Amazing people who make me go on n on n on:)

24 September, 2018

The ‘Into The Wild’ Epiphany.

I am on a movie watching spree. With G away on long trips, students fewer now due to exams and me recently Netflixed, the future seems grim from where I see. I can almost visualize a couch potato (literally and metaphorically) shaping up right here in my bedroom.

So I saw ‘Into The Wild’ (2008) recently. It was an extremely thought provoking experience, almost an epiphany. Not everyone’s cup of tea though. I believe there is no person on the planet who hasn’t dreamt of kicking it all and going away to be on his own and free. Except here, this 23 year old boy in the movie, wants to be free in the Wild, giving up on human association altogether. He believed that - Wants, desire, family, wealth, love and the likes are the root evils that stop us from knowing who we are and what we want. 

As was revealed gradually, the thing that sowed this crazy urge in him was the continuous marital stress between his parents who were on the verge of a divorce since forever. He throws away his degree, burns his money and leaves no trace as he travels across with a backpack. The boy doesn’t allow anyone to get too close and eventually comes upon a lonely end. But then, as he wisely sums up, “Happiness is only real when shared.” 

Now I have a friend who’s faced something similar at his home front and has always vehemently shunned the idea of love or marriage. He holds a bitterness about commitment and relationships in him that I often and silently concluded was more of an exaggerated sense of restlessness and even attention seeking. In my ignorance, I would urge him to shake that cynicism off, as if insecurities of ages could be shrugged off from the shoulder like a baby monkey that just perched on it. 

More movies in recent times show children of broken homes being imbalanced and even psychologically twisted. Those who say movies are mirrors to our society, seem to be winning. Troubled childhood breeds troubled adults, 9 out of 10 times. I’m not blaming the children, I somehow wish to caution the adults. 

I would wonder how could this happen if even one of the two parents is affectionate and sane. My friend had jolted me back to reason by saying “You would not understand with your cushioned early life, of how a stressful house effects the impressionable mind of a child”. Even if one parent is loving enough, he or she isn’t whole enough anymore to give it completely. You can hold on to a broken twig in a storm, but it can only last for so long. 

And now I did what I often do, step into someone’s shoes to fathom how deep or shallow are my own convictions. As I was blessed to have been brought up by loving parents (one making up for the inadequacies of the other) my mind feels strong enough to fight the ups and downs thrown my way. I conveniently assume everyone else’s should also be. Often there had been a lack of empathy, for I didn’t realize how my being was fortunate enough to be conditioned in the conditions that were there. Not everyone is as strong. And as the movie says - In life sometimes it is not so important to be strong as is to feel strong. 

So then, a child of six or ten or even thirteen for that matter, has yet to understand the ways of the world. For him, the world would be good or bad depending upon the reflection of what he sees at home. Where he spends all his time. 

When he watches his parents screaming at one another day in and day out, he takes it to mean that there is always going to be chaos in the outside world. When he hears his parents calling each other names, he realizes that the two people he kept next to God, are full of flaws and begins to mistrust any goodness that comes his way. When his happy moments always get clouded with arguments and blame games, he is convinced that even if something good would happen to him, it won’t last forever. For if childhood, that is supposed to be secure and safe and carefree, is not, what will ever be? 

Divorces are commonplace these days. Keeping an open mind, I believe there is nothing wrong with two incompatible people going separate ways. But when children are involved, you need to take more responsibility. Would you be strong enough on your own to nurture the child with the love of the mother and the father? Do you think the child would retain a sense of belonging and positivity in life, after you take the plunge? Or are you just putting your own invisible baggage on his fragile shoulders? 

It is not wrong to seek happiness for yourself. It is not fair to always be selfless. But maybe when children are involved, we need to be cautious for we take up the role of the Creator. We can’t shrug off and say “not my problem, go fend for yourself” like perhaps animals do. 

Hug your children as much as you can. Do not stop saying “I love you” as a ritual, repeated several times a day. You must not let your negativity rub off on them as they should grow up believing all is hunky dory with the world at least till they’re old enough to comprehend that it isn’t always. 

Too much to ask, your say? But perhaps it’s just too little. 


