“Dada, Taxi laagbe?” greeted me a 40 something man outside the Kolkata Airport. It was the night after Mahalaya, and finally I had landed in Kolkata. It’s not like I returned to my city after 5 yrs or something, but still a sense of reminiscence absorbed me big time. Well, I returned after 6 months and like all the previous times, this time too… nothing in the Kolkata air seemed altered. The Arrival’s gate and driveway are still a mess… with many plump Kaku-Kakimas and Ambassadors waiting eagerly.
As I dialed the number of my Chhoto-Kaku (Father’s youngest bro) who was supposed to pick me up, I did not fail to take in the familiar sounds of “Oyi je, eshe gechhe go”(There He/She comes) followed by embraces and “Babba, koto rogaa hoye gechhis?”(Look, how skinny you’ve become) Well, in my case, I knew the opposite’s gonna happen, coz am putting on a steady 3kg/yr ever since I left home. Well, predictably Kaku replied that he’s stuck in traffic and he’ll take another 10 mins or so, thus I lit up a Cigarette, heaving a sigh of relief that I have enough time to fag one and ogle at a number of pretty Bengali chicks after a long long time. I looked left and right and saw a giant hoarding reading “Kolkata Welcomes you.” In those 10 mins, my eyes and thoughts wandered from a Yellow Ambassador Taxi to a pretty girl on the Phone to a Foreigner who was being bugged by taxi-wallah’s to the new CCD opened right outside the Airport finally settling down to a group of guys who were there to receive a friend of theirs. Shouting “Eyi to ****, eshe gechhe”,(Here comes the ****) followed by few other Bengali slangs (which are not quiet conventionally used to greet someone)… but somehow the guy was happy and they hugged each other”.
Those 10 mins made me recognize how badly I have missed my city, my people, my language, my friends and my family. So, here I am, like the last 25 yrs in Kolkata during Pujas. I was born and brought up in a family where I have never ever seen an Agarbatti stick or a Phool Mala in my home ever. Idol worship was out of the question and I grew up with Portraits of Lenin, Stalin, Ray and Tagore around. My parents never felt the importance of telling me or letting me know the importance of “The God” in daily life, and me too like them grew up to become an Atheist, and I am proud of it. So what is it that brings me year after year to Kolkata during Pujas.
My thoughts were cut short on seeing Kaku wave his hand from a white Ambassador. I quickly sneaked in and before I could have even settled properly on the couch like back-seat of the Ambassador, my mouth was stuffed with my favorite Kheer Chop from Surendranath’s. Reached home along the same roads and alleys, I don’t know how many thousand times I have been through. There was the regular dose of hustle-bustle and melodrama once reaching home followed by a very simple, yet the best dinner I had in months. I was getting accustomed to my room and surroundings where the topography has changed significantly because yet another apartment has risen up right outside my only looking window.
As usual, 2 of my closest pals from school crashed at my place@ 2 a.m. without prior notice, and left
@ 4 a.m. That’s the best thing about old friends… they don’t text u “Hey, wanna catch up someday?” All they do is call and say “Gate khol, niche aachhi” in the dead of the night. The next 1-2 days were spend mainly doing some pending household action items on me, and meeting a host of neighbors and acquaintances whom I have to answer the 3 standard questions : My Organization name and what exactly it does, whether the Biriyani in Hyderabad is better than Kolkata’s and whether I have visited Ramoji Film City or not. To my astonishment, I found out that even the chai-wallah of my Para has been to Ramoji and I have not. (Action item on me once I return back to Hyd.). Pujo was looming in a rapid tempo, and like every other time, once again I lost track of the date and the day of the week. All I knew is that tomorrow is Panchami, the next day is Sosthi and so on. The whole of Kolkata is counting hours, maybe seconds as if to explode under a pressure mounting for months. So, you might question again why the hell is Pujo so important to a Bengali, that too to an atheist like me. Just like one non Bong friend at work had asked.. it might be very tough for u guys, to have veg food for 10 days?. Well, Durga Pujo is no ordinary Satyanarayan or Balaji ka Pujo where you have to fast or eat veg (see, am not comparing amongst the superiority of Gods, I don’t believe in any of them in the first place), the essence of Durga Pujo to me, and like many others is less of a deity worship, and more of a festival. It is compared to the “Rio Carnival of Brazil” and also known as the “Rio Carnival of the East.”
This is the time of the year when I clean up my friend’s puke in my washroom.
The time of the year when the weather is humid and unpredictable, the traffic is at its worst, the Taxi and Auto wallah’s charge you double with a very straight reply “Pujo’r time, dada.”
The time when there is no traffic @ 10 a.m. and a mad rush @ 1 a.m.
The time when I can sip Lebu Cha @ Maddox Square or eat Lotpot @ Kumartuli.
The time when beauty parlor owners are super rich in a week.
The time when there is a shortage of Halogens and electricians in the city.
The time when I wake up not at the sound of the alarm in my cell, but due to the Dhaaki beating the Dhaak > 60 dB.
The time when MohunBagan- EastBengal or Buddha-Mamata rivalry is forgotten.
The time when I invariably bump into old friends and class-mates at some pandal or restaurant.
The time when even the size zero girl gorges in Mutton Biriyani and Chicken Chaanp.
The time when you don’t give a damn on what P.Chidambaram says about the Maoists.
The time when I again miss the Ashtami’s Anjali due to Saptami night’s hangover.
The time when Tata Sumos are the hottest things on road because it alone can stuff the dozen something gang of friends together.
The time when we keep singing and strumming the same sets of songs from midnight to 6 a.m.
The time when I chat and laugh along with my friends imitating our teachers or other class-mates and each coming up with an almost forgotten rib-tickling story.
The time when u gotta have a new dress everyday for the five days. The time when speaker’s play “Aaguner Porosh-moni”(A famous Rabindra-sangeet) for the first couple of day and progresses to “Dekha jo Tujhe yaar”(The only thing for which people recognize Ritesh Desmukh) as the festival comes to an end.
The time when I am the best dancer on the floor during the Visarjan.
And suddenly before you blink an eye, it’s gone. Yup, plain simple, gone. The city looks suddenly deserted, since half of the people are out for vacation, just to avoid the gloom after the Pujas. 5 days later, The Lokkhi Thaakur is heavily ignored. I think, Bengalis can never make money primarily because of these 2 reasons. They are vacationing too much and ignoring Maa Lokkhi time and again. Then the dreaded day comes suddenly without a notice, when it’s time to pack your bags and make a quiet exit. As I was flying back, I was thinking is there an end to this madness or disease, when I overheard 2 kakimas in the airport waiting area chatting excitedly, “This time Pujo is early, in September, you know..?”. Barely 7 days out of the Pujos the next Pujo has already become “This Pujo”. And I concluded, No, there is no end to this madness and “Aaschhe bochhor, definitely aabar hobe”
Sunday, October 31, 2010
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
Myth 5: Love Letters
Myth 5: Love Letters
Well, this one is for the ones who are sick n tired of my boring blogs. Well, at least I am bored of my sickening criticizing satirical blogs, and so I have tried out something very different this time by pulling out couple of platonic love letters. Nothing can be as fresh and pure than love, ain’t it? The first one was most probably published in a Bengali daily few years ago. It was Osama’s letter to Mamata. I know, I am not being completely original this time, by taking reference of an old letter. But what the hell screw it. I apologize whole-heartedly to both the parties for bringing this up again.
It goes something like this:
Now, I know not all my readers are not Bongs (huh, as If I have so many readers), so I had to do a translation of this letter in English. I know that most of the puns will be circumcised down to a large extent due to the language barrier (Yeah, you can re-read my blog on Languages once again.) But,here’s what the letter meant:
Dear Fire Lady Mamata,
I am writing this letter from a secret hiding place in a rocky desert. They don’t have a Post office, Fed Ex or even Facebook out here (Can you believe it, no Facebook?). So, I am sending this to you through a gigantic cloud in the sky, hoping someday it will reach ya.
