A perfect 10.. Taare Zemeen Par

ISHAAN AWASTHI ... Grade III...FAIL ! FAIL ! FAIL !
That's how the movie starts.

Based on the initial songs and the trailers, we decided to brave it to PVR to check out the latest Aamir Khar movie "Taare Zameen Par". Well all seen and done, it's a Perfect 10.

Ishaan Awasthi is an eight year old whose world is filled with wonders that no one else seems to appreciate. He see's colors, fish, dogs and kites - dancing characters in his alphabets. The world of adults and peers are much more interested in things like homework, marks and neatness. And Ishaan just cannot seem to get anything right in class.

The world demands perfectness in class, high ranking in school.No repeatation of mistakes and so forth. But, Ishaan has a world of his own. He like to take a dip into the school gutter to pick up a few fishes (for his aquarium), bunk school to roam around the city (and later had his elder brother write an Absentee note) and those small knick-knacks of nature that a child takes pleasure in.

When he gets into far more trouble than his parents can handle,he is packed off to a boarding school to 'be disciplined'.Things are no different at his new school, and Ishaam has to contend with the added trauma of separation from his family.

One day a new art teacher bursts onto the scene, Ram Shankar Nikumbh, who infects the students with joy and optimism. He breaks all the rules of 'how things are done' by asking then to think, dream and Imagine... this bring out the creativity of the students, way outside the fixed thinking of the school curriculum.

All the children respond with enthusiasm, all except Ishaan. Nikumb soon realized that Ishaan is very unhappy, and he sets out to discovery why. With time, patience and care, he ultimately helps Ishaan find himself.

As perceived by today's rat race world, the movie shows rightly:

Kas ke joota, kas ke belt,
Khoons ke andar apni shirt,
Manzil kp challi sawaari
Kandho pe zimmedari

Haath mein file, man mein dum,
Meelon meel chalenge hum
Har mushkil se tarrayenke,
Tas se mus na honge hum

Duniya ka naara jame raho,
Manzil pe ishaara jame rajo

Ye soote bhee hain attention mein,
Aahe rehne ki hai tension,
Mehnat inko pyari hai,
Ekdum aagyakari hain

Ye omelet par hi jeeye hai,
Ye tonic saare peete hain,
Waqt me sote, waqy pe khaate,
Taan ke seena Badhte jate

Duniya ka naara jame raho,
Manzil pe ishaara jame rajo

Then again, in the eye's of Ishaan Awasthi, it is a completly different world.


Yahaan alag andaaz hai,
Jaise chidta joi saaz hai,
Har Kaam ko taala karte hai,
Ye sapne paala karte hai

Ye hardum socha karte hai,
Ye khud se poocha karte hain
Kyon duniya ka naara jame raho,
Kyon manzip ka ishaara jame raho

Ye waqt ke kabhi ghulam nahin,
Inhaon kisi baan ka dhyam nahin,
Titli se milne jaate hain,
Ye pedon se batiyate hai

Ye hawa batora karte hain,
Barish ki boodein padhte hai,
Aur aasmaan ke canvas pe,
Yeh kalakariyan karte hain

Kyon duniya ka naara jame raho,
Kyon manzip ka ishaara jame raho

The movies does provide a trigger to retrospect if the current approach of schooling to excel for "the" future is encouraging the innocent mind of a child to think or pushing it in a rigorous path of schooling to excel.

To end it all... The PVR trip was fultoo paisa wasool.
DARE to DREAM, and DREAM beyond the OBVIOUS... then EXECUTE the DREAM..
Cheers !

The legend of a Pressure Cooker

It was a great morning. Great 'romantic' weather...Mr. XYZ was in a very happy mood. Why should he not be ! He kept signing along in the shuttle from home to Office (~40 mins of travel)...it is a happy day ! it's a Happy Day ! It's a Happy Happy Day !


The day started of peacefully. Why cannot every day be like today !Then an email arrived - on date dd-mmm-yyyy there is going to be an "external" audit on the project for alignment to AB8888 standards ! What !! Oh No !! This was supposed to be a corporate level certification audit and we were selected ! Come to think of it .......


In the global deployment in m-countries, this country was selected. In this country, out of the n-branches, XYZ's branch was selected ! And finally out of the p-project in XYZ's branch, this project got selected. Come to think of it ... what could be the Odds !! Anyone remembers Probability theory !! Please tell me what are the Odds .....



Thus went up the "Happy Happy Day" in thin air ! The Branch Quality/Audit groups started calling.The phones started ringing ! The cell phones kept ringing continuously lines ! There was no escape !



An army of internal quality auditors arrived to do the mock audit. Mr. XYZ decided he will never again sing the Happy Happy Day song in the early morning !!



The mock Audit was a lightning bolt ! Out of the blue - issue after issue were picked and reported (hey ! we just had an internal audit 2-3 months back). Non Conformance Reports were raised left-right-centre-top-botton et. al. Whoa !



