Movie Review: The Martian

I'm a Space Pirate!

Director: Ridley Scott

Starring: Matt Damon (I love him in everything)
               Jessica Chastain        
               (Interstellar's McConaughey's daughter)
               Kristen Wiig (my SNL star)
               Kate Mara (House of Cards' Zoe Barns)
               Sean Bean (The Ned Stark)
               Sebastian Stan (whom I confused with Robb Stark)
               and many more...

Genre: Science Fiction

Recommended For: Matt Damon lovers like me

The Gist: Due to a severe storm on Mars, NASA's astronauts are forced to leave the Red Planet, leaving behind a crew member Mark Watney (played by Damon) they believe is dead. How Mark spends his time there and what NASA and other Earthlings do about it is what the movie is about.

-ve points: Towards the end, a launch vehicle has to be designed such that it is 5000 tonnes lighter (or some other figure like this). This requires losing some parts of the vehicle like the seats, a few machine attachments, the windows (yeah!) and the top of the ship (get this!). What they do use as a substitute is something I can't digest! (not sure if scientifically the new material makes sense, but it defies my common sense)

+ve points: The movie did not leave me at any point being hopeless or sad like Gravity or Interstellar (both awesome movies) The Martian takes the adversities with a pinch of salt and uses his brain to come up with solutions that are so simple they are elegant!

All the greatest brains of earth, literally all of them, are trying to solve my problem and the greatest solution that they have come up with is- drill a hole.

My Verdict: Watch it.

My decision: To read the book "The Martian" from which the film has been adapted. My friends say the movie is good, but the book is way better.

Little Drops from Heaven

Behta hai mann kahin, kahan jaante nahin
Koi rok le yahin...
Bhaage re mann kahin
Aage ye mann chala
Jaane kidhar jaanu na aaaa

- Chameli (2003)

I mentioned about an year ago, rains bring out the romantic in me. This time the romantic me brought the rains <blush, blush>.
I don't know why but since Friday, I have been in a mushy mood. Which means Friday night I saw "While You Were Sleeping", a 1995 Rom-Com, and then it rained all Saturday; and so I watched "The Wedding Date", a 2005 Rom-Com on Saturday night.

Well I have also been playing the "Love" playlist on my laptop, on the auto-mode, but let's not go there.

So, "While You Were Sleeping" is a Sandra Bullock movie, and like Rajesh Koothrapalli says, "she is great in everything". It's a simple story of a plain Jane who has no one and has a huge crush on this guy she sees everyday for about 15 minutes to and fro on the train station. One (un)fortunate day, he meets with an accident, she saves him, gets him admitted to a hospital and through a misunderstanding, people take her to be the guy's fiancee.
It's a classic comedy of errors, and what with the movie's setting as Christmas and New Year's week, a lot of funny family stuff happens, while the guy is in a coma. The movie has a sweet and lovable feel to it and my favorite setting of the holiday season.

"The Wedding Date" is a movie full of beautiful people. I mean beautiful-looking. Gorgeous! There's Dermont Mulroney (yes, F.R.I.E.N.D.S.' guest star, Gavin Mitchell, Rachel's co-worker and balcony kisser from season 9). There's Debra Messing, who looks just so exquisite. There's Amy Adams, whose only other movie I have seen is American Hustle, another movie full of great-looking people.

It's a story of Kat, whose sister is getting married in London. Kat hires a "date" so that her family doesn't think she's miserable after her much talked about breakup with her ex. This movie is shot in England- a beautiful country (-from what I've seen in the various movies. I really want to visit Yorkshire someday).

In the first movie, the girl and the guy (not the coma guy, spoiler) become really good friends while taking a walk in the snow. In the latter, they start liking each other in various moments here and there. Enough appetite for the mushy me. While there's snow in case of Sandra Bullock, it's rain for Debra Messing. The way I see it, both fall in love when there are little drops of heaven, pouring down on them. :-)

This time it's more than pitter-patter

I like the sound of pitter patter. Rabindranath Tagore called it "tapur-tupur". Raveena Tandon sang "tip-tip barsa pani". You can choose your own words. 
Like, rain is falling chama cham cham... actually this is clearly an understatement in Gujarat right now. Raining cats and dogs, if this expression can cover all the cats and dogs of the world.

3 years ago, before joining the college, I had asked a family friend, who had been studying here then, to describe Surat. She had said “it rains all the time”. I had shamelessly displayed all my incisors in ecstasy. Rains, I love.

It brings out the lazy, the foodie and the romantic in me. There’s the cool breeze that splashes the raindrops on your face. My lush green campus becomes oh so green! I lie in my bed all day long, cuddle with my pillow, imagining I’m on a bike ride and he stops to buy me a hot bhutta. Mushy daydreams aside, rains give me a craving for bhajiye and chai. There were days when I used to dance in rains. Whatever happened to that, I wonder? My nanaji’s anecdote pops into my mind. When he was young, whenever it rained, the school would be dismissed. I mean, isn’t that AWEsome!!

And this time the heavens poured just a couple of hours before my exams. And boy, did they pour! They had to actually announce that the exams have been postponed. I wake up because of the blaring noise that the public announcement system is, and I find my batch-mates dancing like peacocks. What a sight (And we are a bunch of clumsy gals). While panic was about to strike the city, a new lease of life was awarded to us students.

Then came the awkward moment when no one really knew what to do with this sudden freedom. And was it freedom indeed? I mean, we all knew we can shift+delete all the mugging. We can sleep. We can dance. We can yell.  We can do all that pleases us, within the threshold of the hostel. So this is going to be like stranded in the safe, albeit boring havens of H-12, the quintessential girls’ hostel.

