It changed me

Just writing about some things that I think changed me, or at least a part of me

A Writer and two books: Fountainhead/Atlas Shrugged, yes it did make a difference, and it does make a difference in the great domain of lower minds, the indispensable engine of this world. After reading them, a lot of us start idolizing Howard Roark , in this great competitive circus, where everyone is so proudly replicating Peter Keating lives, these old fictions come up as a reality check, as an honest mirror display! There is one more impact Ayn Rand has on your thought process and that is the ignition of the ‘so-what’ mindset. And believe me, the ‘so-what’ mindset is far calmer that the ‘what-if’ mindset.

A Bank: Another book that impacted me immensely is the freshly completed ‘Banker to the poor’, which talks about Grameen bank, its genesis, functioning, people, and a lot of things about it. For someone who has believes that the world economy is depressingly polar, this story came as a hammer, and a followed up relief. Very motivating and logical. The biggest question that has been asked to the world still remains “How do we eliminate poverty from the face of the world”, in our lifetimes; a few answers like Grameen bank will help. Amen!

A Movie: I love movies, from ek ruka hua faisla to Amelie, from the incredibles to Raincoat, from Memento and the butterfly effect to Ghost World, I love them all. They entertain me to the core. And in this midst of all these great movies and the great directors, arrived ‘Into the Wild’, the only movie that I have gone back again and again and again. I just can’t get enough of it. And even if the movie’s magnetic field diminishes, the music and lyrics of this movie takes over. I once told about this movie to my simple very motherly mother, she quietly asked me ‘Everything’s ok son?’, she surely loves me a lot :). Time to quote from a song from the movie

When you want more than you have, you think you need…
and when you think more then you want, your thoughts begin to bleed.
I think I need to find a bigger place…
cause when you have more than you think, you need more space.

A Person: Ravi Gulati. Met him only twice, and I am a fan of his, admiration comes up naturally for this IIM A graduate who runs a subtle NGO called Manzil based in Delhi where he teaches under privileged kids necessary skills.  One of most humble persons you will ever meet, and he will surely make you rethink and ask ‘What am I doing?’, anyways I think I am still young, and I cant run away saying that for a long time. Though I admire him a lot, but I wouldn’t say that he changed me, in that category only one person can fall, and that’s ‘She’, call it obvious, call it bourgeoisie, call it rule-of-world, but I am a different person when I am with her, a different person for her. We are two different ends of this world, but it clicks and it clicks pretty well for our comfort. I am always asking questions, feeling sad, wanting to do this to do that, and she has a pretty simple solution to my mental turbulences – ‘Why do you think so much’ and thus she conveniently shuts me off. But I guess it’s time for me to tell her on a public platform, thanks for being there!

There are more things that changed me, events, more people, my stay at my college DA-IICT, my stay at Mumbai and Bangalore, troubled times at home, my dad’s drinking habit and his management skills, and perhaps a few more. And my own belief that a person changes completely in a span of 4-5 years, lets see, if that continues to happen.

This is not a tag post, but i would like if some of my blogmates pen a similar post, it would be interesting, so requesting the following to pen the same:

Luthra, Shakti, Ankit, Richa, Naresh, Navin, Kamiya, Steve, Biraja, eesha, Desh, Vineet, Prateek

Daybreak

Sun in the earth.. sunflower
Bird in the air …rain
Eye within eye… daybreak

Streets we have never walked on
Windows we have never opened
Hands we have never held
Dreams we shall never ..never see again

Lives we have never lived
Hopes ..we have never realized
Fires we have never lit
Loves… we shall never .. never make again

Sun in the earth sunflower
Bird in the air rain
Eye within eye daybreak

I hear those strange whispers again…..

– Hazaaron Khwahishein Aisi

And believe me, it sounds even better.

Image Source: http://www.deviantart.com

Into the wild

“The sea’s only gifts are harsh blows, and occasionally the chance to feel strong. Now I don’t know much about the sea, but I do know that that’s the way it is here. And I also know how important it is in life not necessarily to be strong but to feel strong. To measure yourself at least once. To find yourself at least once in the most ancient of human conditions. Facing the blind death stone alone, with nothing to help you but your hands and your own head.” – Alexandar Supertramp

Into the wild, directed by Sean Penn, story of a twenty three year old graduate exhausted of life, pursuing freedom, pursuing truth and pursuing reason. After completing his graduation and troubled by things with his family, he decides to move on, literally! Devoids himself of all his possessions and identity he starts his journey towards north, meeting people reading books eating edible leaves and forest fruits.

