AmreekanDesi

Can you truly recreate a legend? Probably not. But you can certainly try!

Most of my generation grew up listening to that immortal classic Mile Sur Mera Tumhara back in the days of Doordarshan. That song/video will forever remain one of the most amazing memories of my childhood, never failing to give  me the goosebumps.

Zoom TV has gone ahead and tried to recreate the song. Phir Mile Sur, with a lot of new faces and a lot of new settings. It’s beautiful. Nothing that presents India in such amazing glory can not be beautiful.

There’s sportsmen, singers, and Bollywood personalities. Men and women of immense talent doing their thing against spellbinding backdrops. Pretty awesome.

The video opens with a piece by AR Rehman, followed by Big B, with the 26/11 ravaged Taj hotel in the background.

There’s Aamir, (again) shaping the country’s future with little kids. Salman has a touching bit miming out the segment with a group of children. Aishwarya gets her share of lip synching, and of course she has her husband in tow. (Do they ever appear without each other? Is this love, or is it some sort of imprisonment?). The ever improvising Siva Mani drumming away on water.

Here’s a little preview. The full video available here (16 minutes long)

More than 60 of India’s icons have lent their support to this initiative which has taken almost a year to create. It took more than 60 days of on-location shoot, across 15 cities of India, 30 days of post production, 22 of India’s biggest superstars, 18 of India’s best musicians, 13 of India’s best artists and singers, 15 of India’s most renowned icons to create this magnum opus. Each artist speaks of a cause and the video is shot at places which have historical value and significance. [link]

Phir Mile Sur is quite good, but Mile Sur Mera Tumhara [video] remains untouchable. Far beyond the reach of any remake, for its vision and the tremendous impact it had on the nation.

What do you think?

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Check this out…

The story of IIM, told in the space of 5 odd minutes. Pretty niftily done too!

There’s assignments, summer placements, girls (just the one), a temple, divine intervention, and success at last. All elements of a masala movie rolled into a fraction of the time.

Interesting stuff. Here’s another one.

Oh, and yes i am still alive. Regular programming will resume shortly. Rukawat ke liye khed hai!

2009 was a busy year with a lot happening in the  twelve months. The Indian elections, and the Congress’ stunning victory. The BJP’s continued internal drama. The global economic downturn. India’s rise to the top in world cricket, and the continued decline of the national sport (Hockey, in case you didn’t know). 3 Idiots. Big Boss 3.

More significantly, there was the return of the prodigal son to the land of Snake charmers and Elephants. You know who i am talking about. Me.

This blog did well for itself, and continues to be a huge passion for me. I have been able to post rather regularly even though the last month wasn’t that productive. The reader base has grown, and all you wonderful people reading this blog totally rock. I became a member of the DesiPundit community, as well as BlogCritics. Twitter has proved to be an amazing tool and I have got to know some tremendous people via that medium.

2010 holds a lot of promise in personal and professional life.

I would like to see if the time taken for my daily tri-state commute keeps increasing or will it reach a maxima and then drop to saner levels. I would like to see Delhi do well for itself in the Commonwealth games, despite all the attempts by the official agencies to make a complete mess out of the event. I would like to eat more mangoes in a few months come summer. I would like to do a lot more on this blog, including being more regular with posts (and replying to comments). I would like to know for sure whether the world is indeed going to end in 2012, so that i can just get done with that book already.

Meanwhile, here’s wishing you all a wonderful new year. God bless you, and hope all your wishes come true.

The latest Aamir Khan starrer 3 Idiots is being widely acclaimed as one of the best movies of recent times. I managed to catch a show last week, and came back impressed.

Not just impressed. I learnt a lot from the movie. What follows is ten important lessons in life that the movie taught me.

This is not a review. Millions have already been written so i wont go there. If you want a positive review try here, and here. If you want a bad one, check this out, and for a really nasty one, read here.

Ok. So back to the ten lessons i learnt from 3 Idiots.

Ageing can be stopped. There is after all, such a thing as the elixir of life. Obviously Aamir Khan has found it; there’s no way a 44 year old man can look so incredibly young all of a sudden. If only he shared some of that with Madhavan…

Or science has really made immense progress over the past years. They probably stole the face of a college kid and stuck it on Aamir’s.

