Of Petty things and Leadership

Hey All

Here are a few things that I want to do:

a. Visit Australia, watch the Ashes – Boxing day test match in Melbourne

b. Meet my cricket icons (gods) Mark Waugh, Steve Waugh, Shane Warne, McGrath, touch their feet and seek their blessings

c. Go to Glacier Bay National Park

d. Back Pack most of Europe

e. Visit Rome and the Coliseum

f. Boat ride on the streets of Venice

g. Watch the cricket game between England and Australia at Lords

h. Drive along the Scottish woods

i. Spend some time at Port Hawkesbury in Nova Scotia and experience what it feels to be in the middle of a thunderstorm

j. Get to the Victoria Falls in Africa and take a Safari

k. Make a movie, a comical one

Well, the list is endless. You might want to do a million more things and frantically you realize that there is no means to accomplish what you just put down. In my case, whatever I have listed above is a partial list of things that I would most want to do before I die.

Like mine, everyone of you would have a list and almost everyday one wishes that some of the wish list gets closer to materialization. Most of us would not have the means to overcome the wish list.

As I understand, there is only one reason why we are not in a position to making our wishes come true. We simply do NOT possess enough clarity of thought in whatever we seek. We wanted to become someone in life, but we end up being someone or something else in life. This holds true for 90% of the people we know. The remaining 10% of the people who are set out to achieve what they want to achieve are those who essentially defy the normal logic of leading a life, or rebellious in attitude or unconventional or extremely passionate about their hobbies or necessarily much more determined than normal humans and possess an absolute clarity of thought through seeking objectivity in life or their living.

Most of us are leading a rather compromising life. We want to eat something but we end up not having it for reasons which may not be mentioned. We wanted our choice of career, but we are someone else in the office. I always wanted to be connected with the world of spirits or to narrow down my choice of sport, it has always been cricket. As you can see from my different things I would do before I die, most of it is connected with either travel and tourism or sports. But I ended up going to a rather boring office, with boring people around and not much of excitement between the 9 hours that I spend in my closed room. Although I dreamt about having a job that puts me on a sports desk and makes me travel around the world, I didn’t take the right steps to achieve that goal and now I rue my chances of having lost a decade of experience in ruing about the same.

I am writing this to persuade a section of my readers to pursue their hobbies. How you could do that? Well make your hobby your job but the vice versa of my statement doesn’t hold the purpose. If you have your hobby as your job, there is nothing remorseful about it. One tends to be more than creative about the work or hobby in this case.

Bill Lawry, the famous Australian cricket commentator, was once asked by Ray Martin as to how HE brought about so much life into his JOB. Bill stopped him mid way into the question and corrected Ray telling him that it was NOT his JOB, but it was his HOBBY that he pursues with Channel 9. When you are pursue your hobby, you bring life into whatever you set out to do. You tend to be creative, start looking at positives from every angle…. And a lot of things that make the work place a lot better and people start enjoying it. I totally agree with Bill. I always keep telling people that Tony Grieg, Bill Lawry, Tony Cozier and the forgotten Henry Blofeld are the most liveliest cricket commentators ever to grace the commentary box. Because all that they knew was better english and a better understanding of what their everyday passion and hobby was and that was nothing but cricket. They eat, sleep, drink and talk cricket. That made them commenting icons of the cricket world. I was watching this interview with Bill Lawry in 1997 when a game got canceled because of rain in Brisbane. Bill is so very damn right by all perspective.

Most of us are bogged down by our daily routine and lack of creativity in every walk of life, that our lives have become insanely lifeless. We are nothing but dead men and women walking. All that we can do to overcome this situation is to take a break, get within our skin and seek solace and query our soul as to what we are, what we are capable of and seek what we are set out to do. Seek clarity of thought, seek objectivity of our existence. Pursue our hobbies. Forget everything, every pressure and just QUIT from the daily mockery of our life.

Its rather very easy to say this than making it possible. But its our life and who else but one himself/herself knows the purpose of thier/our life. Afterall we live for ourselves and our life needs a direction of sorts.

Yeah, I am watching a lot of Seinfeld these days and hopefully the script to make one similar Seinfeld ready in Telugu is coming soon. I have the actors ready tho!

I want to pursue my hobbies and making so, I will have control over my time. When I have control over my time, I do things as per my schedule and not anyone else's schedule. The by-product of doing so is going to be means to accomplish my remaining hobbies and that is to Travel the world. If I am able to do that before I turn 50, my purpose of existence has been established.

