Aftermath of Ranjhanaa

Note: I know this is late, but talking about movies week within they are released is way mainstream. Enough with the cover up or the lack of it.

I had no inclination of watching Ranjhanaa, my first thought were, it was one of those priyadarshan sort of  a hindi remake of a south Indian grosser, moreover who wants to see that guy act whose claim to fame is being the singer of a viral music video and more importantly being son in law to Shri Rajanikantham, I mean look at all the son in laws lying around these days , Mr Vadra in news recently ,Gurunath Meiyappan few months back. After reading so much about the movie, a one page article in a newspaper and the point that it was compared to Kamal hassan's Ek duje ke liye in one of the article, I had to watch it.

About the movie itself ,based in UP and I for one know many people from UP, thus could smile through those little quirks that are associated with the UP ishtyle.But like Rajiv Masand in this  interview I too felt the whole concept of guy addressing a chick as ye teri bhabhi hai to his friends for a freaking decade or so without ever really completely closing the deal (an analogy that arsenal fans can understand this transfer season) was off the mark and with the current scenario where rapes are becoming staple news you should not be encouraging such thing. I remember having a discussion in cab regarding how our society has produced savages who can think of morbid thing to do to a lady and most of us agreed that it was due to lack of education and backwardness of some areas clubbed with this impression in the mind of youth that the dude, the charmer, the lothario as presented in our spiced up movies is the way of life in reality as well and chicks dig it. In a way the movie goes down that lane but then the melodrama and the Amar Prem kicks in. There is this instance in the movie when this guy cuts his hand for the chick and when she returns after ten or so years later she can hardly even remember the guy, beyond me perhaps wrist slitting is a common thing these days. Apart from that, Dhanush really proves his mettle(apart for the fact that sometimes it really became inscrutable as to what he was saying due to his unfamiliarity with the language) , perhaps it was the kind of role that had made anyone look cool, but the way he has portrayed the hybrid Tamil banarasi is nice, for his innocence and nonchalance of putting things forth(even in the above mentioned interview the way he takes the question in his stride kind of typifies what I am trying to say) was what made him stand out, for anyone who has seen his performance would agree that this is not we expect from a Bollywood actor doing a mushy movie, we expect the grand emotions and grander gestures just to strike home the fact the he is the guy this movie is about, be it SRK in Kal ho na ho or Salman in hum dil de chuke sanam, you learned it it was THEIR movie, with Dhanush it was never like that.
 The best parts of the movie are surely when we have the three friends  played by Zeeshan, Dhanush and Swara together, it's never a dull moment and they surely pull their weight, particularly the closing scene when Dhanush is in this monologue which in itself despite his hard worked Hindi is quite soul wrenching and shows the plight of his friends who like all the times are there by his side but this time helpless and he himself is too spent and selfless to conjure up another love story for himself for he has been  Ranjhanaa-ed over this silly Little girl.

Chicks.. I tell you......

P.S. the aforementioned analogy prescribed to the arsenal fans can be safely rendered unfit and rather be implied to GGMU variety of fanatics.

Cab Confessions

Cabs are different sort of kingdom

 I remember saying long long ago. And the fact remains the same, cabs, the school buses of the corporate world (with way less legs space and less explicit fights for seats) have and will always harbor clans and groups and prejudice and apprehensions, somewhat similar to going to a new school. You don't have friends per say and you keep to yourself but slowly you lose the apprehensions and build things from there on, which for me is always a long process. Ironically this wasn't the case this time as I was made a part of this kingdom and within short time it was about looking from the other side of the senseless jokes and the lame chitter chatter and feeling less pretentious and more senseless and lame.
 
Looking back at  my first job, my tryst with corporate culture, it was not exactly garden of roses but yet it all feels good in retrospect, perhaps nostalgia mellows you down and makes you a bit of  a sucker for all things old, known and assured.Getting to grips with the new environment was tough. Acting professionally,meeting deadlines(yeah sounds hotshot), sipping coffee on your workstation while punching on keyboard incessantly and pretending to like coffee, seeing your manager candidly nibbling on pan masala and lewdly checking out some chick, getting "God! he knows fuck all about accounts" look from your seniors  you sometimes most of the times lose it, and these are the times when you wish for a  getaway, and cab was exactly that and more. You get to know that you are not the only one lying at the bottom of and getting  screwed by the delegation chain. You share that us against them kind of bonhomie with the cab mates, the bond fosters and you start to care about people which is shown as permitted by cab rules by ridiculing them. It's not only about ridiculing (though it occupies lion share) but goes on to the silly little gestures like cancelling cabs and coordinating to be able to go in the same cab,at the eleventh sending urgent deliverable work and still communicating about the cab timings,mindlessly running to catch the cab while others wait and cabby frowns, preparing for farewells with personalized cards, the endless dumb charades are some of those cute nonsensical things that make you smile even while writing about them.

