Photo Finish

Film noir

TN Express...

a part of my life ever since the monsoon of '98

On the way out after a good lunch

AllThreeSnaps(c)MyNokia 3110c

Orphaned Samosas

Wondering what a photograph of dozens of ready-to-eat samosas and sweets doing here? Well, they are not just an battalion of samosas, crispy potato chips and delicious sweets served along with tomato sauce; waiting to be had. They mark a rare occurrence in our campus. Generally we have a short break after every 50-minute lecture and a long break after every two such lectures. The first long break is a tea-break; the second one is the longer lunch break. Blame it on the soporific tax law lectures or the early morning physical exercises or the late night solid, liquid diets and movie sessions or just the sheer frustration arising out of the mere act of sitting inside the lecture hall for 50 full minutes -there is a sudden outburst of energy after every 50 minutes; that's when most of us rush out of the lecture rooms and make calls, catch up with friends, curse the bureaucracy, have sun bath in full formal wear outside the building, and prepare ourselves for the next fifty minutes. The energy outburst is of a very high intensity during the first long break when the tea, coffee etc is served. Being the winter hot soups are also being served these days. Most of us just wait for the lecturer to officially conclude and the moment we get that signal from the lecturer, there is a mad rush towards the mess workers who wait outside with the tea-can, soup and biscuits.

I feel it gives most of us a kick to fight and earn something, rather than getting things easily on one's lap. All of us here are aware that there is going to be enough of tea or soup for all of us, still we simulate the environment outside a PDS shop in a small-town, during every tea-break. There is a mad rush towards the tea-can. Imagine a minimum of 100-plus fully grown adults making a campaign for the tea-can and biscuits! Terrific! Here, the strategists have an edge. While many of us run and take positions near the tea-can and try to lay hands on the disposable cups kept on the other side, the masterminds conquer the disposable glasses first. Such a strategic move gives them the wild card entry; they have instant access to the tea-can. Their job is done, they have earned their cup of tea.

Among others who had lost out on the strategy there is a chaos and now the war zone shifts from the tea-can to the array of disposable cups. In the end everyone has the plastic cups in their hands and the real fight for the tea begins. Sometimes due to the commotion, many of our fingers lose the delicate balance of the plastic cup with some steaming tea, and a few others end up with heavy tea stains on their neatly-pressed formal shirts and trousers. "Very sorry yaar...". Coming to the biscuits the ones that vanish the fastest are Bourbon biscuits. I too attack them. Usually the salted biscuits are the leftovers.

So how were these samosas and sweets spared? Well, we had a special guest in our campus that day. He is also one of the persons I too admire. Samosa was in none of our minds. All of us were impressed by the talk the person had given in the audi earlier and were obviously interested in having a small talk or a snap with that special guest in the mess lawns, where the samosa-battalion was tantalisingly waiting. Alas! No one even cared about it. (Did you notice this in the photograph...how carelessly a person walks by the samosa battalion?!) No one even turned towards it.

Sometime early December, 2009. The best-ever captain of the Indian cricket team, M.S.Dhoni, visited our campus. It was an inspiring and a very memorable day.

Director's Cut - 4

Majid Majidi. Children of Heaven. Day 6. December 12, 2009. It was (supposed to be) the final day of NIFF. My excitation level was a little higher. Being the final day of the festival I expected everyone to like the movie and go back home with a happy note - about the whole thing called NIFF. But more than that it was Superstar Rajnikanth's 60th birthday! Even in the promos I had mentioned that COH would start after the screening of highlights from Sivaji - the boss.(Shankar/ 2007/Tamil). COH was about to start at 9:30 PM. I started Rajni birthday celebrations with Sivaji, with the scene where helicopter lands and Rajni stunningly and stylishly comes out as "motta boss". No wonder the applause and whistles lasted for the next ten minutes or so till the movie ended. I still believe that Shankar has truly transformed Rajni to a higher plane in Sivaji, especially as motta boss, and Enthiran (under production) is going to be a trial by fire for the Sivaji team. Having celebrated the birthday it was time to start the final show of the festival week.

COH impressed everyone right from the beginning. The movie is about - just a pair of shoes! I never knew such a gripping and enjoyable movie could be made using this half-line plot! Hats off to the director for also showing various walks of Iran life using this tiny plot. The screenplay also has a few pinches that makes you come to the seat edges. One of them being the sequence where a shoe falls into the stream and the little girl chases it along the stream trying to pick it up. Its a classic! Of course, the climax too. My heart missed beats while watching the climax. We all were sure that the kid is going to come second and win the shoes. He too appeared to be doing that. It was quite a surprise and disappointment to see him win the first prize. It was a kind of anti-climax. Totally unexpected. Now what? Hows he going to get a shoe-pair to his sister? Is he not going to get? Is his father going to know the truth and scold him? Poor boy!

