Ram’s great, Ram’s good,
Ram does what Ram should.
Ram’s just, Ram’s right,
Ram is our guiding light.
Perfect man, perfect son,
Ram’s loved by everyone.
Always right, never wrong,
We praise Ram in this song.
Sing his love, sing his praise.
Ram set his wife ablaze.
Got her home, kicked her out
To allay his people’s doubt.
I have a long list of posts to put in here -
the books I was gifted in my last birthday (all of which were subsequently read, and hence the post!),
Victor’s attempt to dissuade me from my attempts at explaining my email id to a shopgirl who had wondered about it aloud,
reviews of Billu Barber and Chandni Chauk to China,
the cool ruby script I wrote to make gchat-like conversations from all the smses in my phone,
the bug I discovered in ubuntu-gnome with multiple mice (mouses sounds better, and the bug is probably a feature anyway! :))
- the list goes on.
All that will await the completion of my ongoing exams, however, and here are a couple of pictures from Holi this year.
In the ideal world, everyone would accept my testimonials. But as reported by a multitude of pompous philosophers, poets, writers and at least one famous mathematician, this world is far from perfect, and we must turn to this explanation when one considers the fact that practically all of my testimonials get turned down on an hourly basis. It is to preserve them for posterity that I post them here, and here is the latest.
This one is actually a song, to be sung along the tunes of “I am a vampire” by Antsy Pants (Juno fans will remember this). Please note that it wasn’t supposed to be funny. And I am not saying it wasn’t supposed to be funny in order to cover up my theoretical and highly debatable crude sense of humour by an acute awareness of it.
It’s good to be at home.
In the pocket of the shirt I changed into after taking a bath, I found a small note from my kid brother. On one side, it said, “Beauty is not how you look. It is not how beautiful you are. Beauty is not the figure. Beauty is the inner self.”
A small arrow mark at the bottom asked to to turn the piece of paper. On the other side, it said, “So change your underwear daily.”
It’s good to be at home. :)
The First One
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I am going to say such nice things about him that it might look like I am being blackmailed into this testimonial, but nothing could be farther than the truth. ;)
He is my oldest friend, and if you discount the mickey mouse he received on his eighth birthday, I’m his oldest friend too. Seriously, he is one of the greatest guys you’ll ever meet, and I am not kidding, and for the last time, I’m not being blackmailed into saying this.
He is handsome for one thing, really really handsome, as some of you might already have noticed, and he is necessarily equipped to back up his handsomeness. There, I said it, and you can take my word for it.
He is warm-hearted, but far from being hot blooded. Sensible, mature, intelligent, with a funny bone that is not immediately apparent, great social manners, what more could you ask from a guy?! No, I am not being blackmailed into selling him to girls either. No, seriously, I mean all of what I have said.
I’ll join his Orkut Fan List sometime soon, I swear. :)
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The last we knew, I had offended my friend Rainbow and made a new acquaintance and then disappeared into my life preoccupied with A(gni)d (whether I was trying to get away from him or I was trying to entice him by acting uninterested is still a question no one will let me answer! :().
If presented with the opportunity to do such a thing again today, I would like to make only one change. I would list some of the aphorisms I mentioned, like, Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative, Conversation about the weather is the last refuge of the unimaginative, Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow, Ambition is the last refuge of the failure, etc etc. This reminds me of Salver (or was it Salvor?!) Hardin from Asimov’s first foundation book, who was famous in later foundation books (particularly the second and the third) for his aphorisms. I think it was Hober Mallow who quotes him thus - Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent!
Clearing up my old stuff, I stumbled across quite a bit of ancient history. New year, new beginning and I am going to get rid of all the old papers etc, but this time I am going to save the parts I like on this blog.
Today’s item is a letter to Rainbow which was never sent. Talks about books, music, movies and mathematics have been censored (removed, mostly) lest it should give a hint towards the time and place and context of this letter. Everything deemed to be personal has been removed too. And then there was the shameless self obsession of a typical teenager which I found embarrassing after all these year (thank god for that, I have done some growing up, though I don’t claim to have grown out of my self obsession! :)).
The Letter
Disclaimers:
1) Before my boredom takes over, I want to make clear that Ghajini is a decent time pass (I’ll list the USPs at the end of this post).
2) This contains a rough overview of the plot that can spoil the movie for you. There are some specifics of some scenes too.
Putting Ghajini into a genre
Ghajini is not Memento. Ghajini is the boy-meets-girl (and falls in love) story followed by boy-avenges-girl’s death rant. The non-linear unfolding of the narrative is superfluous because there is no surprise in the story and because it doesn’t serve any purpose except for tightening the pace. It’s a different movie altogether, with a different focus and a different niche, and it is entirely unnecessary to keep Memento in mind when thinking of it.
Ghajini is not Bollywood either. It has been reworked to Mumbai, but the screenplay wouldn’t have made much sense without its Southie (I think it’s called Kollywood!) motifs. For example, Asin plays the typical innocent bubbly girl with attractive simplicity (real life bimbo made larger than life on screen!). Obviously this is a character done to death in Bollywood, but they do it with a different kind of sensibility in South which you can see in this movie. The Goody Two-Shoes-ness of Asin might thus be a little jarring to the rest of India, but I am sure they will enjoy the bit where Aamir Khan subconsciously learns to drink tea in a pedestrian manner from her.
Ghajini is Kollywood in Bollywood clothes with the addition of Aamir Khan. It’s almost a scene by scene remake of the original except for a better paced and politically correct (or may be I should say cinematically correct!) ending.
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