Deepika Padukone's Meera - A Study

Since everyone is putting in their two cents on what they thought about Love Aj Kal, I cannot be outdone:

I thought Deepika Padukone wasn’t so bad as Raja Sen made her out to be. While this is not definitely her best work yet according to Taran Adarsh, she did make her character rather believable. She is supposed to play an overly practical girl who chooses her career over anyone else, without a single romantic bone in her body. And by romance, I don’t mean the fine dining, red roses, violins sort of romance. I am talking about comfort, understanding and compromise sort of romance. She’s not the girl who will tell her man I will give up my rather interesting job because you want to have your ego and your dreams and your girl. She will tell him I rather marry the boy mummy daddy chose because they are sure to choose someone who understands my dreams and they can’t be wrong because they have been married 30 years.
Deepika’s Meera is understands how the world functions and is very indicative of the new feminist breed of women. She makes her own decisions and she calls a spade a spade.

On retrospect, I think Deepika’s Meera is the strongest character in the film.
Saif Ali Khan plays yet another metrosexual confused ‘dude’ who tries too hard to ooze uber cool. If he was paired with say a Kareena or a Priety, he would have looked easier on screen but while Deepika Padukone is earthiness and a ‘okay I am on screen and I am a no nonsense girl so don’t even bother,’ he is ‘how do I create chemistry with someone who is better off with a guy who reflects all the serious points in life.’

And serious she is. Oh God. After one point, her seriousness got so annoying that it got boring. Her smile, though gorgeous, lacks the wistfulness her character feels throughout. However, I think her character is not a very easily likeable person. She is not supposed to be all sunshine and butterflies just because she has dimples. She’s focused, and she’s callous. She’s also indecisive and she wants things to be convenient. She’s direct and doesn’t mince words. In short, she’s just another normal girl trying hard to let go of her love. I think it’s a well thought out character.

So that’s what I thought of Miss Padukone. The film overall had its moments. But I honestly related to the break ups, and the yearning. I also cracked up at what could be the best line of the year: 'Main baad main maafi maang lungi.' Poor Rahul Khanna. He should win an award for Most Dumped Guy onscreen.

Imtiaz Ali really knows how to frame a scene. Sepia filters never looked so beautiful. The ending had to be a crowd pleaser and Neetu Kapoor is still beautiful.

The First Among Many Firsts

Growing older is hitting closer home. An old school friend recently got married and I got pwnd as the loved one says. I found out through Facebook that AB has been tagged in an album named ‘Wedding.’ So I click on it because I love to see wedding pictures of people I have no idea exist and don’t care they do, when suddenly I see that old gummy smile, and those twinkling eyes winking cheekily at me. AB was married a couple days ago and I found out through Facebook. Imagine that. I have become a social victim of the internet.

AB is younger than me by a few months and I have always thought of him as the House Captain with the epaulets that would stick out on his shoulders and make him look like a Star Fleet officer. But now that our AB is married, reality is sinking in even faster. I am soon to be 25, I am soon going to be officially in a place where I can’t depend on my dad for getting the car serviced, or expect my mom to cook dal for me. I have to start caring for other people; I am soon going to be a care giver. Shudder. The word ‘care giver’ reminds me of pristine, white gleaming hospitals.

A favorite childhood AB memory of mine is when we got dressed in our best Indian clothes to go for an Independence Day Dance at the Naval Club. And soon we were boogying the night away to ‘Cecilia,’ and ‘Macarena,’ and I remember our two left feet dance: Jump to the left, hop to the right, do a mini pelvic thrust…or do what AB does…stomp the ground with each foot. Stomp stomp in perfect rhythm goes one foot, stomp stomp goes the other.

Another time, I was asked to play the harmonium during the school assembly. As I struggled to lead the totally disinterested Class 7 choir into the nasal bars of Daya Kara Daan, there he was: AB. Smiling and encouraging so that I don’t forget the chords. Just the night before, he had painstakingly taught me all the chords and keys of the school songs.

This is how it feels when my childhood actually feels like it has ended. Empty. And yet, happy. And grateful. Look how far we’ve come.

Good luck, and many congratulations, AB!

Blog Camp!

