New Look!

Yippee!! Finally my blog has a refreshing new look chosen eclectically from this awesome place..

HP6-A Compulsive Lacklustre

This is the most inactive phase of my vacation,I daresay,what with my Mom's superstitious streak preventing me from going out as freely as I used to,due to the unexpected death of a family member although a 'door-ka-rishtedar' (With all due respects,may the soul rest in peace!!) dampening my vivacious plans of shopping for the semester ahead which I carefully planned for this part of the vacation...Sick of arguing with her,I started finding my solace in books and movies besides working "occasionally" for my Shaastra event...The progress I made on "Books and movies" front has been particularly very promising by any of the characteristic Sush-standards...I managed to finish reading both 'Deception Point' and 'Twilight' in a li'l about 2 days besides inflicting terrible neurotic trouble on myself watching the sloppy and nonsensical 'Kambhaqt Ishq' and a distorted yet entertaining HP6...HP&HBP has been a nice outing at Prasad's with my insti friend,Shreya...This tempts me to briefly review this movie...

Opened to mixed responses, HP6, I felt didn't quite justify the book although the screenplay of adaptation was brave enough for a book which talks about a whole lot of things...Harry's (mis)adventures with the Half Blood prince, evolution of Tom Riddle from a 'different' child 'who could make things happen to people who are mean to him' to ominous (for want of better adjective) Lord Voldermort, Horcruxes,Harry's budding relationship with Ginny, his friends' adolescent blues etc...All that was managed to be constricted in a duration of about 150 mins is a li'l something of everything...Yet,sadly falls short of pleasing a loyal Potter fan...Its not devoid of the magic moments though..Who doesn't love the tongue-in-cheeky Harry riding high on luck with Felix Felicis to extract that one vital memory from Prof.Slughorn!! Truly charming performance by Daniel.That hostile and rare defensive look on Hermoine's face when she's outsmarted by Harry in Potions class,Cupid-struck Ron,flamboyant Dumbledore who wonders openly if Harry is seeing Hermoine,Weasley twins' new shop in the Diagon Alley and a fitting climax on the island are all the stealing moments of the flick...Jim Broadbent is well cast as Horace Slughorn,the new Potions master...Tom Felton surprises you with his mature performance as Draco on Dark Lord's mission...The major glitches which disappointed me are-the under-dramatized death of Dumbledore which didn't have quite the same effect of Sirius's demise in HP5, certain major characters like Snape and Hermoine had not much to do,Harry-Ginny relationship not well portrayed,the various premises of the story are not very tactfully dealt with leaving the audience with a loosely assembled puzzle set...The bottomline is,the film fails to be qualified as perfect,not exactly because of any cast or crew misfits,as a matter of fact some characters leave a nice impact on you long after leaving your seat,but out of compulsion to serve a lot on a limited platter...I definitely don't regret my 150 min outing in a pleasant company watching it on one of the biggest screens of India...

And I'm riding high as my mom's unofficial curfew is gonna be lifted tomorrow back home..

Hooked to books n blah!!

I'm into the tail-end of my vacation.Left with no more than 15 days and I find myself desperately looking forward to going back to insti...I am getting to hear some really interesting things going to happen this semester,most importantly I'm intrigued by Sharav getting 80+ new freshies(Awesome!!!) not counting the MAs..just B.Tech girls..Its sort of never heard of..Isn't it? Our batch having a strength of 60 did manage to raise quite a good number of cynical eyebrows in the insti..I'm eager to see insti junta responding to our freshie batch (:P)...And those nightmarish stories about 3 of them having to share a double room and 4,a triple!!! Though I'm not surprised with the 3/4 formula I can't imagine how the poor girls are gonna manage 2/3...God bless them!!!

And yeah,coming to personal front,these days I find myself buried deep into 2 books I started of late (eating ,crashing,googling and g-talking in whatever spare time I manage to find) Dan Brown's Deception Point and Stephanie Meyer's Twilight...Unputtdownable books truly...More about them after I finish...

New York

A Bollywood attempt to interpret the global scenario post 9/11 in USA...Yet it is not all that Bollywood in spirit...It can be called offbeat yet interesting and entertaining-the genres that rarely sync well and strike a chord in India...Its a poignant tale of three friends-two Americans of Indian descent,Sameer and Maya later joined by Omar from New Delhi in the New York State University...Omar gets to see a whole new Occidental world marked by boundless freedom and sophistication starkly contrasting his traditional Delhite upbringing...Uber-cool dude Sam and a dream-like Maya help him become one among them.When its time to leave the university,Maya realises that Sameer is her man leaving Omar heart-broken which compels the latter to leave New York...Seven years later,Omar wakes up to FBI raids in his house on the suspician that hes acting as an aide to his terrorist-turned friend Sameer and now,to avoid an almost death-like detention,he is asked to help FBI as its undercover agent...When he learns that Maya and Sam are now married happily with a son,he decides that he will take up the offer and prove to FBI that Sameer ain't any terrorist...The consequences of Omar's decision form the rest of the story...

