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Did you ‘Wake Up Sid’?
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Recall those years when partying hard was the only agenda on your list. Recall those years when staying awake at nights, chatting away with friends became a habit. Recall those years when bunking college and sneaking into movie halls was more exciting than books. Recall those years when you were completely clueless and aimless about the vocation you wanted to pursue once you graduated… That indecisive phase when you were hesitant to take that first big step in life can never be erased from your memory.
Wake Up Sid, directed by debutante Ayan Mukerji, is like revisiting those years that lay at some remote corner of your mind, after you moved on in life.
Actually, Wake Up Sid is a slice of life film. It’s not merely real in concept, but has also been told most realistically, so much so that you can’t help but draw parallels with your life or with someone you know. But what really makes Wake Up Sid most believable is Ranbir Kapoor, who’s mastered the craft at such a young age.
Verdict? Wake Up Sid mirrors those ears with flourish. This one’s a simple story that strikes a chord instantly. Strongly recommended!
Wake Up Sid tells the story of Siddharth aka Sid (Ranbir Kapoor), a lazy, unmotivated slacker from Mumbai whose life undergoes a series of changes after taking his final year college exams. Sid’s world is breezy, carefree and without any true responsibilities.
Sid thrives around his two best friends, Rishi (Namit Das) and Laxmi (Shikha Talsania), very rarely communicates with his mother Sarita (Supriya Pathak) and takes his father Ram Mehra (Anupam Kher) and all his hard-earned wealth for granted. Despite all these traits, Sid is an honest boy; sweet, funny and above all, a good friend.
Aisha Bannerjee (Konkona Sen Sharma), an aspiring writer from Kolkata, learns this soon enough when her path crosses with Sid’s on her first day in Mumbai. Ambitious, well-read and driven, Aisha has come to Mumbai to realize her dreams as a writer. Despite their contrasting personalities, Sid becomes Aisha’s first friend in the city.
As Aisha sets up her life in Mumbai, with the help of Sid and his gang, Sid allows for time to fly by over long drives, parties that stretch well into dawn, and endless hours doing absolutely nothing. But a series of circumstances and events compel him to take stock of his life and take a hard look at himself.
Let’s not compare Wake Up Sid with anything you’ve watched before. Not Dil Chahta Hai. Not Lakshya either. Debutante director Ayan Mukerji narrates a story that you can relate to instantly and treats it with utmost care. A few moments linger in your memory and evoke bitter-sweet memories.
The first hour, right till the intermission, sweeps you off your feet. You get drawn into Sid’s world instantaneously; you react to everything he does. But the post-interval portions slackens, courtesy the writing. The Rahul Khanna track, for instance, looks half-baked. Also, the story stagnates after a point and hence, the pacing gets very slow. It’s only towards the finale that things perk up. Ideally, the film could’ve done with some trimming in this hour.
Ayan Mukerji packs in a solid punch in most parts of the film. The emotional moments especially gets you all moist-eyed. The humour too is well integrated in the sequences. Even the confrontation between the father and son is superb. Prior to that Konkona’s birthday sequence is amongst the finest sequences of the film. Music (Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy) is melodious. Anil Mehta’s cinematography is top notch. Niranjan Iyengar’s dialogues are just right.
There’s no denying that Ranbir Kapoor is a supremely talented actor, but in WWake Up Sid, he proves that he’s amongst the best in the business today. No one could’ve portrayed Sid as effectively as Ranbir has enacted, that’s for sure. This is an award-worthy performance.
Konkona is natural to the core and the best part is, she’s so effortless. Here’s another winning performance from this incredible performer. Anupam Kher is wonderful. Ditto for Supriya Pathak. Both shine in their respective parts. Namit Das and Shikha Talsania are perfect. Rahul Khanna doesn’t get any scope.
On the whole, Wake Up Sid is a well-made film that should strike a chord with the youth mainly. A metro-centric film, the film should attract its target audience and should also prove to be the first choice of the elite/urban audience this Friday. Its distributors (UTV) have very rightly released the film at plexes of metros and mini-metros [instead of flooding the market with physical and digital prints], which in turn should only make this small film talked-about in days to come. Thumbs Up!
2 States – the story of Chetan’s marriage
1Hi guys, finally I’m back home! After tweeting the countdown for around 40 hours, yesh, yesh, yesh.. I finally came home!
Ok, I was late though, went shopping to Shimla (with my gang) which was totally unplanned. (Shimla, FYI, is in the opposite direction to my home from my college!) It took me more than 3 hours to return back from where I started (i.e. displacement equals zero). But I am glad I went. For I got to buy Chetan Bhagat’s 2 States! Yes, India’s best-selling English author’s fourth novel – the story of ‘his’ marriage. I desperately wanted a copy ever since 8th of October, the day when it was released. So, my journey back home wasn’t that boring, what it could have been had I not gone shopping 
- 2 States : Chetan Bhagat
One thing I like about Chetan’s books is his writing style. The way he converts thoughts into words with such an ease is simply awesome! 2 States is a story connecting two people, belonging to different states, who are deeply in love and want to get married. Of course, their parents don’t agree. To convert their love story into a love marriage, the two have a tough battle in front. For it is easy to fight and rebel, but much harder to convince.
Though Chetan clearly stated in it’s disclaimer that it is a work of fiction, but I doubt the statement. And the book also made me doubt the level of fiction in his first book, “Five Point Someone”. In other words, 2 States seems to be a sequel of his earlier work – Five Point Someone. But with a totally new story in a totally different environment.
