India Trip Report 2003

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Written in free time, so Read it in free time

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Starting with taza khabar from Raipur. Thanks to Jogi
jee it was in limelight and bharat ka bachha baccha
janta hai about this city now a days. I feel proud!

So whats the latest movie there in Babulal talkies.
"Football-Shootball ....Hai Rabba!"
(yes thats the hindi version of Bend it like Beckham).

It seems Salman Khan hair style (Tere Naam) is a big
craze. saw many one in that style.

Lots and lots of ATM centers, Nearly all big shops
accept Credit cards (sliding machines, connected
to phones....no more pressing business).

ICICI is omnipresent. Very nice service. They are also
in insurance business and giving hard time to others.
The most popular product is ICICI-Prudential Life term
(and surprisingly they do cover "suicide" but atleast 1
year after the policy has been issued). You are right..
I bought one.

This is funny, and I witnessed it.
Raipurians are still not used to traffic lights. So
they have 3 policemen in one crossing. The one sits in
a stool and controls switches. The second one looks at
the traffic and asks his colleague when to press green
or red. (thereare No YELLOW lights).
And the third one "danda phek kar marta hai..whoever
breaks thelight". I saw one cycle man fell from his cycle
after getting hit.

DVD/MP3 are big hit. Very soon VCDs will be wiped off
(as happened with VHS). You get rs 200 DVD which has 3
movies. Quality is far better than VCD but less than that of
DVD seen here...

Cell-Phones/Mobile technology awareness, among average is
more than here.

Nearly all the studios keep digital cameras. All of them expertize
in "puraney photo sey naya photo banaye" and all other featurs
of Photoshop/Arcsoft softwares.

Amir Khan is a big hit in the ad world. His coke ads are too
popular and catchy. In one he enacts a "gurkha" and in
another as "kishore kumar".

Talking about TV, I thought FashionTV had been banned. But was
able to watch(on the excuse of surfing channels). Unfortunately
once UmaBharti sworn it they took that off.

Nearly all the news channels have continous tickers at the bottom
of the screen with latest updates and.....guess..?.
So in "Aajtak" I was following the tickers like "saddam husain
pakda gaya...thand sey 5 marey....kuhra key karan train radd..
and suddenly..  kamar tod dhulai super power ultra rin sey....
aaj hee isteymal karey ...and then back to News again"
Yes it was too much.
Tip to CNN on how to increase their revenue.

Oh..yes...the song "kanta laga" has won sahitya academy for
largets selling albums (I think more than 30 lakhs).

and last before leaving this segment:
Siddharth Basu is back with his quiz show in BBC.
he looks much older now.

Do you know whats the latest in Bhopal.
Everything there is ISO-9001. It is BIG thing and bhoplais are
too proud of it.
So they have India's first ISO-9001 Railway station (HabinbGanz),
India's first ISO-9001 Train (shan-e-bhopal exp, from bhopal-delhi),
I saw ISO-9001 Hospital (Ayushman hospital), and Restaurants,
Hotels. Bank branches....I wont be surprised soon bhopalis will
start wearing ISO-9001 tags.

Raliways have improved like anything. 99% of trains are in right time.
Platforms/trains are quite clean. We had to travel from Pipariya to
Itarsi (70Km) in 3 tier. That being a short distance we could not get
reservation and just boarded in 3 tier sleeper. I was surprised to find
that we were the only ones without reservation. and the coach/toilet
was so clean. There are new trains running called Jan-Shatabdi exp.
with chair cars. Quite popular.

Coming back to elections and politics....

Gone are the days of "muhar lagana hai"...now it
is "button dabana hai".

Whole country is in BJP mood. (at least the places we visited).
And it is much more professional when it came to campaigning
and all. All the state capitals there were behind-the-door teams
of professionals of BJP who did the survey, drafted the resolutions,
discovered the weak points/areas, managed the whole show.
The public never saw them, but they conducted many select
gatherings of city intellectuals addressed by likes of jaitley, yashwant
sinha and other big diggazs.

Whereas for Congress...
Ajit Jogi and team tried to convince the adivasi
voters in Bastar that if you press any buttons other
than "panja" you will get electric shock.
dont laugh..It is true.

Before assembly elections the whole Raipur was in grip
of Jogi family. The CM's son (who is an US citizen,
had appeared for IAS) virtually ruled the whole city.
He took over forcibly the dhanajya parihar's cable business
and renamed that Akash channel
(Mr D. parihar was a local goonda who killed a batchmate of ours)

Coming to Delhi/Bombay where I spent half day each...
The big big business (not legal ofcourse) now a days in Metros are
the "secret massage parlours".  More than half of the classified in
TOI/HT (delhi/bombay) are about that. Ads are like "4 start/5 star
guests only, nri/foreign welcome, room service available etc etc
followed by just one  cell number". And it is going to be the next big
challenge  for law officials.

Mirchi FM is too good....

There are many private colleges who offer diploma in call center
handlings. Talking of that, I read somewhere that the latest syndrome
(seen in Gurgaon) is call-center syndrome.
These people work in night, and in day they behave and think like they
are americans. They try to impress by their newly learned accents.
And this very strange working hours in call centers are causing
problem to many employees.

I also spent a week in London.
Not much there but I will only say that "Princess Anne's dog had bitten
her housemaid" was BIG and NUMBER ONE story for 2 days. All
channels/papers/tabloids had nothing else to discuss that whether
that dog needs to killed or Princess punished, and what is the
psychology of dog, why they bite, what the maid shall do now,
can she sue a princess....by they way this morning 141 people
died in Egypt plane crash"

and AT Last...
"Yeh desh hai veer jawano ka" is still the most favourite tune
for the band and generally the last one, before barat comes to an
end....
Yes...I experineced it on 19th and 21st nov in both my brothers
marriages...
All went well...and we had a great time!

