You have to be strong within...theres no other way...

I have again and again realized how people, once they know of your weakness or circumstances, don’t hesitate to take advantage of you; manipulate you or even just throw it in your face at the drop of a hat. Even the best of friends who seemingly are doing good out of the goodness of their heart – I attribute your behavior to your family circumstances…a perfect example of that…any close friend of mine knows about my “family circumstances”…but to throw it in my face just like that is so below the belt…that’s when you realize how important it is to be strong within yourself…but me being me…it hurts me deeply…

The minute things are a little less perfect I see the cover of calmness and control slip and what I see reminds me of the state of Voldermort in the last Harry Potter book…a pitiful contraction of the usual stronger self…why it bothers me so much? I know the answer…because I end up keeping people on a pedestal and when you realize that they are after all mere mortals no different than yourself…the realization instead of heartening breaks you…now there’s again no ideal to look upto :(

Khansamas...UB City...Bangalore

Yesterday J, D and me met for the first time this year and what better to do then to gawk at obscenely expensive clothes and accessories and top it up with a sumptuous meal…at least that was the plan.

The venue for this rendezvous was the new UB City in Bangalore…Now you know what I mean by “obscenely expensive” 

The first part of the evening was adventurous…we ventured into name less stores and looked through innumerable racks of clothes and shoes and jewelry…Every girl’s dream come true except that they were mostly un wearable and un affordable…sigh…
So after we were completely worn out we decided to head to this new place for dinner – Khansamas by the BJN group…some colleagues and online reviews highly recommended the place both for ambience and food…not wanting to spend time waiting, I had made reservations before hand and quite rightly the place was packed…after waiting for 10 minutes while the waiter was getting out tables ready we entered the place…the smell of the place was extremely appetizing and made you want to devour anything in the vicinity ;) we took some time ordering drinks…most of them were the regular drinks, no big surprises there…very surprisingly the number of waiters for the number of tables they had we really low…and as a result the service was actually pathetic…I don’t know if this is the regular feature or just some problem yesterday… the waiter who took our order for the drink brought only two out of three drinks after 15 minutes…and then we spent another 10minutes locating the waiter and reminding him that he had forgotten the third drink…we had ordered a regular chicken starter…and the starter was served but there were no napkins on the table…after again trying to locate the waiter I failed and had to finally asked the usher (I hope I am using the right word) to get me the napkins…this was a slight let down…and I don’t think throughout our stay there which was almost 2.5 hours anyone refilled our glasses…

Now coming onto the food…the menu is ok not too great…though there are a lot of vegetarian options…we decided to be adventurous and ordered a crab…I was going to try that for the first time but my friends were all out in their love for crab..so they specifically told the waiter to get the crab without the shell as (I discovered this later) eating with the shell is a nuisance…after a long wait we got our food which looked really appetizing…but we discovered that the crab came with the shell…after complaining to waiter we were told that there is no other way it could be cooked…so we dug into the crab…my friends guiding me at every step on how a crab should be eaten…and it was easily one of the best meals of my life  I loved the crab and the way of eating it…so what I enjoyed had nothing to do with the ambience…or the quality of food…but it was the company and the crab ;)

Though to be fair…the waiter was very polite and they gave us a complimentary crab dish which was without the shell when they saw us struggling with the crab…though the crab meat gravy was nothing compared to the original gravy we had ordered which was very yummm…

Coming to the ambience…the décor of very ordinary…the lighting was good though…but there were too many tables in too short a space and the whole place was way too noisy…there were some nice murals…the glasses were like old styled goblets and the cutlery was had a old jaded look to it…overall very ordinary and nothing creative about it…

All in all a regular place where you can have a good meal and happy times…but nothing extraordinaire…

Fight club...

I had of course heard about the movie before. And was told from one and all that its some sort of a cult movie…now I have a thing against generalizations like that, a movie can be a master piece for its script, superlative performances, editing, direction, visual appeal etc. but I don’t really understand this phenomenon called “cult”.

So last weekend I had a chance to watch the movie…I was quite skeptic…not sure what to expect…having seen Ed Norton in other roles I was at least hopeful from his performance and Brad Pitt can quite manage to act at times apart from just looking good on screen…

The movie was gripping from the very first scene…you don’t want to stray for even a moment lest you miss some important tidbit…the director and the editors don’t digress from the theme for even a second and the movie does not drag anywhere…when the realization of what has happened sinks in it is almost a “Eureka” moment for the audience…and you feel absurdly surprised and silly at the same time…like you feel after reading a Agatha Christie…the clues were there in front of you all the time…you just never pieced them together…Needless to say the performances were easily the best I have ever seen…even the role of the maniacal “Marla Singer” was performed flawlessly by Helena Bonham Carter…it had to be given the fact that the character of Marla is what ties the lives of Tyler and Jack…Ed Norton has played the quintessential yuppie who lives a cataloged life where days and nights merge without any meaning and each moment is similar to the other…Tyler Durden, on the other hand (played by Brad Pitt) is a man with a mission…who seemingly has realized the burden of consumerization that we carry and has broken free from it and now wants to free the world…reminded me of “Sam Lowry” played by Jonathan Pryce in the movie “Brazil”…the movie peaks with the twist that actually leaves you breathless…

All in all a brilliant movie not just for the script but the treatment and the performances…A must watch.

