tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17668961901713649042024-02-19T17:55:03.512-08:00little gold fishesmukul sharmahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04903714182994554289noreply@blogger.comBlogger20125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1766896190171364904.post-71200300117620264662010-06-05T01:51:00.000-07:002010-06-07T10:15:31.792-07:00Tales from the Hills (Vol.I)<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEit-BemfJcSbb51rFRJszZExpZHNJMa2HBiX2feH9MaIk7lCGgFzsw8HfeMqYFL2kaGeaJJieGjkJavEP4ZWPcooLwXpp9PSRav11gsmLFen1b4zwtRCwNPMSOSIgW_XSUzjhp94a_Lqg/s1600/800px-Landour,_Mussoorie,_1869.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 222px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEit-BemfJcSbb51rFRJszZExpZHNJMa2HBiX2feH9MaIk7lCGgFzsw8HfeMqYFL2kaGeaJJieGjkJavEP4ZWPcooLwXpp9PSRav11gsmLFen1b4zwtRCwNPMSOSIgW_XSUzjhp94a_Lqg/s320/800px-Landour,_Mussoorie,_1869.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5480014088006174370" border="0" /></a>
<br /></span> <meta equiv="CONTENT-TYPE" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"> <title></title> <meta name="GENERATOR" content="OpenOffice.org 2.3 (Linux)"> </div><style type="text/css"> <!-- @page { size: 8.5in 11in; margin: 0.79in } P { margin-bottom: 0.08in } --> </style> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;" align="justify"><span style="font-size:100%;">I've read Ruskin Bond's stories but I didn't exactly grow up on them. For that matter, my familiarity with Tintin, Astreix or Archie is also limited to the bare minimum. In the earlier years, it were mostly the Hindi comics or periodicals which fueled my imagination and later I was enthralled by the words of Enid Blyton and lost in the adventures of Hardy Boys and Mr. Holmes. But Ruskin Bond had been around; and time and again I would pick up one of his books. Even though I have read most of his works at a much older age and am still discovering him, still Ruskin Bond's stories throw me back in a bout of nostalgia; of times when life was simple and innocence was not quite dead.</span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;" align="justify"><span style="font-size:100%;">I think that's why everyone specially the grown ups like Ruskin Bond because it brings back their childhood. In a way its odd that I feel nostalgic after reading Ruskin Bond because I did not grow up in a small town like Dehra or Mussoorie, I'd not seen the hills he describes till recently and I did not even read him voraciously as a kid. Still reading Ruskin Bond today brings back the memories of childhood, summer vacations, simple people, small towns, grand parents.</span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;" align="center"><span style="font-size:100%;">********</span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;" align="justify"><span style="font-size:100%;">One of the things that I was looking forward to after moving to Delhi was getaways to hills. So far I'd lived in Jaipur, Bangalore and Bombay and while each of these is a beautiful city, I did not get the time and the opportunity to see the fabled hills. There were a few visits to places like Coorg, Munnar and Nepal but I was yet to see the 'hill stations' of the north. </span> </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;" align="justify"><span style="font-size:100%;">Finally after a couple of aborted attempts mostly due to unreliable companions, I got on to the train to Dehradun with a wait listed return ticket. The scheduled arrival time of the train in Dehra was 5.30 AM. One of the perils of traveling alone and sleeping on the upper berth is that no body wakes you up when the train terminates. So at around 5.45 in the morning I started cursing the Railways in my sleep for switching the AC off. This went around for fifteen minutes when my sleepy head processed the information and told me that the AC should only have stopped if the train had terminated. I got up with a jolt and realized that I was the only person left in the train. Thankfully my bag was still there and I coolly walked off the train with no damage done. At six the morning the platform at Dehradun Station looked surprisingly sparse. I didn't particularly feel a chill in the air but it was certainly cooler than the scorching Delhi heat but then I never get up at six o'clock in Delhi so can't really vouch for that. The station proclaimed to have been around since 1899 (or something, I wasn't taking notes) which I found a bit funny because a station doesn't need to establish its authenticity or credibility like a shop selling sweetmeats. As I walked out, I was surprised to see a lack of auto/ taxi drivers giving multiple choice questions that are invariably encountered outside the stations. Nor were there any coolies to remind you that being a white collared guy, you can't possibly lift your own luggage. There was a taxi stand outside where it was theoretically possible to get a shared taxi till Mussoorie for eighty bucks. The only problem was that there was not one more tourist in sight and taking a look at the rickety local bus I decided to take the taxi on my own. It cost 500 bucks, cheaper than Borivali to Nariman Point, I thought. As we passed through, I caught a few glimpses of Dehra waking up. There were not too many people on the roads and hardly any morning walkers but the roads looked clean and the air smelled fresh. </span> </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;" align="justify"><span style="font-size:100%;">In a few minutes, the car, a regal Ambassador, started making its way up the serpentine mountain roads. <span style="font-style: normal;"> If I may suggest, an iPod (or any other equivalent), is a must carry for any single traveler. Good background music always accentuates the visual experience. So, I listened to the beautiful soundtrack of </span><i>Once, </i><span style="font-style: normal;">admiring the beauty of mountain roads and the spectacular view of the forest cover. About one and a half hours later, I got dropped off at the Library end of the Mall Road which according to my Internet research was the bustling center of Mussoorie. The fact that saw a total of two cars and three rickshaws confirmed that hill stations wake up late. I walked a bit on the mall road and its extension called the hill road both overlooking the beautiful valley. I had read about an old colonial hotel called the </span><i>Hakim Grand</i><span style="font-style: normal;">. I was harbouring grand hopes about it but it turned out to be a bit too old and stuffy for comfort. It did have the look and feel of a withering guest house straight out of an 80s horror movie but with no windows and a very suspicious electricity situation, I found it a bit too creepy for staying alone. Right opposite to it was Honeymoon Inn but I could not muster up enough courage to ask for room availability there for reasons evident in its name. Finally, I checked into a hotel built on a rock with an old stone building overlooking the valley. The clinching factor here was its name. I did not particularly care about room service or the ball room (none of which were there incidentally) but the fact that it was called </span><i>Hotel Rose Evelyn Estate</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> was enough.</span></span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;" align="center"><span style="font-size:100%;">********</span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;" align="justify"><span style="font-size:100%;">Later in the day I started a walk from the Mall Raod towards <i>Lal Tibba</i>, the highest point the region. On the way I soaked in the beautiful vistas that are so beautifully portrayed by Ruskin Bond. I passed through the Landour market with its narrow stone paved lanes and old shops on both sides. Some of these shops looked like they had always been around and since being old was not a novelty or specialty, none of the shops had sign boards with 'since 1938' or something like that. Modernization though had also crept in. So right after the 'National Walking Stick Company' shop there was a shop selling 'original HP cartridge' as if it was right next to a market of counterfeit electronics. I walked on further ahead leaving behind the cantonment area, as the road became slightly more sloping. Although it was only a gentle slope and not an arduous trek, I had to stop a couple of times to sip water specially due to it being a very sunny day. </span> </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;" align="justify"><span style="font-size:100%;">After walking for about half an hour more the view became spectacular. I could see the valley covered with trees, distant hill ranges and the town of Dehra (at least that's what I thought it was). A few minutes later, the forest cover became thicker, and the trees covered the sky above the road providing a welcome relief from the beating sun. The road itself was covered with dry Pine leafs and ferns creating a thick and comfortable natural carpet. Every ten or fifteen minutes a vehicle would pass me but a bit further ahead even that stopped and I reached a zone of perfect silence. Nothing. Not a single sound. No sound of wind in the trees. No crickets. No sound of even the birds. We are so used to having some noise or the other all the time and standing here on a road covered with trees with my eyes looking at the outstretched lands, hills and clouds and absolute silence all around, was quite overwhelming. This is probably what the Gods feel, looking at everything and hearing nothing. I passed a beautiful catholic cemetery. With a dense cover of trees all around and the stunning view, it looked like a good place to spend the afterlife. </span> </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;" align="center"><span style="font-size:100%;">********</span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;" align="justify"><span style="font-size:100%;">My further progress was stopped by the boards which proclaimed that the area was some kind of army research institute and was off limits for the civilians. It used to be a British army hospital where soldiers too sick to recover were sent to spend their last days. On my way back, I saw a couple of beautiful nineteenth century stone churches. Some of the contributions for these came from the families of soldiers who died serving Her Majesty in the area. Whether they died in conflict or fell pray to one of the many deadly diseases that were common in India those days was not clear but it was clear that their families remembered them and a hundred odd years later when all those people would have died themselves, the memories of their loved ones remain in the form of plaques in a church in Landour. </span> </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;" align="center"><span style="font-size:100%;">********</span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;" align="justify"><span style="font-size:100%;">On the way back, I stopped at the famous Cambridge book store which prides itself in being frequented by Ruskin Bond and in having all his works ever published. I was told by the affable shop owner that Mr. Bond visits the store every Saturday but this particular Saturday that was the first time in the year when he could not make it as he was out of town. It could be true or it could be what he tells to every eager tourist. Although slightly disappointed initially, I was overjoyed by picking up a book autographed by him. I also bought a book and asked them to send it after getting it signed from him which they did. </span> </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;" align="justify"><span style="font-size:100%;">So far, my stay in Mussoorie had been completely peaceful and I had not come across too many tourists, but when after a short nap in the afternoon, I stepped out for an evening walk, I was shocked to see hordes of honking cars and swarms of chattering tourists much like the invasion of the undead in a zombie flick. The exodus from Delhi had started and everyone from grandparents to toddlers to newly married giggly couples seemed to have pinned their hopes on a weekend of relaxation in Mussoorie. Although, it was probably not as good as the peace and calm of the place in the morning, admittedly, this rush of tourists did lend a festive atmosphere to the place. After getting my fill of the atmosphere, I drifted towards the quieter Garwahal Mandal Vikas Nigam (GMVN) restaurant which very prominently promised to be serving the kind of beverages that I was looking for. So I stood in the balcony of the place, right on the edge of the valley, drinking from a cold bottle, looking at the lights spread out in the plains and the dim moving headlights of cars making their way up to Mussoorie. Things seemed quite clear from here. Life is good, I thought.</span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;" align="center"><span style="font-size:100%;">********</span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;" align="justify"><span style="font-size:100%;">The whole point of going to a hill station like Mussoorie is embodied in the feeling when you get up in the morning and look outside the window at the clouds floating around. I had slept in the night with the windows wide open and by the morning, the blankets which had seemed quite useless had become critical. The chill in air was aided by the presence of clouds which had been pretty elusive the previous day. Although it was quite tempting to stay in the bed and sleep through the morning, I managed to drag myself out. I walked up till the famous Savoy which I had been told was closed for renovation. Although the place was not much to look at, because of the repairs going on, it was quite easy to imagine looking at the beautiful green rooms and the brilliant view outside, that it would soon be back with all its glory. The short morning walk done, it was time for a lazy breakfast at Whispering Windows (at Gandhi Chowk). Sitting there I read the local news paper and found about the electricity crisis, corrupt politicians and other existential issues in the region. There was also an interesting article about a youth from a Garhwal village who was arrested in Dehradun. The boy who was living in Bombay for some time had apparently called up some businessman there and asked him to cough up some money. For establishing his credentials, the boy said he was an associate of Ajmal Kasab. But the businessman did not buy it knowing perhaps that all of Kasab's associates being dead would be indisposed to use a mobile phone. I am not sure if Kasab has since then started an action for passing off or perhaps defamation against the poor boy. </span> </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;" align="center"><span style="font-size:100%;">********</span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;" align="justify"><span style="font-size:100%;">The day was turning out to be completely different from the previous one with the clouds becoming darker with every passing minute and the possibility of showers imminent. However, as I walked towards the Happy Valley, a Tibetan settlement, the winds became stronger and although there were a few drops every now and then, it did not actually pour. Now all the tourist guides listed Happy Valley as a place to visit but I am sure, its not polite to walk into the homes of people, no matter what the guide books say. But of course, the pretext here was, as is usual for any Tibetan settlement, the Buddhist temple somewhere in the settlement. Social conventions taken care of, I deliberately ignored what appeared to be a straight forward route to the temple and ventured on a path which took me inside the settlement. I passed the small shops selling groceries and a high school basketball court where some guy seemed to have carefully hidden his books. Of course, after walking for fifteen minutes, I was lost in a maze of narrow rocky pathways cutting across houses. After taking every ten steps, I would hit a dead end and had to ask for directions, being the helpful people that they were, the young guy or girl who I would ask for way to the temple would point in a direction and say 'just keep going straight'. I realised that they probably figured that when I hit the next dead end, I'll anyways ask for directions again. So I walked, stopped, looked around for a friendly face and asked again. There is something inherently simple and good about the Tibetan people and it shows on their smiling, glowing faces. On the way, I crossed a few beautiful sights in the valley surrounded by plush green hills on three sides. I passed a lot of kids, sitting outside their houses, lost in their school books. Either it was exam time or these kids really worked hard. Finally I reached the temple which was much smaller and simpler than the Buddhist temples in Bylakuppe near Mysore but had more peace and calm and quietness. </span> </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;" align="center"><span style="font-size:100%;">********</span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;" align="justify"><span style="font-size:100%;">After a forgettable afternoon at Kempty Falls, the famous and tourist filled water falls near Mussoorie, and a thoroughly filling and satisfying lunch at <i>Rice Bowl</i>, I took a taxi back to Dehra. I dozed off for most part of the way listening again to <i>Once </i><span style="font-style: normal;">soundtrack which was definitely the theme music of this trip by now. I told my friendly Sikh driver to drop me at the Elora Bakery which he did and also told me that the Railway station was pretty close from there, a statement which I later found out to be heavily exaggerated. I bought the famous 'jaw stickers' and 'rusks' from Ellora Bakery but when I turned back, I realised that there was not one but in fact two Ellora Bakeries right next to each other and both of them claimed to the authentic, original and old Ellora Bakery. I just hoped that the one I bought from was the more original one! </span></span> </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;" align="justify"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Soon after, the weather took a drastic turn and it started raining. Not wanting to get drenched with my bag which was now filled with books, I took shelter outside a closed shop. This turned out to be the smartest thing that I'd done all day because the rain quickly gave way to hail-storm and hale stones the size of grapes started pounding the ground which triggered the burglar alarm of one car. When it was safe to venture out after fifteen minutes, I started walking up and about the famous Rajpur Road which was filled with the army school guys blatantly and hilariously leching at every girl who had the misfortune of passing by. After about ten rounds of walking, I gave up and the only honorable way to kill time before catching the train was to watch </span><i>Kites. </i><span style="font-style: normal;">Waiting outside the theater, I sat on a bench with three Buddhist monks who also happened to have the seats next to me in the theater hall. So while I was not looking at Barbara Mori on the screen, I was trying to look at the reaction of the monks to the movie. Did they also find the same jokes funny as the rest of the people. Do they also snicker when the couple kisses on screen. Of course, it was a pity that there was not enough light to see the reaction on their faces. Anyways, not wanting to take the risk of missing my train for gawking at Ms. Mori, I left during the interval. There was enough time for having dinner at the famous Kumars' on Rajpur Road. The only problem was that there were four Kumars'. So I ate in one which appeared to be the costliest and hoped that it would also be the real Kumars' not that it would really matter, but still. </span></span> </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;" align="justify"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-style: normal;">At ten in the night, Dehra wore a deserted look. There was still half an hour to kill. Instead of spending it on the platform, I went inside a Cafe Coffee Day, hoping to finish off some pages of </span><i>'Friends in Small Places' </i><span style="font-style: normal;">the recently purchased Ruskin Bond book. I was again mildly surprised to find it completely deserted but halfway through my coffee a couple of groups of boys and girls presumably school students walked in. All right, things were not so bad in Dehra after all. It would have been interesting to catch parts of their conversation but the loud music ensured that I couldn't. After a ride in a </span><i>Vikram </i><span style="font-style: normal;">(the more powerful and more polluting version of an auto) which turned out to be longer than I was expecting, I found myself on the station, well in time for the train and like all happy endings, by the time I reached station, my ticket had been confirmed; even though it was tantalizingly wait listed number one till the afternoon and looked all set for a nail biting finish. The train was supposed to reach Delhi at 5 o'clock in the morning and I had the upper berth. This time I slept with an alarm in my cell phone. What's the point of traveling if one does not learn anything!</span></span></p> mukul sharmahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04903714182994554289noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1766896190171364904.post-23180792143168759752010-03-10T21:47:00.000-08:002010-03-11T09:36:54.586-08:00Bombay Velvet (Vol. I)<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVsY9NiQqXccZV3yIt4YvNOGnYKYOwrPW8mwNXmw-pjX5ECbncEWmYsyql0fir4I8w4mXNQ_n9AiM1JIutr42oIKpRK2HegBchH6cMbWidBQnOBNKlEz4YNyr6AgHBsgOPl_b2JknSWQ/s1600-h/Yazdani_Bakery_in_Fort.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVsY9NiQqXccZV3yIt4YvNOGnYKYOwrPW8mwNXmw-pjX5ECbncEWmYsyql0fir4I8w4mXNQ_n9AiM1JIutr42oIKpRK2HegBchH6cMbWidBQnOBNKlEz4YNyr6AgHBsgOPl_b2JknSWQ/s320/Yazdani_Bakery_in_Fort.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5447413514617109010" border="0" /></a><br /></span></div><span style=";font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" ><br /></span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style=";font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >Recently some guy with strong views and a weak vocabulary commented on a post that what I try to pass off as serious writing (specifically in reference to one particular book review) on my blog is little more than a load of smartly packaged manure typical of wannabe bloggers. That comment has affected me immensely and so in response to him/her/it I've decided to indulge in further blogging, as opposed to writing that is!</span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span><span style=";font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >I've recently shifted from Bombay to Delhi and so a frequent set of questions that i face is: Do you like Delhi? But you must be missing Bombay? The answer to both these questions is as may be expected in the affirmative. So this post is nothing more than me reminiscing about the good things in Bombay.</span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >So, what do I really miss about Bombay? </span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >There is a something very primeval about man's fascination with water bodies. This is why since ever rivers, seas, water falls and lakes have attracted people. Not just because they give water which of course is useful but because there is something inherently beautiful in looking at water. So I liked Bombay because of (and despite as rural as it may sound), of the sea. <span style="font-style: italic;">Marine Drive</span> is something. Every day for two years, I crossed it at least twice and yet never grew tired of looking at it. Sitting there. Sleeping there, once till three o clock in the morning. I loved how glamorous the concrete wave breakers make the shore look. I really liked how different it looked during the day and in the night when the lights came on in the buildings and the road all around it. I quite liked seeing the people sitting there. How easy it was really to make out the locals from the tourist. For the tourists, <span style="font-style: italic;">Marine Drive</span> was an amusement, a monument. They’d be clicking pictures, turning their heads around every now and then so quickly as if the view would have changed while they were looking the other way. The regulars would of course be sitting there because it’s a good place to sit and talk or simply sit. There aren’t too many in Bombay and at least not too many that are this good and certainly not too many that are this good and still free. I liked the way there would be rows and rows of couples, in varying degrees of intimacy, all of them lost in their own world as if they could not see beyond the circumference of four feet which they occupied and no one could see them. I liked going pass <span>the </span><span style="font-style: italic;">Marine Drive </span>ten thirty in the morning and seeing school or probably college couples in varying states of arguments, discussions and other coupling rituals. Also, for some strange reason there would be an inexplicably frequent number of sightings of couples involving burqua clad women at th</span><span style=";font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >at point of time in the morning. I racked my brains every time I saw one but could not fathom the link there.</span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >I liked seeing the joggers, the evening joggers, the really late night joggers and the foreigners who would be jogging at 11 in the morning with a hard sun beating upon them. I really liked feeling the wind in my face being driven back in a kaali peeli at three in the morning. I found amusing the wannabe drag racers who came out in their fancy cars way past midnight on the weekends, speeding with howling music and sometimes screaming vocals in open roof cars. </span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span><span style=";font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >I liked sitting and eating in the <span style="font-style: italic;">Pizzeria</span> at <span style="font-style: italic;">Marine Drive.</span> I even liked walking past it. With broad windows which open up on the footpath, it gives the feel of the road side cafes that the some of the most hep cities in the world are known for. When you are inside you can keep looking at the people outside, who for some strange reason always appear to be visuals better than the inside ones. When you are walking past it from the outside, you can walk right past the fancy people enjoying their fancy meals and more often than not you get a whiff of their fancy perfumes and the food’s aroma is always lingering there as well. </span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span><span style=";font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >I miss the sea. I miss looking at the sea from my balcony. I really liked seeing the black rocks along the shore and how in a matter of a couple of hours they would disappear when the tide came in. I really liked seeing the sun set and the fact that I could never actually wait till the precise moment when it disappears completely in the water. I really liked seeing the tiny faint lights of the fishing boats in a sea of complete darkness. I loved looking at the sea in full moon nights. A flickering carpet of silver would be laid down when the water reflected the glow of the moon. I miss hearing the crashing waves when I went to sleep. I miss the windy rainy nights when it seemed quite possible even though illogical that the windows and doors would get blown away.I miss looking from my other balcony at a skyscraper coming up there. I liked looking at the laborers, engineers working precariously balanced on the edges of its high floors. I liked looking at the flares shooting up in the pitch black nights when the metals works were being done. I really liked seeing the construction going on unaffected by the continuous rains. I liked seeing the massive cranes doing a full 360 degree circle and the stunning maneuverability with which they could lift and keep the stuff, 500 feet above the ground. </span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span><span style=";font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >I miss <span style="font-style: italic;">PDP</span> (<span style="font-style: italic;">Priya Darshini Park </span>for the uninitiated) . Truth be told I had gone their only a couple of times before my last one and a half months in Bombay when I went there every morning. Its a beautiful park alongside the sea. I liked seeing the joggers there, which were very few. The majority were walkers. Of those a high number were serious walkers who came armed with cutting edge gear (which in some cases included a cell phone or better still a plugged in blue tooth) and attitude. With steel hard determination and quick steps they paced to finish three rounds so as to be in the war room by 9.30 for that conference call. The mornings were glorious in <span style="font-style: italic;">PDP</span> but the evenings were even better The best time to go to <span style="font-style: italic;">PDP</span> is when the twilight starts setting in. It seems like a strange island surrounded by high building on three sides and a wide stretched sea on the fourth. Its a brilliant sight as the sun light starts fading ever so slowly and the lights in the buildings around start coming on one by one There is a strange sense of tranquility and self awareness which is a rare event in the bustling public spaces of Bombay. </span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span><span style=";font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >I miss the Bombay rains. I wouldn't say I really liked them but I do miss them. I liked the way how it would rain all day and all night and all day again and still the city would not be drowned; at least not every time. I liked waking up in the morning and seeing the rain pelting against my doors and windows, my balcony filled with water and the violent sea waves crashing and jumping above the protective wall. I liked it that every now and then there would be a warning of high tide and heavy rains and the entire country and all the news channels would be biting their nails off in anticipation of another <span style="font-style: italic;"> 2012 </span>of Bombay while life would go on pretty much as usual for the people in Bombay barring a couple of amusing conversations and a few curious peeks out of the windows mostly in the hope of catching something interesting. </span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span><span style=";font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >I miss how powerful money made you feel in Bombay. As long as you have money in the pocket there is nothing that you can't get no matter what time it is. If there is something or some service of which there is some use and some value, there would be someone selling it or providing it. Its not just about being spoilt rich. You can get dinner for ten bucks to ten thousand bucks in places separated by hardly by a hundred meters. You can arrange for a you know what from as little as nine hundred to as much as nine lakhs by simple making a phone call. You can walk casually out of a good restaurant and buy grass for a post dinner smoke like buying classic milds. You can get dinner at three o'clock, stop a cab on the road at two o'clok and even catch a local train at one o'clock in the night. I miss how powerful and free the two cabs and local trains made me feel. You could travel anywhere anytime, get off anywhere, switch between the mode of transports without the usual worries of finding a parking or worrying about the safety of your vehicle or driving inebriated. I liked traveling by local trains on Sundays or late nights when you could actually breathe and enjoy the perpetually and drastically changing landscape. I liked traveling by local trains on Sunday afternoons in monsoons when vigorous greenery would crop up all around and over the tracks and the faint smell of rusted metal would fill the air. I liked the anonymity that Bombay provided. </span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span><span style=";font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >I miss how you could become a part of a massive crowd by just stepping off the train. I really liked the look of a busy morning at Churchgate. Hundreds and hundreds of people walking in hurried steps to rush to work. I miss walking in that swarm and feeling myself to be a part of it and how easily and quickly I could step out of it by simply taking a cab. I loved walking around the <span style="font-style: italic;">Fort</span>, the <span style="font-style: italic;">Fountain</span> and the <span style="font-style: italic;">Nariman Point</span>. I miss walking from <span style="font-style: italic;">Nariman Point</span> to the <span style="font-style: italic;">Fountain</span> to <span style="font-style: italic;">Kala Ghoda</span> to <span style="font-style: italic;">Colaba</span> to <span style="font-style: italic;">Gateway</span>. I miss walking past the <span style="font-style: italic;">High Court Building</span>, walking through the small pathway bisecting the <span style="font-style: italic;">Oval Maidan</span>, going past <span style="font-style: italic;">Bombay House</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">Bombay Samachar Bhavan.</span> I really liked the old buildings around <span style="font-style: italic;">Fort</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">Ballard Estate</span>, the mural on the walls of the <span style="font-style: italic;">dockyard</span> (which features incidentally in the opening credits of the movie <span style="font-style: italic;">99</span>). </span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span><span style=";font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >I miss the only lunch, the wonderful lunch I had at <span style="font-style: italic;">Britannia</span> whose owners have not merely ignored but probably consciously rejected the slightest of modernization or commercialization. If it was not a couple of Parsis but one of our prominent trading communities by now it would developed into a chain of pretentious restaurants serving fake customized food. I really liked the fact that it was totally acceptable in Bombay for one single person to slip out of office at lunch hour and demand a table in a restaurant without being considered a socio-pyscho path and that I was not the only one to do so. I miss watching the Prithvi theater plays in the beautiful <span style="font-style: italic;">Horniman Circle Garden</span>. I miss walking past the <span style="font-style: italic;">Asiatic Library </span>steps and recalling which was the latest movie to showcase them. I miss walking past the iconic <span style="font-style: italic;">Bombay Stock Exchange </span>building on Sundays and thinking how something so small and silent could hold the key to this country's fluctuating fortunes. </span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span><span style=";font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >I liked attending the <span style="font-style: italic;">Kala Ghoda Festival</span> with its movie screenings in M<span style="font-style: italic;">ax Mueller</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">NGMA</span> and some other libraries/ museums whose name i could never remember. I do remember under the <span style="font-style: italic;">KGF</span> listening to a talk by Gregory David 'Shantaram' Roberts and being part of a ten thousand (?) strong crowd which was swayed for close to three hours by <span style="font-style: italic;">Shankar Mahadevan.