MY REVIEW on " 26/11 " ....

There are very few movies which come straight out of Ram Gopal Verma's Heart. 26/11 is one such movie. RGV made this movie with one intention and one intention only, to pay homage and tribute to the victims of this heinous attack. And believe me, RGV does a fitting job. RGV has had a long-term drought of good movies , and this movie might just end it. You may know the whole story of this movie through news-papers and media, but RGV still manages to keep you engaged throughout it's length.

The story is told as flash back to the Nana-patekar's interrogation before a committee depicting the chain of events the happened on that horrible day. Though not covering the entire operation, The action straight away starts from the capturing of a boat by terrorists and shifts to leopold cafe, CST, CAMA Hospital and finally ending with kasab's hanging. Nana patekar plays the role then ACP Rakesh Maria, while the casting of Sajeev Jaiswal as Ajaml Kasab is frighteningly close. Though unnecessarily treated with his trademark unusual camera angles, few scenes of the massacre were simply mind numbing. Though some could doubt the brutality portrayed in this movie for real, some scenes will send chills down your spine. In one such attack scene at Taj hotel Lobby, RGV attempts to give a gimplse of his atheistic attitude too. He does that by showing the idol of god, who whose idol sits idle while the terrorists are on a killing spree behind his back. Only Bold directors like RGV can pull-off scenes like these without any second thought.

The performance of Nana Patekar is nothing short of top notch. Though he dint have a proper chance to portray his confusion during the event, Nana Patekar is nothing short of perfect during the monologue scenes in the end. The casting and performance of sanjeev Jaiswal as Ajmal Kasab is good enough to make you bite your teeth with Grudge and Dis Contempt on this monster. As the whole Incident cannot be contained in a Movie, RGV avoids the NSG action in the event. Special sequences are dedicated to the brave police officers who died fighting for the city, to which their family members are bound to be in tears.

But the movie is not without it's flaws. There is too much of exaggeration in majority of the massacre sequences, which were quiet unnecessary. The back ground music is sometimes stretched out like a chewing gum which is, plain annoying. I suspect RGV has taken the liberty of portraying the terrorists as extra cruel, by making them kill children and also killing the guy who gave them water. The CST sequence lacked pace in contrast to the actual way of it's happening. The amount of blood and corpses is definetly not a good sight for the faint hearted. The jarry camera movements can be stressfull for the eyes too.

Despite it's flaws, Movie-goers must consider themeselves lucky that RGV has blessed them with a sincere attempt. This movie is not as mind-blowing as his another sincere master-piece SATYA. Neither it is as Raw and as Crisp as BLACK FRIDAY. Nor it takes stands and gives you thought provoking answers. It's just a Homage RGV has paid to the victims of 26/11 attacks instead of observing mere a 2-minutes silence.

BLACK FRIDAY by ANURAG KASHYAP ... MY REVIEW

BLACK FRIDAY by ANURAG KASHYAP ... 

MY REVIEW

In this movie about Hindu-muslim rage, You will find it hard to believe that the people depicted in this movie are real. You'll find it hard to believe that the lines spoken by these people are real. You'll find it hard to believe that the events depicted in this movie are real. You'll find it hard to believe that human beings can turn into ruthless animals in the name of religion are real. Right from the start, Anurag Kashyap keeps to the edge of the seat unraveling the dark side of the 1993 blasts and the hindu-muslim clashes. 

Right from the Babri Masjid incident to the bombay blasts, Anurag Kashyap taps all the chain of events that made that passage of time the bloodiest event in the history. Though shot in a non-linear structure of flash-backs and flash-forths, the director never looses the grip and tone of the movie at any point of time.
i don't remember watching an indian movie with so many spine chilling moments till i watched this movie. The entry of Dawood Ibrahim is one of those moments. The backdrop of Mumbai itself is a big help for this movie. One can wonder how the director was able to re-create the Mumbai of 1993. The execution of the blast scenes are so realistic that, the viewer can almost himself as a by-stander on the spot, experiencing this blast.

So much of this movie also belongs to the cast and the fantastic casting itself. Every single actor brings so much life to their respective real-life characters and their performances are nothing short of perfection. The characters of the ruthless don Tiger Memon and the confused terrorist Baadshah Khan are the life lines of this movie. So, are their potrayals thanks to Pavan Manhotra for his ruthless performance as tiger memon and Aurag Srivastav (Abhijeet of CID) for brilliantly displaying all the emotions ranging from loyalty to confusion and frustration to self-introspection. Get ready to drop your jaws, for you see the striking resemblance of the actor Chandra Mourya who plays Dawood Ibrahim with Dawood Ibrahim itself. Kay Kay menon plays police commissioner Rakesh Maria with required professionalism and stature in his Body Language.

