A Piece of My Mind

The guffaw that broke the Internet

2016-05-26T23:33:00.000-07:00

When Candace Payne, a Texan mom of two, slipped on a Chewbacca mask to record her bemusement on Facebook, little did she know that she was on her way to Internet stardom. Candace Payne’s love for the infamous Star Wars Wookie is rivaled by millions, but what was it about her video that got her freebies from corporations and invitations from movie studios, talk shows, and even Mark Zuckerberg?

With so much negativity and fear mongering peddled around the Internet--from climate change and violence to racism and terror attacks--along comes a happy-go-lucky woman who makes a video with her laughing hysterically wearing a Chewbacca mask. While I didn’t find Payne’s video side-splittingly hilarious, her infectious smile and childlike love for the mask made me chuckle. I could see why she had gone viral; her goofy personality and joie de vivre was something that the Internet needed. Her video made us believe that “it’s the simple joys in life” that mattered.

Nothing could be a more effective advertisement for a brand than a bellyful of laughter. But Payne’s video wasn’t a sponsored video, nor did she pay lip service to Star Wars or Kohl’s (which she only mentioned in passing as the store from where she bought the mask) or even Facebook’s Live Video feature. Candace Payne used a Chewbacca mask to talk about how we need to find reasons to laugh in the littlest of things. It was a fortune-cookie lesson on life that Facebook turned into a subtle promotion for their video feature; while for Star Wars and Kohl’s it was a free advertisement for their brand.

Given the short shelf life of an Internet sensation, the three giant corporations cashed in on the video’s popularity. Candace Payne, the content creator, was regaled by celebrities and corporations alike. She went on a car ride with J.J Abrams; met Peter Mayhew, the original Chewbacca; hung out with Mark Zuckerberg; and was thanked for only mentioning Kohl’s with even more goodies and shopping coupons.

She now has a verified tick on Facebook and might become an influencer who will be wooed by several brands, or may be like many Internet trends she will be forgotten by the end of the month. Nevertheless, her sudden fame is proof that digital media helps a brand’s popularity best when it is used by a gleeful consumer. Digital marketing strategists may come up with contests, posters or hashtags to trend a brand, but a simple video or a tweet from a satisfied customer will improve your brand’s image more than a celebrity endorsement.

Image source: http://bit.ly/27USdXk

That Old Feeling

2015-02-02T08:39:00.000-08:00

I set my alarm for 5.30 a.m. on my phone because I like to believe that some day I will wake up, slip into my tracksuit, put my hoodie on, plug in my headphones and go for a jog on a crisp Toronto morning. It has been six months, and I am yet to wake up to the first sound of my alarm. I believe that snooze buttons are the best addition you could think of to add to an alarm clock, they give you the option of postponing the inevitability of going through the motions of a dull and dreary life.

My alarm promptly rang at 5.30 in the morning today, but it being so early in the morning--and a Monday nevertheless--I promptly hit the snooze button and slid back into my comforter, "Let me make full use of my final fifteen minutes of sleep," I mumbled. Fifteen minutes later, it went off again, I checked the time, "Huh? I can always walk in a half-an-hour late into class, nothing's going to change in fifteen minutes," or so I thought, because quite a bit changed by the time it was 6.30 a.m.

It was finally 6.30 a.m. when I finally woke up, and like any normal person the first thing I did was to log into social networking websites to see if anything big had happened while I was asleep. Something big did happen: Schools and colleges had cancelled classes because of a snowstorm. The said snowstorm only seems terrible when reading about it on the internet, because outside there is pretty good visibility. It reminded me of my student days in Chennai when schools and colleges were declared a holiday because the Indian Meteorological Department predicted a Category 5 cyclone, only for the sun next day to be shining bright and beaming. But ironically, all of the Met department's predictions would come true when I started my career, which meant I had to commute to work even if it were pouring buckets.

Waking up to see that classes were cancelled was a feeling I hadn't experience in a gazillion years. A perk of being a student is that the government doesn't want to risk your life in the face of inclement weather, because you are their future, that fresh blood they inject in their economy because you are young, smart and brimming with new ideas (and by "you" I am referring to myself because who's the student here?), it's a different story when you are in corporate because you are the hamster in a wheel. So you gotta go to work come rain or shine.

I felt euphoric initially as I imagined all the productive things that I could be doing, then it dawned on me that refreshing twitter feed, watching TV shows, and staring into an empty word document in the pretext of writing my "novel" was something that I had been doing over the weekend. That was the most "productive" I could get.

I had planned to finally get around doing my sales assignment, which was going door-to-door to stores and selling ad-space for my department magazine, it was something I had been postponing because it involved being confident and charming, and was looking to get it done with by Monday. Now, with even the Po-lice asking denizens to stay indoor and restrict inessential travel, I feel I am only rearing the lazy, procrastinating dirtbag inside of me who likes to stay indoors and watch TV shows.

Well, there are two sides to classes being cancelled on a Monday morning, I guess. But oh, look! The sun's out!

Nightcrawler - Creep Inc.

2014-12-01T20:11:00.002-08:00

Lou Bloom: What if my problem wasn't that I don't understand people but that I don't like them? What if I was the kind of person who was obliged to hurt you for this? I mean physically. I think you'd have to believe afterward, if you could, that agreeing to participate and then backing out at the critical moment was a mistake. Because that's what I'm telling you, as clearly as I can.

In every character-driven story there is a main character that we root for, we witness his star rising from being a nobody to a somebody. We root for him because he is the good guy; he is an honest man, a salt of the earth kind. He may be flawed but you are okay with it because he is human, after all. You want him to succeed because everybody likes to see an underdog win. Movies like Lord of War, Dallas Buyers Club , The Social Network have protagonists with a grey side, yet they win our empathy because there is something human about their imperfections, we feel for them because their intentions are good, we know that somewhere down the line they will realize their folly and try to turn over a new leaf. But it is hard to empathize with Louis Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal) because there is nothing good about him. He is smart, ambitious and driven to an extent that is terrifying. He is twisted from the minute we see him first on screen, and yet we get attracted to him like a moth toward a flame.

Nightcrawler is an intense two-hour drama/thriller about Lou Bloom, a wayward young man who tries to get his foot in L.A’s local news agency KWLA-Channel 6, by working as a freelance video journalist. Men in this profession are called “nightcrawlers” because they roam the night in search of a good story, crawling into crime scenes armed with a video camera taping anything they could find that would sensationalize the crime. Immoral and sleazy, it is a profession where one man’s misery is another man’s fortune. This is a profession that Lou Bloom stumbles upon when he sees star nightcrawler, Joe Loder (Bill Paxton) in action. Loder refuses to take an earnest Bloom into his wings, who then decides to get into the business by buying a cheap camcorder and a police scanner.

Dan Gilroy’s story also works as a commentary on how news channels function, on how they package and manipulate crime stories to get more viewers and use fear as a tool to sell their product. Bloom in his quest to make it in the big leagues finds an admirer in Nina Romina (Rene Russo), the local TV news producer who schools him and grooms him into the job, not knowing that she’s raising a Gollum. As Bloom flowers in his newfound profession--much to the chagrin of Joe Loder--he begins to grow more ambitious, manipulating and orchestrating potential crime scenes so that he could get eyeball-grabbing footage.

Movies based on news channels often have a TRP obsessed head honcho who compromises with ethics of news broadcasting with sensationalism, Rene Russo as the news producer Nina Romina is the ringmaster who tells what to show to what to say. Cold and businesslike, Romina finds a perfect ally in Bloom, or so she thinks. Rene Russo plays the no-nonsense Romina to perfection; much like Bloom hers is a character that warrants no sympathy from us. Bill Paxton turns in a neat performance as Joe Leder, cocky and with a prima donna attitude his position as leading crime photographer is taken over by the relentless Lou Bloom.

Gilroy who has had a checkered career as a writer (The Bourne Legacy, Real Steel, The Fall) is the writer and director for Nightcrawler. Through Gilroy’s eyes, we see the darker side of L.A., a city riddled with crime. The screenplay is tight, focusing on Bloom’s ambition to rise up the ranks in L.A.’s news broadcasting industry. One of the best scenes in the movie happens inside a car when Bloom’s apprentice, Rick (Riz Ahmed), who starts out as gullible looking lad, wises up to his master’s antics and tries to extort money from him for keeping mum. Having been familiarized with the unpredictability of Bloom, you’ll be on the edge of your seat hoping Rick stops talking, because Bloom is capable of choking him to death in the blink of an eye. The way the conversation pans out is a testament to Gilroy’s skill. With majority of the scenes shot in the night, the tense scenes turn out to be more effective.

The most chilling parts of Nightcrawler involve no blood or violence, it involves Jake Gyllenhaal acting all earnest and personable—his pale face glows with colour, and his once sunken eyes start twinkling with excitement as he gets enamored with the world of late night news broadcasting. Gilroy has given Jake Gyllenhaal the role of a lifetime, and he crawls into your skin slowly and steadily.

Nightcrawler is an out-and-out Jake Gyllenhaal film, with sunken eyes that seldom blink, and an unpredictable persona about him, his portrayal of a sociopath will send shivers down your spine. Louis Bloom isn’t just a psycho who is in the business to earn a paycheck; he’s a psycho who feels is destined for greater things. He demands the best from his sole employee, having gotten a little taste of success, Lou Bloom is a deluded psycho with grand plans of starting his own company. With one of his finest roles till date, Gyllenhaal is a shoo-in for the Oscars’ contenders come the awards season. It is astounding to see the range of characters he’s portrayed over the years, from a gay cowboy (Brokeback Mountain) to an introverted cartoonist (Zodiac) to a tough-as-nails detective (Prisoners), and now all beefed up for his forthcoming project as a boxer in Southpaw, it is a shame that he is criminally underappreciated. Hopefully, a solo outing like Nightcrawler could make people sit up and take notice of his talent.

Nightcrawler is a story of flawed people who’ll do anything to get ahead in the world. There is no single character you’d feel sorry for or empathize with, yet, it is a riveting watch that keeps you hooked thanks to a splendid Jake Gyllenhaal.

Interstellar - Of Wormholes and Plotholes

2014-11-06T08:58:00.000-08:00

Cooper: We used to look up at the sky and wonder at our place in the stars, now we just look down and worry about our place in the dirt.

As the screen cut to black there was silence in the movie theater, a “What just happened?” expression was writ large on the faces of the audience, and as Christopher Nolan’s name appeared on the screen, there was a thunderous applause that went on for a couple of minutes. You see, it’s all in the name. Your name carries your brand, your achievements, your vision, your reputation, and if your name is Christopher Jonathan James Nolan, even more so. In the weeks that have led to the release of Interstellar, there have been more feature profiles on him than on any of the stars of the movie. All these articles celebrate his style of movie-making, of how he’s the blue-eyed wunderkind of Warner Brothers who churns out blockbusters with larger-than-life set pieces, with a story laced with philosophy and red herrings told in a tricky fashion, that in its final moments pulls the wool over the eyes of its viewers and leaves them in a frenzy, making them dissect and discuss the movie for days. Nolan’s movies could be frustrating, with a simple plot told in a complex manner, you’d want to that guy who understood the story better, the smartest guy in the audience.

We celebrate him like he were the greatest thing to have happened to motion pictures, which to an extent, is true. He is the best thing to have happened to commercial cinema in recent years, he's the reason we want to go to the movies. Not since Spielberg of the 90’s have we seen a director who is celebrated by the masses and critics alike, nor have we seen a director who enjoys carte blanche over his work. He is the most recognized movie director in the world, for someone who doesn’t own a cell phone or an email id, that’s saying a lot. His movies are flawed, and god forbid, if you mention that in your review, your comments section would be flooded with taunts that question your intelligence to death threats. We live in an era where our opinions are malleable by tweets and online articles, and if someone doesn’t conform to our opinion we strike down upon them with great vengeance and furious anger.

With Interstellar, Nolan makes a foray into the space opera genre. It is a story we have heard before, of a father who leaves his family behind to save the world with a promise that he will return. The premise may be similar to Armageddon, but they differ in the narrative and treatment. Within the first one hour, we’re shown that Earth is nearing extinction with corn being the only crop that could be grown, Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) is a farmer and a has-been spaceship pilot who believes “Mankind was born on Earth. It was never meant to die here”, he stumbles upon the defunct NASA that is working out of a secret base, and within the first hour of meeting them, agrees to fly the mission to search for a habitable planet for the human race. After bidding an emotional goodbye to his heartbroken daughter, Murph (Mackenzie Foy), promising that he will return, Cooper and his team fly across space exploring signals from NASA’s previous attempts.

Nolan has previously made run-of-the-mill stories that have hinged on scientific themes—memory (Memento), dreams (Inception)—and had yet managed to entertain the audience with innovative storytelling (Memento) and jaw-dropping action set-pieces (Inception). Interstellar is where he explores the space-time continuum with the theory of wormholes and blackhole, but it is while using the theme that the plot seems convoluted. Nolan’s movies are known to befuddle the viewer with a complicated storyline, while you try to wrap your head around the story he cleverly inserts a jaw-dropping action scene, the visual aesthetics in the scene always compensate for the complexity of the plot. But in Interstellar, there are too many complicated scientific theories that he brings into play within short intervals, while the visuals of space and the traveling through the wormhole are an immersive experience, it somehow does not make up for the gaping plot holes and convenient resolutions that he comes up with.

Even with limited screenings before the movie officially releases, the internet is set ablaze with over-analysis and explanation of scientific theories ranging from gravity to relativity to astrophysics used in the movie. The average viewer would rather be entertained than to have to go home and do their research on space-time travel to understand the plot. Not everyone in the audience would be equipped to handle the scientific mumbo-jumbo that is thrown around in liberal doses, and in some scenes with the sound mixing not right, it could be a pain to figure out what is being said. While Interstellar may blow your mind away with the visuals and the technical aspects--of which Nolan is a master--it is found wanting in the screenplay--of which Nolan is not--where some plot points go way over your head. What also ails the story is the lack of well developed characters. There are some shoddily written scenes that try to come across as thought-provoking but only end up looking manipulative.

