Bull and the vegetarian

Read this carefully.

There was a man who was a vegetarian and made sure that he took every care not to hurt any creature. He thought because of his goodness to animals no animal would or should attack him. With that understanding, he approached a raging bull and was gored badly. He cried, "Why did the bull attack me? It should only attack those who slaughter and eat the flesh of other bulls and cows and other animals. It had no right to attack me."

We can dismiss this as something childish or juvenile. But, if we stretch this analogy little more, we actually have similar attitude towards so called bad things happening to us in our lives. We may have lived a very upright and honest life. Regardless, at one time or the other, we will experience grief. We many take a position that it's very unfair that destiny singled us out and met out such treatment. We cry out exactly as the man in the above incident cried. We lived a honest life, did not hurt anyone, did not cheat anyone etc. but why on the earth we got such a raw deal. Raw deal may be some personal problem or a loss or anything that we absolutely did not want to happen.

There are several possible explanations. One sheer naivety. Other is false or wrong expectations. One more is lack of knowledge and so on.

If not anything the above mentioned small story goes a long way in helping us come in terms with reality when we feel like crying out and degenerate into self pity of "why did this bull attack me?"

Cheers!

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Bull and the vegetarian

Read this carefully.

There was a man who was a vegetarian and made sure that he took every care not to hurt any creature. He thought because of his goodness to animals no animal would or should attack him. With that understanding, he approached a raging bull and was gored badly. He cried, "Why did the bull attack me? It should only attack those who slaughter and eat the flesh of other bulls and cows and other animals. It had no right to attack me."

We can dismiss this as something childish or juvenile. But, if we stretch this analogy little more, we actually have similar attitude towards so called bad things happening to us in our lives. We may have lived a very upright and honest life. Regardless, at one time or the other, we will experience grief. We many take a position that it's very unfair that destiny singled us out and met out such treatment. We cry out exactly as the man in the above incident cried. We lived a honest life, did not hurt anyone, did not cheat anyone etc. but why on the earth we got such a raw deal. Raw deal may be some personal problem or a loss or anything that we absolutely did not want to happen.

There are several possible explanations. One sheer naivety. Other is false or wrong expectations. One more is lack of knowledge and so on.

If not anything the above mentioned small story goes a long way in helping us come in terms with reality when we feel like crying out and degenerate into self pity of "why did this bull attack me?"

Cheers!

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Impression - expression - depression

"Impression with expression causes depression."

This appeared in Rick Warren's nice book "Purpose Driven Life". This is a motivational book where priest Warren gives 40 sermons, one for each day, with a promise to turn your life for better. Whatever the claim may be, excellent book. Especially the above mentioned quotation is a gem. First of all for its beauty of the arrangement of words. So well rhymed not to just sound beautifully but also to sound so meaningful. Rick explained the meaning from his sermon point of you. He says that if you are impressed by what God has done for you, then you must express such profound impression by sharing your experiences with non-believers so that they become believers. If we do not express the things that we have been impressed with, it will lead to depression.

I came up with a new personal insight to this. It happens to many of us who spend a lot of time in reading, acquiring knowledge in our respective fields.Many times we do not make enough effort to share and advocate what we have been impressed with. For example, say, I have read a book in my field (software engineering) and been very impressed with some new technique or process or whatever. If I do not make any attempt to share this knowledge with others in my field, it has often led to disappointment and disillusion. It's not easy. Try telling your people in your workplace that you think you have found a better way to run your group or company or business. First look you get is "what the hell you are talking about?". Then, you still manage to muster some courage and try to say few good things about your new discovery. Then, most often than not, you will hear "it won't work here" and so on. Only discouraging words. You very soon give up and fall in line with doing the way things are done. But you will certainly feel depressed having been unable to express what you have been thoroughly impressed with.

Even more frustrating thing happens when you see someone who probably has spent a fraction of time and energy in learning the same thing you have mastered but making his best effort to convince and persuade people of something he has been impressed with. He has passion. He ignores negative comments coming from non-believers. Even if he can not change the minds of his coworkers, he tries something on his own and then slowly but surely influences the rest of the group towards change. You feel depressed even more now. First for the reason that if you were to get such an opportunity, with your much more knowledge you would have been able to change things for much more better. But, you lacked initiatives.

