Memento to Ghajini (Tamil) to Ghajini(Hindi)

Memento - 2000




Memento, by Christopher Nolan, impressed me so much that the effect of the movie played in my mind even after months from watching it. It opened the doors of non-mainstream cinema that I was not aware of till then. The narration, the very concept and acting were simply world class. It is after this movie that I started hitting imdb.com and started watching movies that were critically acclaimed but not so commercially successful. Memento is a movie where a person gets into a state of short-term memory loss after a accident in which his wife is also murdered. How he finds the murderer in such a state and kills him forms the plot of the movie. Guy Pearce played the main role and the movie also featured Carrie-Anne Moss of Matrix fame. Overall, an excellent attempt by director Christopher Nolan.

When I first saw the stills of Ghajini, the AR Murugadoss-Surya movie,I knew it was a remake of Memento. I was sure that the original movie is going to get spoilt with songs, unwanted explanations and masala scenes and the movie lived true to my belief. Especially the climax was pathetic and for all the Memento fans I am sure it would have left a bad taste. Now the movie is to be remade in Hindi with Aamir Khan. Aamir is known for the quality and perfection in movies and lets hope he does a better job. But still, Im sure, nothing can beat the original Memento.


Ghajini - Tamil (2005)



Ghajini - Hindi (2008)

White water rafting in Bheemeswari near Bangalore

Last week I went for white water rafting to a place near Bheemeswari, which is around 110 km from bangalore. The place is called Fishing camp and is on the banks of river Kaveri. Sivasamudram another famous tourist spot is about 50 kms from this place. We took a taxi from Bangalore and it takes a good 2 1/2 hours to reach the spot. The route is well marked with signboards and you will not miss the boards with the distance written for Fishing camp. We started around 8:15 from Marathahalli, the place where we stayed in bangalore, and it was around 12:15 when we reached the spot. This duration was after we picking a friend on the way and also a small search for the exact spot after reaching Bheemeswari. .

The Rafting @ Bheemeswari is conducted on two batch basis with one batch starting in the morning and the other in the afternoon. We had our rafting scheduled in the afternoon session that starts around 2:30 PM. Not knowing the exact time details, we had to spend some good two hours wandering around the place. But the place is very good and refreshing and kept us occupied during this wait. The package cost of Rs.900 and includes the lunch that we had around 2 PM after some wait. The lunch was quite good considering my other experiences in such tourist spots. It was South Indian buffet type meal with Rice, sambar, rasam, chappathi, sabji and dhal. Would advice people to opt this as there are no restaurants around.

The Rafting there consists of three rafts with each holding a maximum of 8 persons (This ofcourse can change if more rafts are added in the future). But, we were a group of six people and took a single raft. The person count does not include the guide who normally sits in the tip of the raft controlling the speed and direction of the raft. All the guides were well seasoned and were able to handle the sail with care and good humour. I especially liked the way they handled the tourists with every effort to make the trip a memorable one for them. The total rafting lasted for around 1 1/2 hours for a distance of around 10 KM. The rafting was not very tough and does not require one to take any professional training, or for that matter even knowledge in swimming. It could be done very easily as I saw one accompanying raft occupied with women and young college girls. It was great fun wearing those protective jackets and helmets for rafting and it also ensured the trip was very safe. Since the rafting was done in the month of November the waves were not very rough as it would have been in the case of August-September rainy season. To sum it all, it was a wonderful experience and worth the money. The most forgettable part of the trip was the jeep ride which took us back to the starting point after completion of rafting. We are made to get on a open jeep packed with people and it takes us back through the bumpy roads of Bheemeswari. It made sure that every join in the body pains at the end of the trip. We finally took a tea and signed off from Bheemeswari.

The total cost of the trip came around Rs.1300 that included the taxi cost and cost for rafting. We did a mistake of taking a sales agency "CareIndia" (http://www.careindia.in/) for booking the trip which cost us extra Rs. 250 out of the cost of Rs.900. The best thing to do is to contact the Rafting office directly and make the booking.

Overall it was a very pleasant and memorable trip with friends. I would especially recommend this to the IT folks who need a refreshing and different trip with friends. This will definitely be a very good break from compared to the time you spend in front of monitor and will also be a trip to remember.

Bannerghatta park - Good, if combined with some other place

Bannerghatta park is situated about 20 kms from bangalore city. Main attraction is a wildlife safari where you can sight animals while travelling in caged vans of forest department. It's a park where, tigers and lions are caged but kept in vast open area, giving you a feel that you are seeing them in open. At the end of safari you get nice open sitout area where you can chitchat. A park is also present for children to play. It also has a butterly park with museum that seems to have been opened quite recently. Commutation to the park is very simple even in public transport. We took a bus from bannerghatta junction and it takes only about 20 minutes to reach the park. If you have a private vehicle the entire trip could be completed within 3 hours. But, private vehicles are not allowed inside the safari trip. The main thing you have to look out is if its a government holiday, as it was in our case (Oct2), then be prepared for some waiting for the safari as there will be lot of families coming to this place.