But the Ultimate Master of this Master piece is the Director Anurag Kashyap Himself. Never does he lets this movie stray on the tracks of a dumb bollywood formula Movie. Nor does he gives a Documentary feel or an art movie feel to it. He just makes a fantastic Drama, So realistic and So gripping, neither you'll find a documentary, nor you'll find any other source of media, that can describe those chain of horrors that happened in Mumbai in those dark days of 1992-93. Am quiet sure it would have bought India It's first best foreign movie oscar if it had a proper release.

FROM AVILALA TO IISC ... ( i dedicate this article to my very very close friend @Jayanth Kumar .. Describing all his sucess path to IISC )

Meet Jayanth ... Among all the lakhs of GATE aspirants through out the country, he is one of those exclusive 28 members to get a seat in the prestigious IISC  .. Gate Rank 256 ..

K.Jayanth Kumar ... a little guy with a hair style that would beat malinga’s hair style ... this is how i saw jayanth when i first met him in Inter. He said he had vowed not to cut his hair till he visited tirumala for tenth class exam results. Now i wonder he must grow a forest on his head for the feat he has achieved – A SEAT IN IISC. An incredible achievement.. !!! ... Only Jayanth himself can describe how that feeling is. I can certainly not describe how his parents must be feeling, his mother a humble housewife, his father working at a local shop on Gandhi road. Though i am not Jayanth, i take this opportunity to describe his wonderful journey from AVILALA to IISC through my eyes and how lucky i was to witness and learn from that as a part of our 6 years of close friendship.

All the way back in inter, In that SUPER-F*ckin-FAST-TRACK-BATCH of IIT, Narayana college Tirupati, here was a guy sitting in the first bench, solving every maths problem faster than the lecturer, yelling answers louder than every other student, asking doubts which were like the bombs in the lecturers heart. He left me clueless & puzzled with his speed, his clarity, his confidence and his guts to question a lecturer ON HIS FACE. He left everybody like that. Personally, he scared the shit out of me. The fact that i had to beat this guy and achieve an IIT seat gave me nightmares. He used to cycle all the way from his village called AVILALA to Narayana College in Gandhi Road bearing the heat of Tirupati day in and day out. Later in the second year, though being a day-scholar, he never went to his home to avoid all the time waste of cycling to his village. He stayed over every night at my house, sometimes slept on college benches, sometimes on the chairs, sharing the beds with other college hostlers, sometimes in little rooms not greater than an arm’s length. He lived hs entire Inter on his Mom's tiffin box, coz he hardly had the time to go home and eat peacefully. Despite all these, i never saw him he complaining about anything else. I only saw him put his goal above everything else.

Since he stayed at my home every night, i think i had the chance to observe him closely than anybody else. One of the things i observed was his sheer enthusiasm to learn. He was always ready to learn, ready to teach and ready to share knowledge. He was the only guy in class to promptly attend and listen to every single class with great attention. One could say he was totally immersed into that teaching-listening experience. He is the best listener i have come across in my life. No subject was tough for him since he loved them. He immensely enjoyed working on subjects, studying them in great detail, a habit which he carried with him to engineering and probably for the rest of his life. We had a wonderful time in inter, solving problems, creating new problems, dissecting theorems, arguing about theories and enjoyed the process of shared learning. We shared our beds, our bedsheets, our lunch boxes, our ideas, our thoughts and i still remember having the longest of my consversations with till about 3am on everything about life and subjects. And those conversations were one of the best ones i had in my life. I learnt from him and he learnt from me and we have been doing this or  years. We were probably one of the few people who enjoyed subjects of inter which were supposed to be dry. And Jayanth is the best person to have in your shared study group. He’ll clear your doubts and straighten your mind on that concept just like an expert tailor unknotting a tangled mess of threads into one straight and fine pieces of strings.

Despite all his efforts in Inter, he never could achieve his dream, i.e.. Getting into an IIT. He had this habit of committing petty mistakes which cost him a lot. But he was never exhausted of the 2 years effort. He wouldn’t give up. He ended up in Aurora engineering college, 50 km outside Hyderabad. He dint complain about it. He dint complain about his hostel life, dint complain about staying away from home, dint complain that he lived his entire college life in a lifeless town. As i said, he never complained about anything else and put his goal above everything else. As soon as he discovered his second opportunity to get into IIT,... i.e GATE he plunged into it without a second thought.

