Formula One!

It’s been quite many years since I consumed movies like a glutton – once in college when it was a night of six back-to-back porn movies with the seventeen rogues in my hostel and once as an over-achieving sales manager watching a movie a day for twenty one days in the small town of Hubli , after having achieved my revenue targets with 30 days to spare.

This time , over the last two weekends , I binged on six new movies in town with a vengeance , four of them in succession . I have now realized that there’s a lot of formula-format in most movies that adhere to the rules of great screenplay , resulting in a sense of satisfaction as one leaves the theatre .

The typical great-movie-screenplay formula is :

Setting - Introduction of characters - Dramatic Event (Conflict 1 )- Reactions & Interplay of characters - Dramatic event (Conflict 2) - Resolution - Climax .

Here are the reviews , with the realization that great movies stick to the format , no matter what the plot –

Dor : The most riveting movie of them all . A movie that began slowly but gathered tension and momentum as it went along , making us cringe in our seats and shed a tear or two is about this woman who’s husband has been accused of the murder in an Arab state and is sentenced to death . His death penalty can only be waivered if she can get a pardon letter signed from the widow of the murdered man .
A Great plot , it adheres to the typical format of a movie screenplay which goes something like this :

Setting : 2 settings actually – a hilly Shimla & a dusty Jodhpur
Introduction of characters: 2 women- the will-be-widow & the gritty-pardon-seeker
Dramatic Event –Conflict 1 : The accidental death of husband 1
Reactions & Interplay of characters : The search for the widow ;meetings ;interplay
Dramatic event - Conflict 2 : The refusal to pardon
Resolution : Push factors – Father-in-Law wanting to trade her off for the house ;
Climax : Signing of the pardon letter ; emotive station scene & widow’s freedom

Exactly the same format was adopted by another great movie Khosla Ka Ghosla that dealt with the travails of a middle-class household wanting to move to a new bungalow which is to be bought and constructed with hard earned life-time savings .And how land-grabbers and brokers play kill-joy , tugging at the heart strings of guys in the audience who can relate and don’t want this to happen to them . The movie is quite brisk and covers its large canvas of the plot and characterization pretty quickly. Towards the very end there is some moments of gripping tension as one fears for the schemed plot going awry , but there’s a huge sigh of relief as the story moves on as planned leaving behind a good vibe . The format is , however , just as Syd Field said , except for the accommodation of more conflicts to highlight the many characters . Someone actually outlined the maximum number of characters for a good screenplay to be 3 , with 2 being preferred since each new criteria adds another aspect of communication and complicates the plot further . This movie manages to rise above the complexity of 7 important characters , and gives way to laughter at various turns in the plot .

Setting : A middle class family wanting a new house
Introduction of characters: one son going to US ,one son useless ; one girlfriend with separated parents ; a greedy land-grabber ( thrilling Bomen Irani ) , a harassed grandfather , a poor theatre company owner , the visa agent
Dramatic Event –Conflict 1 : The purchase of a plot of land
Reactions & Interplay of characters : Excitement , planning the structure
Dramatic event - Conflict 2 : The land grabber takes over the land
Reations & Interplay of characters : Panic , the prodigal son wanting to stay back
Dramatic Event –Conflict 3 : The plot hatched to get cheat the land-grabber
Resolution : The execution of the hatched plot – suspense – the hired labours
Climax : The sweet taste of Revenge .

Surprise , Surprise . A nice feel-good movie You , Me & Dupree which had Matt Dhillon , Michael Douglas , Kate Hudson & Owen Wilson doing some great roles , also followed the great-screenplay format to a tee ! The thematic was based on someone who is not cut out for a regular job , but who is a do-gooder with a great heart who believes that one should live a great life – job or no job . It creates a new concept of ‘ness ‘ – a verb which added to ones name defines the person as unique in this world . As if follows the challenges of a good guy getting married into a rich family and his stresses , one can’t but recount similar occurrences as one struggles up the corporate ladder .
The Formula is back in action .

Setting : A marriage of a man into a millionaire household
Introduction of characters: the millionaire father , the beautiful bride , the groom and his best friend of twenty five years
Dramatic Event –Conflict 1 : The friend has no place to go so comes to stay
Reactions & Interplay of characters : Husband being suppressed by FIL , surname , project , work hours , promotion & demotion
Dramatic event - Conflict 2 : The realization that the jobless-but-with-a-big-heart-friend has won over the wife & FIL
Reations & Interplay of characters : The harassed husband vs wife vs great childhood friend vs Pop-in-law ; friend highlights the loss of ‘ness’ in his buddy .
Dramatic Event –Conflict 3 : Friend leaves home
Resolution : The clarification of mis-understandings – pardon by FIL
Climax : Friend starts an academy on ‘Not losing ones ‘ness’ ‘.


The biggest disappointment was United 93. United 93 is the story of the 4th plane in the 9/11 bombings planned by Osama Bin Laden that couldn’t reach its target – White House , as its passengers revolted against the highjack and crashlanded the plane in the plains of Pennsylvannia , twenty minutes from its target . While the movie did manage to whip up appropriate tension at the right time , it could’nt resolve the tension appropriately and left a feeling of having seen a documentary at the end of the day . There was no emotional interplay , no names of characters , no action except in the dying minutes and killed a could have been tragic movie . Imagine Titanic without Jack& Rose and their chemistry not as a backdrop but as an in-your-face romance larger than life portrayals of values , relationships , love and freedom and then the tragedy with its magnitude . A documentary not worth watching . That’s what United 93 lives up to be .

Krishna was a good animated attempt at looking at young Krishna’s childhood , his antics and his achievements in mathura .Animation in India is still to reach the heights achieved by Disney though one hears that part of Toy Story and Narnia was done in a lab in Bangalore .The animation is pretty crude , the story is jerky , but the attempt is sincere .

Woh Lamhe , the unauthorized biography of Parveen babi was disturbing and pretty depressing though the characterization and portrayal was done very intensely by both Shiney Ahuja and Kangana Ranaut . It was a story , had all the elements of great screenplay , but since it was showing the story of a great yesteryears actress driven to schizophrenia by the fragile insecure relationships of the movie business , it couldn’t have been a happy movie .

Setting : The house of a movie actress
Introduction of characters: The aspiring director , the famous movie star with her boyfriend
Reactions & Interplay of characters : The treatment of the actress by the two men ,her search for meaning , the date-rape, resorting to alcoholic relief
Dramatic Event –Conflict 1 : The schizophrenic effect on the actress
Reactions & Interplay of characters : The director’s love – kidnapping –caring
Dramatic event - Conflict 2 : The suicide attempt
Resolution : The Director at the hospital
Climax : Death , Remorse
And it was good that I saw You,Me and Dupree just after I saw Woh Lamhe as the great humor and comic timing of Owen Wilson and Michael Douglas managed to wipe out the strong negativeness of Woh Lamhe .

A quick reflection on all historical great movies further confirms the One formula-different plots theory of movie-making . Most stories are different from plots , but there's a formula lurking somewhere for them , I guess .

Pluto 1930-2006

It's been a strange month .

We lost Pluto , our 9th planet .

Probably , in our lives , it will be one of the biggest losses .Imagine losing a planet ! There it was , quietly tucked away in the universe , merrily ruling a sun-signs , inspiring cartoon characters and giving hope that one-day man might land on it to discover new life and poof !, it's left eight planets all by themselves in the universe .

The terse CBS/AP news report read out its dramatic redesignation ' Pluto, beloved by some as a cosmic underdog but scorned by astronomers who considered it too dinky and distant, was unceremoniously stripped of its status as a planet Thursday. '

The International Astronomical Union, dramatically reversing course just a week after floating the idea of reaffirming Pluto's planethood and adding three new planets to Earth's neighborhood, downgraded the ninth rock from the sun in historic new galactic guidelines. “Pluto is smaller than our moon, not of planetary size,” astronomer Sir Patrick Moore told CBS Evening News interim anchor Bob Schieffer. “If we call Pluto a planet, there are others: Xena, Verona, Terran, Ceres — the list is endless. In fact, that makes no sense at all.”

“Science is an evolving subject and always will be.” Powerful new telescopes, experts said, are changing the way they size up the mysteries of the solar system and beyond.

Pluto, a planet since 1930, got the boot because it didn't meet the new rules, which say a planet not only must orbit the sun and be large enough to assume a nearly round shape, but must “clear the neighborhood around its orbit.” That disqualifies Pluto, whose oblong orbit overlaps Neptune's, downsizing the solar system to eight planets from the traditional nine. Astronomers have labored without a universal definition of a planet since well before the time of Copernicus, who proved that the Earth revolves around the sun.

“It's disappointing in a way, and confusing,” said Patricia Tombaugh, the 93-year-old widow of Pluto discoverer Clyde Tombaugh. “I don't know just how you handle it. It kind of sounds like I just lost my job,” she said from Las Cruces, N.M. “But I understand science is not something that just sits there. It goes on. Clyde finally said before he died, 'It's there. Whatever it is. It is there.”

' The decision by the IAU, the official arbiter of heavenly objects, restricts membership in the elite cosmic club to the eight classical planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

One man's meat is another man's poison . While astronomers have knocked out Pluto , astrologers are stuck !! Scorpions don't have a ruling planet !
Here's a definition of Pluto - it is associated with spiritual changes, development, and political power. A person under the strong influence of this planet will experience many different upheavals in their life, such as rebirths (transformations and regenerations of both the spirit and the mind). It exerts much force in bringing about changes and plays a key role in identifying spiritual lessons during a lifetime.

It seems a lot of it has been suddenly applied to Pluto itself !

Plutos energies are intense and when unleashed it can actually change your entire life, for good or evil, so much so that the person seems caught up in a whirlwind until the phase passes and leaves a complete set of new ideas, ideals, or morals instilled in the very core of their being. It also has a purifying energy that allows one to rise to higher levels of awareness. Before this rise can come about one must consciously seek to eliminate anything that would hinder them. Sometimes Plutos energies are perceived as destructive but they are, rather, a reflection of energy being returned to itself; this effect has often been associated with the subversive elements of society and with the underground.

Due to the slow orbital journey ( Pluto takes 278 days to orbit the sun ) it is seen as a generational influence, as with most of the outer planets, its natal house position has a much greater meaning. Its influence is neither mild or subtle, it destroys the old and builds the new.

Consumed by its own definition , Pluto is suddenly not a planet. But as I look around , noone seems to be bothered about it .

Bye Pluto .

1970.1982.1994.2006

Just can’t resist writing this at 3 am on 5th Morning minutes after the match has ended .

It's will now stand forever that every twelve years Italy makes it to the soccer world cup finals . The jinx can now only hope to be broken four years later.

The packed stadium at Dortmund had over a 75000 people watching the match between Italy and Germany , the first semi-final .And I watched it in the soccer capital of India , Kolkatta , though the temper is subdued as they mourn the demise of the Brazilians from the cup .

German songs reverberated till the 90 minutes of full time ,expecting the first german goal the very next minute only to be thwarted by a great Italian teamwork .
German songs reverberated even stronger 4 minutes of injury extra time
The game breaks for the extra time .
The first fifteen minutes see two great Italian attempts which find the bars of the German goal and give the goalie Lehman gasping relief .
German songs reach a real crescendo . the DJ at the Park in Kolkatta ups the volume.

119th minute : Goal no.1 : Fullback Fabio Grosso , with penalty shotouts looming in two minutes , curled around a great left foot drive into the goal corner sending the crowd into stunned silence .

Absolute silence for the last 2 minutes .
German counterattack , a long Podolski kick , blunted by Italina keeper Buffon

122nd minute : Goal no. 2 : A brilliant pack of the foot pass to Alessander del peiro who fires it into the goal brilliantly .