I went with my friends and had a good outing on a saturday evening. My advice would be that its a sure go if you are going with one's family and children. If you are going with friends then its better to combine this place with a lunch or some other place as there is nothing much other than the safari.

English - modern divider of Indian society

Came across an article written by Barkha Dutt. She states how english has become a divider in Indian society and how it divides people in class and caste lines. Good one .. read on ..

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One of the most awkward - and yet, strangely compelling - things about journalism is that sometimes your work makes you hold a mirror to your own life. This past week, a quiet, but determined 16-year-old became an unexpected reflection of my education. I have always believed that my school and college years were the first architects of my personality; like every middle-class Indian, I take pride in where I studied and what I was taught. And yet, the gentle idealism of this young girl made me pause to wonder: Had my public-school education been shamefully elitist? At first, the story seemed straightforward enough. Garima Godara, a CBSE topper, with an astonishing 97.6 per cent had taken the entrance exam for the Delhi Public School (Dwarka), the school closest to her village. The daughter of a police constable who earned less than Rs 6,000 a month, the school's fees would have been a problem. But the family was undeterred; perhaps there would be a scholarship or a loan; surely the school would be keen to admit the girl who had topped the national capital's merit list. Garima's proud father had spent months battling the entrenched patriarchy of his peers, fending off nosy neighbours who gossiped about why she didn't spend enough time in the kitchen. Now, he was even more determined to give his daughter the best education her marks could buy.

This could have been the story of New India and its emerging, self-made middle class; a proud milestone for a country that dares to dream. Instead, here's what happened: DPS turned her down. Her results were good, it conceded. But marks aren't everything, said the school principal to NDTV, and besides, her English was poor, and just didn't cut the grade. Later, listening to Garima in the studio, it was hard not to feel both angry and moved. Angry because of the obvious injustice: not only was she as bright as her results indicated; there was nothing about her spoken English that suggested that she would have been unable to keep pace with the syllabus. Yes, she spoke with a regional accent that some would consider insufficiently sophisticated. But there was no doubt that she could not only follow a complex argument, she could also make herself understood to any English speaker. But it was her calm that was almost heart breaking; a quiet courage that belied her teen years. It was almost as if we were more outraged and indignant than she was. During the course of the programme, a principal from a well-known school in Dehradun called in, offering her admission and a scholarship; others promised to get DPS to change its mind. But betraying only the slightest sense of hurt, she said firmly that her aim now was to show DPS that she would do better than any of its students. She had already got herself admitted to another school, and DPS could quite simply, take a walk.

As she spoke, viewers clearly shared my anger. The online poll showed that 90 per cent of viewers believed that the English language exerted a disproportionate influence over the education system. Yet, were we all being hypocritical and dishonest? This time it was DPS under the microscope, but were any of us any different? Let's say she continued to do outstandingly well in school. The next stage would be college. I pictured her trying to take the entrance interview at my old college, Delhi's St Stephen's. Would she get in? And even if she made the cut, how would other students react to her presence? Would they admire her for her academic brilliance? Or would they snigger at her accent, titter each time she made a grammatical error and then, melt away, leaving her alone to find her own friends?

Garima's story is a metaphor for India's twisted tryst with the future. I learnt after the programme was over - and it is significant that neither she nor her parents brought this up themselves - that she is an OBC. For some months now, as the debate over reservation has raged, opponents of the quotas have made the same point again and again: we should be a society where merit matters. It's a compelling argument, and one that I have personally supported. But what do the anti-quota street fighters have to say now? Here's a girl who competed in the mainstream, her own Hindi medium DAV pitched against the trendier, richer, big names. But her merit was swallowed up by prejudice. Is it any wonder then that supporters of reservation believe that the system is stacked against them, and that merit is a con-word used by upper-caste tricksters? Her story is also a scathing comment on the class divide in India. It is fashionable for marketeers and economists to talk about the burgeoning middle class. Each day a new figure is conjured up to demonstrate the size of the Indian market, and the clout of the new middle class; is it 250 million this week or has it already reached 300 million? We embrace these statistics, because we like the idea of India as this century's favourite financial destination. We feel flattered when Time magazine puts our country on its cover, and we talk glibly, especially to foreigners, of social mobility and how the gap between the rich and poor is closing; we argue that India's tomorrow is being built by its industrious and enterprising middle class, and we feel like the future is unfolding, right here and right now.

But here's what we never admit. We're just the worst sorts of snobs. The social mobility of the last decade has meant that the new middle class does not consist of people like us. Instead, it is made up of people like Garima, who we still find excuses to exclude; we sneer at their lack of Westernized sophistication; make fun of their accents, and we try and ensure that our children have nothing to do with theirs. Finally, Garima's story exposes India's paradoxical relationship with the English-language. Nobody in the world speaks English like us. We have our own idioms, our own words and our own accents.