He prepared for GATE bearing the hot summers, Chilly Winters, ignoring mosquitoes in his lousy hostel. He sacrificed the weekend fun of college life and travelled 100 km every weekend to the city for the coaching classes. The failure in Inter did not disturb him. The way he analyzed his weakness and mistakes and eliminated them one by one on his way to success, Jayanth reminds me of the Batman in the movie Batman begins, who struggles, falls, commits mistakes, only to rise back up on his strength and makes his own legacy by vanquishing all his inner weaknesses. Through his enthusiasm and love for subjects, combined with hours of planning and preparation, Jayanth refined himself constantly for the exams, just like a kid who sharpens his pencil every now and then to make his writing better. Jayanth became that crisp and sharpened pencil by the time he faced GATE exam.

One another quality within himself, he is never shy of accepting his weakness, even if someone of lower calibre is pointing fingers at him. He accepted that he couldn’t speak English despite the 90+ marks in school level English. He accepted that he dint knew to which country the Sydney city belonged. He accepted that he was weak at soft skills. After all, how much can one expect from a kid, who studied in a school which was as small as my school’s basketball ground, that too in a village growing up in almost an illiterate atmosphere. He embraced all these facts and learned everything from everybody possible. And many a time, he out mastered his teachers themselves

The persistence that he displayed during this four years of preparation is probably what that made stand out from the lakhs of GATE aspirants. Jayanth too, like every other engineering student went through the typical anxiety of “what next “question about his future career. His college had scarce amount of campus placements and he never got a job on campus. These things did pose a question about his future for which he answered me “GATE IS MY ONLY WAY OUT “. And i realised the confidence behind that answer right away, hence i wasn’t surprised with his achievement. I knew he would do it. I knew it because i could see how easily he used to clear my doubts with crystal clarity. I could see how he confidently outsmarted the lecturers themselves with analysis. Only a person with the uttermost understanding of a subject would do that. He dint achieve that level of understanding overnight, It was 6 years of constant learning process in which Jayanth never ran out of fuel. He never let the “WHAT-IF-I FAIL-IN GATE” types of negative thoughts into his his mind ever. Now that’s what i call confidence.

Jayanth is not that typical first-benched-self-centered nerd like that Chatur in 3 idiots. He would explain things to dullest of students without exaggerating about himself. He would learn things from others without biting his teeth from the Inside. He was never shy to learn English from me, Never hesitated to learn math from some below his caliber level, Never ignored the arguments of anyone regarding the subject and he always listened to them no matter what. He is an ever learner. Ever listener.

As you read this, you may a get a Goal-oriented-serious-guy impression on jayanth, which he is not. He enjoys his social life with friends, travel’s places, has his part of fun and entertainment. He is not serious. He is sincere. He is persistent, focussed, ever learner, a great listener and puts his Goal above everything else. And these are the qualities that got this AVILALA boy his IISC seat. He’ll achieve many more things in days to come. And i don’t just have to hope for that because i am damn well sure that HE WILL DO.
CONGRATS AND GOOD LUCK MAN ... Technically speaking, you are the first person to settle down in life. Am Always with you..

NAJEEB

MY HIGH SCHOOL DAYS WITH CRICKET...

