Trump imitates Modi, Modi imitates Trump

Narendra Modi campaigned heavily on India being a Hindu nation and that India needs to defend itself against Pakistan sternly. He accused the previous govt Congress of being too soft against the aggression of Pakistan on the Kashmir issue. He even campaigned that the top leaders of Congress as the Western establishment ruling India associating the Gandhi family as Italians, although Sonia vehemently opposed that saying she had left Italy to be with her now deceased Indian husband Rajiv Gandhi. It did not sit well with the Gandhi family as their budding heir Rahul Gandhi expressed no such Indian values other than wearing an Indian kurta for campaigning, while most of the time he was found in Bangkok detoxing himself to gear up against Modi attacks – the strongest one being the Shahazadha; the son of royal family. This was 2014 and Modi won with thumping majority as the next Prime minister. The Congress was decimated, Rahul who had half heatedly canvassed on the persuasion of his mother went back to Bangkok for further detoxing. Since then Modi has been the first Indian PM to visit Pakistan with surprise visit found hugging the then PM of Pakistan, Nawaz Sheriff. Since then Kashmir issue has escalated and India claims it has now given the befitting reply to Pakistan cross border terrorism, understandably now detoxed and formally appointed as President of the Congress party Rahul claims otherwise.

Then came 2016 and America went for election and Donald J. Trump took the Modi playbook and accused all the politicians of big swamp and especially Barack Obama as too soft to the world, hence undermining the might of Mighty America. The reality was George W. Bush had projected America as a bully nation after 9/11 for going to war without the UN consensuses. It is then that obese Americans who love French Fries had renamed them as Freedom Fries in retaliation to France, it is these Americans that would eventually vote for the now Republican candidate DJT who had little knowledge that French fries had nothing to do with France. Trump crushed 11 political presidential hopefuls to nominate himself as next Republican candidate in Primaries.

Against Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, he pitched that under her administration it would be the same 8 eight years as her predecessor Obama. Frankly she was running on that agenda as Obama had brought the respect for America it deserved from the rest of the nations and had made an effort to diffuse the nuclear tension from Iran by holding a bilateral talks. He had also steered America from the worst recession created by out going GWB since Great Depression. But what Trump used against her was Modi’s strategy, America’s superpower status had diminished under Obama and he was too soft to speak with Iran and bent backwards to appease them. He vehemently opposed the stand immigration policy against the illegal immigrants, where in the past both Republicans and Democrats had avoided the issue. Trump came along and said he would deport all illegals back to Mexico, 11 millions of them and build a beautiful WALL across the Mexico border. Although majority of the illegals are from Mexico sizable illegals are from other nations too, including India, so will he send them to Mexico too? but this was a good catch phrase for election and he ran with that.

It worked and Trump was elected as the first non political failed businessman (not according to him, on the contrary Trump race is the most powerful gene, to which he feels that every women needs to be impregnated with his sperms, to further the dominance of America against the rest of the world) as the President of America.

Now it is Modi’s turn to run for a second term and he is using all the gimmickry that of Trump. Although it’s almost two years since Trump took office he has not gone any further with his biggest policy of building the wall on Mexico border. He had promised his supporters that Mexico would pay for the wall, the supporters had cheered him in every rallies “BUILD. THAT. WALL.”, now as a elected president he went to Mexican president to pay for the wall, that did not go well but he got a big middle finger from former Mexican president Vicente Fox. So now he has retorted to build the wall using American tax payers, although the congress is not approving it, even though republicans are in majority. So trump has planned to shut down of the government, twice by now.

Here Modi has called for deporting some 4 million illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, apparently the illegals that have entered India since 1971 are at the risk of getting deported back to Bangladesh, only problem is they are all born in India. To make it more complicated he had declared in 2014 that all the Hindu, Sikh and Christians refugees from Bangladesh are welcome anytime, so who else is left, that’s the Muslims. Muslims mostly poor daily wage workers are claiming that they are born and lived in India, if they are deported they have no place to go, Bangladesh would not accept them. Indian constitution is built on secularism and cannot ban the immigrants based of religion. But Modi supporters are backing the move. The opposition is warning bloodshed if such a move was executed. Thus some 4 million people are stranded as to not knowing when they would be deported to Bangladesh.

