Tag Archives: Thoughts

The fear of the sabbatical

11 Saturday Sep 2010

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As the days inch closer to quitting nearly a decade of work – I can’t help but battle a strange queasiness. Since my sabbatical wouldn’t mean exotic travel and exciting new opportunities, but just a whole new phase of my life; I feel increasingly anxious – will this mean that I will change as a person? We identify ourselves so much with our work that will it give me a separate identity or a non-identity? Will I be able to take the opportunity to explore new avenues of thought and writing…or will the creative juices just dry up? We often wonder, worry about the things we cannot control or cannot predict and it possibly is a massively futile exercise.

Ignore or Delete?

10 Friday Sep 2010

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Today, after really long, I looked at my personal email account and really, really cleaned it up; as opposed to scanning for urgent and ignoring all else, because my work email keeps me so caught up. And I realised a lot of things:

1. We hoard a lotta junk!!! It’s easier to ignore than to take that vicious decision to delete, somehow?

2. Subscribing lists find us (because ignorant friends and family let random apps access their entire contact list to send out emails to) and keep spamming.

3. Sometimes, an important email from a friend lies unreplied (im guilty of replying to one after 8 months) because it got lost in the maze of the junk and useless. And that just feels wrong.

4. The art of emailing a friend who lives far away: when at work, I find it impossible to take time out to shoot out thoughful emails, or a hello to friends I haven’t spoken to in ages. But when in my personal domain, I find myself reviving the spirit of long-distance friendship. You realise work emails are just cluttering up your life and keeping you removed from quality relationships.

5. I feel as relieved and ‘cleansed’ chucking out junk from my Inbox, as I do clearing my workstation or home. It’s funny, the places we hang out – whether they are physical or virtual, always end up collecting stuff – and purging it feels like a revelation.

6. I don’t feel like I’ve done anything productive all afternoon except keep on doggedly after my 4000-email inbox, but, hey, even if it’s not writing an article or making a difference to the world – my email a/c and I feel SO much lighter! Hallelujia!

7. Moral of the story – delete/ archive. Preferably Delete (tho I achived way more than I should have – that stupid tool that hides the junk from you). Even if it means thinking you’ve lost something vital or have wronged the person who’s sent that email to you!! And oh yes, UNSUBSCRIBE to like a million junk lists! Wish they had that for mobile phones.

Clearing out my Inbox, clearing out my desk at work and soon clearing out my home…hope that leads me to a fresh clutter-free start in 2011!

Arthur aka Joe aka Joesph Gordon-Levitt aka @hitRECordJoe

23 Friday Jul 2010

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Joe totally bowled me over in Inception. At that time I began wondering why I tend to look at the secondary actor more than the primary one – I think it’s because he’s just not that obvious. I liked Orlando Bloom in LOTR instead of Viggo Mortesen, I much preferred Jude Law to Robert Downey Jr. in Sherlock Holmes, and now Joe got my attention – moving away from Leo. The very fact that they are unexpected treats – you know the main guy is going to be great, all-powerful, all-knowledgeable and with that casting, perfect to a T…it’s the second player that always grabs my attention (if he’s cute in my sense of the word). Joe was surprising – he’s matured so much from 10 Things I Hate About You, where he was a cute kid, and now he’s a good-looking boy-man. Love the dimples, the natural demeanour, the burgeoning confidence that says ‘Yeah, I’ve made it, but I’m not there yet!’ and it’s fun seeing him in this interview with Peter Travers from Rolling Stones – especially where he starts to play the guitar.

http://hitrecordjoe.tumblr.com/post/824017098/peter-travers-who-has-been-writ…

Exceptions in Inception

22 Thursday Jul 2010

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So, without a doubt, Inception is a powerful movie – in concept, in it’s making and it’s presentation. Love the casting, so surprising to see grown up Joseph Gordon-Levitt (playing Arthur – best remembered in 10 Things I Hate About You) and Juno‘s Ellen Page as characters in a film like this, but very intuitive and faithful plays all the same. In fact they added the surprise spice that was a perfect foil to Leonardo’s predictably good performace. Love the concept – it’s fresh and will have people thinking about it for ages to come.Hats off to Christopher Nolan – oh and this would have been a great movie to watch in 3D! Oh and another aside: Cillian Murphy (Fischer) and Marion Cotillard (Mal) are actually sublime and super-looking together – would love to see them in a sensual noir film together.

