Many have died triumphing the impossible. Sometimes by a bullet wound in the head, sometimes by being crushed to pieces, sometimes by knife wounds and sometimes by a rain of maa-behen expletives. Although this does not stop those who are spared alive by a lucky turn of fate to turn around and splash others with what had dragged them into depression in the first place, but then this is what the game is all about. You cannot stop fighting. As Gabbar said – Jo darr gaya samjho mar gaya.

Newbie ASIRW are clumsy at times and hence India amounts to more than 1,00,000 road accident deaths annually. And now the time has arrived to give the ASIRWs a rest. Too many have perished in the fires of their own foolishness. Hence, the Indian government approached our corporation to provide them some radical ideas to control the ASIRW. Here are a few gadgets we have proposed and which are ready to go in mass production to help the ASIRW follow traffic rules which they find too Manmohan-ish to take seriously. Of course, the Indian Traffic police can install a combination of these brilliant machines but if they are happy with the ongoing self population control, they can give it a skip.

1.  The Jolt Inducer wires(codename – Come to Papa)

This device comes in the form if a thin wire that can charge itself by cow dung and dust which are easily available on Indian roads. The wire is installed on a yellow line in the middle of the road which separates the traffic flow and also acts as a divider. The moment a car steps on the wire (many ASIRW tend to do this as they are divider blind) while over-taking or during jams, it discharges an electric current which can travel to the warrior’s body via the tyres of his vehicle. This can make him dizzy to the point of making him throw up. This will stop a majority of ASIRW from jumping in the wrong lanes.

2. The drag and drop Robotic arms(codename – Get the fu*k back in your lane)

These state of the art robotic arms are installed on cemented dividers in the middle of the road. They are very sleek and don’t take much space. They are fitted with sensors and cameras and move on a single rail track on the divider. As soon as they sense a vehicle which is not in the correct lane or going in the opposite lane, they pick it up and place it back at the end of the current line of vehicles in its appropriate lane. You can also program it to pick up the vehicle and keep it hanging in air for a predefined time before throwing it back in the correct lane. Turning the vehicle upside down while it hangs in the air is optional. It can also be used to pick up cows from the road.

3. The laser cutters (Codename – Red Queen(after the Resident Evil Supercomputer))

Traffic signals can be fitted with these extremely sophisticated laser cutters. A single laser light will appear on the road (approximately 0.5 foot above the ground and behind the pedestrian crossing) the moment light turns red. Any ASIRW trying to cross it will end up with tyres neatly cut in half. This will ensure mayhem for a couple of days but soon the terror will not let anyone jump a signal. You can adjust the height of the laser from the ground but we strictly suggest that it remains below the legs of the ASIRW.

4. Celebrity Signals (codename – Take a Munni break)

Traffic signals will be replaced by images of celebrities asking people to stop and go. This will be achieved by harmless vertical laser show images that will cover the crossing like a big movie screen. For example, A red signal will be replaced by Katrina performing “Chikni Chameli” or Vidya Balan performing “Nakka Mukka” while the green signal will be replaced by Manmohan Singh giving the Independence Day speech. Yellow will be replaced by Meira Kumar’s laser video of her famous “Shaant ho jaiye” monologue in Lok Sabha.

5. Weapon snatcher magnets (codename – Magneto)

We do not expect hardened ASIRW to completely let go of their valour and courage and not use weapons like country made pistols, acid and knives to fight road wars. For such scenarios, we have the weapon magnets which will activate as soon as they sense rage above the critical limit of 200 TMK (Teri Ma Ki) which will be calculated by a secret mathematical formula specially designed for ASIRWs which takes into account components like blood pressure, swear word usage, eye widening capabilities, level of frothing, reddening of face etc. Once the critical limit is reached, the magnets will immediately snatch away any weapon produced by the warrior and teleport it to the nearest junk yard.

6. Begging hover and money collection system (codename – Begging Angels)

A study has revealed that ASIRWs have a soft corner for beggars and they love to do some charity but beggars do pose a threat to life as they surf the maze at the traffic intersection. Hence they will be provided with the hover system where they will float around the cars like “Betal” and as soon as Manmohan Singh start’s his speech their distance from ground will increase automatically so that the vehicles can move smoothly. To avoid ASIRWs from fumbling to extract change from their pockets, we will be introducing single swipe signature-less credit cards system.

