EY 08-09 – Miscellaneous activities

 Though last post really didn't cover the entertainment part but please bear with that section because it really has a huge potential; however if you really want to write off then it's not an issue as those are more on a non-operating entertainment income side. Hence, let me get back to the operating part again. The second leg of what I left behind in the previous to previous post.

Well, wonder is what sets us apart from other life forms. No other species wonders about the meaning of existence or the complexity of the universe or themselves. And as my friends know that I wonder a lot; so while wondering I found that I was having a golden time at my hand during the break between the date of convocation and the date of joining. That was sort-of unique time which won't probably happen again precisely because it was the time when I had the job and all kind of securities associated to it but no responsibilities or stress associated to it because I haven't had joined by then.

So, I used that time for a lot many things, major part was dedicated to socializing. My friends during engineering used to say that I'm so fond of attending the marriages or functions in general that I'm just one invitation card or a call away from attending the namkaran ceremony of grandson of buaji of my friend's landlord. I lived up to my image and attended as many as 11 functions (I hope I've been to recall all of them) during that time.

Secondly, I devoted a huge chunk of my time in pursuing those interests which have been pending for a long time, like swimming and music. I swimmed a lot, around 3 hrs a day, which is incidentally more time spent than that on studies during my academic days. I honed my guitar skills as well and raised myself to at least bearable level on that front. Normally, people don't get bored when I'm around (explicitly testified by one of my brutally-honest friend in our IIM Yearbook and one female friend from school days) and that's primarily because I talk useless things a lot which keep them wondering what those talks could actually mean and meanwhile, they forget about getting bored. So, to add to my PJs {Peyush's jokes (look even the full-form is a PJ)}, I've got one more thing in form of guitar to make people suffer for all the menaces they have done so far in their lives.

Well, last few lines have been sort-of-boastful so excuse me for that. Anyways, coming ahead of the break; let's talk about Mumbai stint. Well, I tried a lot doing a lot of activities but failed miserably at all fronts. I was very intermittent with all the pursuals; whether it was guitar, singing (Himesh instilled this hope that if he can then lesser mortals like us can, as well) or swimming. Moreover, I joined gym to keep up with the physical routine in absence of sports club and swimming pool; however I hit the gym on just six occasions in the period of three months so you can understand the extent of my bulging bisceps. Thus, due to my sheer laziness, everything ended in either zilch or approximately zilch.

However there was one activity which I could follow to a certain satisfactory level and that was 'Teach India'. Though I was a bit irregular with it as well, but overall I rate my performance 'satisfactory' as I managed to achieve the targets set on institutional and individual basis. I'm now eagerly waiting for the next year's version so as to contribute with even higher efficiency. One more thing which made this activity more memorable than any single activity in last year was the entertainment associated with satisfaction. I mean it might sound a bit clichéd but it was definitely very satisfying and emotional time to be there. Thank you Times of India! And how can this lekha-jokha get away without the mention of my two flatmates- Nishant (the creater of "three awesomely pathetic lives" – a sort of biography of three people which resembles a bit to the people you might know) and Sandeep (who can make me run for the money in PJs). They have been a partner in lot of the above mentioned entertainment activities (strictly those activities which have been mentioned here, so don't let your grey cells go elsewhere).

Well, this was the account of activities for the EY 08-09. I hope to perform better next year, and wish you all very best for the same, too.

 
 

Happy Birthday to me :-)

EY 08-09 – News & Media

News & Media are not a surprise entrants in the entertainment year, for obvious reason. I bet that not even Bejaan Daruwala or Sunita Menon would have been able to predict say 10 years before, about this meteoric rise of 'news' in entertainment segment. A lot of credit for this goes to 'India TV' which brought-in the concept of news entertainment. This is quite similar on the lines of WWE (erstwhile WWF) which calls itself Sports Entertainment; now that's again pretty disputed as many people, that includes one of my flatmate, can't understand as how WWE can possibly be included in Sports category. Well, I don't want to get into this side as in this blogpost, 'entertainment' word is more important and it doesn't matter if it comes from sports or pseudo-sports or news as long as it has some value proposition to offer.

