MANDY DA DHABAAAA.........

It’s been a long time since I wrote last, blame is on my new job, shifting to a new apartment and my new hobby (cooking ;-). Well I have a rented a wonderful apartment in Indira Nagar and since the time I have moved in there’s a party every day. I had so many empty bottles collected in a month that I was able to pay off my maid’s monthly salary just by selling them.
Reason for so many parties…hmmmmmm….Well I need people to taste what I cook..lolz, and did they praise!!!! So ladies and gentlemen after 1 month of rigorous self training on cooking I can now make wonderful Chicken (Mughlai/Chinese), Mutton, Pork, Pranthas, Dal, Any kind of sabji, Rajma, Chole, Rotis (this was the toughest part), Pasta, Biriyaani….and above all my favourite dish Prawns in Red Curry (Thai). I have gained a kilo due to all the amazing foods I have been cooking and eating in the past month but I have no regrets as I have learned an art that I always thought immpoosible for a creature like me. Cooking for me has become a meditation of some sorts, I am more content and happier in life because of this exercise. A man can do anything if he puts his heart into it…….Yummy….

Everyone is invited to drop@myplace in Bangalore to savior the taste of my cooking.

Check this link out.....

http://www.star28.net/snow.html

Endurance and Pain

Everyman thinks why the hell women crib about giving birth and enduring the pain, it's worth it right? And then how much pain can it actually be? as his belief that he has endured more pain in those bike accidents and college brawls...I mean broken bones are more painful right?......but then the time comes when his perception is changed and he gets a root canal done just to realizes the true meaning of pain. Believe me this must be what giving birth must feel like ,I can say this after getting couple of root canals done and this recent surgery that I had to go through because of an infection right below my root canalled tooth. My dentist was adamant on pulling my tooth out and leave me toothless for life( unless I spend fuckin 25000 rupees for an implant), somehow I convinced him to find me an Oral Surgeon to cut through the bone below my tooth to take out the infection and fill it with some bone supplement. Easier said then done as next day I had a man with a green mask with a drilling machine inside my mouth along with my dentist poking a suction pipe to suck out all my juices. To keep my mouth open for 2 hours while they were experimenting with this unique case felt like extended labor pain while trying to give birth to an unwanted child. Since I had earlier underwent root canal treatment I was expecting a lot of pain and was calm on the surface, what scared me most was once the surgery was done those doctors were clicking picture inside my mouth as if they have solved a case of there life, it felt like they have taken out a huge chunk of cancer while performing a miraculous life saving surgery. They even delayed stitching up my wounds so that they can catch a better frame using there camera phones, at last when I protested (really had a tough time doing that as my left lip was hanging down due to all that anesthesia and it was impossible to sound like me) they realized I need to close my mouth and gave me 9 stitches inside my mouth. I felt like an old torned down shirt which was getting mended. At last they triumphed with a job well done as I saw a man with a swollen face and hung down left lip in the mirror, a face that looked even more swollen the next morning. Today after a full week the face seems to be my old self and tomorrow my stitches are going to come off though I'll have to exercise precaution for a month I feel I feel like I've been born once again, though it was tough at last I got rid of my illegitimate child :-)

Children of Heaven (Bacheha-Ye aseman)

Usually I don't write movie reviews but this movie touched my heart, it is a really sweet story of two Iranian brother and sister (Ali and Zohra) who live in poverty with there parents. The story starts when Ali accidentally loses Zohra's shoes and the kids are afraid to tell there parents, they come up with a plan to share Ali's shoes (Zohra wears them in morning and Ali in the Afternoon according to there school timings) till the time they figure something out. There only hope in the end is a marathon race for which the 3rd prize is a pair of sneakers and Ali plans to take part in it but comes first after a tough try of coming third. I bet this movie will wet your eyes as this has to be the sweetest adventure story ever written.

My Date with the Flute Maestro

As they say you just can't forget your first times...be it your first kiss, your first girl friend, your first car or the day you get your first job, all these moments are unforgettable. Most of youngsters in India hate to hear classical music and term it as boring because that's what it is as I too remember those dreadful days when some stupid politician used to die and I had to miss my favorite TV shows as DD used to play classical music whole day (I guess it still happens on DD), so it has become a symbol of mourning for me. It's a fact that you just can't like something if you are forced to watch it and the blame goes to our poor old Doordarshan for giving classical music a boring tag.
But then times change and came my first live classical music concert (well it wasn't really a concert only Bansuri), though I am used to hearing instrumental music (without any knowledge of the Ragas) this experience was mind blowing. Pandit Hari Prasad Chaurasia has a great aura surrounding him and the thrill I experienced when he played the famous Rag Malhar cannot be explained in words. Pandit Ji started the concert with Rag Bhairavi and ended with Shivranjani Raga in which he did some amazing percussion with a smaller flute. The best part about Panjit Ji's concert besides music is the raw pleasure and perfection the great man puts in his performance. He has made me a fan of classical music (only instrumentals) and the next man I would like to hear live is Ustad Zakir Hussain as Tabla happens to be my favorite.

