On to newer horizons…..

Has been a long time that I posted something here.. Today too, I have just peeped in to say that moments from now, I’ll be leaving my hometown and in another 40 hours, I’ll be at Atlanta, my home for at least next years.. I don’t think that it’s a news for anybody, who knows me. But for others, here’s the reason: I am joining the full-time MBA program at Goizueta Business School, Atlanta.

I plan to update this blog a bit more frequently, though I am sure that BSchool life won’t give me many chances for that. Still, I think of keeping this updated with everything non-MBA in my life: Visits to places, my stand on political and social issues, Toastmasters speeches and may be some quizzes too.

Where does the MBA-related stuff go? For that, I have a separate blog: http://missionmba.net. The MBA-blog has been more active for last 2 years or so and I expect it to continue the same way for another 2 years. But keep following this one too, I promise to at least try to keep this regular.

“You civilians!!”

Two weeks back, I had to take Chhatisgarh Express again and like always, the train was late. So, I located an empty seat on the platform and made myself comfortable. The guy next to me was almost my age, had a laptop with him and his lappy-bag was carrying a Kingfisher-airlines tag. In sum, he was clearly a software engineer coming from Bangalore/Hyderabad for a vacation to his home, or so I thought. Since it was still more than an hour for the train to arrive, I tried initiating a conversation.

“So you too a software engineer?”

“No, I am not.”

The tone was blunt and the implication was clear => “I am in no mood for a conversation.” So I thought of winding up the conversation.

“Sorry, you are approximately my age and were carrying a laptop. I, by default, assumed that you must be a software engineer.”

BIG MISTAKE!! The guy was already offended.

“So, what do you think? Only software engineers deserve to have laptops? Or can only people like you engineers afford to have them?”

I, of course, in no way, meant anything even close to that. And about the question of affording, in a good number of cases (including mine), the laptops that we software engineers carry are not even ours, they are company property. But yes, I still was quite sure that at least in our age-group, it’s mostly the software engineers, who’re associated with carrying laptops.

“Well, In India, the IT revolution hasn’t caught that much. So mostly, you’d find people having professional uses for a laptop carrying it?”

ANOTHER MISTAKE!!

“Oh!! In India!! And where are you from? Are you not from India?”

“Of course, I am an Indian and I am proud of it”

“Yeah.. It’s very clear how much proud you are. Generalizing everything from the eyes of a software engineer and commenting negatively in public on progress of the country. See!! I am from defense and I hate it when you civilians make fun of India”

Oooh!! So the guy’s from army. That explains his passion for the country. But this time, I was offended, the phrase “You civilians” pinched me. I had heard this or its different connotations earlier too and I find it really disgusting.

But this wasn’t a time for a counter-attack, I thought of setting things right first. I objected to his remarks and told him I wasn’t making fun of the country, I was just looking at things as they are. I also told him about my own feelings for the country and also about what this “civilian” is doing for his alma-mater and society. Within 5-10 minutes of conversation, I guess it was clear to both of us that it’s an argument between two guys, who actually are passionate about taking India forward. But he still wasn’t too friendly. So I gave up saying that I understood that he was upset over something else and hence, there wasn’t any use in carrying the conversation forward. Precisely, at that time, somebody called him up and perhaps this was the break he needed.

After the call, he was a bit mellowed. He admitted that he had missed his train 2 hours back and hence, wasn’t in a good mood. We had a very good conversation then onwards. I told him about my life as a software engineer, also discussed my MBA plans and what I want to do after that. He told me about his life at Navy: how he gave up his dream for joining an IIT and never regretted the decision after entering the National Defence Academy for the first time. Felt really good to see that the government is taking very good care of the defense people. They surely deserve every bit of that for the work they do for the country.

Very soon, the announcement for my train’s arrival was made and I cursed myself for not bringing up the topic about his attitude on civilians in a conversation of about an hour. So I told him about the blog and promised to write about the conversation.

And then he did it again: “May be someday I’ll see your photograph in a newspaper as a successful businessman and realize that this was the guy I fought with. You seem to be a good guy. If even some of civilians start thinking the way you do, the country would be in a better shape.”