Those tiny, baby scooters come in handy in medical emergencies. You can drive ahead of an ambulance clearing the way for it to pass, or if an ambulance isn’t available, just use the little bi-wheeler as one. As an added advantage, hospitals will let you drive the scooter right up to the operation theater so it works out quite nicely.

Poverty and illness may be touchy topics, but if tinted in sepia tones they become funny. All you need is a mom cribbing about the family’s pathetic financial condition in black and white, while the paralyzed dad lies in bed, and audiences will roll away in their seats. Some will ROFL, while some others may even ROFLMAO.

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Arpit was going crazy. He hadnt posted in weeks. He spent the entire day thinking about the next post. The outline was ready.

“This will be the best post ever. As soon as i get home…”

He got home at 10. Exhaustion took over and soon he was snoring.

The blog would have to wait.

Author’s note: My first attempt at writing a short story in the space of 55 words; popularly known as 55ers. It’s pretty hard, as i were to realize over the course of composing this one. Hope you like.

My name is Kalpana. A weird incident happened earlier this week as i was going home after getting my hair done. I saw a car burning on the road, and i think there was someone inside.

I have seen a lot in my years on Delhi roads, but nothing comes close to this one. Not even the time when i saw four masked men forcibly push a young girl into their Honda Civic (nice car, but i wouldn’t be caught dead in one. Everybody seems to own one these days), but didn’t raise an alarm since i had to leave for the States that night, and didn’t want any complications.

It had been a long week. The husband had been making preparations for an upcoming business trip. I had been busy with the kids, the social circuit, and all the shaadis. Damn November. I attended 5 weddings Monday night and still ended up missing a couple.

Anyways…yesterday  the hubby had to go to get his UK visa stamped, and picked me up on the way back. As we were traveling on this busy South Delhi road, i noticed this car that had seemed to erupt in flames all of a sudden. I think there was a couple inside the car, and could see them struggling to get out of the car.

I saw the car behind them stop, and the man inside rushed to their rescue. He tried opening the door of the still burning car with little success. Then he started waving others to stop. Why, i wanted to ask him? You don’t care for your life, and want others too to get their hands burnt (awesome pun..eh? I am convent educated, you know) trying to save a stranger.

Besides, no good ever comes out of being a good Samaritan in these modern times. The police will harass you. You will have to make a million court visits. Anyway, nothing can change fate. If they were destined to be saved then they would have been saved. Why should i waste half an hour of my life over a meaningless cause?

Thankfully this car was in the left lane, or traffic would have gotten totally messed up. You know how Delhi traffic is….one car breaks down and the domino effect ripples down to all surrounding areas resulting in long jams. The honking. The cursing. The cutting in and out of traffic. I take utmost care to be a responsible car owner – my driver has strict instructions not to use the horn more than fifty times in an hour.

Back to the burning car. As we were passing the car, i noticed Mr Braveheart managed to pull the husband out of the car and was trying to help the woman. He didn’t seem to be getting anywhere, but only getting severely burnt himself. Meanwhile nobody else bothered to stop, though traffic had considerably slowed down. Who said Delhi doesn’t care? Everybody’s eyes were focused only on that single car. What’s so bad if people were sensible enough not to endanger their own lives and add to the already existing problems.

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Is this what old age and lack of work does to veterans?

But then we also have reigning superstars Amitabh Bachchan and Shahrukh Khan doing ridiculous ads for diverse brands such as Chyawan Prash and Hair Oil.

Maybe it isn’t about lack of work. Maybe it’s all about the Moolah!

Dear Danny Boyle,

We heard that you left India in a rush because you were ‘really, really tired‘. What happened? Did you happen to travel in a Mumbai local train?

We are sure it couldnt be related to the fact that your child stars wanted some more from you. All Azharuddin wanted was a car. And Rubina, an additional $48,000 for an apartment in Bandra. What’s so bad about it?

Its simple. You made a movie about India’s poverty and the movie ended up making some $300mn. These kids should have gotten money but you took them to Hollywood, Disneyland etc, and then told them to go to school. WTF! These kids are stars now. Stars dont go to school.

