Recently while browsing through UPenn's video library catalog I was surprised to see forty one Kannada movies in it. Last time about four months ago there were only a handful. So I decided to checkout and watch some movies. This post would be the review of one of the popular movies made some ten years ago called 'Amritavarshini'. I would post the reviews of other films in subsequent posts.

'Amritavarshini' I feel had been quite a popular (hit) film with its name floating around lot of tongues around that time. After watching it I realized that it was solely for the reasons like good music, presentation and a descent star cast and nothing else. I feel the primary flaw of the movie is its not so impressive storyline. Again story has the same essence of triangular love involving 'husband', 'wife' and the bad 'friend'. The plot is very very simple. In short 'Husband'-'wife' in love with each other, 'friend' develops liking for 'wife' and kills 'husband' hoping to marry the 'wife'. 'Wife' comes to know about it and denies herself to him and as a martyr kills herself in front of him. Though it doesnt look so novel and interesting, it definitely is a typical Indian film story. So whats wrong with story in the first place?. I think the flaw is in the portrayal of the 'friend Abhishek's character played by Ramesh Arvind. Apart from the fact that he killed his best friend, from start to finish he has been portrayed as a very good, innocent, peace loving poet hearted person. Its very hard to imagine how such a naive, quite personality suddenly turns so cruel so as to kill his best friend 'husband' Hemanth played by Sharath Babu for the sake of immoral likeness he develops towards the 'wife' Veena played by Suhasini. Its very hard to imagine the existence of such a personality in real world who is a savage murderer and at the same time a very shy and dumb headed person as enacted by Ramesh. Two extremely contrasting behaviors mixed up in one personality.



Ok, lets take the story for granted. Story is a story, good or bad. Lets try to see if it really makes any sense. There are two possibilities. Firstly its possible that because of some circumstantial reasons Abhishek developed love towards Veena and was so mad in love that he became very inhuman and killed his best friend. But nowhere in the story there are convincing circumstances or events which strongly suggest towards that. Also dumb-headed personality played by Ramesh never convinces anyone that he was ever madly in love with Veena in the first place. Abhishek develops likeness towards Veena just because shes an active personality , sings well which are good reasons in any love story, but not in this scenario involving a married woman that too who is the wife of his best friend. One more possible but weak and poorly convincing reason given is that Abhishek still deeply depressed by the loss of his beloved lover Shruthi, finds Shruthi in Veena and begins to like her and goes mad about her. For me it seems very unnatural for such a quite, naive and important a sad, depressed person to love his friend's wife and upon that grow into a insane killer. Its a reason, but realistically a very very poor reason.

Second possibility is that though Abhishek was a quite, poet hearted person, he could have had a dark side. Outside he was good but from within he was very very bad. People like that generally fit the role of a villain, not a good, soft spoken guy. The role played by Abishek should at least have given some indication of that villainous conduct. The Ramesh's portrayal of Abhishek gives a clear picture of a very very good guy who somehow by chance suddenly commits a dastardly act. It rather feels as if he is a perfectly good guy who is drawn by some sudden evil force or demon outside his control to commit such acts.



Second flaw is again in the story sequence near the end where Veena foolishly commits suicide as a symbol of revenge. The not so convincing reason given by her is she wants 'Abhishek' to suffer all his life from the pain of not having her. This makes no logic at all. She could have as well done that by simply not marrying him and alienating herself totally from him. The most practical thing to do as a brave single woman instead of simply dying would have been to handover Abhishek to police and see that the justice is served. By committing suicide she sets a very poor example and its a rather cowardly, senseless act. But who cares about practicality in films?
The guy who wrote the story is not a literary person, hes just a filmy guy who is after a populist climax sequence as desired by majority ordinary public.

Standout performance is by Suhasini as Veena, very bubbly and expressive. Though technically Ramesh as Abhishek acts well, he fails remarkably since his portrayal doenst do justice to his character in the context of the real world for the reasons I mentioned earlier. Personality of the character itself is uncertain, confusing and unrealistic. I have high regard for Ramesh as a talented actor, but probably he was simply not a good choice for this villain's role. Sharath Babu as Hemanth is good within his limited scope. Direction is good by Dinesh Baboo Other good aspects of the movie are the music by Deva and presentation of sequence flow of events in the movie.



