Dreamzzz, Desires n Desperation...: February 2006

Feb 27, 2006

The changing face of humour..

Fridays since last june has been so interesting that i remember my friends waiting for one whole week till friday arrives and we all get our regular dosage of laughters in the common TV room of the hostel. The Great Indian Laughter Challenge has changed the whole experience of prime time TV viewing. Six awesome guyz (Could be five depending on whether you understand the PJ's of Parag Kansara or not) with their witty sense of humour and a properly crafted scriptline sweeps you over again and again for one complete hour. The success of the show can partly be attributed to the dimple cheeked host Perizad Kolah and the awesome twosome Shekhar and Sidhu. All these six guyz have got a large fan following in no time and i bet that their moments of glory won't be shortlived as making someone laugh is the toughest art to master.

Now like every other reality show, this one too has come up with it's second version (the Dwitiya one). I don't know that what these production guyz think of when they try to come up with the dwitiya versions. The success of these reality shows depends on their uniqueness, the way they capture the imagination of common person. Now the moment you decide to go for another copycat, it loses the uniqueness and reduces itself to merely a TRP seeker. And after all, nobody can do what Amitabh Does. Not alone the duplicacy of ideas but this second version of laughter challenge also suffers from the loss of clean and witty humour. The likes of Raju, Sunil Pal and Naveen (pahchan Kaun fame) are giving ways to unknown faces who confuse laughter with vulgarity.We wonder that we would see no more Ratan Noora act rather we would hear things on how people urinate and people divulging the secrets of their suhagraat. The art of enacting scripts is now changing to reading vulgar SMS. I wonder that what the talented judges are doing there..they are also not adding any values to the show and instead one can catch them passing excellent remarks to these guyz who don't have any sense of humour. Poor perizaad.... god save her from these laughter champions...Wow!! the humour (sense of humour) is surely changing.

FIGHT CLUB (Hindi).. All messed up movie..

FIGhT CLUB (Dino More, Zayed Khan, Diya Mirza....)

When i wrote my first movie review, it was for the breathtaking masterpiece "Rang De Basanti" and i thought that i wouldn't be able to write my second one for long long time. But well i almost forgot that for every situation we can have two extremes. Even in the movie making i think, there are two extremes, the best and the worst. If Aamir and his awesome foursome friends were something near the best then these four guys (naturally cute looking but they look more like dancers and less like fighters) must be something close to worst. 'Fight Club' is a movie which has all the ingredients of being a flop. Poor in design, four incompetent actors, a cobweb like storyline and well the production team is quite inept with copying also. The fight scenes looks like that the extra men were not paid properly and the same with the movie editor. Just few days back i watched the original Brad Pit's 'Fight Club'. The story is copied, given an Indian touch (given a female angle by including two damsels, but they too have added to the misery of the movie), a few song and dance sequence (Hindustani film makers can always find ways to put those weird sea and bikini combination scenes in any kind of movie).

Dino Moreo's dialogue delivery is no match to his dancing abilities and i think he subconsciously have accepted this fact and that's probably the reason why he even walk with that touch of dance in his steps. Zayed Khan looks innocently cute and it is not easy for him to get changed over to the macho man rightaway. Ritesh deshmukh is the only talented actor in the pack but he too dissapoints in this movie..Suhail is trying to come out of the producer's tag but somebody need to tell him that he is better off producing movies than acting in them. You do not get to see Rahul Dev more often and well, if he keeps doing movies like this than i wonder his days in the industry are limited.

After writing all this, i don't know what could i say about the whole package. BUt guys if you have a few extra hours to waste or you are in desperate need to kill some time or if you like popcorns too much then, you can go for this movie...

Feb 23, 2006

Can we say it a FAIR JUDGEMENT?

7 years ago, a crime was committed in the cosmopolitan hub of delhi 'Qutab colonade'. The restaurant is owned by delhi's socialite queen Bina Ramani and her designer cum model daughter Malini Ramani and on that fateful night it is believed that a high profile party was going on (Now the very word high profile signifies the presence of "who is who" of capital city). Jessica Lal was a personal friend of Ramanis and she obliged to tend the Bar on that night. A guy named Manu Sharma entered the Bar in the wee hours, asked for liquor, she denied as the bar was closed, he took out his licensed gun, shot her in head, point blank.

The newspaper run the story for weeks. The trail followed to the then president Shankar dyal Sharma's nephew and Manu Sharma (Son of Haryana's present finance minister). The eyewitness were Ramanis and Jessica's model friend Shyan Munshi. Manu was arrested and cricketer Yuvraj Singh's father Yograj Singh along with several other well connected persons were charged for providing him shelter. A statement was issued from the president's office that he do not have to do anything with any Manu Sharma. All this happened seven years ago. Seven long years ago.