Absolute silence . Germany goes into mourning .
History . Hoodoo magic .Astrology .

They say that Italy gets into the soccer finals every twelve years . 1994 was the last time , 1982 was before that and 1970 much before . 2006 was to happen .

But it wasn;t just astrology , it was sheer control of the game . As Juergen Klinsmann rallied Germany at the end of 90 minutes with some pep talk , Italians rested . their coach had nothing to say except probably, go and get a goal , guys .
In the game , Germany had 148 long passes compared to Italy’s 129 and had only 303 short passes compared to the Italian 470 passes with a 89% competion rate with a 57% ball possession , they had 11 offsides attempting goals and 8 shots at the goal with 7 on target . Complete dominance of the game .

Last time , Fransesco Totti had scored 30 seconds before the end of the game to end the Australian dream run in this world cup . A brilliant kick from the 35 yards reduced Australians to tears and dashed their hopes . They have done wonderfully as a team , their 11 goals so far in the tournament have come from 9 different players .

1970. 1982 . 1994 . 2006 .

Now , is it an Franco-Italian war on July 9th at Munich ?

Selamat Datang !

Malaysia makes a good first impression . And sticks with it right through its hills , beaches , straits and cities . With its swanky international airport and its elevated monorail that connects the boarding area from the checking-in area . The monorail flies right under the airstrip , so one doesn’t wait for the other . The simultaneous arriving and the landing are one great representation of great Malaysian efficiency .
Then comes the acres of green with a drive through one of the densest forests heading towards the city . The city itself is a good mix of the old and the new , the fast and the slow , the black and the white .
There’s a great amount of diversity in the city , the structures reflect different architectures , temples , mosques and pagodas dot the landscape , the entire population is a mélange of Chinese , Indians and Malays . The Buddhist maha vihara temple near Tun Sambanthan is a stark contrast to the spectacular Batu caves in the hills on the way to Genting . One needs to climb the three hundred steps upto the top of the hill to see the temple of Muruga , the son of Shiva .
In Kuala Lumpur , we stayed on the thirty fifth floor of the swank Berjaya Times Square Hotel , the forty storey hotel on top of a ten storey mall on top of a four storey games arcade and with the KL monorail running through its first floor .Some great food at the Big Apple restaurant kept us in good spirits just like the great harmonious city all around . The monorail gives a great overview of the city as it travels from Titiwangsa in the north to the KL sentral and Tun Sembanthan in the south passing Imbi ( where we stayed ) and Chow kit , the riotous shopping place .
The Petronas is an imposing structure and so is the Surya KLCC mall it houses . The variety of fish in the aquaria make interesting viewing .
Malaysia also makes for good mystery .
For instance , while little is known about its origins , some say that Indians discovered Malaysia as they crossed the Bay of Bengal looking for some sort of Swarnabhoomi or “land of Gold” ,only to find this heavily vegetated land , most of which still stands as is . In fact the cable car gondolas that transport one from Genting highlands to the lowest altitude past through 500 year old scary and dense rain forests . Genting itself is like Ooty , nestled amongst thick vegetation at a height of 2000 feet above sea levels , the only thing it has is the massive amusement theme park . It’s like Pattayya and Las Vegas as cities built on just one source of income.
The most outstanding ride is the Space Shot . As it slowly takes you high up , so high that you can see KL many miles down . Rising slowly , it gives you a great glimpse of the entire rain forest around Genting , building fear in your soul to its maximum . And then it drops you . Feet , heart , mind become numb and you shriek hard to stay alive . It is one of the most remarkable experiences one can have .
Probably , it helps you conquer fear . But it’s great fun for twelve ringgits a head .
Malaysians seem very impressionable too . Their flag is a replica of the Amrican flag with the stars replaced by the half moon crescent and star , an Islamic adaption , and most of their earlier kings were called ‘Rajah’s , straight out of Hindu history .The Government is a replica of the British monarchy , a King ruling the country with the administration looked after by a Prime Minister . Even their traditional wedding ceremony is remarkably similar to the ones done in India .
Srivijaya , the oldest of Malaysian ports was the original name for the port city of Malacca . Rajeev Menon , one of my neighbours in Pune and a great badminton buddy did the sixon-sixoff schedule as a merchant navy captain with a Norweigan company , would often recount tales of how pirates would jump ship and how he was once lighter by two thousand dollars of his personal wealth when they attacked just off the coast of Malaysia .
Pirates of the Malaccan ! plays out every night in the dark waters of the Andaman bay. The Kingdom of Malaysia forms a strange ‘V’ sign with the south China sea as its backwaters with the richer nations of Brunei and Singapore occupying pecks of land in its borders . The intensity of trade makes it a much desired destinations for pirates .
As Malaccan trade grew in volume , it attracted the middle east businessmen and soon the local heads started to call themselves Sultans and forming a cross cultural network of ships controlled the pirates .
This and the fact that non-muslim ships couldn’t dock anywhere near Egypt attracted the Portuguese who landed in Malacca in 1511 .If one were to look at the boat of the Portuguese sailor , Alfonso de Albuquerque preserved in its splendour on the coast of Malacca , one can see the spirit of adventure and the great conquest that the Portuguese made .The Dutch attacked the Portuguese ruled Malacca till the next invader came along .
The resort of A’Famosa spread over many acres has a gate that replicates the original fort as constructed by the Portuguese before the Dutch took it away . We spent a great three days in our three-bed villa with private swimming pool . A banana truck took us along around the resort .
As we sat down by the sea on the strait of Malacca , the Portuguese locality around us had a stark resemblance to Goa . They count amongst the poorest of the people now and are culturally the most bankrupt .
‘One not like this place , ‘ said Syed talking about the sea front Portuguese locality in Malacca , the dashing driver who doubled up as a history guide too. Syed had five children and his wife was buzy expecting the sixth , all of whom he supported by ferrying tourists around the Melacca city .
‘ The British change everything ‘ , he said affirmatively , ‘They come to Penang , dock ships , refuel , and go to China . But the Japanese beat them ’
As the world war played out in Europe , the Japs down here , part of the italy – germany axis , were plundering the localites here . Malaysia happened to be in their way of total eastern control ,so they threw the british out in 1942 , a couple of years before the war ended and invited the B2 bombers and the only bomb ever exploded saw them surrender it back to the British .
Finally , the Chinese came invading in 1969 , before a series of treaties signed amongst all these city states and countries settled the definition of land borders and created amongst the most efficient and progressive states in the southeast .
The road from Genting to Kuala Lumpur or the one from Kuala Lumpur to Malacca were superb , well laid , and a great drive .

The KLIA doesn’t need luggage to be screened as the entire airport has been wired and screening happens the minute you step into the airport .
I stared at the Flight scheduler with horror . The flight was delayed by over twelve hours and was slated to leave now in the morning.
I managed to convince the Chinese supervisor and his Indian assistant that I needed to be on the flight leaving right now via Chennai to Mumbai and couldn’t wait for the morning flight . Persistance paid and we managed our way back .
The Air India baggage retrieval counters in Mumbai were a mess . The luggage of different airlines turned up in different counters and there was utter chaos at two am . There was utter chaos as the conveyor belt of the Air Indian Malaysian flight got loaded with the Air India South Africa flight and all hell broke loose.
As one drove out of Andheri in the pouring rain , the dilapidated buildings , the incomplete structures , filth and ‘work in progress’ signs dotted the lanes onto the western express highway .
‘Selamat Datang India !’
‘Welcome to India ’, as they say in Malaysia .

Meter Down !

Here are some of my fav songs on Mumbai from the movies , though I can’t place the movie with the song :

Aye Dil , Hai Mushkil jeena yahaan ,
Zara hatke Thoda bachke , yeh hai Mumbai meri jaan
Kahin motor , kahin carein , kahin busein , kahin manzil ,
Milta hai yahaan sabh kuch , bus milta nahin dil

I like the reality check !

Yeh Bombay sheher hai ,
Haseenon ka sheher
Yahan kissi pal bhi ho sakta hai
Koi na Koi
Haadsa ,
Haadsaa .
-from the movie Haadsaa , indicates the city's open canvas for action and opportunity.

Bombay se aaya mera dost , dost ko salaam karo
Raat ko khaao piyo , Din mein aaram karoo !

There’s an anachronism in the above line , though it celebrates the friendship . Unlike say Bangalore or Delhi where you are likely to say that you stay in Bangalore or Delhi without being a typical Bangalorean or Delhiite , a Bombay guy says he is a Bombay guy . Cosmopolitanaism in Bombay is atypical .e.g. your money skills , survival skills and opportunity capitalization skills convert you to a Bombay guy unlike in the other two cities where you can never convert to become a quintessential typical rude , arrogant and post-9pm social circuiter Delhiite or a meek , unadverturous localite typical Bangalorean . You never belong to those places , but to Bombay , you could belong . Bombay …..even against your wishes and even while you are pretty unaware of it , takes you in its fold and cosmoses you !
So the daily grind of action , the 35km daily commute , the continual adjustments that one does to quality of life in Mumbai , there can never be a ‘Din mein aaram karo ‘ kind of Mumbai guy ! for this is one city that truly never sleeps .
But I like the zing of a welcome for a Bombaiyah guy in the song here .


Eh Hai , Eh Hai Bombay nagariya tu dekh babuaah !


And amongst the newer ones ,

Na biwi na bacha , Na baap bada na bhaiyya
The whole thing is that ke bhaiyya sabse bada rupaiyyah ! ‘

-the beautifully choreographed song on cool Abhishek Bachchan from Bluffmaster .This was the get-rich-quick formula that saw the younger B’s wealth-creating opportunites only to be conned into a bigger game .


‘Kissi ka chhuta , Kissi ki daulat ,
Kissi ka lost , to kissi aur ka found ,
Yahaan pe Jindagi me har kushi
Rupaiaah hai ya dollar ya pound !
Meter down , down , down , down , meter down .
-from the great John Abraham movie Taxi no 9211 .
This was an outstanding movie with this brilliant sound track that pitted the fantastically rich billionaire against the existing-struggling-selfpitying taxi driver and chronicled their parallel lives in the city with each claiming Mumbai to be his .

Finally , there’s Rudyard Kipling’s ode to Mumbai
“The Seven Seas ”

Surely in toil or fray ,
Under an alien sky ,
Comfort it is to say ,
Of no mean city am I !


And here’s my poetic take capitalist Mumbai :

This space on which you stand
Is worth a thirty thousand grand
The time which you take with me to talk
Kills some other opportunity that knocks !

So said this steel merchant in Fort
Many years ago to me , and him ; here I quote
He, in that one line ,taught me more about life
Than Toil , Sweat , Study or Strife !

For he had put a price
Without being polite and nice
On opportunity , effort and time
And thus defined this city of mine .

