Saturday, June 19, 2010

Gulaal – A Powerful Intense Depiction of Dirty Politics

वो कहें हैं की दुनिया ये इतनी नहीं है,
सितारों से आगे जहां और भी हैं,
ये हम ही नहीं हैं वहाँ और भी हैं,
हमारी हर एक बात होती वहीँ हैं,
हमें ऐतराज़ नहीं हैं कहीं भी,
वो आलिम हैं फ़ाज़िल हैं होंगे सही ही,

मगर फलसफा ये बिगड़ जाता है जो वो कहते हैं,
आलिम ये कहता वहां इश्वर है,
फ़ाज़िल ये कहता वहाँ अल्लाह है,
काबिल यह कहता वहाँ ईसा है,
मंजिल ये कहती तब इंसान से तुम्हारी है तुम ही संभालो ये दुनिया,
ये बुझते हुए चाँद बासी चरागों, तुम्हारे ये काले इरादों की दुनिया,

ओ री दुनिया

….is how Gulaal ends with a “Pyaasa” movie song spin-off

 

image Only God knows how I missed Anurag’s movie “GULAAL”. May be I was unknown of the brilliance of this movie. There was a time, when I had just confused this movie with some other low grade movie without even taking a look at what it was. I never checked the plot summary ever before I saw it yesterday.

Gulaal is an intense depiction of dirty politics happening in a town in Rajasthan, spanning off from the an anti-nonrajput sentiments. Plus a race to capture the leader position for the fictional Rajputana revolution gang. Anger, hunger for power, rebel, revolt, broken relations, sexual harasment and violence color the frames of this movie.

Be it the sexual harassment of a young female teacher who joins the college or the ragging of a newly joined law college student Dileep, or the keep-your-mouth-open kind of acting by Kay Kay menon, you arre glued to screen by the powerful gripping drama in which dirty politics eventually win, and sacrificing brothers, sisters and fathers.

With songs like “…Door des k tower me ghus jayo aeroplane…”, Anurag has taken a funny take over the dirty politics around the world. Afghanistan, Bush, Uncle Sam… sabki bajayi hai is gaane me. Or take the scene where Kay kay is outrightly challenges the state rulers to jump in the revolution bandwagon. Or the cold heart Kiran for whom her goal of becoming GS of the college is way above emotions, relations and ethics.

Is movie me dum hai.. Dum us baat ka k jo satya hai use usi gehraai se pesh kiya hai Anurag ne. I was always a die hard of Anurag for making DEV D, which is a true to the heart, contemporary, bold and highly melodramatic depiction of love, hatred, betrayal and doubt ridden minds.

Anurag, Hats of to you!! SOmeday I will work with you…

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Tuesday, June 15, 2010

“The Invisible CEO” Puts Together 10 Simple Processes for Success

image A.G. Krishnamurthy who is Founder, Chairman and MD of Mudra Communications and Founder of MICA, has come up with his new book “TEN MUCH”.  Picked up this book at Crosswords today and liked it a lot, completed it. Took me 3 hours to finish it, as against 2 which AGK says it should ideally take one to complete.

What’s special about the book? The book is about 10 simple processes rather 10 simple disciplines which AGK puts forward as something we all know about but sometimes just don’t get it right. He has tried to exemplify these 10 principles through various success stories – some known, some unknown – in very simple language which connects to you the moment you start reading through the prologue.

Simple basic processes need to be followed is the gist of the book. Dream Big, Be Positive, Master your trade, Be ethical, Believe in yourself and your team - are few of the basic processes he mentions. Not just talk, but do is the mantra.

TEN MUCH is a must read for budding entrepreneurs.

AGK’s previous works include Dhirubhaism, Against all odds and others.

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Monday, June 14, 2010

Management Guru With A Different Take Towards Life– Ram Charan

image For the two years of my life in my MBA School, there were a lot of Management Gurus, Consultants, Authors, Harvard Professors, CEO’s and Presidents who we came accross. We read about them and praised them in unison. With few of our professors idolizing American names and their feats which drove companies on a breathtaking accelerated path of growth.

The only international guru of Indian origin that was talked about was Pankaj Ghemawat, that too during an International Business session by Prof Shareif. Never once was Ram Charan mentioned. Although being an avid reader of a lot of books, I was knowledgeable about him but did not read much about him till today. I wonder why is Ram Charan not included in the countable-on-my-fingers list. Reading about Ram Charan is like visualising a fast-track jet travelling through space.

So today I was spending my time relatively more productively at Crosswords, where I picked up his latest book called “What the Customer Wants You to Know”. Right from the first page, the book catches your interest. If you are into the business of selling (which generally everybody is, most of them at least), this book is a must read for you.