Majidi has given us a great ending. He has written the climax sequencing in quite an absorbing way; he just does not leave us there comfortably, he gives us a twist. Neat job! But that's not the main reason why my heart missed a few beats. Usually I play the movies form the movie files stored in the computer. Only for COH I had to play it directly from the DVD. And you know what, the Computer made the climax much more thrilling and ensured that everyone in the audi had to literally sit at the edges of their seats. Just about 5-6 seconds before the running race is over and everyone fully eager to know who is going to win - the DVD got jammed! We tried hard a few times, it would not move beyond that very same point! Audience were getting restless. I was getting tensed up. One more try; no improvement. We tried opening it using other media players as well, but no change in the script.

The ending could not have got more thrilling.

Thanks to the Computer!

Ultimately, I had a huge relief when we were able to copy the file to the computer and the VLC player was kind enough to show us who won the race and what happened to the pair of shoes! The audience too had a great relief and a feeling of satisfaction; the movie got a warm applause in the end.

Still I had to apologise to the audience (who were very nice) and narrate (!) them how exactly the movie ended. It was a real, thrilling experience. I, and many others, would not forget COH for the years to come. Cheers to Majidi... and that Computer!

Director's Cut - 3

Day 3. 9th Dec 2009. I had made the promos for that night's movie with the tagline "Come and see what it takes to beat Lagaan". No Man's Land. (Danis Tanovic/2001/Bosnian). Some of you would have seen this movie; most of you would have heard about this movie. NML emerged the winner in the Oscars ceremony in 2002 and I vividly remember that day. I was in my final year of engineering. Dozens of us were in the common room watching the live relay from Hollywood. Lagaan had by then created waves all over the world. The simple storyline of David v/s Goliath set wonderfully in the pre-Independence India, with Goliath being the British and rustic Aamir as David had struck chord with everyone. AR Rahman's compositions had also mesmerised all. Lagaan ran for more than 3 hour 30 minutes without any dullness. Great job by Gowarikar. I remember even one of the IIMs had used Lagaan to teach management! No wonder that dozens of us were waiting for India and Aamir to hold the Oscar.

...and the Award goes to No Man's Land! Huge disappointment, then. NML is just the opposite of Lagaan. While Lagaan takes forward a simple plot in a highly entertaining way, NML presents us a grand plot covering global politics, cultural issues, military mindsets, patriotism, media hypes and a few more in a very simple yet a very hard hitting way - that too in just under 100 minutes! At the end of show everyone was left with a deep impact. It was a worthy defeat for Lagaan. Not many of us had seen such a movie before. The talks between the two men in the no man's land made us laugh at a few places but at the same time those dialogs were quite deep. What an end! I had another night of peaceful sleep. Some of the audience personally congratulated me for choosing NML! I plan to watch L'enfer by Danis Tanovic.

Day 4. Downfall.

In the first place I was not sure whether to have The Counterfeiters (Stephen Ruzowitzky/2007/German) or this movie, Downfall, in the itenary. I decided to go ahead with The Counterfeiters. But just a few moments before I clicked "Print" in NIFF_Schedule.docx, I got The Counterfeiters changed to Downfall (Hirschbiegel/2004/Germany). Though a heavy movie, my friends would like to know Hitler's final weeks, I felt. I had seen this movie a few months back.

Being a Friday the audience count had touched thirty! The majority of them were due to the curiosity-factor. Anyway by then at least 25 viewers was the norm.

Though some more editing would have made the movie more riveting, at the end of the show everyone was feeling - heavy and as a part of one of the defining times of the modern world history. Downfall proved yet again that language does not matter...all it mattered was whether a movie is able to "connect" with the audience, and what is "new".

Director's Cut - 2

I consider my contribution to the world of cinema to be - over! I have personally been instrumental in making close to thirty people watch Rashomon. (Akira Kurosawa/1950/Japan). Well I do not say all those thirty saw the movie only because of me; I just meant that I had a huge role there. The past one week has been quite tiring and exciting. Being the Secretary, Film Society here I am supposed to screen 1-2 movies every week. These were typically old Hindi or English movies. And generally only 4-5 viewers (including the person who is in-charge of the audi) turned out for these movies. A show is treated to be Houseful if the audience count touches the magical double-digit figure - ten. Sometimes due to the poor turnout I have even felt very lonely and scared in the Auditorium! Well...the only exception to that till the last week has been Andaz Apna Apna. (Rajkumar Santoshi/1994/Hindi). More than fifteen people had come to watch that rib-tickling comedy by the Khans. I too enjoyed the movie. I almost placed a "HOUSEFUL" board outside the auditorium.

