To: The Director & Scriptwriter for Chandni Chowk to China
This is probably the oldest cliche in the book. The celebration of the earth completing a complete revolution around the sun as a monumental point in our lives. Nevertheless, a Happy New Year (albeit belated) to those who read my blog (probably numbering no more than 2).
Now, I run the risk of sounding like an old man with no hair on my scalp and no teeth in my mouth who reminisces about the good old days but seriously.... Remember the good old days when TV was something we all looked forward to at the end of the day? And not something to turn on because we have nothing else to do. And even not so long ago I remember MTV. A channel that lived upto its name. Music Television. Its all about the Music baby! From Shehnaz Treasurywallah's saccharine draped MTV Most Wanted to Nikhil Chinappa's spunky MTV Select, it was always about the Music.
Shehnaz is long gone, and I must say I don't miss her, but that’s not the point. Nikhil is still there but a 35 year old VJ trying to act 25 is just plain sad. But what I miss is the music. It has been replaced by what can only politely be called from the infertile and impotent imaginations of retards who could be outsmarted by apes.
Point in case, MTV Roadies. The flagship show for the channel. A show about the spirit of adventure out on the open road. What it is is a show about 20 somethings with cumulative IQ scores of 20 something bitching, back stabbing and playing "politics" to win the grand prize of 5 lakh and a bike. The so called adventurous tasks are so timid that my daily morning trip to the john is more death defying in comparison! But then Roadies is really an award winning master piece in comparison to what they got lined up after Roadies got over.
MTV Shitsvilla!.. No wait... Splitsvilla! Whats that you say? Who cares? It involves 20 babes in hot pants and spaghetti tops most of the time and 20 babes in beach wear for the rest! Basically, these 20 girds have to fight, bitch and backstab for another grand prize. This times its two "hunky" guys who they get to date at the end of the show. And you thought true love only existed in Mills & Boon! So how does 20 women foregoing self respect and everything that women's rights activists have fought for in the last century make for good television you say? I dunno... but it just does.
Another example, MTV On the Job. The other day I caught an episode where 3 girls had to compete to become air hostesses! Talk about career goals! These women were taught the fundamentals of air hostessing in a day which apparently involves how to apply make up and .... hmmm.... thats it! So naturally, they had a challenge where they had to apply their make up and get ready in 10 minutes and then proceed towards handling a mock flight. During the flight the girls snatched a mock passenger's cellphone, did the mock safety demo all wrong, forgot to give a mock pregnant lady adequate protection for her mock baby during a mock emergency landing and left behind a mock kid during a mock evacuation. Despite making a mockery of everything an airline does during a flight, one of the girls won! She was so overwhelmed by the mockery she made of herself on Mockery Television (MTV!) that she was crying and deluded herself into thinking that had this been a non- mock flight she would have been able to save non-mock lives! Absolutely brilliant, I must say!
And this was just a tip of the iceberg. MTV isn't music anymore. Hell it isn't even TV anymore. So who should I blame for the immense mental agony being meted out to us through MTV? I could blame that bald headed goon called Raghu who's aforementioned creations, quite frankly, terrify me more than Dr.Frankenstein's. Or maybe I should just do what all the elders do and point my fingers at today's youth who demand to be entertained in this fashion. But in truth I only have myself to blame. For only I am to blame when I actually sit and watch MTV. For only I am to blame when I watch these shows because of the guilty pleasure I get from watching people making a fool of themselves on national TV. For only I am to blame for wasting 735 words of blog space when I could have read some else's blogaristic magnum opus instead of publishing my own blogaridical drivel.
Let me tell you about a little disease I've been suffering from lately. Began end of Jan and has been raging ever since. The root cause may be the internet upgrade I bought last month. Or maybe I just got tired of watching Top Gear over and over again ( heaven knows I thought that would be impossible). Its well over a month now and this mania shows no signs of ceasing or at least slowing down. Now, you might expect me at this point to say I've been bitten by the cyber love bug or that I'm suffering from pornographitis or that Counter Strike's disease has hit me but I'm afraid I'm suffering from the more common movie mania. And thanks to a 256 kbps internet connection and the scourge of internet piracy, BitTorrent, this affliction of mine has always found the fuel to keep it going. In the last month I watched 60 movies!! Now, for true cinematic buffs 60 movies may not seem much but considering the fact that I work 5 days a week at a 9 to 5 job(at least on paper, the truth is a little different but shhh...!!) I would think its no mean feat.
IMDB is my new best friend. Popcorn is my grub. And uTorrent is my saviour. That is how life has become for me. My human friends are forgotten. The TV as an invention no longer exists. My Xbox lies wrapped in plastic and ignored like a middle child. And the world now exists only in anamorphic widescreen. I rush to get out of office and long to get home to my beloved PC and its plethora of DVD rips. A movie before dinner is a must to build up an appetite and a post meal cinema obviously aids digestion.
This plague has seeped into everything I say or do. I bore my friends talking about cinema verite or frustrate them when I try and explain the wonder of 2001: A space odyssey. Gaddaar must naturally follow when I see the name Johnny. Juno is the new Venus. Stanley Kubrick is the world's greatest mystery. People wonder why I Thank them For Smoking. Babies scare me out of sheer fear that they might be Rosemary's and my favourite dish is Bheja Fry served à la Hannibal Lecter.
Its been 30 days and I still can't stop. That is the wonder of cinema. Its art and its entertainment. It will amaze you, annoy you, shock you, captivate you, humour you, move you and sometimes make you wish it was you on that screen. Its surreal, unreal and real and I love it.
