Life's been a theatre whole week !!!!

Dont take me wrong with the title of the post because it aint a quote from a shakespeare novel and nor I am trying to be philosophical (which in the most cases I am). This week has just been so full of movies . Right from oscar-nominated recommendations to general public choices, I have just managed to view most of them. Somehow, there isnt a better time pass than movies. I always have a new reason every evening a little early to come back happily from the not so interesting job these days I have got ( well the downloads done till then ). As I write the post, Michael Clayton's next in line and I am just done with Juno. Breach, 40 year old virgin, Heat, In the land of women( which was Arjun's recco) have all become part of the extravaganza. Weekend had a special attraction in the form of prison break. Well Michael Scofield's done it again ( Sorry for breaking the suspense on you prison break fans). I still remember how Rohan, Bangia and me covered the whole season one in one go the day ( rather it was late night ) we got our hands on prison break in our final year.

I had a chance though once again to visit the legendary Paranthe Wali gali in chandni chowk once again when I had gone to see a friend of mine in CP on sunday. Oh Man what paranthas. Being from amritsar ( A place serving some mother of delicacies ) and me not being so praiseful of desi foods elsewhere generally, really have to commend them with ten on ten for their taste. Being in delhi, Everybody must go atleast once to enjoy the sheer pleasure of typical tel mein tale paranthe. You will really keep licking your fingers.

Rest, Anil Ambani seems to have grab the attention once again with the bonus share allotment. Anil Ambani gave up some 5000 crores of his personal wealth for the bonus shares. With the horrific opening bell at the exchanges, Reliance power might just have pulled a rabbit out of a rather empty hat which I am sure many of you will understand. But still I cant understand the fact that how come bonus shares will prevent investors from turning the stock around once again. People are still looking for every exit out of reliance power highway. It is a very interesting scenario which is developing right now. It remains to be seen what will actually triumph in the end - The faith in reliance with bonus added or the true sentiment of an injured investor in the current market conditions. chao !

Dates with the stars..... One on the screen and one off it !!!!

The unexpected does it again. After an uninspiring 5 day trot at the office, I always expect my weekend to be full of fun and frolics. Well the start was just about perfect as it gets. First of all I would thank the cook for it who once again didnt make it to cooking a dinner for us at home. So as I was entering the GIP mall in noida with my friends, there was a swarm of police guys outside checking each and everything entering the mall premises. When we enquired about it, the one of the guys said " Koi hero aa raha hai ". We shrugged off the comment in a very unconvincing way thinking there might be a minister on the way. After dinner when we were about to make our way back there were like herds of people standing by the circular rails on each floor.Could this really be ? May be hrithik was on his way for the red carpet premiere of jodha akbar at the recently inaugurated Adlabs. But this was not to be. In fact, hrithik and Ash both were on their way. Oh boy.. this had to be witnessed. People had been waiting since two hours for the arrival. I was a bit reluctant to stay and wait for them. we all went to see if some tickets for the current show for the same could be arranged.

We didnt get those , so booked the tickets for saturday's show. After getting the tickets booked, my friend Piyush insisited that we all have one more shot . Maybe a glimpse was possible of the stars. So we went again to the mall and after a five minutes wait, it happened. First Hrithik made his way up the lift waving his hands to all. The man is awfully smart and dashing though not as tall I was expecting him to be. After a little while , Aishwarya came up the lift. She was looking damn gorgeous in a red saree. Believe me, I havent seen a more stunning woman face to face in my entire life ( The earlier one was a foriegner I saw in Nehru place, Delhi in last december). She is a flawless beauty. The fact that " Ash is the one of the most beautiful ever to have step in the world" was looking an embarassing understatement. Now I can well imagine why Adlabs was booked for the whole weekend.

My guess is that Anil Ambani who owns Adlabs and is extremely close to Bachan family must have come up with the idea for the red carpet opening in noida for promoting the new multiplex. Though Delhi would have been a much more comprehensive option in this regard. Well thanks Anil... Your reliance ipo may not be a hit. But you surely made up for it with this little stint. That surely made the day.

