m a n u s c r y p t s

Disclaimer: This is one of those trippy posts written purely for indulging the self.

It all started when we realised that we could never find Nagraj when work had to be done. Some even said he never responded anyway. And that’s when I suggested that we get a been, so that he would be forced to respond. And then I wondered if a been came with a been bag.

I nagged him about why he went missing. He said he was a movie buff and held the job only to pay bills. His favourite actress was Nagma. He slithered out to watch Bollywood snake videos on YouTube. That was his escape from the snake pit we called office. He called it his cobra pause.

Nagraj obviously had a bean bag, which he refused to lend. I challenged him to a game. Whoever got snake eyes first in a game of dice wins it. I was a charmer, but Nagraj was a hood. Punch me he did. He kept the bean bag, and I could never be a has been.

until next time, been there, done that

Sometime back, a friend and I were discussing Bollywood in general and then we somehow landed up on the subject of Aditya Pancholi. Oh, okay, if you’ve forgotten him already, refresh your memory with Wikipedia.  The last I heard of him was when he tried to give Kangana Ranaut a lift, the story was she didn’t want it. During the discussion, I was able to ‘regurgitate’ information about him, stuff I’m guessing few track, since she is also a Bollywood buff , but wasn’t able to recollect. No, don’t go away, this post is not about him.

This is about the place that gave me different kinds of education at different stages of my life. A couple of years after I started going to school, I was also deemed responsible enough to go to the nearby barber shop and get myself a haircut. After a few months, it was noticed that the time I took was way longer than warranted. I tried to get away by saying that there was a crowd before me, but my mother had a sneaking suspicion that I was playing cricket for a while before I came home. I wasn’t lying, but she was close to being right too. The barber had realised that I could easily be persuaded to wait, while he dealt even with those who came after me, if he gave me the video games he had. The complete version of the truth was discovered after a few months, when a rather long gaming session caused quite a stir at home, and my gaming education lost its continuity.

In later years, after my childhood faults were forgotten/forgiven and the time I spent outside wasn’t so strictly regulated, it was noticed that  my haircut trips had suddenly regained their lost long duration. Though I claimed I was spending time with guys i knew, my mother had a sneaking suspicion that I was with friends of the opposite gender. I wasn’t lying, but she was again, close. For these trips was also when I caught up with Sridevi, Juhi, Madhuri, Kimi, and later, Raveena, Karishma, Urmila, Manisha etc, in addition to Big B, Mithunda, Jackie Shroff , and later Govinda,  Anil Kapoor, Sanjay Dutt, Chunky Pandey etc -  Filmfare and Stardust were read from cover to cover diligently, and random bits of information about actors and actresses were stored. They were always surprised at home, when I expounded on actors’ and actresses’ lives and the gossip surrounding them, since we never got the magazines at home. Some of the Bollywood education has obviously been retained in the memory bank even after more than a decade.

This magazine habit still continues, despite getting a daily fill thanks to newspapers, TV and the web, who consider Big B catching a cold breaking news. When we move to a new location, and I have to go to a new salon, I make sure that the place is well stacked with magazines. There are so many more sources, and so much more content these days, but reading the magazines is a way of being in touch – with the past.

Meanwhile, my paternal genes attack me from the temples and my maternal genes attack me from the vertex. When it happens, I’ll miss the hair, and the heady education, the haircuts provide.

until next time, fountainhead

He: Aa Dekhe Zara..
She: Kya?
He: Watchmen
She: and I thought you’d prefer Bips. You want to “Watchmen”
He: very funny! So shall we go?
She: No, I don’t want to watch a comic strip!!
He: It’s a comic book
She: so maybe the comic can book the tickets and watch it by himself?

until next time, stripped of comic standing

And sometimes, in the strangest of places, you find food for thought. ‘The Peddler of Soaps’ by Anand Kurian, which I had expected to give me only some entertainment, and not points to ponder, did the former quite well, and tucked away in a page, a paragraph that provided the latter too.

Because a group is always a compromise, an intellectual or an ethical compromise. And a compromise always involves the lowest common denominator

I thought about it a bit, and found that I agreed. And it doesn’t even have to be a group. It can even be two individuals, and can involve any of the relationships we have with each other. Friendship, marriage, relatives, professional groups and so on.

While in the case of close relationships, we might tend to agree with each other most of the time, there are several times when we reach a compromise, sometimes with the other person, but mostly with ourselves, for the sake of the relationship, and the value we attach to it. In fact this value is also the factor that makes us compromise in casual relationships, and larger groups, in which case, the value is perhaps social acceptance.

