Reviewing Inception is sure going to be difficult.

Am no stranger to Christopher Nolan – I’ve seen The Prestige and cried for Hugh Jackman; and I’ve lost count of how many umpteen times I watched The Dark Knight, each time with the same fascination. So, ahem, my expectations of Inception were huge. I hoped fervently that it wouldn’t be an Avatar repeat.

The movie starts out innocently enough; slowly, with each passing frame, it starts sucking you in. What Nolan did was let his imagination run rampant, no bars whatsoever, and then strived to mold that imagination into reality. The end result is nothing short of amazing.

Dom Cobb can extract a person’s thoughts from his subconscious. He can enter a person’s dream and steal his innermost secrets. He faces the challenge of his life when, instead of extraction, he is required to plant an idea in a person’s mind. Inception. A team of expert extractors have to travel therefore, into the subconscious of the subject – go through multiple layers of dreams so they can plant that single thread of thought flawlessly. What follows is a masterpiece of creativity, stunning visuals, and multi-dimensional complexity, the core of which is so simple, it boggles the mind.

I saw Ellen Page for the first time after Juno, and was struck by how young she really is. Cillian Murphy, I’ve had a mild crush on him since his Red Eye days, and he didn’t disappoint. Di Caprio is a master, though I wish he had more of that boyish look from Titanic.

People do not really make what this movie really is; it probably wouldn’t have mattered if Nolan cast a bunch of unknown faces – the movie would still be awe-inspiring. It’s the kind of psychological thriller that will make you question reality, and re-play scenes of the movie in your mind long after you step out of the theater.

Summing up – edge of the seat narrative, nail-biting pace, and a gripping plot – I can say I got my money’s worth, and then some. Go watch it, people.

Date: December 26, 2004. Time: Crack of Dawn. Place: Ancient city of Cuttack.

“Stop shaking the bed! Stop it!”

“Me shaking the bed? What the heck is wrong with you, you stop shaking it first!”

Both of us were wide awake in an instant – me staring at the ceiling in awe expecting it to crash at any moment, and my Mom yelling for my Dad. He had returned from an early morning walk and fallen asleep in the hallway again.

“Daaaa-dddd-iieee! There’s an earthquake happening!”

He opened his eyes briefly, mumbled, “Eh?” and started snoring.

A piercing scream from the guest room – my aunt was huddled up on the bed in a fetal position, mumbling about her dead mother-in-law.

“Maa-ji, mujhe akele chod di jiye, please! Bed ko aise mat hilaaiye! Aiiieeeee, bachaaao!” The bed was trembling as if it’s life depended on it.

“Idiot, it’s not a ghost, it’s a quake. Get the hell out of the house!”

We ran out, hearts thudding.

Scene inside the house on the other side of the street -

Manisha Manjari AKA Mamuni, our pretty neighbor was asleep with a smile on her face, dreaming about her upcoming wedding. She was alone in the house with her mother – her Dad and brother were in different cities at the time.

It was pitch dark; they slept with every light off, and had no idea what time of the night it was. Mamuni sat up with a start. The bed was shaking violently, carrying promises of a vicious fiend underneath. Mamuni had an active imagination and imagined the worst. One leg on the bed, and another on the wall, she managed a sprint that only Olympic standard athletes could have managed.

Out in the hall in two beats, she had just begun to wring her hands to cry when she stopped, shell-shocked. A figure was propped up against the door, a frightening silhouette, half hidden behind the wall. She let out a wailing shriek that woke half the city up. The figure moved forward slowly, hands dangling by the sides. Mamuni was by now crying in earnest – the hand-wringing was on in full swing. The figure revealed itself as her mother, who had woken up for a drink and dozed off against the wall.

By this time the news trickled in that there had been a massive quake, affecting the entire coastal belt. It was only later in the day that the news of the tsunami reached us, leaving us awe-struck and counting our lucky stars.