Fresh off his Academy Award success, McConaughey plays his role with aplomb, he speaks his lines with the same calm and raspy tone that he did for a season in True Detective making it sound like you were in a class of Philosophy 101. His character is also blessed with more detail, which makes us easy to connect with, however, we cannot say the same for other characters. Michael Caine as Dr. Brand is an extension of the Michael Caine in any of Nolan’s other movies -- the wise old man who gives a direction and a sense of purpose to the hero’s journey. Anne Hathaway’s Amelia Brand is a weakly developed character, for someone who shares more screen time with the hero, her character doesn’t add much to the story, there comes a moment in the movie where she talks about love and how powerful of an emotion it is, instead of sounding thought-provoking and rooting for her, it only sounds manipulative and out of place in a sci-fi flick. Mackenzie Foy/Jessica Chastain as Murph is the emotional core to which Cooper wants to return to, angry at her father for having left her, but smarter beyond her age, she tries to put the pieces together. There are more lighter moments in Interstellar than in any of Nolan’s films, most of it coming from a robot named TARS. Hans Zimmer’s soundtrack has always been an integral part of Nolan's movies, making the scenes more grand. In Interstellar it is minimal yet absorbing, a departure from his more pulse-pounding works in Inception and the Batman Trilogy.

While Interstellar features Nolan’s trademark jump cuts in the final scenes of the movie that keeps building the suspense, it would seem hard to keep up for the audience once the movie becomes more scientific and enters the perplexing territory of time and space and other dimensions. Interstellar requires a suspension of disbelief, while it may be frustrating to grasp what’s happening in the movie, you’d just have to let go and be taken in by the stunning visuals. If you thought the beauty of space was jaw dropping in Gravity, Interstellar would only take it to a whole new level.

Nolan’s movies have always created a divide in the audience where a certain section calls him out as a sham that makes blockbusters with all the razzmatazz and pop-philosophy but lacking in heart, whereas there is the other section of Nolan fanboys that reads between the lines of every Nolan flick and tries to equate it with a profound philosophy. I love the rush of watching a Nolan movie in a crowded cinema hall, it leaves me perplexed yet entertained, it gives me scenes that I could take home with me. Although, I wouldn’t go all out to madly defend him, I know his movies have flaws, but at the end of the day, he leaves me entertained, and that’s all that matters.

However, while I walked out of the theater, there wasn’t much to hold on to, all my excitement that had reached fever pitch during pre-screening was fizzled out, giving way to a bewilderment in trying to figure out what was happening after the show ended. But as the hours passed, and I kept going over it again and again in my head, I realized I needed to give it a second try in the theater, and a third try when the DVDs released.

Interstellar could be a frustrating watch or an enthralling one; it depends on the expectations you walk in with. With the scientific concepts and some gaping plot holes, it is yet another Nolan flick that would require multiple viewings to understand. But then, you wouldn’t mind, it’s Christopher Nolan after all. It’s all in the name.

Image courtesy: http://www.impawards.com/2014/interstellar_ver3.html

Lessons from a Pickle Jar

2014-10-15T08:31:00.001-07:00

It was a late Sunday afternoon when in the midst of sautéing my vegetables (I say “sauté” because it sounds and spells fanciful, although I was only chopping my potatoes) my Tambrahm cells kicked in and a vision of curd rice and pickle popped in my head, because any afternoon meal of a Tambrahm’s palate is incomplete if it didn’t end with curd rice and mango pickle. So, I plugged my earphones, put my clothes on, tied my shoes, and turned off the stove (yes, exactly in that order) and walked all the way to the nearest supermarket salivating at the prospect of tasting steaming rice lathered with curd bathed in a sprinkling of hot spices that envelope the mango pickle--a holy matrimony of curd rice and spicy mango pickle that only ones from Chennai could understand (I am not sure about you, but I am smacking my lips as I am typing this).

I entered the supermarket vowing not to listen to the calls of a plethora of food items that looked tempting and mouth-watering, but of which I had no idea how to use in my novice-level cooking. From Mexico to Italy to China, the shelves were filled with ingredients from all over the world, calling out to me, Use me! I taste delicious! You won’t regret it! They said. One day, when I have enough money to experiment with, I’ll buy some exotic sounding items and create a fusion of ingredients from different corners of the globe and make my own World Cuisine, but for now, I am going to buy that bottle of curd and that jar of pickle, I told myself.

I walked out of the supermarket with a bottle of curd, a jar of pickle (which was a vadu maanga at that) and a satisfaction of knowing I had not wasted money on any fancy-sounding food products.

I reached home and spent the next one hour cooking my lunch all the while dreaming about the curd rice and mango pickle that I will be devouring after my main course. Once the time came for me to open the bottle, imagine my surprise when the lid wouldn’t come off. The downside of living in a rented apartment is that you cannot let off steam by smashing a bottle against the floor or by punching a hole in the wall, which is how I used to approach any crisis when I was living in my own home.

However, I did fret and fume while trying to open the lid with my bare hands, I quit when I realized that I wasn’t covered with any health insurance just yet, and ran the risk of cutting my hands. The image of eating curd rice mixed with my blood wasn’t appealing. I heaved a sigh of despair and left the pickle jar hidden away from my sight so that it wouldn’t remind me of my shattered dreams, like how bumping into your ex would bring back all these memories of a blissful life that you had planned with her/him.

The next few days I’d walk to the kitchen every morning with a faint hope that maybe, just maybe, the lid would budge if I tried a little harder. I tried, I twisted, I contorted my face in several angles exerting energy that ran through my nerves to my face, reddening and molding my features, wishing the jar would open. But it would not move an inch. I gave up all hope and cursed the manufacturers for making such an impenetrable fortress of a pickle jar.

A few weeks passed and I went on pretending that I was better off eating plain curd rice. But who was I kidding? Curd rice without pickle is as incomplete as French fries minus ketchup, Fourth of July without any fireworks, a marriage sans intimacy. The more I was deprived of that elusive combination, the more I yearend for it. What made it worse was the pickle jar was lying in my shelf, and I, who used to unseal the hardest of jars for my mother with just a flick of my wrists and chided her thereafter, was unable to summon all my strength to open a jar when it mattered the most.

And one fine day, it opened, and I did not know how. I trundled into the kitchen like a boy who walks into the schoolyard knowing well he’s about to be beaten up by bullies. I opened the shelf and took out the jar of pickle; hope was replaced with a resignation to my fate. And then with a drawn-out sigh, I twisted the lid ever so slightly, like I were cracking a safe, and click! I could not believe my ears, it was the faintest of sounds and yet it got my heart racing as if I had heard Beethoven’s symphony. I imagined this was a dream, and I twisted the lid a little more, and it loosened a bit more. With every turn of the lid, the jar opened, and as I unscrewed and removed the top with disbelief, I looked in to see the contents of it. And there it was, resting there in all its glory. Red, slick, and so spicy that you could feel its taste on your tongue just by looking at it. Vadumaanga, my own elixir.

I had read about it in self-help books, and on the Internet, but it was then when I was staring into my pickle jar with a “did-I-really-open-it” look that I truly acknowledged it, that persistence is a virtue. It kicks down the hardest of doors when you least expect to, it moves mountain when it seems impossible, it wins you games when all seems lost. I realized the importance of trying everyday, to just show up and do your thing. Things may not go our way, results won’t be delivered the very next moment, but if you truly want something, you just got to push through, inch-by-inch. It would be a long and slow journey to your destination, it will be trying, you will sweat it out, you will question your judgment, but you will be there someday.

And it will feel worth it.

Persistence, it helped me open my jar of pickle, it will help you open yours too.

Image Credit: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-WD2nQuz_5fG1FV6pj0q75_k8CU45FRFvzMRJhJjVRYC0838EvVroKnTaYRJ6ZNlYfqa31nm2O6O_tUtTSRi4IevGXnsks8r3LJxKzkNvUTCvkjkU3sa4hpCXoGIRXOvdm0zrp0cuneU/s1600/photo+%281%29.JPG

Peter Quill and the Importance of Being Deluded

2014-09-13T19:31:00.001-07:00

Peter Quill: I come from Earth, a planet of outlaws. My name is Peter Quill. There's one other name you may know me by. Star-Lord.

I am writing this post with Redbone's Come And Get Your Love playing in the background. It has been a month since I had watched GoTG, twice, and I haven't gotten over it yet, From the moment Peter Quill plugs the headset and tunes in to that groovy soundtrack, you feel that GoTG is going a direction where none of Marvel's other movies have tread before. By the time the end credits roll your feeling would have been validated.

Guardians is breezy, funny, and never takes itself seriously, it tells the story of a ragtag bunch who get together to find an orb, in their pursuit they end up being hunted by Ronan the Accuser who intends to use the orb for world-dominating purpose. While the trope of a bunch of misfits who get together to stop a powerful villain has been done to death in movies across all genres, where Guardians scores above the rest is in its treatment. Despite being lighthearted with many a comic moments, there is a sense of destiny instilled within its protagonist, Peter Quill, who calls himself Star-Lord--the cheesy monicker dismissed with chuckles by the characters on screen and the audience alike at first.

It is this sense of delusion within our hero, of him believing that he is destined to be a Lord of the Stars that's gotten me hooked on to GoTG from the time I first watched it. Delusions of grandeur is sometimes necessary, despite how often we’ve been told to snap out of it. It is the drug that we every once in a while inject ourselves with to escape the drudgery of the present to go on to a utopian future. We spend our lives being taught the cold, hard facts. That we might end up going through the same ol’ rigmarole, that our lives won’t be any different, that it is all a Big Nothing, that love, with all its promise and intensity, eventually fades away.

Maybe they’re right. But we ought to every once in a while build castles in the air, that we dance alone in our room with the lights off and the music on while believing that we are destined to do something with our lives. That we got a purpose—no matter how small—to fulfil it, that every roadblock is just a brick that builds us to be the person we dream to be one day.

There’s no harm to dream about things that we know would never happen, but heck, just dream, they could take away your hope and drill down the bitter truth inside your head that things will just stay the same, what they cannot take away from you is your dream. So, dream with your eyes wide open, hold on to that tiny fragment of delusion, and who knows, some day you might get to lord over your stars after all.

My Chennai

2014-08-14T09:33:00.000-07:00

I came across a link online, something that was about a 100 Things to Do in Chennai, of the hundred things one can do to stake their claim as a true Chennaivaasi I had only done a measly 15, half of which I would never had done had there not been the corporate culture of "Team Outing". I had never considered myself to be a part of this city, I had scoffed at those images that went online, something that went "Chennai is a city, Madras is an emotion". I found it to be a statement too shallow to my liking.

I was quite proud of my unfamiliarity with Chennai, as I felt it asserted my image of being a social outcast. When I told my friend that I had not even crossed twenty things one could do in Chennai, she chided me saying that I wasn't a true Son of the City, I rather found it to be a compliment.

While people who lived in Chennai or had migrated to from a different place, swear by the sights and sounds that she had to offer, I only cringed every time I had a reason to get out of my home. I would fret and fume whenever I boarded the buses and trains ranting to myself about the population and traffic, bemused at how people find the city to be liveable what with the extorting policemen and hassling autodrivers. Chennai is not a perfect city, why should it be?

Maybe I was irate because I lived two hours away from the city in a once quaint little town that now is slowly being inhabited owing to rising real estate value or maybe because the city is so overpopulated that the masses are looking for new places to occupy, and they've decided to occupy my once quaint little town. That's what they do, occupy, not live.

I had spent a good part of my two decades in this little town, I grew along with my friends in a neighborhood where everybody knew everybody, where I could get a store credit just because my grandmother used to share the town gossip with the local annachi. Now, when I go for a walk in the evenings I feel like I have entered a different place. My neighborhood has changed, my little town is inhabited by strangers, those who had been here for decades have either been buried to the ground or have moved to a different place. It's hard to find a familiar face that I used to see as a child. My friends have gone away, my childhood crush lives here no more. The only place I could connect with, my little town, has transformed. From a ghost town it has now changed into a place that's bursting off the seams. Heck, even my playground now has apartments being built on it.

People associate their love for their city with the places nestled within it, I never could find any place in Chennai that I could connect with emotionally, not its beaches, not its joints, neither its temples nor its malls. I may not reminisce about Chennai thinking of the times I'd spent in the city, I have no emotional investment in any of the monoliths it houses. Even when Landmark in Nungambakkam was being closed down, I mumbled "Look at these people overreacting over a stupid bookstore closing down".

For me, Chennai is beyond the places that define it, for me Chennai is about the people it has gifted in my life. The few places that I would look back on fondly are so because of the people who had made it special for me. From the family I've grown up with to the casual acquaintances I have befriended, to the close friends who are dear to me, to the many loves I had fallen for, they are My Chennai, not the buildings or the beach or the bar. My people have been that piece of puzzle when put together completed my life, that have shaped my principles, that have made me the person, good or bad, that I am today. Chennai was just the large canvas where I was piecing it all together.

And as I spend my last week here, I've realised that my Chennai is about the strangers I have met with whom I have built a strong friendship, the first brick for which was laid with an awkward "hello". My Chennai has to be about the friends I once had who have now drifted away into being strangers, for no fault of theirs, of course. My Chennai has to be about the half-a-dozen times I had my heart broken, my Chennai has to be about those countless times I had fallen for someone on a first glance. My Chennai has to be about unrequited loves, the broken promises, the forgotten dreams, the false hopes. My Chennai has to be about the people who taught me and tormented me, who have forgiven me and who have forgotten me, who have accepted me and who have discarded me.

And if you're reading this and you know it's about you, then you my friend, are my Chennai.

