Driven : Compacts & a few others

Kia Rio(2010) , Cerato(2011) & Optima(2010)
Till a few years ago when you heard the word 'Kia' an image similar to the one below would have popped into your mind :

A collage of some not so memorable, ugly and poorly built Kias of yesteryear

Kia is actually a pretty old company, it was founded in 1944 and its core business was bicycle parts!! After about a decade of building cycle parts they gradually expanded into motorcycles, trucks and finally by 1974 they started manufacturing cars. They partnered with Ford for the technical know-how and produced several re-branded Mazda models (Ford has maintained a stake in Mazda from the '60s and even now has a small piece of the company) and in a few years entered the then biggest automotive market, the holy grail for car manufacturers - the US of A. Their models were downright ugly, pathetically built, poorly marketed and not at all fun to own. But all that changed because in a few years Kia was declaring bankruptcy!! The present global economic recession has everybody fearing the worst but if you actually look closely there have been major setbacks to the economies of some parts of the world for quite some time now. During the 1997 Asian Economic crisis, Kia just could not keep itself afloat. Even though they blame the crisis for their failure I personally think it was a blessing in disguise, because not only were their ugly models out of the showrooms and roads, but they also got a new  investor, none other than their major competitior - the Hyundai Motor Company. From then on Kia and Hyundai have been sharing platforms and other resources and at one point of time it was very evident because their models looked so very similar to one another's which can be seen to some extent even now, check out the 2011 Kia models (on the left) and their similar platform-shared Hyundai models (on the right) :

The similarities are quite evident. The main difference between both the model line-ups is the design philosophy and this where Kia managed quite a coup. They managed to get the legendary Peter Schreyer on board as the Chief Design Officer. Peter Schreyer is the design maverick behind many of Audi's and Volkswagen's most beautiful models including the Audi TT and the Volkswagen New Beetle.

Some of Peter Schreyer's work with his previous employer

While Hyundai adopted a curvaceous approach, Peter Schreyer's aggressive sleek design lines for the Kia made it stand out. Kia got an easily identifiable 'Tiger Nose' grill and people began appreciating and even admiring Kias for their bold designs and vastly improved quality. The best part of Kia is still its price and now with such other amazing traits, choosing a Kia is really a no-brainer and fleet owners are flocking to the nearest distributors. The very fact that the one of the most recognized distributors of Toyota in Oman and worldwide, Saud Bahwan Autmotive, grabbed Kia from another smaller distributor, built a massive dedicated showroom for Kia and made the Kia buying and servicing experience as good as their other marques which include Lexus, Toyota, Mercury and Ford amongst many others. Some readers may seem skeptical when I said that Saud Bahwan is a globally recognized Toyota distributor, but believe me, in India, every employee of a Toyota distributor learns the Saud Bahwan story as a case study during their training!! So while working in Oman I got the opportunity to drive many Kias and for long durations of thousands of kilometers. First the Kia Rio 2010.

This is a nimble fuel efficient car, best suited for the city but can handle long drives quite well. Well I got loads to tell you about this car and a lot more but will have to be continued later, gotta run now. 

What a GP!!!

The Valecia MotoGP was simply spectacular!!! What an exciting race!!! Crashes, splendid overtaking maneuvers and a photo finish victory for Casey Stoner, you really cannot ask for any more action. The top 5 really fought for their positions and and the battle for the podium places were pure drama.

Life Mein Ek Baar

Just saw the first episode of 'Life Mein Ek Baar', an awesome Indian travel show that follows the adventures of Purab Kohli and 3 others. Purab started off as a Channel [V] VJ and found stardom when he played the character 'KD' in 'Rock On!!'. He's also appeared in several other movies and shows, but this is the first time I am seeing him on the small screen. I gotta tell you this guy is really awesome!! He's got a good sense of humour, is damn gutsy and is a good chap at heart. This show 'Life mein ek baar' was originally supposed to be based on Purab and 3 of his friends but Purab chose instead to give the opportunity to 3 guys who otherwise would not have gotten to do all the stuff that they ended up doing in the show. There was a well publicized selection of candidates mainly through FB and Twitter.

Initially I thought that this would be regular travel show with bunch of youngsters mainly based in and around India but that is totally not the case. These guys really do everything that they always wanted to do, and most of these things are stuff that you and me also have always wanted to do : skydiving, bungee jumping, driving a ferrari, washing a car with bikini clad babes, biking up a moutain etc. etc. In the very first episode itself these guys bike up the Leh mountains to the Khardung La Pass, which is supposedly the highest motorable road in the world. 2 of them actually have no biking experience whatsoever, and they drive up on Bullets!!!! It might seem possible when you just read about it here, but you should see that road for yourself, my heart was in my mouth when I saw how narrow the road actually is. It is 18,380 feet high (which means approx 5.6 kms above sea level!!!), filled with potholes, a steep cliff and sure death on one side and an unforgiving snow clad mountain on the other. Imagine a first time biker driving up on a heavy Bullet on this narrow little superhigh road!!! I am really looking forward to more of this show!!

