Behind the Scenes of Raaz, the mystery continues..

Let me break the first mystery - "ki ye naya concept kanha se uthaya hai Mukesh bhai sahab ne?" The concept is shamelessly ripped off from the popular TV Series Heroes where the character of Isaac Mendez use to paint future. He was the author of a famous comic series "The 9th Wonder". And the most famous of his paintings which was his last one as well was painted on the floor. That's the mystery behind this ripped off concept. Mr. Bhatt junior might have borrowed his central character from Heroes, the zombie artist Isaac Mendez and have given him the Indian touch.

Watching Heroes might have been an 'Eureka' moment for the director. The concept was good but movie ke liye you need a full script. And there the twists and turns started. And jab koi star nahin mila to apna superstar Hashmi sahi. Still there were doubts in the mind of some people.

Producer - "Sir aab Imraan Hashmi ki picture kaun dekhta hai?, chalo phir bhi naam kya rakhenge Sir?
Director - Well, even I don't know what the movie will be like? Abhi to puri story bhi taiyaar nahin hui hai?
Producer - Kya baat kar raho ho? Story is not ready yet? Why?
Director - I don't know yaar, it's a Raaz.

Now, this was the eureka moment for another Bhatt family member. He shouted from behind Call it "Raaz part 2" only.

Director - But Papa ji! it is not at all related to Raaz.
Papa ji - Who cares, you know, I know, the crew knows it but audience doesn't know it right? Let them discover. And don't worry about the hit or flop thing. At-least we will ask one great movie reviewer to write rave reviews about it. (You all know who the famous reviewer is, who not only review the movie but also predict about it's collection)

The only original thing about this movie is the dialogue " Kutte ki maut aati hai to wo ek kona pakad ke baith jaata hai" To add weight to this dialogue, they even portray the character in a 'kona' of his house. Or may be the script writer wrote the original line about "Geedar ki maut" but "Geedar" might have been too old fashioned for the creative genius of the Bhatt parivar. "Geedar geedar sab kahe, kutta kahe naa koi" So there goes the "Kutte ki maut".

Isn't it the creative genius of the director that the whole movie is centered around one dialogue "Tum Ashudh ho, Tum Sadh Chuke Ho". This mysterious dialogue takes us on the journey of 5 lives interconnected. Anyways, during the entire duration of the film I was feeling like the producer and director wanted to send this message across to 'Ramu the great' that " Tum Ashudh ho, Sadh chuke ho, isliye apna kona pakad ke baith jao". We have given two horror hits so, please refrain from this genre now.

Okay, so now here is the story lineup. A person supposedly managing a 'NGO' is murdered and a Englishmen is involved. His last call was made to a TV reality show host who then sells the tapes to the Gora in exchange for producing his TV series. Then after the success of his TV reality show, he bought a flat from that money and then gifts that flat to his love in life. Kangna holds the flat keys in her hand and that was the moment when ghost decided to haunt her as if "he was waiting ki kab ghar kharide and kab ladki aaye and kab hum shuru ho jayein". If the show would have flopped perhaps the ghost would have never decided to haunt him thinking ki "leave it yaar, bechare ko itne paise bhi naa mile ki ghar ka EMI de sake, sharm aati hai mujhe apni maut pe. Isko haunt kar ke kya milega, let's go and haunt his girl friend instead".

Well, the bhoot might be too scared to take panga with the Junior Sekhar Suman "Kya pata Sekhar bhai sahab agli movie khud produce karein and usmein Jackie will be given a negative role and junior Sahab will do his pitai. So Jackie might have requested or Mohit might have requested him to haunt Kangna only. Waise bhi who will come to watch this son of Shaker to be haunted on screen? So there it goes.

So the bhoot decides to enjoy with the leading lady like waiting for the Kangna to enter the bath tub and then playing around with the lights. "Arre bhai bhuton ka bhi koi iman dharam hota hai yaar, thodi mood lighting ho jaye, phir enjoy karte hain". But, agar ghost is here to enjoy it alone then what is the use of our serial kisser Hashmi? So suddenly he wishes to play around and start throwing stupid visions to Imran. And poor Imran living alone, hooked on beer and might be reading a lot of stupid bollywood magazines suddenly starts painting his imagination on canvas.