The backdrop of this movie is a series of detentions FBI carried out on Muslims even at the slightest suspician post the twin tower destruction by Islamic fundamentalist organisations... The amount of horror and humiliation these detainees are subjected to is poignantly conveyed...The debates at various places between the FBI officer Roshan and Omar put forth some interesting justifications for such operations...Most imporatantly,the film doesn't take any stands...It obediently presents the motivations of duty-ridden FBI and passion-ridden 'so-called' Jehadis...

Actors,very well-cast, are the biggest assets of this movie and leave an indelible impact on the audience...John(Sameer) as the university 'star' who later undergoes terrible trauma as a terrorist suspect shows amazing variation pre and post 9/11 and steals the show...Katrina(Maya),as a vulnerable wife silently aware of her husband's terrifying motives and a Human Rights activist produces a rare act given the history of her earlier films...Then Irrfan Khan(Roshan) as the South-Asian FBI officer gives a taste of some casual yet effective acting...Last but not the least, Neil(Omar)-my perosnal favourite-as a loyal friend,distressed lover and a Muslim in dilemma,dishes out quality stuff...I mean it when I say there is not a single frame that doesn't contribute to taking the story forward...Its a very genuine,strong ,brave and sincere film coming from the director,Kabir Khan who is said to have been a victim of this discrimination, he so effectively captures in the movie...Hail Kabir!!!

Emotional Atyachar...

The other day I was surfing the channels on T.V. lazily when I came across this particularly outrageous interview of Rakhi Sawant,arguably the most effective drama queen of Indian television these days,being telecast on a 24x7 news channel.It had this obviously bored and equally boring host having a chat-what I'd like to call dumb-with this loud-mouthed item girl about her new 'reality' show wherein she holds a 'swayamwar' to chose her Mr.Right!!!! From what I could manage to absorb from those indicative promos is that this show has its share of emotional tear-jerkers which has become more than common-these days on Indian telly bitten by 'reality' bug and long back on its American counterpart,where,more often than not, all these shows draw their concepts from.I don't mean to imply that their is nothing productive about these kind of shows....Certain reality shows,irrespective of the controversies they seem to generate,are quite successful at showcasing some genuine talent in a much more dignified way.But this particular concept of Rakhi's show sounds all odd and way too loud a cry for publicity to me.She comes across as an insecure,self-pitying and so very cliched woman trying to act righteous in a way so ironic that it rings all annoying bells in me.I don't find any point in discussing such a person at a greater detail other than for the fact that her show is generating so much interest from a much wider and equally diverse audience which I find very hard to digest.Well...yes...I believe that people have a right to choose the way they want to be entertained but what sort of an individual does it take to make herself an objectivistic plastic mould who has zero personal life left for her!!Had Ayn Rand been alive,she would have called Rakhi one true self'less' creature.Watsay?

Wimbledon Wisdom.....

Serena and Venus-the miracle Williams sisters-have taken sibling rivalry to that next level where it came to be redefined altogether... Everytime they meet in a Grandslam final,they open doors for speculation from all the quarters...It was no different this time around..It was really intriguing to see them fight it out on the grassy London courts for a 4th time...But I must say,a 3 setter would have been a lump sum feast but it happened otherwise and Serena ,beating her defending sister,emerged victorious...Looking forward to the match tomorrow on centre court where Federer fights for a historic berth in the record books of men's tennis as Roddick tries to kindle some sparks...

F.R.I.E.N.D.S

Those were the days when we had nothing left unsaid between us...
Those were the days when we talked about everything in focus...
But we parted for good I suppose...
And now I wait in the anticipation of good times to be back...
Can't wait to meet you all and bask in the warmth of the retrospect...
Talking to you is like falling back into that deep valley of nostalgia...
But only finding myself coming out of it with a renewed emotional paraphernalia...
To chase those dreams I never missed to make you all a part of...

P.S.This piece of amateur poetry,I dedicate to all my school friends who I eagerly wait to meet one of these days...My first poem for those people who saw me through many other firsts of my life...