Why cant Rubina live in a house in Bandra West? The kid calls you Danny Uncle and you really want her to live in Vikhroli? Vikhroli?

Forbes, the magazine famous for compiling lists of the world’s best/most/biggest/richest people/organizations just gave us a new compilation.

The world’s most powerful people.

In compiling our first ranking of the World’s Most Powerful People, we wrestled with these questions–and many more–before deciding to define power by four dimensions. First, do they have influence over lots of other people? Do they control relatively large financial resources compared with their peers? Are they powerful in multiple spheres?

The top choice seems obvious enough. The man who won a Nobel peace prize without really achieving anything concrete; the man who captured the world’s imagination; the president of the United States (and the master of the universe). Barrack Obama. Following him are Chinese premier Hu Jintao and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Four Indians feature on this distinguished list of 67 people, one per 100 million people on the planet. Which means that only 400 million Indians are represented. (The others are poor enough to not matter.)

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh comes in at 36. Dalai Lama is 39.

Soft-spoken Sikh economist won landslide re-election victory despite sharp slowdown, poverty and non-Hindu faith. Credited with transforming India’s quasi-socialist economy into world’s second-fastest-growing. As finance minister (1991-1996), abolished cumbersome “Licence Raj” requirements and opened up India to foreign investors and outsourcing. From the “fences make good neighbors” file: “We all know the epicenter of terrorism in the world today is Pakistan.” Has nuclear arsenal at disposal. [link]

Mukesh Ambani is 44. Lakshmi Mittal is 55. Ratan Tata is 59. French president Sarkozy comes in at a  relatively lowly 56. Funnily enough, there is no Sonia Gandhi in the list. Dawood Ibrahim is. As is Osama bin Laden.

It’s very hard to quantify the power that people hold in contemporary world, but this list beats me. How is the president of Brazil more important than the president of France? How is the CEO of Walmart more powerful than these two heads of state? How is the CEO of TelMex more important than the CEO of Walmart? How are the Google founders more powerful than the Pope!?

Is this list a fascinating reflection of changing world dynamics where industrialists, politicians, and drug traffickers hold equal power over the masses? Or is it just a bad attempt at picking the world’s most important people?

Ram Kadam, the mustachioed warrior out to protect Marathi Asmita assaulted Samajwadi Party MLA Abu Azmi while the latter was taking his oath as member of the Maharashtra assembly. The reason was that Azmi refused to pay any heed to the MNS warning to all MLAs to take their oaths in Marathi, and proceeded in Hindi. (Watch Video)

(This same Ram Kadam had been arrested by the police a month ago during the assembly elections for fighting with them. Serves us right for electing goons into our assemblies.)

Later, four of the 13 MNS MLAs including Kadam were suspended from the assembly for four years, a move that critics say should have been stricter in the form of an expulsion. Now essentially their constituencies are going to be unrepresented for four years. Even after the suspension these people remain unrepentant and look at themselves are heroes out to protect their Maratha motherland.

Now people are holding Raj Thackeray responsible for all the nationalistic chauvinism being propagated by his party. I get the feeling that Raj Thackeray is merely showing us a mirror.

Raj Thackeray is in a sense a projection of India’s worst case scenario. Of an India gone all wrong in narrow minded regional glory. Of an India divided by language, religion, region, caste, gender, and what have you.

Raj Thackeray is in a sense a projection of India’s worst case scenario.

Raj Thackeray isn’t the only one who thinks the way he does. Obviously he has support from the people, or he wouldn’t get their votes into the assembly. And therein lies the problem. He is merely giving form to a very dangerous form of nationalism. Already, there is the much talked about north south divide, where the people from the southern states aren’t particularly fond of north indians, and the north Indians reciprocate the feeling through typecast terms and expressions. madrasi, anyone? Message boards on news sites provide ample examples of this attitude.

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That’s how it is done.

They pointed a finger at you, and you voluntarily went back to jail, leaving your aging mom to fend for herself. What superlative sacrifice!

This should serve a lesson to the media hounding you, and all those people who said that you should be given strict punishment for the murder you committed some ten years back.

What punishment? I say you should be released from jail immediately. You should be a chapter in law books that teaches people the values of integrity, honesty and self esteem.