Ballet on grass

32 nations will battle for the soccer world cup . Who will win this one ?
Surely , the ruling deity - Brazil !
When Brazil was playing a practice match just before the final FIFA matches , 25000 people turned to see Samba magic . That’s a helluva lot of people . And why not , they have a record of 60 wins in 87 matches for an unprecedented 5 world cup titles in the 17 that have been played so far .
I was completely involved in the last world cup finals way back in 2002 , having organized the screening in Pune . Brazil won with the help of Ronaldo’s brilliance against German organization with the blazing 2-0 victory . I had gone berserk with the drums in the excitement of that match . And Ronaldo had arrived , carrying forward Pele’s legacy .
Brazilians don’t play defensive football , they don’t give long passes , they play a great risky game with short passes through competition and strike at will . They create opportunities that are studies in soccer rule books .That’s why watching them play is wonderful .It's like a ballet on grass.
Between them , Ronaldo and Ronaldhino have between them been selected world footballer of the year five times out of eight in the last eight years.
I saw all the matches of the 1986 world cup , missed the 1990 world cup completely as I had no access to television during those college years and missed the 1994 world cup as I settled into matrimony and a high pressure job . But logged into the 1998 world cup selectively as I climbed the corporate ladder . I turned the 2002 edition into a money spinner by converting it into an event and now will be a complete part of the 2006 world cup with the promise that the next world cup , I will see live in whichever country it is held in .
I love the game , it’s the best game for practicing leadership and team work at the same time ; and it’s the only sport for which I have ever won a medal . I won a silver medal for the school competitions way back in 1984 in Ambala , Haryana . I remember scoring two of the eight goals scored in all the six matches we played with the other schools that year . I have loved the game since .
It is also a great lesson in geography and history . A Portuguese team plays Angola which has been a portuguese colony for 400 years . Serbia plays Croatia , both parts of erstwhile Yugoslavia and now at a bitter five year war against each other back home . Germany plays Poland , years back having started a world war by attacking Poland ; USA plays Iran , where a war could be around the corner . France plays Algeria , a former colony , Netherlands play half of their old colonies and England play Australia , after having taken the cricketing Ashes for the first time in history last year . Cricket playing Trinidad and Tobago is the smallest country to play in the world cup with its 1.3 million population and a total land mass of 5000 sq km .So much excitement has their qualifying created in Trinidad that ther’s a comic book being released on their triumph . Five african teams battle hunger , poverty and financial crisis in their countries to give hope through victory .
It’s also a great study in combat . there are 12-13 formations to tackle different teams. There’s a new format of the ball itself with 14panels and not 32 as is normal .There’s an embedded chip that ensures that each time the ball crosses the line , it’s recorded .
‘For the record , anyone can win the 2006 World Cup’ begins the headline of the Newsweek article in its pre-match edition .Whether its three-time champion Italy or the debutante Angolans , Beckam’s England or Togo , the 61st team amongst the 62 teams vying for the 272 million dollars in prize money and the world championship , anyone can win this world cup .
I , though , would bet on some great exciting matches .
And a Brazil and Argentina final .

One Life

It was pouring and like normal Mumbai monsoons , it was pouring heavily . Visibility had reduced to a couple of metres , no matter what beacon light one had in the car . The concrete roads of South Mumbai shined with the rain , but the traffic refused to thin . A few pedestrians walked on the parapet walls held up by cement tripods keeping the rough sea at bay . The huge waves lashed at the parapet and a couple hugged tightly under an umbrella hopelessly as the waves wet them completely from the sea unexpectedly .The thin girl lost her balance and the guy lost his umbrella to the furious wind .
As Rahul’s car turned the end of marine drive and headed towards the Napean Sea road , the edge of the road was flooded . This was the part of Mumbai that was supposedly well-organized but now it seemed that nature had caught up with the outdated sever system in this part of Mumbai too .
Rahul was the quintessential good son . His dad and mom brought him up with the sole mission of him becoming an IAS officer . He studied hard , gave up sports , gave the exams and made it to be the senior under secretary in the Telecom Revenue Authority of India to the Telecom Minister . Life was a series of meetings on policy . And when there were no policy meetings , there was family .Or meetings with friends like this one tonight .
As Rahul drove over , through the barrage of cars , in Kemps corner , he contemplated whether it was a better idea to park the car and take the cab to Gallops restaurant , tucked inside the Turf club , where Arjun and Palak were waiting for him or should he drive on braving the rains and the traffic mayhem .
The drenched cop on duty took the decision for him . The whistle directed him to keep driving towards Jaslok hospital and then on to the Mahalaxmi race course for the restaurant . It started to rain afresh and the pace of the car reduced to a couple of metres a hour .
He drove into the Race Course , flashing his VIP card and reached the restaurant just before the new spell of rain created the traffic jam at Haji Ali.
Arjun stood up and greeted him . He considered himself closer to Rahul than Palak , as bothhad had fathers in the Administrative services and led very similar predictable lives . Palak was different , son of an army officer , he had jumed into the rough and tumble world of business with a software firm that was billing in good healthy dollars , but keeping him away from having time for relationship . Arjun and Rahul were the only ones he cherished from college . Arjun was rising the corporate ladder , so to say , in the country’s largest engineering firm , Larsen and Toubro .He headed the western region office and was knee deep in the large infrastructure projects the company was involved in . He was the dink ( double income no kid ) guy , traveling each year to a new country , wedded to his schoolmate , Radhika , who worked in a travel firm .
‘Lot of rain ,huh ‘ , said Palak as a non-chalant greeting
‘Mumbai is a mess when it rains ‘, completed Rahul
‘That’s why I came in early ‘
‘Don’t try your one-upmanship games again , Palki ‘, butted in Arjun
‘ Chal chodd , whazzup ?
‘Same old , same old ‘, Rahul sighed , ordering the waiter up , ‘ Get me the same drink as always , and an ashtray ‘
‘The amazing thing is that nothing changes in our lives in the gap between our meetings ‘said Palak
‘Except perhaps the stock quotes ‘, said Arjun ,’ none of my brokers have been able to figure out how the hell the sensex can come crashing down from 12000 to 8900 in ten days when it took a good three years to go the same distance up. Look at my company’s stock , it gains and loses 3-4% everyday ‘
‘These are swinging times . Cheers to the integration with the global economy ’, Palak raised his glass as all of them clinked the glass and sipped away ,‘ My firm sees dramatic creation and erosion of valuation every week . The Fed is increasing interest rates , money from the emerging markets is making its way back into the American market is everyones explanation . What beats me is if the emerging market stocks return as much as 30 % per annum , how the hell is the increase by 2% points back home going to keep their money growing ?
‘Moreover , how could the commodity exchange collapse in Russia or Mittals failure to close the Arcelor bid in France trigger the collapse of the share price of Kalyani steel or Tata steel here in India ?’
Precisely the reason I stay out of stocks , folks ’ said Rahul
‘You babus have no need to work the market . You are pretty well looked after , would never run out of your job and have even when you quit years later you will still get your house , car and rations taken care of till you kick the bucket . We lesser mortals have to make money , ensure employability , pay the taxes and live in constant uncertainity . And when a medical ailment hits us , we are drained of our resources too . The market helps us keep in financial shape .’
Palak broke into a song , ‘
Na biwi na bacha , Na baap bada na bhaiyya
The whole thing is that ke bhaiyya sabse bada rupaiyyah ! ‘
That’s the theme in Mumbai .Everyone is busy making money and ultimate respect is only for the guys who are working at making money . I started small , now my firm employs over a thousand people and I am raking in dollars. My timing was just right , I guess .Yet , my investment advisor insists that I put money in equities for long term gains . Money does buy you happiness . ’
Arjun added , ‘ In fact I like the couplet in the movie Taxi no 9211 as a good descriptor of the times we live in ,
‘Kissi ka chhuta , Kissi ki daulat ,
Kissi ka lost , to kissi aur ka found ,
Jindagi me har kushi
Rupaiaah hai ya dollar ya pound !
Meter down , down , down , down , meter down .
Everyone is seeking monetary happiness . The country is moving from being a socialist country to a capitalist one and spiritual values are the ones that we abandon along the way . Americans will reduce the world to the lowest common denominator of compulsive consumers ”
Rahul was , as always , looking at meaning of life . Money was never a motivator for him and his grooming and childhood had kept him away from the lure of money as his parents never discussed money in front of him , so did he try not ot discuss money in front of others .
“And look at the predictability of our lives ,’ he said , ‘ like they say in our Vedas , the seventy five years of a mans’ life are divided into four parts , first twenty five years is the vidhyarthi stage where he is a student of learning , the next twenty five years in the grahasth where he as a householder brings up his family , next twenty five years is sanyas where he would give back to society the enlightenment he would receive from his experiences . But I guess , all of us are perennially in a stage of existing , just running to do things without reflecting ’
‘That’s true ‘,said Arjun
‘But aren’t we doing different things ?’,asked Palak
‘Well, even though we are all in different professions , we are all pretty much doing the same things .All have studied Science , done engineering and then narrowly specialized either in the Administrative services or in management .Even our families are the same , just that I have kids and you guys don’t .’
‘I don’t have a family ‘ corrected Palak .
‘Out of choice or compulsion ?’checked Arjun
‘Choice , where’s the time ?’
‘Yes, but somewhere along the way you will find someone and settle down to a mundane householders life . ‘
Palak contemplated . It could be the case .
‘That’s why India’s is so different’ , Rahul continued ,‘completely unlike the westerners ‘
‘Meaning ?’ said Arjun , feeling slightly left out at the sudden pace of the discussions .
‘Americans , for instance .No two Americans lead the same life , everyone pursues different careers , follows different paths in life . Imagine taking a two year holiday traveling the world or going to learn scuba diving in the middle of a tough financial year for the company ? ’ Rahul postulated .
‘You are so right , Rahul ,I n my firm , there are atleast 30% expatriates and I look at their lives , and they are as different as chalk and cheese . This guy , Edwin , has had four relationships , is currently living in with a Marine Biologist who visits him in India every three months in between assignments in the pacific . And my project head on Gap , is one hell of an adventure freak , he’s a certified microlight flying instructor and is looking at starting a Flying Institute in the Sinhgad hills in Pune .
I once met a Palestine Engineer who was on our road project in Mysore and when he’s not working the world , he takes a month off as a reading break , I mean , just for catching up on reading . For a guy who has not had a country for years , to be able to think like that is amazing . And here I am , not having even truned a page of the two books I bought a couple of months back. ‘
Palak said agitatedly .
‘It is beginning to happen in the movie business , Aamir Khan has just junked his wife of twelve years one fine morning and moved in with Kiran Rao , a non-descrepit , ordinary soul with film making as a call in life .Then he gets married and takes her along to every film premiere and party . His productivity has surely increased , he’s done atleast three movies in two years which betters his record of one movie every four years . Saif Ali Khan did the same and now lives in with his Italian girlfriend Rosa . That’s just two of them in a billion .’
Arjun laughed out loud
‘There must be a change in society ,sure thing , guys . Look at the number of women who don’t marry or the number that gets divorced every year . Rita , my colleague has just finished completing her divorce formalities . she’s broken but she’s picking up the pieces of her life quickly . Working more hours than normal has seen her land some great assignment , like she went to Malaysia last week to study their Cantilever systems and is now promoted to head the project . Radhika met her the other day and Rita told her that she’s in no hurry for a new relationship and says she understands men now and will define the role they play in her life. ’
Palak ordered another drink .
The rain had stopped and the grass on the race course glittered with the dew. Rahul was two drinks down and so was Palak . Arjun was in his fourth drink .
Conversations were intense now.
‘Bhatia , my security incharge and three of his men actually participated in the anti-reservation protests along with the medical students outside Sassoon hospital in Pune the ther day . They even courted arrest . I think this fight between haves and hav-nots is going to intensify . The country is being divided like never before . the guys who don’t have will fight with the guys who have .’
‘You are right , Palak ’, said Rahul, ‘even the riots in Gujarat is a part of this same thing .’
‘How canyou say that ?’
‘See , around ten years ago , I had traveled through each of the cities in Gujarat when I was attached to the Industries Minister in Ahmedabad . Man , must tell you there ain’t more industrious people than them anywhere . In Rajkot , I remember the strategies they adopted to keep the Chinese out of the Machine tool business . The industrial corridor from Vapi to Mehsana is amongst the largest chemical industrial estates in the world , a full 225 km by 50 km stretch that saw each town flush with great capital and lots of commerce . The state was extremely prosperous and it contributed to national coffers . The state was historically always ruled by the congress , and it also decided the fate of many a central government . Hindus and Muslims lived in great harmony in areas like the old city on the other side of Ashram road . Even the Industrial houses around old city had great bonhomie .
All was well till the Y2K thing put Indian software industry on the world map , creating a reason for a great exodus into the American silicon valley which coupled with the great internet boom , suddenly took the thunder away from the manufacturing industry in India and turned us into a service economy
I remember the pie share changing from 65% agriculture to 20% while services moving from a meager 9% to 45% with manufacturing also dramatically reducing.’
‘You are right , Rahul ‘
‘Look ath e appointment ads today , 90% of them are for software , just a meager 10% are for the manufacturing industry . they are creating jobs by the thousands.’
‘Just yesterday TCS decided to add 15000 people in Pune whisking away 5% of my best managers at 35% increments , added Palak woefully .
‘Guys like Chandrababu naidu and SM Krishna also techno-upgraded their cities and wooed massive FDI’s into their states .Mircrosoft has probably now more people in Hyderabad than in Redmond . GE has massive people on its rolls .’
‘And all this employment was outside Gujarat . The new money simply passed Gujarat , it missed this boom . The gujjus never learnt English , never studied technology and are stuck with their manufacturing skills which the economy doesn’t need now . That’s a have-not . And their riots are a struggle against the haves as people go with traditional low paying jobs . The BPO and IT revolutions have just passed them by . Its easy for any politician to create an artificial enemy and stay in power .’
‘Now look at the reservation ruckus ‘, said Rahul .
‘‘Reservations has raised its ugly head for the seond time running . Last time was when the liberalization was happening and now when the second phase of liberalization under the same government leadership is taking place . While socialistic pursuits like these always put the country back by a couple of years , it will forever create a reason for the merit-oriented migrating to newer countries , this time probably Russia , China or even south east asia could see a stream of Indians moving in . ‘
‘Come to think of it , doesn’t every such move be followed by a move to remove restrictions on emigrations ?’
‘We are caught in the throes of a dramatic social change .’ added Arjun , trying to get in some affect .
‘The BPO IT revolution is also creating newer cities and towns with greater avenues to spend the monies . Which nineteen year old planned for an international holiday every year in the past ? Who pays for a hundred rupee coffee and who pays for a two hundred rupee movie ticket ? This is fueled by dollar income of companies . ‘
‘No wonder when the federal ban k in the us sneezes , dalal street catches the flu!’
‘Rahul , what you say is so true ’
‘Palak , the point is that there has been dramatic change in the last fifteen years , but some of us are in a time warp . Just doing the same things as ten years back ‘
‘Rahul , why do you say so ?’, queried Arjun
‘Look at what you are doing today , Arjun . A traditional engineering job that existed ten years ago ! What’s Palak doing today , a subcontracted tech offshore business which according to me is more akin to slave labour ’
‘There are all kinds of jobs now . You neednt just study engineering or medicine , you could pursue fashion design , architecture , IT , merchant banker , a financial analyst ,creative consultant , you could become a radio jock , a television journalist all of these careers did not exist before . That’s some form of equalization happening between the science , commerce and arts streams . The world has become flatter , for sure .Each of these now pay well .Why not explore these streams ?’
‘So , why are you trapped in babudom ?’ Palak countered .
‘ I love making policy , making some old-fashioned difference .’
‘But , I will quit one day to join the entertainment business , for sure . Probably get into movie making ‘
‘You see ,the movie business is getting organized now . Most movie scripts are all sequels now , reality shows rule the roost ,and our distribution systems are integrating hindi movies into parts of the world remarkably well . Sequels like Krissh , Dhoom ,Phir Hera pheri will now spawn many more . Isn’t that the traditional Hollywood formulae , what was that ? Rocky seven !What about sequels to Jurassic park ?’
‘I can visualize that ‘ Rahul Tandon , movie producer , with a background in telecom regulatory affairs ! Talk about mundane living !’ chuckled Arjun.
‘The movie could be called ‘Dial a ticket ‘ integrating your jobs ! laughed Palak, adding ‘probably , it will be in time for Arjun’s kids ’
‘But do kids go to the movies ?’
‘ Well , my kids today are surely spoilt for choice . In our times , we had one odd game and would play board games all evening interspersed with a game of football or cricket . Today its video games and internet games . Pokemon , Gameboy , Beyblades the japs who are the masters of the indoor games have now invaded Indian homes like never before and in Mumbai with no football grounds , its difficult to get them to play outdoor games anymore ‘
‘My cousins tell me that birthday gifts nowadays are gameboy cartridges and versions of the game . Weused to have national chess tournaments , nowadays it’s the national beyblade tournaments .Each month sees a new television channel , there’s Disney and Cartoon Network each occupying a greater share of free time . Peer pressure demands international holidays and bigger toys and games each time . In our days it was just a simple visit home and time with grandparents in our ancestral home in Allahabad .’
‘Times have surely changed ‘
‘There’s also just no privacy . The mobile ensure 24X7 availability and so there’s no personal space anymore . Anytime access leads to an over-stressed life with numerous artificial emergenceies . Last night I got a call from one of my managers briefing me on the status of a deal with a client in Chennai . Now, honestly , I could have done with the update in the morning as there was nothing I could have done about it till day break . ‘
‘Mine’s worse . I get these funny sms’s on the soccer score from my friends even when I am not interested in the game at all .’added Palak to Arjun’s predicament .
Surely , we live in amazing times , but what has really changed for us .
Maybe a little more money .
Maybe a little more knowledge .
‘But, back to basics . Where’s the fun of living , the enjoyment of simple things uninterrupted by the constant cell phone or business overtime ?’, lamented Arjun , ‘ My relationships are still the same . I yearn for some good company , time doesn’t permit . it’s been ages since I took time off . I am burning at a pace faster than ever before .’
‘Listen , we have just one life . Let’s ensure we make the most of it .India is at a stage it will never be again . Everyday there is a dramatic change in the way we have been living . This is a lifetime we can't imagine again . Let's live it up with abandon. How about starting something exciting ....’ proposed Rahul .
Like what ?
The three looked at each other .
What crossed their mind ?
Well , that’s another story .