Trump announces ‘SPACE FORCE’ and Modi pulled of Space Mission on Aug 15 2018.

BlacKkKlansman (2018)

The movie opens with a rant about racism, denigrating the existence of blacks as equals in the society among whites. It is none other than Donald J Trump! err sorry, I meant his SNL alter ego Alec Baldwin. This sets the mood of the film, so if you are a Trump-ster, you have wasted your money. But you sit and enjoy the intelligent comedy played by the characters.
Then enters our protagonist, Ron Stallworth(John David Washington) prepping his nostalgic Afro hairdo, he becomes the first black police officer to join the force of Colorado Springs. Based of the true story, Spike Lee weaves the story from the past to present racism in America.
Ron starts of his duty in records room, who gets bored very soon, requests his chief to assign him a detective work. Due to his persistence Chief assigns him to infiltrate a Black Panther Activist movement headed by Kwame Ture. Ron accepts it as to socialize with his own community, which in turn finds his love interest; the head of the student union Patrice Dumes(Laura Harrier).

While he is rationalizing with his own kind that police are not pigs, who have tortured the blacks at every juncture concealing his identity. He stumbles upon an advertisement in local newspaper seeking members for a new chapter of KKK in Colorado Springs. He picks the phone and dials the number, the man on the other side asks why would he want to join? Ron goes, “I am WHITE man and hate all those N-word who are sleeping with our white girls and raping them”. I dare not spell that n word, Omarosa might be taping. He pronounces the word WHITE with southern accent, VOIIGHT as it can be. The jaws drop in the office as the rant continues from Ron over the phone, hating blacks. Spike Lee shows that how the rest of the white crew in the office are supportive of Ron except to one bad apple. There is always one that spoils the entire basket. Needless to say the KKK clansman is impressed by Rons views and gets accepted and intends to meet face to face.

Ron’s partner, Filip Zimmerman(Adam Driver) reluctantly agrees to be the face of Ron Stallworth, with Ron as voice, Filip as face the duo infiltrate the KKK, they learn the plans to bomb the Black Panther to eliminate the uprising and end up meeting the master himself, David Duke!

Lee has juxtaposed the KKK and Black panther meeting both being intense in their own right although I would say that the presence of Henry Belafonte is real moving. Lee brings in a full circle and gets that one bad apple on the tape and has him removed from the police force, thus saving the basket from contamination.

In the end Spike Lee ends the movie as a documentary highlighting the events of Charlottesville and President Trump delivering the speech ‘There were fine people on both sides‘ at the cost of an innocent life
Heather Heyer.

It’s worth mentioning here that throughout the movie audience is laughing at the jokes played by Ron and his colleagues over the phone with KKK, but when the commentary from Henry Belafonte is delivered there is a pin drop silence and tears roll down as Heather Heyer is commemorated.

Selfie by Shweta Bachchan

Russian daredevil Kirill Oreshkin taking a selfie atop a hi rise building

I have conveniently dropped the Nanda at the end to make it more appealing. Yes it is Sr Bachchan’s daughter writing about Selfie. Not surprisingly very eloquent article; she hails from writers family, her father and grand father. Found it very interesting to note that she is totally against the selfies while she is surrounded by huge personalities.

Selfie was immortalized by Ellen DeGeneres of course promoting the phone she held at Oscars. The picture itself was beautiful with all the Hollywood stars posing triumphantly for the shot, then it went viral on Twitter.

I am not so much against the selfies, but I tend to agree with Shweta on the self indulgence of we humans. Although selfie can be used as medium to capture everybody in the group, but like she says, why do it, if there several other tourists around you who would be glad to help you out. Builds human interaction and social acquaintance.

She also vents about the children taking selfies with duck face. Sure she being a mother herself would be annoyed by that, but it is still cute as long they are limited to children. Unfortunately lots of adults have never grown out of their childhood and progress into belfies.

Selfies has taken a sinister turn, which she is not addressing, the deaths related to Selfies is overwhelming. The picture posted above is that of a Russian daredevil Kirill Oreshkin has earned a name as Russian Spiderman for his selfies atop a hi-rise buildings. Call it daredevil or dumb move, one mis-step could cause his death. Other daredevils have not been so lucky who have succumbed to death, pricenomics lists such deaths in this article.

