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After days of frenzied traveling through Udaipur , Jaipur and Pushkar I have settled down in to the daily humdrum. And gosh!! I remember how the Italians, that I was traveling with, had chided me for not seeing Lage raho munnabhai….. Yes, that’s true. A movie buff like me and yet to see Lage raho munnabhai. I guess that is the price I have to pay during days of hectic business activity.

Anyway, here, with release of DVD of Lage raho munnabhai, I get a chance to see it finally and boy!! what a movie this Rajkumar Hirani has made!!!!. After the utter disappointment of Don and Umrao Jaan it is a relief to watch a well made film that doesn’t pander to base tastes of audience and instead levitates the audience to its high moral ground.

For all the hard work put in by Sanjay Dutt , Arshad Warsi , Boman Irani and the cast, the true hero of the film remains the director Rajkumar Hirani. Underachievement and disappointment are endemic to movie sequels and when you are trying to match up to something as well made as Munnabhai MBBS you are always climbing uphill. Yet the fact that Hirani manages to better on his previous work is truly a sign of the immense talent of this man. And why not he has come here the hard way unlike the Johars and the Chopras and this experience shows.

What had amazed me about Munnabhai MBBS was the economy of dialogue and screen time. No character received a second of screen time extra than the screenplay required and surprisingly the same holds true for Lage raho Munnabhai though here the threads are much more complex. Of course some of them look contrived but then Hirani is not God and I do not expect him to act like one. Deciding how much screen time is enough for any character is an art in itself and Hirani seems well versed in it.

That said, nothing can take the credit away from the super performances by the entire cast
especially Boman Irani. He plays a Punjabi to the boot taking care of those small idiosyncrasies and avoiding any stereotype and the same goes for Dilip Prabhvalkar who plays Mahatma Gandhi. Vidya Balan looks gorgeous and even betters her performance in Parineeta. Of course, Arshad Warsi and Sunjay Dutt deliver stellar performances especially touching is the scene after Munna slaps Circuit and then tenders an apology. Simply awesome!

And if this bounty was not enough, even the songs give you a sweet memory to ruminate on. Nothing pathbreaking but simply delicious in melody and picturisation and then there is the social message. No pushing down the throat, no preaching. Just a sweet pill of morality.

The makers could have certainly made a more hilarious movie like No Entry or the likes but instead they kept the emotional part and made it a product they could be proud of.
Hats Off to these guys.
Loads of inspiration for my business…

First a confession. I have been a computer geek all my life and entertainment outside the online world has meant an odd movie at the multiplex. But this week has been a breakaway from all those geek stereotypes, in true computer geek fashion.

Well frankly, I was sick and tired of the substandard movies dished out over the past two weeks and decided to opt for the ‘ white man’s way’ to relaxation i.e. Bagpacking. It is the art of surviving on bare minimum while soaking in beauty through all senses without being obstructed by who you were before bagpacking.
Actually I was coaxed into it by a group of Italian students who have descended on the house next to mine.

Pushkar is a experience that just pours into you through all your senses. Sights, sounds, smells, tastes and of course the intangible enthusiasm all galore around you in this world’s largest camel fair. No wonder these foreigners throng Pushkar every November. I did it all, lived in tents, mingled with locals, rode in Rang De Basanti style albeit on a camel and gave some Italian beauties a gala time, no pun intended. I was drowned in a riot of colors and a frenzied burst of activity and yet I feel so relaxed at the end of it.

Bagpacking is seriously a neglected art in India. It has much in common with the ‘tirthyatra’ tradition in India minus the ritual part. You can truly let yourself go and just enjoy the existence of the world. I am seriously contemplating forming a bagpacking group back in Mumbai and anyone interested please leave a comment here. We need not really travel together but we can certainly exchange a lot of information, a sort of a support group.

Even blogging seems pale in front of bagpacking. On second thoughts, just kidding.