2010 : Through the looking glass

So as we prepare to bid farewell to 2010 and usher in the New Year I want to look back over the last 12 months. It’s the last day of 2010 and I’ve been looking back through the bloggy archives remembering the year. I’ve always loved that I can go back through old posts and its kind of like a diary showing me where I was and what I was up to. To say the year was eventful would be a gross understatement, I have crossed many milestones of my life in this year. Most of them unplanned I think.  I think it’s a norm to do a month by month summary of some of my favorite moments of the year, But being a wannabe iconoclast, I restrain myself from doing that.

Cisco : 2010 started with a career switch. I started my journey at Cisco on Jan 4th. I am about to complete a year in Cisco next week and I have loved every moment so far. Fortunate again to work with some best ppl and making lots of new friends here. Looking forward for a long journey here.

My i20 : I bought my first Car this year. Thanks to a lot of R and D and test drives of possibly every car by Sethu, I narrowed down to i20 as my choice. My parents long time dream to own a car became a reality. Only one medium long drive so far, Looking forward to many long drives on my car in years to come.

Leaving 114 : Moving out of 114 was one of not-so-happy things on this year but I would say that friendship is beyond the bounds of a house. I still have an identity of 114 boy , I still have membership of 114 group on FB and what more a spare key to 114. I do visit 114 at-least once a month for my haircut(LOL)

Bye Bye Shimoga : After years of thought, my Dad decided to sell off our Shimoga house this year. Moving from Shimoga winding up everything was one of the low point of the year for my parents. I have spent a significant amount of my life in that home and I still call that my home. I visited my shimoga home couple of times after we gave it away. I still ask my friends to check on that place. Making so many relatives sad and bidding them a good-bye with moist eyes are the memories etched forever.

Being Bangalorean : After a year and half of persuasion , My parents moved to Bangalore this year. This must be one of the best time of their life to see all their kids living so close-by. My sis and her kids are living next door and my Bro and his family stays a couple of mins away. After they moved to Bangalore, We have celebrated all the festivals in a huge festive mood and we have spent so much time together as a family. So if somebody asks me now, ‘where are you from?’ , I answer them, Shim….Err….Bengaluru.

Hello Cuties!! One of the most happiest moment of this year or may be my life. My cute nieces moved to Bangalore and what more they are literally my next door neighbors. I had got fed up of seeing them in pictures. They used to visit shimoga once a year or something. Now they are my next door neighbors and I am loving clicking their pics and videos. It’s such a nice age to see them grow.

Travel : I traveled a bit this year. It’s not the destination that matters but the journey. We went to Kanyakumari. It was one of the best drive to the southern trip of India. I went to Chickmagalur and I saw the house where I had spent my childhood. I will always cherish my trip to Goa with the 114 gang. The Hyderabad trip was memorable too. I went alone   couple of times to Goa as pilgrimage to temple. I went on not to long drive to Ghati subrahmanya on my Car with my family. The last trip of this year was a full family trip to Vellore Golden Temple.

Wedding Season : Three of my best friends Venki, Nagi and Sumanth got married this year. There were a lot many marriages this year and attending them with the gang have accumulated many wonderful memories. I wish all those couple a lifetime of happiness. I expect 2011 to continue on this trend , at-least 2 guys from my team are gonna get married. I expect more profile pictures on FB turning from single face to a couple snap.

Namma Mane : After a bit of house hunt ,  I have finally found ‘the one’ place I would be soon calling ‘Home’. This happened by kinda accident, but I was super happy with the house. I have booked this apartment and have the legal documents now, Have given those documents to a lawyer for a legal opinion. If everything goes well, I would be signing on the dotted line soon.

So there it is, A few hours left in this year now. With every ending, starts a new beginning. Hoping the year 2011 will have many more memorable moments and many more milestones crossed.

Let’s clank our glasses for 2011.

Cheers and Happy New Year!!!

Home is not a place, It’s a state of mind

It was a lazy Sunday afternoon. Just like any weekend, I hadn’t done anything worthwhile. I was pretending to sleep when the door bell rang. He was right on time, Dad asked if we could go with him. I thought ‘what the hell, Lets Go!!’