I don’t feel like reviewing this movie, I am still digesting the movie, surely want to see this one a couple more times, want to get back its dialogues and a lot more little things about it. There are a lot of things that were said and done during this 150 minute life journey of Alex which needs another go at it. Ya, but I must mention for all the brothers and sisters from ‘love pearl jam’ community that it features a lot of sound tracks, and the vocals are all by Eddie Vedder, looking to download the songs from somewhere, if you have them, please share.

The movie has a few extreme moments when he moves into a complete nomad mode, he shots a moose dead, takes out his heart (correct me if i am wrong!) does activities with it and regrets it at the end of it. He tries to get all the wisdom from the books he reads (other than his delusive thought process) and gets the motivation to call things by their appropriate name; and then he’s off to the jungle weeds again, calling them by their appropriate scientific names.

Solitude is what he wanted and wisdom is what he received. Into the wild should be seen, for reasons more than just sensory. Not many of us are born Christopher McCandless, not many of us will die Alexandar Supertramp

Movies…..

Ah, finally I have seen some movies. In last month or so I have felt like college days, new movies new music, cricket, football everything is back. It’s spring time!!!

Mithya, Whats eating Gilbert Grape, Dead man’s shoes, Fantasia-2000, The squid and the whale, The blue umbrella and hopefully will see taxi driver and 10000 bc in next week.

Mithya, I always wanted to see that movie for its star cast, and i was not as disappointed as rest of my friends who saw it with me. They were laughing their asses out in the first half and still came out unsatisfied. It’s time I must agree that movie making isn’t an easy task, and even if it is, making people like it is absolutely one hell of a job. Anyways, it was a good movie, a 7.5 flick, all I din’t like about it was the quick ending. It was too sudden for me. As soon as the movie gets its pace, it ends. But still, a wonderful act.

What’s eating Gilbert Grape, I didn’t know that Leonardo was a child artist! And certainly one of the better ones. It’s one of those smooth, light-hearted, close to life movies where you can just sit and enjoy. Movies which will give you enough time and intensity to look at the cinematographical aspects, screenplay, emotions etc, reminded me of one of my all time favs garden state. Another 7.5 stuff. But all can say about Gilbert is Johnny Depp is Johnny Depp. Period

Dead man’s shoes, its all about revenge, crime, death and blood. Exactly the kind of stuff I don’t buy. And to add to my agony it carries the brit accent. After all this, I can just say, I loved it. Best of the lot that I have mentioned. See it, it’s my 8.5. Wonderful stuff wrapped in ninety minutes

Fantasia-2000, it’s Walt Disney, it’s animation, it’s music, it’s Mickey mouse and Donald duck, it’s childhood, it’s smiles, it’s Disneyland, it’s all that this world wants, its peace, its utopia, it’s Fantasia.

Blue umbrella deserves a post on its own, so that can be removed from the list. The squid and the whale, read it on IMDB.

Cheers!!!

I ‘Bheja fried’ myself last night….

…and I just now realised that it could taste so well. Even after reading a critical critic’s review of the movie, where it was said to be an avoidable drag, I had a bubbly urge to go for it and reviews from some of my friends made my desires firm. And now after finally seeing it I would say it was one hundred minutes of pure desi ghee fun, Vinay Pathak (Mr. Bharat Bhushan) plays the central character, who is given the chance to fry your bheja or at least everyone else’s who are working in the movie, and to say the least, he does it brilliantly. The last time I remember someone playing the annoy-you-to-lose-your-senses role so well was Manoj Bajpai in ‘Kaun’ and ‘Road’. Debutant director Sagar Bellary’s motivation for this movie is Academy Award winner Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, a 1967 Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn flick.

Rajat Kapoor and Sarika play the ‘lets play smile-frown-kiss-frustrate’ Mumbai couple and associated to their lives are Milind Soman and the girl who plays Suman Rao to add confusion and turbulence in their happy, married, buy costly painting and different cars for different people lives. And then enters the Friday night idiot Mr. Bharat Bhushan, who ensures that he makes their life worse, not better at least, but with all good intentions and music knowledge. He is a man who speaks his heart out (his heart, perhaps his heart, his lungs, his lever, and his intestines out!) and then he sings, he is a killer deal.

