Let's call her 'danu'. My friend had this habit of taking things into consideration, a lot many times before arriving at a decision. And invariably she would come to me for  suggestions, speaking in a tone which suggested 'help me na'. i of course was a sucker for any free service of  advice, that is abundant in all of us, isn't it? That afternoon i had gone somewhere( a movie i think), when i had called her to say hello. Honeydew asked me to come and see her immediately after the movie; it was regarding an interview she was supposed to have with a top guy in our company. Upon meeting her, i told her to be very positive and sound enthusiastic about the new profile she aspires to get, that is if selected at all. After a few queries as to what she might be asked,Danu left for her meeting. Later in the evening, at around dinner time, she sent a message that i should come and see her. There was this staff cafeteria where i chanced upon her, she was looking for me; her eyes spoke more than they wanted to, she was tensed. The staircase leading up to the floors in our office was a secluded place to have a 'private' chat. We went up two floors to a suitable spot; lest someone overhears our conversation. Sensing the nature of the situation, i spoke as carefully as possible, but she broke down as soon as we sat down on the staircase. She wept on and on clutching her face, i awkwardly placed an arm around her(never at ease with these things). Poor Danu must have cried for a full four minutes, when she finally managed to mumble that she needs my handkerchief. Snapped out of a daze, self ran downstairs to grab the nearest napkin lying around(we have no shortage of such things, ever). She wiped her face, i helpfully offered her a glass of water, she drank some, sniffed a little, and then told her story. 

It seemed she wanted to get hold of a better profile, she had been trying hard for it for the past year or so, in some other company. Likewise, here too(she was a new employee) her talent was lying waste for lack of opportunity, and for that regards she had applied to join the sales team. They flunked her;again, that's what she was worried about. The interview mentioned earlier had gone well only till the point of her presenting her case well, they/he/the interviewer had actually appreciated her 'spunk'. What's spunk, Sam? she had asked me in between telling her story. But alas, in the end she still was empty handed, her 'bad luck' hadn't left her still, she was heartbroken. Now what can a colleague, or even a friend do in such a situation? except may be perk her up. That i did. i told her that she was a genuinely nice human being, a rarity. Sometimes even the rarest of things do not get the attention they deserve, you do not worry, and certainly do not cry, stop being a crybaby. 'Stop being such a girlie' wouldn't you like to put up a better fight? i see that you aspire, which is good, now get your act together and get going, you'll succeed surely. She thanked me for being with her. i thanked her for sharing her 'down' time. We all share our 'up' time very easily, but hardly speak to anyone when things aren't rosy enough. A few months later, Danu came to me teary eyed again, this time to say good bye. She was leaving for a better position, a better profile that she had wished for so long. We spent a few hours together, relieving all the wonderfull moments spent that made up these past few months. Her life now seemed on track, and i was happy to see her smile and giggle at my silly jokes again. She had left on a bus, i had waved at her till the bus turned a corner. i knew we wouldn't meet again. Some instincts are too strong. It has been a long time.i am sure you did well in your life. i wish you only the best 'Danu'. 

