Random Expressions

Film Review

Sidharth (Salaam Namaste) Anand moves a step ahead in his craft. Tara Rum Pum, while retaining all the gloss and glamour associated with Yash Raj Films, is essentially a human story, narrated in a gracious and genuine way. An absorbing film, Tara Rum Pum keeps the flame of human spirit burning with the warm oil of compassion, concern and candor.

The story revolves around a car race driver (Saif Ali Khan), who meets a severe accident on the tracks. Alongwith the car, his confidence crashes and amongst the debris are his ruined career and the acrid smoke of ruthless cash crunch. His family rallies around him, but he has several lessons yet to learn, and they form the crux of the second half. Of course, keeping in mind Bollywood sensibilities, the story starts right from the beginning where he meets the disciplined and dedicated piano student (Rani Mukerji looking plump yet ravishing in mini-skirts) in a series of - what else? - accidents.

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Jaipur impressed me. While driving on the University Road leading up to Hotel Clarks Amer, it gave a feel of a mid-Eastern city (Dubai or Doha) replete with gigantic grunting construction machines peeping out of neatly-defined very foreign-looking boundaries ( I guess a World Trade Center is getting built there). The smooth wide road dotted with street lights (that actually worked) and lined by steel-and-glass architecture gave a very international feel. For me, Jaipur is an old halt - I have visited it several times, done all the touristy things and even once got my car accidented. But it’s the first time I felt that the city has actually progressed well. Compared to Agra (the other angle in North India’s Golden Triangle), it came off as the bigger, neater and more responsible cousin. However, the drive to Jaipur didn’t offer anything smooth as this portion of the axis is still under construction - perhaps a couple of years down the line, Agra-Jaipur Highway will give stiff competition to the current Delhi-Jaipur one.

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Funny I read actor and former VJ Rahul Khanna’s fabuloulsy written post on encountering a cockroach just at the time when I am these days faced with similar problems - albeit involving a completely different species. Rahul’s tryst with a cockroach is funnily narrated. But my daily face-to-face with lizards hardly tickles my funny bones.

My enemies are not the cockroaches; I can bear them, and they look pretty mild, as compared to the animal that seems to be here, there and everywhere in my house - the lizard. When the mercury soared this month, I had to open the windows and doors; else I’d have died of suffocation and heat. But instead of any cool relief, all I got were these creepy crawly things running over the walls, and sometimes on the floors.

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Uncork the champagnes, play the band, let the fizz flow: Random Expressions enters Technorati Top 100 Most Favorite Blogs list now! Many thanks to every one who made this momentous occasion happen. Given the popularity of TFX program I really doubt that it will retain its position for long, but here is a proof that RE once graced this hallowed portal! The last two days were disheartening since I noticed the threshold limit increase with each passing hour; till yesterday night, I had nearly given up hope of ever getting featured. RE would probably one of those very few non-technical/non-niche blogs that has made it to this list.

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Film Review

If you think you are going for another Khosla Ka Ghosla, keep back the car keys right away. Stay back home and probably watch the Jahnvi Kapoor-Abhishek-Aishwarya drama re-run on television instead of watching the neo-modern-yuppie-multiplex-supposedly-funny (and borrowed plot from a French film - how exotic are they getting in their filching!) but essentially witless film.

Human quibbles are source of good clean harmless laughter don’t we all know how Hrishida drew on them effectively in Khubsoorat and Golmaal, and more recently Dibakar Bannerjee brilliantly utilized the Punju-Delhiite quirks in KKG? But the problem with Sagar Bellary’s debut is that he is not laughing with the idiot , but at the poor soul. And that disturbs. The director is as guilty as the arrogant self-centered tycoon Ranjeet Thadani (Rajat Kapoor) whose gang of friends invite bakras every Friday to secretly make fun at them. Bellary(ok, it s Thadani who mouths the dialogue but I suspect it is the director actually speaking) justifies by saying that it s like in college you give the rose to the ugliest girl on a Rose Day just for the kick. College, yes it’s fine, we all do these silly kiddish things; but business barons indulging in these pranks? Grow up, get a life! And probably, a shrink as well.

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Using a cliched statement, The Great Technorati Favorite Exchange (TFX) Program is going great guns. In the past three days I have seen my overall rank make a quantum jump and since last night it hovers around 40,000. I am also now very close to entering the Top 100 Favorited Blogs - the initial objective of the experiment. I have been favorited by 119 125 131members, which means I need close to 20 14 8 more members to favorite me in order to enter the halo’ed list. (Of course, with many participants the threshold limit has gone up; when I started out it was around 125 but as on date it stands at 138).


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It is six a.m.The sun’s golden streaks hesitantly color the azure sky. The birds softly twitter. The air is midly nippy.Despite the bird’s musical chirrup, there is a deep silence; a silence which doesn’t hurt but balms the frayed and frittered nerves. I haven’t brought any woolens. I wrap the hotel’s white bedsheet, like a shawl, and step into the dawn’s welcoming arms.

I walk out of the gate and move upwards on the road; it carries the sign which displays Trekking/Walking Route in English and Hindi, at the end of which a cemented block will inform that it is a path on which Jawaharlal Nehru (India’s first Prime Minister) walked on. The narrow road is empty and snakes upwards in multifold curves. The fresh air meets resistance from my city-sooted lungs but soon they acclimatize. My nostrils tingle as they greet the sweet smelling blended fragrance of pine and early morning.