I did have a few concerns about the minutae of the story – the dream sequences – maybe I need to watch it again to clear those doubts. Any thoughts/ feedback welcome!

1 How did both the characters survive the gun wounds in deep dream sequence, when Leo had pointed out that the chances were very weak of them making it through even Level 3, but they came through from Level 4?

2 How did Leo bring Ken Watanabe back? It’s not easy to find someone lost in Limbo, as he himself had pointed out earlier, especially when he wasn’t physically with him when he got lost in the dream sequence. Also because Leo thought it was practically impossible to locate someone lost in a Level 3, and he managed to find Ken from Level 4/Limbo?

3 Why did Ken age so much and Leo not age at all – I assume Ken’s aging was a part of him spending so much time in Level 4 (where time would have moved super slow), but Leo would also have spent significant time in Level 4 hunting for Ken – and he didn’t seem to have aged at all!

4 How can Mal take Fischer into deeper levels when she isn’t real and not a part of his subconscious?

5 How did people return from Level 4 (Leo n Ken) without someone there to pull them back? Every other level needed someone who stayed back on a previous level.

6 And a minor point: If they’ve chosen an architect, why couldn’t she make things easier instead of hard for them? Level 3 in the snow and seemed like it would hamper them instead of making their life easier. It didn’t seem like it had a point.

Some interesting ideas on other blogs thanks to @manishacharya:

Inception Explained: A Dream-within-a-dream

Reviews, Critics and Trashing the Critics

Other stuff on Inception, thanks to @leodicaprio:

Unscripted interview with Leo and Ellen Page (Ellen seems nervous and ill-at-ease)

http://o.aolcdn.com/videoplayer/AOL_PlayerLoader.swf

The Mind Crime Game

Chris Nolan’s Dream Research

The Cobol Job: Prologue Comic

Inception Trailor

One baby, Lonely baby, Two baby…Um, Population control?

08 Thursday Jul 2010

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So the latest buzz I’ve been hearing is that people should never be that cruel and have just one child. (I know, all you smart people worried about population control and all associated evils are probably asphyxiating right now, but hold on, it gets worse). So, you should ALWAYS have more than one child – why? – get this: so that your first baby “doesn’t get lonely.” It’s apparently just plain cruel to put your child through that kind of torture. I can’t even begin to start on how many things are just plain wrong about that. First, if you bring your child up right and he/she has enough things to do and hopefully enough friends, why in the frigging world would (s)he get lonely? Being an only child I really don’t recall feeling any moment of regret getting exactly what I wanted, and feeling a sense of responsibility for being the only child.

That brings me to ridiculous reason no. 2: ‘When we have lotsa children, we ensure that they will be around to take care of us in the future.’ Ahem. Red alert – most kids fight over who shouldn’t take care of the parents, and try to steer clear of duty as much as possible. And with more people living all over the world (not in the farm that these thoughts seem to be stuck in), who’s to say any of the 15 kids will be around to man the parent’s problems? In fact, if it’s just one child, (s)he knows that his/her responsibility from day 1 and works towards it.

Hell, it’s a selfish world, but don’t be selfish by killing the world’s resources and taxing everyone by wanting to provide entertainment and fight-club company for your kid. In fact, the more crowded the world is, the less likely your kid is to have a chance to do something or even have a good quality of life – and heck with overpopulation, (s)he gets his pick of company!!

Sure, I don’t deny that having a sibling is special, the bond is special and irreplaceable, but is it worth it in the long run? If every parent in the world thought this way, what in the world would the world’s population look like? Forget the world, just think India. I mean we do have some form of civic responsibility, right? Or should we all stop thinking about the consequences of our actions and just let the world go to rot? Or wait, that’s IS exactly what we’re doing anyway – for everything else!

At the end of the day, it is entirely a parent’s choice, but what bothers me is when they make important choices that affect people around them based on inane reasoning. God help us and the children we seem to be so heartily planning for!

Mindless in the Desert: SATC-2 is actually just a spoof of itself!