After waiting eagerly for the entire day at home, We finally made to waves for our 7 PM show on saturday. As for the movie, First of all its a visual spectacle. One has to appreciate the flamboyance with which the movie is given a 15th century look. Daunting and beautiful sets dressed up with appealing blend of alluring fabric materials. The curtains, the costumes and the tapestry all give you a rich feel . And as for the movie , its a classic. Some might call it boring but there isnt a better way to present a historical. They are of mammoth durations so that one can truly experience the demeanor of those days. And the movie belongs to Hrithik and Aishwarya. Hrithik once again reinstated why he is in the top league with a truly remarkable and commanding performance. The scenes have been shot in a truly clinical manner. Full marks to Ashutosh Gowarikar. Music is top notch ( I have been listening to the songs for the entire day now even as I as writing the post). Kwaja mere Kwaja takes you a step closer to eternity if you let it through into yourself. AR Rehman at his very best. I think it has all the ingredients for a great all time classic. I might be talking more like a movie critic. But you have to see it to believe it. In case you have some other views do lemme know about them as well........
Here s a video of the aishwarya the other night in red saree in the mall , shot with a mobile..... You have to wait till the end of it to have a glimpse of her.
chao !!

Rajdhani To Darbhanga express...... Everything in one night !!!!!

Friday night was once in a lifetime experience which crossed every limit of wackiness I had experienced during travelling. It even surpassed the experience I had during my college days when I was thrown at sirhind from a train after boarding from Rajpura( which is about 30 kms from the former) for not having a sleeper ticket. The past week was kind of a confused week where my decision to go to amritsar was inverting everytime I thought about it. But finally when I was up for it on tuesday, I couldn't find a single availablity for any class in any train. But now, i always wanted to go. I decided to ride on my luck by having a go at a couple of trains leaving delhi to asr that night. Well the "Jugaad" with TT had worked before and I really hoped it wont let go this time around as well. I reached the station on time but couldnt find a single berth in any class of Golden temple mail which had an arrival time of 3:30 AM in ludhiana. It was 7:50 PM then.

Well "NO PROBLEMO" I said to myself, There are still a couple of options left on the desk. Lets try out the other one, Muri express. Well I was left stranded when i heard that Muri was running late by six hours. One more option I thought which I knew was a sureshot. So I enquired about the chattisgarh express. Another bsombshell dropped on my head. Chattisgarh had a route bypassing Delhi since last month. Oh boy, this was already heading about to be dramatic night. I tried every train I could get my hands onto heading north, But to no avail. As I was thinking about a Volvo deluxe bus option for which I would have to wait another 3 hours, I saw a Rajdhani express to Jammu standing on a platform from a distance. I enquired about its timing and stoppages. It could have been an option to reach jalandhar. From jalandhar I could go to asr even in a bus. To my surprise It only had a stoppage at Ludhiana at 1 AM. So I started planning for a way to get to home. A foolish yet could-be-effective strategy was sprouting in my mind. I decided to talk to TT and tried to have a connection till Ldh . I could always catch the golden temple again at 3:30 AM as their would plenty of vacant seats in Ldh. The TT was quite stubborn and demanded that I would have to be made a ticket which would have cost me a fortune. I with the old cheap college convincing that " sir, college ke hain, padte hain, train miss ho gayi , sir itna nahin". He finally decided to give me a seat for a fare compensation. It was a very comfortable journey and had a grand dinner in it as well. I slept for a couple of hours and reached Ldh at 1AM.

As I left the train, Darbhanga express was standing in front of me. It was supposedly running late by some sixteen hours or so. I asked if it was heading in my preferrable direction or not. Now a darbhnga isnt a kind of train you would generally get onto unless there is an emergency. The train is one of the rickiest you will ever see with the wood panels above windows coming off. At some parts even the roof is missing. It was a train we made fun of as " the time and over raided train coming from bihar" during our college days. At that hour of night the train was scantily filled up with human souls. I looked up my options once again. Either I could wait for a couple of hours at Ldh or move with the flurry of events and get on board. I decided the latter option. I had not seen a more dismal train compartment than this my entire life. Some luggage shelves overhead were also missing. I took a place in a vacant window seat and the train started moving. I was completely taken aback by sheer speed at which the train was running. It was lightening quick. I could feel the chills of the plains of punjab which was such a discussed topic in the last couple of days. Oh boy, It was cold.

As I thought that all comedy of errors had ended during the night, A shabby looking young man came up to me after hearing some people whispering about "finally we will be reaching amritsar and all" and asked me that " sir, yeh train darbhanga hi ja rahi hai na. Main to ambala se yehi poochkar chada tha ke yeh darbhanga express hi hain na". I had no idea if I should be amazed at the heights of ignorancy or the lack of communication proficiency. I told him that the train was right, just that the direction in wihch uou were travelling was wrong.