Tom Could Never Kill

2014-02-14T17:48:00.000-08:00

The alarm on his phone was fifteen minutes away from buzzing, but Tom was already wide awake. Sleep had become a luxury he couldn’t afford anymore, and when the alarm did finally chime from his phone, Tom sluggishly got up from his bed. Another long day ahead to wade through, he thought to himself.

Since Marla had broken up with him, Tom had become an empty shell of a man, it was as if Marla had reached into Tom and grabbed his soul and taken it along with her, leaving him as vacant as his apartment. His endless pleas did not bring her back, neither did the flowers, nor did the letters. When he had exhausted all options of bringing her back, Tom decided to put himself out of his misery, but the means to his end were either painful or needed a doctor’s prescription, or required the false bravado to run a blade through his veins. Why should he be the one to die? He asked himself one day. Shouldn’t it be Andrew? That smooth-talking son-of-a-bitch who had come out of nowhere and taken his Marla away from him?

His Marla, he missed the way she twirled the curls of her hair when she was lost in her thoughts, he missed the way she’d nuzzle her nose against his neck while he was watching the television, he missed the way she’d talk nineteen to the dozen a moment, and fall asleep the very next, he missed the way her hands ran over his hair while he was reading the morning daily, he missed the way they lay in bed and made conversations out of nothing on a warm Sunday afternoon. And now, it will be Andrew who would have his fingers moving through the curves of her body, it would be Andrew who would listen to her breathe while she slept next to him, her face resting on the rise and fall of his chest. It would be all Andrew, Andrew had to go.

Tom was once a funny, generous and friendly man, today, the only remaining trait left in him was his generosity. Now, he drank generously and mingled selectively. It is perturbing how pointless life becomes when the only person around whom your life used to revolve, leaves you. Tom would only speak until he was spoken to, he wandered the corridors of his office aimlessly like the zombies from that TV show he used to watch along with Marla, curled up on their couch in the living room. During lunchtime his mind would wander to thoughts of torturing Andrew, hurting him while Marla watched, a satisfied smirk would sprout around the corner of his lips, one that would vanish as quickly as it had appeared once his mates prodded him. But that was all those would remain as, thoughts, Tom sighed. Tom wanted to kill, he wanted to make Marla pay for what she had done to him. She had turned him into a rabid dog that wouldn’t stop until it sank its teeth into the flesh of the one it had been faithful to. But, he knew he could never do that to her, he didn’t have the heart to pull the trigger even if he were given a chance to get away with it. His spirit may have been broken, his faith may have been lost, but Tom still had his conscience intact. The truth was simple, Tom could never kill, even if it gave him a sadistic pleasure to hurt the one who had betrayed him. Tom couldn’t kill even out of spite, for Marla’s absence had become too heavy a cross to bear. He couldn’t imagine a future without her, but he had to make her pay.

***********

Zeus was skimming through the classifieds section of The Tuesday Daily when he found what he had been looking for, another job that required his special set of skills. It had been a while since he had been employed in a job that had asked for his expertise, he fished for his phone out of his pocket and dialed Handler, as was the norm for jobs such as these. Handler would screen the advertisement, after which he would get in touch with the person who had posted the ad, checking for the veracity of the job and negotiating the payment. After the background check performed and the requirement deemed to be “genuine” the Handler and Zeus would meet in a dingy pub in the suburb to discuss over the when and the how of going about the job.

Zeus never met with his clients, if things went down the crapper the anonymity maintained between Zeus and his clients would make it harder for the law enforcement agencies to trace things back to him. The deal was always taken care of by Handler, who acted as a liaison between Zeus and his client, in this case it was Tom. They had met in a crowded mall-- a cloak and dagger affair--heavily dressed to maintain their anonymity with neither of them wanting to be recognized by the other. Tom had a cap on with shades covering his eyes, and a heavy overcoat covering his slim build. He had taken enough effort to make sure his movie star looks never stood out from the crowd. Handler had been a part of enough such meetings and had come out of them as incognito as he had gone in, yet, his years with the Secret Service had taught him to never be complacent with his appearance, he took pains to look ordinary.

On a cold Wednesday morning, when the only people in the mall were the employees of the stores it housed, they had met each other near the large fountain that lay right in the middle of the sprawling courtyard. Just two middle-aged men, probably unemployed, catching up for a drink too early in the day as they bitched about their wives, and lament on how unfair the world had been to them. But all that happened was a solemn exchange of the envelope which had the pictures of the mark in it, and a piece of paper with the number of a bank account to which the money for the job had to be transferred.

“His office is at the Millennium Towers, he works from Monday to Friday and gets off work at 5.30 in the evening. He carries a brown leather bag to work and has a black Saints cap on, it would be hard to miss. I will wire you half the amount now, the rest will be done once I read about it in the papers.” Tom whispered hoarsely, and then he added “I want it to be done in one clean shot through the head, he should never see it coming.”

“It will be done.” Was all Handler said.

***********

It was a Thursday, Zeus had chosen a building under construction as his vantage point. He had been studying his target for a week. His mark was slim-built, with a week’s growth of beard and unkempt hair that needed to be trimmed, he had a set routine, enter at 9 a.m. exit at 5.30 p.m. He would enter Millennium like a man walking his last mile taking each step in trepidation. He would walk in with his shirt tucked in, but it always found a way to sneak out of his waist by the time he got out of work. Zeus had taken pains to set the vantage point, to gauge the right distance from Millennium while aiming at his target, and the escape route through the fire escape. He took cover on the ninth floor of the building. Dressed in a plain sky-blue shirt and cream chinos, with a briefcase that could hold the blueprints to the building but had the unassembled parts of an M25 Sniper Rifle in it instead, Zeus very much looked the part of an architect. He waited patiently for his digital watch to dawdle past 5.30, and when it did, he craned his neck towards the entrance of Millennium as he saw the employees hurriedly file past the entrance.

He took a deep breath and wrapped his finger around the trigger and aimed the rifle toward the exit gate. He spotted his mark lingering far away from the crowd savoring each step on his way out, like he was in no hurry to go home. Zeus squeezed the trigger when the target was in the center of the crosshairs, the barrel spit a muffled cough as the bullet zipped out and hit its mark.

***********

The Saints cap flew off his head from the impact the bullet had made on his forehead as he dropped his mobile phone and the briefcase. As promised to Tom, he never saw it coming. A moment ago he was trundling toward the parking lot thinking of reasons to go home to an empty apartment, he had nobody waiting for him, no more Marla. And in the very next he lay sprawled to the ground glad that the misery was finally over, as blood oozed from his forehead. The people around him thought the man had a heart attack, but when they saw a man next to the fallen shriek in horror at the bloody mist that had sprayed across his face, it then dawned on them of what had happen.

A phone rang next to the now dead body.

A dazed bystander picked up the phone and pressed the button and held it to his ear.

“It’s done” was all Handler said before he hung up.

This post is part of A significant turn.. on WriteUpCafe.com<

A World Beyond Hollywood - Part I

2014-02-03T01:00:00.001-08:00

Ricardo Morales: If you keep going over the past, you're going to end up with a thousand pasts and no future.

I have gotten back to watching foreign language cinema only recently, I devoured close to half a dozen movies last weekend, and I wouldn’t be exaggerating if I said I feel different, for that is what some movies do to you, they fill in a vacancy inside of you, and yet, at the same time leave you asking for more. I had stopped experimenting with foreign movies close to five years back when I was introduced to American television that required just an hour of investment, and was equally rewarding with engaging story lines and compelling characters.

As I had exhausted the best ones in my hard disk and was left with only the B grade shows, and with Hollywood churning out big budget blockbuster that required a viewing in the movie theaters, I looked to breathe some life into my old fetish for watching foreign language thrillers. I scourged the internet for thrillers recommended by movie lovers, and came across two cerebrally and emotionally charged movies made by countries from either side of the Indian Ocean, Argentina and South Korea.

My first part of this two-part review will deal with a taut, and edge-of-the seat drama released in the year 2009.

I had seen the French prison drama Un Prophete a couple of years back, and had unwittingly assumed it to have won the Oscars for the Best Foreign Language film, for it was a raw and violent story of a juvenile convict who grows on to be a mafia kingpin. I had never bothered to check IMDB for the details, for, Un Prophete was that good. The jury obviously had a different winner in mind, a deep, emotionally charged Argentinian drama, The Secret In Their Eyes, this was one of those rare moments where the jury was right. But you couldn’t blame them if they were wrong too, because the competition in Foreign Language category was that tough in 2010.

There are some stories that you take along with yourself long after the end-credits have rolled, long after you have closed a book and placed it in your shelf. There are some stories you fall in love with such intense fervor, that once it is over, you cannot hold yourself back from sharing it with someone. The pain and the pleasure of watching such stories leave an indelible impression on you, an experience that you’d get over only if you wrote about it for others to read, or told about it to others so that they could experience the same.

The Secret In Their Eyes is such story of a legal counselor, Benjamin Esposito. Retired from the legal profession for more than twenty years, he begins to write a novel about that one case that still haunts him, a case that had changed his life forever, a brutal rape and murder of a young newly-married wife. His journey down memory lane reintroduces him to his then boss, Irene Mendez Hastings, a woman for whom he had harbored feelings that went unreciprocated. As Esposito gets back in touch with the proverbial one-that-got-away, he begins to question the decisions he’d then made, both personally and professionally. Juan Jose Campanella , the director, takes us on an intense ride that travels between the past and the present and leaves us emotionally spent by the time the door shuts down on us.

TSITE isn’t just a murder mystery, but it is a tale of a man who grapples with the choices he had made in his past, while trying to go about finding the answers to the questions that are plaguing his present. It is a story about second chances, and of hope. Seldom have we come across murder mysteries that are less about the murder and more about the life of the ones who are embroiled in it. TSITE is that one rare film that not just takes us into the lives and psyches and principles of those involved in it, but also, introduces us into the petty politics and class system that make the deliverance of justice that harder in their society.

The actors are solid and make you relate to their plight, and the chemistry between Esposito and Hastings while strong and could be felt in the air, never gets the best of the two by going predictably overboard. Campanella’s pacing never makes you feel that there are any dull moments in this thriller, no words are wasted, no scene seems overdone. And the big reveal that unravels slowly and delicately like a Christmas present, is that final punch to the guts that would knock you out of your senses and leave you breathless. The Secret In Their Eyes has in its title a sense of foreboding, and much like its haunting name, the movie will stay long with you once you are done with it.

The Wolf of Wall Street - Marty's Still Got It!

2014-01-05T18:49:00.000-08:00

"My name is Jordan Belfort. The year I turned 26, I made 49 million dollars, which really pissed me off because it was three shy of a million a week."

How is Martin Scorsese able to direct one brilliant movie after another even when he’s at the end of his career? This was the question that was plaguing my mind as I walked out of the theater. His energy is awe inspiring, and yet at the same time insane. You could feel the zest for film making, the itch to tell a story, the childlike enthusiasm that is present till date in Marty’s eyes sprinkled all over the screen. To make a movie out of a character who had embezzled ordinary people out of millions in stocks and shares—financial terms that may go way over the head of the average moviegoer, like yours truly—and to keep the audience involved at the same time is no mean achievement. But in Wolf of Wall Street, Martin Scorsese does that, and how!

Scorsese portrays the lead character, Jordan Belfort, as no less than a rock god. The man is a modern day snake-oil salesman, he makes a living by cheating honest and hardworking people, he is a drug addict, a wife abuser, a womanizer, and egotistical, yet, Scorsese and a brilliant Leonardo Dicaprio make us root for the bad guy. We cheer for Jordan where he dupes an unassuming, gullible, customer into buying the shares of an obscure company over a cold call, a victory that he celebrates by miming a vulgar sexual act on the other end of the line, we are left wide eyed out of amazement, and at times even in splits when he berates an honest FBI agent by rebuking his normal life as he asks him to go back to his “ugly wife”, while he shows off his ill-gotten wealth. Jordan Belfort is a man full of himself, a man intoxicated on his own success, and we are captivated by his life hook, line and sinker.

What does that say about us as an audience? That we’d root for the bad guy as long as they are flamboyant, good-looking, incessantly cussing and bedding a bevy of beauties, because we are just the average person who could never get to live the large life of those men we see on screen?

Scorsese sells us the image of a man who has it all, a yacht, a fast car, hookers, a bungalow, all of it gotten by money fraud. He may seem like a man who would end up being a victim of his own hubris, but eventually only gets off easy. Scorsese may seem like he’s playing the devil’s advocate by glorifying the criminal exploits of Belfort, and he has been slammed by some critics for this, but this is how Belfort’s story could be told. And it is told effectively, it keeps you engrossed, it keeps you wanting for more, and not for a second does the three-hour runtime seem overbearing.

Much praise should be handed over to Terence Winter whose screenplay has the raw power and the intensity to keep you absorbed for three-hours. The movie is bereft of gun fights, and violence, but, what it does possess in large doses is the outrageous sex scenes (despite the cuts), the profane language (censoring which would only end up making the movie a silent film), and a lot of humor. Scorsese has assembled an ensemble cast where every actor is seen having a time of their lives, be it Matthew McConaughey in a cameo as the eccentric Mark Hanna who guides a greenhorn Jordan Belfort into the world of stock markets, or Jonah Hill as Donnie Azoff , the drug-crazy, pill-popping right-hand man of Jordan Belfort who is border-line insane. The star of the show, however, without a doubt is Leonardo Dicaprio who throws in a career best performance as Jordan Belfort, if you were blown away by his negative role as Calvin Candie in Django, you better fasten your seatbelts in the Wolf of Wall Street, because Leo’s fantastic (which is quite an understatement) performance would make it tough for you to not jump out of your seats and hoot for him.

Oversexed, power hungry, abrasive, arrogant, misogynistic, the real Jordan Belfort may have many more detestable qualities that would not have garnered him much fans. Yet, Dicaprio lets loose the crazy hidden inside of him, we can see him enjoying the character, be it while dishing it out to people who are lesser than him in all his arrogance, or while trying to win over the affections of his wife with his boyish charm, Dicaprio is not acting like Jordan Belfort, he is Jordan Belfort.