Ha!!This was one of the times when words of genuine praise do not make you happy. I thought of correcting him, but the train was already there. So I reminded him of my blog and took leave.

I may have made a mistake in generalizing that most of the laptop-carrying guys are from software industry. But what is worse: This generalization or generalizing that all civilians have zero feelings for the country? Aren’t people like Narainmurthy, Leander Paes, Mother Teresa, AR Rahman all civilians? They may not be fighting it out in the open, but in their own way, aren’t they doing their bit in making a name for the country? Talking about common men, I agree that most of us don’t do much in our daily life. But when the call from the country is there, a good number of us respond in our ways: be it contributing for flood-hit areas of Bihar or standing up against reservations, you’d find civilians contributing to the cause. This may not compare with the live action that army-guys are involved in, but would it be justifiable to write that off completely? Most importantly, like every other bunch of people, no two civilians are the same (or for that matter,no two defense guys either) Then, why this generalization: “You civilians”?? Why do you actually need to have a dichotomous view of the world: civilians and servicemen?

These are some of the questions I would have liked to ask that guy. I am still looking for the answers. I understand that some of the civilians would be making comments on this post as usual, but I would love to see the view point of somebody from defense too.

Earth hour::My contribution for a global cause :-)

For some time now, I had been listening to this concept of Earth-hour. On this Friday, we got  a mail from our HR deptt, reminding us of this opportunity to volunteer for this global effort. I found it a good concept and decided to contribute this time.

On this Saturday, I was pondering over how would I spend that one hour. First of all, I thought of going out around that time after switching off the lights at my flat. But that did not look like a contribution to me. So I decided that I’d be staying at my home and would be switching off the lights for those 60 minutes. The  fact that none of my two flatmates were at home made  it easy (although they too would have contributed) as it was only I, who needed to make the decision.

I was thinking whether using my laptop would be permitted at that time. No, I won’t be connecting it to the AC supply, would be charging it up and then using it, I tried to convince myself. But this sounded wrong to me. Extending that logic, people can simply switch to their inverters and keep everything running. (If we extend it a bit more, I should have kept my cellphones switched off too, but I decided against it. )

I decided to complete some of the pending tasks during the earth-hour. For long, I was contemplating writing some linkedin recos and Orkut testimonials for some of my friends. But for one reason or other, i kept postponing this. Decided to take this up. I also thought of keeping a log of my activities as the time passed.

So at 8:28, I was ready with a pen, a notebook and a candle at my table. Precisely at 8:30, I switched off the last light in my room, lit the candle and started scribbling on my notebook.

Here’s a quick view of how things went.
8:30 -> Started scribbling down things to do. Got ready of tasks to do and Linkedin recos and Orkut testimonials to write.
8:34 -> What!!! Just 4 minutes have passed!!
8:41 -> The tiny TV indicator told me that I had missed out one light. Turned that off too.
8:56 -> Two linkedin recos complete.
9:05 -> Third reco complete; never knew that this takes so less time once you’re focused.
9:26 -> This one took long. This was testimonial for a dear friend. Completed three-fourth of that.
At this stage, I got curious to know whether anybody else in the society is following this or not. As I looked from the room window, I was impressed to see 1-2 of the flats had their lights switched off. Decided to walk down to see whether there are any more of them. There actually were a number of them.
9:30 -> Earth hour complete!! But none of the flats mentioned above switched on the lights. Perhaps, they were not contributing to the Earth-Hour, but were simply not in their homes.
Anyways, I was happy at my contribution to world-energy.

Some important takeaways from those 60 minutes:

• Staying w/o power is tough!! We better work towards saving it for the future. As Anunay’s FB message said, “Anunay Gupta  is hoping that everyone saves energy all the time, not just the Earth Hour. ” Remined me that I am actually not that responsible in using power judiciously. Followed the power-saving norms religiously today, hope i am able to continue this.
• If I allow myself an occasional break from the laptop and the internet, there’ s so much I can achieve. (am on the lappy almost 24X7) Reminds me of similar stuff from “Monk who sold his ferrari” At times, we become slaves of the gadgets around us, whereas it’s us, who should be mastering these devices. Have decided to exercise more control on this. Even when I am on the machine, will try to do more meaningful stuff (like blogging) than just checking mails/Orkut/Facebook every 5-10 mins.