7. Magnetic wheels for manual vehicles (codename – Rickshaws will fly)

Cycles and rickshaws make ASIRWs very angry. To solve this problem, we will be providing magnetic wheels for such vehicles which can be activated by the touch of a button. This will attach the cycle/rickshaw to the nearest vehicle and it can travel with the same speed as that of the vehicle. Detaching it from the high-speed vehicle can again be a one touch operation. This will also reduce honking.

8. Alcohol detection Automatic Car Shutdown Chip (Codename – Dumb ass is Drunk)

A recent study has revealed that Indians Luuuuuve to drink and drive. They love hitting a speed of 120km/hr especially when everything ahead of them is blurred. Enter our automated car shutdown chip. The chip detects alcohol fumes in the car and instantly produces an electric spark the moment car keys are inserted in the slot. This not only gives the drunk jerk a jerk but does not allow him to start the car. We are in discussion with the Indian Government to make this chip mandatory in all the cars. It goes without saying that this will not be applicable to all the government vehicles.

9. Honk Slap (code name – Arnold)

To reduce noise pollution level on Indian roads, we have designed a microprocessor which includes various permutations and combinations allowed for honking in sensible nations. This microprocessor can be fitted in all cars and will assess the situation under which a driver honks. If no match is found, a robotic hand will appear from the dashboard and slap the driver. So, if you see every driver battered and bruised on the road, don’t be alarmed.

We sincerely hope that the introduction of these various equipments will smooth traffic flow on the roads of India. Of course, we cannot change the mindset of the ASIRWs, but we can always install a sense of terror by using lasers, robotic arms, slaps etc. There are a few problems like potholes, divider-less roads, lack of amenities for pedestrians, salivating for bribes traffic police etc but we have made clear to the Indian government that WE CAN”T FUC*ING SOLVE ALL THEIR PROBLEMS!

Hope you will enjoy driving with our new gadgets

Regards

ASIRWCS ( ASIRW Control Squad)

This post has been selected by Blodadda as one of the “Spicy Saturday Picks”.

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No matter how much we try to hide a coupling couple by moving the camera away from the bed as they settle beneath the flower printed bed sheet or by bringing two flowers shaking vigorously suddenly in front of the camera, we cannot snuff out our Kamasutra connections. We are 1.21 billion people who have not been dropped by storks or erupted from the ground. We have been reproducing like eggs lying Godzilla and it somehow seems that chasing the British away was a mistake. We seem to have taken Aryabhata very seriously after he invented zero and are busy including it in our population count as a sign of flattery, which brings me to the point – ours is the horniest nation in the history of mankind.

Think about it. 41.6% of our population fall below poverty line. Of course they haven’t heard of “precautions” and the only source of entertainment is having unprotected sex and producing causalities called babies. Now, I must not put the whole blame of India turning into a dangerously tilted overcrowded bus on the poor. Laluji is not poor. My 10th standard maths teacher was not poor whose production line produced six girls before it was abruptly discontinued after manufacturing a boy.

We have a lot of anti-population plans in place. Our government is trying its best to stop Indians from mating by showing them 1-3-2 (Fayde Ka mantar) family planning adverts in which a lustful couple dwells into something which borders very close to soft porn. Hell, we don’t even have the live-in concept. We have balding, pot-bellied, in their 30s males living with their parents (I am one of them. Thick hair. 8 pack abs). We have people living in rooms smaller than prison cells. We have Khaps, religious groups, cricket, prehistoric parents and a very nosy society structure in place to cater population growth but none of this seems to be working.

Why?

It’s our Horny genes. We love bed sheets with elephants printed on them. They turn us on.

Look at the statistics. Raping women is as popular as learning cricket. Horny men are rampant on the streets just like those zombies in Resident Evil. Delhi is famous worldwide for its horny men who achieve the impossible feat of raping women in moving cars. We have also tried both the ends of the spectrum – from an 80 year old to a two year old. We love eve teasing also. We have the courage to address a rotund middle aged mother of two as Chikni. It comes naturally to us. Controlling our hormones is against our culture.