Cheers mate

Rajesh

PS: By the way, thats me and my Fiance'

Welcome Again

A big hello to everyone, everywhere.

I have taken some time off from blogging, oh well not that I am into blogging every day and every hour. Even my posts that were usually once in a week or two have become once in month. I have every reason for my "slackness". Me and my whole family have been occupied with ceremonies that included my "Upanayanam" and my sister's wedding.

I was a shy person and always eluded myself from the whole relative fraternity right from my days as a kid. I entertained myself in solitude and admiring the nature whenever I visited them in their town. I would quickly venture out using a cycle and sit by a lake for hours before I came back to their place for dinner and some sleep. That way, the kind of impression I generated with them was more like an "obedient son who never spoke a word and always remained silent."

After a long time, we had a whole bandwagon of guests from all corners of the country and people whom I have met before, never met before and all kinds. Our house was filled with guests and a lot of noise made. Since I am in this gathering after a long while, I was enjoying every moment. I was also proud that we were hosting this entire fraternity at our place, entertaining them, taking care of their needs and also enabling subtle comforts. It was a proud moment for all of us (me, my parents and brother). This time I was more social and also inobedient at times, particularly towards the women folk. I didnt like their political agendas and also some section of the women crowd were hitting out at the lesser mortals with their superiority complex. I dont like this kind of an attitude which becomes contageous and makes some sensitive women step away from the gathering. Since it was our first ceremony at home and I didnt like the environment to be corrupted with ill feelings towards one another. If the situation demanded that I raise my voice, I would want to do that. I started off with this feeling. In a nut shell, the brain was pre-meditated to exhibit the other side of me. No sooner I started off with this attitude, it took me no time to make it public. I did it with utmost authority. It surely did have some consequences but I was happy that my attitude was directed at the right audience and the people most worthy of having a pleasant atmosphere were happy with it.

So this attitude of mine was some kind of a revealation to those people who thought I was still a shy and aloof person.

The point I am trying to make is there will always be people who would need constant attention, who always want to be obeyed, who always to stamp their authority, who always want to show their supremacy, who have an air of their elderliness and want to put their foot down on lesser mortals. This happens particularly in family gatherings (families who have a history of being very conservative and persuasive) and more particularly with the women folk. What it does is creates an atmosphere where people get divided into groups and start having their own agenda. The objectivity of hosting and making any ceremony succesful gets corrupted because of these groups, which is unwarranted. Our family wanted a sucvcesful event and by a mile it was a grand success.

Let me tell you the reasons why the event of my sister's wedding was a hit off. I must admire my sister for being very objective right from her childhood. She always knew what she wanted and she would go any mile to get it established with all positivity. At the same time she also has in mind what people around her would be ok with her decisiveness. She has all the freedom to do whatever she wanted, this was bestowed onto her by my parents who never raised any concerns with whatever she tried to do. As a kid she was extremely studious and always minded her busienss, which is to bury herself in books. She always topped the class, school, college and even the entrance exams. She was the one who bagged a rank of 127 with minimal coaching for the engineering entrance. She topped the JNTU with her engineering degree. Achievements of this magnitude always left my parents, not to intervene with her. My cousin put it like this about my sister and I echo the same feeling about her; which is " I sometimes feel belittled by the silent objectivity she shows just by result of her actions. It is rare to see such an individual in this day and age of temptations and faulty tribulations. She is the fruit of your mom & dad’s simplistic lifestyle without much selfishness."

I could not find any better words to express and thats why I chose to copy the feelings from my cousin.

She also chose her partner for life and by all counts we all are very impressed with the groom (hes a sweet guy to be with; although I regret not being able to spend too much time with him, I just wanted to leave the newly-weds alone) and their family. They all are very modest and down to earth people and subtle things made them extremely grateful and enjoy our hosting. More importantly this marriage was a "cross-cultural-conglomeration;" if I am allowed to put it this way. They come from Madurai and they have allowed us total freedom to perform the wedding with utmost focus on our traditions and customs. So we wanted to make it a memorable experience for everyone. Nowadays marriages are just click away. While the technologists boast of this feature, purists like us wanted to contradict it. Most marriages are over in a span of a couple of hours, we are proud that we did it over 48 hours. This was startling to most people. Some put it as, this is simply unaffordable. But all our family got together and erased the misconceptions that are concerned with this event. There was no conservationism when it came to spending for this event while considering where we could economize our means and still create an extravagant feeling.

