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This is superb news — As many as 101 out-of-bounds mountains in the frontier region of Ladakh are about to be opened for trekking.
Right now, trekking — even travelling for that matter — in Ladakh is a terrible experience. You have to get a permit — sometimes more than one — for every direction that you travel from Leh. Still worse, the permits take more than a day to process unless you go through agents who ‘get the work done’ in a day. It is worse for foreign tourists, who aren’t even allowed as near the border as Indian nationals.
This is a pity because Ladakh is one of those rare places that you’ll remember for a lifetime; it’s a wonderful experience everyone must have. With these trekking destinations opening up and the access limitations being relaxed, it will help the local tourism, hotel and adventure sports industry — and mountain lovers like me.
So if you’re planning to go to Ladakh anytime soon, do look up the newly opened destinations. At the very least, your Facebook uploads won’t look the same as everyone else who visited Ladakh. That line always get people going.
As I read this news of construction workers from Dubai visiting home for Eid being sacked over SMSes, I was reminded of this Ted Talk by Cameron Sinclair that shed some light on the pathetic conditions of immigrant workers in Dubai. The talk is fairly short and I recommend it :
On a general note, it is strange that we learn to look past human rights’ violation when something is right under our nose, but are vocal when observing a distant occurrence. The laws in India against child labour and labour exploitation are a joke at best, and violators are laughing at it every single moment. I’ve witnessed countless cases of child labour and exploitation (as I’m sure every Indian has in his life), but somehow I haven’t been as protesting. I knew of a family that took the little girl of their maid who lives with them as a domestic help. She is treated alright, but that’s still blatant exploitation of a child. Back then, I don’t even remember feeling that it was wrong.
So I shouldn’t expect anyone else to do the right thing till I rid myself of the dichotomy.
On the anniversary of the Babri Masjid demolition, the leaked Liberhan report and when the RSS is looking to increase its stronghold over the B.J.P. once again, I recommend this piece of Vir Sanghvi. This bit, I liked best :
I don’t wish to make too much of Advani’s pious hand-rubbing or his crocodile tears. But the furore about the demolition should serve to remind us that no matter how reasonable BJP leaders may seem on television, at the heart of the parivar, there lurks a nasty fascist core.
A fascist core — that is what is common to so many parties today. Even considering Vir Sanghvi’s Congress leanings, I can’t find much to complain about in what he puts forth.
In a discussion, a friend once claimed that the RSS/BJP kar-sevaks didn’t really demolish the masjid and it was the Central government that completed the task after nightfall. All I say is, I still hold the RSS/BJP responsible for the demolition and every death that occurred consequently.
Advani has done plenty for the country, but speaking for myself, I won’t be disappointed if history remembers L.K. Advani as just the architect of the Babri Masjid demolition.
Link via @amitvarma.
Watch this video of Sarah Palin supporters who turned up in large numbers at her book launch. The money quote is at 5:09, when a supporter justifies her experience with international issues :
I’m sure she’s had boundary issues to deal with [Russia].
It is easy to sit back and mock Palin’s supporters, but they are just as delusional as those who passionately and unconditionally support a political party. These people, I find, often justify the wrongdoings and come up with explanations, at best laughable. Not just the U.S., the same applies to supporters of parties such as Congress, B.J.P., M.N.S., Shiv Sena, etc. I don’t anymore see the sense in supporting a party in every election — each election needs to be studied on a per case basis before deciding who your vote goes to.
For example, in the Indian general elections of 2009 (if I could vote), the B.J.P. would’ve lost my vote the minute Varun Gandhi’s speech became public and reactions from senior leaders followed. Perhaps at the core, I prefer a socially stable society more than anything else.
As for Republicans and Palin supporters, the hypocrisy in their ideology is so obviously visible when they bat for liberty and oppose same-sex marriage in the same sentence. Enough said.
