Seems like the end is near ...

Gautam Motwani signing off. Seems like my end is near if things continue going this way. This is the third consecutive night when I have not been able to sleep at all ... just coughing and coughing .. not even able to breathe ...

Music Review - Yuvvraaj

This is the first time I am writing a music review for a film. Obviously, the film has to be special. It is indeed very special. If I were to look back and think of the director whose film's music has left a mark on me the maximum number of times it would have to be the showman - Subhash Ghai. I still love the agnst and anger is "Nahin hona tha .." (Pardes, 1997). I am still transported to another world by "Nahin Saamne ..." (Taal, 1999). I am still wondering how can anyone compose a beautiful melody "Yaadein .. Yaad aati hain" (Yaadein, 2002). Even now the song "Hum hain is pal yahaan ..." (Kisna, 2005) leaves me asking for more. The movies may or may not have worked ... but the point is every movie of Ghai has a music that is special .... and special in a unique way .. be it Taal or Yaadein ... Pardes or Saudagar ... Kisna or Ram Lakhan. So here we go with his latest offering ... Yuvvraaj!

1. Main Hoon Yuvvraaj ... an introduction by Salman Khan .. about Deven Yuvvraaj i.e. himself ... Nothing great to talk about .. skip this one for the next.
2. Tu Meri Dost Hain ... Now here comes a chart topper from Rahman. You may not like or infact understand the song in the first go. But then that has been the common feature with almost all the Rahman songs. I would like to push your attention towards the lyrics. This is sheer poetry. Give the song the priveledge of you listening it 2-3 times and you will fall in love with this one.
3. Shano Shano ... Never thought Rahman could do this. Remember "Its the time to disco".. "Where is the party tonight" .... This is Rahman's version of the songs of that genre .. excellent ..without going overboard .. thats all that i can say
4. Tu Muskura .. A winner all the way ... the song paves way through your heart the very first time you put it on. And believe me ... it can well bring tears also to your eyes
5. Mastam Mastam ... No great shucks .. a typical situational song
6. Zindagi Zindagi .. a perfect song .. a perfect composition ... turn of the lights and put this on when you are in sad mood .. it will perfectly complement it
7. Dil ka Rishta ... a strange mix of western and indian classical ... i personally could not understand the song ... but its good on years ..
8. Manmohini Morey ... i have only one word for it .. bakwaas
9. Shano Shano Remix .. a remix from Rahman .. its sure worth its weight in gold

Overall I would say the album has some quality music. I would go with a rating of 3 stars plus additonal 1/2 a star for "Tu Muskura" .... Go for it .. this one will rock!

Memories from the golden years of my life (17)

Firstly, Thanks Dhiraj for commenting on the blog … the others whom I requested have shown no signs of basic courtesy. Your comment will help me move on … and yes I will respond to your comment also. Well murgi was far from any so called K-serials though I did not knew him well enough to say if he could have hatched a conspiracy. All that he was concerned with was his guitar and rock music. In fact I am sure you would have started liking him by now J He was a member of 3.4, the music band of IIML … the name 3.4 is strange but there is a legend behind it. Its 3.4 kms distance from Sitapur Mod to IIML. Once the founders took this long walk and the band was formed during this walk .. hence the name. Now a part of band was all about rock music … English songs … but where true Indians are there … apna typical bollywood style gana bajana can’t be far behind … and hence there was a hindi group or band also …. Both the groups hated each other and things had become this bad between them once during our stay there … that 3.4 nearly escaped being split into two 1.7s