Open Letters and Political Correctness

I am sure that all of us have gone through the 'open letter to delhi boy' saga which was all the rage on FB sometime ago. For those of you who were lost in the wilderness or busy playing with themselves :

1. The mother of it all : The Original Open Letter

This blog may or may not have been very popular before, but it has virtually become a viral mega-success thanks to the famous open letter to a delhi boy. The post in question is basically a rant by a pissed off chick at her ex, both of whom are apparently from 2 diverse cultures co-existing in the same country. This post is definitely worth a read for the awesome humor quotient. But RaagShahana's blog is not only all about the open letter and dark humor, the other posts are also equally humorous and an enjoyable read.

2. The supposedly best response to the original open letter :  Mad Momma's Politically correct response

Of course there are many who would love to piggyback on the new found popularity of the open letters and would want to exhibit their ignorance, lack of sense of humor and the fact that they have a stick up their *** by blogging about it and trying to drive a little traffic their way (yes your honour, I guess in all honesty I am guilty of this charge too ;-)). But Mad Momma takes things to a different level altogether and that too in a very bitter way. She thrashes Shahana's post  from all directions and tries to portray herself as the politically correct messiah who might have the answer to all the hatred within humanity. But personally it's just sad that people have to get so worked up over a really funny blogpost. Shahana's views might not have been the most mature or wise, but who cares? It was fun to read, well written and most importantly worth a good laugh. Nobody started hating Delhi boys or South Indian men more/less after reading it. Mad Momma probably was probably high on ecstasy when blogging coz she keeps praising herself for having found a 'fayer' handsome Sawth Indian boy and even talks about kissing and making up between northies, southies and drags in the pakistanis as well to her orgy!!!! Well these are the kind of people who might have problems with strong opinions like those expressed by Jeremy Clarkson. But Mad Momma is really not all that mad, the rest of her blog is really awesome and definitely worth a read.

3. Another Delhi boy trying to dodge the bullets : "I am better than that other Delhi boy, OK!!!"

We all know that most of the time most of us are not at all that perfect. Everyone has their moments of shame alongwith their moments of glory and we think we balance our good side : the helpfulness, sweetness, respect for others and whatever, with our bad side : our lies, the perverted things we sometimes think, ego, hatred and whatever. We rationalise that this is all part of being human, but author of  'The Disgruntled Mob' is the extreme end of the spectrum. He is the kinda guy who forks out major dough to watch the first F1in India and is busy observing the butt cracks of people ahead of him! But nevertheless his blog is an enjoyable read and his reponse the open letter is a good one.

Whatever I feel about these blogs or bloggers really do not matter coz all these blogs are good reads and you must check 'em all out.

Opera in Oman

Surprise of all surprises, Oman featured in a CNN story!!! The Royal Opera House is truly a landmark of the entire region itself and it is featured in the 'Inside Middle East' show on CNN which can be found here.

His Majesty Sultan Qaboos Bin Said is a big fan of music and symphony and the likes and this is one of his dream projects. The cultural scene is Oman is definitely going to get a shot in the arm with this latest addition.

Lloyd's Cars

Beuatiful isn't it??? The shiny new Merc CLS

The gay Lloyd ;-)

Entourage is really a superb show. If you haven't watched it already then you must, its supercool!!! For the ignorant, 'Entourage' is about the life of a successful movie star and his buddies who live with him, the series is loosely based on the life of Mark Wahlberg (he's an exec producer on the show BTW), and there are so many details that are simply amazing but let's start with cars, cause whoever is responsible for picking out the rides for the stars is doing an amazing job. While the main ensemble of Vincent Chase and his buddies are spoilt with exotic rides like the brand new Mercedes SLS, Hummers, Ferraris, Astons, Harleys and the celebrity favourite Cadillac Escalade, their agent Ari Gold gets to play with a new luxury ride every season, he's had it all, the Merc S-Class, BMW 7 Series, Lexus Hybrid and the stunning new Mercedes CLS.

But the most interesting choice of rides is for Lloyd, Ari's gay assistant. Only two times in the whole show we have been able to see Lloyd in his own car, the first time was long back in the first or second season when Lloyd drove around in an import tuner(looked like a Hyundai ;-)) and the recently Lloyd was spotted driving in a spanking new Chevrolet Volt. I guess the message is pretty clear : Cheap imports and Electric/Hybrids are for queers!!! ;-)  Japanese cars are almost like the gold standard now, so cheap imports very clearly means over modified Korean & Chinese shit, at least according to this blog ;-)

Lloyd's ride shown in the earlier seasons (not really but very close!)

