Madhuri Dixit’s comeback vehicle Aaja Nachle turned out to be quite a bit of disappointment.

A lightweight film with few rewarding surprises, there’s not much going for Aaja Nachle besides fine performances by Konkona Sen and Kunal Kapoor and an average performance by yesteryear Bollywood queen Madhuri Dixit (now living in the U.S.)

Most of all, for a movie that’s supposedly about dance we were not even treated to any great dance performances other than the garden-variety kind.

If shallow movies like Aaja Nachle, Laaga Chunari Mein Daag, Jhoom Barabar Jhoom and Ta Ra Rum Pum are the kind of films that one of Bollywood’s premier production houses Yash Raj Films can churn out, there’s not much to be said for India’s tinseltown.

Music is perhaps the sole saving grace of Aaja Nachle. We liked most of the songs, particularly the title song Aaja Nachle as well as O Re Piya and Ishq Hua.

Aaja Nachle’s photography is fairly decent and visually the movie is above average.

But Aaja Nachle’s Achilles heel is its fairly pedestrian story, which lacks depth and rich layers to offer much by way of entertainment.

There are too many gaps and jumps in the movie. For instance, Diya’s initial passion for dance or her bond with her dance teacher fail to adequately come through, partly because of the inadequacies of the script.

In several scenes, Madhuri’s face lacks the sparkle or vivacity that endeared this luminous beauty to millions of Indians in the 1980s and 1990s. Perhaps, some of the lost sparkle is because of the ravages of age.

After 11-long years in the U.S., a NRI divorcee and dance choreographer Diya (Madhiri Dixit) in New York City returns to her childhood town Shamili in India upon hearing that her old dance teacher (Darshan Zariwala) is on his deathbed.

By the time Diya reaches Shamili, the old geezer is no more and the town dance theater Ajanta is scheduled for demolition so that a shopping mall can be built there by a local businessman (Irrfan Khan).

So, now our New York babe Diya with a young daughter in tow makes it her mission to save the crumbling dance theatre by involving the local folks, many of whom are still hostile to her for eloping with a White boy and bringing shame to her parents many years earlier.

Two talented actors Akshaye Khanna and Irrfan Khan - both in Special Appearances in Aaja Nachle - do an adequate job.

It’s interesting to note that in Indian movies NRIs in the U.S. are always returning to India!

Remember, Shahrukh Khan went back to Kaveriamma’s village and got the poor folks electricity in Swades.

In June this year, Rajnikant went back to his state Tamil Nadu in South India and got rid of the corrupt politicians in Sivaji.

Now, Madhuri Dixit has gone back to her small town Shamili and given them a Laila Majnu dance program that they can all be proud of in Aaja Nachle.

Coming back to Aaja Nachle, all we can say is that given all its inadequacies the movie packs a low EQ (Entertainment Quotient) and is definitely not a must-watch film.

If you are a connoiseur of good movies and live in the New York or Los Angeles area, your time might be spent more fruitfully this weekend watching the French film The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, which got rave reviews in both the Wall Street Journal (subscription required) and New York Times today.

Amazon.com’s new e-book reader Kindle got the thumbs-down in a critical review from Wall Street Journal technology Guru Walter Mossberg today.

Mossberg writes that while he liked the shopping and downloading experience,

the Kindle device itself is just mediocre. While it has good readability, battery life and storage capacity, both its hardware design and its software user interface are marred by annoying flaws. It is bigger and clunkier to use than the Sony Reader, whose second version has just come out at $300.

….the device is poorly designed. It has huge buttons on both edges for turning pages forward or backward. They are way too easy to press accidentally, so my reading was constantly being interrupted by unwanted page turns. Plus, the buttons are confusing. One called “Back” doesn’t actually move to the previous page, but supposedly to the prior function. I never could predict what it would do.

Priced at $400, Kindle lets consumers Continue Reading…

Dell plans to expand its manufacturing facility in Sriperumbudur (near the South Indian city of Chennai) to make notebook computers and servers in 2008,  according to Live Mint.

Dell currently makes desktop computers at the Sriperumbudur facility.

In the wake of accounting irregularities and a resurgent HP, some of the fizz has gone out of Dell lately.

Dell has a significant presence in India with over 10,000 employees involved in customer support and server and storage product development.

Following increasing incidents of terrorists strikes and bomb blasts in different corners of the country, India has set up a Multi-Agency Centre and Joint Task Force on Intelligence in its domestic spying agency, the Intelligence Bureau (IB) at Delhi.

Indian intelligence officials hope that setting up the Multi-Agency Centre and Joint Task Force on Intelligence at the IB will optimize intelligence flow and coordination between multifarious agencies at the Centre and in the States in the field of counter-terrorism and counter-intelligence.