</span> I loved going to <span style="font-style: italic;">Cafe Mondegar</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">Leopold 's</span> and till day find it difficult to choose one over the other. While <span style="font-style: italic;">Monde's </span>has a juke box and better graffiti on the walls, <span style="font-style: italic;">Leo's</span> has all its history and the charm of seeing more interesting foreigners. What both of them do have is the feel and atmosphere of a vibrant and alive city. I really liked going to <span style="font-style: italic;">Mondegar</span> on a weekday and finding it to be full of people by seven o'clock. I loved how while having a conversation in <span style="font-style: italic;">Monde's</span> you would just have to raise your voice a little to rise above the music and the conversations around you. I really liked how you could always hear a word here and there from the conversations happening on the tables around you and how to a person standing at a distance all these words would appear to be floating in the air together making no sense or probably making very humorous sentences. </span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span><span style=";font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >I really liked watching a movie in <span style="font-style: italic;">Eros</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">Regal</span> probably the only good and certainly the best single screen theaters left in the country. The onslaught of the multiplexes may have saved the dying film industry but it has effectively and silently served a death blow to the wonderfully big and acoustically brilliant single screen theaters, structures whose sole purpose of existence was to captivate and enthrall you through the magic of movies and not to recreate your drawing room/ bedroom with a slightly bigger TV screen. I miss watching movies in <span style="font-style: italic;">New Empire </span>and <span style="font-style: italic;">New Excelsior</span> and to finally have the experience of watching movies with lower stall audience. I liked the small hidden shop behind <span style="font-style: italic;">Eros</span> which sold rare and contemporary Hindi film posters and how the salesmen there always tried their best to discourage people from buying stuff from there. I miss the people sending hot peanuts and fresh bhel all over the city and the pavement stalls selling newspapers and magazines. I miss the second hand booksellers near <span style="font-style: italic;">American Express</span> at the <span style="font-style: italic;">Fountain</span> and how they could pass off as completely knowledgeable about the massive book collection that they had and also how they could come up with colorful reasons for not having the books they did not have. </span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span><span style=";font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >I miss the small shop of a Parsi lady near <span style="font-style: italic;">Marine Drive</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">Churchgate</span> that sold ice cream sandwiches. A shop which seems like it had always been there so much so that there is not even a board announcing its name or wares. I really liked the Yazdani Bakery in Fort quietly and comfortable hidden between a dozen nondescript shops. I miss having their bun muska and kharis and how sitting there you could easily forget the decade that you were living in. </span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span><span style=";font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >I liked <span style="font-style: italic;">Tendulkar's</span> and how you could find a place there even on a Saturday night and how surprising it was not prohibitively expensive. I miss <span style="font-style: italic;">Bade Miyan </span>and the gastronomical festivity around it at one or two in the morning on the weekends and how despite being a vegetarian orders of <span style="font-style: italic;">char gurda, teen bheja aur das naan</span> sounded really mouth watering . I miss <span style="font-style: italic;">Gokul Bar and Restaurant</span> right opposite <span style="font-style: italic;">Bade's</span>, the only suitable replacement for <span style="font-style: italic;">Surya's</span> I've found so far and how the only females in this almost shady but not still shady bar would be the foreigners. </span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span><span style=";font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >I miss, oh god, how badly i miss the <span style="font-style: italic;">Movie Empire</span> (recently opened on Kemps Corner), undoubtedly the best DVD rental store in India with its rows and rows and stacks and stacks of brand new, sealed, rare (including the Criterion Collection), original imported DVDs. I miss <span style="font-style: italic;">Phoenix Mills</span> and how it kept swallowing on and on the mill structures around it and turning them into luxurious shopping boutiques. I miss the starking contrasts of the city. The shanties near the hotels. Abject poverty coexisting right next to overflowing affluence. I miss the fact that if you know the right place to look, you can find just about anything and there is nothing which cannot happen in Bombay and nothing which happens can shock you. </span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span><span style=";font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >What do I miss about Bombay? That despite all the ridiculing and belittling you can sense that there is indeed something underneath the surface of this bustling, teeming megalopolis. Something which is hard to pinpoint though easy to make fun of. Something which is hard to put into words. Something which can at best be called and only because there is no better, more appropriate word for it yet, the spirit of Bombay. More about Bombay and about Delhi, and about Bombay and Delhi, in the next post. </span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /><br /></span></div>mukul sharmahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04903714182994554289noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1766896190171364904.post-60193677500312677862010-01-26T10:54:00.000-08:002010-01-26T11:32:13.098-08:00All it takes is a little push...<div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdwSMKOX4M579K8w5ab4-UBz9i5whwUECltXN4j5ZT29wFYsl3UgF1AmMr5rNL15DDEUnqo3s___-Zp9XUAacDk0qAQ2CloUOIpPta36Q0yxTikmVK5hEqSbCfpXR04oCWw7faF_XEwg/s1600-h/51n3HgF7cXL.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 209px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdwSMKOX4M579K8w5ab4-UBz9i5whwUECltXN4j5ZT29wFYsl3UgF1AmMr5rNL15DDEUnqo3s___-Zp9XUAacDk0qAQ2CloUOIpPta36Q0yxTikmVK5hEqSbCfpXR04oCWw7faF_XEwg/s320/51n3HgF7cXL.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5431126552334778114" border="0" /></a>
<br /></div><meta equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><meta name="ProgId" content="Word.Document"><meta name="Generator" content="Microsoft Word 11"><meta name="Originator" content="Microsoft Word 11"><link rel="File-List" href="file:///C:%5CUsers%5CDell%5CAppData%5CLocal%5CTemp%5Cmsohtml1%5C01%5Cclip_filelist.xml"><o:smarttagtype namespaceuri="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" name="address"></o:smarttagtype><o:smarttagtype namespaceuri="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" name="place"></o:smarttagtype><o:smarttagtype namespaceuri="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" name="PlaceName"></o:smarttagtype><o:smarttagtype namespaceuri="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" name="PlaceType"></o:smarttagtype><o:smarttagtype namespaceuri="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" name="Street"></o:smarttagtype><o:smarttagtype namespaceuri="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" name="country-region"></o:smarttagtype><o:smarttagtype namespaceuri="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" name="City"></o:smarttagtype><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:view>Normal</w:View> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:punctuationkerning/> <w:validateagainstschemas/> <w:saveifxmlinvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:ignoremixedcontent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:alwaysshowplaceholdertext>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:compatibility> <w:breakwrappedtables/> <w:snaptogridincell/> <w:wraptextwithpunct/> <w:useasianbreakrules/> <w:dontgrowautofit/> </w:Compatibility> <w:browserlevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:latentstyles deflockedstate="false" latentstylecount="156"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if !mso]><object classid="clsid:38481807-CA0E-42D2-BF39-B33AF135CC4D" id="ieooui"></object> <style> st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } </style> <![endif]--><style> <!-- /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0cm; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language:EN-US;} @page Section1 {size:612.0pt 792.0pt; margin:72.0pt 90.0pt 72.0pt 90.0pt; mso-header-margin:36.0pt; mso-footer-margin:36.0pt; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} --> </style><!--[if gte mso 10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} </style> <![endif]--> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><meta equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><meta name="ProgId" content="Word.Document"><meta name="Generator" content="Microsoft Word 11"><meta name="Originator" content="Microsoft Word 11"><link rel="File-List" href="file:///C:%5CUsers%5CDell%5CAppData%5CLocal%5CTemp%5Cmsohtml1%5C01%5Cclip_filelist.xml"><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:view>Normal</w:View> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:punctuationkerning/> <w:validateagainstschemas/> <w:saveifxmlinvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:ignoremixedcontent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:alwaysshowplaceholdertext>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:compatibility> <w:breakwrappedtables/> <w:snaptogridincell/> <w:wraptextwithpunct/> <w:useasianbreakrules/> <w:dontgrowautofit/> </w:Compatibility> <w:browserlevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:latentstyles deflockedstate="false" latentstylecount="156"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--><style> <!-- /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0cm; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language:EN-US;} @page Section1 {size:612.0pt 792.0pt; margin:72.0pt 90.0pt 72.0pt 90.0pt; mso-header-margin:36.0pt; mso-footer-margin:36.0pt; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} --> </style><!--[if gte mso 10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} </style> <![endif]--> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The world seems to be more fractured now than it ever used to be. Race, class, caste, religion, region, language; just when we think that one is getting weaker, a new de-marker comes up;<span style=""> </span>dividing people, plunging the societies into a fresh hell of hatred and a mad vicious circle of violence and vengeance. I remember when I was growing up; this country was embroiled in a turmoil over demolition of some mosque and construction of some temple in its place. I remember how strong my views were or at least the impression that you can credit to a ten year old’s mind; about ‘the others’. Over the years as I became more aware, I realized that the problem was not with ‘the others’ or with ‘us’. People have been killing each other for centuries. What changes with time is the de-marker, the criteria for determining ‘the others’ and ‘us’. People will keep killing each other for centuries. It doesn’t really matter what the reason is. </p> <p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">***
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">In the fourth year of law school, I got an internship with <i style="">Lex Juris Prude</i>, LJP for short, <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">India</st1:place></st1:country-region>’s best law firm. These internships usually ended with job offers. Johnny on the other hand got an internship with the legal department of Axals Electronics, one of the leading consumer appliances manufacturer in <st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on">India</st1:country-region></st1:place>. It wasn’t the best place to work for some one out of the <st1:place st="on"><st1:placename st="on">National</st1:placename> <st1:placename st="on">Law</st1:placename> <st1:placetype st="on">School</st1:placetype></st1:place>. After all, we were the best legal minds in the country, the crème de la crème and as was the norm most of us looked forward to a life of slogging hours and raining money in some sweat shop of a law firm. But not Johnny.
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Johnny (his pet name by the way, his parents did not hate him enough to actually name him Johnny) was in the peculiar position of being more confused than the rest of us and believe me, we were quite a confused lot. His dad was in the armed forces. Johnny wanted to get into civil services but only after finishing IIT. He managed to get admission in some random engineering college but dropped out of it after a couple of months. Then by some strange mix of fortitude and fate, he landed up in law school. In that sense he was like the most of us, people who landed up in law school because we were smart enough to not to go to an engineering college. In law school, Johnny had a wide range of interests. None of them were even remotely relevant for academic purposes. At least not the kind that you got graded on.
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">One of the best kept secrets in law school was how Johnny passed his courses. It was a usual sight on the evening before the exam, to see him stocking up on food and beverages in preparation of a long night ahead before the exam. Almost as certain would be the sight of him snoring away soon after midnight even as people around him were indexing notes or preparing the ammunition for toilet breaks. Johnny in total oblivion of the commotion around him, lived his life unconcerned and blissfully. Mind you, he was not a genius. So of course, he flunked and got the ‘repeats’ and the ‘carry overs’ quite frequently. But just when it would be the last time, the time when it really mattered, the time when everyone thought it was over for Johnny, he would manage to clear it. So he reached the fourth year like the best of us in just four years. From now on it was just one cool, nonchalant walk till you passed out and got a well paying job at the end of the fifth year. On his way sometime around the half way mark, Johnny started showing where his heart lay. He became the uncrowned king of theatre in the college putting up one production after the other. It was alleged by his closest friends that his love for the stage was just a way to get some chick and sure enough he did start going out with the lead actress of one of his plays, a romantic comedy, incidentally. The number of movies Johnny had watched and the number of movies he had heard of or read about made him a walking IMDB for the rest of us. He was quite excited about the internship with Axals but least of all because of what they did. It was not his job profile or the pay package which drove him to accept the internship. The prospect of working with Axals delighted Johnny because more often than not work would get over by six o’ clock plus they had a five day week and most importantly it would be located in <st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on">Bombay</st1:city></st1:place>.
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Off late, Johnny had started taking his theatre quite seriously. He had even performed (meaning written, produced, acted and directed plays) in a couple of prominent theatres in Bombay which was no mean feat for someone studying in the best law school in the country with supposedly the most rigorous routine and curriculum. It was now the grand ambition of his life to manage theatre as a hobby with his professional life for some time and finally at some time after finding his feet, take the plunge in the movie industry. Johnny and I got along quite well. He more or less introduced me to the joy of English movies and I was more than hooked. Movies were the common ground on which the tree of our friendship found its roots. It’s a fact that anyone who’s ever been to a college can confirm; that the strongest and the most lasting bonding always happens over some form or the other of pop culture. Drugs, alcohol, rock music, films or literature are the forces which bring people of impressionable age closer than exams, projects or class room lectures ever could. Though he was not my room mate in college, I spent a lot of time in his room. When we realized that both of us would be interning in <st1:city st="on">Bombay</st1:city>, we booked a room together in a student hostel in Colaba, the heart of south <st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on">Bombay</st1:city></st1:place>.<span style=""> </span>It was a place run by the Jesuits, the same people who run the Saint Xavier’s schools and colleges across the country. There were a lot of people from our class who were interning in <st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on">Bombay</st1:city></st1:place> that vacation and we were soaking in the many delights of the city even as we reached the last week of our internships. As was expected, most of us including me and Johnny got the job offers in the places we were interning. It was the last weekend we had in <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Bombay</st1:place></st1:city> when Johnny told me about a great way to spend the Sunday evening. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Dude, lets go and meet Ravi Kumar" , he spoke with his trademark forced enthusiasm.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Who the hell is Ravi Kumar.” It seemed like one of his nonsensical conversations and I was not in the mood to humour him.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Arrey, he is film star.”</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Of what, Bhojpuri movies?” I was pretty sure he was just making all this up.
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“Well actually he’s not a star. But he’s done a lot of movies. He was the father of SRK in <i style="">Anjaane</i> and the lead villain in <i style="">Betaab Dil</i>. He also does a lot of TV serials and theater. He is a friend of my dad.” Johnny gave me what was sure to be the gist of Mr Ravi Kumar’s profile on IMDB; except of course the last sentence.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /><span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Although I could still not recall his face, I had definitely heard of the movies and was more or less convinced that Mr. Ravi Kumar was not another product of the fertile imagination of Johnny. As it turned out later that evening, Mr Ravi Kumar was not only a real person but a very realistic one also. He gave us a nice talk about the systemic inefficiencies of the entertainment business and how the creativities of young idealists are more often than not lost in the search of financiers and in appeasing the whims and fancies of the people who matter. He lived in a nice flat overlooking a creek in a peaceful northern suburb called Malad. He was a nice soft spoken gentleman who insisted on walking us till the gate of his apartment complex on the pretext of it being an evening walk for him. It was actually quite a pleasant evening. Most evenings in <st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on">Bombay</st1:city></st1:place> are rather pleasant unless it is pouring. Johnny and I walked around aimlessly for some time till we reached a multiplex which happened to be screening <i style="">Kisna, the Warrior Poet</i>. Being men of free will and refined taste we decided to watch it. It was probably not worth the 150 Rupees we spent on it but was still good for many laughs as we ripped apart what were supposed to be some of its most sentimental scenes. It was almost 11 o’clock by the time we were done with the movie and the familiarly greasy food court dinner. There was a guy selling pirated and second hand books outside the multiplex. Book sellers like this all over the place was another thing about <st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on">Bombay</st1:city></st1:place> which excited me. Although we were law students, we had no obvious qualms in purchasing the pirated books. We justified it to ourselves with the reasoning that the originals were just too overpriced to be afforded by students like us and we managed to convince ourselves quite easily. This guy looked like he was done for the day and was packing up his wares. Just then, I saw a copy of <i style="">the Fountainhead</i> lying on top<i style="">. </i>I convinced Johnny that it will be the most influential book he would ever read. Actually, I wanted to drive the point that his plays will remain trivial and shallow until he has an understanding of good literature. The book seller looked in a bit of a hurry to go home and without much haggling agreed to sell it to Johnny for 150 bucks which was a pretty good bargain. Satisfied with our conquests for the day, we took an auto to Malad station and got on to a slow train on our way to Churchgate, the last station on the route. We would have to walk to our hostel from there.<span style=""> </span>
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Local trains in <st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on">Bombay</st1:city></st1:place> are notorious for the unimaginable number of people that are cramped in a compartment during the peak hours. This was of course a late night on a Sunday and we were going towards the business district. Moreover, we were travelling by the first class (Courtesy the monthly passes both of us we had). So we were not really surprised to find that we were the only two people in the compartment. We occupied the two seats next to the window to enjoy the cool night breeze. As usual the topic of our conversation was movies. Earlier in the day, I had bought a pirated CD of ‘<i style="">A Clockwork Orange</i>’, a movie which both of us had seen when it was screened in law school in our first year. I was of the firm opinion that the gruesome and explicit scenes in the movie were justified because without them, it would not be that impactful. My point being that you cannot understand the brutality of the acts of the lead guy and his gang unless you see what his victims go through. More importantly, you cannot understand the motives of the lead guy and why he enjoys doing those things unless you actually show him in the process of committing those acts. Johnny on the other hand felt that it was really easy to excite or disgust someone by showing shocking or sensational visuals and that is not really a sophisticated way of film making. More importantly he was not interested in following the life of such a psychotic guy. I however, found it fascinating to observe and know about the deviant human behaviour and in my opinion the only way we could enhance the knowledge of our species in general and our own selves in particular was by observing and learning about the deviant elements. After some point of time our conversation drifted towards less controversial topics like the use of or rather the lack of use of swear words in the Hindi movies.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">‘<i style="">Hamaari rashtra bhasha Hindi hai</i>’. Why don’t you talk in Hindi?. <i style="">Hum bhi baat kareng</i>e <i style="">tumse</i>.”
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Both Johnny and me were startled if not shocked to hear this loud voice. As we turned our heads, the speaker came into our view who was now beginning to sit down on the berth across the aisle. He was a guy in his early forties wearing a faded jacket over his denims, which was a bit odd because it was not cold enough in <st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on">Bombay</st1:city></st1:place> at that time for anyone to wear a jacket. The train had been moving at a fast speed for some time, so the guy must have got on to the train on some previous station and must have been sitting towards our back without either of us noticing him. I actually felt a bit embarrassed. Here was probably some educated guy who was pointing out why two educated young Indians should feel ashamed in talking in Hindi with each other. But Johnny was not one to entertain any self righteous moral preaching.
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">He snapped back, <span style=""> </span>“Hindi is not our <i style="">rashtra bhasha. </i>We know, we are lawyers.” Then for a good measure he added, pointing towards me, “and he does not know any Hindi”. This of course was a blatant lie. Coming from Allahabad, the heart of Hindi belt; I thought, slept and dreamed in Hindi or at least I used to for the most part of my life. The guy however kept looking at us without blinking. It was almost as if he did not hear a single word of what Johnny said.
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">He started giving a monologue in Hindi, the essence of which was, “Do you know who I am. I work for the government. I give advice to the prime minister and the president. Do you know the reason why I am travelling in first class today? To catch people like you. I knew someone or the other will get caught and now I have caught you. One Indian and one foreigner talking in English. Now, you been caught’. There was an eerie menace in his voice when he said the words, ‘now you have been caught’. Both Johnny and me just looked at each other’s face. We didn’t know what to say. I was thinking who was this guy? What was his problem? Moreover, I was now silently cursing Johnny for being a smart ass and replying rudely to that guy. What followed were an uncomfortably long and silent two or three minutes during which the guy kept staring at us with a sly grin on his face. In an attempt to make light of the suddenly dense atmosphere, I spoke to Johnny in almost a whisper, “You know I would have never spoken to anyone in English for more than five minutes till I was in school except of course with the teachers.’ “AMENDEMENT. CONTENTMENT. PUNISHMENT. FONTEN. PAINTAN. HAINTAN”, the guy started shouting at the top of his voice and then stopped almost as suddenly as he had started. Now this was getting really weird and confusing. Why was this guy doing this? Was he irritated by us and was pulling a practical joke on us by forcing us to remain quiet?<span style=""> </span>Or could he be just some loser who’d had too much to drink. It was getting more and more unnerving with each second. The guy just kept looking at us. Johnny and I were pretending to look outside the windows even while keeping an eye on him. " Yes, I have caught you now’", the guy spoke again, in almost a whisper this time and with a wide grin of immense satisfaction on his face. His next sentence was drowned by the announcement informing that the next station was Bombay Central. I looked at Johnny and was about to whisper to him that we should get down there when I saw the guy getting up and move towards the door. He was now standing between us and the door blocking our chance of getting off the train without going through him. I looked at his jacket and realized that the label on it was a fake and it was obviously a very cheap one. It was now riding a little above his waist. Then all of a sudden, I noticed something stuck between his jacket and the denims. It was a knife!<span style=""> </span>It was quite evident from its thick dark wooden handle, that it was not of the harmless vegetable chopper variety but the kind that I had heard were used for wrenching out the guts. I suddenly felt a flush of heat as if I had been standing in the sun for an hour. A drop of sweat started rolling down from my forehead. Seeing the look on my face, Johnny also realized that there was something seriously wrong. I pointed with my eyes towards the guy. Johnny followed my line of vision and spotted the knife. His reaction was even more telling than mine. He started biting his lower lip and I knew that his mind had gone so numb now that he was as good as paralyzed.
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The train came to a halt at Bombay Central. There were only a couple of people on the platform and none of them showed any inclination of getting aboard in our compartment. The train started moving again and within seconds it picked up to its normal speed. The guy moved away from the door and sat down again in his seat. I realized that now he was staring directly at me trying to establish eye contact. I kept looking out of the window even as my heart started pounding. Though I was really tense now I couldn’t help thinking that this would make a really good anecdote if we could just get out of it now. The problem of course was how to get out of this situation. Another few minutes passed and none of us moved or said anything. The only sound was the dispassionate rhythm of the train. I had always liked the sing song sound that a fast moving train makes but today it felt like someone was beating my head repeatedly with a baseball bat. Somehow I was reminded of A<i style=""> Clockwork Orange </i>and Beethoven’s ninth. The mechanical lady announced that we were reaching <st1:street st="on"><st1:address st="on">Grant Road</st1:address></st1:street> station. As expected, the guy once again got up and moved towards the door. I looked at Johnny and spoke in a barely audible whisper, “I hope he gets down here.” Of course I knew that it was not likely to happen. <st1:street st="on"><st1:address st="on">Grant Road</st1:address></st1:street> was even more deserted than Bombay Central. Now there was only one station, ‘Marine Lines’ before we got to ‘Churchgate’. What if this guy followed us and attacked us in the deserted road in front of the hostel? The guy looked in pretty good shape too. Probably the two of us together could be of some match to him but with him having a knife we stood no chance in case of a direct showdown. We could try running to the police as soon as we got down but considering that both Johnny and me had gone through ill health during the last couple of months, I doubted our stamina to out run him. And what would we tell the police. Probably that was not a knife after all. Although I couldn’t imagine of what else that handle could be?
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The train had just started to move again, when all of sudden two guys got on to the train. They sat on the berth the guy was sitting on. The one who sat next to him was listening to music on his ipod while the other one sitting opposite to the guy looked blankly in front of him. Evidently, the two new passengers on the train did not know each other and so no one spoke. I do not have the words to describe the joy and relief that Johnny and I felt to see these two people. I had never been this glad to see a friend as I was to see two complete strangers now.<span style=""> </span>A few minutes later, the train stopped at Marine Lines. It is a station which is ridiculously close to Churchgate station. So much so that if some of the proposed long new trains stop at Churchgate, they will extend till Marine Lines station. No body got on the train but as he had done earlier, the guy got up and moved towards the door. This time he did not stop and actually got down. He started walking on the platform with his back turned towards the train. I broke into a grin as I sighed with relief. My smile was frozen half way through when the guy suddenly turned. He stared into my eyes for a couple of seconds before slowly turning away again. I was not sure but I think I saw a hint of sadness in his eyes. I actually felt a moment of pity for him.
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The train started moving again and Johnny was now saying something which I could not hear as I was still looking at the guy who was walking almost painfully towards the exit on the platform. "Wow. What a loser. I am sure he was just drunk out of his wits or probably stoned. Must have had some really good stuff though." Now that it was all over, Johnny was finding his sense of humour back. Quite typical. I mean this guy was good company and all but he did get on my nerves at times. Specially with his ‘I am so great and talented but most of the times I underestimate myself ’ attitude. I made a note in my head to avoid him for some time after going back to the college. ‘Yeah. Yeah. Sure., I said so as to discourage Johnny from giving any more <i style="">gyaan</i>. Johnny did not get the hint though. He kept on blabbering and laughing rather obnoxiously on his stupid theories about the guy. God, he was at his irritating best. Finally, the train came to a stop at Churchgate and we got down. The big old clock dial on the platform showed 12.20 AM. I was thinking about the day ahead; the last day of the internship. I had to ask for the certificate and hopefully they’d give me a stipend cheque also. 'Hmm..how much will they give actually?', I wondered.<span style=""> </span>
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“You know I think that guy was actually an actor, a method actor…”. Johnny went on as I almost tripped on my shoelaces. I sat down to tie them. There was a faint metal squeak as the train started its journey again, this time in the opposite direction. There was something sticking to side of my shoe. ‘Uggh....I will have to clean it tomorrow morning’, I thought. ‘If they give me five grand, I can buy a good hard disk with it. Take all the movies when I pass out.’ As I got up I had a peculiar feeling. Something was wrong. Somehow it all seemed to have gone very……quiet. Johnny!! I turned with a jolt. He was not there. He was right there behind me, blabbering and now he was gone. For a couple minutes I though he was being the jerk that he was a lot of times and playing a prank on me but with each passing minute, it seemed less and less plausible. He would not do it today. No after what had happened earlier. Probably, he had gone straight to the hostel. I went there. He was not there. I waited for an hour and then I told the hostel caretaker. He called the police immediately.
