Moovy Review - Omkara

“Shart ghodon pe rakhe jaate hain…sheron pe nahin” roars Omi to a rival henchman’s sidekick. The unwitting sidekick freezes while the screen glows with the incandescence of Ajay-Omi-Devgan’s presence. Omkara aka Omi, a henchman in the hinterlands of U.P, is next-in-command for Bhai saheb (Naseeruddin Shah). Omi makes Kesu (Viveik Uber khool) his lieutenant while Langda Tyagi (Saif gaali Khan) feels insulted. Langda hatches a scheme to falsely implicate Omi’s love Dolly (Kareena) in a love affair with Kesu.

What unfolds is a saga of love, innocence, loyalty, jealousy, greed and revenge. This adaptation of Shakespeare’s Othello is deeply rooted in the Indian milieu sans the hyper hamming of the usual flicks. The genre is trademark Vishal Bhardwaj. The genre is coming of age Indian cinema. From Makdee to Maqbool to Omkara, this guy is upping his creativity bar every time. Trust me, his work is manna for discerning movie buffs.
Body language of the characters speaks realms about the machinations of their mind. Darkness laments about the inevitable. The crystal clear skies and swelling streams talk of love and innocence. Bhardwaj’s control of the medium is simply sooperb. For those of you who have read or staged Othello in high school, the beauty and the difficulty of writing Omkara’s screenplay will be evident.

Langda Tyagi…bahubali! Langda Tyagi bahubali! Saif is first rate with his mannerisms, dialogue delivery, yellow teeth and all that. The moment of truth for Saif’s acting prowess, according to me, is the scene when Kesu is made bahubali. Just watch his expressions ranging from warped loyalty to a benign smile to sinking insult to simmering hatred. All in 5 seconds! Too few actors in contemporary Indian cinema can handle this scene with conviction (sorry Tarun…SRK would lose 4 seconds in keeping his head straight). Langda’s conversation with Raju on the river bank…he wearing the stolen kamar-bandh on his head and giving an eerie laughter…Saif is gonna walk away with lotsa awards and walk into the hearts of zillions of fans.

Ajay Devgan is his usual best. His ability to convey emotions without any dialogues is amazing. Kareena sans make up reminds you of Refugee and Yuva. Viveik should try giving voice over to animation movies. Konkana Sen is a class apart. Has great screen presence. The scene where she confronts Omi about his suspicion on Dolly will form a lump in your throat.

Great movie. Catch it on big screen. You will hear more expletives than you would have heard all your lives  Kudos to censor board. They have started to believe in the maturity of Indian cinegoers. But Amit had a difficult time explaining to Chinti that all those expletives just meant either stupid or fool..hehe.. Vishal, Sid, NaM, Manas n GC were all chipping in with comment tidbits. We had a good time. Now I need to catch some Fin Mgmt. I don’t want SBI to write off my loan as a ‘bad debt’!

All the best for Marketing presentations,
Ganga

of butter noodles & credit market imperfections...

Night canteen @ spjimr boys hostel is a melting pot of various case studies. Jayaram operates this stall with dollops of enthu and oodles of knack. Kya Sir..kya chaahiye? Question is seemingly multiple choice. Only one answer fetches the highest marks and the fastest delivery. Butter Noodles! Jayaram has a happy process of making upto 4 plates of butter noodles in a deep pan. Khool entrepreneurial snack, this one...wonder who invented this. The Chinese connection points to TG :) More on that later. Oops! Didn't get my wallet! Hmm, well..I can see my roomie Nitin in the vicinity. Then there is NaM n GC...laughing n smoking repectively. So, we bail each other out when the money supply is low in the graveyard shift. This is our quasi credit union. Fulltoo non-profit. Very co-operative. The depositors run the show. Only that there are no formal deposits. As yet J I- don't-know-whom-to-pay-how-much. .. Well, I guess this is happening at all- india level too. High credit offtake. Low deposits :) Jokes apart, guys.. you would have read Praveen's mail regarding the benifits of such a pool account. Pour in your thots pls..

Know wot…Edward Filene discovered credit unions in a village in India in 1907. He had stopped in Kolkatta and met a government official who took Filene out into the countryside. There Filene first observed a village credit union in operation and immediately was interested. He had begun profit-sharing plans for his employees, instituted other novel fringe benefit programs, was the founder of the "bargain basement" idea in department store operation, allowed his employees to engage in collective bargaining and arbitration, established minimum wages for female workers, and advocated a five-day, 40-hour week. In the early 1900s, such ideas were revolutionary. Besides his creative approach to business, Filene was also one of the founders of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Now this one is interesting…An inefficient credit market can make for a higher rate of savings and thus spur economic growth. In Italy, the average age at which people buy their first homes is 41. In the US and UK it is 28 and 29 respectively. In order to buy their homes, Italians have to save for many years, and then some get help from their parents or other relatives. Without such gifts or transfers Italians would have to wait another two years before they could buy a house.

One reason why Italy is so unusual is the way the mortgage markets work. Maturities of loans are relatively short – 10-15 years, and down payments are often above the legal minimum of 50% of the cost, itself a rule, which inhibits ownership. Fewer than 2% of mortgagees borrowed more than 60% of the total equity, and were able to do so only because of borrowing for repairs and additions.

So, it is said that “gifts are a poor substitute for efficient credit markets.” But they add, “On the basis of this finding, mortgage market imperfections remain a potentially powerful explanation of the high Italian aggregate saving rate and of its powerful correlation with the rate of economic growth.”

The results make for a fascinating contrast with the credit markets in the United States and Britain where borrowing is far easier and saving far lower. In recent years, however, the differences between growth rates in these countries and the traditionally higher Italian rate have changed and have even been reversed to some extent.

Pls do share your thots about macroeconomics and credit market imperfections...and what about our credit union???

c u soon,

Ganga

PGDSM MIT. Only Management can change the System.