Can you answer this?

Question : You are in a boat in the middle of a river. You have 2 Cigarettes and have to light any one cigarette. You don't have anything else with you in the boat? How will you do it?

One long night @ the call center


What can I say about this book, it does brings back all those memories of my stint at the call center industry and good old Gurgaon, only city I have lived in where you can party all night long after Kathmandu, I have some of the best memories of my life in that city. Anyways the author has done well in creating a nice story though he faltered a bit towards the end but then I had huge expectations after reading the amazing 5 point someone so it was a bit of turn off there. He was able to keep the charisma of his one liner in this book as well and created a story out of a loser type hero again. I never thought so many things are possible in one night, at the least the author should have given a thought to the timeline. To sum up this entire entire book is just a one time read and since the price was reasonable I have no regrets :-)

I, PROUD TO BE AN INDIAN

Here is an article I found that would open our eyes and put our heads down in shame.........

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I am proud of being an Indian. I am one among you, a mascot of an Urban man. I respect women in my house. During Rakhsha bandhan my sister ties me Rakhee and i give her nice gifts. I love her a lot. My mom is like god for me. I am man like all of you. When i went to college, I didnt attend classes but i used to stand near the college gate along with my friend and tease all the girls. I used to tell them how beautiful they are, how nice their cheek and back is etc etc. While traveling in the bus, I get close to girls and brush my body against theirs, it fun, the girl can’t say anything so I take advantage of that. I have touched them at so many places just for fun. When in friend I discuss about girls in the society, in college and about their assets. I share my experience of how i kissed my Girl friend, how good her assets are and how i made love to her. I feel proud when i share this with my friend who considers me macho and look at me with awe and respect. I sometimes lie that i have loved this girl just to get added respect from my friend. I tell them sometimes the whole sequence and how good the girl was in bed. I travel in train and hang out of the door. I shout at the girl standing on the platform just for fun. I call them Ran.. Pros.... chik..I am one among you who says this, I cant say alone since its dangerous. Generally when you people are with me, i am excited and also no one will take panga with us. I have followed girls in dark and hit them behind and driven past them. I don’t care what she must be feeling but i enjoy it. I usually haunt for such situation. And if that is not enough i take my car and me and some of our friend kidnap girl from the road side, we take turns to rape her in the moving car and then we dump her. We don’t care if people have seen us or not not they won’t do anything. Usually the girl doesn't say anything or complain to police. If she goes to cops they don’t even consider registering the complaint, since they want to do the same with the girl as we did. But some idiots are there who register the complaints. So what we have money and we are not even caught. Sometime if we are caught, we bribe them who make the case quite loose so that we escape during the trial. Even if the case is strong and the case goes against us, I will offer the victim to get married to me and the judge will take a sympathetic view to me without considering the torture and brutality meted out to win. So i win again. No one can prosecute me. You can count the number of cases in which conviction is passed against the number of cases that is registered against. My fried who’s a cop one day was drunk a lot and he saw a young teenage couple. He just got aroused and threatened the boy away and raped the girl in police chowkie. His name is Sunil More. He’s happy in jail, thode din problem hua but he’s okay now. Waiting to get released due to lack of evidence so that he can go back to his wife and kids who will give him a hero’s welcome.
I don’t spare girls in movie theaters, at public places anywhere. I don’t spare any moment to harass a girl whether she’s with her relatives, friend or alone. If you object to my moves, you will be threatened not only by me but also by people close to you, your friends, your relatives etc. Look at what friends Morpani and krishnani. They mixed some drugs in a girls drink in Bawa international hotel. She is a South African model and trying to get some role in movies. They took her along to kalyan, the waiters and people out there know about it but they didn’t say anything. Then they took her and raped for two days. So what krisnanis dad was dying in hospital while he was raping the girl? They even recorded that on the mobile and am sure they will release it soon. Arey this hype about the case is because the girl is foreigner. Otherwise they are so influential that the case wouldn’t have registered. They do this all the time and people know about it but just yeh baar thoda panga ho gaya. You can ask the waiters at Bawa or Rajmahal. They know it all. You know most of my friends now have camera enabled mobile phone and they can secretly record their girl friend when making love. They release it on the internet so that we can enjoy it. We all enjoy it don’t we? It doesn’t make any difference as how it will effect the girls who trust us so much. Sometimes we fix up spy cam to record and release other couples in their private moment. We all enjoy it later and our appetite for this is increasing ever. You can get it at any mobile dealer in the sim for some money, especially borivli in Mumbai or palika in delhi.
I am proud to be an Indian, Mai apne bare mey kya likhu, U can read about me in the news paper everyday. I strike every second in one form or the other.

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FIVE POINT SOMEONE (Chetan Bhagat)

What can I say about this book, it not only made me smile but it made me laugh and that too more than once...some of the incidents are really hilarious and even though the author has selected IIT where only the most intelligent cream of Indians study he has found a bunch of average guys with GPA's of 5 point something and constructed a story that could've existed in any college. A really enjoyable read....