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">***</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><meta equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><meta name="ProgId" content="Word.Document"><meta name="Generator" content="Microsoft Word 11"><meta name="Originator" content="Microsoft Word 11"><link rel="File-List" href="file:///C:%5CUsers%5CDell%5CAppData%5CLocal%5CTemp%5Cmsohtml1%5C01%5Cclip_filelist.xml"><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:view>Normal</w:View> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:punctuationkerning/> <w:validateagainstschemas/> <w:saveifxmlinvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:ignoremixedcontent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:alwaysshowplaceholdertext>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:compatibility> <w:breakwrappedtables/> <w:snaptogridincell/> <w:wraptextwithpunct/> <w:useasianbreakrules/> <w:dontgrowautofit/> </w:Compatibility> <w:browserlevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:latentstyles deflockedstate="false" latentstylecount="156"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--><style> <!-- /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0cm; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language:EN-US;} @page Section1 {size:612.0pt 792.0pt; margin:72.0pt 90.0pt 72.0pt 90.0pt; mso-header-margin:36.0pt; mso-footer-margin:36.0pt; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} --> </style><!--[if gte mso 10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} </style> <![endif]--> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">They never found his body. It was five years back. They never found what happened to him. They never found the guy who was on that train with us that night. I spent the last year in college outside the campus. I hardly spoke to anyone. I did not take up the job at LJP. I now work at a pharmaceutical company. The only reason I took up this job was because there is no one from my college here. The pay is too low for anyone from law school to come and work here. It was all going well. I had almost forgotten about the entire thing. Almost forgotten. And then a few months back, it started all over again.
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">A colleague of mine fell off a train and died. Everyone thought it was an accident. In fact, I was in the same compartment although I did not see how it happened. Then about a month back, I spoke to his fiancée, a beautiful woman who works in the same office as us. Apparently, he was talking to her on the phone when he fell down. Just before she heard the phone crashing on the tracks, she heard in the background a creepy soft voice saying, ‘<i style="">Hindi mein</i> <i style="">bola karo</i>.’</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> This morning I got a courier. When I opened the envelope, there was only one thing inside it. The front cover of <i style="">the Fountainhead </i>with a couple of smudges of dried blood. I think I know whose blood it was. On the reverse side were written these ominous words: ‘Don’t speak Hindi, learn Marathi’<i style="">.</i> I know he’s coming after me now. I am leaving this godforsaken hell tonight. My train leaves in an hour. There is no time to pack. I am not going to leave any clues for him. I’ll burn this place down before I leave. He won’t know where I am going. I am just taking a few clothes, some money and a couple of books. Now, wait a minute, where’s my copy of the <i style="">Fountainhead.</i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></p><p></p><div style="text-align: center;"><i style="">***</i>
<br />
<br /><meta equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><meta name="ProgId" content="Word.Document"><meta name="Generator" content="Microsoft Word 11"><meta name="Originator" content="Microsoft Word 11"><link rel="File-List" href="file:///C:%5CUsers%5CDell%5CAppData%5CLocal%5CTemp%5Cmsohtml1%5C01%5Cclip_filelist.xml"><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:view>Normal</w:View> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:punctuationkerning/> <w:validateagainstschemas/> <w:saveifxmlinvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:ignoremixedcontent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:alwaysshowplaceholdertext>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:compatibility> <w:breakwrappedtables/> <w:snaptogridincell/> <w:wraptextwithpunct/> <w:useasianbreakrules/> <w:dontgrowautofit/> </w:Compatibility> <w:browserlevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:latentstyles deflockedstate="false" latentstylecount="156"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--><style> <!-- /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0cm; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language:EN-US;} @page Section1 {size:595.3pt 841.9pt; margin:72.0pt 90.0pt 72.0pt 90.0pt; mso-header-margin:35.4pt; mso-footer-margin:35.4pt; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} --> </style><!--[if gte mso 10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} </style> <![endif]--> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">People will keep killing each other for centuries. It doesn’t really matter what the reason is.</p>
<br /></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p> <p></p> mukul sharmahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04903714182994554289noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1766896190171364904.post-82386196535549832542010-01-11T10:16:00.000-08:002010-01-12T09:44:41.517-08:00The Diary of an Unreasonable Man: Shock Therapy? Yeah, for Bozos!<div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjotDAc6L6INQrfVSOXJ-3I4TksE6zeEkHroLrHeNjQLtRl0AUIvIkNlonweNvP9Rh4e_Ap9Ykac-zDejJnAUDtVXTn6OejNCUIoqza1AlKrqlX8QPF8yeI_WuIilO5fzG3ehfav3ULRA/s1600-h/The+Diary+of+an+Unreasonable+Man.JPG"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 207px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjotDAc6L6INQrfVSOXJ-3I4TksE6zeEkHroLrHeNjQLtRl0AUIvIkNlonweNvP9Rh4e_Ap9Ykac-zDejJnAUDtVXTn6OejNCUIoqza1AlKrqlX8QPF8yeI_WuIilO5fzG3ehfav3ULRA/s320/The+Diary+of+an+Unreasonable+Man.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5425559269223975538" border="0" /></a>
<br /></div><meta equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><meta name="ProgId" content="Word.Document"><meta name="Generator" content="Microsoft Word 11"><meta name="Originator" content="Microsoft Word 11"><link rel="File-List" href="file:///C:%5CUsers%5CDell%5CAppData%5CLocal%5CTemp%5Cmsohtml1%5C01%5Cclip_filelist.xml"><o:smarttagtype namespaceuri="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" name="place"></o:smarttagtype><o:smarttagtype namespaceuri="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" name="City"></o:smarttagtype><o:smarttagtype namespaceuri="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" name="country-region"></o:smarttagtype><o:smarttagtype namespaceuri="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" name="PlaceName"></o:smarttagtype><o:smarttagtype namespaceuri="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" name="PlaceType"></o:smarttagtype><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:view>Normal</w:View> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:punctuationkerning/> <w:validateagainstschemas/> <w:saveifxmlinvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:ignoremixedcontent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:alwaysshowplaceholdertext>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:compatibility> <w:breakwrappedtables/> <w:snaptogridincell/> <w:wraptextwithpunct/> <w:useasianbreakrules/> <w:dontgrowautofit/> </w:Compatibility> <w:browserlevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:latentstyles deflockedstate="false" latentstylecount="156"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if !mso]><object classid="clsid:38481807-CA0E-42D2-BF39-B33AF135CC4D" id="ieooui"></object> <style> st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } </style> <![endif]--><style> <!-- /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0cm; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";} @page Section1 {size:612.0pt 792.0pt; margin:72.0pt 90.0pt 72.0pt 90.0pt; mso-header-margin:36.0pt; mso-footer-margin:36.0pt; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} --> </style><!--[if gte mso 10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} </style> <![endif]--> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">According to a survey by some really jobless people, there were approximately 112.8 million blogs in 2008. The number is certain to have increased by a considerable extent by now. Although I have no real or imaginary authorities to back it, from my general browsing of the blogosphere, it appears that when you take out the usual marketing, film, sports and sex blogs, the most common form of blogs are where people vent out their angst. I mean there are thousands and thousands of blogs out there which no body needs to read and which perhaps no body expects to be read in the first place. I do not know if this is a result of a dangerous therapy suggested by some new age psychiatrists or a new fad; in the parlance of our times which is responsible for so many people crying and ranting about the miseries of their life in cyber space. Nobody apart from you has any interest in knowing how badly fucked up your life is. You hate your job. Welcome to the club, 99.9% of the people doing any semblance of a job do. The 0.01% who don’t are actually inhabitants of ga-ga land. And no, being a waiter in <st1:place st="on"><st1:placename st="on">Playboy</st1:placename> <st1:placetype st="on">Mansion</st1:placetype></st1:place> is not a job, that’s destiny. You hate your boss. Well, so does everyone else who ever has to report to anyone. If you really hate your family or life, don’t blog about it. Pick up a semi automatic and do something about it but please spare anyone the misfortune of reading your maladies on the already cluttered beyond repair internet. My other and even bitter contempt is reserved for those bloggers with pink tinted glasses who wake up everyday like a puppy staring with amazement at the world around it and write about the most boring things that they did and the great joy they derived from them. Oh, you had a terrific dinner. Well, I hope they fry you in oil whenever you have to pay for gluttony but really it was just some food you had, right. So get over it and stop ruminating. Did you have a tiff with your boyfriend? Congrats, this is as fascinating to me as a slap fight between a democrat and a republican over use of excessive force on their neighbour’s dog in sixteenth century <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Mozambique</st1:place></st1:country-region>. Well, if your life is full of such fascinating and captivating nuggets and you are a walking streak of stupidity, please do enjoy it by all means. Don’t get me wrong, I really respect your right to live your wonderful life but at least be magnanimous enough towards the rest of the mankind to not to write about it. The fact that irritates me the most is that some people who know such a ‘writer’ (and if the ‘writer’ is a pretty chick, some plus 20 more people) actually read such stuff and give their insights like, “Ooh. Wow. You poor baby. Way to go. I know what you mean…” and other such complex lingual combinations. The real reason of course for all my ranting and cribbing against such writing is that I do not have such friends and will never have such friends who’ll read and appreciate the incredibly invaluable and unbelievably intelligent stuff that I write and I won’t ever find a publisher who’ll publish it even though these may be the most important words since those of some bearded guy walking on water. Madhav Mathur unfortunately was not so lucky. He found a publisher and got published the bullshit he wrote on his office computer three o’ clock in the morning while he was supposed to be managing millions of dollars of some poor unsuspecting oil tycoon. The cover of the Diary of an Unreasonable Man has no less than Anurag Kashyap proclaiming that it’s a shock therapy. Of course, it is. Once you’ve finished reading it, you’ll drop dead out of the shocking waste of time and money that you just incurred. The consolation being that at just over two hundred pages and just less then two hundred bucks, the loss is not that substantial. It may probably be the only book to ever see the ink of the printing press which in its forward thanks the person who praises it on the cover for praising the book! The first hundred or probably eighty pages are about the protagonist ranting, full of angst, professing his ideas with a sincerity that would make Socrates appear a medieval edition of Russel Peters. And what does his holiness talk about? Well, you know; the usual. The tedious desk job. The illogical office rules, the dickhead who passes off as the boss. But it does not stop at that. It goes truly deep by wasting pages and pages about the manipulative capitalism and shallow consumerism with special emphasis on the advertising industry (the profession of the protagonist) making it appear a job so hideous and ghastly that it must rank second only to blowing up buildings filled with people on Satan’s recruitment website. Like a sad Govinda comedy, or a glorious Baba Sehgal song, he goes on and on, non stop to his heart’s content. Finally, realizing that he needs to dress up his grouse against his boss and everyone in his building complex as a novel, the author tries to clue us in the plot. The protagonist thinks of ingenious ways to wake <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">India</st1:place></st1:country-region> out of its slumber, to make the people rise in revolution against the rich, the corrupt, the greedy and the horny. He starts by calling himself and his sidekick flatmate, ‘Your Anarchists’. Well, done. I suppose calling yourself ‘V’ would have been really naïve. If you must know, their methods include blowing up a ‘harmless’ paint bomb in a local train (Stampede, what’s that? That happens only in that <i style="">Kumbh</i> <i style="">mela</i>) and leaving behind pamphlets with signed sermons in bold letters (lest some of the poor daily commuters have a weak eyesight) in English (Come on. What do you mean they don’t know English. How do those people talk to each other? In sign language? And what’s the Hindi word for ‘anarchist’ anyways?). Our Batman and Robin pour dung all over a car launch. (Have you heard of a more exploitative thing than having a launch party for a new car range. I mean surely there are children starving out there, somewhere. I don’t know where but I am sure must be somewhere.) They feed paans to visitors of brothels so that they’ll have a green face for the rest of their lives. In case you are wondering, why green? Well, that’s because its derived from chlorophyll and paan is also green na, you silly! By the end of the book, you can sense that Mahur is getting tired of sleeping in office or the oil tycoon is calling him incessantly to find out where his couple of zeros have disappeared over the last couple of days. So he does what any self respecting creative Indian born and brought up on the diet of Bollywood would do. He brings in a couple of nasty, heartless mean gangsters to chase our poor Anarchists and an honest, sensitive and idealistic policeman to save the day. There was also a sub plot about the protagonist and his childhood sweetheart who were always different from the other kids. Yeah, well I guess nowadays you can blame everything on bad childhood, especially stupidity. Hope you had a good one though, Mathur. Would really hate to blame your parents for this. In the end, a patriotic appeal to all those Indians like Mathur living in <st1:country-region st="on">Singapore</st1:country-region>, working as bankers/engineers/drycleaners, guys there is a very good market for English writing in <st1:country-region st="on">Singapore</st1:country-region>/ <st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on">Timbuktu</st1:city></st1:place>. Please do not seek a publisher in <st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on">India</st1:country-region></st1:place>. You owe at least this much to your mother land. Jai Hind. And a word of warning to AK, dude you better had made some more really good movies before I run into you.
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><meta equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><meta name="ProgId" content="Word.Document"><meta name="Generator" content="Microsoft Word 11"><meta name="Originator" content="Microsoft Word 11"><link rel="File-List" href="file:///C:%5CUsers%5CDell%5CAppData%5CLocal%5CTemp%5Cmsohtml1%5C01%5Cclip_filelist.xml"><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:view>Normal</w:View> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:punctuationkerning/> <w:validateagainstschemas/> <w:saveifxmlinvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:ignoremixedcontent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:alwaysshowplaceholdertext>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:compatibility> <w:breakwrappedtables/> <w:snaptogridincell/> <w:wraptextwithpunct/> <w:useasianbreakrules/> <w:dontgrowautofit/> </w:Compatibility> <w:browserlevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:latentstyles deflockedstate="false" latentstylecount="156"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--><style> <!-- /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0cm; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";} @page Section1 {size:595.3pt 841.9pt; margin:72.0pt 90.0pt 72.0pt 90.0pt; mso-header-margin:35.4pt; mso-footer-margin:35.4pt; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} --> </style><!--[if gte mso 10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} </style> <![endif]--> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-style: italic;">Post Script</span>: In case you are wondering how I ended up with this classic despite giving so many tips about picking a good book in my previous post, well, in my defense I was in a bit of a hurry and did not get the chance to see the photograph of our hunk with chiseled model like looks who works as a banker during the day and as a superhero during the night. Also, I read what appeared to me to be a positive review in HT. Apparently Mr. Mathur has also written screenplays. When they hang me tell them, there was more than grave provocation.
<br /></p> <p></p> mukul sharmahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04903714182994554289noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1766896190171364904.post-91296966162981779802010-01-07T10:17:00.000-08:002010-01-07T10:43:35.364-08:00“Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil”: Book review of sorts<div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-w13mXuJx-yT7YpoGLs9b9Djxi8Gtdw-FyPQqdCOy5vSZEhfXhd1S5QU4P97OmHOuewoy27QNuR9toEmpEBizI7BvnQALv1obKB90si678l9iLMvcC7iHFGzywZbSiaCUVISkCl_1Rw/s1600-h/m-512.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-w13mXuJx-yT7YpoGLs9b9Djxi8Gtdw-FyPQqdCOy5vSZEhfXhd1S5QU4P97OmHOuewoy27QNuR9toEmpEBizI7BvnQALv1obKB90si678l9iLMvcC7iHFGzywZbSiaCUVISkCl_1Rw/s320/m-512.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5424064373008012738" border="0" /></a><br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">I picked up the book at the Bombay airport. I always thought that people who say that they buy books at the airport are the pompous lot for whom the height of literature is ‘<span style="font-style: italic;">seven secrets of highly successful people</span>’ or something along those lines. But it really is true that once you’ve checked in your luggage and have to serve that mandatory time waiting for your flight, browsing books at the store seems to be the only decent self redeeming thing to do after gawking at a firang chick for twenty minutes.<br />It seems like the government is forcing people to read and actually succeeding too. The sad thing is that now these shops sell DVDs also. So someone actually asked for <span style="font-style: italic;">What’s Your Rashi </span>while I was browsing through the books. I would have been sure to raise a terrorist threat alarm but for the fact that the people in question here were two gentle looking maidens in their early seventies.<br /><br />It is a cliché done to death that a book should not be judged by its cover. I disagree. More often than not a tacky or loud cover is an indication of the stupidity it is trying to hide and more often than not books with interesting and subtle covers turn out to be quite decent. Of course it would be idiotic to think of it as a universal rule but it did ring true for me after I finished reading <span style="font-style: italic;">Midnight</span>… It had the photograph of a weathered tombstone on its cover. One with a statue of girl with sad eyes holding two saucers in her hands and the shadow of trees above. Although I have to admit the name itself did not appear to be too imaginative to me. Till then I had never heard of the book so had no way of actually knowing that it holds the record for being a New York Times bestseller for the longest period of time.<br /><br />The back cover is again a pretty good indication of what to expect from the book. The louder the praises, the greater should be your suspicion. The worst of the books always market themselves by using adjectives that someone supposedly famous has used about the book like ‘excellent, spellbinding, masterpiece’ etc., each followed by an increasing number of exclamation marks as if you are expected to fall to your knees in reverence of the gospel in your hands. Even worse (if there is indeed a category of worse than the worst!) are those which loosely throw around human emotions like popcorn. If a the book says that it is a story of love, endurance, tragedy, redemption and the indefeasible human spirit; drop it right at that instant. Thankfully, the cover of <span style="font-style: italic;">Midnight</span>…talked about it being a travel book with some off-centered sex, murder, trial and mystery. The next step is to read the first few pages. If you cannot get through the first few pages standing there, you’ll never get around reading the book. Unless of course you already know the book to be a classic and will force yourself to read the first few pages and acquire the taste. That was the case with Marquez for me. But once I got through the first few pages of <span style="font-style: italic;">One Hundred Years of Solitude,</span> I was hooked for life.<br /><br />But coming back to <span style="font-style: italic;">Midnight</span>.., the first thing which catches your eye is that in the introduction John Berendt says quite clearly that this is not a work of fiction but a result of his journalistic endevours. Really? Doesn’t the cover mention an array of weirdest characters, a murder mystery, a sex scandal and what not? Yes, it does and yes all of it actually exists or existed or happened. So it is time to bring another dead cliché to our use, truth indeed can be stranger than fiction! <span style="font-style: italic;">Midnight</span>..is set in the small American town of Savannah. In early eighties, John Berendt working in the big apple as an editor of magazines like Esquire discovered the joys of low cost domestic airlines. Soon he was flying to far off places cheaper than the cost of his average meals in fancy NYC restaurants. On one of such bohemian trips, he discovered the pleasurable pastures of Savannah, a town in the southern state of Georgia. Soon enough he was so charmed by the town’s architectural and anthropological marvels that he decided to write a book on it. He kept coming for more visits and eventually rented an apartment there spending half of the year, the other half in New York (to perhaps retain his sanity and perspective!).<br /><br />The best part about the book for someone like me who is generally averse to non fiction is that it is written in the style of a novel. What is the style of a novel? I guess something which has sequential chapters each of which deals with one particular thread of the story. Also, and perhaps, more importantly in the first place, there is a clearly identifiable story with a beginning and an end and not just a random collection of thoughts coming in one’s mind like this piece is turning out to be!<br /><br />What makes <span style="font-style: italic;">Midnight</span>..a relish is of course not just the fact that it has a coherent story but that the story has a number of peculiar and interesting characters which would be more expectedly found in a Murakami or a Marquez world. The story is told in first person but in a number of places the narrator in not present and the reader can unobtrusively peek into the weirdly funny and entertaining world of the residents of Savannah.<br /><br />The star, the king-pin on whose shoulders the story of <span style="font-style: italic;">Midnight</span>…rests is Jim Williams, a “<span style="font-style: italic;">nouveau riche</span>”, an antique collector and dealer, restorer of heritage structures; and as the second half of the book reveals, possibly a murderer. Jim Williams made a fortune through a series of fortuitous and high risk deals. He settled in Savannah and became the toast of the social circles with his lavish parties but in the process he managed to ruffle quite a few feathers with his peculiarities and haughty attitude. A major portion of the book revolves around Jim Williams and his trial(s) for murder. En route we encounter a bumbling District Attorney hell bent on getting a conviction and the endlessly changing defense strategies of Jim Williams, only a portion of which came from the legal fraternity or the world we can claim to be familiar with. Incidentally, Jim Williams holds the record in the state of Georgia for being the only person to have been tried four times for the same crime.<br /><br />An even more delightful and unbelievable character is that of Joe Odom, a partner in a tax law firm who quits and moves his office to Savannah to in his words, ‘mix business with pleasure’. But in Savannah, Joe, a serial womanizer finds occupation as a piano player and a tour guide entertaining people and hosting open door parties every night. More often than not he is giving paid tours to people of the house he is living in at that time and more often than not he is not paying rent even in cases where the landlord is aware of his living there. Sample as an example of the carefree nature of Joe, this account given by his girlfriend and fourth wife-in-waiting, Mandy. One night while they are sleeping, Mandy hears certain noises downstairs. She is afraid that it might be a burglary; after all they did not have a lock at the front door, lest it may discourage any visitors. She wakes up Joe and asks him to check. Joe not bothered a bit says, it could be anybody. He shouts, without getting up from the bed, “Angus? That you, Angus?” When there is no reply, he assures Mandy, “Well, if we got a burglar, his name ain’t Angus” and goes back to sleep.<br /><br />The third most prominent character in <span style="font-style: italic;">Midnight</span>...is Frank, a negro more popularly known in his cross dressing avatar as Lady Chablis, the drag queen. In the racially conscious town of Savannah, it is no mean task for Lady Chablis to carry on her performances not to mention her occasional appearances at formal social events.<br />There are also a few supporting character like the guy who walks an invisible dog or the guy whose idea of pets is flies on a string leash and whose Columbian ambition is to breed goldfish who’ll glow in the dark. The reasoning behind this brilliant inspiration is how trippy the fish floating in the darkness of the night clubs would appear to drunk people. Awesome! No? There are some more wildly eccentric and amusing characters and what makes the book funnier to read is how little the people of Savannah are shocked by these characters. The ‘normal people’ are mildly amused but not disturbed by the ‘colourful characters’ even as they carry on with their regular lives around them almost without noticing them. In the introduction, John Berendt tries to explain the rationale. He attributes the presence of so many larger than life characters in Savannah to its inward looking, gossip loving and eccentricity tolerant people.<br /><br />I think I got carried away so much with introducing the outrageous characters that I almost forgot to mention that <span style="font-style: italic;">Midnight</span>...is a very good travelogue as well. The lyrical prose with which John Berendt describes the architecture of the old buildings, the picturesque squares and nice small town quaintness of Savannah, makes you want to pack your bags and go off to Savannah for the next holiday. Evidently the book had the same effect on a number of other people as well and the tourist inflow in Savannah increased by manifolds a few months after the release of <span style="font-style: italic;">Midnight</span>…in 1994. In the introduction to the new paperback edition, John Berendt assures that the tourist inflow has not ravished it as is usually the case, and Savannah remains a beautiful, eccentric and charming small town.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Post Script</span>: The book was adapted into a movie with the same name and directed by Clint Eastwood. I haven’t seen it but according to most people, it didn’t turn out as well as the book mostly because some things are best left to imagination. As venerable Ebert said for the movie, “something ineffable is lost just by turning on the camera: Nothing we see can be as amazing as what we've imagined.”<br /></div>mukul sharmahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04903714182994554289noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1766896190171364904.post-32718474929029507262009-12-09T06:45:00.000-08:002009-12-10T10:26:34.277-08:00The colours of language and legalities: reviewing Gulaal<div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtsSqs2-3S8t5HgChaRuwY7q-hFmAOcqAV804dIPYhDn4kdlVhvCt4Y1mORahLzTNLBhR6ZDI5Os2IZnrQI1SpL7lg0BKaJH8k8qhfvqOJmTNDFxre7oVTHKf94uJ3cXrWWWFJRzUqxw/s1600-h/gulal_0.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 239px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtsSqs2-3S8t5HgChaRuwY7q-hFmAOcqAV804dIPYhDn4kdlVhvCt4Y1mORahLzTNLBhR6ZDI5Os2IZnrQI1SpL7lg0BKaJH8k8qhfvqOJmTNDFxre7oVTHKf94uJ3cXrWWWFJRzUqxw/s320/gulal_0.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5413252284614739602" border="0" /></a>
<br /></div><meta equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><meta name="ProgId" content="Word.Document"><meta name="Generator" content="Microsoft Word 11"><meta name="Originator" content="Microsoft Word 11"><link rel="File-List" href="file:///C:%5CUsers%5CDell%5CAppData%5CLocal%5CTemp%5Cmsohtml1%5C01%5Cclip_filelist.xml"><o:smarttagtype namespaceuri="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" name="PlaceType"></o:smarttagtype><o:smarttagtype namespaceuri="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" name="PlaceName"></o:smarttagtype><o:smarttagtype namespaceuri="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" name="place"></o:smarttagtype><o:smarttagtype namespaceuri="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" name="country-region"></o:smarttagtype><o:smarttagtype namespaceuri="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" name="City"></o:smarttagtype><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:view>Normal</w:View> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:punctuationkerning/> <w:validateagainstschemas/> <w:saveifxmlinvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:ignoremixedcontent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:alwaysshowplaceholdertext>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:compatibility> <w:breakwrappedtables/> <w:snaptogridincell/> <w:wraptextwithpunct/> <w:useasianbreakrules/> <w:dontgrowautofit/> </w:Compatibility> <w:browserlevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:latentstyles deflockedstate="false" latentstylecount="156"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if !mso]><object classid="clsid:38481807-CA0E-42D2-BF39-B33AF135CC4D" id="ieooui"></object> <style> st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } </style> <![endif]--><style> <!-- /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0cm; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:EN-US; mso-fareast-language:EN-US;} @page Section1 {size:612.0pt 792.0pt; margin:72.0pt 90.0pt 72.0pt 90.0pt; mso-header-margin:36.0pt; mso-footer-margin:36.0pt; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} /* List Definitions */ @list l0 {mso-list-id:1542472589; mso-list-type:hybrid; mso-list-template-ids:1497014832 67698703 67698713 67698715 67698703 67698713 67698715 67698703 67698713 67698715;} @list l0:level1 {mso-level-tab-stop:36.0pt; mso-level-number-position:left; text-indent:-18.0pt;} ol {margin-bottom:0cm;} ul {margin-bottom:0cm;} --> </style><!--[if gte mso 10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} </style> <![endif]--> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><b style=""><i style=""><span lang="EN-US">
<br /></span></i></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><b style=""><i style=""><span lang="EN-US">The language barrier<o:p></o:p></span></i></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US">
<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US">One of the most important movies of last year went almost unnoticed. It is quite rare in <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">India</st1:place></st1:country-region> for movies to be made on sensitive issues without being preachy. That <i style="">Gulaal</i> is a gritty portrayal of campus politics, power struggle and anarchy in the heartlands of <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">India</st1:place></st1:country-region> is reason enough for it to be appreciated. But of course, that is not all the reason. There have been very few movies in recent past which had such a wide array of well scripted supporting characters like in <i style="">Gulaal </i>not to mention an ensemble cast which breathed life into them. A couple of movies which would come to your mind would be <i style="">Maqbool</i> and <i style="">Omkara</i>. Another thing which was common between these movies and some others like <i style="">Dev D</i> was the liberal use of ‘foul language’. This is a new development for Hindi movies because so far use of expletives or obscenities by actors on screen was a strict no-no. Some movies like <i style="">Gangaajal</i> chose to sidestep by using phonetically similar words (remember the famous inventive word <i style="">madarjaat</i>). It is a commendable change both on part of the movie makers and censors because finally we get to hear the language that is spoken on the streets, on the screen. The nonsensical sugar-coating of language was completely out of sync with the realistic portrayal that movies like these sought to achieve. Unfortunately, this change has not been received all that well. In fact, a number of people have come down hard on this trend. There are two directions from which criticism has come. One of course comes from the fact that the use of crude language makes it difficult to watch the movie with the ‘entire family’, thereby alienating a big chunk of audience. The only response to this can be that not every movie can be made for universal viewing. If all the movies were to be made keeping in mind the sensitive sensibilities of the ‘family audience’ movies like <i style="">Requiem for a Dream</i> or <i style="">Fight Club</i> could never have been made not to mention movies like <i style="">Passion of the Christ</i> or <i style="">Irreversible</i>. Some of the most path breaking <st1:place st="on">Hollywood</st1:place> movies like <i style="">Scarface</i> and <i style="">the</i> <i style="">Departed</i> were also record breaking in terms of the number of times the F words were used. Another line of attack comes from people who say that use of such language is self defeating because the effect of some of the best scenes in these movies is lost as people are too busy laughing or snickering whenever an expletive is uttered on screen. This may be partially true but there is not much difference between this argument and the argument that was paddled around for years that our audience is not mature, it does not want to watch sensible movies but only ‘mindless, escapist and fun’ movies. It can’t be denied that for a sizable group of audience, use of such language may be a source of amusement in itself but there is no doubt that it will not be the case once the novelty factor wears out.
