One English movie and some Kannada songs.

Right. Let’s start this with a paragraph movie review.  We saw Cars 2 this weekend. We have to say. We liked it a lot. The detailed analysis of the world from a car’s eyes is truly awesome. Here Lightning McQueen plays a supporting role. The movie revolves around Mater, the bumbling tow truck best friend. How some old cars play villains and how Mater is mistook for a spy and in the end how he saves  the world is the story. Without discussing about story line much, we will tell you this. Very rarely a sequel is better than the first movie. Here is one such movie. Larry the Cable guy is totally delightful as Mater. We give this movie two thumbs up and a 9 out of 10. This is like your childhood dream come true. All your Hotwheel cars and all your yeeeeoooowwww’s.  Watch this movie.

We came back and we were not feeling sleepy. So we thought we will listen to songs. Kannada ones.  One song was from Hudugaru.  It was an item song called Pankaja. Somewhere between “Akka nim maneyalli naayigu Dancu barutta” and “Nim ooralli thamaTena hodyakke chancu sigutta” , we started thinking about how Kannada songs have gotten back their mojo. There was a phase where Kannada songs were qualitatively poor. Once Ravichandran and Hamsalekha kinda broke up, the Music became more to the mass than class. Apart from some movie exceptions, most songs did not catch our fancy much. But then suddenly it seemed like all is well again. What happened?

If you think about it, this seems to have begun from Mungaru Male. Everyone tends to agree that Mungaru Male really started this upward trend. It increased the listener count by many folds. Many of our friends who were not really fans of Sandalwood music started listening from then. And then the quality started improving. Not just the lyrics. If lyrics are outrageous, tunes became catchier. It was like the music industry picked itself up and decided, “Right, We need to show others what we are about.” We like this new trend.  We do not mind listening to nothing but Kannada songs.

After that almost every movie that has been released, has had at least one beautiful or catchy track. Even movies which were pretty horrible had one nice track. We don’t want to start listing the songs we like. Because there are plenty. Our phone has hundreds of new Kannada songs. And every day we get to add some song or the other from a new movie. We, being a Kannada movie fan, absolutely love it. Kannada Industry has always had people who make some really good musical movies. But in late 90’s it was limited to Ravichandran. He had his way with the leading ladies and always had flowers and fruits and honey around and on them. But it was not just about visually pleasing his male audience. He made sure that the songs were melodious. He was immensely talented when it comes to picking songs.

But now the number has increased. Every other director, every other producer, every other actor seems to crave for quality. There is some flip side to it as well.  The local talents seem to have been neglected. Sonu Nigams and Kunal Ganjawalas started hogging the space and have replaced Rajesh and Hemanth. Shreya Ghoshals have replaced Pallavis and Nandithas. Sure the Bollywood singers are talented. But shouldn’t these songs go to the local talents? We are pretty sure any good Kannada singer can sing the same songs just as well. Why do we have to go to Bollywood and pay more money? Pallavi Arun is the best and most versatile singer in Kannada industry. Give more chances to her than Shreya. If the songs are as good as they have been for past few years, audience will listen no matter what.

It’s all about love in the family...

We have news for you.  No. Not about Aishwarya Rai telling Abhishek “Main tumhari Bacchan ki maa bannewaali hoon”^[1]. Although there have been pretty curious reactions to the news. We have seen more people congratulate BigB on being a Grandpa than Abhishek on delivering his first successful solo hit ^[2]. Also, Kiran Rao supposedly asked Aamir, “Kab tak Perfectionist bante rahoge?” ^[3]. OK we are not going to say anything more as we do not bother about Ash. We personally feel she is more plastic than the Barbie she tried to endorse. 

It’s also not about Arindam Choudhary trying to sue the search engine Google for being a.. search engine. He said that it is promoting slander by showing bad stuff written about him. So if websites do not like him, so he will sue the company which.. just searches for the information? What kind of dick does such a thing? Arindam that’s who. Google searches for the popular pages. People like reading about him. How is it Google's fault? We are not sure why he did not sue internet itself or people in general. By trying to be a smart ass, he just became fodder for little more news. And he is promoting his anti-slander compaign via youtube which is by, you guessed it, Google.

OK topic. What is the greatest gift that can be given to a man? We all know it’s a tape of Scarlett. But if you ignore that and say love of a lady, we will grin and agree. No. Correct it. We will agree but after laughing at you. No, one more correction. We will agree after sometime because we will be busy rolling on the floor laughing and calling you a wuss. But yes. We will agree. Because our lady would be damn pissed with us otherwise. KJO, you know that misspelt coffee show man person with a lie-o-meter, once said it's all about loving your family. We just modified it a bit. Another quote we want to use is by Dr Seuss, that weird love one which you might have heard about. It’s just that we got the news that our elder brother is in same situation as we were few years ago. You know. Love and stuff. We are a victim of love marriage you see. Our lady doesn't like it when we say stuff like that. Now our brother has fallen into the net as well. By making fun of love, we start the blog with the mental preparation to sleep on the sofa for a week.

We at the risk of sounding sentimental, will admit that we are very happy for our brother. He has been having some tough time personally and professionally. We are glad he has found happiness. But any sensible, not just married, man would say, marriage is not the solution for tough times. It may be beginning for some. But definitely not the end (Warning one). Actually, we wanted to give a sarcastic lecture starting with “love anthe love. It’s aal stupidity my baay. Thatsall means thatsall”^[4]. But we would have a very unhappy lady to calm down and calming down an unhappy lady is a very difficult task, as any married man knows (Warning two). When our brother told us that he and our future Bhabhiji have agreed to leap the leap, we were excited. Not because a love is being consummated to marriage. As they say, all marriages are made in heaven like thunder and lightning (Warning three).

