The Green Motion Scam

So there is this car rental company called as Green Motion from where I used to rent cars quite frequently. This year alone, I might have used their services 5 to 6 times. All these times, my experience has been quite good until........

 It was the Sunday of Oct 21st 2013 when I went to Green Motion Heathrow London to pick up my car. Lucky me I even got an upgrade from a small car to a Vauxhall Insignia (pssst !!! Its a trap). Unlike the song that Sunil Shetty used to hear in Hera Pheri, I heard none while this happened.

As usual they carried out basic checks on the washed car which was still very soapy and hardly took a couple of minutes to check any dents or scratches on the car at the time of renting it. Everything looked good and we had a great time on Sunday.

I went to return it the next day and the bumper to bumper traffic had already made the Monday morning blues even worse. As I finally arrived at their place to return it, the guy who came to do the final checks hardly checked anything and went directly for the front wind shield and said " This is chipped off, you would have to pay damages".

Upon closely examining it, I could see two small dots on the glass, like two pin pricks. I knew I was being scammed right there but in spite of arguing that I had nothing to do with those, the guy wasn't ready to budge. What made it worse was that the other 4 people from the company ganged up against me. I couldn't even say "F**k off" and leave as they had already taken £300 as deposit  and made me pay £100 for so called "damages". See if you can spot it. It was already 10:30 and I was extremely late for work and had was no mood to argue further. The only response from their side was , "Pay us and go claim with your third party insurance provider"

                                         

I must say that Zenith, the insurance providers were quite helpful and gave me back  70% of the money. But I did some further research into Green Motion and this is what I found.

• There are numerous others who have been scammed in similar ways and it's always either the wind shield or  tyres and rims.
• Green Motion makes its money out of renting out cars for reasonable prices and scamming the customers for 100s of £.
• They specifically target people who do not have a British passport and especially the ones who have a connecting flight to catch in few hours.

My sincere advice to anyone thinking of hiring from Green Motion is

                                      *****PLEASE DO NOT*****

The disgusting bastards don't even show any respect to their customers and have no ethics whatsoever.

A month later, the only thing I'm currently able to do is hurl abuses at the entire family tree of the people who run the company and write this blog post. Sigh !!!

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Lucia - Watch the movie here

After months of promotions and numerous hurdles, Lucia is finally available to watch online. Now that you have navigated yourself correctly to this blog, why not click a couple more times and start watching the movie right here.

I hope you have your socks on, cause this movie is going to blow them away!!! Enjoy the best Kannada movie of this era :-)

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Movie Reviews - Lucia

Most of the times, its the star cast, trailer, hype around the budget, rumours about the storyline that are the factors that get people excited about a movie. But it was all quite different for Lucia. Mainly because none of the factors mentioned above were the catalysts behind promoting it.

I had been following Pawan's updates on Facebook since he set shop on Lucia. Not only is this a one of a kind crowd funded Kannada movie but in my opinion, should have actually been called "SociaLucia". Mainly because the musical backbone and tune pumping arteries were actually discovered using Facebook and Youtube. I also felt that Pawan's openness in sharing intricate details of the project regularly was very commendable.

So this meant that as soon as I heard about Lucia being featured on the London Indian Film Festival (LIFF), I booked the tickets for its world première. On the day, me and silent arrived quite early at the venue and saw Pawan walking around quite tensed, mainly because he couldn't connect to the wifi and update his followers. He genuinely sounded quite apologetic that he couldn't carry out live streaming as promised. But must say, a humble guy who still has his feet grounded and a vision set for the stars. He too studied in PESIT and was a dropout and I'm glad he did that!!

I'm not going to play a spoilsport and hence will not be revealing any spoilers here. The movie starts with the hero Satish having a pretty relaxed life as an usher in his close friend's movie theatre (to get the exactly feel of the scene, in his words its "ನಮ್ ಶಂಕರನ್ನನ talkies ನಾಗೆ ಬ್ಯಾಟೆರಿ ಬುಡೋ ಕೆಲಸ ನಂದು") . His only problem in life being insomnia. One day he comes across a few guys who introduce him to "Lucia" which would then change his life totally.

He then starts dreaming that he is a pretty famous movie star who is not devoid of all the fame and glamour attached to it. What follows this is two stories that run in parallel throughout the movie. To differentiate the movie star story from the  ಬ್ಯಾಟೆರಿ ಬುಡೋ story, its shown in black and white. 