26 June, 2018

The Living In The Instant Generation

(Caution: Not a funny Read)

So I was watching this beautiful movie on tv - Things We Lost In The Fire (2007) and it would have made me a lot sad had it not been for gushing over this beautiful beautiful man Benicio Del Toro. Such unbelievable intensity and sexiness even in the out of shape character that he acts as. (Reminded me of the Doctor from Pakistani series ‘Dhoop Kinare’ that came when I was a teen and how I crushed over him) Phew! 

Anyway, Toro plays a drug addict whose life is wasted due to heroine consumption but he can’t stop. Halle Berry has lost her husband and wants to take to some drug so she could sleep or escape the world. When she asked him how it feels like to take heroine, he says something extremely intriguing on these lines - 
It’s a heavenly escape. Nothing can compare to it. How it makes you feel. But that magic happens only the first couple of times. After that you just keep pursuing it in the memory of that first time but never ever feel it again. Even though you realize you’re losing it all in the process of it. 

Can you imagine the depth in this statement! What a capsule of explanation for human behavior at so many levels and how it forms an allegory to everything in life (or so I found in it). Say Love, for example. It’s magic the first time and then that forever pursuit of getting that adrenaline rush thereafter. Or why people obsess over having sex randomly. Does sleeping with new people satiate something besides the crude momentary lust? For I feel it should kill some of the soul. I think part of the answers lie in this feeling of pursuit of elusive happiness. For it’s seldom as pathbreaking as the memory of that first time (or the first time that it really happens like that). 

Even for say simpler things like meeting someone after a long anticipation is just wondrous for the first time. And then that ecstatic sensation may or may not return when you meet again. Money, power, weight loss, fame - we strive for it all, for that first and ultimate high. After that it becomes just a number and maybe three times over but the pinnacle of emotional euphoria was reached and post it, nothing really moves you. But do you stop? No. Because you remember the taste of that first conquest. You remain agitated because you can’t feel it anymore on your tongue, though they’d be claiming it is better or more now than what you had then. Addictions and how they pump and suck the life breath out of us, just like that! 

It may perhaps be the reason why people continue to look for love even after being heartbroken several times over. That feeling of freshly into new love is worth the pain of falling out of it yet again.  Or why people look for love outside their marriage. Because the high and the rush is missing. While we as a generation probably learnt to curb these urges better, I wonder about the recklessness of those in the current times. 

The ‘high’ obtained from wearing the most overpriced dress, is lost after it’s worn the first time. The iphone7 is no longer cherished because just a few months later the iphoneX floods the market temptingly. The producers are tapping into our weakness and we are being the eager victims. ‘Upgrade to change to have the best ever - in technology, lifestyle or humans’ , is being subconsciously drilled in our psyche. No patience in wanting to wait to get to know someone, but wham-bam through tinder for that instant gratification. The Living-For-The-Instant Generation. 

I’m not any holier than thou, mind you. I’m moving, though inchingly still. I remember I did not own a mobile phone, till ten years ago because I was scared of being dependent on or addicted to a gadget. I still resist getting a Netflix because I know my love for good onscreen drama and how my four walls will probably suck me in. Or I keep switching off the AC every now and then even in the torturous heat because something stops me from excesses. If I over indulge, it will stop giving me the pleasure. 

But I’m beginning to give in. Noticing the small changes despite me. Like I’m constantly whining to G for a holiday because that ‘high’ received just once a year, makes you restless when you see others soaking in it more generously. Or that I don’t mind picking up a dress I do not need, just because it’s on sale and I might need it in future. What I do need, is to sit with myself one of these days. Or rather sit outside myself for a change. 

Like the infrequent Saturday night-outs I go to or the hair spa I’ve just taken, none of them really gratify me anymore. Why? Perhaps the merciless knife of comparison is sharpening its edges upon my reason. “I’ve had better, so this is not good enough or I must go on till it is good enough, which never is.” I need to live in the moment and tame my highs and lows. So that I don’t exaggerate the fuck out of a good experience transcending to the rest of my senses or shove myself in a pit of self pity over something that can threaten to ruffle my peace. 


Maybe self awareness is the key. Though the locks for now look intimidating. Maybe if I keep telling myself that all this is just in pursuit of happiness that’s already in me, it will finally come out and show it on my skin. So much for the unsolicited gyan today, folks. Until next time :)

16 May, 2018

Neighborly Fantasies!