To break the monotony and my loneliness in the Auditorium, I hit upon the idea of screening a few international movies. (International means - Non-English/Indian) It was a huge risk and I felt I was driving away even the regular 4-5 viewers. Anyway I was prepared for it. Even if no one else turns out I was sure at least two viewers would; my close fellows here...captive, guaranteed and helpless audience! A personal gain behind this idea was that over the past one year I had seen most of the movies only in my room, on my HCL desktop. So watching a few of those great movies in a "cinema hall" was not a bad idea. And I have this luxury only till this month-end, when my tenure ends and the new FilmSec would take charge. Things got going and I put up the itinerary for the week-long NIFF ~ NADT International Film Festival 2009.

The lineup was - Pan's Labyrinth (Mexico), Rashomon (Japan), No Man's Land (Bosnia), The Downfall (Germany) and Children of Heaven (Iran). I had also planned to screen Mongol (Mongolia). I had wanted to show only those critically-acclaimed movies that were also interesting enough; not the usual slow-paced, art-movie types. I thought, in that way I would help break the normal mindset that award-winning movies are either too slow or over-the-head.

Here are a few lines from the gmail chat I had with one of my good friends (GF) here...just a few nights before the inaugural show of NIFF.

GF: "if u had 2 do a festival 4 urself thn why waste our money on posters"

GF: "so a mixture is always good"

GF: "wht u r doing is social exclusion of those whose tastes dont conform 2 urs."

Me: "i am sure more than 10 will turn up on one of these days!"

GF: "show mithunda's Gunda... best ever B-grade movie made...it was the biggest hit in kharagpur."

I reduced my audience estimates after that chat. I found some sense in what that sensible GF was saying. I felt only the usual 4-5 would turn up to NIFF too. Being shown on weekdays....will even the usuals come? Question mark.

Day One. Monday. Dec 7th. Pan's Labyrinth. All my assumptions about the kind of cinema people would like to watch - were demolished without a trace, for the good. To my utter surprise quite a few number of people started pouring in and by the time the movie ended the count had touched..hold your breath...t w e n t y! Unbelievable! People were ready to take a few steps to drop in and see..."What's new?". Language was not a serious barrier. All that matters was a novelty factor to begin with, and to sustain the crowd all it takes is a gripping storyline and a beautiful narration. By the end of the show...everyone was thoroughly mesmerised by Ofelia's fairy world and equally disturbed by the evil Captain. Day One was a success! I had a good sleep.

Day Two. Rashomon. It is said that Rashomon made Hollywood stop for a while and turn towards Asia. Being shot in black and white I was not sure if it was a good choice for NIFF. Still I went ahead - just to tell everyone what made Akira - the Master. I also wanted to make sure that my friends had something to say when they had to come across the so-called connoisseurs of world cinema. It worked...more applause for Akira. My job was done. That was my greatest contribution to cineworld yet.

The story will continue...

(PS: On a special directive from that GF, I would like to make it amply clear that GF is not equal to Girl Friend. For this post, GF = Good Friend. This GF's name is Smarak Swain @ Mark Twain)

Director's Cut - 1

It happened at last!! Ever since my Higher Secondary school days I wanted to be a cinema director! Seriously. I am not joking. I don't know from where that dream landed in my brain and heart. But it did. During my earlier school days I wanted to be a Doctor. It is a different, tragic story that the biology classes in our high school days pushed me to opt for the Computer Science group during my higher secondary classes.

September 19-20, 2009. Tanjavur.

I was sitting next to the director of "Kalavani" looking at the monitor! It has been more than a decade since I finished my schooling. It was a great feeling to find myself in the sets of an actual movie shooting. Kind of dream come true.

Beauty in chaos - that is the only line that can truly convey what happens on the sets. You have people running around madly looking for someone/something, assistants desperately trying to get the sets and the props ready, a few men shouting at the top of their voices asking someone to get something to the sets, tea boys shuttling at the location with tea cups/juice bottles, associates trying to explain the situation to the cast/crowd and make them ready for the shoot, huge cables from the generator van coiled around the whole place like hungry pythons, dance masters trying to extract the right moves, the lead artists' vans parked at a distance, a few men permanently hooked on to their cellphones, the curious crowd that sieges the unit, the caterer with his huge tiffin carriers...the list goes on. And at the end of all this repeated over a few months or so - you have a finished movie! That is something truly amazing.

The whole thing hinges on that one person called - Director. Apart from being a highly creative person, a director is also expected to be an extraordinary General Manager. I really don't know how in spite of all the headaches on the sets, one is able to be creative and make others too deliver. Creativity needs relatively calmer mind/environment, as far as I know. For instance let us take the apparently creative task of writing this blog post. Just try writing something or drawing something with a dozen people watching you amidst lots of chatter. It is not going to be an easy task even to write one good paragraph. Just magnify the complexity of the creative task as well the chaos around, say a thousand times, you have a director's job!

The story will continue...

Topper's Tips

It is going to be off my head and heart in a couple of days. I have been pestering my brother, ever since the summer of 2005, to share the ways that made him the most successful candidate as per the results of the IAS Exams that year. He is a voracious reader. After four-plus years...he has become a writer at last. In the process I too have written a lot. Our book "Topper's Tips" will be waiting for you in the stands in another 4-5 days. Unique Publications, Delhi is doing the job of making our tips reach the needy aspirants in the best form at Rs.95. It is a small-sized book with about 100 pages.