While he maintains a rugged look with a stubble as an usher, he has a clean shaven (surprisingly extremely smart) look as a movie star. For any sequence that occurs in one side of the story, there is a well thought of sequence occurring in the other. While he falls in love with a girl who visits the theatre to watch a movie with her friends, the same girl enters his dreams as an item dancer who starts flirting with him (*plays Jamma Jamma song*).

There are hundreds of such scenarios throughout the movie and I stand the risk of drifting towards revealing spoilers if I start explaining them in detail. The stories move at a good pace on both the sides and at the end, you see a guy who finally finds a cure for his insomnia in a way which most people would find quite calming.

I give the movie a 5/5 for numerous factors. Firstly, because of the story and the vision behind it. Must say, it had a certain "Nolanesque" feel to it. You might hear people saying that its similar to Inception, The Machinist , Insomnia etc but don't believe them. Its nothing like any of them and is based on a totally different concept which I haven't seen in any movie.

Secondly, the music is absolutely fantastic and if you've followed Pawan on Facebook, you would have even seen the long history behind some of the songs which makes it even better. "ನೀ ಮಾಯೆಯೊಳಗೋ, ಮಾಯೆ ನಿನ್ನೊಳಗೊ" is probably one of the best songs that I've heard that actually mirror the situation in the movie. In an essence, the lyrics of that song actually sum up the movie.

Finally, Satish and Sruthi are absolutely wonderful in both their roles. ಕ್ವಾಟಲೆ Satisha has indeed given a kwaatle performance in the movie. When the movie does come out in your city, please watch it as I can guarantee you that its going to be a cult favourite. Oh !! and one more thing, you might want to watch the movie a second time. You'll know the reason once you watch it.

To contribute your bit to become a part of history and also help the movie makers, please do pre-order the movie using the below link.


Preorder Lucia and make the dream come true

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Croatia - A Snowy Start

It was an early flight on a cold morning, full of not so pretty air hostesses. The wifu decided to have a quick nap, and though I'm not the person who usually chats to strangers, I gave it a shot. I'm not sure whether that person sitting next to me was constipated or hungover or had a colonoscopy done recently or all three. I thought I was the socially awkward penguin but this guy made me feel like unsalted butter.

Landed in Zagreb a bit late and picked up some new words looking at the signs. It was time to rent a car and I've seen even samosa sellers more passionate about their products than this rental guy. I enquired about some taxes on the bills and his reply was *with a smile* "Please sign here, I dunno anything" . I ask him about the speed limits and he says *with a smile* "Boards everywhere, don't worry" which later turned out to be not true. I think he was the company's only employee. He went to wash the car and get it from the parking lot and left the counter unattended. It was then I realized that he hadn't even turned the lights on inside his booth.

Finally got the car, a decent Aveo. But the problem started as soon as we sat in the car. The left hand steering, driving on the right side of the road in an unknown country and testing a new GPS for the first time. Luckily we both had that teenager kinda josh to just get going and take things as they came along. There were numerous times when I tried to change the gear with my left hand and kept banging my hand against the door. But guess what, the experience of invariably overtaking from left on Bangalore-Mysore highway finally got me into my comfort zone and made me feel at home.

The speed limits were clearly marked on the freeways (autocesta) and was in most places 130. But the problem was that our car was probably having her time of the month. At times it would be above par to the speed limit but in most cases would struggle to keep up to it. I even tried standing on the accelerator and it would still be a bit stubborn. 

We kept passing through numerous towns and the houses resembled Indian rural houses. Amidst heavy snow, most of the restaurants were either shut, or had their access blocked by snow or looked terrible. It was only after a couple of hours that we found a decent place to eat. By this time, we had got off the freeway and the speed limits ranged from 40 to 90 within half a km. In spite of maintaining the limit, I got numerous stares from overtaking vehicles (another incident that reminded of India).

We planned to visit Barac caves which were famous for its stalacities and stalagmites but unfortunately the caves were shut due to snow. We drove along from here and the road started to get a rough with a bit of potholes, then full of gravel, then just slush and finally we reached a point where no vehicle had gone past it. There was around 2 feet of snow everywhere and was no way one could differentiate a road from a deep pit. What made it worse was there were hardly any houses around and the only soul apart from us was a dog.

It was so quiet there that one could probably hear the sound of even a snow flake hitting the ground. After admiring our interesting situation, we decided to turn around and trace our road back to the highway.  



It had started to get dark and we finally checked into the house and our host Osana was very friendly and warm. She even got us some home made sweet pastry which was a local delicacy. It was tasty but I just couldn't get her to tell me its name. After all, she only spoke a few English words. 

This was just day 1. One of the best days was day 2. Lots more to follow ....

