Rappy New Year :-)

I don’t believe in New Year resolutions and usually I come up with the “I will try be a good human being every hour of the day” lines. This time I am going to try one thing – besides the Good Samaritan one. Yes just one. And if that works out, I will add more to the list.

The one thing – is vegetarianism. I know I know I have fought for the justice of non-vegetarianism before. But this is something I just want to do, or try, its not because I think non-vegetarianism is anything bad. And my reasoning is mostly selfish. One, I wanna lose some kgs. Two I am a little fed up of chicken, and Three – anyway I eat only chicken so I just have to stop that. And a fourth most motivating one – a movie scene in which a goat losing its head was shown on screen (which I willingly missed but still got the idea)…

So I am not planning for a forever deal. I can break it when I want to. But just to test my will power I plan to go on for a month, and if it works out I will add more to my list.

Done-o. More shall be talked about next month. Till then, Rappyyy New Year folks!!!

No ‘you’ and ‘me’ please, just ‘us’

There is this thing that bugs me. Its when people say to people “Hey its Christmas. You ‘Christians’ have got to treat us”. Or else they say “Hey its Ramzan you Muslims should fund the party” and Dasara time its got to be ‘the Hindus’ who take turns. It bugs me to the core whenever someone cracks things like that. And I hear it a lot.

“Hey I don’t know how its done for you Christians but we do it this way”. Blah, blah and blah! 

This kind of “you” and “us” attitude is awful. Ok so people may follow different religions – but that was no reason to come out with “you are different from us” attitude! If anyone wants to celebrate Christmas or Ramzan or Holi its got to be a we-will-do-it-together thing. It is so much more- lovely, so much more human… Cause dig this – the “yous” and the “wes” are all humans! 

Ok I am probably overreacting. But it was Christmas a couple of days ago and I knew people who would only wish “Happy New Year” cause they thought the “Merry Christmas” was not meant for everyone. And there are some who just joke about it but don’t really “mean” it. Still it bugs me that they take into consideration who were from what religion and then crack these “its only you who has to treat” jokes. Wonder when humans will get that gift – of being able to see humans as humans. 

I believe all celebrations have just one purpose – having fun together. And together was the keyword here.

End of IFFK! Sigh!

st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) }

/* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:”Table Normal”; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:””; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:”Times New Roman”; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;}

So film festival came and went. All so fast! This was my first film festival but I have no clue how fast these 8 days went by or where all my hours went to?  I saw 15 films but most of my classmates saw more than that – one of them saw 28!

 

Yesterday as I stepped out of Kalabhavan (a movie theatre in Trivandrum) I felt a pang. I know I can go there anytime I want to. But for these past few days I have been going in and out of there like it was a second home. Even other Cinemas for that matter – that freedom which media didn’t fail to highlight – women walking into theaters alone and late in the night! 9:30 p.m. didn’t seem like an odd time to take an auto rickshaw all by yourself. The roads were all crowded, people were there – and everyone seemed to mind their own business or else the movies. You wouldn’t think anyone was a bad guy or girl.

 

I hope the film festival leaves behind that feeling. It would be nice to wake up to that feeling everyday and sleep with it every night.

Past-Present-Future tag

Its been some time since amazing wetspark’s amazing editor Mathew had tagged me. I am taking it up now.

The tag: Two questions from the past, present and future. Answer them and then tag your friends from the blog-o-sphere. Leave a comment on their blog letting them know they have been tagged and you are all set.

Past

Your oldest memories…

No one is going to believe it, but the oldest I remember of my life is being rocked in a cradle in the living room of our old house by my Valyammachi (Granny) and the then-maid we called Anithedamma (Anitha’s mother). I don’t know how but this visual has been etched in my mind for as long as I can remember.
So I’d rather not say more – I mean I have started all the way from age less-than-1!

What were you doing ten years ago?

Probably doing last minute studies for 10th grade half yearly and fighting with my best friend Ros cause she talked to another girl for more than 5 minutes.

Present

Today

Overslept and missed bus, went to office, made another wrong sms mess (sms meant for one going to another – becomes a mess when another is little known to you and especially when another is a celebrity), saw half a movie at film festival.

Tomorrow

Oversleep and miss something, but please no messes tomorrow! Going to interview a debutant director. Yaiii scared and excited.

Future

Where do you see yourself 14 years from now?

Oversleeping, missing buses, making lotsa messes – that much is guaranteed. I mean I will be me. And then the good things – having a job I love, and lotsa plans I’d rather not talk about for fear of not happening.

If you build a time capsule what would it contain?

All that I write, having written all that I saw and imagined.