<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US">
<br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><b style=""><i style=""><span lang="EN-US">Plot and pluses of Gulaal</span></i></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">
<br /><b style=""><i style=""><span lang="EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span></i></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US">The best part about <i style="">Gulaal</i> is of course the script, that it also lets you down in some parts especially towards the end is another matter and that is also mostly because your expectations have been raised too high. The movie takes off with Dileep Singh (played by Raj Singh Choudhary) a naïve simpleton from <st1:city st="on">Bikaner</st1:city> coming to the city of <st1:city st="on">Rajpur</st1:city> (a fictional city which seems to have characteristics of both <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Jodhpur</st1:place></st1:city> and Jaipur in equal proportions) to study law. He is welcomed to the college by a horrifying ragging experience. His sensible elder brother tells him to forget about it as he says its not worse than the ragging that he had to endure as a student. Mild mannered Dileep indeed would have let go had it not been for his brash, crude, fearless roommate Ranajay Singh (played by Abhimanyu Singh) who is later disclosed to be the heir prince. He literally forces Dileep to take revenge for his insult. From this point of time, he becomes a sidekick to Rananjay (or Ransa) and his fate also becomes entwined to his. Ransa catches the eye of Dukey Banna, a power lord who is heading an underground revolution of the erstwhile royalty to secede from <st1:country-region st="on">India</st1:country-region> and establish an independent <st1:place st="on"><st1:placetype st="on">kingdom</st1:placetype> of <st1:placename st="on">Rajputana</st1:placename></st1:place>.<span style=""> </span>Dukey Banna sees in Rannjay his opportunity of capturing power in campus and he persuades him to contest for elections for the post of General secretary. The only other strong contestant in the elections is Kiran (played by Ayesha Mohan). Kiran and her brother Karan (played by Aditya Srivastava) are the illegitimate children of his highness, the father of Ransa. There is only one ambition in the life of Karan Singh and that is to somehow attain legitimacy as the children of his highness. His aim seems to be motivated from a matter of pride than property. He believes the more powerful he becomes, the more difficult it will be to deny him legitimacy and for this he has no qualms in ruthlessly using his sister. He kidnaps Rananjay to force him to withdraw from the elections and eventually kills him in a fit of rage. This throws awry the plans of Dukey Banna but only momentarily. He realizes in Dileep the potential of becoming his puppet and soon a reluctant Dileep finds himself as the General secretary thanks to a rigged election. What follows is a further tussle between Dileep who tries to come to terms with his recently acquired power and tries to resist the schemes of Dukey Banna even as he himself being infatuated <span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span>with Kiran gets manipulated by her. The movie ends a bit abruptly with Dileep somewhat redeeming himself in a confused misguided rage of retribution where he kills Dukey Banna holding him responsible for the murder of Ransa and corrupting Kiran. This of course clears the way for Karan Singh who after killing Bhati, the lieutenant of Dukey Banna becomes the leader of the covert secessionist movement.
<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US">
<br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US">The dialogues written by Piyush Mishra are the heart of the movie. The language captures the flavour of the region and the lines are extremely witty. Mishra has also written the lyrics and given music for the movie, both of which are again quite brilliant. Some of the most impactful scenes in the movie owe a great deal to the background music. <span style=""> </span>Whether it be <i style="">Aarambh hai prachand, (</i>which is a brilliant war cry in poetry) during election campaigning, <i style="">Jis raat gagan se¸ </i>during the murder of Ransa or <i style="">Wo kitabon ki thi duniya, </i>during the rage fury of Dileep in the climax, all make the scenes quite haunting. Having said that, some of the other songs despite their highly amusing and creative lyrics hamper the pace of the movie and could have been done away with. Editing is also not up to the scratch and some parts seem totally irrelevant, not to mention the wasted and bewildering character played by Jesse Randhwa. This I guess could be blamed on the fact that the movie was in the making for a long time and was shelved at least thrice. It finally saw the light of the day following the success of <i style="">Dev D</i> which was also the reason why it had to be finished and released in a hurry soon after that. As mentioned above, it is one of those few movies in which almost each and every one of the actors is brilliant and it would be impossible to single out one performance which overshadows the others. If however, one name has to be taken before all the others it would be that of Abhimanyu Singh, a debutant who is brilliant in the role of brash, flamboyant and crude Ranajay. The role of mercurial, temperamental Dukey Banna seems to be tailor made for Kay Kay Menon who simmers in the role as only he can.<span style=""> </span>Ayesha Mohan, another debutant is quite good as Kiran who is vulnerable and manipulative, a player and a pawn at the same time. Of course, it would be criminal to leave out Deepak Dobriyal who plays a small role as Bhati, the right hand man of Dukey Banna and gives some of the best scenes in the movie. After <i style="">Omkara</i>,<i style=""> Shaurya</i>, <st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on"><i style="">Delhi</i></st1:city></st1:place><i style=""> - 6</i> and <i style="">Gulaal</i>, Deepak has definitely emerged as one of the most talented actors in the country. It would not be an exaggeration to say that he can acquire the same position in this generation which Om Puri and Nasserudin Shah had in the previous one. His style of acting is so natural and effortless that it does not dawn immediately upon the viewer how good an actor he is. Piyush Mishra himself plays an interesting character that of the elder brother of Dukey Banna, a foreign educated, John Lenon devout, who is disillusioned with the real world and is declared insane by it in turn. He breaks into a song at the most inappropriate of occasions to sometimes hilarious and sometimes tragical consequences. However, in the mad cap world of <i style="">Gulaal </i>his is probably the only voice of sanity. <span style=""> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; line-height: 150%;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhw6bcDB8F5-Gs4w0qlDAf6qis5ujb8KGeWTXg_EDeAKyePH1GOSdfQjzTUn58H5lp_K6subxhNdKeX2v5x_CkwyXOD4W8HEhxLmq8szlJGHt1T1Aoqhvju_22tnhK4HH-n30jYJf7A9A/s1600-h/555.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhw6bcDB8F5-Gs4w0qlDAf6qis5ujb8KGeWTXg_EDeAKyePH1GOSdfQjzTUn58H5lp_K6subxhNdKeX2v5x_CkwyXOD4W8HEhxLmq8szlJGHt1T1Aoqhvju_22tnhK4HH-n30jYJf7A9A/s320/555.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5413254781822862866" border="0" /></a></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><b style=""><i style=""><span lang="EN-US">
<br /></span></i></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><b style=""><i style=""><span lang="EN-US">Colours of inter-legality
<br /></span></i></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">
<br /><b style=""><i style=""><span lang="EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span></i></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US">According to <st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on">Santos</st1:city></st1:place><i style=""> </i>(1), our legal life is constituted by an intersection of different legal orders which he calls, interlegality. In other words his conception of the legal field is of different legal spaces superimposed, interpenetrated and mixed in our minds, as much as in our actions, either on occasions of qualitative leaps or sweeping crises in our life trajectories, or in the dull routine of eventless everyday life. Interlegality is encountered as a result of the legal orders of the state and non state actors affecting and modifying each other. Clearly, it will be more defined in areas where the order of the state actors is comparatively weaker. These are the areas that <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Santos</st1:place></st1:city> would refer to as the margins. In <i style="">Gulaal</i>, the margins are the hinterland of Rajputana, where the feudal and aristocratic orders survive along with the rule of law of the democratic government. It appears to be a fictional setting where the royalty has refused to hang its boots and the tide of time seems to have passed by it, failing to notice it completely. People still use titles like Raja Sahaab and Banna and it is mandatory to end every sentence with the servitude of ‘Sa’. The word of Dukey Banna seems to be a law unto itself. Quite apparently he has scant respect for the law of the state as his henchman Bhati and others have no problem in bumping off whoever and whenever they want. They seem to not only be modifying the state order but also destroying it to the extent that they kill a policeman, an agent of the state without any fear and even without any coherent reason or provocation. Of course, this is not enough and Dukey Banna is planning a revolution to completely overthrow the state order by snatching independence from the Indian state and establishing an independent <st1:place st="on"><st1:placetype st="on">kingdom</st1:placetype> of <st1:placename st="on">Rajputana</st1:placename></st1:place>. It seems to be the second wave of attempt by the royalty to alter the state order. The first one was not as an explicit challenge but by becoming a part of the formulation of the state order. Through a series of flashbacks we are shown the glorious days when the royalty managed to maintain its status by winning democratic elections. It was quick to adapt to the change of the fall of the colonial order and managed to maintain its equation on somewhat similar terms with the Indian government by becoming part of its order, just like it had tried to become a part of the British colonial order. Of course, this equilibrium came crashing down during Emergency when Indira Gandhi took away the privileges of the royalty and threw most of them in prisons. This explains the disillusionment of Dukey Banna with the Indian state and his immense desire to wrench away from it.<span style=""> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US">
<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US">The college campuses as depicted in <i style="">Gulaal</i> seem to be fiefdoms in themselves. They are pretty much insulated from the outside world and the state order fails to penetrate into their boundaries. Ragging goes on grotesque levels without any fear of the law of the state. The battle lines are perpetually drawn between groups often on the basis of caste, which means your side is already chosen for you. One of the few signs of interaction between the law of the state and the feudal order and their musclemen inside and outside the campus is the elections in the college. Elections in college are an exercise which is conducted by the state actors and ostensibly in accordance with the law of the state. The feudal order understands the power and money that can be gained by using the post of general secretary, an institution created and sustained no doubt by the state actors. They do not try to undermine this position; instead they try to manipulate it to their own advantage by rigging the elections and getting their own stooge appointed to the post of general secretary. Clearly, the state order to appoint an elected representative as general secretary is modified by the non state actors by rigging the counting of the votes.
<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US">
<br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US">Of course in the vivid landscape of <i style="">Gulaal</i>, feudal order is not the only legality overlapping with the state legality, even the ‘weak’ have a voice. The illegitimate children of his highness are outside the circle of legitimacy in the royal order. This does not however mean that the siblings are mere passive recipients of the state and the feudal order. Instead they play an active role in resisting and modifying these legalities. For them it’s a constant struggle to become accepted as the legitimate children of his highness not so much in the eyes of the state law but in the royal circles. Murder of Rananjay Singh, Bhati and manipulation of Dileep by Kiran seem to be steps in the same direction. In the end they seem to have achieved success with Karan becoming the ‘Senapati, leader of the secessionist movement. The last shot of the movie shows Karan being crowned Senapati while tears roll down the eyes of his sister Kiran. It is difficult to be sure if those are the tears of joy or of regret.<span style="">
<br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="">
<br /></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US">It is now widely coming to be accepted that law can no longer be understood as a uniform concept; instead, the legal theory has to be seen as dealing with many different normative systems. In case of <i style="">Gulaal, </i>the feudal and state normative orders interact and conflict with each other and even as they affect the lives of the many characters, they themselves get modified by the actions of their subjects. Something similar (although not as drastic which would only be at the margins and lets be thankful for that) happens in the everyday lives of people like us (<i style="">mango people, anyone ?!</i>). Usually we see that there is difference between the letter of the law and the ground reality but perhaps a better way of understanding it would be to see our lives being governed by a set of overlapping and conflicting legalities: law of the state, word of the local policeman, systemized corruption at the RTO/ Passport office, sweet will of the auto driver, autocratic cell phone companies, irritating banks and so on. <i style=""><o:p></o:p></i></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><b style=""><span lang="EN-US">
<br /></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><b style=""><span lang="EN-US">Notes <o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <ol style="margin-top: 0cm;" start="1" type="1"><li class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><st1:city st="on"><span lang="EN-US">Santos</span></st1:city><span lang="EN-US">, B. de Sousa, (1995) <i style="">Toward a New Common Sense: Law, Science and Politics in the Paradigmatic Transition</i>, <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">London</st1:place></st1:city>, Routledge. </span></li></ol><meta equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><meta name="ProgId" content="Word.Document"><meta name="Generator" content="Microsoft Word 11"><meta name="Originator" content="Microsoft Word 11"><link rel="File-List" href="file:///C:%5CUsers%5CDell%5CAppData%5CLocal%5CTemp%5Cmsohtml1%5C01%5Cclip_filelist.xml"><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:view>Normal</w:View> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:punctuationkerning/> <w:validateagainstschemas/> <w:saveifxmlinvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:ignoremixedcontent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:alwaysshowplaceholdertext>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:compatibility> <w:breakwrappedtables/> <w:snaptogridincell/> <w:wraptextwithpunct/> <w:useasianbreakrules/> <w:dontgrowautofit/> </w:Compatibility> <w:browserlevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:latentstyles deflockedstate="false" latentstylecount="156"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--><style> <!-- /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0cm; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";} @page Section1 {size:595.3pt 841.9pt; margin:72.0pt 90.0pt 72.0pt 90.0pt; mso-header-margin:35.4pt; mso-footer-margin:35.4pt; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} --> </style><!--[if gte mso 10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} </style> <![endif]--> <p class="MsoNormal">
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">PS: This has been published in Silhouette Vol. VII.</p>
<br />
<br />mukul sharmahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04903714182994554289noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1766896190171364904.post-75919395981594409902009-12-08T05:20:00.000-08:002009-12-08T08:02:00.312-08:00Top 10 All Time Favourite 'Feel Good' Movies<p class="MsoNormal" style="page-break-after: avoid; text-align: justify; font-family: times new roman;"><o:p> </o:p></p><div style="text-align: justify; font-family: times new roman;"> </div><p class="MsoNormal" style="page-break-after: avoid; text-align: justify;">
<br /></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p class="MsoNormal" style="page-break-after: avoid; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p class="MsoNormal" style="page-break-after: avoid; text-align: justify;">It is often said that its not fair to compare movies of one genre with those of the other. A <span style="font-style: italic;">2012 </span>can perhaps be as good as a <span style="font-style: italic;">Jurassic Park</span> but it can’t really be better or worse than a <span style="font-style: italic;">Revolutionary Road</span>. But if one has to make a list of one’s favourite movies across the genres I guess the ‘feel good’ or ‘uplifting’ movies do end up on top more often than not. Most importantly I do not want to watch a <span style="font-style: italic;">Donnie Darko</span> or an <span style="font-style: italic;">American Psycho</span> if I am lying on a hospital bed. Not that a hospital bed is the ideal place for watching movies, but all of us do end up there some time or the other, anyways coming directly to the point here’s a list of my top ten all time favourite ‘feel good’ (for lack of a better word encompassing the genre) movies (not in any order of preference). These are not great love stories or mad cap comedies or inspirational sagas of human struggle but simple, amusing, pleasing, cheerful and entertaining movies.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="page-break-after: avoid; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:78%;">
<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="page-break-after: avoid; text-align: justify;font-family:times new roman;"><span style="font-size:78%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><div style="text-align: justify; font-family: times new roman;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p class="MsoNormal" style="page-break-after: avoid; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:78%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p class="MsoNormal" style="page-break-after: avoid; text-align: justify;"><u>Scope and Limitation</u>: Since its only been six years since I watched my first English movie (<i style="">Matchstick Men</i> it was) on Saluja’s desktop (the one before the TV!), I am still at the beginner’s level in terms of number of movies watched and hence this list is far from exhaustive and limited to the few movies I've watched.
<br /></p>
<br /><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;"><b style="">1.</b><i style=""> <b style="">Before <st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on">Sunrise</st1:city></st1:place> & Before Sunset</b></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;"><span style="font-size:78%;"><i style=""><b style="">
<br /></b></i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;"><meta equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><meta name="ProgId" content="Word.Document"><meta name="Generator" content="Microsoft Word 11"><meta name="Originator" content="Microsoft Word 11"><link rel="File-List" href="file:///C:%5CUsers%5CDell%5CAppData%5CLocal%5CTemp%5Cmsohtml1%5C01%5Cclip_filelist.xml"><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:view>Normal</w:View> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:punctuationkerning/> <w:validateagainstschemas/> <w:saveifxmlinvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:ignoremixedcontent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:alwaysshowplaceholdertext>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:compatibility> <w:breakwrappedtables/> <w:snaptogridincell/> <w:wraptextwithpunct/> <w:useasianbreakrules/> <w:dontgrowautofit/> </w:Compatibility> <w:browserlevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:latentstyles deflockedstate="false" latentstylecount="156"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--><style> <!-- /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0cm; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";} @page Section1 {size:595.3pt 841.9pt; margin:72.0pt 90.0pt 72.0pt 90.0pt; mso-header-margin:35.4pt; mso-footer-margin:35.4pt; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} --> </style><!--[if gte mso 10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} </style> <![endif]--> </p><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:78%;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjC2VCSCCmw7Tknq4rEkA1sdbSoNYxj68oJB-LWZqGD_vUrSvFlDcAyuK55CvWWTxdFpM8vRmlxGCJMplw70QfpVwCfuKzI7RJZTxIG6Wx6zVcsGGZ6AyqDDjYEMHDzhRCulxBIN4SGgA/s1600-h/1.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 256px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjC2VCSCCmw7Tknq4rEkA1sdbSoNYxj68oJB-LWZqGD_vUrSvFlDcAyuK55CvWWTxdFpM8vRmlxGCJMplw70QfpVwCfuKzI7RJZTxIG6Wx6zVcsGGZ6AyqDDjYEMHDzhRCulxBIN4SGgA/s320/1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5412884706955783122" border="0" /></a></span></p><p class="MsoNormal">
<br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal">Richard Linklater creates what can only be described as magic along with actors Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke in these two movies. <i>Before Sunset </i>came nine years after <i>Before Sunrise </i>and as the actors grew older so did their characters. Considering they also wrote their own dialogues, both of them do become quite indistinguishable from the characters that they portray. What are the movies about? Two people walking around and talking. But as far as walking and talking goes it has never been this engrossing and the dialogues have rarely been better.</p> <p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid; font-family: times new roman;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;"><b style="">2. <i style="">Big Fish</i></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;"><span style=""> </span><!--[if gte vml 1]><v:shape id="_x0000_i1026" type="#_x0000_t75" style="'width:307.5pt;height:229.5pt'"> <v:imagedata src="file:///C:\Users\Dell\AppData\Local\Temp\msohtml1\01\clip_image003.jpg" title="BigFish01"> </v:shape><![endif]--><!--[if !vml]--> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;"> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; page-break-after: avoid;"> <span style="font-size:78%;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgC11R9pKxU84y5rSPD7N4BaE9MlUui2_HWpkd6tP-WLeqVnDkMhmKIJmA0bYG-1BHeTpBHePygGGPt69scvX_nwDdfANHhfJPWzCtNwC_nczPyZSM6OsB4uiXcWbwwN_QhTj_Ne1JF_w/s1600-h/BigFish01.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgC11R9pKxU84y5rSPD7N4BaE9MlUui2_HWpkd6tP-WLeqVnDkMhmKIJmA0bYG-1BHeTpBHePygGGPt69scvX_nwDdfANHhfJPWzCtNwC_nczPyZSM6OsB4uiXcWbwwN_QhTj_Ne1JF_w/s320/BigFish01.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5412861241665861426" border="0" /></a></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;"> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;">
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;">A man tells fantastic and unbelievable stories all the time so much so that his son becomes sick of him and his stories. Of course, he does not believe any of them. Who would in a witch with a magical glass eye and a man eating giant? Even when the father (played earnestly by Albert Finney) is on the deathbed the son wants to know what kind of person he really was. Of course slowly he learns that his father’s stories were not entirely false and that faith is the only thing separating fantasy from reality. <i style="">Big Fish </i>is amusing to a large extent because of Tim Burton’s visual imagery and some very likable actors. It’s a story that’s funny and sad, fantastic and realistic at the same time. Ideal for ending an irritating day (unless one has access to better utilities!).
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;">
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">3. <span style="font-style: italic;">Americano</span></span>
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;"><b style=""><i style=""> </i></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"> </span>
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; page-break-after: avoid;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZ3AJCvRV81-jJf1-5cDdTaBSKLRD_Yh6j-8UWLBhJGGKqoU47iNtxHnc42_4-z3MfAAWGj21RvuQYZ54miaUYb4ZeYyxVUEJD4W7IA-fDYebtCI4BOGZ2n7R7z16O0rJOhjauIVSuHg/s1600-h/americano.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 230px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZ3AJCvRV81-jJf1-5cDdTaBSKLRD_Yh6j-8UWLBhJGGKqoU47iNtxHnc42_4-z3MfAAWGj21RvuQYZ54miaUYb4ZeYyxVUEJD4W7IA-fDYebtCI4BOGZ2n7R7z16O0rJOhjauIVSuHg/s320/americano.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5412863053125225890" border="0" /></a></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;">
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;">An American student is at the threshold of starting corporate drudgery. Before that he backpacks on a holiday across <st1:place st="on">Europe</st1:place> with a couple of friends. The movie catches up with them in <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Spain</st1:place></st1:country-region>. It has quite minimalist dialogues but captivating and at times stunning visuals. Of course, as it tries to answer ‘the meaning of life’ question, too many dialogues would have made it cheesy or preachy. Thankfully, it’s subtle and enigmatic.<span style=""> </span>Perfect for a dead afternoon.
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;">
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;"><b style=""><o:p> </o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;"><b style="">4. <st1:place st="on"><st1:placetype st="on"><i style="">Garden</i></st1:placetype><i style=""> <st1:placetype st="on">State</st1:placetype></i></st1:place></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;">
<br /></p><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXVTAK-koQ05fHPDFK8TVhAcmqwwMjGwBYccCodXYiopPhwO7GijdaGVtWWZUeNRhpoaAjUo1iN1cX5uKFztNGVqkQi0ORDlbG3IV-kIBudJQ_WtWnZ9N8hJVCXHWM7fDYyXKpl59EaA/s1600-h/4.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 218px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXVTAK-koQ05fHPDFK8TVhAcmqwwMjGwBYccCodXYiopPhwO7GijdaGVtWWZUeNRhpoaAjUo1iN1cX5uKFztNGVqkQi0ORDlbG3IV-kIBudJQ_WtWnZ9N8hJVCXHWM7fDYyXKpl59EaA/s320/4.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5412864069034331138" border="0" /></a>
<br /></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;"><b style=""><st1:place st="on"><i style=""><st1:placetype st="on"></st1:placetype></i></st1:place><i style=""><o:p></o:p></i></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;"><b style=""><o:p> </o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 36pt; page-break-after: avoid;"><!--[if gte vml 1]><v:shape id="_x0000_i1028" type="#_x0000_t75" alt="" style="'width:294.75pt;height:225pt'"> <v:imagedata src="file:///C:\Users\Dell\AppData\Local\Temp\msohtml1\01\clip_image006.jpg" href="http://www.ferraraworld.com/photogallery/garden_state.jpg"> </v:shape><![endif]--><!--[if !vml]-->
<br /><!--[endif]--></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;">Zach Braff who stars along with Natalie Portman in this very underrated movie is also its writer and director. He plays a small time actor, part time waiter who is leading his life sedated, drugged or otherwise zonked out of the boredom of mundane existence. He returns to his small town home to attend his mother’s funeral and encounters an array of quirky but mostly likeable characters and of course the pretty girl. It’s a love story of sorts and also a ‘coming of age’ story but avoids the clichés of both. A beautiful soundtrack and peaceful visuals make for a perfect watch in the time between a couple of drinks and being sloshed.