Some background: The IAS Exam is considered to be the toughest and the most tiring exam in the country. Though this Exam does not test one's quantitative skills and analytical bent of mind as good as the CAT does, IAS Exam is a nightmare for the sheer volume and variety of the subjects to be mastered; and the unimaginably long duration of the selection cycle that spans over a year with three stages - an objective Prelim, a subjective and unnerving Main and finally topped up by a Personality Test. Well, I can go on about the exams for dozens of more lines. Cutting it short, it becomes very essential for an aspirant to be armed with good guidance to wade this Exam. We felt we could and we need to help here.

Anyone who is even remotely related with this Exams would agree that right guidance, especially from candidates who have cleared the Exam, is not easily available in a systematic way. Rather, there are thousands of "free advices" and "glorious myths" that end up confusing and spoiling the efforts of thousands of genuine candidates every year.

Topper's Tips is an attempt to clear the myths and share our wisdom acquired over a period of about ten years. Yes, ten years. My brother started with the Prelims 2000, I ended it with the Interview 2009. Luckily we both have cleared the Exam. We sincerely hope this book will be much help to many; and sincere candidates can avoid wasting years in reinventing the wheel.

We have tried to keep the language as simple as possible. We have also put in very practical insights. We hope it is going to be useful. If you happen to come across a copy in the coming weeks, please feel free to write to us.Thanks!

Our sincere thanks to all who made this book possible.

Fingers crossed!

Happy Diwali

Happy Diwali! Unlike the last year there are no crackers for the background this time. But the feeling is better now.

(I clicked this Tirunelveli Twilight a few days back with a Nokia E63)

Lions, donkeys and angels

Agreed. I was quite busy with my job as well many other interesting things in life that I found it difficult to maintain my average monthly post rate; But the poor Internet connectivity in our country is the real culprit. Even right now I am not typing this live on pilanipix. I will have to take this in a pen drive and locate a good Internet centre to make this available to you.

Well, my mind is having a words-jam. Words-jam is not like the ones that come in those transparent glass bottles with tight lids and bright labels; it is like the traffic jam. There are thousands of words struggling hard to come out my head at the same time, mainly due to the congestion caused by this delay in my post. The past six weeks have been quite exciting. Before I forget, let me tell you about a sarcastic yet heavy statement I came across today -"Bureaucracy is a donkey manufacturing factory". Well, I could not get any meaning out of it until that gentleman gave the addendum, "It catches lions and creates donkeys out of them". It is in reference to the tough civil service exams that tries to get the best talent available to the manage our country's administration. And how over a period of time we fail to make the best use of this talented human resources, and end up turning these smart fellows into mediocre officials who close their eyes before opening their pens.

I too was supposed to be a lion when I was caught by the civil services exam two years back. It is a different matter that I am not sure whether they caught what they wanted. But, I am sure I have not yet been turned into a donkey!

I am happy to have come across a few who still remain fearless lions even after dozens of years of service. I interacted with some of them today; I felt proud to have been caught. This moment I feel like retyping my earlier post; exactly the same way I typed it a year back. There are a few good civil servants scattered here and there; And these are the ones who keep the system in tact without any implosion or explosion. As one of my bosses said, these are like the angels sent by God in very small numbers - but to the right places, at the right time. I shudder to think of a situation where such self-driven and self-motivated people are absent from the system. With such people around there is enough inspiration!

(October 14th, 2009)

Back to Office

After a gap of about, exactly four full years I will be back at an office. Though it is just as a trainee for two months, the mere fact that I will have an office, a boss, timings, canteen, probably some place to park myself etc after a huge gap makes me somewhat thrilled. Also nostalgic. I was serving my notice period this day, four years back.

Tata for now... I got a train to jump into.

You know you are an Officer when....

Just one more to go... The last paper of the Departmental Exam is slated for tomorrow. The Departmental Exams are like the semester exams in colleges. These are a part of the larger bureaucratic formality, apparently designed to ensure that Probationers turn out into full-fledged Officers by the end of their intensive training (If we allow repetition of letters, "intensive" and "insensitive" are anagrams). There are three semesters and two Departmentals here.

From my point of view there is much, much more to these Exams - the foremost of them being the time one gets for oneself. This because unlike the normal days - on an Exam day you are inside a closed, classroom only for three hours at max. On other days it is about seven hours spread over nine hours and the day begins at 6 AM, with the compulsory morning PT. Thus one is choked during the normal days. Exams give me a great relief from all these. Added to this is the special bonus called the preparatory leave, for about a week before the Exams. It is exciting!