All his paintings carries images of Kangna and they both discover together the mystery. Jackie da is too fat for a ghost and reminds that "upar jaa ke bhi khana badhiya milta hai bhai". Imran tries to fit into the role but Kangna's boyfriend is a total waste in the role of the reality show star. In the award function, they simple nominate this only reality show and give the award to him. No Farah Khan, No Sajid Khan, kaisa award hai bhai? No insult, no poor jokes nothing. Kaisa award hai bhai? Sajid ko naa sahi kam se kam Rakhi Sawant ya Mandira Bedi ko to bulate?

Anyways movie is a total waste of time and money. But yeah, you can take your girlfriends to this movie and to put this message across that for any of her unjust demands, it will be she who will be hunted by ghost aka jackie aka Mukesh or forget it yaar, aise bhoot se darta kaun hai? Bhoot lagta hai face painting competition se bhaag kar aaya hai.

MTV Roadies - Behind the Scenes

No no no. I am no way associated to the Roadie franchisee and this "behind the scenes" version is written as the Roadies is in progress. (Not even related to the one where all the crew members sit in front of the camera and try to make the audience believe that whatever is happening is real).

The most pleasant sight is watching Devarshi doing the Ghoda dance in the room itself. Well may be this is the kind of scene which inspired the famous PJ "Ek ghoda doosre se poochta hai ki bhai? Ye Ghode pe gadhe ko kisne bitha diya?" (One horse is asking the other that who made this donkey sit on the top of this horse?) And what a dance he did. Despite of all the shoes and sandals which was thrown by the crew members of the show (a small indication of the respect they have towards participants of this show). Well, waise bhi getting shoes thrown at you is now a status symbol. Don't believe this? At-least the most powerful person on the earth for eight years will swear by this.

Another scene is where the girl with a funny accent (Tamanna) runs to the terrace, two guys run behind her thinking she might commit suicide and well, well, well the cameraman also runs behind her with a camera (so irresponsible). But then you know that it's a reality show and like all the reality shows made in India, there are just a very few things real here as well (only) .

Anyways, another very interesting part was when the "Singh is King" (well the original Singh is King is now busy preparing an explanation why Chandni Chowk to China flopped so badly. He has to explain otherwise this lad won't go to Africa) brand guy Pradeep kicks the living daylight out of the Ahmedavadi Devarshi. I am sure after watching this episode, a Marathi poster leader will try to expand his empire to Gujrat as well, because this is a clear example of a North Indian ill treating a Gujrati boy. A spokesperson might also claim that the shoe which hit on his face came from a someone who belong to the other part of India.

There was discussion going around in our office that MTV is slowly becoming a beep channel. I think that it's a conscious effort on the part of the franchisee to get this positioning. And they want to stick to it now. I am not sure how far this will go because at some point they need to alter the format to keep the fun alive. Beeps spoil half the fun. Waise bhi all the hooplah around the "Hell Down Under" is fizzing out and it seems that "Visa nahin bana hai abhi tak. Jinka reject ho gaya wo show se bahar nikal diye gaye and jinka banega wahi jaa payenge. Isliye bechare India mein hee naach rahe hain". Cost cutting ka jamana hai bhai. Waise bhi Slumdog ne dikha diya hai ki Garibi mast chalti hai and mast bikti hai. Maybe this one thought inspired the Gobar collection task.

Chalo, the show has still some half an hour to go and thanks god! somebody invented remote.

Just In.. "Microsoft is Firing"

Oh God! I must be dreaming. No posts for more than three months and then suddenly two posts in a day. This was the day

Well, our News Channels as well as Business News Channel might be slow in reporting this news (after all the source is same for me and them, the only thing is that I probably understand the implication this news could have on several other things) but the news is just in that "Microsoft is Firing". When TCS gave pink slips to 700 (about 0.7% of total workforce) employees, it became a big news and IT stocks lost the favor from investors, this news is surely going to have an impact. Perhaps a bigger one.

In a major development today Microsoft announced that it's going to downsize about 5% of it's workforce (5000 employees) to streamline costs. What is more alarming is that the company has also decided to eliminate merit-based pay rises, cut travel costs and reduce the use of contractors to increase the profitability. And to top this all, it's happening with Microsoft, a company which everyone believed will stand tall as computers are slowly becoming integral part of everybody's life and the demand for which will grow even during tougher times. Well, it's happening and it has just begun.

What does this mean for the IT, ITES industry?