Some punjabi shayari for bevada's like me.....

daaru kehande ne shaan punjabiyan di,

kai mehfilan ehde bina adhooriyan ne,

kai peende ne esnu shaunk vaaste,

sade varge diyan taan eh majbooriyan ne.........
majboorian vich peende haan.....

kadi dard vich peende haan......

je kar khushi vi naa hove koi......

taan ehdaan hi pee lande haan.....

Talli as usual

Mandy

Life of Pi (The Lion, the hyena and the lifeboat)

I finished it at last; this book is such a short read but took me a really long time to find it interesting. Initial pages are really boring when our good old Pi Patel is in Pondicherry, the fun starts when his ship sinks and he is left on a lifeboat along with a Bengal Tiger, a hyena, an orangutan and a dying zebra. The author has struck the right chord of comedy and logic in his struggle of survival which includes surviving with a tiger onboard through hundreds of days of cast away.
All in all a worthwhile book to read in case you are a national geographic fan or wants to learn the survival techniques in case you find yourself ship wrecked some day or just to have a good laugh. Don’t know why it got the Man Bookers Prize though.

Atlas Shrugged

I would always remember this book not because of its intellectual content but because I carried it to GOA to fulfill my dream of reading a good book on the beach. Ayn Rand has done a wonderful job in follow up of Fountain Head, she has shown a perspective of human nature and presented in such a way that you feel blown away at her capacity of classification of people. "Who is John Galt?" is the central plot of the book and the central character Dagny Taggart's struggle to find him. Though I hardly read philosophy but Ayn Rand's philosophy (she calls it objectivism) is based on the fact that this world is surviving because of people who only get happiness out of there work. The plot is so mind blowing that you would not let the book away from your sight to find out in the end how appropriate the title of the book is.

The characterization of good and evil is done on the lines of Fountain Head. I would still consider Fountain Head as Ayn Rand's best book because Howard Roark is the most unforgettable character.
The only drawback of Atlas Shrugged is that it's too lengthy to finish, it took me a long time to go through the 1000 pages paperback edition with a really small font.

My Rating: ****1/2

My pics from GOA!!!!!!! If you want to check out the rest.....just click here

A trip to remember……

Thailand one of the most exotic place on our planet…unfortunately it was not my time to be there due to the ECR status of my passport and since I had my leaves in hand I took a decision for which I’ll thank these immigration policies for the rest of my life. We (I was in company of a really great friend) decided to forget Bangkok and go to GOA!!!!!
To our disappointment the only ticket available to fly on the same day were IA’s business class, that’s 5 times expensive than the normal fare but that didn’t deter us and we landed in GOA within 5 hours of taking that decision without any prior knowledge of where to go as it was our first time there. Taxi driver’s advice took us to North GOA and we landed up in a hotel near Baga beach, the whole place was filled up with Indian tourists which did not give me the picture of EAST meets WEST of GOA. Though the beaches (Baga, Calengute, Anjuna) were beautiful but the place was really crowded. We had a great dinner with mouthful of Crab meat and went to Tito’s for a nice party that lasted all night with a Coyote Ugly style dancer showing some amazing moves. Next day was spent exploring all the beaches of North GOA and Agoda Fort (from Dil Chahta hai fame) on a motorbike, a quite satisfying day but it finished most of the things I wanted to see in GOA and we were left with 3 days on our hand. A wise man’s advise on Anjuna beach made us go back to the hotel pack our bags and make a move to Palolem beach in South GOA a 132 km drive (GOD bless him). With the first sight of Palolem I just knew that this will become the most famous place on the planet earth for me. We lodged ourselves in the most amazing beach facing coco huts and dived straight into the water…….it was the calmest and most peaceful beach and made me feel @ home right away. For the rest of our stay we spent whole day either lying on the beach or wetting ourselves with the salty water. Evenings were better and with the help of some new found friends from England we explored the most beautiful sites on the adjacent beaches of Palolem. There were the most amazing sunsets and since the beach was full of foreigners it was view of EAST meets WEST that GOA is famous for. Well my friends GOA is also famous for some amazing sea food and my assorted list of meals included crabs, prawns, calamari, shark and some great intercontinental stuff.

The beach facing Restaurant at the End Of my Universe was named Titanic and was responsible for my blood being replaced by alcohol, my face constantly stuffed with food and adding some amazing new friends to my life. Even though we went at the end of the season on all our evenings we ended up partying till dawn, there were some really beautiful and amazing people in these parties to make them memorable. Imagine dancing on a Sandy beach till dawn and take a dip in the sea in the dark after getting smashingly drunk. The drinking sprees starting right after breakfast and ending till dawn of next day are just unforgettable. The adventure of those walks from sand to rocks, the view of sun setting in the sea and behind the coconut trees, the ideal days lying in the sun and the waves hitting my bums, the parties that never stops the booze that’s never enough, it was time out of my deepest desires, it was a holiday to put my soul on fire. I wish the time could’ve stand still and I wish I would have never come back to this swill. But it was the thing I had to do and before leaving these was my last words GOA I LOVE YOU BUT I WILL LEAVE YOU!!!!!!!!

