Ship of Theseus: My thoughts.

On a saturday afternoon, I was aimlessly looking at tweets in the 'lonely' world of Twitter and tried to check what was trending.  To my surprise  #ShipOfTheseus was the trend setter and just to add to that surprise, it wasn't one of those sponsored conversation which promise you those lovely gadgets if you tweet and make it popular!

So when was the last time that people were talking about the movie in social media and not cracking sarcastic jokes on it? Seems like a decade since that has happened! All I saw on twitterland was heaps of praise for the movie and talks about the director's vision.( A rare entity! )

I then did what I do best, Researched ( Googled ) about the movie, read a few reviews, checked trailers, read criticisms and similar stuff on the web. I then decided I think this movie ought to be watched considering the kind of conversations people are having about it. Word of mouth publicity actually working!!

luckily Hyderabad was one of the 5 cities where the producers released the movie, I was so proud to be a hyederabadi! ( False tears). Had booked tickets for an evening show and after facing many obstacles ( not life changing sadly!) boarded the ship!

We were 10 minutes late to the show and I was perpetually swearing at the traffic which was causing all the delay but the only hope for us was those creatively masterpieces of advertisement which come right before the movie and allow audience to settle down, Isn't that the purpose of them anyway?

Talking about the movie, people were watching it with riveting silence even a sneeze by someone in the back row shattered the golden silence. I realized people had taken the those reviews talking about 'life changing movie'  a bit too seriously and were more focused on ensuring they don't miss out on that scene which would make their life better rather than soaking in the movie entirely.

I for that matter sat back and enjoyed the movie with popcorn, and even eating popcorn was a difficult exercise! I thought I was disturbing others by making the sound of chewing popcorn! Such 'informed' audience they were!

Movie did not change my life! However I have to say, it was one of the most thought provoking movies I have ever seen. I was thinking well into midnight about so many sub themes/questions which were raised in the movie, and I felt compelled to do so. 

If you call 'look of the movie' as cinematography then it was pure genius, acting was pure class and direction above all was enthralling to watch! The three stories of Blind photographer, old monk and young stockbroker connect with you at so many levels which is difficult to describe. They ask such amazing questions which make you think for the answer when there isn't any readily available. 

This movie as rightly pointed out by many others is one direction I would love bollywood to go to. Please take some time out and watch this movie, It isn't a movie its an experience worth cherishing. 

Special 26:My thoughts

This is not a review,I don't consider myself competent enough to review a movie.I can definitely share my thoughts.
Here are my thoughts about Special 26 the latest Bollywood flick to hit the theaters.

One thing I really appreciate in a movie is Directorial work, Actors certainly play a pivotal role but if Director does not anchor the ship in the right direction then it is sure to sink as many ships have.

Neeraj Pandey,Director of "A Wednesday"(debut) and "Special 26" had impressed all of us with his debut movie which turned out to be a surprise hit. He has once again done commendable job on his second movie as well. He obviously had to take certain leeway from his usual style,nonetheless he hasn't disappointed.

Special 26 is your Hollywood style heist film with emphasis on rapid screenplay and smart twists in script. I am sure most of you know the theme of the movie, however let me give a gist for the benefit of those who haven't got a chance to google about the movie.

A group of con artists( If you can call them) lead by Ajay(Akshay Kumar) pose as CBI officers and raid corrupt businessmen,politicians and flee with their black money.They are unfazed by police since no one wants to complain regarding stolen black money. CBI gets to know about them and sends one of their best (Manoj bajpayee) to stop them. Movie follows the Cat & Mouse game between Real & Fake CBI.

Positives

• Attention to detail:  I am really impressed with Neeraj Pandey for giving attention to the little details which most bollywood directors tend to miss. For Ex: Since the movie is set in 1897, all the things you see on screen are of that era. I could not find any loophole. In one scene all the cars shown on the road are of that era( could have easily ignored the fact) Production department needs to be lauded for the effort. 
• Brisk Pace: This kind of heist drama needs brisk pace and he has definitely kept the audience on tenterhooks for most part of the movie.
• Acting: Akshay Kumar,Anupam Kher & Manoj Bajpayee definitely steal the show with commendable support by Jimmy Shergill, Divya Dutta and two other actors( You can google the names)

Negatives

• Love story angle: It was definitely not needed, I am sure he had to include it since he dint want only critics to love the movie but also the "Mass" who control the market. It slightly dampens the pace.