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Blogging is no longer ‘just an online diary’ experience. Today it has transformed into a mind-boggling mini-industry with blogs and posts devoted to help you popularize your site, and the best part - gather a huge traffic and on the side earn some money (well, make that lot’s of money, sample - Steve Pavlina’s site on Personal Development - this post here will set you reeling for sure!) There are more, but I will reserve that for a later post. Frankly, after reading all that the web has to offer on blogs/blogging I feel insecurely a novice, and the past three years look wasted, especially since I spent two precious years on the horrendously primitive Rediffblogs service. Even though I say it, I feel some of my finest writings came from that period, and though now I have transferred a vast majority of those posts to this site, I hope new readers will also check them out from the archives!

From the multiple ways of gaining readership, one such means is through Technorati - a social networking site, and almost considered the Mecca for Bloggers! Technorati is a blog search engine, content aggregator, social website and ranking system which attracts a large number of bloggers, and well, let’s be honest - everyone craves for additional readership! Technorati ranking is almost a social prestige, and it isn’t really that difficult to climb in its rating. In the past few weeks, since I started to observe it (though I had become a member in 2005!) I have seen my own rank climb from an obscure 1,00,000 plus to a more respectable 62,826 60922 53,317 50,054 46786 40,090(as on date); considering that there would be at least 71 million blogs out there, it isn’t all that bad!

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Film Review

Crushed under the heavy-weight Guru’s simultaneous release, this small film Anwar - director Manish Jha’s next after the sledgehammer piercing Matrubhoomi - succumbed to an untimely death. Unfortunately, it isn’t the co-release that only weighs down the film. It’s the extraneous flab in the script which thwarts the film’s flight - a whooshing rocket whose steam and fire is wasted on the ground instead of hurtling it into a spiritual and scathing universe. However, the film - based on Priyamvad’s short story “Phagun Ki Ek Upkatha” - has its moments of sensitivity which is far beyond the normal stuff scene in commercial cinema. Plus, it’s relevance to the current turbulent time, when the inter-religion tolerance is hitting a vile nadir, cannot be ignored.

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Bring out the enforcements. Call the protectors. Burn effigies. Damage properties. Take out to the street. How dare the public go about earning their roti, kapda aur Mercedez¹ when our thousand year old yet vulnerable like a kid culture is again under attack? Foreign hand or rather foreign mouth has again swooped over our petite modesty to kiss and ravage, and lo and behold, that too publicly. It’s a different matter that Shilpa Shetty hardly looks like a wronged woman, and certainly not when a several-million-pound win is not at stake.


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Anja Merret gifted me the tag about why I blog. Several times over the past months I thought of re-penning the ideas that have hazily suspended like a vapor but never crystallized into any cohesive post. Of course, I have time and again, especially on blog anniversaries, hinted why I continue to do so, and what exactly is the driving force behind Random Expressions. Here is a comprehensive list of the reasons for being alive on the net:

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One thing that I enormously detest is sychophancy. I simply have no patience or love lost for those self seeking servile flatterers who cozy up to their bosses and make life miserable for others who cannot do so. I convincingly belong to the group that can only look at anger and amusement at such fawning parasites who would probably even go to the extent of writing odes on the mole on the superior’s face.

A sub-class of people in the sycophant category is the one who would show their bosses every small work they do, even if it is just a routine matter, highlighting it, asking permissions and suggestions, and making it sound something special. These are such people that they would even seek permission from the boss to go to the loo and probably dash off a mail to him asking for the technique to do so! Request your advice , suggestion , help or approval are phrases and words generously peppered in such mails, which in all probabilities would be unnecessarily cc’ed to everyone in the department!

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When the overtly abundant but rarely active traffic cops pulled over my car at the busy landmark intersection of St. John’s College, I wondered if, engrossed in the song playing on my stereo, I had jumped the signal. Traffic violations are so rampant in Agra that I have ceased to pay attention to the rules, finding it quite tough to adjust to the more stringent (though not the best) Delhi traffic rules. I saw cars rushing past mine, so I was sure I hadn’t broken any law. If any, I would be following a few extra ones, for example wearing a seat belt, which is not mandatory here, but I still fasten it just to keep the habit alive.

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I am sure any self-respecting medical journal will give you pretty simple, doable and practical answers eat a light dinner, take a small walk, wear loose clothes, count till whatever number you can count till and many more.

But one very important advice they forget is something which I realized recently, and it actually confused me initially: keep your conscience clean and satisfied; because if you do not do so you are bound to pound the poor bed, turning and twisting the night long.

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What is it about the number two that it keeps cropping up in Hindi film titles so regularly? No other number gets such preferential treatment from our Bollywood makers. Sample this:

Do Kaliyan - The first of The Parent Trap remake starred a cherubic Neetu Singh as the adorable twin sisters who re-unite their warring parents. The songs Bache man ke sachhe (Lata Mangeshkar doing an absolutely astonishing childlike lisp act!) and Tumhari nazar kyun khafa ho gayi (Lata Mangeshkar, Mohd. Rafi).

Do Chor - A trite and forgettable seventies film, starring Dharamendra and Tanuja as two petty thieves out to take revenge on some past crime committed by the villain, which I had the mis-chance of viewing one early Sunday morning on Set Max. RD Burman s music held interesting nuggets like Mera chhota sa balamwa (Lata Mangeshkar), Yaari ho gayi yaar se (Latadi sounding suitably tipsy) and Chaahe raho door (Lata Mangeshkar, Kishore Kumar) the latter song’s antaras borrowed by master-chor Bappi Lahiri for a song in First Love Letter!


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