Quick Gun Murugan's official website says, "Quick Gun Murugun is an unlikely Superhero with Guntastic powers. He is a sincere South Indian Cowboy who considers it his duty to serve and protect. The movie revolves aroundmis-adventures of Quick Gun Murugunand his fight with his arch villainRice Plate Reddy! In 1994, a maverick called Sashank Ghosh (MBA from University of Jodhpur), left MTV to become the creative head at Channel Vand created a character called Quick Gun Murugan. Those "fillers" in between programs were a rage among the youth. Quick Gun Murugan trailers quickly became the talk of the town especially in the colleges across India. It introduced the phrase "We are like this only" as a tagline that reflected the growing comfort with Indian English. An out and out spoof on film heros who duck bullets, thulp twenty attackers without ruining the shirt crease is what Quick Gun Murugan the movie is all about.

I am a fan of writer, lyricist, music composer and film director Vishal Bhardwaj. He brings in a breath of fresh air into Indian cinema especially mainstream Bollywood. He has cracked the magic formula of making movies that are aesthetically appealing and yet are commercially successful. Never afraid to experiemnt, Vishal is gifted and gutsy. As a director, his films Maqbool (adaptation of Macbeth, made in 2004) and Omkara (adaptation of Othello, made in 2006) have made audience sit up and take notice. Taking great stories to the masses is a challenge. To take the complexity of a Shakespearean play and adapt it to contemporary India and yet make it appeal to a broad spectrum of audience is what Vishal does best. His literary and cinematic mentor Gulzar writes songs that play at an upmarket nightclub as loudly as they do in the autorickshaws. Omkara had Saif Ali Khan and the blockbuster song Beedi Jalai Le (watch the song here if you have not) featuring a sizzling Bipasha Basu. Kaminey has Shahid Kapur.

The story of Devdas has become like a format. Rich boy loves poor girl next door but is unsure of himself. Girl marries someone else. Boy meets prosti... errrr Commercial Sex Worker and yet pines for first love while doing a brisk jog on the eight lane highway with big bold signs showing the exits to drugs, booze and Elvis Presley like end. Check out some wild photographic effects depicting what goes on in the mind of a drugged and boozed out Abhay Deol which were shot using a camera that Danny Boyle of Slumdog Millionaire fame loaned to Anurag.

I have been eagerly waiting to watch Slumdog Millionaire. Is the movie really good or is India just the flavor of the moment and the film is lucky to hit good timing? Is this the film version of slum tourism? The short answer is no.Last week a delighted AR Rahman walked up to sign his name as the first Indian to win the Golden Globe. He won it for the song Jai Ho written by Gulzar. When Rahman dedicated the award to the country, he just floored the nation of a billion who were waiting with vicarious pride in having someone carve out a place for them in a club where membership is by invitation only.

Do you make lists? A daily To-Do list? Maybe even an hourly list of things to be accomplished? Do you find these lists helpful or do you find them tyrannical? Lists bind me down. Worse still, I make lists and then forget where I have kept them. So making those lists doesn't work for me. Yet there are scores of people who find lists a great help. They find it a source of joy when they keep ticking off the items one by one on that list. For someone like Amar Kaul (played by Vinay Pathak) in the film Dasvidaniya, (means goodbye in Russian) he lives for the to-do lists. That gives him a meaning in his life. He looks forward to the next to-do so that he can complete all those things marked in his list.

Hey 30th October 2008 was the day before yesterday. I was in the office when the news came in. Anxious calls were made. Was anyone planning a trip to Guwahati? Were there people in our sales force who were supposed to be there? These are times when a "NO" can be a reassuring response. Everywhere in the country the citizens are trying to find the pattern. Where will it be next? How are we all coping in these times of uncertainty? People avoid crowded places. A loved one's delay by a few minutes from the scheduled time results in anxious calls. Tempers fly. Then finally people learn to be immune to it all. We flip the newspaper and read some other news item. Apathy can be a coping mechanism too.

Maybe the reason why people look back so nostalgically at their days in college is that for most people those days represent what dreams are made of. Hanging around with friends, being crazy, being ruled by the head than the heart. Why did you give up those shreds of youth just because you became an employee or a spouse. So dream on and keep chasing your dreams. If you stopped singing, dancing, painting, writing, trekking or whatever gave you a high when you were growing up, just go back and discover it. Rediscover your passion.

I have been lucky enough to live in several different cities of India. Having grown up in New Delhi, India my view of Mumbai (actually it was called Bombay then) was colored by a collage Bollywood cinema scenes from various movies from the black and white era to the times when color films were the norm. They would always show the millions of daily commuters who would cramp themselves in local suburban trains and spill out at Churchgate Railway Station or Victoria Terminus Railway station to get to their office in the commercial hub of India.