Flaw in Fable

Wolves that go huff and puff don't have enough muzzle velocity to scare today's kids...

We had guests over, passing through on their way to Rishikesh. They had two kids, absolute pains. I was put in charge of entertaining the kids. I have a brother who is presently in 7th standard. I have forgotten what it means to entertain kids. These days you have a hard time telling them bedtime stories. So I went with the Hansel & Gretel story and how they found this gingerbread house made of sweets in the forest.

What forest, conifer or deciduous?

You want the story or not.

I want a story, but what’s with this gingerbread stuff. Couldn't they use timber?

Today’s kids have no imagination; they can’t let it fly. Tell them about Rapunzel letting down her hair so the prince could climb up the tresses and you get sums about torque and weight and if the prince was over 48.5 kg he would have pulled her over and hair cannot take more weight than that much per square inch.

 Listen kid, that’s the way it is.

I told the child about Snow White and the seven dwarfs and she said, horizontally deprived men, get it politically correct. How would it sound if we wrote, and off they went to work, the seven horizontally deprived men singing, hey ho, hey ho, off to work we go.

Remember Jack & the beanstalk and how we lay awake at night after hearing the story, waiting for the giant to roar. You tell that story to today’s kids and they tell you the beanstalk is all rubbish, beans don’t grow that high, show me one stalk that goes that high, huh, come on, show me.

It was a magic beanstalk.

Mom, she’s bluffing again.

What do you expect? They watch Addams family for fun, Frankenstein for relaxation, horror and terror over a sandwich. They gambol in Jurassic Park, they enjoy screaming. They see 4000 T.V murders, 3000 shootings and knifing, when they are still in school. And you tell them about wolves that go huff and puff and try to blow houses down. Not enough muzzle velocity there.

Try the Little Red Riding Hood yarn on a modern child. Get to the part where the wolf gobbles her up. You see this curl of the lip as the child tries to absorb the drivel you are flinging at him. Then you say, the woodcutter came and rescued the Little Red Riding Hood.

From his stomach? Yes. Like a caesarian? Sort of, kid.

Let me get this straight. The wolf swallowed her whole, right, in one big gulp. Yes, kid.

Just like that, huh? Go to sleep, kid.

Remember our time. We believed in Goldilocks and the three bears and Cinderella’s pumpkin turning into a coach. Try telling Junior that one, specially the bit about the mice swinging into six white coach men. You will get this lengthy diatribe on DNA and how it would never work.

# a special reference  to a friend who had a tough time taking care of her 4 and the half year old little sister while their parents were away. She chose to be anonymous...Nevertheless, i salute her (y) _/\_

ROCKET MAN : RANBIR KAPOOR

He does not look common enough to be Everyman Amol Palekar, but then he is not as hunky as Hrithik Roshan. He is not brooding enough to be a Bachchan and he does not have Salman Khan's bulging biceps either. Yet Ranbir Kapoor's raffish looks and boyish charm have helped him wrench out more space for himself in the league of extraordinary gentlemen of Bollywood...

Midway into the movie, Yeh Jawani Hai Deewani(YJHD), there is a scene where Ranbir and Deepika set out to climb a haunted hill on a full moon night. There over a bottle of shared local brew, they strike a connection and he bares his heart: “Main udna chahta hoon. Main daudna chahta hoon. Girna bhi chahta hoon. Bas rukna nahi chahta (I want to fly. I want to run. I want to fail or fall too. What is don’t want is to stop.)”

That pretty much describes this man as Ranbir Kapoor’s box-office fortunes have been soaring, shattering quite a few records. 

• ·        Yeh Jawani Hai Deewani ( Rs 176 crore and counting) is already one of the top three grossing Hindi films across India, after 3 Idiots( Rs 202 crore) and Ek tha Tiger( Rs 198 crore).
• ·        YJHD took just seven days to reach the coveted 100 crore mark.
• ·        YJHD has become the first non-Khan film to enter the list of Top 10 Bollywood hits abroad.

YJHD, the biggest hit of 2013 yet, has added to Ranbir’s resume is: a solo blockbuster, both home and abroad.

RK-the new ‘Superman’ of Indian Cinema, is young, energetic and has cool looks which makes him popular across age brackets.