It is hard to come across a sentence involving Anu Malik that isn’t preceded or succeeded by plagiarism. I too have done that in the past. It is easy for us sitting at a vantage point and unconditionally poke fun. But for once, I’d like to credit the music director for one soundtrack that is arguably his absolute best : Refugee.
Until last week, I had just heard the most popular track — Panchi Nadiyan — which I think is a very good track. I had fleeting listens to the other tracks in the past, but never really thought much of them. While I was travelling last week, I heard the other songs of Refugee closely and I’m thoroughly impressed.
It is tough to point out the best track in the album. It has to be a close call between Panchi Nadiyan, Raat Ki Hatheli Par, Aisa Lagta Hai and Mere Humsafar. The lyrics by Javed Akhtar superbly complement the music and I think he has only gone south after this film’s release in 2000.
The strongest link in the entire album is the melody. Malik has gone beyond creating obvious tunes and riffs to explore the possibilities of longer melodic constructs. Udit Narayan is in superb form and while Alka Yagnik usually annoys me, she is fairly good in this album. Sonu Nigam was at his peak around that time, and it shows.
As far as I know, none of the songs of Refugee have been blatantly plagiarized. So it is a well deserved National Award for Anu Malik and a superb effort — I’ll concede that. Malik has himself to blame for biasing our views. If he hadn’t been such a blatant lifter of tunes, he wouldn’t have to defend every new album of his as awe-riginal in interviews — although I’m not sure if he would’ve been around for as long if he hadn’t pleased his directors and producers by not providing those tracks.
But I have my complaints.
For one, the use of the verse and chorus tunes in musical interludes. This is one most obvious difference between the better music directors like A.R. Rahman, Shankar-Ehsaan-Lo, Amit Trivedi, etc. and the lesser ones like Jatin-Lalit, Nadeem-Shravan and Anu Malik. A song loses out on creativity by using the main tune played on different instruments in interludes — and it is one of the things that annoys me most.
Second, is the obvious arrangement. Malik and his like need to think out of the box when it comes to arrangement. Until that, they can never provide a different sound and will have to rely on melody. Rahman stormed into the industry with both strong arrangements and melody. It is no wonder that others still find it tough to catch up with him.
Anu Malik can be good if he wants, and Refugee only proves it. He is talented too, but then anyone whose name is placed next to Abhishek Bachchan in the credits of a movie directly seems talented.
And I’m back at the vantage point.
After their initial attack on Tendulkar for his statement that was a veiled condemnation of the Shiv Sena’s ideology, the Shiv Sena went ahead and praised Gavaskar for being a better Maharashtrian than Tendulkar :
Continuing its attack on Sachin Tendulkar, the Shiv Sena on Sunday said there was no instance of him helping any Marathi cricketer while Sunil Gavaskar was a “genuine Maharashtrian” and had given Test caps to many players from the state during his tenure as India captain.
Let’s not even go into the fallacies and intricacies of the argument : it is absurd to even suggest that an Indian cricketer should give a chance to his regional mates. I would be more enraged at this statement if I were Gavaskar, more than Tendulkar. While the idea automatically falls under nepotism — and nepotism is the most popular ideology in the political (and every other) sphere in India — we might be reaching a tipping point where nepotism is openly condoned and assumed to be right. The Sena’s statement should rejected for just that.
Delving further, it is obvious the writer of the piece, Sanjay Raut, doesn’t see the irony of praising Sunil Gavaskar. Gavaskar has been outspoken against the Sena during the ’92 riots and another story tells of how he “left his apartment and took up position at the building’s gate to block Shiv Sena thugs as they searched for Muslims during the 1992 Mumbai riots”. I hope the Sena learns to stay away from Marathi icons like Pu. La. Deshpande, Tendulkar and Gavaskar — it usually ends up shooting itself in the foot.
The MNS has been wiser — they called Tendulkar to get the exact extract of his statement, then chose to stay away from the topic. Tendulkar’s statement was clearly against their ideology. They didn’t stand a chance of blaming the Hindi channels for misquoting him and blowing the issue out of proportion.
