Reflections

Not many movies make it to my blog; which is themed around India as a whole – from Indian Books to Culture to History to Economics & Trade. Thus, I perforce limit myself to only the movies which impress me the most; and in this, Fugay score big time! In 10 years of writing, and 5 of blogging, I have reviewed only around 10 movies, maybe 12 – and Fugay is one of them. This movie is, in my opinion – one of the best I have ever watched in its genre; I can think of only two other movies that are either better, or comparable : Golmal, and Angur. Period. THE PLOT The movie is a mix of a comedy and a horror movie : 99% comedy, 1% horror. The source of the horror is that the plot can actually happen in real life; no jokes . At any rate, something quite similar. Do photographs appear in newspapers? Yes, they do – am aware of two instances in family & friends. {None were embarrassing, thank God!} Do things get blown out of proportion, do people overreact in marriages? Of...

The one I missed… this is a book I read more than a couple of years ago, and forgot to review it then. As luck would have it, I dug deep into my pitaaraa two days ago, and thought of re-reading this one to check up on how exactly Iqbal ended up. The immediate stimulus was a twitter conversation with the Author himself. And so it was that I found that this excellent book was spared my attention in the list of books reviewed, which is a real pity; I would rate this as being among the Author’s very best. If any of you haven’t already read it – do so; you will not regret it. THE PLOT This is the 4 th book of the Lashkar series; and this one is all about Iqbal from start to finish. A shattered Iqbal comes out of Blowback with hatred and revenge the only two alternating emotions in his heart; a heart burning with one desire, and one desire alone. And a mind filled with alternating thoughts of Tanaz, and the man / men who were ultimately responsible for her condition… the combinatio...

So far, I have looked at what could have been in terms of the budget; and the overall Macro-Economic Scenario and the Budget assumptions, and asked myself three questions : namely, in short. Will the budget give a boost to investment, demand and boost agriculture? But, before we move to looking at answering these questions, let me first of all appreciate and point out the most significant changes made from this year onwards : 1.     Merging Railway and Union Budgets 2.     Plan and Non Plan heads done away with, replaced by Capital and Revenue heads 3.     Moving forward of the date of budget presentation and unveiling 4.     This has gone unnoticed : rationalization of schemes, and focus on the key schemes I would also like to point out that, at least in those articles I read, there was not a sufficient presentation of the viewpoints of both sides, that is, for and against these changes given above. A detailed ...