Harry Potter & The Goblet of Fire

Last Friday saw us in R Mall. It’s a huge shopping complex in Mulund with four floors and a large variety of stores to offer you thousands of items to buy. On the top floor are the Adlabs screens. We, in total twelve people, had bought our tickets through Internet. Sometimes I am overwhelmed with the measure by which Internet has made our lives simpler. Paying electric bills and credit card dues are so effortless and the best thing is that I no longer need to waste my time standing in long queues for a movie ticket or a railway reservation. So without much hassle, we were inside the hall.

The movie was pretty good. I got what I expected from a Harry Potter movie and undoubtedly (at least for me) it is the best Harry Potter movie made so far. It was also the best movie I have seen in the recent past (last few months). It was a relief in the realm of bogus Hindi films (expect a few, of course!).

The story was quite straightforward to understand. Given that I have not read the original book, you can count on that statement. However, if you don’t know anything more about Harry Potter except his name, you are not going to catch the whole of it. One of my friends was such an ignorant fellow. He didn’t even know that Harry goes to Hogwarts to study or anything for that matter related to the stories. By the time he understood the first scene*, the movie had already reached the interval -:) So if you haven’t read any of the books or watched none of the films, better get a crash course. Make sure that you know that someone named Lord Voldemort is the villain of the story.

If you are a crazy Potter maniac, you have already watched the movie, haven’t you? If you are in doubt, to watch or not to watch the movie, just book a ticket now. You will enjoy (remember you must be a Potter literate). If you hate Harry Potter, if you boast that you don’t watch movies made for kids, go to hell!

(* The first scene is a tricky one, don’t apply too much brain on that. You will understand its significance eventually.)

Killing Time

If you thought that I was too busy or too lazy to make a post, you were wrong. It’s the lack of significant things happening in life that got me refrained from making new posts. As I had promised earlier not to make this blog a sentimental or a philosophical one, I was in desperate search for something happening. If I had to write a new post everyday describing what happened that day I will save my time by putting the post named “Back to Routine” in a while(true) loop. (The pattern of such computer language is adopted from my friend Dipanjan, however instead of while(1) I used while(true) because ….. well, you are left to guess the reason. If you can’t make out, you don’t know Java).

Have another look at the previous paragraph. That is what happens when you can’t find anything to write about and still make a post in your blog.

MTV Music Summit

One of the enthusiastic guys in my office got hold of five free passes for the MTV Music Summit last Saturday. As one of the five people backed off at the last moment, I grabbed the opportunity to go along.

The program was scheduled to start at 6 in the evening. We were well before time, at around five, to secure a place considerably close to the main stage. As time passed the deluge of young faces poured in. By six, it was quite full, at least as far I could see. The show started with Cyrus Broacha and Nikhil appearing on stage and doing some funny stuff, which they continued, along with other MTV VJs, during the breaks. Yes, the AIDS awareness stuff was also very much there as the prime aim of the show was to promote the war against HIV.

Finally the main show began. There was some guy named Raghav (do I recall the name correctly? Well, I’m not sure.) who performed two songs and tried to create more awareness about his next album than AIDS. Certain other performers followed and it wasn’t even half an hour past when I felt like getting out of the mess. With each new song starting, people put their hands up in the air expectant of a thrilling number, only to put them down after a few seconds frustrated yet again with a rather dull song. That’s the best they could do. Did you expect them to dance? Well, there wasn’t just enough room for such luxury. However quite strangely the crowd still had enough energy and interest to shout and jump at the slightest provocation from the hosts or the camera focusing on them. If you happen to watch its video recording, you will feel as if the mass was jumping and waving their hands all through the show, while the truth is far from being so.

Reading so far, if you are thinking that it was all bogus, you are wrong. Sophie, the VJ who recently acted in the film Shaadi No 1, restored some charm to the show with a few good numbers. Next to follow were Avijit Sawan, Amit Sana and another person from their Indian Idol contest. They were good. The show got even better with Bombay Vikings and Strings notwithstanding occasional interruptions for AIDS campaigns, bad jokes from Cyrus & Co., the irritating Gulshan Grover and worst of them all, the long breaks for showing advertisements of the sponsors.

We left the show with around another half an hour more to spare in the show. Such a show will be an average experience for average people, neither too good nor too bad. Well, conditions apply – you should have enough physical tenacity to stand in an overwhelming crowd for over four hours sometimes not being able to move even an inch to relax your numbing limbs, you should be able to resist plucking your hair in frustration while they show you the same set of advertisements over and over again (be prepared for this if you are getting a free pass with the logos of sponsors printed on it), you should have enough zeal to shout whenever the host on the stage asks you to.

Back to Routine

When you get up at around 8:30 in the morning, take your breakfast at 10:15 in the office, after checking the email for 10 minutes wonder what to do next, when you go for lunch at 1:30pm, while on your way to the food-court do a process of brainstorming to decide what to have in lunch and despite all efforts end up eating more or less the same food you have been eating for the last five months at lunch, when around 5:30 in the afternoon, you get ready for the office hour to be over only to be called to the discussion room for a two-hour-long meeting where the HOD gets to speak and you keep your mouth shut, when at 8:30pm you get back home (or whatever you call a flat where five poor souls exist between 8pm and 10am), change channels of the TV continuously without actually watching anything, eat up dabba food which changes its form and colour but somehow tastes very similar everyday and finally go to bed around 12 midnight, you know that you are back to routine.

Home Sweet Home

It felt really nice to be home. After around a five-month stay in Mumbai, the weeklong break in Kolkata was a treat. One thing is clear – my fascination for Mumbai will take a long time to get even close to my love for Kolkata.

The 32-hour journey by Gyaneshwari Express from Kurla Terminus to Howrah rendered the rare occasion when I could speak in Bengali with someone face to face. The week at home wasn’t very eventful but still we enjoyed a lot. We have a custom of performing Laxmi puja on the day of Diwali. So no crackers! However the special kichuri (hotchpotch) with five types of fries on that day do compensate for the fun of the crackers. Or am I just too old for crackers? Either way, the puja went fine. The other days were marked with trips to Big Bazar, the near-by shopping complex or the local Satyajit Ray Park, meeting some old friends and also watching the ODIs between India and Sri Lanka. We feel a bit sorry for Sourav (Dada) not being there in the field. But if India can play so good in his absence, better be it this way. My father came home on Friday. So it was a family reunion after quite some time. My brother is in the 2nd year of his engineering studies. If he gets a job outside Kolkata, which is very likely, such a reunion, I am afraid, will be even harder and more rare. The saddest person on earth will be my mother for whom just our being home is the ultimate treat in itself. The world is pulling us apart. Yes, there are cell phones and emails but nothing is like being at home. I am not getting homesick. I just can’t put the right words to narrate the feeling. May be, if you are away from home busy with your duties and pleasures and get back home after a long time only to leave after a short period, and if you have someone as caring as my mother and someone as lovable as my little brother, may be, you will understand.