2016 - Bye Bye

Goodbye an interesting 2016. A couple of personal firsts in  2016 apart from demonetization driven realization that most of us urban folks can survive fully on plastic money.

• Watched a Telegu movie (without subtitles!), still sat through surviving on few English lines and yet enjoyed the movie (Dhruva)
• Celebrated new year at a party place (discotheque an' all) where kids were allowed! Not sure if my little one is getting the right "Sanskars" from parents like us :-)
• Working from cafes instead of the daily grind at office. Starbucks should change its menu more often though!

Welcome 2017!

Banaras - Time Stands Still, and no one cares

Refreshing my post on Banaras written 12 years ago...

good old..Banaras... 
things seem to have taken a frozen stand here.... I come here and everything remains the same..... dusty and messy

The 'so what' attitude is always in the air of this place....seem to like it for a couple of days ..but then that's it.. 
its really frustrating to see the support facilities around ... You bet

Power-cuts..something which I had almost forgotten.........are still at their nightmarish best out here.... roads ...well if at all they exist...are filled with potholes...which give one a feel of being in a car rally of sorts... A lot of improvement on both these fronts along with app based taxis (OLA) on the road.

time has taken a standstill here ... and the couple of ATM's here are, at best, an aberration.... and now there are more than a couple of shopping malls and multiplexes.

It also seems that the educated gentry of the city has disappeared and majority people in the city represent more of a small kasba crowd.

But finally, what is also timeless is the sense of humour of the average banarasi and the awesome taste of food...(I put on 2 kgs just in a week!)

Thoughts in Phlegmish

Not getting any sleep,
(ultra)milds to go, before I beep,
This is sheer gibberish, I know,
but am feeling quite squeamish, though.
Will get through the night,
if I knew how to do it right.
Tommorow is another day,
can keep all the bad things at bay, 
if I knew what to want, it wouldn't wait, it'd be today.
What can I say, what should I do, 
getting really confused, feeling the monday blue(s)
guess they are right when they say,
to do is to be, to be is to do,
do be do be do......

Attempts at doing a con-noisseur job

A 100 kgs and a 40+ waist later, I finally have realized that I am most likely a foodie!!! and so is here another tag for entries on my blog : "Restaurant Review" !!! Kindly excooze me if the reviews may (and most likely will) look amateurish but be assured they will be honest..(till such point that my blog becomes a rage on the www and I can coerce the poor restaurant owners to provide me food for free or else...). Anyways, to get things started, let me review one of the few mexican joints I have visited/ are there, in Mumbai, called Sancho's.

Amongst the various world cuisines which had the opportunity to grace my taste buds and later on certain dingy and smelly parts of my anatomy, Mexican food seems the closest set to our desi fare, mostly for the lack of blandness in the food. Although, in Mumbai and most likely Bharat, Italian food seems to have taken over the international food scene with a force reminiscent of the mafia-lore of that country. Needless to say, the craving to eat non desi/non Italian food had been pretty high for Me and V (wifey...).

By some sheer eavesdropping on the tennis court, I heard the name of Sancho's and in no time, put technology (read Iphone App - Zomato) to use in finding about the place.  The pictures seemed to suggest an airy and bright feel, something which has become a key criteria to avoid the wrath of the monster which usually awakes within A (my cuutooooo son) in places which don't offer such ambiance. The reviews also seemed pretty good. What attracted me the most, was the fact the amongst other listings for Mexican food, this was the only one offering only Mexican cuisine while the other ones were offering the usual mutli-cuisine menu...net net liked the dedication.

The place is quite easily reachable, being off the Linking road in Khar. Upon entering the place, it seemed even better than the pics with a very earthy and wooden decor in an a/c but outdoor-sey setting. The place seemed large enough to seat about 50 people at once.

We hit a place right in the centre of the proceedings with a table for four and replaced one of the chairs with a 'High Chair" for His Highness, Mr A, who very amicably got himself well ensconced in the length and breadth his new found throne.

