How is married life treating you?

...oh, it’s devastating! Wish I could tell someone this just to see how he reacted... what is one supposed to say?Getting married is all about getting used to a lot of new things. Waking up with a new person, her idiosyncrasies, change in priorities, change in goals, blah blah... blah. But how exactly does one react to a vague enquiry... So? How is married life treating you? Some ask it with a tone of conspiracy... tell me all you can while your wife is out of earshot... Some ask it with a smug look... now you’ll know what you’re in for! writ ll over their face...Some things have changed... weekend grocery shopping, for example... a 20 something boy pushing a trolley-full of normal vegetables and dal-chawal-atta always seemed to give aunties and uncles something to stare at, giggle about and worse still, point fingers at! Somehow they seem much more acceptable of the contents of the trolley in the presence of a woman alongside. Ah, he is the settled down sorts... they think, and must have recently graduated to eating healthy, normal khaana – the kinds that do not come out of a oven-safe packet.Is this what domestication is all about

HoneymoonTravels...

Lots been written about the movie... and I guess it is a trifle late in the day to write a review... so let me write why I like the movie... and defend the most common grouses levelled against it. Needless to say, grouses that I find justified as well, will not be addressed.No one has faulted Reema Kagti on her ability to script the movie... it is her way of telling a story that they don't agree with. It's been often pointed out how after the first forty minutes or so she seems to be losing her grip on the story... and introduces the super-hero element as a face-saver... that is where I beg to differ... to me it seemed every character was given a lot of thought and was there with a purpose.The Bong couple for example... like the Gujju or the Punjabi couple they were caricatures of what one from a particular ethnicity is assumed to be (that does not mean that my submission is that Bongs are far from how Kay Kay was portrayed... just that even though they may be prudish, deep down, take their hang-ups from them, and they ARE nice people)... but as the movie culminates you notice that their conjugal relationship has undergone a learning curve.Ranveer Shourey – once again, brilliant as the oh-so-Gujjubhai-that-we-all-have-met-in-Bombay is wonderful... but again, a caricature from his Seelpa call, to his aake hisaab karta hoon, that he threatens Shilpa’s family with.Ameesha Patel... the less said about the better. My suspicion is that she did not have to act too much.But the point that I am trying to make is that, if you look at each couple behind closed doors, you realise honeymoons do not necessarily need to be the perfect period that they are portrayed as... in fact, in most cases, this is the time when the two people face each other with their insecurities, issues and confessions.And that is where the superhero act of Abhay and Minnisshha (is that one extra ‘h’? But then, who’s perfect) come in... I’d like to believe this is a way of saying that for one to be ridiculously perfect and absolutely compatible, one would have to be superhuman. But look at what they lose out on in the bargain – these two characters do not develop at all... they go nowhere from where they were in the beginning of the story.The ending is adorable too... everyone seems to learn to live with their lives – may be not at peace with it’s shortcomings, but aware of them, and determined to smile through them...Nice.

Of all the things I've lost...I miss my mind the most

When did you fight a losing battle last? When did you do something last, knowing fully well that you had no hope in hell to crack it half as good as the best in business? Honestly? I don’t remember.We are taught to be good from our childhood... if you can hold a tune – sing; If you can draw a crow that doesn’t look like a kite – paint! for you seem to have some hope. Till you grow up. As, somehow, the options seem to dwindle as years add up on your side. The harmonium goes first of all...gathering dust above the almari. Then the paintbrushes end up being used to clean cobwebs on a Sunday. And finally you end up being good at something that means nothing to you. And, you don’t care anymore, for the knowledge that you do it good stands above doing what you enjoy.I have been fortunate. I wanted to be a journalist since I was fourteen. Well, before that I wanted to be, among other things, a private detective, a traffic-policemen and an actor, but journalist was the first secure enough option I gave myself. Though, my father breathed again only after I got my first job.I’ve done reasonably well since, I’d suppose; or found options fast enough. But the one thing that I could not give up is writing. Or reading. Or at least missing both, when I didn't have time. I miss not having time to read as much as I would want to. Most of what I manage to read is literature on finance – something that pertains to my work directly, and to be honest, I do quite enjoy as well. But what about all the travelogues I fail to read anymore? the anecdotes and autobiographies? short stories?I miss reading them, and I miss thinking about them. Oh, the joy of feeling enriched after you’ve been mesmerised by a master-craftsman who takes you in a journey with her while she is putting her thought in words. Literally. Thoughts-in-words. It doesn’t even have to be a classic. I go thorough http://55-words.blogspot.com/ as often as I find time. Why am I denied such clarity of thought? 55 words is all you have. And at least ten percent of these creations are mind-blowing. Or a dead blog I come across every once in a while, that takes my breath away. I take an hour and the archives have been rampaged; why did they stop writing... I wonder as I pine for more, all the time secretly wishing I could write as well.But as I go through all my archives, I clearly see the learning curve has gone flat. I’m learning new words, but my thoughts don’t get any more lucid.Where’s this journey going to end?