Lloyd's latest baby

Hey before you bash me for not being green, I gotta tell you I love all kinds of cars, even electric, but these kind :

Tesla Model S

Tesla Roadster 2.5

Ad Backfire

Subaru is one of the most confused auto manufacturers in the world at least when it comes to design and marketing. They have some of the best technological know-how, thanks mainly to their amazing success in WRC and their motorsport partner responsible for their success, Prodrive. But their commercial cars have been mostly a joke for the last few years. They transformed a beautiful & capable Impreza into an ugly & gay  hatch, made a ridiculously useless & ugly 'SUV' called the Outback and have throughout their history re-badged models from other manufacturers to varying degrees of success. Most major auto brands have some kind of visual or non-visual recall feature that strikes a chord with auto enthusiasts : the famous 3-pointed hood ornament of Mercedes, the dual radiator grille of BMW, amazing engine refinement of Hondas, the clean design of Audis, the perfomance and styling of Porsches and so on. For Subaru, there is only one feature that is consistent throughout their model range for the last few years, they all are frickin UGLY!!!! Subaru is also known for their pathetic advertisements throughout the world, but their latest 'Mediocrity 2011' campaign takes the cake for being their most stupid, unimaginative, boring and just plain bullshit effort yet.

What the brilliant ad gurus at Subaru's trashy marketing agency have done is that they have taken a Kia Optima, tried to dress up the logos with their own 'Mediocrity' ones, and there you have it :  a very mediocre, run-of-the-mill, boring family sedan. I really have no clue what they are trying to imply here, because the car they have selceted is a 2005 Kia Optima which for some reason they have named as Mediocrity 2011. Now you might think that Subaru being a multiple times WRC champion might want to hint that their cars are way more sportier than the Kias and Medicoritys of this world. But take a look at their not-at-all mediocre attempt, the 2011 Subaru Legacy (the mediocrity campaign was designed for this model)  :

Looks familiar? Now take a look at the best selling mid-sizes :

The Toyota Camry :

and the Honda Accord :

So when you compare the 2011 Subaru Legacy with these other models, it almost looks as mediocre if not worse than the others! The Kia which the Subaru ad guys used was 2 generations old, so you want to know about the 2011 model of the Kia Optima? Check it out:

The brand new Optima looks like a stunner and is available in all kinds of options including Hybrid. 'Nuff Said. Go get your act together Subaru & way to go Kia!!!


Note : Many thanks to The Truth About Cars, a brilliant automotive website.

New Nissan Sunny

Last year a buddy of mine was car shopping and we had a lot of fun in the initial stages coz we were test driving some of the really high end models like the then brand new Nissan Maxima, which is a superawesome car btw, and the Nissan Altima Coupe amongst others, yup I know these are not really 'high end' cars but they are really cool cars especially for my friend who was a total novice driver with a shiny new driving licence. Well due to some unexplainable reason my dreams of test driving all the awesome cars in Oman were cut short and my buddy surprised or rather shocked me by picking up a 2010 Nissan Sunny (this model name refers to Nissan Sunny in Oman, its called the Nissan Almera in other parts of the world, and in some places its called the Nissan Pulsar or Sentra). One of the major reason cited was that the car would fetch a good resale value when sold the next year, the plan was to upgrade to a bigger and better car once the basics of driving were mastered. Well this gave me an opportunity to learn a lot more about Nissan and the particular model in question, the Nissan Sunny.

Nissan as a company is a very very cautious player, they have seen both the highest peaks of automotive success and the lowest valleys of failure. Their VQ series of engines have been placed in the Ward's 10 best engines for 14 straight years! Despite having a pretty awesome market-share and technical expertise, they were up to their eyeballs in financial woes towards the end of the 20th century (dramatic isn't it, when we say end of the 20th century? its actually simply the year 1999 that I was referring to ;-) ). Nissan made a stunning and dramatic fairy-tale recovery led by the then Renault COO and now Japanese superstar Carlos Ghosn, pretty accurately decribed in the Nissan Wikipedia entry :

"Under CEO Ghosn's "Nissan Revival Plan" (NRP), the company has rebounded in what many leading economists consider to be one of the most spectacular corporate turnarounds in history, catapulting Nissan to record profits and a dramatic revitalization of both its Nissan and Infiniti model line-ups. In 2001, the company initiated Nissan 180, capitalizing on the success of the NRP. The targets set with 180 were an additional sale of 1 million cars, achieving operating margins of 8%, and to have zero automotive debts. Ghosn has been recognized in Japan for the company's turnaround in the midst of an ailing Japanese economy. Ghosn and the Nissan turnaround were featured in Japanese manga and popular culture. His achievements in revitalizing Nissan were noted by Japanese Government, which awarded him the Japan Medal with Blue Ribbon in 2004."


To cut a long story short, there were a lot changes in Nissan and its product portfolio, but they really were not in a position to revamp their entire model lineup nor could they introduce a new model every year or two, like their biggest rival Toyota was doing. But I guess the wait was worth it because now not only is Nissan a business success, but their models are some of the best in their respective classes. The Nissan Maxima and the GT-R are prime examples. Well you can't deny that they have made a few gigantic unforgivable mistakes as well like the Nissan Micra, Richard Hammond of TopGear actually masked his face with a paper bag while test-driving it coz the Micra looked so disgusting (and yeah he ditched the car midway through the test coz he just couldn't go on)! Well the Nissan Sunny is a car that has been around for a long time. Once a major threat to the Corollas and the Civics of the world, they were soon too out dated to be a threat for even entry-level cars. It may seem unbelievable and blasphemy but Nissan have been selling almost the exact same car from 1995 to mid 2011. That's a whopping 16 years of running the same model!!! There have obviously been a few cosmetic changes but it clearly wasn't enough to entice the average buyer. Most of the purchases were by either government or fleet customers who cared only about the price of the car and nothing else.

