Tuesday, October 30, 2007

What to do with Telecallers ? - Sell Cows and Join the bank

Life is inundated with telecallers . Telecallers from airtel , hutch , BPL and banks have encroached into my life . On an average I get four calls every day . Each call causes a time wastage of three minutes . 1 minute to take the phone from my mobile wallet, 1 minute to realise that it is a telecaller and 1 minute to keep the phone back in the mobile wallet . 12 precious minutes in a day wasted on something that is futile. This means that I do waste 70+ hours in a year on attending telecalls I don't want to take. This figure is without taking into amount the time wasted on deleting SMSes send my mah mobile service provider , airtel.

There are some strategies on dealing with these calls . Join their organisation or sell them cows .

Strategy 1


Caller 1: Sir , Am I speaking to Mr:NC?

NC: Yes

Caller 1: Sir , this is on behalf of Citibank

NC : OK

Caller 1:We are having a good offer for you after analysing your credit history ?(What a plain lie ? . Why don't you tell me that it is to meet the sales targets of somebody?)

NC: Hmm , Actually I am not....

Caller 1: (without allowing to complete). It is a nice offer sir . this is a lifelong free card. Where are you working?

NC : I am the Senior Vice President of Citibank Credit Card Division in India.

Caller 1: WHAT???

NC: I look after the Credit Card Sales in India . How are you doing?

Caller 1 : THUD ! It was the sound of telephone getting back to receiver.

Strategy 2


Caller 2 : Sir , I am from this *********bank*********** .(Bank can be anywhere in the name).

NC : OK

Caller 2 : Our Credit Card is Blaaaaaah Blaaaaah... (in an infinite for loop)

NC: I have a cow to sell.

Caller 2 : Sir , Cow??

NC: Yes a Black jersey one ,You buy my cow , I will take your credit card.

I could hear a faint laugh and the usual THUD!


It seems that telecallers have understood my strategies and now the number of calls per day have increased to 12 . I think now I should start singing non stop Himesh Reshamiyya Songs to them.

God Save Them!

Monday, October 15, 2007

Manichitrathazhu - Raped Apart in Bhool Bhulaiyaa



There was Mohanlal , then there was Rajnikant and now there is Akshay Kumar in Malayalam , Tamil and Hindi respectively.



It is very interesting to see the progression of ghosts in Manichitrathazhu AKA Chandramukhi AKA Bhool Bhulaiyaa .In Malayalam the ghost was a Tamil , In Tamil the Ghost was a telugu and in Hindi the ghost turned a Bengali. Errrr.... but the standard has decreased .

1) Which Bengali Ghost will call ghalis like Kuthe Kameene Mr:Priyadrashan ? .We used these ghalis in Delhi University every hour . I mean , you could have used something which had a Bong Ghali Standard . When it comes to teaching the values of Communism , Rice ,Fish Curry , Intellectual Cinema , Football and group fights in CPI (M) to other parts of India bongs and mallus should go hand in hand.

2)What happened to all the children in the world ? When Shobhana went to open that room in Manichitrathazhu I as a 14 year old and as all 14 year old children did in those days was really afraid and clutched the hands of my mother . Now the child must have been 10 and she was sitting near me in the multiplex . She was giggling all the time when Vidya Balan opened that door in Bhool Bhulaiyaa. Is it a problem with the door or a problem with children who were in the theatre.

3)Vineeth Dances so well , Jaipur Palace still looks magnificent and the ghat scenes are cool.

But it is a thumbs down for Bhool Bhulaiyaa and Priyan again disappoints .

Manichithrathazhu is a movie that so many in this generation would have grown up with courtsey the telecast and retelecast by umpteen Malayalam channels . Each scene and each frame is embedded in the mind of my generation and the first memory that comes to mind when you think about Manichithrathazhu is the character played by Shobhana - 'Nagavalli' - for which she got national award.

After seeing the Hindi version of the film when I was driving back I couldnt frame anything like that . Innocent has been replaced by Paresh Rawal , Vinaya by Amisha Patel and there are umpteen hints in the movie that Vidya is playing the character played by Shobhana unlike the original Malayalam version.Whatever.. the movie has not gelled well.

In an interview with Rediff.com for a question on the difference between the Malayalam film industry and Hindi Film Industry (not Bollywood) Priyadarshan says


"Nothing at all, because there is no difference. If at all there is any
difference, it is the audience and its different tastes."


The assumption that there is no difference between audience may be the inspiration for him for the Great adaptations from one Indian language to another like Lesa Lesa (Tamil) From Summer in Bethlehem (Malayalam) , Virasat From ThevarMagan(Tamil
) , Herapheri From Ramji rao Speaking (Malayalam) , Sath Rang Ke Sapne From Thenmavinkompathu (Malayalam) , Hungama From Poochakkoru Mookuthi (Malayalam) , Yeh Tera Ghar Yeh Mera Ghar From Sanmanssullavarkku Samadhanam (Malayalam) , Chup Ke Ch up Ke (coming) From Punjabi House (Malayalam) , Kyon Ki From Thalavattom (Malayalam) and teh list goes on and on .