Our movies inspire us a lot. Latka, Jhatka, Thumka and of course the patented moving-breasts-up-and-down is something our visionary directors have to create to quench the thirst of millions of horny citizens. Small time theatres which showed desi porn movies are on a decline. We don’t need them anymore. Who wants to see fat women curling around fat moustached men like two tangled hippos when our John and Bipasha can do it? Has anyone tried connecting Munni, Sheila, Jalebi and Chameli to the Eve teasing graphs? I’ll bet my porn collection that there is a connection. Of course I am not blaming Bollywood. It’s a sophisticated sex toy for the horny underprivileged.

And while I am on this topic, I find us horny in another sense also, which in truth, was the real reason to write this post – It is the fact that we are a horn friendly nation. Horn friendly, horny, got the drift? We love to honk. We honk egoistically at poor pedestrians who are like those pesky cockroaches and have no right to salsa in the middle of the roads. We honk at rickshaws pullers who desperately try to move their sole bread earning rickety vehicle out of our way before it gets mowed down. We honk at other cars specially if there is a big red L pasted on them. And traffic signals? They are just disco lights. They turn us more horn(y). They remind us of dance bars.

We are horny for speeds also. How else can you explain the recently created racing tracks with cars and stray dogs competing in Noida when the other developed nations are shunning the sport? How else can you explain the speeding Mercedes and BMWs which end up in a pile of scrap and dead bodies being scrapped off roads?

Do I need to mention money? Money turns us on like an eighteen years old who has popped 10 pills of Viagra. We are on a collective hard on from the last 60 years.

Well, in India, being horny is good. It’s cool till it is done under veils. We have the art to cover it up, even if it includes covering up the women in real life and dis-covering them in every other medium. We encourage it. We are not apologetic about it. We are always turned on.

We, are the incredibly horny Indians.

Facebook, Google and Twitter must be laughing their asses off. Seriously what was Kapil Sibal thinking? The only good that I could imaging coming out of all this human pre-screening censorship stupidity will be that the government will employ around 5,00,000 people to manually read everything and snip snip stuff which they (read Congress) don’t like. Of course, they will not make public what they have snipped off, which means that they could practically remove anything which they don’t like. Reminds me very strongly of George Orwell’s 1984. And China which employs around 30,000 people for hiding things from public but they must be terribly under-worked as half of the websites are banned in China.

Secondly, this happens to be a democracy. Everyone ridicules everyone. That is the whole fuc*ing purpose. Celebrities and politicians are always at the receiving end. No one is liked by everyone. If our politicians come out of the hole they live in and look around for a while, they will realize that their counterparts in other countries have gone through much more. Hell, we recently saw Obama kissing another guy on a poster and it is still all over the internet. Do we see him frothing? SRK has been called gay millions of times. Do we see him running in the street beating up people? It comes with the package of being in the limelight. So, our politicians needs to ignore it instead of bawling like a kid.

Focus on your work guys. There are so many problems in our country, there are so many people suffering like insects that it is blasphemy to even think about such minor issues as someone calling you names. It just shows our politicians in a much dimmer light and shows how insensitive they are to the real challenges facing our country. And, no, morphing “Madame” does not amount to hurting someone’s religious sentiments. Sometimes, I feel that religion in our country is like a dash of Garam Masala. We have to sprinkle it over everything.

Thirdly, I could not understand Congress’s affinity with controversy. Ever since the scams took away the last shred of credibility from the ruling party, they have hardly done anything to save their faces from the shit flying all around them. The way they handled Lokpal and Anna Hazare can fill a tome describing what not to do to piss off the public when you are in power. FDI was another gem in their crown of thorns and now this unbelievable censorship controversy. They could have turned the table in their favour considering the short public memory in India and they had plenty of time but they stumbled at every step.

I really wish Kapil had shown equal enthusiasm towards getting Lokpal through (Although chances are bleak that it will work). That might have saved Congress from another egg landing on their face.

“Deja Vu”, I said after the movie finished, remembering something similar which happened when I watched Satya a year after its release. I had such high expectations from Satya that I found it very average and couldn’t understand what the hu-ha was all about.

Rockstar fared a little better. I liked it in parts but had major problems otherwise.

