Thursday, December 30, 2010

This is 100

It started in June 2007 and 3 years and 6 months later on the December of 2010 it is 100 posts old. Well let's see what happened in this period.

This blog account was actually opened much much before I wrote my 1st blog post. Sarah Salins opened an account in Dec-2005 and edged me to open one too. Sarah has been married for over two year now and her blog is dead.


Dec-2007, First visit to Japan
Feb-2008, Barny got married.
Apr-2008, Permanently shifted to Japan
Aug-2009, Arvind got married.
Nov-2009, Buvana got married.

The Shoppers Stop
Well I guess Debbie and I can differ about the moment, or the day, when our relationship actually started but since Debbie doesn't write this blog, you get to hear only my side of the story. So we met in the church youth meeting at Salom Hills School in Gurgaon. In fact I and Barny use to pickup people who didn't have the means to come to the meeting. So we were suppose to pickup Bhanu, and Barbarra and her room-mate aka my wife. I said "Hi" to Debbie. Debbie will say that I didn't but I'm sure I did. That was our "first ever" meeting. This was sometime in the summer of 2007. Things moved on we met occasionally in the church, in youth meetings but the next singnificant meeting took place in Dec that year. At this time I was shopping for my trip to Japan. I had asked Bhanu to accompany me while I shop but at this point I don't exactly remember how Debbie ended up showing up that day. May be I only had invited her. I hope she doesn't kill me after reading this, but honey I as I said, I don't remember. Anyway, I bought loads of stuff... oops... I shouldn't say "bought" at this point, I picked up loads of stuff and arrived at the checkout counter and voila my credit card was not working and I had no cash in hand. Oh poor me!! dude in distress.. enter Debbie to the rescue she paid my bill and saved me from the humiliation. She saved the day. Later, I dropped her home that night and promised that I will return back her money the very next day.

No I didn't run away with her money, in fact I met her the very next day with the sole intention of giving back her cash. As it turned out, I had buy a suit as well so I asked her to accompany me to the mall. I was expecting the suit shopping to be over in 30 minutes and then adios... ta-ta..good bye.. but the suit that I bought needed to be altered and the shopkeeper promised that his tailor wouldn't take more that 10 minutes but he took more that 2 hours or so. So what was supposed to be a "Hi... thank you .. here's your money.. bye..see you around.." meeting turned out to be "lets have coffee..." I mean it became a date. And that's the beginning of our relationship.

No I'm not implying that that was the day I decided to marry her or I knew that she was the one or anything lovey-dovey like that.. but that was the "kick-off" of ,God only knew at that time, of a life long relationship.

Rest of the story... well may be later.

Wednesday, December 29, 2010

It was Christmas in Tokyo this year

This was our 1st ever Christmas together. The day started with the morning worship service at Tokyo Union Church in Ometosando and the rest of the day was spent just roaming around together.
 The Church is located in one of the most prime spots in Tokyo. On its left is the show room of Louis Vuitton and on the right Armani. The street itself has the showrooms of probably all the designer labels I have ever heard of…



Ometosando dori is famous of its autumn trees although we couldn’t take pictures of the autumn trees but the street right now is illuminated by hundreds of lights in the night which too was a sight to see.


 


Window shopping at the designer street was a delight. Probably someday we will have enough money to buy stuff from these stores. Anyway, moving forward… apart from the glitter on the street and the beautifully decorated shops the Christmas trees caught our attention.




We too decorated our own Christmas tree and when I say we, I mean Debbie. She did all the hard work while I happily slept in the night.





We are looking forward for the New year now…
Personally speaking it was the best Christmas ever.

Saturday, December 25, 2010

Honeymoon at Phi-Phi Island

Have not been able to find time to update the blog recently... for obvious reasons.

I could not execute any of screw-ups that I had planned and shared in the previous post. I guess life doesn't even allow us to plan our failures. But I am sure if any one of those ideas had been executed I would have been in my divorce deposition. :)
 
Here are a few pictures from our honeymoon. Will be uploading the wedding album soon.



Thursday, November 04, 2010

The Perfect Wedding Adventure

Debbie and I are getting married and the wedding preparations are on full swing. By the way there is something about the wedding that makes women cranky (for lack of a better word). So just like everyone else wannabe Mrs. Maurya is has also been infected by the wedding prep. virus.And she is working hard for the elusive "Perfect" wedding.