Mumbai police has posted a sign for Selfie daredevils,

Don’t make ‘taking a selfie‘ mean ‘taking your own life‘.

scores of people are dead taking a selfie near Marine Drive or Bandra seaface. Statistics have shown that India had almost 60 percent of deaths of all selfies.

Finally Shweta ends her blog with a satirical note, where she contacted her doctor for sunburns over the phone, to which her doctor responded, “Send a Selfie”, you can read her entire article here.

WhatsApp Lynching

I first read the lynching incident way back in Sep 2015, which has now become infamous Dadri lynching. The incident was so sad that the man was lynched based on the rumors that he had eaten beef.

So what?

I know, if you are in USA beef is an American staple diet; trust me it’s high in cholesterol, you need to cut on that. Just a suggestion or if it was Mayor Mike Bloomberg, he would heavily tax on it, which is outrageous, who wants a nanny state, right? Even if that saves your life in the long run. Lets get back to our story, turns out this man from Dadri (I try not to use the real names, it’s subject that matters); a parent of an active soldier, was made to run in the village streets while a mob chased him with machetes. The senior man ran for his life behind a bunch of teenagers; could you think that a senior could out run a bunch of teenagers with adrenaline. That senior out ran them, it was the last hope he had, else death. Anyways the peasant ran to his home, locked himself up in the bedroom. Commotion erupted in the living room, the family members scurried around the crowd begging to save his life.

What couldn’t they immediately call for the police help?

You might think these poor villagers did not have phones, they did! as a matter of fact every individual has phone in India, actually India has the highest number of cellphones in the world. No wonder Mark Zuckerberg visited Prime Minister Narendra Modi multiple times, to provide a free internet to all his citizens. Good deal hah! not so fast, in return Mark gets to control what content the nation views. See the game here. Well that did not happen and Mark returned home empty handed, actually the first thing he ate after landing on American soil; A double cheese Hamburger. So they had called for the cops but they were standing outside the home as the tiny home itself was filled with mobs. The wife begged and pleaded the leader to spare her husband; it was immaterial what his offense was. Nonetheless his son demanded what was the offense?

“You filthy humans, you eat beef”, said a burly mustache and darted towards the kitchen and opened his fridge to produce the beef.
Aah! the beef, dear Americans pardon those mobsters for calling beef eaters as filthy humans. Well lets talk about this beef a little, there two flavors of beef in India. No it’s not Angus and regular beef; that’s debate you fight in America. Here it’s cow beef and Water buffalo beef.

What’s the difference?

Big difference. Cow in India is a sacred animal, so sacred you worship her everyday. That buffalo, the dark cousin of cow, not so sacred, you can butcher it and eat it, at your will. Mind you, buffalo provides more milk to the nation than cows. If only they evolved using Fair and Lovely to become fair like cows, Sigh! So this Cow Beef is banned in India since independence, see the Brits left the land and cows roamed the streets at freewill. A foreign delegate comes to the capital of India; Delhi, the entire population is shooed off the streets for the entourage to pass by and suddenly it comes to halt. Then President, Barack Obama once asked, “Aaah! Why did we stop?“. The Indian high command sputtered, “Saaar! it’s the cows they are crossing the streets and one is just resting on the road, they will have them moved and we will get going.”

Buffaloes dare not come on the streets, they would be beaten like hell. You say, “I get it, this man was eating Cow beef“, no he was not, it was a buffalo beef, but this wonderful WhatsApp we have now had spread the word that he was eating otherwise, even , more sinister a calf meat. You know how fast the news spreads on WhatsApp right, it goes viral within seconds and then the cow vigilantes gather and dart towards the culprit. So here we are attacking this father whose teenage girls were huddled in the corner for the fear of being raped. Son pleaded that the beef in the fridge was buffalo beef, if only he could reach his older brother who was deployed on the treacherous Indo-Pak border; defending these cow vigilantes from the terrorist attacks. This soldier does not carry a cellphone for security reasons, in short he was nowhere to be reached. The mob chants grew louder,

“Kill that man, who abuses an innocent cow.“,

few reprimanded the family members and rest broke open the doors of the bedroom. Father was mercilessly beaten to death while his entire family looked on!

