Author: The Metrognome

Categories
Film

Review: Partu

This week’s release is defined by good performances and excellent camera work relating a moving true story about a lost young boy.
by Ravi Shet

Rating: 3 out of 5

This is a true story of a lost boy from Rajasthan who finds his moorings in a remote village in Ahmednagar.

A seven-year-old boy, Prithvi, arrives in Mumbai from Rajasthan with his uncle Prem Singh to enjoy the city for a few days. But on a crowded train station in Mumbai when the child is returning home, Prithvi gets separated from his uncle and ends up taking the wrong train. Soon, he reaches Ahmednagar, where he knows no one and doesn’t know Marathi, the local language.

Laxman (Kishor Kadam), a poor farmer along with his wife Sugandha (Smita Tambe) help Prithvi and take him to their home. Laxman struggles to find Prithvi’s family; however he fails and finally decides to raise Prithvi with his family and names him ‘Partu’. The child soon adapts to his new family and surroundings, and also learns how to speak Marathi and adjust to local rituals and routines.

 

17 years later, Partu (Saurabh Gokhale) is now 24 years old. Completely tied to his home with the love and affection from his adoptive father Laxman and his family, Partu has almost forgotten about his past. But Laxman still hopes that Partu will find his own parents one day. Meanwhile, Partu is married to Gayatri and settled in the same village with Laxman and his family. On a pilgrimage, Laxman manages to find out where Partu’s hometown is in Rajasthan.

Director Nitin Adsul does a commendable job in bringing a true story to the screen, and also uses the real Partu in the end credits of the film. The overall pace of the film is fine, but some scenes go on interminably. Sanjay Khanzode’s camera work is excellent – Rajasthan has been beautifully captured in this film. As far as the performances are concerned, the ever-reliable Kishore Kadam leaves his mark, and so does Smita Tambe. However, Saurabh Gokhale is miscast as Partu and is not at all impressive in the titular role.

(Picture courtesy marathimovieworld.com)

Categories
Little people

Know a brave child? Nominate him for an award

The Ghanshyam Binani Children’s Bravery Award invites nominations for acts of bravery from those aged under 16 years of age.
by The Editors | editor@themetrognome.in

The 15th Ghanshyam Binani Children’s Bravery Award committee is looking for the year’s bravest little people from around the country. The award felicitates brave acts of deserving children below 16 years of age and recognises the spirit of courage among children who risk their own lives while protecting others.

The nominations are invited from children, who have shown remarkable bravery and fondness for social concern during the period of January 1 to December 31, 2015.

The awards includes the ‘Bravery’, ‘Social cause’ and, the ‘Posthumous’ categories. The awards will be presented to both male and female candidates respectively in all three categories. Deserving  children  from the ‘Bravery’ category  will  be  given  a  public  recognition  and  awarded  with  a  cash  prize  of  Rs. 51,000, a Silver Medal of Courage, a Certificate of Recognition and a Citation each.

The ‘social cause’ category awardees will also  be  given  a  public  recognition  and  awarded  with  a  cash  prize  of  Rs. 25,000, a Silver Medal of Courage, a Certificate of Recognition and a Citation each.

The kin of posthumous awardees be awarded with Silver Medal, Certificate of Recognition and a Citation each.

An eminent panel of judges comprising of distinguished personalities in their respective fields will select the winners. The names of the recipients of the award will be announced in early 2016.

The Eligibility Criteria:

– The child should be below 16 years of age

– The act of bravery should reflect bravery against physical attack/violence or by risking his or her own life by saving a life and social cause should reflect humanity or for welfare of society.

– Nominations should be authenticated by documents, appreciation or coverage of the incident in the media.

– The act of bravery should be within the period of January 1, 2015 to December 31, 2015.

Look up www.gbbraveryaward.com for details.

