The opening credits and the first few scenes looked very promising, and there were some excellent frames in them which made me think this was going to be a rich big-screen experience. But when the dry, dramatic recital extended from Albert Samson’s (the protagonist) reflective monologue to everyday conversations of the characters, I could sense something was amiss. The cast was reciting supposedly high-brow philosophy through breakfast, lunch and dinner. No, I am not cribbing at some intellectual mumbo-jumbo that I couldn’t comprehend. It didn’t take much to see through the thin veneer of pretension that this movie props itself upon. We quipped that a verbatim Malayalam translation of (the English translation of) the play would read exactly like the script of the film. That is most likely the truth. And there was this particular line that came out devilishly vulgar.  Whoa! The perverts that we are, we laughed quite a bit about that.

The biggest casualty is of course, Mohanlal (apart from the viewers, that is). He tries to look the quintessential brooding, complex hero but comes a cropper with extremely bland acting. Even someone like Sreenivasan who almost always hits the deck with his deadpan sarcasm, was reduced to another dummy. Nevertheless he got to mouth the single meaningful line in the film – Albert utters his characteristic nonsense to which he replies, “Ningal parayunnathonnum enikk manassilavunnilla” (I don’t understand a word you’re saying). Bingo! There might have been a couple of good visuals or lines that I missed in the mush, like the one about “birds that seek only the tallest spires” that I noticed randomly. The bad vibes you get from suffering through the fake speech and the constipated (okay, I’ll give Hari’s more vivid imagery the miss) acting drowns all else in the film.

Ah, yes, the culmination. It looked to me for an instant that the master’s dream building (the titular Aakashagopuram) was CG, but Hari was quick to spot it was el cheapo 2d graphic! And, I swear I saw the thermocol top of the gopuram wobble as the master builder was decking it with a wreath. These might be forgiven, but not in this movie, which claims to be bathing in technical excellence. Not to mention the Albert-Hilda courtship scenes that looked straight out of those two-bit music videos that a bunch of college guys with a handheld camcorder and some cash botch up in their backyards and the nearest beach. First, learn decent production values, then brag.

Of course, this movie too will have it’s share of devotees who would use the classic label (and a hundred other labels) to justify the pitiful product that it is. It has got enough tie-ups with the media (evident from the opening credits) to pad it up with good reviews. My skin crawled as I skimmed through some. Enough said. Go watch Aakashagopuram at your own risk, if you want to know what this is all about. And don’t forget your Dictionary of a Thousand-and-one Pompous Malayalam Words.

Update: I finally managed to watch it, seventeen days past the original attempt.

Almost two years in the making, the most-expensive-Indian-movie tag, monstrous amounts of hype – reasons never run out for wanting a go at the clichéd magnum opus as soon as it hits the screen. But Kamal Haasan is always going to be reason enough for me. Fan, I am.

Reserving tickets for the release day was the smart thing to do, but that didn’t happen, obviously. With that crowd and no reservations, morning show (the first show of the day) was plain impossible. After shuttling between the two release centers, the six of us (classmates) decided to bide time in the serpentine queue at Ajantha Theatre with the hope of getting tickets for the next show (matinee). Only, the queue had enough people to fill two theatres. So we stood in the queue, taking turns in two or three, and watched all the release-day circus happening around (Oh, it was my first first-day). Black-market ticket hawkers, skirmishers in the crowd, police patrols keeping a tab on the affairs and OB vans (not to be confused with Obi-Wan ) of local media being the notable performers in the sideshow.

Matinee was looking bleak, and the sun was raining down fury. Ice-sticks, those dinky delights from heaven! By this time the morning show had ended, and people coming out weren’t all praise, to the point of being severe. I didn’t give a damn for the regulation dont-lose-your-money advice from the people who made me stand in the queue in the first place. And, standing in the sun for hours on end is, taxing, to say the least. Don’t attempt it alone, for the tamasha happening around you can amuse for some time, but it can’t last you the wait. Nor music.

