Taare Zameen Par - Different Versions! Too good :)

Hi-- I've not written this article. This came to me by mail and i just just cutted and putted it!! :)
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If Karan Johar made Taare Zameen Par
Obvious starcast:
Shah Rukh Khan as the arts teacher (duh duh duh!!).
Aryan Khan as the dyslexic child (even if he could not act for
nuts).
Rani Mukerjee as the kid's mom (assuming Kajol is unavailable).
Abhishek Bachchan as the kid's dad.
Amitabh Bachchan as the school principal (who cares if the role is
ultra minute, he can afford it).
It would be shot in New York to appeal to the NRI audience.
The story line would obviously be different. SRK would fall for the
dyslexic kid's mom. The last scene would have the mom running to the
teacher rather than the kid. And again, like in so many other
movies, SRK would get someone else's girl.
It would have one dance number.
The film would be titled ' Kuch Taare Zameen Par.'

If Sanjay Leela Bhansali made Taare
Obvious starcast:
Salman as the teacher.
Rani as the mother.
Of course the whole film would be shot on elaborate sets. The school
would be nothing short of Harvard university.
An orchestra would play every time anyone cried.
Slow motion, different camera angles for every scene.
The school uniforms would match the classroom walls even though that
does not make a difference.
The film would cost 60 crores.

If Farah Khan made Taare
Obvious starcast:
SRK as the teacher (yawn).
In the original Taare, Aamir makes an entry at the interval point.
In Farah's version, SRK would be on screen on for 2.30 hrs out of
the 2.45 hrs and would be introduced in the first scene itself.
The story would be changed to make sure the above happened. The
focus of the film would be a teacher who helps a kid fight dyslexia.
To make it a complete entertainer, there would be a romantic angle,
comedy, and action thrown in. Oh idea!! Nikumbh's character likes
another teacher and the kiddo helps him.. throw in some comedy
moments there and you have romance and comedy settled. For action..
hmm.. lemme see.. oh yah, the kid gets kidnapped and the teacher
fights the baddies to save him. Wow!! I'm quite an imaginative
writer. I can see how Farah can write a film from scratch in two
weeks straight.
The film posters would have a big SRK with the tiny image of the kid
in the background.

If Rakesh Roshan made Taare
Obvious starcast:
Hrithik Roshan as the teacher.
Since Rakesh Roshan cannot think beyond science fiction these days,
this film would have that too. Instead of dyslexia, the kid would
have alienositis or something, a condition induced due to him
witnessing an alien abduction.
Instead of Nikumbh being an arts teacher, he would be a physics
teacher, and instead of asking kids to be creative, he would ask
them to challenge the science we know.
In the scene where Nikumbh asks the kids to open their minds and
make whatever they want outdoors, the kid Ishaan, instead of making
a boat, would end up making a working spaceship prototype.
Nikumbh would cure the kids problem by making a full fledged version
of the kid's prototype, traveling to the alien planet, and asking
them to give the kid his powers back.
The film would have music by Rajesh Roshan ripped off from some
world music.
The film's name would again start with a K.. probably ' Kkuch Aliens
Taaron se Zameen Par' .
The director would make sure Hrithik gets to show all his abilities.
This would mean a scene with Roshan jr flexing his muscles, and a
dance competition in the end, instead of an arts competition.

If Priyadarshan made Taare:
Obvious starcast:
Akshay Kumar as the teacher.
Paresh Rawal as the kid's dad.
It would be a brainless comedy. The kid's dyslexia would be made fun
of. Half the times the parents will be running after the kid from
one room to the other and that, in the director's opinion, would be
funny.
The film will be full of sex jokes. So for example, when Akshay
would come to the parents telling them that their son has dyslexia,
the ignorant father would say something inappropriate like 'iss umar
mein? par kaise, woh to hamesha boys school mein padha hai!'. And
yes, the director would think it is funny.
In the climax of the film all the characters in the film would run
around in the amphitheater for no reason, spilling colors on each
other. That's where the film will end, without any logical
conclusion.
And of course, Paresh Rawal would emote like an epileptic himself
making us question the boy's mental abilities anyway.

Contemplations!

I heard that God gives you what you need and not what you want.

It did not make sense then!

And what I’ve realised is that God doesn’t come down by himself in front of us with a board saying "Hi. I'm God. Can I help you?" and with a marching beat playing in the background!

As Paolo Coelho says in 'The Alchemist', "Once you desire something strongly enough, the whole universe conspires to help you achieve it!” Only recently have I started understanding it!

You know what, even nature talks to us! In fact, it hollers at the top of its voice whenever you have need of it!

Last week, I was wondering about how long do we keep trying to finish something which is not getting done. Like everyone, I have a few things in life, which I’ve never been able to actually finish, though I’ve been trying for a long long time.