We were one off love marriages in the family. Now it seems like we have set a precedent. When we propositioned our marriage situation to our family, everyone had lot of fun discussing about it. We did not have all the Telugu film drama, which we regret. We were sad that we cannot make speeches about undying love and eternal flame in our heart etc. Instead everyone agreed without fuss and we and our lady ended up being butt of many jokes as we were the youngest in the family and were not really considered what you can call responsible. Everyone thought we may not be able to handle the responsibilities we felt (Responsibilities. Warning Four). And now that there is another couple being readied to be institutionalized (marriage is an institution, right?), people look at us as mature experienced couple. It’s very interesting how tables turn. Now we are going to attend the marriage with big smile with our heart and mind going BMwuhahaha. Unless you are in our position you will never truly understand the joy of sadism.

We wanted to tell few things to our Bhabhiji. So, if you are not our Bhabhiji, skip this and move to next paragraph. We and our brother have never been the similar ones except for our interest in current affairs and GK. We have been fighting almost always. We still have the memory of him chasing us with a wicket when we had some argument in cricket. No, no need to worry. We also want to assure that he has sobered down (We still have our fingers crossed). He may chow down on his colleagues but he is not the one who can yell at you. At least, for now. Also, He means good. We may fight a lot, but first time we were away, he had to seek medical attention. No not the wrong kind. He had fever etc because he missed us. (It always made us happy to know that we controlled his health. Sadly as we grew up the grip vanished). The point to be noted is not that he gets angry easily. It’s that even though he acts all angry, he still will care for you a lot. We do not want to repeat the sobered down bit. Anyway, what we actually wanted to tell was, we are happy that he found you and you found him. You make a good pair. We have one more thing to tell. Sorry, we are making this paragraph long but we had decided to dedicate only one paragraph. That was not the thing. This is. We also heard from our lady that you were silent in front of parents. We hope you are not the silent type of person. When we make fun of Aishwarya (Yes. We sneaked into your Facebook profile.), we want a proper response. Else it won’t be fun. If you notice, there are some references in the beginning of the blog.

Non-Bhabhi readers, let me guess. You read the previous paragraph even after we told you not to read right? Bleddy… As a punishment, we are going to bore you now. We want to write some philosophical things. As per some lady from some website, there are four kinds of love needed to make a marriage work. You need unconditional love, human love, tenderly love and physical love. When all four types of love operate in a marriage, the marriage is complete. We did find it on the net. We can't make such things up if if we wanted to. Although we felt it was too boring to read through all that we understand the gist. It’s just that you should love each other. Also we feel that whatever institution they say marriage is, can be successful only if the people constituting the institution work on it. (Word play. We are becoming smart). Also, let us tell you another thing. This is again our train of thought on why we prefer love marriages. We do not think people can fall in love after marriage. Yes. Occasionally we do hear stuff like that. But normally, it’s just mere adjustment to the other person which can be misunderstood as love. 

Edward Carpenter says that behind every marriage stands the life-long environment of the two sexes; an environment so different from each other that man and woman must remain strangers. Separated by an insurmountable wall of superstition, custom, and habit, marriage has not the potentiality of developing knowledge of, and respect for, each other, without which every union is doomed to failure. We did not the heck of it. But we decided to copy paste it nonetheless just to show that we search for some serious stuff too on the net. Also we read somewhere that a girl who loves makes a man from a selfish idiot. But if she leaves he will become even bigger selfish bastard. That brings another question to our mind. Do all love marriages happen because of luck? Sometimes it is destiny too, right? Some love cases end well. Others result in marriage. 

We are in a practical age. A new age. But still the time when Romeo and Juliet risked the wrath of their elders for love has not disappeared. If young people allow themselves the luxury of romance they are taken in care by the elders and advised till they become sensible. It’s not very often that parents happily agree for a love marriage. At least in many parts if India. We and our lady are very much aware of the fact that we are one such couple who got very lucky to have sensible parents who agreed without worrying about anything else. We are glad trend has remained same and they have happily agreed for or brother too. Good luck for them and God bless. 

But what made us even more happy was the fact that Rahul Dravid scored a gritty classy century and deserved the MoM award. When most others failed and could not grasp the pitch, Dravid stood for more than six hours to build an innings worth its weight in gold. That was a mature innings played by one of the greatest batsmen of all time. This innings reminded us of his second innings heroics five years ago one the same pitch. Which had reminded us of his first innings heroics in the same test. Words cannot describe.. OK you know what, sometime we totally get why our family considers us second best.

P.S : Personally we still think Scarlett’s tape is a better gift. But we are expected to support being in love, we will not discuss the matter further. For now.

Note to God: Thanks for the blessings, big guy. You are not always an a**hole. Now, coming from us, that would be a compliment for you. Cheers! 

[1],[2], [3] – Citation needed. But we don’t have it.

[4] – There is a sher for this. Babbar sher actually

Jaldbaazi mein shaadi karega toh zindagi bigaad lega

Soch samajh ke shaadi karega toh bhi kya ukhaad lega.

The Wall, The Fortress and The Gentleman.....