Overall the film suffers from a very much illogical, poor story and poor, non-realistic portrayal of 'Abhishek's role. Its unfortunate that a film has to become popular because of secondary reasons like music and presentation rather than the practicality of the story. All the audience wants is a sensational sequence of events no matter how improbable or meaningless they are. Film makers exploit this public immaturity and feed the people with such non-nonsensical stories which are no good. Instead even in commercial cinema if filmmakers come out with novel, meaningful stories or adapt stories written by adept writers and do a descent job in presenting that through the film, masses will definitely like it and its good for everyone. There are lot of examples of that too. But who cares? majority of the people are just after money and populist ways to earn fame.

The charactar Poli Kitti in the famus TP Kailasam's kannada play 'Poli Kitti' argues with his ticher 'Sir, I am confused about English all the time. If 'c' 'u' t' is CUT, 'b' 'u' 't' is BUT why 'p' 'u' 't' is not PAT???. My case is also not less confused eether.

I am too pour in spellings. I just didnt care. I dont care now too. I am not a native speaker and just write stuff as I read.. try to keep things simple. Also when I am writing online wat helps always is thier spel cheker or as I more approprietely call it as 'Google speling mystake korrecter':P. I pity them they dont advertaise so much on thier such a spectaculor servise. They shout so much abt some of thier other products, but I think this is a gem for disabled people like me, because that makes my job of remembering spellings less painful.



Couple of funny insidents about my spelling heroics. When I was in school there a was a Scince teacher for me who seemed more like an English teacher. May be one day she steped into a wrong class room and unfortunately was no looking back. She was so particulor about spelings, she used to screw me up royaly in all tests and exams becose most times I used to write Photosinthesis for Photosynthesis or equilibriam for equilibrium or even sometime as horible as Phisics for Physics. Though all my Scintific facts were correct all the time my langvage used to let me down. She used to coment, 'Prathap everithing is rit, the only problum with you is your spelings'. But I never thout speling shoud be a problum in Scince, for the simple fact that Einstin didnt have a MA in English. I even tried argueing with her once going to the extent, 'Why worry about the spelings until meaning doesnt change?'.. and got blasted. Iam stil a good proponent of this argument even today. That was a bit of a battle, I would say I lost it.



One more interesting thing is I have been learning correct spellings of some of the words when Iam doing some technikal, academic or profesional work off late. Good example was I actualy learnt the spelling of FRIEND not by atleast watching the dumb F.R.I.E.N.D.S with dots in between TV serial, but during a C++ class during undergrad through 'Friend class/functions'. The funy thing was I teased my prof in my mind that he was writing the rong speling 'Friend'!!!. Later someone mocked me and told me what was right and what was rong.:P
While recently doing a project implimenting 'Link state routing protocol' I actually learnt the spelling of the word 'Neighbors'. (Link state routing protocol has abundant usage of words like neighboring nodes). I used to just write it as I would prounounce it like as simple as 'Neibor'. In the code all comments and variables had this spelling mystake. Later my perfectionist devoted project partner actually took time to clean things up by using the right spelling!. Well, for me 'Neighbor' with the complicated 'gh' was too complicated to remember:P. Thanks to the project work I now am a relatively good speler even if it means by a minute amount:P.
One more stupid thing is when I was working in industry and rite code and send code for peer review I used to get comments like
1) Weather on line no 34 file FileGenerator.java
2) ....
at first sight i would be confused.. 'wat comment is this??' wondering wat the comment would have been on?.. for me the word 'weather' and 'whether' just sound the same!!!