From 1995

To 2011

Well after all those years, Nissan has finally decided to introduce a new Nissan Sunny and it looks pretty good. The rear is definitely inspired by the Maxima while the front bears more than a passing resemblance to the outgoing model. Everything has been made completely up to date. I believe there is a lot in common with the new Sunny and the Renault models, particularly the Fluence. Well my buddy who bought the older Sunny right about when it was going to be phased out is in for a shock, because its resale value has gone for a toss now with this spanking new model out, but if nothing else, the older model is sturdy, coz it has made it across quite a few pavements, traffic light islands and unpaved roads in one piece and in the hands of a wannabe rally driver ;-)!

The New Nissan Sunny....It's not a Car it's Caaaaar (The Indian ad sucks I tell you!!!)

Why is Toyota THE best???

Check out these videos....I don't think you will need further proof of the Toyota quality!!!

Arabic Hip Hop

I was watching NatGeo Daredevils by Diego Bunuel (The show is called 'Don't tell my mother' in most other parts of the world) the other day, and Diego was hanging out with a few Palestinian rappers and their music really felt fresh and interesting. Being born and brought up in Muscat, Oman, anything middle eastern and arabic still has a very high appeal for me and I was just browsing through the various arabic hip hop videos on youtube when I came across this particular one. Its an old track, and the video is a pretty amateur attempt, but I could really feel their beat and the english rapper (Flipp - real name Hissam Aseem I think) is really good, like his voice and style. A great attempt by these guys!!!

Buran - Did you know???

I love anything that has an engine and moves faster than 50 km/hr. So my love for aviation is a no-brainer. I always wanted to be a pilot and in fact, I still do. I would like to take at least a Private Pilot license some time in the near future. Space, astronauts, Neil Armstrong and Virgin Galactic are topics that I thought I always kept myself updated on. But I realized that even though I considered myself a big space junkie, I was very ignorant about what was actually happening in space.

Most of you must have noticed the recent developments regarding the NASA Space Shuttle program, unless you live in Mars that is. In case you are a Martian, then first of all "Hi dear Martian, you are welcome to visit my home unless you plan to invade us poor earthlings, we are already doing a damn good job at destroying ourselves", and secondly let me just inform you that after an amazing journey that lasted 30 years, the NASA Space Shuttle program has come to an end, mainly thanks or no thanks to Mr. Barack Obama (He had originally promised to shut down the Guantanamo Bay Prison, but on second thoughts I guess he decided to shut down the space program instead). There has been a lot of disagreements with this decision and several people, including NASA astronauts, have heaped praises on the Space Shuttle program, claiming it to be the most advanced system of its kind and at the same time have criticized the US government's decision to prematurely end the program. Read this article to get a good sense of the sadness and regret of Americans, pilots and other space lovers. An excerpt :


".....These craft are still well within their functional worklife, still capable of carrying man and machine into space. It is a shame the program is ending as early as it is. The shuttle should continue to carry NASA astronauts to the ISS and low earth orbit for at least the next decade.


.....So let's get over the political arguments, the disagreements with the decision and let's support the organization that even made any of this possible in the first place, NASA. We have a long hard road ahead for a replacement vehicle, a HUGE political battle for funding and continued support of NASA by the US government. "


So all in all, I was feeling a little sad that such an awesome machine is being put to sleep, mainly because the US needs the money to fight useless wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and soon there will be several other countries in this list from the way things are going (Iran, North Korea and Libya are almost literally begging the US to attack them from the way they are handling their affairs). All over the media, the sadness at this great larger-than-life space shuttle program coming to an end is pretty obvious and it kinda leaves you with a heavy feeling and makes you think "So what next?".


But guess what? How many of you have heard about the Buran Program?? I don't think many.Vladimir Radyuhin has written an amazing article on the present situation of the space travel, which paints a realistic picture of expectations and public sentiment vs. Reality, a few excerpts (I have highlighted the major points in bold underline) :


"...When the U.S. embarked on designing a space shuttle in the late 1960s, it was widely believed that reusable space vehicles would win hands down over expendable ships by drastically cutting down the cost of spaceflight. However, the result turned out to be exactly the opposite. The cost of the 30-year space shuttle programme was more than $1 billion per launch, roughly equivalent to the cost of launching 20 Soyuz spacecraft.

