7.1/10.0)
Aliens
The Incredibles
Rain Man
The Princess Bride
Amadeus
Finding Nemo
I Am Sam
Magnolia
Monty Python And The Holy grail
O Brother Where Art Thou?
Platoon
Pulp Fiction
Saving Private Ryan
The English Patient
American Beauty
Bandit Queen
Big Fish
Final Destination
Harold And Kumar Go To White Castle
Indiana Jones And The Raiders Of The Lost Ark
Jaws
The Fugitive
The Naked Gun - From The Files Of Police Squad
Vertigo
Back To The Future
Monster, Inc.
Run Lola Run
The Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers
When Harry Met Sally
Final Destination 2
Million Dollar Baby
Mystic River
The Godfather Part III
The Last Samurai
Batman Begins
Monsoon Wedding
Oceans Eleven

Good(My Rating 7.0/10.0 - 6.6/10.0)
Chariots Of Fire
Collateral
Freaky Friday
Raging Bull
Rocky
Terms of Endearment
The Devil's Advocate
The French Connection
The Island
The Truman Show
The Untouchables
Charlie And The Chocolate Factory
Runaway Jury
The Usual Suspects
Sky High
Life Is Beautiful
Peter Pan
The Nightmare Before Chritmas
Hitch
Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom
Malena
Paycheck
The Seven Year Itch
A Fish Called Wanda
Chicago
Meet The Fockers
Notting Hill
The Graduate
The Terminal

Just OK(My Rating 6.5/10.0 - 5.8/10.0)
13 Going On 30
Cheper by the dozen
Corpse Bride
Lord of the Rings - The fellowship of the Ring
Seven Years in Tibet
The sting
Anchorman
Daredevil
Day After Tomorrow
Something's Gotta Give
Stealth
Zoolander
Fantastic Four
Serenity
Bruce Almighty
Mr. and Mrs. Smith
Along came polly
Anger Management
Cradle 2 the Grave

Bad(My Rating 5.7/10.0 - 4.1/10.0)
Deliver Us From Eva
Laws Of Attraction
The Deer Hunter
Driving Miss Daisy
Imaginary Heroes
Band Camp
Be cool
Monster In Law
Dickie Roberts : Former Child Star
Secret Window
Napolean Dynamite
Bewitched

Extremely Bad(My Rating 4.0/10.0 or below)
A Dirty Shame
Garfield The Movie
Dirty Dancing : Havana Nights
The Master Of Disguise
Bad Timing
Dukes Of The Hazzard
Just Married
The Jacket
Duel

There’s a little bit of ‘R’ in each of ‘ABC’s

2005-12-23T17:20:00.000-08:00

The most dangerous creature on this earth is man and his most dangerous virtue is hypocrisy. I sincerely accept that I am a hypocrite but I have never met a person who is not. Today’s real life people including me preach and profess so many “good” and “righteous” things to others but barely practice them in their lives. Making fun of or criticizing any “bad” or “non-righteous” habit or act of any person is extremely easy but to refrain from that habit in totality is Godly. Especially in today’s so called professional world each and every person who calls himself a professional or an employee is a hypocrite.

‘X’ is having a ball in group of ‘A’, ‘B’, ‘C’ etc. and narrating a funny incident about ‘R’ that ‘R’ is an asshole and he can do this ‘worst’ act and after listening to the true story of ‘R’ by ‘X’, ‘ABC’s are either criticizing ‘R’ or laughing at him or exclaiming ‘Oh My God’ as if each and everyone inside ‘ABC’ group including ‘X’ is a saint. But the very next morning or morning after that or after that or someday each and every individual from same ‘ABCX’ group will be involved in doing that same ‘worst’ act of ‘R’ in partiality or totality. In a nutshell, all those who yell and profess that ‘R’ is an asshole, are much wider assholes than ‘R’ themselves.