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The Story Of 3 Knots - Part 3

I had barely caught 40 winks when I heard some knocking at the door. To my surprise, it was the bride who woke me up. We walked around the venue to find that flower arrangements were extremely beautiful. I bid adieu to her and went back into the room but hardly anyone had woken up.

I was apparently not supposed to have my breakfast and I wasn't in any mood to argue with anyone about it. So my roomies went out to get some biscuits for me and also left me something so that I could "release it in peace" one last time as a bachelor.

I took more time than usual to get ready this time. Squeezing myself into the traditional attire was a different experience. Abstaining from desserts for a couple of months had helped in a way. A colleague of mine later described it as the "Prince of Persia attire". Yes, I guess I would prefer that name. After I got ready there were quite a few people in my room. The purohit came and started talking some nonsense.

They walked me to a small temple in the Choultry and RLG uncle was supposed to hold an umbrella for me as we walked. But in spite of numerous people telling him he wasn't doing it right, he made sure that he was completely protected from the sun while I wasn't. He still gets trolled about it even today. After some other people made me very uncomfortable there with some rituals, we went inside onto the dais. 

The purohit's assistants held a white cloth up to obstruct my vision and gave me a mixture of Cumin and rice. I asked him what the whole thing was all about and he said that upon releasing the cloth whoever manages to put these on the other person's head first gets to take control in the marriage. I asked him "What if we both do it at the same time?" He said " I've never seen that happening in my life"  to which I replied " It's going to happen today and you'll tell your grand kids about it ". After giving so much of a build up to the scene, I don't think I need to tell what happened next.

After uttering some gibberish to which the purohit himself didn't know the meaning, it was time for the 3 knots. Strangely enough, the photographer was the only person who knew the meaning behind the knots. One dedicates a knot each to Brahma, Vishnu and Maheshwara. Though being an atheist, I was finally happy to know the meaning . As I went in to tie the knots, I told all the ladies around me to stand back and not do the usual  ನನ್ದೆಲಿಡ್ಲಿ  while tying the ತಾಳಿ . While I was tying the knots, I could hear the words "Oh Sh*t, oh Sh*t....." and I knew exactly who was saying it. As I looked around after this, I could see waterfalls in pretty much every direction. I was extremely surprised to see so many people shedding tears but couldn't control smiling at the myriad of emotions around me .Yes, lame jokes again came to my rescue and my FIL was the only person supporting me.

I was supposed to show my wifu a star in broad daylight outside (note that sun doesn't count) and I just showed her the large bee hive over our heads. What followed next was the boring ceremony of holding a coconut underneath a milk bucket till the cows came home. Must say, some oldies were very excited to splash the milk all over our hands and clothes. Luckily Mr and Mrs Spoke helped us to wrap it up. After an extremely tasty lunch, it was the moment that movies, serials and ads love. The actual departing scene which didn't really see any tears but just seconds later all those emotions bursted out on either side.

What followed this was a long, hardly any words spoken in the car, journey back to Bangalore. This is one of the very few regrets I have of the whole event. I could have surely done better to cheer my wifu's mood during the journey but I just didn't. Sigh.

After getting back home, we both headed to Leela Palace for the ahem ahem consummation. It was funny to see relatives wishing us "All the best" before leaving. I still think of that incident and laugh. OK I'm not even that drunk to go into details about what happened thereafter. 

Its been wonderful 3 parts even for me. Must say, the brain stores some intricate details even without your knowledge. I realized that while writing these 3 parts and reminiscing the moments. Hopefully, I'll come back to read this again in 40 years' time when my wifu changes the wifi password to our wedding date. 

P.S - Its 10th February 

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The Story Of 3 Knots - Part 2

Yes, small broke a coconut right at my feet and I jumped to avoid its pieces. The camera man took advantage of this situation and with some basic loop effects, made me look as if I jumped thrice. Whatay!!  

There were lot of new faces but the face I really wanted to see was busy getting ready. I've never understood the concept of 10+ men in the same room as the groom to get him ready. I badly wanted some space alone after an incident late previous night. Have to say, I did spend a considerable amount of time in getting my trident pocket square right. My grandpa was actually super excited to see me in that attire and I still remember him sitting on the bed with a walking stick and talking to me in Dr.House style.

I went to meet the bride and did she look pretty or what!! She looked so much more beautiful than I ever imagined her to look in that dress. We smiled a lot at each other, looked into each others' eyes and just like that exchanged lots of words even before speaking the first word.

