The Great Bollywood Trick.

I don't understand what this 'Kaminey' versus 'Dil Bole Hadippa' debate is all about. What I don't understand even more is why should there be the same intellectualist noise every time Yash Raj comes to the theater. Its been nearly a quarter of a century guys. Now Grow Up.

If you paid money for Dil Bole Hadippa people, you paid not to see Godfather re-invented. You paid knowing full well what was to come. No scams being run here. And I am bored. Of reviews from Hollywood- struck wannabe reviewers. Hell, I don't even know which newspaper is paid how much for each.

This will sound familiar, but yes, we have fantastic cinema. Not international cinema, not worldwide cinema, but absolutely fantastic cinema.

And if exotic India sells, Why not sell it? We need money.[ Let me see you debate me on this ;) ]
Sell exotic India. Sell sarson ke khet. It'll fetch you crores by the acre. Though apparently, in recent times, Shit-covered-India sells even more.

Years ago, Yash Raj brought along DDLJ, the NRI audience was discovered and Bollywood could never remain the same. It now had to cater to the Indians there instead of only Indians here, though of course it wasn't as if Indians there had confetti for brain. But the brains would have known that there were better movies to be watched with the same money. So the maestro tugged at the heart and Lo! Behold! The Great Bollywood Trick was born.

The Great Bollywood Trick culminates with Dil Bole Hadippa. And so does the trademark method of bringing back something from the gone romances. So we have to have Raj with his mandolin, the Veer- Zaara touch with Veer and 'Jhaapiyon sa desh hai mera.'

Just for the record, Kaminey just stopped short of just having been a really good movie. Just. The cinematography was bad. The realism is understandable, but it was wanting. And oh, it could have done without the blinkers-strapped Shahid. I mean that part was way out of the way, if you get what I mean.

I don't have any issues with my country basically consisting of people who like mush with an overdose of song and dance(preferably Bhangra). I like it too. Just as I like deep, issue based movies of foreign origin. Though if issues are what interests you, look deeper. DBH has them too. Light-hearted, breezy, but there.

Aaj discowale khisko, bhai desi beat bajaani.

When Illness is a Mercy.

There comes a time in the lives of all mediocre people when they are dragged down into their own abysses for no reason in particular. Daily, everyday chores weigh heavy. Tiresome, cumbersome jobs needed to be dispensed with replace what is usually a joy.

In straighter words, you are stuck in a rut.

What do you do to pull yourself out of it?

You find yourself an inspiration. Even if you are talking about dreary, dead places and desert sands of dead habit. Remember. In another time you would not have believed that this was impossible. You would have laughed at the unwillingness of another to make an effort to pull himself out of habit. It wasn't an effort for you. Your spirit jumped into a new adventure everyday. How fast we scorn. You should have measured the amplitude of courage required.

You brush the dust off from old dreams. You convince yourself that they still remain and are not something that was foolishly wanted.

But most importantly, you tell yourself to wipe out that cynical smile that is playing on your lips as you type. Even forcefully if you must. You also remind yourself to stifle the half of your mind from whence originates all cynicism. That is the half on whose sword lingers blood of a mangled quarter of the other half, and Massada should not fall this time.

An illness, a body racked with aches and a fever has a strange way of recalling old determination.

The Shadow and The Soul.

Tonight, I saw a dark shadow in the caves. This shadow came to me as a reminder, playing hide and seek in the crevices and behind stalactites and stalagmites. I was being invited to a game, someone whispered. If I could catch that mist, the fog, then knowledge would be mine she promised.

I smiled. Wryly, and barely. But I smiled. Why would I want knowledge? Is a battle within the heart not enough? And I Ignored. I looked around for exit as I remembered I had been doing before the shadow went swooshing past. Touching me with her coldness and threatening me with the unknown. Oh I like the unknown. I crave for the unknown. Did she think she could have scared me?

And again, the mist went swooshing past.I could have so easily grasped her had my hands been outstretched. But they weren't. I had heard of the legend of Dr. Faustus. No, I did not intend to sell my soul. And knowledge brought suffering, it did. So I turned again, blind and fumbling, but the exit was lost.

I was not hopeless now. Hopelessness had become a way of life a long time back. Then she took pity.


"You are ignorant" said she
"I know" shot I " Even though it does not bring me to the fools paradise"

She left.

Then the shadow came to rest and spoke :
"Knowledge brings pain, and it brings you medicine so that they may be healed.
Knowledge will make you aware of the chains in which I have bound you. Yet it shall teach you how to slip out of them. "

Without darkness there can be no light.
The earth rotates.

The shadow was me. The lost soul was me. Within the globe of my heart, one half sleeps and the other acts. Then upon awakening, the sleeping half condemns the acting one as it prepares to fall asleep. They tear at each other. Carnivores, blood-thirsty, ripping apart the womb fated to encase them.

I still fumble for the exit. It still eludes me.

When Things of past return to haunt, Morphed many times over in their terribleness.

“Anything, anything would be better than this agony of mind, this creeping pain that gnaws and fumbles and caresses one and never hurts quite enough”
- Jean Paul Sartre.

A Sea.

Sitting at the window seat of a bus on the Sealdah flyover thrusts the picture of vast humanity below you. It's fascinating. Everything moves. In continuous, unbroken waves.

There are three types of people that I spied in those waves.

The first were The Conformists. Obviously in the majority. They are the ones who surround me and suffocate me. They confuse morality with convention and we know them to be capable of terrible cruelty. Tell me, would they understand a genius genius differently?
The society does not respect them.

Then I spied, dotted all over the expanse, The Confronters.
Some found inclusion here by choice, and others in their callousness.
Do you know what happens when enters a microcosm in a macrocosm to create ripples? The macrocosm is disturbed.
So it re-groups itself and retaliates. It punishes the one who in deluded belief of being a society unto himself dares to disturb. The macrocosm would push these to its very periphery and deny them access to the core.
The society is weary of them.

Then of course, as the law of the universe dictates, there must be a group who has achieved a perfect balance. I think that the world was created in end September or start October and this is the reason behind it being doomed to be ever looking for the perfect halfway point. Neither entirely here nor entirely there. And so, finally, I spied The Non- Conformers.
They, the wise ones knew just precisely how to fit in their differences which did not ripple the waters. Or at the very least, did not start ripples which extended far.
The society is thrilled by them and it thrives on them.

But then again, I spied something else. Dots even fewer than The Non- Conformers. They embodied perhaps the one true characteristic of the waters in which they were born. They were the ones fluid and moving. They fit in neither of the three groups, and yet they perhaps found a place in all three.
They were the ones who did not know their place. Indeed, they did not know if they had one at all.

And then, a light turned green and I moved on.

Through the Looking Glass.

In the post before last, I spoke of choices.

Now that post was very inarticulately written, but as S told me, it's all the age da.Maybe it happens to all, but currently, it's humanity and its current condition that truly disturbs me sometimes.And many more things besides. I still have steps to tread before I develop a distinct apathy that makes survival a happy affair. Though in alternate stages of my oscillation I doubt if I haven't too much of it already.

Do we choose the coloured glass through which we look at life ? Or maybe they are presented to us, gifts or curses as we make them out to be?

I look at life through Red coloured glasses, and this shouldn't come as a surprise, given that I've literally bathed myself in this colour since age 8.

Which coloured glasses do you look at life through? Find here.

Then share.

Being Free.

And so two countries celebrated another year of freedom.

Are we politically free?
Are we economically free?
Are we culturally free?

Are we free to spin our own illusions?

Are we free to at least proclaim that we are free?