Chak De India : Review

Since the movie released yesterday, there are no real reviews out there yet. I shall go out on a limb and write my own.

The debate for us was to watch one of the following: Bourne Ultimatum or Gandhi or Chak De. Finally we decided to watch Chak De, and it turned out to be a really good decision.

The movie starts in a hocky field and Sharukh Khan is the captain of the Indian mens hockey team. He misses a penalty in the last minute of a final match against Pakistan. The team loses and he is brandised as a traitor. Social rejection follows and he loses his respect, his game and his family home.

Cut to 7 years later, where a committee is deliberating on who should be the coach for a womens national tea. The attitude of the Hockey committee officials reflects outdated mind sets. Anjan srivastav is really funny and irritating as the resigned, currupt and disinterested official committee head behind Indian hockey. Describing the INDIAN National team as a team of "chakla-belan" weilding women, who can not even beat the high school teams of Europe nations, the stage is set for Khans re-entry - this time as the coach to the womens team.

What follows is a funny, rigorous, tough journey for Khan and his motley band of girls all the way to the world championships in Australia.

Khans performance is controlled and not over-the-top as his past several roles have been. The girls have given amazing performances. Especially the brooding Bindiya, the crude "harayana-wali" Komal chautala, and the aggressive sikh girl. The chandigarh girl, preeti looks really pretty and stands out from a group of unsensational and deglamorised casting which is quite apt for the womens hockey team.

The movie is a bitter sweet saga of public opinions, ostracism, feudal mind-sets, group politics, team building, self belief and putting the team priorities in order. As Khan says , country first, team second and if anything is left then that is for yourself...

Full of interesting one liners which drew lots of populist clapping from the crowd in the Dubai hall, it was equally funny with the diverse set of girls and how to learn to live together and operate as a team. There is not a dull moment in this movie.

The sporting scenes and climax are quite realistic and are not made in a traditional filmi style. You know the Indian team is going to win, but it is presented in a realistic manner. The issue of changing attitudes towards equality of sexes is also a running undertone and the message that times indeed have changed has been conveyed in subtle and mature ways.

Kudos to director Shimit Amin, the Yash raj banner and the movies cast, who have brought out a quality entertainment product, and one that we hope, may revive a sport that we were once world beaters at.

Career Summary

Here is a quick summary of how my career has moved till now!

Current Employment - Seven Seas LLC, UAE (Jan 2006 - Present)
- Project 1: Retailing of Natural Products (Setting up a retail concept like the Body Shop)
- Project 2: Establishing & maintaining partnerships & generating sales for software solutions (Like intranet portals, project management solutions etc.)
- Project 3: Licensing & solutions sales for Microsoft products (This is the business that Microsoft makes all its dough from. Seven Seas makes 16% of its revenue from this business!)

Startup Business : Deft Healthcare Pvt. Ltd. (May 2003 - December 2005)
These were the highly intense years as a first-time entrepreneur dabbling in businesses purely for passion & out of a sense of adventure!

- Project 1: Selling Laboratory Equipment to top Research Institutes in North India
- Project 2: Surgical Gloves distribution to Hospitals (Margins were razor thin!!)
- Project 3: Herbal Extracts and Essential Oils exports
- Project 4: Herbal Formulations development & marketing

M.B.A. - ISB Hyderabad March 2002 - April 2003
- Majored in Marketing & Technology
- Learnt & enjoyed with illustrious classmates & world-best professors!!

First Employment - Wipro Technologies May 2000 - March 2002
Systems Engineer. These years were spent in a lab full of large base station controllers. I was part of the team which was responsible for the testing and bug fixing to the base station controllers of Lucents GSM network devices.

To put it precisely I was a test engineer (and then a test lead). My job was to test that the hardware and software is working the way it is supposed to. On a day to day basis it involved running through test cases and test scripts to ensure that every thing works as expected and if something fails, then report the same along with evidence.

It was interesting at first, but gradually it got repetitive and boring and I decided that there were better ways to spend my years. I took the GMAT, applied for 4 B-schools. I got admits from 2 and a wait list of 3rd. I joined Indian School of Business, Hyderabad.

Bachelor of Engineering, IIT Roorkee (Erstwhile University of Roorkee) (1996 - 2000)

These were amazing years of my life. I entered University of Roorkee as an undergraduate student in the Pulp and Paper Engineer Department. However after the first year I got my branch changed to Electrical Engineering.

Life is ironic. I always remember that when we were young, my younger brother was always the one who could fix broken devices or malfunctioning radios or electrical connections etc. He was a more natural Electrical Engineer than I was. (He would also go on to become an electrical engineer and end up at the top of his graduating class from the REC Surat)

I graduated from Roorkee with almost a distinction grade (74.6% - 75% was distinction grade).

My greatest achievement in the university was winning the Gold medal for the BE project. That was the only time I wrote some code and planned a software along with my buddies KK-the josh machine (Kamal Kishor Joshi) & Pakora (Abhinav Kumar Singh).

Writing programs and coding was a genuinely frustrating experience for me. I could read about technologies and understand how systems works, but I just hated to write code.

Class 3rd - 12th DPS NOIDA (1986-1996)
Came into the bigger Noida School where my younger brother had already been studying for two years. The bottle green blazer and the gray trousers looked amazing in the winters.

Intelligent student at School. Teachers used to like me a lot. I used to get scholars badge every alternate year. However I missed our on a scholar gown since I could never get 3 scholar badges in a row. I believe that I was in a position of responsibility for around 50% of the time that I spent in DPS Noida...it was a cool experience to stay in the teachers good books and enjoy life to the hilt by breaking small rules here and there behind their back ;-). Initially a class monitor, then around high school I became a prefect and then house captain and then the Joint secretary of the Students council in the final year of school.

Standard 1-2 APJ NOIDA (1984 - 1986)
An average-bright student. My best friends from APJ were Vikalp Sharma and Adok Saraf. I learnt Gymnastics in APJ and can still do pretty good cart-wheels.

Revival!!!

Hi,

This Blog has started to speak now. It was created in the Feb of 2006 and now I am standing in the April of 2007. Its been over a year. I liken this delay in the 2nd post to a young child who is learning to talk. I think the time for this blog may have come!

My passions in life are business, health & spirituality.

First post

Welcome to this page!!

Ever since I was a child, I have always been the kind of person who loves to scribble. Give me a pen and a paper and watch me go. From writing answers which were twice the required word length in school exams, to writing tragic poems when heartbroken, to writing business letters, to most recently writing content for product labels ;) words remain a passion, a love for me.

If I can write something that you will enjoy, that will enrich you, or that will put a smile on your face, I will have put a smile on my own!