I finally reached Amritsar at 3:15 AM. When I think about it, I started at 8:45 PM at reached at 3:15 AM. This is almost the same time Shatabdi express takes to reach Amritsar from Delhi. Fine, I agree that the manner wasn't the most sophisticated one. But still turned out to be an out of a box experience once again.

After all this, It even feels much more better to be home. Slugging it out in metros and comforts of being at home are two different things all together. The experience again gave the messy feeling of the college travelling days. And being messy makes me feel that I am living, and that too in the best possible manner filling up an out of the world experience stack each time with some new foolishness.

And , Relaince power listing on monday. Really looking forward to it like you all. Lets hope that it gives nice opening gains to capitalize upon !!!!!!

Its all about Friends...........

When I was in TIET last year, sleeping my way around lectures, rather never making it to them in the mornings, Little did I know things would be so different ahead in life. I felt like a free bird the very first day I came to college like caged birds released from the wraths of tuitions, the tensions of AIEEE and the expectation of IIT's. And the most amazing journey of my life gets the head start. And some people become part of your experience and you become companion in their journeys. They come for free and stay till the end. I guess thats why they are called Friends (free ends.. huh ?). They just need affection and compassion to bind with you. We all come in this world with some relations defined by blood and we make some defined by love and trust. We sit together, laugh together, share joys, divide griefs, cry, dance ,drink, celebrate, talk, chat all the rubbish in the world. But still the time is more valuable than the hope diamond.

In this monotonous and perpetual job life, I have come to know the real worth of my friends and the times spent with them. I always wish that life gives me one more chance to be together with them and complete all the unfinished errands and share the times of joy once again. Still I like making the most of all the little opportunities life brings to me. So this weekend when i got to know that aameen and later on Dd will be coming in to noida, I was quite overjoyed to hear about it. It had been such a long time since I had met them. It was a superb experience talking to them of the old times, discussing all the foolish, weird and insane instances we all have been in together.This was always going to be a great weekend.

We people who started out as 7 in the first year ended the final year as 12. Aameen, DD, kunal,Gautam,chetan,ekansh, Sharma, Yogi, Rohan, Moti, Bangia and me. Its been an exquisite journey altogether. I have been taught so much for all the idiotic things i had done in my four years by you all. I thank all of you for being there at all the times. It would be very tough to choose one particular instance when we were at the peak of our friendship and experiencing it more than ever but I would put the night when we all celebrated for everybody's placement somewhere in september right up there at the top. Life would never be the same without you. One day we shall all sit together, once again. And you know what i mean by sitting together. You people make a difference in my life and I wish this continues throughout life.

A Weekend Of Surprises

I usually never liked the look of the 50's and 60's hollywood movies. I always thought they were too boring and colourless for my liking. Somehow these movies always had that an unvaried and a monotonous feel to them. If this was the case of 50's and 60's you can very well imagine what i felt for the 40's black and white lot. Yesterday after recommendations from many and lack of movies in my laptop ( which was the bigger reason ) I finally decided to have a look at 1942's so called classic Casablanca. And didn't it turned out to be a ripper. The people back in those days knew their cinema real well. The movie shot in the background of second world war has its own nice share of twists and turns and was complete in every way. The movie is a tale of a man's actions based on morality where he must sacrifice his love for what he considers is righteous. The movie depicts every bit of chivalry men had in those days ( I dont mean we people dont have it in us these days. Its just that we dont get a chance to show it ). The characters were beautifully defined and the roles played in exquisite manner. I was amazed to see how beautiful one of the protaganist Ingrid Bergman was. I was delighted to see the graceful manner in which she lit up the black and white screen. The swede was truly a flawless beauty. I would recommend to everybody who thought early cinema was slow and boring. You will fall in love with the simplistic and proficient was the movie is actually presented.

Finally after trying for nearly 3 months on CNN-IBN'S Rajeev Masand's Now showing's "A real tough movie quiz" , I finally won. Guess when you expect the least , you get the most . Earlier I used to wait impatiently for the results every week , check them on the net. But this time , the result thing had completely slipped out of my mind ( Maybe due to the stock market frenzy throughout the week ) . My friend Suruchi called me up to ask me if i had given some quiz because my name was there in the winners list. And Oh boy , Wasn't I overwhelmed to hear that. It feels so good to be a winner in life. It doesn't matter if the stage is big or small. That extravagant feeling running through your veins making you feel special in every way , with your cheeks getting all fleshy with some real nice blood flowing through them. The good results keep you driving on with momentum. Only thing I dont know still is that what i have exactly won. I Guess I better expect less , maybe a nice DVD gift hamper is on the way . Huh ....?

