Saturday, February 10, 2007

Stress at School...

A few days ago I was sitting with an old friend from school.
As it often happens in such situations we started talking about the good old days especially the last two years of school (classes 11th and 12th).
We passed out about 9 years ago so it was fun going back to those final days at school.

Suddenly my friend remarked that while those days were amazing he would never want to repeat them.

Now I was thinking along the same lines as we had been talking about school. So I was naturally surprised to hear my friend giving voice to my thoughts.
Then he went on to say that he still gets nightmares sometimes that he has failed the Board exams in 12th and he wakes up in a panic. Once he is awake and realises that those days are behind him he manages to relax.

When I heard this I was even more surprised. I was surprised because I get similar nightmares sometimes. But my nightmares are about having missed many school days (I used to take quite a few holidays in 11th and 12th) and then having to rejoin.
I think what will teachers say, how much of the course I would have missed and what will my friends ask me? Sometimes I too wake up in a panic thinking that those days are back.

This got me thinking about the hidden stress at school. Schools are supposed to be places where a child can grow and develop, not where they develop subconscious stress.

A few questions came to my mind:

Is school supposed to give you nightmares 10 years down the line?

Is that perhaps a 'fringe benefit' of formal schooling?

Maybe we don't take enough time in preparing a child for education like a farmer prepares a field for crops to be planted. I wonder if this is a growing trend in children especially in today's highly competitive study environments where each half percent can mean the difference between success and failure. Where children are evaluated on the basis of exam results and not their true aptitude.

Wednesday, February 07, 2007

Long Island Iced Tea

The Long Island Iced Tea is my favourite cocktail.


The Recipe:
  • 1.5 cl (one part) Vodka
  • 1.5 cl (one part) Tequila
  • 1.5 cl (one part) White Rum
  • 1.5 cl (one part) Cointreau
  • 1.5 cl (one part) Gin
  • 2.5 cl (1½ part) Lemon juice
  • 3.0 cl (two parts) Sugar Syrup
  • Dash of Cola
Mix ingredients in glass over ice, stir, garnish with lemons and serve.
It is a deadly drink. As you can see from the recipe its got a wide variety of alcoholic ingredients in it!

LONG ISLAND ICED TEA

View Before consumption





















View After consumption

Tuesday, February 06, 2007

Few Quotes...

Living without a conscience is the easiest way to live.
-Myself

Nothing great seems achievable at first.
-Myself

Life is about living, not about ifs and buts.
-Myself

Making the end justify the means is a sure sign of failure.
-Myself

Monday, February 05, 2007

Guru - A few lessons yet to be learnt!

Guru
My personal rating: Low Blood Pressure (5/10)

The main problem with the movie is that while it does manage to grab your attention now and then, it is not able to hold it.
The movie oscillates between emotional drama and the business side of things. Whenever something interesting seems to be happening on the business side some emotional drama is injected. There is no continuity in the movie. In one scene things look absolutely bleak for the hero, in the other everyone is dancing with joy.
The timeline of the movie itself is not very continuous either and one is not able to understand the temporal gap between events. When you are trying to tell a story of events happening over a period of 30-35 years especially against a dynamic background (in this case Post-Independence India) one needs to be very careful in establishing a clear timeline.

All this inspite of lifting parts of the story straight out of the life of Dhirubhai Ambani.

The end of the movie is one big emotional stretch which hindi movies are so famous for.
It also leaves various loose ends such as:

  1. What happens to the conflict between Mithun/Madhavan and Abhishek Bachhan?
  2. How does Abhishek manage to recover his personal and business lives after the hearing?
  3. What happens to his wife's brother?

It seems to me that the director wanted to make a movie which showed off all aspects of the struggle of Abhishek Bachhan both on a personal front and on the business front. What comes out is a horribly mixed up story where instead of having seamless integration of the two story lines there is a cut-paste feel to it. Its like watching a Powerpoint slide of a movie.

I think Aishwarya Rai should not have been picked as the heroin. They should have picked someone a bit low-key and made the emotional side of the story a background for the business side. I don't think high-profile actresses like Aishwarya can ever be expected to play background roles successfully. Vidya Balan had absolutely no role in the movie except to be the weeping point for both the parties.

It reminds me of the movie Kalyug (directed by Shyam Benegal) which manages to achieve what Guru tries to.

A few positives about the movie:

Mithun's acting. Simply amazing, shows that he still has it in him! But his whole effort is wasted because the story never gets continuous enough.

Madhavan's acting. Role perfectly suited to him.

The instrumental soundtrack is quite nice and the titles are very well designed (flipping pages).

Aishwarya Rai dances well especially in the song 'Barso re megha..' she seems to have a very flexible body.