Dad has been keen on buying a house for long time now and he was actively looking around. I was keen too but the word ‘active’ wouldn’t be the appropriate association with me. Dad was in talks with few real estate agents and had viewing of many places. I too accompanied him to see few houses but I never felt any house to be ‘THE ONE’. The first step was to decide on the location. Staying in banaswadi since some 6 months now, My parents have taken a liking for Banaswadi , Everything for my parents was close-by and I took less than half hour to office. It was close to MG road area, just couple of KM to Indiranagar area too. So kinda strategically located to most things. So we decided to start our search around Banaswadi/Kasturi Nagar/HBR or HRBR layout and then spread out our hunt.

The next step on our hunt was the never-ending argument was on Independent House V/S Apartment. I was initially pro-apartment but with many issues we were seeing in our current rented apartment , I was leaning towards an Independent house. The resale value and mainly the independence in making decisions pertaining to the house was a favorable thing for the independent house. On the other hand, as we were seeing with our current apartment, The Apartment had more security and the maintenance guy who was very helpful in household chores. With so many arguments we finally just patched up and agreed to make any decision on need basis and to keep an open mind on both things. I started to keep an eye for the ‘For Sale’ hanging outside any buildings in nice locality.

The biggest roadblock with an independent house was the ‘location’ and bloody high price! Dad saw few houses but they were too interior and the neighborhood wasn’t too. The houses in narrow lane with sometimes no proper parking and if everything is well, The houses fly off our budget. With most apartments the problem was it was on some 4th floor or 5th floor. A few were over priced too. Dad saw so many houses without liking them and I went along to few houses that he was interested in. I couldn’t see myself calling any of these places as ‘Home’.

So this Sunday 18th Dec , Our current apartment’s landlord had come for something. While we were in conversation, He happened to mention that he has a couple of more apartment projects under progress. We expressed our interest and he told that afternoon anytime between 3 and 4.30 would be a good time for us to have a viewing. When I agreed, Dad was surprised that I agreed to move out of the couch. I was more active and happy from a couple of days and I had in fact seen a ‘For Sale’ board in front of an apartment building the very previous day.

So its 3! The guy came and took us for a viewing. I had a mixed feeling about the locations, It was almost kinda right next to the Mukunda Talkies fly over. The road was not too narrow but still the neighborhood didn’t make me too happy. The apartment had 2-bhk and 3-bhk but both had almost same carpet area. I liked only the penthouse but it was on the 4th floor and wasn’t comfortable for my parents. So it was again a disappointment. While we were coming back, I just remembered the ‘For Sale’ board I had seen the previous day. I just mentioned it to my Dad and we thought ‘why not!’ . The building looked very good from the outside.  When we got a chance to see it from inside, it felt home. The location was perfect, The house was spacious, The build quality was perfect, Its on Ground floor/ground level, so perfect, It has ample parking space for 2 cars, Has ample space around for walking and had skating rink and play area for kids. Most importantly, I could see myself living in this place. As ppl say, Home is not a place, It’s a state of mind. I loved this place but kinda expected to be way over our budget. When we talked to the builder the next morning, we were pleasantly surprised. I paid booking advance for this house the very next day.

If everything goes well, I will be signing a house sale deed soon. If that happens, A sequel to this blog titled ‘Home sweet Home‘ should be out soon.