*Few spoilers ahead*

Lets start with the female lead Nargis. She makes Katrina Kaif look like Meryl Streep. Somehow, her expressions never reached her eyes. Even though she was capable of making a total of like 3 expressions, her eyes remained blissfully ignorant of the awful splutter of emotions on her face. Her best scene was when she was in a coma.

I found the screenplay shoddy at a few places. Imtiaz Ali wanted to show the relationship between the lead pair but he did that at the expense of mutilating the rest of the cast. So many threads which could have made the story more rich and the characters more believable were snipped off to show the lead pair taking a thousand bike rides. Jordan’s family was one-dimensional and hardly got 30 seconds of screen time. Shammi Kapoor’s role could have been more. Much more. Jordan’s introduction scene to Heer’s mother was snipped so badly that I thought someone fast forwarded the movie. The relationship between Jordan and the female reporter was terribly castrated and vague. Heer’s husband’s frustration was annoyingly underplayed.

The second half sagged like an old man’s skin for quite a while. Somehow, I was tired of seeing the couple going to dance bars and prostitutes and strip clubs. And why did they have to do it twice? Whatever happened to bungee jumping and paragliding as adventures instead of saying hello to a guy pissing on a wall?

Coming to the positives, I liked the story. I liked the fact that there was a story. Somehow, the boy taking the girl out before her wedding so that she could have some fun before the mundane married life takes over, looked clichéd as we have already seen that in “Mere Brother ki Dulhan”, but the Kashmir backdrop made it a treat to watch. Cinematography was great. Ranbir did really well. He moved from one end of his character’s graph to another with smoothness. It was his movie all the way. The songs were a nice mix. Somehow, I couldn’t understand a few of them but it’s Ok considering the fact that A.R.Rehman gave the music. It will grow on me, I am sure.

Overall not bad at all, considering the horse shit Shahrukh and Salman are throwing at us these days. The movie definitely had its moments. Don’t bother if you liked Bodyguard.

Rating – 3.5/5

1. Both of you might end up in different countries. It is not always easy to say no to an onsite opportunity when you have a home loan, a car loan, a washing machine loan, a diamond necklace loan and a pack of underwear loan and an over pressurizing manager. And then, practically speaking, the long distance SOS (Sex On Skype) fizzle out in a few days, simply because the ‘feel’ is absent.

2. Both of you might end up in different shifts which is worse than being in different countries. Leave alone SOS, you will not have the real one in days. You will wake him up after coming from office and crash yourself on the bed as soon as he gets up and vice versa. Your conversations will end up being – ‘Hi honey’. ‘Bye honey’. ZZZZZZZ

3. Completely forget any trips to Simla, Munnar, Singapore, Andaman or Malaysia. Getting an off together for 5 days for a holiday will be task more difficult than getting Katrina Kaif to act and Manmohan Singh to open his mouth. You can beg, rub your nose on the ground till it bleeds, pull out your hair but it just won’t happen.

4. On the rare occasions when both of you will be at home by 9 pm, you will bitch about your managers till 10 and vent out all your frustration and completely forget to cook. You will end up having bread with soup, which will be good actually considering your expanding bellies.

5. Home made food will be available only on Saturdays and Sundays, if at least one of you is not working on the weekend, which will be as rare as scams in India. You will end up eating pizza, pasta and punjabi thalis at malls. Whatever good the bread and soup were doing will adjust to inflation.

6. All the family functions will carry on without you. Your cousins will get married and will have babies. You won’t be there in their marriage albums and videos. You will meet them, maybe, once in 5 years and wonder where all the time flew away.

7. If you are planning to have a baby, forget about it, simply because you should get some time to ding-dong, which you won’t get. If you somehow manage, the she-engineer’s manager will make sure that the baby is delivered in office alongside the project deliverable. The baby will already be stressed out by the time he will come out because of your 15 hour shifts.

8. Your parents will wither away trying to make sense of what hit them. You won’t have time for them and they will end up cursing themselves for giving birth to a machine and then marrying him off to another.

9. If the she-engineer somehow manages to pop out a baby, the baby will grow up thinking that the maid is his mother. He will not recognise his father on the rare occasions of bonding simply because he has never seen him awake. The first word he might learn will be ‘Basanti’, which will be the name of the maid.