We hardly care about these little quirks that time, we are more spent in living this new tough looking 9 to 5 life and the cab time seems like one of its facet which makes it bearable but we realize the importance of this little bliss after its gone and then you think about all the time whether you could have added more, had more fun, made much more use of that time had you not been dozing off in the morning cabs, but all this ranting sounds like the yearning of a greedy child who can't get enough of anything that made him happy and is now taken away.

Quote/ Unquote

Be kind. For everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle

                                                                            -Plato            

Be alert. For everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle and you have to kick his ass left, right and centre in this battle coz you know its a battle and you're my bitch and  i dig wars, battles, strategy and all that shit

                                                                        -Sun Tzu

 Get a life dude, stop googling my stuff for half of it ain't even mine,
 I didn't  ramble about love and shit all the time.
P.S. Fuck you deepak chopra for cashing in on my name.

                                                                                -The ever so poignant Rumi  (to all the chicks who claim to love his stuff for the Romanticism it exudes in them but candidly agree that they cut copy paste his stuff for they are vying that emo looking guy or other way round )

Time and again we fall for a quote or a line mentioned somewhere or the other. Some are anonymous, some by great people,but we hardly ever question the authenticity of these quotes and etch them in our minds, make them ours. For instance I always loved the be kind quote and used to address it to plato after so much of what google told, it must be true but the fact is that he never said it  nor did he say anything about people who forget the past being condemned to repeat it.But he has the fortune of wrongly being credited for these quotes.The world, especially the worldwide web is filled with fake platos and rumis. In a world of branding even quotes go by the maxim jo dikhta hai wo bikta hai.Quoting people looks good, particularly in front of people, shows your worldliness and looks even better if you add a big intellectual name as the source of the quote. I remember quoting jim morrison for "If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite" for it is jim morrison that people recognize and not William Blake.  With the rise of social media everyone is looking for a quick witty remark and quotable quote which may give him or her retweets and mentions and thus a great social following.
It's not always about famous people and famous quotes, some of the most heart felt and honest quotes are the things said by family and friends.These are the quotes we keep with us and replay in our mind time and again, something funny something emotional and most of the time preachy.  I for one feel great paraphrasing and reproducing something my parent said, there is that proud feeling talking like them and broadcasting their view. The authenticity of these is way more than for any of the hotshot quotes.  But as Tom Stoppard said - It's better to be quotable than to be honest. ”.

I feel it's other way round, you can know plethora of things and you can be quotable but sometimes not knowing much can really be blissful, I would like to quote Alexander Pope just like Kirsten Dunst so calmly does in the movie Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind, which for a fact will make you fall in love with Kate winslet for her weird hair colors and her crazy ways  :

 How happy is the blameless vestal's lot;

The world forgetting by the world forgot.

Eternal Sunshine of the spotless mind

Each prayer accepted and each wish resigned 

Jo lade deen ke het sura sohi !

Hospitals are not supposed to be likeable places, no matter how grand they appear, or how many snazzy fast food chains they may sport within their premises they still reek of sadness. So I was at a "Super Specialty" Hospital few days back waiting  to meet a  friend who was recovering from his operation and they had this small corner of the waiting room converted into temple with people sitting and praying and others reading Hanuman chalisa and other spiritual text. At first it seemed little bit filmy to me,  people praying for their dear ones in a hospital sitting on ground, all devoted, ringing temple bells ,but the intensity and desperation  made it hard for to me to mock them or even question the public display of faith. For spending time there made me realize how much people mean to each other and how much power and energy you get sitting in front of god, even if it is in gloomiest of places.
The gesture reminded me of this hair raising scene  , the song, signifying the daredevilry and spirit of the sikhs is from tv movie Tamas, based on a short story by Bhisham sahni set in the time before independence depicting the widespread communal riots and all the politics that govern them. This particular scene just leaves you awestruck. Uttara Baokar after seeing male members of the group go to fight against the rioters who have surrounded them , starts singing this battle cry by herself  and inspires the rest of ladies to join her and in a way prepare them for the big sacrifice, knowing that the rioters would get better of the group's men she arouses the whole group to go ahead and jump into well and die rather than get molested by the rioters. Every time I watch this scene I find myself speechless, awed by the strength shown by the group of ladies.Though initially while watching it I felt queasy and funny for the gravity of the situation, people fighting and killing each other outside & this maniac lady starts to get on with the song rather than prepare to attack or even help the men. Slowly as the scene unfolds you see the magnanimity of the act and the helplessness. And for a moment when you start to think it's a silly short story about which you are getting so sentimental about and then you hear the director confirming that these acts were actually performed by a group of ladies in Rawalpindi making it really bitter.
Talk about  Jewish holocausts and other western mishaps that are terrible to talk about even today, somehow I feel the above marked tragedies qualify for same kind of respect and retrospection but end up hardly ever being talked about globally .

