In transit

Can we postpone the movie for the next weekend please?

Now why would you want that? You were the one who asked us all for the movie...

Yes, I know but you see...there is this training thing starting on Monday and I don't want to start my first day at my first job without a good night's sleep behind me.

The first day at the first job. Like so many other firsts...first love, first kiss...the first job is the platform that so many of us have come across (and so many will) while making our transition...a transition from a carefree world where dreams know no end and reality hasn't sunk in yet to a world that is as clear as is opaque...as round as is straight. The stepping stone to the so-called and much-hyped corporate life, the first job prepares one for the days ahead...or does it?

In the very beginning, isn't it all about trying to maintain a straight face with head held high but all the while thinking about what the manager, the colleague, the fellow trainee, the trainer...or even the peon is thinking about one self? Am I dressed properly...is the tie the right length...have I combed my hair the dignified way or are there traces still of the last weekend's spikes...are my shoes shining...is there a smile on my face when I greet my boss...am I interacting sufficiently with my colleagues or becoming either a recluse or too garrulous??? There are so many questions but not as many answers as one bumbles from one formal relationship to another...from one errand to another, trying to find a balance.

The balance does come but a little late, late enough to make you realize that all you have thought of to be true may not be able to stand the test of time and experience. The ideals that your college life taught you, the dreams that you had of your hard work resulting in handsome returns are just those...dreams and ideals. The real life is so different, you feel. There is no one who is your friend in the real sense...all of them are professionals, waiting to bite your back the moment right after they have just scratched it. You start feeling that the veil has lifted and you know that efforts are all good to speak of but in reality, there is much more to progress...to success. You start getting the idea more than anything else, that your fortunes depend not solely on the amount of work that you put in or the nature of results that you have generated but more on how well you have been able to present yourself...how well you have been able to network, to suck up to the people who matter.

The above two stages are so very transitive and boundary-less that many-a-specimen of the first job population that I have been discussing are often left wondering. They don't know when they move on from the confused-and-scared stage to the cynical-and-rebel one. In some cases, the employees' prejudice makes them start off with the second stage itself and the first stage is lost in oblivion just because of the rather uncommon cockiness that might have come from peer advice or to resort to a cliche, general knowledge. However, in almost all other cases, there is this uncertain beginning that is to be invariably seen and following it may be a gradual or sudden movement to the second stage. The second stage is particularly seen to be harmful for the company and this is where the possibility of attrition looms large. In fact, if we take a careful look at the attrition details of most companies, we can quite easily realize that there is simply too much supporting data for the above observation.

Whether it be the attrition data or the employee surveys that the progressive companies undertake, the result is often seen to be the same. There are people belonging to a third class (apart from the above two) who are the most satisfied lot. Not that they do not have ambitions...not at all...in deed, they are much more focussed at what they want from life and are working the fastest towards it. In fact, if we look at the profile of people who hav reached this stage, we will soon realize the reason for their apparent satisfaction with their work place and at the same time, their contribution to what is often known in the corporate lingo as organizational inertia.

This third stage is reached when the winds of change have passed through and done the damage that they could have. It comes, but rarely, to those who let themselves be uprooted by the winds ever so often. It comes to everyone at some stage or the other but it comes earlier to the steadier of the lot, the more focused of the group, the more determined of the pool...people who have spent their work life not cribbing and complaining alone, people who have been at the top without thinking too much about it...people who work smart and not just hard (another cliche, yes but pretty much suited).

This is where the lateral entrants (people who are into their second, third or later jobs) and the experienced people come in. These people have already arrived...they are thinking of strategy (and not in the sense an MBA student thinks about it, if you please)...they plan to align themselves with their company...they wonder about the performance linked incentives with more than mere wonder or a sort of indifference...they either feel themselves to be a part of the family or are too unattached to let even anything else (like a probable increment offered by some other shark in the pond) cloud their actions.

A journey from uncertainty to rebellion to acceptance, the corporate life is not at all as simple and as appealing as it looks from the outside. Of course, there is the financial freedom to a certain extent but at what cost? Is it just a mirage, then, that we look at when we are burning the midnight oil for that entrance, for this interview? A lot depends, I would opine, on the mentality of the person if this question is to be answered. The first stage of hesistant exploration is for the most innocent of them all and honestly, the longer it lasts, the better for all concerned. The sceptic moves on pretty soon to the second questioning stage and if there is a lack of clear puprose, this stage gets prolonged for just a bit too long.

The step that shall benefit the employee as well as the company is to arrive at a mechanism by which the third stage becomes much more porous...where, just like the transition between the first and the second stages, there are ways in which smooth transfer may take place between the "oh wow!" and "oh ok!"...where the enthusiasm and first-timer's freshness contribute just that little bit more to the big picture.

Black wind in the wings and the climax

I have been thinking and this time, there are good reasons for it. The summer project, after days of absolutely-nothing-to-do, is heading for a typical Hollywood climax. Although there aren't going to be exploding tube stations and car chases and that final kiss, but the last few days at this place are sure going to be one whirlwind. With the gap analysis being the mainstay of my project (or rather the project in its totality) and the system B (out of the systems A and B, between which the gap analysis is to be done) not being available yet, and lest I forget, with another four working days to the final presentation, things can be said to be growing into interesting, to say the least.

Be as it may, it does not stop me from having a good time in Cal and since these are the last few days of vacations before I get on to another sort of vacationing on the beautiful hill resort down south, I plan to do anything but let sleeping dogs lie. This weekend, it started with a bit of shopping at Pantaloons on Saturday (after the French class, of course). I and Sandipan got a great Tees bargain and before you start wishing that both of us will be dressed in the same tee some day on campus, let me tell you that we have already entered into the pact not to. Tanu (Sandipan's girl friend) and Rohit (in the E n Y office a few floors above the Pantaloons) were there as well and surprisingly, none of them cribbed about the quality time we were spending looking at and trying out one thing after the other.

However, not to take any chances, we moved on to Sheesha Bar next. I know that the name sounds pretty corny but the place is anything but corny. It is a pretty classy place, in fact, that does not allow people in slippers (not even the funky Yankee travellers, one of whom turned up that day in rugged tees and shorts and of course, slippers). After a few drinks and eats, Sandipan and Tanu made their way to some other Rendez-vous (without the bones in the meat) while Rohit and the poor old me went ahead to a filled-beyond-capacity Pizza Hut. This was the second time in a Kolkata Pizza Hut for me and not any different from the first one: good pizzas, good crowd, and of course, the typical birthday celebration complete with the song and dance and claps routine.

Compared to Saturday, Sunday was not all that exciting. A late Saturday night meant that I got up just in time for the French classes (which start at 3 in the afternoon, by the way). With Sandipan having another plan with Tanu, and Rohit enjoying the roller coasters at Nicco Park with his friends, I was left all alone but not for long as Rohit joined me a little later at City Centre for some coffee table conversation. I must say that the conversations with Rohit over the weekend have been pretty interesting and there have been occasions where both of us have been able to read beyond what the other has spoken. Apart from the conversation, the next best part of the evening was the Masala Cola that we had just before calling it a night. Amazing style, some solid taste and the earthen cups made for some good entertainment. The way the Masala Cola Dada was preparing the thing would have put any bar tender worth his salt to shame. Sprays and mixes and popping the caps and juggling the bottles were all there and more than the drink, the entertainment gave me the paisa-vasool.

Like any other weekend, this one would have been incomplete without the usual dosage of movies. Although Bunty and Babli had to be shelved for a later date because of non-availability of tickets, there were quite a few CDs available at the BJ Market shop. The first one was the screen adaptation of the immensely popular work of fiction, "Gone with the wind". After "The Sound of Music", I had been expecting a lot from this movie as well but for some reason, despite the ten Oscars that it had grabbed in its time, the movie really failed to excite me as much as the other one had.

Scarlett O'hara and Rhett Butler, Melanie Hamilton and Ashley Wilkes were the same, no doubt and the actors did do justice to the roles but still it did not feel the same as reading the book had done. The actors did settle into their characters gradually but their introductions in the movie were not impressive at all. Most of them, when they appeared for the first time in the narrative, looked like caricatures and the gravity of the story got reflected in their faces only when the second half of the movie had well and truly started. Personally, I missed the story of Eileen and Gerald O'hara and Scarlett's early youth that had formed such an enjoyable part of the novel. In fact, the entire good-old-South imagery has been done away with to accommodate the misery of battle and the greed of man that destroys the old order and sets in the new.

The movie is good effort, however, to bring the mammoth classic to everyone's doorsteps and I must say that it has satisfactorily brought the gist of the story up front. Ever since I read the book, I always used to wonder about possibly how the entire length and breadth of the story could be captured on reel but that, the movie has been successful in doing. Probably, if only for this, it deserved its ten oscars and perhaps even more.

The other movie this weekend was the first of the Batman series titled "Batman" (what else? :-)). The Batman series has got some big names to boast of, right through the four movies that have come so far. Michael Keaton, Jack Nicholson, Kim Bassinger, Danny De Vito, Jim Carrey, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Nicole Kidman, and Drew Barrymore are just some of the people who have played some character or the other in one of the four Batman movies. The DC Comics character has always been fascinating read for me beacuse of his, amongst other things, roguish nature and the very absoluteness of his character as far as the nature of dealing with crime and criminals goes.

