Mausam movie review

Spoiler Alert: This post reveals the story line (?); but don't worry! The director has already done a terrific job spoiling the movie.

Pick up the horrible incidents that happened in the past 2-3 decades; and create characters that connect all these dots. That's what Mausam is all about. Operation blue star, ethnic cleansing of Kashmiri pandits, terrorism in kashmir, Babri masjid, Twin towers, Godhra... You name it! Every notorious tragedy of the past, is a part of the movie. I liked the fact that the director wanted to show how humanity is buried in the name of differences; but when that is not focused on one incident and virtually everything is taken into the scope of a three hour movie, the result is an extremely long, boring movie; and that's exactly what Mausam is. (Aanaalum padam rommmba mosamnga! :D)

The best part of the movie is the heroine and right from scene 1, she faces trouble wherever she goes. Born in Kashmir, victimized by ethnic cleansing, losing her uncle in Mumbai blasts, missing her lover due to Kargil war, discriminated by the US government after the twin tower attack, escaping death in punjab riots... She is more or less the angel of death in the movie. If I were her, I would better stay home and let the world live in peace.

The other funny aspect was the chemistry between the hero and the heroine. Shahid is obviously shorter than Sonam and he looks like her little brother than anything else. And their ridiculously long love story spanning three decades of riots and violence is just intolerable. On top of this, the director apparently forgot that there is an editing department and there are so many scenes after which you scratch your head, thinking "Why have that scene now?". The climax scene was the best of the lot. Every time a bunch of goons (causing riots as usual) walk around or even remotely get mentioned in a statement, the heroine asks "Who are they?" and Shahid says "They are nameless shadows of death" and this statement is repeated like 3 or 4 times to stress the importance of it. Likewise, with his left arm paralyzed by a flight accident, the hero climbs through the arms of a giant wheel to rescue a child and this part alone takes about 15 mins of the movie. As usual, he rescues the child and his arm becomes functional again. Looks like the director forgot the fact that people have been watching so many movies in the past to automagically understand the result of such sequences.

In short, I wasted about 3 hrs of my time, watching a movie that had no traces of continuity or screenplay in it. Yawwwwn!

Married Wisdom - 1

This is the first post in the long awaited (from my end that is :D) series on marriage; and what you get to learn out of it. This is just a process of making notes along the way to serve as documentation (to me and to that rare person who thinks I'm sensible) and that being said, let's move on to the "What's not said is not understood!" chapter.

Usually, I'm a big fan of abstract expressions and implicit communication. Even in the movies, I love shots that implicitly convey something as opposed to the ones that dramatize the whole thing. Unfortunately, that's the last thing a married man should do. Until you are married, you are like a pet. Free to wander and permitted to do what you want to do, no questions asked, unless it's something incredibly stupid or irritating. The hope there is that you will return home no matter where you wander and you will be in the vicinity no matter how long you keep wandering. The moment you are married, you are expected to be responsive and responsible. Your best friend, your immediate surrounding and even your parents start believing that your life would change drastically after marriage, whether that happens to be true or not. So staying out of touch, forgetting to call, avoiding touchy-feely dialogs are strict no-nos. Unless you say "I love you" nobody is going to believe that. Unless you call, nobody is going to believe you are interested in their welfare. Unless you express, nobody is going to understand you!

So rule 1 in short, if you want to say something, say it instantly and explicitly without the the least bit of ambiguity or abstraction in it.

(To be continued... ;))

A moment to cherish!

I often wonder how nice it would be to have a tool that blogs contents from our mind automatically (of course upon approval and moderation :D), as that's the need of the hour for me. If I even blogged 10% as much as I wanted to, this blog would be overflowing with posts. Of all those events I wanted to blog about, there was one, strong enough to drag me all the way into blogger - India's victory in Word cup.

People who know me well would probably be surprised, as I'm known for being the devil's advocate ever since the Azhar, Jadeja days. Even a couple of days back, I was arguing about how this whole thing is becoming one big masala movie and I was totally sure that India will win, listing out the reasons why a hero should triumph over all disasters in the end. I was stunned when Ravi Shasthri projected a 275 total when Srilanka were making less than 3 runs an over and that turned out to be the exact target for India to chase. IPL scheduled within the next few days, India beating all the old rivals on its way to the final and so many other things made/make me think that there is some form of predefined results involved.

But all that said, I was immensely proud when Indian team lifted the cup and earned the top spot in ODI and here's why.