Though at that time the events of the day seemed fearsome, as years passed they became a favorite topic of conversation, always starting with, “Remember the day when……”, and ending with, “Yeah, I was so silly LOLOL….. I was absolutely fearless and…. Yeah, so was I…. Yeah RIGHT….!”

I cannot think of any reason why I put off seeing this movie for so long! I also cannot imagine why I steadfastly refused to watch a Ranbir Kapoor movie. Maybe the long line of flop star sons we have been forced to endure freaked me out; I didn’t want to take the risk of watching yet another Uday Chopra go, “Kya Mummy!” Folks, I’m happy that I was wrong about Ranbir Kapoor – he is genuine, offbeat and a natural.

Coming to the story, Sid Mehra is the spoiled son of a rich business magnate (aren’t they all!) who doesn’t care what might happen tomorrow. He is happy to let Daddy foot the bills, while he is carousing with his friends till the wee hours. On his farewell party (he’s an engineering student) he meets a girl about 7 years his senior, and they hit it off. The girl is Aisha Banerjee, a creative writer. The character is played by Konkana Sen Sharma to the hilt; she outruns the other, so-called sexy actresses by a huge margin. Anyway, Sid and Aisha become platonic friends, and one fine day after having royally flunked his exams and kicked out of the house by his Dad, Sid lands up at Aisha’s place.

Live-in relationship doesn’t quite define it, since their friendship was strictly platonic. What I liked was the way the movie portrayed their neighbourhood accepting it, and Sid’s mom accepting it. It showed that society these days has loosened up quite a bit, become more liberal in it’s thinking. Also, the gradual change in Sid – from a prodigal son to a responsible person who finally learns how to cook an omelette and clean up after himself – is done so very subtly, that in every frame you see something changing in him. Just a little bit, but a little bit nevertheless.

However, the movie is not all about Sid; it is equally about Aisha, and I loved her role, more so cos I could relate to her completely. Hell, tons of girls must relate to her! A single girl, away from her hometown, seeking independence, seeking an identity – yep, I love her! The way she takes Sid under her wing, patiently tolerating his nonsense, while at the same time trying to make her mark – I cannot think of another actress who can fit the bill better than Konkona Sen Sharma.

When finally Sid makes his career as a photographer, and patches things back with Dad, Aisha realizes she is in love with him – and she has no idea if he feels the same about her. Sid is back at his place, it’s raining, and he reads her article on Mumbai Beat. How she came to Mumbai with high hopes, how she fell in love with the city. It’s not just about the city, she writes, she fell in love with the city due to one person, that one person who was able to show her how special it all was. It’s not hard to guess how the movie ends. It is, after all, a romantic comedy.

I am sure everyone out there has already seen this movie – if you haven’t, run, run like the wind! To your DVD store, your laptop, wherever. For a full list of the characters, and other trivia on the movie, go to IMDB.

What could beat a raw onion?!

There are so many facets to the Onion.

It stinks. But people love it. It has so many layers, and it is, therefore, multi-dimensional. Just a bite of it brings an entirely new flavor to whatever you’re eating. AND, it’s after-taste lingers on, overpowering everything else, including everyone’s senses in the room.

Onions make us cry. Those tears are not shed in vain – we can always come out of the kitchen and give our spouses a scare by not revealing the reason for our tear-stained face. If an apple a day keeps the doctor away, an onion a day keeps everyone away (Source: No idea who said it, but I know WHY they did ).

So, erm, after a lot of consideration, I hit upon this name for my blog. Well, I didn’t exactly hit upon it myself, my friends Hrish and Andy contributed. Andy, by the way, is responsible for the excellent tagline.

Bring the feedback onnnn!

So what?!

This Times of India article really made me go WTF. Not only was there a hue and cry about him entering the temple, but he was also handed over to police who let him go after “thorough verification and scrutiny”. If only such thorough verification and scrutiny were reserved for more important things, maybe India would be a much better place.

