मायाजाल ...

हर सपना देखा सा लगता है
हर आइना बिखरा सा लगता है
तेरी नज़र मेरी रूह पिघला रही है, और
हर लम्हा बेमानी सा लगता है
मैं जहाँ थी अभी भी वहीँ हूँ
हर कोई जो पास था
अब धुंधला सा लगता है...

Long overdue…A movie flowing in frames…

I had written this ages ago...don't know why never posted it...anyways here it is now...

As I go about some of my fav blogs and see every one of them writing about Dev-D…I am engulfed with guilt of not penning my thoughts…

If there was ever any hype for any movie for me, it was Dev-D…having close to heart people closely associated with this movie…having heard awesome comments about the script, music, about the movie…I was just dying to see it…

I had heard the music long before the movie was released…the songs in themselves are addictive and psychedelic…so much so that I have heard the songs over and over again…and there is a song for every mood and (you discover later in the movie) for every character…the songs have so much of character in them that they tell a story even when you haven’t seen the movie…”hadh se behad hadh kar di”…need I say more…

The movie is radical in more ways than one…I will begin with the adaptation…having read the original book…having seen innumerable Hindi and Bengali movies on the subject, I still could not have predicted the characters in the movie…they have been adapted with such brilliance and honesty…things, feelings which are there, which we experience but hypocritical as we are, we don’t accept…I was amazed that the director could portray them with such panache….be it paro who is so in touch with her sexuality…or dev who is unapologetic about his addictions and way of life or chanda who discovers life and freedom behind a mask…there are multiple layers to every character…

For the first time I felt the Indian cinema broke the shackles of the plot and ventured into the actual realm of film making…it reminds you of Ingmar Bergman in “Through a Glass Darkly” or Alfred Hitchcock in “I Confess” (I know I repeat these way too often :) ) or Lars von Trier with his “Dancer in the Dark” or “Europa”…

The brilliance is in the making of the movie…the way the movie moved between frames for me flowing seamlessly was awesome…and the fact that the music was so much a part of the movie that you never realize that there are close to 18 songs there…there are scenes which are executed with no nonsense…all I know is that if I have to tell about the movie to someone I will just show some of these frames to them…

One must applaud the actors…Abhay Deol who could have easily let the role slip into that of a “pathetic sex addict cum drunkard and loser” brilliantly manages to internalize the character and deliver a performance par excellence and Kalki for the rendition of Chanda without guilt, with complete awareness of self, without being bogged down with stale morality and judgment…

Overall for me the movie brings o life what was missing from Indian cinema…

Selective Good...

Heard Sunita Narain on TV today… From what I understood before my patience ran out and I switched the channel that she is raking a campaign to regulate the colas and mineral water. The anchor asked her ( I think it was a viewer question, for we all know the IQ levels of the anchors) if we weren’t making too big a deal about concentrating on colas and mineral water when there were statistics to show that there were more toxins in the rice we eat than anywhere else in the world?

Now, I can assure you, you won’t be able to guess the answer to this one…

What I am writing here is not verbatim, but the essence as I understood…

It does not matter, the toxins in rice, because we are getting nutrition along with the poison. As long as the level of toxins is what our body can accept it’s OK. She almost justified the toxins.

How did we arrive at that logic, if it can be called logic? Why is it that every cause we take up and support is the one which will attract the most attention and the one which will lead to the minimum change, if any at all?

Since when did the “collective good” become the “selective good”?

Collateral Damage

I just caught some bits of the “Remembrance: Kargil” on a national television. And I was so shocked that I decided to check the entire show online to make sure that what I was hearing was just an unintentional slip. Alas! That is not the case here.

The entire show is despicable. And I am filled with this loathsome disgust which I normally feel these days when I watch any news channel. The de-humanization, the absence of any depth whatsoever, no argument, no logic, no essence, no point of view, and a pitifully hollow shell with no substance is what these programs have become today.

What is the one photograph that never goes away?

What about the smell of death?

Isn’t it ironical that you still love the mountains that so many soldiers died on?

There were no satellite uplinks and mobile phones then…how have the times changed…

The questions above are what this extremely popular TV anchor deemed fit to ask the soldiers who had fought during the Kargil war. The last one takes the cake – really – all that has changed from then to now is the availability of mobile phones?

And furthermore, she asks –

Has it been a difficult memory to live with?

Daaaaaaaaa…people died in front of him…by what stretch of imagination can that be an easy memory to live with.

I imagined soldiers to be brave creatures.

Creatures - really?

The woman did not ask even a single question which will tell the audience that she had any presence of mind.

And it goes on, the slew of inane, insensitive words pouring out of her mouth –

What do you think Vikram thinks when he hears you…twins have that thing no that they can hear each other even when not present

…is there any other synonym for “loathsome disgust” I can use here?

And this one leaves me completely speechless –

Now we approach tiger hill…would it have caught the public imagination in the same way had it been called rabbit hill…

And since when was this program about this anchor. I thought it was about the lives of these men and many more who lived, died and survived through the war. What about how their families have changed or their colleagues, or who came after them and heard of these heroes. The woman completely failed to bring forth the idea of how the war changed them as people.

There is a term we so loosely use in popular conversation these days Collateral Damage. To me it is the epitome of injustice that gets inflicted on humanity in the name of collateral damage.

But here watching this show all I can think is that the collateral damage in this day and age is the thinking power, the ability to feel pain, the sense of justice and the ability to reason.

Sex and the City

more wisdom from sex and the city...

in the end you always go back to your family...
sometimes its the one you are born into...
and sometimes its the one you make for yourself :)

i cant be more grateful to God...Thank you...

किस्मत...

कतरणें हैं रिश्तों की
चाहतों का ताना बाना है
मेरी किस्मत मेरे कल का कसीदा बुन रही है
मुस्कुराती सी मेरे आज पर...

Figment of my imagination...my reality

The smile that curls on his lips…And twinkles in his eye…His words…the intentional and unintentional humor…has me in splits…the riot of ideas…the sheer imagination…the thought itself has me glued…the songs he hums…his weird interests…his lack of any patience or loyalty to any idea or work…his narcissistic obsession with self…thoughtless words that can pierce your heart…never acknowledging…

an anomaly in my life…still an inseparable part of my life…