PS: Keep waiting for the beautiful pictures of the most amazing sunsets of GOA along with mine….

Another stupidity of our gool old politicians!!!!

ET has opened a debate on reservation.Is Premji right to go against job quotas in Wipro?
As expected most of the posts agree with him... here is someone who put his pointt in a very diff way.. :-)

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I think we should have job reservations in all the fields. I completely support the PM and all the politicians for promoting this. Let's start the reservation with our cricket team. We should have 10 percent reservation for muslims. 30 percent for OBC, SC/ST like that. Cricket rules should be modified accordingly. The boundary circle should be reduced for an SC/ST player. The four hit by an OBC player should be considered as a six and a six hit by a OBC player should be counted as 8 runs. An OBC player scoring 60 runs should be declared as a century.

We should influence ICC and make rules so that the pace bowlers like Shoaib Akhtar should not bowl fast balls to our OBC player. Bowlers should bowl maximum speed of 80 kilometer per hour to an OBC player. Any delivery above this speed should be made illegal.

Also we should have reservation in Olympics. In the 100 meters race, an OBC player should be given a gold medal if he runs 80 meters.

There can be reservation in Government jobs also. Let's recruit SC/ST and OBC pilots for aircrafts which are carrying the ministers and politicians (that can really help the country.. )

Ensure that only SC/ST and OBC doctors do the operations for the ministers and other politicians. (Another way of saving the country..)

Let's be creative and think of ways and means to guide INDIA forward... Let's show the world that INDIA is a GREAT country. Let's be proud of being an INDIAN..

May the good breed of politicans like ARJUN SINGH long live...

Have you ever felt Lonely Lately !!!!

Lonely I'm Mr lonely,
I have nobody,
for my owwwn I’m so lonely,
so lonely
I’m Mr Lonely
I have nobody,
for my owwnnn
I’m so lonely

My favourite lyrics for a gloomy lonely day.......Lonely !!!! There comes a time in everyone’s life when you feel gloomy about your utter existence in this stupid world, you feel lonely and incomplete, you may have lost a loved one….got dumped by your love…..lost a job…..or just got frustrated of your life…well I HAVE!!!! A world full of liars, people fighting over there egos brother shooting brother over a property dispute (take the case of Mr. Mahajan)…..have you ever felt the urge to end your life? Have you ever felt the coldness of the blade on your wrists and waited for the feeling to go away? It really takes lots of guts or should I say lots of stupidity to make that final slash!!! Well if any of you reading it have had thoughts like these and were able to pass it be proud!!! You are the survivors of senseless stupidity. But this experience gives us a deep understanding what others (the non-survivors) must have gone through…..it is like seeing the light at the end of a tunnel and returning back ready to face to world again.
So for those of you who haven’t yet faced the gloomiest day of your life and if unfortunately land up in this situation wait for that feeling to pass as tomorrow is yet another day. Believe me I have been there done that!!!!!!!!

(I write this due to the shocking news of a suicide by somebody I knew for failure in love)

A Mail from a frustrated victim of chain mailsz

I wanted to thank all my friends and family who have forwarded chain letters to me in 2004 & 2005.
Because of your kindness:
* I stopped drinking Coca Cola after I found out that it's good for removing toilet stains.
* I stopped going to the movies for fear of sitting on a needle infected with AIDS.
* I smell like a wet dog since I stopped using deodorants because they cause cancer.
* I don't leave my car in the parking lot or any other place and sometimes I even have to walk about 7 blocks for fear that some one will drug me with a perfume sample and try to rob me.
* I also stopped answering the phone for fear that they may ask me to dial a stupid number and then I get a phone bill from hell with calls to Uganda, Singapore and Tokyo.
* I also stopped drinking anything out of a can for fear that I will get sick from the rat faeces and urine.
* When I go to parties, I don't look at any girl, no matter how hot she is, for fear that she will take me to a hotel, drug me then take my kidneys and leave me taking a nap in a bathtub full of ice.
* I also donated all my savings to the Amy Bruce account. A sick girl that was about to die in the hospital about 7,000 times. (Poor girl! she's been 7 since 1993...)
* I went bankrupt from bounced checks that I made expecting the $15,000 that Microsoft and AOL were supposed to send me when I participated in their special e-mail program would arrive soon.
* My free Nokia phone never arrived and neither did the free passes for a paid vacation to Disneyland.
* Still open to help some from Bulgaria who wants to use my account to transfer his uncle property of some hundred millions $.
* Made some Hundred wishes before forwarding those GaneshVandana,Tirupathi Balaji pics etc.. now most of those 'Wishes' are already married(to someone else)
IMPORTANT NOTE: If you do not send this e-mail to at least 1246 people in the next 10 seconds, a bird will SH** on your head today.