The Moolah in the Market

Wednesday , 3 pm , Dinesh Khanija , Investment Analyst on CNBC
‘ The market is testing these levels and it could probably hit the 11200 to 11500 levels in the next 2 trading sessions ., said the analyst confidently .’.. in fact from now there would be a market correction of upto a 500 points and it will face resistance only around the 9500 levels . That’s a 20% downside . From now on the retail investors would jump into the market , the foreign institutional investors have run out of steam and even local institutional investors have dropped volumes . The number of rising stocks has reached a plateau .’


Friday , 12 pm
The market crossed 12000 points and some stocks hit their lifetime highs . Foreign inflows continued unabated . Confident analyst , Dinesh Khanija was not available for comment .

A month earlier the market had crossed the 10000 levels when every analyst worth his salt said that the market would crash post this level and caution was advised , but the market broke the 11000 number in a week and then crossed the 12000 level baffling everyone in the stock trade . We are now bigger than the Dow as an index number . Where is the market headed , why is it crossing level after remarkable level rapidly ? Right now , in the summer of 2006 , there are no answers , just a couple of stock pickings to make a killing .

Stock market money making has been a subject of enormous discussions and since the free trade policies of the government , spearheaded by Narsimha rao and Manmohan singh in 1991 , just as I has passed out of college , the stock market had created a new set of millionaires who create wealth trading stocks . While the handful of Kolkatta’s super rich have created enormous wealth and kept it through the stock market , Mumbai has phenomenal number of stock market millionaires . Delhi doesn’t trade in stocks as much so their stock pages are pretty unanalytical and colourless , they make money through raw trade .

My first stock buy , am the first entry in the State Bank of India’s register for stock Invest scheme in December 1991 at their office in Broadway in Chennai , was the auto anciallary company India Piston Rings , a subsidiary of the local Murugappa group . Hundred shares were allotted to me from the Initial Public Offering worth a thousand bucks , whose value today is around twelve thousand bucks .A thousand percent appreciation .

I understood the meaning of real wealth when at the end of the stock scam in 1992 , the Central Bureau of Investigation ordered the scamster Harshad Mehta to pay Six hundred and forty five crores as fine for his stock manipulations and insider trading . And Harshad Mehta agreed to pay back the amount in six cheques from Monday thru Saturday . I wondered about it for over a month . What kind of money was that .

Dhirubhai Ambani understood the meaning of the stock market when he periodically used the market to fund his industrial expansions instead of borrowing money from the banks . His issues were mega scale , just like his projects and he must be accredited to singlehandedly teach India equity investment strategies . Reliance Petroleum is the issue I remember created such an impact for its size when it was listed .His sons still do the same .

The World is truly flat and we can feel it in the billions of dollars chasing the Indian stock market , they say at five billion dollars we are a ten percent of the investment made in the Chinese economy .

Services stand where agriculture once stood , towering over the contribution to GDP with a fifty five percent share . The other forty percent is shared between the agriculture and manufacturing . Service industry has seen categories like Cable TV and radio , part of the media and entertainment industry hitting 55000 crores today from 3000cr in 1990 and Telecom becoming a $15 billion industry and Retailing with $100 billion in sales employs 8% of the country’s workforce with banking and real estate growing rapidly , India is moving rapidly to becoming a developed country Also, globalization has meant that the Indian economy is intergrated to the word economy is some very complex ways . For instance , experts say that much of the sensex’s current rise is due to an appreciation in the dollar, which has inturn spurred Indian software stocks, and three-fourths of such companies’ revenues come from exports to the US market.

Though we may be the same as the Dow Jones industrial average at 11000 points each , in terms of market cap, the Dow obviously wins hands down. The market cap of the world’s largest economy is estimated to be about $30 trillion approximately (a trillion is a thousand billion), while the sensex’s market cap stands at about $500bn. The US is a mature economy, growing at a much slower rate than India’s. Ours is an emerging market where the economy is expanding at over 8% and is currently viewed as a darling of investors,” said Edelweiss Capital MD, Rashesh Shah. While everyday crores of investor wealth is created , we’ll get to be a developed economy in another fourteen years or so .

In the meantime , I presume , one keeps busy making his moolah !

A ticket to the movies

The queue was bloody long . It reached till the empty patch of land outside . The movie Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak had just released at the theatre and was greeted with an enormous response . the reviews were good and we all landed to see the movie , fifteen of us straight from the college at five pm for the six pm show . Fifteen engineering students armed with a strategy to see the movie on its' first day of release and it's second show in town .
We stood in the queue impatiently , as usual , we wanted to see the movie and wouldn’t go back without seeing it . Come hell or highwater . Getting the tickets was the issue as always , but we were armed with strategies , a sum total of our experience from buying bulk movie tickets many times in the past . To return without seeing the movie was definedly shame and akin to flunking an exam .. The queue was quite well behaved till about fifteen minutes before the movie . Then suddenly all hell broke loose , as everyone wondered if they would get the tickets at all and why the queue wasn’t inching ahead at all . A typical reaction to a stationary queue anywhere in India .As everyone started shouting , we broke into three teams , one that would attack the counter straight breaking the queue and adding to the confusion , the other would break the middle of the line so that the middle of the queue din’t protest the commotion at the counter when team1 landed there and the last five at the back would hold their positions in case the first team didn’t manage to get the tickets . The hefty musclemen standing guard sprung into action , brandishing their lathis . The first hit managed to send no message as the two guys who bore the brunt of the lathi swore back and engaged him in a verbal duel.

‘Look at the counter , there’s absolute confusion . If you have balls, get them in line ‘
‘First you get into the queue , b* ’
‘Am standing where I was standing , m* ’

The thing with dirty abuses is that ; if a stranger does it , you revolt . If your friend voices them , they are part of a seemless conversation with no malintent . Anyone unknown using the b or m word to you is cause for a fight .

