A few things learned this Rakshabandhan.

I was in San Jose last weekend for Rakshabandhan. I was there after 4 months. It was a good break from work and I enjoyed it quite a bit. There are few things I learned and some re-affirmed during my stay at Didi's.

1> Its truly wonderful to have a loving sister. I love my sister. Although I wish I also had a younger sister, the one I could pamper and boss around.

2>Rakshabndhan can be expensive and yet wonderful :)

3>My Jiju is a great guy.

4> Sachi gives me one more reason to go back more often.

5>Staying just for 2-3 days with my Sister sucks big time. I wish I could see her more often but I don't want to move to San Jose. Thats not gonna work out. :(

6>My sister is suspicious that I am seeing someone and would secretly check SMS's on my cell phone. She would not ask me directly though. Although most of the messages in my Inbox are sufficient to make anybody suspicious. :)

7>If you are a unmarried or single (or secretly seeing somebody that nobody knows about :) ),
married people can be real pain in the neck.

8>When it comes to marriage or getting married stuff, nobody is wrong. People of every age group will have different POV and are usually right about their line of thinking. What helps is asking your self a question about what you want to do and reason behind your line of thinking.
Self doubt is gonna take you nowhere and neither will blind following of someone's advice.

9>You can feel lonely in even in large house full of people.

10>Life is much simpler if your parents are non-vegetarian enjoys a drink once in a while. This wasn't related to my trip to San Jose but I realized this on my way back to San Diego. In an Indian culture most social interaction revolve around food. Your parent judge your friends on the basis of what they eat and relatively less judgmental of other aspects of their personality.
Vegetarian parents would hate to take part in a bday party that involves non-vegetarian food. One the other hand, all is good for non-vegetarian ppl. They would enjoy any food equally.
This also has an adverse effect if your boyfriend's/galfriend's family shares a different food culture than your's bcoz believe it or not one of the side is gonna puke.It doesn't matter if they follow different political regimes, religions,actor etc. But it really matters if they have totally food habits. :(

11>I cannot cook as well as my sister. She is an excellent cook.

12>Kids are big responsibility. Just like marriage you gotta be exactly sure of what you want to do.

13>I realized that I have become habituated of having some space of my own and dont like to be surrounded by ppl all the time. Quite a change from what I was two years ago.



Overall a good trip and I miss them. But I am gonna see then again in four days ...yay :)

Song in background:
Phoolon ka , taaron ka...sabkka kehna hai...
Ek hazaron mein meri behna hai

Horrible Movies

Bollywood movies have been quite weird off late. Even weirder is the box office record of these movies.The latest mantra it seems is "More weirder the movie, more money it makes". It amazes me that distributors even agreed to buy rights of these movies, let alone the fact that they are all super hits.

Bollywood had a bad period of business in 2004 to 2005. Continuous failing of big movies had the entire industry in shock. Some people including me hoped that economic disasters like this would force bollywood biggies to do some thinking and serve us with some better cinema. Alas, it seems to have worked other way round where audiences have gotten tired of waiting for good movies and have started enjoying the bad ones.Below is the list of few movies which according to me were out right stupid.

1> Dhoom 2: Its on top of my list of stupidest movies. Sadly majority in India seems to think otherwise. No storyline, no plot and lots of bad acting. The highlight of the movie was Hrithik Roshan. I believe the worst effected person from this junk was Uday Chopra. Poor kid was portrayed like a fool and that too in his home production.

2> Fanna: Amir Khan with a remote to the nuclear device. It can't get more hilarious than this.The movie started well. The chemistry between Amir and Kajol is great. They are great actors. Unlike the other kunal kohli movie Hum-Tum which had a great screenplay and tight script, this movie's screenplay I believe was written without any application of logic.I used to regularly watch Kunal Kohli tv show on Zee cinema in earlier years. His comments and observation about movies of those time were great and accurate. Sadly Kunal couldn't follow his own ideology. The movie was a massive hit nevertheless.

3>Guru: Mani Ratnam at his mediocre worst. I have watched Yuva umpteen times. Its still my one of the favorite movies. One of the hallmark of Mani Ratnam has been the research undergone for each character in the plot. On the other hand, in Guru lead character itself was half baked. The movie never got going, it started as hunky dory story of a youngster making big in life without actually showing struggle dhirubhai must gone through to establish such a big empire. It showed that whatever abhishek did was successful. Sadly that cannot be. Did anyone notice Abhishek and Aishwarya speaking with gujrati accent in some scenes and speaking pure hindi in others. What crap.?? Abhishek did well but it wasn't his greatest performance as some of the tabloid immediately announced.

4>Partner: If you want to make a bad copy of Hollywood movie, learn it how to do it from David Dhawan. Partner is said to be inspired from Will Smith movie HITCH. But don't expect it to be even as half good as Hitch. Salman ain't no Will Smith. Nothing except some cleverly written lines by Sanjay Chhel are worth the ticket money. And why earth should be crap like "Chotta Don" be introduced in a movie.I don't search for logic in David Dhawan's movies but if you are showing some illogical crap at least make sure its funny. If people in India find concepts like "Chotta Don" funny, then god save my beloved home land. It has been biggest hit of 2007 so far. I don't know whats wrong with people.

5> Krrish: A password locked computer cannot be unlocked even after its broken and reconstructed years later. God help India. Does Rakesh Roshan thinks everybody is an idiot?. I loved Koi mil gaya, simply for new story line and great acting by Hrithik. But what hell was Krish all about. I remember cribbing about Krissh and its supposedly great action to a friend. Being a hardcore bollywod fan he retorted by saying something like, "You can praise Matrix and not Krissh, you prejudiced against hollywood." I couldn't control my laughter. How can you even compare Matrix with Krishh. Its an insult to a great movie like Matrix. And I am prejudiced against hollywood because most of the bollywood plot lines come from old hollywood movies.Well the director of movie can argue that its was movie for Kids. If it is so, why the hell introduce a romantic angle with priyanka chopra and some stupid songs. This movie was also a super duper hit.

6> Vivah: Another unimaginative movie. Beaten to down track and hopeless romanticism enveloped with sugar coated Indian values.Add to that shoddy production values and bad music composition. Even then the over all result is not as disgusting as some of the ones mentioned above and thats because even though the story is predictable it is a good plot nevertheless unlike some of the movies mentioned above which did not have story at all.

7> Aaap ka Surror:
This movie is living proof of what a good publicity can do for a movie. It generated tremendous curiosity. Sadly not much effort was invested in story line. The movie had great production values and looked slick and stylish. Fans of himesh made sure that movie was a hit but making a sequel to it would be stupid. I cannot understand how can you make a sequel to movie which doesn't have a storyline in first place.Even then I found Himesh a decent actor and he can improve.

All of these movies were great hits.It often makes me wonder what hell is Indian audience thinking.But there have been some great movies in last couple of years like RDB and lage raho munnabhai.Enough has been said about them already and I do not need to say more.


Waiting for Sanjay Leela Bhansali's next.