The April Tag Line update..

Its been a while since I presented a Kannada movie tagline update. Some diehard Kannada movie followers who have complained in the past as to why I do not present tag lines from other language movies are welcome to provide me this information. If Okalipuram area has movie posters from other movies, I would be more than glad to add taglines from other languages as well.

But for now, we have only the following movies.
a) Minchu – Touch me if you can
b) Prem Kahani – A Pucca love story
c) Macchaa – On Field (Movie also has an A rating for some reason)
d) Paper Dosa (Not kidding) – S.O.S (Not kidding either)
e) Yagna- The Fire Within.
f) Auto – Wheels ‘N’ Bottles

Among other news worth noting is that Mr.Vatal Nagaraj was spotted near the town hall wearing a Policeman dress and carrying a Mace (The Gadaaa). He had been allotted the coconut symbol by the election commission and was pulled up by them for allegedly selling these at 2Rs a piece. If elected, he has promised to take care of all the animals in the area, with a specific mention of donkeys. Again, I do not kid here.

Back and the election season and the fast passenger trains....

The bloggard is back in the blogging business after a small break....!!  And what made me come back is the headline in today’s newspaper. The headline couldn’t be more hilarious given the election season in India. A certain party from North India which uses the bicycle symbol released its election manifesto. According to this manifesto, the party aims to remove the usage of computers and English since this is apparently causing mass unemployment. And this is the plank on which the party wants to win elections. Brilliant strategy, I must say. Can’t wait for the election results to see how this party does. The tragic thing is that these guys may actually win just enough seats to get a couple of ministries in the government. We may even get a prime minister from this party.

This election promises a lot of soap operatic kind of drama, back stabbing and front stabbing (if there’s such a term), rhetoric, at least 11 aspirants for the top post, extremely biased news reporting etc etc. This is of course the norm in any election, but this time the scale is unprecedented.

On a trip to the railway station the other day, I saw this train called the Hubli Fast Passenger. So I wonder, what exactly is a fast passenger? Normal passenger trains stop at every concrete slab by the railway line thinking that its a station. The average speed is known to be roughly about 13 kmph. So does a fast passenger still stop at every station but zips at incredible speed between two stations? But then what happens to a train like the Udyan Express which in spite of its tag, stops at every station and travels at reasonable speed. Or is it that the fast passenger is nearly the same as the mail/express train except that it will always be late in reaching its destination? The esteemed reader is more than welcome to enlighten me on this issue.

Customer Service Centre and the Emotional Blackmail…

In India, business development clearly happens through shrewd manipulation of the customers’ emotions and not through some good sales gimmick or some witty ads. The companies have a fundamental assumption while they use this emotional blackmail tactic. They assume that customers have brains the size of a peanut. In many cases, that definitely could be the case though. Sample this conversation of mine with a customer service representative of a television cable company.

Me: I wish to cancel my subscription to this particular channel. While I can add the subscription to this channel online, why can’t I cancel this online?
Customer Service Representative (also called CSR): No Sir, you have to call us to cancel it.
Me: Ok, I want to cancel these channels for now.
CSR: Why do you want to cancel these channels?
Me: Currently, the channel has all useless programmes.
(Now comes the most important line)
CSR: Sir, Do you realize that if you cancel these channels, you will not be able to see them anymore? Are you sure that you want to cancel them?
Me (stunned for a while): Yes, 100%.
---End of conversation---

Now, why would CSR remind me that I won’t be able to receive these channels if I cancel them? I am not the brightest of persons but I do have enough intelligence to know that if I cancel a channel, I won’t be getting that particular channel. So my guess is that CSR has used this line before and met with success. There does seem to be a section of the population that has renewed their subscription to channels when they have realized that cancelling them would mean no further reception.

The cancelling thing also made me wonder if partial channel cancellation is possible i.e. can I have the reception cancelled only for time slots which have serials of Ekta Kapoor or reality shows playing? Now that would be a wonderful feature.

Still staying on to TV channels, I made a few random discoveries while flipping the remote the other day. There’s a Hindi movie channel that plays only dubbed Hindi movies of South Indian origin. Arjun Sarja, Nagarjuna, Chiranjeevi and Balakrishna are regular Hindi speakers on this channel. For some reason, all of them have the same Hindi voice and accent. All villains also have the same voice and accent. I think this channel does the dubbing itself employing the same voices for every movie. Cost cutting seems to be the mantra of this channel.

Continuing my research further on the Rajashri Productions from my previous blog, I have found out that they now make serials like Bidaai, which needless to say borrow stories from their previous movies. Alok Nath continues to cry in this serial as well and in many occasions, more than the heroine and her mother.

Return of the Trivial Thievery...

Thievery seems to have reached a new low this season. While I have had an ancient hole ridden umbrella and brass/iron taps (called faucets in certain English speaking countries that I don’t wish to name :-)) stolen from me, this time it was the handle grip from my bike that was stolen. This grip was 7 years old, made of rubber and cost roughly 27 Rs. What’s worse is that the thief stole only one of the grips. What kind of a thief is this? Mostly a sadistic one I would like to guess. Because, when he stole the grip he exposed the glue coated handle (which I didn’t know until much later). I happily set off on my bike only to notice that I couldn’t take my left hand off the handle and that it was stuck to it. Some force later, I did manage to free myself leaving behind some glue imprints on the exposed handle. Needless to say that the glue also left a black imprint on my hand and this did take some effort removing off.

This thief will definitely not be going to heaven for this.