The mob moved on warning the remaining family,

“Dare you eat this beef, you will meet the same fate“,

actually the mother darted to eat the meat; it was suicidal, her children held her back.

Mob moved out, police moved in.
“What happened here?” asked the inspector.
“Sir, they killed my father for eating this beef, it’s buffalo beef”, cried his son.
“Send that meat for forensics”, ordered the Inspector, you see his priority.
Indeed the forensics report had come back as buffalo meat, really nobody eats cow meat in India. Actually cows have become such a nuisance on the streets, they have been left to die eating plastic bags and trash. The day cow stops bearing milk they are left on the streets, nobody dares take any action. Not to digress, but there are few organizations who shelter these abandoned cows.

Finally the military son was informed, whose bosses were appalled to hear the story and sent him home to attend his grieving family. He being the elder son torched the dead body for cremation and did the final rights.
Media asked him, “Soldier how do you feel that you serve our nation and here a bunch of mobsters kill your father”.
He simply says, “I forgive them”, and finally moves the entire family from that town where his generation had lived.

Since that incident scores have been lynched over the past few years, it was not always cow related though, some times it’s religion, other times it’s journalists/writers, I was loosing track of these incidents until the last one that literally hit home.

My hometown Karnataka, a software engineer, who had just returned from Middle-East on vacation, gave-away few chocolates to street kids, who devoured with joy. The bunch of vigilantes go to work, sent a Whats-app message among their friends, with this engineer’s picture attached saying that, he is a child-lifter. Really that’s a popular word in India a Child-Lifter. The mob got to work and this highly educated engineer was not given any chance to defend his actions and dragged on the streets and beaten to death.

Since most of these mob vigilantes are affiliated with one or the other political parties, the police keeps looking for them but can never identify the perpetrators, conveniently, even though all of the act is circulating on the same WhatsApp among rest of the world, I mean, I sit here in USA and get to see these videos within an hour of the incident.

Argument has been that WhatsApp has to stop these false propaganda, Facebook parent company of WhatsApp has been under fire for selling out users information to Cambridge Analytica, which has compromised the election results in USA and India alike. The technology can only go so far as in case of WhatsApp, the privacy of the user is protected by not revealing the information to anybody except the intended party, in this case the vigilante groups messages cannot be seen by law authorities or the WhatsApp organization itself. Facebook has put in place a lot of checks and balances in case of English language, but would take a lot of time to decipher the hundreds of Indian vernacular languages.

For argument sake let’s say a person ate beef or abducted a child, what right and authority does the mob have to punish him or her. Yes there were women killed based of fake messages of child-lifting. If anybody suspects that somebody is doing wrong, inform the authorities, let police handle it. Well in America this has gone too far, too. A black child sells lemonade and a lady calls cops on that child. Yet she did not take law into her own hands, at least for now.

My final plea is that we as humans need to care for other humans, justifiably to animals too. I cannot fathom that a bunch of people use there bare hands and kill another human in a gruesome manner while rest of the people watch it or video tape it. The person begs for water during his last moments and beating continues, until he goes silent!

Anthony Bourdain: Pain Unknown

All his life he showed us the finest dining places across the world and some remotest of places and proved that it is not necessary to be wealthy to enjoy life and have fun. He did visit the Malaysian remote island (could be wrong), for the second time; this time being more popular TV host and explaining them that he had then loved their culture, where people cooked and drank all night till they dropped dead; metaphorically, a simple living and sharing the food amongst the entire village. More so than food, he showed the beauty of connecting with people across the world at a personal level.

With his exhaustive traveling and carefree living, he once said “With so many tattoos, one more I can take”, he took every challenge that was thrown at him, though scared at times, he was real on camera as he was in his real life.

He made his life an envy of all, dining in the most exotic places, maneuvering yachts, blending with various culture around the world and families alike or was it an illusion, we will never know.