So, I was wondering about the ways in which I can goof up the wedding. So me an my co-conspirator Vishal were scheming all day today and we've come up with some ideas that can make this day go crazy.

1. Dropping a banana peel in front of Debbie when she is walking down the aisle.
2. Make a small ditch somewhere on the aisle fill it with water and put the carpet on it.
3. In wedding vows, instead of saying "I take you as my lawfully wedded wife".... say "I take you as my Awfully wedded wife"
4. When its time to exchange rings, I bring out a thick, large, silver ring with a skull, snake, swords, blood dripping from its mouth... like pirates wear.
5. I put plaster on all my fingers and ask her to put the ring on my toes.
6. I put paint or mud in Bride's flower bouquet (the one Debbie will toss in the end ).
7. When the paster recites the final banns I'd say i object...
8. During the wedding ceremony, when the pastor comes to the part about, "If anyone has any reason why these two people should not marry, speak up now or forever hold your peace..." a couple of kids running up the aisle yelling, "Papa, papa."
9. I make loud stinky farts on the stage.
10. As we both walk from the stage after the ceremony, a funeral music plays. (This one is a bit classy, I don't think many people will notice).
11. Make faces when photographs are taken. 
12. During the wedding ceremony, when the pastor comes to the part about, "If anyone has any reason why these two people should not marry, speak up now or forever hold your peace..." a muscular, well dressed man runs up the aisle yelling, "Darling please dont leave me".....  but he runs up to me and start kissing me, begging me not to leave him.
13. I say someone else's name during vows preferably old married woman like Mrs. Chib.
14. Select a guy as maid of honor and a girl as best man.


I hope my girl will appreciate it and I hope that our wedding is a fun filled event with errors and goof-up, some deliberate and some unintended and we'll fondly remember and recall them for the rest of our lives.

Monday, October 25, 2010

The Ponzi Scheme

I read this in "Fooled by Randomness" by Nassim Nicolas Taleb and it appealed to my darker side. (Please note I have 2 sides one is dark and the other one is darker). So, imagine one fine day I decide to become a share market pandit and start predicting the future of the market on a monthly basis.My objective is to fool some people by making him believe that I do possess some genuine know how about the market and thus can actually forecast the future of the market. (But actually I don't know a thing about the market).Can I do that?

Ok, so I start with selecting 10000 random people and send them an emails. To 5000 people I send an email stating that the market will go up and to the remaining 5000 that the market will go down. Ok now let me do this systematically...


Jan: Prediction Group A (5000 people) - Market will go up , Group B (5000 people) - Market will go down
Actual outcome - Market goes down.

Feb : I dump contact Group A but from Group B, I send another email
Group C : 2500 people - market will go up; Group D: Market will go down
Actual outcome : market goes up

Mar: I dump group D, and send another email
Group E (1250 people) - market will go up, Group F: Market will go down..

and so on...

In April I will have 625, in May 312, in Jun 156, in July I would've accurately predicting the fate of the share market to 78 lucky people seven times in a row...

Now, imagine that you are one of these lucky people who has received this email 7 times in a row and before you receive the 8th one, the I send another email asking you to invest in a share or mutual fund... would you invest?

Saturday, October 23, 2010

A Developed Nation

Japan rapidly grew from a catastrophic nuclear disaster to an economic super power. I've met people that were Young boys and girls when US dropped 2 Atomic bombs on Japan during the second world war. Remembering those days, these people tell me when their father's use to go out in the morning they didn't know whether or not they will be able to bring food for the family that day.

But they were determined people. Their farmers toiled hard in the fields, their workers worked hard in the factories and their leaders had vision. The vision of not just building a developed country but building a culture. They wanted to make their world the perfect world and as a result in less than a half a century, Japan was one of the most powerful economy in the world. Not just that, they were able to cultivate an environment where the people were humble, respected one another. Their streets are safe, clean and their country looked beautiful.

A job well done, I'd say. Now what to do...