For Rishi Kapoor’s son( and Raj Kapoor’s grandson), the khandan casts a rather long shadow. But the 30 year old does not seem weighed down by lineage; he even referenced uncle Shammi’s song, ”Yeh Chand Sa Roshan Chehra” in Rockstar. In his TV interviews, Ranbir has often displayed un-star like candor. For instance, the actor has admitted to experimenting with drugs during his New York days. “I have tried it…but I am not endorsing it. It is important for me to be honest”, he told a news channel sometime back.

He typifies the new cool among the young: effortless, carefree and intelligent. People find it easy to relate to him. He is a representative and keeper of Kapoor legacy. So he is old reinvented as new and new reinventing itself further. He is the only actor with intelligence and mystique. Members of the Kapoor clan believe that Ranbir’s success lies in the fact that he is such an original. He is not “like” anyone else in the family and is the finest actor in the Kapoor clan. Being grounded is the quality his parents give him full marks for. His mother Neetu calls him a “film-encyclopedia”. She says that her son takes success in his stride.

Much like Mount Everest these days, Bollywood box-office summit is a crowded place. Apart from the three Khans, Salman, Aamir and Shah Rukh, Hrithik Roshan too is back in the reckoning after two consecutive winners, Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara and Agneepath. And there is no evidence that any of the four is vacating space. But clearly in the past two years, Ranbir has wrenched out more space for himself in the league of extraordinary gentlemen. As for actors from his own generation, nobody even comes close to Ranbir. That he shares great onscreen chemistry with most female co-stars-Katrina Kaif( Ajab Prem…), Priyanka Chopra( Anjaana Anjaani), Ileana D’ Cruz(Barfi!) or Deepika Padukone(YJHD)-and has shown a knack of sensitive romantic scenes, has only helped his cause.

The actor has done it on his terms. YJHD director Ayan Mukerji says that Ranbir follows his instinct while choosing scripts. Mukerji says that he was very anxious when he went to Ranbir’s house with the script of his film Wake Up Sid (2009). The actor heard him narrate the story for two and a half hours without uttering a word. At the end of it, he just said, “I love it and I will do it”. He is really unafraid to be who he wants to be.

He has been far more experimental than any major star at such an early age of his career. That includes stripping rather strategically in his debut film, Saawariya (2007), playing a sardar ( Rocket Singh) or a deaf-mute (Barfi!). With Barfi!, he has already shown that no role is too difficult for him and no project too risky. He basically opts for the “alternative within mainstream”.

Ranbir is not without flaws. Critics say there is a similarity in the way he plays most of his characters. There is no pronounced difference in the way he interprets the commitment-phobic philander in Bachna Ae Haseeno, the slacker in Wake Up Sid, the ethical salesman in Rocket Singh and the individualist in YJHD-all boys who end up as men by the last reel; the trajectory of their transformation being the film’s narrative and emotional core. In Rockstar too, while he brings out the rage and angst of JJ, another boy-man, his Haryanvi accent keeps slipping like his towel. But he generally manages to be better than the movie he acts in. Irrespective of the director, he brings something to the table which is his very own.

He is more an instinctive actor than someone who prepares in detail for a role.

Ranbir Kapoor, salesman of the year! The actor is currently the ambassador for eight leading global companies including Lenovo, Panasonic, Hero Moto Corp, Blackberry and PepsiCo among others. With every new film- and Ranbir is constantly reinventing himself in his films-his brand image is growing. This is attracting diversified brands. Brands for all age groups and consumers want him.

When it comes to the choice of roles, Ranbir says that he has always gone with his heart. He does not have a preconceived notion. If he likes the script, the character and the director’s vibes-he says yes! In an interview he said that Acting is his “only calling” and his reason to get out of bed in the morning-otherwise he would be happy to sleep in till 6 pm. But he works hard for his success. His grandmother-Krishna Raj Kapoor, after watching his film Rockstar, gifted him their family heirloom-an ancestral gold coin that her father-in-law Prithviraj Kapoor had won at a drama competition in Peshawar in British India. She believes that Ranbir would indeed take the family name forward.

There is always something nuanced about his performance. The raffish charm and showboating dance moves in YJHD, the protagonist Bunny(played by Ranbir) has several shades of grey. He hates his step-mother, forgets about his best friends when he gets a job of his dreams, spurns true love and even misses his father’s funeral. That by the end of the movie, he manages to make Bunny one of us, or at least something many of us imagine ourselves to be, is a compliment to Ranbir!

