Just finished watching the movie Wake Up Sid. I could sooo identify with the earlier character!! The sitting in an exam hall, having futile regrets too late, the tension about passing and making all kinds of promises to god and self about how the next time will be better, until the next time....
The messy room, the self centred life ( part of which continues even today!!).
Also loved how the initial part of the movie focusses on the hep and happening club life types, but the later part shows them enjoying the much more wonderful yet simple joys of sitting on the ocean side, having a road side chai with someone, etc. It portrays different sides without castigating any....
Problem question of the movie being - what would've happened if Sid passed? Hmm...
but overall a very nice movie... I like.
It gives me a re-look at the various stages of my life. It gives me an assurance ( odd one though!!) that i'm not the only one to have been such an ass!! Most importantly, it gives me hope that I will find my metier too!! ( Though maybe i'll become like Sid's dad, my passion is somewhere, my necessities lead me elsewhere. And is that so wrong? It looks to be, but I don't know....
I think there should be a GO that says that people at 30 cannot be confused!! But I guess if there was, that'd just be one more of the essentials I would be bad at...
A definitely one time must watch movie. :)
Friday, February 12, 2010
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
The religion called Cricket!!
Let me start with a disclaimer. I'm not a major cricket fan. I mean that i'm not the type to watch a cricket match bunking college ( or office!!), I am extremely unlikely to watch anEngland-Australia World Cup final and I'm definitely not going to be caught even looking at the score of a Zimbabwe-Bangladesh Test match!
But there is something in the magnetism of the moment which pulls you in when either the match is of historic importance!! ( like the India Pakistan semi final which India won!! That we totally flunked the final was almost irrelevant!! :D) or when we are soooo in the flow that it's a pleasure to watch the perfection!! ( Like the India England series now!! ). There is always a joy in watching everything go right! Like the ideal day when everything is on time and is going your way!! ( which sadly never happens).
I'm sitting and watching India bat in a series they've already won, watching a match halfway through and actually having the confidence that this one too is in our kitty!! ( A luxury which Indians very rarely have!! We're known for losing games from every conceivable winning position!!).
Maybe I should stop my blog!! From the time i've started writing, we've actually lost 3 wickets!! 2 on back to back balls!! ( And the wickets of the well settled Sehwag and Yuvi, the player of the season).
But yet, it has been a really refreshing experience to see an Indian team play this way and usually when they say that sports represents life, one has always dreaded the fact that it might be true!! Whereas seeing the Indian team today, we're earnestly wishing it is!!
And of course the legends like Sachin make you change the way you look at not just the game, but at yourself and life itself!! What he tells you is sports is beyond life!! What you do in life ( which is basically whacking a piece of leather with a wooden stick!!) doesn't matter. What matters is how you do it! ( The fact that he is soo timid in real life is a whole another story).
All I can say is that seeing a resurgent Indian team at a time when India is much touted as being resurgent economically is a good sign to see. :)
Life looks good overall. :) (Fingers crossed!)
Finis
But there is something in the magnetism of the moment which pulls you in when either the match is of historic importance!! ( like the India Pakistan semi final which India won!! That we totally flunked the final was almost irrelevant!! :D) or when we are soooo in the flow that it's a pleasure to watch the perfection!! ( Like the India England series now!! ). There is always a joy in watching everything go right! Like the ideal day when everything is on time and is going your way!! ( which sadly never happens).
I'm sitting and watching India bat in a series they've already won, watching a match halfway through and actually having the confidence that this one too is in our kitty!! ( A luxury which Indians very rarely have!! We're known for losing games from every conceivable winning position!!).
Maybe I should stop my blog!! From the time i've started writing, we've actually lost 3 wickets!! 2 on back to back balls!! ( And the wickets of the well settled Sehwag and Yuvi, the player of the season).
But yet, it has been a really refreshing experience to see an Indian team play this way and usually when they say that sports represents life, one has always dreaded the fact that it might be true!! Whereas seeing the Indian team today, we're earnestly wishing it is!!