India has a profusion of spying agencies like Research and Analysis Wing (external spy agency), IB and Defence Intelligence Agency that often work at cross-purposes and have a poor record of cooperation.

The plan is for the Multi-Agency Centre and Joint Task Force on Intelligence to be supported by Subsidiary Multi-Agency Centres at almost all State capitals.

Indian politicians say that steps have been taken to strengthen counter-intelligence apparatus in the Intelligence Bureau.

The States have been directed to take the following steps to revamp the Special Branches:

* by filling up of vacancies and posting of competent officers in Special Branches
* making mandatory tenure preferably of 5 years for personnel in Special Branches and linkage of this requirement with promotion
* using system of incentives/disincentives
* having dedicated staff for intelligence work right up to the police stations level and re-activating beat constable system
* making available modern equipment and gadgets for interception
* offering special training for personnel posted in Special Branches
* earmarking of up to 5% of their annual allocations under the Scheme for Modernisation of State Police Forces for strengthening of Special Branches.

Broadband Internet penetration is just not making headway in India.

According to the mandarins at the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, the country added a mere 20,000 new broadband subscribers in October 2007 taking the total broadband subscribers to 2.69 million.

The broadband picture in India looks even bleaker when you consider that the TRAI defines broadband as anything higher than a piffling 256Kbps download.

Broadband Subscriber Growth in India
(in millions)

Mar 06 | Oct 06 | Mar 07 | Oct 07

1.35       1.92      2.34      2.69

Dhan Dhana Dhan Goal has turned out to be a dud at the U.S. box office for the November 23-25 weekend.

At the box office, Dhan Dhana Dhan Goal brought in a pitiful $66,011 and came in at No-40.

Featuring John Abraham, Arshad Warsi and that non-actress Bipasha Basu, Dhan Dhana Dhan Goal is the story of a U.K. football club Southall United struggling to survive.

The folks behind Dhan Dhana Dhan Goal’s do not seem to have had much confidence as the movie was released in only 32 theaters in the U.S.

In contrast Om Shanti Om was released in 114 theaters in the U.S. and Saawariya in 85 theaters.

Om Shanti Om had a first weekend gross collection of $1.76 million while Saawariya brought in $542,192.

Well, John Abraham is no Shahrukh Khan, not even a poor man’s Shahrukh. As for Arshad Warsi, guess he’s lost without Sanjay Dutt.

Bollywood’s yesteryear dancing queen Maduri Dixit will be back on the Big Screen this Friday in Aaja Nachle after a gap of six years.

Maduri Dixit thrilled Bollywood movie fans with her pretty looks and fine dancing skills in scores of Hindi movies from 1986 to 2002 when she called it quits after her marriage to an NRI doctor in the U.S.

In Aaja Nachle, Madhuri plays - what else - a dancer in New York, who returns to India when she learns that her Guru is dying.

Aaja Nachle is produced by Yash Raj Films and directed by Anil Mehta.

Yash Raj Films has had a mixed record lately. While Chak De India fared reasonably well, Yash Raj’s other recent films Laaga Chunari Mein Daag, Jhoom Barabar Jhoom and Ta Ra Rum Pum were unimpressive and hardly set the box office afire.

Everyone has his favorite Madhuri film.

Our favorite Madhuri Dixit movie is Dil To Pagal Hai in which Madhuri was paired with Shahrukh Khan and Akshay Kumar.

For Aaja Nachle showtimes in USA and Canada, click here.

Reeling from massive losses due to its disastrous missteps in the subprime mortgage segment, embattled financial services giant Citigroup is getting a $7.5 billion cash infusion from Gulf nation Abu Dhabi through a sale of Equity Units convertible into shares.

The Abu Dhabi investment is expected to close within the next several days. 

The badly-needed cash infusion is being made via the Gulf nation’s investment vehicle Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA) and will eventually give it a 4.9% stake in the financial services company making it one of Citi’s largest shareholders.

ADIA is the sovereign wealth fund of the government of Abu Dhabi, one of the seven emirates that comprise the federation of the UAE. 

Putting a positive spin on the Abu Dhabi investment, Citi’s Acting CEO Win Bischoff said Monday night:

This investment, from one of the world’s leading and most sophisticated equity investors, provides further capital to allow Citi to pursue attractive opportunities to grow its business. It builds on a series of actions we have taken over the past several months to strengthen our capital base, which have included sales of certain non-strategic assets, the issuance of trust preferred securities, and the previously announced plan to use common stock to purchase 32% of Nikko Cordial in Japan. In addition, ADIA is a significant participant in alternative investments and emerging markets financial services, two areas in which we have major positions and have been expanding.

Citi executives said ADIA had agreed not to own more than a 4.9% stake in the financial services conglomerate and would have no special rights of ownership or control and no role in the management or governance of Citi, including no right to designate a member of the Citi board.
 
