Feb 15, 2007 04:42 PM
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The year 2003 is special to me in many ways- It’s the year my sweet little daughter was born, it was the year when I got a good break in my career and it was also the year when I knew that something like Mouthshut exists.
Like most other things, I discovered this by accident. I was just looking for some info on Amitabh Bachan movies, and one of the links was Mouthshut. The concept of writing something, getting it reviewed and then commented upon appealed to me. But I did not immediately start writing. I just looked at other reviews, and took my own time. But that’s me always a slow starter. I take my own sweet time to decide, and once I do, then I am with it.Nov 29, 2003 was when I made my debut on Mouthshut, with a review on Ten Worst Hindi Movies. And the very first comment I received was a negative one, asking me not to be too critical. To be honest, I expected to be torn apart, as some of the worst movies I listed were movies likeMohabattein, Dil To Paagal Hai, K3G. But I was surprised as many liked my review, and overall I got around 7 comments, not bad for a beginner.
I had earlier written on movies for a site called Indolink.com, however because I often wrote against SRK, Yashraj movies, Karan Johar, I used to receive regular hate mail. But the turning point came with release of movie Kal Ho Na Ho. I felt it was not such a great movie, but every website was going ga ga over it, and giving it high ratings. It was then on Mouthshut, that I saw reviews which were honest about the movie. One memorable review I read was that of amjad_maruf, and what he wrote, echoed exactly what I felt. And then I discovered that apart from Amjad bhai, there were others like Premjit, suyog, rjois to name a few, with whom I felt a common mental bonding. And that made me stick to Mouthshutfirmly.
From Nov 29, 2003 toFeb 15, 2007 it has been a long journey of 3 years, 2 months and 200 reviews. In this journey I made many friends, some are around, some are not. Every review I have written has been a learning experience for me. There have been some frustrating times, when I felt like leaving, after watching mediocre reviews get tones of comments and really good ones get no attention at all. There have been good times too, and some really heart warming comments too.Two comments which I would treasure for ever, one from a person saying he created an account in Mouthshut, just so that he could comment on my review about Balraj Sahni. Another was an M2M message received by an retired IITprofessor, who claimed that my review on Top 10 songs of O.P.Nayyarbought back memories of his younger days. These 2 comments really touched me.
Like any other member I had to go through the growth pangs phase. That was from Nov’03 to Nov’04. Yup it took me 1 full year to really come up to a standard. In the beginning I just wrote reviews left, right and center. While some of them were good enough, a majority of them were crap. In fact I was embarrassed when one of those reviews The Day of the Jackal, was selected as Review of the Day. It was during this phase that I had a good friend in Amjad Bhai, who gave me support, by commenting on my reviews. And yes I was pretty poor in rating and commenting on other reviews. While at times I would often comment on a lot of reviews, many a time I did not, and that perhaps explains the low response to my reviews. The other good friend I had was Lyla(Cousin2), who rated and commented on most of my reviews without fail. This was the period when writers likepremjit, rjois, karana, suyog, vivekbp were most popular and to be honest, I often felt very inadequate.
And that was the time I met Milind(mnc123), one of my pretty good buddies, who unfortunately does not write much nowadays. He was the one who suggested how to make my reviews more appealing. And another member who suggested how to get more comments to my review wasdil_Hindustani. I would forever be indebted to these two people for getting me up to a certain level.FromNov ’04 to Nov ’05 was the best phase I had here. My reviews got a fair number of hits, and more importantly I made really good friends here. People like mayank(matwalaboy), farookhbhai(mbfarookh), rajni(rajniraj), jai(jai_coer), munir(parikhmunir), Dr.Shafique, ekta(ekta_unity) to name a few. Sadly again many of them don’t write as actively as they used to. But I still treasure my association with them. It was the time when I started to branch out from writing solely on movies to other topics too.
During this period, I made two new friends and the irony was it started off with a long argument on my reviews. One was jrangoon(Juzer), with whom I had a very longish argument over the Imrana issue, and another ispatenik(Nik), with whom I had quite a verbal battle over Saurav Ganguly. And these two later commented frequently on most of my reviews, Juzer is not around, but Nik still is and I love those movie reviews of his. And speaking of long discussions, I often remember the marathon discussions I had with Mayank on most of his reviews. And another friend of mine madsadman( Himanshu), who sadly has stopped writing. Mention must also be made of my friendFalguni(falsparsh), who commented on most of my reviews, but is not around nowadays. And yes can I ever forget the movie genius whitedevil,whose wonderful reviews on movies and his excellent comments, have motivated me to perform better.
But as they say life goes no, and from Nov’05 to Sep’06, while most of my old friends had gone, I gained some new ones. Daya(sndaya) with whom I started off on a cricket based review and Abha(amateurabe) who comments without fail on most of my reviews. And I just admire their all around ability to write on anything under the sun. As with my other cricket mate,diver(Tenny), with whom I had a great time duringWorld Cup 2006. And of course how can I forget sourray(Anton), with his reviews on movies, cricket and soccer. Boy we had a great time ripping the English football and cricket team. And yes my dear friendHarsh(thakurman), who is the only MS member I have met in person so far. And then there isPras(cticize), who gave some wonderful inputs on my reviews.Shyam(shyamnambiar), is another great guy whom I met here and so is arkhan. A special thanks to Jodie(jodihayes) for having the patience to RRC most of my reviews on Hollywood movies, and who even now RRC’s every review I have written.
