Some childhood fascinations, one never grows out of. and some, one just refuses to. I guess candyfloss and balloons probably lie in the second category for me. I dont think I ever want to stop getting excited

i arrived at the IGI Airport in Delhi at 2 PM. The flight was dot on schedule. And this

just a promise...

i am an optimist. most of the times.

mostly i am the person who loves children,
flowers, birds & butterflies
the person who sees the beauty
in the smile of a first time parent
or the happiness of a student getting a good grade
the person who loves watching rain falling on the glass screen..

mostly, i am the person who loves to talk to her mom
every night about small things
& catch up on family gossip
over a session of head massage
the person who loves to tease her kid sister
laughing & fighting over silly stuff

mostly, i am a simple person.
who prefers to trust people
& trust their commitment, dedication, sincerity
you may call me too trusting, too naive,
& i think you are right
but i prefer to keep it that way,
it makes life easier.

yet, the more i see of this world,
the harder it becomes to remain simple.
because the more i see of the world,
the less i like it.
& the more disdainful i become.

everyone caught up in petty matters of ego,
ego that is in desperate need for attention,
immersed in conceit & greed,
lacking dedication n commitment,
ego that resorts to lies to preserve itself,

everyone engulfed in their own petty matters
of their own insignificance existence

don't get me wrong, i am not holier-than-thou.
i have my faults, more than i care to count.
& yes i do know some phenomenal people
& am blessed with precious gems as friends
my life is full of people who love me,
and full of opportunities & possibilities

yet, the more I see of the world,
the more I realise I don't fit in
& the more i see that i don't fit in,
the lesser i even want to.

& i wonder at times,
if the world will succeed in transforming me
into one of its own, filled with conceit & deceit
& ensure that I fit in & that I succeed

or will it succeed in turning me away
away from itself and all its promises
as a defeated mortal, resigned to my fate
with lost dreams of a lost future

or will I keep fighting this battle,
this battle to preserve me as me,
to find a converging point of give and take
of trust and mistrust, of love and hate

this battle to find a converging point
between my definition of success
& that of the world's

this battle with this world
this battle with me.

can i win this battle
or am i just a promise,
waiting to be broken.

Its official. There is something decisively wrong with me. Why on earth would I not like the movies the whole world can't seem to stop raving about?? Last time I checked, I used to be a movie buff averaging 2 movies in the theater a week. But then..that was a long time ago, a time when I was earning, and movies were a great mix of unwinding & catching up with friends...Movies weren't really about movies.... but then as I said..that was a long time ago :)

Coming back to recent times, here are a few of the heavily over rated (in my opinion) movies that I have seen in the past few weeks

Paa

Seasoned stars, brilliant performances. and definitely a fresh break from the different flavors of love stories we have been fed to death! But the other day I got this email that said that Amitabh's make up used to take 8 hours to put & take off everyday. and that he was given special dentures so that the lisp that he talks with is natural. Great work! The indian movie industry is definitely growing up. But then, with such brilliant make up that you can't recognise the actor, or his voice...you can't make out his facial expressions, or voice modulation...his emotions are depicted more by the camera movements than by themselves, ... it just makes me wonder if this role couldn't have been done by some one else just as well. the industry is definitely not short of great budding stars these days, and given that Progeria patients usually have small & frail bodies, a 6 ft tall relatively healthy actor...naah!!

And why Paa exactly? I mean this could easily have been titled Maa as well...in fact given that the movie had more of mother-son relationship, than father-son; and the "Paa" doesn't come into the picture as "Paa" until the last scene, ..Maa would have probably made more sense. Or may be "Auro" , given that the movie is about the character more than anything else. Or given that the movie is about progeria, around progeria, and 50% of the budget seems to have gone in putting that make up to simulate progeria...perhaps progeria would have been the best ;)

Makes the whole Amitabh-Abhishek "father-son-son-father" tag line just a publicity gimmick to draw the crowds..ya ya you have to do that coz movies have to make money but I don't know..just one of those movies where I failed to see why people are going nuts about it...perhaps the Indian audience have such low expectations of Indian movies, that it will them even longer than the industry itself to mature into serious movie goers!