Post It!

Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans - John LennonI think I am becoming a slave to organisation. Or at least to the quest of perfect planning. Not that my wife likes it, she objects to the bag being kept on a particular chair (closest to the door – helps when you have woken up late in the morning and are late to work), the bed compulsorily being made every single morning, even when all we do is get out of bed, run to office, run back and crash on that same bed.But I don’t listen. A day spent without planning is a day lost. Post-It is the biggest invention of mankind... ok, may be after ice cream, but then too, it is big enough. How else would we remember to keep the milk back in the fridge after it’s cooled? How do you know which is dhania powder and which is jeera, unless the identical jars have those friendly little stickers on them? (My wife here says that stickers cannot be friendly. Helpful, yes. But not friendly. Gah!) Post-It, O Post-It, you are the God of the modern day!Aaah, the joy of writing about Things To Do in those long narrow strips of paper! The more items to scribble, the merrier... and then, you can always count on the joy of scratching them off the next day! Single digit serial numbers make to double digits... and then to... no, one must not lie on a blog; I am yet to reach a three digit on the list of items. But on a particularly bad day, innovation always helps. Need to meet someone? That’s one item. Need to call him first to figure out his office address? That’s another item too.Where is the problem then? Ah! Let me get to that. The problem is in the To Do lists. I have To Do lists for the kitchen and the doodhwala and the istriwala. I have to do lists for the bank guy, for the broker we need to meet, for the couriers we need to send, and for the phone calls home we need to make. I even have lists for topic I plan to Google for, when I have time to kill. All separate. Did I forget anything? Ah, yes, I also have To Do lists for the business calls we need to make, the reports we need to read, and the forms we need to fill up.In fact, let me admit. I even have To-Do lists for To-Do lists. Now tell me, don't you think this makes life so much simpler?

While you were sleeping...

A friend gifted S a Worldspace subscription... so most of the time at home during the last couple of days has been spent testing its limits. But the real surprise came about late last night, when on switching on a Bangla channel, all we could hear for the next hour or so were old melodies by Manna Dey. No RJ spreading his/her gyan, no baniyan advertisements...only and only music - something I had forgotten to expect of radio. You see, listening to cassettes or CDs is not as much fun, because you know what song will follow. It's only a radio station that plays good music consistently that keeps up the suspense of what is to follow.But what does that have to do with your (or mine, for that matter) sleep?Listening to this station, I was trying to remember the last time I had heard uninterrupted music like this...way back, before the FM revolution. When all that we had was the non-commercial sarkari radio stations - Calcutta A and Calcutta B... with no FM stations till far, far away. Listening to this made me feel how I did not know how much I missed it. And I tried to think of some more things that had vanished silentlySome more things that vanished? The safari suit. Remember that grey/brown/powder blue coloured half-sleeved suit thing that was worn without a shirt inside, had collars similar to but smaller than a suit's? all the uncles used to wear it... with ridiculous pockets not only on the chest but also at near the waist of the short-shirt. Now the only people who wear it are the contractors and tent-wallahs. though there's proof that not only is it alive, it even has trends for 2007 and a calender to boot!!Remember there was this time when one would land up unannounced at some one's place and sit and wait for half an hour? The only thing that surprised me when I first heard about how things were abroad, was the fact that no one ever went to meet anyone without calling... none of us ever noticed when that happened to us. Those were the times of ITI's heavy black telephones with circular dials... with a variety of services like false-rings and cross-connections... that is if your line was up and working, in the first place. Oh, these fancy credit-card size mobiles with speed dials are such a kill-joy!

