Previously I had posted about this movie – based on a real story of a teenager who sets out to “live off the land”.

Right now I’m reading the book of the same name while traveling back to Mumbai.

There are a lot of differences between the movie and the book. The movie simply romanticizes McCandless’ journey and the adventures he had along the way. Nowhere in the movie there is a constant reminder to the viewer of the innumerous perils which a traveler may face if unprepared. Watching the movie for the first time had made me want to throw away my laptop bag, burn all my visiting cards, deactivate all my email accounts, permanently switch off my cellphone and head out on the road.

But the book is more sober and realistic. There are constant reminders to what may go wrong in such a journey. Other such adventurers are referenced who lost their way while following the call of the wild.

The movie (directed by Sean Penn) was beautiful but the book (authored by Jon Krakauer) is responsible.

Between the movie and the book, I still like the movie more. The sights of Alaska have a totally different pull than reading about the dangers.

I surely can’t leave the life I’m living and set out on such a journey. But I hope this book can. I was thinking of an experiment. I was planning to leave this book abandoned somewhere where someone with a more adventurous spirit would come across it and take it forward from there.

Maybe I can leave it in this train itself, maybe in a taxi someday. Someone may decide to follow the trail of McCandles and return successfully.

“We have started one engine and the air-conditioner will come on in some time.”

But after an uneventful 1:30hrs we landed in Bengaluru. New airport, some 45km from the city. After another hourse and a half drive into the city and we reached our destination.

Attended the training on first day. Then met up with college friends – it was a good reunion. Good memories of college times. Regret not taking a snap of everyone together.

First impressions of Bangalore? A good city with wonderful weather. Coming from the oppressive heat of Mumbai, Bangalore felt like a hill station. Reminds me of a trip to Ooty in the not too distant past. I can understand how one cannot enjoy Bangalore alone.

Other good points? Property is cheaper than Mumbai. I guess that is true for all the cities in the world. And no offence, but people speak Hindi freely! Auto drivers fleece but are open to negotiation.

Travel is expensive. Haven’t yet had a problem with food. Tomorrow I’m leaving back for Mumbai – a nice 3-day experience, part work part holiday. Hope to come back for a longer trip.

Still to visit:
MG Road
Foodie joints
Discs
AOL Ashram

Posted from my mobile. Please excuse spelling misteks, miscorrect grammar and brevity.

Proof: I am a manager. I just made an unequivocal statement. So there is an apparent paradox. So putting aside the possibility of why the world didn’t disappear in a big flash of light due to this contradiction (which I would not have liked), there are two possibilities. Either the above hypothesis is not true, or I am not a manager.

Revised Hypothesis: An unequivocal statement by a manager may or may not be an oxymoron.

All I can see are dull drab gray clouds,
All I can see is slow-moving, unending traffic,
All I can see is three months of miserable commuting.

Where is the little boy who used to run out at the first sight of monsoons?
And stayed there till someone dragged him in by the ears!
Where is the excitement in building paper boats in a clear stream?
And where is the innocence of running after them,
To help them along their way or to watch them sink.

Where is the hope of looking at the rain out the windows,
Secretly wishing for a holiday tomorrow?
And that loud scream of joy when you get that wish fulfilled!

Where is the fun in stomping in potholes in over-sized gum-boots?
And the pain in getting your skin nicked in the muddy water?

And when everything used to be alright after,
applying a Mickey Mouse band-aid and some hot chocolate.

For instance, this is what the lady had to say while quoting her rates.

Rs 400 – Washing clothes (assuming 4 people)
Rs 600 – Washing utensils, drying them and placing them in the cupboard (400 for washing and 200 for drying)
Rs 400 -Jhaadu pocha.
Rs 400 – Dusting furniture (excluding windows)
Rs 200 – Cleaning windows.
Rs 200 – Cleaning bathrooms.

That works out to around Rs 2200 for a month’s worth of work. And oh yes, before I forget, here’s the clincher – the paid-leave clause. The lady is expected to take 2 days of leave per month. But if she doesn’t, you have to give her that two days’ worth of pay.