And of course the legends like Sachin make you change the way you look at not just the game, but at yourself and life itself!! What he tells you is sports is beyond life!! What you do in life ( which is basically whacking a piece of leather with a wooden stick!!) doesn't matter. What matters is how you do it! ( The fact that he is soo timid in real life is a whole another story).
All I can say is that seeing a resurgent Indian team at a time when India is much touted as being resurgent economically is a good sign to see. :)
Life looks good overall. :) (Fingers crossed!)
Finis
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
I want to sell my Ferrari!!
Now bofore you write in asking me about the model, year and my asking price, I haven't got one!! I've just become the biggest fan of "The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari" ( I'm sure Terry Pratchett will have a lot to say about the Capital first letters. :)) ). An amazing book which I strongly recommend to all ( even before i've started practicing anything from the book!! So obviously use your own brains when you're reading it, but then you should be using your brains anyways!!).
Does give a more positive outlook to life and there have been minute improvements in mine. So there. Gotta rush off, but realised that all my blogs are when i'm down, so decided to do ( an albeit extremely short) one when i'm in the ups. :)
Ensoi
Vivek
Does give a more positive outlook to life and there have been minute improvements in mine. So there. Gotta rush off, but realised that all my blogs are when i'm down, so decided to do ( an albeit extremely short) one when i'm in the ups. :)
Ensoi
Vivek
Saturday, August 11, 2007
Kanyadaan - The drama
Just back from a drama called Kanyadaan. Phew!! Blew my brains out!! It was a Lillette Dubey directed drama which was written by ...Vijay Tendulkar (had to look up his name, which should probably teach us the power of celebrity names!) and Lilette dubey also plays one of the protagonists. It was the first play probably after campus where the play has held me rivetted from start to finish!! It tore me apart at spots and if I was to describe it in one word, it would be INTENSE!
Now before i really go into MY dissection of the play, the basic story is this.
The main pair are a freedom fighter socialist husband ( the year is 1981) who has always fought for equality for Dalits all his life ( he makes speeches at political rallies on a daily basis as a member of the Socialist Party! )and an equally socially committed wife who is the Women's wing equivalent. Their daughter announces that she is planning to marry a poet and a writer who happens to be a dalit. Even though the first meet with the future son-in-law clearly shows that he is from a very different world from this brahmin family ( in his language, in his culture, in his financial abject poverty, in his tendency to be violent with his future wife, everything!) the father is enthusiastic bcos he believes that this is the first opportunity he has got to practice what he preaches! So he and his daughter overcome the objects of his wife and his son and get her married. However, slowly things go from bad to worse until they find that their daughter is pregnant and is still being beaten by her husband ( who they begin to see is not really interested in getting a job but is interested only in drinking her money and beating her for it!) and later when the son-in-law publishes a wonderful and touching autobiography ( which is a total lie from start to finish) he comes and asks his famous speech making father in law to chair a meeting and discussion on his book! When the father in law who is sick of his daughter's ill treatment and is also a very principled man refuses, the SIL indirectly threatens to further torture his daughter!! The FIL against his entire life's principles delivers the laudatory speech ( though it breaks him in the process) and the drama ends with the daughter coming and shouting at him stating that the very reason she has not come out of the relationship she is in is bcos HE has taught her to live by her principles, to never back out of any fight in life and to never give in to circumstances and she is shocked to see him break his own values so easily!! This accusation of the daughter breaks the father's heart and the play ends with the father weeping in a chair!!
Disclaimer: This is a pathetic representation of the story and misses out ALL the nuances, the emotion, the depth that was in the play. However, short of seeing the play ( or maybe writing a novella in my blog) i can't give more than this gist.
NOW for my take on the play:
The play ran on three levels, one was the family drama which was unfolding on stage, the other was the societal issues reflected through the family's thoughts and arguments, the third was the reflection of the various facets of human nature.
The family issues raised ranged from the father's fight between his commitment to his ideals and his family's welfare, the son's lack of belief in his dad's ideologies to his inner love and respect for him all the same, the same with the wife who is torn between being the mom and the wife and finally the daughter, who is torn between self preservation and living to save her love from his self destructive tendencies, her sense of helplessness clashing with her strong pride and sense of independence.