As humans, we do things. We've climbed the top of the highest peak of the world, we've learned how to fly, we've walked on the moon. We communicate with each other at the speed of light. We have sent objects out of the solar system. And everyday we are breaking the boundaries of thought. I guess the reason we do these things is not just because we can, but to make this world a better place.

But what do you do when you've already made your place the better place? Japan (and may be some other European countries) is the example of the end result of the development. There is no inflation, indicating that the economy has grown to its peak and can't grow any further. The government can't put money in infrastructure projects to boost the economy because everything they needed to build has been build. The country is growing old, people are not interested in having kids because Nintendos and X-box's are more fun and easy to handle. They've got night clubs and bars where men pay women to just sit with them and hold hands. They care about their environment alright so they import all their timber from other countries. 

Some perfect world huh!

Friday, October 15, 2010

Tele-translator

Here's an interesting business idea. Let's see if someone can pick it up and make some money out of it. I'll lay down the idea in a systematic form.

Let's give our company a name say Tele-translator.

Service it will provide - Language Translation on phone

Need for this kind of service - Let's talk about people like me who have to meet with people that don't speak the same language. Now, it may be easy to find a translator but it's not cheap to have him when you are travelling abroad.

How it will work - This service will be on phone. Say you are an Indian and have a meeting with a Japanese guy, in Japan, but you don't know the language and you didn't hire a translator. You reach the meeting spot and as the meeting starts you realize that there is no way you can have a productive meeting because of the language barrier. You dial tele-translator, put your phone on speaker mode and have the meeting.

How to pay - I could think of two options:

1. You can become a member and dial a toll free no. or
2. A non-member can dial a hotline no. where he or she can be charged on per minute basis.

Any takers?

Friday, October 08, 2010

Black Clouds

Ever wondered why some clouds are dark and some are white? Well I did not, but I always assumed that dark clouds bring rain and white ones just float. Anyway, today I saw an interesting thing about this on the return flight to Tokyo. As we were flying I saw a thick cloud sheet below me and patches of clouds above. The areas where clouds above were casting shadows on the clouds below were darker than the surrounding clouds. I think a darker cloud would mean that there are more layers of clouds on top of the lowest layer of cloud.

Friday, September 17, 2010

India walon main aa raha hoon.. :)

By the way just realized that I'm planning to visit India, probably this week itself so may be I'll post the remaining part next month.

Screw the post.. I'm going home :)

Simply Complicated

Recollecting a conversation that I had with Arvind a couple of years back about an incident that happened during my school days. You see,in school I was with a bunch of extremely talented and brilliant people that used to challenge each other in problems in mathematics.On one such day we were trying to solve a trigonometry problem and during the process I tried to solve the problem by using theorems after theorems in order to arrive at the solution but I only ended up making the problem more complicated. On the other hand a friend of mine, who apparently is a genious, was able to solve the same problem in just 3 or 4 steps. The lesson learnt was that best solutions to complicated problems are always simple and are beautiful. And a real genious can solve a problem in the most simplest way.

Later in life I came to know that the revelation above that I had was somewhat in line with Occams Razor which says, all things being equal the simplest solution is the best. Added to the fact that for quite some time now the smartest minds of our species too are trying to find out the common pattern in all that there is or should I say the single theory of everything. It makes sense, right? There can be nothing simpler than being able to explain all that there is by a unified theory.

Now the obvious question that comes into my mind is that if a possibility exists that there is a unifying theory that explains everything in the physical aspect of our life then what about the spiritual aspect of our life? Is it possible that here too only one possibilty exists and if that is true than who is this God and what is the means to know him. Well this post is not entirely about the God conundrum, it's about simplicity, so I'll move on but I will discuss this one more time in this post because it's important.

I held my views about simplicity for a long time and I was pretty convinced about it too. Untill recently I read a few things that made me question my original set of beliefs. And I realised that those beliefs were based on a certain set of assumptions that now stand on shaky ground in the light of some new discoveries.

~I always like to keep my blog posts small and also my mind is over crowded with ideas and is running in many directions so I'll take a small break and get back on this in a day or two.~


Monday, September 06, 2010

Random Thought

A few days back one of my friends shared a video on facebook. Have a look at it :



This is a time lapse video of the Perseids meteor shower that was visible in Tokyo around the same time last month. Also before I dwell in the philosopy check out this video as well.