Ranvir Shourie plays Tax inspector Asif Merchant and like every time else, he is witty and comic, in spite of the fact that he over does it in this movie, he is real fun for the little screen time he gets. His chemistry with Vinay is turning the whole comedy scenario into a trend metamorphism, and it reminds me of the early eighties Farukh Sheikh and Amol Palekar subtle, comic and light weight display of the great Indian middle class and their day to day drudgeries. But, on the contrary, this time the centre of mass shifts to the good living and comfortable yet discontent lives of the upper middle class (in accordance with the inflation and the upgrade of Indian middle classes’ standard of living in past 25 years).

To sum it up, if you are one of those guys who find all the comic elements moving around you stupid, or you are among those who feel that they are the real kings of wit and situational comedy, or you are the big moustache no nonsense guy, or whoever you are, you can go and get your bheja fried and you won’t find a better chef than Mr. Bharat Bhushan, and yea make sure you take someone along with you who feels that you are an annoying person, and make that person realize that how worse it could have been if you were him. Cheers to Vinay, Sagar and Team, Great job!

Image Source: Sulekha

The Namesake

A little observation of two movies The Namesake and Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham

– Both based in the USA and India in parallel space and time.

– Both talk about two generations of developing India and the gap.

– Both deal with culture divide (to some extent, for sure)

– Both have the issue of non-conventional marriages

– Both directed by renowned directors of their times.

– But, both of them can be precisely distinguished in two distinct genres of movies.

So I was finally impelled and tied to the theatre seat for once to see a movie, and hence killing the sloth god in me. But at the end of it, I was the one who came out stuffed with satisfaction. For once, during the movie when there wasn’t much discussion taking place on screen, I was wondering that what makes this movie so placidly entertaining and I realized that it’s the lack of major Bollywood ingredients – noise, gloss and overplay of emotions, drama and the great Indian circuses. So subtle in its own domain, the movie walks at a leisurely pace, giving a complete worth for the viewer’s time (finding worth for your money, depends on your yardsticks) and senses.

Tabu has always impressed me, in spite of her very few recent appearances on celluloid, she looks amazing in all the different moulds she does in the movie. She plays Ashima and lives her fully in span of two and a half hours. A young Bengali girl, a lot fresh bride in a cold city on the other side of the globe, an old lady managing complexities of her life and her children’s. Irfan Khan justifies why he’s been getting all these offers from outside his own country and so little from his own. Amazing performer he is, without much hullabaloo he carries the role of Ashok Ganguly, doing complete justice to the fiction character.

Gogol, the character around which the whole movie rotates is played by Kal Penn (yes, the guy you watched in Harold & Kumar and American desi), who turns 30 today, but still manages to play a younger role with the same exuberance (and ignorance) of a youth, as required.

A fan of ‘The Interpreter of maladies’ by Jhumpa Lahiri, I now regret that I missed reading the book before the movie. ‘Salaam Bombay’, ‘Monsoon Wedding’ and now ‘The Namesake’, Mira Nair as thorough as she is controversial, ah, perhaps more thorough than controversial. For any Mira Nair, Jhumpa Lahiri, Tabu, Irfan khan fan this movie becomes an obvious must.

A lot of buddies have disliked the movie, a lot criticized it, some liked it, a few loved it and would be in the last category of them, the lovers, make your choice later, but for Godsake! Go and see it now, its getting off the screens, rush!

Waking Life

Quotes from an animation movie I like, Waking Life.

My comments on them would be an obscenity, so just read the screenplay writer’s !!

Speed Levitch:
The ongoing WOW is happening right NOW.

