Why this Kolaveri Di?

Why this Kolaveri Di? That is probably the question a lot of Indians are asking and the answer is simple, its just a song with a catchy tune. Still confused? Well most of India, at least the northern part is....or well was when all of sudden that first line I typed was played, firstly everyone who didn't speak Tamil, had no idea what was happening and there was this talk about Kolaveri which was odd as no one knew what it meant unless of course you had any remote knowledge of Tamil. The other bit was that it started with, "Why this Kolaveri Kolaveri Kolaveri Di?" to which the most obvious response was, "Shouldn't it be what not why?" and as humans our curiosity always gets the better of us and hence we went to our best friend (Google) and asked the question that kept bothering us. Alas, the answer is a 4:08 min video of a song, it was initially leaked and went so viral the producer released a lengthier version with a video,on YouTube. Now, the first time I heard the song, it didn't really click with me as such, that is for the first 45 seconds and then I started bopping my head, the slow bop of the head - a sign of affirmation that the music connects with you. The only thing is that it has words which made you do a double take, there was mention of soup song and flop song, now flop song I could understand - the dude obviously is playing himself down right at the start to keep the expectations low (or well that was my understanding of it) but I could not for the love of those guitar strums figure out what a soup song was or for that matter soup boys? I mean was this a new trend that Maggi and Knorr were using to promote their products? If so why would they have the word flop follow suit? No there had to be a another reason, a totally different meaning and voilà there it was, the soup song referred to "Love Failure Song" (sic) and soup boys were the boys who failed in love as per that most authentic source on the web - Wikipedia. So while I got back to the song, this small exercise confirmed my conclusions that soups weren't as cool as they are touted to be, I found that all of a sudden this had become my next "Apdi Pode" (another Tamil song which had a massive crossover to the northern side) and somehow it kept repeating itself on the playlist. A few days later, what do you know, its trending on Twitter and getting more posts and attention than Sunny Leone (totally stole her thunder) and everyone who's anyone in India started talking about that song that Dhanush wrote and sang. The song has well and truly gone viral and if you have not yet heard it, then you probably don't have any connection to the land of India. I have approximately 20 people sharing this song in the last 24 hours and the count is just going up. The Kolaveri (which means killer rage) is just starting to ramp up and don't expect it to die soon. Like it or Loathe it, the line you will utter is "Why this Kolaveri Kolaveri Kolaveri Di?"!

Social Networking - The future or a fiction?

It's all about social networking advised someone an article I read while trying to pass some time waiting to catch up with some friends (in actual real life) and I wondered what the fuss was about, I mean I have a Facebook account and thought that's what it is all about. I then forgot about it till I was listening to a music pod-cast and the presenters went on talking about how being on different social networking sites is where the future is going. Being the experiment dabbling individual I am, I went ahead and logged back into Google+ (which I had opened when they were beta testing and thought it to be very boring) and was not surprised it was just where I had left it....bare and empty, apparently like me most of my friends had not found anything appealing on it and gone back to where everyone hanged around - Facebook. The thought of the whole future being on the social media however kept me thinking and I wondered how we had drifted from actually meeting up with friends we have in real life to stalking the whole world sitting in our living rooms. Don't get me wrong I am all for Facebook (and anyone who even remotely knows me can vouch for that) inspite of all the privacy issues and what not but as a self-confessed anti-social (I really am one....seriously!) I still like meeting up with people in real life and see their faces while talking to them, shaking hands and the occasional friendly hugs to see if I am still human or if Skynet has taken over us all and we have tricked ourselves into think we are human all while there are steel chords and microchips instilled all over the insides of our bodies. Any how so on a quiet boring day off from work, I did something I had been holding off for years, I joined twitter and it was just to find out what all the fuss was, I mean it had been there for sometime now but the whole tweet thing kept chirping away and I had finally succumbed to it. It has been a couple of weeks since I have signed up and I can see what the whole thing about social media being the future is about, its about bringing in everyone and by everyone I mean everyone - the celebrities, the politicians, the activists, the philosophers all come together and share with you a part of them thus giving you a glimpse of them and probably changing (manipulating) your view of them. The one thing I found out was, that it stands as a medium for you to shout out your thoughts without anyone caring or reading it and hence it becomes an outlet similar to you screaming out loudly in the bare silent sky, all while listening to your local legislator or one of the stars you follow have a public meltdown along with you. So the next time you hear the line, "The future lies in Social Networking", let me assure you there is a pinch of truth in it, it just depends on what you would define "social" and who you would want to interact with.

Wonder Where The Wondering Went....

