The Ultra-heavy emergency

Today’s emergency went like a F1 race. Fast. I couldn’t remember anything. All I can recollect is that I’m, as usual, trying extra hard, to run a municipal hospital’s Orthopaedic emergency as efficient as it could possibly be. This is almost futile because what happens is that I work extra thus giving room for the servants and the other staff to relax.

Needless to say that I enjoy doing it; or else, I wouldn’t be doing it in the first place. What it does is that it makes me so tired the next day that the day is of no meaning to me.

The snare stand and the first jam session

Today was a Monday, meaning pre-emergency. I and e-boi had loads of plans. The only problem is that on an extremely humid and sunny Mumbai afternoon, we rode all the way from the north to South to back North of Mumbai in search of a new hi-hat stand.

As usual, we were short of money, but wanted to buy the world. So we went to the Musician’s Mall. Mr. Bharghava, a demi-god for me at least, granted his mercy to us poor brethren once more. On a loan of more than 10 grand, he gave us a cymbal (brand new, Sabian set and a hi-hat stand).

Excited, although understated, were we when we finally started asssembling the set in E-boi’s hot-oven of an apartment. And by 10 pm we finished.

The feel of the drum sticks hitting the skin-heads was amazing. That too after about 3 years. For E-boi it must have meant something like heaven. It’s been alomst 4 years since he touched a drum set.

We jammed some songs with me altenating on guitars and bass. Oh, I can’t control my excitement.

G – spots on the guitar

Some things that E-boi sometimes tells me to get me irritated does good for me. The other day, when I was playing a Dave Matthews Band riff, he said I can’t still play the ‘So Much To Say’ riff. That’s it. I wanted to prove him wrong by learning it. I did that in a jiffy. It came so easily.

And I love it. It is simply amazing how people like Dave Matthews and John Mayer find the G-spots for riffs on the guitar.

Shifting Rooms

Today (actually yesterday night) I started shifting to my new room. It feels so great to find some space, both figuratively and literally. This new room is on the 3rd floor as opposed to the one on the 1st floor now. It’s airy and more spacious and less dusty.

I think I’ve found a good roomie as well. I’ll refer to him as BG. He’s a bengali psychiatry resident and has a sophisticated way about things. Apart from our common interest in computers, internet, books, movies, WorldSpace etc., he seems like a nice guy. A drastic change from all the previous roomies that I’ve ever had.

I’ve shifted about 1/2 of my stuff excluding clothes and computer. I’m looking forward to a nice year with this guy.

Oh and by the way, T. has many a time admitted that she’s in love with BG’s good looks. He’s actually cute. But already engaged and therefore, very straight!

Cheeni Kum

Cheeni Kum at the first go was spoilt by Xander and his chest pain. Today, after hanging out at E-boi’s apartment, in the midst of shifting mess, we three (us and E-boi’s brother) went to the amazingly cool Fun Republic to watch the amazing Cheeni Kum.

Tabu is simply fantabulastic. The screenplay is fresh and riveting through out. Amitabh Bacchan, as I’ve always thought, was a little too over the board in dialogue delivery. But he’s so much better than the old generation actors like Dharmendra with the fuck-all fake teeth. The oh-so-controversial ‘Sexy’ character is also nice. I don’t think that it is a social injustice to label a 10 year old female childe ‘sexy’. It is dark and it is intelligentl so.

Loved the movie hard core. 3.5 to 4 stars.

Raqeeb – I’ll kill myself for this

I don’t know why I ventured out to watch the next one in line at New Empire. The only reason that I could still think of is the fact that Rahul Khanna, my favoritest MTV VJ, was there donning the lead role. The reviews online raved about a modern murder mystery with suspense till the last.

My opinion about the movie is simple. Rahul Khanna doesn’t know how to act or how to deliver dialogue. I felt like I was in 1978 when I understood the plot as it unravelled. The editing, directing and cinematography was idiotic. The story was faltoo. And the suspense which was supposed to come up last didn’t come up at all. Instead, there was a lot of goofiness in the last few minutes which made me (and a few others in the movie theatre) laugh.

After all the killing for the day, I felt like slaying myself… I give a 1 out of 5 for the movie.

Ek Chaalis Ki Last Local – Bloody Entertaining

Today morning, I was still tired after the weekend jam session at E-boi’s place. I tried to pull myself up by putting on, for the first time in what seems like forever, tailored trousers. I thought I looked good in them. The only problem was that I was not able to feel the tightness on my waist which has increased from 30 to 32+ over the last year, and therefore, they always seemed like slipping down. But I looked at myself in a full length mirror. They are pretty damn good.

The morning routine at the hospital was mundane as usual and I was relieved to be relieved by early afternoon. My present roomie, who has joined as my senior in the unit, did have some irritating comments during the pre-round discussion but still I was in a good mood.

After my lunch over the first 15 minutes of the hilarious ‘Another Gay Movie’, I decided to sit down and study. It was afternoon and I had had a heavy lunch. It didn’t last for too long and I was somnolent in about 15 minutes into the session. All that I tried didn’t prove to be enough and I had to fall back on my routine pre-emergency plan of watching back to back movies.

New Empire Cinema saved the day yet again for me. It was running ‘Ek Chaalis Ki Last Local’. Despite the bad reviews in the dailies, I felt like watching. Just to reaffirm my hunch, I’d looked up the reviews on the internet and was very happy to read positive reviews, one of which ended like this; ‘If you loved Bheja Fry, you will like this.’

As usual no spoilers. The movie is a dark comedy highlighting the clandestine ongoings in the city of Mumbai. Although there is a lot of fun in the script, it fails to rise upto the whacky levels of Bheja fry. The movie has nice twists and turns and is fun to watch. Although I must warn you, there is a lot of blood and killing in the movie… a bit like Pulp Fiction.