Have always admired Priyan for his craft , the ability to create situational comedies and to extract maximum potential from his actors . Priyan films were an absolute craze back in schooldays simply because those movies were pure entertainers which gave a lot of relief from those plodding days.One of the first movies that I saw was Chithram and still remember admiring the story and the comedy .

Priyan was a director who could read the minds of an average malayali viewer and most of his films were huge hits in the Malayalam industry.The differentiator of Priyadarshan movies was that he was able to inculcate "situational comedies" in good story threads (Thalavattom , Kilukkam , Chitram , Thenmavinkompathu ) that could touch the emotional chord of a middle class Malayali.He had a great team who worked with him who complimented his direction skills and made sure that his movies were well made.One excellent example of his team would be Thenmavinkompathu which was really well made and won national awards .

However when he started migrating to other languages it seems that he has lost the grace of the "magic priyan band" that he had in Malayalam .Once in Kerala saw the movie Vettom which is a blatant copy of the Hindi movie Pyar Tho Hona hi Tha and was below the usual Priyan standards. Similarly many of his recent Malayalam movies like Kakkakuyil , Kilichundanmampazham etc.. were sub standard and below his potential .

When watching Hindi movies by Priyan you can't stop guessing the scene and the Malayalam movie from which it had been lifted .


In Hungama there is a scene of one actor going to a lodge asking for rooms
which has the same dialogues as the scene from Poockakkoru Mookkuthi when Pappu goes to the lodge asking for a room.

In Malamaal Weeklythere is a scene of Rajpal yadav riding a bicycle which is exactly same as what Malayalam actor Jagdish does in the Malayalam movie Vandanam.

In the same film there is a scene of the grampanchayat meeting about a
pregnant woman which is same as a scene in Malayalam movie Thenmavinkompathu


Since all these films were made my Priyadarshan , nobody will compain and it is not sensible to compare one actor with another if they play the same role .However sometimes even a brilliant director like Priyadarshan fails to appreciate the nuances in the tastes of audiences and that is where he fails .As they say " Echukettiyal Muzhechirikkum " .Comedies which may click in one language may not be appreciated at all in another language and the "imagination" of Priyan in Malayalam may become a cliche in other languages and when he tailors successful comedy scenes things dont gel well. Mohanlal and Salmankhan played the hero in Malayalam and Hindi for Thalavattom and Kyon Ki respectively . However the audience treatment was different in both these cases and these subtle difference in tastes require refinements in stories which sometimes makes me wonder whether Priyan should take some lessons from one of the old sayings in Malayalam 'When you have enough butter, please don't hunt for ghee.'


Friday, October 12, 2007

S Sreesanth - Indian "Wild" 'Child'(?)

"Indian wild child Shanthakumaran Sreesanth's running feud with Andrew Symonds looks set to escalate after it was revealed the paceman got in the allrounder's face in an off the field incident during Monday's one day international."


Clapping on Symonds face. Wow !!! Us mein hein Baath!!!! Now Sreesanth may or may not act in a tooth paste ad.

That is really something . For instance how can psycho Sreesanth reach till his long hair . It would have been better to give an imposition to Symonds to write Shanthakumaran Sreesanth australian score in matches times. The mystery of tongue twisting Mallu and other South Indian names , the only thing left unconquered by Australians.



The half human half animal Andrew Symonds has a feud with Psycho 'child' Sreesanth wrote someone here .

A furious Ricky Ponting has labelled fresh charges against Sreesanth claiming that he sledged batsmen from the boundary line during the fourth ODI at Chandigarh , wrote someone here.

We saw Sreesanth glaring on our TV Screens and all of us know that if Symonds Pooh Poohs , Sreesanth may fly away but the camera focuses only on Sreesanth's face. Actually if you know what happens in the cricket field. Look below!


Do you see what I see? . The great "Mallu" courage .

Wednesday, October 03, 2007

Banatwallahs , Screwwallahs and some more

Yaaaaaaawn!


I realised the guy was a reporter and he is wasting moi precious time which could have been spend either by chatting with friends or forwarding FYI - For Your Information- emails to my boss . FYI seems like a simple three letter word but my boss knows it in turn means that



Darling . Please take a note of the vital information(?) in this mail . If somebody in this deal screws up now it is on your head , don't sack me.


My Boss has his own ways of taking revenge and he is making me attend so many presentations these days . But if he is cool then I am super cool and within two minutes my supercooled mind in the AC cooled conference room take a decision on the presenter and the presentation that is thrust upon me.