The U.S. will save a lot of money by switching over to the Russian space vehicle. NASA contracts with Roskosmos for ferrying 18 U.S. astronauts to the ISS and back aboard Soyuz ships over the next five years (plus 24-month training for each astronaut, room and board, flight operations and crew rescue) will cost the U.S. only as much as a single shuttle flight. 

Soyuz being transported to the launch pad

A big advantage of the U.S. shuttles, of course, was their freight capacity. A shuttle could take to space almost 30 tonnes of cargo, 10 times more thanSoyuz, and bring down to earth two tonnes of payload, compared with just 50 kg by Soyuz. Roskosmos acknowledged the critical role of U.S. shuttles in setting up the ISS by placing bulky sections in orbit. Why then, Roskosmos asked, are the sleek U.S. “birds” gone, while the old Soyuz craft are still in business?

The answer, Roskosmos itself said, was simple: the Soyuz was more reliable and cost-effective. The spacecraft had an impeccable safety record: not a fatal accident over the past 40 years. The two Soyuz accidents involving fatalities date back to the early stages of the programme. The Soyuz-1 descent capsule crashed to earth in 1967, killing cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov, because its parachutes failed to open, and the Soyuz-11 mission in 1971 ended in a disaster when its capsule with three cosmonauts depressurised on re-entry.

While the U.S. space shuttle was far more comfortable to ride, especially on re-entry and landing, than the crump Soyuz, it certainly trailed Soyuz in safety. Out of the five space shuttles built during the 30-year-long programme, two were destroyed in accidents. In 1986, Challenger, carrying seven astronauts, broke apart 73 seconds into its flight due to a faulty engine seal. In 2003,Columbia exploded during re-entry into the earth's atmosphere, killing all seven crew members.

The only time Soyuz was struck by an accident similar to the one that destroyedChallenger, the crew were rescued thanks to the Russian ship's launch escape system. The accident occurred in 1983 at the Baikonur launch pad. The crew were in the spaceship waiting for takeoff when a leaking fuel valve at the base of the rocket set off a fire that engulfed the rocket within seconds. Ground controllers activated the escape system, which flung away the top sections ofSoyuz with the cosmonauts inside, free from the three-stage rocket and lifted them more than one km before the descent capsule parachuted safely to land even as the launch pad crumbled in flames.

U.S. commentators who praise the sophistication of the U.S. space shuttle compared to the “primitive” Russian craft overlook the fact that the Soviet Union built its own space shuttle, Buran (Snowstorm) which, in some ways, including safety features, was superior to the American shuttle. For example, it was fitted with high-tech ejection seats for the crew that could be activated at altitudes of up to 24 km. At greater heights, Buran could detach from a malfunctioning booster rocket and glide down to a soft landing. Such an escape system could have saved the Challenger crew. Buran made its first and only flight in fully automatic mode without a crew in 1988. To overcome a crosswind of 20 metres per second, Buran's autopilot recalculated its landing trajectory and the spaceship landed on the runway from the opposite direction, to the amazement of ground controllers. It was a feat that remains unrivalled.

The Soviet space shuttle programme came to an abrupt end after the break-up of the Soviet Union, mainly for lack of funds. But before that, Buran helped push forward arms control talks between the U.S. and the Soviet Union because its successful flight demonstrated the Russian ability to counter President Ronald Reagan's “Star Wars” programme.

Buran was designed as the first fully reusable shuttle system, with all rocket boosters to be equipped with parachutes and retrorocket soft landing systems. By contract, the U.S. space shuttles were semi-reusable because they had a throwaway central fuel tank and its solid rocket boosters (SRB) had to be heavily refurbished after splashing in the ocean. While the U.S. space shuttle glided to earth in unpowered mode and, therefore, had only one attempt to land,Buran was designed to carry two jet engines for increased landing manoeuvres. Also, it had superior thermal protection tiles, used less toxic and more efficient liquid fuel, had a higher payload capacity and was designed to carry 10 crew members against seven by the U.S. shuttle. Buran was the first and only space shuttle ever to perform an unmanned flight in fully automatic mode until the U.S. Air Force launched its Boeing X-37 space plane last year. But then, X-37 was a much smaller craft than the 100-tonne Buran."


Damn, those Russians are smart. For almost the same size, they built a shuttle that can carry a payload of 100 tons, as compared to NASA Space shuttle's 30 ton limit, it can be completely re-used, whereas the NASA Space Shuttle is not fully re-usable, and to top it, the Buran has 2 jet engines which enable it to manoeuvre within our atmosphere, whereas the NASA space shuttle has none, so on entering the earth's atmosphere, it has exactly one shot at making a proper landing and if the astronaut in the driver's seat is sleeping then its all over, on the other hand, Buran has proved to us that it can successfully go to space and land back on earth with or without men, no matter what the conditions are. Only if that idiot Mikhail Gorbachev didn't ruin the party for us. Well let's keep our fingers crossed and wait for the next great development.

