It's shoshthi today!!

It's again that time of the year for which every bengali waits for since the previous years dusshera. Today is shoshti ('shasthi'), the day when the Durga Pujo begins.

In good old days when I was a student it was a day when 5 days of fun used to begin. Spending time at pandal with friends. How can I forget the famous bengali adda. But now things have a changed. Today I am sitting in office working like any other day and same for tomorrow. Though looking forward for the long weekend to celebrate the pujo.

This is my second pujo in Chennai. Last time I celebrated with my roomie and his friends. We went to few pandals. This time round though he is not there, he is in kolkata. So this time planning to join my cousin dada o boudi along with masshi o meshomoni. Its a full house there. This is also the first pujo for dada's son.

Wishing you all too a very happy and rocking pujo!! Bolo bolo joy Durga mai!!

Pyaar ke Side Effects

Dont be surprised with the title I am not going to discuss my love story here. In fact I should first have one to discuss about it. Anyways thats a different tale; maybe I will write about it some other day. Today's post is to tell my experience with the movie titled "Pyaar ke Side/Effects".

A small introduction to the movie. Lead protagonists are Rahul Bose and Mallika Sherawat. Movie is about there 'pyaar'. Rahul is shown analyzing the various 'side-effects' associated with different stages of love. And then you a small side stories of Rahul's roomie and his brother-in-law. Both of them are like two extremes. First guy is of the 'un-marriageable' lot and second one belongs to the married community. Rahul is somewhere in- between; he has a girlfriend who has proposed to marry him but he is not very sure what to do... for rest of the story watch the movie yourself :)

My motive behind this post is not to tell the story, there is nothing in that. Actually to tell the truth I never thought I will go and watch this in theater. But living in Chennai one usually runs out of ideas on weekend and same happened with us over this weekend. So this was the one movie which we had deliberately skipped. So we decided lets check out how bad is it.

Luck was on our part it turned out to be a good entertainer. I wont call it a real good movie but it was definitely not boring. Best parts were Rahul's roomie's antics and his analysis of the side-effects. First half had lot of instances where you can laugh. Second half was bit emotional occasionally but you can get enough reasons to laugh. I guess overall we had a great time.

One caution, do not go with your girlfriend and if you end up by mistake do not enjoy the movie, unless you are planning for a break-up.

Munnabhai ... laage raho!

After a long time I watched a really great movie. It’s loaded with lots of laughter and meaning. One good thing which the director/produced did was not to make a sequel. Sequels sometimes tend to be bit boring but a series a good thing as each time its something new.

The best thing in both the older and latest edition is the Munna-Circuit antics. I somehow like Circuit more; Arshad Warsi is too good as Circuit. The kidnapping sequence is best kidnapping sequence I have seen ever. I think real life 'bhai log' will get some interesting ideas after seeing it.

Apart from the fun and laughter in the Munnabhai movies, I like them for the social messages they deliver. Most of the points are very simple yet most of us do miss them in life. This time round it tried to show the Gandhian way of life in Munna-style. Usually a movie about Gandhian values can’t expect to be a hit in current times but when to show it as 'Gandhi-giri' it does catch your attention.

Hats off to the whole team of the movie ... laage raho! I am waiting for the next serving to reach theaters.

Five years since!

9/11/2001. The date which marks the turning point in war against terrorism. In some ways you can draw parallel with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor during the 2nd World War which brought USA into the war. But unfortunately the difference starts there. While on the older instance the active entry of USA changed the course of history; same doesn’t seems to be true for the present edition.

We have seen so many wars against the terror groups in last five years, but we are yet to see any change in the ground realities. What we have achieved in last five years is a world which constant lives under a threat of terror attack. In name security concerns we have increased scrutiny and restrictions on the common citizen across the globe. There are increased instances of human rights violation in name of security precautions. The line of difference is so thin between a possible threat and an actual threat that the excess by the security agencies can safely hide behind it. End of the day we seem to missing the actual threats and taking fighting the proxy ones.

If we try to draw parallels from the 2nd World War we can say that the success is eluding us because every country is concentrating on its own local problem. During the world war, though with different objectives, there was a single target. It is global threat which is distributed across the globe; the solution should be equally global. Best forum can be the UN Security Council and best anti-terror force would be a force under the UN flag.