10 Reasons why one should watch the upcoming Mary Kom movie

1. Firstly because I believe it’s the first movie made in India based on a sporting legend who is young and still participating actively in competitions. She has not yet retired and in all probability will be participating in the 2016 Olympics.
2. Because we all know the production quality of movies made by Sanjay Leela Bhansali (even though he has just produced it).
3. Because the sports action director (Rob Miller) is the same who had earlier worked for 'Chak De India' & 'Bhag Milkha Bhag'. This means you can be sure to see good and authentic sporting action unlike many other so called sports movies (I would not like to name them here)
4. Because we all love a 'rags to riches' story. We all want to know about people who despite all odds and difficulties comes out very successful purely based on their own hard-work.
5. Because it is the story of a woman who has been successful in a sport not considered fit for women.
6. Because it tells the story of Mary Kom who had already been World Champion 5 times (twice after giving birth to twins) but most people came to know about her only after she won the Olympic Bronze medal.
7. It is the first mainstream Bollywood movie which focuses on a person from the remote North Eastern part of the country.
8. Because it will show that people with Mongoloid features belonging to a tiny state called Manipur are Indians to mainstream Indian audiences, most of who had always considered them anything but Indian.
9. Because by now we all know that the title role will be played by Priyanka Chopra who had done some fabulous movies and we love her for those roles.
10. And most importantly, I believe, because we all love Mary as a person as well as her achievements.

If you think there are more reasons kindly share.

Its about Arnab Goswami

Love him or Hate him, you can't ignore him. Arnab Goswami has a mastered the art of creating sensation and playing to the gallery.

It is a fact that most people like to take sides to various issues and very few people actually understand nuanced discussions. He understands this fact very well and takes sides in each and every discussion he conducts. He loves to corner his panellists on issues he feels the majority will side with his views and arguments. He does not believe in nuanced and unbiased discussions even though the channel may claim to be so.

Arnab must have taken cue from Fox News, the US based news channel which even though takes up sides and puts up their own biased views on each and every issue, is a very successful and popular channel. This kind of reporting and conducting discussion/talk shows also happens in a lot of Hindi news channels and other vernacular language news channels. The only difference is that the English speaking, urban and 'elitist' Indian people who think of themselves as very intelligent and knowledgeable have not seen such behaviour in the other Indian English news channels.

The impact Arnab has created by his way of reporting can be seen in the way channels like Headlines Today (Rahul Kanwal) and 9X News conducts their prime time shows (telecast during the 9PM to 10PM time slots). They have started emulating Arnab. The only exceptions being NDTV and CNN IBN who have consciously tried to maintain a different or rather their original identities. But even these channels can be seen to telecast such discussion/talk shows with either their Editor-in-chief's (CNN-IBN’s Rajdeep Dardesai) or their top draw reporters/journalists (NDTV’s Barkha Dutt) during the same time slots as Arnab's Newshour.

Apart from that this field (journalism) has become very competitive with new channels coming up every now and then to cover the same news. They have to create their own identities and brands to grab more eyeballs and stay on top of the others. I believe we should at least congratulate Arnab Goswami that has become very successful in creating his own brand (an easy pointer would be one of the Flipkart ads where politicians are shown discussing the topic of online shopping in a talk show the host of which acts, talks and behaves the way Arnab does).

In the world of Media you can know if you are popular or not by the amount of discussion people are having about you. It does not matter whether they are discussing your merits or your demerits. Like they say there is no such thing called bad publicity, all publicity is good.

The DEEWAR effect

Remember the dialogue in the movie Deewar (the old one) said by Amitabh Bachchan when he is asked to sign some papers by his screen brother Shashi Kapoor. ‘Jao pehle us aadmi ka sign lekar aao jisne mere haath pe yeh likh diya tha ... uske baad mere bhai tum jis kagaz pe kahoge main uspe sign kar doonga’. 

Careful Everyone

Now it has become more dangerous in India to hurt someone's sentiment or feelings than hurting someone physically, stealing, killing, raping or looting public money. Hurting someone's feelings or sentiments can land you in jail and various penal codes slapped against you. The people who were hurt by our views may physically hurt us and our families, vandalize our properties and then go scot-free. 

Do not draw cartoons, do not write articles or books, do not comment, share or like anything that may give the slightest hint of opposing and criticizing ANYONE or ANYTHING (person, policy, religion, language, region, community, etc., etc., etc.). Do not express your views publicly or even personally. Never ever do it on social networking sites. Don’t do anything. Just be passive spectators and view the massive degrading spectacle (sic!) that is going on around you and become awed by it. You can become a part of it by actively supporting and participating in it but never ever oppose or criticize it.

Pardon me for being so vague and for not speaking about any recent or past incidents and not taking anyone’s name and stop here before someone feels that I have hurt their sentiments and I get mugged and arrested for it. Like or share this comment at your own risk. Whew…

So what do you think???

Don’t like to wear a Helmet!!!

The most common reasons given by people (while riding motorcycle, scooter or cycles) for not wearing a helmet

Mindset of a rapist

India is going through an epidemic of rapes at the moment. We regularly keep on hearing about rapes being committed on girls and women of almost all ages.

Is it enough for us to just vote?

  

Its election time and with the constant onslaught of propaganda by different political parties regarding their past achievements and future promises most of us have decided whom to vote for & whom not to vote for. Most of us support one political party or the other and show our liking for their leaders. Many of us have put forth our views about the leaders in various media. We are encouraged by various agencies through different media to register and vote during elections so that leaders of our choice get elected. We are asked to cast our vote and choose our leaders. We are told that our votes are very valuable and it can bring in change.

Where do you want to be?

Do you know that in any given population 90% of the people will be mute spectators to most events around them? These people can also be called the silent majority. They just carry on with their lives. They generally tend to be followers. We can also call them the changers. They change according to the situation. They are the people who buy what others want them to buy. They see what others want them to see. They read what others want them to read. In other words they do what others are doing or not doing. They either like or wait to be told what to do or what not to do.

Why should politicians have all the fun?

Everybody knows that politicians and their supporters do not manufacture any product nor provide any services that they sell to buyers to earn money. Yet they have huge reserves of funds. Political parties say that they get donations from well wishers. They say that this money is spent on the functioning of their party and upkeep of their party offices, for organizing/conducting various political events and other expenses. It is unclear whether members are paid salaries as well or they get a share of the amount they are able to collect from the public (through donations obviously).

A new beginning or the beginning of the end.

I don’t know where it will lead us to but if something has started then let it start even though the protests are yet to take a statewide status with participants from all groups – majority and minority (religious and linguistic). 

I am not and do not presume to be a know it all or a pseudo intellectual. I am what I am because of the times and surroundings I have been living. I have formed my opinions and beliefs based on my interactions (however few they may be) with different people. My opinion (which may or may not be different from the facts) is that the common people and even many so called intellectuals do not have any idea about who is an Assamese.

4 reasons why Metro in Guwahati is not a good idea!!!!

Can you believe it? Well I can’t and I am not looking forward to it. This is an example of an announcement that is going to get the government lots of wows, greats and awesomes.  Just to make a comparison (without getting into specifics) in the 2013 Assam state budget the government has announced that it will earmark Rs.1800 crores just for this project (one project in one city) and Rs.600 crores for flood prevention measures in the whole Brahmaputra valley. Talk about priorities or rather the completely misplaced ones.