That’s exactly what happened .
The guy in the queue shouted back , ‘ Go and tell this to your dad . You m* ’
The dhoti clad six foot hefty guard brandished his bamboo stick and hit him harder .
Three man broke queue and punched the guard .
There was utter chaos .meanwhile at the counter window , there was some success . I pushed in my hand with the money . Some three hundred bucks . Twenty bucks was a balcony ticket , and we saw balcony all the time .

Just the hand thrust in was not enough , you needed to shout for attention and your hand was part of a set of ten hands being thrust at the same time .The guy at the counterwindow would engage with you only when he took the money from your hands .

Just as the burly man at the counter took money from my hand , a powerful force grabbed me back . Another guard had got to me . Bargi and Khot had held him back for some time , but he managed to reach the counter through brute force and a thick bamboo stick .

‘Get back . You broke the queue , get back , get back ‘
‘My money is inside , ‘ said me , just managing to tell the guy at the counter for fifteen tickets .
The guard let go of me and I emerged unscathed through the mass of flesh of people at the counter , sweating profusely .
We had a good laugh , the movie was fun and memorable .

And most movie tickets , we bought this way till one day ,Maheswary had an idea . He suggested that we tie-up with the manager for tickets . Some kind of a pre-booking everytime a movie would be released , blocking fifteen tickets with payment in advance . No theatre manager bought the concept . Trade practice demanded that they block the tickets themselves and sell it in ‘black ‘ at five to ten times the value of the ticket . This was dynamic pricing at its best . Each blockbuster movie guaranteed that the demand for tickets went high and prices shot through the roof , making a parallel booking system with select vendors selling the tickets at this unauthorized premium . It would always force us to make a choice – to see the movie with this high premium , skip it for another day or negotiate it down to a mutually acceptable price ?

Yesterday , seeking relief from a tiring work day in Bangalore , I wanted to see a movie ‘Gangster’ .The movie released just a day back , with rave reviews for Shiny Ahuja , the star of the movie . I logged onto the net , checked the theatres it ran in , only to find one single ticket available in PVR at Forum in Koramangla . Netizens in Bangalore generally don’t leave a ticket free . All theatres , all shows were booked , except for this one . I clicked on it , paid for it by the credit card , and got a confirmation number .
Later in the evening , I glided upto the ticket counter on the fifth floor through its four escalators at the swanky mall, Forum .
There was a small queue of five people buying different movies . A slim , meek and small girl no more than eighteen or nineteen , was manning the counter .
On my turn , I gave her the confirmation number .
The screen showed the seat I had bought in a sort of position chart of all seats in the theatre .
Sitting in great airconditioning , with a well mannered crowd , she probably doesn't know what it was like to see a movie years back .
She punched out a ticket and gave it to me with a smile.

One can’t fight any longer for first day first shows , as there are neither first day first shows nor fights for tickets , atleast in urban India . We have moved from an economy of scarcity to an economy of abundance . While theatres then showed four shows a day , multiplexes show upwards of fourteen a day . There's a movie after every half hour that you land in a multiplex .The concept is to hold movie premieres where the actors would watch the movie with you and you could quiz the actors , directors and producers on key aspects of the movie, mostly a day or two before it opens to public. Also ,there are paid previews , you can pay and see it earlier than its public release .

Great seats , some like Fame adlabs in Andheri have 180 degree seats that become beds , smaller plots , shorter movies and swanky multiplexes .

No sweating , swearing , scuttling or strategy . And no black !

Missing veerapan

Last year , Veerapan , the notorious sandalwood smuggler , was shot dead in cold blood after a twenty year chase through dense forests on the borders of Karnataka and Tamil nadu .

I vividly remember a newly wedded me driving down those very roads cutting through two wildlife sanctuaries Bandipur Tiger reserve and Madhumalai elephant sanctuary on my way from Mysore to Ooty on the state highway . My cool as cucumber 150cc Kinetic Honda automatic bike served me well through those adventure years as it never broke down , never needed servicing , and would give me thirty kilometers to a litre without fail .
In the age of hundred-kilometers-a-litre bikes , the Kiney was a little anachronistic , but was a part of many of my driving expeditions . Had driven it earlier through the thick forests in Dandeli , the forest reserves west of Dharwad . There were bad roads , uneven terrain , heavy rains , strange forest sounds and plenty of monkeys . The forest was so thick that one couldn’t see the sun in broad daylight . We had driven one complete day through the forest chasing the monsoon . We would find an occasional pit stop in the form of a shack with water dripping through it , serving tea and deep fried onions bhajjias. The bike stood through thick and thin with me .
That 160km journey from Mysore to ooty through Madhumalai and Bandipur was one such . From Mysore , the winding road breaks through the shallow vegetation and into the thick green cover quite dramatically . It was rare to see people on the roads , some said it was because of the tigers of Bandipur , some said it was because of the elephants of Madhumalai and some said it was because of Veerapan ,the bandit .
We took the bike journey without much care , no tool kit , no medicines , had no mobile phones then , no maps , no nothing , just the two of us , me and Nal and a small bag stuffed with some clothes and books . Passing Madhumalai was scary – there were three hunting preserves within the sanctuary – Kargudi , Masinagudi and theppakkadu . The road skimmed its borders and cut though Kargudi . We hits the ghats with a stunning hairpin bend that took us about fifteen metres vertically straight above the road we just crossed by .And then another that put us up by another twenty metres , making it a great breathtaking journey for us . There were 56 hairpin bends along the way taking us two thousand two hundred metres above mean sea level , a third of Mount Everest ! Driving through landslide signs , hurriedly erected army bridges and utter greenery was sheer ecstacy . The bike rode the hills like breeze and we took a good part of six hours to climb upto Ooty .From there we chased the toy train down to Coonoor , which with its lush green tea-plantation hillsides was quite a spectacle .
People in Ooty scared us with Veerapan tales , warning us against venturing out at night . He had killed over a thousand elephants , hundreds of police men and presided over the forests of these sanctuaries like a reining deity . Newspapers would talk about beheaded soldiers of the Special task force from tamil nadu trying to nab him , there would be hushed tales of a Veerapan sighting on some side of the hills , some dead tigers , some skins recovered in a truck driving out of the wilds .Then Veerapan kidnapped Rajkumar , the superhero of kannada cinema following it up with the abduction and killing of a former Karnataka minister . It sent shivers down the sides of many a cop who braved all of these to capture and kill him after a fifteen year long chase .

Those days , late in 1994 , the sanctuaries had very few tourists and fewer jungle lodges making it a brilliant experience . It was not even on the 1000 places-to-see-before-you-die list of local Mysoreeans too.

Today , the economy has boomed , people love going to wildlife sanctuaries as tour package deals , partly because they need a breather from the rising heat , stock markets , realty prices , gold prices , capitalistic rat races and partly because Veerapan is no more . There is unabated construction , jungles resorts are coming up by the dozen , there’s a lot of crowds and tourists are coming in droves . There’s a lot of pit-stops on the highway where many shops have come up . Traffic is beginning to get denser than the wilds , there are traffic jams on the state highways . Hair pin bends no longer seem so , as the buses after buses make you inch up , missing out the thrill of the turn . The thriving IT BPO industry in bangalore and Mysore is in need of a weekend break . The forests beckon .

It is not truly wild anymore .

Veerapan smuggled , poached , murdered , and so deserved to be shot . But , he also made sure that the drive through the great forests was thrilling , refreshing , breathtaking and that the wilds stayed uninhabited by man .

Battle Ready

Just as you land in arid Jaipur and drive out of the airport parking lot , you see an elaborate green signboard declaring profusely ‘Welcome to Pink city ’.

“Why is this called the Pink City ?, I asked my cabbie
‘Maharaja Jai Singh , the erstwhile ruler of Jaipur , had built a wall all around the old city which had the large windowed Hawa Mahal which was pink in color , so this came to be called Pink City ‘, said the cabbie authoritatively .
‘And why on earth is this road called Tonk Road ?’, I queried wondering what a peculiar name this was for a normal ‘Airport road ‘as it is called in any other city .
‘This road starts from a Muslim area where Tonks lived , so it must be one of the muslim names ‘, said the cabbie
As I found out later from the owners of one of the oldest movie theatres in the city , the pink color had been used at the time of its construction to create an impression of red sandstone buildings of Mughal cities of those times .
That cabbie was pretty well informed amused me . Mumbai cabbies would care a damn about why Victoria Terminus or Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus as it is called now was a built that way or where the architecture originated . They couldn’t tell their Borivalis from the Dombivilis as long as the meter was ticking and money was rolling each minute .

I landed in Jaipur to be greeted by thirty degree temperature at seven in the morning . The flight was packed with foreigners , eager to soak in Indian history . The terrain , when seen from above, is flat as flat can be and arid as arid can be . There are a minimal scattering of trees around the different parts of the city and a hillock on one side of the airport . A couple of forts can be spotted as the plane hits the runway .

The city was founded in 1727 AD , much after Shivaji had finished his fights with the Mughals in the Deccan , by one of the greatest rulers of the north , the astronomer king Sawai Jai Singh. A collection of complex astronomical instruments, chisseled out of stone- most of which continue to provide fairly accurate information to this day kept in the Jantar Mantar observatory stand testimony to the intellect and brilliance of the astrologers of those times till this day .

Forts never fail to impress me . Each piece of history that Forts hold and the amazing turn of story that each conquest holds grips me with a sense of awe . Achievement thrills me . And I consider a Fort a great military achievement and their conquests absolute strategies .

Take for instance the Sinhagarh fort thirty kilometers from Pune city , the mystery of its conquest , can goad me to to even today take a treck up the fort to feel the awesome daring of Tanaji Malasure , Shivaji’s trusted general who forsake his daughter’s weeding to conquer the fort from the Mughal King Afzal Shah . The Lizard , Yeshwanti , which stuck to the walls so that the Maratha guerillas could scale the mighty fort and attack a surprised enemy enthralls any audience . His death while fighting prompted Shivaji’s famous soundbyte ‘Gard aala , pan sinha gela ‘ , The Fort is Won , the Lion is Lost .
A poignant moment in conquests .

Another fort with a great twist of fate is the Murud-Jaljira fort one hundred and forty kilometers from Mumbai , bang in the middle of the Arabian sea on the coast a couple of miles from Alibag . legend has it that the fort was built by Siddhi Johar ,a South African King around the end of the sixteenth century over eleven years , each day seeing contruction on the outside during low tide and on the inside during the high tide . The fort with its three hundred and sixty five canons couldn’t be captured by Shivaji or by his son Shambhaji , who attempted to reach the fort many times but failed to find its entrance gate .He then tried to build a fort a couple of miles down the sea but left the fort incomplete as he had to fight other battles in Raigarh .
One can’t approach the fort directly . The canoe takes one in a zigzag manner to find the entrance , going south westward into the sea first , away from the fort , then the boatmen swing the sail the other way in a rapid well co-ordinated effort and the canoe changes direction to northeasterly and then a couple of hundred metres down the choppy sea waters , the sail is turned again so that the canoe can move south westwards again . And just as the canoe turns sailing over bouncy waves , one sees the hidden entrance to the fort . It is so deceptively hidden , no wonder Shanbaji couldn’t figure it out for his life . As you reach the entrance , the boat is held by ropes and you need to jump out in order not to be sucked by sea . A remarkable experience . The journey from the shore to the fort in the sea takes a good half hour , but you return in ten minutes as the sail is directed straight to the shore in a south eastwardly direction making it a swift journey .
The fort itself is huge , and they say a complete town settled in the three storey fort with schools , marketyards , houses and freshwater ponds inside .Architechturally , it is brilliant with its many alleys and carefully designed township .

The fort in Jhansi is also spectacular , more for its place in history as the battleground of one of India’s most outstanding queens who fought the british till the end , than for its plain architecture . The Indian Army uses it as a base now .