Ever since I have taken to Twitter with a vengeance, I have also stopped being somewhat of a recluse. Yes, ironically, the internet has been done some very Botox like wonders for my social life and sense of self. Wanting to continue in this vein of awesomeness, I gave into a friend’s insistence, and before you can say anti – social, there I was, arguing with the conductor about a window seat on a bus to Pune. While the journey was surreal and very Impressionistic, rain streaked windows like splotches of grey paint separating the bright green, brown, blue broad strokes that whizzed past, I had trouble adjusting to the tripe that was Koi Mil Gaya playing on the bus’ in-insane-highway-horn honking at everything-driving entertainment system. But point was, I was on my way to Blog Camp Pune 2009. To interact with strangers I knew only by their Twitter and GTalk handles, folks whose blogs I read but had never met in person. All on my own accord.

Pune was cool, green, with a nip in the air, and perfect for a long day of playing romantic hookey. As I drove from my aunt’s place to SICSR (Symbiosis), I could not help humming ‘and all those children, heaven help them, but they’ll look after me!’ In that frame of mind, I met my friend responsible for getting me to come in the first place, fished out the much beloved Blackberry and starting tweeting about what was going on and the things to come. Quite an impressive turnout and I could not wait to get started.

Being used to an industry where people say they are 5 minutes away, but turn up for meetings once the first rounds of coffee and teas have been cleared, citing ‘what awful traffic, dahling,’ I was very very pleasantly surprised when we started right on time! Tarun Chandel, wearing a cheery bright yellow t-shirt, introduced the agenda and then we were asked to introduce ourselves. As I saw people stand up and talk about what they do, I froze for a moment. The very moment I was dreading. Then all those years of public speaking classes at school (always slept in, never learnt) kicked in, and I heard myself smoothly go on and on about my blogging passions and what makes me unique from the million other extremely talented bloggers in the same room. Heck, so excited I was with the new me, I started smiling at unknown faces. SOMETHING, I HAVE NEVER EVEN DREAMT OF DOING.

The most amazing part of the Pune Blog Camp was that it was quite an unconference. No strict rules, restricting structures, organizations, or linear counting. I am sure there is a Memento joke somewhere here, but ha! I won’t be such a total dork. We were free to walk out any time and start discussions of our own. It was just like being on the internet, but without a keyboard and HTML formatting of course. And there were no hashtags in real life. Participants and speakers mingled, there were impromptu discussions on the stairwells, (college was like this come to think of it) and there were as few PPT presentations as possible. The geek fests had begun!

The first talk I sat for was by Meetu on her movie review blog WOGMA and all the cool stuff she has been doing. My takeaways from this talk were to be confident in your writing abilities, to keep in mind that content is the single most values element for any blog, and to marry someone who was a PHP God. Okay, the last one not so much considering I am not even close to marrying someone who knows what the internet is, let alone a God. Before this gets any lamer, I am moving on.

I also discovered much to my own chagrin, that old habits of wanting to lend voice to discussions die hard. Meetu blogs about all things cinema and the topic of reviewers being influenced by producers came up. If reviewers were to accept merchandise and premiere passes, would this mean their reviews would not be objective? In my opinion and experience, that is not something a reviewer should worry about. Users online don’t really care about what someone thinks. All they need is a conversation starter. The internet is a place which functions socially as a parallel means of communication. I say parallel because not all discussions are indicative of real life scenarios. Collective consciousness is best measured by logging onto a popular message board such as Rediff and seeing what people think and feel. There are no influencors online. Just facilitators of discussion and conversation, The well spoken and talented Mr Raja Sen seems to be the most hated man online. And yet, he’s the most read. (Note to self: this has got to be a separate blog post by itself)

I was very glad to meet Meetu because it’s so inspiring to know people who have done such a phenomenal job of combining passion and work together. Please read her blog WOGMA (Without Giving the Movie Away) at www.wogma.com. That’s another thing I was pleased to discover: entrepreneurs and smart people ranging from16 to 45 years, doing their own thing, and doing it best.

Next, Annkur was up talking about the mistakes best avoided while blogging. There was much frenzied discussion on how marketing should be considered after there is content to show for it, and how content must remain the focus of it all. Now, I can only wish Bollywood gets this very simple and basic principle. You’d think a billion dollar industry would have understood content by now.