A witness to our lives…

One of the thoughts that struck a chord…it was a totally forgettable movie with wasted performances from people like Susan Sarandon…Anyways, in the movie there is this wife who after twenty years of marriage feels disconnected from her husband and explains to some the reason for marrying:

"We need a witness to our lives. There are a billion people on the planet... I mean, what does any one life really mean? But in a marriage, you're promising to care about everything. The good things, the bad things, the terrible things, the mundane things... all of it, all of the time, every day. You're saying 'Your life will not go unnoticed because I will notice it. Your life will not go un-witnessed because I will be your witness'."

Me and writing...

Sitting at the airport, two hours early for my flight, I wanted to write…and just my luck that my laptop ran out of charge … so here I am writing the old fashioned way. The thing about writing on a PC for me (apart from the fact that I can actually read what I have written) is that it’s like telling a third person…blogs do that to you, it’s like writing a book except that you don’t have to be writer…anyways, without digressing…or maybe lemme digress…these past few weeks so many thoughts have crossed my mind…thoughts which I should have penned then, but now all that remains of those thoughts is a lingering feeling of realization…though I quite can’t say what I realized…another thing about me and pen & paper is that I write really slowly so my thoughts far outpace my writing speed…and my hand is always playing a catch up game…

My thoughts...

Its been almost a week now…and I have finally started reading the newspaper, viewing the news channel, reading people’s reactions on blogs and so on…so now I guess I can try writing something…the moment I heard about what was happening I basically blanked out…I know I should have been disgusted…horrified…angry…shocked…but I wasn’t…I just blanked out…the enormity of the whole scene unfolding in front of me…the realization that some action was inevitable was huge…

There are a couple of things I want to say –

The first is the impact of communication and media on our lives…how it has shaped us people…as a society…these days even before things actually happen or unfold…the news is everywhere…on the TV…people calling each other within seconds…instant SMS or email…you know it before you know it…this revolution has completely changed the way we view the world…earlier it took time for news to reach people and then too it was half baked…now we get to know of happenings in minutes and the side effect of this is that we forget happenings within days if not minutes…because some other issue is in front of you before you even realize it…I am not saying the remorse, the anger, the sadness we feel is false…it is just short lived…this “instant” syndrome has ripped us of our ability to internalize…and thus we need to decide for ourselves whether this “instant” news is actually useful or is it just making us more impervious to emotions…

Secondly the impact of consumerism on our lives and the way we live…one of my ex colleagues is helping the economy by buying clothes or is showing solidarity with the Taj employees by eating at the restaurant…ok she is an extreme case…but come to think of it how many of us watched the news glued to TV and ordered a Pizza from “Pizza Hut”…or how many of went about our lives and on a buying spree to stock our houses from floor to ceiling…so how at all are we going to do anything against this “Pak” sponsored “US” sponsored terrorism when our day to day lives is so dependent on what US feeds us…when we can’t take a day off because we work in the US companies or companies that work with US companies…that’s not how Non-Cooperation movement got results…

Before we start blaming the world…and in this case they are rightly blamed…the politicians, the policymakers, the ministers…but before we start blaming them I think it’s time for us to look at ourselves…to see if we can stop ourselves from being soft targets…to see if we can be more self-sustainable and not give in to the consumerism surrounding us…

Unreasonable Expectation...

I am feeling so “something” that I just had to write and hopefully get it out of my system. But the thing is I don’t even know where to begin. Sometimes people take such moral high ground in life and it’s just not even moral, its philosophical, experiential, practical…everything…maybe they have done it all and seen it all… maybe they have every reason in the world to take that high ground but the fact is no one has the right to do that…and the fact is that you care about them too much to go and fight with them over it…but in the process they end up walking all over you…making judgments…stereotyping…deciding what will make you succeed and not succeed in life…who decides that the way you are living your life is best and optimal…that your reactions are best or worst for that matter…that only if you figure out this or that you will forever be happy…I personally don’t really agree with the way so many people close to me live their lives…but it’s their lives…at best I can express my opinion…do I have a right to force them to change…I don’t think so…for all I know what I think about the way life should be lived is all wrong…the only fact that’s probably true in all this is that I care so much about that person that whatever I say will be with his\her best interests in mind…but still do I have the right to sit on judgment…I don’t think so…

Another tricky thing is expectation…what’s the thin line between expecting and not expecting…I do know you are most happy when you don’t have an expectation from anyone…not even yourself…or so the sages say…but is that actually true…how do you get close to people otherwise…there would at least be a least set of expectations…for e.g. you will expect your partner to take care of you in sickness or health…or be there for you…if you don’t even have this minimal expectation then what’s the point of having someone share your life…from your friends you will expect that they will be supportive of you no matter what you do…not try to change you but be there even if what you are doing doesn’t make sense to them…is this too high an expectation…and if it is then why don’t we make a list of expectations which are acceptable…no confusion in life after that…it’s ok to expect your friends to be there for you when you are sick but it’s not ok to expect your friends to be there for you when it’s your birthday…like when Carrie calls up Miranda in “Sex and the City” (when she is just about to go and meet Mr. Big again inspite of the fact that he broke her heart) and says something like…though I know what I am doing is the worst thing in the world and I will end up an emotional wreck, but I have to do this and I can only do it if I know you are there for me when I am a wreck…