Gussa-rish

I used to be a Hrithik Roshan fan and I was very much looking forward for this movie. My expectations were terribly lowered when I read the reviews. The various reviews kinda killed my desire to see this movie on big-screen. My bachi-kuchi Hrithik loyalty pushed me to get a pirated DVD of the movie and give it a try. The Tag line of this movie was “Fall back in love with life”. Hrithik gave press statements that his character in ‘Guzaarish’ is the biggest superhero. He learnt how to live life after playing this role. Even with low expectations, I still had a vague idea on how the movie should be.
When I finished this movie, I was wondering if Hrithik and Sanjay Leela Bansali were talking about this movie which I saw or if the pirated movie had a pirated story/plot. This was one of the most boring movie I had ever seen. It’s a tragedy that  SLB can command the best of resources in Bollywood including all-important finance and still come up with insipid plots with gloss and razzle dazzle trying to compensate for utter lack of content. It’s unbelievable that SLB charged 25 Crore fee for this movie which is having a total budget of 80 Crore. Whats more unbelievable that somebody is actually ready to pay him 25 Crore!!  To say the least, some of the supposedly best scenes of the movie are ‘inspired’ from foreign movies. The core idea is from some spanish movie “The Sea inside” , The house-fly on nose scene from ” The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”.  Anyway, Overlooking everything I have said so far, Let me tell you why the movie is pricking me so much  and yeah.. “Spoiler Alert Ahead”.

Hrithik is a world-phamous Magician who meets with an accident during one of his act. He becomes a “quadriplegic”, that is he cannot feel anything from below his neck. When the movie starts he already is a celebrity, Despite of being a quadriplegic, He has lived his life in dignity for 14 years. He is ‘supposed’ to be an inspiration to all the other ppl with this condition, He writes an inspirational book and becomes a Hero to more ppl who suffer depression in life. On his radio show, he inspires ppl to live, They show a person who changed his mind from suicide after he had conversation with our Hero.So far so good. One fine day our hero wants to Die. This person who is an inspiration to other ppl wants to die. The only question that any person with common sense would think is ‘WHY” , If he has survived this condition for 14 years and is living with dignity, why the sudden urge to Die. To be honest , The only reason I watched the whole movie was to find the answer to this question. This question was not answered and I didn’t see the point of the whole movie. Hero files a petition for mercy death and its dismissed by the court. He then launches a segment on his Radio show to get support for his death petition. Naturally, he being an inspiration to others, he doesn’t get a single supporter. Now.. If only Mr.Director could let our Hero explain or at-least try to convince why he has decided to die. alas, he just smiles! With all this going on we come to know that Hero’s mum is alive. How a mother can leave her son alone in this condition just beats me. At least she should have come when his petition to die becomes a talk-show topic. Our Hero appeals in the court again for Mercy death , SLB tries to show us as if our Hero is going out of his house for the first time in 14 years. To  say the least, This to me was very funny. In the initial part of the movie , hero was shown making inspirational speeches at schools during his book release and all. Now our Director forgets everything and tries to paint a picture like our Hero was trapped in this house for 14 years. This kinda kills the idea that our Hero lead a dignified life for 14 years.SLB is suddenly trying to victimize our Hero. His lawyer explains in the court that it was too difficult for our Hero to come out of his house! To be honest, He didn’t even make an effort to move his toe, for gods sake, He is a vegetable already! He cannot move a toe. This lack of attention to details makes this movie silly. The court scene is moved to Hero’s Mansion and his lawyer kills all the arguments of the defense lawyer. This doesn’t impress the Judge at all!! If the judge just wanted to pass a judgement whats the point of this court scene. The judge finally asks our Hero to make his point. This was potentially the most powerful scene of the movie and if our Hero had made a valid point here, I would have not hated this movie as much. Alas, Hero doesn’t thinks outside the box,He only thinks inside the box.

I will not even go into the allegedly romance between the leads, I was least interested in that. The Magical flashbacks were good but didnt help, The plot of his student again didn’t help. Most part of the movie, I didn’t care what was going on. I didn’t feel for the characters, the audience never feels the pain of this Hero. I still don’t understand during which part of the movie the audience will ‘fall back in love with life’. If not Aishwarya, I would have loved to kill this Hero way before and end this movie before the interval 🙂

An ending note, If anybody wants to see a movie on this genre, I would highly recommend ‘My sister Keeper’. This movie is about a 13-year-old girl who sues her parents for medical  emancipation. That is, The little girl is expected to donate her kidney to her sister suffering from leukemia, She sues her parents that they are making her donate that against her will. This is one of the most sensitive and well-made and touching movie I have ever seen. You care so much for the characters that unless you are a robot, it will move you to tears.