RBI hikes REPO rates

Image Source: www.ibnlive.in.com

RBI recently hiked the REPO rates and I was reading some articles on WSJ.com and LiveMint.com about the same. For those who don’t know what a REPO rate is, it is the rate at which RBI lends money to banks. Now this was done to curb the inflationary pressure that the economy is facing. This inflationary pressure is largely due to the rise in food and fuel prices. Now I fail to understand that after 64 years of independence, an agrarian economy still has basic problems like irrigation and storage. Governments after governments sing the songs that how far India has grown. But if the most important problem related to the most basic need i.e. food cannot managed, we should ask them are we really growing?

I understand that rising fuel prices is another cause of concern. But if that is so, why not improve public transportation facilities and encourage people to use them (Almost all Indian cities have a really bad and insufficient public transportation system in place). Why not discourage people from buying and using private vehicles by having more duties on buying and using cars? (Of course that cannot be done with so many automobile majors looking to set up shop in India, because of two reasons one India being a big market and secondly its geographical position for exporting cars).

10 Years on and Dil Ab Bhi Chahta Hai "DCH"

Image Source: www.chakpak.com

10 years back I had scraped through SSC and entered HSC or 11^th. Then I had the first heart-break (the situation seems funny now…but back then it was indeed a heart-break) of my life. So like any teenager I was having lots of new experiences at that time.

And then it happened….yeah ‘it’ happened. Don’t think otherwise, I am talking about Dil Chahta Hai’s release. Dil Chahta Hai or DCH had become an instant hit with the youngsters. It has been a cult friendship movie ever since. I still remember back then, we didn’t have much access to internet (we were still using ultra-slow dial up connections back then) so we didn’t depend on the critics review before watching any movie.

The movie as you all know by now (if you don’t….man that’s so uncool) is about three young guys, their friendship & buddy bonding and their individual love stories. DCH was an uncommon movie. It was not about high octane action, super emotional family-drama, sugar-coated romances, singing in the rain or snow-covered Swiss mountains. All though the protagonists were rich Mumbai guys, they had an appeal and an instant connect with small town middle-class guy like me. Everything about the movie was so fresh, be it the dialogues, the screenplay, cinematography, music, styling, I mean almost everything. New age cinema had finally reached the Bollywood shores.

Well DCH gave us a lot of stuff to hold on to and here are my favourites from the movie.

Music: The songs were awesome. It seemed as if the album had one song for each mood.

1.    DCH title track- the ultimate buddy song

2.    Jaane Kyon- the naughty love track

3.    Kaisi Hai Yeh Rut- the dream track

4.    Koi Kahe Kehta Rahe- the party song

5.    Tanhayee- the heart break song (a personal favorite at the time for the obvious reasons)

6.    Who Ladki Hai Kaha- the funny dance song

Style: How can we forget?

1.    Aamir’s soul patch or a mouche. It’s my personal favorite and most often than not I have it since I first grew it in 2001.

2.    Aamir and Akshay’s haircut. I say it with honor while everyone was aping Aamir’s haircut, I had Akshay’s cut. Actually I always had that haircut (even before the movie) and so probably Akshay copied me.

3.    The casual clothing and Aamir’s hat.

Characters: Oh man weren’t they just great.

1.    The Three Friends- Akash- Aamir, Sameer- Saif and Siddharth- Akshay Khanna

2.    The Love interests- Shalini- Preity Zinta, Pooja-Sonali Kulakarni and Tara Jaiswal- Dimple Kapadia.

3.    The small but interesting characters- Subodh aka Time Table- Azad Dadarkar, Rohit- Ayub Khan, Priya ‘Sameer’s GF’- Suchitra Pillai, Deepa ‘Crazy gal in love with Akash’ - Samantha Treymane

Well DCH magic still holds on (I will be watching it for the n^th time today). All smiles.