Avatar

James Cameron's masterpiece. 10 years in the making. An epic story! deserved to be seen in 3D.
Really???!! I mean seriously..seriously?! 10 years?!!! Doing what??!! the movie definitely had no story, no novelty, no originality of any sort. It is the East India company stealing from, destroying and colonizing the Red Indian villages... in the year 2154, on another planet where natural skin color is blue.

So the blue color takes care of racism I guess. And if definitely makes the cliched face and skin make up look more fancy. Honestly guys..really..look at the facial features, the makeup, the attire, the ornaments, the rituals, even the language of the so called Pandora Na'vis ...am I the only one who has seen too many old English movies about the Red Indians? Or seen Discovery's discoveries on the Mayan civilization?

Watching it was like, okay so they themselves got fed up of the theme of one American saving the Earth, so one American is now saving another planet. or may be it is the American who got tired of trying to save the Earth, decided to try his luck at another planet for a change ;)

okay, yeah the special effects were great, all those plants n trees with enhanced colors that reminded of the flourescent accessories that people wear to discotheques..and the trees that seemed to crawl all the way to your brain and suck them out to transfer to another body...all of that was great, even if a little creepy.

And why on earth..sorry, on Pandora, can human beings advance enough to live on another planet, set up huge research labs, even clone Na'vis & mine their rich reserves, but their aircraft radar technologies haven't moved in practically 300 years and still can't function in high EM activity zones?!

But still, 10 years???? If only a certain Mr. Cameron had paid 10% of what he must have paid to his special effects team, to his writers as well... they would have at least come up with a more original name for the planet.. rather than calling it "Pandora" !!

But of course, leaving all your thinking faculties aside, special effects were great, and my male friends did find the Na'vi tribal princess, a.k.a Zoe Saldana "too hot"! Although I would still say Transformers (part I) had better special effects, and Harry Potter has more creativity than Avatar, still in 10 years, at least something turned out right! ;)


Inglourious Basterds

Loved the performances! Honestly...the best acting I have seen in a really long time. Truly stellar...definitely Oscar deserving!!! I can't say this enough. A little too gory for my taste, but thats okay. People have a high apetite for this kind of stuff. And until the very end, I was feeling truly impressed. Until the end i.e. Until I saw Hitler and the rest of the Top SS brass gathered inside one movie theatre, and burnt down by burning a bunch of nitrate films. What an end to WW II. Simple, quick & efficient...why didn't anyone think of this at the time...Duh!!!!

sigh...what a waste!! Even if you must make a movie on WW II, which is as over used (understatement) as the first-love-lasts-forever theme in Hindi movies... and even if you must make a completely fictitious movie on such a monumental historic war, with no historical base whatsoever.... must you give it such a completely ridiculous end??!!!! the end..killed the movie..totally!!!!

3 idiots

Honestly, I have less disappointment with this one. May be because I hadn't even expected as much. I am not a big fan of Chetan Bhagat's work, which I think is the bollywood masala movie contemporary on Indian English literature..Indian English work i.e. for you can hardly call it literature. But still, nice, fun, easy to see, good timepass.

Amir Khan however, exceptional though as ever, I think is getting a bit too old to be playing a17 year old. About time he realised that. I don't know why in Indian movies the so-called stars live is such gross self denial of their age.

And delivering a baby with a vacuum cleaner...inspiring an engineering application as the writers / directors may have thought it to be... it made the entire movie fall back into the most ridiculous, melodramatic and nonsensical hindi movie scenes league!

And why is there such dearth of good writers in the Indian film industry, that they have to reuse jokes from email chains and mentos ads to make people laugh..is beyond me. Didn't the writer strike end like a million years ago??!! Feels like the Indian film industry takes the "reuse-recycle" idealogy, noble as it is, too seriously.. and implements this idealogy in ALL of it in its scripts, stories, music, and star casts.

