Jhalak Dhikla Ja

These days my wife is not requesting (in fact ordering ;-)) me to change the TV channel and switch it to saas-bahu serials. She has started watching "Jhalak Dikla Ja", "Dance India Dance", "Mummy Ke Super Star" and "Comedy Circus". Thanks to these reality shows. Now I don't have to watch vamp serials because there is plethora of reality shows which is not only a full time pass but also they can be watched from any episode. I don't have to be aware of the whole history.

When I come back from office, instead of telling me the sad stories of Saas-bahu serials (though I am not at all interested in those bitching stories, I could never acknowledge this fact :-(), my wife now keeps talking about her favorite Celebes dancing on the stage, kids singing with their mothers and three generations dancing together.

These days’ reality shows have become prominent on TV channels than any other show. Whether it is Star, Sony or Zee, all are showing dance, comedy or singing reality shows. Jhalak Dikhla Ja is one among them airing on Sony. Celebrities who are relatively free these days get a chance to dance in this show accompanied by one choreographer. Ram Kapoor, Mohinder Amarnath, Anand Raj Anand, Ugesh Sarkar, Baichung Bhutia and Karan Singh Grover taking on gentleman's stride. At the same time Monika Bedi, Parul Chauhan, Hard Kaur, Shilpa Shukla and Gauhar Khan sets fire on the stage by their thumkas.

Ram Kapoor, a television actor and best known for his role as Jai Walia, is one of the most fun loving people in the Jhalak house. Mohinder Amarnath, a legendary Indian Cricketer, used to dance so well considering his age that Saroj Khan used to say, "Main aap pe fida hun". On the other side, The hot babes Gohar Khan, seems to be Juhi's favourite, has got "marks ka guldasta" many time for her good dance performance. Hard Kaur is proving herself as a great dancer apart from being a good a rap singer.

Participants perform and appeal audience to vote. Everyone says that viewers are the ultimate judges, but when a good performer goes out, judges blame public to be biased. One of them says, "kya ho gaya hai public ko". Don't you know public goes by sentiments? One thing I don't understand, "Public voting ko mante nahi ho, to vote mangte kyon ho". If you don't trust junta, then don't leave it completely on to public. On the contrary, in Jhalak Dikhla Ja, after voting results, last two candidates go in dance off. and again after the performance of the two, judges decide who should go out. In this way, they respect public decision as well.

All in all, Jhalak Dikhla Ja is a good entertaining time pass reality show. Three seasons have already been successfully completed and the fourth one is now on its full pace. Let's see who wins this time..

Eklavya - The Royal Guard..

After Munna Bhai MBBS, Parinitha and Lage Raho Munna Bhai Vidhu Vinod Chopra has come up with another new concept 'Eklavya - The Royal Guard'. Eklavya is a multi starer movie in which Amitabh Bachan has outperformed everyone else by his impeccable acting. Saif Ali Khan (Harsh), Vidya Balan (Rajjo),Voman Irani (King), Sharmila Tagore(queen),Jaikie Shraf(Jyoti, King's brother), Jimi Shergil(Udaya, Jyoti's son) are the other gems of the movie. All of them played their role wonderfully.

Movie doesn't have regular plot where it revolves around Hero and heroine of the movie. It's a story of Eklavya and other characters are knitted around him. Amitabh Bachan has overshadowed evryone by his flawless acting. Over the years Amithabh Bachan has become sailer of the boat.

Best part of this movie is length of the movie. Movie is only for 1Hr 50min. Only acting based movies can't make people glue to the chair for long and Director has taken care this fact very well.

Beauty in real meaning..

It's 7:15PM and raining heavily. Mumbai is famous for its unpredictable rain. Snigdha is still waiting for bus. Next bus to Andheri is at 7:30PM. She waits for the bus at the same bus stop daily. Snigdha is a very simple girl. She doesn't have a fair complexion, but I don't know what attracts me towards her. I think it's because of her pure heart.