Dummies’ guide to punters

• The punter is drawn from the worlds of business, finance or Bollywood. He has access to large sums of money, and is a habitué of the party circuit, where movies and cricket collide. And he has easy, unquestioned entrée into the hotels and dressing rooms of the cricketers

Per legend and lore, as crafted in the media and given further heft by Bollywood (Think Emraan Hashmi in the film Jannat), this mythical figure is an end-to-end gambling solution. And so, we who love stories clean and unambiguous have over time created an archetype: the super fixer.

He scripts every detail of cricket matches. Beginning with toss, incorporating the ebbs and flows of the game and ‘taking it right down the wire’. He bribes, coaxes, cajoles and threatens the cricketers into following the script. With his granular knowledge of what is going to happen, he then fixes the odds to favor to suck the gullible punter into betting on what he has already ensured will not happen. In doing all this, he manages to pull off two mutually contradictory requirements: On one hand, he rubs shoulders with top cricket stars and on the other hand, he remains a will-o-the-wisp, invisible to the authority. This combination of fixer and bookie died little over ten years ago and gave way to the era of the super-punter as fulcrum in the world of illicit gambling on cricket.

Typically, the punter is drawn from the worlds of business, finance or Bollywood. He has access to large sums of money, and is a habitué of the party circuit, where movies and cricket collide. And he has easy, unquestioned entrée into the hotels and dressing rooms of the cricketers.

His presence at the dinner with a cricketer is unremarkable and goes unremarked. And the cricketer-young and mostly naïve, drawn from the backwaters with his eyes blinded by glitz-revels in the friendship he has struck with this very important person who can get him into big parties, and put him next to Bollywood starlets and models who show a willingness, to ignore the cricketers gaucherie and join him for public fun and private pleasure.

So when his new-found friend asks him in the course of casual dinner-table conversation- what the team composition for the big game is, what the team makes of the pitch and atmospherics, what changes if any there will be in the batting order or who will open the bowling, which batsman is fit and which one is struggling with physical or mental niggles-innocent questions of the kind fans pose to cricketers everywhere-the player thinks nothing of sharing these details with his obliging influential friend!

In gambling, just like any area of business, knowledge is money. And the punter armed with this inside knowledge places his bets on certain outcomes he is able to predict with fair degree of certainty.

He wins, and shares a slice of his winning with his friend- the cricketer. It is all very jolly, all done with a nudge, a wink, a chuckle. The cycle repeats a couple of times until it is taken for granted by both parties. From then on, it is not even necessary for the punter to meet the cricketer in person-a late phone call before a big game, to ask relevant questions and gain actionable information, becomes routine, as does the post-game ‘gift’-in gratification.

Almost without knowing it, the cricketer goes beyond merely answering questions, and begins to volunteer information-anything he thinks will give his friend an edge in the betting market. Technically, this process is called ‘grooming’.

And then one day, the ‘routine’ phone call comes with an unexpected twist. “Can you bowl a shoddy over in your first spell; manage to give away say 15 runs?” “Can you get out before crossing the 20s?”

By now, “What the hell, where is the harm?” works like an anesthetic on the cricketer’s conscience. The threat lies in the fact that the cricketer has inadvertently helped a gambler and have profited therefrom; to say no now might result in his outing and resultant disgrace. And so he bowls that short one outside off or he backs away from his stumps to cut, misses the line and is bowled.

What does a bad over, an indiscreet shot matter if there is a party, a willing scarlet, an SUV or a foreign holiday waiting on the other side of it?

And who would ever suspect? The bookie, operating deep within the underworld, is a ‘person of interest’ to law enforcement agencies. His movements are watched and his phone is tapped. He has no easy access to team hotels and dressing rooms. And the cricketer is aware of the risk he runs if he takes a call from a bookie or meets him. The punter, however, is not readily identifiable as such. The punter, too, is a celebrity himself of whatever wattage, and is perfectly at home in the restaurants and lobbies of the star hotels that house the cricketers on tour. And thus the risk of association is nullified.

