Bollywood Inc.

We were sitting at Nescafe sipping coffee the other day, and the art of Blogging was the topic of discussion. My good friend Ravi felt that it was necessary for the blog to be thought provoking....so Ravi Babu here goes.....

I watched 'Taxi no. 9211' yesterday in Satyam. Though I am not a big fan of Bollywood I managed to watch the movie owing to the following reasons:
1. It was a 1 hr. 45 mins. long movie
2. It had Nana Patekar in it (At some level, I aspire to be like him...sans the beard of course!)
3. The tickets were for free ( I won them by answering some quiz in ET)
4. It did not have 18 songs and a family wedding!

Well, I managed to watch it and at the end I was thinking that there was something very Hollywoodish about the movie....I also remembered what Shekhar Kapoor had once said about Bollywood..."Even the worst Hollywood movies are better than the best Bollywood Movies" ....this was the case maybe 3-4 yrs. back when 95 out of 100 Bollywood movies flopped...but today...I think the situtation has changed.....Durations are smaller...Not too many songs....cross over movies are in vogue....off beat movies are also being appreciated....So what prevents Bollywood movies from being truly global, I mean beyond singapore and other places where there is a plethora of Indians.....??

This got me thinking....what if Bollywood was run like a corporate entity?? It would have an MD, a CEO who would take care of the general affairs of the company....A Mktg, Finance and an HR team...An Operations team to take care of the Supply chain...such as the Distribution, Retailing etc....Things would be so much more organised....There would be MBAs who would specialise in Bollywood operations...there would be electives called 'Public Relations for Shahrukh Khan and the likes'...ha ha.....But who do you thnk would make the perfect CEO??....I vote for Mr.Bachan...he could take care of the PR too....There would more than just unions...there would be Associations where people could get together and chat up on the latest trends...these get-togethers would also give the papparazzi something to dwell upon...best of all...I think, it would elevate the movie making industry to new levels....It would probably be as respected as an HLL in FMCG, an Infosys in IT and a Reliance in....well everything.....

As I awoke from my reverie I realised that the movie was over ...time pass I would call it....just two hours of TIME PASS.....However, it did leave a warm feeling at the pit of my stomach....mmmm....I guess thats why people are drawn to movies, especially Bollywood ones....they take you away from reality and make you live in a separate world with Raghav Shastree and Jai Mittal.....laugh and cry with them, feel sorry for the taxi driver at the same time as you feel sorry for the spoilt son of a very rich man....

would it be worth making the whole thing such a serious affair.....?? I wonder.....

Time to get over my fear of ghosts!

Yesterday, I decided that this was it...I was going to do it! I was going to take the plunge....Before you guys get any ideas....I am referring horror and its many forms depicted in movies.

Well, let me brief you about life before yesterday....
I moved into sharavati and started having recurring dreams about a man asking for my help....I was never able to move from my bed when these dreams happened and i woke up in between....scary huh..it was almost as if i was glued to my bed.....

Then i slowly mutated into this paranoid being, constantly on the look out for a ghost outside my room door....stuck to my cieling and to all my close friends at IITM, my stories were a source of entertainment...I did not expect them to understand anyway.....(at some level I knew it was stupid, but then i just could not help it)...I felt that if i denied the existance of a ghost or a spirit, the spirit would be cross and come and haunt me......I used to sleep in Sheetal's room (remember Sheetal? if you don't know her go check out my earlier blogs)....She was nice enough to accomodate me and my paranoia....:)

Yesterday as i lay around thinking....I realised, I was going to have to live in a house probably all alone once i moved to mumbai for work...What would i do then....??Of-course I have been sleeping all alone for the past couple of months....but then I need to have the Joey Show running in my ears or else Abhijit talking to me over the phone till I sleep...(I don't let him sleep till i sleep)...But how long could i pull on like this????

And then DONG! the bell of realisation struck and I took a steely resolve to watch all the horror movies possible to immunise myself against the GHOST SYNDROME! Started with 'THE RING' yesterday....Not too bad...at least not as bad as portrayed by the guys (Probably they just glorified the whole thing to freak me out)...but in the wee hours of the morning, I had some trouble with erasing thoughts running through my head...still with sheetab's help and some amount of grit and resolve (actually, more of Sheetab's help :)), I managed to sleep through the whole thing....And boy am I proud of myself or what!!! I shall watch more such movies in the future as I think I have a thing pr two to prove to everyone...and to MYSELF! One thing has changed for good...I now perceive my Laptop as a friend that plays JOEY to help me go to sleep , instead of a portal for more ghosts to enter into my room......HA HA!

until next time.....

HOPE- the driving Force!

As I was going for my evening walk the other day, gulping down bursts of fresh air ...drinking in the beauty of the surroundings here at IIT Madras....I notice several fa....no...(have to use a more appropriate word) ...not-so-thin people walking by....they smile at me ..a faint smile of recognition, or maybe a smile of ridicule(Coz I am not-so-fat) or a smile of "I GIVE-UP" ...I have been going for these walks for the past one and a half years and some of the faces are kinda familiar...the heavily built man, walking as if his clothes were on fire....The plump lady with her baby in the pram....(the baby invariably always has a grouchy look on its face...Why ME???...it wonders)...the old guys walking by rather strolling by talking about politics, and sometimes, even babes :) .....But there is one underlying theme...NONE OF THESE PEOPLE EVER SEEM TO LOSE WEIGHT!!!!!one and a half years of walking and they are as they were one and a half years back......

What gives them the stamina and the grit to keep going....What gives us all the spirit to keep going on despite failures....I am struck with wonder when I see people going on and on and on though their efforts have never borne fruits so far.....but then I guess the answer is TOO obvious ........It lies at the end of Pandora's box........

It was well for Pandora that she opened the box a second time, for the gods, with a sudden impulse of compassion, had concealed among the evil spirits one kindly creature, Hope, whose mission was to heal .......

"Hope sole remain'd within, nor took her flight, Beneath the vessel's verge conceal'd from light." Hesiod (Elton's tr.)

We all hope, at some point of time or the other .....for something or the other...The lonely heart hopes to find its soulmate, the student hope to pass, the beggar hopes to make enough money for two square meals....the not-so-thin people HOPE to become not-so-fat some day.....and it is something that we need to bear in mind always......AT THE BOTTOM OF PANDORA's BOX, THERE WAS HOPE........and there will always be HOPE that drives us all to do whtever we do!

I am off for my walk...until next time....ADIOS AMIGOS......