10. One day, while buying Cabbage at Big Bazaar, you will pick up one in your hand and wonder what the difference between both of you is.

p.s. Don’t take the post seriously. It’s a funny take on what I see people around me going through.

Now, let’s be clear, no one and that means no one can reach the epic crescendo which Dolly Bindra reached last year but the Big Boss team is trying really hard to match that level. Dignity be damned, the contestants can now discuss nominations and use beep words. Men shouting at women. Women shouting back. Women throwing shrill bombs on each other. You got the picture? And, oh yes, there is a ghost in the house this season. *bangs head on the wall*

Don’t take me wrong. It looks wonderful for sometime. We love to see people fight. That was the only reason Balaji Telefilms worked. Nothing is as gratifying to see a daughter-in-law teaching her mother-in-law a lesson. Our movies have worked on this premise for years. A hero taking revenge on his sister’s rapist and his mother’s butcher has been a source of instant nirvana for generations. But then a time comes when all this starts getting your goat. Unfortunately for me, Big Boss has reached that pinnacle.

Sometimes I could not understand how Shakti Kapoor and Rageshwari were evicted. They were bigger celebrities than the half-baked ones who are left. I don’t expect to see a ‘Hum Aapke Hain Kaun’ in the house but if it is not scripted, then hats off to the Indian audience. I guess, the vicarious feelings run deep.

Don’t be disillusioned. I will still see it to the end. Sometimes I am too angry and would love to see someone more fuc*ed up than I am and clap to my heart’s delight.

p.s. Polly tried to make me watch ‘Bade Acche Lagte hain’, which going by its name,  I took up thinking that it’s a soft porn series. Sourly disappointed. It’s about two 45 years old virgins who sat on a sofa and ate a cake on their honeymoon while watching Zee TV.

p.p.s  KBC is the only saving grace. It’s good to feel happy for all those people who really need that money and see their lives transform in minutes. Saw that guy winning 5 Crores. And then he picked up the cheque and counted the zeroes. Made me smile.

p.p.p.s I re-read the post and it’s such a contradiction. It’s good.

p.p.p.p.s All those who have an expression of disgust and are going to throw one liners like – ‘You watch that shit?’, readjust your jaws to a closure.

It happened with me. It’s still happening. I am a lot more angrier now a days. Small things like someone opening a glass door with his hand, imprinting the Congress symbol on it while ignoring a bloody handle irritates me to no end. I feel like shouting. A few deep breaths later, I am fine.

Then I see people falling over each other to get into a lift to go to a floor above when the lift is going to the basement, simple because they can’t take chances. What if it is filled at the basement? They will be stranded at the ground floor till eternity.

These are small things. I know. I know we will be ahead of China in a couple of years. We are reproducing like crazy. Just like a virus experiment gone horribly wrong. I think that is why people have no patience for anything. They have to take shortcuts, do everything as quickly as possible. Win the race. And, of course, you can’t take away the fact that we are still quite rustic at heart.

I was telling Polly (who is a teacher) that you can define liquid to your class by showing them a photograph of a traffic jam in India. The stream of vehicles take the shape of any vacant area around the roads. And it took me a lot of time to get used to the honking. Believe me, that is the first thing you notice after coming back. It is like needles in your ears. And people honking at rickshaw-pullers is funny. The rickshaw will not develop wings and fly away.

Today, while driving my car, I saw a woman cross the road with the school going kid. She did not bother to look both sides before crossing. A lot of people do that. They believe that even if there is a car coming at a speed of 70, the guy will eventually apply the brakes when he will see two people in the middle of the road, roaming as if in a park. But what if that guy is distracted? What if he is not able to apply the brakes?  I don’t know whether the fact that our religions talk about rebirth provides us with the audacity to belittle life or are we so wrapped up in taking shortcuts that we forget to bother about anyone’s life? When I see people driving on the wrong side of the road just because the U-turn is a bit ahead, I start believing that the latter is true.

Making queues is unheard of at most of the places, leave alone the courtesy of letting the person standing before you complete his transaction. A few days back, I had a fight with a woman who created a new ‘ladies’ line at the metro station when the original line was only 2 people long! She called herself Anna Hazare and labeled me Rahul Gandhi. I had to tell her that she was an idiot. And then, I was watching the crowd surrounding Anna Hazare at the Ramlila ground and thinking – Given a chance, most of the people sitting here will disregard each other with utter disdain. What if I leave a suitcase full of money in the middle of the crowd? Movement be damned, won’t they claw each other for that?