These days it’s dangerous for 2 wheelers to ride in the night near my place of stay. And not because of muggers or any anti social elements. There is a huge black street dog stalking the area which chooses to chase every unsuspecting rider. Recently, I was this unsuspecting rider. The dog when it saw me had only one aim and that was to bite my leg off. The dog was running by my side ready to chew me off and I had also my leg ready to kick in case it lunged at me. But suddenly it stopped dead in its tracks and then I realized that I had moved out of its territory when I saw another dog in the distance. This one seemed to be a more peaceful one and let me pass through harmlessly. And this is how the intrepid explorer survived another adventure and continues to live to tell his tales. :-)

Ek Vivaah Aisa bhi and the protector of Gardens…

After seeing the poster of yet another movie by the illustrious Barjatya clan (of the Rajshri Productions fame) based on the Indian marriage, innumerable songs, joint family and roughly about 1000 actors, I was forced to dig deeper in this “direction” (Excuse the pun). I was intrigued by this director, who year after year churns out similar kind of movies with the same actors and music directors. I found a few disturbing facts though. “Ek vivah aisa bhi” is a remake, nothing surprising is what you would think. But what is disturbing is that this is a remake of one of their own movies made roughly 25 years ago called Tapasya. This is the first instance that I see of someone remaking his/her own movie. This is what I call a serious case of director’s block.

The idea of Hum Aapke Hai Kaun is also based on one of their earlier movies called Nadiya Ke Paar, which according to my research had roughly 200 songs. Needless to say, this was their top grosser in 1979. There was a brief attempt to venture into the action genre through a movie called Agent Vinod, in which Vinod a CBI agent is out to hunt a certain villain called Scorpion. This movie won the Filmfare for the best sound recording. The way I understand, this was their only foray into this genre and soon they were back making movies like Sun Sajna, Rimjhim Geeton Ka and Maine Pyaar Kiya. I truly salute this genre of film making. I never have and will never comprehend this kind of film making.

But, surprisingly and surprisingly is the operative word here, they were the ones who produced Saaransh, which one of the finest movies Indian cinema has to offer. I think they have already atoned for making Hum Saath Saath Hain and Mein Prem ki diwani hoon.

*---Change of topic----*

I henceforth declare myself the protector of gardens. A new crime wave sweeping across the gardens of West Bangalore (which are also my usual places for running) is people stealing flowers as if it were ones own backyard. While jogging today, I requested a certain pilferer of blue flowers to stop his act. He calmly replied saying he needed them for his “puja”. My retort was going to be, “So why in gods name wouldn’t you buy your own flowers?” But I froze there, too shocked to reply at the utter disregard for a very well maintained public garden. Next on my target are certain aunties, who prefer some orange flowers from the garden. Hmm, I ought to have a nickname somewhere on the lines of Blade, Iron Man etc. The Flower Warrior seems to fit the bill perfectly. Maybe the esteemed reader can suggest a better name.

The Diwali Cracker Discoveries this time…

The Diwali Cracker Discoveries this time…

The recently concluded Diwali saw me return to the Diwali celebrations scene with the gang again after an absence last year. This year’s celebrations saw substantially more participation on account of some new entrants.

One thing heartening to note about crackers this time is that they came with “No Child Labour Employed” printed across them. But this time, I saw brands that I had never ever before seen in my life. Standard Fireworks were no where to be seen, while KRS and Navarathna fireworks seemed to be very prominent. And this particular KRS brand has sub-brands like Calf Brand and the Sheep Brand. While I was in the process of using the product called Aero Dance, I also noted that the company provides additional specifications of this cracker like Original Name: Shell, Class 7, Sub-Class 3. I was under the impression that only navy ships, planes and missiles had a classification system like this. This goes to show how our firework companies have reached a new level of sophistication and they probably have a new database system as well.

While the packaging is very professional these days, the names of the products are extremely hilarious. The Red Gangster cracker had Amitabh Bacchhan, Rajnikanth and Kiera Knightly on it. The Lazer Show (note the spelling of lazer) had extremely suggestive and provocative pictures from a movie, whose actors I don’t recognize. And then there was the Pearl Hunt fire cracker, which had the Pirates of the Caribbean pictures all over it. The Tamil actress Asin also made her presence felt on one of the crackers. As mentioned earlier, Rajnikanth was a standard feature on all of them. The celebration ended with a lousy fancy cracker called Jukebox 100 which looks like a car battery and which is supposed to fire around 100 small rockets at will in all directions making a rather irritating noise while doing so. To the best of my knowledge, only 30 or so of them fired in ALL possible directions that left people scampering for cover. The jukebox 100 package also mentioned that this product was the pinnacle of the company’s innovation. Somehow, I do not happen to think so.

Lastly, the company is also careful enough to inform the prospective user that for best results crackers should be lit at night only :-)

Finally, the right spelling of “puncture”....!!

Puncture and vulcanizing are the most misspelt English words in India. After years of searching all around, I finally found the right spelling of puncture not 75 metres away from my house. Karnataka Puncture Shop proudly displays the correct spelling of puncture. In the past, I have seen many different variations; panchar, pancher & puncher. Puncher seems to be the most common variant though. The only difference with Karnataka Puncture Shop is that its advertisement says “puncture done here” while all the other shops tend to remove them. Looks like this shop has a different and an innovative business strategy according to which perfectly good tyres are punctured at a cost. My quest to find the right spelling of vulcanizing still continues though.

A very bizarre news as of yesterday is that the state of Himachal Pradesh has recommended the Great Khali, (for the uninformed, he is an Indian wrestler in the WWE) for the Padmashri to the Central Government. While I let the reader chew on this news, I can’t help but wonder as to which genius came up with this idea. Readers who don’t believe me are kindly requested to read the Times of India dated 6th October. I also won’t be surprised if the CPI(M) objects to this and claims that this nomination would hurt the sovereignty of India. Whether the President’s office will accept this recommendation remains to be seen.