Hello ???

Ever wondered why we say “Hello?” when we answer the phone? Well, when the telephone was first invented, people became accustomed to ringing a little bell, kept especially for the purpose, and saying “Are you there?” whenever they answered the phone. Tedious, huh? So, once when Alexander Graham Bell was in engrossed in some work, he received a call and he was so impatient that he snatched up the receiver and abruptly said- you guessed it- “Hello?”. And there it is… It seems Bell invented more than the phone; he unknowingly established the beginning of telephone etiquette!!

Stop..

People who are the closest to you have the most capacity to hurt you. This is but obvious and highly scary. So when you are in such a situation when you do get hurt and get hurt repetitively, what do you do? Do nothing and wait for it to go away? Move the person a bit farther away from you so you stop getting hurt so often? The second option sounds more appealing at times since you’re sick of feeling this way, but then again you don’t want those consequences… even though you get the feeling that the person might be taking you for granted. What do you do then? Again wait for it to go away and just ignore it? Show the person how wrong they are by making them realise you might not always be there? Again the second option would sound tempting if it weren’t so damn hard to do and you realise that the other person might be more important to you than you are to them… And you wish it could go back to how it was… Carefree (fine, more carefree than the present), less touchy, with less expectations… wish it would stop feeling vulnerable and stop wanting to lash out, only to realise that you can’t bring yourself to in the first place…

Am I...?

Sometimes, when I least expect it, I get this strange thought.... and when I do I actually have to stop what im doing and ponder it over. It strikes me- I'm here. I'm alive. I'm actually on this earth along with millions of people like myself, going about life's activities. Or am I? Is this even real? Is this maybe the manifestation of someone's dream or imagination? Maybe any minute now that person will wake up and everything we know will vanish in a puff of logic... Which seems pretty much like me saying- What is real and what's not? Then I regain my senses and go about doing whatever it was I stopped, till the next time this notion comes floating back in my head to perturb me again for a while... this... who knows, maybe the reality......?

50 things i learnt from GHAJINI

Well, here I go hammering Ghajini, the so- called blockbuster and cine wonder of Bollywood. I hate hypocrites and plagiarists. For those of you don’t know (you should have figured out this, by now) Ghajini was “heavily inspired” by a movie called Memento by Christopher Nolan (Director of The Dark Night, The Prestige, The Following and Batman Begins…

The best part is that almost all these box office wonders in Bollywood (Life in a Metro, Hum Tum) seek “inspiration” from some Hollywood movies but even fail to acknowledge that. It doesn’t make sense when you already have the script, the story board and everything ready made for you and you even fail to acknowledge the person who went through all the pain and hard work. By the way, Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi (ardent Shah Rukh Khan fan, always will be) was unfairly compared to Ghajini. Yes, both were well acted but Ghajini was a copied concept and one should give credit to RBNDJ for being original.

I am a frequent visitor on IMDb.com and there one can usually find posts like 50 things you learn from Taken, or Fight Club etc. I found those posts hilarious and here are the “50 things I Learnt from Ghajini”

1) After watching Ghajini, go blog about it.

2) Hell yeah, Revenge is Sweet!!

3) Even Aamir Khan can screw up sometimes.

4) “Vishwas”(Confidence) aur “Ghamand” (Vanity)mein farak hota hai!” (These magical words can change your life. [ Dis is the sentence my pappa tells me always ]

5) World has achieved “Utopia”; people no more take advantage of people having problems and short comings. (All his employees remain faithful to him even after his injuries.)

6) If you remake a Hollywood movie, you have to make use of all the possible bollywood clichés.

7) If you see the love of your life for the first time, animated and exotic leaves will start falling on her.

8) If you are the C.E.O of a big MNC, you should always drive in a BMW 7 series car followed by 3 black Mercedes, if you don’t do that, then you are not a real big player in the corporate world.

9) The co-workers of a big CEO if see him outside office, they greet him by the ye olde “Salaam Saab”.

10) CEOs personally make sure that the company’s hoardings are placed at the “Right” spots; marketing guys just have a blast in their offices.

11) Models can fantasize themselves as a heroine in the middle of a traffic jam on a busy street.

12) Models travel in empty railway coaches going to Goa.