The movie "Batman" does miss this aspect of Batman's character and though the hooded hero scowls in his mask, Bruce Wayne is shown as the part-bumbling part-brooding character who seems to be as confused as Peter Parker of Spiderman about his convictions (which actually, is not the case if you read the DC comics a little more carefully). All said and done, the movie was some good time spent and I did relish the bringing alive of characters like The Joker, Alfred, Bruce Wayne, and of course, Batman complete with his Bat-mobile.

The last of the movies that I watched over the weekend (not last, literally as I watched it on Friday) but the one that had the greatest impact was "Black Friday". The censor board is not allowing the movie to get to the cinema halls in India but fortunately or unfortunately, the original print of the movie, complete with the candies ads has found its way to the neighboring CD shop, all the way from our beloved neighboring country. The movie, if you haven't heard about it already, is based on the Mumbai riots and specifically looks at the way Mumbai police cracked the entire operation open and how the actors in the crime were brought to book one by one.

The police officer in charge of the case is played by Kay Kay and he has done justice to his role. Confident and strict and determined to find the truth and nail the criminals, he is human enough to be disturbed over the torture that his men have to resort to in order to get the truth out. All the supposed villains (the movie does present a rather single side of the entire issue, proclaiming only the Muslims to be repressed and villainous), apart from Dawood Ibrahim, are handled well and despite the torture and the subsequent opening up, they manage to maintain their convictions and more importantly, the actors have been able to effectively portray this dimension of their characters.

The movie also brings to light one of the most effectively planned criminal activities and on top of that, one of the most successful crack polce campaigns ever. The way one little clue leads to another and the very tenacity with which Mumbai police is shown going after the suspects fills you with a kind of reluctant admiration (reluctant only because of the apparent unfeeling nature of all police men apart from the inspector played by Kay Kay).

In the midst of all these movies and the good time that I have been having in Kolkata, I have also been a little worried lately about the conclusion of it all. I just hope that all this fun is not at some unreasonable cost and that the project thing goes off properly enough. With much depending on how I and Sandipan perform here, I do not want to be a reason for my institute not getting the respect that it deserves...not if I can help it.

The hills are filled with the sound of music

One of the primary factors contributing to the gradual evolution of humankind must be its tendency to perform acts that are not just limited to survival manouvres. Of course, there will be many who will contend that even the seemingly unrelated acts are actually attempts by human beings to attract the opposite sex and thus reproduce better and ultimately keep fighting in the struggle to get chosen as the fittest and thus, survive. However, if we do neglect the rather minor opinion of the die-hard Darwin enthusiasts, it seems that free flowing activities like music, dance, poetry, literature, and so many others are what make humans different from the other species that live from day to day only in order to protect themselves and their offsprings from possible annihilation.

Of the many such differentiating activities, the one thing that keeps coming at the top of most people's lists can be safely assumed to be music. Whether it be the brooding poet giving notes to his ode to some season, or the incoherent lover strumming his violin strings in the dead hours of the night, the sound of music is kept alive and as the moon beam plays hide-and-seek with the lover and the poet, the notes fly up into the air and seem to get mixed into the nature from which they have ultimately evolved. It is in honour of and inspired by God's creations that the best of music comes forth as the ordinary mortal remains immobilized, feeling and listening to the scales finish their octaves as the nature and especially, the motherland that has always given him succour displays its resplendent beauty and wows out all the cynicism.

The immensely popular movie classic "The Sound of Music" opens with the song that has filled the heart of the beautiful, vivacious, funny, and above all different Maria. A would be nun in the Abbey, Maria feels music in her bones and admittedly can not stop singing, not even when she is the Abbey. Nature, the hills and brooks and snow and water...they all bring music as naturally to her as a mother might come to her child in time of need. Maria is full of adventure and the independent streak in her makes her a problem for the Reverend Mother who decides to let Maria go out and feel the real world away from the walls of the Abbey and let her decide and identify the destiny that God has chosen for her.

Sent as a governess to seven children of a proud Austrian patriot, Captain von Trapp, Maria realizes the absence of music in the von Trapp household. The death of Mrs. von Trapp has immersed an otherwise happy family into a gloom from which Maria undertakes to take them out. She teaches the children how to sing and with the notes of "Do Re Mi Fa So La Ti", brings the music back into their lives and the smiles on their faces. In the process, she falls in love (equally reciprocated) with the Captain, their father. Unable to decide her fate and scared of her own self, she runs back to the Abbey and hides in isolation till the Reverend Mother tells her to go out and find her destiny.

The Reverend Mother tells Maria that loving a man does not necessarily mean that she will love God less. A beautiful thought, indeed...something which the fanatics across religions must understand. It is not the celibacy (just to take an example) that is important...what is important is the concept behind it. Loving God with all your heart does not mean that there is no love inside you for anyone else. Loving somone else does not mean that you can not fulfill the destiny that God has decided for you. You can still play your role in the Grand Design and thus make sure that you give yourself over to God (for what God wants is not for us to keep chanting His name every second but to fulfill His scheme of things...finish the job that He has sent us here for).

Maria finally goes back to her family and just as things were starting to get cozy, come the Thrid Reich and the Germans who are taking over Austrian territories. They have not, however, taken over the Austrian spirit yet and as the von Trapp family says adieu to Austria and her people in the Austrian music festival on the stage, they give rise to probably the last independent outcry against oppression. As the mvoie ends rather unfortunately with the von Trapp family making good their escape and leaving behind the mother land that had given them their music, the audience is left with a desire for more...more of the dialogues that are more of songs than dialogues...more of the high-pitch high-note conclusion of songs...more of the dance...more of the smiles...more of the beautiful Austrian landscape.

Julie Andrews is bewitchingly beautful in this movie and with her character being that of a free and unassuming girl, she makes the best out of it. At the same time, Christopher Plummer as Captain von Trapp manages to maintain the inconsiderate-turned-loving father image as also that of the proud patriot. The seven children are as lovely as they come and the youngest of them enchants, in particular. The 1965 classic directed by Robert Wise is one movie that you can watch again and again. It is a movie that you will be happy to show your children, the kind of movie that makes you appreciate the finer things in life, the kind of movie that makes you see the child in you once again...the kind of movie that fills your heart with the sound of music. 

What you see can kill you

After about two hours of head banging at the IE and network settings, the tech support people were finally able to get the PeopleSoft URL work on my system at about 6 last evening. Not that it was of any use as I realized, to my absolute dejection, that the application server of PeopleSoft was down. There remain seven more working days to the presentation and half of the project is pending...not because I did not do anything but more because I could not. With no access to the system earlier and now even with access, no chance of getting in (the application server continues to be down as of this moment), all of it seems to be a sign of things to come. I am not really bothered but sort of know that coming upon me is a stage of quite a few five-hour work days (instead of the usual two or three).

The Blues is one strangely appealing form of music and given its history (with the Civil War and all), it ought to be. The very purpose of this form of music is to pluck at your heart and the way even a single instrument like a guitar manages to do so speaks volumes of the possibilities. As I sat listening to some blues music, I was sure that I am going to be a big fan. Bubbunda, my guitar instructor, does play very well and of course, the excellent collection of songs and guitar solos and other stuff that he has written on three CDs for me is great.

As for my own progress at guitar, even the P of progress does not seem to be forthcoming. I understand that learning anything new is not a joke and especially starting from scratch on a musical instrument is going to require a lot of patience and that it has only been three odd weeks, but inspite of all this, the frustration has started getting to me. Though my fingers move much faster on the fret board now and I am able to make a guitar run sound like a guitar run at times (instead of random strumming as it used to sound like earlier and does at times even now), but there is a lot more to be desired. With my instructor's emphasis on grammar and his eye for detail, I am not allowed to take the short cut and start playing the chords of any song. I just realized the other day that even after another two weeks, I will only be able to speak the guitar grammar fluently (and may be even teach it to a few) but not really able to play a full song (or even a partial one at that). Well, let's persevere, I say and let's see...

The CD shop in BJ market was in full form yesterday with quite a good addition to stock. I got hold of a DVD with the entire Batman series as also a CD with the original print of The Sound of Music. I have not been able to see these five movies yet as yesterday was devoted to apna Bollywood as I decided to match my wits with Soni Razdan and her much talked about (all due to inconsequential reasons) movie Nazar. Now, this is one movie whose tag line is ever so apt...what you see can definitely kill you in this case...if you do not die of boredom, you will definitely die of laughing at the histrionics (or the lack of it) displayed by Ashmit Patel and Koel Poorie. Meera is definitely the pick of the lot and can act but as for the others in the movie, suffice to say that Avatar Gill comes off the best despite appearing in just two odd frames and unimportant frames at that.

