DANGAL ...

Dangal is a movie based on semi-biography of Mahavir Phogat and his daugthers. Dangal is directed by Nitesh Tiwari and he is one of the scriptwriters as well. The movie revolves around Wrestling the sport. I have seen many Hollywood movies which are based on sports and definitely this movies connects with its audience at every level.

I typically judge a movies by its Script, direction and acting in that order. This movies definitely scores top marks in all these areas. Talking about script - its based on the Mahavir Poghat and his love for wrestling. As its kind of based on true story - the script had to be smart enough to provide a sense of reality and also, from commercial point of of view, a story-line which would bind audience together. The script exactly does that - it exhibits all sorts of emotions happy, sad, angry, love, self-respect, ego etc. The script do make certain characters look negative (like the coach) but they had to do this in order to get most from the movie.

Direction has been fabulous and flawless i would say. Shooting sports scenes are very very challenging and all these scenes gives us goosebumps. Some of the emotional scenes are very creatively shot - a scene where Geeta comes to visit and leaves for NSA, which leaving the camera is on her and she greets all her family members, while in the background Amir Khan is in the balcony and focus shifts to him. Its a very touching scene. There are many scenes with great sense of humor in it.

Acting has been top notch specially by Amir Khan. He seems very natural in his acting as Mahavir Poghat. Amir Khan has put in extra effort to look exactly like a old man (same hair cut, weight as per age etc ). All the girls did fabulous job with great acting skills.
Most of the songs were rightly placed and special mention of the song "Naina" - it was very situational and emotional.

Overall a great treat to watch on big screen.

6 year ago

It has been exactly 6 years since my last blog. I actually forgot about this blog until one of my friend reminded me of blogs. Thanks to her, i will do justice to the online space to write my thoughts.

Just a reflection of these last six years

• I have a kid who turned 4 couple of days back, I just love spending time with him.
• Read few good books. Some upcoming Indian authors (all fictional, mostly romantic novels). I need to definitely do better in this area :)
• Played lot of football and made so many friends over the years, of course old friends remain forever
• Started running in the mornings (Plan to run couple of marathons next year-2017)
• Had been some awesome long drives with family (Mangalore, Goa, Mysore, Pondicherry etc) - bottom-line - can't survive without visiting a beach once a year :)
• I feel I have a great work life balance, I slog hard when my office work is hectic and I spend lot of time with family otherwise
• Did lot of mistakes and learned a lot from them, i feel i am a better person than i was six years back. Obviously wants to do better.
• Life Lessons - learned that Happy Relationships are the real key to happiness (Money doesn't matter that much)

Much more solid topics coming up. Stay tuned :)

which movie character you want to be ...

Well I am a movie freak and most of the time I put myself in those characters..

Following are my top 5 all time favorite characters...

1) Michael Corleone - The Godfather [Actor : Al Pacino]
2) Jay - Sholay [Actor : Amotabh Bacchan]
3) Chuck Noland - Cast Away [Actor : Tom Hanks]
4) Juno - Juno [Actress : Allen Page] - though its a girl character, i just love the character
5) Baadshah - Baadshah [Actor : SRK]

What are your favorite characters ?

the new year's eve

I had been thinking of planning my first new year with my wife ...
But when I looked back, what I did on previous new year's it turned out to be all memorable ones.
And the best one was the one when me and few other friend's visited our college beach. It was hell of a night and still can't forget it ....
Let me jot all this down..

31st Dec 2009 - Though officially it was my first New Year's eve after the marriage, I celebrated it as a bachelor as my wife had gone to my native place. I called few colleagues from SAP and we drank the whole time. We were drinking all the time and discussing all sorts of non-sense. The best part was we were watching Animal Planet and after boozing commenting on all animals. :)

31st Dec 2008 - This day was special. It was new year's eve + my Bachelor's party. We all had gathered in one my friends house. My friend had to go for a trekking and he handed over the house to us. As usual we all drank a lot and had loads of fun. At the stroke of 12 we went out on the terrace and shouted on top of our voices. The next day when my friend arrived, he got an earful from all the residents. :)

31st Dec 2007 - This new year was again special. We all friends gathered at our flat. Drinks, Music, Full Volume, Mafia. We shouted on top of our voices and had great fun.

31st Dec 2006 - This is the my best new year so far. We all roommates and few other friends decided to go to our College beach(Surathkal). Each one of us were nostalgic about our college trip. On the new years eve we all went to Beach. We had campfire, drinks, all sorts of chicken, food etc. We were on the beach enjoying the new year and around 2am few policemen arrived. They asked us to leave and we protested. Some of us got scared and left the place. Only me and balli (Shrirang), decided that we will stay the whole night on beach, we were so drunk that none of other friends were able to convince us. Finally we both stayed on the beach talking all old days. We both slept on the beach. The funny part was when I got up at around 530 in the morning there was a dog sleeping next to me. :) I cant forget this day in my life. We had so much fun.

31st Dec 2005 - I had gone to Kodaikanal with some of friends. It was one of the most boring places to celebrate new year. Still we found some place where some kind of party going on and were thrown away from it too.

