Chale Chalo!!!!

Its 2.14 in the night and i am just back from work.
As soon as i entered my flat contrary to the expectations i found half litre of water to drink. (I am amazed that Ashish my roommate actually got a bottle of water tonight)
The second thing i found is the CD of the documentary/ movie Chale Chalo and i thought why not share what it is about.
Till sometime back i thought that making a software is the hardest job in the world and managers in IT industry can't really plan as dependency matrix is too complex.
That's the reason why 90% of the projects in this industry are slipping and 100% of the people who are working sincerely in this industry are overloaded. But after watching this movie my perception changed and now i think that the dependency matrix is not so complex in software field only and being a manager and to plan anything is really tough.
Now after talking all the crap about managers and industry let me get to the point and share with you what Chale Chalo is about.
So the documentary is about making of the oscar nominee movie Lagaan and it depicts the passion of director Ashutosh Gowarikar about the subject. The Guy narrated the idea first to the actor Aamir Khan (who later produced the movie) somewhere in 1998 and the movie got released somewhetre in June 2001. The director and producer lived with the idea for more then 3 years and believed in it. Note that there's a book names Chale Chalo on the same subject as well.
They planned the movie for 9 long months and came up with an estimate of a schedule of 4 months but managed to complete the whole shooting in more then 6 months. (that's 50% slippage after such a careful planning)
The slippage matched with the slippage in most of the software projects i hear of in the industry.

The way it has been portrayed in the documentary the team comprised of the best possible talent pool. Best hair designers/ cameraman/ ADs etc. were available for the project. (There were minor ego problems in the artists according to the book though) .
The production team planned for every scene of the movie but they didn't plan for the hiccups like planes passing above the shooting area stopping the shooting for minimum of 20 mins., they couldn't plan for one of the teammates injury, they couldn't plan for actors inability to do lip sync for songs in one shot, they couldn't plan for actors not able to hit the ball (Movie is about cricket)

But the result is there for all to see. The movie was one of the big hits of 2001 and went on to become an oscar nominee from India after a long time.
I hope we get to see the team together again....
And i also hope to see some more inspiring stuff like Chale Chalo again!!!
And to all the software developers in the world i say Chale Chalo!!!!!


~Abhishek