At last…broke the jinx!

This year will always be special…for it is the year the greatest jinx of my life has been broken.

This blog post is mainly to thank (though most of them wouldn’t accept it and would throttle me if I say ‘thanks’ :D) all those who’ve unintentionally and most unwittingly broken the jinx.

Although I’ve celebrated all my birthdays with great fervor and each of them has its special moments, the birthdays (ya, plural :P) I’ve celebrated this year will remain the most special.

Thanks to my birthday falling on a weekday during the vacations most of the time (a deadly combination when you are accessible to neither your friends nor family), or having commitments like exams/ souvenirs (:D) or things going wrong or whatever other reasons, it’s been 10 long years since I’ve celebrated my birthday, ON MY BIRTHDAY. Not only that, due to the same reason and various other reasons, it’s been the same duration of time since I’ve cut a birthday cake! (Birthday cakes are usually not cut other than on the birthday, except in IT companies :P, which was good for me btw :D as you will see...).

In the beginning I tried to prevent the jinx as much as possible, but soon realized that it was as inevitable as, well, my jinx, and gave up. Till last year whenever anyone asked me about what I would do on my birthday, I would say ‘I will sit at home and watch TV’ and enjoy the weird expressions on their faces.

This year – no vacation but my b’day falls on a weekend! And when there's a bandh!  :(
And I dared not plan anything other than shutting up and sitting at home!

And then my wonderful friends and cousins surprised me that day and broke the jinx!

So, why the late thanks?

I had another wonderful surprise today when my team members most unexpectedly arranged another birthday bash (combined with the b’days of 3 others, but anyways broke the jinx again) today!!!

So I thank

My friends for surprising me (u really got me that day!) and coming all the way in spite of the bandh (thanks also to those who wanted to come but couldn't becoz of the bandh) and breaking the jinx…

My cousins for enduring the long distance travel and making the surprising arrangements for my birthday regardless of the bandh and breaking the jinx…

My colleagues for surprising me today and breaking the jinx…

You know how some small gestures go a long way and unwittingly change a person’s perspective of something? ....

Tindly Dum Fry

No, this is not a recipe and hence is in the right blog...

Everytime I don't take my lunch box to college...er...office and have to eat at the cafetaria, one infamous (in my mind) dish pops up in the menu - 'Tindly Dum Fry'.

I used to have an aversion towards the name of the dish and never ever cared to find out what 'tindly' is for many months and I used to skip taking the buffet whenever that dish was served. Finally, 3 weeks back, I dared to try out the dish and found out that 'tindly' is Ivy Gourd or 'Dondakaya'. I managed to taste it, but hated the way it was made by the cafeteria.

As sadness and grief makes poets out of men (as in mankind), the agony 'Tindly Dum Fry' was subjecting me to, caused a poem to flow out of me within minutes of eating the horrendous dish.

Here it is:

Why why why
Why Tindly Dum Fry

Everytime I ate
That was what they made

Tindly tindly who art thou?
Did I ever hurt you somehow?


ROFL!!!


Why did I release this blog now if I ate the dish and made up the poem three weeks back? After three whole weeks of eating from my lunch box, I decide to give it a break and plan to eat at the cafeteria today, and guess what I see in the menu...

Telugu Movie Gyan…Unleashed!!!

I switched on the TV today afternoon, wondering if any good movies were being telecast and I chanced upon a Telugu movie in a channel. I started watching it and could not believe my eyes at the inane stuff they were showing. I had a feeling that almost all scenes in the movie were picked off from other movies. I could’ve just stopped watching, but, somewhere deep down I had some hope that the movie would turn out to be better; as I continued to watch, this hope kept diminishing.

And then, my ordeal was cut short by a power-cut. Hence, no movie review (I don’t think I would’ve taken the pains to write a review for that crap anyways)…

…but it left me seething at what most Telugu movies dole out year after year.

So, here’s a compilation of Telugu movie ‘gyan’:

Caution: Reader discretion is advised

The ‘hero’ -

• The hero is always the most crude person; he almost never has a proper education, even if he does, is in 90% of the movies, unemployed

• He always has a friend who is the biggest bakra anyone has ever seen or a bunch of good-for-nothing friends

• Either he has a family - father, mother and mostly a little sister, rarely an elder sister and never a brother, or he is an orphan!!!