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;">
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 36pt; page-break-after: avoid;"><b style=""><o:p> </o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;"><b style=""><span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;"><b style="">5. <i style="">Mumford</i></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;">
<br /><!--[if gte vml 1]><v:shape id="_x0000_s1026" type="#_x0000_t75" alt="Mumford & Skip Skipperton" href="http://www.imdb.com/media/rm2570491904/tt0140397" style="'position:absolute;" button="t"> <v:imagedata src="file:///C:\Users\Dell\AppData\Local\Temp\msohtml1\01\clip_image008.jpg" href="http://ia.media-imdb.com/images/M/MV5BMTM2NjUyNTM5N15BMl5BanBnXkFtZTYwMzQ0NTg2._V1._SX399_SY280_.jpg"> <w:wrap type="square" side="right"> </v:shape><![endif]--><!--[if !vml]--></p><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAJnk9TxUoVoSp_6Qg66-ybvNwlYOXVhaHS_1jzxTnAKwec1bSxtPdVpOVUTxvr10dfkBSyrbiTry4bHi9Sn8ccxftIO2HowPq83iXoBndtiR1RDPnUJUf5kOqbgqS6wDgNpAjaj_6VA/s1600-h/5.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 225px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAJnk9TxUoVoSp_6Qg66-ybvNwlYOXVhaHS_1jzxTnAKwec1bSxtPdVpOVUTxvr10dfkBSyrbiTry4bHi9Sn8ccxftIO2HowPq83iXoBndtiR1RDPnUJUf5kOqbgqS6wDgNpAjaj_6VA/s320/5.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5412865187953345922" border="0" /></a></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;"><!--[endif]--><span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;"><a href="http://www.imdb.com/media/rm2570491904/tt0140397"><span style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> </span></a></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;">
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;">A psychologist called Mickey Mumford (played quite endearingly by Loren Dean) comes to the quaint little town of <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Mumford</st1:place></st1:city> and sets up his shop. Soon he becomes the most successful shrink in the town due to his rather different methods. His patients are an interesting lot and the doc himself has a remarkable back story. A bit like <i style="">Garden State </i>what makes <i style="">Mumford </i>a relish is an array of small town characters with their simplicity and mild eccentricities!
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;">
<br /><span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;"><b style="">6. <i style="">Rushmore<o:p></o:p></i></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;"><b style=""><i style=""><o:p> </o:p></i></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;">
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; page-break-after: avoid;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiR0g1JVX5l65vtL7L4MSmCedHOEch3aUpsmsuFxGPqbQZMX_iWiRB7fTY1QaHg9N-nB3F_BCczUc1BCIoXZeXxG4B7jzN74FRtQOIzYMuCnUvnO7EeLqvwcbLyaDIs06zlmHeG25uLGw/s1600-h/6.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 221px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiR0g1JVX5l65vtL7L4MSmCedHOEch3aUpsmsuFxGPqbQZMX_iWiRB7fTY1QaHg9N-nB3F_BCczUc1BCIoXZeXxG4B7jzN74FRtQOIzYMuCnUvnO7EeLqvwcbLyaDIs06zlmHeG25uLGw/s320/6.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5412866051723999442" border="0" /></a></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;"><span style=""> </span><!--[if gte vml 1]><v:shape id="_x0000_i1029" type="#_x0000_t75" alt="rushmore_l" style="'width:306pt;"> <v:imagedata src="file:///C:\Users\Dell\AppData\Local\Temp\msohtml1\01\clip_image009.jpg" href="http://img2.timeinc.net/ew/dynamic/imgs/070808/gallery/rushmore_l.jpg"> </v:shape><![endif]--><!--[if !vml]--></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;"></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;">
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;">This Wes Anderson flick is about a 15 year old school kid who is too mature for his age and a business tycoon (played superbly by Bill Murray) who is too immature for his age. Its actually a pretty funny reminder of the child in all of us and how we never really outgrow him. Not that its something bad though!
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;">
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;"><b style="">7. <i style="">Groundhog Day</i></b><b style=""><i style=""><span style="font-size:10;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;"><b style=""><i style=""><span style="font-size:10;"><o:p> </o:p></span></i></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;">
<br /><span style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102);font-family:Verdana;font-size:9;" ><span style=""> </span><!--[if gte vml 1]><v:shape id="_x0000_i1030" type="#_x0000_t75" alt="" style="'width:298.5pt;height:223.5pt'"> <v:imagedata src="file:///C:\Users\Dell\AppData\Local\Temp\msohtml1\01\clip_image010.jpg" href="http://www.guidetoliteraryagents.com/blog/content/binary/groundhog-day_l.jpg"> </v:shape><![endif]--><!--[if !vml]--></span></p><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbiYW7hW7hqYioaNV6aLY0EYb_M34FMTmxMwvG_TcBIylvHT-jGs6Fo4bOxo44tgmE1rSDlzCpHrlXf0RslEH89WR2crqxgHGezve4he2p2IEsx7qzuMXM-2ppl4feWp4mwynVoiOe5A/s1600-h/7.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 206px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbiYW7hW7hqYioaNV6aLY0EYb_M34FMTmxMwvG_TcBIylvHT-jGs6Fo4bOxo44tgmE1rSDlzCpHrlXf0RslEH89WR2crqxgHGezve4he2p2IEsx7qzuMXM-2ppl4feWp4mwynVoiOe5A/s320/7.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5412867146276474050" border="0" /></a></div> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;">
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;">This Bill Murray and Andie McDowell starer is about a guy caught in a time warp who lives over the same day again and again. It is surprisingly witty and has a kind of endearing humour which grows on you every time you watch the movie. If you watch it enough number of times you’ll probably get the subtle message also; how to live your life!</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;">
<br /><span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;"><b style="">8. <i style="">Keeping the Faith<o:p></o:p></i></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;"><b style=""><i style=""><o:p> </o:p></i></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;">
<br /><span style=""> </span><a href="http://www.imdb.com/media/rm2865207552/tt0171433"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><!--[if gte vml 1]><v:shape id="_x0000_i1031" type="#_x0000_t75" alt="Brian and Anna" style="'width:337.5pt;height:235.5pt'" button="t"> <v:imagedata src="file:///C:\Users\Dell\AppData\Local\Temp\msohtml1\01\clip_image012.jpg" href="http://ia.media-imdb.com/images/M/MV5BMTI2MTk0MDM5MV5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTYwNDAxMDM3._V1._SX500_SY349_.jpg"> </v:shape><![endif]--><!--[if !vml]--></span></a></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; page-break-after: avoid;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2QYfuFBCYiuiXLIBL2mHLH6qu7OU7KizNHa8eCgFeu0O8E_QuAQlz0q7urhWJnvhUyC6UEuM-YFiA3zJjaHgmnayvkVu7vHQ1JLfFKAwaY_B4T6-T65Ktaxf-Lz8_FwSu4AQGAXxEAw/s1600-h/8.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 208px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2QYfuFBCYiuiXLIBL2mHLH6qu7OU7KizNHa8eCgFeu0O8E_QuAQlz0q7urhWJnvhUyC6UEuM-YFiA3zJjaHgmnayvkVu7vHQ1JLfFKAwaY_B4T6-T65Ktaxf-Lz8_FwSu4AQGAXxEAw/s320/8.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5412867703288760722" border="0" /></a></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;">
<br /><a href="http://www.imdb.com/media/rm2865207552/tt0171433"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><!--[endif]--></span></a><b style=""><o:p></o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;"><span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;">Edward Norton’s directorial debut stars him as a priest who has a rabbi (played by Ben Stiller) and a suave business woman (played by Jenna Elfman) for friends. The three were childhood friends before Jenna moved away. They bond again when she returns years later as a smart and successful corporate executive and as always happens, both guys fall in love with the pretty girl. What makes this a very pleasant movie is that it doesn’t try to be a comedy. Instead it comes across as a funny yet heart warming story about friends, love, religion, faith and…life.
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;">
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;"><b style="">9. <i style="">Lost in Translation</i> </b><b style=""><span style="font-size:8;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;"><span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span><a href="http://www.imdb.com/media/rm335190272/tt0335266">
<br /><span style="text-decoration: none;"><!--[if gte vml 1]><v:shape id="_x0000_i1037" type="#_x0000_t75" alt="Still of Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson in Lost in Translation" style="'width:291pt;height:193.5pt'" button="t"> <v:imagedata src="file:///C:\Users\Dell\AppData\Local\Temp\msohtml1\01\clip_image014.jpg" href="http://ia.media-imdb.com/images/M/MV5BMTgzNzUzMDIzNl5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTYwOTg2NTE3._V1._SX485_SY322_.jpg"> </v:shape><![endif]--><!--[if !vml]--></span></a></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; page-break-after: avoid;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAP7iDVXdbN_OHnH9f5FyNl0q2iUGUwZT7bW-Oh7313SB9ZMbpMD14Q1leYh4wUxsJOThtfA_oZctQC2UqHzAKAThZXNeRqV9Kve6jld0s7NK4-tqy2xy3uk21yO9ChSCiatdpYrlCfQ/s1600-h/9.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 213px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAP7iDVXdbN_OHnH9f5FyNl0q2iUGUwZT7bW-Oh7313SB9ZMbpMD14Q1leYh4wUxsJOThtfA_oZctQC2UqHzAKAThZXNeRqV9Kve6jld0s7NK4-tqy2xy3uk21yO9ChSCiatdpYrlCfQ/s320/9.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5412868409248438722" border="0" /></a></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;"><b style=""><o:p> </o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;">
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;">Bill Murray (once again) playing an actor in his 50s and Scarlett Johansson playing a newly married twenty something meet during their stay in <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Japan</st1:place></st1:country-region>. Surrounded by an alien culture and customs; frustrated of the boredom of an unknown language and people, they get closer. Its quite difficult to call it a love story but more difficult to call it anything else. Its about how two almost strangers can understand and communicate with each other better than they can with the people they’ve spent their lives with. Its also about how sometimes its better to ignore the bleak big picture and enjoy the interludes while they last. That and the deadpan humour of Bill Murray make sure that <i style="">Lost in Translation </i>leaves a pleasant aftertaste.
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;">
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;"><b style="">10. <i style="">Ed Wood</i><o:p></o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;"><b style=""><o:p> </o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;"><span style=""> </span><a href="http://www.imdb.com/media/rm660379904/tt0109707">
<br /><span style="text-decoration: none;"><!--[if gte vml 1]><v:shape id="_x0000_i1032" type="#_x0000_t75" alt="Still of Johnny Depp and Martin Landau in Ed Wood" style="'width:285pt;height:231.75pt'" button="t"> <v:imagedata src="file:///C:\Users\Dell\AppData\Local\Temp\msohtml1\01\clip_image016.jpg" href="http://ia.media-imdb.com/images/M/MV5BMTgxNzk5Mzk5NF5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTYwODU0OTc3._V1._SX475_SY386_.jpg"> </v:shape><![endif]--><!--[if !vml]--></span></a></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; page-break-after: avoid;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicpF88Ig7zpZugUiS983mF-3ilbFRlMojT9o1DyXJbJFotEAdhSkXXExo-mW_ZOyAASbxX3i0o9CLJT48zP0kH5PNhsK2nDkwDMmzYarPzt_Q4d-ulTX336FHSZZE3giMVpS8kmsVBDw/s1600-h/10.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 260px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicpF88Ig7zpZugUiS983mF-3ilbFRlMojT9o1DyXJbJFotEAdhSkXXExo-mW_ZOyAASbxX3i0o9CLJT48zP0kH5PNhsK2nDkwDMmzYarPzt_Q4d-ulTX336FHSZZE3giMVpS8kmsVBDw/s320/10.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5412869050424875650" border="0" /></a></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="page-break-after: avoid; text-align: justify;">
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="page-break-after: avoid; text-align: justify;">This Tim Burton biopic stars Johnny Depp as Edward D Wood who acquired unexpected fame posthumously when he was voted as the worst director ever for his outlandish movies about monsters and alien terrors made on shoe string budgets in the 1950s. <i style="">Ed Wood </i>is obviously funny but it never makes fun of the actor/director/writer/editor/producer who had a fetish for cross dressing. Instead it pays a loving tribute to a guy who was passionate and sincere about making movies even if he was ill equipped for it and perhaps despite being aware of it.
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="page-break-after: avoid; text-align: justify;">
<br /></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p class="MsoNormal" style="page-break-after: avoid; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p class="MsoNormal" style="page-break-after: avoid; text-align: justify;">And a few more..</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="page-break-after: avoid; text-align: justify;">
<br /></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p class="MsoNormal" style="page-break-after: avoid; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p class="MsoNormal" style="page-break-after: avoid; text-align: justify;">I’ve already listed 11 movies instead of 10 so how does it matter if I list a few more. Should always take advantage of economies of scale.
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;">
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;"><b style="">11. <i style="">Beautiful Girls</i> <o:p></o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;"><b style=""><o:p> </o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;">
<br /><span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span><!--[if gte vml 1]><v:shape id="_x0000_i1034" type="#_x0000_t75" alt="" style="'width:226.5pt;height:333.75pt'"> <v:imagedata src="file:///C:\Users\Dell\AppData\Local\Temp\msohtml1\01\clip_image018.jpg" href="http://www.moviegoods.com/Assets/product_images/1020/209370.1020.A.jpg"> </v:shape><![endif]--><!--[if !vml]--></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; page-break-after: avoid;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6tP9p-q6PpfA7SS901Q8YAi1dHNAFqMDRdjv9ZGpIMtjcbw2dHdFETBmRgRU4SwoiN8PUaEl5FAvauEZdGRyg1WhV8N7j8HzaEmgBAFu_T2ThMhp9KhLGGoxkJ0vV6v05H_1l7N3HXA/s1600-h/11.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 217px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6tP9p-q6PpfA7SS901Q8YAi1dHNAFqMDRdjv9ZGpIMtjcbw2dHdFETBmRgRU4SwoiN8PUaEl5FAvauEZdGRyg1WhV8N7j8HzaEmgBAFu_T2ThMhp9KhLGGoxkJ0vV6v05H_1l7N3HXA/s320/11.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5412869895531771266" border="0" /></a></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;">
<br /><!--[endif]--><b style=""><o:p></o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;">A deceptively ordinary name for a brilliant and funny movie with an ensemble cast, vaguely about men chasing illusions of women. This is a perfect example of a movie which is not trying to say anything but is still absolutely fascinating to watch not to mention hilarious, sensible and sweet. Its definitely not a ‘date movie’ even though the poster might say so, although on second thoughts I am not very sure what exactly is a ‘date movie’. A superb soundtrack, likeable (and competent) actors and soothing visuals. Seriously, what more?</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;">
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;"><b style="">12. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind <o:p></o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;"><b style=""><o:p> </o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;">
<br /><b style=""><span style=""> </span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; page-break-after: avoid;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhK4k20SJNO4sqwm7_kPHsccyVBVtlILUfcAqT3JmKhePzPfAegBwn18hN5_wdzlGAJiOYvGSMMEL_2emijp1nCIt4kuE-TS_aPQ1wjfU4WX-F5A4SagH3be4M0QeCOigz6CbNFiXCQYA/s1600-h/12.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 207px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhK4k20SJNO4sqwm7_kPHsccyVBVtlILUfcAqT3JmKhePzPfAegBwn18hN5_wdzlGAJiOYvGSMMEL_2emijp1nCIt4kuE-TS_aPQ1wjfU4WX-F5A4SagH3be4M0QeCOigz6CbNFiXCQYA/s320/12.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5412870880887356082" border="0" /></a><a href="http://www.imdb.com/media/rm1222875392/tt0338013"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><!--[if gte vml 1]><v:shape id="_x0000_i1033" type="#_x0000_t75" alt="Still of Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" style="'width:327pt;height:212.25pt'" button="t"> <v:imagedata src="file:///C:\Users\Dell\AppData\Local\Temp\msohtml1\01\clip_image020.jpg" href="http://ia.media-imdb.com/images/M/MV5BMTM5MTM4MTUwNF5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTYwMDA3MTE3._V1._SX485_SY315_.jpg"> </v:shape><![endif]--><!--[if !vml]--></span></a></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;"><a href="http://www.imdb.com/media/rm1222875392/tt0338013"><span style="text-decoration: none;">
<br /><!--[endif]--></span></a><b style=""><o:p></o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;"><b style=""><o:p> </o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;">One of the best films ever. There’s no point in me trying to explain what its about. Anyone who hasn’t yet, should watch it. And while you are at it check this out as well: <a href="http://www.lacunainc.com/">http://www.lacunainc.com/</a></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;"><a href="http://www.lacunainc.com/">
<br /></a> </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;"><b style=""><o:p> </o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;"><b style="">13. <i style="">Vicky Christina Barcelona<o:p></o:p></i></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;"><b style=""><i style=""><span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></i></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;">
<br /><span style=""> </span><!--[if gte vml 1]><v:shape id="_x0000_i1035" type="#_x0000_t75" alt="" style="'width:307.5pt;height:205.5pt'"> <v:imagedata src="file:///C:\Users\Dell\AppData\Local\Temp\msohtml1\01\clip_image022.jpg" href="http://www.cinemaisdope.com/news/films/vickycristinabarcelona/penelopecruz.jpg"> </v:shape><![endif]--><!--[if !vml]--></p><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxQPe-MeLdmzD4TVk0DgfSV0lBesXs0DR1b5HU6i45AhR_6HH8DvFCz6Vx_Ewo6qJXfXq3DYLJTknv1jqIz3fqfxX5dxntC6U-KIO_FRke_U2h5R6pAIRU6Kj5IuBheKNftZXlNxFrEA/s1600-h/13.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 214px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxQPe-MeLdmzD4TVk0DgfSV0lBesXs0DR1b5HU6i45AhR_6HH8DvFCz6Vx_Ewo6qJXfXq3DYLJTknv1jqIz3fqfxX5dxntC6U-KIO_FRke_U2h5R6pAIRU6Kj5IuBheKNftZXlNxFrEA/s320/13.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5412871516829375090" border="0" /></a></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;"><!--[endif]--></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;">
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;">This is definitely not Woody Allen’s best movie but it’s a better one in recent times. It is also one of his most stylish and good looking films.
