Headaches and terrible movies

Each one of us has seen a bad movie at some point of time. What characterises a bad movie? Is it poor screenplay, limp direction, insipid acting skills, uninspiring storyline or a combination of two or more of the above? It is difficult to place a finger on the worst aspect of a movie that ticks you off. Nevertheless, one feels nauseated in the gut when one is forced to pay good money at a fancy multiplex for three hours of self inflicted torture. I was lucky in this regard since I at least did not waste any money on this monster of all bad movies – ‘I Hate Love Storys’. I managed to watch it on the Internet (Long live, Thee Internet). The server hosting the movie had broken it down into six parts and over a span of six gruelling days, I managed to watch the whole movie. For sake of self preservation, I dared not see more than 1/6th of the movie every 24 hour. Each day, I would click on a link for one part and pray for that segment of the movie to have a tiny measure of sense or sensibility. No such luck. Right from the very first 1/6 part till the last 6/6 part, the movie got progressively worse. What was Karan Johar thinking? Why did he put his money in the most unbearable movie ever made?

In my opinion, I Hate Love Storys(IHLS) should be the new yardstick against which all bad movies are measured. Initially I thought, probably movies could be given a rating of 1 to 10 IHLS depending on how tortured the viewer was feeling by the end of the movie. But logic would then state that a 3 IHLS movie is thrice as bad as the original IHLS. This is an impossible scenario since IHLS is the worst ever. So I decided to go with the calculation that 1 IHLS (100%) being the highest rating, how bad a movie is can be rated as 0.5 IHLS(half as bad or 50%), 0.2 IHLS (one fifth as bad or 20%) etc, etc. For those of you who did not pay attention in school to fractions and percentages, this might be a slightly challenging scale to comprehend. However, please rest assured it is comprehensive and accurate. Of course to truly understand the implication of each rating, one will have to watch 'I Hate Love Storys' so that one has a mental image to calibrate the other movies against. My suggestion, catch the movie online. It is not worth even a penny. (I apologise to the Copyrights people and of course to the recording industry, to the producer etc for encouraging the ever booming Internet piracy).

What about the incorrect plural of story? I don’t believe they were exercising their poetic license when they decided to use ‘storys’. In a world where SMS lingo is the norm and vowels are being dropped like hot potatoes, one does not need to confuse a child or even an educated adult by using bad grammar in movie titles. My bet, more than 50% of the kids in schools will at least once use ‘storys’ as a plural in an English test and lose marks for it just because he/she thought KJo always spells correctly. But that is for another day.

Deutschland vs Germany

Indian: A word used to refer to a person whose ‘usual country of residence’ is India or in other words one who is a legal citizen of India (let’s forget the American Indians for now. Even if one wishes not to forget that, one can always remember that the reason why American natives were called Indians was because Columbus thought he had reached India).

Indian: A synonym for immigrant? Maybe not, considering that the top five countries of origin for immigrants are in the African continent. But then, it would be more appropriate to call asylum seekers from Africa as refugees since they are fleeing from drought, hunger, poverty and persecution. Not so for Indians. For the educated, skilled and employed, India is a beautiful and quite a comfortable country to live in. Also, apparently amongst all the countries in the world, Indians have the highest Happiness Quotient (HQ). Yet hoards of Indians leave the shores of India for more exciting, foreign lands. These lands have typically been USA, UK, Canada or Australia.

Though Europe is an equally enticing and challenging continent, very few immigrants from India chose Europe as their future home. Germany in particular is the most advanced and the richest European country. It has the best social benefit programme for its citizens and immigrants. Right from the first day of arrival, a refugee is provided food, shelter and health insurance. Agreed, Indians do not migrate as refugees rather as skilled or semi-skilled assets. So why do Indians avoid this incredibly attractive country? The answer lies in the immigration requirements of Germany. One primary requirement is an adequate command of the German language. As the inimmitable legend, Amitabh Bachhan once said, I(ndians) can talk English, I(ndians) can walk English, I(ndians) can laugh English, I(ndians) can run English. But learn another foreign language? Na re baba na!

Between the 22 officially scheduled languages and the dozen unofficial ones, Indians already know at least three languages and bits & pieces of many more. German is not an easy language to learn either. Everything has a gender. So every living or non-living entity has either a male, female or neutral gender assigned to it (him/her). If one was to replace the noun with a pronoun in the sentence, “Please pass the bag around”, it would become “Please pass her around”, since bag is a feminine entity. Similarly, “The machine is broken. Get her fixed” or “I have hidden the house key near the front door, you will find him under the doormat”. As hilarious as it may sound, learning German is not a laughing matter. So why would the Indians, educated in English bother to cram a foreign a language into their already over-taxed brains? There are far simpler options available wherein their only concerns will be unpacking and setting up base rather than spending bewildering nights delving into the depths of accusative, dative, nominative and genitive cases of German grammar.

However, Germany with the largest economy in Europe has the greatest shortage of IT staff. The German Information Technology Association estimates that twenty-five percent of IT vacancies remain unfilled. While low skilled workers will find it difficult to gain permission to work in Germany, highly skilled workers find it easier to gain permanent residency since the government is making an attempt to lure highly skilled workers into Germany. The professions most in need are natural scientists (biologists, chemists, physicists), engineers, professors and scientific personnel in high technology areas. But with German being the official working language, may God Bless those who decide to move to this green pasture for their German green card.