What I have concluded after being ‘X’ for quite some time is that there is no point in glorifying cheap / non-righteous/ disturbing acts of ‘R’ unless these acts of ‘R’ don’t directly do any harm to you or anyone in ‘ABC’s. If those acts are going to or are harming you, then go ahead, spread the word so that ‘ABC’s could be prepared to face the bad times, but if not then let ‘R’ rest in peace. It’s better to become an alarming ‘X’ rather than becoming a hypocrite ‘X’.

Practically, there’s a little bit of ‘R’ in each of ‘ABC’s.

One Week, Seven Movies & Indian Characters

2005-11-18T21:59:00.000-08:00

“I feel most uncomfortable, when I start to feel comfortable" said one of the managers in my office some day. I don't know whom he was quoting, but I found it interesting enough to memorize it. Anyways, it was the great suburban Chicago summer of 2005, when I started feeling comfortable in above sense and had to find something which will keep me busy for at least a week after my office hours are over. Watching movies on DVD was never a bad idea, especially when it's for free. Likelihood of, me watching Hollywood/American movies back home is very less, as my country produces largest number of movies each year in the whole world and I don't find time enough to even watch just 2% of them per year. So I was kind of geared up for movies on DVD week.

I borrowed five movie DVDs from the community library; of course five was the maximum limit, each was issued for a week. I was not looking for any specific movie, so I had to pick and choose from whatever was available on the shelf. So the list goes this way. The very first I picked up was “The Terminal”. I had never heard of the name but saw director's name on the cover and it read “Steven Spielberg”. So, I thought let's give it a try, above all Steve has been 'The Directore~' since ‘Jaws’ and he made millions of new international fans with “Jurassic Park” series.

Next movie which I picked up was "Harold and Kumar go to white castle". But this was not an unheard name for me. One of my American associates in my office told me once that it is the most raw comedy movie he has seen ever, I had no option but to grab that up. Next in line was "The English Patient". Of course it rang some kind of bell and I could figure out that this was some kind of best picture at Oscars for some year. The note on the DVD cover confirmed it. Next two movies that I grabbed were both Ben Stiller starred flicks. First was "Along Came Polly" and second was "Starsky and Hutch". I barely knew anything about Stiller until I watched "Meet the Fockers" in the flight from Paris to Chicago.

So I had these five DVDs with me on Monday evening. I started with "Startsky & Hutch" on Monday. I'd like to quote the scene from the movie , where Snoop Dog is inside a ‘Godfather’ like den and an Indian Shopkeeper comes to him for some kind of underworld protection and Snoopy assures him of that and at the same time other bad guys in the Den were trying to mock Indian accent of this frightened shopkeeper. I said to myself, wow there's an Indian in this movie.

Tuesday was the day for "The English Patient". It was a long tiring movie with a very sad ending. This movie also had a Sikh character named Kip. The character was some kind of bomb disposal expert in British reign beautifully played by Naveen Andrews and his role was one of the vital roles in the movie. Come Wednesday and I watched "The Terminal" starring Tom Hanks. There was a character in this movie with the name Gupta Rajan. This guy plays a substantial role in the movie and wins hearts of everyone by stopping the plane on runway in a heroic act to help Hanks so that he can do, what he intended to do. His last act in the move really touched heart.

I was overwhelmed with the sentimental stuff till now and it was the time for Comedy and believe me "Harold and Kumar go to white castle” was not a disappointment by any means. It is amongst the most hilarious comedy I’ve seen ever. The 'hero' Kumar plays an ABCD lad in the movie and is just superb. Last but not the least was Friday's "Along came Polly". I t doesn't had any significant Indian character there in the movie but it has an Indian restaurant where Aniston takes Stiller to have lunch (or may be dinner) and they meet Stiller’s parent in the restaurant. Definitely Indian restaurant was shown in the context that Indian food is spicy and stiller would throw out again as he had this weird Irresistible Bowel Syndrome, but I liked the act where Stiller's mom call an Indian waiter in the restaurant while imitating slow Indian accent “that native American guy” and Stiller replies to her that she can call him “Indian” and it is actually an Indian restaurant. So by now, you might have figured out what I am trying to say here. All these movies had Indian characters in them and it was mere coincidence because I just picked these movies at random except "Harold and Kumar ...' as the name Kumar explicitly indicates Indian character. So I was thinking wow or in Will Smith’s style ‘Woh Woh’, is it real or I just got lucky.. Americans can't make movies without an Indian character… Indian characters are so important for Hollywood movies….But my astonishment did not end here.