India TV was no doubt, a pioneer in the news entertainment but there is no denial to the fact that almost every news channel from NDTV to Aaj Tak to Star News to CNN-IBN is more than eager to follow the herd. In my opinion, it's directly dependent on the audience's taste. Today if the people want the news-channels to broadcast this, then they are catering to their demands. One or two channels like "Headlines Today" or "VOI" tried to create a niche for them but didn't succeed to that extent despite being really quick on news-coverage side.

Besides, if we look at the performance of news-channels then I can safely said that they mightn't have proven high on the expectations of intellectual society but they have delivered perfectly on the parameters they set for themselves. They were able to sensationalize "Ayushi Murder Case" to that extent that today somebody may get double thoughts while identifying Mrs. Pratibha Patil but won't stumble even once to identify Late Ms. Ayushi. This is the power of media and they have (mis)utilized to full extent this year.

However, there were some disappointing moments as well, like in the case of 26/11 coverage which once again raised a big debate on the issue of media-censorship. I think that media should be free of censorship barring some rated-r categories of coverage; but they should be matured enough to decide the limit which they won't breach in any circumstances, even not for TRPs. Again, this would gradually come with the viewers' wants and requirements.

Well, I've been trying real hard since the beginning of this post, to focus on just the entertainment part of news but I've not been able to resist the temptation to move into the other things. You may attribute it to my old-fashioned mentality of looking at news channels at the much-talked-about fourth pillar but can't help it.

 
 

P.S. – Tomorrow would be the last post of this series, do remember 1. to read the post 2. wish me "happy birthday to you" ;-)

 

EY 08-09 – Sports & Movies

Well, the year begins on a high note with most of the news channel being confused whether to put IPL in Sports section or in Entertainment section. I didn't want to go into that debate so named my blog-post on both of them. So, IPL was definitely a very big thing to happen for both Sports and Entertainment in this country. How for sports- Ask Swapnil Asnodkar(s) or Shawn Marsh(es) of this world how much they gained in both economic sense with this ultimate money-spinner and in professional sense with this unprecedented platform to showcase their talent. How for entertainment- Ask the cinema owners countrywide who suffered with an under-booked matinee shows or the TV channel owners (apart from Set Max of course) who suffered their worst TRPs in almost a decade. The biggest beneficiaries (not in economic sense) were definitely the people like me who had nothing better to do (in fact, there is nothing better to do, even now).

By June 1^st, this extravaganza was over and so was my can-be-called honeymoon period; and had to move to Mumbai on 8^th of the same month in search of daana-paani. This shift made me suffer on sports front as I had to download-and-watch the recorded Grand-Prix or Cricket Match or Wimbledon final or similar things. This is due to the lack of television, which is again a big story and can be covered in some other post. So, overall sports couldn't contribute much to the entertainment part except for the news/blogs at sites like cricinfo, espnstar, etc. However, the movie spree didn't suffer in fact new horizons were opened in front of me to watch even those movies (I didn't want to use any kind of abuses) which don't get released in Jodhpur.

In EY 08-09, I watched Sarkar Raj (Decent movie however my friend didn't understand why they kept on singing "govinda, govinda" in the background when Govinda didn't even have a guest appearance), Jannat (Sonal Chauhan, will you marry me), Race (Watched with a big group of friends, and thus missed out on many moments of the picture due to being busy in the baqar all the time…overall, the time spent was worth it), Singh is King (This movie happened because my train was running late and well, I don't regret it), Bachna Ae Haseeno (Kaash meri life esi hoti), Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na (No Aditi across the globe can be more thankful to any other single movie; and yeah, overall an entertaining watch though not a compelling one), Rock On (Prachi Desai, will you marry me), Kidnap (Offoh, what was that; I've never seen this before that people started chatting in the cinema hall because the movie bugged them big-time and neither could they simply run away because it was raining outside; Lord Indra and Sanjay Gadhvi literally 'kidnapped' us), Dark Knight (Wow, and I thought Batman movies were boring), Dostana (watched with two guys, should I say any more), Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi (Anushka Sharma, will you marry me), Ghajini (Huh, splendid success but didn't impress me), Chandni Chowk to China (He he, critics have already slammed this movie beyond recognition so let me not make my hands dirty), Luck By Chance (Casting coup of the decade; found it watchable), Billu (Don't know what to say- didn't find it interesting, but neither was I bored), Delhi 6 (Sonam Kapoor, will you marry me), A Curious Case of Benjamin Button (This was really an out-of-the-box stuff), Street Kings (I wonder why was no dialogue in this movie free of the 'f' word; watchable on lappy, nothing more), Gulaal (Simply Superb; haven't seen anything like this before, barring Haasil).

