Ra One: Not really what I expected

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Shahrukh Khan got two new fans to bolster his legion of fans. We caught Ra One en famille over the weekend and while they didn’t like the movie, GG & BB liked the hero.

So Ra One….Where do I start. Before I start with my observations on the movie, here’s a Wikipedia link with the detailed storyline and reviewsThe movie had a PG 13 classification here and since BB & GG are eight, and they saw Enthiran/Robot last year in the theatre, I thought they could handle a similar genre of movie. I was wrong, they can’t handle violence, so I am going to try and get them to see something softer, maybe a romance or a comedy soon. Since they are learning Hindi in school, this was supposed to be something which had undertones of education attached to it.

I found the movie to be a big disappointment. For a movie which was the most anticipated movie of the year and which had so much hype surrounding it, the actual movie was a complete let-down.

The film starts with a double meaning joke which is supposed to be a dream which Shahrukh Khan’s (SRK) son, a 10-12 year old is dreaming about! This is not the only crude joke in the film. The whole film is peppered with such jokes, with a ‘condom’ joke running through the entire film. This ‘condom’ joke is offensive, not for the content, but for the fact that it is supposed to be a wrong version of the tamil word ‘konjum’ (little) which Kareena’s Punjabi character mangles all the time.

The stereotypes alluded to Shekhar Subramaniam is typical, which is quite irritating given that he is supposed to be living in London for a minimum of 12-13 years (they show a song with the courtship of Sekhar and Mona then the birth of their child), so in that time, it is inconceivable that he would learn to speak English without that irritating accent and also lose all those stereotypes like eating noodles with yoghurt with bare hands! Come on, nowadays, most people are more sophisticated that that!

I also found the back story between SRK and Kareena very vague. She is a typical gaali (ephitet) sprouting Punjabi kudi while SRK is a sterotypical Tamil scientist nerd. How did they meet? Where did they meet? If the couple is based in the UK and Sekhar Subramaniam (SRK) is a British citizen, then how does he own a huge house in Mumbai with the house holding loads of memories for him and his wife? These questions were never answered and leads you with a sense of the storyline missing something.

SRK’s Shekhar Subramaniam dies within 30 minutes and the hero of the film, the good guy G One appears at the point just before the interval is announced. The villian, Ra One is initially an Asian guy and the real villan Arjun Rampal, appears in the last 40-50 minutes of the film!

The songs are ok, I loved the Chammak Chalo song which comes almost at the climax. At the climax you also see Ra One on a running train, something that reminds you of Enthiran/Robot. Alluding to the same movie you have Rajnikant make a 1 minute appearance as Chitti, his robot character in the movie which is greeted with awe by the characters in the scene.

So all in all, the movie is worth is a watch, just to see the special effects and especially if you are a Shahrukh Khan fan. But if you are planning on taking children below 12 to see the movie, then exercise caution. If your child/ren are the innocent variety like GG & BB, then give the film a miss or see it alone/with adults. If your child likes/understands adult and toilet humor, by all means take them with you

What Kind of a Blogger Am I?

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I was stuck today with nothing remotely intelligent to say. Then while I was surfing the net, I came across this quiz which asks you some questions about the things you blog about and then tells you what kind of a blogger you are. So what kind am I? I am a Life Blogger. To quote…

“Your blog is the story of your life – a living diary. If it happens, you blog it. And you make it as entertaining as possible. You may be guilty of over-sharing a bit on your blog, but you can’t help it. Your life is truly an open book. Or in this case, an open blog!”

Am I really a life blogger? I do blog about things going on in my life – after all this blog was started with the intention of being something like a digital diary. Well that should give me things to post about another time.

This weekend is going to be a long one with Hari Raya Haji or what is called Bakri Id in India on Sunday, so Monday’s an extra holiday. We’ve got plans this weekend – on Saturday we go for a birthday party for the child of a friend, one whom GG & BB also know well, then on Sunday GG and BB will see their second Hindi Bollywood film in the theatre! The first non-children film was 3 Idiots and the first Tamil film was Enthiran. We’re seeing Ra One on Sunday and both BB & GG are super excited about it. I’ll review the film sometime next week.

Feeling sorry for myself…

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I am in a very funky kind of mood today. This post is a semi rant cum self indulgence one!

The job I am with is not working out. I am not fond of the industry and want to go back to academia, which is where I feel I belong. Also I work on a flexible arrangement here, this was an experiment I wanted to do since I wanted to be there for BB & GG. But here, atleast, this experiment is not working.

Since I leave about 3 hours before the others, there are always things that I am unaware of, which people forget to update me when I get in the next day. I keep having this feeling of being in an island all alone. This is not very good for my morale.

The project I was hired for, has, for some reason not taken off. It has now been postponed to mid 2012, so I also have the feeling that my confirmation which would come in early January would be affected as I do not have anything concrete to show for the last six months, just preparations which went nowhere.

Last, this organisation is going to shift – no idea when though, but each time I ask, it is sometime by the end of the year – to the absolute other end of the country/island. Currently it takes me between 45 to 60 minutes to get to work and getting home takes around the same time, but I only need to take one straight bus and so most afternoons, I get on the bus and sleep till it’s time to get off. At the new place, I will need to change three different buses which will take me approximately 90 minutes to get to work and home (this is assuming there are no traffic snarls at any point in the journey). I will be spending 3 hours in the road and 6 hours at work – making it a 9 hour day altogether.