Some of the other facts worth noting about my speling heroics is firstly even after learning some of these spelings though some very opurchunistic insidents, I am still confused sometimes for eg I am serius even now I get confused wheather 'e' comes first or 'i' comes first in 'thier' and 'freind'. See as the LJ red mark shows 'e' and 'i' take different positions in two diff words. How wierd!! Secondly the vowels are the bigest killers for me. In different words how differently, complexly and convolutedly they get jumbled up. Sometimes when I get confused on which vowel to put, I just put all of them, whatever that sounds in the prounounciation :P just like the word i just wrote!!

After all of this I do owe my opologies to all English prefectionists and Science-cum-English school teachers if I sound like I am murdering the language. For me written English is far more complicated to wory more about,, I can speak good English.. so atleast it sounds good. Or may be its not good to be so neglegent of speling in respect of the languvage.. I may need to reform myself... Does anyone suggest a easy way to remember speling which kind of answers the unsolved mysteries like.. if 'c' 'u'' 't' is CUT, 'b' 'u' 't' is BUT why 'p' 'u' 't' is not 'PAT'???

between the title says theres a speling mistake in my name itself which got in due to a clerical mistake when I was in school!!

Credits : Images courtasy of http://www.cartoonstock.com

Disclaimer : All above is ment for fun only, pls dont interpret it seriously like murdering the languvage:)

Good news! : Java 1.6 latest release has added spel checker on code coments.. devine boon to me!!! hope they soon bring the spel mistake correctur servise too!

Congratulations to Indian Cricket Team on winning the twenty twenty cricket world cup!

Finals against an equally spirited Pakistan team, has to be voted as one the most exiting and thrilling cricket matches played in contemporary cricket.

I want a long break from online hibernation. Hope to keep things up.
Currently in Fast and Furious Philly, United States on a study mission. So far so good in here. Lots of first times and experiences. So more exhaustive updates should follow.

First Step in fulfilling the dream to become the Chief Minister of Karnataka:P. And there are more contenders in the queue!

It was sometime back. A sunday. It was great fun. Suddenly in the afternoon I decided to visit the famous Kamat Yatri Nivas Hotel's 4th floor restaurant 'Jowar Bhakri' , GandhiNagar to feast on the famous 'Plaintain Leaf Jowar Roti' or in Kannada 'Bale Ele Jolada Rotti Oota'  meals of North Karnataka and style.  Things are simple here, in the afternoon you get only 'Jowar Roti meals' either 80 Rs or special 100 Rs per meal. Me, my mom and my aunt had to wait for 20mins to get seats. The place just like MTR near lalbaugh is always fast buzzing with activity. As you enter the hotel you are transferred to an entirely new world. North Karnataka style Dhothi and Kurta and topi clad waiters almost running taking orders , serving hungry people is the scene always.



        Coming to the actual meals, here how it is served. Already clean and washed plaintain leafs are laid out. One by one items get served to you at different times by different people. Just when you think that waiters have forgotten your table and you are just about to open your mouth to shout 'Waiter.. next Item', somebody suddenly appears from nowhere and decorates your leaf with next subzi or sweet. Firstly along with two kinds of 'Kosumbaris' and 'subzis' a butter cube and methi leaves are served. Then comes the main course. Hot, very soft and delicious Jowar Rotis served with famous North Karnataka dish 'Badanekaayi Engai'. It is a dilicious spicy curry made with Brinjal or 'egg-palnt, the highlight of the whole meal. Rotis are so yummy and soft it feels like eating with no end. You can have unlimited rotis and there are waiters all around you all the time hoalding a plate full of hot rotis and checking if anyone needs rotis and serving them. There will always be a 'thatha' (old man), hoalding the 'Badanekaayi Engai' bowl carefullly scanning each customer's leafs to voluntrully check himself weather anyone needs the side dish. Once he finds a victim even with still some 'Engai' left on the leaf, he suddenly springs up from nowhere and asks 'Swalpa Badanekaayi Hakla?'.. 'Shall i serve little more Badanekaayi?! Thats too cool!.. I've never seen any waiter in a hotel, who enthusiastically and voluntrilly checks customer's plates and offers to serve more of a side dish! That too he doesnt pour any little amount of Badanekaayi even if u tell only little. He swings the 'sautu' atleast twice/thrice between your leaf and the bowl that has Engai. 