So the question is...have we stopped to wonder about things. Now for your sake or the sake of humanity I hope you are wondering what I am embarking on. Well, the thing is have we slowly stopped to use the whole concept of wondering and started using the same practise that we do when now in a debate - Use Google instead of talking and thinking about things. I mean when was the last time you wondered, "Geez what would it be like if sharks for some reason started walking the earth and smashing doors in, what kind of a sound would that make?", or lets go a bit simple for your benefit, something like, "Why am I calculating how much money Tim has in a Maths class when my pocket money is cheap as peanuts.....wait...yeah no I can afford peanuts".
There was a time when we questioned the intentions of the poor chicken scrutinising all of its moves even when the little creature had no option but to cross the road in spite of being aware of all the risks of turning into road-kill. Did we ever stop to wonder why the chicken and not the ducks or even cats or dogs, no it was always the chicken who even when made it safely to the other side ended up on a plate for dinner, totally nullifying all its effort of making the stride across.
I wonder if anyone wonders, why there is no mention of food in my entries even though I have call is Life's a pie. Well if you have ever wondered that then you should probably speak out and work on writing words in the comments section.
So before you start wondering what you are doing here reading this, I am going to end it and let you wonder what in the world this was. :)

Question Quest on Queasy Questions

There are times when you realise that things you say might not sound the same as it sounds in your head, actually let me correct that, there are only times when you realise that things that sound brilliant in your head come out as expected. The thing though is we don't really think of things we speak either, like when you see a person at the cinemas or a mall or even at a restaurant and go "Hey!! What are you doing here?"! Now, lets break that question down and this is what it comes down to -
a. You can't afford to be here!
b. If you are here, I wonder if I should be......
b. Damn it...its like I can't avoid you anywhere
c. Kind of follows b, but is more like crap now I have to talk, ask a question, any question....and after the question you go "Duuh!! Had to ask that one of all the ones there were!!
This can be expanded further but you know where this is going. The other one which I have come across, and let's be honest they were trying to be nice, was while visiting the doctor I was asked, how I was doing. Really!! You ask a person who's feeling sick and had to wait 45 minutes in a waiting room, which co-incidentally only stocks women's magazine....don't know why but that one defies all logic as to do the doctors think only women fall sick or they just don't care about the men waiting there, anyways back to the point, you are waiting for 45 odd minutes and get asked how are you doing, the only thing you can do is look around you and go you kidding me? Do you think I like spending time in a room full of people breathing out germs and handing out diseases just to exchange pleasantries with a doctor!
Then there are questions that are just asked to confuse you, like the one and this remains the weirdest question I was asked, ever. I had an interview with an immigration officer who basically had to approve my citizenship application and had asked me the normal questions which were expected, and then just before ending the interview he thrown down a googly, and the question went as such, "Are you aware of any criminal charges brought against you in any country that you are not aware of?", I had to take a minute just to process the question in my head and when I had, my first reaction was to laugh which I suppressed as common courtesy suggested that it was inappropriate and a better sense of judgement (rare occasional moment) prevailed and I as any other person said when put in a spot says - NO! Turns out that was the answer, that person was looking for and after a minute said thanks and started to walk away before realising he worked there and I had to leave.
Anyways, the point of all this, if you really do read what I write and think it makes sense, is that when you ask someone a question, give yourself a 10 second buffer to think over it and if you have the slightest of hesitation over it, do everyone a favour - Don't ask the question!

P.S: This applies while answering a question too, although, allow yourself a bit more time to think especially if answering to a girl about a girl otherwise you dig yourself in a big hole! :)

Alienating the Aliens

So the debate continues, do you believe in Aliens/Extraterrestrial/Martians who quite simply can't get enough of hovering around our skies in their mundanely disc shaped ships we fondly call UFOs. The thing is we are so convinced that anything funny found in the sky is being flown/driven/controlled by Aliens that calling them UFOs makes the whole "Unidentified Flying Objects" totally obsolete if not stupid....yes I used the words Aliens, UFO and stupid in one line, god forbid I ever make it to Comic con and get caught among the alien loving nerds, that would be the end of me if they get the lightsaber working that is.
The thing is though, that however much we may try to prove or disapprove the theory of the whole life in outer space, and them wanting to come here and probe us in places...lets leave it to the probe us shall we, the whole Alien invasion remains one of the Piece De Resistance when we bring on-screen in cinema. There is the whole good vs Evil Alien thing happening there too but our fascination with the green creatures still stays strong either ways. We had the friendly ET who just wanted to go home and more recently had Paul (yes we gave the Alien a name too) trying to do the same thing except this time make it more of a comedy than drama. On the flip-side we had bad-ass human killing Aliens, with the whole Aliens series and Species and then some. We all remember Will Smith blowing up the mother-ship in "Judgement Day" and then having a cigar to celebrate the victory. We even got outer space robots fighting it out on our planet and turning into cars, trucks, tanks, fighter jets and even mobile phones in Transformer all because their ship had crashed on Planet Earth.
All this would not have been an issue but for the humans trying to mix the world of fantasy with the reality, and I am not joking when I mention that there are kids out there today who actually believe that vampire and werewolves are real, so much for the folks having a hard time explaining who Santa is. We have watched so much of these alien flicks that we actually believe that eventually we are going to be invaded by green monsters in flashy space-ships with gadgets that are out of this world (literally :P). So the next time you see something abnormal in the sky, don't worry, unless it starts beaming light near you, you're okay and if its round and white and shines, its probably the moon!