Like all things end in a good way... the celebrations too slowly started to fade and the normalcy returned to our lives in terms of our daily livelihood and routine errands.

While my parents are away for the reception of my sister and Karthik (our newest member in the family) I wanted to write about this post.

I also have to worry about what my dinner could be in the evening and who would pop in to give us some company. Since my mom is away, we have to do the cooking ourselves....

More later....

Cheers!
Rajesh

A tribute to creativity, A welcome change

Hi All.

There was nothing else to do for me now. I could have slept very early. I tried. A couple of phone calls woke me up from bed. One was from a friend of mine from Canada and the other an office colleague. While I attended the call from Canada as I can hardly afford to not pick calls from the other side of the world, still swearing about the call. I thought I will give a call to my friend from office a little later. I do take calls all the time, but not today. I wanted to sleep very early coz, I have to go to the airport at 2 AM and pick my sister who is coming back from USA after 2 years. So I needed the sleep because the new airport just takes 2 hours to get there.

Once I am up from sleep, I can hardly go back to bed. So its still about 90 minutes for me to start to the airport. I didnt find anything better to do than blog about a stunning movie which I watched recently.

This movie provoked several thoughts within me and most people who think like me. One of the thoughts is:
a. why does it take a westener to make a movie about our country and do a splendid job making it and whats more spectacular is that the movie gets 10 different nominations at the 81st Academy Awards? A movie, that has left most people in the Americans, spell bound and swept the Golden Globes?

b. Are all Indian movie makers creatively DEAD? Braindead, rather?
c. Why do we want to make a controversy out of nothing, just to be noticed and grab attention? Why cant we simply appreciate an artwork, in any form. Not just the movie?
d. Why cant we pay tribute to a foreign national who understands the diversity, the adversity, the cultural dynamics of our nation and can do a fabulous job of putting it up on celluloid?

I tried to find answers for some of the thoughts, I realized that I was not one among the millions who would belong to the 4 groups above. I am simply unfazed by the controversies for I am in total agreement to a fantastic creative work.

I am talking about the movie, "SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE". There is little ecstacy, after you watch it, why it should not be nominated at the Academy OR WHY IT SHOULD NOT HAVE SWEPT GOLDEN GLOBES.

There was a lot of noise which this movie created and I was watching all of it.. I thought there must be something in this movie and I should watch it. Then the golden globes happened, my curiosity increased by leaps and bounds. Then I started swirling for my cousin Ravi, who would have downloaded the movie from some site.. but hes resting in St Louis. Althought I never downloaded any movie off the internet as I believe in admiring the efforts of the crew and the time they took to make a masterpiece. But I could not resist the temptation and then I thought I can make an exception. I will download it and for doing something unethical, I will advocate for this movie and create enough publicity among my friends and ask them watch it in THEATRES ONLY. In this way, I would have covered up my sin of watching it online and also created revenue stream for the producers of this movie by making my friends watch it. Bonus money.

I watched it and a week later, I cannot stop admiring the artifacts in this movie. It raised a few eye brows alright, but it is realisitc. I must appreciate the nerve of the story writer, the screenplay and the direction in some scenes (the entire movie, ofcourse) was breath taking. The guy jumps into shit to get the autograph of this favorite hero, AB. That is life, for most slum dwellers. That is how they lead, that is how they survive untill they discover their death. They face everything from utter poverty to, riots on religion to slavery, to drudgedness and what not.
The script writer has done his home work exceedingly well.

To movie goers like me, its an eye opener, to watch the slum dwellers daily routine. We seldom spare a thought for them and the moment we pass by a slum, we think of, ewwww.. how could anyone live there.. But to millions of slum dwellers its their life. Did we ever spare a thought for them? NOPE~!!!!Nor did I. The movie takes us through various phases of a slum dweller before he comes a full circle. Riots, beggary, cheating, conning..... and then the underworld. In between all this our protagonist has a love tale. This was combed very well into the script. and the lifeline of this movie.