Bottom Line

Neeraj Pandey is definitely inspired by Hollywood in right sense, not the usual copy inspired! He has taken a real life incident and crafted a good entertaining movie out of it. You should watch it if you love good quality cinema.  

Confessions of a Talentless Guy!

Yes,I have to admit it to the world, I have hidden this for long time. "I have no specific talent to boast upon".There have been innumerable times when I have had to come up with "on the fly" answers to that demeaning question "What's your talent?" I could no longer keep this with myself since it was becoming a burden too heavy to withstand!

Let me try and explain why I don't have any specific talents, following is my honest attempt at understanding my own predicament,

I remember back in childhood I used to sing occasionaly and there was this person who happens to be a distant relative who did tell my mother to get me classically trained. That's the only person who has ever told me that I did sing good, no one else has ever since! So due to lack of encouragement I had to quit singing which never was my passion( What is?)

Dancing seems to be the second best talent, I never danced in my childhood and to this day I lament on this fact, why din't I? If I had I could have gone places. Believe me I never danced in any of those umpteen number of cultural events our school had! No one, not even a soul asked me to dance,neither did I think about it that much. Now I do dance,but it is more to do with free style which has no specific style at all! However have to say this dance can be so exhilarating, wish someone had told me.

Music: I have one more significant confession to make, there are so many people for whom music means the entire world but I honestly need to tell you it has never caught my imagination. I have never got immersed  into music, I have no clue why! I do listen to music but am not passionate about it. My taste buds in music vary a great deal not sticking to any particular genre. I listen to Bob Dylan,Adele,Amit Trivedi composed and a few hit numbers which you anyway can't miss. I wish I could be as passionate as some people are about music.

Movies/TV Series: This is one thing which comes very close to being my talent, but it does sound weird when I would have to say "Watching Movies" is my talent! I am not a encyclopedia of movies like some people are. I do know a few names in movie industry but I don't keep a track of them. The only reason I love movies and TV series is because they tell a "Story". A story which can inspire me and make me a better person than I am. I love stories but even that isn't my talent since I only love them, I don't do anything with them.

Academics: If my academic scores were plotted on a graph you would get a perfect Zig-Zag image! I was never a topper and believe me I am happy that I wasn't! Why am I happy? Well toppers are people who are most ridiculed among friends, how bad is that! I scraped through many examinations to be called a engineer and also a MBA but academics in totality was never my forte.

I can go on and on about many fields where I don't have any talent but I think it isn't fair on my part to waste your time.

However, If there is one silver lining which my talentless life has taught me, it is this. Every person no matter what he is good at needs a helping soul who can have faith in him or her. It is this helping hand which pushes the talent to the pedestal. There are enormous number of people who have incredible talents but never come out of the shackles, My dream is that one day I can be that soul who would help people to come out and chase their dreams. To do that I need to have the capability first, Hence I need to develop that ,So for now all I can do is Motivate and encourage people to do better in whatever they do.It isn't something tangible but that is the closest I can come to having Talent.

Enigma of Ganesh utsav celebrations!

From childhood I have been seing pandals put up across most of the streets in the "pearl city" with huge idols of Ganesha   (you can find 42 feet ganesh idol in khairatabad pandal which has sort of got the cult status now)  Ganesh visarjan again is a done with huge fanfare, with trucks and lorries overflowing with people and the extremely slow traffic in and around the 'Tank Bund'. You go tot experience it!I believe hyderabad comes close second only to Mumbai in celebrating the ganesh utsav.

Since the mid 90's the number of apartments in Hyderabad has grown exponentially and now you would hardly find a residential house in the main areas of the city. It comes as no surprise that most of the apartments have associations in order to solve the issues pertaining to the apartment or just to cling onto the belief of "togetherness". It is imperative then that these apartments also celebrate ganesh utsav every year by putting up a idol in the premises by collecting money from all the flat owners and tenants.

As of now, I have lived in two apartments in Hyderabad. I stayed in the first one for 18 years and in the other one for 4 months(where I am staying now) I was never perturbed about these celebrations, in fact I enjoyed them in my young age when I used to play games and participate in the pooja.I never questioned the celebrations since I enjoyed most of them.

So six days back in my new apartments few kids came up to our flat and asked for donation for the ganesh festival. At first I was happy that such a celebration could happen and help in new tenants and owners to get to know each other. So with a false sense of participation I gave them 200 rupees and to my surprise they did not accept and demanded minimum 500! So the problem solver in me got awakened and I did which most of us would have done, called the higher authorities, in this case my parents!! The problem got sorted out after heated debates, High and low Tea's and what not! So the ganesh utsav without starting already had made sure that there was more collaboration among the flat residents.