This is the story of the jowar rotis. While burying our stomachs on a downpour of rotis, you will not feel like having rice (the actual main course of any south indian lunch!). So after the highlight of the meal is over, rice is served with Sambar and ghee. I totally had 5 rotis and some rice and even that too was good. So after a warm and hearty meal with out stomach filled to no end we left the place around 3:30. Everytime I come out of YatriNivas I always think they should have had resting area of some sorts to catch up with unbearable sleep one gets after such a wholesome meal:P.

Feast more of Jowar Bhakri here!

Suddenly idea of going to the English play 'Anklet' or 'Shilaapadikaram' splashed in my mind. So i dropped my mom and aunt at a relative's place and went straight to Rangashankara @ JP Nagar. Play was at 7:30 sharp.

Anket or Shilappadikaram is a ancient Tamil story written by a famous writer, poet Ilango Adigal who lived almost 2000 yrs ago.  Its a saga of a brave and strongwilled protagonist woman who fights and avenges for justice. I knew about the legend from the copy of the old Amara Chitra Katha lying at my home which I have read countless times over long time.  'Shilapadikaram' is considered by many as a great Tamil epic, one that gives the strong message of fight for justice, justful revange, faithfulness and strong will.

It is a tragic but inspiring story of the couple Kannagi and Kovalan. Kannagi, a beautiful daughter of a wealthy mearchant is  married to son of another merchant Kovalan in the town of Kavirippattinam. Sometime after marrige Kovalan deserts Kannagi for a charming court dancer Madhavi and throws all his wealth for her. But he returns to the uncomplaining Kannagi devoid of all wealth after learning that Madhavi was faithless to him. Penniless, Kovalan along with Kannagi migarates to the town of Madurai in Pandayn Kingdom in saerch of a better livelyhood. There they stay at a kind Brahmin's house. The only welath they pocess are a pair of anklets given to Kannagi by her parents at the time of her marriage. Kovalan goes to city to sell one of the ankets at Royal Jeweller's place. In the meantime a similar precious anklet belonging to Pandyan queen would have been stolen by the King's Royal Jeweller himself. The cunning jeweller after seeing that Kannagi's anklet exactly matches the stolen one of the queen, hatches a evil plan and reports to King that Kovalan was the thief. Pandyan King beleiving in Jeweller's fraud words without doing much investigation decides the innocent Kovalan as thief and executes him.



Once Kannagi learns of the incident, shes heart broken. But suddenly she makes her mind hard as a rock and with immense  avengeful rage marches towards the King's palace to demand justice. With her eyes buring red with justful anger asks for a hearing with the King calling him a murderer.  King obliges and asks her what proof she has to say her husband is innocent. Then Kannagi gives the proof in style by showing the other anklet that had dimonds inside it where was queen 's anklet would have pearls. King realizes his folly of executing a innocent and commits suicide to honour justice. Queen too follows him. But Kannagi's anger is still not soothened, she curses the city of Madurai to be burnt. The city blazes in flames and only the good, poor, sick and old people survive. Kannagi is reunited with Kovalan at Heaven.
As a symbol of her glory Kannagi statue stands tall even today at St Marina Beach in Chennai.

Coming to the actual play at Rangashankara, it was directed and performed by a theatre troupe named 'Bangalore Little Theatre ' which promotes mainly Enghlish Theatre in Bangalore. It was two hours of gripping journey through a great Tamil epic.  It was very well directed, enacted by a group of young and talented actors and script was the highlight of the play. But some conversations like when Kovalan returns to Kannagi leaving the court dancer and conversation between Kannagi and the King seemed very very strechy. Everytime when the King screams 'Show the Proof Woman!!'  everyone felt the play had reached the climax where Kannagi tears open her another anklet, Kannagi starts off with one more Philosophical dialogue and the saga continues . One more visible shortcoming of the play was that there was no adress of contemporaryness relevence in the play. Kannagi we saw was a woman who lived 2000 years ago. Some of her actions like meekly accepting an unfaithful husband who had caused her so much suffering look rather submissive and outdated. Instead some aspects in her principles and behaviour should have had the qualities  of a  brave, confident woman of 21st century. But anyway the play is considered as an epic and continues to be adressed with honour.