Fifteen years ago, this day at Lord's, India had lost early wickets and a left hander made his debut. A left hander who was hugely talented but just as arrogant. People had lot of expectations from him. He hit a century. People were happy. He hit another hundred in the next test in Edgebaston. People were ecstatic. They claimed that the future has arrived. It had. At Lord's another lanky 23 year old was playing as well. He was known to be a steady bat. He played his part very well. But missed out his hundred and an opportunity to create history by just 5 runs. Next test where the left hander scored another hundred, he scored 84 and missed yet another hundred. People pitied him. We did too. But more than pity we liked the way he played. He was wristy, elegant and watchful. We were 12 then but we devoted ourselves to be his fan. As people said, future of Indian cricket had arrived but it was that right hander who would carry the country's hope for more than a decade. 

Little did we know the luck, which eluded the 150th Indian test cricketer in his first two matches, would play hide and seek with him throughout his career. Luck made him spend entire cricketing career as a second fiddle to him. People never seemed to be really happy. He is slow they said, he is not fit for limited overs they said. He took every criticsim in his elegant stride. He showed them why he is one of the greatest ever players in the modern era. He showed why India needs him at number three. For us he is the greatest Indian player and stands just behind Lara as the greatest player we have seen. We have sworn our devotion to the greatest supporting act in the history of Indian cricket, perhaps world cricket even. Yes. You know whom we are talking about. Rahul Sharad Dravid.

We think rather than telling why he is a great player, we will just give you some high level overview of the stats. 10000+ runs in both formats of the game (Only 3 others have done it), 200 catches in tests, 200+ dismissals (including keeping) in ODIs, 90 50+ scores in tests and 94 in ODIs, only player till date to score hundreds in all test nations, 80+ century partnerships in tests. 50+ in ODIs, two 300+ partnerships in ODIs, one of only three batsmen to hit Test centuries in four consecutive test innings, to add to this the countless number of times where he rescued the team and lifted it to safety or at least a par score.

Life was never been fair to him. His whole career he has been marked as a second fiddle for other players. Whenever he scored a hundred, there would b someone else as well and snatch the deserved MoM award. He has spent his career as a shadow to him and we feel sad. Indian fans never did treat him right. There have been quite a few moments where people simply ignored the fact that RD reached a milestone. We always gets pissed off when that happens. How is it that the entire country is grateful to only one person. Sure he has done whole lot more than anyone else. But shouldn’t the real cricket fans be fair?

We being a test match fan, do not prefer T20s or ODIs as much. So we will list the five best test knocks by the Wall. This is our personal opinion. We do know that listing five is not the proper justice. The list where he played an important knock would go on and on. So we will stick to five best according to us.

148 vs SA in 1996, Jo'burg : First century by Dravid. Playing against powerful SA attack lead by Allan Donald, this was a masterpiece.

180 vs Aus in 2001, Kolkata : For us it’s the greatest test match of all time. VVS scored 281 and everyone went nuts. The fact that nobody else could have lent a better helping hand escaped many minds. We are naming this the greatest supporting knock in history.

177 vs Srl in 2009, Ahmedabad: We feel this was his most fluent innings. He kept finding boundaries and we absolutely loved watching him in this innings.

233 vs Aus in 2003, Adelaide : This test belonged to Dravid. That's all we can say.

81 & 68 vs WI in 2006, Kingston : The greatest knock for us was not a century or a double century. When the entire batting of both the teams struggled, the wall weaved magic. He led the defense and made sure that India is in a commanding position. These two innings' are why India needs Dravid.

People have been trumpeting his achievements so much that we feel kind of disappointed. We are not against him. No. We just wanted al to know that there are some other players who have given their everything for the game as well. It has been 15 years. You have provided us inspiration, entertainment and hope so many times. Thank you Rahul Dravid and God Bless.

Oh Please.. Stop.. No really... STOP.

How dumb can you be? No. Don't feel offended. We are not asking you personally. Relax now. You can keep that secret to yourself. We just wanted to cite an incident that happened. We have a regular call with our client manager. You know what one of our team mates discussed for whole 15 minutes? His Piles problem and how he cannot do his morning work properly. While we do understand that it is a very unfortunate situation, what we cannot understand is how someone can discuss about it. Let alone with client managers. He went on and on about how it has been occurring from past year. We sat fidgeting in our very seat (pun, if anyone notices, is intended). Its something for which you are not responsible but you are embarrassed nonetheless. It was like watching Fardeen Khan act.

Now that we have given today's blog a humane start, We should warn you. This is a dirty blog. we mean dirty dirty. Not that dirty which makes guys sit up and notice. Let us talk about how we embarrass ourselves. When we say we, we mean general public. That's right. "We" includes you lot too. There are so many situations where people don't realize they are embarrassing others. We have lot of examples.It almost makes us feel as if we are a country of self centered people. Since we are writing about the stories, we make sure that none of our stories are included here. Well, it can also be because we are not a dimwit and we watch ourselves.. Ahem. Aren't we a role model.

The main thing we have noted here is loud talking on cell phones. Some people simply cannot realize that they have cell phone in hand. It will be their mother tongue and since they feel that no one can understand what they are talking, they feel free to use lot of expletives. What's that? Isn't that a "cool" thing you ask? No. For us its not. We are not against talking in mother tongue. We very much prefer it ourselves. (Now we want make a bad tongue joke here but we are bound by the contract we have.). We use expletives when people are around and understand it. Its like bling. What is the point of using it if no one knows you are using it? You clearly shouldn't be ashamed of letting people know that you are using it. General public may not like it. But then if you are someone who uses such words, why fear the general public?