The reason behind this desperate measure is to shore up the profitability as the company is able to see the slump in the global demand for the sales of PC or Laptops (bad news for Dell, Compaq, HP, Lenovo and millions of supply chain partners like vendors, resellers and distributors). All these manufacturers will start bundling their hardware with Free or cheaper open source softwares to cut their costs further deepening the slump in the sales of Microsoft products. Sensing this threat, Microsoft is trying to take appropriate steps by right-sizing the workforce.

“Economic activity and IT spend slowed beyond our expectations in the quarter,” Chief Financial Officer Chriss Liddel said in the statement. “We acted quickly to reduce our cost structure and mitigate its impact.” (Source - Bloomberg).

In this statement lies the clue for Indian IT/ITES industry. The slowing down of IT spend is alarming. Nortel which use to be one of the top 10 client of one of the top 5 Indian ITES company filed for Bankruptcy protection on a cold Wednesday morning. Other clients are either delaying their budgets or canceling the existing contracts. Clients are asking the companies to renegotiate the deals and the day is not far when they will even ask to halt the development or off-shoring to preserve cash.

The top 3 Indian IT companies have reported growth despite of the downturn but there is a sense of fear in the reported numbers. For the first time in six years all these companies are speaking of caution. The way Microsoft has reacted today, I am sure it will instill a sense of panic and will send a shock wave among the employees, stock holders and analyst all over the world. After all Microsoft was supposed to be above everything.

Let's see if our IT companies also follow in the foot steps of the big brother or they go slow and adopt the wait and watch policy which will mean avoiding the extreme step of retrenchment and adopting other measures like incentive cuts, salary cuts etc. It's surely going to be a tough time ahead. This year doesn't seem to be better than the last one. Anyways, let's pray for the 1400 of Microsoft Employees would loose their job tonight.

Jo hona hai hoga, for the time being let's believe in our Prime Minister's assurance that India is relatively insulated from this crisis (which he is repeating along with the ex Finance Minister Mr. Chidambaram since the stock market was at 22000 levels about one year ago ). I don't know how many of Indians will be among those 5000.

(As I finish writing this post, Dow is down by 3%, Nasdaq fell by 4% while S&P 500 also shed some 3% from the Yesterday's gains. Microsoft has lost 10%. Infosys ADR has lost some 5%, Wipro has lost 10%, Cognizant by 5% and IBM has lost some 7% by now. )

A Wednesday!

And the terror hit the Stock Market this time.

The day Satyam's news broke out people were in mad rush of selling shares. Call it coincidence or sixth sense, I advised one of my friend to sell all his Satyam shares before Wednesday and I specifically mentioned that market will fall on Wednesday. I never thought that this prophecy will come true. And what a fall it was.

Raju has definitely added a chapter in the "Sabse Bada Scamsters" an yearly magazine published jointly by CBI and CID. This magazine consists of all those people whom CBI probed but never was able to prove a case against them. Lalu Yadav, PV Narsimha Rao, Rajiv Gandhi, Hinduja, Abdul Karim Telgi, Harshad Mehta, Ketan Parekh all have decorated the front pages of this magazine but then Raju or Raju brothers deserve a special mention. They did not fool only the investors but rather all their stakeholders including Foreign Investors. He can gloat in glory "Lalu ne sirf poor Bihari logon ko loota, Harshad ne sirf stock investors ko loota, Ketan ne sirf bankers ko loota, but Humne to sabko barabar loota. Aur to aur Americans ko bhi khoob loota".


Scam ka king kaun? "Raju Bhai, Na Raju Bhais"

CID is investigating it, SEBI might just get some time to chat friendly with brothers and our honorable prime minister will keep monitoring the progress on this issue and then finally our honored CBI will be pulled into action. And then? Kya hoga aagey? Honestly I don't know. Nobody knows, not even the chief of CBI.

Well, one thing is sure that a scam of this magnitude cannot be pulled by just one man. Many more stakeholders are there and it's just about time when the body count will increase.

That's about Satyam. I think this issue brought me back to blogging. (and also increased the credibility of my stock tips) I am planning to migrate to my own domain name and currently I am searching for a cheap and reliable web hosting service provider. I am promising myself to take some time out for blogging atleast on weekends. So let's hope I keep the promise this time. Anyways, I am writing one investigative article on Satyam Scandal and am hopeful that I will be able to pack it with information.