These are just a few examples of the both discovered and undiscovered wonders of the universe that can be seen from our planet. Over the last century our technology has enabled us to witness and understand much more. And as our equipment improves - which it has and will- we will, no doubt, be even more astonished by what we get to see and understand.

But I've realised that man can't really understand the universe, we only observe and make notes of patterns. I mean we only understand the patterns. Even the greatest mind of our civilization Einstein was looking for a common pattern in everything. But we all know that he failed to figure out that pattern. May be towards the end he realized that a thing so vast and so complex cannot be weaved into a single theory. It's like an ant trying to understand the purpose of an aircraft.

Some of us on the other hand think that everything is for us. Even-though we don't even know what that "everything" comprises of, again it's like an ant thinking that the aircraft was made for it.

The ant can never comprehend the aircraft nor the aircraft was made for it.

I guess may be sometimes we should take a step behind, relax an enjoy this amazing ride.

Friday, August 20, 2010

My Life's Score Card

Truthfulness - F
Honesty - F
Humbleness - F
Love - F
Discipleship - F
Principles - F
Kindness - F
Content - F
Faith - A
Grace - A

RESULT - SAVED

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Adventure in Summer Vacations - Sea Paradise

I did perhaps the most darest acts I have ever done - A non-stop free-fall ride from 108mts. And considering the fact that the world's tallest free-fall ride is 120mts, it was a personal landmark for me. And I think, Arvind would know what I'm talking about. But what Arvind doesn't know is the feeling that creeps in when you are at 108mts high and ready to be dropped at any moment. What's more terrifying is the fact that they've made the seats in such a way that you don't see anything other than the sky above and the sea below. Yes, you can't even see the ground and your feet are just hanging in the air. No footrest at all. Further, to add to the terror, the music in the background is nothing but pure horror. It's the sound of a rapidly pounding heart... dhak dhak.. dhak dhak.. the tempo of the heartbeat keeps on increasing till you reache the top. Then there is a moment of silence, and that sinking feeling of the inevitable creeps in. But you don't fall for another moment or so instead they linger you on for that little bit longer. Long enough to confuse your nerves - whether to be calm or not. And just when you think you have an opportunity to scream and bail out there is a sound of a scream and the free-fall. You can check out the free-fall ride video (not taken by me).



There's another adventure here. The roller coaster at hakkeijima sea-paradise. I must reveal a little secret, I wasn't really scared when I boarded the roller coaster, I mean not as scared as I stepped on to the free-fall (At free-fall I was about to piss in my pants type scared) but at the coaster I was a bit more relaxed and confident. But the moment it started dropping and turning, I screamed... I screamed out my lungs on the roller coaster. On the other hand at free-fall, I was pretty OK after the bloody thing was on it's way down. I mean, right at the moment of fall I was scared as hell but during the ride I was OK. Although I did feel a little buzz in my head after the free-fall was over.

Here's another video of the roller-coaster.



I guess the next obvious adventures in my to-do list are
a. Bungee-jumping and
b. Skydiving

woohoo.. I can already feel the adrenaline rush...

Here are some pictures from Yokohama Hakkeijima Sea paradise.

O yes! I forgot to tell you that the main attractions of Sea Paradise are not the rides but an amazing aquarium and a wonderful dolphin show.

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Adventure in Summer Vacations - Disney

So last week was summer vacation in Japan. Yes, we get summer vacations here!! and winter vacations and spring vacations too... mwaha ha ha haa....

Anyway, I had a pretty good time and got to do things and visit places that I always wanted to. One of the main items in my to-do list, for a long time, was to visit Disney Land in Tokyo. Well actually, visiting Disney Land was my childhood dream. So I now strike-off visit to Disney Land from my Bucket-List. And for people like me who love a good bargain I got to see Disney Sea as well. You see unlike other cities, Tokyo has an equally awesome Disney Sea amusement park as well.

Here are a few moments captured on camera.


The rides were fun but I think they have been made keeping the kids in mind. The roller coasters & the free falls were not really as scary as the ones in sea paradise (look out for other blog post on sea paradise) but then Disney is not about scaring the people. It is about fun and wonder. Every ride, every coaster and free fall had an amazing story and an amazing set to back-up the story. Designed to perfection taking care of every minute details. Just spectacular.