Is this worth it? When I joined here, I had great ideas and thougths, but the reality is way different. There’s been so much staff turnover, both before I joined and during the last 4 months, two people have left. When asked, the management talks about a ‘lack of fit’ for the reason why people leave. But I wanted to ask them, if there is an issue about the fit, then why hire the wrong kind of people? It’s either you don’t know what you are doing when you hire people, or that you give potential employees a completely distorted view of the organisation which makes the ‘fit’ questionable.

Well, I need to start searching for a new job pronto! What I would like in an ideal world would be to search, interview and accept a new position this month (aka November) and then serve my two weeks notice in the first half of December and finish my last day before I go on holiday and start a new place in the new year. What do you think? Will that happen? I want to do something that interests me and makes me excited to wake up on Monday morning, raring to get to work, instead of waking up on Monday and wishing it was Friday already 😦

If someone above listening to me, please, please help!! Also if God, you are listening or reading this, I wouldn’t mind winning some serious money in Toto or 4D, so that for the next few years, I can give up work and concentrate on BB & GG and do what interests me…

A picture to cheer me up! But does it? Let's wait and watch...

Stories from Ancient India: How Lord Ganesh got an Elephant’s Head

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One day Goddess Parvati wanted to be alone and have a bath, so she instructed the bull Nandi who was Lord Shiva’s personal guard to ensure that no one could enter the house while she was bathing. Just then Lord Shiva wanted to meet Parvati. Seeing him, the Lord of Mount Kailash, Nandi immediately allowed him into the area where Parvati was bathing. When Parvati came to know about this, she was furious about the fact that the guard she had ordered to do her work was more faithful to her husband than to her.

In retaliation, she took the turmeric paste from her body and with her powers, created a child whom she wanted to be faithful only to herself and no one else. She named the child Ganesha. At this point in time, no one knew about the creation of this child as Shiva was away from Mount Kailash then.

Soon, the child was guarding the Parvati’s room and did not allow anyone to enter the room as ordered by Parvati. Meanwhile, Lord Shiva entered their home and made his way to Parvati’s private chambers. Following orders, Ganesha stopped the great lord with a loud “Stop! You cannot enter my mother’s private chambers”

Shiva was amazed both at the audacity of this child who was stopping him from entering his own home and with the fact that this child, whom he had never seen before was calling his wife Parvati his mother.

“Who are you to stop me from entering my own home? Do you even know who I am?” Shiva roared in anger.

“I don’t know who you are, but I can’t allow you inside since my mother has forbidden me from doing so” replied Ganesha.

Furious, Lord Shiva sent his army or Gana Sena to attack the child. But Ganesha who was no ordinary child was born with immense strength and he soon defeated the army easily. Shiva then looked at other avenues to reason with the child. He used the services of Lord Brahma who came in the form of a peaceful Brahmin and tried reasoning with Ganesha using the religious texts, but Ganesha did not budge. Then Shiva mobilized the army of the gods or Devas, but the child routed them too easily. Enraged beyond reason, Shiva then goes behind Ganesha when he is battling others and cuts off his head.

“Motherrrrr” Ganesha screams and dies on the spot. Hearing the noise, Pravati rushes from her private apartment and sees the carnage before her. Seeing her child, her creation dead in front of her puts her in a great rage and she moves into her destruction mode threatening to destroy the entire universe. Seeing this makes all the Gods assembled there very nervous and scared and Brahma decided to intervene and asked her to reconsider her decision

“I will not destroy this universe only on two conditions – one my child be brought back to life and two Ganesha will be worshipped and propitiated before any other Gods” Parvati put down her conditions.

In order to console his wife and stop the world from being destroyed, Shiva agreed to the conditions and sent for his servants and soldiers.

“Go forth and bring to us the first head of any creature you come across which is sleeping with it’s head pointed in the northern direction” Shiva ordered his soldiers and they soon set out to do their Lord’s bidding. The Ganas spread out to search for a creature with its head to the north and soon find an elephant sleeping with its head to the north.

They then bring the elephant’s head back to Lord Shiva who attaches it to Ganesha’s body and with his divine powers, soon brings him back to life. Ganesha soon gets revived and Lord Shiva proclaims him his own son and also the leader of his army, hence his name as Ganapati (Lord of the Ganas). He further proclaims that Ganesha will be foremost of all Gods and will be the first God to be worshipped as well as before anyone undertakes any new undertaking.

This is how Lord Ganesha came into existence, why we worship him first and why he is also called Ganapati

My Son is Smarter than me….

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I consider myself to be an intelligent person – certainly not Mensa material, but smarter than average. Why I am say this – well yesterday evening I realized my eight year old son is smarter than me! So how did I come to this conclusion? Well yesterday BB & GG had their Math final paper. One of the questions in the paper was a tricky one. When BB explained the question to me, it took me a while to get it and longer to figure out the answer. It was only when BB showed me the working, it was like a ‘duh’ moment for me and a realization that my son’s smarter than me!

The problem in question goes like this and I paraphrase “In a room if 15 handshakes are exchanged, how many people are there in the room?” The answer for those interested in knowing is 6 people.

So now how do I nurture this ability? Any ideas?