I saw her first a few months ago when I was waiting for a bus at the bus stop. I saw her helping an old lady getting into the bus. I thought it might be her aunt. But later came to know that she didn't even know the old lady she was helping to. I was very ebullient by the thought that a little bit of humility is still left in these fast paced Mumbaikars. I approached her to appreciate her efforts for the lady. She first gave me a glance as if I was an idiot, but then she realized I was also a gentle soul..;) From that day onwards I meet her daily at the bus stop and have a chat while traveling back to home.

Snigdha is an average looking girl. Physical beauty doesn't impress me much. It's her inner beauty which really compels me to meet her. I may sound as if I am trying to be too modest, but it's true.. Physical beauty can impress you in short run, but in longer run inner beauty is what matters. When I talk to her for few minutes, my fatigue evaporates and I feel rejuvenated. She listens to me very carefully and corrects me wherever I go wrong. She gives me energy to take up new challenges. She can not hurt anyone..In real meaning, she is a nice person..She is a blend of traditional and modern values. She doesn't hold herself back for the sake of some trite traditions. She doesn't follow them blindly. She uses her wit to judge the situation and then she reacts.

Sometimes I feel she is an angel who knows nothing about malign thoughts, cheating, betrayal.. At times she surprises me when she suggests to me to be careful from this cruel society, where people just wait for a chance to take advantage on you.. I wish her to be the same nice person even in adverse situations...

A trip with our gang..

It was 4:00AM and none of us was feeling sleepy. We were driving from Singapore to Kuantan.. Adi, behind the wheel, was crazy for driving, that's why we decided to drive all the way to Kuantan instead of taking a cheap flight.. Sana, Adi's Girl friend, was busy in capturing every moment of the trip by her tiny-miny, but hi-fi camera.. We were stopping after every mile to capture a scenic view from the road side.. Aman and Swati, a sweet couple and our friends, were posing like budding love birds.. I was in the front seat with magnifying glass scanning through the route map and was acting as a navigator..Through out our trip, we were enjoying songs on the DVD player and by our budding talents in the car..We took a break at Kota Tinggi, a famous water fall on the way to Kuantan. We fuelled our body with some food and started for Kuantan.

We reached Kuantan around 3PM. We had a booking in Hyatt Regency on the beach side. We kept our luggage in sea-facing room and ran towards the restaurant in the hotel, as we were all very hungry. We enjoyed delicious food served to us. Hotel staff was very friendly..While finishing up food, it was already evening..We decided to set bonfire on the beach and play antaksihiri. We did all the preparation for the evening and started our game.. While we were all busy having fun, someone sitting very close to water caught my attention..I excused myself from the group and went a little closer to the person..I was amazed by what I saw.. A very beautiful girl, wearing white dress, was sitting on the beach.. I mustered courage and went little more closer the girl.. Now I was totally flat by her beauty.. She was very beautiful. Pearl shell necklace was adding charm to her charismatic beauty.. Her gleaming eyes were like twinkling starts in the sky. I had never seen an angle. But if angels do exist, it should be like her. I was so impressed by her beauty that I couldn't resist myself going close to her. To start conversation, I asked her name. Hearing my question she gave me a glance as if her parents never christened her. A moment later she replied, "Sheen". I wanted to ask her what she was doing there, but a thought of intruding other's life stopped me from asking this. But later, during our conversation, she told me that she lived nearby. I wanted to live every moment of that evening. Around mid-night she decided to leave with a promise to meet next morning again.. I helplessly said her good bye and was watching her image going away from me. That night I couldn't stop myself thinking about her and admiring her beauty.. She left an impression on my heart. I didn't know what to call it. Was it love at first sight.. But I didn't believe in love at first site. Juggling with the thoughts I slept very late.

Next morning, Aman asked me to get ready to start our journey back to Singapore. But I was peeping out of window from my sea-facing room. My eyes were looking for Sheen.. But there was no trace of that lovely girl. With heavy heart, I got ready to go back. Till this time I haven't told anybody about that girl. During our journey back I was very sad. Everybody kept asking me the reason..When their questions became un-resistible, I told them the whole story of that girl..And inquired if they also had seen her last night. But none of them said yes.. Then I realized that it was my imagination in which I had a nice time..But it was a lovely imagination. I am still looking for girl of my imagination. Sooner or later will find her.. Or who knows I have already found her..