Citi said substantially all of the investment proceeds would be treated as Tier 1 capital for regulatory capital purposes and support its goal of achieving its targeted capital ratios by the end of the first half of 2008.

Each Equity Unit is convertible into Citi shares at prices ranging from $31.83 to $37.24 per share on dates ranging from March 15, 2010 to September 15, 2011. Each Equity Unit will pay a fixed annual payment rate of 11%.

Meanwhile Citi’s shares fell to $29.75 on Monday on the New York Stock Exchange, the first time it’s slipped below $30 since 2002.

The Citigroup investment is Abu Dhabi’s second major investment in recent weeks and follows its move to acquire a 8.1% stake in U.S. microprocessor firm AMD for about $700 million.

Search giant Google is looking to offer an online data storage service that will let consumers store their files on the company’s hard drives, access them on the Internet and share them online with friends, according to a story in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal (subscription required).

Apparently, the plan is to offer some free storage with additional storage available for a fee.

The idea of online storage is of course not new. Several companies have played with this idea, albeit with limited success.

Noting that the storage service could debut in a few months, the WSJ piece makes the point that:

Google’s push underlines a shift in how businesses and consumers approach computing. They are increasingly using the Web to access applications and files stored in massive computer data centers operated by tech companies such as Salesforce.com Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Google. Such arrangements, made possible by high-speed Internet connections between homes, offices and data centers, aim to ease users’ technology headaches and, in some cases, cut their costs.

Other companies offer various Internet-based file storage services, but most have been slow to catch on with businesses and consumers. Some offerings, such as Yahoo Inc.’s Briefcase Web-based storage service, require users to go to a Web page and click through a few screens to upload a new file and set various limits. Other more sophisticated services have remained niche products.

So, how will the Google storage service work or be different from existing services?

According to the WSJ:

Google is hoping to distinguish itself from existing online storage services partly by simplifying the process for transferring and opening files. Along with a Web-based interface, Google is trying to let users upload and access files directly from their PC desktops and have the file storage behave for consumers more like another hard drive that is handy at all times, say the people familiar with the matter. 

However, given sharply falling storage prices and the privacy and security issues involved, we remain skeptical that consumers will entrust their private files and documents to Google or to any other entity.

One of the most fascinating books on India is the work Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies by that Christian bigot Abbe Dubois, who traveled widely in South India in the late 18th century and early 19th century.

A resident of India from 1792-1823, Duboi had the opportunity to observe the customs and practices of Hindus, particularly the Brahmin community.

After observing Indians at close quarters for over three decades, Dubois contrasted the licentious habits of Hindu men with the chastity of the Hindu women in his book:

Whatever may be said to the contrary, Hindu women are naturally chaste….I would even go so far as to say that Hindu women are more virtuous than the women of many other more civilized countries. Their temperament is outwardly calm and equable, and though a passionate fire may smoulder underneath, without the igniting spark it will remain quiescent. (Part 2 Ch 12 P.313-314)

But having given the Hindu women the highest compliments, Dubois confesses his inability to explain the reasons for their chastity: Continue Reading…

The Wall Street Journal (subscription required) has an interesting piece today on the recent stock surge in the Ambanis’ Reliance group of companies controlled by the two brothers Mukesh and his estranged younger brother Anil Ambani, who run different companies.

According to the WSJ, the steep stock surge has taken the two Ambanis’ total worth to about $100 billion.

Describing the stock surge in some of the Reliance companies as “most puzzling,” the WSJ story has this to say:

The suddenness of the Ambanis’ wealth tsunami has some analysts and investors scratching their heads.

Consider this: The Bombay Stock Exchange’s benchmark Sensex Index has spiked about 30% in the past three months, setting a record intraday high above 20000 on Oct. 29, before losing some ground to end Friday at 18852.87. But during the same period, Reliance Petroleum Ltd., a refining company, has climbed 90%. Reliance Energy Ltd., a power company, has surged more than 130%. Gas-trading company Reliance Natural Resources Ltd. has skyrocketed more than 250%.

Although the two Reliance groups deny that their companies were behind the stock surge, the WSJ cites speculation:

that the Ambanis are using their many holding companies to buy shares in their listed concerns, to solidify control of those companies or to lift their stock prices so they can raise more money through new share sales.

Terrorists attacked India’s holy city of Varanasi and two other cities Lucknow and Faizabad on Friday killing at least 13 people and injuring dozens others.

All three cities have a very long history of communal tension between Hindus and Muslims.

The bomb attacks happened between 1:10PM-1:25PM local time outside the premises of the courts in the three cities suggesting that it could be related to the decision by some lawyers in the state of Uttar Pradesh not to defend terrorism suspects.

Early reports said several of those killed were lawyers.

The six bombs - three in Varanasi, two in Faizabad and one in Lucknow - were said to have been planted on bicycles.