Supposed to be a murder mystery, the movie does have some good initial moments. Like Naina, the other release of the week, Nazar is also loosely adapted from the chinese movie "The Eye" but does not manage to do justice to its inspiration. After a decent beginning, the movie falls flat as soon as the two great (read with at least a few tonnes of sarcasm) actors in Koel Poorie and Ashmit Patel make their entrance. I really don't want to waste any more of your time or my blog space so will stop talking about this movie with this well-meaning suggestion...unless you have nothing to do at all...not even a fly left to swat, don't go for this movie.

Amongst other things, UTI Bank has asked one of its summer interns (a girl from IIM Lucknow) to do a project on campus branding. One of the measures she is planning to suggest is for the bank to go to the campuses through sponsorships of institute activities and festivals. I think that it is a good idea for various reasons, the least being a few HBR cases that I vaguely remember addressing the issue. The UTI Bank does need to raise its profile in the minds of the B-school junta who actually associate it with the Government and half of them do not even know just how privately owned and managed it is. I must say that the bank has done some real good work and the most visible of it is the number of ATMs that one can now see spread all across...even giving the ICICIs and SBIs a run for their money in this arena. And by the way, it is also an opportunity for Backwaters, Horizons, et al...anybody listening?

A night in BED

This Sunday night, you will be in bed
but not alone and certainly not sleeping

So went the first few lines of the invitation presentation for the Kolkata alumni freshers meet. For all the appreciation and admonition of the presentation that I received directly or indirectly, thank you all the same. It was just a result of an hour of work-less training time and some use of work-unoccupied office resources. However, what was not such a small thing was the planning for the event itself. Although we did lack in so many things from the planning and execution angles, but the end result turned out to be sweet and an organized and smooth sweet at that.

B.E.D. (short for Bars Entertainment Dining) is a great place to have a party at. With a number of bars, an amazing dance floor with some sexy DJs (the fairer sex doing the honours here), lush green lawns and authentic wooden furniture in the open air restaurant with the live ghazal stage right in front, nothing could have been better. With the rains welcoming the guests who came all drenched and hoping to identify someone from IIMK pretty soon, the beginning was auspicious, to say the least. That little bit of worry that the open air garden restaurant and the ghazal thing might have to be replaced by the indoors restaurant was pulling at me a little but with the clouds clearing away to a beautiful night, all worries were laid to rest.

The first to arrive was a fresher, as expected. In time, the rest of them were there and though we fell short of nearly five people who were expected (all of them alumni, of course), the party, however, was on any day with six each of freshers and alumni making it to BED along with the three of us from the Class of 2006. As the group made its way from the waiting room in the first floor restaurant to the main disc and bar, we were greeted with shots (alcoholic and non-alcoholic). Had I been one of the invitees, I know that I would have loved this little thing and I just hope that the rest of the people did. The only thing that might have gone wrong with this was that some people (mostly freshers) did not realize that there were non-alcoholic shots arrnaged for, too and decided against the thing or went for it (the alcoholic one, at that) only after some insistence.

With the DJs in full swing and the place just beginning to warm up to a Sunday evening (it was 8 PM when we entered, pretty early from a nightclub's point of view), we were all set to rock. Rock we did, with the alumni being such a sport and making their own intro sessions pretty interesting and short but fun. When it came to the freshers, the little bit of grilling was always on. Some took nicely to it, others let their ego come in but what the heck, it is all part of the game. A mixed lot, the Kolkata fresher crowd seemed to be with a bent-on-paying dude and an escorted-quick-to-home dudette, amongst others. I am sure that as we see more of them on campus, we will be able to find out and acknowledge more of the good and bad about them.

The drinks were on and as the atmosphere became less stiff and as stories after stories of the past and present started getting thrown about, the discomfort gave way to the spirits. Fosters and Smirnoff were at their best and so were the RCs and the Bacardis. Soon (too soon), it was time to go out for dinner and after repeated calls for going out and repeated returning calls of staying just a little bit more, we finally made way to the best table in the garden restaurant, the one right next to the ghazal stage. The ghazal artists were good and the only complaint I had was that I could not show the presentations with the music on. Nevertheless, I did make the sales pitch for Backwaters after the preliminary IIMK presentation that Rohit had prepared.

Soon enough, the food was there and we were all busy chatting more with our forks and spoons than with the neighbour. Personally, I liked the spread and though it was not very varied, the taste was good and the items complemented each other. I just hope that the selection of the menu went well to the taste of the rest of the invitees, as well.

While we were busy eating, the first of the interesting things of the night happened. One of the guests who had too much to drink came on the Ghazal stage and demanded to be given the chance to sing. Left without choice, the artists gave way to the guy who made a mess of the Sur-Taal thingy and even a novice like me could point out his faults. And point out his faults we did, with shouts to stop the damn thing and claps right in the middle of a song and other typical stuff. The guy finally left the floor and came to us thanking us for our patient hearing...patient hearing indeed!

The next interesting thing in line was not bad, either. After everyone else had called it a night, I and Sandipan decided to make it to the disc and shake a leg or two...if not for anything else then probably just to compensate for the extra that we had to pay for the food (with two people dropping out even before the dinner). The music was eminently danceable and the crowd decent, too...until the 50-something and fully drunk guy started throwing himself on all and sundry on the dance floor. This was one enthu guy, whom even his relatives could not convinve enough to stay away from the floor. There were also these two women dressed in some strongly colored (typical of the red lighted places) salwar suits who were in the disc as company to two tobacco-chewing middle aged, shabbily dressed fatsos. It might just have been my prejudice playing tricks but then again, it might just have been what I thought it was.

Another stint of the Roy hospitality awaited me as I went to Sandipan's home for a second time this summer. A late night entry (even later because of the antics of Sandipan that enabled him to get the number of one PYT dancing away at BED) and the next day full of some more home cooked food made it worth all the while, as earlier. I also got to watch a nice reality show on AXN called The Contender...quite a nice concept and though most of the things looked stage managed due to some shabby editing, the thing was quite interesting if it was the reality that they actually wanted to show.

After endless days of doing nothing, work seems to have picked up the momentum and I have received access to the new system. The cards are all on the table and I just need to make sense out of them in the coming fortnight or so. Looking at the new system that I have just been given access to, and comparing it to the data and process flows of the current system that I have already prepared, the last step in my project is to do a gap analysis between the two...time to get on to it, I say!

A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away

War! The Republic is crumbling under
attacks by the ruthless Sith Lord, Count
Dooku. There are heroes on both sides.
Evil is everywhere.

In a stunning move, the fiendish droid
leader, General Grievous, has swept
into the Republic capital and kidnapped
Chancellor Palpatine, leader of the
Galactic Senate.

As the Separatist Droid Army attempts
to flee the besieged capital with their
valuable hostage, two Jedi knights lead
a desperate mission to rescue the
captive Chancellor...

Revenge of the Sith completes the circle for all Star Wars fans and fanatics spread all over the world. Having bathed in this genre of movies (yes, it did create a separate genre of its own), the enthusiasts have all been waiting for the moment of reckoning for Anakin Skywalker where he makes the decision that was to clarify the role of Darth Vader in the original Star Wars trilogy. Revenge of the Sith is where Anakin Skywalker becomes Darth Vader, it is in this movie where he has the first of the famous duels with Obi-Wan, it is here that the Chancellor of the Republic proclaims himself to be the dark Lord and tranforms into the Emperor...and of course, it is in this movie that are born Luke Skywalker, Leia Organa, and the Empire.

Technically, Lucas Films have managed to create some masterful stuff that does not fail to get the adrenaline flowing. The light sabers flashing as Obi-Wan fights his best apprentice, the star ship with all its guns blazing, the fighters with their small cockpits and amazing manouverability, the different creatures that inhabit that galaxy far far away, the holographic meetings of the Jedi Council, and of course the stormtroopers with their now famous costumes, are all there in full glory in this movie. The technical supremacy does put a fresh outlook for the new series as compared to the earlier trilogy but then again, the charm in seeing the green little Yoda jumping around with his light saber in the earlier versions can hardly be matched by the too-digital Yoda who fights but is unable to defeat the Sith Lord.

One more way in which the movie scores over (or I should rather say, is different from) the first three is the undertone of evil that it is able to bring in to the characters and situations. Return of the Jedi or even The Empire strikes back were rather soft on the evil and the villains (even Darth Vader in the last one) were reduced to caricatures. Revenge of the Sith, however, brings all the tomfoolery to rest as it brings out the evil in Anakin Skywalker ever so wonderfully and does full justice to that famous conversion of the most powerful Jedi into the most powerful Sith Lord.

For all Star Wars fans, the two most important sequences of the series are explained in this movie...the way Darth Vader is born is, of course, one of them, complete with the Obi-Wan duel and the moral struggles of the frustrated Jedi under the influence of a wily Sith Lord. The other important thing is the prophecy that says of Anakin to be the one who will destroy the Sith and bring balance to the force and how the coming of Darth Vader and the birth of Luke and Leia seem to negate that prophecy but not really so...

