Dil Se

Finally, it has rained and a scorching Delhi has had a 10° Celsius respite from the relentless heat it had been simmering under for more than 20 days. Last year, the onset of summers was a delight. It would get hot for a day or two and then thunder showers would get going. In fact, the talk this time round was how the summers never really arrived in the Capital last year. Summers being brittle are welcome. But, any sign of a weakening monsoon generally comes with a whole lot of issues. Not only do the ailments pile up (like conjunctivitis for example this season) at an individual level but also the dry heat leaves a lasting impact on the winters. This, of course, is true for urban centres. In the countryside, delay means huge financial issues and a crippling delay in cropping timings. This year, by agriculture standards, the rain has got delayed by over a fortnight. The corn crop in the Himachal Pradesh, for example, needs to be sown in mid-June but was awaiting the rains till n...

The national outrage and tears over four-year-old Mahi’s death due to a borewell fall in Gurgaon has since subsided. But, it will be worth our nation’s while to not bury itself in the depths of general disregard for human life. The very fact that Mahi is not the first but 20th such reported death is reason enough to introspect on where we, as a population, as a political force, as a social  mahadesh , are heading. Mahi died for a deadly cocktail of reasons that our befuddled democracy is too disregardful of, or should we say, doesn’t have the time to tackle. Besides the fact that Government has, over the years, turned a consistent blind eye to illegal digging for illegal tubewells over the length and breadth of the country, there is also this huge issue of the water tanker mafia supervising the proceedings. Water experts insist that illegal borewelling is a huge issue which no one is looking into even as the water mafia grows unhindered both in callosity and power. Governmen...

There are two ways of looking at the mess that has emerged out of the tennis dressing room. First, that we should not get overly ruffled by players flexing their muscle at the cost of national interest. That, because medal hopes in Olympics are dismal anyway, so all this drama shouldn’t really matter. Second, that we should really get annoyed by the goings-on because whatever hope we have to mark our presence in the Big Games this year, is being taken away by a federation that has no hold over its players, players who may be professionals but are far from being patriotic, a Ministry that has sided with such players and an entire nation that is helplessly reading about the unfolding fruitless controversy around a sport that is erroneously pegged on individuals with hulk egos. Look at how ridiculous the scenario has been made out to be — Mahesh Bhupati will not play with Leander Paes because he feels the latter is a ‘backstabber’. Rohan Bopanna, who incidentally will be playing h...

Aamir Khan has managed to ruffle quite a few doctors and has since appeared on almost all news channels to face the ire of some of these physicians. Though one agrees that not all doctors are blood-sucking unscrupulous beings interested only in making money out of you, it is sad to know that some of these protesting doctors have launched a personal attack on the star. The syndrome is “people living in glasshouses should not throw stones at others” and the premise is Aamir’s divorce and second marriage some years ago. Social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter continue to be deluged with personal attacks on the actor’s personal life. He may or may not have been textbook correct in his personal life but that’s certainly not the issue here. To me, this means that these protesting holier-than-thou doctors obviously do not have a sound argument to counter Aamir’s episode on their community making a killing out of hapless patients. Denying that doctors at all levels have a v...

Gangs of Wasseypur Starring:  Manoj Bajpai, Jaideep Ahlawat, Richa Chadda, Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Reemma Sen & others At:  PVR & others Rated:  8.5/10 Gangs of Wasseypur  is not just any movie you go to for weekend fun. It is a treatise of violence, a slice of realtime history, a saga of relentlessness and a soiree of such potent sights and sounds that it grips you with the same insanity as libido and revenge grip its main protagonist Sardar Singh. The violence here is in your face. It is stark, pervasive, uncompromising and blood-stained. Yes, it makes you cringe. Yet, very strangely, it stops short of repelling you. It is not surreptitious but cunning enough to sidestep allegations of sensationalism. You could call it a picture perfect genre of savagery drawn out of blood-stained swords, firing guns and mean men by Kashyap’s skillful measurement and elan. It is, in a way, his best tribute to his diligence to dark, edgy, real and unapologetic cine...

Teri Meri Kahaani Starring : Shahid Kapoor, Priyanka Chopra, Prachi Desai At:  PVR & others Rated:  3/10 Difficult to write a full-fledged review of this one from Kunal Kohli as there is really nothing much to report. Despite spanning three lifetimes in more than a century, the story still does not have anything to tell, either in the name of a romance or any other genre for that matter. Yes, boy meets girl in 1910 Lahore, he again meets her in 1960s Bollywood and yet again in 2012 London. However, other than meeting the girl, he (and she) do pretty much nothing. Yes, they do sing a song but that’s it. Why would someone make a rippleless romance of this kind escapes a valid answer. You feel rather sad for the lead couple in Shahid Kapoor and Priyanka Chopra simply because they try so hard to somehow click with the audiences. But in the complete absence of a script, sequential events and a storyline, the duo fail to do anything more than looking groovy. Sha...

Rock of ages Starring: Tom Cruise, Alec Baldwin, Catherine Zeta-Jones At: PVR Rated: 8/10 It is quite another kind of starkness, this one! Propelled by the king of rock Stacy Jaxx who is America’s most unabashed bare-stopped slave of rock music, this one redefines gay abandon in as much detail as it does commitment to collective debauchery. For one, Jaxx is a complete crowd puller whose self indulgent to the power of infinity. He can pee on the boots of his unscrupulous manager the same way as he sings on stage swaying away any kind of guilt you might have felt in following this completely satanic star singer and the more his music propagates to a shocked yet surrendering society. Why guilt? Because who in her senses would worship a man whose tongue keeps going into all kinds of unimaginable places as he enslaves even his staunchest women critics, whose nipple is so swollen that you might want to rub in a little diuretic. His  chest adornment would put your boldest...