Watched a full length documentary called Religulous, ( probably merging of religion and ridiculous) an American production. The narrator is a stand up comedian called Bill Maher; yeah they can take a stand on anything. America for all that it stands and doesn't stand for is a very open society, the views expressed in public, would bring a nation like India to a bloody civil war. They have varied levels leading to and away from religion, the theist and the atheist being the closest and the farthest respectively. American society has and had quite a handful of atheists, this particular sect being treated like the carrier of some deadly disease by the majority of the very religious and church going Americans. Too many despicable and downright crass moral and social stigmas are attributed to the completely ungodly creatures, namely the atheists.
This documentary is no different from the huge amount of sound and fury spewing out of the land of plenty, time and again. Any talk,book,movie,documentary, audio or video about or against religion is widely followed and marketed; it always scores high. Religulous is no different, the narrator essays a silky smooth barging into the private lairs of some rich and powerful religious leaders or representatives to defy everything that religion stands for and does. He throws question, levels veiled accusations, scorches, stumps, bruises,punches and laughs at the pot bellied, Armani suited 'scholars'. They evidently are playing to the camera, some making it look real, others fumbling and stuttering, maybe praying that this gets over soon. The whole episode is a series of short interviews aimed at poking fun at the concept, misinterpretation and general shortcomings of religions all over the world.
Maher knows his onions, or is rather well prepared for the roasting of his victims, while keeping the proceedings light hearted and jovial. But the point is that inspite of making severe dents into the foundation of religion, like pointing to the glaring glitches in history(usual),linking of private wealth of preachers to blind faith(hackneyed) to rationalizing miracles to every day phenomena(clever), the documentary fails where all American tirades against religion fail, its adversity to atheist way. We, in India look at religion as either true or false, not the Americans, a vehement no to religion is still unacceptable to them. The narrator, like all other rationalists from America, relies on the seed of doubt to express his and all fellow brothers and sisters inability to see what religion is up to. They conveniently call themselves agnostics, a fancy term for the doubting Thomases. By this they mean that they are unsure, 'by doubting you are being rational' booms Maher. nah! you aren't being rational, you are trying to escape the twin dilemma of becoming a social outcast and a futureless,rootless flying twig. There are a lot of unmentionable attributes strangely given to the atheists, the veracity of the same though cannot be vouched by yours truly. 'Atheists do not vote, do drugs, blah blah blah'...went on an American i personally know, himself an agnostic.
i remember the sensible statement from another agnostic American, Richard Dawkins, 'physical science has a long way to go before it unearths the mystery of the all that is there around us, hence it is safe to say that all arguments for or against religion are not final, both are true and untrue at the same time'. That is solid ground for the agnostics, this yes and no, easy to adopt and say 'i doubt', instead of saying 'i deny' and get lynched. This view does not change anything, but it is better than a 'yes i believe so bring out the nuclear warheads'. Peace and human progress shall be achieved when assorted no-brainers like of 'doubts', 'beliefs', 'service', 'rituals', 'miracles','punishment', 'rewards in heaven', etc etc are totally and thoroughly washed down from our collective conscience. With religion around us, its a 'miracle' to live another day. Without it, there will be heaven without death. Another miracle!

Recently spoke to a Texan engineering consultant about the woes of the world market, to get a feel of how an American reacts to an infectious malady born in USA. He was pretty cool about it, saying casually that this is going to take three quarters more to get back to normalancy. He pointed out that the earliest signs of the recovery would be the drop in unemployment levels, and raising of interst rates. These two parameters he said, would be a healthy indicator. i asked for good measure what he thinks is the right price for oil in this scenario, to which he replied about seventy should be good. Sounded fair, the rates, controlled by American companies are always illogical. The commoner on the street should be able to get a tanks fill without having to worry about other consequenses. Then i came to the crux of the discussion, which i suspect he was ready for, he knew somehow that i would ask him. So why do you think this had to happen, who, if you were asked, is the single biggest culprit?
He was a smart diplomat in this classical answer of his, 'greed my friend, its greed'. There can be situations where the consumer is looking for a refuge under some sort of cover, to meet his desires, the market foces if not ready to meet the challenges shall be losers in the long term. Only, the methods chosen should have state approval in almost all cases so as to avoid future consequences. At least that is what is proven in this recession. The world needs better economic regulations to accomodate the aspirations and fix the greed of the principal lenders. Further i stated matter of factly that the reforms are going haywire and that the very basis of economics is a farce, its a dicey concept. He fully agreed to that and offered to add that it is called, 'the dismal science'. i laughed at this new phrase. Yeah, yeah, he indulgingly muttered. Trying to put mathematical coordinates on to human behaviour is nothing but an absurd idea. So the world will always see such phases, more of the global meltdowns are likely to occur, unless a very strong fundamental base of economic governanace is rolled out for the all the nations to follow. That is an unlikely scenario, like telling fifty chimpanzees to stand in a line for some bananas. Someone is bound to jump the line, someone would scoot with a whole bunch. Man is only socialised, an animal all the same.

