Review of Kahaani

Kahaani-A mother of a story

The promos of Kahaani give u a very different kind of aura about the film. The film is nothing like what you predict. Since the debacle of Sujoy Ghosh's last two films at the box office, Home Delivery and Alladin, this film turns around the tables for this director. This film has an ease to it which is the best part of Sujoy’s direction which made his first venture Jhankaar Beats a treat to watch.

 The film begins in a very different way which builds up the mystical angle around the film. It shows a parallel incident which gives no mention of the lead characters. Vidya Balan (Vidya Bagchi) plays pregnant NRI from London, a techie by profession and also a southie married to a Bengali. She is looking simply beautiful. Just beautiful is the word.  She again raises the bar for the female leads post The Dirty Picture and proves her mettle as an actress who can pull off a film on her own which appeals to the masses and the classes. Mrs Vidya Bagchi is looking for her missing husband who had come to Kolkata for an assignment with the National Data Centre. She goes straight to the police station form the airport.  She meets a cop there, Parambrata Chattopadhyay (Rana). Parambrata plays a cop with a heart. He accompanies Mrs Bagchi looking for clues, interrogating people, protecting her from the bad guys, just about everywhere.  The character of Rana has a variety of tints to it. U like him a minute and at times you don’t. The friendship between Mrs Bagchi and Rana develops as the movie advances and the chemistry is just right. As the movie continues, a host of clues and mysteries unfold making u sit almost at the edge of your seat. The end is unpredictable and by far the one of the best I have seen in Indian cinemas. Nothing is left to the imagination of the audiences. The end is cut just clean and crisp.

Every character in the movie has amazing clarity to its shade. The casting is just perfect and easy to decipher. Be it Indraneil Sengupta(Arnab Bagchi), the tough cop Khan played by Nawazzudin Siddiqui, the kids, a LIC agent who plays a contract killer, the guest house manager, the NDC employees, the IB agents. Everybody falls right in the picture. The cinematography is a little confusing in the beginning but stabilizes after a while. The editing is good and the minute before the interval is so going to freak you out. The chaos captured in Kolkata during Durga Puja is simply par excellence. There is confusion yet serenity etched in the chaotic scenes of Kolkata. The colours of Kolkata are sketched perfectly and blend well into the story. The styling is done perfectly. The music is minimal and put in at the right times.

A must watch people. I can already see this film taking away the best lead actress and the technical awards of this year.

GYM- A tale of the freak and the feeble

Obviously I have only been to the gyms that are either unisex or for women only so I have no idea about the men’s gyms. Once you reach a gym, you ensure to look your best and have a super confident aura about yourself. At the lobby you ask a pleasant beautiful lady for different weight loss programs and she suggests pehle aapka weight dekhle??? Then you tread slowly towards the weighing scale with a heavy heart regretting every ounce of cheese and every sip of cola you didn’t refuse. And then bang, the lobby ki item makes a scary face. She takes you back to the lobby and convinces you to go for an expensive package by telling you how badly you need it. Then you see how the money goes flying to their accounts coz you weren’t disciplined.  Crap!!!!

And then there is s session with a nutritionist where your diet is ripped apart. Grain by grain you note down what you eat. She makes a face for everything you love and asks you to quit it. Once you are done you go home and start the “diet”. First day seems really easy trust me. You shun all the carbs and sweets from you fridge, later realising it’s already in your tummy :D You start hunting for Quaker oats, green tea, skimmed milk, flak seeds and green vegetables all over your neighbourhood supermarkets. These things are necessary for a balanced diet for losing weight.

Next comes the first day of your work out. You walk in like a legend with your track pants, tee and a new pair of shoes. A full sipper of water and a towel hoping you will sweat like hell. You look out for your trainer, he comes and greets you with a warm smile and asks start kare? Your enthusiasm is at peak, you walk inside the gym area. He asks you to do some warm up first. Easy na? Then you start with cardio, not a problem at all (btw the music makes it so much fun). Once you are walking, your mind wanders and you look around. You see a very fit girl running with her ear phones on, you look away cursing yourself. You look again, you see a very fat aunty sweating profusely and walking on the treadmill. Feeling good about yourself you look around more. There are cute guys doing weights which distracts me the most actually :D Then you get inspired and focus a little more in your workout.  There is a weird rowing machine which looks absolutely stupid to me. I hated it the most. You look like you are rowing a boat in a dry lake and paying money for it. The cycle is fun and the stepper is the best, it burns calories the fastest. Then there are some uncles running like freaks. Looking at them you feel probably they had tortured hamsters in their previous birth and they are paying for it now.

The weights are the scariest part of working out. Some instruments knock the daylights off you.  There are about 39 types of workout types. I don’t remember any of them. Some machines make u sit in weird embarrassing postures. And those squats, you can so not get them right without embarrassing yourself. T he mat you lie down on is not meant to relax for more than 170 seconds. Unlike most of the people, I absolutely love doing crunches :P but u can’t feel u have an abdomen after a couple of hours still...I LOVE IT!!! And btw that big ball is not meant to play “catch catch” with (I was so disappointed).  After the weight session you have to sign your record with the trainer, my sign is actually nothing like what I signed with my post-workout-numb-with-pain hands. Once you are done with this you go home and relax. You feel I am already thin yaar, gym works. And then.......the pain.....your limbs get stuck up, they can’t move. You start walking like a lame funny duck. You have to explain everyone what is wrong with you and then everybody laughs at you *wipes away tears*. You go back to your trainer in the next session, he asks you the exact locations of pains and says pain hona chahiye nahi toh weight loss kaise hoga and all you feel like doing is punching him.

Okay so I am not a gym freak...neither am I a lazy log....I am one of those moderately active people who can enjoy a good diet and works out regularly at home....

So I quit the gym long back and still losing weight in my own way.  Some get used to the pain and discipline themselves. Addiction to the gym is unexplainable. You gradually lose weight and get inspired with all the compliments you get. Some even follow your diet and start joining your gym. All this happened with my mom not me * evil grin*. So I dedicate this post to my MOM!!!! Three cheers for my her!!!