3 unkown facts about Big B

Just a day back, Big B turned 67. A legendary actor, without him, we cannot even think of Bollywood. A big salute to you sir !!! Jeo hazaaro saal...

I don't know what came in my mind but I thought let me try to find some interesting facts about Mr. Bachchan and I browsed quite a few sites and I came across some interesting facts which I never knew. I picked up 3 and put it in a blog. That way, one new entry added to my blogs after many days. Here you go.....

1. Bachchan was initially named as Inquilab (Inquilab Shrivashtav), inspired from the famous phrase "Inquilab Zindabad, but later he was renamed as "Amitabh" (the light that would never go off).
2. He made an entry in Bollywood due to introduction letter sent by Mrs. Indira Gandhi. And that's how he got a role in "Saat Hindustani" for 5000 Rs.
3. While filming Coolie in 1982, Bachchan was required to fall onto a table and then on the ground in one of the fighting scene with Puneet Issar. Puneet Issar accidently punched him and that resulted abdomen injury, from which he lost a significant amount of blood. He required an emergency splenectomy and remained critically ill in hospital for many months, at times close to death. The public response included prayers in temples and offers to sacrifice limbs to save him. The film was released in 1983.
   The director, Manmohan Desai, altered the ending of Coolie after Bachchan's accident. Bachchan's character was originally intended to have been killed off but after the change of script, the character lived in the end. (Based on few articles, Bachchan's mom Mrs. Teji asked Mr. Desai to edit the script.) It would have been inappropriate, said Desai, for the man who had just fended off death in real life to be killed on screen. Also, in the released film the footage of the fight scene is frozen at the critical moment, and a caption appears onscreen marking this as the instant of the actor's injury and the ensuing publicity of the accident. Also the last scene where he stands in the balcony and thank the people, was the real scene, a way to thank the people of India, "Main to chala gaya tha, laut aaya hoon to bus aapki duaon se...."
   

Please feel free to add anything interesting if you know.

Belated Happy Birthday, Amitji :-)

Movies... (Ticket + Popcorn + Cola + DISPRIN)

A long back, one of my teachers had told us one saying "Expectation is mother of all disappointments". So true !!! Well, this time I have trapped Indian Movies. A guy works 14 hrs a day for the whole week, finishes his personal stuff on Saturday and Sunday he thinks that he can get a relief by watching a movie. And after coming out from a theatre room, you can find all different adjectives - 'pathetic', 'horrible', 'boring', 'terrible', 'awful' and finally 'WTF'.

What happened to bollywood? I don't understand. First quarter of 2009 gave nothing. Akshay also started giving all nonsense movies, just like Singh is King. If you start thinking anything starting with 'Why', you will end up by breaking your head into nuts.

Dev D - I was expecting it will be a good entertainer as personally I like Abhay Deol as he is specialist in playing off-bit roles. But this was not upto the standard of his previous movies.

Billu - SRK gave only 2 good movies in whole of his life. Swadesh & Chak de India, otherwise same shah rukh; running in the yellow-red colored fields by wearing black jackets, and that too with typical chopra/johar music...yukkkk..

Luck by Chance - okay. (good in comparison with other movies)

And then there was a big pause in movie release as profit sharing issue fired. All multiplex started demanding 50% share from overall profit earned by producers. Literally they stopped releasing movies. All big heads got together; that too including SRK and Aamir. (Akhir me hari patti ka sawal hai). Somehow they have negotiated with some figure. 1st week 50%, 2nd week 42.5%, 3rd week 35% and 4th week onwards, 30% flat.

The moment I heard this news, I was happy that now all stacked movies will overflow. But it was just like burp after heavy food. Aa dekhen jhara, NewYork, all failed. I was expecting too much from Love Aajkal as Imtiaz Ali had 2 nice baby birth - 'Socha na tha' & 'Jab we met'. Though Love Aajkal was not disappointing, but it was not upto the standard of his previous movies. A typical Saif, stolen kaam-chalu music of Pritam and too much of flip-flop between stories in London/Delhi/Punjab; these 3 factors had weaken the strength of the movie.

But the main reason which clicked me to write this blog was 'Kaminey'. A Vishal Bharadwaj highly created hyped movie and 3-4 star avg rating by all critics. Man, it was so pathetic. The whole movie was in darkness. Too many scenes have been directed with full close-up and that too shacking camera. 'Jo dimag me aaya wo daal diya movie me'. We returned to home with full headache and bunch of gaalis on tip of tongue.