As every day, I was sitting on the beach and was gazing at the waves, when it suddenly struck me that the Sea was shouting-out-loud "Look at me - I don't give up! Each second, I try again, again and yet again, creating new waves continuously- and I will continue to do so till the end of time!"

Recently, we were at Burra Caves in Araku Valley and there was this stream of water - a thin trickle actually - that has been flowing incessantly for millions of years, eating the stone up and forming all those unimaginable shapes on stalactites and stalagmites! It never gave up!!!

And then, for the first time, I saw a picture at home which said, "In the confrontation between the rock and the stream, the stream always wins in the end - not through strength, but through sheer consistency!"

What was surprising is that the picture has been around for a long long time, but I never noticed it!!!

This happens ever so often - The solution is staring at you in the face, but you never get to notice it till the time comes. What we mean by "till time comes" is till we actually want the solution badly enough!!!

Be it a financial problem, a personal problem or a philosophical problem.

The next time something bothers me, I’m gonna sit on the beach again!!!

Your Tax Form Explained

Paying Tax?? A Special bulletin for your convenience!

How to fill and submit your IT return in the easiest way!

This step by step guide will help you finish filing your Income Tax return in a Jiffy!

Note- Please follow all the instructions carefully.

Ø Firstly, Buy your IT form. Don’t take a photo copy from your friend or ask your auditor. Be responsible. Buy it. Kill piracy.

Ø In column No.1, write your name, surname, middle name, date and exact time of birth, Longitude and Latitude of the place you were born in, distance (in nautical miles) from the nearest IT office and signatures of 4 witnesses present during your birth. The same details need to be furnished in Annexure 12 A for your spouse, children, parents, parents-in-law, spouse’s grand father and of the teacher who taught you Maths in school. You can use Spl annexures 69 K to 70M if 12 A is insufficient. Failure to truthfully submit ALL of the above details will lead to a fine of upto 6,54,780 and/or imprisonment upto 834 years.

Ø Please fill in your employment details in table no 9 on page 46. Start with the work you did as a kid for which your father paid you pocket money. For each job you held, pls furnish proofs of employments which may include office stationery you brought home to gift your kids, personal fuel bills you re-imbursed from the office and fake medical certificates you used, to claim benefit. In Section 43, pls affix photos of yourself in the workplace of each of the employers. You can claim Tax benefit if you produce bill from the studio for these photographs.

Ø If self employed, fill page number 39A if businessman, 46E if a professional, 67K if you work from home and 99ZZ if you don’t really know. Irrespective of your profession, pls submit your electricity bills of the last 56 months so we know you have been continuously inhabiting some place. Also, get your income declaration (column 16 on page 71) counter signed by the District Sanitary inspector and the State Hindi Officer. Your return will not be accepted if any of the above is incomplete.

Ø For all professions (except for retired people), you need to fill a detailed expense statement using atleast 34 pages. Every kind of expenditure ranging from your grocery bill to the money lost in gambling needs to be duly filed in. Make sure that each entry is accompanied by either a bill or the signature of the service provider. Failure to comply can lead to verita-serum injection and truth-machine analyzer tests.

Ø For each Credit Card and Personal Loan you have, Buy additional Form No.184s from the Zonal Income Tax consulate at your state headquarters (No brokers please) and attach them to your main return.

Ø Sign on the dotted lines given on the right side of each page (you will find 26 of them on each page) (Do not sign on the dotted lines on the left- they are perforations so the page can easily be torn). If you cannot see the dotted lines, please visit an ophthalmologist and DO NOT claim Tax Benefit for his consultation bill.

Ø Now that all your documents are in order, take an auto / taxi and bring the whole set to your nearest Income Tax office. There are licensed porters available on the ground floor to haul your return up to the necessary circle office. Using a non-licensed porter is punishable under Section 1132 P, amendment H by a fine upto 647 times of your IT return and / or death by electrocution.

Even after these simple instructions, if you still have any confusions or problems, do not hesitate to call 1800-1456-??? Between 1 am and 1.07 am on Tuesdays. If you cannot reach our helpline, send a mail to nousesending@whocares.com or noonewillreply@gotohell.com.
Sada Aap ki Seva mein!!

Found this bulletin useful?? Do ask our helpline for our recent Spl bulletins on How to Get a Passport before you die, How to get a Birth Certificate in 179 easy steps and How to change address in your ration card within 19 years.

The Aliens are coming!!!!!!

I have made a major discovery!!
Our planet is in mortal peril. Aliens are about to invade us and before they do that directly, they have got a network and a system in place to disrupt our daily lives and to create chaos!!
Don't smile!! I'm serious!
To prove my point, i'll show you daily indications of Alien actions in our lives!!