Alexander , like Shivaji many years later , must have mastered the art of breaking forts for in his time , 326 BC , he had captured half of the known world with sheer chutpazh and valour . Think leading a contingent of thirty thousand fighters across Persian , Egyptian and Indian soil conquering whoever came in the way . Alexander did at a ripe young age of twenty six .

That brings me to the forts in Jaipur , each of which are exceptionally functional and served their time in history . There are six forts in Jaipur and as I see some of their designs , they still look ready for battle , worn by time but built for ever .

We begin a different battle for marketshare in the Pink City tomorrow . We have to fight to win , guarding our turf , customers , listeners . The forts in Jaipur have stood testimony to great strategies and big victories by many Kings .

And they will all be around to see ours , a couple of weeks from now .

Lungs of London

One of the first things that beckoned was a visit to the ‘ Lungs of London ’ , The Hampstead heath , four miles north of London , a huge green land mass with its various ponds , and houses that once had sought after occupants . Promptly catching the Tube’s Northern line from King’s Cross station to Hampstead , we were greeted by Emily just outside the Patisserie on the other side of the station’s exit . A petite , young woman , hazel-eyed Emily had served as a guide for the Walking Company for the last couple of years . The brochure said that she was an effervescent and smoky-voiced actress , who had shot to fame for her role in the production , Nicholas Nikleby . She wore an old bag slung across her shoulders , and a tanned blue french cap and worn jeans .
‘How are we this afternoon’, she asked all of us who had assembled , three british girls on a study trip , one Spanish women , five Americans with one of whom was massively built and the two of us .
‘Ready to roll ‘, said the Spanish woman .
The girls giggled .
‘I must tell you we have to walk all the way up the heath and then across a lot of great greens and then through large moors . Is everyone upto it ?’ She smiled .
Everyone nodded their heads happily .
‘ You can expect the most picturesque and perfectly preserved Georgian neighbourhood . Most of the people who came here came to breathe its fresh air and hoped to live a long life .’
‘I must begin with the story of John Constable , the painter of Hampstead ‘,said Emily as we crossed St.John’s dilapidated church .
John Constable was a painter and had earned fame for the story of his life more than his paintings . He fell in love with a girl called Mary and their romance over years and their four children born out of wedlock , forms part of the folklore of the heath.
Then we walked past the long and winding cobblestoned pathways with some very pretty cottages . The houses here were architecturally brilliant and very well created , though a lot of them were identical .
We stopped near the Kenwood house , some of the large windows of which were covered with blocks of wood .
‘The window tax was created to identify and tax the rich . The more windows the house had , the richer were its inmates .’added Emily emphatically , ‘So some of the rich blocked their windows to avoid paying the tax !’ Must tell her that some of the Indian businessmen were even more ingenious when it came to tax –aversion !
Soon , we reached the highest point of Hampstead Heath , called parliament hill , Emily asked us to pause and look over the hill for a great view of the city , just four miles away .On the left was the Canary warf area , with its financial epicenter and the stock indices in an electronic ticker circulating around the main building there .The Saint Pauls cathedral’s dome could be seen at a distance . We resumed our walk towards one of the larger ponds in the Heath , half of which was frozen and had birds walking on the icier part of the pond . A couple of swans made up the scenary .
Just as we walked around the pool under the thick foliage , there was a small patch of land with a lot of stationary wagons , most of whose tyres were deflated and was were very sad sight . A couple of people walked around , looking very poverty stricken , a strange sight in London , for sure .
‘The gypsies ‘, Emily said ‘have been around for as long as I can remember . They are extremely proud of themselves and don’t like anyone peeping into their homes . There are over thirty ponds in the heath and most served as reservoirs for water in the 17th and 18th centuries . Different ponds were used by men and women for bathing with one of them being a common public one , that one over there .’
On the northern fringes of Hampstead Heath lies Kenwood House, one of the most glorious country houses in London , which was in 1754 was acquired by Lord Mansfield, the Lord Chief Justice, and one of the great British lawyers who, when a slave was brought before him, made the great judgment that England had always been free, and that when any slave set foot in England, he was automatically free .
Much further down the heath , we came across the Highgate Cemetery with its long winding pathways , one of the 'garden cemeteries' of the Victorian era. ‘There are in fact two cemeteries at Highgate . The original one, created by Stephen Geary , the short bespectacled architect , stands on the west of Swains's Lane, and was established in 1839 as a joint-stock company .’Emily added .
This is where we found the original communist , Karl Marx , resting . It’s an irony that within a couple of miles of the cemetery of Karl Marx are the houses of the last James Bond , the debonair Pierce Brosnan and Madame Jude Dench , the irrepressible M in 007’s life .

Irving Wallace would have turned in his grave at the thought of having the creator of communist Russia , arch rival and key target of master dapper spy , Marx staying in the same neighbourhood as Bond himself .

History

The graphic representation on the airlines passenger information system of the map of the world and the flight path showed how the sun was setting in Africa and parts of India as we closed in on London . The sun had set on the British Empire !
The weather report on page two of The Daily Mail forecasted two degrees in London for the whole of the week , with a maximum temperature of five degrees and four hours of sunlight thrown in . Whoever coined the term ‘trecherous London weather ’ , was right . We would soon find out .

It is true that once upon a time , the sun never set on the British Empire . The Empire span from the East Asian countries to the Australian continent and most of Africa and to the discovered lands of Americas and Canada . It is also true that they amassed vast wealth over the passage of centuries and its former colonies are still called ‘commonwealth ’ .That even much later in the years , they attacked Argentina in a Falklands war or recently jointly ran through Iraq shows that their conquering spirit still exists. History and culture is part of most of the European cities . Spanish explorers discovered parts of the world , Portugese sailors uncovered cities as far as India from around the African continent , Romans conquered many countries , Greeks fought amongst themselves prompting Alexander’s expedition , even the landlocked Moghuls invaded India and spread their religion and architecture .With six thousand kilometers of coastline , India never put a single ship out to sea , never once attempted to reach a country ,never attempted to go to any country and challenge its beliefs or understand the world . Raja Raja Chola , the only king who did so , came back half way from Ceylon when one of his ships collapsed . We witnessed a Anglo-Dutch war in our country . Imagine two countries fighting for control of India . Our history , therefore , is reactive history . We reacted to Moghuls , Portugese , French , Dutch , Britishers , Spaniards and now react to the Americans .
That is was makes London interesting as a destination , drawing people from all countries who can drop in to see a piece of their own history in the city. A Spanish Armada ship , the Kohinoor diamond , the sword of Tipu Sultan , houses of authors from all over the world who stayed here from Rabindranath tagore to Shakespeare .
Thousands of years of culture mark everything in the London , unlike other world cities like New York which is just a boiling cauldron of commerce and capitalism . It is to their credit that they created most of the educational and political systems across the cities they ruled in . How on earth would such a sparsely populated country dream of ruling over most of civilized world is as amazing as it is mystifying . Even today , as New York stands as the ultimate destination for any enterprise , London has reinvented itself to be a world city worthy of a visit . Its transport systems are created to serve the needs of twenty million people everyday ,a number that’s thrice its seven million residents ,
Walking down different lanes in London gives a feeling of exhilaration not felt in any other world city , even New York . Even though 5th Avenue and Manhattan are great walks with its brilliant facades and colourful shopfronts , Oxford street is better . More organized , more stylish and definitely more expensive . People dress well, there’s a sense of fashion . Women are pretty , impeccably dressed and extremely perfect with their lissome profiles . The chill winter breeze also makes them wear high leather boots and loosely wrapped around mufflers .
There’s also a sense of content around people . They are peaceful , satisfied and happy .Even blacks here dress well , unlike the ones in New York or San Fransisco , whose stench can be felt from far . They wear breaded hair , torn jeans and worn threaded sneakers whether in New York or Minneapolis , not in London though . Here , they carry themselves very well .
Leisceter Square and its theatre headquarters is an amazing place to spend any leisurely evening . It’s buzzing with activity till early hours of the next day .We caught the play ‘Phantom of the opera ‘ at Her Majesty’s Theatre , now in its twentieth year and it was a packed house .
The cabs of London are fresh and different , all of them look freshly painted and clean. Specially made by a firm called London Taxi Industries in acontract from the government , they cost a good thirty fve thousand pounds , very expensive. Also , unlike elsewhere , the public cabs cost more per commute than local dial-a-cab services .
There are no cops on london streets , or atleast I couldn’t see one the whole week , except the few gun-totting ones patrolling outside Scotland yard with its no-window building . Instead , I caught a lot of close-circuit cameras all over London . Streets from Kings Cross to lanes in Hampstead , the Tube , Oxford Streets , everywhere .Guess the cops keep a hawk-eye view on London’s happenings without being present . 221B Baker street , the lane housing the famous detective Sherlock Holmes had a close circuit camera too .
‘Ridiculous , Watson . That’s no way to keep an eye on crime ’, the purist Holmes would have shouted , had he seen such technology take over the sheer thrill of deduction .
It was very cold .It was the last week of February and summer was nowhere in sight . The sun rose early and set by afternoon , a chilly breeze swept through most parts of the day . It snowed in the afternoons and it rained heavily for four hours the day before we left . As we walked through Hyde park towards Buckingham palace , it snowed again .And just as we had the time of our life in Spearmint Rhino , the gentleman’s club , and emerged at one am in the morning , it drizzled all the way for fifteen minutes as we crossed streets to get to the Italian restaurant on the other side . Half the pond in Hampstead Heath was frozen and the other half had swans basking in the mild morning sun .
Must say , the weather did have us baffled .

Fact is London doesn’t play a role in the world theatre anymore is ample proof , no global businesses are British , no bog brands are British , they don’t win soccer world cups , cricket world cups , Ashes , they don’t export anything , they send forces wherever Americans do , their move to make Euro the common currency has fallen flat on their face with France saying no ,none of their banks are present in most parts of the world , the queen is forgotten , nothing British matters anymore. London is just plan history .
Yet , for that alone , it still is a great place to be .

As Dr.Samuel Johnson says ,

When a man is tired of London , he is tired of Life ;
For there is in London , all that life can afford .

Lights , Camera , Action !