It was Saturday night, I had no movies to watch at home and therefore planned to go out to movie theatre for watching "Dukes of Hazzard" and by this time I was again expecting at least one Indian character in the movie but none showed up until last 20 minutes of the movie. There was a fat desi (Indian) guy with faked American accent who was playing campus cop in the movie. It was a very small appearance of his and was carrying no significance whatsoever and when I told my friend sitting beside me watching the movie that this guy looks like an Indian , he said “ Damn Right , he is and he is the director of the movie and name is Chandrasekhar , Jay Chandrasekhar” . I was in aw.

Sunday is a fun day, but was not for me that week. This was this bright Sunday noon and I had nothing to do but watch one more Hollywood movie in theatre and I decided for sweet "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory". There was an actor in the movie who played the role of 65 “Oompa Loompa” – Watch “C and TCF” for understanding the meaning of this darn word. His looks were definitely Indian. At the end of the movie, came to know that his name was Deep Roy and on further research found that he is from Kenya not India. But none the less must be of Indian origin. And, and …. There was one more character in the movie played by Nitin Ganatra ; the name of the Character was Prince Pondicherry.

This was all about the seven movies I watched in a week and all of them were having some Indian characters or Indian actors in them. It was definitely something not very usual or regular. I am not trying to point any kind of BJP's “India Shining” concept or increasing popularity of Indians in American movies. I just wanted to let others know about this was a wonderful coincidence which happened to me and I enjoyed all of these movies, especially pinch of Indian character in each of them made the each movie’s dish real tasty.

The Heart Says ...

2005-11-18T21:35:00.000-08:00

The heart says

The 'Cheap' Conundrum

2005-11-01T11:08:00.000-08:00

There is this developing, third world country somewhere in south Asia named Swadesh. Does the name of the country ring a bell? Name sounds like some kind of an intelligent combination of Sweden & Bangladesh. Swadesh has got no links or relations with Sweden but its true that , it is located somewhere near Bangladesh only and as a matter of fact only those people in the whole world have heard the name of this country , who already knew the nation named ‘Karkozia’ from Steven Spielberg's 'The Terminal'. Anyways Swadesh is de facto IT nation of the world and therefore from Swadesh many IT professionals come to US for working on IT projects. Hail Outsourcing. Most of the citizens of Swadesh are young, bright, smart, hard working, adaptable etcetera, and etcetera but there are also those few who are cheap, stingy, tightfisted, contemptible, parsimonious, frugal etcetera and etcetera. Different people from Swadesh come to US for different durations such as 1-4 months (B1 or Basic Group) , 6- 12 months (L1 or Low duration group ) , 2-5 years (H1 or High duration group) and some Swadeshis never
return back to Swadesh and become citizens of US (GC or Green Card or Got to be Cheap Group ). Bottom-line, different kinds of people from Swadesh come to US but we are going to focus here on the cheap, stingy etcetera group.

We have two couples residing in one of the northern suburbs of Chicago. Let me introduce couple number one. Mrs. Dooja Mala and Mr. Fishy Mala. Allow me to call them ‘Malas’. They belong to L1 group above and they are one of the cheapest couple on the whole earth. Second couple is Mrs. Pumpkin Chopa and Mr. Pola Chopa from GC group. One mentionable point about Mr. Pola Chopa; his actual name in Swadesh was Ratnaker Chopa, but in US , people were really having hard time to pronounce his name properly and used to call him Red Nigger , Red Naked , Red Knickers ,Rent a Car,’ Rate Na Kar' (which in the native language of Swadesh mean 'Please don't bargain’ ) and other humiliating names, So he decided to change his name to Cola as he was a big time fan of Cola , but Mrs. Pumpkin wanted him to have his new name start from P as her name was also starting from P so he finally settled with Pola. Let me call them Chopas. None the less, Chopas also claim that they are the most parsimonious couple residing in US. Only the future will tell who the best is. But for sure, Chopas and Malas are top two cheapest couples on the world. Our big Question, our conundrum is, who’s number one. We will find the answer, do not worry. Secret is about to unravel

One beautiful Saturday noontime, Malas and Chopas, both the couples were returning empty handed from Hawthfailao Shopping mall towards the parking lot. Why empty handed?? They were ‘Cheap’, so they never bought anything from mall unless it was totally free or free after mail-in-rebate.

