Dry State of Kerala-Its After-effects

This is bigger than an earthquake, and its after-shocks will be felt for decades, and not just in Kerala. I am talking of prohibition in Kerala, just announced by the state. This is a look (you know where the tongue is) at those mammoth consequences.

1. The Kerala State Beverages Corporation, the biggest money-making (or the only?) enterprise, will go ka-boom, as they eloquently say in comics.

2. The entertainment that common citizens have, of standing in long lines to buy liquor from the KSBC counters will be taken away. This is actually more fun than what happens after consuming the liquor- nothing.

3. Bootleggers will have a new territory to expand their business. How long can you survive on just one (state, not peg)? (sorry, Lays campaigners)

4. Dubai duty-free will go out of business, and that will have global repercussions.

5. Foreign (and domestic) tourists will abandon God's Own Country and go to Hell, or Satanic places where they have the freedom to drink.

6. Border areas will have a booming liquid economy. Wine tourism will grow in Tamilnadu and Karnataka.

7. Demand for toddy will go sky-high, higher than the Burz Al-Arab/ Burz Khalifa.

Before Midnight- Film Review

This is the third one in the series of offbeat films, Before Sunrise and Before Sunset being the first two. My admiration grew for all the people associated with the movie. There are few films in which the hero and heroine are both involved in the script. This is one of those- along with director Richard Linklater, they are in good form. Like the two earlier films, this is centred around conversations between the hero and heroine.

In this one, one of the long conversations/fights starts during lovemaking. Surprising? Well, they are married in this one, and many interesting things happen when two people are married. The fights, as I always maintained, are some of those interesting things. And the film tries to prove me right.

The difference is that there is also a great conversation around a Greek dining table (they are visiting a Greek writer and his family), which is extremely stimulating, in which three generations discuss the man-woman romantic relationship and its possible future (or no future).

All in all, I loved the heroine (Julie Delpy), and the hero (Ethan Hawke), and the movie, in that order. A fitting finale.

Book Review- The Sceptical Patriot

This book by Sidin Vadukut is about the great country that India is/was (mostly in the past tense). He examines several India 'facts' to the best of his ability, and concludes that there are wildly inaccurate half-truths or less, circulating as truths on the social media and through email chains.

Some of these include "India never attacked a foreign country." True only to the North of India. The Cholas actually ruled over vast parts of East Asia. "India invented the zero." is partially true, as in it invented the use of zero as a full-fledged digit, but there were symbols used earlier to indicate 'place' where nothing was between digits.

"World's first plastic surgery was done by Indians." Could be true, but as usual, there are grey areas about when and who actually did this. There is a description of how to do a nose job in some ancient texts.

Finding documents about anything Indian is a Herculean task, and some temple inscriptions are sometimes the only evidence you can rely on.

His comments about history (or its writing) always being questionable, and should be questioned, are good. So is the book. My view is that it is better than his Dork series, based on college humour. Maybe I'm too old for that now.

Now You See Me- Film Review

This film is pure magic. Literally and figuratively. It is so engrossing that I did not want to miss a scene. A car chase that seems pointless and stereotyped also turns out to be more than the eye can detect. In fact, the entire movie is full of deception that is hard to catch.

The story is of four magicians who hit the big time with shows in Las Vegas etc., thanks to a billionaire benefactor (played well by Michael Caine). They come up with a jaw-dropping illusion- looting the bank mentioned by an audience member- in Paris! This turns out to be a real robbery, but the magicians have a perfect alibi. They were in Las Vegas at the time! So they can't be booked for the crime.

They go on to perform two more stunts in live shows, one that empties their benefactor's bank account in favour of audience members. The benefator then turns to another magician who has exposed tricks of a guy called Shrike earlier (Morgan Freeman, excellent as always) to stop the Four Horsemen (the magicians) from doing their next trick.

There are run-ins with the FBI duo ( a guy and a girl-French, from Interpol) that keep the suspense up, and the magicians always come up trumps. The secret is revealed at the very end.

Not sure if Dhoom 3 was inspired by this, but could have been- partially. But this one is superbly edited and directed, and a must-see. In my view.

Planning Commission Decommissioned

I am just trying to imagine what the Planning Commission must have done in their sixty years of existence.

Year 1-20

Have annual meetings to understand how to plan. Make a quarterly trip to Russia to educate themselves.

Year 21-30

Implement that learning. Keep everything (including bread, rice, sugar) in short supply, just like the Russians did. Make a government office unreachable, according to 'plan'. Fortunately, outings in Siberia for dissenters were not implemented. Must have been an oversight. Well, nobody is perfect.

Year 31-40

Change gears. Go on quarterly trips to the USA to learn how they could beat the s**t out of Russia economically, and make so many models of cars.

Year 41-60

Start making cars with power windows in India. Send IT guys to sabotage the US systems so they would be brought down to our Hindu growth rates. Lehmann Bros beat them to this in 2008, with innovative thinking.

And now there's no Planning Commission. Job well done!

How To Guides

There should be a How to Guide to help us negotiate important tasks that we need to perform in our life. I have customised this (potential wish) list for India. Anyone interested? You could be a millionaire.

1. How to fill up water to last you a day.
2. How to get a cooking gas connection.
3. How to Get an Address Proof.
4. How to Get a Driving License- with and without knowledge of driving anything, except driving people nuts.
5. How to Find a Suitable Match without using Shaadi.com
6. How to Negotiate your way through the ceremony.
7. How to Get Your Kid Admission into Kindergarten.
8. How to Get Through the maze of 'Type 1, Type 2' instructions and get hold of a Customer Care executive (why do they call them that?) with service of any kind.
9. How to Read a text book without falling asleep.
10. How to Play with a Straight Bat- this is for our test cricketers.

Meeting Old Friends

I have realised that I have a major hobby. That is to talk about old times. I guess all old guys have this one. But there is a twist in the tale. I like to talk about old times with new people. And I have a huge stock of people with whom I can talk. That includes my 3000-odd students from around 9 places I have been in. The most recent ex-students are from IMT Nagpur/Ghaziabad.

So it was when I met Nikita at Pune. She is from IMT Nagpur, and now working. It was great catching up on old times, with of course, new perspective. She had been in the student placecom (committee) and that was one thing to talk about. Because this was the first time that IMT achieved record placements. It took years of effort, but it paid off. Nice to learn such things.

There was a lot of other gossip too, which will remain undisclosed, but it was great fun catching up. I recently met with lots of alumni at Bangalore too (Madhulika, Abhinav, Anupriya and Gowri-Sreeram from IMT and Sowmyashree from PESIT). And those meetings also produced a lot of good feelings.

Here's to more such!