Sometimes we forget these compromises, and at other times, they have a long shelf life, like open sores that never go away, as though to remind us that there was a choice, and a different decision might have led to the fulfillment of what we were meant to be. I wonder, by these compromises, do we forsake ourselves?

until next time, for the sake of….

Ever since I saw Via Darjeeling, I’ve had this thought. In every movie that I’ve seen, the hero has to be victorious at the end. The villain never wins.

Of course, there are movies with tragic endings, where the hero dies in the end, but its always due to life circumstances than the villain in particular. Also, in Bollywood multi starrer movies of yore, whenever the number of heroines was lesser than the heroes, one hero was destined to die somewhere before the end. Sholay like scenarios, where its technically impossible for the hero and heroine to get hitched, are also included in this. There are also side heroes who end up martyrs. Add to this, the various instances of heroine/brother/mother/ human friend/ dog friend etc taking revenge on the villain  (the last one was specifically included for Teri Meherbaniyan) and you never see the villain win. Anti heroes always have a justification.

We obviously don’t have a problem with unhappy endings. There are umpteen number of films that have become hits thanks to the hero’s tragic death in the end. So what makes films shy away from endings with a triumphant villain? Is it a self created rule to make sure that good always wins in good vs evil? Because people watch films as an escape from real life, and cannot digest real life on reel life? Why can’t we digest endings where a villain wins?

So will you pay to watch a movie where the villain wins in the end, or will you stay away because you’d feel cheated with such an ending? How about books with this theme?

until next time, know any exceptions?

PS. Bollywood/Hollywood (like say, Arlington Road), I can’t handle subtitled stuff

And once in a while a movie comes along that makes you want to write a note on it. No, Drona, Karzzz, LS2050 don’t exactly fall into the category that I meant.

A lot of discussion happened before I saw Dasvidaniya, mostly on twitter, and many thanks to one person who put the idea of a review in my head. I might have let laziness overcome me if not for that. And so, while i will not go about doing a long drawn review, I shall try to pen down the thoughts that came to me as I watched the movie.

The film worked for me, and the major portion of the credit would go to Vinay Pathak, who has carved a niche for himself, that no other actor can occupy now. It started with Bheja Fry and a few shades of that character can be found in this too. While the basic story idea has been used several times, it is the actor and the situations that makes it endearing and believable.

It’s the story of a relatively uncomplicated human being, but thanks to a single situation that arises, his life is forced on to a much faster pace than he’s used.  My heart went out to him, when he asks ‘Why me?’ . That one sentence captures the angst of a man who has lived all his life doing the right things, but is yet treated unfairly even by the cosmos. Meanwhile, he lives his life based on a day to day ‘Things to do’ list that he religiously maintains. A meek person who is pushed around by everyone and life, the list is what gives meaning to his life, right from buying vegetables to repairing his momma’s hearing aid to several mundane things that we would regard as well, mundane. But like he himself says, he is not ambitious. Even when pushed, his dreams (in the beginning) are only a car, saying No to his boss, a foreign trip etc; yes, nothing great, but it’s typical of the man’s character, and you end up liking him all the more for it.

Through the journey of one man, the story shows how simple human existence can be, if only we let it be, how it is possible to love unconditionally, if only we let it happen, and how there is an innate bond between human beings, if only we care to show it. But like a couple of characters in the movie show, at some point, the selfishness that we see around us, and perhaps within us, has created in us, a cynical outlook, and we force on ourselves, a complicated existence. So much so, that (like in the movie) we’d not believe that when, after a dozen years, someone wants to visit us, its only for the pleasure of seeing us.

Yes, it is possible to live, without strings attached to everything we do or say; and by living so, it is possible to create great joy not just in us, but those around us too.. someday, hopefully, we can live this lesson.

until next time, time is running out

PS : So, some might turn around and say “Oh, The Bucket List”, and to those I’d say, for the majority of Bollywood lovers who understand Gunmaster G9, this works way better.

Somewhere in the first half, Himesh sings “Hari Om. With the twang, it sounds like ‘Hurry Home’. I didn’t heed it. As the movie moved towards the climax, and Himself confronts Urmila, who plays the vamp, I half expected Him to sing ‘Ch***** banaya’ in tune with his old hit. This time I’d have agreed.

until next time, but hey, its a must watch

He supposed he would just have to go through with it. After all they had warned him of this about 5 minutes after they started. He remembered the exact words “ ..aur aise shuru hua Drona ka safar” They were right, with a small modification – from then on, the audience was forced to suffer Drona.

until next time, drone arrgh!!

PS. It also inspired me to get verse  -

Ticket ke paise khona, aur theatre main jaake sona..