This list was strictly about the movies I watched in cinema hall. Besides, I watched a lot many films on laptop (out of which I regret the most about not watching "A Wednesday" in theatres) and that summed up the movies part of EY 08-09. As you can see, I had a lot of fun despite being the non-availability of television for most of the time; and managed to propose as many as four girls (though, without any success) in the meantime. So, overall it was a comparable performance to EY 2007-08 in Sports & Movies section, if not better.


P.S. – Nav Varsh (Nav Sanvatsar), Gudi Padwa aur Chetichand ki sabko hardik shubhkamnayen; enjoy!!!

EY 08-09

So, I'm back yet again and coincidentally back with the coinage of new terms (for starters, read my post 'YAM').  Well, in other circumstances I would have loved to write on any of the two ongoing hot topics: the unexpected political drama woven around the IPL and the expected political drama woven around the IPL.  Here, IPL stands for Indian Premiere League and Indian Political League respectively. However, I'm sparing these topics for our politicians and cricket-politicians (who are already giving Advanis & Gandhis run for their money) though would definitely like to come back to them some other fine day.

Anyways, coming back to EY; let me not build the reality show-alike suspense around the full form of this term. So, ladies and gentleman, EY stands for 'Entertainment Year'. Just as we've FY (Financial Year) or AY (Academic Year) so do we have an EY! Well, this year surprisingly begins on 29^th March which is coincidentally my birthday as well, and ends on 28^th March. There have been two big reasons behind coming up with this post today. Firstly because by this mean, I might get an extra birthday wish this Sunday from some unexpected person who mayn't like me but may like my blog and thereby would drop in a wish through calling up/orkut/facebook/gtalk/sms/email/in-person or by any other mean. This way, I could be able to break my 2008 record of 89 wishes. On the record, this number represents only those people who have just wished me and not kicked me along with it. I celebrate 'March' as the salvation-month-for-birthday-bumps and don't kick anyone. This helps me in reducing the level of pain a bit after all my experience says that recently enraged people often hit very badly, ouch!

Moreover the second reason behind the timing of this post is that we are running in the last week of EY 08-09 and it's an old good habit of human beings to recall the happenings of the previous year and ponder over them. Most of the times, these recalls can be horrible like in the case of examination results or the financial results. Both results share a peculiarity- whenever we face a bad exam result or a bad financial result, we always act surprise, awestruck and blame the circumstances or the God or many other factors for it; though we know from inside, these results reflect nothing but our yearlong performance. I can't get more into this: one, because the current students might complain that I've passed out so have lost the right to comment on examinations in general and results in particular; and two, because one of my boss is CFO of the company and he won't like me to talk about the connection between performance and financial results for obvious reasons.

Therefore, I've planned to write a string of posts on the happenings of EY 08-09 in near future. Well, I won't disclose the exact number of posts and the reason is pretty obvious; this number heavily depends on the probability of 'procrastination' and 'enthusiasm' in the coming days. So, let' pray that enthusiasm prevails over procrastination or even vice-versa. I won't mind as long as you are praying something for me; look good/bad are pretty subjective so it's alright with me.

 
 

P.S. – I don't know why my posts have to conclude with some global or philosophical or baqar statement. Please spare me for this.