Forgot. Passing the tag to

Anila – she usually does poems but lets see.
Seema
Nickelodeon
Salil
Qwerty – you have got enough time to do this now Q!
PS – not sure if she takes tags but putting her name here anyway

About divorces

Hmm this should be hard. But I have wanted to write about it for sometime. To put it in one question – Is it a wrong act? 

A generation back, divorce must have been the last thing thought of when a marriage fails and unless dire scenarios came up, people chose to stick with the marriage. There might have been exceptions. But today, divorces are not that rare and doesn’t always tell the story of “another man or woman”, or a lunatic-spouse deal. A divorced couple may give the reason “cause we didn’t get along well” or “it just didn’t work out, there was no love” 

But was it as easy as that? No, no and no. Divorce is still heard of as a condemned word. “Divorce? Are you crazy? No way am I letting you. You are living with him/her no matter what” – the typical responses of a parent/a relative/friends. 

Agreed, marriage calls for a lot of adjustments and understanding – you cant expect two different individuals to agree upon every deal on earth. But that’s not what I am talking about. When a marriage goes to a level where you find yourself unhappy all day and night long, when you realize beyond doubt you can never work it out –what was the point in clinging on? Why was it so important that you had to stick with the person till end of life no matter what? Wasn’t marriage all about making your life happier by spending it with someone you love and care about? When that love and care is not there, why would you choose to ignore it and go on with your lives unhappily? 

Cause divorce was still “evil”, unheard of and a shame to kith and kin. People choose to make their own lives unhappy to have the world around them believe they are happy. An idea that always goes above my head. 

The argument against this was that young people didn’t really need a reason anymore to divorce, they separate for the silliest reasons heard of. Why I am against this argument was that – whatever silly reason called it for, would they have gone ahead with the separation if there was love in the marriage? Wouldn’t they be the ones who should hate the idea of a divorce more than anyone else if they still cared for each other? Why was this so hard to understand? It was not the silly fights or reasons that was important – it was their decision – they wouldn’t be able to take it if they didn’t really want it! And they wouldn’t be able to proceed if they didn’t want it! Divorce was not a momentary deal! It gives you months to rethink, to reconsider – if all those months didn’t make them want to come back together, it simply means one thing – there is no love! 

And then of course the most-fought-upon subject – what about kids? “Cant you live together for their sake?”

What do people think about kids who see their parents fight all day and night? Would kids be happy watching that or would they rather have their parents away and happy with each other? There need not be any pretense about this – kids who watch their parents fight each other shut themselves off in rooms and never find happiness at home. They seek comfort in friends and school and in worse cases, bad influences. 

I know a girl who saw a psychiatrist as part of her parents having problems – the first thing the doctor asked her was “do you have an affair?”. The stunned girl said no and wondered why he should ask her this when the problem was with the parents. The doctor explained “Usually kids who face such problems at home end up having boyfriends/girlfriends at a very young age”

I know, no business of his, but well it showed that doctors expect kids to go “in the wrong direction” (since he obviously considered an affair wrong for a 17 year old) when their parents were having trouble with each other. 

I strongly believe that kids would be much happier if parents who fought each other stayed away and still managed to spend enough time with them individually. 

Divorce is not really a hard deal to understand. Cause what reason prompted it was not all that important unless it’s a case of serious misunderstanding – even then if there is love in the marriage, things sort out. But if there is no love, please don’t live frustrated lives forever – you had a choice. If you wanted to avoid divorce, take a lot of care on whom you marry – that’s where your decision really matters. But then humans make mistakes and a mistake may be hard to avoid, but not so hard to correct.

Secret to making good speeches

I found the secret formula of making a good speech. You need to be born with an amazing sense of humour. And if possible, you should grow a beard. Beards have something to do with dealing with masses – Santa has one. And today I heard Richard Stallman talk, and Eben Moglen talk. They have beards too. I made another connection here. Cause wherever I see free software, I see big beards. If Santa has a computer, which latest movies say he uses to deliver gifts, he probably uses free software too. Or else he has got to explain the white beard.

The beard also explains why there are fewer women in free software. And people think its housework! Hah house or no house, get a beard and you are an FS expert.

Now coming back to speeches. Having lived a few years as a human being, I have found out one thing – humans hate listening. So speech-makers had a tough job ahead. Here was a bunch of people all ready with their nap-beds waiting for their lullabies and you had to keep them awake. You had to make them listen and you had to make sure they could think about what you say.

An average human, according to my analysis pays full attention to the first 6 words. And if you don’t grab his interest with these 6 words, you have lost him. He would turn his head to look at the pretty girl in front of him. And then he would turn his head to look at the unpretty chair at the back. After this, he would look up and count the threads in cobwebs. He would do everything except listen.

