How to produce original content? As an amateur blogger, like millions of others, I must find the answer to this burning question.

In my recent conversation with someone very close and frank with me, I got an honest feedback that my last few articles weren’t so charismatic as he had expected them to be. I couldn't blame him. I was so indulged in the urge of writing something – absolutely anything to start with, that I partially (or fully?) failed to justify the topic. But what else could I have possibly done?

I have picked information from forwarded emails, anonymous quotes, newspapers and books to write inspired articles in the past. Many of them were gladly received, liked and commented on. But did I really deserve that? At least I wasn’t satisfied. And when I managed to break out of the shell, it had a direct and much tougher competition with my own writing of the past.

Director(s): Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra/ Acto(s): Abhishek Bachchan, Sonam Kapoor, Om Puri, Waheeda Rahman, Rishi Kapoor, Divya Dutta

I finally started living in my new (rented) apartment in Bangalore, with no great movie to look for on TV (not sure if I should blame TataSky for that). The only option was to re-explore my old DVD collection. No rewards for guessing, I picked Delhi 6 – one of my all-time favorite movies (as most of my closest people already know). I loved it so much the first time I watched it, I immediately bought its DVD and happen to have watched it more than once (being modest).

While I’m about to watch it (n+1) th time today, the only question running through my mind is – why would anyone not like Delhi 6? That’s a question for those to answer who can’t appreciate this phenomenal creation. I belong to the proud-others, who’re sane enough to understand and digest its perfection.

Yet another absurd title, considering what I’m planning to write about. I still hope it’s justified (by itself) by the end. I started 'typing' this article back in mid-2006 (on July 2, 2006 - to be precise). Not sure what stopped me from completing and publishing, I guess I had to move to Bangalore to realize the need.

Talking of the background, I thought of writing over this whole ‘home’ context soon after I happened to watch two of the greatest Hollywood movies in a very short span of time – Syriana and Munich (thanks to Pushkar’s keen interest and faith in Hollywood). They’re independently great movies with very limited things in common. One thing that attracted all my attention though, was the element of ‘Terrorism’ and its aspects portrayed in them.

Syriana showed the ‘making’ of individuals turned to terrorists, while Munich briefly discussed why one would take the tough road of terrorism – that would lead to a life full of hatred, violence, blood and painful struggle. In one of the scenes in Munich (not so surprisingly – a Steven Spielberg movie), one of ‘those’ guys tells Avner (the lead actor – Eric Bana) how ‘they’ did it all for home and how they were willing to continue and stay away from home for centuries to follow – just to ‘save’ their Home from the ‘bad’. He concludes by saying ‘…after all, Home – is everything!’ and Avner – fighting the terrorists – is speechless.  Anyway.

Like in Nagesh Kukunoor’s ‘3 Deewarein’ three independent incidences took place with me in the recent past, which were meant to be linked by the end. That’s the only part in common with 3 Deewarein; the plot and the story in my case were completely different.

• I gifted one of my favourite books to a friend in the office because I knew she loved reading and I also knew she wrote equally great. I just attempted to encourage her to start writing book reviews because she read a lot of books and she could write much better than what I attempt here on this blog. (Not mentioning my selfish intentions; they’re out of the scope of this article.)

• My cousins and less-brother-in-law-more-a-friend happened to visit Pune for a weekend around the same time. One of the most fun-filled weekends, I didn’t know there were so many hours in a day and there was always so much we could do. Anyway. We had fun. I realized both of my cousins were too much into reading, and just-like-how-I-used-to-be, my brother-in-law found it tough reading more than a couple of pages of any book. I recommended him one of the most interesting books (Indian fiction) I had ever read, with a very strong endorsement to give it a try. The last I know, he had read much more than two pages in that book. No rush, but I really hope he completes the novel someday – it’s really interesting.

It must have been due for a while. Especially for the things I’ve done (rather, things that happened to me) in last two weeks,

• Completely unplanned holidays
• Unexplored exotic beach(es)
• Coloured my hair red
• Football – FIFA World Cup Live in Goa!
• Busted bladder with Breezers
• Explored amazing Music (Instrument) Stores, on foot
• ...followed by some Asian-style Foot Massage
• Day-long train journey (in a real Indian way) - Konkan route!
• And then the fastest bus ride (like the ‘Fastest Indian’. MSRTC rocks)!

To Himalayas, via McDonald’s at Lonavala: Just like all my previous whacky trips, this too had to start on an odd note. For the flight at 6 AM from Bombay, I was still at work in Pune at 1 AM. With the grace of God (and pressure/torture from Nirav and Kaushal), we hit the highway by 1:40 AM, reaching Khapoli Highway Foodmall by 2:50 AM. Deadly ‘Tum Tum’ tea with some fries, pizza-puff and a few egg-do’s, we suddenly realized we only had an hour and a half and crouching Bombay-traffic before reaching the airport. Kaushal and Nirav were already sleeping on the rear seats; I didn’t have anyone I could confess to – that my situation was no better. We still made it to the airport by 4:30 AM. I’m good! So far, no pictures – we actually didn’t have any time for that. 

Torture: As direct customer-facing representatives, what could possibly be the toughest ‘handling’ situation for the onboard staff? An irate customer crying for a seat-change (for a completely unreasonable reason); or a group of terrorists politely disclosing their ‘goodwill’ to hijack the plane? The onboard crew is trained to handle such situations. But how about a kid bursting into a ‘loud’ cry every time the airplane is in motion? Can you beat that – that kid had a problem with the airplane moving? (“It” probably belonged to the airport and NOT the airplane.)