Those were the days when we carried radios secretly to class for score updates. We used to run to library which had the only computer with internet for live scores. We had no Cell Phones, no facebook, no twitter. We had cricket as the only source of entertainment. We were the most cricket crazy class room of the whole school. I believe we hold a record for bunking the highest number classes for playing cricket. Those were the days when Dhoni was not “ THE “ Dhoni we know today. I still remember the radio commentry of Dhoni’s first century, his 148 against Pakistan at Vizag.
How can we imagine our school days without cricket? We ate cricket, we drank cricket, we breath cricket, we lived cricket. Cricket was the last thought that crossed our minds before we went to bed. We were in love with cricket. We were the only teenagers on this earth who were least interested in girls & more interested in cricket. It was like our girlfriend.Every games period had a cricket match and every cricket match had hours of planning & discussion. No kidding, half of the classroom hours were spent in discussions, planning, field positions, sketches and strategies. We were so serious about our game, we used to maintain records of our total runs, number of sixes, no. of fours and were proud of our records. We split our class room into 2 teams forever & never changed for the whole year. It was just like our own professional IPL.
Yes we were friends. But on field, we were utter rivals. I still remember how we never spoke to opposite team for 3 days, just because they cheated us on a wide ball at the end of a match. Victory was a matter of pride and defeat was a matter of shame and insult. Losing team had red noses and Bowed-down heads for a brief period of time.But our love for cricket was what that bonded us as a class. We jumped the walls of our school, just to get the bats and balls we hide in the neighbouring house. We bribed the watchmen so that he won’t complain. Under those beautiful trees and vast grounds of our school, we have played some glorious matches. Some were one-sided, some went close, but each every match was played with 200% aggression and spirit. And all that intense cricket for a week bogged down to one final showdown, THE SUNDAY. Our popular venues were the medical college ground & the municipal ground. They are like our LORD’S & EDEN GARDENS.
We had such a tremendous fitness back in school days, Thanks to Cricket. We have played cricket in 45*C heat, in 20 cm rain, in 15*C of biting cold & all possible conditions imaginable. We have played cricket in a cricket ground, hockey ground, football ground & even in Basket Ball ground. We have also played cricket for a whole without attending a single class. We have played cricket with rubber ball, tennis ball, Paper & a Pad, with a English willow, with a Kashmir willow, with a broken wood piece, with a radium ball & what not. We never had a single guy in our class who played cricket with negligence. He literally took his game to his heart. We had so many guts for cricket. We have lied to principal, denied Sunti’s exam papers, Bluffed or PET.... Only for Cricket. All the art, yoga, leisure and other boring classes were our cricket periods.
WOW ... !!! ... So many memories we have with this wonderful game.... And how crazy we were about cricket.... I still don’t Understand what drove us so much in those days? ..................

My Review : English Vinglish...

One should create a new category of award called THE BEST COMEBACK MOVIE AWARD for ENGLISH VINGLISH and Sridevi should be awarded as the BEST COMEBACK ACTRESS. I will not be surprised if both the film and the Sridevi’s performance turn out to be the best of the year. According to bollywood standards, after a hiatus of 15 years, actresses turn into mothers and mother-in-laws on the silver screen because they are not young enough to “lead” a story. But Sridevi breaks those shackles by choosing possibly the most respectable comeback role for an actress of her stature. It only takes a few minutes of the film to realise that the sheer and charming innocence of Sridevi has not faded with time. Loyal fans can go nostalgic by her lively screen presence itself.

English Vinglish is easily the most pleasing films of the year. Though predictable, you will still find yourself synchronising all your emotions with the leading character. English Vinglish is the story of an un-attended and uncomplaining house wife Shashi, whom her husband titles as “Born-For-Making Laddus “. She is constantly subjected to insensitive mocking by her daughter and husband for her poor English. Her daughter is embarrassed to the core, for her mother let her down in a PTA meeting because of the same problem. Speaking fluent English has become a matter of self esteem for Shashi.

The real problem starts when Shashi has to go alone to New York to attend her niece’s wedding. After her humiliation in a struggle for ordering a coffee at a Manhattan Cafe, she joins a 4-week English learning program to regain her much yearned self-worth. While instilling a mix of feelings from Lump-In-Throat to joy, the whole story unfolds like a beautiful flower gradually blossoming in spring time. The director has beautifully weaven all the scenarios around Shashi, hence conveying her quiet resilience and vulnerability in the most possible touching way.

From the other characters to the surprisingly humorous guest appearance, nothing in this movie has been exploited beyond necessity. The casting of the class room characters was pitch-perfect, giving a taste of a typical cosmopolitan class room to Indian audience. The classroom scenes filled the movie with some healthy humour, nicely centered on the characters’ weaknesses in English imbibed in them due to their respective cultures. The best part of the movie lies in those natural scenes of shashi and Laurent, where language becomes no barrier to convey what they feel. While the French man Laurent showers his avid admiration for Sashi in his already romanticized language (French is a romantic language indeed), Shashi is bound to strike a chord here by conveying something many-a-women can relate themselves to. It’s the scenes like these that fill you with a feeling of warmth and at the same time, makes you retrospect on the way you have treated your women in the past. Concealed within Every situation Shashi has faced, lies a message to be conveyed reminding us how the things have shaped up around us exactly the way they were not supposed to.

But it’s the performance of the Sridevi, which nails everything in this movie rightly down to its place. From a neglected housewife yearning for self esteem to a woman rediscovering her much vulnerable self-worth, Sridevi delivers a charming performance despite the huge gap. She pins all the emotions immaculately, especially when her character finds itself flying with confidence and enjoying the fresh air of its solace independence in the Big Apple.

ENGLISH-VINGLISH will not only make you laugh, cry, think and inspire, but also leaves a chilling reminder that, even in this information age of 21^st century, there are women in our society who are still treated as mere “ BORN-FOR-LADDU-MAKING” types.