Mama...i went home...

It's been a year and a half that I left India to come to Newcastle. Understandably what was on my mind all this time was when will I go to the one place on earth I have always dreamed of going to, the theatre of dreams, Old Trafford. I put it off for far too long and too many little things have come in the way. No more! I had enough of waiting and watching... I had to go...the date was set...26th December 2012..I decided to wish myself a belated Merry Christmas...

Ironic that the game i chose to go for was the one between us and Newcastle United. All the planning in the world couldn't get us a ticket but I said what the hell...lets just go to Manchester and see if we can manage something... there weren't even any of the tours available at the time of us leaving Newcastle  but my friend Manu and me just took off with just a small rucksack, some cash and a prayer...

 I cannot tell you what it was like to lay my eyes on heaven for the very first time. I have heard of love at first sight. Now I know what it means. Your heart skips a few beats, you get all giddy and all you want to do is run to it and at the same time try and keep calm... and then I lost it. My jaw was on the floor...I was here!! I was home!! you know the banner that says Manchester is my heaven...well that is what OT is to me.... every inch of it looks so perfect.. there is a certain romance associated with the club and it is evident with the way the steward, the guy selling you banners and programmes and the fans talk to you about the club... For the first time I was among people who understood my fanaticism for the club. you start to sing all the utd songs you can think off without even a moment's hesitation.. I was home...

Then reality hits...what about a ticket? of course we cheekily tried our luck at the box office for a game that was sol out weeks ago..the guy at the counter was suppressing a chuckle while almost telling us to move on...we even tried to get some the usual way us back home do...you know the 'black' way...the tout says 150..I love man utd...but even I cant get that kinda money...we decided to see if he decides to drop prices...almost 30 mins later just at the point of saying maybe we should go find a pub or something a man walks by with his 9 year old and whispers "need tickets?"... casually im like yeah? how much?..he is like about 50 quid, west stand.. I'm like yeah, that's cool and as I walk it hits me!! west stand.... that's... THAT'S...SURELY NOT...STRETFORD END!...the guy is like yeah..we have our season tickets there and i get a few from the academy but my son dropped out...you may ask what academy...well the guy just happened to be the guy who coaches the u10 and u-12 kids at carrington!! his own kid plays for Oldham academy...yes, the same school a certain Paul Scholes comes from!!! We still couldn't believe our luck!!! 

anyway to cut a long story short we get in, pay the guy and scramble to get to the ground... the last time I had a moment like this was when I laid eyes on the Taj for the first time. my mind went blank! for a few seconds all I could do was just soak in the atmosphere.. I have watched the team play before but to see them on home turf being cheered on by the crowd was so new to me...we settled in and waited for the game to start...not even one clue of the roller coaster awaiting us!

What a game!! I mean WHAT A GAME!! It was perfect!! In every aspect...I got to see united make a comeback...not once, twice but THRICE!! my heart was pounding throughout...I barely sat and sang my heart out!! danced with strange men, swore like a sailor, and pleaded to the higher powers for victory...watched Alex have a go at the ref, watched Scholes and Giggs calm the team down and watched an inspired comeback after giving away some rubbish goals!! What a finish...literally when it was 90 Min exact we find a winner.. OK so it wasn't in "fergie time" but still very late and what a wave of celebrations broke out around me...73,000 voices blowing away the measly 2000 from the toon...came out chanting and singing on the streets...

Now like I said before we had nothing with us...so when I called back home to talk about the game with Surabhi, she was like she can see some tour dates opened up online...another twist of fate! got two tickets for the tour the next day itself!!

I have always maintained the belief that if we plan something it mostly never works out and when you just things by instinct it works out better then you imagine! I had another chance the next day to spend even more time with my beloved club and stadium...did the usual tour and went through the museum and other aspects many fans have done before and countless will do after...but what will remain with me in my heart is that I made it to the one place I have always loved without question, and sat among the most loyal of them fans and sang songs I always have had to do alone...you know that one dream you all have...the one where your the most happiest...you may have replayed it a thousand times in your head only to wish for it to one day come true...My Biggest dream always was sitting in Old Trafford at Stretford End among the most loyal fans and cheer on the team I love to victory...no matter how many times I saw the dream it never lived up to the actual feeling of doing it... I can still hear the crowd inside my head, I see Chicharito and Fergie walking to us celebrating the win, I can still feel the atmosphere inside the ground. It was so easy for us to say comeback kings but it was that night when I completely understood the DNA ingrained in every aspect, every inch of that club... It screams at you when the team is down...the belief is beyond words and all I could hear from the players to the managers to the fans was never give up! never surrender!! 

I hereby proclaim that the earth now can end itself whenever it wants, there is nothing more for me to find.

I have found peace, I have found zen, 

It goes by the name of Man united, and Old trafford is its den.

WE LOVE UNI-TED, WE DO,

WE LOVE UNI-TED, WE DO,

WE LOVE UNI-TED, WE DO,

OOOH UNITED WE LOVE YOU!

In loving memory

Today i lost a brother. No i will not accept this nonsense that God wanted him to be in a better place. Yes i am selfish. i Dont want him to go to a better place. i want him to be there when i get back. no amount words or gestures will suffice today. i Have lost my closest buddy. my brother. the boy went away too early. I don't know if i will ever forgive God for what he has done to us.