1. The most awaited moment - I don't know the exact stats; but I'm sure that at least 60% Indian families are interested in cricket in varying degrees. If there has been one thing that all these viewers have been waiting for, it's India's triumph in the World Cup tournaments. Nothing could match a great milestone achieved after a long period of expectation, anxiety and longing. This definitely is one.

2. The respect it earns for the nation - Facebook is flooded with updates, Twitter has no energy to tweet anymore and Gmail Buzz hits the 100+ mark in less than 10 minutes; and everything just boils down the one word - respect. Even people who don't know much about cricket turned their heads to see what is so spectacular about this and why so many people are euphoric. Knowingly or unknowingly, this creates a positive vibe about the country and I felt like I was watching "Invictus" live.

3. The first step to being a superpower - In all these years, I've never known a field where India dominated so much, owning the stakes and having command over things. Cricket without India is almost a fantasy right now and needless to say BCCI now owns the space. From how we were treated a couple of decades ago, this is what I call an achievement.

4. Inspiration - When something good happens, there is always a free supplement to it - inspiration (advice is another). Dhoni is now being studied as a great leader who stood up for the nation, taking charge of things and standing by his decisions. That is something that Indians are going to remember for a long time.

5. The future of sports - If India (hopefully) wins a couple of other tournaments as well, it could very well be the start of the golden era of Indian sports. I sincerely hope this would put an end to the days when over a billion people eagerly wait for a bronze medal to celebrate an "achievement".

Blogging after a break!

I still remember the days when I used to wonder what good a blog could do. I mean, what's the whole point in writing some random stuff online without knowing who is going to read it or without having any kind of guarantee whatsoever that it's going to matter at all. But over the years I realized that blogging, unlike FB, Twitter or any of the "cool" trends, serves like a real vent. Even better, I have an indexed, searchable diary that tells me what I've been thinking on a specific date, with no respect to the years that might've passed in between. To a person like me, often getting lost into thoughts, this for sure is a boon and that's how I get back to blogging irrespective of the breaks that I take in between. This is kind of like a marriage - the initial days you are so expressive, never stay apart and the instinct to be with each other is overwhelming. Over the years, all the superficial things vanish; but the bonding is so strong that you kind of grow into each other.

Speaking of marriage, which is the biggest event that happened in my life quite recently, I've always contemplated and blogged over the topic in general; but nothing would be as realistic as experiencing it, right? I recently realized that I didn't ponder much over one important aspect of this social system - what it does to people. I mean, I've thought about what expectations the couple and/or the parents might be having before marriage, how important it is to ensure that all parties are happy when the couple get engaged, how important it is for the couple to stick to each other, to be flexible/understanding, etc. But the post-marital changes in people related to the couple, is a topic that I never thought of and quite honestly, that comes to me as the most surprising part. I guess I'll try to record these steps and changes and thoughts through my good old, trustworthy, faithful companion - my blog! So in case this sounded the least bit interesting, stay tuned! :)

SQL Server BCP - Nulls getting exported as spaces as opposed to blanks

SQL Server just drove me crazy with a BCP issue today and though I usually don't put a lot of tech-stuff on my blog, this one is well worth it I guess.

The issue:

I had a stored procedure that uses bcp to export data from a table and surprisingly all nulls were being exported as spaces. I tried explicitly using ISNULL to populate an empty string, tried replacing nulls with empty string in the table itself; but no luck. Google didn't have anything useful either.

The solution:

Specifying the COLLATE attribute on all the character columns to use COLLATE SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS as shown below:

[EMAIL_ADDR] [varchar](100) COLLATE SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS NULL

After adding this to the source table, all nulls were exported as blanks with a simple bcp out.

Dedicated to that lone programmer somewhere breaking his/her head to figure out the solution to this issue :)

The Indian "formula"

It's been a pretty hectic schedule at work and I almost forgot that I had a blog. When you are forced to spend a large portion of your day working and your personal life asymptotically tends to zero, you don't get the mood to do anything else with the remaining time. The only activity I've been enjoying these days is playing racquet ball (American version of squash) as it tends to give you the peace of mind that you miss the most. Enough with the off-topic chitchat. Today I was watching the movie "Vivah", a typical formula film that reminded me of Vikraman films; and that combined with the numb philoso-sarcastic (if you will) mood I'm in right now, catalyzed this post. The essential parts of a formula movie...

#1 - A divine protagonist

The hero and/or the heroine of the movie should be too good to be true. So loving, so caring, so selfless, so beautiful/handsome, so forgiving, in short, so unrealistic.