You could draw many a parallels between The Wolf of Wall Street and Scorsese’s own gangster classic Goodfellas, the in-your-face narrative style that breaks the fourth wall which gets you sucked into the world of the protagonist from the get-go, the characters of Henry Hill and Jordan Belfort—confident, ambitious and fueled by greed—they are men who tend to reach for more than they could grasp, the usage of music in the scenes that only gets you involved even more, and the camaraderie between the protagonist and his band of merry men. The Wolf of Wall Street is the Goodfellas for this generation, you cannot have enough of it with just a one-time watch, you will watch it time and time again, you will recommend it to your friends, you will watch it with them just to see them have a great time, and you will talk about the movie till the cows come home.

After his recent movies over the years, I had assumed that Scorsese had run out of steam to make a classic like Goodfellas again, how wrong was I! The old devil still has it in him. In his latest outing the great man has collaborated with a legendary actor-in-the-making who doesn’t howl like a wolf, but roars like a lion!

The Year That Was

2013-12-30T18:31:00.000-08:00

There is something about the year end and the approach of a new year that lifts our spirits. We are brimming with Hope, the New Year is not going to be the same as the last year we promise ourselves, something is going to be different about it, things will change. There will be new beginnings, chapters will be closed, new chapters will be scripted, a new dawn will arise we tell ourselves. But deep within we know things will be the same, yet, we can’t stop gushing over the endless possibilities that a new year brings along with it.

2013 has been quite an eventful year, a great year for reading books(16 so far!), a decent year with the writing(I have two blogs in all!), although I am yet to steel myself and start writing that book that many of my friends have persuaded me to, it was also a year where I realized that I can do a decent job of making people laugh when given the stage. I've quite a lot to be thankful for. I've people who believe in me, people who feel that I can do better with my life, these are the people who egg me on to go on to take the leap while I doubt myself. But when you are on the verge of taking that leap of faith, you can’t help but wonder “What if I fall?”. Well, even if we fall, we might at least plummet to the ground screaming our lungs out with a wide grin. It is necessary to embrace failure, it’s only when we fail big do we get a chance to enjoy true success when we attain it. This has been a year that has taught me to better have tried than to live with regrets wondering “What if?”.

This has been a year for falling in love, writhing in pain over it, and trying to fall out of it all over again, all the while trying to be happy with whatever little that I've been dealt with.

This has been a year for forging friendships, and a year for seeing some fledgling ones cut short. There always was the chance of holding on to whatever little that was slipping through my fingers, but so caught up I was in my own hubris that by the time I tried to mend all that I had broken, it was already too late. Time either strengthens relationships, or sours it, only we can choose the people who are worth fighting for, and go to any lengths to revive it, to save it. I am still learning, and who better to teach us about life, love and loss than our own friends, those great teachers. They become a part of our life, teach us something about ourselves, even when it ends on a bitter note we take a vital lesson from failed relationships. I am humbled and thankful for that.

This has been a year where I've been a victim of my own pettiness, my jealousies, my insecurities. I am still trying to be a good person, I am still trying, This has a been a year of pains and gains, of broken heart and mended soul, of lost dreams and a new found hope, of self-doubt and self-discovery.

To all those have been a part of my life this year, thank you for being there. Thank you for the belief, thank you for the love. To those who aren't a part of it anymore because of my own doing, if you are reading this, I am glad for the good times we shared, you have taught me more about myself than you could imagine. I’m sorry for being an ass that I was. I may not be the finished product yet, but I am trying. To you dear reader, I wish you the very best that life has to offer.

I leave 2013 a little more mature, a little more grounded, and head into 2014 a little more wiser, zinda hoon yaar, kaafi hai. I cannot wait to meet the people that life has in store for me, I cannot wait to see where Life would take me, and I cannot wait to learn more about myself. Bring on the New Year, I say, I just can’t wait!

Captain Phillips - A Master and a Commander

2013-11-28T01:43:00.000-08:00

Captain Richard Phillips: You said you were a business man! Is this how you do business?

There are some movies that translate real life incidents onto the celluloid in an attempt to rake in the moolah, they “Hollywoodize” the original story by adding a lot of drama and over the top action sequences in order to connect with the audience with the premise remaining the same: ordinary men under extraordinary circumstances who come up trumps when faced with adversity. Eventually the final product ends up looking cheesy. Paul Greengrass’ latest offering Captain Phillips is a story of courage and determination where the titular character played by the ever-so-brilliant Tom Hanks is faced against Somali pirates. While there have been other action films inspired by real life that have fallen flat in keeping the audience engaged while playing to the galleries, Captain Phillips keeps the viewers emotionally involved because it brings two different worlds together in the form of their lead characters, Richard Phillips an Everyman with wife and kids from the global superpower America, and the ruthless pirate Muse from Somalia, a country torn by strife. Two men with vastly different socioeconomic backgrounds, but with one common objective : Survival.

Adapted from the book "A Captain's Duty: Somali Pirates, Navy SEALS, and Dangerous Days at Sea" written by Richard Phillips and Stephan Talty, the film is inspired by the real life hostage situation of the Maersk Alabama hijacking. Like any other Paul Greengrass film, the movie is filmed in the trademark shaky camera that throws the viewers right into the action. Paul Greengrass has always been known to direct edge-of-the seat action sequences, The Bourne series is a testament to that, the action scenes in Captain Phillips are no less thrilling than his other films, at times they are even better. Captain Phillips isn’t just an action movie shot like a docudrama, what it also strives to be is a social commentary on the two lead characters who are on the opposite ends of the spectrum, there are bad guys doing bad things, but what Greengrass also shows us is why they are forced to do it.

Tom Hanks is aptly cast as Richard Phillips, a bespectacled Joe Schmo who is the captain of a cargo ship cruising through calm seas one moment and ends up facing the working end of a gun in the next, Hanks’ likeability is what makes us root for him to stay alive, and as usual he plays the role of a hapless hostage with much conviction. While it is no easy task to outdo a two-time Academy Award winner like Hanks, Barkhad Abdi as the pirate leader Muse does it with menacing ease, Muse is a rebel with a cause, he is forced to wield a gun because circumstances make him do it.

While there have been other big budget movies that have come and gone this year lacking in some way or the other, Captain Phillips is a smartly made thriller which is the complete package of action and drama that will keep you engrossed.

Gravity - Deadspace Downfall

2013-10-12T13:09:00.000-07:00

Ryan Stone: I hate space!

I was intrigued with Gravity from the moment the project was announced, it seemed to be a theme never attempted. Marooned in space, with only two characters who fight for survival not against aliens, but against a more human catastrophe, and an opening scene, a long take that lasts for 13 minutes, what was there to not be intrigued by it? As many other big budget movies were released over the course of a couple of years, Gravity had moved down my list of movies to watch and I had almost forgotten about it, I thought the project was shelved. But I chanced upon its trailer a couple of months back, and since then, it had soared back to the top of my must-watch films.

And it will stay on top, for never before has something so spellbinding ever been attempted. Watching Gravity on the big screen is the closest you would come to reaching for the stars, the space is Alfonso Cuaron’s giant canvas and he paints it with breathtaking imagery. The stars, the space stations, the jaw-dropping image of planet Earth in all its glory, there is so much out there, up above the world so high that when seen on the big screen would make you rave about it. Yet, what Cuaron makes us fear more is the vast expanse of nothingness where our protagonists are lost. An endless dark abyss where the deeper you fall into, the more engulfed you get by its silence. And there is so much of silence.

Cuaron takes no time in setting up the film right from the opening single shot scene, where the camera traverses across the limitless space and goes on to focus on the two protagonists to the tune of the pulse pounding background score. The sequences of debris hurtling into the path of the astronauts is stunningly shot, the 3-D has been used like no other film previously seen before, from flames to teardrops the smallest of things have been amazingly shot by Cuaron and his team, no wonder it left James Cameron speechless.

Gravity is an achievement in film making, with Cuaron’s grand vision complimented well by the lead actors. If the cinematography by Emmanuel Lubezki, and sound engineering are a treat to visual and aural senses, then Sandra Bullock and George Clooney’s portrayal of the hapless astronauts keeps you emotionally engaged. Clooney’s Matthew Kowalski is the seasoned and level-headed mission commander, who with his Zen like calmness tries to ease the nerves of the greenhorn Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) as she keeps falling inward into the bottomless pit, literally and metaphorically. But it is Sandra Bullock who as Dr. Ryan Stone is the hero you will be rooting for, unsure, terrified, and with a draining oxygen tank, Stone has a tragic past for which she blames herself, and the recent catastrophe only gives her a reason to give up on surviving, which is shown in a brilliant scene towards the end through her tearful outburst where she realizes that there is no one waiting for her at Earth, nobody who’d miss her if she were gone. Bullock nails the character with much gravitas, she initially had me skeptical since I found her role to be an extension of the jumpy and panicky Annie from Speed, but Ms. Bullock deserves as much accolades coming her way for this is a movie that not just depended on the visuals but also on the actors. You worry for her when she drifts off into space, and you cheer for her when she tries to get into the escape pod hoping that she makes it.

It would be unfair to label Gravity as a sci-fi movie, this is a story that could as well be set in sandy dunes as much as it is set in space. Space is just a backdrop, with the peril of falling debris in fact a possible catastrophe named Kesslersyndrome. This is less of a sci-fi horror and more of a survival-thriller, an astounding piece of cinematic achievement that would pop your eyes off its sockets, where every shot from the movie is a potential front-runner for your desktop wallpaper.

The Conjuring – Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid.

2013-08-04T09:49:00.001-07:00

April: When the music stops, you'll see him in the mirror standing behind you.

Very rarely does a great movie make us feel glad that it got over, the lights are out, the tension disappears, and when you see the face of the person next to you, a sense of relief washes over you, it’s all good, it is just a movie. But those two hours I spent at the edge of my seat, cowering in fear at the scares that James Wan so expertly threw at the audience, made me feel otherwise. For, The Conjuring is not just a horror movie, it is a heart pounding terrifying experience.

I believe that some movies are akin to a roller coaster ride, the ascent to the top is what builds the anxiety, as you slowly move up on the ride inch by inch, you hold on close to the one next to you, fearing the fall that follows next. And when the ride plummets at a breakneck speed from the top, you scream your lungs out, hoping the shrieks eat out the fear that has engulfed your heart. The Conjuring is a roller coaster ride where Fear is the driver. You fear for what you would see on the screen when it is night time at the Rhode Island farmhouse, you say to yourself “Oh God, don’t go looking into the closet, you fool! “ as a character unwittingly goes searching for someone in a game of hide and clap. You shiver in your boots when The Perrons go exploring their new home, not knowing what to expect, because you are as unaware as they are to the various forces that haunt their house. But you feel safe amidst the presence of seasoned paranormal investigators, The Warrens, because their presence is reassuring. The last time I had been so involved in a horror movie, feeling for the main characters was during The Exorcist.

James Wan introduces all the necessary tropes that you’d find in a horror movie, a reluctant dog, a little musical box, a hidden attic, a sleep walking child, a game of hide and clap, lesions occurring mysteriously on the body of a character, a creepy looking doll, a rocking chair, a horrifying legend of the haunted home, clocks freezing at a particular time, and some more, yet, where Wan makes this movie superior to other trashy horror films that we have seen in the recent past, is in their effective use. The sense of foreboding is heightened by Joseph Bishara’s thrilling score, as Wan wastes no time in creating a paranormal atmosphere around the haunted house. Solely relying on camera work and a strong screenplay Wan elevates the tension and gets your pulse racing. The movie is bereft of cheap thrills, no cuss words, no sex, no blood and guts being spilled on screen, yet The Conjuring sows an ominous feeling that envelops your mind.

The protagonists of the film, as confident as they come across while going about their business of exorcising demons, also have a troubled secret, thus making them vulnerable to the threat they face that is plaguing the Perrons, which makes for a brilliant sequence later in the movie. While the first act deals with setting up the scary atmosphere of the home, while introducing us to the protagonists, the second act throws us right into the dark with heart stopping visuals of corpses jumping out of nowhere, and spirits roaming about in the stairs. The final act is reminiscent of the The Exorcist’s finale that goes on to match the horror classic scream for scream.

If you are a sucker for horror movies, make sure you watch The Conjuring in a big screen, a cheeky 9 a.m. audience that was acting smart, and laughing off the fear factor with annoying wisecracks was eventually silenced when things got a bit more serious than just doors opening and closing on their own. There aren’t many horror movies that make you feel alone in a crowded movies hall, James Wan’s “The Conjuring” does exactly that as it feeds off of your fear. You can close your eyes, you can say a prayer, you can keep talking incessantly much to the annoyance of others to ward off terror, you can even hold on to your friend next to you, but eventually, you have to let go and let fear take over you. Because “The Conjuring” is that good, frighteningly good.

Why the Zombie Apocalypse is inevitable

2013-07-16T10:28:00.000-07:00

Before you judge me correctly to be a sociopath, let me ask you this - have you taken a good hard look at the world we live in?

Corrupt, self-centered, rude, dirty and overpopulated, ours has become a world which even the aliens would think twice before setting off on their motherships to invade. We think we aren’t answerable to what we do with nature, we shit were we eat, we pillage, we plunder, we have lost our morals, we lie, we cheat, we steal, we commit unthinkable crimes against women and children. Mankind evolved from apes, now, we are devolving right back to where we started, if you need more proof then just look at the kind of people who are running the nation. WE gave them the power, so how intelligent does that make US?