U must know by now, that the day you shouted “Buddha Hatao” (Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, Chief Minister of WB), I have fallen in love with you head over heels from that very day. It ain’t matter if its Baamiyan’s Buddha (the largest Buddha statue of the world which I had wiped off, remember?) or Baam Union’s Buddha (Baam means the Left in Bengali), I have my moral support in any kind of Buddha hatao drive. My terrorism comes under dharma (religion), while your terror from Dharmatala (a place in Kolkata where Mamata has done several rallies n dramatic stage shows). But see, where you are today and where I am.
He Cruel lady, you know that for you only today I am in this state.
U remember, you had shown the V for Victory symbol last time around after the elections. I thought you wanted to signal the ’twin towers’. So what does a crazy man, madly in love do? Wiped off those buggers from the face of earth. Bas, that was it, I am running around since then. But you never looked back. How can someone be so cruel?
That’s why finally I am writing this because I have heard that nobody returns with empty hands from you. Even a famous ex PM of India had once been at your door to have some special Bengali sweets, and you had not let him return empty stomach-ed (Atal ji). I don’t want Rossogollas, neither Fish Curry nor Bandhs. I just wanna tie the knot with you. That’s my humble proposal. We both will be benefitted from this. You will get your share of the Muslim vote easily, while nobody ever will have the balls to say that I am a Mamata-heen purush.
That’s it for today. Please reply. Miss ya , tkcr…:)
Yours n only yours,
Man of Fire… Osama
This letter had made me laugh like hell, and so I decided that Mamata should, I mean must write him back, even if she doesn’t mean it, you know, just to make him feel loved and that he doesn’t do a 9/11 again. So, after much coaxing, she finally wrote a letter to Osama and handed it to me so that I post it. But, you know me, spoilt from childhood, couldn’t resist tearing the envelope and do a quick read. Now that she is a Union minister, she has become fluent in English, and thus has written this in awesome English. Still, there might be few Bengali words (in bold) in the letter, for which I have an Index in the end specially for you. I am trying to put whatever I remember of that letter in a nutshell:
Dear Agnidebata Osama,
How dare you sending such a chithi to me?
I cannot handling more pressure of this kind before my final porikkha - The WB Election of 2011.
You don't know how much Khorkuto I am burning to get that Briddho Buddho out of Bangla.
Pleej understand my agenda is ‘Poriborton Chayi’... not ‘Patro Chayi’..
I hab already said No-No to Nano.
I hab also said No to so many men..I mean "So-men" before.
Becoj Like Bhagat Singh said "Ajadi hi meri dulhan hai", same to same "CM ka Chair hi mera Biye ki Piri hai"
My slogan is "Maa-Maati-Maao...Buddho Hatao"
I have wait for dui doshok to come to this historic moment when I am sure to pass my porikkha.
So , plij do not propose or disturb me, before my porikkha is over.
All the tough papers are already cleared , like Political-Jyoti, Physical-Subhash etc
Only the Buddho-Juddho paper is left, but I habe done special cochin class this time.
Also I habe refering ABTA Test papers (Aantel-Buddhijibi-Tuddhijibi Association)
I am already in Gola-jol trouble working for the Mao-badis.
Also, this Monmohon and Pronobda disturbs me a lot by saying "Didi, you need to concentrate on Railways...!"
They also demand that I come to Delhi sometime sometime...
Now you say Osama, is it possible for someone to concentrating so many works ek saathe ?
When you was planning to Attack Bush, was you thinking about your 54 Stri's?
So Love and war cannot be together...at least not now..
the day my Porikkha is over and I pass, I will flag off a new train known as Mao-Qaeda express running from Kabul to Kolkata.. And I will be doing waiting phor you here.
And after that nobody will have the guts to call you Mamata-heen...
Yours truly,
Didi... oops...
Mamata..!
Index*
Chithi = Letter
Porikkha = Exam
Khorkuto = hay
Poriborton Chayi = We want change (Mamata’s unique slogan, oops sorry, even Obama’s)
Patro Chayi = We want grooms (A classifieds in Anandabajar Potrika, which has made it the highest selling Bengali daily)
Biye ka piri = A wooden plank used in Bong marriages
Dui Doshok = 2 decades
Maati = Soil
Gola-jol trouble = Neck deep in trouble
Ek saathe = together
Habe = have (that’s how it sounds in Bengali)
Plij = Please (that’s how it sounds in Bengali)
Phor = for (u’ve got the trick now, right?)
Well, this one is for the ones who are sick n tired of my boring blogs. Well, at least I am bored of my sickening criticizing satirical blogs, and so I have tried out something very different this time by pulling out couple of platonic love letters. Nothing can be as fresh and pure than love, ain’t it? The first one was most probably published in a Bengali daily few years ago. It was Osama’s letter to Mamata. I know, I am not being completely original this time, by taking reference of an old letter. But what the hell screw it. I apologize whole-heartedly to both the parties for bringing this up again.
It goes something like this:
Now, I know not all my readers are not Bongs (huh, as If I have so many readers), so I had to do a translation of this letter in English. I know that most of the puns will be circumcised down to a large extent due to the language barrier (Yeah, you can re-read my blog on Languages once again.) But,here’s what the letter meant:
Dear Fire Lady Mamata,
I am writing this letter from a secret hiding place in a rocky desert. They don’t have a Post office, Fed Ex or even Facebook out here (Can you believe it, no Facebook?). So, I am sending this to you through a gigantic cloud in the sky, hoping someday it will reach ya.
U must know by now, that the day you shouted “Buddha Hatao” (Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, Chief Minister of WB), I have fallen in love with you head over heels from that very day. It ain’t matter if its Baamiyan’s Buddha (the largest Buddha statue of the world which I had wiped off, remember?) or Baam Union’s Buddha (Baam means the Left in Bengali), I have my moral support in any kind of Buddha hatao drive. My terrorism comes under dharma (religion), while your terror from Dharmatala (a place in Kolkata where Mamata has done several rallies n dramatic stage shows). But see, where you are today and where I am.
He Cruel lady, you know that for you only today I am in this state.
U remember, you had shown the V for Victory symbol last time around after the elections. I thought you wanted to signal the ’twin towers’. So what does a crazy man, madly in love do? Wiped off those buggers from the face of earth. Bas, that was it, I am running around since then. But you never looked back. How can someone be so cruel?
That’s why finally I am writing this because I have heard that nobody returns with empty hands from you. Even a famous ex PM of India had once been at your door to have some special Bengali sweets, and you had not let him return empty stomach-ed (Atal ji). I don’t want Rossogollas, neither Fish Curry nor Bandhs. I just wanna tie the knot with you. That’s my humble proposal. We both will be benefitted from this. You will get your share of the Muslim vote easily, while nobody ever will have the balls to say that I am a Mamata-heen purush.
That’s it for today. Please reply. Miss ya , tkcr…:)
Yours n only yours,
Man of Fire… Osama
This letter had made me laugh like hell, and so I decided that Mamata should, I mean must write him back, even if she doesn’t mean it, you know, just to make him feel loved and that he doesn’t do a 9/11 again. So, after much coaxing, she finally wrote a letter to Osama and handed it to me so that I post it. But, you know me, spoilt from childhood, couldn’t resist tearing the envelope and do a quick read. Now that she is a Union minister, she has become fluent in English, and thus has written this in awesome English. Still, there might be few Bengali words (in bold) in the letter, for which I have an Index in the end specially for you. I am trying to put whatever I remember of that letter in a nutshell:
Dear Agnidebata Osama,
How dare you sending such a chithi to me?
I cannot handling more pressure of this kind before my final porikkha - The WB Election of 2011.
You don't know how much Khorkuto I am burning to get that Briddho Buddho out of Bangla.
Pleej understand my agenda is ‘Poriborton Chayi’... not ‘Patro Chayi’..
I hab already said No-No to Nano.
I hab also said No to so many men..I mean "So-men" before.
Becoj Like Bhagat Singh said "Ajadi hi meri dulhan hai", same to same "CM ka Chair hi mera Biye ki Piri hai"
My slogan is "Maa-Maati-Maao...Buddho Hatao"
I have wait for dui doshok to come to this historic moment when I am sure to pass my porikkha.
So , plij do not propose or disturb me, before my porikkha is over.
All the tough papers are already cleared , like Political-Jyoti, Physical-Subhash etc
Only the Buddho-Juddho paper is left, but I habe done special cochin class this time.