If you look at most influencing personalities in any place, they are not the most knowledgeable or the smartest. They are dogged and determined. They overcome first and foremost the worst enemy of all - self doubt. Then they overcome the doubts of others. They persist and they win. We high powered intellectuals cram our brains with information about the same subject much more but are inflicted with self doubt and do not purse to spread the knowledge of what we have been impressed with.

If something impressed you to arouse your passion, do not sit back, go for it and change the world to embrace what you believe in. It's not easy but is rewarding. If you do that in your work place, people take notice and that's what leads people to positions of leadership.

Cheers!

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Dance - Love

"Dance as if no one is watching.
Love as if never been hurt."

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The Wonga Coup

The Wonga Coup: Guns, Thugs and a Ruthless Determination to Create Mayhem in an Oil-Rich Corner of Africa (Hardcover)
by Adam Roberts

Interesting book documenting a fairly recent incident in which a bunch of mercenaries attempted a coup in a small west African nation of Equatorial Guinea. I think this happened in 2004. The whole event was unsuccessful. Regardless, the attempt and the planning that went behind it are simply mind boggling. The author who has intimate understanding of social and political landscape of Africa does a good job of piecing together several disparate pieces of information, talking to several people who were involved in the coup attempt to present a nice blow by blow account.


Equatorial Guinea - a small country on the west coast of Africa. Some portion of the country is in mainland Africa  and some provinces are islands off the west coast of Africa. Rich oil fields attract international attention. A bunch of wealthy foreigners with their eyes on the oil fields, a disgruntled political figure in exile who is very eager to come back and become the head of the state get together and start planning the coup. Equatorial Guinea was a colony of Spain. After independence, one after another ruthless, brutal and cruel dictators ravaged the country. Atrocities were too gruesome. Due to isolation nothing much was known to the external world.


The coup plotters were not novices. They were the veterans of private armies who fought wars for people who paid them right. They fought in Angola among many other countries. Many of them had solid training as soldiers in UK. The group as a whole had all sorts of skills - foot soldiers, pilots, helicopter pilots etc.


Best seller novel and also the movie based on the novel 'The dogs of war' resembles this coup attempt very closely. In fact, the novel which was written way back in 1970s was based on another coup attempt. The author is alleged to have financed the coup in same fashion. When the coup could not be pulled off, he mixed facts and fiction and came up with a very realistic book which described planning very well and fictional execution which did not happen. In 2004, the story was being replayed.


This coup attempt is strange for several reasons. No secrecy was maintained. May be people were too confident that they would pull it off without much problem. The planning was hodge-podge. Airplanes which are considered never suitable for coups were used. Many shady and unreliable elements such as wayward rebels in Congo, unscrupulous government officials in Zimbabwe became part of the plot and only made it more prone to problems.


For people from India, we can relate to one particular person. The lead pilot who was to fly the Boeing jet which was to carry the team to Equatorial Guinea was the pilot who flew Indian liquor baron Vijay Mallya's private jets. He was also a veteran of Angolan war and had flown planes and helicopters on many dangerous missions. He always yearned for action and when the leader of the coup plot called him in Bangalore, the pilot was only too willing to forgo his vacation to join the plot. It's a different matter that after being arrested in Zimbabwe, he had to spend more than a year in jail and had lost the job with Mallya.

The whole plot which started on a shaky ground gave up due to many flaws and carelessness. Ultimately the south African government which was very closely aware of the plot informed Zimbabwe government and the plot team which was in Zimbabwe to pick up arms before heading off on the mission was arrested and thrown into jail. Similar thing happened to the small sleeper cell in Equatorial Guinea.

Many prominent people were involved. One of them is Mark Thatcher, son of ex-PM of UK Margaret Thatcher. He was convicted on some count which was on the periphery to the plot. He paid fine and did not have to serve any time. However, due the conviction his ability to travel freely is very limited.

Very nice story. Opens our eyes to how a small group of powerful people can control whole countries. How world powers look other way when such sinister acts suit their interest. There are also passing references to some other coups  such as how Comoros was taken over multiple times by the same band of mercenaries, disposing same people they had put on the throne in the first place. Unsuccessful coup attempt in Seychelles where foot soldiers were too drunk to stage the coup. To escape, they somehow hijacked an Air India plane to South Africa to be arrested. This was probably the last of the ventures of Mad Mike (Mike Hoare) a legendary British mercenary.

All in a good book. Fast read. The author who is a BBC correspondent has done a great job of telling nice story.