#2 - A cruel antagonist

Antagonists come in two flavors - I'd call them the born-villains and made-villains. Born villain should be soulless, selfish, if it's a male he should booze/smoke/should be the opposite of a teetotaler, kill people like mosquitoes and get away with it; usually starting with a murder in the very first scene of the movie. Made villains are good persons with bad misconceptions. He/she can turn bad even because of the silliest reason one could imagine ex: s/he thought that the world is flat and the protagonist thought otherwise. And just to prove himself/herself, s/he will be behind all insane stuff going on in the movie.

#3 - Sentiment bit

Usually dominated by ladies... Mom, sister, wife, one-side-love, neighbor who has always been sister-like... Someone who eventually gets killed or for whom the protagonist risks his life.

If it's a guy, it's usually the father, a friend or in the worst case a brother; but nothing else. It's hard to believe the protagonist risking life for a distant relative who is a guy (girls are accepted for these roles :D)

#4 - A terrible incident

Something terrible should invariably happen in the movie. Some accident, a betrayal, a murder, sudden poverty, death of the most important family member in the most crucial moment that turned the family to beggars overnight. Usually this happens just before the interval and the second half of the movie will be the phoenix re-incarnation.

#5 - Songs

Whether it's the song that brings out the difficulties of the protagonist or the song that turns the protagonist into a millionaire in minutes, songs are inevitable in a formula movie.

#6 - Villain's expiry

Expiry can be literal expiry or expiry of his/her character. A born villain will usually die and a made villain will transform into a mahatma just a scene before the climax.

How many of these crap movies are we destined to watch? GOK!

Conclusive Conceptions

This is my office. As you could see, I didn't get the biggest, it doesn't even have a window and it might even look a little bit like a glorified store room. But I've made it mine as much as I could and in that attempt, made is as beautiful as I could. The floral painting out there is something I got in the arts exhibition last year. The painter should've used bold yellow on the skies to accent the sunset. But yeah... Better than the junk at the reception, rite? This porcelain paperweight is Chinese and its said to bring good luck; but I don't know. Everyone knows that Chinese are good at selling BS. This pen, the calendar out there, my desktop wall paper and almost everything here is something I liked and chose. But my job...

*Phone gargles*

Just a minute...

"Good Morning. This is Geeks420. I'm Shreya. How can I help you?"
"..."
"Oh yes... yes Mottayyan. We are still trying to fill that position. Can you please forward your resume to Shreyas@geeks420.com?"
"..."
"Yeah. I understand. What is your rate?"

"..."

"Are you looking for benefits?"

"..."

"Ok. I'll forward that to one of our developers right away and let you know. What will be the best number to reach you at?"
"..."
"973...979...2797. Ok! I'll keep you posted. Thanks for calling."
"..."
"Bye"

Well... Where were we? Oh yeah... My job! I'm sure you would be smart enough to infer that my name is Shreya and I work for Geeks420 as a recruiter. An interesting name to a company isn't it? Our boss wanted to name it Geeks to at least have them in the name; but mother internet had conceived too many children at that point making my boss's dream impossible. So he added his birthday 20th April to Geeks and named it Geeks420; but the Indian Penal Code gave a suitable and hilarious perspective to it. Coming back to me, I'm commerce undergraduate, and an economics postgraduate relying ultimately on English which I never learned past my high school. Married to a software engineer working for Verizon, mother of two kids, trying to get more a-holes, if you will, added to this company. In the US, making a living with a single working member becomes tough unless your husband makes truckloads of money. With a husband like mine, you would've to work overtime to compensate.

Before I forget, I've to schedule an interview for the dumbo who just called. He's always available in the market and God knows how he's making a living. You know the worst part? He has a family with two kids... poor souls... and he wants benefits as well. Imagine... Paying him is an overhead and he wants insurance on top of it. Funny rite? And I'm not sure if this guy is one of those 23 yr olds with 10 yrs of experience and a post graduation; like they had a laptop in their mother's womb. Join me and I'll show you around. You wouldn't believe how much crap is going on here!

Do you see the one sitting in the next office? Her name is Priya.

"Hi Priya... How are you?" She's from North India and you could see the arrogance in everything she does. In what way? Well... err... it's hard to explain you know... But you'll feel it. She's another recruiter here. Hardly knows how to talk to a candidate and all her recruits are crappy. Last week she hired a candidate for 120K and you know what? The clients have deemed him unfit this week. Sort of like cutting the company's throat for the commission. All North Indians are like that... you know?