Had become very hungry by the time we came to ordering, and hence mercifully begged our waiter guy to suggest something 'authentic' while trying to look glorious and looking down at every poor soul around us who were munching on regular and cliched stuff like "nachos" !!! The waiter (btw, haven't we developed some more politically correct and pseud name for this profession like 'food consultant' or something? excuse me for ignorance, in case...) packed a swift reply with the disdain of Chris Gayle hitting a six, that there was nothing 'authentic' as such in the menu...so much for poor pay in the hospitality industry!!! After looking around to make sure nobody was watching us, we tried to maintain our class by not ordering plain old nachos, but "fiesta nachos" and added the safest-option-when-you-don't-know-jacksh!t-about-a-cuisine, Baked-Potato skin (how bad can a fried आलू be!!!). Interestingly the food arrived quicker than the changeover in an IPL T20 match. (Was their menu FIXED!!! he he he, pun intented)

Given that I said this will be a food review section, lets get that out of the way quickly... :-)
As said before, whats better than fried aaloo? a fried aaloo with lots of cheese!!! The baked potato skin is basically half sliced potatos, stuffed with cheese, baked and served with some salad toppings (how clever!) and it tasted yum;
Fiesta nachos weren't as feisty as expected but were very tasty. I can only compare these to the ones mostly served at the not so authentic multi cuisine places, and the nachos's were thinner but crispier with the usual sour cream. The difference was the a green colored (guacamole?) sauce and a slight gravy of baked kidney beans. Also, the fact that the quantity was not too much (but absolutely sufficient for two), left ample space for the next course (or so we thought)

In between, A had realized that mere gracing his throne may make him lose touch with the ground realities of his empire, so he exhorted his two pet servants (read Parents) to take him around with a squeal and a few grunts and get photo clicked with the subjects of the constituency. I passed over the baton of ordering the main course to V while I ventured out on the brave journey with A.

Upon my return from the tour, I found a परांठा सब्ज़ी kinda dish on the table. It is called quesadilla. It basically is a tortilla wrap stuffed with, you guess, cheese, corn and, not again, kidney beans. Served with three kind of sauces. By this time, all the cheese and beans had started to make their presence felt in our stomachs and finishing this meal proved slightly challenging and hence maybe a biased not-so-great judgment on this particular dish.
As for the drinks, I drank to my nostalgia of a decade old stay in LN, Stella Artois i.e while V sipped on a cool multi fruit slush which was perfect for a hot summer day.
All in all, the bill made the food feel even better with a damage of under 2k!!! (yes, drinks included).

Left the place in good spirits (safe as V was driving!) with an idea of coming back for more...hence the recommendation ***(*/2) (max 5 stars). Great place, visit recommended.
Till my next review, Adios Amigo!!!

Efficient market hypothesis aka धन्धा है पर क्या गन्दा है ये ?

Enough academic research has already flown into finding out whether active portfolio management works, i.e. stock picking is random luck than skill...I tend to get the philosophical pangs about my profession (of course, I don't stop praying for that extra bonus at year end)...as to why should portfolio managers be paid in case market truly is efficient...

But to turn the argument on its head, in case markets are truly efficient, the efficiency of the market is because of this "intelligence" flowing into the market at all points of time...so portfolio management fee is the cost that investors have to pay just to keep the market efficient...

hmmm.....मोगाम्बो खुश हुआ :-) :-प 

गन्दी फिल्म

In line with positng at least one entry per calenedar year on my blog, I come back to the blog for another movie review, one starring the same two lead actors from my previos post, Vidya Balan & Naseeruddin Shah, you would have guessed it right by now, with in between flashback moments of the naughty posters on dirtier walls, The Dirty Picture.

The offbeat subject of the film, and the competence of the lead actors, prompted me to watch the movie. I even justified the tacky promos centred around Vidya balan's carved out cleavage, as an effort to generate to draw the masses, as at the end of the day, commercials are important even for an offbeat movie.