Also I habe refering ABTA Test papers (Aantel-Buddhijibi-Tuddhijibi Association)
I am already in Gola-jol trouble working for the Mao-badis.
Also, this Monmohon and Pronobda disturbs me a lot by saying "Didi, you need to concentrate on Railways...!"
They also demand that I come to Delhi sometime sometime...
Now you say Osama, is it possible for someone to concentrating so many works ek saathe ?
When you was planning to Attack Bush, was you thinking about your 54 Stri's?
So Love and war cannot be together...at least not now..
the day my Porikkha is over and I pass, I will flag off a new train known as Mao-Qaeda express running from Kabul to Kolkata.. And I will be doing waiting phor you here.
And after that nobody will have the guts to call you Mamata-heen...
Yours truly,
Didi... oops...
Mamata..!
Index*
Chithi = Letter
Porikkha = Exam
Khorkuto = hay
Poriborton Chayi = We want change (Mamata’s unique slogan, oops sorry, even Obama’s)
Patro Chayi = We want grooms (A classifieds in Anandabajar Potrika, which has made it the highest selling Bengali daily)
Biye ka piri = A wooden plank used in Bong marriages
Dui Doshok = 2 decades
Maati = Soil
Gola-jol trouble = Neck deep in trouble
Ek saathe = together
Habe = have (that’s how it sounds in Bengali)
Plij = Please (that’s how it sounds in Bengali)
Phor = for (u’ve got the trick now, right?)
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Myth 4: I am the 4th I-do-IT
There are 10 kind of people in this world. One kind who appreciates PJ’s, and the other who do not understand binary. Well, if you are through with the first line now and having a skewed smile on.. you r probably good to go. And if you are again going up to re-read the first line, no issues… u’ll catch up soon.
All right, this blog is about “the IT Guy next door”, the one who you see every day from your balcony rushing for work in the morning, most probably empty stomach-ed and definitely empty headed. Okay, If you r also an IT guy and reading this with vengeance, I apologise for Prototyping. Just think of this as an exception logic or a negative Test Case, and you will start feeling better. you might be lucky enough a chap who leaves a 3BHK worth 40 Lakhs with a stomach full of “Maachh Bhaat” cooked by Mom , “parathas” packed in the lunch box by wifey dear while ‘Raju the chauffer’ drives your Honda City to your Office. This blog is definitely not about u, it’s about the thousands surviving away from home sweet home in an aim to “make a career out of IT (or at least make out with an IT girl) ” waiting in a bus stand in the scorching heat with a prized fashion accessory round his neck.
So what makes the regular IT guy so special? Well, for starters he ventures into an industry with no freaking idea whatsoever it is. Again, am sorry if you kicked ass at coding “Towers of Hanoi” or “Fibonacci Series” in school/college, remember I am writing about the regular guy who relied upon ‘Xerox machines’ or the microscopic letters written behind ‘Sai Baba’s photo’ during Computer exams. My knowledge of Computers were limited to “Roadrash and desibaba.com” during school and these were the precise reasons I coaxed Baba to get me a Computer back then. So, it’s completely understandable if a student of Medical science having 5 yrs of intense study and training, rip opens up a heart during surgery, or if a Chartered Accountant audits a MNC. But what on earth is the regular Mechanical/Bio Tech Engineer guy who screwed with nut- bolts or was busy preparing Methanol and smoking grass all 4 yrs of college, doing in an IT Company? Well the answer is, neither did he have anywhere else to go, nor did the company who hired him had much option. It’s a symbiotic relation in which you are ready to flush out whatever you learned (in case you did learn something – In my case it was a win win situation) in College, while the company is ready to hire u, because it needs to design softwares maybe for some Pathology Lab in Oklahoma, and he does not have enough guys to do the dim-witted labor.
So, you start with plenty of dreams in your mind to change the world, ok if not the world , then at least the Pathology lab in Oklahoma. And you start imbibing the archetypal trends set by your seniors and team mates very soon in your everyday life. You reach office and fashionably swipe your card while the glass door opens with a beep (as if you r entering a NASA Laboratory with loads of sensitive data – I mean how can “Jennifer S. Hughes, 570-32-3479, 28 Zimmerman Lane, Los Angeles, CA 90017, suffering from Piles” be classified as sensitive data? – It can be termed unhygienic data but not sensitive for chrissake.) and the time of your entry is recorded. You make sure to spend 9 hrs every day in Office at least before swiping out, else it might impact your Companies revenue. So you feel good and kinda important (ur fooling around of 30 mins can bring down a Fortune 50 on its knees, ain’t that great?) and you don’t really mind being tagged as “Billable Labour” in your timesheets, do u? It’s all about professionalism @EOD, isn’t it? You love abbreviating everything (EOD, PFA, WFH etc) in an attempt to look uber-cool. You swear by jargons like “deep diving” , “fine tuning” , “gap analysis” just to give a feel that you are solving something really big and important.
The Bio Clock of your life changes according to your Client’s time zone. So, while you used to go to bed around 11pm previously, you might just wake up at that time now to greet your Client “Good morning…”, just to make him feel good. You are a great team-man if you r working round the clock. You put extra hours in office just out of habit, coz there’s practically nothing to do going back to your boring double sharing basis room. Plus you get free access to the internet and Coffee machines. So you save some bucks on your breakfast and snacks. Yes, a cup of coffee and a cigarette makes the breakfast of a regular IT guy. If you, by chance, still have a social circle and friends, you research about proxies to get access to chat sites and torment your friends tellin’ em how your life sucks.
Just like a coolie, you ask a colleague on introduction, ”Which platform r you working on?” And like a beggar you r always looking for change. The hottest thing you can do in a weekend is attend some walkin drive for XYZ company. But hey, you are not alone in this food chain. You might just sneak past your manager in the weekend drive, both mutually pretending not seeing each other. If you have a girlfriend in another city, you religiously follow the 3 routine calls per day schedule (the 5 mins wake-up call which ends with “I am getting late for work” , the 10 mins lunch call which ends with “I have a meeting” and the 20 mins Good night call which ends with some mushy sounds.. ).
You are robbed by auto wallahs (they just charge double coz of your expensive id-tag round the neck), brokers (they inquire whether you r a student or working, and if you proudly say “I work for Microsoft” with a fake accent, your rent goes up 50% straightaway) and vegetable vendors (They levy an IT tax of at least 30% whenever you r shopping with the tag on). They all will burst into laughter, if they happen to see your ridiculous payslip btw. If they have any goodness left in their heart, they might as well give you some of your money back.
You love partying.. Even if partying means gulping down a beer with your fat and balding roomie in your room every alternate nights, and each demonstrating how their companies and their mangers suck more than the others. That’s your ideal party. You are a movie buff.. Even if it means downloading and watching the pirated version, on Saturdays, the very next day the movie released. The only thing that excites you and you die for is probably the Office quarter or annual parties in which you get to see your otherwise geeky female colleague dressed in some eye soothing outfits, and yes, finally she has waxed her arms…. Plus you get free booze n unlimited starters. You smoke Marlboro and Dunhill in the presence of your colleagues and seniors, just to make yourself look sophisticated, while you puff away maybe Chhota Gold Flake in your room.
Your biggest nightmare is the rumors of increase in the “notice period duration”. The most motivating word to you is “CTC” and that’s nothing to do with Calcutta’s ultra slow heritage transport system. The parameters in which you judge other people are 5.5L or 6.5L, H1 or L1, i10 or i20. Let’s say you discovered a really really hot girl in some random chat session (chances are that she might be a 40 something gay named Rameshwaram Pandey, but that’s a different story) on a night when you really were feeling lonely. So after the initial what do you do and stuffs, you end up asking “So, What domain are you working now?” the moment you discover she (or he, whatever) is also an IT person like you, when all you wanted was to start with “So, what are you wearing now?”.
So that’s how your days and months and years goes on, by meeting or mostly stretching deadlines, submitting timesheets every week , fidgeting between Word and Excel, updating the experience in your CV by 0.1 of an year every few days, signing up in yet another Job Portal. You are always updated with the requirements and Packages offered in the Company opposite to your building. And just like the packages offered, the chicks in the opposite building too come in better packages. As I always say, the grass on the other side, always gives a better kick.