Tony’s death came days after another celebrity ended her life tragically; Kate Spade, what drove these greats to this extreme, world would never know. Every budding chef, journalists many other common person in different professions idealized his life, wanted to be Tony, except himself.

Lastly I would leave with a thought that his high point in life (sorry for speaking on his behalf) would be, he introducing the President Barack Obama a good cheap eat in Hanoi, Vietnam over a bottle of beer!, but Barack being another great he has tweeted his best moment with Tony already.

I would like to quote Neil Degrasse Tyson, “Life is precious, here were are investing in search for life on Mars, wherever we find it, we need to cherish and nurture it”.

The man who lived so much, the idea of he not being there anymore is surreal.

Ode! Anthony Bourdain!

KRSNA

KRSNA is a mythological story told by himself for children in a very simple language.

Excerpt

What Next…

Well it’s been five thousand years and I am meeting with Lord to land on earth. We feel like we left it for you humans to handle it on your own without we meddling too much, but we are noticing the state this earth has been brought to.

The constant argument here is who will lead the effort to go down there and take care of the business. Every time; all of these thirty three million us, none wants to come down there. Everybody has gotten very comfortable up here, we look down and see the technological progress you guys have made, frankly lots of devas fear of being outdated. I remember few decades back, if I am not mistaken Narad went to Varanasi; the university of Hindu literature. He even met with you people and explained that he was Narad, Lord Brahma himself had sent him down there to address your concerns. He was heckled so bad, that we couldn’t help but laugh at his plight.

Narad went to one beggar who had his legs crippled and twisted from knee down, beard, hair and body starving for nutrition, clothes falling apart rotting on their own and said, “I see you in distress, is there anything you need from Lord?”

The man looks at him like Narad was some kind of an alien and goes, “Who are you?”

“Oh! I am Narad, the messenger of Lord himself”, explicitly displaying his signature Veena and Jasmine flowers tied around his head and arms.

“Well you seem like a nice guy, what’s up that hairdo”, he scooted over a little and continued, “come sit here, this is a popular spot, every temple visitor passses from here, you can collect a lot of money here, you seem like a nice guy, what brought you to this state”, he spread another rotten gunny bag next to him and patted to dust off.

“No! I am not here to beg!”, Narad looked up into the sky, frankly we were laughing out loud, this embarrassed him and continued to the beggar, “I am sent by god to check with your concerns”, frankly he was losing his cool.

“Alright then, give me hundred rupees”, said the beggar, “you make my day today”.

“No I can’t pay money, I don’t have, I can carry your concerns…”

“Alright beat it now, you are obstructing my busy hours here, go check concerns of other people out there and take them to your lord”, he threw an air quotes around Lord.

Narad, stepped away from the man and got moving, beggar yelled back, “Hey watch out godman, a bus will run you over, nobody has time for your Lord concerns out here, take it somewhere else”.

Narad turned to look around and a cyclist knocked his Veena and broke it, he just yelled back “Sorry” and kept riding his bike. Some other person picked up his broken Veena and handed it to him, “Are you looking for the drama theatre?, you look lost, it’s right there, you see that cobbler sitting down there, turnaround you can’t miss it”.

Narad frustrated, “No, I am not…”, before he could complete the man had taken off, was hanging on to a moving bus. The wooden slippers were also knocked off, he decided to meet the cobbler to repair. Limping on one leg with broken Veena he approached the cobbler.

“My good friend, can you fix these sandals for me?”

Cobbler busy sewing a leather sandal adjusted his broken glasses and looked at Narad, “What are these, you don’t wear these on streets”, he continued with his work, irritated.

“No! This is all I have worn all the time, please fix them for me”, pleaded Narad, his feet was burning in the hot sun, his other wooden sandal had stuck in the melting tar and had no clue how to get it off. Cobbler wanting to take a break, dropped his sewing and grabbed the water jug and gulped the water. Wiping his mouth turned to Narad and said, “I can’t fix these sir, leave them here, walk into the theater and when you return maybe I will see if I can fix them”.

“I am not going to a theater!!! I just need these fixed, I need to go home”, said Narad visibly irritated by people asking him to go to theater, feet were killing and sweat dripping off his temples.

“I can’t fix them, here you can buy these”, cobbler handed him a pair of Hawaii slip ons.