I wasn't really a fan of these wedding photographers until I met this Choudhary and totally became his fan within his first few snaps. But then again, one of my favourite pics from that day has to be this.

                                    

As we both walked onto the stage, I could already see a sea of people queuing up and that I when we both realized that its going to be a long night. There were some genuine smiles and wishes, there were some fake smiles, there were also some "I don't know who you are, I'm here just for some free food" faces. The worst of them all were a couple of them who actually said "I wanted to get you married to my friend's daughter of the same caste, but now its ok. Congrats!!" Aaah , the one day I felt like really slapping someone after along time. However, my MIL had already kept a couple of Red Bulls behind me and they helped me to avert the ugly situations.

There were quite a few incidents that tried to alter both our moods, but then again my terrible jokes came in handy yet again to make sure that both of us kept a smile on till midnight. Choudhary even made me get down on my knee and propose "just for the photos" . It was that or Photoshop and I went for the manlier option.

It was finally time to sit down and have dinner. The food was amazingly tasty but both of us couldn't eat much just because the gastric juices had already slept off. I found the concept of asking the bride to stay back in the Choultry even though her house is just 2 minutes from the place a bit silly. I orchestrated a perfect escape and as a reader, you're probably one of the very few people to know about it even today. 

Some pesky relatives also wanted to do some idiotic ritual at 1:00 in the morning and I metaphorically showed them the finger and went to sleep. Batha and Bujji were there to accompany me and I realized that it was 4:00 in the morning and I still hadn't slept. Not because of any wedding jitters but because of those damn Red Bulls. It surely had given my eyes some wings. The unsynchronized snoring of two people also didn't help the cause. Couple more hours to wake up for the D-Day and I was still awake. 

To be continued...

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The Story Of 3 Knots - Part 1

The knots here don't refer to the speed metric but more precisely the 3 knots of my wedding. Even though its been more than a year since it happened, its better late than never to pen the memories before I say hello to Alzheimer's.

I landed in India exactly a week before the wedding while my then future wifu was already at home looking after the arrangements. As expected, she was there at the airport and though still jet lagged, we drove directly to Mysore for Bujji's engagement. It all looked like a teaser before the main thing a week later.

The bachelor party was quite different. Different because amidst all the booze and nutritious greens, none of us were high. I would like to blame it on spending the night in front of a 10 foot high bonfire.

The day before the reception was the day when I witnessed a miracle at home. About 50 women gathered delivering cliched dialogues and the roof didn't come down. Must say, the Harishina(turmeric) day is one day that many women look forward to most after their wedding days. I'd never seen such excitement and glow in some of their faces all my life. Seriously, even a rave party wouldn't see such natural highs. And all of this just to paint a poor old groom bright yellow. Sometimes to such an extent that even the melanin inside the skin would be shitting in its pants.

I've always hated the concept of  elderly people touching your feet. I made that quite clear before the ceremony that I wouldn't want anyone to touch my feet while smearing turmeric. While some were considerate, some smothered me in turmeric and  some menopausal aunties still managed to cop a feel of my feet. Ugggghhh.

After making a lot of women happy by sacrificing myself, it took a good couple of hours to get rid of the first coat of yellow. Quite a few women folk kept insisting that the yellow on my face should be prominent till the wedding day and I was very close to turning into Ravi Teja from Vikramarkudu.

Suspecting this outcome of the ceremony, I had booked an appointment in the parlour on the same evening. From a hair cut , it turned into a long process of regaining my original colour back and finally the yellow was out of my system.

The next day was a big day and I travelled to my favourite city, Mysore for the reception. Upon entering the choultry, everyone in my family were overwhelmed with the welcome party and I stood there with a turban on my head, garland around my neck and one coconut heading right at me........to be continued

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Season 2

Its been more than 15 months since I last posted on this blog. I've no silly excuses and no serious reasons also. I think its like one of those situations where a crocodile swallows huge rocks and just settles down at the bottom of the water body.

Yeah !!! You can say that I've become crocodile like but still haven't managed to eat one though. While I was on this self imposed exile, lots of things happened in my life. For starters, I got married to the love of my life. Gained quite a few extra pounds (nothing new there).  Also quite importantly, blogger has changed so much that for a few minutes I was as confused as a toddler left alone in an amusement park.

Honestly speaking, I've missed writing. While there were a few people who did ask me why I had stopped writing, I have no answers and am very humbled that I was missed. I think Twitter proved to be a "Petromax" while I was skiving away from my loyal and faithful blog.

There are so many things to talk about and sleep upon and I intend to keep the posts coming at regular intervals from now on.

Till next time, Adios !!!

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