Lazy Sunday morning, nothing else to do, what better to do that waste my time twittering the India Vs Australia Cricket game @ MCG
Join in & lets have some fun commenting the game together on twitter
I finally managed to catch the supposed ‘must watch’ movie of the season ‘Lage Raho Munnabhai‘, a much-waited sequel to the popular movie ‘Munnabhai MBBS‘. I had been primed quite lot by my wife, who saw the movie last weekend, she raved about the movie, its humour as well as the message, the tounge in cheek comedy of Circuit and so on. A few others that I met state that they would not mind watching it a few times
Such hype / popular liking, in recent time is quite rare for a movie. I had seen the first version in bits and pieces and all said and done, I did like it for its own queer style, Sanjay Dutt’s ability to play a comic role despite his body language telling us otherwise and ofcourse the stellar performance of Arshad Warsi as Circuit
So, Lage Raho Munnabhai is a cool movie, that attempts to tell today’s generation of what Mahatma Gandhi was all about and how his principles change Munna’bhai’ style from Dadagiri to Gandhigiri. The storyboard looks good, bits & pieces are a bit painful (in the attempt to be melodramatic). Thought Sanjay Dutt still does not look very comfortable in a comedy role, he does manage to sail along thanks to the efforts of the likes of Circuit and the others in the movie
Divya Balan (as Jhanvi) is a big let down. I thought she had talent (besides a beautiful face), but then, she has to realise that she can pull of a performance just by throwing a sweet smile every not & then. Boman Irani is good, but was much better in the previous movie. And as for the rest, they just pass muster, but for Circuit. This chap literally owned the first half (despite the 2 main protagonists). Unfortunate that Vidhu Vinod Chopra did not give Arshad Warsi the kind of exposure that he should have got in the 2nd half of the movie. His sense of timing, body language, spoken bombaiyya language, style etc etc rock ! This guy will go a long long way in Bollywood !
Net net, the movie is perhaps having an impact on people, certainly in ensuring the people adopt the Munna / Curcuit style (just before the watching flick we were having a bite at McDonald’s and I overheard to the cleaning boys there do a Munna / Circuit style cocnversation). One only hopes, that the impact is deeper and some of the finer meaning of the movie is understood and realised by the masses
Finally, a good flick, lets people know that Oct 2nd is more than a dry day, got me to understand the meaning of ‘Vinamritha’ and has got people pondering about Gandhigiri. Kudos to the team 
Lage Raho !
update : I did a Google on Gandhigiri & actually found a forum which discuss Gandhigiri with people quoting samples of how they are observing people change !!!
Trailer on Lage Raho Munnabhai (YouTube)
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Shakira & Wyclef rocking to the hit single ‘Hips dont lie’, This one is from yesterday’s MTV Music Awards. Apparently the dance for the song was choreographed by the Bollywood choreographer Farah Khan
Carrying on with my 80’s TV nostalgia trip, managed to get hold of the ever popular ‘Mile sur mera tumhara’ video. IIRC, this was the video that truly brought the concept of National integration into the forefront to my generation
Certainly, amongst the slickest of things ever shown on Doordarshan way back then !
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59 years ago, today, India became an Independent country, freed from the burden of foreign rule, free to manages its own course and destiny. I don’t quite know why, but more than any other year in the recent past, today (& in the days preceding), I have been thinking of what this means to us !
The scepter of terror that faces us today … is this a price that we are paying for being a free & democratic nation ?
The song that comes to my mind is Kris Kristofferson’s “Me & Bobby McGee‘, which says ‘Freedom is another word for nothing left to lose’ ! I do not agree ! There has been much lost in the name of freedom and most unjustifiably, most unfairly … not by design, but by utter carelessness, carelessness of people like you and me ! It is easy to blame someone else of the ills facing us, but we must also look back at the great progress we have made as free nation in the past 59 years
I am in the midst of reading ‘The Discovery of India‘ by Jawaharlal Nehru, and with amazement I read about India’s glorious past, when we perhaps were one of the few sources of Scientific thought, Artistic pursuit and Trade. Alas ! we are but a shade of that today. But the good part is that, life is afterall a sinusoidal curve … what goes up, must come down and what is down … will go up … and you know what … we are on the upward curve
To sign off … here’s an excerpt from Nehru’s famous ‘Tryst with Destiny‘ speech made to the constituent assembly on the eve of our Independence on 14th august 1947
Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially. At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance.It is fitting that at this solemn moment, we take the pledge of dedication to the service of India and her people and to the still larger cause of humanity.’
At the dawn of history India started on her unending quest, and trackless centuries are filled with her striving and the grandeur of her successes, and her failures. Through good and ill fortune alike she has never lost sight of that quest or forgotten the ideals which gave her strength. We end today a period of ill fortune and India discovers herself again. The achievement we celebrate today is but a step, an opening of opportunity, to the greater triumphs and achievements that await us. Are we brave enough and wise enough to grasp this opportunity and accept the challenge of the future?