And finally when you have decided that enough is enough, and you have clicked on the send button of “the mail” which was lying in your Drafts for months, you feel really ecstatic.
It’s time for “Change” and “Change has arrived”. Boy, u just made Obama proud. Way to go boy…!
All right, this blog is about “the IT Guy next door”, the one who you see every day from your balcony rushing for work in the morning, most probably empty stomach-ed and definitely empty headed. Okay, If you r also an IT guy and reading this with vengeance, I apologise for Prototyping. Just think of this as an exception logic or a negative Test Case, and you will start feeling better. you might be lucky enough a chap who leaves a 3BHK worth 40 Lakhs with a stomach full of “Maachh Bhaat” cooked by Mom , “parathas” packed in the lunch box by wifey dear while ‘Raju the chauffer’ drives your Honda City to your Office. This blog is definitely not about u, it’s about the thousands surviving away from home sweet home in an aim to “make a career out of IT (or at least make out with an IT girl) ” waiting in a bus stand in the scorching heat with a prized fashion accessory round his neck.
So what makes the regular IT guy so special? Well, for starters he ventures into an industry with no freaking idea whatsoever it is. Again, am sorry if you kicked ass at coding “Towers of Hanoi” or “Fibonacci Series” in school/college, remember I am writing about the regular guy who relied upon ‘Xerox machines’ or the microscopic letters written behind ‘Sai Baba’s photo’ during Computer exams. My knowledge of Computers were limited to “Roadrash and desibaba.com” during school and these were the precise reasons I coaxed Baba to get me a Computer back then. So, it’s completely understandable if a student of Medical science having 5 yrs of intense study and training, rip opens up a heart during surgery, or if a Chartered Accountant audits a MNC. But what on earth is the regular Mechanical/Bio Tech Engineer guy who screwed with nut- bolts or was busy preparing Methanol and smoking grass all 4 yrs of college, doing in an IT Company? Well the answer is, neither did he have anywhere else to go, nor did the company who hired him had much option. It’s a symbiotic relation in which you are ready to flush out whatever you learned (in case you did learn something – In my case it was a win win situation) in College, while the company is ready to hire u, because it needs to design softwares maybe for some Pathology Lab in Oklahoma, and he does not have enough guys to do the dim-witted labor.
So, you start with plenty of dreams in your mind to change the world, ok if not the world , then at least the Pathology lab in Oklahoma. And you start imbibing the archetypal trends set by your seniors and team mates very soon in your everyday life. You reach office and fashionably swipe your card while the glass door opens with a beep (as if you r entering a NASA Laboratory with loads of sensitive data – I mean how can “Jennifer S. Hughes, 570-32-3479, 28 Zimmerman Lane, Los Angeles, CA 90017, suffering from Piles” be classified as sensitive data? – It can be termed unhygienic data but not sensitive for chrissake.) and the time of your entry is recorded. You make sure to spend 9 hrs every day in Office at least before swiping out, else it might impact your Companies revenue. So you feel good and kinda important (ur fooling around of 30 mins can bring down a Fortune 50 on its knees, ain’t that great?) and you don’t really mind being tagged as “Billable Labour” in your timesheets, do u? It’s all about professionalism @EOD, isn’t it? You love abbreviating everything (EOD, PFA, WFH etc) in an attempt to look uber-cool. You swear by jargons like “deep diving” , “fine tuning” , “gap analysis” just to give a feel that you are solving something really big and important.
The Bio Clock of your life changes according to your Client’s time zone. So, while you used to go to bed around 11pm previously, you might just wake up at that time now to greet your Client “Good morning…”, just to make him feel good. You are a great team-man if you r working round the clock. You put extra hours in office just out of habit, coz there’s practically nothing to do going back to your boring double sharing basis room. Plus you get free access to the internet and Coffee machines. So you save some bucks on your breakfast and snacks. Yes, a cup of coffee and a cigarette makes the breakfast of a regular IT guy. If you, by chance, still have a social circle and friends, you research about proxies to get access to chat sites and torment your friends tellin’ em how your life sucks.
Just like a coolie, you ask a colleague on introduction, ”Which platform r you working on?” And like a beggar you r always looking for change. The hottest thing you can do in a weekend is attend some walkin drive for XYZ company. But hey, you are not alone in this food chain. You might just sneak past your manager in the weekend drive, both mutually pretending not seeing each other. If you have a girlfriend in another city, you religiously follow the 3 routine calls per day schedule (the 5 mins wake-up call which ends with “I am getting late for work” , the 10 mins lunch call which ends with “I have a meeting” and the 20 mins Good night call which ends with some mushy sounds.. ).
You are robbed by auto wallahs (they just charge double coz of your expensive id-tag round the neck), brokers (they inquire whether you r a student or working, and if you proudly say “I work for Microsoft” with a fake accent, your rent goes up 50% straightaway) and vegetable vendors (They levy an IT tax of at least 30% whenever you r shopping with the tag on). They all will burst into laughter, if they happen to see your ridiculous payslip btw. If they have any goodness left in their heart, they might as well give you some of your money back.
You love partying.. Even if partying means gulping down a beer with your fat and balding roomie in your room every alternate nights, and each demonstrating how their companies and their mangers suck more than the others. That’s your ideal party. You are a movie buff.. Even if it means downloading and watching the pirated version, on Saturdays, the very next day the movie released. The only thing that excites you and you die for is probably the Office quarter or annual parties in which you get to see your otherwise geeky female colleague dressed in some eye soothing outfits, and yes, finally she has waxed her arms…. Plus you get free booze n unlimited starters. You smoke Marlboro and Dunhill in the presence of your colleagues and seniors, just to make yourself look sophisticated, while you puff away maybe Chhota Gold Flake in your room.
Your biggest nightmare is the rumors of increase in the “notice period duration”. The most motivating word to you is “CTC” and that’s nothing to do with Calcutta’s ultra slow heritage transport system. The parameters in which you judge other people are 5.5L or 6.5L, H1 or L1, i10 or i20. Let’s say you discovered a really really hot girl in some random chat session (chances are that she might be a 40 something gay named Rameshwaram Pandey, but that’s a different story) on a night when you really were feeling lonely. So after the initial what do you do and stuffs, you end up asking “So, What domain are you working now?” the moment you discover she (or he, whatever) is also an IT person like you, when all you wanted was to start with “So, what are you wearing now?”.
So that’s how your days and months and years goes on, by meeting or mostly stretching deadlines, submitting timesheets every week , fidgeting between Word and Excel, updating the experience in your CV by 0.1 of an year every few days, signing up in yet another Job Portal. You are always updated with the requirements and Packages offered in the Company opposite to your building. And just like the packages offered, the chicks in the opposite building too come in better packages. As I always say, the grass on the other side, always gives a better kick.
And finally when you have decided that enough is enough, and you have clicked on the send button of “the mail” which was lying in your Drafts for months, you feel really ecstatic.
It’s time for “Change” and “Change has arrived”. Boy, u just made Obama proud. Way to go boy…!
Friday, July 30, 2010
Myth 3: Languages known: English, Hindi, Bengali, C and VB (very basic)
I was happening to watch a Debate on a TV show few days back. It was something related to “Language being a Socio-Political device instigating Division”. So, there were self proclaimed theatre legends (folks who mess up in movies), religious activists (people whose main occupation round the year is to keep a tab on which leader or celebrity sparked a controversial statement and then issue a fatwa on him) etc. each having something or the other to deliver as a Final Verdict on how really Language is creating a rift in the “Unity in Diversity” motto of India. Now, to the mango people like me… I just don’t have the brains to understand some of the theories they were putting (neither do I wish to understand). So, in this blog, I will just write about how and why I have been tortured and confused throughout my childhood (the buck hasn’t stopped, though) with the dilemma of “Why So many Languages?”