“What are these?”, asked Narad looking at the soft sandal shaped pair.

“Go ahead try it, they are very comfortable”.

Hesitantly Narad slipped on the Hawaii and was amazed, they were soft, did not have to pinch his toes to hold to them like he did with wooden sandals.

“What are these”, asked Narad, a smile had broken on his face, they were so comfortable.

“Just pay two hundred rupees, I feel bad for you”,said the cobbler while he got busy with his sewing.

“I like these, but I don’t have rupees!!!”, said Narad, “Here take this, but I need these sandals”, he jumped with joy handing him a gold chain.

“I don’t want your chain, you seem to be a nice guy, go home now it’s hot, pay me later, don’t cheat me, I know you come to this theater”, cobbler waged his finger sizing up Narad.

Narad turned around the bend to check on this theater, he saw bunch of people dressed as Amitabh Bachchan and Elvis Presley impersonation, of course he could not make anything of it. This was it for him, drifted back into the clouds and reported to Lord Brahma, “Fire me if you want to, I am never going back there”, flashing his new sandals.

“I am not firing you! Go take rest”, Lord could no longer control his laughter. Narad walked away with a swag enjoying his new sandals.

The meeting went on for hours at end and there were no takers who would go down there and do the job they are supposed to do. Lord Shiva had declared, “I have gotten too comfortable with Kailash, it’s hot down there, I am not going”. Of the top three two had already ruled out. I being the third, well if you don’t know I am an incarnation of Lord Vishnu; the third supreme god. I had to speak up, “We can send Ganesha, he is very popular among them, I see every car dashboard adorned with elephant head wobbling there”.

So Ganesha was summoned, he came with a laddu in his mouth, looked and his father respectfully, then sized me up and bowed his head to Lord Brahma.

“Ganesha, we want you to go down to Earth, looks like they need your help, also they believe in you”, Lord Brahma was like a car salesman selling his idea.

“What! Did you see what they did to Narad?, he looks so normal yet he was ridiculed, I have this elephant head, thanks to this man here, if I go down there some billionaire or a politician will claim my ownership and keep me in a cell and start billing the customers for my viewing”, he went and fell to the feet of Brahma and Shiva walked away staring at me, for suggesting this idea.

The meeting continued, actually it was only me and Brahma that were discussing, Shiva was peaceful. Lord Brahma ran his fingers through his gray beard and looked at me pleading.

“Alright, alright, I will go”, I said throwing my flute on the floor. Shiva just smiled in the corner, he stood up to leave, it was settled. I had to work on logistics with Brahma, first thing I said was, I am going to lose this attire, thanks to my mom, who made my look a legend but this peacock feather and dhoti had to go.

Brahma got curious and asked, “What do you plan to wear?, I know you like those gold jewels”.

He is right, I have this affinity towards this bling, I just love it, “I don’t know yet, I just don’t want to be fooled like Narad.” I really can’t believe you guys treated him like that, what a change millennials can bring. After he saying he wants to help a beggar, he was ridiculed, what will a common man do us when we get down there, I wonder.

Anyway Lord Brahma has left it to me to wear or do whatever I want to, all he wants is somebody to get down there and bring some order. So good or bad news, I am coming, I do need some input from you guys, especially the millennials, it’s your time to shine. I am planning on getting hooked with Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, really what do I do with instagram, I am the most progressive out here but, I am clueless about instagram, I know people post pictures there, but what good would do that to me. I am also done with these chariots, planning to get a fast ride; Lamborghini or Tesla, I am torn. Tesla will be good in a sense, I don’t have to drive and relax at the back.

I am thinking we will see how it goes…

Kirik Party (2016)

The prologue (jump to review)

This has been the most elusive movie for me, ever since I have heard about it, it had already been taken off the screens here in New Jersey, needless to say I had least interest in watching Kannada movies when Bollywood churns out everyday a new movie and friends around me dropping their jaws for not watching this one or that, recently I have also been watching Marathi movies like Sairaat (2016) and Court (2014), which had made waves of their own. Got calls from India; Kirik Party is a good movie, you should check it out. My quest for the same in local stores for a pirated copy went in vain. Many a times I googled for an online copy, never watched Kirik Party but ended up watching some other Hindi movies. There are times I was jubilant to see on YouTube Kirik Party run time 2 hr 40 some minutes, the movie starts fine and then after the ghastly cigarette ad, it turns out to be a third rated movie. Dejected I gave up on watching the movie or so I say with blood shot eyes.