15 Tuesday Jun 2010

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How is it possible that Hollywood cannot see how stupid it makes Americans look when it creates movies like Sex and the City-2? I mean you start out with four relatively intelligent, well-read and well-travelled (we hope) women: a writer, a lawyer, a PR person and an art curator. How can these women who’ve spent years in their respective professions behave like such complete imbeciles? Well actually, Miranda and Charlotte do behave themselves, but the queen bees of the foursome, Carrie and Samantha act like absolute idiots.

I get that Samantha is Samantha – deliciously irreverent when it comes to sex and society. But I also get that while she flirts outrageously, and takes home a lot of goody bags, she generally doesn’t act like a moron in her home city. It seems that lack of hormones and hot flashes makes her go a little insane. She flagrantly flaunts social codes (which are a religious and legal issue in the middle east), while being the business guest of the sheikh who has kindly flown her friends and her first class in complete luxury to his home country, so that she can think about representing him in a PR capacity. It appears that Samantha could do with some PR of her own – and some re-training in the way to behave in public; not like a hormonal teenager on heat. And you can argue that that’s just Samantha – but is it? Did she become a top PR executive by showing hordes of conservative men her middle finger, breasts and her latest lay’s boner? I’m not really sure. It just seems that she’s finally becoming senile. Where even her Samantha-ness is no longer acceptable.

Do Americans really know so little of other cultures and behave this silly when they travel? What they do in New York is not really acceptable in Abu Dhabi! And flaunting social norms is not funny, it’s just stupid. Why does Hollywood not understand that when they make movies like this, they are not ridiculing the closed cultures of the world while heralding the joys of the librated ones, they are only proving that Americans can be really socially inept, culturally dumb and truly lacking in common sense, basic decency and courtesy and in any amount of general knowledge? And Americans are not really like this – the ones I’ve met are genuinely interested in other cultures and politely respectful of them. So who are these Americans that Michael Patrick King is idolising on big screen? What happened to the girls who regaled us with their smart repartees, chic appearance and layered conversations? The girls who may have used the metaphor of sex, but were making important observations about society, life, men and people. These are not the women we see now – the women now are haggard, bitchy, unable to learn from their lives’ many lessons and choose to regularly regress to inept teenage-world.

Miranda and Charlotte’s troubles are actually real and funny – they deserved more room to mature and grow, but instead the story got sucked into the vortex of Carrie’s stupidity and Samantha’s ridiculous faux pas. Carrie is just being plain ridiculous – she is tired of the relationship in its current form, she takes time off from their house, but when Big tries to intervene and asks for some time off too, she freaks out and goes and makes out with an ex-boyfriend. I mean really? Do these girls never grow up? What Carrie did when she was 20 and 30 is not really still acceptable at 45+! Does she never learn from her mistakes? Or is the writer so unimaginative that he can’t move or think beyond the usual troubles of the 4 girls? Where is the Carrie who only believed in the love of her life, and went through men trying to find happiness but unable to do so, because she truly loved another? Her affair with Big (when she was dating Aidan) was allowed, because he was the man she loved. Why would she cheat on the man she loves with Aidan? Just because he was too tired to go out to party with her after a long day at work and bought her a plasma TV instead of jewellery? Is she really that shallow?

And the clothes! The styling! What an eyesore! What the show had been known for, renowned for, were the supremely stylish clothes and looks. What have they done here? They’ve taken the brightest, gaudiest fabrics possible, stuck on extremely shiny, often pointy things, added the most garish of accessories that made them look like Christmas trees at best, and called them clothes. I can possibly accept that 4 of the 750 clothes actually looked reasonable, and the only good thing to come out of this is that Miranda got a makeover. The plain Jane of the series and the tubby-mommy of the first movie looked the best of the lot here. Carrie should have thought about mummifying her look from the series and staying cryogenically frozen. She has not aged well, and well, botox doesn’t work for everyone.

The movie would have truly worked as a spoof of the show and the series – outlandish clothes, haggard-looking women, absolutely no story, weak dialogues, stupid characters, social faux pas galore, trivialisation of social rules and a caricature of American intelligence (or the lack of).