So everyday around 8pm they had celebrations in the basement which I could never be a part of because of office schedule which I was thankful to! So while I was coming back to my home in the night I got to see so many apartments celebrating the festival in its full glory by either playing "Tambola" "Dancing" "Musical chairs" and other equally enthralling games. I just asked myself, Is this right? Wasn't this supposed to be regarding Ganesha and not about playing these petty games??(Q) Pat came the reply from alter ego that it is all right since it is helping people get together,something ganesha would be proud of.

I would have had the same feeling for eternity if not for yesterday's developments. In our apartments they had a arrangement where in flat residents bring some food ( one day one flat resident)  which would then be distributed as the prasad to all others who had come. The celebrations use to continue till midnight with the sound of tambola numbers haunting me in sleep! But yesterday was different.

Yesterday it was the turn of a resident who stays in one of the rooms in the basement along with the watchman( family of the driver of one of the owner's car) The lady with all her enthusiasm had prepared huge chunk of prasad but to her shock 70% of residents did not turn up for the celebrations! What happened to the sense of togetherness? What happened to pleasing the lord ganesha? What happened to playing the greatest game:-Tambola?  Everything was thrown out of the window and unique excuses came into the picture when they were asked why din't they turn up!

All because the food was prepared by a Driver's wife! Then again the same question(Q) popped up in my mind as before, Is this right? Then the enigma was no longer mysterious, I made sense of it. It is never about the god, it is about following a mindless tradition without knowing its very purpose! I am sure there are people who do it in a proper way but most of them do it in the way our apartment does!

Bolo ganesh maharaj ki jai *

* Conditions apply

Book Review: Fountainhead

Well this is my first attempt to review a book and see my guts! I have decided to write about one of the greatest books of all time. "The Fountainhead" by Ayn Rand.

I remember the time when i had first heard about Ayn rand,It was my friend who was reading Atlas shrugged( Do not remember exactly) and he had said that it is difficult to comprehend the Philosophy in her books. I thought it would be interesting to read a mix of Fiction and philosophy.

Few weeks ago i came across the book Fountainhead in my friend's place and borrowed from him.

I check out the number of pages of book before starting any book,when i checked this one it was 680!! I knew it would take long time to finish considering my phenomenal speed in reading!!

First few pages done,I did not know what was happening! I got confused but then i tried to comprehend and then started understanding the difficult style of writing of Rand. Difficult because it is different from the contemporary writers we read nowadays. I had heard from different sources that Fountainhead is about some kind of philosophy called "Objectivism"

In the middle of the book i was in inspired by some characters and the kind of philosophy which was being explained was Timeless! The book was published in 1943 and its been 67 years since and the philosophy seems so relevant to present! The book was so ahead of it times.

It is difficult to comprehend everything at one read,it surely requires careful re reads so as to grasp each and every concept which is so beautifully explained. The book comes alive because of its amazing characters. So i shall try to give a short description of each character.

1] Peter Keating: Very similar to every common individual you see in daily life. Has great interest in painting but his mother forces him to utilize the talent in Architecture.He attends the best institute for architecture and is the best student there but he doesn't have any originality. Because the college itself doesn't encourage originality. Goes to the best Firm for work,makes his way to top by some clever plans which also involves causing a death of a person! He becomes famous but it is short lived. He loves a Girl Catherine but they never marry.

2] Dominique Francon: Very difficult to comprehend her nature. She does not believe in the World'y concepts. She writes a column for a Newspaper "Banner" on Architecture and makes no effort to appreciate her father's work. She criticizes most of the work until she meets Roark and falls in love but their love is the most weird i have ever seen. But the understanding and passion is amazing.

3] Ellsworth toohey: A man who preaches Altruism. He is the representative of good in the society. Encourages Unions to fight for their rights. An architecture critique who's views are very important. A man to whom everyone looks up to. In the starting i was so inspired by this character but then he was too good to believe. He actually is actually after power and wants to rule the world! His explaination of how he goes about this work is very interesting and made me think a lot. How he encourages self sacrifice,selling of your soul. Amazing insight into some real concepts of Altruism.