From 2001 till 2004 we celebrated new year in college hostel. It was entirely different. We used to come out of the hostel and dance. Some students used to throw water from the terrace. We used to go Girls hostel until the guard used to call up the warden. It was all fun.
Just keeping my fingers crossed for this new year's eve with my wife.... hope its a memorable one too ...

football fever ...

well ... I should have written this blog before fifa world-cup or may be during the world cup, but alas, I am writing 'my dedication' after the world cup is over. I don't need to mention how passionate I am about this sport and hence I did not miss a single match of the WC2010. I had correctly predicted Spain's winning WC2010 but my prediction was Spain would play Brazil in final. Netherlands was in Brazil's place instead. Though I predicted Spain Brazil final, I had also predicted top 3 teams of WC2010 and they were Spain, Argentina and Netherlands in that order. Argentina was out in pre-quarters, thanks to great German play. I felt Argentina selected a squad depending upon Messi. Maradona selected all players which were supposed to play alongwith Messi but somehow that Barcelona magic didn't work in WC finals. Ghana had a bad luck with Uruguay. German as usual made it till Semis in spite of having such a young team. Spain played their usual Game and liked them even when they lost against Swiss. The best quality about this Spain squad is their ability to keep the ball and sustain pressure. When opposition is on top of them to get the ball, they keep their cool and play short passes and frustrate their opposition to core. They came, they played and they won.
For me players to watch were :-
Sneidjer (Netherlands)
Sanchez (Chile)
Messi (Argentina)
Muller (Germany)
Forlon (Uruguay)
Ramos (Spain)

After going through the WC, I feel club football plays an important role in preparation of world cup. Also each player must be committed to the role and responsibility given to him. England and France failed because of only this reason, somehow players were not fit in the roles they were given.
Anyways WC is over and I wish I can go to Brazil to see atleast 1 match. :)

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the karma ...

I consider myself an atheist who believes in Karma. For me, Karma means, your current actions will have certain effect later in your life and your current actions are because of certain actions in the past. I would love to keep my life simple, everyone would like to, but then its not that. Every point in time/situation we behave or react in some way which have a effect on us in future. I never believed about it earlier, but certain things do happen and make you believe in Karma.
Like human beings, created so many appliances/machines to make our life easier at the cost of environment or other factors and finally human is suffering. Human created air-plane but a plane crash takes live of hundreds of people. Human created money and brother is killing another brother for money. People are fighting all over the world for power and money. I remember the first few minutes from 'Gods Must Be Crazy' (Part 1). A remote tribe in Africa lives in complete harmony where people never had fight with each other. Once the tribe find an empty coke bottle lying around (the bottle was thrown from a helicopter). The tribe think that its a gift from God and they keep the bottle. They don't know what's the use of bottle, so each one of them tries various stuff. Everybody in the tribe becomes curious about the bottle and wants to keep the bottle with them. So they start fighting over the bottle. So this example shows how a small thing can chaos among we humans.
Believing in Karma is really important for us. We must know that what we do today is a consequence of something good or bad we have done in past and what we are doing today must have good or bad effect on our future. I don't know how would you measure Karma in daily life but definitely there would be moments to indicate you about the cause and effect. I guess the day one understand Karma, he/she will try to avoid problems for themselves and try to become a better person in life. I guess thats a fair ask - to become a better person in life :).

... back again ....

After being away from blogging for more than half a year I have decided to bring back myself on the track.
As this is a comeback blog I will update on what I did last 6 months or so.
Well, I did not loose my movies interest and have seen all the recent movies. Kaminey, Wake up Sid, Jail were the few which I would recommend to you all. Bollywood movies haven't been that great lately. Rest all the movies were not so of 'my type'. I always used to follow Masand's review on IBN live but then later I found that he is sometimes biased. On the other hand I never go by Time Of India review as half of their rating goes to the star-cast. Any movie involving top actor or actress will fetch minimum of 3 stars. So I sometime follow Masand but never trust TOI.
I have been to Wyanad (Kerala) during October 1st week. But rain god didn't allow us to roam much. So we stayed in the Tree House playing Poker all the time. I will always consider this trip as Poker trip as thats the most memorable point of the whole trip.
I hope I got head start today and will most actively update this space.
c ya.

General Elections - 2009

The result of general election in 2009 was surprising for me. I didn't expect UPA to do damn well. The best and funny part of the whole election was, the predictions by all the news channels.
Everyone was expecting a hung assembly and when such result comes up, its really remarkable. Congress has done really well and lets congratulate their effort. The election results were being predicted with respect various attributes. The one which I read and followed was the "Television ad" by both UPA and NDA. There is an article on IMRB which talks about which ad is most liked by the people of india. The answer was UPA ad was better liked in most parts of India except Karnataka. The general election results were also on the similar lines, Karnataka is the only state which had best result for NDA.
Going further, there will be loads of drama about forming the government and which all parties will support Congress. There are signs of young leaders joining the cabinet which is a good news. The best part of the result is a stable government and lets hope Manmohan Singh can pull India out of the recession as promised.
There are lots of expectations from this government on all fronts and the foremost is security and economical situation. I believe a stable government is required to tackle such issue. People of India seems to be Happy about the election results.
I hope UPA government makes India proud.

coming back to life

I am back after a long time. Well not really long but long enough to write my next blog.Well last few months were the best times in my life. I got married to the girl whom I loved. It was a great feeling and I enjoyed every bit of the marriage ceremony. But the marriage days are really hectic. You don't need to do anything but still you get tired. So many ceremonies and so many people around. Best part is for every small thing 10 people will say 10 different thing but in the end everything works out. It was really fun. We all danced for all 3 days and in the end everyone was tired. Marriage is one special thing so enjoy it a lot.
After marriage we went to Maldives and it was really great place to be. The ocean is so beautiful that we were staring at it for hours. For the first time in my life i have done snorkeling and it was amazing fun. We saw loads and loads of fishes in water and it was simply awesome. It was surely one of the best trips ever.
Now I am in Bangalore and enjoying the married life.
Will keep on updating the blog now. :)