We make a hue and cry about how we are being taken for a ride every now and then by the government, but then as days go by we get fascinated with something new and aggressively advertised that comes up, and stand in line to catch a glimpse of it. Our attention span is that of a three-year old, we bawl and fuss when we don’t get that doll, but our eyes light up when we are handed a scoop of ice cream, and we forget about the doll. The media knows our pulse, it knows what it has to do to get its TRPs. It will stoke the fire, we will outrage on twitter and FB, make memes and share it on FB, get a few likes and RTs and think of ourselves as activists. We will believe in our Messiah Arnab, who every night at 9 would interrogate spokespersons and social commentators. Our dinner would taste better while we watch someone else being grilled, why shouldn’t we indulge in schadenfreude? We take shit from people everyday who are above us in the societal food chain, it is only right that we see some from their ilk face the music from our Savior.

Much like the bubonic plague that had wiped out a third of our population in the middle ages, nature, unable to take more injustice will wreak a pandemic of epic proportions amidst us. What has strengthened my belief in this theory is the current pop culture: from books, to video games, to movies, all of it advocates the extinction of Mankind. From ginormous aliens surfacing within the depths of the sea, to an army of gory looking creatures that emerge from the skies, Hollywood has made us believe that the end is nigh, and at the hands of monstrous beings.

Yet, my personal favorite, and the one I find most believable is the turning of humans into the undead. Yes, I have been indulging in too much of The Walking Dead, the gore factor of that show doesn’t make me cower with fear no more. I have become so compatible with the show, that I now even eat my dinner whilst watching brains being bashed, and eyeballs being plucked out of its sockets. A not so convincing zombie-kill also makes me critique vocally with the food spilling out of my mouth.

“They could have shown more blood when he hacked that 5-year old girl, yaar. It would have been more convincing then.”

“Arre, what is this ya? Instead of chopping that guy’s arm he should have directly rammed that sword inside his forehead man. Bloody rookie! Just pass me the salt na, mother forgot to add salt in the dal again. Damn!”

After watching World War Z, I was having a conversation with someone regarding how believable the movie was. My observation of the movie being “believable” was laughed off when he remarked that a zombie apocalypse would never happen. I wanted to stress the fact to him that at a certain juncture, all things tend to reach a breaking point. Even nature for that matter will revolt, Mother Nature has been bearing our insolence for so long that a time will come when she says “Enough is enough, all you bastards are gonna pay for what you have done to me!”

And no, it won’t be in the form of a landslide, or an earthquake where death will be swift and over in one motion. It will be slow and painful, just like how we are doing it to her, we will first lose our body, after which our minds will shut down. Slowly yet surely we will lose the little bit of humanity that was left in us, and turn into blood-thirsty ghouls. We will bay for the blood of our family, of our friends, even our dogs, we know we have become a monster, yet we cannot stop ourselves from sinking our teeth into the flesh of our children because ours will be craving that could never be satisfied, and the thirst for blood, unquenchable.

The fall of institutions: Seeing the world around us go to hell will bring that side of us which we knew never existed, we will learn to scavenge. We will learn to live within our means, we will learn to use our limited resources sparingly, also, there will be no government, and to each his own. No school, no college, no office, no need for money. Your 1000/- note might as well be used to wipe your ass, because whom are you going to indulge in a transaction with? Your neighborhood shopkeeper has turned into a Zombie, son!

Free stuff for everyone: With nobody to monitor us, or to penalize us for our wrongdoings, the world would be one large shopping complex. You can loot, you can vandalize, you can take whatever you want, hell, you can even live in a mall. You wanted to try those shoes, sure, go ahead and check out that Nike showroom on floor 3. You can even get that liquor from the booze section in the supermarket, nobody monitors the CCTV, and you can show the finger to the camera while nonchalantly walking away just for kicks!

Killing is legal: Killing will be the natural order, the survival of the fittest. You got something essential, like a lighter, that the other person hasn’t, you have reason enough to be threatened at gunpoint. You don’t comply, he could even kill you. He will kill you anyway because who is going to stop him? While killing normal people might prick your conscience because they are the living, killing a zombie, or the “turned” is just a means of survival. You know how you always wanted to physically hurt people, but couldn’t because you were scared of getting your ass kicked? That doesn’t apply anymore, take a weapon of your choice, from a screwdriver, to a steel pipe, anything that gets you off, then just go ahead and do it. You can even make it look like an accident, you can bash his skull and be like “Oh shit dude, that was a mosquito bite? I thought you were bitten by the infected. Sorry man”

Starting from scratch: With half the population reduced, and lots of resources left, Mankind would have to begin from scratch to get back to its feet. With more resources available and lesser people to use them, there will be a problem of plenty. We have to begin repopulating Earth again, but since that’s something we (read men) love to do so much, I don’t see people (read men) complaining about it, but women might still fake headaches and like they are having their time of the month to avoid doing sexytimes.

Roads will be empty, well, almost: Driving will be more fun when you have the licence to run over people who break the laws of the road. In the present age while you will be penalized and fined heavily and be the attention of the media for running over people who jaywalk and cross the road without looking left or right, with zombies thronging the road during the zombie apocalypse, what harm is going to come out of running over the already dead? Also, there will be lesser cars on the streets, so you can drive without the fear of being hit by other vehicles and happily drive over jaywalking dead people.

Gated communities FTW: Much like what was shown in those movies and TV shows, gated communities will be prevalent, this will just be a reason for Brahmins in India to turn their Agraharam into a fortress, and to enforce archaic laws that lower caste people and zombies will not be allowed, with a few of the Ambi and Kitchu mamas taking turns in guarding the entry with Bows and Arrows.

While a zombie apocalypse will spell our doom, we would evidently learn a valuable lesson from the destruction, which is to respect nature, you see, although she maybe a “Mother” sometimes a spoilt brat has to be shown its place with a kick on its backside, and who better than a Mother to do it?

Image credit: http://www.fanpop.com/clubs/zombie-apocalypse-team/images/31487533/title/related-xd-photo

WeChat - Six People I Would Like to Chat With

2013-06-15T01:34:00.000-07:00

There are quite a few celebrities we admire, about whom we’d like to know a bit more, yet, we hold ourselves back because there never has been a platform to interact with them. With this WeChat contest, we could atleast get our creative juices flowing and bring together motley of people, fictional and non-fictional, whom we admire into the same chatroom. Thank god for creativity, it helps us break the shackles and go to places within our mind which we never knew existed.

Felix Baumgartner

I have always wondered how it would feel like to jump from high above the sky with nothing to hold you back. What goes through your mind when you are traveling at the speed of knots? How prepared would you have to be to pull off a stunt with such daredevilry? What drives you to do such breathtaking acts, that if gone wrong could result in your death? When I read of Felix Baumgartner’s astounding achievement last October, it made me think of all that the human body can accomplish only if it controls its mind. Felix Baumgartner had set the world record for skydiving when he had jumped from the stratosphere, having broken the sound barrier by reaching an estimated speed of 1357.64 km/h jumping from a distance of 39 kms into the stratosphere. His Wikipedia page may have well captured the numerical details of the jump, the distance, the test jumps, the dreary side of it. Yet the Wikipedia page misses the human element of the jump, the emotion that Baumgartner would have gone through, the feeling of ripping through the clouds like Superman – is that a bird? Is that a plane? No, it’s Felix Baumgartner! What did it feel like to be plummeting into earth on a wing and a prayer, Felix?

What we would talk about

What drove you to do something so ballsy? What was going through your mind when you were piercing the skies? What is it with this death wish of pushing your mind and body over the limits that it could handle?

George R R Martin

Has there in recent times been any storyteller who has been able to capture politics, betrayal, vengeance and carve myriad characters – each more engrossing than the last – as successfully as George R R Martin (GRRM)? His fantasy fiction epic Game of Thrones was first published in 1996, the story takes place in the fictional lands of Westeros and Essos with a narrative that covers the events in various Houses or dynasties. Larger than life, gripping, and awe-inspiring, GoT is as ambitious in its storyline as its characters, now adapted into a television program for a larger audience, GoT has become a pop-culture phenomenon that has received bouquets and brickbats, has won over audience from all demographics, and even left ardent lovers of the television show heartbroken and enraged by killing off what were seemingly main characters with calculated brutality. GRRM is not just a storyteller, but a visionary whose magnum opus is not just characters written over paper, but a literary leviathan whose fan following is growing every time GoT trends on twitter. Unlike many writers these days, who tend to portray women in weak stereotypical roles, GRRM’s writes women of substance, graceful under pressure.

What we would talk about

As baffling as the narrative structure is, I would also like to quiz GRRM on what made him choose the fantasy fiction genre to pen his saga, what makes him at the age of sixty-five – when people hunt for retirement homes – get out of bed and create mythical lands and layered characters? Also, from a writer’s point of view, I would also like to ask him how he gets out of the rut if and when struck with writer’s block.

Steven Spielberg

Ask any movie buff and he’ll tell you the impact that Spielberg has made in international cinema over the years. Spielberg’s movies have always covered a huge canvass – be it war, or the Holocaust, or alien invasion, or huge prehistoric creatures walking the earth, not only has he captivated the audience’s imagination with the grandeur and jaw dropping visuals of his movies, but also has always managed to win their hearts by always telling a compelling story. The bloody and brutal realism shown in the opening sequence of his WW-II drama Saving Private Ryan had even the real WW-II veterans squirming in their seats during a special preview for them. His not charging a single dollar for making Schindler’s List shows us that Spielberg is not just a filmmaker who makes movies to rake in the moolah at the box office, but is also a philanthropist who via the medium of cinema likes to tell stories of all the injustice and struggles that humanity has gone through. (Read Amistad, Color Purple, Empire of the Sun).

Having GRRM and Steven Spielberg in We Chat’s group conversation would be any bibliophile and movie junkie’s dream. If I am lucky I could even spark off a collaboration of sorts between these two giants, a movie written by George R R Martin, directed and produced by Steven Spielberg – given their love for monumental storytelling, it won’t be a surprise if the movie lasts for three hours stretching till five parts!

What we would talk about

Making a movie is no child’s play, and to make Oscar contenders year after year even drains the energy out of a grown adult. What has gone into all the effort that has translated into some of the most stellar moments seen on screen? Which was his toughest movie to make, and why? Who has been most favorite actor, and if there were any movie that he shouldn’t have made, which would be it? And as with every artist who secretly wishes had painted a piece of art that he never could, I would ask Spielberg of that one screenplay which he couldn’t get to direct.

James Bond

Why Mr. Bond? Because he was one of the first movie characters who had left an indelible impression on my young mind back in the day. Fast cars, cool gadgets, gorgeous locales and femme fatales, all that even at the age of 40! What wouldn’t we all be willing to part with to have a life like that? But let’s not forget that with great power comes great responsibility, and Monsieur Bond’s responsibility is greater than what you and I have – that of saving the world. You certainly didn’t imagine that charming the folks at MI-6 would get you everything that James Bond had, did you? Apart from being suave and charming and blessed with good looks, James is also a skilled assassin, a sharpshooter who is also adept at hand to hand combat, and has the cojones to pull off acts of daredevilry like skydiving, car racing and jumping off and on speeding trains!

Well, isn’t he the complete package! No wonder he gets the ladies.

What would we talk about

Having faced megalomaniacs all over the globe, with each one tougher than the last, I wonder who Mr. Bond rates as his most formidable adversary, a perfect question to ask during the WeChat conversation. He has toured to some of the most exotic places we wouldn’t even know about, and has had flings with a bevy of beauties, as a perennial 40-year old I would like to know when he is going to settle down. Has Vesper Lynd’s death hit him so hard that he has decided to roam around the corners of the world preventing it from destruction, but still come back home to an empty apartment?

What was his favorite assignment? From Sean Connery to Daniel Craig, who has played his role better? And what is his secret for staying a 40-yr old for more than fifty years now? These are a few questions I would like to shoot at Mr. Bond, let’s see how good he is at dodging these bullets!

Meryl Streep

In an industry where men have been calling the shots for decades, Meryl Streep seems to be one of the few women who has clout to dictate terms, and why wouldn’t she? With 17 Academy award nominations, having won thrice, she is regarded as one of the most complete actors of our times. Have a sample of her filmography and you’d nod in agreement. From playing a woman estranged from her husband and child to a cold hearted boss, to a Catholic nun to Margaret Thatcher–Miss Streep has essayed all her roles with aplomb. And for someone who will be turning 64 soon, she doesn’t look it either.

She has strangely not been cast by Spielberg in any of his movies, a strong character actor, she could easily have a literary character tailor-made for her by George R R Martin, she would even play M in the James Bond movies with much conviction. And given her acting talent, with some good makeup, she could even play Felix Baumgartner if ever a biopic was to be made. It would be great to see the men in the chat group sell their ideas to Ms. Streep.

What we would talk about

Being an actor who has played so many roles that have garnered fame and awards, I would ask her of what her most favorite role was till date. How does she prepare herself to get into the skin of the character? If there is any personality, dead or alive whom she would like to play, who would it be?

Lizbeth Salander

To invite a tough-as-nails character as Lisbeth Salander to a group chat would be no mean feat. Having grown up with a troubled past that contributes to her trust issues, the heroine from the Millennium Trilogy is a wild child who lives life by her own rules. She prefers leading an isolated life, and is unwelcome to all those who have ever tried getting close to her. Never the one to seek compassion from others, she is adept at solving her own problem through any means necessary. Do not be fooled by her punk rocker look that is punctuated with tattoos and piercings, her rough exterior exactly does what it’s supposed to do: to ward off people. Your first impression of her may be of a girl who has lost her way and wrecked her life for good. But little do you know of her prowess as a brilliant investigator and a genius hacker who has helped solve cases in Sweden that were left unsolved for decades. With a keen eye for research and deduction, she is the perfect foil to journalist Mikael Blomkvist, the only man whom she respects, and also has hidden feelings for. In this day and age where women are looked down upon and treated with no respect, with a rising increase in violence and crime against them, Stieg Larrson’s Lisbeth Salander is one woman you’d root for. Cross her once, and you will pay for it. She is the kind who wouldn’t flinch while shoving down your crown jewels down your throat. Independent, combative, and someone who could held her own in the face of adversity, Ms. Salander might as well belong in GRRM’s universe.