There are scores of so-called holy men who wait outside the Jagannath Temple with brooms in their hands; if you look even the least bit gullible, they swing that broom on your head hitting you with it, and then demand money from you. Their reasoning – they warded off your “Shani” by that gesture, so if you didn’t give them a hundred bucks rightaway, dude, you are so screwed by Shani Bhagwan. Even the main pujari is unscrupulous.

It is these people we need to be aware of, and maintain a distance from; not unwitting citizens who have done nothing wrong. Isn’t it time for us to let go of petty beliefs and embrace people for what they are?

Prince of Persia was a welcome change after the debacle of Clash of The Titans; I admit I went inside the theater with some apprehension – after all, the last two fantasy movies I had seen were not exactly what one would call enthralling. Far from it.

The storyline is riveting – During a war, Prince Dastan, the adopted son of the Persian King Sharaman, chances upon a dagger that on first sight is really cool and sexy; he does the natural thing – he pockets it. Little does he know the power that the dagger wields – it can unleash the sands of time. In layman terms, the person that invokes the power of the dagger can go back in time and change events.

Our Prince is accused of the murder of his father, and, accompanied by the Princess of the vanquished city of Alamut, he has to find a way to set things right. He soon realizes everything is not as it seems, and somehow everything that has happened is intricately linked to the dagger. He has to stop the villian from using the dagger, cos if he does, the world will be destroyed by the Gods.

I really liked the movie; more so because of it’s rustic feel, and it’s more-than-subtle sense of humor – some of the scenes had us in splits. There is this Hassansin leader who is disgusting, with his snakes and whatnot; I mistook him to be Sheldon of Big Bang Theory fame. IMDB just clarified that he is not. They look so very similar, they could be twins

The one thing that boggled me was, I thought the dagger turned back time, not offer a glimpse into the future. Anyway, the story is good, the action makes you sit on edge, the hero is handsome and the heroine pretty, and, the bad guy is utterly cringe-worthy. All in all a complete masala movie you cannot afford to miss. Watch this one, people!

Scenario 01: Two friends, barely out of graduation, get selected for a postmaster’s job. They break for lunch, and decide to have a simple meal at the tiny dhaba across the road. No sooner than they leave the post-office that bullets start flying around them, and a fierce gun battle starts between insurgents and the CRPF. They duck their heads and run for cover.

Scenario 02: A bank manager drives to work, looking furtively around him for attackers. He goes to the bank, locks up all the doors from inside. For any customer to enter, they have to identify themselves before the locks can be opened. He tries to make the 50 km journey back home before dark – it would be too dangerous otherwise.

These are not scenes copied from Sholay, and the setting is not militant-infested Kashmir. The two kids are my brother’s friends, and the banker is my father. For them, this is just any other day in a tiny village of  interior Orissa. Bridges getting blown off, railway tracks torn off are all absorbed with just a nod of the head. Commonplace.

Sounds incredulous, isn’t it?

We are talking about the home-bred, in-house gang of terrorists, AKA Maoists. The Maoist Movement which began as a simple fight for tribal justice has taken on alarming proportions. No longer can they be ignored as innocent tribals fighting for their rights, for food, for education. No longer can they classify themselves as Naxalites, guerrillas, or by any other damn name. They are terrorists, pure and simple.

The Maoist Empire is a staggering 1500 crore rupee corporation; their terror spans several states, most severely hit being Chattisgarh, Jharkhand, Orissa, West Bengal, and Bihar. No, they don’t spend a penny to help their fellow men; on the contrary, they extort money from almost everyone, including school teachers. They kill at will, most often than not tagging their victims as police informers. You can get more information on the Maoist modus operandi here.

Bridges, schools, railway tracks, telephone towers, buildings, nothing can escape their wrath. Their latest attack, blowing up a bus with a landmine and killing over 40 people left me open mouthed. Chidambaram says they get their weapons from across the border, maybe from China, and Bangladesh. Ah, what sweet neighbors we have! Pakistan, China, Bangladesh – kudos to you people! It wasn’t enough that you took parts of our country with you, you had to continue poking at what’s left.