I thought the first movie did injustice to the supremely brilliant shows, but in retrospect that movie was Oscar-material compared to this hunk of junk that fans of the show were forced to sit through for 146 minutes! Maybe King needs to think about handing the writing over to Darren Star – who put together 94 episodes of the show that won 8 golden globes. This movie, I’d be happy if it won a Razzie. Two funny lines and four decent outfits do not a movie make. I may just have to burn the box set of the Sex and the City after the incredibly bad taste this movie left in my mind and soul, ruining the iconic characters forever. I hope King gets the message and lets everything and everybody rest in peace, without a third piece of torture barraging our mind and the cities.

Celebrating An Imperfect Life, & It’s Uninhibited Successes

02 Wednesday Jun 2010

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I’m not one for hugely inspirational videos, talks and books; but what is inspiring is when people share their life with you – a life that has been imperfect, and successful despite that, or because of that. One never knows where one’s choices will lead us, but as Steve Jobs (a less cocky, more humble, more human Jobs) points out, we won’t know until we take the plunge. Things we may know from his life, things we may have heard about but are still moving when you hear him talk.

If you can’t view the video below, you can try this link: http://ht.ly/1SwMm

Job’s 3 life lessons:

1. You cannot connect the dots forward, but you can, when you look backwards. So trust in the direction your life is taking.

2. I had been rejected, but I hadn’t stopped being in love (about his work). The only way to do great work is to love what you do…keep looking, don’t settle.

3. Your time is limited, so don’t live someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is someone else’s thinking. Don’t let others’ opinions drown out your inner voice.

Killing me softly with my own smog | Jaagore

03 Monday May 2010

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Guest Post by Sitanshi Talati-Parikh, Features Editor, Verve Magazine

The problem with writing about issues is the fatalism that creeps in and tends to swallow you whole, where you want to scream to the world to wake up – before it’s too late, but you get the sense that they are simply not getting it. And makes you want to sink into a mire of desperation and helplessness. *Shudder*.

So, the idea is to calmly embrace the fact that the world as we know it, will really not last very long. I have a distant uncle who is geared into amassing family wealth for the next seven generations – and while I am truly proud of this generous gesture towards his family’s well-being, I feel that he is just a bit deluded. At the rate we are going – denuding the earth’s natural resources without a thought towards replenishment, ransacking and pillaging and foraging like barbarians, without once questioning what it implies for tomorrow, there will be no tomorrow. And I don’t mean like, oops I’m going to wake up and June 1, 2010 will no longer exist, but really, June 2, 2020 might not!

Do we really have as many years as we think we do on this planet? As we plan the next generation of pillagers, do we really believe they will make it through another 80 years of living in toxic hell? If the planet doesn’t implode on our own sins, we will definitely self-destruct in some way or the other.

1. We have waste disposal problems.

2. We have severe water shortage issues.

3. The air we breathe is so polluted that there’s no point smoking – you’re inhaling crap anyway.

4. We are rapidly consuming all limited natural resources without really figuring out alternate sources of energy, power etc.

5. Global warming is bringing in volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, earthquakes, tremours and a lot of other stuff that should shake us in our heads, not our houses.

6. There is severe overcrowding and over population, which is merely compounding the crises mentioned in 1-4.

Specifically talking about Mumbai, do we realise that as the incorrigibly corrupt government and municipal corporations allow illegal construction of sky-rises in already sandwiched areas, it’s not just the pressure on the land, it is also the impossible question of the pressure on infrastructure? Our infrastructure is quite simply redundant – there are old pipes, rusted and cracking under the pressure, drinking water getting mixed up with sewage and refuse, there is already insane amounts of fuel, water and power shortage; and with the advent of that many more homes, families, people and cars, the problems on the surface and below will only compound. So as spanking new buildings start popping up left, right and centre, who plans to deal with the repercussions of these short-sighted activities? Forget problems like soil erosion, pollution and cloud cover thinning that you can’t comprehend, but think of the really basic stuff. Say you spend multiple arms and legs buying a flat in a nice Sobo area, in a brand new building, with a great view. What are you going to do when the pipes burst with the pressure and you get filthy water to drink and bathe with in your new luxurious haven? What are you going to do when the already choked area doesn’t allow for you to take your brand new gas-guzzler out because there’s a perennial jam of cars being taken out for unnecessary spins?