So, at last, we are probably half-an-hour away from tickets for the first show (as in cinema jargon) at 5:30 in the evening. Yeah, ponder the elapse of time. Enter the villain. Another three guys from college, one of whom promises us tickets to the show through the manager of the cinema he supposedly knows. And the incredible happens – we leave the queue on his word. It’s like leaving your wife of fifty years for a shady lady you ran into at the street. Perhaps the sun was getting to us, and a short reprieve sounded like heaven. And of course, the climax is foreseeable at this point – the tickets don’t arrive as promised. Well, three of them he did get us, but we were six. And of course, the guys who were at the hind of the beloved queue we were heading as we left, all had their tickets. After asking ourselves whether we should all leave black-hawking the three tickets, three of us decided to leave, including me. Jasim was particularly ruffled and bitter (not because he wasn’t watching the movie, but of the incredibility that he wasn’t).

Yeah, I wanted to watch the movie like hell, and could have easily got someone else to let me, but the events of the day and my sun-cooked brain had pushed me past the point of wanting anything.

LOSER.

Silver lining: It helped break the blogck, though the longevity is suspect.

Li’l Jinx is a fictional comic book character published by Archie Comics since the late 1940s. A high-spirited little girl who has humorous misadventures with her neighborhood friends, she was created by cartoonist Joe Edwards, first appearing in Pep Comics # 62 (July 1947).

From the Wikipedia entry on Li’l Jinx.

She’s one of the lesser-known comic book entities, the kind of thing / person you know exists, but that’s pretty much all what you know – the high-spirited little gal relegated to the odd page of Archie Comics issues, easily thumbed over or forgot even as you turn the page.

Of course, li’l jinx! It’s been four-and-a-half months since I posted anything here. I have a couple of drafts lying around, but nothing came out of them. And quite a few posting ideas, falling short of even a draft. Putting things off, certainly off-putting. A li’l jinx. So here I am, penning out a random post with the noble intention of breaking the shackles. Here’s to posting. Mazal Tov!

P.S.: Waking up at four-thirty in the morning (not to be confused with being awake at four-thirty in the morning, which happens quite often with long nights), quite a small rarity.

So, the tour. The build up was interesting – wrangling and more wrangling with the principal, chasing teachers around to enlist them, plans changing a few times per day, and a lot of other hilarious bullshit chanced before we were sanctioned a measly five days for the entire affair. I hate, I hate, I hate. By the way, this was my first tour from college; I had opted out on two previous occasions citing reasons like anti-sociality and what not. I think different now, and am now of the view that you gain something from everything – that life can be only as good as you want it to be. I don’t exactly regret missing out on past outings, but I plan not to do so in the future. Words of wisdom from Hari:

Life is good. Very good. For all those reasons that are not obvious.
Believe me. ^_^

Very true. [Aside: I don't think I'd post this at this rate.]

That I didn’t know our first stop was Ooty despite being in on most discussions is a loud statement about the degree of organization of the tour. LOL. We reached all places way behind schedule, thanks to the drivers who drove like they had all the time in the world. So, Ooty was little more than an evening at the very familiar lake area and a campfire at the hotel we were staying. For the lesser-informed, a campfire in college-tour jargon (according to my experience) is all the guys and gals gathered around a fire (which is periodically renewed spectacularly by spraying considerable loads of kerosene), the ‘in’ songs playing in the background and the gathered folks shaking a leg and making merry in whatever ways they can. Guys and gals danced, pranced about and all had a good time, I guess. I lingered around the fire, taking in the warmth. By the way, the short trip around the lake aboard the toy train was fun, and so was the desi grilled-spiced corn on the cob.

Next stop Mysore, reach only by evening (as always). There are a lot of landmarks to visit for the record, but the only place we went to was Vrindavan Gardens. We walked the entire length of the garden and back (it’s pretty much what you could do there, besides lounging on the grass). I went around from stall to stall sampling snacks, which is always a pleasure. The dancing fountains were good though nothing out of the ordinary and the whole place does look cool when lit up during the night. Some whined about missing out on all those ‘must-see’ places, but it was good that no other was squeezed in for that evening, as it happens many a time.