All in all 3.5 stars out of 5!

Chest pain de la Xander

During the interval of ‘Shootout’, E-boi had this idea of seeing another movie. What else could be better than a movie featuring the Big B (Amitabh Bacchan), Tabu and Paresh Rawal running at a theatre across the road from my hospital with tickets at 80 Rs. for upper stall and which is 2 minutes of walking from the theatre showing Shootout. Too tempting it seems. It actually is. Or was.

Because we took that option. The only problem was that Parry called me up and said that Mr. Xander was having some chest pain since evening. So we were not sure whether to go or to help him in case he needs to go to the hospital. So I rang Xander up.

He seemed to be drunk or getting there. I asked about the pain and stuff, the usual history taking for doctors. To be frank, I was alarmed to understand that his chest pain looked like angina, the chest pain due to ischemia of heart, or in more common terms, a pre-heart-attack. But that’s about it. Nothing else was positive in the history. I concluded that he needed an ECG. I suggested that he come over to my hospital as fast as he can. He said that he thought he was okay. I persisted. He insisted that he was not going to come out of the apartment.

I knew there was no way we could do anything about it. I asked him to call him if he feels so.

So we went to Cheeni Kum. 20 minutes into the very entertaining first half, we got calls from Parry. I replied with SMS saying that I’m busy. E-boi didn’t hung up once saying that we wer at the movie. We got more calls and we kept on not picking up. Apparently, Xander’s pain was increasing. And Parry wanted us to see if we could do something.

Irritated, Parry sent me an SMS ‘Bye guys. We will meet at Xander’s funeral.’ I again didn’t know what to do. E-boi didn’t want to come to Xander’s place after the last weekend when apparently Xander insulted him a lot. I decided to get out of the movie and ring up Xander.

When I did that, it turned out to be that Xander’s pain was increasing gradually. I thought I would go and see if I could get him to the hospital. When I reached the apartment Xander opened the door. He was looking alright. I checked his pulse which was steady. I asked him to dress up so that we could go reach the hospital quickly.

He did that. I was not sure if I should take him as a pilion rider on my scooter. Xander said it was fine. So we rode to the hospital in double quick time. Once inside, I got his Xray Chest and ECG done and everything was normal. It turned out to be some muscular pain which was relieved by a strong pain killer shot.

Soon Parry joined us and we had dinner. Another uncomfortable one though. I really don’t know whether I did the right thing by choosing to go for a movie when my friend was in distress. On the other hand, is there anything wrong with doing ignoring an almost the almost-somatization disorder in a near-life-wreck? Maybe too strong words, but this is how I felt.

I got this SMS which meant a lot ‘The relationship which need a lot of effort to maintain are not true and those relationships which are true don’t need to be maintained with effort.’ It isn’t all that poetic and deep. But it makes a hell lot of sense to me.

Shootout at Lokhandwala

Today, the day started with an early morning surgery. I had to disarticulate the arm at the shoulder of a young male patient who had sustained a rail trafic accident. The surgery finished by 7 AM and I had enough time to read my newspaper while sipping coffee in the early morning sunshine at the mess.

After I showered and got dressed, I headed straight to the Operation Theatre. There I was informed that I was not supposed to wash up for surgeries as there were adequate hands. Instead, I was supposed to take rounds. I was doing that when I was called to assist another surgery.

I obliged and was happy to be assisting a relatively common spine surgery, done by someone who everyone looked up to. As I was washing up, I remembered my conversation with E-boi earlier on in the morning. He had asked me to arrange for tickets to Shootout at Lokhandwala. I asked a very faithful servant if he could do the job for me; a ticket for two at the second show at the nearby theatre.

It was the First Day of this mega blockbuster movie. I didn’t have any hopes of getting tickets before the show. To my utter surprise, the servant said yes and as I was washing out of the surgery, he brought me tickets. But he did flash the news item all over the OT; ‘Kris is going for a movie with a date.’ he had said.

I looked at the tikets and was alarmed to see that it was for the first show and not the second. I immediately rang up e-boi and told him that there was a change of plans. He said he’ll still make it.

Therefore, after my afternoon OPD, after a liesurely cup of coffee at the Tata Memorial Hospital OPD watching the Indian batsmen winding up a day of ‘whacking’ of the Bangladeshi bowlers, I headed to the theatre. It was almost housefull by the time I reached.

E-boi came on time and we were happy to have decided to come for this show.

Once it began, everything fell apart. Yes! Including the thousands of bullets and the building complex at Lokhandwala, everything fell apart. Bad direction, screenplay and songs. Everything about the movie was bad. Except probably the fact that it was a piece of history. I felt educated about that bit.

Also, Sanjay Dutt was amazingly sexy! Whoa! What a role he had! And what big hands does he have! Oh my goodness, I can’t even think of the possibilities.

New guitarist/singer?

After the introduction of drums, the next logical step should be guitarist/singer. Exactly what the ‘righteous’ E-boi did. He did a little survey inside his office and found out a guy called Vicky. He’s a modest singer/guitarist who’s interested in Brit Rock.

Voila! Oasis, Coldplay, Blur, Radiohead, Snow Patrol, Keane, Travis, Muse etc! Oh and I forgot the Verve. He likes all of this and he came to our little jam session. It was a Sunday and therefore things were a little better.

The jam session sounded awesome because we tried ‘Speed Of Sound’ – Coldplay, ‘Cast No Shadow’, ‘Don’t Look Back In Anger’ – Oasis. This is the first time that I’m ever trying any such song with my bass guitar. Plus the effect of an actual drumset is divine!