To me personally, the "engineering" college set up in Ladakh in the end [ minus the 400 patents in 10 years for 1 scientist..yeah right! ] ... was the only display of genuine novelty; and an impressive one at that, ...at least I haven't found the original source of that scene yet ;) :P


Disappointed, disillusioned and seriously doubting my own capabilities of appreciation, I finally tried my hand at "Alwin & the Chipmunks II " . A movie that openly declared its ridiculousness. And voila! I actually enjoyed it! I had liked the first movie much better, but at least I didn't feel cheated. At least it didn't claim to be any more sensible (or senseless) than it really is.

Another 2 movies that I have liked in more recent times, Morning Raga & Schindler's list. Old movies, but I saw them recently. And Capitalism too [ except for the extremely biased view]

Next Stop: Sherlock Holmes..I still haven't given up all hope on me! I will try to leave my thinking faculties back at home though! :P

Else I will become an example of " Those who can't act, criticize" critics. :P

But to be fair, its great to see people trying to new things, especially in the Indian film industry breaking away from the endless love stories. And all of these movies are a great watch, at least once.... :)

But jokes apart, even as an onlooker, I have never ever understood the madness behind this whole wedding ceremony. Its like the moment 2 people decide to get married [rather usually their parents decide], 50 others...at least...get an electric shock. they are woken up from their sudden zombie state of minds... Suddenly a 1000 different task lists are made and tasks for the next 3 months are divided meticulously amongst different people...the joys of having huge families planning your wedding...

It takes endless phonecalls to sort out the color of the bride's mother's sister's saree for the function 2 days before the wedding, dont get me started on the bride's outfit..i wonder if Jennifer Anniston ever paid that much attention to her costumes! and 1 phonecall from the pundit saying the muhurat will have to be delayed by 5 minutes brings the whole world crashing down!sigh...

What's amazing is that this timeframe of 3 months doesnt make that much of a difference, I have seen weddings of similar scale being arranged in a month's time and yes, having a year to plan doesnt help either, it just adds more tasks to the list ??!!

And the meticulous planning and task allocation...it would put any corporate to shame if only it weren't for coversations such as...

"Oye the tent guy hasn't called"

"O nahi ji I had asked Mamaji to call him"

"O mamaji has gone to the caterer. He asked me to ask you"

"But I'm taking didiji to the Parlour to get ready"
" Your didiji can go to the parlour herself. You call the tent-waalah"

..well you get the idea..

And then, there are the expenses. Parents save up all their lives to marry their children off. Specially daughters, but thats more thanks to the incorrigible dowry tradition in this country. [ It may be illegal for you to see on TV, its as real as the sun! It just takes different shapes, sometimes its a car, fridge, LCD TV, sometimes its gold, soemtimes its cash, usually its all these ]

If only I could get a penny for every time I have heard statements like,

.." They too spent 3 lacs just on the tent in their son's wedding reception"

"Aur Sharmaji gave his daughter a Corolla in her wedding"..

"and Khanna Sa'ab, spent 10 lacs over and above the wedding function"

!!!!!!!

Only 3 out of 10 of these people can actually afford to spend this kind of money on one function. The rest take all kinds loans at exorbitant interest rates, just to keep up to the "status" !! I have known people spending anywhere between 15-18 Lacs INR on just the wedding function. Even those who have never earned this much even in 2-3 years!! It is the ultimate "Keeping up with the Jones's" cartoon in the world! Not only are these weddings senselessly exorbitant effectively leaving the parents & some close relatives of the bride almost bankrupt

It is just such a big event, at times I feel its bigger for parents than the bride n groom!;they are a platform for everyone to show off all their riches, owned or borrowed; they are also a platform for you to prove your mettle of remembering names of, patiently smiling of the 500 people you have never seen in your entire life and will never see again.

No wonder so many people spend their lives in unhappy, beyond-repair marriages rather than getting divorced! Fancy throwing away a marriage that follows from that kind of a wedding.

Maybe , as people have been telling me since I was 12, once I am getting married myself...I will get it. I doubt....