Visiting Chamundi Hills and the Nandi Temple before leaving for Bangalore next day meant we were sure to hit traffic.We managed to do so and reach Electronics City (where the Infosys campus resides) by around 3:00 in the afternoon, which was exactly the time scheduled for the visit there. Elvesbane says:

The I.V. (that oh-so important ingredient) was an even bigger joke. We walked around the Infy campus and were finally lead to an impressive conference room, only to be shown a worthless promo vid, followed by an even more worthless question-answer session which proved that our guide didn’t know what to do with us and didn’t really care whether we left the campus impressed or not. Sigh…

Ditto here. I guess Infosys is hosting so many student groups any year that they’ve evolved a format – every visit turns out to be the very same boring ritual. Nevertheless, many in the group were in awe of the towering buildings that dot the campus. I liked the single question that transpired in the attempted question-answer session – our host wondering at the air, “I guess you’ve not asked any questions since you’re so impressed by our presentation”. ROTFLMAO. Yeah, ma’am. Exactly.

Elvesbane again:

Tour organization began to break down that evening.

Tour organization didn’t break down that evening, since there wasn’t one. But things certainly started getting ugly that evening. If going out for the night to a local place like the Majestic Circle (wonder what’s so special about a whole lot of shops by the street, selling pretty spurious stuff) is deemed unsafe with girls (Aah, male chauvinism!) in the group, the ONLY thing to do is to chuck the idea and stay indoors. The more chauvinist males in the group wanted to go out on their own and this resulted in a males-versus-females row which spoiled the night. I stayed away from the heated proceedings.

The entire next day was devoted to the clichéd shopping. I wasn’t looking for anything in particular, so I accompanied random groups (My group, one fella by the name Vijith was spending his time in bed recuperating from a leg injury induced by a freak bike accident two days before the tour ) on their shopping adventures. After a while of shop-hopping, I felt bored (never knew at the time that a whole load of bore was waiting) and went inside a rusty internet joint and dropped a mail to Jasim (who missed the tour, incidentally). See, I’ve got no GPRS connectivity like Elvesbane.

And here comes ugly incident number two. A rather amusing one at that. The drivers, two of them, went missing with the bus. It’s actually a lot less dramatic than it sounds – the bus had to be parked elsewhere, and they didn’t turn up at the agreed time (and were unreachable on their mobiles), and neither did the bus. Anoop and Arun went searching inside the city and finally located them. All this meant the rest of us were sitting by the wayside waiting… waiting… waiting… for four hours. The drivers drew a hell LOT of well-deserved flak, from the accompanying staff and the angry-young-men amongst us. The evening was spent at The Forum, the signature large shopping mall that quintessentially adorns every big city. I went drooling inside electronics shops and had a go at a couple of MacBooks and a set of Bose headphones.

A handful had come down with stomach upsets and fever by this time, and that night at the hotel was stripped of the usual merrymaking and cacophony. And the beverages. Hogenakkal next day was the silver lining and by being our last stop, ensured that the tour ended on a happy note. The place is a perfect example of the virgin tourist spot – unique, not too busy, not too commercialized, and with a generous helping of raw beauty. The waterfalls, trips round the river in the saucer-shaped thatch-boats, the powerful currents, the splashing around and sinking others in the shallow waters were all pure fun. It’s a must-see must-do place – and make it a point to get wet.

The trip back was less eventful like all return trips tend to be. I reached home a little after 1:00 in the afternoon, and instead of settling into a sleep, went straight to Vijith’s house. That was it – my cells went out flat – I think I dozed off narrating him some event of the tour.

P.S:- I haven’t yet got myself a digital camera, ergo I didn’t take any photos, ergo I’m not posting any.

I’m not surprised.

[20 seconds pass]

Poocha comes into my room meowing like there’s no tomorrow. Jumps atop the bed and seats herself comfy. Looks around, catches my eye and asks “What? You wanna ask me something?”.

I’m not surprised.

Meet Poocha.