In US cows roaming on streets is not very usual and in case they do roam around on streets, they don’t scatter their dung on streets (although which was a very common scene back in Swadesh), but nevertheless there was some huge lump of cow dung laying on the ground in parking lot .Over the dung was laying a serene one Dollar Bill. Malas and Chopas saw the dung (let’s start calling it shit) covered Dollar Bill at the same time. Malas and Chopas started running towards shit (sorry, Dollar bill) to grab it and reached the spot simultaneously. Lady Mala yelled to Chopas, “Go away, this is ours, we saw it first”. Mr. Chopa replied calmly “Sure the whole shit is yours but the dollar bill is ours”. Fishy attacked in a sophisticated manner “Sir, would you please mind keeping control of your slippery tongue and chuck your boring lame joke. This is not the way to talk with ladies from Swadesh, especially my better half Mrs. Dooja ji. By any chance, do you have any idea that I was the first person who buried my eyes on this Dollar Bill lying over the blackish green excreta of some unknown cow”. Lady Chopa exclaimed ‘Holy Cow!!!’ “What are you? Who the hell do you think is going to believe you, my Pola saw it first’ and then…Then….Then arguments started and finally turned into some sort of a quarrel.

There was this silent observer named Mr. Poking Nose who just parked in before this whole argument started , was looking at the whole mess and was the firsthand witness of the argument , reached the scene asked all of them ' What the hell is this ? Why are you all guys fighting over a Dollar Bill and that too a Dollar Bill covered up in shit ‘.This guy was so frustrated that he was about to give them a proposal to give dollar to each group from his side, but as soon as his senses help him recognize that these people are Swadeshis, he dropped this idea, but nevertheless he proposed another intelligent solution to put an end to this ‘Alien Vs Predator’ War. His idea was a William Arthur
Ward’s quote “Obedience to our Heavenly Father starts with our loving service to a needy brother.". “Needier should get it. The couple needing it more, poorer couple, more deprived couple amongst you really deserves this Dollar shit. Poor and Needy ….” Poking Nose was not even finished and Mr. Chopa interrupted, “Mind your tongue Mister, who the hell in this world is needy or poor. I am far too well to do than what you can ever imagine. I have $200,000 in cash in my TCF Bank account. My Pumpkin also earns a fortune in her accountant job. I have a house in North suburb, one Bungalow in Kentucky and I have recently bought a flat in 420 S. Michigan Avenue, Downtown Chicago. All my houses are on rent including the one in which I am residing now. Now, Now….Now you dare to call me Poor and Needy. “ . Mr. Poking Nose was like,” Aw. Shoot, this guy is anything but needy. He is cheap. “.

Fishy also couldn't resist. He responded “Needy, My 28 inch small ass. I make $65000 an year legally and I don’t want to declare my illegal earnings, have 4 big fat Swadeshi houses in Swadesh and My Father is Undergarment King of Lelhi, Capital of Swadesh. We are the largest exporter of Undergarments in whole Swadesh and you call me needy. Needy... My Dooja’s foot.”

Mr. Poking Nose was puzzled as hell,” Goddamn it. Man, Oh Man, all of you are so rich then why the hell in the whole world, you guys worry about a trivial, Shit messed, single, Uno, one Dollar Bill.” All the four of our protagonists almost sang together "Because, we are Cheap'. Poking Nose talked to himself “You Bet”.

