"Rape ho gaya aaj to!!"

"Rape ho gaya aaj to!!"

"Kya ho gaya bhai? Kyun subah subah dimaag ki dahi kar raha hai?"

"Abe! Suna nahi tune? Tere us hero celebrity writer ka balatkaar kar diya junta ne aaj"!

"Kiski baat kar raha hai mote?"

"Abe wohi jo aaj tak yehi samajhta hai ki usne apni life mein bas teen-heech galtiyaan ki hain".

"Oh, haan suna maine. Ek number ka gadha hai woh! Kab kahan kya bolna hai chamakta nahi hai usko. Ek na ek din to uska rape hona hi tha. Aaj khudne apni ***** li".

With heavy heart n moist eyes i just overhear this coffee table conversation of two of my male colleagues while pushing my poha plate into the microwave. They are obviously completely oblivious of my presence around. Or actually, they might not be!! Working with an equal opportunity employer in an intense n camphor-like volatile environment does make you immune n indifferent to such jocular n casual chit-chats.

On any other day i might have wryly smiled on this. If i were spirited i might have actually cracked a joke on it myself. Worst, i might just have shrugged it off thinking about my own deliverables in next one hour.

But not today!! Even as the microwave's heating plate has started its noisy n rhythmic rotation for next sixty seconds or so i feel like having to relive those brutal n soul crushing moments over n over again which in all earnestness i don't even dream of cursing upon my sworn enemy!!

Like another aspiring young professional i was full of jest while still in my internship with my potential employer & had indeed took it on to me as a challenging assignment which not many were really excited about. I wanted to prove that i am up for it no matter how it looks like to any one else.

That evening, very enthusiastically i was all set on my mission when my remaining life was forcibly pushed into a living hell by those half a dozen rotten eggs. Their otherwise normal looking outer shells didn't even remotely gave me any inkling of how disgustingly smelly & pukish their inner yolks would turn out to be!! I just can't get my thoughts away from those few minutes of absolutely incomparable torture no matter how hard i try to feel strong about my will power n my resilience. It certainly helps that all of my family members have stood like rocks besides me all this while. I don't see any of those dreaded mausis n bhuajis who i thought would be only deriving pleasures of their lives by mockingly deriding me.

I gather all my courage to start afresh & today was supposed to be my first day at my workplace after-life! While coming to the office i couldn't believe my eyes when i read in today's newspapers that those very same outfits which otherwise are perpetually at diagnolly opposing views whenever in public domain have tightly maintained a studied silence over a 72 year old rapist who in all likelihood has killed the very self of a poor girl who might indeed be younger than his great grand daughter!! Such a bunch of eunchs! BJP & Congress, you don't lose grip on even the sand flowing out of someone's fists but today you are showing what dog poop you are made of.

Why do people around me have to reignite memories of those not-so-cherishable moments which i just wish could be washed away by a Gajini? Why can't they just discard one word in their vocabulary for good? Why can't people find themselves accomplished in coming up with some other really witty or sarcastic metaphor? Why should they always be programned to feel that this government has 'RAPED' our economy? Is it too much of an ask?

"Madam ji, poha garam ho gaya hai." I see Param (our pantry boy) sensitizing me.

(C) Rits Original

Rendezvous @ Madras Cafe

Ah! At the cost of sounding sexist i can't help but express my astonishment with an awe on a truly unbelievable metamorphosis! Not many monsoons ago half of the planet was drooling over a yellow trunk & over the hunk who was donning it with such elan n fervour while emerging from Miami waters that it became sort of a trendsetter. The other half had to do a self introspection to actually figure out whether it was wrongly confined in males' bodies! Until then it was unheard of to even imagine a male doing what was considered to be an exclusive & undisputed territory as the only lasting image etched in the cinegoers minds was still that of an Ursula Andrews (or more recently that of a Halle Berry). Such was the gay abandon with which our very own John did it!

To see the same Johny boy getting into the shoes of an intelligence key man & essaying an all-intense role onscreen was something i self-confessly could never expect! It's a remarkable performance from him & as the producer of this political thriller he has not certainly played a blind by backing himself. But for the promising director who gave us the immensely entertaining sit-com on a sensitive issue in Vicky Donor it must definitely have been a huge leap of faith he decided to take while agreeing to sign this engrossing saga. Shoojit Sircar is on top of his craft all through the 130 minute duration of this potboiler set to depict the cross border socio-political unease in the two decades of eighties & nineties. I can sympathize with a relatively new generation which can't be expected to have even an inkling of what all transpired between India & Sri Lanka during those years ultimately leading to the watershed event in the history of Indian politics on that fateful scorching summer night of May 1991. It helped (in relating to the plot) that still as an adolescent yours truly was trying to figure out (with all confusion of course) as to what all was going around from the headlines of Rajasthan Patrika.

Beyond the main protagonist in John & the affable story teller Shoojit also there are so many stars this (ostensibly) authentic narrative rides on. Story, screenplay, editing, cinematography, soundtrack (and probably in all other technical departments as well) you just don't find a single flaw. Such is the vice-like grip of the pace at which the film rolls that you don't feel like affording a blink! There need not be a song & dance sequence to puncture the spirit of such a thriller and thankfully, better sense has prevailed. Wow! And the icing on the cake is characterization. The entire ensemble has been so carefully selected that you just get into an awe. For the ones who had seen those old The Hindu pics the spooky resemblance of the female suicide bomber with the real life one gives serious goose bumps. And btw, who would have expected Nargis Fakhri to do a cameo of a foreign magazine journalist with such near perfection! Siddhartha Basu adds chutzpah as the head of the country's intelligence agency.

