Saara Yeh Aalam Noorani Hai

A brilliant song. Representative of hindi film songs based on classical music. I was reminded of this one by another song - a new kannada music video that's totally classical. After watching it, I thought it had was a great composition and had harnessed all the genius and full potential of the classically trained singers, while allowing them to show their individual prowess. But at the same time I just knew it wouldn't become very popular. Just like this brilliant song from the RGV movie Shiva that never became popular. 

For a song to be loved by people, to be passed on from one voice to another towards popularity, it has to be hummable. And therefore within the reach and grasp of the common people. 

If you listen to this song, not one line is hummable by the ordinary untrained voice. And the tempo is uniformly fast. It never slows down to allow the singer to breathe. 

And that's not because it's classical based. 

Just think of kahan se aaye badra, or Jab deep jale aana - there are parts that are beyond the reach of the ordinary but there is the mukhda or the first few lines that are simple, slow and that can be sung by anyone. And how popular they are!

https://youtu.be/nmBL4PLts5M?si=zFfAvH_g0wKuEdQw 

21 (2008)

Watched ‘21’ (2008) on Netflix.

A heist drama inspired by the true story of MIT Blackjack team. 

Truth is stranger than fiction.

Ben (Jim Sturgess) a mathematics major at MIT is accepted into Harvard Medical School but it is unlikely he will get the scholarship due to fierce competition, unless he says something dazzling about himself to the panel. 

This means he will have to spend 300000 USD from his pocket.

At MIT, professor Micky Rosa (Kevin Spacey) notices Ben is brilliant at math and invites him to join his secret blackjack team. Using card counting and covert signaling, Micky’s team has been making profits at Las Vegas casinos. Micky knows that Ben has the potential to be a big player.

Ben hesitates and refuses at first, but joins, saying he is doing it only to pay his Harvard tuition.

During weekends, they fly to Vegas and Ben sees a lifestyle that baffles him. Luxurious hotels, glittering casinos, money, profits,…

They use masks and different makeovers, wigs, hair colour and disguises, to make them look different each time so they will remain off the casino’s radar.

Meanwhile, Cole (Laurence Fishburne), Head of security at a casino, has been alerted about a player making profits and has started watching camera recordings.

Ben’s success at the casinos and the money that’s pouring in makes him neglect his contribution to a project with his friends. When they confront him, he fails to persuade them to buy his story of being busy and they part ways.

During one trip to Vegas, Ben shows overconfidence, breaks one of the rules of the team and ends up losing 200000 dollars.

Micky, who had warned them he is not their father, nor friend, this was strictly business, is now very angry and insists ben pay back all the money due to him.

Ben refuses to, and convinces the others in the team to join him in continuing the casino business.

Micky follows them and tips off Cole about Ben.

Cole drags Ben away and beats him up.

When ben returns to MIT, it’s a train wreck.

He is not eligible for graduation because Micky Rosa has pulled the plug so another professor is no longer willing to ignore Ben’s absence at his course. When he enters his dormitory room, his money, which he had stolen in the roof above is all stolen. The money he had been saving for Harvard med.

Ben approaches Micky, apologizes and asks that they may continue like before. 

They go to Vegas and win big money. When Cole spots them, they all run with the bag of chips. Micky asks ben to hand him the bag of chips just before he jumps into a limo, but realizes that the bag has coin shaped toffees and not chips. The bag of chips is still with Ben.

It turns out Ben and Cole had made an agreement that Ben would hand over Micky to Cole who had been outsmarted by Micky before when Micky used to gamble in the casinos himself.

It is understood that Cole gives Micky a good thrashing.

As per their agreement, Cole would allow Ben to keep his earnings, but Cole takes away all the chips at gun point leaving Ben with nothing.

The movie ends with Ben’s friends with whom Ben has reconciled, playing at the casinos, making profits, as part of Ben’s team.

And ben recounting his antics to the scholarship director, dazzling and dumbfounding him.

I hated Kevin Spacey in this film. it probably meant he did a good job of acting but such a hateworthy wretched character! A predator, blackmailer, exploiter in the garb of a teacher.

Lines noted…

‘Why don't you ask her out?’

‘I am already dating someone’

‘Your right hand doesn't count’

‘It does the way I use it’

‘Winner winner chicken dinner’

Face cards - In a deck of playing cards, the term face card or court card is generally used to describe a card that depicts a person as opposed to the pip cards. They are also known as picture cards, or until the early 20th century, coat cards.

‘I can't just go to Vegas on weekends’

‘Why not, MIT's on cruise control for you, you've already gotten into Harvard med, what do you have to worry about?’