I had always heard of the rush associated with the killing of wild animals, aka Hunting. I am happy to inform my dear readers that i have been experiencing the said rush these days thanks to a new found passion.

I have blood on my hands. Well, not right now. Not as i type. Wouldn’t want to stain the keyboard. Anyway, it isn’t even just blood. There’s some other gory stuff as well.

For those of you who have watched (and enjoyed, i daresay) the spectacle of that Discovery show called Man vs Wild where this brave guy catches fish with the bare hands and rips their head off for the protein, i have been doing some bare handed killing myself.

The best part is that the more i kill, the more there seem to be. Its like the akshay patra of Mahabharata, the bowl that was always full of food. Somewhere in China, maybe they fry and eat these beings but i dont think i am quite yet ready to eat a mosquito pakora.

(Swatted one just now as i stopped for a breath in between paras, Obama style. I got the sucker.)

Nothing beats the joy of finding a lonely fat (it’s most likely my blood in there) machchar, and swooping in for the kill like a vulture diving to pick up a rat from the ground. It’s not easy, and the amateurs will likely have a low success rate. It’ll take some practice before you can reach fire and forget levels of surety.

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Dear Times of India,

I was appalled by the cartoon in today’s newspaper. I have long held this paper in high esteem, and somehow it hurts to see such a  distasteful statement.

I know it is fashionable to declare one’s secular credentials. I know that people have coined a term pseudo secularism for this behavior, but still.

Narendra Modi has served three terms as Gujarat chief minister. He has been lauded for the development in the state under his government. He was most recently chosen as The Asian Winner of the FDi Personality of the Year for 2009 by fDi Magazine. He is a well respected figure in his state, and outside.

In a country where the current Prime Minister didn’t even bother to stand for election, and where most other states aren’t doing half as well as Gujarat, why should the man responsible for so much progress be subjected to such ridiculous humor?

This, when your newspaper had no qualms about printing full page advertisements just yesterday remembering the only Indian Prime Minister to ever invoke emergency on the country following an election defeat, and in the wake of whose death thousands of innocent people were slit or burnt alive by her followers?

Are you an Indian settled abroad thinking of coming back to India? Read on.

First the all important question. Why do you want to move to India? Seriously. Think again.  If you are coming back because you think India is this awesome place growing at a rapid pace where you would be able to enjoy all that life (and money) has to offer, then please reconsider your decision.

If you come expecting a thousand watt halogen lamp, the hopeful candle flickering in the wind might come as a disappointment.

NRI City – Greater Noida. “Bringing Singapore to India“

Return to India only if you have a very solid reason that will sustain you through the transition period (and beyond), during which you will crib about everything from the traffic, pollution, corruption, cows, buffaloes, and the silly speed bump outside your house. This reason could be work, family, emotions, a hidden treasure that you left under the tree on that plot near the house, the one that has been taken up by the newest unauthorized temple in town.

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Just came across the Google Doodle contest going on currently. As part of this competition, students in India from Standards 1 to 10 were invited to design a doodle for Google. The winning doodle will be displayed on the Google India homepage all day this Children’s day (14 November).

The theme for the competition is My India and through their designs these kids are supposed to tell us what India means to them. Over 4000 entries were submitted out of which the top 45 have been selected. Now it is open to the public to decide who is the best doodler.

Online voting is open from 21st of October 2009 to 31st of October 2009. Go cast your vote  for your favorite design.

There’s three categories: 1-3rd, 4-6th, and 7-10th standard. Teeny kids if you ask me, but the designs blew my mind. I am no artist  but damn, these kids are good.

Sample some of my favorites. This one is the creation of Vansh from 1st standard. (Yes, that’s some 5 years old!)

Jai Ho

My doodle depicts few of the endless contributions made by India to the world. India has never invaded any country in the past 10,00 years of history and taught the world non-violence and peace by Gandhiji. Aryabhatta invented zero. Ayurveda is the earliest school of medicine. 2600 years ago Sushrutha, father of surgery conducted complicated operations. Pythagorean Theorem was first explained by Budhayana. Chess, snakes and ladders, art of navigation, etc originated in India. I wish that someday with my contributions, I’ll be able to occupy a space in somebody’s doodle as a person who contributed for this lovely country.

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