Agonies of an Offshore guy

here i am in Bangalore doing server administration offshore
Waiting for the good old work request tracker to open..
i am still loosing sleep over usage of memory, cpu's and hard disks
as our good old sitescope never stops alert sending
Everyday we get new deployments for the stupid A-Day
have to come and work even on weekends and holidays
the comp offs keep on mounting, shucks now i have lost all the counting
these RFWs (Request For work)irritates me now, c'mon guys at least format it properly somehow
HpInsight and Sitescope are my best pals, at least they send me alerts before Motu could scan
everyday the onsite guy starts with a salaam on sametime....
keeps slamming his work on my head and keeps saying aisi taisi..
i am fed up with the Change control and work request trackers..
loosing my gf was easy but opening them on network is a cracker..
every morning monitoring of all the servers sucks...
it's as if you are playing a roulette and every server that's up is your luck
everyday there is some server down or a missing mount...
seems like a conspiracy of some higher count...
i wonder how onsite will be like
will it be able to give me any respite....
will I scream and shout like my onsite counterpart..
and will I still end up writing useless lines like this
where have the days of great troubleshooting and implementation gone...
oh sh*t I forgot i really got to go
there are some RFWs waiting for me to explore and tracker entries to be made...
I will write some more lines during my next agonizing wait...

Indian government spent Rs. 40 crores on Bollywood stars for an eleven-minute performance!

It was shocking that the Indian government spent Rs. 40 crores on the Bollywood stars for an eleven-minute show at the recently concluded Commonwealth games in Melbourne. If the government had spent even a fraction of that amount on the athletes who participated in the event then we would have had some more medals in our Kitty. It is really shameful that the government gives step motherly treatment to the sports and sportsmen and spends crores on Bollywood actors that has no connection with sports world at all.

I have seen our national hockey players bathing in a railway yard and being stashed in a second-class railway compartment when they were traveling for a hockey tournament. The sportspersons participating in Olympics and Common wealth games are paid peanuts and the sport facilities are pathetic. Even the medal winners at the Commonwealth games will not receive even one percent of what Bollywood stars like Priyanka Chopra and Lara Dutt got (one crore each) for simply waving to the crowds. And the so-called face of Indian cinema Aishwarya Rai’s fake patriotism was exposed when she boasted of performing at the ceremony just for patriotic reasons. And what was the cost of this patriotism – a cool Rs.3 Crore. Bollywood actors do not even represent India but the sportspersons do and they are the ones who are more eligible for receiving large amount and not some dumb actresses like Aishwarya Rai, whose only qualification is her good face. Now there is every reason to believe that Aishwarya Rai might also be charging hefty fees for indulging in other social causes.

Can’t our Bollywood stars perform free of charge for India even for eleven minutes? The government would have definitely spent on their stay and travel expenses and it was not even the case where the Bollywood stars had to incur a loss by rejecting a movie offer for performing at the event. The Government should get their priorities right and instead of wasting money on Bollywood stars they should spend money on improving the sports infrastructure, the training facilities for sportspersons and increasing their fees.

The organizer of the event, Mr. Viraf Sarkar of Wizcraft says that Bollywood stars were showcasing our country. He should know that Bollywood is not India. And if he wanted to showcase our country then he should have had people from different fields and not just from Bollywood. And if the government is thinking that they can attract spectators by displaying Bollywood actors in the ceremony then they are seriously undermining the sports lovers in India. A sport lover would always go for Commonwealth games whether Bollywood endorses it or not. There is nothing wrong if Bollywood actors are used for publicity but there could be no justification for spending 40 crores on them when the sportspersons are being poorly paid and leading a pathetic life.

Such poor sports administration has been the bane for our sports culture for decades. I hope that the Indian government and the sports minister look into the matter and ensure that this kind of money wastage does not recur. It is high time that the politicians and officials are thrown out from sports bodies and are replaced by retired, outstanding sportspersons and able administrators who know something about sports. Why have politicians like Suresh Kalmadi at the helm when he has done nothing good for the sports all these years?

Finally, Bollywood stars like Aishwarya Rai, Rani Mukherjee, Saif Ali Khan, etc should stop talking about patriotism and their love for India when all they do is sell their soul and patriotism for money. They are nothing but mercenaries and the sports administrators are nothing but idiots.

Electricity Theft

Jharkhand police has atlast solved the complicated case of electricity theft, the criminal was identified as Harsh Chaudhary aged 1 year and in his possesion a 7 metre long wire. Though his father has filed for anticipatory bail the JSEB(Jharkhand State Electricity Board) is sure that this time they won't let the culprit go free. GR8 going.....atlast they have started solving cases!!!! This kid should rot in hell as electricity thieves like these are responsible for me missing my last thursday's episode of "Sex and the City".

