Of Stars and Superstars

Bollywood can lay claim to be the torchbearer of the Indian entertainment industry to the rest of the world. It is leading the way in the fight for recognition for films other than those made by Hollywood.

But is this overbearing presence of the big brother of Indian cinema slowly but surely killing the regional cinema of India?

Let us start by looking at the size of the Indian cinema industry. It is an $8.9 billion industry, with almost 4 billion people visiting cinema halls every year.

Now that is one big cake that everyone would love to have a share of.

On pure statistical terms Bollywood has the biggest share of this cake. The popularity of Bollywood stars have to be seen to be believed. Earlier the only place they used to rule was the cinema halls. Now they have invaded our roads, our living rooms and even our bathrooms. They ask us to buy everything from chocolates to chayawanprash. They are screaming from the idiot boxes asking us to buy the idiot box that “they use”.

A lot of artists’ crossover from regional cinema to the Hindi film industry pulled by the lure of BIG money. The superstars of the Hindi film industry enough pay tax each year to probably wipe off the debt of many small African countries.

But does all this mean that the regional movie scene is losing out to Bollywood.

The answer would be no.

Surprised?? Why??

In a country like India which has around 114 main languages (not counting the thousands of dialects), the dominant language is Hindi. But it covers only the Hindi belt in the north and Maharashtra (coz it houses bollywood). The entire south is dominated by their own film industries. In fact, the Telegu film industry is home to the second only to bollywood in terms of movies made. A number of top Hindi film actors have been a part of these regional films over the years.

The Tamil film industry too holds a major stake in the Indian film industry. It has produced some of the finest artists that have graced the silver screen. In fact the only star in India who can challenge the legendary Amitabh Bacchan in popularity votes is from the Tamil film industry. Rajnikanth enjoys demi-god status in TamilNadu and has fans from Singapore to the US.

Malayalam films have dominated the National awards for years. Many have been remade in Hindi which proves that imitation is the best form of flattery.

Bengali films were among the first Indian films to make an impression in the west with filmmakers like Satyajit Ray leading the way.

Marathi films are fighting back in their homeland after going into obscurity for a couple of decades albeit with some strong political backup. The general increase of theatres showing Marathi films shows an increased interest in Marathi cinema.

The sheer number of people in India and the cheap availability of cinema here have given a variety of choice for people to choose from. All forms of cinema in India have an opportunity to shine. So what if the brightest star in the constellation is bollywood. It takes all of them to form a constellation right :)

P.S. this post was added to be part of a blogathon :) so no more serious stuff after this :)

Lets build some Character :)

Calvin and Hobbes - My favourite comic strip, my getaway to a land of kraziness..

Calvin's Dad: Honey, have you seen my glasses?

Calvin's Mom: No, I haven't.

[Calvin walks in wearing the glasses.]

Calvin: Calvin, do something you hate! Being miserable builds character!

[Calvin's Mom cracks up]

Calvin's Dad: Okay, I admit the voice was a little funny, but we're raising a sarcastic kid here.

Funny as it may sound.. isnt it the truth.
All of my life, the things that people said will make me a better person were stuff i used to hate.
I dont remember much of it but why is it that stuff we usually hate is the one we are supposed to do. Who decides these things??
How can these grownups say that this is good for us? I am sure they would have cursed society for making them do all this stuff when they were kids but they grow up and make their kids do the same things.
I wish that i have a kid like calvin.. i know girls readin this are gona stay away from me on readin this but life would be such a joy havin a firecracker at home. My very own nuclear fusion reactor which never runs out of energy.

Another year.. Time to make resolutions

So another year dawns upon us. Its been long since i resolved to post stuff regularly here, so i am not going to make a promise that i am gonna break.
This is one year where i want to stick to the resolutions that i make. So i set myself some resolutions which actually are not so much resolutions as they are goals.

1) Learn to play the guitar - Atleast the basic stuff and I am happy to say that i have already started :)

2) Experience snowfall - Now since it aint happening this winter i got a whole 9-10 months to plan this out. This is definitely happening.

3) Talk less and listen more - My one true resolution. Seems to be a popular opinion among my friends. So will try hard not to bother ppl :)

A nice start to the list i guess. Cant wait to experience the satisfaction that i will get when i strike off each of them :)
So wish me luck for this year..

Yahoo Toolbar

Just had a taste of my friend's blog on User Interfaces and that got me thinking.
This i sumthing that i am good at. So i have started givin more attention to the scores of little buttons and tabs that we click everyday, the textboxes in the forms we fill without a second glance.
So let me take you to my first post on my newfound interest:

Have you ever installed the yahoo toolbar on IE and tried opening sumthing in a new tab.
Just suppose you are reading something on a web page and you find a link in it interesting enuf to be read. so what a normal guy would do is right-click, select open in new tab and continue browsing the current page. Then you go through the new link that you opened once you are done with this page.
Now if you do this on IE with yahoo toolbar installed it takes you to the new tab directly. the page you were browsing goes out of ocus and you are looking at a page that is being loaded.
Now why would anybody open it in a new tab if the new page is what they wanted to see.
Firefox behaves he way i said i expected it to.
Now how did yahoo miss this part??

Customs.. Bandhan :P

Will start this off with a story :)
Long time ago there was a wedding going on in a village.
There was a cat which was runnning all around the mandap and causing havoc.
So the dulha decided to catch the cat and tie to a pole with a duppata.
Now people saw that and thought it was some kind of tradition.
So every wedding in that village had the dulha catch a cat and tie it to a pole with a duppata.
And that tradition is still followed.
:)

A question lingers in my mind.. since time immeorial..
How was life in the past? not just the recent past, but before the time i was born.
Every era is a different experience.
I am not sure if I would have been the same man that i am right now.
You cannot blame a person for having prejudices of caste, gender and society then can you.
It was somthing thrust upon each and every living being back then. You were taught as a child that these are the things that our forefathers did and we follow them blindly.
Untouchability, Sati and other such shameless acts of disparity were never even thought of as evil. very much accepted as part of day today life.
In fact we were ruled by foreigners for 200 long years due to this very ignorance. (apart from a lot of other reasons)
The very thought that a lot of our customs were cruel and inhuman was brought to light by these outsiders.
So i guess i have to thank the visitors who were driven out of our country (and rightly so) a wee bit for opening up the path we were following and givin us a world to explore.