Phase 1: Pre-school days: The innocent days of learning your mother tongue – Bangla in my case (am sure this “mother tongue” term originated coz I hardly see Baba speaking when maa n baba have an argument) was perhaps the best days of my life. By birth I am a Bong (I wonder if this term – Bong has really something to do with the Bengali’s affinity to the real stuff ‘Bong’ – u know the one which makes u go high n all), and my early childhood was spent mostly with Marwari and Gujarati kids of my neighborhood. And yes, my baba used to play Boney M and Abba on the gramophone. Thus, I was confused with the Multi Language system long before I even realized what ‘confused’ meant. And yes, Being an Indian and more because am a Bong, I had the privilege of having 1 Bhalo naam (Good name, School name, Official name – wateva) and a series of very embarrassing, hard hitting Daak naams (Gyara – for instance if u r short, Bhombol/Gablu/Golu if ur just a bit on the wrong side of the BMI Scale)
Phase 2: Early School days: Introducing “The English”. The baap of all languages finally arrived on my plate. Am glad that I was admitted to an Eng Med Co Ed School (happier on the Co Ed part of it) and soon fell in love with Radiant Readers. Couple it with Bengali Sohoj Path, Kisoloy etc, plusthere was Hindi...partly coz of the cute Marwari classmate I had a crush on… and largely due to the influence of Bollywood which made my Hindi Base quite sturdy. Long before I had held my First Hindi Textbook, I could already read and understand whole words like “Pyaar”, “Dil”, “Pyaasi Jawani” etc courtesy the Posters. So, at the age of 6, I was doing a threesome with languages.
Phase 3: Middle School days: Things in English moved to frightening stuffs like “Present perfect continuous tense” (I still don’t know what the hell was that – but it surely made me continuously tense), On top of that I had an obese English Ma’am screaming her lungs out “Wren and Martin is your Bible.” And that’s not all – In came, SaratChandra and BankimChandra with their shares of “Duradoyoshchokro nibhosso Tonni, TamaalTaaji Bonoraaji Neela.” kind of Bengali. I loved Hindi back then because it was still in its puberty with “Akbar Birbal” and “Chuha Billi” kind of stories. And those were the days in which I realized the advantage of the 3-tier Linguistic architecture … yes, u get to know so many interesting synonyms for different Human anatomies in various languages. (I can think of around 10 for the posterior one… :))
Phase 4: Senior School/College days: Bengali and English had wrecked havoc by then. Mr. Shakespeare had already suffocated us with his extra dose of “Thou art my friend… “And Bengali did little help either. The only easy stuff, Hindi had already made a quiet exit before the Climax (Board exams). So if you thought 3 languages were more than enough to possibly flunk you, you missed a thing buddies. What about Logo (I still could not figure out wtf did the shore turtle wanted?), Basic, Java, C and its ++ brothers? So again, you needed to work harder on learning another couple of languages to work on a machine which is supposed to make your work easier (Bingo! I framed an oxymoronic sentence)
Phase 5: Settled out of Kolkata: So now, if you are lucky enough to survive all these years of this linguistic torture, you might as well land up with a job somewhere in India. Now that you are ecstatic about the fact that you are earning (and gulping down beer alternate days) and it’s finally the end of all the learning, hold on. If you are in Hyderabad, u better learn some Telugu, coz that would help you understand the lyrics of the songs to which the Busty babes on Sun TV and Maa TV seductively lip-sync to (Just to get a better feel of the things, u know ). If you are in Pune, be sure to scream “Mee Marathi Maanoos aahe, Jai Shivaji” in case Raj Thackerey’s men chose to f*** with u. You have a scope of learning 1600+ recognized Indian Languages in this fashion. Also, you’ll need to grasp languages like JAVA, VB, COBOL, PERL etc, if, unluckily, god forbid, you are an IT guy. Hold on, that’s not all... Your client could be a Mr. Woo/Mr. Gonzales, and your Manager will superbly convince you on learning Woo’s mother tongue now, as it would supposedly help you out a lot once you get an onsite opportunity (But he won’t remember he said anything remotely close to that when you tell him that you have successfully completed the Japanese Certification, is a different story). That’s not enough; If u luckily have an English Client, u should well be able to differentiate between UK/US English…Coz if u innocently say that ”I bought pencil and rubbers for the NGO children”, your US Client will surely mistake u for a pervert; Coz rubber is the term they refer to the thing which is used to prevent having children in the first place.
So what is the significance of this many languages in my existence of being a humble Bong, or let’s say an Indian? Well, the fact is we adapt to everything very naturally. We just cannot be some Mr. James who from his childhood speaks only in English, listens only to English music, abuses only with words starting with F and even makes love only in English. It won’t be much of a fun thing to do, will it? I know my Bengali is of such a degraded quality that Tagore would have smacked me hard on my a** if he could have. My Hindi is still fighting between “aaj baarish hoga?” or “aaj baarish hogi?” My friends say that I have a near perfect strike rate of using the wrong gender every time I speak. My English, ohh… u know by now if you are following my blogs, I don’t need to explain…Marathi and Telugu are something I understand only if there are about 3-4 key words in English punched with them in a sentence. And programming languages? Ask the Computer teacher of my school about me, and it will still send shivers down his spine about the technique I used to design and call functions. But still, somehow I am, like millions surviving, and managing pretty well. Coz I believe that somehow I am better off than a Prime minister of some country who has to carry an interpreter the moment he crosses his borders. We are not very good with any 1 language, but we kickass with a dozen of them. We mis-spell, stammer, and wrongly construct sentences. So what if we see Menu cards with Items like “Masala Cock/Pepsi… Rs.20”, Or maybe a Highway Liquor shop sporting in giant fonts “Child Bear”… (Google it if u don believe me) We adjust and uncannily manage. That’s the best thing about us. And I don’t give a rat’s a** to people who think Language is a dividing force…
Throw me what u got man, am ready for more…! Am kinda Freudian… the more the merrier!
Phase 1: Pre-school days: The innocent days of learning your mother tongue – Bangla in my case (am sure this “mother tongue” term originated coz I hardly see Baba speaking when maa n baba have an argument) was perhaps the best days of my life. By birth I am a Bong (I wonder if this term – Bong has really something to do with the Bengali’s affinity to the real stuff ‘Bong’ – u know the one which makes u go high n all), and my early childhood was spent mostly with Marwari and Gujarati kids of my neighborhood. And yes, my baba used to play Boney M and Abba on the gramophone. Thus, I was confused with the Multi Language system long before I even realized what ‘confused’ meant. And yes, Being an Indian and more because am a Bong, I had the privilege of having 1 Bhalo naam (Good name, School name, Official name – wateva) and a series of very embarrassing, hard hitting Daak naams (Gyara – for instance if u r short, Bhombol/Gablu/Golu if ur just a bit on the wrong side of the BMI Scale)
Phase 2: Early School days: Introducing “The English”. The baap of all languages finally arrived on my plate. Am glad that I was admitted to an Eng Med Co Ed School (happier on the Co Ed part of it) and soon fell in love with Radiant Readers. Couple it with Bengali Sohoj Path, Kisoloy etc, plusthere was Hindi...partly coz of the cute Marwari classmate I had a crush on… and largely due to the influence of Bollywood which made my Hindi Base quite sturdy. Long before I had held my First Hindi Textbook, I could already read and understand whole words like “Pyaar”, “Dil”, “Pyaasi Jawani” etc courtesy the Posters. So, at the age of 6, I was doing a threesome with languages.