• The hero’s family is shown mostly during the intro, then once for introducing the heroine to them and then they are completely forgotten about till the wedding (of the hero and heroine in case you were wondering)

• The hero’s parents always pester him about his job/ education etc., but they never bother about whom he’s gonna bring home as his wife! They always oppose our hero for every tiny thing whether it matters or not but they never oppose his choosing the heroine!

• The hero’s sister mainly exists so that the heroine can be her friend and hence get introduced to the hero or for convenient communication between the hero and heroine in tough times

The ‘heroine’ -

• Our heroine, who is the most beautiful and the most dumb creature on the planet, always enters the movie in the first 15 minutes. The ‘entry’ of the heroine is usually when it rains, or atleast when the wind is blowing like mad, and then there’s the focusing of our heroine from bottom to top or her behind (oh bother!)

• No matter how ugly and/ or old our hero is, the ‘heroine’ is always a sweet young thing, the younger the better (even teens will do)

• The heroine was introduced as a sweet young thing right? After the intro somehow, she turns into a mean, arrogant thing to make things difficult for our ‘hero’

• The heroine is always to be engaged/ engaged (thank God never married :P) to another guy (who is NOT THE ‘hero’). No matter how decent, sweet, handsome, educated this ‘other’ guy is, poor thing, he can never be THE hero and can never exceed him!

       In most of the movies, I did not understand why the heroine chooses the hero over that guy! After all, he’s much better than the hero in many ways and the heroine’s parents like him too! :D

• The other guy whether good or bad or much much better than the hero, always has to give up the heroine, either reluctantly (after some ‘dishum dishum’) or by sacrifice (after a long horrendous speech by this sacrificing bakra on what ‘Love’ is and how parents should always agree to such crap

• The heroine’s dad is always big and bad and always wears white starched cotton shirts and mostly a dhoti and has a big curved moustache. He is 90% of the time a gangster (the highest in the ranks), or a factionist or just plain bad for no reason (our hero has to have challenges to live upto his title right?)

• The heroine’s dad (the villain, if the guy the heroine is engaged to is good) always has a huge convoy of white cars (before it was the Ambassador, now it’s the Tavera) and a huge gang of ‘rowdies’ who wear huge white starched cotton shirts which remain spotless even after all the ‘dishum dishum’ and slaughtering and bloodshed (wonder what detergent they use!)

• The most ridiculous thing I’ve seen in any movie: The convoy of dazzling white cars enters the scene and the heroine’s dad’s goons poke their hands and heads out of the cars’ windows and swing the swords and guns round and round in the air!

• If the heroine’s dad is not big and bad, but a little big and a little bad, then she will have an elder brother, who is also a little big and a little bad, but is pesky and hates the hero to the core and does anything to keep the hero’s eyes off his little sis

• The heroine is always a damsel in distress (even though she has a rich dad, good education, is extremely beautiful, is engaged to the most suitable boy her dad can get, has a huge bunch of friends (who are initially shown in the movie, but then they are totally forgotten about) etc. I just can’t understand what the heroine’s problem is…

The fights…

• When the villain/ villains/ ‘rowdies’ hit the hero, there is seldom any noise and hardly any impact on our hero. When the hero, who is weak and thin and most of the times old too, hits the rowdies it makes a ‘dishum dishum’ sound (nowadays just a ‘dash dush dish’ kinda sound) and one knock is enough to blow their brains out or send them flying through the air and land them on some wooden or concrete object…which then breaks

• Sometimes the hero is first hit black and blue by the villains and blacks out, but then he miraculously wakes up and beats the villains to pulp, thanks to a cry of despair by the heroine

• The heroine is ALWAYS present when the hero fights with the villains

• Even if the hero is fatally stabbed, he will continue to fight the goons, but if a goon is even scratched, he will fall to the floor with a thud and never get up

• The most important thing – the goons attack the hero ONE AT A TIME, even if they come in hordes. Sometimes, to break the monotony they attack in 2’s and 3’s and place themselves so strategically that the hero can beat ‘em all up in one go. They might also (though rarely) stand in a circle around our hero and wait for their turn patiently to get beat up!

The songs…

I better stop now…this post has been my longest so far. I surprised myself by writing so much; it’s high time I stopped watching senseless Telugu movies!

Note: Not all Telugu movies are that bad and senseless - sadly, MOST of them are, and then there are some which make you want to tear your hair out. I somehow find the older movies to be more sensible than the newer ones…I’m saving this for another post though.