Sunday, August 08, 2010

It's OK

After a very long time the poet in me woke up. Just a few seconds before I woke up this morning I had a dream that I was singing in a church. Actually, I was singing only the "it's OK" part again and again with "coz you are there" tossed in occasionally. Obviously it must have been the chorus. So the first stanza of the song has been composed in my complete consciousness. And therefore sounds a bit of a cliche but it's OK as long as it is my own composition. Well, I think I'll try to complete the song and make it more deep and meaningful. But right now I must brush my teeth. :)

It's OK

My heart can sing
in you o Lord,
My life is true
with you o Lord,
And even though
I fail and fall
at every single step

coz when you are in my life 

It's OK (repeat several times)
coz you are there....

Saturday, July 17, 2010

Collages


Thanks to Ms. Sangeeta and picasa I have leared that collages are a better way to make pictures tell stories. I've just created 2 collages of the recent pictures I took. The one on top is Tokyo Tower and the second one is Komatsugawa, my dwelling place in Tokyo.

Wednesday, July 07, 2010

Nothing

Dcat - Gman!! what have you done??????? %*##*@#@#&#$*
Gman - Nothing.. Absolutely nothing significant... ever... :(

Tuesday, July 06, 2010

Why the Universe Has No Limit?

Very intriguing !! But there is a reason why we say that the universe has no end? The answer is equally fascinating too...(yet pretty simple, and that's why a bit funny and worth blogging).

The reason why we say that the universe has no end to it is because if we define the limits and say that this is the end of the universe then we have another question --> What's after that?

Similarly, (and this is not a mere product of my hyper imaginitive mind) we cannot say that a particular particle is the smallest one because then we will have to answer the question, What's smaller that this?

Interesting Huh!!

Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Ja Mata Bharat Mata...

The time just flew by and it's time for me to go back to Tokyo. And even though my heart sinks like that of a child whose summer vacations are coming to an end, I can say that I completely enjoyed every moment of my stay here.

The day I boarded the flight from Tokyo (end of Apr), I was wearing a full sleeve sweater, a leather jacket and a monkey cap. Of course, I was suffering from cold that time. But the moment I landed in Delhi, I felt that somebody has thrown me right in front of a furnace. And all the warm clothes that were keeping me alive a few hours back became excess baggage. And believe it or not but I felt a burning sensation when I touched that sweater later.

One of the greatest fears that I had when I departed for India was the powercuts. But I must thank God that at least the situation in Delhi has improved tremendously. Although there are powercuts but they are almost non-existent. Did I hear a hallelujah for that?

It took me sometime in getting used to the driving conditions here. But during my entire period of stay I was always circumspect on the road and frustrated by the way people were breaking rules while driving. Every single day, during my long drives to Manesar or Noida, I could see an accident or two always. Leading to major traffic jams. One of the most frustrating experiences that I had on this trip was to reach "Punjabi by Nature" restaurant in Cybercity, Gurgaon from Sikanderpur Village gol chakkar area at 6:00pm. For no apparent reason it took us almost an hour.

Anyway, as I've always mentioned, in the past, for me it's never about the place, it's about being with the people, I love. And that's why, inspite of all the traffic, road and weather conditions and inspite of experiencing some uncivilized behavior on road (I'll write something on it very soon), I can surely say that the last two months were the best time I had. More on this in a day or two :)

Friday, May 28, 2010

Horn Please

Alright, I had almost forgotten that I had this blog. :)

I am back in India and it's awesome!!*

*Except for the frikkin' iron melting blast furnace like weather.

Anyway, after what seems to be a very short amount of time, I am back in India. And right now, I have a surface coating of "The Japanese way" on me. And before it whithers away and before I too get back to "The Indian way", I must point out some typical and some not so typical differences between the people of India and Japan.

It will not be a surprise for most of you to know that people aborad honk only at dire circumstances or to express their frustration at the someone on the road. I was wondering why then people in India honk for almost every thing until I saw HORN PLEASE written at the back of a truck. It was a moment of epiphany where I realised that it is not that we want to honk all the time, it is the person in the other vehicle or on the road that wants us to honk. Because only when we honk, will they do something.