While the jury is still out on the authenticity of the story as it has been told and i didn't see any disclaimer of whether it's a fictional work and/or is an inspired one one thing is for sure. This story had to find its rightful place on the silver screen. It is no surprise that it took over twenty years for someone to have both courage (for its unchallengeable political sensitivity, internal as well as external) to candidly execute the project as well as conviction about its commercial viability. A case in point is a ban imposed in Tamilnadu on its screening! For all his earnest emotions about his baby John would be puerile to even think of anything other than that beforehand. To hear him express his childlike crazy anguish over it was heartening yet bizarre. He must have known about it & it certainly doesn't take anything away from this masterpiece which on the REndex (RG's Entertainment Index) gets a perfect ten.

(C) Rits original

Chennai Express (Passenger)

It's seventy nine minutes past midnight & after rushing through a 10 PM show here i am sitting in a state of quasi dejection (now don't ask me to elaborate on it for i won't ever be able to help you with this spur of the moment coinage) contemplating what to pen!

Alright it's coming out of THE Rohit Shetty womb who by now has itched his name in the annals of Indian cinema for his ability to methodically produce babies born with a fixed deposit of thousand million. Will this one be able to stand up to its illustrous siblings? Well well well...it JUST might be able to achieve the same & the reasons for being so optimistic ain't akin to illustrating the taste of Potassium Cyanide.

The event of an RS' creation having an iota of a story would invite higher bids than expecting a certain N. Srinivasan to give up his lust for power. So, you don't have any expectation before hand & whatever droplets of pleasant surprises come along the journey you don't mind soaking yourself in with a (forced, more often than not) smile on your face.

RS is a person who religiously believes in keeping one's avowed tenets intact. He has been able to mostly achieve this unsustainable feat by having his core team glued in to his assembly line until now with his main protagonist being Ajay Devgn who would be ably catalyzed by a more than a handful support cast ecosystem. But then two events had to coincide with each other to sow seeds of this work of absolute, mindless fiction. AD sure had a reasonable fallout of sorts with RS and SRK had a popcorn burst in his head inducing him to fill in the void.

I have never been one of the biggest fans of a hamming & stammering SRK but at the same time can't help appreciate his attitude towards his family & life in genral. This guy for sure knows his crowd pulling potential story/critics be damned. But then didn't you feel sorry when Sachin would get repeatedly out in an almost identical "day light margin between bat n pad" fashion. The entire nation cries in unison while silently asking in closed quarters whether the time has come! I fear the same notion now applies to SRK as well who simply seems like is hell bent on proving a point about his star power. But does he manage to succeed?

Not surprisingly the movie has all the staple ingredients of a typical Rohit Shetty recipe & fluoroscent coloured vehicles zipping past like an injured cobra with cylinders / cars flying & inflammed all around is a sight you couldn't have missed in any of his earlier projects even if you entered after the intermission. But to make a Hindi movie with more than reasonable Tamil dialogues speaks volumes about the filmmaker's self confidence.

Deepika as the daughter of a hinterland South Indian don keeps trying to improvise her dialogues but doesn't quite get it. The villain appears to be a good prospect for future roles. But the real winner is OST (Originail Sound Track). Wish there was more of these hummable songs which are the only worthwhile area of note in the movie generally.

One true fan doesn't really get too excited while watching their hero of two & half decades turning into a victim of his own. We are not coded to digest Sachin's failures. Similarly, we can't afford to see fall of the mighty franchise "SRK". We have adored them so much that anything suggesting their downhill trajectory finds a boot. Let both of these professionals fight their own demons to emerge victorious for one last hurrah. Hip hip hurray!

Unsolicitedly yours
(C) Rits original

Organ Donation Day

An appeal to all my friends, relatives n acquaintances

Dear All,

They say that human soul doesn't ever die even after the body it briefly chooses to wear disintegrates into ashes. The body which one so painstakingly adores as a narcissist all through its ageing eventually gets rendered a residual value for just the carbon dating purposes & that when one chooses not to get ones remains submerged in the Holy Ganges.

I am not sure about the soul theory but modern science has come of age & has ensured that one can exercise at least some control over his/her vital organs in a bid to make them "immortals". Not for nothing a Hollywood flick bearing the same title finds a connection with audience transcending geographical borders. Isn't it your wish too (even if a covert one) that you are able to embrace it?

So, what's stopping you from making your own wish come true? Just liberate your mind from any corruption for next few moments & donate your organs (it's an oxymoron given the context for you are not actually donating in the true sense of words to serve your own after-life vested interests).

Today is Organ Donation Day. Not long ago you celebrated the friendship day. Now, make good of today & just do it. I have pledged all of my organs viz. heart, kidneys, liver, lungs, corneas & pancreas. Trust me, after doing it i am feeling quite light & would indulge in some mouth watering delicacies in the evening to gain some weight :-)

Log on to ileadindia.com or facebook.com/ILeadIndia2013 to sign up.

Issued in public interest by
Yours truly (who else) ;-)
Ritesh Garg