Oh yeah, forgot to tell one thing. I also watched trailers for upcoming movies and decided that better spend money in buying some stuff. !!!

7 things...

Almost 10 weeks and no contribution to blogspot.com. Finally got some time. Huhhh!!!

Since last 2-3 days, I was thinking what can be my new topic and finally I hit the arrow on my findings about US. First I decided to write 7 things I like most and 7 things I dislike most in US, but then I gave up about good things. As there are sooooo many good things here, I cannot pick 7 out of it. If I start writing about good things then it won't be a blog anymore. It will be an online book. So being unfair, I am just writing 7 things which I don't like in US. Well, before commencing, lemme clarify that - when I say "I don't like in US" means ofcousre I am comparing it with India; and again it is individual perception, I may be wrong by looking at someone' perspective. Okay, okay, enough 'bhashan'. Let me start now

1. TubeLight

Yeah... here in apartments, you won't get any tubelight, or holder of tubelight. All you have to use is Lamp. If you really want tubelight, you can have the set up by your own, but as a must default thing, you won't get it in the apartment.

2. Different Terms

Take anything, you will find a different terms & units here. Forget about Mile, gallon, million, billion, ferunhit, freeway. Normal stuff have got a different term. Soft drink becomes soda, cycle becomes bike, restaurant bill becomes check, biscuits becomes cookies, ground floor becomes first floor, dustbin becomes garbage/trash, football becomes soccer, tin becomes can, baby cloth size available in 2T-3T. So the history says, Americans are separated from britishers and they wanted to have everything different from britishers. So it is very difficult to be adjusted in the world of new terms, but it is just a matter of time, but in intial days, you will struggle a lot.

3. Medical

Well... appointment, appointment, appointment.. no matter what disease you are suffering from, you should have appointment. Otherwise go in emergency. And once you go in emergency, minimum they will charge 200-300 bucks which is 6K INR. In 6000 Rs, a guy can very well be hospitalized in semi-special room for 2 days in India. Medical is very very very costly here. So if you don't have insurance here, you are screwed if something goes wrong. That's why people prefer the employers who have the best medical insurance plan for employees. And Microsoft is one of those best employers here who has the 100% coverage for the whole family.

Coming to medical stores, I was so surprised when I went to medical store with my friend who was supposed to take some pain killer medicines. So it's not like India, park your bike near the store and yell to store keeper- "Aey Rajubhai, jara ye dawaai de dena". Pay the money and you are done in 5 mins. Here in US, it takes one hour to get the medicines. Show the prescription, they take the complete information, verify by asking to the hospital who has give that prescription, make a record of the patient with SSN and applied a sticker on medicine box with patient's name and other info. Oh my god !!! It is such a long process. Of course, 911 is the BEST service in case of emergency, but as long as regular check-up is concerned, I like Indian style.

4. Advertisement

Remember... all those best indian commercials.... (All fevicol ads, All Mentos ads, Vodaphone zoo zoo, kya aap close-up karte hai..., Camline-permanent marker, vergin mobile, Pulsar....... & so on). smart, comic and cool ads. But here if I see the ads, they are very descriptive with full information. Basically you won't really enjoy most of the ads. With my biggest surprise, I couldn't find any celebrity in the ads. I don't know why???

5. Food

Pani puri, ice-gola, vada paau, daabeli, maska bun, khaman, faafda, khandavi.... all Indian 'Footpath Food'... missing them a lot... You have a full variety if you eat non-veg. But for vegie, you have very limited option.

6. Saloon

I am not sure about other cities of US, but here in Redmond, mostly you will find chinkis to run a saloon. Here they will ask only 1 thing - "which size, 1,2,3 or 4". They trim your hair based on that size. And they charge $16 + $3 (tip). Lot of my friends are very scared to go because it is very hard to explain them how exactly you want to cut your hair, you want to have long hair from front/back, stylish sidelocks. Doesn't matter. You will come back with only 1 style. In India, hardly they will charge 25-30 Rs and that too with ultimate head massage with taka-tak sound.