So there’s this huge arsed apartment-building being raised in my immediate neighborhood from some time now. And like with everything else, my hormones that tend to romanticize it all, had caused to give birth to a subtle hope and expectation of good looking faces coming to reside next door and venturing over, every once in a while to ask for Cheeni or dahi. (Yes, we can be presumptuous like that sometimes) 

Wait. What! Why do you seem horrified? It is the age of single men who cook! And who are yet busy enough to forget refilling groceries. And feel no shame in asking (not their next door neighbor in the apartment itself but climb the first floor of a building next door) with a bowl in their hand, a trickle of sweat going down their chiseled face and a subtle fragrance of musk in the air around them, asking for nitty gritties, with such an infectious smile that you melt like butter on a heated pan at your very threshold. (Sigh! I know you pictured that too. Ah well!)

Don’t you remember “Meri saamne waale khidki mein, ek chaand ka tukda rehta hain” song from a Kishore Kumar-Saira Bano-Sunil Dutt flick? ‘Padosan’ it was I think. Most of you were probably not even born at that time.

Anyway, my father’s fondness for Kishore Kumar made us watch this movie on a recorded cassette over and over again in those years of my impressionable teens till the reel was damaged and refused to abide by our commands. But how fascinating it was, this idea of opening the window of your room and having some deliciously gorgeous face, waiting there for a sight of you, crooning a hopelessly mushy number in praise of your beauty and grace as you do that coy act, bat your eyelid and bite your lower lip into a smile. STOP PICTURING ME LIKE THAT. It’s an analogy for crying out loud. 

Needless to say, it never happened in all those blessed years of growing up and the hope died a slow and silent death. But a fantasy is a fantasy! You can curb it but never kill it. This Hindi movie was probably the advent of it (Minus the terribly classic musical form and that hair oil drenched look of Sunil Dutt from those times). So years later, we witnessed the rise of those long forgotten urges again. What’s life without a little eye tonic, right?

If you had looked closely you’d see my thought bubbles of picturing a Hrithik look alike dude with weights doing his biceps as seen through the open window or a Ranbir look alike playing his guitar on a moonlit night, on the balcony opposite mine. Please let me sigh, one more time again. This is such a heart wrenching story of love, unheard of and untold. 

Anyway, so the building took its own sweet time for completion making me further console myself with the proverb “Intezaar ka fal meetha hota hain”. And there came the first occupants, as we saw a truckload of stuff being dragged in. And guess whose was the first lights to be switched on in the otherwise darkness draped homes. Yes, the apartment right adjacent to mine. The balcony right outside my room lit up, as rays of light gleamed through the drawn curtain of the windows. 

Did I rush to the temple to chadhao 5 Rs ka prasad? Did I light a burning lamp on my hand, waiting for someone to come along and not let it extinguish till then? Did I wash my tresses and sat at the balcony with a beautiful comb, water droplets trickling down my softly radiant skin, slowly letting go of the knots while humming a tune most seductively? No yaar. Mad or what! Kuch bhi you people believe.  

Because life is hard and expectations, a bitch. Within two days I realized that the room opposite mine belonged to the Kaam waali bai of that household, who hangs the jhaadhu, poocha and the dusting ka kapdas in the balcony there each day and each blessed evening. If that’s not enough, in the morning I may have to make do with the sight of her not so sparkling white undergarments washed and hung on a wire she’s put across the grill of the balcony area. 

I think my eyes have been permanently damaged, having caught a glimpse of her darkened, overflowing paunch, unable to be covered by her blouse too short and pallu too tiny. Those poor blouse buttons may be ripped off some day due to the pressure and may I not live long enough to witness that mind altering, earth shattering sight. My room window has been shut off now for life, the doors bolted and the curtains drawn. High time we bid good bye to childhood fantasies and not allow them to trickle in, ever. Sigh! 


The moral of the story my dear friends? Do not open the windows of your rooms in the false misbelief that you’re letting fresh air in. It could also slyly allow in, the stink of shattered dreams to cling to your insides. 

05 January, 2018

Big B and Little Me!

So I saw Tiger Zinda Hain last night. And I was crammed again with the filmy keeda that lay dormant hitherto from years maybe. Not that I loved the movie. The movie was just about okayish. Or perhaps I’ve given up on the Khans. But then, I was in a theatre after ages and that was enough to make me lose my marbles. The ‘over the top’ drama sparked off the drama streaks in me and here’s what I dreamt of early this morning. 