4] Gail Wynand: Rags to riches story. Started his life as a Hooligan but later becomes a billionaire by building Wnand enterprises which has newspapers,tabloids,newsreels etc Even he is after power and iys termed as a Capitalist who runs the most vulgar Newspaper "Banner". He is inspired by Howard roark and they both become friends. He at the end goes all out to support Roark but ultimately loses out to the pressure. But he does not allow Toohey to take over his paper because he shuts the newspaper itself!!

5] Howard Roark: He is the soul of the book. His ideologies rule the book. His Egotism which is showcased in such a wonderful manner that you can't hate him. You will end up being inspired by this man. He is a brilliant Architect who believes Bulidings have their own life and is a Modernist which the world does not like. Very few individuals like his work and give him commissions. But all his commissions make huge furore in the Architecture world. Toohey keeps on ridiculing his work.Roark and Keating are classmates but not necessarily friends! Roark helps keating in designing his work and keating gets away with all accolades which Roark does not even care for. At the end roark blows up the building he designed because it not being erected as it was designed!! He faces trial in which he defends himself by giving a long speech which is thought provoking. Actually it is difficult to write about Roark!

This might be a amateur's review since i couldn't grasp the entire concept but it is one book which you cannot afford to miss!!

Just to tell you the significance of the book, read the comments on this blog by different people who have read it.

http://www.bennadel.com/blog/359-The-Fountainhead-An-Amazing-Book.htm

Book Review: Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell

In my city Hyderabad there is a market for second hand books which is put up every sunday. For people like me who cannot spend more money this place is a gold mine! You get all the famous books and also a few duplicate stuff. I try not to buy pirated stuff but at times have no other option. I have promised myself that once i start earning i will get the books from real book stores. Most of the times i buy second hand books and Tipping point was one such book.

I bought this book after checking out the cover and reading the brief intro about it. I was not sure whether i would like it or not considering how old the book was(both years and the condition of the book!) After reading it i again gained lot of gyaan!

This book answers some interesting questions,

1] Why certain ideas or behaviors get a spark and become a epidemic whereas others don't?

2] Can we deliberately start social epidemics in a positive sense?

The book explains this by using various examples and experiments performed by social scientists and psychologists.It is a very interesting way of explaining and the author makes sure that you get the point. He basically gives three concepts

-> Law of few:Connectors,Mavens

-> Stickiness factor

-> The power of context

Each and every point has been explained in a detailed manner.

You also get to know why fight against smoking is failing, because we are focusing in the wrong direction. Its a interesting way to look at the smoking problem.

Throughout the book the author says how little factors are responsible for major change and how little effort put in the right direction can get you amazing results. These factors are responsible for the ideas to reach their tipping point.

It is a must read book according to me. You should not miss out such a great book.

"In nonfiction, you have that limitation, that constraint, of telling the truth"

~PeterMathiessen~

Book Review: Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki

For me reading books is a mission, i have promised myself that i am going to read loads and loads of books, Something which i should have done earlier. Its never too late, is it?

I shall try to write down my thoughts on them and what i got to learn from them.

I started reading Non-Fiction books recently and must say they are truly more rewarding than fiction. Though there are exceptions!

I was advised to read this book so that i get to know some basics stuff of finance, I come from a technical background(at least i think i do!) hence have no idea of financial concepts.When i saw the book in the crossword store i was skeptical should it. But then i thought lets take the risk and see what this book with a unusual title is all about. I am happy that i purchased the book since it has taught me very valuable lessons on how to deal with finances.

It is not a investment strategy book like some people call it,it is a book which teaches you, how to manage your finances and become rich. Yes it also tells you different ways to invest but that is not the main goal of the book. It gives some good insights on why people never become rich and why they keep on falling into debts. I understood some concepts which i would like to mention briefly,

-> People think that in order to become rich they need to work harder at their job but they do not realize that the more they earn the more they spend! Rich people spend smartly and middle class people dont.

-> The difference between asset and liability is defined in a simple and easy to understand manner. People generally consider their liabilities as their assets and never spend enough time to accumulate the real assets.

-> The biggest mistake what education is doing is, it is not teaching 'financial literacy' which is of utmost importance. If anyone wants to learn how to become rich he is said to be greedy but we are digging our own grave by falling prey to debt in the forms of loans.

-> In order to come out of rat race you need to be smart and have financial literacy. The book in no way tells you to avoid work infact it tells you to concentrate more on work but also handle your finances intelligently.

The author has explained in a beautiful manner of a story and not one minute will you get bored.

Everyone should read this book especially one's who have no knowledge of finance. Go ahead and get your copy and get all the gyan!