e-Nagar

April 11, 2008

Race: Movie Review

Filed under: review — Ankur Aggarwal @ 3:08 pm

If you have not yet watched this movie, then you probably have saved 3 hours of your precious time. This movie was a sheer waste of time and money and I am so sorry I watched it.

the 6 characters were:
Saif Ali Khan …. Ranvir Singh (bada Bhai)
Akshaye Khanna …. Rajeev Singh (chota bhai, a waster)
Katrina Kaif …. Sophia (Saif’s sexy secretary)
Bipasha Basu …. Sonia (she and Saif love each other, yet she marries Akshaye)
Anil Kapoor …. Robert D’ Costa (police inspector who would bore you by eating fruits and cracking PJs)
Sameera Reddy …. Mini (Anil’s bimbo secretary)

Here is how the story goes (don’t read if you want to watch the movie)
There are 2 step brothers. Younger brother is a waster while the elder brother is a gambler. The elder brother has a beautiful secretary, who also happens to have a crush on him, and also a girl friend whom he intends to marry.

Now the insanity begins:
The younger brother likes the elder brother’s girl, so the elder brother sacrifices his love for him.
Then the younger brother dates his bhabi and makes a proposition. They will together kill him and share the spoils of a 100M$ insurance between the two. The girl agrees, but promptly reveals the entire plan to the Saif (elder brother). However, moments after that she pushes Saif off the roof. He takes the fall and his dead body is shown and verified by the Police Morgue.
At this point the movie looks like a bit complicated movie on human greed.

Then enters Anil Kapoor. He and his bimbo secretary would bore you with their PJs. So much that the guy sitting next to me started snoring. During investigation it was revealed that Saif is married to the hot secretary (kaitrina Kaif) so all the insurance money would go to her. But immediately after that the scene changes and you would find the younger brother (akshay khanna) sleeping with Kaitrina. Then Anil Kapoor steps in and proves that the Kaitrina’s marriage was fake and Akhsay bribes him to get the insurance money. Bipasa Basu (Akshaya’s wife) now discovers that she has been double crossed and by some twist of fate, mistakenly ends up paying a contract killer for her own assassination. Then out of thin air Saif Ali Khan rises from the dead and saves Bipasha Basu, who immediately falls in love with her. then instead of killing his younger brother with the revolver that is in his hand, he challenges him for a car race. …. ….

And the plot thickens revealing many more twists and turns.

Hawala or Currency Exchangers.

Filed under: Thoughts — Ankur Aggarwal @ 10:19 am

Banks and the legal counters offer the rates of INR 37 for every dollar you sell, but charge you 41 INR for every USD you buy. So If I sell a Dollar and then immediately repurchase back, I get only 90 cents for a dollar. Thats a spread of 10% which by all global standards can be called Highway Robbery.

Indian currency is not yet fully convertible. Hence there are always some people who are fed up with the bureaucratic red tape and are willing to pay a premium for the dollars (hawala). Although this transaction would be illegal, these folks offer me 5% better rates than the banks and also ensure that no matter what I cannot be legally implicated.

Saddled with a few crisp US Dollar bills, I am in a moral dilemma. Should I do what is best for me (after all its my hard earned money) or should I go by the legal route and make the highway robbers richer?

BTW, I am not alone. According to Economist , Indians remit more than 24 Billion Dollars annually. So the banks charge us 1.2 Billion dollars annually as conversion fees. If I add to this the amount of dollars which Indians purchase for their imports, foreign travel and education, these highway robbers make multi-billion dollars every year.

Why is the competition not able to put a stop to this?
With the Indian forex reserves touching 300 Billion Dollars (30% of the country’s GDP), why does not govt make rupee fully convertible and put a end to Hawala?

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