Wow, even I have never gone into such a level of detail during my salary negotiations. Maybe this is not a bad strategy to adopt. After this level of detail, you just don’t have any room left for negotiation. You pick what you want to get done, and do the rest yourself. Obviously the wife isn’t too thrilled about this.

Let’s see, hoping the previous maid resolves all her family problems and returns. Else it is time to tighten the purse strings and make some difficult choices.

The first couple of minutes of the movie, even before the opening titles, show in a nutshell what TV journalism in India has become. The film further reveals that slowly and surely, even TV channels which were, previously thought of to be upright and unbiased in their coverage of news, get caught up in the race to gain more viewer-ship. So here are my five reasons why you should forget what Ram Gopal Verma has given us in the past, and watch Rann.

1) The growing sensationalism in the media - Unless you’ve been living under a rock for all these years, you know what news on Indian TV has degenerated into. In the race for garnering more viewer-ship, more ad revenues and more TRPs, news has been relegated to the sideline while at the same time, a generous dose of entertainment (mindless to say the least) has been mixed in the programming. The movie explores a few reasons for the same.

As Rajpal Yadav’s characters explains to a director in the movie – “We both are in the same business. You make films, we also make films. Only we call it news.”

Some would say this mix is harmless. What’s wrong if you can get a little entertainment out of news channels as well? But the danger lies in the future when it would be difficult to distinguish between the entertainment part and the actual news part. This movie is for all those people who are already ignorant of this distinction. This movie is for all those people who are tired of the rampant “Breaking News” permanently plastered on TV channel screens.

2) Hard hitting facts - The movie discloses a few facts about how politicians and business-people can manipulate the media into twisting or actually creating news stories out of thin air. Without directly mentioning the parties involved (but giving enough clever hints), RGV has picked up (real) stories from all across India to give an example of the nexus between politics-business and politics-TV media. How many journalists today can honestly say that they haven’t compromised on the quality or content of the news which they report in order to get a few more eyeballs?

4) Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? This is a Latin phrase from a Roman poet, but made famous by Dan Brown in his novel Digital Fortress. The literal translation of the phrase is “Who will guard the guardians?” If the sole medium through which we receive our news are the TV channels and newspapers, who will ensure that the veracity of these news is unquestionable? As is shown in the movie, if facts can be distorted or reversed at the mere mention of money or power, whom will the common man believe when he is watching the news? The scenario described is not far from the Orwellian control of all media by the government or a part of private industry.

3) Rajpal Yadav’s histrionics – Rajpal Yadav plays a wannabe TV anchor at India 24×7 who wants to bring in more creative programming on the channel. In order to achieve this purpose, the character practices – in front of the mirror – the now famous mannerisms of the “b-grade” anchors who have built a whole genre of programs on TV with their loud intonation and their exaggerated descriptions of news. Think . If you jog back your memory a few years back, this trend was most probably started by the now forgotten Suhaib Ilyasi for India’s Most Wanted. But thankfully, RGV has kept this character in limits. Even though you would enjoy the face tweaks and gestures of this enthusiastic reporter, the seriousness of the film would have gone for a toss if he had been given more screen-time.

5) Last but not the least, Amitabh’s and Paresh Rawal’s performance. None of the actors in Rann have a dominating presence in terms of screen-time, but as is expected of them, these two towering personalities put everything into the screentime allocated to them. Paresh Rawal, as the scheming politician Mohan Pandey is menacing and not far from today’s politicians.

The movie has its down-sides too. Some parts of the movie are typical Bollywood. For instance, the part where everyone receives an SMS at the same time on their mobile revealing the truth of Mohan Pandey is hilarious. The telecom companies would have made a killing in this part. One major irritating aspect of the making of the movie was the camera angles. RGV’s cinematographer tried the same angles he tried in Sarkar 2 and fails miserably. Since the movie was about TV news, the least the director could have done is to try out a news studio kind of setup. A static multiple camera setup would have been better than the shaky, twisting angles which the cameraman constantly tries. It’s like the cameramen wanted to go for a susu but the director wouldn’t let him.

