ICICI – "I had an eerie experience"

How and again how…How do we sometimes land on the ‘planets of Troubles’ without any routes? Sometimes you do live like Alice (Alice in TROUBLEland)…

I had a frustrating ‘money-losing’ experience few days back. At 6:45 pm, I got a call from a lady. Unlike Chetan Bhagat’s ON@TCC, the call was not from any God/Goddess, rather she belonged to ICICI. Her message was simple, somewhat strange and shocking too. “Sir, aapke cash mein fake note mile hai”.

CHEERS n ROCK ON…party was on for me…

The prelude is important. At 11:30 am, I went to ICICI for depositing a large amount in person. It was the first time I was depositing money in my 4 month old ICICI account. Coupon system was followed to implement FIFO (first in first out) approach. As my turn came, the man at the counter asked me to deposit the whole money in envelope; rather to the cashier. Though I was a bit skeptical about depositing in packet, I trusted the system. After depositing it, I was told it will come in account after 2 hours.

I went back and did what I love most – slept…

At 6:45 pm I got that call informing me about a fake 500 Rupee note in my cash. I rushed and I ran. I was told I won’t be getting back that fake note (which I knew beforehand). Point to highlight here that ‘fake note’ was taken from Canara Bank. My first question to them was ‘why wasn’t I informed after 2 hours after my deposition?’. To which they replied, the camera systems weren’t working so it got delayed. My second question was ‘ Why did he asked me to deposit in envelope?” To which they replied…(silence)…

After my persistent request (which later started sounding like demand), I was shown the fake note on camera. They deposited the rest of the amount…and the icing on the cake was done by there ATM machine, which I guess was having some network problems. Sadly, the impression about ICICI services has compelled me to change my bank.

Some days are like that. You just can’t help yourself. I walked away with a smile hoping my hard earned 500 bugs reach somebody needy on this DIWALI…

JAI HO LAXMI MAATE

Body of Lies

Everything in this life is summarized by titles. Consider the school days, where it is customary to give titles like Mr. Stud, Ms. Photogenic, etc to every student. Your English teacher must have taught you about the importance of ‘titles’ when writing essays and blogs. Some days back I read a book ‘Joker in the Pack’ and understood the meaning of title only after completing 90% of the book and boye! it was apt (Bad reader I am)

‘Body of lies’ is too a strange title when you evaluate it from its trailers. From trailers it looks like an espionage killer thriller (‘spy game’ types). But again DO go by the title when you go for it…

Movie has two great actors; Russell Crowe (Ed) and Leonardo DiCaprio (Roger). Plot wise, not much new is there in it. Russell Crowe works for CIA (Los Angles) and gives directions to DiCaprio (his CIA operative in Iraq, Jordan, Dubai, Syria, etc etc). Movie does revolve from one country to other to another symbolizing geographical reach of terror. DiCaprio is given assignments by his boss and after his initial assignment in Iraq, is sent to Jordan to get Al Salim (head of a terror group). There he seeks help of Jordan’s GID (general intelligence dept.) to nab Al Salim. Meanwhile Ed plants another operative thereby jeopardizing the plan and getting Roger hurt. Roger while getting the treatment becomes affectionate towards the nurse. Then there are more plans to nab Al Salim which flop….In the climax, the nurse is taken up by Al Salim’s men and wants Roger in return. Rogers agrees and as he is to be executed, SOMEBODY (not me) saves him…Who??…find out. In addition, movie has some high intensity nasty dialogue-baazi in it. There are dialogues which may sound provocative to some; for example ‘He wants to come America in one piece and go to heavens in thousands’, ‘He is the one who touches his head 4-5 times a day’ and few more. One scene which caused the whole audience to applaud happened when the Al-Salem men foxed American spy-satellites in the middle of the desert...technolgies cannot outdo everybody (a reminder!!)

Castwise this movie attracts two very famous men of Hollywood. Both have done legendary movies in past and are great crowd pullers. Crowe in this movie looks mighty fatty and carries a strange nerdy look (one who can live without oxygen but not without specs and earphones). Denzil Washington or Bruce Willis could have easily replaced Crowe here. On the contrary, DiCaprio is fantastically shot. He runs, he kills and he acts brilliantly. Though one might fear about him going for stereotyping killer roles (The Departed, Blood Diamond types). A special mention for Mark Strong (played head of Jordanian GID). An amazing scene presence and emotionless dialogue delievery made him at par with the other two actors.

If you like kills, thrills, spy-satellites and offcourse, the two legendry men…go for it
JUST REMEMBER !!

“Nobody’s innocent in this shit”