What we would talk about

I would measure my words before asking any sort of questions to her, for fear of having my computer hacked, or worse, be subjected to her violent actions. As she possesses a brilliant investigative acumen, and I being someone who likes to read a lot on crimes and mystery thrillers, it would be natural of course to ask her about which unsolved case would she like to dig deeper into, the Zodiac Killer maybe? And, with James Bond in the chat group, she could always be a great ally to the smooth and suave Bond, from solving crimes she could go on to do bigger things like saving the world from nuclear annihilation. A bit of training is required but I am sure Bond can take care of that.

A novelist, a movie director, a diva, a superspy, an adrenaline junkie and a street-smart urchin from the literary universe, my WeChat group sure is an eclectic mix of people – living and imaginary – from all walks of life.

WeChat's youtube channel can be found here:

http://www.youtube.com/user/WeChatIndia?feature=chclk

And That's How You Make A Superhero Movie !

2013-06-14T09:53:00.000-07:00

So, Man of Steel has finally been watched. After months of anticipation that had my hairs standing on the back of my neck, I finally attained closure from all the excitement after the end credits started to roll. And boy, what a huge payoff Man of Steel has been for all that time I had invested in getting involved with the film.

When a Superman reboot was announced with Zack Snyder at the helm and Christopher Nolan producing it, there was always a question of whether the darkness and realism that was found in Nolan's Batman universe will be married to Snyder's grandiose visuals. Would Clark Kent stumble his way before he finds his true purpose, much like how Bruce Wayne did? It was never an easy task for the makers to have the audience relate emotionally with Superman, an alien from another planet who keeps to himself for the fear of being labeled a freak. We have after all known him to be a flamboyant ass-kicker who breaks sound barriers, and has X-ray vision. But behind all those superhuman strengths lies a confused, tormented soul that just wants to belong.

My knowledge of the Superman comics were limited to Lex Luthor, his arch nemesis, Clark Kent his alter ego, Metropolis the city where he lives, and Lois Lane who is Clarke's love interest. And that "S" on his vest which was for Superman, or so I thought.

But David S Goyer and Christopher Nolan have made sure that non-Superman fans do not feel out of place. Heroes are for everyone, you do not have to be a comic book geek to stake claim for the love of a colossal comic book figure.They give us a quick introduction on the circumstances under which Kal-El (Supes' Krypton name) was born. A natural birth in centuries in his ravaged planet Krypton, that is now under threat from General Zod, an anarchist who has the noble intention of saving his planet and its people, but only through violent ways.

To help his son have a better life, Jor-El sends away his newborn in a space cradle to planet earth where he is raised by humble farmers Jonathan and Martha Kent, the emotional core of the movie, who ingrain a sense of morality into a teenage Clark. Some of the best scenes in the movie are where Clark tries to come to terms with who he really is, whilst being guided by the genial Jonathan Kent, a salt of the earth kind of man. Probably the scene that feels like a punch to the guts is the one where a young Clark Kent holds himself back and looks on helplessly because it is not time yet to reveal his true self to the world.

Being a movie about the Granddaddy of all superheroes, the action set pieces do full justice in making the movie feel larger than life. From one jaw-dropping action sequence to another, the movie shifts gears to full-on action mode in the second half. While the first half was all about setting up Superman's ideals, and him choosing his way of life, the latter half shows him taking full flight. Snyder is a past master in directing unreal action scenes, we have seen enough of those in 300 and in Watchmen. In Man of Steel he brings his A-game to the table in the large scale mass destruction that takes place right after the lights go down post interval.

Buildings are reduced to rubble, men break through walls punching each other, choppers and fighter planes are swatted to the ground like they were flies. There might be an overdose of action, more than what the eyes can take at times, also, it may seem to have stretched the run-time. Yet, it would be foolish to expect realistic action sequences when it's a fistfight going on between men from a different planet. All the time that was spent in building the drama and setting up the high stakes finally comes to an end with a whirlwind of an action sequence that leaves you gasping for breath.

Zack Snyder sure knows how to make a blockbuster, with stunning visuals of course! He is ably supported by his writers who add an emotional depth to the story, without which MoS would be seem like one of Marvel's facades in the name of a superhero film. Hans Zimmer's pulse pounding background music is as good as The Dark Knight, and ably compliments the action sequences. The intensity of the soundtrack leaves your spine tingled, complementing the grandeur in the visuals that make you jump out of your seat. And the scene where we first see Clark Kent walking out as Superman, that would give goosebumps to anybody !

Henry Cavill is not the Superman of the Christopher Reeves' mold, he seldom smiles nor does he give witty repartees which has been the reason for many a critics to gripe. We are introduced to a humanoid with an identity crisis, with him having found his feet we may see a lighter version of Superman in the forthcoming sequels. Michael Shannon, however is brilliant as the megalomaniac Zod, armed with a motive that you would support only if he weren't attacking our own people, Shannon is menacing and a worthy adversary to Superman. Russell Crowe with an impeccable Brit accent is a solid Jor-El, who educates Kal-El on the planet to which he owes his roots, and is the guiding light in Superman's quest to defeat Zod. Kevin Costner and Diane Lane pitch in with dignified restraint performances as the Kent couple, never sounding melodramatic nor too preachy. Amy Adams as Lois Lane has a poorly written role, and is a cliche as the seemingly independent yet starry-eyed go-getter who conveniently falls for the hunk who saves the world, yet gives an earnest performance.

The "S" in the Superman logo stands for "Hope", having given new life to a superhero, on whom we had given up all hope of seeing on the big screen after the previous debacle in 2006, the "S" in the Krypton glyph may as well stand for Snyder.

I am No Adonis

2013-06-01T08:25:00.000-07:00

Over the past few days something strange has been happening, something that has hasn’t happened in my 26 years of existence. I’ve been getting compliments. Not for my blog, neither for my intelligence (“What intelligence?” you may ask), but when I look at myself in the mirror, I see myself staring at what has now become my most prized asset that has been getting me praises from all corners–My body.

Yes dear reader, I am told that I have a fine body. I am no Adonis let me tell you that, I guess I just have the curves at the right place, and they have become so visible that they are aching to rip out off my shirt. My current physical state has taken most of my family and friends by surprise, so much so that one of my cousins who hadn’t seen me in a long time asked:

“What the hell, are you wearing a bra under your t-shirt?” pointing at my expanded chest.

“Oh no no, I’ve just been spending some time at the gym” I said nonchalantly.

It feels good to be complimented for something on which you have been working on for quite a while. A good body can actually uplift your confidence by a few notches. The other day, I even walked over to a girl in the office pantry whom I had been looking at for close to six months now, and with the confidence of a Eureka Forbes salesman said to her:

“Could you pass me those sugar packets please?”

As she handed me the sugar packets, I casually stretched my arms like I were warming up to lift her off the floor, hoping she would notice my biceps and fall for my manly exterior whilst not taking my receding hairline into account.

“I prefer green tea in the morning you know, had a tough work-out session at the gym. Nothing like some green tea to relax those muscles.” I said while stirring my tea.

I turned to ask if she were a coffee drinker, only to see that she was long gone. Thankfully, no one was around to see me talking to myself.

Anyway, that wasn’t the point I was trying to make. My point is that a good healthy body makes you confident enough to take on the world. Let’s face it, we have no control over our looks, we can apply all those creams, get all those facials done at Naturals, apply herbs and drink cow piss to make our faces glow in the dark, apply all kinds of hair oil to make our roots grow strong hoping the lost hair grows back again, but seldom do we get the results we want. So busy are we focusing on the top part of our body that we forget about what is below the neck. Well hello! Your face and hair only take up like 30% of your entire appearance; you have your arms, legs, torso, and butt to look after.

Well, there are times when I am reminded of all that is above my neck and everything that’s wrong with it, but then I change the topic by saying “That and all is okay, but you wanna feel my biceps ah?”

Over the past few weeks compliments have ranged from “You look so fit” to “You should start riding the bullet to suit your physique”, hell, I even know a guy whose opening line to me always is “So, worked out yesterday?”. One of the reasons why I have increased my frequency of visits to the gym is so that I can always respond to that dude’s response in the affirmative.

I don’t believe in sleeping late into the morning during weekends anymore, my body clock wakes me up by 5.30 a.m. even on Saturdays and Sundays, I lie wide awake in my bed arguing whether to go to the gym on a weekend, or to just pull the covers and go back to sleep. But then, the image of Tom Hardy as Bane pops up into my head, and I get out of my bed.

It was tough getting any response from people from my blog so much so that I had considered quitting blogging, but you know what the blogosphere actually needs? A lean and fit looking blogger, who is not that bad to look at. Bloggers are stereotyped to be geeks who got nothing better to do than to sit at home and rant and rave about everything that’s going on in the world. Well, I am going to do all that, except that I can beat my fellow bloggers at an arm-wrestling match. Ooh, you know what else the internet needs? A well-built blogger who can play the tabla. Now if you’ll excuse me it’s time for me to do some pushups with one hand, while browsing for some tabla tutors with the other.

This is the End.

2013-05-04T02:46:00.000-07:00

I feel beginnings are always easy, yes, some amount of planning may go into starting something, but generally once the first step is taken the rest comes easy. One step leads to another, you begin to trundle, then you slowly walk, as you familiarize with the pace you begin to march, and then when you reach a stage where you can control it, you begin to run. But when do you stop? Or more importantly how do you stop? How do you end it?

Endings have always fascinated me, it takes the smallest of efforts to begin something. It takes a “Hello” to build a relationship, a hum to start a tune, a cold stare to instigate a fight, a simple sentence to write a story. But the million dollar question is: Where do you put the full stop? Every time I hear the news of a new big budget movie being released, or of a television series that I keenly follow entering its final season, it always makes me wonder how they are going to pull the plug off of its characters. I am never worried about how it will begin, all I think about is how all the pieces would come together to give it a fitting conclusion.

“Will Nolan kill off Batman in the end?”

“Will Dexter get caught by the police?”

“Will Lizbeth Salander finally get her vengeance in the third and final installment of the Millennium Trilogy?”

I was thinking over the same lines about a television series I had been hooked to over the past six months. HBO’s critically acclaimed Cops and Criminals drama “The Wire”. In an age where the narrative for many a one-hour television shows try to cram in so much of drama and events into its runtime, that it totally neglects any chance for building characters that the audience can get attached to , “The Wire” comes across as an epic novel where each page is filled with an amount of detail to munch on that you could never have your fill, an extensively crafted world of Baltimore where the characters reside, an intricate description of how the cops build a case against the criminals, the canny ways in which the criminals evade the cops, and to top it all some of the finest bunch of actors in any television drama. Ever. The events don’t unfurl at a cartoonish pace of a cat running behind a mouse, but instead it unveils methodically like a cheetah preying on a deer. From marking the target, to scoping its movements, to setting the trap and playing the waiting game, to finally catching it in the act, and in the end putting it down – The Wire is not a television show that is merely a passing of time, it is a hard-hitting depiction of police procedure that demands our investment of time.

As I chugged towards the Series Finale at a slow pace prolonging the end, saving it for a Friday night after a hard day’s work, I gave myself more time to be absorbed into the world of The Wire. I had been playing its title track, revisiting its finest scenes, mouthing off dialogues to myself, reading critiques and appreciations of it on the internet, and spreading the word about its brilliance to many who hadn’t heard of it like it were a Gospel from God. And at the same time, I managed to pretend to work at the office too.

“I think I will cry once I am done with it.” I confessed to a friend over lunch at the office pantry.

Isn't that what all great pieces of art make you do? It enriches you by telling some amazing stories, it shows you a world you thought never existed, it introduces you to characters you get so attached to, that when one of them, a recovering alcoholic, goes back to his old ways, you shake your head tut-tutting in dismay as if he were your friend. And once it all ends, it leaves behind a gaping hole which you try to fill by reminiscing about the countless brilliant moments that you experienced while it lasted. Boy, I couldn't wait to see how it all would end. Would they tie the loose ends or leave some as open-ended? The whole series had been so perfect throughout that I hoped they wouldn't muck up the final episode.

The Ending is all that mattered to me that day.

Once the clock struck five, I grabbed my things and raced out of the building. I hoped there would be no power outage at home in the evening, that would be like throwing cold water on all my plans. I wished the cab I was in was any smaller in size so that it could navigate through the traffic quickly, it was around 7 p.m when I got dropped off at the bike stand. I now had a twenty minutes drive from the stand to my home. I could make it in ten if I drove fast enough.

I hurried to where my bike was parked, the helmet was under the seat, over-sized and red it seemed more appropriate on someone who was flying a Sukhoi, not on some bespectacled geek who drove an Activa. And besides, I would reach home in another ten minutes anyway. I turned the ignition on and push started the Activa as it purred to life, I gave the accelerator full throttle as the engine woke up from its sleep. I sped my way out of the entrance of the parking stand and into the street as if I were Batman on his Batmobile on the streets of Gotham. With a wide grin on my face and the image of me curled up in front of the sofa sipping on apple juice while watching the final episode, I maneuvered my way through the hordes of two-wheelers that were on the street. Maybe I should stop by at a bakery and get something to munch on. The viewing experience for me has to be perfect. A drink in one hand, and a packet of chips in another. Nice.

My train of thought was interrupted by the goddamn college bus behind me that was honking like there was no tomorrow, taking up most of the road he left me with no choice but to slow down and give him the way. The road was narrow as it is, if only the bloody road was wider. As the bus whizzed past me and moved to the left, it gave me enough space to sneak past it through the right, I can easily accelerate and leave the bus behind. I signaled my indicator to the right and raised my speed. Sometimes, when your adrenaline is high and the juices are pumping through your system, you feel that luck is on your side. I steadily moved ahead of the bus only to realize that he was taking the turn at a bend in the road. Never overtake while negotiating a turn, something I was taught by my father which I now conveniently forgot. Shit. And to make matters worse, there was another incoming bike from the other side of the road who had taken the turn. I tried to hit the brakes to avoid the collision, but either way I was sandwiched between the bus and the bike speeding towards me from the opposite direction.