A Few days back , I read that a NASA satellite for monitoring mars had captured a photograph of a naked woman sitting on a rock on mars. Keeping this in mind, I can hardly imagine what we are gonna witness next on mars . lolz....!!!!!!!!!

Wackiest Nightout In Delhi ....... A Leaflet Out Of College Memoirs

The night somewhere in may 2006 was one of its kind experience for me and four of my friends in delhi. We people just got a chance to be together for a night during out six months training from jan-jul 2006. We had a plan to stay at my PG in noida that night. There was hardly a night during my training days when electricity at night wasn't there and that night was no different. What made things worse was the fact that my PG had no battery backup. One of my friends,Moti came by car. So we decided right away that this was not a night to be spent in sweating in beds rather to roam about. so we got into that 1998 model Maruti 800 and took off wothout a destination. We took iced teas from former nescafe branch on main road , sector 18.

We had all the ideas propping of what we could do with a car and a night. Gautam , suggested we could go to Agra which was just 100 Kms from Delhi by his wonderful calculations.Seeing Taj at night would have been amazing, so we moved in that direction. When we reached Badarpur Border, his idea for distances struck up when milestone read AGRA - 202 Kms . Oh boy! Didn we wanna smack the guy up. So we manage to find a U- turn 6 kms ahead and turned back our cars towards Delhi again with the same question - what can be done with a car anda night.It was like 12:30 AM in the morning.

We followed the second Advice - Going to for drive on Noida - Greater noida expressway. Now the journey upto to Greater noida was truly enjoyable with cool breeze blowing across our faces. Going full out on 110 Km/hr - the top speed our 800 would allow us to go at. It hardly took us half an hour to be back from where we started and back to square one. Again with the same question. I had heard that ice cream vendors stay up all night at India gate. So we were off in that direction. This time i was behind the wheel and and had my first shot at the Noida toll bridge road and driving experience on that road was fantabulous. We somehow managed to reach india gate with our vague directioning sense.Seeing the rajpath all lightened up was a delight to watch. It gave us that RDB(rang de basanti) feeling. We had our icecream stayed there for half an hour. Then it was time to head back again. we decided not to take the same route we had come from. We would go back by connought place. So again trusting our directioning, we set again. we could have asked for directions though. when we thought we were lost and decided to turn back, My friend Divyadeep told us that he had seen the place before in auto he came by in the evening. And I forgot about the fact that delhi has got some places that look alike. So we took a turn and our two lane road was turned into a four lane very well lit up road. Just as i had completed the turn , a policeman stopped us.He asked us "Do you have any idea where you people actually are". We nodded and said "Bas bhaiya CP ke raste mein hi hain". He showed us a spiral buildingwith huge pillars some two meters ahead and said"Rashtrapati Bhavan Bhai sahab". And we were in total disbelief. Our mouths virtually open. The guy said "mujhe bade sahab ko bulane do, 5000 ka challan katata hoon tera ". Our hearts were virtually in our mouths as we heard that. I could already see Moti's Dad spanking us in middle of connought place. My friend Ekansh. a total baniya was already counting the per head cos tof this experience.We tried to convince the guy to settle this in under the table fashion.He settled for 500 rs. We agreed. We checked our wallets and discovered that we had only 205 bucks in total. We tried convincing him with this much . He didn even leave us with 5 bucks to spare. But the hilarious thing had still to happen. The icing on the cake - As I put the car in reverse suddenly there was a reverse alarm in 800 shouting "OM JAI JAGDISH HARE". We just couldnt laugh to the situation too as we were still in shock. And we finally asked directions from a guy we saw on the road and decided to head back. But one thing i cant still forget about his experience - Ekansh on our way back saying "Consider this , We paid 205 bucks and still didn get to meet the President. Wat the hell ". This was the only conversation we all had onour way back . Each of us in his own sub conscious must be thinking about things that happened and the things that could have.