A trip in cab..

Unlike Singapore's normal weather, it was a cool day. Serenity pervaded everywhere. I stay very near to the airport (to welcome everyone, whoever comes to Singapore ;)) I had to go to my friend's place to attend a get-together. After a long wait for the bus I decide d to take a cab. It was not very economical to take a cab to reach the other end of Singapore, but lack of time compelled me to take this costly transport , provided by the government to rob people.

Sitting in the back , I was constantly peeping in the front to check the meter. I was very sure that it was tampered by the cab driver. In the mean time , the driver, who was a Malay-Singaporean, asked me," Are you an Indian?" I proudly said," Yes, I am". He asked me about my profession. He kept asking questions about India and Indian people and I kept replying proudly. Then he started the topic of Bollywood movies. He was a great admirer of Indian movies. I was happy to hear from him that Indian girls are more beautiful than western girls. He sung a few songs for me. He had been watching Hindi movies since he was 15 years of age.

He said if luck permits and there is peace, he would like to take his wife to Kashmir, the valley of love. He started praising Kashmir. He had seen it only in movies. But his description of Kashmir was very captivating . In the mean time I had reached my destination.

I wished him luck for his future trip to Kashmir and got out of the cab.

Now I was only thinking of Kashmir. We have such a wonderful tourist place in India, but because of terrorism no one dares to visit it . Probably this diver's luck would bring peace to the valley. God please help him to fulfill his wish and bring peace to the valley.

False Impression,,

I am a great admirer of Jeffrey Archer. I have read number of novels written by him. 'Not a penny more, not a penny less', 'Kane and Abel', 'Prodigal daughter' and 'False impression' to name a few. In my opinion 'Not a penny more, not a penny less' is one of his finest piece of work. I like this novel so much that I have read it twice. Whole plot of this novel revolves around 4-5 persons who try to take back their money by a person who cheated them all.

Latest novel I have read is 'false Impression'. This is based on a murder of Victoria Wentworth, owner of Van Gogh painting. She is heir of an estate and debt of her father. Her father had taken some loan from Fenston Bank. Father dies leaving all his debt on Victoria. Unable to return money Fenston decides to acquire the Van Gogh painting. But suddenly she is killed. Police starts investigation.

Now several incidents are happening around. Anna, working in Fenston's office in WTC tower was sacked on 11th sept because she had suggested a way to Victoria to save her estate. Anna somehow managed to escape from 9/11 twin tower collapse.

Anna wanted to help Victoria in saving her estate and Van Gogh painting. She decided not to allow Fenston to succeed in his ill will. She had got a Japanese buyer, Nakamura to buy Van Gogh at 50 million dollars. This will pay down her debt and interest. By the time she contacts Victoria, Van Gogh had been dispatched from Wentworth to its destination, Fenston Bank. She some how managed to get hold of it and take it to Japan via her home land where she meets her friend. Hes friend is a good painter. He paints another replica of Van Gogh. Anna was being chased by two stalkers, a police man and an athlete turned to a killer. She manages to escape from all the adversities and returns original Van Gogh in it's owner's hands.

Novel ends with disclosure of the whole mystery of murder of Victoria.

Currently I am reading another novel of Jeffrey Archer, 'First Among Equals'.

We Indians - Aise hi hain hum,,

I was constantly peeping in my monitor like an umpire standing in the cricket ground. One of my colleagues came and asked why I was so late in office on Friday. His words were piercing in my eardrum. With full of frustration I turned around and stared him for a while. After scrutinizing him from top to bottom I replied with heavy voice,"Yaar, I have some work to finish". He informed me that he was going to "Bottles and Chimney", one of the most happening pub in town. To add fuel to the fire he invited me to join him knowing the fact that I would not be able to join him. I wanted to kill that guy, but thought of consequences held me back tightly.