Cheers!

First sow then reap

When we see that we have to first sow seeds to reap, it appears obvious and natural. But, why do we seem to forget this basic principle when we have to reap rewards (or lack of them) in life. We do not seem to have patience. We like instant gratification. It's like sowing some seeds today and expecting a yield fruits next day.


It's not just sowing seeds that gets us a good harvest. It's also all the nurturing that we need to provide till the end to get a good harvest. In life, many times, we somehow manage to sow seeds but taking care of the seeds till they grow up to provide harvest seems too much of a task and effort. Look at how we many times approach relationships. The very foundation of a relationship is that we are willing to undergo short term losses or pains in the expectation that when the relationship matures, it deliverers lasting and satisfying rewards. This may be personal relationship or professional relationship. Most of the times in relationships, either we are on guard thinking that people will exploit us or we give a little and immediately expect equal or more in return immediately. Nobody says that we need to keep giving without any expectation of returns. But, expecting returns very early or being way too much calculative or feeling insecure all are like not remembering the natural law - first sow and then reap.


Another manifestation of this law is the fundamental truth that you have to first GIVE before you can receive. The principle of giving is highlighted in our scriptures and stressed by all great people. But, we still fall short of giving. Or we give something that we really don't need and giving it really does not matter to us. I think Brian Tracy says in one of his books, best way to reap the benefits of giving is by giving those very things which we ourselves short of. If you are short of time, make some time and give your time to the causes you believe in. If you are short of money, save some money somehow and give it to your favorite charity. This concept does not stop here. It's beauty is only magnified when we take it to other aspects. Short of patience, how about putting up with that annoyance or annoying person for extra 5 minutes. Short tempered?  How about managing to hold on for extra 5 minutes before blowing up? Insecure? How about feeling secure even if it is miniscule and so on. Somehow strange law of 'Karma' works and you are rewarded many more times.


Some people may totally give up on this natural law of first give and then receive for some very good reasons. We many times see some really nice people who have toiled their entire lives for the welfare of their family and friends and made some really great sacrifices end up getting nothing worthwhile at the end. People who benefited from them move away, they do not get much needed help when needed and so on. It is absolutely norma for such people to feel bitter at the end and denounce such laws and advise youngsters to care only for themselves because nobody is going to care for them when the time comes. This approach taken by elders is short sighted. Why limit the period for receiving back the favors just to this life time that too when they are almost ready to end this life and move on to another life. Isn't it much better to have all those favors reserved for next life rather than get them now and not be able to enjoy because there is not much time left. It's like someone offering you a gourmet food when you are not hungry. They say the offer is good only for next hour. What do you do? Try to gobble some food anyhow even if you can not take even one more morsel. Do you prefer a rain check? Don't you think it would be great if the other person can tell us that we can use the offer for gourmet food anytime in next 10 years or even next life.


This understanding really helps when we feel sour that we did not get what we think we deserved. Let it go. If God thought that thing that you coveted is really good for you, he would give it you at the right moment. If you don't get it in this or next or other lives, you probably did not need it in the first place. God felt you had everything you needed to be successful and this thing that you so badly wanted was not one of them. Some people who are born with some deficiencies or people who lose limbs or organs  due to some mishap who are spiritual develop this understanding very easily. Moreover, those who develop and firmly believe in God, have gone to achieve great things in life. Helen Keller, Arthur Ashe, Greg Louganis and you can name many many more people who firmly believed that what they lacked they did not really need to achieve what they were destined to achieve. Can everyone develop such a conviction? Not very easily. But, over time everyone matures and such insight comes to everyone. Taking to spirituality and becoming interested in some spiritual classic only speeds up the process and reduces much pain which people normally undergo learning these things the hard way.

Cheers!

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No meaning

Nothing has meaning unless you attach one to it. True? False? May be?

It made sense at least for GOOD and BAD. No experience or incident is inherently good or bad. The way we feel towards it determines whether it becomes GOOD or BAD.