With the arrival of the super-punter, the bookie realized he no longer needs to run the risk of fixing matches. All he has to do is to follow the money. The world of bookie is structured like a classical pyramid. At the top, sits the kingpin. At the next level are a string of ‘Tier A’ bookies that form a loose confederation, each building up his own select clientele. Below them are ‘Tier B’ bookies, operating on small or medium scale. Thousands of Tier B bookies are affiliated to each ‘Tier A’bookie. The punter and the bookies work together. They make a guess about the quality of insider information underlying the bet itself, thus deriving the benefits of the ‘fix’, without the risk of exposure.

            The Meiyappans and Dara Singhs of this world are super-punters; their position in the worlds of celebrity and/or team management allows them- to acquire information on events, even to manipulate said events. This in turn allows them to do what in financial circles would be insider trading which in turn feeds into the activities of the book-making syndicate!

And all this is criminal.

#Courtesy : THE TIMES OF INDIA

Virtual Vanity

• You know you have gone too far when you start typing your name in the Google Search Engine...

Like most teenagers, I dreamed myself of one day having my name in lights. Perhaps, an interview in National Geographic for my work with African apes. Maybe an Oscar for my portrayal of a feisty heroine in an epic drama preferably set in Scotland. Or a Nobel prize for writing, which I would collect in Stockholm wearing a black turtleneck.

To be honest, none of these has come true. I prefer dogs to apes. My writings are used to line the bottom of my sock drawer. And, I have never been to Scotland.

Sure, as a writer I got my name in the occasional glow of a byline in our school magazine and even today in the college journal but the Oscars and Nobels, interviews and going places is but a distant dream!

Like most users, I am a gratuitous Googler, squandering valuable work time looking up for invaluable topics such as the trailers of recent movies( and of course, watch endless flicks too!), repeat telecasts of a couple of soaps, pdf files of the books I want to read or the latest footwear in the market. But among these endless searches will be a valuable constant: my own name.

In the great scheme of things, I am not very important. I have never been medically paroled from jail. I have never gone to rehab and I am not about to marry a famous celebrity. But when I Google my name, I realize that besides being me, I am apparently also a student at IIT Kharagpur. I am a healthcare executive and the branch manager of a Ranchi-based travel agency. I am in a relationship which is complicated. I also speak multiple languages. Phew!

My dad once jokingly suggested that I should seek psychological help for my addiction. True, I Google myself every day. And yes, there are times when, like a bulimic digging into a second bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken, I feel out of control, gorging on images and news groups for glimpses of myself.

I could counter that my profession as an amateur blogger demands that I check in on myself to ensure accuracy! I could argue that other people stare at themselves in the mirror, or hoard fake friends on Facebook, so what’s the difference?

In cyberspace, there is no such thing as big fish in little ponds, or little fish in big ponds. Instead, it is one swirling, bubbling swamp of amoebas, all gasping for their own share of air. And for ego surfers, it is important we float to the surface. Research by the Pew Internet and American Life Project in 2007 found that 47% of internet users in the US have performed self-Googling more than double the number from five years prior. Now, new web tools such as popuri.us, addictomatic.com and egoSurf.org are attempting to confer some sort of hierarchy to the pond. Type in your name, and they will plumb the depths of the swamp, casting their nets far and wide, generating ego ranking for you, calculated on how many times you are mentioned in the murk.

I have realized like wine, watching soaps and eating pizzas, modernization is the key to virtual vanity-and keeping it to your self-paramount. When you plunge in the competitive realm of rival surfing, a frantic search of name, searching colleagues, heroes or any relationship for that matter, you are sure to sink into the hell of self-doubt and comparisons. There is always someone out there with a higher ranking, a better picture, a bigger job.

You might even discover that your nemesis has won a Nobel Prize, been interviewed by Karan Johar, saved every ape from the Congo to Cambodia and has landed a movie role-set in Scotland!

No one needs that net result.

Happy Birthday Maa! :)

A woman like no other.

She gave me life, nurtured me, taught me, dressed me, fought for me, held me, shouted at me, kissed me, but most importantly loved me unconditionally.

I’m rich because of how much time and love she has invested in me and the sacrifices she has made for my benefit. There couldn't be a Mother more wonderful than her.

I love you so much mom, more than you can even imagine! You have been such a strong support to me. I will never be able to thank you enough for all of it. 

Good kids come from good Mothers! :D

You have always been the most amazing Mom.!! :)

I promise you a lot of happiness in every way.

Happy Birthday to the best mom in the world and the prettiest lady i have ever seen!!! 

                                                                    Love,

                                                          Avi n Betu :)