Jai Mata Di!!

Last weekend, I had a terrific trip to Vaishno Devi..This had been in pipeline for at least 4.5 years for me. Last time, it was in October 2004, when we had decided to go in a group of friends. I had booked my tickets too, but had to back out due to a number of reasons. But as I look back, I see that there was only one reason: it wasn’t meant to be at that time. As they say, you only get to visit this place, when you get a bulawa from Maata.And when the bulawa is there, there would be nothing to stop you.

This time, the call was there for me. Even on last Monday, it wasn’t decided who all would be going. But this time, I had decided that I’d be going ahead even if there are just 1-2 guys accompanying me. Four days later, we were on our way in a group of nine.Here are some quick highlights of the trip:

• The bulawa theory was true this time too. Anu was there in the trip right from the planning stage. And at the last moment, he was struck with Typhoid and had to miss the trip. Instead, Deepak, who was never in the picture, called me up at the last moment and he got in! Maybe some other time for Anu; when the bulawa comes.
• We had booked our tickets with Volvo India (Feedback: Not recommended. The return journey costed us Rs 150/- less per head and the seats were much more comfortable.) Normally, I do get a decent sleep during a long journey, but this time, I could not sleep for more than 5-10 minutes.
• The era of big-brands has reached Katra and Vaishno Devi too. I remember locating Barista, Cafe Coffee Day, Sagar Ratna and a  number of Nescafe outlets there. Of course, Am not complaining here. We did take breaks at some of them.
• This time, the general energy-level around was a bit low.   Throughout the way, it wasn’t very often that I saw energetic groups chanting “Jai mata di”. But every time, we located any such group, we  were quick to join in. And I can tell you, when you’re dead tired, this chanting makes a whole world of difference. It gives you the motivation to keep going no matter what. So many times, it was just I and Akash, who were shouting the jaikara on the road and that kept us going.
• I was appalled by the condition of the toilets on the way. Almost, all of them on the way were filthy and stinky. I tried to use one, when I felt that I had no option, but the stink there almost made me vomit. Namrata had similar experience with the ladies’ toilets too. It’s really pathetic to see it this way and I am surely going to write to the Shrine-board office for this. (Though I don’t have much expectations from the sarkari-system. )
• Finally, at around 9, we were there at the top. Aman had already taken the token for us. But then, there was a long queue for lockers in the cloak room. After a long, long wait, finally our  turn was there. The system is a bit problematic here too.. It’s one locker per yatra-parchi (the slip that you get before setting for the trip from Katra) irrespective of number of people on the slip. (which can vary from one to five) Since we were nine in the group, we got two lockers and had to do some jugaad to get the third one.
  (Quick tip: If you are in a group of four or more, make sure that you do not get more than three people registered on a single slip)
• Sometimes, some small things happen, which make you believe in the almighty even more strongly. A similar thing happenned in the queue for us too.
  We were dead-tired and it had been more than an hour in the queue and the queue had hardly moved a bit. At this stage, I was almost giving up. (though that wasn’t an option!!) I silently made a prayer to the Goddess that now that we have made this much effort in reaching at the final frontier, we needed her  blessings to finally complete the darshan. This was more of a helpless plea than a prayer with some real hope. I requested for some jugaad (yes!! this is the precise word that I had used in my prayer) for us to get in quickly. And lo!! my prayers were answered almost instantly.
  Here’s how it happened. Akash went ahead to ask the man-at-duty at the gate about how long will it take for the darshan (Thanks to the cloak room chaos, our number had already passed. Ours was 84; it was 105 running at that time) and Neha, the youngest of our group, decided to accompany him. She was about to ask him, when the policeman there  shouted at her and asked her to be in line. By mistake, he thought that she is right at the head of the queue and is getting out of the line. And thus, she was thrust almost at the head of the queue. Then, she politely asked him that some of her friends are left behind in the queue. The policeman initially insisted that she wait for us, but then relented and suddenly, all of us were at the head of the queue, saving at least 3-4 hours.
  There was more to come. Almost, as soon as we were there at the head of the queue, at the first entrance level, the police-wallah ordered to make a 2nd queue starting with us right at the entry gate for the main premises. And within 5-10 minutes, we were inside!!
  The happiness that I felt at that time can not really be described in words. Just 20 minutes back, I was there in the queue with at least 300-400 people ahead of me. And now, we were all inside the main bhawan heading for the darbar. It really feels so reassuring to see that someone is there listening to you.
  While going for the trip and during the ascent, I had several thoughts running into my mind, some random wishes, some random worries and what not. But at that particular moment, the feeling that I had was that of plain happiness. Perhaps, that was the only time that I visited a holy place and didn’t make any specific wish. All i said was “Thanks for everything. Everything that you have given me over the years.” Was very indecisive over certain things some time back, but now I am assured that for the future too, The Goddess will show me the right path.