Yehi hain Yaaron Drona, jise dekhke aaya mujhe rona…

Saw ‘Rock On’ during the weekend, and as always, Farhan Akhtar did not disappoint. No reviews here, just a few thoughts that the movie provoked, so even if you haven’t watched the movie, read on.

Inspite of the movie’s tagline – ‘Live your dream’, I thought it dwells more on choices we make as human beings, the directions we take at crossroads, the compromises we make as a result of those, and the implications of those choices, some of which we have to live with, our whole life.  That, i guess, is why the movie worked for me, after all ‘Choices’ is perhaps the largest tag item on this blog.

All of us have dreams, right from the time we were asked who we wanted to be when we grew up, and perhaps before that too. There are those who pursue it without deviating at all, there are those who compromised in between, but came back to them because living with the choice we made was difficult, and then there are those who live with a choice that did not include their dreams. The film shows all of the above, in addition to one more set – those who live a compromised version of their dreams.

So, there are those who follow their dreams, there are those who choose not to, but the tragedy doesn’t end there, as gray shades are abundant. Those who are never able to figure out what they want, who live in a limbo of multiple alternate realities, those who chase the dream only to figure out that it wasn’t what they thought it’d be, and lose the spark in their eye forever, as a life is gambled away.

Compromise – that was the keyword. While its very easy to see that a choice out of our dreams would involve lots of it, the movie also made me think about the other side of the fence. When a person pursues his passion/dream with all his heart, does he also harbor a feeling of having ‘compromised’ on the (for lack of  a better word) fun part of his life,  or the  materialistic things that he could’ve afforded if he had put his dream on the shelf? The opportunity costs arriving out of following what one considers his destiny? Will he be a mirror reflection of those of us who compromise and wish for that chance to live at least once before we cease to exist? Or would he have achieved a private utopia as a reward for sticking to his dreams? Or does that utopia exist only in others’ minds? What happens when you’re the only individual gold medalist your nation has produced, and you still fell a sense of ennui/hollowness,  a feeling of having missed out

Which leads me to a question i read sometime back – ‘Is dissatisfaction in the nature of existence’, and irrespective of what we do, the climax has already been decided?

As for the movie, it speaks about something many of us can relate to, and it is ‘feel good’, er, except for the part where i was met with stern gazes when i sang ‘Popcorn, hain yeh waqt ka ishara’ during the interval. So, you see, I do it all to myself.

until next time, bedrock

PS. A nice read on the movie.

Caught ‘Mumbai Meri Jaan’ on the weekend, was propelled to the theatre by the cast – Kay Kay, Irrfan, Paresh Rawal, Vijay Maurya. I’m not going to attempt a review, and will limit the post to a few nuggets and a strong recommendation to go watch the movie. I think the movie worked for me because almost all the lead characters were ones I could identify or empathise with.

Vijay Maurya (Dawood in Black Friday, Jam K in the horrible ‘Bombay to Bangkok.. hmm, thats a coincidence, all the 3 movies have a Mumbai link) for his rage and helplessness against the system he is part of.

Irrfan, for the agony that he feels, on the way he, as a citizen from the lower strata of the economy, is treated by those more fortunate than him, but for still retaining the innate goodness of his character.

Kay Kay, for the indignation and the impulsive mistrust of Muslims.

Paresh Rawal (bless the director and scriptwriter for reminding me of the original Paresh Rawal, the one before the morass of his recent movies and Priyadarshan happened to his career) for the cynicism and acceptance of the system he is part of, but still retaining a part of himself that can be stung by someone pointing this out to him. His cynicism is just amazing. Check out this nugget, “Arre, blast ke baad agar bar khule nahi rahenge, to Mumbai ka spirit kahan se aayega” and the part where he says (to paraphrase) ” a long time ago, we joined seven islands to make Mumbai. After the 7 blasts on 7/11, I felt we were being split into 7 again”

But most importantly, Madhavan, the 30+ corporate executive, who refuses to buy a car because he does not want to contribute to the city’s pollution, who refuses to take up opportunities abroad because of a sense of patriotism, who advises a roadside vendor to stop using plastic….

I could identify a lot with the last character, especially when he is shown doubting the choices he has made as well as his sticking with them, as people close to him berate him, doubting whether an individual can make a difference. A doubt that forces him to ask his NRI friend, on his India visit, whether he’s really happy there…the conversation that follows, that highlights how human beings are in the same situation across the globe. And one that reinforced a personal belief for me, happiness is within me, and the most important battles I have to win, are those against myself.

until next time, exorcise demons daily