Thoughts on the Year and random predictions

The idea of updating the blog more frequently is definitely due to the lack of exciting things to do in office right now, but it does not mean that the blog will be orphaned when the rat race starts once again from next Monday. It is one of my resolutions (yes, I make them and stick to them seriously) to blog at least once a week in the coming year.

Am sure every year which passes by leaves us with a lot of emotions, most people I know term their year as a mixed one, for every happy occasion they have had two not-so-happy / sad ones. The current year has been eventful for me. It would be absolutely unfair to term it as good or bad. Starting with the wedding in the beginning of the year to the big deals cracked in office to the usual marriage related financial tension to the realization that the stress in office is here to stay; there has hardly a day which has been boring. When not faced with usual office / home / marriage / money related moments many books and movies made life fun and interesting.

I would love to do a 'My Top 5 of Everything' kind of a list for various things in the year (in fact started by doing the movie post last week), but then I would be intensely personal and would not be appreciated by all. So I will instead focus on some interesting trends / incidents in public domain which I witnessed this year and my thoughts on the same.

The Ambani War: Though both the brothers have enough shady deals / skeletons in the closets, my sympathies in this one lie with the younger one. Simply for the fact that the Government has put the weight of its entire machinery behind the elder one, and whenever the government does something like that there is something fishy. Picture this, older and younger brother sign a deal and get it approved by High Court, Government is aware of this. Now 5 years later government comes out with a policy which supposedly favours the elder one and says that his deal with the younger one is invalid. And then they make some weird noises about how a PSU should be treated differently than a private entity, pls tell me why? Elder one is of course happy and repeats the lame line in SC 'We cannot do anything without government consent'. If he was aware of this why the hell did he sign the freakin deal 5 years ago, unless of course the intent was mala fide and he knew the government would back him when we wanted to dishonor the deal. SC will reprimand the elder one and the government, but the younger won’t get any gas.

The Mumbai Traffic: I started my career working in Nariman Point 4 and a half years ago, after some drunken moments at Ruby Tuesday I would sometimes take a cab home, I would usually reach home in 45 mins - 1 hr (in the normal post 8.30-9.00 pm traffic), worst case scenario it would take one hour fifteen mins max. Now it takes me 1 and a half hours minimum and the maximum till now has been 2 hrs 45 mins. Having made this point, I simply have 3 observations to make.

• Number of cars are increasing and road length is not.
• Number of potholes / constructions for metro / monorail / telephone cables / flyovers / any other random thing have exponentially increased, none of the proposed flyovers or rail projects look close to completion in the next 2 years
• No one in the BMC / State Government cares about the traffic.

The Merus and Megacabs have made travelling slightly more comfortable, but as usual the political rascals had to screw things up, so antiquated black and yellow cabs continue to fleece us, ricks still make the deafening sound. But who cares...the cab and rick drivers are an important vote bank, let them fleece the middle class who anyways never turns out in full strength to support us.

The Great Indian Political Drama: With the retarded leftists silenced, we will have a stable government for the next 5 years but,

• Sycophantic congressmen will still bypass ministers / relevant authorities and try to get in the good books of Soniaji and Rahulji
• Mayawati will still treat UP like her fiefdom and do what she wants, law and Supreme Court be damned
• BJP will continue fighting and gift the next few state elections (save Gujarat) to the Congress so that the whole cycle of extreme corruption can begin again (yes the BJP guys are also bad, but not even half as experienced as their congress counterparts)
• MNS will continue bashing up random people from time to time to get mileage; Sena will retaliate by bashing up more random and innocent people in a game of one upmanship.
• Karunanidhi and his family / cronies will try to make up for the loss of income in Delhi (due to a strict PM) by plundering TN and ensuring that the coffers are completely empty by the time the fat lady gets her chance to steal.
• Expect many more morchas / dharnas / marches / fasts for statehoods

Global Relationships: US will continue saying nice things to us and continue giving money to Pakistan. China will continue its aggressive stance and our fattu ministers and officials will continue saying its nothing to be concerned about. Aussies will continue bashing Indians both on and off the cricket field.

Sports: As usual the administrators lived up to their reputation and screwed everything possible. In cricket we had bad pitches to shady state board elections to random sackings of professional event managers. In Hockey the mystery about who controls the game in India still continues, on the field we managed to draw a few games against also rans like Belgium and China, I don’t think the big boys like Germany, Holland and Australia even wanna play with us. In Chess, the AICF duffer continued harassing Humpy, thank god Anand shifted to Spain so that he could concentrate on his chess and not internal squabbles. As usual Mr Kalmadi emptied the funds made available for the CWG and ensured that preparations are way behind schedule.

Ok..Now this is developing into a full on rant session, so I better go and get myself some food.For people mentioned in the blog (I know you don’t read it but anyways...) pls not to take offense uncle, I was only joking.

In which we write about our favorite movies of the year..

I have always been fascinated by lists, on the back of my notebooks through schools i have many rankings of superheroes, actors, actresses, films, sportstars and many other things which have held my interest. Below lists are basis my evaluation, as usual the things i look for in a movie are: Entertainment Value, Story, Direction and Performances. I don't really care about sad, depressing films having a lot of artistic value.

Being the sucker that i am i am only going to rate the hindi movies which i have seen through the year. Have seen some decent Hollywood stuff too..but too little..and anyways Avatar and Inglourious Basterds easily overwhelm everything else (i don't really care for depressing films like The Hurt Locker and Precious). So here goes:

Best Film:

1. Kaminey
2. Gulaal
3. Luck by Chance
4. Dev D
5. Paa

Honourable Mention: Rocket Singh

Dark Horse: 3 Idiots (i might have to change my list on Monday)

What the retards at Filmfare will do: Ignore Dev D, Gulaal and LBC completely, they will nominate shit like Ajab Prem Ki..and Wanted (nothing against the movie, i thought it was entertaining, but not exactly top 5 stuff), and yes..they will also nominate Love Aaj Kal.

Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role:

1. Amitabh (Paa)
2. Shahid (Kaminey)
3. Abhay Deol (Dev D)
4. Ranbir Kapoor (Rocket Singh)
5. Will leave this vacant in anticipation of Aamir Khan occupying it for 3I but in the unlikely case that he screws up, this should be a toss up between Ranbir for Wake up Sid and Farhan for LBC

What the retards at Filmfare will do: Ranbir will get nominated but for Ajab Prem Ki.., Sallu has to be humoured by nominating him for Wanted, Saif of course for Love Aaj Kal (maybe Kurbaan also), Abhay will be ignored. I don't think anyone can ignore Amitabh or Shahid for their performances.

Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading role:

1. Priyanka (Kaminey)
2. Konkona (LBC)
3. Vidya Balan (Paa)
4. Kareena (Kurbaan)
5. Will leave this vacant in case Kareena does a good job in 3I else i will put Konkona here for Wake up Sid

What the retards at Filmfare will do: Katrina Kaif is the flavour of the season, so she will definately get nominated for Ajab Prem Ki or New York (or horror of all horrors-BOTH), Deepika has to be appreciated for looking wooden in LAK, Konkona can be ignored-she is anyways supporting actress material. The award should be a toss between Priyanka or Katrina (whoever charges less for her performance will win).

Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role:

1. Aditya Srivastava (Gulaal)
2. Amol Gupte (Kaminey)
3. Chandan Sanyal (Kaminey)
4. Rishi Kapoor (LBC)
5. Will levae this vacant for Sharman / Madhavan in 3I if not then a toss up between Kay Kay Menon (Gulaal) and Abhimanyu Singh (Gulaal), if Sharman and Madhavan both do well then maybe Rishi goes out of the list.

What the retards at Filmfare will do: Rishi will get nominated but for LAK, how can Neil Mukesh be ignored for looking spastic in New York

Best Actress in a Supporting Role:

1. Ayesha Mohan (Gulaal)
2. Arundhati Nag (Paa)
3. Kalki Koechlin (Dev D)
4. Gauhar Khan (Rocket Singh)
5. Cant think of any other notable performances..maybe Dimple in LBC, but i dont feel it was top 5 level

What the retards at Filmfare will do: Kiron Kher has to be nominated for Kurbaan, Gulaal has to be ignored, maybe some sidey performance from LAK, Delhi 6, Ajab Prem Ki might be nominated, i think they will do eenie meeney miney mo to decide the winner.

Best Music of the Year:

1. Kaminey
2. Gulaal
3. Dev D
4. Delhi 6
5. Love Aaj Kal

What the retards at Filmfare will do: Ignore Dev D and Gulaal, enter New York, Ajab Prem Ki

Coming up: More lists about sports, music :-)

Life Update

Firstly, Thank you to the 6 faithful friends who regularly keep checking this space for updates. Lots of things have happened since i last blogged and have been wanting to update people about them since the past 4-5 weeks but laziness and lethargy took over.

Anyways, its been more than 10 months since i have been married, its has been an eventful ride. The wife has finally made the shift to Mumbai (she still hates the city though) and has joined a MNC Bank (yeah yeah...the firangiis are going to suck our blood). What to do...the money looked good. However her office is now in Bandra, which means we get to spend very little time with each other (her office used to be in fort earlier).

Tennis is coming along just fine, the wife also plays (occasionally). Its the only thing currently which is refreshing and cheers me. Apart from this quality of life is steadily deteriorating. The travel time between home and office is increasing by the day, at last count i was spending close to 3 hours in the car everyday. Trains are still not an option, mainly because Mom is still skeptical about them and secondly after a hard day of work at office, i definitely do not appreciate getting crushed under the mass of humanity at Kurla station every evening.

On the professional front, i had a great year, earned decent revenues, targets were met, new heights were achieved, but all this counted up to almost nothing, coz the bank as a whole had a lousy year (screw you fraud clients who made us lose millions). However the year ended on a very bad note when i lost a million dollar client who conveniently moved business to another MNC who was slightly less greedy. So next year is going to a very tough (i can already visualise the arguments / heated discussions at home due to my late comings).

Looking forward to:
- The promotion i have been waiting for ages
- The anniversary celebrations in Goa in Feb-10
- Many close friends getting married in 2010

Coming soon:
- A new layout for the blog (yes..i am technically literate)
- Lots of posts about movies and books

Note: This time i plan to treat the 'Coming Soon' thing real seriously. I swear.

Back...

The marriage is finally over...and so is the audit...although the sceptre of another scary 'credit quality' audit stares us in the face, i guess we shall survive the rest of the year without any mishap.

Lot of changes happening in life, most good :-)

Lot of new things to remember / take care of, but the experience is quite fun. Watching 52 movies this year looks tough. Recession / lack of quality movies and hectic schedules to blame. Count now stands at -5, but hopefully things should improve once the wife moves here with bag and baggage, being a weekend husband is not so much fun for weeks at a stretch.

To the friends who feel persona has changed and so have priorities since marriage, pls to be patient... getting used to big changes takes time.

Other plans for the year include working on the tennis game, putting those running shoes on and finally be in shape to run 21 kms next jan.

More on the wife, movies and other interesting stuff next week.