The best part about this movie is that despite its entire story being anything but hidden, it makes the things come live with all the drama and all the unexpectedness that a thriller can hope for. It is so difficult to match the expectations of generations of fans who have grown on the cult of the Star Wars series and give them something that they can believe to be a suitable explanation of all that they had been seeing over and over again in the movie re-runs, of all that they had anticipated to be behind it all, of all that their juvenile minds had made up about the story before. It won't be an exaggeration to say that Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith manages to do all that and more.

As far as the performances are concerned, they had to be creditable to convince viewers of the evil that surrounds the birth of Darth Vader and fortunately, apart from my personal Obi-Wan disappointment (Ewan Mcgregor seems as if he has just been woken up and asked to smile and look silly...he is a much better actor than this and Obi-Wan's character a finer one, too), rest of the deal is quite good. Anakin, played by Hayden Christensen is definitely the pick of the lot as he manages to portray on screen, a person who is evil but also show pretty convincingly that the most evil thing about him is that he does not think that what he is doing is wrong. He believes in his evil with all faith and of course, all the force. Ian McDiarmid as Emperor Palpatine is sufficiently dark and manages to bring in a fine balance between trying to be evil and turning out to be comically evil. Even the shorter roles like those of Padme (Natalie Portman) and Mace Windu (played by Samuel L. Jackson) are finely etched and performed to a fault.

The direction is adequately done and as I have already mentioned a number of times, manages to bring about a satisfactory culmination of the Star Wars saga through some wonderful undertones that the different characters are made to display. Whether it be the evil of Anakin or the helplessness of Padme, the compulsion and pain of Obi-Wan or the lusty hunger for power of the Emperor...everything has an authentic feel about it.

More than anything else, this movie can be counted upon to bring the force to even those who have been aloof from the saga for so long...the first timers would love the movie and ask for more and as for the veterans, I can only say that it you have not been able to see the movie yet, it can only be because either the tickets were unavailable or because some one or some thing was cracking up pretty badly near you...so in order to get you free from your ticketless or incidentful worries and move on to the nearest special effects rich theatre...may the force be with you!

The life and times of...

Since I do not have much to do anyways and since there is not much happening in my life either, I just thought that maybe I should do a little plagiarising (from I-don't-remember-which-blog) and use an idea that I have been "inspired" by. So here go the titles and first sentences of the first entry of the month for all the months that I have been blogging. Incidentally, this month also marks the completion of one year of blogging for me (I started off on May 3rd, 2004).

Once compiled, these do make for some interesting reading, at least for me :-)

May 2004 (the 3rd)

One long day

Another day passes with neither news nor immediate hope of the IIMK results.

June 2004 (the 1st)

Working for free

I have been working for free once again, and that too during my last few days at Infy.

July 2004 (the 7th)

Inside God's own country

Finally, I am in IIMK.

August 2004 (the 1st)

The tragic comedy

The play was a mess...
I must bow down to them, the play was a real torture...
Next time onwards, don't let these junkies come on stage without audition...
What a bore...
What have you made these juniors do...

September 2004 (the 1st)

Dahi vadai...garam samosa...masala dosai

I had promised...to serve masala in this post...and so be it.

October 2004 (the 3rd)

9 days and 1250 kms in God's own country

Day 1: 125 kms from Kozhikode to Thrissur
Day 1: 65 kms from Thrissur to Athirappally
Day 2: 70 kms from Athirappally to Kochi
Day 3: 60 kms from Kochi to Aleppey
Day 5: 120 kms from Aleppey to Thekkady
Day 6: 110 kms from Thekkady to Munnar
Day 9: 300 kms from Munnar to Kozhikode

380 kms in no-man's land

1250 kms of bliss in God's own country

November 2004 (the 9th)

Not Fair

There are times when happiness knows no bounds and yet there are others, when there is no limit to the tears that come to the eyes.

December 2004 (the 6th)

Of winning hearts and heartlessness

Life does seem to have taken a strange turn this term.

January 2005 (the 3rd)

Happy New Year!

Bombay, or Amchi Mumbai, as the locals call it lovingly and often with an awe-struck catch in their voice, is one of the cities that has its own memories for me.

February 2005 (the 1st)

Is it the end...or the beginning?

If they ever tell my story
Let them say
that I walked with giants
IIM Kozhikode
Backwaters 2005
i was there!

March 2005 (No post)


April 2005 (the 15th)

Getting a hold over my self

It has been four days since I joined PwC (as the HR guys requested, I must be careful how I write it, even if it is in the short form...in full, by the way, it is written as PricewaterhouseCoopers with only the P and the C in caps).

May 2005 (the 2nd)

Birthday celebrations and Patna eat-outs

It was really sweet of Shanu to have been waiting for me to cut his birthday cake.

Toon toon go away?

A large part of yesterday, directly or indirectly, was devoted to the mid term review presentation of our summers. All the nine of us (from four IIMs and XLRI) were all keyed up for the show and were wondering aloud about the usefulness or futility of the exercise. We were also wondering as to the audience of our review presentations. We knew that our respective project managers will be in attendance, but exactly what would be the representation of HR and the higher echelons (including partners and directors) was still an open question. In fact, that would have decided the seriousness with which we would have gone into the presentation, assuming, of course, that the respective managers were already aware of our work (or the lack of it).

As it turned out...or as I made it turn out, my presentation had its own share of informal stuff which started giving me cold feet just when it was time for the presentations. By the time the schedule came, I was hoping...no praying that they put me first because as Khaitan had so ominously been wondering (aloud, of course,...curse him :-)) during lunch time, what would happen if the partners say that they wanted me to skip the cartoons and come to the real part. It was not all cartoons, my presentation, but I was still banking on the toons to give that different class to my stuff. The schedule, of course, did not have my name at all. The first six were listed and as for me, Sandipan and another guy from IIMA, with none of us being in the data warehousing projects, we were put on hold.

Fortune takes strage turns, though. Not sooner than I had come back and settled into my seat worrying about my late turn, the presentation co-ordinator came and told me that I had been called by the HR head. Strangely enough, all the time that I was going up the elevator to meet him, I was thinking that he had probably gone through my presentation and was now calling me to admonish me over the cartoons. It was not that, fortunately and more fortunately, he wanted me to start the presentations since the project manager, I was reporting to, would not be available later in the evening. The cartoons went off really well with the two of them and the PM actually seemed to be a Dilbert fan and had already read most of the cartoons I had displayed in my presentation...what good fortune indeed!

The icing on the cake was that the senior partners and directors (just the four of them, actually) came in the latter half of my presentation and as per custom (of not interfering if one is not present from the beginning), did not ask any questions though they did witness the juiciest parts of my presentation. As I came to know later, they were unrelenting and untiring with the other trainees whose presentations followed mine. I got off on this count, too.

As for the other trainees, as I mentioned already, none of them were spared the quick wit and technical skills of the partners. Most of them were on the wrong side of the verbal gun yesterday and were cursing me for my luck...well, a dog has to have his day some day, what say!!! (a nice rhyme, by the way ;-))

But then, there are a lot of things yet to be done. As my project manager told me at the end of it all, the most significant thing that is going to determine my success or failure in this summer internship program is going to be my final gap analysis report which will be a sort of testimonial to my efforts.

I may not have realized it but the presentation had been a source of tension for me over the last few days. When I came back to the PG after the presentation, I immediately fell dead on the bed. As Asif told me later, I had been snoring away to glory, completely oblivious to all the hullaboo that was happening around me with music playing, people shouting and chatting and what not. Though I did go for the guitar lessons when I got up, I did not particularly put my soul into it yesterday...absolutely no practice and almost imperceptible interest in what was happening.

Coming back to the PG, I found that I had been locked out twice in a row (day before yesterday was a late night because of the Joe Satch show). Luckily (my luck was too good yesterday *cross fingers...touch wood*), the maid came to open the door and thus, the PG Aunty had no way of knowing that it was the same guy who had interrupted her dreams two nights in a row with a phone call in the dead of the night (which she defines as 10:30 PM, by the way).

I must start with the rest of my project work pretty soon if I am to complete the thing in time but then, I have to wait for access to be given to me for the new system and only then can I do something worthwhile. As for the time before that, I guess it is going to be another round of net surfing, blog reading, some chatting (at least as much as the highly erratic messenger connection allows me), perhaps even an e-book reading or who knows...there might just be some work :-)

Just too much...

My Yahoo status message reads: "apun ka weekend...15 hours of movies, 3 hours of guitar concert, 6 hours of French classes, 8 hours of guitar practice, 1/2 hour of work". It does give me a pretty good idea of what I will have to write if I were to cover the events of the past two days. And that is precisely what I am going to do because presenting life as it goes past me gives me the biggest licence to express myself and my thoughts in the way I want to. So here goes...

Kya kool hain hum is an absolute timepass but in the league of movies I like, you will never find a place for this Tushaar (I don't know the latest spelling) and Ritesh starrer. Above everything else, it makes an absolute mockery of the feminine gender and societal issues. In fact, I am pretty surprised why no feminist group has taken up arms against the movie yet. It is so insensitive that it glorifies rape by trying to base the entire story on how a female police officer (the paan-chewing and naturally-sensuous-but-still-trying-to-shed-clothes Isha Koppikar) tries to entice a serial rapist killer suspect into raping her so that she can catch him red-handed. On the other side, the other female lead (who else but Neha Dhupia would be fit for this) tries the same with a guy who she thinks is in love with her brother...man, how uncool can you be!