Fishy explained for himself and his wife, we are the official cheapest couple in whole Swadesh and everyone knows about it. In fact we were the ‘Shame Jodi (couple)’ in famous TV reality Show ‘Shame Gurukul’. Every one in Lelhi knows about it , Whole Swadesh , My employer Corona Shoe Company CSC , my client at NY City , all shopping mall goers in Chicago , NY , Miami ;everywhere we have left our ‘Cheap’ marks. And then he, did an enactment like the He-Man and declared “We are the Masters ...oops, Cheapest couple of the Universe”

Mr. Chopa replied seriously “We left Swadesh in good old days thirteen years back. I am a GC now. You could become Shame Jodi because we were not there. Otherwise you had no chance. We left Swadesh when you were in your nappies only. All states know that I and Pump are the cheapest couple in the whole US. You don't even know that the word ‘Cheap’ has been derived from my surname Chopa. Chopa became Cheapa and Cheapa became Cheap and you claim you guys are the cheapest guys…No way. People in Kentucky , Illinois , Las Vegas , CA , Swadesh’s largest city Gumgai , NOIDEA , Jhumri Talaiya and virtually every place , still get into shivers and mental tremors , when they remember our name ‘The Cheap Chopas’ Since we are the cheapest couple on the earth , let this shit dollar bill be ours .”

Fishy zealously replied “Okay … it’s a deal, whichever group amongst us proves that they are ‘The Cheapest’, will get the shit dollar bill.” Chopas accepted “Yes”.

But then problem on hands now was to decide upon the cheapest couple on the earth, as both were claiming to be ‘Cheapest’. Poking Nose came up with a brilliant Godfather idea. “Okay Guys. I’ll make you an offer you can’t refuse. Let’s settle down and agree upon something. As we all know Mr. Chhota Chattri is the wisest Sheppard in our whole suburb. Let him decide who the cheapest guys are and whatever he says finally, we all will agree to it.”

Our couples once again Meg Ryanically moaned in tandem “Oh Yes, Oh Yes, Oh Yes” Everyone again said in tandem “OK.”

Poking Nose closed his eyes and started muttering something for around thirty seconds and voila!!!!There He was...Chhota Chattri was on the scene in the same parking lot where Malas and Chopas were trying to ‘outcheap’ each other for the shit Dollar Bill. Let’s call Chhota Chhatri, CC for our convenience. CC calmly said to Poking Nose “I know you are real admirer of mine and that’s why I am here on just your hearty call. Now, can you explain me your problem in short?” Poking explained everything to CC and asked him to provide his views and judgment. CC thought for a while and addressed Malas and Chopas “See, all you guys, this is not an easy call and I want to be fully prudent and impartial in my decision, so I will require you to provide some information to me and to answer some of my questions and once I am satisfied that I have sufficient information to make a call, I will provide my judgment. If you guys agree to it, we will move ahead, otherwise I will disappear from the scene and will continue to feed by black sheep.” Both the couples nodded in agreement “Yes”.

CC looked towards Mr. Mala and said “Okie Dokie, Here we go. I assume, in both the couples, males are the dominating forces. So, Mr. Mala, you have exactly sixty seconds and in these seconds you can say whatever you want to say. Your time will start, when I will signal ‘Three’. One… Two…Three….Start.”

Mr. Mala started in full pace “Sir, We, me and Dooja are the cheapest couple on the whole earth. We bought a camera from Sears, used it for a year and returned it to them after one year and received all the money back, we spent for buying it. One year…You know what I mean. One year…We never bought any comforter, but still used it. We changed a comforter from Wal-Mart for 18 times in a span of 6 months and finally returned it, when summer started. We never used apartment Laundry during the whole duration of our stay in US, instead we washed all our clothes in bath tub. We sold a designer ‘Kurta’ which we brought from Swadesh for our own use to some idiot American at a price 50 times more than the actual price and interesting thing was Dooja already used that ‘Kurta’ for 3 months. Once receptionist in our office Jan, found a wounded bird, a beautiful yellow parrot at the entrance door, she brought the bird inside the office and cured it for couple of day and then later asked all employees in the office, if anyone wanted to keep the bird with them at their home and could take care of the bird as a pet and you know what, I grabbed the bird and again sold it to a dumb American for 50 bucks. I was… ”. CC interrupted “Sorry, Fishy, you have already exceeded time quota given to you. Let’s hear Mr. Chopa now and dear Malas please maintain silence”. CC was not even finished Pola rushed “Dear Sir, no one can …” CC shouted, “Pola please… at least allow me to signal start. Okay, your time starts… One…Two…Three…now”