After cursing him I sat back in my chair and tried to resume my work. But one thought was constantly nagging me,"What am I doing at 10:00PM in office on Friday?". It was not the first time I was slogging in office. I was sitting in office to complete my task I had earlier promised to deliver on Monday. But now to cater my manager's request to deliver it on Friday I was sitting all alone in the office like a watchman of old haveli.

I was in that situation because of my not-to-say-no habit. This habit is prevalent among most of the Indians. We Indians are very flexible. We bend ourselves so much that anybody can kick our ass. Jokes apart. We work hard. There is no harm doing that. But hard work should be within office timings. Most of us work hard even after that. Initially when we are unmarried we stay late in office because we have nothing to do back at home. This becomes a habit. After marriage when you try to steel time from old wife (office) for your new wife , problems start here. Boss doesn't approve you going home early (at 7:00PM). He feels you are no longer working hard and not performing all your jobs well. It is all because he has an habit to see you in office in late hours. If boss asks us to finish a job before time, we never say no. Instead we stretch ourself to make it to possible. This is how we people are.;)

Unlike this, in western countries people are very straight forward. They work 9-6 and go home. They enjoy personal life too (I am not sure, but at least leave office on time). If they feel things can't be done in given time, they don't hesitate saying no on the face of their manager.

I was completely lost in thoughts of all this. Suddenly my mobile rang. It was my friend Suresh who was waiting for me to join him for clubbing. Immediately I logged off my PC and left office to enjoy my Friday.

My Imagination : Team meeting..

Let me first explain what team meeting is. Perspectives vary from person to person. For few intellectual people (so called managers) it's the time when he or she can bug others. For rest of the dumb people (like me) it's the time when you should enter in the meeting room with cotton in your ears and keep shaking your head up and down (for your consent with manager).

I have derived few more meaning of our team meeting. Let me share it with you.

1) Team meeting is the place where you can show your creativity by scribbling few lines on the paper. You can call it modern art and ask others to suggest the whole scene. Failing to guess it, you can call them dumb..

2) You can take a nap and revitalise yourself to work for rest of the day.

3) Team meeting is the only place where you can discuss about lunch plan. You can even decide lunch menu for next team lunch or dinner.

4) Make some weird faces when a person sitting beside you is getting scolded by our witted manager. Please don't take it otherwise. You are doing this to ease the situation and reduce the tension. If someone hurts, it's not your problem (anyways you have no malign feelings for anyone).

I guess these many points are enough to excite you to attend team meetings more sincerely. All of you should suggest your manager to have meeting at least once in a day.. Hehehe..

Baa, Bahu aur Baby..


All the TV channels are in the race of TRP. To get high TRP they always try to bring in some new concepts. In other way they pick up some stale dishes from foreign channels and serve it in new wrapper. Indian Idol, Big Boss, KBC to name a few. Fortunately Indian viewers like these so called new ideas. Essentially they are bored of watching same type of daily soaps completely filled with crying Tulsi and Prerna. One thing common in all these daily soaps is a family drama where elders of the family try to sail the boat in thunder storm.

Among all these fighting-with-vamp soaps one serial is airing on star TV 'Baa, Bahu aur Baby'.

'Baa, Bahu aur Baby' is again based on a family. This serial is complete pack of emotions, temperament and real family values. It handles all the obvious reasons that can set fire between devrani-jethani, saas-bahu or bhai-bhai. Instead of showing dark part of these very delicate relationships its director has given it a brighter sheet to cover and gives a new dimension and proves that these relationships can go hand in hand even in todays life.

For details I would suggest you to watch it once and get a feel by yourself. I can only say that it has redefined Hindi television entertainment and gave us a break from 'K'-iller series.

Management Guru..

Mr. Lalu Prasad Yadav, earlier famous for his Jungle Raj among critics, has now become a 'management guru'. Now a days he is busy in giving lectures to management students from Harvard and Wharton management school. He has completely turned around Indian railways and set examples for other departments too. He has surprised many by emerging as one of the top-performing ministers in Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's cabinet.