Management Lesson - Boss

Management Lesson - Horse & Pig

An interesting management lesson shared by a friend of mine :

Horse, Pig and their Boss before the incident in the story

" There was a farmer who collected horses; he only needed one more breed to complete his collection. One day, he found out that his neighbor had the particular horse breed he needed. So, he constantly bothered his neighbor until he sold it to him. A month later, the horse became ill and he called the veterinarian, who said: Well, your horse has a virus. He must take this medicine for three days. I'll come back on the 3rd day and if he's not better, we're going to have to put him down.
Nearby, the pig listened closely to their conversation.
The next day, they gave him the medicine and left.
The pig approached the horse and said: Be strong, my friend. Get up or else they're going to put you to sleep!
On the second day, they gave him the medicine and left.
The pig came back and said: Come on buddy, get up or else you're going to die! Come on, I'll help you get up. Let's go! One, two, three...
On the third day, they came to give him the medicine and the vet said: Unfortunately, we're going to have to put him down tomorrow. Otherwise, the virus might spread and infect the other horses.
After they left, the pig approached the horse and said: Listen pal, it's now or never! Get up, come on! Have courage! Come on! Get up! Get up! That's it, slowly! Great! Come on, one, two, three... Good, good. Now faster, come on.... Fantastic! Run, run more! Yes! Yay! Yes! You did it, you're a champion!!!
All of a sudden, the owner came back, saw the horse running in the field and began shouting: It's a miracle! My horse is cured. This deserves a party. Let's kill the pig!

Point for reflection: This often happens in the workplace. Nobody truly knows which employee actually deserves the merit of success, or who's actually contributing the necessary support to make things happen.

LEARNING TO LIVE WITHOUT RECOGNITION IS A SKILL

If anyone ever tells you that your work is unprofessional, remember: amateurs built the Ark and professionals built the Titanic."

The pig after the incident !!!

Interesting isn't it? Sadly its also very true, the companies that really value their employees and their contributions are rare and few.  

Shaitan - Movie Review

DISCLAIMER : This post is titled ‘Shaitan : The Review’ but as much as I have raved on about this absolutely fantabulous piece of art, I have also rambled a lot more on Bollywood and the inspiration behind insane shit like this. All this makes this an extremely long post (with no actual review!!! if you want the plot of the movie then just go read this), but for a work of genius as brilliant as this, nothing less would have been justified, this is my ode to these great artists. Don’t blame me if you fall asleep midway, I already warned you  ;-) , read on and do give me your 2 cents worth…

Chapter 1

When I was much younger and when we used to watch Hindi or regional language movies together as a family, I always used to ask my dad that how come in every movie the villain always loses and the hero always wins. I was pretty surprised by the fact that even an extremely brilliant, superbly charismatic & sexy villain cannot even get away with the smallest of crimes, how much ever smart he/she is, the hero always has the last laugh by the time its the climax of the movie. As I grew up I realized that this, apart from the intention of giving out a good social message, was also highly influenced by our cultural ancestry. Most of our films are still loosely based on the epic 'Ramayana', in more than one ways. As in 'Ramayana', the hero is painfully squeaky clean and always wins, there's always a villain who might be extremely accomplished and ingenious (like the ten heads of 'Raavan' is supposed to indicate mastery of ten different subjects, to be precise the 4 Vedas and the 6 Upanishads, moreover, he was a staunch devotee of Shiva and has supposedly received blessings and gifts directly from the lord himself), but how much ever skillful the villain is, he's always ugly, mean and he always loses. Hollywood was like a breath of fresh air, the industry in US was much more creatively, technically and morally advanced. The film-makers were experimenting with all kinds of crazy concepts and innovations, including the traditional stereotypes of villains and heroes.

Just look around us, or better look in the mirror. Can we see anybody that is anywhere close to perfection around us? Is there one person that we know who always does the right thing, or always upholds the morals taught to us right from childhood? Obviously it is not practical to be always honest and to always do the right thing. All of us, including you and me, have done, thought and will continue to do many things which contradict with the values that we are supposed to be upholding. Come on, get real, it need not be a murder or a robbery or a rape, but I'm sure all of us have at least done some small thing or the other, which we would not be proud to tell our mothers. But the evergreen Bollywood heroes are from another planet itself. for e.g. they will be in love with a girl for decades but the feeling of lust never crosses their minds, they don't even try to kiss!!!

