Just felt like it...

Nothing to write about. Nothing to sing for.

Nothing to die for, nor to live.

NOTHING defines me,

so don’t search my soul. You’ll find nothing.

I dream of what I will not be

I fight against what I don’t want.

I am a big negation of what I don’t believe -

forever in the quest of a zero…

And have nothing more to say.

Ladies and gentlemen, presenting..... JAANI DUSHMAN!

Four followers. Thank you God. (sniff) I celebrate this day with a Jaani Dushman Special.

Now you must remember that Jaani Dushman is the film that re-re-re-launched the talented, good looking Armaan Kohli with a specially designed re-re-remake of every hit his dad delivered (total: 2). Armaan Kohli - ring a bell? Hint: Ayesha Jhulka. Go brush up your 90's history.

It was the film that had Manisha Koirala studying at what I can only guess is an adult education institute that confers full-time student status to people past 35. She is kept company by everybody in Bollywood who was out of work at that moment. It was the film that led Sonu Nigam into the darkest abyss of his career, a brief spell when he tried to act. It was the film packed with stunning visual treats like snake-Manisha and her lover snake-Armaan romancing against photoshop locales, stomping on a hill till it crumbled... outstanding original action sequences and special effects that went on to inspire a generation of action thrillers... and gems of cinematic moments like, "Jallad hoke naazuk phool ko chhoota hai!"

As a special treat to my readers, here is one scene out of this genre-defining epic (well yes, I have since been rating movies on the Jaani Dushman scale; Kurbaan was a 7).

How to kill a hero

Become a snake with the power to transform into man, woman, vehicle.

Put tough and macho adult education institute student into coma. The day he gets out of coma, you threaten his friend's retarded brother. They flee on a motorbike. You turn into a motorbike, smash hospital windows and follow. They reach a secluded beach. You catch up. Fight. Stab. Stomp on the dagger in hero's chest.

Little bro escapes on water scooter, coz you know, someone parked a water scooter and forgot to take out the keys. Anyway, you run over water and catch little bro. Hero (still alive, what were you thinking?) catches up on another water scooter. You wrestle in water, and hope that the salt water will finally do the trick, and the physical weakness of being just out of hospital kicks in, and the hero finally gives up.

Distraught, the hero will crawl back to the adult education institute to make a dying speech in the lap of the Principal before finally and terminally dying.

(You continue chasing little bro till big bro The Hulk catches up with you for a breathtaking climax.)

Hah.... I'm going out looking for the DVD right away. Have to watch this classic once again.

What up, man!

Just because I am bindass does not mean I am not serious about my career.

Just because I am bindass does not mean I don't believe in God.

Or do drugs. Or sleep around.

It just means I am OK with a TV anchor snooping on my girlfriend because I am too much of a gentleman to confront her. And I love watching music channels and letting them tell me how to live. And my life aspiration is to be a cuss-spewing roadie. And I fulfill my responsibility towards social awareness by publishing my inner colours on social networking sites.

Yo man I'm bindass. Go green. Save water. Save tigers. Save SRK. Go vote.

Yo.

Do you happen to hate Kurbaan too?

I am not insensitive to the big issue that is terrorism. I do feel sorry for hot hunks like Saif who are forced into masterminding terror plots by the big bad global superpowers. Tch tch, the heart goes out to him. What I cannot comprehend is how anyone who's watched New York can afford to watch Kurbaan. Aren't we still suffering from the effects of recession?

Ah well, the movie does teach you a lot. Here's what I've learnt:

1. Don't marry a good looking Muslim guy. He could be a terrorist.

2. Afghans are terrorists. They are also spooky people who stare at you wierdly like a bunch of undercover aliens and kill you if you threaten their secret.

3. If you suspect your neighbours of wierd undercover activities, just snoop around, tiptoe into their basement and you'll uncover a deadly terror plan as well as find a dead body or two.

4. Terrorists are dumb louts who don't watch much TV, and so can't tell a journo from an Islam fundamentalist. So the next time you want to blow their plans, just give an anti-America speech and next thing you know, you'll be in their clan - don't even bother to conceal your identity, they won't notice.

5. There are two types of Muslims - the ones who think Americans deserve to be kicked, and the ones who don't.

6. A bunch of Afghans and a Pakistani use a Delhi girl as a pawn in their war against America. This is India's problem, so we have to make a movie about it.

7. To make a dark, sultry thriller, take a good film, strip it of all colour, get a bunch of expensive actors, tell them not to act and just look tense in every scene, paste some sex scenes (refer Mahesh Bhatt productions for guidance), add a dash of gore, some extra tears. For a dash of authenticity, get Kiron Kher do an Afghani accent. There you have it. Now sit back and enjoy the critical acclaim. And dare anyone to call you candy floss again.

8. Kareena Kapoor can act: she has three very distinct expressions in this one - in the first part she's deeply in love, and can't get her hands off her new husband. Less than an hour later she's scared, and in the end she's sad. Great performance.

9. If you want to make a sexy anti-terrorism movie and still sound secular, just sprinkle some pro-Islam arguments. Nobody will blame you for killing all the Muslims, since after all you've been sympathetic to their sorrows and their motivations. Let them speak, and them kill them in the larger interest of humanity. Its a win-win situation, everyone's happy.