I think this understanding goes a long way in battling day-to-day disappointments, brooding over things, frustration etc. By taking things as they happen and not rushing to attach meanings to them, we can reduce the anguish we feel. Easy? Not even by a long shot. Your favorite stock  goes down by 15% and you forgot to place a stop on it and lost decent sum of money. If someone says, this is neither good nor bad, you are going to kill him. But, this is the kind of situations, we need to be able to be detached. It comes after some practice.  A lot of people recognize the value of developing all these good qualities like detachment, taking things as they come, patience, forgiveness etc. They have no doubts that these are the qualities they should go after. But, these qualities are hard to come by. Some people get them easily and some not so easily. But, these qualities are not anything that can not be learnt. We did not learn to read in one day. We learnt and practiced so long and so much that now it is secondary. We do not have to do it explicitly. Same with writing. Same with any skill that we learnt -  practiced and perfected. Same with these soft skills also. It may be true that their practice and perfection is much harder and often very painful but the only way to learn things like patience and forgiveness is by actually becoming more and more patient and forgiving more and more people for more and more of their mistakes and wrongs done to you.


When we look at the things that we term bad, disappointing, uninteresting etc., it is the volition of our ego and our preconceived notion of what is good, what is exhilarating and what is interesting. If we abolish such preconceived notions and experience every thing with an open mind, chances are more often than we expect we feel good. It's like a child not even willing to try dish because he thinks that dish tastes awful. May be because of it smell or may be because of the container it is in and for any other reason. But, when the child tries it finally, many times they find it so tasty that they are hooked to it.

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Lara Dutta and her generosity

Lara Dutta is a former Ms Universe and a leading film actress.

Not many times we get to hear  good things people from movies. Conventional media is only interested in raunchy gossips, fashion and other sensational stuff. Very few people look at movie celebreties like one of us - good, nice, caring fellow human beings.

Recent gesture by actress Lara Dutta is really praise worthy. Story is short and sweet. A little boy was admitted for treatment in B'lore hospital. Family was poor. The family had raised money thru fellow community members. Since my family contributed a little, I know this first hand. The hospital had put posters requesting for help. Lara Dutta happened to visit the hospital. Saw the posters. Was moved. Visited the boy on her volition. Spent time with boy and family getting know them, decided to sponsor the whole treatment (tab was close 2-3 Lakh rupees) and left. She did all this without any fanfare. She could have tried to get as much media mileage out of this. But, none she went for. At least I did not come to know about this in any news paper. A person who was involved in fund raising efforts posted this info to our community yahoo group (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/havyaka/) and that's how we got to know about her act of generosity. Isn't this really nice? Ms.Dutta deserves kudos.

We have seen so many celebrities making all promises and then reneging on them. But, in this case no words but only action.

Way to go Lara Dutta. Thanks for saving little boys life and more importantly saving the family from going to financial problems. FYI, boys parents are school teachers in near Surathkal in DK, Karnataka. This is one nice act which is bound get a lots of good karma for actress and everyone.

More about Lara at - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lara_Dutta

Cheers!

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Mushroom management theory

Mushroom management - Keep people in the dark and dump a lot of manure on them and see mushrooms boom......

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Secrets of Great Rainmakers: The Keys to Success and Wealth by Jeffrey J. Fox

Tips and tricks book geared towards sales professionals.

Rainmakers - people making a lot of rains (of moolah).

Nice book. A lot of uncommon common sense. From sales perspective. For people who are new to sales, a lot of new stuff. 'Cold calling' is considered to be the most dreaded of all tasks due to high percentage of rejections, abuse from customers and so on. One smart sales person's first call was to fix up an appointment for the actual call. Needless to mention that this person soon moved out of cold calling and probably managed an army of cold callers.

Many good tips on what to sell, what not to sell, when not to sell, when not to argue, how to make sure that you make your biggest sale when the customer yells 'get the *&^@ of here'. True!

Great book to listen to over and again.

Even if we are not sales professionals,we should read (or listen to) this book because all of us have to manage the most important brand called 'self' and should be able to sell it for the maximum moolah. Secondly, even if you are not a sales person, being able to effectively manage a bunch of smart rainmakers is a good way to make some rains yourself.

Cheers!

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Bait and Switch : The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream by Barbara Ehrenreich

This is a funny book.

If you have read (or listened) to author's other book 'Nickel & Dimed', you can probably guess what might be there in the book.

Author documents the first hand experience of trying to get a white-collar job in the US during 2002-2003 time frame and how it went. She ends with a very pessimistic note and it is up to you to decide if such pessimism was unique to the author or justified.

In 'Nickel & Dimed', the author hid her true identity and worked as a house cleaning maid, waitress and a few other blue collar workers to document realities of living 'American dream'. In this book, she does the similar thing for white collar professionals.