Above all the best part of the Exams is that they give me the compelling reason to watch good movies frequently. On the usual days, I am sapped by the end of the long lectures and I don't really feel like sitting in front of the system. But these days we are supposed to have been working very hard for the Exams and that means we need to take good breaks and that means watching movies often without any kind of guilt or discomfort. Also my group-study unit members never say "No" when it comes to opening any .avi or .dat file!

Over the past one week of Exams we have seen some of the best movies I have seen ever... It started with The Virgin Spring (Sweden/Bergman/1960), Mongol (Mongolia/Bordov/2007), The Counterfeiters (Germany/Ruzowitzky/2007), Pan's Labyrinth (Mexico/Toro/2006) and stands with The Downfall (Germany/Hirschbiegel/2004) that we watched last night. It is difficult to single out the best one out of these...however if compelled I would go for Mongol...er...also The Downfall. Mongol traces the life of the most famous person from Mongolia - Ghengis Khan. In addition to the authenticity one can feel in this movie, the back ground score also needs a special mention. It captivates you.

Another "cute" part of the Departmental Exams is that one is offered water, snacks and cups of tea at one's seat itself. During the normal class days the snacks and tea cans are kept outside the classrooms and the whole area regularly reminds me of the ration store where I had fought out for a few litres of blue kerosene many years back. (Just imagine...160 officer trainees v/s 2 tea cans and a few biscuit packets!)But being the Exam time, nobody expects us to simulate a PDS shop situation. Also, being "Officers" it is understood that we can not survive without a cup of tea for more than two hours at a stretch. So...this seat-delivery of tea and biscuits! Good idea!

After seeing the winning side in movies like Saving Private Ryan or say The Pianist, it is quite chilling to see the losing side in The Downfall. Not just the story of the losing side (that we have seen in the Vietnam War movies like The Full Metal Jacket or The Deer Hunter), but that of the last few weeks of the downfall of the greatest modern times dictator; Of the pain of a man whose great vision is shattered; Of the unmanageable shock of a leader as he sees his men betraying him; And of a family and group of die-hard loyals who actually kill themselves as a tribute to Fuhrer. The scene where a mother poisons all her children one after the other in their sleep is sure to bring tears even to the rocks. Bruno Ganz has lived as Adolf Hitler in this movie. Sometimes, he even makes us pity that beast called Hitler. Hats off boss!

Coming to the tea...I just think of those exams of school days, especially my Higher Secondary Exam. I would rate that as the toughest Exam I have ever taken, for the sheer amount of pressure and the stakes involved. But even during those exams, there was no seat-delivery of tea...forget seat-delivery there was not even a tea can anywhere in that vicinity. All one could do was to take a quick walk outside and have a glass of water kept from a huge stainless steel drum in the corridor.

I am an Officer now!

(To know more click here...)

Lazy Photos

(Window View)

There were days. many years back, when I used to roam around with my bulky Cosina manual SLR camera. That camera used to fill almost half of my briefcase. Today, after a 2-year relation with a Sony 5.1 mp digital camera, I am tied up with a Nokia 3110. Though I take this one wherever I go, it is not for for good snaps; it is just to use the mobile. I no longer "look" for good frames. I also miss those moments of enjoyable, anxious waits in the photo studio...for the negatives to be turned into photographs. Those moments of wait really used to race my heart. I used to remember almost all the 34 or so frames I had clicked, and eagerly waited to see how they have shaped up on print. The moment I see the studio boy bringing the photos (they are generally a slightly wet at this point of time), I literally used to pounce on him. It gave one a kind of high to see the snaps on print for the first time. It is no longer today.

(First Rain)

Of course no one asked me to throw away that manual SLR and get settled for mobile camera. Probably I have lost much interest in photography. Or another angle to it is - I am getting lazier with age. The latter is more realistic.

(Lazy)

For example, the snap above was clicked while I was trying hard to catch up some sleep. But people who do not know this story behind the snap might think that I have worked really hard to fix the frame, conceptualise such an innovative angle, and the snap too has come out as impressively as planned. Only you and I know that this is a lazy photo.

(Wet Rickshaw)

The Golden Carpet (below) was taken by my Sony before we broke up. I was quite satisfied about this taken in the corridor outside my room, but had it been a few years back - I would have surely enjoyed those anxious moments in the photo studio.

I don't know what I did...

It was about seven monsoons back I had my first brush with the subject called book keeping and accountancy. (For the removal of any doubts - seven monsoons back means in the month of August of the year 2002) It was called as Managerial Accounting that time. It involved a lots of intimidating terms like provision for doubtful debts, appropriation account, sundry creditors, etc...and the most frightening of them all, the two words that always bagged the prize for the best couple - debit & credit! For some peculiar reasons known only to a select few called the Chartered Accountants, Debit&Credit were always together like Siamese Twins. The subject also involved rampant use of the small, black gadget called the calculator; one got to fill many A4 sheets with lots of numbers partitioned by numerous lines - horizontal and vertical. The final thing that you created was called the Balance sheet or Consignment account or Joint Venture account, based on what was asked in the question. But my answer did not vary much between the questions. Only the heading changed. The marks I got also did not vary much. Only the denominator kept changing! And it does not end there, one is also supposed to draw a horizontal line at the bottom and generate a mosaic of words and numbers under the title - Working Notes.