7. Bathroom

Generally in the apartment, you will get at least one bathroom with bathtub, but other bathroom will be a standing bathroom. So if you are staying with your roommates and you are not lucky then you may have to use that standing bathroom. It is just 2X2 sq. feet bathroom. You cannot even move your hands freely. No bucket, no mug. So the satisfaction you are getting by sitting in a bathroom and spilling water on your head, you won't get it here. Moreover, here in the bathroom, in the common space there is no drainage. So if you forget to close the curtain while taking bath and if water comes out, then it will be PITA (acronym available at http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=PITA). And I am not talking about toilet, that's universal truth, let's not make this blog dirty. :-)

The coolest stuff I found in Gujarati ;)

'HAATH' se mile haath

It was 15th May and I started early from office, not because it was Friday but it was an election result in India, so I was pretty excited. I was thinking about the different permutation and combination as I was very much sure that this time not a single party/front will get a full majority of reaching a magic figure 272.


After finishing evening snacks, Saurabh connected laptop to TV and we started watching CNN-IBN live tv. 4 score-card counters were flashing on TV, each for UPA, NDA and Third Front, Forth Front.... And the first result came from Andhra Assembly election. TDP achieved 1 leading seat. In couple of minutes, general election counters started changing... So far UPA was leading but the difference between UPA and NDA was small.


Then Tanmoy came to home and he screamed by looking at UPA is leading.. He and Saurabh were supporters of UPA and I was a supporter of NDA. I was still hoping NDA will come up or at least they will give a good fight to UPA... but every moment, the difference between UPA Leading and NDA Leading was becoming bigger and bigger. Apart from NDA, I was also counting on TDP (Telugu Desham Party: Chandrababu), TRS (Telangana Rashtra Samiti) , AIDMK (Jaylalitha's party), BSP (Bahujan Samaj Party: Maywati) because they are more or less anti-congress parties.. But all over India, a 'Hand' of Congress was waving.. Congress spokepersons were looking very happy and at the same time BJP spokepersons; with a dull face; were telling the same thing to newsperson "Let's wait and watch, it's not over". And at that time, Rajdeep Sardesai gave a good comment. "Look at the numbers of UPA and look at the numbers of NDA. NDA needs some Sachin Tendulkar who can turn the table". Finally UPA counter reached almost 250 by. And it was the end.



3 states turned the table. UP, W.Bengal and Maharashtra.
In UP, it was all "Rahul factor". Public threw Mayawati and Mulayam out and welcomed Congress after many years. Congress grabbed 21 seats. Public understood these 2 BSP and SP will fight with each other and won't do anything good for public. In W.Bengal, "Left" was beaten badly after 2-3 decades (I guess). And the biggest reason was nuclear deal, the way they withdrew the support from the government, public gave the correct answer to them in a same way. And 'Left' became 'Left over'. The alliance of congress and Trinamool got 25 out of 42. 18 seats more they got in comparison with the last year. What a sweep !!! In Maharashtra, MNS (Maharashtra Navnirman Sena:Raj Thakarey) and SS (Shiv Sena) split gave the advantage to Congress-NCP (National Congress Party:Sharad Pawar). Lot of candidates of Cong-NCP got the victory with very small margin of thousands. In Andra Pradesh, Y.S.Reddy was a star performer of congress by grabbing 33 out of 42. Delhi also got 7 out of 7. What a stunning performance by Shila Dixit.


BJP could not even match with the figure they got in 2004 General election under the leadership of Vajpayee. Even after addressing maximum number of rallies, Modi could not do much better even in Gujarat. BJP tried RamMandir, AfzalGuru, Terrorism, 'Kamzor Neta', Modi as PM, but nothing worked out. Finally it was a show of Sonia and Rahul. Mahmohan could not have achieved this figure without Sonia-Rahul. It was almost 3.30 AM and we were watching that Aruna Jaitely was addressing a news conference. He seemed to be speaking after weeping for an hour.


Though I was a supporter of NDA, I was happy that India got a stable government. What a show by congress. UPA got 262 including 206 achieved by Congress itself, just a 10 far from a magic figure. This is the best part that now they don't need all these so-called Kingmakers like Mulayam, Lalu, Jaylalitha, Mayaywati, Left, etc. They have been always a hurdle for a government. So it is good that, all are out of the boundary so a trio of Mahmohan-Sonia-Rahul' can can take proper decision. So that way I am so happy. So finally I can say, "Hindustan ki janta ne HAATH se milaya haath".


3 things are clear...

