First Day First Show: Karthik Calling Karthik

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A friend of mine, after enough coaxing and cajoling from me, has been kind enough to send me this review. Do read and leave your comments!


What will happen if someone with your voice calls you and claims that its you?

Karthik (Farhan Akhtar) is a real nice guy but a loner. His boss and colleagues don’t appreciate his work, and the girl he loves (Deepika Padukone, who is also his colleague) doesn't even know that he exists.

He has been working for a construction firm for the last four years, has to put up with his boss who refuses to accept his own mistakes and treats Karthik like a slave. Unable to bear the humiliation any further, Karthik decides to take the extreme step. Just when he is about to do it, he receives a phone call that changes his life.

The first half is fast-paced and keeps the viewer engaged. The second is slower and the ending, a bit sober.

Farhan Akhtar as Karthik and Deepika as Shonali act quite well. Deepika looks stunning and has considerably improved her acting from her last movie, "Love Aaj Kal."  The movie is all about Farhan and he is complemented well by the others.

The chemistry between Farhan and Deepika is good and there are quite a few cute scenes and well-written lines. The scene with their fingers moving on the table top is brilliant.






The songs by Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy are good, though they remind you of some of their previous works. Hey Ya is already a hit and is shot superbly. The background score by Midival Punditz & Karsh Kale and the camera by Sanu Varghese are also good, although the camera work in the second half could have been better.

Considering this to be Vijay Lalwani's first movie, the end result is commendable.  
Karthik calling Karthik is a good watch, definitely a one-time watch.

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A story in 55-words

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The little girl sang beautifully, a song made up from her limited vocabulary, composed from her nursery rhymes.

“Do you want to be a singer when you grow up?” they asked her.

“No, I’ll be a person who makes everyone smile.”

“There is no such profession,” they said.

“Then I don’t want to grow up.”


This story was made into a film by Naseef Gafoor. 

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A.A.A.D.D

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Oh, I did laugh my share of laughter at the old joke on Age Activated Attention Deficit Disorder(AAADD), just a few years ago. Little did I know that I would come up with my own version, extracted directly from my own interesting days, so early in my Life.

I was getting my son's school bag ready, throwing his books and tiffin box into it.
I remembered that his water bottle was in the bedroom.
I went to get it and saw that the bed was unmade.
I just started making the bed when I saw that he had left his glass of milk near the bed the previous night, so I took it into the kitchen.
One glance at the pile of unclean dishes in the sink and I started on them.
Then I realised that breakfast was not cooked.
I took the iddli batter from the refrigerator, ready to pour into the iddli cooker, when I looked out of the kitchen window and remembered that I need to run the washing machine, else there would be no clothes left to wear.
Hurriedly I pulled some unwashed dresses from here and there, and rushed to thrust them into the machine when I noticed that my plants were not watered and the unkind Sun was bearing on them.
I was about to throw down the clothes and start watering them when my son came out ready for school and looked around for his bag...

The school-bag not ready, the bed unmade, the dishes not done, breakfast uncooked, clothes unwashed, plants not watered, I begin the cycle again...

Attention deficit? Laugh, my good reader, laugh...
I hope you have some stories to share with me as well.

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A Story in Six Sentences

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The little one, wearing new sports shoes, goes out to play.

After days of pleading, his Mother has finally let him go, on condition that he would not fight with the children, and will come back when she calls.

Seconds later, he is back at the door, whimpering, sufficient amount of skin peeled off his elbows, knees and wrist, a spatter of red on them, gathered from his first encounter with the ground.

His Mother hurries to take him in her arms, clean the bruises and apply medicine on them, comforting him. "It's all right; let's go for a walk - and you can go to play tomorrow."

"No," says the brave child, fighting back tears, "Make my pain go away, and I'll go back to the play-ground."

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The Songs of the Ocean

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The Horses rein free. They flee for a while in the pleasure of finding themselves unbound, and soon engross themselves in the greenest grass one could find on the Planet, spread as far as eye could see.
She could rein them in, whenever she wanted.  
If she wanted.
Left to themselves, she knew, they may wander off out of her sight.