 Though the role of the Protagonist Kannagi was very well done by the actor, to corrolate and be consistent with the immense justful anger and hardwill for revange that one expects in Kannagi after reading the story, the signs marking those traits were not there in its entirity. Little more anger filled expression would have been good and just. Other actors did a good job, but not perfect though. Sometimes actions looked a lilttle exaggerative and facial expressions not perfectly relevant to the context. But overall it was good show and perfect way to end a weekend evening.                             

In my invented craze to watch Hindi movies off late that come up with a different outlook and some inborn novelty in story and presentation much different to the usual mundane masala and SRK type love tales of Bollywood which i have never watched, I got up with this refreshing Entertainer produced by Ramesh Sippy 'Taxi 9211' starring John Abraham and Nana Patekar directed by Mithun Luthria . Idiom 9211 is a slang type usage in Hindi to refer to somebody who runs away. The best thing about the movie is its novel story with a comic touch and director never diviates from the main theme. This way the movie would be rated above many such endauvers where film makers charged by criticisms from film critics (like me?) that Bollywood without coming out of its traditional Hero - Heroine - Villan and love , dance, item song and etc (old wine in new bottle kind of stuff) can not woo a larger mature audiance(like me?)(may be Western viewers) towards it, try desparately  to come up with some new story and presentation and though novelty exists to some extent, but everytime end up somewhere somehow finding it difficult to resist thier inborn urges find themselves forcibely drawn n tempted towarsds squeezing in a irrelevant love song screaming Diwana Dil Dil Le gaya Hoto pe Dil  (the same old words) or fighting or cabret dance etc.

The story is about the comic collision between two persons of contrasting extreme personalities. Raghav Shasthri played by Nana Patekar is a short tempered taxi driver who after an array of frequent job changes finally resorts to driving a taxi. But he lies to his gullible wife that he is an LIC Insurance agent. Jai Mittal played by John Abraham is a rich spoilt brat son of a dead buisnness tycoon who feels his father has cheated him by rewriting his will in complete favour of his old friend Arjun Bajaj at the time of his death. Accompanied by his greedy Girlfreind (Sameera Reddy)  whos interested only in his health  he sets out in court to proove that the second will is false and all his property should belong to him as per the first will.



The main scene starts with Jai Mittal going to court to show the first will which would be in his favour. On the way he needs to pick it up from a safe locker. He boards the taxi plated 9211 driven by Raghav Shastri. Jai demands that Raghav drive very fast and they end up meeting in a accident. There starts the collision course between the two dudes. While Jai looses the safe locker keys in the confusion (which are picked up by shastri), shastri lands up in jail. Jai is desperate to get the locker keys from shastri cause the time is running out for him in court. Shastri anagered by his plight cunningly hides the keys from Jai eyes in Jail. Then Shasthri escapes from police.  Jai goes to his house telling Shasthri's wife about the incident. After knowing the truth that her hubby was lying to her about taxi, Shastri's wife angrilly decides to move out to her mother's.  Then mayham breaks loose between the two. They destroy each other, leaving one another hopeless and defeated. At the end as a sudden twist of events, both realize thier folly and help each other which brings back everybody's smile.
 
