I saw Slumdog Millionaire, many days before the hype started to engulf it. Maybe that’s the reason why I loved this film. It’s a story about love, about spirit. about determination and also a story about India. And I was happy that it won a few Oscars and happier when ARR and Resul got the recognition on the international stage they have deserved.

But I hear a lot of dissent growing against the movie. I read articles like this and this. I hear some of my friends and colleagues telling me it is bad advertising for India. Maybe it is. But are we all really blind? Or experts at putting things under the carpet. I guess every single one of us understands that these things still happen in India. It is not falsifying facts, it is just showing the negative part of the truth. Yes even I am proud and overwhelmed by the strides India has made in technology, space exploration, IT, pharmaceuticals, spirituality, business.. But doesn’t all that gloss simply hide the patches of rust underneath?

For me Slumdog is a movie that also acts as a reminder. A constructive criticism on how we manage to ignore some bare facts about our country. Take pride in glory, but don’t ignore the dirt.

A few days back Renu had told me about this book called as ‘The Last Lecture’ written by a computer professor named Randy Pausch. She told me it is a must read and also a current best-seller, but I had never heard about it. Now that I think about it, being an incurable net-addict its amazing that I never came across this one.

I bought the book a few days later, and started reading it. The fact that I was able to finish half the book in one sitting and considering how lazy I am nowadays reading books, it speaks volumes as to how good I felt reading it. I was in quite a gloomy mood for days before, but reading this gave me instant bliss and I am not exaggerating. It is amazing how a book about the last lecture given by a dying professor tells you nothing negative but inspires you to be positive. And it really did inspire me, I would go as far as saying that it was the most inspirational thing I have heard ever.

Now, after this I did some research about this guy. He really is a hot-shot in the computer world. A major contributor to the world of Virtual Reality and even co-developed one of the best programming learning aide – Alice (try this one out, its a free download). And then I came across the original video of his last lecture, again available for free in YouTube. It is over an hour long, but I promise you, there’s not a minute of boredom in there. It is filled with energy and its not about dying, its about living. Do watch it, its even better than the book!

Dr. Pausch passed away on July 25, 2008. But what a legacy to leave behind…

Buy the book at Rediff.com (India) or Amazon

My connection with the Theater does not go beyond viewing (and even acting albeit in minor roles) in amateur (very) plays at school (and yeah also mugging up Shakespeare for the 12th Standard board exams). So I was kind of skeptical when Renu asked me if I’m interested in going for a play. Hmmm.. Already under some guilt that I just while away my free time in Bangalore, I agreed to go ahead. Doing something once in a while to stimulate that rusty part of the brain couldn’t be that bad.

The play was called as “Always look on the bright side of Life” by a troupe called as ‘Evam’. I really didn’t know what to expect, the only thing I knew was that the theme was humour and it was inspired by the Monty Python. It turned out to be really good. It was good fun, clean entertainment keeping the audience engaged throughout. The play did not follow a conventional single storyline, instead it was presented as a series of mini-sketches like the Monty Python series. What I really caught my fancy, was the way in which the scenes were transitioned with music and dance. Three girls danced and set up the props in a well-timed seamless manner. The fact that the girls were pretty helped out too! The jokes were all mostly original (I think) and also relevant to the world around us. All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed the whole show.

It is definitely worth a try if you have some free time and the troupe is staging a show in your city. 100% recommended, even if you have never seen a real play in your life before!

For more information on ‘Evam’, show timings and their other plays visit their site www.evam.in

A sleepy Sunday evening and I was wasting my time on my laptop. My roomies suddenly pop out with the idea that its been a while since we saw a movie. Well, having spent half of the weekend in hibernation I thought I should give my body a stretch and I nodded. The only tickets that were available at such short notice in PVR (unfortunately the only theatre at walkable distance from our abode) were for Ram Gopal Verma’s Phoonk. Ok, so we thought let’s scare us a bit.

We thankfully missed out on the first 10 minutes of the movie owing to a faulty ticket machine. Hmm.. but the movie began pretty well actually in retrospect. The acting was ok, but then nothing scary seemed to happen. Then again I thought they were just preparing us for that big 5-lakh rupee moment. Well, the thought and the wait persisted till the end. The general pattern was to build up some excitement, focus on some random objects ranging from a giraffe to Elmo to a pic of Lord Hanuman and then suddenly fade out to daylight without anything happening. There was just one slightly scary scene in the whole movie. Other attempts were too cheesy and the entire theatre audience was laughing, me included, during those supposed-to-be-BOO! moments. My friend, Jithin, kept defending the director (don’t understand why, but he has this habit of liking all the worst movies on planet Earth) saying that what else could he do in a horror movie? Well for starters, he could make me scared for god’s sake!

Not everything was bad. Amongst the positives the movie was only 2 hours long :) and didn’t use too many B(ollywood)-grade special effects (when RGV had a chance to actually make it worse with those added in). The real positive was the camera work though. It was just brilliant. Sad it was wasted on a poor movie. The long single shot of the kid entering school and the camera panning to crow.. well masterpiece!

All in all, I don’t recommend this at all. Quoting Arnab Goswamy from Times NOW, “If you wan’t to watch something really scary, try RGV ka Aag” but don’t waste your time and money on this! Should have stayed at home and slept!