Alas, I was sort of surprised no one really mentioned the user experience. Why do we blog? To call attention to ourselves. To tell the world – look at the wonderful and horrible things I go through – Empathize with me! And yet, if you squeeze in a thousand ad sense ads selling Life Coaching Books, stick in an all white background, call your only substantial web presence something like Suzy’s House of Cool (which on retrospect doesn’t sound half bad), and make your blog design seem like something that Freddy Krueger met earlier, you will not get those that matters – readers. People willing to listen. #megafail. User engagement comes right after content being King. Bollywood, still with me?

Ankesh K was very very cute and very very smart. After all, his was one session that gave me insights on the more important bits: make money out of your blog! He also reminded me of an old school friend from school who would carry flash index cards to lead the school assembly.

By now, everyone was relaxed and all the XKCD type jokes seemed rampant. As I allowed myself to drift off, checking for Twitter updates, the room blinked in unison. Ankesh was standing on a chair, saying something about a string, a girlfriend and a cat. While the next logical step would be to think about spatial physics, having considered the keywords caught by my half-listening brain, I had never been so wholly entertained in my entire blog life. Which turns 5 years old next month by the way.

Post the talk, we decided to head out for lunch. On our way out, I met and chatted up with Harish K (of Blogadda), who’s doing some great work in the space of content aggregation, Kunal Sheth, a fellow Bombay blogger, and Sahil K – boy genius. Sahil’s venture The Tossed Salad is a beauty in design and usability and I have been known to quote from its articles.

After a rather nostalgia inducing Bengali spread, we returned in time to sit for Thakker’s anecdotal, mostly funny, half creepy talk on user privacy online. On the surface, Thakker seemed like any other normal IIT-B graduate, denied and repressed (haha), but he made some strong points on plagiarism and privacy. Basically boys and girls, do not pass off source material as yours if it’s not, and if you are taking pictures of unsuspecting and hot girls in Pizza Hut, at least have the good sense to turn away your viewfinder. Or just don’t upload said photos to your highly popular blog. Basic blog practices. Basic life practices. So Bollywood, can you repeat what I just said?

The day came to a close, ending on Thakker’s hilarious recounting of ‘meeting prospective brides’ stories, and introducing his younger brother as Thakker Junior, V2, out of Beta testing. (Yeah but I saw that joke coming.) Time for us to pack up, meet and socialize some more, and head out to The Corinithians for the ALL YOU CAN DRINK beer tweet-up. On my way out, I tweeted: http://twitter.com/tanushreebaruah/status/2357731659

I hope there is another blog camp soon, maybe at Goa? And the next time, I hope to actually be a presenter, talking about movies and their presence online, talking about content and piracy. I learnt at this blog camp that being a geek is actually cool, I met some very nice and fun people, and that they’d guide you to a place where everyone is happy and dreaming of the building the perfect PHP based backend, or figuring out unwinnable scenarios in Star Wars. Thanks all you guys, and thanks Pune!

Some Random Reactions

The Hangover: The funniest movie I have seen in a really long time. Road trips and getting drunk are made out to be synonyms of cool. Hollywood, nothing compares to you.

Rains in Mumbai and the ensuing media frenzy: Roads Blocked! Death By Electrocution! 3. Mumbai Submerged! La di dah. Headline copy can’t get any more original than this.

Bollywood after Kambhaqt Ishq: Losing my faith and interest in India’s movie industry. So boring. So insipid. So repetitive. So dumb. Would rather watch White Chicks followed by Wedding Crashers.

The Ex: Confused loser who needs a serious hard kick in the balls. And then shoved off the newly christened Rajiv Gandhi setu.

Michael Jackson’s Passing On: No. I will not pun. No no no, I will not beat it. ARGH. There, see what you made me do. But parting is such sweet sorrow. Moon walk on.

Sam Rockwell: Why why why oh why don’t I know you in real life? Hmmph.

Bollywood in General: Why can’t some of the older more popular so-called A list stars just DIE? That way, we will never run out of things to talk about.

Article 377: So long, sucker! Note to gay friends: This does not mean you have the right to act bitchier than me. Muah! And congratulations.

Iran Elections: Stop trending on Twitter already!

Mamta Banerjee: Live long and prosper. NOT.