If all of this terror and violence is one side of the story, the other, more important one is how little we have done to combat it. They keep gunning our security personnel down like insects, they kill civilians, they smuggle heavy artillery from across the border right from under our nostrils, and all we do is fart out a “strong statement” saying we will not take it lightly. Manmohan Singh declared them as the most serious internal threat to India’s national security (Source: WIKI). Yeah, that should have them quivering and running for cover, right?

We have so many causes that get their quota of attention – Saving tigers, yes, they’re important. Treating animals ethically, well, they deserve it. Going green, good for the environment. Do it. But hey, can someone focus on this cause, too? Maybe get to move the government to take stricter measures. At the very least, no more killings. Pull some security personnel from the thousands allocated to all those fatso politicians and place them somewhere where they can feel a sense of pride that they’re involved in what they originally signed up for.

No more bloodshed, no more red. Let’s say goodbye to the red corridor. I, for one, hate it.

I left my farm high and dry a few months ago, and now I’m back with a vengeance. Most of my waking hours are spent thinking of ways to make my farm better; at least I have no control over what I dream about, so at night thankfully Farmville leaves me alone.

Tending to my livestock, rounding up baby animals, adopting lost ones, sheltering homeless calves, ugly ducklings, and Llamas take the most part of my busy day. I have to admit I have no clue on earth what kind of an animal is the Llama; the closest I’ve come to knowing a Llama is the Dalai Lama . This doesn’t stop me from tending to the animal with great fervour, asking my friends to help if I come across a lost Llama in my farm, et al.

Oh, and yes, I am the proud owner of a library, a school, a couple of greenhouses, cottages with picket fences, a complete forest with every type of tree imaginable – cherry, passion fruit, durian, olive, magnolia, yeah well, you get the idea.

How can I forget the whole business of growing plants?! It is a painstaking process indeed – plow the field, plant seeds, wait for them to grow, harvest them on time, and repeat the damn process all over again. God forbid if you forgot the harvest timing! A bunch of withered crops are not the right way to start the day – they make your heart beat funny and you are subdued for quite some time, without even realizing why.

This experience made me realize how, if I am saddened by a bunch of withered virtual crops that don’t even exist, farmers who toil day and night on their farms, waiting patiently for the rains to come on time, would feel if at the end of the day their crops are destroyed by a freak thunderstorm. Heartbreaking, to say the least.

For all you people who loathe Farmville and who make fun of us virtual farmers – please don’t. I don’t know if I can ever own a library in real life, or if I’ll ever have a pretty cottage with white picket fences. I cannot explain it, but when I tend to my farm I feel happy. I feel happpy when I pet my animals and they jump a little, and tiny red hearts come floating out of them. I feel happy when I see my crops ready to be harvested, and I feel happy when I harvest a perfect bunch of red tulips.

Okay, I just realized this post has become too long – enough about farming, now! Will greet you with an entirely different post very shortly

Came across a most astonishing piece of news on the internet today; you might think you’ve seen it all, but I guess this man sets a new precedent. I’ve heard of many strange cases, but Krystian Bala must surely take away the prize for the most WTF crime ever committed.

A Polish author, Krystian Bala published his first novel Amok in the year 2003; some time later, police found an eerie similarity between a murder committed in the book, to an unsolved murder that took place in Poland in the year 2000. Getting suspicious, police began to track the murder again, matching it with the clues and events written in the novel.

In what might very well be a WTF moment, the author turned out to be the murderer, later drawing on his own experience to draft his masterpiece of a novel. Whoa, hold on – no, this genius didn’t stop at that; he was at the time working on his second novel, and was also planning another murder at the same time. Guess this guy gives “writing from his experience” an entirely new meaning.

You can read the full stories here and here.