So one has to say the story is very well wooven and prooves to be both reality and entertainment worthy. Both Nana Patekar and John Abraham perfectly fit to thier roles and have done a commendable job. Also subtle humours like making Sanjay Dutt narrate the story in his typical mubaiyya style accent and Shastri's son's silly drawings hung over in his cab and chunk old filmy style  'love at first sight' scene at the end etc add suitably to the comic health. Music and singing by Adnan Sami fits well to context. Overall a really cool refreshing entertainer. Though it seems like a simple entertainment flick, I see it as real signs of Indian Cinema coming off age and gradually coming out of its inbuilt clutches of old style polulist mundane masala entertainment and love stories's influence, so that it can draw attention of wider audiance across the globe. I rate it on par with similar entertainment flicks in Hollywood.
But the best thing i liked about the movie was that the heroine Sameera Reddy had a very less significant role in the movie and most importantly she was not 'made up' to look good:P. These are good signs that direction is getting entirely focussed on the story rather than ir-relavantly putting some stuff to glorify one induvidual's stature or popularity. It is a unwritten cluase in Indian Cinema that no matter how out of context and remote it might seem in terms of story, there has to be scene where heroine smiles showing all her teeths and its closeups, she has to dance with Hero or sing with her arms wide staring at the sky!!!        

In KSRTC website, the URL itself of the link to e-ticket where u can book tickets online is http://ksrtc.in/ServerBusy.htm.



Its like putting a permanant board in front of your house 'Under construction'     LOL!!!!!!!!!

Me and indianerd suddenly on one sunday afternoon decided to bike to Bannerghatta. The place is no more than a park.The safari they take sucks and here and there you spot one or two lean and weak looking tigers and lions. But  Arun liked it a lot. For he  has the tendancy to like something in even the most borest trips!:P. You can call it tendancy or ability to like something in nothing.  But the only thing that brightened my spirits for a while was this!



( (Now You open the DOOR)  )

On March 11th in front of a jam-packed auditorium Rajit Kapoor performed a monoact at Rangashankara in the play 'Flowers' written by Girish Karnad and directed by Roysten Abel and produced by Arundhati Nag's Rangashankara itself. So the production was a sort of joining of hands of some of the highly acclaimed names in the theatre, coming from different parts of the country to give one memorable performance. 'Flowers' is one of the highly acclaimed plays out of Girish Karnad's pen off late, one that poses hard questions to conservative  Indian society and in it gives a deep, profound contemporaraly significant message to a wide audience.


 
Story revolves around the life of the protagonist priest and his love for his God and equal fondness for his mistress Chadravathi a courtesan. He is a master in decorating shiva Linga with flowers for pooja. Everyday he decorates the linga and performs pooja   when the King arrives.After the God's pooja is over he goes to his second love Chandrvathi's house and decorates her in exactly the same way and precision he decorates the God. In other words, he treats her like a Goddess. People call his actions uncalled for and criticize him for loosing his sanctity.  On one night when the arrival of the King is delayed beyond midnight, he without performing pooja to the God walks to Chadravathi's house during night and offers her his daily dose of decoration from the flowers that were meant to be for the real God .




After he returns to temple that night, King delayed by an urgent commitment arrives late at midnight. The priest has to now perform pooja on the main god. But he now has to use the same touched and corrupted flowers to decorate the God. At that time his two Gods, the real God and courtesan both collide and appear as being one. King is left with awe and lots of questions unanswered. Seeing long hair projecting out of the Linga, the King fumbled asks the priest with wonder and also fury 'Does God have Long hair'. Priest with firm tone answers 'If you believe that God has long hair, he will have'. Hence this way the play throws a tricky question to audience on what God is?

To say the least Rajit Kapoor was simply superb in his performance. Mind you he is a national award winner for his role in the film 'Making of the Mahatma' by Shyam Benegal. Basically Rajit just sat and occasionally stood up and just went on narrating his story as a priest for 80 minutes. But he did the role very professionally and held the audience's attention without a moment of difference throughout those 80 mins thanks to his superb dialog delivery, eye movements and expressions. As director Roysten Abel would have it to physicalize the metaphor of his mindset between his two beloved Gods, the protagonist Rajit was made to stand on a suspended platform with a little water pond below.

           Though a very serious and silent play, it was truly a great experience to watch one of the highly acclaimed, extremely talented actors of India, my favorite, the famous Bhymokesh Bakshi himself live on stage!   
Useful link throwing light on Rajit Kapoor's work in theatre - http://www.hinduonnet.com/mp/2004/12/28/stories/2004122800690100.htm ;