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;">
<br /><span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;"><b style=""><o:p> </o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;"><b style=""><o:p> </o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;"><b style="">14. <i style="">Into the Wild<o:p></o:p></i></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;"><b style=""><i style=""><o:p> </o:p></i></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN"><span style=""> </span><a href="http://popsecret.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/2007_into_the_wild_005.jpg">
<br /><span style="text-decoration: none;"><!--[if gte vml 1]><v:shape id="_x0000_i1036" type="#_x0000_t75" alt="A still shot from the movie Into the Wild featuring Hirsch and Stewart" href="http://popsecret.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/2007_into_the_wild_005.jpg" style="'width:337.5pt;height:225pt'" button="t"> <v:imagedata src="file:///C:\Users\Dell\AppData\Local\Temp\msohtml1\01\clip_image024.jpg" href="http://popsecret.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/2007_into_the_wild_005.jpg?w=500&h=333"> </v:shape><![endif]--><!--[if !vml]--></span></a></span></p><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDp2mBIGAPaQeijaxz0-DOJpSNTtcQ-1WjgaS1wCKpQvK18O-u3Eag7XrRi_5ZLaT9124flsmJGPQkkVBb8pSn-7DZT-XqEeMCouG-KcJ3zJ2hqOZB2Wb8vAYySRJRYNml5C3iFFDVgA/s1600-h/14.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 213px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDp2mBIGAPaQeijaxz0-DOJpSNTtcQ-1WjgaS1wCKpQvK18O-u3Eag7XrRi_5ZLaT9124flsmJGPQkkVBb8pSn-7DZT-XqEeMCouG-KcJ3zJ2hqOZB2Wb8vAYySRJRYNml5C3iFFDVgA/s320/14.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5412872369605586162" border="0" /></a></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="" lang="EN">
<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="" lang="EN">A brilliant film by Sean Penn based on a true story about the journey of a guy into wilderness in search for purity. Its one of those movies which affects you immensely the first time you watch it. Breathtaking visuals and Eddie Vedder’s soundtrack make this almost a perfect film. The only minus is that it can be a touch depressing at times. I guess it depends how your general mood is when you are watching it. So probably its not exactly a ‘feel good’ movie but still a great one.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; page-break-after: avoid;"><o:p> </o:p></p> mukul sharmahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04903714182994554289noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1766896190171364904.post-59575447029487561262008-09-20T07:29:00.000-07:002009-12-08T23:50:45.069-08:00Rhymes For A Working Man<div align="center"></div><p align="center">I. Sitting here, looking there.</p><p align="center"> My mind on nothing.</p><p align="center"> its not easy I tell you; </p><p align="center">the words in front of me; </p><p align="center">on my screen move around.</p><p align="center">They run into each other; </p><p align="center">merge, converge, disappear; </p><p align="center">till I can see nothing. </p><p align="center"><br /> II. Tad dat dat, tad dat dat. </p><p align="center">The phones now a days don’t ring. </p><p align="center">They go tad dat dat, tad dat dat. </p><p align="center">The one next to me goes tad dat dat, </p><p align="center">then the one behind me, then all the ones around me. </p><p align="center">Ta dat dat, tad dat dat. </p><p align="center">They hit each other, punch each other; till I can hear nothing. </p><p align="center"><br /> III. Its not easy I tell you, to keep your mind on nothing. </p><p align="center">They teach you this in meditation.</p><p align="center"> Keep your mind free. Think nothing. </p><p align="center">Think nothing, see nothing, hear nothing. </p><p align="center">Quite soon you feel nothing, imagine nothing, do nothing. </p><p align="center">Dream nothing, desire nothing, yearn nothing. </p><p align="center">Now I know, I truly madly deeply love nothing.</p><p align="center"> Quite very soon I’ll become nothing.</p><p align="center"><br /> IV. That’s nirvana for you, served fresh on your desk.</p><p align="center"> Goes well with piles of paper stack. </p><p align="center">Piles and piles of paper stack and stacks and stacks of paper piles. </p><p align="center">And those black little binder clips.</p><p align="center"> Exist to point that you are even smaller blip. </p><p align="center">Anomaly in the System dude, you are still thinking. </p><p align="center">But don’t worry, they’ll sort you out. </p><p align="center">The last remains of sanity, they’ll extort out. </p><p align="center">Shout out, cry out, laugh out.</p><p align="center"> Don’t blame anyone though, you see the window, if you have the guts then jump out.</p>mukul sharmahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04903714182994554289noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1766896190171364904.post-66867296768594561222008-05-12T05:06:00.001-07:002009-12-08T08:59:10.572-08:00Death is the Road to Awe: of and about The Fountain<div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaORqo68sfOCiF5eNvqaCs9cY5RAH8j77N5lugPZxnjxaPfYt-vOHYHjxMLUN78h8RyamH_34vVN_djeVNftFIBwgilS8ZvQvcOLh5ty1lpVKinKs54SYlATsY1xpj6fZfOvcPyz8P6g/s1600-h/the-fountain-1-1024.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaORqo68sfOCiF5eNvqaCs9cY5RAH8j77N5lugPZxnjxaPfYt-vOHYHjxMLUN78h8RyamH_34vVN_djeVNftFIBwgilS8ZvQvcOLh5ty1lpVKinKs54SYlATsY1xpj6fZfOvcPyz8P6g/s320/the-fountain-1-1024.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5412897617315312690" border="0" /></a><br /></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">“What if you could live forever?” </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">This is one of the taglines for <i style="">The Fountain</i>. It is also a question which has haunted humanity since its beginning. The quest for eternal life has no other parallel in the history of mankind. Be it science or mythology, we have always been fascinated with the possibility of finding elixir, the Fountain of Youth, the Tree of Life, <i style="">aabe hayaat </i>or <i style=""><span style=""> </span>amrut!</i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><i style="">The Fountain</i> is the story of the quest of a man (Hugh Jackman) for immortality for his love (Rachel Weiz). It spans across three ‘life’ times and in many ways represents the struggle of Man himself against mortality.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><span style=""> </span>In 1500 AD he is Tomas, a warrior, the Conquistador who has to find the Tree of Life to save his Queen Isabella, the Queen of Spain from the Inquisition for heresy. As he sets off for the Mayan jungles, his queen gives him her ring and promises that when he comes back successful, they will together forever. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">In 2000 AD he is Tommy/ Tom, a scientist who is searching for a cure for cancer afflicting his wife Izzi. She is on the verge of dying. He is on the verge of a breakthrough. He watches in anguish as she slowly slips away from him. He decides that death is a disease like any other. There is a cure for it and he would find it. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">In 2500 AD he is (still?) Tom who is traveling through space in a floating bubble with the almost dried Tree of Life. His destination is Xibalba, a dying star which is the Mayan Underworld where the dead souls go to be reborn. He plans to revive the Tree of Life and perhaps revive Izzi. All these years he has survived not so much on the bark of the Tree but the memories of Izzi. As he tells a vision of her, “all these years, all these memories, there was you. You pulled me through time.” </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">What happens eventually when Tomas drinks the sap from the Tree of Life and when Tom reaches Xibalba as it explodes around him is the answer to the questions haunting Tommy and the rest of us- Is there a cure for death? Can we ever achieve immortality? The answer is No and Yes. No, there is no cure for death but yes it is possible to achieve immortality. Death is the path to immortality; <i style="">death is the road to awe. </i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">The sap from the Tree of Life does not revive the dead, it gives rise to new life. And what happens to Tomas who drinks it and is horrified to see saplings spurting out of his body? Does he die? No, he becomes immortal. He becomes the trees. When Xibalba explodes, it gives birth to new stars. Which is why a dying star is the Mayan Underworld. Which is why the guard of the Tree of Life kills himself because his blood will feed the Earth and make him immortal. Which is why Tommy plants a seed over Izzi’s grave. Of course Izzi knew this before him which is why she was not afraid of dying. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">So, perhaps it is not possible to become immortal without dying. Perhaps it’s not possible to move on without letting go of the past. This means that it becomes all the more important to live in the moment. One of the pivotal scenes in the movie is where Izzi asks Tommy to take a walk with her as it’s the first snow of the season. But Tommy is working furiously to develop a cure for her cancer, so he refuses rather harshly. This scene is flashed many times in the movie as Tommy goes through guilt and regret for not spending time with her. In attempts to get more (life) time for her, he gave away the time that he could’ve had with her. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">One last bit of advice: watch <i style="">The Fountain</i>. Watch it for the heart wrenching eyes of Hugh Jackman as he traverses through hope, helplessness, anguish, desperation and regret. Watch it for the quivering lips of Racel Weiz as she says, she’s not afraid anymore (of dying). Watch it for her glorious face which makes a man waiting 500 years for her seem perfectly logical. Watch <i style="">The Fountain</i> for the visual ecstasy that it is; one that you would have never tasted before. Watch it for its majestic soundtrack. Watch it because it took Darrren Aronofsky (the guy who had earlier made <i style="">Requiem for a Dream</i>) six years of blood, sweat and toil to bring <i style="">The Fountain</i> out overcoming disbelievers and doubts-from within and without. Watch it so that you would never use words like <i style="">magnum opus </i>for movies like <st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on"><i style="">Troy</i></st1:city></st1:place><i style=""> </i>or <i style="">Jodha </i><span style=""> </span><i style="">Akbar</i>. Watch <i style="">The Fountain</i> because its been condemned like any other attempt which dares to challenge the way we think.<br />Watch it because there is hardly any other love story which is so pure, moving and grand that it truly deserves to be called an epic. <span style=""> </span></p>mukul sharmahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04903714182994554289noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1766896190171364904.post-39572392554400683382008-04-10T22:25:00.000-07:002008-04-10T22:29:55.675-07:00A Cold Obituary<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">Sid C (30.9.07): Al got stabbed in a street fight. He didn’t make it. Passed away around 1.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><o:p></o:p>I waited for it to sink in. it didn’t. Somehow it didn’t seem real enough. Maybe because it was Al. The guy had been through hell and back many times over. Did he really run out of luck this time. It was not shocking that he got into a street fight. He had in the past and it was equally normal to expect him to come out it just about unscratched. People don’t just die in street fights at least not Al.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">If there was ever a concrete model of flawed genius, it was Al. An exceptional natural athlete with one of the sharpest brains in law school. A rare combination without doubt.<span style=""> </span>No one could argue that his heart was in the right place even if at times his head worked in a ‘different manner’. It were his excesses at times which made him both abnormal and normal at the same time. If not for such extreme streaks he would have been too perfect, almost a superhuman; a non human. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">Cruel as it seems his getting killed on the day he finished law school, it was not devoid of some poetic sense. I mean, imagine Al going through mundane office chores everyday!</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">And of course he had lived! That’s what everyone would say. He had lived his life before he died. There are not many people dying at 22 that you could say things like that. People wouldn’t say such things about ‘achievers’ or people who had been perfectly genteel and ‘normal’. No, but when a guy who half the world called ‘mad’ dies, we say that he had lived.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">It says something about the rest of us, what exactly I am not sure. Perhaps it shows what hypocrites we are. What we truly admire is also what we detest, fear or ridicule. Perhaps because we lack the courage to act according to our whims that we are uncomfortable with people like Al, who do so. But now that he is dead we see the futility of pretensions.<span style=""> </span>In death there are no masks and no need for niceties. Why we need to carry them through life is something people should think about once in a while. <span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span></p>mukul sharmahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04903714182994554289noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1766896190171364904.post-74500629698402348382008-03-26T07:04:00.000-07:002009-12-08T09:29:48.526-08:00BITCH: short story<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">Everybody loves a good train story and almost everyone has one. It is of course not difficult to explain why. What makes a good yarn after all?<span style=""> </span>A bit of adventure, a sniff of mystery, a trace of the unexpected, a bunch of strangers and a lot of time with practically nothing to do. There! now you know why train travel makes storytellers out of normal, simple and god fearing folks. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">The year was 2008. Benazir Bhutto had been assassinated; Modi had won the elections in Gujarat, the French President was dating an Italian supermodel, India had just won the test match at Perth and I was about to graduate in four months.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">I was traveling from Jaipur to <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Bombay</st1:place></st1:city> for an internship. It started out as a routine train journey- entertaining enough and boring enough. <span style=""> </span>Exactly like one of the numerous train journeys that I had taken earlier. Now my dear reader you know what I am going to say next and well, I am not going to disappoint you; yes…..little did I know what was in store for me. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">So, sure enough I ate my home packed dinner at around eight o clock, flipped a few pages of <i style="">Outlook, </i>doodled a bit in my writing pad and then dozed off. In all probability I would have slept like a log till the morning but for the wannabe IAS aspirant occupying the berth above me who had to get down at Ratlam at ten thirty. In the process he banged the door thrice, called the mother of the coolie a ‘professional worker’ of a different kind and managed to crush my almost non existent nose with the bottom of his fake <i style="">Nike </i>bag, thereby rendering me quite wide awake.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">Then of course, she entered. There was a backpack dangling from her shoulder and apart from that she did not seem to be carrying any luggage. Obviously a short distance commuter, I thought. She threw the backpack on the berth above with a brutal casualness. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">“I hope you are not going to sleep right now”, she asked bending down; her face inches away from mine.<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">Her face! Dear reader if you haven’t noticed, this was the first time that I saw her face. Now, I could fill many a pages describing the lines and contours of her face or rhyming metaphors to pay tribute to her but I would get nowhere close to describing her angelic beauty or the effect that it had on me.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">“eh…no, I’m not”, I managed to elicit a reply out after what seemed like an awful lot of time for a pretty simple question.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">“Good! Because I am in no mood to sleep and I want someone to talk to” she exclaimed rather jubilantly much to the annoyance of the retired CA struggling to sleep on berth number twenty six.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">Then we talked for a long time or rather she talked and I intervened from time to time. We were of course talking about all random things and I think it was I who brought up the killing of Benazir Bhutto and what would drive suicide bombers to kill themselves.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">“I don’t know what it takes to kill yourself but I can assure you that it feels horrible to have someone’s blood on your hands.” Suddenly she became grim and her pink cheeks turned crimson. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">“Well, one would think it should but then I am sure there are a lot of murderers around who feel no sense of guilt at all.” <span style=""> </span>It sounded pretty reasonable as I said it.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">“I am sure even the most cold blooded killers can’t forget the faces of the people they kill. You don’t know how it feels to kill someone. I do. Trust me on this.” She appeared lost as she said this.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">Wait a minute. What was this girl on to? Was she serious?</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">“Hey, what do you mean by that?” I had to ask.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">“Nothing forget it.”, she shook her head.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">Now we all know that when someone says, ‘forget it’, they are just waiting to be persuaded further. So I prodded in my most eloquent fashion, </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">“I mean……come on………like………..actually have you…………what………killed?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">“Yes…I ran over a guy. I mean… I’d got admission in NIFT so I went out to celebrate with friends, while coming back alone………………..was a little drunk……….and this guy came out of nowhere……..when I hit him, it felt like a road bump. I did not stop. I couldn’t stop. I knew he was dead…………I knew from the look on his face a split second before the car hit him. <span style=""> </span>Two days later when I saw his photograph in the newspaper, I couldn’t stop vomiting.” </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">OK. I’m admittedly not one of those chirpy talkative types but even assuming I was what could I say in a situation like this. So there was an uncomfortable period of silence, after which I managed to say, </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">“ehh…..I am sorry, its all right” or something like that. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">“You know this is the first time that I’ve told anyone about this incident…………..because it never happened! </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">I can’t believe you fell for it!!! </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">Look at your face you poor child! ” </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">She started laughing hysterically. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">My dear reader if you think that I was feeling miserable at this point of time, you couldn’t be more wrong. I was in the heaven of delight. That laughter! Clear as fresh spring water was sufficient to cure all mortal medleys. To this day that laughter rings clear in my ears.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">“So what do you do apart from telling charming lies?” I asked as her laughs were finally reduced to giggles.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">“What would be your guess?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">“Well, I think you could be a successful model.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">“Wow, I wonder how you could guess that?” I think for a second I detected sarcasm in her tone.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">“But yes, you are correct. I am into modeling……mostly on the ramp but am starting to do some commercials.” </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">“Well, it must be a great life as a model” I said rather than asking her.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">“Yeah….its pretty good….All this traveling………..glamour…………the money’s pretty good as well….”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">“Cool……”, I was satisfied.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">“but yes………it stinks also……… especially if you are young and gullible……..you can get really fucked in this line”, she said.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">“Yes, I think its important to be well grounded or you can go astray with all that money and glamour”. I said earnestly.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">“Not just that. Its so important in our profession to be well connected, know the right people and maintain relations with them” she said almost insisting.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">“Well, I guess its true for most professions.” I still couldn’t see how this was a problem only with the fashion industry.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">“But this can go horribly wrong as well. I have a friend who stayed with this almost famous photographer for two years. He kept promising her work but finally she realized that he was merely using her. That was the first time she tried committing suicide by slashing her wrist. Since then she has tried at least twice again to kill herself. Though, for good or for the bad she’s still alive.” She voice gradually faded to a stop. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">There are not many occasions on which you are relieved to see the ticket checker but on this occasion I was as it ended the uncomfortable silence that was building up. I produced my ticket for his perusal. She got up to retrieve her ticket from her bag on the upper berth. As she stretched to open the bag, the sleeve of her shirt slipped back a little. I saw there: three wide and deep slash marks on her wrist just below the slim gold watch!</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">To be honest I was not shell shocked. I felt like perhaps something beautiful being destroyed but more like a sense of losing something you never had in the first place. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">As the TC left, she sat again in front of me and moved her hair back to tie them in a knot. I committed the folly of looking straight into her eyes even as I tried to come up with something to say. She instantly realized what had happened as I tried to avert her gaze. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">“I know you saw the marks. Yeah, its obvious I am that friend of mine! But don’t worry I am not planning to jump off the train or something.” She said quite matter of factly.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">I nodded and hoped that I could get the ‘its fine, I understand’ look on my face.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">“Oh ! I am such a terrible person!! Please I am sorry.” Her words were generously interspersed with giggles. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">“I am sorry…..none of this is true. I just made up the entire story. These marks I got as a kid when I fell on a barbed fence.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">This was followed by a brief spell of hysterical laughter after which she finally spoke,</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">“But you know. It was worth it. The look on your face. I am sure you would have offered to marry me to prevent me from jumping off the train.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">My dear reader, you would be justified in thinking that I must have got irritated and fed up with her. But as I told you earlier I was spellbound. Though I felt bad as she was having fun at my expense but secretly I enjoyed it.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">“And I am not a model. I am a journalist. I had gone to Ratlam to cover a story. So what do you do?” She asked.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">I told her that I was a law student and to impress her I also added that I struggle to write. Well, sure enough it did get her attention. She perked up, leaned forward and put her chin on her knees, “So what kind of stuff do you write?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">“Short stories, reviews, generally all kinds of random stuff.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">“Oh…and I guess your stories come out of your experience. That’s what everyone says.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">“Yes to a certain extent but it is true that every time you write something, you expose a bit of your self to the readers. I think I read that in <i style="">Atonment.</i> “</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">“So am I gonna figure in one of your stories?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">Strangely<span style=""> </span>I was expecting this question. “Perhaps. But I need to know your name first.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">“If its for one of your stories, call me Jasmine. I kinda like that name.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">“So Jasmine, are you single?” I tried to change the topic of conversation drastically. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">“Yeah… I just broke up with my boyfriend for four years just two months back.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">“What happened?” <span style=""> </span>as soon as I asked this I realized that it was too snoopy question.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">Thankfully she did not think so and replied, “Oh…he was cheating on me.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">“Fine”, I said.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">“But that’s not why I broke up with him.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">“Its not? Then what happened?” </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">“Its actually an interesting story.” She did not ask me whether I was interested in hearing it. “I was going out with this guy for almost two years before I moved in with him. He works for the same newspaper as me. But after a year or so we grew weary of each other. I think he was the first one to start seeing others but I am not sure as I also was not being exactly faithful.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">“We were still staying together and we never confronted each other even if we knew that the other was cheating. For the record we were still in a mutually exclusive relationship. This would have continued for some more time at least if I had not met that charming banker when I was doing a story on the market crash. I was smitten at our first encounter itself. Anyways, jumping ahead, the fateful day was a Friday. I was supposed to go to <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Nasik</st1:place></st1:city> directly from the office that night. But at the last moment they told me that someone from the Pune office had already reached there and I was not required to go there. This left me with an unexpected gift of free time. I met up with this investment banker at Leo’s for a few drinks. This was I think our third or fourth date. As it turned out I had a few drinks more than usual and we ended up doing it in his car.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">“By the time he dropped me back, it was midnight. I was still a bit tipsy as I opened the flat using my key, switched on the lights and……..whoa………..what did I see?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">“Your boyfriend with someone else.” I offered. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">“Yes. They were at it in our bed but wait here comes the shocking part……………..the chick in bed………….she looked exactly like……………..this guy………the banker……who had dropped me back………..except of course for the long hair and you know….well……..the boobs”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">“Admittedly, I was still a bit drunk but as I told you I had switched the lights on so I got a pretty clear look of her face. It completely freaked me out. I mean really really freaked me out!”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">“Seriously what the hell?”, I found it a bit difficult to swallow.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">“Anyways I later found out that she was indeed the twin of my investment banker but again think what are the odds of such a thing happening?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">“The next day itself I moved out. Though still I feel a little bad about my ex boyfriend as he thinks that I was indeed not cheating on him and was shattered on catching him in bed with someone else. I obviously did not tell him the real reason of my shock.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">“What about the investment banker?” I asked.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">“Oh…I never saw him again. He did call a couple of times but I never answered.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">“That’s a pretty amusing story but is it true?” I had to ask her.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">“Well…………”, then came that now famous giggle again, “no…….but you do agree that its an interesting one, right?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">“Yeah, it is”, I smiled.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">Then we chatted for some more time and finally went off to sleep. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">‘<i style="">Jaipur sai Mumbai Central jaane waali…….” </i><span style=""> </span>The announcement at Bandra Terminus woke me up in the morning as the train slowed down. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">“Hey….am getting down here. Bye.” </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">I turned to find her standing in front of the open door, the wind blowing her hair all over her face.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">“Hey…see ya…” I said sleepily, trying to get up but realizing that it was too late as the train had come to a complete stop and she stepped forward to get down.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">But then she hesitated for a second, leaned back in, turned her head towards me throwing her hair back and said, “By the way, one of the stories that I told you last night was actually true.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">“You are such a……….bitch…….” I said with a chuckle. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">“Yeah…I know that’s what everyone says.” She smiled her infinitely beautiful smile and then…..she was gone. <span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></p>mukul sharmahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04903714182994554289noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1766896190171364904.post-57926744134052493532008-03-26T06:53:00.000-07:002008-03-26T07:04:31.689-07:00An Ode to Her : meta fiction<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">There is pretty much nothing in my life except her. When I go to sleep it is her voice which is whispering in my ears. It forces me to listen to her but I cannot understand what she says. I yearn to make sense of her words. Maybe she is confessing her love for me, maybe she is sharing her inmost secrets with me. No matter how hard I try, I cannot make sense of her. Yet, her voice is clear as water from a fresh spring, cool like the first breeze in the morning after a night of rain. It soothes me and soon pushes me in a trance like sleep. I am still aware of her, she gets closer to me but I cannot see her, or feel her, I can only listen to her, sense her. I try to tell her that I love her; that she is my life but she doesn’t reply. I hear her laughter, it is not a loud, shameless laughter of a child. It is a shy, muted laugh. She knows! I don’t need to tell her, She knows! She pushes me further in my daze. I try to resist but then I realize that it is her spell and I cannot resist her. I succumb to her shoves and embrace senselessness.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">I wake up and she is beside me. I am not surprised, I am not overwhelmed. My head is over her hair. I turn slowly towards her and my nose is buried in her long hair. The smell is not intoxicating, it is refreshing. For a couple of moments I feel like burying my face in her hair; forgetting about everything else, losing myself in the silky dark maze. But no, her face beckons me. I turn my head further to see her face. My nose brushes hers. She breaks into a smile. A smile more beautiful than anything I have even seen before. A smile like drops of dew on a windflower swaying in gentle breeze. A smile which tells me innocence is not dead. It has the freshness of a thousand glorious mornings. It lasts for barely five seconds but I want to freeze this moment. I close my eyes for a while, there; now it won’t leave me. Her eyes ask me the meaning of what I just did but I pretend not to notice her question. I move my hand behind her shoulders and bring her closer to me. Now, the warmth of her breath is upon me. Her breaths come and go quickly revealing her apprehension. I move my lips to kiss her and feel the smoothness of rose petals. Gently first, then with slightly more fervor. There is a taste on my tongue. It is not wine or nectar. It is not sweet or salty. It is a purplish red taste. I withdraw slowly. Her eyes are closed. Perhaps she is still savoring the moment or maybe she is also creating a snapshot for her memory book. As she opens her eyes, she finds me looking in them; searching for something, looking for an answer to an unasked question. She is no mood for answering any questions. She rebukes me for being too inquisitive. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">There is a tress of hair in front of her eye which troubles her every time a gentle breeze revisits her face. I move it aside with my hand and let my hand fall down to caress her cheek. Her skin has absorbed the chill of the morning but it warms under my hand. I repeat the movement with the back of my fingers, as I reach the top of her upper lip, she lowers her eyelids. It is an invitation but she could have as easily given me a command. I throw my hands around her shoulders and embrace her. The voluptuousness of her body is pressed hard into mine. Her breath is on my neck. Her fingers are playing with my ear lobe. As I make love to her, I can feel her breasts heaving against my chest. I do not wish for this moment to continue forever, I know it can’t. <span style=""> </span>I do not wish for immortality, I wish for death, death at this very moment. This is the consummate moment of my life. I do not seek anything more; I know there can’t be anything better. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;">After sometime, while our bodies are still intertwined, I look over her. A morning shower is pelting against the glass of the window. I catch a reflection in the glass. It is not her reflection, not my reflection; it is our reflection. In this moment of our accord, it is impossible to tell where she ends and where I begin. There is pretty much nothing in my life except her.