On this Day in 2009, we were trying to get Shah Rukh Khan to come to the Dream Mile

As I was listening to leads of Dream Mile 2010 churning out ideas and action items to push the publicity into high gear for the last three weeks the campaign, my thoughts went back to Dream Mile 2009. The first thing that came rushing back to me was how a bunch of us (not on any medication, I might add) came up with this "crazy" idea of trying to get Shah Rukh Khan for Dream Mile 2009. Yes by The Shah Rukh Khan I mean the one and only K.k.k.k.....kkk... King Khan who was here in the bay area last year filming for "My Name is Khan".

Ribhu (Dream Mile 2010 lead ) and I were new to Vibha and were leading publicity for it. We had already garnered a dubious reputation of coming up with the nuttiest ideas but this one truly was the cherry on the cake .. our finest moment ..... We were...are still so proud of it..... I think the momentum of registrations had really picked up at this point and registrations team were really facing the heat of a mammoth turnout.. So when this idea first came up, it was more to tease them and get them to sweat some more....After all we all love to see Mukesh (National Fund raising Director) in panic mode... We were even more suprised when people started considering it seriously....

Soon, we were following twitter to see where SRK was filming, planning on pitching tents outside his Hotel in SF, talking to his bay area agents to see if they could give us some face time.... Some actually believed this would be possible and started planning for the worst... what if he actually turns up ? Will we have a logistical nightmare on our hands ? If a 1000 man running event turns into 10000 man stampede .. lets just keep it at if..... The logistics lead Anand was incredibly cool about this... which gave us even more fuel to pursue this...We tried hook and crook to try and get face time with SRK but to no avail..... Also , after it truly sunk in that if he turns up, it wont be a pretty sight finally put an end to this grand plan..

But what this entire exercise gave us was incredible momentum going into the event...The registrations team was preparing for the worst.. the pledge team started dreaming about a big fat cheque from SRK, the publicity team.. well we didnt need any momentum at that point.... everyone was trying to apply brakes on us :).... But it did bring the entire Dream Mile team together for the final push.

This year we don't have SRK in the bay area.. But we need still need the all the awesome volunteers we had last year to build the same momentum as we head into the the final days before DOE.

After all, it wasn't SRK who made DM 2009 a grand sucess, it was all of YOU !!!!!

www.dreammile.org

An open letter to the Shiv Sena

Thackeray Saheb, ( BalaSaheb or Udhav , whoever is calling the shots )

Asa kai kela ?

I live in Mumbai. No; I live in Bombay. Sorry, I am using the dreaded “B” word as a mark of protest. Why am I in a sacrilegious mood? Because, I am upset and disappointed with the Shiv Sena’s attitude! I was so looking forward to this weekend. I had it perfectly planned and you ruined everything. How could you do this? We had such a great thing going over the years and in a blink of an eye you betrayed me for that over-rated Shah Rukh “Ham” Khan.

Valentine’s Day will not be the same anymore without the Shiv Sena disrupting itL.

Growing up in Bombay, if you ever put me in a rapid fire quiz show and asked me, “What comes to your mind first when I say Valentine’s Day ? “ Without any hesitation my answer would be “Shiv Sena”. Yes, Not Love, Not roses, Not cupid. You had entrenched yourself in Bombay’s Valentine’s Day folklore. And now you have abandoned all those couples in love who depended on you to provide the spark in their otherwise mundane relationships.

As I write this letter, it takes me back to my first V-day. You were at your peak that year. Most of the big hotels, pubs, and night clubs had canceled their parties. It was the perfect hide and seek game. How will the couples manage to sneak in some alone time, manage to hold hands in public, exchange those ridiculously expensive roses and paraphernalia and whisper sweet nothings without being caught by the minions of Balasaheb. So much more exciting than a quiet candle light dinner or a deafening Bollywood remix party. Looking at the expensive demands the chick I was taking out was making, I was sweating balls. But as it turned out, everything she asked for, you managed to get to it first J.. She wanted some expensive soft toys. That store I went to was destroyed by you a day earlier. So all the other stores around were closed. She wanted to go to this yacht party with some supercool DJ from Delhi. But your goons got to him a week before and made him swear that he will never set foot in Mumbai on V-Day. I ended up giving her a rose from my neighbor’s garden and taking her out to a romantic dinner to the local Chinese tapri and I didn’t even look cheap doing it. She was so impressed by what you had done in the run up to V-day that she was begging for this. I never properly thanked you for that. Aah the good old days.