Coming to the calculator...during those four years that preceded that monsoon seven years back (!!hold on..hold on.. I just meant during my engineering days that preceded my MBA days), I had used my calculator quite extensively. In fact to unimaginable levels. Those people in my college did not believe in words, they spoke the language of numbers - and only numbers. As such I did not have any problems with that, but the real issue was they also expected me to speak the same language. Even in a paper called General Biology, that we did in our first year, there were numerical problems! Well.. not only numbers, usually all the papers also had some very bizarre symbols like.. d, a f, g, s, D, F, y etc.

I was equally scared of these symbols. Especially the last one. It reminded me of Trishul - the Hindu mythological weapon of Lord Shiva and many local deities. It represented the omnipotent, unbridled force that would destroy any evil. But I was using these symbols on a day-to-day basis. I was scared. Naturally. But my calculator was not afraid of any symbol - it had all these symbols and much more. The calculator was called Casio V.P.A.M fx-100s.

But the calculator needed for Book keeping and accounting is like our dhobhi's puny donkey. It has just the 10 digits, keys for the four basic mathematical operations, and the essentials like "=", MR, % etc. But it is expected to do carry loads and loads of clothes that ranged from rags to rich shirts. For instance it is supposed to find out out the right entry for the Stock valued at Rs.8,700 that was destroyed by fire on 25.03.2007, but for which the insurance company admitted a claim of Rs.5,800 only, that too in the next year. Poor donkey! About the dhobhi.. the lesser said, the better!

We are having a small test of accountancy and book-keeping tomorrow.. and I really don't know what I did many monsoons back...

College Days

My computer's screen has been staring at me for the past couple of minutes. I too was staring at it. I am supposed to type out something. Type out - not just because it has been about 20 days since I updated my blog, but also because I have come across so many things to share with you. One of them is about doctors, other one is about the Indian summers, the need to have a Friend-Philosopher-Guide also featured in my topic list and movies too found a place, naturally.

Also I have been writing lots of other stuff in the mean time and I was not able to find time to scribble down on these hotspots in my mind.

"Happy Days". (Telugu/2007/Sekhar Kammula) One of my close friends gave me this when my train stopped at the Vijayawada Junction for a few minutes, many weeks back. I took out time for this movie only a couple of days back. To tell you in one line, this movie is a must-watch. The film traces the lives of a bunch of friends from the day they enter the gates of an engineering college to their farewell day. Nothing more; Nothing less; And there lies the speciality of the movie. Generally college-type movies try to solve something - a love problem, a friendship problem, a student-teacher relation problem etc - by killing a character or by loads of lecture by someone or by gallons of tears. Say, the film "Kallori" (College. Tamil/2007/Balaji Sakthivel) tries to cinematically trace back the incidents that happened before the grossly unfortunate incident of burning of a college bus, in Tamil Nadu, many years back. It had followed the popular mode of developing a story from news articles. But HD stands out here. HD just shows what happens in those four years in the campus - No problems, No solutions; Just four years.

No one marries anyone in the end; No one kills anyone in the end; A few take up jobs; A few others leave for the US; A few remain undecided.

This sense of incompleteness makes this a complete movie. This imbalance in the end makes the movie a perfectly balanced one. This sense of void gives.. I hope you got the message by now, right? Songs are wonderful. The lead lady looks great; (incidentally she featured in Kallori also!) the lead man also looks smart like Boys-fame Siddarth's close clone. And above all....this is the first movie I get to watch, after many months, that does not have even a single murder or a gun shot!

I too had a happy day :)

(PS: Just now I found out that Happy Days was released about 2 months before Kallori!)

Rains....

The dry mess

Rain falls -

the postbox bleeds.

(The monsoon is back after a dangerous game of hide and seek. My Nokia clicked this snap with its 1.3 megapix camera, on my way to Sunday morning masala dosa.)

Freeze!

FADE IN: INT. GRUBBY HOTEL CORRIDOR - DAY (DIMLY LIT)

A woman's face BACKS INTO SHOT, her head resting against grimy wallpaper. She is tense, sweaty, wide-eyed with concentration. This is CLARICE STARLING - mid-20's, trim, very pretty. She wears Kevlar body armor over a navy windbreaker, khaki pants. Her thick hair is piled under a navy baseball cap. A revolver, clutched in her right hand, hovers by her ear. She raises a speedloader, in her left hand, locks it into her cylinder, twists and reloads.

CLOSE ON a guest room door, with a small, wired pack attached to its knob. Suddenly, with a sharp CRACK!, the knob explodes, and the door bursts open.