1. Street lights- From afar we see that the halogen is burning bright, illuminating our path. When we get close, it suddenly turns off! (Alien plan to murder us by creating an accident-zone)

2. At a traffic junction, there is a red light and we're waiting for it to turn green. Suddenly, one hero (or Bozo, whatever you call him) rushes on, beats the red light and surges ahead. Others suddenly realise this smart option and rush on too!! (The first guy is actually an alien agent, like pied piper, who has been sent to lead others to their deaths!)

3. A new shopping mall opens in town, which is selling the bestest, cheapest and most taked about-est stuff in town. When we reach there, we see that there is no parking available at all!! No. the lot is not full, there is no lot!! So, we park the car in what we consider to be the most non-intruding area on the road and go in. When we come out, our car has been towed away!! (This is a cruel alien plan to make us exercise us and also make us fight with our law-enforcement authorities and lose our faith in them!)

4. We are driving out of town on an important work and see a signpost one way indicating 150 Kms and into a bylane indicating 120. So, the smart people we are, we take the 120 kms route and after we reach a distance where we can't turn back any more, suddenly don't see any more route indications, but multiple road junctions every 120 mtrs! We use our brilliant sense of direction and ...... (This is a deep-rooted alien plan with double pronged results- to first make us lose our sense of direction and also to disorient us so we lose our self-respect, dignity and self-image and become frustrated individuals!)

5. We finally decide to go an a diet (as one day we hear the ground beneath our feet groan) and religiously draw up a plan and a roadmap to success! The next day onwards, we start getting invited to parties to Pizza Huts and Tandoori Restaurants (and everyone feels bad if we don't go). At the end of the month, we actually realise that we put on 6 kgs!! (Obviously, this is being done so we are overweight and can't join our forces to fight the alein guys when they attack!)

6. Since a Looooonnnnggggg time, we've been wanting that latest new phone / computer / TV / DVD player / Car / holiday / shoes.... and finally, after taking advice from people who are in no way qualified, decide to plunge in and indulge. Next day morning, we bump into a friend who got the same (if not better) product / model for an unbelievably low price! or, the company itself reduces the price (or declares the model defunct) as if they were just waiting for us to shift their economic orientation! (This tool is used by THEM pretty often as it makes us hate ourselves and also all those unqualified people who advised us!)

7. We know that real estate / shares / mutual funds / gold prices are shooting up. Something sensible (!) inside us stops us from putting in our money and next week, we meet a friend (the one who always copied from us in school and who finally did not graduate) who gleefully tells you that he made an obscene amount exactly on the investment you did not make! (This is a cyclic redundancy cycle put in place by martians to make sure we don't feel good! and this feeling comes with an auto-renewal feature and tomorrow also, we won't invest!!)

God knows there are more, but i need to research them more in depth before i put them up here for the whole world (and the aliens too) to see and realise.

I solemnly affirm that the above information is true to the best of my knowledge!
You have more?? do let me know!!

Cricket Freakonomics!

I am depressed and disillusioned with Cricket!! (Atleast temporarily)
But, this article is not an outcome of that feeling!
On the first day of the world cup, i was wondering at the graphics on the ground, which were Pepsi, LG, Hutch and Hero Honda.
Now, Pepsi and LG are international brands, but Hero Honda is an Indian brand (though they have some part of their money coming in from exports) and Hutch is also an Indian brand (it is called something else in other countries)
So, atleast half the sponsorships for world cup are coming in due to India and Indians.
Now that India is almost out of the cup, (unless Leverock decides to give Ekalavya Gurudakshina to Sachin) what's the fate of all these companies which put up crores???
And what about Set Max which has bid an obscene amount to buy the rights for the telecast and sold airtime at even more absurd prices?? (3.5 Lacs for a 30 sec slot- apparently)
Will Mandira Bedi be enough to bring people to watch the rest of the World cup???
Not only that, a report says that Various Indian companies, which have hitched on to the World cup bandwagon to promote their sales by giving various offers, tie-ups and co-brandings stand to lose over 2000 CRORES due to India's not qualifying to the next round!!
Crazy kiya re!
Cricket is such a big money spinner with us that it makes / breaks destinies of companies associated / disassociated with it!
We've known for a long time that the ICC makes approximately half of it's money from Indian Cricket and associated sponsors and that the BCCI is the richest sporting board in the world by far!
Now, will this world cup loss make any big difference to that statistic?? probably no, but the companies which are making BCCI and ICC so rich are definitely going to take a huge beating!
And not only in India. In various countries where there's a good sized Ex-pat population, Cricket rules!!
Look at the teams in the world cup and we'll see that almost all countries playing have atleast one Indian in it's ranks!
Now, coming back to economics, when will the effect of this loss wear off on the market conditions of the companies which relied so heavily on Indian cricket??
Looking at the positive side, EA Sports has launched Cricket 2007 and is in the process of launching World Cup 2007 too.
Now, I'm sure all Indian fans ( and Pakistanis and Bermudans and Kenyans and Zimbabweans and Scottish and ...) will make the game a huge hit (and make India win the cup in their PC)!
So, someone stands to make money! (other than the bookies)
Atleast it is some sadistic solace that Pakistan has come home before we did!! :)
To the World cup in 2011.
Hope more companies put in more of their monies and make it more exciting!