Inevitable , But of Utter Importance

Somehow I felt todays stock market fall was every important. Inevitable, yes but important, even a BIGGER YES. One could have easily seen that for the past few months the momentum behind most of the stocks was meaningless.These markets just work like a strip club. Someone has to strip in front of the audience to attract customers. The better you strip the more is the degree of bringing the people closer to you. Those who got the money can have all the fun and rest without enough money can watch them play and enjoy a glass of drink. The people with money are the FII's and one watching from the back are the retail investors like us. The markets today are absolutely bare for FII's to enter again. Today we offering them valutaions of around 16 times the Forward Earnings And with the growth story of india intact , there is hardly a reason why we shouln't be back in a bull run once again.

It was foolish to hear people demanding resignation of P.Chidambram for todays mishap at the stock market. How can one blame him for this carnage.

Also some good news is just pouring in from US right now. They have dropped the discount and funds rate by 75 basis points and the FED doesnt see a recession likely in next two years. In simpler terms , putting all the jargon aside , we should see everything back on track within next few days.

p.s. - Thanks a lot garima for correcting me. I mistakenly put the crash from 16000 to 12000 in the last post at may 2007 instead of 2006.

Saare Zameen Par .........Crashed , Burned and The Revival of the Phoenix

Some expensive stocks would have cost you today less than a jockey underwear which i believe some definitely would have auctioned after today's disastor. Atleast mine are intact for the time being. ( Down at 10000 bucks). Just joking by the way.... its just the funny stories of the day getting to me....

If yesterday would be addressed as thrashing at the stock markets then today definitely was souls being burned alived in the morning session of trading. I got up in the morning at around 10 and was a bit astonished to see the countdown for start of trading at 10:15 ( Official start of trading is 10:00 AM ) and voice of dismal looking Udhyan Mukherjee explained it all. And so did the breaking flicker news at the bottom of CNBC-TV18. The sensex hits the lower circuit of 10% . Another witness of a kind of its own and the trading halted for half an hour. The market was a remarkable 2200 points down. Bulls have been torned apart by the bears. The losses are incalculable. Pure carnage and mayhem has been witnessed yet again.

Loads of people are cancelling their reliance checks to invest in the stock market in the news again. Oh boy what consequences.........
If these kind of enigmatic experiences continue day by day then you people would have to BEAR me a lot at this blog, Mind you....

Wouldn't great fans of reliance like me would have been delighted to watch and buy reliance industries at 2120 this year. Stock prices were tumbling like a pack of cards on the table and it was time to put them back where they actually belonged. You wouldn't call it a resurgence , but Indian Financial Institutions and retail investors stepped in at the right time to put a stranglehold on the venom of negative sentiments being spilled everywhere. I think the indian markets recovered well to put them above 17000 levels for a while. Burned to ashes and recovered again like a phoenix. You could see all the inflated valuations being driven down at the speed of knots. After all in the long term I feel that Fundamentals are everything and rest all is Bull shit. This after all was the best time to buy stocks and enter the markets with the risk to reward ratio finally on the side of the buyer. I myself was confused at one point of what to buy and what to leave. Everything was looking just so tempting.

Crashed & Thrashed !!

AND BEHIND ALL THIS , A NEW START...........

I always used put up an excuse that the day i get first multibagger in stocks would be the day i start writing the blog. Not because i wanted to boast about it ,but because that day i would have experienced the enigma i wanted to feel for the past three years since developing my interest in the field. But that feeling came a bit oo early. When i reached my offfice today and started my moneycontrol , I saw something mindboggling. It is what stock market fundamentalists claim as a " Free fall" - a stock market crash , and the witnessed was the biggest in the history of indian stock market. I had seen and heard the crash of may 2006 when sensex plummetted from 16000 to 12000. But being a part of it was an experience of its own. A feeling like someone is pulling your pants down in the middle of the town and you cant do anything about it while a strip tease is going on in front of you. You can neither enjoy nor despise. It was amazing to see markets lose all its sheen among a plethora of uncertainties of all kind. There was weird data of the amount that was at stake and was lost converging from every side. It was around Rs. 6.6 lakh crore which I read later was ( of which 6500 was my personal wealth ).

I right now, can imagine what people have to bear while facing such an onslaught of bears. ( not the polar ones mind you). It makes you realize the fact that things look good when you are on the other side watching as spectators. But then there are highs and there are lows. What is life without the element of risk in it. I being a great believer in the power of the unexpected , expect that its power shall reign supreme in the end. But then there is no point expecting !

The auspicious day 21st January 2007 also happens to be birthday of my dear friend Manish Bangia. Happy b'day bangs and these events better not happen next time , atleast on this day!!!