I hate to say Goodbye!!

I am the kind of person, who sometimes takes time to open up and build bonds with people, but once that is done, I find it really hard when it’s time to move on.

Last Friday was one such occasion. It was my last day with the Print Technologies Group at Adobe. It has been a terrific experience working with the team for over 2.5 years. After the college life, this phase has been the most impressionable one of my life so far. I learnt a lot of things technically and professionally. I had my share of working weekends and meeting late-night deadlines, but each one of these was well complimented by the sense of accomplishment echoed in GM parties, ice-cream treats or sometimes, simply a “Good job” mail from the boss. (I must say sometimes, one such mail can do wonders to your confidence)

But the best part of being in the team was having got a number of good friends. This has been a team that knows how to work hard and party harder and I do believe that I have been able to pick some of this philosophy myself too. I have learnt a lot from the team and have had an amazing time. But finally, it was time for a change. Starting this Monday, I would be joining Team InDesign.

On Friday, I had lots of things to finish off including multiple customer cases and knowledge transfer on two topics. So I decided to reach office a bit early and I was there around 8:30. I started working on the pending tasks: replying to the client queries and getting ready for another case. It was then that Anuranjan walked to my seat and asked me for a treat: “InDesign join kar rahe ho, party to banta hai..”. Although I am looking forward to my new role in Team InDesign, I somehow didn’t find leaving print-team as an occasion to celebrate. I promised him a party for some time in near future. But he insisted on at least having the lunch together in the office cafeteria and to this, I readily obliged. It made sense to share the lunch-table with my current teammates on my last working day with them.

So around 1:30, he and Alok caught me again. I wanted to call out my regular lunch-group too, but Anu assured me that he has talked to them and they’d join us directly in the cafeteria. But it was only when we reached the reception and he started calling up other members of the team that I realized that we are not actually going to the cafeteria. The team had planned a surprise farewell party for me!!

Shortly, we reached Chor-Bizarre, our team’s favorite venue for farewell parties. (or welfare parties as Gauri calls them. ) I was in the hot-seat and people started asking Qs about my experiences with the team. And as soon as I was in a mood to talk something about that, the discussion shifted to some more masala-stuff like my crushes in Adobe and some more things on this line. Now, I surely wasn’t going to answer these in a public gathering, so I warded off the Qs with some weird answers.

Then, we proceeded for lunch. For some strange reason, Chor-Bizarre had included Kadi-Chawal in the buffet menu for the day. Everybody in my lunch-table group, except me, loves it and they never miss a chance to take a dig at me whenever cafeteria menu for a day includes this item. And the worst part is that often lack of options in the office cafeteria forces me to have only Kadi-chawal as lunch. This time too, Sandeep forced me to have a good quantity and I did not refuse.

After the lunch, the group focused back its attention to me. After some weirder answers to the same questions that were asked before, I was asked for a song and a speech. On public demand, I repeated the “Zehreelay” song that I had sung on our last trip to Manali.(I just hope that Chor-Bizarre doesn’t ban Adobe guys after my “performance”. ) Then, it was time for a farewell speech. Well, I wasn’t at all prepared for this and when you’re not prepared, you can only be honest. I winded up with a short speech covering my journey of 2.5 years at Adobe: starting from the initial few months when I did not actually enjoy being in the team to the present moment, when I have started loving being in this team. By the time I finished, I was already very emotional. To make it more touchy, there were some real good words about me from Mohit, Gauri, Anu and Alok. And then, there was this lovely farewell gift from the team: A coffee-mug with pics showing me in different moods. The central pic was marked as Mr. VxWorks. (VxWorks is the platform that I have worked on for most of the time) I really loved that and at the end of the party, I was finding it hard to hold back my tears. I really had a great time being in this team and I would surely miss it.