As the years went by, I was amazed at your innovative methods each year. How funny my date and me looked when we had our faces blackened , or the time I wanted to break up with this girl but didn’t know how until you came along and made her tie me a Rakhi. That was easy J. Or the time when I was having a romantic candle light dinner and your sena broke the window of that restaurant. The tiny pieces of glass flying all over the place and falling all over our food and us, looked magical. Right out of a fairy tale!!! But what takes the cake was your campaign to force couples caught on V-day to marry each other. I was so pumped up about that. I even managed to catch a filthy rich girl that year. But somehow we never ran into each other. That would have been the jackpot.

Sigh, I’m all teary-eyed now. This year, I had met a girl from the “We love Shiv Sena on V-Day” generation. It was going to be perfect. We were planning to walk in front of protesters and then hold hands. This would have led to a high speed chase through the streets of Bombay.On being caught; we were looking forward to the new and innovative punishments you would come up with. It would have made both of us feel proud. But all that is just a dream now. You chickened out and decided to go after a SRK. It was so much below your dignity. Was it worth it?

I just cannot have a V-day without the excitement the Shiv Sena used to provide. So I became innovative and decided to do the unthinkable. If the disrupters don’t come to us, we would go to the disrupters. I was going to commit the sin of going to a SRK-KJo movie in its opening weekend just so that it would be disrupted and I could have a slice of excitement and reminisce the good old days. But, and it’s a big BUT… our government decided to actually do something for the first time in 10 years. Why now , Mr Chavan. Please go back to doing nothing. We loved you that way. That’s why we relected you time after time for the last 10 years. Now you have really done it. The one place I could get some action, and you stopped that too. Why ? I had to actually coax some local Sena Shakha guys to protest outside a local multiplex before they catch the Sunday evening show , pay off the local constables to wait for atleast 15 minutes before taking any action, just to get a feel of the good old days.. We are living in truly troubled times. This has cost me more than all the earlier V-days put together.

I hope you learn your lesson and we have a normal V-day next year. Otherwise I will have to move to Bangalore. Ram Sena is eating into your market share.

Sincerely

With Apologies to Bill Maher

New Rules

If I call a person on the telephone, I want to hear a traditional ring tone. I do not want to hear the love song which was playing the night you lost your virginity or the song your mom loves. When I hear of a song instead of a ring tone, it makes me feel, I am on hold with customer support. So dont be surprised if you get the same treatment I dish out to them, even though you pretend to be my friend.

More.. Coming soon

Shorts Standing Tall

Great Short Films I Stumbled upon

Woke up last Night at 3 am from a horrific nightmare involving my boss... again

Anyway that's besides the point..

I had recently hooked up my new Tivo HD and wanted to see if it had recorded something to put me back to sleep :)
It turns out it was recording these short films being shown on a showcase on IFC.
I have never been a fan of shorts. But the ones I ended up seeing really turned me into a fan, a high speed one at that.

The first one was called "Underground"

Details can be found on IMDB.

Underground

It was exploring human nature and how we perceive certain situations based on our own fears and notions. The viewers, in this case, were subjects and how we perceive the situation being shown is the purpose of this short experiment. It simply involves two guys following a girl riding on an empty subway train. What happens next will help you judge yourself and your perceptions.

It used a simple quote as a baseline and then launched from there.

"We don't see things as they are. We see things as we are."

Watch it and let me know what you think. I don't want to analyse it too much for the fear of giving it away.

The film is being shown on IFC and they have repeat dates. I have listed the dates at the end.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

The second film was called "Disposal"

IMDB link:

Disposal

This is again a character study of Human nature or a certain aspect of it in 10 minutes. It shows how people react in a naive fashion during times of unexpected crisis and the repercussions of actions taken to resolve the crisis. A couple in the city accidentally hit and kill a homeless man, while a father and son are hunting in the jungle. The two couples don't know each other, but accidents will cause their lives to intertwine and change forever.

fascinating!!!!

I think shorts are a great way to explore human emotions and the way we think. You can make a point very quickly and then post mortem all you want, based on it. In Feature length films, there is usually just too much going on to really have a good character study done. Not that it hasn't been done. But, I just think shorts can really bring out the point trying to be made to a diverse and wider audience.

Anyways, Comments are always welcome, and if you cant catch the films or don't have IFC, I have them recorded on Tivo, so I can help out.


IFC Short Films Showcase Schedule:

Thu, May. 15 at 12:35 PM EDT

Sun, May. 18 at 06:55 AM EDT

Thu, May. 29 at 06:00 AM EDT

Tue, Jun. 3 at 08:50 AM EDT

Fri, Jun. 6 at 05:30 AM EDT

Thu, Jun. 12 at 12:30 PM EDT

Enjoy...