All in all, the message that Rann is trying to send across is beautifully exemplified in one of the lines Yashwardhan Malik Vijay Harshvardhan Malik speaks in his closing news broadcast in the film.

…”[For the media industry, ] news was supposed to be the goal, with money being a medium. However, today money has become the goal, with news becoming a medium…”

Into Thin Air, however, is about the journey of an expedition group which meets with disaster while climbing Mt Everest. This too is a real life incident, and beautifully describes how nature still has an upper hand over us. The blurbs on the book claim the book to be one of the best adventure books of all times. I have very high hopes from the book, and you can bet a review of the book once I read it.

Until then, happy reading. And I’ll keep searching hoping to find for a bargain his other book, Into the Wild.

However registering the domain and hosting the site hasn’t come cheap. So unless I make full use of the increased flexibility which this setup brings me, I’ll probably be pouring more money down the drain. So let’s make a commitment to meet here after one year and see where I’ve taken myself and whether it is worth it to continue this arrangement.

In the meantime I keep looking for a job to justify my MBA. On a related note, how would you like to be interviewed by this fellow?

Today I almost was. Brrrr! Can you guess who it is? He was in the news recently for creating a record.

That was one of the extra-curricular activities/hobbies on my resume a few months ago. I have since removed it because I’ve always thought it to be a very cliched hobby to have. I’ve replaced it with other seemingly more niche hobbies (but that hasn’t made much difference to my career).

But the thing is that a hobby is a hobby. If you have that travel bug inside you then no matter what you’re likely to go places, or at least dream about going places. In the last four months, I’ve traveled considerably. I’ve been to a few places known, and a few unknown. So the travel bug is definitely active within me. But compared to me there are travellers who have explored the length and width of the globe and it is for them I wrote this post.

Recently I saw a video on Youtube about this guy who has travelled all around the world. The unique thing about his travels is that he performs this funny yet infectious dance every where he goes. Probably you might have heard of him, his name is Matt Harding, and the video is aptly titled Where the hell is Matt? He has also appeared in a Visa ad doing the same dance. His profile even has a cheekily named video Where the hell is Matt’s girlfriend [then?!] I found out about this video through another wonderful video made by final year students of IIT Madras. The video has the same theme, with students doing that funny dance in front of all the major landmarks in IIT Madras (Funny how could they forget Gajendra Circle of all places!) It won the best video award for Adieu 2009 (which is the farewell program for the final year batches). The interesting thing is that this video is an excellent example of a viral campaign, where Matt explains that his original video is a hoax. People lined up to see this confession, and then Matt releases another video saying that the hoax was actually a hoax! Some amazing stuff there.

There is this another guy Michael Hughes who gets souveniers from each of the places he visits and superimposes them in the pictures he takes. Take a look at his amazing gallery on Flickr.

I have travelled quite insignificantly compared to these fellows. Yet I plan to do so extensively in the future. After all this blog is all about a never ending search. Although I still haven’t uploaded my collection of Patel shots but someday there will be quite a few of them from my side. Till then I keep getting inspired from travellers like them.

PS -I have no idea where to fit the following paragraph. So it stays quietly in the postscript.

On one hand we Indians love to travel. Yet it seems that we Indians haven’t yet perfected the art of travel. For us, travel means planning the trip from start to end right up to the breakfast, lunch and dinner we’re going to have each day. Each person has a dedicated suitcase in which clothes are stuffed, with a couple extra thrown in just in case. We pack our own food, which includes everything ranging from rotis, theplas, pickles, fruits, biscuits and a huge watter bottle. On the other hand, I’ve seen foreign citizens in India carrying nothing but a backpack on their shoulders. Nothing in their trip is planned. Even the exchange students here in IIT take an impromptu trip during the weekends by hiring a bike and taking off. Guess the motto of the Indian traveller is Be prepared.