His previous books are

  • Owning Up: The 14 Questions Every Board Member Needs To Ask (2009)
  • The Game-Changer: How You Can Drive Revenue and Profit Growth with Innovation (2008)
  • Know-How: The 8 Skills That Separate People Who Perform from Those Who Don't (2007)
  • Leaders at All Levels: Deepening Your Talent Pool to Solve the Succession Crisis (2007)
  • Boards That Deliver: Advancing Corporate Governance From Compliance to Competitive Advantage (2005)
  • The Source of Success: Five Enduring Principles at the Heart of Real Leadership (2005)
  • Confronting Reality: Doing What Matters to Get Things Right (2004)
  • Profitable Growth Is Everyone's Business: 10 Tools You Can Use Monday Morning (2004)
  • Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done (2002)
  • What the CEO Wants You to Know : How Your Company Really Works (2001)
  • The Leadership Pipeline: How to Build the Leadership Powered Company (2000)
  • Every Business is a Growth Business: How Your Company Can Prosper Year After Year (2000)

He is called as the most influential consultant alive on earth by Fortune and some of the top CEO's in the world. Most interesting is he didnt have a home till recently, used to stay at hotels or stay back at Client’s home and his laundry was flown to and fro by FedEx.

Came across a very intriguing article on cnn website by Fortune's David Whitford, that talks about history of Mr. Ram ad his daily life. Recommend to read this article. Please read it till the end. Extremely interesting.
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2007/04/30/8405482/index.htm

 

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Saturday, June 12, 2010

The Stupid-neeti of Rajneeti

image Well as decided yesterday was supposed to be the "Rajneeti" night it didnt happen fully. So just completed it. First of all let me first congratulate apni pyari Kat for the hilarious speech on the stage. I was literally rolling on floor trying to control my laugh. What an ishhtyle madam-jeee..(gaowalo aur sheherwalo, jao aur us speech wali clip ko bar bar dekho aur pura anand uthao).

Its not that the speech was funny, although nothing katty does sounds or looks ever funny which is another problem, but this speech had so serious words which jab apni katty was 'uvach'ing felt like she shuda been awarded the funniest commentary award. Topi band!!!! (yane hats off!!!) She recites the speech as if an 8 year old has been made to by heart it and made to reproduce it word-to-word on the stage for a national-day ceremony. tab jaise bachcha bolta hai, ekdum waiseich

Few mins before this you realise that Universal Amma has just found that uska pehla beta, uski pehli "santaan" is alive. So Mahabharat ka realization hua. All other maaramari is typical Godfather ishtyle. Isko maro , usko bam se udao

And yar, kshama chahta hu Jha-saab, par ek baat bataiye, when all this happened were all the condom-factories closed down, or the birth-control companies gone bankrupt? Every incident of random sex creates a new dialogue "mai maa banane wali hu". In fact the movie starts with it and ends with this(katty also gets one)

and hey hey, mr script wroter, atleast show some respect to the guy who goes to London to do PhD. Dude do you even know what kinda guys go to do PhD and apna Jr Hrishi Kapoor comes back and suddenly knows everything about politics. Chalo ye bhi maan lete hai ki bhaiyya ji Arjun ka kirdaar nibha rahe hai and Nana's (as always in his - he he he - ishtyle acting) is Krishna who's keeping everybody around on tracks making them aware of their "Dharma", aur Ranny is trying to now become the all-vighna-harta kinda 'dawg' who's got everything clear in his minds and behind those innocent looking eyes and spectacles of this slim trim guy, lies an evil minded + good spirited protagonist who wants to keep his family line on the political upfront whatever it takes for him to do so.

Chalo is fillam me sab kuch posshible hai.. no issues brotha. I’hv seen much worse movies.

With a huge starcast, it becomes difficult for the scriptwriter to write extremely good dialogues for every character. Thats what happened in this movie. Take an example, Katty is a pagal-in-love girl, who’s suddenly at the end of the movie given the wholesale respo to be the face of the party. WTH, the speech was a disaster and i mean it. It looks as if, trying to imitate modern day modified version of draupadi and script-wroter-given tint of “bitiya” has taken its own toll on the brains of audience. (Anyways Indian audience is brainless and stupid, thats what i have seen for all these years I have seen and heard people talking about movies, so it doesn’t matter much coz recent Bolly-movies have trained the audience to go and watch a movie without carrying brains inside the theatre) So what happens is that you are not able to connect whether katty is draupadi or ‘bitiya’. Nevertheless the overall script of the movie doesnt have any major resemblance to our congress story.

Problem is that when the movie ends, you wonder what was the moral of the story

Whether it is that one should always wear condoms whenever you have an extra-whatever kinda sex?

OR

Politics is just a stupid mindless game that can be played by a guy who comes back from abroad pursuing studies and undergoing PhD?

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