Ra.One - The raving review that wasn't

Ok, so this one would hold no interest for those who do not watch Bollywood flicks. I say that with so much conviction, like anyone was interested in reading what I have written before but then if a lot of movies being made, irrespective of the their geographical origin, have viewers, my writing would be a relief sent from heaven for such.
Anyhow, coming back to why I am writing this entry, I happened to watch the extravagantly expensive production made by none other than the one called SRK (if you are confused on who that is....well you definitely don't have any idea of Bollywood)called Ra.One. Now, Ra.One could just have been called Raavan (remember that dude with the 10 heads and a mean streak who while being a King resorted to kidnapping other people's wives himself, serious lack of Human Resources planning in that kingdom) except a movie by that name came out not long ago and which starred Abhishek Bachchan, and now need I say about how it fared?
Ra.One it seems was Shahrukh's dream project and he really wanted to make it for his kids as he claimed, yet the first two minutes in, the dialogues were so double meaning that a majority of parents would have cringed in their seats not knowing if they should cover their kid's ears or eyes or just make their way to the exit, the last not being such a feasible option as there would have been a mad rush to exit at that point of time anyways.
Now we could do the whole what went wrong with the flick, that was to re-define the way Bollywood made movies and that super-heroes were not just confined to the self-confessed saviours of the world - the Americans, and could be better off going on to the what went right with it. So here is my list of what I thought was the positives from Ra.One
Getting Akon to sing Chammak Challo, now none of us and I mean none of us saw this
coming and did Akon (and the rest of the Ra.One team) pull it off. The song in
hindsight would be nothing as good as it is.

The whole video game concept, yes it was different although how it was handled here
is a totally different conversation.

The whole pixelated distortion of the faces when punched and otherwise looked
pretty good, to me at least.

Chitti (Rajnikanth)

Did I mention the song Chammak Challo?

That was about all I could find in a movie that ran for 2 hours and 45 minutes, a movie that was publicised in any and all avenues possible and SRK went on a marketing madness to pull the crowd to the cinemas yet he forgot the very basic thing that would have made this a truly re-defining way to make cinema in India - a proper STORY. The team of Ra.One went with the whole Good vs. Evil way in the same as the rest, heck Raavan had a much tighter storyline than this. The movie borrows a lot and when I say a lot I mean a lot of plots from the various super-hero flicks which could be another reason it leaves the audience leaving confused and wanting to see some rational although most of us went looking for none. The dialogues are so clichéd it makes you cringe in your seat and wonder if just some of that money spent on production could have be better utilised in getting a someone who could pen some proper lines. The whole Kareena making up words for abuse was good in the Golmaal series as it was different and new, whereas it was just used and abused in Ra.One. Some of the scenes were stretched longer than the value for money chewing gums and became rather annoying than awe-inspiring.
Overall, Ra.One is the present age Roop Ki Rani Chooron Ka Raja (don't remember that one? Had Anil Kapoor and Sridevi and was one of the most expensive movies made by Boney Kapoor, and had left him out of the business for a long time too) and although it may make its money and not see the same fate as the later the only difference that lies between the two is the larger than life appeal SRK has over his fans.
This one is only for the SRK fans and am sure they would be loving the flick, the rest of us have endured the pain and moved on for now.

A Touch of Life

There was a time when things were simple, life was about living, television was for entertainment and a phone for talking to people. Now however, its all changed, the phone is used as a phone, organiser, radio/MP3 player, alarm clock, web browser and what not; television is to fill in the void when we actually get time to pull ourselves away from that very phone and life a stress filled, heart attack ticking bomb waiting to blow any second that is if some other disease doesn't kill you first.
The human life has been entangled in a web so complex that the more we try to wrangle free of it the more complicated it gets. We have started relying so much on technology and gadgets that we have forgotten how that in-built super machine - the brain works. We can't have a proper debate or discussion without one of us opening up Google to actually verify the answer, sometimes even before anyone has had a chance to speak up. Back in school, we were discouraged to use the calculator while learning maths so we could rely on our ability to think and solve the problem instead of plugging numbers on the calculator and getting the answer, now kids don't even have to bother with a calculator as everything is present "on the internet". The whole concept of imagination seems to be the thing of the past with people now asking to see the animate of concepts before it can be conceived. We now have gadgets where we can just order it to do our work and while it may seem that this would make our lives better we find better ways to complicate it and add more stress. We try to look for answers on life but then there is only so much Google can provide and the answer to one's life somehow just doesn't appear on its radar, it could however find someone else's life for you to read.
Life is short or so they say, however in order to avoid the disappointment, slow down to smell the roses, enjoy the sunshine, feel the wind, dance in the rain - live a bit of your life before the curtain comes down.