Another thing we noticed is how the some people clean their lunch boxes in the sink and dump the leftovers in the sink. That makes sure that water doesn't drain and everything gets clogged. You want to imagine how bad it can get? Think about variety of foods eaten by Indians. There is a trash bin man. How tough is it to dump stuff there? Before you know it, all the foren peepuls are looking at you as if you are the culprit. We may be of the same colour as the person who did it my dear lady, but we are not the same character. We did try telling someone about it and we got a sly grin. Now we have a notice there (put by foren peepul no doubt) saying don't wash your dirty dubbas here. Some foren peepul make sure they discuss such stuff when Indians are around. Just to rub salt to the wound.

We want to talk about our accent issues as well. Oh boy. Aren't we a diverse nation. Mallus, Tamils, Telugites, Kannadigas, Punjabis, Bengalis, Oriya, Bihari, North-east, Gujjus. Every one has their own accent. When we join any meeting nearly half the time goes just to decipher the accents we feel. Plus people treat grammar like that kid who stole your toys. We want to give you two examples. Imagine a Oriya/Bengali accent. " itj a bhird dokyumaint. Bhee need microsopt bhird". Most Indians have trouble understanding when they hear the sentence. Imagine how gora's felt. He had to repeat thrice and then type it over chat session. Thank god that our accents don't carry over to the chat sessions. or how about this for a conversation between two of our guys in a call including clients. "We are did the testing. We naat getting what result we wanted." "you caantacted yuvar subject myatter expert aa?" "Hmmm. we did told Smith John but he busy. so weeyar waiting". Take that grammar. Everyone knows that you are a bitch.

There are lot of things which people need to sort out. From Using text lingo in emails and chats to using aa to form a question. From using regional language fillers to trying to explain songs in movies, From scratching your privates when in public to opening the fly when one enters the restroom without even checking the urinals. There are lot of things which we are embarrassed about. When you are in India, people tend to ignore such things only because most people tend to follow it. Not because its accepted as social norm. And when people enter another country, shouldn't they realize that everyone is representing the country here? (We wanted to include From Akshay Kumar to Sharad pawar, but apparently some people actually like Akshay Kumar. So there goes one example.)

We have just noted couple of things we observed here. We are not against our country or our country people. We believe that our country has a great culture. We feel good when someone explains about the how great it is or about how diverse it is. We really do. But there is always some minor thing that ruins the fun. Imagine how proud you are when you tell how beautiful is the morning there or how you played cricket during last weekend and how your team won. And someone bursts the bubble by telling how you were stuck in traffic jam excluding the fact that major traffic jams are due to gazillions software engineers coming to work every morning Or a very 'talented' software engineer tells about how he couldn't do his morning stuff due to piles. Yes. That's what we want to avoid.

Weekend update... Delayed.

Aren’t we a bit late on telling u what we did on the weekend? Even if you say yes, we would ponder for a moment if we give a rat’s ass about what you think and then will go ahead with our story anyway.  But before we start anything on that, we want to tell you that we got our driver’s license. We have not actually got it but we have cleared the test and will get it in ten days max. It was a huge burden lifted. Also it looks like it lifted the bad luck we have been having. See. We planned to go there three times before and actually reached the DMV two times. First time, our roommate damaged his back. Second time the photo machine in DMV was broken and third time, they said we need to get a proof that we exist here legally. We did not get it. We had our learner’s license. Why would they still ask for passport or I-94? Finally we had everything ready, spent three hours waiting and finally completed the test successfully. We were so happy we could hug anyone. Actually, no we take that back. We were just happy.

But we have told you countless times that all we do is sit and watch movies on our laptop and occasionally play cricket. It seems we have been watching too many movies lately. Our friend circle here has doubled (another person has newly come to Charlotte). So we go to many movies and since our ex-roomie is getting married, we are doing plenty of shopping too. All in all, good times are happening.  So are expenses. This past month has been the most costliest here, apart from our HK trip. Haven’t we told you about our HK trip? May be we will. Soon. We won’t post pics though. We have it in our picasa page and will give you link. OK? Ok. Anyway, two movies we saw this weekend.  Both were sci-fi. One was a master class and one was very ordinary. We were amazed at both the movies. Considering the hype for the movies and way they turned out to be.

The first one we saw was X-Men: First Class. As the title says, the movie was well and truly first class. If you have seen the rest of X-Men movies and not comic reader, then you would wonder how the entire premise was built. This explains it. Who are they and how did they become what they are. It is wonderfully crafted film which keeps you engaged. The Cuban missile crisis has been interwoven very well with the story. We see Charles Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr before they became Professor X and Magneto. Erik being the victim of Nazi cruelty when the SS officer kills his mother to exploit his powers, wants to take his revenge on the Nazi officer who is now planning to rule the world. Erik does not know that the Nazi officer is a mutant himself. Charles meanwhile becomes a professor and leads a better life with his childhood friend Raven. The chemistry between the two leads is a delight to watch. We already knew that James McAvoy is a good actor after watching Last King of Scotland. Here he does total justice to the role. But the actual highlight of the movie is Michael Fassbender as Magneto. He emotes himself very well and we have to say we were totally awed by him. We hope he gets a Oscar nomination at least.

We actually did not plan to watch the second one. We actually went shopping to a mall and mall closes at 7 PM on Sundays (very Hip. We know.). But we could not come out as it was raining cats and dogs. Not literally. It means very hard, rain. So we decided to watch Super-8. Turns out drenching in rain would have been a equally good/bad option. The brain behind the movie is J J Abrams who is also the creator of the series Lost. The movie started ordinarily and end was also expected. There was no moment in the movie where it tried to be different. You get bored and would fall asleep if not for the ear splitting sound effects. Its about how a kid and some of his friends accidentally record an alien escape and then how that alien wreaks havoc in the town and in the end how he flies back to his homeland. There are efforts to bring some family drama and romance into the picture. But nothing that interests you. The kids have done a good job. But overall the movie just doesn’t have that ‘something’.