The societal issues range from the torment that the Dalits have gone through over the ages, the guilt that the upper class feels for the same, the inadequacy of the solution they try to give, the limitations of the caste itself, how little people around us really care and so on.
And finally the human conflict which starts with the intense conflict within the Dalit Son-in-law, who writes such sublime idealistic poetry ( reading which the girl falls in love with him) to his strong sense of inferiority ( to the extent where he is not even comfortable just standing in a "big" house) to his self destructive tendencies which range from his drinking to his abuse of his wife to beating her and which swings from extreme rage to extreme horror at himself for what he is doing! His education clashing with his genes, his knowledge clashing with his atavistic tendencies and his losing battle with the animal within! The conflict in the later stages shifts to the father and daughter duo, each in their own fight!! The father torn with guilt for having encouraged his daughter in getting married!! His fight between his ideals and the practical requirement of the day ( which is to save his daughter from further torture!) and the daughter's conflict between taking her parent's help and living on her own, between hating the animal in her husband to loving the intellectual in him, between her moments of strength when she refuses to leave her drunken husband to moments of intense self pity.
The things I really loved about the play was, it didn't try to give a solution ( even after one hour of pondering, i find none to the issues raised in the play). But it raked up various emotions, from intense grief ( which you cannot but share with the father who realises that HIS beliefs and morals [ or rather their interpretation by his daughter] have led his daughter to this hell which she is living, to shock at the realisation of how different the lives of the lower caste is from the upper, to a strong conviction that some solution has to be sought for this fundamental difference that is the life of the upper caste and the lower!!
The mind ranges from a strong sense of guilt/pity/horror for what the dalit's must've gone through to become the way they are today, to a sense of outrage at the manner in which they misinterpret the best and noble intentions of the upper class, to a sense of helplessness at being unable to find a solution for it!!
All in all, an unforgettable play!!
Now before i really go into MY dissection of the play, the basic story is this.
The main pair are a freedom fighter socialist husband ( the year is 1981) who has always fought for equality for Dalits all his life ( he makes speeches at political rallies on a daily basis as a member of the Socialist Party! )and an equally socially committed wife who is the Women's wing equivalent. Their daughter announces that she is planning to marry a poet and a writer who happens to be a dalit. Even though the first meet with the future son-in-law clearly shows that he is from a very different world from this brahmin family ( in his language, in his culture, in his financial abject poverty, in his tendency to be violent with his future wife, everything!) the father is enthusiastic bcos he believes that this is the first opportunity he has got to practice what he preaches! So he and his daughter overcome the objects of his wife and his son and get her married. However, slowly things go from bad to worse until they find that their daughter is pregnant and is still being beaten by her husband ( who they begin to see is not really interested in getting a job but is interested only in drinking her money and beating her for it!) and later when the son-in-law publishes a wonderful and touching autobiography ( which is a total lie from start to finish) he comes and asks his famous speech making father in law to chair a meeting and discussion on his book! When the father in law who is sick of his daughter's ill treatment and is also a very principled man refuses, the SIL indirectly threatens to further torture his daughter!! The FIL against his entire life's principles delivers the laudatory speech ( though it breaks him in the process) and the drama ends with the daughter coming and shouting at him stating that the very reason she has not come out of the relationship she is in is bcos HE has taught her to live by her principles, to never back out of any fight in life and to never give in to circumstances and she is shocked to see him break his own values so easily!! This accusation of the daughter breaks the father's heart and the play ends with the father weeping in a chair!!
Disclaimer: This is a pathetic representation of the story and misses out ALL the nuances, the emotion, the depth that was in the play. However, short of seeing the play ( or maybe writing a novella in my blog) i can't give more than this gist.
NOW for my take on the play:
The play ran on three levels, one was the family drama which was unfolding on stage, the other was the societal issues reflected through the family's thoughts and arguments, the third was the reflection of the various facets of human nature.