For instance I am busy typing this blog now and is looking at the other side of the table.There were three guys and one girl who were intently staring at the presentation. The guys had long hair and the gal (Good Looking Hein :P but lacks dress sense :(`) had bobbed hair. Wondering how barbers are surviving these days , I tried in vain to listen to the presentation once again and tried to fit the guy to my typical presentation postmortem.

My parents would not have encountered any PPTs like me in their 30+ year long professional lives . Life from what they describe seemed so peaceful those days without mobiles , laptops , PDAs and !@#!@#!#. These days I have my tryst with presentations everyday given by clients, colleagues ,trainers , CXO's and cricket commentators and I have devised a way by which we can avoid wasting time in the torture of presentations known as boresentations.



Nariyal Chutney proudly presents ! Nariyal Chutney's guide to The Presenters and the boresenters.


Reporters


Reporters report . The length of the presentation will be directly proportional to the boredom a reporter produces.They have PPT's but they just read or report . They dont have the style and flair of a Barkha Dutt or a noise as loud as Sagarika Ghose .Reporter presentations are "canned" and boring as the speaker read directly from the slides and it doesn't serve any purpose as I can read through the slides faster than a reporter speaks.

Dedication : To the guy who is looking at me when I am typing this and is thinking that I am absorbing all the nonsense that he is delivering by reading his PPT.


Entertainment Quotient : Plain Plain Boring ! Yaaaaaaaawn .

Murphysons


Murphysons live by the evergreen laws of Murphy -Anything that can go wrong will go wrong. When murphysons start with their presentations , the projectors wont work , the slides will crash , the correct PowerPoint version wont be loaded in the computer as a result of which half of the slides will be sans graphics. They epitomise the Murphy law - If anything just cannot go wrong, it will anyway. The beauty of a murphyson is that it happens in all the presentations that they give.

Dedication : To my B school classmate who come prepared with 12 floppies of the same presentation for her first presentation in front of a bunch of MCP's but since the floppy drive was not working all her presentations screwed up. I am dedicating it to her because I came with only one back up.

Entertainment Quotient : Entertaining in the first half and periodically in between when Murphy strikes!.

Packagers
Packagers package their presentations with all sorts of graphs , diagrams and expressions and colors . The colors can range from the color of pants worn by Govinda in David Dhawan films to the blazing colors which were propagated by Mamootty in the film Hitler. It is entertaining to watch their slides but the packaging generally will have little substance . A good presentation will have content - the information that people would like to gain after the presentation . But once packagers start their presentation it is like the movie Jhoom Barabar Jhoom . Lot of hype , but little substance and information.

Dedicated : To some of my MBA peers whom I met frequently in various B School Competitions

Entertainment Quotient : High Rating for packaging and the variety of diagrams but zero for the entire presentation.

Banatwallahs

Banatwallahs banata hein. They dont have any relationship with G M Banatwalla , the political leader.These people make plain , simple complex theories and quote facts from thin air . Everything else is normal about them , the only problem being those instant examples that they quote from somewhere but nowhere . They are so confident of the figures and facts that they quote that all pressure is upon us to believe them.


Dedicated : To a professor in IIM Lucknow . I dont know his name but I havent seen a better banatwallah in my 26 year old life.

Entertainment Quotient : Entertainment is through those caledospic figures and astounding astronomical figures that banatwallahs deliver . You have to be a seasoned attendee of their banatwallah style types to decipher this entertainment.


Screwwallahs

Screwwallah thinks that the audience is their to screw him/her. A cat when pushed to the corner of a room purrs ,whirrs and become aggressive. Similarly if you ask screwwallahs any questions they screw up in answers because they always think that we are trying to screw them . The decibel levels of SCwallahs rise , the room sometimes thunders due to the digial durround sound effect of screwwallahs when you ask them any questions but invariably they screw up innocently.


Dedicated: To Shoaib Malik for his world famous comment in Pakistan "First of all, I want to thank all the supporters in Pakistan and all the Muslims in this World” after T 20 World cup finals.Even Psycho Sreesanth (Courtsey Great Bong) would not have realised that he was apologising to all those supporters in Yemen and Egypt and not in India.



Entertainment Quotient : High , if you watch the aftereffects of screwdups made by screwwallahs .

Pointers


There are points and there are power points . These guys know what they speak and what they present and follow the 10/20/30 Rule. Their presentations have fewer slides and take less time but it is a treat to watch their presentations and imbibe the information . There is a take away from pointers after each presentation and there is something to learn as well. These presentations have content , stuructre and a human element as well by the pointer.


Dedicated : To all pointers because they value their time & our time.


Entertainment Quotient : Not an Issue.



If you have come across anymore categories , Please update :).

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