• The most powerful word is 'GANDHI', which hasn't been changed since freedom, and there is no scope in future.
• A lesson learnt by Lalu: "Talaab main rehkar Magarmachh se Dushmani humesha bhaari padti hai" and that will end up with "Dhobi ka kutta - na ghar ka, na ghaat ka"
• BJP will tumble like a house of cards. Just look at potential PM candidates in BJP post Vajpayee-Advani era.

Rajnath Singh - Better my next vote will go to Congress
Sushma Swaraj - A receptionist can't become manager
Murli Manohar Joshi - Does everybody know him?
Arun Jaitely - Seniority problem for others
Modi - It's like "Better Tamil hero be in Chennai rather than trying in Bollywood" ;)

Flash Back

Let me press 'Rewind' button of my life's remote control and collect beautiful memories. Unfortunately, I do not have 'Pause' button, otherwise I would have paused at my college days. Well, I am not gonna write from childhood, schooling, college days n all that, otherwise it may end up into Biography rather than Blog. I just want to collect few memories when I was on cloud 9, when I broke up into tears, when I made my parents tensed, when I made myself tensed, when I was so embarrassed, when I gained so much respect etc., etc.


When I was on cloud 9

It was 10.30 pm in my college. Since morning, I was there with hungry tummy. I already had got rejected from TCS, MBT (now it is Tech Mahindra)... it was our 3rd placement but the firm was very small .. CSSI (Hyderabad). Also I had not fixed my company for my last semester project. I was very tensed. somehow I reached the final 11 out of 230 started giving written test initially. At the intro session, MD and HR executive had already declared that they are gonna grab only 1 student. Don't be surprised, company strength was only 40. Company MD, Abhinav Dave, started disclosing the selected students. First was Chetan Ladha. A room got converted into a huge round of applause. He continued, second student is Abhinav Prakash. We all were shocked as they already declared that they are going to select only 1 but still they chose 2. I thought okay, let's wait for 4th company. I almost started going out of the room. When I reached to door, some words reached to my ears. "And 3rd and last student is Ni...Nis... Kinariwala" (Mr. Dave had hard time to pronounce my name). I turned my face 180 degree and rest of the folks also turned their face 180 degree to me. Maaaan, I was just speechless. They finally completed their formalities and said "Welcome to CSSI". The best part was, I got to finish my last semester project in the same company. So even that worry was also gone. What a moment.... My technical round was not at all good, but still Mr. Dave was somehow impressed by looking at my educational background and my HR round talk. I reached home by giving some extra bucks to the auto person who dropped me. I hugged my dad n mom. My dad became emotional and his eyes got wet. Woooow, what a moment it was. I thought it was the most happiest day of my life.


When I broke into tears..

Well, I am not gonna write I got hurt or I did not go well in exam and all that. I remember one incident which is very touching for me. During my childhood, our economical condition was not good. We used to have a side business of selling asafoetida (heeng). My dad used to buy it from Surat. He used to carry big boxes in general coach in a train, my mom used to pack it in small packets and then we used to sell it out. Me n my bro used to sell them in our school. One day (I guess I was in 4th or 5th class), I gave cpl of packets to my school teacher and I had 20 bucks with me. On those days, I did not have a wallet so I kept it in my school bag.

When I reached home, I tried to find 20 bucks in my bag and surprisingly I couldn't get it. I kept on searching for 10 mins, I searched inside all my books and notebooks, but I couldn't get it. I don't know whether it fell down somewhere or somebody had stolen it. I really have no idea about it. I remember, I went into corner of the bed and cried for at least 30-40 minutes. In those days, for us, even 1 Rs. coin was like a wheel of cart so I avoided to tell the incident to my parents. My dad used to go and buy grocery by cycling 7-8 kms just to save 20-25 bucks so of course, it was a big amount for me. Till 2 weeks, I could not come out of this incident.


When I got embarrassed..

There are 3 incidents so far when I got embarrassed a lot.

1st...

After my placement, I was in Hyderabad with my new group of friends. Daily we used to sit at one juice center with my new friends (Manio, Arbo, Ladho, Dipu, Vatsy, Darshit, Bhaggu). As per daily schedule, we were doing birdwatching and talking some nonsense. Suddenly we realized that the guy sitting next to our group is listening our talk carefully. We ignored him and again involved in our activities. Again we realized that he had a keen sense of hearing. Bloody I don't know, what went wrong, I started abusing him in Gujarati. I was feeling so much of freedom because I was in Telugu land, so I was so bindaas and giving him all the gujju gaalis. Continuously I abused him for 10 mins. I did not leave a single gaali and went crossed all the limits. After couple of minutes, he went away.

