Heartbroken once again, Saina why did you lose?

Arthur Robert Ashe, a three-time Grand Slam winner, once said: "You are never really playing an opponent. You are playing yourself, your own highest standards, and when you reach your limits, that is real joy.”

Surely, Indian badminton star Saina Nehwal could not achieve that real joy today because she knows she never could really reach her limits or touch the high standards that she set for herself in the last two year.

"Failing to prepare is preparing to fail.” But for Saina, who has been training specifically for the World Championship for the last one and a half months, preparation was never a factor.

Infact, she was in the best shape to clinch the title this year considering the fact that she invested so much time to practice and achieve perfection in her strokes but then why did she falter once again at the quarters of the World Champion is a question that none but she can answer better.

Plagued by a lingering ligament injury for more than half of the year, Saina had done well to recover completely and get rid off that scrap bandage which she wore this year in most of the tournaments and regain her full fitness before the tournament.

There were concerns with her foot movement in the court but even for that arrangements were made as she was under the guidance of Tom Jones beside her mentor Pullela Gopichand but all these preparations meant nothing in the end as she succumbed to a straight-game defeat against world number three Xin Wang.

No loopholes in preparation, no dearth of motivation and there is no paucity of talent either, then why Saina, who is revered by one and all in the country couldn't achieve her dreams which she had seen many times since her kindergarden days. Was it this very pressure of a billion hearts that wants her to win every time she takes the court or it is the lack of believe?

For a shuttler, who has entertained the nation and the world in the last two years, beaten the chinese umpteen times and is considered one of the best in the world by not only her country men but also coaches and players across the world, it has to be a sad day. As a fan of the sport and as a fan of her game, I am disappointed.

Chiller Party is a story of courage, hope and friendship

     Bollywood has never been known to produce films for children. It was only after 'Tere Zameen par' that this genre of movies was taken seriously by the filmmakers and although even today there are very few movies being made for kids, films such as 'Stanley ka Dabba', Makdee, 'Blue Umbrella' and now 'Chiller party' gives a lot of hope to this genre of movies.
     Chiller Party is an honest film made with a lot of heart by directors Nitesh Tiwari and Vikas Bahl. The film, co-produced by Salman Khan Being Human Productions (SKBH) and UTV's Spotboy, is a story of courage, hope and friendship that transcends all borders.
     The film, mostly shot inside a colony in suburban Mumbai, is about a group of young boys living in the colony, their camaraderie and their friendship with a boy, who comes to the colony to work as a car washer, and there fight to keep his dog 'Bidhu' from being taken away by the dog catchers.
     The film doesn't have any big name and it doesn't need one. Though there are a number of character actors but the main USP of the film are the kids, who made this film worthy of more than just a watch.
     The film gathers steam right from the start as the different kids are introduced to the audience one by one and simply sails through as the kids goes about their job and leaves no stones unturned to save their friend Bidhu. They take the help of the media, conducts 'chaddi' rallies -- all without the help of their parents. There are moments were it becomes a tad slow but it keeps its feet on the ground althrough.
     It is a heart warming film which also passes on enough messages to the adults without sounding preachy. Overall a good watch!!!!

Primer is a intense, dialogue-based sci-fi movie

To make a Sci-fi movie with an intriguing plot is any day a very difficult task and to make it on a low budget could spell doom for the director's hopes. It is here that Primer steals the hearts of the audience because it is not only fresh and intriguing, but has been made at a shoe-string budget of USD 7,000.

    A 2004 American Sci-fi drama dealing with time travel, 'Primer' is a winner because of its meticulously and methodically constructed narration and editing which keeps the movie buffs glued to the screen till the last scene.

    The film starts with four young office-goers spending their extra hours inside a garage involved in a discussion on a scientific project which unexpectedly leads two of them to the discovery of a device that makes it possible to travel backwards in time by a day or two.

    'Primer' is dialogue-driven and is full of scientific jargons which are not explained. Nothing in the movie is explained and it takes a lot of attention to understand which actually is happening on screen.

    The narration is linear but the sharp twists and turns and the characters travelling back and forth makes it edge-of-the-seat but equally hard to follow. Primer is a movie which needs viewing more than once and it is quite impossible to completely decipher what is happening on screen.

    Like Christopher Nolan's Memento, in 'Primer' writer, director, producer, musician and actor Shane Carruth puts the audience in the state of mind that the characters are going through and that makes it all the more immpressive.

    However, it can also put one off, especially because we all are habituated to watching hi-fi Sci-fis with visual graphics but Primer have absolutely no stunning visually stimulating scenes which can leave you mesmerised.

    It is more of a thriller which deals with the emotional implications and how greed can take over and break down your relations after you come up with such an exciting discovery like time travel.

