1600 hrs

Raining pretty heavily in Kondapur. Going by bus or MMTS will be pain in this weather. AC compartment + drenched clothes is a very bad combination.

1620 hrs

Stopped raining in Kondapur, only to start again in Gachibowli. PG is stuck now. What other options do we have? A cab perhaps?

1630 hrs

Welcome to Radio Cabs. Please hold the line while we connect you to one of our executives and get you bored to death with our music. You are the 77th person in the queue.

No thank you very much! What the heck are the other 70 odd customers doing waiting in such a long queue?

1635 hrs

Welcome to Dot Cabs. Please hold the line while we connect you to one of our executives and get you bored to death with our music. Hello and welcome to Dot Cabs. How may I assist you?

Hi, I need a cab from…

No.

Sorry?

No. No cab.

But I need it from Gachibowli to Secunderabad by…

No. No cab till 8. Anything else?

Yes, frock you.

1650 hrs

Welcome to Orange Cabs. We suck too much to afford a call center. So no music for you! Anyway, how may I help you?

I need a cab from Gachibowli to Secunderabad at 5:30.

No cab till 6 Sir.

Fine, 6 it is.

1800 hrs

So what is the plan now? Are we still stopping by Nanking?

Of course! Why do you think I came on a month’s leave to India?

Fine dude.

1820 hrs

Stuck at Punjagutta. Will we make it to Nanking?

1900 hrs

Stuck at the Paradise junction.

Don’t worry man. The soup will take 5 minutes. Starters and main course, 10 minutes. We will be out of Nanking in 30 minutes and in the station 10 minutes before the train leaves.

1915 hrs

Ordered the soups, starters and the main courses.

Waiter, we are really short of time. Please, PLEASE, hurry up!

1930 hrs

DUDE, WHERE THE FROCK IS OUR SOUP! We should have finished our starters by now!

1935 hrs

Soups finally arrive. One bowl of soup at Nanking puts you on Cloud 9.

1940 hrs

Starters arrive. Still enjoying the soup. Dude, we should be leaving in 5 minutes!

1945 hrs

Main course arrives.

Starters not done yet.

We will get them packed!

1947 hrs

So what do you think will happen if we miss the train? Are we so screwed up that we are actually contemplating the idea of missing the train for Nanking?

My parents are going to kill me.

1948 hrs

The noodles are just delicious. And so is the sauce and chicken pakoda. Is there time to have another bowl of soup? Still deciding whether to miss the train for Nanking. We could probably take a bus to Vizag.

1951 hrs

We have just 4 minutes to stuff ourselves with these dishes. Eat whatever you can. Hurry!

1955 hrs

Got into an auto.

Bhaiyya, station – quick – 25 bucks. Please start.

1958 hrs

Ravi calls.

Rahul and I are on the way to the station and we have 15 minutes to catch Garib Rath Express. Remember the time you and I sprinted to the station after eating at Nanking? I think we have to do it again. Stay on the line and be part this history in the making!

Dude, did you mean you have done this before?

Yes, with Ravi and Pappa, on separate occasions.

So you knew we would have to run?

Only in the worst case, don’t worry!

AREYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!

2000 hrs

Wow, Sunday night and the clock tower junction is empty! Guess we don’t have to chase the train afterall.

2002 hrs -

Wrong! Stuck outside the station.

This is it. RUN!

2003 hrs

Outside the main entrance. OMG, the train is on the last platform.

2004 hrs

Huff puff… Out of shape. Should do some cardio regularly.

2005 hrs

Landed on Platform 10. Compartment G14 in sight. With 600 seconds to spare!

600 seconds later…

2015 hrs

Train still on platform.

another 600 seconds later…

2025 hrs

Train still on platform.

Finally…

2030 hrs

The train starts.

[Tring tring... tring tring...]

It was the third time in a gap of 10 minutes.

Don’t they ever stop calling? Its a fucking Sunday night for God’s sake! he cursed to himself as he threw his first cup of coffee for the night into the dustbin and sprinted towards the ringing phone.

His manager had instructed him to not miss a single call. I Broadband is all about the customers! One missed call is equal to ten customers lost. As part of quality checks, the management makes calls to make sure the employees do their job. You know what that means, the manager had added with a sly smile.