Main aisa hi hoon, though a non-starter, will certainly find a place of pride in my movie list. Apart from Devgan's acting (which, once again, turns out to be two notches above the rest), the entire plot and the supporting cast (including the for-a-change-looking-good Esha Deol) make for an interesting movie. To add to the flesh, there is the extremely graceful Sushmita Sen (I have been thinking lately...I know it is hard to digest for me but probably she did deserve to win over Aish) and one gifted performer in the girl who plays Devgan's daughter in the movie. The sentiments and emotions are all there in the movie but in as much restrain as ideal...no overdose of loud guffaws or sobs...a balanced directorial outlook and some decent music, too.

It was the third time or so that I feasted myself on these two of Tarantino's amazing works. Personally, I prefer the original Kill Bill to the much hyped sequel. The way Uma Thurman and Lucy Liu fight it out on the snow in the climax of the movie and the scenes in the middle where Thurman demolishes her enemies are pretty much in a different league. Kill Bill 2 is darker and perhaps because of this, did not appeal so much to me. Luckily, I got some amazing prints of the two movies and enjoyed them a great deal.

Swordfish was the umpteenth time, too and so was Face-off. Nevertheless, the movies were on as soon as I heard the familiar Travolta attitude-filled tone coming from the speakers of Anurag's (my PG mate) laptop. Swordfish is certainly meant to be enjoyed all the more by the geeky types...or at least those who know the difference between a 64 bit encrypted string and say...a rope string :-). Halle Berry is great, BTW. Face-off, of course, is full of spice and dares you to let your eyes go off the screen for even an instant. Full of chills and thrills, the chemistry between Nicholas Cage and Travolta is electrifying (BTW, the Amitabh-Bajpai effort in Aks was not bad, either).

The God of guitar was in town. The first ever western music conert by an international artist (I have had quite some experiences of desi bands trying to play foren music) that I attended, I found it worth all the money and hype. Rushing past the barricade into the higher-priced stall was fun as long as it lasted but once we settled down (which is to be read as "once we started to shout our heads off while head banging to the music), the magic began. He really deserves the praise that is heaped upon him and man, does that guy have some stamina! He plays music like triple octave on his guitar (or maybe, I should say guitars, given the frequency with which he was changing them) and keeps moving to the lower end of the fret board, feels as hot as some one in a furnace and yet keeps stringing away for two and a half straight hours without any sort of a break.

The basic difference between an Indian music exponent and Joe Satriani (as also others I have seen performing in video) is, in my humble opinion, one related to the intended audience and its importance in the concert. While the typical Indian musician plays for a higher power (or spirit) and interacts more with his/her music than the audience, a western music performer relies on adrenaline to take the concert through. To get the required dosage, these performers have to be on a platform where they can hear people root for them, shout out, and bang their heads. This is what drives them and this is what gets the best out of them.

The French classes have slowed down a bit or perhaps, all of us in the batch have become a lot more comfortable. Personally, I felt that a lot more could have been covered in the class and we could have gone to at least one level higher in the two days. But there must be purpose in the way things went and the people who designed the course, of course know much more than I do about what they should be doing. And anyways, if we are able to understand this much this quickly, all the better for us.

Unfortunately, I had to miss three straight days of guitar lessons on account of night outs and presentation preparation and what not but I did manage to get in some quality practice time. I am worried about the final shape that this thing is going to take, however. The time that I am spending on this activity, though quite a lot in absolute magnitude, appears quite small when I try to relate it to what I have really learnt. It will suffice to say that in two odd weeks, I haven't progressed much and given the little time remaining, I am forced to think...

After arranging a string of cartoons for my presentation, I did not want to change it and spoil the effect by adding any text :D. All the topics had been covered through some typically satirical Dilbert, CnH and Peanuts cartoons and the real content was as good (or as bad) as a disturbance in the scheme of things. Sivaram (the IIMC guy interning with me) suggested that I let the presentation remain as it is and give printouts of the actual presentation to the audience. Good idea but I did not take the risk and instead put in the real stuff in my presentation itself in a way that the cartoons came first and gradually gave way to the more serious (and relevant ;-)) text.

I have been tweaking the presentation since morning today and have just come back after what, I would say, was a pretty successful and comfortable presentation. This post has ran into quite some length now so I will post more about my presentation and those of my fellow trainees in the next post. Till then...

The usual crib and some more

The post-a-day run seems to have run out (literally) and I am back to keeping irregular rendez-vous with the blog. However, it is not too irregular, either considering that I am still able to write about almost everything that has been happening out here in my life and around.

A one-off quiz that I took at one of those livejournal quiz sites put me down (or should it be up?) as a life blogger, essentially someone who writes about what has been happening in his/her life, whether or not that is interesting read for others. I don't know how far it reflects on my blog or on myself, but then again, questions at the seriousness (and the need for it) of blogging keep popping up every now and then. I keep wondering if I should start testing my PG Wodehouse memories and try to re-style some incident (real or fictional) a la Woodie just for the heck of fulfilling that long-hidden desire to write. On the contrary, should I continue to write about things that happen in my life, just as they are...or should I go back to writing about, in addition to the events themselves, my feelings regarding those events and associated people?

Probably, the last one is out of the question, what with the feelings of others involved and all that...but as between the first and the second choices, I am often confused. That is the reason why my blog is home to movie and book reviews (based on whatever little understanding that I have of them), too and not just my raves and rants...and yes, the occasional blurting out of what I have been thinking, even at the risk of sounding like a "serious blogger" and thus putting off some people, certainly adds to the diversity.

Updating the blog regularly or not, one thing that I have been doing regularly nowadays is to not let a second tick by without doing anything enjoyable. Continuing in the same mode, Dan Brown series seems to be over, with the last of my collection, "Deception Point", getting wolfed down last evening. Although science and its discoveries do make their entry into this novel, but the political overtones make it a tad different. I must say that such political thrillers should be best left to the the likes of Jeffery Archer and Co. and Dan Brown should have focused on what he does best, science, religion, symbolism, and of course, thrills.

The story is all about NASA, which is on the brink of being privatized and since it is election time, the NASA is not alone in getting the mud heaped on them. The President of the United States has to save his office from the allegations of overbudgeting and loss making that have been brought forward by his primary opponent in the presidential race. A big help comes to the NASA and the President when a discovery is made of a meteorite with fossilized remains of extra terrestrial life, proving beyond a doubt, the worth of all investments made in the NASA.

The President, in order to bring all doubts and cynicism to rest given the volatile time of impending elections, engages the help of four civilian scientists and the White House's liasion officer, who incidentally happens to be the daughter of the President's opponent, and an embittered daughter at that. The book's title leaves no room for doubt as to what happens next but the way it happens is Dan Brown's forte. He tries to keep the identity of the villain hidden and probably succeeds, too but only for the naive ;-). My logic behind outguessing a Dan Brown novel stands vindicated after yet another of his character-building-followed-by-partial-demolition exercises.

The Joe Satriani show is finally happening in Kolkata on Sunday (at the Ravindra Sarobar stadium) and tell you what, I have got the tickets. Widely touted as The GOD of Guitar, Joe Satriani is credited with tutoring guitar greats like Steve Vai and others including lead guitarists of bands like Metallica, amongst many more. This is probably the first time that I shall be attending a concert by an international artist and it will be interesting to observe the difference between them (or at least the sole representative of them, whom I will be watching this Sunday) and the exponents of Indian classical music, whose numerous shows have graced my graduate college (IT-BHU), situated right in the seat of the Indian classical music, Varanasi. More on that, however, in the next post on Monday.

Monday also promises to be an important day at work. The mid term review of our summer projects is scheduled for Monday afternoon and all the summer trainees in the TAS division are to present a half hour each presentation on what they have done so far and what they shall be doing in the remaining month that they are here in the company. The audience of the presentation is expected to be quite high profile with directors of the company, senior project managers and of course, the HR team planning to attend. I have just kicked off with preparing the presentation. Trying to make it look a little different from what others are going to present (I am sure that in the midst of all IIM students, it will be difficult to score much on the presentation style alone), I have decided to take some risk and go a little informal, making a statement through cartoons and some bold contours on neutrally colored and level plains of presentation slides.

In the meanwhile, the fingers of my left hand (especially the little finger) continue to play tricks with my brain's pain cells and the first few minutes of guitar practice every day get wasted in gingerly checking if I can still handle those strings without some permanent damage to my 'pinky' (this is the term my guitar instructor has for the little finger :-)). French classes are going to happen tomorrow and day after and I have not gone through anything that was taught the last weekend :-). Rohit is in town and I will be meeting him tomorrow and the first question that he is going to ask is about the alumni freshers' meet, which I haven't done anything about :-). 