Cruise control - Cruise control is a system that automatically controls the speed of a motor vehicle. The system is a servomechanism that takes over the throttle of the car to maintain a steady speed as set by the driver

‘The best thing about Vegas is, you can become anyone you want’

‘They've got this new computer software that reads people's faces’

‘Win like a man, lose like a man’

‘You know what's worse than a loser? Someone who won't admit he played it wrong’

‘Jeffrey, my brother from another mother...’

‘Cauchy was the first to make a rigorous study of the conditions for convergence of an infinite series. And was concerned with developing the basic theorems of the Calculus as rigorously as possible. 

Isn't it true Cauchy stole from his students? 

Vladimir Stupnitsky, a student of Cauchy's who accused Cauchy of stealing his four volume text on this analysis and publishing it under a pseudonym’

‘You should get that eye looked at’

(black eye) 

‘I scored the prettiest girl in school’

#westerncinema

The Interview (1998)

Watched ‘The Interview’ (1998) on Netflix.

An Australian film starring Hugo Weaving, Tony Martin, Aaron Jeffery.

A film that demonstrates how law can mean travesty of justice, how law can be the antithesis of justice, and how law can be a hurdle in the way to justice.

Edward Fleming (Hugo Weaving) is roughed up by two cops Steele and Prior, who break into his house and dragged to a police interrogation room.

They question him about a missing car. Fleming is scared, he pleads innocent and begs them give him food. They don’t, and Prior intimidates and threatens him while Steele acts good cop. 

As the interrogation proceeds, Steele mentions that the owner of the car is missing, in response to which, Fleming provocatively suggests the person may have been murdered.

He asks for a lawyer. The lawyer arrives and asks him to maintain silence, to say nothing.

But after the lawyer leaves, his confidence grows. When questioned by the cops, he demands to be given food. 

They put an appetizing spread of food on his table and he starts talking. He confesses to have hitchhiked and then, after being picked up, he says they drove to a desolate place and he brutally murdered the guy. He further says, he killed 5-6 other in a similar fashion and dumped their bodies someplace where they could not be found.

Just when Steele thinks he’s got the man, recordings of the confessions and all, he summoned by his superior Jackson who tells Steele his interrogation was video recorded since it began and due to threats and intimidation used during the questioning, the proceeding in the room are inadmissible in court.

Fleming tells Jackson his entire confession was a lie. He wanted food and gave the police what they wanted to hear so they would stop harassing him.

Steele knows Fleming is a criminal but fails in persuading Jackson to give him a chance.

As Steele and Prior look on, Fleming walks away with a mocking grin on his face.

Steele hands the recordings of the confession to a media person, not caring about the consequences, knowing he would be fired anyway.

Hudson, the officer in charge of the ethics committee talks to Steele one on one. Steele accuses him of personal grudge. Hudson turns the recorder off and insults Steele, abuses him and tells him he make sure they will get him.

Unknown to Hudson, Steele records Hudson’s voice, planning to use it to defend himself.

The movie ends with Fleming hitchhiking somewhere.

Lines noted…

‘We're all what our parents make us, Mr. Fleming’

‘There was this lean-to in the field...’

Lean-to - a shack or shed supported at one side by trees or posts and having an inclined roof, a roof of a single pitch with the higher end abutting a wall or larger building

‘The toe cutters. They are here’

Toe-cutters - The term toe cutter is Australian slang for a person who lives by torturing other criminals, then robbing them. As the name implies the torture usually involves painful removal of the digits or in some cases the complete foot

‘The shadowers are sitting outside. 2 crew of 4 round the clock’

Shadower - a spy employed to follow someone and report their movements, a secret watcher; someone who secretly watches other people

‘You were careless, slipshod’

‘Typical cowboy response’

#westerncinema

Monument of Love

It's not Taj Mahal, its Ram Setu. The greatest monument of love.

------------------‐--------------------------------------------

After learning of many great love stories of the world, you wonder, what could be the greatest thing a lover can do for his/her partner? 

Build a freaking bridge over an ocean?!

Such was the love of Ram for Sita, which no ocean, no ten headed Rāvan, no million strength armies was able to bound. 

If there is any true monument of love, then it is Ram Setu.

Spy Game (2001)

Watched ‘Spy Game’ (2001) on Netflix.

A Tony Scott film starring Robert Redford and Brad Pitt.

Tom Bishop (Brad Pitt) is an undercover CIA agent who has been arrested in China by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), as he was trying to free a female prisoner from an army prison in Suzhou, in an unsanctioned operation he started in his own personal interest. He will be executed in 24 hours if the US government does not claim him and bargain for his release.

In CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, a group of CIA executives gather to discuss the case. The President is due to visit China for a major trade deal and if they claim Tom Bishop as their man, it could jeopardize the deal.

They summon Nathan Muir (Robert Redford), Tom’s Bishop’s mentor, in order to understand the details of Bishop’s history. While appearing to be looking into his arrest and the next steps, they actually seek to learn something in his history that will give them the pretext not to abandon him.

Nathan knows these men, their cunning and their machinations. Its his last day at work before retirement, there are less than 24 hours left and Bishop is being tortured even as they are speaking about him.

He must outsmart these men and circumvent the system to have Bishop rescued…

Interspersed in between Nathan’s agile moves in CIA to realize his rescue plan are flashbacks of Bishop’s work in Vietnam, East Germany and Beirut.

------------------------------------- 

Lines noted…

‘When I was a kid, I used to spend summers on my uncle's farm. He had this plow horse that he used to work with every day’

‘It was a tip of the sword deal out of Beirut intended to be clean and efficient in a place that was anything but. By 85 the place was a nightmare’

(An American idiom commonly used in military operations to mean the first soldiers to go into a war zone)

‘Sheikh Salameh was our target. He ran a large terrorist faction that had taken out a number of American targets including at least one of the embassy bombings. That left 212 people dead. Mostly civilians’

‘His cover was as a photojournalist. Bishop did a day-in-the-life spread on the doctor that we got printed in the Times’

‘Will you join us?’

‘Maybe just for a minute. I don't want to be a third wheel’

(A third wheel is someone who is unnecessary to a group and is tagging along. In this case, the group usually consists of a couple and the third, superfluous person)

‘We have some fucked up barometer for success don't we?’

‘Give me bottom dollar’

Bottom dollar - the last of one's money; all of one's money; a sure thing. This idiom describes something that is sure or certain to happen.

Dear John Letter - A Dear John letter is a letter written to a man by his wife or romantic partner to inform him that their relationship is over, usually because she has found another lover. The man is often a member of the military stationed overseas, although the letter may be used in other ways, including being left for him to discover when he returns from work to an emptied house. It is usually sent after time-away on holiday.

#westerncinema

Peace Comes After War

Wrong. Ramayan and Mahabharat wars were fought. They had to be. Part and parcel of life. There are dharmic and adharmic wars, yes, that discrimination can and should be made.

Pacifists are morons. Usually low IQ or diabolical leftists.

My Baby

26 Feb 2016

Missing my baby. Seeing her in my dreams everyday. On the verge of crying...

Saree Love

Feb 26 2017

Sharadhi's love for the sari. Just like her aunt's when she was a little girl... 

That Red Man in a Nuclear Reactor Accident in Japan...

26 Frb 2018

Over an year ago, I read, on fb, of this youth who suffered fatal burns in a nuclear reactor accident in Japan.

I was warned of disturbing images and yet I clicked the continue button and immediately regretted it. 

There was the picture of red flesh resembling a human body that had been freshly skinned. 

All of the limbs had been suspended from the roof of the white bed only the torso and head were on the bed. The limbs looked longer than they were because of how thin they had become with the layer of skin gone.

The insane hospital had kept him alive in that state for 80 days, instead of letting him go. He was allowed that privilege after pleading for it.

I was in California at that time, and all alone in my hotel suite, with no white lights but dim yellow lights. For a few days after, I continued to feel dull and depressed. 

I don't know why, but last week, with absolutely no provocation, the memory of that image came back and stayed for a while. What made it worse than before was, it was a family member in that state. Don't know how and why my mind conjured up such an image. But I felt sick again. 

The thing about having good memory is, you are unable to dislodge even unpleasant and disturbing images from your mind and the result is, recursive suffering. 

Or, is everything alright with me?

Small Town or Big City?

My uncle. My favourite person in the whole family. God give him long life.

For all those who flock to big cities because they offer ample opportunities for growth, education and recreation, here is someone who lives in a small town and lives a very big life.

I had read in an article years ago that most of living in big cities only means having access to abundant options, though very little or no actual availing of those options. How often do you attend the music concerts in the townhall or watch a play in the theater or attend the book club or cycling or gardening club, or go to lalbagh or cubbon park, the availability of which made you choose this city over others for permanent settling?

This uncle lives in a small town in Coorg and has a dozen events or plans up his sleeve, spread over a number of domains. 

He exemplifies the saying, don't try to add days into your lives, add more life into your days. 

And what more, unlike other men in the family who delegated the wife to the kitchen and washroom, he took his partner along with him and educated her in every domain he dabbled in. A true gentleman. 

For security reasons, I will not reveal further specifics about him...