After an year of air date, I landed in India for vacation, vacation was fine, family was even better. It’s my wife’s sister-in-law that disturbed my peace.

“Shrikant anna, did you watch Kirik Party, it’s Superrr”, she said.

“No!”.

“I will get it for you, you need to watch it”, she darted out the door.

I lay on the couch, day after day in front of TV, she being busy with her house chores ran to neighbors house to get me a copy of DVD, she did manage to find few, one was a very bad Camera recording and rest just did not work. I just thanked her for trying so hard and she was depressed that I couldn’t get to watch that one good Kannada movie after long time.

After landing back in US, once in a while I googled for Kirik Party, nice song videos but never a complete screening. I had begun to like the movie. Sadly I am not here to preach about marketing but Kannada industry has lacked a lot in this, every Hindi, Tamil or Telugu ends up on Einthusan after a week but Kannada; how do you expect Kannada movies to become popular. Recently bought another Chinese video box that streams pirated videos of entire worlds collection but English; we have Kodi for that. Started watching live cricket matches and latest and greatest Sony TV comedy shows. For the first time in US my wife bragged she had watched Jagga Jasoos (2017), where her friends dropped their mouths in awe.

“Where did you get that, I want to watch it too, is it on Einthusan?”

“No! It’s not on einthu, it’s on this box”, she beamed.

Out of curiosity and zero hope browsed Kannada section for Kirik Party; you thought I had given up on this movie. Lo behold I found it; a working HD copy!

The review

To my pleasant surprise the movie opened up to a beautiful upbeat song, bunch of boys, being boys in a college and having fun, is the most winning formula in any of the Indian movies. Hollywood has long given up on this theme since Grease series. For me it brought the pleasant memories of my college days watching another best Kannada movie of that time, Premloka. The comedies were not slapstick but some creative humorous dialogues. It was a long wait but it paid off for all the pain I had taken. It was almost a musical like Premloka; unlike stupid musical; Jagga Jasoos, got involved in the romantic comedy, had begun appreciating the directing skills of Rishab Shetty and decent acting by Rakshit Shetty until they killed that Senior girl, Rashmika Mandanna;no I mean really she looked senior. For a moment I thought it was his dream, asked my wife, if she really died. I don’t know if I dozed off; I do a lot with chick flicks, my wife is very annoyed with me for that. There are times I watch movies in installment because I sleep half way, sadly she watches every time the whole movie. Next thing I see is that there is an election in the college and best of friends have broken up canvassing against each other. I am like did I wake to Shiva (1989)? Just to confirm, I ask my wife, that Chasmish girl is gone, I had begun to like her. She said “Yes” sternly. Then I see this high school girl Samyukha Hegde flirting with protagonist, I am like come on, don’t kill him now gods sake. The girl is very good on the screen but again a misfit in the story; Rishab, where are you going with this man. Then he steals some scenes from 3 Idiots (2009) and makes Rakshit drive on the Royal Enfield and go missing, why? Now the movie has become so painful you start to enjoy the torture, I am saying let me see how he will tie all the ends of this movie and pull the curtain down, he does after three agonizing hours. The End.

You can’t help notice that the graduation party has the banner 2013, the movie has been delayed to release

~~Every good movie must be an inspiration but never implemented in yours~~

Hubballi Hitler

Hidden Figures (2016)

Sheldon Cooper (Big Bang Theory) makes a first movie and gets beaten up in NASA mission by our protagonist, thats a first. I could see him twitching with pain when Katherine Johnson, erases the black board (no pun intended it is black board not white board) and rewrites the formulas for John Glen‘s pod re-entry, unfortunately Penny was not there to console him.