She sat there, face drawn, watching them graze. Occasionally her tired eyes would stray longingly across the green valley and the barely visible stretch of Desert, to the farthest horizon, from where a low rumble suggested the presence of the Ocean. She never knew if it really existed. Was the sound a mirage as well? Could it carry so well across the desert and the valley?

The Mountain behind was real, for sure; it was powerful, yet calm. It was closer physically, if not in spirit.

The Ocean was forever luring her with its song.
Yet, it would be unwise to leave the shade and the comfort of the Mountain and attempt to cross the vast Desert, where there was no certainty of finding an Oasis, let alone the Ocean.

Besides, who knows... for whom the Ocean sings!

She was no wanderer; there was no wander-lust left in her. It was the heart-wrenching longing that the songs induced in her that left her unsettled.

On days of thunder and rainstorm, when water and wind lash against the valley, she would again look outwards toward the horizon where the Song still played its invitation to her.

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The Intelligent T9

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When I first discovered the joys of SMS about a decade ago, I fell in love with it, so much so that I desired a mobile connection just to send SMS-es. Making and receiving calls were passé. It was the speed of punching a reply to SMS, it was the cool new short-forms, that became the fever. I would choose to send a message to convey info that could be said in a less-than-three-seconds' call, even if it takes me more time to type it.

In my initial days of text messaging, I excelled in typing speed and shortening of words to make coherent short messages. My sister, on the other hand, made perfectly formed sentences complete with zero grammatical and spelling errors. And yet, her speed matched or exceeded mine. Atrocious!

Once I paused in my brisk texting to complain to her that her messages seemed quite formal, not quite she-ish, and she let me in to her secret - the T9 Editor.

I refused to be enchanted by the so-called 'intelligent' dictionary squirming through words on each key-press and raising numerous possible permutations and combinations to locate the one best suited to the occasion. It just wasn't me.

Today, several revolutions and rotations of the World later, I am an ardent admirer of the T9. Except when I have to key-in words in the regional/national language, my default setting is T9. And my sister? She has long ago bid farewell to the T9 and along with it, vowels seem to have totally abandoned her text message composer.

I often wonder, seeing the suggestions that my T9 gives me for the same key combination, on what basis was the order of the words decided? Most-often-used first? Probably. Sometimes, I suspect that the person who designed it was/is an optimist, a romantic, an adventurer, who gave certain words a tad advantage over others. Given two words which could be equally popular, see the ones he has given preference to!

Read on...

* 'Cool' before 'Book' or 'Cook'
* 'Moon' before 'Noon'
* 'Dec' before 'Feb' Yes, winter is for romantics!
* 'Slip' before 'Skip'
* 'In' before 'Go'
* 'Pain' before 'Rain' Hmm... that wasn't very romantic or optimistic, though!
* 'Won' before 'Woo' and 'Zoo'
* 'See' before 'Red'
* 'Find' before 'Fine'
* 'Of' before 'Me'
* 'Foot' and 'Font' before 'Don't'
* And the best of them all ... 'Selected' before 'Rejected'

Get what I mean?

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Of Equations, Good and Bad

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Have you ever felt...

... what you yearned for is suddenly placed on a platter, at your doorstep?
... that, you had not realised how much you had longed for it, till it was finally within your reach?
... that, you earned it, maybe you suffered enough for it, so it seems well-deserved?
... that, you thoroughly enjoy it and love it, though it has come with a price?
... that, though you pretend otherwise, others' envy does make you pleased?
... you grab it, hold it, savour it, but the time given to you is not enough, never enough, before it is taken away from you!
... when the final bell rings, and your time is up, you try to convince others and yourself that, 'after all I was paying a price, good that it is now over', and it was 'good while it lasted', not really believing it yourself?


My entire World is poised for the final equation. The climax where E=mc2 makes its much-awaited appearance.

The parameters involved are numerous, and they play see-saw around me without coming to rest.

The Equation of the Year. Perhaps the first of its kind.

I wait with bated breath.

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