The last thing I felt was the guy’s helmet hit my face, and then, everything went dark.

The cops told my parents that there was not a scratch on my body, despite the severity of the impact. It was later revealed that my heart had stopped functioning seconds before the collision.

So, this is how it all ended for me.

I wonder how the ending for The Wire was.

They Left Me With No Choice, Okay?

2013-05-01T07:37:00.001-07:00

It’s not like I wanted to come back, but I had no choice. Every other site I needed to log in to was asking for a Facebook account. Creating a custom account for that particular site would take time, and in some cases even money, whilst an option was open where you could use your facebook account to log in directly.

Don’t waste time in filling forms, don’t waste money in creating an account. Just log in with your facebook account, and attain temporary Nirvana.

I smell a conspiracy in all this. The internet will soon be ruled by Facebook. This Zuckerberg chap is giving it back to the internet junta for all the suffering the Jewkind had to endure under Hitler, and it makes sense because Zucky is a Jew too. Maybe he travelled through time to accomplish his mission.

“My name is Mark Zuckerberg, and THIS IS THE FACE of Jewish Vengeance!!... also I AM CEO, BITCH”

But no Zucks, I ain’t falling for your trap. I have my own steps to control my life, I am not letting your creation control me.

Like a recovering alcoholic who has realized his folly and wants to lead a clean life, but at the same time wants to take a couple of swigs out of his bottle every once in a while to celebrate that special occasion and yet not get addicted to it, I too have gotten into that stage where I’ve realized that a sip needs to be taken at times. Slow and measured sips from the social networking bottle, do not consume too much of it, for you shall lose your senses and do things which you don’t meant to do in the first place, like sending friend requests to people you hardly know, only because you had a new picture taken where you are standing in front of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and want to subtly thrust the fact that you had been to Italy on a stranger’s face.

Like Alcoholics Anonymous’ Twelve-Step Program that allows people to put together their lives that has been in shambles owing to liquor, I too have charted out my own steps to fight this addiction of online narcissism, and figured out ways on how to tame it.

Thou shall not add people more interesting than you: Let’s face it, Facebook is not about getting to know others, although that was the philosophy around which it was based. But as time evolved, we took that philosophy twisted it, turned it, and gave it a whole new meaning, Now, it is about shoving our lives on other people’s faces, making them feel sad about their own miserable existence. So, to prevent oneself from beating themselves up for not having a life as happening as others, it is only advisable that we avoid such people. Let’s not have anything to do with their timeline, let us not even give them the luxury to tag our names.

Do not post shit puns as status updates: For every witty one-liner, posting which makes you think that you ought to work in the TOI office as the guy who writes puns for a living that you read under the photos in Chennai Times’ Page-3 section, there is always one guy who posts a comment to your update trying to do one better than you, and in the end it all becomes a fight of one upmanship.

Do not give it more than 30-secs, and do not do it more than twice a day: This is actually one of the rules to live by for the folks who are at the “Addicted to Porn” group, and it is their way of fighting that addiction, by giving in to it, but not letting it take control of their time. How do I know? Well I just know, I am not a part of such groups. Honest. Anyway, the rule is self explanatory, you do not browse Facebook for more than 30-secs and you do not log in to it for more than twice a day.

This helps you in curbing your enthusiasm to check every once three minutes for the likes you have been getting on posting that picture, that crap meme, or some soul-stirring quote that you copied from twitter and are passing it off as yours. Imagine checking Facebook a day or two after having posted something, the excitement and the anticipation of finding likes and comments on it 24-hours later is akin to watching the final overs of a close T-20 match.

“How many likes would be there?”

“Who all would have liked it?”

“Would Jilpa have liked it? If she has clicked “Like” means she has a thing for me, must ask for her phone number later…”

Always leave an element of mystery: Do not post everything about what you like, what you did, where you are, what you are doing, who you are doing etc. leave an element of mystery about you, let people figure you out. Leave behind bread crumbs that can help them sketch your personality, do not leave behind a whole loaf of bread that makes them come to the conclusion of what you are.

The urge to be liked and loved is one that cannot be contained, and now with the power to let a reflection of our real self be portrayed online, we give people, known and unknown the liberty to judge us. We yearn for their validation, their comments, and their likes in all that we do so that it gives us a sense of belonging, and reaffirms our faith in what we have done, or are doing.

Now, if you’ll excuse me I have to share the link to this post on my Facebook wall.

Somebody That I Used to Know

2013-04-09T09:31:00.000-07:00

Bitch. Fucking bitch. (Did I get your attention?)

Well, that would have been the precise words I would have used to describe her at that moment, but I did not. I am not a 19-year- old anymore, at one point of time she used to mean the world to me, I cannot treat her like yesterday’s garbage just for stating the truth. The truth she told me had to be accepted with grace and calm, the response was to be frank, yet not curt, practical yet with a dash of fantasy here and there.

When in doubt, I ask myself the following question:

“What would Clooney do?”

Watcha gonna do George?

Would George Clooney, the most classiest man alive, if informed by his unrequited love that she is getting married, resort to calling her names and telling her to go to hell?

The answer my friend, is a big NO!

Clooney would just shrug his shoulders and walk away, with the same nonchalance with which a duck goes back to minding its own business after flapping the water off of its back. Clooney, like any self-respecting man would wish her well and move on with his life. Which is what I did.

“I wish you all the very best in your married life, I just don’t see myself anywhere in your life after this. I finally have to move on, I wish to have no more contacts with you. You will always be my first love, and for that I have no regrets.”

I had replayed this scenario already a hundred times in mind, right from the day I had realized that she and I would never end up holding hands and walking away into the sunset on a Spanish beach, as a title card appears “This is not the end, this is just the beginning” .

I had always wondered how I would react. Would I break down? Would I take any blunt object that was near me and try to harm myself with it? But on the contrary I only heaved a sigh of relief. I had made numerous attempts to move on, what with her not responding to my calls and messages, left me with no other option but to pick up the pieces of my heart and walk away wallowing in my own misery. I would walk away promising myself that I would never look back, yet every time I received a stray “Hello” from her months later, I ran to her like a puppy dog that had met its master who returned home after war.

That was because I always believed there was a door open, as long as there was no other guy in the fray maybe I could sneak in through the back door and steal her away from watchful eyes. Maybe I would summon all my strength to fight the world and win her over. But then I knew I was clutching at straws.

Moving on always requires us to let go of what we had been holding on to for long, but move on to where? A door has to be in the vicinity with an usher standing by who greets you with a smile.

“Welcome to your future sir, I can assure you that your new life here will be filled with wonderful people, and who knows you might even find your special someone! Join them, revel in their company. They will wash your wounds with their laughter, heal your scars with their embrace, and ease your pain with their warmth and love. The future sir, sure looks bright. But before stepping in, do you mind leaving your excess baggage right outside the door? You won’t be needing these here.”

Yes, it was time to leave behind the excess baggage. I just had to take what I needed. The good times, the joy of knowing that I had once loved, the thrill of being in her presence, those moments we spent building our relationship – from a casual “Hello” to a friendly chat, to those intimate secrets we shared late into the night over our phones, to the moment I realized that I was falling for her. I don’t need the bad memories, the arguments, the fights, I am flushing them down the drain. I am all set to meet new people now, I am ready to go.

You know that standard promise all the lovers make when they are high on each other?

“I cannot live without you.”

That’s pure bullshit. How would you know if you haven’t tried?

Life is easier to live if you are surrounded by people you want to be with. And as for falling in love, I guess it always happens. It’s not a one-time thing like people say, there are just too many beautiful people out there to fall in love with. If it works out then that’s well and good.

If it doesn't, well, you can always turn them into a piece of literature.

Forces of Nature

2013-03-30T00:20:00.003-07:00

I have my dreams, I have my fears, I have my hopes, I have my plans, yet all of it was rendered inconsequential when I stared at Nature’s creation right in the eye. It is strange how meaningless life is reduced to when it faces a greater power, a force that cannot be contained within boundaries. Your plans of getting that job with a higher salary, that dream of getting a room with a view, your fear of failure, is all rolled into a ball like it were some old torn newspaper and thrown into the garbage can. Such is the aura of Nature that it can make your life seem nothing.

I had two such moments of epiphany, once when I was hanging on to dear life on a boat that was in the middle of a raging sea, and the other when I saw a lion at its pomp. The sea looks calm and serene from the shores, the more you venture into it the more you get acquainted to its fury. In Chennai, we do have the Marina Beach–the second largest beach in the world, but yet every time a friend suggests a get together at the beach, I exude the same enthusiasm that Indian batsmen have for green tracks in Australia.

What could it be that makes me react the way I do? The jam packed crowd that reduces a serene and sublime view to that of unruly, ear piercing cacophony with images of mothers running after pesky kids? That someone from the crowd might flick my footwear while I sink my feet under the wet sand, as the tides wash through my feet? That I might be solicited by some shady characters (mostly men) who upon politely turning them down resort to abusing and name-calling? That behind every upturned boat you might bump into a couple (sometimes of the same sex)furiously making out?

It is my lowly opinion of the Chennai shores that had programmed in me preconceived notions about beaches all over the world.

Maybe they steal footwear in Bondi too.

I am sure Miami Beach has evil lurkers, and molesters roaming about.

I bet that in the beaches of Spain arguing with peanut sellers over the price of a pack of peanuts results in him spitting at you.

And then, I visited the coastal town of Umkomaas in South Africa.

The shores of Umkomaas are the kind you would like to be ship-wrecked on, a splendid view of the sea that stretches miles ahead, cloudy and overcast conditions, with reports of a storm brewing on the horizon. Of the fifty five odd people that were there, forty five of them belonged to the touring party, the rest were the skippers and tour guides who took you on the boat ride. The group was split into different batches which were handled by separate skippers. Not until had we ventured into the middle of the sea, did the waves that wet-slapped me across my face made me feel exhilarated, a thrill that you won’t feel by meeting your deadlines, or winning the employee of the month award, or topping the class. This was about getting high purely on nature, to be embraced by it, to wet ourselves by its fury, to be taught a lesson by Mother Nature that in front of her splendor nothing else matters.

We were advised in case of nausea or sea sickness to look at the land, which in turn gave us a hope that the shores were not that far. But the farther we went into the sea, the more the shores started to seem like a speck, and as for the sea we had gotten so familiarized with her mood swings from frenzy to moments of calm like she were an old friend. I tried to break into a rendition of "Elay Keechan", but I was advised to stop being cocky by the fellow members of the boat since were were not out of rough seas yet.

Nothing makes you appreciate the value of life than the possibility of staring at the face of death. While holding on to the railings of the rocking speed boat, where even a slip could mean being thrown into the shark infested sea, I realized of all that I had and yet how incessantly I had been grumbling for so little. I was not worried that I wouldn’t get to win the employee of the month award, or get to see my career graph progress, or have my own cabin that would have the view of the city’s skyline.

All I wanted to do once I reached safe shores was to call my support system–my friends, my family, and the people I care for and thank them for all the unconditional love, care and support they had showered on me over the years. And if I had my way, to probably tell that girl about how she took my breath away every time I saw her.

Maybe that is all there is to life, not your money in the bank, not the things you own, not where you hang out in the weekends, not how much you can afford to spend over a bowl of soup. It’s all about having someone to hold on to when your boat is being rocked, someone with whom you can share that bowl of soup. And I wouldn’t have realized any of this……

Had I not been thrown in the middle of the sea.

* * * * * * *

I had been to South Africa on a vacation, and apart from AIDS the other thing that you associate with South Africa is a Safari, since exploring the former would be more risky and requires two to tango, I went for the latter. I had been to the Lions Park in Johannesburg. I have never seen a Lion in real life, I have been to zoos and parks in India at a much younger age, at an age where I was too immature to acknowledge the beasts of the wild. For me back then, the animals were just a source of inspiration for Disney’s cartoon characters, the image of having seen a lion at an early age has never stuck with me.

Maybe it was the thrill of watching a ferocious creature, a change from the two legged beasts that I encounter every day in my social life that had the hairs on the back of my neck stand upright. Maybe it was the nature of the beast, the Lion, the majestic King of the Jungle that has inspired stories, movies, poetry that had my jaw dropped and had me all starry-eyed like I were watching a Rockstar in action.

But then a Rockstar he was, it was the way he moved, the way he growled, the way he prowled. And much like a Rockstar, the White Lion posed for the cameras gazing into it with an intense and fierce look, we were told he had even starred in a movie named “White Lion”, and as my eyes met his I could feel my soul dissipating away. How can you not be overawed by looking at a mammoth creature as white as snow, that weighs close to four hundred pounds and looks at you with eyes that could cut through steel? The natives consider the white lion as a messenger of gods, a statement you wouldn’t deny. Looking at him made me feel that I was in the lowest rungs of all creatures that walked the earth.

Take one man from our race, the super-achiever, the Alpha Male, a Greek god type who looks like Adonis, someone who has achieved it all, someone who has done Engineering from an IIT, then went on to do an MBA from an IIM, and then a doctorate from Wharton, and now has a thousand people working under him, screws movie stars, earns so much money that he can afford to wipe his ass with it and flush it down the drain. Then, put him in a room next to a Lion.

Chances are that even an all-conquering, globe-trotter who reaches for the stars and pins them on his shoulders would feel insignificant when standing next to a Lion so sublime. Nothing shatters your self-esteem as looking at a lion can, with him walking around the open field like he were ruling the world, his long mane blowing in the wind, the path he walks clears all by itself, he doesn’t have to say a word to show you that he’s in command, but when he roars even the mountains shudder upon hearing his voice.

