Ratha Charithram

Ratha Charitharam or Rakta Charitra... My first movie in bangalore...
I wanted to make a messy sketch (inspired by some other blog i read recently) of this messy movie to save the future potential film-goers..

Hope the picture speaks 1000 words (Apart from the one i typed)..

                RATHA CHARITHRAM TIMELINE

Add a noisy background score and a uncomfortably chill AC... The best movie watching experience ever... 

You can still watch it in theatre if you are the 'its-half-full-not-half-empty' kinda person...

You are in bangalore if.....

You are in bangalore if……

-

 -         You see 1000s of guys with a backpack and an ID card wherever you go

-         You see lakhs of girls with their hair let loose and a sporting strange attitude.

-         Guys carry the backpacks even on weekends; when they are not carrying their laptops to work.

-         People wear ill-fitting clothes and are in constant denial of the fact that they are gaining kilograms.

-         Every Reddy, Kumar and Patil works for a software company.

-         The supposedly ‘expensive’ Volvo buses are crowded but the ‘normal’ buses are empty.

-         The auto drivers earn more than anybody else in the city.

-         The house-owners give stiff competition to the auto-drivers in becoming the richest traders in the city.

-         You have to sign a six page document to rent out a house but sign a two page document to buy one.

-         The rules of notice periods are stringent if you want to leave the house, but relaxed if you want to leave your company.

-         Every bus and billboard will be written in Kannada even if 75% of the people here don’t know the language.

-         You will be always spoken to in Kannada, if you reply back in the broken Kannada that you know, you will get your next reply in your mother tongue. (Bangalore locals have a strange talent of identifying your mother tongue by the way you speak kannada)

-         You are allowed to bargain for 30% of the quoted price and still not let the conscience prick you.

-         Everything seems costly and everyone seem to be cheating you in some way.

-         Sentences like ‘Its very close… about 10kms… it will take just 45 mins for you to reach there’ do not have any hint of sarcasm.

-         You need to plan your travel to the railway station more than you plan your travel to your destination.

-         Talks about .Net, JAVA, hikes and openings are so prevalent that it makes you go sick of being a software engineer.

-         All the places are either _____Halli or ______Palaya or some fancy English name given by the British (Brigade, Richmond etc).

-         Cost of parking and the cost of a movie ticket are more or less the same.

-         It makes you wonder if people just go to the malls to eat why do they have the food court on the top floor.

-         You get McD burgers, KFC chicken, Dominos Pizzas everywhere but do not get a decent dosa anywhere. All the dosas available here are the awful sugary cousins of the real ones back in tamilnadu.

-         You get the combo dishes and wonder what is combined with what?

-         The SUVs rarely have party flags on its bonnet and also rarely carry more than one person.

-         There will be a huge line of traffic caused by a person who is struggling to make a U-turn coz he bought a car before he could learn to drive as his company pays him crazy.

[Written just for fun.. Bangalore has a lot of positives.. great weather.. nice restaurants.. and lot more... ;-)]

JUDO is back

Drew a comic strip after a long time.. Excuse for the quality of the humor..
Hoping i improve as the time goes by..

my other sketches

http://messy-sketchy.blogspot.com/2010/08/judo-life-my-first-comic-strip.html

Shooting BLANKS

Back to blog-o-world after a long time, guess I ve crossed the blogger’s lull.

This post is for guys to read(not strictly..), We guys just love to text or msg or SMS right, its fun, its easy, we get that precious time to think before replying which we don’t get in an actual conversation. Im talking about real msging (read long SMS based conversation to a person of the opposite sex), not the SMS that we send that reads “Good Morning. Have a nice day J” or “I reached.. where the hell are you dude..”.

While texting had its own shares of advantages (which im planning to cover in another post), I wanted to cover the important aspect of this not-so-well-mastered art or msging. It is called blanks. Blanks are not messages that guys send to gals when they want to start a conversation, ‘damn these touch fones, I must ve sent that by mstke,..,. so wat u dng??’. Blanks are the deadly messages with minimal characters sent by gals to guys; which forces them into submission, and makes them do the unthinkable, ‘to end the conversation’.

Blanks are just one word replies which the guys try very very hard to understand. The one word is usuall followed by a series of dots, the more the number of dots, the more powerful the blank, coz it shows the degree of frustration they had. Here I list the top 5 deadliest blanks used in the history of messaging.

5. Ya..

This may sound like the nod of approval but it is not even close. It actually says ‘Ya u r a jerk y don u stop botherin me..’ If it actually an approval of something it should be followed by a lengthy acceptance like ‘Ya.. Rohit is totally into Pooja’, if its just Ya.. its nothing but a lengthy “YAaa……wwwn” to your msgs.

4. K..

This is another blank in the guise of a positive acknowledgement (short for for okay) but it became so common that it is rarely misunderstood. It jus expands to ‘K…ill me for msgn you’ or the other person jus feels like ‘K….ickin ur b***’

3. Oh..

This blank makes us feel like the other person is sympathetic or even empathetic, but that’s not the case friends, it means they are not listening, they din even read your previous message. There is a good chance that they sent that message before they received yours.

2. Then..

The ‘Then…’ is like a slow poison, it forces us to come up with new topics to discuss which we will eventually run out of and later forces us into submission. It never works for the first time as we will be full of energy and we dodge it, but a barrage of such blanks will be too much for any master.

The coveted first place goes to…..

…….

…

..

.

.

1. Hmmm..

What the hell?? This is not even a word, this is just a sound. This is the deadliest of all blanks. No they are not singing, they are jus giving out a sigh, not a sigh of relief (that will come after we end the conversation), it’s a sigh of disgust, the one we give to annoying beggars. It’s the knock-out of all blanks. The only reply a guy could give here is ‘Oh.. guess u r bsy.. cya l8r’.

