A light story... (Heavily loaded)

Remember, my earlier post on Aug 25 Fat Boy Slim where I vowed to touch a 70 kg from the... ahem 89 kg that I so graciously had managed to accumulate over the years of adopting Charvak's principle - Eat, Drink and Merry!!! Well all the merriment, drinking and eating principle were now to take a toss once the mission began. For all unknown conditions I was able to get on to a work out mode only a month after I had written the first post. (Sigh!!! I know)
Losing weight my friends, is never an easy task and I will not make it sound simple either. (Lest it may discount all the 'Oooohs' and 'Aaahs', 'Really' that I happily manage to generate nowadays when I tell wannabe's of my weight loss story) It is not rocket science either. It is actually more to do with the mind and the motivation that you may receive from yourself in wanting to lose weight. The funda is simple - Regulate your diet, Plan and follow a workout and bingo the process begins. But before one actually begins the mission, what is very important is the need to read literature on nutrition, diet and work-out. I did exactly that. There is no dearth of it in net or also if you decide to pick up some good magazines like "Men's Health", "Prevention" (and this has nothing to do with the fact that I have worked with the India Today Group) What I write now on is no prescribed formula, but something which I have practsised and managed to achieve results over 11 months.

Mantra 1: Know your body!!!

It is very important that you understand your own body and that does not mean standing in front of a mirror and groping yourself and the unwanted layers that might now be hanging from all the wrong places. ;) Understanding one's own body is a lot to do with the kind of life that you might have led prior to accumulating the layers and also the kind of life that you might be leading right now. In my case, the retrospective was of an athlete, relentlessly in the basketball court or if not then perhaps dancing at a friends party with two left feet. And then, I completed my MA and MBA, lost perspective of life and a girlfriend, tasted and got addicted to alcohol, suffered from attention seeking disorder and hence got drunk and loved to create a scene (all puns intended) and then before I realised the weighing scale was reading 78 kgs in 2005. I thought that job would change all this but I was wrong, and this is something you also need to realise. Working a sedantry or even a field job does nothing but adds many gms to you, because lifestyle becomes your nemesis. We earn, so we indulge; We indulge, So we get tired; We get tired; So we drink; We drink, so we have fun... Its a viscious cycle my friend, very viscious. And its almost the same story for everyone who has gained weight. (Drinking is supplemented with good food for both alcoholics and also who refuse to drink) So when, I decided that I need to shed weight, the first thing was to introspect my lifestyle and in turn my body. When I did this, it is then that I realised that instead of actually pampering my body, I was abusing it. Late nights, sedantry work style and more over the many empty bottles of alcohol and beer in my cupboard were a clear indication of why I had been bloating. And when I joined Music Today, the weighing scale read 89kgs. I stopped weighing myself and started to laugh off the smirks and remarks on my paunch, but every day I stood infront of the mirror wishing for a new day.

Next: Mantra 2: Stop Wishing and Act!!!

Back!!!

Yes, I am back, like all the other times. And as a hard working lazy individual I am shameless enough not to offer any excuses for being away for so long. Smug!!!

I watched Rock On last week and have to definitely write about it. Nikhat Kazmi, in his review remarked that the Indian Film has come of age and I could not agree with him more. Some couple of years ago when I was watching the acronym'ised' movies directed by the 'Oh-so-exclusive-touch-me-not-delicate-creative-metrosexual-directors' (O.S.E.T.M.N.D.C.M.D... Pun intended), I thought that we will never get to see a Good Will Hunting, Amadeus or even a Forest Gumps in Bollywood. But, I am wrong and as if to ward off my fear, Bollywood of late has provided me some great mental orgasms in the multiplex. Small budgets, new faces, young directors, realistic, hard hitting and more importantly entertaining movies have been churned out. Last year it was Big-B starrer "Cheeni Kum", Anurag's "Black Friday" and the inimitable "Bheja Fry". The list is small but yet very heart warming since the movies managed to bridge the gap and stigma between words like cross-over, off-beat and mass. This year, Whoa!! Look what we have. In the early months we had "Taare Zameen Par," Rajat's "Mithya", Rajat Kumar Gupta's "Aamir"(This was a real good one) and now we have Abhishek Kapoor's "Rock On"

In my ratings "Rock On" takes the cherry till now. Fast moving, it yet carries its own mellow pace reflecting the psyche of friendship and the anguish in shying away from one's dream. Farhan must have a penchant for friendship (though in the industry he is shy and reclusive) because post "Dil Chahta Hai", this is his second movie in the same lineage. But we dont care. Rock On is a step ahead of DCH because it is about the need to reclaim you life, if you have lost it in the alleys of 'investment banking' and 'mundane daily life'. The plot is simple and even if you are not a rocker/musician, you will still feel that its a slice of your urban life. This is what makes the movie memorable. We all have or are living the lives of Farhan, Arjun, Luke, Purab, Prachi and Shahana.

The plot interweaves with heart warming poignancy that each character experiences in staying away from something that they much love. And its not the men alone who suffer this deliberation. Rock On also introduces us Prachi Desai, who in her very quiet role emerges as a clear winner as the doting and yet frustrated wife of a husband who treats her with as much inertness as he would do with the stocks he advises about to his clients as an investment banker. The other woman in the movie Shahana Goswami's performance is equally stellar as a wife to an embittered guitarist, Arjun Rampal, handling the latter's fishery business. Each of the characters' story however does not strain the fabric of the primary plot of the battle that they engage in the compromise/s they have made. I guess we all fight this battle and hence Rock On relates to us.

In performances, Arjun Rampal is my pick of the lot. He eases through his character as an embittered guitarist who bravely tries to accept his marraige to Shahana and the compromise that he makes in refusing to play guitar in marraiges because he knows he is made for the stage. He is made for doing "Magik"

Go watch the movie because, words fail me in expressing how good is it. Rock On will be incomplete without a standing applause for Shankar Ehsan and Loy's soul stirring music, which is made even better with Farhan's rustic but fresh voice. To sum up I will borrow a paragraph from Subhas Jha's review, which so aptly sums up the movie "A large number of our films are about life. Some are about music. Seldom has a film blended the music of life into the fabric of a film with such seamless expertise. Rock On!! is that rarity where every component character and episode falls into place with fluent virility."

Indeed Subhas, cant agree more.