<span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span></p>mukul sharmahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04903714182994554289noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1766896190171364904.post-34639631635089341902008-02-25T04:40:00.000-08:002009-12-08T08:35:27.566-08:00Shine On: reviewing Superstar<div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEip4ZwPzxOircVdq9HfM5AfBCAvOZdVVD-e9gZIb48IdMWl89ZPQaNu95-qd8eNGHc-2yhTP8gMjiE_FRfv1TBVYQ-Tm1_sJ328yVFBH6q5_iYBwrRoyGbd-ZIOrQzh3XyTKNfDDXLdmw/s1600-h/Tulip-Kunal-Khemmu-in-SUPERSTAR-746493.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 213px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEip4ZwPzxOircVdq9HfM5AfBCAvOZdVVD-e9gZIb48IdMWl89ZPQaNu95-qd8eNGHc-2yhTP8gMjiE_FRfv1TBVYQ-Tm1_sJ328yVFBH6q5_iYBwrRoyGbd-ZIOrQzh3XyTKNfDDXLdmw/s320/Tulip-Kunal-Khemmu-in-SUPERSTAR-746493.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5412903395846219234" border="0" /></a><br /></div><div align="justify"><br />It’s not fashionable to sing praises to Kunal Khemu. Its certainly not cool to rave about a movie called <em>Superstar</em> especially when its released on the same Friday as a Ranvir Shorey, Vinay Pathak <em>Mithya</em> which of course has to be a sophisticated and superbly hilarious movie meant only for the self proclaimed classes.<br />So probably Rohit Jugraj would not get the due credit for making a roller coaster of a drama which reflects the ethos of a typical Bollywood masala much better than OSO claimed to.<br />One reason why he deserves the accolades is because it would not have been easy to recover from <em>James </em>to make <em>Superstar</em>. No one held back in slamming the movie which it probably deserved and his own mentor RGV disowned him (that the latter then remade the movie himself as <em>Shiva</em> which met with an equally disastrous fate is an amusing story in itself)<br />With <em>Superstar</em>, Rohit has redeemed himself. He can only go up from here.<br />There has not been a movie in quite some time where you could identify nay feel with the central characters. (ok, leave TZP aside for a moment). In Superstar you laugh when Kunal laughs, you cry (at least shed a tear) when he cries and your heart actually sinks every time his dreams are shattered.<br />The secret to the visual craft of Rohit Jugraj lies in its rawness. In James it was at display in the brutal punches but he went overboard there. In <em>Superstar</em>, he has started to learn the beauty of subtlety. So here when the dreams of the middle class struggler are crashed because of his look-alike becoming a star you get a close up of Kunal’s face with his head on the edge of roof and a single tear rolls out his right eye. There are a few more of these subtle touches like the shot of Marv from <em>Sin City</em> before Kunal takes on a bunch of goons or the portrait in rich Kunal’s room which clearly show that the director was in no hurry when he made the movie.<br />When the need arises to go lavish, Rohit does it in style again with near picture perfect frames. Despite being an out and out masala movie, <em>Superstar</em> avoids a number of clichés. So the rich brat is not exactly spoilt and though lonely he is not filled with self pity. Again, despite being a bumbling actor, he is not stupid and nor is he apologetic for his undeserved riches as he explains to his middle class look alike, “I’m just lucky, not stupid”.<br />In supporting cast, Sharat Saxena shines in the role of a middle class father who is ashamed of his son being a struggler. One scene stands out, when he explains why he never praised his son but is showing off his achievements when he is dead, he says, “Kya karen, middle class jo hain…sharm kuch zyada hi aati hai…” touché.<br />Tulip Joshi is so beautiful and not a bad actress at all as she proves yet again, so why she’s not seen more often and in bigger productions makes one suspicious of the ‘skills’ of the other actresses who do manage that.<br />The music again is quite good and gells really well with the mood of the movie (if you think this is a standard line, watch <em>Welcome</em> and you’ll realize what happens when the music is totally out of sync with the movie).<br />So in a nutshell <em>Superstar</em> rocks and if it had names like SRK or Farhan Akhtar associated with it, it probably would have been one of the year’s biggest hits but now it’ll be just one of those movies which came and went. But just as well, because it does mark the birth of two new stars, Kunal Khemu and Rohit Jugraj.</div><p><em>PS: </em>This got published in April 2, 2008 <em>Filmfare</em>. They cut it down quite a bit actually. Took out most of the sting and the barbs leaving it quite bland. To be fair to them some of the portions they left out were not exactly "movie review". </p><p> </p>mukul sharmahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04903714182994554289noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1766896190171364904.post-48011653816632466452008-02-25T04:20:00.000-08:002009-12-08T09:33:50.918-08:00The Colour of Love is Red: short story<div align="justify"></div><br /><p align="justify"><em>The End</em><br />An abrupt squall with deafening noise of screeching tires forced the old man on the bicycle to close his eyes as he felt a train thundering past him. He opened them just in time to see the scarlet Skoda crashing into the crumbling boundry of the small puliya, about a hundred meters ahead of him. It dangled from the edge for a moment as he watched, reflecting the morning sun and then slowly tipped over to fall in the deep valley. ‘At least I don’t have to worry about getting any rescuers now’, thought the old man.<br /><br /><em>The Beginning<br /></em>It was a match made in heaven. When they bumped into the dusty narrow corridors on the first day of the college, both of them fell down. She was the first one to get up. She did not offer her hand to him but rather took his hand and pulled him on his feet even as she kept cursing him for having made a mess of her favorite red dress. A week later she surprised him by kissing him just as he was talking about his failed attempts at understanding poetry. For the rest of the five years at law school they were almost always seen together so much so that the rare public appearances that they made separately would spark off hopes of their break up in the cynical gangs of the college, all of which and all of whom would be crushed the next day when they would be spotted back together. When the job offers were being made in the final year, it was quite expected when both of them chose the same law firm in London.<br />A year later, after a day of hard fought rounds of negotiation in the office while they were waiting for the tube on a windy London night, she gave him the option of a dingy Chinese place or a slightly better Italian one as she said they were too tired to cook anything. He surprised her for the first time in a long long time by telling her that he had already made reservations at a posh continental restaurant. As they stepped inside the elegant interiors of the restaurant, she suspected there was something wrong with his head and when she saw the exorbitant items on the menu, her fears were confirmed. Twenty minutes later when they were sipping on an exclusive claret, she got her second surprise of the night as she found her drink spiked with a platinum ring. Rohit’s eyes asked a question and Shweta smiled a “yes”. They got married in Bombay a month later. Two months later, they started a new law firm there along with three of their batch mates from college.<br />The first time Atul saw Mahak, she was standing stiff upright dressed in a sari, awkwardly trying to smile without showing her teeth. He did not like the photo and told his mother that he would never marry an ugly girl like that. He had to soften his position after he was shown around twenty probables over the next six months, all of whom made her look like a fairy tale princess in comparison. The second time when he was forced by his parents to see her, he realized that she did not look as bad in person as she did in the photo. It certainly didn’t hurt her looks that her father was the biggest supplier of rotators for his father’s wind turbine company. Also as she had done MBA from Australia, after marriage she could help in managing the family business. So, three months later they were gotten married.<br /><br /><em>The middle (what else!)</em><br />One of the first major challenges that Atul had to face after taking charge of the company after his father’s death was that of dealing with the strike in one of the factories. It was a tough time for him. Till his father was there, he had been working with an attitude of a carefree employee and never took seriously his advice to take part in the management of the company. Sensing this to be a perfect opportunity, the other major shareholder launched a bid to takeover the company which led to a bitter legal battle.<br />His domestic life was also in dire state. Mahak turned out to be the typical rich snooty wife he had had nightmares about marrying. It was futile to expect her to help him out or even understand his problems. She was completely preoccupied with her own passion of socializing from parties to charity dinners to art exhibitions. Of course what mattered to her were not the malnourished babies or abstract expressionism rather being seen in the right places with the right people.<br />But then someone came in his life and one by one all the clouds got cleared. To begin with their relationship was strictly professional but soon she became a personal friend and it was not long before that they realized that they had something special between them. Words which are often exaggerated as a mode of communication had minimal importance for them. Even through the most tense times, they could share comfortable silence. A mere glance at his face and she would be able to sense if there was something wrong, a mere glance at her and a smile would cross his face. So almost a year after she had walked into his life, Atul gathered up the courage to ask her if she would marry him, of course after he had divorced his wife. He was expecting a ‘no’, though hoping for a ‘yes’ but was shattered when Shweta replied that she was already married. But why had she kept it hidden from him? Before he could ask her, she had left the room.<br />It did not take him long to find out the reason. Just six months after Shweta’s marriage, her husband met with a terrible accident which left him nearly dead. After some time the doctors gave up almost all hopes of him making a recovery but somehow he had been holding on in that vegetative state; a constant reminder of the cruel joke played on them by fate. Slowly, Shweta tried to pick up the pieces of her life again but she got tired of the sympathies of her friends and colleagues. That was the time when she quit and joined Atul’s company as a legal adviser.<br />***<br /><br />“You have to move on, how long can you go on like this?” Atul pleaded with Shweta.<br />But how could she? It has already been four years and yet it did not sink in. Sometimes she would wake up in the middle of the night and think that it was all just a bad dream and everything would be normal in the morning as it had been. She still remembered the awkward manner in which Rohit had reacted when they had kissed for the first time. She could still clearly hear his laughter in her ears; feel his touch on her skin.<br />Of course time had slowly and quietly taken its toll. It always does. Even the strongest of emotions or memories become faded over the years. Then again there are times when one’s refusal to let go of the past starts distorting it. She started becoming unsure of how his voice was. Because she wanted to hold on to his memories so much that she could not accept the fact that she may have forgotten how he exactly sounded. To delude herself, without knowing she started putting a voice to his face in her memories which was quite different from his real one.<br /><br /><br /><br />***<br /><br />Somehow Mahak felt suspicious. It was nothing in particular that concerned her but he seemed to be a bit different recently. Now, that she was thinking about it she was surprised that she hadn’t noticed that sooner. While, earlier he used to get quite irritated with her social life which often lead to heated altercations between them, off late he had almost stopped bothering her. He had also started behaving with her with a touch of politeness which made one of her friends remark that it was as if he was talking to his neighbor’s wife. She had taken all this as a victory over him, a sign of his submission to her dominance in their relationship. But now all of a sudden she felt uneasy. Though she did not understand it but it was the fear of losing Atul that made her nervous. Of course she took him for granted but that did not mean he did not matter to her. She was married to him for life and the thought of separating from him never even crossed her mind. Love has many manifestations. Possession may not be the most dignified of them and certainly not as beautiful an expression as sacrifice but it still is love.<br />So it was quite expected that when she found it, her world came shattering down. Actually, it was nothing much but in her mind clouded with suspicion no testimony would have been more reliable. Atul’s cell phone bill showed an alarmingly high frequency of calls to a number which she knew to be of his beautiful legal adviser. Also, a number of them were made late in the night convincing her that something was amiss. A sudden rush of blood in her head made her go almost blind as she jumped into her Skoda, hoping to confront Atul in his office or better still catch him in the act with his lover early morning.<br />***<br />She had been sitting there for quite some time and probably had fallen asleep for a while but could not be sure. He was lying in front of her. Sometimes he would open his eyes. The doctors said that he could recognize faces. But even if he did there was no acknowledgement of it on his face. Those blank eyes would keep staring at nothing in particular. It appeared as if life was draining out of those eyes ever so slowly. Those were the eyes that had once reflected dreams, hopes and promises of future.<br />She got up and twisted the knob that controlled the amount of oxygen being forced into his lungs. She wanted to hold on to his gaze all this time, accompany him till the threshold. For a second she felt she saw an expression of gratitude in them but soon his eyes were closed. It was as if he did not want her to see death in his eyes. For a brief while his body seemed to struggle. Then the thrashing stopped almost as suddenly as it had started. She reopened the knob and walked out of the room.<br />BLANK. It was as if all her senses had stopped working all of a sudden. No sound reached her ears; her brain registered the whiteness of the morning sun and nothing else. She felt light and free like she had never before. She did not even realize when she got into her car and started driving. Of course, she had no idea where she was going.<br /></p>mukul sharmahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04903714182994554289noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1766896190171364904.post-18217122186405126212008-01-26T23:39:00.000-08:002009-12-08T23:48:29.360-08:00Justice is Blind or it is for the Blind: Reviewing Blind Shaft<div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaFoNw7qTujKe3PbbvKeffw-FAR_mOIb04QxBl-4gipf7bnGsDD5l-GHitG0KzvPRjeOJ865VsfOSj-0hiirWK2TKFNO-d7G6XJYyK4FDBT52q00xhMs2hmHvybtSrO71s3QZftYLGnw/s1600-h/BlindShaftPoster.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 230px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaFoNw7qTujKe3PbbvKeffw-FAR_mOIb04QxBl-4gipf7bnGsDD5l-GHitG0KzvPRjeOJ865VsfOSj-0hiirWK2TKFNO-d7G6XJYyK4FDBT52q00xhMs2hmHvybtSrO71s3QZftYLGnw/s320/BlindShaftPoster.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5412911857083010402" border="0" /></a><br /></div><br /><div align="justify">It seems unfit to write a substantial piece on a movie without explaining its basic premise and the plot. So here it goes: Blind Shaft (2003, Chinese (Mandarain), Director: Li Yang) begins with the two central characters of the movie (as we discover later) Tang and Song speaking with a fellow miner in a coal mine. As they talk about his longing to return home, they hit him over the head killing him and make it look like an accident. They come out of the mine and start acting as if the dead was the brother of Tang. After some shrewd negotiations they manage to extort twenty eight grand from the mine captain to hush up the matter. They leave the mine soon after and go on a spending spree enjoying the pleasures of life. Soon they run out of money and as they stand in town among the crowd waiting for work opportunities, they stumble into a young 16 year-old boy and it is only inevitable that they immediately see in him their new victim. They get him to memorize a new name and ask him to lie about his age. They take him to the mine as the nephew of Tang and plan to kill him off at an opportune moment and make a killing from his death.<br /><br />An unknown death: is forgetting denial of justice? </div><div align="justify"><br />Blind Shaft the name itself would seem to suggest not only the dark cold mine shaft cut off from the rest of the world but also a place so dark and isolated that it is beyond the reach of the law and justice. A place where neither there is “no union, no safety standards, pitifully low wages, no law given such an environment, it perhaps isn’t a surprise that the worst aspects of humanity rise to the surface.” For all the state and its law knows the mines have been closed after being considered too dangerous and don’t even exist. The workers working there are of course then the “non existent non people”.<br />The person who is chosen as the target by the duo is obviously someone who is alone and has no other friend or relative working with him. In all possibility even his family is also not aware where he is. There is no one who knows the story of his life. No one would come to know when he dies that who it was that died; that is who other than a nameless and faceless mineworker. If the only impact of a death left in the world is in the memories of the dead, then perhaps someone who dies an unknown death is not dead at all. In Before Sunrise, Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawk go to a cemetery, which does not have the names of the dead on the tombstones. No one knows who the dead were. Most probably they were dead from capsized boats and suicides at the beginning of the 20th century. It is called the cemetery of no name. She says to him, “….if none of your family or friends knew you were dead…its like not really being dead. The people could invent the best and the worst for you.”<br />In one instance in blind shaft, Song is quite disturbed by the possibility that Song the kid that they plan to kill might be the son of one of their earlier victims. He does not want his entire family line to be ended by killing the kid. The family line is not about the gene pool. It means to keep alive the name of the family; to keep alive the memories of the dead. If the entire family line would be wiped out, there would be no one to remember the dead. That seems to Song as being a greater injustice than actually killing a man.<br /><br />In Blind Shaft, there is no justice for the dead because firstly they are not dead (because their friends and family do not know that they are dead) and secondly because no one alive except their killers know that they were murdered. As far as the law is concerned it does not know that they are dead or they were or that they existed in the first place.<br />So of course, there is no hope for justice for those whose death has also been forgotten or rather not registered in the memory at all. That is no justice before the law but there is always narrative justice.<br /><br />The Villains: or rather the victims?</div><div align="justify"><br />Somewhere down the line in the movie one starts feeling for the killer duo. They are not exactly maniacal blood thirsty criminals. For them it seems to be just the only possible way of making a decent living and supporting their families. Well, they are quite cold blooded in the sense that they do not feel sympathy for their victim or suffer from guilt pangs but they do not enjoy it as well. They have a rather a very business like attitude and a meticulous routine for everything right down to the lines of conversation with the soon to be deceased just before he is murdered. But as the movie unfold you realise that in the land of abject poverty, lawlessness of the greedy mine owners and callous ‘hand in glove’ agents of law, they are indeed walking on a thin line between survival and elimination. Even when they are extracting the money from the mine owners they have to be careful not to ask for too much because if it would be cheaper for the mine owner to kill both of them off and instead pay the cops to hush up the matter, the ruthless mine owner would not hesitate from doing so. In a dog eats dog world, they are at a quite low rung in the food chain.<br /><br />Narrative Justice in Blind Shaft</div><div align="justify"><br />In a piece of fiction whether on paper or movie screen, it is possible to do justice even when the law has failed to do so. This is what is called ‘poetic’ or narrative justice- perhaps a literary equivalent of the ‘divine justice’ in real life. So the good guys have to win and the bad guys have to lose (unless of course one is making a movie like Zodiac where winning or losing are quite immaterial).<br />So Blind Shaft also employs narrative justice to make the ending of an otherwise bleak and uncomforting movie rather ‘just’ and acceptable. The killers get their ‘due’ and the innocent not only escapes unharmed but also earns a substantial amount from the death of his ‘would have been’ killers. It is quite ironical that the contract that Tang and Song enter into with the mine owner to make money from the death of the kid actually ends up in earning money for the kid. Although one can feel sorry for Song who actually develops traces of affection for the kid and is reluctant to kill him and the story is as harsh to him as it is to Tang who remains dispassionate, focussed and rather cruel. But then hey, Song still has to pay for his past deeds, right? So the way he meets his end is quite ‘just’ as per the statutes of narrative justice.<br />If retribution is the only manifestation of justice then narrative justice delivers justice quite efficiently and effectively. All the victims of Song and Tang who did not have access to law or justice get redemption in fell swoop through narrative justice by their dying of each other’s hands.<br /><br />PS: This was published in <a href="http://silhouette-mag.wikidot.com/home-news">Silhouette </a>Vol. VI<br /></div>mukul sharmahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04903714182994554289noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1766896190171364904.post-21217096763487379112008-01-04T12:44:00.000-08:002009-12-08T08:41:43.774-08:00Smoke ‘em up: of ‘No Smoking’ and smoking no’s<div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHW4KDZa_uKH7undt91rbm0XY5_RYxJZ0yiThsvgAKT4GoDZfn6NCrcX35GCZRmwK9MyHqwc3pTFxecEBphMEcmi6ryXycHZdLHF0SR-W7FbC1qVCywawnSIBIAPAs5SkWFAt2P_Pcjw/s1600-h/no+smoking.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 274px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHW4KDZa_uKH7undt91rbm0XY5_RYxJZ0yiThsvgAKT4GoDZfn6NCrcX35GCZRmwK9MyHqwc3pTFxecEBphMEcmi6ryXycHZdLHF0SR-W7FbC1qVCywawnSIBIAPAs5SkWFAt2P_Pcjw/s320/no+smoking.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5412906060043614066" border="0" /></a><br /></div><br /><div align="justify">What is it to be alive? To have desires; to be free to love someone; to have the choice to die; to have the liberty to smoke! </div><div align="justify"><br />K is a narcissist. He loves to admire himself in the mirror and no one tells him what to do. Nicotine flows in his blood and the smoke of cigarettes creates a thrilling aura around him. But when his wife decides to walk out on him, he agrees to go to Prayogshala- a rehab not so much to give up smoking but as to have a look. Prayogshala-a blend of ultra modern and the ancient turns out to be an omnipresent, all knowing, and all powerful entity. Once you are in, there is no escaping from the grip of the ‘Pryogshala’. It is run by one Guru Ghantal Baba Bengali. His methods involve putting the patient’s relatives in gas chambers, chopping off his fingers, bumping off his wife and so on to cure the addiction.<br />In the second half of the movie the surreal becomes quite indistinguishable from ..well, the ‘real’ and you are totally at the mercy of the director. To borrow an overused phrase, he is quite ‘self indulgent’ and makes no attempt to explain the movie to viewers. So K keeps on dipping in and out of dreams even as you are left wondering whether all the trauma that he is going through is happening only inside his head.<br />The plot reaches its logical conclusion with his ‘antar atma’ being separated from his body and thereby ridding him of all his desires.<br /><br />Technically the movie is brilliant. Some shots like the panorama of Mumbai’s skyline and the streaming traffic below from K’s apartment and those of middle of nowhere in Siberia are simply breathtaking. The instant disgust and revulsion that the atmosphere of ‘Prayogshala’ evokes is no less an achievement. The use of sepia frames and comic book like blurbs to humorous effect is another first for Hindi movies.<br />John Abraham is at his best when he is not speaking and thankfully in this movie, he does not have a lot of dialogues and his body language does the talking quite brilliantly. Paresh Rawal is menacing and funny in just the perfect proportions.<br /><br />A number of people have criticized the movie because it did not make them tremble before lighting another cigarette. Perhaps with a name like 'No Smoking’ they were expecting a ‘Requiem for a Dream’ for smokers (that the latter has a cult following among the junkies makes for an interesting study in itself).<br />But then I am not sure that Anurag Kashyap (AK) started off to make an anti smoking movie in the first place. That is a job best left to a certain Dr Anbhumani Ramadoss. In fact cigarette at best is a metaphor here for freedom. If you have killed all your desires, then perhaps you are as good as dead. Not having desires does not mean that you are close to Nirvana or perfection but perhaps that you are closer to depression! No smoking is of course at the core a story of rebellion but in total opposition to what you would expect such a movie to be, it does not romanticize or encourage rebellion. It shows the plight of a rebel, the price that he has to pay. It is not a movie for rebellion; it is a movie about rebellion. And it ends with an ominous message: sooner or later, a rebel has to die. Die by conforming himself.<br /><br />‘No Smoking’ is one movie which would be remembered in the popular memory not for what it was but what people (or rather the people who call themselves ‘critics’) said about it (not very unlike Jhoom Barabar Jhoom). Almost everyone panned it. They called it a tribute of a self obsessed man to himself. The reviews read like admonitions to Anurag Kashyap for his vanity. “Why”, they shouted “make a movie which no one can understand? What is the point of making a movie which makes no sense? Why make a movie which neither entertains not conveys a message?”<br />This is what Khaled Mohammed wrote in his review,<br />“Sir Kashyap, your genius is blinding. Thank you for Quitters’ Inc which you have set in Mumbai and Siberia. And if you ask me, at this very point, I don’t want to quit smoking. I want to quit Kashyaping. See a Bhojpuri or a Blogpuri movie. Just don’t do this to me sir, please, don’t. The rest of the world needs your brain. Ulp, I don’t”<br /><br />Well, one can’t but help remembering something written by one Mr Ellsworth M Toohey,<br />“It is not our function –paraphrasing a philosopher whom we do not like-to be a fly swatter, but when a fly acquires delusions of grandeur, the best of us must stoop to do a little job of extermination.”<br /><br />But if you google the phrases ‘No Smoking’ and ‘Reviews’ the first few results would be of ‘reviews of reviews’, in other words bloggers pitching in for AK and condemning the ‘old men of reviewing’ as senile in the choicest of abuses. It would not be incorrect to say that AK asked for it. With shouting all those cries of rebellion and angst on PFC he has encouraged people- both his detractors and his supporters to focus on him and not his work. He has sought to become larger than his movies. If a guy starts comparing himself with ‘Howard Roark’ publicly, there is something wrong with him. If for no other reason then for the fact that Howard Roark would never do that. He would let his work speak for himself; something AK has to learn. Hopefully with Hanuman Returns doing well and AK keeping a relatively low profile about the movie things will be back on course for him. After all he has movies like Black Friday and Paanch also to his credit which even the most staunch of AK bashers can’t damn.</div>mukul sharmahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04903714182994554289noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1766896190171364904.post-82143293077504868702008-01-04T12:36:00.000-08:002009-12-08T09:36:52.010-08:00PRODIGY: short story<div align="justify">As he slipped out of the shining new Porsche Cayenne, a gust of wind carrying sand hit Aditya Singh straight in the face. As he gently brushed the corner of his eyes to remove the sand, he found himself transposed to his tiny little hamlet in Banswara. He was thirteen years old again, walking beside his father to the weekly haat bazaar in the nearby village. It was difficult for him to keep up on the sand covered pathways with his father’s brisk pace but he did not want it to be seen that he had to run to be at par with his walk. This resulted in his taking hilariously long steps.<br />A smile crossed his lips.<br />Of course then he did not see it as funny, it was an assertion of growing up, of declaring to whoever was watching that he was ready to step into the shoes of his father. No one called him Aditya, back then he was just Adi.<br />In the market he would watch with disdain as his father would spread a rough cot on the side of the dusty road and slowly arrange his things.<br />While other traders selling all kinds of things, from tit bits to utensils to clothes would be shouting at top of their voices to attract the customers to their wares, his father would make the barest of attempts of doing so. Most of the times unable to sell much during the day, he would, in the evening settle for a barter exchange of his goods with other traders which would invariably be a bad deal as opposed to have been paid in currency by the customers. Also, the only goods left unsold at the end of the day were the ones which were the worst. Even on days when he managed to sell things, he would not fare much better as bargaining was not his cup of tea. While, other traders would relish bargaining and start with four times of the price they actually expected, his father would settle to whatever price the buyer would quote without much haggling. Soon he stopped standing by his father’s side all day and suffer through the monotonous routine. He would roam around in the market and see how other traders would be doing much better business through their social skills although their goods were not any better than his father’s. He realized how inept his father was at trading and the only reason why his family did not starve was because he did this only for six months in the year. In the other half of the year, the family would cultivate wheat in the small tract of land that they owned and after satisfying their subsistence needs, it left them with enough surplus to sell and afford the luxury of his father’s poor trading.<br />It did not take him long to realize that he could do a much better job as a trader than his father. He was smart and he knew it. Although he had gone to the school for only five years, all his teachers had proclaimed him as a brilliant and exceptionally bright student. He had to leave the studies when his mother fell sick in the agricultural season and his father needed his assistance. Somehow, he never felt like going back to the school after that and instead he took a fancy to the market. As he would show keen interest in the transactions, other traders would teach him the nitty-gritty of their trade. They would pass him on the tricks to lure the customer and extract the maximum out of him depending upon factors like his need and economic status. All these had to be picked up from his appearance and tone.<br />On one of those days in the market he saw a trader who he had never seen before. He had a rather impressive appearance as compared to the rest who were mostly farmers from villages or from small towns and looked pretty shabby. But this trader was wearing shining deep blue robe over a white shirt and had a rather different turban with a feather tucked into it. He had erected a kind of tent over his goods and was turning over what looked to young Adi like a manuscript. He showed no interest in the customers or the proceedings in the market and even others seemed hesitant to approach him, clearly he was an outsider.<br />“What do you want?” barked the man with the turban as he curiously approached him.<br />He told him that he just wanted to know what he sold since he did not see any goods on display. The man in the turban chuckled at the interest shown by the young boy and said, “I do not sell; I buy things, old and rare pieces.”<br /><br />“I see, and what do you with them?”<br /><br />“I go to the cities and sell them there.” The man in the turban had probably not talked to anyone all day and decided to play along in this little game of the kid. This is why he took his queries with the sincerity that was reserved only for serious prospective clients.<br />“What are the kinds of things that you buy?” asked Adi with a little more confidence.<br />“Mostly old paintings, swords, jewelry and other decorative items; the older the better.”<br /><br />“And how do you pay?” his tone was now acquiring the assertiveness of a seasoned trader. That he made a good profit out of the trade was clear to Adi from his attire and demeanor.<br /><br />“With these”, he said, flashing a couple of crisp ten Rupee notes, “and I pay well.”<br /><br />“Will you be here next week as well?”<br /><br />“Yes, why do you have something to sell?” the tinge of mockery in his voice suggested that the man was finally bored with this little game with the kid.<br /><br />“Maybe”, and with this Adi walked off.<br /><br />He spent that night turning over and over in his khat. This was his chance to enter the trade. Other traders knew him well but they would not deal with him as they thought that he was merely a kid. But this outsider would have no such qualms. All he needed was to sell him something; make a decent profit on it and then it would be easy for him to convince his father and other traders also that he was old enough to enter trade. But what was there within the mud walls of his hut that could be of some value to the trader with turban? This question kept him troubled all night.<br />As the first rays of sun filtered from the creek between the wooden doors, he woke up with the answer. His mother had a heavy golden colored necklace which was certainly the most attractive piece of her jewelry, not that she had many. He remembered asking her if it was pure gold, and she had laughed and said that it was merely sone ka paani (gold plated) and when he kept asking her how much was it worth. “Not more than ten Rupees” she had said distantly. He had seen her wrapping it in a red cloth pouch and putting it in the big wheat container after coming from marriages and religious ceremonies.<br />The first opportunity that he got of being alone in the hut, he removed the stone slab covering the container and slipped his hand inside. After a bit of groping around in the wheat grains, he found what he was looking for. He did not take the pouch out and let it remain there.<br />Next Sunday as his father was getting ready, he took out the pouch and tied it in the folds of his dhoti and covered it with the kurta. He felt a slight hesitation in doing this because he knew this was stealing. But what he also knew was that there was no other way. He had to start somewhere and his parents would not let him do anything on his own.<br />Is it not the case always? The parents have no clue that their children have grown up, that they can do things on their own, maybe even better than what they themselves could do. Many a times it is only when an outsider tells them about their exploits that they realize the capabilities of someone who until then was completely dependent upon them.