In this book the author puts on the identity of a PR professional trying to get a regular job in a company with benefits. Her assumed background is freelancing the same field. What fills up rest of the book is how she goes thru the process using resources such as career coaches, endless networking, resumes, job boards, interviews etc. She also takes a critical look at the entire process and so called useful resources available. You know, they say 'more people made money by teaching people how to make money than making it for themselves on the wall street'. Same thing holds good in job hunting too. At least the author feels so about career coaches and other helpful resources.

The project which runs for good part of one year ends on a sad note. Time is up but the author's dream to get a decent job is unfulfilled. American dream shattered. Bitter and cynical ending.

It's easy to write off the author as someone who did not put full effort into getting a good job, approached the subject with an agenda to prove that corporate world was unfair etc. But, knowing that how difficult it was to get a job between 2001-2003, it merits some consideration. During that time, many well qualified professionals worked in those jobs which they would have not touched with a 10 feet pole otherwise.

I think we can ignore author's pessimism but use the insight from the book to prepare ourselves for similar job market which comes again and again and goes along with different economic cycles. Always learning new things, getting new credentials, saving tonnes of money, investing wisely and other common sense activities all come handy to make our lives recession proof. "When your neighbor loses  job, it is recession. When you lose yours, that is depression'

Cheers!

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Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies by Jim Collins, Jerry I. Porras

This is a business classics. Came before another book from Collins 'Good to great'.

In fact, Collins says in 'Good to great' that, knowing all that they know now, 'Built to last' should have come second and 'Good to great' first in the order. First you build a great company (using 'Good to great') and then immortalize it using 'Built to last'.

In 'Built to last', the authors take a set of companies. In each pair, one company went on to become a legendary company and the other faded into oblivion. They make comparisons between companies such as GE v/s Westinghouse, Marriott v/s Howard Johnson, Motorola  v/s Texas Instruments.

Authors are careful about how things might change for these companies in the future. They say their main focus has been to extract those characteristics that are responsible for transforming companies. Down the line, if certain companies choose to ignore them and write their own failure story, that does not disprove the principles. Good thinking. Because some of the companies that appear in 'Built to last' did not retain their greatness or companies which were thought have faded off have come back strongly.

Authors are extremely effective with compiling mounds of data, carefully analyzing the data, coming up with patterns and then validating (or invalidating) those patterns against hypotheses or fitting new hypotheses to fit unmistakable patterns. It is really an art to be able to do that so consistently in both books. Collins claims in one place that being able to do that is one of his skills.

A lot of good information. A lot of management insight.

The audio book read by the authors is a very nice one too.

Q&A at the end addresses many questions.

Cheers!

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Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco by Bryan Burrough and John Helyar

This book provides blow-by-blow account of events related to LBO (Leveraged buy out) of RJ Reynolds Nabisco in 1989.

This should be a recommended reading for corporate finance students. There can hardly be better example of LBO than the one of RJR Nabisco.

Two WSJ journalists, with intimate understanding of the incident, reconstruct the entire story that spans only a couple of months. They use their extensive knowledge, contacts and access to key players  to provide ringside view of the event.

LBOs financed by junk bonds were a phenomenon of 90s. As dot coms became the in-thing later in the decade, doing LBOs using high risk bonds were the norm in 90s. As with anything, once the concept was found to be attractive, many unscrupulous people  entered the scenario which resulted in the convictions of legends such as junk-bond king Mike Milken among others.

LBO is a simple concept. It's the process by which a group of private investors take a public company private, retool the business, add some value and after some years sell the company as a whole or in parts for huge profits. So, where do they get money to buy these companies especially when the companies are bid in billions of dollars. The money comes thru high risk debts issues by the private investors. Naturally these loans have very high interest rates. How do these investors expect to repay the debt? Actually they do not. All they care is to be able to make interest payments on the billions of dollar debt they have raised for next 3-4 years. In that time, they will retool the company and sell it for much more value to be able to comfortably pay back the principal. How can they be sure about being able to make interest payments? One is from the cash on company's balance sheet and other is from the cash flow generated from the ongoing business. LBO is nothing more than putting down 5% to buy a house costing 100K. Fixing it up and selling it for 175K in a very short time and thus make nice profits without having to worry about the long term.