Now that my cribbing is over, I can peacefully go back to preparing my presentation...Dilberts and Dogberts of the world, here I come... :-)

Too much for a lifetime

I hope that I am not taking up things that are beyond my capacity to handle them. It has been five straight days since I watched a movie and for me, this is quite a lot. The initial days (it has been more than a week, actually) of the guitar lessons are turning out to be quite a task, what with the notes, the cycle of C, the fingers and the chords. At the same time, the French classes scheduled for the weekend are already giving me jitters as I am not sure how much of what was taught last week will I be able to recollect and retain when the time comes for the next lesson. On top of everything else, of course, is the reason why I came to Kolkata, which is, despite what anybody else might think, my summer internship ;-). With the new phase of the project having started and the new team working with seemingly unstoppable enthu, things do not seem to be following a straight line anymore.

The alumni freshers' meet for IIMK in Kolkata is due this month. When Vaibhaw from the Alumni Committee had asked me to take care of it, I had said yes without giving it a thought as I was in a hurry to do a lot of things...pack my stuff, submit assignments, take home end-term papers and what not. Now that I have started making the arrangements and actually calling up people, I have realized that it might turn out to be more than I had bargained for. There are hardly any alumni in Kolkata and even all the freshers are not going to be here in May. As for our batch, there are just two people...Sandipan and me, waiting for Rohit who was supposed to be here this week but has not contacted any of us so far.

I guess that this much of cribbing is enough for the day so shall move on to some thing different...not too different though. I am still in the Dan Brown mode and after finishing a higly engrossing "Angels and Demons" (and giving myself a small break...just enough to re-vitalize my taste buds), I started off with "Digital Fortress". Recommended by a lot of people as delicious fare for the computer-savvy, I had great expectations from the book. To say the truth, it did fulfill most of them. There were a number of references to viruses, worms, 64 bit encryptions, cryptography and powerhouse parallel processing. And more than that, there was the typical Dan Brown thrill-a-minute caper that made the story that more interesting.

However, the book did not excite me enough to finish it off in one sitting, as had been the case with the earlier two. One primary reason for it can be that I may have got used to the tricks of the trade. The character building of the villain of the piece has become too much of a common trait to be a coincidence now. Brown seems to have this habit of building up the qualities of the character who turns out to be the villain in the latter half of the book. And not just this...you can also find the villain to be not a villain actually...just a person who does what he/she believes to be right and in the process, crosses the line somewhere. These people, as Dan Brown shows them, are not inherently bad, but have been forced to do things by the situation and their convictions which often make them prone to be mentally disturbed, too.

Digital Fortress is the story of NSA (National Security Agency for those who haven't read much of Ludlum) and its high profile code breaking Cryptography division which is held to ransom by an ex-employee via the threat of having developed an unbreakable code, a code with mutation strings that can not be out-guessed even by the fastest of parallel computing that NSA is capable of unleashing. Unfortunately for the reader, the suspense is too thin to be of any sustainable interest and not just the villain, but even the fate of the unbreakable code and the climax of the story are quite predictable...certainly a little timid when you compare it to the twist-a-page nature of his other two books. Anyways, the next in line is Deception Point by the author...if things go as peacefully (sic!) as they are going right now, I just might be able to finish it in this lifetime. :-)

Oui, c'est Louis!

What a full weekend it has been! I know that this blog mentions just how even most of my earlier weekends in Kolkata have been full, but this one takes the pride of place amongst all. Having ditched Sandipan for the last few times (that is what he says), this weekend was reserved for a rendez-vous at his place. At work, the project had come to the end of the first phase and I was expecting to be taken off it and put into another at any time. The HR Head had called for a meeting at 4:30 in the evening but it never happened and so it was at 6 that I left with the entire batch of trainees for an evening of fun that we had been promising each other for quite some time. The idea was to go to some hangout, have a drink or two with some snacks and then head for some movie.

A good idea or so it seemed till we reached Opium, the hangout selected for...well, hanging out. The place did not appeal to the refined tastes of many but after some cribbing, owing mainly to the fact that most of the others were not willing to travel all the way to the city to go to Someplace Else or one of the better do's, we made peace with Opium. After a few drinks and some food, we decided to call it quits and while some of the people left for their homes, I, Sandipan, and the two IIMC guys, Aditya and Sivaram, decided to move on to Someplace Else for some good music and some good crowd. The ambience was great, as it was when I had been there the last time, and by the time we reached Sandipan's home at about 11 in the night, I was satisfied with some good music still ringing in my ears, dead tired, and my stomach was filled right up to the brim.

The amazingly affectionate hospitality and the delicious dinner that Sandipan's mother had put out for us, however, turned out to be my undoing and...I hogged. I kept hogging for the rest of the weekend and had it not been for the few outings that we had and the few chances of walking and sweating the calories off that I got, I would surely have gained a couple of kilos on this weekend trip to Sandipan's home...not that I am reasonably sure that I haven't gained those couple, either.

The first of these outings that I talked about was to the Alliance Francaise for the third of the weekend classes in the month-and-a-half elementary course in French. We had already missed the first two classes because of joining one weekend late but the enthusiasm of the teacher (Mr. Amitav Ghosh, who quite resembles Prof Broaca, back at IIMK, in his teaching style and enthu) and the help that we got from some of our batch mates (especially Sweta, who is an ICFAI Hyderabad passout working in Kolkata, and who loaned us her notes of the first two classes for getting them photo copied) compensated for whatever trouble that we did have in the first hour of the first class.

French is understandably, one of the more popular languages in the world, what with its musical feel and the romantic appeal of all things assoicated with France. In fact, I have still not been able to recover from the extremely melodious way in which the French pronounce the phrase "Oui, c'est Louis!" (don't ask me why this phrase of all...my subconscious just picked it up amongst others). BTW, the way it goes is something like this...oooiii, say Loooiii :-). And so it was that by the Sunday class, we were quite sure of our foot hold and quite in sync with the rest of the batch (especially Sandipan, who even took a lead over others, partially due to his starting advantage of having learnt a bit of Italian earlier, which is helping him at quite a few occasions in this course, as well).

Once we were out of the class, we had some other concerns. Tanu, Sandipan's girl friend and Pallavi, my cousin had both agreed to come for the night's party at Fusion, one of the better known Kolkata discs. Pallavi is going to join Wipro at Bangalore as a Business Analyst and she was going to be in town for the weekend. When she heard about the party at the disc, she wanted to go and get a feel of the Kolkata discs after having been through the razmatazz of the Goa night life (she passed out of GIM this year). I had to ditch my own friend I had already asked for the party and had quite a row over the thing with her and we are still not talking :-( but that is perfectly okay...after all, I might not be meeting Pallavi again for quite some time and family takes precedence for me...any day.

The concern that I had been talking about was only this...that I had to go and pick Pallavi up from her Bua's place in Golf Green where she was staying. Having not known the folks and not having met them ever, I was feeling pretty uncomfortable about the entire thing...as if I were a rogue come to ask my own cousin out for a late night party. I perfectly understood Pallavi's Fufaji's hesistation in letting Pallavi go without ensuring that there was someone escorting her to the disc and all the way back to home but as I said, it just did not gel with me. I was really glad, however, to have met Gudia didi, Pallavi's cousin, at the place...though she was busy with getting her kid ready to go home with her and we hardly spoke and though we had met for the first time...I still felt that somehow she seemed to be aware of my discomfort and silently telling me that it was okay. I relaxed and all thanks to didi for that.

The party, however turned out to be a dud. With Jassi-turned-Jessica-but-actually-Mona-Singh scheduled to make her appearance at the disc, the place was choc-a-bloc with some faces and chartacters that you will never expect in a night club. For the very first time in our lives, we saw kids in a night club...and not just kids, but fully grown Papajis and Auntyjis, too...and to top it all, some salwar and sari clad behenjis and some kurta clad bhaiyyas, as well. They had all come to watch their girl-next-door-turned-glam-doll Jassi-Jessica and until she arrived at about 11:15, the party was at a stand still...well almost...but for the last three quarters of an hour when they played some real music and all the six of us (including Sandipan's friend 'chai' and his girl friend) had a good time shaking our legs. By the way, I realized that it does feel a little awkward to be dancing with your cousin in a night club and neither of us could really dance with as much abandon as we could have, had the company been of friends. Strange but still true!

Much before the DJ took over and the dance started, the disc managers had been thrusting upon us, their idea of entertainment. It consisted of three skimpily (but smartly) clad Chinki girls (they called themselves Filipino...they might have been, too...who knows) trying to make a mess of some good songs by trying to shake to the music and sing at the same time...all the while, making sure that their stilletos did not slip on the polished dance floor. Mona Singh's arrival (and she does look stunning, BTW) put an end to all fun that had started post the torture with the DJ taking a hold over the proceedings. We had to make a beeline for the exit at about 11:30 (10:30 being the time that I had promised Pallavi's Bua we will be back home by).

With "Chai" doing the Michael Schumacher (and a drunk Schumacher at that), we reached Golf Green in good time and it was at midnight that we stood outside Pallavi's Bua place, expecting the worst. It did not come immediately...not in my presence at least, might have come the next day for Pallavi...am not too sure. We did hear some rapidly spoken Bangla from Sandipan's mom though, but since I could not make head or tail of it and anyways, since it was not meant for me, I just sat down to another dose of royal pampering and another lavish dinner to fill an already filled stomach.