(Picture courtesy www.huffingtonpost.com. Image is used for representational purpose only)

Categories
Film

Review: Creed

‘Creed’ is a spin-off from the beloved ‘Rocky’ series and will knock you out with excellent performances and well-shot action scenes.
by Ravi Shet

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

You will like this film if you’re a fan of the Rocky franchise. Adonis Johnson (Michael B. Jordan) is the illegitimate son of former heavyweight boxing champion Apollo Creed. The boy loses his mother at a young age, and he grapples with issues – abandonment, loneliness – which make him an angry youth. He lives in a Los Angeles-based youth facility, until Mary Anne Creed (Phylicia Rashad), Apollo’s widow decides to raise him like her own son. Adonis’ life changes – he gets a job at a securities firm; however he wants to follow his dream of becoming a professional boxer. So he quits his job to become a boxer, but Mary is strongly opposed to the idea.

Adonis tries to get in Delphi Boxing Academy at Los Angeles; but is turned down. He moves to Philadelphia with the hope of meeting Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone), his father’s old opponent and friend. Adonis meets Rocky at the latter’s restaurant and requests him for lessons. Rocky is reluctant to get back into boxing; but he agrees to train Adonis with the help of his old friends.

 

Adonis soon defeats a local fighter and people find out who his father is. This leads to him getting a call from the World Light Heavyweight Championship; he is informed that Ricky Conlan (Tony Bellew) is due to be forced into retirement because of an impending prison term. Adonis is offered the role of Ricky’s final challenger on one condition – he must change his name from Adonis Johnson to Adonis Creed.

Director Ryan Coogler has ensured that Rocky’s persona never overshadows Adonis’. The story is structured well and the action scenes are quite thrilling. Especially impressive is the camerawork by Maryse Alberti. But the performances really lift this film from average to very good – Sylvester Stallone and Michael B Jordan are top notch. If you’re a boxing and Stallone fan, this movie is worth your while.

(Picture courtesy screenrant.com)

Categories
Enough said

As an Indian Muslim, I agree with Aamir Khan

The superstar was right in speaking about insecurity. The feeling of unease is slowly growing among the minorities in India.
Humra Quraishiby Humra Quraishi

We are so quick to take offence these days that we do not even stop to think about something being said, the wisdom or thought behind the statement. If an opinion is contrary to ours, we lack the sense to consider it. We pan it instead.

This is what happened with the recent fracas over actor Aamir Khan’s statements. What did the poor man do to deserve such censure? Did his statements about the growing intolerance in the country and his wife’s sentiment that she feared for her child merit such a brouhaha? We are champions of freedom of speech at other times – then why did we not allow him to exercise this same freedom? Did he say something seditious or scandalous? And if we chose to be scandalised by his personal opinion, is he to blame for it?

All the ‘nontroversy’ did was highlight Aamir’s point – that we are so intolerant today, we silence voices of dissent, we crush those who are different from us, we question sanity in the face of foolish rhetoric…

And I would like to ask all those who were offended by Aamir’s statements: Why were you silent when the Governor of Assam, PB Acharya, said this ghastly line, “Hindustan is for Hindus only”? Where was your sense of patriotism when he said this, why did you not ask for him to leave the country? He continues to sit pretty in his official residence, talking like an RSS pracharak – but nobody reminded him of the fact that this country belongs to everybody, Hindus, Muslims, Christians, alike.

But we are quick to ask Shahrukh Khan or Aamir Khan to pack their bags and move to Pakistan – and we choose this particular country for these men because of their religious identity.

It is the height of hypocrisy and naiveté to say ‘All is well’ when it is not. It is all very well for everyone to profess that they do not feel any insecurity or fear, when the fact is that some of us do. Is there any way to predict which artist’s face will be blackened next? Whose home will be attacked? Who would be hacked for eating non-vegetarian food? Who will be called anti-national for pointing out that all is not well with the Motherland?

To say that there is violence all over the world is a silly excuse. This argument is stale and ridiculous. The fault lines that were drawn years ago are now been deepened with these incidents. It is true that minority communities are being suppressed. Few have the courage to speak out.