Vote for??

Last week, i fulfilled a fundamental duty (have'nt we heard that term somewhere??).
I cast my vote!
This is the 4th time since i've gained eligibility and never before has the person i've voted for won!!
So, for the first time, my vote counts!
Now, elections bring out various facets of ordinary people. The candidates overnight become local celebrities and new professions are temporarily created (like the auto-announcer (literally))
Now, that's a separate line of thought.
What i've been thinking about is that this is probably the first local election in which there has been such a stupendous canvassing expenditure!
We are talking about ordinary people who are contesting for the post of a municipal corporator.
For each ward, there are atleast 4-5 contestants and each of them has done their best to try and get elected.
Now, there can only be one winner. What about the expenditures incurred by the rest?? In most cases, ordinary people (read as Not Rich) contest. Where is this money coming from? and why is the government allowing it?
Now, what will be the salary of a corporator? Max 10000/- pm. Not more than that. Now, in their term of office, will they even be able to make back what they've spent to get elected thru their salary?? By Expense, i'm not talking about behind the scenes allegations of buying the votes or giving the voters cash or gifts. Up Front, each candidate (more so for bigger party contestants) hires a multitude of vehicles ranging from jeeps to rickshaws for the entire duration of canvassing permitted time and that's not free. Each of them have had bike rallies multiple number of times and that's not cheap. Most of them have huge signboards and acrylic banners at every junction in their ward and that costs money! Hand-outs, Newspaper, Radio and TV Ads, posters on vehicles. We really can't even gauge their spending.
Now, commercially, there has to be a return on investment. So, our system is virtually guaranteeing corruption. Why do we crib later that these leaders are corrupt when we elect the ones who've canvassed the most??
In our ward, there had been Zero publicity for the BJP Candidate. In fact, till i went into the booth, i did not even know that the party is fielding a candidate from here. And the person was an unknown.
She did not even get a deposit.
Now, why do we blame the person whom we've elected that they're the stink of our system and with other such creative insults?
There is an entity called Election Commission and it's pretty powerful too. Why is there no action taken at the root level?
And, this time, there is no Mayor candidate for Vizag. They said after the corporators are elected, the party which wins will field a candidate (and that person will buy out the corporators support) who will be sworn in as a mayor. No wonder they become corrupt. Where will they get all this money from otherwise??
It's time we think about a change. A change at the root level.
Any ideas?

Tiruvannamalai- and my confusions!!

There are some things in life which are unexplainable / inexplicable. I'm not talking here about the the Stone Henge or how Roger Bannister ran the first sub-minute mile.

Tiruvannamalai- Abode of Arunachala Shiva and Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharishi- is one of those things for me!
As a young boy of 16, Sri Ramana attained Self realisation in an instant and left his home town to reach Arunachalam (and he never again left the town). After some time spent in the temple, he went up the Arunachala Hill- to Virupaksha Cave, where he spent 17 silent years meditating and contemplating on "Who am I" and later, he moved further up the hill to Skandashram and spent another 7 years, again mostly in silence. The last years of his incarnation were spent at the ashram at the foot of the hill and he left his body there in 1950 (more info at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramana_Maharshi )
Now, for a life mostly spent in silence, there is hardly reason for other people to get attracted around him. There were hardly any instances where he gave discourses to devotees or ordained them onto a spiritual path. As said earlier, that is why, it is inexplicable (in terms of logic), the reason why millions and millions of people flock to Tiruvannamalai. Even more confusing is the aspect that the majority of the visitors are foreigners (mostly Europeans), but are so at peace in the surroundings and stay on for months and years! Now, Bhagavan never spoke a word of English- nor was it the era of recordings, broadcasts and translations. All the books on the library (with the exception of a few verses in tamil) were written by devotees and not by the master.
In fact, most of the people in the place were not even born by the time Maharishi left his body in 1950!!
Now, i've decided to give up Logic here (as it seems to be serving no purpose). This is something we can't understand at a physical level!
It is something else that is bringing people in from far-flung corners of the globe to this place.

There is an abundance of Positive Energy in Tiruvannamalai and on Arunachala Hill. It is this energy that brings together people irrespective of Religion, Age, Background, Upbringing and even Language.
There cannot be a person who steps into this place and comes back exactly as the same person who went there!
Something inside us (which we never knew existed) will awaken!