Another way to look at LBO and what happens to the company after LBO is akin to buying a used car. Sometimes people buy a used car not for the car as such but for the parts. This is because there is a huge demand for car parts all over the world. A 98 Honda civic (for example) is said be worth more when dismantled and sold as parts than for an intact car. Same with the business. A business as a whole may be valued less than the sum of its parts. So LBO investors sometimes sell the pieces  of business to make some quick money. It used to said that HP's printer business was so profitable that Wall Street had recommended spinning it off as a separate company. It's a different matter that it did not happen.

LBOs are done especially when stock is depressed. Astute investors know that the company is worth more than what market has priced it. So, even if they offer a small premium to the shareholders, they will only be happy to take the money and run. You can also create media hype, not-so-true news tidbits to create more panic to force people to sell out.

RJR stock was trading at around 60 after the 1987 crash which had depressed the economy. The management team led by Ross Johnson wanted to do the LBO at 75. Internal documents showed that company was valued anywhere between 85-115. So, if they could take the company private they were going to billionaires.

Once a public company comes to the market. Anyone can bid for it. Although the management team had liked to take it private with the investment bank of their choice, there were many others who found the opportunity irresistible. How different groups of investors played very hard and left no stones unturned to buy RJR Nabisco is the story in this book.

Basically it comes down to personalities, big egos, rash decisions, shortsightedness, greed and what not. So you will come across many colorful characters with their own idiosyncrasies. When they wheel and deal, their actions and behavior thru the time provides entertainment, and occasionally shocks you and nauseates you when you see the corporate filth.

All in all a great book to learn about one of the biggest LBOs in American corporate history. Authors have done  a  fabulous job of recreating the crime scene, accused and verdict. Audio book is also very good with a lot of dramatics to give  realistic feeling.

There are way too many characters and their side kicks. So it may be hard to remember all of them. Authors probably knew this. So they introduce characters often. It helps.

Great book.

Cheers!

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Corporate

Corporate - Madhur Bhandarkar film. Madhur Bhandarkar who delivered some hard hitting films such as Chandni Bar, Page 3, Satta comes up with another 'hatkese' film that is Corporate.


Corporate tries to lay bare everything that happens in cut throat, dog eat dog world of corporate world.

In his other films Bhandarkar showed in macabre detail about things many of us only had heard. In Chandni Bar he depicted beer bar girls, their exploitation, cops and underworld nexus, how so called encounters take place and how a gangster is used and discarded when he is no more of a value.

In Satta, Madhur tried to expose the chess game that politicians play.

In Page 3, he went behind the facades of people who take pride in showing up on Page 3 (which includes reports of parties, socialites etc.)


After having seen Madhur exploring such sensitive topics, much was expected from Corporate. But, Corporate somehow misses the beat. It struggles to make a mark between dirty corporate acts and what not.


In corporate Madhur does not show anything that most of us do not know. Probably some of the things that he shows in Corporate we ourselves have seen happen all around us. Corporate espionage - fairly common although not as blatant as shown in the movie. What do you think people leaving to your competitor do? Shut their mouth and reveal nothing. There are several ways to work around all NDA etc. What about your customers? If they are really smart sales people, they will make your customers leave and go with them.


In Corporate we have nepotism, we have bosses doing favors for their subordinates in exchange for sexual favors, we have people using prostitutes to lure executives from competitors to steal secrets, we have people cutting corners to release products which are not safe for public consumption, we have companies going after like sharks go after the prey after smelling the blood, how NGOs are exploited, how media is manipulated etc.


Despite explicitly showing most of the above, corporate fails to make the impression such as Chandni Bar or Page 3 did. May be because we,as professionals, are exposed more of these things in our part of the world than what happens in some shady lanes of the underworld.

Rajat Kapoor, Raj Babbar, Bipasha and most of the cast delivers a solid performance. Only if the script was little more deep and involved, with this cast and theme, Bhandarkar could have come up with another great 'hatkese' film.

Payal Rohatgi as an item number is gorgeous. Vinay Apte as the finance minister is very good. The nativity he  brings to the role is unmistakable.

Luckily Bhandarkar has come back to doing to films that he is good at. He also had made 'Aan' which he said was the mistake of his life. But, it was a decent film if you do not take into account his other films. In fact, it had all good commercial stuff. In fact, Bhandarkar could have made that film equally well. It was based on famous cop Daya Nayak of Mumbai crime branch.

Good film.

Cheers!

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