Rain, rain, go away!

The answer to India's age-old affliction with droughts, is here. It's the Indian cricket team. Everytime they start playing, it rains. They rained out an entire tournament in Colombo. They rained out and lost a match they had half won, against West Indies in KL. Now they are playing the Aussies today and guess what? The covers are out. Divine comedy, I must say, once put it in context of the plot of the movie 'Lagaan'. An team of Indian villagers play cricket 'coz it hasn't rained for four years!

It all comes back, it all comes back.

The Apple Product Cycle

This is hilarious!

Hungry Tide

Amitabha Ghosh's "Hungry Tide" is being made into a film. Suman Mukhopadhyay, the director of "Herbert has taken up the project. Names like Zuleikha Robinson (of The Namesake fame, of course, otherwise who the hell has heard of Zueikha Robinson!), Rahul Bose, Abhishek Bachchan, Prosenjit and Jaya Bhadhuri are being bandied about. Now are these 'expression of interest' by the director in a public forum or actual actors who have been contacted?
Needless to mention, "Hungry Tide" is the one of the best novels to come out Amitabha Ghosh's pen. Set in the Sunderbans, spanning two generations, it is a human document par excellence. It was also probably the start of Ghosh's love affair with the delta, the outcome of which was a tirade against the Sahara group's efforts for a resoert in Sunderbans. Our kudos for the man for raising the issue, although one doesn't know what is the current status of the project. Hopefully, good sense prevailed on the Left Front government or perhaps the Sahara Parivar had other demons to fight.
So we will all wait till Pia comes to Canning. Of course, there will be others with reasons, different.

Which states in India have you been to?

I have been to these ones!




Which states in India have you been to?

Swing bowling

Swing bowling is now a scientific study. NASA scientist Dr Rabindra Mehta explains.

Shundi

Rajkumar Hirani thinks he can change the world by making a movie. Just like John Sculley thought he would change the world by selling PCs. (Well, Sculley changed somewhat). What are we talking about? A movie called Lage Raho Munnabhai.

Which brings us to the latest trend in movie-marketing. The 'cause' movie. Aamir Khan did it to fantastic effect with RDB. The movie as a cause. Sounds wonderfully novel. Big-hearted. Inspirational, really. But tell me really, do you think in these days of cross-promotional marketing, media partnerships and brand integration, is it believeable?

And when the hype is over and the DVD has been launched, the 'cause' is notch on the bed-post of these cause-pimps. In the mid-90s, a popular way to ensure repeat viewing was to add a song and then re-release the movie 6 months after the initial hoopla is over. I guess 'causes' are the new additional songs.

You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things. It's just another way of selling tickets, dammit. And you fell for it.

Wake up

Some people host blogs and then keep quiet about. Others start a blog. And then stop.

A blog is not an end. Make it one of the means to an end. Let it out into the world. Let it grow. Let it get dirty. Let it live.