Superstar Aamir Khan has the platform to speak about his fears and the security to ensure that he comes to no harm. But if a less exalted Khan had spoken out? Would he have remained alive to tell the tale?

As an Indian Muslim, I too have been experiencing some of this fear. It is translating into my everyday actions, into my writing. This had never happened before. Maybe it is a response to the kind of turbulent times we live in.

Humra Quraishi is a senior political journalist based in Gurgaon. She is the author of several books, including Kashmir: The Untold Story and Dagars and Dhrupad, among others.

(Picture courtesy khoobsurati.com)

Categories
Tech

Review: LG Nexus 5

We take a look at the new Nexus smartphone and like a few features. But some others require more work.
by Manik Kakra | @Manik_K on Twitter

LG’s Nexus 5 remains the most popular Nexus device till date. The phone got a lot of things right, and was not only liked by power users who are into Nexus’s products but also general users. Two years since the Nexus 5’s launch, the LG Nexus 5X is out. But does it fare well?

The looks. The Nexus 5X follows a familiar soft-touch look and feel of the Nexus 5. The soft-touch polycarbonate material and rounded edges and light weight make the phone comfortable to carry, but as soon as you press those Volume buttons and power/Lock key on the right, you realise this phone doesn’t ooze a premium feel. The phone has a flat back, plus, front-facing speaker (which also houses the primary mic) and notification LED below the screen.

The ear-speaker grille is surrounded by the 5 MP front-facing camera, sensors, which are visible if you look closely. On the back is the protruding 12.3 MP camera along with dual LED flash. The phone’s design reminds a lot about the Nexus 5, but it doesn’t feel better than other phones priced around Rs. 30,000, especially with Xiaomi, Motorola and ASUS designing phones well below the Nexus 5X’s price point.

Screen. The device boasts a 5.2-inch IPS LCD that’s covered by Gorilla Glass 3. The screen does a great job in daily use for videos, images, and text. It’s not the brightest LCD on a phone today, but it definitely has great colour reproduction, sharpness, and richer Black levels than earlier. It doesn’t have the highest resolution possible but it handles colours and sharpness for videos and images well.

Camera. Nexus phones aren’t really known for imaging. The 12.3 MP (f/2.0 an 1.55 microns) camera is apparently better at low-light shooting. Here are a few sample images.

LG Nexus 5The camera seems capable of giving detailed and sharp images. In low-light and good light conditions, the camera doesn’t disappoint. You can open the camera app from wherever you are even if the screen is locked, by double-tapping the Power/ lock button. The new camera app is much improved too. Other than some unusual focus issue in broad daylight, the camera app works well.

Battery. The Nexus 5X is equipped with a 2,700 mAh battery unit. The phone required to be charged well within 20 hours of heavy to moderate use. But what’s better is Android 6.0’s battery optimisation feature (Doze). Thanks to this new feature, expect your phone to give much improved standby time, when the phone is idle with the screen switched off.

Audio. The loudspeaker on the front does a pretty good job and usually doesn’t distort. It is quite loud and clear, while not as nice as the One M9+ and Note5 (better placed, though), it isn’t really bad either. In-ear headsets are just about okay, and I would suggest getting a decent pair for your new Nexus phone. Basics like call quality and network reception are top notch. Bluetooth and WiFi connectivity caused no problem.

Software and performance. Under the hood, there’s a Snapdragon 808 SoC (hexa-core -1.8 GHz dual-core + 1.4 GHz quad-core CPU and Adreno 418 GPU) along with 2 GB of RAM. Belonging to the Nexus group, the phone is expected to be smooth in various tasks, have stutter-free scrolling, and so on. Does it deliver on those points? Mostly yes. The phone does well when scrolling in apps, paying HD videos in the YouTube app, and switching between apps from the Recent Apps key (on-screen keys here) has been improved in Android Marshmallow. The phone hardly ever lagged, and almost always provided stutter-free experience in games (FF Legacy).