Okay … now that I have started the topic of my seniors once again .. and it is quite an interesting topic indeed (at least in my view). Although my interaction with my seniors was really really limited, there are some incidents which I will never forget. Let me start with one such incident of one of our seniors called Aashika. Now Aashika was a very very short heighted girl with extremely sharp facial features - she was fair, had 'good assets' and her dress sense made her look like anything between a s*** to a girl next door. Now I did not interact with her even once during my entire stay of first year with the seniors but there is a very interesting story that I would like to share about her. In our mess, as the mess workers are also aware of the eating habits of us 'bigde shahzade' ( we eat less and throw more), so they had kept two very big dustbins in one of the corners to pour out the left over food. And believe me those dustbins could take some huge quantities of food. Ok so after dinner all of us would go and empty our plates in these dustbins and then give our plates for washing and all. Now the story goes like this. Once when Aashika went to the dustbin to throw her remaining food, her spoon also dropped into the dustbin, so like a good girl she tried taking it off (and hence reduce the loss burden that the mess was carrying like an albatross round its neck ... more on that later). Now as it happened the dustbin was just 1/4th full that day and Aashika being really short highted could not reach the spoon, so she just tried to do so by just tilting a bit more ..... and BAANG .... the next moment she finds herself in the dustbin ... upside down! ... My god ... the laugh we had when we had heard this story ... now I have not been a witness to this story ... but almost everyone on the campus would be ready to swear by it .... and some even go to the extent of saying that the dustbin was full of 'paav bhaji' remaining from previous day thrown into it ... Just imagine face into bhaji ... and she shouting for help for someone to drag her out from the dustbin ... The very thought still has me in splits ... any tippany on this Manish?

Memories from the golden years of my life (16)

After a long time ... but here it goes!

Quizzes ... they were like the constant sword hanging on us from the day we entered IIM L. They were the weapons in the hands of each professor to ensure that we were spending our precious nights studying .. not sleeping. Alas ! If only they knew that their happiness will last only for the first two or three terms (obviously now , I am not speaking about myself .. for me it lasted till the very last quiz we had .. which was in MIR - Managing Industrial Relations. Thats another story in itself!)

As it turned out to be .. our batch was called the ghissu batch by our seniors. The fault as anyone might have guess lay only with their batch. These guys (our seniors) had pissed off some of the profs so much that the profs had been forced to give dhakas and fuckas in wholesale. As a result a total of some 50-60 students were thrown out of their batch after second term as they had flunked! As they say .. no one can hide the truth ... the news travelled and it travelled fast. Even on our fresher party in Delhi (remember Ambassador Shounak?) people were asking all sorts of questions which they were not so eager to answer. Obviously .. our batch was scared as hell ... From day one .. each and every student started mugging up ... anytime in the night you go to library ... you could be sure to find it fully occupied .. the profs also responded favourably to our batch .. we soon came to be known as the best batch in years ....and this troubled our seniors to no extent.

As a batch, I would say our relations with our senior batch were rather not so good. I remember once having a discussion with Murgi (he was a hostel inmate and indeed a nice person to know who was unfortunate of repeating his first year at IIML) about relations with seniors ... Now his opinion was that our relations with seniors were excellent thanks to those 40 odd guys who had come back to repeat first year ... he said that they used to hate their seniors ... Pity i could not tell him we too :) ... as few of his best friends were from the senior batch and i am sure they would be anyday .....

There were more stories of friction between our batch and the seniors ... let me put down one here ... Suddenly one day we get a mail from senior batch that our batch is not really helping in maintaining cleanliness in the campus .. and that we leave cups lying on tables at nescafe shop ... and generally litter around ... now this speaks for itsef (I want comments from you Manish on this)

Had started writing about quizzes ... but it turned out to be something else only ... all for good .. more about quizzes and exams next time :)

This too was a golden period ...

I rolled off from GGSRL project today .. The mail I wrote to Piush and Sohini ... More on this later

Hi Piush & Sohini,

Just wanted to say thanks for the wonderful time that we have spent together on this project.

What began as just a project in the dingy UCO bank office turned out to be one of the best times that I have ever spent at work, both professionally and personally. Thanks for supporting, developing and sometimes protecting me.

Will cherish fond memories of our now famous potty jokes, joe pjs, all sorts of cheap talk (which includes "peeche se" and "beach mein"), our animal farm (goggi, doggi, hippo, rhino, kitty cat), the insignificant others (uncle bum, chuha, toothpick, tina, sita and the frustrated gang), our special capabilities, the daily hogging (of all paranthas, samosas, mad angles and the current hot favourite pass pass) and and the constant cribbing and bickering about anything and everything on earth!