In an age of instant viewership or readership for all sorts of media, the teams behind the numerous mediums expect the unexpected in a matter of a few hours or minutes sometimes. A news item, its authenticity be dammed, becomes an instant rage with one single telecast. Likewise, an erroneous article, or a scandalous interview is purposely feeded to the masses to elicit a response to something that's co related to another end product;a movie for example. More often than not, it hits the bulls eye, given the volatile nature of the multiple cross sections of the society. Anything goes in the name of 'breaking news'. Times are such that a viable model of business has been carved out by the wily and often highly paid strategists looking to make a mark in their chosen field; nobody is 'safe' without results, however qualified they be, such are the times. Quality in all fields, be it ads, movies, print media, television etc has gone for a toss. The formula is simple, make a downright crappy product and place it in the hands of a team of fancy degree holding team of 'professionals', they will brain storm over litres of coffee in some suburban five star and pronto!, you have a delightful plan to sell it overnight to a hype mongering consumer. Before anybody realises what the hell is being 'marketed', the makers are flush with tons green bills. Win win situation. Read an absurd 'news item' the other day about a bloke from Mankhurd who fretted and fumed to get his ticket money back after watching 'Ek'. The makers had apparently advertised that those not satisfied with the movie will be reimbursed their hard earned money. The said ad also kicked a bucketful of muck at the review writers, claiming that, when certain films being given a bad rating, it does not affect its box office performance. The makers went to the extent of pointing out that 'Dev D'which won a rarest of rare 5 star rating, didn't do well, whereas a movie like Golmaal Returns with 2 star rating proved to be a winner. What! that's a comparison? Its like comparing Charlie Chaplin to apna Jonny Lever. Forget about talking sense, these chaps do not understand what sense means. They want their nonsense to be highly regarded. By the way, if the ratings didn't matter, then why the hell do you raise a cry about them? Well that's the plan i guess. Make some noise, someone's ear is going to prick. If anything bears a semblance of sense, its the reviews of some truly dedicated critics. Yes it is easy to criticise,but then that's the voice of truth. We should be ready to hear the truth after giving our best shot, the sounding boards are bound to echo with the glaring bloomers commited.
And promises of simply giving money back will not help, you need to promise a decent entertainer to yourself before calling over the 'hustlers' in tie-suit.

India goes to vote again, another money flaunting, muscle flexing, hoodwinking,backstabbing,booth capturing circus is about to unfold. A new set of men and women shall be chosen to govern the country.Early nineties saw a then considered to be the baap of all political showmanship, BJP's rathyatra.The obvious agenda behind such a yatra or journey was to whip up the Hindu sentiments in the name of Ram.A vernacular leftist daily had a gem of a poem in this context which i translate here- Ram has re-incarnated in the form of Advani, this can be safely assumed, if the vote bank goes to BJP, the country's reigns will be in the hands of Hanuman! Both the avatar and the ape god reference here, are to demean the essence of the juggernaut which was unleashed in the country. The said party did finally win, but a lot later. And not Hanuman but A B Vajpayee was at the helm, incidentally the five years of his party's rule were puntuated with hiccups like Godhra, Kargil and Lahore summit( Advani almost looked ready to confer the Padmashri on Musharraf). And then, a whirlwind rally by Sonia saw the tides turn in favour of the congress again.The rule of the UPA was a bumpy, rocky ride capped with the recent recession.Two ideologicaly polarized parties, two different regimes, same unsatisfactory results. Not to talk about some forgotten piece of fiction called election manifestos.In India we choose not able leaders with vision, but personalities with narrow agenda.The messy,often bloodstained regional politicos, steeped in black money are promoted to the echoleons of power at the centre, or else given enough lollies in their state itself. Parties are willing to partner with anybody who has a seat to his/her name.The coalition resulting of such deals are multiheaded monsters allowed to run the country shamelessly, the voters clearly having shunned each one of them.In the run up to the general elections,a more disgusting result of such coalitions is surfacing, the blunt, selfish, egoistical leaders of regional parties are openly flaunting their drooling tongue and wagging tail, prime ministerial aspirations exposed. Just about anybody can pin their hopes in a lok sabha election for the top job. The top job is that easy. It is akin to a plump piece of meat hanging on a thread. Any bully can snatch it and be promptly named our next PM. It happens only in India.There is absence of logic in the mandates, reason is conspicous by its absence in the coalitions(adultry is the norm of the day), a single stable leadership is missing from the thick of things, India is about to vote for its next puppet PM. For the politicians, of the politicians,by the politicians. Thumb rules.

