Taare Zameen Par

taare zameen par... 24th dec, most of them were traveling and partying and i was bored to death. Had nothing to do in office and thot the day would be real miserable. It almost came true for the entire day and turned head over heels by night...yeah...i watched "taare zameen par"...a movie about a kid who looks at the world in a different way... I have always felt that great movies are very simple and revolves around people whom we meet daily and TZP is one such movie. How many times have we found kids whom we think are of no good coz they are not good at studies or things which we think are important. The whole movie is about supporting kids and understanding their problems. Many of us fail to understand why few kids cannot grasp things quickly, why they don't do things which are normal. The only thing that matter to us is how good the kids are as per the "society standards". As said in the movie, we train kids for the race where he has to win to survive, it dosn't matter if he dosn't live even one day of his childhood the way he wants. But we don't realize, the most memorable days of our life is our childhood and thats is something we carry a long way. The kids are never given a chance to live their childhood. Parents always want their kids to live their dreams and make them suffer for that. I'm not telling that we should leave the kids to do what they want and waste their time, but there should be a limit till which we should push them and there is a way of doing things. The greatest mistake people do while raising kids is comparing them to other kids. I have faced it myself but it somehow stopped after some time. As said in the movie, all kids are not the same similar to our fingers. Don't pull the fingers to make them same, as this can break the finger. Comparing is something which can destroy a kid beyond repair. How will it be if your kids compare you with the people of your age. For example, how about comparing yourself with lance armstrong or vishwanathan anand. Every kid is different is his own way and has his own qualities. Even if he has nothing special, just remember "he the is the sperm which won against millions of others and made it to real life". We ourselves don't know what we are good at and we expect our kids to know every thing. Its all about grooming a kid towards a better future rather than dumping all our dreams on him and expecting him to carry it. Every kid will learn, just that some are fast and some take more time. I seriously pity the kids today who have no time to play and have fun. 8 hrs of school, 2-3 hrs of tuitions, 2-3 hrs in some other learning activity. With all these things, where is the time to play. The whole marks system makes the kid to just mug up things rather than understanding it. Due to this we see so many of them doing good in school and then fade away later. Childhood is all about having fun and not thinking about anything else and thats why it is always considered to be the best years of our life. The most important thing the movie talks about is "being there for your kid". Its not enough to "care" for your kid by hugging, kissing and pampering him. The most important thing is the be there for him when he needs you. Everyone does mistakes and kids need someone to stand by and help them out and not someone who will scream at them and look down at them. Kids should make mistakes, act foolish, do notorious things, break things, have broken bones and thats why they are called kids ;) Let them be they way they are, they will love it the most and grow in a better way :D Thinking of it, it is the same wit every person, let it be kids or grown ups. Every relation needs to be groomed for it to flourish, every person does mistakes and everyone needs time to learn. The most precious thing a person can give to another is time. Its not the money u spend on them, the gifts u pour or the facilities you provide. All these things are important but its your time which matters the most. Its the feeling of having someone next to you, be there when you need them, who will help you correct yourself. Give your time to people whom u care for. That is the greatest investment you can do. cheers to life....

wow...what a drive!

Since the day i came to UK, i have missed driving big time. Every time i see a car or bike ripping across (im seated near the window and get to see some cool ones), i felt real bad. Being used to drive atleast 300-400kms a week, not having a vehicle was horrible. Then came the weekend when it actually happened...

After a boring weeks wrk :D we were all set to laze around on the weekend. Thanks to friend who had a leave on this weekend, we had to do some travel thingy. We started to think of possible destinations and after me striking out all other possibilities, we were left with one option- Lake District. Situated at the northern part od England, it is supposed to be very beautiful and calm. Our normal plan was to reach there by bus, roam around and return back. All of a sudden i started to call up car hire agencies to find out the costing. I donno for what reason as it was just out of the fly, i wanted to drive down. The costing was decent and we got a booking done for a ford fiesta.

I had not drove a car outside India and was not used to any kinda lane driving (you knw how we drive back there). I have always been on the middle of the road, the actual speed zone, no way used to exits and stuff and getting used to this lane system gave me scares. We went to the airport to pick up the car(we got a free upgrade for a ford focus-thats what they call when the run out of the actual car :D) and the drive back to the hotel was not so pleasent with a few car ripping passed me real close due to my lack of road sence in this part of the world. This was a real bad drive for my standards (im a decent enough driver back there in blore) and i had real night mares of me crashing on a speedway the whole night. I hardly slept the whole night.