But a team is surely more than the official work it does together. I still would continue to take gyan on all kinds of topics from Ashish (aka actinium) and solve Hindu crosswords with my crossword-buddy Abhinav. I still would try hard to irritate Bhavya in whatever ways possible. I still would be meeting Dahuja, Anu, Alok, Varun and Surya in Toastmasters meeting.  And of course, I will still be having lunch with my same old lunch group. The new seating plan, which has both my new and old teams sharing the same floor, makes all this a lot easier.

So people, I am still around and it’s not a goodbye. At least, not yet!!

Great vacations..a quick round-up-I

A movie a day, keeps the boredom away!!

This was my mantra for the shutdown this time. I watched a movie a day for nine continous days. Add to that three books, meeting an old friend, meeting Sachi (my 1 year-old niece), hours of sleeping and spending lot of time with my family and I can say that I had a very good time. This was the break that I was looking for. And this was one of those times, when I could stick to my plans.

I had planned to share things in more details, but lack of connectivity to the internet spoiled my plans. As a substitute, here’s a quick round-up of the vacations:

Day 0(Dec24): : Vacations started a day earlier for our team. Description here.
Day 1 (Dec25): Watched Ghajini. Left for my hometown. Started Message in a Bottle. Found it quiet intriguing.
Day 2 (Dec26): Watched Kung Fu Panda. Simple, cute movie for a one-time watch. And always remember, “There is no secret ingredient”   Continued MIAB
Day 3 (Dec27): Met an old friend after more than three years and only the second time our school days. We met at a common friend’s shop. Initially, there were some moments of awkward silence, but then, three of us chatted and chatted for long. Was a real good experience. Looking forward to a bigger get-together and a cricket match around Holi.  After coming back, watched Dor. Superb movie!!
Day 4 (Dec28):Finished MIAB. Okayish read, nothing extra-ordinary. Decided never to read Nicholas Sparks again.  Watched Mumbai Meri Jaan Another very good movie on terrorism. The character played by Madhawan, in particular, was very realistic. Great performances by Soha Ali Khan, Irfan and Kay kay as well.
Next day, when I told my family that I had watched MMJ, I was surprised to know that they had never heard of it. It was same when I had told them about Iqbal, A Wednesday and Dasvidaniya. I guess most of these movies are made for multiplexes in big cities only. It’s a shame that such great movies go unheard of in most parts of the country. Can’t really blame the distributors for this. The audience too needs to get maturity to see beyond the star cast.

Day 5 (Dec29): Went out with my family to watch Rab-ne-Bana-di-Jodi. I was watching a movie with my family after about 10 years. (I guess the last one we saw together was Kareeb ) As for RNBDJ, it was a very confused movie and the story is not gripping at any moment. But it’s still one of those, which you can watch with the family. And with a feel-good fairy tale ending, I knew that my family liked it. My personal rating of the movie: 5.0/10
But for those, who feel SRK sickening, I must say that his performance as the reserved, shy common man was really good. Hope to see a movie with him doing a similar role again. When he was playing Raj, he was as usual repeating himself.
BTW, the movie-watching experience in Saharanpur is still the same as it was 8 years back when I saw Mohabbatein with cousins. It was complete with power-cuts in between, people shouting unnecessarily and unclean toilets. And this is when we went to the so-called best cinema in the city. I wonder when will the city change.

Picked up Morning, Noon, Night by Sidney Sheldon. I had read If Tomorrow Comes as my first Sidney Sheldon novel four years back. This was the only SS novel that I liked and after trying for four/five more titles, I gave up. But this time, I got this from my library on Chaya’s recommendation. And this one surely was different. Very gripping right from the start.

For the rest of the vacations, wait for part 2.

Cutting vacations short.. for bandwidth!!

This was the famous slogan coined by Devang Mehta. He wanted the government to provide the common man with electricity and benefits of information technology too in addition to the three elementary needs.