Now, it's not of much importance that what happened seven years ago. The result is that one person was murdered in front of some mighty and powerful persons (some of them were personal friend of the murdered soul), everybody there knew who was the killer. What is important and significant is the fact once again our judicial system proved to be impotent for those who are sitting in the powerful positions. They can hire big shot lawyers by paying them filthy cash (the money that smells sweat and blood, earned of corruption) in return these guys in black coats buy them time for playing with the testimonies, issuing threats to witnesses. The end game is that witness turns hostile and the murderers gets acquitted by the court of law. Manu sharma and all others were acquitted. POlice played his role and weakened the case to a large extent. They even failed to recover the weapon (it was said to be a licensed revolver). Ramanis refuged to testify against Manu and as expected, Shyan also changed his statement. what about those who were present at the site that night?? yeah they also spoke in the favour of their powerful friend Manu.

For how many times should it happens to wake us all up from our slumber? Animal Husbandary scam, Defense scam, Sugar Scam, Salman Khan's drunken debauchery, Naina Sahni Murder, numerous rape cases. Do we really have a judicial system which really favours those who have the money and power? Our leaders (many of them are involved in more than one scams/murders/fraud) can end up convincing us that we have an egalitarian society and a democratic setup but, where is that democracy when certain leader anounce a reward of 51 crores for killing a person who toiled with their religious sentiments? Why not anybody come forward to offer the same kind of reward for Manu sharma? Why not any political leader raise his voice against the failure of our judicial system? Why the judicial system do not go for setting up fast track courts for deciding these cases in short time span? All these questions will remain unanswered for a long long time.

Feb 22, 2006

Questions..Questions..Questions...

who's gonna tell you when it's too late
who's gonna tell you things aren't so great
i said you can't go on just thinking nothing is wrong
you can't go on just thinking that nothing is wrong

I spent the evening watching movie "50 First Dates" on my desktop computer. The lyrics above is one of the OSTs. I feel moved on hearing it for the first time so thought to devote a whole page of my blog to it.

How true is the fact that sometime we get involved with things so much that, we never really get time to look on the things as they are, and we like to see them as they should be, from our perspective. without confusing it all, i should say that in those kind of situation where we find ourselves emotionally involved, we just kind of overlook the truths/facts and assume that life is all normal. Atleast i find my decisions go awry during these situations. Is it my vulnerability to emotions that force me do things which i wont have done otherwise? or am i a person with abnormal levels of emotional quotient (EQ)?

Is it human to keep moving into depth first manner which means delving deep into certain poor decisions (committments) until and unless you realize that things are going wrong and the going is getting tougher? Well i think that it can be a pretty lame excuse to justify your acts but, it can't be the truth really. Now the question is that how to know what is wrong and what is right? Isn't the notion of right and wrong is somthing relative? Like what is right for one could very well be wrong for others? So how to make judgements? Should we shed all the emotional baggage (which essentially means stop acknowledging any sort of committments or bonds or ties ) and start acting like machines? The obvious answer will be a firm NO, then is there any way out of this emotional dilemma? I think that this is some topic which will keep me in dilemma for long long time... Still thinking about it..

Feb 18, 2006

One whirlwind week

The last week was great. I almost spent the half of it on haryana roadways buses. First it was a ride to Delhi for my SIIB interview and then a journey to chandigarh to catch up with the NIFT entrance test for a programme in Fashion Management. Well i am glad that i took the test, (it is atleast one test where they can't really compalain about having 33% reservation for girls. If the sheer number of female candidates is anything to go by, i think about 60% of the students qualifying the test will be girls.

The week have given me quite a few chances to realize my strengths and weaknesses (i spent a considerable amount of time writing answers to these commonly asked questions during interviews) but i am still wondering that are the interviews really can judge a person's talent and skills. I mean that when the convictions can merely change due to the color of your shirt or the way you sit on a chair or the way you dress, then i think we need to differentiate between learning of corporate culture and business skills.

I feel that i am not at my creative best, so better i hit the bed and wake up with some organized thoughts...
Will write about my interview experience some time soon.

Feb 6, 2006

NIFT Fashion Management (Sample analysis).

Hi all...

With less than a week left for the test, i think i should better post the paper analysis.

Paper 1 GAT

No. of Sections-5
No.of Questions-120
Marks- correct 1 marks/Q (no negative marking).
Time-2hrs

Section 1 (Quantitaive aptitude): 27 questions

The questions were all of easy-moderate level and included things like profit and loss, mixtures, percentage and simple artihmetic operations.

ideal attempt scenario would be like 22-25 questions in 30 minutes.

Section 2 (Communication ability): 20 questions.

Breakup was like----
(Synonyms-4, Antonyms-4, Fill in the blanks-4, Idioms and phrases-4, Sentence correction-4)

The questions were based on direct vocabulary and if you know the answers it will be more like a time saver.

ideal attempts- 12-15 in 15 minutes.