That started the real - work ! There were folks running around, shouting 'Quality Quality Quality...' (almost equivalent to Eureka Eureka that Archimedes has done once..well ;) without clothes they say !!)


Quality records were audited, new reports were raised, and re-audited ! The cycle went on...Many of the folks (team members) volunteered to generate the missing data ! So started the cooking (literally, in other words...data cooking). Poor Mr. XYZ was astounded by the data that was being re-created, retrieved, processed and documented.


Finally the D-Day arrived. Well, what can we lose...Mr. XYZ went for the Audit singing the song "it's a Happy Day ! It's a Happy Happy Day !". The AB8888 audit went through successfully !As the saying goes, All is well when it Ends well ! Phew !!!


But the pick of the experience, was Ms. M......
Ms. M is good at cooking up data..hence was nick-named 'cooker', and Ms. M is VERY good at cooking up data when under pressure... Hence the name 'pressure cooker'. Thus started the legend of the Pressure cooker...

Ahem !

The Gift of inspiration..

Truly a Gift of Inspiration....

ONMS trip to Mekedattu..

Trin ! Trin ! The alarms goes off at 5:00 am ... T. G. I. F ! Ring ! Ring ! The cell/mobile starts ringing at 5:30 am - 6:30 am IST at at least 25 different houses.. Oh ! Oh ! do we have a priority issue that needs urgent R&D support ! Oh no !!!There goes our 'T.G.I.F'... it's going a full exhausting day of work and R&D support.

BUT wait !! NO NO ...That's not why the alarm went off ! That's not why the Cell/mobile started ringing ! Nope not at all !! Those are wake up calls..... We are off to a Trip to Sangama, trek to Mekedattu and a sign-off visit to Muthathi.

A detailed trip was planned by the organizers, where the 28-Seater would originate from Corporation, and make designated stops at Old Madras Rd, Airport Rd, Marathalli and Banashankari to pick up the folks and make for the planned trip on Nov-30-2007.

We start of the day with the chilly Bangalore morning (try getting up at 5:30 am IST !) and a slight delay in the shuttle schedule. Breakfast was planned to be loaded into the bus thus a few min(s) of lag (isn't that called the "I"ndian "S"tretchable "T"ime !). But this delay was a boon in disguise..as we realized that we did not have any Dance(yo ! yo !) song CDs in the shuttle. We did get a few movies too... Saawariya (oh no ! not again !!), OSO, Jab we met, Dhoom and Dhoom 2 and Dhamaal.

The ride (integrated with movie OSO, had a tough time figuring the Fast Forward button on the remote of the DVD player !) was a good one. Surely, Karnataka Tourism could spend a bit more from the budget to improve the road to Sangama. The narrow roads through the in-between cities did slow us down, not to mention the herds of cows, goats and sheep's being herded on the main road :0) En route, we even had a welcome speech in Kannada (with English translation)... it is a different thing that our English translator (one of us) had his own mind..and tweaked the Kannada speech !!

A quick stop en route had the team having a quick breakfast that we had packed up. Rumour has it that the so-called Vangi baath was from yesterday and the vegetables seen in the same were day-before yesterday (isn't Vangi baath supposed to have only Brinjal, but we did find a unique assortment of nutritious vegetables). What say ? Just kidding...

The road to Sangama was unique... we lost count of how many sharp turns (some of them blind turns) we made..kudos to the driver who could manoeuvre that 28-seater round such turns - Phew !

Finally, we reached Sangama at around 12:30 am IST. Weather was good and so was the surrounding (if you were to not look at the litter folks have left around !). The first thing for the 'papi-pet' was to mark out the Lunch spot ! We did ..at the heart of Samgama, we have the Tender Cocunut Restaurant, and we pre-ordered for Lunch.

Then the team started to cross the Sangama - the confluence of two rivers Arkavathi and Kaveri(Cauvery). The adventurous took off pants (!!) and started swimming across the river. The not so adventurous one's started to walk across the river holding hands and inching their way across the sand-bed of Sangama. The rest decided to take the dingy..and be rowed across the Sangama.

At the other end of the bank the choices available were either take the bus/jeep to Mekedattu or do the (~1.5 hr) trekking to Mekedattu. By either of the options we reached Mekedattu.

The sight was awesome.. the rock formation was superb. It is surely a rock climbing spot (hey ! no one told us that mekedaatu is good for rock-climbing, else we would have carried the gear).And not to forget the monkeys around. We did want to take a self-time photo shoot, but that to the monkey scare...no one wanted to keep the camera on a self-timer and take the risk of providing an east target for the ever-ready monkey squad !

After the view of nature's beauty and the photo shoot...we started the way back to Sangama. The Mekedattu to Sangama road is a virtual roller-coaster ride...but, recommendation is if you have enough stamina...trek back to Sangama. It is a good walk..down the slope and along the river bank !

