Rang De Basanti

LOOSE CONTROL !!!

Jan 25:
Kolkata
RANG DE BASANTI is out(though a week later than scheduled)... at last. Special premieres and shows were screened at INOX and fame multiplex here...

Jan 26:

The wait has come to an end. Had no control on my patience.. After making calls to organise 'movie-mates', rushed to apna own city-centre-ka-INOX. Thanks, to Saptha's Manhattan card, INOX gave 1 ticket free with every ticket purchased !

[Amar Rahe this scheme and Long live Manhattan card !!!]

As far as movie, it was SUPERB. Definitely, worth watching. Here goes one synopsis of the movie...

�eRang De Basanti�f deals with a topic that is very relevant to contemporary times. It talks of several youngsters with different aspirations from life. It brings parallels between present and our revolutuionary past with 'shaheed' freedom fighters. Its story is also partly inspired from the story of real life pilot, Flt.Lt.Abhijit Gadgil who was killed in a MIG crash two years back.

About the movie: All the roles were crafted well and I personally liked Atul Kulkarni's role (both as 'Lakshman' and as 'Ram Prasad Bismil'). Aamir as Daljit Singh aka DJ, is at his best. Madhavan, Sidharth, Sharmaan Joshi, Kunal Kapoor and not to forget the charming young ladies -- Soha Ali Khan and alice Patten have formed the rest of the lead. Cinematography and Music are the other highlights beyond the impressive starcast.

On the whole, Rang de Basanti is more 'Shaheedon ki Paathshaala' than 'Masti ki Paathshaala' ...

Watch it !!! You'll definitely feel and experience the pulse...

PS: Trivia - The above pic (with Aamir on the horse) contains that sequence which was removed from the movie bcos of request (!) from Animal Welfare Board

TRIVIA & ANAGRAMS

I was just checking few trivia questions from a fwd mail and found this quite interesting:
1.
What is special about the following sentence:

"I do not know where family doctors acquired illegibly perplexing handwriting nevertheless, extraordinary pharmaceutical intellectuality counterbalancing indecipherability, transcendentalizes intercommunications' incomprehensibleness"?

A : This is the longest sentence in English language in which the Nth word contains N letters
[I guess, the shortest such sentence is "I am." or 'I do"!]

And this list of Anagrams is also cool :D))

1. DORMITORY:
When you rearrange the letters:
DIRTY ROOM
2. PRESBYTERIAN:
When you rearrange the letters:
BEST IN PRAYER
3. ASTRONOMER:
When you rearrange the letters:
MOON STARER
4. DESPERATION:
When you rearrange the letters:
A ROPE ENDS IT
5. THE EYES:
When you rearrange the letters:
THEY SEE
6. GEORGE BUSH:
When you rearrange the letters:
HE BUGS GORE
7. THE MORSE CODE:
When you rearrange the letters:
HERE COME DOTS
8. SLOT MACHINES:
When you rearrange the l etters:
CASH LOST IN ME
9. ANIMOSITY:
When you rearrange the letters:
IS NO AMITY
10. ELECTION RESULTS:
When you rearrange the letters:
LIES - LET'S RECOUNT
11. MOTHER-IN-LAW:
When you rearrange the letters:
WOMAN HITLER
12. SNOOZE ALARMS:
When you rearrange the letters:
ALAS! NO MORE Z 'S
13. A DECIMAL POINT:
When you rearrange the letters:
IM A DOT IN PLACE
14. THE EARTHQUAKES:
When you rearrange the letters:
THAT QUEER SHAKE
15. ELEVEN PLUS TWO:
When you rearrange the letters:
TWELVE PLUS ONE

The PICNIC

Well, owing to (y)our valuable time, I am trying to make this one a la M-O-M (Minutes-of-Meeting).

The TCS-Kolkata Annual picnic was a blast (Note, I ve give the conclusion here itself!).

With 50 odd buses all over Kolkata, associates started from their homes in the morning and reached the �esite�f Lakeland Country Club (half an hour onward drive from Vidyasagar Setu*).

Around 1500+ ppl turned up. With multiple food serving counters and BIG queues, breakfast** started (and so ended late for many!). Next, people started spreading in clusters in the sprawling campus. Later, the circular atrium in the club was flooded with people to shake their legs to the pulsating DJ-music. Owing to the scorching sun, it had to be made short. Later, there were lots of events happening simultaneously.

1. Fun games like �eHit-the-stumps�f, �eTug-of-War�f and Dart
2. Spoon-race and memory games for kids
3. A sort of Cosmo-jump and play area, again for kids
4. Go-karting
5. Kabaddi, self initiated by a group of entho junta
6. And small small �esangams�f spread idhar-udhar by junta of identical frequency

By noon, there were again queues (for Lunch!). But now, all the lines moved fast and there were absolutely no hassles in getting things done fast. And boy, the Khana was sumptuous! ( I gobbled to my hearts content). Post lunch; with few camera sessions, gazing here and there, sab assembled for a Magic-show! That was fun and by 5 pm ended the eventful day with the buses receding the venue..

[ A memorable day Indeed! ]

PS:
*this is the New Howrah bridge, the cable supported bridge connecting Howrah with Kolkata,)
**with poori, sabji and jalebi, it was just palatable

An Eventful week (indeed)!