The powerhouse of world enconomy is taking one disastrous tumble after another in the face of a yet to be fully ascertained recession. Sub prime is prime time news, plus every coffee, chai or ciggie break topic.Stimulus or no stimulus, some known company or the other is announcing cut in flab like it is a routine policy matter. Now news has come in from the lands of plenty about families wiping themselves out, often initiated by the head of the family;reason, unable to cope with the crunch.So much already, more bad news invariably around the corner; all this what for? because of the countless mistakes of a wealthy, powerful, all pervasive, domineering state which has the largest share of every listed man made threat to the planet? This
nation consumes every thing from burgers,chips,colas,trees,gas,steel,paper,rubber, oil,whiskey,beer, anything that is there to consume like there is no tommorow.The average American is worth at least 20 Indians in terms of consumption of resources. The amount of pollution US of A creates would blacken the face of earth in a mere few years if all other nations were to follow suit.Now this hungrier_ by_ the_ minute giant is showing yet another disgusting face of itself, callous misappropriation of mortgage funds to the tune of so many billions that some nations may possibly run their economy for a hundred years with that kind of money.That kind of money is gone;kaput. Result is, truly deserving nations like India, which ought to come out of shadows of a miserable past, and share the power equation of the world, is being unnecessarily made to drag back its feet into messy waters. More pollution from the American stable, the dollar dirtying the fragile economic balance of the world. What can we do about it? For starters, our nation has shown tremendous foresight in refraining from falling into American hands to support its key infrastructure. Oil, a near monopoly of the US, cannot be totally produced in our homeland and hence needs to be outsourced. Sectors like IT services,call centers ect did depend on the well paying American cos, but then they are relatively new money spinners, and hence do not directly affect the vast majority. But we do need a serious relook into the shortfalls of a dissaparate revenue generating capacity across all sectors. Agriculture, small scale industry and consumer electronics should be strengthened to such an extent that the lower and middle income group, the bottom of the heap, begins to add value to the national income. The health of the nation lies in the weakest sections of the society, in our case, the agricultural sector must pull its feet up towards better output and quality. The per hectare yield is a shameful figure by world standards. This can and must change immidiately. Like in milk production, food grain surplus is the need of the hour. The green revolution that never was, must become a reality.Secondly the millions of manufacturing units must get all possible help as regards financial, technical or marketing related support. Improved quality in home grown products will automaticlly open new markets, just like in the case of the high quality saree fabric or mangoes that India exports by the tonnes.All in all, a better equipped, burden free, government backed lower income group, which so far has only faced apathy and injustice, must be allowed to break free of the shackles of the last four hundred or so years. This step alone can cure a plethora of economic maladies which the country faces from time to time.Let the hetherto unknown Indian in the darkest corner of the country stand up to tell the world what he can and does do, chances are, another wave of change will happen. This time it just might take the wind out of some mortgage swindling American.Take that.

This year's filmfare awards reinstated the old fact about this most popular of cine awards in bollywood.It is populist and often contrived.The awards in itself are not a patch on the global one's;themselves gullible to entrappings as displyed recently, it at least has the guts to say that look, we know what the public likes, so we shower only the viewers choices with the statuettes. A notable ommission though would be Ghajini.This blockbuster of the year was given a cold treatment, pray why, filmfare?because it's a southern remake?oh! so you don't like regional makers to enter your esteemed territory and run havoc. Ghajini went on to shatter record after record, the style statement of sorts it created was a sidey bonus, and both went unnoticed, unrelenquished, Amir's brilliant portrayal notwithstanding.Had this been a 'homegrown' production, bollywood would have given it the maximum trophies. Anyways, a perfect compliment to last year's best female lead in Priyanka Chopra has been delivered; an excellent selection. Roshan Jr was a bad choice altogether for best actor. If not Amir for his short term memory loss afflicted role, then Shahrukh deserved it for his double role in RNBDJ.
In the music category, the choice of A R Rehman for Jane tu...was poor, it should have gone to him, but for Jodha Akbar.Best film was a dissapointing and agonisingly callous choice in 'Jodha Akbar', 'Fashion' deserved it hands down.The second female lead in 'Fashion', played by Kangana, and rightly awarded for best supporting actress providing a little consolation. This acid tongued (pun intended) comment on the model-designer scenario with the whole lot of cliches, was by far the finest example of direction and production. It richly deserved to win the maximum trophies, including best film. Vocal merit awards again could have gone any which way, no singer making much of an impact, 'haule haule' by Sukhwinder, which won for best male playback, in particular was an odd choice, he doesn't even sound close to Shahrukh. The rest of the categories are technical and hardly scrutinised by the masses, 'oye lucky....oye' bagging the best dialogue award, is seconded by yours truly.A number of award ceremonies are on the way in the coming months, each with its own set of prejudices and fallacies, a few more bloomers would be witnessed, in the end no one is likely to complain. They just want to watch the great Indian tamasha unfold on the stage near them, clap for the winner, encourage the losers to hold their breath on to the next round of trophies. Something always comes by in a decent filmy year. There is one for every one, even for the perpetual absentees (read Amir Khan).Or if all else fails, 'have money will buy' is the sure shot winner(read......nothing).The legend of playback, Kishore Kumar, waited 26 years for his first filmfare trophy.An old issue of the magazine by the same name carries the year by year account of the legacy of Filmfare awards, search for it, buy it, it's worth a dekko. One finds exellence, passion and integrity on those pages.Now that is exactly what the awards these days do not honour.Ask Amir Khan.