And the Oscar goes to...

23 Feb 2009!!! What a day it has been for millions of AR Rahman fans back home. YES. The Oscar goes to Rahman... Not one but two :) I could say nothing but a BIG congrats to ARR and Pookutty!!

Simplicity is something that i like the most in ARR... perhaps even a step more than his music. Very few personalities stick to this code.

Unfortunate to miss out the live coverage today morning, but was abreast with the event on the web like many others in the office. It was the first time i heard the excitement across the office for an event other than cricket. I could hear the noise... "Yes AR got it...", "Its two now..." everybody was as excited as holding the golden statue in their hand itself...

What a moment it was...

Still remember the days where we go buy the cassettes/CDs on the very first day of the ARR's music release... It was indeed great disappointment when i was told that all the 'alaipayudhe' CDs were sold out inspite of getting additional stock!! all this among busy entrance exam preparations... :)

Highlight of the day, what made whole Indians proud is the "Mere pass Ma hai" and "ella pugazhum irraivanukke" thats truely taking India on global stage. Very special thanks to him for taking India's glory to the red carpet.

As a close follower of his every compositions, i do believe that he had given much much great music than this... ultimately its just the recogintion that matters, he deserves it and he gets it!!

I wish he gives us more and more great music, With Delhi 6 already rocking... eagerly awaiting for all his other releases. Plenty more to come!

"Jai Ho" AR :)

Strange.... Good men do exist

Taking liberty to copy/paste the content of my friend Varun's blog here... No harm in spreading good messages :)

It is good to know that few good men does exist... surrounded by the world of selfish people who do whatever it takes to go forward, world of blaming people, world of people doing wrong stuffs saying they are correcting someone's mistake...etc etc. List is huge...i don't want to highlight bad things while talking about some good stuff. Here is the content from Varun...

I was in the Coimbatore railway station to catch a train back to Bangalore when a strange incident happened. I could not locate the platform where the train would come so i asked a police man standing nearby. Forgetting that i was in Tamil Nadu i asked him in Hindi. Bewildered, the police man answered back in fluent English that i would find the train in 4th platform. Embarrassed with my wrong perception that police men are uneducated, i walked on to the platform. After wandering aimlessly in the platform, a middle aged man looking like a small barrel with shirt on it approached me and asked if i needed any help. I was confused and little suspicious of the courtesy shown by this stranger refused the kind gesture. This was the second time i replied back to someone in English although knowing the native language. I soon realized that he was there for money and would squeeze out as much money as possible assuming that i was a stranger to this part of the country. At this point i decided to play along and see what all he would do to get money. I also decided that i would maintain "only English" image. When it was time to get into the train compartment, he pushed himself into the crowd and made way for me to enter the compartment. I soon settled down and knew that it was time for give-me-money talk. To my surprise he wished me a happy journey and walked away. I couldn't help asking him what this is all about. This time, to his surprise, i spoke to him in Tamil asking him why he was so courteous? After a smile he said that he was working for the Tourism department of TN and his job was to help non-locals from getting cheated. The police man i spoke to earlier had asked him to help me as didn't look like a person from this part of the country. It was a very different experience and something i will remember for a long time. Now iam curious if this happens in other cities also?

Personal experiences apart...Nice to know good people do exist!

Guitar - The hands on!

It was friday evening! left with nothing but few movies in laptop to spend the weekend and as usual waiting for my workaholic roomies to come back from office...

Then entered Naveen with his new guitar, he has joined guitar class n bought a new instrument along with that some strange device called as the tuner, Little did we (or rather nothing) about music and the measurements shown in the device was nothing but greek n latin... AD,AE...4D etc etc, i got reminded of the opcodes in microprocessors ;)

Atleast i decided to go on w/o it (actually...tune itself is not coming where to fine tune it :P), then tried few things like Sa Re Ga Ma (note it was sounding 'like' Sa Re Ga Ma n not exactly that)... Wow first hands on with a guitar it was feeling good, what is there to worry when no one around you knows how to play it!

After few tries, we got few doubts as really does guitars r used in orchetration ;) coz it was making some irritating sounds in our hands.. (Typical critics comments right?? ;) ).