Wanted: God

I recently went to visit a temple after a long long time. I used to go there everyday about a coupla years bak.
Me and Naveen a very close friend of mine. Not just to pray but also to look at the gud lookin mallu girls who used to come there frequently :) yea God wasnt reason enuf for me to visit the place. In fact i never even thot why i go to temples. u see i am not an aethist. but i am also not the kind of guy who wil blame all things good or bad on God. Then why do we believe in God?? Do we really need to acknowledge the presence of the almighty??
I certainly feel the need to do so. I simply cant accept that the universe is just a mix of Physics and Chemical reactions. That our existence is just a scientific incident taught in some chapter in high school science books. Accepted there is beauty in knowing that as well.
I want to believe that there exists an Almighty who is actually responsible for all of this. This way things seem so much better.
Also this is something which can teach people humility. That we are so minute in the larger being that is the universe.

Loving Someone to Death

This is just something i read in the paper the other day. I seriously dont know how you might think of such a story. Foolishness, Crazy, !!@#$, etc. But, I must say i was touched.. really touched. This seems to be something that is lost on the world.
It started as a note to my wife. And then i thought that since some of you might have husbands or wives and might feel the same way. I'd pass it along. I don't own this story anyway. Charles Boyer does.
Remember Charles Boyer? Suave, dapper, handsome, graceful. Lover of the most famous and beautiful ladies of the silver screen. That was on camera and in the fan magazines.In real life, it was different.
There was only one woman. For 44 years. His wife, Patricia. Friends said it was a lifelong love affair. Soulmates. They were no less lovers and friends and companions after 44 yers than after the first year.
Then Patricia developed cancer of the liver. And though the doctors told Charles, he could not bear to tell her. And so he sat by her bedside to provide hope and cheer. Day and night for six months. He could not change the inevitable. Nobody could. And Patricia died in his arms. Two days later, Charles Boyer was also dead. By his own hand. He said he did not want to live without her.
He said, "Her love was life to me."
This was no movie. As I said, it's the real story --- Charles Boyer's story.
It is not for me to pass judgement on how he handled his grief. But it is for me to say that i am touched and comforted in a strange way. Touched by the depth of love behind the apparent sham of Hollywood love life. Comforted to know that a man and woman can love each other that much that long.
I don't know how I would handle my grief in similar circumstances. I pray I shall never have to stand in his shoes. But there are moments when i look across the room --- amid the daily ordinariness of life --- and see the person I call my wife and friend and companion. And i understand why Charles Boyer did what he did. It really is possible to love someone that much, I know. I'm certain of it.

--- Excerpted from All I really Need to Know I Learnt in Kindergarten published by Ballantine Books, New York

Aaaarrrrgghhh!!!!! How do i do this??
Hmm.. after struggling with the dashboard and settings page of blogger i still m not able to figure out how to make all my posts appear in one page.. I give up!!!
i knew how to handle stuff like this like the back of my hand when i was a kid not too long ago..
nowadays i gotta read the manual to actually understand how to my new digicam works..
the same guy who put together his first video game machine when he was only 10 yrs old is now struggling to learn how his oven works..
is it just me whos not able to keep pace with technology or we live in a world which is just too overwhelming..
lets c .. if anybody out there knows how to make all the posts appear in one page just help me out
puhleeezzzzeeeee.

"Deja Vu"

Hey Whats this..!!! Do i see myself writing a blog..! Fuk i knew this was gonna happen!
Have u ever felt that the life you are living is just a pre-recorded movie that somebody in the heavens just plays. What if u get top see YOUR movie before it is actually played? You may not remember the whole movie but, you will have those bits and pieces of it coming back to you. Which pieces and when is beyond ur control. When u do get a flash in ur mind and u hear urself sayin "Fuck Dude! I knew this was gonnna happen. I swear!!" what you have just experienced right now my friend is a sense of 'Deja vu'.
You go about your usual routine life. you wake up, get ready, take the bus, go to work, back

home in the evening. when all of a sudden you look, hear n feel around you? You can predict the entire conversation that ur friend is carrying out with you. you can predict what hes gonna say and how you are going to react. But how is this possible?At that moment you aretoo perplexed, petrified even to say anything. After you regain composure and you tell ur friend what you felt only for him to snap back at you with a "Yea RITE!! Better start those medications again Punk!!"
I have never been able to explain these phenomenon that keeps happening to me. But when I do find people who have experienced the same things as this a part of me breaks knowing that i I m not the unique person who experiences this.

Hey!!! Havent u read this blog Before. I knew you were gonna read it.. and then welcome the comment that you are about to write.

Hmmm.... I Resolve??

m posting after a long long time inspite of making a resolution that m gonna write to my self everyday..!!
I dunno why i make such resolutions.. i know i am too lazy to keep up with them..
probably i should make a resolution not to make one.. :)
But why are resolutions so hard to keep?
When something becomes a habit you do it everyday? but when u resolve to make something a habit. u just can stick to it?
I guess you usually think of doin something when that is something you dont like doing..
but nowadays i find myself having to make a resolve to read a book, visit my friends, play something, watch a movie.. things which i really like to do.
I get rather annoyed that m unable to do all these things nowadays.