We also saw two Divya Dutta movies. We saw Monica and Haat, the weekly bazaar. She is one of our all-time favourite actresses. We always feel sad that she did not get enough opportunities in Bollywood. She is awesomely talented and we want her to act in more movies. Of course we saw them streaming because not many Hindi movies are screened here. Ready is beng shown in a theatre here but we do not want to watch that. OK That is pretty much what we did during the weekend. We would highly recommend X-Men: First Class to anyone who wants to watch a movie.  We wasted plenty of time watching junk stuff on the internet (No not porn. It may be a surprise but we don’t watch porn. Anymore).  We also managed to lose yet another cricket match. We managed to reach semifinals. There were only four teams. But come on. Semifinals.

P.S: Did you read about Delhi college cut-offs? Sriram College for Commerce? 100%. They want to make sure no unworthy candidate joins. Is it true SRCC? Its not just them by the way. All colleges have increased their cut off by pretty huge margins. So either we will see lot of fake caste certificates or there will be lot students taking the unwanted courses which nobody with high marks usually takes. Like languages. We wonder what we would have done if we faced such scenario. 100% cutoff? We were lucky we cleared 60% cut off. A good point to note would be, we believe our intelligence cannot be measured by the education system we face.

DK Bose has made us nostalgic...

As we sit and listen to the songs from the man-boy’s new movie, we are amazed on how much the world has changed since our childhood. We dreamt of being someone wonderful. We wanted to play cricket for India, we wanted to be like superman. We wanted to be like Vyomkesh Bakshi . Heck, we were so fascinated by a Lorry driver or a bus conductor who had this cool whistle. So many characters were thought of. But not even in our wildest dreams had we thought that our life would be nothing but sitting in front of a computer. When we listened to songs we remembered another song picturized on man-boy’s uncle. It was “Papa Kehte Hai Bada Naam Karega” then. We hated that hero. Now it’s “Daddy Mujhse Bola Tu Galti Hai Meri”. We hate this hero also. So may be the world has not changed much in some ways.It also weird how even an unrelated hip song can make you nostalgic.

Life was so simple those days. We used to go to school very early so that we can play cricket before the school opened. Play till our teachers come and open the doors. We did not go to a rich school. The students used to most of the work.  No peons or aayahs you see. The school pupil leader would be the most powerful person. He and his friends would control all locking/unlocking rooms, getting drinking water for the entire school, ringing school bells. We were the SPL. We know how good that responsibility feels. Only glitch was we had to supply water to teacher’s toilets also. Of course students did not have a toilet. Literally the world was our urinal.

The teachers used to come around 9. The keys would be given to the SPL. He would open all doors.  Then at 10 the whole school would stand up and sing the state anthem in chorus. We were never a good singer but in chorus nobody noticed how bad we were. Now when we recall it, we feel fascinated. No not by our singing. But the way the school worked then. Classes one to four had only one teacher. And she used change the subject depending on the hour bell. And when one of the teachers is on leave, there was no concept of substitute. The SPL or some studious person would go and look after the kids for that day. We loved that situation. No class to sit through and bossing around the smaller kids.

Classes five to seven were a bit different. That’s when you get promoted from pencils and slates to pens. And Fifth standard is where two new subjects are introduced. English and Hindi. We studied in Kannada medium school. All one teacher per subject stuff began there.  Anyway, the morning classes were till 1PM. Then lunch time. The elder kids helped the rest of the kids cross roads if they are going home. Or distributed water to wash hands if they have got lunch boxes. We went home had lunch ran back to school to play some more. Classes started at 2 and went on till 4:20. Then it was PT till 5. It was called PT but we could do pretty much whatever we wanted.  After that entire school assembled on the ground and national anthem was sung. Then elder students helped little ones cross the road again, SPL and friends locked the doors and secured everything and the day was over.

Our school was on a small hill. It was near a bungalow which was later converted to an Christian orphanage. All orphans from there used to study in our school as well. It was the bungalow where Rev Kittel wrote the famous Kannada Dictionary. Our school was called “Gudde Shaale” or “Bangle Shaale”. It was not a school as such. It was a huge hall. Each class separated by wooden screens. When it got too hot inside, teachers used to take the class outside. We had classes in the ground or somewhere on the hill. Imagine studying amidst trees. We liked it then because we could see vehicles on the road or just for the fact that we were outside during class hours. Students had to carry the portable blackboard. It was definitely a poor man’s school. But the teachers were wonderful and there was no bias.  

As we said earlier, our school did not have servants. Students used to do the work. The teacher would sound a bell calling the SPL or whoever is available in the last bench of the class next to the head teacher’s room. He would go and obey her commands. It would mean that you can skip the class till that task is done. Bell after each hour, sending messages to each class, calling some student or teacher from the class, going to the nearest hotel and getting tea/snacks, going to post office and getting some work done. We have been there.  We are not complaining mind you. We loved every moment of it. We also refuse to consider it as child labour. The school was like that and nobody could help it. This is just wonderful nostalgia washing over us.

Of course doing these tasks had its own perks. You would be teacher’s pet. Also, when they send you to a hotel to get something, obviously you would get some commission. For a twelve year old, that was awesome. And our house was very near to school. So if they sent us to post office for some work, we used to go home have something and then go back to school. But we were a good student then even though a little naughty. So we got lot of attention from teachers and they usually forgave us for whatever we did. Plus we used to go to all these quizzes and stuff. Our teacher had given us an apple when we came second in the very first quiz we participated. We treasure that moment as one of the best trophies. We respect them and like them more than any of our college and high school teachers.