Random Thoughts

Slipping away

Time slips away
Slippery like the ground outside
Drenched in Winter rain
Inviting the gullible
Welcoming one and all
To admire the green that comes with the rain
To take in wisps of the wet soil
Distracted from the goal
"I can get it done"
"This will only take a few minutes"
Minutes turn into hours
By the time they return
Its too late
Time has slipped away.

With apologies to Bill Maher

Bill Maher has this great concept of making new rules which take on existing meaningless shenanigans. I thought I could use that concept to come up with some of my own. Il keep adding as I come up with it.

New Rule: Politicians, stop hitting out at Amitabh Bachchan to revive your non-existant popularity or clout or whatever it is you are missing out on in your otherwise fulfilling life.
Trust me if people ignored you before, it actually did your social barometer a lot of good. Now, you are seen as as plain ignorant and stupid. If you think what Amitabh does or doesn't do will really save this country, then you are the ones who needs to be put on the hot seat.

New Rule: Just beacuse you have chewed and digested every word of a word list doesnt mean you have to use only those words in your entire sentence. Writing is about expressing something you feel in the best possible words that would convey the message. Using hard to understand words, totally out of context in sentences just proves you are not sure what you want to say and are hiding your inability to write behind those words.

5/7/2008
New Rule : Anderson Cooper from CNN needs to stop going gaga over the touch screen he has been using to show election results. Maybe your mom didn't let you paint when you were a kid, maybe you are an artist at heart and only a broadcaster by profession. But stop painting on the damn touch screen. Im sure there is software out there to do it for you, or maybe you can have a lovely assistant do it for you, because you doing it sure doesn't make a great picture.

Simple Yet Powerful poetry: Stuff I like

This is pretty powerful writing by Wislawa Szymborska. She is a polish poet who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1996. Notice the simplicity of the poem. Yet It has so many layers. Simply mind blowing


The Three Oddest Words

By Wislawa Szymborska


When I pronounce the word Future,
the first syllable already belongs to the past.

When I pronounce the word Silence,
I destroy it.

When I pronounce the word Nothing,
I make something no non-being can hold.

-----------------------------------------------------

Utopia

By Wislawa Szymborska

Island where all becomes clear.

Solid ground beneath your feet.

The only roads are those that offer access.

Bushes bend beneath the weight of proofs.

The Tree of Valid Supposition grows here
with branches disentangled since time immemorial.

The Tree of Understanding, dazzlingly straight and simple,
sprouts by the spring called Now I Get It.

The thicker the woods, the vaster the vista:
the Valley of Obviously.

If any doubts arise, the wind dispels them instantly.

Echoes stir unsummoned
and eagerly explain all the secrets of the worlds.

On the right a cave where Meaning lies.

On the left the Lake of Deep Conviction.
Truth breaks from the bottom and bobs to the surface.

Unshakable Confidence towers over the valley.
Its peak offers an excellent view of the Essence of Things.

For all its charms, the island is uninhabited,
and the faint footprints scattered on its beaches
turn without exception to the sea.

As if all you can do here is leave
and plunge, never to return, into the depths.

Into unfathomable life.




Possibilities


By Wislawa Szymborska

I prefer movies.
I prefer cats.
I prefer the oaks along the Warta.
I prefer Dickens to Dostoyevsky.
I prefer myself liking people
to myself loving mankind.
I prefer keeping a needle and thread on hand, just in case.
I prefer the color green.
I prefer not to maintain
that reason is to blame for everything.
I prefer exceptions.
I prefer to leave early.
I prefer talking to doctors about something else.
I prefer the old fine-lined illustrations.
I prefer the absurdity of writing poems
to the absurdity of not writing poems.
I prefer, where love's concerned, nonspecific anniversaries
that can be celebrated every day.
I prefer moralists
who promise me nothing.
I prefer cunning kindness to the over-trustful kind.
I prefer the earth in civvies.
I prefer conquered to conquering countries.
I prefer having some reservations.
I prefer the hell of chaos to the hell of order.
I prefer Grimms' fairy tales to the newspapers' front pages.
I prefer leaves without flowers to flowers without leaves.
I prefer dogs with uncropped tails.
I prefer light eyes, since mine are dark.
I prefer desk drawers.
I prefer many things that I haven't mentioned here
to many things I've also left unsaid.
I prefer zeroes on the loose
to those lined up behind a cipher.
I prefer the time of insects to the time of stars.
I prefer to knock on wood.
I prefer not to ask how much longer and when.
I prefer keeping in mind even the possibility
that existence has its own reason for being.

For more from Wislawa Szymborska

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1996/szymborska-poetry.html