After a lot of days from its release I finally managed to watch the much awaited Yashraj films' product re-re-re(don't remember how many)launching the home grown talent Uday also playing a new role of a script writer proving his extreme talent in various aspects of film making. Then there was another home grown talent directing the film, making it a complete family film. Trailers projected it as a beauty and the geek love story, Uday Chopra obviously playing the geek and beauty naturally played by Priyanka Chopra.
The movie opens with a college setting with Abhay (Uday) telling us that he is infatuated towards Alisha (Priyanka), who doesn't even know Abhay exists. No time is wasted here because just after a song, we are shown Abhay saving a drunk Alisha from drowning and then Alisha taken away by her father. Many years after, Abhay meets Sidhu (Dino) an investor interested in Abhay's brilliant idea of an operating system UNITY. Well actually the idea is actually crap but probably nobody dares tell that to him considering he is producer's son (may be the same thing happened with the script too). By the way Sidhu also thinks that idea is so brilliant that he steals the source code (referred as program files in the movie for the benefit of the ignorant audience, so thoughtful of the Uday and Jugal) of the OS on a pen drive.
Abhay realizes about this theft when an Indian software company, who he tries to sell his idea tells him that another company in Singapore is coming up with an OS on the same concept with an innovative name UNIFY. (we have to admire the information network of the Indian information technology company, because we are shown that Sid hadn't yet finalized the deal with the Singapore company). Abhay on his dad's advice and encouragement decides to go to Singapore to confront the thief and get what is rightfully his.
On reaching Singapore, he realizes that Alisha is also there working as a PR executive in the same company and he suddenly almost forgets about his mission and takes a new mission of winning his lost love. How he does it? Well, by playing a nanny to her 6-7 year old spoiled daughter, who is an expert in harassing her nanny. Movie starts getting sillier and sillier from this point onwards leading to one of the silliest climax ever seen. I know I am being a bit sadist here, but since I have been through it, I would want you to watch the movie to know the details.
None of the actors in the movie impressed with their acting talent. Only watchable thing in the movie was Priyanka, that too only in the few minutes of college scenes, not because of her acting though. Looks like Uday wrote the script when he was 7, or may be he has stolen it from some 7 year old. In the end, it looks like another disaster from Yashraj camp.
Friday, March 26, 2010
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Eklavya: Not the movie
Continuing from the thoughts in my previous post, another thing which is crippling the creativity among us is we only learn what we have been taught, without using our intelligence. Irony is, we are also taught that we have a wonderful analytical brain unmatched in any other living species. Don't know who to blame, the education system, which is fit to produce only clerks, the society, where we have always been taught it's not polite to question your elders or ourselves, who chose to believe whatever we have been taught and decided not to question.
I have asked this question to many people in recent past, what is the most important thing you learn from the Eklavya story that has been told to us plenty of times as a kid and probably as a grown up too. The usual answers I got are, respect your teacher, if you respect your teacher you can even learn from his statue etc. Some who probably don't understand the question answer, what Dronachaya did was not right and not ethical, Eklavya should not have given in to Drona's demands.
Well, I think the most important thing we learn from the Eklavya story is that, in order to achieve anything the most important thing is the intent to achieve it and and honest effort towards the same. If you have the right intent, you can achieve whatever you want despite not getting the desired environment and support. In order to do so you will be innovative and discover something of your own, which you probably would have never achieved had you given the desired environment and the intent was missing.
Think for once, had Dronacharya accepted Eklavya as a student, all Eklavya would have learned was what Arjun learned. But with the right intent and right effort, he learned some things that he could have never learned, had Dronacharya actually been his teacher (remember the barking dog incident, that took even Drona by surprise).
I am not saying that this is the best and the only interpretation. I am just requesting you all to start thinking beyond what you have been taught and start questioning.
PS: I believe that any literature that we read has been written from the point of view of the author and sometimes has been modified from the point of view of the editor, translator or compiler and but it is written assuming that whoever reads it is an intelligent person and will derive his meaning out of it using the gifted brain he has got.
I have asked this question to many people in recent past, what is the most important thing you learn from the Eklavya story that has been told to us plenty of times as a kid and probably as a grown up too. The usual answers I got are, respect your teacher, if you respect your teacher you can even learn from his statue etc. Some who probably don't understand the question answer, what Dronachaya did was not right and not ethical, Eklavya should not have given in to Drona's demands.
Well, I think the most important thing we learn from the Eklavya story is that, in order to achieve anything the most important thing is the intent to achieve it and and honest effort towards the same. If you have the right intent, you can achieve whatever you want despite not getting the desired environment and support. In order to do so you will be innovative and discover something of your own, which you probably would have never achieved had you given the desired environment and the intent was missing.