The one next to her is Tracy and I honestly don't know why she is being paid. She eats 6 times a day and walks around the floor for the rest of the time. Yells at the top of her voice all the time and even if she speaks the kindest words in the world you will feel like a wrestler punching you right on your face, particularly the ears. One person I can't stand.

The Chinky guy over there is Charles. He is from Vietnam or some other country that is hard to locate on the world map. But we have a convenient term - Chinky that can be applied to anyone whose eyes aren't wide enough.; and I always call him one. The funny thing is... he calls himself American. Getting a citizenship here and being an American are two different things in my view and this guy doesn't have a clue about it. Another useless recruiter who is so good at losing money gambling. Trust me. If he ever wrote an autobiography and named it "Top 10 ways to lose money gambling", he would've been a millionaire now. Not that he can write that well... you know what I mean... Insane guy loses half his pay cheque or check since we are in the US, gambling every month.

The five offices next to them are occupied by the sales department and don't even get me started on them. False promises stacked over false promises! I find their very sight repulsive. If they were able to get at least 1 customer per 100 phone calls, the company strength would've been doubled now. I think most of them just keep talking to their friends and family. Free lunch, free calls, free trips. Brain naturally dies you see. Useless fellows claiming that they have seen unicorns and angels.

This is Tom's cabin. As you would imagine with any boss's office, this one is naturally bigger than all the offices here with three glass walls. Only after meeting him I started believing in the idiom "Every dog has its day". Every Dilbert story I ever read is like his biography in parts and I get a feeling that being dumb is important to become a boss. There are times I feel intellectually insulted to work for such a guy; but then all bosses across the world are dumb and being a smart person, I can't become one. So there you go!

This is the most interesting part. The "Software Development" division filled with freaks who call themselves geeks. Look at their attitude and you'll know. No one here knows a thing about programming; but they yap about it for hours.

Do I know programming? No no. I hate sitting in front of a computer like an idiot and I think no smart person would do that. So I didn't want to be a programmer. But I know enough to know that these guys have zilch programming knowledge. I'd bet dimes to donuts that these guys don't have half of what it takes to be called geeks. And you know the funny part? We've like a hundred guys back in India who are so intellectually handicapped that these guys end up complaining about them.

I hate to make personal comments; but getting one of these idiots interview a prospective idiot is such a difficult task. They always claim to be busy and I always see them surfing the internet still having the air of "I'm a developer" pride around them. The funny looking guy out there in that greasy white shirt is the one who is supposed to handle the interview today. Just see what happens...

"Hi Praveen. How are you?"
"Am fine..."
"Can you do a screening for me today?"
"Today I'm quite busy. Can you get someone else do it?"
"No Praveen. Tom wants you to personally do this interview. It's an urgent requirement and it shouldn't take more than 30 minutes to screen."
"Well... I'll let you know by noon"

Let's walk back to my office as we talk. See... Didn't I tell you? Unbelievable arrogance. Until I say "Tom" he wouldn't even say anything close to a yes.

*Cell phone rings*

"Hello..."
"..."
"Yeah this is Shreya..."
"..."
"Hey hi... I just spoke to the developers. Have you sent me the resume?"
"..."
"Oh... Ok! Let me know whenever you are ready."
"..."
"Thanks Bye..."

*hangs up*

"you idiot!"

It's at Mottayyan again. God knows who named him! Says he's got a doctor's appointment that he forgot and he'll not be able to attend the interview today. What a lame way of saying "I have another interview to attend"? I'm sure he'll call back tomorrow and I should go begging one more time.

Good God... Why wouldn't I hate this job when I work for a boss who knows nothing but being a boss, trying to find arrogant freaks with zilch programming knowledge who will end up giving the "I'm too busy" crap to me? I hate this job so much and the day I get out of this job will be the happiest day in my life and this office would really go bonkers when that happens.

*phone gargles again*

"Yes Tom"
"..."
"Sure"

One minute. My boss wants to boss over me for some time. Dilbert time. I'll be right back.

*Ten minutes later*

You know what? The a-hole fired me. Says I'm not doing much work and they can manage without me. And you know the worst part? People have complained that my attitude is not good. How untrue and unfair? He didn't even think about my family and kids. I've been so kind to others. Never said a word about anyone. I so loved my job, you know!

What are you laughing at? People have become so selfish, disrespectful and disloyal these days. I just can't put up with them. Why is everyone...

*Door slams shut... voice fades*