Well i decided to leave it there...but Naveen was determined to play 'jingle bells' with it but lil did we got the clue about it from what we heard... Anyways awaiting for this second class now!

If in future we get a rock star out of him, i deserve some credits as well atleast for bearing him in his initial days ;)

As a next step.... planning to take a solo with guitar ;)

Back to square one...??

Loneliness is not something which is new for me... But oflate i feel the pain of it to the core. Its just 4 years that i started mingling with people more often than anytime. I often go out with my office friends these days....may it be the hangouts or the movies and even with such lively gang around, i feel alone these days... !

So what was there in these 4 years which i don't have now which makes me feel so lonely? i had spent almost 20 yrs with limited friends....living within my boundary and rarely going out with friends... Movies! oops i can't think that almost once in a month i am going to theater to watch movies...Hmm... still remember my frnz pulling me with great struggle for a movie (Have to mention this... i went to a theatre after 6 yrs in my final year engg.)...

I would definetely say, i can't get back these 4 years which i have spent with my friends in our appartment in electronic city...It was so lively that we won't mind spending weekends just staying in our rooms... but now almost all are gone...all have gone in different directions, not sure whether we can meet again!...now we meet only in the network world which can excite the professional roadmap but definetely not the personal feelings..

Simply to say 'Guys i miss u' would not suffice... The same place wherein we had spent days together during weekends without doing anything... now, could not kill just the time window between after office hours n bedtime even with TVs n movies! The appartment in which we occupied almost 3 houses has dropped down to 1 now...

Matured mind would always say...it is part and parcel of life but heart doesn't always think like this. It is good to see friends settling down at the same time it hurts when i have to accept that they will no longer be with us.

Left with no choice, have to accept this and have to move on... who knows whether i will even get time to think about all these when time for me comes to settle down... Only time has to say!

As of now, i am back to square one!

Highway travels - The nightmares!!

Thanks to the bad weather and electricity board! i had no option but to write a blog. It has
been a couple of weeks that i wanted to write something on this topic but always found one
or the other so called 'Good' reasons to postpone it! Here i get a chance now :)


I always opt for private omni bus of class semi-sleeper for commuting to/from my home town... the only reason for that is leg space! Oflate, long distance travel have been a adventure for me. Something or the other exciting stuff happens during the travel.

This day was not an exception, it was around 1 am and bus was somewhere near salem. I don't
get sleep that easily during travel but that day i fell asleep cajoled by the hot tiresome day at home... that is when i heard a shattering sound of glass, it took few seconds for me to realise what has happened. Thank god it was nothing fatal, the front glass of the bus bursted into pieces owing to pressure of high speed wind hitting the glass of the cruising bus leaving driver bleeding! what else had to wait for alternate driver/bus in the process spent arond 2 hrs on the highway...


A month before that! Aah!! this was the worst bus travel i ever made... It was some holiday season and hence could not get tickets for night bus and had to opt for day time travel in a
volvo, worst part is we had booked first two seats... In a volvo, driver's seating position is such that the front row is completely open for a panaromic view, believe it, the view which u get from that isn't that great!!


Call it the dexterity of the drivers or the quality of the buses to cut through the wind,you will get to see all vehicles almost smashing into you, it was almost like playing NFS!! The sixth sense of mine and my frnds whom i travelled with that day constantly pricked us...we said to each other "This beggar (the only decent word that we could get to call the driver ;( ) is going to park (hit) somewhere ", after couple of close encounters we were all set to reach b'lore... guess what the bus was sucessfully parked after hitting a private carrier!!


When used to hear abot or see some accidents, always thought its bad luck on the driver/passengers part but after having so many close shaves it is really hurting that how careless these drivers are! Having said that, it is not only the drivers whom are to be blamed it is the responsibility of the transport company to take care that the timings are not tight and the drivers are given good rest... and ofcourse the condition of the highways which are worsening day by day.