We pretend to love our own English and brag about how it is India's great selling point; the reason we dominate the global outsourcing business. But of course deep down we know that our English is not the English that the West really wants. And so, each time we talk to Britons or Americans, we subtly alter our diction and inflection. When we set up our call centers, we drop the subtlety entirely and start accent classes to teach our young people to abandon the speech patterns of our own society and to migrate to a virtual, linguistic middle America, where they become impersonators of people they will never meet and never know. But within India, we still treat our own English as the great social decider. We laugh at regional accents, smirk at those who make grammatical errors and feel most at home with those who talk like us. Everyone else belongs on the other side of the English divide. And as it turns out, the other side of the class and caste divide as well. Maybe we cling so tightly to this tiny community because secretly we are just insecure. Outside of our little bubble, India is changing. Every major institution in recent times - Parliament, the bureaucracy, the military, our colleges and schools - is being forced to re-write the rules. A new breed of Indians who no longer look towards the West for self-affirmation, is making its presence felt. We like to call this a decline in quality. But actually, it's the rest of India waiting to get in.

How long are we going to keep the gates shut?

Barkha Dutt

Managing Editor, NDTV 24x7

Saturday, June 24, 2006

Fighting Inertia

Back after a long hiatus. Its been such a long, long time since i blogged. Sometimes you force yourself into a such a fixed cycle that doing even a small work outside becomes so difficult. My job was really after me for the last four months. From morning to evening this was my flow .. get up, go to work, slog hard , come home late, go to sleep .. Saying this i still believe I should have taken some time off and concentrated on many more things. Its more of lack of will than lack of time. Now I have decided to force a routine which includes a lot than just job. Let me see ....

Chennayil Oru Mazhaikalam

Chennai had not received any substantial rainfall in last few years due to failed monsoons. October-November is the monsoon season and the only source of water for this city and successive failures ensured prolonged dryness. When any forecast of heavy rain is predicted it was a subject of joke and usually considered as a sign of no rain :-). With rapidly growing population, underground water table in most parts of the city had come down alarmingly. Sea water has entered in some areas. There was severe water shortage and people standing with water pots had become synonymous with the city. To compound it you have treacherous summer which can make you look like grilled chicken with a few minutes travel under sun.

This time too, as in the past few years, it was a routine and normal monsoon with isolated rain spread over the city. When all hope of good rainfall was lost, came the D-day. The weather forecast predicted heavy rain fall as a low pressure area was seen near the city. As usual people left their umbrellas and went to office. But, this time around the forecast came true, in fact more than true. The day before the rain I was traveling back home from office and was able to see continuous and widespread rain. I knew it was a sign of heavy rain but did not expect in such a large scale. On October 27 the clouds opened all gates and rain water flooded most parts of the city. Rain was pouring continuously and let me tell you it did not stop for even a second. 21 cm of rainfall fell in less than 5 hours. I felt that a Mumbai flood was in the making. The place where I live, North Chennai, was affected the most as it is a low lying area. It looked like islands with water everywhere and houses in between them. Other parts of the city were spared neither. Water upto hip level water in front of my office in T Nagar, which is situated in the heart of the city. In between this rain we were continuously in touch with my cousin’s family who live in Korattur, a very low lying area. Around 11 am water entered his house and I went there to help keep household things in an elevated place and bring them to my house. What I saw there was painful. Water of around two feet has entered most of the houses. People living in ground floor have evacuated their homes and have either gone to first floor or have left to their relatives or friends place. People who are supposed to be well-to-do were fleeing like have-nots. It was such a sad sight to watch. It was worse in slums as water has entered their huts. For the first time in my life I prayed for the rain to stop as I really got bored with such incessant rainfall. Electricity was cut the entire day and I was listening to news in Radio. Finally the rain relented at night to much relief of chennaites.
The next day looked completely different. Water started to recede from residential places and most of the important roads looked dry. The City Corporation officials had pumped out water from some important road junctions and made sure the city is up and running. It was nice to see such a splendid job from them in a crisis situation.

Mind Your Language

I was lying on my bed and lazily surfing through the channels. It was NDTV and [as usual :-)] a chat show was going on. This one involved school children who were discussing topics in current affairs. They were all by themselves with no anchor around. What caught my attention is they were chatting on topics like bureaucracy, democracy, judiciary and the words they used were no mean. Mind you, it was not cosmetic words with no meaning but meaningful comments made with impressive fluency. It made a big impact on me. This is how good communication can help you. English communication means a lot in new economy industries. If you are from IT industry and have good vocabulary skills, or lack of it, then you know what I mean. If you are technically good, you are on board, but if are technically good and have excellent communication then you are most sought after and can thrive here. I am very new to IT but still can see the advantage it offers to you.

Currently IT is the only industry which is generating jobs with good salary in India and it demands fluency in English. What is boon to the urban class here is turning out to be a distance reach in rural areas. I grew up in metropolitan Chennai but my roots lie in village south of Madurai. I can clearly see the difficulty faced by students from my village to get a break in this industry. Lack of communication makes a job in software industry a distance dream for them. But, one small * condition for this observation: If you are big mouthed and empty minded, technical jargons may not help you for too long. Soon people will realize you are just gassssss ....