Sunday's French class took a little longer and though there was quite a lot that was covered and despite the pace being scorching, I enjoyed the session. However, I did not enjoy the following session that we had with Sandipan's friend, Soochna (nice name, isn't it?) at Camac Street. Heavily made up and full of words, my prejudice started working as soon as I saw her. The telephone call from my sister, Priya, having put my mind in the dark mode, I was a silent spectator to the lively and intelligent (my prejudice turns out to be unreasonable, too...at times) discussion between Sandipan, Soochna and Sivaram (yes, all three names starting with 'S' and as for Sivaram, the fellow trainee from IIMC, we met him roaming around the Camac Street, absolutely out of the blue).

We finally managed to make it an early night and Sandipan's mother...was she relieved! After two more meals (another couple and I would be bursting out of my widest pair of jeans), I bid good byes to Sandipan's folks and the excellent stay that I had at his place over the weekend. The odd one out (not having carried my formal office wear, I was still in my casuals) in the company bus, I was relieved at not having to hide beneath the last seat. I must have been looking like a pig, in worn jeans, not really spick and span tee, and with a stubble that had been growing for the last five days. I skipped out of the bus as soon as it reached office and instead of moving in with the rest of the people, made a rush to my PG.

A clean shaven, fresh smelling, nicely dressed me came to office to realize that I had not been put into another project. However, the second phase of my project is going to start now. Along with two others, I shall be given access to the new ERP system that the UK office is currently following. With the Indian system already charted out, my job now consists of trying to understand the UK system and prepare reports relating to the gap analysis between the two systems and regarding the things that the Indian system might put in its wish list for the adoption of the UK system to be profitable.

Another realization since the morning has been that after Friday's bout of not-strictly-related-to-project activities of the trainees observed by some senior people in the company, the mid term review has been called for. We are all scheduled to present a status report of all that we have done so far and a plan of action for all that we are going to do over the coming month...and all this action happens live...right here in Kolkata...at the 16th of May, which incidentally is exactly a week away...one whole week?? We will be able to make a dozen status reports in this much time :-)

Godspeed!

I had to wait for one entire day before I was finally called upon to make the presentation and it did turn out to be pretty low key, not at all what I had expected. Probably, the decision had already been taken and the presentation was of academic interest  only, as they say of the last cricket one-day in a series that has already been won and lost. The proposal to adopt the UK system, it seems, had already been rejected and the UK guy might have been trying to salvage his position by studying my presentation and trying to draw parallels between their system and ours. At 6:30 PM, when I finally gave my presentation, it was not too detailed and of the 50 odd slides that I had prepared, I was asked to cover only the selected few that had created some doubts in the mind of the intended audience of the presentation. From my end, I would say good riddance if this project dies out here and I am sent on to another by the start of next week or better still, by the time office ends today. I have decided to meet my Project Manager today..let's see what he has to say.

While I was waiting for the presentation, I decided to make some good use of time and got on with the e-book version of Dan Brown's Angels and Demons. Widely publicised as the prequel to The Da Vinci Code (actually, the stories have no relation apart from Christianity, of course and the books are just part of the same series with the symbologist, Robert Langdon as the common protagonist), the book scores over its more famous cousin in terms of thrills but as far as the symbology (which really made The Da Vinci Code so popular) is concerned, this book is certainly a poor, and yet somehow fitting, cousin.

Based on the eternal conflict between religion and science, the book tries to trace history in the backdrop of the current times. Right from the times of Copernicus and Galileo to the modern times of the nuclear bomb (and even more serious, harmful , and as the beginning of the book says, factual technology called the antimatter), science and religion have been at loggerheads. The analogies drawn right through the book are impressive. I particularly liked the part where one of the staunch church believers admonishes science for its reluctance in accepting a greater power in things that it has not been able to explain. He says, regarding the beginning of the universe, that scientists are ready to believe a mathematical near-impossibility of perfect conditions for the genesis of creation but are not able to see a bigger hand in the creation of those conditions. Well said, I believe....given the Time Zero's non-explicability in the Big Bang theory.

Religion supporters go on to argue that science is taking the soul away from the human race by making the entire lot cynics and unable to appreciate the finer things in life, unable to submit to a bigger power. Surprisingly, little has been said about the point of view of science. In a pretty lop-sided story for most of the part (except the end, perhaps), science is shown to be the villain of the piece and the brothers of Illuminati (another sect that factually exists) shown as the Satanic cult that is all set to destroy the church. With illustrious members like Galileo, the Illuminati (the enlightened ones) are shown to have infiltrated the Masons of the current times (with the Masons having some more illustrious members as Winston Churchill, Roosevelt, and even George Bush) and thus, preparing the world for the tomorrow that shall accept Science as the new God and the only God capable of miracles.

As for the chills and thrills, apart from arranging four churches at four ends of the cross, with an obelisk each as company, the story does little else. However, this is sufficient to keep the viewer glued to the book (or the computer screen in my case). The imminent destruction of Vatican City can be stopped only by a symbologist from Harvard and a scientist from Europe, an unlikely team that, as expected, does the unlikely and in the end, all is fine...well, except for a final twist, which I shall abstain from disclosing (for people who still haven't read the book and want to).

The guitar lessons are becoming more difficult now and it does need a lot of patience to keep tugging at the strings as if there is no tomorrow when I can see my instructor play Floyd and Maiden with such ease. The finger tips have had quite some wear and tear and they should be thankful for the two day break that I shall have this weekend. I am likely to go to Sandipan's place for the weekend and will be back to the PG only on Sunday. Tomorrow also marks the beginning of my weekend French classes at the Alliance Francaise...after all, I need to be able to communciate to the French supermodels once I am in Paris, what say! :-)

A long day at work

I have done it and I have done it right and proper this time. I was in office till 10 PM (yes, you read that right, it is PM) last night and no, I was not doing "something else"...I had been working. With the meetings, which were supposed to give me the final inputs for my presentations, delayed, I had no option but to wait for the post lunch session to get the data. Post lunch turned out to be quite post lunch and it was only by 5 that I had all relevant information with me.

Since the person from PwC UK is going to come today and in all probability, the presentation might happen today or tomorrow, it was imperative that I finish the presentation yesterday. With about a dozen slides to go and some heavy duty graphics and animation pending, I had a tough time and had to stretch myself to finish off the thing by 10 (after all, I couldn't have afforded any delays beyond this time...the PG shuts its doors at 10:30). Luckily, I was able to give a satisfactory final touch at just about time to get me a fast (really fast) auto to Karunamoyee (I just can't write it the way it is pronounced...it will test all my spelling skills).

As is evident, I missed my guitar lessons, missed my movie, and more than these, missed the book that I have been reading for the last few days. Yes Prime Minister is an excellent sequel to Yes Minister and although I am reading it for the nth time, it never fails to amuse me. Subtle humor, sarcastic at times, dry at others, even goofy at some...always keeps the reader clinging to his/her stomach.

I tried calling some of my friends yesterday but unfortunately, could not contact even a single one of them. Either they were all (all the four of them) switched off or not answering...don't know why it happens all the more when I really want to talk. I was all tired and actually weary after the day's work when I dialled these people to get a booster but alas!

Snobbish bloggers and customer relations

I did not have much to write today but got into writing because of a peculiar incident that happened right now. I had been going through some random blogs during my free time for the last few days and came across some really interesting ones in the process. I kept myself to reading the blog posts and not commenting anything on any post probably because these people were so very unknown to me. Yesterday however, I broke my rule and actually went ahead and commented on one of the blogs. I really liked the way the author used an in-your-face (or no-nonsense, as that author says) style in the blog posts and commented about the feasibility of using the same in real life.

All is well till this part but things came to a head this morning when I came to office and just checked the blog to see if there was any answer to my comment. Lo and behold! I find that my comment has been removed and in addition to the answer to my comment, there is another comment by the author which mentions how the author does not like the blog to be used as a publicity vehicle and if I want, I can re-post my comment without the unnecessary links. For a moment, I failed to understand what link was the author talking about and then it came to me that it was my blog link that I had left on the comment to let the author know who I am and where I am from. For God's sake, publicity for my blog is the last thing that I would want, especially after the problems that I have faced because of this so-called publicity.

Of all the snobbish and self-obsessed acts, this one takes the cake. I was so pissed off that I immediately fired a rather mild but yet inconsistent-with-my-ways comment on the blog. Though I did follow it up with a peace message as soon as I cooled off a little, but I must say that this episode has taught me some things. First of all, that you should not meddle into affairs that you know nothing of...next, that you can be misunderstood on the slightest of pretexts...more over, that there are people who have a way of thinking that is so different from your own and between such people and you, there just can not be any semblance of reason...and finally, that it does not matter a damn, each one to his/her own.