Though I reached home at quarter past midnight, after travelling more than 12 hours in bus, I just couldn’t Zzz before I finished reading the book. And I was glad I did. Because soon the ugliest truth of my life was to be unveiled before my eyes. And I don’t think, I don’t know rather.. if I would have wanted to read anything the following day.
P.S. The book is a must read for all those in love, all who are planning to fall in love and those who want to know what’s love.
Seeya.
The 3 Mistakes of My Life : by Chetan Bhagat
2Hello everyone! Few days back I thinking to write a review on Rahul Saini’s “Those small lil things”, but unluckily I didn’t get the book. Then finally I decided to write one on Chetan Bhagat’s “The 3 Mistakes of my Life” for my PD class’ extempore (not exactly!). So, finally this is what I ended up with.
Chetan’s “The 3 Mistakes of My Life”.. A book that was long anticipated before it’s release. The best-selling Indian novelist brings on another installment in showcasing the everyday life of some of the most common, unassuming and innoticeable people of India. Though titled 3 Mistakes of my Life, it has nothing to do with Chetan Bhagat’s life in itself. Anyway, its something fictional, but an entertainer in all!
The plot is pretty simple, 3 average students: Govind, Ish and Omi, having a hard time living, think of entrepreneurship. In middle come an entire big hoard of people, problems and pressures. Its about how they react, solve and live with those problems. Just like in his older books, he chose a batch of people who truly represent a good proportion of urban India. This book is picturised in the older and slightly lesser developed part of Ahmedabad, Gujarat.
After reading the book, I kind of felt that it had just one major objective. Making the Indian youth vigilant and aware of some of the biggest problems that plague its society. The list of problems could be very long, but well, WordPress’s tinyMCE editor does have a bullet/numbering functionality for some reason, right? Feel free to scroll down and continue reading the rest of the review. I just wanted to point out that Chetan covered the following problems in his book…
- Expensive Education
- Lack of development in smaller towns
- Conservative mentality
- Extremism in politics
- Sick politicians
- Religious extremism
- Bias towards agnostics and atheists
- Poverty amongst the brighter lower-middle class youth
- Extreme competition in entrance exams for college admissions
- Success is hard to get
- Offbeat ideas receive suppression
- Lack of sports education/infra-structure in schools, etc.
- Completely study oriented schools
- Small-scale businesses are extremely risky
- Advanced coaching for exams is expensive so only the upper-middle class receive that
- Drift between religions, castes, etc
- Conservative mentality of parents
- Hypocrisy among public, politicians, and everyone alike
- Lack of awareness, foresight and ideas due to lack of quality education
- Smaller schools lack funds and money in everything, just bigger school students get everything
- Bad quality contraceptive devices that don’t allow Indians to get bold early
- Heavy mugger-friendly curriculum
- Monotonous books, pathetic teachers, result oriented study
- Lack of scientific temper
- Students prejudiced about certain subjects and losing interest
- People just want to earn, and passion for anything is dead
- Prodigies and talented folks are mostly unrecognized and all that dies away as unharnessed potential
- Expensive international air tickets, nice food and even good reference material
- Stereotyped mentality of 99% of parents …. I had enough of it and I guess you did too. Just know that it had many more of it…
Oh well, I could go along all my life just covering the problems Chetan Bhagat put on those measly souls. But then, he makes a point clear. Indians live with many of these, even most of the readers do. The story was just a nicer way of illustrating the most extreme faces of these problems. In some places, the book does seem a little cliched with a few situations seeming too obvious in the setting. Like there is this bloke named Ish, who is a talented cricketer who didn’t go anywhere thanks to his involvement with cricket. So well, it was too obvious that his parents, especially his stereotypically grumpy Indian Dad always taunting against his failures, sometimes, simply for the heck of it! And simply for the heck of covering many of these problems, Bhagat creates or sets up certain scenarios a tad too forcefully… He even chose the best possible time-span to set the story in. Between 1999-2002, India faced the worst of all. Worst of riots, the worst of earthquakes and there were a hoard of problems especially in the part of India he spotlighted on. So well, the book in the end seems a little more than a detailed study of these problems… The book did go pretty much on the over-board side, especially in the ending. Seriously speaking, it did feel like a wonderful plot to a hindi movie with Chetan Bhagat trying to keep the book as riveting as possible.
But then, I did find the book an entertainer. Story and setting did slack off at places, but the writing style simply caught my mind. Several one-liners, witty metaphoric comparisons and unique usage of words with examples plucked from lives of all of us living in the sub-continent did have me bowing down at the same time munching at the food for thought he provided. A few things that he wrote in the book were such that, we might always have it in our mind, but then never have we ever managed to phrase that situation out into a clever statement… At times, he feels just so right. But then at times, it feels that parts of this book were just Chetan speaking out to the public and having his opinion read. And the pricing of the book makes it affordable for even those people documented in the book and even piracy-proof!
There are lofty many things that make Chetan Bhagat a wonderful writer targeting Indian youth. His writing isn’t the same as fantasy writers, who spend a large portion of their publications just explaining the jargon and commodities that they imagined, and neither is it like those philosophical but anecdotal ones like say Sudha Murthy… It just feels almost, but not quite, entirely unlike Me, and many others who are a part of the growing India. The way he managed to put the un-phrased thoughts sitting in the minds of many of us is something that brings me to no surprise to have his third book soaring for success. I would be waiting to read more from him… I wish he updated his so-called blog more often!
Price: Rs. 95/- although ask for discounts in leading book stores.
PS – The book doesn’t have as much of cricket or the fanatic kind of cricket you might assume after looking at the cover, which does look pretty neat.