Philosophy Professor:
The reason why I refuse to take existentialism as just another French fashion or historical curiosity is that I think it has something very important to offer us… I’m afraid were losing the real virtues of living life passionately in the sense of taking responsibility for who you are the ability to make something of yourself and feel good about life. Existentialism is often discussed as if it were a philosophy of despair, but I think the truth is just the opposite. Sartre, once interviewed, said he never felt once minute of despair in his life. One thing that comes out from reading these guys is not a sense of anguish about life so much as a real kind of exuberance, of feeling on top of it, its like your life is yours to create. Ive read the post modernists with some interest, even admiration, but when I read them I always have this awful nagging feeling that something absolutely essential is getting left out. The more you talk about a person as a social construction or as a confluence of forces or as being fragmented of marginalised, what you do is you open up a whole new world of excuses. And when sartre talks about responsibilty, he’s not talking about something abstract. He’s not taling about the kind of self or souls that theologians would talk about. Hes talking about you and me talking, making descisions, doing things, and taking the consequences. It might be true that there are six billion people in this world, and counting, but nevertheless -what you do makes a difference. It makes a difference, first of all, in material terms, to other people, and it sets an example. In short, I think the message here is that we shouuld never write ourselves off or see eachother as a victim of various forces. It’s always our descision who we are.

Pinball Playing Man:
There’s only one instant, and it’s right now. And it’s eternity.

Man on the Train:
I haven’t seen too many(dreamers) around lately. Things have been tough lately for dreamers. They say dreaming is dead, no one does it anymore. It’s not dead it’s just that it’s been forgotten, removed from our language. Nobody teaches it so nobody knows it exists. The dreamer is banished to obscurity. Well, I’m trying to change all that, and I hope you are too. By dreaming, every day. Dreaming with our hands and dreaming with our minds. Our planet is facing the greatest problems it’s ever faced, ever. So whatever you do, don’t be bored, this is absolutely the most exciting time we could have possibly hoped to be alive. And things are just starting

Man with the Long Hair:
They say that dreams are only real as long as they last. Couldn’t you say the same thing about life?

Alex Jones:
Resistance is not futile, we’re gonna win this thing, humankind is too good, we’re not a bunch of under-achievers! We’re gonna stand up, and we’re gonna be human beings. We’re going to get fired up about the real things, the things that matter! Creativity, and the dynamic human spirit that refuses to submit.

Guy Forsyth:
Did you ever have a job that you hated and worked real hard at? A long, hard day of work. Finally you get to go home, get in bed, close your eyes and immediately you wake up and realize… that the whole day at work had been a dream. It’s bad enough that you sell your waking life for minimum wage, but now they get your dreams for free.

Quiet Woman at Restaurant:

When it was over, all I could think about was how this entire notion of oneself, what we are, is just this logical structure, a place to momentarily house all the abstractions. It was a time to become conscious, to give form and coherence to the mystery, and I had been a part of that. It was a gift. Life was raging all around me and every moment was magical. I loved all the people, dealing with all the contradictory impulses – that’s what I loved the most, connecting with the people. Looking back, that’s all that really mattered.

Sources :IMDB IMPAwards

Delicatessen

Delicatessen – A shop selling ready-to-eat food products. Thanks to the French movie festival at Nani Cinematheque. I got a chance to see this amazing movie. After already watching a good movie and a bad movie me, Chotu(hey, Saurabh Nandan!) and Divya were a little confused whether to go back for the third movie in a row and make it a complete French treat for an otherwise slothful dry Saturday. And thanks to that great Udupi restaurant at Miller road – Cunningham road junction and we had all the energy to go for the third movie of the day.

Totally dependent on subtitles for basic comprehension, we expected a nice light comedy to cheer us up. But! It started like a Ramsay brother classic. Dark ambience, a dull basement and a shuddery old butcher, oohh what a recipe for a comedy! But it looked amusing to all of us. Based in a post destruction times, it is so much like a depiction of a man eat man society but presented beautifully and comically to the comfort of viewers’ sentimental vibes.

The butcher, who is also the landlord of the apartment around which the movie revolves trades human flesh to grains and lentils! An ex-clown finds a job at his place and gets going with his daughter, who is lost in her own very very haze world! A lady haunted by some weird voices howling in her head, puts so much brain in killing herself, just to see something going wrong with the plan, every other time! A whole bunch of maniacs who stay in the sewers and look for grains here and there. And all these stories very well knitted together in a delicately beautiful manner giving you that jittery laugh all the way through.

And it’s not only the fun tale that moves on and on, it is amazing in its own meaning. A satirical attempt as it looks from the surface of it and presentation in a critical manner makes it an irresistible name in your to-do list.

What more to say about this? This 1991 Jean-Pierre Jeunet ( Amelie Fame) Classic is a must see!

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101700/

http://www.badmovies.org/movies/delicatessen/