And stranded we are. We have all the food, the water, the wifi- the basic necessities of everyday, mundane life. We can hop about, like a frog. We can go to each others’ rooms, to download into our external storage devices, the movies they have and we don’t have. We can listen to the radio; they are playing some of the sexiest songs of the 90’s. We can (as advised by our grey eminences and ignored by us all) utilise this time to study some more.

I, on my part, have been doing all this with a new found gusto. I am reading Agatha Christies. I’m day-dreaming big time. I’m eating all the biscuits and dry fruits I could hoard in this time of emergency. I’m listening to my favourite rain-song “Saawan barse tarse dil...♥”. I’m liking and commenting on facebook updates and uploads. I’m talking to my ma round the clock to know how much water has Ahmedabad received. I’m convincing my papa I’ll step carefully on the glazed tiles and through the water puddles and not slip/skid/fall like I’m prone to.  

Then there’s the municipality’s praise-worthy feats of cleaning and recovery that one hears about. There are also many crusades my fellow comrades are pursuing in an attempt to live their own version of Prison Break (read once again our safe havens of H-12J) I, myself, am thoroughly enjoying my days in the VIP cell: P

I would like to sign off now, with the hope that the rains will come to a stop and sunshine once again spread in our lives (literally as well as figuratively). Meanwhile, I advise all to list and listen to their favourite rain songs. J   

Know Thy Star - II

Here, I write about two girls .Both of them played roles that were of 6- 12 years of age when I used to watch them on TV.  I was the same age.

Jodie Sweetin and Tiffany Brissette.

Stephanie Tanner

Or popularly known as Stephanie Tanner (Full House) and VICI the robot (Small Wonder).

No, I didn't hero worship them. 
But, they seemed to be the cool icons for my age. 

After many years, there's a re run of Full House on Zee Cafe` . This made me Google about these two young stars to find out wassup with them these days. 

Realisation dawned upon me that they have grown up! Like me, they too have changed. Unlike me, they are in their 30's.

Know thy star was to help me know about people I watch and cool stuff they're upto. 

But, in this case, I decided it would be better for me to know them as their characters and not their real selves. Not because Jodie (who was once a smart kid Stephanie) is now a mother or Tiffany (once an affable robot who could shower out tears and flip through pages of a book in seconds and tell each and every line out of it) is now a former actress and currently a nurse.

Because, they form a part of memory which is still child like. 

I actually remember myself playing a computer in a small act-play competition in class V and speaking out my dialogues the way VICI used to say. Oh, I won first prize for that one. So, its one happy memory. :)

Is it necessary to know the real person who is so different from what you have always known him/her to be? 

Know Thy Star - I

Misha Collins 

Misha Collins stars as Castiel, the angel who pulled Dean from Hell in The CW's thriller "Supernatural." He, and others like him, are intervening in human affairs for the first time in 2000 years, because the armies of hell are on the move, and Lucifer has been released.

Collins was born in Boston, Massachusetts. Before turning to acting, he worked as an intern at the White House during the Clinton Administration in the Office of Presidential Personnel. He then moved on to become a producer and copy writer for National Public Radio on a show called "Weekly Edition." After graduation, Collins traveled the world for a year, spending several months in monastic seclusion in a monastery in Tibet.

In his down time, Collins can be found outdoors kayaking, biking, running or hiking in the mountains. He also enjoys back-country snowboarding and recently took a winter trip to the Sierras where he built and slept in igloos. In addition, Collins is a published poet with works in "The Columbia Poetry Review," "The California Quarterly" and other literary journals. Collins currently resides in Los Angeles in a house he built and designed himself.

As it started, you wish there's no end to it...Sparsh2012

Day One(actually night one!) :


We welcome our alumni and main sponsor from Toyota. He relives his college days and happily notes the fact that girl students have increased in numbers. :)
Final year guys and girls enthrall us all with their "Sparsh hai" theme song .
Flute Gurukul present some of our loved bollywood numbers and I love flute!
I love mouth organ, trumpet and flute actually.
(I play none, and credit for my love for flute goes to Silk Route band's "dooba dooba rehta hoon" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWaNo3oVvAQ)
Frankie stall gets maximum crowd as girls and guys savor food with music.

Rishabh Srivastava --

Rishabh Srivastava  comes and entertains us all. He accepts all our song requests...I mean all those he could...:P
I in fact had the pleasure to witness his song rehearsals earlier too.
It is a treat to see all guys doing random dance moves and girls standing on their chairs and grooving to his tunes. 
Even the faculty relive their RD Burman days with "Gulabi aankhen jo teri dekhi" (smirk!).
Last me, Priya and Deepa go ahead to click some of his pictures and he dedicates a song for us "girls who are all so pretty". 
"Pretty Woman".


Ends with my playlist's most played "Summer of '69" and we can only hope for encore.

Music, SVNITcanteen, Grammy

International Congress Of Environment Research 2011 at NIT SURAT..... brought not only environment-enthusiasts from various nations.... but also Pandit Vishwa Mohan Bhatt- the inventor of Mohan Veena.

The Grammy Award (1994) winning maestro from Jaipur enchanted the audience comprising music and environment lovers with his Raag Malhaar and then generating echoes of his native birds -- the peacocks.

Vibrations of his shoulders, fast moves of his fingers, the soft movement of one palm and the aggressive use of the other one on the strings and the jugalbandi with Tabla...
the audience couldn't stop from joining in.

Listeners could be heard reciting "Padharo maare des" along with Panditji .

He then entertained the gathering with his Grammy award winning number... the mix of sounds of guitar and veena in turns ,coupled with his smiles and finger clicks added to the magic.

To quote the audience: "KYA BAAT HAI"..."WAAH WAAH"