As I write this post, I am filled with righteous indignation. My body quivers with outrage. Rather, it wobbles in outrage. The way jello wobbles when poked. Perhaps I exaggerate about my mental state, but I am surely somewhere between simply annoyed and quite vexed. Now that I have described the properties of soft cuddly objects sufficiently, we shall continue with the tale.

On Tuesday afternoon my mother calls me and informs me that I am to make my presence felt at – at this point my brain goes into hyperdrive mode and comes up with suggestions (much like Google Suggest) like ‘a wedding’, ‘a relatives abode’, ‘a hotel’ but sadly no takers – THE POLICE STATION. The only way I would have been more surprised is if she’d told me to attend a gym. It turns out that a policeman had dropped off a summons at the house saying that I was cordially invited to an inquiry at the Ragama Police station on Wednesday, RSVPers get warranted. Not having committed any criminal activity apart from jaywalking in a long time, I was suitably confused as to why they would require my august presence at this inquiry.

The next day, filled with confusion and a tiny bit of dread (this _is_ Sri Lanka after all, justice sometimes sits it out) I made my way to the police station with one of my best friends tagging along. I haven’t even been to Ragama in years and didn’t even know anyone from the area, so I had no clue as to what awaited. After arriving at the station, I show a policeman in a separate room my letter and tell him I’ve come as requested, but I’ve no idea what’s going on. He asks me to wait and sends a minion to dig up the charge against me. What’s interesting is that there are lots of people about even though it’s a poya day. Most of the complaints revolve around ‘I cannot live with this man/woman/parents’ or ‘I cannot sleep because this man/woman/person makes a lot of disturbance in the night’. I was starting to dread whether I had suddenly slipped into a parallel universe where I was married and separated from my wife (who would naturally be really hot, smart and raven haired not to mention funny).

In due course the WPC returns with the complaint, and it turns out that I’ve been making death threats against someone! Suffice to say, this is all news to me. Now this is the real kicker, when I ask for the number, it turns out to be a SIM registered to me but used by my friend a while ago! The number isn’t even in active use anymore. After sharing a telepathic moment where we discussed our next move, we got the number of the person who placed the complaint. Not so that we can call and actually threaten the person, more so we could find out who the hell I was supposed to have threatened!  After informing the police officer that the SIM is not in active use and that I will disconnect it immediately, I go to record a statement.  And there we find our next clue! Next to the complaint by the complainant is my friend’s actual number as well! So this complaint was apparently against my friend!

The complainant having given the police two ‘anonymous’ numbers, the police call Mobitel up and request for a name and address (since all numbers are now tied to the NIC). After having gotten the address of only one number, the police hi five themselves on a good day’s work and go home. At least that’s what I can surmise from all of this because it’s incomprehensible to me that they only investigated one (random) number. So anyway, things become much clearer to us.

The other policeman (I think he’s a second in command or something) then gives me a lecture on how smart they are and how I shouldn’t make death threats because it can all be traced now.  I would have liked to say ‘no shit Sherlock’, but I am quite attached to my freedom of movement. And all this in front of Mrs-I-Can’t-Live-With-My-Husband and Ms-My-Neighbor-Makes-Too-Much-Noise-In-The-Night and a myriad other people. And since I’m bigger than any three people in that room combined plus an unruly beard, I look the part as well. And the most insulting part in that whole episode was him thinking I’m some kind of idiot to have committed a crime with a big fucking finger pointing right back at me. I’m not even the type of person to actually threaten anyone with death! I have, on several occasions, willed fire to burst forth from my fingers but the aim has always been to singe rather than burn to death. And no, it’s never worked. They didn’t even get a warm feeling.

If I _did_ want to threaten someone with say a gruesome chocolate covered death (admit it, you’d rather die covered in chocolate than without), I would have used Google voice or some other VoIP provider with a clean account. At the very least I’d have used a public pay phone! I’d like to see Mr-Second-In-Command tell me how smart he was tracing a call through one of Google’s datacenters and routed through several telcos that ends up with an IP in bloody Tanzania because I used Tor.

Also, I’d like to point out that during the whole time nobody actually cared whether I’d made the call or not. No one checked phone records, the complainant didn’t come forward and I was simply assumed to have been a miscreant.

Yes, so. My outrage has suitably been vented.  I quiver like jelly no more.

After leaving the police station we head to Mobitel head office to get the detailed bill for my number to ascertain the veracity of this complaint. Can’t really trust the police to actually check whether I had called this number before summoning me, no, that would be more like real detective work and we all know the boys in khaki don’t detect stuff. Once we go through my call records for the past three months, that number doesn’t even show up, so my number shouldn’t have even been on the list. Tomorrow, my friend will get his call records and we’ll be looking at that as well. My friend maintains that he hasn’t threatened anyone and although he does some really stupid stuff when he’s drunk (we all do!),  I for one believe him.

So we wait on confirmation for my friend’s call log and if it comes up negatively, it proves that someone out there is out to hassle my friend and I was collateral damage! Possibly we’ll be able to get Mr-Second-In-Command to take a closer look at the complainant and reverse the tables and do some actual detecting, instead of sitting in his chair and making snarky comments. Apologies if this played out like a Hardy Boys mystery!