Phase 3: Middle School days: Things in English moved to frightening stuffs like “Present perfect continuous tense” (I still don’t know what the hell was that – but it surely made me continuously tense), On top of that I had an obese English Ma’am screaming her lungs out “Wren and Martin is your Bible.” And that’s not all – In came, SaratChandra and BankimChandra with their shares of “Duradoyoshchokro nibhosso Tonni, TamaalTaaji Bonoraaji Neela.” kind of Bengali. I loved Hindi back then because it was still in its puberty with “Akbar Birbal” and “Chuha Billi” kind of stories. And those were the days in which I realized the advantage of the 3-tier Linguistic architecture … yes, u get to know so many interesting synonyms for different Human anatomies in various languages. (I can think of around 10 for the posterior one… :))
Phase 4: Senior School/College days: Bengali and English had wrecked havoc by then. Mr. Shakespeare had already suffocated us with his extra dose of “Thou art my friend… “And Bengali did little help either. The only easy stuff, Hindi had already made a quiet exit before the Climax (Board exams). So if you thought 3 languages were more than enough to possibly flunk you, you missed a thing buddies. What about Logo (I still could not figure out wtf did the shore turtle wanted?), Basic, Java, C and its ++ brothers? So again, you needed to work harder on learning another couple of languages to work on a machine which is supposed to make your work easier (Bingo! I framed an oxymoronic sentence)
Phase 5: Settled out of Kolkata: So now, if you are lucky enough to survive all these years of this linguistic torture, you might as well land up with a job somewhere in India. Now that you are ecstatic about the fact that you are earning (and gulping down beer alternate days) and it’s finally the end of all the learning, hold on. If you are in Hyderabad, u better learn some Telugu, coz that would help you understand the lyrics of the songs to which the Busty babes on Sun TV and Maa TV seductively lip-sync to (Just to get a better feel of the things, u know ). If you are in Pune, be sure to scream “Mee Marathi Maanoos aahe, Jai Shivaji” in case Raj Thackerey’s men chose to f*** with u. You have a scope of learning 1600+ recognized Indian Languages in this fashion. Also, you’ll need to grasp languages like JAVA, VB, COBOL, PERL etc, if, unluckily, god forbid, you are an IT guy. Hold on, that’s not all... Your client could be a Mr. Woo/Mr. Gonzales, and your Manager will superbly convince you on learning Woo’s mother tongue now, as it would supposedly help you out a lot once you get an onsite opportunity (But he won’t remember he said anything remotely close to that when you tell him that you have successfully completed the Japanese Certification, is a different story). That’s not enough; If u luckily have an English Client, u should well be able to differentiate between UK/US English…Coz if u innocently say that ”I bought pencil and rubbers for the NGO children”, your US Client will surely mistake u for a pervert; Coz rubber is the term they refer to the thing which is used to prevent having children in the first place.
So what is the significance of this many languages in my existence of being a humble Bong, or let’s say an Indian? Well, the fact is we adapt to everything very naturally. We just cannot be some Mr. James who from his childhood speaks only in English, listens only to English music, abuses only with words starting with F and even makes love only in English. It won’t be much of a fun thing to do, will it? I know my Bengali is of such a degraded quality that Tagore would have smacked me hard on my a** if he could have. My Hindi is still fighting between “aaj baarish hoga?” or “aaj baarish hogi?” My friends say that I have a near perfect strike rate of using the wrong gender every time I speak. My English, ohh… u know by now if you are following my blogs, I don’t need to explain…Marathi and Telugu are something I understand only if there are about 3-4 key words in English punched with them in a sentence. And programming languages? Ask the Computer teacher of my school about me, and it will still send shivers down his spine about the technique I used to design and call functions. But still, somehow I am, like millions surviving, and managing pretty well. Coz I believe that somehow I am better off than a Prime minister of some country who has to carry an interpreter the moment he crosses his borders. We are not very good with any 1 language, but we kickass with a dozen of them. We mis-spell, stammer, and wrongly construct sentences. So what if we see Menu cards with Items like “Masala Cock/Pepsi… Rs.20”, Or maybe a Highway Liquor shop sporting in giant fonts “Child Bear”… (Google it if u don believe me) We adjust and uncannily manage. That’s the best thing about us. And I don’t give a rat’s a** to people who think Language is a dividing force…
Throw me what u got man, am ready for more…! Am kinda Freudian… the more the merrier!
Saturday, July 17, 2010
Myth 2 : Hindi Movies are so unpredictable
Thanks to the millions (exaggeration is a tool which I use the most when I blog) who read my Blog 1. http://toomuchofbongblood.blogspot.com/2010/07/myth-football-is-most-beautiful-game-on.html (This is a business approach –Influence of Gujarati friends I made in Pune).
Candidly speaking, I had to bribe almost my whole friendlist in Orkut and Facebook to read that blog. I had to do few “hey Sweeties, read ma blog?” kind of things to gals who r not sweet from any possible angle;with whom I had last talked some 5 yrs ago. Still when I found that my readership is not crossing the single digit mark, I threw a party at my place and did a narration of the blog. But when I realized that they are more interested in watching “Milenge Milenge” on a pirated DVD than listening to my blog which I was narrating with the same magnitude as Steve Jobs did while addressing the Stanford University fresher’s batch a few yrs ago, I gave up.
Soon, I was watching voluptuous Kareena and size Zero Shahid (yes, this epic was made some 5 yrs ago when Shahid did not have a chest to flaunt, and Kareena did not lose hers… ) cuddling in exotic Locales. That’s when I decided if I write on something next, it would be homage to the Bollywood scriptwriters on how they manage to unravel so many fascinating and unpredictable stories year after year.
The spinal column of a movie is its plot. Now, Hindi Cinema has for eternity been very sturdy and severe in this context; i.e. the plot will be for the most part sketched on one of these lines.
• Poor Guy loves Rich Girl (Rich Girl’s dad = Mr.Evil)
• 2 Guys Love same Girl (The guy who trails the whole movie will unexpectedly hit aces in the last half an hr.)
• 2 Long Lost Twin Brothers (One of them definitely evil) who were separated at birth
• The Hero with a incurable Disease (He’ll not die until the last 10 secs of the movie)
• The Badass killing the Hero’s parents(Or Looting the Izzat of the Hero’s Sis)
Now, the most remarkable thing about a Hindi movie is that you cannot fit it into one single genre. So, even if you go to a theatre and watch an absolutely crappy movie, you are still somehow happy on your way back that you watched almost 5 movies at the price of 1, because a Hindi Movie will consist of all the 5 broad genres:
• Comedy (If sudden dropping of the comedians Pajama qualifies as comedy)
• Romance (Insects sucking the nectar out of a flower kinda stuff)
• Action (From Slaps to Rocket Launchers, u name it , we’ve got it)
• Musical (Nobody can beat Bollywood in the avg. 10 song/movie record)
• Drama (Everything in Hindi movies are over the edge dramatic)
Now, coming to the ‘Must have Characters’:
# 1 The Mom – Immortalized by Nirupa Roy’s ever perennial source of tears and her “Choukh gaye? White Saree”. This character has undergone some serious metamorphosis and has become Kirron Kher wearing a Rs.1.8 Lakh Stone studded Ritu Kumar Saree (for people who love useless trivia) in the epic “Singh is Kinng.” But she will still cry if her son indulges in some “Itne saare paise kahaan se mile beta?” activities and won’t touch the money (jo khoon se range ho) even if the son’s Pitaji is on his death bed in some old ward of a municipal hospital (In other words, the Mom has stood the tests of the time like a Giant Tree, completely unshakeable.)
# 2 The Beta/Hero – Surely he has changed a lot from the times of Rajendar Kumar, where even touching a woman was considered a sin (unless the woman was drowning/freezing and you had to transfer “tann ki garmi” by..You know what). Respecting his parents and siblings was the first and last thing in his mind. Now, he has the liberty to smooch 17 times in a movie. He drinks, lives with the heroine “shaadi ke pehle , ek hi chhat ke neechhe..” He two/multi times with simplicity. This change of the hero’s character is superbly captured by Karan Johar (people who are not straight are finally happy with my mentioning his name) movies. From K2H2, K3G, KHNH to KANK his message has simply shifted to “Love your Friends to Parents to Neighbors to finally… the other man’s wife”. The only thing which has not changed throughout is that his favourite dish remains “Gajar ka Halwa”
# 3 The Gudiya/Heroine – Gone are the good old days when she and her bunch of bubbly sahelis played Balloons and Rings all around Papa’s (Mr. Evil, remember?) huge mansion, dressed in the most eye catching outfits in Yellow, Purple or Pink polka dots. Not to forget the retro oversized glasses and hair bands. Now, imagine 20 something of this rare species on identical bicycles singing “Laa Laa Laa.. Laa Laa”. Now, she wears bikinis even if she’s out shopping for breads n eggs. Vanished are her girlfriends, they are replaced by pretty pretty boyz, she calls friends. She has eradicated the need of Item girls (vamps) like Bindu and Aruna Irani, because she herself can wear (or not wear) more revealing clothes and dance more provocatively than them. So, she is doing 2 roles (Buy 1 get 1 free) together (# 1 The heroine – whom the hero romances, # 2 The vamp – Used to seduce the hero/villain). And btw, she does not fit the image of a Gudiya anymore , unless you are into Sex dolls and other kinky stuffs.