The Amisha Patel episode

‘ I need a Mercedes to go back home ’.
Amisha Patel , the photogenic and well endowed actress , shot to fame in the movie Kaho Na Pyar Hai . Actually , she didn’t quite shoot to fame as much as Hritik Roshan , the hero of the movie and son of not-so-successful Bollywood actor Rakesh Roshan , did , creating history unheard of before . The movie was a miraculous debut for Hritik , he became a legend overnight . One of the reason for his success was he had broken the stranglehold of the ‘Khans’ , namely Salman , Shah Rukh and Amir who were the reigning Kings of Bollywood with movie after movie starring either of these three . Hritik was Punjabi , tall , muscular and handsome , combined with great agility helping him create some super dance moves . None of the Khans had his personality , height and slick killer looks . Another reason for this success was the movie’s choreography , marvelously shot in Mauritius it was a ultimate relief for an ordinary movie-goer . Then the music . And finally , fresh , mysterious , good looking Amisha Patel.
‘I need a Mercedes to go back home ’
I had only heard of the tantrums celebs threw before , here I was witnessing one . We had bought her a return air ticket from Mumbai to Pune , as part of our compensation to her to inaugurate our radio station . She had insisted that her mother’s ticket also be paid for , which was done . Now , having done her bit by giving the first on-air interview to pune’s new radio station , she wanted to travel by road and not by air , as we had planned and agreed earlier . The flight was leaving in an hour , but she was clear that she wanted to go back by road . As time ticked , I needed to organize the car and fast .
The first of May was Maharastra day and labour day , a double holiday . On any given day , most shops shut for a siesta between one and four in the afternoon in Pune . On a holiday like this one , it was impossible to organize anything for this city of the tired , retired or ready to expire .
I made the first impressions executive call up all the travel agents in the city .
Shut .
We attempted to call the travel desks of all hotels .
‘No Mercedeses , sir . Will a Toyota Qualis do ?’
It won’t . I thought hard for a solution .
And then it struck me .
As usual , the answer was the most obvious , right under ones nose and completely hidden till the last minute .
The Mercedes Benz car in India is manufactured in the Chakan factory industrial area , twenty two kilometers from Pune . And that this fact struck me so late came also rided on the caveat that a factory can’t lease out a car , just makes and sells .
I thumbed through the telephone directory to find the numbers of the factory. The best thing to do on a holiday is to call the residential numbers of the people listed .
I called up the first guy listed , Suhas Kadlaskar .
‘Mr.Kadlaskar , I have a sticky situation . Amisha Patel has just inaugurated our radio station here and she would like to go back by road in a Mercedes . We had organized air tickets for her , but she insists on going by road . It’s a holiday , have tried all avenues and finally decide to call you from the directory . Can you help me organize a Mercedes for Ms.Patel ?’
‘I know it’s a strange request . You will need to give me some time . Can I call you back in a couple of minutes ?’
‘Sure , Mr.Kadlaskar ’
The next ten minutes seemed to last a lifetime .And the five minutes after that were awesome .
‘Where must I arrange for the car to come ? ’, said Kadlaskar .
‘Hotel Blue Diamond , Koregaon Park ‘
‘The car will be there in half hour . Could you please ensure that the car is back by the evening ?’
‘Sure , Mr Kadlaskar ‘
It was remarkable of Suhas Kadlaskar to have done that . I mean , we didn’t know each other , yet he sent his own car to drop Amisha Patel to Mumbai on my request .

Siraj Baig besides being one of our best sales managers , was also a big Amisha Patel fan when he was not busy chasing his targets . And a big , crazy fan , at that . He carried a tattoo of her on his chest and a photograph in his wallet . You couldn’t say a bad word about her in his presence . He would pick up a fight and defend her .
I called Siraj up at his house .
‘Siraj ,do you want to drive back Amisha to Mumbai . She’s leaving in ten minutes . And it’s a Mercedes which has to come back to Pune by evening .’
Siraj was dumbfounded . Amisha Patel , heartthrob , live . He didn’t believe me. Some things just can’t come true is the general belief .
‘ Her mom is traveling with her , you can even propose marriage ‘,I joked .
He just didn’t believe me , missing the opportunity of a lifetime .
Siraj can’t get over what I said then , till this day .

Suhas Kadlaskar , as it turns out , is the Financial Controller of Daimler Chrysler Benz in India . he’s the most powerful man on the board and the distinct number two man in the company in India after Hans Huber , the CEO .
As we chatted on the day of the launch of the Mercedes E230 launch on Indian soil , I pointed out the Amisha incident to him and asked him what made him send the car on a strangers , or fellow professionals , request on a holiday .
‘ Well , ‘ said Kadlaskar , taking a deep breadth ,’ you see , Amisha Patel is our customer . She drives a Mercedes in Mumbai and as part of our cultural ethos , our customers concerns override everything else .’
I was thoroughly impressed by the car and its ethos .
Later , as I test drove the car and felt the exhilaration of its absolutely superior engineering , I was convinced nothing even comes close .
On July twenty seventh , unprecedented rain caused havoc in Mumbai with major flooding in all the roads . It took three days for the rain to clear . Many people abandoned cars on the roads and ran home , creating absolute chaos . Some people died in their cars as the mechanical systems failed and the doors jammed , making it impossible to break the windows and get out before water swallowed them . Thousands of cars were rendered useless with their gear boxes turning paralytic . Most car garages after that took days to even register the cars for repair . Only one company replaced all the cars that had functional disorders due to the floods . Mercedes .

I walked upto Amisha Patel .
‘The Merc is waiting for you ‘
‘Thanks . Is it ok if we leave in an hour ‘
‘Sure , just that the gentleman who sent the car needs it back by the evening ‘
‘Sure .So we get anything to eat while on our way to Mumbai ?’
‘You could grab a couple of sandwiches here . You can’t stop on the expressway .’
‘Good idea ‘, and she disappeared in the elevator to her room .
An hour later , she was on her way to Mumbai . Siraj didn’t come and missed something .

The photographer gave the developed photographs in two days .
Amisha Patel looked stunning , ravishing and brilliantly photogenic . The entire office was staring in stupor at her beauty and charisma .
I keep a photograph of her with me and my team next to the photograph of the Mercedes E230 , the most outstanding car ever made .
Noone quite knows how the photographs are connected , yet .




The Hritik Effect

The fact that Hritik was visiting our studio was enough to send shock waves across the company rank and file . He had just completed his comeback movie , Koi Mil Gaya , a science fiction flick , directed and produced by his father just like his first mega hit , Kaho Na Pyar Hai . And as part of his promotional tour , he was jet-setting cities giving interviews to publications , television networks and radio stations . The hysteria that had ensued after his first movie was a little missing this time and one felt it in the air . There was a deafening loss of public memory after his first movie . He had been relegated as a one film wonder and abandoned to darker corners of peoples’ memoirs . From Hritik , Hritik to Hritik , who had been a painful transition for this young actor . Worse than ignomy is ignomy post enourmous fame . He coped by working his muscles even harder and waiting for the right script that could turn his fortune .We were , in effect , meeting him when he was pretty much down and out . He was expecting the release the next Friday with dated breadth , hoping for some sort of a reinstatement of his erstwhile superstar status . Fridays are when new movies hit the theatres and that’s when a star’s fate is decided , with the box office collections playing the jury . Next Friday would decide Hritik’s fate .
‘He’s coming at five’ , ‘ anybody and everybody knew this .
The photographer was studying areas around the studios trying to see places he could shoot from , looking at the possibilities of creating a not-so-ordinary environment for the photographs . Shortly, he stood on a desk , held the camera close to his eyes and examined the effect . Then he jumped and went behind a work desk to study another possibility . He looked at the studio equipment and tried creating an angle that would avoid the mikes and glares reflecting from the window .
A large flower basket was ready to welcome him . Kabir would probably object . I remember his couplets

Mujhe us panth per rakna dal ,
Jis panth per chalte veer anek .

Kabir , the faqir poet , rued the practice of garlanding people that didn’t matter . His couplet describes the desires of a flower , which as part of a garland , wouldn’t like to be placed around the heads of politicians , not on the feet of Gods , but on the path that is treaded on by courageous soldiers and freedon fighters .
Hritik didn’t qualify to be anyone of those mentioned by Kabir , but he could qualify as a fighter , fighting for a comeback in peoples minds and hearts , many years after his first movie . Just about .
‘Is the script ready ?‘, screamed the enthusiastic and energetic young producer of the show , Deepika Rana . Deepika was one of the coolest cucumbers one will see . that she handles production remarkably well is established . How stress and success sit easily on her shoulders is to be seen to be believed . Pretty cut and dry too, they don’t make creative professionals like her anymore .

Minutes later , there was some commotion .
Hritik Roshan , potential king of Bollywood , acting talent and phenomenon , was here .

Hritik looked much more smarter in person than in print or camera . All the photographs and television snatches failed to catch his extremely handsome personality . He was physically perfect , his jaw and cheek bones aligned , his musculature defined to the T , am sure his six-ab pack had rippling muscles . Tall and slight , he was well defined male. His smile and nods could easily set hearts flutter . In all fairness , Hritik perhaps deserved all the adulation he got .
His handshake was warm and friendly , neither firm like Shah Rukhs’ nor out-of-the-world like Amitabh Bahchans’.
I noticed curiously how he was paying particular attention to each and every girl in the office . He wanted to know if they were looking at him !
It was strange that he wanted acceptance demonstrated . Most girls who work in a radio station are star struck , since movies and television is the most definite next halt for most creative radio professionals . Yet having seen many stars close and having spent interviewing them on their lives , meeting them when their movies didn’t do well or when they went through trying circumstances in their lonely lives , most radio jockeys take the stars very lightly . Hritik was looking for some sort of a reaction from every girl present there . He was double checking his relevance amongst today’s young ones .Times change radically nowadays , more so in India . Every couple of years is a new generation .His last movie had been five years ago .The stars change every five years compared to decades earlier .Even technology changes radically each year now , so this new movie was adequately armed with a lot of science fiction , making sure audiences fell for its special effects and the star was reborn .
Hritik was just reading if his fan following had dried up .
Checking his effect .
He gave a soulful interview , full of optimism and hope .

Ten days later , Koi Mil Gaya , the science fiction remake of Spielberg’s ET was declared a massive super hit of 1994 , raking in millions in its opening weekend and turning Hritik into a confirmed sensation in the movie business .

I saw him again at the Filmfare awards precursor , celebrating the best movies of last year. It was the fiftieth year of the Filmfare awards , the most respected awards in the movie business in India and the coveted statuette had been turned golden for the ceremony . Everyone would get golden statuettes instead of the traditional black tanned one that was given for the last forty nine years . ‘Hamara Yaar , Hamaara bachchpan ka dost ‘, is all that Javed Akhtar , the much celebrated script writer , had to say when asked to describe the filmfare awards and compare it with the other newer movie awards that were lauched in recent years by other media houses .
Hritik was again in the reckoning for the best actor award for his performance in Koi Mil Gaya , an award he had won when he debuted five years ago with Kaho Na Pyar Hai .He looked cool with his grey flannel suit and worn jeans , holding hands with his beautiful wife Suzzane .
Confident and more surer of himself than when I had met him first , Hritik Roshan was beginning a new climb to superstardom .



Waiting for Sandhyali .

As we waited for the inaugural ceremony of the latest event that we had created , I was cordoned off in the open air lounge of the Maharastra Education Trust college of Management in Bandra with Sandhyali Sinha , a fellow army brat and an upcoming movie actress .
Her last movie and as I jogged my memory , probably the only movie she had done to date , was a tear-jerker called ‘Tum Bin ’ where she played the role of a girl who was expecting her fiancé , but as fate would have it , the guy is killed accidently by some rich guy’s son , who then falls in love with her . She has to overcome the grief first to fall in love again and so they move to Canada where she joins her uncles business and then eventually the most evident thing happens and she weds the accidental killer of her fiancé.
I remembered the movie as a fast moving script with good choreography .
She was our celebrity guest invited to inaugurate the Business Process Outsourcing event that we had organized at the third floor of the institute . Intensive radio promotions would lead to a lot of aspiring people looking for jobs coming to the venue . Sandhyali Sinha would inaugurate the event and was the main draw in our ceremonial beginning of the event. We waited at the open-air lounge , awaiting the signal that enough crowds had come and we could go ahead and inaugurate the event . The last time around we had a similar event , three months ago , we had Dia Mirza to inaugurate the event . The event was a sell out . Dia was an extremely simple girl and had an opinion on a lot of subjects under the sun , including the entire BPO revolution which she felt was damn good for India .Dia Mirza also was on a rapid fire ascent up the Bollywood ladder , being a finalist of the annual Miss India contests and having represented India on the World stage. Her list of movies was rising each couple of months .
Sandhyali , who wore her hair very elaborately , was different in that she was a relative unknown in the industry and bagged a role when she was spotted by the director at a party .
She was a little too pretty for an army officers daughter . She detailed for me the life she was leading now with leased apartments and her grandmom cohabiting with her in harsh , capitalist Mumbai . Her next movie was something called ‘Ab Tumhare Havale Watan Saathiyon ‘ with a whole host of stars and slated for release in a couple of months . She talked excitedly about the movie and her expectations , sharing wee bits of the movie story .
It’s common practice that whenever two army officers children meet , you tend to check the schools one has studied in and the locations where their dads were transferred to , hoping to find a link somewhere .
Nothing matched in our case . Srinagar , Mhow , Tezpur in Assam , Ambala , Gwalior ,Shimla Nagpur and Pune read my list . Jabalpur , Bangalore , Jodhpur , Patna , Lucknow and Chandigarh read her list .
Alas !
Nevertheless , we struck an instant communication over movies that I liked and movies that she was going to act in , again not reaching any kind of mutual agreement on a Bollywood formula that we both liked .
Soon it was time to inaugurate .
The inauguration was quick , the traditional lamp was lit , the flashlights blinked , the crowds were parted and we walked in to meet each participant company in their classroom-stalls .