Its been more than a decade since we last entered that school. Once we go back, we will surely go and so how much changes have happened. It feels strange that the way things were when we were a little one seem so different and archaic now. We see TV and we struggle to find some sense in what kids watch. May be what they watch makes them more mature earlier than needed. Is it necessary to show them so much violence or push them to harsh world of reality shows?  We had good shows which taught us the moral (well.. yes. ) values.  Can we compare the charm of the robot Vicky to Hannah Montana? No. Can we compare the fun we had when we watched “Crystal Maze” to the game shows now a days? Never. Forget about that. Can anything ever be compared to Mile Sur Mera Tumhara? You know the answer.

We wanted to talk mainly about the movies and TV shows but spoke about the school instead. We had such amazing TV shows and DD was a treasure back then. DD started with Hum Log and followed it up with Ramayana and Mahabharatha, the greatest of all tele serials we have seen. Believe us. We are a huge fan of the idiot box. We have seen plenty. But none as effective as Mahabharatha. Surabhi was another one we loved. And the aforementioned Vyomkesh Bakshi. There was another crime fighting series which we liked. It was called Tehkikaat. It was much before CID came and it was much better as well. And how can anyone ever forget Circus. Look at the wide range of shows we had in DD. Those were the good days.

Then there were all the dubbed Hindi versions of classic series’. The Lawson Family in “Small Wonder” or “Silver Spoons” or “I dream of Genie” and numerous others. There were wonderful cartoons as well. Disney hour was something we used to wait for. “Duck Tales”, “Tailspin”, “Aladin”, “Darkwing Duck”, “Rescue Rangers”. You name it. We have seen it and loved it. We still sit and watch whatever possible on Youtube. We would advise that to whatever that is on TV these days. OK. We need to end this abruptly. We feel we have dragged this post too long. We will stop praising the old serials. If you are from our generation, you know what we are talking about. If you are from the younger generation, you do not know what you are missing. We will end it with a statement that may make us sound older than what we are. But that’s fine. Ah. Those were the days.

A missing Doctor and an ever present Yoga teacher

So much happening in this nation and the person who is supposed to take the responsibility to set everything in order is not to be seen?  No. We are not talking about the most powerful lady in the world. We are talking about a doctor. Actually we wanted to title this “is there a Doctor in the house” or “Doctor Doctor give me the news”. Doctor Doctor is one of our favourite songs for now. Ever since we heard that song in Scrubs we have been fans of the song. OK topic.. We are looking for not just any doctor. The doctor who is running the house. OK not exactly running. Dancing would be the better word. He is the Muppet in the Italian hands. MMS as he is known in youth of this age. Dr Man Mohan Singh. Where is he? Where has he gone? Has madam grounded him as punishment for something?  Or Is he waiting for Madam to send the dialogues and screenplay?

How spineless is our prime minister? And how sad is it that even Devegowda looks like a brave PM when compared? It is very sad indeed. We had Anna fast his way to get Jan Lokpal. With that being going on like a stuck record, we now have the Yogaman coming out to fast. Seriously. How bad is the situation for UPA?  You have to acknowledge that it is grave. Next election will be very interesting to watch. What’s with Baba Ramdev anyway? Doesn’t he have a Yoga class to teach? OK now you would ask us to stop and be reasonable. Surely he is doing it for the nation you think. Well, he may. We don’t know/ but we think this is pathetic. When he talks about Swiss bank and black money, surely he hasn’t realized his own worth. His worth is estimated at several hundred crores and the man owns an entire friggin’ island.

If you want to talk about self-worth and being clean and stuff, surely you should show your wealth first. And you being the owner of several hundred crores, cannot act like a messiah of poor by stretching your stomach and folding yourself like a chair. Now, you think we have over done it a little. We say sod off. We stick by our opinion. He may have showed lot of people how to keep themselves in good health and stuff. Interesting and good for him. But it is the same man who called homosexuality a sickness and wanted to cure it. The same guy who said he can cure cancer by Yoga. The same guy who wanted to replace sex education in schools with Yoga. Clearly kids, how do you stop teenage pregnancy? Try Shalabhasana*. Understand that we are not against Baba Ramdev the Yoga guy. But we are not supporting him as a corruption fighter and his morals.

Now he is not happy with the khavi. He wants to don Khadi as well. His followers are already in halla bol mode now that he has been arrested.  Ramdev has decided to have his supporters contesting the elections. His party called Swabhimaan Abhiyaan will contest next Lok Sabha elections. His party will cleanse the political system, fight corruption and win the next Lok Sabha election it seems. Clearly the public is facing the case of choosing lesser of the devils. You have the Ruling party which is busy shooting itself in its foot and the opposition which is more helpless than a guy who dropped soap in prison bath. While we hope the Anna does provide a way, we are not sure how and when. And we are also not sure how much time it will take for Ramdev to align himself with another political party.

Also, did u see the news about a Janardhan Dwivedi? Heard the name before? Don’t worry. Not many had heard either. Somebody threw a show at him and suddenly he has become famous. He is using this situation for political gain very well. Already the blame has been made on Ramdev’s fans, the BJP, the RSS. He can become the next Diggy raja. Speaking of Diggy Raja, you can surely expect some fireworks from the man who puts the mad in madness . He has come out and said Ramdev is a cheat who is trying agitate people. Now now. Diggy Raja is the last person you would expect to talk some sense. And it is true. He has wasted no time in calling Ramdev a RSS man and also defended the tear gas and baton usage of police on the Ramdev supporters as “in public interest”.