# 4 The real Bad-Ass/Gudiya’s Papa – He has lived in underground dens, with fluorescent lights and smokes to add to the effect (The sets look more like Kumortuli Pujo Pandel though), and the head of a dear and a tiger-skin for long. With high hunter boots, pipes and sone ka biscuits, he has sent shivers through the spines of the viewers for years. Nowadays, he has sprawling villas, the longest stretch limos in town, and the Devil wears Prada. In first impression it’s difficult to say whether he’s good bad or ugly. And he has a pretty daughter, who will get hooked up with the good guy, and then troubles start. Alternate sources of trouble are if he had berahami se katl’d the hero’s parents for some whatsoever feud.
# 5 The Good Cop – He is the one who is transferred to the most wretched locations over and over again, for doing what he is supposed to do – yes his Job. When he again tries to continue the same out there, out of habit, he is invariably suspended by the balding Commissioner who has just received a Call from the Minister screaming ”Yeh sab kya ho raha hai?” But that’s not all, the suspended Cop will finally solve the case, or in other words, he can only solve the case if he is suspended. On the process, he will definitely visit some dance bar, where he will get hold of the baddies after receiving a tip off from a little, skinny guy who calls him from a STD Booth.
So this was all about the characters. Now, to make a Bollywood movie and not have the song and dance sequence is blasphemy. So you have a fixed methodology; songs and dances are like the best practices injected into specific slots just to make your movie compliant to the industry standards. So you need to have at least 5 songs and a maximum of well, whatever Hum Aapke Hai Kaun had.
# 1 The Happy Song – Generally sung in and around Colleges with Bikes, Beers and Friends all around. (All the college knows your song and steps)
# 2 The Fell in Love Song – Figments of thoughts of how beautiful love is with the hero imagining himself feasting the heroine’s body.
# 3 The Transparent Saree Song – With Rainfall, Waterfall or hay mounds adding to the titilation.
# 4 The Sad Song – The Hero gets an excuse to drink and lament about their Judaai for whatever trivial reason.
# 5 The Happy Song 2 – Generally sung in and around a homely atmosphere with Bikes, Beer and Friends replaced by a Car, Kid, and the wife.
Now you have 5 plots, 5 genres, 5 characters and 5 songs under your belt. So anyone who has paid a little attention in Std XI-XII Mathematics could figure out instantly how many different Permutations and Combinations can be made out of these. For those of you, who were more interested in reading Playboy magazine in the last bench instead of what your Geek Madam was trying to convey, the figure would be… mmm…(trying to calculate) …Huge.
So that’s the success formula of Hindi Movies. You work out these few elements in such different combinations and orders that though two films are made of the same elements, they can be as different as ‘Paakeezah’ and ‘Tashan’. So, that’s simple, isn’t it? And you always thought that Hindi Movies were so unpredictable
Candidly speaking, I had to bribe almost my whole friendlist in Orkut and Facebook to read that blog. I had to do few “hey Sweeties, read ma blog?” kind of things to gals who r not sweet from any possible angle;with whom I had last talked some 5 yrs ago. Still when I found that my readership is not crossing the single digit mark, I threw a party at my place and did a narration of the blog. But when I realized that they are more interested in watching “Milenge Milenge” on a pirated DVD than listening to my blog which I was narrating with the same magnitude as Steve Jobs did while addressing the Stanford University fresher’s batch a few yrs ago, I gave up.
Soon, I was watching voluptuous Kareena and size Zero Shahid (yes, this epic was made some 5 yrs ago when Shahid did not have a chest to flaunt, and Kareena did not lose hers… ) cuddling in exotic Locales. That’s when I decided if I write on something next, it would be homage to the Bollywood scriptwriters on how they manage to unravel so many fascinating and unpredictable stories year after year.
The spinal column of a movie is its plot. Now, Hindi Cinema has for eternity been very sturdy and severe in this context; i.e. the plot will be for the most part sketched on one of these lines.
• Poor Guy loves Rich Girl (Rich Girl’s dad = Mr.Evil)
• 2 Guys Love same Girl (The guy who trails the whole movie will unexpectedly hit aces in the last half an hr.)
• 2 Long Lost Twin Brothers (One of them definitely evil) who were separated at birth
• The Hero with a incurable Disease (He’ll not die until the last 10 secs of the movie)
• The Badass killing the Hero’s parents(Or Looting the Izzat of the Hero’s Sis)
Now, the most remarkable thing about a Hindi movie is that you cannot fit it into one single genre. So, even if you go to a theatre and watch an absolutely crappy movie, you are still somehow happy on your way back that you watched almost 5 movies at the price of 1, because a Hindi Movie will consist of all the 5 broad genres:
• Comedy (If sudden dropping of the comedians Pajama qualifies as comedy)
• Romance (Insects sucking the nectar out of a flower kinda stuff)
• Action (From Slaps to Rocket Launchers, u name it , we’ve got it)
• Musical (Nobody can beat Bollywood in the avg. 10 song/movie record)
• Drama (Everything in Hindi movies are over the edge dramatic)
Now, coming to the ‘Must have Characters’:
# 1 The Mom – Immortalized by Nirupa Roy’s ever perennial source of tears and her “Choukh gaye? White Saree”. This character has undergone some serious metamorphosis and has become Kirron Kher wearing a Rs.1.8 Lakh Stone studded Ritu Kumar Saree (for people who love useless trivia) in the epic “Singh is Kinng.” But she will still cry if her son indulges in some “Itne saare paise kahaan se mile beta?” activities and won’t touch the money (jo khoon se range ho) even if the son’s Pitaji is on his death bed in some old ward of a municipal hospital (In other words, the Mom has stood the tests of the time like a Giant Tree, completely unshakeable.)
# 2 The Beta/Hero – Surely he has changed a lot from the times of Rajendar Kumar, where even touching a woman was considered a sin (unless the woman was drowning/freezing and you had to transfer “tann ki garmi” by..You know what). Respecting his parents and siblings was the first and last thing in his mind. Now, he has the liberty to smooch 17 times in a movie. He drinks, lives with the heroine “shaadi ke pehle , ek hi chhat ke neechhe..” He two/multi times with simplicity. This change of the hero’s character is superbly captured by Karan Johar (people who are not straight are finally happy with my mentioning his name) movies. From K2H2, K3G, KHNH to KANK his message has simply shifted to “Love your Friends to Parents to Neighbors to finally… the other man’s wife”. The only thing which has not changed throughout is that his favourite dish remains “Gajar ka Halwa”
# 3 The Gudiya/Heroine – Gone are the good old days when she and her bunch of bubbly sahelis played Balloons and Rings all around Papa’s (Mr. Evil, remember?) huge mansion, dressed in the most eye catching outfits in Yellow, Purple or Pink polka dots. Not to forget the retro oversized glasses and hair bands. Now, imagine 20 something of this rare species on identical bicycles singing “Laa Laa Laa.. Laa Laa”. Now, she wears bikinis even if she’s out shopping for breads n eggs. Vanished are her girlfriends, they are replaced by pretty pretty boyz, she calls friends. She has eradicated the need of Item girls (vamps) like Bindu and Aruna Irani, because she herself can wear (or not wear) more revealing clothes and dance more provocatively than them. So, she is doing 2 roles (Buy 1 get 1 free) together (# 1 The heroine – whom the hero romances, # 2 The vamp – Used to seduce the hero/villain). And btw, she does not fit the image of a Gudiya anymore , unless you are into Sex dolls and other kinky stuffs.
# 4 The real Bad-Ass/Gudiya’s Papa – He has lived in underground dens, with fluorescent lights and smokes to add to the effect (The sets look more like Kumortuli Pujo Pandel though), and the head of a dear and a tiger-skin for long. With high hunter boots, pipes and sone ka biscuits, he has sent shivers through the spines of the viewers for years. Nowadays, he has sprawling villas, the longest stretch limos in town, and the Devil wears Prada. In first impression it’s difficult to say whether he’s good bad or ugly. And he has a pretty daughter, who will get hooked up with the good guy, and then troubles start. Alternate sources of trouble are if he had berahami se katl’d the hero’s parents for some whatsoever feud.