I was late watching this Pixar movie too. I usually cannot get myself to watch animated movies, which is strange as I haven’t hated any. The last one I saw in this genre was WALL.E, which was overrated in my opinion.
Back to Up, I loved its simple plot, the execution, the adorable characters and almost every aspect of it. If you haven’t already seen it, don’t miss it. Everything is kept very simple and linear, but done perfectly. Animation is top-notch, as is expected of Pixar.
May I add that ‘actors’ like Upen Patel would do well learning acting from the animated characters.
If the Mayans predicted the world would end in 2012, how didn’t they predict that such an annoying movie would be made based on their prediction ?
You get the idea, right ?
The director Roland Emmerich should’ve really stopped making disaster movies after Independence Day. Cliches galore (is that a cliche too ?), the movie borrows from half a dozen disaster movie scenes and doesn’t even try to make any sense. Lesser said about the acting, the better. I have no idea what John Cusack is doing in this movie. I believed he was a respectable actor.
Just avoid the movie. Period.
Borrowing a line from one of my favourite bloggers, I’ll say :
Saala aisa picture banayega to world end nahi hoga to kya hoga ! (If you make such a terrible movie, the world is bound to end)
If you thought Gandhian ideals were a lost cause, look no further than the Sena. They have not only held them in utmost regard, but are now fighting for it to remain alive.
We all know that the Shiv Sena attacked CNN-IBN channel offices — that’s old news. They beat up reporters and staff — big deal. But few people know that a Shiv Sainik too was beaten up in the fracas :
“We have demanded action against journalists, who beat our activists. A party worker was seriously injured and has been paralysed,” Sena group leader in Assembly, Subhash Desai, told reporters here.
I am sure the biased channels haven’t covered this news. Action must be taken against the journalists who have done this. Don’t people even remember what the old man taught us ?
If the Sainiks attack you, you don’t resist. If you do, they’ll beat you up till you don’t resist. So really if you see, they’re just converting us all to Gandhians.
And here we are, criticizing them.
Yes, I hadn’t seen this movie until last week. Turns out when I was looking for it, I spelt it right.
Few directors have to match sky-high expectations of the audience as Quentin Tarantino — to his credit, he’s been consistently succeeding. Not this time. Inglourious Basterds is his weakest movie in my opinion.
Tarantino is a master of style, humour, scene-writing and execution — he falls short of all 4 in this movie. Besides the opening scene of the movie, few scenes were as impactful. I read Tarantino worked on the script for a decade, and had to cut it down from a script that was 3 movies long to one movie — it shows. There are tons of missing links and back-stories, but he seems to have chosen only those he could portray Tarantino-style. I am fine with missing back-stories, but only if it is consistent in the plot.
One more aspect I must add to the shortcomings is the score. I personally look forward to his flicks for the music he shortlists or gets written. Here, the background score stands out in only one scene — the climax scene involving Shosanna (Mélanie Laurent) and Fredrick Zoller (Daniel Brühl). Imagine if the movie was sprinkled with such pieces ! That would alone take the movie a few notches higher.
I reserve the best for the last.
Christoph Waltz.
The guy is outstandingly brilliant in his portrayal of the German officer Hans Landa, nicknamed ‘The Jew Hunter’. The mark of a great actor is the fewer lines he needs to speak to get a message across — until you threaten the job of a dialogue writer, you cannot be called a great actor. Watch out for the opening scene where he asks the French farmer to estimate the age of a missing Jewish girl, and you’ll know what I’m saying. Please please more roles for him !
The second pillar is Mélanie Laurent — looks, talent and a well-written character, she has it all.
About the star Brad Pitt, don’t rave about his acting on any page 3 clicks away from this post, and we’ll be cool. OK ?
I do realize that I might be making an unfair comparison to Tarantino’s previous movies here, but I can’t call a movie great when I know it could’ve been executed far more superbly by the same man. Standalone, the movie is a decent one-time watch. I don’t think I’ll revisit it.