Although he was in a contained environment, where he was monitored and surveyed he never gave a feeling that he was imprisoned. Sure, he was in an open field with his own Pride of lions, he never had to use his hunting skills to put the food on the table for his family, infact, he was reduced to a prisoner standing in line during chow time. He knew this was not his natural habitat, but was his prison without a cage. Yet he never let that crown topple of his head, he may be amidst humans, but he sure as hell was not letting them know that he was a beast conquered. His handlers still feared him, our guide was wary of what he could do, she also warned us that our chances of surviving against a behemoth that covers four hundred meters in six seconds were next to none. So, even if we dropped our cameras out of the moving bus, we might as well consider it as good as gone, for there was no way would we have the luxury of getting out of our vehicle and getting it back.

We are so busy building technologies, and conquering new worlds that we seldom acknowledge forces that are greater than us. We are caught up in our own stories of how smart we are, and how the whole of mankind is making progress, that we may even colonize Mars one day. So deluded we are in predictions of our own glory that we fail to realize that there lies a world outside our rooms that is bigger than all of humanity put together. My one week surrounded by nature made me appreciate the fact that as humans no matter what we create, and build, and no matter how many moons we conquer, or galaxies we explore, none of what we have done or what we have seen could match the breathtaking grandeur of being on a rocking boat in the middle of a tumultuous ocean, or watching a magnificent Lion roam the earth like he owns it.

He who has said it, said it right “Until lions have their own storytellers, tales of the hunt will always favor the hunter.”

The Vendor

2013-02-10T18:46:00.000-08:00

The effects of a hearty meal are well documented, lunch–the most important part of the day is also when we get to reload the tank, fill the empty stomach making us prepare for the long day ahead. Since that would be the last time you would be eating a full meal for another eight or nine hours, it is also the break that is much looked forward to, where you get to share your home cooked food (if it is any good, or in my case especially when it isn’t). Dining out has its own thrills, because there is no joy greater than salivating over the prospect of what to order at an eatery.

“I am gonna try that Paneer tikka today, but before that maybe I will try KFC’s new chicken as an appetizer, and after all that I shall top it off with a chocolate sundae!”

Now my office may not be nestled in the swankiest of tech parks, as a matter of fact it is not an IT park at all. When someone says “Hey, in which IT park is your office located? Ascendas ah? DLF ah? Tidel ah?” I tend to correct that statement by saying:

“We are not located in an IT park, it is just a huge building that has a dozen other multinationals.”

“Oh, you guys have a food court there?”

Now you see, the reputation of an IT park is not judged by the companies it houses, but by the various eating establishments that are present in the food court. And when someone asks me a question about the eating options at the food court, I just tilt my head to the side and say:

“Yeah, we kinda have one.”

Because technically, the presence of four joints that sell food does make that huge empty space of furnished area be labeled as a “Food Court”. A juice shop which can give the roadside juice seller a superiority complex, a bakery that sells bread and cake but considers itself too posh to be called a bakery, a Sarvana Bhavan wannabe who is similar to that place only in terms of its pricing, and a biriyani house where in your plate you occasionally find a cockroach, and sometimes a piece of hardened cloth that eerily resembles a snake skin.

If these were not enough to kill your appetite, you also had to deal with the poor service. Complaints of finding bugs or pieces of cloth in your plate would automatically entitle you to another plate of food for the price of the one that you paid for, rather than getting your money back. But then you had no choice, venturing outside the premises in search of a decent shop was regarded as a waste of time.

And then one day He waltzed into our office corridors, He the bringer of clean nutritious food, yes nutritious I say, for the meal he provided was affordable, simple, tasty, and had earthly qualities. It was not like that the dishes he served was right out of a Master Chef episode, it was not packaged to cater to the foodie snobs, the kind who judge these cookery shows by taking a delicate bite as if they were nibbling into a newborn’s feet. It was served to hungry men and women who only wanted to have decent food that filled their empty stomach and prepared them for the tough hours ahead. If the dishes served at the food court matched the oomphness of Megan Fox by looks, but came across as a damp squib once they went into your mouth, then the ones served by The Vendor were as plain-Jane as Julia Roberts, yet they were rich in taste and filling, much like her acting prowess.

He was a no-nonsense guy, he took orders over the phone, he brought the food to the office cafeteria where a separate corner was allotted to him. He would not speak more that what was spoken to him, he never bothered to ask you about your job, or the stress you were facing, he never seemed to find any reason for idle chit chat, unlike the guy at the counter in that bakery in the food court who was beckoned by a first name basis, gave you dating advice, was liked by many ladies because… you know how can you not like a guy who owns a cake shop? And was on the Facebook friends list of a few regulars whom he served. Yet you could see the warmth in the eyes of the short and stocky Vendor when he handed you your packet of food, that and the most honest smile if ever there was one.

“Enjoy your meal and do come again”–words he never said, yet you know that’s what his smile translated to.

The meals the Vendor served would be in neatly packaged separate aluminum foils. It generally consisted of four pieces of rotis, rice, a dal and sabji, along with the raita that was in a plastic cover with a tightly sealed rubber band, with half a piece of onion, and a couple of pieces of neatly diced carrot and cucumber, all of it with a use-and-throw plate and a spoon that completed the contents of the plastic bag that he handed over to you, with the name of the person who ordered neatly written on it with a black marker for easy recognition.

The perks of working for a Fortune -500 company is that they got their own clout, which they use to make lives of their employees easier, from providing cabs to handling their mail, to paying their bills to setting up their own exclusive foodcourt.

As the complaints with the foodcourt grew and the remaining eateries were slowly yet surely shutting down, the calls for a more feasible option grew. And then the prayers were finally answered–a whole new floor was dedicated to cater to the appetite of the employees, and it captured our imagination. From food that ranged from Chinese, to North Indian, to South Indian, from juices and milkshakes, to cakes and pastries to the ambience–the beautifully designed décor, to the placement of the chairs, to the view, the new foodcourt had everyone going gaga over it. It was a welcome change from the eyesore that passed itself off as the building’s main foodcourt.

And then, they gave the Vendor a spot there to go about his business.

Do you know that feeling that creeps under your skin whenever you see your ex-girlfriend with her boyfriend?

You grit your teeth, yet you pretend that she walking hand in hand with him does not bother you at all. Every bit of you would urge you to walk over to her, to look her in the eye and shout out “What has he got that I don’t?”, yet you do none of it. You cannot make yourself do it, you just look at her with a fake smile hoping that one day she will realize her folly and come back to you.

But you know that she won’t.

The Vendor was reduced to that guy, he was reduced to a peanut seller in Disneyland, nobody was interested in buying peanuts from him, they were all going for the cotton candy. He saw his once faithful patrons going for bigger, better and more varied options. He looked longingly at his old customers who waited in the long queue at the Chinese, hoping they would spot him in his corner eagerly holding a packet in his hand, and come to get one from him just for old times’ sake. But no one noticed, nobody cared, nobody even acknowledged his presence.

There were very few who came to him, but that was because they were running short of cash. When they were loaded with cash the next day, they probably won’t even go near him.

Maybe one day when people had their fill of the swanky new foodcourt, when every meal starts to taste the same, when they realize that the lavish food was burning a hole in their pocket, they will search for that friendly face again.

They will look for the Vendor at his spot, only to find it empty with no trace of him. They will ask others about him.

“Did you see that young boy who used to sell dal and rotis in a plastic bag? Where do I find him?”

Questions that would be answered with a shake of the heads, with shrugged shoulders that say “I don’t know.”

And just when you felt that you betrayed him, he would be standing right behind you handing you that packet which has the neatly packaged food in aluminum foil. And with a smile on his face, he would say

“Enjoy your meal, do come again”

No thank you, I prefer being at home.

2013-02-02T05:47:00.002-08:00

My friends always coax me to come out of my home during the weekends for a movie at the mall, or for lunch somewhere in any of the fastfood joints that reside there. Strangely, as excited as I sound when the plan is in its nascent stages on a Thursday afternoon, all the excitement seeps away when Friday evening announces its presence. By then all I would love to do in the weekend would be to curl up in the couch, and read a book, or watch television.

This probably has been one of the reasons why I am still single. It takes enormous amount of willpower to get out of bed on a Saturday, to go out for shopping or a movie in a mall that is bursting at the seams. Ask every young couple of their plans for the weekend on a Friday evening, and they would excitedly list the places they intend to visit, the movies they plan to watch, and the restaurants they are dying to try out. You see, in the age of internet and door delivery of restaurant food I just find going out for shopping and thronging at movie halls a waste of time. Sure, online retail sites never give us a chance to bargain, but I was never much of a bargainer. Ask any auto driver in Chennai or a hawker in Moore Market and he would list me as one of his favorite customers for the same reason.

When a plan with friends is made on a weekend get together, the first image that comes to my mind is this:

Once the plan is finalized with the “Where” and “When” decided, and every one disperses to their homes, I end up thinking of the How?

How do I intend to meet this lovely bunch of people at the decided place?

And then the answer flashes before my eyes.

Haven’t you seen how crowded the streets are? People are everywhere. They are down at the mall, in cafes, in restaurants, in movie theatres, you go to the beach and they are there too. The only uninhabited place is the space, but that won’t be like that for long. In the near future earthlings might visit Mars over the weekend for a quick getaway from their nagging bosses at Earth, the women might visit Venus to kick back and relax at their spas and salons that Green Trends and Naturals would have opened there. If they can open one at a place like Avadi, there is nothing that could stop them from opening one in Venus.

Traces of the DNA of the Early Man–the Hunter-Gatherer type still exist in our cells, what else could explain the reason behind scores of men and women bustling down crowded streets and avenues, looking around for deals to grab and items to shop?

If you think about it, this whole social ritual of shopping is a more evolved version of hunting and gathering. In the Stone Age, man used to hunt for exotic items to please his lady that would help him win her heart and eventually lead him to do the Ooga Booga with her. He would be out for days on a hunting expedition, in search of exotic things he could find to please his lady. They would range from the tusks of a walrus, to the fur of a woolly mammoth–anything that would catch his lady’s eye. The more scars and bruises he got in his quest, the more impressed would the woman be, bargaining used to be more violent and bloodied those days with either the hunted being a victim of a club smashing down their skull, or the hunter being mauled by the vicious animal.

But now in the modern era, our quest of hunting and gathering of commodities leaves us bruised and battered of a different kind–financially, that is.

People often label me as dull, a bore and a spoil sport because I never go out to meet friends, and instead lock myself in the confines of my abode, but then I don’t see the point in why I have to meet a bunch of people by going through this:

When I can be at home and actually do this:

The No Head or Tail Post

2012-12-25T05:58:00.000-08:00

It has been three months since I had last posted a blog, I could apologize for going AWOL from my blog to my readers, but hey…… “Readers”? Who am I kidding?

It has been a long time since I framed a coherent sentence in a word processor, it feels like getting back to the gym after a long break. You don’t hit the treadmill running right away, you just pace yourself slowly. This post shall be like that too, pacing myself, word by word.

I feel like I am back in the nineties since I had deactivated my Facebook account.

Yes, you read it right, I deactivated my Facebook account.

“Why?” people asked with concern, like they ask a couple who just broke up.

“It didn’t work out” I reply with a straight face.

Actually, I was just tired of yearning for people’s opinion to know that I am funny. I used to check Facebook every fifteen minutes after posting a photo or status update for “likes”, the absence of which would make me feel less validated.

I was cut off from the internet junta, and it feels kind of okay. One has to be shrouded with an element of mystery about themselves, something that Facebook takes away. You are there for others to see. The food you eat, the communities you like, the people you hang out with, the places you go to. It’s your own virtual avatar that leaves nothing to other people’s imagination about yourself.

You seem to know a fair deal about that guy you see in the elevator every day just by browsing his Facebook page.

I am writing this post not because I want to, but because I want to know that I can. There won’t be many people reading it, but I am not complaining.

People often ask me why I never go out much, hang out with friends much over the weekends. I have a small television room, comfy, well equipped with a good sound system, and a TV that reads videos of all formats, the one that it doesn’t read is read by the media player that is plugged to it.

I have a hard disk filled with television shows and movies. I get to see lots of stories, absorb lots of content, and get to see various actors emote as they get into the skin of the character. From serial killers, to mob bosses, to zombies to cops and robbers–the idiot box opens a whole new world with diverse characters to me. And as I sit on the bed watching all that is happening on TV lifeless, I could feel my whole world shutting down on me.

They ask me “What do you want to do with your life?” it’s a question that leaves me fumbling for answers. What am I doing with my life, I wonder. I think of it when I am traveling to work, or watching repeats of old sitcoms, I feel the laugh track actually suits my current predicament. I have cousins settled abroad, earning lots of money. I have friends around me in India doing the nine-to-five regular jobs earning lots of money. Is that what life is reduced to? Earn lots of money, save for the future, get married, have kids, raise them while worrying for their future.

Sometimes friends tell me to get a girlfriend, socialize. Maybe I shouldn’t have scoffed at Chetan Bhagat who had famously said that young India’s problems are “naukri aur chokri”.

But after looking at the Delhi rape incident, I sometimes wonder whether we men even deserve a woman. What kind of a monster does that? I can’t imagine what the girl must have gone through, reading the report leaves me angry, depressed, helpless, and choked up. Even checking out a girl now makes me feel that I am violating her someway. Fuck.

We are regressing as a society, and as a nation. What good could bringing a child to this shitty world do? To make him/her go through an overcrowded, polluted, materialistic, one dimensional system?

I don’t believe in making New Year resolutions, but the Delhi incident has only opened my eyes. When next time when a lady friend of mine is hooted at, or has lewd remarks thrown at her, probably the least I could do would be to make a scene with the violators. Point a finger at him and bring it to the crowd’s attention that there is sicko lurking amidst us.

What do I want to do with my life?

Maybe I will start with being a better man.