The family issues raised ranged from the father's fight between his commitment to his ideals and his family's welfare, the son's lack of belief in his dad's ideologies to his inner love and respect for him all the same, the same with the wife who is torn between being the mom and the wife and finally the daughter, who is torn between self preservation and living to save her love from his self destructive tendencies, her sense of helplessness clashing with her strong pride and sense of independence.
The societal issues range from the torment that the Dalits have gone through over the ages, the guilt that the upper class feels for the same, the inadequacy of the solution they try to give, the limitations of the caste itself, how little people around us really care and so on.
And finally the human conflict which starts with the intense conflict within the Dalit Son-in-law, who writes such sublime idealistic poetry ( reading which the girl falls in love with him) to his strong sense of inferiority ( to the extent where he is not even comfortable just standing in a "big" house) to his self destructive tendencies which range from his drinking to his abuse of his wife to beating her and which swings from extreme rage to extreme horror at himself for what he is doing! His education clashing with his genes, his knowledge clashing with his atavistic tendencies and his losing battle with the animal within! The conflict in the later stages shifts to the father and daughter duo, each in their own fight!! The father torn with guilt for having encouraged his daughter in getting married!! His fight between his ideals and the practical requirement of the day ( which is to save his daughter from further torture!) and the daughter's conflict between taking her parent's help and living on her own, between hating the animal in her husband to loving the intellectual in him, between her moments of strength when she refuses to leave her drunken husband to moments of intense self pity.
The things I really loved about the play was, it didn't try to give a solution ( even after one hour of pondering, i find none to the issues raised in the play). But it raked up various emotions, from intense grief ( which you cannot but share with the father who realises that HIS beliefs and morals [ or rather their interpretation by his daughter] have led his daughter to this hell which she is living, to shock at the realisation of how different the lives of the lower caste is from the upper, to a strong conviction that some solution has to be sought for this fundamental difference that is the life of the upper caste and the lower!!
The mind ranges from a strong sense of guilt/pity/horror for what the dalit's must've gone through to become the way they are today, to a sense of outrage at the manner in which they misinterpret the best and noble intentions of the upper class, to a sense of helplessness at being unable to find a solution for it!!
All in all, an unforgettable play!!
Saturday, August 4, 2007
The world of the ninetanks
A paraphrase of shakespeare would read " The world is a mental asylum and all of us are mad men". So the purpose of this blog is to explore that insane, politically incorrect, idealistic, cruel, selfish, desperate, scared, angry-young-man,crazy sides of me!! This is NOT for any of your liking. If you are sent a link ( or have somehow found out), you have already been privileged. "Ceasar is generous to a fault". You may comment on what I write here, you are free to like it or not. But you are NOT free to censor what I write, to tell me how to do it, to change the way it looks, it feels, it talks, it shares or ANYTHING else. You already do it to me in the real world ( along with the rest of the world). But here in blogland, I truly am FREE!! I can wear my underwear outside my pants!! I have the power to fearlessly voice my opinion and I will NOT brook interference!!
ALL HAIL THE PROPHET OF TRUTH!! ( Or atleast his side of it!! )
Aaaah, now that i've put in MY style of a legal disclaimer, let's get down to the long, boring, disinterested soliloquys. :)) The biggest kick that i get from a blog is that the blog doesn't talk back!! ( Or atleast, so far it hasn't!!) I can say EXACTLY what i like and it nods in muted acquiscence. I rant and rave and it shares my agony, I cry and it empathises with my pain, I shout in ecstasy and it shares a whoop with me!! And all this in my first blog!! Maaaan!! Am I a sucker for blogs or what!!
VA
ALL HAIL THE PROPHET OF TRUTH!! ( Or atleast his side of it!! )
Aaaah, now that i've put in MY style of a legal disclaimer, let's get down to the long, boring, disinterested soliloquys. :)) The biggest kick that i get from a blog is that the blog doesn't talk back!! ( Or atleast, so far it hasn't!!) I can say EXACTLY what i like and it nods in muted acquiscence. I rant and rave and it shares my agony, I cry and it empathises with my pain, I shout in ecstasy and it shares a whoop with me!! And all this in my first blog!! Maaaan!! Am I a sucker for blogs or what!!
VA
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