I still can clearly see that day when we were 9. I had just started using the school bus and he was this guy who i only remember seeing carried around school by his dad. He comes up to were am sitting I can still clearly hear him say...actually lets be clear i really dont remember what he said :P but i just remember that we hit it off from day one. and its been a ride for the past 15 years. never outta sight even with the distance. He always made freinds easily and had a bunch of friends but for me he was my 'best' friend. I dont think anyone knows me as well as he did, and we shared everything... lunch, bus seats, school benches,stories  ...memories for a lifetime i have with my friend.

He always valued his friends over anything else. for someone who did so well in studies he didnt really even look like he was putting in enough effort because he would be out with us , screwing around..I owe him a lot in life and im thankfull that i was able to share so many wonderful years with him. he put the love for movies and cinema in me. oh how i loved to listen to him tell me a new movie story. Didnt care if it killed off the suspence for me. it was his way of saying it. I  guess i see now why i love the movies and acting so much. i could listen to him for hours on end.

No matter how much i hate it that he went so soon i know that he lived life to the fullest. I am insanely jealous of a guy who was so brave and awesome . you cared for your friends better then anyone i know. You fought the fight people would have given up on years ago and you did it with a smile on your face and a crass joke in your head. when The Hobbit releases this year what i will miss the most will be your excellent review of it. Hope you will get to watch it where ever you are. Hope you leave some of the angels alone for me when i get there brother. I will live my life knowing now that your presence will be with me. love you bro...miss you so bad...sleep tight...goodbye till we meet again my brother, my friend R.I.P. Harsh Pande.

P.S. i wont forgive you for the words we parted company with- " arre we will meet when you get back...where will i go man!" words that will haunt me for the rest of my life....

FORGIVE THEM DON CORLEONE...THEY KNOW NOT WHAT THEY DO...

Appalled , disgusted, disturbed, saddened, embarrassed and most of all down right anger.... i dont really think this is something you would say is enough to make you understand that this will be a review raving about how awesome DON2 is... no no no no no...no way in hell will there be a kind word said...so if u loved the movie, stop! and go away cause your opinion is for another place...not here!!

I LOVE DIL CHAHTA HAI and LAKSHYA...hence i loved the movies frahan akhtar made... even the first don was pretty classy even though it essentially was supposed to up the original one with Big B...and i waited silently and patiently for mr. akthar to come up with another gem in Don-2...oh im tired of putting the 2 so just presume im just talking about this movie...

I have always loved movies and so in essence i liked a lot of the movies shahrukh did...not a fan but yes some was good...but then this thing got in him what we see in so many celeb wannabes like beiber... they think they are SO cool...well ur wrong shahrukh and everyone else in don...you'll suck donkey dick with extra pudding on the side!

I have lived with inspired movies and inspiration taken to cover up the fact that you copy stuff from everything around you, let alone the west, you dont even leave regional cinema alone.... today i realised that no matter what we cannot be as cool as james bond or jason bourne no matter how hard you try mr.khan! you can have all the copied body language, those gaudy dialogues and a soundtrack right out of casino royale but u forget that people no longer go to a movie leaving their brains at home... we have slapstick comedy for that...the whole movie i just wanted to smack you silly for thinking your so cool...on seeing his driver getting shot he goes ' what a shame, abhi boat mujhe hi chalani hogi' ...when he is told killing him will get them a ticket to sell drugs in europe he looks at the other guy and goes ' yeh waha ka ticket collector hoga'...i can go on like this for the whole movie but i pulled my hair so hard some of my grey cells got pulled in the process and now i have dyslexia and cant even type straight..

why blame him though... he wasnt the only disaster in the movie... priyanka chopra is there na...someone like her who i dint really hate is giving me a pretty good reason to lose it... she was just some chick trying to bone don in the first part so that she could then kill him and avenge her brothers murder...how the hell did she become and interpol officer?? and that too a high ranking one...am i missing something here or has it become as easy as getting an erection in the morning as becoming a law enforcer????!! and those dialogues...who is writing this shit...i didnt even bother looking...fucking disgrace!!! they are trying to be so cool and all they forget the basic gist of the plot every 5 seconds...She needs to make up her fucking mind... i want to kill him,,, no he isnt that bad... maybe he has changed after all....wait he jumped prison.... now i want to kill him again.....wait....oh for christ sake i wish that bullet had been shot right through his head in the first movie...the irony of it we had to deal with a second part coz shahrukh is still alive....and we will never see insane talent like heath ledger...god is a BITCH.

the storyline is a pointless as an 80 year old dick...the other characters as you can guess will get killed by don sometime or the other...the only thing u need to remember is no matter what happens or who you think is don up against...in the end that asshole will live and i will now base my efforts on getting farhan killed to avoid another movie being made for that mofo khan....even though i downloaded it through free wifi i hated it...thats gotta tell ya something...

and one final thing- SHAHRUKH you are DEAD to me for doing one of my favorite moments from 'THE USUAL SUSPECTS'...the moment were kevin spacey just does 'poof' and gone....anything else was fine but that...on this note i think im allowed one lame dialogue as well-Don2 ko dekhna mushkil hi nahi...ah u know the rest.....