This is where we need someone to step up and bring some peace. We have people like Sibal and Diggy Raja who want to prove everything is done by BJP/RSS and some certain people are the weakest and cleanest bunch of people. We have the opposition which is busy dancing at Satyagrahas or trying to save Yeddi. We have rest of the regional parties fighting between themselves to show who is the boss in their states. WTF is happening? Where is that person who is supposed to restore normalcy? Hiding in some closet? We always felt that he was a good economist but not a politician. Forget about Ramdev entering politics. We want Dr Singh to enter politics first. He should stop hiding behind madam and face the field. This is where we miss Atalji. We are going ahead and naming him the best PM the country ever had. And we want him to find some anti-ageing solution and become young and lead us again. Yes. We would love that.

* We do not know. It was meant as a joke. Now we feel it may be a bit tasteless but we are not going to erase. We feel we may just have proved that we have more balls than the man who is leading us by just being firm about our choice of joke. Yes. That's how bad we feel the UPA leadership is.

Our favourite author....

Ever heard of Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn? We're not sure how many have. Well if you have not, we humbly request you do learn a little about the man. A Nobel Laureate, he is one of our most favourite authors. One of the legends in Russia's vast and wonderful literary history. He has written many books regarding Soviet communist regime. But for us mainly, two books stand out. Gulag Archipelago and One day in life of Ivan Denisovitch. Latter being the best book we have ever read. We read this book online today. We had left the book in Bangalore and it had been sometime since we had read it. That’s right. We re-read the books. In fact, we love this book so much; we have identified it as one of the greatest we have read, if not the greatest. We will tell you about the man. We would suggest you to read Wikipedia but being the lazy ones that you are we will give a gist.

Born in 1918, his father was an imperial Army soldier who died while Solzhenitsyn was still in the womb. This fact had to be hidden since Lenin and his 'people', Well.. Hunted and killed any royal loyals. They killed their family and they killed anyone who ever knew the person. Solzhenitsyn grew up under the influence of his mother. It’s pretty obvious that the man was a genius. Why do we say so? He studied Mathematics at a Russian university and at the same time did correspondence courses in history, philosophy and literature. Maths and philosophy together? That ideally won't end well. You usually would spend your nights wondering why geometry cannot actually spend the life happily with algebra, or have nightmares about how god will destroy the world with dangerous weapons like probability or calculus. In short, cuckoo... But anyway, the man was not a cuckoo.. He was influenced by communist thoughts at that time. Yes. But not cuckoo.

He fought in World War II, and even became captain of artillery. But in 1945, he was arrested for insulting Joseph Stalin and sent to the Soviet labour camp for eight years. It was here that he realized that Marxism isn't actually helping. We had read somewhere that communism is mass distribution of poverty rather than property. We tend to agree with that thought. Anyway, back our hero of the story. He was diagnosed with cancer and was treated in Tashkent. He was released eventually. After the release he spent his days as a teacher and nights as a writer.

In '62, his book Odin den iz zhizni Ivana Denisovicha or Odin den' Ivana Denisovicha (One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich) was published with the approval of then president Khruschev. It was a instant hit and was marked as classic. This short novel describes how one day in the labor camp is spent and we get to see it through the eyes of a prisoner, Ivan Denisovich Shukhov. This was one of those rare books that touched us (No. No pun here. Move on). We were moved by the accounts given in that book. How people fight for pieces of bread and one puff of a cigarette. It is a heartbreaking story but does end with hope that all this will end one day. The west suddenly woke up to see what is happening in Soviet. This was one of the first instances where someone openly distributed the ills of the Stalin rule. It even became a part of then curriculum. You cannot but root for the 'prisoners' as they lead their monotonous and strenuous life.

But once liberal Khruschev was removed, the ideological freedom also died slowly. KGB had heard that he will be writing about the Gulag and they damn sure wanted to make sure that this doesn't materialize. Washing dirty Lenin (see what we did there?) was not OK with them. The manuscripts and drafts had to be hidden at his friends' houses. It launched a massive action plan to discredit Solzhenitsyn. The government sources in many countries were included in this. Some secret agents joined as translators to work with him and kept KGB informed about all his activity. The plan bore fruit and finally he was expelled from then USSR in '74. KGB even published a biography of Solzhenitsyn maligning him.

In 1970 he got the much deserved Nobel. While the most people were happy about it, the Soviet Government was the party pooper again. They did not let him go out. And it was pretty clear that he would not be let back in if he steps out. He had his speech delivered to the Nobel ceremony. He finally received his award after he was expelled. There is an online article about how he got his Nobel. Interesting one. You should check it sometime. He eventually moved to USA and spent two decades. His Soviet citizenship was restored once the country fell. Upon his return he was honoured by, irony of ironies, an ex-senior officer of KGB, Vladimir Putin.

The Gulag Archipelago is considered to be his second best work. It tells the story of his experience in the labor camp and stories of other witnesses. He wrote it in secret as KGB wanted to destroy the script. It describes the arrest, interrogation, conviction, transportation, and imprisonment of the Gulag's victims as done by Soviet authorities. The first part was release in '73 and the Government and its loyals criticized him and branded him as a traitor. This lead to his exile. The second and third volumes were released when he was in US. The book changed west's perspective about Lenin who till then had a legacy.  Solzhenitsyn argued that Stalin merely improved the idea of labor camps which was in fact created by Lenin. It is now included as a Mandatory read in Russia's school system.