    It is not the greatest Sci-fi film ever but has a strong tight script and a story which is experimental to the core and demands load of patience given its intricacies.

Delhi Belly:An edge-of-the-seat comedy

At a time when Dabaang, Ready and Double Dhamal types of movies are trying to make people laugh with their slapstick and double meaning and often offending dialogues, Delhi belly comes has a breath of fresh air. It is a no-nonsense and on-your-face comedy which doesn't try to be a comic but tickles your funny bone by its sheer situation and characters and their predicaments and difficulties and its fast pace of narration.

Delhi Belly falls in the line of movies such as Sanket City, Phas Gaya Obama and love ke liye kuch bhi kharega, which have entertained people with the sheer power of their scripts and performance.

Delhi Belly doesn't have a great story but it's biggest strength is its script, dialogues and screenplay besides the performances. From the first scene to the last frame, the director never leaves the acccelarator even for a moment as the characters and their predicaments unfold in a breath-taking pace which leaves the audience enthralled.

In fact, by the time the credit starts rolling, you actually feel completely satisfied with Aamir Khan's I hate You (Like I love you) item number serving as a perfect dessert for the audience.

But having said that, it is not for the ones who likes to go out on an weekend with their families or for the moral policing couples. It is a perfect outing for a group of friends -- the 20 and early 30 somethings -- or for couples who are more friends than husbands and wives.

Reasons: Its language is crass, full of slangs, perhaps you can make a dictionary of slangs out of this movie. It is the language of the youths especially of Delhi, which almost every commoner hears day in and day out in the capital and though the language is raw still at no point it seems that the director tried to forcibly include those slangs in the movie. Also if toilet humour makes you abominable then stay away from it, because you have plenty of it here.

Also some of its scenes are too raw by Indian standards, because we think twice before including those in Bollywood perhaps fearing the moral police, although, it is a reality of the young and ever-changing India.

In fine, Delhi Belly is a laugh riot, a complete paisa vasool. It is a kind of film which gives a lot of hope to an industry which generally depend on homophobic and racists jokes to entertain people in the name of comedies. It gives a ray of hope to the dying genre of comedy in Bollywood.

Did MF Hussian deserve what he received?

M F Hussian is no more. A man who is considered to have catapulted India to the world art map, a man considered to be the Picasso of India, a man loved and loathed in equal measure is dead.
From being a movie billboard artist to becoming India's most sought after painter, MF has travelled a long journey and on the way have courted controversy as much as he was bestowed with accolades.

From being India's most influential artist to one of the most persecuted, MF covered a full circle during his lifetime and even after his death while on one hand there are people who mourn his death, there is another group who doesn't feel an iota of pain in the demise of the legend.

In a career that started even before India's independence, MF turned from a hero to a villain only in the later stages of his life. His works which brought laurels to the country and hoisted him as one of the treasures of India -- all faded and forgotten once he started depicting Hindu goddess and deities in nude.

He was hounded by the law, activists and moral police and eventually had to flee his country and take refugee in Qatar before breathing his last in exile in London.

I often wonder if MF deserved what he received from his own countrymen, if he really was a pervert not a painter, if he actually committed such a huge crime that he didn't even deserve a death in his place of birth,
if he really intend to hurt the sentiments of a particular religion with his paintings, if he really deserved to be a pariah.

Art as I see is an interpretative form of communication that thrives in interpretation. What I see in an art can never be similar to what someone else gauges in between those strokes of brushes. What I read amidst those blend of colours can be diametrically opposite to what others feel and sense.

I wonder if the fabric of religion is so thin that a painting can tarnish it, can tear it into pieces with just some strokes of brush. What good is of democracy if there is no freedom of expression, if there is to freedom to live the way one intends to.

But then when I see those paintings and think from a lay man's point of view or just stare at those nude images of the goddess without trying to look beyond them, I have to admit even the staunch secular and liberal in me, feels more than a bit awkward.

My mind questions why MF didn't paint any other religious goddess or deities in nudity, why he never tried to inculcate nudity in the Islamic themes which he explored, why all his painting always ended up portraying only a particular religion.

Perhaps, these questions will never be answered, perhaps I lack the understanding of seeing his painting in the right perspective or perhaps he actually was what people say a butcher in the grab of a painter.

Whatever it might be, all I can say is "Now that you are gone, May you get what you deserve in a world which is beyond us". Amen!!!

Shagird is an usual hotchpotch of the nexus between police, politician and gangsters where one feeds on the other, befriends and betrays at the blink of an eye and the line between good and bad, right and wrong and even the antagonist and protagonist keep blurring all the time. Although, the context, texture, language of the film has been used many times in films such as Ab Tak Chhappan, the USP of the film is once again Nana Pathekar and the sharp twists and turns in the plot give the movie a pace which is quite edge-of-the-seat.