After what seemed like a million years I actually watched a Hindi movie. Now you have to understand, the last time I watched a Hindi movie was when I was still looked like a fuzzy cheeked babe (see below)

My pre 17 look

See below for how I look like now.

My post 26 look

Edit : I have now shaved and gotten a haircut ~ August, 2010

Now you might ask why in the world you need to see a ‘before’ and ‘after’ pic of me read a movie review about kites, and I’d give you two reasons.

1. It serves as a frame of reference to gauge how long a time has elapsed since my last view of a Hindi movie.

2. Do you really need a reason to look at my picture? No, you don’t

Now that we’ve established the background to me watching the movie, I’ll get on with the review.

Kites

Excerpt from IMDB

In the harsh terrain of the Mexican desert, a mortally wounded man is left for dead in the heat of the desert sun. This is J. Once a street smart, carefree young guy. Now, a wanted man. As death looms, the only thing that keeps him alive is the quest to find the love of his life, Natasha. A woman betrothed to another man, but surely destined for J. A woman who comes into his life like a bolt of lightning and changes it forever.

As you can see, nothing shocking or earth shattering there. And I’m told that as far as Hindi movies go, this was a below par movie for all the people involved. If you go into IMDB boards you’ll see a lot of people trashing the movie. But all that is irrelevant because I liked the movie. I don’t know what exactly made me like the movie, maybe it was the fact that it was bashed so much I went in just expecting to sit through 180 minutes of suckiness, maybe not. Anyway, the following elements can be found in Kites.

Primary Characters

He doesn't even look Indian!

Hrithik Roshan as Jesus

Don’t tell me you don’t see the resemblance. The first time I actually got to see his face (it was obscured by hay initially), I was like WTF?!

The character’s actual name was J, short for my suggestion maybe?

His acting wasn’t bad either, I was actually quite surprised by it. And he seemed to be a (believably) good dancer, which is required according to the plot line.

Spanish heat

Barbara Mori as the Fiery Spanish Spitfire

To explain the impact of this character on me, I changed the my definition of a perfect woman from “PHP coding, beer drinking, LAN gaming female assassin” to “PHP coding, beer drinking, LAN gaming female assassin with Spanish fire”. Obviously humor, wit, smarts and the rest are a given. But fire in her belly (and I don’t mean the type of fire in your belly when you’re hungry either) is prerequisite now because this character was awesome!

She plays the role of Linda in the movie.

A Bob

Kabir Bedi as Bob

Ok ok, so he’s not a primary character at all. He’s got all of 15 mins in the movie, being the father of the girl that J dupes and the father of the guy that Linda dupes. He’s an Indian named Bob. I kid you not. He’s included here purely because most of the imaginary conversations are carried out by Bob-like people.

Recurring Themes in the Movie

Hrithik’s Abs VS Barbara’s Cleavage

Obviously, neither of these pictures are from the movie, but you should get the idea. Thankfully, Hrithik is decently clothed during the latter part of the movie. Also thankfully, Barbara managed to be all cleavag’y during the whole of the movie.

EDIT : I managed to find a picture from the movie with both of them touting their stuff (Click through for full image).

Hrithik and Barbara touting their stuff

Indians

Seeing as how this is a Bollywood movie, I know I shouldn’t be surprised. But seeing as it was shot in America and Mexico (I think) I would have expected less Indians. But you’ll come across Indians in the form of Bob the owner of the biggest casino in Las Vegas, two unidentified con artists who cheat the casino, a delivery truck driver who’s truck is stolen by the dynamic duo, and the multitude of Indians serving the leading family and so on and so forth. Kites is actually the nightmare for every red necked xenophobic American out there who imagine all the Indians pouring into their country to take their jobs. Thankfully the biker gang did not have even one Indian. That would have been too much to stomach.

Another big shock to me was that they had full on lip on lip kisses. The last time I watched a movie they would never actually lip lock, it was more of a “I’m going to kiss you now, but you should quickly turn your head to the side to show that you are a chaste woman even though we are dancing in the rain and your sari may as well have been made of glass for all the hiding it does – never mind all the belly tickling”. Speaking of dancing, when did the leading ladies of Indian cinema stop wearing those ridiculous knee length biking shorts for the dance scenes? Those would have been totally out of place in the dance scenes for this movie.

And in Conclusion

I enjoyed the movie. I went in expecting a three hour rendition of the same old story of boy meets girl-girl is coy-girl warms to boy-parents are coy-parents warm to boy-boy marries girl, but instead I got to see a romancy movie that was just about 2.5 hours long and had cars blowing up. And it didn’t have too many songs either, and the soundtrack itself was pretty good.

The ending itself was quite a surprise and it actually got to me because I was in a bit of a blue funk afterward. It reminded me of the ending from the book Amber Spyglass (Book 3 of His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman), although in their case they did what they had to do because it was necessary.  In the case of the lovers in Kites, their decisions were forced upon by others.

All in all, feel free to trash the movie after you’ve watched it, because it could have been a lot worse.

Some of the images have been acquired from this site : http://satyamshot.wordpress.com/2010/05/13/an-image-from-kites/

First of all,

WELL DONE!!

to the fire fighters. They just walked in there as cool as hell.

Some vids I got from the place. A bit shaky and low quality.