My mom was very sick when I arrived in Delhi and so I had to take her to the hospital. Nope, I am not about the rip apart the health care system of this country. But I wanted to talk about the attitude and manners of the people who run these places. Starting from the receptionists and to every single staff person (clerks, nurses, lab techicians and doctors) that I met in that night behaved badly. I wondered why these people are working in a hospital in the first place. So yes, Mata Chanan Devi Hospital in Janakpuri is the worst hospital in Delhi in my list.

I guess this post is turning into hardcore criticism instead of light hearted sattire. So, I'll continue this very soon. No promises :)

Tuesday, April 06, 2010

Valentine/White Day

I should've posted this last month, as it would've been more appropriate then, but anyway here it is.

One more thing, I don't want to make my blog some sort of information center about Japan so this will, hopefully, be my last post about Japan. Unless, of course, I find something strange about Japan, again. About this White-Valentine... one of the reasons I am posting this is that I want to spread the word across. And I hope my girlfriend will read this. :)

Valentine's in Japan is a totally different than that of any other country across the globe. On Feb. 14 girls buy gifts and tons of chocolates for their male friends, co-workers and bosses. Yes, this is the day for men in Japan, not for women. Girls of course buy chocolate (or gifts) for their special loved ones too. These are more expensive gifts and very special chocolates. While Giri-chocolate is for everyone else and Honmei-Chocolate is only for a serious love.

Isn't Japan great? Nope, now the sad part of the story...

To balance the gift giving, another holiday called White Day is celebrated exactly after one month - March, 14th. On White Day, men return the favor. Gifts from the men can be chocolate too but as we all know Japanese men are real pervs. so sometimes they give lingerie too. And these are not Honmei guys, these are just Giri guys. Just imagine what Honmei guys must be giving back to their Honmei girls? ;)

By the way, in Japan both Valentines Day and White Day are Holidays! I'm serious guys.

Wednesday, March 03, 2010

Reflections

As my stay in Japan draws to an end, I think I'll pen down a few final thoughts about Japan. Two years of my precious life went by in this weird country but it was fun being here in Japan. So, here are a few of the interesting and weird things about Japan that made me say huh!!

1. The Raw and Crazy Seafood

Sushi and Shashimi is for the beginners. I am talking about really crazy stuff here. Live octopus, live fish, fish eggs, raw beef and raw chicken. If your are about to puke already then fearnot they eat some normal stuff too such as soy beans, plums, squids, eels. Having said that, most Japanese food is pretty yummy.





2. Bizarre-o-TV


I think even if you understand the language, you may well not understand the shows. They are so bizarre and so unreal. The studios look like a .... well there are no parallels. Just imagine a small room with pink walls, stars and balloons hanging everywhere, card-board cut outs of Hentai girls and a bunch of people sitting on sofa chatting about some meaningless stuff. To make things even worse, more than half of the TV screen is covered with Japanese script and a satellite image of the street reporter, who is in a market place taking public opinion over the most mundane subject.




3. Golf-mania


It's true. I don't know about any other country but in Japan as the weekend approaches you can see them practicing their shots in offices, in swimming pools, in restaurants … I mean everywhere.






4. Comic books


Japanese of all ages and particularly the adults read comic books a lot. Most of these Manga books are Hentai and some of them are written exclusively for adult audience. There is a special section (center pages) in all these comic books which contains semi nude pictures of women. At any given time during the day you can see Japanese men checking out these middle pages in the departmental stores.

And yeah one more thing... Japanese guys read these manga books and stare at the semi-nude (topless) pictures of women even in trains.

5. "L" and "R"

Let me start this in defense of the Japanese. You see Japanese people don't have the "L" sound in their language. So when they speak any other language they substitute the "L" sound to its closest relative i.e. the "R"sound. Having said that, it's pretty funny to hear Japanese English speaker make this classic mistake.

So, Quickly becomes Quickry, English becomes Engrish.
Imagine a Japanese boy proposing to a girl in English - "I Rabu you" LOL!!