It is a tale of two cops -- one experienced and the other a newbie -- and their manipulation of the system to outdo one another for different reasons. The story is scripted in such a way that after a point of time it becomes difficult to understand who is exploiting whom. Though police officers accepting bribes and working for politicians have been done to death in bollywood and hollywood alike, the film scores in the way it shows how the system is at times mutual and also the other way round. The first half ends on a interesting twist but the second half somehow fails to raise to the suspense created by the first half.

Nana as Hanumant Singh is the soul of the film but Mohit Alawat as Mohit is not quite up for the role. At no point of time, it seemed that the new cop will be able to outwit his senior pro and also the reason behind his turning rogue is quite weak. Anurag Kashyap is just okay while the rest of the crew chips in well.

All in all, Shagird is a fast-paced thriller which will keep the audience hooked but not awe-inspiring. So, it is definitely worth a watch but not a must-watch.

I imagine Paradise as a library of cinema

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“I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.” -- said Jorge Luis Borges once. He must have imagined it to be a book library but for someone like me, I have always imagined it to be a room full of racks loaded with cinema and music. I wonder if paradise will have walls, if it does then a high-definition LCD screen supported by a high-decibel sound system won't be a bad idea, of course needless to say about the couch.

But then I wonder, paradise must be a peaceful place where someone, perhaps some guards or doorkeeper would insist on maintaining silence,like my school teachers who would shout at the top of their voice: "Pin drop silence". Although in school, we never bothered to listen to the teachers, paradise perhaps would have stricter rules. so I might need a good piece of earphones, wireless would be better. If this really is what paradise looks like, I would have no qualms of leaving now for the sojourn.

But then again I wonder that people say one has to earn his or her right to be in paradise. It is something sort of an elite community, where getting membership is too tough and a lesser mortal like me, who
have never been a part of any elite group ever, sneaking in could be a bit difficult.

But then, paradise must be having different set of rules and criteria such as weighing one's sins and vices against one's virtues and good deeds. I mean, at least that's what my grand parents and then my parents used to say and even the 'Sadus' and 'sants' propagate that at the jagrans and TV channels. But looking at the current state of things in our world, I wonder if paradise too have made some concessions, I mean making the rules a little flexible. Also if the concept of 'jugaad' is acceptable in paradise.

Well, there is no limit of imagination, no sky can bind the flight of imagination and so many such things keep visiting my brain from time to time at the dead of the night. After grappling for sometime with this
thought of paradise, I give up and settle for a better idea: Lets make that paradise here on earth. And thus starts another day of slogging to keep that idea alive.

Bring on the Aussies!!!!!!

Sparks will fly and daggers would be out of the closet as rivals India and Australia lock horns once again in a World Cup match. Ghosts of the past that marked so many clashes between the two competitive teams will threaten to be out of the can once again.

 Of course, we don't have Andrew Symonds, one of the characters of the infamous Monkey-Gate episode but we still have Harbhajan Singh, the protagonist. Moreover, Ricky Ponting too is not in the right frame of mind these days.


To say the least, Punter is struggling to save his captaincy and reignite his form, not to mention his anger which boiled over a TV set. Thank God it was a TV not Steve Smith.


Well, I feel pity for the man, I mean how else can you keep your cool when the whole world is conspiring against you.

First you become the only Australian skipper to lose three Ashes urn and then Pakistan comes out of nothing and breaks your World Cup streak.


Media is also going gaga about formidable India and portraying a struggling picture of Australia. Ponting must be thinking 'Why don't these Indians go and watch the footage of the 2003 finals. It was me who spoilt there dream with my bat.'


And then rather philosophically must be wondering: How I wish I had the same bat with me today?


Well, Mr Ponting keep dreaming and we wish your bad patch continues at least for another match as we Indians make merry.


P.S. Everything is fare in love and war and we are surely not in love, at least not on the field

The first installment of 'Three colours -- Blue', directed by Polish director Krzysztof Kieślowski is a film about pain, loss and its eventual freedom from human emotions. It is a poignant tale of a wife and her struggle to come in terms with the loss of her composer husband and daughter, who dies in a car accident. 

The film unfolds in an almost poetic pace, which is slow but doesn't put off the audience. The elements of 'blue' keeps reoccurring in various ways from attires, paints of the wall, a chandelier, swimming pool and even chocolate. 

The subtle performance of the protagonist, the ethos and pathos of the character perhaps could not have been better performed than done by Juliette Binoche. The film is completely carried forward by her and is her emotional journey after the death of her family. Her attempt to give up everything and live a lonely life, which eventually ends up in releasing her from all emotional bindings is an enticing tale which is very real and close to heart for many. 

Add to this the background score and one gets a beautiful rendition of the colour blue through the montage of shots, some of which are simply exotic. Overall it is a wonderful watch.