Well! we are left with less options... if something is to happen it will definetely happen! I have to book tickets for my next trip now ;)

Taare Screen par

I had been to 'taare Zameen par' this weekend. What a movie it was!! Standing evation at the end of the movie! something that happens seldom in theatres. Oflate bollywood movies has nothing but glamour and 'high speed' stunts (not to mention abot the annoying remix nos. which comes out for every song...), Every movie is meant to be shot abroad even if it is indoor shooting... probably directors too want onsite opportunities as people in s/w industry ;). Taare zameen par is an exception, hats off for Aamir khan for this effort.



Darsheel safary (Ishaant as most of know now) steals the show. He has been the cynosure throughout. From the naughty classroom scenes to senti moments during boarding school, there is no age bar to get involved into his action. It is very certain that u will be glued to the silver screen. Excellent effort!! Aamir khan deserves appreciation for putting himself into a character role and not allowing the 'Aamir' factor to come in for pushing in the commericial aspect to the movie.

The story line was catchy, it had every aspect of entertainment... with message. The laughther of the kids and the weaping women (Certainly not for 250 bucks paid in PVR ;) ) in theatre speaks volume about the success of the movie.

Screenplay was awesome, my picks from the flick...

- "3 X 9 = 3" graphics, height of imagination! well executed by CG folks. This certainly would triggered numerous childhood imaginations.

- The book painting depicting seperation of the kid when Ishaant is put into boarding school. Very touchy, the message is nailed into audience here!!

- Ishaant's crying scene in hostel bathroom on the first day @ boarding school is very touchy as well.

Shankar, Ehsaan and Loy deserve appreciation for wonderful tracks. The title song reminds me of title song of 'kal ho na ho' and 'breathless' otherwise every track is different and well matched to the mood of the storyline.

Somehow felt that the message missed the punch required, screenplay has shaken a bit here. Though the theme was 'every child is special' and the concept was to make the parents understand the same, the screenplay should have involved with Ishaant's parents a bit more. Something like manirathnam's "kannathil muthamittal" which revolves in similar lines of telling story from the child's point of view wherein there was equal opporturnity for other stakeholders such as parents.

'The End' in the movie also tells a story in the form of documentory. The film makers stand up to the audience till end to convey the message!!

Overall it was 'Taare screen par', true glittering stars. If i have to rate the movie in the scale of 5, mine would certainly be 4+. Hoping for many such good movies in future. Hope i am not hoping against hope :(.

Ungrateful man - My first theatre experience

Here i am back blogging at last!!

I would like to share my first time experience on watching a play in a theatre...

Frankly speaking, i never was interested in watching plays... i keep hearing about 'Ranga shankara' in b'lore from the time i had been in here but never even thought of going to watch one of the performance!!

It was under compulsion of one of my friends that i decided to go for the play at last, we decided to go for 'Ungrateful man' it was a story from panchatantra... Did not want to go for a serious one ;)

Being used to movies, i was expecting similar ambience over there with all speakers hanging around (DTS, dolby n what not...)..... x no.of seats with y no.of rows!! but my imagination went wrong, it was a small amphitheatre WITH NO SPEAKERS.... oops what i thought and what it has turned out to be!! now started wondering about the acoustics n was doubtful whether i will be able to hear the dialogues properly r not....

Then came the final ring.... a man came with traditional drums, at the outset all the audience started tapping their feets (including me :) )... hmm... already started dancing to performers tunes!!

Then came two very cute kids, guess what they were the narrators of the play :) Their performance deserves appreciation... Then slowly all the characters came in n the play continued.... It was certainly a different experience, the co-ordination that was there in assembling the sets for each scene was nothing less than 100%.

The best part of the play was when bunch of kids posing themselves as monkeys.... well imagine the kind of atmosphere it wud have been.... all the chotoos posing as monkeys! doing what not on the stage.... The complete theatre was burst into laughter.... Kudos to the director!! Imagine how hard it is to get something out of kids.... oops!! The most difficult thing to get something is having a kid to do something which we ask them to do.... :) They were perfect!!

Altogether it was completely a new and wonderful experience for me... it was worth the bucks!! If you happen to get an opportunity to watch one, pl. don't miss it.... go at least once to feel the difference.