Some break!

I am off blogging for a while. Will come back in mid-November. As if it really matters! :)

Den'tales'

Some of the most excruciating moments of my life were spent recently in my dentist's clinic.

The last time I had been to my dentist was almost two years back. I guess that would be a reason for his charging me a fortune this month! (Dentists should be recovery agents. Wonder why nobody ever thought of that!!!)

Anyway, earlier this month, I decided to pay a long-due visit to the dentist. (My teeth were wanting to turn into shades of brown. Or maybe, they wanted those gold-plated shells to cover them!) He had one look at my teeth and decided that my teeth had to be scaled and polished. Scaled? Why measure my teeth, I asked him. He laughed and explained that scaling is I-still-have-no-idea!!! Polishing? He said it had become necessary for my teeth were a bit on the colorful side of life! He mentioned that there were to be two sittings and that I should shell out a fortune!!! (psst, secret! I don't wanna be called a goat!)

I had absolutely no inkling of what was in store for me. Scaling, bah! I had a root canal done. What could be worse than that, I thought. Unfortunately, my thoughts remained just that. Thoughts.

And so, I waited for my turn in the dentist's clinic - going through newspapers and leafing through Kannada magazines. Bored, I tried to gauge the reactions on the out-going patients' faces. One face looked like Santa Claus's after his tryst with the dentist. Another looked like it had the life sucked out of it! Silly people, I thought. One sitting, and they are all down in the dumps.

Unfortunately, vanities in life never last. I realized that quite effectively, when my turn came.

I was called in. My dentist had a mask over his face. (I thought that was unnecessary. I knew him. Why hide?;) ) His attendants sterilized the equipment and started applying a coating to a thin, sharp needle. (For a fleeting moment, I turned pale!) And then, it started.

'Torture: anguish of body or mind', lists the Mariam Webster Dictionary.
'Torture: scaling of the teeth', is my definition.

What was he doing? The needle drilled into my teeth and gums, like they were a wall and the needle were a nail. Grimace, flinch, clench, grit, whatever conveys the message, I did. My dentist knew it, but worked indifferent. The sadist. It was so tortuous. If karma does dictate life as people claim, then it is a given that I would be the dentist in my next incarnation and he, my patient. A small problem there, though. I will have to wait a whole life! (i.e., if my teeth don't drag me to the dentist again!)

Anyway, after an hour of unbearable torment, my dentist asked me to rinse my mouth. As asked, I rinsed my mouth with water. When I spat back the water, miracle! It had turned into wine. For an instant, I was God. The next, I realized it was blood. My blood, mixed with water. I thought of suing Mr. Dentist for dental abuse. I dropped the idea, realizing that I had to come back to him.

And so it ended. My teeth still were yellow. I was poorer by a thousand bucks. I had to stay up a whole night because of the pain. Last but not least, I had to go back for a second sitting!!!

I took some really hard decisions. I am going to approach a painter the next time I find my teeth yellow. I will ask the local jeweller to cap my teeth if it came to a root canal. If a tooth has to be extracted, I will ask my good friend to punch me at the right spot. (He will be glad to!)

And yes - I will brush twice...nah, thrice a day!!!

Hers?

In a sound recording studio, the sign-board outside the ladies' toilet read - "Hertz"

Trappic!!!

Somebody once said - "Give me space and I will move the world!"

In Bangalore traffic, one says - "Give me space and I will move!"

Keep Rocking!!! Rock on!! - movie review.

A good movie is one which makes you feel good.

Forget about its bigger-than-life settings. Forget about its disconnects with real life rockers. Forget about the corny characters. Forget about its contrite dialogues. Forget about the predictable screenplay. Forget about the rock concerts that would do Shakira proud!!! Forget about the 'that is so stupid' moments.

Rock On!! is a movie which makes you feel good. You come out of the cinema with that typical heart-warming feeling and that is good enough for a bit of selective amnesia.

The direction is a tad better than the other recent Hindi movies. I am sure, though, that the director has made use of his producer's talent as a film-maker. The movie has all the moments that DCH had. The fight between two close friends, the late realization of one towards rapprochement and the death of one of the main characters of the movie. Too much of a similarity. One could be forgiven for thinking that Farhan Akhtar was the director! (Psst...just for the record, Abhishek Kapoor is the director!)

The story, though, fails to score. One of my friends was thinking of a career as a film-maker, no thanks due to the sheer lack of ingenuity on the part of the screenplay. Anyway, the film is about four friends who gang up to form a rock band. Arjun Rampal as Joe, Farhan Akhtar as Aditya, Luke Kenny as Rob and Purab Kohli as KD form a rock band 'Magic'. (Can you believe it, neither could I!!!) The band disbands after Joe has a run-in with Aditya over the (See...you are thinking of becoming a film-maker, ain't you?!) band's association with a leading music channel. However, (again, that same film-maker feeling, right?!) they get back together later for a final gig. (Final? Well, you are clever enough...guess the reason!!!) The other important characters are Debbie as Joe's girlfriend-turned-wife, Tanya as Aditya's ex and Sakshi as Aditya's wife. Of these, Prachi Desai as Sakshi excels. Clearly, she proves quite capable of transiting from the idiot box to the 70mm. She exudes the right amount of sentiment in the space she shares with Farhan Akhtar. Shahana Goswami as Debbie, too, has a pivotal role to play. She manages quite well in her role as Joe's nagging half.

However, I could not quite fathom the fact that Purab Kohli was given one of the minor roles in the movie. A load of talent wasted! Although Farhan Akhtar excels in his role, the character sounds patchy at times. Luke Kenny is good in the first half, but the story makes him look bad in the second. Arjun Rampal is by a long run, the best of the male acts. He acts every bit his character. Getting into the skin of one's character is any day, a tough job, but Arjun makes it look like child's play in the movie. The scene where he exchanges words with Shahana Goswami is moving, as one almost feels sorry for him, split as he is, between loyalties to his friends and to his family.

The music is the real treat of the movie. The title track sounds brilliant. One of the 'nicest' rock songs to hit the Hindi charts, one should say. Pichle Saat Dinon Mein is another track that one would enjoy. The vocals sync so well with the music that one hardly notices the strange sounding lyrics. However, the best is Ye Tumhari Meri Baatein. It is so soothing, that you want to listen to it many times over. The visualization and timing of the song in the movie too, are near-perfect. Sindbad the Sailor, Tum ho Toh and Socha Hai complete one of the best albums in Bollywood today. Kudos to Shankar, Ehsaan & Loy and Javed Akhtar for churning out some real good music!!!

Overall, the film is a good package. One of my friends complained that there is no real climax to the movie. Well, not all movies need to have a climax. Why can't they just be about a period of ones' lives?! You watch Rock On!! and tell me.

In the meantime, let me strum on my guitar. \../
My verdict - 4/5

Knock off your blues!

My friend wanted photos of a recent trip to a waterfall. He asked for them to be copied on to his pen drive. I said I will copy them on to a CD instead, to which he retorted - "No macha, my CD drive is screwed." Another of my friends mocked him - "What were you watching? A blue movie?!"

Alert the Navy

What would you call a witch on the beach and ready to dive into the water?

A submarine sand 'witch'!!!