Beta, Papa hai? (Is your dad there?)

Nahi Uncle, Papa to nahi hai (No, he isnt there)

Oh. okay.. ye hai hamare dost xxx (Oh, okay.. this is my friend xxx)

Aap inhe he vote kijiyega (Please vote for him)

Ye hamare load shedding ka problem fix karwa denge (He will fix all our load shedding problems)

xxx ka sign mat bhulna, upar se 5th (Don’t forget the symbol of xxx, it is 5th from top)

Yes Uncle, aap bole aur hum vote inko na kare, aisa ho sakta hai kya? 100% inko he vote karenge (Yes, uncle, how can we vote to someone else, 100% we will vote for him only)

Well, this is what I used to tell each and every person at my door. Instead of telling people what they have done, these guys are just promising about the stuff that they are going to do.

One more strange thing I noticed this time was, grouping. Each and every candidate is making a group with some or other community. It is basically to get support from that community. One comes with some guys from Jain community, other one with Maharashtrian community or someone with Kutchi / Gujarati community and the list goes on.

And some of them don’t even hesitate to call themselves young and dynamic. Ahem, even if they are 50 year old and with no sign of being dynamic on their face.

Okay so moral of the story is, vote for the one you want and the one who is less corrupt. Haha, I know everyone is corrupt but some of them do some social work too (along with corruption)

Note: The post is about BMC elections in Mumbai.

Another anti Hindu movie? Yes, but very well made. As expected, the movie was not screened in many theatres. And the ones which were screening had only few shows. Infact PVR in our area had just one show i.e. 8.45PM

Okay, back to the movie.

Cyrus (Naseeruddin Shah) lives in a chawl in Ahmadabad with his loving wife Shernaz (Sarika), son Parzan (Parzan Dastur) and daughter Dilshad (Pear Barsiwala). The life goes all smoothly until communal riots spur up in the city. They loose their son Parzan in riots. Cyrus and Shernaz try their best to find their lost son.

Based on the true story, the movie shows utter truth about the communal riots happened in year 2002. It shows how Hindus killed Muslims, what role local police played in riots. But the movie failed to show other side of the coin. I know, the movie is about a Parsi family but somehow I felt, they should have shown the reason behind these communal riots. I agree that whatever people from ruling party did was totally wrong but it is also important to show the people, what made them do it. There is no point in showing half truth.

Coming back to the movie, when there is Naseeruddin Shah in the movie, you cannot expect any flaws on the acting part. Hats off, great actor. I have always admired him. He gets into character so well, that you will feel as if things are happening near you. Same applies for other characters, Sarika, Pear Barsiwala and even Corin Nemec (who is shown as an American present in Ahmadabad to write thesis on Gandhi). Some of the scenes in the movie will surely make any person cry. Those scenes have no words but the expressions say it all.

Let me sum up the things now.

Story: True and shocking story. It will make you laugh and it will also increase your heartbeats.

Acting: A Grade.

So, overall I would give this movie 4 stars out of 5. It is a must watch for everyone.

Predicto Meter: On the business front, I do not see it doing good business but it will surely get critically acclaimed. Award winning performance by the actors.

According to some numerologist, this movie won’t do well because the movie title adds up to number 28 and it is not a good number. But my opinion would be different; the movie might not do good business because it had flaws. And even if the total number was 29, 30 or whatever, it wouldn’t have saved the movie.

Okay, here is my take on the movie.

The movie is about 6 different couples, oops, 5 different couples, Sohail Khan and Ishaa Koppikar were just for the sake of comedy.

Couple 1: Ashutosh (John Abraham) and Tehzeeb (Vidya Balan) are young married couple, madly in love with each other. But Tehzeeb looses her memory in a train accident.

Couple 2: Ramdayal (Sohail Khan) and Phoolwati (Ishaa Koppikar) are newly married couple where Ramdayal wants to spend more time with his wife but something goes wrong around him all the time and he does not get chance to be with his wife.

Couple 3: Shiven (Akshaye Khanna) and Gia (Ayesha Takia) are engaged and about to get married within few days. But Shiven is afraid to get married thinking he will loose all his freedom. He breaks the engagement with Gia.

Couple 4: Raju (Govinda) who is a taxi driver in Delhi and is waiting for his dream girl. Finally one day, he finds his dream girl in Stephanie (Shannon Esra) who visits Delhi in search of her boyfriend Rohit. Raju gets to know about it and helps her out to find her boyfriend. Now, we have a love triangle here. Raju loves Stephanie but she loves Rohit.

Couple 5: Kamini (Priyanka Chopra) who is an item girl in Bollywood but she dreams of starting in Karan Johar film. To break image of item girl, she decides to call a press conference and announces her relationship with Rahul (who is just a Virtual character with no existence). But while going to London, someone named Rahul (Salman Khan) (who calls himself as Rahooowl) lands up at the airport and pretends to be boyfriend of Kamini.

Couple 6: Vinay (Anil Kapoor) and Seema (Juhi Chawla) are happily married couple for last 15 years. But Vinay wants more excitement in his life and het gets infatuated towards a young girl, Anjali (Anjana Sukhani).

I really liked the concept of the movie but the director failed to fine tune the stories and ended up making a lengthy movie without any proper narration of the stories. Take example of the story of Ashutosh and Tehzeeb, in one scene they are showing Ashutosh crying for Tehzeeb and very next moment they move the story to some other character where the theme changes totally from serious to comedy. Some kind of balance between the stories would have really helped the movie.

I personally found, Ashutosh and Tehzeeb’s story really good, then comes Shiven and Gia’s story. Vinay and Seema’s story takes third place, infact their story was very much powerful and the director should have handled it well but he missed the track somewhere in between. Kamini and Rahul’s story did not click well, it was full of illogical things, it looked more like an artificial story. Same applies for Raju and Stephanie.

I think I should sum up the things now.

Story: 6 different stories with good concept but bad narration of the stories affected the movie most.

Music: Top class, very sweet music. I personally liked all the songs. Dil Kya Kare by Adnan Sami was the best.

Acting: John gets a “A+� for the acting. Vidya was good enough. Akshaye Khanna gave people a good laughing dose. Ayesha Takia looked sweetest ever and Juhi Chawla looked youngest ever. Anil Kapoor was perfect, Anjana looked stunning but she did not have much to do. Priyanka Chopra looked bit irritating in the first half but she covered it up in 2^nd half. Salman Khan could have explored in a better way but the director did not know how to take good out of him. Govinda and Shannon were good at their roles. Sohail Khan was funny, (Though he didn’t have much to do) I think this will be the first movie where I saw some expressions on his face… Ishaa Koppikar should lookout for better roles.

So overall I would give this movie 2.5 stars out of 5. I am really disappointed; I had lot of expectations from this movie. It could have really done well if it was fine tuned properly. It is worth watching once but you should also keep in mind that, the movie nearly touches 4 hour duration. (3.30 hours to be exact)

Predicto Meter: The movie should get a good start due to very impressive promotion but it might not do good business in long run.

Need to say more?

In the school we had learnt that “Gaay Hamari Maata Hai” (Cow should be treated as our mother). But few people does not seem to understand it.

I am talking about the cow slaughter happening in Maharashtra. No one seems to be bothered about stopping it. I am not going against it because it is Cow (Holy animal for Hindus), be it any animal, I will always be against it. I personally feel killing of innocent animals should be banned and there should be strict punishment if someone does it.

Now, by this I have no plans to start any debate on the veg and non-veg food. I am talking about Slaughter houses.

You can sign the petition online here

Thanks Shyam for letting me know about it.