Perspectives and perceptions

I always find the beginning of a post the hardest to write, and then I decide to just start writing and I bet by the time I'm done, I'll be the author of yet another loong post. :) This year has been fantastic in terms of my travel. Oh yes I've had some horrid experiences with transit visas but then I've learned a HELL lot from those experiences so that my next travels are a lot smoother. The US trip was special like that, because I researched and found and practically booked the flights and the hotels myself and ended up with a perfect trip. If you know me then you know that I'm jinxed when it comes to flights, tickets, dates and sometimes even online payments! But then, that's the challenge, and thankfully this time I managed to catch all my flights on time. Major win! After my Boston trip last year, this year was a totally different trip. I visited 4 cities for starters, San Francisco, Miami, New York and Boston. I think I didn't end up doing justice...

My friend recently shared a t-shirt design which she thought was very apt for me. Given my penchant for behaving almost as though I have an OCD about orderliness, the line reads, "I have CDO, It's like OCD but with the letters in the right order like they're supposed to be" Funny. And a bit true. I do obsess over stuff like straight lines, and clean desks, and bedsheets tucked in perfectly and eye pencils facing in the right direction and bottles in the shelf being arranged according to size, and books being arranged according to category and then height, clothes being arranged according to type and then maybe by color... and so on. Sometimes it's tiring to keep up. Most times it helps to be like this. I always have something to do! There's always something more to clean, something more to arrange and something to change. :) But apart from all the funny reasons, the real thing is this... Sorting out the mess in my physical surroundings, sorts out the m...

(cross-posting from my notepad written post) Writing with a pen in hand on a wide notepad after years feels so strange. I've forgotten how to wield a pen to my wishes almost... On a side note I should probably keep writing a little bit every week to stay in practice. My plan was to spend half the day in going around Calcutta, having got a taxi to take me around I was excited about the day! My morning was beautiful. Sukanya woke me up at 6.30. Had some coffee and then got ready to leave. Hunted for this place called at Maharani to have Calcutta's famous breakfast, Kachori Subzi. To add a bit of trivia, this place is very near the guest house shown in Kahaani. V argues that Maharani serves very good Kachori Subzi and not Kuchudi Subzi (which is more bengalisized version). Grabbed that and then headed for Babughat. En route we saw Eden Garden decked up in the new face of KKR. Glimpsed at Victoria Memorial and found a beautiful cathedral, St. Pauls. Eventually turned out tha...

I finally saw this movie! :) Everyone in my circle has been raving about this movie and I've been meaning to watch it for a long time, and today, with my mom in town, we finally ended up going for it! Like the many friends who faithfully kept their end of the bargain and didn't divulge anything about the movie but the fact that I must go and watch it, I find it hard to actually tell you why you must watch it! But have no fear. This review is not going to spill the beans. So what the kahaani of kahaani is you have to find out for yourself because you're not getting that here. At least not for another month till most of you have seen it and it's gone out of the theatres. The movie is set in Calcutta, and not Kolkata, because it is set in those parts of Calcutta that in my eyes can never be called anything else. Thanks to V I've got this fascination for that city and for Bengali, which basically means, I had a silly smile plastered on my face for most parts of the ...

Frankly I have other movies to write reviews on; After Agneepath I've seen The Descendants, Ek Mein Aur Ekk Tu and The Artist, two of which I thoroughly enjoyed and want to write good reviews for (no points for guessing!) but today's movie (the one on which this post is centered) was just sooo bad that I had to write a review on it. Even though it's past midnight and you've probably never even heard of this movie before. Anyway. Taking a deep breath. I shall proceed to tell you in not too much detail about why you should NOT ever ever watch this movie! In my hall of shame, this movie is down there with the likes of Transformers 3! I mean seriously! So, Speedy Singhs (featuring Anupam Kher, Russell Peters and Vinay Virmani) I hadn't heard of the later but he's kind of cute. But that's where it ends. Story? (Haha really? You want to know?) I'm going to try and not be so sarcastic but I so badly want to. I want to stand in front of Anupam Kher and hear so...

I've been on a tremendous backlog of movie reviews having suddenly seen so many of them in quick succession! Bare with me while I attempt to jot down all that I wanted to say about these movies, however late I might be. :) So first up, Agneepath. Unfortunately I haven't seen the original or at least I don't have any memory of seeing it so I'm not going to be able to do a fair comparison of this vs that, but then again, maybe that's a bonus point for the new movie because I've gone in with no expectations and no biases. Though to state the obvious, every person I've spoken to about this movie, says that the original was better, but the remake is quite good too. Storyline? Family of three, mother, father and son living in Mandwa, a tiny village at the coast of Maharashtra. The father's a progressive masterji and runs the school in the village, encouraging the villagers to stand up for their rights and protect themselves against the general tyrannies...

Rarely have I gone and seen a movie on the first day of its release. By chance yesterday it was MI4. To give me the benefit of doubt, I haven't seen the previous movies but I'm guessing that shouldn't make my review biased. On the whole, I felt the movie was a lot of brawn and no brain. And the action was great, but I didn't come out feeling wow. First of all, my expectations were dashed when I booked tickets for an Imax screen, expecting a 3D experience! :P Clearly I didn't read the poster too well. That apart, the movie was fast-paced, kept you hooked, had some punchy dialogues here and there, and around average acting from everyone else. Tom Cruise was good, I mean he was great, but somehow my response was more on the lines of, 'At this age, he's doing this stunts, that's a WOW' Maybe I'm being scathing, maybe I'm being overcritical, maybe you would like it, but I was not so happy. The underlying plot without revealing much is that Tom...