Not sure when the govt will list the last two as their priority. (They still are struggling with the first three.) But at least our lifestyle had really made these two as absolute necessities. In particular, I am talking about the last item.

I, like almost everyone around me, am a complete internet addict. Although I have cut down my activity on social networking sites (Orkut and Facebook are the two that I am active on) substantially, I still have to check my mails almost every minute. Wikipedia is another thing that I find hard to live without and I really feel restless when I need to know something about a topic and I don’t have wiki to help me. And then there is the blogosphere: There are some blogs that I frequent these days and am gradually developing an addiction towards blog-hopping.  I am not totally addicted to posting on this blog as of now, but it’s very irritating, when you have just thought of resuming blogging and you have a pleothra of ideas to blog about and then you don’t have the internet connectivity.

I knew that this may be an issue when i left for my hometown. In past too, whenever I have visited my hometown, Airtel GPRS has been my slow, but steady companion. The speed can be a real pain at times, but most of the time, it used to be very much tolerable.

But this time, it was quite different. Most of the time, my GPRS connection refused to connect, citing different reasons each time. (Remote computer out of order, PPP protocal terminated, remote hardware problem etc etc) And whenever it did connect, the data transfer was painfully slow and then too, it disconnected in another 10 minutes or so. I managed to check my mails in between, but my frequency on posts on this blog suffered badly. I had some posts written and saved offline, which I tried to post whenever there i got connected. I had some posts planned for my birthday, new year day etc, but without live-blogging, I lost the enthu for these.

Finally, when I could not bear it any longer I decided to cut my vacations short by 1.5 days and left for Noida today morning. ( Had planned for Jan 4 evening earlier) Had to struggle with my lunch and  evening snacks today, but no issues. Ab mere paas internet hai!! 

Hope to post more regularly now.

Ghajini: what a letdown!!

It was one of those rare occasions when I went on to see a movie without having a prior review or idea about the story. I am normally too choosy when it comes to movies, particularly on the big screen. So it’s really rare for me to see a movie without hearing a good word about it either from a friend or a critic. I first experimented with RDB and had a good experience. Decided to repeat this with another Amir Khan starrer, this time with much awaited Ghajini. I had almost no idea about the plot and had not got a chance to read the reviews for the movie except for some news headlines, which claimed Aamir’s performance to be his career best.

Now, when you are talking about career-best performance of somebody,whose list includes gems like RDB, DCH, Lagaan, and Sarfarosh, it certainly raises expectations. And surely, these expectations were not betrayed.

The movie starts on an eerie note. And I am not talking about the first scene yet.. It’s the way initial casting is shown, (the music and the visuals) that sends a chill down your spine and sets the tone for the next three hours.(I suppose that they were taking us through a tour of the human nervous system.) Going forward, the movie maintains a fine balance between the present and the flashback. When the story is in the present tense, it’s a thriller, in flashback, it has a lovely romantic side. And you don’t miss the other side, when one side is being played.In partciular, you are bound to love the scenes when Aamir and Asin are together. Whether it’s the scene when she sells off her car to “help” him, the scene in which they enter the new house together or finally, the last scene in which Kalpana is killed, each scene is  touching in its own way.

As for the acting performances, Aamir was superb as usual. Though I am not sure whether it was his career best, but surely, it was a terrific performance. As the affable CEO in the flashback, he was quite good. But it was his second avatar, that impressed me more. I have seen some of his action packed performances in Sarfarosh or Mangal-Pandey:The rising, but this was the first time I saw him in a beastly role. Flaring his nostrils and flexing his muscles, he personified rage and revenge. Among others, Asin played the role of an upcoming model to perfection. Her entry-point (“Aye Bachchoo” song) lowered any expectations that I could have from an unknown actress. But after that, she was quiet likeable. The villain Pradeep Rawat was menacing in his role as an organ-trading devil. Jiah too was okay in the small role that the script had for her.

You may be wondering about the direction in which this review is going. (especially after seeing the title of the post) Actually, this is the way it happenned. For the first 2.5 hours, I was glued to the seat. But IMO, for a thriller, it’s  often the last 30 minutes that matter the most. If in these 30 minutes, the director connects the pieces well, the movie can make a lasting impression on the audience. This is exactly where Ghajini fails.