Hoping for the best i got up real early(actually i couldnt sleep) adn we were all set by 8 to hit the road. Thanks to the great UK weather, we couldnt see anyting outside due to fog. The visibility was for 10 feet or so and it was real cold. I had no clue how i can drive with this visibility, but somehow managed to reach the speedway with very few hickup (channging lanes, missing turns and stuff). The highway was quite free as it was a sunday morning and i started to like the feel of the steering in my hand. Soon the fog cleared and a bright sunny day was in front of us (UK weather u see). I started to push the pedal and i hit a decent 130 on the speedometer. It felt quite fast on the speedway as i ripped past some of the famous cars like merc kompressor, range rover, audi a4 and stuff. After about 30mins, arun pointed me out tht the speed i was chking wasnt kmph but mph, which ment that i was doing a whooping 130mph which is close to 220km/hr. Wow, that felt real good and so far we were not chased by police. Soon i realised that there was a speed limit by seeing the super cars not crossing to 100mph speed and had to follow them.

The drive in lake district was out of this world and i enjoyed it more than any ride in my life(I have been on quite a lot of them but this was way better). Clear roads, awesome lakes, beautiful mountains. It was just a perfect way to start driving in some unknown land. I covered almost 100 miles in less than a hour and a half(coz of the speed limit of 40mph in the last 30 odd miles). The entire drive was awesome with picture perfect scenes all around. The first time in my life, i was caught in a traffic jam and felt happy about it. This jam was because of some accident on the road (i was not happy that the accident happened or may be i was -saddist me :P) and we were stuck in one of the most beautiful valley. Next to the road was a huge lake with mountains all around. The place itself was so very beautiful that the entire chaos in traffic dint bother me.
After that we headed back to our hotel and by this time i was a guru of driving in UK. It was a cake walk from there and loved every bit of driving. We almost covered 300miles in 8-9 hours and i dint feel one bit tired and wanted to drive more. At one point i wanted to goto liverpool also but due the the fact that sun set at 4pm in this season, they convinced me to drop it :D

Im waiting again for the weekend where i wanna drive again, This time in a different country known as Scotland :D
You can check some pics of lake district here
http://picasaweb.google.com/ravi.maney/LakeDistrict

Movie watching at its best!!!

This is a flick from one of my old mails I had sent...thought of sharing movie experience of my lifetime wit u ppl.

we went to collage on Saturday and decided to go to a movie which was the last thing we did when we were in college. All 7 of us (myself, MC, pari, bab's, jagz, kaddi and paby). After lots of discussion and looking into movie coulmns, we decided we will watch any movie running near mejestic area which was close to our college. The options were shabd, black, yeshwant, aptamitra, rahasya... But we decided on BLACK. kaddi had seen this movie on friday and said its a gud movie and it had AB in it :-). we stood in the Q and when we were near the ticket counter, kaddi started to say that this movie is a serious one (no comedy and all). As usual we all were in a very jovial mood and wanted to hav fun. we came out and decided on an other movie in Nartaki.

The movie was.....KALASIPALYA.......actors...darshan, rakshita, saadhu kokila......

This was my first kannada movie for this mellinium (the last Kannada movie i had seen in a theater was "OM" in 1998). This was pari's second movie in 10 yrs. We were all exited about it.

As we wanted this to be a bit different experience, we went for Gandhi class(local translation of front stall). Guess the price of each ticket....17-00 rs ....too much no....we wanted to go to PVR where the ticket would cost 130 rs :-). The total came upto 119 rs for 7 ppl. Thats one heck of a
price.

MC took some great pics as we were standing outside waiting to go in. At the same time, a bhikari came near us and asked for 2Rs. As u all know how gud me and MC are when it comes to donating, we both gave 2rs each to him. He walked away towards the theater.Guess wot happened next.

He went near the ticket counter and bought a movie ticket frm the money we gave.......maaan......wot a scene.
Instead of getting angry, we all started to laugh our hearts out. we just couldn't stop. MC called that guy but he started waving the ticket instead of responding to him....hehheheheheheeeeee...Then he came near us and said he took money from us to
buy a ticket. He had asked of 2Rs and MC realised we had given 4 bucks. As u all know how gud we are, MC asked for the extra 2rs....muhahahahhaaaa......we cant change......
that was so very hilarious.......we just couldn't stop......full paisa vasool before going for the movie :-)

We went inside the hall and were searching for a seat. Suddenly we hear a familiar voice "sir...elli banni sir..". Guess who...the same bhikari.....man.......super scene.....
We again burst out laughing and were happy that he had bought a Gandhi class ticket (think how we would feel if that person was sitting in the balcony and we in the 3rd class)

And now abt the movie. This movie was equivalent of watching 5- 6 movies.

A grt combination of Dhool(tamil), Sethu(tamil), Vaastav(hindi), Angaar(hindi), Crouching tiger hidden dragon (englishu)....

Dhool: few comedy scenes......vivek doing some body building and all......rakshita was at her possible hugest. Actually we couldnt make out how fat she was coz we cud see only one half of the screen at once frm gandhi class and when ever she came she covered the whole screen ;-)

Sethu: som senti scenes frm this :-)

Vaastav: the second half of kalasipalya was frm vaastav where sanju baba kills the villains brother to save his frnd and runs for his life.