Yup... its that time of the year again. The day of days these days is around the corner. It's Feb 14th in a couple of days. The day many look forward to as it is a day they can spend coochy coing the one they love, or maybe get a nice swanky evening out and a expensive gift from the cutie they have been seeing, or maybe just get to lay the hottie whose conversation they've had to endure for all those days just to get her into bed. Then there are others who dread it because it just reminds them that they have no one to spend it with or may be all that excess red, mush and chocolates around every corner is enough to make them hurl. I, fortunately and/or unfortunately, belong to the second camp.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not one those proponents that all relationships are destined to fail or that love is a waste of time. Neither am I part of the RSS or Shiv Sena who advocates that Valentine's day is a "western" evil. I , however, will agree.... it is an "evil". Its not religious, cultural or political.. it is just pure and simple commercial "evil" and it highlights the gullibility of people and the immense talents of those marketing guys sitting in the offices of every card maker, chocolate confectionery, florists, night club owner, music station, restaurant chain and.. well.. everybody else. I'm fairly sure that even makers of fertilizers, industrial strength steel and paint thinner somehow profit from the annual marketing phenomenon on Feb the 14th.
I remember when Valentine's day used to be an affair of just giving a simple card and may be a simple dinner out when I was in school. Now we have Microsoft urging girls to buy their boyfriends a Xbox. Canon urging lovers to gift each other SLR cameras. Five star hotels trying to convince you why spending half your monthly salary at their disc is the best way to spend the annual festival of love.
Is it really love when you have to convince your mate that you love them only if you give them something on Valentine's? Is it romance when your partner promises you sexual ecstasy only if you give the night out of their lives? Aren't there enough saturdays in a year to go out partying? Do you only have one day in the year to show someone you love them? What happened to the other 364 days in the year? What happened to giving gifts for no apparent reason? And if you are that desperate to get laid I'm sure in today's horny times hiring a call girl would be a more economical option. When will people realise that Feb 14th is no more the day to remember your loved ones. It is a well orchestrated and choreographed event managed by people in boardrooms and offices and the only love I can see is the love these businesses have for what's in your wallet.
An engineer may be defined as a person who is able to apply science without fully understanding its working. An engineer may also be defined as something every something most Indians in their plus twos aspire to be even though they are unaware of the definition which I gave in the first sentence. Due to this lack of knowledge of what an engineer truly is and a lack of knowledge of many parents regarding other professions, engineering colleges have mostly (d)evolved to a point where there is less emphasis on the "applying science" bit and more stress on the "without fully understanding" bit. However mind it, getting into a decent college is still unbelievably tough. It requires immense hardwork and/or immensely deep pockets. There is no other way around it. What to do once you are in is a whole other story.
You thought school is over so no more rote learning. Eager to use your brains and build something? Wrong. Its back to rote as the only way to survive your paper is to commit to memory those tattered notes which were handed to you by your seniors which they themselves got from theirs and so on. These barely legible but really valuable words are what fetch you marks as they always have and always will. Try deviating from the notes and and your professors will be having your marks for dinner.
Ah your professors! Glad to be out of school and away from those homework giving, constantly scolding and nitpicking teachers of yours and hope to find some priestly professors in this temple of higher learning? Wrong again!! Let's face it. In a booming country where engineers are in short supply who would give up high paying jobs in the corporate world to stick around in some college barely earning a 5 digit monthly figure. This is especially true if you happen to study computer science or IT. So those who have the misfortune of teaching are actually fortunate to have a job in the first place. These brainless, skill less and quite often personality less "teachers" will bore you in class, frustrate you when you have doubts and anger you when they don't give you marks. However, do take note, that on a rare occasion you will come across a gem of a teacher who will make you feel that this was the reason you came to college. Try and cherish those moments.
Projects! An integral part of your curricula. At least on paper. In reality, they are like a speed bump in the road of fun and vellapanti that is engineering. So find that smart geeky guy in class and make him your project partner. He/she may be dull as ditchwater but when it comes to doing projects you are dumber than a donkey. So maro some maska and have the smartie work and then have him explain his work to you so you can explain it to your professor and get a better grade than the hardworking idiot. Briliant!!
Ooh! Vellapanti and bakchodi. Far more important than engineering drawing or C++. The latter two may be ignored but the former must not. Class is not a place to listen but to pass notes, irritate the guy/gal in front or text message someone who is doing the exact same thing in some other engineering college halfway across the country. Sitting around at the canteen gazing at that hottie is what vella is being about. Who cares about trying to understand what that stupid professor tried to teach you when you get home at the end of the day? Its all about a bunch of guys drinking beer and just being guys somewhere far away from habitation at 12 am. What a way to end the day!
Assignments! Uff! If projects were speed bumps then assignments are like potholes. You never know when you may come across one. No worry. There will be one goodie touchie who says no to plagiarism and will finish it first. As the rest say a resounding "YES!!" to plagiarism all you have to do is copy from the guy who finished first or someone who copied from him. Yes folks.. this is what man used to do before the Xerox machine was invented.
Exams!! Projects are speed bumps, assignments are potholes and exams are the police checkpoints. Still they too like all hurldes can be crossed without too much issues. So relax, watch a couple of hundred movies, take your girlfriend out on long bike rides or party like crazy. Its only the day before the exam that you need to blow of the dust from those afore mentioned notes, cram through the night and go vomit it out on your paper the next day. Easy peasy!! However it is this last hurdle that many falter at. But when I think about it I understand why. Would you really like to leave behind this heaven sent four years of engineering just to join the rat race of the working world? Maybe those who flunked a couple of years did get a better deal and I was the idiot who ensured my stay in heaven lasted only four short years. DAMN!!!