In an hour ,we were done .
As I walked with her to her car , I wished her the best and promised that I would see her new movie for sure . She smiled , shook hands and left .

The movie bombed . Within a week of its release, the movie sank without a trace . It was withdrawn without even reaching a lot of cities it was meant to be distributed in .
I couldn’t keep my promise this time around and Sandhyali Sinha vanished somewhere in tinseltown waiting for another script , another movie ; leaving me with good memories of a lively conversation .




The Serial Kisser of Bandra

The Photographic studio neatly tucked outside the Mehboob studio near Mount Mary hill also doubles up as a photocopy shop . While running around for the British visa , I found this shop pretty well located for my tasks of getting my snaps done and organizing document copies .
As I emerged from the photo lab , I found Emraan Heshmi , the newest Bollywood star standing with his girlfriend discussing a photocopy requirement with the shop owner .
Emraan Heshmi , will write his name in the history of Indian movies as the guy who brought about a great cultural revolution without knowing it .
He has earned the sobriquet ‘ serial kisser’ , because of the elaborate kissing scenes his last three movies , Murder , Zeher and Ehsaan with three new actresses . The movie Murder had scenes of uninhibited sex , something that was brought brashly out of the closet by Mahesh Bhat , low budget moviemaker . Most of his movies are made on a very small scale , address an typical social issue and create a controversy to get free publicity and therefore save on promotional costs . Murder was the story of this bored housewife’s extra-marital affair . Mallika Sherawat shot to instant fame because of this movie though her debut movie boasted sixteen kisses , seemed like they were in vain . This one rocked . The audiences lapped up her sex appeal and Emraan Heshmi’s ordinary boy next door cum jilted lover profile and kept visiting the theatre for more of her skin show . While Mallika Sherawat fell out of the Bhat camp , one of the low value camps in Bollywood , the Chopras and Johars being the biggest ones , Emraan became their mainstay for future movies . Mallika is also the smartest kid on the block , with an attitude ,and she’s made it to the Cannes Film festival as a celebrity invitee on the basis of just one movie , while Aishwarya needed a ten year working history post winning the Miss World title in 1994 to be invited . She is ever ready with a soundbyte and knows what people want in this day and age .
Emraan Heshmi on the other hand is very short for his screen presence and am sure he was unaware of the revolutionary thing that he has started - kissing was suddenly okay in public and on screen , unlike the last fifty years in Bollywood where in each movie , as soon as people came close to kissing , there would surface a set of flowers covering their faces and the audience would need to assume that the actors kissed .
Maintstream movie superstars with great reputation started kissing their actresses on screen starting a revolution of sorts . Amitabh Bachchan , clean superhero without a doubt , kissed Rani Mukerjee in the movie ‘ Black ‘ released a full year after Murder , Sanjay Dutt elaborately kissed the difficult but most beautiful actress ,Aishwarya Rai in ‘Shabd’ , Kareena Kapoor kissed Fardeen Khan blissfully in the movie ‘Dev’ and Saif Ali Khan numerously kissed Priety Zinta in the movie ‘Salaam Namaste ‘. And Manisha Koirala , who’s starred in some great movies with superstars even kisses an unrecollectible non-descript actor in the movie ‘Tum’ .
With that one movie ‘Murder ‘ , Emraan Heshmi has made sure that no actress can ever refuse a kissing scene in a movie . Lesser actresses like Neha Dhupia probably can’t refuse any number of kissing scenes .In two of her recent movies , Siskiyaan and Julie , she kisses her co-stars with great abandon , making the act larger than the movie itself .
Movies have given way to television serials trying to present the kiss to the family closeted in front of the television screen .
Television has followed up the moviedom’s experiments with kissing with many of their actors and actresses kissing away to rating points .
Newspapers couldn’t be left behind , in the issue of twelfth January 2006 , Mumbai mirror a mailine daily supplement , carried a large article on ways in which people kiss and methods to improvise kissing , something that was usually discussed in issues of Cosmopolitan and read by young girls in the privacy of their rooms .
The serial kisser from Bandra just changed that .



The hardworking Kapoor

‘What next after No Entry ?’ I asked Boney Kapoor , the producer of the new movie ‘No Entry’ as he sat next to me in the Sahara airline lounge in Lucknow airport waiting for our flight to Mumbai .
Big Boney Kapoor laughed .
‘Did you see the movie ?’
‘Yes, I did . It was terrific ’
‘ Thank you . Working on my next film , it’s a big film . Tying up loose ends .’
Boney Kapoor , twice married husband to South Indian heartthrob Sridevi , was also the elder brother of Anil Kapoor , who has built his reputation in Bollywood working in the remakes of all movies that have hit great success in the south . Most of Anil kapoor’s movies have had good success and baring a few audacious large format movies like Ram Lakhan , Taal and Tezaab , he’s done well for himself in remakes .
Anil kapoor , sat quietly , saying nothing . There was a third guy in the group , who looked like a producer type . The ones who manage the monies for any movie .
Anil Kapoor soon opened up .
He animatedly had a conversation about some new movie project .He was upset with Boney for some concessions that he had done for some supplier . He was also upset that some co-actor’s role had been made larger than necessary . ‘You can’t build someone else’s brand on our money ‘ said he emphatically , ‘ I work hard , harder than any other actor . I might not have the best of personalities , but I work harder than anyone else in the industry . ’
I thought about him . Many years back , way back in 1987 , just when I entered college , the movie ‘Tezaab’ was released . It was a gangster movie on the people living on the fringes of society and their milieu . I had to fight for the tickets at the queue as it was sold out for many many weeks and when we had decided to see the movie , we needed all seventeen tickets together . There was mayhem at the ticket counter , and in the mad rush our task was to make enough way for one of us to hit the counter and get the tickets . It was an amazing experience , but we got them with our clothes and our spirit intact .Anil Kapoor became a rage . But after that , somewhere down the years , he couldn’t position himself well enough to be a good mainstream actor like a lot of the others have managed to do . And when the Khans took over Bollywood in the mid-nineties , Anil kapoor shifted to remakes for survival , only to reemerge after many years with this hit movie ‘No entry ’.
I quite liked the hard working Kapoor . He seemed to be sincere than most actors I have met .





The 88% problem

The biggest event that we pulled off was the builders mela , where consumers could get home loans from banks and multiple options for properties across Mumbai .
Vivek Oberoi , dashing young hero of ‘Yuva’ and boyfriend of the extraordinarily beautiful Aishwarya Rai was invited for the opening ceremony .
He was a true sport . he spent a long time in the studio describing how he needed a home loan himself and therefore was coming to the mela inviting all the others to come too . That it was a mela for only expensive real estate properties helped him establish his credentials as a premium actor too . Houses worth upwards of sixty lacs were up for grabs .
Vivek Oberoi came on time , cut the ribbons and walked around the stalls looking at each of the exhibits carefully .He spent time talking to each of the builders and exploring possibilities of buying the property .
An hour later , we got him to our stall where the entire sales team had been assembled for a small ceremony for rewarding the team that had sold the event .It was quite historic as an event of this magnitude had never been sold before in Mumbai and we had made a tremendous amount of money out of the event . This one event transformed our entire sales team and turned it into a victorious outfit that could go out and sell anything ,achieving the years numbers and growing the company’s performance dramatically . The team had also hit eighty eight percent of its targets for the first time in history .
We aptly got a large cake with the numbers 88% written in the centre and ‘congratulations’ written around it .
Vivek Oberoi walked upto the cake . I handed him a knife , explained the occasion for the cake .
‘Wow, fantastic show , guys ’ said Vivek to great cheering from the team .
And he cut the cake to general shouting and loud bonhomie .
Then he turned to me on the side , shifted his weight to move away from the cake , put an arm around my shoulder and said ‘ Next time , do 100 % . Okay ! ’.
Damn !




The Greatest

Ever since ‘Deewar ’, the movie about values in life , I have been a great fan of Amitabh Bachchan . All other movies added to his legendary status as the actor classique’ of Indian cinema . Much of his life is an open book , he’s covered by every publication worth its salt , the nation prays whenever he hits the hospital , his wife , son and daughter have pretty clear non-controversial lives . Even if there are , like in the case of his son’s love affair or his political career or his attempts at corporatizing Bollywood with his company ABCL or his friendships with strange political bedfellows or Rekha , he rides them over with ease .He had been there and done that and was still at it .
I had no idea of what the reality was till I actually met him as part of the Filmfare Awards ceremonies .
The new multiplex Inox was the venue where the golden statuette of the Lady in Black , as the Filmfare award trophy is called was being unveiled by us . Select guests included Dilip Kumar , Bollywood thespian , who had won the first filmfare award when it was instituted , lata Mangeshkar who had won the award for best singer and Javed Akhtar who had a great role to play in the many movies that went onto become blockbuster superhits . Yash Chopra was invited as he had made a lot of those movies over the last many years and Amitabh Bachchan was invited because he was Amitabh Bachchan and no Bollywood ceremony is complete without him .
Dilip Kumar and Saira Banu , his wife and actress of yesteryears was the first to arrive.It was a strange sight . He came dressed in ordinary clothes and had an orderly carrying the clothes that he would eventually wear for the ceremony . He walked using a walking stick , his age catching up with him fast .
Yash Chopra , Javed Akhtar and Lata Mangeshkar came in one Mercedes car and were promptly ushered into the room .
Every heart and soul there at the entrance of Inox theatre beat for Amitabh Bachchan as news spread that he was round the corner signal and expected any minute.
Ten minutes later , the crowd was swelling and ecstatic . Suddenly a whole lot of photographers emerged from the blue . Surely , they were greater than the number invited by us .
Another minute later , a large golden Toyota Lexus pulled in .
Out stepped Amitabh .
My heart sank . He has undoubtedly ,immense aura and stupendous charisma . Impeccably dressed , he emerged as a man in great spirits and as many cameras merrily clicked away , he smiled superbly .
‘Is this the party ’, he asked in his characteristic deep baritone .
I just extended my hands , ‘ Welcome ’
He grasped and released my hand firmly and rushed in .
As I ran to catch up with him, there was absolute commotion . There are two escalators to go up and down parallel to each other as one enters Inox . It could have been a scene from a movie , as Amitabh moved up the escalator , many photographers who were waiting inside came down the other escalator trying all kinds of camera angles and shots .
Amitabh Bachchan leaves an impression , unlike any other actor anywhere . Probably Shean Connery comes close . Tall imposing and very well read , his smart repartees make people take notice . As he entered the room , no one was larger , or more magnetic ,or more authoritative and or commanded more attention than the Big B . The event started and stopped with him . He could feign humility but I know now that there’s nothing bigger than the Big Bachchan .
I saw him at a couple of other occasions and it reinforces the truth . Jeetendra , father of the creator of Television sitcoms Ekta Kapoor , was once asked how he ranked himself in the industry . Prompt came his reply , I am the eleventh best star in Bollywood .
He was asked , so ‘who are the top ten ’ .
‘Amitabh Bachchan ’, said he , without batting an eyelid . It’s true .