Great vacations..a quick round-up-I

A movie a day, keeps the boredom away!!

This was my mantra for the shutdown this time. I watched a movie a day for nine continous days. Add to that three books, meeting an old friend, meeting Sachi (my 1 year-old niece), hours of sleeping and spending lot of time with my family and I can say that I had a very good time. This was the break that I was looking for. And this was one of those times, when I could stick to my plans.

I had planned to share things in more details, but lack of connectivity to the internet spoiled my plans. As a substitute, here’s a quick round-up of the vacations:

Day 0(Dec24): : Vacations started a day earlier for our team. Description here.
Day 1 (Dec25): Watched Ghajini. Left for my hometown. Started Message in a Bottle. Found it quiet intriguing.
Day 2 (Dec26): Watched Kung Fu Panda. Simple, cute movie for a one-time watch. And always remember, “There is no secret ingredient”   Continued MIAB
Day 3 (Dec27): Met an old friend after more than three years and only the second time our school days. We met at a common friend’s shop. Initially, there were some moments of awkward silence, but then, three of us chatted and chatted for long. Was a real good experience. Looking forward to a bigger get-together and a cricket match around Holi.  After coming back, watched Dor. Superb movie!!
Day 4 (Dec28):Finished MIAB. Okayish read, nothing extra-ordinary. Decided never to read Nicholas Sparks again.  Watched Mumbai Meri Jaan Another very good movie on terrorism. The character played by Madhawan, in particular, was very realistic. Great performances by Soha Ali Khan, Irfan and Kay kay as well.
Next day, when I told my family that I had watched MMJ, I was surprised to know that they had never heard of it. It was same when I had told them about Iqbal, A Wednesday and Dasvidaniya. I guess most of these movies are made for multiplexes in big cities only. It’s a shame that such great movies go unheard of in most parts of the country. Can’t really blame the distributors for this. The audience too needs to get maturity to see beyond the star cast.

Day 5 (Dec29): Went out with my family to watch Rab-ne-Bana-di-Jodi. I was watching a movie with my family after about 10 years. (I guess the last one we saw together was Kareeb ) As for RNBDJ, it was a very confused movie and the story is not gripping at any moment. But it’s still one of those, which you can watch with the family. And with a feel-good fairy tale ending, I knew that my family liked it. My personal rating of the movie: 5.0/10
But for those, who feel SRK sickening, I must say that his performance as the reserved, shy common man was really good. Hope to see a movie with him doing a similar role again. When he was playing Raj, he was as usual repeating himself.
BTW, the movie-watching experience in Saharanpur is still the same as it was 8 years back when I saw Mohabbatein with cousins. It was complete with power-cuts in between, people shouting unnecessarily and unclean toilets. And this is when we went to the so-called best cinema in the city. I wonder when will the city change.

Picked up Morning, Noon, Night by Sidney Sheldon. I had read If Tomorrow Comes as my first Sidney Sheldon novel four years back. This was the only SS novel that I liked and after trying for four/five more titles, I gave up. But this time, I got this from my library on Chaya‘s recommendation. And this one surely was different. Very gripping right from the start.

For the rest of the vacations, wait for part 2.

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1. Winter vacations:simple plans, decent start

Tags: Dor, Ghajini, Message in a bottle, Morning Noon Night, Nicholas Sparks, Rab ne bana di jodi, RNBDJ, Saharanpur