All You Ladies

I have watched the movie October around a year ago and then I planned to write a review about it and then like several of my plans it took off, then limped, and then died out of negligence for life got in the way. After about a year, I hardly remember much about the movie to write a review, but I still remember where it hit me. The protagonist is a carefree young boy who’s breezing through life aimlessly, till one day when a girl from his class accidentally falls down the building before him that life is no longer the same for him. He barely had any relationship with the girl, yet when he sees her in that vegetative state in the hospital he is shaken. He cannot shake off that uneasiness, so he visits her every day. He gets so lost in caring for the girl and supporting her family in this hour of crisis that he loses track of his own college and work. His friends ask him to get over her and think through what he’s doing with his life, to which he replies- “tum log kya har cheez ...

I had a sudden eureka moment today. I have realized that as you grow old in life your Eureka moments become rarer and therefore if you have one at this age and stage it calls for some sort of celebration- and my writing of this post is manifestation of one such celebration which for any other time and event would have succumbed to my laziness and procrastination. I have always believed in strength of character and admired it in people whenever I witnessed it, but several experiences in life and several seasons of ‘house of cards’ makes you a skeptic ☺ You begin to think that to be successful in life you need to be a little mean and manipulative and may be loosen up a bit on all those noble traits that Plato and Socrates vouched for. Paul Tough in his book ‘How children succeed’ argues that to be successful in life you need, not just cognitive skills like IQ but a lot of non-cognitive skills too like grit, determination, resilience and strength of character. His philosophy is not ...

When you watch pink you wonder why hasn’t anyone made a movie on this before. It is so fundamental to a women’s existence- especially the middle class urban women, that you wonder what took it so long. There is no theme left that Bollywood has not touched- however obscure, but for a reality that is so in our face, so ubiquitous and so omnipresent, it took so long to portray. May be the answer lies in this very paradox. The issues raised and the all the subtleties and all the obvious-es are so much a part of our existence that we have become inured to it. It is like a pain that we have become so used to that we hardly think about it while going about with our lives. When I watched Pink it was like a storm of emotions-a blast from the past, all the angst that I had forgotten about was raked up. I wonder if there is any woman in India who watched this movie, and had nothing that resonated with her. From a woman’s friendliness that is interpreted as a sign of her love interest, to ...

‘Patta patta boota boota’ is a very beautiful ghazal by Mir, an 18th century Urdu poet from Delhi. It is sung by various ghazal singers but my favorite version is in the voice of Vinod Sehgal from Gulzar’s serial Mirza Ghalib. Here is a bit of an excerpt from the ghazal: Patta patta boota boota haal hamara jaane hai Jane na jane gul hi na jane baagh to sara jane hai Every leaf and twig in the garden knows my state, It is only the flower that is unaware of my feelings. Chaara gari beemari-e-dil ki rasm-e-shahr-e-husn nahi Warna dilabar-e-naadan bhi is dard ka chaara jane hai To cure an ailing heart is not the tradition of society of beauty, Even though they’re (the innocent beloved) aware of its remedy. We read differently at different stages of life. When young we tend to interpret it in the context of the beloved and find it all very moving, but I believe once you have kids in your life that you can really feel the misery, pain and irony hidden in these lines...

The world is divided into two kinds of people- one who think like me and the other who should learn to think like me. Nowhere does this thought haunt me more than when I open my facebook page. It takes me a good couple of minutes to control my demons of arrogance and let sensibility dawn on me, except when it is times of elections or big political events, when from a thinking human being I morph into a computer and begin processing information only in binary, in a ‘you- are- with- me- or- against me’ mode. In times of elections you may have noticed, that an occasional comment or a remark on facebook can act as a sting operation on ideological divides of your friends and expose to you your friends like you have never seen them before. Some you weren’t reasonably impressed with, back then in college, will become elevated in your opinions if their beliefs are same as yours, and others who differ will definitely take a beating. All I can say is whatever your leanings may be, if y...

There is no movie in recent times that has so casually presented love without really undermining or simplifying the complexity that comes with it. I may go so far as calling it Woody Allen-ish, because one parallel that comes to mind is ‘Vicky Christina Barcelona’. Although VCB is far more intellectually stimulating with undertones and subtleties that LPNY cannot match but there is an overall similarity in the approach i.e. a simple breezy presentation without being melodramatic or didactic about anything. The movie is made by a débutante women director 'Anuradha Menon’     (more popularly known as 'Lola Kutty’ of MTV) and and as they say for authors I guess its true for first time directors too-who also happen to be first time scriptwriters-that it has shades of their own self. At many points in the film the characters and conversations become so earthy that you wonder if its autobiographical. The theme is quite simple and the format pretty much NOT overused.The ...