Our Mobilizing Era

One of my colleagues lost her mobile around a month back and has not bought a new one since then. As a usual reaction, we were all surprised and asked her why doesn’t she just buy a new one? Her response is simple, she doesn’t feel the need to and that she actually gets time to do other things (like reading books). Her responses although amazed me but also got me thinking. Is so much technology really helping us or just eating up all time from our already loaded schedules?

To answer that question I did a small test on myself. I just tried to record the number of times I checked my phone in a day (for messages, emails or anything else). Well my average for couple of days was 16 times. That was quite amazing I thought but then it was not probably a big figure I thought. So I tried to check how much time I spent each day actually using my cell phone. Well I am not much of a caller so, at an average I talked for around 20-30 mins a day. Messages (sending or reading the received ones) took away another 30 mins. Music and radio usage came to about 2.5 hours a day on average. Internet and various application usages also took around 1 to 1.5 hours. So here after the accumulation of data, I was using my cell phone for 4 to 5 hours a day. Now this figure was big I thought. Probably my colleague was right, one can actually get a lot of time without these mobiles.

And guess what yours faithfully has had three different mobiles in last 16 months.

By the way how much time do you spend on your cell phone? Please do comment.

Ohh Jheejhus…Look who’s back on TV

Image Source: www.newsbeats.in

My luck or whatever you might say it is, I saw a reality show this weekend on NDTV Imagine by the name of “Ghazab Desh Ki Ajab Kahaaniyan” hosted by none other than Miss Rakhi Sawant (I hope you know her because if you don’t she will haunt you). I must say it’s one of the most hilarious shows around; Rakhi is so naturally dumb (ohh Jheejhus, people just love her).

So it was a Sunday and with nothing better to do, I switched on my television and started surfing through channels (not spending more than 2 seconds on one channel). And then I switched to NDTV Imagine and saw Rakhi Sawant, I stopped (Ohh Jheejhus I am a great fan of her you see…I feel that she’s really funny without actually intending to be so). Tata Sky showed the name of the show was Ghazab Desh Ki Ajab Kahaaniyan, I said this should be fun and so I continued watching.

The first episode had Naveen Prabhakar as the celebrity guest. (Naveen who????) Well for those of you who don’t know him, he is a stand-up comedian. And so on it went. So Mr. Prabhakar was on the show to clear a controversial fan he has. Apparently she keeps messaging and calling him and blah blah. Watch the show on YouTube if you’re interested to know the details. Then came the second episode about two people (neighbors or something), who cannot see eye to eye. They apparently send ghosts to each other’s house. It was freakingly hilarious. There’s a show called Comedy Circus on Sony TV which is comedy show but man it doesn’t even come close to this one. You can catch the old episodes of it on NDTV Imagine’s YouTube channel (http://www.youtube.com/user/ndtvimagine).

Anyways Rakhi awesome with her reactions…. I mean you will fall off laughing watching her talk and react. Her body language is outrageously funny. Although I guess Rakhi might have thought that it wasn’t a comedy show and she was doing some serious television (yeah right), but I guess the channel has pulled up a prank on her.

I am not complaining though. Enjoy.

(Remember the Jaspal Bhatti show ‘Flop Show’ and that episode where he was the producer director of a TV serial and was given the Comedy award mistakenly, well Rakhi’s show is a real life example of that. All smiles!!!)

No Singham in Nottingham

Yeah India got a real drubbing at the hands of English. And like many self-proclaimed cricket pundits I would like to take this opportunity to criticize our beloved “Indian Cricket Team”. This article is a pure product of fiction and any resemblance to any real situation is unintended.

Image Source: www.espnstar.com

“Is the dream really over?” is what Mr. Dhoni said to Mrs. Dhoni this morning, confirms our very unreliable source Pumba at Nottingham. Pumba also confirmed that Ian Bell has thanked the whole Indian team and especially Dhoni, first for the generosity they have shown to him with so many boundary balls and secondly of course for the run-out thing. Apparently Stuart Broad and Ian Bell are going to throw a party for the whole Indian team once the series is over.

Pumba also got a chance to interact with some of the Indian players and got their reaction on the test match and the series so far. Here are the few reactions we got.

Sachin Tendulkar said he is quite enjoying the English weather and hopes that his family will join him soon and they will spend some valuable time together.

VVS Laxman when approached said that he and his family never used Vaseline in their life. They are fans of Boroline and have been using the brand since many years.

We couldn’t get a comment from Dravid as he straight away went to have a net session with few local bowlers.

Harbhajan Singh said that he was very angry with Vijay Malya and that he will make sure that his and whole Sikh community’s prestige be restored in the court of law. (Pumba says Bhajji is also angry on Dhoni for appearing in the Ad and hence the performance)

Ishant Sharma seemed very happy, when asked the reason he replied that he was very happy with the barbers in Nottingham.

Sreesanth when contacted said he was very happy with his first innings’ performance and he credited Harbhajan Singh for it. He said “Bhajji-paa really helped me a lot…he told me which lines and lengths to bowl on these wickets and how to swing the bowl from outside leg-stump to off.”

Pumba says World Cup MOT Yuvraaj Singh was very sad when he met him. Apparently he was missing his mother and Neha Dhupia.

Dhoni apologized to Pumba because of lack of time. He said he was getting late for wonderful Thai curry his wife Saakshi had made for him.

Coach Fletcher was seen in a local pub enjoying a few beers. Apparently English team was celebrating their win in the same club and had invited Fletcher to join them for old-time’s sake. Fletcher though declined politely.

Indian team in the mean time is boosted by the return of Nawab of Najafgarh aka Virender Sehwag. Pumba has got inside information from Team India dressing room that they were actually trying to make England overconfident by losing the first two matches and then launch Sehwag on them. He also informed that Gautam Gambhir is already feeling fitter on hearing about Sehwag’s return. We have also learnt that India is considering playing two spinners and that Munaf Patel might be called in the third test to share the spin burden with Praveen Kumar.

So hopefully with such positive energy all around India will be able to make a turnaround in this series and level it 2-2. With high hopes this is me signing off.

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.