You would be surprised to know that the man, who was against the communist regime, did not prefer democracy either. He in fact supported authoritarian regime. He hated the way Boris Yeltsin's brand of democracy and that delayed his return to Russia after its collapse. Solzhenitsyn's books after he returned, which included essays on Russia's future, stirred quite a bit of controversy. He passed away in 2008 at his home near Moscow. OK we really do not know how to end a biography kinda article. We are not that good a writer to give some nice senti ending. So we will just recommend the two books mentioned and leave it at that. You don’t read it, it’s your loss.

P.S : We would like to thank Jimmy Wales, Larry Page and Sergey Brin for indirectly helping us with the details to write this blog.

Outnumbered... And outfriended.....

Do you know who Ramona Marquez is? We will tell you. She is this marvelous actress from a BBC series Outnumbered. And she was six when she started acting. Yes. That’s right. Six. How old were u when you did something significant? Even helping an old lady crossing a street was a lie. Wasn’t it? We are well past quarter century and we cannot boast of anything significant in our life apart from travelling alone to Charlotte or hitting three sixes in one of our cricket matches. That’s how our life is. Ok let us tell about Outnumbered. This is about a couple outnumbered by three kids, played by Ramona Marquez, Daniel Roche and a very contradictory name, Tyger Drew-Honey. Tyger is so manly and Drew and Honey are well.. not so much.

Have you ever watched a sitcom or a series being played on BBC? The British jokes and innuendos are more straight forward and rude than anywhere else as far as we know. We have always been a fan of BBC comedy. Top Gear, Mock The Week, Coupling, now Outnumbered. We also prefer BBC documentaries than NatGeo or Discovery. There is something wonderful about BBC. They know how to get things done. And they do not hesitate to talk about controversial topics. They obviously can apologize later, but we get the point. The major thing is BBC has always made kept the promise. When they say documentaries, you know you will learn a lot and when they say comedy, you will laugh. A lot. If you understand the jokes that is.

OK, enough of BBC pimping. Outnumbered is basically about how kids look at the world and how the parents struggle to cope up. Hugh Dennis, the wonderful funnyman that he is, is great with his witty and sarcastic statements. Claire Skinner, as the mother, is equally good. You will feel that Tyger does not have enough to do in the series. But hormonal troubles of a teenager are hardly entertaining (Cue to Disney : Stop your shows. Overacting teens. Not funny.) But the credit of making sure you watch this series goes to the two little ones. Daniel as Ben and Ramona as Karen. Karen with her inquisitive nature and typical bossy child behaviour is a treat to watch. Ben, who looks like he has symptoms of ADHD, is outrageous and impresses you with his same outrageousness.

The three seasons have only just 19 episodes in total. Plus four special episodes. Each series has only six or seven episodes dealing with trivial issues dealt by most households. Like bullying or killing a mouse or even playing around the house. When you look at the world from a child’s eyes, everything looks strange. We assume that you know YouTube. Search outnumbered. You will know what we are talk about. The only thing which saddens us is most child stars will move into obscurity when they grow up. Most child stars that get the publicity and fame at such young age never get used to it and ruin themselves. Tell us how many child stars have made it big? We are not saying there aren’t any. There are some who have made it big. There are most follow the path of self-destruction and very few come back from that path. We are very impressed by Ramona Marquez. We like her a lot. We really hope she becomes a great actress.

We also want to talk about another BBC show. It’s called Mock The Week. It’s a chat show kind of program where six guests will join the host to “discuss” about current events. Basically everyone is made fun of. It’s hosted by Dara O’Briain. We told you about Hugh Dennes in Outnumbered right? That chap is a permanent guest in this show. It is one of the most hilarious shows we have seen. We like it a lot. Frankie Boyle did offend quite a few people when he was there but he was a charm to watch. The show has become a bit “clean” now but somehow it’s not the same. You know that feeling? You prepare something your mom prepares and it’s good but it’s not the same as mom made? Yes. That kind. We are not telling Frankie is the mother of comedy. No.We just feel it would have been better if he were still there. Anyway, do watch the snippets in Youtube. You will like it.

After TV, let’s come to more entertaining part. The real life. Long back we had told you that Charlotte has two malls? Well we were wrong. It has 3. One is very posh it seems. So we have not been there. Anyways, we went to this other mall to buy gifts with our roommate (for one more day) for a colleague of ours. We are not sure why we did it as we were not invited to a birthday party nor cake cutting (which really is pissing us off). To help us recuperate, we gifted ourselves a watch (which is awesome looking) and this book by Stephen Colbert. It’s called “I Am America (And So Can you!)”. There’s some dollars we will never get back. We never speak ill of books. So we will leave it at money wasted.

What pissed us off was, the book was a waste plus our colleague treats us bad. Well, OK.. It was the colleague thing more than the book. We were thick as thieves. Now suddenly we are nobody. We don’t get it. What kind of person leaves one friend because they got another more useful friend? Why do all the drama about being good/best friends and then stab in the back? Also, why do people avoid telling other people that they would like to avoid them? Anatole Broyard said, "When friends stop being frank and useful to each other, the whole world loses some of its radiance." What does it mean? He/she was high he/she said this? No. Be Serious. We want to know why people who call themselves friends lie. We really want to talk some philosophical bullshit about friends and stuff but really we don’t see any point. It’s going to be as good as listing out your favourite Sanjay Kapoor movies. Nobody cares about it. Besides we are scared that too much thinking will cause us brain heamour  haemarr damage.