This time for crossing a few more adventurous folks joined the walk across the river. The only two who decided to take the dingy ride across, well some of us made sure..we could spray some water on them when they reached the other end. Hey ! its a democratic country... everyone needs to get drenched with the Sangama water.

We were a tired lot (~3:00 noon IST). A 2 min(s) walk landed us at the Tender Coconut restaurant.A very good lunch was waiting. Under the Shadow clad slight breeze whiff, we had out lunch of chappati, Paneer Butter Masala and Aloo Gobi. Topped it up with Sweet lime soda... ahh ! C'est La viva!

Now we had two options...take a good rest (some could have dozed off !!) and then start or start immediately for the next location...Muthathi. We decided for the latter. En route, after multiple runs we finally finished off OSO. Muthathi was good (would be great during the rainy season). The water had receded and the natural roots of the huge trees were all around us (and off course the monkeys were everywhere). It would be a great place to cook, and have dinner at this place :o) The sunset had just taken place, and the last few rays of sunlight reflected the Muthathi basin.

After the photo shoots, walk down the river bank (some even found time to visit the temple), we decided to pack up..and kick-off the 100 KMs trip back to Bangalore city. The trip back was slow in the internal road... now the local population who had taken cattle stock for a walk were returning back and they walked the length-and-breadth of the road.

Snacks were passed around...and then we discovered that all the Snacks were disappearing in no time !! Where ! Finally, we found a place...where 'someone' was stockpiling the Snacks :-) we found at least 10 packets..hmmm....something was cooking there ;-)

What did we leave out ! It was already dark outside... nothing much to see. What did we leave out !Ahhh ! ha ! It's the time to disco ! Thus started the Dance Masti tune blasting off the shuttle speakers....and all were welcome (some had to be carried to the dance floor !!) to show off the 'moves' ! We learnt a few new moves...

We saw the 'towel-and-cigar-stub move', the 'open-bulb-and-open-tap' move, the 'soap-scrubbing' move and finally the 'boxing' move !!! So much talent and so less time ..... Then we had the singing program..where a few of the folks sang for the team.Kudos !

By that time we had entered the city limits, and started the Appreciation and Thankyou for joining notes (this is a hit !!) for the team.

Finally around, 10:00 pm we were back home. Thus came to a closure the 1-day Trip of Trip to Sangama, Mekedattu and Muthathi. Remembrance... that's what one will refer to many years from now, when One takes a Walk down the memory lane.

The Circle of Life....

It was once said that if one leaves any part of the life chapter pending/not ended,one has to return to the same place to complete the story. Saw that earlier for OSO and now the same for Aaaja Nachle. A night out for some other work, got us a i-Ticket into the Saturday 10:00 pm show of Aaaja Nachle at PVR, Bangalore.

Art in all forms should not be threatened..and the movie integrates art with the need of preserving our fading historic buildings and remembrances, at the cost of the growing Mall's and real estate-eaters !

A lively village girl, who was the heart of the 'Ajanta Theatre' falls for a Uncle Sam's guy and flew off to US. With the village motivation disappearing into thin air and also the village Chaudhary (self proclaimed leaders) making hay of the same...the Anatja Theatre takes its toll ! The message for free thought and to follow one's will is send out as....


jo baat dil se nikal ke aata hai...usse kaala (art) kahte hai,
jo baat dil me he rehe jati hai..woh kala (black) hota hai !


The Ajanta theatre is marked for destruction to give way to a shopping mall. A Shopping mall in a Village ! Then the circle of life comes to the rescue...Diya (Madhuri) returns from USA (had broken off from Uncle Sam's sample) to lead the crusade to preserve the Ajanta Theatre (cultural heritage of the village).


A strange deal is struck... rekindle the love of art in the silent village (where whispers were heard of Diya's escapade and her character) and perform a 'Laila-Majnu' dance show in the Ajanta Theatre.. but with no out-sourcing. All the performers should be from the village. All this in 2 months... and thus starts the search for the members. ..

In due course, the story unfolds ...the plight of local folks at the hands of real-estate grabbers eyeing any piece of prime land, old flame of love being re-kindled, for a change the police in a non-corrupted role, a village Chaudhary (political) who can changes side at the flip of a coin (well in this case 50 lakhs), a guy trying to recover his marriage, a girl trying to break out from the strict principles/monitoring of her husband and finally a simple village girl(Anokhi) being groomed to be the star of the simply fascinating 'Laila - Majnu' show.

Additional, there is of course the MP, who for a change (from real life) sticks to his words and finally revokes the demolition order ... true to his word. Can you believe that !! Well in return gets Diya's (Madhuri's) US contact number :o)

On the whole a very light hearted and lively movie. Comeback dancing legend, Madhuri still rocks in the dance sequences.

Dheeraj rakho yaaro, Picture abhi baki jai...............