Section 3 (Passages): 15 Question


passage 1 (about 800 words): Was something related to R.N. Tagore, contained 10 questions, Most of them were fact based, direct questions.

passage 2: A small case study kind. (300 words, 5 questions)

Ideal attempt: read both the passages, start with the easy one (which you can easily connect with), take your time to go through the questions. You can take 20 minutes to answer around 10-12 questions.

Section 4: (Analytical and logical REasoning) 30 questions.

(THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT SECTION MIND IT....)

This is the catch-22. Try to read and attempt each and every questions. Ambitious ones should start with this sections followed by quant. The difficulty level was moderate. however most of the questions were based on plain reasoning. Picture based reasoning questions were also there and there were two sets of five five questions each. This is the one area where you can go for the maximum.

ideal attempt: 25+ questions in 40 minutes.

Section 5- (General Knowledge): 28 questions

This section is for the GK enthusiasts to get level with the quant and reasoning buffs. The questions were easy and only a couple of them were related to fashion.

ideal attempt: anything over 15 in 15 minutes.


Overall analysis.

quant---- (20-22 questions in 30 mins.)
Communication---(12-15 questions in 15 mins.)
RC--------------(12-15 questions in 20 mins.)
Analytical------(25+ in 40 mins.)
G.K. -----------(15+ in 15 mins.)

NOw, an attempt of 85-100 questions with an accuracy of 80% will get you something around 60...

ANALYSIS OF PAPER 2- (MANAGEMENT APTITUDE TEST)..

No. of Sections-4
No.of Questions-120
Marks- correct 1 marks/Q (no negative marking).
Time-2hrs


Section 1 (VIKALP- Case Studies): 30 Qs.

case1- moderate difficulty- 7Qs.
case2- easy difficulty- 6 Qs
case3- moderate difficulty- 8 Qs
case4- moderate difficulty- 9Qs.

The cases were just like passages where the details are given in paragraph forms. Read them, make important notes in mind and you can work out most of the problems by just reading them. Don't get scared by the size of the passage. They will come out to be easy once you start cruising through them.

ideal attempt: Read atleast three of them and try out atleast 20 questions in 30 minutes.
** No need to solve all the questions of a case, try to solve only a few from each. This will help you maintain the speed.

Section 2 (Fashion Related GK) 30 Qs.

Questions were mainly revolving around:
1) Designers
2) Fashion Houses
3) Shows
4) Fashion capitals


i found this section real tough, mainly bcoz of my computer engineering background. Thanx god!!!! they don't have any negative markings.
(this section will hardly take 10 minutes to cross over..)

Section 3 (Logical Ability Test) 40 Qs.

What i lost to Fashion GK, i made up for that in this section. This section also contains questions related to:
Data Sufficiency (5)
Set theory (atleast five of them)

Simple reasoning, picture puzzles type and then the regular logical ability questions.

However the difficulty level was moderate.

ideal attempt: 30+ questions in 1 hour.

Section 4 (I'll call it psychometory round): 20 Qs.

This sectionfocus on your soft skills like etchical values, business sense and morality. We have these kind of tests for interviews.

Now the catch is that you don't have anything like right answers or wrong answers here, all you have to do is to pick out the choice which, you feel, applies to your mindset. I mean go for the answers that you feel is right.
i don't think that they have answer set to match the answers, it will be more likely that they have graded them as 0.25, 0.50, 0.75 or 0.0 marks options. So think what will you do if the situtation is applied to you.?



Okay guyz.. now overall analysis is something like this:

1) Vikalp(cases)-------- 20+ in 40 mins.
2) Fashion GK ----------10+ in 10 mins.
3) Logical/Analytical---- 30+ in 1 hr.
4) Psychometory--------20 in 20 mins.


Overall-------85+ attempts with 80% accuracy----->>> 60+ score.

Sum total------ paper1+ paper2 (170-200 attempts)--- 130+ score...

I think that anything above 130 will be considered a breakthrough score which can get you a rank in top 100. Well this analysis is based on the sample paper and it may differ from the actuals. So one should better prepare himself to adopt a flexible strategy to take on the challenges presented to him on that particular day.

Signing off..
R@J..

Feb 4, 2006

Trapped in lines...(Palmistry at it's best)

Trapped in lines...(Palmistry at it's best)

There is no derth of talent in SLIET. Amidst the 451 acres of panormic view, you will often spot a guy with a trademark walk (zig zag), He has this habit of shifting his weight on his right foot when he is walking. But the same body weight evaporates in the air when you shake hands with
him and in a couple of minutes you will discover a soft spoken persona blooming from underneath. The transformation is complete with a friendly smile appearing on his face which also marks the begining of a palmistry session with this second year engineering student Pranay Debonath.