What kind of people are these? Why is there such utter disrespect of the needs of other people? Why are we always at each others throat?

And then mulling over it, I start realizing, that it’s not just in India. It’s everywhere. It’s basic human nature. Put 10,000,000 humans in Manchester at it will decay as quickly. Developed or developing, societies are directionless in their own way.

Anyways, I was angry, so had to vomit it out somewhere. Thankyou for your patience. And how have all of you been?

p.s. It’s not a comeback post. It’s just a random rant blip.

Like all other bloggers who go on a sabbatical, I am supposed to dive into an egotistic and pompous rant about the happenings in my life in the past few months, which I will dutifully indulge into, to satisfy all the masala hungry people here.

So, this is my first winter in Manchester and what a dull and gloomy place it has turned into. It gets dark at 4 in the afternoon and by the time I get up from my desk at 6, I feel like I have been working since eternity. There are cold winds bellowing all the time making those spooky horror movie sounds and turning my umbrella inside out. One thing that I really hate is wearing caps, which I have to do now because otherwise, I will not be able to feel my nose and ears by the time I reach home. It rains all the bloody (Yeah! Bloody and Bollocks are the two latest additions to my dictionary) day and the bell of my house gets short circuited in the rain and starts ringing continuously at 2 in the night. So, I have to get up from my bed and go to the door in freezing cold to throw out the batteries to make it stop hollering. Bollocks!

And do you think that an Indian landlord in Manchester would do you good? Well, think again. I shifted my house three months back and fell upon a smiling, obese Punjabi Uncle who acted like Mother India before I said Yes to the house. After I shifted, I literally had to rub my nose on the ground in front of him to get a few minuscule things to be fitted. He gives miserliness a new definition.

The reason I went on a break (and I am still on a break) was that I wanted to write a book. Now don’t hit me with a cliché by asking me the bloody story. As if I am going to tell you! Buy it and make some dough land in my wallet if it gets published. Ever! And it’s going on fine. Thank you very much. Some wise man said once – The first draft of anything is shit! Got the picture?

And then in between all this mayhem to which my life was subjected to…

I GOT ENGAGED!!!! YAY!!!

Well, long story short, it was through a matrimonial site. My parents had put my advertisement (I like imagining myself as a commodity. It’s quite aphrodisiacal) on a matrimonial site and had almost given up hope. It’s not because there were no takers. Far from it! It’s just that my parents had set some very high standards. You see, they think I am Hrithik Roshan and the rejection rate was as high as 50 girls/week. No kidding! Then along came Polly (Yeah, that’s what I’ll call her on the blog), and we started talking over phone. Our parents matched the horror-scopes and Voila! 33/36! They almost jumped out of their skin! So, we talked, talked on phone, talked on webcam and talked each other into saying yes without meeting. Kind of romantic, I think. So, I went back to India and there was a small ceremony called Roka. Done! Amit is sold! He is now Polly’s slave (this is such a turn on! ).

What else have I done in the previous months that was exciting….Ummm…

I saw a play for the first time in my life in the Palace Theatre here. It was a musical called Chicago (you might have seen the movie). Before the play started, I thought that live performances can never match the ‘razzle dazzle’ of the movies, but I was wrong. It was splendid (another word that I have picked up here. Everything is either splendid or wonderful or excellent). The downside? I went alone and missed Polly and thought that it would have been great if she was sitting next to me instead of the wonderfully fat lady who could barely fit in her seat and was brimming all over me.

Autumn was beautiful. I went around the city with my camera and took some photographs. I visited Style Mill with MB, a British friend and was literally transported a 100 years back, specially in the apprentice house. I’ll put the photographs soon. And now I think I am rambling.

Anyways, the reason I actually started writing this post was because Visceral Observations had recently announced the Avant Garde Bloggies Awards, which is wonderful! Since this is a kind of beat-my-own-drum post, I must jog your memory cells and remind you that I won 8 awards last year and again thank all of you who voted for me. So, the nominations have started and are open till 20 December. Nominate your posts and the posts which you think are worthy of recognition. It’s fun, believe me!