The problem is that we think that it’s not our problem yet. It’s not relevant now. It’s not about me. As long as we continue with the current status quo, living in mass oblivion, we are barely able to grasp – despite Hollywood’s barrage of disaster ‘2012’ flicks – that everything is very real, everything is NOW. Tomorrow is not just another day in the grimy city; tomorrow may be a day where we no longer exist. And it would be entirely our fault. No amount of words can make you sit up and take action – until you realise that it’s your and your family’s life at stake, not your neighbour’s.

via jaagore.com

Is Fiction Tastier Than Fact?

09 Tuesday Mar 2010

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In tabloid journalism, respect for the truth and the other person’s dignity never existed, that’s why it is politely termed ‘trash’ or a ‘rag’. All the hoolaa in the media about wronging celebrities got me thinking about something that I have realised for a very long time. In much the manner that terrorism becomes a clinical act of violence, where those who cover the crime beat begin to lose touch with humanity, sensitivity and emotion simply because after a point it is too hard to keep up; in much the same manner (but with no similar justification), the general media treats a celebrity like an object they own – to be used for sensationalism and to sell copies. After all, money taints many things and when money is involved (think buyers, subscribers, advertisers and targets) there is a very clinical attitude towards celebs. They end up being names, that people throw around, that are replaceable by the next available or prominent personality. They are evaluated like objects with features, and their time is up for grabs.

But we forget that just as quickly as we are willing to sully friendships for cheap gossip, we are willing to drag celebrity-strangers through the muck because their pain is irrelevant to us. A conscience is an archaic word that has lost meaning a long time ago. And since when are celebrities people? It appears to be a price we believe they should pay because they enjoy fame: it is a way to level the field. You can’t have the cake and eat it too, you should end up paying for it in some way, and that is by being muck-mired.

Even if a celebrity has chosen the path of the limelight, nowhere have they signed up for public humiliation. If it has become a part-and-parcel of public life, it is because, we as an audience, have made it acceptable. It is because we buy, read and excitedly discuss Aishwarya’s supposed health problems, Hrithik’s spring cleaning, Deepika’s relationships and Imran’s equations with his co-stars. We choose the lower road, and that makes us as bad at the media who print stuff like this.

Whether the rumours and true or false, whether the celebrity is a good person or bad is logically irrelevant to his/her job. Just the way we judged Clinton’s presidency on the basis of his sexual choices or Tiger Wood’s golf game on the basis of his loyalty to his marriage, we are wrongly judging our own actor or a sports-person on his/ her personal life. If they open their life to us, it is their choice; if not, still their choice. But spreading rumours (whether based in fact or fiction) about their personal life should not be our choice. As media and as readers we should be merely interested in relevant facts – or is that too boring for our palate now? Can we digest dull, boring facts after being brought up on a gourmet diet of tasty hearsay, rumour and Chinese whispers?

Is it not our responsibility to respect the people we admire for who they are, who they appear to be, who they may be, and for who they may not be? Isn’t that being human? And shouldn’t we concentrate on good sport and on good cinema, as opposed to trying to be a voyeur into another’s life? Really, let live and let be.

Actually, get a life – your own.

will we ever be ‘cool’ enough?

08 Monday Mar 2010

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Watching the Filmfare awards and the Oscars back-to-back just reinforces the fact that we will really never be ‘cool’ enough. I mean sure, we can wear the well-cut tuxes and the flowy gowns, but it is the on-stage humour that really sux. If they are not ridiculing other people, they are trashing each other – literally, with eggs and such. I have no issues with pulling a leg here and there, but must it be done in a crass manner? I guess for the people who want subtlety and wit and sarcasm of a higher level, we would need to turn to the Oscars. After all, the TRPs are derived from the masses, and I guess the masses get crass humour, as we can tell from the overwhelming amount of terrible comedy that emerges from Hindi cinema. Our awards are so predictible, the humour so boring and the performers so obvious and unenthralling that one wonders why we even bother to watch Hindi cinema award shows. Of course, the industry was made happy, by splitting the awards between all the ‘camps’, making sure most went home with something. Possibly the only innovative act and the highlight of the event was Shahid Kapoor’s tribute to Michael Jackson, which actually involved skill, talent and thought. And the fillers? Bring back Ranbir Kapoor and Imran Khan, I say; out with the stale acts. SRK and SAK were good the first time around, now it’s just a bad deja vu. Actually, why should I waste my time on this blog post. I have one word for our awards shows: *Yawn*.