Youngistan !!

I just came across Pepsi's new tag line 'Youngistan'. One of the add features Ranbir Kapoor and Deepika Padukone outwitting 'Badshah' Khan. The other one features young faces of Indian cricket team. To me this tag line emphasizes on the role of youth in India. The challenges from the young blood to the aged expertize of the old India, a country emerging out of the shackles of tradition and customs to the superpower of the new millennium. For now, lets look at new development in cricket.

The role of the youth in the recent victory of our cricket team against numer-uno team Australia showed the effects. The strategies that were chalked out where never too predictable; Dhoni leading from the front took some interesting decisions of dropping Sehwag and replacing an opening bat with an extra simmer. All our experts in cricket went on saying that was a mistake and some even commented that this may be Dhoni's tactics to keep Viru hungry for runs, whenever he is included in paying eleven. As we all saw, he never made it. Was it right or wrong in cricketing sense, I dont know. But the bottom-line is that it worked. Dhoni's decision to keep out the expertize of Ganguly and Dravid was also a shock to many of us, especially since the tour was overseas. If we keep in mind that neither Ganguly, Dravid or Tendulkar will make it to the World Cup 2011 and consider that to be the ultimate reward of playing one-dayers then it was a reasonable decision. But there was also risk of loosing the tournament. So under all these circumstances I would say Dhoni did a good job. He has his own vision and is ready to stand by it, very similar to what Ganguly did a couple of years back to revive the Indian team and giving a new title of 'Team India'. Ganguly's policy was to include new faces but also give the seniors enough chances they deserve. This might go back in keeping Dravid in the one-day team under immnese contradiction from the selectors. In fact, Ganguly went to the extent of using Dravid's wicket keeping abilities to retain him in World Cup 2003 team as a wicket-keeper batsman.
But after all these revolutionary changes Ganguly brought to Indian Team, they were still shy of the championship titles. In fact, under Ganguly Indian Team lost record number of championship finales, including the WC 2003. Its too early to comment on Dhoni's policies as a skipper, but from what we have seen so far we can say that he wants young guns in the team and is not shy of criticizing even legendary Sachin on his failure on the top order. The inclusion of new faces and giving them chances on a rotation basis might prove to be the best for the rise of Indian team and actually winning more championships. They even did that, they won T20 and now the last ever CB series in Australia. This was the last of these triangular nation tournament in Australia and Aussies are shocked to lose it to India. India proved they are the second best team in the world in Test cricket and a lot of potency to be the World No. 1 in one-dayers. Kudos to Dhoni and his men.

This is really a 'Youngistan' !!

Bong !! Connection

Anjan Dutta's 'Bong Connection' is a smashit movie. The return of Sayan Munshi is really a great by-product of this film. Although some of my friends have risen their eyebrows on the version of 'Pagla Hawa' used here, I feel may be thats the need of the movie theme; it was not necessary but quite fits into the perspective.

Although I feel tremendously unattached to this word 'Bong', but people from other states refer like that and gradually you cannot do much than accept. Dont forget we also have shortties to every states and we call them by that. But anyways these are fun when they are used in right spirit. After all we are a large country with different culture and traditions, if we have freedom to respect each other, we should also have some freedom to make fun of each other, but ofcourse in the right spirit.

Ballygunge Court

I apologise to the hypothetical reader, who actually cares to visit this blog, for writing another consecutive movie review. I cant help it. I watched this bangla movie 'Ballygunge Court' a few days back. Its not a new release, but I only managed to watch it recently. The movie is directed by Pinaki Chowdhury and based on Bani Bose’s story Deepshikha. The casting includes Soumitra Chatterjee, Sabyasachi Chakraborty, Mamata and Tanusree Shankar in major roles.

Going by the trend, I will mention about the positives first. Its a film about the parents whose kids are leaving Calcutta (I still prefer to call her by this name) for better career prospects abroad. Nevertheless, they are leaving behind their parents in Calcutta, to suffer their rest of the life in lonelyness. The film is based on this appartment named 'Ballygunge Court' and builds up around the two couples played by Soumitra-Mamata and Sabyasachi-Tanusree.

The movie was great to watch, I never felt that it was stretching too much in length. The end was the most beautiful sequence, one really needs to watch it. It also deals with a social problem of the country losing its young brains to foreign nations. I think this was a major problem last decade and before that. The present trend says no one is too much excited to leave India permanently since the job offerings are becoming very lucrative at home also . Now, I think the problem is of equal opportunity. So in this respect the film actually should have been made a decade back. But anyways lets put aside the social criticism . The casting might have been made slightly better, or may be its just me; I am so used to seeing Mamata Shankar paired up with Dipankar Dey, that this sudden pairing with Soumitra was not taken very well by me, sorry for being conservative. The leads in the film where really great even the supporting casts like Biplab Chatterjee deserve special mention. I am very sad to see Manoj Mitra making such a inconsequential appearance in the movie.

Overall 'Ballygunge Court' is a good movie, worth watching and indeed supports the fact that commercial bangla movies are recovering better.