Movies This Week

The Usual Suspects

The plot starts of with a man being murdered. From the conversation that happens just before murder, it appears that the killer is already known to the victim. He dies in a boat which is also the venue of so many other murders on the same night. Only a cripple(Kevin Spacey) and a Hungarian survive. The cripple starts narrating the story to the Customs Special Agent, Kujan, going back by 6 weeks. A group of 5 people gets interrogated in a case involving a missing truck carrying weapons. The cripple narrates how Keaton, Fenster, McManus, Hockney and Verbal (the cripple) - the 5 people then team together and gets involved in the story leading up to the massacre in the boat. Verbal mentions a lawyer named Kobiyashi on his narration, who makes the group to get involved in the task on the boat, on the advice of his boss. Further, the Agent gets to know of a man named Keyser Soze (the boss of Kobiyashi) from the injured Hungarian. Verbal gives the background of Keyser Soze and picturizes him as the ultimate Devil and also tells he is the one who killed Keaton (the first scene). But later he agrees that he saw a man (which he believes to be Keyser Soze) shooting, but he did not actually see Keaton dying. The Agent finds out who is Keyser Soze and convinces Verbal too. Verbal breaks out on finding who is Keyser Soze. Once Verbal leaves the office, the Agent senses something fishy and what gets revealed next is the twist in the tail (tale).

The plus point to the movie is the screen play and the narrating style. Very good performance from Kevin Spacey. The actor who plays the agent, Chazz Palminteri does a wonderful job. Some of the dialogues are very good. One cannot forget this one. "The greatest ever trick that the Devil pulled was convincing the world that he did not exist".

Bheja Fry

This has long been on my movie list; had a chance to see this week. Absolutely no masala stuff! The story is about how a talkative person gets involved in a tussle between a husband and wife. Inspite of his good intentions, he messes up everything. Ranjeet Tadani invites "talent" for his special dinner on every friday and makes mockery. He gets to know of Bharat Bhushan (Vinay Pathak), the talkative character who thinks too high of his singing talents and invites him for his special dinner. But unfortunately he breaks his back and is unable to go to the dinner. In the meantime, Bhushan arrives at Ranjeet's house. Sheetal, wife of Ranjeet leaves giving a message on phone that she will never return. From this point onwards, the story goes about how Ranjeet traces the whereabouts of Sheetal with Bhushan making a mess of every move. Further, an ex-girl-friend, ex-friend of Ranjeet, a tax-inspector - friend of Bhushan enters into the story and makes it humorous to the core. The movie even ends with a typical mess-up by Bhushan.

Cheeni Kum

Another movie which was on my list a while ago, but got missed then. The plot is about a 64 year old man and 34 year old lady falling in love with each other. The story does not put forward a good reason for the 34 year old lady to fall in love with the old man. There are a very few occasions in the story where it deals with this complicated 64-34 relationship. Otherwise, it seems to be an ordinary movie where that 64-34 could have easily been replaced by 25-25 or something. There can be many issues, psychological and social, which could have been brought up. But the movie misses out on those and tries to make a single point - there is no age for love, with no sufficient back-up. The Hyderabadi Zaffrani Pulav and the Umbrella sets up the stage and are the main characters in the first half. The "Sexy" little-girl is nice. Her beyond-age comments and remarks are awesome and interesting, especially the "Happy Sad" and the "Sad Sad" dialogues. In some other scenes also, the dialoges stand out. The background score by Ilayaraja is good. In fact, in most part of the movie, he keeps it silent. Lead roles by Amitabh and Tabu.

An Early Morning Auto

This story happened a few years before when I was in Bangalore. I just thought it might be an interesting read and also wanted to record it before it goes into oblivion.

A very ordinary day had been turned into an unforgettable experience because of an auto-driver in Bangalore. I was to catch the Intercity Express train to Salem from the Cantonment Station at 6:35 am. Generally, it takes only 15 minutes for me to walk from home to the station. That was not a very special day - as usual an ordinary Saturday. I estimated the time in the ticket-queue to be 10 min. With all these calculations perfect, I came out of the apartments at 6:10 am. I started walking, just then realised an auto-rickshaw passing by. I just thought I could get some extra 10 minutes if I take the auto and save some energy walking to the station. I called him. He stopped. Generally, the autos charge around Rs 20 in the mornings to go to the station. I stepped in and seated and told him to go to Cantonment railway station. By this time, it was 6:11 am. He replied, "Ek Sow, Ek Sow". "What! One Hundered! Not at all possible. I will give you twenty." After that he did not care about what I told. The auto whirred and sped up on the empty roads, but unfortunately in the direction just opposite to the station.