Hope we will get a chance to work with each other again in near future! Wishing you both a great luck for all your future endeavours!

Warm Regards
Gautam

"We part only to meet again!"

Memories from the golden years from my life (15)

The few of those who do take the pains of reading my blog must be pissed with the gory details of my foot infection going on and on since the last 3 blogs. No more of it. I'll come back to campus life. I have already spoken about three of my subjects and their professors in first term viz. Manac, BIO and COM. Let me put down a few words about the other three before I go on to describe the Mid terms. The other three were QAM, ECO and LAM.

Ok ... now QAM and MANAC are considered to be the two most painful subjects in IIML. for the simple reason that these subjects can earn you what is commonly known as a "Dhaka" or "Fucka" any time! More so because of their professors. Well strangely enough, I found the QAM professor to be really nice - Abhijit Bhattarcharya. He knew his subject really really well. But we were like all scared of him as he had given a lot of Fs last year and was (as we had heard from seniors) a demon in disguise. Anyways .. I like to form my own opinions and I found him to be really good. The less we say about his counterpart "NKG" the better ... Kyun Manish? We had also come up with a name for him ( do you remember Manish? .... put it down in comments :)) His famous "Oooouunn .. I dont know any exampules" was repeated by us many a times during lighter moments. Manish and I had did not even have one professor in common .. While we had some oldie (whose name i cant remember) for LAM (Legal Aspects in Management) .. Manish's section had the pleasure of studying from Mr. LAA (with whom Manish shared a very "special" relationship in second year :) )

The third one was Eco. We had an excellent prof. whom i will respect through out my life .. it was really a pleasure studying from him .. Rest in next blog!

Memories from the golden years of my life (14)

I have always heard ... that there is a lot of strength in your parents blessings. And it was proved this time ... once again. I had told mom dad about my feet .... and it did make them worry like anything ... to the extent of finding unknown relations in Lucknow! However, thankfully i did not require to use those relations. There was a girl (rather an auntie would be more appropriate) called Mukuli in my class. She was about 32 years old, had about 7 years of experience and looked absolutely stupid (well ... it all changed later :) .... i think ill dedicate a full post to her sometime later). Now Mukuli was suffering from fever from sometime .... and she had a doubt that it was jaundice .... she appeared to be scared to death ... and wanted to get her blood test done .... and apparently there was no facility in campus for the blood test to be done .... and that day we were discussing about our own problems ... when she said that she wanted to go to hospital to get her tests done but was scared to go alone. Now even though i was dying with my feet in that condition ... being a man .. i offered her my help (of accompanying her) ... Now let me make it very clear ... that the help was offered with no wrong intentions in mind :) ... Actually I wanted to show my feet to someone ( as none of the medicines were having any effect whatsoever) ... and I had no clue about medical facilities in Lucknow. This was not an easy decision for me ... as my first mid term exams were just 5 days away ! ... and I guess only Manish would know what wasting one full day in those circumstances in first term would mean ... but i had little choice so i went with her after BIO class...

The hospital was first of all not at all difficult to reach. We had taken campus bus which dropped us till 3.4 .. and from there we took one of the vikrams (pooled autos) .... Well the hospital looked as if it would fall anytime ... I had my doubts if this would be of any help ... still we paid 50 bucks each for check up ... and went to our respective doctors ... Now this is one lady to whom I will be indebted for life ...We have such wrong impressions about govt. hospitals ... tell you what .. the kind of treatment this lady doctor gave me .. even the most qualified professional doctors would not be able to give ... may be this was because of the fact that i was in IIM... which had a real huge prestige in Lucknow ... Anyways ... she removed puss from my blisters .. which were all over my feet .. applyed betadiene ... bandaged my feet .. and with all the bad puss gone properly .. i was feeling very much better .. she also wrote a few medicines ... some of which were available from the chemist outside the hospital and the rest i had to get from purana chauraha .... finally mukuli also had her tests done and we came back ... and i then knew ... i had seen the worst as far as my health goes for years to come .... and things would start becoming better now .. God bless that lady doctor ...