You guys really don't believe me, here's the link to the real story. Please join me creating a movement against this type of theft.....don't you laugh on me now......:-)

Court Unites Lesbians

There was an article in Times of India today about a ruling in favor of a lesbian couple, dropping all charges to prevent them from staying together....all the gay associations are ecstatic about this victory but I believe otherwise.....it isn’t really a victory till the time a proper law is passed in Indian Constitution, what they got away with is a chink in the Indian Law. Of course court is right in saying that these girls are old enough to take the decision of living together. But the catch is that the policemen couldn't book them under section 377 of IPC which punishes "intercourse against order of nature" as it requires penetration (point is there is still a law to punish you if you use dildo’s). I believe if it was a Hillary Swank kind of thing from Boys Don't Cry they would have been behind bars........
Everything apart I believe there is a long way to go for gays in India as this is a country where the most happening city like Bangalore has bar timings restrictions till 11:30 pm.

Link to the article --->http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/msid-1472141,curpg-1.cms

Eragon, Eldest and the Trilogy of Inheritance....

Do I smell another Lord of the rings in the making? Is Peter Jackson reading & waiting for the third part of this trilogy as impatiently as I am? Yes it is true they are making a movie at last http://www.eragonmovie.com/ ......wow.........This story has all the masala of L.O.R as this book has Elfs, Dwarfs, Dragons, Huge Battle, Shades, Kulls, Magicians who can read your mind and the excitement and the journey of a boy who wents on to become a Dragon Rider. The story starts simply when a boy named Eragon find a stone in the Spine that turns out to be a dragon egg which takes him to a never ending journey through out these books. The author Christopher Paolini started writing this story when he was in 1st standard and finished it when he was 15, now 19 he has already got the world begging him to finish writing the 3rd part of the trilogy........ The magical world of Christopher Paolini named Alagaesia takes you through one hell of an exciting journey that won't let you keep the book down till you pass out due to insufficient sleep....I strongly recommend it to all the Magical Fantasy readers and also to readers who underestimate the power of Magical Fantasy....believe me I know people who won’t read Dune because they think fantasy is too easy to write and worthless to read....

My Rating ****1/2 (I had to take the 1/2 star as I hate the author for not writing the 3rd part yet)

Brokeback Mountain and Transamerica........

What can I say but these are the two movies I saw recently....though I only saw the latter while I was completely drunk and could've watched any movie...lucky enuf i watched this one cause at the end of it I was still totally completely drunk and I still can't say whether I liked it or not as I am CONFUSED.......and to top it all I am CONFUSED about Brokeback Mountain as well...though the most confusing thing about Brokeback was the Texan accent.....but you have to see it to believe what Ang Lee is capable of......he actually made me want to be gay......hey don't make a mistake @ calling me gay cause in the interval a girl from a group of seven commented....."wht is this guy doing alone here ...is he a GAY?" to which I simply turned around Schezwan Popcorn in one hand and a Diet Pepsi in other and said "No lady I am a pukka Lesbian" and believe me I have never seen a face change colors so quickly when all of her friends just bursted out laughing......they even stopped there ooooohhhhss when the next gay scene came..........
But now I can see why Crash won the best Oscar and why Brokeback didn’t...cause the latter is easiest to hate.......even gay population would hate this movie because of the way the character of "Heath Ledger" always ran away from accepting his destiny wanting to lead a normal life in turn screwing up his wife from behind.........though the realization did dawned on him at the end.........
Well Transamerica is a movie about a male to female transsexual who is about to go for a surgery to get a brand new Vagina but finds out that he has a 17 year old son who is in jail on charges of prostitution....whose aim in life is to go to LA and star in a gay porno flick....well the main story lies in the journey to LA when our transsexual offers his(or should I say her) kid a car ride to LA without disclosing her true identity.....it is a movie with a happy but a bit confusing ending as bith of them end up getting what they want from life......
Well if you are reading this for a review point of view I will say watch it on your own risk as both of these are hard hitting movies on shades of modern male sexuality and believe me they are watched more by women rather than males.......there was an article in TOI last week that said Bangalore men hate Brokeback........and I wanted to write Women of the world loved it....take example of the oohs and aahs coming from the group of girls in my back row of the theatre......