Pola started in a hurry “No one can beat us in cheapness. I always look for deals and coupons before buying even onions or potatoes. We never bought a single utensil or kitchen ware for ourselves after December 1997; we are using utensils of our paying guest tenants. I never switch on heater or AC even if temperature goes below 0 or rises above 100. I am wearing the same underwear from last seven years. Once I got a JC Penny coupon worth $5 which said - spend $50 and save $5; I bought a shirt worth $4.99, I went to a dumb looking counter person and forced him to sell me the shirt against that coupon and in fact, I grabbed even the remaining penny also. We haven’t bought single body soap from last 5 years; I always bring lots of them from hotel rooms, where I stay on my official trips. I have usurped the security deposit of $350 for at least 5 tenants in last three years. I never use the restroom in my home in the morning on weekdays. I finish all my daily morning activities in office itself; it saves me water, soap, toilet paper and electricity. Fishy Mala has just sold Swadeshi stuff in US and I do vice versa, and I do it on a large scale. I have sold numerous digital cameras worth $200 at almost double the price in Swadesh. Whenever there is forecast of heavy snowstorm or blizzard, I always park my Car in open and have claimed a lot of money from Insurance company number of times against minor dents developed on Car surface because of snow.” CC interrupted, “Enough Pola, Time is up. You too never wanted to stop. Huh…”

CC continued, “Both the groups are confirmed damn cheapest groups and all your habits and deeds about which you told me just now are by any standard far more cheap than any average normal human being in US can exercise or practice. But both the groups still appear equally cheap to me. This one minute speech thing didn’t prove any group better than other in cheapness. I still need some more information from you guys before I can actually arrive to a conclusion. Why don’t you guys, tell me about your ‘Cheapest’ deeds ever done? Hers are the rules; each group will tell me about their three ‘Cheap’ deeds which they consider are cheapest things they have ever done and mind you!!! Please keep your stories clean. I know you guys are so cheap that you can literally cross any kind of limit but I don’t want to listen to any shit activity which you might have performed related to any super “R” rated item like prostitution , rubbers , shit , fart and any such messy stuff. You know, what I mean? This time let’s start with Chopas and of course there’s no time limit, but please be quick and crisp. I am getting another hearty call from one of the real admirers of mine in black south suburb.

Mrs. Pumpkin Chopa started, “If I’d try real hard, I can at least recollect 101 cheap deeds of ours. But as of now, on hands, I manged to remember these three. Mr. CC, I believe my cheapest deed was returning a used panty to Wal-Mart after using it for 59 days. This says a lot about our cheapness. To keep our discussion clean, I won’t mention a very interesting incident about a rubber pack. The second best I believe was selling a bike (known as cycle or bicycle in Swadesh) to one of our tenants. The incident goes like this. Once a guy named Merlyn Al Attri, I must say dashing, smart and handsome guy...Aah…. (Pumpkin sighs…) came to US from Swadesh on L1 category and he rented one portion in our house. He loved riding…riding bikes so he bought a bike from Wal-Mart and kept it in our garage. We charged him additional money for keeping the bike in our garage and once he left US, we started renting the bike to kids in the neighborhood. Of course, he couldn’t take the bike with himself back to Swadesh and as history repeats itself; six months later Merlyn’s cousin Shah Al Attri came to US on same L1 category and he also loved riding bikes. So we made him a Godfatherly offer he couldn’t refuse. We sold his own brother’s bike to him at the same price at which his brother bought it and we also charged him the additional parking. The last thing I’d like to mention is this interesting incident; we were new in US, were in Virginia and were about to shift our apartment in a new area. We were always in hunt for items which American people keep outside their houses as junk on some weekday so that waste management trucks will carry with them to trash it or provide it to Salvation Army finally. Once we saw a beautiful sofa cum bed outside one house in the area where we were about to shift. We crossed all our limits of cheapness , we went to the owner and literally begged them not to trash that sofa bed until the weekend as we were supposed to shift our apartment in the weekend and in our current stay there was no space to keep such a big sofa set. With our cheap skills we were able to persuade that person, another dumb American and finally grabbed sofa from him on Weekend when we shifted to new apartment. So you see CC, how cheap we are. We are number one.” Everyone standing there started applauding the cheap incidents Pumpkin just explained. Pola patted Pumpkin’s back, “I never thought you were so good at explaining things.” Pumpkin replied,” For shit dollar, I can learn or unlearn anything….Haa Haa Haa……….”