And here are a few details to kick start the process (which I am shamefully copying from Oxy’s blog).

Here is once again the link to everything you need to know about the Awards as well as how to nominate your and other’s posts. CLICK HERE.

Conceived by Visceral Observations

Badges Designed by Chirag. Have a look at the Badges by CLICKING HERE.

Volunteers Vimal, Vee and Magik

Publicist Nikhil

The Categories CLICK HERE.

Official Video CLICK HERE.

So, go ahead and have fun and I’ll see you around.

So I am taking a break from blogging for the time being. Don’t know when I will come back to write another post but I will be reading your posts for sure. I might pop up in between if something really really interesting happens in my life or if I feel strongly about some topic.

Don’t be shocked. Its not a sudden decision.

See you around!

I don’t know if it was because I was Bollywood starved from the last six months or if it was because the movie was really good, the fact remains that I immensely enjoyed the movie.

The Aaj and Kal of it (no spoilers)

Jai(Saif Ali Khan) and Meera(Deepika Padukone) are a modern day couple living in London who believe in the philosophy of take-life-as-it-comes and do not believe in tying each other down just because they are in a relationship. They know that their real preference is their careers and thus end up breaking their relationship with a break-up party when Meera decides to move to India to work.

Veer Singh(Saif Ali Khan) falls for Harleen(Simran) the moment he sets his eyes on her. It was love at first sight. Harleen liked Veer but was too shy to respond. That does not defer Veer from following her on his bicycle while she travels to college on a rikshaw and let Harleen know that he was madly in love with her. One day, Harleen shifts to Calcutta with her family.

The story of Jai and Meera is set in the present time while that of Veer and Harleen is set in 1965. There is a connection between the two stories but you better watch the movie to know that.

The differences or no differences

The underlying theme of the movie is that no matter how much the times must have changed and how differently we might look at love, the feeling is still the same. You will still end up in a whirlpool when it happens. It will still turn your world upside down. The story of Jai and Meera is completely different from Veer and Harleen. Jai and Meera are in love with each other without realizing it. Meera knows that if she asks, Jai won’t say no but then one day he will feel guilty that he let go his dreams and career. Jai is completely confused. Veer on the other hand had made up his mind that he is going to marry Harleen. The only question is how?

As the movie proceeds, the scenes shift from the past to the present and vice versa and you can see the stark differences and the similarities. The switch between the two stories is done brilliantly. You realize that how different and then how similar the two stories are.

The Performances and the Wasted Role

Saif Ali Khan and Deepika are good in their respective roles. Saif has played the confused modern day man in many movies earlier(Dil Chahta hai, Hum Tum, Salaam Namaste), so this was nothing new for him except for the role of Veer Singh. Although his Punjabi was not perfect but he did the role of a madly in love Sikh man, who starts working in a ‘phactory’ so that he can marry Harleen and who travels to Calcutta just to look at her once, quite well. Simran(Harleen) was also good in her role of a meek Punjabi girl. She left an impression even though she hardly had any dialogues in the movie. Rishi Kapoor had a very good role(can’t reveal more about his role right now. ). Rahul Khanna was wasted. I am not sure why he took the role.

Music and everything else

‘Chor Bazaari’ is already up on the charts. I personally liked ‘Ye dooriyaan’ a lot. The songs are a nice mix of soft romantic and dhinchak dhinchak songs. Thankfully, most of the songs blended well in the movie and were not like a su su break song. Even the ‘Main kya hoon’ which started off as one ended up being quite well done. You will know why when you see the movie.

Dialogues are the plus point of the movie. Some very well written scenes like the one in which Saif asks Rishi Kapoor about how couples did not had sex before marriage in the past and Rishi Kapoor retorts back – ‘Jaanwar nahi the hum!’.

And, yes, thankfully, the movie had a story!

Finally and Eventually

Imtiaz Ali surely does not disappoint. I am in two minds and I know I should not compare, but was the movie was good as Jab We Met? I think yes it was. It had its moments.

Rating – 4/5

Director – Imtiaz Ali

Official Website – http://loveaajkal-illuminatifilms.erosentertainment.com/