Thanks for reading till end....
Happy New Year!
Gans

15th Aug QSQT and Me

Well....how the heck they are related, you must be thinking. But they
are.... if free (at lunch time)..read on, if not, Happy I Day..and
continue your
work!


15th Aug. 1986. It was friday, and I had just started my class 10. That
week my parents and brothers were away in Gaya (doing "pind daan" for
Moni (my
grandma).  She passed away the same year, just 3 days after Javed
Miyandad hit the sixer on
the last ball of last over (17th April, 86...another land mark day in my
life...
that story next time).
So that I-DAY, I was all alone in our railway quarter..not exactly
alone. Amar Singh "bhaiyya" was there to look after and cook etc.
A nice and smart person I would say.
After doing some tough budget cuts from the daily allowance I was able
to save some money
and the best usage of that to me was watch a movie.
A real movie...and not like Meera, Safed Hathi, Lav-Kush etc.
which I was used to...rest all the movies were not for kids as my
parents would say. So me, the teenage rebel and Amar Sing decided to go
for it!
Of course I had to skip the flag hoisting too....

That being friday there were few new movies released. The one in Raj
Talkies was a long name cinema called "Ram Teri Ganga Maili Ho Gayee"
with absolute new cast like
Rajeev Kapoor and someone called Mandakini. There was another one in
Sharda Talkies
(which being an Old theater used to release old hits, or could not
afford new ones).
They were showing "Pratigya". Dharmendra, Hema, Keshto..all household
and
popular names. After much brain storming we decided for Pratigya.  When
we came out of the hall...I was quite happy.
It was an all out hindi masala dacoit, thakur, police, village belle,
police, comedy film.

Saturday, 16th Aug, 1986. You know in all schools there are boys like
Aman Adil, Prakash Gawai and Ram kumar Sahu, who are famous for
everything except
their academic skills. And that morning in class 10 section "B" they
were heroes
because they had watched RTGMHG the previous day. And they were all out
to discuss the vivid details of the new heroine and the "jharna" scene
and the train scene where there was much to see and to hear....I felt
all left out..not even
my best friend Rana Mukherjee was interested in what happened in
Pratigya!

Fast forward 2 years....the very next day after Engineering entrance
exams were over I went out to Bhilai Maitri Graden (Indo Russia
Friendship) for a picnic along with
some friends. As usual in the afternoon before
retrning back to Raipur, there was a choice between 2 movies called QSQT
(all new faces) and "Agey kee soch" by veteran director Dada Kondke. I
did not want to commit the same mistake again  what happened 3 years
earlier and
went out with the split group for Dada Kondkey movie. He was already a
very famous man (having reserved a place in Guinness book still don't
know, if that's a rumor) and for his double entendre gimmicks. No need
to say what happened afterwards...
That was one of the worst 3 hours in my life....

Now you got the link....

Jai Hind,
Have a nice weekend!

Yeh woh Bambai to nahee

As usual.....the "insomniac" me was at its peak last night...and after
completing the latest Time magazine  with its not so impressing article
("where all the GOOD jobs are going...To India), I decided to watch some
real desi channel.

Generally I dont watch them for more than 5 10 minutes..and would have
preferred top 10 sexiest beaches in travel channel,
or even some shopping network (where they sell interesting stuff around
midnight)
but last night I preferred the real desi channel (Soni/Zee) and sat
before the idiot box for non stop for
more than 2 hrs till 2AM!

What did I watch.....
Well, lots and lots of things which I had no idea is happening there....

a) I saw the video of India's first Boy Band group (aptly named
Band_Of_Boyz)..
    song was "She drives me crazy" and the choreography and visual were
comparable (infact
    same as) the local boy band groups.....move on Justin. Following
Liz Hurley Britney might
    prefer Indian Boy Band star than him! If I made it mute...no way I
could make it that is from Bombay!

b) Remember "Saudagar"  not the "imli ka boota" one but in which big B
sells Gud. That
   old movie had a nice song called "Sajna Hai mujhey sajney key
liye"...well I saw its remix...
   and it was too good.....and too catchy. Other than the music, the
storyline was couple of beautiful
   girls fighting for a person (hero) in a NailBar. You said..what the
hell is Nail Bar....me too.
   I believe its the modern name of a place where "pedicure" is done...

   Then there is ofcourse the "kaanta laga" ....taking full advantage
of "no Sensor needed for music albums".

c) Saw two clipping and behind the scenes from movie called Ooops and
Boom....
    I dont want to say more about them...because either you already
have heard..or you are going
    to hear about them
soon....Camera/Visual/Action/Dialogue......Difficult to believe unless
you see it.
    "ek chotte see love story" which created a controversy sometime
last year...seems  so trivial
    compared to these....and all this happened within a Year....!

d) And there are lots and lots of new and young directors who are
breaking all the limits....in a way it
    is good....but I think the change is so sudden that this is going
to create a SHOCK! And there is a
   reason..in our days a hollywood movie used to take months (if not
years) before it is screened in India.
   Now it is a same day release all over the world. Vice versa A well
made hindi movie is going to create more
   money abroad rather than in home. To attack these two things
together Bollywood needs this strategy....
   it is a necessity..for the survival.

I was literally feeling out of place, but after those "bollywood"
updates it was the time for a serial
called "Shri Ganesh"......with their camera work/special
effect/dialogue/music..that was it. I was expecting this.
This sounds so familiar and I am OK with it.  It was time to switch off
the tv in a "feel good" mood.