Angaar: the twist in the movie to show that it was diff from vaastav was taken from this. The hero's family in kalasipalya were

killed by the villain which dint happen in vaastav (see the movie was diff) But the way the hero's father was killed was

inspired by angaar where jakie shroff's father was hanged.

Crouching tiger hidden dargon: all the fight scenes were from this movie...the hero could beat up 4-5 ppl by jumping just

once....grt no...

ooooh....i forgot to tell abt the movie being inspired by rajanikant also...with the cool style....

the heroine was more than a 'bomb'........man she is so very similar to a barrel....

yes...the songs was super....grt......the "Manmatha rasa " song was flicked...and man....wot a flick....the danced so very well....i just cant explain abt their combo......coz at one time i couldnt see both of them (as i said i cud see only one half of the screen.)

we also found out flaws in the movie ...where things the heroine wore changed from white to black in matter of seconds.

Totally a super time pass. We hardly cud stop laughing during this movie......hmmmmmmm....total paisa vasool...
(guys....u ppl have to see this movie...... i bet....ull enjoy this......)

hey...i forgot to tell...there was a poster where the hero was holding a machhu i;e longu. we had thought of a nice story abt that long before going in but we dint find even one single scene where the hero was holding it. I think it will be in the second part.....are you game to see this ;-)

One Sinking Experience!!!

A strange thought of writing a blog came to my mind and I made it my so called new year resolution. As it was my first blog, I wanted something interesting for that and was wondering what to write. As I was thinking, came December 31st…

We wanted an outing for New Year and most of the forests bungalows (our favorite place) were booked we had given up the plan. Most of my friends were staying back in blore and I also decided to join them. Suddenly one of our uncles decided to go to the most sorted destination in India "Goa" and got the bookings done. We seven of us started to Goa on 30th December to have a great time on the riverside resort.
We reached late to the place and were real disappointed with the resort, which was almost empty. It was far from all the famous beached in Goa and not many people around. The approach road was horrible coz of the fishing yard next to it. The only good thing was that Bethul Beach, which had 'The Leela', 'Holiday Inn' and many more star hotels, was just across the backwater of the sea. We decided to take a boat early morning to have a dip in the sea.

Tired due to the whole day travel, we woke up quite late at around 9 and headed to the boat, which was waiting. It was a local country boat (long, narrow with a bamboo tied to for balance (but the actual reason was something else) about 10 feet long, 2 feet wide with 5 planks.) and we 4 ppl (Me, my cousins G and N (the crazy 3 of our family) with my very safe uncle M) got into the boat as we were told by the boatman that it can take only 4 at a time. As we sailed, it reminded me of the awesome experience of Kerla backwaters, which I had been almost a year back. We were half way through the 400 mtrs backwater when a fishing ship passed by causing 1-foot waves in the water. The wave hit out boat, the boat was filled with half water and our clothes were wet. By the time we could realize, water started filling the boat (very much similar to the scene in Titanic) and the boat started to sink!!!!

We were right in the middle of the river and were around 200 mtrs on each side. The last words that the boatman told was 'Ayyo Geli' (which translated to 'Shucks she is gone!!!') The boat was totally submerged inside water and we dint not have anything to hold on to. We were lucky enough that we 3 cousins knew swimming and G was a national level swimmer and my guru J. The boat sank and we just went aside with G holding M so that he dosnt drown. The boat floated once it was upside down and we managed to make M to sit on it. After 5 mins we found a person walking on the bank and I shouted for help. He got a few people who got into one of the fishing boats to rescue us. It took almost 15mins for them to get the boat ready and we were happily floating in the middle of the water. They lifted us one by one and got us back to the bank. We thought of beating the boatman who took us in but he was too very petrified and we left him alone.

The best part of the whole experience was that none of us panicked and did something foolish. We we calm and were laughing when were there. I was more worried about my mom killing me if she comes to know that my digi cam and mobile was inside water for over 30mins and had stopped working. My cousin was more worried about his cigarette's (as he had a new year resolution that he will quit smoking and that was the last day he will smoke) :-). It was the presence of mind, the confidence that we knew swimming and the adventure freak in us which helped us to survive and also have fun.

As we always say "Hell is full", no wonder that's true and im still alive on this earth. Yeh, I'm happy about it!!! The biggest loss was that my digi cam (which i always wanted to change) and mobile (along with 3 other mobiles we were carrying) are conked up. All our clothes were in horrible condition. I wanted to name this as "One Stinking Experience" instead of "One Sinking Experience" as the water was so very polluted by the drains, oil from the fishing boats that the water was stinking big time. If it weren't the Merc T-shirt from Malaysia, it would have definitely got rid of it. It was one good learning experience and lots more is waiting at home. Once my parents will come to know about this, ill have to take a long torture session of lecture that im not serious, I take too many risks and wot all... Me am all ready for it. Once that is done, ill be real bugged of it and will definitely need a break. Me am already thinking of a new adventure ;-). Wanna Join???