"Where are you going? Turn right on to this road." - "Ek Sow, Ek Sow"
By this time, I realised that the auto driver was totally on a high. Drunken Driving experience!

"I do not want to go anywhere. Stop! Stop! Now!!" - He did not even cared. The auto started speeding up even a little bit more. He had no idea where he was heading to. In the meantime, another auto started following the one that I was in. He tried to overtake us a couple of times and tried to say something to the driver. From his expressions, I got that he was also trying to stop this guy. No way. My driver was already in heavens. He did not give way; did not listen; but never stopped to release the accelerator. By this time it was already 6:15 and auto was going through the streets of Cox Town.

The auto happened to cross the railway bridge. I just got an idea. I told, "See the railway bridge. Stop here. The station has come". I am not sure whether he listened to me or what went into his mind. But he finally stopped. The other auto which was following us also got close by. The moment it stopped, I jumped out and started running. It was 6:17 am by now. I saw a bus which goes close to the Cantonment railway station (it takes a turn 200 metres ahead of the station towards Shivaji Nagar). I got into the bus. It was 6:18 am. I was looking at the watch every now and then. It reached the bus stop at 6:25 am. From there I started running towards the station. Entered @ 6:29 am. Walked up the stair case, reached the other side of the station, joined the ticket queue at 6:31 am. The train had just entered the platform. The ticket queue appeared to be moving very slow for me. There would have been around 15 passengers waiting ahead of me. I look at the watch, it was 6:33 am, still 10 more were there. It was 6:35 am, the train started leaving, still 4 ahead of me. When I reached the counter at 6:37 am, the platform was empty - the train had already gone. Stop here! For those of you who had thought that I could have made it finally - it is an anti-climax.

I requested the ticket issuer, "One Jolarpet" - Idea changed. I planned to take the Lalbagh Express to Jolarpet and catch the Kovai Express coming from Chennai. It would reach Salem by 11:30 am. Had I originally caught the Intercity Express, I would have been in Salem at 10:20 am.

Got the tickets. Lalbagh Express came to the platform at 6:53 am. Unexpectedly, too much of crowd in the unreserved compartments and even in the reserved ones. I thought why all these hassles, why can't I catch the passenger train to salem at 7:45 am. That probably seemed to be a better deal. Came back to the counter and cancelled the superfast ticket and got an ordinary ticket to salem. By the time, the Lalbagh also left, the platform was almost empty. Spotted a comfortable bench and started reading magazines. That continued till I fell asleep in a few minutes after I boarded the 7:45 train. When the train reached Salem, it was 12:45 am.

When I look back, it is enjoyable and I can laugh at it. But definitely not, when I was in that auto!!

Team Building and SBN

Yesterday, we had a day-long team-building session as a part of our Strategic Business Negotiation course. It started at 7:15 am and went on till 6:30 pm. We had lot of activities in the time in-between. They call it "Experiential Learning". The entire day program was conducted by a team from STEP consulting, Delhi. We were about 175 students separated into 8 teams engaged in various activities at different venues all around the institute. We were 22 in our team. Our team started with rappelling. The task is simple - come down from the top of 3rd floor to the ground using a rope. Some of us had an initial apprehension about the task, but each one of us finally made it to ground. In fact, it was totally safe as it was coordinated and controlled by professional men. Still, you can't do away with the basic instinct - fear! Next task was called "Toxic Waste". It was a team game. There were 4 buckets in an encircled area. One of the buckets contained 15 balls. The objective was to transfer the equal number of balls to all the 3 empty buckets. We were given with a bicycle tyre-tube and a few ropes. The rule was not to touch the balls or buckets with the hand and also not to move the buckets which were initially empty. We figured out a way, though not very much implementable, after a lot of confusion. We managed to transfer 7 balls in one of the buckets and 3 balls in another and spilled 5 balls. We made several attempts. That was the best we could get.