10. 500 hard earned rupees are nothing if compared to the sorry saga of innocent people forced on the path to terror, and noone could understand their pathos better than Karan Johar. So give him all your money.

P.S. Can't wait to write that Jaani Dushman blog. Coming up soon.

Tata has gone nuts! And this is not about some vanishing species of turtles...

Heard of OkTataByebye.com? I hadn't heard of it either - apparently it is a community portal for travellers, initiated by makemytrip.com. Bizarrely enough, Tata Sons have sued the company with the claim that the domain name infringes on the Tata brand name! Well I hate the expression, but WTF?

More about it on: http://www.oktatabyebye.com/support-us/Appeal.aspx

This isn't corporate bashing, but I do feel the company has taken it too far. If this is some ingeneous ploy to take over a popular domain name, kudos to the legal eagles in there. But if they actually contend that by being born into the Tata clan, they win copyright over a colloquial expression, then duh-uh... wait, is that copyrighted by someone too?

Do pass on the message. Not that its gonna help anyone, but we ought to know the levels of absurdity prevelant in our country.

Fly You Fools - Indian Comics about Life.

...and, we're back!

Don't you just love Google?

After years of technologically retarded existence, humble ol’ self is finally learning the ropes. And indeed, staying ahead of the geeks who first scoffed at me for not having an email account (1999), then for not knowing what to do with it and always forgetting my password (2001), then for not having a gmail account (still on rediff? Tsch. – 2004) or not understanding what all the fuss around Orkut was (2005). Ahead of them, because I figured Twitter and got hooked on to it on my own! (Loud applause) Thank you, I love you all. Muah.

My romance with the Internet really started when it first helped me find a home and roommates in a new city. Three years, two cities and umpteen relocations later, Internet is again the reason I have the apartment I always wanted, and a sweet li’l roommate, everything worked out within a week and right under all the estate agent noses left sniffing the rainy air! And yes, my present job too. Just the one I wanted, and noone else thought such jobs exist. No need for applause.

The Internet has also been remedial to my Queuephobia – no more physical banking, ticket booking for me, sir. The scoffers of yore would be delighted to see my (company sponsored) lappy with four browsers – one to browse in German, another for English, one exclusively for using Outlook and one with a fancy logo.

AND the point of telling you all of this is… uh… I did have a very good point… never mind. Just wanted to blog.

Is there life after death?

Well, I had to talk about it. This is the story of a magazine gone wrong. It was called India Insight.

Many people would have many different sides of the story to tell - this is my side of it. More than a year ago when I had the crazy urge to stop working as a translator and try my luck as a copywriter, I packed my bags and came to a city I thought I knew - Pune. The King in Paulo Coehlo's Alchemist says that when you set out on the way to your dreams, nature rewards you with a little success on your first step - its called beginner's luck.

So with no experience, no training in media, I ended up with the job I'd have killed for - not as Junior Copywriter in some obscure advertising company, but as subeditor for a newly launched weekly magazine with some ambitious plans to redefine journalism in India. For the first few weeks, the work was maddening - intimidating, exhausting, but oh, the feeling of holding a fresh copy of the magazine in my hands... 64 pages of honest, if a little amateurish journalism, that I helped organise, arrange into one issue packed with stories on every subject of interest from politics to films to history to sports... this was May and June 2008. India Insight was launched on May 4, I joined the tiny team on May 13. By the first week of July we got a real office - by mid-July I got help as two more sub-editors joined us. By end of July, from a team of two - me and the creative head slogging on issue after issue of the magazine - we had grown to a full-fledged editorial team of 3 sub-editors, a chief editor, a copy editor working from Delhi, and 3 assistants to the chief designer. By August, publication stopped.

I won't get into blame games here, so never mind what went wrong. Only a lot of dreams were shattered - big deal. But one issue of that magazine, dated August 8-14 2008, which was the first product of our complete team, never made it to the stands. Somewhat hurts. It also hurts, still hurts that two people among the new faces were there because of me. I told them we needed more people in this amazing new publishing house, that we had two magazines running and more in the offing, that yes it was a risk for them to quit their present jobs but that the risk was worth taking. I'm not conceited enough to think that I influenced their decision or the course of their lives, but I was the Nimittya - there's no better word for it. Had I not told them about this job, they wouldn't have quit their jobs in Bangalore.

I'm still chasing my dream. And I remain indebted to India Insight for marking my first step towards it. Journalism is what I wanted for my life and if I started late, it was only because I hadn't had the nerve before. This was my beginner's luck. This weekend, I'll be in Bangalore, watching a play by my favourite theatre group. We'd done a little story on them, in the August 8 issue - very few copies of that issue were printed, and I've managed to save one with me. I'll hopefully be able to hand it over to the group's director.

India Insight, meanwhile, lives on. After August last year, it was re-launched from Bangalore in October. And again from Pune last month, this time as a fortnightly. The publishers remain optimistic and I too wish the magazine all the success. Only hoping that this time, the still-ambitious project does not displace a lot of young people, play with their dreams and render them jobless in a month.