There are some gaping loopholes, something that you can never expect in a movie starring Mr Perfection himself. Okay, not everyone of us knows the CXOs of even the biggest companies, but it becomes too indigestible, when they put a bold statement that  “Noone has ever seen Sanjay Singhania” (says Kalpana’s boss b4 the new year party) You’re talking about somebody, who is the CEO of India’s leading mobile company, whose articles are published in leading newspapers like Economic Times, you’re inviting everybody (from presswallahs to NGOs to potential clients) to the event and you expect that nobody has ever seen him before. And then this CEO (Yes, he continues to hold the position) goes on wrecking havoc at will and again no one notices. Yes, one cop does notice and traces him quite easily before getting butchered, but then rest of the police deptt doesn’t bother to catch him.

Another irritating thing was the presence of songs that come out of nowhere. Almost all of the songs could have been just snipped out without the slightest change in the flow of the movie. I thought that Bollywood had left these behind and we now even have some songless movies. Worse part was that the songs were not only out of place, but most of them were intolerable!! (Only exceptions were Guzarish and Kaise mujhe..)

But these flaws are something that I could have lived with. But as I said earlier, a thriller is about connecting the pieces well. And Ghajini does not even make an attempt to do so. I would have liked to know how exactly the friendly CEO turned into a revenge-seeking monster. And that too, when he has no sense of memory left. But not only he remembers Ghajini,the villain, he also remembers each and every one of the killers. He needs to scribble every minute detail so that he will remember the same 15 minutes later; he has his entire body tatooed to remember “Kalpana was killed”, but the director does not bother to show us the transition. How and when did he prepare for this?  And then another transition that the movie misses is Sanjay’s return to normal life. After killing Ghajini, how does he actually remember that his mission is complete. Further, he’s not shown to be convicted or punished for so many cold-blooded murders.  He simply returns to his normal life with an orphanage named after his beloved.

Also, a masterstroke by Ghajini the villain (wiping out all the text on Sanjay’s body so that he has no map to his revenge) is left unanswered. I could imagine the scene, in which Sanjay would have woken up with some vague memories only to see his body with signs of something overwritten all over it.That would have made for a superb scene, but I am sure that must have been editted out to keep the movie within the 3 hour limit. ( Why did they not snip the Bachchoo and lattoo songs instead!!)

The end is a bit touchy with a gift of Sanjay and Kalpana’s footprints followed by a replay of “kaise mujhe.. “.  Despite the feeling of inconclusiveness for the main story, I could notice my eyes getting moist at this moment.
Overall, I’d remember Ghajini as a movie, which for the first 2.5 hours, promised to be in my all time favorite list, but then went down as just another okayish movie. BTW, I am now eager to see Memento and check how was this terrific premise handled there.

Rating: 6.5/10

Winter vacations:simple plans, decent start

The winter-break is back again.. For the uninitiated, Adobe has this policy of keeping its offices closed worldwide for the last week of the year. This shutdown period is something that almost everybody looks forward to. This is a period when you can chill out for 9-10 days without having to worry about any work getting accumulated at your workplace. (Don’t get too envious, these holidays are deducted from our earned leaves!! )

Two years back, I had a wonderful trip to Himachal. Last year’s shutdown was relatively uneventful except for my cousin’s wedding right at the start of the holidays.

For this year, I have some specific plans: Lots of movies, some books, catching on some lost sleep and spending time with my family. Now, this may seem too boring to some of you, but if I look back at the hectic year gone by, this is exactly what I need for a break. Last I made very few trips to my hometown, Saharanpur and all of them on some special occasions.(festivals, niece’s birthday etc). So, I need some time with my family. Reading is something that I love, but I read very few books in full in last one year. As for movies, though I am very selective normally, but last year, I had missed even the movies that I really, really wanted to see.

I had planned to leave for my hometown at about 4:30 in the evening. After doing a bit of cleaning up my room in the morning, I decided that the first day of the vacation can be utilized better than sitting idle in my room. Thought of watching Ghajini, but tickets were not available anywhere. Considered “Rab ne bana di Jodi”, but my roommate Mayank had already watched it. Then, I was reminded of Bhavya’s post and Prat’s comments on watching a movie alone. At least, Prat’s comments seemed to suggest that it’s not that bad an experience. So I decided to go and watch RNBDJ all by myself. (Now, will you stop giving me that stern gaze? I didn’t actually go to see RNBDJ.)

