the coffin

We decided to give preference to age and an old frail looking man obviously got preference over everyone else and he started narrating his story of someone he knew very personally. (A true happening he claimed)
The story goes this way:
He woke up into pitch darkness as he tried to fathom where he was right now, what he was doing. The last thing he remembered was crashing his mercedes onto a tree trying to avoid a stray child on the highway. His friends always told him a merc was not meant for India well he thought they were just jelous.
He coudnt remember anything else, or could he?
He could vaguely remember a siren in the distance, his wife, she had been with him inspite of his excesses from time to time.
He came back to reality and tried to get up, realized he was too weak, it felt like his heart wasnt working till a while back. Feeling around with his fingers he got woodwork and something that felt like slips of paper on all the sides. Wait a minute was he really in....
He was not what people described a noble soul or even a good man, he had earned his riches from scratch but got this -oh i want lots of money syndrome- and people often described him a snob behind his back. There would have been many who secretly wished he were dead.
He could remember more now, the doctors pronouncing him dead, oh damn he was alive, atleast his brain was and was frantically asking his heart to start beating again. As fate would have it, the heartless man's heart was pulling his leg.
He was so fond of money that in his will he had wanted almost all of his money to be buried with him and all his possessions (those that could fit in a coffin). The rest he left to his wife.
When he was hale his favorites included his watch that showed time in 12 different countries although he hadnt been out of tamil nadu, his cell fone, about which he boasted to his friends "you know you neednt even press the talk button,as soon as a call comes it puts itself into speaker mode".
Well you see he was a strange man, who lived in the eternal illusion of happiness looking down upon poorer men who were much more contented and slept more.
Right now he was in his coffin and as the gravity of the situation struck him he suddenly grew frantic. Nothing can be worse than being buried alive in a coffin filled with rupee notes that were so dear two days back. Nothing worse than all his dear possessions that would make a thousand men regard him with fake respect. He tried in vain for the third time to break free and then slowly resigned.
He cried. Then tried to find something that would help him break free, his torch, oh no, his watch lol no way..doomed.
Its very funny you know when you know your going to die, its so damn different, you want to do a million things, want to tell your wife you actually loved her, you understand the limitations of money, you regret those stupid hours lost making a huge empire which wouldnt follow you.
It was a terrible death, choking without much oxygen, ever slowly, without the world knowing, a wrong date on the epitaph, and lots of sad thoughts.
As his last breadth ceased not to start again, his beard started to vibrate,
"We are calling from HDFC bank sir, would you like a credit card?"

said the frail man with a wry smile, as we all gaped at him for telling such a haunting unbelievable story, he stood up to go to the loo as the others started to reflect.
People were saying how terrible it should have been, as I realised something, everyone turned as I shouted "But whose this guy? how did he know all this?"
some of us ran to the restroom..he was gone.

why so serious? (with minimal spoilers)

First day. first show. usually am not that excitable but I always thought Christopher Nolan was too good. But little did I know this was his best ever, probably 10 times better than the second best, probably twice as better as any movie I ve ever seen.
I purposefully delayed the review by about 30 hours to see if the hysteria inside me would subside and I would write a less -droolin all over- review, but I guess this is how I would excited I would be even when I tell my grandson that I was there for the first ever show of this masterpiece.

What makes the movie work is the fact that it doesnt depend on its graphics and breathtaking action scenes and more on its plot and drama. This is where it breaks the stereotype of a standard comic book movie like a superman or a spiderman or the earlier batman movies.
Its also commendable that the joker and the DA are given equal importance as the batman which is very rare in this genre. And its a welcome break that movie relies on its action and story instead of swearing and the f-word to get cheap applause from the audience.

Heath ledger, makes sure you wanna cry about losing a one-of-a-kind actor probably the best villain performance of all time. As Caine puts it "if heath dusn get the oscar, i sure want to see the performace which beat him to it". Caine(alfred) , Freeman(Fox) and Oldman(Gordon), the seasoned actors they are need no special mention.

Bale, oh he does a great job of the Batman who is in an ethical dilemna, and carries the dual role with aplomb. Ekhart carries out the transformation from DA to two face awesomely and you do love the DA hate the two-face and feel sorry for the transformation.

gylenhaal plays batmans love interest and it was probably because they were short of money and couldnt get a real beauty to act, but apart from not being gorgeous she does do justice to her role.

The plots are nothing short of genius and the screenplay oh man..mind blowing, there were five different instances when the audience broke into spontaneous applause like as if in a Lords cricket match.
The car and bike ll make you go gaga, the acting will haunt you and the story ll make you stay in the movie long after the credits.

I got pretty attached to it seeing imdb everyday to track its performance literally praying to god every guy who goes to the movie likes it.
I dont want to see a movie that is better than this one.

dhaudi tales (dhaudi is tamizh for beard)

To all those guys out there..
How many times have you been dragged into a jewel shop or worse still a cloth shop by your mum or you better half or whatever and did not know how to kill those million hours when your women folk forget you exist and fall in love with those saris and those many named jewels?
Well as a kid I went around playing or chatting with the watchman but a couple of days back I guessed it would look to awkward for a guy 6 feet to inches to jog around playing catch-catch.
I sat down with dad and granddad and we spoke about this and that and the unfortunate species that is men.
This was a discussion between three generations mind you and yes there was a rich exchange of ideas. I ve always silently observed this phenomenon of trends repeating and a perfect example of it was that my grand dad and me never had a mustache..ma granddad because Brahmans should never have one and me because I thought it was cool. My dad being the slow learner that he is (CA 1st attempt 16th rank) realised this only about a week back.
Someway, the convo lead to shaving and my dad made an interesting observation. Now its a common knowledge among men-folk that the skin becomes rougher and rougher because of shaving, and CA asked me why his skin between the lips and the nose (yea you guessed it where the mustache once was) was rougher than the rest of his face. After all he had shaved it once in his life.
The experienced moustache shavers grandpa and me explained to him that the mush part of the face is a lot more hyper and grows hair a lot faster and so is inherently rougher.
We went on to discuss how its a pain to shave the mush stub as there are many a purturbations in this part which deter efficient shaving and also discussed various methods.
It was such a surprize to realise there was so much to shaving which men had not come forward to discuss, you see men seldom discuss their problems in the open and hence seem like they dont have problems at all.
Slowly some more jobless dads sons and grandpas joined our group
1)they were jobless
2)this was an interesting topic
and I was quick to point out how there was so much to discuss about beards.
In fact we soon found out how the beard made each one of us remember some particular occasion in life..ranging from a failed love affair or a particular bad shaving day or even something like....
read on ;)