I’m some ten years younger (yes, it’s a dream, what did you expect) and a famous blog writer and twitter person. So famous that a handful of us are handpicked by the Big B to visit his house for a day’s stay as his guests and get to know and write about his life, living and family. And somehow I bag this opportunity and somehow my parents allow me to go. (That’s a bigger miracle than meeting Big B because my father like Amrish Puri never said - Ja Suruchi Ja. Jee le apne zindagi. He never allowed me to go even on a ‘chotu sa bagal ke gaon mein’ school trip, and that too from the all girls convent school that I belonged to, not bothering about the scars this would leave on my ymind for a lifetime to come).  

Anyway, one of his agencies selects us and we land there all charged up, knowing not what to expect. After the initial introductions, soon everyone gets busy exploring some nook and corner or some celebrity inhabitant of that huge ass mansion while I’m sitting there randomly observing a painted wall. It’s then that I’m graced with the presence of His Highness himself who asks why am I not buzzing around like the others. And that voice. That close to me. To be heard in person. For all my witty cells, I may have just turned into a Dodo. Only from within though. We hold our turf proudly. 

The ice is broken and we get talking into larger and deeper things. (Now I suck at social gatherings and would rather choose a corner to disappear in, defamed for being conspicuous by my absence, but whenever I’ve managed to have someone ‘one to one’ for a while, they’ve held on to me for dear life. If only we could put that as special skills on the resume.)

So one thing leads to another and we have a heart to heart as Amit (I’ve already begun to “fondly” call him that) bares himself to me and talks about things he’s never revealed before. It’s almost like a circle of trust he finds himself in, with me and he must release himself now or it wouldn’t be ever. I listen like a three year old child, holding on to his hand and looking in his eyes. A tear trickles down mine perhaps. And the noise in the backdrop and constant activity, relegated to just that - the backdrop. We couldn’t have been more alone and surrounded by silence like we did then. In our heads. 

What began as a buoyant banter turns into a whisper of the spoken musings of a heavy heart and I give a long tight hug to cheer him up. He makes me sit down and rests his head on my shoulder with eyes shut even as he mutters - however peaceful this feels, I fear what comes next. 

And I scrunch my forehead thinking he’s wondering about his financial liabilities or performance pressures that he’d have to face in the day. Just then I hear Jaya’s loud exclaim from the backdrop coming alive.  (Now Jaya is not what I’ve begun to fondly call her too, it’s just that I can’t call the husband Amit and go all “Jaya ji” on the wife, can I?)

So all hell breaks lose. Immediately the guards are all alert and I’m dragged away as though I had drugged and assassinated the country’s biggest superstar. Abhishek, Aishwarya and a host of other family members arrive at the scene of crime in their posh garbs and jaw dropped expressions. I felt like how Nathuram Godse would have felt and I almost awaited the shots to pierce my heart, that a few minutes ago was warmed with unexpected mush by a man who made me weak in the knees, like no man had ever before or ever will. 

The family takes him away even as he turns around to catch a last glimpse of me. Wait! He’s not the underage heroine of a film and you guys are not the zaalim zamindaars. Stop behaving like that. I was now doning the angry young man avtaar. He’d rubbed off on me too. I shouted and tried to explain that we were just talking and they should stop creating a scene when someone threw my bags and unpacked stuff at me and asked me to get out. 

The other girls’ things were thrown on the lush grass of the garden too as Jaya muttered “I told him it was a bad idea but mere sunta he kaun hain iss ghar mein” and stomped off, as irony turned around in her grave and died again. 

I rose like a brave injured tiger (yes, Tiger Zinda Hain) and rushed towards the entrance of the house. I knew I now had to be my own Knight in shining armor. Just then someone made a thud on my head with the butt of a rifle. Wait, that was also the thud on the door because Seeya had awoken and was knocking to let her in so she could slink in my blanket. 

I woke up with “kahan hoon mein?” expression and thankfully not screaming “Amit, Amit, mein aa rahe hoon or Amit, Amit, I’m coming” for my knight in sleeping armor next to me in bed would not believe my reasons, even if I explained. 

So yeah. There it is. Another one of my dreams crushed by reality and fate’s cruel hands. But we dream on. And some day, the shiddat would make the entire kaaynaat conspire to make my dreams come true. Amen! 


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