Then there are those ‘combi-blanks’ which are even more dangerous:

Hmmm… Ya…

K.. Then..

Oh.,.. Ya..

Hmmm.. K..

Oh.. K..

So guys,, suit up its time to dodge those blanks.

Movies.. Murder.. Madurai..

For the past three years I ve been living in a wonderful city called 'Madurai'. It is the city where almost all Tamil 'mass' movies are based. A city which has inspired a new genre of movies, 'the 3M' (Murder, Mayhem, Madurai) movies.

Now, there are so many 3M movies coming up that the creators are running out of movie titles. So they ve started naming their movies based on well known places in Madurai Subramaniyapuram, Goripalayam are examples. Madurai is full of such localities that would inspire any film-maker to name their movies after. Here are some possible titles for future 3M movies. 

Simmakkal:

This area is situated in the heart of the city, famous for hard-core non vegetarian hotels like Konar Kadai etc., So the movie based on this area should have the hero working or hanging out in Konar kadai. He may fall in love with the owner’s (read local goon with big mustache) daughter and kill a lot of people before winning her love.

Andalpuram: (I live here… J J)

This area is situated close to Subramaniyapuram. The name of this area has a religious ring to it so the movie should be religion based. The classic God vs Evil story. A young girl, who is highly devoted to Goddess Andal should be tortured by her stepmom/mother in law. With the help of the Goddess herself, the girl should defeat all her detractors.

JaiHindpuram:

Im not kidding, there is really an area in Madurai called ‘Jai Hind’puram. Obviously, the movie based on this area should be a patriotic one. Ideally vijayakanth should be cast. The movie should have dialogues like ‘Dei.. na jaihindpurathu aalu da.. desa bakthi na poranthula irunthey enakulla oori pochu da’

Alagappan Nagar/Vasantha Nagar:

This is a highly residential area, so the movie based on this should be a family subject. As with all Madurai movies, violence may follow suit, but it should start as a family movie. An entire family, who once lived happily, is killed by a bad guy. A young boy survives who later grows up and kills the bad guy.

Mattuthavani:

This is the major Madurai bus-stand. So, the story should be based on the power-struggle between two Madurai goons and an innocent bus-driver who gets caught. He soon loses his innocence and kills the two others. There will be a police officer who does not arrest him because the guy he killed were ‘poisons to the society’.

PonMeni:

This area is a very small area in Madurai. It literally means ‘skin of gold’, so the movie based on this should be a skin flick or as local would call it, a ‘gilugilupaana padam’.

Other areas in Madurai which has huge potentials to be movie titles:

Tallakulam

Arapalayam

Therkuvasal

‘Harvey’patti

Palanganatham

Pasumalai

By the looks of it, I think there are lots of 3M movies coming our way.

Writing exams... :( :(

EXAMS.....
Everybody has seen it and i'm sure everybody hates it.. but it  is the only thing common to all students… It has no partiality among the students. Irrespective of race, creed, caste, sex, color etc., etc., exams treat you the same, but the exam is not treated the same by all students; each has his style of taking exams which fall into some broad categories.

The Perfect

            This guy is so perfect in taking the exams that the word perfect itself seems flawed. He carries loads of pens in all colors, rulers of different sizes, pencil, ink blotter and all that stuff. He plans his exams well in advance [30 min for short answers, 1 hr for brief answers and 1.5 hrs for detailed answers] and tries to stick by it. He stops studying 1 hr before the exams and is usually the first person to enter into the hall. The bad thing is, he doesn’t have a plan B and mostly end up not finishing their exams coz they spent too much time planning and too few time actually writing the exam.

The Mess

            For this guy, writing an exam is like wrestling with a pig; he becomes a total mess by the end of it. His hair becomes a mess, his shirt becomes untidy, even his shoe laces untie themselves. He burns the same amount of calories Lance Armstrong burned during his last Tour de France. It is still a mystery how this guy makes a ball pen to leak ink all over his hands and even the answer paper. He has to be dragged into the exam hall as he will be studying till the last minute. This guy may finish the exam but will have to do lot of cleaning up later.

The Cool

            For this guy exam day is just another day, he is so cool about it. The reason for all the coolness is either has everything or nothing prepared. He just brings one pen to the exam hall and does not bring his books. He competes with ‘the perfect’ guy on ‘who-enters-the-exam-hall-first’ game but wins the ‘who-finishes-the-exam-first’ game hands down. He hardly breaks a sweat during the exams, if one can listen closely, he could hear him whistling during the exam.

The Closed

            This guy has only 3 things in his mind during the exams, the pen, the paper, the subject. He doesn’t even let the hall superintend to sign his papers. It is very very tough to borrow a pen or a pencil from him. He will seem much tensed during the exams and one could see his talking to himself. He motivates himself a lot. It is common to see this guy pumping his fist and saying “YES!!!” if the question paper has a question that he knows well, at the same time will go to the extent of crying if the question paper is tough.

The Devout

      This guy shifts all the burden of exam writing to God. One could confuse this guy with Nityananda on the exam day. The temples run out of vibuthi, santhanam and kungumam when he writes the exam. The first thing he does after receiving the question paper is look up the sky and pray. Some pray with their eyes closed. The time he spends on praying in the exam hall will be inversely proportional to the time he spent studying the previous day. He might even bring some pictures of his lucky God to the exam hall, but it is always a rarity to see him pray after the exam.

       I know into which category i fall.. I'm not gonna disclose... ;) :)

JUDO life - My first comic strip

Hi Everyone... After years of doodling, i ve decided to go to next level - Cartoon strips. Take a look. :):)

For full size pictures.. visit my album http://picasaweb.google.co.in/ashwingr8/JudoLife#