During initial one year Lalu did not have time to spare for the ministry as he was busy with Assembly election in Bihar. In his absence Railways started performing better. Directly or indirectly he got some credit of it. After loosing election in Bihar Lalu started taking interest in the department. By now Railways had shown some good performance.

We can't ignore Lalu's contribution which really expedites the performance of the department. Prasad's management mantra has been 'If you do not milk the cow fully, it falls sick', which he is practicing while running railways. He achieved this not by downsizing or by increasing fares, but by increasing traffic volume. Goods trains’ journey period was cut short. More goods per wagon in goods trains also improved the efficiency. Freight concessions on the empty return journeys of the goods trains also did their bit. Privatization of some particular operations of the Railways was a further good step. Public-private partnership in several Railways projects has been yet another good step in the right direction.

Management institutes are taking this success story very seriously and adding it as a case study in their curriculum. Lalu refers railways a lifeline of the country. Question arises here on the sustainability of this success.

Even after complete turnaround of Railways people can not forget downfall of Bihar from mineral rich state to the poorest state of our country. Let's hope for the best and hope this growth sustains for long.

Reservation..

Standing in the queue for admission in engineering college I was unsure whether I would get admission in a premier college or not. Reason was almost 50% reservation in all colleges. I was glad that society was concerned for the upliftment of so called discarded people. But this was happening at the cost of growth of other talented guys.

After independence reservation was implemented for the betterment of those people who were discarded in the society. After almost six decades of independence reservation should have been sufficed the basic purpose of it. But that is not the case. Doesn't it signify a failure of reservation? It should have been the case that after 60 years we should be in a position to say that we have done a great job and now we should reduce reservation. And later complete relegation of it. That should have been the success of reservation for our society.

But if you see the graph, you can easily say that it's not very far when we will say that we have 10-20% of reservation for upper class students.

I am not against reservation but it should not be based on caste. If we really want to uplift them we should provide them basic amenities first. There are so may villages in India which don't have primary schools. Support them until they are ready for competition. Once they are ready let them fight with others. I am sure this way they will also feel confident and contribute to our society in better way.

My Experience of Night Safari

It was lovely Friday with drizzling. But unlike any other tech savvy I was not very excited with the thought of "TGIF". I guess most of IT people use this word with their first step in the office on Friday. For those who are still unaware of TGIF, let me explain it. TGIF is "Thanks God it's Friday". Coming back to the point, I was very restless. It was not because of my workload. It was due to a question which always nags me on Friday, " What will I do with 2 holidays??". When I was in confused state of mind (about what to do?) I got an offer from one of my colleagues to join him for night Safari. I thought it would be a nice experience.

We reached the decided place where my colleagues' family was already waiting for us. We joined them and got the ticket from ticket counter and headed towards the animal show. I looked around the place where show was supposed to be performed. My sight got stuck at a very lovely face standing in the middle of stair cased performance place. She was the host of the show. She showed number of animal performances.. Eagle was flying on the whistle. Wild cats were showing high jump. A small animal was putting litter in litter boxes and many more. Everybody was very excited watching those performances. But some other thing grabbed my attention. Yes, it was that lovely girl who was speaking in almost 7-8 languages. After watching the performance (animal’s) we headed to catch a tram to roam around the safari. Tram was moving so slow that you can get down and get on while it's in motion.

We saw so many animals. Few of them were from India, South Africa and many other countries. I was happy watching those animals so closely. It was not the first time I was on a trip to zoo. But thought of watching animals very closely and that to in night was exciting me. Our tour guide was telling us characteristics of animals when we crossed them. Seeing Indian buffalo out there surprised me. This animal was given very less importance in India. Here in Singapore it's enjoying all VIP treatment (of course, in terms of animal). The saying was true,"For everybody there is a place where one gets due importance". Moving further we confronted with the king of jungle (for now king of safari). After that our tour came to an end.

When we were coming out of the safari my sight got stuck at a guy looking like a Tribal. I moved further and stood by him to take a snap with him without even waiting for his consent. I was fond of giving poses for snaps. We took few snaps and moved towards the out gate..