Second day we were at the same place as per our regular schedule. I saw him coming towards us. Dipu pointed out by telling me "Nisu, jo pelo aave che". He reached me, put his hand on my shoulder and told "Kem baka, kaale bahu gaaro aapi te (what man, yesterday you abused me like anything)". BLOODY THAT GUY WAS GUJJU. For 2 minutes, nobody spoke a single word. It was a pin drop silence.

2nd..

This was also in Hyderabad. Me and Ladho were having lunch in "HotRottie" mess. At that time, we were at the old place which was on the terrace of one house. So it had 2 rooms and a big terrace. There was a girl (I don't want to disclose her name) who also got selected in our company from different college. At that time, she had called her parents and she was having lunch with her parents in inner most room. She saw me and Chetan and called us to meet her parents. Her dad was looking more elder than her Mom. She started..."here is my mom". I said, "Hello auntie". She was about to introduce her dad and I interrupted her abruptly and said, "Oh, is this your grandpa, right?". They 3, me and chetan, we all 5 were shocked. Again it was a silence and we all looked at each other by shocking face. She said, "He is my DAD". Ohhh man, why the f***, I interrupted her, why the heck I din't keep my mouth shut.. I said "SORRY" thrice and immediately ran away from the room.. Till 1 week, I did not have eye-contact with that girl.

3rd...

First two are nothing. This incident was 'baap' of all the embarrassment. But I don't want to disclose it here. My hyderabad roommates know about this.



The worst days..

Since day 1, my dad had a dream of making both his sons to be doctor. My mom and dad spent there whole life to make their dream true. It was 50% done as my bro was already in medical. I was also a ranker throughout my schooling, and also I was younger so they did not want to repeat some mistakes which we they did for my bro. But somehow I started degrading since 11th standard. In each exam, my graph was exponentially going down. And I got only 51% in school preliminary exam. I put my whole family in big time tension. I was so scared to give mock test. Neither we had any family business not I am coming under reservation quota, so it was a full tension. I never saw my family with being so stressed for 4 months (January-April, 2001). Those were really worst days of my life. Generally board exam happens in month of March, but in 2001, it was an earthquake in Gujarat so they postponed the exam. So I got some time and prepared well and somehow I managed to get 92% in board exam. It was a big relief. Again my dad started dreaming to send me in Medical. But for 1 mark, I did not get in and I chose IT.

When my inner soul patted me...

I was in 9th standard. My dad had a fever. It was there for 2 days and then our family doctor diagnosed that he has falsiparum and he needs to be hospitalized. We called couple of my papa's friends and we went to hospital. At that time, my bro had university exam and he was there in Jamnagar, so deliberately we had not informed him. Me and my mom were staying in a hospital. Our all relatives were staying out of Ahemdabad. And we did not even inform everybody as we did not want to give them trouble. After 3 days, my mom also got caught by falsiparum. We shifted from special room to semi special room so both my mom and dad can stay in one room. On one bed, my dad was there and on the other my mom was there. It was first time in the history of hospital that both husband and wife are lying on the bed in the same room. We informed our relatives but somehow nobody was able to come before 4 days because all of them were stuck up with some work.

I had stopped going to school. Till 4 days, I was there in a hospital. I used to give them medicines on time, sponging them with cold water, measuring temperature regularly, co-ordinating with doctor and other staff, giving them proper food by taking from our neighbours and some friends and of course I was doing other crucial nursing stuff. Night time, I used to spend at my neighbour's home and again in the morning I used to go there on bicycle by taking all the necessary stuff. In the night, either some neighbour or some friend (1 male and 1 female) used to stay there. We got a very good support from all of them. We are really thankful to them. But whoever used to come, they used to tell the same thing .. "Nisu, tu to Shravan bani gayo (Nisu, you became Shravan)". I could not realize at that time, but now I can realize what a time it was. Then after my parents got discharged and my aunties came from Surat, Ankleshwar and all of them spent 1-1 week accordingly because both papa n mummy had so much of weakness. Man, what a time it was !!! I hope nobody will face this ever.