Lot many will argue in the favour of palmistry as an actuarial science and another lot will be opposing the theory by saying that its just the interpretation and manipulation of some facts based on completely irrational logic. Well in my view, all of the theology is trapped between the two extremes of beliefs which are "either you believe it" or "you don't". Leaving aside the merit and demerits of this questions let me put into writing, the analysis of my fate lines.

Life line: He started with predicting my life cycle and it came out to be something around 60 yrs. Well that is cool that i will not be there to take the hardships of old age. But who wants to leave this place so young? But the beauty of the fate lines lies in the fact that they changes with
time and with factors such as marriage etc.

Sun Line: The sun line determines your attitude and the height where you can reach. In my hand it's there that i will make a steep climb up the ladders of success but then i have to be in complete control of my senses. most importantly of my voice as i speak a lot. I have still a lot to accompolish and i have't ever done even a little judgement to my talents.

Luck: I stand very strong chances of gaining some windfall success. I don't know what cud that be but it says that with the help of that i would be able to cherish all my dreams. My greatest dream is to start a school for children whre every needy child is provided with the best education possible. I also want to start some NGO to help the old and aged and to provide ways for youth to augment their income. Well that's a lot and for that i don't think that any windfall will suffice. i would better see some storm kind of thing..

Love: Well this is the must vulnerable point for young people. My stars says that i have a strong tendency of falling for love and to much extent, it's true. I had my share of setbacks, like this romance (School dayz) which lasted for no more than a month and then a crush for the
this girl which ended briefly after the realization that there are things beyond our control, and that childish love which never saw the daylight. And presently there is this phone-a-friend thing which haunts me most. I still have not realised that what wil be probably the fate of this
relationship?
Neways according to my stars, Love is something i can't just count on. Even if i manage to pull some strings here and some strings there and somehow get married to the girl whom i love, it won't last for long. So better stay prepared to save something for the girl who is going to be my life saver.

Wife: There comes the catch 22. predictions were in myfavour. Tht's all i want to share here.

Medical Diagonisis: Problem related to stomach will be a cause of worry. Persistent medical problems after age of 60. i think that's why i returned from the doors of cancer safely at the age of 23.

Job: I am set to get a decent job profile in the next 2-4 years. That means i can go for MBA to realise my full potential. A lot of knowledge is written in my hands but i lack self-discipline. I need a mentor/motivator/wi**.. hahahah.. that's true as far as i am concerned.

Other important things:
  1. I can be a very good critic. partly coz i have a great sixth sense and partly coz i always look for a chance to go blah blah blahing..
  2. Other than job i can also be very successful at some business.
  3. My spouse will come from a very high standard family.(I don't know wat this term means.. standard is something relative right??)
  4. Fame is in abundance (I dont know what are the things i should do now to get that?)
  5. People attatched to me would always benefit from my misdoings. (Thanx god for this)
  6. I always tend to become a victim of someone pretty and who knows how to talk with eyes.
  7. Most importantly i can achieve more if i take the CAT 2006 this year....
Well i wanted to write all this because i feel that i tend to loose focus regularly. I pick up some tasks (sixth sense), go all out to prepare meticulously to achieve the set targets and then one day realize that i am not doing enough and well i just cant do enough coz i don't want to do it anymore. This lack of focus comes from the fact that i am too much in everything. And i remember the most important thing said about this palmist friend of mine that
"Until you realize your potential and start working towards your goals till then, everything would remain simply trapped in your lines". Truly said "life has its own ways to reward and punish you, Fate is just one".

Feb 3, 2006

Three Best things in Sliet: My take....

The best decision that the management body of SLIET took in years was to have a dedicated leased line for internet access. With an upgradation in the existing capacity now, the campus inet speed is 4 MBPS which means faster speeds and bigger and faster downloads. This is our final semester and thanx god we all have a common answer to the common question during fresher parties. "What do you gonna miss the most about this campus"? hahaha!!! free high speed internet. (free means there is no control over downloads and contents..)

The benefits are many: seldom you'll find people in each other's room. Everyone rather prefers to stay confined to their allotted rooms and do their kind of things(read chatting, typing offline messages and surfing stupid sites) in utter privacy. This has resulted in considerable reduction in the level of noise in the student dorms and all you can hear is the tringggggggg.. sound of yahoo messenger or trinnnnnnnnn trinnnnnnnnn of skype. You can take informed decisions mostly of the type that whether to watch this movie or that? (By reading the movie reviews). or whether to watch the TV shows now or to download them later at your own pace?

Well my pick for the three best things in Sliet is:

Enter-The-Net (For the reasons mentioned above)
Laxmi's Cafe .. (for the delicious tea)
Mittal-The samosa place...

Will write about the other two sometimes.