# 5 The Good Cop – He is the one who is transferred to the most wretched locations over and over again, for doing what he is supposed to do – yes his Job. When he again tries to continue the same out there, out of habit, he is invariably suspended by the balding Commissioner who has just received a Call from the Minister screaming ”Yeh sab kya ho raha hai?” But that’s not all, the suspended Cop will finally solve the case, or in other words, he can only solve the case if he is suspended. On the process, he will definitely visit some dance bar, where he will get hold of the baddies after receiving a tip off from a little, skinny guy who calls him from a STD Booth.
So this was all about the characters. Now, to make a Bollywood movie and not have the song and dance sequence is blasphemy. So you have a fixed methodology; songs and dances are like the best practices injected into specific slots just to make your movie compliant to the industry standards. So you need to have at least 5 songs and a maximum of well, whatever Hum Aapke Hai Kaun had.
# 1 The Happy Song – Generally sung in and around Colleges with Bikes, Beers and Friends all around. (All the college knows your song and steps)
# 2 The Fell in Love Song – Figments of thoughts of how beautiful love is with the hero imagining himself feasting the heroine’s body.
# 3 The Transparent Saree Song – With Rainfall, Waterfall or hay mounds adding to the titilation.
# 4 The Sad Song – The Hero gets an excuse to drink and lament about their Judaai for whatever trivial reason.
# 5 The Happy Song 2 – Generally sung in and around a homely atmosphere with Bikes, Beer and Friends replaced by a Car, Kid, and the wife.
Now you have 5 plots, 5 genres, 5 characters and 5 songs under your belt. So anyone who has paid a little attention in Std XI-XII Mathematics could figure out instantly how many different Permutations and Combinations can be made out of these. For those of you, who were more interested in reading Playboy magazine in the last bench instead of what your Geek Madam was trying to convey, the figure would be… mmm…(trying to calculate) …Huge.
So that’s the success formula of Hindi Movies. You work out these few elements in such different combinations and orders that though two films are made of the same elements, they can be as different as ‘Paakeezah’ and ‘Tashan’. So, that’s simple, isn’t it? And you always thought that Hindi Movies were so unpredictable
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Myth : Football is the most beautiful game on the earth
Okay, First things First:
I am by no means a Great Footballer.Nor am I a Football expert...
Being born and bought up in India, somehow it’s not in the list of my Fundamental Rights, I guess…
The closest thing with which I can associate myself with the game might be my protruding tummy, which people have mistaken for a Football, time and again...
Secondly, I am by no means a novelist...So, if you are still reading this (Thanks... :)!)I am sorry to say that you will be utterly thwarted with the writing style. Coz, pretty obviously u won’t encounter the panache and poise with which Oscar Wild or Sexspeare wrote... (Btw, thou art might get occasional glimpses of wild sex though)
Thirdly, I will continuously use this kind of intentional, totally irrelevant and irritating PJ’s, so that even if u r absolutely pissed off with my writing, u can simply enjoy this PJ’s.
So, if u r still reading this and contemplating a murder, u can initiate the noble cause by sending me hate mails @ diptangshu.h@gmail.com .
And lastly if u encounter any spelling mistakes and/or grammatical errors (which I am sure u will, by the dozen), kindly overlook them and process the correct ones in your brain. It’s simply because I have turned off the Spell-check (just like I have turned off the very few women in my life) in Microsoft Word as I am pissed off by telling it “My name is not a spelling mistake, stop underlining it with a red saw tooth, u bitch.”
It started off with a small Facebook Debate on a Friend’s wall (Don’t u smirk; I do have a few friends). With the Fifa fever gripping the whole world, my poor friend was not spared as usual. And he did the biggest mistake of his life. He patronized the game and not only that; he went a few steps ahead and compared it with Cricket…! He did the rarest of the rarest of the crime of using these spiteful words -“with the WC getting over now, hopes all Indians take more interest in The Beautiful Game... Keep the fever on folks... It’s a thousand times better than cricket. And you know it :)”
Out came the tongues and pangs from everywhere and my poor friend was cornered in an instance by the protector’s of the World’s no. 1 sport (Cricket dude… what else wr u thinking off?). Ohh, we have a lot of them here. With a series of hate-posts in his kitty within an hour, my friend was almost on the verge of a nervous breakdown. That’s when I decided that enough is enough and I need to make him understand that “Dude, when in India.. Do as the Indian’s” (Btw, I am not referring to the Indian style lavatories).
So, I wrote him a mail in which I explained him in details why “Football is the most beautiful game in the earth” is a myth and why he should not ever commit the blasphemy of using the 3 words together.. “Better than cricket”, because to millions of Indians, this sentence is as meaningless as Wayne Rooney was in the 2010 Fifa world cup. The mail went something like this:
Dude,
U out of ur mind or what? U knw what u just did? I mean, how stupid is it to post such a thing on ur wall? U have any idea how ppl might react to this? Remember what happened to Varun Gandhi when he had delivered some stern speech targeted to a certain community? This is ridiculous. People should learn from other’s mistakes. And u did a graver sin by not only insulting the religion of 110 Crores (Am I updated with the figures, or is it some 2001 census data?) Indians, but that 2 on ur Facebook wall..!!!
I mean, it’s a different thing to address a crowd and deliver a controversial speech, but for chrissake don’t tweet or Post this kind of sensitive material on the net… (Ask Tharoor, he’s still repenting).
Cricket is the best possible sport in the world (simply because India and 8 other nations play it.)
Don’t u remember we have won the World Cup in 1983? (This gives us a 100 years lease of right on the property).
Cricket has given us a New God in the form of Sachin Tendulkar (330 million Hindu Gods and Goddesses were never enough.)
We have consistently defeated Bangladesh, Zimbabwe, and Kenya again and again (So what if we are a bit apprehensive playing on fast tracks like Perth and occasionally get bowled out within 100 runs?)
Look at the choices we offer in Cricket – 5 days , 1 day , 3 hrs (Just like sex, u can decide whether u r going for a marathon session or a quickie)
So u can anytime decide what kind of Cricket u want to watch and do not end up with a fixed boring format of 45 min this side – 45 mins that game (And yes, we do have busty blonde cheerleaders shaking ‘what their mama gave them’ in IPL’s and World T20 Cup whenever a 4 or 6 is hit.)
Look at the multi-talented lot of Indian cricketers and you can never complain about it (We have a Turbanator who uses the Maa ki gaali with ease in the gentleman’s game and occasionally slaps his colleague on the field, who btw happens to be a better dancer than a bowler.)
Our Captain is the most multi-talented Skipper the world has seen (Not only has he introduced all the baseball shots in cricket, he owns Hyabuzas, hobnobs with John Abraham and dates pretty chicks. What else do u expect from a guy whose shoulders are already so over burdened with the responsibilities of Handling the most important ministry – The Ministry of Cricket?)
Our ex cricketers have always made us proud (So what if half of the team was involved in match fixing at a time? Who doesn’t want to make some money from a game?)
They are so dedicated that they still want to give their best and entertain us (They are so hell bent on entertaining us that they appear as Comedy Show hosts and laugh their guts out on the drop of a hat. Some have become selectors and successfully screwed up the careers of others who had done much better than them.)
We also have our own Desi Mandira Bedi consistently teaching the young guns the art of appeal all these years. And now u soccer fanatics r copying these techniques by bringing some half American half Indian chick in the expert panel (So what if Mayanti played football for her college team? Mandira acted in the blockbuster DDLJ.. That makes her overqualified than Mayanti, any given day)
See what happened to Lagaan, a movie on Cricket.. it almost won an Oscars.. You bloody soccer fanatics (Now I am turning aggressive and abusive) tried to recreate the magic with Dhan Dhana Dhan Goal and failed miserably.
Dude, it’s high time u accept this facts and post an apology to all the millions of people u have unknowingly hurt. Why waste ur precious time on watching Football and dreaming in vain that India will qualify someday in the FIFA world cup? Let’s unite together and pray that India becomes a stronger cricketing economy and love the most beautiful game on earth.
Thanks,
DIptangshu Hazra
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