Pola added, ”CC I’d just like to add that I go for hair cut only semi annually, you know its so costly here in US.” “Don’t forget the rules Pola, Three is Three.” warned CC.
CC continued looking towards Lady Mala “Your turn cheap guys.”

Fishy Said “CC, I’ll take the onus of delivering our cheap deeds to you. I can also recollect at least couple of Hundreds cheap deeds, but I’d like to present best three of ours. You’d never believe this but this is true. We visited our B1 colleague Chatnaker Chamanchilly who was given an official accommodation, a hotel room by our company for a few days, we asked Chatnaker, if we could take the toilet papers, bath tissues and soaps to home everyday since he got them for free anyway at the Hotel. He couldn’t refuse as he was my junior programmer in my same project. Swadesh is a land of festivals and one of the festivals is “Rakhi”. On “Rakhi”, all sisters tie up a holy thread or “Rakhi” on their brother’s wrist as an indication of their love for their brothers and in turn brothers take pledge to protect their sisters from any danger throughout their lives and also provide some gifts to their sisters in their capacities. You know Swadesh….land of customs, orthodox and sentimental fools. But important part from my angle is this “Rakhi” thing was, I had a wife who could be a sister also, if not real then at least realized. I called one B1 guy, again another junior programmer in my project and asked him to realize something, realize that my wife is his sister and so that she could tie a “Rakhi” on his wrist and in turn he should at least give a gift worth $10 to my wife. Do you understand, what I am saying here? Can you imagine how cheap we are and can be? Next thing is also very impressive. Dooja always wanted to visit Miami Beach, Florida and it’s too far from Chicago, so only way to take her there was thru Air travel only. I planned it this way, I booked our tickets during the season when there were all the stories about Katrina Hurricane in Florida and New Orleans in the whole world and of course during that season everything related to Florida was cheap including return air tickets from Chicago to Miami. I got the return tickets for $13 (I am the ‘Deal Monster’). We always knew, we can’t be hit by Katrina, God won’t like the company of cheap guys like us and just to answer Pola’s last comment, I never go for Hair Cut outside, and My Dooja is excellent at cutting all kinds of hairs at home.”

Dooja had tears in her eyes as Fishy finished. Looking towards Fishy she accepted “I always knew you are my best match. We are made for each other” and then Malas started kissing each other to show their enormous ‘Cheap’ love towards each other. Poking Nose who was silent from quite a while cleared his throat and addressed Malas “For me, you are the cheapest couple and shit Dollar must be yours.” CC interrupted with might “This is my job to decide the cheapest couple Poking. Let me finish my job.” He looked towards all of our four protagonists and continued “I am almost done with my decision, but still not fully satisfied with myself. I never made any wrong judgment for any of my cases till now and definitely I want to continue the trend so that faith of my admirers on me doesn’t fade down. This is going to be last small exercise for you guys and after that I will declare my judgment about the ‘Cheapest couple on the earth’ and here’s the deal, I will provide each group with a same two question questionnaire and you need to submit the answers to me in maximum of two minutes and each question has to be answered in less than 50 words. Any questions????” Malas and Chopas replied “No, Sir.”