WITH CLARICE - MOVING SHOT - as she runs around a corner, through a cloud of smoke. She shoulders aside the shattered door and rushes inside, gun at the ready in both hands...

CUT TO: INT. HOTEL ROOM - DAY. CLARICE'S POV - MOVING - as she first sees, sitting on the edge of a bed - a FEMALE HOSTAGE. Black, late 20's, gagged, hands behind her back. Then, SWIVELLING... she sees a startled MALE SUSPECT - white, mid-20's - standing by a window with a rifle in his hands. He is turning towards her...CLARICE drops into a combat crouch, gun extended, and shouts.

CLARICE

Freeze! FBI!

Replace Clarice with My Name, also make necessary modifications with the descriptors like mid-20s, trim, very pretty, you can probably replace them with late-20s, appears to be trim, strikingly handsome! Hey.. don't worry, I have not yet gone mad! That was the opening sequence (as per the script) of Silence of the Lambs. A mock rescue operation going on in some Police Academy in the US. Tomorrow, we have a mock Income Tax raid here. IT raids - technically called - Search and seizures - are the biggest things that come to one's mind on hearing "IT". What has gone into IT raids here so far is long, and longer hours of lectures, mostly interesting. I can tell you very well that, it is not just about showing one's ID card, saying "We are from the Income Tax Department" and ransacking someone's resisdence. IT raids have much more to them. More updates after tomorrow. Till then..

Freeze! Income Tax!

Something like...

An old pond

A frog jumps in -

the sound of water.

"Well of course if a frog jumps into the water, there's going to be a noise". Is that your reaction to those eleven words and a hyphen? Well, then you simply have no feeling for haiku. Please do not mistake me, I don't say that; It is Akira Kurosawa. At last, after dabbling for a few weeks, I am through with Something like an autobiography by Kurosawa. Rashomon (1950, Jap) comes to most of our minds on hearing the word Kurosawa. Interestingly, in this book Kurosawsa has told his own story starting right from his childhood and ending it with the making of Rashomon. However he continued to make films as late as early nineties. I am not an expert on film making or the history of world cinema, but I have been impressed by Kurosawa's films like Dersu Uzala(1975) and Ran (1985). Needless to mention Rashomon. Andha Naal (1954, Tam, S.Balachander), one of the greatest performances of Sivaji Ganesan ever, follows a similar script as Rashomon. The plot is simple. It is something like the game Chinese whispers that we would have played at some point of time or the other. It is about how a same event takes amusingly different forms when coloured, consciously or unconsciously, by the perceptions and motives of the individuals who report it. (Sorry....I could not make that sentence simpler!! I think I am yet to recover from the hangover of yesterday's Income Tax Act test.) Virumaandi (2004, Tam, Kamal Hassan) also belongs to the same genre of story telling. 

The day just before the shooting was about to start, the three assistant directors Daiei had assigned me came to see me at the inn where I was staying. I wondered what the problem could be. It turned out that they found the script baffling and wanted me to explain it to them. "Please read it again more carefully," I told them. "If you read it diligently, you should be able to understand it because it was written with the intention of being comprehensible." But they wouldn't leave.  "We believe we have read it carefully, and we still don't understand it at all; that's why we want you to explain it to us."

I was horrified as well curious at the same time while reading that para from the book. Horrified - as I imagined myself to be Kurosawa for a moment; Just a day before the shoot and the assistants saying something like that! Curious - to know Kurosawa's explanation for that. Rashomon went on to win many awards including the Oscar for Best foreign language film. The film's recognition the world over was like "pouring water into the sleeping ears of the Japanese film industry."

Some verses from the book that make me smile...

Cheerful on the way there,

Fearful on the way home.

(Lyrics of a song from his directorial debut Sugata Sanshiro, 1942.)

On the mountaintop

water appears

and tumbles down.

(When  I first read it, I was struck with amazement. It was apparently a poem by an amateur, but I felt as if its pure, clear vision and simple, straightforward expression had hit me over the head. My affection for my own poems, which were no more than words lined up and twisted around in different ways, dried up completely. - Kurosawa)

We sing thanks for our teacher's kindness,

We have honored and revered...

.. After the years, met daily as brothers and sisters,

You go on..

..In the gleam of fireflies.

(A few lines from his school graduation day)

Kurosawa talks about a lot of people in his autobiography but film director Yamamoto Kajiro, whom Kurosawa describes as the best teacher of my entire life,  takes away the largest share. The next biggest impact on Kurosawa was probably by his elder brother about whom Kurosawa says ...But I prefer to think of my brother as a negative strip of film that led to my own development as a positive image. 

Specifically, the last few pages where Kurosawa tells us about film-making are worth a dozen reads. Cinema resembles so many other arts. If cinema has very literary characteristics, it also has theatrical qualities, a philosophical side, attributes of painting and sculpture and musical elements. But cinema is, in the final analysis, cinema. - AK

[By the way, this post is by no means a book review. 