Jan 18: Aravind was leaving tonight, was with him till noon.. Showed up for the Quiz-prelims at office in the evening. Had been to Howrah station to see-off Aravind at night
Jan 19: Arun and Sabari came from Guwahati. Went to Airport, picked them up and spent the rest of the day with them roaming and doing nothing
Jan 20: Was there at office but there wasn�ft much free time
Jan 21: 'PICNIC' and see off to Arun & Sabari
Jan 22: Went to Uma Achi�fs place with Sara and was there whole day; installed xp to their comp and saw much awaited 'mounam pesiyathe'

Well, through these things I really didn�ft intend to project how busy am I or venturing into a new one-liner-daily-event-diary.. These are actually the �elame�f excuses for me not posting a blog for such a �ebada�f gap especially when it was cho�c. Eventful ! I really wanted to make seperate posts for all these days, but thanks to time and memory (my own memory!) constraints, I am just making it one or two to sum up.

SETBACK DAY
It �ereally�f was a �esetback�f day, appearing for a quiz (this was a general-quiz organized by the Library, TCS-Kolkata) after so many months (I guess it�fs the first after college). Around 50+ heads turned up for the prelims. Me and Vishnu took the paper and were almost blank for half the questions of the total 25. The quiz master (Biswabijoy da) had made a good effort in churning up dry, visual and audio questions.
(I actually wanted to post some of the questions, but thanks, I am not doing so..!)
Managed to get 6.5 (which I thought was okay). But to my horror, I was shocked that the average score itself was ~ 10 and highest was 16.5. The last team to make it to the final four had got 14.
Arey Baba! I couldn�ft digest these numbers. Looks like my QQ (quiz quotient) has really really got down or rather has got stagnated�c. It certainly wassa big kick-back. As usual, in the cover of being �eoptimistic�f, took it in the real spirits.

(continued....)

PS: I am taking the liberty of using a separate post for the sequel

PONGALO PONGAL!

We, the roomates of DL-42 (our house no. !), celebrated Pongal with the full enthusiasm and spirit, though away from all our homes..

I ve uploaded some of the snaps:

Courtesy:

1. Vishnu for that Kolam

2. Sara (and Kalp) for Sakkara Pongal

3. Kalp for the payasam and vadas made from instant vada powder

4. Dhana -- overall coordination

5. And finally Pankaj and Kasi (thats me) for eating all those (with them, of course!)

Project Party !!!

I just remembered that I'd been to a party last friday (13 Jan). The occasion was to celebrate the success of 'go live' of the database instance at the client side that 'we' worked.. (no pun intended!)

The party was hosted at our Company's guest house and even the ex-project junta (which includes me!) were invited.. Da, it was a good time..

All the people, around 30 in number gathered and spread themselves across the rooms of the house. Promptly, our PM made us comfortable though we were spread here and there...We started with the juice and snacks. Rest of the course would be dedicated exclusively in the next para...With Indrani di making an iniative for some activity to be done, we agreed to go for dumb charade.. It was a gala time -- emoting movies, making signs, emoting, changing rules and yet competing (sorry, but no points..) and making fun of each-other.. Ya, I forgot.. Insert some camera sessions with Nishant's 'Analog' camera in between (I didnt take my cam that day..) I repent now ;-(

Then came the interesting part. The course followed with some paneer and chicken lollipops and eateries like what we call onion bonda and bajji
2. Next, we were given some appetisers like fryums and onion chips (sort of)
3. Dinner: Roti, Plain rice, Veg gravy (Paneer), Non veg gravy -- chicken and some other gravy ( I didnt taste that), Prawn , fish pieces, Aloo mixed sabji, Another Veg curry and pickle (yeo this pickle was sweet like marmalede)

Sadly, no mishti was there.. was terribly missing those mouth watering rossogulla's and bengali sweets. Phir bhi, had a lion's share indeed

New Year Bash @ the city of joy !!!

The New year started with a 'vetti' visit to park street, doing nothing and it was fun to be with the massive crowd, cars and cops! Believe it or not, city of joy was in the fullest of spirits when it comes to celebrations...













A big group of our junta went on a outing on 31 dec night and returned home to put high volume music and chill al night round... It was all FUN, boy !

ACCELERATING START IN THE NEW YEAR

I am back again to the Blog.. Certainly after a BIG gap!

First good news, in 2006, is with the arrival of a baby-boy at my sister's place in the U.S on January 2, 1 pm U.S time (11. 30 pm Indian time)...They've christened him TEJAS. Tejas Beta, I dont how long it would take me to see you in person (even I ve not seen Tejas's sister Tanya in person (1.5 years old now!)). Only I am hoping to see the kids on my sister's vacation to India..

I am in the ORACLE CoE now, certainly much better than the bench in the office.. Recently i ve put 'vazhuthu kaal' into the orkut. Right now I am connected to 12239687 people through 4 friends :D )))

Then, on January 4, I went to Uma Achi's place here for 'Pillaiyaar Nombu', a festive of Nagarathars (well, I too am a Nagarathar). Had a very good 'saapaadu' with around 2 dozen idli's, vadai, paniyaarams and three different chutnies too! The occasion gave a chance to socialise with three Nagarathar families here. As usual, the air was filled with the talks of oor, kovil, kalyanams, karaikudi et. al

Aaj ka Tid Bits:
Todays news has shocked everyone: 350+ haj pilgrims believed to be dead bcos of stampede.
Well, the much awaited Indo-Pak test series had a kick start today at Pak with Pak team opting to bat first.