Where it slightly lagged was when switching to Chrome with a few tabs open or using an image-heavy app like Instagram or Imgur and having to load images again when scrolling.

I found WiFi performance and animations to be noticeably improved. It feels a bit more polished and less buggy to use. On the other hand, there’re also a few added features with this new version. One of those is Google Now on Tap. The swipe-up gesture to bring Google Now has been removed and you now have Google Now on Tap, which you can trigger by long-pressing the Home button inside any app.

Wrapping up, the Nexus 5X scores well on these fronts – Screen, general performance, camera, but lacks a little for battery life and aesthetics. While we have seen quite a few manufacturers bringing great value-for-money smartphones in budget, in my opinion, this year’s Nexus launches (the Nexus 5X and 6P) show the Nexus program is here to stay and its advantages – first in line for OS updates, no third-party bloatware, typical smooth performance – are well in place for now. If you’re looking to buy one, you should go for the 32 GB model (24 GB available space) that is priced around Rs. 31,000.

(Pictures courtesy Manik Kakra)

Categories
grey space

Why I was happy when my mother married again

Deep Shrivastava’s mother, Anuja, was widowed at a very young age. Today, she is married and lives in the UK.
As told to Reyna Mathur

My mother is the picture of happiness today – she has good health, a loving husband, a close circle of friends. At 66, she is doing all the things she never had the time or money for earlier. She travels, has a reading club, goes to the park for Tai Chi, even takes a baking class for the neighbourhood children.

This is not the story of a retired woman finally finding the time to enjoy her life. My mother, Anuja, got married for the second time five years ago. Her husband, Prashant, is settled in the UK and runs a small restaurant near their home. I lost my own father, Sushil, when I was about five years old. He had a heart attack on his way back from work one day and died in the train before he could get help. My mother was left to look after me, without an income and no skills that could get her a job.

It is safe to say that my childhood passed in relative poverty. My parents had not saved up too much money, and the expenses were mounting up. I remember seeing very little of my mother in those days…always a great cook, she would take catering orders for parties and weddings. She was always out of the house, even on Sundays, when other mothers would be at home with their kids. I was mostly brought up by my grandparents while my mother worked all the time. If she didn’t have orders, she would take home cooking classes.

I have seen her struggle to raise me, never once refusing to buy me something I wanted even when she had little money. She gave me a great education, a good life at home, even started saving up for my wedding…but she was unhappy. She rarely smiled – I used to think it was because she was tired from working all the time. But it was something else. I realised my mother was in love…

She met Prashant when she was catering for his nephew’s engagement party. They were instantly drawn to each other – he had never married and was not looking for a relationship. Neither was she, because she had a son at home and a house that needed her. But there were sparks, and for the two weeks he was in India, they would meet every day.

I had just started working at the time. My grandfather had already told me about the situation. It turned out that Prashant did not want to be married, and she was keen on marriage. I convinced my grandpa to call him home. It was the sweetest thing watching my mother bring her boyfriend home to meet her parents! I don’t know what my grandparents said to him, but two months later, Prashant proposed to my mother and she accepted.

I had kept a cheerful face throughout and participated with gusto during the wedding ceremony in Mumbai. But as she walked through the gates at the airport to fly to her new home, the tears started to fall down my face. My mother, my saviour, my hero…she was finally about to discover happiness after working all her life for me. As she turned back for a last look, I saw that she was crying too…and then she smiled through her tears.

Deep Shrivastava is a chartered accountant based in Pune. ‘Grey Space’ is a weekly column on senior citizen issues. If you have an anecdote or legal information, or anything you feel is useful to senior citizens, caregives and the society at large, feel free to get it published in this space. Write to editor@themetrognome.in or on Facebook at www.facebook.com/Themetrognome.in and we will publish your account.

(Picture courtesy silverinnings.blogspot.com. Image used for representational purpose only)

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