Well painfully slowly, all that has changed now. Several leading actors of the day refused to play 2 defining negative characters of Hindi cinema, and the guy who did play those 2 roles, now rules the industry in such a way that he single-handedly overshadows the glitz and glamour of everyone else combined together. 'King' Khan's depiction of negativity in 'Baazigar' and 'Darr' redefined box-office formulas and threw away the typical stereotypes. Over the years, Bollywood has completely revolutionized itself. Initially it was run like any other business in India, in a shoddy family-oriented way. It was a skilled trade, like carpentry or fishery, and the tricks of the trade were passed on from generation to generation. Everyone, from the light boy to the superstar had some kind of hereditary connection to the film world and it was sealed shut to outsiders. Of course there were many exceptions to the rule, but not enough to cause a massive shift in ideology. Prodigies like Ram Gopal Varma (RGV) made major dents in the traditional thinking and inspired more new comers to experiment with all aspects of a film. Soon the scale of economics got so huge that Bollywood started attracting major foreign investment and when the Hollywood studios started pouring money, along with it came years of expertise which has transformed our movies completely beyond recognition. All of a sudden our camera angles, editing, sound recording, movie print and in general our story-telling were as good if not better than Hollywood movies. India has never been short of talent. Indians are extremely talented in many ways but creatively, we are on another level itself. A small town artist in India can and does create stunning logos etc. for companies, in fact on par or even better than the ones created by international advertising firms, the only major difference being that the small town artist might call it an 'emblem' and gets a few rupees, while the ad company calls it 'brand identity' and rakes in millions. Critically acclaimed film-makers, like RGV, make cinematic masterpieces, for a fraction of the budget of a Hollywood highschool comedy.

Chapter 2

The talk of bollywood town these days is that Anurag Kashyap is the new Ram Gopal Varma. An immensely talented maverick, Kashyap had a very troubled childhood, reportedly suffering 11 years of child abuse, which led to him dabbling in drugs, booze and cinema in order to overcome his trauma. Anurag Kashyap got his first major break when he co-wrote the script for the cult classic RGV flick 'Satya' following which he worked on a few major projects with RGV, Mani Ratnam (Kashyap wrote the dialogues for 'Yuva') and others. His pre-Satya hangout buddies included RGV prodigy Sriram Raghavan (who went on to make the masterpiece ‘Ek Hasina Thi’ and ‘Johnny Gaddar’) and Shivam Nair (he made ‘Ahista Ahista’) amongst others. All these guys were insanely creative but also had an inclination towards the dark side of humanity.
They worked on different projects which included a docu-drama on a serial killer called Auto Shankar. Shivam Nair had oodles of information on serial killers and the likes, whereas Kashyap had loads of ideas regarding a movie based on his buddies who were members in a rock band. That’s when he got the idea to merge the rock band idea with the Joshi-Abhyankar serial murders (if you haven’t already heard about these murders, follow the link and get your blood curdled !!!) which resulted in the what is supposed to be Indian cinema at its best. Made in 2003, this movie was not allowed to be released, even with an 'A' rating, by the Indian Censor Board for the following reasons :

1. The film glorifies violence
2. It shows the modus operandi of a crime (killing of a police officer)
3. It shows excessive use of drugs
4. It has double meaning dialogues (with sexual undertones)
5. It has no positive characters
6. It does not carry a social message


In the original first draft of 'Paanch', the protagonist, played by Kay Kay Menon, was supposed to be imaginary, like Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) in 'Fight Club'. But the concept was too alien for Bollywood masala-formula producers and in order to get financing, Kashyap re-wrote the script several times and at later stages also included multiple songs bending to the demands of financiers. If released on time, 'Paanch' would have forever changed the future of Kashyap, Kay Kay and Bollywood. If you liked 'Shaitan' and Kashyap or if you are a serious art connoisseur then 'Paanch' is the movie to watch. It has been shown at various film festivals around the world and all those who have seen the film, are surprised it has been refused a certificate. People have been congratulating him on the film's realistic approach. Directors like Ram Gopal Varma, Govind Nihalani, Sudhir Mishra, Kundan Shah, Ketan Mehta, Aziz Mirza and Farhan Akhtar have liked the film and have hailed it as path breaking, but too bad for you that the movie is banned in India......or is it??? Thanks to online piracy and unrestricted communications using internet, it is now possible to do a lot of things that was not even fathomable a couple of years back. Click here to download 'Paanch', a movie several people are dying to see, but are not able to coz they don't have the good fortune to visit film festivals and coz they haven't heard about torrents and satanicreflections.blogspot.com ;-)   


Chapter 3

'Paanch' was basically a story of 5 members of a rock band, set in an ultra-urbane landscape, with everybody doing massive amounts of drugs and other crazy stuff. The wikipedia article on 'Paanch' says :


"The story depicts what ambition, immorality, greed and angst, unmistakably the products of urban life, can do to an ordinary person. A little mischief for the sake of success leads a group of 5 wannabe rock stars to get entangled in a gory web of murder and betrayal. What follows is a shocking thriller of a story, supported aptly by some great performances, the best coming from Kay Kay Menon and Tejaswini Kolhapure. The movie has a great musical score by Vishal Bhardwaj. The songs, most of which Anurag Kashyap interestingly uses up in the first 15 minutes, are brilliant. So is the background music. Another high point of the movie is the cinematography, which impresses upon the viewer an aura of fast-paced urbanity juxtaposed with dark, ruthless bloodshed. There is a compelling tension and gloom that permeate the movie towards the latter half."