Coming to mainstream cinema, it puts me in a sorry state just to read about the many controversies that are being aired in various forms of media. One of them reads, that India is being presented in a wrong way... and that the slum dwellers stiff and things like that..Well isnt this true? Do NOT most people see it regularly? Is it not reality? If its not and India is only a hub for all outsourcing and hi tech jobs, what made Mother Teresa stick here and do the job that everyone shyed away? Why did the great Australian icon, Steve waugh, has most of his charity activities in Kolkata and India for that matter. Let the guys present what India's other side also. Please do NOT make it political. Creativity has no boundaries, art knows no political thinking and philosophy. Art forms are not totally biased. Appreciate it.

The fact, which I constantly mention in my previous posts, that we cine-goers are so attuned to watching belle dancing, those death defying, unrealistic stunts, that sex appeal, that cleavage show, and those romantic numbers.. For once be different. Watch the real stuff.. admire what is real or what could be close to reality. Watch movies for entertainment, but add a little bit of education to that and make it.. EDUTAINMENT. Watch movies from a artists' perspective and then get the real message. Last but not the least, if you think India is being portrayed in a wrong way and all that darn things, thats your viewpoint and purely your opinion and dont make it political.

The other thought that gathers momentum in my mind right now, is to have an edge towards PHILANTHROPY. Lets give the society something back for what we derived from it. Lets make someone's life a better one. Atleast one day of his life. If we are not in a position to do that, atleast lets not ruin someone's life for a moment and not be judgemental about anything or anyone.

If you are to ask me, which category this movie would win the ACADEMY'S appreciation, I will pick SCREENPLAY. I wish this movie all the best at the ACADEMY AWARDS.

Cheers!
Rajesh

PS: Go watch this movie in the theatres, near you, Do NOT DOWNLOAD.

Blockbuster Effects -2

Hey!

I posted my views about movies and entertainment these days in India and it felt really incomplete about the way I have projected Indian cinema. The ground reality is I am not too educated in the movies or the media bandwagon as such, but they are purely my views and I wanted to express how frustrated I am with the lack of quality in movies and viewership. I also felt I should underline most fundamental problems the movie industry is facing.

This is only an attempt to showcase the other side of the coin. It happened by chance to me that I finally made it to a movie on last saturday evening. I went to the movie because;

We had a cricket game on saturday afternoon and we were playing against the team after a long gap. We had beaten GE Energy almost all times we played except for once when it was a tie. I wanted to score some big runs against them after I was inspired by the way Ricky Ponting played against the South Africans for the boxing day test match. I really wanted to make it big. So I had all warmed up for the game, I went to the gym the night before to get my feet movement on track and also to ease my body so that it doesnt show any signs of sickness after playing the game. I went the gym the next morning to get some additional stretching done and I had an extra 3.5 KM run on the treadmill. So I was really conditioned for this game. Becuase I knew I will have to bowl and also open the batting to get the required scores. Back home from the gym, I was watching cricket again and I was also planning how I would bat and bowl to win again. Finally the moment came and we lost the toss and we were asked to bowl first. I usually open the bowling too, but there are a couple of new guys in our team who can really bowl fast and terrorise the opposition from the start, so I had to make way for them and I came in as first change, because I could also swing the ball. I had picked up 3 wickets against the same in the last game, coming in first change and I also liked to come in at that point. I bowled well, although I didnt pick any wickets, I could control the run rate. My 2 overs went for 8 runs. So it was good to be in that position. My fielding was also good as I affected 2 run outs quickly. I had a chance to do a Jonty diving onto the stumps, but I decided against it as I didnt trust my instinct so much.

We had to chase 120 in 20 overs to win the game. I was relaxed as I was up to the task and I was raring to go. Mind you I had worked out and also planned my innings. I faced the first ball and I spanked it for 4 runs. This is the first time in my cricket history that I opened my account with a boundary. I felt really good as I was making my plan work. But the whole enthusiasm lasted only this ball as I was out the very next ball trying the same shot to the same ball and this time instead of finding the boundary, I found the safest hands of the opposite team captain, he didnt move a millimeter to complete the catch. I could not believe what had just gone by and I was in a state of shock. I had over 24 hours of planning done to play my game. I had done everything right be fit for this game, fielded well, bowled well and lasted only one ball in my batting. Thats why purists say, that although cricket is a batsman's game, a batsman is only one ball away from being at the pavilion. My shot the first ball was a classic, it rolled on the ground till the boundary and through the covers, my next ball a similar shot, but played in the air, went into the hands.

