Local Train

He woke up at around 1 am.

He brushed his teeth, shaved and got into his usual jeans and T-Shirt. Wrote a letter.

He walked out of his housing society, hailed an auto to Goregaon East station.

He sat down on the platform and waited.

As the train entered the station, he lied down on the tracks.

The fucking train stopped just before it reached him.

He took an auto to get back to work, hoping no one saw him. Threw the letter out on the way.

Shaitan

Am listening to Retro Pop Shit from the Shaitan OST.

If you haven't seen this film by now, please don't visit my blog again. I am in love with the film, and its music at the moment. UNFORTUNATELY, the album that I have with me does not have Khoya Khoya Chaand.

I always like characters, and probably people in real life too, who are on the edge. Who can do stuff you would not expect them to in a normal world. But, we do not live in a normal world. Shaitan's lead players are like that.

I absolutely love it when a film-maker shows respect for music and uses it well. I also love it when a film-maker makes a film set in a milieu he understands. Bijoy (or is it Bejoy) Nambiar is that film-maker.

Anurag Kashyap, you can walk on water.

Aside: Juhi Babbar is/was married to Nambiar. Juhi is Raj and Nadira Babbar's daughter. She had filed for a divorce from Bijoy sometime back, but am not sure if they are legally separated yet.

Yep, you know now where to come for your Bollywood trivia.

From Last Post

Just came to me that they always pay HR far more than the work is worth. Whether in an organization or on a TV show. HR could be done away with and no one would notice.

This and That

I am a stickler for these things, so am more than a bit distressed when I am not able to figure out if the freaking thing is called Dahi Vada, Dahi Wada or Dahi Bada. My vote would be for the first option, even if I have been calling it the last one all through my life. The reason I bring it up of course is because I learned to make it last week.

I am sorry if my gushing posts on learning to cook new dishes resemble a newly wed housewife's, but it sure is a satisfying feeling to make yet another much-admired dish from your childhood. And make it well.

It did not start very well though. My vadas kept burning up with the paste inside remaining wet and raw. A distress call home (I really do sound like a housewife!) made me realize that the oil was probably too hot. After cooling the oil down a bit, the vadas came out great. I am beginning to feel cooking is not as difficult a job as people make it out to be.

Of course, cooking the same boring shit everyday must be mind-numbing.

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Samit Basu has redeemed himself a bit now. Since I had read close to 160-170 pages of the 340-odd paged Turbulence, I thought I might as well read it through. Nope, despite working in finance, I am not very familiar with the concept of sunk costs. On page 209, which is right in the middle of an international crisis caused by some Indian superheroes, there's a line 'The Indian prime minister has already appeared on TV, bleating gently about the need to remain calm...'. Given my overflowing fountain of love for Manmohan Singh these days, that line seemed very very apt. He does bleat quite often, doesn't he.

Damn, I was planning to have mutton biryani tomorrow for lunch, but bleating being associated with the most inadequate PM we have ever had is likely to keep me off any mutton for some time.

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Saw the first episode of Just Dance. I don't see what the fuss is about. For one, calling Hrithik Roshan the 'God of Dance' through the show is really jarring. Having him refer to himself as a Superstar is even more so. I think the celebrity-featuring shows that have really hit a chord with the audience are those where the celebrity becomes a part of the audience. Crosses that perpetual line that divides the common man and the star. Here that divide is being made even more prominent.

In its concept, the show is not different from Dance India Dance, which really seemed to have a better quality of dancers. Can't believe they are paying HR so much for this.

The Overrated Samit Basu

Someone who leaves IIMA to pursue a career in writing ought to be a fantastic writer. Or so I thought.

I have been trying to find that spark that Samit Basu is supposed to possess. The spark that makes publishers keep publishing his books.

I bought the three books in the GameWorld trilogy, but got bored midway through the second book. The plot was interesting, but the execution was plain boring.

I also tried to read Terror on the Titanic. Which put me off reading fiction for a month.

And I am reading Turbulence right now. I am through about 40% of the novel. The plot is very interesting. How could a Heroes-X-Men-Misfits clone not be interesting? But I am not sure I can read it the whole way through.

Basu's characters talk so much. So much! Each one of them is too clever by half. Every one takes pot shots at each other. And the narrator keeps trying to beat them at this cleverness. In every book. It's like the same character with a different get-up turning up in every book of his.

BORING.

Irrational Surds

I have been making fun of Baba Ramdev's 'protest' on Facebook and otherwise too in one-on-one conversations. I don't think too many people take him seriously. It's great that he is teaching Indians to live a healthy life, but we are well past the time when a half-naked man (I wanted to say fakir, but then fakirs don't own islands and fly around in chartered planes) can dictate political terms. Especially someone as utterly unimportant as Ramdev.

But, I was shocked when I got to know that the Central Government actually used violence to evict him from the place he and his followers had gathered to carry on their hunger strike. The Government could have easily ignored this idiot's fast, but they have ended up according it so much importance. The Government is trying, as visible to the naked eye, to get the Lokpal Bill passed, even if not having the PM within its purview seems like a really pointless issue to stall things for, and Ramdev's fast was a very obvious effort to create ground for a future career in politics.

It's like Manmohan Singh's government can't do anything right now. I don't understand what's gone so wrong in just two years. The country voted him back with a higher vote share than in the previous elections in 2009. It might have been partly because it has looked for a long time now that BJP is filled with senile leaders feeling up an elephant and smiling at their reflections in a mirror, and not so much because of UPA I's own merits.

But, I feel right now that I am being ruled by a eunuch. Who is guarding the harem so that Rahul Gandhi's virginity is not lost too soon.

I don't want this moron at the helm of things for the next 3 years.