Brokeback ***1/2
Transamerica ***

(An article from web)Why Brokeback lost to Crash

For movie lovers, Oscar watchers, and a lot of gay men and women, this has to be a night that will go down in the history as one of big disappointment -- almost at par with the night when John Kerry lost to George W Bush.
Brokeback Mountain was supposed to sweep the Oscars. Ang Lee's tragic and beautifully rendered love story (which just happens to deal with the love affair between two cowboys) seemed to have the Best Picture win locked. No other movie last year could match up to Brokeback's success and critical praise.
Oscars: Complete Coverage
Ever since Brokeback won the top award at the Venice Film Festival in September (and since I saw the film in early September at the Telluride Film Festival), the buzz was very strong about that film – a groundbreaking story set in the vast, sweeping, visually stunning landscape of Wyoming (the film was actually shot in Alberta, Canada). It opened in the US in early December and the possibility of a Brokeback win seemed even more certain.
And Brokeback truly deserved to win tonight. For Lee's controlled and detailed direction; Annie Proulx's moving short story; Larry McMutry and Diana Ossana's strong screenplay adaptation; and its theme -- a romance between two men, like it has never been shown before in Hollywood.
It also deserved to win for Heath Ledger's quiet, devastating and heart-wrenching performance as a man left alone with his memories. Ledger is simply fantastic in Brokeback.
Crash beats Brokeback
Unfortunately, Ledger was not going to win the Best Actor award. That was a sure win for Philip Seymour Hoffman for his equally well-deserved, but a lot more showy performance in Capote. The other sure win was for Hollywood's golden girl Reese Witherspoon in the role of June Carter in Walk The Line.
Then, a few weeks ago, a word started appearing in the press. A five letter word that spelt Crash. Just last week, Entertainment Weekly pointed out that although Brokeback had won the Golden Globe and the Producers, Directors and Writers Guild awards, it had lost one crucial race. The Screen Actors Guild award had gone to the ensemble team of Crash. And maybe, just maybe, Crash might win the Best Film Oscar.
On the red carpet
'Like a speeding Ferrari you didn't see coming, Crash has rammed its way into possible win territory,' the Weekly said. But the magazine's critics still maintained that Brokeback had a slight edge.
Then on Friday -- several days after the close of the academy's voting -- David Carr wrote a scary prediction in The New York Times, which unfortunately came true: 'But Los Angelenos, a good chunk of the Academy, have a crush on Crash, the parable of race and class that memorialises the city they drive through everyday.'
But Carr also said that if the Academy votes for Brokeback, it will demonstrate its tolerant and progressive values.
We will never know how many more Academy voters picked Crash over Brokeback. But this much is clear: While Crash is a fine and important film, in choosing Crash over Brokeback, the Academy members showed their conservative, safe and non-controversial side.
How the Academy works
The Academy members may occasionally give Oscars to breakthrough performances -- such as Hilary Swank as a woman who wants to live like a boy in Boys Don't Cry, or Tom Hanks as a successful white man dying of AIDS in Philadelphia, or Charlize Theron as a lesbian serial killer in Monster.
And 37years ago, the academy did the most daring -- it gave the Best Film award to John Schlesinger's Midnight Cowboy -- another gay themed film. But today's Academy is mostly uncomfortable with a film that deals with real love between two men.
This is the same Academy that chose the worthy South African film Tsotsi as the Best Foreign Film -- over an even better-constructed and moving, but more controversial Palestinian film Paradise Now, which shows the human side of suicide bombers.
There were reported signature campaigns against Paradise Now among the pro-Israel lobby within the Academy. And that conservative wing of the lobby managed to get more people to cast their votes for Tsotsi.
Winners at a glance
There were some real important wins tonight. Taiwan-born Ang Lee was recognised as the Best Director not just for his masterful work in making Brokeback, but also for his long range of a most impressive and diverse filmmaking career.
Lee started with small indie films like Pushing Hands and The Wedding Banquet, but then he went on to direct films that dealt with American suburbia (The Ice Storm), English period drama (the brilliant Sense And Sensibility) and Chinese martial arts (the awesome Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon). Lee is also such a humble and a warm man. It was good to see him win tonight.
The Supporting Actor awards tonight were expected, but still very well deserved. The always smooth and charming George Clooney put on weight and looked dishevelled in Syriana. He carried the weight of the film on his back. And so did Rachel Weisz in The Constant Gardner. Weisz's character and performance was so important for the success of the film that one wonders why the studio did not promote her name in the Best Actress category.
I suppose Brokeback's supporters will get over the film's loss tonight. How many people remember the other big Oscar upset in 1999 when Shakespeare In Love beat a more deserving Saving Private Ryan?
There are a lot of Brokeback backers in the US and abroad, and we can still maintain it is a great film. It is a milestone movie in the history of cinema that broke a lot of barriers.
But in a democratic system there can be only one winner. Just over a year ago millions of Americans voted for Kerry, but eventually the other (and some might say the less deserving) candidate won.

CRASH

I was lucky enuf to catch Crash this Saturday and it's no surprise now that it won an Oscar for the best movie. It's a movie based in post 9/11 LA and has several central characters constituting the different races and ethnic backgrounds……...there fears and confusions.
The subject is handled so well in this movie that I felt as it could easily have been the story of any big metropolitan city(especially India)....of course no other city can have so much hatred against Blacks, Latino's , Middle Eastern, Chinese etc etc …..and best part is that there hatred is shown against each other. The scenes like a small girl getting shot, car rescue by Matt Dillon and a nigger getting shot by a good cop are just unforgettable. The way all the characters go through the transition in there life is what this movie all about. I would easily give **** to this one.....