The Virago of Veerpuri got me hooked from the word go – this was the first ever mystery that I had ever read – and as luck would have it, was a mystery that was left unsolved.

The story was published on Chandamama as a series, appearing first in the May issue of the year 1997. It belonged to an era where every single piece of fiction was riveting – full of kings, queens, princesses, evil tantriks, royal astrologers, predictions of doom, the entire lot. You get the picture.

I was living in a town where the only accessible reads were academic text-books; I grew up with my grandparents, and they belonged to the clan who thought kids who didn’t read Chandamama growing up would grow up into unspeakable adults. In all fairness, I loved the little book. I literally pined for the 4th of every month, waiting hungrily for the mailman to deliver my copy.

To cut a long story short, The Virago of Veerpuri mysteriously stopped after a few episodes, just when the story was at its most interesting. To this day, it remains like that grain of sand in my eye, that seed stuck in my tooth, that thorn in my foot – I just can’t let go. I keep remembering it from time to time, and wonder how the story might have unraveled.

Ah well, wouldn’t bode well for me to get nostalgic again, so here goes – all you Chandamama fans, you can go through the archives of the book by going here. And for you old-timers who did follow the story, and know what happened to it – Yours truly is waiting to hear it.

The Earth Hour campaign, hosted by WWF, is on 27th March this year; and it’s getting viral like nobody’s business. Millions of households are expected to go dark tomorrow at 2030 hours, in an attempt to curb the menace of Global Warming.

The stats are impressive – Earth Hour 2009 had one billion participants, and this year is expected to cross that figure; 121 countries have counted themselves in, and a whopping 812 global landmarks are expected to turn off their lights for the occasion. The list includes biggies like the Eiffel Tower, Niagara Falls, The Leaning Tower of Pisa, and more. Closer home, we will see the Red Fort in darkness tomorrow. (Source: WIKI)

While all this is pretty awesome, wouldn’t it be a lot simpler if the governments involved just cut off the power for that one hour? I know, it’s forced participation that way, but c’mon, think how many participants the event would have! I certainly wouldn’t mind a one-hour power cut, especially if it was in the interests of the global community!

So there, now that you know, try to use as less power as possible during that hour – at other times too, for that matter. If this means the day-time temperature is gonna drop by even 1 degree Celsius, I’m willing to try it out.

I hate Global Warming, and I know you do, too. On board, then!

Everyone said it was the best movie they had ever seen. Everyone said, they were surely going to watch it a second, third time. Everyone said if you haven’t seen Avatar yet, you haven’t lived.

I finally decided to see what the fuss was all about. Or rather, I finally got a chance to see what the fuss was all about when my friend got hold of three tickets at the famed IMAX 3D Screen at Prasad’s.

The movie in a nutshell – Bad guys target good guys. One bad guy turns into good guy. Finds true love.  Defeats bad guys. End of movie. Throw in tons and tons of special effects, cheesy lines, lots of bluish, creepy looking things, and you’ve got Avatar. I’m sorry guys, I know you loved the movie, but I just don’t see what made the movie so lovable.

Frankly, I developed a migraine about 30 minutes into the movie; whether it was due to the movie itself, the sweltering Hyderabad heat, or the uncomfortable oversized 3D glasses, we’ll never know. But yeah, I’m inclined to blame the movie We waited in vain for some awesome scene that would make us go WOW!!!, but that never happened.

Pandora was full of neon lighting, huge tails, as-ugly-as-you-can-make-em monsters and birds, and what not. I mean, how creepy were those earthworm-like wiggly things in the Na’vi braids?! And how many of you felt the Na’vis – with their bows and arrows slung on their backs – resembled the Hindu Gods?

What I do acknowledge, is the hardwork put in by hundreds of behind-the-scenes crew; Apparently, each frame (1/24 of a second) of the CGI scenes took an average of 47 man-hours to complete (Source: IMDB).

That certainly is impressive, and while I’m in awe of it, I did not really enjoy it.