It is rather Something like a book review.

And thanks to Anish cheta for gifting me this book]

Status Quo - 2

I plan to write something about "how to handle extreme rumour pressure" very soon. As most of you know I have been in the eye of the Civil Service Exam storm for the past one month or so. For others let me explain what I meant - a national-scale rumour about the CSE results has been doing rounds for the past many weeks. It went to that extent that my colleagues here even wanted to have a photo session with me based on that rumour. Sundar/Rajan has topped this year's CSE. That was the rumour! Over the past few weeks not even a single day passed in my life without at least five people congratulating me for topping the exam. Such people also called me from diverse geographies like Chennai, Delhi etc. Most of them would also add, "Topping IAS exams is in your family genes", referring to my elder brother's feat a few years back. A few of them also concluded that IAS Rank.1 is a family property. And over the past four-five days the number of callers and the people who congratulate me had only increased. Some of them came to me and even said the marks I had (apparently) scored in the Mains and the Interview, with great authority. 

Combined with the speculation about the actual date of the results, my life was quite peculiar. Things reached the zenith today before dying out at about 4 in the evening. But overall I enjoyed the process. It made me learn a lot about people - individuals and groups. I will talk more on this later on a post fully dedicated to rumour - and rumour only. But for a very few people belonging to my inner circle, no one actually knows the adventures I undertook, the dreams I chased - after taking the prelims exam, last year. Looking back I'm quite happy about the way things turned out. But even in that little inner circle many actually expected some truth in that rumour. I'm terribly sorry for them, and really grateful to them for placing such a high level of confidence in my capabilities. Or is it their lack of confidence in the Exam system? I guess it was a blend of both.

I have been laughing away this rumour since the day it reached my ears for the first time. Also from some corner of my mind, Dr.Gopalakrishnan's (ED, Tata Sons) quote always flashed within me. It goes like this - Deserve before you desire. [Something more fundamental to that is - One should want something in the first place. Only after that deserve/desire rule sets in] No no...don't worry, am not trying to be philosophical. I generally believe in cause-effect and usually do not subscribe to destiny/fate etc. Probably had I got the Rank as per rumours I would have started believing in destiny etc. I am happy now. I had full faith in myself and I'm happy that I was able to uphold that faith. I genuinely believed that for the kind of treatment I meted out to the Mains exam this time, even getting the interview call was a great bonus for me; leave alone Topping the exam.  And I would have really got confused with my career, again!

I'm happy that I have not betrayed myself; My belief in myself; 

My belief that I do not deserve anything, as I did not want anything this time.

I'm also happy that no one can be a Topper just by some miracle.

Now, let me resume the Debit/Credit lessons!

Status Quo

Pune, July 2002.

Personal Account: Debit the receiver/Credit the giver

Real Account: Debit what comes in/Credit what goes out

Nominal Account: Debit all expenses or losses/Credit all incomes or gains

Nagpur, May 2009.

Personal Account: Debit the receiver/Credit the giver

Real Account: Debit what comes in/Credit what goes out

Nominal Account: Debit all expenses or losses/Credit all incomes or gains

Well, that is the surface-level summary of my life over the past couple of years. I'm still fighting it out with the Golden rules of accounting, as I did over seven years back. In between, many things like soda ash, Kolkata, geography, psychology, Mussourie, modern Indian history, Lalitpur, many exams, Prasad Studios etc have happened in my life...but the status of "studying/under training" remains unaffected. Unfazed. "I'm sure even after a year you will be getting trained or studying something somewhere", that's what Mayur told me this evening. Mayur is heading the sales function of western India (comprising of 4-5 states) for a leading sports apparel brand. We had shared a room for a year from July, 2002 during my MBA days. After passing out in 2004, over the past five years, he had gained an impressive work experience in sales and marketing with the leading brands like Airtel and Samsung. He has also helped his dad set up an edible oil factory and business. Also, my dear cousin brother who was in Class VIII-IX during my MBA is about to complete his BE degree in a year.

My accountancy book is still open. I have to start studying ledger posting in a while. We have some tests coming up soon. I will also be doing a bit of the Income Tax Act 2008 tomorrow. (Wow!! It is a great way to spend a Sunday... you may also try)

And it does not end there. Similar to children of love, this blog is a blog of frustration. (Here is the link to my opening post). (Almost) Exactly two years ago I founded this blog, unable to do anything else, especially preparing for the then approaching prelims exam. I was impatiently waiting for my first attempt result. 

Cut to two years forward.

I am waiting for my third attempt result. Nothing else has changed drastically. Of course, I have gained a lot of patience over the past two years and am very well able to focus on the job at hand.

Personal Account: Debit the receiver/Credit the giver

Real Account: Debit what comes in/Credit what goes out

Nominal Account: Debit all expenses or losses/Credit all incomes or gains