I went to the ICICI Bank yesterday and got my internet banking user-id from them. They do have a better system now and when my call got transferred to the specialized officer, the good part was that the specialized officer already knew about my problem and I did not have to go over it yet again. However, the bank staff remain as apathetic to the concept of customer service and relations as they used to be. Just because the bank has been more successful than the others because of being the first mover, they should not be complacent and let the Citis and the HSBCs get away with the booty through some good customer relation skills.

There were quite a few steps taken to improve the customer service in the past at ICICI Bank, with feedback forms asking for the way the customer was greeted and so on. I just hope that the spirit continues to exist and the letter is carried out in action. I know that I am sounding as if I am being grand-motherly towards the ICICI Bank but being their customer for the last three years, I have seen so many changes and I wish the bank well.

I had some meetings yesterday and today at work promises to be some more of those and a bit on the presentation side, too. I think that I will be too busy to read any more blogs today and that should be good for me.

Birthday celebrations and Patna eat-outs

It was really sweet of Shanu to have been waiting for me to cut his birthday cake. He has always been like that...a little partial towards me and that is to be expected, too. Despite being a cousin, I guess I am more of a brother to him than anyone could have been and he is the same to me. Ever since he started identifying people, he has seen me around and has spent quite a major chunk of his childhood playing, fighting, going to school, having fun with me. Having stayed with my maternal grand parents for my school education, I have always had the same amount of affection for Shanu as he took away from me, the mantle of being the youngest in the household.

I am glad that the weekend and the fact that I am doing my training in Kolkata (which is so close to Patna) gave me a chance to go to Patna and be a part of Shanu's birthday celebrations...or as much of celebrations as the cake-cutting was. The ceremony part was actually left for the morrow...the Saturday, when all the bachcha party went to the movies. Patna, incidentally, has some good cinema halls and given the low entertainment tax or some such reason, the rates are pretty cheap, too. I don't think that it is possible to watch a movie in Dolby DTS in an air conditioned theatre for as low a price as twenty bucks...that is Patna cinema for you.

Well, we did not get the tickets of Kaal for twenty and that is another aspect of it altogether. The poor me was given the charge of arranging for the tickets while Shanu had the responsibility of getting hold of all my cousins (five of them, actually) from different places in Patna and bringing them along to the theatre. The queue at the counter, despite all my good intentions, was impossible and with the free swing that the policewallahs were giving to their sticks, I thought it prudent to stay a little distant from the proceedings. Staying away from the proceedings, the only option was the dus-ka-bees...which actually was bees-ka-sau in my case...that is, for people who still did not understand (duh!!!), the tickets worth 20 bucks cost me a hundred bucks a-piece when bought from the typical Rangeela black marketeer.

I had hoped that Sunday would be a chilled out day at home with nothing to do except catch on to loads of gossip and apart from a few instances of going out, once to get Shanu's bike repaired and another time to stuff something in at one of the new eat-outs, I was at home. The rains on Saturday had made the weather amazingly pleasant and with no sun and sweat to bother me after a long time (3 weekends in Kolkata do seem to be a long time if you consider the amount of sweat that you can generate in all these days), I was having fun.

Even the eat-out venture was good, despite my stomach playing tricks with me. I did not have the speciality Golgappaes at the place but did have a good Baskin Robbins scoop to cool my stomach down, or so Shanu convinced me of doing. The Bollywood Treats, as the place calls itself, is located right down the Maurya Clarke Hotel (Patna's only five-star), and has a huge area, given its location. With a mini amusement park for kids in the lawns outside and some video games inside the restaurant, the place with its theme of Bollywood has come up quite well. The right side of the menu does give a few shakes to the left side of the chest but then, that is to be expected now...what with Patna's middle class competing with the rest as far as purchasing power goes.

Luckily, my wait-listed ticket in the Sunday night Amritsar Howrah mail was confirmed and I had a comfortable journey back. The journey to Patna, earlier in the weekend, was not too bad, either and was my first experience in the Jana-Shatabdi or the poor man's Shatabdi, as some call it. The train reached Howrah a little late today morning and the queue at the pre-paid taxi booth was quite long, too. It was only at 11 that I was able to reach office but Sunita, my sub-guide, was pretty cool about it. It seems that today's meetings are scheduled for the second half of the day. The second half of the day has just arrived and the work is beckoning. This week should be busy work wise, with the presentation to the PwC UK person also due in the middle of the week...I just hope that I am able to stand up to it.

Right now it's K...

Galtiyaan insaan karta hai
Ilzaam jaanwar par lagta hai

One wonders if Kaal is more than yet another thriller on the block but when one is engrossed so deeply in the thrill-a-minute caper, one hardly has any time to wonder any more. Based and shot in Jim Corbett National Park (the high profile producer duo of Karan Johar and Shahrukh Khan are also facing some problems on this count), the movie is a high quality thriller that tries its best to pack some high quality stuff in its short duration of two hours and sans any songs (well..apart from the title song featuring the newest Item-boy, Shahrukh Khan, of course).

Kaal is the story of Orbit park, one of the biggest tiger conservatories in this part of the land, which has recently become rife with reports of killings of tourists and researchers by man-eater tigers (by the way, I always thought that tigers were called baagh in Hindi and the word sher was reserved for lions but apparently, the film makers do not think so...but that is besides the point, anyways). Kris and Rhea (played by John Abraham And Esha Deol), two researchers associated with the Discovery Channel (or was that Nat Geo?), think that something fishy is going on in the National Park and they decide to find out more about it.

Dev (Vivek Oberoi) and Ishika (Lara Dutta) are off to Saajid's farmhouse with their friends Saajid and Vishal, when their car breaks down and the person who offers them a lift also offers them the adventure of a lifetime. Baggha invites them to spend their vacations in the Orbit park, which he says, can offer many avenues for the entertainment of members of the group, whether it be silent corners for the romantic couple or opportunities at big game hunting for the restless and gun-savvy Saajid. The two teams of tourist and researchers, as expected, collide and start moving together till they come across a life threatening situation with nothing between them and death...well, nothing except Kali Pratap Singh. The dramatic entry of Kali (Ajay Devgan) puts the story in a tailspin, from which the viewer is able to escape only at the end of two engrossing hours of dead bodies, screams, sudden chillers, and of course, the group's Kaal...their imminent death.

To say more about the story would be killing the fun but let it suffice that the twists and turns are not too dramatic and can be rather made out from the way the story progresses. Anyway, speaking of the story, I must say that the screenplay is as taut as it could be and with no songs to interfere with the flow, the chills and thrills of the movie leave you with hardly any time to breathe. The cinematography is brilliant, especially because of the light-and-darkeness balance that is maintained throughout the movie. Generally, in a story like this, the director and the cinematographer tend to be a little partial towards darkness and though it does add to the mood, the expressions of the actors have to lose out in the bargain. Moreover, the forest and its trails could not have been captured so beautifully, had it been nights all along.

The music of the movie has been topping the charts and this is one time (after Bhoot's moderate success) that the soundtrack of the movie has come out and got its share of acclaim despite the movie not actually carrying the song videos, a la Hollywood. The title track is played during the titles and with Shahrukh and Malaika shaking their legs, the item song draws its share of whistles, and so does the Tauba Tauba song that plays at the end of the movie. The rest of the movie impresses with the background score...whether it is the "eye of the tiger" foot tapper or the just-when-you-thought-nothing-would-happen bang.

The debutante director, Soham, has done some really good work with his actors and even the normally wooden Esha Deol can be credited with screaming at just the right intensity. John Abraham as the serious, brooding researcher and Vivek Oberoi, as the short tempered, spoilt brat are just right and give the right amount of histrionic contribution. Lara Dutta is good, too...especially in the scenes where she is shown disbelieving some tales...she does it with a kind of arrogant and sarcastic smile that does its job without a word being spoken. Once again, Ajay Devgan walks away with the performance of the movie. The actor has been going leaps and bounds and if it is a serious and sarcastic role, there is no one to beat him (somebody please tell him to have a teeth job done...or ask him not to smile...and given the kind of roles he has been doing, he can be the next big thing after Amitabh's Jai in Sholay).

The only place where the movie fails is when the director and the screenplay writer try to create the suspense out of nowhere. There are quite a lot of moments in the movie that do give rise to the Whodunnit question but showing people smile cunningly and others giving them the side glance is not just my idea of trying to throw suspicion on characters. With effects, background score, performances matching the best in the business, there was no need to go the Gumnaam days of melodrama to keep the audience on their toes...the typical Hollywood style of cool and I-care-a-damn expressions might just have been suited for this kind of a movie (of course, the Barjatyas can't dream of using it).

Before I end, two questions that you will understand only if you have seen the movie and will not spoil your fun if you haven't (well, not at least till the scene comes in the movie, which is right at the end, when the suspense is all but over)...

Why does a Sony Handycam differentiate between voice and image?
Why does the mirror not differentiate between object and non-object?

Kaal is the movie to watch in the coming days if you are, even in the least, given to thrills...or are partial towards some good cinematography and background music...or are a nature freak with some strong views on poaching and tourist intrusion on animal territory...or if you want to know the reason why I asked the questions above and want to give me your version of the answer. :-)