The next one was a blind-folded game. We were given a long rope from which we were asked to make a square. Remember, all of us were blind-folded. Again, it started with lot of commotion, but after a few minutes Arun Moolchandani came forward and guided the way to make a square, though not a perfect one. All of us were giving our own ideas and were also listening to others and accepting the ideas which suited the task at hand. We accomplished the task well ahead of the time given to us. But, we did not use the entire length of the rope. On finishing the square, we were asked "If you are the customer, would you buy this square?" We answered in negative. But given the time constraints, and knowing that the same constraints are with everyone else in the market (read as other teams) that was one of the best that could be possible and customer had no option!

After this was the wonderful activity called "Trust Fall". The task is to fall backwards from a height of about 1 metre. 9 of us would be on ground to catch the person who free falls. I thought this was simple activity, but it was like jumping into the water. We feel very comfortable from a distance, but once we are near to water, we feel really scary. Though I knew that nothing would happen and there were people to catch me, I could not make my free fall elegant. I bent my knees and fell in an awkward position making it difficult for the people to catch. Thank god, nothing happened to any one of us. There is a very good chance of getting hit by the elbow of the person who is falling, if he does not adhere to the rules of the game. The objective of the game is to understand “trust”.

After this, we had carpentry. We were divided into 3 sub teams. Each team was given a set of raw materials consisting of wooden plank, nails, hammer and saw to make a stool out of that. We were also given instruction that we needed to finally sell our product and the customer would buy a stool from one of the teams. We started our task immediately and were able to make a stool in the allotted 30 minutes. After the task, we were stumped with a question, "You know who your customer is. Did you guys ask what kind of stool he actually needs?" Surprisingly, this very basic question did not strike to any of us in the 3 sub teams.

We had a few more games in the afternoon like "pipe-bomb" where we need to transport the bombs (marbles) using bamboo pipes without touching the marbles and dropping them in-between, and "web" where we need to cross through the shapes just about a person to enter, made of ropes tied between two trees. The "Web" was interesting where we lifted persons and passed him or her through to the other side of the web. It required good planning and coordination. In this game, the objective was to pass everyone across the web in the allotted time. But, it was also said, for every member successfully passed through the other side, we scored 10 points and for every member left behind without getting passed through, we scored a -20. Every time, any one touches the rope, the score comes down to -5 and the entire team had to restart. Because of the scoring system, we concentrated on the numbers and missed the objective that everyone had to be passed on to the other side. This was very good example of how certain not-so-important and important things make you miss the focus on the objective.

The next one was an awesome "Valley Crossing". One had to travel via rope between two trees tied at the height of about 3 metres from the ground on one end and about 4 metres from the ground on the other end. The distance between the trees was around 15 meters. The team scored 5 points for every member who did downstream and 10 points for every member who did upstream. As I now believe I have improved my stamina because of regular jogging, I tried the upstream. It was actually easy than what I had initially thought. The thought was based on the stories that a very few people did the upstream in the entire day. Now, I think that either those stories were untrue or the teams did not try to take chances going upstream. In our team, we had a good number of people going upstream.

The final one was an interesting activity, the name of which I forgot now, but we may call it "Lava and Stone". This was played with a huge team of about 40 members, 10 on each side of a square. The objective was that the teams on opposite sides of the square should exchange places. The area inside the square was supposed to be lava and there were a few stones(bricks) inside, only on which a person can step. Further, there was a center stone, on which every person crossing had to necessarily step on. Once a person steps on a brick, the human contact with that brick had to be maintained failing which the brick would disappear. If any one person stepped on the lava or the human contact with the center-brick got missed, the entire process had to be restarted. There was a lot of commotion again initially, also there were fights regarding which team gets on to the process first. Initially one team started, they goofed up, then they wanted to try again, which the other teams refused and another team started again, this time they goofed up. It was a hell lot of fun. Finally, we all managed to accomplish the objective. In the end, a solid support was given by Sreejith (who is also my neighbour in the hostel) who maintained the contact with the center-brick till all of us passed on to other side. He made a triumphant jump to mark the eventful end.

All-in-all, it was a nice Sunday which was well spent.