Just then, Monkey came in with an idea of trying out Ghajini at Ghaziabad. I looked and finally found some seats available at Adlabs, Ghaziabad. We booked our tickets and made it to the place just in time. I had suspected GZB-malls to be not so hap and systematic and I was proven right. In spite of the heavy rush , which in no way was unexpected (Public holiday and Ghajini’s 2^nd day), they had just one counter for everything: internet booking and on-the-spot purchase. And there was this heavy confusion over the seats: the seat-map that they show on bookmyshow is quite different from the actual seating plan. Finally, we settled in and watched the movie mostly in peace. Won’t comment on the movie here; planning to write a separate review for that.

Moved on to catch my train after the movie. And while on train, I picked up item 2 on my list: reading some books. I had books of different genres in my kitty ranging from a Harry potter book to a Sidney Sheldon masala novel and a mathematics-based book. I decided to start with “Message in a bottle” by Nicholas Sparks. Looks to be okayish story so far: not too gripping, but not too boring either.

In short, the vacation season has started on a good note. I have quite simple, workable plans and I seem to be on track so far.

Last team-outing of the year

Had a great outing with my team last Wednesday. We normally have a team-outing every quarter. And for this quarter (Dec-Feb), the boss suggested that we have it on the last working day of the year.

I normally hate going for movies for outings, so was bringing out ideas of going for bowling or some other activity. I was especially opposing the idea of wasting an outing on a movie as all others wanted to go for “Yes man”. (or “Sorry Bhai”, which most of us had already seen) I hadn’t watched a Jim Carey movie ever and for some reason, didn’t want to try that either.  I vaguely remember some promos from “The Mask” and perhaps because of those, I found him to be a bit repulsive. But eventually, I had to give in reluctantly as rest of my team seems to be crazy about him.

Anyways, we had planned to leave at 12 and though none of us had actually planned to work before that, it was amusing (though certainly not unusual) to see our boss keeping an eye on everybody and checking, “Kaam to nahin kar rahe ho naa aap??”

We had planned for a lunch before the movie and there was some drama over choosing the venue for the lunch, but finally we settled for Pind Baluchi in TGIP. (One line review: Khana is good, but they make you wait a lot for everything except “aam ka panna”) In any case, we had lots of time at our disposal and we used that for some light moments (some Kodak ones) during and after lunch. And then we proceeded for the movie.

I went with fairly low expectations. As it often happens when you have low expectations from something/somebody, I was in for a surprise. The movie wasn’t great, but was interesting enough for me to rate Jim Carey above the “Govinda of Hollywood” level that I earlier put him at. (Okay, this was meant specifically to irritate some Jim Carey fans. J ) Seriously speaking, I actually liked the movie and found it to be almost in the same genre as some Adam Sandler movies like Click and Anger Management: the “moral behind the comedy” types. And comparing it to the two I have mentioned, I would surely place “Yes Man” at third.

Overall, it was pretty decent and I now want to try some other Jim Carey movies too.  Bruce Almighty and Ace Ventura series are in queue when I return to office in Jan.

After the movie, I returned to office with Abhijeet. (seniormost guy in our group after the boss) In the 15 minutes or so that it took to reach the office, he shared some general gyan about career and life in general and his experiences with Adobe and the software-world in particular.  I always enjoy when somebody senior shares the wisdom of his/her experience and this time too, it was no different. Thanks Abhijeet, I have a lot to learn from you.

We wound up the day with about 2 hours of one-tip-one-hand cubicle cricket. For some reasons, I almost didn’t want to go for the vacations I was waiting for. This always happened to me in my college days and I really liked to see this feeling to be back, this time at my workplace.

Overall, it was a lovely day. I don’t think that anything too significant happened. It was simply that I enjoyed the simple not-too-significant things too to the full. And since I will be moving to a different team next month, this was my last official outing with the team.  I have truly enjoyed being with this team in last two and a half years (especially the last one year or so). I have a lot to say, but maybe I should keep it for my farewell day.