We hired a cab and started back to my lovely house with sweet memories. These sweet memories were not of that girl but of animal performance.

A voyage to hell..

Today I woke up very late. Sun was in full shine. I was late for my work. I jumped out of my bed. But fell down.. what was that.. My lags were tied up with one corner of my bed. That was not my bed. That was an old version of car or might be a chariot. "Hey, what is happening?", I enquired a guy standing beside me..He was dressed with full of jewels.. I felt I was watching some religious TV soap (Ramayana or Mahabharata). I was astonished when I got to know that he was Yamraj ji. My amazed face became pale when he informed me that I was dead and was nothing but a soul left on the earth. I was about to be expatriated to heaven or hell whichever suits me. He showed me my dead body residing near to my bed. All my family members were crying. Few other relatives were trying to console them.

Having attended my own last ceremony I started with Yam. By now we were good friends so I gave him a pet name (yam) too. When we crossed the white cloud sheet in the sky I saw a lady sitting on the reception. Woh, they too have a reception with lovely lady. She asked Yam,"Where will he go (heaven/hell)??". Yam opened a long ledger and started counting my good and bad deeds. He ordered a moustached guy to take me to hell. I had heard that they behaved badly in hell. I protested.. After all my hard work in IT industry I was not supposed to be in hell. But after all my efforts I was sent to my new abode (hell).

I was surprised when I saw a Pepsi vending machine at the entrance of hell. People were moving here and there. Environment looked pretty cool.. I thought if that was hell then what about heaven.. When I moved few yards from the main gate I found a group of middle aged people.. They were all looking gentle men.. I tried to familiarise with the group.. Then I came to know that those people were also gentle souls. And unfortunately they were also software professionals. I used the word "unfortunately" because I had got fed up of this IT field. Once again I was among same kind of people.. Above that they were planning to develop a software for Yamraj ji.. Can you imagine that software in hell !!!!!!!! They had managers and leaders in their team. Only developer was missing there. I filled that post too..

Once again I was in a big mess. Now even after my death I was unable to take a sigh of rest. Again dead lines, work pressure and crib of not completing task on time.. In a status meeting several questions were shot by my manager. Most of them were irrelevant (at least to me)..I felt as if I had theft something and was getting interrogated.. Any how that couldn't budge me as I was used to of all that.. Finally.... appraisal day came. As usual my boss started belittle my efforts. This was too much. I got up and started shouting "I don't want to live in this hell. Let me go.".. I kept on shouting for a minute and everybody was looking at my face. My manager shacked me and asked the reason. Then I realized that I was sitting in a boring meeting and was screaming on my actual boss on the "earth". I wasn't dead.. Woh..

That was a great news.. That day I realised that I was so engrossed in my work that I had absolutely no time for myself. I decided to take out some time daily for myself and spend it with my family and friends. I can tell you from that day onwards I never shouted on my manager and stopped day dreaming.. hehehheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee...

Anything For You Ma'am

The book "Anything for you ma'am - An iitan's love story" is nicely woven love story with its characters. I picked up this book from a book stall on the railway station. I was told that this book is simply a love story (as implies by title too) with a number of twists written by an iitan.

This book seems to be inspired by so many bollywood movies where hero is not bothered a bit about his career just to meet his beloved, sitting far far away from our hero. He hatches a plan of bunking industrial tour and meets his girl friend. To make his plan possible he dodges so may people using his witty tricks. Whenever our chap is about to take a sigh of relief, gets another problem to overcome. On his trip from Pune to Chennai he met with so many coincidences which includes meeting with Shreya's (his girl friend) brother (passed out from IIT Bombay & IIM Bangalore) and his own professor, whom he dodged by bunking industrial tour. This coincidence looks like a rendezvous of two generations of IIT arranged by fate. By the help of these people and so many others he finally meets his beloved.

Having possessed all the positives the story still seems to be an art of fiction. Because all these coincidences can't happen together.

Anyways this book is a good attempt by Tushar Raheja to make it an interesting love story. It will give you a feel that everyone should a love atleast once...