Well, I was wrong, the offbeat treatment was limited to cheap dialogues and scenes without any underscoring sense of sarcasm or pain, which would normally justify them in such a plot.

The movie starts with a hurried flashback scene of a young girl running away from her house in some desolate village; fair enough, but then in the very next few scenes, Vidya balan is portrayed as a 'bold' girl who doesn't shy away from making orgasmic sounds to annoy the next-door horny couple, and so on.
I guess the purpose of any tragic movie to be based on a Silk Smitha's character has to show a progression of a normal girl into the caricature of a provacative 'slut' image which she was percieved as by the public, which would essentially show the irony of the whole situation. To start her character in the mould of that caricature seemed to defeat this whole purpose of the movie.

The director probably was trying to hurry up to show as many slutty dialogues, cleavage display etc as it would have been possible in the 3 hrs.

To speak of other characters, Naseer's character too was caricaturish as well but justified in the plot, and he didn't have to work too hard to essay the role hence.
Imraan Hashmi's angst as well as a grudged respect & love for Silk seemed too sudden and frivolous.
Tushar Kapoor's character was carved out possibly becaue of his association with the production house and his 'feelings' towards her too looked ridiculous, especially as he breaks off from her because of her provocative dance at a party, where his parents are present, as if the parents were being put up in some isolated island where they were not aware of Silk's image anyways!

On a minor note, given the setting of the story was set in the southern part of the country, none of the characters seemed to speak with any accent seemed a little odd, though I must say the same oddity can be mentioned about say movies on world war Germany where everyone is speaking English with a Queen's accent.

The only stand out part of the movie was Vidya balan, who managed to pull out a strong performance even without a strong characterization and dialogues. She undoubtedly is one of the finest actors of this generation.

Compared to say The Doors or even a Walk the line which are about real life stars, it is disapponting to see the level of detailing which goes into making of Indian movies like Dirty Picture which actually have a benefit of extra movie length of about an hour over their Hollywood counterparts. Oh, I do forget the time slots for songs/dance etc...

To sum it up, this movie's aim was more commercial than a serious attempt just as its promo read, entertainment, entertainment, entertainment...

इश्किया - Just short of intelligence

Vishal Bharadwaj is back, thankfully, after the cinematically disappointing Kaminey (though commercially successful) at least as a producer and kudos for giving a break to debutante Abhishek Chaubey. For a debut movie, the director has done a commendable job. Tight editing, superb performances by established actors, and recreating an earthly UP locale which is less filmy kinds गाँव का देश but more real, are enough to classify this as one of the better movies of its times.
Naseer's brilliance is a given, so not point talking about it. Arshad Warsi seems to have developed the knack to get under the skin of a character so naturally, and his only test remains an out 'n out serious role as even this role had the usual comic element associated with him usually. Having said that, his comic sense of timing still is very enjoyable in the movie.
Vidya Balan, well, I am only too happy to see her doing a purely performance based role, and which she delivers with the utmost ease of a veteran. Her performance in परिणीता was outstanding, and this as a follow up is only a little short particularly due to a smaller role in the movie.

The two shortcomings of the movie

• A weak story though an interesting one, which could have been elaborated more
• "Cheating" on the part of Balan's character in the movie, as it is conveniently moulded from a temptress to love torn lioness. In the end, her character was that of a strong woman who demands justice for the betrayal, but from the start it was just built as that of a manipulative and flirtatious woman. The transition of a character in such cases demands more intensity and detail. The director seemed careless/impatient on this count in this otherwise fairly 'intelligent' flick

Two more minor positives

• Intelligent music, which is given for Vishal Bharadwaj, but for the fact that he didn't get entangled in creating local/folk sound for the movie given the backdrop of rural India etc but experimented with the arrangement wrapping a rock-ish feel around the music
• Minor characters like the old woman and the young boy Nandu, add a different tinge to the screenplay, and were reminiscent of this style used by Sudhir Mishra in हजारों ख्वाहिशें ऐसी

In all a 4/5 to the movie