The review

Hidden Figures is a wonderful uplifting story of three African American ladies during segregation, making it to the top in NASA space mission. The bubbly, Mary Jackson (Janelle Monáe) who wants to be an aeronautical engineer in the white mans world, men watch her struggle through a observatory window when her heel gets stuck on the launch pad. The senior, Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer) who is managing a colored computers – literal meaning is a black women employed for computing. The genius of the trio is Katherine Johnson (Taraji P. Henson) who is calculating rocket’s trajectory and re-entry crossing odds with Paul Stafford (Jim Parsons famously known as Sheldon Cooper). The movie is fairly star studded, Al Harrison (Kevin Costner) is head of the launch mission who at first is very skeptical of the Katherine’s math abilities, he is a fantastic scientist with great leadership skills, but his human side is revealed when he discovers that Katherine took half hour breaks on a critical mission days just to learn that she had to walk half a mile (rain or shine) to relieve herself in the colored bathrooms. Takes a sledge hammer and shatters the signs of color of the facility and declares “There are no colors here at NASA, we are all one color”. In the other building Dorothy updates her staff with coding (FORTRAN) so that they don’t become obsolete on the installation of IBM supercomputers in the building, in the interim gains the much anticipated respect from her supervisor Vivian Mitchell (Kirsten Dunst). Mary breaks the barrier to be the first women to go to a College for White only through a court order. The icing on the cake is when management decides to take off Katherine from the mission control since all the calculations can be done by IBM computers, John Glenn personally orders to get Katherine to verify the calculations done by the computer. She oversees safe re-entry of John Glen in the Mission Control room filled with White people (I mean all men dressed in white shirts), with Katherine in a bright colored dress. She later goes on to supervise the Apollo 11 launch, mission to moon.

The movie is a pleasant watch, very well directed by Theodore Melfi, a must watch for all children.

Passengers (2016)

Hmm, where do I begin with this movie, its an arms race to build a colony on Mars and beyond, first we had Gravity(2013) where you saw what it was like getting drifted in Space, then came Interstellar(2014) and Martian(2015) where they landed and grew a plant there. Here in passengers they have taken it to the next level, passengers settling on another planet. Every next movie uses part imagination and part scientific evidence to push the envelope backed by NASA. George Lucas is like you all so 18th century.

The review

The first 30 mins the movie is played by Chris Pratt (Jurassic World 2015) is awakened on a spaceship prematurely since his hibernating pod has malfunctioned, with no one available to talk; sounds scary but we have seen worst on Cast Away(2013). He scans through all the profiles of 1500 passengers and picks to wake up JLaw ( her name in the movie is Aurora, why did you not leave her sleeping, don’t you watch Disney Movies man). Don’t worry, ‘If I was you, I would be waking her up too‘. Now the next 30 mins or more they are busy trying to find out why only they are up and rest are hibernating peacefully for 90 years. Whatever happened to ‘Hum Tum Ek Kamre Mein Band Hon, Aur Chavi Ko Jaye‘, maybe I am old schooled they had a whole ship by themselves with all the amenities, food and wine at disposal. Lo and behold after an hour into the movie they find romance between them. It took less time to bring two Pandas together in NYC Zoo. Since Chris discovered sex; by the way JLaw claims this was her first on screen, he thought of waking up Julia Roberts too, but then the director yelled at him, it would cost them another 2o million.

All is well and Chris has planned to propose JLaw at the bar where our only humanized robot Arthur as witness, he takes off to get the ring and Jlaw is chatting with Arthur, disaster strikes, Arthur spills the beans as how Chris contemplated waking her up with guilt and finally went for it and now all looks so good with them together. JLaw is furious and breaks up with Chris for forcefully waking her up.

As fate has it, Chris waking up abruptly was beginning of more problems to arise on the ship and now Chris has to get out into the space and fix it. Love is lost, what more can he loose, he gets out and fixes it but drifts into space. JLaw could have let him go, Brad Pitt was sleeping in one of the pods, looks like she was smitten by Chris and risks her life to bring him back. You think she will fail in the mission, hello so predictable, then they live happily ever after. No really they do and leave a legacy behind for the hibernators to see a rain-forest created in the space ship after 90 years.

I like JLaw, her movies are best but if I have to watch her I would watch Hunger Games again.

hadagali

Up in air

Author: hadagali