<br /><br />After spending an hour and half by his father’s side, he slipped to look for the man with the turban. Yes, he was there. He was talking to someone. Although he was at a distance it was clear that the discussion that the men were having was not a very cordial one. Both of them were raising their fists now and again. Finally, the other man left with a strained face, muttering abuses. This was nothing new in the market though; he had seen the traders as well as the customers lose their temper quite a lot of times. When it came to blows the people around interfered but as long as it was merely a verbal altercation, everyone stood by and enjoyed the abuses being hurled all around. It was almost a regular feature of the market which everyone enjoyed; sometimes he wondered that even the parties involved derived a perverted pleasure out of it.<br /><br />As he approached the man with the turban, he could see that his was still scarlet from the exertion that the last interaction had involved.<br />“OH, its you again; what do you want today?” clearly the man was in no mood for humour.<br />“I have something which you may want to buy”, now that he had come this far he was not going to waver in confidence.<br /><br />“Really, then show me” the man was regaining his composure.<br /><br />“Here” he said and untied the top of the packet and took out the necklace.<br /><br />The man did not evince much interest in it as he took the necklace in his hand. But Adi had spent long enough time in the market to know that seasoned traders do not let their interest drip from their faces.<br />“It does not look very old” the man remarked as he casually yet carefully turned it over.<br /><br />“It has been in our family for four generations”. He was not sure of this but then he knew neither was the man in turban and it certainly looked quite old.<br /><br />“Certainly not gold.” The man clearly did not need his opinion on this one.<br /><br />“But still quite valuable because of the design and the gems” It had to be, it looked beautiful.<br /><br />“Maybe, I’ll be able to sell it some foreigner in the city. How much do you want for it?”<br /><br />“How much can you pay for it?”<br />(Rule number one: Never tell your reserve price, let the customer value the good first.)<br /><br />“Not more than twenty Rupees”<br /><br />“Ha, you think that I am a child and you can fool me, or maybe you are just kidding with me. Please, give me back my necklace.”<br />(Rule number two: If the customer refuses to let go of the good, he will buy it, you just have to find the maximum price he’ll pay for it.)<br /><br />“No, no. You tell me how much do you want.”<br /><br />“Not less than a Hundred Rupees.”<br />(Rule number three: Start bargaining with five times the minimum price that you would be willing to accept.)<br /><br />“Come on, now you are asking for too much. How about thirty?”<br /><br />It took some twenty minutes of bargaining and finally they settled for sixty Rupees. At the end of it both of them acted as if the other had practically robbed him. Although, in his heart Adi was more than content with having made a profit of six times the investment. Now, all he had to do was to look for a place to invest this money.<br />He spent the entire day looking for some things he could buy to invest his new found finances. When till evening he could not find anything interesting, he decided to come back again on next Sunday to continue his search. As he was walking back with his father, he noticed that the man in the turban was loading his tent and goods on a cart; from the conversation that he was having with his servants it was clear that he was moving to another village. He avoided looking at the man, lest he may say something which would reveal to his father what he had been up to. His father was leaving that night for a close relative’s marriage at a distant place. The visit would take him ten days and although, he won’t let Adi sell the goods on his own in the market, he could certainly come here on his own. This was all the better for him as he would have plenty of time and would be able to haggle with the traders without the fear of his father looking over his shoulder.<br /><br />He had decided that he would not break the news that he had sold the necklace till he had invested a part of the money in some other transaction; that would mean at least till next Sunday.<br />As it turned out, he did not have to wait that long. Soon after his father had left, his mother discovered that the necklace was missing. She was taking out some wheat for grinding it in the chakki, when she looked to feel the packet as a habit. When she found it to be missing, her first reaction was that she must have kept it somewhere else but as she failed to find it anywhere, it turned into disbelief and horror. Thefts were almost unheard of in their little hamlet and that one had happened to them, instead of anyone else was a really dreadful thought. As an afterthought she started asking Adi about it. Now, he knew that there was no point in hiding it, since anyways sooner or later he would himself have told them and it was not something to be ashamed of.<br />“I have sold it.”<br /><br />“What?” his mother reacted as if he had spoken in a foreign language.<br />“Yes, I have sold it. But do not worry. I got sixty Rupees for it.” he took out the money.<br /><br />“Sixty... It was not worth less than seven hundred. Pure gold…..” his mother’s voice trailed into silence. She did not shout or hit him but staggered and sank to the ground.<br /><br />“But you said…..” he suddenly felt he had been hit on the head with a plank.<br /><br />What happened after that was mostly hazy in his memory. That was the last night he spent in the village, before the sun rose, he was in Murea village, catching a train to the city.<br /><br />As the durban executed a quick salute to the man emerging out of the glass doors of the building, Aditya Singh was brought out of his trance. He put his white cap back on and held the back door of the car open.</div>mukul sharmahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04903714182994554289noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1766896190171364904.post-14452318265124028362007-12-18T12:17:00.000-08:002009-12-08T08:55:42.937-08:00Johnny Gaddar: Paperback on 70 mm<div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrUaBVVC1Q1sXSSNGRSCogynJjudWxrUOPUDEL2m0-1oFi_YcDzIBeH8oVr4FbScpXIi07S7Jetttpn46OWuuUjhLuVPUz6nN0XkLIII7y7U_g-SuhLmrUzBjarpoe4e0cxcJhC-Hrqw/s1600-h/JOHNNY+GADDAR.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrUaBVVC1Q1sXSSNGRSCogynJjudWxrUOPUDEL2m0-1oFi_YcDzIBeH8oVr4FbScpXIi07S7Jetttpn46OWuuUjhLuVPUz6nN0XkLIII7y7U_g-SuhLmrUzBjarpoe4e0cxcJhC-Hrqw/s320/JOHNNY+GADDAR.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5412909963101250066" border="0" /></a><br /></div><div align="justify"><br />First things first. Johnny Gaddar is a really watchable and enjoyable movie. Now, it’s a bit difficult to classify the movie as a mystery as there is hardly any suspense which is kept hidden from the viewers. And although there are a fair bit of twists and turns, there is a lack of shocks or ‘edge of the seat’ stuff to call it exactly a thriller. The thing which works for JG is that it retains an integrity throughout its two and a half or so hours. There is a story and the entire movie is about telling that story. There are no silly sub plots, no distracting love angels and absolutely no useless characters. </div><div align="justify"><br />Another thing which Sriram Raghvan is quite clear about is the kind of story that he is telling. When you begin your movie by paying tribute to Mr. James Hadely Chase (him of ‘classic’ paperback thrillers with delectable covers) and Vijay Anand, you are assuring the critics not to fret over the non existent “deeper meaning” or the “sub texts” in the movie. In between JG also pays homage to movies of 80s like Parwana and Johnny Mera Naam and still manages to come across as a smart movie suited for the contemporary times. </div><div align="justify"><br />Neil Nitin Mukesh (come on! Its not difficult to figure out his lineage from this name) makes a really promising debut. Although he appears to be a bit more dazed than required in certain parts, he is quite impressive for a first timer. He is also the most intriguing aspect of the movie. Its not just his character in the movie but also his look which makes it difficult to be convinced of the fact whether he is a good guy or a bad guy even after the movie gets over. I mean, the moment you see Dharmendra in the movie, you know he is a good guy but not so with Neil, no wonder that Sriram Raghvan went for a newcomer for this role. </div><div align="justify"><br />The cinematography of JG provides a welcome break from the stuff that passes off as ‘thriller’ in India. So no camera breathing on your neck (Vikram Bhatt, please note!), no sudden turning and shrieking your guts out in the camera and no focusing on the shoes of the people waking around. The trick to good cinematography is not to put the camera behind a bush or under a chair but to transpose the viewer so that he can see it for himself without realizing that he is watching through the camera. </div><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify">Another pitfall that JG manages to avoid is the use of jarring music to create a ‘thrilling’ effect. Though, more use could have been made of the brilliant soundtrack and at times absence of background music results in creating unnerving moments of silence in the theatre but perhaps this is what was exactly intended by the director. This also means that JG does not come across as a candyfloss entertainer like it was promoted but retains a rather bleak and somber mood despite a few really funny one liners. This is hardly surprising considering the fact that Sriram Raghvan is the guy who gave India its first true modern dark movie in Ek Hasina Thi. </div><div align="justify"><br />There is no doubt that JG is a high quality product and recommended for the sheer novelty in its treatment if nothing else.</div><p> </p><p><em>PS: </em>This got published in December 6, 2007 issue of <em>Filmfare. </em>I never got to see that issue but did get 500 bucks for it. Small joys of life!</p>mukul sharmahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04903714182994554289noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1766896190171364904.post-84124256226858975782007-12-18T11:57:00.000-08:002009-12-08T09:35:42.355-08:00MIRACLE MAN: short story<div align="justify"><br /><span style="font-family:courier new;">Monday, August 22, 2005, The Times of India Late city edition, Mumbai<br /><br />“THE MIRACLE WORKER or THE GRIM REAPER?”</span><br /><br />When Akhil Patni saw this caption above his photograph on the cover of Bombay Times he could not repress a dry chuckle. Not because the report was very pleasing but that it extended to four columns with the full blown photo meant that he was going to be a very recognized face; not that he was a very unknown till now.<br /><br /><span style=";font-family:courier new;font-size:85%;" >May be you have never heard of him but the high and mighty of Bombay city swear by his name. A lot of celebrities in India in the past have been influenced by god’s men be it Osho or Asaram. But in the last two years more than a dozen hot shots have “surrendered” themselves to Akhil Patni. These include people from Bollywood, a couple of politicians and even a few very high ranking police officials. According to the man himself, “he has helped these people in making peace with themselves and get closer to the supreme power.” He also claims to have cured a thousand people of various incurable diseases. But what makes him more intriguing is the fate of his detractors. About six months back, Hemant Diwedi the renowned fashion designer had in a party accused Patni on his face of fooling people and fleecing money from them. Ten days later his body was found rotting in his Vile Parel Flat. The flat was locked from inside. The police is till date clueless about the cause of death. A month later Marthand Shivhare an additional professor at IIT Powai had mocked Patni and his antics when giving a lecture on Science and Miracles in a convention. Forty eight hours later his face was 70 percent burned due to a tragic explosion in the Institute Chemistry Lab where he was working alone. He is still recovering in a hospital. The investigation s have showed that it was an accident. And recently in the last week Ashok Contractor had charged Patni of using his political connections for securing a tract of land outside Mahim by influencing the bidding. Contractor passed away Saturday night in his sleep due to a cardiac arrest. According to sources, Patni wants this land to build his ashram.<br />On asking for his comments on these terrible incidents, the response of Patni was that everything happened according to the will of God and that some churning is necessary for securing a balance in the world. Whatever be the causes behind them, these incidents have made Patni not only a more respected figure but also much feared one. The police are investigating if there is connection linking Patni to these ‘misfortunes’. Though, many people claim that Patni has extraordinary powers which he uses for the benefit of his followers and teaching a lesson to the infidels, Patni himself refused to answer the question if he had any such powers.<br /></span><br />Another man who was reading this report intensely was Inspector Madhav Godbole. Sipping a cutting of tea, sitting in a creaking chair in Bandra West Police Station, he was more revolted than amused by the story. “these fucking newspapers make a miracle out of that motherfucking, two cent bastard. I am telling you Nagre, this Patni is no more than a fucked up goon. I am going to put him in his place and when I whip that bastard in my lock-up I’ll see if he can show his magic tricks to me.”<br />Head Constable Siddarth Nagre silently nodded his head in approval. He was not sure if Godbole was really angry at Patni or generally taking out the frustration that he had with his life. The only reason why the file on Patni was lying on Godbole’s desk was because he was considered one of the most inefficient officials in the department and some people high up in the power ladder did not want much progress on this case. And what was worst was that Godbole knew it. What he also knew was that he was 48 years old, had two departmental inquires pending on him on the charges of corruption and was sitting in the same chair since last eight years. People took him for granted. He could not remember the last time anyone had talked with respect to him; even his wife took all the decisions regarding family matters without informing him. Last night she had told him that he should be at home on Sunday as some people will be coming for fixing the marriage of their daughter. His daughter- the only soul on earth that he really loved but that did not mean she treated him any different from others. She also believed that her father was good for nothing and which Godbole often reflected was not entirely untrue.<br /><br />But this time it was going to be different. He was not going to let them make fun of him. He was going to earn respect. “I’ll show those motherfuckers….”thought Godbole. The zeal with which he jumped from his chair surprised everyone. “Nagre take two other constables and start the jeep. We are going to nail this Patni motherfucker down.”<br /><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-family:courier new;">Friday, September 2, 2005, The Mid Day After Noon Edition, Mumbai<br /><br />GODMAN ARRESTED<br />The Mumbai police around 8 o’clock in the morning arrested the well known godman Akhil Patni. He was arrested on his alleged involvement in a series of tragic incidents including the mysterious death of fashion designer Hemant Diwedi. Further information is awaited regarding this matter.</span><br /><br /><br />“So mister Miracle you have no idea how Hemant Diwedi died, haan?”barked Godbole at Patni who was sitting in a chair surrounded by four constables, Godbole and Nagre.<br /><br />“No sir, none at all”<br /><br />“not even a little bit, a tiny, a slight vague idea?”<br /><br />“no sir not even a tiny, slight vague idea”<br /><br />“Well, then let me tell you. Diwedi died due to internal bleeding from his intestine. He suffered from a medical condition known as Hyperdomatcticillia which was not as threatening a disease as it sounds but apart from occasional surges of intense pain, it makes the intestine vulnerable to certain chemicals like *******. Now, if a patient is suffering from Hyperdomatcticillia and he takes a substantial amount of ******* then it may result in the rupture of intestine leading to internal bleeding and death within 10 to 15 minutes. But the point is if the amount was substantial then it must have shown in the postmortem report but it did not.”<br />“Do you know why?”<br /><br />“I have no clue what you are talking about, Inspector.”<br /><br />“The reason being that even a miniscule but regular intake of *******every day can aggravate the condition to such a state that one day it will snap but the amount would be too little to show in the post mortem.<br />Now, we come to the interesting part. You were aware of Diwedi’s medical condition as his doctor Rishab Shukla is a disciple of yours as was Diwedi when you assured him that you’ll cure him of his pains using your powers.”<br /><br />“so you mean to say I administered him *******everyday. But how could I? He did not come to me after he insulted me in that party.” Patni ridiculed his logic.<br /><br />“Well, Mr. Patni we have no doubts that you are quite resourceful. Do you know that that Diwedi used to get milk delivered at his door step every morning and two days after his body was found that delivery man disappeared” said Godbole matter of factly, lighting up a cigarette.<br /><br />“These are all coincidences inspector. You cannot link me up to his death in anyway. I think whatever happened was the wish of the all mighty. He punishes those who deserve it.”<br /><br />“Well, Mr. miracle he punished Marthand Shivhare also, didn’t he? That was also an act of god no doubt. And the fact that the lab assistant who was officially absent that day is the brother of your organizing man Deshmukh is again a mere irrelevant coincidence.” He blew the smoke of cigarette in Patni’s face.<br /><br />“Can’t be anything more.” Neither the smoke nor Godbole’s tone bothered him.<br /><br />“OK Mr. Patni, enough of your coincidences. I am going to beat the motherfucking shit out of you. So if you want to tell me anything or show some magic trick, now is the fucking time.”<br /><br />“You have a beautiful daughter, Inspector.” an ominous smile flickered on his lips.<br /><br />“All right then, since you want to get your ass whipped, here we go……” Godbole raised his hand to strike him but restrained himself when the phone rang.<br /><br />Nagre picked it, what followed was a brief moment of silence. Cautiously he kept the receiver back.<br /><br />“Who was it Nagre?” barked Godbole.<br /><br />“it was……eh…….. from… your.. home……. sir” He seemed to be stopping after each word.<br />“….. There is a bad news…. Your daughter… she passed away…..”<br /><br />After a brief moment of shock, Godbole leapt for his service revolver. “I am gonna kill this motherfucker……die you motherfucker…you deserve to die”<br /><br />“it was only an accident sir…….pure accident”, the words were barely coming out of Nagre’s mouth.<br /><br />Two constables tried to restrain Godbole as he lifted Patni by his collar. The third one not knowing what to do picked up his Rifle and alternately pointed it at Godbole and Diwedi.<br /><br />“..she got an electric shock… unfortunate accident sir…” Nagre desperately tried to reason with him but by then Godbole was already pointing his revolver at Patni who remained unperturbed. And then the shot was fired…………<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>mukul sharmahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04903714182994554289noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1766896190171364904.post-60396313906195574222007-12-16T10:42:00.000-08:002009-12-08T09:14:11.749-08:00It’s better to laugh and forget than forget to laugh: review of “The Book of Laughter and Forgetting” by Milan Kundera*<div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQ_EXbxWAYl66E15wNvAu5JBeE04u9E2uexrEbkzfPYmjMNiZ-OGhqTyIaPQNi7lngkpJVDuMGOZ6l7r6e7Maggfun0SdzSgd4DzAIO6xd9ZBwjBHnztFU4mSLf11IAV2l_hWn7keCQQ/s1600-h/laughter-and-forgetting1.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQ_EXbxWAYl66E15wNvAu5JBeE04u9E2uexrEbkzfPYmjMNiZ-OGhqTyIaPQNi7lngkpJVDuMGOZ6l7r6e7Maggfun0SdzSgd4DzAIO6xd9ZBwjBHnztFU4mSLf11IAV2l_hWn7keCQQ/s320/laughter-and-forgetting1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5412914409132639618" border="0" /></a><br /></div><div align="justify"><br /><u><em>AMUKH</em>, also a disclaimer</u>: It does not reflect well upon a reviewer to discount his credentials in the beginning itself. But a student is more likely than anyone else to get away with it. So anyways, here it goes. This is a great book to read, one to sip slowly and savor the taste but perhaps not an ideal book to review. This would be true for many other works of Kundera as well but definitely in lesser degrees than this one. As the book proceeded so did my perplexities and by the time I finished the book I found myself to be in doubt about my adequacy to review it. But then I guess I’ll never be sure until I try.<br />One obvious temptation that I might succumb to is to flash clichéd one liners. But then when Kundera expresses something extremely complex in one beautiful line, its very difficult to resist trying to pay tribute to him in a similar fashion.<br />Since this is supposed to be book review and not an essay or a research paper, so I’ve tried to stay true to the book and not tried to fish out one particular theme and discuss it in the framework of the course structure. So while there are a few references to Walter Benjamin’s Storyteller and Soshana Felman’s The Storyteller’s Silence, themes which do not form part of the course have also been dealt with. Also, since I do not have the training to critically comment on the writing style, no such attempt has been made.<br /><br />‘The book of Laughter and Forgetting’ is a multi layered book. It is divided into seven parts. Each with different characters (though Tamina appears in two of them) and each dealing with a particular theme (though sometimes overlapping and some of them repeated). “It is a book about laughter and about forgetting, about forgetting and about Prague, about Prague and about the angels”<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />LOST LETTERS<br />If life for the dead resides in remembrance by the living of their story and justice for the dead resides in the remembrance of the injustice done to them (Soshana Felman: 15), then punishment for the dead resides in their forgetting. After Clementis is charged with treason and hanged, the propaganda section makes him vanish from history and from photographs.<br />To have memory is to have lived. No wonder then that most tourists on a holiday spend their time in capturing the scenes on their camera for recall in future than enjoy it in that moment with their naked eye. After all, if you can’t remember it, it never happened, right? May be this is the reason why Mirek wants to keep a record of his ‘potentially’ subversive political activities. For him this remembrance is an act of defiance and hence he says, “the struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting”.<br />Kundera laments the transitory nature of public memory in which one catastrophe is soon replaced by another bigger and more ‘magnificent’ one, so that in the end “everyone has completely forgotten everything”. This also means that history is no longer the slow unfolding of events against the common background of which, the lives of individuals may be followed. Instead, it has become “an amazing adventure enacted against the background of the over familiar banality of private life”.<br />This does not sound very different from the complaint of Walter Benjamin in Storyteller that (individual) experience has fallen in value while (un-noteworthy) news and dissemination of information keeps on growing in volume. Of course, since the value of the information does not survive the moment in which it was new and therefore no on would remember anything.<br /><br />“Memory can change the shape of a room; it can change the color of a car. And memories can be distorted. They're just an interpretation, they're not a record…”<a title="" style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=1766896190171364904#_ftn2" name="_ftnref2">*</a>*<br />Distortion of memory; both public and private is a central idea in this first part of the book. So the Czech who cheered when the Russians drove out the Germans only to find themselves fighting the latter’s grip on their country are rebelling “against their own youth”. After they are crushed and the Russian tanks roll into Prague, the Communist propaganda erases the images of their struggle “from the country’s memory, like mistakes in a schoolchild’s homework.”<br />One way in which the establishment dealt with subversion was by destroying the past of people. By making a person like Mirek disown his words, actions and beliefs, they would leave him without a past, a man condemned to become a shadow.<br />Mirek of course is not a passive observer to the alteration of his memories. He is actively engaged in modifying memories of his youth just as a novelist might rework his novel by rewriting its beginning. He wants to get back the love letters that he wrote to his ugly girlfriend so that she can be erased from the pages of his life. She is a reminder to him of his weakness, of his own hated youth which he desperately wants to destroy.<br />Again, he would not run away from his imminent persecution. Not only because he feels responsible for the grandeur of his destiny which is leading to a glorious destruction of his life but also because by going to prison he is refusing to let him be erased from the public memory. He is going to leave his body as a stain on the sparkling unblemished history that the Russians are building. He is going to cement his place in history. And in this way he shall have his revenge.<br /><br /><br />MAMA<br />Mama is aware of the failure of her memory. It conjures up her past in patterns which she knows to be false but instead of acknowledging this before her son and his wife she instead imagines a story which would make sure that she rises in their eyes by sharing with them her glorious youth as she sees it now.<br />For Karel, the resemblance between his mistress Eva and Mrs Nora of whom he has an erotic childhood memory provides a leap from childhood to manhood. A leap across time and space.<br /><br />THE ANGELS<br />If the first two parts of the book deal primarily with the tricks and turns of memory, then this part is dedicated to the eloquence of laughter. Kundera offers that laughter much like pain pins down the person to the present moment. A person bursting out in ecstatic laughter is without memory and without desire; he cannot think or care about anything beyond his laughter; beyond that moment.<br />In Kundera’s world angels represent coherence and rational meaning, while absurdity and confusion are under the dominion of devils. So laughter would seem to be devilish act because it denotes the absurdity of things, things deprived suddenly of their supposed meaning. Laughter is the ultimate destroyer of meaning.<br /><br />LOST LETTERS<br />Kundera returns to the idea of old memories preserved once again in lost letters. But unlike the first part where the motive is to get rid of the uncomfortable past, here Tamina desperately wants to hold on to her past, the memories of life with her dead husband which are contained in her diaries. For her past is the reference point for present and without that present is a “nothingness moving slowly towards death”. Lacking a proper photo of her husband, she tries to revive his image through her memories. However, even the strongest of emotions or memories become faded over the years. Then again there are times when one’s refusal to let go of the past starts distorting it. Tamina loved her husband too much to admit that she could forget his face, that “what she considered unforgettable could ever be forgotten”. In <em>My Name is Red</em>, Black is shocked by the revelation that for a dozen years he had been recalling the face of Shekhure, his beloved different than it actually looked. Tamina is equally horrified by her memorys betraying her.<br />Tamina (a human being) and Goethe (a writer) stand on the opposite ends of the spectrum. While a writer craves for an audience to display his thoughts, writings and memories, for Tamina the mere thought of others reading her diaries is paralyzing. For her if the exclusivity of her memories is lost, she would become a stranger to her own memories.<br /><br />LITOST<br />Litost is a state of torment created by a sudden sight of one’s own misery. A young budding poet after breaking up with his girlfriend has a fling with a butcher’s wife. She is a small town woman of ordinary looks but the student poet is convinced by the others that it is exactly that ordinariness, the delightful mediocrity of soul which makes a woman lively and real. However, she refuses to yield to his persistent efforts at coitus. It is only too late that the student comes to know that the only thing holding her back was the fear of getting pregnant and not the immensity of their love as the student had imagined in his grand romantic fantasies. When this realization is dawned upon him, he is thrown back into the depths of litost.<br /><br />THE ANGELS<br />Violence on memory and through memory which was hinted at in the first part is dealt with in some detail in the sixth part of the book. After the Russians occupied Czechoslovakia, they started a systematic campaign not just to alter the history and the ‘archives’ but through these also something basic, something far more important: memory. “You begin to liquidate a people by taking away its memory. You destroy its books, its culture, its history. And then others write books for it, give another culture to it, invent another history for it. Then the people slowly begin to forget what it is and what it was.” And of course the rest of the world would forget the people who have forgotten themselves, even faster.<br />When Soshana Felman hails history as being “above and beyond official narratives, a haunting claim that the dead have on the living”, she seems to be forgetting that history is merely an ephemeral account of ephemeral changes and it can be as easily appropriated by the victors as the philosophies of justice.<br />Benjamin would of course suggest that history of the oppressed can be traced from the “tradition of the oppressed and the silence of the official history (the victor’s history) with respect to the tradition of the oppressed” but if Suyodhan can be branded as Duryodhan (the evil one) for eternity by the Pandavas then the hope of redemption of historical accounts is not all that promising.<br /><br />In <em>A Hundred Years of Solitude</em>, when Macondo is affected by the plague of insomnia and memory loss, Aureliano discovers that to ensure that people do not forget the names of things and their use, they should put up inscriptions on all the things, describing them but he did not foresee the situation when people would forget the meaning of those words. “Thus they went on living in a reality that was slipping away, momentarily captured by words, but which would escape irremediably when they forget the values of the written letters.” This is perhaps the reason why Kundera (actually he quotes one Hubl here) says that it is not required for the Russians to take away the language, because when people have lost their memory, the words also lose their meaning and a language of meaningless words would “become folklore and sooner or later die a natural death”.<br />Something exactly opposite of this happens to Kundera’s father in the last years of his life. The words slip away from him, so that every attempt to define his thoughts results in the same sentence: “that’s strange”. The result is the astonishment of knowing everything and not being able to say anything. Kundera compares this to the silence of the silence of the Czech historians who have been forbidden not to remember by the Russians. Indeed, this is also the silence of the Storyteller who returns mute from the First World War and has no words to share his experience.<br /><br />What haunts Tamina is not the desire of remembering but the remorse of forgetting. The reason why she cannot let go of the past and move on is because she cannot accept and cannot forgive herself for forgetting her dead husband.<br />However when she is taken to the island of children everything that she considered significant and serious, her body and her sexuality is rendered trivial and laughable. On this island sensuality becomes absurd, innocence becomes absurd and vocabulary decomposes. And finally in this kingdom of absurdity Tamina can stop looking back and feel lightness. She is free.<br /><br />THE BORDER<br />This is where Kundera ties up the loose ends in the book. Border is of course, the geographical division between countries; between one’s home and the alien. It is also the border between life and death; between attainable and that which is beyond reach. It is also the border between coherence and absurdity; between love and laughter.<br />Jan is about to leave Prague and take up a position in US. His other friends have done so in the past and they still keep fighting for the freedom of their homeland. But all of them also know that after crossing the physical border, the bond tying them to their country is just illusory. It would be quite easy for them to stumble across the border where they stopped caring about their people and it was merely an enduring habit that prevented them from doing so.<br /><br />The woman Jan loved most told him that she held on to life by thread. She was not suicidal but merely reiterating the fact of the fragility of human life. Life and death are separated by a border of few millimeters. Even a very little push would suffice to find one on the other side of the border, on the side where everything- love, faith, beliefs, history, memory- has no meaning. Simply because everything is unattainable.<br />There are three kinds of women in a man’s life. First are those of realized affairs and passing amours; the attained. Second are the women we wanted to have but who eluded us; the unattained. Third are the women (the girl Jan meets on the train, <em>the girl i’ve loved the most</em>) we like and are liked by but we would never have because in relation to them we are on the other side of the border; the unattainable.<br /><br />Laughter as the ultimate destroyer of meaning was first encountered in the third part of the book. Its source is traced here. When things are repeated they lose a fraction of their meaning. And after a maximum acceptable dose of repetitions, they are eventually rendered meaningless and cross over the border by evoking laughter. Laughter denotes meaninglessness. Therefore, laughter is the enemy of love; of poetry, it is the enemy of erotic; of arousal, it is the enemy of grief; of mourning. It is a barrier between man and the world. It tears us away from the world and throws us back into our own cold solitude.<br /><br /><br /><u><em>UPARANT</em>, mostly a Postscript:</u> After the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, Milan Kundera lost his position as a professor at the Prague Institute for Advanced Cinematographic Studies and all his books were removed from public libraries. He settled in France in 1975. In 1979, “The Book of Laughter and Forgetting” was first published in response to which the Czech government revoked his citizenship. I guess some people can neither laugh nor forget!<br /><br /><a title="" style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=1766896190171364904#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1">*</a> Translated from French by Aaron Asher, first Published in Great Britain by Faber and Faber Limited in 1996.<br />**Memento, 2000 (Director: Christopher Nolan) </div>mukul sharmahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04903714182994554289noreply@blogger.com0