It took me an hour to come out of this grief and in that one hour, my team stalwarts made merry about the bowling, we won the match with over 7 overs to spare. It was a comfortable win for my team. We were all glad, we planned for a party in the evening. But I excused myself from it and I wanted to come out of what happened to me in my batting. I feeling of disgust, guilt towards myself overtook my emotions and I wanted to come out of it. So all I did was find the nearest movie hall and keep myself occupied for the next 3-4 hours, which would have given me enough time to come back home and hit the bed right away. The next morning I would have another cricket match to play.

So I found the movie, its named "Neninthe" (a literal translation would mean, "I am like this, only"). I have watched almost all the movies from this director/actor duo. Puri Jagan is the director, Ravi Teja is the protagonist. They are good friends. I have had the privillege of meeting Puri at the shooting of one of his movies, Super, 3 years ago and I was mesmerized by his charm and the innovativeness that he brought to his way of film making. I met Ravi at a function before the launch of his movie, Vikramarkudu. These both guys were extremely warm and accomplicing and very down to earth. More importantly their level of super stardome didnt really create an air over their human persona. Thats why I remained a loyal fan of Ravi. He also happens to be a very close friend of my room mate in Canada, Durga Prasad, I would call him DP. So that feeling also made me stick to his movies. Puri had both good movies and bad movies. His good movies were really good and for me another reason to stick to him and watch his movies.

This is a part 2 of my previous post "Blockbuster effects." While in my previous post, I had badly criticised the industry for doing nothing to improve the quality on the 70 mm screen, Puri exposes the facts, why the industry is in shambles, well he made an attempt to, in his movie "Neninthe". That movie prompted me to showcase the other side of my criticism about the industry. In other words, I am drawing my reasons from this movie.

There are some key aspects which are highlighted in this movie and those are the facts.

a. The industry is englufed in ego. Egos of producers, actors, directors and virtually everyone who is a part of the movie industry. Egos of fans as well.

b. There is not really any encouragement to creative talent in the industry

c. The image persona of any actor doesnt allow them to accept themes that take them away from their image. And the resultant movie is a canned product. You can recycle it any time and come out with the same thing in different colors.

d. The director is a mere puppet in the hands of the producer and the financier

When you have several discerning facts which are the roadblocks to a good movie and when there are several people who want to a movie made to suit their image/persona/popular belief/what have you, lilttle can you expect the output on the 70mm screens is something that the director wanted to showcase. The director wants to tell a story, afterall cinema is all about telling a story, when you compromise at every level, the plot/story is lost and what turns out to be is a mix of several overlapping tales and escapades. That is how you lack quality. That is how you bring down viewership quality to stooping levels.

This movie also highlights the hardships of aspiring movie professionals and what stops them from achieving what they have set out to. The hardships may be family oriented, may be professional when you bend down to others' dictums. The hardships are when you fall prey to "influential personalities" that dictate the movie industry.

This movie is a whip to everyone whether you belong to the film fraternity or you are an ordinary film buff. Puri has been quite successful at pointing out issues such as piracy, online publicity websites, online movie review boards, to us as viewers at large, to the politics inside the industry and the producers. He unleashed his whip and quite rightly spat on the face of those online movie review sites, who have a reviewer who is not so canny about the way he/she drafts the reviews. He/she is not necessarily a film technician but are only acting judges to the storyline and there are millions of netizens who watch the review before they watch the movie and are quite judgemental about watching movies. A ten minute biased review by some buff who knows no hell about movies and the technicalities just brings down a million dollar movie to its knees. The producers/directors are made a bunch of jokers by the so called reviewers who have their favorrites in every industry and draw their attention by canning those opinions which will bring in the moolah.

In short, this movie exposes the film fraternity's those black holes which are either directly or indirectly eluding the quality levels in movie making.

Those who have dire interests in the movie industry and those who vie for upgrading the quality streaming of movies and those who advocate for viewership quality, may please join hands with Puri. This movie is a must watch, only get educated about the movie industry, not to entertain themselves for 3 hours. This movie is not for them who want to get entertained. This movie is for them who want to get educated about the prevailing system and who get entertained in this process.

By all means, Puri and Ravi have weaved their magic again. They have influenced me to write the sequel to my Blockbuster effects. I am really glad I have written it before I watched this movie.

I cant wait to meet Puri and Ravi again and congratulate them for a splendid effort.

Cheers!
Rajesh