Think for once, had Dronacharya accepted Eklavya as a student, all Eklavya would have learned was what Arjun learned. But with the right intent and right effort, he learned some things that he could have never learned, had Dronacharya actually been his teacher (remember the barking dog incident, that took even Drona by surprise).
I am not saying that this is the best and the only interpretation. I am just requesting you all to start thinking beyond what you have been taught and start questioning.
PS: I believe that any literature that we read has been written from the point of view of the author and sometimes has been modified from the point of view of the editor, translator or compiler and but it is written assuming that whoever reads it is an intelligent person and will derive his meaning out of it using the gifted brain he has got.
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Blind Faith
I am not sure about the rest of the world but we all know that a typical Indian blindly follows whatever he/she is asked to follow, without asking any questions. Some people reading this might not agree with me. For those people here is a recent incident from my work life.
We recently shifted to new work place and till the new automated attendance system was in place we were asked to mark our attendance in a register. The register was not kept at the entrance, it was kept in the far corner of the office where many people would not go all day if it was not only to mark the attendance. Because of this many people missed to mark their attendance in the register. Since the office was not very strict about the attendance, nobody bothered and the register was kept at that far corner for couple of months.
Later the management became very sensitive about the attendance and people started cribbing with in groups about the place where the register was kept, but nobody raised a concern. I took the initiative and placed the register at the entrance so that anyone coming to office can notice the register and mark his/her attendance. But to my surprise I noticed that next day the register was again moved to it's original place.
I decided to reason with the person who was made responsible for attendance register, and was really surprised with the reason given by that person. Before going to details of the conversation, let me tell you two things. The minimum qualification of people working in my office is graduate and since it's an analyst profile I would assume they are supposedly people with good logical reasoning ability. So following was the reason given by a highly educated person with supposedly good analytical skill.
The person in question, told me two things. One, why the register was kept at the place where it was kept and two, why it cannot be moved at the entrance. The reason for keeping the register at the far corner of the office was that the unit head used to sit there and he wanted to monitor when people are coming in. I thought that is justified, but since the unit head has moved to the cubicle close to the entrance by that logic the register should also be moved. To this the person gave me a reason which I did not understand then, he said, the register cannot be moved because now people are used to it.
Few days later I was talking to some friends about the blind faiths in India and could relate that to the above incident. What is a blind faith? We start doing something because of a reason, but keep on doing it even if the reason doesn't exist any longer. Because we are not the questioning type. The above incident is a very good example of how a blind faith is born is a period of 70 days and here we are talking about 100s and 1000s years of history and tradition.
So, people start questioning what you are doing without even knowing and understanding the reason behind that act. May be the reason doesn't exist any longer.
We recently shifted to new work place and till the new automated attendance system was in place we were asked to mark our attendance in a register. The register was not kept at the entrance, it was kept in the far corner of the office where many people would not go all day if it was not only to mark the attendance. Because of this many people missed to mark their attendance in the register. Since the office was not very strict about the attendance, nobody bothered and the register was kept at that far corner for couple of months.
Later the management became very sensitive about the attendance and people started cribbing with in groups about the place where the register was kept, but nobody raised a concern. I took the initiative and placed the register at the entrance so that anyone coming to office can notice the register and mark his/her attendance. But to my surprise I noticed that next day the register was again moved to it's original place.
I decided to reason with the person who was made responsible for attendance register, and was really surprised with the reason given by that person. Before going to details of the conversation, let me tell you two things. The minimum qualification of people working in my office is graduate and since it's an analyst profile I would assume they are supposedly people with good logical reasoning ability. So following was the reason given by a highly educated person with supposedly good analytical skill.
The person in question, told me two things. One, why the register was kept at the place where it was kept and two, why it cannot be moved at the entrance. The reason for keeping the register at the far corner of the office was that the unit head used to sit there and he wanted to monitor when people are coming in. I thought that is justified, but since the unit head has moved to the cubicle close to the entrance by that logic the register should also be moved. To this the person gave me a reason which I did not understand then, he said, the register cannot be moved because now people are used to it.
Few days later I was talking to some friends about the blind faiths in India and could relate that to the above incident. What is a blind faith? We start doing something because of a reason, but keep on doing it even if the reason doesn't exist any longer. Because we are not the questioning type. The above incident is a very good example of how a blind faith is born is a period of 70 days and here we are talking about 100s and 1000s years of history and tradition.
So, people start questioning what you are doing without even knowing and understanding the reason behind that act. May be the reason doesn't exist any longer.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)