(they also don't have the "V" sound)

Friday, January 29, 2010

Amir Peterpan Khan


Amir Khan is definitely from Neverland. The actor never seems to grow old. It has been 22 years since Khan first got noticed in 'Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak' in 1988 as a young college graduate. And 22 years later when most of the kids that were born in that year are now graduating from colleges, Amir is still doing college flicks (he also did a movie as a school student 'Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikander'.) To put it simply it's absurd. Oh wait... Amir is from Neverland, he has decided to never grow old.

I saw 3i a few days back and I think Chetan Bhagat did a good job by creating a controvercy. because if it wasn't for the controversy, I would have not been able to connect 3i with 5PS. The two stories, except for a few parallels, are totally different. I guess Chetan must have felt as if he got kicked in the nuts when the movie started making billions where as he had sold the story to Vidhu Chopra Co. for a meager sum of 1 million rupees (before taxes).

Gross revenue generated by 3 idiots may be highest ever by any Indian movie. But I personally think that even though 3i and Ghajini (the 2nd highest grosser) have been the most financially successful Indian movies of all times yet they cannot be kept at par with movies like Sholay, Deewar, DDLJ etc. I can illustrate this with a simple example, how many of you can recall even a single dialogue from Ghajini? I can't. And even in 3 Idiots, "Aal iz well" was force fed to us. They devoted a whole song to this phrase and Amir Khan kept repeating it  through-out the movie. Consider, Sholay on the other hand, "Tera kya hoga kaliya?", "Kitney aadmi the?" and many more such dialogues have become colloquial. Movies like, Deewar, DDJL, Lagaan, Sholay, Mughal-e-Azam have proven the test of time and have stood out from the crowd. But same is not true for Ghajini? We don't even talk about Ghajini anymore and neither will we talk about 3 Idiots in a few years.

Anyway, 3i did touch a critical subject which is very close to my heart i.e. our education system. But I would like to talk about that in a new post.

Tuesday, January 05, 2010

The Avatar Experience

Yesterday, I went to Toho Cinemas to watch Avatar. About Avatar, all I can say is that James Cameroon knows how to create a lot of hype. On top of everything, I am surprised that these so called movie critics 'the experts' got carried away by the hype. Or are these critics a part of the publicity machinery? Anyway, I didn't feel the 3D the way I was expecting. I was told by the media that Cameroon had invented a new 3D technology for this movie. The Titanic's famous "I'm flying" scene was much more exhilarating than any scene that 3D saga Avatar had to offer.

Here are some fun facts about the movie Avatar:
1. The Man-mounted killer robots were exactly same as the ones in Matrix III
2. The rituals that Jake (the Avatar form) had to perform in order to mount the flying creature was a complete rip-off of the rituals that Harry Potter had to do in order to mount Buckbeak in Prisoner of Azkaban.
3. The style of narration by Jake (the paraplegic) during the entire movie reminded me of the narration in Max Payne 2 (the game).
4. And at the climax when Eywa suddenly sends the entire wildlife of Pandora to attack humans is totally Chronicles of Naria.
5. And yeah one more thing, over all it was sort of reverse of Independence day.

Anyway, this was my first 3D movie and I'm guessing that this is just the beginning of 3D movie era. A front line movie maker, such as James Cameroon, has entered into the 3D movie making business, I'm sure that other movie directors will join in too and soon 3D will completely replace the existing technology. Isn't it amazing to see that in period of just over 100 years we've traveled from
Silent >> Talkies >> Color >> Digital >> Animation >> 3D (My grand ma still refers to the Movie Theaters as Talkies).
And I do think that 3D is the next-gen movie technology and I'm really excited about it except for the heavy and annoying glasses. Somebody will have to do something to get rid of the them . They are annoying and stupid and I got a severe headache after the movie because of the glasses.

One really silly thing happened at the theater that I must mention here. You see we Indians have a habit of springing out of our chairs as soon as the movie is over and the credits start rolling in. In fact, the minute the movie is over some of the theaters in Delhi even turn off the projector. And frankly speaking I don't really see the point in reading the names of the people who made a contribution in making that film, unless I am an agent or a casting director. But to my initial astonishment which turned into annoyance after a while (because I got stuck in between, next time I'm taking corner seat) these stupid Japanese sit right till the end. Up to the point when 'THE END' appears on the screen and the whole thing goes blank and the lights are turned on. What's the deal with that?