The line I'm in love with now

In the long term, we are all dead ~ KeynesJohn Maynard Keynes, British economist said this... presumably about economics or even capital markets... how waiting endlessly for projects, investments to bear fruit makes no sense.But to me, this line is about that, and much more...it's largely about life. How almost all we are preoccupied with in life... my job sucks, my EMI's killing me, see - he's sucking up to the boss, when will I get rich, blah, blah, blah, blah...But the point is, all of this is transient...it will all be over, sooner or later. Whether you like it not, whether you are winning or not, whether you had your chance or not. And when it does get over, all of us, no matter how rich, how powerful or with how much clout, will be on equal footing.

The easy WAy out!!!

Finally broke our jinx last evening by watching The Dark Knight – the jinx of having gone wrong on a series of movies that we chose to watch in theatres. And after movies like Black & White, U, Me aur Hum and Ugli aur Pagli, what a treat this was!Enough has been said about Heath Ledger, who absolutely owns the film… it couldn’t have been anyone else’s show, despite their best efforts. But I have come back more impressed with the writers of the movie (Screenplay: Christopher Nolan & Jonathan Nolan) than anything else. Superhero films, to me, usually, have been instant gratification. I have watched them for thrills, and forgotten them the next day. Till Spiderman 2 came along – the first time someone seemed to be looking beyond the superpowers and special effects – trying to get across the message that it is not the extent of power one wields, but what one intends to do with it.The Dark Knight seems to take this message further – to understand how everyone justifies their stand – the Joker, Two Face, or even Batman himself. And the way they write so effortlessly gets the complicated point-of-view across! Consider, for example, this conversation where Joker convinces Two-Face about the necessity of chaos as the only balancing factor between those who have power and those who don’t. You can’t help marvel at the perverse logic. And then, with a start you remember that these are just lines written for a movie by a writer. I could copy paste the entire script from the web – because this is what they do through out the movie – play along the two sides of the argument.Which brings me to the part that I had actually set my mind to write about, when I began this post. What is the matter with the way we write our films? Why can’t we tell a story half as well? And why are we getting so, so lazy?Let me explain. The major problem that I find with most Hindi movies that I watch these days is the laziness in building a character. Or working hard to explain a sequence of events that lead to certain emotions. We are comfortable with taking shortcuts like using voiceovers, or narrations from friends for this. And in some cases, even a representation from the media comes in handy.Ugli aur Pugli, for example. Anyone who has watched the movie would remember how every couple of minutes Ranvir Shorey’s voiceovers would take over. Or Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na… we use the extremely easy way of friends telling a story to establish the protagonists and their personality. Or, how could we forget Rang De Basanti, where even Sue is used similarly when her voiceover lets us know that DJ (Aamir Khan) is actually awakening from his slumber while lying with his head on her lap. Was there no cinematic way of conveying this? U, Me aur Hum? Where the story is anyway in flashback with Ajay Devgan narrating it?In some places it is even more blatant. Remember Krrish? Naseeruddin Shah’s character there had the habit of looking directly at the camera in an extreme close up and yelling out “BREAKING NEWS” to announce what he was going to do next. Shootout at Lokhandwala also uses the same trick through Dia Mirza reporting as a journalist from the place of the shootout. Rang De Basanti, once again, had half the story told through mike toting journalists reporting from various locations as the drama unfolded.And if I am still not clear about what I’m trying to drive at, let me tell you about some of the films where we have seen beautiful narrative. Take any movie by Hrishikesh Mukherjee or Gulzar – where half an hour in to the story, one would have complete clarity about each character. In recent times, remember Lage Raho Munnabhai? What will it take for us to write more like that?As someone said, being simple is the most difficult thing in this world.