But bring in humour and bang he is back. Once he knows you are one of those unpredictable fellows who’ll crack a joke any minute, he will listen. He would not want to step away for a second and miss a funny piece.

And then of course there comes your tone and how you say things. But experts have already covered that. I will just say – talk soft, slow, with a lot of pause and of course – you have to talk not read, not recite. Its got to be a conversation or at least a narration.

The method I use is the opposite of all that I said now – I read or sound like I read, and I speak at 10 dB ensuring anything beyond 10 cms cant hear me breathe. That works fine for what I am looking for – namely no future invitations for speech-making.

A job, and I am back

A bit of personal update. I have got myself a job as a journalist trainee couple of weeks back. And I am continuing my journalism classes as well. So finally am back to doing what I mourned about not being able to do for a few months – cursing everyone and everything every morning at half past 7 – since it means wake-up time once again. 

Gone are the days of late nights and late mornings, err afternoons. And I say this at 1:30 am! Well almost gone. I don’t see 2 a.m.’s anymore. I see the sun and the moon everyday – used to be just one of this for a long time. Well, it’s good to be back in the universe.

Another autorickshaw story

It might look like I have started an autorickshaw story series. Here is another one. Couple of days back I was trapped in a ksrtc (state bus) – no they didn’t lock me inside. There were some protests going on in the city and the major roads were all blocked for hours. So I jumped out cause [ahem] quite unlike me, I was late for my next stop. My plan was to run till the point there was no more traffic jam, grab an auto and go. On the way an auto-wala who first said he wont take me, followed me and took me in. He dropped me at the next bus stop – and dig this – free of cost.

“Ivide ninna mathi pengale, bus kittum” – You wait here sister, you will get your bus.

It was a small distance but who would do anything for free today?? I was not in a position to press him to accept money cause I had just about enough for my next trip. This is a short entry. Its just that I want to remind self and readers here that there are many nice people around us… they do these little nice things but thing is, little nice things are a little big, they have a long life.

Varanam Ayiram, hmm

Philip has already done a good job of Varanam Ayiram – story and review. When commenting I thought I will write my own version. Here is how it started. My auto rickshaw driver heard “Sreekandeshwaram” when I said “SL Theatres” – don’t ask me how, I guess its my brilliant accent – and directions were never my strong point – so we saw a lot of Trivandrum before reaching the Cinema. One more side-detail before reaching the main story – they took me to a seat right next to which was sitting an ex-colleague with helmet on lap and heading towards nap (hey that rhymes!) – such a small world – you have a howdy-mate wherever you go.

Now the movie. I was warned that it had a bit of The Wonder Years in it which was what actually took me to the movie. So I found a boy narrator talking about himself, about his Dad. Good. I like it when there is narration. Boy narrator grows up, he reaches high school, college and proceeds with life. Surya, I thought looked very much a young boy doing school days. Early life finished pretty fast. That was one thing about the movie. All the while so many things were happening you hardly had time to keep track.

The narration goes on and we see Sameera Reddy appearing. Now Philip may say she was an angel on earth but like I have commented there, I thought blech, a male faced female. So when Surya was saying “I knew that night what kathal (love) is… I knew what you felt when you saw Amma for the first time”, I thought “Sheesh”.

I actually liked the Surya-Sameera part of the story. It was, in one word nice. Surya’s exaggerated expressions actually seemed quite – alright I have to say it – cute (I have a particular aversion to that word). I will agree with Philip on one thing. The Priya part of the story failed to sink in. But then it somehow seemed the natural course to take – it felt real. Then there is Simran doing an older mature role. Not bad.

And then of course the main theme – the Dad part of the story. I was not quite happy there. From all that adoration, I was expecting a stronger Dad – I don’t mean a 6-pack abs or one that roars – but somehow the Dad lacked character, the Dad was not Dad enough. He seemed like a good old man who gave bits and pieces of advice to a younger man in the neighborhood – all the Dad-son reality, freedom, and naturalness was missing. It was like a good natured patient character was stitched up for the Dad who just talked like a good natured patient character. He could be anyone Surya knew, not Dad.

There are more aspects in the movie, which Philip says was the work of a confused director who wanted to have a bit of everything in his movie. I didn’t exactly feel it a hullabaloo of events, but yeah some of it was a little out of place and fitted in for the sake of fitting in. Like the director must have thought “Oh there is no Kashmir in the movie, let me add that now”.

About Surya, he acted well and boy he has a good face, I thought it’d be perfect for Jesus Christ’s role but I won’t try talking about his 6-pack abs (another personal aversion!). So hmm that’s it. I am not giving out the story. It was a nice 3 hours for me, and I didn’t think it a waste of time or money. It could have been better yeah, but then every one cant do wonder-years.