MP3 Player

Received a new MP3 player from Manoj today........really bzy downloading new songs....Mandeep Khush Hau....thanks buddy you made my life fun as you gifted me music to heal my soul.....:-)

Phil Nicol and a wild Saturday night

I have always been a gr8 fan of live shows, be it music concert, drama or just a speech but live comedy stands out if you have a good comedian at your disposal, this is the reason why gr8 Indian laughter challenge is by far the best thing on the idiot box right now.
After watching a mediocre Firewall(Harrison Ford) couple of friends dragged me to a disc and to there surprise & my good fortune it was live comedy show night @ Zero Velocity and the comedian was a Canadian by the name of Phil Nicol. This guy was hilarious and had guts enuf to put his balls on your face and I mean he literally dropped his pants half down pinching his tits cracking some of the best heard gay jokes, he even found one guy in audience as a bait for all his gay jokes......apologizing constantly about his rudeness to an 80 year old lady in the audience whom he called his mama.......I could have never imagined this kind of show would be possible for me in India and all the lesbian and gay jokes could make everyone in the crowd die laughing....he made our group popular too by calling us Gay Christians(thanks to a cap my friend was wearing supporting a cross) due to which everyone in the audience became an instant friend. Best part was we got 6 bottles of beer complimentary...........I guess the best part of his performance was the song "I am the only GAY eskimo......" with amazing guitar….. After the show this guy even came down to our table to share a drink with us......followed by gr8 music lots of drinking and dancing.....well i ended up dropping a brit girl who was all wet as she plunged into the pool with her clothes on to Leela Palace but not before I saw the best aerobics in the pool by a French girlfriend of hers......all an all a wild night and a gr8 ride......

The Fountainhead

Since this is my first post I guess I will just write about the last good book I have read. I know most of the people have read this book as a kid but I just got a chance to read it last week on suggestion of a friend who claims this book changed the course of his life. I was devastated by the way life was going and may be this was the reason my friend Venky gave this book to me. I have had read books of this kind earlier but I was amazed by the way Ayn Rand captured the character of Howard Roark, Peter Keating, Dominique, Ellsworth Toohey and Gail Wynand.
This book was written more than 60 years back and was still so modern that I felt every building being built by Roark was being built in 2006, all the characters were so purely different and to my astonishment I can only find the character of Peter Keating and Ellsworth Toohey in the real life as the other characters were simply out of this world.

Peter Keating was the best example of a person who would sacrifice everything to be rich and famous including his soul, he always did what people liked and always lived a life to be accepted in the masses only to realize in the end that his childhood ambition to become a painter can no longer be realized as his mom forced him to become an Architect which was a noble profession.

Ellsworth M Toohey is a simple guy who is considered the wisest by whoever meets him, his ability to make people feel at ease and consider him there greatest friend ever was interesting. He is the one responsible in shaping the future of everybody he meets. He can be said to be the villain of this novel as all his followers can no longer think for themselves and are so dependent on his advice that they forget the desires of there heart and end up being the slaves of his mind. He wants to rule the masses and to do this he schemes throughout his life to destroy every specialist in his/her field and promoting those who really suck. The best battle in this book is between Roark and Toohey where Toohey tries his best to destroy Roark whereas Roark hardly considers it a battle and doesn’t give a damn about what anyone thinks of his work.

Gail Wynand is the owner of Wynand papers and has raised from nothing to one of the most powerful man by being immoral and cares for nothing but for absolute power. He enjoys destroying everyone on his way but surprises every reader by the way he impressed Dominique well enough to marry him and then the way he convinces Roark to build for him.

Howard Roark is the central character of a book and a genius in architecture, the only aim of his life is to make buildings the way he wants them, he is thrown out of his college because of the modern way of his thinking and because he believes they cannot teach him anything that he doesn’t know already. He is a man of integrity and builds for himself and won't do any building till the time the client agrees to make the building the way he wants. He is a kind of man who never gives up in life and against all odds reached the purpose in his life, the last scene in which he is standing on the top of the tallest building in New York sums up his success. He is a man every one of us aspires to be, to be indifferent to the world and follow your dream...don't know many who have been able to live there life this way.

Dominique is the love interest of Roark who always believed in destroying whatever she loved so no one else can have the same pleasure as she can, she used to destroy a priceless artifact after buying it if it was too good to be seen by some one else. Her world goes through turmoil when she finds Roark working in a quarry, she tries to challenge his dignity and reaches the heights of love for him when she is raped by Roark. She fought against Roark to stop him from raising new buildings as she was not willing to share his greatness with anyone. It takes her a long time to do what she would have done at the first place, but it is really interesting the way she first falls for Roark and then marries the worthless Peter Keating and agrees to sleep with Gail Wynand to get a contract for Peter and ends up marrying Gail starting the downfall of Peter.


To sum up I can say that this book is another inspirational story like Alchemist major difference being there were doubts at some moments in Shepherds mind in Alchemist but our Howard Roark had no doubts neither he cared about anything else than making his building. Also this book is around 700 pages so a really lengthy reading but still highly recommended.