Cold Turkey

Cold turkey is a phrase I got to know while reading Shantaram, it is basically  this phase when one tries to get rid of one's addiction. The addiction in question is usually of a grave nature like for drugs et al. Thus the efforts required to get off the addiction are intense and usually require complete cut off from the drug or the substance in question. This phase of complete refrain is called as Cold turkey. What is termed as the toughest stage in the recovery from substance abuse, Cold turkey may be called by the name due to the numbness and shivers experienced by the addict in the recovery as the body and mind still in habit of the drug completely lose it when they are not provided with the supply. But Google and Wiki may beg to differ. But as much as what I have learned  while reading and watching movies like Trainspotting and Basketball diaries is that restlessness and the desperation suffered is the origin of the phrase. Looking back at the movies, I have mentioned basketball diaries here earlier as well and Trainspotting is this weird short story turned into a movie which is good one time watch.

We all have our own- days of cold turkey, when  we are in a way addicted to some thing not necessarily drug but anything from a gadget to a habit to food to internet for that matter(to particular sites, if I may say so which may help hone our sociability quotient) and the addiction does not seem unhealthy at first. It is pretty funny thinking about getting rid of these plain little addictions of our daily life that keep on weeding on our daily routine. There comes a time when you realize how big these things in your life are and how difficult it is to get rid of them. Detachment is the first step and then is the battle against the urge, which as mentioned is detrimental. Perhaps the only leeway there with respect to drugs is the fact that we don't have to stop with our addiction at once, we can perhaps phase it out or moderate it by our ways and conviction. But as they say Old habits, die hard, one relapse or give in to the urge and we are back to scratch. The stigma with drug and other substances is what makes us look at it differently although the fact remains that any addiction is as grave as another, as is the cold turkey related with it.

Heaven and Hell.

' Only a wicked man would derive such benefit from good works. A good man, on the other hand, would simply be worn out and bad tempered'

One of those lines that makes you remember a story by. For me Shantaram, with all its thrills and the goofy love story, is rather about these words.

 Time and again i think about these line and it kills me (like the old sport Holden used to ), partly due to the abundance of time, partly due to lack of any schedule and partly due to the undeniable genuineness of the statement.  Aren't  we all doing good things to compensate for the past bad deeds?  I for one try this sort of cleansing exercise because there are so many past wrongs that cannot be righted that all that remains with us in order to overcome that sense of guilt is to do a good deed. We all have this dark side, filled with things we are not proud of, things that remain with us for way too long,things that propel us to and most of the time dwarf all these good deeds. In short there is hardly a deed that is bona fide per say, we all try to look for 'what is in it for me' part of any deed.

Thinking about what's there in it for me in upcoming time, pretty much everything! innit? (i always wanted to use 'innit' after watching goodness gracious me, feels like a dream come true for me *brushes away the proud tears*)  Having freedom after so long feels good, not receiving a message on the second last day of every month informing me that a certain amount has been credited to my account feels bad. There remains a lot of good and bad of this time off  that i can jot down here, but the biggest thing right now is to get over this little year long hiatus from this space and start shitting my mind out.

INDENTATION

This whole past week i have:-

• constantly hummed 'people are strange' for no particular reason
• realized that people are really strange plus they think you are stranger from the constant humming and singing
• respected punctuality and have shown a bit of it myself for a change
• had verbal diarrhea and  started to zip my mouth off  more often until and unless i have this dire urge to sing 'people are strange'
• listened to people saying fu...and then ultimately nibble off the last two alphabets in front of seniors, that too when they were teaching us.
• laughed(not my ass off)  like some weirdo with this jerky and sporadic laugh after hearing the above word being uttered and then being asked by the seniors about what the joke was despite the fact that the whole batch had joined in after me.*FACE PALM*
• gone sober on a night when everyone around me was not and then acted as a mother hen to all. Tchah.
• learned that cabs are different sort of kingdom, and if you are not liked you may have to take refuge in the front seat, sleeping your way to home while others chitter chatter and laugh at senseless crap while you even if not feeling sleepy still have to pretend to be sleepy and apathetic to the senseless jokes.
• yearned for weekend like anything.
• given football a pass, skipped watching the final, talk about being drastic.