I Broadband, huh! Why the fuck would anyone name it I Broadband? And he had already missed two calls. No way he was going to get fired for this.

After he caught his breath, he lifted the receiver and, in very casual tone, said,

Hello?

Hi, is this I Broadband?

Yes.

My name is Rahul and I took an Internet connection from you guys two days ago. The engineer came yesterday and finished the installation. However, within an hour after he left, the modems stopped working. We tried everything but could not figure out the problem. Finally, we found out that the modems he provided had burnt out. Luckily we had our external hard disk drives’ 12V adapters. Anyway, after using the Internet connection for almost a day, the modems suddenly stopped working. No matter what we did, nothing happened and it was not the adapters this time. When we called the main call center, they told us that our accounts don’t even exist! How is that possible when we received a system generated SMS with our broadband credentials, an engineer to install everything and the most important point of all – We used the Internet for over a day! After about half an hour, the person I spoke to told me that the information was probably still in the Pune database and so he could not help me in this regard. He then gave me your, the local call center’s, number and asked me to give you guys my MAC address for registration. So now tell me what to do!

Hmm, what do I do now? Poor guy spent fifteen minutes to explain his situation to me. But the manager asked me to give only one answer to any question, he remembered.

Sir, it’s a Sunday night and I am just the night watchman here. Kindly call tomorrow after 11AM. Thank you.

[Phone line clicks off]

Owned!

A slumdog desperately trying to become a millionaire (Con)

A Muslim running away from his past, country and fellow Hindus (Religion stereotype)

A wanna-be-rockstar rebel candidate determined to prove his mother wrong (Freewill)

A prostitute making plans of running her own brothel (Prostitution)

A family too poor to pay back loans and lead a normal life (Organ trade)

5 of the most sensitive issues in India, and…

100 cinema goers desperately waiting for the mid-movie break to figure

WHAT THE FUCK was going through the director’s mind,

{WHERE, WHEN, HOW, WHY} THE FUCK will these 5 subplots merge and

WHO THE FUCK set their GTalk/Twitter statuses to ‘Vedam is good’ that morning

Justice is swift, at least in Tollywood.

Had Allu Arjun been in Mumbai on that fateful day, more lives would have been saved. More importantly, Kasab would not have made it this far for Allu Arjun breaks his neck in the movie. That is Vedam for you. Someone was eventually going to make a movie on the 26/11 attack. New York came out 8 years after the 11/9 attack (DDMM format in India people!). “So why not me?” thought Krish, Vedam’s director. But probably due to the movie’s budget issues, the terrorists had to attack a government hospital and not a 7 star hotel (A small note to terrorists – our government hospitals kill more number of people every day than you ever can.). The movie also did away with expensive SMGs, rifles and explosives by using raw human strength – Allu Arjun’s newly acquired 6 pack for big time flop Varudu and Manchu Manoj’s, err, good body. And just in case the heroes ran short of muscle, their girlfriends (usually called heroines though they have no role other than dancing with the hero) had enough body piercings to finish the job. And since when do ‘Guest Appearances’ appear throughout the movie, intertwined with main plot?

FYI: Anushka’s screen time is not more than 10 minutes (for those of you who are planning to watch the movie for her, like I did)

Now I cannot help but wonder how RGV’s movie on Paritaala Ravi will turn out.

3 years ago, Trivikram came out with Jalsa. Good quality comedy ran throughout the movie. However, the director had some punch lines in his mind for a really long time. The dialogues were written. And that shaped the plot. Not that Jalsa was the first movie to do so, but it deserved a much better, well planned story.

And now Krish’s Vedam. I did not find anything good Krish’s Gamyam either, except Allari Naresh’s comedy, Kamlini Mukherjee’s once-in-a-blue-moon appearances. But then I heard people speak so highly of Vedam, so I decided to give it a try.

Wrong Move! (Another small note to readers: Watch Crash and then Vedam (Crash’s pathetic remake))

Have to watch ‘The Motorcycle Diaries’ soon…

—————————————————————

SPOILER ALERT! Scroll to the top to view it.