13) Models are dumb, if their boy friend shows up at a party with a BMW 7 series car followed by 3 black Mercedes and donates 5 lakh Rupees to charity, she still won’t suspect anything.

14) You can pretend to be anyone’s fiancée and not get caught. (This one requires practice.)

15) If the love of your life dies and you lose your memory, you don’t grieve about it, instead you work out heavily.

16) Pre-requisites to being a good Police Inspectors are good reading skills and ability to read any thing.

17) Police Inspectors are basically hopeless romantics, instead of calling for backup they’d rather prefer to read a suspect’s love story.

18) Tattooing can be painful, use Camlin permanent markers instead.

19) If there’s a name tattooed on you, you would NEVER consider googling it or looking up that person on orkut or facebook.

20) Always carry change with you, conductors were born with the right to say “Chutta nahi hai,chutta do nahi toh peeche waale bus mein se jaao”. (This one is very practical.)

21) If your hair cut is unique, people especially bus conductors remember you.

22) If you can tolerate a girl blabbering 24×7 and can actually find her talking pleasant, then you are in “love”.

23) The most romantic place to propose to a girl has to be BEST bus.

24) A girl, who agrees to marry you, would NEVER ask about your family, your mother or other stuff, cos that would be too “trivial”.

25) Each love story needs to have two songs, one is sung by the guy when the guy tries to woo his woman and the other one, when he realizes he’s glad and lucky to be with her. (Songs can also be sung to make your woman jealous, to show you are sad and at some points, even to dance before the villains before the ultimate climax fight scene and to add more USP to the movie by throwing in an item number).

26) All the possible rich guys falling for middle class women will have to try Pani Puri. (Presence of a song or background music is compulsory).

27) Aamir Khan extensively researched wild animals to understand their wrath and use it in his antics.

28) If thugs go after you in a train, “DON’T EVER PULL THE CHAIN, TO STOP THE TRAIN” (Use of common sense is a cardinal sin), instead offer them a gold chain.

29) Jiah Khan is extremely awesome. Even if she barely has any role or dialogues, she is great eye candy.

30) If you suffer from a short term memory loss, you would still remember your fiancée but forget your manager, co-workers and friends.

31) If you plan to murder someone, make sure you don’t leave the bus tickets behind, finger prints, weapons used are secondary, bus tickets can screw you up big time.

32) The henchmen of the biggest criminal in town don’t believe in fire power or ammunition, sticks and construction instruments are replacing guns.

33) If you are a good Don/Thug/Small time crook, you have the potential to become a successful industrialist.

34) A good don always believes in diversifying, our beloved Ghajini was into trafficking, selling kidneys and pharmaceuticals.

35) Rajnikanth should deserve special thanks in the credits, since half the stunts were inspired by him.

36) If the movie is almost 3 hour long, then you should make it a point to cram in a song, so that it becomes 3 hour long. (Lattoo Lattoo!!)

37) A.R Rehman’s music can make any horrible movie pleasant and a bit watchable.( Also applicable for Yuvvraaj.)

38) No matter how many kicks and punches you get, nothing happens to the Polaroid camera you are carrying with you.

39) Never trust female students who are planning to do a case study on you.

40) Jiah Khan is awesome eye candy. (Did I already mention it?)

41) If you can mimic Aamir Khan’s reaction when he wakes up every morning, you can prevent your younger siblings from entering your room.

42) Gyms and fitness centers should teach Aamir Khan’s Ghajini antics to help people lose weight.

43) If there are thugs looking for you, make sure your cell phone is on silent mode.

44) Aamir Khan’s favorite meal would be maggi, cos it gets prepared in two minutes, he’d remember he cooked it and hence even manage to finish it.

45) Tattoo important phone numbers on your body; you cannot depend on your cell phones these days.

46) If you wanna look cool, fold into half, the sleeves of your half sleeves shirt. (Wonder why Aamir Khan didn’t do the same for his trousers.)

47) Though “inspired” from Memento, you would still remember every movie made by Rajini when you are watching Ghajini.

48) You are allowed to kill as many people as possible if you have short term memory loss.

49) Bullets, grenades, knife, safety pins, rods, hydrogen bomb et al, try everything on a guy suffering from memory loss, he will still survive and seek retribution.

50) Tell people to watch “Memento” and to appreciate originality and creativity.