Swades - My kinda' review

This movie indeed was a unique experience - not really because the director did his job well, but because of the circumstances that make watching this movie special.

Employees of Oracle have come out with a new club, called the "movie" club. Their job, looking out for hot movies, liasing with the theatre owners to get bulk tickets, selling them to Oracle employees at a premium rate and using the surplus money for charity.

It happened that now this club has caught up with a theatre "Sensation Insomnia" - Boy! what a name! - for showing us Swades. The actual price of the ticket was Rs.45 and we paid Rs.110 each for it. They sold out all the tickets and collected Rs.15000 for charity.

It was announced that the movie would start at 12:30pm. But the morning paper says that the movie is at 12:00pm, which confused me. Amid the confusion, I reached the theatre at 12:10pm with great expections and heard that the movie was just starting. I frantically ran into the theatre and could see nothing but the screen. People who know me also know that my eyes take quite a bit of time to open up their aperture to allow more light. How nice would it have been if we had varied ISO settings for our cornea, the way the latest digital cameras have!

OK. I just sat there and started watching the movie. I don't really want to spend time giving the details of the story or making critical remarks about the movie. The websites will be full of such information very soon.

My collegues came in on their own time, their instinct saying that if the movie is at 12:30pm, it would actually start at 12:45pm and in the mean-time, the theatre guys will show some advertisements or documentaries for the bakras that chose to come in early. They were disappointed to hear that they had lost half-an-hour of movie.

This 3 hour 20 minute movie went on at a leisurely pace with interesting background music, photography and an interesting way the story was told. Sharukh was as always, at his best, and the heroine, don't ask me her name, was as good as Gauri in Lagaan. Neat and good-looking.

The movie had an anti-climax, probably just for us. They cut 1/2 rolls of the film and dropped on the credits so abruptly that we were sitting in our chairs with eyes popping out and jaws sagging. The theatre guy was apparently bad at time management. But to get enrolled in a "time management" course, he should be working as a software engineer. And if he were a software engineer, he would be one of the spectators who had popped out eyes and sagging jaws.

Disappointed again at the anti-climax, we came out of the movie cheering each other up. Here are a list of conclusions that really bother me.

1. We paid around 230% the actual price of the ticket
2. We missed the start
3. We missed a reel or two which apparently consisted of one of my favourite songs "Aahista Aahista"
4. We missed the ending

After all this, a point to be noted is that I say that the movie is fairly good. Extrapolating the perception to the point where everything goes well, I think we end up saying that it is a pretty good movie.

I wouldn't advise you to watch it simply because it is not my business, unless you ask.

Eat Street

Had a chance to go to this beautiful place for a birthday party last Friday, with a dozen of my revelling friends cum collegues. You should understand that this place was "special" now that you see it on my blog.

This place sits lazily on the banks of Hussain Sagar, almost opposite to Tank Bund. From the outside, it has a huge wall like a jail's and an entrance arch, which was also like a jail's entrance, expect for the neon lights that spelled out the name of the taurant. I wondered why a restaurant is supposed to be so big, and why it was called a street! OK. Shelled out 3 bucks and parked my Activa, and slipping my bare hands into my jacket's pockets (the evening was a bit on the colder side), stalked into the entrace carefully, glancing at a couple of good looking girls.

I got in, and after a couple of scans of the surroundings, my optical person recognizer spotted my collegues, who had landed there earlier in a car. Bang them, they would not have felt any of the cold sitting in the cozy car. Well, now it was time to look around to see what the place looked like and woallah! How the hell should I describe it... it was like a queue of branded food-stores - coffee day, pizza hut, ohris, baker's inn, subway etc. etc... all lined up, inviting you.

After we got a big table set up for us, we went in and got lots of stuff to eat from all these places. No one really had anything normal... like rotis or curries or biryanis, everyone was gorging on junk. So did I. Had lots of junk... rolls, chat, jilebis, mirchi bajjis, pizzas, chole bature etc.

Did I tell you that this was on the banks of the hussain sagar? At around 11pm, we were still hanging around, and then, God gifted us an excellent moon-rise. Over the lake, and just over a line of lights, there stood, as majestic as a white elephant, a huge crescent. It was not white, it was actually brown. How I missed my camera! Well, if only people had told me about the party a day before!

With the moon-rise, people started revelling and going out of gear. We slowly moved out of Eat Street, were back on the street, took my bike out and drove through the deserted roads of Hyderabad. Well, that's another experience to write about, and is clearly out of scope of this topic.