As you can see for yourself, this almost reads like a review for 'Shaitan' doesn't it? To say that 'Shaitan' is actually 'Paanch' with its edges roughed out would be an insult to the efforts put in, but it does have a lot of the same genetics as its controversial unreleased 'elder brotha'. 'Shaitan' was in fact already finalised and was set for shooting, even dates were booked for all the stars including the beautiful Kalki Koechlin (who is Kahyap's wife btw, and this is a major reason for him to be introduced to this project), and it was only at the eleventh hour that Kashyap hopped on board as producer. Basically all the reasons that 'Paanch' was banned have been eliminated, like introducing strong positive characters, avoiding excessive violence on screen time by actually shooting the murder scenes from less bloodier angles, sending across a strong social message etc. and at the same time all those features that made 'Paanch' a masterpiece have been improved on and incorporated in 'Shaitan', like crazy cinematography, riveting background score and amazing perfomances from the entire cast. The collaboration of Kashyap and cinematographer R. Madhi, who previously worked in major tamil films results in pure visual magic. By using several tried & tested tricks and by playing around with their creativity, they have given true movie buffs a real treat, and several scenes stand out like the breaking the beer bottle on the nosy pricks head and banging the shit out of him, the smoke coming out of K.C.'s mouth as he plays pool, the weird angles of being inside the bottle when they play 'dare', the angle from the point-of-view (POV for you porn lovers ;-)!!!!) of the ball when K.C. dribbles the ball on the bat, skillful and  extremely innovative use of high-speed cameras (so many of the scenes are shot so beautifully in super-slow motion, btw if you haven't already seen 'American History X' either commit suicide right now or go see it right away!!!! Its another cinematic masterpiece that has a lot of ground-breaking photography which is still very much contemporary though the movie itself was released in 1998!!!! Go see it!!!!) 


Chapter 4

Recently two events were caught in the eye of a 'gossip storm' in Britain. When Sanjiv Mehta bought the rights to the brand name 'East India Company' and when Ratan Tata claimed that the mindset of the workforce of the Jaguar Land Rover factories (the buying of which itself was another major controversy) was of laziness, the british tabloids called these events the ultimate moments of 'Empire strikes back', because after several hundred years of bossing around Indians, now they are getting bossed around, and this will continue the same way for the foreseeable future. 


Regionalism, communalism and differentiating based on caste, creed, sex etc. is a totally stupid emotion and will never be of any use in the long term and I totally DO NOT advocate this. But even though the more knowledgeable people acknowledge and practice this equality, there has always been a major bias in Bollywood against Southies. Even though South Indians have a major role to play in almost every aspect of Mumbai, the average Northie Mumbaikar is always a little too quick to discount this fact and embark on her/his mockery of everything south. The list of extraordinarily successful Southies is endless, from the greatest respectable dons of Mumbai Haji Mastan and Varadarajan Mudaliar (Dawood is just a money-power-slut hungry Pakistan agent ;-).....honestly go read the news mate, there is more than ample evidence to suggest the same), the greatest music director Asia has ever seen A.R. Rahman, the best sound engineer in India Resul Pookutty (if u don't already know him....he won the bloody Oscars for pete's sake mate!!!!!).....the list goes on, for that matter even Ram Gopal Varma is from Hyderabad and not a Marathi as many ignorant baboons have assumed incorrectly.

I usually try to go for a movie without reading or hearing anything about it. This means that I usually do not have much expectations from any movie and so am pleasantly surprised when the movie turns out to be awesome. I assumed from all the hype & hoopla that Anurag Kashyap himself was directing 'Shaitan' and since the opening credits rolled by alongside with visuals, I didn't clearly notice any of the names. But I was a little amused to hear the familiar sounds of the 'Chenda'  (a traditional percussion instrument used extensively during festivals in Kerala) during the opening credits. Moreover, the movie is peppered with references to the South, like the wife of the cop Arvind Mathur (played by Rajeev Khandelwal) is shown as a South Indian dance teacher and is played by Sheethal Menon (the wife of the director himself) and there are several instances when popular traditional South Indian instruments are used for the riveting background score, notably the 'Chenda Melam' soundtrack when Arvind Mathur metes out his own brand of justice when he throws a sex offender from a first floor of a villa. So when in the closing credits I saw that our malayali homeboy Bejoy Nambiar has directed this, one of the best Hindi movies of all time, and the crazy insane cinematography was directed by another Southie, R. Madhi, it was like a little 'Empire strikes back' moment. 


Now let's just go back to the first chapter of this post, where I mentioned that bad guys always lose and the good guys always win. Yes, 'Shaitan' is revolutionary , path-breaking and will soon be a cult classic, but due to Indian Censor board stipulations, but more importantly due to moral responsibility, the good guys still win and the bad guys still lose. The detailed discussion of why the good guys always win will require another humongous post, but that's for another day. In a totally out-of-the-box perspective, 'Shaitan' can actually be seen as an old-fashioned morality tale packaged in an extremely funky brand-new bottling.  Kudos to Bejoy Nambiar, Anurag Kashyap and the whole team for creating a true masterpiece.


And hey, thanks for reading ;-), your feedback is most welcome.


RATING 
                   (Six out of Five Stars for Excellence!!!!)