CC clapped in air and magically he had couple of paper sheets and pens in his hands. He provided questionnaire and pens to Fishy and Pola and continued, “But I have questions for you in the paper sheet. First question reads like this: What all cheap deeds/acts can you do/perform while you are in a holy temple of your suburb?
Question two reads like this: As tomorrow is Halloween, What all cheap deeds/acts can you do/perform on occasion of Halloween to prove yourselves the cheapest couple? Remember 2 minutes and 50 words limits. Your time starts One…Two…Three…Now”

Both Fishy and Pola came up with their answers in exactly 2 minutes and handed over sheets to CC. CC quickly scanned the answers and almost declared the result “OK guys, the cheapest couple on the earth is the…..” and suddenly he paused “Won’t you all love to listen to the answers first ?”

All our protagonists impatiently replied “OK, Be quick.”

CC continued “Good.

Answer from Chopas:
‘Will go to nearest temple on day of Bhoj barefoot , will grab some nice shoes/sandals outside temple , Dooja will grab Henna corner and will apply Henna on palms of girls , will get paid for that , we will stay late there and will grab remaining food left after Bhoj.’

Answer from Malas for same temple question:
‘Will go in fellow devotee’s car , wear old footwear and will get new ones of others’ , will go only on day of Bhoj , will take Swadeshi articles with us and sell them there , Pumpkin will apply Mehndi to girls’ palms , will bring remaining food with us.

(Bhoj is Free Dinner / Lunch served to devotees as a form of Prasad in temples. On special days Girls in Swadesh apply decorative Henna or Mehndi on palms because of multiple reasons one of them being red color is considered to be auspicious color back in Swadesh , second is, it’s the in thing today and third is girls like make up in any sense and Mehndi is an add on and various other reasons which we of course don’t know.)

Second Answer from Chopas:
‘Americans will junk lot of home stuff on Halloween; will continue grabbing all useful stuff until we have stuff enough to put on garage sale. In eve will put on garage sale and when Kids will come to house for getting candies, will ask them to buy some stuff.”

Answer from Malas for Halloween question:
‘Morning: pick up thrown away stuff, Noon: work for subway, wear Halloween dresses/mask, stand on road showing way to commuters to subway from Main Street; get paid , will beg drivers also to give something. After Afternoon Free Burrito at Chipotle, Evening: Sale is open. Will ask kids to give us some candies.’”

(Every year on Halloween person going to Chipotle dressed like a Burrito, Burrito Bowl, Salad, or Taco, receives a free burrito.)

CC addressed our couples and Poking Nose,” I knew, if I’d have given you even 5000 words you wouldn’t have finished then also, you can think as deep cheap as an abyss that’s why I gave you the limit of 50 words. Cheap Minds think alike. Both the couples are equally stingy and equally cheap, all of your thoughts are disturbingly dreadful but Malas proved that they are one step ahead from any cheapest thought. I must say I never thought people as cheap as you exist on this earth. I am done with my decision. I admit that Chopas were terribly cheap at all instances but Malas proved to a step ahead of them in every walk. At this time I have not even a figment of doubt about my decision and I Chhota Chhatri hereby with all shepparding power bestowed to me by state of Illinois and county of Northern Suburb declare that, Dooja Mala and Fishy Mala form the Cheapest Couple on the earth. Congratulations!!! Fishy and Dooja, you may now kiss the shit Dollar Bill, it’s all yours. Go have fun.

Just one word of caution for you Fishy, I know (you know, I know lot of things) that you are imparting this art of misery and cheapness to two kids Chatnaker Chintapally and Chinky Chayattri Chutta and officially training them to learn this art, but beware Aunt Pussy Cat never teaches Kid Lion to climb trees, so that in case Kid Lion attacks her some day, she will just climb on the tallest branch of a tree and will save her life. You know! What I mean??? Anyways…

Chopas Please don’t get disheartened, I know you are too cheap and miser but Malas were only little better than you guys and I was just being impartial. For Fishy and Dooja I can only say this as in a way once Einstein quoted about Gandhi guys ‘Generations to come will scarce believe that such a cheap couple as this ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth.’”